Crawfish Boil!

Well, missed the Texas Crawfish Festival in Old Town Spring...again.  The plan was to go Saturday but the rain ruined it all!  So I had my own crawfish boil with my folks.  It was sort of planned yet last minute.  My brother had asked the previous week, but I forgot about it.  First thing was first,  call the stores to see if they had crawfish. 

I like my crawfish with tons of flavor so I sauteed some onion, garlic and ginger for a while and then tossed in the fruit uses and the citrus fruit.  Louisiana's Crawfish Boil seasoning is great, but we wanted more heat...in went the Sriracha. 

We had grabbed a sack of crawfish, about 35 Pounds, and just had unlimited crawfish. Of course I threw in some mussels and sausage into the boil.

The crawfish was just full of flavor and then you take a bite of the corn! I like heat, but corn just absorbs everything!!! Corn is like Pringles...once you pop it, you can't stop it. Oh yeah...the mushrooms were just a huge sponge full of spicy deliciousness!

The initial set up

My Sous Chef...

...being immature!  Grow up!

The broth just turned all red!

Boudin from my Dad.

The Final Product!

It was well worth it.  As much as a I love crawfish, this may be my last time this season to eat crawfish.  Throwing in the towel!



Asian Skirt Steak with Stir Fry Veggies with Jasmine Rice

 

Tonight's dinner was thrown together quickly.  I had some skirt steak in the fridge and was in the mood for Asian food again.  This of course is still part of the clearing out the fridge week. 

Ingredients: skirt steak, asparagus, carrots, onion, garlic and leftover jasmine rice.

I seasoned the salt simply with just salt and peper while I prepared everything else.  I whipped up a quick Asian glaze and proceed to cut up my veggies.

I stir fried the veggies and hit it was the Asian glaze and set that aside.  While the pan was still hot, I added a little bit of oil to the pan and got it nice and hot to sear the skirt steaks.  After, the steaks seared off, I hit it with the remainder of the sauce to let it soak into the meat. 

The reserved sauce in the pan went nicely with the rice. 

Stuffed Huevos Ranchero

So much sounded good this morning, but I wanted to create a dish that would use up more of the groceries in the fridge.  After some deep thought, Huevos Rancheros sounded very good. 

Ingredients in the fridge: cherry tomato, carrot, cilantro, onion, garlic, corn tortilla, black beans, 3 eggs, 3 hard boiled eggs, cheese, left over Mexican rice and corn. 

To make the hot salsa, I threw everything in the blender with some spices and cooked it down until it became a thick sauce.

I sauteed some garlic and shallots and threw in the black beans that I had mashed to make refried beans. 

I was going to just double up on the tortillas to just use it up, but opted to "stuff" it with my refried black beans and cheese.

From there I just started layering everything.  It looks like another one of those hot messes, but all the flavors just worked so well together.  The pics below was enough for 2 people. 

Here we are....Huevos Ranchero at its finest!

The tortillas were stuffed with black beans but it was too good not to have more.

 

Single serving.

 

Huevos Ranchero cut open with the yolk flowing into the black beans.

 

 

Great way to start the morning!  I love the days where I am cooking just to clean out the fridge...the creativity comes out in me!

Pizza Pizza!

This week's goal is to clear out the fridge of all the produce before it goes bad.  We had tons of veggies and tomatoes was one of the most abundant items.  Realizing that I had pepperoni in the freezer that I had made a couple months ago, the natural thing was to make pizza.  I had done the major prepping last night such as making the pizza sauce with all the tomatoes. 

Lets get on the story of how the pizza dough came to be.  I wanted a wheat pizza dough so I did a 1:3 ratio of whole wheat flour to AP flour.  I went ahead and added all my water in that I had measured out for the flour.  WAY TOO MUCH WATER!!!  The dough was too wet and I had used all the flour I had already.  I was just going to let it be until I opened the pantry and found the tapioca starch.  I threw some of that in to make the dough more dry and crossed my fingers and wished for the best!

The end result of the dough was a nice crispy and chewy crust!  I am not sure what the tapioca starch did for the dough, but I would have to say, it does rank up there to your gourmet pizzas.

Veggies in the fridge included asparagus, squash and spinach. I cut up the asparagus into bite sized pieces, sauteed the spinach with some onion and garlic and sliced the squash thinly.

For the cheese, I had a block of Apple Smoked Gouda that I grated.

The homemade pepperoni recipe was inspired from a food blogger (I will give credit once i remember who it was) that I had made couple months ago. This was a long tedious process from curing to cooking time.

 

Ingredients before.

Pepperoni

 

 Ingredients ready to go on the pizza.

Pizza before it visited the oven.

The END RESULT!!!!!

