Spinning and Roasting Pineapple While Keeping OSHA Out of the Backyard

I'm always looking for something a little different for the grill and also look for ideas for my rotisserie so when little sis posted a spit roasted pineapple recipe on Facebook I perked up. Now mind you, not just grilled pineapple but grilled pineapple on a rotisserie, don't get much better than that.  

I've grilled pineapple before but always as spears or cut up in rounds mainly because I didn't own a rotisserie at the time.  All the pineapple I've grilled have been good but the use of a rotisserie took the pineapple to a whole new level.  

To properly roast a pineapple we first must start with fresh pineapple, available at most grocery stores.  Fresh pineapples normally are pretty east to spot, due to their size and rather large greens on top.  This pineapple could be a little riper but it was the best I could find at the store this week.  

It's not hard to cut up a pineapple if you follow a few simple rules with rule number one being don't cut towards yourself, isn't that right John?  If I keep him around I'll have OSHA camped out in my back yard writing safety violations.  Follow the link I provided and it will explain how to cut up a pineapple better than I ever could.  

Once the pineapple is ready for the spit it's a matter of pushing the spit through the pineapple, being careful not to push the spit through the pineapple and your hand or you'll end up like John again, with a bandage around your hand.  After the pineapple is on the spit, and no extra holes in your body, it's time to assemble the cast of characters.  It's a simple cast starting with:

• 3 Tablespoons melted butter
• 1 Cup sugar (I used sugar in the raw)
• 2 Tablespoons ground cinnamon
• 1 Teaspoon ground cloves

Mix the sugar, cinnamon and cloves.

Now it's time to fire up the grill and get it hot.  My grill had cooled off a bit since I used it to cook dinner that night so it took about an hour to roast the pineapple at 350 degrees.  The butter is basted on throughout the roasting time with the sugar mixture applied at the same time.

 It makes me drool just to look at the photo.  Like the wife said "What's not to like?  You got butter, sugar, cinnamon and cloves."

The last decision to be made is how to serve it.  The original recipe gives good options with one being with whipped cream.

No doubt that's a good option but my favorite, vanilla ice cream.

 That's hard to beat in my world.

Regardless what you choose, roasted pineapple on the rotisserie is hard to beat, simple and delicious, let's give it a 5 out of 5 forks.

Original Recipe

Mozzarella Cheese and How I Learned to Use Bottle Water

"Waiting tables is what you know. Making cheese is what I know. Let's stay with what we know here." - Jimmy the Cheese Man from the movie The Pope of Greenwich Village.

I really don't know much about waiting tables and I really don't know much about making cheese, although I did stay at a Holiday Inn once, but I do know how to read directions, or so I thought.  A few weeks ago, when it was her turn, little sister posted our weekly family recipe for making mozzarella cheese.  My first thought, what a great family recipe and I wish I'd thought of that.  

Even though I lived in Wisconsin and actually been through a few cheese plants, I still didn't have a clue how to make cheese.  I knew cheese came from milk and I knew the pasteurization process and I knew, somehow, whey came from the cheese making process and I knew when the whey was separated from the solids, also known as cheese curds, it was the curds that were the start of the cheese.  Well, maybe I had a small clue but what I didn't know was how the whey and curds were separated and what to do with the curds afterwards.  

It turns out to be a relatively simple process with some relatively tough lessons learned.  To be honest, I've tried four times and failed on two of those occasions. We'll get to the lessons learned but first lets introduce the cast of characters for mozzarella cheese which is simple and few:

1/2 Rennet Tablet (Found at a local grocery store)

1-1/2 tsp Citric Acid (Found at pharmacies)

1 gallon milk (Found from contented cow)

Water (Found from a bottle)

For my first attempt at making the cheese I used the recipe that little sis posted for our weekly family recipe.  Epic failure.  What did I do wrong?  Since the wife was helping we were both sure we had followed the directions to a tee.  We made sure we didn't use ultra pasteurized milk, a warning supplied with the recipe.  I wasn't alone in failure, big sis attempted and failed too.  Little sis had much better success than we did and she assured us the recipe worked.  

After failure, I knew of only one place for answers, the internet.  Google, at times my best friend, supplied me with plenty of information but one piece of information I came across stood out, use bottled water.  Could bottled water make the difference?  There is only 3/4 of a cup of water required for making cheese which makes it hard to believe that could be the difference.  The reason my water may not work?  It's chlorinated, or at least that's the only thing I could find.  That might make sense too, since little sis's water is good ole country water from a well.  

