Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Summer Surf and Turf

Well, now that summer is essentially over, I guess it would be just about time for me to finally get something up on this site here!

I apologize in advance for the lack of organization of my post; I very rarely use anything that resembles a recipe and also generally fail to write down anything I do as I go along, so bear with me here. I also apologize for the formatting here. Luke's going to have to help me clean this up at some point.

Anyways, over the last few weeks, I had been having crazy person cravings for surf and turf. Yes, ladies and gentleman, surf and turf, that meal that does everything in its power to exude an air of decadence and gluttony and proves that we as American's have conquered both the wild plains and the deep blue seas. With our stomachs.














Anyways, the first thing you'll need to do with this meal is pick out your meats. I went with a pair of rib eye steaks from the local market. For those that are still learning meat cuts, rib eye (also know as Scotch fillets) are beef steaks cut from the rib section of the cow. Because of this, they are fattier and more tender (marbled) than other cuts (seen here, already marinated). They can be a bit pricey too. You'll also want to pick up some shrimp. I recommend going with a bag of small or medium shrimp to make preparation a bit easier. Large shrimp have to be deveined since their digestive tract may contain grit. In smaller shrimp this can be done for cosmetic reasons, but isn't mission critical. I also picked up some grilling mushrooms.

When you get set up, make sure to throw your shrimp skewers in a pan of water for about an hour so you don't wind up with shrimp torches. Next, I marinated the steaks in a large zip lock bag with some extra virgin olive oil, salt, pepper, Worcestershire, and crushed garlic in the fridge, while I skewered the shrimp and set up the grill. If you buy your shrimp frozen, you can thaw them in a bag placed in cold water.

When the grill is ready, go ahead and throw your steaks on over indirect heat for a few minutes. You'll want to have a jump on them before you add the shrimp, since the shrimp will cook crazy fast. When the steaks are moving along, throw on the shrimp skewers with whatever herbs you like (thyme and rosemary for me). The shrimp need to be turned often, so keep your eye on them. I also shook a little adobo on the shrimp as they were cooking.


For the mushrooms, brush lightly with oil, add some salt and pepper and grill on tin foil over indirect heat. Don't over cook them. Burnt mushrooms are SAD SAD things.

Once everything is finished, plate it up and serve. If everything went well, you should have pretty nice meal laid out here.

As far as pairings for this meal go, I'd say you're pretty safe with a darker amber lager or another heavy red meat beer. For wine, I picked a syrah by Francis Coppola. It was a little peppery with definite hints of blackberry and earth, but it went pretty well with the steaks. You can pick it up at any local grocer with a decent wine selection.

Well, that's all I have for now! Have fun with attempting this meal. The great thing about shrimp and beef is that you can do just about anything with them. Peace out, Conquistadors.

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Something Clever About Stuffed Peppers and Red Hot Lovin'

I never used to be a fan of stuffed peppers. I would come across them once a year or so, stare distastefully at the green blobs simmering in their own juices, and would do my best to avoid seconds. My Subway orders often included the words, "...and everything EXCEPT the green peppers".

We weren't friends.

As one grows older and (at least in my case) generally more adventurous, foods which were once shunned find their way into a diet. A great example: Brussels sprouts with bite.

When I learned that Erin would be coming to visit me for a few days back in late May, I was inspired to give stuffed peppers another shot. In searching for a recipe that we could make together (and in true Conquistador fashion, basing most of my decision off what I had in the refrigerator at the time), I consulted my Epicurious iPhone app. Bunch of zucchini? Check. Sweet Italian sausage that I best use up before leaving home for a couple of months? You know it. A red onion the size of my sister's head? Oddly, yes. Get some rosemary sprigs, a few big peppers, and we're in business. Done.



I'll go on a tangent for a moment - Epicurious, whether accessed via said iPhone app or Epicurious.com, is a great place to look up recipes when you have a general idea what you might like to try... or at least what main ingredients you have. I suggest checking out their site, some of our CulinaryFTW Twitter friends, or the other sites we have listed in the right-hand sidebar of the blog if you ever need suggestions.

While there are a lot of stuffed pepper recipes out there, the one that we made can be found here and originated in the May of 1999 Bon Appetit magazine issue as far as I can tell.

I'll leave the cooking instructions to the recipe author this time and focus more on our experience. While we didn't struggle with creating this dish, I will highlight one part of the instructions to which I wish we'd paid more attention... the stuffing can be PREPARED A DAY AHEAD! The required mincing, grating, and sausage skinning may not seem like much, but with a cook time of around an hour, you may not want to spend all of that time cooking at once.

The construction of the dish is not difficult once the stuffing is prepared - you basically mush everything up, stick it in a halved pepper, and bake it. Once out of the oven you can transfer everything to a plate and stick a few rosemary sprigs in for decoration... the result of which was Caesar Pepper once we were finished. A few roses for matching color, a bottle of Rieseling, and you have a romantic dinner.

