Salsa - Standard

2 Large Tomatoes 

1 bunch cilantro 

3 Jalapeno 

2 "Chili Panamania" 

2 Small Purple Onion 

1 Small Chili (?) 

Salt 

White Pepper 

Cayenne Pepper

 Juice of a Lime

 Roast peppers in a cast iron pan for 10 minutes at high heat. Makes 2 tubs or 3 small jars

Fried Pork Green Thai Curry

Ingredients

• Pork Shoulder, 1/2kg, cut into bite-sized pieces
• Garlic, 8 Cloves, finely chopped
• Yellow Onion, (1) chopped into 1/4" pieces
• Ginger, Thumb-sized, finely chopped
• Green Curry Paste, 4 Heaping Tablespoons
• Can Coconut Milk
• Chicken Broth, 2 Cups
• Zucchini, (1) chopped roughly
• White mushrooms, about a dozen, chopped roughly
• Broccoli, 1/2 of a large head
• Red Bell Pepper, julienned
• Cilantro, bunch, chopped for cooking and for garnish
• Lime, 1/2 Juiced
• Soy Sauce
• Sriracha
• Salt, Pepper
• Cooking Oil
• Sesame oil

Directions

Prepare the Pork
In a medium-sized pan, on medium-high heat, put some vegetable oil and a dash or two of sesame oil until it smokes. Throw in the pork plus some salt and pepper. Brown this thoroughly and set aside.

Sauté the Savories
In another pan, sauté the onion, garlic and ginger in a bit of oil. Add a dash of sesame oil. Once the onions start to caramelize, add the green curry paste, the coconut milk and the chicken broth. Let this meld for maybe 5 minutes.

Add the Veggies
Toss in the red pepper, zucchini, mushrooms and broccoli. Let this cook, covered, for 5 minutes.

Add in Pork and Final Ingredients and Let Everything Cook Down
After the vegetables are partially cooked, add in the pork and a half-handful of chopped cilantro. Add a few dashes of soy sauce, the lime juice and a good dose of Sriracha

Let it all cook until the veggies are tender.

Serve over rice<sup>*

*</sup> - Instead of regular white rice, we made rice using chicken broth. Next-level taste!

Webdood Kale Chips

Kale Chips

Super Crunchy!

These Kale chips are easy to make and are guaranteed to satisfy when you want something crunchy.

Per Baking Sheet:

• Approximately 1 bunch kale leaves (sizes vary substantially)
• 1/2 TBSP Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 1.5 TBSP Nutritional Yeast (this is the secret ingredient IMO
• 1 TSP Garlic Powder
• 3/4 TSP Chili Powder
• 1/2 TSP Onion Powder
• 1/2 TSP Smoked Paprika
• 1/4 TSP Fine-Grained Sea Salt
• 1/8 TSP Cayenne Pepper

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 300 degrees
• Use a large, rimmed cookie sheet. Line with foil if you care but it's not messy.
• Remove the leaves from the stems by cutting vertically along the stems. (Think whittling)
• Make sure the leaves are dry (I suggest NOT to wash them). Pat dry with towel if need be.
• Add Kale leaves into a large bowl
• Massage in the oil until all of the nooks and crannies are coated with oil
• Combine all of the spices into a separate bowl and mix thoroughly
• Sprinkle on the spices and toss to combine
• Spread out the kale onto the cookie sheet making sure to only have one layer and to not overcrowd
• Bake for 10-12 minutes
• Pull the cookie sheet out of the oven and move the kale from the center to the outside. All soggy leaves go to the outside.
• Put back in the oven for AT LEAST 15 more minutes
• Cool the kale on the sheet for at least 5 minutes afterwards
• Once cooled, the crunchy kale stores nicely in a gallon ziplock for a few weeks

This is about two bunches worth

Smoked Rib Pie

Smoked Rib Pie

This is a quick riff on Shepherd's Pie.

