It just ain't Christmas without cheese grits

The wildest wild goose chase I went on this Christmas was a Christmas Eve hunt for a roll of Kraft garlic cheese to make cheese grits, a Southern Christmas specialty if ever there was one.

First, I went to the little Foodland market at which I always purchased my holiday garlic cheese in the past. When I couldn't find it there, I should've known something was up. I then went to Publix, and they didn't have it. Right there I really should've known that something was up. Being the glutton for punishment that I am, I trekked to Food Lion and Kroger only to be skunked two more times.

Little did I know that Kraft's patented garlic cheese was taken off the market last year. "What the **** am I gonna do now?" I said aloud to no one in particular before I had a revelation: "I'll bet I can use a jar of Cheese Whiz and some garlic paste!" And that's exactly what I did.

First, here's my recipe for garlic cheese grits, which is actually my mother's recipe for garlic cheese grits (which she has recorded on a bank deposit slip from a bank my parents used about, oh, 25 years ago):

Garlic Cheese Grits

1 1/2 cups grits, uncooked (do not use instant grits)
4 cups water
1 tablespoon salt
1 stick unsalted butter
1 roll Kraft garlic cheese
2 cups sharp cheddar cheese
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
Paprika

Cook grits in salted water. When water is absorbed, add butter, garlic cheese, cheddar cheese and Worcestershire sauce sauce. Stir until cheese is well incorporated.

Pour mixture into a greased shallow casserole dish and sprinkle with paprika. Bake in 350° oven for 15 to 20 minutes.

Here's what you use in place of Kraft's garlic cheese roll:

Pour 1 8-ounce jar of Kraft Cheese Whiz into a microwave-safe bowl. Warm on "defrost" for about a minute and a half. Add 1 teaspoon of Amore garlic paste and stir well. If you want more garlic flavor, add a dab of garlic paste at a time while stirring and tasting. Now be warned: a little garlic paste goes a long way, so don't overdo it. Just be sure to keep adding dabs and tasting as you mix. Enjoy!

J'adore le jambon de pays!

Today's Tennessean has a great article about the Power of Pork:

If you believe the trend forecasters at Epicurious.com, pork will be passé in 2010.

But in Tennessee, surely that's like calling Johnny Cash uncool, or pouring out the Jack because it's proclaimed a passing fad. Some things just can't go out of style.

And even if the bacon-wrapped craze of '09 falls apart next year, many Southern cooks will no doubt stick with tradition on New Year's when bits of smoky hog jowl flavor pots of collard greens and black-eyed peas with hopes of bringing good luck.

Speaking of pork, there's nothing I like better than quality country ham, like the country ham I recently purchased at Rice's in Mt. Juliet, TN ...


For those who don't care for country ham because it's too salty, or because it's too tough when fried, I have one word for you: Coke. Place three or four slices of country ham in a shallow baking dish and pour a half-can of Coke over the ham. Tightly cover the baking dish with foil and bake in a pre-heated 350° oven. Cook for about 25 minutes and you'll have you some tender, not-so-salty ham that'll make you want to slap your pappy, guaran-damn-teed. [Note: Do not use Diet Coke ... trust me.]

Joltin' Django's Mac N Cheese

Per an impassioned e-mail request, here's how I make mac-'n'-cheese (the pic above is from my Christmas Day kitchen counter):

Joltin' Django's Macaroni and Cheese

Ingredients

1 lb elbow macaroni
6-8 cups cold water
1/4 stick butter
12 ounces Velveeta cheese, cubed (DO NOT use light or 2 percent)
1 1/2 cups WHOLE milk (see previous post)
4 cups mild cheddar cheese, shredded
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Directions

Bring lightly salted water to a boil in a large pot. Add macaroni, bring water back to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-high. Simmer macaroni until very tender (12-15 minutes). Remove pot from stove and drain.

Return macaroni to pot. Add butter, Velveeta cheese, one cup of cheddar cheese, milk and A LOT (at least one heaping tablespoon) of black pepper. Mix until no large lumps of cheese remain.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Pour macaroni mixture into a deep baking dish. Top with remaining cheddar cheese.

Place dish in oven and bake for 20 minutes, or until cheese on top is completely melted and smooth. Place oven on broil and allow cheese to turn golden brown (should take no longer than 2-3 minutes). Remove dish from oven and allow mac-and-cheese to cool for 10 minutes before serving.

