Thursday, 10/21/2010

Last Friday I picked up some short ribs in Kalbi marinade from the Fred Meyer meat counter.  I thought we would have them over the weekend, but we never did.  I wanted to use them tonight, but was pretty sure they were not going to be good anymore.  It must be my lucky day, because they were still good!  Ben grilled them on direct high heat for 5-6 minutes.  We had iceberg lettuce wedge salads to go with it.  My salad was exactly as I wanted it to be.  1/4 of a lettuce head + bacon crumbles + Kraft's Zesty Italian Dressing = tasty salad.  Ben's didn't turn out as I expected it to.  I got him blue cheese crumbles and assumed we had a blue cheese dressing in the refrigerator.  While it is hard to tell if blue cheese has gone bad, Ben was pretty sure the dressing wasn't good anymore. He opted for the same dressing I used, but was not thrilled with it. 

Katie was willing to eat some rib meat, but mainly just ate grapes and cheese.  

I cooked up a pound of bacon tonight so that we could use it for our salads and then breakfast over the next couple of days.   Rather than using a frying pan, I baked the bacon.  I lined an old cookie sheet with heavy duty foil and then placed two square, metal cooking racks inside the sheet.  The racks had to overlap to fit, but it allowed me to use the entire sheet's surface for bacon.  I covered the racks with one layer of bacon and put the cookie sheet into a cold oven.  I then heated the oven to 400 degrees with the bacon inside.  I first checked on the bacon after 27 minutes.  When it wasn't done yet, I continued to check on it every 3 minutes until it was done enough for my taste.   For thin sliced bacon, 27 minutes is often enough.  For the thicker, leaner cuts of bacon, it takes a while longer.  The cooling racks keep the bacon out of the rendered fat.  This is a method Ben learned from Alton Brown on the Food Network several years ago.

I was just about to write about how sad it is that we can no longer watch Alton Brown's show "Good Eats" on TV anymore.  We gave up cable in January and it has not been available on Hulu.com or through Netflix.  But, as I was pulling up the show to link to it for the blog, I found that there are five full episodes currently on the Food Network's website!  So, if you want to learn about salmon, canned tuna, celery, popovers, or home freezing...check it out here:)  You learn a lot about the food itself and then how to prepare it.  We've learned a lot from Alton.