Carne Advovada Ala Heather

Heather, over at Rocky Mountain Cooking, recently posted her recipe for Carne Advovada and it sounded too good to pass up, especially since I’d found adaptable ingredients while freezer diving - check out her site for the recipe she used.  According to Wikipedia “Adobada is generally pork marinated in a "red" chilli sauce with vinegar and oregano, …” and after looking at several recipes on-line this seemed to be accurate, but since Heather’s use of green chile sauce is the part that appealed to me, I decided to stick with hers. 

Carne Advovada - Adapted from Rocky Mountain Cooking

Ingredients:

2 pounds of pork loin, cut into cubes

3/8 cup red chili powder (like Heather, I used Hatch)

½ tbs. salt

2 cans Hatch hot, chopped green chilies – I used canned to save my last bag of the good ones

½ large onion, diced

5 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp. ground cumin

38 oz. of homemade chile verde

Instructions:

1. Trim pork and cut into cubes, both small and medium sized.

2. In a bowl combine chili powder and salt.

3. In a large bowl, add pork and chili/salt mixture and mix well with your hands until all the pork is covered in the chili.

4. Cover let sit overnight.

5. Add everything to the Crockpot and cook on high for an hour, then reduce to low and cook for 6-8 hours or until pork loin is very tender.

We just rolled it in a flour tortilla and topped with some shredded lettuce and sour cream and I thought it was delicious.  The shredded meat came from the Chile Verde and the cubes are the pork loin.

Since a big part of my dish was our homemade chile verde and Heather used green chile sauce with pork, I suspect the two were somewhat different but I believe we did use the same Hatch red chile powder which had to have made them taste very similar.  I think this dish basically turned my green chile into red and I don’t know if it is classical Carne Advovada, but I loved it this way - much better than my shots of it showed.

Next time, I would not use the pork loin cubes but would make it as Heather did or just add the right portion of the other ingredients to my Chile Verde - the canned hot chiles added plenty of heat.  I think it would have been very good atop most any starch - potato, rice, pasta, chips, etc.

Thanks Heather for several delicious meals.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

10/22/14 meal date

Chicken & Peppers for Supper and Breakfast

Due to our travel plans, we didn't really have a garden this year but we did plant a few tomatoes and peppers to eat on.  As usual, we have a large fall pepper crop and while we’ll freeze a few, we are planning dishes around eating them fresh - like in the old days when folks ate whatever was ready in the garden.  For this meal, we decided on a recipe from Allrecipes for Chicken and Peppers with Balsamic Vinegar.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup olive oil, divided

4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves - cut into strips

Salt and pepper to taste

1 red bell pepper, thinly sliced

1 yellow bell pepper, thinly sliced

1 orange bell pepper, thinly sliced

1 medium onion, thinly sliced

4 large cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 tablespoon dried basil (we used fresh)

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar, divided

Directions:

1. Heat two tablespoons olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Place the chicken in the skillet, season with salt and pepper, and brown on both sides. Remove from heat, and set aside.

2. Heat remaining oil in the skillet over medium heat, and stir in the red bell pepper, yellow bell pepper, orange bell pepper, and onion. Cook about five minutes, until tender. Mix in the garlic, and cook and stir about one minute. Mix in the basil and two tablespoons balsamic vinegar.

3. Return the chicken to the skillet. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer 20 minutes, or until chicken is no longer pink and juices run clear. Stir in remaining balsamic vinegar just before serving.

While I really liked the concept of this dish and it made for a colorful presentation, the basil and balsamic were not my favorite so I would use something different next time.  The green and orange peppers are Cubanelles at different degrees of ripeness (nice to get green, orange, and red from the same plant) and the yellow one is a bell.

The following morning, Bev turned an okay supper into a delicious breakfast by chopping the chicken and peppers, warming them in the microwave, and using them to stuff an omelet along with some hot pepper cheese.  After folding the omelet, she topped with more cheese and a little salsa.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

10/21- 10/22/14 meal dates

Saturday Humor - Three Contractors Bid On The White House Fence.

