Monday, November 11, 2013

Recipe-Apple Barbecue Marinade for Pork

I made this up in the middle of Wal Mart last night in my head.  It came out amazing, so I decided to share it.  I'm gonna write it as I made it, and include the recipe for the side dish I made, too.

1 1/2 lbs Boneless Pork Ribs
1 Cup Melted Butter
1 Cup of your favorite barbecue sauce
1/2 Cup wine (I used Cabernet, but you can easily choose a sweeter or dryer wine depending on your tastes)
1/4 Cup Chopped Sweet Onions
1 Tablespoon Minced Garlic
1 Quarter of a peeled and cored red delicious apple, finely minced.  The finer you can mince it, the better it will be.
1 Tablespoon White Sugar
1 Tablespoon Brown Sugar


Mix the Butter, Barbecue sauce and wine in a medium mixing bowl and whisk vigorously together.  Whisk in both sugars until smooth.  add the onion, garlic, and apple.  Place Ribs in a gallon size Ziploc bag and pour in the marinade, reserving about a half cup or more for basting and topping.  Place in the refrigerator for a minimum of an hour.  Take out and cook your favorite way (I broiled, but baking and grilling would work very well too). Once the ribs are cooked through, plate them and top them with the sauce that you reserved earlier. 

And what goes better with barbecue ribs than a nice home made mac and cheese??

3 Cups Elbow Macaroni
12 Cups water
3 Tablespoons butter
3 Tablespoons flour
1 Cup Milk
1 Cup Shredded Sharp Cheddar Cheese
1/2 Teaspoon Mustard Powder
1/2 Teaspoon Onion Powder

In a Large pot, boil water, and salt water a small amount to flavor the noodles.  Add the macaroni and boil 8-10 minutes until al dente.  Drain and return to pot

In a separate, very small pot, melt the butter.  Remove from heat and add flour and mix.  Add milk and whisk together.  Add Mustard and Onion Powder and whisk in. Return to heat and cook until the solution just starts to thicken, whisking frequently.  Remove from heat, and whisk in the cheese.  Continue stirring until the mixture is smooth.  Pour this over the noodles and mix well with a wooden spoon.  Pour the cheesy noodles into a cake pan and cover.  Bake at 400 degrees F for about 10 minutes, just enough for the cheese to start cooking into the noodles.  Remove from the oven and top with more shredded cheese.  Serve and enjoy.

Serve this up with some nice biscuits and your favorite vegetable and you have a nice southern comfort meal.  Corn works really well with the theme. 

Friday, October 11, 2013

Pizza Casserole

3 cups Rotini Pasta (white or whole wheat)
12 oz Can Red Pasta Sauce of your choice
1/4 cup Diced Onions
1/4 cup Diced Green and Red Peppers, Mixed
1/2 lb Raw Italian Sausage (mild or spicy, depending on your tastes)
1 cup Shredded Mozzarella Cheese

Boil water and cook pasta to al dente texture.  Drain, do not rinse, and pour into a 9x13 cake pan.  Cover noodles with sauce.  Sprinkle onions and peppers over the sauce. Break Sausage into very small chunks and spread evenly over mixture.  Spread Cheese over mixture.  Cover and bake 15-30 minutes at 400 Degrees Fahrenheit, or until Cheese is all melted and sausage is cooked all the way through.

This very simple casserole is great warm and, like pizza, is even better reheated the next day.  Great with some breadsticks or garlic bread.  One of the greatest things about Pizza Casserole is that, also like pizza, you aren't limited to the ingredients listed in the recipe.  This is just how I like to eat it, but you can just as easily throw in Mushrooms, Black Olives, Pineapple, Pepperoni, Canadian Bacon, Chunk Chicken, Bacon, or anything else you like on your regular pizza.  It goes together really quick at the last minute and I have no problem getting five huge servings out of it, so it will easily feed the whole family, too. 

