Me and my immersion blender

Several years ago, on some special occasion (which may or may not have been my wedding), I was given an immersion blender from my aunt.
In the years since, I have discovered how useful this fine piece of machinery is. All those late night commercials about "slicing, dicing, julienning" are pretty true when you talk about an immersion blender.
You can use them to make some very nice salad dressing, since the blender will emulsify your oil and vinegar much more completely than a whisk will (or at least better than my whisk will).
You can make blended soups (like cheese soup, or a single vegetable soup) quite easily, since you're not transferring the soup back and forth between a regular blender.
And, you can make a very fine breakfast smoothie, which is what prompted this post:

Dave's Breakfast Smoothie
2 cups milk (or vanilla soy milk)
1 banana, sliced
1/2c crushed pineapple
3/4c mixed frozen fruit, thawed

combine and blend until smooth.

The fruit amounts are approximate, and you can adjust them to taste or texture preference.

What you get is something like this:



In short, a tasty and light breakfast, that gives you at least a couple servings of fruit..

The Pillsbury Bake-off...

Or, as I like to refer to it, the **********-ing Pillsbury Bake-off.
Clearly, I have a little hostility towards it. Why, you ask?
I present to you the winning recipe for this year's bake-off:
"Double-delight peanut butter cookies"

INGREDIENTS

1/4	cup Fisher® Dry Roasted Peanuts, finely chopped
1/4	cup Domino® or C&H® Granulated Sugar
1/2	teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2	cup JIF® Creamy Peanut Butter
1/2	cup Domino® or C&H® Confectioners Powdered Sugar
1	roll (16.5 oz) Pillsbury® Create ‘n Bake® refrigerated peanut butter cookies, well chilled

DIRECTIONS

1.	Heat oven to 375°F. In small bowl, mix chopped peanuts, granulated sugar and cinnamon; set aside.
2.	In another small bowl, stir peanut butter and powdered sugar until completely blended. Shape mixture into 24 (1-inch) balls.
3.	Cut roll of cookie dough into 12 slices. Cut each slice in half crosswise to make 24 pieces; flatten slightly. Shape 1 cookie dough piece around 1 peanut butter ball, covering completely. Repeat with remaining dough and balls.
4.	Roll each covered ball in peanut mixture; gently pat mixture completely onto balls. On ungreased large cookie sheets, place balls 2 inches apart. Spray bottom of drinking glass with CRISCO® Original No-Stick Cooking Spray; press into remaining peanut mixture. Flatten each ball to 1/2-inch thickness with bottom of glass. Sprinkle any remaining peanut mixture evenly on tops of cookies; gently press into dough.
5.	Bake 7 to 12 minutes or until edges are golden brown. Cool 1 minute; remove from cookie sheets to cooling rack. Store tightly covered.

I'm sorry, but when the winning recipe has prepackaged cookie dough as one of the ingredients, the contest immediately loses all legitimacy and becomes "**********-ing".

Been a long time....

It's getting to be a habit, starting every post with some variant of "gee, it's been a long time".
I promise to blog more frequently in the future.
So what have I been up to? Not much, sad to say. I'm trying to find a motorcycle to buy, I've cooked some good food lately, and other than that, precious little that's exciting to any one but family.

Foodwise, I've checked out "Charcuterie" by Michael Ruhlman, from the library, and I'm making an honest effort to get a handle on this fascinating subject. If you're not familiar with the term, charcuterie covers a range of meat products. Essentially, anything smoked, ground, cured, or otherwise preserved. Think "ham", "sausage", "pate", etc.
I got the book on Sunday, and I immediately cured some salmon I'd had sitting in the freezer. I'm not sure how well it will turn out, but so far, my salmon looks like you'd expect gravlax or lox to look like. Considering all I did was mix up salt, sugar, brown sugar, coriander, pepper, and 5-spice powder, it could taste like fish sticks and I think I'd be ahead of the game.
I'll post pics tomorrow when it's done curing, and I'll also try and post about my empenada experience.

Meat salad

Meat salad -- mmm.