This would be hilarious if it wasn't so likely to be reality.

Three contractors are bidding to fix a broken fence at the White House.

One is from Chicago, another is from Kentucky, and the third is from New Orleans.

All three go with a White House official to examine the fence.

The New Orleans contractor takes out a tape measure and does some measuring, then works some figures with a pencil.

"Well," he says, "I figure the job will run about $9,000. That's $4,000 for materials, $4,000 for my crew and $1,000 profit for me."

The Kentucky contractor also does some measuring and figuring, then says, "I can do this job for $7,000.  That's $3,000 for materials, $3,000 for my crew and $1,000 profit for me."

The Chicago contractor doesn't measure or figure, but leans over to the White House official and whispers, "$27,000."

The official, incredulous, says, "You didn't even measure like the other guys. How did you come up with such a high figure?

"The Chicago contractor whispers back, "$10,000 for me, $10,000 for you, and we hire the guy from Kentucky to fix the fence."

"Done!" replies the government official.

And that, my friends, is how the Government works.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

A Little Trip To WV and Swordfish

Now that Madison is back in school, we are pretty tied to her schedule and for her fall break we made a short trip to WV where we visited with my relatives in Fairmont and she stayed with her mom’s family in Wheeling.  In addition to visiting, we did the normal Fairmont things that included some hot dogs from Woody’s and pepperoni rolls from Colasessano’s and we checked out the Stonewall Jackson State Park campground for its ability to accommodate our RV.

A couple of unusual’s for our trip:

It’s not often my cousin gets to mow his grass shirtless in mid-October.

This guy was helping out next door.

And we were not aware that they use helicopters to trim the power line right-aways with ten 24” diameter circular saws – you can just see it in my shot or go here for more views.

I didn’t have my long lens with me.

From Fairmont, we went up to Wheeling to pick up Madison and while there, we went to Market Centre for a famous fish sandwich from Coleman’s Fish Market and while there we checked out the fresh fish counter and were shocked at how low the prices were compared to our place.  So we had to buy some to bring home and Madison picked out Marlin, Shark, and Swordfish ($10/lb) while I went for Flounder and King Salmon tail pieces ($7/lb).

After we got home all but the Swordfish went into the freezer and I went in search of a unique Swordfish recipe, eventually discovering Sicilian Style Swordfish, which was the runner-up in a contest.  We only had two pieces of fish, but I made the full sauce recipe and I grilled the Swordfish rather than pan cook it so I changed the instructions.

Sicilian-Style Swordfish – Adapted from cucinettaNYC - Serves 4

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 medium yellow onion, halved and thinly sliced

2 garlic cloves, finely minced

1/3 cup sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil

¼ cup pitted oil-cured black olives coarsely chopped

2 tablespoons salted capers, well rinsed and coarsely chopped

¼ cup dry white wine, preferably Sicilian

Crushed red pepper to taste

4 x 6 ounces swordfish steaks

Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

1. In a large skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat, add onion and garlic; cook, stirring frequently, until onion is lightly browned, 3 to 4 minutes.

2. After a couple of minutes, season swordfish with salt and pepper, oil, and begin grilling it over high heat – I flipped it after 5 minutes. We did some chicken and asparagus as well.

3. When the onion is lightly browned, add sun-dried tomatoes, olives, capers, wine and generous pinch red pepper flakes; stir together and cook until warmed through.

4. When swordfish is done (note), plate, top with sauce, sprinkle with roughly torn basil (which I forgot) and serve.

Note:  From what I read, the fish should be cooked to 145* for safety’s sake, so I cooked it to 140* knowing with the carryover heat and sauce topping it would get above that level.

Everything done and headed for the kitchen.

We served the fish with a Knorr's Pasta side and grilled asparagus.

