Norm Matthews

We had Arroz con Pollo for dinner. Charlie loves anything with chicken and rice.

@rotuts Thanks again. If I ever see it again I certainly will. I don't see flat iron steaks very much any more and they are good too.

@rotuts Thanks for the info. I do not remember if it looked like that and can't tell from the pictures but it was very tender except for one area so they probably were blade steaks. It can be hard for me to tell which steaks cut from the chuck can be good or tough and even harder when the butcher gives them some fanciful name.

Steak, Salad and Sourdough and Taylor Swift The grocery had these little steaks. They callled them patio steaks. I don't know what that is so I marinated them just to hedge against them not being tasty. They were good. They each were under $3.00. Taylor Swift lives part time in Kansas City now so she appears in the newspaper occasionally. Sometime around her engagement announcement, it was mentione that she was really into baking with sourdough. A few days later, there was an interview with a guy who teaches sourdough classes. I have been making sourdough French bread for 40 years and haven't been much interested in experimenting with different recipes, like cinnamon rolls. Anyway, the guy said baking bread in a Dutch oven was important. I looked into it and found that putting it in a preheated Dutch oven will seal it in so the moisture is trapped around the bread and the steam will enhance the rise. Another article had a recipe that was very much like mine except it used a little more water and used diastic malt powder. Malt powder is also supposed to help the yeast and gives a nice golden brown to the crust. I tried it with my Dutch oven and it was a little too small. The top of the bread rose to touch the top of the oven and it got too brown. There was very little rise outside the oven and there wasn't much today when I tried again with a new Dutch oven. I am guessing something happened to the yeast when our refrigerator stopped working and we had go get new one. By the way, when I ordered the diastic malt powder, spell check changed it to diabetic. This time the bread turned out well. Charlie even had seconds.

The Korean grocery store has beef and pork already cut up and ready to take home and marinate but they also have beef short ribs not only cut up but in a marinade ready to take home and grill. We had not tired them before today and they were good. The little BBQ was going to be too small and converting the smoker is a chore. the clean-up is too. I got a cheap charcoal grill at Walmart yesterday and set it up for today. In a couple of weeks, Charlie is having a couple over for some of my smoked meat and wants to include some Korean food, so I knew that I'd need a separate grill then, because I can't use my smoker for smoking and grilling at the same time.

The second day of his soft food diet was chicken thighs baked with peaches, basil, dry sherry, garlic and fresh ginger. I didn't post the recipe on my blog because both of us agreed that is wasn't worth making again.

Thank you. Italian Wedding Soup ranks high with me too. If gumbo qualifies to be called a soup, then it's my favorite.

Charlie had dental work yesterday and the dentist put him on a soft food diet for the next couple of weeks. I decided to make Italian Wedding Soup for dinner. It isn't something you might think of making in the middle of August but the meat balls are small and soft, plus It's nutritional and tasty.

Charlie frequently mentions a program that he enjoys about food history. He has asked me to look at some of the shows and make some of the recipes. I intend to do it but always forget. But the other day he sent me an email containing a program about one of Napoleon's favorite dishes. Chicken Marengo. The program said it remained popular in French cuisine after his death. We tried the recipe, and he said it was really good and it reminded him of Chicken Adobo. The sides we had with it, most probably, were not ever eaten with this meal in France..rice and corn. Thomas Jefferson tried to interest the French in corn when he was ambassador to France during George Washington's presidency and they were not interested in eating food meant for animals.

Last month Charlie said he wanted to invite people over for his birthday. We had it last Saturday. He asked for Korean food mostly but would like it if I cooked something in the smoker too. I got , some thin sliced shoulder for pork bulgogi, some thin sliced ribeye for beef bulgogi and marinated them for three days. I got a 4 or 5 pound shoulder roast for pulled pork. I told Charlie that I was going to smoke a shoulder roast because I thought people were getting a little tired of ribs. He said the only person tired of your ribs is you, everybody else will want you to make some, so I got a couple slabs or loin back ribs and smoked them as well. I didn't take very many pictures. I did take a picture of the pork roast and a couple pictures of how I converted the smoker for a large grilling area. I have grill grates that fit the smoker. They are ridged on one side and smooth on the other side. I've had them since before there were Blackstone grills. I use them when I need a large flat grilling surface. They were expensive. I probably could have bought a Blackstone for about what they cost. Anyway, sorry I didn't take many pictures. We had, besides the meats, two kinds of kimchi, rice, vinegar based coleslaw, BBQ beans, and hamburger buns so people who wanted, could make sandwiches with the pulled pork.

