Father Feeds Flock!!!

I've never cooked a beer can chicken, so I thought I would try it out. I decided to pair it with tomato duxelle and roasted red potatoes. First I shoved a can of Busch Beer into a chicken and threw it in a 350 degree oven. I added some rub to the skin. The key to duxelle is 2 fold, first you have to chop the mushys quite fine  (add some onions and shallots),  then overcook the mushys till they are brown and dry. Take a tomato and core and seed it, then put the mushy mix in the  cavity.  Then add some parmesan cheese on top and put it in the oven to cook the tomato and melt the cheese. I took the chicken drippings and added some cream and buttermilk, to create a sauce.  I put the roasted potatoes on the plate then poured some sauce on the plate.  I placed the chicken leaning up on the taters. This was an awesome meal! Very tasty and it got 3 thumbs up!

My cousin, Travis Lawton, is a professional photographer. While we were in Washington State to meet his 6 month old daughter Lilah, he snapped some photos.   I wanted to impress my family a bit with some things I learned in culinary school.  I ended up going to  an old family stand by...my mother's lasagna! Since we had lots of people, I decided to make 1 by her exact recipe, and the other one veggie and a bit healthier. Father fed an even bigger flock! No complaints, but we had LOTS of veggie left over!

I've you've read my blog before, you probably know that I like Jamie Oliver recipes.  As a matter of fact, my favorite recipe of all time...Sorry Mom, is Joliver's proper chicken caesar salad.  I've made it several times, for several people. The key to that salad is to cook the chicken on top of the bread so that the juices drip down and soak into the croutons.  Delicious! I wanted to try a salmon version, but salmon doesn't have wonderful juice to soak the bread, so I came up with a plan B. First off, as always, I started with rosemary bacon. mmmmm...bacon. in a mortar and pestle, I put garlic and anchovy filets. I made this paste as the base of the dressing. I used lemon juice, olive oil, sour cream and the garlic-chovy paste to make the dressing.  Mix it up and let it sit in the fridge. I like to add the crumbled bacon to the dressing as it chills, as I think it adds a different dimension of flavor as oppo...

I wanted to do something a bit special for 4th of July, but I'm a bit  busy with work so I didn't have much time to plan and prepare. So I settled on burgers, but I wanted to do it a bit different than the norm. I got ground chicken and turkey and mixed it together with hoisin & soy sauce and a little chili paste.  After mixing it together, I let it chill out for a  bit in the fridge to marinate the flavors. The burger fixins were pretty standard (tomato, red onion, romaine lettuce and pickle), I also added some jalapenos and banana peppers from our garden.  I didn't stop there. I quartered some radishes and served with carrots. I wanted chips, but needed an element that was out of the ordinary.  So I got some purple potatoes and sliced them carefully in the madeline and fried them in the  trusty fry daddy. Plated along side a Shiner Hefeweizen and this holiday meal was complete.  With a small prayer...

So the Dutchess is finally rubbing off on me, and I think I have come around to the whole "being healthier" thang. Since culinary school has added even more to my spare tire, I can almost start my own tire business. I hope to find a good mix of still eating food and moving MUCH more. So hopefully FFF will include a lot more healthy inspiration,  without resorting to "rabbit food".  After all, our bodies need fats and carbs too, just not as much as we are used to. I found this recipe in the Food Network magazine. I pretty much stayed with the recipe and just plated it differently, which didn't showcase the fennel or carrots as much as the photo included with the recipe. I mise en place'd all the needed ingredients which included:  fennel quarters,  carrots, green beans, scallions, a head of garlic, basil, parsley and fennel fronds. First up was blanching the fennel and carrots to soften them. Remove them and set...

I haven't blogged in a while so I came up with this meal so  that I could pull out the camera and let you guys peer into my culinary adventures. I looked through some cook books and came across a Tyler Florence recipe for veal piccata.  The Dutchess doesn't do veal, so I changed it to chicken. First I split, then pounded the chicken breasts. I dredged it in seasoned flour... Then a quick egg bath. Next they went, one at a time, into the cast iron till they were golden brown. I put them in the microwave, not turned on, to help keep them warm while the other 2 cooked. I cooked some pasta, and started to make the sauce. The photo isn't too appealing, but make no mistake, this was delicious.  I deglazed the cast iron with  white wine, lemon juice and capers and reduced it to concentrate the flavor. I plated, on our new white plates, simply by mounding the pasta then placing the chicken on it...

In the interest of full disclosure I must mention that I was contacted by Wendy's and provided a salad to sample. I also have some blog posts on DallasFoodNerd.com, one of the posts there is my review of Snappy Salads.  Someone at Wendy's reached out to me to see if I would be interested in receiving a sample before the product was released.  I like free food, so of course, I accepted. The day came and the sample was delivered to my house.  I have eaten at Wendy's many times and I find it overall to be hot, fresh and one of the better choices for fast food convenience.  They have always had many choices such as baked potatoes, chili and salads. This is the 3rd consecutive year that this salad has been offered for a limited time only. I'm a fan of Wendy's.  Does that mean that anything they make, or send to  me will be great?  Of course not.  A few dollars for the cost of a salad isn't even close to enoug...