Outside the dugout: What's cooking?

Bone-in ribeyes on sale today so firing up the KJ. My wife will be making a bread salad with kale from a friend's garden. It is really good.

 

Cooked some Vienna Beef dogs with all the Chicago trimmings except for a poppy seed bun.

Dee-Lish!

 

Smoked a small pork shoulder (3.7 lbs) for pulled pork sandwiches. Made Carolina slaw as well. I think my wife is bringing some Sonny's baked beans home as a side. I can make decent baked beans but it is a lot of work and baked beans is the best thing on Sonny's menu.

 

Pork has been taken off, rested for an hour and pulled. Perfection. All connective tissue has melted but still some fat remained for juiciness. Perfect bark. I just rubbed with brown sugar and salt with a touch of yellow "ballpark" mustard to make the rub stick. I never got the appeal of "fancy" rubs. Sugar and salt is all you really need. Maybe some black pepper as a third element.

It helped that it was a small shoulder and not very thick. The middle meat could get up to temp without drying out the outer meat. I did run it mostly at 230F instead of 250F with that in mind. No need to inject before or even spray with apple juice during.

 

Last night was hot Italian sausage with arugula and orecchiette with scallions and lemon zest.

Tonight is chicken tinga tacos with pickled red onion and avocado as toppings. I think that the Carolina slaw left over from pulled pork would also be a great taco topping for chicken tinga but not authentic, but who cares about that. If it tastes good it is good.

 

I make oven fries pretty much like that. It works. No need for an air fryer.

 

Occasionally I sprinkle a tiny bit of sugar on my steaks before I grill them. For just a little caramelization. But I always keep it simple.

 

Leftovers.

 

Stir fried beef and broccoli. I marinade the beef in soy sauce, sesame oil, ginger, garlic and honey.

Thai inspired cucumber salad (smashed English cukes salted and sitting out for about 30 minutes, dressed with serrano peppers, rice vinegar, fish sauce, garlic and topped with chopped dry roasted peanuts) and Texmati rice.

 

Making Tamale Pie from the Joy of Cooking book. Old school comfort food.

 

I have everything for making mezzi rigatoni with fennel from the Red Hen restaurant but we are having another round of lasagna before what is left does into deep freeze.

Added in edit: My youngest son want to know how many got the "Death is a cold lasagna suspended in deep freeze" reference from the 10CC song "Life is a Minestrone". I am guessing only the old farts.

 

Making the mezzi rigatoni with fennel and sweet Italian sausage tonight. Two ingredients are not normal. One is fennel pollen. That I had to order online. Not even our Whole Paycheck grocer had it. The other is passata. Think of it as a totally smooth tomato sauce with nothing added and using roma or San Marzano tomatoes.

 

Again?

 

On Friday I had planned to roast a pork tenderloin with a sesame teriyaki sauce to serve with stir-fried broccoli and rice but my wife saw a recipe for chicken vesuvio which is a Chicago thing and wanted to try her hand at it. It was really good. We had leftovers last night.

Tonight I am BBQing chicken thighs served with leftover Carolina slaw and corn on the cob.