However, she had bought some peaches whilst in west/central mass this weekend, and had ALSO tasted some grilled peaches at the wonderful, wonderful restaurant, Hope and Olive.

So, she suggested we try grilling the peaches.

Says I, “Ok. So how do we do it?”
And she replies, “I dunno. Put them on the grill and do your grill thing”
Me: “oh. Ok. Well, maybe we just eat peaches.”

…time passes, and we eat tacos…

Me: “I suppose we could try them. Just grill them?”
Jess: “Well, I was thinking a sauce would be good…”
Me: “Such as…?”
Jess: “Well, I didn’t grab the brandy…”
Me: “Honey might be good?”
Jess: “Yeah, that could work…”

… more time..

Me: “We do have Maker’s Mark.”
Jess: “Which is?”
Me: “Bourbon.”
Jess, face lighting up: “Oh, yeah, that could work. So, I guess we throw them on the grill, and then honey and bourbon for a sauce. They had ricotta cheese at Hope and Olive. I’ve got vanilla yogurt…”
Me, starting to get excited: “Ooo, yeah that sounds really really good.”

So after the tacos, we started. We sliced the peaches in half and pitted them, and I went out and put them on the grill over medium low heat. Meanwhile, Jessica snatched up a sauce pan and began to simmer the bourban and honey, stirring all the while.

I came back into chat, and looked into the sauce, and suggested a little bit more honey, which we added. Jess came out, looked at the peaches, and told me they needed more time. I went back in, and noticed steam rising from the sauce. I suggested we be cautious, lest we boil off all the alcohol.

All told, we grilled and simmered for about 10 minutes. Give or take. I went back out to take the peaches off the grill, and Jess broke out the yogurt. Each half peach, just lightly charred, with glorious runnels where the grill grate had been, got a generous dollop of yogurt, and then the sauce was spooned out over each one.

Then we dug in. Our eyes grew wide, and I was the first to swallow my delicious morsel and speak.

Me: “HOLY CRAP WIN!” I am nothing if not eloquent when good food is involved.
Jess: “MMMMMMmmmmm!”

So yes, these were a gigantic win. Amazing.

I actually took pictures as Jess was putting the sauce on, but I managed to delete them in my infinite wisdom. (Unix side note: when using the “date” command to insert the date when moving files, do NOT forget to put a space between date and the format string, even if it line wraps. Forgetting will actually result in losing the files you were trying to move. This could be disastrous if the files are more important than pictures of delicious peaches.)

Pseudo-recipe:

4 peaches, halved and pitted
Greek vanilla yogurt. Use the real good stuff.
About 1/4-1/3 cup bourbon
Less than 1/4 cup honey. a few tablespoons.

Grill the peaches pit side down over medium low heat. Combine the honey and bourbon in a saucepan and simmer over low heat. Do both of these, simultaneously, for about 10 minutes, or until just right. Remove the peaches, pit side up, on a plate. Put a dollop of yogurt in each pit, then douse the lot with the sauce. Consume ravenously.

Ideas for variations:
Use rum instead of bourbon.
Use any other variation on creamy substance. Creme Fraiche would probably be amazing.
Hit the peaches with butter before grilling. Should give it a pie-esqueian flavor.

Sorry for the no pictures. I’ll be kicking myself for awhile.

Now, rather than actually using leftover taco meat, although that would probably be tasty too, I actually put the taco spicing (from a few weeks ago when Anne and I finally discovered how* to make your own taco seasoning) into the egg before making the omelet. I used about a half a teaspoon of taco seasoning and a half of teaspoon of salt. Although, if I do it again, I’ll use a quarter teaspoon of salt.

Overall? VERY tasty. This one was a win.

*Note: this isn’t the exact same recipe I used, for which I apologize, but I couldn’t find the one again. Anne, any help?

So, just made a “Bison and Anise” or “Bison and Fennel” stir fry for lunch. I’m calling it that because those were the two “non-standard” ingredients.

