In Dog Beers We Had Only One

Ok, so we did knock back a few, but it was specifically for the scientific experiment of seeing if one could cook a seven course meal using beer in every course. Turns out one can! No need to thank us SdJ chefs for taking one for the team. I mean, someone had to.

This was the menu:

Full Sail Amber Ale Ceviche

Shit-Faced Mushroom Crostini

Triple Smoked Porter Sliders 

  On a Pretzel Bun with Smoked Gouda + Smoky Tomato Jam 

 Guinness Marinated Pork Tenderloin with Aji Sauce

Bitch Slapped Potatoes with an Herb Attitude Adjustment

Chocolate Milk Stout Infused Ice Cream

Topped with Caramel Sauce and a Pretzel Crumble

Personally I thought my Full Sail Amber Ale Ceviche was killer. I've made it about three or four times since then ~ just to be sure and yeah I'm sure....it's definitely killer. You can serve it with tortilla chips if you want, but I went with some radicchio and endive. ( Use any Amber Ale, if you don't have Full Sail available.)

I'm also sharing the Shit Faced Mushroom Crostini recipe because everyone was still talking about it at the next cooking class. I tried it with both fresh and dried mushrooms and it turns out that the fresh 'shrooms get shit-faced way classier than the dried, and no one likes a drunken asshole mushroom, so def go with the fresh. I also did a run with goat cheese, but ended up liking the Borsin cheese better. Super easy and way tasty so grab a Sam Adams Cream Stout and get those 'shrooms shammered!

Go to the "Appetizers" page  to view the recipes then crack open a cold one or seven (think dog years people, dog years!) and get to drinkin' cookin'!

All the fabby pictures are courtesy of Kitt, our official SdJ photog!

PRINT RECIPE:  Full Sale Amber Ale Ceviche

PRINT RECIPE:  Shit Faced Mushroom Crostini

Tomato Napoleon Salad with Kalamata Tapenade + Sweet Basil Vinaigrette

 

 Look at that! ↑ I mean, just look at that!!!!

The only way it could have been any better is if it were August and I had just picked those tomatoes and that basil out of my own garden, and if I had just came back from Italy, hand carrying that fresh Mozzarella, olive oil, and those Kalamata olives; and if TSA had let me pass through without a cavity search, and if this freaking winter would end so that any tomato north of the equator actually stood a snowballs chance in hell of RIPENING!

Well...never mind that. The thing is this:  Tomato Napoleon Salad with Fresh Mozzarella, Kalamata Olive Tapenade and Sweet Basil Vinaigrette  is a wonderful salad even if you live in the polar vortex, next to a twenty foot snow drift, by an ice sculpture that resembles the Big Horn Mountains. Make it now and then promise to make it again in late summer when juicy tomatoes and leafy basil are begging for it, and the creek is running, and the sun shines hot, making your tomatoes pop.
    

Sous chef Scott took a detour through Whole Foods in Fort Collins and scored those pretty yellow heirlooms just a day or two before our Mediterranean Cooking Class, so here in Hickville we were able to thumb our nose at the Polar Gods and have a slight taste of summer. Stack em three or four high if you want, making this salad go from a wintery first course to a summer entree.

Click here or on the "Soups & Salads" link at the top of this page for the recipe.


 Napoleon Salad photos courtesy of SdJ sous chef and super photographer, Kitt.

PRINT RECIPE:  Tomato Napoleon Salad

Cooking 111 ~ Eating and Drinking Our Way Through the Mediterranean

The February cooking class was "Flavors of the Mediterranean," meaning fresh, lovely produce; rich, creamy cheeses and tangy vinegar and lemons. There are a lot of countries in the Med region but we only drank ate from a few: mostly Greece, France, Italy, and Spain. ↓

I stuck to the traditional formal Italian meal, in full form, meaning we knocked back about ten courses, starting with an Aperitivo of Baked Feta and Prosecco and finishing with a Dolce of Balsamic Laced Stawberry Parfaits with Mascarpone, Lemon Gelato and Amaretti Cookie Crumble, and then five, count em, five digestivos, which I think is Italian for doing shots after dinner. 

 

Our Antipasto course was a Fig Compote, Prosciutto, and Mozzarella Panini. No recipe needed, just do it.

 Here's Brandy working the panini grill.