A few days later it was time for another shot at cheese making, with bottled water this time.  I also decided to use the recipe that came with the rennent tablets, American Mozzarella.  I heated the milk up just like the instructions instructed(?) and let it sit for 2 hours.  After 2 hours I looked in the pot and  I couldn't tell if anything happened but after feeling down in the whey, yes it was actually whey, I found it, the cheese curd.  Yippie Kay Yay success.  Was it perfect? No, but I had cheese and it tasted good, definitely worth another try.

Now we fast forward to 3 months later and time to make cheese again.  Simple right?  Yeah right, read on.

Once again, I follow the directions, heat to 88 degrees stir in the dissolved rennant and citric acid, wait 2 hours and....................UGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!  NO CURD!!!! All I could think of is "What did I do wrong?" as I was dumping the failure down the drain.  For 2 days I kept thinking about it, what, what, what?  Then one night, as I was watching the Nats baseball game, it hit me, like a Ryan Zimmerman homerun, whack, "ITS THE WATER STUPID!!!!"  How could I be so dumb?  I knew from before not to use tap water, at least our tap water, but I did anyway. Stupid, stupid, stupid.   Oh well, if nothing else now we will find out once and for all if the water really does make the difference.  

The weekend came and I bought another gallon of milk, at least the diary farmers are making out on the cheese making experiment.  Once again, heat the milk to 88 degrees, add the dissolved rennent and citric acid in BOTTLED WATER this time and wait for 2 hours.  After the 2 hour wait feel in the pot and, YES, we have curds.  From here on it's clear sailing, heat back up to 108 degrees for 35 minutes, stir to keep the curd separated, and strain through a cheese cloth.  The whey can be saved for later and make ricotta cheese but when I tried it I didn't think the amount of ricotta cheese I got was worth the effort.  

After the curds are separated from the whey it's time to add salt and mix in thoroughly.  Now the fun part, microwave and stretch, microwave and stretch.  The hotter it gets, the more it can be stretched and the more it burns.  Stretch until you are satisfied with the smooth consistency of the cheese.  Once finished, form into a ball and store it in the frig in cool salted water for 24 hours.  

There you go, as easy as opening a bottle of water, mozzarella cheese.  The hardest part was finding the rennent and citric acid.  Taste?  I'll guarantee, nothing you buy in the store will compare to making your own and it's fresh.  The possibilities are endless, this batch ended up on a prosciutto, basil and mozzarella cheese pizza cooked on the grill.  

The next time you got a couple of hours to spare and don't know what to do, give cheese making a try, just don't forget the bottled water.

30 Minute Mozzarella Cheese Recipe

American Mozzarella Cheese Recipe  (Need Adobe Reader to view this recipe)

Sriracha Chicken Wings

Chicken wings, chicken wings, chicken wings, so many ways to cook and almost all are good.  Most chicken wings found in restaurants are deep fried and coated with hot sauce.  As the story goes the original chicken wing was concocted at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo New York, hence the name Buffalo Chicken Wing, clever.  

Since I rarely, if ever, deep fry anything I make my chicken wings in the oven in the winter and on the grill in the summer.  My personal favorite is the grill so anytime I see grilled chicken wings pop up on one of the barbecue blogs I follow I usually take note.  That was the case a few weeks ago when I came across a blog post with grilled chicken wings using sriracha chili sauce.  Since I happen to have the sriracha chili sauce in the frig, from a family recipe a few weeks ago, it just seemed like one of those moments when everything comes together and the subconscious says to me "Make these wings, make these wings."  Since I can't find the original blog post you will have to follow along to find out how to make these sweet, spicy, delicious wings.  I have changed the recipe from the original because I either 1) Didn't have the ingredients from the original recipe and need to substitute what I did have or 2) I needed to use up the ingredients I did have before I threw them out.  Either way, the results speak for themselves.  

