Chocolate: Part one of many. Seriously. It's chocolate.

I've always had a sweet tooth. When I was a kid, candy was an important source of energy. Getting my hands on it was initially a bit tough; between my lack of funds and the fact that candy retailers lay on the far side of streets I wasn't permitted to cross, I had to rely on what mom brought into the house. Lucky for me, my mom has a thing for chocolate... 

Coconut: neither coco, nor nut. Discuss.

Oh, the raspberry zinger. One of my more colorful vices. Spongecake with crème filling, soaked in raspberry sauce, rolled in shaved coconut. I'm drawn to the coconut. They're better than their chocolate and vanilla siblings by a longshot. Not great for you, but like everything ok else in moderation. (brought to you by the high fructose corn syrup people) It's too bad the local bakery thrift store sells them at savage discounts. It's hard to avoid junk foods that aren't half as delicious.

So here's the thing about coconut. It has more appealing attributes than most things found in nature, and it goes right for the strong senses most tied to memory; smell and taste. As a foodstuff, it's delicious and nutritious. An Almond Joy candy bar? German chocolate cake? Coconut shrimp? Ok, maybe not the most nutritious examples but I've got a great recipe for that last one, knocked off from Blue Crustacean* that will make your palate dance. It's not just food though. Soap, lotion, shampoo, sunblock, air freshener? All better with a hint of coconut. Coconut rum? sí, por favor. Hell, I was bummed to be informed after-the-fact that my dentist could have offered me Piña colada numbing gel instead of that dreadful cherry. Speaking of coconuts, they're not really nuts. They're actually Drupes. Think fleshy fruits with a stone, like peaches, mangoes, cherries and plumbs... not that it matters when you're devouring a zinger, standing in the garage, so you can honestly say you didn't bring junk food into the house...

Sure, coconut may have more saturated fat than you should cross paths with on your average day, but mere fat pales in comparison to the dangers of coconut when in cahoots with Gravity. Falling coconuts kill 150 people every year; 10 times the number of people killed by sharks.**

*Named changed to protect those serving overpriced food with an attitude.

**Totally baseless internet statistic. Sharks want to eat you, coconuts predictably fall toward the center of the Earth. Get out of the way.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all!

Stop back in the new year for a look at poultry.  

We'll talk turkey... about chicken. In other words, there will be fowl language.

I've got this new gun...

I thought I had written a nice review the other day. Concise and informative, or so I intended.  When I finished, I read it though and realized it had started well but morphed into a rather esoteric piece on the history of .22 pistol offerings from the big American firms over the last 70 years.  Yeah. 

A bit dry for a food blog. 

Instead here's a quick overview of the the S&W 22a pistol I recently purchased, and rimfire recreation in general. 

Iron Out the Details

I promised a closer look at cast iron, and here it is. Cast iron cookware has a lot going for it. In a word, versatility. It goes from the cooktop to oven to grill to campfire with nary a whimper. A CIS (cast iron skillet) will quickly blacken catfish as happily as it stews beans for hours. On low heat it will keep pancakes or tortillas warm. On high heat you can beautifully sear a filet mignon or tuna steak. It's low maintenance. Treated properly, a cast iron skillet will last indefinitely. As a matter of fact, as soon as I find a recipe solely comprised of shelf stable ingredients (best stored in the proverbial “cool, dry place”) I'll have the ideal dish for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. 
Stay tuned for that gem; back to heavy black pans...

Cast iron options

Cast iron is available in countless shapes. There are skillets, griddles, dutch ovens, grill pans, bakeware shaped to produce molded cornbread, deep sided chicken fryers, the list goes on. I've got six cast iron pieces, but I get the most use from my 12” Lodge, followed by the 10” skillet featured in Cast Iron Crumble. You'll find cast iron made offshore, but I suggest you buy American. The quality is better, and the cost difference is negligible. That leaves you with two choices. You can buy from Lodge, the preeminent name in American cast iron, or look around for good vintage cast iron from companies like Griswold or Wagner. You'll have to fight the collectors for old pieces. Lodge is easy to find, and the price is right.

Cooking do's and dont's

• Always preheat cast iron, it prevents sticking and allows you to sear.
• Avoid tomato sauces, acidic foods are hard on the pan's "seasoning".
• Cast iron isn't great for boiling water.  Use another pan.

Care

My frequently used cast iron hangs with the rest of my go-to pans but it's just as easily stored in the oven. After cooking, rinse with hot water, and wipe dry. Follow with a very light coat of oil and you're done.  

Recipes

Cast iron shines at breakfast whether it's in the kitchen or around the campfire. I'll use it for eggs and pancakes, but I really have a thing for parmesan crusted potatoes. They're simple and hearty. Here's the recipe. Slice two medium potatoes 1/4” thick. Preheat your CIS and add a dab of oil. Toss the potatoes in the pan and push them around to lightly coat with oil. Season with salt and fresh ground pepper. (sometimes I'll mince some onion if I have one handy.) Brown on one side then flip the slices. Cook til tender. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese and flip the slices cheese side down. 

Sausage gravy and biscuits is one of the few things me and The South agree on. Because of the flat bottom, iron skillets are well suited to making roux based gravies.  I'm convinced my gravy is good for you because it's made with skim milk; the lab results aren't back yet but I have a hunch.  I try to buy relatively local meat and produce wherever I happen to be, which led to the discovery of Purnell's “Old Folks” sausage from Louisville, Kentucky. I use their "spicy medium" and it's delicious, especially once I confirmed it's not made from old folks. 

Here's the skinny on my gravy:

Brown a pound of breakfast sausage over medium heat, chopping into smallish chunks. With the heat on, prop the pan at an angle. This allows the grease drain from the sausage and collect in the bottom of the pan where we need it. Remove the sausage to a bowl and add 2T of AP flour to the fat in the pan. With a flat whisk, create a roux over medium heat. Cook the roux until it turns the nice beige color of the walls in the psych ward. Add 2C milk and whisk thoroughly. The gravy will thicken as you near a boil. Kill the heat when your gravy reaches a simmer and add the sausage. Once the sausage is completely incorporated, season to taste with salt and pepper. Its best to do this last because the sausage brings most of the flavor; if you season before you add the meat, it will be too salty. 

My biscuit recipe comes right from the pages of the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook, so I won't reiterate it here.  Baking in cast iron is the only deviation from the book.  If you don't have a cookbook, this is your answer.  The red plad book is complete with sections on everything from cuts of meat to basics like biscuits.

That's breakfast for you.  You'll see my heavy black cookware again when we talk about stir-fry, tacos mexicanos, filet de beouf, and tikka masala.  

Like I said, cast iron is versatile.

Cast iron crumble

I love cast iron cookware. It does things no other pan can do. I've got a full rundown on cast iron coming soon, so today I offer a simple crowd pleasing fruit crumble recipe. I developed this recipe for the barbeque grill, but it works just as well in the oven. One day I was looking for dessert to bring to a backyard barbeque at a friend's place. I wanted something that could be cooked on the grill while we enjoyed our meal, as I didn't want my friends to turn on their oven in the July heat. In truth, I just threw together some basic ingredients in eyeballed proportions that I could assemble on site. It's a basic ratio; 1/1/2/1 butter/flour/sugar/oats, with a few minor but important players rounding out the cast. Everyone enjoyed my efforts, and I've continued to tweak and tinker with the recipe a dozen times since. I made an apple crumble the other day to confirm the recipe is ready for general consumption, and we weren't disappointed! Here it is.

1 can fruit pie filling   

1/2 C (1 stick) butter

1/2 C AP flour

2/3 C dark brown sugar

1/3 C white sugar

1/2 C oats

1/2 t salt

1t baking powder

1t cinnamon

1t vanilla

3t water

The method is very simple. Preheat your oven or grill to 425°F. Combine the dry goods. (flour, sugar, oats, salt, baking powder and cinnamon) Cut in the butter. Add the vanilla and water to form a coarse mixture. Lightly grease your 10” cast iron skillet and add a can of your favorite pie filling. I grease with butter; it makes for crispy crust, and nothing tastes better!  Pour the crumble mixture over the fruit, and drag a fork through to bury some of the crumble. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until golden brown. Allow to cool for at least 10 minutes, and serve! 

Common Grounds

"I never drink coffee at lunch; I find it keeps me awake for the whole afternoon."

~Ronald Reagan

Somewhere in my teens, I started to drink coffee. Probably for the same reason I started drinking beer and smoking cigarettes; to look "cool." Since then, my relationship with coffee has matured. For a while, I worked as a barista during the 90's coffee craze. I learned a bit from the experience, having prepared hundreds of gallons of espresso based beverages. For every method of making coffee at home, there is someone who will swear theirs is the best...  

A moment of clarity worth noting.

A federal judge said today the US Constitution does not grant Congress the power to require a person to purchase insurance coverage. Therefore you can't tax someone for merely existing. It's a point worth noting for it's intellectual honesty and logical thought, unfortunately two things absent from too many Judges in America. The Brian Aitken case in Jersey is an example of (among other things) faulty logic; the recent comments made by Justice Stephen Breyer of the US Supreme Court define intellectual dishonesty.

The French Toast Defense

Take the children into the other room, I've got something to say. 

Natives of the Cincinnati/Tri-State area are shitty drivers. 

