A couple weeks ago I finally remembered to mention ham steaks to Theresa as a new meat to work into our meal rotation. It has been in my head from Split Lip Rayfield singing about how many biscuits can you eat this morning? 49 and a ham of meat of course. We picked up a Cooks ham steak from our new top secret Russeses grocery with a box of scalloped potatoes. We are working on simpler meals for weekdays and I do not have to make everything from scratch I have realized. The ham steaks have been a hit and we only made it through 1/2 of one Tues night and I suggested making a hash with the ham leavings and Theresa agreed.

I used the mandoline of death to dice the potatoes really small. Cooked the bacon, wiped the skillet, threw the potatoes in there with some clarified butter and veg oil and started browning them. Onions were added about 5 minutes later, then the pepper, bacon, and ham. A bit of salad and garlic bread and that was one tasty meal in under 30 minutes. take that TV lady who makes sex sounds when she eats.

Read about the mini pommes anna over on buns in my oven. They looked really good. While watching Worst cooks in America this weekend, Chef Ann’s team made pomme Anna and it looked pretty good. We decided to make them for dinner Monday night.

Pretty simple to make. Thin sliced potatoes, butter, salt, and pepper. Of course we decided to make 3 versions and tweak the recipe a little. I used the stitchgiver mandoline set on 2 thickness to slice the spuds. Melted some salted butter and coated each slice in the bowl.

1st. was traditional with just salt and pepper.
2nd. had some grated garlic, fresh grated parmesan cheese, parsley, and a touch of salt and pepper.
3rd. Theresa mixed some other herbs in it.

Placed each kind into a slot of a muffin tin
20 minutes covered with foil at 325
20 minutes uncovered at 325, with a boost to 350 towards the end because we were not getting the browning we wanted.

They were good, but there was too much butter used. It was really like we fried them in butter. The slices were too thin as well. The garlic was very powerful and the cheese was not all that noticeable. The portions were great, it was easy, and with some tweaking I think we have a new side to add to our rotation.

codezer0 asked me to make a clip on how I make my chips.

voodoo chicken and skillet fries from beerorkid on Vimeo.

Prob one of my better vids.

We have been looking for new ways to do pork chops and a breaded version seemed cool. The skillet potatoes have scallions, bacon, red pepper, and were awesome. More pics below and some info.

I did not get pics of it, but I cut bacon into diced and cooked them first. It makes for an evan cook and crisps up the bacon well. I took about 90% of the grease out with a paper towel and added some clarified butter and olive oil mix to coat the pan.

Diced some scallions and red bell pepper

Sauted the pepper for a minute and added the shallots. Mostly to get them soft, but they imparted a great flavor to the oil I will cook the potatoes in. Pulled the peppers and shallots and put in a ramekin.

A lot of flipping on medium heat browned the potatoes well.

Trimmed the fat from the chop and had a breading station. The final breading had parm cheese, crushed crackers, panko crumbs, and lots of seasoning.

Fried in clarified butter and olive oil. Finished in the toaster oven.

All of it was amazing. Those potatoes are right in our go to sides for sure. The breading was pretty awesome, but did not stick too well. I bet it was from the continued baking. Still great.

Trying to eat our way through our freezer. Figured some grilled pork chops would be good. We had some bread and always have lots of Nebraska sweet corn. Theresa wanted some potatoes too. Easy meal.

Are you boiling those chops? Click below to find out.

Actually I am brining the pork chops. They were still a bit frozen so brining helped thaw them too.

So why brine? Well pork these days are really lean. Brining will help lock the moisture in the pork. I am sure you would rather have a juicy chop over the dried and tough one.

This comes from Alton Brown on good eats.
pork chop episode part 1
pork chop episode part 2

The brine (for about 5 chops)
# 3/4 cup kosher salt (DO NOT use regular white table salt!)
# 1 cup brown sugar
# 1 tablespoon black peppercorns
# 1 tablespoon mustard powder (do not use prepared mustard!)
# 2 cups cider vinegar (heated until hot)
# 1 lb ice cubes

We are only having 2 chops so I chopped (tee he he) the brine in 1/2 and left stuff out. Was pretty much just salt and sugar.

Garlic Bread

Softened butter, garlic salt, granulated garlic, parsley, and parmesan cheese. I should of used fresh garlic, but I forgot because it has been a while. Cooked in toaster oven on 400 for a few minutes. I made the video below of it a while back. It is before we remodeled the kitchen and the old toaster oven.

Pan fried taters

Pretty simple. I slice them decently thick, put some oil and clarified butter in a non stick pan set to medium. When they get close to done I salt, pepper, and add greek seasoning.

Grillin

I get my grill rocket hot and those chops cook quick as heck. Some Misty’s seasoning works great for chops. Turn them 90 degrees to get the pretty marks, flip and a few minutes more and they are good to go.

Great meal with not too much work from stuff we just had around. No clue what to make tonight though.

So we trying to make some new meals. Have had some failures, but nailed it Friday night. Some folks suggested some good sites to find recipes. Epicurious seems like a favorite, but after scanning a bunch of recipes I was getting frustrated and decided to try an recreate dishes we would get if we went out. It has worked for us before and usually comes out pretty good. Theresa likes the voodoo chicken from Lazlo’s and I decided to try something like that.

Voodoo Chicken
Boneless breast blackened with Cajun spices, topped with a three-cheese sauce.

When it comes to blackening chicken I usually stick to just cayenne, salt, black pepper, and maybe some garlic salt. I checked out Alton Brown’s blackening for salmon and added some celery seed, onion powder, sage, paprika, and mistys seasoning. Spread lightly over the flattened breasts and sauted in olive oil and clarified butter.

I did not get good pics of this meal cuz I was a bit flustered.

Made up a bechamel and used whipping cream in there. Added asiago, parmesean, milk, and black pepper.

Deglazed the saute pan with some reisling wine, reduced it a bunch, and then added that to the cheese sauce.

Bread came out much better at 500 degrees, thanks DISH. Had some yukon gols potato slices with it. I sliced up some roasted red peppers to garnish the chicken.

It was one of the best meals that I have made in a really long time. It is totally on our list from now on. The flavors were very rich. The cheese sauce was amazing and having just a litle on there made it not overpowering. Can’t wait to have it again.

So we went to best buy and decided we should pick up something for dinner while we were out. Got to the supermarket and still had no clue what to make. Theresa suggested potato soup and it sounded like a cool thing to make. We have made potato and bacon soup a couple times. Our attempts have been hit and miss. Could not find a smoked ham hock so I decided to pick up some smoked turkey legs. Figured I would try and tweak this one so I put some celery, garlic, onion, peppercorns, bay leaf, and a piece of bacon in the pressure cooker. The broth was intensely flavored.

Peeled and diced these potatoes. boiled for a long time with some milk added to the broth. Dug them out and blended them up.

Some bacon. Two kinds

It was still really flavorful and kind of salty. Asked Theresa if I should throw some corn in there and some cheese. She thought that sounded awesome so in they went.

More potato cubes and slowly cooked it till they were ready. It was the best soup I have ever made. So packed with flavor. Oh man. Going to try that again and again.

Our wire whip on the kitchenaid mixer was destroyed in an attempt to repair it (pic below) so we turned to the trusty ricer for our mashed taters and although I have replaced the wire whip we will sticked to riced potatoes. The texture is nice and you can fold in the milk and butter easily. Best part is you avoid making glue by over whipping them.