One of my first photo shoots

I found a file with some old pics on a my desktop at home last night. This is one of the first times I decided to document the process with a camera. I'm guessing this may have been 3 summers ago because I was incredibly proud of my Kershaw Shun Knives that got as engagement and wedding gifts. This is another Garlic stuffed Pork loin, but with a few twists. First I cooked an appetizer with this and second I basted the loin throughout the process with bacon as seen above....Mmmmmm....Bacon.....


One thing I have noticed from these pics is that I have come a long way since then in both grilling and photography!?!?

First the shrimp. I took U8-12 shrimp from the local grocer that were already deveined and removed the shell but left the tail. I did these two ways. The first way I wrapped a large basil leaf around the midsection of the shrimp. Then I wrapped a half piece of bacon around the basil and secured it with a toothpick.

The second I did with Rosemary. In this case I took a short sprig of rosemary and put it in the valley created by the deveining process and then wrapped in bacon as I did with the basil shrimps. A little cracked black pepper is all it needs after that.

Here is a bowl of the shrimps ready for the grill:


Then the loin. As I did before with the garlic stuffed loin I cut slits into the loin and inserted slivers of garlic. I'm guessing I did some sort of marinade considering the color of the meat when raw. The marinade was likely worcestershire, garlic, black pepper and maybe some red wine.

I had yet to buy my Charcoal baskets that keep the coals on each side so this is a quasi indirect/smoking session on a standard 22 inch weber. In this case I seared the loin a bit over the coals before pulling it over to the side with no coals to indirect and smoke:


Here you can see the coals on one side and none on the other:


And after a bit, I rotate to get a bit of a sear all the way around the loin:


Then I pulled the loin to the other side of the grill and added some soaked wood chips and small chunks. Here is where I have grown as a pit master. I never use chips anymore or those tiny chunks as they burn up way too quickly.


And now it's time to make sure that loin will be juicy when I pull it off:


Evidently I got a little hungry and decided to throw a couple shrimp on the ole barby to enjoy during the process. Notice the bacon browning on the loin. How good does that look?


Once the shrimp is firm and the bacon looks done they are ready to eat:


Here's a rookie mistake with the bacon used to baste. The first three half slices were running out of fat to render out onto the loin, so instead of pulling those three slices off and eating them, I put three more slices on top of them. Learn from my mistake here. Don't let perfectly cooked bacon go to waste like I did:


I have no idea how far along in the process this is, but I'm guessing I was about to pull the loin off at this point. How does that bacon look now?


And here we have the loin resting and me proudly displaying my badass cutlery yet again:


Here are a couple of slices. You can see the bits of garlic if you look close:


How things have changed. First, I don't show off my knives as much. My pictures are clearer than these. I know not to waste bacon. I don't use wood chips anymore. That was the summer of 2006. A lot can change in 3 short year...

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Chicken Cordon Bleu and Chicken Spedini

Chicken Cordon Bleu:

Chicken Spedini:


I decided to go outside the box and do some Chicken Cordon Bleu (CCB) on the grill. And while I was planning that I was reading about places to get good Chicken Spedini (CS) in St. Louis. Since many of the ingredients are the same I decided to do both. These are not the easiest dishes to prepare on the grill or not. It took a lot of work and I made some mistakes. Click the link below if you are brave enough to try this and want to avoid the pitfalls that ran into..,


Both of these dishes require some manual labor. Boneless, skinless chicken breasts need to be flattened into very thin boneless, skinless chicken breasts. The tools for this: two sheets of cling wrap and a meat mallet. Here is one of the chicken breasts pre pounding:


That breast is large before it gets flattened. But look at it after it gets pounded with the mallet:


Be careful not to pound too hard. If you do it will tear the chicken. How do I know? But the time I got to the 4th chicken breast I was bored of pounding despite having the Florida/Alabama game on to keep me occupied and the final one had a few tears.

Once all 4 breasts were pounded flat, I seasoned each side of two of them with coarse salt, cracked black pepper and some oregano. A little tip in dealing with large, flat pieces of chicken surrounded by cling wrap - peal back the cling wrap on one side, apply the seasoning, put the cling wrap back over the chicken, flip over and repeat. Here is a seasoned breast:


Then I added two sliced of swiss:


Now two sliced of deli ham (prosciutto could be used here if you want):


And here we have another layer of cheese and the rolling of the CCB:


If you are sick of touching raw chicken at this point you can roll it up using the cling wrap without actually touching it. I got my hands dirty as it is a little awkward with the cling wrap but can be done.

