Father Feeds Flock!!!

So as you've seen in the previous post, I made some venison sausage. I couldn't wait until tomorrow, I had to try them tonight. I got a red bell pepper, and sliced it with some sweet onions, then I sauteed them with the sausages. I left them connected as links because last time I made sausages the meat leaked out the ends. To go with the sandwich I bought some purple asparagus.  The plan was to just cook and eat them, but I remembered that we had some bacon.  BACON WRAPPED ASPARAGUS!!!!! We had some Green Goddess dressing, so we dipped the asparagi in that!  Yes, Yum! To go on the sandwich I used some leftover fiery garlic sauce from our  bison tacos the other night.  I've now enjoyed this on 3 meals. Take 8 cloves of garlic, 3 tbs apple cider vinegar, 2 tbs srirachi, 2 tsp chili paste, s/p and 1 1/2 tsp sugar.  Put everything in a food processor.  Enjoy! I read the recipe wrong and used 2tbs ...

Still have tons of venison, so I thought I'd make some sausage. We are doing our annual tradition of spending New Years Eve with our good friends, the Millers, and this year we are cooking a bunch of appetizers or small plates or tapas for grazing. One of the things we discussed is small individual pizzas, so  this sausage will be perfect for that. I started with a 2-1 ratio of venison to pork fat.  I chose salt pork due to its high fat content, and its close relation to bacon and I used meat from the ham portion of the deer. I sent this through the course grinder. This is what it looks like after the first grind. I thought it looked a bit chunky, so I took half of  it and sent it through a second time, then mixed the two together. I included panko, dry mustard, shiner, white wine, rubbed sage, herbs d Reid, fennel seeds, s/p and lest of meyer lemons (plus 1 normal). This is what it looked like before I put it ba...

I used to watch "The Galloping Gourmet" tv show when I was a wee lad. He went on to host shows under his name, Graham Kerr. He had some health problems and started to cook healthy recipes. So I've watched him cook on tv for many years.  He now lives close to my aunt in Washington State. I was flipping thru cookbooks looking for dinner inspiration, and I came across this recipe for roast pork and fiesta rice in one of Grahams books. I was hooked when I saw that you use a banana in between 2 pieces of pork loin.  It sounded good, so  I was in. Recipe called for you to slice the loin in half and hollow out a trough for the banana in the center and line it with cilantro and garlic. Then truss it back together and bake. My loin came in two pieces already, and luckily it had this cool netting, that I used to cook it in. The rice used garlic, onions, rice, 2 cans of Roma tomatoes, garbanzo beans, black beans, red pepper and...

My father-in-law did something that he hasn't done in the past few years, he successfully hunted a couple of deer on his property. We used to get venison on an annual basis, but it has been years since we've had some deer meat in our freezer. Needless to say, we were very excited to have a whole bunch of meat that was essentially free. I have just completed my first quarter in culinary school, so I  was very excited to have the chance to butcher the carcass. In the past, the meat came to us already cut up, but this time we got large chunks.  We got the 2 front shoulders, the backstrap, the tenderloin and the 2 hams.  This was my first butchering and it showed. I think I still got a good yield though. So you can look forward to lots of venison recipes coming soon. The first one is venison stew.  As I was butchering the shoulders, I kept chunks aside for stew. I dredged the chunks in seasoned flour and put a sear on them. ...

Dutchie found this pork chop recipe and I ran with it. First I tourneed some turnips.  Culinary school has made me a bit ambitious.  Tournee doesn't add flavor, but is merely a shape to cut the turnips into. I cheated by microwaving the turnips to mostly cook them, then I sauteed them in butter and olive oil. The turnips were nice and tender, brown and very tasty. The chops were browned and cooked in a mixture of honey, lemon juice (including 2 meyer lemons from our tree), soy sauce and garlic.  This sauce was sweet and savory at the same time. I put some rice and dried shitake mushrooms in the rice cooker with half beef stock and half water.  I plated it from a ramakin in the middle of the plate. I fanned out the chops and leaned them up against the tower. The turnips and broccoli spears were also leaned against the rice. This meal was quite delicious.  The turnips were awesome, the rice was nice and...

We traveled to the Dutchess's family farm, Porterville, in Nacagdoches, Texas for  Thanksgiving this year.  We took on a lot of the cooking duties, but didn't go too crazy  cause some of the country folk, not all, aren't too crazy about fancy fooding.   We did do a few things that we've never done, so I thought I would share. First thing I did was make homemade cream of mushroom soup to  use in our green bean casserole.  I had to try a bowl of this on its own and it was awesome! I have recently seen the light in the brine vs no brine debate...I now BRINE! It goes against all physics but the salt, instead of drying it out like you would think,  makes the turkey so very juicy and tender. I put chicken stock (homemade + some store bought), salt, brown sugar, allspice berries, ginger, bay leaf and peppercorns into a stockpot and simmered it to melt the salt and sugar, and incorporate all the  flavors. ...

I made tomato duxelle in culinary school and wanted to do it for the flock. We tossed around a few ideas and came up with meatloaf and mashed cauliflower (with cheddar & parmesan cheese) to complete the meal.  Duxelle is a fancy, culinary word for "stuffed with chopped mushrooms and onions". I started with whole button mushrooms and used the stems too. You want to get the mushrooms SEVERELY chopped, so I utilized my pizza slicer to help me chop the mushys small. How cool is this photo? This is what I ended up with. After sauteing the mushys with onion until brown and dry, and mixing in some parmesan cheese, I stuffed it into these roma tomatoes. The meatloaf was ground beef, raw bacon, onions, bread crumbs, tomato paste,  chili paste, the tops of the roma tomatoes, ketchup, parsley, an egg and a packet of ranch dressing! I chose to cook it formed on a baking sheet, instead of in a loaf pan. I put a l...