Grilled Pork Chops Marinated in Papaya Juice & Tamarind

Equipment: Indoor Iron Griddle

Meat: Pork Loin Center-cut Bone-in Pork Chop, approx 1.5" thick

Rub Tamarind Paste & Papaya Juice into Pork Chop, place chop in plastic bag, place in frig. Have at least an exhaust fan running in window before starting. Put hickory chips, black peppercorns, garlic pieces, crushed red pepper, and enough spring water to cover in griddle and turn up heat full blast. When water starts to boil and steam, put pork chop on grill above steaming water, for 3 mins a side, 1 min covered with a pot-lid. When water has boiled off, sprinkle fresh-ground dry barbecue seasoning in pan,  push hickory chips etc in griddle together to form a bed, & cook pork-chop 4 mins a side on hickory-chip bed, 1 min/side covered by pot lid resting on top of griddle. Then when griddle temp is over 600 degrees F, place pork-chop directly on griddle & cook for 6 mins per side, 1 min per side covered by pot lid resting on griddle. Remove from griddle put on plate, garnish with red-palm-oil & fresh-ground sea-salt. Wait 5 minutes before eating. 

I ran the above recipe but with the minutes per phase at a lesser value, and still got an excellent result, except for the meat nearest the bone being perhaps too pink for some people's taste. I expect the mins per phase in the recipe provided above would be even better. Though just a pork chop the meat tasted like a high-class cut of meat. It tasted like a 5-star hotel pork-chop. It had a definite charcoal-grilled or gas-grilled or wood-grilled aroma and taste to it. And of course it was very digestible and very nutritious. Perhaps a little barbecue sauce added to the plate as a dip would have made it taste even better.

Awesome Indoor Hickory Steak with outdoors taste

Ingredients
1" thick Steak
Adolph's meat tenderizer
Garlic
Ground Black Pepper
Hickory wood chips
Spring water

Tool: Iron Griddle 

Rub Adolph's meat tenderizer into steak (I used a 1" thick piece of boneless Sirloin). Wait 30 minutes before cooking. Put hickory wood chips into griddle; add spring water, garlic, and ground black pepper. Boil hickory chips in water until water dissolved. Heat griddle to 650 degrees Fahrenheit. Put steak on griddle, cook for 4 minutes on each side. Last 2 minutes, bunch hickory chips near to steak and cover steak with cylindrical pot-lid. Wait 5 minutes and then eat.

The result for me  using a boneless piece of sirloin steak was awesome, good enough for a 6-star hotel or restaurant, if such a thing existed. Which is impressive, seeing that it is usually difficult to make boneless steak taste excellent. Many dream of getting that outdoors taste indoors, which is hard to do without an indoors gas or charcoal grill, but this accomplishes the trick. After much experimenting I achieved this, the production of a steak with an outdoors taste without the use of an indoor gas or charcoal grill. Seems that often you get the best result by avoiding over-complication. Only improvement I can see (kind of unfair to Adolph's): Mix sea-salt, raw unprocessed sugar, & Papain and use instead of the Adolph's.

6-star Hotel Spaghetti Sauce

I made a spaghetti sauce night of 7/9/15, which impressed me so much when I ate it that I named it 6-star Spaghetti sauce. Mary-Carman makes a spaghetti sauce at least as good except: her sauce loses its distinctive taste after a day in the frig; this sauce I suspect will retain its flavor for days in the frig; this sauce has a nutritional kick; you feel good after eating this sauce.

Ingredients: 

Marinating/basting oil for meat: Coconut oil, hickory liquid smoke, black peppercorns, McCormick Grill mates Montreal-Steak Grinder Seasoning, Tamarind concentrate, bay-leaves

Sauce ingredients: Approx 1 lb ground pork, 1 onion, Pasta sauce, olive oil, red palm oil, coconut oil, garlic, onion, tomatoes, peppers of jalapeno/habanero type, crushed red pepper, ground black pepper, raw unprocessed sugar, butter, crushed red pepper, whole dried red peppers, deactivated charcoal powder, hickory chips,

Method

Combine the ingredients for the marinating oil and heat till sizzling for a few minutes.

