Habanero-Garlic Grilled Shrimp

This is a Bobby Flay recipe which has been slightly changed. Amazing crowd pleaser.

Habanero-Garlic Grilled Shrimp

1. 8 garlic cloves
2. 1/2 cup pure olive oil, plus more for brushing
3. ½ or 1 habanero chile, seeded and chopped  depending on how spicy you want the sauce
4. 5 tablespoons chopped cilantro
5. 1/4 cup fresh lime juice
6. 1 tablespoon honey or I prefer Maple Syrup (Pure)
7. Salt and freshly ground pepper
8. 2 Pounds 26-30 shrimp (size), deveined and shell removed

Wear Gloves. Soak Skewers in Water and handle the Habanero Very Very Carefully. In a small saucepan, combine the garlic and 1/2 cup of the olive oil and simmer over low heat until the garlic is golden brown, about 8 minutes. Transfer the garlic to a blender and pour the oil into a glass measuring cup. Let the oil cool slightly. Add the habanero chile to the blender with 1/4 cup of the cilantro, the lime juice and honey/maple syrup and puree. With the blender on, slowly add the garlic olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. You can make this sauce ahead of time and even refrigerate for a few days.

Brush the shrimp with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Skewer the Shrimp Grill over a hot fire until lightly charred, about 4 minutes per side. Remove shrimp from skewers and transfer to a serving bowl. Drizzle with the vinaigrette, sprinkle with the remaining cilantro and serve.

Smoked Turkey in a Brinkman Water Smoker

Here we go again but without pictures this time. Will have to wait till Thanksgiving for photos. As you may already know, I love to smoke meats in the Brinkman Water Smoker. I have been smoking Turkey for Thanksgiving for the last 4 years and I can safely tell you that this is the best way to cook a Turkey. The key is to find the right size Turkey that will fit in the Smoker and the time you take to Brine the Turkey for 12-24 hours before cooking. I have used Diestel Free Range Turkey which has not been frozen. A 12lb Turkey fits nicely in the smoker but you could go up to 14-15 lbs. You can also safely use this recipe for brining chicken, just reduce the amount of water and salt and other ingredients appropriately.

Ingredients:
One 12-14  lbs Turkey (don't use Kosher or self basting turkey since they already contain salt.)

2 Gallons Non Chlorinated Water
1 Bottle Reisling
2 Tablespoons Juniper Berries
4 Tablespoons Black Peppers
2 Tablespoons Colored Peppers
1 Celery Stalk Coarsely Chopped
1 Yellow Onion Coarsely Chopped
4 Medium Carrots Coarsely Chopped
4 Bay Leaves
1 1/2  Cups Salt
1/2 Cup Sugar
1 Bunch Sage

Directions:

The hardest part for me to brine the turkey every year is how to store the Turkey. Fortunately, last year I found a large pot similar to a clam bake pot that I can fit inside the fridge. If you don't have a large pot, you could try to put the turkey in a large cooler or a 5 gallon paint bucket but make sure you can fit that in your fridge.

Pour the water and the Reisling in the pot. Mix salt in the water until completely dissolved add sugar and mix it well. Wash and clean the Turkey and get rid of the giblets. Dump all of the chopped vegetables in the pot along with the other ingredients. Drop the Turkey carefully into the brine and put it in the fridge for about 12-24 hours.

Remove Turkey from the brine at least 30 minutes prior to putting it in the smoker to bring it close to room temperature. When your smoker is hot and ready to go, simply place the Turkey on the top shelf of the smoker and cook for 4 hours. Check the temperature with a meat thermometer for a reading around 160 to 165 degrees. Remove the Turkey and rest it for 10 minutes prior to cutting it. Enjoy the most delicious, moist Turkey you would have ever had. The day after Thanksgiving, you can wear gloves and remove the meat from Turkey by hand and shred it with your hands or chop it with a knife. Mix some mayonnaise and chopped red onions, cilantro and seeded green chili's. Season with salt and pepper and put the mix on a Crostini or Crackers and enjoy with a nice glass of Pinot Gris.

