Outside the dugout: What's cooking?

Chilly morning here is Gainesville as well but not that chilly.

Sweet Italian sausage with charred cabbage and giardiniera. Got to use Italian style giardiniera (vinegar based) instead of Chicago style (oil based) otherwise it is too oily.

 

Potato and broccoli soup tonight to take to a friends' house for dinner. I am guessing they are grilling pizza.

 

Making caramelized cabbage with penne from a NYT's recipe. They say it takes 10 minutes to caramelize the cabbage. LOL. More like 40 minutes to do it right.

Sage, garlic and anchovies give it excellent flavor. Along with parmigiano reggiano. Worth the price and orders of magnitude better than the green can from Kraft.

Added in edit: My son that still lives at home wouldn't like what I made for everyone else so I made him dirty rice with andouille sausage.

 

Left over potato/broccoli soup tonight. Got to clean out the fridge and freezer because we get tented for drywood termites next Monday.

 

Cleaning out the freezer we had some clams from Cedar Key (you can freeze them but not as good a live) so making a Thai-like coconut/lime soup.

 

Cleaning out the freezer and fridge. Pulled a pork tenderloin out of the freezer, we have some frozen fries for the oven and a bag salad.

 

I have not but I usually use leftover pork tenderloin for escarole soup.

I will keep this in mind.

 

Saturday was a wedding celebration (the actual wedding was earlier at the courthouse) and yesterday was take-out pizza from Square House as we were getting prepped for a drywood termite tenting. A lot of food stuffs moved to my MIL's fridge that is in a additional dwelling unit on out property. Moved our parrot to her screen porch early this morning. Tenting was delayed until tomorrow morning after they found that they needed a bigger lift.

Tonight we are warming up a sausage, arugula and pasta dish that I made and froze a while back. Then watching game 7 of the AL Championship. We all would like to see the Mariners win because Seattle has never been. I don't count the Pilots becoming the Brewers as a Seattle team after they left after one season.

 

Grilling chicken thighs on the KJ with green beans and a salad.

Added in edit: I left my Thermoworks thermometers in my house that is now tented and full of poison gas. Going to have to go old school with a cake tester. Insert for 10 seconds and touch the wrist. If hot it is done. If cool cook longer.

 

I thought I would be cooking at home tonight as they removed the tent and ventilated the house. The problem is that they turned off the gas. I know how to turn it back on and how to relight the pilot on the water heater (my range and both our upstairs and downstairs gas furnaces are pilotless) but you aren't supposed to do that yourself. Called GRU about 2:00 and never heard back. Try again tomorrow.

Anyway I will be cooking tamale pie in my MIL's kitchen.

 

I saw the metal cake tester method on some cooking show. I recall seeing it as a kid. I think they put the metal cake tester to their lip on the show but I wouldn't do that.

Worked like a charm. Perfectly cooked chicken thighs.

I made sure that it was really hot because I think chicken thighs taste better well over 165 F. I like to get it to about 185 F. 165 F for breast meat is starting to dry out. Grilling or roasting a whole chicken is an art. Spatchcocking helps with keeping the thighs at the center (hotter) part of the grill and the breast meat on the edges (cooler) part. You have to have your coals set up correctly. When in a hurry and don't have time to spatchcock you know the breast meat will be a bit dry and the thigh meat not perfect but still not bad. Grilling the bird breast side up helps a little.

Then smoking a chicken low and slow to the point where the breast meat is cooked gives really juicy thigh meat and is my favorite way to cook chicken. The only drawback is the lack of crispy skin. Another draw back is that it takes typically 4 hours.

Not cooking tonight. Spent the whole day moving things back home to our fridge and freezer as well as dealing with getting our gas turned back on. Still have to move all of our spices and some of our open liquor back. Mostly done.