Monsoons and Prickly Pears

Last Saturday, Mardi and her sister Marci decided to make Prickly Pear jelly (and whatever other goodies they could devise from the delicious fruit) Marci stopped on her way down to our place and spent about an hour picking the fruit. Our monsoon rains have loaded the desert with fat ripe fruit! It's truly a crime not to use it if you can. I loved her description of how she chose the fruits. "I left the high ones for the birds and the low ones for the lizards and other little critters. So, if you see a patch of cactus with a band picked clean around the middle.........those are mine!"
She arrived with two, nearly full, five gallon buckets of cactus fruit, ripe and ready. By now, Mardi had called our good friends Marika and Sandy partly as reinforcements and mostly to just join in the fun. In no time, they had pots and cauldrons boiling on the big commercial stove in the outdoor kitchen. It Was Hot as Hell, even with the cooler "blasting". (so we work in our swimming suits, a quick dip in the pool now and then really helps)

Meanwhile, they had all put their heads together and devised a rather elaborate straining system using about everything we have. Cactus fruit has small stickers on it (no big deal) but there are also these almost microscopic little buggers which can really cause havoc. They are so fine, they will get inhaled! The final stage was to pour through several layers of muslin and a paper coffee filter. The bounty from all this was about eight gallons of prickly pear cactus juice. Nectar of the desert! We poured several gallons into ice cube trays to freeze for later use.

Sunday, Mardi and Marci began making the actual jelly. Recipes abound for this process but none of them seem to be complete or they are contradictory with each other. You just have to read between the lines and be a little creative. After a couple of false starts, the jelly was piling up like a real canning line.

It tasted wonderful! I took some of the juice and blended it with my Hummingbird mix.

They love it too!

Marci arrived Monday morning with her "Cordial Maker" a kind of odd little machine that looks to be a cross between an ice cream maker and a yogurt machine. What the Hell, let's try it. You simply take about half cactus juice, half vodka and some sugar and pour it into this contraption. Set the dial and wait a few hours. Voila! You have Prickly Pear Cordial! Simple as that. Hmmmmmmm...I think we may be onto something here. Sweet, thick, and it packs a kick! It looks as if we may need a few liters of this stuff just to make it through the winter.

The next plan is to devote a few gallons of juice to cactus wine. We have most of the stuff already and the fruit is ready to pick! I'll let you know how it turns out, in a few months.

Chow!

It might have been a wake, but the food...................!!

Our cousin's mom passed a few days ago. The funeral was yesterday with a wake afterward. We volunteered to cook the food because, that's what we do. Our cousins were overwhelmed by out-of-town guests and preparations. The last thing they needed was to try to feed 60 or 70 people.

As luck would have it, I had just installed my new grill on Sunday. I gave it a quick trial with a few brats and decided that it would be ok. It's not like my old clunker but I will get used to it. Besides, this one is a whole lot fancier! The real test came Tuesday. I first, grilled an 11 pound pork shoulder roast. The seasoning wasn't too involved as we were going to make pulled pork BBQ with it. I used the indirect grilling method on my trusty broiler pan @ about 275.

I left it on the grill for just over five hours and basted it regularly with its own juices. After about two hours, I tented it with a piece of foil. I think this helps keep in the moisture while not allowing things to get too dark.
As the pork roast cooked, I prepared a 12 pound beef brisket. This one got a wonderful sugar and chile powder based dry rub. Nothing particularly exotic, just add a little extra zippy enhancement without overpowering the wonderful beef flavor. When the pork roast came off the grill, the brisket went on. I kept the temp the same and followed the ironclad rule: NO looking for two hours! After that, I basted the brisket with its own juices. KISS cooking at its best. 6 hours later I turned off the heat and removed the beef, wrapped it with foil and let it rest for about another hour. Wednesday morning I sliced it thinly and poured some of the left over juice right back over the meat. Oh, I almost forgot, I also baked a big ham in the oven of our outside kitchen while all this other stuff went on. It was wonderful! but..............................

back to the brisket. We managed to get all the food to the wake by about one in the afternoon. everyone was really hungry from all the crying and the pressure was on. In no time at all and with a lot of help, we had a fabulous spread! We used an electric roaster for a makeshift steam table and put the pulled pork and beef brisket in it to stay hot. I was a little nervous as I had never cooked a brisket before. To add to my anxiousness, this is one of my favorite things to eat and it is always made to seem almost impossible to do right. (unless you have a $10,000 trailer mounted smoker, a keg of beer and a half dozen rednecks to keep you up all night cooking, tending and drinking) Now, I am as much a redneck as the next guy, and I am willing to do all that other stuff. If I have a couple of days to recuperate. Time just did not permit that much fun.

