Iceland - The Food Tour - Hot Dog!

Next stop, Icelandic Hot Dogs!

We went to the world famous Icelandic Hot Dog Stand. Note our awesome tour guide at the window placing our orders.

Even an American President, namely Bill Clinton, has eaten at this hot dog stand. 

The traditional Icelandic hotdog has lamb as part of the filling of the dog.  

Traditional toppings of a "one with everything" include ketchup, raw and carmelized onions (both placed under the dog not on top) two kinds of mustard - one of which is cut with mayo with additional spices as a remoulade.

In short, the result is hot dog nirvana.

I mean, that was truly a great hot dog.

Interestingly enough, President Clinton did not do the full Icelandic when he ordered his - he just had a dog with plain mustard. From that day forth if you want a hot dog only with mustard at the stand, you order a Clinton. You will be missing out on the full experience if you do.

Real Good Eats: Are You Skyr'd Yet?

Skyr is an Icelandic version of yogurt.  It's got lots of protein and is creamier and more solid than Balkan-type yogurts and has a smoother texture than the Greek-style stuff too.

Skyr is often flavored and I just came across yogurt nirvana.

It's Icelandic Provisions  Extra Creamy Coffee Cold Brew Skyr

Life-changing. It's coffee and yogurt coming together in perfect tasty harmony. Best flavor of yogurt I've ever tasted.

Seriously, this Cold Brew Skyr is so tasty, they need to rename it to "Winning At Life".  

A great way to start your day or to have a healthy pick-me-up snack that makes you happily charge through the rest of your day.

New Smoker Run #1

Today was the day to give the new Weber smoker a go.

Pulled pork was on the menu as Tash had bought a 6 pounder.

So I first prepped it last night with some rub and put it in the fridge.

 

Then I fired up the smoker for the first time with lump charcoal and locally sourced Pecan wood.

 The Weber being larger than the ol' ECB takes more charcoal to get it up to temperature than the Brinkmann, and the water bowl is also larger, so a little trial and error occurred until it was just right at temp and smoking along merrily. 

 A serious improvement of the Weber over the Brinkmann are the adjustable vents at the top and bottom of the smoker and a functional thermometer gauge.  The vents made adjusting and controlling the temperature a snap.  Serious improvement over the Brinkmann as a result - only disadvantage is the barrel body lacks handles for lifting it off the base which is good to have when you're refueling it with more charcoal, but there is a lip near the top that serves that function nicely.

Nine hours later and after replenishing the water bowl once and the charcoal and wood twice it was done.

I then pulled it and it was awesome and did not require any BBQ sauce, but BBQ sauce was available for taste.

It was pronounced to be my best effort so far and was declared to be amazing.  

Even so, at six pounds, lots of leftovers remain.

The first run of the Weber is a success.

Sunday Smoke Day!

Today was a home game of spring cleaning.

I spent the day cleaning the car's interior after a long winter, washing the mats and getting all the salt and grime out. Then it was cleaning the garage, and getting all the winter's dust and dirt out of there, and reorganizing and making it less of a mess.

While that was going on, I prepared two racks of ribs for dinner.

I made my own rub with salt, brown sugar, paprika, ancho chili pepper, pepper, garli,c and cumin and rubbed it on the ribs.

Then I got the smoker fired up with Leah helping light the charcoal - because, Fire!

Then when the charcoal was hot I combined it with locally-sourced apple and hickory wood for a sweet smokey smell.

After five hours on the smoker, low and slow at a nice steady 200 degrees, they were done and looked like this:

The ribs were fall-off-the-bone good. Didn't need any sauce either, the rub turned out to be just right and the ribs were excellently smoked with plenty of tasty smoke flavor.

The first smoking of spring.

Brisket Results Report

The brisket, I'm happy to say, after a long slow cooking time came out great.

Excellent smoke ring and tenderness throughout,

Slicing it before dinner after it had cooled, we then reheated it and served it to us and out two guests.

It didn't need any BBQ sauce at all and was great straight and served with roasted potatoes and it was highly complimented.

The sad part - there's absolutely no leftovers - it was gone and gone fast.

Smoked Beef Ribs - It's What's For Dinner

Tash wanted me to try something different on the smoker so I decided to give Beef Back Ribs a try.

