Slow Cooked Pork Ribs and Parmesan & Swiss baked penne…
Riced cauliflower & spinach topped w/ a toasted garlic sourdough baguette with Chorizo, Gruyere and garlic shrimp…
Parmesan & Swiss Baked Penne w/ leeks and vine tomatoes…
Sometimes when you’re being held hostage by a Kraken you may need to make some ribs. RIBS. ARE. DELIGHTFUL.
“Jameson infused riced cauliflower paella”
After trying the riced cauliflower (cauliflower grated into the size of rice) earlier this week I’ve been thinking of things I could make. I remembered I had some mussels from last weeks trip the market so I started cooking. Not with paella in mind, but thinking “Um…I’m about to go out of town and i still have a crap-load of cauliflower, sausage, mussels and other ‘ish.” So I just started cooking and ended here. I’m actually fairly surprised that if you do enough stuff to the cauliflower it doesn’t keep its own flavor. It takes on all the other stuff you’ve mixed in. This is also my first riced cauliflower paella try. When I get back from Salt Lake City I’m going do a take 2 and really go hard in the paint.
“Basil & Grape Tomato Cauliflower rice layered with Zebra Eggplant, apple smoked bacon, vine tomatoes topped with a seared scallop.”
So I needed to use some of these Farmers Market veggies I had sitting in there fridge before I leave for a trip. And I got to try cauliflower rice! That’s one of those things that that that I feel once I master will be a game changer for the whole low-carb lifestyle I’m rocking. It’s delicious. Admittedly I attacked it 14 different ways from Sunday. I didn’t simply rice the cauliflower and eat it—I basically infused it with 17 different things.
Will be doing more with that. A LOT more…
Food Collage for the Week ending 8.7.11
Funny enough—I cooked more food than this this week but I did not want them in the collage. My stuffed portabello mushroom pics had a weird filter on the camera that I wasn’t paying attention to when I took the pics (You know—some cameras are like “NIGHT TIME” or “FOOD”) No matter what I could NOT get that weird yellow saturation off of them. It was just me yelling at the camera like a crazy person going “REALLY? YELLOW? WHY FRICKEN YELLOW?!?” And I’m a photoshop NINJA. Still? Yellow-y. This week I felt good about a few things like the Bacon, Egg & Cheese cupfakes (which I’ve had to defend more times than I expected) and the dough-less pizza.
I still have plenty of confit. Be prepared for more random dishes with that stuff. I HAVE TO USE IT.
I’m learning as much about photography as I am about food in these past few weeks. The support I’ve received about the blog has been amazing. This is flat out—one of the most fun projects I’ve worked on. I’m totally trying to figure out an ebook and the date for the first #WeCookHard PODCAST is on the books.And #RealTalk—I have no clue what I’m cooking this coming week.
It’ll be a surprise for you AND me.
“Parmesan Egg Crust Pizza: Part Deux”
I. AM. GETTING. GOOD. SON.
Every time I make this dish I figure out just a little more of the magical puzzle of a flour-less crust. Emily (my Fiancee) is a pescatarian and complains HEAVILY that I don’t cook enough she can eat (just look at this blog) and was terribly envious of the pizza pics earlier this week. So I decided to try it today—and since it wasn’t simply for “me” I needed to sell her on the PIZZA-ness of it. I went with a traditional tomato sauce (I have a deep dish recipe i came up with years ago) and played with the WHERE I would put the pan (I cook these pizzas in my BIG ASS Cast Iron pan) in the oven. Put it on the bottom so it was cooking the crust as it was BAKING the crust. Threw some of the organic yellow grape tomatoes on from the Farmers Market and boom. PIZZA, SON.
I also decided to play with a mini pizza using my take on whats called “Cauliflower Crust.” I didn’t follow ANY of the instructions for it besides putting riced cauliflower in my mix. It was pretty good too! I didn’t use a cast iron pan for that one so it got a bit stuck so the crust wasn’t stable simply because I had to scrap at the bottom to get it out. But the texture was damn good. I’m writing this all down for when I put out the recipes to all of this magic at once. But again—I’m proud of this one.
MEAT, GLORIOUS MEAT.
