Earl Cooks Grilled Romaine Dinner Salad - EEK!

My dear wife a.k.a. "Turkey" knows I love to buy cooking equipment, and she hates to shop...for me! She says I am impossible to buy for, so we usually end up going shopping together and picking our own stuff out. Well this year for Father's day, I knew exactly what I wanted...an indoor grill/griddle for our stove top.  Ever since I dog sat for daughter #2, and used hers, I have wanted one. See post Earl Cooks Grilled Ham Steak and Two Squashes while Dog Sitting . We have a gas grill and a charcoal grill/smoker, but what a hassle to drag them out, clean them up, prep them and finally cook! The TV chefs use them all the time, so I thought it would be a tool we could take advantage of!

I have never grilled lettuce before and didn't know what I would end up with. There were several recipes, but I don't need no stinking recipe! I heated up the grill and got the items together we like on any salad. What you see are great grill marks and I just used a bit of olive oil and salt & pepper. The good stuff will come later!

What we used to top our salad was light balsamic vinegar, then from top left going clockwise, mozzarella pearls, Parmesan chunks, bacon bits, hard cooked eggs (I like mine sliced, "Turkey" likes hers diced), and finally, bottom left grape tomatoes! 

 I usually put my homemade croutons in our dinner salads, but I couldn't find room! It filled a PLATTER!...oh, and ME TOO! Results & Conclusions: This was very good. If you make one get VERY crisp lettuce. Top it with what you like. This was ALMOST meatless, but VERY satisfying! 

Earl Cooks Eggplant & Rice Casserole With 2 Cheeses

Eggplant seems to be the darling of the vegetarian /vegan community. I see it used in dishes that look SO good, and I have wanted to use them more. My first try was a failure, but I found an idea that seemed a bit better. It would include an eggplant, mozzarella & Parmesan cheeses, tomato sauce and rice. First I covered the eggplant, sliced thin, with salt to draw out the moisture and bitterness. I rinsed the slices to remove the salt and began layering the eggplant and other ingredients almost like a lasagna, tomato sauce, rice, eggplant, cheese until I had filled my casserole dish and used all of the ingredients, topping it all with cheese. I baked it at 350℉ until hot throughout and the cheese all melted. Results & Conclusions I liked it okay, but I won't make it again. It ended up with far too much liquid in the bottom. My wife was unimpressed and hardly ate any of her bowl. I finished mine, but didn't bother to keep the leftovers, which is VERY rare for me. It seems I just haven't come upon a recipe that makes eggplant worth cooking. It may be that we love meat so much that we are not tasting what others taste. I will try ONE more time, and hope that is isn't 3 strikes and out!

Earl Cooks is Makin' Bacon By Bakin' Bacon into BITS

I always liked the good quality REAL bacon bits you could buy at the supermarket. It always seemed easier and faster than making my own. But they are not CHEAP! They definitely charge you for the effort. So I started making my own with the microwavable, precooked bacon...half the work was DONE, just crisp them up and chop them and you have freshly cooked (almost) bacon bits that are cut to meet your likes. The problem with that is there isn't a bunch of flavor in the microwave bacon.

Big Buy Bacon In and Out of the package

My brilliant idea was to bake my own from CHEAP bacon! The cheap bacon has been a really good price recently.The great thing about cheap bacon is the reason it is cheap...it has a high fat content. The smoke flavor permeates the fat and is released when it cooks and renders down. I am continuously looking for a better way to cook bacon. I have tried the oven, the microwave, the stovetop, griddles, as-seen-on-tv devices. My wife (a.k.a. "Turkey") is the best because she has the key...patience.

Baking Sheet with Corrugated Foil

For under $2 I can have bacon chunks that taste like bacon! I start by taking a baking sheet and line it with  foil I had corrugated at the suggestion of a chef to allow the fat to drip away and make cleanup a breeze.

Pieces of Cheap Bacon Raw and Baked

I cut one pound of bacon into small pieces, keeping in mind that they will shrink...a lot. I baked them at 350℉, which was the temperature recommended on the package for cooking their bacon. Only half of the bacon fit on the first sheet, so for the second batch I decide to change it up a bit. I like my bacon on the less-than-crispy side, so I think I will bake the second batch with my oven's broiler mode rather than from beneath. It turned out great. Can you tell which is which?

Baked on the left and Broiled on the right

Make your own bits. Just take the time when you aren't doing anything else. Your house will smell great and they can be refrigerated or frozen, so next time you want bacon for your salad or scrambled eggs, you'll be set!

Earl Cooks Shepherd's Pie—DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME!

