I can hardly believe that my trip to Pittsburgh was only 2 1/2 weeks ago; our October has been really full! When I was there, I got a great candy bar that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, from Chocopologie, that was dark chocolate with burnt caramel and sea salt. Great stuff!

If this is the only entry you’re reading here, you haven’t yet heard about the wine party we had last weekend, but it was not only a great party, it also has provided me with all kinds of stuff to write about. I made a dessert for the party to mimic the candy bar I got in Pittsburgh.

The dessert started with something I saw as I flipped through the channels a while back. I found a recipe for chocolate creme fraiche pot; I don’t really care much for the show it came from, but then Alton Brown is about the only food show host I really like, but the dish looked interested because it 1) sounds good, and 2) is really easy to make. So for a big party or just when you don’t have time, this is pretty cool to try, especially with my additions.

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When we have our wine party every year, I try to do a variety of food for the party. Sometimes, I make whatever I want, but I’m trying to get better at following the theme of the wines. I select the wine theme in advance so guests can get wines that fit. We’ve done American wines that aren’t from California, southern hemisphere wines that aren’t from Australia, and anything goes.

This year’s theme was French wines, if you haven’t read anything else I’ve written about the party. Each couple was asked to bring two French wines, one red and one white. They were also asked to look up something about the wine to share, whether it’s about the vineyard, the grape, that particular wine, the appellation, whatever. (Appellations are distinct areas were grapes for wines are grown). It wasn’t anything too difficult, and Vince helped some by looking up their wines on his iPhone connected to our household wireless!

I talked about the foie gras I made for the party yesterday. Today, it’s grilled steak au poivre.

I’ve made steak au poivre in the past. It’s basically steak with a pepper-cream sauce, and it’s fun because I get to play with fire. Traditionally, though, it’s a dish made in a skillet on the stovetop. I wanted to mix it up a bit, though, and push it outside onto the grill. I thought the addition of wood-grilled steak would be a benefit.

There’s one problem with this approach… The fond! Fond is the stuff left in the pan after pan-frying, and grilling a steak means no stuff in a pan. What to do, what to do? I realized that, for the sauce, beef is beef, so I got a couple strips of cubed round steak and used that in the pan. It worked great!

So here’s the whole process:

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Last night was kind of exciting. I got home to find a package waiting for me.

That’s right, my duck liver had arrived!

As I opened it, the first thing I saw was a bunch of those horrible styrofoam peanuts. I hate those thing! But lurking just below the peanuts, under ice packs, was a load of good stuff! I got the foie gras; a 1.65 pound duck liver, from Hudson Valley Foie Gras. This was suggested because they feed with soy mixed in with the corn, and D’Artagnan feeds with only corn. The soy mix results in a firmer liver, which lends itself well to pan searing. Also in the delivered treasure were 4 tubs of duck fat, duck sausage and wild boar sausage and bacon. Good stuff to be trying over the week!

The one item I got into for the party last night was crepes. They refrigerate very well, so I took the opportunity to get them done before Saturday.

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Jaay Dunlap posted a chocolate chip cookie recipe in November 2006 on JustBaking.net that sounded good enough I wanted to try it, and, man alive, am I glad I did!I’ve made these before, but never when I had the chance to get some shots of the process. The recipe is simple, and includes the same stuff that most any other recipe has. There’s sugar, egg, vanilla, baking soda, flour, salt and chocolate chips (or chunks in this case). Oh, I can’t forget the butter… There’s definitely butter in these puppies.What is different is the proportions of the ingredients. This recipe calls for a 2:1 ratio of brown to white sugar. I want to try making this with all Turbinado sugar to see how that works, too.Another major difference is that I’d always read to cream the butter, usually at room temperature, with the sugars. This recipe instead calls for using melted butter. (The formal recipe is listed at the bottom of this entry). Read the rest of this entry »

It’s here!!!

Autumn officially started today!  After this summer, I’m ready for lower temps and cooler evenings.  Bread baking filling up the kitchen with yeasty smells and apple pies cooling before being ready to eat are anticipated.

Nicole at Pinch My Salt recently posted on both comfort foods and biscuits.  I tried her biscuit recipe, which can be found here.  I have to say that this was not only an easy recipe but really makes some great biscuits!  The effort wasn’t much more than popping open one of those cannisters from the grocery, but the taste and texture were much better!

Biscuits and gravy can be found not only at Pinch My Salt in her latest Comfort Foods post, but also at The Pioneer Woman Cooks.  Ree at the Pioneer Woman Cooks does a fantastic job of showing photos of every step of any process during her cooking. 

With my wont to add smoke to whatever I’m cooking, I do my gravy a bit differently…

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Well, here it is again!!!  The recipe is pretty much the same, but there are reasons to bring it back.  First, this way, it keeps coming up.  Secondly, it’s just so good, it’s tough to post it too often.  Thirdly, Nika’s great looking tomatoes made me start jonesing for the last of this year’s tomatoes.  You’ve got to see them; they’re gorgeous, as tomatoes go.  In the time since I moved out of town to the country, and we found an old couple that grows great tomatoes, our tomato usage has gone up, but since tomato pie, it’s gone up even more!

I have one basic theory about tomatoes…

Local, ripe tomatoes are a gift from God.  He’s basically saying, "Night’s will get a bit cooler… Grab the salt and enjoy My best for you!"  Ok, He doesn’t tell me to grab the salt; I already know to do that.

On the other hand, hot-house tomatoes, grown out of season and sold all year, are of the Devil, and no one can convince me otherwise!  I can almost see Satan personally breathing a bit of evil into each of those plants that look so diabolically similar to the heavenly tomatoes of summer.

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This week in blogging…  Great start, huh?  I thought I’d do a blog preview of the week, to keep me focused and hopefully keep my readers’ interest!

First off, I submitted my tomato pie entry to "Carnival of the Recipes - The BBQ Edition", and it got included!  This is a feature that can be hosted by just about anyone, but pulls together a topic of recipes.  The tomato pie is included in the side dish part of the entry.  I’ve submitted another entry for an upcoming "Carnival of the Grill"; if it makes it, I’ll post about that, too.

Later this week, I’ll have some info on salmon.  I have generally cedar-planked salmon recently, but I hot smoked some really great salmon, and I’ll talk about salmon in general for outdoor cooking.

I’ll also have my next installment of updates on how I’m doing diet-wise.  Already, I’m noticing a difference in how my pants are fitting!

And I’m preparing for my first judging experience at a KCBS event.  My wife and I will be going to Madison, IN, this Friday to judge Saturday.  The only thing that will change that is whether I can leave my dog overnight… Woody’s having some issues, and I have to be comfortable leaving him with a friend that will come over to watch him.  We’ll see how he’s doing later in the week before I make up my mind.

That’s what I’m planning for this week…  If there are any topics of interest, email me or leave a comment.

I got home last night and didn’t feel like cooking much.  However, I new I had a hunk of wild-caught salmon in the meat drawer that needed to be cooked, so I sucked it up and grilled the fish, along with a few chicken sausages that I wanted for lunches this week.

I had some mesclun salad, too, so we had salmon salads.  Well, I did; my wife doesn’t like food together like that, so she had a salad and some salmon.

The tastes were simple but very good, and there are some good ways to kind of ‘dress up’ a meal like this very easily.

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