Make patties out of ground pork. Brush the marinating oil on them on both sides. Put whole black peppercorns, dried red peppers, pieces of garlic, bay-leaves, deactivated charcoal powder (under where patty will be cooked), soaked hickory chips, dry hickory chips in griddle. Heat Griddle to 550 degrees. Cook patties in griddle 2.5 minutes per side, last minute of cooking with pot-cover over patty and hickory chips etc pushed close to patty. Repeat for 2nd patty. Remove patties from griddle.

In sauce pan, saute majority of 1 chopped onion/garlic in 1T red palm oil plus 1T coconut oil.  Add some dried red peppers, ground black pepper, crushed red pepper, some of the chopped peppers/tomatoes & cook for a while. Add cooked pork-patties & saute, breaking up the patties. Add spaghetti sauce, & some of the chopped peppers/tomatoes/onions/garlic & simmer. Add water as necessary. Add 1T olive-oil, 1T butter & dash of raw unprocessed sugar. 5 minutes before turning off heat, add most of the chopped-peppers & the majority of the chopped-tomatoes and continue to simmer. 1 minute before turning off heat add remaining chopped peppers/onion/garlic/tomatoes. Turn off heat. Transfer contents to pot with lid, and allow to sit for 1 hour.

Note: by accident, most of the chopped-peppers were not added until 5 minutes before I shut off the heat, but the result seems to be charming. I suspect a reason the sauce tastes classic, is that tomatoes onions garlic peppers were added to the frying pan at the beginning, then when the pasta sauce was first added,  and then again before the flame was turned off and the sauce transferred to a pot.

Hamburger Trial & Error

I intend to post results of my experiments cooking hamburgers as sub-posts in this blog-post.

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6/25/15

Frozen 'Wolfneck' 5.3 oz burger was pasted with mix of Wright's Liquid Smoke & Red Palm Oil. Griddle preheated to 500° F. Griddle had hickory chips, black peppercorns, pieces of garlic in it. Deactivated charcoal & sea-salt were sprinkled in the area of the griddle where the burger was cooked. The first side was left to rest on the griddle for 4 minutes; the 2nd side of the burger for 5 minutes, then the 1st side again for 1.5 minutes while covered by a pot-cover, with the hickory chips & the peppercorns pushed close to the burger. The burger was then allowed to sit on a cool plate for 5 minutes. 

Result: perfect, pink in the middle, good outdoorsy taste, no offensive taste, but too dry. Felt better after eating the burger compared to how I usually feel after eating a burger, I suspect because of the beta-carotene Vitamin A on the burger, further released due to heating. 

Conclusion: Perhaps the salt should not be sprinkled in the pan. Perhaps the burger should be turns only once, not twice. I think that perhaps not sprinkling sea-salt into the griddle would make the burger juicier.

Note: This attempt was preceded by a couple of other attempts.

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6/26/15

Frozen 'Niman Ranch' 5.3 oz burger was pasted with mix of Wright's Liquid Smoke & Red Palm Oil. Griddle preheated to 500° F. Griddle had hickory chips, ground black-pepper, pieces of garlic in it. Deactivated charcoal & was sprinkled in the area of the griddle where the burger was cooked. The first side was left to rest on the griddle for 2 minutes with flame at max, then for 4 minutes with flame off & griddle heat falling from 500° to 340°; the 2nd side of the burger for 2 minutes with flame to max (griddle-heat rising 340-380°), and then for 4 minutes with griddle-heat off, (griddle-heat falling from 380° - 300°), & with a pot-cover covering the burger (but Iforgot to push the red peppers hickory wood & garlic under the pot-cover). The burger was then allowed to sit on a cool plate for 5 minutes. 

