Cooking with an Urban Country Boy

I've posted before that I'm always on the lookout for tasty recipes that can be easily translated into food for Boy Scout campouts. Recently our hometown newspaper, the News and Observer, ran an article on what has to be just about the simplest, and tastiest biscuit recipe that I've ever come across. I've made them several times now, and they've now become my standard homemade biscuits. The cool thing is that there are only two ingredients in the simplest version, and three in the ever-so-slightly tweaked version that I use.

Sour Cream Biscuits (six-seven biscuits)

1 cup self-rising flour
1 cup sour cream
1/4 tsp baking powder (optional, but makes the biscuits a little fluffier)



Simply combine the self-rising flour and baking powder and mix in the sour cream until it forms a wet dough. Turn out onto a floured surface and pat out to 1/2 inch. Cut with a biscuit cutter and place into a greased pan.



(These look odd because I wasn't thinking and put half of them with the smoothed surface up and half with the smoothed surface down).

Bake at 450 degrees for 12-14 minutes.

This has been an emotionally and physically taxing week. Sometimes in times like that you retreat to certain comfort foods that speak to you emotionally. For some reason, banana bread is one of those foods for me. It's also a food I tend to only make when I least expect it -- usually when I find myself with a bunch of bananas that are well past their prime because something has happened that kept us from eating them as God intended them -- sliced up in cereal. So this week I've made banana bread twice, once at my brother's house and again here at home, both times to use up bananas instead of throwing them out. I guess I like it because banana bread is a good thing to make -- it's a way of taking something that is old and not so useful, and making it into something hearty and delicious.

But anyway, I digress -- here's the recipe. Simple and short.

Banana Bread

4 overripe bananas, mashed with a fork
2 eggs
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup chopped nuts

Combine the bananas and eggs and beat well with a mixer in a large bowl. Add the sugar to the banana-egg mixture and mix together. Combine the remaining ingredients in another bowl and stir to combine. Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ones, stirring constantly until just combined.  Pour batter into a greased loaf pan, and place in a preheated 350 degree oven for 55 minutes to 1 hour. Let cool and slice.

It seems like this summer grilled pizzas became all the rage with the food blog community. This is actually a bit surprising, since the concept is one that's been around for quite a while -- it was invented back in 1980 in Rhode Island, and many restaurants have been serving it for several years. The cool thing about grilling pizza is that you don't have to heat up the oven -- which on a hot summer day in North Carolina is much appreciated. However, one of the things that a grill can't do is to give you a nice browned top to your pizza. So, even though the goal is not to turn the oven on, I usually end up turning on the broiler and running the pizzas under it for a couple of minutes to brown the top.

But anyway -- no new recipes needed -- it's pretty much the same recipes as my normal pizza, just a different cooking approach. I usually roll out my dough onto parchment paper, brush the dough with olive oil, and then flip it onto a very hot grill and peel off the paper, then close the lid.



You then let the dough bake on the grill for 3-4 minutes, then flip it over with a spatula and VERY QUICKLY apply the toppings and then put the lid on the grill back down to heat the toppings through and melt the cheese. For me, that's usually another 2-3 minutes. As I stated earlier, this gives you a pizza that's got a melted top, but not a browned one -- leaving it on any longer would burn the crust, so that's why I then take it off and pass it under the broiler.

So here's the final product -- this one was a pepperoni pizza for Ann:



And finally here's my barbecued chicken pizza -- you can clearly see the grill marks on this one:

My previous post dealt with one of my favorite uses for leftovers - making chicken stock. In this post, I'm featuring a recipe that I like (but my wife doesn't unfortunately) that I made while my wife and son were at her in-laws this week; corn chowder.

It's been a bumper year for sweet corn here in North Carolina. The crop has been abundant (yielding lower prices at the Farmer's Market and supermarket) and very, very sweet and tasty. The issue is we generally find ourselves either roasting or boiling more ears than the three of us can actually eat. So, I simply cut off the kernels from the uneaten ears and save them in little plastic lunch bags in the freezer.

