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Food Thread: Smoke 'Em If You've Got 'Em!

Long-time commenter and long-distance shooter "Blake" sent this along, and I must admit, I feel a bit guilty not having smoked the Mac&Cheese I served yesterday. That looks delicious! It is also another data point in my life-long study confirming my theory that everything is better in a smoker. Or at least as good!

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There is a difference between the faintly disgusting unripe tomatoes that Big Supermarket tries to pawn off on us, and the late summer green tomatoes that are used in the South to make Fried Green Tomatoes. Sadly, the tomatoes around here are uniformly awful, so I can't even wing it. But damn, a well executed fried tomato is delicious, and it is just my luck that I happened across this recipe when it is at least a month before anything palatable is available!

You Southerners are lucky!

Southern Fried Green Tomatoes Recipe

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Yup, that looks faintly disgusting, mostly because I am not an accomplished food photographer and it was impromptu anyway!

So what is it? a delicious cheeseburger (American Cheese Food Product, and a plain-Jane bun), with some avocado and...drum roll...a Poblano and Serrano chile hot sauce that a friend sent me. One might assume that it was going to be on the hot side, but it was perfectly balanced, with the sweetness of the Poblanos balancing the sometimes considerable heat of the Serranos. It was simply spicy, with all of the interesting flavors of the chiles on full display.

Great stuff! Poblano & Serrano Hot Sauce

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Plain old American Baked Beans! A bit too sweet for my taste, but I make them at home and can control the amount of sugar. So that pot turned out very, very well! The onions and green peppers that I was browning in the bacon fat took forever, I think because of the amount of liquid they sweated out. Obviously there is variation in each onion or pepper or whatever, and I think I simply got unlucky. But they eventually gave up enough water to brown a bit, and all was right and true and simple in DildoWorld.

They went well with grilled chicken, baby-back ribs, some great Mac&Cheese, a weird but good pasta salad, and some green stuff.

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Yup...that is a nice big octopus tentacle in a bun! Looks great, and I'll bet it tastes great!

Grilled octopus is wonderful, and when I see it on a menu I usually order it...like a few days ago in an Italian restaurant in Philadelphia! They served it on a ceci bean mash, and it worked well. But a large tentacle in a hot dog bun is minimalist and elegant. That might be the way to go!

[Hat Tip: naturalfake]

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I apologize in advance for how f*cking awful the writing is in this article, but the topic is interesting, so try to suffer through it! Young writers need to put down their phones and pick up a few well-written books!

Anyway, I was exposed to NC barbecue courtesy of my father, who would occasionally lecture in that state, and would bring back their various types of barbecue as often as possible. The one I remember best is the simplest...vinegar and red pepper flakes. Who knew something so simple could be so delicious.

Mapping a Barbecue Sauce Trail Through the Carolinas

Of course this brings up the existential question: Ginger or MaryAnne should barbecue be sauced to begin with?

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The garlic is harvested! And it looks...well...sigh. Send all of your excellent home-grown garlic to: cbd dot aoshq at gmail dot com.

Rumor has it that the Bourbon Bubble is bursting. I have seen no evidence of decreasing prices, but maybe the bursting started somewhere else! I think the sweet spot is $40-$60 for excellent and interesting bottles, and bumping that to $100 gets you an incremental improvement in quality, but nothing mind-blowing. More than that and I think you are paying for hype and rarity, which may look good in your liquor cabinet, but doesn't translate to more quality in the bottle.

The problem...or the solution...is to buy lots of bourbon, take tasting notes, and eventually arrive at your favorites! It should take forty or fifty years, but it is worth it!