Home Made Food can be Great.

 

I made some Ham and Bean soup this weekend that ended up being extraordinarily good.

It does look a little odd. I love black beans which of course makes the soup very dark.

Easy to make. Get a back of whatever dried beans you want. Put them in a large pot and then put in enough water to be about 2-3 inches over the beans. Add a little sea salt and then bring the beans to a boil. As soon as they are boiling drop the heat down to medium low and add a cup and a half of chopped onions, a cup of chopped or shredded carrots,  2 chopped celery stalks and a small can of diced tomatoes. Add 2 heavily smoked ham shanks in there and add more water until the ham shanks are covered.

Bring it back to a boil and then lower the heat to medium low again and let it cook for about 3-4 hours. Take the ham shanks out and get all the meat off the bones, chop it up and add it back to the soup. Also add about 2 cups of V8 with black pepper juice.

If the shanks do not have a lot of meat then it would be good to chop up some other ham meat and add it. Then bring it back to a boil again then lower the heat so it is just slightly boiling and let it cook for about another 2 hours.

At that point it will be done and will be delicious.

Food Can In Some Way Help You Recover From a Minor Illness

 

This may not help everyone but it has certainly taken care of me.

On occasion I get bronchitis which has me coughing so hard I damage my stomach and diaphragm muscles and most of the time it lasts for at least a week and a half.

I found a fast resolution the last time I had it.

I was off work for a short period of time and I made some regular large glasses of hot beef broth using Knorr’s Latin Flavor bouillon granules.

I would make a quart at a time. I would add some Lean and Perrin’s Worcestershire sauce and a bunch of Mexican Hot sauce.

I would drink the quart of spicy broth with 4-5 shots of scotch and then chase it with some southern style iced sweet tea. I would drink this about every 2-3 hours and my Bronchitis was gone completely in 2 days.

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I Love Everything That Is Made From A Pig.

 

My wife and I were at Karn’s today and they had some wonderful Ham on sale. Karn’s has the best quality meat in the Harrisburg PA area. It is always fabulous and is many times on sale for very reasonable prices compared to pricing in other stores.

Ham recently has been pretty expensive. Today they had hams on sale for well under 2 dollars a pound and the ham is absolutely fabulous. The brining is perfect and it is very well smoked.

They also had Perdue fresh roasting chickens on sale for 1 dollar a pound so we got one of those and had it for dinner. They have the most awesome meat in the area.

The sometimes have bacon ends on sale for less than 3 dollars a pound which is a great price since most bacon in general is over 5 dollars a pound and sometimes as high as 7 dollars a pound. I have no problem with bacon ends. The fact that the bacon is all kinds of odd sized and thickness slices makes no difference to me. I want the flavor and you have that regardless of whether it is perfectly sliced or not.

 

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Fantastic More or Less Oriental Food

 

I made a fabulous oriental style food the other day. I am very limited on the money I have to spend. My wife and I were at a discount grocery store and found some fabulous seafood. We found a case of fish fillets from a Hong Kong company. I was able to purchase a 10 pound case of fish fillets for about 6 dollars.

I put several of the fillets into a large non stick pan and added a small amount of flavorless coconut oil to the pan so I could sear the fillets and brown them a bit. I then added some crushed garlic, a little soy sauce and some oyster sauce. Once that was done I added a bit of leftover Jasmine rice to the pan and turned up the heat so that everything was combined and in certain cases seared a bit by the high temperature in the pan.

This turned out to be an absolutely fabulous.tasting meal. Oriental and middle eastern spices and sauces are not only fabulous tasting but also pretty healthy.

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Food That is Good for You

 

I just made a wonderful late night snack. I was with my wife about a week ago at a discount store that sells overstocks that large markets can’t sell.

We picked up a 10 pound back of Pollock loins for about 9 bucks.

I placed 5 of the loins into a non-stick pan on medium heat and put the lid on it. In about 5 minutes the fish had thawed since it released water as it started to thaw which in the medium heat pan gave us some steam which then just accelerated the rest of the thawing process as more and more fluid came out and became steam.

As soon as it was thawed I used some wooden utensils so I did not screw up the non-stick surface and broke up the Pollock loins into small pieces. I then sprinkled just a tiny pinch of ground celery seed on the fish, salted it and added butter to the pan.

