pulled pork

Here is a recipe for superb pulled pork. 6.25 boneless boston butt.

night before:

soak wood chips
rub pork with rub, wrap in plastic wrap

day of:

begin big green egg. mix dry chips in with charcoal.
add wet chips.
smoke for three hours, or until temp hits 150 or so.

wrap butt in foil.
cook for another seven hours.
when temp hits 195, pull pork.

sweat pork for three plus hours.

pull pork!

beauty.

Tomato update

The tomato crop has begun coming in in earnest. The taxi tomato plant has produced only two fruits, and is still growing quite slowly. It is rather overshadowed by the amish paste, which has been my powerhouse. I'm now getting five or six amish pastes a week, and it shows no real signs of slowing down. Given that it shares root space with the taxi and golden nuggets(?), It is possible that it is just taking up the soil.

In the planter, the cabernet tomatoes have produced beautifully. The oxhearts and tappy's heritage tomatoes are bearing fruit, but all is green so far.

Query: up until now I have been picking tomatoes off the vine. Should I be cutting the vines to keep juices flowing to them?

Fertilizing the garden

On Sunday, July 24, I fertilized my garden, throwing down black cow on the herbs, the watermelons, and the tomatoes. A handful or two for each, padded right beneath the mulch.

Summer of the Mojito

Just read this blog post on mojitos on Jeffrey Morgenthaler's blog, with a list of dos and donts for those of us who treasure the mojito. Some of the rules seem reasonable, others raise queries. For instance, crushed ice is a must, and I learned this the hard way this last weekend when I used the big cubes in my glass. Will always crush ice from now on. Likewise, the silver rum is a must if mixing with a refined sugar simple syrup. But what of a turbando based alternative? It produces a thicker, richer syrup, and my guess is that it would overpower dark rums. And please, some explanation for why limes ought not to be muddled with the mint and syrup. Does it offend the herbs? Bruise the oils? Some explanation other than "strictly amateur" would be helpful. The gentle muddle seems good advice. My aggressive style of muddling breaks up the limes too much.

It is about time to try a golden pineapple sage turbinado syrup. Mojitos can take one more ingredient, and golden pineapple sage seems a natural fit. Both grassy and sweet, imparting nose and flavor that works well with mint. We will see how it fares. My goal is to have a syrup I can use for whiskey drinks in the Fall as well.

pork tenderloin, simple

This worked out well today for a simple pork tenderloin:

set big green egg for indirect cooking at 350.
Salt and pepper tenderloin. Rub with oil.
Cook at 350 for 35 minutes.

Remove place setter and let grill rise in temperature. (At this point I grilled some squash and zucchini while the pork sat)

Baste tenderloin with some kind of sauce. I used a cherry-balsamic grilling sauce. Return tenderloin to grill and cook each side 2-3 minutes.

Salsa Fresca

Adapted from Rick Bayless's Authentic Mexican:

2 ripe heirloom tomatoes, cored, seeds removed, and diced
1 medium onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, diced
4 jalapenos, seeded and diced
20 sprigs cilantro, chopped

Mix all these ingredients. Then add:

1 tablespoon of lime juice
salt
1 tablespoon of water

Let stew for half an hour. Enjoy some with chips. Then let refrigerate overnight.

Pelissero Munfrina 2009

Pelissero
Munfrina 2009
Dolcetto D'Alba, DOC
13.5%
$30? Sherlock Wine Merchant

This was a wine of some sophistication and elegance. Good spice, tobacco, and leather notes. Tannins were big, but not overpowering. A reminder of the fact that the $30 price point means something.

Simple Stuffed Jalepeno

The basic trick to stuffing jalapeños is to make the stuffing balance. Everything else is a cakewalk. Here was a recipe that really worked, and was pretty to boot.

For the stuffing:

cream cheese
creamy goat cheese
yellow onion, minced
parsley, finely chopped

The proportions were eyeballed, and it is usually best to start with the onion. Six jalapeños took about a quarter onion.

I cut the stems off the jalapeños, halved them and seeded them. I pulled out the membrane, but these peppers were mild enough that I didn't need to do so. I should try better to gauge heat before I do that in the future.

Then I spooned the mixture into the jalapeños halves, and loaded them onto a foil covered baking tray.

Baked at 350 for 16 minutes, broiled for 4 minutes to brown.

They could have been cooked less. These jalapeños are small, from the garden. They came out soft, and a few of them blew apart. Next time try either no broiling, or broiling for only 2 minutes.

Meat on the Bone, Pampered

I enjoy all the ribs we do, but I still feel like my ribs aren't tender enough. I'm going to try the southern technique of smoking and then sweating them to see if I can't get them real tenda. We'll call this the SSS method: Soaked-Smoked-Sweated

Night before: rub down ribs in my proprietary rub--a rub so delectable that no one knows the recipe. And I mean no one. I have no idea what I put in this rub, except that it has some usual ingredients and some cinnamon in it too. Wrap ribs in plastic wrap and throw in the refrigerator. Soak wood chips for grilling the next day.

[15 hours later]

Get coals going. Add soaked woodchips. Set for indirect heat, drop in the ribs. Temperature starts at 150 and climbs over the next twenty minutes to 210, and stays there for the next 1 hour and twenty minutes. Remove, wrap with foil, return to grill. After another thirty minutes, drop all the dampers. Temp perpetually cools to 150 for the next one hour or so.

Total cooking time: 2.5-3 hours. Temperature is a bell curve from 150 to 210--no higher.

Remove and let sit for fifteen minutes. I also placed the rack on it side to let any excess fat train before I cut off the individual ribs.

Wrapping in foil works, except of course that a lot of liquified fat pools. This isn't a huge deal, but keep in mind which side is down. I put the bone side down, so the meaty portion stayed crispy.

The result was the most tender I've ever had with ribs. I've been overcooking them, no question. This produced a tender result, and one where the meat and the rub can really shine. I refused sauce, which is a big deal for me.

board night oemlettes redux

My omelette-making technique has improved, making this a great standby meal all year. To reiterate, the best pan is one that is hot but not overly so, one where one tablespoon of butter can melt and just begin to bubble and turn golden before you add two lightly beaten eggs. (It doesn't hurt here that we now get fresh eggs from our neighbors. Fresh eggs give a better color and richer flavor than store-bought.) I've taken to using a rubber spatula to hold up the cooked portion while distributing the eggs about the pan. Otherwise, I use a lot of jerking motions to cook the eggs. Once it is virtually cooked through, but a hair runny on top, I flip the mixture. This is the only part of my technique that really needs work. It works about seventy percent of the time, and I'm missing the wrist action that makes this an easy task. Once flipped, I turn the heat off, add the filling, then ease it out of the pan.

Tonight we added one ingredient to the smoked salmon and cream cheese: chopped fresh anaheim peppers, with seeds and membrane removed. The one thing this omelette was always missing was some texture differentiation. This fills it nicely, and adds just a touch of heat to it.

Also, I always top my omelettes with a sprinkle of chopped italian parsley, which is great for both appearance and adding a little herbal flavor.

baking and stuffing jalepenos

A good way to use some of the jalapeños would be to stuff and bake them. I found some good ideas on the Simply Recipes blog. Basically, the question is how to make cream cheese (or any other cheese) interesting. Some mix of herbs, onions, and/or sausage and bacon seems pretty standard.

anaheim fish tacos

I need to begin using jalepenos and anaheims regularly, while I wait for the tomatoes to come in so I can begin the grand salsa experiment. Here's one idea, taken from allrecipes:

Anaheim Fish Tacos:

• 1 teaspoon vegetable oil
• 1 Anaheim chile pepper, chopped
• 1 leek, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 cup chicken broth
• 2 large tomatoes, diced
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 1/2 pounds halibut fillets
• 1 lime
• 12 corn tortillas

Directions

1. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat, and saute the chile, leek, and garlic until tender and lightly browned. Season with salt and pepper.
2. Mix the chicken broth and tomatoes into the skillet, and season with cumin. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low. Place the halibut into the mixture. Sprinkle with lime juice. Cook 15 to 20 minutes until the halibut is easily flaked with a fork. Wrap in warmed corn tortillas to serve.

The Wise Fool

So-called for its mixture of sage and gin, which I think speaks for itself. With the wife and child gone for a few days, I had to try my hand at inventing a cocktail, and I had to make use of the copious amounts of fresh sage growing in the garden. Since sage and gin are a natural fit, and I've been craving a martini forever, this seems a good mix. Here is the recipe I will try:

10 medium sage leaves

quarter lemon wedge

1 tsp. turbinado sugar

4 ounces gin

3 ounces fresh grapefruit juice

Muddle the sage, lemon, and sugar in a shaker. add gin and grapefruit juice. shake.

It helps to run the final product through a strainer, unless you want bits of sage floating about in the drink.

Garnish with a sage leaf, rubbed or broken to release fragrant oils.

This drink has promise. My first attempt had 3 oz. gin to 3 oz. grapefruit and quarter lemon wedge, but I thought it is too heavy on the citrus. Second had the ratio above, and it was a cleaner drink, and the Ethereal gin I used came through.

I used ruby grapefruits in this (what I had on hand), and they were very tart. The drink does not need to be any sweeter, in fact the citrus is a nice bite. But the sage must come through more.

Future concoctions might include a sage syrup rather than muddled fresh sage. Or perhaps a naked sage and gin martini cocktail with a good, dry vermouth.

Garden Update

Everything in the front is growing beautifully. The jalapenos are coming along, and the anaheims I believe are pretty much ready to go. I have made gifts of them, but have yet to figure out exactly what to do with them. Salsa recipes are definitely in my future. We have already eaten one flavorburst pepper, and the red peppers have already turned green to yellow. Fairly soon we will have a good harvest of peppers.

The cucumbers are off the chain, literally. They come out one and a half inches thick and eight inches long. Bursting with water. Perfectly fresh. They store well, and make nice gifts.

The tomatoes are just coming in. Around July 4, I noticed them beginning to flower more prolifically, and to hint at a change in color. We left for Canada on July 7. When I returned on July 11, they had grown by inches, and in the front planter had begun to fall over. I immediately tied them up with some twine, and eventually dropped two cages in the planter to help hold up the new branches. In the mound (taxi, amish paste, golden nugget?), tomatoes were beginning to turn. The amish paste had produced several tomatoes that were changing from yellow to red, and the taxis are yellow. I picked an amish paste and made a cucumber and tomato sandwich. Highly tasty. I expect the real harvest to begin in a couple of weeks, and hopefully we will see production (like last year) into September.