Friday, January 2, 2015

Art to Art - Lamb Sausage and Pasta with a Creamy Feta, Onion, and Sweet Pepper Sauce

Happy First Morning of the New Year!  I've already been to court in Orlando and back, stopped at Starbucks for the first time in at least a year, and took a mini-tour of my Kissimmee before returning to my home and crockpot.

I had previously promised myself I was going to snap a picture of the Andy Warhol sculpture in downtown Kissimmee before it disappeared.  So I stopped on my drive home down Broadway and shot Andy.


That started me on a photographic tour of a few more sculptures, and that led me to the lakefront.  Just a half hour, but very enjoyable.  I love Kissimmee, especially the part that tourists rarely see. I am utterly crazy about the artwork all around town, temporary and permanent.  Let me share a few of today's favorites.

Birds by Broadway Pizza

Camo Sumo Wrestler in front of City Hall

Water Fowl are Fair, or Bird's the Word in Kissimmee

"Come on along and listen to
The Lullaby of Broadway
The hip hooray and bally hoo
The Lullaby of Broadway"

The wonderful Jerry Orbach



You may be wondering the fate of the oxtails.  Or perhaps you ran screaming from the room when you saw the photo; if so, I'm guessing you are not the sort of person who orders a tongue sandwich when you go to Toojay's.  Truthfully, the oxtails are less weird than the tongue - they are just beef, folks, from a more cartilaginous part of the cow.  They braise well and make excellent stew.  Nice meaty oxtails are not easy to find, so when I do find them, and they are not priced through the roof, I snag 'em and bag 'em.  Since my fridge is currently full of cooked food, that means a nice rest in the freezer, just until the next big cooking cycle.  Recipe and photos to follow, ha ha.


Which will not stop me from cooking some lamb sausage I froze months ago.  For one thing, they are reaching the end of their effective freezing cycle and I don't like to pay for food that is just going to languish until it gets freezer-burnt.  And as it happens, I still have a nice amount of delicious tzatziki, which will pair beautifully with the sausage.


Another use of spices and spice blends is to layer the flavors of a dish by seasoning your aromatics - onions, garlic, celery, pepper, carrots - during the initial sauté.  For this dish, I am using Emeril's Essence, kosher salt, black pepper and some granulated garlic to season the onions.  Sort of like having Emeril Lagasse and Paula Deen sitting down to dinner together in your kitchen.

Lamb Sausage and Pasta with a Creamy Feta, Onion, and Sweet Pepper Sauce

1 tablespoon each olive oil and butter
1/2 large sweet onion, halved and sliced
Emeril's Essence, kosher salt, black pepper and granulated garlic, to taste
1 cup sliced sweet bell peppers, any color or combination
3/4 - 1 pound frozen lamb sausage (about 5 sausages)
1/4 cup dry white wine
dried oregano, to taste
1 - 16 oz. jar Ragu Roasted Garlic Parmesan cheese sauce
1 cup tri-color rotini pasta
1 plum tomato, seeded and chopped
2 green onions, white and all green, sliced
1 - 6 oz. package crumbled feta cheese

Put the first five ingredients into a 3 or 4 quart crockpot in the order given.  Pour the wine over the top.  Cover and cook on low.  After two hours, carefully remove the sausages and stir the vegetables.  Add the oregano, stir again.  Return the sausage to the crockpot, rearranging them top to bottom.  Do not mix them in with the vegetables.  Cover and continue to cook on low.  After another hour, remove the sausages to a dish with some of the cooking liquid.  Turn the crockpot up to high and let the onions and peppers cook for another hour. Stir in the Ragu cheese sauce, cook until fully heated.  Add in the rotini, cover, and cook 15 minutes.  Stir in the tomato, green onion, and one cup of the feta cheese.  Cover and cook another 15 minutes or until the pasta is al dente.

To serve:  remove the rotini to a serving dish, with all of its sauce.  If you wish, top with the remaining feta cheese.  Slice the lamb sauce on the diagonal, and place it next to the pasta.  Serve with a side of tzatziki, and warm naan or garlic bread.


If you would like the recipe for the Tzatziki Sauce, click on the Index to Recipes in the upper right hand corner of this page.

Thursday, January 1, 2015

Spice Girls Do It With Rubs

I'm a Spice Girl.  Heh heh heh.  No, I'm not, not even close.  In fact, I am as far from spicy as is humanly possible.  I am in a huge, honking rut.  All my edges are blunted.  My head is in a fog, my brain is on the disconnect setting.  I have fallen into a sinkhole and I can't get up.  I cannot get a damn thing accomplished.  I want to go home and curl up on the couch and fall asleep so I don't have to think about my inability to think.  I bloody HATE when this happens.  My back hurts, this is the freaking fibromyalgia, I just know it is.  I want my doggies.  Damn, this sucks.

And did I mention the hot flashes?  Unrelenting!

I have passed cranky and moved on to crabby.  If this keeps up, by tomorrow I'll be grouchy.  Lord help us all if I get to cantankerous! I am angry with myself and frustrated with Microsoft Outlook and I hate my office cell phone.

The good news is that I was able to eat today.  It's been a long time.

Let's speak briefly about spices.  According to Wikipedia:

spice is a dried seed, fruit, root, bark, or vegetable substance primarily used for flavoring, coloring or preserving food. Sometimes a spice is used to hide other flavors.
Spices are distinguished from herbs, which are parts of leafy green plants used for flavoring or as a garnish.
Now you know everything you need to know.  Not really, not even close, but you probably already know a lot more about spices and their uses than you think you do, such as how important it is to check them periodically for freshness, to store them away from heat, and how effective they are at enhancing the flavor of almost any food, especially if you can give them time to season the food.  This is especially true of spice blends or spice rubs, which are used like a dry marinade.  Although they are called "spice" blends or rubs, they almost always contain herbs.  A good example is Emeril's Essence.  You can buy it commercially or you can make it yourself.  The recipe is all over the Internet.  I buy it commercially at BJ's Warehouse, as I also buy McCormick's Montreal Steak Seasoning and Montreal Chicken Seasoning, lemon pepper, garlic salt, seasoned salt, stuff that comes in big shaker jars.  Other rubs and blends I buy in smaller jars, and those I pick up at Publix, including Italian seasoning, herbes d' provence, five spice powder, curry powder, and Goya Sazon.


This is my "old" spice cabinet.  When we moved to the house in Kissimmee, I planned ahead and allotted much more space for spice.


The spice must flow ...

An advantage of keeping a well-stocked spice cabinet is that I can create my own spice blends as needed.  If I find something I really like, such as Bobby Flay's16-spice rub for smoked chicken, or the Jamaican Jolt,  Basic Barbecue Rub, or any number of blends I snag from Steven Raichlan, I make extra to keep in a shaker jar.  

And that is how I came to season these rather gorgeous oxtails with the spice blend I use on lamb.  Plus some more garlic, because we like garlic and garlic likes beef.  And lamb.  And chicken.


The oxtails on the right have been well-seasoned with the dry rub, and I lightly rubbed in the spices.  Afterwards, I wrapped the seasoned oxtails up very well with both plastic wrap and foil, slid them into freezer bags, and popped them into the freezer.

Lamb Chop Dry Rub:
1/4 cup paprika
1/4 cup garlic powder
2 tablespoons kosher salt
2 tablespoons black pepper
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 tablespoon celery seed
1/4 cup dark brown sugar
2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 teaspoons dried thyme
1 1/2 teaspoons cumin
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon cardamom
1 teaspoon dried Valencia orange peel
1 teaspoon dried California lemon peel
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Combine in a shaker jar with a screw top cover, and shake well before each use.  I use this on all different cuts of lamb, especially lamb shanks.  

Another good basic seasoning to keep near the stove is Paula Deen's House Seasoning.  

1 cup salt 
1/4 cup black pepper
1/4 cup garlic powder

I use kosher salt for this, and granulated garlic.  Sometimes I add paprika, which reminds me of the spice blend my mother-in-law always had made up in her kitchen, long before anyone heard of Food Network.  Other times I add some onion powder and white pepper along with the paprika.

