Summer Slush - 25 August 2021 - Plague Journal Day 531

Micah 6:8
Psalm 147:16-18
Yes, your life matters.

Some of you are still sheltering in place, but fear not: I'm here to keep you sane and entertained.
One could hardly ask for much more than that, now could one?

Today is National Whiskey Sour Day. My Aunt Peggy used to make frozen whiskey sours, or whiskey sour slush, as many might call it. She filled her blender with ice cubes and dropped in one of those tubes of frozen lemonade concentrate. Then she filled that tube with whiskey and added it to the blender. All that remained was to blend it all till slushy and enjoy. I think that is still my favorite whiskey sour of all time. Simple, cheap, tasty, and refreshing.

She had a lot of fun stuff like that - like what she called Dinner on a Breadstick. Basically it was loose, browned hamburger (like meat from a coney hamburger if you're familiar with those) with cheese and onion on half a hot dog bun toasted under the broiler. She also made really good scalloped corn. She's the one to whose house I was going when Mom (her sister) took us around 5 of the four leaves of the cloverleaf at I-94 and I-69 near Marshall, MI.

I'm pretty sure she was the cool Mom in Clint and Christy's circles of friends.

Keep Calm and Don't Stay Away.
I'll be back tomorrow.
The mental health issues related to our lockdown and the pandemic are especially hard for people with depression. NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, has a 24 hour helpline: 800-950-6264.

Carnage du Jour - 01 July 2016

We had a nice roasting chicken in the refrigerator and it was next in line so what to do?
I had cleverly had my butcher cut out the backbone (retaining it for stock purposes, of course), so it wasn't going to take terribly long to cook in butterfly (or spatchcock) mode. The weather was great and the Weber grill beckoned.

While the coals got ready, I remembered having seen a recipe for Persian spiced chicken, but didn't seem to have any ground allspice (I know, really?), so I went into improv mode.
I made a blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, Hungarian paprika, chipotle powder, and garlic salt and rubbed that onto the very lightly oiled skin of the chicken.
It started skin side up over a cool part of the fire, then flipped a couple times, moving around to get a crispy skin and a fully cooked interior.
Rice and corn made for a nice pair of sides and the chicken was very tasty - juicy and crispy with a slight afterglow of spice with each bite. It was spicy in the sense of flavourful, but not in the sense of hot as it seems to be used today.

Delicious and highly recommended - definitely one to be repeated.

Cornage du Jour - 21 June 2015

I know, my normal usage would be for this to be a Vegage du Jour, but this corn was good enough for its own coinage.

Corn on the cob on the grill.
Sure, it's trendy, it's hip, it's all those things I normally avoid.
Still, it's also delicious, so I had to ignore my normal behaviour and do it anyway.

When I have grilled corn in the past, I have simply soaked the corn (still in the husk) and grilled it until it was done - basically steaming it until it almost smokes from the char on the husk.

I may have noted here in the past that when I boil corn on the cob, I like to add sugar and chipotle powder to the water to give the corn a bit of extra flavour.

The corn we had was partly shucked, so I knew I couldn't do it quite the way I always do, but it wasn't going to be all that different.

It being Father's Day, my flavour consultant, Christian, was in the house.
Something had been said about something or other that made me think of coconut. I have no real recollection of what that might have been, but hold that in mind for a moment.

I decided to soak the partially shucked corn in my normal water with sugar and chipotle before dropping it on the grill. Then inspiration struck.
Do you remember the coconut? Well I did, and I asked Christian to check the combined scent of the flavours, and he concurred: this could be great.

After about a 10 minute (15?) soak, the corn went on the grill (covered, wet husk side down) with some rotation and such - including a final flip to corn side down - until it was steamy hot and delicious.

Oh, did I mention it was delicious? It was.

This is definitely to be repeated, and is highly recommended,
Enjoy!

Carnage du Jour - 17 October 2011

from grandteuton.blogspot.com

What to do with all those peppers this year? In an odd twist of agriculture, hot peppers of various varieties were nearly the only thing that grew well in our garden this year. Eggplant and yellow squash were fairly productive, but the banana, serrano, and cayenne peppers were the stars of the season.

Well, roasted chile peppers are great, so we have roasted a bunch of them, but then the question becomes what to do with the oil that had been on them while they roasted.
Aha! Make an emulsion with some decent Cabernet, and marinate a top round steak for a while. What a nice combination of heat and semi-sweet.