Shepherd's Pie topped with a generous pat of real butter

Until I was married, I had never had nor do I remember ever hearing of Shepherd's Pie. But my wife introduced me to it and I developed an affinity for it. She has never much cared for green peas, and until a few years ago, I didn't care for green beans, a common substitute for peas. So what I remember her using is broccoli. I like broccoli. I like it raw, I like it cooked and I even like it riced, but according to recipes I looked at nobody considers it Shepherd's Pie with broccoli. This got me to wondering "what exactly is shepherd's pie and what are the traditional ingredients"? Rachel Ray says one thing, Gordon Ramsay another. So I dug deeper into its history and found that originally it was designed to use up leftovers, particularly roast! Well I just happen to have a bit of leftover roast and the veggies I used cooked with it. Here is what I did and what I will never do again! —I started with the leftover roast, removed all of the fat and diced it into ¼" dice. The leftover vegetables I diced up but they were too soft, and really just dissolved into the dish. I didn't have leftover potatoes, so I made a package of potatoes and added about ½ cup of sour cream and one egg yolk, and mixed that into the potatoes which will become the topping. I also made a gravy from a packet which I enhanced with some broth from the roast. Veggies in the dish, meat in the dish and gravy added, I then topped with the potatoes and decorated with a fork. Lastly, I added smoked paprika to the top. I covered it and baked covered for 20 min. at 375℉. I then removed the lid and baked for another 20 minutes to brown the top. Results I quite liked it. I topped it with a generous pat of butter, but my wife didn't! She thinks I can eat anything and have an iron constitution, so as the saying goes, happy wife, happy life! That's not why you shouldn't try this at home though. The vegetables were too mushy. It needed to have uncooked veggies added. The potatoes were pretty good as was the meat, but next time I will try the trraditional American version with ground beef and peas (I love peas). I will still be eating the leftovers, which I guess are leftover leftovers or leftovers²!

Earl Cooks Baked Chili Cheese Dog Sandwich - EEK!

Why EEK! you say? It stands for Earl's Experimental Kitchen...or something I made that nobody has made, and sometimes it is for a good reason! Like all EEKs, it starts off sounding like a good idea and somewhere goes off the rails. I wanted a grilled cheese and I wanted a chili-cheese dog They go together, right? Just substitute the bun for bread and you're almost there. But I thought I would try it in the oven not the stove-top. What I discovered was a more difficult way to make a grilled cheese! What I used was 4 hot dogs, shredded mild cheese and mild no bean chili(½ of a can), and 4 slices of homemade bread slathered with butter. —First I took 4 bun-length hot dogs and sliced them in half until they lay flat, but not all the way through. —I placed the hot dogs on a sheet pan and placed in a 325℉ oven for 15 minutes and removed them to a plate. —I then placed 4 slices of bread buttered on both sides in the sheet pan and in the oven, again at 325℉ for 10 minutes. — Flip and cover with shredded cheese (lots) and place back in oven for another 5-10 minutes until melted. —Remove from oven, cover 2 of the cheesy slices with half of the chili and place 2 hot dogs on each slice over the chill. —Now put more cheese on top of the hot dogs and use the other slices to top. —Place back in the oven long enough to heat through and melt the cheese, about 10 minutes more. Results: I liked mine but the hot dogs cooked a bit too long and the bread was quite crunchy. My wife felt it was not what I was shooting for. That's why it's an EEK!  Let me say here that I really liked these, and will never make them again!!!

Earl Experiments with Kluski Noodles with Smoked Pork(EEK)

My mother was a bargain hunter to the CORE. It seemed to be part of her DNA, but could have been from being born at the end of the depression to a family of humble origins. Either way she knew where they kept the bargains in every store she frequented. And she would buy a good deal even if she had never heard of the product, thinking of someone else and how they may need or want it. That is how I came to have a large package of Kluski Noodles. I can best describe them as polish fettuccine, cut into about 2 inch lengths. They are egg noodles and would have made a great addition to soup, but this is MY experiment!

I have some noodles, smoked pork, ricotta cheese and leftover Alfredo sauce. These are the ingredients for this experiment!

Procedure

• I cooked the noodles per package instructions
• I diced a small yellow onion
• In a sauce pan I cooked the onion
• I then placed the leftover Alfredo sauce and ricotta into the pan with the heat turned down to LOW to warm and soften them with the onion
• After the noodles finished cooking, I drained them, then placed the smoked pork (pulled), into the noodle pot. The pork was cold from being in the fridge so it needed to come up to temp.
• When the pork came up to temperature and was well mixed with the noodles I added the warm cheese & Alfredo sauce to the pan and mixed together thoroughly on a low heat
• I added salt and fresh ground black pepper and served.

Problems

• I undercooked the onion which made the onion a bit too crunchy. I could have cut the amount of onion down by 1/3 and been fine.
• I didn't have enough Alfredo sauce
• I needed more salt in the water for cooking the noodles

Conclusion/Results

While this tasted fine, it was a bit bland, except for the ONION. It could have used a few more spices or herbs. My mom is gone, having passed away earlier this year, so she won't be getting me any more Kluski Noodles, but I might buy some for a soup...who knows!