I was then able to combine those frozen corn kernels with my homemade chicken stock to make this recipe:

Bacon-Corn chowder (serves 3-4)

1/2 onion, finely diced
1 stalk celery, finely diced
1 clove garlic, finely diced
1 potato, peeled and cut into small dice
1 teaspoon dried thyme
3 slices bacon
1 cup of frozen sweet corn (about 3 ears worth)
3 cups homemade chicken stock
1 cup heavy cream
4 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons all purpose flour
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon turmeric (optional)
salt and pepper to taste

Dice the bacon and cook over medium heat in a small frying pan until crispy. Remove the bacon and set aside, then saute the onion, celery and garlic in the bacon fat until translucent and slightly browned. Meanwhile, parboil the potato in the chicken stock in a saucepan until almost fully cooked.

Melt the butter in the pan with the sauteed vegetables and slowly add the flour, stirring and cooking 2-3 minutes to make a light brown roux. Add the sauteed vegetables to the pan with the chicken stock and potatoes and stir until the roux is completely dissolved into the stock. Add half the bacon, the cream, thyme, and salt and pepper. If you want your chowder to have a nice yellow corn color, add the turmeric (the color will be darker depending upon how much you add). Simmer over low heat until the potatoes are completely cooked and the chowder is thickened. Serve hot with the reserved bacon and shredded cheddar cheese as a garnish.

One of the most basic tenets that my parents drilled into me from an early age was "waste not, want not", especially where food was concerned. My mother was very good at saving and reusing leftovers -- what started out as vegetables from a beef roast usually ended up in vegetable soup, and likewise holiday leftovers were carefully repackaged and frozen for consumption months later. Of course, my parents both grew up during the depression, so such habits were strongly reinforced during their formative years, which is why they were passed on to us.

I wish I was as thrifty as my mother, especially now that the economy is in the dumps and everyone is cutting back, but I must say that I'm just not cut out for it. Leftovers in our house tend to be thrown out after a few days of being forgotten in the back of the fridge. However, one exception that I make to that rule is with leftover produce -- particularly carrots, celery, onions and leeks. When these start to go past their prime, I'm usually good about making them into one of the easiest, and best ways to use leftovers that I know of -- making homemade chicken stock.

First of all, let's review the difference between stock and broth. Stock is made from bones -- broth is made from meat. The difference is often subtle but you can usually see it when the two liquids are cold -- stock will jiggle a bit like jello -- that's because it actually contains gelatin that has been rendered out of the connective tissue in the animal products (bones and cartilage) that it is made from. The reason I like making my own is that (a) it tastes an awful lot better than the commercially packaged alternatives and (b) it's cheaper -- in fact, pretty much free if you use leftovers the way I do.

In fact, what I do with my chickens is that I freeze the unused parts whenever I make grilled chicken (no one in my family will eat backs or the parts of wings other than the drummettes, and both my wife and son prefer breast fillets rather than whole breasts). So, after cutting up the chicken I'll divide it in two two ziptop bags -- one to freeze and one to brine for grilling. Likewise, whenever we eat a supermarket "wonder-roast" chicken, I'll freeze the carcass from that as well after we've sliced off all the meat. This, combined with leftover produce and some herbs from our herb garden, is all you need to make stock.

So on to the recipe:

Basic chicken stock

(Makes about 12-14 cups of stock)

1 or 2 chicken carcasses or equivalent chicken parts (particularly backs, rib bones, necks and wings)
3 carrots, coarsely chopped
3 stalks celery, coarsely chopped
1 leek, cleaned and coarsely chopped
1 onion, quartered
2 cloves garlic, crushed
20 whole peppercorns
2 bay leaves
1 bunch parsley (7 or 8 stems)
1 bunch fresh thyme (2 or three stems)
salt to taste

Place all ingredients in a large stock pot (ours is a 6 quart model, which is about the minimum for this) and fill with water until you've just covered the meat and vegetables. Place over medium heat until it just starts to boil, then immediately lower the heat down and simmer for 6-7 hours. Skim off any scum and fat that rises to the surface and also replace any water lost during the cooking process.