Following my recipe to make amazing BBQ Spareribs, I found myself in the heretofore unheard of place of having extra (!!) ribs on hand.

Living down the street from an Irish Pub got me to thinking about Shepherd's Pie, so I thought "why not use the meat from those ribs as a base and make my own pie."


Ingredients:
Rib Meat
Frozen Peas and Carrots
Instant Mashed Potatoes (milk, salt, butter, water, dried potatoes)
Shredded Cheese
Freshly ground pepper.

Heat your oven to 375 degrees.

Take a bunch of ribs (maybe 20) and cut the meat off. Chop into small (1/4") pieces.
Put the meat into an iron pan (something you can put in the oven later) and sear the meat until it has a nice, almost crunchy, crust. Set aside.

In another pot, boil the frozen peas and carrots per instructions. Drain.

In another pot, make up a batch of instant mashed potatoes (I think a serving for 6-8 will suffice).

Once the meat has been seared, the peas and carrots cooked and the mashed potatoes done, mix up the peas and carrots into the rib meat mixture.

Onto the top of that, pour the mashed potatoes.  Spread so as to cover evenly.
Add a generous bunch of fresh cracked black pepper.

Place contents in the oven for 20 minutes -- this will meld the flavours.

At 20 minutes, pull out and sprinkle a light layer of shredded cheese on top.

Set your oven to broil, put everything back in and watch it until it browns slightly on top (a couple of minutes will do).

Pull the concoction out and let it rest for five minutes or so.

This recipe is so good, you could start a restaurant.

shannon

Sensational Shark Steaks

This recipe works equally well for any fish, but is especially good for shark as that meat is pretty firm in general and can stand up to a lengthy cooking time.  I would think it would be especially good with catfish too.

Ingredients

• 3-4 shark steaks
• 1 TBSP Garlic Salt
• 1 TBSP Onion Powder
• 1 TBSP Thyme
• 1 TBSP Ground Pepper
• 1/2 TBSP Chili Powder
• 1/8 cup Worcestershire Sauce
• 1/8 cup soy sauce

Be sure to skin your shark.  This can be somewhat labor intensive as the skin is strongly bound to the meat itself.  

Similar to how you skin a catfish, you can eventually remove the skin by pulling and stretching the skin until it separates from the flesh.  You may need to help it along a bit by using a sharp knife to split off the connective tissue at key points but, with a little patience, you will eventually have a clean slab of firm shark meat to work with.

In a bowl, mix all of the other ingredients until you have a pretty think paste.

Put the shark steaks in a glass baking vessel, paint the paste on both sides of the shark steaks, cover and put them back in the refrigerator.

We want the shark to marinate in our rub for at least a couple of hours.

In a 325 degree oven, cook the fish for 40 minutes, flipping them over at 20 minutes.

I have eaten a lot of fish in my life and I can tell you that shark, following this recipe, will be some of the tastiest fish you will ever have.  Sort of reminiscent of Jamaican Jerk.

A little nugget of heaven

Shannon Norrell

WebDood CrawFish Pie

CRAWFISH PIE Recipe

1 Stick Butter

Saute Onion, Bell Pepper, 4 stalks celery

Add one can of cream of mushroom soup

2lbs crawfish meat

1/2lb grated cheddar cheese

1 can evaporated milk

1 tbsp seafood seasoning (salt, cayenne, red pepper, garlic powder, onion powder)

2 caps full of liquid crab boil

cornstarch to thicken (approx 1/4 cup)

Pour into 2 pie crusts, pinch together top and bottom 

Bake 400 degree oven until brown

Steps:

Saute 1 stick butter, Onion, Bell Pepper, 4 stalks celery

Add 2lbs crawfish meat

1/2lb grated cheddar cheese

1 can evaporated milk

1 tbsp seafood seasoning (salt, cayenne, red pepper, garlic powder, onion powder)

2 caps full of liquid crab boil

Thicken with Cornstarch (approx 1/4 cup)

Pour into 2 pie crusts, pinch together top and bottom 

Bake 400 degree oven until brown

Looks a lot like Chicken Pot Pie - only WAY more delicious!