Usually, I sprinkle a little seasoning on the wings and slap them on a hot grill but these wings need to be marinated.  The cast of characters for this episode include (in no particular order):

3-4 pounds chicken wings

1 cup chicken broth

1/2 cup sriracha chili sauce

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 medium sized onion, chopped

2 tbsp garlic, minced

Salt

Pepper

Cajun seasoning (I use Emeril's Essence)

All ingredients get mixed together, other than the chicken wings and cajun seasoning, and set to the side.  Next, time to get the chicken wings ready.  I always start by cutting the wing tip off and discarding.  After that, sometimes I'll cut the wing apart at the next joint but this time I decided to leave the wing whole.  Next, sprinkle the chicken with the cajun seasoning, put in a resealable plastic bag, and pour the marinade over the wings.  Put the wings in the frig and walk away, just walk away, for at least 2 hours and preferably overnight.

I let the chicken wings marinate overnight and what a night it was.  Thunderstorms rolled through with winds up to 80 MPH and left 1.5 million people without electricity.  We were lucky and got our electricity back early this morning and the second most important utility, the internet, back in the middle of the afternoon.

Now is the time to fire up the grill, don't need electricity for that, and get it ready to cook wings.  The original recipe said to cook the wings in the marinating liquid for 45 minutes uncovered and then 45 minutes covered.  Then, after that, grill over the hot coals, or flame if you use gas, while basting with the liquid.  The first time I cooked wings using this recipe I did all that and the results were good but since I like to keep my chicken wings simple this time I cooked them over the hot coals until the skin was crispy and then finished them over indirect heat.  However you choose to cook your wings they will turn out good either way.

Regardless how you decide to cook your wings, while the wings are cooking, it's time to make the chicken wing sauce.  The classic sauce, and I think the original, is made up of Frank's Red Hot and butter.  No doubt a good chicken wing sauce but when I saw this particular recipe with sriracha sauce (and if you remember I also had a bottle in the frig) I knew I needed to try it.  The original recipe is as follows:
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup of sriracha chili sauce
1/2 cup clover honey

Mix ingredients together.

Once again, since I didn't have any clover honey, although I did have regular honey, I decided to use barley malt instead, again left over from a previous recipe.

The barley malt definitely brings a different flavor to the party and one which I like.  I should also mention I only use half the butter the original recipe calls for and only because I really don't need all that butter.

After the wings are cooked it's time to pour the wing sauce over them and serve.

There's some good grub right there, a little spicy, a little sweet, a lot messy, and another way to enjoy those tasty chicken wings.

Grilled Chicken Salad and the Hibachi

I visited one of my favorite stores the other day, Amazon, and came home with a new hibachi made by Lodge.  Well, anyone that knows Amazon knows I didn't really get up to go a store I did my shopping on my computer, which is my preferred way.  And with the Amazon Super Saver Shipping option the shipping is free, extra bonus, and I almost always have my order within 5 days.

The biggest decision I needed to make once the hibachi arrived was what was I going to cook on it?  One look in the frig answered that question, setting front and center were some boneless, skinless chicken breast. I like chicken breast as much as the next person but I think my favorite way to eat them is in salad.  Grilled chicken salad is a simple, fast way to a delicious weeknight meal.  Before grilling I normally use an old standby for seasoning the chicken breast, Emeril Essence Seasoning.  At one time it was available on store shelves but I have always made my own.  The Food Network website has the recipe available.  I make a couple of small changes to the recipe to suit my own taste, half the cayenne pepper and half the salt and if I think I need more cayenne pepper or salt I add it later.  

Since Lodge makes the hibachi it is made of cast iron and weighs in at a hefty 35 pounds.  It doesn't come with a lid so need to get used to grilling without a lid, flare ups are harder to control (although that's not a problem with the lean chicken breast).  

The best thing about making grilled chicken salad is you add whatever you like.  For this salad we had:

• Leafy greens
• Chopped carrots
• Red Onion
• Cherry tomatoes
• Portabella mushrooms

For the salad dressing we had some Sweet Vidalia Onion Dressing in the frig which always seems to go good with the grilled chicken.

 Oh yeah, there's some good grub and like I said earlier, a simple, fast go to recipe for those busy week nights when you really don't feel like spending the entire night in the kitchen.

Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato, Not Just for Sandwiches Anymore

"Nothing burps better than bacon." - Dutch Dooley.

I couldn't agree more with Dutch and I think there is nothing better in this world than a good slab of bacon.  Bacon should have its own food group and I think Emeril was right, it would make a car bumper taste good.  And speaking of tasting good why is it that everything that taste good isn't good for you?  I haven't quite figured that one out yet.

