Bachelor life

Adjetivo Lucia (Mexican Juicy Lucy)

I was feeling a little hungry and I've been catching up on my DVRd episodes of Man vs. Food. On a recent episode Adam travels to Minnesota (pit stop on the way to BWCA Jeff?) and eats a burger called the Juicy Lucy. Basically its two burgers with american cheese in the middle. Oooey Gooey Heaven. I put a Mexican twist on my "Lucia".

Ingredients (per burger):

1/2 lb ground beef
1 Slice of Pepper Jack Cheese for topping
Cheese for filling*
1 Roasted Pablano Pepper
sliced tomato
1/4 cup of sour cream
1 tbsp mexican hot sauce
English muffin (nooks and crannies + juices = good)
salt and pepper to taste
beer for drinking

*The original is made with a kraft single for its melting ability, but I chose a Sargento shredded Mexican blend consisting of monterey jack, cheddar, queso quesadilla, and asadero cheese.

Process:

Preheat grill (or infrared burner if you are a big baller like Jeff) Divide meat into two 4oz. thin patties. Place shredded cheese on bottom patty and lay top patty and pinch edges to form somewhat of a beef ravioli. Season liberally with salt and pepper. Throw pablano on the grill with the burger, 4-5 min per side. While burger cooks, mix sour cream and hotsauce. Flip burger and turn the pablano until well charred. With a minute left put pepper jack cheese on the burger to melt and toast the bun. Place pablano in a zip top bag while you assemble the burger, wait on the bun to toast, and open a beer. (steaming the pablano helps the skin be easily peeled). The burger is layerd as follows: bottom of muffin, sour cream sauce, burger, pepper jack, pablano, tomato slice, more sour cream sauce, top bun. Smile and enjoy.



MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!

New Grill

Since Simpkins is has issue with my gas grill I thought I'd post some pics to hopefully sway his opinion. 5 burner Kenmore, one of the burners is an infrared and it gets frickin hot! Loads of cooking space and stainless steel cooking grates. Got it from Sears on memorial day weekend and they had it priced wrong so I got a helluva deal. I'm going to start experimenting with some wood chips for some added flavor.

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Post CFA exam Smokefest 2010

Click on this pic for a close up!

After studying my brain off for 8 months I needed 3 things:
1. Beer - Growler of Barley's Ivan Porter
2. Pork - Boston butt*
3. Wet Hickory Chips

*ribs and salmon were also part of the smokefest but those were not made by me.

I made a simple dry rub (no measuring involved)consisting of:
Chili powder
Hot Hungarian Paprika
Garlic Powder
Salt
Pepper
Onion Powder
Brown Sugar
Cayenne
Dry yellow mustard
Cinnamon

I also sacrificed a PBR into the smoker for some moist heat. Don't hate on PBR.

I smoked the Boston Butt (I'm going to capitalize that from here on out), and then wrapped the Butt in foil with a half a PBR and sealed in the juices for a 4 hour braise. The temp in the smoker is 225-250 degrees, and it produced some uber-moist (thank you simpkins) pork Butt.

Cook time on the ribs was 4 hours, all exposed to smoke. The Bark on the ribs was awesome, but I think next time I will use the partial smoke/partial braise method to add some moisture. The salmon only took 25 minutes and took on some nice smoke flavor in that short amount of time. Smoke On!

Pizza anyone?

NY Style 6-11-10

Pizza anyone? So a little over a month ago I ordered some unglazed quarry tiles to use as pizza stones, and Nat (yes his name is Nat) at McSwain forgot to put my order in and so I just got my tiles a few days ago, and of course had to try them out. They actually worked out really well, and I got a nice char on the bottom of the pie that I have not been able to get with my other crappy stones.

Here's a pic of the setup.

I made some NY style pie with a 48 hour cold temp ferment using this formula.

Flour (100%): 420.75 g | 14.84 oz | 0.93 lbs

Water (63%): 265.07 g | 9.35 oz | 0.58 lbs

IDY (.4%): 1.68 g | 0.06 oz | 0 lbs | 0.56 tsp | 0.19 tbsp

Salt (2.25%): 9.47 g | 0.33 oz | 0.02 lbs | 1.97 tsp | 0.66 tbsp

Oil (1.5%): 6.31 g | 0.22 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.4 tsp | 0.47 tbsp

Sugar (.5%): 2.1 g | 0.07 oz | 0 lbs | 0.53 tsp | 0.18 tbsp

Total (167.65%): 705.39 g | 24.88 oz | 1.56 lbs | TF = 0.11

Single Ball: 352.69 g | 12.44 oz | 0.78 lbs

I preheated the stones for about an hour at 550. Dough was stretched and topped with some sauce that I made the day before from some pureed whole Italian tomatoes, garlic, red pepper flake, and Italian seasoning that I “bloomed” in some EVOO, and also added a good does of Kosher salt and a little Agave nectar to sweeten it up. Pizza was topped with a blend of diced part-skim mozzarella, sliced whole-milk mozzarella, and a little shredded white cheddar. The whole-milk mozz was from Trader Joes and I was pretty impressed by it, good flavor and stretch to it, I’ll definitely be using it again. It was the first time I’ve ever added any kind of cheddar to a pizza, it was nice, gave it a little extra flavor, I didn’t use much, maybe a ¼ cup on each pie. My pie was topped with spinach, pepperoni, sausage, thinly sliced criminis, red onion, a drizzle of EVOO and some grated parm. Kristin’s was pretty much the same except no pep and added pineapple.

All in all some pretty good pies, enjoy the pics. Not sure why they don't show up full size, you'll have to click on each one to get the full pic.

Beerfest, Anyone?

Beerfest at Jungle Jims, June 18th. $40 dollar ticket gets you a mug, 20 sample pours, and a beef brisket dinner. http://www.junglejims.com/beerfest/about.asp So who wants to go?

Pickled Ginger

If you ever been to a sushi restaurant with me, you know that I request extra pickled ginger; I absolutely love the stuff. And I've been wanting to pickle my own ginger for some time now. So, last weekend I finally had some extra time and decided to whip up a batch. It is exponentially much better than the crap you buy in the jar. I added a couple additional chiles which proved to be extremely hot! Accident ... ? ... maybe not ... it keeps Leeann from eating it.

Ingredients:
• 2 cups rice wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 small red beet, peeled and halved
• 2 bay leaves
• 1/2 tablespoon white peppercorns
• 2 Thai bird chiles
• 2 cups ginger slices, peeled (1/8-inch thick)
Directions:
Combine everything but ginger in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Add ginger and turn heat down to a simmer for 1/2 an hour. Pull off heat and let stand until cool, about 1 hour. Place in jar and refrigerate overnight. Will keep for 1 month.

Diner's, Drive-In's, and Dives

DDD aired the episode that it shot in Cincy at Terry's Turf Club. I haven't seen it, on account of I don't have cable, but here are the other dates that it will be broadcast.

• Jun 11, 2010

  9:00 PM ET/PT

• Jun 12, 2010

  12:00 AM ET/PT

• Jun 13, 2010

  3:00 PM ET/PT

  Make sure to Tivo it for me.