Thursday, June 30, 2011 Grape Soda Night Was DDelicious!

Usually, once dinner is in full swing, I completely drop the ball on the picture taking and video making - but I managed to snap this shot before I ate all my grape soda pulled pork.

OMG! Grape soda pulled pork!

As I was preparing this feast over the course of two days I made an important discovery. Grape soda turns things horrible colors, but it tastes good.

Grape soda can chicken, seasoned with cocoa, chili, cardamom, galangal, allspice, sage, oregano, sea salt and pepper. Pulled pork seasoned with chili, cardamom, allspice, cinnamon, cayenne, paprika, sea salt and pepper, cooked in the crockpot with a bottle of Goya grape soda. Two kinds of grape soda BBQ sauce, one spicy and one sweet. Slammin drop biscuits, apple sauce made with grape soda and corn. Oh, the corn, with grape soda reduction and roasted garlic and butter - it was like a sweet ghetto Burre Blanc and gaddangit it was good! If you take any recipe from this dinner let it be this one. This covered about 12 ears...

1/2 can Grape Soda - put it in a pan at low-medium heat and reduce it by half,

Add a couple cloves of chopped roasted garlic and continue to reduce for about 5 minutes, it'll start to smell incredible.

Then add two sticks of butter, slowly in pieces, whisking it in to prevent separation.

Pour it on grilled corn, sprinkle with salt and BOO-YEAH!

You're going to have to trust me on this one. It sounds strange, but it will blow your mind with it's sweet complexity - simply dreamy.

Dessert was s'mores, and more grape ice cream sodas (which we also had as an app because dinner wasn't ready yet, bad timing on my part combined with early guest arrival. But no one complained they had to eat ice cream as an app, who would?). I just LOVE s'mores! I had two. And the guests loved them...and there was a big gob of melted chocolate on my carpet, always a good sign.

One of the best dinners ever - I really surprised myself. At one point, when I first pulled the pork out of the crockpot and saw the putrid color it had become I started to get nervous, but I managed to season everything perfectly. You can't go wrong with sweet and spicy, that's what I say!

Stay tuned for the video and feel free to contact me with any questions!

And, while you're at it, check out this awesome article I wrote for Alternative Control, check out this scene I did for Scenes from the Movies on Tango Dango and don't forget to make a reservation to see my play Connect Couples (dot) Com.

-HH

Monday, June 27, 2011 Grape Soda Night!

Oh, yeah baby, you read that right! Grape Soda Night!

My people love the grape soda. I don't know why this is, I actually drank one the other day and it was turrible! But there is no better way to celebrate the return of my good friend Marc than to slather our dinner in sugary purpleness. I promised him a Grape Soda Can Chicken upon his return from Mexico and I shall deliver.

Grape Soda Can Chicken, Grape Soda Pulled Pork, Grape Soda BBQ sauce, Slammin' Drop Biscuits, Grape Ice Cream Sodas...need I make more? I probably will, this is a special occasion. Stay tuned \m/

On another note entirely, I have written a brand spanking new play! It's called Connect Couples (dot) Com and it'll be premiering at the first ever Dinner Theatre Night at the Piedmont Club in Darien, CT on Saturday, July 23. Please, please, please, if you are in the area and you are able, please come down and check it out. It's only 20 bucks for dinner and a show (I'm not making the dinner this time) and you'll be supporting the incredibly nice people over at the Piedmont Club and, of course, you'll be supporting original theatre right here in lower Fairfield County.

Please pass it on! And make your reservation soon! Only 60 seats are available, and 25% of them are already sold. Reservations required by July 19, call the Piedmont Club at 203-655-7884

-HH

Wednesday, June 22, 2011 Pork is Cheap, Yo!

I made this fantastic discovery - don't ask me why it took me so long, maybe I wasn't paying attention, but pork is cheap, yo!

These beautiful deep fried meatballs were born of a 1 plus pound pack - $2.41 I paid for it. That's it! What the heck kinda food do you get for $2.41? The cabbage is actually super cheap, too. 59 cents a pound and the sweet potato was 99 cents a pound. Looks I'm growing up to be an expert in post-modern-depression-like-living.