After simmering for 6-7 hours, strain through a colander lined with cheesecloth or paper towels into another stock pot or large bowl and submerge one gallon-sized ziptop bag filled with ice into the new container. Once the ice melts the stock should be cool enough to move into a refrigerator overnight. If you line the top of your container with plastic wrap so that the wrap touches the surface of the stock, then in the morning you will be able to lift off the wrap and most (if not all) of the fat that has separated from the stock will come up with the plastic wrap.

Divide into quart or smaller ziptop bags and freeze until needed. The resulting liquid love is shown below:



If you want smaller portions for use in sauces, freeze part of your stock in ice cube trays and then after they have frozen, place the stock cubes in ziptop bags in the freezer.

It's only recently that American cheeses have ever received any respect from the food press. But even then it's always the artisanal cheeses, usually exotic ones like Laura Chanel's goats-milk cheeses that were so made popular by restaurants like Chez Panisse. But what about the perfectly normal, commonplace cheeses that are unique to America? What about Monterey Jack? Yes, to most of us Monterey Jack is if anything just a background -- maybe something that you've had on a taco or mixed with Colby, or perhaps you're one of those with cast-iron palates like my son who has a fondness for Pepper Jack so long as it's breaded and deep-fried.

But in my opinion, Monterey Jack is a cheese that deserves consideration on its own merits. As you can see from reading the Wikipedia article above, it's a cheese that is unique to one particular location in the US, and its origins can be traced back to similar (but not identical) farmers' cheeses from Europe. What's more, it's mild flavor and creaminess, and its ease of melting makes it a wonderful addition to sauces -- which leads me to my own preferred use for Monterey Jack -- a Chicken Lasagna that we've adopted from a Marion Cunningham recipe in the Fanny Farmer Cookbook. Used in this way, a single one-pound block of Monterey Jack can act as the star of the show in an unctious, utterly decadent recipe that is one of our favorites.

Chicken Lasagna

This is a fairly straightforward recipe, with four parts -- a filling, a cheese sauce, lasagna noodles, and shredded Monterey Jack.

The filling:

6 oz shredded Monterey Jack cheese
2 cups finely chopped cooked chicken
1/2 cup finely chopped celery
4 tablespoons chopped parsley
3 tablespoons white wine
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon salt

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and set aside, or refrigerate until needed. When I make this I generally broil or grill the chicken as I find we like the extra little bit of flavor that adds.



The sauce:

The oddity is that the sauce is a cheese-enriched veloute sauce -- odd, because normally for a cheese sauce you start with a bechamel and not a veloute -- but not so odd when you consider that this is basically the same procedure for making a cheese soup.

6 tablespoons butter
6 tablespoons all purpose flour
3 cups chicken broth
1 teaspoon dried tarragon
6 oz shredded Monterey Jack cheese

Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed sauce pan and cook over low heat until the popping stops (at which point the water has mostly boiled away). Add the flour and stir until combined into a light roux. Cook for 2 minutes. Add the chicken broth slowly, stirring constantly until the mixture forms a thick veloute sauce. Add the tarragon and cook for 2 more minutes. Stir the cheese into the sauce in small batches until completely melted and remove from heat.



Assembling

Pour a thin layer of sauce into a 9X9 baking dish. (You can use a 9X13 dish but it won't be as high -- you can compensate by multiplying the sauce and filling proportions by 1 and 1/2.)  Layer cooked lasagna noodles in the dish and top each layer with some of the chicken mixture, and some of the sauce, making sure that the sauce coats the chicken mixture. Add a little shredded Monterey Jack on top before moving on to the next layer (I used the remaining 4 oz from a 16-oz brick).



Once you have completed three layers (or 4 depending on how much space you have in your baking dish and how your ingredients hold out) top with the remaining Sauce and Monterey Jack.