Badass Brisket

Badass Brisket

Oh my god, my dad and I just made the most fantastic brisket ever!

Ingredients

• One untrimmed brisket
• Yellow "French's" mustard
• Brown Sugar
• Agave nectar
• Dry Rub
• 4 cups Pecan Wood Chips, soaked in Apple Juice
• Roll of heavy duty aluminum foil

The first thing you notice about an untrimmed brisket is that it a ton of fat on it. Don't be afraid of the fat as we will be trimming a lot of it off; but the fat that we leave on is useful to make the meat moist and delicious as it slow cooks in our smoker. You can always cut off excess fat when you eat the brisket, but for now we need some of it for the magic to happen.

Trim your brisket
This takes a fair amount of time but the end-goal is to remove all of the fat on the top side of the brisket and thin down the fat cap down to about 1/4" in depth.
Here is a pretty useful video about how to trim a brisket

Rub your brisket
Once you are all trimmed, put your brisket on a cookie sheet and liberally coat it with yellow mustard.
Next, dust it with your dry rub everywhere you can see meat (there's not much point in dry rubbing the fat cap).  You don't need to press down on the dry rub or you will end up using too much and the meat can be overly salty.  Here is my dry rub recipe.

Next, coat both sides with brown sugar.  It's OK to press this down as otherwise it will fall off.  I ended up using about three or four cups of brown sugar to coat our brisket.

Smoke your brisket
After your done with the rubbing, go start up your smoker and set it to 230°. The amount of time it takes to get up to temperature will help to marinate the brisket a bit and those flavorings have some time to soak in a bit (for even better results, you could let it marinate overnight).
Once the smoker gets up to temperature, put the brisket on the top shelf of your smoker with the fat cap up (this is important so that the fat renders down into the meat from above).

Put as many of the wet wood chips as your tray can accept (mine takes about two cups). Be sure to fill up your water tray (or add a vessel with water in it in your smoker). This evaporation of water also helps to keep the meat nice and moist.
Now we are going to smoke our meat until it reaches an internal temperature of about 145°. This will take a varying amount of time, depending on the thickness of the meat. It is pretty useful to use a remote thermometer that will tell you the meat's internal temperature without having to open the smoker to use a manual probe inasmuch as every time you open the door you lose all of the smoke and heat in the smoker. Insert the probe into the thickest part of the meat (obviously).

Keep an eye on your smoke. If it stops, go add some more wood chips. We went through about four cups

When the internal temperature reaches 120%, it's probably time to start heating your oven for the last step. Set your oven to 250°

Wrap and Coat in Agave
When the internal temperature reaches 145%, the brisket is at a point where smoke will no longer permeate it.
Pull off two big sheets of heavy duty aluminum foil. Squirt a liberal amount of agave nectar onto the aluminum foil where you will be setting your brisket. Pull the brisket out and lay it onto the agave nectar layer, fat cap down. Now, squirt a liberal amount of agave nectar all over the brisket. I used about 1/2 of a squirt bottle on ours. Dust it with a bit more dry rub, although using a bit less than the initial application.

Slow cook your brisket in the oven
Close up the foil tightly and put the brisket into the oven for about three hours.

Let it Rest, Slice and Enjoy
You can test the state of your brisket after about two hours. Depending on the thickness, this last step can take from between two and four hours. You want the meat to basically fall apart when you pinch some.
Once done, open up the foil, leaving the meat sitting in what should be a bunch of juice/gravy that you will retain.
When you cut the brisket, be sure to cut across the grain or the slices will not hold up.
For leftovers, store the brisket with the juices surrounding it in a glass container. It's even better the next day.
Enjoy!

webdood