What can you expect in the Food Thread on PF?

[Ouabache]

Sorry to hear the grilled scapes tasted bland, Turbo. Eric really enjoyed them grilled. I believe I'd also like them in a salad or an omelet. I don't have any garlic growing but my chives and egyptian onions all good. I just go out and snip a few when I need some for the pan.

Evo's country ribs sound delicious (Yummm). I believe Alton B would approve of this method.

 

[Evo]

MIH asked me about this recipe, so here it is. If you like chocolate, you will LOVE this. It is the best chocolate ANYTHING I've ever eaten. Well worth the effort.

Hershey's Fudgey Chocolate Torte

3/4 cup butter or stick margarine
6 Tbps Cocoa powder
1 cup sugar, divided
2/3 cup ground blanched almonds
2 Tbps flour
3 eggs, separated
2 Tbps water
Chocolate glaze (recipe follows)

Melt butter in medium saucepan over low heat. Stir in cocoa and 3/4 cup sugar; blend until smooth. Remove from heat, cool 5 minutes. Blend in almonds and flour. Beat in egg yolks, one at a time. Stir in water. In medium bowl, beat egg whites until foamy. Gradually add remaining sugar, beating just until soft peaks form. Gently fold chocolate mixture into egg whites, blending thoroughly. Pour into greased and floured 9-inch layer pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until tester comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes. (Cake will settle slightly). Remove from pan onto wire rack. Cool completely. Invert cake onto serving plate. Spread top and sides with chocolate glaze.

Garnish as desired. 8-10 servings

CHOCOLATE GLAZE:

Melt 2 tablespoons butter or regular stick magarine in small saucepan over low heat. Add 2 tablespoons Hershey's cocoa and 2 tablespoons water; stir constantly until mixture thickens. Do not boil. Remove from heat; add 1/2 teaspoon vanilla. Gradually add 1 cup confectioner's sugar, beating with whisk until smooth.

 

[turbo]

Ack! I prefer that my cappilaries pass blood.

 

[Evo]

Ack! I prefer that my cappilaries pass blood.

You don't eat eggs?

 

[lisab]

Ack! I prefer that my cappilaries pass blood.

Chocolate is good for you - it has antioxidants! This recipe is clearly health food!

<lisab places hands over ears and says lalalalalalalalalal...>

 

[turbo]

You don't eat eggs?

I love eggs, but any dessert that calls for lots of butter rings alarm bells for me. My cholesterol is great (a bit high, overall, but with really good HDL/LDL ratio), so when the two largest contributors to a recipe are butter and sugar, I lose interest.

 

[turbo]

Supper was fine tonight - a sweet/spicy grilled mix of chopped chicken thigh meat, red and orange sweet peppers, Vidalia onions and halved mini-bela mushrooms, served over a bed of steamed Basmati rice. I grilled the chicken first, basting with my home-made BBQ sauce, then transferred that grill-wok to the warming rack, turned up the heat, and seared the vegetables, seasoning them with the remaining BBQ sauce in the second grill-wok.

Reservations are required. No shirt, no shoes? No worries.

 

[Evo]

I love eggs, but any dessert that calls for lots of butter rings alarm bells for me. My cholesterol is great (a bit high, overall, but with really good HDL/LDL ratio), so when the two largest contributors to a recipe are butter and sugar, I lose interest.

For a cake that serves ten, this is one of the healthier. 1 stick of butter divided between 10 people, or use maragarine, if a couple of pats of butter concern you.

This has the least amount of sugar of any chocolate cake I've seen. Some have 2 cups of sugar in the batter and 3 cups sugar in the frosting.

My torte is light in comparison, it just tastes rich.

 

[turbo]

For a cake that serves ten, this is one of the healthier. 1 stick of butter divided between 10 people, or use maragarine, if a couple of pats of butter concern you.

This has the least amount of sugar of any chocolate cake I've seen. Some have 2 cups of sugar in the batter and 3 cups sugar in the frosting.

My torte is light in comparison, it just tastes rich.

