Tomatoes and Steaks Cooked on Granite

Almost two weeks and I've not posted.  You see, a year ago I made a business decision that didn't turn out very well.  We made a big change with a group I'd been with for almost 15 years.  The new folks over promised and under delivered.  BIG time.  I finally decided I couldn't spend the next ten years of my life waking up crabby knowing I'd have to deal with all their mistakes.  I called the old guys and asked if they'd have me back.  Would they ever.  They welcomed me with open arms.  August 1st I got an email from the president saying, "Welcome home."  He may be a Yankees fan but he's a great guy :-)  And, I am SO glad to be back.  I sorely miss my buds from the old group.  It came down to doing the right thing for my clients, myself and my marriage.  Being crabby and unhappy doesn't solve anything.  Now, I can move forward and know I've made a good decision.  But, it does mean doing a LOT of paperwork.  A couple of months of explaining to my wonderful clients what's happened and why.  And, very little time to post.  Or, cook for that matter!  I've been trying to fix big batches of whatever so we've got plenty of leftovers.

Thank goodness it's the height of summer around here.  Our tomatoes and cucumbers are producing like crazy.  A couple of years ago I asked the wonderful folks at the Garden Center if they could get Black Brandywine tomatoes.  They rather looked at me like I was crazy but ordered them anyway.  Patty told me this year that I'm the only one who ever requests them but they always sell out because folks love the name.  This is the perfect tomato in my opinion.  It's not mealy or mushy.  And, the flavor is perfect tomato with the exact right balance of sweet and tart.  My beloved Sallie dog (who died in 2004) used to run to the garden and eat the Black Brandywines just as they were perfect.  The year after she died, my yard had a HUGE volunteer Black Brandywine plant.  It produced like crazy.  My guess is Sallie pooped the seeds :-)

Needless to say, I'm finding all kinds of ways to fix tomatoes.  A few days ago I made what wound up being gazpacho and served it in a cucumber boat.  Then, there were the BLT's with pesto.  Oh, my, but those were good.  And, of course we've had tomatoes and cucumbers.  And, Caprese salads.  You name it and we've had it.

 

Then, I picked up a Bon Appetit grilling issue and read an article about grilling steaks on slate.  Off to buy some slate.  Yeah, right.  The Stone Center was a bust.  So was Lowe's.  You name it, we tried it.  No such luck.  Then, we tried the Tile Shop.  Eureka.  How about granite instead?  Yeah, that sounds like a great idea.  Now, one of the things you need to know is that we've both been dieting.  Connie's lost more than I have but he's tried harder.  So, meat has been a side instead of the main attraction.  We've not had a steak in forever.  These slate grilled steaks sounded just too good to pass up.  And, using granite that doesn't flake sounded even better. 

What to have with our steaks?  Cucumbers and tomatoes.  Creamed corn with bacon.  I read a great recipe somewhere.  But, where?  An internet search turned up Michael Symon's recipe.  (You can find it on foodtv.com)  Wouldn't you love to have dinner with him?  He's such a fantastic chef. 

Connie'd asked for hell grilled onions.  I kicked them up a notch with a bit of Emeril's seasoning.  

Our take?  These were good but not any better than a plain old steak cooked on the grill.  I did manage to make three full meals out of two small steaks by taking the leftover onions and tomatoes and cucumbers and tossing them with chopped steak to make fajitas.  Now, those were spectacular!

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

Pasta with Corn

During the summer months we eat a lot of vegetarian meals.  Typically, they don't hit the blog because they're repeats.  Eggplant involtini is one of our favorites.  If our eggplant plants would ever produce fruit we'd dig in on that.  Unfortunately, Indianapolis is in the midst of a severe drought.  Worst here for 136 years.  You know how crunchy your grass sometimes gets by the end of August?  We were there by the end of June.  Right now we're under a mandatory watering ban.  Trees less than five years old and vegetables are exempt.  You're supposed to water them by hand so as to not waste water.  Connie's installed drip hoses in the garden beds.  They're helping but our plants are still WAY behind.  It's probably because we set the timer and water as little as possible to keep everything alive.


Sunday after we got back from Cape Cod and Boston we went into the office.  I was facing a veritable mountain of work.  That meant that the recipes that graced my inbox from Epicurious, Cuisine at Home, Fine Cooking, Food and Wine, Food Network, etc. should have all immediately gone into their respective folders without being opened.  But, I was intrigued with one from Food Network.  Papperdelle with Corn.  That just sounded good. 


Monday evening we were home and I didn't particularly want pasta. Tuesday I was supposed to teach Social Security class but had a bad belly so came home and landed on the couch.  My sweet hubby fixed fritattas.  Wednesday we met Diane and Darrell for dinner.  That meant that Thursday was the perfect time to fix this.  We had a bottle of a fun white wine from our friends Lauren and Bob that we'd been saving for the right meal.  This was perfect. 


