Weinr Loves Food!

This is a flashback to an earlier episode of Iron Chef America, but not one to miss. I mean seriously, how can you turn down Battle Butter? Cat Cora battles Chef Koren Grieveson from Avec in Chicago. This chef has been in the military, then went to the Culinary Institue of America, and then became a chef for various “rock bands” that Alton explains in the intro.

With Mediterranean influences, it’s no wonder that Grieveson chooses to battle Cora, although I think she’ll get her butt handed to her. Especially with butter. It looks like there’s a bunch of different types of butter presented: an Irish butter, French Butter, English butter, Goat’s milk butter and good old fashioned American Butter. Alton explains that there are differences in the fat content mostly.

Grieveson’s dishes are:

Popcorn encrusted sea scallop – popcorn goes great with butter – talk about a no-brainer

• Pullet Egg with Brioche – Basically a Toad in the Hole with Hollandaise, bacon, potato, some cheese and peppers. In general, the judges seem to be liking her style
• Pan Roasted Sea Bass with Beurre Monte – Peas, Morel mushrooms, butter and some acidity. Oh, okay, the judges like it but they don’t think it’s all about the butter. Too bad…
• Veal Milanese – brown butter, squash, fennel, basil and a few other things I missed Judges seem to like it – they enjoy the crust on the Veal
• Butter Dessert Tray – Salted caramel ice cream with goat’s milk butter in a pound cake with a brown butter vinaigrette. Judges love it.

Overall, the judges seemed to say favorable things about Chef Grieveson. Hopefully Cora will be able to overcome that.

Cora’s dishes are:

• Bread an Butter – Goat butter, Parsley Butter with a warm baguette. Judges are saying that she may be a cheater just because the dish is so simple. I agree, it’s kind of a cop-out.
• Butternut Squash Tarte Tatin – Buttermilk dressing with a petit herb salad. The judges agree that it highlights the ingredients
• Gnocchi with Brown Butter – buttered truffle with sage brown butter. Well, it’s got truffles in it ;-p
• Butter Poached Scallops – with Apple on top and a celery puree underneath.
• Asian Buttered Pork Tenderloin – marinated in butter and lemongrass cooked sous vide. this is also served with a coconut curry brown butter sauce with Mango celery daikon radish.
• Butter Dessert Tray – a crisp caramelized cake, brown butter rice crispy, brown butter ice milk, sea-salt caramel and raspberry butter sauce.

So yeah, Cora didn’t seem to have as favorable comments from the judges that Grieveson did. Now, I’m worried.

And the winner is…

Yes, I would have totally participated in that. Whenever Food Network is looking for Judges for the show, they can feel free to contact me.

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

For those of you who know me (uh, okay, it’s very few of you, but I’d like to pretend that I have a reader or two) you’ll know that I’m a big geek. So, with that in mind, in my spare time I’ve been working on getting some things together for a few of my sites – mostly programming, but also some organizational items.

So, to spare you the dry boring details, what’s come out of this is the Weinr Food News Aggregator – I basically aggregate news from various Foodie news sources, and pass the stories onto you guys. Now, you can get the latest food-blogosphere news in one location without having to sign up for useless accounts at places you’ll only ever log into once.

Over time the plan is to hone and refine this news feed, the aggregator and the site even more. Have comments? Suggestions? Other news sources you’d like to see? Suggest them in the comments!

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

I enjoy Alton Brown – So, in anticipation for Good Eats: The First Ten Years coming up this weekend, I thought I’d dig through my extensive Good Eats collection. And where better to start then at the beginning? (This is a random sidenote – but in this episode – there’s a portion that’s titled “Raising the steaks”, which is actually the name of another Good Eats episode.) голова болит секс

женские порно фото фото порно зрел

download Species III

Tonight, I broke out Season 1, Episode 1 – Steak Your Claim. If you can’t guess by title alone, it’s all about Red Meat. Alton Brown has this amazing talent for packing obscene amounts of information in a very short amount of time. I’m about 3/4 of the way through the episode, and there a plethora of things that anyone would pick up about cooking by just this one episode – here’s an incomplete list in no particular order:

