Demented Ramblings

I’m still a terrible food blogger. What can I say? This blog isn’t my first love. My first love is the LiveJournal. Since the poached pear evening, I haven’t done anything amazing in the kitchen. My AC is busted and I’m eating a lot of sandwiches or cooking simple things. I did make a kickass chocolate cake for Sparks and myself this past weekend, but it was just a chocolate cake. Not blog-worthy.

I’ve been doing more crafting though. Mostly decorative things for the cute house. While I have plenty of plans, few things are finished yet. I’ve finished one thing though – Project Privacy. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, well, now. That was one damned tasty dinner. My camera is still packed away someplace. I shoved all clutter into the spare room and closed the door. Much easier than actually cleaning the house enough to have company. Read the rest of this entry »

Whenever I have a party, there are leftovers out the wazoo. I was raised by a bunch of women who think that they must feed the entire Marine Corps whenever they have company. My friends were obviously raised by folks with the same viewpoint. Therefore, we can put out a serious spread. This is why I’ve been eating crackers and dips all week for breakfast and lunch.

There was a veggie tray brought to my party and as always the carrots and cauliflower get hit pretty hard, but not much else. Tonight I have decided to make use of the big pile of grape tomatoes left over.

I tossed them into a pan with olive oil and salt and an entire head of garlic broken into its separate cloves. Stuck them in the oven at 400ish degrees (I set the oven to 400, the thermometer said that it was more like 360) and left them in there for a half hour. I came along 2 or 3 times to give them a shake during the cooking.

I mashed the garlic out of it’s skin and squished it up. Yes, squished is a culinary term! *snicker* Then put it into a bowl with the roasty tomatoes and squished them up with a fork. Added some salt and a few dried herbs. Yummo as that blasted Rachel Ray would say (she’s currently on my tv).

I’ve got water on the stove to boil up some pasta. I plan to throw this together and hey – free dinner!

Ok, not quite, but it all came from the pantry/leftovers and did not require me to go to the store. Besides, if I weren’t using the tomatoes in this fashion, they’d probably be thrown out in another day or two as I do not like raw tomatoes.

I’d considered adding a bit of wine and cream and making a schmancier sauce but I was afraid I’d mess it up. It’s damn near perfect right now.

I haven’t found my camera yet since moving, so no pictures. But it’s not all that pretty anyway.

*sniff* I accidentally killed it dead. And it was such a handy gadget!

How, praytell, did I manage this? Broiling pork tenderloin and touched the thermometer to the element. OOPSIE!

It was a horrid sacrifice, but dinner was yummy enough to make up for it. Broiled pork tenderloin crusted with curried mustard, served with peas, couscous and curried fruit. *droools*

Thanks to my darling Mark Bittmann for the idea! I didn’t exactly follow his recipe, but close.

Sparks and I went away to one of the state park lodges for a couple of days. We were celebrating both Valentine’s day and our second anniversary. Being that we were pretty much in the middle of nowhere, the lodge restaurant was the only game in town for acquiring dinner.

Their Valentine’s special dinner was a special salad (which we never saw), prime rib, twice baked potatoes, parmesan tomato, and a special dessert. The prime rib was quite overcooked, per both our tastes, but was still tender. It was served with some sauce named for the Louisville chef who created it. It might have been wonderful on ribs, but prime rib needs horseradish. Luckily they accommodated us there. The twice baked potatoes were ok, but tasted like they’d just split the potato and then piled on instant mashed potatoes.

The big surprise of the meal, especially to a non-tomato liking girl, was the parmesan tomato. It was halved and topped with bread crumbs and parmesan cheese then toasted under the broiler. It brought out the sweetness in the tomato and was very tasty. Of course, the two of us being slight food snobs, we discussed how we thought that we could do it better, but it was very tasty.

Dessert was dry cake with way too much royal icing and a quite yummy strawberry.

I wouldn’t drive up there just for the dinner, but for being the only option it was quite good.

On friday, I bought a rotisserie chicken at the grocery. I get those occasionally and usually eat one breast off of it and the rest of the chicken rots in the fridge. Not this time!

So, on friday night, I had a nibbly meal with chicken and cheese and fruit and olives and bread. Yum!

Last night I stripped all of the chicken off of the carcass and threw it into a pan with a can of chicken broth and started simmering it. I tossed in a bit of seasoning, a shallot, 1 garlic clove, and a can of chopped chiles. I cooked it until the chicken broth was mostly evaporated/soaked into the chicken (softening it, as it was a bit overcooked and tough) then added a can of black beans. This I spooned over rice.

Tonight, I sauteed an onion, mixed half of it with the chicken and rice and set the rest aside. Then I made a quick chicken gravy from canned chicken broth. Half of that went into the chicken and rice and the reserved onions went into the other half and set aside for a moment. I spooned the chicken/rice/gravy mixture into tortillas and rolled them up. After all the enchiladas were rolled up, I topped them with the reserved gravy/sauce/whatever and baked them for a half hour.

