Thank You George Stephen for my Greek Kabobs



Last saturday, as a brief but welcome stretch of blue sky filled in the jagged spaces under the pine limbs at the cabin, I looked down to the five sticks of Greek Kabobs sizzling over the center of the coal-heated Weber rack

and had a good feeling that they would cook well and turn out. When properly filled and placed, the coal bins – lit on this model automatically by a propane flame...no need for the liquid starter thankfully – let off a nice even steady heat, to somewhere between 350 and 400.  Because the kabobs are already cut meat, the extra surface area, plus the heat of the sticks themselves through the middle, allows for a quicker cook, just watch for signs of juice to rise up to the surface where the seasoning has been laid on generously

for only a few minutes per side, plate it, then let the kids sample quick before the heat is lost.  We know we have a good batch of meat when Julia, the tallest leanest 6th grade carnivore in town, first eyes it up, maybe wrinkles up a lower lip, but then tastes it and gradually scoots up to the edge of her seat, as though performing surgery, and doesn't let go of the utensils until the last morsel is on its way down the hatch.  These were no doubt nice cuts of meat from the Holmen Meat Locker, but it dawned on me what the right grill can do for you, too.  Our Weber, a sort of modern retro-green model, still resembles the concept of the original

hemispheres that George Stephen, welder for the Weber Brothers Metal Works outside of Chicago, invented back in 1951.  He had gotten tired of cooking meat in the old open top ancient 'brazier' style grill because ash kept flying in the food and there was too much lost heat in the process.  His company fabricated metal sphered buoys for the Coast Guard, so George decided to cut out two spheres, put them together, and before you knew it he had a product in high demand, and Weber eventually became its own business for Stephens and his family (all 12 of his children manage Weber!), and is now the premium gas and charcoal grill manufacturer in America.  Julia thanks George Stephen for my Greek Kabobs.

Disney Chronicles


Spring in Wisconsin, Memorial Day... ahh, the expectations high but the May skies very very uncooperative for all of us folks who don't mind getting out of the house here and there for a dose of sunshine.  When you can't get it today, sometimes you have to go back in time and find a sunny day or two lodged in the fresh memory banks, like April in Disney.

I see a sketch of the sun anyway back behind Jan's head in this pic – I think in Magic Kingdom – just outside of the Be Our Guest Restaurant where we sat in the castle chamber next to the Prince's glass-enclosed rose. Or here,

along the walk from Asia's Kali Rapids raft ride

to Africa at Animal Kingdom on our way to go and see the giraffes (we could just about touch this one from our Jeep seats)

and hopefully, (as we did) the statuesque broad side of a lion standing over his very life-like Serengeti Lair.

The sun was so bright at Hollywood Studio's Sci-Fi Theater Restaurant I'm surprised that Abby – unlike the other two – was able to stand letting her eyes go unprotected.

What was nice though, really, was the ease with which we could find those vast green (lower hemisphere) landscapes flush with sunshine right outside our Kadani Village resort windows (not so bright in this pic, but it was warm!).

And Minnie's Mini-Me Carly (or the other way around?) walking along main street Magic Kingdom all sun shades and bright purple ears.

What Theeee?...Olive Loaf, Pepper Rings and Tuna Fish All Over Again



Another culinary wish blog post...but what the heck, we CAN make our own rules when it comes to these posts for the simple reason that there might not be an audience for them in the waiting.  Real writers, mass audiences, means you had better produce something that is readable and sells.  What I wish is that I could do genetic taste bud tests, or maybe another way to put it, figure out a family taste bud tree.  I want to know what my ancestors loved to eat during the Civil War Period.  I want to know if Aunt Janey, when she lived in New York for that brief moment in time, before she got hauled off onto the pioneer trail and into the sandier pastures of North Dakota, found a brief hankering for ritzy food.  Maybe more specifically than all that theoretical taste bud geneology, I want to know where my Janet found her love for Olive Loaf?

We can all handle the black finger olives at T-day, no problem, understandable – a little adolescent plaything that also happens to taste pretty good.  But I want to know much much more about the appeal of bulbous pink fake meat stockpiled with halved Manzanitas (sp.? I'm not spellchecking a blog post!).  Yesterday I jogged in the rain past Holmen Meat Locker after I dropped Carly and Addie Lee off at gymnastics, saw that the store was still open, so returned after I finished my run.  I ordered some normal meat – Greek Kabobs and Country Ribs – when I saw the 'loaf' sitting in the case staring out at me

with its thirty-eight eyes.  Bye Crackey, that's right, Jan likes this stuff.  Because it was a minute from closing time, the butcher told me the meat slicer was already cleaned and he couldn't use it.  I told him I'd take the whole hunk of loaf.  What kind of a soggy, rain-drenched, desperate man would do such a thing, really?  A slice or two, ok.  But a three pound block?  I brought it home and sure enough, there was slight glee in Jan's eyes, "Ohh, I love this stuff!"  The girls, looking at the same thing: "what theee.  What is this? Does it move?  Bark?  Play fetch?"  The truth be told, the 'corn-oil' browned meat strikes a nice contrast up to those salty olives...........whatever.

Pepper Rings and Tuna Fish taste bud geneology to come...  

Those Poor Old Guinness Travellers



Some folks end up in the coolest food and beverage jobs you can imagine.  Mario Batali, the great American Italian cuisine chef, owns upwards of 20 restaurants worldwide and travels to cook and keep tabs on his far-flung kitchens.  Or Andrew Knowlton, the BA Foodist, is sent out into the culinary world to scout out what's hot and yummy on the food scene and write about it all over the pages of bon appetite magazine (his most recent article conveys some sadness that the school his kid goes to doesn't allow for pb&j sandwiches due to the possibility of peanut allergies.  Their solution: a retro pb&j night every month at the Knowlton household...) My favorite job though comes from Reading Guinness: The 250-year Quest for the Perfect Pint, by Bill Yenne.

The book tracks the history of the Guinness family dynasty and those evolving brewing techniques that created what has become the longest continuing brewing operation in the world, which now creates the most recognizable and popular single brand (draught in the can, porter in the bottle) of beer known.  By the turn of the 18th to 19th century, Arthur Guinness, Son & Company, Limited "eclipsed all others to become the largest brewing company in the world.  Annual output increased to 1.58 million barrels in 1888 and to 2.08 million in 1899.  By 1909, the volume was up to 2.77 million, and in 1914, on the eve of WWI, it stood at 3.54." Only approx. half of all of this production stayed in Ireland; the rest was shipped from St. James Gate in Dublin

around the world, including to such heavy import areas as Australia, the U.S. (Boston became an early favorite) and a bunch in Africa (Nigerians love their Guinness).  The niche jobs that came from all of these exports was the need for "travelers, men who would literally travel to places where the product was being sold to check on the quality."  In other words, a handful of beer savvy guys (J.C. Haines, an original traveler, was a brewer himself), travelled around the world sipping beers in cool pubs. Haines observed on one of his trips that "Nearly all the good class bars, cafes, epicures (grocers), and hotels keep Guinness.  I examined about 40 samples at Cairo, 25 Alexandria, 10 each Tantah and Zagazig, and 15 in Port Said, and although a few may have been a year or more in bottle...in no case did I find beer which I would think required withdrawing from the market."  

To make the job sound like it was more than sipping and traveling, they would report back with studious remarks like Arthur T. Shand's report of his 1904 travels to South Africa who said his role was "To obtain information as to the general conditions of trade; to gain knowledge of the most important of our bottlers doing business there; condition of stout after undergoing the severe climatic test, inseparable to sending the articles so far; ....as to whether we have competition; as to whether there was any trace of fraud or imitation of our trademark or label, and the prospects of our trade in the future."

The travel was no doubt rigorous to places like the south of France and the effects of those long ocean voyages through hot and cold weather took its toll, but in the case of tracking The "Black Liquid," the job must go on.

Blue-Green Mold Steak, Yum



Ree Drummond, the Pioneer Woman, starts off her blog post describing one of her top recipes of all-time, "Grilled Ribeye Steak with Onion-Blue Cheese sauce," like this:

  Good grief.

  Help me.

  Help me now.

  This was delicious.

 

For us here, off the ranch and into the burbs, normally anything that includes blue cheese isn't going to happen.  I've read about the making of blue cheese before and this next description does enough to make us all wonder how folks decided, way back, that they really wanted to eat milky spores.  Blue cheeses are those "that have had cultures of the mold Penicillium added so that the final product is spotted or veined throughout with blue, blue-gray or blue-green mold, and carries a distinct smell, either from that or various specially cultivated bacteria. Some blue cheeses are injected with spores before the curds form and others have spores mixed in with the curds after they form."  Hmmm hmmmm, yummmmmy stuff.  Yet I've also seen blue cheese sauces offered on countless menus to cover steak, sandwiches, or use as a dip.  It has to be good to some part of the taste buds.

The recipe is simple and calls for butter-sauteed onions to start, then a cup of heavy cream and a fourth cup, finally, of the crumbled blue cheese, to be melted then poured under the rare-medium steak.

Taken each as individual components, the yellow onions, the cream, or the cheese don't really offer necessarily a 'delicious' factor, but together the sweetness of the sauteed onions and the heavy cream tame down the odd zinginess of the blue cheese and just leave an unmistakable earthy taste that is so  good over a well-browned rib-eye that you might find yourself sipping a spoonful or two of it after the steak is gone.

Grilled Ribeye Steak with Onion Blue Cheese Sauce

Prep Time:

 5 Minutes

 

Cook Time:

 15 Minutes

 

Difficulty:

 Easy

 

Servings:

 2

Print Recipe

Ingredients

• 2 whole Ribeye Steaks
• 2 Tablespoons Butter
• Salt
• Pepper
• 4 Tablespoons Butter
• 1 whole Very Large Yellow Onion, Sliced
• 1 cup Heavy Cream
• 1/2 cup Crumbled Blue Cheese

Preparation Instructions

Salt and pepper both sides of the steaks. Grill in 2 tablespoons butter until medium rare.

