Norm Matthews

Here is the recipe. Hoisin sauce is optional. Cornish Hens with orange sauce 2 Cornish hens 3/4 cup fresh orange juice 1/2 cup honey 1/4 cup soy sauce 2 tablespoons hoisin sauce 2 tablespoons minced orange rind 3 cloves garlic minced 1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger root 2 teaspoons oriental sesame oil Mix marinade ingredients. Simmer on stove to reduce by at least half. Bake hens according to package directions. Before putting in oven, place slice or onion and slice or orange inside and rub outside with oil. salt and pepper. Reserve some sauce for basting. Bake, basting with sauce every 15 or 20 minutes, Serve with remaining sauce. Spinach: Blanch the spinach in salted boiling water only until wilted, 30 - 40 seconds. Drain quickly and shock in cold water. Squeeze out water. Cut into 3-inch lengths. Toss with 1 tablespoon of chopped scallion, 1 teaspoon minced garlic, 1 teaspoon of sesame oil, 1/2 teaspoon of sesame seeds and salt and pepper to taste.

Charlie requested this. It has been a favorite of his since he was about six or so. It is Cornish hens with an Asian flavored orange sauce. We had Korean style spinach to go with it.

Hen House grocery had big packages of "Smoked Hocks" so I got some. They used to have big honking ham hocks and these looked like they might be some like before, but they turned out to be mostly bone and skin with a bite or two of meat and it was smoked pork not ham. They were good anyway. They didn't have any collard greens so I went to two other stores before I found some. At the other store that didn't have any, they said it was because of the season, weather and the ones they got in were not good enough to put out. Those were bogus excuses. This is just the season and weather for collards. I used navy beans because Charlie doesn't care much for black-eyed peas and besides, it isn't New Years.😋

I thought it would be difficult to use the smoker on a cold day but I got some ribs anyway. The smoker fired up and held for four hours just like it was a warm day. I added some beer brats during the last hour or so.

I have not been cooking very much lately. It really hit me how long it has been when I checked in and saw how much had been posted since I did. I made chili and corn cut off the cob and cooked with a little honey and milk.

I have only used it two or three times. I had plans to use it the other day but didn't. I used a butane grill instead.

I wish I had known that sooner.

Charlie had a request for dinner: Either strip or ribeye steak, mac & cheese and a vegetable, no potatoes. I added strawberries.

That reminds me of a Chinese restaurant where I used to live. They had two menus, one for regular people and one for Chinese customers. We always asked for the Chinese menu then had to have everything explained to us. Some of the food had a lot of those little red chilies. They were good but I had to take them in moderation.

Fifty years ago when the World Atlas of Wine , Hugh Johnson's other book - Wine, The Signet book of Wine, and Time Life's Wines and Spirits were all published, the world of wine was smaller. California wines were in their infancy and grape wine variety options were smaller. In other words it was easier to be 'knowledgeable" There were no mentionable wineries in the US outside of Northern California, there were too few to mention in South America , Asia, Africa, Australia, or Canada. Today the subject has really expanded to the point that it is difficult to write a comprehensive book about wine, at least not in a single volume. One would need several volumes just to have the wine labels pictured.

A bit of unimportant (IMO) trivia: Herbs come from the green leafy part of a plant and spices are from any other part, like stem, bark, flower, seed, etc.

Every once in a while I have to go over the top with something. It is a Scotch Egg inside a layer of grated potatoes which is fried until the potatoes are browned then baked until the sausage is done.

Now that you mention it, I recall using Ritz cracker crumbs or something similar a couple of times.

I saw a box of corn flake crumbs on a shelf at the store and it brought back memories of when I was single. I often made a James Beard recipe for oven "fried" chicken. It dipped chicken in evaporated milk then rolled it in corn flake crumbs and baked. I thought I'd try it again and followed the recipe on the box that made a batter first, then added the corn flake crumbs. Almost a year ago Charlie got a lot of mac and cheese at Costco and we are finally down to the last box. The green beans were cooked for about a minute in the Instant Pot.