And still tonight, it was too much food. If we’d made a side dish of some sort, there would have easily been enough for 3. But we didn’t think they’d reheat for doodly, so pop stuffed himself to the gills and I ate as much as I could without making myself ill.

To sum up. One chicken turned into a plate full of nibblies, chicken etoufee of sorts, and chicken enchiladas. Aw yeah!

For the record, this recipe is amazing!

pumpkin bread pudding

I’m currently on a business trip – my first solo excursion longer than a day. I’m actually having a bit of fun exploring Columbus. Tonight, in my wanderings, I came across someplace called Stoney River for dinner. Pricey, but holy shit that was the best steak I’ve had in a very long time. I went with my waiter’s recommendation of the coffee cured tenderloin. *drools* I’m stuffed to the gills right now and it still makes me drool to think about. Dude brought me their “stone puppies”. *homer simpson drooly sound* Think teeny yeast roll with poppy seeds in it, deep fried like a doughnut hole and served with honey butter.

I had to ask Tony (my server) how one goes about coffee curing a steak. I’m going to put it here so that I’ll remember later. Take triple strength coffee (think french press, not espresso) and lots of salt, mix in brown sugar and molasses, other spices if you like. Put your steak in there and a bunch of ice cubes to bring the temp down way low, then slide it in the fridge. Let it sit 3-4 hours. When you pull one out and check it, it should be tender but not falling apart. If it’s falling apart then you’ve left it too long. Rinse it very well before cooking. They sear it on a griddle so that the sugar pulls out and carmelizes, then slide it into the oven to finish cooking. (it tasted rather like it had some rosemary in the marinade too)

I must try this at home. They served it with lyonaisse (?) potatoes and french green beans. Even though I couldn’t finish the dinner, I succumbed to dessert when Tony mentioned the magic words….creme brulee! Ah hellz yeah! My favorite! It was a first for me, cinnamon creme brulee. I still like vanilla better but the cinnamon was damned good.

Perhaps I will find more yummy things to try to recreate at home while I’m on the road this week and next.

Ack! What to do with a plethora of tomatoes!

Have I ever mentioned here that I really don’t like tomatoes? It used to be a full on hatred, but I’ve been teaching myself tomato tolerance for the last few years. I still don’t want to just pick a tomato fresh from the garden and bite into it, but I’m finding things to do to them that make me love them.

Twice this week, I made pizza – roasting the tomatoes first on the grill. Then on friday I threw together a quick tomato salad to go beside the burgers that we had for dinner.

I quartered cherry tomatoes, diced up a couple of slices of red onion, and minced a garlic clove. This was tossed with seasoned salt, lemon juice and olive oil. It was pretty danged tasty, I ate and even enjoyed a bit of it.

All of these tomatoes have my reflux kicking up something severe.

Twice this week (and it’s only Wednesday!) I’ve cooked and it’s turned out well. Even better than that, I even remembered to take pictures. I might turn into a foodblogger yet!

There was nothing terribly groundbreaking about Monday night’s dinner. These were rehashed recipes, but thrown together in a new combination.

Here we have grilled tuna steak which was marinated in lime juice, olive oil, and Old Bay. Corn on the cob done in my new favorite way – grilled with lime, salt, and cayenne. And a quick bean salad consisting of canned (rinsed) beans, minced onion, jalapeno, lime juice, garlic, olive oil and cilantro.

Tonight I got a bit more adventurous.

Mustard crusted grilled pork tenderloin with mustard dill sauce, honey glazed sweet potato, and grilled asparagus. I found the recipe for the pork online somewhere and really liked it for its simplicity. Coat a pork tenderloin with a jar of stone ground mustard and 2-3 tsps of kosher salt. I only used half a jar of mustard since I only used one of the tenderloins in the package. Place the tenderloin on the grill (lowest setting) for 20 minutes on the first side, then flip and cook for another 15-20 minutes, until it reaches 165 F.

The asparagus has become a standby around here. We love it! If you’ve never grilled asparagus, I recommend getting to it. Toss trimmed asparagus spears with olive oil and kosher salt and place on the grill. I leave them there until they get a little blackened in spots.

Finally, the sweet potatoes. I had no recipe for these, just pulled something out of my head. It was mildly based on the fried sweet potatoes that my gran used to make for Pop. I peeled a sweet potato and sliced it into large slabs. These were placed on the grill for 10 or so minutes, until they looked ready to flip. After flipping them, I brushed warmed honey onto the top side. Once I thought the other side was about done, I flipped them again and brushed honey on the other side, giving it a few more minutes on the grill for the honey to sort of carmelize.

While everything else was cooking (believe me when I say I was running back and forth like crazy) I made a mustard dill sauce in the kitchen. I got the recipe from Get Saucy, a cookbook I have on hand. I had feared that the pork would be dry, as I tend to cook the daylights out of either pork or chicked because I seem to have some deep seated fear of undercooked meat (except beef, which I prefer medium). However, by cooking the pork slowly over very low heat, it was quite moist. The sauce was a great complement for it though.