I don't use margarine at all - only butter. I love butter, and use it in moderation in many, many recipes. (Butter is the French Provincial chefs' secret weapon.) I think it's healthier than margarine. For the same reason, I use lard, bacon fat, rendered pork fat, etc instead of shortening.

My family (both sides) cooked with butter, lard, animal fats, cream, etc, just not a lot of it in anyone dish.

 

[turbo]

I took the young turkey out of the freezer today to start thawing. I'm going to use the new grill/smoker to make a smoked turkey for Father's Day. (This will be a first - I always used my Brinkman stackable smoker to do turkeys!) Now to figure the rest of the menu. The grill-woks should make it easy to do stir-fry-type vegetable mixes, among other things. I've got to bake another batch of beans for Sunday, too. My niece Hayley loves baked beans. Maybe some fresh breads and biscuits... If the oven is going to be hot anyway...

 

[Evo]

Todays rant - idiotic fads

Smearing a teaspoon of sauce on the bottom of a plate of food. Ok, I got enough sauce for the first forkfull. Now what am I supposed to do with the rest of the plate of food? There is no more sauce.

Overpriced food fads - chicken wings

I can buy a whole raw chicken for 98 cents a pound. A little over one dollar per pound for a fully roasted chicken. Cooked chicken wings, the part of the chicken that is 80% bone? $6.97 per pound!

 

[turbo]

Ack!

 

[turbo]

Getting ready for Fathers Day cooking. I need to make baked beans and bread, and the outside temps are going to be hitting 90. Not good. I need to move my kitchen into the cold-cellar.

 

[turbo]

I'm soaking dry beans (mix of Black Turtle and Black-Eye beans). Right now it's about 90 deg in the shade with oppressive humidity and it's likely to be worse tomorrow, so I'm going to bake the beans on the grill instead of running my oven and overheating the house. I'm going to use the charcoal side burner to heat the main charcoal grill indirectly and use it as an oven for the covered bean-pot. All I have to do is maintain around 300 degrees under the lid of the charcoal grill - shouldn't be too tough.

BTW, if you grill you should never buy charcoal lighter fluid. You can get a charcoal starter (chimney-type) at WalMart for less than $10. Load the chimney with charcoal, cram a piece of crumpled newspaper in the bottom, light it, and you've got red-hot coals in 15 minutes or so. At most, you might have to cram a second piece of paper in the bottom to get the coals roaring. I can't stand hamburgers, rolls, etc, that have a hint of petroleum in them, plus the starter saves the expense of buying the lighter fluid. I made starters out of coffee-cans back in the Boy Scouts, and they worked very well. The commercially-made ones have nice heat-shields, wooden handles, and permanent baffles between the paper and charcoal chambers, and they are very inexpensive.

My father was a sheet-metal mechanic, so as a kid I had access to tin snips, shears, drills, pop rivets, etc. My charcoal starters were a bit on the elaborate side compared to the type most of the scouts made, but aside from the rivets, all the materials were recycled/free.

 

[Evo]

I'm soaking dry beans (mix of Black Turtle and Black-Eye beans). Right now it's about 90 deg in the shade with oppressive humidity and it's likely to be worse tomorrow, so I'm going to bake the beans on the grill instead of running my oven and overheating the house. I'm going to use the charcoal side burner to heat the main charcoal grill indirectly and use it as an oven for the covered bean-pot. All I have to do is maintain around 300 degrees under the lid of the charcoal grill - shouldn't be too tough.

Excellent idea, also cooking ouitside will save money on air conditioning.

BTW, if you grill you should never buy charcoal lighter fluid. You can get a charcoal starter (chimney-type) at WalMart for less than $10.

Greaqt suggestion. For lighting wood fires, in the girlscouts, we made fire starters out of tightly rolled strips of newspaper dipped in parafin.

 

[turbo]

Excellent idea, also cooking ouitside will save money on air conditioning.

Greaqt suggestion. For lighting wood fires, in the girlscouts, we made fire starters out of tightly rolled strips of newspaper dipped in parafin.