Here is the CCB rolled up and ready for dredging:


Speaking of dredging, the best method here is have everything ready to go and in logical order or you will make a mess. So in this case I have my dredging liquid which is just butter and sauteed garlic on the left and my dish with my breadcrumbs (breadcrumbs with some fresh grated Romano and a little paprika) on the right and the plate they go onto is farther to the right out of the picture:


Once the garlic was sufficiently sauteed I let the butter cool so I could dunk the CCB into it and not burn myself. Using a high sided saute pan cuts down on the cleanup from butter that drips off. Here we have a CCB buttered and dredged and ready for the grill:


Now onto the Chicken Spedini (CS). The recipe called for both sides of the CS to be dredged in breadcrumbs so I laid them out on round platters and simply brushed each side with butter from the butter/garlic mixture I used for the CCB:


Now for the stuffing. That butter/garlic mixture came in real handy. With a few extra ingredients it made a great stuffing. I brought the butter/garlic mixture back up to a simmer and added some shallots to saute in the butter as well as a little of the ham shredded into small bits. Then I added some flat leaf parsley at the end (always add fresh herbs at the end when cooking or the flavor will be washed out):


Here we have the stuffing mixture simmering:


I reduced most of the liquid out of the stuffing mixture, grated in some fresh romano and a little breadcrumbs to bind it and then I spooned it into a line lengthwise along the flattened chicken breasts:


Then I rolled them up and added toothpicks to keep the meat in place:


Here are the Spedini and the Cordon Bleu together and ready for the grill:


Since the CCB is decidedly thicker thant the CS I put them on first using my standard two zone method - coals on one side nothing on the other. In this case I indirected them by putting them on the side with no heat on a sheet of foil as that cheese is going to ooze and the foil will save it from falling through the grill grate into the grill:


I waited a bit too long to put the CS on but that just made me eat the CCB first and the CS a few minutes later when it was done:


You can see the CCB browning nicely and the cheese oozing

The CS really didn't really need to be on foil but it makes it easier to remove later as I can just pick up the foil and move both to a platter.

Here we have the CCB resting a bit and ready to be cut:


And here it is plated with a nice side dish my wife made with pasta and veggies:


And after I finished that plate I went and got the CS off the grill and brought it in to rest a bit:


And here is the CS plated on a small plate:




How to improve the process for the CCB:

1. Truth be told, the CCB was a bit bland. The only garlic in it was in the butter that helped to bind the breadcrumb mixture. In the future, I'm adding garlic straight in with the ham and cheese. It will cook inside the chicken and bring it more inline with the way I cook.
2. The oregano added a nice sweetness to it but I wasn't looking for oregano chicken.
3. And finally I would probably go with a stronger flavored cheese. I just happened to have some swiss in the fridge so I used that. Maybe a smoked swiss of cheddar. Provel would be pretty good. And I could've grated some Romano in there as well to increase the flavor
4. Oh, and be careful with the salt. With a large amount of surface area and very thin meat the salt can overpower. There were a few bites that were too salty for me, but I don't salt anything after I cook it other than french fries. If salted properly during the cooking process, salting after is not necessary.
   

How to improve the process for the CS:

1. Honestly, the CS was really good. I would've put it on a little earlier should I do this again, but this is more of an experiment and not something I would do for guests so having both done at the same time isn't really all that important. I would go with one or the other and not both for guests.
2. Instead of a little ham, some Andouille Sausage would've been really good in the stuffing. Not a lot and broken up into really small pieces so it doesn't operpower the chicken.

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Hot Buttered Rum

I realize that this is a grillin thread and I will get back to that this weekend (both chicken spedini and chicken cordon bleu on the grill!!!), but the holiday season is in full effect. Tons of Christmas and Holiday parties in the next few weeks. Wanna be a rock star at one of these? The I give you Hot Buttered Rum. And this is so easy that it's ridiculous. Sorry no pics, but it so easy you won't need them.

This is the perfect Holiday drink. I think this is the drink equivalent to comfort food. It's a comfort drink. The fact that the drink is warmed plus the rum just warms the body all over.

