I’m not sure how long this deal will last, but if you need a new food processor, or don’t have one yet, Amazon is selling this Cuisinart food processor for $80 off its list price, a savings of 44%. This is the same model I’ve used since 2005, and I have no complaints about it. It works great, and this is a great, great price.

A foodie blogger in the UK has manufactured a meme and came up with a list of 100 items for people to repost on their blogs to say what they’ve eaten, what they haven’t, and what they won’t. I managed to tick off 71 items, and only indicated 4½ items I wouldn’t ever touch : horse, roadkill, head cheese, a raw scotch bonnet pepper, and a fat cigar (which was listed with cognac, something I’m more than happy to drink).

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred…

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When you’re the only one who can cook, and you’re used to cooking for two and have to feed a crowd.

Well, it looks like I’m the chief cook on this visit to my in-laws. Not that I mind much, though it is a little stressful, especially since I’m not used to cooking for a crowd. Two nights ago, I improvised and just picked up various grillable things (two ribeye steaks, two orange roughy filets, and an assortment of bratwurst and mittwurst, all of which I cooked on my sis-in-laws gas grill, along with some storebought potato/macaroni salad and cole slaw.) Last night, given time to plan, I completely overdid it and made twice as much food as was required. (I made a pan full of manicotti (cheese) and a pan full of cannelloni (meat), with garlic bread and salad greens.) The first night, the mixed grill was a great success, with only a couple of the hot dogs left over. Last night, half of each of the trays of pasta remained, with the manicotti being slightly more popular. Compounded by my unfamiliarity to the kitchen I’m working in, and that it belongs to a person who really doesn’t cook much, so a trip to the store sometimes involves buying the cooking equipment as well.

The pasta was improvised from the manicotti recipe I posted last February, as best I could remember it. i wimped out and used jarred spaghetti sauce in the interest of saving time. The cannelloni was stuffed with browned ground buffalo meat, onion, oregano and garlic, that I whizzed briefly in the food processor to get a finer mixture. The meat rolls were harder to make than the cheese rolls because the meat mixture kept dribbling out of the tubes as I filled them. I was afraid when I took them out of the oven, since the pasta on the cannelloni looked a little dry, but they were fine. Next time, I think more liquid to the ground meat mixture might solve both the filling and the baking issues. I even made a bechemel sauce which I anointed each pan with before putting them in the oven.

I also tried making a summer fruit crumble (blueberries, black raspberries, and white peaches, tossed with some flour and sugar, as well as some orange zest and orange juice, and topped with a mixture of flour, oatmeal, brown sugar, pie spices and butter … based on a recipe I saw Ina Garten make), but I didn’t take into account that it’s supposed to be served warm or at room temp, and it was past 8 before I even took it out of the oven. I figured I’ll serve that with dinner tonight. Instead, I improvised and broke out one of the jars of peach preserves I brought down as gifts, and spooned them over vanilla ice cream, and that seemed to be a good success.

If I could just get away from being such a control freak in the kitchen, it might be less stressful. i had plenty of offers for assistance, and my sister-in-law actually does want to get more proficient in the kitchen. I will make an effort to let her help me make the dinner tonight.

Yesterday we went to a local foodie landmark, Jungle Jim’s — a one-of-a-kind super-duper supermarket — part supermarket, part carnival, really. They’ve taken cast offs from a nearby amusement park in an effort to jazz up the place, so shoppers are greeted by giant fiberglass animals in a mock oasis, as well as a non-functioning monorail system. Once inside the warehouse-sized store, it’s hard not to be dazzled by the selection. Their international foods section is amazing. Where most stores have a section of one aisle devoted to different world cuisines, Jungle Jims offers aisle upon aisle to products from different countries. I took one or two covert pictures (cameras aren’t allowed inside), which I’ll upload and post later. One standout highlight is their hot sauce aisles - yes, aisles — every hot sauce made on the planet can be bought at Jungle Jim’s, I think. Hundreds of different bottles. Jungle Jim’s

Today, the plan is to go to the Findlay farmer’s market in Cinci, and perhaps a trip to the Newport Aquarium, if all goes well. I’m not sure what’s gonna be on the menu tonight. Probably leftovers, if they’ll have it, augmented with something fresh from the grill — shrimp or fish, I think.

Some of the delicacies available at Findlay Market.

Not half as good as a real gas or charcoal grill, but considering most apartment complexes won’t allow those on high-rise balconies, this is the best you’re gonna get.

I mentioned before that I got an electric patio grill for my birthday earlier this month, and based on some reviews on Amazon, I deviated slightly from the assembly instructions that came with it. Specifically, I added a little mass. Reviewers on Amazon mentioned that the grill just doesn’t get up to any real temperature. So, underneath the heating element, I added a round wire rack and a layer of lava rocks designed to be used with a gas grill. The real payoff with this mod is that the more I use the grill, and the more food juices fall and stick to the lava rocks, the more smoke. And smoke is what gives flavor.

I’ve been pretty happy with this, even though it’s just a glorified electric broiler element in an enameled steel encasement. It gets plenty hot — easily climbing to 500° — and it does it pretty quickly. It did blow the electric circuit when I tried plugging it in on one of the more heavily used circuits in my apartment.

It costs about $200 with shipping (though Amazon will ship it for free if you’re willing to wait a couple extra days), and it’s fairly easy to assemble with a screwdriver and a crescent wrench. Although I can’t say if it will last many, many seasons. If it lasts two or three, I’ll be satisfied.

Amazon : Char-Broil Patio Caddie Electric Grill, $159.

The reader Frobozz’s comments to the early June pork ribs post hit the nail on the head in a lot of ways.

He’s right: there’s no need to have coals on both sides of the Weber, a single pile of coals on one side is enough (and don’t use a coal rack or anything like that, just pile them loose. Another tweak (learned from an amazing book called “Mario Tailgates Nascar Style“): after soaking your wood chips for an hour or more (depending on thickness … I sometimes use mesquite chunks I chip myself with a hatchet), put the soaked chips into foil packets and punch holes into the packets before putting the foil packets directly on the coals. Smoke city.

Here are before and after pictures for some beef rib slabs we bbq’d up this weekend.

Whatever you do, the secret is: use patient low temperature for a long time. In many important contexts (cooking ribs is definitely one of ‘em), slower is better.

Temperature Control: how about putting a thermometer on your cooker? Don’t bother with one of them fancy wireless ones, they aren’t very reliable. A simple Teltru BBQ thermometer such as ones you can find at KCK.com is rugged and will do a great job. You can achieve success without a thermometer of course, but using one is an easy way to tell that it’s time to add more coals (and how many) without opening the kettle.

Be careful not to rely too much on your thermometer. The first (and only) time I cooked a whole hog, I was convinced based on a meat thermometer reading that the old boy was done after about 12 or 13 hours. An old hand gave me good advice: throw your meat thermometer away, just take out a knife and cut into the meat to see. Sure enough, he wasn’t done, he needed another 6 hours.

Lesson learned: technology is fine, but nothing beats experience and common sense.

Last week, the good people at La Cense Beef sent me a quantity of their products to try for free in the hopes I’d tell you good things about them here. And after trying some of the items they sent, I am certainly impressed.

Their website proclaims that their beef is all natural, hormone free, grass fed beef. The product comes in a styrofoam cooler, deep frozen with a block of dry ice to keep it that way. After allowing them the thaw, my wife and I have sampled two of the items they sent — their steak burgers, and their NY strip steak.

The hamburgers were fine, though not anything really to write about, but their strip steak was delicious. Strip steak is my favorite cut when I make steak. I usually go for the thick steaks that sell at Whole Foods for similar price, per pound, as La Cense, but they’re cut much thicker, and require a bit more care to cook.