Cooking on the grill is a matter of practicality. My two little portable AC units are struggling to keep the house under 75 deg right now. Baking on the back deck seems like a good way to save discomfort and money.

In the Boy Scouts, we also played around with paper, paraffin, strike-anywhere matches, lighter flints, etc, so we could could start fires in adverse conditions. By far, the best tool (if you didn't have to hike it in and out to your camp-site) was a chimney starter. It's not only good for starting charcoal - you can chop up some dry wood, fill the starter, load it with one or two pieces of newspaper, and in 15-20 minutes, you have a really raging bed of coals to start cooking with. When I first joined the Scouts, we had a camporee in town, and my patrol leader and I took over the cooking chores for our troop. I was maybe 13 and he was 17 or so. We made stew the first night on a wood-fire, and the Troop-master and his assistants all ate at our campfire. We had to make extras every time we cooked all weekend so the adults could "evaluate" our efforts.

An aside. When our patrol leader left HS and the Scouts, I became the youngest patrol leader in the troop. I'm pretty sure it was because I could not only organize and set up a camp-site, but that I could cook well enough to keep the other kids happy. If you are 13-14 or so, and you can get older kids to clean up the pots and pans, repackage and store foods, etc so you can have good meals for a few days, you can get some validation from that.

 

[Evo]

I made the Evo Child's favorite soup last night. It's just a bean soup.

I don't really have a recipe, but here's a rough estimate if anyone wants to try it.

6-8 quart pot with lid.

Ingredients

1/3 cup each of the following beans, rinsed and sorted to remove rocks, etc... (you can use any type of dried beans you want, but you must use the green split peas & large white limas, they dissolve and thicken and flavor the soup).

black beans
garbanzo beans
large white lima beans
small dark red kidney beans
small light red beans (or 2/3rd cup of either red or light)

Hunt's petite diced tomatoes, 28 ounce can or two 14.5 oz cans
6 beef bouillion cubes (DO NOT use canned or boxed beef broth or stock, it won't taste the same)
1 large or 2 small smoked ham hocks

1/3 cup dried lentils
1/3 cup dried black eyed peas
1/3 cup green split peas

Place the first 5 beans in pot and soak overnight, or for quick cook - bring to boil, stirring occasionally, boil 2 minutes, turn off heat, cover, and let sit for 1 hour.

Drain water from beans. Return soaked beans beans to pot, add the remaining DRY beans (lentils, black eyes & splt peas), 6-8 cups water, one 28 ounce can Hunt's petite diced tomatoes (Hunt's tastes the best, they have an unmistakable deep, rich, and acidic flavor crucial to this soup), the 6 beef bouillion cubes, and the ham hocks.

Slowly bring to boil, stirring often. Turn heat down, cover, and simmer for 2-3 hours (depending on how soft you like your beans, Evo Child likes 3 hours), stirring occasionally and adding water as needed.

 

[dlgoff]

That sounds soooo good. But with the Nexium I take and its effects, you would hear the results of mixing them from there.

 

[Evo]

That sounds soooo good. But with the Nexium I take and its effects, you would hear the results of mixing them from there.

LOL, I take Nexium too.

 

[dlgoff]

LOL, I take Nexium too.

Yea I knew you did. That's why I won't be alarmed if I hear explosions coming from the east tonight.

 

[Evo]

Yea I knew you did. That's why I won't be alarmed if I hear explosions coming from the east tonight.

 

[turbo]

After eating, do not approach open flames or electrical arcs.

 

[turbo]

I got up at 3am to start the smoker and get the turkey going for our fathers' day cookout. I rubbed the bird with olive oil, salt, pepper, and sage and started smoking with the bird breast-up to get that skin browned, then flipped the bird over so that the fats from the dark meat can migrate down to the white meat.

 

[Evo]

Looks great turbo!