I tossed it in the pan to make sure that everything was mixed properly. I then turned the heat to high. As soon as the temperature came up and things started sizzling nicely I added a little more butter, some more salt and then added lime juice. I tossed it again until things had mixed and the fluids had evaporated so I didn’t have a ton of juice left.

I plated it and it is fabulous. There are not a lot of foods that are as healthy or healthier than fish.

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My Take on Ham and Bean Soup

 

Ham and bean soup is one of my favorites. I start by looking for a couple of nice sized double or triple smoked ham hocks. I do not want anything that was sugar cured. It needs to have been fairly intensely brined to work well.

Most recipes that start with dried beans tell you to soak them over night but I have a different method. I put the beans in the pot with the ham hocks as I am cooking them off for about 5 hours. It actually gives a rather surprising result.

Once the hocks are cooked off I pull them out and chop up the meat that was on them and brown up a little of the fat until it is nice and crispy and then put that back in. Then I add onions and carrots and let it cook for about 3 hours. I then add tomato juice and cook it for about another hour.

At this point the beans for the most part have actually pretty much dissolved so rather than chewing the beans they actually work quite nicely to thicken the soup.

Once it has cooled I put it in single serving containers and freeze it. The soup is awesome fresh from the pot but it becomes incredibly more awesome after it is frozen for a few days.

Anyone that likes bean soup should try this. It is REALLY good.

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Wonderful Thanksgiving Food

 

We had a fabulous meal today. My wife and I have some medical issues so cooking was a bit of a challenge. In order to perhaps get some sleep we actually started the turkey in  roasting pan with the lid on around midnight Wednesday at around 200 degrees.

At about 9 we took the lid off and cranked the oven to 325 and let the bird roast with no lid until around 12:30. It browned perfectly and by letting the lid on overnight and very slow roasting it we had the most moist flavorful turkey I have ever had.I also made smashed potatoes rather than mashed potatoes.

I coarsely chopped the potatoes and left the skins on. I cooked them in water with salt, black pepper, chicken bouillon cubes, chopped onions and ground Coriander. When soft I roughly smashed them and mixed them with butter and Sour Cream. Fabulous potatoes.

We also of course had all the other Thanksgiving meal trappings.

Awesome day.

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Weird But Fantastic!

 

I made something today that is strange but it wonderful. My wife the other day came across some cans of minced clams for a very low price so she bought me several cans.

I made a batch of clam fritters. I had some fritter batter left today when I got home from work and rather than heating up a deep fryer I just took the end and made what is essentially a clam pancake and just fried the rest all at one time.

As I turned it I saw on the stove a pan of the darkest richest pork gravy I have ever seen. My wife made it from a pork roast and had a roast pork sandwich.

I took the rest of it and put it over the clam pancake when it was done and this is one of the best things I have had in a while.

Sounds a little strange but pork goes with anything.

 

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A Cuisine from the Philippines

I spent a month and a half in the Philippines some years ago and learned to love almost every food I tried. I was in Manila for the entire time so the food I tried was limited to what was available in restaurants and from street vendors in the Makati section of Manila.

I came across a mention of a cuisine that I have not tried yet and it makes me want to hop a plane and go back just to try the food.

It is Ilonggo cuisine and my research has shown a number of things that I would just love I am sure.

There is a festival where the cuisine is going to be featured and I will likely not be able to get there in time.

2013 will be the 21st year of Dinagyang Food Festival, Information on the festival can be found here.

Some examples of Ilonggo cuisine can be found here.

Some day I hope to be able to visit during the festival.

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Great Food From Discount Grocers.

My wife, like so many people today, does most of her shopping at discount stores and at stores that sell overstocks from other stores.

You can always get nutritious food for a very good price but in many cases it tends to be rather plain or bland.

This last time she has outdone herself. She found a package of frozen haddock filets with an artichoke and capers cream sauce that is just absolutely knock your socks of good.

Do not ever look down on the discount stores. What they have varies and it is not always wonderful but there are times that you can find an absolute gem when shopping there and stocking up on necessities that are cheaper than elsewhere is certainly not a bad thing at all in todays economy.

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How Not to Cook Food for a Buffet!

My wife's birthday is coming up and I took her out for dinner this evening. She loves Prime Rib and I have been driving past a restaurant that has a Prime Rib and Seafood buffet every Friday and Saturday.

With the Prime Rib there was a choice between medium rare and well done. Medium rare was raw and cold. Well done was like shoe leather.

The coconut shrimp was cooked to the point where is was almost burnt and tough.