Result: pink in the middle, more juicy compared to the dry one in the previous entry, but had that fried or boiled taste I dislike. 

Conclusion: I thought I was being too unsophisticated & attempted to reduce the extent to which the burger was burned on the outside, by playing with the heat-level, which I could detect using my infrared-thermometer. In my attempt to get sophisticated I failed. We must remember this was working with a frozen burger on a griddle on a gas-flame indoors. I suspect that the extended cooking at low temperature with the pot-cover not covering & then covering the burger, results in the burger cooking in the frost & frozen-liquid inside the burger, creating the unpleasant boiled/fried taste. Not sure if the problem is extended low temp cooking with pot cover off, or with pot cover over burger ( danger of burger being steamed), or both. This is getting complex as I expected it would if I tried to perfect the burger. Think I'll have to sleep on the problem, then my rewired brain might be able to get a handle on this. Right now at a loss as to how to get the proper taste without somewhat burning the outside. 

Note: This attempt was preceded by an attempt that is not recorded in this log.

Steak-Tip trial & Error

Sunday near 10 PM, at the Whole Foods, I bought a pound of steak-tips. It was almost closing time. The young black man who was a butcher, gave me the meat which had already been covered by some white plastic. For a change I got the unflavored stuff. At home I discovered it was not chopped up, I tore it up with my hands. I rubbed Black Peppercorn Sauce into half of it, and organic Tandoor Masala into the other half of it (Hour 0). Then at hour 28 (28 hrs after hour 0), I heated up my cast-iron griddle and cooked the Black-Peppercorn half-pound, for 8 minutes only because the pieces were small.

I was disappointed by the black-peppercorn half-pound, though at other times I've had great results with black-peppercorn sauce meat and the griddle. They tasted a little like Whole-Foods hamburger I buy and take home tastes when I try to cook it on the griddle or in a skillet. The taste was like stale animal-fat (when the Whole-Foods Hot-Bar presents cheeseburgers made with their ground-beef this stale-animal-fat-like taste is not present-- they use an indoor grill over a flame source, which allows the fat in the hamburger to drip down and away).

Then at hour-56, I took out two pieces of steak tips that I had marinated simply by rubbing Tandoor Powder into them. I heated up the griddle all the way up to 650 degrees in the middle and 550 degrees in the corners (IR thermometer readings). I noted that after the griddle got to around 475 degrees as I left the flame on it went all the way up to 650 degrees. Then I cooked two pieces of the Tandoor-powder marinated steak tips. I left the pieces on one side for 2 minutes, then on the other side for 2 minutes, then rolled them around for 2 minutes, and then put the lid of a pot over them for 2 minutes. Then I put some clarified butter and lemon juice and salt on them, waited 5 minutes before eating them.

The result  with the Tandoor-powder steak-tips was superior to the peppercorn-sauce marinated tips. The stale animal-fat taste was not present. The taste of Cumin was excessive, and the Tandoor-spices tasted undercooked; however the result was something that I can imagine the neighborhood Indian restaurant presenting, accompanied by chutney bread garnishments etc, without incurring disgrace upon itself.

This experience so far produces certain points of confusion.

1. Are the steak-tips that you buy pre-marinated, better preserved compared to the un-marinated ones?

2. Are the steak-tips less fresh when you buy them just before closing?

3. Was the level of heat of the cast-iron griddle, (ranging from 450 - 650 degrees when it seems ready for cooking) too low when I cooked the Peppercorn-sauce marinated tips?

4. How can us earthlings who lack indoor grills, reproduce that Whole Foods hot bar taste, which is pleasingly devoid of that stale animal-fat taste? Will an electric grill work?

5. Would somehow cooking the Tandoor-powder before using it as a marinade improve things?

6. Were the Tandoor-Tips better because they had no pink in the middle like the Peppercorn-tips?

7. Of all the differences between the way I cooked the Peppercorn-tips and the way I cooked the Tandoor-powder tips, which difference accounted for the superiority of the Tandoor-tips, despite them having sat in the frig for 56 hours before being cooked?