The La Cense strip steak was about three-quarters of an inch thick. It arrives in a vacuum package, so the steak was a little misshapen when I removed it from the packaging. (Somehow, during shipping, the packaging on this steak had developed a small hole, so it left a bit of a bloody mess in my refrigerator as it thawed. You’d do well to thaw your steak in some sort of a tray or zip top bag to avoid a similar fate.) The steak displayed a good amount of fat and marbling, and the flesh was deep red.

After cooking the steak in the usual way (warming on the counter for 30 minutes to take the refrigerator’s chill off, drying the surface with paper towel, and then generously sprinkling with salt and fresh ground black pepper, I cooked the steak in a hot skillet for 3 minutes per side, putting a lid on the pan for the last 2 minutes of the second side, to cut down on the smoke, and to push the heat deeper into the steak. I then allowed the steak to rest for 10 minutes.) My wife proclaims that this is one of the best steaks I’ve ever made, better than the dry-aged steaks from Whole Foods.

Since I’m suffering from a head cold, I will have to take her word for it. I thought it fared better than a similar cut from the normal grocery store, but wasn’t quite up to par when compared to Whole Foods. Add to that the inconvenience of having to thaw the steak for several days puts it slightly lower in my book. However, if I had ample freezer space (which I don’t), I wouldn’t hesitate to order several of these steaks to keep on hand.

A 7.5oz strip steak will set you back $17.49, considerably less than a similar steak from other mail order companies (Lobel’s sells a 10oz. natural prime dry-aged bonless strip steak for a whopping $46.99, and Omaha Steaks normally sells four 8oz steaks for $69.99, which works out to be exactly the same as La Cense. My local Whole Foods sells its grass-fed beef for $15.99 a pound, dry-aged for $17.99 a pound.)

La Cense Mail-order All-Natural Beef

If you’re feeling rich and extravagant, replace the canned salmon with fresh chopped salmon, or lump crab meat.

5 green onions, finely chopped
½ sweet red pepper, finely chopped
1t garlic powder
¼c mayonnaise
1 egg, beaten
6 oz. flaked salmon (canned or in those foil packages)
1/3rd c corn flake coating or bread crumbs plus extra for coating
pinch of cayenne
juice from ½ a lemon

Mix all of this up in a bowl, and then make 4 balls, about the size of a golfball. Roll them around in more corn flakes/bread crumbs. Just before frying, flatten the balls to make patties. Fry in butter over medium heat, 3-4 minutes on each side.

Update, May 17 : I just made these for lunch today, using some leftover pan-fried salmon from the other night, and thought they were far superior to the packaged salmon I used last time. I didn’t explicitly point it out, but if you use fresh salmon, you might be able to get away with using it raw, if you chop it into small pieces, but even cooked salmon works well with this recipe.

What the second and third class passengers on the Titanic ate.

As an aside and an update to the last entry about the Titanic, some people who saw it were wondering what the other people on the ship were eating. The 2nd Class Dinner Menu for April 14, 1912 lists :

Consummé
Tapioca
Baked Haddock
Sharp Sauce
Curried Chicken & Rice
Spring Lamb, Mint Sauce
Roast Turkey, Cranberry Sauce
Green Peas
Purée Turnips
Boiled Rice
Boiled & Roast Potatoes

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I’ve had an Aerogarden for about 2 years now. When my wife and I moved into an apartment building, I really missed having my own backyard garden, and I thought that this might, in some small way, act as a replacement. I’ve been moderately satisfied with the results, and it’s fun to grow your own kitchen herbs.

As with all advertised products, the yield isn’t what the box or the literature would have you believe.
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With proper care, these inexpensive pans will become treasured heirlooms. And it really isn’t all that tricky to maintain them. The prime directive for these pans is, never, ever use soap to clean them. I know it probably sounds icky, but you should never use soap on a seasoned cast iron pan. The stuff that makes a cast iron pan seasoned is oil, and soap breaks down oil. So soap goes against everything you’re trying to accomplish here.

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