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Summer’s pretty much over and Autumn is getting a foothold as the trees are beginning to turn and we’re headed toward cooler weather and eventually, Winter. However, just because the weather is cooling off doesn’t mean you can’t get your taste buds to think they’re in the heat of vegas. All you need is something like this Cajun style barbecue sauce to crank the heat up on almost anything you can grill.
Finely chop up 3 cups of onion, a green bell pepper, and 6 cloves of garlic. Then put them into a good size pot and add to that, a quarter cup of honey, 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, a tablespoon of salt, a half cup of dried parsley (chopped), 4 tablespoons of Lea & Perrins, a cup of dry white wine, 3 tablespoons of vinegar, a tablespoon of liquid smoke, 2 cups of ketchup, a half teaspoon of dried mint and 2 tablespoons of Louisiana hot sauce.
Bring this to a boil and then turn the heat down low and then cover it. Simmer on low heat for three to five hours.
When it’s done you’ve got a pot of barbecue sauce that’ll wake up the summer in any thing you use it on regardless of the time of year.
Technorati Tags: barbecue sauce, spicy, recipe, hot, cajun style
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Posted on 11th October 2008
Under: Odds & Ends, Recipies, Sauces | Comments Off
Salsa has been a favorite of mine for dipping assorted chips and Cheetos for a long time. I used to prefer the hotter stuff but now I usually stick with the milder kinds. This recipe may not LOOK like it’s all that hot, but be warned that habaneros are the hottest peppers going. Serve this to somebody that can’t tolerate *HOT* salsa and they might just be on the phone to a really tough crowd of Chicago personal injury lawyers as soon as they can get the fire out of their mouth. On the other hand, if somebody likes salsa with a kick, this is the stuff for them.
Cut some tomatoes into quarters and fill a blender with them (depending on your blender it should take four or so). Run The blender at it’s lowest setting until it’s reduced to smallish chunks.
Add a couple cloves of chopped garlic, a quarter of a yellow onion coarse chopped, three tablespoons of lime juice, a teaspoon of cumin, a cup of chopped cilantro, six whole jalapeno peppers, six whole habaneros peppers and salt to taste.
Run the blender again at it’s lowest speed until there’s no large pieces left
The salsa will be as hot as it’s going to get right after it’s made. It’ll cool down some as it sets however it will remain pretty hot no matter what.
Technorati Tags: jalapenos, peppers, spicy, salsa, habaneros, hot, recipe
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Posted on 21st July 2008
Under: Odds & Ends, Recipies, Sauces, Snacks | Comments Off
One of the great things about Spaghetti Sauce is that there’s really no carved in stone way to make it. Everybody ends up with their version of sauce that suits their tastes and the ingredients they have available. For at least a year or two now we’ve had one primary way of making the sauce when we want to have spaghetti. Once in a while though, everybody discovers that they’re out of something that they always use in a particular recipe and that’s when they either decide to do something else or make some experimental changes to the old recipe.
That’s pretty much what happened to us this time. We’re also blessed that it turned out as good as it did because I “fowled” something up and there was a few moments when we didn’t know if it was going to work out ok. Thankfully it turned out pretty good, though I’m not going to run out just yet and order a truckload of promotional pens or aprons or anything else just yet. My head’s already big enough as it is. Isn’t it nice that it gets deflated every once in a while by a near-disaster? Ok, it’s not exactly “nice” that near disasters happen but since they do, the least we can do is benefit from them.
In this particular case we had talked about another variation on the sauce recipe that we were going to do sometime soon, and the variation we were going to use this time. I managed to mess things up by including a pound of ground turkey in this batch that was supposed to be saved for the next time. Here’s the recipe that we ended up with.
It’s called “kitchen sink” because you pretty much put everything into it but the kitchen sink. The idea is to use whatever ingredients you have available. We started with some frozen grilled chicken breast patties along with a frozen “Pecan Chicken” (chicken breast with a pecan breading). The original plan was to get them cooked up and then use the food processor to chop it up into small bits and use it as the meat in our sauce. I made the mistake of not only doing that, but including the ground turkey as well.
As the chopped meat heats up in a skillet coated in olive oil I chopped up an onion and added that to the meat along with four heaping teaspoons of minced garlic. At one or two green bell peppers and three or four stalks of celery chopped up into the meat as well if you have them.
When this mixture is heated through it’s time to add a couple 10oz cans of diced tomatoes and two 29oz cans of spaghetti sauce. After you pour the sauce from the cans, use just a bit less than half a can of water to rinse the last bit of sauce out of both cans and add that to the pan. If available, add some Italian seasoning or pizza seasoning.
Stir everything together and let it just start to boil and turn the heat down to low and cover it. Let it simmer like this for two or three hours, stirring every 20 or 30 minutes. If you have it, another great addition to this is spinach. Take about six to nine ounces of spinach, chop it fine and stir it into the sauce. It’ll give the sauce more body and flavor, as well as the extra nutrition of having some “greens” added.
Once it was added to the spaghetti, we had enough for supper tonight and put away enough leftovers for two more meals.
Technorati Tags: pecan chicken, spaghetti sauce, kitchen sink, grilled chicken, recipe, pasta sauce, foul up
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Posted on 18th July 2008
Under: Dinner, Food Prep, From The Cook, Main dishes, Odds & Ends, Recipies, Sauces, pasta | Comments Off
I’ve had a problem lately with tomato sauces, specifically the sauce didn’t want to sauce stick to the pasta, resulting in the pasta basically laying there in an almost “sauce soup” kinda thing. It would simply come right off of the pasta as you picked it up.
So I spent a bunch of time looking around the net trying to find ways to get it to cooperate. Here’s the results of what I found out.
The first tip was to use tomato paste to thicken the sauce.
A common tip was to use a bit of corn starch. Mix it with a little water and then stir it into the sauce.
Another common tip was to cook the sauce “gently” on a low heat for a long long time. The moisture evaporates as it cooks and the sauce is reduced to a concentrated and thicker form.
One that I liked was to add some chopped up dehydrated tomatoes to soak up moisture as the sauce cooks.
For cheese lovers, a little grated Parmesan and a little flour (preferably semolena if you have it) will thicken the sauce.
When cooking the noodles, make sure not to overcook them. They should be “al dente”, firm to the tooth.
Finally, another popular bit of advice was to never rinse the noodles after boiling and draining them because doing so washes away the starch that normally helps the sauce to stick to the noodles. Instead, when the noodles are done, drain them and allow them to sit draining in the colander for several minutes to make sure all of the water is drained away.
Technorati Tags: sauce, sauce tips, cooking tips, stick to pasta, pasta, pasta tips
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Posted on 3rd July 2008
Under: Food Info, From The Cook, Quick Tips, Sauces, kitchen talk, pasta | Comments Off
Tomato sauce and by extension pasta sauce, pizza sauce and many others that are based on a tomato sauce. They’re all great, however there is one drawback for some people. The Tomato is basically an acidic plant and sauces maded from it are going to be acidic. While this isn’t a problem for most people, there’s plenty of people that have indigestion or Acid Reflux that’s aggravated enough by the acid content to seriously cut into their enjoyment of the meal.
I spent a bunch of time over the last several days searching out ways in which to cut the acid and learned a few things. A few of which will help.
The first thing I found was a suggestion to add a couple teaspoons of sugar to the sauce as it cooks down. This is one that I’ve tried recently and regretted doing so. Sugar MIGHT cut acid a little but mostly what it does is add sweetness to the taste and a sweet pasta sauce is not something I ever want to make again. I honestly don’t think that sugar actually gets rid of any acid, it just tries to mask it with the sweet taste. Not good in a tomato sauce.
Another suggestion was sodium bicarbonate, also known as baking soda. When the sauce is near the end of the cooking process and most of the juices are gone, add a VERY little bit, Just enough to fit on the point of a steak knife. Stir it into the sauce. You’ll see a lot of small white bubbles all over. They are caused by a chemical reaction that actually nutralizes some of the acid in the sauce. When the bubbles subside taste the sauce to check both for acidity and any change to the taste. If you need to add a bit more baking soda you can but caution is the word of the day. Best to do this in very small steps because once you add it in you can’t take any of it back out.
The third idea is one that as a cheese lover I kinda like. Add grated cheese. Parmesan cheese (the real stuff, Parmigiano-Reggiano) or a little Pecorino (a very strong cheese), even ricotta cheese will reduce the acid in tomato sauces and add their own flavors. This works because cheese contains calcium which has a chemical reaction with the acid that nutralizes some of it.
A suggestion I read somewhere on discusscooking.com was to add a whole potato to the sauce while cooking it and remove before serving. I’m not sure how this would work but it’s probably got something to do with the starches in the potato. Another comment on that site suggested adding a carrot to the sauce. Someone else suggested adding a bit of vinegar, though I can’t see how vinegar which is more acidic would help cut acid from tomato sauce
Technorati Tags: tomato sauce, baking soda, tomato, calcium, reduce acid, parmigiano reggiano, nutralize acid, acid reducer, cheese, ricotta
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Posted on 26th June 2008
Under: Food Info, Food Prep, Odds & Ends, Quick Tips, Sauces | Comments Off
This is continued from the previous entry “Homemade Tomato Sauce“. I was originally going to do the whole thing as one entry but decided to break it up into two steps when it started to get kinda long.