The first indication that maybe the beef was ok, was when I noticed one of the guests bragging about how everything but the brisket was fantastic! While talking up all the other food, he was loading his plate with brisket! Several times. At last, he confided, it was the best brisket he had ever eaten. This was a cool thing. Over and over, people raved about our food. Mardi had made a ton of other stuff all while teaching a class. We are so fortunate that an event like this is pretty easy for us to pull off now.

For us to be able to provide a wonderful meal and help lessen the grief of all the guests is truly a gift we are very thankful for. The rest of the day was spent telling stories, drinking and eating. I think everyone went home feeling just a little better, and a lot fuller.

Chow!

Our best ribs yet!

Ok, I know we always say this - but really, I think this latest rack was the best yet! We love to cook ribs on the grill. In fact, a couple of summers ago we cooked ribs every weekend. All that practice has really paid off. I use a gas grill and indirect heat. My grill is not exotic but it works very well, especially after Mary Q "pimped it a little". We souped it up from a paltry 35k BTUs to a more manly 55,000 BTUs. Besides being able to get far more heat from it now, I also can go lower and hold the temp (at say, 300 degrees) with ease. Before, I had to prop the lid open and other embarrassing tricks.

We use pork ribs (not baby backs) as we think they have more and better flavor. First we remove the silver skin. (that tough membrane over one side of the rack) Just get under one end with a sharp boning knife and peel it up a little. Grab the flap with a paper towel and pull firmly. If you are (very) lucky, it will all come off in one piece. If not, just keep picking at it till it is gone. We then trim the excess meat off from around the bottom of the rack. (St Louis style) Cook these pieces along with the other and treat them the same. I like a dry rub that we make ourselves. I'll post the recipe on our newsletter website, BiteMe!, soon. Smear the dry rub all over the ribs and allow them to rest for at least 45 minutes. Make your mopping sauce ( I'll post a recipe for it too) and soak your wood chips. If you use a charcoal grill the chips will not be needed. For your gas grill, try this easy and non-messy trick: take a piece of foil about a foot long, place a generous handfull of wood chips in the center. (hickory, mesquite, whatever you like) bring the sides of the foil up to meet all around and fold into a pouch. Punch a bunch of holes in it and soak this whole thing in a container of water for 20-30 minutes. Drain the water off and place right on the fire of your grill. Wonderful smoky flavor will result! Simply throw the pouch away when you are done.

Meanwhile, back to our ribs. I found a broiler tray and pan from a kitchen stove at a tag sale. I love this thing! I spray both pieces with Pam then place my rack of ribs bony side up on it. You also can use one of those disposable foil baking pans with a roasting rack in it. Either one keeps the ribs from sitting in the drained fat. Heat the grill to about 300-350 degrees using one burner. Place your ribs on the unheated side. Cooking ribs is where Life in the Slow Lane is perfect. Close the lid and walk away for about 30 minutes. When you check in again, liberally baste them with your mopping sauce and tent the ribs with a piece of foil. This will help keep them moist. Keep checking and basting about every thirty minutes and cook for a total of about three hours. About halfway along, I will turn the whole pan 180 degrees to share the heating wealth. Using an instant read thermometer, and without touching a bone, bring your ribs to about 155-165 degrees. They will probably clock in at about 130-140 and you may need to raise the temp of your grill for the last thirty minutes or so to bring the ribs up to temp. A little extra cooking time only makes them better. Low and Slow, remember? When you remove them from your grill, allow them to rest for at least fifteen minutes. those wonderful juices on the top will go back into the meat. There you have it, the best mouth watering ribs ever! We like to serve them with a bbq sauce on the side with beer or a sturdy red wine. A hearty Zinfandel is my choice.

