Merry Christmas

Seems like I have been doing much more eating than cooking the last few weeks. I hope all of you are having a wonderful Christmas with lots of good food. 

Honey Grilled Chicken

Sweet Honey Grilled Chicken

By

Neil Waring

Revered Wyoming Chef, outdoor cooking expert, admired woodsmen and honored citizen.




My Favorite Picnic Spot in the Park

This stuff is so easy that anyone can do it. That’s why I’m posting this, even this old food cooker can get this one right. The best part is that it can be made on the backyard grill or out at a favorite picnic area, mine is Guernsey State Park. Everything tastes better cooked outside.

I like to buy the chicken breasts in the portion size bag. I usually buy the giant bag of 6 oz. breasts. Frozen chicken tenders also work great for this, no, not the kind with all the stuff already on them that you warm in the microwave. These are naked, skinless, frozen pieces of real chicken. If you are a wing person, buy the skinless, boneless, dark meat chicken portions.

I season liberally (both sides) with my own concoction of salt, pepper, paprika, sage, thyme, and coriander. Make sure you have thawed the chicken first. This need not be a big deal, thaw in the microwave, that’s what I do—because I always forget, or want this chicken at the last minute.

-Ingredients-

Enough chicken for however many want chicken, let’s say chicken for four (I love alliteration)

·        4 Chicken Breasts

·        The seasoning from above

·        The special sauce

·        A good hot grill, heat ur up good, really good

Special Sauce Recipe – and I am not kidding about this, it is super. So what is it? Your favorite BBQ sauce and pure honey at a ratio of 1 to 1. For those of you that were math challenged, as I was, that means, equal amounts of BBQ sauce and honey. Easy!  Melt it together in the microwave, this will only take 20-30 seconds.

Now don’t get in a hurry with the sauce, it goes on when the chicken is mostly done.

Put your chicken on the very hot grill, it should mark the meat nicely. Turn in two minutes and mark the other side.

When clear liquid starts to bubble through it is ready for the sauce. Sauce one side, turn after a minute or so, turn and sauce the other side, turn once more. The BBQ sauce should blacken around the edges of the meat.

Serve on hamburger buns, hotdog buns, or whatever you have. Goes great with chips, potato salad and a fine, chilled, diet soda.

This is so much easier than doing hot wings and tastes even better.

Part of the reason I love summer – cooking out, burning some meat!

 

 

 

 

Hello Summer

Great BBQ, a little rain shower, and best of all one of those super Wyoming sunsets. Wonderful way to say goodbye to May.

Sunset over the Oregon/Mormon Trail a half mile south of our house.

 Oh, and the gardens are getting colorful.

 

 

 The vegetable garden is up and growing, already eating green onions and radishes, cherry tomatoes setting on, strawberries and raspberries looking very good - I feel a good year in the garden.

 

And this gal/guy? moved into our backyard pear tree

 

My Kitchen Disaster

Kitchen disaster, I completely ruined an apple crisp yesterday, I really miss that crisp. I was so hungry for apple crisp topped with vanilla ice cream. The problem? It was too sweet, I put the sugar in twice, at least. My wife, who is a wonderful baker, saved the day. She made coffee cake with my crisp-like-stuff in the middle. It was terrific!

Think I will stick to cooking and forget the baking!

Well, as we used to say - A good baker will rise to the occasion, it's the yeast he can do.

Trail Drive Breakfast

I get tired of reading what is labeled, “authentic cowboy trail food,” and one of the first ingredients to some kind of stir fry they didn’t have, and wouldn’t have eaten if it was available, is avocado or mushrooms. In my many years studying Western American history I have found no reference to the use of mushrooms on the trail, and although avocados were commonly available in Mexico, and in the American Southwest cowboys thought of them as low level food and most avoided them.

Cowboys ate food very plain, well done, and salty. They might have tried something with mushrooms or avocados in restaurants, but not on the trail. Trail food needed to be fast, filling and hot. Following is a recipe for breakfast on a trail drive.

Warm a flour tortilla or use fresh hot biscuits
Spread with refried black or pinto beans
*Top with scrambled eggs (in modern day we toss on some shredded cheese and salsa)

Role the tortilla taco style, or stack the biscuit halves sandwich style

Serve with fresh hot coffee and the cowboy was ready for the trail

*Eggs were available in several places along the trail, some dirt farmers made a nice bit of money by selling to ol' cookie as he went north with the beefs.

