Pioneer Meatballs

Well, yesterday was my birthday.  Never mind which one.  I am one of those people who DOES NOT obsess about her birthday. Many years, it's actually snuck up on me.  I'll be going through all my usual shenanigans and then, DOH!, tomorrow is my birthday.  Really? And, of course, as we get to a certain age, the birthday festivities become even less important.  When someone asks me what I want for my birthday, I have no idea.  No well-thought out list.  Just crickets and tumbleweeds.  

But, the two people who know me best hit the nail on the head yesterday.  They presented me with not one, but THREE, Pioneer Woman cookbooks.  

 I can't even remember the last time I bought a cookbook.  This tells you what incredible self-restraint I have achieved!  Consequently, my birthday turned out to be pretty darn awesome.  Neil took Viv to the movies so I went to the nail shop and got my nails done, pedicure and had 2 mimosas while they worked their magic on me.  Then, I returned home and read my new cookbooks all afternoon.  


One thing I love about Ree Drummond is her talent for creating "freezer meals."  This is particularly of interest to me these days because I like to make dishes for my parents that can just be taken out of the freezer and popped in the oven or crockpot, so they don't have to stress about what to have for dinner. I also serve on the "Gracious Goodness" committee (that's really not the right word) at church. We make meals and freeze them to distribute to church members and spouses when someone is hospitalized, just home from the hospital, not able to get out much, etc.  I really love cooking for other people, so this is right up my alley.

ANYWAY...I had 2 1/2 lbs of hamburger sitting my fridge waiting for me to come up with something brilliant to do with it and along came the Pioneer Woman.  I turned it into her "ready to go freezer meatballs."  

I cut her recipe in half because of the amount of meat I had on hand, yet, I ended up with 3 batches of approximately 25 meatballs each.  We used one tonight for dinner and the other 2 are in the freezer. The cookbook gives 3 ideas for preparation of the meatballs. I had all the ingredients for the BBQ recipe on hand, so that's what we had tonight.  

Very simple ingredients: bread crumbs, eggs, salt, pepper, mustard

You go ahead and cook 'em then freeze for later

 Ree's recipe takes store-bought barbeque sauce and jacks it up.  You put it on the stove just to a gentle boil, add some vinegar, brown sugar, Tabasco and Worchestershire.  Add your meatballs back in, cover and simmer on low heat for about 10 minutes and then, it's dinnertime.  

I can't even begin to tell you how insanely easy this was and how fast you can have it on the table. Thank you Pioneer Woman.  I want to come hang out on your ranch sometime.  Whaddya say?

Broke My Own Rule

I know, I know. I've said it a million times before.  I don't think chicken has any place on a pizza. But, I'll admit that I've had chicken pizzas before and it wasn't terrible.  Probably because I still maintain that pizza is the world's perfect food.  All food groups can be (and should be) represented. 

The other day, I cleaned out my fridge.  How does one family of 3 come up with so many jars of stuff?  Horseradish, capers, 5 kinds of jelly, wasabi, 4 hot sauces, maraschino cherries, just to name a few.  And, two half full bottles of BBQ sauce. That sauce, and the leftover roasted chicken in my fridge, got me thinking.  You know where I'm going with this.

I pulled out the bread machine and whipped up some pizza dough.  I really love this machine and need to remember more often that I have it. And, the fridge ingredients got involved to create our version of a BBQ chicken pizza.

I started early in the afternoon with caramelizing onions. If you have the time to slowly caramelize onions the right way, you'll be so pleased with yourself.

This is 3 medium-large sized onions

 

Starting to get a little color

Browning up more

Slowly but surely, we're getting there

OMG, isn't this beautiful?

My chicken was already cooked, so I just shredded it and tossed it around in some of that BBQ sauce from the fridge clean-out.  I rolled our homemade dough out nice and thin and placed on my trusty pizza stone.  After brushing with some olive oil, I put it into a 500 degree oven to prebake and get crisp.

For the pizza, we used a layer of BBQ sauce instead of tomato pizza sauce.

Since we're going with red BBQ sauce, some cheddar made sense.

Then, I just continued on with the chicken, some chopped (cooked) bacon, my gorgeous caramelized onions, pineapple chunks and mozzarella. 

The finished product

Despite a pretty sophisticated palate, my sweet girl usually defaults to a cheese pizza (much to mama's chagrin).  However, she took one bite of this and declared it the "best pizza ever."  It's her new favorite.  Personally, I think I went overboard on the sauce.  It was tasty, but a little too sweet for me, but overall, I thought it turned out quite well.  The bacon and pineapple were great choices and really gave the pie a cool "flavor profile" as they love to spout off on The Food Network. Next time, I'll just use less sauce and I think it'll be pretty close to perfect. 

