Hot Hot Hot Sauce

I've been making hot sauce the past few years.  Dad is the one who eats it the most.  He has been eating hot stuff for so many years he says the hot sauce I make is like ketchup.  So I vowed to make a hot sauce that will burn him up!  This year Mom grew Red Savina Habaneros and Fatallis, both of which are tied for the seventh hottest pepper in the word, if my research was correct.  So last night I made that hot hot hot sauce.

I made a huge batch.  Eleven pounds of peppers.  Five and a half pounds of each kind.

I took 3 onions and a small head of garlic, chopped it and sweated it in a pan.

Took the stems off the peppers then cut them in half so they would cook better.

Then I put everything in a big pot with some salt and 2 quarts of tomato sauce and got it cooking.

After about 45 minutes it was cooked down nicely.

Then I pureed it all and put it into another small pot.

That's a lot of hot sauce!  I ended up adding 3 more quarts of tomato juice because as it cooked more it was too thick.

Then I jarred it and screwed on lids right away to seal it.

46 pints of hot hot hot sauce.  That should keep Dad burning for a while.

I tasted just a little on a spoon and it burned me up for about 20 minutes.  Tasted great, though.  Nice and fruity...until the heat hit and then that's all I could take.

Dad tasted it today and acted like it was nothing.  Then later he said, "That's the hottest you've made it yet!"  After a while he said, "I think that hot sauce may have burned a hole in my stomach."
Yess!!!  I have done it!!
Andrew's Hot Sauce - 1.  Dad - 0.   :-D

Beef Jerky

I have been wanting to make my own beef jerky for a while.  I never did it because I was not keen on trying to dry it in the oven.  When we bout our dehydrator a while back, that eliminated that obstacle.  So the other day I made beef jerky.

Too a sirloin steak,

cleaned the fat and stuff from it and sliced it thin, approximately 1/4 inch.

Made a teriyaki marinade, poured it over the strips, and let it do it's thing overnight.

In the morning I took it out of the marinade, dried it off, and loaded it into the dehydrator and turned it to 155 degrees.

Six hours later I had my very own, homemade, no bad preservative added, beef jerky.

The picture doesn't do it justice.  It is very nomalicous.

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Dehydrated Watermelon

First post in six months.  Woohoo!  I've been slacking.  Well, not really.  I just grew tired of blogging about ho-hum food all the time.

Well, since I lasted updated, I have a new job!!  I am Chef Garde Manger at The Manor House Restaurant at Poplar Spings Inn and Spa in Casanova, VA.  No more ho-hum food for me.  Sorry, Black Bear Bistro.  You were good to me for 3 years, but it was time to get away.  No offense, but compared to what we are doing at Poplar, I wasn't getting any good experience at the Bistro.  No offense to them.  They have a good thing going I guess.

Anyway, on to the real matter and something that is not ho-hum...dehydrated watermelon.  Yes, you heard it right...dehydrated watermelon.

I took a perfectly good watermelon, cut it and sliced it into thin wedges.

It would have been a lot easier to use a seedless watermelon because I had to scrape out all the seeds.  Time consuming.

I loaded the wedges into our Excalibur dehydrator and turned it to 135 degrees overnight.

In the morning I had dehydrated watermelon.
Behold!!

Only bad thing about this, the wedges stuck to the racks.  I figured out the only way to remove them was to roll them into cigars.  So I ended up with dehydrated watermelon cigars.

Some of them are a bit spicy because the last thing I dried on the racks was hot peppers, but they are still good.  Very sweet.  All the sweetness concentrated into the little bit of the watermelon that dried up.  Yum yum!  Don't think I will ever do this again though.  Too time consuming.  I think I will venture into drying other melons.  Hopefully cantaloupe is not as sticky when dehydrated.

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Homemade Mustard

So yesterday I mentioned using homemade mustard in the honey mustard that I made. So here is the recipe. I got it from a cookbook that my mom has, A Harvest of Health Hospitality written and illustrated by Sharon Morgan.

Mustard

I have been trying to make mustard since my college days but have only ended up with results that were worthy to be called a "five alarm blaze." Then one day I read that it takes 6 - 8 weeks for mustard to mellow at room temperature. Refrigeration stops the mellowing process. Relying on these nuggets of valuable info, the following tasty mustard recipe was born. It takes about 6 to 7 weeks for a nice spicy mustard -- 8 to 12 weeks for a mild version. Feel free to experiment! If guar gum is not available, boil 2 Tbsp powered fruit pectin in the water for 1 minute and allow to cool before adding to the rest of the ingredients.

