First!  My apologize to the Bangles…it was just too easy!

Second!  It’s not Monday anymore but what the heck it’s still a good headline!

If you’ve been following the last saga of my trip to the Fancy Food Show you know that I’ve become the owner of a fair amount of Buffalo Style Hot Sauce from Tabasco.  So, it seemed only appropriate that I cook something with the hot sauce.  There will be more, at a later date, about the hot sauce itself, but in the mean time I adapted a recipe from one of my favorite new cookbooks The Meatball Shop Cookbook by Daniel Holzman and Michael Chernow.  I’ve adapted their Mini Buffalo Chicken Balls for the grill and turned this into a salad instead of an appetizer.

Grilled Buffalo Chicken Meatball Salad

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1/4  cup Tabasco Buffalo Style Hot Sauce
• 2 pound ground chicken, preferably thigh meat
• 2 large egg
• 1 celery stalk, minced
• 1 1/2 cups bread crumbs
• 2 teaspoons salt

Directions:

The recipe calls for ground chicken and more specifically thigh meat.  Because chicken white meat is so lean and you’re going to be cooking this twice I recommend you try to find ground thigh meat.  If you can’t get your butcher or meat cutter to grind up a package of thighs for you then just do it yourself.  You can use a meat grinder or if it’s all you got try your food processor.

Preheat your grill to 350 degrees using indirect heat.  Using the oil coat a large baking dish about 9 X 13 in size.

Combine all the remain ingredients in a large bowl.  Roll the mixture into large meatballs, make sure you pack the meatballs firmly.  Place the meatballs in the oil baking dish.  Line the meatballs up into neat rows and pack them tightly into the baking dish.

“Bake” on your grill for about 15 minutes or until they start to get firm and hold their shape.

Quickly get your grill set up for direct high heat.  Remove the meatballs  with a spatula and grill them until they start to get grill marks and reach an internal temperature of 165 degrees.  Don’t over cook!

Let the meatballs rest for five minutes and combine with whatever salad ingredients you like.  Since it’s a “Buffalo” salad it has to be served with bleu cheese dressing.

You can easily cook this on your smoker or oven.  The grilling at the end is to give it a little of that “grilled” flavor I like. It’s not a necessary step but a good one.  Also, by making the meatballs much smaller you can toss them in additional hot sauce and serve them with bleu cheese dipping sauce for a great Big Game appetizer.

The “baking” of the meatballs on the grill, using indirect heat, is because the meatballs are not firm enough to set on grill grates without falling apart.  By cooking them a little first you can then grill them without any problem.

Enjoy!

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A salad without lettuce?  Who would have thought this would be something that tasted awesome.   I saw this on the Fine Cooking website and figured it would be a novel idea to try and blog about.  Little did I know that it would, in fact, be a flavorful and extremely tasty appetizer.  You’ve just got to try this recipe.

Grilled Bread Salad With Basil and Cherry Tomatoes

A trip to the grill gives the makings of a classic Italian bread salad—a good crusty loaf of bread, ripe summer tomatoes, and basil—a little smokiness and crisp texture. Because this salad can sit out at room temperature for an hour or two, it’s the perfect side for a picnic or barbecue. If you can’t find bocconcini, substitute a large fresh mozzarella cut into 1-inch pieces.

Ingredients:

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Larry Gaian

Somewhere in the back of my mind I have a recollection of having eaten a kumquat once when I was a kid.  For some reason I seem to remember eating one at a roadside produce stand on a trip to Mount Palomar.  It’s strange how the mind works, that something like that would still be stuck in there.  As for beets the only time I’ve ever eaten beets was the pickled kind you find in a salad bar.  They always tasted okay covered with huge globs 1,000 Island Dressing and croutons.

The four ingredients for the December Challenge are:  flank steak, kumquats, beets and gnocchi.  After some research I decided the way to go was a salad with chopped flank steak, beet gnocchi and candied kumquats.  And you know what?  It came together quite well.  The flavors all blended together with a balsamic vinaigrette.  And the colors were amazing!

This was the most time consuming and labor intensive of any cook I’ve ever done.  It was days in the making.  The easiest part of the process was what we consider the main ingredient of our challenges the protein.  In this case it was flank steak.

Here in Northern California we are experiencing our biggest rain storm until since 2006 so I used my Char-Broil RED gas grill with my GrillGrates to grill up the meat.  The steak was seasoning liberally with Char-Broil’s new “All-Purpose Seasoning.”  The flavor profile with some of the herbs it contains matched quite well.  This is a great all around seasoning.

The blowing wind and rain was a bit of a distraction so I over shot my intended medium rare and ended up with medium.  It wasn’t quite as juicy as I wanted but it still  didn’t have that over done texture you get with flank steak when you screw it up.  Fortunately I caught it just in time.

Candied Kumquats

Ingredients:

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup water
• 2 cups kumquats
• Salt

Directions:

Make a simple syrup by combining the water and sugar in a saucepan.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for a minute or two.  While the water and sugar come to a boil cut the kumquats in half and remove as many seeds as you can.

When syrup has boiled add the kumquats and cook until tender, about 10 minutes.  When done remove the kumquats, with a slotted spoon to a rack.  Keep heating the syrup until reduced to a thicker syrup.  Spoon the reduced syrup over the top of each cooled kumquat.

Beet Gnocchi

I found a great recipe for Beet Gnocchi at Eat A Beet.  I’m really thankful to have found this recipe it made the whole meal possible.