After a good long soak, the steak gets a quick sear on each side, then back in the bath with a bunch of sweet onion wedges for some time in a moderately slow oven (275F or so).

A batch of rice and some corn slathered in butter and it was a very nice meal.

Oh, and as a bonus, the now-cooked marinade becomes a tasty - and spicy - sauce to perk up the steak and rice.

Very tasty, if I do say so myself (and I just did).

Glacage du Jour - 24 July 2011

Heidi: "I bought five ears of corn the other day."
Me: "I bought five ears of corn the other day too."

Oops.
What to do with ten ears of corn and only two mouths currently resident? Clearly the answer lay in the ice cream machine.  Here's how it went.

Cut the kernels off the cobs, and break the cobs into thirds.
Place in a pot with a pint of milk, a pint of heavy cream, and 1/2 C of sugar.
Bring that mixture to a simmer and let it go a few minutes, then grab the immersion blender and blend all the kernels into the mixture (not the cobs, please!), and let it infuse an hour or so.
Bring that back to a simmer and then turn off the heat - warning: this stuff will smell delicious already, but you're not done!
Now, whisk 1/4 C sugar into nine egg yolks. You're going to mix this into the hot liquid (you already removed the cobs, right?), but you have to temper it so you don't get scrambled eggs.
Whisk in a small amount of the hot cream mixture at a time, until you've added about a cup to the eggs.
Now you can whisk that egg mixture into the balance of the cream to make your corn custard.
Next, cook that custard - stirring! - over medium-low heat until it thickens enough to coat a spoon.

Strain the custard through a sieve, squishing as much through as you can, but dump the solids that don't pass through, and chill the custard for a few hours, or even overnight.

Once that's all chilled, it's just a matter of dumping the stuff in your ice cream maker (following the normal procedure for your machine, thank you very much), and letting it freeze and then harden.

Apart from one very vehement negative review (which frankly, I still find bewildering) this dessert was a definite hit. Oh, and I'm sure it counts as both dairy servings and vegetables! Bonus, no?

Delicious, and highly recommended.

from grandteuton.blogspot.com

Carnage du Jour - 25 June 2011

from grandteuton.blogspot.com

You know, crock pots are wonderful things.
We had some spectacular pulled pork a week ago or so, made simply in the crock pot with a pork butt cooking down low and slow to tasty perfection.
Now, when there were some lamb chops to use up, a little light went on in my head.

Why not pulled lamb?
Why not indeed.

So, four chops nestled close together in a dry crock pot on high for a bit. The seasoning was simply salt and pepper on each side. A trip to the herbs growing on the back porch yielded some gorgeous rosemary - four large sprigs were dropped on top of the chops.
After they had gotten a bit of colour (and the kitchen began to smell wonderful), I flipped the chops and added a bit of braising liquid - in this case, some coffee - and dropped the temp to low.

Several hours later, the meat was falling off the bones (as expected) and shredded with a spoon, so that seemed like enough cooking. That was fortunate, as it was now time to eat.

Some nice whole wheat buns were loaded with the pulled lamb, which was enhanced with a bit of crumbled feta cheese, just because it's so good, and we tucked in to a most enjoyable sandwich.
On the side we had some beautiful ears of corn which had cooked in a bath of water with salt and sugar and some powdered chipotle.  All in all, an excellent meal - one I wouldn't mind repeating.

RIP Ernie Harwell

We all knew it was coming, and we've likely never known anyone who was actually so ready for it, but death is always a shock no matter what.

The one time I met Ernie, I could tell that he was just as cool as we thought he was from listening to him on the radio (I miss the Tigers on WJR, and I'm not even a baseball fan); he was a genuinely nice, kind gentleman.

I do have one (continuing) regret related to Ernie. He had some kind of connection with our church, and every year as I started the planning for the Lenten Devotion book, I thought that I should send Ernie a letter and ask for a bit of devotional writing from him - but I never did. Now I never will.

Still, I know that Ernie is in Heaven (and I'm pretty sure that doesn't mean he's in an Iowa cornfield with a bunch of dead baseball players), and he's happy. No, happy wouldn't be the half of it - Joy is the serious business of Heaven, and Ernie was always good at Joy.

He'll be missed.

Oh, and it's time to add to the name at Comerica Park: Harwell Field at Comerica Park has a wonderful ring, don't you think?