The Ashy Gourmet

Seafood pancakes w/ braised pasta and dried shrooms ala Mark...

Sun, 30 Jan 2011 10:00:47 -0500

Seafood pancakes w/ braised pasta and dried shrooms ala Mark Bittman (by groverwatts)

… but i aint complainin’…. (by groverwatts)

Sun, 30 Jan 2011 09:58:16 -0500

… but i aint complainin’…. (by groverwatts)

Sun, 30 Jan 2011 09:57:49 -0500

… but i aint complainin’…. (by groverwatts)

Uh oh

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 16:35:50 -0400

Uh oh

i can identify…

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 09:10:38 -0400

i can identify…

Home-Cured Bacon | Michael Ruhlman

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 12:47:29 -0400

Home-Cured Bacon | Michael Ruhlman:

awesome alternative recipe for making the bacons. will def try out next.

SAPCHA WaSP Salad (by groverwatts)

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 00:05:41 -0400

SAPCHA WaSP Salad (by groverwatts)

Savory Breakfast experiment #1 (ramen overdose remedy) (by...

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 09:16:11 -0400

Savory Breakfast experiment #1 (ramen overdose remedy) (by groverwatts

A young lady once said to me: “why does breakfast have to always be about sweet? (that’s paraphrasing about twelve different conversations we had about it). So to that end i tried this. and man does it work. Oatmeal with poached egg and scallions. perfect.

Makin the bacons

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 01:39:00 -0400

Hey everybody. I made bacon.

Started with some high quality but affordable pork belly (from Fairway), and shazzizalazzazamzam… I had awesomely smoked cured porklicious bacon. I had read lots of how to’s and it turned out that to get it done I ended up pulling different info together from about 3 or four different sites. I’ll explain later….

First step, get yourself some really good pork belly. I got mine from Fairway, a great supermarket in Red Hook Brooklyn. Next, take your hiney to the Brooklyn Kitchen, another great market in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. There you can get the other ingredients you’ll need: fresh kosher salt, pink curing salts, and a bag of potato rolls. You’ll need these to much on when sitting around trying to figure out how to a) cook bacon and b) how to pack on another 30 lbs to your already quickly winterizing (read fattening) body. Plus you can soak croutons made from this in a little bacon fat for that “cupcake dipped in sugar” effect.

Then you’ll whip up a quick curing mix for your bacon. Mine had curing or pink salt, brown sugar, salt, molasses, and cracked pepper. K.I.S.S…

Roll the bacon in it, let it hangout in the fridge, flat for 7 days inside a ziplock with the curing solution. Flip it daily to make sure the curing goes well and evenly.

After seven days, it gets tricky. You COULD, legally take this out of the bag, rinse and that is called American bacon. Get it sliced and start your pork holiday, alone, with a friend, pet, Real Doll, Púca, girlfriend, husband, granny, etc.

Buuut, you might want to go that extra mile, make that leap, into that giant mystery of smoking and preserving meats. Charcuterie as the kids call it these days.

To be fair, I think I got extremely lucky with the outcome of the final product. I didn’t want to smoke up my apartment, hickory is not a good look when it comes to home fragrance unless you are a bear or hunting a bear. So I got a “smoke-bag” by Emeril, supposedly a great way to smoke meats veggies etc.

Trouble is, these bags aren’t used to cure meats, only to cook them, so I couldn’t find any direction on how to treat a piece of pork belly without cooking it all the way. Anyhow. I think I alternated between high and very low temperature (around 200 degrees) for about 20 minutes and then got really nervous and then popped it out of the oven and bag and BOOM. Bacon.

We took it to the corner deli, which usually is the perfect picture of total apathy towards customers…praying they would slice our pride and joy without charging an arm and leg. but this guy totally sliced and wrapped my bacon for me. AND FOR FREE TOO. Good dude!

Obviously BLT’s were the natural choice to showcase the new bounty. Avocado, burgundy heirloom tomatoes, baby lettuce, some plain baguette and of course, bacon. Also a touch of mayo. BOOM.

Can’t wait to try and do more of this type of thing. if we had a bigger piece of belly, we could have rolled it up into pancetta, experimented with juniper and other strange spices… sky’s the limit. next up… homemade ricotta.

hollers.