Apology

I promised the folks at Caesar's Ristorante Italiano that I'd have a review up today. Due to a f-ed up camera, it's gonna be later in the week before said review is posted.

Sorry.

"My" cookbook

Joltin' Django was surprised to get this cookbook in his Christmas stocking ...


This's the first recicpe I'm gonna try ...


Stay tuned.

(Click pics to enlarge)

Merry Christmas!

Eat, drink and be merry this Christmas!

Quote of the day

"Take that, vegetarian f***wad."

-- Chef Anthony Bourdain, No Reservations Christmas episode

Some folks love 'em some grilled cheese

Would you get a tattoo for a discount on grilled cheese sammiches?

Ohio eatery offers discount for sandwich tattoos

An Ohio restaurant is offering lifetime discounts to people willing to make an indelible display of their love for grilled cheese sandwiches.

Melt Bar & Grilled in the Cleveland suburb of Lakewood specializes in spins on the grilled cheese and says anyone with a tattoo of the classic sandwich will get 25 percent off.

The restaurant has hooked up for the promotion with a tattoo shop, which is offering its own discount on grilled cheese designs. John Forgus of Voodoo Monkey Tattoo says he's been getting creative, giving one person a tattoo of Popeye holding a grilled cheese sandwich instead of a spinach can.

Here's one of the tats (pic courtesy of Slashfood):

The taste of Taste of Home

Whenever I see a new Taste of Home recipe magazine (TOH) at the grocery store, I immediately start flipping through it. Nine times out of ten I buy it. Indeed, I'm rapidly acquiring a collection of TOH magazines that rivals my impressive collection of cookbooks.

The last TOH mag I purchased was the "Potluck" issue. It's chock-full of casseroles and dishes that remind me of what I dug-into at church suppers when I was a kid. Here's the first recipe I whipped up:

Taste of Home's Taco Noodle Bake

Ingredients

2 cups uncooked yolk-free wide noodles
2 pounds lean ground turkey
1 can (8 ounces) tomato sauce
1/2 cup water
1 can (4 ounces) chopped green chilies
1 envelope reduced-sodium taco seasoning
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 cup (4 ounces) shredded cheddar cheese
2 cups shredded lettuce
1 cup diced fresh tomatoes
1/3 cup sliced black olives, drained
1/2 cup taco sauce
1/2 cup sour cream

Directions

Cook noodles according to package directions. Meanwhile, in a large nonstick skillet, cook the turkey over medium heat until no longer pink; drain. Stir in the tomato sauce, water, green chilies, taco seasoning, onion powder, chili powder and garlic powder. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer, uncovered, for 5 minutes.

Drain noodles; place in an 11x7-in. baking dish coated with cooking spray. Spread the turkey mixture over the top. Sprinkle with cheese. Bake, uncovered, at 350° for 10-15 minutes or until cheese is melted. Let stand for 10 minutes.

Top with the lettuce, tomatoes, olives and taco sauce. Dollop each serving with 1 tablespoon of sour cream. Yield: 8 servings.

© Taste of Home 2009

Three things:

I took two liberties with the recipe: I used ground beef instead of ground turkey; and I substituted a half-cup of Goya sofrito sauce for tomato sauce.

TOH's Taco Noodle Bake looks like a mess when it's completely finished (see above pic), but believe me it tastes great. Here's what it looked like before I added toppings (nice, huh?):



I took my casserole to a Christmas party and, well, let's just say every noodle, olive and shred of lettuce got eaten. That tells you all you need to know, n'est-ce pas?!

Cartoon of the day

Le Lion de Nourriture

For my money -- and I'm real picky 'bout how I spend my money in the age of Obamanomics -- Food Lion is the best chain grocery store when it comes to butchered meat (sorry Publix).

I've never purchased a bad cut of meat at Food Lion. Indeed, even the mark-down cuts of meat I've purchased there have been first-class. Like the ones I cooked tonight ...


I bought that $6.38 package of chops for $3.12 at the Antioch Pike Food Lion ("Purchase By" date: 12/20). I seasoned 'em with some Szeged Chicken Rub (!), and I slow-grilled 'em for about 25 minutes ...


Those chops you see are right off the grill. I covered 'em in foil and let 'em sit for about 10 minutes ... and then I made a simple gravy with the juicy juices that leaked out of 'em.