I have plenty of leftover pizza dough and ingredients and will be making this again during the week!  Tell you guys what...I did not feel guilty after eating this pizza!

Pulled Pork Cornbread Pancakes and Sausage Cornbread Crepe with Corkscrew BBQ

If you have not been to or heard of Corkscrew BBQ in The Woodlands, you have no idea what you are missing out on.  This husband and wife operation has been taking the BBQ world by a storm since they first started about 19 months ago.  The people that I take to Corkscrew BBQ for the first time and they ask me what is good...I tell them everything...and I mean it.  There is not a bad thing on their menu from meats to their sides. 

 

Here is a little teaser of their Pulled Pork and Sausage

My top to favorite items there are the Pulled Pork Potato Corkscrew Style and the Whole Hog Sandwich.  The potato is loaded with pulled pork topped with a slaw, pico de gallo and green chili ranch...who would have thought to put slaw and pico de gallo on topped of a pulled pork baked potato!  Everything works so well together.  I top mine off with fresh jalapeno!

Now the Whole Hog Sandwich is a story of its own!  Imagine a sandwich topped with a layer of pulled pork, then a layer of pork sausage and....I repeat the "and"...a dinosaur size pork rib!  At this point, it really is not a sandwich anymore!  Of course topped with fresh jalapeno and slathered in their BBQ Sauce!

Check out their website and you will just start drooling.  www.corkscrewbbq.com

Any who...I had gotten some of their Pulled Pork and Sausage to create two dishes.  I asked them not to sauce the meat so I can create my own sauce.  I had made BBQ Cornbread  Pancakes at a friends lake house several months ago and I wanted to improve on it and make Crepes at the same time.  With the Pancake and Crepe in mind, I automatically think of something sweet so I created a Candied Jalapeno Peach BBQ Sauce.

Candied Jalapeno Peach BBQ Sauce:
Especially with pancakes, people would normally associate it with syrup.  With that in mind, I made a fruity sweet bbq sauce with a kick from the jalapeno.  I Had pureed the whole sauce, but left chunks of peaches and pieces of candied jalapenos.

Pulled Pork Cornbread Pancake with Candied Jalapeno Peach BBQ Sauce:
Cornbread is one of my favorite things to eat especially with corn and jalapenos in it.  I made a quick cornbread batter with corn and jalapenos in it and made pancakes.  I have been making these for a while, but never thought of it going with BBQ.  I took some of Corkscrew BBQ's Pulled Pork and let it soak in the BBQ sauce that I made.  And I just covered the pancakes with the delicious meat. 

Sausage Crepe with Candied Jalapeno Peach BBQ Sauce:
I wanted to add the corn and jalapeno to the crepe batter, but crepe being so light, I figured it would tear it.  For the batter, I just made the cornbread batter but just lighter.  I did the same thing with the sausage, I let it soak in the BBQ sauce for a little while and stuffed the crepes.  I had made a quick corn salsa as a topping. 

 

Beef Chow Mein

Well It has been a while since I have uploaded...did not realize blogging was almost a full time job in itself. 

As always, Asian food sounded delicious that night and I had taken the beef skirt steak out the night before.  Chow mein was a for sure thing that night since  my mom had given us some bok choy a couple nights before that and the extra mushrooms from the Crawfish Boil that previous weekend.  Several weeks before that, she gave me some egg noodle that I had frozen.

With the beef skirt steak, I sliced it on the bias and against the grain and simplly seasoned it with salt and pepper.

Made a quick Asian sauce for the stir fry and noodles.  Many have asked how I make various Asian sauces that I use and I promise I will start writing all these down.  I honestly do not know what variations of sauces I use to make my Asian sauces.  It is more like...whatever kind of mood I feel like that day.

For the noodles, they were fresh before I froze them.  I quickly blanched it in boiling water and drained it.  I pan fried the noodles with salt and pepper and a dash of sesame oil.

The exciting part about this dish is...all this was created using one pot.  At this point, your pot is super hot from boiling the water to blanching the noodles to pan frying the noodles.  The pot should be perfect for sauteing garlic and onion and searing the beef until its brown.  I made sure I did not cook the beef thoroughly.  Pour this out to a plate.

Add a little bit of oil to the pot again and sautee the mushroom and bok choy.  Once the bok choy is cooked down, I poured in the Asian Sauce and threw back in the beef and water chestnut.  Pour in a slurry made from cornstarch and water and let it all come together for a couple minutes.

Viola!  Beef Chow Mein cooked in one pot!  Less Cleaning!

Asian Cabbage Rolls

What to do with a whole head of cabbage sitting in the fridge above the package of ground pork?!  Cabbage Rolls!  I have seen it made so many times on the Food Network so I figured I would give it a try...Asian Style. 