Monday, October 7, 2013

Banana Salsa

This is a great recipe for everything.  I found this as a garnish for a fish entree, but I quickly discovered it goes great on chips and pretzels, too.  Any place you can use salsa you can use banana salsa

2 Medium Chopped Bananas
1/2 cup Green Pepper
1/2 cup Red Pepper
3 chopped Green Onions
2 tablespoons Brown Sugar
3 tablespoons Lime Juice
1 tablespoon Softened or Melted butter
1/4 teaspoon Salt
1/4 teaspoon Black Pepper
1 Small Seeded and Finely Chopped Jalepeno Pepper

Put it all in the blender or food processor and blend it until it's uniform.  The recipe I found said to chill it for 2 hours before serving, but I promise you that it will be better if you leave it overnight

This is the recipe it came with

Potato Crusted Grouper

1 lb Snapper, Grouper, or Tilapia fillets
1 1/2 cups Crushed Potato Chips
1/4 Cup Parmesan
1 Teaspoon Ground Thyme (this will make your house smell great while it's baking)
1/4 cup Milk of Choice
The Banana Salsa you made yesterday

Combine the chips, parmesan, and thyme.  Dip the fish in the milk, then dredge it in the chip mixture.  Bake for 10 minutes at 400 degrees Farenheit or until the fish is completely opaque, white, and flakes in the middle.  

  • 2 Medium chopped ripe bananas
  • ½ Cup chopped green bell pepper
  • ½ Cup chopped red bell pepper
  • 3 Green chopped onions
  • 1 Tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro
  • 2 Tablespoons brown sugar
  • 3 Tablespoons fresh lime juice
  • 1 Tablespoon cooking oil
  • ¼ Teaspoon salt
  • ¼ Teaspoon black pepper
  • 1 Small jalapeno seeded and finely chopped
- See more at: http://www.painlesscooking.com/entree-recipes.html#sthash.BTLOXTVS.dpuf
  • 2 Medium chopped ripe bananas
  • ½ Cup chopped green bell pepper
  • ½ Cup chopped red bell pepper
  • 3 Green chopped onions
  • 1 Tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro
  • 2 Tablespoons brown sugar
  • 3 Tablespoons fresh lime juice
  • 1 Tablespoon cooking oil
  • ¼ Teaspoon salt
  • ¼ Teaspoon black pepper
  • 1 Small jalapeno seeded and finely chopped
- See more at: http://www.painlesscooking.com/entree-recipes.html#sthash.BTLOXTVS.dpuf

A Chef's Prayer

It's been quite a while since I have written to this because I have had so much to say on my other blog, but as I ease back into this, I felt like starting with a prayer I wrote about the business I want to go into.  I'll be following with three recipes.

A Chef's Prayer
Dear Father. Please guide my hands to make sure all of my food tastes great and is wholesome. Grant me the wisdom to know that food and money are only a small part of my business. May I always put the basic needs of my employees before personal gain, but let them also know that I must profit in order for me to help them. Let my food be used to bring family and friends closer together, and my establishment be a favorite for dates. And if it is your will, may it never be used for breakups or family fights. Also, let me stay stable enough that I can give freely for benefits and charities when the call comes up.

Finally, and as always bless all the food and the people that cook it, serve it, and clean the dishes.

Amen

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Ingredient Review - Whole Wheat Pasta

Pasta is a staple ingredient to most diets around the world.  It's a very simple, very versatile item that can go into anything from main dishes to soups to desserts to snacks. It's a great provider of energy, and it's very easy to digest.  However, these great points to it can make it easy to overdo it on pasta.  The excess energy contributes to the obesity of America.  But there are healthier options to help make this less of a problem.  When I went on my big diet, one of my changes was switching from normal white pasta into whole wheat pasta. 

Whole wheat pasta is healthier than white pasta for a couple reasons.  The biggest one being the fact that the flour that the pasta maker uses isn't artificially bleached.  The bleaching process to turn ground wheat flour into the white flour that most of us are very familiar with takes with it a lot of the minerals and vitamins that are in the wheat. Wheat pasta is also very high in fiber, which is an indigestible carbohydrate.  This means that you have the mass in the pasta from the dietary fiber, but the calories are not available to use by your body, as it cannot break that part of the mass down.  It's a great way to fill you up without putting on the excess weight. 

One of the great things about wheat pasta is that it has quite a variety, maybe more so than eating white pasta.  Different companies have provided different ways of making it.  My personal favorite is Racconto's 8 grain pasta.  In addition to the fiber it is packed with vitamins and minerals that just aren't there in white pasta.  It also doesn't taste much different than it's bleached counterpart, so you can cook it right into your favorite dish and enjoy it just the same as you would have enjoyed your white pastas.  A nice plate of 8 grain rigatoni, a light layer of tequila butter sauce, and some margarita shrimp and some simmered broccoli florets, and you have a healthy meal fit for a king.  So next time you're in the pasta aisle, give it a try.  Make it for the family, and don't tell them.  I guarantee they go back for seconds, and don't even know the difference.

