Oh, how I love the falafel.
June 23, 2008
Let me count the ways… All right, there aren’t many ways, but I do love the falafel. The best falafel I ever had was in Austin, Texas. Ah, Austin, home of many vegan delights… Yes, it was silly – but we had driven from Minneapolis to Austin, and after Iowa it gets hard to find much to eat on the road besides meat. I needed a break, and it was so good. The little patties were crispy on the outside but tender, savory and flavorful on the inside.
Falafel made from scratch at home has always eluded me. But I’ve had to keep trying because the place by my house that has falafel on the menu serves up these mini falafel pucks that only serve to make me wish that I was in Texas. Or knew how to make it myself. It seemed that every time I tried the little beasts would explode or suffer from some sort of garbanzo bean plate tectonic syndrome. Soon there would be little fried bean bits floating and bursting into flames in hot oil, victims of the unfair and unstable universe on which they lived. And I didn’t have a clue why.
“It’s street food for crying out loud! It can’t be that freakin’ hard,” I’d cry to Marv who would just roll his eyes over my falafel incompetence. Then, while I was on a plane, I read a description of falafel that said it was a dough made from garbanzo beans and spices that’s fried in oil and served in pita bread with cucumber sauce and lettuce. A dough. Doh! All the recipes I had tried were basically bean patties with nothing holding them together.
Armed to the teeth with this new information – I had another go. And it worked beautifully. Yea! Falafel for me!
Falafel
Tasso.
September 22, 2007
Marv says to me, “I think I’m going to make some tasso next.” I say, “Okay. What’s that?” Cajun ham, very dense and flavorful, kinda like prochuitto but it’s cajun so it’s crusted spices on the outside. Hm. Sounds okay to me.
It’s better than okay. It’s super easy to make, incredibly flavorful and versatile. I’ve been using it as a less fatty bacon, in salads, pasta, on sandwiches in soup. You don’t need very much to add flavor and interest in foods. Marv took 3lbs to work and watched it disappear. (He doesn’t really work with enough people for that to be reasonable.)
Tasso is made from pork shoulder butt. It’s brined for a week or so and then rubbed with a spice mixture that has cayanne and garlic in it and then smoked for a relatively short amount of time – 3 to 5 hours or so. But, I suspect there are as many ways to make this as there are people making it.
Tasso, the Recipe
10+ lbs pork butt roast
Brine
1 3/4 c Tender Quick
1 1/2 c brown sugar
1 T cayenne pepper
1 T black pepper
1 T ancho pepper
2 T onion powder
2 T garlic powder
1 gallon water
Rub
2 T ground mace
2 T garlic powder
2 T onion powder
1 T black pepper
1 T paprika
1 T chipotle powder
1 T dried sage
1 T dried thyme
2 T honey
Bone your pork butt if it’s not already boned. (Crikey, that’s a bad sentence.) Slice butt into large chunks 3″ x 3″ x however long the meat is. Combine all the brine ingredients and mix well. Put pork into a 2 gallon ziploc bag and pour the brine over it. Let it rest in your refrigerator for 5 days to a week.
Remove from refrigerator. Rinse and pat dry. Mix together rub ingredients and rub thoroughly. Hot smoke – 225°f – 250°f until internal temperature is 160°f – 165°f.
It will keep in your refrigerator for 1 – 2 weeks or you can freeze it for much longer.
Tasso Green Bean Salad
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Break out the white sauce, will ya?
March 16, 2007
“Should I make another sauce for dinner?” Marv asks.
“Aside from the two you already have, no.” I answer. He promptly starts to make another sauce, Alabama white sauce to be exact. We were making dinner for a bunch of people. Sorta our normal smoking various meats, mash some potatoes, bake some corn bread, and throw together a veg or two and serve up with some sauces. Myself, I’m a big fan of the tomato based bbq sauce, particularly with some smoked chicken or ribs. But I’m good with other people having other ideas and tastes. However, I did not expect the way that the people at my table scarffed down the Alabama white sauce.
It’s a good tangy, creamy mayonnaise based sauce. But rather than loose an opportunity to munch on my favorite sauces, I choose to look for other uses for the Alabama white. Oddly enough, Marv and I came up with the same idea for a seafood salad sandwich dressed in white sauce at the same time. So, it came to pass.
Seafood Salad Sandwich
1/2 c mayonnaise
1/4 c cider vinegar
juice from half a lemon
1 T honey
1 t salt
1 t pepper
1/2 t cayenne
olive oil
1/2 white onion, thinly sliced
1/2 lb shrimp
1/2 package imitation crab, sliced in 1/2 – 1″ chunks
1 red pepper, thinly sliced
4 rolls
sweet potato chips
Stir together sauce ingredients and place in refrigerator for 1 hour. This sauce can be made ahead and it will keep in your refrigerator for weeks.
Preheat oven to 375°f. When oven is up to temperature stick rolls in to toast.
Heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Add in onions and reduce to heat to medium. Cook until browned. Add in shrimp and cook for a minute or two. Add in imitation crab and red peppers and cook until shrimp is done. Remove from heat and toss with white sauce.
When rolls are toasted, slice tops off and spoon center out of bottom. Fill in with seafood salad, drizzle with more white sauce and serve with sweet potato chips.
Bacon makin’
February 4, 2007
Well it seems the ways in which my house is a tiny little freakshow is becoming known to the outside world. Two articles have been written in the Minneapolis Star Tribune on or referencing Marv’s bacon making ways. The first one is a Q&A dealie about his bacon journey. In the print version there’s even a picture of him in action. The second is about the love of bacon. In it I am referred to as a, “convert to the ways of cured-pork products.” While I’m not sure if that’s true, I sure do like the bacon he makes.
The recipe he was using in the pictures is found here. The big question – what do you do with all that bacon – is pretty simple. First off, people (you know who you are), steal your bacon. We should really tag and alarm the baggies of bacon. By the time I get around to making anything with it, I’m lucky if there’s any left in the freezer. Then there is the begging (from the non-Minnesotans.) And the big-eyed hinting (from the Minnesotans.) For the rest, it generally gets added to pasta dishes, like a pasta carbonara or macaroni & cheese. Recently, my mom reminded me about my brother’s favorite (as far as I know) bacon sandwich, it’s a good one, so I called him up for the recipe. Here it is (only slightly modified.)
Feed me! 
