Peach Bourbon Grilled Pork

Posted on July 7, 2016 by Our Growing Paynes

I’ve been trying this week to figure out video editing and the open source software. No success yet. I’m trying not to get frustrated but it drives me batty when my love of technology runs into the wall of not knowing how to make it work for me. So it may be awhile before I get this up and running. Annoying since I have a few ideas and I can see it in my head. Just need to get it through the keyboard onto the screen.

Peaches are in season and they have been showing up at the co-op, yay! And they had pork on sale. I know, I know, meat on sale? Can’t be a good idea. Usually I would agree but I’ve had success with the sales at the co-op.

In a small bowl mix up a dry rub. I used a tablespoon of brown sugar, 1 1/2 teaspoons of cayenne pepper, 1/2 – 3/4 teaspoon of ground cumin and dried cilantro, and sea salt and pepper.

Mix well and rub on both sides of the pork. Set aside to “marinade”. For the peach bourbon sauce chop up an onion to make about 1/2 a cup and finely chop 3-4 cloves of garlic. Heat up a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a skillet and start cooking the onion and garlic.

Peel and dice one peach. Add to the skillet. Simmer until the peach starts to soften. Add 2-3 tablespoons of bourbon. I used Gentleman Jack but use whatever one you enjoy. Then add brown sugar. I started with a tablespoon but added more as it cooked to balance it with the bourbon. I also seasoned it with a teaspoon of cayenne, sea salt, and pepper.

Continue to simmer until the peaches soften and the sauce reduces a bit. Grill the pork and a peach cut in half.

I could do without the stifling heat of summer but boy do I love the flavours.

Jerk Chicken and What Kind of World

Posted on November 18, 2015 by Our Growing Paynes

Tragedy brings out the best and the worst of us. And it was true to form this past weekend. After the attacks in Paris I, like millions of others, added the French flag to our profile pic on Facebook. But I also quickly, like many, realised the hypocrisy of not speaking out against the terror in Beirut and many other countries.

And that’s when it started getting ugly. When you combine fear with bigotry some seriously hateful things start getting posted. It saddens me no end we have a serious humanitarian situation and we have people running for president saying we should only accept Christians. Never mind that this isn’t a Christian nation as laid out in the Treaty of Tripoli which said this was a secular nation. And it was ratified by 100% of the senate of the time. That concept is being lost to the mists of time. The West has a lot of responsibility of the vacuum that keeps being created in the Middle East but yet a lot would wash their hands of the crisis. A situation where you have children so scared they put their hands up in fear because they think the journalist cameras are guns.

I am well aware there aren’t any easy solutions laying about. But I do wish the powers that be would start thinking of the ramifications before they keep repeating history. I mean how many times do we put people in power to only have to forcibly remove them. Or how many times do we change the governments or boundaries without fully understanding the region.

Because not only do I want peace and not have people living in fear, I would love to be able to not have to figure out how to explain to my kids how much humanity is still getting it wrong.

While all this was going on we were preparing for my husband’s birthday party. The theme? A pirate murder mystery night. There was a lot of planning for this as I had to assign characters for our guests and get the packets ready for each person so they knew what their objectives were for the murder and investigation.

One of our friends had great fun with doing themed food of cannon balls, shark teeth, etc. She also did a great Minecraft themed party for her son a few weeks ago. This is definitely up her alley.

One of the dishes I made was jerk chicken. A great time to try using our dried habaneros. I also used some dried cayenne. Sinuses would be cleared for miles around.

The recipe I used as a guide was from food.com and I followed it for the most part. I didn’t have bay leaves but I’m not a fan of that ingredient. I didn’t have any dried thyme either. But I have to say the ingredients weren’t missed.

In a spice grinder, finely grind 3 habaneros and 2 cayenne peppers that have been dried. Add that to a medium sized bowl. Then grind rosemary and allspice so you have about a tablespoon of each. Again add that to the bowl. Add a tablespoon of ground ginger and a tablespoon and a half of sea salt. Next you will need 1 1/2 teaspoons each of onion powder, black pepper, and ground cinnamon. Add 3/4 teaspoon of each of ground nutmeg and paprika. Finish with 1/3 cup sugar, a juice of a lime, and 1/3 cup of olive oil.

Mix well and add about a pound and a half of chicken that you have cubed. Make sure the chicken is well coated. Then remember not to touch your eyes. Ahem. Even after washing your hands.

Let this marinate for a couple of hours. I chose to grill this on the stove top. But given the potency of the hot peppers I should have done this outside. It was like I pepper sprayed the kitchen! What a way to welcome guests.

I did want to do a mango dipping sauce but the mango I bought refused to ripen so it was just the chicken.

This was a hit. Fortunately our friends could handle the heat. Because, while the flavours were balanced, this is not for the weak of heart.

Put the Devil in the Eggs for the Holidays

Posted on December 16, 2014 by Our Growing Paynes

Every year I worry there is enough food for the holidays then I end up being confronted with a stuffed fridge. And coming up with many ways to creatively empty said fridge. But as the family’s dietary needs change there is a challenge of making sure everyone has something they can eat without making them ill.

One has to follow the fodmaps diet and she loves eggs so I thought it would be fun to dust off a classic and update it a bit. We used to love the deviled eggs that mum made when we were growing up.

I had to make sure that at least one of the ways I made them didn’t have any garlic. Because I planned on using my homemade mustard I had to make another variation.

After doing a bit of research on the internet, because it’s been years since I boiled an egg, I got to it. I did the eggs the day before so they were chilled completely when it was time to peel and make up.

Various sites gave me the following steps to take to cook the eggs. First place the eggs in an empty pan.

Fill with cold water until the eggs are covered. Add a bit of salt and white vinegar. This helps contain any egg whites that might leak if the shell breaks. Bring to a boil and turn off the heat and leave the eggs in the water for 10-12 minutes.

Place the eggs in cold water to cool down. When it is time to put it all together, peel the eggs. I found it worked best for me by whacking the eggs round to crush the shells a bit then peel. Slice the eggs in half.

Scoop out the yolks into a bowl.

For the fodmaps version I added a couple of spoonfuls of plain greek yoghurt, a few teaspoons of horseradish, fresh thyme, and salt and pepper to taste.

Mix well and adjust the ingredients as needed. Some of us like the punch of horseradish! Fill in the egg whites with the mixture. For the second version I added a few spoonfuls of the plain greek yoghurt, a few dollops of mustard, fresh thyme, and salt and pepper to taste.

Again mix well and add it to the egg whites. For the mustard deviled eggs I dusted them with cayenne pepper to give it a bit of a pop.

This starter was a simple way to add a ton of flavour to the menu and make sure it met all the various dietary needs without a lot of effort.

Fire Roasted Salsa

Posted on August 27, 2013 by Our Growing Paynes

As I was up to my elbows in food prep yesterday I got a little notice from WordPress saying Happy Anniversary! A whole year has passed in a blink. A year ago I took a deep breath, threw caution to the wind, and became an official blogger. I had no idea what to expect but I remember doing my first post and then wondering if anyone would read it. To my surprise I quickly got a comment, and then another, and I got to discover some amazing bloggers out there and find out what a wonderful community it is. So a big thank you to all who take the time out of your busy schedule to read and comment on my posts. It means a lot. 🙂

We had another round of harvesting a ton of tomatoes so it was the salsa’s turn to be made. We first made my husband’s salsa which is a raw salsa and great for a quick dish before heading to a party. To make his we processed tomatoes, sweet peppers, hot peppers, onion and peaches. It is seasoned with salt, pepper, lime juice, and cilantro. For his we used the grinder on the Kitchen Aid then we drained the salsa a bit to thicken it. It is always a hit whenever we bring it to BBQs. Something about fresh out of the garden veg to make this so tasty.

That only took a portion of the harvested tomatoes so I wanted to try a new salsa with similiar veg but a different technique. Richard from REMCooks posted this salsa and I thought I would take his technique and apply it to the ingredients I wanted to use. It is not a hard salsa to make but given the volume of veg I had it took me all afternoon as I had to stage various ingredients and process them in stages but I got there in the end!

I started with the tomatoes first and instead of roasting them on the grill I had to do it in the oven as the cookie sheet was much bigger than my grill pan and even then I had to do two batches. I heated the oven to 350F/ 177C. On the large cookie sheet I did one layer of tomatoes and drizzled them with a bit of olive oil, salt, and pepper.

I roasted the tomatoes until they looked like this:

I like Richard’s tip about roasting the garlic in the skins on the grill so I gave that a shot. Per his advice I started those first then about halfway through I added the onion. For this I used one very large red onion.

Remove and set aside. While the onions and garlic were cooking I gathered the peppers from the garden and the peaches from the co-op. Found some nice white peaches. The peppers I used were cayenne from the co-op and hot wax, jalapeno, poblano, and sweet peppers from the garden. I sliced the hot peppers lengthwise and cleaned them to prep them for the grill.

While I was roasting them on the grill I got out a large bowl and chopped the onion and put that in the bowl. I also chopped up the sweet peppers and put them in the bowl. I left them uncooked for a bit of texture. I then put together the food processor and put in the first batch of tomatoes, half the garlic (skins removed), a handful of cilantro and set aside for the peaches and hot peppers.

When I went out to check on the peppers I discovered I ran out of gas. My first thought this was now going to be a two day process but my daughter reminded me the cast iron griddle has a grill side to it. Thank goodness! I got that heated up and brought the peppers in to finish.

Once they were done I took the smaller hot peppers and added them to the food processor and then chopped the rest of the larger hot peppers and added those to the bowl. The trick is to have a bit of heat but make it so most people can eat it. I wanted the hotter peppers to be evenly distributed through the salsa.

The last ingredient to grill was the peach. I love grilled peaches and will have to make some as a dessert as my daughter requested some soon. They impart a lovely flavour.

Add half to the to the food processor and process until it’s a bit chunky. Repeat with the second half of the ingredients and add all to the bowl. Then add lime juice to taste. If it needs a bit more salt add that as well and then stir it all together.

We like to have our salsa with lime flavoured tortilla chips. We also had some last night with tacos. It was pretty yummy!

My 9 year old son’s take on this was that there was a punch of heat but it didn’t take away from all the flavours. 🙂

Our Growing Paynes

A journey about cooking, traveling, gardening, and crafting.

Tag Archives: cayenne

Peach Bourbon Grilled Pork

Jerk Chicken and What Kind of World

Put the Devil in the Eggs for the Holidays

Fire Roasted Salsa