First take the ribs from their package, cut into chunks, and give em a nice rub down.

Then heat up the smoker to 200 degrees. I used Hickory wood this time for a stronger flavor than cherry wood.

Add the meat and let smoke for four and a half hours until nice and tender.

After four and a half hours, check for doneness and if nice and tender, remove from the smoker.

A test of one rib indicated they were perfectly tender and awesomely beefy and flavorful.

Now they're in the oven keeping warm after being glazed in BBQ sauce and some apple juice so they will be ready for dinner and company tonight.

Pulled Pork, It's What's For Dinner

Our guests arrived and I had some smokey goodness waiting for them.

Friday after work I headed to Costco and purchased a whole Pork Shoulder, commonly known as a butt. This calling ti a butt is, by the way, quite funny for the kids.

When you're eating pulled pork you're not eating a pig's behind, but the shoulder area. Now you know.

I got home, washed the butt and then slathered it in yellow mustard and applied the rub.

I then smoked it for 4 hours with a nice amount of cherry wood for smokey goodness.

Then I took it off the smoker, put it in a foil pan with a cover and put it in the oven at 220 degrees until morning. Four hours in the smoker gave it just about all the smoke it would get and then any heat will do. This topped me from being a zombie on Saturday from tending a smoker all night.

In the morning I pulled it out of the foil pan where it had cooked in its own juices nice and slow for hours and placed it in pans to pull.

It was fork tender and easily pulled apart with two forks.

I filled up two pans, each to the brim with the pulled pork then covered them in foil and left them in the oven at a keep warm setting.

On getting home after the Fair, I slathered the contents of one pan in a sweet barbeque sauce and prepared it for service.

We also had some pretzel buns from Costco that were an excellent delivery vehicle.

The guests absolutely loved it.

One said it was better than the puled pork he had recently had at Slows BBQ, which is very high praise indeed considering Slow's is about the best BBQ in all of the Detroit area.

We gave care packages of it to each guest and we still have a ton of it, which is a nice problem to have.

Double Stuff You Need To Know About, But Don't Tell The DEA

The Detroit Free Press: Oreos are as addictive as cocaine, study says

You may feel downright criminal the next time you eat an Oreo, and you have a Connecticut College student to thank for that.

Neuroscience major Jamie Honohan came up with the idea for a study, which dug into the effects of high-fat and high-sugar foods on the brain. The conclusions: The brain goes wilder for Oreos than for drugs, and the two are equally addictive — at least when it comes to rats.

Ah, science!

In any case and for the record, I absolutely oppose any attempt to have Oreos listed as a Schedule 2 drug.

If you think scenes from Breaking Bad were hardcore, wait until they start large scale home-cooking up batches of Oreos and require photo ID for purchases of flour, sugar, and other good stuff.

San Francisco Trip Day 3

Day 3 started with a lovely breakfast with two of perhaps the nicest people in the world - my godfather and godmother Derek and Ann, who are now also honorary great-god-parents to our kids. They knew my parents from before I was born and they've been great friends with my Dad ever since. A finer couple of people you will simply be hard put to meet.

We went with them into Chinatown and found the famous Golden Gate fortune cookie factory. Its in Ross Alley and was a bit hard to find but very cool once we found it.

The kids got to make their own fortune cookies and helped make others. For $1.00 you could put a custom message in it and take home your own cooto kie, which the kids did. It was quite busy so I didn't get the chance to write "Help! I'm trapped in a Chinese Fortune Cookie Factory!" as a gag gift...next time.

Then we went to another must see location in San Fran - Ghiradelli Square

There are three separate Ghiradelli shops at the square and each one gives out a free sample of chocolate. If you do the rotation right you can keep going around and getting a free square at each ad infinitum or until you finally pass out from chocolate overload.

You can look at some of the original chocolate factory machines still making chocolate as a demonstration only:

Yum.

After our fill of samples, we bought some chocolate bars as gifts to people at home and took in some sights, including a great view of the bay from the factory square landing.

In the bay was the ship that was used in the movie Mutiny on the Bounty:

After that we walked to the theater district and the Orpheus Theater. On the way we went through some pretty seedy areas, including seeing a street craps game and tons of homeless people, including many that were passed out mid-day, which was educational so to speak, but we made it there without any incidents.