The Crab Legs had a thick crust of Old Bay seasoning on them.

Apparently they used all the Old Bay on the crab legs because the Maryland Crab Soup had none in it.

The breaded and fried clam strips were actually quite good.

Perhaps the made to order items on the menu are wonderful and maybe this was just a bad night but I will not be back to The Pike Restaurant in Gettysburg anytime soon.

For 30 dollars a person I expect to have a meal that is at least reasonably good and enjoyable. In my opinion I am owed about 45 dollars of the 60 I spent since this meal was somewhat less than mediocre.

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Corn Meal

It is the time of year that foods made from corn meal are wonderful. There is nothing better in my mind than to get up on a cold snowy or rainy day and sit down to a large bowl of corn meal mush. When fresh out of the pot with a little butter and some sugar or molasses it is absolutely fabulous. Hot, sticks to your ribs and stays with you for a while. Another thing that is good about it is after you cook the mush and have your fill in a bowl, you take the rest, put it in loaf pans and refrigerate. In theory it solidifies and can be sliced and then fried another morning.

This is something that was quite common when I was a child. My father made this on a regular basis and it is really good. I have no problem with the initial part of cooking it and having bowls of it. I have not yet mastered the solidifying part. The liquid is wonderful and I cook it exactly as I learned to but it will just not solidify. I am wondering if something has changed about the way corn meal is processed from the way it was 35 or 40 years ago.

Should anyone have a possible solution to this please feel free to let me know.

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Making Do With What You Have

There are entirely too many folks that have absolutely no adventure in their soul when it comes to food.

Do not be afraid to experiment. I will be the first to admit that that I have on occasion had some spectacular disasters when experimenting with food while cooking but not too many and they become fewer and further between as you get some experience.

I would be quite comfortable in saying that I can walk into anyone's kitchen anywhere and with a few questions about likes and dislikes, with some kind of meat and a decent supply of assorted canned goods and spices or seasonings, I can cook up a pretty damned good meal that they will be quite happy with.

You need to listen to the folks you are cooking for. My wife for instance does not like pepper or peppers so I will generally cook with no pepper unless the dish is one that requires it as a main ingredient. Pepper steak for example is rather difficult to do without peppers.

The important point is, do not be afraid to experiment. You learn from mistakes and over time you can make some incredibly good things with just what you have on hand, which in this economy can be a very good thing.

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Don’t Be Afraid to Play With Your Food.

Just got home from work a bit ago and was hungry. My wife had gotten a bag of pretty good breaded Chicken Patties and I wanted those but perhaps a bit more exotic.

Mayonnaise, a little soy sauce, some Tabasco sauce, a little sesame oil and a bit of parmesan cheese makes for a seriously good spread for the roll on a chicken patty sandwich.

Never, ever be afraid to experiment in the kitchen. I will admit that I have on occasion made some absolutely spectacular disasters but the winners far exceed the ones that crashed and burned.

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Christmas Breakfast is Coming

Christmas is almost here and I will be continuing a tradition that I learned many years ago from my father.

Fried ham, home fried potatoes with onions and eggs poached in ham milk gravy. This is a great breakfast and I would encourage all to try it.

My father is gone now. He passed on Christmas Day in 2009 but this is one of the many things I will never forget.

You need to start out with a ham that has been very well brined and heavily smoked. You slice however much you will need to feed everyone that will be at the table and you get a pan that can be used for making gravy (no nonstick).

The pan gets set to medium high heat and once at temperature you put a liberal amount of butter in the pan plus just a touch of oil to help raise the smoke point of the butter. you lay the ham slices in and proceed to fry them until they are very well browned. Do not worry about things sticking to the pan. You need those wonderful brown and burned bits.

Once the ham has been completed you leave the pan on and deglaze it with milk. Enough milk that you can poach eggs in. Stir it around and make sure you get all those wonderful bits off the bottom. Once the milk has taken on all the flavoring you then proceed to crack eggs into the milk mixture and use a spoon to make sure you ladle the mixture over the top of the eggs to get them poached properly.

In another pan you have been frying potatoes with onions to a fairly brown and crisp consistency. When plated you will have a nice slab of browned ham, 2-3 poached eggs and a pile of home fried potatoes along with whatever kind of toast you prefer.

I don’t know exactly when this started. I remember it as far back as I can remember and we have been having that every Christmas. I only make this once a year but this is my favorite holiday meal.

Enjoy!!

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