Japanese Steakhouse Golden Shrimp Sauce

Probably my favorite style of restaurant is the so called "Japanese steakhouse". You know, like Benihana's where a chef cooks on a teppanyaki grill in front of you doing tricks and cracking lame jokes, like "japanese eggroll!" when he spins an egg on the grill for stir fried rice, like this:

I don't care how cheesy the "watch me flip a shrimp tail into my hat", "ahhh Japanese spaghtetti! (bean sprouts)", or flaming onion volcanoes are. I don't care if our good friend Jennifer who is half Japanese, grew up in Japan, and speaks fluent Japanese tells us that this is a completely American institution. I never get tired of it!

One of the standard items that you find at these joints is the sweet golden shrimp sauce they serve for the seafood appetizers. Here is the version that we have used for years. It tastes pretty darn close to the many we have had.

Ingredients

• 1 cup mayonnaise
• 3 teaspoons sugar
• 3 teaspoons rice vinegar
• 2 teaspoons melted butter
• 3/4 teaspoon paprika 
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder 
• 1 teaspoon sriracha sauce
• heavy cream to desired consistency, 2 to 3 tablespoons

Instructions
Mix all ingredients together and chill for 4 hours. Serve with grilled shrimp, scallops, etc.

The picture is from tonight. I seasoned a few scallops with just salt and pepper. Then I pan seared them in a cast iron pan. I spooned some of the shrimp sauce onto the plate. The red flame? I kicked the sauce up by drawing a thin line of sriracha sauce in the shrimp sauce. I made the "flame" effect by dragging a toothpick through the line of sriracha sauce.

Wow! This is a dynamite combo. The shrimp sauce hits you up front with a "sweet" and then the sriracha kicks in with "heat" on the back end. Perfection, in my not so humble opinion!

Idea for Food Meme/Throwdown

I was kicking around ideas of what to cook for dinner tonight when I had a thought. I should (not tonight, but sometime soon) make a full menu comprised solely of recipes from other blogs.

Then I took that idea one step further. There are so many great foodies blogging out there. How many times have you commented, "Looks great...I have GOT to try making that" yet never get around to doing it?

All of us food bloggers should designate one weekend in a few weeks, when we all do this.
1) Select a a full menu using recipes from other food bloggers' posts. (Trying to use as many different blogs as possible.)
2) Cook the menu, take pictures, etc
3) On the designated date, post the menu (linking to the original posts), your alterations and your results.

Anyone interested?
What would we call the meme?

Boiled Peanuts

I crack open the soggy shell with an faint POP and the hot brine drips over my fingers. I squeeze out the three pearls of taste and savor the salty deliciousness that is boiled peanuts.

Yeah, I know. Boiled peanuts, aka goobers, are pretty much a southern thing and most likely you fall into one of three categories:
1) love them
2) hate them
or
3) have never had them.

I fall into the "love" category in case you couldn't tell. The best ones come in paper bags from roadside stands that pop up on the weekends selling local vegetables each summer.

A few weekends ago, I made a batch of my own. So I thought I'd write up my version of boiled peanuts but found that Lisa of Champaign Taste had already done pretty much the same dish and did a bang up job blogging about it. Go check her blog out....I'll wait.

Then I thought that I might write a great post about the history of goobers but I found that What's Cooking America had already done an exemplary job of that.

But darn it (such foul language, Chris?), I spent 8 hours boiling these things and took pictures so you're gonna see them :)

Soak the peanuts in plain water for at least 8 hours (the longer the better....well, reasonably. They'd be pretty gross after 3 or 4 weeks of soaking.) and then rinse them well. Peanuts DO grow underground.

Ingredients are simple. Green peanuts (raw peanuts work but take longer to cook), 3/4 c of salt per gallon of water, and 1/2 cup of Old Bay Seasoning.

Boil them for what seems to be forever, adding water as needed throughout the process to keep the level of liquid up. I ended cooking my batch for just over 8 hours.

Like good BBQ, boiled peanuts are done when they're done. You'll know because the shells soften and the peanuts take on a bean like consistency.

Mmmmmmm can't you just taste them?

Who Stole My Smoke Ring?

I had a pair of spare ribs so I decided to do a "throwdown" between two products, Big Bob Gibson's rub and sauce versus Billy Bones rub and sauce.I know what you're thinking, it's not fair, the Billy Bones side has TWO rubs and adds cherry preserves to the sauce. First, that is how I have been doing my spares when I want wet ribs (I use my own rub when doing dry). Second, who cares? I was just experimenting a bit.

