Smoking up Peppers, Goat Cheese and Corn

Long time no chat with.  Busy is an understatement.  Not only are we working on moving our office - yes, we're down to eight file cabinets from twenty four but they do all still need to be scanned in and the new scanner is not dependable... - but a lot of my clients have been sending their friends and family my way.  I can't think of a higher compliment.  Maybe if it was preceded by, "Gosh, you look like you've lost a lot of weight, I need you to talk with my sister..."  LOL, I can only wish those first words were coming out of people's mouths.  At any rate, it's been a wonderful crazy busy around the office.  By the time I've gotten home and fixed dinner I've been way to chatted out to chat some more.

Pepto Bismol and I were very good friends today.  Tonight was supposed to be dinner with my friend Vicki.  She's one of those friends you are SO lucky to have.  You can tell her ANYTHING and she never breathes a word of it.  She listens to whatever you need to say.  She's the bestest.  I was bummed. We were to head to Bravo's.  Italian food absolutely wasn't a good idea.  Turns out she felt as crappy as I did.  So, we rescheduled.  I had a bag of rotisserie chicken in the fridge at the office.  That came home with me.  Comfort food was on  the menu.  Cousin Polly's Chicken Elegante.  Let me digress here for a minute.  Isn't it funny how you can have a bad belly and something that normally wouldn't be on the recommended list for said condition is perfect?  Yup, that's the way with chicken elegante.  If you get a chance to go back and read the original post I talk about when I fixed for my ex.  Every time I fix it for Connie, he says, "Jim Hutton was an idiot.  This is FABULOUS!" 

Along with the chicken, I thought I'd reheat some of the corn on the cob from the other evening.  Except it was smoky.  REALLY smoky.  I'd reheated some Jack Stacks ribs by smoking them on the grill and at the same time had made some killer peppers (yes, I'll tell you about those in a minute.) The corn on the cob got thrown on the grill at the same time so it got smoked.  The last pieces got left on the grill with the lid down while we ate.  They just positively soaked up all that leftover applewood smoke.  What in the world could I do?  To my collection of recipes.  I scan in way too many recipes.  Just like I have way too many cookbooks.  This time it served me well.  There was a recipe from Fine Cooking for maple, mustard, thyme butter for corn on the cob.  Maple is frequently in bbq sauce.  It'd play well with the smoke. 

I made a sample batch.  Connie got back from Lowe's and I handed him a cold ear of corn.  "Is this ruined?"  Wow, that's smoky!  "So, what do you think of it with this on it?"  The maple syrup plays well with the smoke.  That'll work.  Indeed it did.  I'd use this on any corn on the cob - smoked or not!

As promised, the killer peppers.  A few months ago a friend of mine ran into a friend of his.  She asked if he worked with anyone on his planning and he gave her my name.  She called, she and her hubby came in and we discovered we'd met kindred foodies.  Now, we start our meetings by comparing menus!  Love working with folks like them :-)  At any rate, Al had to stop in last week so he brought two recipes to start with.  One was for Tri-Color Peppers with Goat Cheese from prettyfood.com.  I HAD to try it.  Soon.  I was drooling reading it.  And, I'd decided that I'd also smoke the goat cheese since that's something we love. 

What did we think?  The peppers were amazing.  Hot and cold.  Instead of cutting them in chunks, I cut them in half so the goat cheese wouldn't leak out.  Since I'd smoked it, it was runny, not crumbly. 

Now, my friends, I have two of the easiest and best recipes in ages to share with you.

Tri-Color Peppers with Goat Cheese

Ingredients:
 
bell pepper - red, yellow or orange - or mix thereof
4 oz goat cheese
olive oil
fresh basil cut in ribbons (ok, I confess, I was barefoot and didn't want to walk to the garden so left this out... it was still fabulous)
1 T olive oil (dressing for one pepper, increase as needed for additional peppers)
2 t balsamic vinegar
1 t brown sugar

Directions:

Cut the pepper(s) in half and remove all the seed and membranes.  Brush them with olive oil and either grill them or smoke them.  Put the goat cheese in a grill safe pan and drizzle it with olive oil.  Smoke it until it's bubbly.  Mix the olive oil, vinegar and brown sugar.  Serve the goat cheese in the pepper halves drizzled with the dressing. 

adapted from prettyfood.com, thanks so our friend Al!


