greg cooks

nourishing the body

greg

DS Cooks Grilled T-Bone Steaks

My son is 11 and I’m very happy that he has enjoyed his FACS class at school. FACS (Family and Consumer Science) is modern vernacular for what I used to know as Home Economics. Anyway, in his class he has been learning about food and nutrition and they were assigned to make dinner for their families and report back about it. Well, I’m delighted to see that DS is picking up some of my love for grilling. We planned out a meal consisting of grilled T-bone steak (medium rare), grilled sweet potato, grilled potato wedges, grilled onions and grilled asparagus. He made a terrific meal (with only a little bit of help).

He learned the wonderful joys of cutting onions!

In addition to the grilled foods mentioned above DS wanted to make a special appetizer. I think it was quite creative, myself.

The veggies came out GREAT.

And the steaks! Yummy.

I think I’ll let him cook more often.

Morning Medley

The sun is shining and work is calling. I made a quick and healthy breakfast before I headed out the door this morning. I love to flash sauté vegetables and then cook them with eggs. This has fresh asparagus and canned garbanzo beans in it. I added just a tiny hint of an Indian hot lime pickle for some depth of flavor. The eggs were scrambled with the vegetables. I used one whole egg and three egg whites to cut down the fat of the yolk. Sometime I just use all whites but I find a little bit of yolk makes for a more satisfying egg dish that is less watery and rubbery. It was SO good. Now I’m off to work.

Country Style Pork Ribs

Nothing says lovin’ like slow cooked, dry rubbed, country style pork ribs. I started with these thick cut bone-in country ribs.

I made a dry rub with freshly ground cumin, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, red chili powder, brown sugar, salt and pepper.

These were rubbed into the meat and the ribs were placed in a zip lock bag and allowed to sit for about four hours in the fridge.

Meanwhile, I made some skillet corn bread. I followed this recipe from Cookworm but I left out the herbs. It is a nice recipe. Not too sweet and the yogurt adds a nice acidity to the bread. I did use skim milk and nonfat yogurt but I didn’t skimp on the butter.

I “smoked” the ribs in the oven. I placed a rack on a sheet pan and placed the ribs on top of the rack. Into the pan I poured some liquid smoke and wrapped the whole thing in foil. I thought the smoke aromas would rise up and flavor the meat and I was right. The ribs had a wonderful delicate smoky flavor. I cooked them covered at 375 F for two hours and then removed the foil and crisped up the ribs at 400 F for another 30 minutes. The meat was falling off the bone delicious. I didn’t cook any bbq sauce onto the ribs but I did dip the meat in some on the plate. With a side of cornbread and coleslaw, this rib dinner sure was satisfying.

Not your typical Pot Roast

Here I sit in Fargo, North Dakota. We’ve been all over the news lately for our record flooding. We are winning the battle against the water. The river is coming down. Unfortunately, so is about two feet of new snow. Yes, once again, we are socked in with a blizzard. Sometimes I think I want to just go to sleep and wake up in 2010. But the high water and blizzard just make us work harder up here in Fargo. As much as I yearn for spring (and I saw my tulips coming up a week ago) I am slapped by mother nature again reminding me that she still thinks it’s winter.

Since I can’t get out and the sandbagging has ceased (for now) I made a slow cooked pot roast. But this isn’t your typical pot roast. I loaded this one up with strong Asian flavors and served it with rice. It all started with this grass-fed rump roast from a local farmer.

I love to slow cook meats in my Turkish clay pot. I really appreciate my dear friend who gave this pot to me. It has been used a lot.

I made a sauce from strongly flavored Asian ingredients. Of course I didn’t measure anything but let me try to approximate it for you. Into a blender I put in 6 garlic cloves, about an inch of fresh ginger, a tbsp of hoisin sauce, 3 tbsp of red miso paste, 2 tbsp of fermented black bean sauce, 1 tbsp srirach hot sauce, 1 tbsp of nuoc mam fish sauce, 2 tbsp soy sauce, 2 tbsp rice vinegar, 1 tbsp mirin and 2 tbsp of sugar, give or take.

This was all blended up into a thick marinade.

The meat was drowned in the sauce and it was rubbed into every crack and crevice of the roast.

Into my pot I put a large cut up onion and 6 large carrots, cut into large chunks. I plopped the roast onto the vegetables and poured any remaining sauce on top. This was covered and placed in a 250 F oven for about six hours to slowly cook. After the first three hours I basted the roast with the pot juices every hour or so. As you can see from my first picture I served it with the carrots on rice with a side of asparagus.

At least someone is enjoying the snow.

Pizza and high water

Well it has been a tough week of sandbagging in blizzards and watching the mighty Red River of the North rise. But we still have to eat. Saturday we got some good news. The river was starting to go down. We may have reached our crest just under 41 feet which is a foot or two less than they predicted. While many people have already lost so much in the rising waters much of the city of Fargo is holding on by a thread. I had a little time on Saturday to make some pizza. The first is a pesto pizza with summer sausage, olives and asparagus. The second one you see is a pepperoni pizza with asparagus.

This morning I was interviewed by Susan Hendricks from CNN’s Headline News about the flooding in Fargo. I posted some of my photos to CNN’s iReport and they wanted to talk to me. Here’s the video.

I have some new photos of the river and dikes as the river reaches it’s crest near 41 feet.