beef

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18 men entered, 1 emerged victorious. For this year, Mikey rules supreme.

The results can be seen here.

More photos at my flickr page.

An interesting weekend. Otto got sick for the first time. Not sick as in a fever but a stuffy nose. He didn’t seem to deal with it very well Saturday night. Didn’t get more than a couple hours of sleep that night. However, Sunday morning, mama got the saline drops and we squeegeed some of the snot out wit the aspirator and he was feeling a little better today. To get out of the house for a bit, we wandered over to the park and got some good swing time in. Regardless of how stuffed up he was, the swing definitely makes him giggle and laugh every time. I also got a new camera over the weekend and have been trying it out. Overall, a much better experience as my last one had seen a lot of wear and tear. It’s nice to see crisp clean images again. This camera appears to take much better sound with the video.

Instead of posting them here, I’ve started to host my videos at Vimeo. More storage and they don;t get compressed as much it seems. So enjoy these if you are bored or just want to see more of Otto.

I also did some salting/pickling of meat and vegetables this weekend. Got started on corning 12lbs of brisket for the St. Patrick’s Day Cribbage Tournament. Also feling a little saucy, so i’m doing a batch of refrigerator pickles withe cukes, carrots, beans, and sweet peppers.

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We spent a lovely week in Mexico with Brain, Tamara, and Blake. Otto made his first trip outside of the country. He was a good traveler. It helped that both flights to and from San Jose were direst flights. Not a whole lot of action on the trip.. lots of lounging at the condo, cooking food, drinking, and going to the beach. Weather was pleasant 80 and either partly sunny or sunny. One of the highlights was brain having to “practice” his spanish while arranging for the tow truck to take our car to a local garage to get fixed. The fresh tortillas were a hit. Tom/cuke/pepper salad was tasty at every meal. The waitresses at one of the restaurants took turns holding Otto while we ate our dinner.

trying out yet another way to easily post a group of pictures at a time. We’ll try the flicker route for some of the bigger sets.

Not the best way to eat food but as a once a year type of thing, it brings some excitement and good eats. We had a few friends over for NYE – Chard, Ang, Axel, Anya, Lucas, and Delfel. Fixings for the evening were ribs, deep fried cod, asian slaw, and some latkes. Everything went off pretty smoothly other than the fryer tripping a few circuits. The night saw some drinking and later singing/dancing contests to Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” ala JT and Adam Samberg.

Since I had borrowed the fryer from Chard, I figured I’d have to get one more use out of it. Empanadas sounded delicious. I made up a batch of beef picadillo for the savory and also made a batch of chocolate chip – banana ones as the sweet. Very delicious!

A couple of weekends, we went and stayed at a friend’s cabin on vashon. As it happened, it was also Megan’s birthday. Chard created another in a series of masterpieces for dinner. An excellent beef tenderloin with homemade raviolis topped with shoestring leaks. Things threatened to fall apart at one point in the evening as the power decided to go out just as we were getting ready to boil the water for the raviolis. We were able to improvise and boil them on the propane grill. As always, many things contribute to me forgetting to take pictures of the items in the meal before they get eaten. Of course, I completely forgot to get the camera out in the morning when Chard created the eggs benedict the following morning.

The weather had threatened to rain the whole time we were there but the sunshine broke out for awhile during the day on Sunday. I’ve got a picture of sunset and one during the day. It’s nice to have this kind of paradise so close. If we hit the ferry right, it’s less than an hour from door to door.

Megan, Otto, Scott, and Olivia made it down to Blue C Sushi the other day. Here’s to having a good time!

via reason

food fight war

as a compliment to my newly acquired meat production skills, i bought a book on bread making called The Bread Bible. I’ve always loved bread. The hard, chewy, flavorful kind. It’s amazing the science behind breadmaking. The right combination of salt, flour, water, and yeast can create vastly different products.

My first attempt is a prosciutto ring loaf. I picked this first as a form of instant gratification. Just mix up the dough, let it rise for an hour or so, and then cook for 30-40 min.

