Our Valentine’s Day Meals

While Bev was hanging out in Gatlinburg, I read the post from Catherine Mayhew for Grilled T-Bone Steaks with Crab and Hollandaise on the Char-Broil Live site and decided this would make a delicious Valentine’s Day meal.  Then I remembered the whole beef fillet in our freezer and decided it would work well for this meal, so out it came for thawing and trimming.

We also had a package of King Crab in the freezer to use for that part and we decided on some asparagus and a Caesar Salad to round out the meal.  This is the amended recipe as we made it.

Grilled beef Filet with Crab and Hollandaise Sauce – Adapted from Char-Broil Live

Ingredients:

5 Filet steaks, 1½“ thick  

1 pound King Crab legs, meat removed and roughly chopped

For the hollandaise sauce:

2 egg yolks

1½ tablespoons fresh lemon juice

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon pepper

Pinch of cayenne pepper

6 tablespoons butter

One bunch asparagus, trimmed and steamed until just tender

Directions:

1. Preheat the grill to medium high.

2. Let the steaks come to room temperature and season with your favorite seasoning – Montreal Steak for us.

3. Warm the crab in a small skillet on low heat with 2 tablespoons butter and reserve.

4. To make the hollandaise sauce, add the egg yolks, lemon juice, salt, pepper and cayenne pepper to a blender and blend for 5-10 seconds. Melt the butter and, with the blender running, slowly stream the melted butter through the top of the lid. Taste and adjust the seasonings. The hollandaise can hold at room temperature for at least 30 minutes.

5, Grill the steaks to you desired level of doneness, remove to a platter, and loosely cover them with aluminum foil for 10 minutes to rest.

6. Top the steaks with some of the hollandaise a few spears of asparagus, the warm crab, and a little parmesan.

It was a delicious meal for me and the four Valentine ladies who shared it with me.  And to show that I’m not the only one who can whip up a breakfast form leftovers, this was Sunday’s meal ALA Bev.  We had combined the leftover Hollandaise and crab so the meal was comprised if toasted English muffin, over easy eggs, nuked asparagus, and the crab/sauce.

Needless to say, it was delicious.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

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

Larry

2/14 & 2/15/15 meal dates

2015 Florida Trip – Day 20 – Fisherman’s Village

During our South Florida stay, Pat and Bev had been over to Fisherman’s Village couple of times to shop and eat and they wanted to be sure I ate at the Village Fish Market before we left town.  Fisherman’s Village is a pretty good sized open air mall located beside the marina in Punta Gorda with the first floor lined with shops and restaurants and the second floor occupied by vacation villas.

The Village Fish Market bills itself as serving New England Style Seafood and the menu seemed to support that.  As I often do, when it’s available, I check out the online menu before heading to the restaurant and I often know what I plan to order when I leave home.

It was cool and cloudy so we chose to eat inside but were seated at a window-side table that had a nice view of the water.  This shot is from our table back toward the entrance.

After my home review of the menu, I noticed two things that were unique – Swai, which I had never heard of, and Smelts, which I had heard of but never eaten.  In order to try both, I ordered the fried Fisherman’s Platter with three items – Smelts, Swai, and Cod.

The Smelts are the little things in the middle and they had been cleaned and the heads removed – you just eat the whole thing.  Everything was good and I could tell little difference between the Swai and the Cod.  I thought the onion rings were very good and made sure I ate all of them.  I’m pretty sure everything we had was hand breaded at the restaurant and Bev thought her fried oysters were delicious as was her mac and cheese.

This was their third time to eat there and based upon my one trip, I would go back.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

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

Larry

1/15/15 event date

Christmas at Almost Heaven South

Since we were leaving two days after Christmas and we were in a bah humbug frame of mind, we did zero decorating for Christmas except for the pine center piece and Poincettia that we received as gifts.  But Bev did want to make pully-ham and invite a few friends to drop by for drinks, ham sandwiches, and a visit.

The recipe came from a co-worker about 40 years ago and is pretty complicated, so I’ll go slow.

Ingredients:

1 ea    Ham, cured and cooked

24 oz  Good beer (I used Yuengling)

Directions:

Put ham and beer in a covered roaster and cook at 250F 10-12 hours.  Baste once/hr last four hours.

As you can see, it’s called pully-ham because it is too tender to slice and chunks are just pulled off of it.  This is after a person or two had attacked it.

