Alliterative

Cornucopia III

Time for another compendium cooking post, this time involving various, newly acquired cooking implements and cookbooks!

Earlier in the summer we bought a new cookbook, another in the Essential Cookbook series called The Essential Barbecue Cookbook. Since a number of the recipes in the book call for cooking on a barbeque griddle or a cast iron skillet on the grill, we bought ourselves another cast iron pan to use exclusively on the barbeque. For our first recipe from this new cookbook, we decided to adapt one of the recipes involving the skillet, Scallops with Sesame Bok Choy. What we wanted to do was make the sesame bok choy and serve it with something else. Having dutifully seasoned our newly purchased pan, we then realised that it would be unwise to use it in its maiden usage for this recipe since it involved a certain amount of liquid that included some lime juice; one isn’t supposed to use cast iron cookware with liquids, especially acidic liquids, until it is very well seasoned. So instead we made the sesame bok choy on the stovetop. Essentially what happens is sesame seeds and garlic are briefly fried in sesame oil. Then the baby bok choy are placed in the pan, and a marinade from the scallops in the original recipe, containing soy sauce, fish sauce, honey, kecap manis, lime juice and rind, and grated fresh ginger, is poured over. Here’s a picture of the bok choy cooking:

To go with the bok choy, we re-created the short rib dish we made previously with my father-in-law, marinated in dark soy sauce, chili garlic sauce, rice wine, and ginger. Here’s the finished dinner served on top of some rice:

So unfortunately we didn’t manage to use our newly acquired cast iron pan on this particular occasion.

In the past, we’ve found that making cornbread is a really good way to break in a cast iron pan and develop the non-stick surface, so we decided to make some cornbread on the barbecue. After heating up the pan on the grill with some oil in it, we poured the batter in. Here’s a picture of the cornbread nearing completion, with some vegetable packages cooking on the side:

After taking the cornbread off the grill, we decided that it wasn’t quite done, so we briefly finished it off under the broiler while the rest of the dinner was cooking on the barbeque. To go with the cornbread, along with the vegetable packets, we barbequed some pork ribs. I’m not ashamed to admit that when we make barbequed ribs, we first boil the ribs, with a sliced onion and a sliced lemon, before finishing up on the grill with the sauce — though I’m sure barbeque afficionadoes would be horrified that we don’t actually slow cook them. It’s just so much easier! I’m also not ashamed to admit that we use a bottled sauce, President’s Choice Memories of Dad’s Grill, flavoured with maple syrup. It’s just so damn good! Here’s the finished dinner, with some boiled corn on the side:

So finally we managed to use our dedicated barbeque cast iron pan. It’s starting to come along now; hopefully soon we won’t have to worry about what we cook with it.

The final dinner of this compendium post uses another recently acquired cooking gadget, the slow cooker. It also involves another new cookbook borrowed from my mother: Judith Finlayson’s The 150 Best Slow Cooker Recipes. The particular recipe we made was a traditional Mexican dish, Snapper Vera Cruz:

First, onions, garlic, oregano, ground cinnamon and cloves, and finely chopped jalapeño pepper are briefly sautéed in oil on the stovetop. Then a can of diced tomatoes and some clam juice is added to the pan and brought to the boil. Once boiling, this mixture is then poured into the slow cooker:

In the last twenty minutes of the cooking, thinly sliced snapper fillets are added, along with some lemon juice. Finally, capers and sliced olives are added. It was a very good dish, and we can’t wait to make some more slow cooker recipes!

Posted by Mark at August 19, 2004 04:50 PM