What did we think?  I made this with angel hair because that's Connie's favorite kind of pasta.  The flavor was fantastic. But, the pasta needed to have a bit more bite.  Fettucine is the smallest pasta I'd recommend here.  Otherwise, I used corn that we'd already cooked so that cut down considerably on the amount of butter necessary...

Pasta with Corn

Ingredients:

2 ears corn, cooked and kernels cut off
2 T butter
3 c grape tomatoes
2 cloves garlic, minced
freshly ground black pepper
1/2 c white wine
12 oz pasta
1/2 c chicken stock
1 small bunch scallions, sliced or one leek, sliced, cleaned and crisped
1/2 c freshly grated parmesan or romano
basil leaves

Directions:

Melt the butter in large skillet.  Add the tomatoes, 1 t of salt and the pepper. 

Cook until the tomatoes are very soft.  That'll take 4-5 minutes.  When they're about done, add the garlic.  Don't add it too early.  Next, add the wine.  Cook until it's reduced by half.  While the wine is reducing, cook the pasta.  (Note:  The original recipe actually calls for reserving the water you cook the corn in to cook the pasta in.  My corn was already cooked so that wasn't an option for me.  Then, the original recipe wants you to reserve a cup of the corn water for the pasta sauce.  I just used a bit of additional chicken stock until I had the consistency I wanted. )  Add the chicken stock and the corn kernels to the tomato mixture. 

Once the pasta is almost done, drain it and toss it with the tomato mixture along with a handful of parmesan.  Here the original recipe wanted me to add another three tablesppons of butter. If you want and your cholesterol allows, have at it :-)  Top with the crisped leeks (thinly sliced, rinsed,

dried and crisped in a small skillet with about a tablespoon of olive oil,) more parmesan and some basil leaves.

Adapted from Foodnetwork.com originally from Food Network Magazine

Glazed Meatloaf and Creamed Corn

Saturday was one of those days.  I worked and worked and worked and barely made a dent.  We're going to be fighting the forces of evil in a week so I had that to contend with in addition to all of the other work.  There were two highlights to the day.  First was a visit with Duane and Becky in the morning.  Second was a visit to the Benjamin Harrison House for the latest version of Victorian Villians. 

Let's start with the latter first.  The Benjamin Harrison House has a series of plays a couple of times a year.  They're typically mysteries of some sort.  For those of you in the Indianapolis area, I HIGHLY recommend them.  They're quite well done and very reasonably priced.  The house itself is well worth the visit.  Ben was our 23rd president and the only one from Indiana.  My great-grandparents lived kitty-corner from him and were friends.  So, I grew up hearing about the house.  While we were waiting for the festivities to begin, we chatted with a delightful lady who works for the Indiana department that handles historical markers.  We're the nuts who stop to read each and every one of them.  How much fun it was to discover that we can actually download a list of all of them AND some additional background info on each.  Well, the evening was full of visits from notable guests like Jack the Ripper, Belle Gunness, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Lizzie Borden and a host of other despicable characters.  We absolutely loved the show.

As for the visit with Duane and Becky, it was delightful as always.  He's a wealth of knowledge about cooking, having spent a great deal of his adult life in the restaurant business.  He said something that is oh, so true.  A great cook is an artist while a great baker is a scientist. There's a reason I made it through high school chemistry etc.  Thank you Lee Ann for all the tutoring!  BTW - Lee now teaches chemistry to college kids.  I know.  I totally lucked out to have her for one of my best buds in high school :-)  I know this is shocking, but we did spend some of our time together chatting about food.  I know.  Go Figure.  The conversation came around to mini-meatloaves my Mom used to make when I was a kid.  Glazed with orange marmalade.  They were the bomb.  Duane suggested mixing a bit of orange zest, orange liqueur and crystallized ginger into the glaze.  Oh, yeah.  Connie was doing the grocery shopping and happened to call while they were there.  Ummm, could you please also get a pound of ground beef and a pound of ground pork. 

Now, I wish the end result was as good as the story.  Sadly, it wasn't.  I couldn't find Mom's recipe.  And, I wanted to add a bit of pizazz so mixed in some shagbark hickory syrup and some Chinese five spice powder.  The meatloaves were good, but not great.  A three on a scale of one to five. 

The corn, however, was a different story.  Corn chowder is the one thing Connie just can't get down his throat.  He's not particularly fond of corn in any way, shape or form.  I love it so he eats plenty of it - probably more than he'd care.  Our grandson, Bradley, visited Friday evening and his dad had said one of the few vegetables he'd actually eat was corn.  Out came a can of corn.  Three-quarters of it was left.  What to do.  I wanted homemade creamed corn.  I'd never made it and had never even seen a recipe for it.  So, I made up my own.  Truth be told here, I really expected Connie to take a bite and say thanks but no thanks.  He inhaled the corn.  So did I.  In fact, if I didn't have a huge bag of broccoli to finish up, we'd be having it for dinner again.  Yum!

