Seeing as we are faced with a holiday weekend marked with the consumption of great quantities of food, much of which I am producing, I’m going to keep this thread pretty loose.The powers that be at the Club, in their infinite wisdom, scheduled a wedding for 100 for tomorrow. This would be the Saturday before Easter, a day that we would normally have to prepare for the two seatings of 100+ on Easter Sunday. This has made things a little tricky, and made my time for this week and weekend rather limited.I spent the afternoon preparing lamb.
We got in some wonderful boneless legs of Australian lamb. Big stuff; not that wimpy New Zealand dwarf lamb. Anyway, I took each leg out of it’s netting and unfolded it. Using a boning knife, I sliced away, spreading the meat out to give me more surface area. Over this, I liberally sprinkled a mixture of kosher salt, black pepper and paprika. Earlier, I had made a paste consisting of ground fresh rosemary, shallots, garlic, olive oil and raz el hanout, a wonderfully pungent Moroccan spice mixture. I now rubbed some of this paste into the meat. I folded the leg back into it’s correct shape and tied it up. Repeat. Again and again. All the legs are now wrapped tightly in film in the walk in. Over the next couple of days, they’ll “marinade” in their juices. On Sunday, I’ll season the outside and roast them. Best lamb these folks will have ever had.
Here’s hoping everyone has a great weekend. Let us know what you’re doing to feast, and how.
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Due to work schedules, the Easter feast will be next weekend. All we did for festivity this weekend was to go to Serb Hall for friday fish fry.
Our contribution to the gathering will be the sausage dish I mentioned and posted last weekend and some sort of potatoes aug rotten, recipe not settled yet.
Look what I got for my birthday! It ROCKS!
I’ve done a brisket and some country cut pork ribs. Mesquite smoke. I made the mistake of following the cooking times in their stupid little cookbook for the beef and it was verging on dry. I have it down now. 35-45 minutes per pound @ 250-300 degrees and taste. I have the thing situated so I can see the thermometer from my easy chair in air conditioned comfort. If ya ain’t got a side smoker - buy this thing now, while summer is still on the way.
Luckily, your new smoker is available through the Daily Pundit Kitchen Store for only $93.93 Get one while they’re, ah, hot.
Steel,
Why tie yourself to where you can see the thermometer? I got my brother-in-law a wireless grill thermometer from Grillovers.com. Has about a 100′ range. He loves it.
Luckily, a wireless grill thermometer is available through The Daily Pundit Kitchen Store for only $23.23! Get one and find out how hot it is!
I’m trying something new for me this Easter. I’m gonna boil a ham in Coca-Cola. I’ll post a pic afterwards.
That does sound interesting, but I think it would be better if you used Pepsi.
The details of this product may vary. Mine has the smokejack in the lid, rather than off the side, and the side smoker is on the righthand side instead of the left. Vastly better than a Webber, especially the beat-up ones I was collecting from curb-mart before treating myself right for once. The other piece of equipment you need to complement that grill is a charcoal-lighting chimney. It would be criminal to use petroleum distillates in it.
This being a Catholic country, everywhere was closed Thursday and Friday. I made Chicken Rogan Josh and went round to a friend’s house where much alcohol was consumed and much curry eaten. Today for lunch I am making Salmon Cakes. They’re super-easy:
Salmon Cakes
serves 2
1 215g can pink salmon
1 24g pack soda cracker, ground into crumbs
1 1/2 tbsp onion, minced very fine
2 tsp tomato ketchup
1/4 tsp fresh thyme or dill if you prefer
1/4 tsp Old Bay seasoning
1/2 tsp fresh ground black pepper
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp balsamic vinegar
dash Worcester sauce
1 egg, beaten
Empty the drained salmon into a bowl and remove extraneous bits of skin and as many bones as you can (you don’t need to be fanatical about this, but make sure you get all the vertebrae.) Put the soda cracker in the food processor and pulse into crumbs. Add the crumbs and the rest of the ingredients and mash with a fork until everything is incorporated. Let the mixture stand, covered, for 15–20 mins until the flavours mingle. Shallow fry in butter in a heavy skillet until golden brown. Drain over kitchen towel and serve immediately. Salsa Rosa (half ketchup, half mayonnaise) is good with this.