When I was at the store a few days ago getting the pork shoulder for the bulgogi, I also picked up a couple of steaks. A day or two later I got some okra at the farmers market and today when I decided to cook them I noticed a package of Velveeta alfredo cheese bowl in the cupboard that had been there a long long time . I thought I should either cook it or throw it away, so I cooked it, we tasted it, and then I threw it away.

The Korean BBQ seasoned Wagyu Short Ribs from Heritage Foods (Kalbi) arrived and was cooked for dinner a few hours later. They were delicious. We had them with some of the spicy pork bulgogi from yesterday.

People have come to expect big breasted turkeys with lots of white meat and generally prefer modern birds to the old breeds. It's a different story with hogs, in my experience. This will be the first time I will have tried their beef.

It was several years ago when a farmer here in Kansas started raising vintage breed turkeys for sale. It started a company called Heritage Foods which took the idea and expanded it to all kinds of food and is headquartered in NYC now. I plan to have some heritage ham for Thanksgiving along with a more commercial turkey. They sent me a catalog that had Korean BBQ Wagyu ribs (beef) which I ordered and expect to get here tomorrow. Today I made some spicy Korean pork to go with it and a couple of steaks for today but Charlie wanted to have the pork today and there is a lot of it so I did some on the grill and that was our dinner.

@robirdstx I imagine you should lock your doors and pull down the shades when eating Cincinnati chili in Texas. . @BonVivant I didn't know barnacles were edible. Live and learn.

We had cap steaks. I made potato pancakes and Charlie made a last minute request for mac and cheese... the Kraft kind. He is particular about that. I cooked the steaks sous vide first then finished on the grill.

Someone I know, has a food blog about baking, and posted a cake recipe that didn't adhere to usual cake making procedures but I made it anyway and regretted it. I don't trust anything she posts anymore and I probably shouldn't be so negative.

I saw a thing on facebook for Cuban empanadas but there was no recipe as such. There was a video with a caption of each ingredient and the amount as it was going along. I stopped the video each time a new ingredient was added and wrote it down. I was thinking this was going to be a lot different than the empanadas I usually make but then I took a closer look at the recipe and decided it would be a disaster. It had a cup or a tablespoon of almost everything. The dough had a cup of flour, a cup of shortening and a tablespoon of salt. That was way too little flour and way too much of everything else. The filling was a cup of green pepper, a cup of red pepper, a cup of orange pepper and a cup of ground beef. It had a Tablespoon of cumin, a Tablespoon of salt, a tablespoon of oregano, etc. I looked up several other Cuban empanada recipes and they all had more reasonable ingredients in more reasonable amounts. They were actually all pretty much like the ones I had made several times before. The difference with the one I used is that it had a chimichuri sauce which I thought was a good idea and made it too.

I hesitate to post this because I expect a lot of blowback but the last time I got some ribeye cap steaks I cut them (3) in half and retied them because one each was more than either of us wanted but half of one was not enough and I regretted cutting up the other two but I had done it and they were in the freezer waiting for me to decide what to do with them. I decided to grind them up and make hamburger with them and sous vide any I may get in the future. Charlie had two well done and said they were really good. I had one medium and it was good too. I figure they cost around $5.00 each. Four more went back in the freezer.

I saw a recipe for Malaysian chicken that looked good. It had curry, coconut milk, anise, lemongrass and tamarind along with a lot of other ingredients that I had to make a special trip to find. About 20 minutes before it was done, I told Charlie to start thinking about where he might like to go out for dinner because this didn't look all that good. It smelled good and tasted OK but not so much that I thought we'd like to make a whole meal out of it. Charlie took one look and didn't even want to taste it. We ended up going out to a Chinese buffet restaurant.

Our dinner tonight was schnitzel with mushroom gravy, German style potato salad and cucumbers with egg noodles.