1. Buy a bag of dried beans for 15-bean soup (throw away the spice packet).
2. Soak the beans in a pot of salted water overnight (about 12 hours).
3. Stir the beans and throw away any floaters. Drain, rinse and put back in the pot with enough water to cover by 1-2 inches.
4. Add one coarsely chopped onion and four stalks of coarsely chopped celery.
5. Toss in a ham hock and a half bottle McCormick Cajun Seasoning.
6. Simmer for three hours, adding more water if necessary.
7. Add a can of crushed tomatoes and simmer for 2-3 hours until tender.

I grew up in the South. More often than not, my mother whipped up a batch of biscuits for dinner and she alway managed to time them just perfect so they came straight from the oven onto the plates… where we would immediately pile on the butter as if the boat-load of shortening in them wasn’t quite enough to meet our daily requirement of fat. And for dessert? Another biscuit with butter and strawberry preserves, of course.

I learned from my mother that a meal without bread and butter… well… it usually isn’t worth eating and never, ever as satisfying, and now I’m paying for it. I weigh 110 pounds, don’t have an ounce of fat on me, I have to take medication for high cholesterol and I still can’t give up that daily bread and butter.

But now I know the secret and I’m going to share my seven easy steps to bread heaven:

1. Go buy a bread machine. I have a Zojirushi and absolutely love it.
2. Go buy a copy of Rustic European Breads From Your Bread Machine.
3. Make up a batch of poolish (page 57), pour it in a large-mouth glass jar and put it in a place of honor on your kitchen counter to sit over night.
4. After the poolish has been doing its thing for at least 12-14 hours, dump it back in the bread machine and make up a batch of pain au levain (page 94). Put one cup of dough back in your poolish jar and bake the rest according to the recipe.
5. As soon as you take it out of the oven, cut a nice thick slice and chew off a healthy bite without stopping to butter it — it doesn’t need any. In between bites, pat yourself on the back for making the best darn loaf of bread you’ve ever tasted without a single drop of fat or grain of sugar.
6. Have another slice. It’s like potato chips — you can’t have just one.
7. Repeat steps 4 and 5 daily.

The verdict is in. I’ve been experimenting with prime rib and rib roasts for four or five years now and can say without a doubt you don’t have to buy prime rib to impress your dinner guests. I’ve started buying boneless Angus select rib roasts at Sam’s Club and they’re absolutely awesome when they’re cooked right. Yes, I said select. For those of you who aren’t familiar with meat grades, that’s two whole notches below prime.

For best results, buy a rib roast weighing between two and six pounds with lots of fine marbling.

1. Remove the roast from the refrigerator at least 45-60 minutes before cooking (longer if your refrigerator is near freezing or the roast weighs more than three pounds). The roast doesn’t have to be be room temperature, put putting in the oven when it’s still cold is out of the question.
2. Mix 1/2 to 1 tablespoon fresh coarsely ground black pepper with an equal quantity of Canadian Steak seasoning.
3. Coat the roast on all sides with the seasoning. Note that the Canadian Steak seasoning is very salty, so don’t be too liberal.
4. Stand the roast fat-side up on a rack in a large roasting pan.
5. Preheat the oven to 500°F. Use your oven’s convection setting if it has one.
6. Place the roasting pan in the center of the oven. Roast at 500°F for 15 minutes (2-3 pound roast) or 20 minutes (more than 3 pounds).
7. Decrease temperature to 275°F and continue roasting for a total of 20-25 minutes or until the internal temperature reaches 110° (rare) or 115° (medium rare).

Resist the urge to open the oven door. When you check the temperature, quickly remove the roast from the oven, close the oven door to keep the heat in and return the roast to the oven as soon as possible if more cooking time is desired.
Removing the roast from the refrigerator well in advance of cooking time is critical. You won’t be at all happy with the results if the roast is cold when you put it in the oven.
Resist the urge to trim the fat from the roast. You don’t have to eat it, but you should leave it on until the roast is done. If you’re worried about the side effects, remember this: it’s more satisfying to consume a well-prepared cut of meat once a month than it is to consume a poorly prepared one once a day.
There seems to be a general consensus that if you roast to an internal temperature of more than 115°, the meat will be tough. On one occasion, I accidentally left the roast in the oven to 125°. It was well done, but still tender and flavorful.