I threw in a bunch of Asian sauces, carrots, dried fungus, onion, garlic and Jasmine Rice. After wrapping all the cabbage rolls, I realize I needed a sauce. Whipped up a quick tomato sauce while the oven was pre-heating and poured it over the cabbage rolls. After about 45 minutes, my cabbage rolls were ready to be cut into.

Rolled up and ready for the oven.

Final product!

Cross cut view.

Another cross cut view.

 

This will not be my last time to make these.  Overall it came out pretty great for my first time.  It was very flavorful, but there is always room for improvement.  Check back in the near future for the next Cabbage Roll!

Dad's Birthday

My Dad is a simple man...I called him to tell him Happy Birthday in the morning and asked what he wanted to do.  Go out for dinner or cookout at home...his response was whatever everyone else wants to do.  Cooking out was the final decision after going in circles.  I know that he likes short ribs so I went to La Michoacana to pick up short ribs once again.  I really enjoyed the marinade that I made last week so I did it the same way. 

I picked up some chicken drumsticks since they always taste great on the grill.  I had made extra rub last weekend for the beef skirts so I threw it on the chicken. 

As for the side, I figured nothing better than a potato salad.  I have always loved this potato salad I made and for my Mom to tell me she never cared for potato salad and that she liked the one I made...is saying something.  A quick run down of whats in my potato salad: Obviously potatoes, celery, onion, garlic, green bell pepper, red bell pepper hard boiled eggs, and olives.  Now I typically use yogurt for the dressing, but La Michoacana did not have plain yogurt so mayo it was!  For the dressing, I threw in some herbs and spices and toss it all together.  Another typical item is bacon, but had to accommodate my brother since he still is not eating meat.  I know right...All that for just a potato salad!

For my brother, I made a quick Asian/Hawaiian marinade for his tilapia and grilled that for him

Finally, what is a cookout without grilled spring onions?!  Instead of wrapping it in foil, I tossed it with a quick Asian sauce and grilled it directly!

Alright, I lied...one more item.  My Dad had also requested the Thai Mussel I made several weeks ago.  So we had that as an appetizer. 

No one is more honest than Asian parents.  If it taste bad...they will make sure to let you know.  If it is not cooked to their standards...you will not hear the end of it.  If they did not enjoy it...the whole entire family would know very quickly.  To my luck, everything was approved by their standards!

Jalapeno Gravy, Oregano Chicken and Biscuits

Woke up this morning still feeling kind of blah from the past couple days.  Weather in Texas is crazy!!!  It was 80 Degrees in the morning and then in five minutes drop to 50 Degrees the other day!

Anyways...I have been wanting to make my Jalapeno Gravy for the past couple weeks and biscuits, but for some reason, never remembered to.  I had made this gravy up several months ago because I had half a gallon of milk in the fridge and it was going to go bad if I did not use it soon. I hate being wasteful so I did something with it.  And I always have jalapeno on hand.  Chopped up my jalapeno, garlic and onion and made a quick gravy.  While the gravy was cooking on the stove top, I made biscuits and popped that in the oven.

I did not have any sort of bacon or breakfast sausage and I needed a protein.  I defrosted some chicken breast and made fried chicken and threw in some fresh oregano to use it up.  Within about 30 minutes, we had a fantastic breakfast!

 



 

You can never go wrong with these 3 food groups together!  

Philly Cheese-"BRAT" Sandwich

This past week was a lazy week for me when it came to dinner.  I put the leftovers from the Cookout last Sunday for various meals.  This is all I had in the fridge from the cookout: Bratwurst, Bolillo, Sauerkraut, and Grilled Jalapeno.  I came up with this last Tuesday and kept making it all week...I did a play on the Philly Cheesesteak Sandwich that we all love so much. 

I chopped up some shallots and garlic and sauteed it with Sauerkraut and mushrooms.  I cubed the Bratwurst and threw it in the pan and topped it with some Jalapeno Jack Cheese. 

It may look like a hot mess, but it was DELICIOUS!! 

Short Rib Banh Mi (Vietnamese Sandwich)

I have a problem...overcooking!  We typically do not eat leftovers, but the Short Ribs from yesterday sounded delicious for dinner.  Tonights dinner...Short Rib Banh Mi (Vietnamese Sandwich).  We had picked up a bunch of Bolillos the other day at HEB.  I cut off the bones on the Short Ribs and went to the fridge and started building a Banh Mi! 

There were so many different flavors that was going on in such a small sandwich, but it worked out so well!

Starting from the bottom to the top of the Banh Mi: Pate, Short Ribs, Asian Slaw, Grilled Jalapeno, Grilled Spring Onions, Cucumber, and finally...Cilantro! (I do not think I left anything out)

Cross Section