Old Dog, Same Tricks

It has been a while! A long while! I've missed the blog a little. Since the last entry, the family and I have moved from the island of Guam to Interior Alaska. I took on a job working in Air Force Mortuary Affairs. Without getting into much detail on that one, let's just say it made me appreciate where I am now--back in the Dining Facility on Eielson AFB, Alaska. I work as the assistant manager and am loving being back where I belong--in the kitchen.
I'll keep this entry short, but I wanted to share my experience of today that inspired me to log back in to this old blog and say something. Today, I picked up an ingredient I hadn't touched since Germany. I picked up lobster. Lobster is an oddity ingredient that I do not like. They are ocean scorpions. Just as crabs are ocean spiders and shrimp are ocean cockroaches.
Long story short, we blew out some lobster tails and salvaged the meat. I cut it into bite-sized pieces and pondered what to do.
-2C Flour
-2T Salt
-1T Pepper
-1T Garlic Powder
-1T Paprika
-1t cayenne
Bread it and deep fry it.
That's it! It fried up crispy and perfect. It was GOOD too. Really GOOD!

There was plenty to go around and there were rave reviews from all. Most surprisingly, from the SMSgt from Louisiana. He's a tough customer as it is, but he's also a man who knows his New Orleans seafood. He would've eaten the whole plate!

My point is, it finally felt good to be back in the kitchen and completely comfortable with a long lost ingredient. I even ate my fill of "ocean scorpion."
This old dog still has a few tricks up his sleeve and a lot of kitchen time left. I have the best job in the world and work with some of the best Airmen this nation has to offer. They are talented and smart and still have a lot to learn from the old guys. But I love them.

Until next time,
--The Old Dog

St. Patrick's Day Irish Pound Pot

My son was asking about St. Patrick's Day and what traditional foods they ate in Ireland. It inspired me to do a pound pot. A pound pot is used for a lot of occasions. It can be for soups, stews, seafood boils, but I decided to do an Irish Pound Pot. These are fun because nothing is exact. It's all about, as the name implies, about a pound. For liquid measurements you will just use a pint because, as the old saying goes, "A Pint's a Pound the Whole World 'Round!" So this will be easy--I'll just give a list of ingredients and just assume it's all a pint or a pound of that ingredient. Only thing that won't be a pound are the seasonings. Now keep in mind that this ain't a pretty dish, but a hearty pot of delicious, heartwarming Irish goodness.

Ingredients

• Bacon or Pork Belly, chopped
• Sauerkraut
• Polish Sausage or your favorite cased sausage, whole or choped
• Potatoes, chopped 1'' cubes
• Carrots, chopped 1 1/4'' length
• Brussel Sprouts or Chopped Cabbage
• Pint of Guinness Beer (1 Bottle or 1 Can)
• 1/3 C White Vinegar
• 1T Granulated Garlic Powder
• 1.5T Kosher Salt
• 1t Ground Black Pepper

1. In a large pot, bring heat to high and cook bacon/pork belly until fat is rendered.
2. Place sauerkraut into pot and stir to mix.
3. Place sausage on top of sauerkraut and bacon/pork belly
4. Place all other ingredients into the pot.
5. Cover, bring to a boil, stir to incorporate all seasonings, reduce to a simmer and replace the cover.
6. Let simmer until all veggies are done and all sausage is cooked throughout (about 35 minutes)
7. Enjoy!

Eating the Yard

This tree puts out the biggest bunches
I've ever seen! 70lbs for the last bunch!

When the Air Force moved my family and I to a small base in Germany, I jokingly said to my wife that it would be really nice to have a cherry tree in the yard since I had one as a kid and always loved eating them by the handfull. Our realtor showed us some terrifying houses--one of which had hundreds of stuffed birds mounted on the walls (HUNDREDS!!!). But then she showed us one in the small, small town of Niederscheidweiler. The icing on the cake for us was the irony of the cherry tree in the yard.
So when the Air Force moved us to the beautiful island of Guam, we were shown many houses that were okay, but just not for us. Funny enough, one even had a dead bird in it (just one though, not hundreds). But finally, our realtor showed us an awesome house. There wasn't a cherry tree in the yard, but there were 3 banana trees, a papaya tree and a calamansi tree that hangs over the fence for sharing.
Our banana trees are currently producing about 150lbs of bananas each. Our papaya tree is producing the largest papayas I've ever seen and our newly found calamansi tree is giving us tons of of fruit that we know nothing about but are very excited to experiment with.

Calamansis hanging over the fence.

One problem--with my wife and 2/3 of our kids in Hawaii, it's just me and my oldest son, Jacob. We simply cannot eat 450lbs of bananas, we both hate the taste of papayas and there are so many calamanis that are completely new to us and we have no idea what to do with them.
Now at this point you might be wondering why I am complaining about the near orchard-like properties our yard offers. Well, I highlight these issues to showcase the attitude surplus that my son and I are about to attempt. It would be nice to be able to utilize all of this food, but I'm pretty sure banana-induced potassium poisoning isn't very pleasant. But we simply can't consume it all, so as soon as all these things are ripe and ready to come off the tree, we are going to start sharing within the community. 
When we were in Germany, I remember stopping at a bakery in Lutzerath on the way home from work and seeing a transaction between the butcher who worked across the street and the owner of the bakery. The butcher handed the baker a package of meats and the baker handed the baker an weeks worth of baked goods. It was a community exchange where no money was needed. It was amazing to me to see how even the owner of the town's hotel provided rooms for visiting family in exchange for breads and meats for the hotel restaurant. It was a completely self-reliant community. A self-licking ice cream cone, if you will. That moment will always stick with me. But how can we replicate this in our small community? That's the million-dollar question. Well, I'll keep you all updated as we try to figure out what to do with all of this fruit we have been blessed with this season.

