Archive for ◊ 2013 ◊

11 Feb 2013 Gunpowder Polly’s Wild West Cowboy Steak
Author:  |  Category: Main Dish, Red Meat  | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,  | 3 Comments

cowboy steak bite on fork 2

Last weekend I had a Wild West themed party at my house.  I suggested to my friends that they come dressed as cowgirls, and they did!  They moseyed on over to the Bar –the Trail Mix Bar– to fill their saddlebags with snacks and quenched their thirst at the watering hole.  I wanted the dinner to be Wild West themed, too, and steak immediately jumped to mind as the perfect main dish (I was later to find out that cowboys rarely ate steak, oops!).  Nevertheless, before steak enlightenment,  I set out to find out how to cook steak for twelve, quickly, accurately and indoors in February!  It was easier than I ever imagined, and more successful, too. After steak enlightenment, I was so excited about this easy, easy way to cook delicious steak that I decided to put it on my Wild West menu anyway.  I also served BBQ drumsticks, onion rings, cornbread with a delicious maple-orange butter, and roasted veggies.  OK, so the menu wasn’t exactly authentic, but it did have a Wild West feel to it 🙂 Also, in preparation for this Wild West dinner, I made place mats out of old blue jeans and bought red bandannas to use as napkins!

Now, for the steak.  Buy some really thick steaks.  I used rib-eyes, but any kind is fine as long as the steaks are thick…, over one-inch thick!  When you get the steaks home, dry age them.  This is a crucial step so buy the steaks early in the week.  Take the plastic wrap off the steaks, place them on a rack, and set them in the refrigerator, uncovered, for up to five days.  That’s right, put the steaks on a (baking) rack (with a tray underneath) in the refrigerator, uncovered, for a few days.  THIS, my friend, is the first half of the equation of a delicious steak.  The second half of the equation is the cooking method in the recipe below. This recipe includes the Cowboy Steak rub I used on my steaks, but you can use any favorite rub, it’s the dry-aging process and cooking process that are important.

For most cowboys,  even for the heartiest meat lovers, one-half of a thick rib steak is probably a good serving size.  I served my cowgirls one-third of a steak each. So with that in mind, your 4 thick steaks, with side dishes, will serve 4 football players, 8 men/boys, or 12 lightweights/small women/teenage girls.

Gunpowder Polly’s Wild West Cowboy Steaks  

(cooked in a modern indoor kitchen)

  • 2 teaspoons kosher salt
  • 1 teaspoon black pepper
  • 1 teaspoon Hungarian sweet paprika (regular or smoked paprika can be substituted)
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder (can substitute onion powder, if you don’t have garlic powder)
  • 1 teaspoon favorite dried herb, many people like thyme, I prefer basil, some like oregano…put in what you like
  • 1 teaspoon ground cumin
  • ½ teaspoon smoked ancho chili powder (or any other chili powder)
  • 1 teaspoon finely ground coffee beans
  • 4 thick bone-in rib eye steaks ( 1 ¼” to 1 ½ thick; each steak weighing 12 to 16 ounces)
  1. Buy your steaks and dry age them in the refrigerator for up to five days.  Remove the steaks from the package.  Place them on a rack.  Place a tray under the rack to catch any possible drips.  Place the steaks, rack and tray in the refrigerator, uncovered, for up to 5 days.
  2. One or two hours before you want to start cooking, remove steaks from refrigerator and bring to room temperature.
  3. Mix  all rub ingredients –salt, pepper, paprika, garlic powder, dried green herb, cumin, chili powder, and ground coffee– in small bowl. Sprinkle approx ½ teaspoon of rub mixture over each side of the steaks, press and rub mixture into meat. Let steaks stand at room temperature 1 hour.
  4. Preheat the oven to 425°.
  5. Get out an oven safe frying pan large enough to fit all steaks (or use two frying pans), put 1T-3T olive oil in the bottom of the frying pan/s and heat (on the stove) until the oil is smoking (but don’t let the oil burn) and the pan is very, very hot.
  6. Keep heat under the pan on high, or medium high if there appears to be imminent danger of fire, and add the steaks to the hot pan.  Do not touch the steaks for the next five minutes.  Let steak cook on high for exactly five minutes.
  7. Turn the heat off.  Quickly turn the steaks over.  Place the still hot pan–with the steaks still in it–into a hot oven. Close the oven door and set the timer for five minutes.
  8. Remove the steaks and pan from the hot oven. Transfer the steaks to a cutting board, cover lightly with foil, and let sit for ten minutes before cutting or serving.
  9. Serve!  You’ll be amazed at how easy it was to cook the perfect medium rare steak.  Your guests will love, love, love the texture and  taste of the steak.  Look at THIS!

