Slow Cooker Gumbo

The other day I broke out the slow cooker. It’s the season for it, but my stove has been acting up ever since c8 let a pot of water boil down to nothing. I keep thinking I fixed it only for the damned thing to start beeping sometime in the subsequent 24 hours.

Stove issues aside, I’m ready for some slow cooking goodness. I love coming home to a cooked meal.

That meal? Slow Cooker Gumbo.

For the recipe I mashed two other recipes together, then tweaked it further. The real brainstorm was adding some brown mustard into the mix to help the okra thicken the gumbo. There’s no roux in this since I wanted to keep it to one dish.

The rice did come out almost completely dissolved, but I think a heartier choice would have survived better. Again, normally I would cook the rice on its own but wanted one dish only.

Enjoy!

Tags: chicken, chicken broth, gumbo, okra, onion, rice, sausage, shrimp, tomato

Speers Street Grill

You will not find this place on your first try. For your nav:

Speers Street Grill
121 Speer St., Speers, PA
Phone 724-483-1911
www.SpeersStreetGrill.com

If you find yourself south of Pittsburg around the I-79 and I-70 interchange, you need to go to this restaurant.

It is off of I-70 exit 40 (in PA). Westbound, you exit to the right and after a spell take a strong right turn for a switchback under the Interstate. Under the freeway bridge there’s a left turn toward the marina, then a right to get down by the restaurants. Park in one of the lots signed for it.

I did that and walked down the road to the Grill. The place was packed, though I got there as they were bussing tables. I managed to nab a decent seat, though I changed it later.

The food was the burger, the one with the spicy barbeque sauce and pepper jack cheese. Aside were homemade home-fried potato chips. There was an anemic pickle. I won’t hold that against them.

The burger was outstanding. While they took my order for medium rare I received a burger that was to the side of medium well.

It made no difference.

The burger was outstanding. The tomato, onion, lettuce, fried onion, pepper jack cheese, and barbeque sauce were wonderful. The chips, clearly home made, offered far more flavor than the average bag of Lays™, though they were hardly salted at all. At first I was put off by this, but the flavor of the chips in their just fried state endeared me.

On top of that the service was wonderful. I moved from my initial table to a seat overlooking the porch overlooking the Monongahela river just before the food was brought to my table.

I cannot recommend the Speers Street Grill enough.

Do it.

Tags: burger, chips, I-70, I-79, Pennsylvania, speers street grill

BrokeAssGourmet’s Butter Chicken

Over at BrokeAssGourmet, Gabi has a recipe for Butter Chicken that looks really good. As someone who usually avoids butter chicken since most places I’ve had it in North America make a dry, bland version of this delicious dish, I’m keen for a way to make this at home or in the kitchenette of my hotel room. Not all of the spices are part of my travel kit (e.g. cardamom) but you might be able to liberate some from a foodie friend.

If you don’t follow BAG, you should. Gabi makes some great stuff.

Tags: butter, cardamom, chicken, chili powder, cilantro, cinnamon, coriander, cream, cumin, curry powder, garlic, honey, pepper, salt, tomato, tomato paste, yogurt

A Light European Breakfast

I was recently in Germany for work. The trip was great. We got a lot done. But that isn’t very ESG.

What was ESG was the breakfast at the hotel.

They had some standard fare: yogurt and fresh fruit, and seeds and nuts, and dry cereal, and scrambled eggs. Nutella was prevalent in and amongst the jams & preserves. Meats, cheeses, and a wide variety of three juices were available.

My favorite was two great tastes that tasted great together.

First, imagine if you will a round of mozzarella. On top of the cheese, imagine a fresh-from-the-vine tomato slice. On top of that, imagine a fresh-from-the-vine cucumber slice. Sounds good so far, no?

Imagine that down the table resides a plate of smoked salmon and lox. Imagine taking the lox and placing it on top of the mozzarella-tomato-cucumber wheel. Then imagine cutting the concoction into fourths and devouring each wedge in turn.

You get the fresh taste of the fruits (cucumbers and tomatoes are technically fruits) and the saltiness from the cheese and salmon.

I brought this recipe home with me. I don’t grow my own stuff, so for the first cut I had to rely on my grocery store. While my store is leaps and bounds ahead of any big box store, it does not have very good tomatoes. I persevered. I was greeted with a different taste and texture, but the liberal application of salt and a light application of pepper fixed most of the deficiencies.

Share and Enjoy!

Tags: cheese, cucumber, lox, mozzarella, nutella, pepper, salmon, salt, tomato

Honey Brined Smoked Turkey

I wrote up my recipe for Honey Brined Smoked Turkey over on the ESG Wiki. I can’t believe, yet I can entirely believe, that I forgot to do that last winter.

The recipe is based off of Alton Brown’s. While this doesn’t work in a travel scenario I am intrigued by the notion of scaling this big sucker way down for a turkey leg or breast in a toaster oven or pan fry scenario. Actually, the pan fried or deep fried would work great with the brine since the fry will lock in the moisture.

Looks like I have a todo for the ESG Labs!

Anyway, as part of the two week travel respite I’ve been cooking up a storm at the ESG home office. I haven’t settled on the sides yet, but it will be fresh seasonal fruit and vegetables.

I had a small problem with the brine. Specifically, the extra ice I had produced for the brine was mostly gone when I went to use it. I’m sure the kids absconded with it a few pieces at a time for water (I hope) or soda (I’m sad to admit).

Brine time comes. Turkey is relieved of it’s neck and giblets. Turkey is rinsed thoroughly inside and out. Turkey is placed inside double plastic bags legs up in the utility bucket I use for such things. Large cooler freezer things (technical term) line the bucket outside of the bags.

Brine is made on the stove per instructions. I go to add ice and …

I have about 4 trays worth of ice.

So I beg, borrow, and steal ice. I take some frozen milk containers of ice and chop them up. I take the brine, separate it into multiple small metal containers and place them in my mostly empty freezer (no food stuffs in it) to chill. I quickly place the bucket in a cool place in the basement and dangle a digital thermometer out the lid to give me a reading on the temperature: 40 degrees at the moment.

I make it through the brining window still hovering around 40 degrees with a few infusions of fresh ice. I air dry the bird in the ‘fridge for four hours, then rub it down with vegetable oil. I threw the whole thing on the smoker and three hours later had a deliciously smoked turkey.

The only thing was I left it in the brine for too long. I should have pulled it out after 12 hours. It was closer to 18 by the time I got around to it.

How have you run into a cooking trap and how did you get yourself out?

Tags: grill, grilling, honey, smoking, turkey

Grill Rig Refresh (said 10 times fast)

When at home I enjoy grilling. I’m in the middle of a two week home stand so I’ve been cooking at home using my own stove, my own grill, and my own tools.

So, to kick it off and for Father’s Day I did my standard delicious Beer Can Chicken.

The problem I had was that the Amish roaster/fryers I bought were slightly too big for my grill lid. As they cooked and shrank a bit the lid closed, but until that point I had a gap I had to compensate for.

I’ve had this happen before. I don’t want it to happen again.

Therefore I ordered the Weber 2290 22-1/2 Inch Charcoal Kettle Rotisserie from Amazon. I don’t particularly care about the rotisserie, although I can now do grilled meats like the lamb loaf you use in falafels. I do care about the 7-inch collar that will lift the lid the appropriate amount for even a beer can turkey.

And sure, I may make more use of the rotisserie as I get used to it, but having the extra internal space will be nice.

I will need to figure a good way of removing it when restocking the coals and when removing the meat. I remember these handle clamp things we used to use in the Scouts to remove pots from the fire with, pots that lacked handles.Maybe just a pair of vice grips will do?

What upgrades are you doing to your cooking gear, home or on the road?

Tags: grill, grilling, rotisserie, weber

Recipes in 140 characters or less

I follow Maureen Evans on Twitter and you should, too. She posts entire recipes in a single tweet (usually). The Rosetta stone for deciphering her tweets is here.

I’ve thought about translating my recipes into this format, too, for easy compressed travel-friendly use. I’m not yet ready to commit to it, but I’ll try it in a bit of a dry run.

Anyway, follow and enjoy!

Tags: twitter

Maintenance Redux

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Chapatis – A Bread for the Grill, a Bread for Me

My gluten-intolerant friends can look away. This is a bread post, specifically a grilled flat bread.

For Father’s Day I ran into the time honored trap of assuming I had a given ingredient on tap. In my case it was cornmeal. By the time I realized I was without it while cornbread was on my menu I was not into going out and not really in shape to drive.

What to do? To the Ging and Boogles!

I found a recipe from Mark Bittman’s The Minimalist food blog at the nytimes.com for a grilled flat bread called Chapatis (the ESG edit). These ingredients I had – whole wheat flout, all-purpose flour, water, and salt.

I gave it a go and made a batch. It turned out pretty good. I think I’m pleased with it and will keep it in my retinue. As an ESG, you really only need a source of heat to do this like a hotplate of some kind. I’m open to ideas on how this can work in a hotel setting.

Tags: all-purpose flour, bread, grill, salt, whole wheat flour

ESG Maintenance

I’m doing some maintenance work on ESG today, so things might be wonky.

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