On a personal note: I dedicate this post to Paul Whitlark.  He was a nutty, looney, generous, kind, always hospitable friend to so many of us.  He will always be Rosewood's favorite "Pizza Man" and we will all miss him terribly.  Peace to all of his family. 

Big Easy on the Mountaintop

You know how when you learn a new word, all of a sudden it seems you hear that word every time you turn around.  I had this experience this weekend with a recipe, or rather, with a dish.

On a food blogger page that I'm a part of, someone posed the question of taking the Ruth's Chris recipe for New Orleans BBQ shrimp and turning it into a cream-based pasta sauce.  She asked for advice, opinions, batted around some ideas of other ingredients to add, et cetera. I've read this Ruth's Chris recipe before but haven't gotten around to making it myself.  It looks and sounds awesome so I need to just quit thinking about it and make it happen.  

So, this past weekend I took my little Wunderkind to visit my sister up in Asheville.  It's that time of year again, so we were making a trip to the apple orchard.  (Now I've got apples up to my ears and need to start up all the apple recipes.) My sister says to me on the evening that we arrived, "Hey I was going to make this for dinner.  I made it not long ago when we had a friend over and he went crazy over it."  She hands me a recipe for New Orleans BBQ Shrimp.  To quote Shatner in Airplane II, "irony can be pretty ironic sometimes."  Now it seems this shrimp recipe is really making the rounds and I'm running into it everywhere!

So, Katherine's version was, in a word, delicious.  If you aren't familiar, the shrimp is left in the shell and covered in this New Orleans style sauce and baked.  Since everyone at the table peels their own shrimp, this makes life really easy on the cook. It's loaded with spices and herbs and creates a fantastic sauce.  So make sure you have a good crusty loaf of bread and sop that stuff up like a starving Frenchman. Didn't expect to be transported from the mountains to New Orleans! Take a look at how beautiful this turned out...

Just gorgeous and tasted divine.  I'm not sure exactly which recipe it was that Katherine used, but the Ruth's Chris recipe is posted below, if you want to give it a try.  This would be a great dish to serve to a crowd at the beach; a nice alternative to the ubiquitous Frogmore Stew. 

Ruth's Chris New Orleans-Style BBQ Shrimp

Ingredients:
-Makes 4 servings
-20 large (16/20) shrimp, peeled and deveined
-1 ounce canola oil
-1 tablespoon plus 5 teaspoons green onions, chopped
-2 ounces dry white wine
-1 teaspoon fresh chopped garlic
-4 tablespoons Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce
-1 teaspoon Tabasco
-1/2 teaspoon cayenne
-1/2 teaspoon paprika
-8 ounces (2 sticks) salted butter

Directions:
Place a large cast iron skillet on a burner and heat over high heat. Add oil and cook shrimp until they are just done. It's best to prepare shrimp in batches if you do not have large skillet. Remove shrimp and set aside on a large platter.

Add green onions to the oil in the skillet and cook for 1 minute. Add white wine and let simmer until it is reduced by half.

When the wine is reduced by half, add chopped garlic, Worcestershire, Tabasco. cayenne pepper and paprika. Shake the pan well and cook for 1 minute. Reduce the heat to low.

Cut butter into small chunks with the knife and slowly add into pan, shaking fast to melt butter.

Continue to add butter and shake until all butter is melted. Add shrimp back to pan and toss well to coat shrimp with butter and seasonings and to heat the shrimp. Place shrimp on four plates and enjoy.

Rockin' Ribs

I've told you all before that I was intimidated by ribs for many years.  I finally broke down and tried them when an issue of Bon Appetit's cover beckoned me.  That recipe was ridiculously easy and delicious and not nearly as time consuming as people tell you. I've made it numerous times now, but I'm still a rib-cookin'-newbie.  I am constantly perusing other recipes for different flavors and techniques to try.  Recently, I found baby backs on sale and grabbed a rack.  What to do, what to do?

I went to my new favorite website (and cookbook publisher), www.AllRecipes.com for some guidance.  Neil was working late that day, which means he probably skipped lunch, and would arrive here starving.  This recipe caught my eye because of the flavors, the time involved and the good ratings.  Decision made.

Look at these babies!

I know, right?

Collards, field peas and BBQ...they eat this way up North, right?