The peppers were, in our opinion, delicious. We made two peppers (that is four halves, for those of you counting on your fingers), and it was more than enough... We could only eat three halves in one sitting. Presentation-wise, I thought they looked great as well - not the bubbling muck I remembered from my childhood. The idea of using red peppers instead of green was a new one for me, but worked. I have to wonder if one could use green, red, orange and yellow side by side for a neat presentation. Let us know if any of you do as I am curious now!

In the end, this was an all-around success. We may not have come up with the recipe ourselves this time, but if we made them without a struggle, you can too! The way I look at it, discussing culinary arts is as much about sharing good experiences with tasty recipes as it is about disseminating original ideas. We found the dish delicious; let us know your thoughts as well.

Sweet Red Peppers on FoodistaSweet Red Peppers

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Some updates

Greetings, all -

We are FINALLY back from Maine! I realize that I probably stated that we'd be back in Ohio "soon" in a past entry, but things have been a bit... crazy lately. Between almost everyone getting an eye or ear infection during vacation and some extreme fluidity in travel plans, we arrived home not on July 15th, but on July 30th. Close, right?

Anyhow, while in Maine, to explain a bit about why so little action was evident here on the blog, we have a very small kitchen with very ancient cookware. Meals generally are collaborations with relatives and grocery stores are either quite far away or literally have two aisles, one of which is exclusively spam and Vienna sausages. It may seem that we've been our usual neglectful selves... but to be honest, there wasn't much in the way of gourmet cooking to write about.

Now for the good news. First of all, we're home and have a familiar kitchen and know exactly where to go for quality ingredients. Essentially, we can cook again. As far as availability, I still haven't been able to peg down a job yet, Matty still has a little while before school starts up for him again, and Deering ought to be in town soon. Regarding motivation, the rest of our family is headed off to visit our brother in Australia (where he is studying abroad) at the end of the week, meaning that if we DON'T cook, we don't eat. The future looks bright.

Another update to tell you about is that we've had some professional advice regarding the blog and how it ought to be operated lately. You can expect shorter, more reader-friendly posts (with links to our recipes so as not to clutter pages), more frequent posting, higher Twitter usage and more multimedia usage. We are hoping to do a few video / audio posts and are considering looking into starting a podcast... though that last part has not yet been determined.

If anyone has any input or advice of their own, don't hesitate to let us know either here or by Twitter, email, etc. We'll be back in touch soon!

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

PetitChef... Another Foodblogging Community

Our networking has really picked up in the last few days since we joined Foodie Blogroll... Last night we were also approved for and listed on PetitChef, a French-based food blogger community as well. We've also started linking posts to Foodista.Com, so we're breaking out of our shell little by little. We look forward to further networking and more cooking posts once we get back home to Ohio this weekend!

Friday, July 9, 2010

Foodie Blogroll... A Legitimate Recognition of the C.C.?

You may have noticed a new addition to the blog of late (I'll give you a hint... it's in the sidebar and has a tomato on it).

We've been accepted, after undergoing a manual review process over the past few weeks, to be listed on the Foodie Blogroll. We've decided it would be nice to both network with other bloggers who share our interests and to see if we can't exchange some ideas along the way. If you're interested, check the new widget to look at some of the other blogs listed and to view current foodie-centric articles.

We hope you like the network and look forward to exploring it ourselves!

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Where the Heck We Are

Howdy, guys.

So it's been a crazy few weeks lately... Torry, Matty and the rest of the family headed to Maine in early June, I headed to Missouri with Erin to do some mission work at a north St. Louis church for a few days, and we then proceeded to travel by way of Boston to now reside in northern Maine ourselves. It's been a lot of traveling but definitely a lot of excitement as well.

I must apologize, as a result, for the lack of entries you've seen lately. I've been on the road, Deering's been working in his chef-ly capacities, and Matty, well, Matty hasn't done much to be honest. I'll get on him about that.

The good news is that we haven't been totally useless... we have been cooking pretty regularly and have a few entries in the works - we simply haven't written them up. I'll hold up my end and write about the stuffed peppers Erin and I made and I know Deering will be writing about a surf and turf creation soon, anyhow.

In the meantime, I am currently working on making possibly our favorite, definitely our most re-created dish so far... the brussel sprouts that don't suck currently. They've been widely successful whenever we have served them in the past... today (being Independence Day - Go USA!!) we will be sharing them for the first time with the members of my mother's side of the family that live here in Maine during our July 4th celebrations. I have no doubts it will be a shockingly different taste for some... even if they don't enjoy them, however, I know I will *shrug*.

Thanks for bearing with us through the tumultuous last few weeks... we'll get back on the writing horse and not get TOO comfy during our vacation. Happy 4th of July!

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Maintenance

Hey all.

You may have noted we haven't been around and that our blog template (again) took a plunge into the abyss and the site has been a wreck lately... hence the change in the way things look around here.

We think we've fixed everything, but Blogger has undergone some changes of late that ought to give us more leniency with multiple pages, profiles, and so forth. We're still exploring these changes may continue to be tweaked for a few days yet... we'll see. Thanks for your patience while we've battled through our technical ineptitude.

The good news is that Matty (finally) has something French to share with you! Standby...

~ Luke