Tonight for dinner I modified a recipe from Pig King of the Southern Table by James Villas.  The recipe was for BBQ pork kabobs.  The recipe in the book calls for making a peach BBQ sauce while I chose to use Sweet Baby Rays Sweet Vidalia Onion BBQ sauce.  The dinner was delicious, and the only problem I only made 4 Kabobs for each of us.

Recipe:
Pork Tenderloin
Sweet Baby Rays Sweet Vidalia Onion BBQ Sauce
White Peaches from a local farm
Red Onion
Wooden skewers

1.  Soak wooden skewers in a water and white balsamic vinegar.
2.  Cut pork tenderloin into 1 inch cubes.  Do the same with the red onion and peaches
3.  Marinate Pork in Sweet Baby Rays BBQ sauce.
4.  Skewer pork onion and peaches.  Brush with BBQ sauce.
5.  Grill on High heat rotating and brushing skewers with BBQ sauce.

Eat and Enjoy

Last night's dinner was an eggplant and chicken Parmesan.  Delicious.

INGREDIENTS:
6 baby eggplants (3 regular/3 white) available at Scenic View Farms, Sabilasville MD
1 Purple Bell Pepper
1 Roma tomato from the Garden
1 pound of Penne
1 jar of Tuscan Inspired tomato sauce with olives (Yeah I know I cheated on the dish there)
1 pound Chicken Tenders
McCormick Grillmates Roasted Garlic and Herb
Olive Oil
Balsamic Vinegar
S & P
Mozzarella Cheese

1.  Preheat Grill
2.  Slice eggplants in half, cut pepper into large pieces cut tomato in half, put in bowl and toss in olive oil and Balsamic vinegar, dash of S&P
3.  Cut fat off chicken tenders toss in olive oil and McCormick seasoning.
4.  Grill chicken and veggies.
5.  Heat sauce on stove and cook penne.
6  To Plate:  Pasta top it with Tomato sauce, top with veggies and chicken, then cheese, Garnish with Basil sprig from garden.  Eat and enjoy.

This week I made a salad for Tiffany and me, a California Style Chicken Ranch Salad.

Ingredients:
Mesculin Greens
1 Avocado
Tomatoes
4 Slices of Bacon
1/2 lb Chicken Tenderloins
McCormick GrillMates Tomato Basil Seasoning
Olive Oil
Salt
Ranch Dressing (also good with Kraft Bacon Ranch Dressing)

1.  Marinate Chicken in Olive Oil and McCormick GrillMates Tomato Basil Seasoning
2.  Grill chicken and pan fry Bacon
3. Cut tomatoes, avocado, (lightly salt avocado)
4.  Toss Greens in ranch dressing.
5.  Plate salad, greens on bottom, topped with tomato, avocado, bacon crumbles, and chicken.  Eat and Enjoy.

I saw a recent Facebook post from friend from high school that said he had kangaroo, alligator, and ostrich at one meal, while on his European vacation.  So I decided to post the kangaroo recipe I did back in October.

Some things to remember when cooking kangaroo is that it's very lean, only about 1-2% fat, so it's suggested to cook it no more then medium rare or it will begin to dry out.  I choose to pan sear the kangaroo so that it would be cooked in a little bit of oil/fat. 

Ingredients:
Kangaroo tenderloin
Sea salt
Cracked black pepper
Olive oil
Puff Pastry
Balsamic Vinegar
Figs
Vanilla extract

1.  In saucepan add 1 cup balsamic vinegar, 5 sliced figs, a dash of vanilla extract.  Reduce over medium low heat until reduced by half.

2.  Cut puff pastry into 2 inch square pieces, fold into the shape of a pouch.  Preheat oven to 425.

3.  Heat skillet with tablespoon of olive oil.  Season kangaroo with Sea salt and fresh ground pepper.  Quickly sear the meat just to brown the outside, and let rest for 6 minutes. 

4.  While kangaroo meat is resting begin cooking puff pastry in the oven.  Slice meat after it has rested (this is to help the meat hold moisture and not bleed onto the cutting board as much.  Cook puff pastry for about 5 minutes.  place the slices of kangaroo onto the pouch of the puff pastry and finish baking until the puff pastry is finished cooking.

5.  Put puff pastry on plate and drizzle with balsamic reduction. Put balsamic fig on top of meat.  Eat and enjoy.

5. 

Ingredients:
2 racks of pork ribs
McCormick Smokehouse Maple Seasoning
McCormick Applewood Smoke Seasoning
Penzeys BBQ 3000 Spice
Applejuice
Sweet Baby Rays Barbeque Sauce

1.  Cut ribs into 2 rib bones per piece.  Season with McCormick Smokehouse Maple, Applewood Smoke, and Penzey's BBQ 3000. 

