Mike's Coooking Page

Had this for supper, and it was pretty good.

Ingredients:
1 pound of thinly sliced beef
1 Bunch of green onions
2 tablespoons oil
2 garlic cloves (to taste)
1 inch ginger piece, shredded (to taste)

The sauce:
1/2 Cup corn starch
1/4 Cup soy sauce
1/2 Cup water
1/3 Cup brown sugar
Red Pepper flakes to taste

Read on, serve this over rice for an easy meal.

The local grocery store had pork loin for sale, and it was cheap. That got me in the mood for tacos. They were great, and just as good reheated when my brothers came to visit.

I only used half of the pork loin, and froze the other half. I don't think I could have eaten all of it in time...

Ingredients:

The meat:



1/2 pork loin
1 can chicken broth
1 Onion - halved
Garlic powder
Salt Pepper

The salsa:



1 Jalapeno
1 Onion half (the other half of the onion from the meat)
2 Limes
1 Bunch cilantro
Salt

Extras:

Tortillas (corn or flour)
Sour Cream
Cheese (if desired)

Gumbo is an easy, great food to make. It does, however, take time. It's a lot like the curry recipe on this site. There's not much to it, if you do it right, but it takes a long time to make. Just like the curry is all about the onions, the gumbo is all about the roux.

A roux is nothing more than flour and fat cooked together. In this case, it's flour and vegetable oil. You can use peanut oil, but I didn't have any for this recipe. This is the #1 most important ingredient in your gumbo, so don't mess it up.

Luckily, there is a fool-proof way to make roux. Traditionally, roux was made by putting flour and oil in a pan, and stirring like hell for about 20 minutes. This is very time consuming, but it works. However, the roux is very easy to burn, and burnt roux is good for only 1 thing. Throwing away.

That said, here's my gumbo recipe (the ingredients are in the order they are used):

I was looking for some comfort food last night, after a day of beer making (2 batches fermenting at the moment...). This seemed like the perfect way to use some of the potatoes and shredded cheese I had laying around.

6 Potatoes (I used the small white kind)
1 Pint of whole milk
2 Tbs butter
Salt and Pepper
3 C Shredded Cheddar cheese
Salt and Pepper
Non-stick spray

This is similar to my other recipe, but with more cheese, and less other stuff.

Chop the potatoes into chunks, and grease a pan. I used a large cast iron pan with a lid. Put a layer of potatoes, a layer of cheese (about 1/4 of the cheese per layer), some salt, and some pepper. When the pan is full, top it with some cheese, pour the milk over it, and stick it in the oven at 450 degrees with a lid on it. After about 30 minutes, when the potatoes are done, take off the lid and cook for another 25 minutes or so, until it dries out a little and the cheese on top is browned.

Had an interesting day of brewing yesterday. I made a trashcan ale, with a bunch of old, leftover grains I had laying around. Who knows what it will turn out like, but I suppose we will find out in a few months.

We also made a pumpkin flavored beer, which was a first for me. It was made just like a regular batch of beer (i.e. steep some grains, boil some extract, cool it, add yeast, and stick it in the fermenter), but with a twist. While the grains were steeping, we cubed up a pumpkin (about 5 or 6 pounds worth), and boiled it on my turkey fryer burner for about 15 minutes. When it was done, we put the chunks into the steeping water, and added about 1.5 gallons of the "tea" from the pumpkin water into the main pot.

The pumpkin steeped for about 30 minutes, and then it was the regular boiling and adding malt extract. I cooled it, pitched some yeast, and stuck it in the fermenter with some pumpkin pie spice and cinnamon.

I'll post an update when it's drinkable, as it's in the garage now, fermenting away...