Blend in blender until seeds are almost decimated.

1/2 cup dry mustard
1/2 cup mustard seed

 Pour mustard into glass bowl and add the following:


1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup honey (for a hotter version, reduce to 1/4 cup)
2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground turmeric (color)
1 tsp guar gum (thickener, see above)

Stir thoroughly. Pour into one pint glass jar. Keep at room temperature until mellowed, then refrigerate. Great gift!

Salmon Cake Dinner

Tonight for dinner I made salmon cakes.  First I thought about making salmon cakes and eating them as sandwiches, but then I decided to go more the actual dinner route and make rice and steam broccoli to go with it.  We do something like that at work.

So for the salmon cakes I put them in a pot with water, salt, and lemon juice then steamed them about five minutes until they were flaky.

 Then I mixed it together with two eggs, parsley, pepper, some Worcestershire, a bit of milk, and crushed up oatmeal.

Then I formed them into patties.  Normally I would make them 4 oz each but because I wanted two per person, and their is 7 of us, I had to make them 2.5 oz each.

I made two different sauce to go with the cakes.  Cream Honey Mustard and Horseradish Cream Sauce.  Made the honey mustard with a bit of Dijon, a bit of cream, lots of honey and homemade mustard.  Yup yup.  Home made mustard.  It's so good.

While the rice was cooking and the broccoli was steaming I fried the cakes.

It was good.  I didn't have any of the horseradish sauce because I'm not really a fan of it.  Honey mustard is more my thing.

I think I put in too much crushed oatmeal.  The cakes were a bit too dry.  Bummers.  Now I know for next time to put in less.

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Pinto Bean Casserole

Casseroles.  So easy, but so good.  Yesterday I made Pinto Bean Casserole.  It's pretty much just crushed tortilla chips on the bottom

followed by a mixture of corn, salsa, and pinto beans,

and then sprinkled with cheese.  I actually layered on cheddar cheese, but whatever.

Then it was in the oven for a while until it was heated thoroughly.

I also made sweet potato fries, because they are so good.

Sprinkled them with oil, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder.

Then it was in the oven until they were done and a bit crispy.

The casserole turned out great.

Yum yum!

I didn't take a picture of the fries because I didn't stir them like I should have and they kinda bur...they over-caramelized.  But eaten with lots of Ranch dressing made them okay.

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Restaurant Review: Sotto Sopra - Baltimore, MD

  I like going out to eat.  I like going to Baltimore and going out to eat with my cousins.  It's fun.  Kills two birds with one stone; going out to eat and spending time with the cousins who I don't see all that much anymore.  Today Jon, Janina, and I went to eat with the cousins to Sotto Sopra.  Thanks Danae for recommending the place.
  "Sotto Sopra is a slick, hip, stylish contemporary Italian restaurant located in the cultural district of downtown Baltimore. The historical 19th century townhome is back drop to great Italian cuisine. Enjoy monthly Opera Nights."  I stole that from their Facebook page.  Now I'm going to come right out and say it, I'm not too fond of Italian restaurants.  Let me explain, I like Italian food.  But it seems like every other restaurant nowadays is Italian.  People that aren't even Italian open Italian restaurants.  Why?  Because people like Italian food and by jumping on that bandwagon there is a good chance the restaurant will attract people.  But there can be a problem with that, these wannabe Italian places tend to be cheesy.  So unless you have an authentic Italian restaurant, I would rather not go there.  All that to say, Sotto Sopra is an authentic Italian place.  From Italian people working there to authentic decorating and, sticker for me, Italian spelling on the menu.
  Sotto Sopra participated in  Baltimore Restaurant Week and although that ended last week they extended their restaurant week menu for a few more days.  So that meant we could order a three course meal for $30.  Good deal.  For the first course, appetizer, I ordered polenta with escargot.  Very creamy polenta...and the snails.  Yum!!  Second course I ordered, I don't even remember what it was exactly, salmon with arugula and set on some sort of beans.  It was amazing whatever it was.  Third course I ordered Chocolate Pots de Creme.  My goodness.  So good!  Oh and before all that we ordered a cheese platter.  Three different kinds of cheese drizzled with honey and served with crusty bread.  Don't ask my what the cheeses were.  I forget.  All I remember was two of them were good and the third not so much.  The plating and the designs on the plates were quite good.  Very nicely plated and attractive.  Good to look at, even better to eat.  It was a bit pricey, spent $43 for everything, tip included, but it was well worth it.

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