The Big Benford Show

Jamie Oliver has a new show on TV called Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. Have you seen it yet? He’s doing some potentially amazing things for the community of Huntington, West Virginia. And the thing is, the problem isn’t just there. If you’d like to support the Food Revolution and sign the petition for better food in schools, go do it! Good on ya, Jamie!

Thanks to Dr. Dave & Saucy Joe’s blog for the guidance (and by guidance, I mean recipe, really) in making my brisket! So, here is my process with pictures:

First, you need to marinade the brisket. I used two bottles of Guinness Stout, one onion and two small cloves of garlic:

Because even the gallon Ziploc bags are too small for a 7 1/2 pound brisket, I opted to marinate in these Reynolds cooking bags.

That sat in the fridge for 24 hours. After 12 hours, I went ahead and flipped the meat over to insure that it marinated evenly.

The next morning, I took the brisket out of the bag, rinsed it off and patted it dry. It’s now ready for seasoning prep for cooking!

Before you go further, open a beer, pour it into a glass and let it go flat. Stir & shake a little to help the process. I know, you’re gasping right now but you’ll see why shortly.

This is part of the seasoning - equal parts brown sugar, dijon mustard & Worcester sauce. I actually made it the night before and let it sit in the fridge in this jar. The jar with lid certainly makes it easy to mix together - just shake!

This is what it looks like on the meat:

Then, just coat that with your favorite beef rub. Since I’ve never done this before, I went with the Fiesta seasoning brand brisket rub that I found at HEB. It’s a little bit spicier than I’d want but it had good flavor.

Once that’s all coated, let it sit an hour.

Next, it’s all about prepping the grill. I didn’t get as many pictures of this as I’d like - I have to admit that I’ve always been weak at building the fire in my grilling practices. But for some reason (maybe because I knew I had the power of Saucy Joe & Dr. Dave behind me), I had no problems this time! I probably had more coals on the grill than I actually needed, though. Regardless, it worked so no complaints here!

First thing’s first, you have to soak your wood chips. They had quite a few options at HEB and I was certainly glad for variety. I got Cherry & Pecan. I soaked those for about 30 minutes while the meat was resting after coating and I was preparing the grill itself.

I have a basic-sized Weber grill. I got a pot that’s made for cooking beans, etc. on a grill and put that on the charcoal grate. You’ll see why in a moment. Around that, about 2/3 of the way around the grill, I put charcoal down.

In the pot, I put in my flat beer (oh, okay), a can of beef broth and water. The pot is about 4″ deep & 4″ in diameter so the beer & broth filled it up quite well by themselves. This is to flavor the smoke & keep the meat moist while it cooks.

Then, using my chimney fire starter (charcoal on top, a little newspaper on the bottom - too much can suffocate the fire, btw), I started a fire but only put it over a part of the empty space I left, touching only one end of the cold coals. This allows the fire to move around the partial ring slowly, helping to control the heat during the cooking process. These are the little things you may not know that having an expert on your side (like Dr. Dave) helps with.

Put plenty of wood chips (I drained them most of the way after around 30 minutes) around both the hot coals and the cold coals. This will create smoke and add flavor to the meat. Once this is going, cover the grill and let the temperature inside get up to about 225 degrees. It took around 20 minutes or so for my grill. I measured it by sticking my meat thermometer (oh yeah, you’ll need one of those for this) in the top vent hole that’s open just slightly and letting the temperature settle. Once that happens, I put the meat on. See all that smoke? That’s what you want.

After 3 hours on the grill, only opening the lid to periodically add more wood chips, check the temperature of the meat, again using the meat thermometer. It needs to be around 160 degrees at its thickest part. Once it’s at that temperature, wrap it in two layers of heavy duty foil with a cup of water over the meat (more moisture) and either put into a 225 degree pre-heated oven or put back on the grill (as long as the grill temp is still around 225). You want to leave it until the meat temperature (still at its thickest part) is between 185-190 degrees. Nice thing about foil is you can test the temperature of meat without opening it (hint, hint).

Once it’s all done, let it rest in the foil for about an hour and you’re ready to eat. Enjoy!

While walking through my local HEB on Sunday, I figured I should get something to make for dinner and decided on beef stew. I’ve made a roast before but I don’t know that I’ve ever made a beef stew so I took a moment to add some key ingredients I knew I didn’t have at home to my list. Here’s what I did when I got home:

1. I coated the dried beef chunks (pre-cut) in flour and sautéed in the pot I was making the stew in (yes, this is a one pot dish!!).

