Outside the dugout: What's cooking?

Burgers tonight. I have some cubed (one inch per side) chuck in the freezer stiffening up before it put it through my grandmother's manual meat grinder. I think that the grinder is from the 1930's, but might be older. I like that I can grind it a bit chunkier than the prepackaged ground chuck but more importantly I know the meat is fresh and not what didn't sell and was ground up because it was starting to turn brown in the butcher's case. And I get to trim out the bits of gristle. Pro tip: put the screw and the plate you force the meat through in the freezer as well. The fat won't stick to it as much if you do that.

I keep the grind simple with just some black pepper, salt, and Worcestershire added. And I "dimple" my patties in the middle before putting them on the grill. That helps with the tendency to swell in the middle.

 

Today is my MIL's 87th birthday and I am cooking dinner. She requested my chicken tagine which I am happy to make.

Yesterday we visited some friends and the wife is into growing heirloom tomatoes that can do well in Florida. They have to start them really early indoors and put them out as soon as they dare in order to get fruit. Now that it is too hot at night they won't set any more fruit. But right now they are over run with too much fruit and so I took a lot home. Today I am making tomato sauce from over 5 pounds of these tomatoes. This should make about one quart of sauce. They are not paste tomatoes, like Roma also called plum tomatoes at the supermarket, so it is going to take a long time to cook down. The taste is really good and the acid level is high which is to be expected with old varieties. The color is not as deep of a red, though.

 

That is a lot of folks to cook for. I think that I topped out at about 100 once. And I didn't get to eat anything that day. It was all gone, but the keg wasn't empty.

 

Did you get to eat?

 

Clean out the frig night. Lots of good stuff. Some will eat hot dogs. Some will have linguini with pesto that I made a few days ago. Some will have leftover chicken tagine and couscous. Some might have some of each.

 

Doing two beer can chickens tonight. One for dinner and one for my MIL so she can make chicken salad for something or another. She was going to buy a dried out Publix rotisserie chicken and we talked her out of that mistake. Since I could be easily talked into making one for dinner why not make two?

Chickens are prepped. I rub some kosher salt, freshly ground black pepper, and paprika under the skin and a little on the outside as well. Just waiting on the grill to be ready.

 

Braising a corned beef today.