• The difference in the cuts of meat – Fat in the front half of a steer is fattier than the back half, and therefore generally considered more tender.
• Alton makes a mean Artist – his square chalkboard cow rocks
• Chuck is up front (the fattiest) – the best steaks are from the middle of the animal or the back – Other steaks include the ribs, short loin and sirloin
• The closer you get to the head or feet, the tougher the meat is, generally. The tougher the meat, the more flavor it has.
• There are 300 cuts of beef, and only 14 of those are steaks
• When buying steak, look for bright color, moisture is an indication of freshness, uniform color, even cut and odorless meat.
• Primal cuts are commercial cuts which smaller cuts are produced
• Porterhouse steak is a strip steak and a filet before being cut in half – they all come from the short loin
• Rib primals produce ribeye steaks
• USDA inspections for beef is mandatory, but grading is voluntary
• Your refrigerator should never be more than 40 degrees Fahrenheit for food safety – that’s 4.4 degrees Celcius
• Pans have one straight handle, pots have two looped handles.
• You need to be able to get the pan really hot, and be able to be stuck in the oven. A cast iron skillet is the best pan to handle a steak.
• Cast iron skillets need to be cured or seasoned – do this by washing it with light soapy water. Then coating with oil or lard, throwing it in a 350 degree oven for about an hour.
• When ready to cook, throw your skillet into a 500 degree oven to pre-heat it.
• A bunch of information about salt – Alton explains sea salt, rock salt, iodized salt and Kosher salt. Kosher salt is a pantry essential.
• ever after the pre-heat, put the pan under high heat on the stove for at least 5 minutes.
• Use a little (canola) oil along with salt and pepper.
• The smoke point of oil is when an oil starts smoking. As hot as the skillet is, you need to use a higher quality oil to stay under the smoke point.
• Random Smoke Points, in degrees Fahrenheit: butter: 350, olive oil: 375, corn oil: 410, canola: 435 peanut: 450, safflower: 450 – the higher end oils are perfect for searing and sauteing.
• when searing in a skillet, don’t tough the meat for at least 30 seconds – this is essential to producing a crust on the steak. And yes, you want a crust. Flip after 30 seconds, and leave for another 30 seconds. After that, throw it in the oven that’s still at 500 degrees, but don’t turn the broiler on! Leave in the oven for 2 minutes per side. This way, you should end up with a medium rare steak.
• How to measure the temperature of meat, along with the types of thermometers are best to use for measuring said temps
• Rare is between 120-130 degrees
• Medium Rare is between 130-145 degrees
• Medium is 145-155 degrees
• Toast is 155 and up
• Rest the meat after pulling it out of the oven. This way, the meat’s juices are redistributed. Lightly cover, leave it alone for three minutes!
• “Steak” comes from “Steik”, saxon for meat on a stick. that sounds manly.

голова болит секс

• голова болит секс

Alton ends the episode saying that you may not get your steak right the first time – (I know I didn’t,) but just pay attention to what you’re doing and you start learning about the food. And I agree with him. When I started getting into food – and I really mean caring about eating and cooking delicious food – this was probably the one piece of advice that helped me more than anything else. I always try to figure out how I can make my meal better next time, even if this one was seriously… Good Eats.

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Now, this is some good chicken! Okay, even with the unnaturally colored barbece sauce, it was still pretty good. скачать порно через торрент супер порно

• бесплатно оргазм порно

• извращенцы порно

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

This posting is a few days overdue – I’ve now been to TJ’s River BBQ in Howell twice, and it’s past time that I gave it my review:

TJ’s River BBQ is located right on Grand River Avenue, across the street from Meijer just west of Latson road. It’s a small place, and used to be a different style of restaurant, although I’m having a tough time remembering what it was named (I think it was “The Prairie House”) and had never been there before. And by small, I mean it looks like an 800 square foot home. TJ’s is a quaint little place – perfect for a barbecue joint – but don’t miss it, it’s nestled between White Castle and Bob Evans – along with a bunch of other chains around – the closest thing that’s *not* a chain is Los Tres Amigos (A great Mexican place, by the way…). Yes, the country home and the dirt driveway – that’s it. It sure looks like a barbecue place – Not so great for fanfare, but I needed to check it out anyway because I have a huge craving for Barbecue – at all times – I can always eat it. That, and the ribs you get at local chain food places are expensive, generally either fatty or small in size, not actually smoked, expensive and never really that good.

Okay, so I’m a barbecue snob is what I’m trying to say I am way better at making ribs and smoked chicken than any restaurant I’ve been to in Howell, let alone any part of Michigan. And, I can’t even find smoked chicken anywhere around here. And, I’m not even particularly talented голы тёлки at making barbecue!