Glazed Meatloaf and Creamed Corn

Ingredients

for the meatloaf:
1/2 lb ground beef
1/2 lb ground pork
2 eggs
1/2 - 1 c oatmeal
1 t Chinese Five spice powder
1/4 c shagbark hickory syrup
1/2 c milk
1 medium onion, finely diced

for the glaze:
1/2 c peach amaretto jelly (or marmalade or another jelly)
1 T crystallized ginger, finely minced
1 T peach schnapps (or a liqueur that goes with your marmalade or jelly)
orange zest (omitted since we were out of oranges)

for the creamed corn:
1 T butter
1 T flour
nutmeg
1/2 c cream
1/2 c grated gruyere
1 can corn, drained
salt and pepper

Directions:

for the glaze:
Melt the jelly in a small saucepan and add in the other ingredients.

for the meatloaf:

Mix the ingredients gently and put the meatloaf into a 9x5 loaf pan.  Bake at 375 for an hour or until a thermometer registers 170.   While the meatloaf is baking, drizzle the glaze over it.

for the corn:

Melt the butter in a medium saucepan.  Stir in the flour and allow it to cook for a few minutes.  Don't let it get brown.  While it's cooking, grate a bit of nutmeg into the mixture.  Slowly add the cream.  Cook until the mixture is thickened.  Stir in the gruyere.  Once the sauce is smooth, add the corn.  Heat through and serve.

Mexicorn Dip

The first dish I prepared for the trip to Cincinnati was a new one.  I thought it'd be a good idea to test it and make sure we liked it.  (You do believe that, don't you?)  David's first request is typically the salsa I blogged about a couple of weeks ago.  So, this will change it up a bit. And, Connie typically doesn't care for dishes with corn - or so he says.  He loved this.  Instead of baking the test bowl, I put a little in a bowl and popped it in the microwave for 45 seconds.  We scarfed that down in no time flat so I did a second bowl - and put the big container of dip in the refrigerator!  I've already put Mexicorn and jalapeno jack cheese back on the grocery list because I know my other two stepsons (who are visiting from Cape Cod next week) will love this.  Many thanks to my friend Betsy for the recipe.  She and her daughter, Beth, own a wonderful scrapbooking BandB called Treasured Memories Retreat.  It's out in Brownsburg, IN.  If everything they make is this good, I may have to go out for a weekend just to sample!  Thank you Betsy :-)

Mexicorn Dip

1 c light mayonnaise
1 c light sour cream
2 c shredded jalapeno jack cheese
1/4 c shredded parmesan cheese
1 can Mexicorn, drained
1 can chopped green chilies

Mix together. 

Bake 30 minutes at 350.  Serve hot with tortilla or corn chips.

adapted from Treasured Memories Retreat recipe

Saturday was errand day. Sam's Club, Trader Joe's, Penzey's, Porter Paint, Marsh... That meant it was time to rotate the pantry when we got home. Not my favorite job to do but I'll admit I love seeing everything neatly stacked when I'm done. When I got home I started sloppy joe's thinking they'd make a couple of great lunches next week. What I didn't count on was that the rotating of the pantry would turn into a mass cleaning out and I'd run out of time to fix dinner - or at least the energy to fix dinner! So, sloppy joe's to the rescue. This is a recipe from Mom. Supposedly it came from the Ayres tea room. I've not seen any reference to this on anything I've ever read about the tea room. So, who knows? The corn salad is a recipe I made up a couple of years ago. It's super easy. Best eaten within a day of preparation.

Sloppy Joe's
1 lb ground beef
1 medium onion diced
1 medium green pepper diced
ketchup
dry mustard (do NOT substitute any other kind!)
cider vinegar
dark brown sugar
worcestershire sauce

Brown the beef and vegetables. Drain really well. Add the other ingredients. Since I've been making this for so long, I use the eyeball method. Looks ok, taste and add whatever is missing... So, here's a guesstimate: 1/2 c ketchup, 2 tsp dry mustard, 1 T cider vinegar, 1 T dark brown sugar, 1 t worcestershire. Allow this to cook for about 30 min so the flavors blend. Adjust as desired. Serve on toasted buns. You might need to add a bit more ketchup if you reheat this.




Corn Salad
4 ears corn
4 oz jar pimento
1 sm red onion, finely diced
2 T robusto Italian dressing

Cook the corn and remove the kernels from the cob. Mix with the other ingredients and serve.