Stuffed Flounder, Beet Salad

Delicious dinner tonight in the works. I'll start with the beet salad. Take beets (we had 3), cut off stems and greens. Put beets in a big pot of water to boil for about half an hour. Greens can be eaten like mustard/kale/etc, but we are reserving ours tonight. Pull out beets and rub off the skin, which will come off fairly easily. Slice off the ends, toss those, and slice the rest of the beets. Put your grill pan on medium heat and toss the sliced beets with balsamic, garlic, salt, and pepper. Save the liquid while you grill your beets, 2-3 minutes per side. Put your beets back into the balsamic mix until you are ready to serve. Tonight, we are eating quickly, so they will come out of the balsamic pretty quickly. Put the beets atop salad (tonight is arugula blend), and add goat cheese to the red discs. I DO like beets.

On to the stuffed flounder. We did a twist on the original. My fish, by the way, was only beheaded and cleaned, but I didn't tell the monger to open up the pockets in the fish's body for stuffing. I'd recommend having them do it, but really it is quite easy. Just slip your sharp filet knife from the bottom of the midline downwards the length of the fish and then repeat from the midline upwards towards the top of the fish. For the stuffing, we used shrimp and a cilantro deliciousness. Take a bunch of cilantro, pull off the leaves and put them into your Cuisinart. Add 2 cloves garlic, a pinky-sized piece of ginger (yea, look at your pinky), 2 tbsp grapeseed oil, 4 tsp maple syrup, a dash of fish sauce, a dash of soy sauce, salt, and pepper. Hit the blend until you get your consistency, which is much like pesto. We stuffed the flounder with this and some shrimp and put it in a greased 12x9 pyrex at 350 for 30 minutes or so. Word.

Shrooms

Every once in a while, we buy the mondo pack of mushrooms from Costco. In weeks where I have to eat the whole thing myself, I have to get creative. This week, I achieved. We had some Strawberry Balsamic vinaigrette left to us by some departing friends, and I wondered, what will we do with this? The other factor going into this is that I have a 1lb tub of mixed spring greens, also from Costco. It is $4, so don't hate.

Anyhow, I cut up about 10 big mushrooms, dumped in the vinaigrette, and let them marinate up. They went into my dinner salad, along with feta and a heated, healthy portion of the black bean/pineapple/red onion/avocado salsa I had done earlier in the week. This was a fantastic salad, and I owe it all to the sweet balance the Strawberry Balsamic mushrooms brought to the plate.

Sorry for the delay in posts. Blame Brad.

Lamb Chops

I have cooked lamb chops before. They are generally good, solid fare. This time, they were much, much more!

Using pieces of recipes from various sources (Blake, Brad, google), I put together the method that would be lamb dinner. First, the meat. I bought a tray of 8 lamb chops from Costco about 6 months ago, cooked 4, froze 4. These chops are about 2.5 inches thick and have a similarly sized width. The day before I was to have lamb goodness, I put the frozen meat into the fridge overnight, pulling it out a couple of hours before I cooked it the next day. When I pulled it out, I added my "marinade." (quotation marks to be explained shortly...)

Second, the "marinade." Very simple: Maille whole grain mustard and 4 cloves of garlic, black pepper. I slathered the mustard all over the chops, using roughly 8 ounces of the stuff. After that, I pressed the garlic straight into the bag, 2 cloves per side of meat, and let it sit out on the counter for another hour. (That is actually a lie, because, had I set out the lamb on the counter, you would have assumed this would have been my kitchen counter. I would not have dared do this, however, because the ambient winter temperature in my kitchen is generally 60, a poor temperature for thawing meats. Thus, I took my baggie of lamb goodness and sat it on the ottoman beside me as I watched basketball.) I digress. So you see - not much of a marinade; much more a "marinade;" perhaps a slather.

About an hour later, I removed the lamb from its bag onto the nonstick grill pan. This will be the only part of my meal I will change for next time because the mustard simply stuck to the grill pan and burned up. I spent the latter half of the cooking time scraping mounds of burnt mustard from the pan so the meat could actually maintain contact with a hot cooking surface. Turns out mustard globs aren't good heat conductors in this respect.