If you’re living in Michigan with me, we can commiserate on the topics of Michigan’s poor economy and lack of barbecue… but I digress…. back to the review:

Walking into TJ’s, it’s almost like a hole in the wall, except that the interior is relatively decent (for a barbecue joint.) Of course, it’s got the obligatory wavy galvanized steel look on the interior, and that’s all part of the atmosphere they’re trying to create. Additionally in the atmosphere department, The first time my wife and I went there, it was completely empty and we were presented with menus printed on pink paper – my thought was that I didn’t know how long the place would last. Fortunately, this weekend we walked in to a restaurant filled to more than half-capacity, and new much more professional looking menus about four solid pages in length. The menu itself is a bit cheesy, but class isn’t exactly what you expect with a barbecue joint. Even still, the lowbrow cheesiness in the menu either berates the intelligence level of barbecue-goers, or is tries to play along with the rest of the atmosphere. Okay, I’m looking into it too much, but with intentional misspellings all over it and items like “Not So Famous Dave’s Green Beans” written in a font that looks like a 3 year old went to town with a box of Crayolas, it’s really quite cheesy. That’s about all there is to say about it. And the pig on the front of the menu? It looks suspiciously like another restaurant down the road in Novi… Compare for yourself:

I knew I had seen that pig somewhere. Anyway, I’m getting off-topic again!

The first time, I was going to go for a Meat trifecta of Pulled pork, Brisket and Smoked chicken, but they were out of smoked chicken so I missed out on that. Instead, I went with the potent pulled pork and brisket duo, along with a side of cole slaw and beans. The wife had ribs and pulled pork with the same sides. Delivery of the food was quick, but the food itself was not *hot* – just barely warm. It quickly went cold through the meal, which was the most disappointing part of it. Even still, the green beans were properly al-dente and the cole slaw had a great flavor to it. I don’t know how you eat cornbread muffins, but I eat mine hot. Unfortunately, my cornbread was served cold as a corpse – not even enough heat in it to melt the butter that came with it. The brisket was good – it had a nice flavor to it, and the texture was decent. The pulled pork was the best part of the meal, and even tasted very good after cooling to room temperature during my meal. I even stole a little bit of one of my Wife’s ribs, which had a decent flavor, but was definitely not the best rib I had ever had.

None of the meal was drown out with sauces – TJ’s places sauces right where they should be – in a squeeze bottle as a condiment on the table. TJ’s serves their sauce up three ways – their regular has a great set of spices in it and a little bit of sweetness which adds a great flavor to whatever you slather it on (I put it on my cornbread of all things – my wife thought that was weird, but it was the only way to eat it.) Their mustard sauce has a crazy color for barbecue sauce, but a good mustard flavor to it – also a very good sauce. Their hot sauce was also nice – it was spicy, but not too spicy, but certainly had the least taste to it. I found the best sauce was a 50-50 mix of the regular and hot – that offered a nice kick, while still providing the refined taste that their regular sauce had. All in all, a great mix of options for pretty much anyone’s palette.

The verdict on my first visit: Okay, but I probably wouldn’t be a regular there.

Fast forward two months. Last weekend, after a long day of yard work, my wife and I found ourselves late in the evening with no groceries in the cupboard. Not wanting to visit any of our normal places, or any of the chains, we decided that TJ’s would be a quick and adequate place to eat. Besides, I think we were both hoping that we’d have a better dining experience. We did.

Our second visit was more pleasant – the food was served at a reasonable temperature for barbecue, and the meats we had were exceptionally delicious. Being pleased with the sides I ate the first time around, I again ordered green beans and cole slaw. This time, the beans were cooked with minced garlic – a nice, yet potent surprise I love garlic, and had no problem with them, but I imagine some people wouldn’t like them (who doesn’t like garlic?!) The only downside to the meal was an overcooked yet cold corn muffin. Next time perhaps I will remember and ask for it to be microwaved or something?

Okay, this is a long review, and I’m being really hard on TJ’s – I realize that, and you should too. My wife and I both enjoyed the food that we ordered – the wait staff was friendly, offered helpful suggestions to those around us who didn’t know what brisket or fried pickles were, and served us promptly. The food is good – not the greatest barbecue I’ve ever had (but I enjoy barbecuing and smoking my own meat, and that’s hard to beat) but certainly a nice refreshing change of pace and a good place to eat.

I was actually blown away – both times we were at TJ’s, the owner and/or head chef walked around the restaurant asking people how their meals were. When he came to our table, I had a mouthful of pulled pork and didn’t get a chance to compliment him on his food. You know when the guy making the food is asking people how it is that he actually cares about his craft. Barbecue is a craft – one that is hard to master. Anyone concerned about what other people think of his work are great in my book.

I will eat at TJ’s, anytime I’m in the mood for pulled pork or smoked chicken and don’t feel like getting my smoker out.

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites