Treats, Eats and Dining Feats

Due to my continued and increasing love for all things food, from cooking in the kitchen to dining out as well as finding great snacks online and in the city, I have decided to start up a separate blog called Treats, Eats and Dining Feats which will focus on my love for all things food.  If you are interested in checking it out and following along please come follow along here, read up and let me know what you are cooking and the great new spots you have discovered out and about town.

Pickling Away

After picking up a dozen quart sized Kerr's jars I am full speed ahead with pickling these days.

My two most recent endeavors have once again come from the Lee Bros. Simple, Fresh, Southern cookbook.  I made the zucchini and onion pickles as well as their radish pickles recipe.

As I find myself getting into the swing of pickling I was able to crank out 4 jars, 2 of each recipe, quickly one weeknight after just a few hours.  The base of most of the Lee Bros. pickling recipes is 1 cup of white vinegar/white wine vinegar as well as some cloves of garlic, a tsp or so of whole black peppercorns, as well as a tsp or two of sugar and kosher salt.  In addition to the cup of vinegar you also add one cup of water.  On top of that, the Lee Bros. have various flavor kicks like some ground turmeric in the radish pickles.

After cutting your veggies 1/8 in. on the bias and stuffing them in the jar, you just throw all your other ingredients on the stove top, medium high heat until it simmers.  Take the pot off the stove top, pour it over your veggies stuffed in the quart, let everything rest until it reaches room temperature and put it in the fridge.  You are good to go in terms of eating the pickles after an hour, but they really get tasty after a solid 24 hours sitting in the fridge.  Per the Lee Bros. notes, the pickles will keep in the refrigerator for about two weeks, so keep them up front and snack on them a lot!

The colors of the veggies in the jar are beautiful.  I added in yellow squash to the zucchini and onion pickles (per Lee Bros. suggestion) to give it a fantastic color balance of green and yellow with the white onions.  The radishes are straight forward, but I love the jar of red radishes sitting next to the green and yellow jar.

Below, the two jars in the middle are sitting in the pickling liquid and the other two were about to be pickled shortly.  I thought the real winner in all of this was the pickled onion, nice tangy and crispy.  The biggest mistake I made was not putting more in as I leaned heavily on the squash and zucchini.  Pickle On!

How to Cut on the Bias

Cutting on the bias is so simple and easy, yet I find myself forgetting from time to time and having to access a quick video on YouTube for a reminder.  This has been the one that keeps popping up lately for me so I thought I would share it with you:

Pickles and Mustard

After doing a few rounds of pickling I recently got after it in the kitchen and made a host of pickle recipes with various veggies and fruits.  On top of that I spent the weekend overpaying for mustard seeds and mustard powder to make a trio of mustards from scratch.

On the pickling front, I have found that no one has better pickling recipes than the Lee bros. and their new Simple, Fresh, Southern cookbook (Also see The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook, another favorite of mine - I just haven't made any of the pickle recipes...YET!) .  I had previously done their cucumbers and carrots and this time I did their pickled grapes with rosemary and chiles.  And as weird as that sounds, they were the absolute winner out of everything I pickled.

I also made a few basic pickling recipes that I picked up from my friend Mei Lei's blog, Family Styles.  I took her base recipe and just added in various spices on top of each one.  Here I made a trio of peppers, a couple of cucumber recipes along with a couple different pickled carrots.

Outside of the grapes, I have to say that I am partial to the pickled carrots as a snack, although the thinly sliced picked peppers made a fantastic topping on all of the sausages we have been having lately.

I dug up all of the mustard recipes via Google and found a tasty sweet mustard with Agave nectar and honey - so far this has tasted really good on everything.  I also made one straight from mustard powder and found it to be a bit stingy in the nose with a lot of heat coming at you.  It is called hotter than hot mustard and the recipe can be found here.  The last recipe was from the same website, which was a honey stout mustard.  The yellow and brown mustard seeds in the honey stout mustard give it a really nice unique texture that feels like it would be the perfect accompaniment to a ballpark pretzel.

I have been using all three mustards on a host of various chicken, beef, pork and lamb sausages and they all three create a fun, exciting and unique taste (although they all need some work and a little personalization).