My favorite sandwich since I was knee high to a grasshopper is the bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich.  I love the smokey flavor of the bacon along with the crunch from crispy bacon that's just been cooked and for some reason it just seems to go with a big, cold slice of tomato and crispy piece of lettuce.  I don't know who invented the BLT sandwich but they sure hit a winner.  

Lately, I've been into making pizza, all kinds of pizza.  Since it can be hard to find good pizza these days, more and more I make my own.  Making pizza isn't difficult, the pizza dough is probably the toughest part and even that isn't too tough.  And once the pizza dough is ready it's as easy as piling on your favorite toppings.  Today my toppings are bacon, lettuce and tomato for a BLT pizza.

There are several recipes available on the net for BLT recipes but the BLT pizza recipe I chose is the one my daughter posted a few months back for our weekly family dinner recipes.  I made some slight tweaks, after all recipes are only guidelines, to the original recipe but the outcome is the same.  I used asiago cheese instead of mozzarella and mixed greens for the lettuce, all because it's what I had in the frig that needed to be used up.  

A few weeks back a guy told me if you are going to be a true pizza pie maker make sure you use a pizza peel.  It's a good thing I happen to have own one but I'm not sure it helps to make a better pizza.  

My choice of cooking vessels, especially this time of year, is my trusty grill.  Since I prefer the traditional style pizza I try to have a grill temperature around 400 degrees.  I think the lower temperatures helps to cook the crust throughout before the outside crust burns.   When I make a thin crust pizza I try to get the grill as hot as possible.  The grill also gives a flavor that can't be matched in a conventional oven.  

As you can see from the photo below I also used whatever tomatoes we had available.  

I really do use the pizza peel.

 Now that's good grub and remember what Dutch said, "Nothing burps better than bacon."

The Ultimate Quest for Pizza Dough

Pizza dough, who knew it could take so much time to find a good pizza dough to make pizza?  After all, a pizza will only be as good as the dough it's cooked on.  It doesn't matter if you're a thin crust or traditional crust person making and finding a good pizza dough recipe can be a daunting experience.  

Finding a good pizza from a pizza restaurant can be a tough proposition too.  I can think of a couple of good places in former places I've lived, Buccilli's Pizza in Clare Michigan and DeO'Malley's Pizza Pub in Plymouth Wisconsin, both serving tradition style pizza crust, my personal favorite.  Where we live now, Gaithersburg Maryland, we have yet to find a pizza parlor that matches either of the above two.  There is a good thin crust pizza place close to here called Coal Fire, actually cooked in a coal fired oven.  Who would've guessed.  

In my never ending quest to find the better pizza dough I have made many different recipes from many different places but I was never satisfied with the outcome.  In my opinion all tasted, well, homemade, and nothing like a good pizza place can make.  In fact, one of the better pizza crust I have come across, or at least as good as I have ever made, was the Pillsbury Pizza dough sold in tubes in the local grocery stores.  Now how bad is that?  

My whole pizza dough life changed one day via Twitter (who said I was technologically challenged?) when someone tweeted to Mario Batali "What is the best pizza dough recipe?"  Mario is one of my favorite tweeters (is that what they're called?) if someone asks him a questions he will usually answer it.  Mario tweeted his answer back as "Mozza, the same one we use in our Mozza restaurant."  Since twitter is limited to 140 characters he couldn't very well give the entire recipe in his tweet and that's why google was invented, to fill in the gaps.  After a quick search on the 'net I came up with a recipe called Nancy Silverton's Pizza Dough. (I'm sorry it's an Oprah link but it's the best link I could find that explains the what and whys for making this pizza dough.)

The cast of characters is, for the most part, simple with a couple of surprise guests, raw wheat germ and barley malt.

  

1⁄2 ounce (1 Tbsp) compressed yeast or 1 tsp active dry yeast

26 ounces unbleached bread flour, plus more as needed

1⁄2 ounce (1 Tbsp) dark rye flour or medium rye flour

1 1⁄2 tsp wheat germ

1 1⁄2 tsp barley malt or mild-flavored honey, such as clover or wildflower

1⁄2 ounce (1 Tbsp) kosher salt

The barley malt is the interesting character, the Kramer of this show.  It's a natural sweetener and, I believe, gives the dough its flavor.  

One note of caution, this pizza dough takes a lot of time to make so if you do decide to try it make sure you give yourself plenty of time.  Sometimes I'll make it the night before and put it in the frig until the next day.   