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Restaurant Review - Ron's Place.

It's rare that there is a hometown bar that can attract people by reputation from sometimes a hundred miles away. But we, in Kenosha, have a little treasure like that.  Ron's Place has been a staple for low key gatherings and dates for well over 40 years, providing excessive alcohol and incredible food, good lighting, and a fairly social, but private table setup. I've eaten at Ron's many MANY times, and I've been carried out of there more than once because their teas are delightfully strong.  Given my experiences, I'd like to talk a little about the food, drinks and service.

Ron's Place is a bar, therefore, it's expected that they do have bar food.  And they do have a wide assortment of it.  However, the executive chef of the establishment wasn't satisfied to just have the same thing as every other college bar.  You don't get a burger and fries at Ron's, you get a massive "5x5" cooked how you want it, with limitless variations like my personal favorite, the T-Hurst special (a 1/2 lb burger smothered in ham, cheese, and onions).  The chicken can be served as a sandwich, or a knife and fork dinner, and grilled or fried. Several steak and seafood options; such as my personal favorite, the cheese stuffed shrimp dinner; along with a rarely used kid's section, make this small town bar's menu one to rival mid level dining establishments throughout the area.  You can seriously walk in and have your meal be either fancy, or comfort food, or anything in between. 

Now with a great selection of food like that, you need to have something to wash it down with, and being a bar, the first place we look is the liquor counter.  Now the liquor is well stocked, various whiskeys, scotches, vodkas, schnapps, and tequilas, and other liquors, but the real stories are the beers and the teas.  Ron's Place is best known, Chicagoland and Greater Milwaukee over, for its 44 different flavors of Long Island Iced Tea.  The majority of its patrons are going there just for the teas.  True they are a bit fruity, but they are packed full of enough liquor to warrant a strict 3 tea limit.  Grape, berry, original, lime, and even one that tastes like a heavily spiked cherry coke are just some of the offerings.  An old girlfriend asked me about the place once, from Miller Park area in Milwaukee, and if I could take her there (as much of a lightweight as she was, I regretted it later, but she enjoyed herself).  They have promotions for drinking every different type of tea (The tour of teas) along with drinking just 50 of any type of tea you want (the custom tour), doing either will win you a T-shirt.  Along with this, they have a Tour of beers promotion, encouraging patrons to come back again and again and try all of the 28 types of beer they have available. 

Now, to top off the teas and all the great food, the service is absolutely second-to-none.  The Olive Garden may treat you like family, but Ron's Place treats you like their best friend.  On slower nights, the bartenders and cooks come out and talk to you, get to know your name, even come up with nicknames for you (one cook always calls me "Ed, Edd and Eddy").  There is always enough staff to ensure that you will never be waiting very long to get anything.  They tend to overstaff rather than understaff, but I would do that too if I knew how busy that place has the possibility of being, even on a Monday night.  Ask them anything, they will gladly bring it to you, even a big to go cup of pickles. 

All in all, this is one of the better establishments I've ever eaten in.  I would go there over and over again. If I moved away, I'd keep coming back just to go there again.  It is a wonderful cornerstone to the fair city of Kenosha, and I hope it continues to be in business for years and years to come.

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Tequila Butter Sauce - Recipe

5 tbsp Butter or Margarine (be extra careful with the butter as to not scorch it)
2 tbsp Gold Tequila
approx. 5 oz coarsely chopped white onion
2 tsp garlic salt

Melt the butter in a small saucepan over high heat until mostly melted.  Reduce heat to very low.  Add tequila and onion.  Be very careful, as the mixture will bubble and may splash back at you.  Simmer over very low heat for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Remove the onions with a small slotted spoon and discard.  Add garlic salt.  Whisk mixture one last time and serve immediately

This sauce works very well as a butter sauce for lobster, as well as pouring over your favorite pasta or vegetable.  I really like this with corn.  It makes enough sauce to lightly butter three 3/4 cup servings of rotini. 