Here is a before the rise

Here is a finished product

A good number of the bread recipes require a starter to help the yeast start moving before you add all of the flour and water. You can make the starter, refrigerate it and then use it the next few days to complete the loaf. The first one I’m trying is a ciabatta. Currently, the starter is rising for 12-24 hours. I’ll then stick it in the fridge over night, bring it out an hour before, mix in the rest of the ingredients, let it rise again, bake it and hopefully have a nice ciabatta when I’m done. I post pictures of that when it’s finished.

edit: here’s the ciabatta. It didn’t rise as much as I had hoped but that’s cause it’s freezing in our house. The book suggests having it rise in a room at a temp of 75-80 degrees. Granted the author is working in a kitchen that has action going on all the time. But in the blurry second pic, you can see some of the lattice work like structure the ciabatta is supposed to have.

Mainly, I was inspired by my trip to Spain this last summer. I’ve always enjoyed cured meats and this trip made me decide to try my hand at this craft. I browsed the internets looking for a good book to help me out. I wanted to start out simple and then try to do something more difficult.

The first book I came across, Cooking By Hand, was a good start. I cjecked it out from the library, read a bit of it. However, my inspiration was lacking as I had to return the book. Being the goofy engineer that I am, I’m comforted by directions and instructions spelled out.

Christmas came around and Megan bought me Cooking by Hand and Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing. This book was incredible. Now that I had a copy of my own, it was time to determine what I wanted to try first.

Due to the quick turnaround time and the short curing process, I was decided to give bacon and pancetta a try. Next, I had to find places to access the required pieces of the process. The main two things I needed were – pork belly and curing salt. Uwajimaya was my source for the pork belly and a small restaurant supply store south of Safeco Field had the curing salt.

Both processes were quite easy. About a 1/4 cup of the curing mix (regular salt, curing salt, and sugar), throw it in a bag in the fridge for a week or so. Remove from the fridge and wash the cure off. The bacon was then smoked for a couple hours in my smoker and the pancetta was rolled into a loaf and then hung to dry for a couple of weeks.

I’ve eaten some bacon I’ve already made. Quite tasty and smoky delicious. I fried some of it up but there wasn’t enough fat/grease released to cook it very well. I baked it the next time which turned out excellent.

The pancetta still has another week to cure. I need to figure out what kind of tasty meal I’m going to include that with.

These pictures show the bacon curing in the fridge and the pancetta hanging in the garage,

I may move on to sausages and salamis next. I would like to do a prosciutto at some point but I need to figure out the logistics of where to hang and cure. I’m contemplating the crawlspace beneath the house but I need to build a sturdy cage to hold it in.

A few people came over to have themselves a good time. Here’s a brief photo montage of the dinner that was consumed yesterday with more picture to come later.

Megan’s birthday. Hooray! Eating and drinking. Still digesting 10 hours later.

wines of washington – wine
cafe campagne – dinner & drinks
le pichet – cheese & drinks

Mugger throws his biannual Tiki PArty. With it comes a little island music, kalua pork, and excessive fruity rum drinks. Also, I felt the need to be a princess.

This last weekend involved heading out to the Olympic Pennisula to visit Ashley’s 20 acres. The whole process of getting there on Friday took about 5 hours. Arn and I left at about 2.45 and didn’t roll in until 7.30. The actual distance by air is only about 30 miles but water and hills get in the way. The main stumbling block was missing a ferry by two cars. The approximate location of the festivities can be found here.

The weekend was to be packed with excitement and joys. The main activities consisted of drinking, shooting guns, roasting a pig, and a Texas hold’em tournament.

The main highway follows the Hood Canal and then you take off up a side road to get to Ashley’s land. The road had been regraded lately, so the trip up was more enjoyable. The property is at an elevation of about 1,200 feet. You take the last turn up the road and crest the hill to these sweeping views of the east. Notable sites include downtown seattle, Hood Canal, and Mt. Rainer. Later photos will give us a view of Mt. Rainer. Friday night also saw a little skeet shooting to get the memories of the exhausting ferry ride out of my system. I did pretty good with the 12 gauge on Friday night, hitting a good number of those pesky clay pigeons.

