Archive for Cooking/Food

Second Annual Fishing Trip

Going fishing with my coworkers has turned into an annual event.  A number of coworkers, friends and I went out fishing on the Chesapeake Bay.  Going out on Captain Ireland’s Patience we left the dock at 6am for almost 8 hours of beer and fish.  Last year we immediately caught our limit of rockfish and headed back.  This year the rockfish were much harder to find and so we caught a large number of bluefish as well.  31 in fact!  Add that to 17 rockfish (our limit + one for the boat) and a spanish mackerel and we had an amazing haul.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My wonderful wife cooked them all up tonight and it was delicious.  The rockfish we stuffed with salt, scallions, chopped up ginger, oil and baked at 350 until done.  We then dip each chunk in a very small amount of soy sauce.  We slightly overcooked it but it was still absolutely delicious.  The bluefish filets we dipped in flour, salt, old Bay, and ginger powder and then pan fried them for 2 mins on each side.  Bluefish is normally a very strong tasting fish, but the pan frying virtually eliminated the fishiness.  It had a nice thin crust and was also really good.

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Turtles and Snails

A coworker of mine sent me an email with a delicious idea. Meat turtles!  I threw together the simple ingredients and decided to surprise my wife with a prepared dinner she could just throw into the oven the next day.  Ground Beef, Bacon, Cheese, and hotdogs.  The basic staples of life.  Make a large beef paddy, throw some cheese on it, and then wrap it in a bacon weave.  Add hotdogs for legs/head/tail.  If you slice the end of the “leg” dogs with three cuts you’ll get nice looking toes for the feet.  I cut the dogs in half before inserting them but there’s no reason you couldn’t use whole ones depending on how big you want your turtles.  Loosely cover with foil and bake 20-30 mins at 400.  Eat!

ingrediants

Afterwards I had some leftover meat and didn’t really want to make another turtle so I decided to get creative and made a snail.  While certainly harder to cook I think it came out nicely.  It’s held on by two toothpicks.  Overall pretty delicious.  Would probably take a lot better if I had a grill 🙁  The last pic is the best where my wife suggested adding antennae!  She’s so smart.

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Super bowl prep

Tomorrow is the day most American men wait season long for.  The Super bowl.  Some for the game, some for the commercials, most for the Super Bowl party.  I decided to have my own small little gather this year and started the prep work for it today.  My menu:

  • Bacon Explosion burgers
  • Beer Brats/Sausages
  • Manwich Cups
  • Trail Bologna with Baby Swiss cheese
  • Spinach/Cream Cheese pinwheels
  • Green Salad with Balsamic Vinegar/Oil dressing

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Venison Stuffed Peppers

So I decided to get a little creative today with my dinner and created a new recipe. My recipes always tend to be pretty simple because A) I’m lazy, B) I’m not that creative, and C) I’m lazy. I’ve only invented one other recipe which I’ll post up next time I make it (venison curry/chili). Since this turned out well I wanted to write it somewhere so I can make it again and I figured I’d share it for any other single guys that are lazy but want to make something that tastes AND looks good.

The only difficult to find ingredient that I used is a Korean BBQ sauce. The name is in Korean and I don’t speak Korean. I put the picture on the right so you can print it out and hunt for it at your local Asian super market.

Ingredient List:

* 1 lb ground venison (I’m sure beef works too)
* 1 onion, chopped
* 3 Bell Peppers. I prefer yellow and orange peppers but green would work if you like them.
* Korean BBQ Sauce
* 6 slices of American cheese.
* Some sesame oil

Put some sesame oil into the pan on high. Then throw the meat and onions into the pan along with the BBQ sauce. You just need enough to get the sauce on all the meat. Don’t drown them. Stir occasionally until the meat is browned. With venison you want to get rid of any pink at all. While this is cooking, cut the peppers in halves and clean out the seeds and scrape out any white areas on the inside (throw those away). Once the meat is done, let it cool a little (so you don’t burn yourself stuffing) and set your oven to warm to 400 degrees. Line a pan with some tinfoil. Put the pepper halves on the foil and stuff them full of the cooked meat and onions. Try to avoid getting any of the oil/grease. The venison is juicy enough without it. You just want the meat/onions. Once the peppers are stuffed, cover each with a slice of cheese and throw it in the oven. Change the oven from bake to broil, and let it broil for 8 mins, which should be just enough to melt the cheese, and just barely start browning the peppers/cheese. If you see browning, take it out, it’s done. Let it cool a little, and eat 🙂

Makes 6 peppers halves. I ate all 4 that I made but a normal person would only eat one if you cooked some sides. I tend to only cook a main dish and nothing else 😛 The picture is a bad angle so you can’t see the different color peppers on the plate. Look at the ones in the background on the stove top.

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Yuraku Just Keeps Amazing Me

So I’m a pretty big sushi guy. My first sushi was in Japan on a student exchange and I was hooked on it. There’s a lot of crappy sushi places in the US. My favorite for a long time was Miyagi’s in Mclean, VA. Then I was introduced to a secret of Germantown, MD that I hadn’t known. I’m blessed to live 5 mins away from my new favorite. Yuraku. I should talk to them about working out a deal for free sushi if I redo their website.

Yuraku has huge pieces of fish for the “average” sushi price. And they always are throwing in some new surprising appetizer for free to try every few visits. Well, yesterday I took my fiance with me since she had not been there before. She orders two rolls, and I tell the waitress I’ll take any two Yuraku special rolls. “Which two?” she asks. “Any. Just let the chef choose what to bring out.” I like to be surprised and they usually make good choices that I wouldn’t have tried otherwise. Apparently she thought this meant I wanted the Chef Special. I found out later that the Chef Special is only for two (or more) people and is $100. But since I go all the time, they gave it to me for 1 person ($50) but still made many of the dishes as if it was for two. I was then treated to an ELEVEN COURSE sushi meal (If you could the miso soup as a course). Absolutely delicious. Even the weird stuff like monk fish liver. They just kept bringing more plates out as soon as I finished the last one. My fiance was trying each one as they came out (even the stuffed jalapeno peppers, poor girl) and ended up not even eating half of her own rolls. The table next to us was having a party and got a HUGE boat that looked amazing. But they kept looking over at my table and taking pictures of my food as it came out! Was very entertaining. I was absolutely stuffed when I left. I haven’t eaten that much at one sitting in a long time. Anyway, if you want sushi and you’re near Germantown, you know now where I recommend.

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