Doesn't that just sound good? Well, it is. One of our family favorites is this recipe that I got out of Bruce Aidells' excellent Complete Meat Cookbook. If you're in the market for a meat cookbook and you don't seriously consider this one, you're missing out. I bought this book ten years ago (or thereabouts) when I lived in California, and I can honestly say it's one of the 5 best cookbooks I own. None of the recipes have been duds, and a good number have been flat out winners, like this recipe for "Tostada Salad", which in our house just gets called "Meat Salad".

Our version is slightly different from the version in the cookbook (I use less avocado and tomato, mostly because avocados are a little pricey, and often neither the avocados or the tomatoes are worth the gamble, and you're supposed to add green chiles, but I always forget to buy them at the store)
I made it tonight with some left over top round that I grilled over the weekend, along with:

• 2 heads of lettuce (1 green-leaf, 1 red-leaf)


• 1 bunch cilantro


• 1 yellow pepper


• 2 tomatoes


• 1/2 red onion


• 1 avocado

After washing all the salad ingredients, I tore up the lettuce and the cilantro, tossing it together in a bowl like so:

Then I cut up the pepper:


The tomatoes:

The onion:

and then I sliced the meat, and put it over the salad.

I then moved on to the dressing, which goes like:

• 2 tbsp cider vinegar


• 1 tbsp tarragon wine vinegar


• 2 tsp salt


• 1 tsp paprika


• 1 tsp dry mustard


• 1 tbsp sugar


• 3/4 c olive oil

I combined the dry ingredients:


And then the vinegars:


and finally the oil, whisked together in an emulsion.

And in the end, what you end up with is....

Darn fine salad.
Like I said in the beginning, you owe to yourself to check out Bruce Aidells' Complete Meat Cookbook.

Resetting the blog...

Since I seem to be petering out on writing solely about brewing (and I'm concerned about the consequences to my liver if I threw myself wholeheartedly into beer), I'm going to refocus my blog. Instead of writing only about beer, I'm going to add food to my list of subjects.
I've long loved to cook, and hopefully this is a chance for me to share my interest in something that I care deeply about.

Gone too long...

Wow, hard to believe it's been well over a month since my last post.
In the intervening time, I've done what seems like a lot of stuff (went skiing, my parents came to visit, etc), but what I haven't done is anything beer related.
As a matter of fact, I quit drinking for the month of January(!).
Sadly, my last batch of beer still sits in my closet, waiting for me to get around to bottling it.
My beer goal this week will be very modest, and is only to get my current batch bottled. Once I get that done, I will set another goal, and go from there.

Not beer related....

I know, I know, it's a beer blog, not a food blog, but it's my blog, and I'll post a recipe if I want.
I got this out of "Roast Chicken and Other Stories" by Hopkinson(?). The book's been getting a lot praise from the NYT and I guess other places, and overall, it deserves the praise it's getting.
I made this eggplant recipe from it last night with a pan-roasted pork tenderloin and jasmine rice:
Chili spiced eggplant:
1 1/4 lbs eggplant, peeled and cut into 1in. cubes
6 tbsp veg oil
4 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp sugar
3/4 tsp salt
3 tbsp sliced green onions
1/2 - 1 tsp dried chili flakes (to taste)
cilantro
Saute eggplant in the oil over med to med-hi heat until brown on all sides.
Remove from pan to drain on paper towels.
Add vinegar, sugar and salt to hot pan, and reduce until syrupy (I did "slightly syrupy", but it's a matter of taste).
Return eggplant to pan, and add green onion and chili flakes, stir to coat eggplant with vinegar. You're done when the eggplant is warmed thru.
Sprinkle with chopped cilantro to taste.

It was excellent with the pork we had, which I cook this way:
Pan-roasted pork tenderloin:
->1 pork tenderloin (roughly 1 lb, or more), patted dry.
->spice mixture (salt + pepper + thyme, greek spice, chinese 5-spice, or whatever else you desire
->1-2tbsp olive oil
Preheat oven to 375deg
Rub tenderloin with spice, and then coat with olive oil.
Heat an oven-safe skillet (ie, one with a metal handle, and nothing on it that will melt) over high heat (it's ready when a drop of water will dance on it).
Sear tenderloin on all sides until brown, and then put in oven for 15-20 minutes, turning occasionally. Tenderloin's done when thermometer in the thickest part reads 137 or higher (meat will still be slightly pink).

I'll leave "rice" to the reader.

Enjoy. (And I promise beer content this weekend)