Cooking in the 512

I am 28, technically not a Chef as I have no formal education but I started cooking for friends and family at 8. Now I run a concession business with my father, I have worked under a French trained chef for 7 years and if I do say so myself I am damn good at cooking by the seat of my pants. I never use recipes except for a baseline idea. welcome to my random food experiments.

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I've been cooking this tortilla soup for 2 days straight. It doesn't look that flashy but its packing a punch! There is so much dissolved collagen and cartilage in the broth that it turns to jello in the fridge.

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Everyone has had a mushroom swiss burger.

Kick it up a notch and make 'em with smoked grueyere.

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The skin was way too tough to eat on that pork shoulder. I think Im going to trim the next one and make pork rinds.

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Brine for Pork Shoulder

Recipe:

2 cups boiling water

1 small onion

1/2 Tbsp ground black pepper

8 Tbsp kosher salt

2 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp paprika

1/2 Tbsp rosemary

1/2 cup molassas

1 can orange juice concentate

2 cups pineapple juice

2 cups mead

Mix dry with boiling water and let stand for 10 minutes then add wet, next give your meat a bath for at least 24 hours.

Cooking comes tomorrow.

[EDIT]

It's tomorrow now in internetland and I've smoked and eaten most of the roast. It smoked at around 275°-300° for about 5 hours. It was delicious, I also made BBQ sauce from the the drippings I collected in a cast iron pan under the roast.

It was good but the brine was unnecessarily complex and you couldn't tell. Pineapple, OJ, salt and rosemary would do fine.

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Want to make the best scrambled eggs? Whip them with heavy cream, salt and white pepper.

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My kid is the best fed 4 year old I've ever met

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Tonight we dine on Balsi Chicks!

Chicken marinated in a Black Cherry Balsamic Reduction and Balsamic Vinegar with garden fresh Basil.

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Black Cherry, Blackberry Balsamic reduction

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More jam from from the fresh berries

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Blackberry crumble for the Fathers day BBQ tomorrow.

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Chicken-Fried Bacon (Chicken not included)

Available @ The Fat Friar, this epic piece of pig is a 1/2" thick slice of Bacon that's been deep fried, battered, fried again and served with fresh Country Gravy.

Yum yum get ya some!

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After the Festival closed this season due to COVID-19 we had to do something with all the food we had left over. A lot got donated to food banks and people left out of work at the festival but we canned a ton of produce. We made pickled garlic, pickles jalepenos, jalepeno jelly, asst. Fruit jams and preserves, pesto you name it we canned it.

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An assortment of sweets from The Highland Bakery.

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Went berry picking again with the family today. This time we picked 8.27 lbs

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I had just enough berries left after I made the jam to make this pie with my son, I feel accomplished today.

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Final product is done! 8 cups pureed and de-seeded Blackberries, 4 cups Sugar, 1 Tbsp Lemon Juice and 6 Tbsp Pectin for good measure. Boil the shit out of it and bam! It's jam.

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Seedless Blackberry jam is worth the effort!