Cover with foil and bake in a 350 degree oven for 45 minutes. You may want to add some additional parsley garnish on top.

Every year, just after Memorial day we take a vacation in Hilton Head, SC.  It's a beautiful place, with great beaches, cool island breezes, the warm waters of the Gulf Stream and fantastic dining and shopping.  Last year I got intrigued by something that I saw on several menus at restaurants but never quite got up the gumption to order -- a Low Country Shrimp boil.  When I returned and dug into this recipe (also called Frogmore Stew, not because it contains amphibians, but named after the now-defunct post office of Frogmore on Daufuskie Island) I found that it was a simple, and delicious way of preparing shrimp and vegetables that I had to try.  My son loves shrimp fondue, and so an idea struck me -- why not develop this into an easy fondue?

So after a little experimentation, that's exactly what I did.  If you browse the various recipes, you'll find a lot of variation in how this is prepared, but it all comes down to this -- a spicy broth in which you boil vegetables and shrimp.  So here's the recipe I've arrived at:

Low Country Shrimp Boil Fondue (serves 2-4)

4 cups water
1 cup white wine (pilsner beer would probably be fine based on multiple variations I've seen on the net)
juice of 1/2 lemon
2 Tbsp Old Bay seasoning

Combine all ingredients in fondue pot and allow to come to a full boil.  Add the following:

(Per person)

1 ear of sweet corn, shucked, de-silked and cut into 1-2 inch segments
4-6 small new potatoes (cut in half if larger than 1 1/2 inch in diameter)
2-3 small peeled pearl onions

Boil for 15 minutes.  Turn down the heat to a low boil or simmer.

Prepare 1/3 lb of cleaned, deveined raw shrimp (peeled or unpeeled -- your choice) per person.

Remove vegetables with a slotted spoon and serve at once, or leave them in the pot to keep hot.  Spear the shrimp and cook in the fondue pot for 1-2 minutes.  Add additional water and/or beer or wine as needed to keep the level of the broth consistent.    After you are finished, you can reserve the remaining broth for use as shrimp stock for gumbo!

My son's absolutely favorite food in the whole wide world is, I'm a bit flattered to say, my homemade Pizza Margherita. Honestly, I never set out to really master the pizza making art, but sort of fell into it backwards. I certainly have good memories of Pizza from high school and college -- at home we had a family-operated Pizza place called DiMaggios that served a thin-crust, party-cut (square slices) pizza that I've never had duplicated anywhere before -- although St. Louis Style Pizza and some thin-crust pizzas I've had in Chicago come close. In college I was introduced to Chicago-style deep dish pizza at Giordanos and the incomparable Papa Dels.

But when I started making Pizza at home I knew I could never really duplicate those experiences, and so, after a few failed attempts at using copycat recipes, stopped trying. Instead, I started working on a Pizza that would work for our family, in our kitchen and with our oven. My wife doesn't like super-thin crust -- she prefers a thicker bread-like crust instead. My son doesn't like anything but cheese on his pizza -- so we always end up making two pizzas since I'm decidedly carnivorous when it comes to pizza. What I've arrived at is that we generally make one simple Pizza Margherita, and another one where I can be a little more creative with the meat toppings. But they all start from the same base.

The Crust

** Use a bread machine. Follow the instructions you find in the cookbook that came with it for making pizza dough.**

Anticlimactic isn't it? But that's what I've found -- that the best pizza crust comes from the generic pizza dough recipe that came with our bread machine (a 15 year old Zojirushi). All I do is stretch it and roll it out as thin as I can without tearing it, leaving just a little lip on the edge. My basic recipe will make enough crust for two pizzas.

The Sauce

1 12oz can tomato puree
1 tsp red wine vinegar or fresh lemon juice
1 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp dried basil
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/2 tsp salt

Combine all ingredients in a bowl. Place in the refrigerator to let flavors combine for at least two hours.

Place half the sauce on each crust and spread thinly.