Saute onions in 4 tablespoons butter over high heat. Cook for 5 to 7 minutes, or until dark and caramelized. Reduce heat to simmer and pour in cream. Cook for 3 to 5 minutes, or until reduced by half. Stir in blue cheese until melted. Serve steaks on generous portion of sauce.

Faint.

Fantasy Restaurant League



Some folks dig fantasy football leagues, some fantasy baseball (I'm trying it this summer myself, but am low man on the Totem Pole – and Corey Hart's still on the DL! – so nothing to cheer about just yet), but what I really want to join is a fantasy restaurant league.  Go and try a bunch of great restaurants around town, the state, the country, then keep tabs on them and see how they do with customer satisfaction of the very same menu you've tried yourself...well, an interesting idea anyway.  Next on my list comes from the back-of the mag section of Our Wisconsin, a short, state-bound publication run by a couple guys who got bored in retirement and decided to promote the 'underground-quaint' from around Wisconsin.  The section is called "The Unexpected Gourmet" and titled "For Dining That Shines, Riverstone Is a Gem."

Riverstone's located up in Eagle River, a city in Vilas County, population 1,398 and the county seat. Humble surroundings, but the chefs, both with CIA (Culinary Institute of America at Greystone, Napa CA) cooking degrees, now serve some of the best bread ("his breads are national award winners") and pasta, in the state.

When I get up there, I'd like to try:

Pot Roast of Veal with Root Vegetable Mash and Demi Glace' Slices of tender Wisconsin Provimi veal paired with an earthy blend of potato, parsnip, rutabaga, and carrot. $18.95

This great dish from a family restaurant experience that began with ice cream and frozen pizza served at their Pine Aire Campground in the 1970's. "That progressed to basket dinners in the 1980's.  By the late 19990's, it had evolved much further. Here we were, a white-tablecloth restaurant in the middle of an RV park," Ron laughs. "People who came for dinner the first time were a little wary when they approached.  There were kids on the merry-go-round...folks relaxing in lawn chairs...swimmers headed back from the lake..."  The campground was sold in 2003, and now the restaurant has evolved "thanks to executive chefs who prefer to avoid the bustle of the city and do a little fishing, hiking, and hunting in their spare time."  The Fantasy Restaurant League owner could go a long with this one.

Minestra



A good pot of Minestrone is so easy, fresh and good that the Romans – who originated the soup – called it minestra, or literally 'that which is served.'  Which meant a 'throw together' daily soup that included fillers such as faro, chickpeas, or fava beans with "onions, garlic, lard, and greens thrown in."  The recipe I had in front of me included Canadian Bacon, and one of our favorite batches of all-time comes out of Tyler Florence's "Ultimate" cookbook, called "Hunter's Minestrone," and includes tube style short rigatoni and pork sausage, among a variety of other fresh ingredients.  But the idea is this: you don't need to follow any recipe in particular, but simply start with a soup base of good chicken stock (I love this gelatin condensed chicken stock),

some extra water, a pinch of tomato paste for zing, some herbs, then start piling in whatever fresh veggies you might have on hand: carrots, green beans, celery, a diced tomato.

I tossed in chickpeas and shell pasta and the end result was a twenty-minute, hearty soup that carries that crispness that only fresh – not canned – veggies can give you.  So yummy a fifteen year old might even eat it.

Quesadilla Hiatus


After a short stint on the spring cooking D.L., it's time to pick up the spatula again and see what to slide back on the fry pan...in this case homemade breakfast quesadillas, a great little recipe found out on Ree Drummond's award winning website The Pioneer Woman (http://thepioneerwoman.com).  For any cook that loves a fully visual step-by-step approach to cooking easy, edible – and totally unfearful of butter – food, this is the best site I've ever seen.  Ree Drummond's story is that she calls herself an accidental housewife to four kids and a real Oklahoman cowboy (called The Marlboro Man).  She has captured the essence of the ranch not only in her simple yet sophisticated blog, but through her personal style of food photography.

Her entry for Breakfast Quesadillas becomes a long and colorful sequence of pics, starting with sizzling bacon, then diced up onions and peppers, multiple pics of the process of scrambling eggs (don't forget to keep the bacon chunks!), the slicing of scooped avocados, and finally the assembling above onto a well-buttered frypan, which gives that tortilla its crisp shell.  She finishes with a pic of the plating,

then the recipe itself follows with instructions.  The eggs end up giving these quesadillas great filler and the avocado texture is smooth and rich but light up against the crisp heaviness of the bacon.  A dollop of sour cream and pico de gallo, and you think you might have your very own home version of authentic Mexican sincronizada de quesos.