I thought the Swordfish was delicious and would serve it in my restaurant, if I had one.  The topping was flavorful and complimented the flavor of the fish without hiding it.  All-in-all a very good meal from the grill.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

10/11- 10/17/14 events dates

Crockpot Barbecue Beef Ribs

Say what, you asked?  If you know me or have read my blog for very long, you likely know I am somewhat of a BBQ purist and subscribe to this definition – BBQ is meat cooked slowly over low heat (preferably indirect) in a smoky environment.  I know that this is the minority opinion in America so nuf about that.  I used this title because it will probably be the only time I use the words barbecue and Crockpot in the same sentence and I just had to do it to see how it felt.

In my continuing and seeming lifelong effort to clean out our freezers, I discovered a rack of beef ribs that had been there for a couple of years and were not vacuum sealed so I suspected they might be in bad shape or at least old tasting.  After thawing, removing the foil and plastic wrapping, and rinsing they looked and smelled fine and with no freezer burn.

I was looking for an easy way to cook them with low energy usage for just one rack of ribs (rather than the grill, smoker, or oven) which is when the crockpot popped into my mind – it is after all just a small ceramic oven.  Since many BBQ rib cooks, roast the ribs for a while then wrap them in foil with a little liquid to steam for tenderness, I decided that this was exactly what the crock pot would do – roast them for a while until they gave up some liquid them steam them in that liquid.

I cut the rack into three pieces, dusted both sides with Chris Lily’s Brisket Rub and stood them in the pot on edge – the one uh-oh was forgetting to remove the membrane.

I cooked them on high for an hour, then on low until a toothpick would slide easily between the bones – the tenderness test – this was after about six total hours.  Then I removed them, dusted with some more rub, and put them on a hot grill fire to establish a crust on both sides, which took a very short time due to the flare ups.  I sliced them into individual ribs and served them up with some fries we had also found in the freezer.

Other than the slightly old flavor, they were actually pretty good, moist and tender, but could have spent a more time on low grill heat to expel a little more of the fat – I guess this could also be done in the crockpot, but direct heat seems to be more effective and I could see them better.  The membrane likely kept the fat from rendering as well.  While I chuckled as I wrote this, I would use the method again when it makes sense but I will never ever again call it barbecue. J

Mean while, back at the freezer – I have taken two kitchen size garbage bags full to the dump and discarded a huge pan of vegetables in the woods – found one 2010 item.  Since we no longer raise a big garden for preservation and I’ve closed my BBQ business, my goal is to eliminate one freezer and I’m almost there.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

10/10/14 meal date

OMG Dill Sauce

Bev had bought some salmon just to have with dill sauce and I went about a web search to find a recipe and ended up with one from Taste Of Home for both the salmon and the sauce.  The recipe is for baked fish but I did it on the grill - given a choice, I always choose the grill as my grilling season is 12 months a year.

This is the recipe for the dill sauce and we made it the day before to allow the flavors to marry well.

Dill Sauce:

1/3 cup sour cream

1/3 cup mayonnaise

1 tablespoon finely chopped onion

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon prepared horseradish

3/4 teaspoon dill weed

1/4 teaspoon garlic salt

Pepper to taste

Combine the sauce ingredients until smooth.

For the skinless salmon, I seasoned one side with S&P and light coating lemon pepper followed by a light coating of mayo.  I put this side down over a pretty hot charcoal grill and treated the new top side the same.  After cooking for a couple of minutes, I flipped, spread on a good coating of the dill sauce (so it could warm up and set a little), closed the grill lid, and cooked to the desired 135* internal temp.  The salmon was removed, plated and topped with a mound of capers and some chopped chives.  The capers were not in the original recipe but since we love them I wanted to try it this way.

I first tried a couple of bites with just the sauce and then with the capers and I thought it was delicious both ways so it depends on if you like capers whether or not you use them but I thought both were OMG delicious – the search is over for a dill sauce at our house as I cannot imagine a better one for my tastes.

We sided it with some 2012 home-canned green beans and added some frozen 2012 shelly beans (October beans) along with some diced Benton’s bacon and they were very good unto themselves but they were even better topped with some of the dill sauce.  I believe I should use what fresh dill we have to make into this sauce and store it - then put it on everything - hopefully you've taken the hint by now - I loved this sauce.

And what about Bev and Madison you ask - Bev went to the store and bought some more salmon so we could have it again the next night - we just mixed some capers in with the sauce for this one, warmed it in a bowl of hot water, and sided with reheated beans.

I snapped the shot before Bev added chopped red onion to her beans so here is mine - I omitted my not so good fish shot.  As I mentioned above, we like our green beans to have plenty of beans, we cook them to well done, and they may even be better the next day - we totally fail at gourmet green bean preparation J.

The gourmet version, lifted from the web, which are definitely much prettier.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

10/07 & 10/8/14 meal dates

Leftovers Breakfast - Garage - A Senior Moment

BREAKFAST
Perhaps the best part of our Wine Club party food was a bunch of the practice biscuits still in the freezer and gravy left over from the party to which we added a couple of scrambled eggs, and picked-that-morning tomatoes with cottage cheese.  I'm pretty sure tomato and cottage cheese did not originate locally, but it still seemed like a delicious southern breakfast to me.

GARAGE
I've been on somewhat of a mission to clean up this dump and get rid of stuff we don't need.  Usually that means starting in the most downstream location and working backwards so I began in the upstairs garage.  I'm not sure if I'll get the house done in my lifetime, but for the first time in a few years, both cars are in the garage.  The garage is still a work in progress.

SENIOR MOMENT
I hate to tell this on myself but it was just too funny to pass up.  I got up at my normal time and busied myself doing the normal morning activities eventually in anticipation of the noon broadcast of the UT-Florida football game.  Finally the appointed time rolled around, I went over to the SEC Network and found a show about coaches wives to be on, so I assumed the guide/programming was not updating as Bev had mentioned the other day or the game was on the alternate channel.  

When it wasn't either place or any of the local channels, I decided an urgent call to Direct TV was in order.  After a few minute wait, I explained my problem to the nice young lady who answered and she said the game was supposed to be on the regular SEC Network channel but the guide was showing a different show - to which I said "that is the problem I'm having."  After a little more conversation, she said she would put me on hold and see what she could find out.  She came back shortly to assure me the game would be on the normal SEC channel on Saturday to which I replied err, ugh, I thought it was Saturday.

In spite of driving Madison to school just 4 hours earlier and watching the normal weekday shows on TV, at some point during the morning my brain decided it was Saturday.  After my profuse apologies for wasting her time she said not to worry as she thought it was Thursday.  I guess it could have been worse, at least I knew it was October.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

9/30/14 meal date

A Taste Of East Tennessee for our Wine Club - Part 2

In my last post, I discussed the September meeting of our wine club with the theme of “Food and Wine from East Tennessee” where each couple brought a bottle of wine from our area for the tasting and a small plate dish from this area or the southern mountains. 

Our selections were wild boar sausage gravy with buttermilk biscuits and a peach wine from Chestnut Hill Winery in Crossville. 

They make three dry, two semi-sweet grape wines and six sweet fruity wines.  This is the description for ours.  “Volunteer Peach: Made from a blend of several different wines with the natural peach flavoring added.  Enjoy the fresh peach aroma before you refresh your palate with this with wine.  Enjoyed as a social drink or after dinner.  Try pouring some over vanilla ice cream and you will find the taste will be amazing.”

While Bev is a regular bread maker, we generally use Pillsbury frozen biscuits, so she doesn’t have a lot of experience or a go-to recipe.  But since we wanted smaller than normal size biscuits and a homemade version, we both set off in search of recipes with the first three, including angel biscuits, all judged to be just okay.  