For our Primo I created a dish I called Pasta Limone. It was a big hit and since then I have made it a few more times and have passed it on to friends who have made it and who are now showering me with love and flowers and chocolate and pig candy.
     This recipe is super easy to make; its light and fresh and the best news it that only one bowl and one pot get dirtied in the making.

While the pasta is boiling put the olive oil, lemon juice, zest, Parmesan, spinach, and red pepper flakes in a big bowl. 

 
When the pasta is al dente toss it in the bowl with the lemon, spinach, etc, adding a bit of pasta water if needed. Garnish with some more parm, lemon zest and fresh basil and call in the troops for dinner.

Here's Lisa making Pasta Limone, and she did bring me flowers last week!

Our Secondo was a Sicilian Tuna. I love that this dish takes in so many flavors of the Med ~ lemon, garlic, anchovy, tomatoes, capers, kalamata olives, basil....The Sicilian Sauce is delicious and would be great on a white fish too, such as halibut or mahi-mahi.  I posted this recipe a couple of years ago...click on the "Seafood" tab. Scroll all the way down.

Ok, what the hell is that, ↓ I know you're probably thinking.  Well...it was the Med we were in and artichokes are abundant in the region so I was desperate for an artichoke dish. I wanted my Contorno (side dish) to be artichokes and not the steamed-drag-your-teeth-over-variety. This my dears is Artichoke Creme Brulee.

Think savory, not sweet. Think Parmesan cheese crust, not burnt sugar crust. Think this is brilliant, not she's a wackjob. It took me five six seven attempts before I was finally happy with the end result. Think creamy texture, artichoke/Parm flavors and toasty crust. Think I'm a genius!?  (The Big Guy, who doesn't like artichokes anyway, is going with wackjob, but he doesn't get to judge because even if I put chrome on an artichoke he wouldn't touch it.)

The Insalata (our 7th course) ↑ was a wonderful Tomato Napoleon Salad with Fresh Mozzarella, Kalamata Olive Tapenade and Sweet Basil Vinigrette. Scott brought me some beautiful yellow heiroom tomatoes from Whole Foods and really made this dish shine. It's almost too pretty to eat! Or maybe it's so pretty you can't help but eat it. I'll share that recipe at a later date. Promise!

We finished the night by doing shots with espresso/cappuccinos and sampling the different countries digestivos. 

     I had a great time, thanks SdJ sous chefs for coming!

Click here, or on the "Pasta" tab for the Pasta Limone recipe, and keep the flowers, chocolate and love coming!

 

 March's cooking class features BEER! Stay tuned.

PRINT RECIPE:  Baked Feta

PRINT RECIPE:  Sicilian Tuna

PRINT RECIPE:  Pasta Limone

Snake Farts: My Comfort Food

Comfort food. We all have our own idea of what it is. Mac and cheese, most likely. Maybe meat loaf. Maybe not. Chicken and Dumplins', probably. Snake Farts.  Definitely. Hands-down my comfort food of choice is snake farts!  Let me back up for a minute.

It was the 80's and smart moms were using that old parental trick called reverse psychology, to get their little darlins' to eat their veggies. Of course my little darlins' were always suspicious of me and didn't really trust me because I may have tricked them once or twice.

I know that most mothers will go to great lengths to get the kids to eat their veggies, right? Well I am not most mothers. Before you think I'm some kind of weird, dysfunctional mom, let me me tell you that I did put broccoli, zucchini, and mushrooms in front of my kids. Granted...most were served breaded and fried and draped in ranch dressing. 
     (Authors note: You gotta eat the breaded and fried stuff when you're young because someday you will grow up and turn forty and you'll crave a deep fried mushroom or some breaded cauliflower so you'll eat a few and then the next thing you know your butt looks like a double order of lumpy deep-fried broccoli. You know I'm right.)

But about my comfort food: I LOVE okra. Fried okra ~ it's my dirty little secret and I love it so much that I didn't want  to share it with the kids so I would deep fry up a batch of the stuff and then tell them that it was snake farts.  Brilliant, I know! There was no way that my little shits were going to touch MY fried okra.  I figured I'd still be silently laughing all the way to the cardiologist when I got ummmm, old. 

