Outside the dugout: What's cooking?

Tonight making penne pasta with a creamy sauce with sun dried tomatoes, roasted red peppers, heavy cream, garlic, red pepper flakes, and fresh basil. And shrimp. Not actually an Italian dish, but mighty tasty. Cobbling together an arugula, tomato, and English cuke salad to go with it.

Tomorrow I am smoking a 5.5 lb pork shoulder for pulled pork. Also making Carolina vinegar slaw for topping the sandwiches.

 

The universal food binding ingredient.

 

At 9 hours plus on a 5.5 lb pork shoulder at 250 F and while it is over the plateau temp it is still too low at around 180 F. I could take it off, wrap, and the chop what does not shred and it would be great but I want to shred it all.

So at least another half hour (and probably more like a whole hour for ten hours total) and then enough rest time to cool down enough to shred.

 

Tonight is some clean out the fridge duty, but there was some cooking today. I made some pesto with home grown basil. I did not have any pine nuts or walnuts but I had some shelled pistachios. While not traditional, pistachios make a really good pesto. I will use this for roasting a chicken some time this week where I push the pesto under the skin before cooking.

I am also drying some chilies. Last fall my wife and I went out to New Mexico for her birthday and we went to Chimayo. Chimayo is a sacred place in both the indigenous faiths and Catholics, but it is really well known in culinary circles for the amazing peppers that grow there. They are not famous for being super hot, but are famous for having a sublime flavor. We lucked out to find a pepper on the ground that we brought home that I saved for seed and I am growing them here. It will not be the same, but it will be as close as I can grow to the real deal. I am drying six of them as I type.

 

I really need to step up my grilling game. I only start any drinking when it is almost done and no decisions or knife work have to be done.

 

Often that is just after I wake up in the morning and that is too early in the day for me.

Added in edit: No Irish coffee at 4 am?

 

Roasting a chicken with the pesto rub tonight. As long as I am roasting a chicken I am also roasting carrots.

Still deciding which one to make: rice, cous-cous, pasta, or potatoes in some form as the last element.

 

The current money pit/rental property is getting prepped for a drywood termite tenting on Friday. I was able to trim all of the tree limbs close to the roof and siding today with my manual pole saw. I thought that I might have to rent a power version, but I got it done without that.

Just a little more close to the ground trimming to do.

Also getting close to "fixing" a window. The rental house has double hung windows all around and originally 6 light over 6 light. Two of the three windows to the exterior from the living room had been converted to 6 light over one light because one renter had an insane dog that jumped through two windows and it was cheaper to turn it into a single pane of glass than to try and replicate the mullions and mutions to return it to a six light sash.

I am converting the third window in the living room to 6 over one so that it has some parity when seen from the outside. It is almost done. I should be able to get glass tomorrow and glaze it in. I know that I am an ex-college prof, but I know how to glaze a window properly. I also know how to grout tile and other things.

Than was an elaborate lead-in to explain why I am having a second martini whilst cooking.

 

Since I had half of a head of cabbage left over from the weekend making Carolina slaw for pulled pork sandwiches I am making caramelized cabbage with anchovies, sage, and breadcrumbs with penne for dinner.

It is not exactly Italian cuisine, but my northern Italian BIL (a really great cook) has given it his stamp of approval. To give an exact quote to my younger sister after he tasted it: "We need to visit Florida more often."

Mine is a twist and a tweak on a NY Times recipe. What they had was good, but I knew how to ramp it up a bit. Number one thing wrong in the NY Times recipe is the time to caramelize cabbage. It takes even longer than to caramelize onions and that is also reported as wrong in most recipes. To do it right takes about 45 minutes and not 15. Julia Child was supposed to teach us how to cook and she had it right.

Even the good ole boys that smoke meat know that good food is not rushed.