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Archive for June, 2010

Caraway and Mustard Seed Mozzarella Stuffed Pork Burgers

I think it’s pretty clear by now that I love burgers.  I make them both large and larger.  If I see a burger smaller/ thinner then the bun its on, then my heart sinks – what a tragedy!  I usually use 25% chuck, but I thought it might be fun to try a few different meats.  This time, I used pork; maybe next time, I’ll try lamb. I may also get around to ground poultry, but the low fat content of chicken/ turkey may stymie my poultry recipe.  Fat, after all, is what makes give a burger its “mouth feel.”  It also helps you get a good char when you cook it over direct heat, because the fat causes the fire to jump and lick the burger.

I used caraway seed in this recipe because it has a strong spice flavor and an anise-like smell.  I think it works decently in curries and I wanted to give this burger a more exotic flavor.  I chose mustard seed for similar reasons.  I then added a splash of minced garlic for aroma.  Finally, I topped the burgers with my Leek salad and used a nicely toasted bun.

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Leek Salad

A leek salad is something I’ve never even considered before.  Before this salad, I usually found myself at a loss when confronted with these giant  green onions.  They have a much lighter flavor than their more compact cousins, which surprisingly works amazingly well in this salad.

I first saw this recipe at a BBQ and got it third hand from a Venezuelan grandmother.  The key to this salad is slicing everything into thin pieces ~ 1/4″ wide.  The salad then ends up being much more like a slaw than a traditional salad.   The leeks, cilantro, green onions, celery, carrots and lettuce mesh amazingly well with a mayo-based balsamic vinaigrette.  Because the salad is so refreshing, I highly recommend this recipe on a hot summer day.  Just remember to make enough dressing to coat the salad!  I was a bit stingy up with dressing initially and it ended up being a tad dry.  I also used this recipe to top my Caraway Seed Pork Burgers (to come later).

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Dry rubbed BBQ chicken

I’ve been making this dry rub chicken to bring to BBQs for almost a decade now.  The recipe has gone through several variations, but I always return to a few key ingredients:  garlic, onion, black pepper and salt.  In this variation, I added a bit of Latin flavor – cayenne, cilantro and some white vinegar – but these these additions are optional. The four core ingredients work well by themselves.  I recommend playing with your own flavors too!

Chicken on the grill is always hard to cook right.  Remember to cook with the skin side down, on indirect heat with a 2-zone fire, and with the grill covered.  Finally, give the chicken some time – you won’t regret it.

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Arroz con Pollo

Arroz con pollo.  Although it translates into chicken and rice, the sum of its parts is much greater than the individual ingredients!   There are probably hundreds of ways to make this traditional Spanish/ Hispanic/ Latin dish.  I’ve found this dish on the menus of fancy restaurants and in hole in the walls or food stands on sketchy corners.  Sometimes it’s delicious, sometimes it’s merely edible.  At its heart, arroz con pollo is comfort food, and I think I have a great recipe to recommend.

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Caprese Sandwich: Pesto, Mozzarella, Basil, and Tomato over French Bread

I really enjoy a good Caprese salad.  I don’t make one too often, because I rarely have fresh mozzarella at home, but since I had some left over from my previous Salami, Pepperoncini and Mozzarella pasta, I decided to give the salad a little more substance and make it into a lunch.

The typical recipe for Caprese salad is a mixture of tomatoes, basil and mozzarella – red, green and white, the three colors of the Italian flag.  I put the combination on French Bread and added some pesto from my emergency stash.  A few minutes in the oven, and voila- a really awesome lunch!  (As a guilty pleasure, I snuck in Kettle Chips on the side).  I made the Caprese Sandwiches  open faced so I could have twice as much sandwich for the same amount of bread… I was hungry!

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Grilled Mediterranean Chicken Wrap

Its very hard not to like Mediterranean cuisine.  Chickpeas, tomatoes, feta, hummus, baba ghanoush, kebabs and tabouleh – oh my!  Aside from the health benefits that I hear from the USDA and other health organizations, Mediterranean flavors are really fantastic:  savory, tart, and sweet, all combined.  Hummus, which I’ve written about before, is great on just about everything.  Toast with hummus works just as well as a heated pita bread.

Since I’d made some hummus on a previous day, I wanted to something awesome with it.  I marinated a bit of chicken in a balsamic base, cooked it quickly over the grill, and added some onions and tomatoes to pita bread and hummus to make a delicious wrap.  If I had lettuce, I’d have added it too for some extra crunch – definitely recommended.  Even without the lettuce, this recipe worked wonderfully.  Just make sure to warm up your pita bread first so it’s nice and soft.  Since I’m impatient, I rushed it a bit, and ended up breaking my pita a bit (as you can see at the bottom of the picture above).

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Chinese Braised Ribs

This past weekend, I bought several racks of ribs in anticipation of BBQ and smoking.   After all, few things beat slow-cooked smoked ribs.  Unfortunately, my glorious plans fell through and I was stuck with ribs but no plans.   Although people claim that they can make great oven ribs, I still find it hard to go head-to-head with smoked wood and charcoal.  Why settle for second best?   Instead, I decided to take this recipe in a completely different direction: the braised rib.

If you’ve ever had a bad rack of ribs, you know that overcooked or undercooked ribs are very tough to eat.  (If you’re at a friend’s BBQ, you’re probably telling the host how great the ribs are, but stealthily reaching for the hamburger or brisket.)  The reason for this toughness is that ribs are fatty and full of connective tissue – they’re designed for a slow cooking process.  Given enough time, the heat and moisture breaks down the collagen into something amazingly delicious.  Whenever I hear the phrase “so tender the meat falls off the bone, I think of well-cooked ribs.

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Simple Tomato Sauces: Pepperoncini, Salami and Mozzarella

Here’s another great tomato sauce that is a bit more work than using a jarred Prego, but is well worth the effort.  Much like my previous effort, using basil, rosemary and bacon, this recipe calls for strong robust ingredients to counteract the acidity of tomatoes.   The key here is the spicy pepperoncini.  The pepperoncini is a pickled banana pepper.  I usually recognize it from antipasto salads or in the giant muffuletta sandwiches in NOLA (fantastic, but not for pre-sleeping consumption) .   The peppers pack a little bit of heat and really enhance the flavor of this sauce.  If anything, I probably used too few pepperoncini in this recipe, so I would recommend using more than what I include in the recipe below.  I was worried that it’d be too spicy, but it definitely wasn’t!

For the mozzarella, you can probably get away with shredded mozzarella – it’d make a more consistent pasta.  However, I really recommend fresh mozzarella balls – I love the milky, concentrated cheesy flavor.  When you’re eating your pasta, it’s kinda like playing a slot machine – it’s entertaining, and you don’t know what you’ll get, but forking some mozzarella is like hitting the jackpot!

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