Chow!

Long Hot Summer is here!

Independence day is now passed and it's time to begin the long hot summer! All winter long, I will yearn for the hot weather, then after monsoons start, things get pretty miserable. For several years we have not used any cooling other than our swamp coolers. They really earn that name this time of year. At last we have finally cracked and gotten a high efficiency AC to replace the antique at the end of the house. Hopefully our tech will be here to hook it up soon. I almost never wish for the "winter". I really hate the cold. Much more time is spent daydreaming about beaches in Mexico, the Caribbean or Meditteranean. Thoughts of tropical beaches and Mardi and me on sailing boat, plying the gentle waves from happy hour to happy hour consumes too much of my time now. This island today, another island tomorrow........hey.....it's gotta be five o'clock somewhere.
It's been a couple of weeks now since we began teaching in the new kitchen. We love it and we are sure our students do too! There is so much more room to work and Mardi can demonstrate ideas and techniques much better. The first real stress test was to put nine little girls around the new work island to make pasta and raviolis. What fun! And, our big, new work area passed the test with flying colors.

I am really excited as we have had quite a bit of interest in our Mexico cooking vacations. I love our destination, Kino Bay, Sonora, so any chance we get to go there, I'll be the first in the car. It looks as if our next group trip will be in October. We are very close to filling that one already!

Our next project is to replace our bbq grill and expand the outdoor kitchen. I am really excited to start on that one. I am going to move part of the north wall about eight feet out to give us far more room in the grilling area. We then, will move the fridge to that portion and install a 3 bay stainless sink. It should give us more prep room for about two more students (and a lot more room to maneuver around the backsides in that skinny space!)

Chow!

The new kitchen......at last!!

We could hardly wait to get started! Our cooking classes are our lifeblood and a favorite part of our lives. Because of this, it was with some reluctance that we gave up classes for two weeks.
At the same time, the excitment had built to a near frenzy! Saturday morning two weeks ago now, I began the demolition. The plan was in place with any changes only to be dictated by unforeseen surprises I might uncover. It didn't take long! A "smile" that had developed over the years in a soffit, turned out to be my worst fear. A little bitty wall that had been removed years ago, turned out to be a bearing wall. The entire ceiling and roof was sagging! Damn, what to do about that? After some thought and consternation and consultation, the decision was made to shore up the roof/ceiling with some recycled and ancient beams that had been salvaged from a job downtown. What a perfect solution! We were able to reuse some great historic lumber, free, and support the construction while creating a beautiful appearance. I love it when a "plan" comes together. Day after day, there would be setbacks, changes and interruptions. To add to the stress, my real job would rear its ugly head and get in the way too. Such audacity! It seemed every day we would delete or defer some portion of the job, It became just like a real construction job. Finally we agreed to break the entire project into seperate pieces. This would allow us to complete the most important elements while holding back on some others. Saturday, June 14, we are ready to paint. It is just about one week late but I think we will be ready for Kid's Camp Monday morning. A couple of planned things are still on the back burner but all in all, it will be beautiful and a huge improvement. Our space is now almost doubled. The floor is tiled to replace that despicable carpet. (who put that stuff there anyway?!!) Next week's "spare" time will be devoted to building a new work island. Of course, that work will be sandwiched between five days of Cooking Camp and five evening classes. We can do it!! The next project will be to re-do the existing countertop and install our new gas cooktop, and then, the wall oven.

We are very excited to begin teaching in the new facility and show it off during our
Grand Re-Opening Party, Sunday June 22. We hope you are able to join us in the celebration. We will have refreshments, prizes and sample food from upcoming classes. Come and take advantage of discounts on future classes and register for our newsletter; BiteMe!
There is plenty of information on our website; http://www.cuisineclassique.com/

Monday the 16th will be a day for rejoicing! Our classes will start again and to add to the fun,
the first ones up will be the kids! Hope we see you in class!