Puff Pancake, Fun and Tasty Too

The Puff Pancake

 

 Puff Pancakes, also called Dutch Baby Pancakes. I will not call it baby anything on this ol’ Wyoming boy blog. Except to say, wow, these babies are good. These are sometimes referred to as a German Pancake and may very well have been the first puff pastry. They have been around for about a century and evidently some pancake places either feature them or used to feature them. I have never noticed them on a breakfast menu, but then we like to cook and go out to eat when forced.

These are normally listed as breakfast fare but we like breakfast for supper at our house, cook these up with a side of sausage or bacon, and you have it.

 

Ingredients

• 2 eggs
• 2/3 cup flour
• 2/3 cup milk (or 1/3c of milk, 1/3c half & half)
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• Pinch of salt
• Teaspoon of vanilla
• Teaspoon of cinnamon
   
  Preheat to 475
   
  Beat the eggs
   
   Pour in liquid, sugar, salt and vanilla - keep mixing until sugar is dissolved.
  (I use the blender, forget the mixer, actually my wife doesn’t trust me with the mixer, or maybe I don’t know which bowls to use or how to attach whatever attachments are needed).
   
  Dump in flour and mix it all smooth.
  Let batter sit 10 min or so, you really don’t need to time this step
     
  Get out your big old cast iron skillet, the ten inch one, if you have it.
  Coat it with melted butter; make sure to get it up the sides all the way. (I was going to say slather it up with butter but wasn’t sure what slather meant so I will stick with coat it, even if slather sounds better).
  Pour the batter in and bake 15 min or a little less- when it is golden brown (or whatever you interpret golden brown to be) it is ready to take out of the heat.
  The pancake will puff up when baking, remove and let sit for a minute or so and it will collapse, don’t worry it’s supposed to.
   *Spread on strawberry or raspberry jelly and lightly sprinkle with powdered sugar.
  Loosen around edges and slide onto plate
  Serve with butter and syrup
  *This step can also be done a few minutes before taking pancake out of the oven
   
  This can also be a great campfire dish, baked in a Dutch oven. I have not tried it but don’t see why it wouldn’t work. That may be the reason I occasionally have my cooking and baking disasters, but believe I will try it some time.
   

French Fries - The Healthy Cowboy Way

 

          Can an old retired school teacher make

                  New Fangled French Fries

                         YEP!

                                   By

                            Neil Waring

Revered Wyoming Chef, outdoor cooking expert, admired woodsmen, award winning author, retired politician and honored citizen.

 

Tired of fast food French Fries? They are full of calories, greasy, and not that tasty.  But we all remember how great they were when we were kids and wish they were that good today.

Here is an at home alterative, and they taste great and without fast food guilt.

ü One medium potato – cleaned, peeled and cut into eight wedges

ü Spray pizza pan or cookie sheet with Pam or similar product

ü Place Potatoes on pan and spray with the Vegetable oil

ü Preheat broiler and put the potatoes, I put it on the highest setting so it will both cook and crisp the potatoes

ü Broil for three minutes then sprinkle with parmesan or cheddar and broil another three minutes (I usually leave out the cheese but they are delicious either way)

ü Remove salt and pepper to taste and enjoy

Each potato is about 200 calories (as long as you are light on the cheese)

We use this to serve two, enough, but not too much.

Oregon Trail Johnnycakes

Travelers on the Oregon Trail were sometime treated to Johnnycakes. Today we think of these tasty cakes as breakfast fare, but for weary travelers they were a treat, after a long day, topped with their favorite homemade jams and jellies, assuming they hadn’t eaten all the sweets the first few miles out of town. Today we more often top them with melted butter and syrup. I am not sure who Johnny was or why they named a cake (griddle cake) after him, but they taste as good today as they did back in Trail days.

-Johnnycakes-

1 beaten egg (some travelers took chickens along)
3/8 cup milk (and some brought along Ol’ Bessy, the milk cow)
1/2 cup water
1 Tablespoon melted lard (today we use vegetable oil)
1/2 teaspoon salt (I sometimes skimp this down to a ¼)
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal (cornmeal and flour amounts can be switched
1 cup flour                      depending on how corny your taste)               

1 Tablespoon sugar

Combine all ingredients and mix really smooth. Drop by tablespoon onto hot greased griddle or skillet. Fry on each side until browned, only a minute or two. This recipe makes about a dozen 4 inch cakes.
These are fun, quite a bit different from a regular pancake (we added cornmeal and took out the baking powder) but the taste is special. The taste is kind of flat, with the first chew, then the taste of cornbread a few moments later. Very cool!