Norm Matthews

Chicken Parmesan was tonights dinner.

Yesterday, I tried a recipe from Jaques Pepin for braised chicken using all dark meat, bacon and vegetables. It was braised on the bone but I took them out before serving. It would have made a good pot pie if it had been topped with a biscuit dough. I don't understand frozen pot pie packages that shout ALL WHITE MEAT as if that were a good thing.

There is a problem with that recipe. If you combine fresh garlic and oil without heat or refrigeration, I think you should use it the same day.

Paul, that looks mighty good. When I make my own hamburger blend, I use your two beef cuts plus chuck. When I do a meatloaf blend, I use those two cuts plus some store bought brautwrust. But that blend looks really good too. Prime brisket plus butt should add a very nice fat blend too. Now you've given me a reason to get another one and freeze the flat for St. Pat's day corned beef.

Last week I thought I'd cleaned the smoker for the last time of the year. Then yesterday I was in Costco. They had USDA Prime brisket for $3.39/lb. I stood there and looked at them for a long time, knowing that if i got one, I'd have to clean the smoker one more time. I finally got the smallest one I could find. It cost $34(!). It spent 9 1/2 hours in the smoker. The point didn't ever get to the temperature that I thought it should but it the thermometer went in effortlessly so I knew it was ready to wrap. The point was great but while the flat was juicy and moist too but it was not quite as done as it could have been, IMHO. Still it was all good.

Shelby, the food looks really good. I like that dish that the shrimp is on, the one with the crackle glaze.

I had some chili left over from dinner the other day, so I made myself a chili dog on a toasted bolillo roll.

I haven't tried the 5 ply one but Calphalon in general isn't really great, in my opinion. When Calphalon first came out, I still owned a restaurant and got a small skillet to try out and perhaps get more for the bussiness. I hated it. A few years later a friend who works in a kitchen supply store said that brand was the most likely to get returned. I never got another one until I moved back home to Kansas City 3 1/2 years ago. My son and (now DIL) had stayed behind to finish the school year at college and kept a non-stick one I used for omelets. I got a non-stick Calphalon at Marshals to replace it and liked it. It was better than I remembered the first one. I have replaced it twice because the surface gets marred but I have stuck with the brand. The current one is about a year old. Eggs don't stick when I use a little butter but they do stick when my DIL cooks eggs without any oil. I tried an All Clad that I didn't like because the handle was hard to hold. It tended to want to twist in my hand and dump the ingredients. I tried another brand that was well recommended and liked it less that the Calphalon.

It's red chili flakes. Ingredient is listed as Tabasco chili

Thanks Selby. I like to make sort of a mini chili bar when we have it.

We had chili tonight.

That is the diet based on what early humans ate because examination of their bones showed very little evidence of diseases that kill many people today. But is it also true that humans normally did not live long enough to get age related diseased that we get today?

My son brought home a slab of raw pork belly with the skin still attached. He didn't want to cut off the skin. Every knife we tried was defeated by the flabby meat and very tough skin. After a night in the freezer, I got out an old long, curved black steel blade and sharpened it. That kind of steel can be easily sharpened to very sharp. It cut through the meat but had to be re sharpened every few cuts. I tried the other knives on the meat and they still struggled to cut through the skin. That is the only time I have needed a really really sharp knife in the kitchen in 25 of so years. I have a theory that those old high carbon knives are the ones that can turn greens brown due to their interaction with the high iron content in the knives. I also think those knives are soft enouth that they can be actually sharpened with a steel, not just realign the edge.

My son gave me an "as seen on TV" gift one year. I don't remember what it was called but it was a round grate and solid plate that fit over your stove burner. You were supposed to add a flavored liquid that would steam flavor your food while cooking on the flat-ish part. The directions, however said not to heat it so high the liquid would boil so it did nothing, not that steaming chicken broth or anything else would actually add much flavor in any case.

It is cool today, Cassie said she was getting off early so I took some left over corn from a meal Cassie made, some bacon left over from something I made plus some ham that had been in the freezer since Easter and added potatoes, onions, cheese, corn meal, and a few other things and made chowder.

I wonder if a torch could have been used to finish the potatoes?

The way I did it was to slice the potatoes into water then chill until they were crispy, drain and dry, put them in melted butter and arrange them on the fish. Then I put the parchment paper on top of them, covered with plastic and refrigerated them for a couple hours. I put the parchment on the fish because I didn't want the potatoes to possibly stick to the plastic. I cooked them over low to medium heat until I could see the fish was cooked more than half way through. Then i flipped them and finished cooking them until they were white all the way through ( I used swordfish) They were not overcooked to my taste. They were cooked all the way through but not dry and flaky. The potatoes were not as well browned as they were in the original picture. I don't know anything about bicarb. I noticed you put them on the parchment instead of on the chicken. Perhaps, using that technique, the potatoes could have been cooked a while before the meat is added. I did not oil the paper but rather put the potatoes in butter. There was enough butter in the potatoes to cook them.

I wanted to try Elaina A's Mushrooms Berkely and the fish with potato scales on parchment that rotuts brought to our attention a while back so I did both for dinner tonight plus some little round white and short eggplant cooked in butter with a Korean dipping sauce and Ponzu mixed together and brushed on them. The potato scales were hard to judge for browning but I guess it was an OK first time effort. My stove was actually acting up. The first burner I used, when I turned down the heat, it stayed high. I moved it to another burner. Guess I'll have to call a service person. It isn't the first time that burner has acted up.

Tonight was my nephew's semi-annual bacon-n- bourbon party only this time he called it scotch and swine. I made these again. It's pineapple bratwrust, queso quesadilla cheese, roasted poblano peppers with a light brushing of BBQ sauce and rolled up with a bacon wrap, tied with string, and smoked @ 240-270º for a couple of hours. I did that yesterday, then wrapped in foil and refrigerated until today when I reheated them in the oven and cut them into medallions.

Son and DIL just got back from almost a week in Seattle so I started cooking again. I still ate alone though because they are conked out asleep until later and I am not on East Coast time. I got too hungry to wait. This is grilled Huli Huli Chicken thighs over rice, a tossed salad with Southwest Airlines peanuts tossed in and baby bella mushrooms with some corn.

I think that pan is either forged iron rather than cast iron and/or black steel.

Nice looking brisket. I smoked lots and lots of food on my Weber. They do a great job. Did you know they make grates that are hinged on the ends so you can add coals without moving the stuff on top? Mine has been jury rigged together so many times I am surprised it is still as functional as it is. Franklin’s book was very informative for me. I had shied away from doing a brisket for years because the results were always just so so. Franklin said a lot of things that I doubted but it made me rethink things I’d taken as a given before. If I had not been grilling and smoking for a long time, I would not have even understood some stuff he was saying. It would have gone right over my head but because of having some experience I was able to imagine how i could use my smoker to accommodate his methods. I am glad I bought the book. There is still some stuff I think I can glean from it.

I'll have to try that thing with corks on pot lids. This is all I have done with corks.

Many years ago I made some rice wine for my then father in law. After the primary fermentation, I syphoned the liquid away from the rice into a carboy and attached a fermentation lock until it was still and cleared, then bottled it, again with a syphon above the sediment. ps I used a wine yeast.

Jeff Smith had a recipe for Haggis. He said it would serve 4 Scots or 20 people from Sweden.