The Gastromaniacs

Pig V is 13 days away.

We’re changing some things. First and foremost, we’re going to hand pull the crap out of all the pork. People get a little too freaked out by the rather large chunks that were served at PIG I and PIG III. So, pulled like mad. We may even share the jowls.

Additionally, there will be somewhere between three and seven BBQ sauces available for our guests. I’m sure 3 will be the traditional “mild / medium / spicy” ketchup-based sauces. We’re also looking at some molasses-based stuff, and we’re thinking there will be something that we’re planning on calling “Tomorrow’s Ass Burn” that will involve something a bit less painful than a bhut jalokia, but probably in sufficient quantity to deserve the name.

Further bulletins as events warrant.

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James and I were just chatting and we realized that we had not yet posted pictures of our hilarious attempt at creating a barbecue turducken.

Turducken are a lot of fun.  Just realize that the ducks are frozen, and the de-boning takes longer than you think, especially when dealing with a partially frozen bird.

Pictures:

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It always amazes me when I watch people try to chop onions.  People either take about 15 minutes to chop an onion, or go so batshit crazy and have bad knife technique that they nearly take their own fingers off.

Lo and behold, here’s a quick primer on how to coarsely chop an onion.  If you follow this technique, you should be able to get your onion coarsely chopped in well under a minute, and do so in a highly repeatable manner.

• Step One: Get an Onion
• Step Two: Cut the top and the bottom off the onion, like so:

• Step Three: Make a vertical slit in the remaining onion peel, as shown below:

• Step Four: Peel the onion:

• Step Five: Cut the onion in half:

•  Step Six: Parallel to the line on which you just cut the onion in half, cut the half of the onion in half again.  For you math majors, this would be 1/2 of 1/2, or 1/4:

• Step Seven: Lay the onion down and make three to four cuts through the entire onion, with the grain:

• Step Eight: Rotate the onion 90 degrees (or a quarter turn, for those not geometrically inclined), and make another 3 to four cuts.  Take care to only cut the onion, and not to cut your fingers at this point:

• Step Nine: Repeat on the other half of the onion:

• Step Ten: JAZZ HANDS!  You’re done coarsely chopping an onion.

There’s not a lot to it, but if you master the above, you can adapt it to pretty much any onion need you may have – be it a fine dice or some largely chopped onions.  As I said above, this procedure is fast, efficient, and eminently repeatable.  I recommend you take some time to learn it, as if you cook with any kind of frequency, you’re going to cut an awful lot of onions before you’re pushing up daisies.

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This is a stock dish – we make this pretty frequently. It’s great as a lunch, as a side with Mexican food, or as an addition to rice. If you’re worried about such things, the black beans actually give pretty good bang per unit mass for protein and fiber, and have the added bonus of making one gassy, perfect for holiday renditions of Jingle Bells on the ass trumpet.

You will need:

• One medium onion, chopped coarsely
• Olive oil
• 3-5 cloves of garlic (to taste)
• 1 can of black beans
• Hot peppers, your choice
• Salt
• Pepper
• Cumin
• Lime juice

1. Fire up your pan of choice on the burner, on medium to medium high heat.
2. Once the pan is hot, lightly coat the pan with enough olive oil to coat the bottom of the pan
3. Add onions and garlic
4. Cook the onions and garlic until the onions are translucent, approximately 6-10 minutes
5. Add in the hot peppers of your choice. Unless the kids are going to be eating this, I generally will use one whole habanero, minced. Stir and let the capsaicin be absorbed for 1-2 minutes by the oil, onions, and garlic
6. Add in your can of black beans and your lime juice, and reduce heat to low to medium low
7. Stir in a good handful of fresh minced cilantro. Personally, I can’t get enough of cilantro, so I rarely if ever use
8. Season to taste with salt, pepper, cumin, cayenne pepper, garlic powder and any other spice that strikes your fancy.

As I said earlier, this dish is great as a side, but can also be mixed in with taco meat, yellow rice, or countless other things to add flavor and texture.

Finished product, as prepared sans spicy peppers (since the kids were eating this batch):

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Here’s some photos from the deboned stuffed chicken outing.  We ended up making this on Sunday, December 16th, predominantly because of the time constraints that comes with having kids and blowing the head gasket on a snowblower.

I’ll document what we did to prepare the deboned stuffed chicken over the next few days.

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