I wanted to buy quail. HEB only had frozen “marinated” quail. I don’t swing on pretreated packaged meats. I bought a couple cornish game hens and thought I was going to make a boring dinner.
I threw together a chile rubbed charred cornish rock game hen stuffed with cilantro and ground lamb with an ancho dewberry coulis, Colorado wild rice and pistachio crusted leeks.
Elise wanted a hard boiled egg to take with her lunch tomorrow. I never thought about it before as we don’t often eat hard boiled eggs. I like to think that I can cook, but I didn’t know how long to boil an egg.
So as to reduce the risk of your eggs cracking, put them in the pot of water before boiling the water.
Soft-cooked eggs: 3 to 5 minutes
Medium-cooked eggs: 7 to 8 minutes
Hard-cooked eggs: approximately 15 to 20 minutes
After a little inspiration from last week’s cooking class, I decided to cook duck. I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel, so came up with a new pizza recipe.
I made a smoked duck breast, mango and jalapeno pizza on ciabatta with a homemade garden fresh pizza sauce, Kalamata tapenade, smoked provolone and topped with feta.
I have to admit… that was the best pizza I’ve ever had. For dessert I made a silky coffee creme brulée.
Quail
Stuff quail with venison and pork sausage and cilantro, wrap quail in two strips of bacon.
Smoke quail on grill until internal temperature is 170 degrees.
Sauce
Sautee onions, carrots and garlic until carmelized.
Add 1.5 C. veal stock (my new best friend)
Soy sauce
Ginger
Add reconstitituted ancho, sandia and chipotle peppers
Cilantro
Blend in blender or use boat motor
Add honey to desired sweetness
I’m in the process of making Easter dinner. Elise and I will be alone so I figured what would be better for just the both us than a frozen 1o.5 lb. turkey that’s been around since Thanksgiving?
The turkey’s been thawing in the fridge for the past few days. I’ll take it out tomorrow morning so it will get close to room temperature by the time it’s ready to cook. Rob Olvera gave me that pointer. Supposedly your turkey won’t dry out as easily because the inside of the bird doesn’t take as long to cook.
I’ve never roasted a turkey (that I can remember) so this experience should be interesting. I’m going to rub the bird in a garlic cilantro butter and stuff it with citrus and sage.
On the side I’ve already made a Mediterranean heirloom salad – heirloom tomotoes (which I sampled and realized that I still can’t stand the taste of tomatoes in large quantities), purple onion, garlic, yellow bell pepper, fresh mozzerella, steamed asparagus, steamed artichoke, fresh basil and mint, extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
Tomorrow I’ll make either ancho bock smashers or grilled potatoes with an ancho and chipotle bock dressing. I’ll figure that one out depending on 1) weather 2) mood 3) time willing to spend in kitchen.
I went to Central Market today. I could live there if it wasn’t for all of the people. I left the house just as it started to rain. My thinking was: I’ll go to CM and pick up a few things for the salad, a few herbs and a couple other odds & ends. I’ll spend $30. $70 later I’m walking out of the store with two large paper bags. I prefer paper bags when I shop at Central Market because 1) they’re larger 2) it’s the trendy thing to do and 3) since I am a tree hugging, bra burning, patchouli stinking hippy I like to think that my grocery shopping refuse will rapidly biodegrade along with my aluminum cans, batteries and plastic bags that I get when I shop at other grocery stores.
I walk to the truck in the pouring rain. I’m one of those guys who won’t drive around the parking lot in search of a good spot. I’ll park in the furthest spot from the store. I always find myself out of my truck and in the store before parking spot shoppers have found “the spot”. Lazy.
So I walk to the truck. I’m drenched as are my bags. I drive home, park the truck, get out, get my bags, head for the door… almost there… Crash, Boom, Splash. The bag in my right hand ripped open and the only thing that decided to make a run for it was my 48 oz. bottle of nice extra virgin olive oil. It shattered and olive oil spilled out all over the garage floor. I had to clean it up. That sucked. Big time. Damn trendy hippy bags.