Well, The Know-it-all was always a pretty smart cookie. It took her only about a year before she caught on and one day tried a snake fart. Hates Everything ran screaming from the room every time I stuck a fork in a snake fart and pointed it at her. I didn't even know the kid could talk for the first ten years of her life because all she ever said was, Eeeeeewwwww!

Well one day she finally caved and tried a snake fart and guess what? Turns out she liked snake farts too and then both of them wanted MY snake farts.
     I'm not stupid. By now it was the 90's and I had read a book or two and I knew they couldn't possibly be very good for them so I kind of turned into a snake fart hoarder. I would send them out to play, fry up a batch and then hide them in the oven. When they were out of sight I'd be sneaking snake farts like a diabetic sneaks chocolate. You know its not good for you ~ it might even kill ya, but you just can't stop yourself. 

I have since passed that old age of  40 and I don't want a broccoli butt so now I resist and rarely eat snake farts. The only time(s) being when The Big Guy is dragging me by my hair, kicking and screaming to the Cracker Barrel for a 4PM dinner. I HATE the Cracker Barrel, but to reward myself for being a good daughter-in-law and going out to eat dinner at a place that doesn't serve wine, I  always place my order by saying, I'll have the okra....with a side of okra.

Today was a comfort-food-cravin'-kind of day...a cold, gray, and snowy Sunday. It was the perfect day to stay in my jammies all day, read, test some new recipes, drink cappuccinos, and eat some comfort food.
     The Big Guy came home and caught me frying up a batch of snake farts and wanted to know if I was going to make my Snakebite Sauce to go with them.  
     Do you want me to? I asked him. He did, which was kind of silly because I had no intentions of letting him have any of MY snake farts. I made the Snakebite sauce and caved in and we shared a plate of snake farts. I say "shared" because I let him have one.

We like our snake farts dipped in my Snakebite Sauce. Actually we like my Snakebite Sauce on a burger, or potatoes, or chicken....pretty much any sandwich or anything that's fried.

Make up a batch ~ it's only four ingredients: Mayo, liquid smoke, sambal oelek and Paul Prudhomme's Blackend Redfish Magic. It keeps for weeks in the refrigerator. The recipe is under the "Misc. Recipes" tab, but there are no specific measurements; just a mixture of the four aforementioned ingredients. (Note:  It should be a pinkish/red color, like the picture above.)

 

PRINT RECIPE:  Snakebite Sauce

Cooking 110 ~ Me & Bobby Bustin' Out the SW Cuisine

Loser! I'm talking about moi. Me. I have been chained to the stove but can't seem to get it together long enough to post one stinkin' recipe. Sorry, needed to vent.
     Well we totally outdid ourselves at the last cooking class ~ ask anyone who was there. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

  I love this picture...everyone looks SO busy! 
Bueller? Anyone?

Here's the menu from the 
Southwestern Cuisine Cooking Class/Jan 2014:

Caramelized Poblano Chile and Onion Dip

Shrimp Nachos with Avocado-Corn Relish 

 

 Chicken and Mushroom Posole

 

Cotija Crusted Quesadillas with Basil + Jalapeno

Topped with Sweet Balsamic and Charred Corn + Smoked Red Pepper Sauce  

 

Blue Corn Crusted Mahi-Mahi

on Jicama-Pepper Slaw, with Roasted Poblano Sauce + Serrano-Mango Crème  

 

Vanilla Ice Cream

Laced with Cayenne Pepper + Mexican Cocoa, Drizzled with Dulce de Leche

Oops, bad pic. We dug in before anyone remembered to take a picture.

We spanked this with a smoked serrano sea salt. It was the perfect combination of hot, cold, sweet and salty. Do try this at home!

 

As you know I'm a big Bobby Flay fan and some of these recipes (the Posole and Quesadillas) were from my man and some were my own creations. All were pretty dang good and we ate ourselves silly, which isn't hard to do in this group.

As we were getting all fired up for class, my sous chef Scott tells me that he called my Bobby and left him a message asking him to come to our Southwestern Class because after all, he is the master.
     Apparently my Bobby didn't return the call. I can't be certain, but I told Scott I was pretty sure it had something to do with that restraining order that he's got against me. I will admit that I am a little butt hurt that he won't just show up at my door anymore without the bodyguards. Whatev Bob, I'm about over you because look what I can do!  ↓

I've already posted the Chicken and Mushroom Posole and the Cotija Crusted Quesadilla recipes, so click here and here for those, and scroll down. 