Of course the 1 plus pound pack yielded me enough meatballs to feed an army - or at least feed my husband and I for two nights. Tonight they found themselves sandwiched inside some kick-ass garlic scape bread and topped with caramelized onions and creamy cheese sauce.

It's was messy, drippy, tasty good. The kinda sandwich you need to take a shower after because it's dripped down your face and neck and arms.

Yum.

Here's the basic recipe for the meatballs. How would you serve them?

Basic Pork Meatballs

Slightly more than a pound of pork
1 egg
1/3 of an onion
1 clove garlic
fresh herbs (use what you like! I used sage, thyme and arugula)
salt and pepper

Mix everything together and then add bread crumbs in small amounts until the meatballs can be rolled into a semi-firm ball.

I deep fried mine, but you can fry them in a pan or do them in the oven at 350 until they're done. Always do a test meatball to make sure you've properly seasoned them!

I actually still have a handful of meatballs left...pizza?

-HH

Monday, June 20, 2011 Mushrooms for Meatless Monday, Monday

So here's me giving Meatless Monday a try.

I've been aware of Meatless Monday for a while, and I've done it on occasion, but more because I ate so much crap over the weekend and not because it was a national trend. I try to avoid trends.

But here we go with this DDelicious dinner construction...in poorly constructed sentence fragments...

Portobello mushroom caps - salt, pepper, olive oil.

Put cheese on top - grill.

Thin slice shallot, flour, fry.

Boil 4 parts water, add one part semolina, stir, salt.

Put it on a plate.

Eat. Enjoy. Rock on.

-HH

Thursday, June 16, 2011 Roasted Pepper Spaetzle Rocks!

I had this crazy idea yesterday. What if I used the rest of the roasted peppers left over from my Angel Hair with Roasted Peppers and Parmesan Cream Sauce to make spaetzle? You can put veggies in pasta, spinach pasta, tomato - why not flavor my noodles with a little of the flavor of home.

First, I gotta tell you, in my house we didn't call them spaetzle, we called them Hungarian Noodles. Now that I think about it this was probably a term they created in order to feed a fussy child. I can't imagine I'd have put anything with a name I couldn't spell or pronounce into my mouth. So the Hungarian noodles remained in my vocabulary, both verbal and culinary, until someone finally introduced me to the word. The recipe remained the same.

Enough of that reminiscing crap, flash forward to tonight's dinner and here we go...

Smothered Pork Chops with Roasted Pepper Spaetzle

Two huge pork chops

Marinate them in hickory liquid smoke, red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper, paprika.

While that's going on slice up half an onion as thin as you can and cook in a saucepan with olive oil until they become translucent. Add one can of diced tomatoes and one clove of chopped garlic. Let that cook at a low heat.

Once the meat has marinated for 30 minutes or so sear each piece in a pan to get some color on it and then toss in a 350 degree oven to finish the job.

While that's going on boil a big ass pot of water. In a bowl mix 1 cup flour, 1 egg, approximately 1 1/2 roasted peppers pureed with a spot of water and about 1/2 a cup more of water (and salt, of course). Usually it's a 1:1:1 recipe...usually for me that is.

The recipe I had was 2 cups flour, 2 eggs, 1 cup water...but one day I got too busy talking to Marc while making my noodles and I added almost 2 cups of water! Well, wouldn't ya know those were the best noodles I'd ever made! So it's a mistake I keep on making. Thinner batter seems to work for me.

Now, I suppose you'll need a spaetzle maker, a piping bag might work, but I like piping bags. Pouring the batter into the spaetzle maker dispenses it through little holes, plopping the batter into the boiling water. Once it's all in there I like to stir it up to separate the noodles, they like to clump at the bottom and make one big noodle.

Once they float to the top they're done! Add some salt and paprika to the tomatoes to taste, take the chops out of the oven and ta-frickin-da! I assume you can figure out the plating from the picture. The pork chops were enormous, I only ate about half of it. But the flavors of the tomato and roasted peppers and onions all played so nicely together the pork was just bonus.

-HH