Chili Cook-off recipe – v4

At work the Friday before the Super Bowl, we ended up having a chili cook-off contest for our department. The entry fee was $5.00 and first prize was $70.00 plus a bunch of other misc stuff (small trophy, pizza party for your team, etc.) There ended up being over 30 entries for the contest, and the types of chili entered by competitors were all over the board (white chili, vegetarian chili, wild game chili, extra tomato chili, etc.) After a few weeks of back and forth conversations with JRR to hash out a recipe, here was the chili that I entered into the contest. This recipe didn’t make the top three (and they only listed the top three finishers.) But as the VP that sits next to me kidded, that maybe I got 4th place. So enjoy this recipe for 4th Place Chili: Continue reading

Cream of Cauliflower Soup – v1

I’ve been on kind of a kick lately, in trying to clear out old food from my freezer. At least a year ago, I bought a 1pound bag of frozen Bird’s Eye cauliflower. Why I bought it is beyond me, since I really don’t care for cauliflower to begin with (since it’s easy to overcook cauliflower), but I’ve got to make it into something. Continue reading

JRR’s Purple Cabbage recipe

After I copied down JRR’s recipe in the comments section of the final garden harvest pictures. Here was the recipe that I came up with:

-1lb 1.5 oz of purple cabbage, cored and thinly shreaded (all the purple cabbage that was harvested)
-4 cloves of minced garlic
-half of a white medium onion (the other half was used in the jalapeno hot sauce recipe)
-2 tsp rendered and solidified bacon fat
-1 TB soy sauce
-1/2 cup Homebrew IPA
-4 strips of pre-cooked bacon, chopped into bits
-Pinch Red pepper flakes
-Salt & pepper to taste

In a sauteuse, cook the onions & garlic in the bacon fat until they start to soften, then add all the cabbage to the sauteuse. I then tossed the cabbage for a couple of minutes to coat in the bacon fat. Next I added the soy sauce & beer, put on the cover and let it steam for about 20 mins on medium/medium low heat. After the steaming is done, I turned up the heat to medium high/high to reduce the liquid. Finally just before removing the pan from the burner I added in the bacon, red pepper flakes and salt/pepper. BAM!

When I tasted the final product on my dinner plate, the thing that I noticed was that it needed a little bit of sweetness. So for next time, instead of using an IPA for the liquid. I’ll trying adding some sort of sweet wine instead, since it only needed a little bit of sweetness to balance out the soy sauce.

Please excuse all the ping-backs, it was just one of those things that happened.

Jalapeno Hot Sauce – v1 – Oct 2009

I really like the jalapeno version of McIlhenny Tabasco sauce, more so then the original version. My favorite use of Green Tabasco is on scrambled eggs (now surpassing ketchup.) But it is also great as a condiment on a wide spectrum of Mexican inspired dishes, as you would expect it to be. But being the mad cooking scientist that I am, I’ve been tossing around the idea of trying to make my own version of that oh so delicious green hot sauce. With a tip of the hat to JRR for sending me the link to this hot sauce recipe from Tyler Florence over at Food Network, I was off and running. Here is my adaptation of Tyler’s recipe: Continue reading