Wish you'd been here to partake. Come on over tomorrow if you'd like some o' the left-overs!

Pretty snappy, en effet!

I heeded an AMGE reader's advice and visited my local Snappy Tomato's pizza buffet today. I'm more than glad I did.

When it comes to pizza buffets, Snappy Tomato don't hold a candle to Angelo's Picnic Pizza's buffet. It is, however, far superior to Fletcher's pizza's buffet ... even if it don't have cole slaw on its spread. Here's why:

I didn't bother trying Snappy Tomato's pasta and salad 'cause, well, as soon as I saw pizzas garnished with jalapeños, I had nothing but pizza on the brain. After grabbing a plate, I got me two slices of jalapeno-'n'-peperoni, a slice of peperoni-'n'-sausage, and -- as always -- a shaker full o' red pepper flakes. Then I sat down ...



When it comes to "cheap" pizza buffets*, Snappy Tomato just might be the best I've ever had. It's better than Fletcher's, and it's far better than Mr. Gatti's. The crust is fresh tasting; the cheese and toppings are first-class; and, by God, any pizza joint that puts-out slices with hot peppers as the first offering on its buffet is a-okay in my book.

*Regular price is $5.99. Watch your local paper and you'll find dollar-off coupons 'bout every three weeks.

Snappy Tomato Pizza
493 Old Hickory Blvd.
Brentwood, TN 37027
615.333.0555

Time is absolutely runnin' out

If you like country ham, you need to get yourself out to Mt. Juliet sometime between now and Christmas Eve. Just so you know, Ed Rice's country hams are ... well, by God, they're the best country hams in the whole, wide world. (Don't trust my word --just look at all the ribbons he's won.)

Stay tuned for pics of my Ed Rice 'n' Son ham. You'll see 'em, oh, about one week from today.

Edward Rice and Son
12217 Lebanon Road
Mt. Juliet, Tennessee
615.758.2362

Oh, dear God

I've not eaten a McDonald's chicken McNugget since, oh, about 1997. Even after watchin' this ...



... I don't care if another twelve years goes by before I eat another'ne. Indeed.

Hey, I've been there!

Be sure to check out tomorrow night's Man Vs. Food on the Travel Channel (9 p.m. CST). Host Adam Richman will be visiting Ted's Restaurant in Meriden, CT. I visited Ted's last year and wrote about it here. A pic from my adventure:

Hagar 'n' salted cabbage

I was all prepared to post this funny with an I-Love-Sauerkraut tag (click it for a big-view) ...



After looking at the funny in question online, however, I'm pissed that the Tennessean saw fit to edit the f-ing thing (which didn't need no editing).

So much for me talking about kraut. Maybe later ...

Happy Hanukkah!

Them's some good thin-'n'-crispy Joltin' Django latkes (seasoned with my Hanukkah salt shaker).

More 'bout the Festival of Lights, from Slashfood.com:

It took Hanukkah celebrants more than 2,000 years to hit upon the dish that's now considered the quintessential holiday food.

Potato latkes, as inextricably linked to the wintertime festival as dreidels, menorahs and chocolate gelt, are such a relatively recent addition to the Hanukkah canon that food writer Mimi Sheraton -- who grew up in a Jewish family in Flatbush -- was 30 years old before she realized the oily pancakes were connected to the holiday.

"Though my family observed that holiday with the weeklong lighting of the silver candelabra ... I never knew those marvelously crisp, hot, onion-scented latkes had anything whatsoever to do with the celebration," Sheraton wrote in 1981.

For many years, they didn't. While food plays a ritual role in many Jewish holidays, the only edible tradition associated with Hanukkah was the rather loosey-goosey custom of eating something with oil in it.

The practice -- intended to commemorate the miracle at the heart of the Hanukkah story, in which one day's worth of oil burned for eight days -- was variously interpreted by Jewish communities across the globe: Jews in Greece celebrated with loukoumades, little orbs of deep-fried dough soaked in honey; Jews in Spain made yeasty bunuelos; Jews in Russia ate buckwheat pancakes and Jews in the Middle East enjoyed fried jelly doughnuts.

When a New York Times reporter interviewed a Tangiers native about Hanukkah traditions in 1959, he discovered "the nearest she could come to remembering specifically the foods served was to describe a pastry that was something like a fried doughnut, dipped in honey and sprinkled with cinnamon."

