What That Smoker is For

And now for the final smoked item: pork spareribs. I think pork spareribs are the THING you fire up the smoker for. Well, that, and home-cured bacon.
We have never used the smoker without a slab or two or more of pork spareribs in there. (Not baby-back ribs, not short ribs.) Sometimes there may be something more interesting going on, like bacon or oysters, but you always want to fit in the ribs.
A little bath in a marinade of vinegar and beer, Worcestershire sauce and hot sauce. Soaky, soaky. Then a gentle cooking with a kiss of hickory smoke, and yer done, baby.
Look at that meat! It was like eating all-day meat lollipops. The meat came from Marin Sun Farms (they didn't grow it, though), and it resembled a Sunday roast.
We decided we didn't even want barbecue sauce, because the meat was so plump and glowing, infused with a not-bad marinade. The first time I've ever had spareribs without sauce, and it was a smart gamble.
I have nothing funny to say.

Smoker's Valuable Real Estate

When you fire up the smoker, you want to take advantage of every waft of smoke. Our smoker holds a couple of shelves of comestibles, so we planned ahead with marinades and so forth.
We smoked three kinds of meat. Two were seafood, and the other was not chicken. I hate smoked chicken. (I will tell you soon, of course, what it was.)
Voila, the smoked teriyaki salmon. My dad used to make smoked salmon jerky when he was in Alaska, pretending he wasn't hauling nukes on his antisubmarine patrol plane. (He was.) I loved the dense, chewy texture, even though that's not really standard for smoked salmon. And I wanted to recreate it.
But Cranky cut the meat into largish chunks, so it wouldn't fall through the grill, and it came out sort of in between. In between jerky and tender fillet.
I'm not going to go on about textures and cooking times. We were very happy with the results, though we may pull the fish out of the smoker earlier next time and forget about salmon candy. Or, we might aim for salmon candy next time.
There will be a next time, before the rains of winter.

The Oyster and the Carpenters, Close to You

Why did I never try this before?
Has anybody else tried this before? Because I will come over and damage your wind chimes for not telling me. (And the neighbors will like me!)
This is local oysters, smoked in the back yard. Ate 'em about an hour ago.
My parents had a lot of Navy cocktail parties when I was young, and the stuff they served was strictly off-limits to me. Hence my abiding attraction to smoked oysters. Nowadays canned smoked oysters creep me out, with the poisonous soy oil and Chinese melamine. So no smoked oysters.
But look! Pop the top shell off a dozen or so fresh bivalves. Slide them onto the top rack of the smoker. Wait a measly hour or so. You get smoked oysters!
The smoke was perfect, and the texture of the meat was very good, though a bit glued onto the shells for the smaller ones. Next time, I'd say shuck the oysters completely out of the shell, apply a little olive oil, put the meat back in the shells, and smoke 'em if you got 'em.
Cranky's perfect idea was to squeeze lemon juice on the oysters when we served them, followed by a drizzle of olive oil, and man. That was perfection.
I am so stunned. Why did I never try this before?

It Takes a Village

On Thursday, Bartlett will have been with us two years.
She was such a difficult dog to train, we seriously thought about giving up and taking her back to the dog pound. And we're good trainers!
The only way it even worked out was because of positive reinforcement. Do something right, you get a little tasty treat. Do something wrong, and we will try to correct you. We wore a treat bag on our waist, filled with yummy crumbs of liver bombs to hand out as needed.
I have seen Bartlett in the deepest psychic pain (Cranky was out of the room in a strange hotel.) To keep her from whimpering, I just slipped her a crumb every time she was quiet for a few seconds. And before you know it, she fell asleep beside me on the bed.
It has been a long, long slog. Her youthfulness and genetic fizzy nature meant we were still in high training mode at 18 months. Then one day she seemed to get it. "They like me more when I do certain things the right way."
She never got yelled at, never got a slap on the rump. (Though we have had to say some things sternly.)
I'm writing this because we recently got new neighbors next door. Younger than us, probably never really be friends. The two adults take care of the man's little kids several times a week; some shared custody deal. They are really nice.
But the guy yells at their dog when he's unhappy with its behavior. And, yes, he yells at his kids.
I don't think he's even close to terrorizing them, but I wish I could share my story about positive reinforcement.
You don't just lean over the fence and offer that kind of help, though. Sigh.

Catalonian "Bread With Tomato"

Yeah, I know it's fall. But it's still tomato season.
I met a couple of friends at the farmers market this morning, where I shivered my gluteus maximus off, and my pal said, "I should have brought you some of my tomatoes." (I gave him a sack of autumn pears.) Doesn't matter. You can get boxes of tomatoes at discount prices now, to roast into sauce and then freeze or can for the winter.
And that's what we are planning to do this week.
But in the meantime, eat some tomatoes fresh, while you still can. While it's still tomato season.
I couldn't believe how fresh the tomatoes tasted in this humble preparation, pa amb tomaquet. Probably because there's a frisky scrape of fresh garlic rubbed into the toast. And a drizzle of your best olive oil. Then top it with raw tomato gloodge (it's easy; just rub tomato halves on the big holes of your box grater.) Not too much tomato. Surprisingly, skimpy is best. Finally a skimpy shower of lovely salt crystals.
The easiest thing in the world, and I order you to make some.
It's still tomato season.

I See Dead People Food

Isn't this pretty? It's about as pretty as a kooky '50s apron, all colorful and well-loved.
I think the corn loaf pictured here probably dates back to the 50s or earlier. Pat Fusco wrote a, well, I wouldn't call it irreverent, but she wrote a kickass story for the Pacific Sun on funeral food! In certain regions of the country, funeral food (the covered dishes you bring to a grieving family) can be quite competitive. Prettiest, most nourishing, like that.
Makes me suspect scenarios like, "Sorry about your uncle, but wait till you try my Chocolate-Caramel Maple Doodles. When you're ready, hon. I know it's hard."
I couldn't resist this multicolored pan of comfort food from Pat's article. We had everything on hand except for the evaporated milk. We followed the recipe exactly. It seemed a bit odd to me, to be including a little dab of sour cream in there, when you're already flavoring it strongly with cheese. And why add water and evaporated milk? You could just use milk, unless the recipe is from the old ice box days and there was no more ice so the milk went bad, but wait. Where were you storing the sour cream? So it was a little nutty, but fun to try. The minute we pulled it out of the oven, we were all over it like starving zombies. Eat, eat. Snorf.
It was really tasty -- so many flavors -- but horrifyingly filling. (We ate a lot.) Toward the end of our snorfing, we realized this was a dense, nutrient-rich thing, and that, sadly, some of the cornmeal grains remained raw and gritty.
Cranky said, "Would you make this again?"
I said, "Over my dead body."
We wrapped up the leftovers for another day. And the darned thing came back to life!
Think about it. If you're taking this corn loaf to a bereaved family, they are certainly not eating it hot out of the oven, as we did. In fact, it might spend a night or two in the fridge, benefitting from moisturizing treatments.
The recipe works. If you treat it as funeral food.