2. I chopped up my veggies.
Carrots (I used 3)

Potatoes (I used 3)

Onion (I used 1)

Celery (I used 1, including leaves)

Leeks (I used 1 - cut open and wash each piece very carefully. It holds a lot of dirt.)

3. I turned the heat back on and deglazed the pan with some red wine and beef stock (I thawed leftover stock from a previous meal). I added salt, pepper, two bay leaves, basil (dried) & rosemary (dried) at this point as well.

4. All the veggies and meat go in the pot.

5. Cover and cook on medium high heat.

6. The veggies are tender so it’s ready to eat!

7. Final product:

It’s been a while since I made this dish but it was DELICIOUS!! Here’s the recipe, in case you want to try it.

First, chop up the onion and garlic.

Saute them in some olive oil in the pot the sauce will be cooked in.

The three meats I’ve used are beef, pork and lamb. 1/3 pounds of each create a trifecta of yummy!!

I chopped up Rosemary, sage and basil. These were so pretty fresh out of my garden that I had to snap the pic before they were all chopped up.

Some people like to put the pasta in the lasagna uncooked then let the sauce cook it while in the oven but I can’t wrap my brain around that concept so I always boil the noodles separately first. Only to al dente, though.

Once the meat is browned, I add the following ingredients to make the sauce:
Red wine, I had some Merlot to add in today.

Whole, peeled tomatoes and tomato puree. I really like the Muir Glen Organic Tomato products.

Once the flavors of the sauce are melded together, you start layering everything. You need to start with a layer of sauce to keep the pasta from sticking to the bottom.

Then a layer of pasta:

Then meat sauce:

A layer of ricotta cheese:

Then mozzarella cheese:

And repeat until you get to the top.
When you get to the top, add some freshly grated parmesan cheese:

And bake. It’s been long enough that I can’t remember what temperature I baked it at but I’d say around 375 degrees until it looks like this:

I made garlic bread, too:

So, the recipe isn’t too difficult, is it? Give it a try…make sure you get good ingredients if you make this lasagna, though. Enjoy!!

Well, we’re in October and I’m not sure how much cooking I’ll be doing. Life gets pretty busy and even on Sundays, there isn’t a whole lotta time to cook. :/ I did find a good website for healthier cooking called Eat Better America and made the Chicken Pot Pie recipe from there last night. No pictures but goodness, it was YUMMY!!

Back to marching band - I have our contest times to post. Hopefully, you can make it to the UIL Region Marching Contest on October 17 and support the SPHS Tiger Band. We perform 3rd - warm up is at 4:20, with the performance at 5:00 pm. This contest will be at the RRISD Athletics Complex (The Palace). Hopefully, the rest of the marching schedule will be on the UIL Region 26 website soon. We just got the schedule in our emails yesterday….

Our final marching contest for the season will be the Sam Houston State University Marching Festival in Huntsville. We decided to go because there will be some great bands there and its format is much like UIL Area (prelims/finals). We are really trying to change the mindset of our band that it’s not over at UIL Region so on our “off years”, we’ll be participating on contests post-Region like this one. If you’re in the Huntsville area and can come support us (we’ll probably have a very small following with the distance from home being as it is), we’ll be performing in prelims on Saturday, October 24 at 5:15 (warm up at 4:30).

We did host and perform the CenTex Marching Showcase last weekend. It went well again and we got lots of positive feedback from the participants about the showcase. Had fun hanging out with the judges as well. Our rating was Superior and our percussion won a Outstanding Percussion award. Because we host the contest much like a UIL Region Marching Contest, we are able to perform as a full participant, not just exhibition. Good times!

I’ve been going to Whole Foods on Sundays to see my mom (and get a wonderful massage!!!) and while I’m there, I find something to inspire Sunday night dinner, which always leads to yummy leftovers for lunch later in the week (or freeze for later later). This particular Sunday, I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to make so I wandered Whole Foods (and the internet) for a “secret ingredient” that would inspire the recipe for dinner. My first thought was cioppino but once I looked up a recipe or two online, I decided it was too much for a spur of the moment meal. I still wanted the seafood so I decided on seafood spaghetti. Here’s how I made it:

I started by chopping and sauteing an onion and several cloves of garlic.

From there, I cleaned the shrimp, cut the hallibut into bite sized pieces and made sure my scallops were all nice and clean.

In extra virgin olive oil, I saute the seafood.

I added in some more flavorings, including white wine, red pepper flakes, Italian seasoning and of course, butter.

I had a beautiful heirloom tomato so I chopped it up and added it in for a bit of color and added flavor.

And here’s the final product over noodles and topped with fresh grated cheese.

If you try it, hope you enjoy it as much as I did!!
~C