Upscale your Ham and Cheese Sandwich!
Upscale your Ham and Cheese Sandwich! First, caramelize red onion slices in a little butter and olive oil. Take your time, this is about 15 minutes over a medium low heat. Remove the slices, but don’t clean the pan. You’ll use the drippings to cook your sandwich. Little chunks of leftover onion will cook into the bread, and the butter/oil remaining will be infused with the onion flavor. Lay down two slices of sourdough bread. Smear one side with Duke’s Mayo. On the other, spread on some horseradish and some whole grain mustard. You can actually do what you like here. They make a Dijon/horseradish spread that would be perfect here. Add a pile of thin, deli-sliced Black Forest ham. Then place your onions and top with cheese slices. I had a medium...
Shrimp Frittata!
This is a simple but exquisite meal. Thin slice and wash carefully a single leek. Dry well. Put this in a skillet with some olive oil and cook it down until it is tender. Meanwhile, we brought in some basil, grape tomatoes, and hot chili peppers from the garden. These were diced up. We took five eggs and beat them, and then added the basil and chili peppers. If you don’t have any leeks, just use fenced, sliced sweet onions.  if you don’t have any chili peppers, use dried red pepper flakes.  On this run, we decided to use pre-cooked shrimp, so we just marinated those with some olive oil and black pepper with a little bit of garlic powder. With the leaks done, we added a couple tablespoons of minced garlic for about 30 seconds to bring up the aroma. To this we...
Dubai Taco
Trust me, if you like meat, you want to make this. I worked up with a simplified food-processor version that makes it easy. And the flavors are OUT OF THIS WORLD. This originated as an Egyptian street food, but this is the taco version. Simply enough, put all the following ingredients into a food processor (you could mix it by hand as well). I blended up the onions, bell pepper and chili’s first. Then I added the rest. Quick note, I finally bought a kitchen scale so I could follow some recipes better. Below is for 2 lbs of meat. I used one lb of 85/15 grass-feed beef. So use half of everything else below. My goal is to add more specific ingredient amounts. Up to now I’ve been pretty loose. 1/2 kg white onion small diced80 g green chili chopped140 g...
Happy 4th oh July Hot Dog
Like everyone else, I like an occasion hot dog. I have limited myself to a enjoying a hot dog once a year…July 4th. So for this year we decided to do it up right. First off, the only dog to use is a Nathan’s All Beef. On the Blackstone we heated up avocado oil and tossed on some chopped Vidalia Onions and a handful of Hot Cherry Peppers. To join them we toasted some potato buns. The topper was a seared grass fed ground beef, flavored with some chili seasoning, fresh ground black pepper and pink Himalayan sea salt. With the buns toasted, we added the peppers, onions and mustard. With the dog placed it was topped with crispy meat mixture, and for me, a slice of deli-cut American cheese. Hands down, the best hot dog I’ve ever had! I hope all my...
Bagel Basil Turkey Burger with a Cashew Cream
A foot injury sidelined me this week. But my wonderful sous chef helped me get back on my feet, or my foot, so to speak. Thus we give you a Bagel Basil Turkey Burger with a Cashew Cream. And yes, it was incredible. And entirely new based on what we had on hand. Saara did all the heavy lifting on this. I just offered thoughts from my position on the couch. For prep work, saute half an onion in some olive oil, the add a handful of chopped basil and some minced garlic. The basil burger was a mix of ground turkey, the onion/basil mix and seasoning. To this we added a couple tablespoons of high quality pesto. The seasoning of the moment was McCormick’s Chicken Seasoning and some oregano with some ground black pepper. Grilled on our Blackstone griddle with...
garden grown cucumber salad
The star of Saturday night’s dinner on a hot Summer night was the garden grown cucumber salad. The whole meal was a griddle cooked turkey burger with sweet potato fries. But let’s focus on the cucumber salad. Two garden grown cucumbers were sliced. Garden fresh parsley, basil and dill were added. Into the bowl went Apple cider vinegar, minced garlic, diced roasted red bell peppers, kosher salt and crushed black pepper with a diced onion. Mix and let this sit for an hour, tossing occasionally. The burger was ground turkey, mixed with suateed onion and spinach. Add this with some olive oil and chicken/steak seasoning and blend well. Season with black pepper. Grill on each side for about 5 minutes. The sauce was our usual mayo with cholula hot sauce. We...