Ingredients:

• 3 small beets, trimmed
• 1lb ricotta cheese
• 1 large egg
• 3/4 cup parmesan cheese, grated
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour, divide

Directions:

Preheat oven to 450?. Wrap beets in foil and roast until tender, about 1 hour.  Cool 15 minutes and slip skins off.

Grate coarsely. Place 3/4 cup of beets in large bowl (reserve remaining beets for tomorrow’s salad)  Stir in ricotta, egg, 3/4 cup parmesan cheese, salt and pepper to taste.  Add 1 cup flour.

You can make it ahead up to this point and refrigerate.  Lightly dust baking sheet with flour. Place remaining 1/2 cup flour in small bowl.  Measure out tbsp-sized scoops of dough and coat with flour.

Roll with a gnocchi board or a fork to get the traditional indentations, or roll into a 1 1/2 inch log and gently press the center with your fingertip to make slight indentations.  Transfer gnocchi to prepared baking sheet.  Can be prepared to this point up to 6 hours ahead. Cover and chill.

Put a large, well-salted pot of water on to boil. Cook gnocchi until they float to the surface, about 2 minutes.  Cook about another minute, then remove with a slotted spoon.

Place gnocchi on plate and sauce appropriately. Serve immediately, sprinkled with additional Parmesan cheese.

Make sure when you work with beets that you wear some gloves.  There’s no doubt the red juice will stain just about anything it touches.  To make up the salad I dressed the greens with a little balsamic vinaigrette dressing.  Added a pile of chopped flank steak, the gnocchi, candied kumquats and some tomatoes. 

Additional participants in this month’s Ingredient Challenge include:

Paul Haight of No Excuses BBQ – ENTRY HERE

When you are dealing with thousands of of BBQ enthusiasts for some reason salad doesn’t appear near the top of the list of “must haves.”  So I figured a salad would be different enough to give me a slight edge in the voting.  Toss in some Yanni Grilling Cheese and I figured I had the potential for a great salad.

I stopped by the Roseville Farmer’s Market and three varieties of apples.  Fuji, Granny Smith and McIntosh.  Each variety of apple grills up slightly differently and I wanted the different textures of grilled apples to compliment the grilling cheese and spring mix salad I was planning to use.

The Yanni Grilling cheese was an interesting thing to try out.  My thought was the grill marks on the cheese and the grill marks on the apples would make for a very nice looking salad.

I was hoping for something along the lines of a sweet salad with a little savory bite towards the end.  I made up an apple coulis that I thought would work.

Apple Coulis

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup water
• 2 tablespoons light corn syrup
• 3/4 cup apple sauce
• 2 teaspoons Apple cider vinegar

Directions:

In a small saucepan combine sugar, water and corn syrup.  Bring to a boil and reduce heat.  Let simmer until liquid reduces slightly, about 4 or 5 minutes.  Stir in the apple sauce and cook an additional 2 to 3 minutes.  Stir constantly to avoid burning.  Turn off head and stir in vinegar.  Let cool completely before serving.

To make up the salad start by coring and slicing the apples in bite size pieces.  Spray the apple slices with non-stick spray and sprinkle both sides with sugar.  By spraying the apple slices instead of your grill grates you’ll have less sticking to the grates.  Also, by spraying non-stick cooking spray directly on the grill grates you create flares which can lead to a bitter taste.  The spray on the apples combined with the sugar will give you great grill marks on your apples.

Once the apples have grill marks on the first side turn them over and grill the second side.  Becareful to not over cook the apple slices, you want them to be warm but not cook the center of the apple slices.  Over cooking will give you soft mushy apples that won’t go well with the salad greens.  The texture just won’t be good.

Once the apples are cooked remove them from the grill and allow them to cool completely.  I cooled some of the slices to room temperature and cooled some in the refrigerator until they were cold.  I preferred the cold slices better in the salad.

At the same time grill the cheese.  You’ve got to make sure the cheese is grilled quickly because if you don’t it will get too soft to turn over.  I tried a couple different times to get it to work out “as advertised” but wasn’t able to get it to work out correctly.  Cool the cheese and slice it.

Put a small amout of the Apple Coulis on the bottom of your plate or salad bowl.  Place a small mound of greens on top of the apple coulis.  Layer the apples and cheese on top of the greens.  I also picked up some great “Sweet & Savory” nuts at the Farmer’s Market from the El Dorado Nuts and Fudge Company and I chopped a small handful of these nuts and sprinkled them over the top of the salad.  Dizzle a little more Apple Coulis over the top and you’ve got your salad.

Now that my wife and I are “empty nesters” we are enjoy trying different types of foods and flavor profiles that we couldn’t try with kids at home. We are also trying to eat healthier. Ellie Krieger’s book “The Food You Crave” has given us several great meals that don’t necessarily taste “healthy.”

Tonight we tried her Grill Thai Beef Salad. (You can find the recipe on the Food Network here)

Celeste whipped up the marinade this morning and got flank steak soaking away in what smelled like a fantastic mixture of ginger, soy and garlic chili sauce.

After getting a nice bed of goals on my trusty weber kettle I got to grilling the flank steak:

Check out the close up of the chili sauce and garlic along with other morsels of tasty goodness.

All and all this was a meal that was both satisfying and flavorful. The combination of the basil and cilantro in the salad combined with the chili sauce marinade made of a taste that satisfied my need for a little heat, but wasn’t overpowering.