I watch a lot of cooking shows on television.  Whenever you watch a cooking show the on air personality will always taste their creations and exclaim to the tv audience how wonderful it is.  Do you ever wonder if they cook anything that just doesn’t taste good?  I’m not talking about something that isn’t perfect.  I’m talking about spit it out, unable to swallow bad.  It’s hard to imagine Giada, Rachel, Paula or Bobby Flay taking a bite, looking into the camera and saying.  “Dang, this really stinks.”  Just doesn’t happen.

One of my favorite shows is “The Best Thing I Ever Ate.”  I’ve gotten a lot of great cooking inspirations from this show.  Today I write about the opposite of “The Best Thing I Ever Ate.”  Tonight I write about “The Worst Thing I Ever Cooked.”  Scan the internet, not to many “foodies” will admit that they screwed up when cooking.  I know my buddies at “No Excuses BBQ” and “Brew and Que” have written about cooking disasters.  And my hat is off to them.  But for the most part only successes make into print.  This is not one of those cases.  This is a blog post about some pretty bad food.

This weeks throwdown on the BBQ Brethren is about Scovilles, that crazy heat measurement for telling how hot a pepper is.  I like heat, but I’m not a chili head.  I don’t like heat for heat sake.  I want flavor first and foremost.  I got the brilliant idea to to combine habaneros and a smoked pork mousse with sharp Irish cheddar cheese. 

On the surface it’s not all that crazy of an idea.  There are lots and lots of Pork Mousse recipes on the internet.  It’s actually something that appears to be popular in some circles of cooking.   Most often when I think of mousse I think of chocolate and it’s a desert.  But it can be an entree if done correctly.  So I set out to come up with what I figured would be a nice tasty pork mouse.

I bought a couple of thin pork loin chops and seasoned them with a little bit of “Simply Marvelous” Cherry rub.  I figured this would give me a little sweet with a nice mild cherry flavor.  I used maybe a tablespoon between all four chops.

The chops then went on the smoker at 225 degrees with cherry wood.  The goal here was to have a common flavor from start to finish.  I’ve been thinking about how I was going to do this for several days.  So I was fairly confident I was going to have some good flavor combinations here.   I learned a long time ago that just pulling stuff out of the pantry and tossing them together was a recipe for disaster.  So I did some thinking…

After smoking the chops I cooled them and put them in the refrigerator overnight.  The next day I chopped up the chops and put them into the food processor with a teaspoon of rub and some heavy cream.  Because the pork loins were so thin they were done before they had a chance to absorb much smoke flavor so I used a tablespoon of “Show Me” BBQ sauce.  This sauce has a good dose of liquid smoke in it and I knew it would give me the smoke flavor I was looking for.

Once I had the consistency I needed I put the mousse into a zip lock bag, cut the corner off.  This allowed me to pipe the mousse into the habanero halves that I had removed the seeds and veins from.  The color of the mousse wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but it wasn’t too bad.  I wasn’t all that thrilled with the flavor of the mousse.  Normally thought I have found that some rubs and sauces don’t taste all that great when you just taste them without cooking so I figured I’d just wait and see.

I’ve fallen in love with Irish Cheddar cheese.  It’s got a great sharp, nutty flavor that I just knew would go with the cherry in the rub and the wood smoke.   It also looks nice when it’s melted.

After topping the mousse with the cheese I popped them into the oven and baked them at 325 degrees for about 15 minutes.  This cooked the mousse and melted the cheese to give me a nice looking appetizer. 

After allowing them to cool a couple of minutes I grabbed one and tossed it into my mouth.  I got about three chews before I realized that this was just horrible.  It may have actually been The Worst Thing I Ever cooked.    The flavor was just so bad.  Individually the flavors seemed to be a good match, but when you put them together with the habanero it just made for a concoction that was just so bad I had to spit it out.

This made the whole Shankopotomus fiasco seem like a walk in the park.  So Giada, Rachel, Alton and Bobby, what’s The Worst Thing You Ever Cooked?”

One of my favorite lunches was a simple fried bologna sandwich.  Bologna, fried on the stove, slathered in mayo on Wonder Bread it was my “go to” after school sandwich whenever I had a chance.  I’m not a huge fan of bologna normally.  The flavor just doesn’t appeal to me.  But fried, bologna takes on a whole different flavor.

This “enhanced” fried flavor is complimented by mayo, and makes even the cheapest, plain white bread edible.  So when I got the craving for a fried bologna sandwich this week I decided that I needed to go a little over the top.  Of course it has to be done on the grill.  And in this case, the smoker and the grill.

I started with 2.5 lbs of bologna that I rubbed down with olive oil and seasoned with “Simply Marvelous Season All.”  Besides the olive oil and seasoning rub down I used a knife and cut slits all the way around the bologna.  This allows the seasoning and smoke to get a better penetration, thus improving the flavor.

Here's the chub seasoned and rubbed and on the Traeger ready to start the smoke. The chub was smoked at 250 degrees until the internal temperature reached 155 degrees.

The chub at about 90 minutes. You can now see the slits starting to appear.

All done! 155 degrees internal. Ready to rest and then slice.

A nice slab of smoked bologna on the Char-Broil RED Grill.

Some simple "Country Style" potato bread and mayo makes a great sandwich! Nothing better than making a childhood memory into a kicked-up adult memory.