2 cups of firmly-packed brown sugar
1 stick butter
1 pinch salt
3 sticks cinnamon
6 cloves
1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg

2 cups rum (more if you like)
Topping: Whipped cream, ground nutmeg

Directions:

1. Put all ingredients (except rum and topping) in a crock pot and add 2 quarts of water.
2. Stir well to dissolve sugar.
3. Set crock on low for 5 hours - stirring a few times throughout the process.
4. After 5 hours add the rum. If you add the rum at the beginning the alcohol will evaporate out.
5. At this point just stir in the rum and get the mixture back up to heat.
6. Use a ladle to put the Hot Buttered Rum into cups, add a dollop of whipped cream and grate some fresh nutmeg onto the whipped cream. An extra stick of cinnamon in each cup is a nice touch too.

I'm telling you, if you take this to a holiday party you will be loved and adored by your friends and relatives. And if you serve this at a holiday party you are hosting your entire place will just ooze with the scent of the holiday season. This is better than any holiday potpourri on the market.
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French Cut Lamb Chops!!

One of my favorite meats, and maybe my fave, is lamb, particularly French Cut Lamb Chops. Something about the succulent meat with the little bone handle that I just love. Maybe I love it because I don't get it nearly as often as I get steak or ribs, but this is one of my favorite things to cook.

I bought a double pack of racks from Sam's and decided to do them with two different marinades:


The first was inspired by an appetizer at a family party on the day after thanksgiving. There was a bowl of basil pesto next to a bowl of crusty bread. I enjoyed the pesto so much I used it. I was contemplating using this after a suggestion from scottq16 (actual name unknown) but after eating some of the bread in the Pesto I was sold. I didn't have any fresh basil so I used dried basil, marjoram, thyme, oregano, and some fresh rosemary in olive oil. Of course I added some minced garlic and white pepper (I'm out of black pepper corns):


Here we have the pesto whisked up:


For the other marinade I went even easier. Honey mustard, fresh rosemary, garlic, white pepper, and a little red wine:


Quick note on the red wine I use in my marinades. First rule about wine in cooking - if you won't drink it, don't cook with it. Cooking sherry or cooking wine on the shelf at the grocery store should never be used in cooking. Red truck is by no means the greatest wine out there, but is nice $10 wine. And in this case it may not even be red truck in the bottle. Whenever I don't finish a bottle of red, if there isn't enough left to put the vacuum pump on to to pull the air out and save for a couple of weeks in the fridge, I pour it into this bottle in the fridge specifically for marinading...

Back to the marinade. The marinade itself does not look all that appetizing in the picture but trust me it was money:


I threw each rack into a ziplock with one of the two marinades and into the fridge for close to 24 hours:


The next day I pulled the racks out of the bags. For the mustard marinade I used the bag to pull some of it off so that when I added salt right before cooking it would actually contact the meat. I didn't want to rinse off the marinade but I didn't want it on as thick as it was. The Pesto marinade was oil based so I didn't have the same issue with that rack.


When I pulled the rack out that was in the pesto marinade it smelled so good I could've eaten it raw!?!?! It was incredible. I can almost smell it right now it was that memorable!?!

I sprinkled some coarse salt on both sides before putting on the grill as usual.

For the cooking method I did my standard two zone cooking. Hot coals on one side, no coals on the other side. I grilled them over high heat (no flame job this time like I do with steaks). Here we have them meat side down to start. One was thicker than the other so I put that on a little before the other one but here they are together on the grill:


Then I flipped them and put them bone side down once they got a decent sear:


The one on the bottom left is the mustard marinade. It is going to char more than the other due to the honey in the mustard. Don't let that scare you.

If you notice I kept the bones away from the heat and the thicker meaty section over the hottest part of the fire. I didn't want to overcook the skinnier section of meat higher up the rack.