My daughter made these delightful cookies for dessert, so fun and tasty! Check her out at Party Girl Cookies or on Facebook 🙂

Here are a few more pictures from my Wild West party, yeeeeHAW!

Thanks for stopping by my Wild West kitchen today!  I hope this recipe becomes a staple in your kitchen, it definitely has in mine 🙂

01 Feb 2013 Dining For Women
Author:  |  Category: Main Dish  | 7 Comments

DFW Jan14Groupattable

Today’s post is a little different but it is about food!

Four years ago I started supporting  and empowering women and children living in extreme poverty.  Yep. Me.  I’ve made a difference.  I know I have. I haven’t done it alone. I have done it through a once a month pot-luck dinner at my house. I have done it through my involvement in Dining For Women. Here are some of the things I have done:

  • Support movers and shakers seeking to end child sex-trafficking and exploitation (who wouldn’t want to support that?), and I also support the “rescued girls” with safe houses, counselling, health care, education and critical life and business skills.
  • Fund micro-loans and micro-enterprises in several developing countries. A micro-enterprise can provide income for three to five women, and I know that each of these women probably support five children.  Yes, that’s five children each.  I know these children now eat better, probably attend more school, and could probably get medical care in an emergency.  In three years I have funded 108 businesses in Northern Kenya alone. WOW!
  • In El Salvador I have funded the training of  healthcare providers in the detection and treatment of cervical cancer, and I have funded examinations for over 600 women and treatment for 80.
  • I have funded life-changing fistula repair surgery and post-operative care for 66 Ethiopian women, and when they were fully recovered, I sent them home in a new dress. What wonderful person thought to send these women home in a new dress?  Of course, I will fund the dresses along with the life-changing surgery and follow up care. This makes me cry every time I think about it. If you don’t know what a fistula is, it’s because you didn’t have to labor in birth for two days in Africa or India…when you were 14.
  • I have supported the re-introduction of the Maya Nut into the Guatemalan diet, funded regular Maya Nut lunches in some of the poorest Guatemalan schools, employed Guatemalan women to make the lunches,  and established Maya Nut tree nurseries in schools–an average 3,000 trees in each school!
  • I’ve provided bicycles, houses, home repair, scholarships, beds, and clothing for poor handicapped children of of single mothers in Vietnam. It’s the bicycles that excite me the most. Giving an impoverished single mother a bicycle can change her life. I’m glad someone figured that out and I am glad to fund such a simple program.
  • I have enabled 450 non-­literate women (hopefully pre-literate women)  to attend and graduate from a life skills and embroidery program in Afghanistan. Amazing.

This month I am supporting 150 girls who had to run from their war-torn country, alone and unaccompanied–because their family members were either missing or killed. I am providing them with basic education, business skills training, human rights education, and leadership skills in programs specifically designed to address their challenges.  I fund their safe spaces, daycare, meals, and transportation to and from the program.  The twenty-one women at my house on Monday night donated $619 to Hemisha, Kenya.

I get a lot of out this, too.  One, it makes me feel good.  I can’t fix everything that’s wrong in this world, but I can do something…, and it feels so good to be doing something. Two, when my money combines with the money of other like-minded women, we make a large  impact in grass roots organizations in remote corners of the world, and we do this every single month.  Three, I adore the women in my Dining For Women chapter.  We’ve bonded through our involvement in Dining For Women.  Some of these women I have known for over twenty  years,  others I have just met, and they are all wonderful… warm, generous, fun, determined, educated, grateful…, and they all have that “it” factor.  I can’t put my finger on what exactly that “it” factor is, but every single one of them has it 🙂  Four, there’s a party at my house every month…, and it’s gone a bit gourmet!  On a monthly basis Dining For Women provides us with recipes from each featured country.  My group has taken to making most of them, so we get some terrific ethnic dishes combined with American classics!  It’s a lot of fun.  This month we had Kenyan Chicken in a Coconut Curry Sauce, two versions of Kenyan sauteed kale, a Kenyan bean and pepper dish, an all-American tossed salad, homemade bread, Gringo Tacquitos and Chinese Chicken Salad!  There were other dishes too, along with Dark Chocolate from Uganda, a boozy bundt cake, and lemon cookies for dessert. Five, I’ve learned a lot. Dining For Women provides a ton of educational materials every month.  I’ve been educated.  I  understand more.  I’ve been changed.  A heaviness has been lifted.  Like I said, I can’t do it all, but I can do something and, through Dining For Women, my little something has added up to many great things.