The Toppings

For my pork-lover's pizza, I'll add chopped ham (in this case left over from Easter), crisp bacon bits, and crumbled pork Italian sausage. I will also add a little sauteed onions on top of the cheese later.



The Cheese

When I'm feeling creative I will get a ball of fresh cows-milk mozzarella from our local grocery store (they make a little fresh every couple of days) and slice it for a my Pizza Margherita. Otherwise I've found that a mix of thinly sliced Boar's head Mozzarella and Boar's head Provolone make good pizza toppings. I'll use those on days like today when I'm not in the mood for fooling with slicing my own cheese. In the case of the Margherita, I add some basil leaves on top.



Baking

The only tricks that I've arrived at are: (a) ALWAYS use a pizza stone and (b) heat your household oven as hot as it will get. Ours will reliably crank up to about 550 degrees, and that's where I keep it. I will generally heat it up an hour (yes, a full hour) ahead of time to allow the pizza stone to get really hot. As you can see above, I make the crust on parchment paper, so I can just slide the paper and the pizza directly onto the stone. Seven or eight minutes at 550 will generally do it.

This is the Pizza Margherita after seven minutes:



And this is the Pork lovers pizza after eight minutes. This one formed a bubble in the middle, so it's not as pretty.

This weekend I was "grubmaster" for the adults in my son's Boy Scout troop (Troop 209, Apex) during the Crosswinds district Camporee. One of the meals that I prepared was Beef Stew and Sourdough biscuits -- that being traditional "Trail food" and what's more, something that I thought would be appreciated on a windy, cool and rainy evening.

My problem was that my usual Beef Stew recipe contains about a half a bottle of red wine.  Unfortunately, alcohol of all sorts (except for use as a fuel) is prohibited on Boy Scout campouts.  So, I was left searching for another recipe.  This time I found my inspiration by starting with Paula Deen and then branching out a bit.  The recipe that I arrived at (and that was met with appreciative noises on the part of the assembled Scout leaders) is below.  Unfortunately there are no pictures of this -- maybe the next time I make it I'll remember to snap a shot.

The key to make this easy is to premix the spice mixes and pre-chop the carrots and onions and put them all in sealed ziplocs before you come.  This way all we had to do at the campout was peel and chop the potatoes.

Boy Scout Beef Stew

Ingredients

    * 2 pounds stew beef
    * 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
    * 2 cups beef broth (or 2 cups water + 2 bouillon cubes)
    * 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
    * 1 clove garlic, peeled and finely chopped
    * 1 or 2 bay leaves
    * 1 medium onion, finely chopped
    * 1 teaspoon salt
    * 1/2 teaspoon pepper
    * 1/2 teaspoon paprika
    * 2 tablespoons tomato paste
    * 3 large carrots, sliced
    * 3 potatoes, cubed
    * 2 tablespoons cornstarch

Directions

Brown meat in hot oil and add to dutch oven or large pot. Sauté onion in remaining oil until tender and add to dutch oven or pot.  Add broth or bouillon, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, bay leaves, onion, salt, tomato paste, pepper, and paprika to dutch oven. Cover and simmer (on a camp stove or in a dutch oven) at 325 degrees for 1 to 1 1/2 hour. Remove bay leaf. Add carrots and potatoes. Cover and simmer 1 hour longer at 325 degrees or until vegetables are tender. To thicken gravy, using a separate bowl, combine 1/4 cup water and cornstarch until smooth. Add mixture to pot. Stir and cook until bubbly.

Ever since I started with "Fred" (my Sourdough starter) a few weeks ago, I've been feeding him more flour and Water and making a batch of sourdough biscuits about once a week just to keep him alive and fresh for the campout coming next week. This weekend I mixed it up a little and decided to experiment with a sourdough Cinnamon roll instead of the sourdough biscuits I've been making successfully for the last few weekends. After scouring the internet and my cookbooks for cinnamon roll recipes I concluded that their really isn't much at all to them -- you just need a good sweet bread recipe, a cinnamon filling and a glaze.

So, the first thing I did was start with my basic Sourdough biscuit recipe that I've been using and up the sugar content a bit:

Sourdough

2 cups active sourdough starter
1/4 cup cooking oil
2 cups all purpose flour
6 tblsp granulated sugar
1 tsp salt

Mix all the ingredients together and then knead together for 5-10 minutes to form a dough ball. Let the dough ball rise in a warm place for about an hour.

Cinnamon Filling

1 tbsp melted butter
2 tbsp granulated sugar
2 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp cinnamon

Combine the three dry ingredients together in small bowl. Roll the dough ball out into a flat rectangle about 10X13. Brush with the melted butter and sprinkle the dry ingredients evenly over the dough rectangle. Roll up from the long end and pinch the edges to seal. Cut shallow slices every 1 1/2 inches and then slide a piece of dental floss under the roll and cross and pull together over the top of the roll to cut through the rolls. Move the cut rolls into a greased 9X13 glass pan and let them rise for another hour.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees while the rolls are rising.

Bake the rolls for 30-35 minutes, or until golden brown.

Frosting

2 cups powdered sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract (I really like using Penzey's double-strength extract for this)
4 tablespoons water

Combine ingredients in a medium bowl and mix until smooth.

Drizzle the frosting over the warm rolls with a teaspoon. Let sit for 5 minutes before serving.

So I made the biscuits this morning (getting up early to make the dough, let it rise, and set up the fire pit, light the briquettes in the chimney starter, and let them burn down) and they turned out GREAT!



I'd actually classify these as more like rolls than biscuits, but whatever they are they're wonderful.  They're very, very light with a soft crumb and the flavor is something like a cross between a good yeast roll (like a parker house roll) and sourdough -- the sourdough flavor is very subtle -- part of that is using commercial yeast in the starter rather than wild yeast, but part of that is just the mix of natural yeasts and bacteria we have in the air here in Apex.

Whatever you want to call them they were a hit with the family, and a small container of starter is definitely coming with me on our next campout in a couple of weeks!

So today was the day I fed my starter. It proceeded to grow and bubble up nicely, and the whole kitchen has a nice yeasty smell.



Tomorrow's the big day -- we'll see how the biscuits turn out.

Ever since my disappointing experience with no-knead bread, I've been thinking about better bread-baking options for my dutch oven. After some consideration, I've decided to begin working on a sourdough. Step one of that is to make a good sourdough starter. I followed the instructions here and the starter has begun.



I'll keep checking in over the next few days and see how this turns out. If all turns out well, then Saturday morning we should be able to have sourdough biscuits cooked in the dutch oven!

It's cold and rainy with a chance of snow tonight, and some hot, nourishing soup just seemed to be the thing to hit the spot. Increasingly we've been making this tomato-basil soup since the entire family will eat it (including our son who won't go near anything beef-broth based) and it's cheap and healthy.

Tomato Basil Soup
serves eight

1 shallot, finely chopped
1 tbsp olive oil
3 14-oz cans of whole tomatoes
1/4 cup of basil leaves
1 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 1/2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon tabasco sauce
black pepper to taste
1 1/2 tbsp cornstarch
3 tbsp cold water

In a saucepan or saute pan, sweat the shallot in the olive oil for 2-3 minutes, or until translucent. Meanwhile, combine the tomatoes and basil leaves in a blender. Add the cooked shallot and puree until smooth. In a large saucepan combine the pureed vegetables together with the chicken broth, sugar, salt, tabasco sauce and black pepper. Heat over medium-high heat until boiling, then reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 30 minutes.

At the end of the 30 minutes, check the seasonings -- you may want to add a teaspoon or two of lemon juice if the tomatoes are more sweet than tart. Mix together the cornstarch and cold water, then add to the soup and cook over low heat an additional 5 minutes or until thickened.



Serve with crackers, or (our favorite) grilled cheese sandwiches!