I cut both spares St. Louis style. I seasoned one with a 50/50 mix of Billy Bones XXX Cherry Rub and Billy Bones Competition rub (aka "green label"). I seasoned the other with Big Bob Gibson's BBQ Rub. I stuck a toothpick in one of the ribs so I could remember which was which.

I smoked them together on the Big Green Egg using Full Circle lump, 1" x 3" hickory chunks (local), and some cherry wood chips. I ran it at 250f dome temp but it got a little higher a few times. I turned the cooking grate 1/3rd turn each hour (to keep from having the same part over the hot spots the whole time).I wasn't going to use foil (3-2-1 method), but after 4 hours got nervous that they weren't getting done fast enough to beat the oncoming storms, so I wrapped them in foil for an hour. When I took them out of the foil, I sauced the Gibson one with Big Bob Gibson's Championship Red Sauce. I hit the Billy Bones one with a 50/50 mix of his Original BBQ Sauce and cherry preserves that were chopped up with an immersion blender. I let them go for another 20 minutes and they were done. The rain started 10 minutes after they came off the cooker:)

They looked really good. The rib bones were sticking out just perfectly, which is a good indicator to me that they were going to be tender.Sliced them up and testing began immediately, no waiting for fancy trappings like plates.
They were BOTH VERY GOOD. I would have been happy with each on their own. But everyone agreed that the "toothpick" ones were just a tiny bit better than the other ones, because of the sweetness. So Billy Bones won out this time. What does that prove? Nothing. Just that my family was in the mood for sweet ribs on this day. (For the record, in Big Bob Gibson's BBQ book, Chris Lilly mentions that they add sweetners to their Red sauce in competitions as well.)
They would have scored will on taste and texture in a comp, but would have given up points on appearance for the limited smoke ring. I've run into this the past few cooks for butts and ribs. That's why I was extra sure to use bigger chunks of hickory this time and they were distributed throughout the coal. I did have a nice thin smoke throughout the cook.

The one thing I have been doing different is using a deep dish pizza pan as a drip pan. It has liquid in it to keep the drippings from burning/smoldering but now I'm thinking that this is putting too much moisture inside the cooking chamber, slowing the formation of a smoke ring. Thoughts from any of you fellow Eggheads or BBQ'rs?

"Oh Boy!" Waffles

I wanted a stick to your ribs breakfast today because I'm going to be skipping lunch. So I made "Oh Boy!" Waffles. I got this recipe from my mother in 2002 when she gave me an electric waffle iron for Christmas. (By the way Mom.....6+ years later, that thing is still chugging along perfectly!)

Here's a few of them before maple syrup and butter.

Oh Boy! Waffles

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

4 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons sugar

2 ea egg

2 1/4 cups milk

3/4 cup salad oil

Sift together dry ingredients. Combine liquid ingredients*; add to dry mix***. Bake in pre-heated baker.

Use a 3/4 cup batter** and set a timer for 5 minutes. Flip and cook for 1 minute more or until golden brown.

*I have found it makes a difference when I whisk the eggs while slowly adding the oil to make an emulsion before adding the milk.

**Specific to the Toastmaster Waffle Baker we are using. Yours may be more or less.

***Don't over mix this. Alton Brown's show on waffles warned that over mixing the liquid and dry ingredients changes the glutens to make them tough or something like glue. Let the mix sit for 5-10 minutes.

This isn't my mother's creation, it's just the recipe she and I use. Don't know who to give credit for it, since there are several sources around the Internet. These come out crispy and taste perfect. They freeze well so make extras and pop a 1/4 of one in the toaster for a quick breakfast during the week. Beats the hell out of eggos!

Beef Tenderloin with Creole Brandy Sauce

Let's just cut to the chase and get the food porn out of the way.

Tonight's menu was

Beef Tenderloin with Creole Sauce
Smoky Mountain Cafe's Summer Corn**
Roasted Potatoes with Garlic & Rosemary
Grilled Garlic Bread

**(One of the easiest, best side dishes ever. Katherine is a fellow food blogger who is awesome! Check her blog out.)

Start with a whole beef tenderloin. We got this one for a steal at because it was close dated. Yeah, we paid $45 (basically the cost of 3 people eating at Applebee's) for fillet mignon for 6-7 people. Not to mention I'll get at least a couple of incredible burgers by grinding up the scraps in an 80/20 mix.
So instead of "beef from the discount rack" we were having hand trimmed steaks. Say it out loud. Hand trimmed steaks. It just sounds fancy doesn't it? Like "rich Corinthian leather".

