Big Mike Cooks!

Prickly Pear Jelly!

2012-10-01T17:11:00.002-07:00

OK cowboys and cowgirls... Here's one for you brave souls out there! We're talkin' high adventure in cookin' here. Yep! Prickly Pear Jelly.

At first I figured this recipe wouldn't work for you folks back east, but according to good ol' Wikipedia you can find prickly pear cactus throughout the Western United States, as well as many parts of the northwest, northeast, Great Plains, heck they even can be found in New England, wherever the heck that might be! Here's a link for you, if you want to read all about this cactus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opuntia

Here's what it looks like out in the Wild West!

As far as International availability, you can pick prickly pear fruit in the Galapagos Islands, North Africa and down-under in Australia. So I guess you're in luck!

So first things first... get yourself some fruit off of the prickly pear cactus, wherever that takes you. Be careful picking them too, cause they're covered with little tiny stickers, you know... stickers, as in little tiny thorns. They hurt too. I'm not gonna bother to show you pictures of prickly pear pickin', or help you find the cactus. I figure if you really want to make prickly pear jelly, then you'll figure out where to find them and how to pick them. I will give you one piece of advice though... wear gloves and use tongs to pick them (oops, that's two).

I got mine from my bro. He picked them for me near his ranch up by Roosevelt Lake... that's in Arizona. Thanks bro! I'll bring you a jar of jelly.

So you're gonna need sugar, pectin, cheese cloth and of course, prickly pears... the fruit from the prickly pear cactus, also lemon juice, but I forgot to get it in the picture, so I'll show it to you later.

Start by putting on a pair of leather gloves, then rub the pears with a cloth. The tiny clusters of thorns (which appear as white spots here) will rub off easily. I held the fruit over a cardboard box while I rubbed them.

Next I cut the ends off of the fruit, and then sliced them in half.

Here's 20 pears sliced in half in a large stock pot. Next up... water.

It took nine cups of water to cover this amount of fruit.

See?

Bring the water to a boil and let it cook until the fruit is softened and you get all of the juice out of your fruit. This will probably take a good 30 minutes.

Then pour it thru a strainer lined with the cheese cloth. I also put a paper towel between the layers of cheese cloth just to make sure I didn't get any solids or stickers in my strained juice.

Prickly pear juice is plum purdy, aint it?

Remember the lemon juice?

Strain it and pour it into the pear juice.

Add the pectin. I used two packages. Sorry 'bout the blurry pic. I'm still learning.

Sugar goes in next... I used 7 and 1/2 cups.

Then boil and stir... boil and stir boys and girls. When you think you're done, then boil and stir some more. After a while the syrup will begin to run off of your spoon slower as it thickens.

Then pour it in the jars. I forgot to tell you to prepare your jars by either boilin' the heck out of them in a big pot, or do what I do... put 'em in the microwave and nuke them for at least ten minutes to kill all of the bugs and stuff. Then like I said, pour your jelly into the hot jars.

Put the lids on them.

That's prickly pear jelly!

Ummm! It's tangy and sweet!

Here's the recipe, all written out neat and organized for ya!

Prickly Pear Jelly

20 pieces of prickly pear fruit
9 cups of water

7-1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup strained lemon juice
2 packages pectin

Clean and slice the prickly pear fruit. Place in a large stock pot and cover with the water. Bring to a boil and continue boiling for about 30 minutes until the fruit is softened. Strain the juice. You should end up with five or six cups of strained juice. Place this in a pot and add lemon juice, stir, then add pectin, stir again, then add sugar. Bring juice to a boil and continue on medium heat until the juice thickens to syrup stage. Test by dripping syrup off of spoon. Pour into sterilized jars, place lids on jars. Listen for jar lids to pop to insure proper seal. Should make about 5 pints. Jelly will continue to set for another day or two.

Dutch Oven cooking in Paradise

2012-09-24T19:17:00.001-07:00

Well I promised you that I would post some recipes from my camp cooking up North, so I am finally getting around to it.
Before we get to cookin' let me just say what a wonderful time we had with friends and family. We were camped for a week in one of the prettiest places on earth and the weather was just about perfect!

See what I mean?

So our outdoor cookin' dutch-oven (DO) menu today is short ribs, my favorite DO taters and rolls. I call them "choke rolls", because the first time that I made them my father-in-law nearly choked to death when he ate one in too big a hurry! Actually, the roll recipe comes from Pioneer Woman Cooks, but I have adapted it to the dutch oven.