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Margarita Shrimp - Recipe

1/3 lb thawed raw shrimp peeled, and deveined.  Tail off optional
                                          -or-
1/3 lb thawed cooked shrimp, peeled and deveined. Tail off optional
1/2 cup tequila
1/4 cup lime juice
1 tbsp fresh minced onions or 1 tsp dried minced onions
1tsp garlic salt
1 tsp old bay seasoning
2 tbsp butter or margarine, divided

Melt 1 tablespoon butter in a medium skillet.  Coat bottom of skillet with butter.  Add shrimp to skillet, along with onion, garlic salt, and old bay.  For raw shrimp...saute until shrimp are almost all opaque, don't let them start to brown.  For cooked shrimp, saute just long enough for them to be warm through, again, don't let them brown.  Once the shrimp are to their allotted level of done-ness, add the tequila and lime juice slowly, so they don't splatter from the hot butter.  Stir the mixture, cover and simmer under low heat for about 5 minutes.  Remove the lid, turn up the heat to high and cook an additional 2-5 minutes, ensuring the tequila and lime mixture stays liquid and doesn't coagulate into a sauce.  Drain the liquid.  Most of the excess seasonings will come out with the liquid.  Melt the second tablespoon of butter into the pan and coat the bottom.  Add the shrimp back to the pan.  Sautee over medium-high heat until the edges start to brown slightly.  Remove shrimp from pan and set on a paper towel to absorb the excess butter. 

Serve these in any of your favorite dishes that you would put shrimp on.....Pasta or salads with your favorite sauces or dressings, or you can use them alone as appetizers with cocktail sauce.  They will have a completely unique flavor and you'll be surprised how many people eat them alone without sauce.  They work really well on a simple plate of lightly buttered angel hair.

Enjoy

Tequila as a Culinary Tool

One of the things I've been playing around with a lot lately in my kitchen is tequila.  It started out as just something i had in the liquor cabinet to make a margarita with, and it quickly turned into my favorite go-to for dozens of recipes. 

Tequila is a distilled liquor made from the blue agave cactus.  It can only be produced legally in Mexico, and only in a couple of states, and it is generally distilled to a strength of 61-110 proof.  Tequila has a very unique and distinct flavor to it. It's very very strong and noticeable, but not so strong that it drowns out the original flavor of the food you're cooking it with if you do it right.  Obviously, if you overdo it with any sauce or seasoning, you're gonna drown out the flavor, and with something as strong as tequila, moderation is definitely the key.  This distinct, cactus based liquor is especially great in seafood, one of my favorite things to cook with it.  Saute your shrimp in a little butter and some select seasonings, add some tequila and lime juice when they are just about done, finish cooking, drain off the liquid, and you have something great to zazz up a boring plate of pasta.  Sausages are another great use of tequila.  Baste them and grill, or just saute some cut up cooked sausage, eat or add to pasta, and enjoy. 

Sauces, on the other hand, are a great use of tequila.  I'd stay away from the cheese sauces with this one, personally, but I know from experience that your favorite stir fry sauce will burst if you add just a little tequila to it.  Tomato sauces come alive with just that extra little kick that comes with a couple ounces of it, and tonight.....well tonight I'm gonna try and add a bit to my butter sauce and see what happens.  

A final note before I close.  When cooking, I definitely go for the cheap stuff.  Almost all of the alcohol will be lost in the cooking process.  What goes into my pans, honestly, generally comes from the 8 dollar special at Pick and Save.  Save your Cuervo for the margaritas you will serve your guests.  To follow this article will be a recipe for Margarita Shrimp.  Enjoy!!

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Welcome to Chef Ed's Food Corner

I'm gonna be getting this started right away.  Since I'm in culinary school, I decided to do a second blog all about food.  Be sure to like this blog on Facebook so you see the new article right as it comes out. Any suggestions of things you want to see are always welcome, and I will try to accommodate you.  This blog is not gonna be any one thing. There will be reviews of dishes I've tried and made, recipes for dishes that deserve to be shared, I'll talk about ingredients I like to use, reviews of restaurants and bars, maybe a review of a chef here and there, and my cooking styles as they develop.  You can share with anyone, I'll never be mad if I find out you spread the word around.  Please remember to read my social blog at some time too.  I'll post a link to my social blog as well as the fan page for that and the fan page for this here in my introduction

Please enjoy

Chef (to be) J. Edgar Davis

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