Avocado Ricotta sandwich from Prune. Except I made this one. (by...

Fri, 08 Oct 2010 11:51:03 -0400

Avocado Ricotta sandwich from Prune. Except I made this one. (by groverwatts)

been a long time. lets get into it:

Toasted slice of sourdough
Homemade Ricotta Cheese
Thin Sliced Avocado
Sliced Cherry Tomato
Thin Sliced Shallots
Homemade Preserved Lemons
Black Sesame Seed
Black Pepper

Deal!

ashhhy149 (by groverwatts) its bloody hot. so as delicious as a...

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 22:25:00 -0400

ashhhy149 (by groverwatts) its bloody hot. so as delicious as a bowl of fatty steaming boiling salty porky ramen sounds to my nose eyes ears and stomach it was BLOODY HOT. so i made this simple pasta salad. dressing was a simple wisk of olive oil, vinegar, spoonful of mayo, and spoon of dijon mustard, salt and pepper to taste. barely broke a sweat. even in this heat.

Truffled Eggs (by groverwatts) And on some weekend mornings, you...

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 09:32:12 -0400

Truffled Eggs (by groverwatts)

And on some weekend mornings, you can wake up and find this on your plate. nice soft scramble with a tiny truffle drizzle and some summer veggies chopped up in it. also some salad so it looks like i’m not completely unhealthy. word.

Double Dizzy Pasta Night

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 14:34:32 -0400

it was a great night for it, the lil lady was busy on the phone with the run-around that is the BP Information Management Division so i decided to make dinner…

Snagged some garlic scapes from the market, just because they looked all freaky laying on the table all tentacle-like and I’m always up for a cooking challenge with something new. Last time it was tackling Yucca Root.

So boom. the only recipe if could find though was for Garlic Scape Pesto. BG’s allergic to tree-nuts (not deeznutz, HAR HAR, funny, i know!) so for her pasta i pulled out the gravy from the night before’s Sea Scallop Extravaganza… which was so good i completely forgot to take any pictures at all of it. It was a really good sauce based on a rigged up tarragon bechamel sauce that was amazing. I decided that since my ghetto food processor couldn’t blend it all together to make the lime green puree it should have, that I’d use said sauce to toss with pasta and serve alongside the pesto pasta i was working on. easy enough.

Pesto was simple and pretty standard, some toasted pinenuts, toasted black white and green peppercorns and roasted garlic (stupid move, the scapes were completely garlicky enough), some leftover parmesan and romano rinds and bits.

I don’t even know the name of the pasta we made, but it was curly and you can see in this picture it really held the sauce it was tossed with really nicely. First is the tarragon pasta blend…

the other bite :) This one’s the pesto…

You’ll have to pardon the odd flash-look of these pictures, haven’t been able to track down my 50mm lens so these will have to do for now…

The final touch was the salad: simple spring greens with an avocado dressing. Easy enough to throw together i guess, although it was my first time. Fresh avocado, 1 spoonful of light mayo, about 1/2 cup of olive oil, 1 small finely diced shallot, juice of one lemon, sea salt, fresh cracked pepper. everybody into the food processor, BOOM. dope.

i know i know it looks like guacamole. maybe in the end that’s what it was. Tossed it on top of the greens and ta-DOW. slammin.so good i bought some for lunch today. WOW.

you had dinner. it was not this. (by groverwatts) lemon lime...

Tue, 04 May 2010 17:56:00 -0400

you had dinner. it was not this. (by groverwatts)

lemon lime gremolata topped beef shortribs with cabernet sauce and gorgonzola polenta. not complaining. this sounds expensive but seriously it wasnt… (last piece of a beef share from last year, my palate was none the wiser) even the wine was chizzzzz-NEEEEP.

YERP. WE STILL COOKIN...

Tue, 04 May 2010 17:53:25 -0400

After a long hiatus, and a slew of long lost posts…. i’m back!

Stay tuned for pictures of food i eat and then gloat about. One day we’ll all be starving and only able to forage for local shrubbery and small rodents. You’ll look back on these photos and rants with unimaginable fondness and nostalgia. And i will be too. i love you. i love you all.