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Sometimes it seems impossible to write on this wonderful space. I have the time, the material, but not the drive. Hence, a post about dinner on Valentine’s Day. Each year Megan and I usually do somethingeither the day before or the day after V-Day to enjoy the evening and not the long lines that usually surround better eating establishments on the 14th of February.

However, this year, Chard suggested we come over to Angela’s house to participate in some culinary discussions. Never to pass up a meal prepared at someone’s house, we merrily showed up at the appointed time to stuff our faces. Below lie a few of the moments that were captured that evening. Dinner consisted of a nice arugala salad with roasted beets, a medium rare seared duck brest, and a leg of duck confit. Truly a marvel and another dinner well done.

It has taken me a little time to post on this subject. Maybe it’s because of the repercussions it has had upon my outlook on life. Or it could be I’m a little slow. The alien explanation could probably also fit into this drama but will leave out the details on that one for now.

Thursday, June 9th, started out like any other Thursday. Woke up, got out of bed, drug a comb across my head. Little did I know how the events that would unfold would change my life forever.

I had vague images of what cassoulet would be. All I knew was it came in its own little dish, it had beans in it, and meat. A good summary. quick and to the point, unlike this rambling mess. I didn’t even know how to spell cassoulet when I first went looking for it on the internets – i think my first attempts involved a lot of k’s and z’s – kazzouleigh – probably not that bad but close. I obviously don’t know french very well but a quick search on google for the wonder ful dish and finnaly arrived at this and this.

We arrived at Chard’s early in the evening. The house had a wonderful smell to it. The gentle odors floating throughout the house. A cocktail was procured and the night began. there wasn’t a whole lot of preparation to be done. Dinner was on Thursday and Chard had started making the meal on Tuesday. Many hours of love were put into the dish. There were three stocks involved in the dish and these were prepared starting on Tuesday (lamb, chicken, and ?).

A quick rundown of the ingredients – white beans, lamb sausage, bacon, ham hocks, and duck confit. The duck confit was fabulous. What can you say about meat that is cooked in its own fat.

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we had a bbq last sunday at angela and chard’s (top left of people photo) house. when grilling is on the menu at that house – no expense is spared for the delicious meals that ensue.

the meal consisted of some fresh kielbasa from a local polish deli, some homemade pirogies (lots of spelling variations on this one) (one stuffed with crimini and oyster mushrooms, the other with spinach and chicken sausage), a nice salad, and some watermelon. William showed up with some ribs (bottom right of people photo) and away we went. we finished it off with some cupcakes made by angela.

as a bonus you get a picture of me by the stump and some crazy old electrical wiring sticking out of their house.

click on photos for larger image

Once again, sack leads and I follow. His post of shouting to the world that he is the future beer butt chicken commander stuck in my mind as I went to the store yesterday afternoon looking for something delicious to grill. I paced back and forth in front of the meat section, trying to find the right piece of meat to cook and eat. My eyes glanced at the chicken section and there was my answer. Whole chickens – $0.49 per pound – limit 2 per day. My mind raced, sack had just completed such an adventure recently, I too am capable of sucj fancy grilling. I snatch the chicken from its precious space on the shelf and sprinted to exit. I threw my money at the cashier and laughed maniacally – Chicken you have met your match!

We rode home in quiet solitude – the chicken and I. No words were exchanged, yet I felt a vibe from the chicken. It somehow knew the unspeakable things I was going to do.

My little birdie was 4.5 lbs. I gently laid it in the pan. Prepared the dry rub (hungarian paprika, dry mustard, salt, and brown sugar). I gently massaged the rub onto the flesh of the chicken. A fresh Miller High Life was cracked open, a few gulps to reach the desired level and then I stuffed the can with rosemary, jalepenos, and garlic cloves. I gently plopped the bird on the can and stood him up for the world to see. I put him in the fridge to sit and think about the choices that had been made in his life as I went oout to prepare the grill.

My grill came with two metal containers that let me isolate the coals so I can get the “indirect” heat. I went with the no pan method and planned to set the chicken right on the grill. the grill was progressing nicely and I brought out the star of the show and placed him gently on the grill. I had doubts as whether or not my lid would fit but to my suprise there was plenty of space left. Here are some action shots of the bird in action.
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