So, in the stir fry I used Bison Filet (about 8-12 ounces, not sure), Fennel (one bulb), about half of a large white onion, a green pepper, a fairly large head of broccoli, about 3 cloves of chopped garlic, and an 8 ounce box of mushrooms.

For the sauce, I used about half of a medium-small onion as the base, then added some fish sauce, some chili oil, some garlic-chili paste, about a quarter or 50 cent size piece of ginger, about 4 leftover mushrooms (figured they’d add some volume without much taste), about 4 cloves of garlic, and some soy sauce. Chop it all up, throw it in a blender, and when it’s liquid, it’s sauce.

Usual stir fry methods: do the meat first, very high heat, until it’s “almost” done, then add vegetables over pretty high heat, bigger (or too potent) first, down to smaller, then when it’s almost done, add the meat back in, spoon the sauce over it until you get the right amount (I didn’t add too much, Regina!), and then enjoy.

It was amazing. Would also be very good over rice.

Ann’s got some pictures, so if she sends me those and reminds me, I’ll add them to the post.

I was trying to use what I had around the house, which happened to be pork steaks and spinach (and other veggies, but nothing worth cooking. More salad type stuff. Which is why I had the spinach.)

For the pork, after letting it thaw all day so it was more or less at room temperature, I decided to go with my favorite, reasonably quick method of cooking: pan frying. Which, incidentally, is almost the only technique I’ve used for these things. I should branch out. I hit the steaks with canola oil and some store-purchased spice grinders: A steak one for one of the steaks, a steak one with chili pepper added for the second, and garlic/sea salt/chili pepper/pepper combo for the final one. I used the canola oil because I didn’t want the oil flavoring the steaks this time, and that was the highest smoke point oil without much flavor that I’ve been able to find at the store, thus far. Apparently, according to this random and unknowably accurate website, I should try and find some semi-refined sunflower oil or something.

Anyway, I left that to sit for awhile to draw out the juices, and played some video games.

I came back after 20-30 minutes, put a fat chunk of butter in the cast iron skillet on low-ish heat. I melted the butter all the way, and had a small pool of it consistently across the pan. I then turned up the heat, and right as the butter started browing, I put the pork in. The theory was, that I’d give it a nice crust, and then turn the heat down to finish the job. Probably would’ve worked better with a different pan and a gas stove, come to think of it.

For the spinach, I cooked it down in a mixture of olive oil, butter, and garlic from a chili garlic oil jar. It was surprisingly bland, actually. Sadly. Some salt and a little vinegar made it better, but it wasn’t special.

The pork turned out ok. It was not tender, but not tough, and the flavoring was more delicate than I’d been hoping in terms of spices. I think I need to marinate the thick pork steaks, and maybe even beat them up a bit. I need to read my alton brown again.

Anyway, not a total success, but a good meal non-the-less.

As always, if you’re not familiar with the foodsploit concept, and you’d like to be, check this out.

Now, as I noted with this weekend first foodsploit, I spent a bunch of money when I heard there was a snowstorm coming in on food, with the intention of making a bunch of stuff to tide myself and my roommates over. This time, it worked out pretty well. No one wanted to try the slinger, but alex got in on the fried rice. :-)

So, what went into the fried rice. I got long-grain brown rice, and then decided on tomatoes, snow peas, sugar peas, green beans, onions, green pepper, eggs, fresh basil, and some crushed red pepper. For the sauce, I used what was available: I had some “schezuan” (sp?) stir fry sauce, some fish oil, some sesame seed oil, some leftover (and going bad) red wine, and some thai chili-garlic paste.

First things first, got the rice going. Regina has introduced me to a way of making rice where you boil the water first, separate from the rice, and sort of saute the rice in a bit of oil (or whatever fat you like), so I went with that. Also, I added some beef broth to make it more flavorful.

That went pretty well, and while the rice was boiling down I chopped up all the vegetables and scrambled the eggs in the wok. I used a branded wok oil for that, so that I kept the flavors consistent. I think next time I would fry the eggs, totally cooking them, before slicing them up. I think the frying gives them a better texture than the scrambling does.