Once they seared well on each side I pulled them to the side with no heat. They were still incredibly rare at this point. I locked down the grill and left them to bake for 5 minutes:


After 5 minutes they were still incredibly rare so I left them on for another 5 minutes. Had this been a warm summer evening and not a chilly windy evening in late November I would guess that 6-7 minutes would be all that was necessary. In this case they baked for just over 10 minutes before I pulled them off the grill to rest:


I let them rest for about 4 minutes. I basically treated them like a steak. The thickest part was more than an inch thick and with a steak that thick I would've rested it about that long as well. Here they are plated, 4 chops from each type:


A couple of notes. First, I tried to accommodate for one of the racks being thinner than the other, but the thinner cooked a little faster than I had planned as you can see with the chops on the right not being as red. That being said both were very tender and juicy. I guess that is part of the allure of the lamb.

Second, despite letting them rest the juice of the lamb leaked all over the place. I mean everywhere yet the meat was still very juicy on the last bone as it was on the first. And as you can see I ate every last bone. Notice the juice all over the cutting board, even filling part of the groove that encircles the board:


And finally, I will say that after a very extensive taste test between the two that I enjoyed immensely the mustard marinade was the better marinade but just slightly so. Something about the sweetness of the rosemary and the subtle sweetness of the honey mustard made the lamb just incredible. I may be doing this again next weekend!?!?!
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A Legit Smoked Turkey Recipe

My last Turkey Recipe was more of a joke than anything. Although it might not be all that bad and sure would get a lot of laughs if you pulled that bird out on Thanksgiving...

This one is a legit recipe although it is only the breast. I make this all year round when I'm tired of pork and beef. I start off with a basic brine of whatever I have on hand - 12 quart pot, cup of salt per gallon, can of soda, garlic, some chunked up fruit, maybe an onion, black pepper, brown sugar, in the fridge for 12-15 hours.

The next day I pull it out of the brine and rinse it off. Sometimes I inject the brine into the breast for a little more flavor and moisture. I don't always and is not necessary. You would get more of a flavor infusion using a store bought injection mixture.

For this one I decided to coat the breast in Penzey's BBQ 3000 rub. So I pealed skin back that covers the breast like so:


At this point you can do all kinds of things to kick a turkey up to the next level. Butter and herbs. A layer of sausage. Even slices of bacon or pepperoni. I just coated it with BBQ 3000:


Once the breast is coated I pulled the skin back up and strategically placed some toothpicks through the skin and the breast to keep the skin from pealing back during the cooking process:


Then I slathered the bird with veggie oil and gave it a dusting of an Italian herb mixture and on the grill with a couple chunks of apple:


Now inside for the sides. Nothing difficult here at all, and besides, with a healthy meal like smoked turkey breast a nice veggie will round out this well balanced meal. Side #1 was fresh green beans taken to the next level. I took a sheet of tin foil, laid down some strips of bacon, tossed some minced garlic and black pepper, put the beans on top of that, added some more minced garlic, black pepper and some more layers of bacon for a nice healthy side dish cooked in bacon grease!?!?!


Green Beans in foil take quite a while to cook on the grill in a foil pouch when smoking so get these on early unless you like reeeeaaaaallllyyyy crunchy green beans.

Side #2, grilled portabella mushroom caps. Pull off the stems, wipe clean with a paper towel. Never rinse mushrooms in water. They are sponges and will absorb too much water. I took the mushroom caps, threw them into a zip lock and added some Italian Dressing for about 20 minutes. Doesn't take long at all to marinade mushrooms since they absorb liquids so readily:


Speaking of Italian dressing, this stuff makes a phenomenal marinade for just about anything from steak, to ribs, to chicken or fish. I don't buy a particular kind of Italian dressing. Whenever I find myself in the dressing aisle I look for whatever they are blowing out for a buck and buy a few bottles. I rarely do salads so I'm not using it for that so I have no preference for brand. I do have a preference for bottles of the stuff for a buck.

Here's the Turkey a couple of hours in, and as you can see here, the beans are not on. Yeah, forgot about the beans inside so we had some crunchy beans!?!?


Here we have the beans on and the ports grilling right over the heat. Nothing to cooking ports. Just grill them like a burger:


Here we have the turkey sliced and the a very good Pinot to go with it being a Cima Calina provided by Fool's Pappy:


The turkey was very moist and delicious. The BBQ 3000 added a good deal of the flavor to the turkey along the outside edges but would've probably been better served had I mixed the BBQ 3000 with some butter and made a compound butter to put in there to baste as it cooked. I just think the butter flavor would've helped as well. All in all, it was a very enjoyable night, for among other reasons, the process, the result and spending time with my dad....
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