Third, the cooking procedure. I cooked the lamb for about 6 minutes on each side over a medium high heat. You will note there are 6 sides to my lamb chops, so these got good and cooked. I opted to not bake them off, though if I choose this option next time, I will use less mustard in the "marinade." When I was done, they were a perfect rare to medium rare in the center and were excellently tender on the outsides.

Fourth, the fix. After taking a bite, I noted my lamb tasted good, lamby, mustardy, but that it lacked punch. This is where I pulled a fast one. I grabbed my massive container of dried parsley from the spice cabinet and shook out about 3 tablespoons into a bowl. I added roughly that same amount of olive oil, then squeezed in half a clementine that was staring at me from the cutting board, and dripped in about 2 tablespoons of rice wine vinegar. I topped it off with a couple cloves of garlic, salt, pepper, and whisked vigorously for 10 seconds. This, my friends, was the most fantastic part of my meal: the chimichurri. Had I not recently visited old favorite Texas de Brazil, I may have not recalled the utility of the chimichurri re: meats, but having done so, my brain was checked in. I opted to dip my individual bites into the chim, as this is my general treatment of any side sauce; I do not enjoy dumping a mess of sauce over my meal. You may beg to differ.

In the end, though, this lamb chop meal was a fine one. And yes, I did have sides. As I cooked the lamb, I ate a tomato/cucumber/carrot salad (add rice wine vinegar, olive oil, clementine juice [because it was sitting there], salt, pepper, garlic) and for a starch, I had some homemade croutons. I ate two of the chops, and fully admit to cleaning the bones like a champ.

Birrieria Aguinaga

So, a while back I lost a work related bet with one of my sales guys. The wager was a taqueria lunch of the loser's choosing. So, thanks to a recent DMN article about the popularity of the taquerias around town, I chose Birrieria Aguinaga. This joint was recognized for its Goat (Birria) tacos, so we figured we'd give it a shot.

We arrived at the location on NW Hwy shortly after 11:30, and the place/parking lot/neighborhood was empty. This isn't normal for this side of town, but I can only assume we were early. When on the way home from work, and around dinner time the parking lot is always packed.

My meal started with delicious chips and salsa -- They were not superb, but pretty tasty. I ordered two Birria tacos, one Carnitas and one Al Pastor. All on flour tortillas (with the cilantro and onion on the side). I know I'm non traditional, but I prefer the flour tortilla, and want to make sure I'm not over cilantro'd. The plate of taco's came with some DELICIOUS pickled onions. The flour tortillas were clearly homemade and fresh.

The Birria taco is delicious -- it's vaguely smoky, greasy and tender, much like good barbacoa. This was my first experience with birria, but I'll be back for more, it was perfect just with a squeeze of lime and a few of the pickled onions.

My carnitas was also a fine specimen. I treated this more traditionally and loaded the tortilla down with cilantro, lime and onions, and added the house green salsa. The carnitas was tender, with just the right amount of crispy on the edge.

The Al Pastor left something to be desired. It was clearly Pork, not the traditional lamb, but I'm ok with that. It didn't have the usual slight sweetness one associates with al pastor. I loaded it up with lime juice and pickled onions and enjoyed it none the less.

I can assure you I'll be back for a fine goat taco, but have many more locations to scout out for my favorite carnitas in the NW Dallas area. We're now making bi-weekly trips to different taquerias, so I'll continue to update.
--Brad

Smoke Dallas

Saturday was a fine day of Christmas shopping for Joy and I. Fighting the sea of Dallas holiday traffic and huddled masses of shoppers really embiggens the holiday spirit in me. Or anger, one of the two. Just so you know driving on NW Hwy at 3pm on a Saturday 2 weeks before Christmas sucks.

I had decided that I wanted BBQ for dinner Saturday night early in the day. I figured we'd go give Smoke a shot <www.smokerestaurant.com> as I had heard good things. We'd have gone for lunch, but it's pretty well out of the way from anything we were going to be doing that afternoon. So, we had Great Outdoors (#12 hot please). Note that the Great Outdoors is next to Backcountry BBQ on Park @ Greenville. We almost had a double bbq day. Or maybe we should have just had Backcountry for lunch, and skipped Smoke for dinner.