And the best part? The last time my husband’s brothers came to visit, one of world’s truest beef-eaters said “this is great prime rib”.

It’s test kitchen night. That’s the night I browse the cupboards and freezer, start pulling out what appeals to me and turn it into dinner. Here’s tonight’s experiment.

1/4 c. brown sugar
1/4 c. cider vinegar
1/2 c. Southern Comfort
1/2 14-oz can Hunts tomato sauce
1/4 c. Plochman’s mustard
2 tbsp. chopped garlic
1 1/2 tsp. cumin seed
2 lbs. beef tips

Mix all ingredients except the tips in a sauce pan and simmer while you prepare the tips.
Heat a cast iron skillet over medium heat until it starts to smoke. Brown the tips in the skillet.
Coat the tips with the sauce, cover and simmer until tender, about 45 minutes.

I’ll post an update when it’s done, but it smells yummy.

We decided to do dinner and a movie for Valentine’s Day and dinner was Bejing Duck at the Chen Yang Li in Bow. We usually go their two or three times a month for sushi, but occasionally opt for the duck for a change of pace.

When we arrived, there was a line at the door and the table’s were full. We were a little worried because we only had 90 minutes to eat and drive to the movie theatre in Hookset. I walked up to the hostess and asked how long the wait was. When she asked if we had a reservation, one of our favorite managers leaned over her shoulder and said “they always have a reservation”. What a nice way to make your repeat customers feel special!

I went Googling a few months ago looking for hot sauce recipes and kept coming across comments from people who were raving about Inner Beauty Hot Sauce. You’ll find numerous recipes on the web, some claiming to be the original, with all of them getting a broad range of reviews as to whether they’re authentic.

If you’re into making your own hot sauce, I’m not sure it matters which one you try… but the only thing that turned me off was that it calls for mangos. Number one, I’ve never been all that fond of mangos. Number two, I live in a small town and mangos just aren’t something we can buy at the local grocery store — not to mention the fact that for a few months of the year, we have access to wonderful local produce… like the apple orchard down the road that has a few peach trees.

So I decided to swap out the mangos for peaches. It’s absolutely awesome. If you like mustard-based hot sauces, it’s definitely worth trying a few recipes and experimenting. You might want to be a little cautious, though… the recipe I used called for ten habaneros — I learned that six is plenty.

I hate to sound like an idiot, but after making myself an evening “coffee drink”, I decided it was time to hit the Internet Ouija Board and figure out whether I made myself a cappuccino or latte. Turns out it was neither — I use proportions that are pleasing to me and that’s all that really counts, isn’t it.

But I was surprised by the number of people who are not only interested in this subject, but terribly confused by the definitions. From Coffee Geek:

Cappuccino: The undeniable classic and darling of the espresso world. It is the perfect example of milk and coffee done right. The cup itself should hold 5 to 7oz and no more. Sharing the space in the cup in one-third proportions is one shot of espresso, one-third steamed milk, topped by one-third foam.

Latte: This is a wildly popular drink in North America. Large quantity of milk, small quantity of coffee. Something the Italians might serve to their children.

If you just Google for cappuccino vs. latte, you’ll find numerous blogs where people don’t understand how you can make a drink of thirds in a 5-7 oz cup with a single shot and end up with a full cup of coffee.

So consider this: take a classic cappuccino cup (which is much smaller at the bottom than it is at the rim) and dump in a single shot. What you have is a cup that’s 1/3 full by height — not by volume. If that’s an inch of coffee, then add an inch of steamed milk and top it off with an inch of foam.

Makes perfect sense to me.

References:
* Coffee Geek