2.  Heat grill to high.  When grill is hot sear ribs on the grill, just to mark the ribs with grill marks. 

3.  In slowcooker add apple juice, and seasonings, 1/2 cup BBQ sauce, turn to high. 

4.  Cook in slowcooker for 6 hours. 

5.  Remove ribs and pour applejuice out of slowcooker.  Brush ribs with Sweet Baby Rays BBQ Sauce.

Tonight in the Mason Dixon Master Chef Competition one of the dishes to be judged will be Chicken Neptune, a seared chicken breast with scallops, shrimp, jumbo lump crab meat, and a sherry cream sauce.  This dish is not in any of my cookbooks and will be a chance for the chefs to have a little of their own creative touches. 

To cook this recipe I would first begin making the sherry cream sauce.  To begin with I would put a quart of cream, with a quarter cup seafood stock, cup of sherry, and bouqet garni and reduce.  I would add the seafood stock to help impart more seafood flavor into the dish since the theme of it is chicken with the seafood. 

I would then slice the chicken so it could be stuffed.  I would stuff it with the crab meat and bay scallops (bay scallops for their smaller size and stuff them whole).  I would then sear the chicken in olive oil and season it with salt, pepper, parsley, and chives.  And finish cooking in the oven.  While the chicken is in the oven I would dice up the shrimp, sear them and add them to the sherry cream sauce.

To plate I would sauce the dish, slice the chicken on the bias (at an angle) one time in half.  I would lean the to pieces together showing the seafood stuffing to the diner. 

If the menu was not so specific there are other ideas I have for this dish. 

One idea instead of serving it as a seared chicken breast would be to braise the chicken, shred it with a fork.  Then shred the scallops into small pieces.  I would then make a crabcake base for it, a combination of mayo, egg, old bay, splash of Tabasco, chives, parsley, dry mustard.  Slowly mix the base with the seafood and chicken, add bread crumbs as needed.  Now you have a Chicken Neptune 'Crabcake'.

For sauce I would also change it to a Mornay sauce, a basic cream sauce with Parmesan and gruyere cheese added to it, and then finished with butter.  I would still consider adding the shrimp to the sauce with the Chicken Neptune Crabcakes due to the change in texture.  Adding a bit of sherry to the sauce would still go well too.

Another way I would consider cooking the dish would be to slice the chicken in half so there are 2 long, THIN pieces.  I would then pound it out with a meat tenderizer.  After it is pounded out I would season both sides, salt, pepper, chives, parsley, and then place all the seafood onto the chicken (yes this time even the shrimp).  I would then roll the chicken up and wrap it in plastic wrap.  Put the chicken on parchment paper and bake at 350 until it reaches an internal temp of 165.  Estimate about 35 minutes.  And then top it with classic Mornay sauce.

For wine I would pair it with an unoaked Chardonnay, maybe from California.  Chardonnay has a enough flavor to hold it's own with all of these flavors, and I think the oakyness may conflict with some of the flavors especially the crab.  A New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc might pair very well with the Neptune cakes.  I would avoid red wine with this dish.

One of the dishes that will be judged tonight in the Mason Dixon Master Chef Competition will be Grilled Portabella mushroom with zesty Garden Ratatouille with a Three Cheese Fondue. 

To make ratatouille first get your mise en place ready (all your ingredients ready).  To do this cut the following vegetables to a medium dice- 1 medium sized eggplant, 1 pound of zucchini, 1 onion, 2 bell peppers, (some books suggest adding mushrooms, add a few chefs I know add squash into the mix but it's note traditionally added).  Mince or finely chop 3 cloves of garlic.  Then peel, seed, and slice 4 plum tomatoes at a medium dice.  Have a olive oil, vegetable stock (optional), chopped herbs like parsley, basil, oregano, thyme, marjoram, rosemary, savory, chervil (note you do not need to add all these herbs, these are just some suggestions on herbs to use).  Some recipes also suggest adding 2 Tbsp of tomato paste. 

Next the chef must decide how they want to cook the ratatouille as there are many ways suggested on how to cook it.  Some recipes suggest cooking all the ingredients in a pot together, some suggest cooking different ingredients at different times and combining them in the end, and other cookbooks suggest roasting all the vegetables together in the oven.

Cooking in a pot
Begin by adding 1/2 c olive oil to large pot and heat at medium heat.  When the oil is warm add onions and saute until translucent.  (If adding tomato paste add during this step)  Next add garlic, then peppers, then eggplant, then zucchini, (mushrooms), then tomatoes (cook each vegetable until it begins to soften before adding the next.)  Turn stove to low heat and add 1/4 c vegetable stock (the goal is to moisten the veggies, not make them soupy).  Stew the vegetables, season with salt, pepper, and herbs.  And serve.  You may wish to cook each individual ingredient separately so each ingredient retains its individual flavor, but this will make for a lot of dishes.