For my birthday my son bought me a copy of Andrea Chesman’s  The New Vegetarian Grill, Revised Edition: 250 Flame-Kissed Recipes for Fresh, Inspired Meals and I’m going to be using this book for several upcoming Meatless Monday posts.

I’ve been thinking about my Meatless Monday posts and I thought it would be a good idea to have a dessert to go along with the previous and future posts.  This post is inspired by Andrea’s recipe.  The recipe is her’s except I used a special ice cream instead of whipped cream.  If you are all interested in grilling meatless dishes I can’t recommend a better book to guide you.

Maple Grilled Pound Cake With Peaches

By Andrea Chesman

• 8 firm ripe peaches or 16 canned peach halves
• 1/3 cup orange juice
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted
• 2 tablespoons pure maple syrup
• 1 8-inch pound cake cut into 1-inch slices

If you are using fresh peaches, dip them into boiling water for about 30 seconds to loosen their skins.  With a sharp paring knife, pull away the skin and discard.  Halve and pit each peach.  If you are using canned peaches, drain well.

Prepare a medium fire in the grill

Combine the orange juice, butter and the maple syrup and mix well.  Brush onto the peaches and both sides of the cake slices.  Grill the peaches and cake slices until golden brown, about 5 minutes per side for the peaches and about 3 minutes per side for the cake.

Place a slice of cake and 2 peach halves on each plate.  Drizzle additional maple syrup over the cake and peaches, if desired.  Serve at once.

I wanted something different to eat with this dessert and I wanted something a little savory to contrast the sweetness in the maple syrup and peaches.  My friend Stephan Franklin has come up with a couple of great rubs and his “Simply Marvelous Sweet & Spicy” rub I thought would compliment this dessert.  But how to turn it into a dessert was the question.

The answer was:

Simply Marvelous Brown Sugar Ice Cream

• 4 egg yolks
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 cup (packed) brown sugar
• 3 cups half-and-half or light cream
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon Simply Marvelous Sweet & Spicy Rub (more or less depending on your taste)

In heavy, medium, non-aluminum saucepan, whisk together the egg yolks and brown sugar until thick. In another medium saucepan bring the cream and half and half just to a boil over moderate heat. Gradually whisk the hot cream into the egg yolk mixture in a thin stream. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until the custard is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon about 6 minutes.   Do Not Boil.

Immediately strain the custard into a medium bowl. Stir in the vanilla and cool to room temperature, stirring occasionally, about 30 minutes. Cover and refrigerate until very cold, at least 5 hours.

Pour the cold custard into an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Let the ice cream soften slightly before serving.

This ice cream recipe is adapted from a recipe on www.inmamaskitchen.com

I cranked up one of the Weber Smokey Mountain smokers with some avocado wood.  Avocado wood is a somewhat hard wood that goes great with chicken and pork.  It’s a mild wood that should be treated like you would a fruit wood.

The wings were seasoned with Simply Marvelous Season All and smoked at 225 degrees for about 2 hours.  Because it was a busy day I let the wings cool and put them into the refrigerator for eating at a later date.

After sitting in the refrigerator for a couple of days I took the wings out of the refrigerator and let them come up to room temperature.

After the wings warmed up a little I gave them a little milk dunk and a dust of flour.

After letting the flour set into the Masterbuilt Butterball Indoor Turkey Fryer they went for about 10 minutes.  They came out nice and crisp.

The wings got a coating of Sweet Baby Ray’s new “Original Dipping Sauce”  The sauce has a mild horseradish flavor and complimented the season all and avocado wood.

I needed a side dish to go with the grilled tri-tips we were having so I decided to adapt the Trash Bag Potatoes recipe from No Excuses BBQ with a new “Season All” I received from Simply Marvelous BBQ.  I followed the recipe except I substituted the spices with the Season All.

A bag of mixed potatoes from Costco gave the dish a rather unique color and the flavor of the different types of potatoes complimented both the flavors from the salad dressings and the Season All.

The Simply Marvelous Season All isn’t like most season alls or seasoned salt you buy commercially.  It provides a much more robust flavor that enhances the flavors of the ingredients instead of overpowering.

With the different spices and herbs in the season all  it helped to give the potatoes a nice golden color while grilling.  I only had a gas grill with some cherry wood chips for smoke so I wasn’t able to give the season all the true work out i wanted to, but it came out very nice.

I’m looking forward to trying the Season All on some chicken and pork.  If you are interested in purchasing some “Simply Marvelous Season All” drop Stephan an email at  info@simplymarvelousbbq.com

Started with a nice sized whole chicken:

Seasoned it up with Steph’s new rub and tossed it on the WSM. The rub has some nice flavors. Not just spices, there’s some herbs in there too:

What also made this a special cook was the wood I got to used. I got a care package from Roy (keale) last week. Loaded with seasoned guava. Let me tell you, this wood is great. Has a nice sweet aroma while smoking and it complimented Steph’s rub very well.

Here’s the bird half way through:

Glazed the bird with a little of BBS’s new BBQ sauce:

It looked so good I gave it another coating just before serving:

Toss it on a plate with some rice pilaf and salad:

Steph’s sauce and Poultry Rub is first rate. Awesome stuff. They both compliment each other very nicely. I’m thinking of smoking a whole turkey and will be giving the rub another good testing.

If you’d like to purchase some of these great new products send an email to: simplymarvelousbbq@yahoo.com