One recipe that we both thought looked good was from Angela Roberts over at her Spinach Tiger blog titled My Best Homemade Fluffy Southern Biscuits for My Southern Husband.  Rather than copy the recipe here, I’ll just refer you to her site for the recipe and some delicious looking shots, but mention the changes Bev made:  She used a little more buttermilk to get the dough to come together and she patted out the dough to a thinner ¾“.

We served them home style - stacked high on a plate.

The search is over and we now have a go-to recipe for scratch biscuits and they met all of my criteria – good flavor, light and flakey, split a little when baked.  Since they are far from diet food and we usually have them with something even more fattening, we rarely eat biscuits so it was great having them four mornings in a row as Bev tried different recipes and we have a bunch in the freezer as well.

For the sausage gravy, I used my normal cooking method:

1. Fry and break apart two pounds of sausage.

2, Move the meat to one side and tilt the pan to the other for a couple of minutes to estimate the amount of fat.

3. Re mix the meat and fat, sprinkle 1 Tbsp. of AP flour per Tbsp. of fat plus one more over the meat and cook for a few minutes, stirring often.  I never used to measure anything for this until I learned about the fat/flour/liquid ratio.  For this I used 6 Tbsp. of flour and 6 cups of whole milk.

Slowly and constantly stir in room temperature milk (about a cup per Tbsp, of flour used) to get the desired consistency.  I added about a cup for each of the first four times then the final two cups.  I had a little fat floating on top and sprinkled a little flour on top, whisk just that area and it took care of it.  This is after the second, fourth, and last milk additions.

One small confession – I didn’t really use wild boar but I did use Swaggerty’s sausage from nearby Sevierville, which is one of several sausage makers in the area and our favorite.

The normal gravy around here in restaurants is a white pasty concoction with a little bit of sausage flavor and meat, but mine is how Dad taught me to make it – I could have probably made a few gallons of the local version with this amount of sausage.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

9/29 & 10/2/14 dates

A Taste Of East Tennessee for our Wine Club - Part 1

We hosted the September meeting of our wine club and selected a theme of “Food and Wine From East Tennessee” so each couple was asked to bring a bottle of wine from our area for tasting and a small plate dish from this area or the southern mountains.  The photos are courtesy of Big Daddy Dave and should give you a sense of the evening.

We began with appetizers of pickled watermelon rinds, pickled beets, and Bev's pimento cheese stuffed celery washed down with some wine and margaritas.

For the entrees we had pinto beans and cornbread muffins - a first try ever from ex-Floridians.

Chicken and dumplings using grandma's recipe from West Virginia.

Creamed corn from midwesteners.

And our sausage gravy and biscuits plus we had some Lambert's Cafe Sorghum Molasses for the biscuits.

Let the eating begin.

The plates weren't quite large enough to hold some of everything.

After the food had settled a little we had our wine tasting  For the wines we had:

Blackberry from Stonehaus Winery
Rhubarb from Mountain Valley Winery
White blends from Savannah Oaks and Stonehaus Wineries
Peach from Del Monaco and Chestnut Hill Wineries
We also had one non East Tennessee mystery wine which turned out to be Gallo's Boone’s Farm Mountain Berry and Bev and I both enjoyed it.  

I found it interesting that with 19 East Tennessee Wineries most of which make a wide variety of wines, the closest thing to a dry wine that anyone brought was one semi-sweet and I was very surprised that no one brought muscadine - which is the native wild grape.

We finished the evening with two desserts - peanut butter cup bars and southern possum pie – perfect name for the theme.  They were both delicious but I got only a shot of the pie.

The food and drink were all very good, the theme was a hit, and everyone seemed to have a fine time - the measure of a successful party. 

LEFTOVER MEATLOAF request - At some point in the recent past, one of you posted a recipe containing leftover meatloaf and it was something I wanted to try, but I can't find it, remember what it was or who posted it - I would sure appreciate an email from the author.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

9/29/14 event date