Anyway, I cut the steaks, tied them, and hit them with my Cajun beef rub***. This is my standard batch, you don't have to use it all, just enough to coat the steaks well.

Grove's Cajun Beef Rub

2 T smoked paprika

2 t kosher salt, coarse ground

2 t granulated onion, coarse ground (substitute onion powder but grinding your own rocks)

2 t granulated garlic, coarse ground (same)

2 t cayenne pepper

1.5 t white pepper

1/2 t black pepper

1 t thyme

1 t oregano

Let them sit for about 30-45 minutes to absorb the goodness:)

I couldn't do mine on the Egg tonight since it has a pork butt cooking in it so I did them on the Brinkmann's Professional Charcoal Grill filled with a chimney of Kingsford Briquettes with Hickory. The temp was around 450f. I seared them close to the coals with the grill lid CLOSED for four minutes flipping and rotating every 1 minute to get even cooking and nice grid marks.

Than I moved them to the indirect heat said and when they hit 130 internal, I pulled them to rest.

Creole Brandy Sauce

One of the VERY FEW PERHAPS ONLY ONE DOWNSIDE to grilling versus pan searing steaks is that you miss out one the foundation (the seared beef drippings in the pan) to many great sauces. With beef tenderloin, I found a way around that by using some of the trimmed scraps.

1 T olive oil

2 T beef tenderloin fatty trimmings, diced VERY finely

1/4 c mushrooms, diced very fine (measurement is after dicing)

1/4 c beef broth

1 oz brandy

1 T green onion diced on a bias

2 T Dijon mustard, coarse ground

6 oz heavy cream
1 t smoked paprika
S & P to taste

In a heated saute pan, add olive oil and allow to become warm. Saute beef trimmings and mushrooms stirring frequently until the 1) beef is browned and 2) the mushrooms have given off their liquid. The pan should start to look like it is going to burn. The following action shots are courtesy of my wife.

Deglaze the pan with beef broth and simmer for a minute or two letting the liquid reduce.

MEGA HUGE SAFETY TIP: Take the pan OFF of heat and open flame to add the brandy.

To be safe, ignite the brandy away from the range top with a long stem lighter. Me? Instead, I return the pan to the burner, tilt and ignite the flambe.

Call the salon and cancel the eyebrow waxing appointment you had for tomorrow!Just kidding, the whole flambe part lasts all of 1 second, just keep back:)

Add the cream, green onion, mustard, paprika, salt and pepper and let it thicken.

To serve, ladle one spoonful of the brandy sauce on a plate and place the steak on top of the sauce.

IMHO, the flavor of the brandy sauce and the texture of the mushrooms & mustard seeds ROCKS!

***Yes I KNOW Cajun and Creole are TWO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THINGS. But my cajun beef rub IS my basic beef rub whether I'm cooking creole or otherwise.

For printable recipe, click here:

Smoked Chicken Salad

So this is why I always smoke one extra chicken than I need.

Ingredients
1/2 ea Smoked chicken
1/3 ea Red onion
1 cup celery
1 cup Mayo
salt to taste
pepper to taste
Instructions
This recipe is really just basic chicken salad. The difference is that you use tasty smoked chicken instead of bland canned chicken or plain chicken breast. I personally recommend my smoked chicken recipe but if you already have a favorite, use it. You could also use a store bought rotisserie in a pinch.

Pick the 1/2 chicken to get all of the meat off, being very careful to remove all bones. Chop the chicken into small 1/4 inch cubes. Make sure you get some of the tasty skin in there too! That's where a lot of the cool flavors hang out.

SMOOTH STYLE
Process the celery and onion in a food processor to "almost" your desired consistency. Add chicken, mayo, salt and pepper and pulse a few times to mix together.

CHUNKY STYLE
Use a knife or food processor to chop celery, onion, and 1/2 of the half chicken (that's a 1/4 chicken) to your desired consistency. In a large bowl, stir together with the rest of the chicken, mayo, salt and pepper.

Let sit in the fridge for a few hours before serving. It's great as a sandwich (toasted bread, lettuce, tomato) or just plain with crackers.

For printable version, click here: