Pressure Cooker experiments

I am at the time of this writing having some fun with a vintage pressure cooker that my friend Jim Dreier found for me at a rummage sale. He and his wife Cindy are the consummate "rummage salers". They make it a part of their weekend event schedule and if I am looking for something I ask Jim if he could find it for me and he usually does. He found me a KitchenAid stand mixer and this pressure cooker. He's amazing. We have been friends since my 5th grade year in school and we hunt deer together and hang out at his grandparents' homestead in Toimi, MN, a place I call "Paradise in the North Woods". I digress. The cooker he found me was a Mirro-Matic Pressure Cooker and it is quite large. I tested it for pressure at 5 lbs, 10 lbs, and 15 lbs and it functioned perfectly. He paid $2.00 for it and it is excellent!
My first recipe is an adaptation of an Emeril LaGasse recipe for white beans; a Mexican quick meal consisting of Chorizo, white beans, Ancho chilies, Lime juice, Tequila, salt and pepper. I substituted Hot Italian Sausage and made it into meatballs about 1 1/2" in diameter. I had the rest of the ingredients and started at 10lbs for 45 minutes and then tested for doneness and taste. It was good but the beans were a little too hard so I put re-set the cooker at 15 lbs and cooked for another 15 minutes and that was the right amount of time.
The meatballs are very tender and the beans are just nicely cooked. Very tasty as well, I might add. I think this is going to be a fun way to cook. I am going to order a cookbook from my cookbook club featuring pressure cooker recipes and start to experiment. I will report my findings along the way and give you the recipes to try as well.
Cooking under pressure,
Tim

Smoked Tomato, pepper and onion ragu

Tonight it is good to get back to the smoker to try a little different take on my smoked pepper and onion ragu to add some tomatoes to the party and see how it comes out. I fired up the smoker with some basic hardwood fire and then added some wet apple wood to the fire for an hour and a half for a "cold smoke" treatment on the vegetables. After removing them from the smoke, I put them in a food processor and ground them to about 1/8" pcs. Wonderful smell, good flavor and success at the smoker for tonight. I think I will try to sell this stuff to a local restaurant for a condiment to their Bison Burgers; we'll see.
I recently met a new friend named Scott at our place on Lake Kabetogama while we were there for a weekend. He is from Stillwater, MN and I offered him some of my Smoked Salt for the Porterhouse Steaks he was cooking for he and his friend. I didn't think anything of it initially, but he called me a few days later and really enjoyed the salt on his steaks as a finishing salt. He said he would like to use it on his ribs as a shortcut to soaking the ribs in Liquid Smoke for while. I ended up sending him a jar of my Smoked Salt as a complimentary gift to him for his interest. He had some helpful tips for possibly marketing my salt and whatever else I come up with to you folks who might be interested. I am offering the Smoked Salt at $4.95/2oz. jar plus shipping and handling. If there is an interest, contact me at tmettner@gmail .com. and I will ship it to you for your culinary enjoyment.

Antipasti at the lake

This past weekend Teresa and I spent at our place on Lake Kabetogama in Northern Minnesota. We normally would have an easy Friday night dinner of Coneys and Potato Salad but based on the groom's dinner our dinner group did for our friends Casey and Mark's son Jon we decided to do an easier Salumi platter instead. I stopped at the Italian Village store on Central Ave. in Duluth for the Italian Sopresata and Prosciutto. It is a wonderful little shop specializing in all things Italian and serving lunches and various other goodies. I also bought some Ca De Medici Lambrusco for the beverage and some good cheeses and Calamata Olives as well as some Bleu Cheese Stuffed Olives. Then it was a trip to the Northern Waters Smoke Haus for some Smoked Whitefish and that topped off the platter. It was excellent and I think we'll make that a tradition for our first night there at the lake! We polished off the bottle of Lambrusco and it was a very pleasant evening indeed.
Tim

new Restaurant find

Teresa and I re-visited our new find, G.B. Schneider & Co. at 46th ave. west in Duluth, MN. I had their pot roast and it was absolutely amazing! the gravy was perfect. The beef was perfectly cooked and Capitol "T" tender and the vegetables the same. Gary Schneider is an amazing chef!
I asked him if I could tour the kitchen and I told him that I designed residential kitchens but I am so intrigued by commercial kitchens that I need to see how his works. He told me that would be fine so I hope to see it soon. Back to the food; Teresa had their Chicken Pot Pie and it was excellent as well! Instead of a traditional savory crust on the top there was a flaky crust with some sweet potato in it and it was marvelous! A bit unconventional, but I thought it was amazing! Serious comfort food as their sign says. I highly recommend this new spot if you can get there. Try the Lake Superior Kayak Kolsch on tap while you're there, it's excellent!
Eat on!
Tim

Groom's Dinner

It has been a "screaming busy" Summer so far and I have been woefully lacking in the new post department so I apologize for the lack of attention to this blog.
This past Friday night our gourmet dinner group did a Groom's Dinner for the wedding of one of our owns Son. Casey and Mark LaCore's son Jon was married to Kelly Norri on Saturday, July 2nd and we did the dinner after the practice. It began about a week ago with a brainstorming session at Bruce and Lisa Reeves' house where we talked about the menu. She said it would be simple thing, just some easy stuff to snack on, nothing fancy: Ha! It was a 5 course Italian dinner! She just can't help herself! After all, she had just come back from a trip to Italy to take part in a Culinary School.
Anyway, as a result we decided to do the same format for the dinner using some of her recipes from the school and a few other items based on requests from the wedding couple and some things we shouldn't serve. We settled on an Antipasti course of Caprese Salad and Prosecco.
Next was the Primi course of Pasta, a sort of lasagna made with Eggplant, Zuchini, Marinara sauce, cheeses, etc., served with a nice Placido 2008 Chianti. The next course was the meat, which consisted of a Chicken Salad with Roasted Red Peppers, Olives, Red Onion, Crushed Red Pepper and Gorgonzola cheese served in a toast cup along with A Walleye dish braised in milk and olive oil and stuffed with sweated onions, garlec, parsley and anchovies also served with the Chianti. Both of these were most excellent! I will be adding these to my go-to repertoire. The next course was the Formaggi, or cheese course. We did a variety of hard Italian cheeses along with a couple of requested other types.
We also did a roasted vegetable course and I apologize for not remembering the Italian names for all of these but I don't have the menu in front of me and I am afraid I will butcher the spelling of those names. The vegetables were Red Onions, Zuchini, Asparagus, etc.. The final course of Dessert, or Dolce was four kinds of Fresh Berry Cobbler prepared by Anita Barr and served with some good Colombian Coffee. Then, of course there must be the Digestivo of Limoncello to cap the evening. We started serving at about 7:00 pm and I think we finished around 10:00 or 10:30. It was an absolute blast to do and It was actually our second Groom's Dinner for this family; the LaCores' son Brian was married a few years ago and we served that one on the shore of Schultz Lake at the home of Lisa's parents, the Jeronimuses.
During the course of our cooking and prepping we continued to kick around the idea of doing a once monthly dinner like a Chef's Table sort of theme and invite our friends and acquaintances to make a donation to offset the food and wine costs and we would like to bless them with great food and we will enjoy the process of cooking it and sharing it with them as well as develop some great relationships along the way. I would like to hear from any of you that read these food wanderings and let me know what you think and if you would be interested in participating with us.
Good eating,
Tim