Oven "Pulled Pork" Fajita's

Tonight I knew I wasn't going to have any time to cook dinner because I had band practice for 2 hours. When trying to decide what to cook the night before, I realized I had 1/4 of an onion, 1/4 green & red bell pepper, and 1/4 of a jalapeno. I didn't have any meat in the freezer other than a small amount of pork shoulder that I had cubed left over from when I was making sausage. I decided to defrost it and think of what to make the next day.

Let's Get Saucy

I recently started making pasta and pizza dough from scratch. I usually make my own sauces just out of a can of tomato sauce and adding to it, but never just an all purpose red sauce. Here is what I came up with.

No Soup For You

Last week, I bought a rotisserie chicken at the grocery store. If you read my blog, you know what that means on the weekend. I'm making chicken stock. If you haven't read my blog on how to make chicken stock, click here.

Beware of the Sausage - Part 2 of 2

Day 2 of sausage making. If you missed out of day 1, click here. Today is all pork and more traditional sausage. The sausages of the day are Hot Italian, Hot Louisiana, and Bratwurst. I used a boneless pork shoulder, cut it up into pieces and froze it just like the chicken. I decided to do a pound of each type and then an extra pound Italian, which I wasn't planning on stuffing into casings. I made it for a different recipe (which I'll blog about later, so stay tuned). I found the recipes for these online, but its just a bunch of different spices and herbs for each. Below you can see the Italian grind prior to stuffing.

Beware of the Sausage - Part 1 of 2

Since I purchased my KitchenAid mixer and meat grinder attachment, I've been researching and reading different sausage recipes. I've made a few small batches just to try out the grinder and get used to using it. I've been waiting to make a big batch of sausage but I've had a hard time finding the sausage casing. After driving all over town, I finally found a small European sausage shop that would sell me casing.

Kitchen Gadget's

A few years ago when I started getting into cooking, my parents and brother found it extremely weird when for my birthday I asked for nothing but cooking stuff. Back then, it was simple stuff like pyrex pans, lemon zester, nice cutting board.... Now that my parents actually believe that I like to cook and am actually ok at it, they expect me to ask for cooking stuff for my birthday & Christmas.

Pickled Egg update

Its been 2 weeks since I've pickled the eggs so on Halloween, I had my pickled egg expert Jadd (@jaddilac) over to help taste them at the 2 week mark. Over the past 2 weeks they have been sitting in vacuum sealed canisters in my wine cellar, which is around 55F most of the time. I have been shaking the jars every few days because the seasonings settle to the bottom.

The spicy eggs are ready to go. They are nice and hot, vinegary, and black peppery. I like to eat them with a dash of cracked black pepper and salt. Nothing fancy about these guys, just real traditional. I am going to keep letting them sit to get more flavor. Back in the cellar you go.

The curry (tumeric) garlic ones are a whole different story. They are not ready yet. You can taste the flavor, but just barely. They have a good garlic flavor but not intense enough. Same with the tumeric. All of the spices separate out, so I think I need to shake the jar at least once a day. These might need at least another month to get up to taste.

The pickled sausage isn't coming out good. It has a strong vinegar taste up front and a very strong all-spice kick at the end. Waaaaaay too much all-spice. These might have to get thrown in the garbage. Oh well :)

One other thing I've been pickling that I didn't blog about is my jalapeno, onion and carrot mix (aka escabeche). If you've been to a Mexican burrito shop and seen the radishes, limes and jalapeno/carrot buffet, then you know you are at the right spot. I've been picking them for over a month and they weren't getting hot enough. About 2 weeks ago, I added 5 habaneo's to my mix of 20 jalapeno's, 1 carrot and 1/4 an onion. We had some last night, WOW are they hot now. Maybe a bit too hot, unless you are Josh Rasler (@RazzleTweet). It's not going to stop me from eating them.

I will let you know the results of the next taste test in 2 to 4 weeks.