Happy Smoking

Smoked Baby Back Ribs

Hello Folks,
This recipe has been requested by many friends so doing my best to reproduce it. There are literally thousands of sites with thousands of recipes for baby back ribs. You can take this recipe and modify it to your taste by adding ingredients to the Rib Rub. This recipe and the techniques will provide the basic foundation for smoking ribs and meat in a Brinkman Water Smoker. I received the smoker as a gift on my 40th birthday 4 years ago and yesterday the smoker finally broke down after being manhandled for so long. This smoker will last forever if you take good care of it. I didn't. It was left out during Summer, Winter, Rain, Hail etc. You can go to this excellent site on how to modify the smoker to use less charcoal. I will be buying another smoker soon and will certainly modify it according to the directions on this site.
http://brinkmansmokermods.com/default.aspx

Happy Smoking!!

Ingredients

• 2 whole slabs pork baby back ribs

Dry Rub:

• 8 tablespoons light brown Sugar tightly packed
• 3 tablespoons kosher salt
• 1 tablespoon chili powder or adjust if you like more or less spicy
• 1/2 teaspoon Ground black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper or adjust if you like more or less spicy
• 1/2 teaspoon rubbed thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon ground juniper berries (optional)

Directions

In a bowl, combine all dry ingredients and mix well. Place each slab of baby back ribs on a piece of heavy-duty aluminum foil, shiny side down. Sprinkle each side generously with the dry rub. Pat the dry rub into the meat. Refrigerate the ribs for at least 12 hours and up to 24 hours.

Remove ribs from the fridge at least an hour before you start your smoker . Take a chimney coal starter (please, please don't use lighter fluid). Fill the bottom part of the chimney starter with newspaper and fill the top portion with charcoal briquettes or mesquite. Light the newspapers on fire. Wear gloves to prevent your hand from getting burnt. I put my chimney starter on my smoker. See photo.

While your charcoal is getting started, take the water pan from the smoker and add about 5 bottles of beer (cheap ones are fine). You can use water if you like but I like the flavor I get from beer. After adding beer in the water pan, add coarsely chopped onions, celery, carrots, garlic and whatever else you like. I have added apples, oranges etc. Experiment and let me know what worked better for you.

By now your coal should be burning and ready to go. Pour the charcoal in the smoker pan and add more charcoal as this fire will need to burn for at least 4 to 5 hours.

Put the cylinder on top of the charcoal and drop the water pan into the cylinder. Put the round grill on top of the water rack. Your first set of ribs are ready to be placed on the grill.

Put the second grill in the cylinder for your second set of ribs.

Now your lid is ready to go on the smoker and it's time for the ribs to cook in the indirect heat for at least 4 hours. The beauty of this smoker is that you can practically never over cook the ribs. The longer you cook them the better they taste and literally fall of the bone. There are some folks who suggest that an hour or two before removing the ribs from the smoker you should baste them in BBQ sauce or other mops with apple juice etc. I am not a big fan of it but you can try it out if you like.

The temperature gauge should start showing ideal in about 15-20 minutes. Now throw in some wood chips of your choice that have been soaked in water through the aluminum door on top of the burning charcoal every 30 minutes. I love applewood chips but you can use alder, mesquite, hickory or whatever else you like. Again, experiment with different flavors.

Your labor of love is about to be paid off. You can at this point serve the ribs right away or you can put them in foil and reheat them later on your gas grill or oven. Enjoy and please ask me any questions or if you have any feedback.

My dog is ready for some ribs!!!

Smoky Glazed Asparagus

I used this marinade of this recipe on other veggies as well. If you like you can substitute Mayonnaise with Sour Cream and you will get pretty much the same result.

Ingredients

1. 1/2 cup mayonnaise
2. 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
3. 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
4. 1 garlic clove, crushed
5. 1 tablespoon sweet smoked paprika
6. 2 teaspoons kosher salt
7. 1 teaspoon cumin seeds (I like to lightly crush them in a mortar pestle or coffee grinder)
   
8. 1 pound thick asparagus, trimmed
9. 2 tablespoon Mustard (gray poupon) or 2 tablespoon Black Mustard Seeds Crushed ** Added by me*** Not in the original recipe

Directions

1. Light a grill. In a shallow dish, whisk the mayonnaise with the oil, lemon juice, garlic, paprika, salt and cumin. Add the asparagus and toss; let stand for 30 minutes.
2. Grill the asparagus over moderately high heat, turning, until tender and blistered in spots, 6 minutes; serve.

