Nov 16 2008
I had some apples sitting around in the icebox for a little too long so I decided to make some apple sauce. I had about a half dozen medium to large Granny Smiths and about a dozen and a half of various sized Galas.
Nov 10 2008
I have been making potato skins since the late 70s. Everybody just loves ‘em.
When I worked at Guthrie’s Restaurant we would bake off about 2 to 3 full sheet pans of potatoes, cut them in half and scoop them out then cut the half’s in half again. Later some vendors came out with pre-cooked/pre-scooped skins in a bag. They sucked, so we still kept baking and scooping. The baked-in-house skins tasted far superior to the pre-cooked/pre-scooped skins. We also used the in sides of the skins for twice baked potatoes. Another problem, the skins in a bag where only cut in half and had a tendency to collect grease inside them.
Nov 04 2008
I love Quiche, the whole family loves quiche. I made four of them Sunday, that’s four full size deep dish pies, and they are almost gone.
Bacon Quiche, Sooo Gooood!
What’s great about quiche is that you can put what ever you like in them. You can make taco quiche, pizza quiche, bacon quiche, veggie quiche almost any type of quiche you can think of. One other great thing about quiche, its great warmed up in the microwave. I think it might be one of those foods that actually get better when they have a chance to sit and mingle their flavors together over night.
Oct 26 2008
Things have gotten really bad in my neighborhood, all the local Chinese restaurants have totally gone down the crapper. We really like pork fried rice, well at least my family does, I can take it or leave it. We ordered some the other night and it was absolutely the worst that we have ever had. It was just rice and a few scraps of pork. I knew I could do better.
I went to the web and found many versions of Chines Fried Rice. I settled on the recipe from the Recipe Zaar web site. It looked a lot like the Fried Rice we used to get from the local Chinese restaurants. Of course I added my own touches.
Oct 22 2008
Or a review of my eating experiences on my last trip to Las Vegas
I took a couple of weeks off to go to the Vision Expo show in Las Vegas for my day job. I also had to catch up on some projects around the house.
While in Las Vegas my dining experiences ran the gamut from a barely digestible breakfast burrito the size of my head to a very satisfying dinner at one of the best buffets I have ever had on the strip.
I’ll start with the Ugly. There were two meals that stuck in my mind, or should I say gut, as really bad food. When we first arrived in Las Vegas my boss stopped by a Del Taco. We ordered a couple of burritos that were huge. It reminded me of the fare at a Taco Bell, big and mushy and not a lot of flavor. I managed to get it down and we went to back to the house. The next morning I had a bad case of Montezuma’s revenge, if you know what I mean.
The next meal that stands out in my head as particularly ugly was a breakfast burrito that we got at a place called Roberto’s. It too was as big as my head and had the flavor of potatoes and bacon that had been setting around in a steam table too long. I think that my traveling companion has a thing for quantity above quality. I couldn’t even finish this thing, no matter how many packets of hot sauce I slathered on it.
Next we have the bad which compared to the ugly really wasn’t too bad. The bad was a place with a bad name, Terrible’s Casino buffet for breakfast. I’m not sure how they do it but everything kind of tasted the same, salty. They do make made to order omelets that wasn’t too bad but everything had an overall salty taste. The cranberry juice was good and I did get some Yoplait yogurt.
In the good category was the buffet at South Point casino. The food here actually had different flavors. There was also prime rib that was a perfect rare to medium rare. Everything here was of good to great quality. I made a bit of an ass of myself here. I had dropped my napkin on the floor and I saw a gentleman coming towards me with black pants and a white shirt with a napkin folded over his arm. I asked him if he could get me a new napkin. He looked at me as if I was nuts and said “I don’t work here” with a disgusted tone in his voice. I really felt stupid, but he looked just like one of the servers.
Now for the great, this was The Buffet at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. This by far was the best meal of the whole trip. They had great piles of shrimp and king crab legs. I stared with a very large plate of these two. They also had sautéed bay scallops which I was able to load on the plate with the shrimp and crab legs. For my second round it was to the meat table for a slice of prime rib. My boss had some lamb on his plate so I thought I’d try it, did not care for it. Hit the line for some potatoes and some veggies. It was amazing everything had its own distinct flavor. It was at this point that I realized that places like Terrible’s and the taco joint where really bad because everything tasted the same.
What should you take from this? Well one thing for sure, there is no recipe or spice that can replace quality. It reminds me of a saying from my computer work, “Garbage In, Garbage Out” It is better to settle for a little quality than a whole lot of crap.
Sep 28 2008
I found a great deal on a Infrared Thermometer with a laser pionter and I just couldn’t resist. It’s all Alton’s fault. It looks like I got the last one too. I was going create a link to the page at NewEgg but it’s gone. I received the add in an email so I am assuming it must of been an email only special.
This is a great little tool for testing the surface temperature of almost anything. Here I’m test oil that’s heating up. If you hold the trigger down the thermometer will give a continuous read out until you let go of the trigger. But, as we all know, a watched pot never boils or at least in this case comes to 375 degrees.
Here I’m testing the surface temperature of my non-stick skillet. This is very important because as we all know, or at least we should, non-stick cookware will give off toxic fumes if heated above above 650 degrees and starts to degrade above 500 degrees. So be sure to keep an eye on your non-stick, or Teflon, coated pans. The fumes are not that much of a problem for humans but I’ve heard it will kill a bird in nothing flat.
There are many other uses for the infrared thermometer like checking disk brakes for over heating, checking the temperature of your CPU in your computer, looking for over heated electrical connections, making sure the pool isn’t too cold or the hot tub too hot. The uses for this tool go on and on. At least that’s what I’m going to tell the wife.
I will be in Vegas all next week so there probably won’t be a posting next Sunday. Who knows maybe I can critique the local hotel and casino buffets.
Sep 21 2008
In last weeks post I discussed the pros and cons between fresh and frozen chicken wings. See the results here. One of the problems with the fresh chicken wings was that they usually come whole and you need to cut them into sections. Which are drumette, middle and tip.
You could take your cleaver and cleave them a part, but that has a tendency to leave shards of bones in the ends. Personal I prefer my chicken wings bone-shard free.
Here is how you do it.
Place the wing in your hand with your index finger wedged in the crook of the drumette and the middle section. Put firm pressure on the wing with your thumb and middle finger. If you are squeezing hard enough you should be able to glide the knife across the wing and the joint will start to split open
I know a lot of people are freaking out because I’m cutting towards my hand, but if your knife is sharp and you have enough pressure on the joint you only need the slightest of downward force on the knife.
Continue cutting until the joint pops apart, I mean it will literally pop apart
When the joint pops apart slide the knife in from the underside.
And pull the knife through.
Do the same for the “tip” and middle section. Throw away the tips, unless you like that sort of thing or freeze them and throw them in your next stock pot.
Cook in your favorite method. If you read this blog with any regularity you all know what I like, I like them marinated in The Best Chicken Marinade/Sauce Ever! and then grilled on the bar-b-q.
Have a great week!
Chef Benwa
Sep 14 2008
The start of the NFL football season signals the start of the Unofficial Chicken Wing season. You can have them fried, baked, broiled, or grilled. I like them fried with a nice coating of a good Buffalo Wing sauce. I also really like them grilled after they’ve been marinated in a good, hot marinade.
In honor of the start of chicken wing season I thought I would do some investigating in to whether fresh or frozen wing are better. To start things off I purchased 4 pounds of frozen and 5 pounds of fresh.
The frozen won on preparation, just thaw them in some running water and you are done. The fresh were another matter altogether. They where whole and needed to be cut into their respective sections, check for a “How To” in a later post, and to top it off, you paid for the tips that aren’t good for anything but stock.
As for cooking, I marinated all of them with The Best Chicken Marinade/Sauce Ever! and cooked them on the grill. The frozen wings where larger and took a little long to cook. The fresh ones had more of a tendency to stick to the grill and lost the skins.
As for flavor, six of us ate them and we couldn’t tell any difference.
In conclusion I think I will get frozen chicken wings from now on. They were easier to prepare, had the same flavor and they were bigger and thus had a better presentation.
I severed them in a basket with some fries and celery sticks.
Sep 07 2008
Hi All,
I spent the whole weekend at my day job installing a new Dell server. So I thought I would revisit an earlier post for Bean dip and Guacamole dip seeing as it’s the start of the NFL football season. Go Lions! The Lions had the best record in the pre-season, 4 and 0, but they lost their season opener today to Atlanta. I guess they are getting the first loss out of the way to go on and win the rest of the season! Yea Right?!?!
Be sure to check back next Sunday for a new recipe.
Click the link to check out my stellar recipes for Bean Dip and Guacamole.
Sep 01 2008
To make the Chicken Quesadillas I used the marinade from The Best Chicken Marinade/Sauce Ever! post. Just grill the chicken before hand and let it cool.
