Cooking With The Noes

Sunday Dinner – 9 September 2018

This was one of the first things that I learned to cook well, and remains a favorite after decades.

It starts with a sauté of onions and garlic, which goes into the crock with kidney beans, pintos, black beans, diced tomatoes, some picante sauce, cocoa powder, liquid smoke, S&P, a bottle of beer and a package of Chili Man seasoning. Usually I add a couple of dried whole cayennes, but we’ve finally run out of the ones we’d grown and dried years ago. I started this on low at 8 PM Saturday night. This morning I cut up a couple of green peppers to add, checked seasonings, and added a little more ground black pepper and some kosher salt. At the very end, I added a handful of rolled oats.

I used to make cornbread from a Miracle Maize mix, but nowadays I mix it up from scratch – 1 1/4 cups of cornmeal, 3/4 cup of flour, 2 T sugar, 2 t baking powder, and 1 t coarse salt for the dry ingredients, then 1 1/4 cup of milk, 1 egg and half a stick of melted butter for the wet. Half an hour in the oven at 375 does the trick.

We served this with chopped avocado, shredded cheese and sour cream. I put Cholula sauce in my bowl. Grampy always has a little maple syrup on his cornbread on the side. The ladies opted for no wine this week. I opened a bottle of Shiner Bock for me, and a can of Busch NA for Grampy (which seemed to agree with him).

Grammy brought an incredible triple berry pie for dessert.

We missed Aunt Pat this week as she had other family obligations.

I’m looking forward to chili cheeseburgers for supper one night this week.

Sunday Dinner – 26 August 2018

We’re celebrating Aunt Pat’s birthday this week, so we made barbecue chicken for Sunday Dinner. Last weekend I told her the story of our Farsi Chicken recipe, so Claudia and I decided to go with that. Luckily this time I was vigilant, and didn’t burn it to a crisp.

Claudia made Basmati rice with Garam Masala, and we also grilled some peppers as a side. I made two of our favorite Wisconsin Supper Club appetizers, marinated olives and marinated mushrooms, and also churned up some lemon custard ice cream for dessert. The wine was an exceptional 2010 Côtes du Rhône.

Everything turned out just about right.

Sunday Dinner – 19 August 2018

Still clearing out the freezer, so I decided to make pork roast with mustard gravy this week from a five pound pork loin.

The recipe came from The Daring Gourmet. Essentially, you slather the roast with mustard, brown it in a Dutch Oven, add some aromatics, wine and broth, and cook it at 325 for three hours. When everything comes out, you add a flour and stock slurry and simmer to thicken the gravy.

This is the sort of simple, savory food that my mother would have prepared when I was a child. I don’t remember her ever cooking this particular recipe, but the flavors brought back memories nonetheless.

Grampy’s 80th birthday is coming up in a few days, and he does love his pork, so I figured it would be a fitting dinner this weekend.

Aunt Pat had other family obligations today, so she didn’t join us, but we did have a chance to get together with her and Claudia’s cousins, Dan and Monica (and Monica’s husband, Ron) Saturday evening for a bit.

We served a Columbia Valley Riesling from Aldi’s with the Senfbraten, and I went easy on it because I may have been overserved Saturday night. It rarely happens, but it does happen. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Grammy brought a super delicious cherry pie for dessert.

Sunday Dinner – 29 July 2018

This week we made a Katz Deli style Pastrami.

Mrs. Noe has been encouraging me to clear out our chest freezer, so I thawed a corned beef brisket and mixed up some Pastrami rub.

• 4 tablespoons black pepper.
• 2 tablespoons coriander powder
• 1 teaspoon mustard powder
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon paprika
• 2 teaspoons garlic powder
• 2 teaspoons onion powder

Since this recipe requires smoking and steaming, I decided to do the barbecue portion of it on Saturday. I rubbed down the nearly four pound pre-brined brisket and set up the grill for a long cook.

Here’s how the Weber Kettle is set up for water smoking. The drip pan is about 3/4ths full of water. There are ten unlit briquettes, four live coals and two chunks of wood (cherry, in this case) on each side of the pan. One bottom vent is full open. One is completely closed, and the other is about halfway open. The top vent is full open. This creates lots of smoke and keeps the temperature steady at about 225 °F.

After four hours of smoking, the internal temperature of the brisket registered 137 °F. I wrapped it in aluminum foil and put it in the refrigerator.

Thinking of sides for the meal, latkes were a natural, but since Claudia’s family is Lithuanian, and I already had a decent recipe, I decided to substitute Kugela. So I cooked 12 ounces of bacon in a foil pan on the Weber Genesis to have it ready. I also saved the grease.

Come Sunday Morning, I placed the brisket on a rack in our Nesco roaster with a couple of bottles of Schlitz in the bottom of the pan, and set it to 250 °F for steaming. The center temperature registered 207 °F in just a couple hours, so I turned the roaster down to keep the cut warm until time to serve.

With the brisket in the roaster, I got busy peeling 5 pounds of red potatoes. I grated those in batches in the food processor, putting them in a bowl of water to keep them from turning brown.

After that I sautéed some grated onions in a bit of the bacon fat, then put the potatoes in a colander and pressed out the water with a plate before adding them to a bowl with the onions and crumbled bacon. Then I beat 6 eggs, and added them to the bowl with 1 can of Milnot, and some salt and pepper. Since the mixture was pretty wet, I added about half a cup of farina and combined it all before pouring into a greased 9 by 13 casserole. I topped it all with the remaining bacon grease. It went into a 400 °F oven for 15 minutes, then I brought the temp down to 350 and baked for another 55 minutes.

Once it was out of the oven, I sliced the Pastrami while Claudia mixed up a Wulff salad (with white wine vinegar in the dressing). She had also baked a cake earlier in the day and put together a nice trifle for dessert.

We made Reubens of the Pastrami, rye bread, sauerkraut, Swiss Cheese and Russian Dressing. Kugela topped with sour cream and Claudia’s delicious salad were the perfect accompaniment. We also opened a bottle of excellent Aussie wine (a Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon cuvée called “Road to Nowhere” from 2011).

The trifle was incredible. I shook up a round of Pink Squirrels for the ladies too. 🙂

The part of this meal that had me most nervous was the Kugela, since previous attempts at it had come out a little bland to my taste. Happy to have gotten it right this time.