To the reporter's evident exasperation, his other sources provided similarly unsatisfying insights: "Several persons, asked what they remembered about the foods they ate for Hanukkah when they were young, had only the haziest recollections," he wrote.

The collective culinary obliviousness that took hold of Sheraton and the unnamed Moroccan immigrant was probably rooted in Hanukkah's official status as a very, very minor festival. Long observed by only the most devout Jews, Hanukkah is the religious equivalent of Flag Day.

"Not even the Zionists make a fuss about Chanukah," the American Jewish Chronicle confirmed in 1916, in a passage quoted by Jenna Weissman Joselit in her definitive "The Wonders of America: Reinventing Jewish Culture, 1880-1950."

Hanukkah might have slipped off the modern Jewish calendar entirely were it not for a lucky stroke of timing. Although Hanukkah's starting date moves with the moon, it almost always falls in December, when most Americans are fixated on Christmas. Eager to lure their congregants away from the Christian holiday, rabbis in the early 1900s began touting Hanukkah's charms.

Since no holiday celebration is complete without treats, Jewish homemakers scrambled to create dishes that might conceivably compete with roast turkeys, plum puddings and mincemeat pies. Joselit quotes from 1941's "The Jewish Home Beautiful," which included recipes for egg salad sandwiches trimmed to resemble Maccabean fighters and "menorah fruit salad," a molded cream-concoction shaped like the holiday's signature candelabra.

But mostly they made latkes, a fixture of Ashkenazi cookery since the 16th century, when potatoes first appeared in Eastern Europe. Potatoes were so plentiful in the Pale of Settlement that when Rabbi Abraham Shemtov's family couldn't afford a menorah, his father "cut a hole in a potato, and poured the oil into the potato," he told the Times in 1977. Eastern European Jews ate potato pancakes year-round, but the delicacy -- typically fried in schmaltz, or goose fat -- almost always surfaced around Hanukkah. American Jews seized on the practice, making latkes a compulsory component of holiday celebrations by the 1950s.

By 1958, Los Angeles' Montebello Jewish Educational Center had begun throwing an annual latke party, featuring songs and dances from "The Nutcracker" and "a traditional meal of potato pancakes and all the trimmings."

The "trimmings" probably weren't as fancy as the Los Angeles Times implied -- latkes are typically accompanied by just two condiments: applesauce and sour cream. Among eaters who made their first super-greasy latkes as children under the tutelage of a patient Hebrew School teacher, serving potato pancakes with ketchup is still considered as uncouth as smearing mayonnaise on white bread.

But the conservatism that clings to latke condiment selection doesn't seem to extend to the latke recipe itself, which has been updated and tweaked thousands of times over the last half-century. Jewish publications have taught their readers to make spinach, eggplant and ricotta cheese latkes (a dairy variation that harkens back to the pre-potato Diaspora.)

Yet the single greatest innovation in the latke's short holiday history occurred in 1973, when Cuisinart introduced the first food processor for home use.

"Lately, knuckles skinned on the grater are no longer the battle scars of the devoted latke maker," Florence Fabricant crowed in 1977. "With a food processor, you can ply your family with latkes for each of the eight nights of the holiday. The machine grates the potatoes in a twinkling. They do not even require peeling."

Armed with their tater-grating machines, Jewish-American cooks churned out latkes at an unprecedented pace, solidifying forevermore the brand new bond between Hanukkah and a plateful of oil-drenched potato pancakes.

"I'm hungry now!"

Here's a man who's really gotta eat ...

"It's a grade A meal when I'm in the mood"

Cowpokes'll come from a near and far
When you throw a few steaks on the fire
Roberto Duran ate two before a fight
'Cause it gave a lot of mighty men a lot of mighty might

-- Rev. Horton Heat, "Eat Steak"

Earlier in the week, I picked up a couple of Ledbetter bacon-wrapped beef chuck fillets at Publix. The price certainly seemed right: they were on sale for $2.99 a piece. I threw 'em on the grill tonight ...


... and I gotta tell you they were mighty tasty. Tasty and tender.


I'll admit that I wasn't expecting much from a $3 fillet. I was very impressed with the quality of my $3 steaks, however, and Ledbetter fillets now have the Joltin' Django Seal of Approval. Indeed.

It's back, baby!

Me SO happy!