Except for the balsamic vinegar (unknown in Indiana in the 1950s) and some of the seasoning, this was our Protestant version of Friday fish dinner when I was a kid.
Thanks for reminding me.
This week, I took part in a Seder for the first time. Bad food (it’s supposed to be bad), good wine, and good food, but other than the brisket and chicken, I don’t know most of what I ate.
The wife and I cook Easter Dinner for all our heathen or stranded college friends. This year, we’re feeding 12. Our restrictions are to keep kosher (except the ham), and provide food for an OCD who only eats white and yellow food, and green vegetables.
The menu will be:
2 loaves of bread from a very good local bakery
1 Costco Ham of the Resurrection. The hams from costco have always been good, and we all watched Hellboy.
5 lbs white fish (talipai? not sure), sauteed in brown butter
2 lbs wilted spinach
1 large broccoli cassarole
1 tray eggplant stackers with no meat.
3 boxes Kraft Mac and Cheese by popular request
1… big crock pot… of steamed rice with roasted red peppers, onion, and roasted garlic.
I’ve given up on dessert. Noone ever makes it that far.
Anyone want to venture a wine suggestion? I don’t have a clue.
I’d serve mead. No idea if it’s available in stores, as I brew my own. A sweet mead (ie, enough honey that not all ferments) would go well with the ham. A dry or a sweet mead would go with the fish, depending on how it’s cooked.
As it happens, I have several gallons of properly aged sweet mead. If you live anywhere near Albany, NY, you’re welcome to a gallon. (Up to a few days ago you could have had half a gallon of dry mead, too, but my brother-in-law drank it all. Along with it looks like a gallon or two of beer. And he doesn’t seem to get drunk. Sheesh.)
I thought we’d just have some rabbit. Maybe someone knows Qzzie Fudd’s recipe?
SteveF, if I wasn’t in Cleveland, I’d take you up on that offer. The only mead I’ve ever had was from a store, and it was God awful.
I think I’ve got a sweetish Aussie Riesling in the fridge that I’ll be taking, but I’ve never had it before, so I don’t really know what it tastes like.
Quick update on that lamb at the Club.
Yes. It was the best damn lamb they ever had. But for a few carving scraps, it’s all gone.
This morning, I unwrapped the legs. Patted on some of the paste mixture on the fat (upper) side, and seasoned with kosher salt, pepper and paprika.
I roasted the legs in a 325˚ oven to an internal temperature of 120˚. I then removed the lamb and let it carry over and rest.
I was pretty much told that the sauce was a raspberry mint demi glace. No recipe, so I winged it. I saved the lamb drippings, strained them and removed the fat. Added that to some demi, red wine, seedless raspberry preserves and mint jelly; just enough so the respective flavors peeped through, but not enough to make it too sweet.
And there you go.
BTW, I’m sure most of you cooks out there have an electric coffee grinder dedicated to spice grinding. Did you know it’s great for “grinding” rosemary? I figured this out a number of years ago. Rosemary is a bitch to chop for the paste I did for the lamb. The grinder practically turns it to powder. You have to let it run for awhile, but the results are great.
My wife is related to half of Louisiana, a quarter of East Texas, and a good-sized chunk of South Mississippi. She had relatives vacationing out here in L.A. — they flew back this afternoon — and, with the way everyone’s schedules were running, only one opportunity to get everyone together for a visit, so Easter breakfast was at an IHOP on Wilshire. The place has a really strange taste in background music: If there is any rational purpose to Health Department regulations at all, I would think they would forbid piping Tiny Tim singing I’ve Got a Pair of Brand New Roller Skates into a restaurant.