It seems like all the buzz lately in the food blogosphere has been about the no-knead bread recipe originally published by Mark Bittman in the New York Times. It seemed like an easy enough recipe, and what's more, I'm always searching for recipes that can be adapted for use on campouts with the boy scouts, so I tried this one this weekend. It's easy enough; just mix up a simple dough of nothing more than bread flour, water, salt and yeast, mix it together and set it aside covered in a warm place for 12-16 hours. When it's risen, oil it, fold it over a couple of times and let it rise a second time, then drop it into a hot casserole (or dutch oven -- which is why I was thinking boy scouts) to bake for an hour.

The results are that it's certainly a very pretty loaf of bread:



And it has many of the hallmarks of a good loaf; it crackles when it cools, it's got a great looking crust, good texture, and nice hole structure.

The problem is, it just doesn't taste that good. It tastes OK, but it's nothing to write home about. I've been making much better tasting loaves of bread with my trusty Zojirushi bread machine and it's standard white bread recipe for the past 15 years. Maybe it's a little low on salt, but to be honest, I just don't think that it's that flavorful. We ate the whole loaf for lunch (I only made a half recipe) but I don't think I'll be doing this again; we'll see if I change my mind before the next campout...

It used to be that here in the south that to start an argument all you had to do was mention the "late unpleasantness" as the Civil War was euphemistically named, but over the years tempers have cooled and that is no longer as much of a hot-button issue.  However, there is one subject that can raise blood pressure throughout the south still today -- and that is the question of the proper method by which to prepare what we call "Barbecue".   Many food writers have pointed out that south of the Mason-Dixon line that this is a noun, and not a verb.  What it refers to varies by region, but here in North Carolina it is inevitably pulled pork.

Now, I won't be going into the proper way to cook your Pork, as there are several wonderful ways in which to do that, ranging from the time-consuming and complex (but ultimately rewarding) whole-pig slow-roasting techniques that are the heart of what we call a "pig-pickin", to techniques that are more suited to a suburban kitchen, but that nevertheless provide wonderful results.

But it is instead to the subject of sauce to go with your pork that I turn my attention.  Now, my problem is that I live in Eastern North Carolina, and the barbecue afficianados here swear by a vinegar-based sauce that to be honest, I just can't stand.   It may be just where I grew up, but to me, barbecue sauce ought to contain tomatoes.  So, our family has kind of cast about looking for a sauce that suits our taste buds, and still allows us to partake of our "un-official state food".   I finally found one at a site that's given us several good recipes; the about.com southern food site, edited by Diana Rattray.   The site contains a number of barbecue sauce recipe, but the one that we absolutely rave about is the sweet Memphis-style sauce that can be found here. 

We make only two small changes to the basic recipe.  We use Gulden's spicy brown mustard instead of yellow mustard, and we reduce the amount of liquid smoke by half.  The result is a dark vermillion, smoky, tangy sauce with just enough heat to keep it interesting - in my opinion a perfect companion to good pulled pork. The results (combined with the pork and returned to the crockpot to warm) are below.

Every year we make Christmas packages for friends and neighbors that contain some homemade goodies -- it's our little thank-you for being a good friend and neighbor that we hope brings a little holiday cheer and reminds people of the meaning of Christmas -- that Christ is with us. Every year we vary the packages a bit, but there are a few old standbys that we tend to repeat each year since they're so popular. One of these is our Pretzel kisses -- which are so simple that you can knock out a few hundred in just a few minutes, if you have the available cookie sheets and a little patience.

The ingredients are simple:

1 one-pound bag of miniature pretzels
2 packages of Hershey's kisses
1 bag of Christmas (red/green) M&M's

Preheat your oven to 300 degrees. Cover a cookie sheet in parchment paper and then lay out as many pretzels as it will hold. Now comes the patience. Unwrap all of the Hershey's kisses. Place one kiss in the center of each pretzel. Place the pretzels and kisses in the oven for 3 minutes (no longer!)



After removing the pretzels from the oven, work quickly to place a single M&M in the center of each kiss. Press down gently to make the chocolate fill the holes in the pretzel.