Getting ready for Charles birthday, I thought I would do a little make-ahead stuff and also cooked some St. Louis ribs today for our dinner.

What do CFS pros do? I have been trying to figure that one out since I found out Charlie was looking for one like his school cafeteria days. One of the things I have tried is giving an already tender cut of meat a pounding for texture then cooking. The breading stays on a little better if I make them ahead and let the coating set on in the fridge.

When I started teaching, I became friends with a teacher who became sort of a mentor in non school things. He made wine, smoked meats and threw great parties. One annual party was his birthday party and he smoked a whole pig for that occasion. About as often as not I was the bartender. At one party, I overheard two other teachers tell him that their years long quest was to find the restaurant that made the best Country Fried Steak. I can't describe what I thought about that but Don Quixote and Sanjo Panza who set out on a quests with little chance of reward came to mind. Now decades later my son has started that same search for the Chicken Fried Steak they had at the high school cafeteria and I am old enough to understand why people crave food they had while growing up. I found a reciipe that had the right taste but still something was not just right. Charlie found a school cafeteria cookbook with Country Fried Steak in it. The revelation was that instead of using a cheap, tough but tenderized piece of meat, they used seasoned ground beef pressed out on sheet pans and baked, then cut into individual sizes. It was seasoned with salt, pepper, dehydrated onions and some flour. I am baking hamburger paddies and then treating them like the recipe below. Probably the last thing to do is find the right thickness for the meat. So far it has been too thick for his liking, but otherwise it seemsllike we are on the right track. Chicken Fried Steak recipe from Threadgills - Recipe By : Threadgill's - The Cookbook ISBN 1-56352-277-2 Threadgill's meat seasoning mix 1/2 cup kosher salt 4 tablespoons black pepper 2 tablespoons white pepper 1 1/2 teaspoons cayenne pepper 2 tablespoons granulated onion 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin 4 tablespoons granulated garlic 2 tablespoons paprika Mix ingredients well. Store in a glass jar or plastic container. Keep tightly sealed. Shake before each use to prevent settling. 8 6 ounce tenderized beef cutlets -- at room temperature 2 eggs 2 cups milk -- at room temperature 3 cups flour 2 teaspoons Threadgill's Meat Seasoning 2 cups frying oil -- preferably canola Whisk eggs and milk together in a bowl and set this egg wash aside. Combine the flour and meat seasoning in another bowl and set aside. Heat the oil in a heavy 14-inch cast-iron skillet over medium heat to 350 degrees F. Use a 550 degree thermometer to check temperature. The oil should pop loudly when a drop of egg wash is dropped in. Dip each of the first 4 cutlets in the egg wash mixture. Dredge them in the flour, then dip them back into the egg wash, and very gently place them in the hot oil. As you carry them one at a time from the egg wash to the skillet, hold a plate under them to catch the dripping egg wash. There'll be a regular explosion of noisy oil a-popping. Cook for 3 to 5 minutes, until breading is set and golden brown. Gently turn them with a long-handled meat fork or long metal tongs. Be careful. Cook another 3 minutes. Carefully remove them from the skillet and drain on a platter lined with paper towels. Let oil reheat and repeat process for other 4 cutlets. Serve with White Cream Gravy and Mashed Potatoes.

Charlie has been painting the living room and dining area so the table is covered with a tarp, rollers, buckets, etc., so we have been eating wherever we find the space. I have done nearly nothing with the smoker this summer. I feel like I need to experiment with different foods and recipes. I did a chicken today and got some ideas for where to go next. I just seasoned it with a rub and sprayed it with a fat for the last hour to help crisp the skin. it took two hours.

Charlie wondered if we could have chislic today. I said that would entail getting some lamb and the only place I know that has it are the Mexican groceries and they only sell it by the quarter, like a whole leg or shoulder and it would be frozen. So he said how about some marinaded steak then. I said I saw a Kabob recipe a few days ago that was grilled and basted with a compound butter. That is what we decided to do. The recipe is just for the meat. I added the vegetables and cooked them on the gas grill for 30 minutes and the steak in the smoker firebox for about ten minutes over charcoal. Charlie really liked it and wondered of it was an Asian recipe. I didn't know. He looked at the recipe and the last line identified it as coming from a Viet Phu Inc. cookbook. That is the Red Boat Fish Sauce company in California.