Good Monday afternoon foodies. I hope all of you had a great weekend! This morning I received a great Ham recipe comment on my Niman Ham post. This recipe sounds so good, I felt it should be a post of it's own. So here it is...I can't wait to give this one a shot. And thanks again to @diella and @jeffallennyc !
Here's what we would do: a) make a paste of mustard, minced garlic, paprika, fresh herbs (thyme is nice) and black pepper. b) score the surface of the ham all over. Slather with mustard paste. c) Drain and rinse a bag or two of sauerkraut. d) In a roasting pan put sliced yellow onions, kraut, some garlic cloves, bay leaves, fresh thyme, whole peppercorns, some cloves, and a couple bottles of light German style beer. e) add some smoked pork Kielbasa cut into 1-2 inch pieces f)Place the ham on top of the kraut, cover the whole thing with foil and bake in the oven the right amount of time for the size of your ham. Then uncover and cook for additional 30 minutes or until a nice crust forms from the paste.
We like to slice and eat with rye bread, some of the kraut, sliced pickles and spicy mustard. Pairs nicely with beer or an off-dry Riesling. It also goes excellently with breakfast. Fry up some eggs and add thin ham slices to the pan and fry at the same time. Put on a bagel or English muffin, add a little Swiss or cheddar, etc.
Good Friday afternoon to all my Foodies out there! It's been a super busy week for me here, but I wanted to share the pictures from our LG lunch this week when we prepared our NEW Niman Ranch Ham. Didn't even need a recipe for this baby...It came with it's own PERFECT brown sugar glaze. The whole process couldn't have been any easier. Just mix 2 tbs water to glaze powder and heat until sugar dissolves, slather the gorgeous ham in this aromatic glaze, wrap in foil and heat 10-12 min per lb on 325. Easy Peasy people...I can't believe I had never tried this before. The ham was incredible, and everyone who passed through the test kitchen exclaimed "It smells like Christmas in here!". I kept telling them it was because I had a big oven full of Christmas cooking, but no one believed me. I guess that's the drawback of being sarcastic most of the time haha. Anyway, enough of my pointless Ham rantings (It's making me hungry to even talk about this ham) Here are the images. Hope everyone has a rocking weekend!
Yesterday I was given a task for Thursday by the President of our company. The orders: Get someone to organize the office for another office lunch date (taken care of by the ever efficient Dr. Proctor) and cook the 10 lb Niman Ranch Ham in the fridge for the office for lunch. Yes...that's right. A 10 lb Niman Ranch Ham. I'm salivating at the very thought of it.
This year is the very first year Lobster Gram is teaming up with legendary Niman Ranch. A small selection of Niman meats will be available in the Lobster Gram 2010 catalog due to be released early this fall. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Niman Ranch and their superior meats, here is a link to their web site. They raise their animals with NO added hormones, antibiotics or animal by-products, and humane practices. The result renders some of the finest meats ever to grace the tables of such legendary eateries as Gibsons Bar & Steak House right here in sweet home Chicago...and Chicago is a leading authority when it comes to meat. The next step...trying to find a great simple ham recipe that will appeal to all of my coworkers, and not force me to spend my day dieing in the heat downstairs. So here is my issue. My family sticks with a great easy recipe for ham. Drench it in 7up and bake it in a oven bag. It's always flavorful and tender beyond all belief, but I'm wondering if this way might be a little too simple for use on a great ham like this. I realize being what it is, the flavors and tenderness will be there even if I spear the ham and cook it over a 55 gallon drum with a fire burning in it on the corner of Wabash & Michigan...so why mess with perfection? On the other hand...such a beautiful ham deserves the very best gourmet treatment we can supply for it, and our test kitchen is more than capable of doing just that. So I pose this question to you my dear readers. What would you do with a 10 lb Niman Ranch Ham? Leave me a comment and let me know! If you have a great recipe for ham, simple or otherwise, feel free to share it! I only have about 24 hours till cooking time so I need to figure this one out fast!
Good morning Foodies! As I am back in the office again...it's time to share the pictures from our Lobster Gram BBQ we had here in the office last week. Had a lot of cooking to do for it, but it was a lot of fun and great to prepare our new Angus burgers for the first time. Man are those things tasty! We also served some of our giant franks, a bunch of great Lobster Gram desserts, and every employee brought a side dish, chips, fresh fruit or condiments for the food. All in all, it was a great way for all of us to enjoy a fantastic meal together and cut some of the stress out of the week, and we are doing it again this week Thursday with a 10lb spiral cut Niman Ranch ham. Hopefully I can talk my Mom into making a huge batch of German Potato Salad to bring with...nothing goes better with ham than warm German Potato Salad. Tomorrow night is the Beauty Brands and Trends expo at NoMi so it's going to be an exciting week of food and blogging! And with no further rambling....here are the pictures from the Lobster Gram BBQ!
Good Wednesday morning foodies. It's a slow start for me today, I can't seem to wake up! Last night I made Oven Roasted Dungeness crabs with orange dipping sauce. I made just the legs of the Dungeness this way, and the body meat I threw into an Alfredo sauce that went into the freezer for dinner some other night. Yay for planning ahead! My camera man/ Sous Chef/boy was cool enough to use the awesome new pasta press to make home made noodles to have with the crab. I would have liked to serve it over a green salad or something like that, but he was DIEING to try it out and hand made pasta is always friggen awesome. I won't turn down home made pasta/help because I'm not insane...(no comments from the peanut gallery on that one please)thankfully everything turned out excellent. We both enjoyed the orange dipping sauce so much I went back to the stove and made a bowl of it to bring to the dinner table. What we had drizzled on the crab was never going to be enough. I even used the reduction to dip my bread into. I wish I would have had enough of it to freeze some for later use. That would be an awesome marinade for a lot of different seafood dishes. Enough of my rambling...I do that when I'm tired. Here is the video and the recipe for last night's seafood adventure! Later today, I'll be downstairs in front of the Lobster Gram warehouse preparing our NEW Angus Steak Burgers, our Giant 7-8 oz Bratwurst and Giant 7-8 oz Hot dogs for the office. It's another one of our famous BBQ days and that's always a blast. I'll definitely have some great pictures to share with you all from that! Happy Eating foodies!
Ingredients 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter 1/4 cup olive oil (Use Orange) 2 tablespoons minced garlic 1 tablespoon minced shallot 1 1/2 teaspoons dried crushed red pepper |2 large Dungeness crabs, cooked, cleaned, and cracked (about 4 1/4 pounds) 2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme, divided 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley, divided 1/2 cup blood orange juice or regular orange juice 1 teaspoon finely grated blood orange peel or regular orange peel
Directions Preheat oven to 500°F. Melt butter with oil in heavy large ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat. Stir in garlic and green onion. Add crabs. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon chopped thyme and 1 tablespoon chopped parsley over crabs. Stir to combine. Place crab legs in oven dish and pour melted butter mixture over crab. Roast crabs until heated through, stirring once, about 12 minutes. When Crabs are roasted, pour crab drippings from roasting dish back into the skillet you used before and add orange juice and peel to same skillet; Add the other tbs of Thyme and Parsley. Boil until sauce is reduced by about half and serve drizzled over crab and along side it for dipping.
Hello friends and foodies! It's crazy that it is Monday already...these weekends seem to pass by with amazing speed! I had a great weekend, but there was a lot of running around and things to take care of. Sunday was my Nephew's First Birthday so there was a little party for him and the family. He was such a little cutie, but had NO interest in his smash cake. I think that was the first baby I have ever seen ignore a cake in front of it! Unfortunately, I forgot my camera in the office and was unable to take any pictures. Have a 2nd Birthday party next weekend for another Nephew, so I'll get another shot at sharing some family photos. Saturday I spent my day shopping with the boy for birthday gifts and creating the special gifts for the little guys. With them turning 1 and 2 respectively, we wanted to do something for them that will help them develop skills that are overlooked in the early years. Being too little for books (Can't wait til' they start reading!) we decided to go with musical and artistic gifts to nurture their creative sides. The final choice...a Playschool Tap-a-Tune and baby crayons. The baby crayons were a HIT with the family. All of them were surprised that we came with something this kid friendly when we are the only ones without kids, and NEVER planning on having any. Making these was beyond easy and it was great to give the little guy something that was made just for him. So I guess I can include the "Recipe" for these... I wish I could include a link to wherever it was I first saw this years ago, but I don't remember anymore.
Baby Crayons 1 large box Crayola Crayons ( I chose the 96 color pack) 1 cupcake baking tray with 12 cups 12 Foil Cupcake wrappers (not paper, wax will melt through)
Directions Peel labels off completely off the crayons. Line the cup cake tray with foil wrappers. Break the crayons into quarters and drop them into the bottoms of the cupcake cups. If you like you can mix colors as seen in the image above, or keep the different shades of colors in the same cup to keep them more uniform (I did it this way to help them start learning their colors). Put cupcake tray into a 350 oven for about 10 minutes. When crayons are nearing the end of their reformation, the top of them will be flat and shiny. After you see this happen to all the cups, let them sit in the oven for another 5 minutes to allow all the air bubbles to escape. Remove from the oven to cool for at least one hour before removing liners. Once that is done, you will have crayons that look a lot like colorful peanut butter cups, but they will be perfect for little hands to be creative with!