We arrived at Smoke about 8pm, were seated at a table too close to the next couple, and enjoyed a couple of complementary cornbread sticks with jalapeno jam. Good, but not great. We ordered strictly bbq and bbq related sides. Smoke has quite the extensive menu, most of which looked delicious, but I was here for BBQ. Brisket sandwich, Pulled Pork sandwich, 1/2 rack of ribs. For sides we enjoyed fries and the hominy casserole.

First, let’s talk about sauces. They bring a four pack to the table. House sauce is a tomato/molasses sauce which isn't overly sweet, but isn't overly flavorful either. There is a vinegar/red pepper SC sauce, a mustardy sweet NC sauce and a "Tex Mex" chipotle/tomatillo sauce. None of them are very good, but the SC sauce has a nice punch of heat.

Brisket Sandwich:
Unless specified, I want sliced beef. This came out chopped, and topped with two 3/8" thick slices of sour pickle. I didn't ask for chopped, nor did the menu indicate that I was ordering a chopped beef sandwich. Either way, the bun was fantastic and the meat just so/so. A little dry and no real smoke flavor to speak of.

Pulled Pork:
This sandwich, on the same fantastic bun as above, was good, but not really bbq. The tender shreds of pork were sauced lightly with the vinegar/red pepper sauce and topped with cabbage slaw. Traditional style, which I can respect. Unfortunately there were not chunks of bark in the pulled pork, and NO smoke flavor. If I didn't know any better, I'd assume it came out of a slow-cooker/Crockpot.

Ribs:
1/2 Rack of St. Louis cut spare ribs. Here's where all of the smoke flavor in the restaurant went. Wow. There is no lack of smoke flavor in these. There is also no lack of rub, or sticky sweet glaze. I really, really wanted to like these ribs but there are just too many flaws to approve. The first bite was pretty outstanding, but after you polish off a rib or two it's just too much. Too much rub -- caked on uncooked powder in your mouth. Too much or the sweet glaze that's masking the flavor of the pork. Too much smoke. I'm guessing there's smoked paprika/smoked salt in the rub which is causing part of the problem. The ribs did come with pickled carrots which were pretty awesome.

Sides:
The fries have a smoky sweet dusting of salt -- like a Wing Stop fry with attitude. At first, you love this. After a while the smoke becomes slightly overpowering and you wish they were just good fries.
The hominy casserole, on the other hand, is awesome. Bacon, jalapenos, grits, hominy and cheddar. I'm going to be making this for Christmas dinner, assuming I can find a recipe.

There's a chance I'll give this restaurant another shot -- cause I really want to like it. I've heard nothing but good things about their house made sausages, so I'll likely be back to try those. We'll see.

Radishes

So, venturing through the local Salvadorean market and hunting for dinner stuffs, I found a tray of radishes. For about $1.60, we got 20 or so radishes. A couple of them went on a salad last night and today, we have a lot of radish left.

Misty did some work on google, and up popped green beans and radishes. We sliced them thin, tossed them in with butter, the beans, added a little green onion, garlic, soy sauce, and pepper. We sauteed this up and went to work. The radishes took on the soy and garlic flavors so perfectly and their semi-transparency made them the perfect addition. I could see eating just the sauteed radishes - they are also somewhat sweet when cooked down, and they really are delicious.

We will be doing this one again - for your winter, pick up a radish!

Best Water Ever

The Ioussen Pot treats your water like royalty. Charcoal pieces and rocks from Mt. Iou, an active volcano on the eastern part of Japan's Hokkaido, filter the water in a magical way. It is said the minerals imparted by the rocks have a natural power that will properly orient your healthy life.

I don't know about all that, but I do know the water that pours out of this magical little pot is delicious, slightly rocky tasting, and, at the least, makes me feel like I am doing something right.

This device is not inexpensive, but we got it as a wedding gift, so bonus to us! Try some next time you're over.




[see? instructions in Japanese mean this is the real deal]