As for the chopping, I had two different styles for the onions, because I still had diced onions from friday’s tacos that I wanted to use up, and then I sliced the rest. That worked out well. Also, I cut the tomatoes into half-wedges about 1/2 inch thick. I wanted them to stand on their own, but still be bite sized. It worked out perfectly. Everything else was pretty straight forward.

Next, on to the sauce. I had queried Mr. Google about the best way to make thai fried rice, and he responded with this page, which I was using as a loose guide. It had you adding the sauce first, then the rice, then the other stuff, so that’s what I did. I put in the oil (sesame, this time) then the schezuan sauce, then the fish oil and chili-garlic paste, and put in a long splash of wine for finishing. I mixed it all up (and, oh! the sizzling was great), then dumped in the rice (still fairly wet, a little undercooked at this point) and started mixing.

I did the vegetables in stages…first the onions and garlic, which I wanted to be a bit softer than everything else, then the broccoli, then most of the peas and green beans, and finishing off with the tomatoes. At some point during all that, I also added in some of the crushed red pepper, just to make sure it had a good spice presence.

As soon as the tomatoes got hot, it was time to eat.

This meal was pretty much a pure win. The spiciness was prefect – balanced, added flavor, but not too much. All the vegetables still had their own flavor intact, but it was all tied together by the sauce. The rice ended up being a little underdone, still, but rice overall is something that I need to work on overall. Still, I’m very happy with this one.

Oof. I really set myself up with all these factors, didn’t I?

Food quotient: Super-high. The only thing that wasn’t food was a little bit of stuff in the sauces, and even those had mostly recognizable ingredients. There was some xanthan gum (sp?), and some kind of acid, both low on the portion list.

Cost from on hand is probably going to be medium. It was all vegetables, and most of them weren’t expensive, so you probably get away with about 10-15, and it makes enough for three, easily. Cost from scratch is significantly higher, because you have to buy all that saucing and oil. Fortunately, on this one, I already had the sauces and oils on hand. I do wish we’d had soy sauce. I can’t believe we didn’t.

Cleanup factor was medium-high. I made it worse by putting all my veggies into separate bowls, but that makes it so much easier to get your timing right that it’s worth it. Here’s the obligatory “clean kitchen” picture.

I didn’t empty the dish rack, this time. :-)

First things first. If you’re not sure what the hell a foodsploit is, check this out. It should clear it all up.

So, today’s foodsploit is a slinger. The slinger is a St. Louis original that sounds horrific and tastes amazing. Now, if you really want to learn about a slinger, and do it right, you’ve got to go to the Eat-Rite Diner in St. Louis in the wee hours of the morning. Being drunk is optional, but recommended by the true connoisseurs. There, you will be served a steaming morass of “food” that will likely turn your stomach and give you pause…that is until you actually try it. The flavors combine in magical ways to create something that is truly more than the sum of it’s parts. Now, at the eat-rite, you’ll also be regaled by very unfunny jokes told by a man who looks like a troll, but it ends up being a charming experience. I decided to leave out the tasteless jokes, but you’d have to make up your mind about my trollishness.

This isn’t the first time I’ve actually foodsploited the slinger, but it is the first time I took pictures, and it is the first time I can be sure I stuck to food, without using nutrients.

So what is a slinger? It is a layered concoction of mostly breakfast foods: start with two sausage patties, then two eggs (over easy is best), then hash browns or home fries, then smother it all with chili and add handfuls of onions and cheese to the top. Finish it by hitting it with hot sauce to taste.

This weekend I decided to stay in and cook, so I stopped at whole foods on Friday (thank you compressed work schedule!) and bought waaay to many groceries. The idea was to feed myself and my roommates for the weekend, but they already had plans, so I’m going to end up throwing a lot of it out. Sadly.