You know I'm not a baker, so I was feeling the pressure in coming up with a SW themed dessert. Desperate people do desperate things, or so I've heard, and only when there is a mixer held to my head can I come up with a dessert idea that doesn't involve loading the beaters. This was so genius ~ sometimes I even surprise myself. 
     I softened up some vanilla ice cream, stirred in some Mexican hot cocoa mix and a generous pinch of cayenne pepper. The result was a cold treat with a little fiery bite that you felt deep in the back of your throat, after you swallowed. We topped it with a bit of dulce de leche sauce and a pinch of smoked serrano sea salt. Mucho Bueno!

 Jeez, can't you guys just act like you like it?

I also made a my Cilantro Pesto, which is super yummy. Click here, or on the "Misc. Recipes" tab. Spread a little on a tortilla, top with some sharp white cheddar and/or Monteray Jack cheese and make yourself a dang quesadilla.

     Call me Bobby, love ya, mean it!

PRINT RECIPE:  Chicken Mushroom Posole

PRINT RECIPE:  Cotija Crusted Quesadilla 

PRINT RECIPE:  Cilantro Pesto

An Asparagus Recipe You'll Pablolly Juant to Make!

The only thing at this very moment more yummy than Juan Pablo from The Bachelor, is this asparagus, leek and pancetta dish that I've been making lately. Well maybe it's not quite as delicious as Juan Pablo, and I know asparagus, leek and pancetta doesn't roll off the tongue quite as sexy as Juan Paaaaablo does, but damn, this is a pretty good dish so I thought I better share it.

For the most part my pantry is pretty well stocked and I usually have all of the ingredients on hand to make about anything from Sesame-Ginger Salmon en Papillote to Mario's Chicken Parmesan, with little or no improvising.  My biggest challenge living here in Hickville is fresh produce, although I do try to keep many of the not-so-weird varieties on hand.
     That being said, the ingredients in this dish are pretty basic...besides the asparagus and leeks, all you will need is some pancetta (you could sub bacon or proscuitto), garlic, pine nuts, lemon and orange zest. Staples.

I happened to have some leeks and asparagus that were itchin' to be used up, when I stumbled across this recipe so I decided to try it, and man oh man (as in Juan Pablo) am I glad I did.
     The recipe calls for pancetta, but on the first go around I  subbed proscuitto. The second time I made it I did use pancetta, but really I think I preferred the proscuitto.

The pancetta added a bit of a greasy factor and although it was still good, I would recommend NOT adding the butter to the pan, like the recipe calls for. Ditto if you use bacon.
     Since there is no grease in proscuitto you need to add a drop of olive oil or butter to the pan before cooking it, and then go ahead and add the tablespoon of butter called for.

Saute it up in a pan until it darkens up a bit and gets all pretty, like Juan Pablo, and then top it with the lemon and orange zest.

Click here, or on the "Side Dishes" tab to get the recipe.

After eating up this yummy dish you will Pablolly never Juant to steam or boil asparagus again. Just sayin'.

PRINT RECIPE:  Asparagus, Leek and Pancetta Saute 

A Casket, a Kidnapper, and a Jamaican Christmas Memory

I'm a bit of a Christmas scrooge, I'll admit it. Shut your pie hole Julie D, I can hear you laughing right about now and saying, UNDERSTATEMENT OF THE YEAR! (It's a birth defect, I'm missing a gene.)
     But it's true...I have never liked the commercialism, rat-race, retail hell that has become Christmas, and I shun it and the responsibilities that go along with it. It's the fact that Christmas has turned into a stressful, money-sucking holiday and that celebrating our Lord and Savior's birth has been one-upped by retailers promising to save us big bucks on flat screen TV's and free shipping.
     Plus, it doesn't help that I can never get my act together until the very last minute. If you need proof here it is:  I couldn't even manage to get this Christmas post written until after Christmas. Oh the irony. I suck.

