Slow and Steady

Stir Crazy

Tired of these walls.
Beverly Hillbillies rule.
Smoke and fire are dreams.
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where?

I'm alive but damaged. Back soon.

Roscoe's BBQ

This made me laugh.....

Friday Night Food Porn

My buddies over at Lakeside Smokers have a Friday night tradition of posting a wonderful picture of some food porn. Lately, a few other bloggers have taken their idea and run with it, so tonight I'm joining in.

Tonight's dinner was a simple pork roast seasoned with some Harley's Texas Style Bar-B-Que and All Purpose Seasoning, cooked in the Weber Kettle using only Royal Oak Lump Charcoal, a little pork au jus, some canned beets (the store was out of fresh beets and canned beets are one of the few canned vegetables I find acceptable and I was in the mood for beets!) and Rachel Ray's Creamy Pasta with Spinach and Fried Capers.

I've never had fried capers before. They reminded me of some salt and vinegar potato chips. I was instantly hooked. You can find the recipe for Creamy Pasta with Spinach and Fired Capers in the November 2008 issue of Everyday with Rachel Ray.

This was some good eats, even if it's not the greatest picture. Call it amaetur food porn.

Return to Me

Return to me
Oh my dear I'm so lonely
Hurry back, hurry back
Oh my love, hurry back, I am yours

Return to me
For my heart wants you only
Hurry home, hurry home
Won't you please hurry home to my heart

My darlin', if I hurt you I'm sorry
Forgive me, and please say you are mine

Return to me
Please come back bella mia
Hurry back, hurry home to my arms
To my lips and my heart

City Market, Luling Texas

This is some of the best barbecue I've ever had. Watching this video makes my mouth water as I can actually taste that meat again.

Recipes

I've been playing with all sorts of foods lately, looking at old recipes, cookbooks and trying to cook things I've never made before. I've been concentrating on the things that we've always bought pre-made or pre-mixed. Two of the items that have crossed our plates are pancakes and bleu cheese dressing. No, not at the same meal silly.

I have a few of those every recipe under the sun cookbooks that try to give you a broad range of recipes. You know the type of cookbooks I'm referring to; titles like The Joy of Cooking. (For some strange reason, I don't own that one.) I found my recipes for pancakes and bleu cheese dressing in two of these books; one first published in 1896 and the other in 1998 but recently updated. The old book is by a woman and the new book is by a man. I'm not going to tell you the names or authors of these books, but they are standards of many a cook's library.

Let's take a look at the recipes. Ladies first...

Griddlecakes

• 1/2 - 3/4 cup milk
• 2 tablespoons butter melted
• 1 egg
• 1 cup white flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Now for the Gentleman...

Basic Pancakes

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 or 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 to 2 cups milk
• 2 tablespoons melted butter
• 1 tablespoon sugar

Very very similar. I've asked this question before and I've never gotten a satisfactory answer. Are both of these recipes original recipes? When I made my second batch of basic pancakes I added some vanilla and a little more sugar.

Have I created a new pancake recipe? Would it stand up to a publisher's scrutiny?

BBQ Contests: Battle of the BBQ Brethren

On the weekend of October 24th to the 26th the Sayville Chamber of Commerce will be hosting the Battle of the BBQ Brethren as part of their annual Sayville Fall Festival.

This KCBS sanctioned event is a NY State Championship.

Come down and enjoy live bands, demonstrations, lectures, great food from our BBQ vendors and the heat of competition.

The cook-off will include Chili on Friday after set-up, Grilling and Kids Q on Saturday and BBQ on Sunday.

The Sayville Chamber of Commerce will be aided in the BBQ aspects of their Fall Festival by members of the BBQ Brethren.

The Brethren will be dedicating two of their on-site locations to Breast Cancer Help, Inc., a Long Island charity dedicated to eradicating the scourge of breast cancer.

Judges Application: Now Available

Competitors Application: Still Available

The "cut off" date for applications is October 15th, any applications received after that date will not be accepted. To avoid disappointment please get your applications in as early as possible.

They are currently looking for people who would be interested in judging, grilling and/or BBQ at this event.

Life Is So Peculiar

Oh life is so peculiar, you get so wet in the rain,
You get so warm in the sunshine, it doesn't pay to complain,
When I get up each morning, there's nothing to breathe but air,
When I look in the mirror, there's nothing to comb but hair,
When I sit down to breakfast, nothing to eat but food,
Life is so peculiar but you can't stay home and brood.
Yes, life is so peculiar, a fork belongs with the knife,
Corn beef is lost without cabbage, a husband should have a wife,
Life is so peculiar, but is everybody's pair.
That's life (that's life)
(Oh life is so peculiar, the beach has only got sand,)
The oceans only got water, you never know where you stand.
When I get out to dinner, there's nothing to wear but clothes,
Whenever I get sleepy, there's nothing to do but doze,
Whenever I get thirsty, there's nothing to do but drink,
Life is no peculiar that it makes it to the top of the sink,
(Life is so peculiar,) it's so peculiar,
A fork belongs with the knife (the fork belongs with the knife)
Corn beef is lost without cabbage, a husband should have a wife,
Life is so peculiar, that's what everybody says.
(That's right.) That's right.

King's Highway Grill

Pseudo Que in Brooklyn
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Chirping Chicken Ribs & Chicken

Review to come.
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What Would You Serve At Your Own Funeral?

Have any of you given any thought on what you'd like served at your funeral? I'd like mine to be a great party on an ocean beach. Even if it's winter. Just build a large fire and gather round.

Since I'm probably going to hell, I want grilled chicken. (since who's not a little bit afraid of going to hell?) Keeping with the grilled theme, grilled scallops and grilled porterhouse steaks.

Depending on season some fresh watermelon, spiked with vodka to remind people of the times on the beaches in high school when the consuming alcohol had to be concealed from my parents and the other adults making it oh, so much more fun.

Pulled pork, baked beans and bbq ribs. Just because I made them so often.

Steamed Maine lobster, because I like it and it's a bit decadent. Prime Rib.

If it's winter, split pea soup with ham. Cream of Tomato soup too.

Mulled cider, spiked of course. Beer. Amber beer. Lots of it.

Apple pie. My mother's recipe with lard in the crust.

And lastly, toast with peanut butter.

Brooklyn

I don't know if I've ever spoken about this on my blog, but I don't like where I live in Brooklyn. It's not hip. It's not cool. The grocery stores are dirty, over priced and have a very small selection. It take close to an hour to get into Manhattan by subway.

But then again, I look at today's picture and the pictures I posted yesterday. Baby pigs, oxtails, rabbits and all sorts of other meats available whenever I want it. Restaurants of every nationality within walking distance. And since I don't live that close to Manhattan, I have a yard in which to pursue sweet blue.

Yeah, Brooklyn's not so bad.
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Sauce

Anybody know what this stuff is?
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Rabbit Season

Front and back legs? What did they do with the body?
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Hungry?

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NYC's Best Barbeque

From Zagat and the New York Daily News....

"Fette Sau in Williamsburg, which earned 24 out of 30, offers the city's best place "for pigging out" on barbecue, according to Zagat. "That's nice, very cool," said owner Joe Carroll, who opened the restaurant a year and half ago.

The barbecue is so good, Carroll tells customers not to use a lot of sauce on his tasty meat - including such unusual offerings as pork belly, pig's tail, lamb shank and tongue."

Wow. That certainly doesn't match my experiences at Fette Sau. Do I need to go back?

Sneak Peek: Grill It!

One of the benefits of writing this blog is that occasionally I get a product, a book, or a food item to review. Usually these items are pretty good, sometimes great and rarely just plain awful. Most however are just pedestrian but I just received a new book in the mail that is extraordinary.

Grill It! is the latest cookbook by the team of Chris Schlesinger and John Willoughby and is published by DK Publishing. This is the latest collaboration of these two chefs whose past work have included the classic The Thrill of The Grill.

I haven't had a chance to cook anything from this book yet, but just looking at the photography has my mouth watering. This book has some outstanding food photography. I feel like a little kid drooling over pictures in a photo album. Anybody remember National Geographic?

A more thorough review is coming. I may do some cooking this weekend. C'mon back soon.

Fun with Food

Looking for that perfect accessory for your princess outfit? How about a crowning touch to your King costume? Look no further. The Anticraft has the perfect answer. A Pork Princess crown. Check it out!

Now if your costume is Sarah Palin this year, I'm sure moose meat will work just as well as pig, boy howdy. C'mon, be a maverick.

Or if you know one of them cynical elitist liberal vegetarians, God love em, maybe you could make them a nice little bacon scarf. You know, it gets pretty cold up in Alaska, what with watchin' out for all them Russians while I'm shotin' wolves from the state helicopter before I put it up for sale on eBay.

KFC

The mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, is pushing for NY'ers to loose weight. As part of his plan, he's passed a law that restaurants must post calorie counts on their menus.

Look at this picture. Can you tell me how this information helps? Didn't momma always say that KFC was bad for you? Is this going to stop me? I think not.

Actually the lousy service and staple I found in my cole slaw will stop me from going back.
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Keep Your Hands Off Me

One of these things doesn't belong.
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Walk To Cure

Sunday, October 5, 2008 - Battery Park Manhattan. Come on down and help us end this scourge on humanity.

That'll be $10 Mista...

Rachael Ray loves her corn.
Safe for the office, but you may need to explain to the kids why you're laughing!

Attack of the Killer Eggplants!

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BBQ Contests: Judging Brisket and Sauce at Blues, Views and BBQ

So, we're finally in the homestretch of judging at Connecticut's Views, Blues and BBQ festival. 3 categories down and one left to go; brisket. Brisket, the hardest piece of meat to get right and my least favorite of the competition meats.

At this event, every brisket box presented to my table contained slices and burnt ends. Or what may or may not have been the cook's attempt at burnt ends, as most were cubes of very chewy, but tender meat. None were particularly smokey as burnt ends tend to be. All of the slices in the boxes were on the thick side, but most were very tender.

In terms of flavors, no one entry sticks out in my mind. Two reminded me of pot roast with no noticeable smokey taste. One had an odd sauce on it that I've tasted before at other contests and in other categories. This sauce always leaves me with a strange apple cider vinegary after taste that lingers long. Little did I know it would reappear in the sauce category.

With the judging of brisket, the official KCBS part of the contest was over and we judges were asked to stay and judge a sauce category. I've never judged a sauce category before so I had some quick discussions with a couple of other judges looking for tips. My main concern was on appearance of sauce. How do you judge that? KCBS rules are not comparative judging, so you are to judge each sauce on its own merits. One judge came up with a good set of guidelines and that's what I tried to follow.

When I was told it was a sauce category, I expected that the "sauce" we were to judge would be a barbecue sauce, but no, the reps repeatedly pointed out that this was a "sauce" contest, not a BARBEQUE sauce contest. Any type of sauce was a legal entry.

They then told us how we were to judge the sauce. Sauce would be presented to us in small plastic cups with lids. We were told to take each cup, open it and judge it for appearance. Each sauce was to be judged for appearance before we could move on to taste.

For taste, we were told to break a saltine cracker in half. We were told to dip one piece of the cracker into the sauce and to taste that. Then we were instructed to dunk and swirl the other piece of cracker, taste it and then score each sauce for taste. Again, we were told to judge each sauce for taste before we could move on to the final judging criteria, tenderness.

Judging a sauce for tenderness is a kin to judging water for wetness, so the reps came up with an interesting twist on scoring the final criteria. Instead of judging for tenderness, we were told to judge each sauce against the other, to comparatively rate the sauces, based simply on which one we liked best. The top sauce was to receive a score of 9, the next 8 and so forth until the lowest rated sauce on your table would receive a 4.

I thought judging the sauces was difficult up to that point, but when asked to lay them out, for lack of a better term, in best to worst, now that was close to impossible. It wasn't that hard to pick out my favorite sauce, it was fairly difficult to pick out my least favorite sauce, and it was close to impossible to rate the sauces in between.

I was glad that my table received only bbq sauces. I know one team submitted a caramel sauce. While I would have liked to have tried it, it raised an interesting question; how do you comparatively rate a caramel dessert sauce against a vinegar bbq sauce? I don't think it can be done. It's really comparing apples to oranges.

But everyone had a good time in the end and that's all that matters.

A final note about this contest. From my point of view as a judge and from my experiences there, this was a first rate, well run event. The reps, the ever lovely, Lovelys did a great job. Talking with the cooks after the event, they told me that everything was great the entire weekend and that the organizers did a fantastic job of making them feel welcome and appreciated. I hope this becomes an annual contest. Connecticut needs one.

Diagram of the cow courtesy of Wikipedia.