Definitely don't judge the mustards in the first few days as they mellow out and the flavors mature when they sit for a bit in the fridge.

Below is a sampling from the day of pickles and mustard:

Pickling is a piece of cake and makes some super tasty snacks or toppings to keep in the fridge.  Even if you can't cook you can pickle, now go doooit, it's fun!  Personally it felt like the mustards probably take a bit more practice and precision so you can get a consistent flavor profile our of you recipes.

The Newest Thing in Chicken Wings

If you don't know (and likely wouldn't from this blog), I love chicken wings (oysters on the half shell are a close second).   In particular I am a fan of hot wings, usually cooking them at home and experimenting with different recipes and various sauces.

Somewhat recently I was introduced to an amazing recipe from Instructables where you steam your wings prior to baking, giving you the crispness on the outside without have to fry them.  The end product is pretty remarkable.  From there they give you a really good hot sauce recipe to put on the wings once they come out.

I have stuck with the steam and bake recipe for the last 10-12 batches of wings I have cooked, but have been experimenting with sauces.  Recently I was up in Truckee (Tahoe area) and came across Truckee style wings at the Blue Coyote.  Truckee style wings combine teriyaki sauce and hot sauce, making for a delicious wing.

Below are some pics at my first go with Truckee Wings using the Instructables recipe for steaming and baking the chicken wing prior to tossing them in the Truckee sauce.

First step is to steam the wings for 10 mins with the lid on.  The wings shouldn't be touching one another, so it takes a multiple rounds of steaming wings depending on how many pounds you have.  I had 2.5lbs of wings for this round and it took me about 5 or 6 rounds of steaming before I had all 2.5lbs finished.

After steaming the wings set them on a rack to let them cool down.  Once they are completely cooled down take a paper towl and get the moisture out of the wings from the steaming.

After you have steamed, cooled and dried your wings put them on a baking sheet throwing some salt and pepper across the wings.  From here you are going to heat the over up to 425 degrees and put the wings in for 20 minutes.  Next, take them out flip them over and bake for another 20 minutes.

Out comes some nice golden crispy salt and pepper wings.

When you have flipped the wings and on your second 20 minute baking get out your gear to make the sauce.  Here I combined a 1/2 cp of Frank's RedHot and a 1/2 cup of Veri Veri Teriyaki plus a few dashes of onion powder.

I then melted a stick of butter on low on the stove top. When the butter is completely melted combine in the sauce mixture and stir, mixing everything together.  Once blended pour the sauce into a bowl where you will toss the wings.  When the wings come out of the oven let them sit for 5 minutes or so and then add them into the bowl with the sauce, tossing them to make sure all of the wings are coated in sauce.

And then you have yourself a tasty plate of Truckee style wings!

I found that the teriyaki sauce dominated a little more than I would have liked.  If you want a little more heat in your wings I wold reduce the percentage of teriyaki sauce.  I would also consider throwing in some cayenne pepper or perhaps some dashes of hot sauce.

And of course bring out the celery, carrots and blue cheese dip.

Enjoy!

Home Cookn'

I cruised over to Williams-Sonoma the other day to pick up some things for the kitchen and ended up grabbing some of their mixes. I snagged the jalapeno cheddar corn bread mix, lemon poppy bread and the vaunted Sprinkles cupcake mix. I was really disappointed in the first two, both were Williams Sonoma branded. The Sprinkles cupcake mix was pumpkin and these puppies turned out amazingly YUM!

Have a looksy with my first try at Picasa Collage (might have to click on the image to see it in full effect):

Homemade Pizza

I've never made homemade pizza as I always found the task too daunting. Thanks to my good friend Sean I was able to do the easy stuff (roll the dough and lather up the pizza with ingredients) as he made the sauce and dough from scratch for us. We ended up cooking a lamb and feta pizza, 4 cheese, an all meat huge pizza (lamb, pulled pork, and ground beef), and a Salmon pizza with dill. Was some of the best pizza I have ever had, easy to do and a lot of fun. Love being able to control the exact toppings I want on my pizza. Highly recommend that if you haven't made your own pizza you give it a go.


Untitled from Clayco on Vimeo.