So here we go!

Let's start with a short primer on dutch oven cookin'. In the olden days the camp cook would need to burn hardwood... probably mesquite in the lower parts of Arizona or oak in the higher areas. The wood coals would be used to heat the dutch ovens on top and bottom.

Most dutch oven cooks today use charcoal to heat their ovens. I also use a high capacity burner to light my charcoal because I'm basically an impatient person. I hate having to wait on coals to get hot. This method delivers hot coals in about five minutes.

Here's a dutch oven all loaded up with hot coals on top and bottom. This is how you cook stuff in a DO. Notice that there are two or even three times as many coals on top as on the bottom... remember third grade science class? Heat rises! That's an importat lesson to remember when cookin' in a DO.

Here's what the coals on the bottom look like before you set the DO on top. Notice that the coals are set in sort of a pattern... an outside circle and an inside circle... sorta. That gives you even heat distribution for the bottom of the oven.

We start with the rolls. Sorry to disappoint you bread purists. No dough production in this meal. I skipped all of that and picked up some frozen rolls instead. Just arrange them evenly in the dutch oven... wait a few hours for them to rise and cook 'em. What's not to love? Notice that I have greased the bottom of the dutch oven with Crisco. Just put the lid on them and leave them alone until they rise. We will return to these later.

Here's the brand of rolls that I use. You will find them in the frozen food section at your supermarket.

While the rolls rise we will begin the meat. Here's about fifteen pounds of short ribs.

Here's what they look like after you have seared them in some hot oil in a pan. I browned them in the same dutch oven that they will cook in, then I removed them to this sheet pan.

By the way, you will need a #16 dutch oven to hold this amount of meat. If you are cooking for just a few, obviously you will want to use a smaller pot for less meat. The #16 is the largest size dutch oven that most manufacturers produce. You will find dutch ovens in sporting goods stores and outdoor equipment stores everywhere. The largest and most popular manufacturer of dutch ovens is Lodge. You can now buy them already seasoned, which saves you a lot of time and effort, not to mention sweat and noxious fumes, since seasoning a dutch oven requires baking it in an oven or in a hot BBQ to burn off all of the wax that coats it from the factory, then wiping oil (I use Crisco) all over the inside and outside, along with the lid, and continuing the baking until a patina is baked onto the surfaces of the oven (and lid).

Anyway, back to cookin'.

After the meat is browned, chop up some onions and carrots.

Dump 'em in the pot with some hot oil.

Till they look kinda like this.

Then add some 'shrooms... mushrooms, ya know?

After browning and stirrin' some more, dump the meat backin and stir it up again. You will notice from this picture that the DO is sittin' on top of the burner during this stage. We are using medium heat, just like you would use on your stove top at home. When we get all of the ingredients in, then we will put the lid on it and pile the coals on top and bottom.

Here's a bunch a stuff that we're gonna add next. Nothing exotic here, pretty basic stuff. That's onion soup & dip mix hidin' behind the beer can.

Here goes! First the onion soup mix, then a can of mushroom soup, then a couple of beers... actually I think I ended up with three in there.

Then a box of beef stock.

Put the lid on it and cook it with coals on top and bottom. We're gonna let that cook for about three hours. Don't worry, we'll check on it in a little while.

Here I am standin' around staring at my pots. That always seems to help the cookin' process.

OK. Let's start the potatoes. First we washed and chopped about a dozen or more taters, then peeled and chopped eight or nine large carrots. Sorry about the blurry pic... only one that I shot.

Then chop three large onions and a couple a bell peppers, use any color that you like.

Now the fun part! Chop up a pound of bacon and fry it in your oven.

Add the onions and bell peppers. By the way, I'm using a #14 oven for the taters.

Now dump the potatoes and carrots in. Did I mention that you need to season the potatoes/carrots? Sorry. I had garlic salt and course ground pepper, so that's what I used. Sometimes I use Cavendar's seasoning mix for this dish, but you can season them with your favorite spices... be bold!

Stir it up with a stick... a wooden paddle or spoon is best. You don't want to scratch your DO with metal utensils. Now add a couple of cans of beer. I like beer... to cook with I mean.

Now put the lid on it and put coals on top and bottom. You're gonna want to take the lid off and stir the taters once in a while.