My grandmother used to combine the same spices with some corn oil to make a paste, which she then rubbed all over a chicken that was going to be baked or more likely broiled.  Another trick she taught me was to combine the spices with some ketchup (yes, Heinz ketchup) to make a paste for a roast beef.  

Happy New Year, everyone.  

Wednesday, December 31, 2014

TRAVELBLOG POST #10 - KEEP CALM AND CRUISE ON

KEEP CALM AND CRUISE ON


Today is Saturday, December 13, 2014, a sea day here onboard the Carnival Sunshine, née Carnival Destiny, and we are relaxing on the Ocean Plaza, reading, writing and drinking coffee.  I've got some sock knitting at the ready as well.  Everything is copacetic unless we look out the window, so we have pointedly moved ourselves as far from those starboard windows as possible.

It is also the last day of our cruise, but I am definitely not giving that any thought.  I am going to enjoy every last minute of what has been a truly wonderful, relaxing vacation and I am not going to start worrying about anything coming up at home or in the office.  I've got all day tomorrow to transition my brain.  Today the most serious thing I am going to think about is which pair of socks to knit.

Things we did not do on this cruise:

I did not go to the spa for a massage.  I was afraid that instead of relaxing my muscles, it would wake up my fibromyalgia, which has been quiescent of late, although a few recent twinges have concerned me.  Pain is distracting; no need to tempt fate.  I've got life to live, latkes to fry.

I did not drink even one Cosmopolitan.  My tolerance for alcohol has dropped to practically nothing, and a Cosmo is all alcohol.  It's hard enough to walk on this ship as is.

We did not attend any of the art auctions.  We still haven't hung up all of the art we collected on other trips.

We did not listen to any karaoke.  God is good.


So here we are at Bonsai for lunch - Japanese rap music and those are indeed two ladies wearing bathrobes to eat sushi.  I ordered the Wagyu Kakuni appetizer for my lunch and I positively swooned.  Those were among the two best bites of food I have had in my life, ever.  Who knew it came with a small salad?  An awesome salad  with Korean flavors of sesame and soy. The ultra-tender Wagyu (American Kobe beef), having been slow-braised, and redolent of sweet Korean teriyaki, could convert any vegetarian to a carnivore.



As this special day winds down, it's been all about the food.  For breakfast we went to the omelet bar instead of the regular buffet.  Then the lunch at Bonsai.  After lunch we do some more shopping.  We watch TV, Rob reads, I peruse recipes in my new cookbook, I knit a little, I sip some wine.  We go to another tea party at 3:00, where the pastries are superb.  I keep reviewing recipes in the cookbook.  So many recipes I want to try - this cookbook is a treasure trove.  Leaving the tea party, we stop to check the menu for tonight's dinner.  We discuss whether the frog's legs appetizer will be prepared as badly as last night's oysters.  I remind Rob that they did a fine job on the escargot.  We go upstairs to check the menus at Ji Ji Kitchen and El Capitano.  Finally the decision is made, it's the main dining room.  Besides, they have the Grand Marnier soufflé for dessert.


Amazing what you can accomplish when you are in the middle of the ocean and happily cut off from the internet and wifi.  And tomorrow will be time enough to start moving back into the real world of ISIS, the protests over police brutality, the school shootings, the Bill Cosby scandal, and the closing argument I have to make on Monday afternoon.


Tomorrow morning, we will self-disembark at 7:30, a privilege afforded to platinum level cruisers.  It has been the best cruise, marred only by the constant rocking, and those damn oysters Rockefeller.


The food tonight was wonderful.  Before dinner, we saw another live music show - the third one, all different, all terrific.  At dinner, Rob ordered the frog's legs while I got the crab cake.  Awesome good.  Then we both went beef, prime rib for me, flatiron steak for Rob.  Soufflé for dessert.  Everything was delicious.

As I said, this was our 12th cruise on Carnival, across six different ships, including the brand-new Carnival Dream.  This was the best ship with the best cruise director. And I had the best time.

I hope you enjoyed the travelblog.  We will return to our regular scheduled cooking program tomorrow.  A new series, Six Degrees of Separation and Consanguinity, will be starting for the New Year.  Stay tuned, stay safe, stay happy and healthy.


Additional photos: