Midnight WTF Rub

Edited: It’s a good thing I decided to tweak this recipe. It turns out I had left out one of the major ingredients, the sugar!! I originally was going to have 1/2 cup of sugar to 1/3 cup of salt. After playing with it some more, it appears the best ration is 2:1 so it’s 1 cup of sugar to 1/2 cup of salt.

I actually made up the recipe for this rub back in January. We were getting ready to prep some ribs for smoking the next day and I wanted a different rub for them. The name comes from the fact that it was about midnight when I decided to invent a new recipe. Our friend Dave was visiting and when I asked for his input, he said he’d like some sweeter spices such as cinnamon and cloves. The WTF part comes from me shrugging and saying “WTF. Why not?” And funnily enough, this is my new favorite rub. 😀

Recipe

1 cup turbinado sugar, or brown sugar
1/2 cup coarse salt
1/4 cup oriental mustard
2 tablespoons black pepper
2 tablespoons garlic powder
2 tablespoons onion powder
1 tablespoon cloves, freshly ground
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

 

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl. Store in airtight container.

Bierocks

When I said that I hadn’t done any cooking lately, I wasn’t completely accurate. I just forgot that I’d made Bierocks a couple of weeks ago.

One of the first questions many people ask is “What the heck is a Bierock?” Basically, it’s a filling of meat and veggies wrapped in either bread dough or pastry and baked to make an easy, hand held meal. Pasties are another name for them. In the Upper Peninsula of Michigan they call them Pasties and the workers in the Iron Mines would put them in their coat pockets, hot out of the oven, to help keep their hands warm until they could eat them for lunch. I have my ex-husband to thank for that little piece of trivia lol.

So the reason I decided to make these was that some friends of mine on Facebook started talking about them and I got jealous. They’re actually pretty easy to make so I decided to put some together.

The traditional filling is ground meat (I used beef but you can use lamb or pork or chicken), onions and cabbage or potatoes. Being me, I couldn’t leave that alone so I got a bit fancy. 😉 And because I have a lovely bread machine I made a batch of beer cheddar bread for the wrapping. You can use any flavor of bread dough you like. In fact, if you don’t want to make bread, you can buy frozen bread dough and use that after thawing it out.

Filling:

Ground beef

1 medium onion – chopped

2 cups spinach – chopped

1 lb asparagus – chopped

Brown the beef and onions in a skillet. Add the spinach and asparagus and cook just until tender. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Make or thaw the bread. I used 2 ounce portions and put about half a cup of filling in each and wrapped the bread around it to make little pockets. Bake in a 350F oven until golden brown, 30-40 minutes. I brushed butter over the tops after I pulled them out of the oven. This made 16 Bierocks with a bit of bread dough left over (I made a 2 lb loaf). I think I ate 3 and I don’t have a huge appetite so they’re smallish. You can make them bigger if you prefer.

I don’t have any pictures since they’re long since eaten but they were quite tasty. Jene said I can make them again 😀

Chicken Shawarma, Tzatziki and Pregnancy

For those of you who read my blog, I’m sure you’ve noticed that I haven’t posted in quite awhile. That’s because I haven’t been cooking. I haven’t been cooking because I haven’t been eating. But the reason I haven’t been eating is that I’m pregnant!! I’m at week 13 right now and slowly getting to the point where I can keep food down again.

Jene and I are both very excited about the baby. However, I’ve been very sick and if I have eaten, it’s mostly been take out because I eat whatever random food item sounds good at any given moment lol.

Tonight, in honor of feeling better, I’m actually cooking dinner. We’re having chicken shawarma with tzatziki and rice. Both are recipes from other sources rather than my own creations but they sound good and are relatively simple to make. The chicken shwarma recipe comes from the New York Times and is baked in the oven. The recipe can be found here. The tzatziki recipe is from Epicurious.com. That recipe is found here.

One of the most difficult things about being pregnant has been that garlic and I are NOT friends. Amazingly, I was able to make both recipes with garlic today and not throw up 😀 I did do a couple of minor tweaks. Instead of mincing the garlic I used my microplane to grate it. I can handle the flavor of the garlic better if I don’t bite into pieces of it. I think that grating it also does a better job of spreading the flavor through the dish. One other tweak is that the tzatziki recipe calls for draining regular yogurt but I used Greek style yogurt. This yogurt has already been drained and is nice and thick. It makes the whole process much easier.

I picked these dishes to make tonight because chicken is one of those foods that is easy to digest and I love the creamy coolness of tzatziki. Besides, yogurt is good for my tummy too. Jene is going to bring home some pita bread and we’ll cook up some rice. I’m thinking about seasoning the rice with some turmeric and onion while it’s cooking. I have some fresh turmeric in the fridge that I think would give the rice an interesting flavor and pretty color.

For now, I’m resting on the couch. I don’t know how much posting I’ll be doing but I’m going to try to do better. I’ve found that right now I can only stand for about half an hour before I get woozy. Hopefully the baby and I will reach an accommodation soon and I can get back to normal 😀

After dinner notes: This set of recipes rocks. To go with the chicken I made a pot of jasmine rice. I added some very thinly sliced onion, 3 whole cloves, 2 cardamom pods and about a teaspoon of grated fresh turmeric root. It gave it a beautiful golden color and a very rich flavor. I’ve included a picture too.

This will definitely be a recipe that stays in our rotation. I’m very pleased with the afternoon’s work.