 The day I made this pizza dough I ran out of bread flour, oops forgot to buy it when at the store, so I used 50% whole wheat flour and that's why the dough has a little hint of brown.  Still delicious, although not as good at using all bread flour as the recipe suggest.  

I normally cook my pizzas on a stone on the grill, which gives fantastic results and something an oven just can't match.  Also, I think I finally have a pizza dough recipe that can compete with the best pizzas I've had at any restaurant, so much so I would rather stay home and cook my own pizza instead of going out for pizza.

Original Recipe:

Nancy's Pizza Dough

The Best Steak I Ever Made

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I'll admit it, I'm a Food Network junkie.  This time of year, right after Washington Nationals baseball, it's my most watch TV channel.  Every year after Memorial Day Weekend the Food Network airs a week of barbecue and grilling and I set my dvr to record many shows during the week so I can watch them later and to also save shows that have recipes I want to try.  This particular recipe idea for this post came from a show called The Best Thing I Ever Made during the grilling week specials.  For those of you not familiar with the show several chefs from The Food Network will share the best thing they ever made, along with the recipes and how to prepare them, on the show.  Every week the show has a theme and of course during grilling week the theme was.............wait for it.........Grilling!!!

Although there were many good ideas and recipes on that show the one that stood out to me was the Grilled  Ribeye Steak by Chef Geoffrey Zakarian.  In my never ending quest to grill a better steak I immediately filed this recipe away for later.  Chef Zakarian didn't give me any earth shattering information I didn't already know but he did use a little different method than I normally use.  His ingredient list is simple enough, olive oil, salt, pepper and a little pad of butter applied after grilling but it is when he applies all the ingredients, other than the butter, that is different.  My normal method is to get the steak out of the frig before I go out to start the grill and this is when I apply oil, salt and pepper.  If you checked the Grilled Ribeye Steak link above you will notice Chef Zakarian use a ribeye steak 2-1/2 inches thick.  What he said during the program was a thick steak like that needs plenty of salt and pepper and plenty of time to absorb the salt and pepper. He salt and peppered the steak the night before and let it sit in the frig.  The next day he got the steak out a hour before he wanted to grill to give it a chance to come up to room temperature (this also helps to cook the steak more evenly once on the grill).  Since my steaks were only 1-1/2 inches thick I applied the salt and pepper in the morning of the day I planned on cooking them.  

My choice of charcoal for cooking the steaks was the hardwood type charcoal.  I also knew I wanted a hot fire, the hardwood charcoal burns much hotter than the regular charcoal, so I decided to put a pan under my charcoal holders so the grate sat on top of the coals.  I watched Alton Brown on Good Eats cook steak on top of charcoal and it always intrigued me.  I'll admit, I don't think I will ever be able to put meat in direct contact with the charcoal but none the less, I still wanted to try something similar.  After the grill was ready I had one hot fire and it was time to get the steaks.

I made sure I didn't go far while cooking the steaks because I didn't want the steaks to end up as as big chunk of charcoal.  I cooked the steaks 5 minutes on each side, alternating with the lid up and with the lid down.  I only put the lid down whenever I thought the fire was going to flame up but once I was convinced fire wasn't going to engulf the steaks and turn them into blackened shoe leather I left the lid up.  After the steaks had sufficient sear marks on each side I slid them to the "cool" side of the grill and let them finish cooking for another 10 minutes until they were a perfect medium rare.  

Hot off the grill and tempting to pick up by the bone and start eating.  But I can't do that because these steaks need to rest for 15 minutes.  The recipe also calls for a pad of french butter to be added to the steaks while resting.  I'm not sure what "french" butter is or what makes it different but since I had some Lancaster County Pennsylvania Amish butter I used that instead.

Once rested, it was time to slice the steaks and get them ready for their final resting place, my plate.  I got to admit though, after I sliced the meat off the bone I did pick up the bones and chew the remaining meat off.  After chewing on a bone I can see why dogs fight over steak bones.  

The steak was served on a simple salad, leafy greens, red onions, red peppers and sweet grape tomatoes.  This might be the best way to eat a steak.

So simple and yet so delicious.  How did the steak turn out?  It's the best steak I ever made and gets a perfect 5 out of 5 forks.  You would have to search far and wide to find a fancy steak joint that could serve a steak as good on this.

Original Recipe

Grilled Rib Eye Steak with Romaine Marmalade and Watercress