Chow

Dinner at Dawn, again

Good morning...I think. It seems to have come awfully quickly! Our "Basics" class ended late last night and of course, we stayed up till midnight cleaning up and getting ready for this morning's adventure.
Periodically, Mardi is asked to appear on our local CBS Morning Show to prepare a dish live with Co-anchor, Jenny Anchondo. This morning we arrived at the studio at 5 to make a wonderful, healthy and easy Southwestern Capreze Salad with a Lime Vinaigrette. Everything went really well until Jenny, while shaking the bottle of vinaigrette, slung a trail of oil across the studio. She didn't realize that she needed to put her finger over the spout. Hopefully she didn't ruin her beautiful suit!
We left enough portions of the Capreze Salad and some fantastic Cake with Ganache for the crew to assure they will invite us back again.
(actually, Mardi is scheduled to appear again June 18)
Chow!

We must be having fun!

This has been such a busy week! We have had full classes
every day and some of them last pretty late. It's good we
love what we do. We taught a Team Building class for a
large local business on Monday afternoon. It was a lot of
fun and I think our guests had a great time and learned
something new about each other. Our Team Building classes
are very rewarding for us as we have the opportunity to
affect and help a fairly large group of people each time.
We research new team building methods all the time and see
how some of them might apply to our own team. Then, if we like
the results, we can offer the new "menu items" to our clients!
Cooking together is such a remarkable and effective way to
establish cooperation and get everyone pulling in the same
direction. And........we all get a terrific meal too!
We added a new member to our Tuesday night Basics of Cooking
Course this week so that fun group should be even funner.
Mardi and I have been working on our new schedule for the summer
and how exciting! The new classes we are offering (from Low Fat
and Fast, to the Thrill of the Grill! will be so fun and helpful
that we can hardly wait to start.

There's a lizard in my kitchen!

Ok, we live in the desert so I guess that exclamation point after the title is more hype than truth. The fact is, lizards in our kitchen are not that rare. Besides, I am talking about our outside kitchen so the lizard is more welcome than an intrusion. For the last few years, we have had what seems to be one lizard who likes to hang out near our atrium and one that stays around the outside kitchen.
Hmmmm. I hate to say it but, they all look alike. Only the distance assures us they are not the same reptile in each place.
These aren't your little old skinny lizards that run away at first sight. Ours are those big fat Mountain Bloomers (both with stumpy tails this year) that merely lumber out of the way when we go near them. The kitchen lizard is especially funny because he does seem to get startled once in a while and "peels out" on the concrete floor to run under the stove or out the open door. He looks like one of those cartoon critters, making his getaway while the bongos play as they take off!
While some of you may be very distressed at a lizard cavorting around your kitchen floor, somehow ours seem kind of comforting to us and a constant stream of entertainment.

Wow! Has it been this long?

Geez, we have been so busy with all our pursuits the past year that I just have not taken time to write anything. That is changing right now! There is so much to tell about food and cooking, and we are busting at the seams to spread the word.
We discovered a few days ago that our only real competition in town is closing their doors May 1st. That is too bad as we think some friendly rivalry is a good thing. Before the word came out that they were closing, we had made the decision to just about double our class offerings. We are so excited about the opportunities to share all our great cooking ideas and recipes that two or three classes each week just didn't cut it anymore.
I think our best idea lately was to add our Basics of Cooking course. We have been kicking the idea around for a long time but just hadn't been able to formulate exactly how we wanted to present the information. We are now running two sessions of this class each week and we are having a blast!
I have just finished a little remodel in our outside kitchen. I removed the large sink and its counter then installed a new cabinet a with a larger countertop to give us more prep area. So far, it is wonderful! Now I need to go to the next step which will be enlarging that part of the kitchen so I can install my commercial stainless sinks and move the fridge to that area. Then we will have a lot more room in the main part of the outdoor kitchen.
Last night we taught Four Pastas and Four Sauces. Our class had a lot of fun preparing these great recipes and the food was out of this world! I think it was the best we have cooked in a while. After cleanup, Mardi and i enjoyed a nice glass of Shiraz on the patio to wind down before bed.
Saturday we have a group of "bigs and littles" from the Big Brothers/Big Sisters organization. Mardi and I are really excited to host this class. The kids should be a real hoot.
Chow!