My Southern Belle...in her motorcycle jersey.

I served the ribs with collard greens and field peas.  I really think I surprised Neil with this kind of down home meal on a weeknight.  The little gourmand also loved it.  Happiness all around!  If you're like me, wrestling with the intimidation of cooking ribs, and cooking them well, try this recipe.  It worked just as it promised and the result was tender and delicious.  

Far East meets Down South

Here in good ol' S.C., we all rang in the New Year in our traditional way.  Food, drinking, and food.  The food is integral and is pretty much the same for us all. Superstition and tradition dictates it.  Every January 1st, all us South Carolinians (and other Southerners too) cook up some kind of pork (for good luck and wealth), collard greens (for cash), black eyed peas (for coins) and cornbread because, well you know, we like it with just about everything.

So, I chose to do BBQ in the crockpot and cooked my peas and collards low and slow for most of the afternoon.  Mom and Dad came over and we all feasted.  It was pretty awesome, if I do say so myself!  And today, we are fortunate to have lots of tasty leftovers to not only reheat and enjoy again, but to experiment with and reinvent!

Neil and I got the idea in our heads to go the route of the eggroll.  And, I'm so glad this thought crossed our minds.  

First, I made one with just collard greens inside.  Super.  Then, I added a little cream cheese to make the filling just a little more silky.  Good idea.  Next, we added black eyed peas to the mix.  Still going strong.  And lastly, I put some of the BBQ inside with the others.  Neil ate three of these.  And gave me a thumbs up. And, the little one ate one as well and proclaimed that it was "fantastic!  Keep up the good work, Mommy!" as she slapped me on the fanny.

I'm so glad we tried this.  It really worked! It sounds a little far out, but trust me, it works well.  Tomorrow, I'm using some more of the black eyeds for some pea cakes.  Maybe with a big ol' salad.  Or maybe with more BBQ...it was awfully good too!

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BBQ worth writing home about

If you live in the South, you eat barbeque.  A lot of it.  Often.  I'm talking about actual barbeque too.  For those of you from "up North" barbeque is a food; it's not an action or another word for a grill.  It's food.  And around here, it's most often shredded or chopped pork with either a mustard based sauce or a spicy vinegar based sauce.  For us, barbeque is a celebratory food.  We serve it when we have casual outdoor parties, we serve it for birthday get-togethers, it's an absolute given that we'll serve it on the 4th of July, and it's commonly served around Memorial and Labor Day too.  We buy it, sometimes we cook it ourselves or if it's a big occasion, we'll even hire someone else to cook it in our backyard for us.  You'll find barbeque at open houses, family reunions, church or school fundraisers, wedding receptions and rehearsal dinners.

Which brings me to last night.

Our friends John and Anne are getting married today.  Yesterday we went to the Seibels house for the rehearsal then headed to a secluded hunt club called Millaree for the rehearsal party.  This place was way cool.  It's a true, active, hardcore hunt club.  Rustic building with bunk beds, open air picnic building, dressing room (not for trying on clothes girls!) and acres and acres of land right next to the swamp.  A perfect place for a BBQ rehearsal dinner.

It was catered by Hudson's Barbeque, a well-known barbeque house over in Lexington.  

Now here's the thing.  I love BBQ as much as the next guy, but I rarely rave about it.  There are aficionados out there, to be sure.  In fact, I used to work with a doctor who was such a connoisseur, you could name a town in SC and he could tell you where to get BBQ.  So for me, barbeque is sort of a staple in Southern cuisine.  It's almost never bad, but some is definitely better than others.  Last night is a great example.


The pork was prepared exactly the way I like it.  Chopped fine, the fat and gunk removed, and some little charred pieces mixed in.  I like to dress mine first with a little vinegar sauce then top it with mustard sauce.  We had traditional accoutrements:  baked chicken (for the pork-less), green beans, sweet potato casserole, macaroni and cheese, white bread, & bread and butter pickles.  The macaroni was outstanding, the sweet potatoes had a heavenly dose of cinnamon and the pole beans were perfectly seasoned and cooked just right.  I could have eaten an entire plate of green beans to tell the truth.  I mean, that's a good green bean huh?


So I thought I needed to share this BBQ experience with you.  It was really fantastic and it's making me happy just thinking about it.  The only thing that would have made the night more complete would be if a giant, nasty, angry wild boar had charged up out of the black swamp and someone would have dropped it right there in the picnic shed with a single shot to the head.  Yeah I know; that's a really weird thought.  But knowing that black, inky swamp was right there, it coulda happened.

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