Notice that I have stacked one DO on top of the udder one here. This saves space, but I wouldn't recommend doing this for too long, since there's lots more coals on the bottom than I would normally use. I was just doing this for a few minutes while I prepared more coals and started melting my butter for the bread roll recipe.

Speakin o' which, here's the rest of the ingredients for the rolls...

Brush the tops of the rolls with butter... lots of butter (notice that they have now risen nicely), then the sea salt, rosemary and thyme. Put a lid on it, fire up the coals again and bake it.

Check the meat. You will want to sorta poke the brown pieces down into the soup and pull the meat off the bottom and let it have a turn up on top where it can get brown too.

Now check the taters... stir em too.

Try not to peek at the rolls too often or they won't ever brown... see what I mean?

It's time to stir some cheese into the potatoes... maybe three or four cups... leave some of it piled up on top... put the lid back on and let her cook some more.

You may need to add some coals to the meat after a couple of hours of cooking time. I also took the lid off of the meat and let it cook for a while with lots of coals on the bottom to reduce the liquid and thicken it.

Meat's done!

Taters too!

Here's the bread. Eat slow so you don't choke!

Time to plate it... sorry I slopped some on the side of the plate but hey, we're camping!

Sorry, but I won't be providing printable recipes for these dishes... that would make the cookin' experience way too tame. This is wild west cookin' folks! Get out there and get to cookin'!

Chili

2012-09-13T17:27:00.001-07:00

I'm getting ready to go to archery elk camp. We're going to spend a week camped with a bunch of folks, a few of which will actually be elk hunting. Most of my time will be spent reading, napping, hiking, and of course eating, which means camp cooking. Stay tuned for some dutch oven cooking recipes here on my blog in a couple of weeks. For now, you will have to make do with my chili recipe, which I am preparing in advance for elk camp.

If you are a chili purist, then you probably won't be a fan of my chili. For one thing, it has beans in it. My apologies if this offends anyone, but I like beans. I also like the combination of taste and texture that beans add to the meat and seasonings. Neither is my chili completely "scratch" chili. I use store-bought beans, instead of homemade beans. I like the Ranch-Style Beans, because they contain some chili sauce, which lends to the flavor. I'm all about taste, and I don't mind taking a short cut or two in my cooking either. Call me easy... I don't mind.

Here are all of the ingredients except the meat.

You will also need a large pot, preferrably a heavy dutch oven. I have a couple of these... the primo kitchen dutch oven... Le Creuset. I highly recommend you invest in one. This is my large one, cause I'm gonna make a bunch of chili today.

I am using six pounds of 80% lean ground beef. I know that's alot, feel free to cut the quantities down.

Dump all of the ground meat into the pot.

Brown and drain the fat.

Add a chopped onion.

Then add chili powder, cumin, garlic (I know that wasn't shown... I forgot), salt, pepper. I'm not going to tell you quantities on any of these seasonings, it is to taste. You're taste is not my taste, so figure it out for yourself.

It oughta look something like this after you stir in the spices. If it aint red, then you need to quit being a wimp and add some more chili powder. If you're concerned about heat, add paprika instead of more chili powder. You will get color and mild flavor without adding heat.

Next add the three large cans of Ranch Style beans, a large can of diced tomatoes and two or three tablespoons worcestershire sauce.

Then add two beers to the pot. I'm using dark beer, but use whatever you have.

We're almost done! Now for my favorite part. Give her a good sqirt of hot sauce. You can use whatever type of red chili sauce that you like. I like this stuff. It's slightly sweet and good on everything except chocolate cake... hmmm, might need to try that. We go thru about a case of this stuff a year.

Now you stir and wait. Let it cook on medium heat for an hour, and then turn it down and let it simmer for another hour or two. You want it to reduce and thicken. It will darken in color and become rich and thick.

Here you go. Chili's done!

A big ol' hunk of cornbread would go real good with this bowl. I'm gonna make some when I get to camp too.

Easy Everything Cookies

2012-09-04T13:18:00.003-07:00

I think it is altogether appropriate that the first recipe that I share with you in this blog is also the first recipe that I ever followed. It is for my grandmother's cookie recipe, which she called Easy Everything Cookies. I use to bake these with my friend Jeannie Sanders. In fact, she converted the recipe to a half recipe version that made 4-dozen cookies instead of the original recipe which made a whopping 8-dozen. Here is the recipe in her handwriting, which I found in my grandmother's personal cookbook a few years ago. Thanks to my grandmother for this and so many other great recipes and cooking memories. Thanks to you too Jeannie, wherever you are.

