Pit Beef

What is Pit Beef?  With a little googling you will find it is a regional specialty from Baltimore, Md that is served as sandwich meat.  The meat is usually Round Roast or for most home cooks an Eye of Round.  It is usually cooked hot and fast with a nice char on the outside and rosey red on the inside - Rare or Med Rare.  The best cooks in the country still adhere to the hot and fast, crusty outside method for cooking this meat but don't listen to them.  I have a better way.  If it is to be sliced thin and used for sandwiches I just don't believe that Char on the outside is going to add much but if you think it does, feel free to crank your grill up after it has reached 100° to 105° internal and sear it off the way you like it.  As you can see in the picture below, I cooked this along with some Spare Ribs low and slow @ 225° until it reached 130° internal temp or Med Rare.  Just coarse salt and fresh ground pepper with a little granulated garlic was rubbed on all sides after trimming all silver skin and fat off all but one side which was the side I placed on the cooking grate.  Loosely covered with foil till room temp came next and into the fridge overnight to make slicing it thin easier.  You can painstakingly try to slice it with a knife but a counter top home slicer works best to get good uniform thin slices.  Serve it on a nice roll with a horseradish sauce and what a treat.  It is irresistible and you can trust me on that one. 

Eggplant & Pasta

When your garden is providing all those fresh vegetables you want to take advantage it and we are doing just that with our second Eggplant dish and it was fantastic.  The Eggplant was just picked and the Marinara Sauce was canned from our tomatoes last year. We used the Baked recipe (see a few post down) for the Eggplant but added a thick slice of Fresh Mozzarella Cheese in between two slices and baked again till melted.  Easy enough to do and when served over the Penne with the Marinara Sauce you really have a nice dish that most anyone would enjoy.  If you make and can your own Marinara Sauce what really kicks it up is to cook it again and start by cooking down some onion and garlic before adding the sauce to the pan and cook that a really long time on slow simmer.  It really is one of the best Pasta dishes I think I've ever had anywhere. 

Dry Lettuce w/Fan

Try this the next time you make a salad.  You know the salad spinners are great but never enough and this gets the job done without having to stand over it forever with paper towels.

Oven Fried Eggplant

With just 5 minutes prep time and 24 min cooking time you can have this on your table and it is VERY good.  Start with cutting the Eggplant into 1/2 inch slices.  In a small bowl mix 1/2 cup mayo with 1 or 2 Tbs on finely minced onion.  In another small bowl mix 1/3 cup Italian Seasoned Bread Crumbs with 1/3 Cup grated Parmesan and add seasoning to taste (salt & pepper or Lawry's & pepper).  Spread the mayo & onion on the slices of Eggplant and coat with the Bread Crumb mixture and place the slices on a Veg Oil Sprayed sheet pan and cook 12 min, turn slices and cook 12 min more.

Baked Zucchini Rounds

Dusted with cornmeal fried in oil, Baked slices like you see here, or grated to make Fritters out of are my 3 favorite ways to use Zucchini.  To bake you need the slices 1/4 thick and I use a mandoline slicer for this job, put the slices in a bowl and toss with Olive Oil, in another bowl mix dried bread crumbs with an equal amount of grating cheese like Parmesan and season with Lawrys Seasoned Salt and add a good amount of Cayenne.  Put all of it in some sort of bowl with lid and shake it to coat the zucchini.  Add the slices to a large sheet pan sprayed with Pam and place in 450 degree preheated oven for about 20 - 25 min or till browned to your liking.  The cheese makes all the difference.

Refrigerator Pickles

This recipe is a "must try" and even more so when your garden is giving you all the cucumbers you can use and then some like mine is now.  It is nice to be able to enjoy these without having to cold pack and once you taste this you will want to keep a jar or two in the frige as long as the cucumbers last.  The flavor this recipe provides is almost identical to the Cajun Pickled Jalapeno recipe and to add some heat I included a couple of tbs of Crushed Red Pepper.  Click here for the recipe.