I'm back, baby!

 Been a weird couple of years, but I am back in the kitchen to create some porn! 

 This week's experiment, homemade sauerkraut. 

 The taste is definitely different from store bought. This has cabbage, Himalayan pink salt and a little water and nothing else. Now I need some brats to go with it. 

Steamed Hams!

   I saw this post from Gastro Obscura about a regional dish from central Connecticut, the steamed cheeseburger. Being a burger lover I knew I had to give it a try. 

 I didn't document the process because you can find tons of recipes and videos online showing you exactly how to do it. However, here is the result: 

 The flavor was a bit bland despite my slathering the bun with ketchup, mustard and mayo as recommended by one of the videos I watched. Texturally it was a bit dense, but kind of spongy too. I definitely missed the caramelized outside you get when you cook a burger in a skillet or on the grill. The steamed cheese however was awesome, I used a nice aged cheddar and it melted in the steamer a lot better than it would have in the microwave. 

 All in all it was fine, and if someone gave me one I would happily eat it but I don't think I will make them again. 

Birthday waffle fun!

   What's a foodie to do on their birthday? Make awesome food of course! I was watching Youtube this morning and stumbled across a guy using a waffle maker to cook other things like an omelet and a quesadilla. The only actual waffle he made had ham and cheese cooking into it. Having leftover BBQ pork belly and ribeye from Friday's grilling bender, my trusty sous chef whipped up some basic waffle batter so we could give it a try.

 Two year old cheddar, I grated it to make it easier for it to melt. 

 Grilled ribeye and BBQ pork belly. 

 Loading up the waffle maker. I put a little batter on the bottom, then the ingredients, then another sparse layer of batter.

 Ta-da!

I threw together some honey mustard dip for the pork and some garlic aioli for the steak when I realized they might be a bit on the dry side without something to dip them in. 

We enjoyed both, my favorite was the BBQ pork belly. The recipe is definitely a keeper, I look forward to stuffing all kinds of things into waffles now. 

Powder fun!

 So in my rambles online I came across a page for something called Flavor Gods, different flavors of powder you can sprinkle on things. Intrigued, I went to their page and was looking at all the exciting flavors, then I clicked on the nutrition info. Loaded with sodium, which is something that I am not supposed to have. And they were very expensive, $15+ for 5ish ounces. 

 After a couple of weeks of thinking about the tasty sounding powders, I went back to their page, read the ingredients and decided to reverse engineer some. I picked up supplies and was off and running. 

 The first flavor I made was buttery cinnamon roll with the butter powder and honey granules and a good amount of cinnamon. My husband (who functions as my taste tester) said it did taste very much like a cinnamon roll. 

 

 Next up was pizza, hubbs said it tastes just like a pizza roll. 

 Nacho cheese, BBQ and honey mustard soon followed. 

  Chocolate donut and chicken and waffles were next.  

 We liked all of them so much I decided to branch out with my own creations, strawberries and cream, honey butter and butter chicken. 

 

 Taste testing on white beans and no salt pretzels. We like them all so far, and I will be branching out into other flavors like bacon, beef bourguignon, BBQ brisket and smoked chicken now that I have a bag of hickory powder. 

 All in all, I spent less on supplies than I would have buying the Flavor Gods versions, and they are salt free. So yay, this experiment was a huge success. 

 

That's one sexy chick!

   Today we're going to talk about hot chicks. No, not that kind, the spatchcocked kind cooked on a grill. This was my first attempt at spatchcocking a bird, and my first at grilling a whole chicken. Should be a fun time! 

 Here's the birdy after being spatchcocked, which is removing the spine and flattening the bird so it will cook evenly.  

  

  I gave it a bit of dry rub with garlic, smoked paprika and black pepper and popped it on the grill with some cherrywood chips for smoking. Here's the finished product:

  That is one sexy chicky! 

It's been awhile.

  I've been MIA due to life, but I am back! Here's a Bored Panda post of some wild looking food to get the ball rolling. Enjoy! 

https://www.boredpanda.com/weird-food-wreckless-eating/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organic

Fun With Jackfruit

 A few weeks ago I read an article on jackfruit, how it is being touted as the new superfood to end world hunger. The fruit is massive, growing up to a hundred pounds, and is chock full of vitamins and other good things. When I saw them for sale in our local HEB grocery store, I couldn't resist giving it a try.

I brought the 23 pound behemoth home and spent the rest of the day scouring the Internet for jackfruit recipes. Not being able to decide on one, I instead watched videos of how to break down and process it. 

 The initial cut. Some people said to cut it crossways, others longways. I went for long.

 The rind is hard and thick, and there is a tough fiberous core I had to cut through. Note the rags ringing the cutting board. There is a reason for my madness. Jackfruit is full of latex. For those of us who were in theater, it was pretty much a bit thinner version of the liquid latex we used for makeup. After my hands started sticking to everything and leaving slimy snail trails of rapidly hardening rubber, I grabbed gloves.

The inside is bright yellow and white, with the pods of fruit surrounded by white stringy fibers. The fruit pods have large seeds, and all of it is edible except the hedgehog-looking rind. 

 It took me about 3 hours to completely break this thing down. There was a lot of it that went in the compost, as the white 'rags' turned out to be a pain to separate, and like potatoes started to oxidize nearly immediately even though I had it in a bowl of acidified water. It is supposed to make an acceptable vegan 'pulled pork', but I decided it just wasn't worth the hassle. 

 I ended up with five quart freezer bags of fruit, a fair amount seeds, and a little bit of rags to experiment with. This is a full size commercial baking sheet 26 by 18 inches. The fruit is about two by three inches, and fleshy. It reminds me of thick yucca flower pods. The seeds are covered in a white membrane, I boiled them for 20 minutes to get it off and make them ready to use.

 Time for the taste test. The fruit smelled like a mix of different things, mostly a generic tropical fruit smell. Several people have likened it to Juicyfruit Gum, although I didn't get that. I mostly smelled a pineapple/guava scent, very sweet. The taste was not like anything I have had before, again, a general 'tropical' taste, exactly like you would expect a fruit whacked off of a palm-type tree would taste like. A bit blandish, and very sweet. I look forward to trying it in recipes. The seeds have a taste and texture of mealy boiled potatoes, I'll be using those later in a curry. 

  It was in interesting experience, but I can safely say I most likely will not buy one of these again. I'll post when I actually use it in something. First up: jackfruit margarita!