Friday, January 25, 2013

Strawberry Mel

Almost a week and No Post?! I blame The Wife. Any who this was supposed to be for "Mead Monday" but eh close enough.

The problem with making mead is that you have to wait to drink it. What is a mazer to do? MAKE MORE MEAD :)

Since I am still new to mead making I decided to go the easy route and make a JOAV. It is a variation of the mead recipe that I made before.

Ingredients:
3 1/2 lbs Clover or your choice honey or blend (will finish sweet) 
3Lbs of strawberries

1 lemon, peeled. 
1 small handful of raisins (25 if you count but more or less ok) 
1 stick of cinnamon 
1 allspice berry
1 teaspoon of Fleishmann’s bread yeast 
Balance water to one gallon


For-notes
First thing you need to do is to sanitize everything. It is not pictured but  I left a sink bath with some bleach and let all items soak for 30 mins, then heavily rinsed.

The fruit should be frozen beforehand. If you are using frozen, that is fine, if fresh, freeze them solid the night before. It helps the yeast break the fruit down better. 

Below is the cutting up of the strawberries to go into the carboy. Anime playing in the background on The Wife's phone is optional. 




This was rather tiring
 I added the lemon in there. The reason for the lemon is for the acidity and bitterness. It will help balance out the sugar from the berries and honey.




Warming up and stirring the honey into some spring water on the stove. Make sure not to boil the honey.

This is with the honey/water mixture and all ingredients in.

A close up pic



 NOT PICTURED, ME SHAKING THE CRAP OUT OF IT



Here it is now all nice and foamy with the airlock on it. My solution is vodka.



What I don't have pictured is the aftermath of what happened about two hours later. The experiences mazer's out there probably started snickering when they saw the last pic.

See I was sitting around cooling it, playing skyrim when I decided to check on the mead as I had read it can get a little foamy. If by little they meant it would be foaming out of the airlock then, yes it did get a little foamy. I cleaned the airlock put the vodka in it and put the airlock back on.

Only to have it clogged up 30 mins later. Sigh.......

After trying various techniques, saran wrap with rubber band, letting it rest with top off, I realized it just needed something that allowed all the CO2 to escape. After racking my brains I came up with a rather simple solution.


A balloon.

I quickly found out the one pin hole in a balloon like the other mead was not going to work. It blew up to almost popping, so I poked 10 holes in it and let it sit for two days. 

Well....let me correct myself. I had one balloon, tried to poke holes in it and popped it spraying strawberry matter all over my cabinet.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

The second balloon, I pre-poked then put it on. It still blew up to the size of a soft ball. It took 2.5 days but I finally was able to get the airlock back on. You can see some of the dried matter down the side.

Now the wait till it clears..........maybe I should start a blackberry jaov...............

Friday, January 18, 2013

Taco Night

As a part-timer, I won't pretend like I don't have a decent amount of time on my hands to prepare
 "special" dishes and "slave" in the kitchen. But every now and than, I just do not feel like doing 
all the extra creativity. There is one night a week that The Man and I just pig out as much as we 
want and enjoy tasty Margaritas! That night's name? The Glorious Taco Night!


Another bonus? It is an instant joy-bringer. How can you be upset when there tasty tacos before you? 
You can't be! The Man absolutely loves it and tells me how awesome I am when all I did was brown
some turkey burger, heat up the tortillas, and put everything else in a serving dish! Yes! Mission 
Accomplished?!


Happy Weekend!
PS...It's taco night. yeah!

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Speaking of Christmas.....

For a large period of my life I have hated Christmas. It was a boring holiday. I did not get or give gifts except to The Wife (who at that time was The Girlfriend). This, or I guess I should say last, Christmas was the first one for The Wife and I. She tried to make me enjoy the holiday and get into the spirit. In my own attempts to break out from my grrinch shell I decided to head to the kitchen.



Earlier in the month I decided to try my hand at infused and spiced alcohols. Vodka and rum. They both turned out great[future post] though I needed the rum for this one. What I did was take some plain white rum, any brand will do. In it I put two cinnamon sticks broken in half, along with an allspice berry and a clove. I let them sit for approximately 3 weeks. Then end result is a dark brown rum with a strong cinnamon clove taste. Voila spiced rum.

Now I took the spiced rum with some cranberry juice. Normally I use Northland, but the store was out so I had to settle for Ocean Spray 100%. I pour that into a small pot on the stove and heated it up. After it started to simmer [NOT BOILING] I added in a bit of juice from a fresh cut tangerine,, and a sprinkle of lemon juice from a fresh cut lemon. Once I had stirred it all in and brought it back to just below a simmer, I added in the rum. In case you are wondering why I turned the heat down, alcohol and heat don't mix. If it is too hot it will make all the alcohol dissipate.

