Outside the dugout: What's cooking?

Don't you remember how hot Gainesville is in the summer?

 

Running the oven is way hotter than microwaving.

 

Now my kitchen is hot as hell.

Pork chops with a sear and put in the oven to finish and German potato salad.

At least the green salad won't add to the heat load.

 

Tonight was leftovers.

I had forgotten how good a meatloaf sandwich could be.

With a side of day old German potato salad. It's better the second day.

 

Smoking a chicken and a duck this afternoon. It has been a long time since I smoked a duck and it is so good. And any leftovers make outstanding duck lo mein.

Making a radicchio and baby greens (arugula and spinach) salad with thinly sliced pear and a blue cheese, honey, and shallot dressing to go with it. Also cous-cous: the side dish so nice that they named it twice.

Saturday was whole red snapper with capers and the side dish was a potato gratin with locally grown poblano peppers. I finished the last of the gratin for lunch today.

Yesterday I grilled a mess of jerk chicken and took it to a friend's house where they made the sides. I make my own jerk sauce and use datil peppers instead of Scotch bonnets because I like the citrus flavor that datils have. The chicken had been sitting in the jerk sauce since Friday. Usually I like to give it one more day, but it was fine. And I tone it down a little so that everyone other than me can enjoy it. I wish that I could find a local source of allspice wood so I could do it right.

 

Made Korean style pork chops the other night with "Chinese" broccoli. Very yummy.

Tonight we are finally having the duck lo mien. I did a bunch of chopping but my wife is the chef with this dish.

 

It's Game Day.

Yesterday I had to wake up at the crack of dawn to cook because it was the last day we were pool sitting for some folks that were out of the country for three weeks and the people we invited over for a swim have three young kids with early bedtimes and I had a full day at UF with a 9th Period (4:05 to 4:55 pm) class to teach. It felt funny to be grilling jerk chicken at 7:30 am after prepping and cooking my yellow rice pilaf (toasted rice and thin rice noodles with turmeric, cumin, garlic, yellow onion, scallions, yellow bell pepper, cayenne, and chicken stock brought to a boil then poured into a baking dish and baked at 400 F for 20 minutes covered and then 30 minutes or so uncovered).

Since there was left over pilaf (my son plowed through the leftover jerk chicken so that is now gone!) I decided to make a chicken and fennel tangine today. It is a Moroccan dish and really good if you like fennel and olives. I normally make cous-cous with it, but the leftover pilaf will be nice instead.

 

Looked like a great meal.

Too bad about the game, though. I have thought about getting a Green Egg.

I watched the first half, but then had to start my own cooking. Is UT some sort of Jekyll and Hyde with how they play first and second half?

 

Next Tuesday is my youngest son (I have two boys) 21st birthday. He still lives at home. I thought he would want to go out and paint the town, but he wants to stay home and have me cook dinner. I want to cook whatever he wants, but he can't decide. I am thinking prime rib or grilled ribeye steaks (he loves both of them) with garlic mashed potatoes and a veggie that he will eat.

Or maybe jerk chicken. When I cook that the leftovers disappear overnight.

 

I got word today that the entree is ribeye.

Probably a Rhone style wine from Paso Robles as the beverage.

As for cigars, that is out. We are a tobacco free household.

And I used to drink cognac in the winter when I lived up North. It just never seems to get cold and dank enough for cognac in Gainesville.