 

[pcman]

i like chinese food

 

[Moonbear]

I got my new grill tonight. I ordered it yesterday from Lowe's (they had them on sale, and since the one I wanted would never fit in my car, I just ordered online rather than make a trip to the store) and I was expecting a call today to set up the delivery date/time. Instead, about 5 min after I got home from work, I got a call that they were on their way to my house with my order (I also got a new chair and table for the deck for cozy reading while grilling). I wasn't quite ready for it! Anyway, this is a fancy schmancy grill (because of the sale, it was worth getting a better one than I would have gone for otherwise, but either way, my old one was in desperate need of replacement since that was the cheapest one I could buy at the time).

I did manage to get it all assembled tonight, even though it took way more than the 30 min the instructions said it should take (partly because I didn't have a second person to help with steps that required two people)...more like 3 hours by the time I was all done (though that also included all the time to unpack the million little boxes of parts, and a few trips up and down the stairs to retrieve screws and washers I dropped through the spaces in the deck, and that one screw that needed to go in a space that was just WAY to small for my hands to reach). The delivery guy joked that I should have bought it on Friday when they were doing demos of how fast grills could be assembled at the local store.

But, I didn't have time to get the propane connected before dark, and like to do leak testing when I can see. So, tomorrow I'm looking forward to a nice grilled dinner.

I think I'll be doing a lot more cooking outside with this grill. It has the side burner so if I want to just boil up a vegetable to go with whatever I'm grilling, I can do that outside too. Definitely better than running back and forth between the grill and kitchen. And, since I keep tossing around various extremes of kitchen remodeling, if I do anything that requires pulling out the stove and oven for any amount of time, I'll still have a good grill to use.

Aside from the old grill just simply starting to rust through, the other reason I wanted this one is that my old one was so cheap, I couldn't even use wood chips to add flavor when grilling. The new one doesn't even require pre-soaking wood chips, just sprinkle them in and I can add a nice smoked taste to what I cook. And, it also has lots of optional extras I can get, like a rotisserie .

So, no more cheapest grill money can buy, I'm moving up! I think I'll be digging out my bbq sauce recipes tomorrow. Maybe I'll pick up a rack of ribs on the way home and get them marinating for Wed night dinner.

 

[turbo]

My wife LOVES our new grill because she can call home and "order" supper as she leaves work, and get nice smoked, charcoal-grilled or gas-grilled food. I'm cooking this afternoon, and since it is rainy today, I'll cook inside. Supper will be a stir-fry including a mix of vegetables and some of the leftover smoked turkey, served over a bed of rice. We had boiled down the smoked-turkey carcass to make a rich broth, and instead of the normal 1-3/4 cup of water per cup of Basmati rice in the steamer, I substituted 1/2 cup of the broth for an equal amount of water. The place is starting to smell really good - smoky, with sage, so I'm hoping that the rice is perfect. I probably wouldn't have tried this with plain white rice, but Basmati has a rich nutty flavor that ought to stand up to the smoke and seasonings.

 

[turbo]

Congrats on the new grill, MB! It took me over 6 hours to put mine together, in part because some of the parts are very heavy, and it's hard to get fasteners lined up without a second pair of hands.

Last weekend, a store in Bangor had a competition to see who could assemble grills the fastest, and the guy who won got to keep the grill as his prize. They got a LOT of grills assembled for free, just in the warm-up to the 4th of July, and sold quite a few, too. Looks like that kind of "competition" is catching on in popularity.

They would have needed teams of two to assemble my grill quickly. The parts total about 200#, and there is a lot of fussing around required to get the grill lids lined up properly with one another (the gas grill and the charcoal grill share a common central pivot for their lids).

I just re-read the story about the grill competition in the Bangor paper. The winner did not keep the grill, but gave it to a young 20-something competitor with two young children. Pretty classy!

 

[Evo]

Nice grill MB! Post pictures.

 

[turbo]

Early supper was great! A stir-fry of smoked turkey, onions, garlic, mushrooms, shredded carrot, Hungarian wax chilies, and zucchini (my least favorite vegetable next to eggplant, but my wife likes it) served over a bed of Basmati rice steamed in a mix of smoked-turkey broth and water. Looks like we have an option (other than turkey soup/stew or sandwiches) next time I smoke a bird.