Hoppin' John

Make this on New Year's day to get  you annual dose of black-eyed peas. This recipe works well and is adapted from Cooks Country's recipe. Good Luck!

Ingredients
6 slices bacon, chopped
1 and 1/2 pounds boneless ham (or ham steak)
1 yellow onion
3 celery ribs
3 garlic cloves, pressed or minced
1/2 tsp dried thyme
4 cups low sodium chicken broth (Swanson's is good)
2 16-oz bags frozen black-eyed peas (one can usually find pict-sweet brand)
2 bay leaves
1 1/2 cups long grain rice
3 green onions, thinly sliced

Directions

1. Cook bacon in Dutch oven over medium heat until crisp, about 10 minutes. Transfer bacon to paper towels to drain. Pour off all but one tablespoon of fat from the Dutch oven and brown the ham steak. Cut it in half if you necessary to get it to fit. About 4 minutes per side. Transfer to a cutting board and let cool. Once cooled, cut into 1/2-inch planks. 
2. Add onion and celery to the Dutch oven and cook for about 8 minutes until they are soft. Add garlic and thyme and stir for about 30 seconds. 
3. Add broth, black-eyed peas, bay leaves, and browned ham and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer, covered, until beans are  just tender, about 20 minutes. Remove the ham and cut into 1/2-inch pieces. 
4. Rinse the rice in a fine mesh strainer (really important; don't skip this) until water runs clear. About a minute. Drain the rice and add to the Dutch oven. 
5. Place a piece of aluminum foil  onto the surface of the surface of the simmering ingredients. Simmer covered until broth is absorbed and rice is tender, about 20 minutes, stirring and re-positioning the foil at about the 7- and 15-minute marks.
6. Off heat and let stand for 10 minutes. Rice should still be moist, but tender. Fluff rice with fork. Stir in scallions, bacon, and ham. 

Tips: If you have pre-cooked bacon on hand, you can use that and some of the bacon fat you saved instead of cooking the bacon while making this recipe. 

Margarita Rocks

The weather is finally warming up and I can wait no longer. This one of my favorite summer cocktails. No need for anything fancy to make a great margarita. Here's how I do it.

Music
Margarita, Margarita

Margarita on the Rocks

Vary the amounts depending on your personal taste.  

• 1.0 oz white tequila (Sauza works fine)
• 1.5 oz triple sec (cheap stuff is best in my book) 
• .75 oz freshly squeezed lime juice
• Kosher salt for glass rim

Directions

1. Add ice to cocktail shaker. Measure and add the tequila, triple sec, and lime juice.
2. Use one of the lime halves to moisten the glass and twist it in a shallow container of the kosher salt.
3. Shake the ingredients in the shaker until there is ice on the exterior.
4. Strain the liquid into the glass, then add enough ice to bring it to the top of the glass.
5. Garnish with a lime wedge and enjoy.

As an alternative, you can substitute simple syrup for the triple sec. Kind of like a tequila sour. An infused simple syrup with lavender might be nice. 

Beef Stew

This is my favorite version. I prefer baking the bacon and using some of the reserved fat to sauté the onion.  I am leaning towards browning the meat in a skillet and then transferring to the Dutch oven.


Beef Stew

•  4  slices bacon
•  2  cups onion -- chopped
•  2 1/2  pounds stew meat -- or cut up your own into 1 inch chunks
•  3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
•  1/2 teaspoon black pepper -- freshly ground
•  3  cups beef stock -- Better than Bouillon works well
•  12  ounces beer -- malty; Nut brown ale is nice
•  2 tablespoons tomato paste
•  2  teaspoons mustard -- brown or yellow
•  2  teaspoons fresh savory -- or teaspoon dried savory or marjoram; more for dried
•  1  pinch cayenne
•  1 1/2  cups pearl onion -- blanched and peeled (frozen works too)
•  6  medium carrot -- cut into chunks
•  4  small red potatoes -- peeled and cut into chunks
•  3  Medium parsnip -- cut into chunks

1. Fry bacon in a Dutch oven until crisp
2. Remove bacon w/ slotted spoon, drain and reserve it.
3. Stir the onion into the bacon fat and sauté until soft and transluscent, about 5 minutes.
4. Toss the meat cubes with the flour , salt, and pepper. Add about half the cubes to the Dutch oven and brown. Add remaining cubes and brown.
5. Pour in the stock and beer, tomato paste, mustard, savory, and a pinch or two of cayenne.
6. Simmer for 1 hour, then add the pearl onions, carrots, potatoes, and parsnips.
7. Simmer uncovered for 1 to 1 1/2 additional hours, until the meat and vegetables are very tender and the liquid is thick.
8. Add Bacon back onto pot about 20 minutes before serving

Red Sauce Salsa

Yet another recipe from The Homesick Texan Cookbook. Super easy and super tasty. This recipe uses canned crushed tomatoes which are fine everyday salsa. Great in breakfast tacos, with chips, over eggs, or whatever. I buzz up some of this about every two weeks. It lasts around a week, but it does become more "garlic-y" over time. I've cut the original recipe from two cloves to one. I imagine one could use garlic powder in a pinch. The only fresh ingredients you need are an onion, lemon, garlic and cilantro. Keep the other ingredients on hand and you can make a batch anytime.