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Thursday 5/21/15, I continued the experiment at 845 AM (hour 82),
82 hours after the marinated steak-tips had been put in the frig. This time, I had the griddle at 400 degrees when I added the tips and I kept the flame constant, cooked them for 13 minutes. Previous time at hour 56, I started with the griddle at 650, kept the flame constant, and cooked for 8 minutes. This because 400x13 = 600x8. As with the previous time, the first quarter of the cooking-time the tips were left to rest on one side, the second quarter they were turned over and rested on the other side, the third quarter they were constantly moved around, and the fourth quarter, they were left stationary under a pot lid to get smoked up.

The result this time at hour-82, was superior to the result at hour-56. The spices did not taste as undercooked and the Cumin was not so dominant as at hour-56. After taking a few bites I heated the griddle up to 550-degrees and put the tips in without moving them for 1.5 minutes, after they had been covered in clarified butter lime juice and sea salt which I put on the Tandoor tips after I cook them as a garnishment that much improves things. This additional 1.5 minutes, did not change the taste of the tips.

Slow-Cooker Country-style Ribs Failure

Past 24, hours, I succeeded in failing for the 3rd time in a row, in an attempt to produce a presentable meal using the Electric-ceramic slow-cooker.

4/30, 3 AM: Bottom of the slow-cooker ceramic pot, I put a bed of hickory chips. On top of this bed, I placed the pieces of inexpensive 'Country-style-ribs', whole potatoes, a piece of garlic, some large raw undried peppers, some raw undried Habanero peppers, some sea-salt, some liquid smoke mixed with water. I placed pieces of sliced onion between the meat & the hickory chips. I turned the slow-cooker up to high. I had rubbed Hydrogen Peroxide, Tamarind Concentrate, & Peppercorn sauce into the ribs.

4/30, 430 AM (+1.5 hours from start): I added whole dried red peppers and sea-salt to the pot, turned the slow-cooker heat down to low. I had lost my appetite. I didn't want to bother with putting the pot into the frig, so I just let it continue cooking on 'low'.

4/30, 500 PM (+14 hours): I turned the slow cooker heat from 'low', down to 'keep warm'. The past 13 hours, I simply had not felt hungry enough to eat the ribs & vegetables.

4/30, 1200 PM midnight (+21 hours): I managed to stir up some interest in food in myself by drinking a little red Spanish wine I bought because I wanted to become World Champ in making 'Sangrias'. I took the stuff out of the slow-cooker and put the vegetables on a pre-heated cast-iron griddle with dried red peppers and peppercorns and garlic and sea-salt. I put the pieces of meat on a plate. A piece of meat broke revealing that the meat was white and very dry on the inside. I rubbed clarified-butter, Tamarind-concentrate & Peppercorn sauce on to the meat, hoping to put flavor and moisture back into the meat. I poured some red wine into the Griddle with the vegetables, mixed the vegetables with the wine, let the wine evaporate. I added the meat to the Griddle. I poured some wine on top of the meat and let it evaporate.

Finally I dared to partake of the concoction. The potatoes were edible, tasty with butter, soft and thoroughly cooked on the inside. The onions and peppers tasted sour and winish and tasteless. The meat was dry and tasteless. Everything tasted old. The end-result was edible, but the kind of dish foolish-restaurants present to customers a month before they go out of business forever.

Intention:

My intention had been to prep the ribs in the slow-cooker and then cook them on the griddle at high-heat without oil, thereby getting ribs that were not overcooked or undercooked on the inside or on the outside.

Result:

The meat was dry and flavorless. The vegetables were soggy sour sweetish flavorless.

