Beefalo Milk Stout Beer Chili Recipe

Beef, buffalo meat, beans, and New Mexican chiles swimming in a broth made with Duck-Rabbit Milk Stout. What's not to like about this soul warming bowl of deliciousness? Check out the full recipe on Food Republic. In the meantime, here's a little step by step photo essay to get you in the big ole pot 'o chili makin' mood.

Brown your meats well in a hot pan.

Remove meats to a bowl and drain off most of the fat.

Chop your onions.

After sauteeing onions and garlic until translucent, return cooked meat to pan.
Now, check out how to prepare your dried chile.

Clean and soak chile in scalding water until soft, about 30 minutes, and then puree well.

Add canned tomatoes, spices and the pureed New Mexican chile to the meat mix.

Bring the meat mix up to a boil, scraping up the goodies off the bottom of the pan.
Then, very slowly pour in the stout.

Cook chili one hour. Then, add beans and tomato paste and cook another hour.

Serve chili with shredded cheddar, minced green onions, sour cream, chips or cornbread.

©2011 Fatback and Foie Gras. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

Pin It Now!

Barbados Food & Wine and Rum Festival 2011

Bajan-style pork and potato roti

In less than a week, the 2011 Barbados Food & Wine and Rum Festival will be taking place November 18-21, and just like last year, there's a stellar line-up of chefs, seminars, cooking demo's, and of course, plenty of great Bajan food and local rum. Chefs Tom Colicchio, Ming Tsai and Marcus Samuelsson will once again make appearances alongside local Barbadian favorite "The Rhum Chef" Paul Yellin, London chef Bruno Loubet, Vitor Gomes (Brazil), Mark McEwin and Tom Brodi (Canada), Food & Wine wine expert Anthony Giglio, and a whole host of other local Bajan chefs. And, the best part? It's not too late to buy tickets as there are still some left.

If this year's event is anything like the 2010 Food and Wine and Rum Fest it's going to be quite the party. Hosted again by Travel & Leisure mags Features Director, Nilou Motamed, the festival will again present an array of a la carte activities including a bevy of up-close-and-personal celebrity chef cooking demo's, rum tours, authentic Bajan-style lunch fiestas (see above photo), even a half day food and rum cruise hosted by Canadian Chef Tom Brodi. Other highlights include Ambrosia II, an all-you-can-savor evening extravaganza featuring food, wine and rum samplings from all of the event's guest chefs followed by the highly anticipated after party, Super Sonic, to be held at the museum home of the British Airways Concorde "Alpha Echo" where the original tarmac will be transformed into an all-night party complete with live DJ's food and drink.

The Bajan gods have shined on me again this year, and I will be returning to the Barbados food and rum fest to savor as much as humanly possible without blowing up my liver, so keep an eye out for future blog posts and Twitter updates and be sure to follow my onsite coverage of the event over at Food Republic. In the meantime, here's a little taste from last year's four day party.

Chef Marcus Samuelsson serves up his take on shrimp and red grits

Chef Ming Tsai's soba noodle sushi w/ tea smoked salmon

The national dish of Barbados: flying fish sandwich

Second national dish of Barbados: flying fish cakes

One of many "cutter" stands selling salt bread fish sandwiches

Bajan brunch: flying fish, stuffed pork, macaroni pie

What the heck! Come spend Thanksgiving week in Barbados. I'll be there.

©2011 Fatback and Foie Gras. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

Pin It Now!

Southern Collard Greens with Ham Hocks

Yesterday, while working on a recipe for BBQ'd Meatloaf for Food Republic, I got an overwhelming hankering for a pot of greens to go with it. Perhaps it's the cool weather coming on or the fact that I might be a tad iron deficient, but whatever the reason, I just had to have some.

So I hit the store, grabbed a bag of mixed greens and a couple of hams hocks and set out to simmer a pot 'o greens to go with my meatloaf. After finding inspiration from Susan Russo's recipe for Southern-Style Greens, which was originally published on NPR as part of her take on a non-Southerner getting her first taste of Southern cooking (and greens), I thought it's about time I work on my own version.

Surprisingly, I've never published a recipe for greens. There's a recipe for slow-cooked kale in fatback in my book, but not collards or any mix thereof and definitely not anything involving ham hocks. I grew up eating all kinds of slow-cooked vegetables, and as Susan mentions, often they were more "browns" than greens. When it came to cooking greens in our house, it was all about the fatback, which while mighty tasty in its own right, never offered that signature smoked hammy flavor I crave in my greens, so after playing around with a couple of combinations including chicken broth, no chicken broth, lots of cider vinegar or less, cayenne or none, and of course, a ham hock, I settled on this recipe for a pot 'o greens, which not only is the perfect accompaniment for a big slab of meatloaf, but might even win over a couple more non-Southerners.

Pot 'O Greens with Ham Hocks

Serves 6

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 large ham hock
1 large garlic clove, smashed
4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1 16-ounce bag of pre-washed and cut collards or mixed greens of choice (or wash and slice you're own)
3 tablespoons cider vinegar (adjust this to your liking)
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Salt, to taste
Generous amount of freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Toppings can include: more cider vinegar, hot sauce, minced onions, crumbled bacon, hot pepper vinegar or chow chow relish

In a large pot, heat your oil. Add ham hock and toss it around a bit. Add garlic and cook for one minute, being careful not to burn. Add chicken broth, greens, vinegar and cayenne. Bring up to a gentle boil. Add salt and black pepper. Then cover and simmer for 45 minutes to an hour or until greens are tender to your liking.

Serve in bowls with wedges of warm cornbread (I'm a fan of my dad's country grit bread) and whatever toppings you want. Be sure to spoon extra pot likker into each of the bowls just before serving.

©2011 Fatback and Foie Gras. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission Pin It Now!

Pimento Cheese Recipe

Photo Kendra Bailey Morris

I know, I know. More pimento cheese...but I can't help it. Pimento cheese is just so darn tasty and it's so easy to make your own instead of shelling out $5 or $6 bucks for a container of that heavily mayonnaised stuff at the store.

There's no doubt that many cooks have placed their own unique spin on this classic combination of cheese, mayo and pimentos, but I am still a go-with-the-classics kinda gal. Over the years, I've tweaked this recipe over and over, and what I've found is that using as little mayo as possible while bumping up the flavor with pimento juice (along with the chopped pimentos) really makes a difference. This, and the addition of a generous pinch of cayenne pepper and freshly ground black pepper is all you need to elevate this spread to something swoon worthy.

Photo Kendra Bailey Morris

For more on tricks and tips to making pimento cheese along with my family's recipe, check out my original post on Food Republic, and while we're at it, how do you like to make your pimento cheese? What's your secret to making this spread swoon-worthy?

Pin It Now!