A New Car and a Sauce

Looky at what I finally got today! My new Honda CR-V, complete with moon roof, heated leather seats, dual-climate control and back-up sensors. Heck, I'm so happy right now that I am even willing to ignore all the months of angst that have led to this moment.

Yep, I've been craving my CR-V.

And now on to the food. If you will recall, a while ago I had made an Apple Farms BBQ Sauce. I had followed the recipe, except for the substitution of grated garlic clove for the garlic powder. Unfortunately, only I somewhat liked this sauce, and even I found it overwhelmingly and unapologetically and unrelentingly sweet. So, since I rather like the idea of an apple-based barbecue sauce, I decided to go back to the drawing board, er cook top. Now, how to add the much needed bite to the sauce?

For the second try I started with these ingredients:

1 cup applesauce

1 cup catsup

2 cups packed brown sugar

6 tablespoons lemon juice

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon paprika

1 garlic clove, minced

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (oops, I seemed to have forgotten this ingredient today - note to self: PAY ATTENTION!)

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

After simmering over medium-low heat for 30 minutes, I turned off the heat and allowed the sauce to cool for another 30 minutes before decanting.

My finished sauce, along with my 'new' discovery. Years ago, I had purchased this strange funnel in with a box full of Pyrex bowls at my grandmother's estate sale. I had never had a clue as to what this particular type of funnel could be used for. Obviously I have never canned or I would have known what this was. Yes, it is a canning funnel. The new ones are made of plastic or silicon or some other funky materials. This one is made of glass. I'm keeping it. My grandmother would be so proud.

So now I will have to see if this reincarnation works or if more work needs to be done.

Dressing and Dinner

I like making my own salad dressings, especially given that I cannot find a really good pre-made balsamic vinaigrette. So today I looked to Emeril Lagasse for help.

Emeril's recipe called for 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar (surprise!), 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, 1 tablespoon garlic, 2 tablespoons brown sugar and 3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil.

Use a very good quality balsamic vinegar for a dish such as this.
And I even got to try out my new grater with the holder for small foods such as garlic cloves.

Add all the ingredients together except for the olive oil. While whisking the mixture, slowly stream in the olive oil until it is all incorporated.

Can I tell you how thick and rich and delicious this turned out to be? Thanks, Emeril. This recipe will remain in my repertoire.

And now, on to dinner...

I decided to make Barbecue Pork Ribs. I bought two packages of boneless pork country style ribs for this dish. I also pulled out a cup container of frozen homemade turkey stock, an onion and two garlic cloves. Salt and pepper will be added once the other ingredients are in place.

You can think of this dish as a hit and run. Just dump all the ingredients in the slow cooker and walk away. And don't worry about the frozen blob of turkey stock. It will melt and all will be well with the world.

About half way through cooking, I turn the meat and contemplate the sauce.

I've decided to use a goodly amount of my Whiskey Run BBQ Sauce, with a bit of the Apple Farms BBQ Sauce and some Asian BBQ Sauce to spice things up a bit.

After 9 hours of cooking low and slow, the barbecue pork ribs are perfection.

My dinner is plated. My dear daughter made her famous macaroni and cheese, but that is a blog entry for another time. It appears I annoyed her enough by documenting her Double Chocolate Mint Cookies earlier in the day.

All in all, it was a good dinner.

A Tale of Three Sauces

I have been playing with sauces this week, much to the consternation of my family. I must admit to a certain fascination with the alchemy that is sauce-making. Add heat to the equation and things get even more interesting.

I found a recipe for Rosemary and Chocolate Sauce in Ellie Krieger's new cookbook, The Food You Crave. Here we have the ingredients for this sauce: carrot, celery, shallot, garlic, dry red wine, vegetable stock, cocoa powder, rosemary, thyme, bay leaf and tomato paste. Since this is from a cookbook, I will not give you the recipe for the sauce. That only seems fair to Ms Krieger.

As directed, I diced all of the vegetables before cooking.

All of the ingredients except for the cocoa powder and the rosemary cook down for about 40 minutes. Then the reduction is strained before adding the remaining ingredients.

I found another recipe for a Jamaican sauce in another cookbook, The Low-Carb Cookbook, published by Publications International, Ltd. Again, as this is a proprietary recipe, I will not give exact measurements. The recipe calls for orange juice, lime juice, grated lime peel, brown sugar, garlic, ground cloves, ground cinnamon, grated ginger, ground black pepper and salt. The directions do not specify heating the sauce, but I chose to briefly heat the sauce in order to allow the brown sugar to fully incorporate into the sauce.

Here are the finished sauces. The verdict? While I liked the Jamaican sauce, my daughter thought it smelled too much like my world-famous potpourri. The Rosemary and Chocolate Sauce was rather strong, though it was passable when eaten with beef. In the end, I poured the remaining sauce down the drain, while I saved the remaining Jamaican Sauce.

Today I tried a new spin on barbecue sauce. This recipe for Applesauce Barbecue Sauce called for garlic powder, but I substituted grated garlic.

I combined 1 cup applesauce, 1/2 cup catsup, 2 cups unpacked brown sugar, 6 tablespoons (1 1/2 lemons) lemon juice, 1/2 teaspoon each salt, ground black pepper, paprika, cinnamon and garlic powder (or 1/2 of a grated garlic clove).

Heat the mixture over medium heat until boiling. Remove from the heat and bottle in a heat-proof container. Allow to cool completely if storing in a plastic container.

Finding the original name somewhat cumbersome, I renamed it Apple Farms BBQ Sauce.

And now a personal post-script: even though 1/3 of these sauces were what could be considered a failure, I do not look at this as such. For every recipe that we attempt, we learn a bit more about our likes and dislikes and we gain just a bit more understanding about how ingredients interact with each other. And while I can certainly understand that these 'experiments' are not cheap, I think that it is very important that we 'foodies' continue to stretch ourselves and to keep on learning what we like and what we don't like.