Chicken Tikka Recipe

Ingredients

6 Pounds Chicken Thighs (Boneless)

¾ Cup Minced or Shredded Ginger

½ Cup Minced Garlic

1 Pound Sour Cream

50g Shan Tandoori Chicken Masala

100g MDH Tandoori Chicken Masala

3 Tablespoons Garam Masala

4 Tablespoons Amchur (Dry Mango) Powder

3 Tablespoons Black “Kalonji” Seeds

4-5 Tablespoons salt or according to taste

3 Tablespoons Red Chili Powder according to taste

4-5 Tablespoons paprika for color or you can use red/orange color instead

DIRECTIONS:

Wear Gloves. Soak wooden skewers in water. Wash and pat dry chicken thighs. Cut chicken into bite size pieces that will fit on the skewers (not too small otherwise they fill fall off the skewer). Leave some fat on the chicken as it contributes to tenderness of the meat.

Put chicken pieces in a large bowl. Mix all ingredients together in the bowl with the chicken. Skewer the pieces of chicken and marinate overnight (at least 12 hours and up to 24 hours).

Grill the skewers on either a gas or a charcoal grill until the chicken is cooked through.

Please control the heat level of the Red Chili Powder according to taste. If you want your chicken spicier, you can increase the number of teaspoons of chili.

KJ Salsa Rojo Y Verde

KJ Salsa Rojo Y Verde


8 Roma Tomatoes (not too firm)
6 Cloves Garlic peeled
I bunch green onions
1 Large White Onion
½ Can Organic Chicken Broth or Vegetable Broth
3 Anaheim Peppers
2-3 Jalapeno Peppers
1 Tsp Cumin Powder (roasted if possible)
2 Limes
Salt to taste
1 tsp red chili powder (optional)
½ Bunch fresh cilantro

Light a grill. Put 6 Roma tomatoes stem side down on the grill. Wrap garlic cloves in aluminum foil and throw on the grill. Put the Anaheim chili’s and jalapeno’s on the grill. Char the tomatoes, chili’s and put the green onions on the grill for 5 minutes before you take out all the ingredients as the green onions cook really fast and tend to burn instead of char if left on grill too long.

Let the entire grilled items cool for a bit and remove stems from the Anaheim Chili’s and Jalapeno’s and add all grilled items to a blender once cooled. Blend and add chicken stock intermittently. Use caution to prevent salsa sauce from overflowing out of the blender. Pour the sauce in a large container. Chop white onions and the remaining 2 tomatoes. Add to the salsa sauce. Chop cilantro and add to the salsa sauce. Add salt, cumin powder and squeeze lemon juice in the salsa. Add salt and taste to make sure that the salsa is spicy enough. If the Jalapeno’s are not spicy enough, add red chili powder according to your taste preference. Let cool in refrigerator for 30 minutes prior to serving.

You can use Tomatillo's instead of tomatoes. Make sure you soak the Tomatillo's in water (with the husk) before you put them on the grill.

You can add grilled corn to this recipe as well.

Filmfare Awards – An Insult to our sensibilities?