I bought organic yukon gold potatoes and vegetarian fed cage-free eggs for starters. Given that this was whole foods, I had a little more trouble with the chili and the sausage. For the sausage, I went with whole food’s in house pork chorizo, two links. More on that later. For the chili, I got “Cookwell and company texas two-step chili mix”, which is a 33 ounce jar of all the liquid offerings you need for chili…i.e, the sauce. The cheese ended up being a local monterey jack that I’ve already tossed the label for, and thus cannot let you know the specific type.

Now, if you were cooking for a diner, you’d have all this food more or less prepared, except for cooking the eggs, sausage and hash browns. Doing it individually, you don’t have the option. So, my plan was to get the chili going and leave it simmering on the stove stop, prep the hash-browns, then the sausage, letting both those items stay in the oven at 200 degrees to keep them warm, then do the eggs. This works out perfectly.

So, I started the chili sauce warming whilst I browned the beef, then drained it and dumped it in the chili pot to simmer. I ended up adding about a cup of water to the chili mix, figuring it would boil off in the interim and making sure that I used up all the tasty goodness in the jar.

Chili, coffee, and hash browns underway

Then, I sliced three small potatoes into sort of a very short julienne fry style, chopped a garlic clove. This went onto the stove at high heat with a couple of nice, big patties of butter, over which I ground some pepper and salt. I mostly left this alone to cook while I prepped coffee and grated cheese. I turned it every now and again, but the idea was to get the nice brown crustyness on the outside, while still have it tender on the inside.

Now, ideally, you should have sausage patties. Buy the sausage in a roll, slice it thin and cook as a patty. Whole Foods didn’t give me that option, so I decided to try slicing the links longwise to create something patty-esque. It worked out pretty well, I think, but I do recommend complete removing the casing if you do this, though, because it definitely gets in the way.

Sausage patties...a hack.

Finally, eggs over easy. Cooked ‘em in butter. Olive oil works also, but I really don’t think the olive oil flavor goes with this particular dish.

All ready to load the plate

So there’s the layout. From here, I loaded up and ate.

all ready to eat

Overall, it was delicious. A few minor caveates, though. The chorizo was basically ground pork with all the flavor drained out. To make matters worse, it had a lot of bone left in it, which kind put a damper on the whole meal.

Note to whole foods: when there is this much bone left in two sausage links, it’s too much.

way to much bone

If (when) I do it again, I’ll make sure to make more potatoes. Three of the 3 inch potatoes was not enough for a proper slinger. Again, I would also remove the casings from the sausage because it was too much of a pain to eat.

Last but not least, factors.

My food quotient on this one was very high. The chili had a single non-food ingredient, calcium chloride. I didn’t actually check the hot sauce (which was trader joe’s chili sauce and is delicious, by the way), but I don’t really think sauces of the “sprinkle some on top” variety count. At least I’m not counting it, and this is my post-series, so there. :-D

This particular dish has a fairly low “cost from on hand”…I would count eggs, onions, chili, cheese, hot sauce, and potatoes as being fairly likely to be stocked by people who cook regularly. Maybe not the chili. The sausage seems like a “buy it each time” factor, and for one person, this should only be a dollar or two right then.

The buy it all price is probably a bit higher…around 10-13 bucks, maybe? Of course, you’ll have a fair bit of left-over raw material, like the eggs, so if you actually get around to cooking it up, that reduces your per-meal cost.

The cleanup factor for this ended up being pretty high. I think it’s fairly safe to say that anything you have to do in stages, and have a number of separate items come together right at the end is going to create a high cleanup load for the amount of food that you get, and this is no exception. I reused the frying pan for everything, so that helped, but then I had to get a oven sheet dirty to keep the sausage and hash browns hot. Still, I was in a cooking and cleaning mood, so I did do a complete “pristine state” clean of the kitchen.

I even swept and took the trash out!

The dish rack is even clear

Time, overall, was pretty long. Between multiple individual preps and then the cleanup time, this took about two hours, start to finish, including eating.

Overall, the slingers are a fun meal to cook. It’s better if you can get someone to share it with you though, and that’s kinda hard because people won’t give this delicious mish-mash of “unhealthy” foods a chance.