I was born and raised in Michigan, but I've lived in a few different places.  I currently call Cincy home. On a good day, the natives do five-under in the fast lane, because they have a left exit in 15 miles or so. They use either the brake or the accelerator at all times, sometimes both together.  Coasting to regulate speed is a foreign concept.  Rain, nay, mist means an automatic 10 mph speed reduction.  We have sun delays in the mornings on eastbound highways because a significant portion of the population has yet to discover sunglasses.  You see, a sun delay is caused by people on the highway slowing to a crawl because they can't see well enough to proceed at the posted speed.  I've seen people driving, peeking through their fingers, as if watching a scary movie.  Unfortunately, none of this is satire or humor, merely the sort of no-BS assessment that I'm usually paid handsomely for.  Risk Management requires honest analysis of often grim situations, but that's another blog entry entirely.

Shift gears with me into the most dreaded of all road conditions, snow.  In Michigan, it's just snow, and it's been known to fall nine months out of the year.  Here in Cincinnati, it takes on a sinister persona; local radio and TV weather personalities insist on panic inducing titles like “Snowmageddon” and “The White Death” (nearly as bad as the Black Death, I'm told.)  This fear mongering from the talking heads on the airwaves leads the local populace to take ridiculous measures to prepare for the impending doom. By impending doom, I mean the 1-2” of accumulation weather.com has predicted.  A dusting of snow, so little that the wind will sweep the ground bare in most places.

I understand limiting travel in less than ideal conditions, and I thank those that do so.  Bumper cars are far more suited for the carnival than the highway.  It's the other chief preparation for potential snowfall that inspires this blog entry.  When it's going to snow in southern Ohio, everyone goes to the supermarket and buys all the milk, bread, and eggs they can. 

Not canned goods, dry goods, flashlights or batteries, but three of the most perishable groceries available. At first I was perplexed.  Was I missing something?  Surely the locals must have actionable intel, earned by inhabiting the area since birth.  One day I was sitting on the couch, (having been sent home from work early, it's going to snow!) and something occurred to me.  The snow in Cincinnati is as perishable as the provisions people purchase to ward it off.  Within a day or two of actual snowfall, it melts away, leaving only wet roads and busy auto-body shops. Yet there must be a connection, some symbiotic relationship.  As a firm believer in Occam's razor, parsimony, and simplicity, I have come to a conclusion.  The people of Cincinnati barricade themselves at home and defend themselves from wintry conditions by assembling milk, bread and eggs into the simplest of comfort foods, French Toast.  

Hence, “The French Toast Defense.”

These pretzels are making me thirsty.

I absolutely love a good soft pretzel. As a kid from the Midwest, they were a rare treat. Enjoying one meant you were already enjoying an adventure of some sort; a hockey game at the LC Walker Arena, a day at the Seaway Festival, or perhaps a trip to the zoo. Somewhere along the way, an enterprising company figured out a way to sell frozen pretzels to reheat at home. I bought them once, wondering if they were as good as the pretzel you'd spend a few bucks on at the carnival. The box suggests you just throw one in your microwave, overheat, and gum on the soggy flavorless product. Perhaps I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea. No offense to the frozen pretzel people, but you just miss the mark. I chalked the soft pretzel up to a snack best enjoyed when purchased for $3.00, from a guy who may have passed the vendor's background check, but probably hasn't washed his hands today.

I've got this old gun...

This post serves as both a peek into my safe, and a history lesson. The Model 1912 Winchester shotgun belongs to a different era, before anyone had conceived of a World War, Kool Aid, or even the humble Q-tip. The Model 12 was designed by T.C. Johnson, responsible for more than one hundred firearms related patents in his forty-nine year career with Winchester. Referred to as “The Perfect Repeater” in product literature, the M12 was introduced first in 20 gauge as an evolution of it's older 12 gauge brother, the Model 1897. The immediate popularity of the M12 lead to a 12 gauge version in 1914. Nearly 2,000,000 M12's were produced in it's fifty one year production run, ending in 1963.

Try it, You'll like it.

So here I am standing over last night's coals, wondering what to do about breakfast. The setting is picturesque upstate New York, in a campground just outside Lake Placid. I'm leading the divisional trip for the sophs, and I've got twenty two of them stirring in their tents. While the four counselors in my charge do their best to help the kids with their tents and personal belongings, I take stock of what's left of our provisions. Dinner last night consisted of dozens of hamburgers and hotdogs, as well as a sleeve of gardenburgers for the kids that claim to have become vegetarians by the ripe old age of thirteen. Gardenburgers are the primary prey of actual burgers, so you have to keep them well separated in transit. Back to reality. When your buddy is eating a hamburger, you want one too. This leaves us with a dozen-or-so Gardenburgers, a tad mushy from spending the night in a cooler of ice and water. In addition, I have a much coveted pound of real bacon, a pound of cheese, two dozen eggs, and two dozen bagels...

It's like a soft opening...

Welcome to my blog!  

Its a place now just coming to fruition, supported by many that said they would listen if I spoke to the masses. The title is a play on my love of cooking and the memoirs of Elmer Keith, one of the truly great gunwriters of the last century. I encourage you to share your comments, and spread the word if you like what you see here.