We had pre-bought tickets for the Orpheum theater so the kids could watch a live show of their favorite TV Show - Mythbusters.

The live show was cool beyond words, and included stunts, tricks and live demonstrations of science including suspending Adam from the theater ceiling from the friction of two interlaced phone books alone.

The kids loved seeing Adam and Jamie live and it was a fantastic show.

Then we headed back to the hotel to change and prepare for the event which was the reason we had come to San Francisco.

Smoke A Little Smoke

So for my birthday my darling wife thoughtfully bought me a Brinkman Charcoal Gourmet Smoker:



This was highly altruistic on her part, and the fact that a friend of hers had a husband that had just smoked some fish and had just happened to bring it into the office gave her quite the inspiration. She wanted me to set it up prior to my birthday to thoroughly test it so it would be ready.  How better to test it than by smoking fish?

Assembly was pretty straight forward and with the help of an electric drill didn't take long. Its a very simple contraption - a base, a charcoal holder that goes in the base, the main cylinder that holds a water bowl for smoking and two cooking grates and a lid.

After studying up on smoking on the internets and this model in particular, the only thing I needed to add was a Brinkmann Temperature Gauge as the stock gauge has only the unhelpful words Warm, Ideal and Hot on the dial, which is insufficient for proper smoking.

The temperature gauge was easily installed by drilling a 3/8" hole in the metal and it screwed into place perfectly with no slop.

In no time at all using a Weber Chimney Starter , Lump Charcoal, and soaked Cherry Wood Chunks  I was smoking away.

The first fish I smoked was a Chinook salmon fillet. I followed Alton Brown's smoked salmon curing recipe and instructions and it came out great if a little heavily salty.

Then two days later I made some smoked Scottish salmon steaks and a fillet of Rainbow Trout - if anything both came out better than the Chinook.

The Trout:

The Scottish Salmon steaks:

These were so good everyone was fighting for more. Exquisitely yummy doesn't begin to describe them.  Were talking the best lox you've ever had.



















And today for my birthday I smoked some chicken drumsticks. They came out Awesome.

A great and useful birthday present, and highly recommended if you want to get into effective and easy smoking but not spend an arm and a leg doing so.

At Least Detroit Can Be Proud Of Its Style Of Pizza

As Passover comes to an end tonight, my thoughts turn to Pizza and Beer, two of the many leavened items not permitted during Passover.

The Detroit Free Press thoughtfully comes through with a timely article on the sensation that is Detroit pizza:

Detroit-style pizza gaining fame, winning fans nationwide

Unlike New York's thin, wide, floppy pizzas and Chicago's burly deep-dish ones, Detroit's thick, square pies -- first made at Buddy's Rendezvous in Detroit in 1946 -- have never managed to make a dent in the national consciousness.

Buddy's itself wins scores of awards and often makes national best-pizza lists. But with its stores confined to metro Detroit, its thick but airy crusts and crunchy, cheesy, square corners remain largely unknown elsewhere.

Finally, though, that seems to be changing, thanks to recent high-profile wins by Detroit-style pizzas in national and international competitions........

I know what I'm having for dinner tonight.

Awesome Indian Food At Rangoli

If you have a desire for excellent Indian food accompanied by excellent ambiance and service, you can't go wrong with Rangoli.

Located on Walton in Auburn Hills, Rangoli has great Indian food at a great price.

Tash and I went out for dinner there and enjoyed it immensely. We left the kids with a babysitter as they don't like Indian food as its too spicy for them.

We ordered the Non-vegetarian (I find vegetarians to be far too stringy for my taste) meal for two, which came with an appetizer plate, naan bread, rice, two main courses and dessert.

The appetizer plate was this big, almost a meal in itself with its kabob pieces, large pieces of tandoori chicken and more:

I ordered the Chettinadu Pepper Lamb with medium spice and Tash ordered the Chicken Koorma super mild. Both were spiced to perfection and I would not advise going for hot unless you're used to lots of heat - the medium is more than sufficient for the warmth it provides.

The food was absolutely excellent, the service friendly and impeccable and an unbeatable price.

If you get around to Auburn Hills, Rangoli its well worth a visit. Now I can't wait to go there at lunch for the buffet.