Corn on the Cob with Mustard, Maple, Thyme Butter

Ingredients:

1/4 c butter (I used 2 T and not 4T)
1 T Dijon mustard
1 t grainy mustard (I used almost a tablespoon)
1 T maple syrup
1 t fresh thyme (reduced from 2 t in the original recipe)

Directions:

The original recipe called for making a compound butter.  I decided to melt the butter instead.  That worked perfectly.  The butter was melted and I whisked in the other ingredients.  We served it in Mom's old copper skillet and drizzled it onto the corn.  Fabulous!

adapted from Fine Cooking

Salad with Baked Goat Cheese and Rosemary Infused Honey

The week before Christmas was one of those incredibly busy weeks.  There was a lot of cooking going on at our house.  Tuesday was probably the craziest day.  I had a couple of new recipes chosen for dinner - chicken crusted with pecans and drizzled with a white wine maple reduction and a salad with baked goat cheese and rosemary infused honey.  Only problem was the fact that I also had to broil 240 bacon wrapped waterchestnuts and make a vat of vegetable soup for Christmas Eve.  The waterchestnuts took 20 minutes a pan - at an average of 40 per pan.  Ok, you can do the math.  I got home about 6:30 and didn't start the broiling right away.  It was 9:15 by the time dinner was ready to go in the oven.  I worked on the waterchestnuts and did a bit of the vegetable soup.  Connie chopped and chopped and chopped.  Turnips, parsnips, potatoes, rutabagas, cabbage...  I opened cans of corn and tomatoes and chopped carrots and celery.  Somehow, we got the soup in the stockpot and the waterchestnuts broiled then in the freezer. 


Our invitations to the after holiday party had gone out four days earlier and we already had 105 attending.  Normally, we have 125-150 here.  But, here we are a week later - and a week and a half before the party - and we've got close to 140 attending!  So, we may be pushing closer to 200 this year.  The good news is that we already have 200 chicken wings in the freezer along with 120 teriyaki flank steak skewers, a bunch of green olive gruyere poppers, wing eggrolls and brownies. I'm almost done with the menu and the grocery list.  A lot of the food is last minute - which makes it tough.  But, I've done this enough years that it's no longer overwhelming.


Finally, dinner was ready.  It was too late.  Neither of us really wanted the chicken.  So, I put the salads together and added a slice of chicken.  Dinner at 10 pm.  Bedtime.  But, we got a lot done and I'll not gripe about that.  Eating too late. Yup.  Getting a lot done.  Nope. 


What did we think?  This was clearly a five on our scale of one to five.  This was the first recipe I picked out of the cookbook and won't be the last. 

Baked Goat Cheese and Caramelized Onion Salad with Rosemary Infused Honey

Ingredients:

for the onions:
1 T olive oil
3 medium sweet onions, very thinly sliced
1 1/2 t sugar

for the goat cheese:
1/2 lb soft goat cheese log
1/2 c panko bread crumbs
1 T minced fresh rosemary or 1 t dried
1 T minced fresh thyme or 1 t dried
1/4 t sea salt
freshly ground black pepper

for the salad:
3 c dark leafy greens
3 T olive oil
1 1/2 T red wine vinegar
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/4 c rosemary infused honey

for the honey:
6 oz honey (I used buckwheat)
6 sprigs fresh rosemary

Directions:

for the honey:

In a jar (a canning jar works nicely,) mix the honey and the rosemary.  Put the jar in a saucepan of simmering water.  You want the water no more than halfway up the sides of the jar.  Simmer the honey for 10 minutes.  Then, remove the jar from the water and set it aside for about half an hour to allow it to infuse.

for the onions:

Heat the oil in a large skillet.  Slice the onions very thinly.  Add the onions to the skillet and saute them for about 15 minutes on very low heat.  Sprinkle them with the sugar and saute them for another 5 minutes.  They should be well caramelized. 

for the goat cheese:

Preheat your oven to 400.  Mix the bread crumbs and herbs. 

Cut the goat cheese into 1/3" rounds. 

Coat both sides of the rounds with the bread crumb mixture. 

Bake the cheese on a parchment paper lined baking sheet for 5-10 minutes per side or until it's golden brown.

for the salad:

Put about 1/2 cup of greens on each salad plate.  Top the greens with some caramelized onion then two goat cheese rounds.  Drizzle the salads with the oil, vinegar and honey.

adapted from Stonewall Kitchen Harvest