Cooking in the Oven
Toss onions, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, and zucchini in about 1/2 c olive oil, season with fresh herbs and bake on a sheet pan at 350 degrees for about 90 minutes (or until water in tomatoes has evaporated out)  and stir it about every 30 minutes for even cooking.  Next in blender combine basil, garlic, and 1/2 c olive oil in blender, and then stir it in with the ratatouille mixture. 

Options to add some people also like adding pitted olives and/or capers.

Ratatouille comes from the Provencal region of France.  And was also the featured dish in the movie Ratatouille by Disney/Pixar in 2007.  In the movie Chef Thomas Keller designed the ratatouille for the Grand Finale dish, in which instead of dicing the ingredients they were thinly shaved on a mandolin and baked in olive oil (think of it looking a bit like au gratin potatoes with vegetable instead). 

One book suggests using Chinese eggplants or Japanese eggplants if you feel that the eggplant is leaving a 'prickly' taste in your mouth. 

If I was in this competition and had choices of cheeses for the three cheese fondue to serve with this dish I would probably base the cheeses on the region of the dish.  I'm thinking I would try it making the fondue with goat, Boursin (yeah I know it's from Normandy), and Brie.  I would grill the portabellas, and cook the ratatouille similar to the au gratin style in Ratatouille the movie.  To serve I would lay the portabella on the center of the plate, use a round cutter and cut the ratatouille to fit evenly over top the mushroom, top with a dab of fondue, and a brush stroke of fondue across the bottom of the plate and a sprig of rosemary going through the center of the ratatouille holding it to the mushroom.  It my also need a dab of fondue under the mushroom to help hold it into place.

For the wine I would consider a strong, bold wine like a cabernet sauvignon, merlot, or zinfandel.  On a warmer day I would opt out and go with a dry rose (Rose from Francis Ford Coppola Presents was good, Sofia Rose made of Pinot Noir grapes), drink something lighter for a sunnier day.

This weekend I went to Tiffany's family Easter dinner. I decided that even though most of the food was home style cooking to stay true to my cooking style and make a seafood risotto. Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups arborio rice
1 lb shrimp, peeled and deviened chopped up
1 lb crab claw (you can use any kind, claw was on sale though)
1 onion
1 red pepper
1 container Swanson chicken stock (fresh stock, or even a seafood stock would be better but for time store bought will be fine)
Parmesan cheese
butter
salt
pepper
Old Bay

1. Toast arborio rice in skillet until it gets a lightly toasted color, in another pan lightly caramelize onion and red pepper in a small amount of butter.

2. Add toasted arborio rice to onion and pepper mixture, then add a cup of stock and shrimp to the rice, add a little bit of Old Bay and salt. Keep stirring.

3. After most of the water is soaked up by the rice add the crab meat and more stock, and a little bit of old bay, salt and pepper. Continue stirring.

4. continue adding small amounts of water as the water gets soaked into the rice, until the rice is tender.

5. When the rice is tender and you no longer need to add water or stock to cook it add 3 T of butter and 4 oz of Parmesan cheese. Season with salt, pepper, and old bay to taste.

Hollandaise sauce is one of the five mother sauces in French cooking along with espagnole (brown sauce- like demi-glace), Veloute (made with white stock), Bechemel (cream sauce), and tomato.

While I was reading the 1998 James Beard Award winning cookbook Cookwise. While reading the section on emulsion sauces I stopped at the hollandaise recipe and reread three times. This recipe was slightly different then the way I was taught to make it. So I decided to look up the recipe for hollandaise sauce in other cookbooks that are highly trusted:
1. Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Julia Childs
2. The Joy of Cooking 75th anniversary, Rombauer
3. Sauces, James Peterson 1991 James Beard Award Cookbook of the Year
4 How to Cook Everything, Mark Bittman, 2009 James Beard Award General Cooking

Each book suggests a different ratio of egg yolks to butter. Sauces and the Joy of Cooking recommend using clarified butter (milk fats removed) and the other books recommend using all of the butter. Julia Childs recommends adding a Tablespoon of cold butter after heating the egg yolks so stop the yolks from continueing to cook. The Joy of Cooking also suggests adding a dash of hot sauce and cookwise says to add cayanne pepper. How to Cook does not recommend adding water to help stabelize the emulsion while whisking.

Whichever recipe you decide to look up and follow will still be delicious, especially if you use the freshest and highest quality ingredients. I'm looking forward to making Eggs Benedict in the morning and using a local hand made butter I found at a Trickle Springs Creamery, Chambersburg. (It looks like Julia Childs recipe has the most butter in her hollandaise recipe, I think I'll follow her recipe this time)