DFW Feb14 photomerge group

 

Here’s a link to next month’s program, Midwives for Haiti.  Look at all the information we are provided with!  My friends and I will donate anywhere from $20 to $50 each.  Our chapter donation will probably be in excess of $500. There are about 400 Dining For Women chapters, we’ll send $50,000 to Midwives to Haiti this month, $15,000 Matrichaya in India, and what’s leftover we’ll send to a “Member’s Favorite”.   If you don’t want to click, just read this:

Patricia Lee, a Certified Nurse Midwife from Lancaster, PA, was a volunteer instructor at Midwives For Haiti. Her story of her first delivery at St. Therese Hospital in Hinche provides an introduction to Midwives for Haiti.   “The ‘maternity salon’ holds five old-fashioned metal delivery tables whose stark stirrups jut up and out at all angles. Sheets are unavailable. The laboring women bring pieces of cloth or remove their skirts to cover the tables. Cistern water is available from the faucet for twenty minutes each morning; there is no more water until tomorrow. With intermittent electricity and no oxygen, the incubator in the corner is a lifeless monster. I hear the housekeeper yelling in Creole. Kindness is absent. Other tools of my trade are also missing. Where is labor support, a drink of water or a cool washcloth, help with relaxation breathing? This miserable room is now my workplace. I meet my female interpreter and the three student midwives who are to observe and learn from me for the next two weeks. All four silence their cell phones. I am drawn to the woman on the table in the comer. She wears just a blouse, her skirt providing the table cover. Her clenched hands and taut grimace speak to me and I understand where she is in this labor. In a moment I am at her side, my students next to me, and I introduce myself, and talk to her quietly, trusting my interpreter to repeat my words.  She’s just a girl, I think. I roll her onto her side and rub her back during contractions, fanning her with a package of latex gloves. I give her a drink from my water bottle. I breathe into her ear to get her in synchrony with me, encouraging her to slow her rapid panting. As her grip relaxes, her face releases its tension. Our dance continues until she has to bear down with the pressure of the baby, and we vary our rhythm to include the grunting and groaning of hard work. I feel the housekeeper looking at me and I glance up briefly and smile to her scowl. Maybe an ally one day. The baby arrives and is tucked into her mama’s arms, cuddled to her chest while we wait for the cord to stop beating and the placenta to be born. There are no tears and no complications. We assess the baby in her safe space, clean them both, and prepare to move to the postpartum ward. The girl/mother turns onto her back, her face toward me and speaks. The interpreter inhales and the students murmur. “Do you know what she just said to you” asks my interpreter. “No, I do not understand yet”. She said, ‘You have been kinder to me than anyone else in my whole life and you have done more than anyone else has ever done for me. I wish I had something to give you but I have nothing.’ We reach for each other. Blinking quickly, my voice unsteady through my smile, I tell her she has given me a gift. Her baby girl is my first birth in Haiti, I am honored to be here with her and I will never forget her. The students are tapping my shoulder, talking, insistent. With the help of the interpreter I hear them tell me that I must deliver their babies, that they will not have babies until I return, that they had never seen a birth like this. I answer them. “You don’t understand. I am here to teach you to deliver babies like this. You will learn to do this.” My new mama, my first baby, my students ~ this place has touched my heart.”

Thanks for stopping by my kitchen today, and thank you for reading through this long post 🙂  If you are already a member of Dining For Women,  welcome!  If you are not a member, and would like to be, the first step is to click on the Dining For Women link…

We eat well, too.  On this night, we had eight desserts…

DFW Feb14 034

26 Jan 2013 Onion Rings
Author:  |  Category: Appetizers, Side Dishes, Veggies  | Tags: , , , ,  | One Comment

There are a lot of bad onion rings out there.  I know.  If onion rings are on the menu, I will find a way to order them, but I rarely order them a second time at the same restaurant.  There used to be some good Onion Rings out there (and, eternal optimist that I am,  I keep hoping I will stumble upon them once again), but not any more.  Onion Rings are pretty much universally bad now, and often the same from restaurant to restaurant.  There’s this huge ring of  “crunchy” (“stiff” would be a better word) “batter” (if that’s what you can call brown cement) engulfing a thin, watery, tasteless bit of something-that-looks-like-an-onion, which is served up hot and hard.  One bite, and that something-that-looks-like-an-onion comes slithering out leaving a hot ring of brown cement in your hand.  Sadly, these are not the worst Onion Rings.  The worst ones have the same batter, but with reconstituted onions on the inside!  Horrific.  Let me tell you a little secret though.  Onion Rings, good ones, real ones, are very easy to make.  If you promise to read my blog forever and ever, comment occasionally, and say nice things to your friends about it, then I will share my recipe with you!

Way back when, when my Dad was healthy, he would visit on a regular basis.  I would make a batch of these for him.  He’d sit on his stool, drink his Manhattan, eat onion rings  and tell me what a good cook I was while I prepared dinner.  That doesn’t happen any more.  Sometimes he forgets he’s eaten dinner, even when he’s still sitting at the table. Occasionally, he still tells me I am a good cook though.  I think I’ll make Onion Rings for him again, next time I see him.  Maybe they’ll trigger a memory, just like this recipe did for me.

There is not much batter on these Onion Rings, just a light coating of flour moistened with buttermilk…, and they are sooooooooo GOOD!

Polly’s Onion Rings

  • 2 or 3 large brown onions
  • 2 cups buttermilk (in a pinch I have successfully substituted 2% milk)
  • 4 teaspoons salt (divided use)
  • 1 teaspoon pepper (more if you are a pepper lover, you could also substitute or add in a dash of cayenne, if you’d like)
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • oil for frying (I use one 48-oz bottle of canola or vegetable oil.  I discard all the oil when cool)

1.          Cut onion into 1/2 inch thick slices and separate into rings (my rings are usually a bit less  than ½ inch)

2.        In a large bowl or  Ziploc mix buttermilk and 2 teaspoons salt.  Add in the onion rings.  Stir or shake to drench all the onions.  Let onions soak in the buttermilk, at room temperature, for least 10 minutes, and up to an hour or more.  Stir or shake occasionally.

3.        Drain rings from buttermilk. Discard the buttermilk…or save it for another use. ( I have been know to use the buttermilk and the leftover flour from the next step  in Yorkshire pudding batter.)

4.        In a large Ziploc bag combine 2 cups flour, 2 teaspoons salt, and 1 teaspoon of pepper.  Shake to combined.

5.        Add onion rings to the flour mixture a few at a time.  Shake until covered with flour.  Remove the rings from the flour and place on a cake rack to dry for at least 15 minutes (and up to an hour).  Repeat until all onion rings are lightly coated in flour and drying on a rack.

6.        Pour oil into a heavy pan.  Heat oil to 360 degrees. (If you are an experienced and careful cook, the oil can be heating while you are completing step 5)

7.        Fry onion rings, in batches, until golden.  Turn each ring over at least once.  (A batch, determined by the size of your pan and the size of the onion ring, so a batch could be as few as 4 onion rings or as many as 10.  Try to cook large onion rings in the same batch, small onion rings in the same batch, the medium onion rings together, and so on.) Each batch should cook for approx. 3 minutes (up the time a bit for larger onions).

8.        Transfer cooked onion rings to a paper towel lined tray to drain off and absorb excess oil then place in a 200 degree oven to keep warm, while you fry another batch. (My family eats as I fry, I can’t get them in the oven.)  Bring the oil temperature back to 360 degrees before adding more onions.

9.        Serve hot with additional salt (I use Kosher salt)

Makes approx 50 onion rings.

I just made these for the “Superbowl Snack” theme meeting of my cookbook club. They are great to make as your guests walk in, as they are best right out of the oil.  Don’t cut up too many onions though, or you will never get a chance to sit down.  I find folks will eat as many onion rings as I make…, and at a faster clip than I can make them!

Thanks for stopping by my kitchen today.  It was a good day to stop by, this is one of my all time best recipes (and one of my most sinful… 🙂 )

 

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