I had the big meltdown back in 1996, when one night I was wrapping presents and mentally adding up how many gifts and how much money I had spent on each kid, thinking it had to all even out, which was next to impossible because The Know-It-All always wanted something on the high end ~ like a TV or a car or a saddle or all three. Hates Everything usually asked for something simple, such as bubble wrap.  And what really chapped my ass was that in a matter of minutes and a flurry of paper, it was all over with and then came the sudden realization that I forgot to buy the 437865 batteries needed to make whatever toy/game/machine, operate anyway. The kids would go back to watching Dumb and Dumber for the 89521458 time, leaving bubbles unpopped ~ right there next to the Walkman with no batteries.

So instead of continuing with the nonsense, the following year I announced to the family that we would be taking a trip somewhere exotic and that there would be NO presents. Just some good old Forced-Family-Fun, or FFF as we refer to it.
     The Know-It-All was cool with that but Hates Everything whined that she would rather have Christmas than take some stupid trip. Probably since she always got the good gifts, like cardboard and socks. Anyway, The Know-It-All convinced her that they would still get everything they wanted throughout the year, they just wouldn't get it all in one day. That kid always was waaaaay to smart for her own good. Made it hard to like her.

It was this first Christmas trip that set us on a path that we would follow for the next dozen years or so, and one that would seal our fate with our love of the islands. 
     Following is the story of one of my all-time favorite Christmas memories and the best part is: We lived to tell about it!

I closed my eyes and put my finger on a map of the Caribbean and landed us in Jamaica! A few months later we were at the rental car place, stuffing ourselves into a car that was just slightly smaller than my suitcase. (Author's note: In Jamaica not only do you drive on the left side of the road, but the steering wheel is on the right side of the car and you have to shift with your left hand (manual transmissions, being the norm), making it doubly confusing.) You can just see a wreck coming can't you?

Van are you wearing SOCKS with those cool Nike open toe sandals?

While The Big Guy was signing our lives away and wracking up $8000 on our credit card, in case we wrecked it, I was lecturing the girls, saying things like: No matter what, do NOT holler at your dad even if he's on the wrong side of the road. Just shut up and let him drive. He's a professional; we'll be fine. So keep your mouths shut!!!!! Got it? Good! This is gonna be fun. (The Know-It-All was a teenager. Fun? Teenager, same sentence? Ya with me so far?)

So Big gets behind the wheel and instead of putting the blinker on, he hits the lever and the wipers come on because the blinker thing is on the right side of the steering wheel.  We are church mice...not a peep out of us. He puts it in gear, hands at 10 and 2, and lets out the clutch and we shoot backwards instead of forward. (transmission is backwards too, apparently) Church mice.
     We leave the rental car parking lot and as we make our first ever turn in a foreign country, to get on the highway, the Big Guy turns the wrong way and gets in the wrong lane where we suddenly find ourselves going head on into kamikaze traffic.  
     WATCH OUT DAD, WE'RE GONNA DIE, YOUR GOING THE WRONG WAY, YOU NEED TO BE IN OTHER LANE, SHIIIIIIIIIT, WE'RE GONNA DIE, EEEEEEEEE, HELP, LET ME OUT, WE ARE GOING TO DIE!!!!!
     He jerks the wheel, gets in the other lane, slams on the brakes and then pulls off the side of the road and looks at all of us and says something like, EVERYONE JUST SHUT THE #&@% UP SO I CAN CONCENTRATE ON DRIVING, I KNOW I WAS GOING THE WRONG WAY BUT I CAN'T #&@%*+! DRIVE WITH YOU ALL HOLLERING AT ME, SO SHUT UP!!!!!  We are church mice once again.

An hour or so later we pull up to our hotel and as we get out of the car the four or five bell men who are standing around, start laughing and pointing at us. (We know it was us that they were laughing at because like synchronized swimmers, we all looked over our shoulders to see who/what was behind us and what was so funny. We were it.) Why were they laughing? Well I couldn't be sure but I suspected it was because they could smell the poop in our pants. 
     Then one of them points at our car and says to Big, you know what we call that?
     No, what? Big asks.
     Casket, he says and then they all bust up laughing again. We don't. We look like scared church mice.

The rest of the week involved a whole bunch of other insane, funny, unbelievable shenanigans; like getting lost in the middle of nowhere, while trying to find the Dunns River Falls, and then pulling over and letting a Rasta man who came out of the bushes, get into our "casket" with us and then drive us all over the countryside before driving us straight to a bank so we could withdrawal a bunch of money and pay him for not killing us. 