Banana flowers peeking out.
They're great in salads.

Papayas as big as your head!

More bananas than we
know what to do with.

Coconuts!!!

Zorak stares at me every time I
photograph his fruit.

Haole Style Kalua Pork

***Disclaimer--This is not an authentic Kalua Pork recipe. This is a badly misinterpreted version of the recipe that I came up with. I appreciate the Hawaiian culture very much which is why I simply cannot try and pass this off as one of their recipes. I can say with 100% certainty that this is good food--out of a crock pot no less! I call it Haole-Style because "haole" is the slang term used for Caucasians on the Hawaiian Islands (it's not really a term of endearment, but it works, I guess). This is just a backwoods way to make something similar (and it is eerily similar in flavor).***
The Hawaiian dish really isn't difficult to make, but requires time and a lot of things that most of us don't have access to. Such as a fire pit, banana leaves, a whole pig, Hawaiian wood, lava stones, etc. But the pig really is just smoked pig, seasoned and wrapped in banana leaves and shredded. So what I've done is horribly misinterpreted the whole recipe for kicks. I've substituted things that are related, but are a far cry from the original ingredients, but they all serve a purpose to contribute to the mimicking of real Kalua Pork.

• Whole Pig is now a Pork Roast
• Apple in the pig's mouth is now cider vinegar and apple chunks
• Kalua is now Kahlua (or go cheap and get spiced rum and instant coffee)
• Smoke from the banana leaves is now banana slices and roasted flavor of the coffee
• Natural saltiness from island-grown pig is now sea salt
• Hawaiian Fire Pit is now a Crock Pot

Ingredients:

• 2.5lb Pork Roast
• 1c Apple Cider Vinegar
• 1.5c Spiced Rum (Capt. Morgan is fine, Black Heart or Sailor Jerry's is a bit more 'edgy' tasting)
• 2T Instant Coffee
• 1t Crushed Red Pepper Flakes
• 1T Sea Salt
• 1T Granulated Garlic
• 1T Fresh Ground Black Pepper
• 1 Granny Smith or Fuji Apple, cubed
• 2 Ripe Bananas, sliced 1.5" thick
• 1lb Dark Brown Sugar
• Unfiltered Apple Juice (amount needed depends on size of crock pot)

Method:

1. Place roast on cutting board and cut many 1/2'' slices diagonally across the top of the meat (scoring). Cut them the other way as well so it appears you have many diamonds across your roast. Flip the roast and repeat to the bottom. Set aside.
2. Place all prepared ingredients into crock pot and stir. Make sure all instant coffee grounds are dissolved. Place roast into mixture and use Unfiltered Apple Juice to bring liquid to the top of the roast.
3. Set Crock Pot on medium and let cook for 5 hours (this may vary depending on crock pot and size and weight of your roast). Low and slow is what we're going for here.
4. Check your roast by securing it with a carving fork then firmly dragging a dinner fork over the top of it. If the meat pulls away with little effort, you are done. Remove roast from crock pot and place in a large mixing bowl.
5. Either pull it apart with two forks, your hands or, as I do, with a hand mixer. All the chunks of banana and apple will be soft enough to simply mix in with the meat. if it seems a little dry to you, mix in some of the juices from the crock pot until it's the consistency you like.
6. Either serve by itself or on a kaiser roll. Top with pickled jalapenos or banana peppers for a tasty kick!

Enjoy! Let me know how it all turns out! Don't forget to 'Like' me on Facebook and 'Follow' me on Twitter and Pinterest!

Black History Month: Sous Chef Chris Rogers

To kick off this feature, I thought we'd start with one of my culinary mentors. When I served with him at Buechel AB, Germany, I knew him as MSgt Rogers. He has since retired from the Air Force, but his lessons still linger in my life from a personal and professional standpoint. Below is his take on Soul Food and what it means to him.

Sous Chef Christopher Rogers

Black History Month--I never really understood the connection of Black History Month and food, but I always went with it; especially while in the military. To me growing up “Soul Food” or “Food from the Soul” was an everyday occurrence. As families often struggled to make ends meet, no-matter-what put food on the table that was good, filling and cooked from the heart. It was never really intertwined with Black History Month. 
As a kid I enjoyed watching my Grandmother, Mother, Aunts and Uncles cook and I learned so much from them. The times we gathered were on holidays and other special occasions with recipes handed down from the years with very little documented, just measured and cooked from sight, smell and touch, but this to my memory was never in February. 
As the culinary world advances, I personally think “Soul Food” will continually play a part because no matter who you are or where you grew up you and your family has a culinary “Soul.” Whether its Italian, African American, Chinese, Latin or wherever that defines the food you eat and weaves a culinary tale of the struggles your ancestors faced through the years. Black History Month is a time to celebrate people who have paved the way. For me it’s Chefs like Jefferson Evans, Johnny Rivers, Patrick Clark and Edna Lewis all African American Culinary icons who made great strides in the Culinary field and are still relevant today.
-Sous Chef Christopher Rogers