Mystery:

Would the result be better if a little slow-cooking of the ribs was done using a bed of hickory chips beneath the ribs, or would it be better simply allowing the ribs to directly contact the ceramic pot in the slow-cooker? With the ribs sitting on a bed of hickory chips, the ribs do not get boiled in sauce (dry-cooking can produce fab outdoorsy taste); however with the ribs sitting on a bed of hickory chips, the moisture of the ribs gets drained away into the hickory chips.

Simple Red-Peppered Steak Recipe

I had  T-bone steak that was on sale at Hannaford. I had to cook it. I had misplaced my black peppercorns. I was used to cooking steak using black-pepper but now I had to do without it. So I managed to cook a steak using dried red whole & crushed red pepper that ended up tasting 5-star-ish. I tried to avoid cooking the meat in oil or any kind of liquid, I was looking for that grilled type of taste.

Ingredients

T-bone Steak

Hydrogen Peroxide

Tamarind concentrate

Peppercorn Sauce

Garlic

Mushrooms

Dried Whole Red Pepper

Garlic

Sea-Salt

Equipment

Cast-Iron Griddle

Method

Heat Iron Griddle close to as hot as possible. 

Rub Food-Grade 3% Hydrogen Peroxide on one side of steak. Rub Tamarind concentrate paste & Peppercorn Sauce into both sides of steak. 

Add Whole Dried Red Peppers, Sea-salt, Crushed Dried Red Pepper to Griddle. Add mushrooms, cook in Griddle. Add Ale & spread throughout Griddle. Let ale evaporate via cooking. 

After steak has marinated approx 30 minutes, add steak, pieces of garlic. Cook for 5 minutes on one side without moving steak. Turn steak over. Pile mushrooms on top of steak. After 6.5 minutes of cooking time have elapsed, cover steak with lid of pot, lid should be a couple of inches deep vertically like a cylinder (the lid I had available barely fit the steak...need to buy pot with big lid). Leave lid over steak for 2 minutes. Remove lid. Continue to cook for 1.5 minutes. Transfer steak and mushrooms to cool plate. Wait 5 minutes before eating steak.

Result

The result was an excellent-tasting steak that provided a change of pace in terms of flavor and ingredients. The meat, a fairly thin-cut, was cooked to about medium no pink was visible, despite this it and the mushrooms were very tasty. The sauce left naturally on the plate (no special cooking done to make the sauce), provided a tasty sauce for a piece of white bread (the bread was toasted directly over the oven's gas flame for a little while). The whole project was simple and required little time in the kitchen. 

Mistakes(?)

The ale was used because I knew that crushed dried red pepper when burned or overcooked is more of a problem compared to black pepper. However the crushed dried red pepper ended up being overcooked and burned anyway. So perhaps I should have used only whole dried red pepper and not crushed dried red pepper.

Perhaps, I should carefully manage the dried whole red-pepper moving it in and out of the griddle to avoid burning it too much. Perhaps the ale should not be completely evaporated before the steak is added, or removed from the pan and saved for later use before the steak is added. Perhaps, the steak should have been cooked for less time so that it would be partially pink. Perhaps vegetables should have been added with the mushrooms such onions, undried peppers. Perhaps the garlic should have been added at the beginning when the mushrooms were cooked. Perhaps crushed dried red-pepper should continue to be used but added later in the cooking process.

Super-Home-Fries

Inspired by the home-fries at the breakfast restaurants (my mom never made home-fries) I invented a new home-fries recipe I find to be superior to that used by the imitated restaurants. My recipe produces a home-fries that: is easy to digest, tastes good, peps up the body, does not make you tired/sleepy, contains important nutrients in high quantity, lacks ingredients that are harmful:

Ingredients: water, potatoes, bell peppers, other peppers, onions, red palm oil, sea salt, garlic, cayenne pepper, olive oil.

Process:

1 In water, in covered pot boil potatoes, salt, peppers, cayenne pepper, garlic, olive oil, for 12-15 minutes. For the ultra hot tasting peppers, might be wise to not chop them up before boiling; less hot peppers can be chopped up.

