Smoked Bacon Onion Rings with Roasted Parmesan Brussels Sprouts

With Spring here and Summer approaching, I thought I'd bring back something I made last summer.  Mainly I'm talking about the Smoked Bacon Onion Rings.

I've seen variations of this online so I did them to suit us, as usual.

This only requires two or three ingredients.

White onion(s)
Bacon, of your choice
Sriracha sauce, optional

To start, peel the onion(s) and cut in 1/2 to 3/4 inch slices.  Take the slices apart but leave 2 layers per ring.  You want to have plenty of onion in there.

Once you have your onion rings, start wrapping bacon around the ring.  Use as many slices as you need to get full coverage.  If you want to spice things up, dip the onion ring in Sriracha sauce before you wrap the bacon.

Once you are done with that, into the smoker they go.  I smoked these for about an hour and a half at 190 - 210 degrees.  Halfway through I rotated positions of the rings so they'd get equal smoke and heat.  They were done on the Weber using a 2 zone smoking set up.  The grill I have is what has evolved into the Weber Performer Premium. 

They don't look  bad if I do say so myself.  The ones on the right, in both pictures, are the ones with Sriracha sauce.

So, what to have with them?  We decided on Brussels Sprouts, since the good wife really likes them.

Roasted Parmesan Brussels Sprouts

Ingredients:
1 lb Brussels Sprouts
olive oil
salt
pepper
Parmesan cheese, grated, about 1/2 cup

Trim the sprouts and cut them in half.  To make things go faster, steam them until tender.  Once they are tender transfer them to a bowl.  Pour olive oil over them and season with salt and pepper.  Gently toss or stir to get the oil and seasoning evenly distributed.  Put them on a baking sheet and sprinkle with the grated Parmesan cheese.  Bake in a 350 degree oven for 20 - 25 minutes until the cheese is melted and starting to brown.  Take out of the oven and serve.

This is not a fast meal by any means, but it is wonderful for the weekend.  I'd also point out that any left over Smoked Bacon Onion Rings reheat well so make plenty.

I hope you give these a try this summer.

Uncle T

 

The Pasta Experiment

We'd thought about trying to make fresh pasta for years.  My sister got a pasta maker and making pasta turned into a family affair to judge by the pictures.  One of the factors against it for us was that I was in the Army and when you are moving weight matters.  Due to weight limits we'd get rid of things we hadn't used much in the past year or things that the weight to benefit wasn't high enough.  I had not seen anything about cutting noodles by hand at that time.

All that has changed.  I retired from the Army in 2011 and we don't plan to move again and the interest in fresh pasta grew.  Unfortunately, the only pasta makers we could find had plastic bodies and didn't seem very sturdy.  Then we took a trip for our 30th anniversary last year.  We were visiting Smokey Mountain Knife Works one day, an amazing store by the way, and in the basement with the kitchen items we found our pasta maker.  It is all metal and the price was equal to or better than some of the others we'd seen.  We now have a Fante's Great Aunt Gina's Pasta Machine.  It came with a cutter for spaghetti and fettuccine noodles.

We were blown away by the difference in taste and quality of fresh pasta over boxed.  Now comes the experimental part.  We used to get flavored pastas from a vendor at a market day in TX so we got to thinking about doing something like that.  We also though about different grains for the flour to get different flavor and texture profiles.  The result of the first experimental recipe was Spelt spaghetti.

My basic pasta recipe is:

2 cups flour
3 eggs
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp olive oil

Mix the dry ingredients.  Make a hole in the middle and add the eggs and olive oil.  Mix the eggs and slowly start incorporating the flour mixture.  Once it comes together knead it until it is smooth.  Shape it in a ball and wrap with plastic wrap.  Let it rest for 20 - 30 minutes.  Divide it into 4 parts and proceed to make pasta.

One thing I do different with my pasta, I use a bowl.  I know all the videos want you to make a mound of flour on your counter top but it is not necessary.

For the Spelt pasta I used 1 cup of Spelt flour and 1 cup of AP flour.  After cooking in well salted water the Spelt spaghetti was good enough to eat as it was.

The Spelt spaghetti was used to make a shrimp and mushroom dish for supper.

Ingredients for supper:

1 lb baby Bella mushrooms, sliced
1 lb shrimp
4 slices cooked pepper bacon, minced
salt
pepper
1 Tbs lemon juice
1/4 cup white wine

Heat some olive oil in a skillet and sautee' the mushrooms, season with a good pinch of salt and pepper.  Take out of the skillet while they still have a slight firmness.  Add about 1 Tbs of bacon grease to the olive oil remaining in the skillet.  Add the bacon and stir to warm and crisp then add the shrimp.  If you need to cook your bacon then mince it prior to cooking and put it in the olive oil and skip adding the bacon grease.  Season the shrimp with a good pinch of salt and pepper.  When the shrimp is just about done take it out of the skillet.  Start cooking the pasta.  When the pasta is almost done put the shrimp and mushrooms back in the skillet and start heating them up.  When the oil starts to sizzle add the lemon juice and the white wine and stir to coat all the ingredients.  When the pasta is done take it out of the water and add to the skillet.  Once all the pasta is in the skillet start turning it, tongs work best, to get the shrimp, mushrooms, pasta, and sauce all mixed together.  The pasta water will thicken the juices in the skillet into a nice light sauce.  Make sure to save some pasta water if you have to drain the pasta instead of using tongs to take it out of the pot.  Plate it up and enjoy.  We topped it with a blend of Italian cheeses.

I may up the amount of Spelt flour in the future to see how it does.  Feel free to make this recipe with the spaghetti noodle of your choice.  I think you'll be pleased.

Uncle T

Glorious Pork

I don't think I've mentioned it yet, but we love pork.  We'd rather eat pork than beef most any time.  That's not to say we don't like a good steak time to time but most times I'll reach for pork.  Commercially produced pork is an excellent vehicle for carrying whatever flavors you want it to whether it be via a dry rub, a marinade, or a sauce.  Pasture raised and wild pork has a more distinct pork flavor that can over power some of the more subtle flavor profiles.  Unfortunately, pasture raised pork brings a high premium and is not readily available and I don't have access to wild pigs since we left TX.  So, I have to use commercially produced pork.

A few months ago, I was given access to Restaurant Depot by a member through one of their key ring tags.  As the name suggests, this is where restaurants shop.  Because of their clientele, they have many things that aren't available in regular stores.  Enter today's  topic, Pork Belly.

Pork Belly is a wonderful cut that lends itself to so many preparations.  I've done Pork Belly confit, Asian style fried Pork Belly,  Uncle T's fried Pork Belly, and so on.  The most recent belly I procured was made into 4 products.  One piece was cured, rolled and tied, then hung to age to become Pancetta.  Another piece was cured and smoked to make Pepper Bacon.  The skin was peeled off, boiled, dried, and then deep fried to make Pork Rinds.  The last  product was a couple of packages of trim that was cut up for stir fry or stew meat.

The Pancetta was cured following the directions in the book Charcuterie, by Ruhlman and Polcyn.  http://www.amazon.com/Charcuterie-Craft-Salting-Smoking-Curing/dp/0393058298  I do mine a bit different as far as holding the meat in the cure.  They have you put it in a zip lock bag in a pan to contain leakage and turn it and massage it each day.  I vacuum seal my meat.  That ensures the cure is held tight to the meat.  I turn it each day and after the 4th day I start squeezing the meat to determine if the cure has reached all the way through.  The Pancetta cured for 7 days before I took it out.

The Pepper Bacon basic recipe came from the same book.  I just heavily coat each side with coarse ground black pepper after the cure is rubbed on and vacuum seal it.  The Pepper Bacon cured for 10 days before pulling it out and smoking.  It smoked for 4.5 hours or so until it reached 150 degrees internal temperature.  It was smoked with apple wood.  The finished product yielded 8 packages for breakfast and 3 packages of ends and pieces to use with pasta dishes.

Pork Rinds are simple to make.  Cut the skin into strips.  Boil the strips until tender.  Cut any fat off the strips.  Let the boiled strips dry until hard.  Deep fry the strips and season while hot.  Enjoy!



See, I told you I loved pork.  I have some more flavor profiles I want to experiment on for different bacons so stay tuned.

Uncle T

Producing Peppers

I'll say up front, we like hot foods.  Our garden is a great place to grow hot peppers.  As a result we produce an abundance of whatever variety we grow.  I always have Jalapeno peppers and add some hotter varieties if possible.  We have a great nursery close by that has a good selection of peppers and other fruits and vegetables for the garden.  This year I am only growing Jalapenos because we have so many of the others dried and stored from last year.  I've given away both fresh and dried peppers to friends both locally and across the country and still have plenty.

This basket holds a light harvest of a variety of peppers.  There are 8 varieties of hot peppers here.  They are Jalapeno, Kung Pao, Serrano, Thai Dragon, Super Chili, Caribbean Red, Trinidad Scorpion, and Bhut Jalokia (Ghost pepper).  The Super Chili is a hybrid that I've only seen at McDonald's nursery but it is flavorful and has good heat.

 Given the large supply of fresh peppers and liking to experiment in the kitchen it was only natural that I play around with hot sauces.   I have come up with 3 good recipes, Habanero Sauce, Mean Green Sauce, and Devil Sauce.  I know I said we like hot foods but heat for heat's sake seems wasteful to us.  There needs to be flavor to go with the heat.  These three sauces have heat but also let the flavor of the fruit come through.  They've gotten good reviews from all who have tried them.  The plan is for them to serve as the basis for a small business so I'll not be giving out my recipes.

If things go as planned, expect to see  Uncle T's Mean Green, Uncle T's Habanero, and Uncle T's Devil Sauce available here locally and via mail order in the next couple of years.  Who knows, I may have additional varieties by then.  If so, you'll have heard about it already.

Chicken Pizza

We are rather routine when it comes to supper on a Saturday.  We typically rotate between pizza, burgers, or hotdogs/sausages.  The other Saturday we had decided on pizza so I figured to try a pizza dough recipe I'd recently come across.  It was called 10 minute pizza dough and can be found here, http://www.sugardishme.com/10-minute-pizza-dough/.  It takes a few more minutes but it is still a quick tasty pizza dough if you don't want to take the time to make a dough with a longer rise time.

As usual, I did things a bit different than what they said.  For the olive oil in the recipe I used some of my garlic olive oil.  There is more garlic flavor in my oil than in the commercially prepared garlic oils and I use it a lot.  The other thing I did different was that I rolled out the dough rather than pressing it out.  In the write up for this she says it can be one large or two small pizzas so I went with one.

I chose a pizza that we've not had in quite a while, chicken and mushroom with a white sauce.  The sauce was a basic cheese sauce, 3 Tbs butter, 2+ Tbs flour, about a 1/2 - 3/4 cup milk (I just poured I didn't measure), and about 2/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese.  It makes a nice thick cheesy sauce.  The chicken was the breast meat from a chicken we'd roasted in the slow cooker a few days before sliced about 1/4 inch thick.  I also sauteed some red onion slices and some sliced mushrooms.  To assemble the pizza, put down a layer of the cheese sauce.  I leave about a 1/2 inch rim of bare dough.  Lay out the chicken slices, the sauteed onions, and the sauteed mushrooms.  I ran short of shredded Mozzarella cheese so I finished it off with some Italian blend salad cheese.  After everything was on I gave a little roll to the bare edge of dough to make a lip to get good and crusty.  I did follow the cooking instruction from the recipe.

The pizza was cooked on a Pampered Chef pizza stone and turned out nicely.  We have two of those stones, one for the oven and one for the grill.  Yes, grilled pizza is wonderful.

I'll throw in how I make my garlic olive oil as well.  We get our olive oil from a local Mediterrane
an market and they get it from a family owned olive grove and pressing plant in Lebanon.  I have some of those tall jars with the pour spouts for my different oils.  I think they hold about 12 oz.  I fill the jar to the desired level then pour it into a small pot.   I then add six to eight cloves of garlic that have been smashed with the side of the knife.  That goes on Med/Low heat until it reaches 250 degrees.  Lower the heat to the point that it'll just maintain that temp and let it cook until the garlic has turned golden brown and has quit bubbling.  Let it cool for a bit and pour it in the bottle.  I'll usually put a few of the cloves in the bottle as well just for the look.  After that, use it however you can imagine.

Give this a go sometime, I think you'll enjoy both the pizza and the garlic olive oil.

What to do with Mashed Potatoes.

A few days ago I went old school with supper.  I fixed fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and green beans.  Sad to say, I still can't make fried chicken as good as my grandmother's.  Yes, I got a whole chicken and cut it up like my grandmother, brined it, and fried it in lard.  It was good but still missed the mark.  Either way, it was an excellent supper and naturally there were leftovers.

The mashed potatoes were made using my standard method.  I cubed 3 good size potatoes and rinsed them well.  No, I don't peel my potatoes.  I put them in a pot and covered with water.  The water was brought to a boil and added a few healthy pinches of kosher salt.  Once a fork can easily pierce the potatoes they are drained and put back in the pot.  The pot is put back on the burner for a bit to evaporate the remaining water.  Once that is done, I put in at least half stick of butter but usually closer to 3/4 stick and stir it around to help it melt.  As you stir, the potatoes start to get mashed and mixed with the butter.  Pour in a bit of milk and finish the stirring and add salt and pepper to taste.  They are mighty fine done this way.

Now, on to the leftovers.  I was searching around for recipes using mashed potato leftovers and came across a food blog called "the kitchn".  Here is the link to their recipe, http://www.thekitchn.com/thanksgiving-leftovers-recipe-mashed-potato-puffs-recipes-from-the-kitchn-133358 .  As I tend to do, I made changes to  make what I thought would be a better product for us.

Ingredients:

2 cups mashed potatoes
3 large eggs
1 cup shredded cheese (I was out of cheddar so used Mexican blend cheese)
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup chopped, cooked bacon (I used some ends from slicing
Optional Items:  chopped green onion, chives, mushrooms, or anything you can imagine.

1.  Preheat the oven to 360 degrees.

2.  Put all ingredients in a bowl and stir to combine.  I used a whisk and it worked very well for this.

3.  Spray non-stick on a muffin pan.  I used a regular size with 12 spots.

4.  Fill each cavity with the potato mixture, just even with the rim.  I used my 4 oz. scoop and it filled 10 of the 12 spots.

5.  Place in the oven and bake for 30 - 35 minutes or until the desired doneness.  I did 35 minutes.

6.  Cool in the pan for 5 minutes then dump out and serve hot.  They can be eaten as is or with a dollop of sour cream.

They are pretty good as they are.  Putting a bit of Parmesan cheese on top before baking or sour cream before serving my kick them up a notch.  Experiment and see what you come up with.,

Until next time,
Uncle T.

Zucchini Pasta with Seafood

This is another Fast Day meal featuring zucchini noodles.  I had a larger zucchini that resulted in 6.75 oz. of zucchini noodles while my wife ended up with 5 oz. of noodles.  Have I mentioned how much I like my Paderno spiralizer?  If not, I'll talk about it when I write about what I use in the kitchen.


Since spring is approaching I wanted something a bit lighter and fresher than the soups we've had due to the cold.  This filling meal is fresh, has a bit of crunch, and a nice mix of flavors.  So, without further rambling from me here is the ingredient list for one serving.


Ingredients:


1 medium/large zucchini
1/2 red bell pepper
3 oz. mushrooms
1/2 medium  red onion
2 - 4 oz. raw shrimp
2 - 4 oz. raw scallops
salt, pepper, turmeric, garlic powder


1.  Julienne the red pepper and slice the red onion and put together.  Sautee in a skillet sprayed with non-stick spray or olive oil from a mister.  Season with a pinch of salt and pepper.  Cook till the onion is soft and the pepper still had a bit of crunch and remove from the skillet.


2.  While the onion and pepper is cooking slice the mushrooms to desired thickness.  After the onion and pepper are done sautee the mushrooms till lightly browned.  Season with a pinch of salt and pepper.  Remove from the skillet.


3.  Remove the tails from the shrimp and combine with the scallops.  Sprinkle with ground turmeric until well covered then add a heavy pinch of salt.  Add more non-stick spray/oil to the skillet and add the shrimp and scallops.  Cook till the shrimp are half done and turn everything and finish cooking.  Remove from the skillet.


4.  Make the zucchini noodles.  I either cut the zucchini in half or make a shallow cut around the middle to avoid excessively long noodles.  Add the zucchini noodles to the skillet and let them heat for about a minute then turn them over.  Stir them around to get all the seasoning left in the skillet on the noodles.  Add all the previously cooked items and stir to thoroughly mix with the noodles.


5.  Slide the skillet contents onto your plate and enjoy.


Using 2 oz. each of the shrimp and scallops yields a meal of 180 calories.  Using 4 oz. of each bumps it up to 280 calories.