The Long Days of Summer

There really hasn't been much happening around here lately except for experimenting with new meals from one of my new cookbooks. The cookbook is loaded with ideas for grilling and what I like is almost all the recipes use ingredients that are easy to find in your local grocery store, unless you live somewhere near Pittsburgh. Todays choice from the cookbook is Roasted Corn with Andouille Sausage.


Start by roasting some corn on the grill.......


Meanwhile throw some andouille sausage in a pan with some olive oil......


While all this is going on crack open a beer. How about a Lienie's Summer Shandy flavored with lemonade, a good choice for grill cooking in the summer.


Now after the important part of cooking is taken care of, the beer, it is time to start dropping the rest of the ingredients into the pan.


A little onion, yellow pepper, red pepper, and garlic. Let this cook for awhile and then add chopped tomatoes, basil, chicken broth, and white wine vinegar. The last item to take care of is to cut the corn off the cob and add the roasted corn to the rest of the mixture.


You are supposed to use arugula salad greens but since our grocery store didn't have arugula I opted for the spinach.



Pretty good and something a little different for a change. The wife and I decided it is a recipe worth keeping.

Post Overtime
Here is the recipe, I hope you can read it. This would be easy to adapt to winter time use too by using frozen corn instead of grilled corn. If you have trouble finding good tomatoes in the winter I would go for the diced canned tomatoes and drain them good. There I just gave out a great dinner idea that can be made easily in under 30 minutes.

Enjoy.


I should also mention if this is the only item on the dinner menu for the night the ingredients list works out perfectly for two people.

More Cooking Tidbits.....Just for PeeJ

I got a call the other day from one of my offspring telling the reason he isn't blogging anymore is because all I ever post is food. Oh he gave me some other excuses too like computer to slow, don't know what to write, and the dog has to go out and take a crap. Yeah you're thinking the same thing I am all poor excuses. So just for him I am doing this post about food, again. I'm not to worried about him seeing it since I am not sure he even knows how to turn a computer on anymore.

Enough about excuses let's get to the food.

I came home from lunch yesterday and decided to marinate some pork chops for dinner. I flipped through one of my cookbooks and there starring me in the face was a recipe for marinading with Hoisin sauce. I knew I had some in the refrigerator so it looked like a good marinade to use. The only problem was I didn't have everything in the recipe. Oh well time to adapt.



If you ever want to add some great flavor to your meals this is the stuff to use. It is in the chinese or ethnic food section at your local grocery store. It is also a great base for a bbq sauce which is really how I ended up using it on the pork chops.

I mixed the Hoisin Sauce with some ground ginger, garlic, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper and couple of other things I don't remember off the top of my head. Someday I just might decide to write some of these things down as I do them. I put everything in a zip lock bag to marinade until I got home for dinner.

Once I got home for dinner I fired up the grill and got it smoking hot. Next, you guessed it put the pork chops on there for about 6 minutes per side. While the pork chops were cooking I decided to turn the marinade into a sauce. I had read you can do this with marinade as long as you heat it up and boil it for at least 1 minute to kill the bacteria. I added a little vinegar and honey to it too.

Here is the finished product.....


The asparagus is marinated in sesame seed oil and balsamic vinegar and then after it is cooked topped with parmesean/reggiano cheese and sesame seeds.

Here is another view.....


A little closer look....


And one last picture for peej......


I know peej likes his pork chops so I hope he ends up enjoying this post afterall. They were good.

Sunday Dinner - July 13, 2008

Ok I waited long enough and it is time to use these items this week....

I got these lovely little items for my half century birthday a couple of weeks ago from my sisters. I was hoping they would forget but they didn't. It didn't help I was with my much older sister the day after my birthday.

Just in case you don't know what these little beauties do they make beer can chicken or for you that don't drink beer soda pop chicken. Believe it or not all the grilling I have done I have never made beer can chicken. I meant to but for some reason or other I have never done it. Well that is all about to change, just follow along.

Here is this weeks cast of supporting characters....


Along with these supporting characters too.....


You may want to know where the star of the show is, well it just took up to much room to include in these pictures. Besides raw chicken around my spices and raw vegetables, I don't think so.

First things first and the spice rub must be mixed up.


This rub includes fresh rosemary, dried thyme, paprika, salt (kosher), fresh ground pepper, and granulated garlic. There could be a couple of other things but I forget what it might be.

Let's get some good ole apple wood soaking....


And now do you know what time it is? That's right "TIME TO FIRE UP THE GRILL!!!!!"


Once the charcoal is ready it is time to put the chicken on the grill.


I should mention inside the chicken roaster is some of my honey wiess homemade beer with a sprig or two of rosemary.

Cook at 350 degrees for about 1-1/2 or the digital thermometer reads 165 degrees when inserted to the thigh bone.


After a half hour or so it is time to put the vegetables on.


The vegetables, except for the red potatoes, have been marinated in antipasta oil. Don't ask me what is in it but it is very good. It also has a bit of a kick to it.

And the cooked meal.....


Mmmm, looks good and for the most part it was. The only problem was the red potatoes. I don't think the Wisconsin farmers and gardeners know how to grow good red potatoes. I even bought these on Saturday at the local farmers market. They are nothing like we used to grow. I am truly disappointed.

Enough about that here is the finished product......


The vegetables were great (other than the potatoes). The chicken, real good. I didn't brine the chicken like I normally would because I wanted to see how moist the beer can chicken was without the brine. The legs and thighs were very moist, the breast was interesting. It started out fine on the outside (not as juicy as a brined chicken) but the closer I ate towards the interior the juicier the meat got and the more I could taste the rosemary that I had put into the beer. Very, very good once I got to the bone. I think little sister might have the right way to cook this chicken though and that is to brine it first and then cook it as beer can chicken.

That is what I will be doing next time, oh yeah there will be a next time it is worth that. I just need to find some better red potatoes.

There you have it Sunday dinner, July 13, 2008.

Next week we will be looking into using these somehow....


Got any ideas?