I start the actual spaghetti sauce by taking three 1 pound chubs of ground turkey (thawed) and browning it in a large skillet with a generous handful of chopped green pepper and another of diced onion. Sprinkle some Italian seasoning on this and stir and chop with the spatula to both break up the meat and mix everything together.
In a large sauce pot start with the tomato sauce and add salt, pepper, Italian seasoning, basil a bay leaf and a handful of parsley. When the meat is thoroughly browned, this is where I normally would add two 29oz cans of spaghetti sauce, I added the tomato sauce I made earlier along with a couple cans of diced tomatoes and Italian seasoning.
Bring it to a boil stirring frequently, then cover and turn the heat down to low. Check it once in a while and give it a stir. How long you allow it to simmer is mostly up to you. It can be ready to use in 10 to 15 minutes of simmering but I prefer to let it go all afternoon (two to four hours) to allow all of the flavors to blend.
Technorati Tags: recipe, spaghetti sauce, homemade spaghetti sauce, tomato paste, tomato sauce
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Posted on 20th June 2008
Under: Food Prep, Main dishes, Recipies, Sauces | Comments Off
I’ve been guilty of using canned spaghetti sauce or tomato sauce as a base to make the actual sauce that we end up using. Circumstances finally caught up with me however recently. I was all geared up to make the spaghetti sauce when I discovered that the cupboard had experienced some serious weight loss, the canned sauce that I’ve always used as a base was gone. Ditto the tomato sauce that I’ve used on occasion.
Fortunately I’ve been known to be a quick study when I need to be and after spending some time with a search engine and looking at various tomato sauce and spaghetti sauce recipes, I settled on this combination of several things I found and one or two that I’ve been doing all along.
First comes the tomato sauce which serves as the base. Since I didn’t have any fresh tomatoes I opened four cans of diced tomatoes and sent them on a merry journey in the food processor to render them into a sorta thick semi-liquid state. I did “cheat” a bit and added a 6oz can of tomato paste as well.
Then I put that in a largish saucepan with a cup of water and cooked them over a medium heat, stirring frequently until they cook down and get thicker … roughly about 45 minutes to an hour or until it’s thick and smooth.
This sauce can be put in a tightly sealed container and frozen for up to a year or so if you make a large enough batch of it.
You can also make a tomato paste by continuing to cook on a low heat, stirring frequently to keep the sauce from scorching until it thickens to a paste. This can also be frozen in sealed containers for up to a year or so.
Technorati Tags: homemade, tomato paste, recipe, homemade spaghetti sauce, tomato sauce, spaghetti sauce, sauce, homemade tomato sauce
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Posted on 20th June 2008
Under: Dinner, Food Prep, From The Cook, Main dishes, Quick Tips, Recipies, Sauces | Comments Off
Low Fat. Thats a couple of words that for a long time I’ve associated with food that’s had a big chunk of the taste taken out of it along with the fat. However this does not always have to be the case. For example, this Low-Fat Alfredo Sauce is one that I’ll wager you’d need to have it checked out by a clinical laboratory service in order to determine it’s true nature.
If all you went by was the taste, I’ve no doubt that most people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the low fat version and the traditional version.
Combine a cup and a half of Low-Fat Cottage Cheese and 3 Tablespoons of Low-Fat Milk in a blender or food processor and blend until it’s smooth.
In a 2 quart saucepan saute about half of a Red Sweet Pepper (chopped) and a minced clove of garlic in a tablespoon of margarine until it’s softened.
Then reduce the heat and add the milk mixture and about 1/8 teaspoon each of salt and pepper. Cook until it’s heated through without boiling it.
To serve: toss it with about 8 ounces of hot fettuccine or linguine that’s been cooked and drained. Sprinkle with a bit of grated parmesan cheese and maybe a bit of fresh chopped basil and you’ve got four main dish servings of Alfredo that you’ll never be able to tell it’s “low fat”
Technorati Tags: low+fat, diet, alfredo+sauce, pasta, linguine, fettuccine, recipe
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Posted on 20th April 2008
Under: Food Info, Odds & Ends, Quick Tips, Recipies, Sauces, kitchen talk | Comments Off
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