Ingredients

• 1 medium onion, peeled and quartered
• 1 clove of garlic peeled and halved
• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 1/2 tablespoon cumin
• 1/2 cup cilantro (some stems are okay, but mostly leaves)
• 1/4 to 1/2 or more pickled jalapeños (you can add a little of the pickling liquid if you want)
• 2 tablespoons lemon or lime juice
• 1 28-ounce can of crushed tomatoes (Hunt's are good)
• Salt to taste

Directions

Add the ingredients in the order listed above to a blender. Blend until pretty smooth but not liquifed. Sample and salt to taste stirring in the salt. Transfer to containers and refrigerate. Stays good for a little over a week. Makes 3 1/2 to 4 cups. 

Tonic Syrup

Homemade tonic syrup is pretty easy once you have the ingredients and equipment. The syrup is used w/ gin, club soda, and limes to make a truly great gin and tonic. Once again, Kevin Liu provided the recipe for this from which I have deviated little. He credits Jeffrey Morgenthaler, so we stand on shoulders of giants with this recipe.

This yields about  cups of syrup; enough for 16 cocktails.

Ingredients

• 40 g cut Cinchona Bark (Peruvian bark; this linked purchase contains 435 g)
• 1.5 cups water
• 220 g granulated sugar
• 6.8 g Citric Acid (about 0.5 tsp). 

Directions

1. Boil the  water on the stove in a pot. Once boiling, add the Cinchona bark and off the heat. Cover and let steep for 20 minutes. 
2. Strain the bark liquid mixture through mesh strainer.  You can re-strain it through a coffee filter or a jury-rigged AeroPress. I've always used the AeroPress setup so cannot comment on the regular coffee filter. Might come out a bit cloudier, but will still taste great I'm sure. 
3. After filtering, add the sugar and citric acid and place everything into a sealed container (like Tupperware).  Shake until everything is dissolved. Pour into a stoppered bottle or one with a screw cap. 

To make a gin and tonic...

To a highball glass, add 2 oz gin, 1 oz syrup, and 3 ounces of carbonated water. I sometimes drop the tonic syrup to 3/4 oz.  Add ice, stir. Garnish with lime wedge or two. 

In this particular bottling I added some dried lavender during the steeping process. It added a bit of lavender flavor. It also made the color much more red than the usual orange I get. 

Carbonating at Home

I like making my own tonic syrup for gin and tonics, but found keeping fresh carbonated water on hand a pain. I already had a CO2 tank with a regulator for a keg I keep in the basement fridge. I read about a special "cap" you can purchase and a quick-connect hose for the CO2 source.

I hooked everything up and used some speny plastic soda bottles I'd been saving. Filled the bottles with water up to about 6 inches from the top. Chilled them and put them in freezer for a while to get the water as cold as possible. Water temp and CO2 solubility are inversely proportional if I recall correctly.

Followed directions adding CO2 at about 40 psi and shaking like crazy. Product delivered. Removed special cap and put original cap on the bottle and left in fridge.

I'm planning to make my own ginger beer and carbonate it using this setup (Morgenthaler has a recipe for ginger beer). Or just make ginger syrup and adding carbonated water. Kevin Liu has a suggestion to add tincture of cayenne to substitute a longer lasting component of ginger that degrades quickly. 

Anyway, this works well and discounting the labor, comes out pretty cheap for carbonated water. 

Thanks to Kevin for improved technique. He posted on Serious Eats and has excellent suggestions. 

Dry Aged Steak (In a Bag)

This turned out great and I will be repeating the process.

1. Purchased Dry Steak Bags from http://www.drybagsteak.com/. Cost (with shipping was about $30 for three bags and "little strips for sealing in Foodsaver". Shipping was high at this site, but they arrived VERY quickly.  
2. Purchased 11.3 pound NY strip loin from Costco. Cost was 6.89/lb so total was about $78.
3. Followed Dry Bag Steak directions to the letter. They have pretty great videos on their site if you can hear the voice over above the "background" music. My corner seals separated the "outer" portion of the bag partially. I did a double seal that did not cut off the corner and am satisfied I have a good seal and vacuum. 
4. Placed on rack fat cap up (required) in rimmed baking sheet (just in case it leaked). 
5. I'm waiting three weeks.

Three weeks later...

Everything turned out as expected. The steaks were dense, flavorful, and tender. The final weight after trimming was around 7 pounds. I probably could have trimmed less, but was playing it safe. Final cost was about $12.50/lb for dry aged steak (including the cost of the bag) Next time I will probably go four weeks.