When I hit up the Farmers Market I came across a Farm that was selling meat. I love meat. And I’ve been trying to understand the big whoop over organic stuff. The farmer took time to explain to me what it means to be organic and that they didn’t have the licence for that. But they explained the process of how the cow is raised, what it was fed, how it gets cut and frozen. Then they gave me a lesson on cuts of beef. I picked up a porterhouse because I could cut it into a NY Strip and a Filet Mignon. The dude Farmer (there was 2 of them) asked me to not season one cut. Just cook it and taste what the MEAT taste like. I did it. Medium Rare (as you can see) and You know what? I’m fairly impressed.
Grand Army Plaza’s Farmers Market
I have been attempting to get to the Farmers Market for weeks. One week I was just really tired, another week there was a Thundercats marathon and how could I NOT stay home and watch that? Another week something shiny was in my peripheral view and so went the cycle of procrastination. This week I finally got my hind parts to the Market and got some great stuff. Pictures of which MAGICALLY disappeared from my camera. I found these (which literally were like 1 percent of pics I took) but I’ll be forced to do another pictorial when I can get some of the cool veggies on camera.
The Farmers Market is every Saturday in Brooklyn. I’d love to do a big trip for the #FoodShoppingClub. You know you should sign up for that.
“Parmesan Egg Crust Vodka Sauce Pizza”
I know. “What do you mean Parmesan Egg Crust?”
Here’s the situation. As I’ve said before—I’m low carbing. But who doesn’t love pizza? I saw a recipe recently which was a breakfast pizza and in “my” mind that obviously meant simply a pizza on egg instead of dough. I was incorrect. Immediately I tried to figure out is this a viable method for pizza crust. I mean you can make a crust-less quiche. You can make egg casserole. There has to be a method to make egg crust!
And there was.
After using my Google University skills I found a recipe for egg crust pizza that apparently gave me the secret ingredient to making this fly. Cream cheese. blending cream cheese into eggs gives it a damn decent texture. I tried it out yesterday and it WORKED. I was AMAZED. But as soon as I made it I realized the flaws. The issues with it. It wasn’t crust-like enough. Yes it delivered the cheese and toppings in a foldy manner but it needed more. So today i decided to thin out the egg in the recipe (it called for 4 eggs and 4 ounces of cream cheese) I went three eggs and 5 ounces.
Then I had another brain storm.
A long time ago i remember seeing a recipe for Parmesan crisps. Basically you simply fried shredded Parmesan. I remembered it being fairly crispy and then the thought processed continued. The recipe for Egg pizza crust was to put cheese on the baking pan and dump your egg mix on top of it.
Why not grill the cheese a little bit before you do that?
In essence making a big parmesan crisp (or the start of one—let it finish in the oven) but with egg on top making it a REAL crust. Let it cook a little longer than suggested (they said 22 minutes. I said “When it feels right”) and then keep it low carb by going cream sauce instead of tomato.
I’ll post a much more in depth recipe later. I was just so damn proud it worked i needed to post immediately. And while testing all of this I got to fry cheese and deep it in a cream sauce.
I’m a happy man.
“Parmesan Crusted Rib Eye with Sauteed Summer Squash & Broccoli in roasted pepper confit.”
This could have also been named “Things I have in my refrigerator that I eventually need to use.” I bought way too much squash. You can tell simply by looking at the last few days on this blog. I buy 10 rib eyes at a time because when low carbing they’re so easy to make and seriously? Once you have confits just sitting in your fridge what are you going to do? NOT use them? It’s like a short cut to make everything tasty. I stole broccoli from my g/f to mix it up and specifically DID NOT add bacon to the sautee because I use bacon in EVERYTHING. I. Love. Bacon. If I’m ever on Iron Chef: Bacon? I GOT THIS. But this blog can’t be that…I totally should make this blog Iron Chef: Bacon shouldn’t I?
#IdeasThatConstantlyGoThroughElonsHead
A Roasted Portabella Mushroom stuffed with Shrimp, Bacon, Squash, Red Onion and a Tomato confit topped with Parmesan on mixed greens.
Bacon, Egg & Manchego Cupcakes with basil and tomato sprinkles…
