Make this Dal

And it's pretty.

So, I bought pretty much all the lentils, and needed something to do with them. Then I found this recipe for Dal - a lentil soup that is a staple in Indian (and related/neighboring) cuisine. It's quickly become a favorite of mine. It has delicious, complex flavors, can easily prepared in under an hour, and is great on its own, over rice, or served with other. I've prepared it pretty much as written; except with chicken stock instead of vegetable - and opting for sesame oil. Give it a try.

Fat Tuesday - Part 1: Crawfish Pie

Don't act like you're not impressed.

I miss a lot of things about living in New Orleans. Most of them relate to eating and cooking. I don't, however, miss Mardi Gras. Except for pickup truck crawfish boils driving up on the more residential corners of the Quarter at 3AM, the spectacle never quite balanced out the city's metaphorical roomates' out-of-town friends camping out drunk and underfoot on its figurative couch for 2 weeks. However, up in the white wastes of the Great Lakes, it's a great excuse to put on some Rebirth, break out the cast iron, and make a big mess in the Kitchen. Where else to start, but with one of my two favorite things: Pie!

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.

Pork and Apple Pie with Cheddar-Sage Crust Recipe at Epicurious.com

Pork and Apple Pie with Cheddar-Sage Crust Recipe at Epicurious.com:

'via Blog this'

It's pig, but in an apple pie!!!!

Thanksgiving Dinner

Sneak preview of B&P Thanksgiving!

Cranberry-Apple Pie is up next!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:W 24th St,Cleveland,United States

I pity the fool

Waiting on a pork belly sandwich at Cochon Butcher.

Mr. T will guide our food to us.




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Andrew Higgins Dr,New Orleans,United States

Great Food 360° Featured on Univision

Our good friends at Great Food 360° were recently featured on Univision! Take a look below (roughly at 2:16). Nicely done, Adriana!

Patatas Bravas

About 15 years ago, I was fortunate to spend a good chunk of time eating in Spain - from Barcelona down the Costa del sol to Granada, and then inland up to Madrid. You can do pretty well in the US, too. Spanish cuisine is pretty great, in my opinion, and tapas (their small plate/appetizery dishes) are among my favorite foods. Given that these are often salty foods seasoned liberally with garlic, paprika, cumin and olive oil, I guess it shouldn't surprise any one. For my final meat-free dish, I'd been planning to recreate a couple of my favorites - gambas al ajillo (shrimp in a garlic sauce) and patatas bravas. I ended up with an amazing garlic sauce complementing badly overcooked shrimp, and a pretty funky oily potato mush with gross sauce. Not our finest hour here at B&P HQ. We remain undeterred by failure here (mostly because we fail a lot), and gave the patatas bravas another go. Also, after some travel, I had potatoes, onions, goya chorizo, and canned tomatoes in my kitchen, and not much else.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, everybody! Hope you're all looking forward to a sweet 5772!

Crab Tater Tots!

In the final days of our Meat Hiatus, my office hosted a pot-luck lunch in honor of an associate expecting her first child. This is always pretty awesome, because in our research-based setting, we've people from a diverse selection of cultures - and everybody does a pretty good job. I usually make meat, and when pressed to volunteer a dish, I promised crab cakes. I'd ever actually made crab before, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. So, I decided to refer back to my cookbooks for some ideas, and the only one I had available electronically was Michael Symon's Live to Cook. Lo and behold, there was a recipe for something called "Crab Tater Tots." I was sold.

Smoked Brisket! Pastrami!

As you may recall, one of the first things I'd planned to do post meat hiatus was test out my stove-top smoker with a pork butt or brisket. And true to my word, the first chance I got, I picked up brisket to get started. Unfortunately, that first chance I got was late night at the end of  a long round trip drive to Motown immediately following from a weeklong conference. I was tired. I was a little surprised to discover the next morning that I had picked up a corned beef brisket.

Oops.

Then it occurred to me: When you smoke corned beef, you get pastrami. I can work with pastrami.

French Fridays with Dorie – Salmon and Potatoes in a Jar | Great Food 360°

French Fridays with Dorie – Salmon and Potatoes in a Jar | Great Food 360°

So, our good friend Adriana at Great Food 360° is a member of French Fridays with Dorrie - a group of intrepid food bloggers cooking their way through Dorrie Greenspan's Around My French Table. Each Friday, they post their interpretation of that week's recipe. As it happens, this week's recipe was Salmon and Potatoes in a jar - fitting in nicely with the B&P Meat Hiatus. Adriana asked if I'd like to fill in, and I happily obliged. How did I do?

Well, go take a look!

Smoked Shrimp

After my first experiment with my stovetop smoker was successful, I've been searching for new and exciting things to use it with for the duration of my meat hiatus (1 week left, for those who are counting). As it turns out, people have tried to smoke pretty much everything. As it also turns out, shrimp work pretty well. I wouldn't have expected this - shrimp cook quickly, and smoking is a famously  "slow and low" cooking method. But after doing a little digging, I found an interesting looking preparation apparently used by the Taco Sisters of Lafayette, LA. After giving this a shot, I'll be sure to drop in next time I find myself by Lafayette.

Cajun Mahi Mahi Sandwich

The last month or two of entries have been a little complicated - not too challenging, but requiring a good bit of prep work in spots. We'll shift gears today, and go with something quick and easy that you can put together in 10 - 15 minutes. Purists beware, the only thing actually remotely cajun about this is the guy on the seasoning container. Everybody else: It tastes good.

Smoked Steelhead with Roasted Garlic Sriracha Schmear

I really miss my grill. It was nothing special - a decent Char-Broil propane grill -  but it was mine. It was also apparently a fire hazard on my 8th floor balcony. So, it got replaced by an electric unit that tries hard, but isn't quite the same. No fire, no char, and the grill marks kind of just taste burnt. As you might imagine, I was excited to recently discover some indoor options for smoking food. The good people at Nordic Ware have developed the lovely stovetop smoker to your right, and the better people at Amazon sold it to me at 40% off with free shipping. Imagine a sort of Aluminum dutch oven with a high domed lid, smoking rack, and built in thermometer. Visions of brisket and pork butt have been dancing through my head since I purchased it. And of course, it arrived right in the middle of our Meat Hiatus.

Bollinos (Fish Balls)!

So, it's been all together too long since we've had any balls here at Balls and Pie (Don't worry, we've had plenty of pie). If you've been keeping up, and read about our delicious curried tilapia tacos, then you know we're on a meat hiatus. I'm going to repeat that, just because I enjoy the term: Meat Hiatus. Well, except for fish, and according to Ron Swanson, (the official fictional libertarian of Balls & Pie) it's pretty much a vegetable anyway. So, in search of something appropriate to share with you, my internet overlords, I discovered Bollinos - Codfish Balls! They were a pleasantly tasty surprise.

Curried Tilapia Fish Tacos

In which our fearless heroes make delicious fish tacos, nearly from scratch. Also, some guacamole. Sometimes, things just come together. Hannibal would have loved it. So, a month and change of traveling, road food, barbecue and other excess has caught up to us here at B&P HQ, and we're going pescatarian for awhile. To celebrate the first opportunity to prepare something more exciting than Costco's Ultimate Fish Sticks, I decided to try something pretty different, and go for a latin/carribean/subcontinental sort of meal. So, with a refrigerator full of fish, and armed with a couple pounds of masa, I got to work.