After you've covered each of the kisses, place the cookie sheet in the refrigerator for 20 minutes to let the kisses re-set. You can then bag them, box them, or just eat them!



But of course, that wasn't all we did this year. We also made Alton Brown's peanut butter fudge, Angel Whispers, and Gingerbread Spritz cookies. The gingerbread cookies turned out particularly well this year, as you can see -- now if you could only smell them!

We just spent a few days at Walt Disney World in Florida and happened (purely by accident) to be at EPCOT for the EPCOT International Food and Wine Festival. And no, this is not a horrible new product of misguided genetic engineering, it's my son in the "Bosc Pear Bear" booth from the "Pear Fair" section set up for the festival.

The good thing about the festival is that the prices for sampling lots of different food were phenomenal -- much lower than standard Disney prices, and there was a fantastic selection. The downside was that the planning of the menus selected for the "International Cities" that were part of the festival were, well...a bit odd. For instance goulash as a featured dish in the Vienna, Austria booth;  California Roll (!) as a featured dish in the Tokyo booth, and my all time favorite -- Roasted Beet salad as the top billed item in a San Francisco booth that was totally devoid of any trace of Sourdough.  Makes you wonder if these people should get out more...

I just realized when looking at my journal that it's been over a year since I posted anything. I'm not surprised -- as I once told a friend I have bits and pieces of blogs scattered all over the internet. My primary reason for shutting down was that the hosting service I was using for my pictures, Live Digital, shut down, taking all of my pictures with them. Of course, I had backups on my hard drive, but it was selecting and sorting them that was the problem. I finally found a few minutes today to start that process, so I'm working my way backwards through my old posts restoring them with new copies of the pictures, this time stored on flickr. Hopefully Yahoo! won't go bankrupt on me and will allow me to keep my pictures up for a while this time...

While I was looking through my old pictures to re-establish the blog links I came across this one that I took last year when I returned to Singapore to speak (actually keynote) at a WebSphere conference. Back in 1991 at the beginning of my career in consulting I got to spend six weeks in Singapore teaching a Smalltalk Apprentice Program. This was my first overseas trip, and it set a high bar in a number of ways; first of all, Singapore is a beautiful, modern city, with lovely tropical weather (if you get there at the right time of the year). Second, it is probably the best (if not THE best, then certainly in the top 2) place in the world to be if you're a foodie. I wasn't at the time, but the trip turned me into one.

One of the most amazing things about Singapore is that it's a melting pot, just like the United States in that its culture has been shaped by the infusion of several different waves of immigrants (in Singapore's case, Chinese, Malay, Indian and British). What has resulted is an amazing, polyglot mix of all the best food from all of those different cultures, combined in unique and astonishing ways.

This particular picture was taken at a restaurant where I and a group of my co-workers dined one night -- from the set of dishes on the table you can see that we certainly had a wonderful variety to choose from, and trust me they were all fantastic. However, the reason that I remember this night in particular, was that it allowed me to savor one of my absolute favorite foods of all time -- Chili Crab. That is the dish to the far left of the picture, slightly behind the water pitcher (sorry it's not front and center!)

In my opinion, Chili Crab is a combination of all of Singapore's varied influences together in a single dish. Its most basic ingredient, crab, displays the wealth of the tropical seas that surround this little jewel. However, it's the preparation of the crab that makes this unique.

Chili Crab starts simply, with stir-frying crab in a mixture of chilis, shallots, garlic and ginger. If you just stopped right there, it'd be good. However, it then takes off into sublime heights. You then add a tomato-based sauce that brings asian flavors (lime, soy or fish sauce, more chilis), together with that most Anglo-saxon of inventions, tomato ketchup. The result is both incredibly messy incredibly delicious.

This recipe seems to be adopted from what I consider the best available recipe for Chili Crab, the one in David Rosengarten's cookbook Taste. Either one should work -- I've made Chili Crab at home with Snow Crab and King Crab from Alaska, and it works just as well as with Dungeness or other crab. Enjoy!