We sided it with a big batch of potato salad so we would have it and the ham as leftovers for our impending RV trip.  The table was also laden with condiments, including naturally spicy homemade mustard, slider rolls, four cheeses, olives and pickles, fruit, cheese ball, and sweets.  The idea was for guests to stop by and visit for a while and just graze while here – seems like every time I saw one friend, she had a piece of ham in her hand so I know she liked it.

Our potato salad recipe is very simple but what I grew up with and still my favorite:

Ingredients:

5 lb. waxy potatoes

Half of a very large onion, finely diced

8 eggs, hard boiled

3 stalks celery, finely diced

1 cup Mayo (more or less to taste)

2-3 Tbsp. mustard (more or less to taste)

S&P to taste

Directions:

1. Peel and dice potatoes to desired size and boil until just tender

2. Boil eggs, peel, and dice to desired size

3. Dice onion and celery pretty small

4. While the potatoes are still warm, mix everything together

5. Let it set a couple of hours un-refrigerated until serving time so the flavors can marry

All of the dozen guests seemed to have a very good time and the ham got rave reviews – it is great for an open house as it requires no attention once it’s on the table and it is still very good and continues to pull easily as it cools.

A Publix Water Roll with a pile of pully ham, a slice of Guggisberg Baby Swiss Cheese, and a slather of the spicy mustard is all that I needed for an outstanding sandwich.  This mild cheese was invented by Alfred Guggisberg in Ohio Amish Country in the mid 60's to satisfy the taste of some Americans who thought Emmental was a bit strong.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

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

Larry

12/25/14 event date

Thanksgiving Turkey

Since we have only one oven (a source of irritation for Bev), Thanksgiving meals generally challenge us in oven usage as we always have homemade rolls that require it just prior to mealtime.  To solve this, I have adopted Chris’ (Nibble Me This) spatchcock cooking method and last year I cooked the bird in the smoker over low temps and I did the same this year but used the grill at a higher temp to get a crispy skin.  Bev bought a 14¾ pound Food Club fresh turkey from Food City which contained no artificial ingredients which means it was not injected with a flavoring solution.

I used a combo of recipes and practices from Chris beginning with his brine which I made per his recipe but with regular oranges and less the bourbon.  I spatchcocked (butterflied) the turkey using Chris' method (link below) but prior to brining to make it easier to find a brining container, it fit more easily in the fridge, and it provided the brine more access to the breast meat

After a nineteen hour soak, I removed it from the brine about 9 am on Turkey day, rinsed, patted dry, and put into the fridge uncovered for about three hours to dry some more and it looked like this is after removal. 

I took it out an hour prior to cook time, and put compound butter under the skin and on the outside using the following recipe.

Turkey Herb Butter

1½  stick butter, room temperature,

1 tsp dried thyme

1 tsp dried marjoram

3 tsp minced fresh rosemary

1 tsp dried sage

¾ tsp dried lemon peel

Mix butter and all minced herbs in small bowl; season herb butter with pepper.

Starting at neck end, slide hand between skin and breast meat to loosen skin. Rub 4 tablespoons herb butter over breast meat under skin.  Repeat for thighs and legs.  Leave enough to rub a light coat on the outside of the bird.

I used Chris’ raised cooking method but I used a pan as Dave (erecipecards) did when he made a turkey for our visit to his home in October, 2013 - I didn’t want to risk flare ups on my non-infrared grill.  This link has a great tutorial from Chris on his entire process, but using injection rather than brining.  Here it is on the grill and you can just see the supporting cans at the bottom of the shot – I meant to stand farther back.  After they got well browned, I covered the leg ends with foil to prevent burning.

Spatchcocking the bird not only worked really well for brining, it allowed it to fit in the grill, it cooked more evenly, and it fit into our warming drawer.  I got busy and forgot the finished shots, but it looked pretty much like this shot lifted from Chris' blog.

Even though the bird got up to a breast temp of 170* and had to rest (tented) in the warming drawer for an hour, it was still very moist, which I attribute to the brining process, and it was very tasty.  This combo of brine and compound butter worked very well together and will be the go-to from now on.  I just need to refine my cooking process so as not to get it done too early – I believe my grill hood thermometer is in need of checking.  While I got no shots of the finished food, here is the table before the guests arrived.

Our total menu was:

A fancy tossed salad provided by friend Ashley

Turkey

Slow Cooker Dressing - Link

Make ahead gravy, Ala of Debbie at A Feast For The Eyes - Link

Mashed potatoes provided by friend Pat

Brussel sprout & sweet potato hash - Link 

Cranberry salad

Chocolate torte

Pumpkin pies provided by SIL Pat using my mom's recipe

And fresh whipped cream provided by friend Pat

It was a very good meal made even better by being able to share it with good friends.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

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

Larry

11/27/14 event date

Tuna Salad & Stuffed Mushrooms

It had been a lazy rainy day, we had the kitchen all cleaned up, and I was thinking nuked leftover grilled chicken for supper with maybe a Knorr’s Pasta side for a one pot and one plate meal.  Bev, however, had other plans – sometimes she can’t help herself when the food prep gene takes over.