EASY EVERYTHING COOKIES

OK, this isn't rocket science, these are cookies. If a twelve year old kid and his teenage girl buddy couldn't screw them up, then neither can you. So here's the scoop.. no pun.. on my oldest and favorite cookie recipe.

Here's your list of ingredients: Flour, sugar, brown sugar, quick oats, salt, soda, chocolate chips (use whatever kind you like, the original recipe used semi-sweet), butter (original recipe called for oleo, which is mid-20th century for margarine... I don't use the stuff though), peanut butter, egg, vanilla and water.

Cream together the butter, sugars, egg, peanut butter, water and vanilla and mix well.

Next, sift together the flour, salt and soda, and gradually add these dry ingredients to the mixer bowl. I didn't get a picture of this, so take my word for it. The flour mixture goes into the wet mixture.

Then add your oats, one cup at a time.

Add the chocolate chips next... the whole bag, baby!

What you end up with oughta look something like this.

Drop 'em on your pan. I tend to make pretty big cookies... but I'm a pretty big guy.

Bake in a 350 degree oven for about fifteen minutes and they should come out looking like cookies.

I came out with about three and a half dozen Big Mike's Living Large sized cookies. Some of them already got ate before I snapped this shot, though.

Had to pay my son Jay his fee for shooting my blog photogs. Don't tell his momma... he ate 'em all.

Easy Everything Cookies a la Me & Jeannie

3/4 Cup butter or margarine

1/2 Cup sugar

1 Cup brown sugar

1 egg

1/3 Cup peanut butter

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon salt

1 Cup pre-sifted flour

1/2 teaspoon soda

3 Cups quick oats

1 Cup chocolate chips

1/4 Cup water

Mix softened butter, sugars, egg, peanut butter, water and vanilla in mixing bowl. Add flour, sifted with salt and soda. Add oats and then chocolate chips.

Drop cookies on cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for up to 15 minutes. Makes 4-dozen small cookies or 3-dozen larger cookies.

I think therefore I am. - Renee Descarte, I eat therefore I cook. - Big Mike

2012-09-03T12:15:00.000-07:00

I have always been a Foodie. Even before I knew what a Foodie was, I was a Foodie. For as long as I can remember I have been in the kitchen while my grandmother cooked, or as my mother cooked.
Sure, my original and primary motivation was eating. I certainly like to eat, but it's more than just about eating. I like food. I like the act of creation that is involved with cooking. I like taking a bunch of random raw ingredients and creating something new and wonderful and delicious.

I started watching cooking shows before cooking shows were cool.

The first cooking show that I remember watching was a local show with a woman named Rita Davenport. She cooked herself, and also had local chefs on to cook with her.

Later I watched the Galloping Gourmet with Grahm Kerr, who was a sort of wine-inbibing, british playboy turned cooking show host.

Then one day I discovered Julia Child and the rest is history.

I probably learned the most from cooking with my grandmother and I cherish the recipes that have been preserved and are still in use today by myself and my family. I also owe much to my mother's patient instruction in the kitchen. Much later in life I discovered camp cooking, in the tradition of the old cowboy camp cooks. This form of cooking was perfected by the chuck wagon cooks that fed the ranch crews on ranches in the American West, and is still practiced in all of it's authenticity on a few surviving big ranches today. This type of cooking employs cast iron cookware, primarily the cast iron pot known affectiontely as a dutch oven. We will learn more about this unique american invention later. My brand of outdoor/camp cooking is updated considerably from those early cookies who worked off of the back tailgate of a chuck wagon.

(A historical recreation of a chuckwagon at theTexas Parks and Wildlife Expo in Austin - Wikipedia)

My style of outdoor cooking relies on some modern innovations. I don't like bending over hot ovens that are sitting on the ground. I use a cooking table. I also use charcoal briquets instead of burning hardwood for coals, plus I use a high capacity gas burner to start the charcoal briquets so I can start cooking in a hurry without waiting an hour for my charcoal to be hot.

So I hope you will come on along with me and do some cookin', both indoors and outdoors. For me cooking and eating and the fellowship that surrounds both is part of Living Large.