The 54th Filmfare awards ceremony was held on the 28th of February, 2009 in Mumbai, India. The annual show is ostensibly the Oscars of Bollywood, however the comparison between the two is immature at best. The awards are given by a commercial magazine called Filmfare and the process of nominating the films and the voting is opaque at best. Oscars on the other hand have a rigorous nomination process that has been in place for 7 decades and relies on the voting of Academy Members who have been or are involved in the film industry. Furthermore, the counting of the ballots is done under the auspices of Price Waterhouse Coopers an independent audit firm.
Every year the awards are handed out to the commercially successful films. Perhaps the title of the awards should be changed accordingly. Best Film? Can someone describe the criteria for selection? Take the nominations for this year as an example.
1. Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi
2. Dostana
3. Jodha Akbar
4. Ghajini
5. Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na
6. Rock On!
Can someone please explain the absence of some terrific films that were produced this year such as Welcome to Sajjanpur, Ramchand Pakistani or Khuda Kay Liye? How about A Wednesday? Does at least one best film in the nomination list must have Shahrukh Khan in it?
Best actor nomination for Shahrukh (Ruk Ruk) Khan for Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi is an insult to the average viewer’s sensibility. When is Filmfare stop going to pander to the biggest stars and award actors based on performances, not popularity.
Pick almost any category and you will find a complete travesty of art and cinema. Top that up with the show itself. We saw a slew of artists from Slumdog Millionaire being worshipped on the stage for a very well deserving performance but had this movie been made in India under an Indian banner it would not have made the Filmfare awards nominee list. Our actors and actresses have shed the traditional Indian outfits to don western designer clothes but have not shed the double standard that is carried in this show. Ashtosh Gowarikar and the movie Jodha Akbar won several awards but none of the small banner films even got the nod from the magazine. It is time for India to wake up and appreciate art in its entirety and not just commercially successful films and please dispense with the hip gyrating dances, even with pants on only one leg, they are still the same lame dances that are presented in every cheap show on Indian Television.

Why I hate AT&T

Sorry but I am about to begin a rant & need to vent./START RANT/I have been with AT&T/Cingular since 1997. Perhaps that in itself is a fault of mine but I digress. I purchased this Blackberry Bold in November 2008 and I have nothing but issues. I thought the Blackjack was bad but this Phone makes Sybil look well adjusted. Here are some salient features of the phone.Let me put this disclaimer. I have no third party apps on this phone and no beta versions of the OS.

1. Resets practically every day on it's own & then takes about 6-7 minutes to come back to life.
2. When it does come back to life, it spends quality time re-organizing logs making the phone unusable
3. Slows down to a crawl and you have to soft reset it and then rinse and repeat step 1 and 2.
4. Calls drop more frequently than rain during monsoon. I get "CALL FAILED" or more recently a new and more creative message which is actually refreshing, it's like your wife calling you new names "UNABLE TO FIND PATH TO NETWORK". Awesome! I am waiting to see "Hello World" soon.
5. Lately, Blackberry messaging stops syncing. No email for 10-15 minutes and you realize that it can't be possible that no one at Cisco is sending something meaningful every minute. So when I reset and rinse and repeat step 1 and 2, email starts to flow again, like my adrenalin.

I Called AT&T and I was told that I must hard reset/wipe my phone clean before they can do a return. I explain that I have done that before and it has not helped. I am told that I need to do it again in order for them to do a RMA. OK. I do hard reset and call them back in two days stating that the phone is still having the same issues. I am greeted by another clueless rep asking the same questions. What is your account number for instance. I explain that I don't get physicall bills anymore. Well, then I need to type a command on the phone to get an IMEI number for him. Then I am asked to remove the battery and provide the last 5 digits of my SIM card. I was asked the color of my battery connecters (I am not kidding). Brass, is what I told him. "They are not green, are they"? "Brass", I said. "There is small square sticker on the side wall where the battery goes, what color is that?". "White", I said. "Good, this means that the phone was not dropped in water". "Was the phone ever dropped?".I am asked 2 numbers where I made phone calls to. I was ready to contort my body to provide my underwear size but he never asked.

I was told that the RMA number will be generated if I agree that if they find that the phone was damaged they will charge my card $499. I honestly feel that my body search at the madagascar airport was less intrusive than this interaction with AT&T, and I am the one who has to deal with this crap phone day in and day out after paying AT&T $200 and not to mention the monthly fees that I have been paying for 11 years. So much for loyalty.

The coverage is absolutely horrendous. I can predict exactly where my calls will fail, since I take the same route to work and home practically every day. There is a dead zone right here on Tasman and 880 interchange and then to endure the ads on TV about how great their network coverage is. I experienced better GSM coverage in BELIZE than AT&T has in the USA.

Last but not the least. The phone drops my bluetooth connection quite randomly and when I get home and turn off the bluetooth and hook it up to the charger. Guess what? YEP!! My incoming call routes to my BLUETOOTH!! When it SHOULDN'T.... I think a colonoscopy is less of an irritant than AT&T.
/END RANT/