First she decided she wanted a repeat of the stuffed mushrooms we’d had a few days ago (you may remember the leftovers went into the recent breakfast scramble) and I readily agreed with this choice.  This is the recipe and a couple of shots that turned out this time – the liquid in the pan is because we forgot that the shrooms were supposed to be cooked some prior to stuffing, step 3.


Ingredients:

4 large portobello mushroom caps, stems and gills removed

1 tablespoon reduced-fat Italian salad dressing

1 egg

1 clove garlic, minced

salt and ground black pepper to taste

1 (10 ounce) bag fresh spinach, chopped

1/4 cup chopped pepperoni

1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese, divided

3 tablespoons seasoned bread crumbs, divided

Directions:

1.Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

2.Brush both sides of each portobello mushroom cap with Italian dressing. Arrange mushroom on a baking sheet, gill sides up.

3.Bake mushrooms in the preheated oven until tender, about 12 minutes. Drain any juice that has formed in the mushrooms.

4.Beat egg, garlic, salt, and black pepper together in a large bowl.

5.Stir spinach, pepperoni, Parmesan cheese, 3 tablespoons mozzarella cheese, and 3 tablespoons bread crumbs into the eggs until evenly mixed.

6.Divide spinach mixture over mushroom caps; sprinkle mushrooms with remaining 1 tablespoon mozzarella cheese and 1 tablespoon bread crumbs. Return mushrooms to the oven.

7.Continue baking until topping is golden brown and cheese is melted, about 10 minutes more.

She next considered turning the leftover chicken into chicken salad but then said she’d been craving tuna salad and so it was.  This is her recipe for tuna salad:

2 12oz cans of tuna packed in water, flaked

3 hard boiled eggs, diced

SOME finely diced celery

SOME finely diced onion

SOME mustard, to taste

SOME mayo, to taste

A little hot sauce, to taste

S&P to taste

Mix everything together, sample and adjust to taste.

As I’ve always said, Bev is the chef in this family and I’m the recipe follower - the tuna salad was delicious, especially when served atop a fresh, from our garden tomato.

This was a fine summertime meal and the little kitchen mess was well worth it – so now I’ll be cleaning it up for the second time today.

On a different note, do you know what happens when the corner your blueberry bush bird netting is out in the grass and you catch it in your mower.

You borrow a set of ramps from your neighbor and rest them on the bed of a pick-up, you drive the mower up on them, and then spend about 30 minutes cutting out the netting and branches that came with it, to get this two foot wad.

The silver linings - it was only wrapped around one of the three blades, the netting was easy to cut and therefore much easier than removing a ski rope wrapped around a jet ski drive shaft - yep, that is the voice of experience speaking.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

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

Larry

7/18/14 event date

A Gourmet Southern Meal Ala Beverly

Late June is a great time for veggies in our area as the summer crops are coming in and some late potatoes are still available.  Bev decided to whip us up a meatless (hard for her) meal of corn, beans, potatoes, and tomatoes (the only part from our garden).  The gourmet part is obviously in the eye of the beholder mouth of the eater.

The local pole beans were cooked with smoked bacon, onion, garlic, and spices; the new potatoes were just boiled in water then mashed on the plate with butter; and the cherry tomatoes were halved.  Now for the corn – growing up, sweet corn was boiled in water and slathered with butter, salted and peppered and eaten from the cob, but since I married Bev I’ve discovered fried corn.

The fresh local corn was cut from the cob, then cooked in a skillet with butter and S&P, sometimes until just barely cooked, like this, and sometimes cooked until a little caramelized.  This method preserves all of the flavor that is removed by the boiling process and can be cooked to the same level of doneness as boiled or more if you prefer.

If you’ve seen Bev, you know she is a pretty small person but this is her plate which was all eaten.  My plate looked similar but without the tomatoes and I had seconds on the corn.

The meal was absolutely delicious and if you’ve never cooked corn this way, you are missing a real treat.  Bev used a half stick of butter for five ears of corn but this can be adjusted to your taste and dietary desires – I’m a disciple of Paula Deen so more is better – notice the word margarine was never mentioned in the above.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

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

Larry

7/9/14 meal date