Scratch-made Beef Empanadas

Mexican food is really frustrating for me. So much of it falls in the awful intersection of some of my favorite flavors and things covered or filled with melted cheese (yes, I made a chart - deal with it). Seriously - give me a tomatillo/chiles sauce for meat stuffed starch that's been fried or steamed, or just used as base for slow cooking meat to be served with tortillas, and I'm good for this life time. Also, carnitas-  because pig boiled in pig fat (check out serious eats for my go-to home version).  But outside of a little crumbled Cotija or judiciously applied queso fresco, my weird melted cheese issues get in the way of enjoying good food. So, I've learned to make own. I've used leftover shredded chicken or pork with premade crust (empanada, or pie crust in a pinch) - here's the first time I've done empanadas completely from scratch.

I smoked a chicken and nobody was harmed.

Grate marks add character, right?

I do OK in the kitchen. If I'm not particularly big on presentation, my food makes up for it in complex or interesting flavor profiles. Or at least is generally edible. However, when I end up with something that is flat out inedible or so bad that it might as well be - it's usually chicken. Breasts, thighs, legs - whatever. It's unevenly cooked, dried out, burnt - or just weird tasting. I had to debone a whole chicken in small galley of a boat at the age of 15, and I think I was traumatized by the experience. So, of course now that I've learned my way around my new electric (no propane or charcoal allowed, sadly) Brinkmann smoker - I had the bright idea to prepare a whole bird. And to my surprise, it worked out.

Accidental Sausage and Lentil Soup

I really love soup. Mom@ballandpie was never a slouch in the kitchen, but soup is always where she shines (the great curdling disaster of thanksgiving 2005, excepted). I do OK, but this is only time I think I've come close to her standard. I came up with this recipe after discovering that a low carb soup mix had way more sugar than I'd realized. Oops. And then I didn't have enough of the right kind of stock. And what I ended up with, I couldn't stop eating for days. I've since been iterating, and this time, I didn't have the appropriate italian sausage. However, I did have some freezer burned pork shoulder and a brand new meat grinding attachment for my Kitchen-Aid mixer - so I took the opportunity to make some. For Science:

Superbowl Meat!

Hey! So it's a been long time. Where have I been? After traveling the better part of the western hemisphere, and getting crazy busy with work, I lost half a dozen entries worth of pictures. It was sad, and then I got distracted, and so it goes. Never stopped taking pictures or notes though. I made an absurd amount of awesome meat for the Superbowl, and writing it up for other venues - and I'd be doing B&P a disservice by not featuring it here. So, here' some burgers, ribs and wings.