We are in there somewhere...

On the up side the nice Rasta man did get some not-so-good family photos of us at some water falls, which turned out to NOT be the Dunns River Falls (click here to see where we weren't) that we thought we were at. First clue....we were the ONLY tourists at Jamaica's biggest tourist trap. We figured that one out later when some real tourist dad at the bar mentioned to our dad at the bar, just how crowded the falls had been. And we thought we had just caught it on an off day. At any rate, we decided we were not going back looking for the falls because we didn't want to be willingly kidnapped and robbed again. Do we look like stupid American tourists? Wait. Don't answer that.

Me, being the foodie that I am, had done my homework and had a list of restaurants that I wanted to fine-dine at. We pulled into the parking lot of one in Ocho Rios and had an armed guy ~ we'll call him a guard-valet, who kinda-sorta valet parked us and then escorted us into the restaurant because it wasn't safe to walk across the parking lot. Yes, I did pick the restaurant after much research and after reading The Lonely Planet review (which by the way, did not mention the armed guard, only the hookers and the drug dealers).

And then there was the Jungle Lobster House (click here) where we were the only ones (besides a sleeping dog) in the dirty, authentically Jamaican joint. We had a pretty great dinner; lobster and breadfruit grilled over an open fire on a barrel by a charming chef(?) who had a joint hanging out of his mouth and who couldn't have been any more attractive, even if he hadn't been wearing that sexy fishnet shirt.  Reggae blared, pot lingered, and fires flared out of 55 gallon barrels as the locals partied right next door, oblivious to us wide-eyed tourists.

At the Jungle Lobster House. We ain't scared...

...well, maybe Hates Everything is....

After dinner the *ahem* chef, crammed himself into our casket with us and made us drive back to our hotel so we could pay him in American dollars. We had money on us ~ to pay for dinner but he didn't want our J-dollars nor our travelers checks and who in their right minds would argue under a bridge with a stoned Rastafarian holding a knife? Not us world travelers. Do we look stupid?  

We made it from Ocho Rios to Negril, a scary distance that involved us being briefly under a truck tire in a Montego Bay traffic circle. Believe me when I tell you that nothing good can come out of negotiating a traffic circle on the wrong side of the road, in the wrong side of the car, going the wrong direction. If that truck hadn't chewed us up and spit us out of the circle we may still be there going around and around, trying to get in the right (or left?) lane, so we could get out of it.  
     Things looked up by the end of the week when The Big Guy had finally mastered the left handed gear shift and the right handed blinkers and had just enough road rage built up to make him look like an asshole who knew what he was doing. (You can read about his legendary island road rage here. It's funny stuff.)
     Us church mice just subliminally chanted, "the left side is the right side and the right side is suicide," while we prayed that we would get out of the country without needing the jaws of life. The fact that Jamaica has the second highest driving fatality rate in the world was not lost on me but it was a piece of guide book info that I withheld from my soon to be dead children.
     Instead, I decided there would be a much less chance of them suffering a near-fatal injury if they were allowed to do low-risk activities, such as jet skiing, parasailing, and getting high on second-hand smoke and then swinging on a rope and jumping off the cliffs at the Pickled Parrot. 

The Know-It-All, high over Negril

Or drinking mushroom tea and hanging out on the beach with the fun local boys, like this guy. ↓

On Christmas day we were in Negril at Ricks Cafe, eating giant lobster and watching cliff divers as the sun set over the Caribbean. As a family, we made more memories in that one week than we had made in the entire year leading up to it.
     And now here it is...over fifteen years later and we still talk about the Jungle Lobster House and sometimes, when we are all on our meds, we even laugh about the nice Rasta man who drove us around and didn't murder us or steal our casket.  What a great trip!
     As soon as we got home and after The Big Guy got out of jail (but that's another story) we began making our plans for the following Christmas.
    Cancun here we come!!!! Federales? What are federales? Should we be worried? Nah....do we look like stupid American tourists?

 
I hope your Christmas was filled with special memories of time spent with family and friends and that you will cherish those memories for a lifetime. And no matter what your family traditions are, I hope you take at least just a second to reflect on the REAL reason for the season.

Merry CHRISTmas!

 Wishing you all a happy, healthy and blessed New Year!