Once the rum was added in I put just a sprinkle of sugar to bring down the tartness of it. I then garnished with two peeled tangerine wedges. It was wonderful. Tangy, sweet, the citrus blends well with the rum.

THIS IS WHERE A PICTURE WOULD GO IF I WASN'T SUCH  A LUSH :)

In addition to drinks, I also decided that I would make a meal I have never made before. My first thought was a beef rib roast. Ya know the ones that are basically  big ass ribeye steaks. A trip to the local publix showed me other wise. It was like  $40-$60 depending on size.













So I sat down and thought to myself what to cook....I also thought of lamb, but no stores around me had any good selections. The Wife had a few cook books so I thumbed through those, when I stumbled upon a recipe about duck. Hmm interest piqued. I immediately turned to google and began searching. Several videos and recipes later I had decided. Duck was going to be the name of the game.

Now I have never cooked duck before. I haven't roasted anything over than chicken, so this was going to be no walk in the park, especially considering every one says it is easy to mess up a duck. The first thing was to find one. During thanksgiving they were everywhere. During Christmas it was a different story. Walmart was completely out, pulbix no go. I was afarid that I was going to have to forfeit the plan. Thankfully The Wife came through.

She somehow located a duck,[kidnapping and ransom?] and a nice size one at that so I was back in the game. I looked around for a few different recipes until I came upon a simple one. I am honestly not sure where it came from, but it calls for Salt [I always use kosher], black pepper [always used crushed] paprika and butter.


Now of course being the lazy fart I am, I did not make sure I had any of these ingredients and just assumed I did. Come Christmas eve around 9pm [aka when everything is closed] I am taking out all the things I need to cook with. I have salt and pepper for days, however not even a teaspoon of paprika

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu............

Ok not a big deal right? A quick google search shoes that cayenne pepper can be subbed for paprika. Sweet I stay with cayenne.

You may notice I am not listing how much seasoning to put. There is a reason for this. Except in baking and mead, I don't measure. I just add what feels right.

The first thing you want to do when cooking duck is to wash it of course. A lot of the time the company will put the neck and liver in the cavity along with a pack of orange sauce, mine was no different. I pulled these out and tossed them aside. Next was to trim the fat. Duck is a water fowl which means they have more fat than a chicken since they need to stay warm and float on water.

I clipped the tail fat off, the neck fat and I clipped off the wing tips. Next you poke holes in the skin. DO NOT go OJ on it and stab the meat. You just want to poke holes in the skin so the fat has a place to exit as it gets heated up.

I applied the seasonings then wrapped the bird up airtight in plastic wrap to let the flavor absorb. The next day on Christmas I took it out and chopped up eight oranges

 I then stuff them inside the bird and placed it in a pot with something underneath so I could lift the duck out. Yes a roasting pan would be better here, however I don't have one so yet, so the below is the best The Wife and I could think of.
Let it roast for 1 hour at 375 degrees. Pull it out drain the fat and covered it in butter. Put it back in for 45 minutes same temp. Pull it out again , drain the fat then coat in butter. 






Let it roast for another 15 minutes. After time is up pull it out and let it rest. Once cooled for 20-25 mins serve and enjoy.


Now in case you thought I was BSing about the fat, check the pic below. That is off of one bird. That is more fat than 2lbs of ground beef. Don't throw it away though. Get you some potatoes cut them up and roast them in the duck fat. Make them cripsy. They will be some of the best potatoes you have ever eaten. 










Thursday, January 10, 2013

Mead


During christmas time I discovered a new hobby, being a Mazer aka Mead Making.

I came across a recipe which someone on zilvia.net posted up. It is often referred to as JAO or JAOM which stands for Joe's Ancient Orange Mead. It was designed back in 2005 by a guy named Joe. It is supposed to be an entry level mead that anyone can make as it is mostly fool proof. It uses common household ingredients and can be had for under $30. It uses bread yeast purposely as they ferment quicker and poop out faster than traditional wine or mead yeast.

Here is my attempt.

Ingredients:
3 1/2 lbs Clover or your choice honey or blend (will finish sweet) 
1 Large orange (later cut in eights or smaller rind and all) 
1 small handful of raisins (25 if you count but more or less ok) 
1 stick of cinnamon 
1 whole clove ( or 2 if you like - these are potent critters) 
optional (a pinch of nutmeg and allspice )( very small ) 
1 teaspoon of Fleishmann’s bread yeast ( now don't get holy on me--- after all this is an ancient mead and that's all we had back then) 
Balance water to one gallon


Ignore the 2nd full gallon of water. That's for drinking as I don't have a brita filter yet.




Warming up the honey in a hot (not boiling) water bath really makes it easier to pour.


Next you need to cut up your oranges into 8ths. Put the entire orange in. 





This was after honey and oranges were in and I gave it a good shake.






This is the poorman's airlock. When I put this together I did not have proper bottles or airlocks. That has been remedied.......:)


This photo was taken about two days later. You can see how the foam is sitting on top and the balloon is at half mast. 




This photo was taken I think 3 weeks later. The stuff on the bottom is called the lees, it is basically the yeast that have pooped out and can no longer float. Soon the liquid will start to become clear and the fruit will settle to the bottom. When that happens it will be ready to bottle. 




[/QUOTE]

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

What We Gave At Christmas

It's been a good 2 weeks since Christmas but I thought I would share the gift that the Man
 and I made for our family: Cinniman Rolls! We got the idea and recepe from 
The Pionner Woman on foodnetwork. She made it look so fun and good and amazing
...so of course we had to try it!

First, we made the dough. There's no picture for for that but it was very simple to mix. 
We let it sit for about 30 minutes to rise and took about half of the dough to start the next step!


I cleared off a space on our cluttered counter (after all, we were 
making a whole Christmas Dinner!) and pour out some All Purpose Flour.


Than, I spread the flour around just a bit.

 Oh, did I mention that The Man and I are newly weds? Yeah, we were 
definitely having a couple good laughs during this process. That's when 
The Man dared me to throw up the dough and let it splat on the counter...

So, i did. It's kind of a blurry shot...


And SPLAT! It was pretty hilarious at the time...but than again-at the time-we were
 drinking a generous portion of Christmas spice rum...so yeah, seemed like the right 
thing to do at the time.


Than I rolled out the dough nice and thin. That Oblong shape was 
SUPPOSED to be a rectangle, but turns out such feats were 
impossible in my giddy state. Oh Well.


Than The Man added lots of melted butter...


He rubbed it in nice and even-like.


Than came a shower of sugar, cinnamon...and maybe a bit more butter!


We carefully rolled it all up into one long log.


I sprinked a little flour over the top and carefully slice about two dozen
 cinnamon rolls from the "log". As I did that, The Man would take each roll
and organize them into foil baking pans until all our pans were full. 
(we used the other half of the remaining dough a couple day later)


We put a cloth over the raw rolls to let them rise for 20 minutes and than baked 
them at 350 for about 25 minutes. While they baked, we mixed strong coffee, 
maple extract, and powdered sugar together to make the icing which we 
applied immediately after the rolls came out of the oven! Yum!

And TA-DA! The end results before we wrapped them up: soft gooey sticky 
cinnamon rolls for all my siblings and both of our parents! YAY!!!!! So Fun. So Delicious!

Love,
YET

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Trip To The International Market


So not too long ago I went to the international market "The H Mart". The moment you walk in the door you are bombarded by a smell of fish.

Once you walk in you are greeted by a site of a huge  produce section that can and will put any walmart to shame.


Unfortunately I only have one pic of that. Like a tard I didn't get many pics.

As I roamed throughout the store I begin to notice they sell some really weird stuff. Observe.



The above is by far not the weirdest thing I saw.


As I wandered throughout the store, I saw products that I had never seen before or in some cases never wanted to see again.



To this day I have no idea what the hell that was. Not everything in the store crawled out of my nightmare. Some items didn't look half bad.




I've noticed that a lot of products use red beans in sweet foods. I saw tons of red bean based deserts.





RANDOM BABY PHOTO



Nope not my kid.  My niece.

Anyways there were some products that I tried. Like this one. It has a weird glass ball in it that you have to puncture the seal around it to open. It tasted alright. Then again I am more used to the fat assery that are american sodas.


And just when thinns were getting normal, you see some weird stuff.


Didn't know you could drink aloe vera.

Mmmmm mung beans.

I wonder what this says? I don't speak or read an ounce of Korean, however that picture looks delicious.



I was tempted to buy this,  an actual durian, but Andrew Zimmerman (Bizarre Foods guy for you non fatties out there) has made me mortal fear this fruit.


There goes the wifey modeling with some mushrooms.

Of course no foreign market would be complete without tons of noodles.





I have no idea what is in this box......?


Great trip, next time I won't be such a wuss and try some other stuff.



Then again maybe not..............