2. Remove boiled stuff and place in saute pan, add chopped onions. Fry in red palm oil for 12-15 minutes. Allow to cool. Sprinkle with sea-salt.

ndoor Grilled Steak a la Raj

I love the taste of charcoal-grilled & gas-grilled steak. Unfortunately I cannot cook such steak in my apartment. But after failures, I came up with a way to cook the steak, that results in a steak that while tasting different from charcoal & gas-grilled steak, has a flavor that is approximately as good, a sophisticated, high-class, clean fresh healthy flavor.

Equipment: Cast Iron Griddle ( bottom of pan features approx 1/4" deep grooves)

Ingredients: Black peppercorns, sea-salt, Colgin's liquid smoke, garlic, tamarind concentrate (available at Indian store), Organic Ghee (available at Whole Foods), spring water, steak.

Method: Mix some Tamarind paste & spring water together to produce a Tamarind water. Pre-heat the griddle for at least 15 minutes. Sprinkle sea-salt & ground black peppercorns, & liquid smoke on the griddle. Put half a clove of garlic in each corner of the griddle. Spread Tamarind concentrate in middle of griddle. Put steak on griddle, let cook for 4 minutes.  Turn steak over, let cook for 4 minutes. spread Tamarind water on steak. Turn steak, let cook for 1 minute. Remove steak. Turn off heat. Put organic ghee in pan. after a couple minutes, pour ghee out of pan, on side of steak, and over steak.

During cooking, periodically (about 3 times) pour Tamarind water in corners of griddle.

This recipe follows the principle of mostly avoiding direct contact of flavorings with the steak. It does not require marination of the steak. I've read that Tamarind plays an important role in steak-sauces and marinades. I suspected that Tamarind by itself could produce as good or better a result as such sauces because people tend to overcomplicate; seems this guess proved correct. This steak is way better than my first pompous attempt a few years ago at a steak recipe.  This is version 1, based on a first attempt; further versions will be posted here.

Cooking Brazilian Feijoada de-mystified

To simplify the Feijoada cooking process, I created two web pages.

http://coolname001.angelfire.com/Feijoadaingreds.htm is a table for keeping track of ingredients and ingredient quantities used in various versions of Feijoada.

http://coolname001.angelfire.com/feijoadamethod.htm is a rewrite of the difficult to understand Whole Foods recipe at http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/recipes/recipe.php?recipeId=1161.

Both pages halve the quantities in the Whole Foods recipe changed from prepared for eight, to prepared for four.

I tried the Brazilian Feijoada at the Whole Foods Hot foods bar in Newtonville. I thought: this tastes great; it uses inexpensive ingredients; it uses nutritious ingredients; it provides a balance of vegetable and meat ingredients; it uses meat ingredients to render vegetable ingredients more appetizing and palatable than they usually are.

Alexx, a guy who works at the Deli at Whole Foods Newtonville, told me that Brazilian Feijoada is 'Brazilian slave food'. In fact the next time they had Brazilian food at their hot foods bar there was no 'slave food' Feijoada available. I assumed Alexx knew what he was talking about because he looked South American. However, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kale I read that Feijoada is Brazil's "national dish".

Wikipedia states at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feijoada that "In Brazil, Feijoada is considered the national dish, which was brought to South America by the Portuguese, based in ancient Feijoada recipes from the Portuguese regions of Beira, Estremadura and Trás-os-Montes".

So Feijoada actually is not merely a 'slave food' but rather the flagship food of Brazil. Then again maybe some think that the New Word Order is that a national food is a slave food because a typical person in a nation is merely a slave.

Kale is indeed nutritious, "very high in beta carotene, vitamin K, vitamin C, lutein, zeaxanthin, and reasonably rich in calcium." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kale). Kale has a long history of being an important part of the diet in Europe.

(Patients taking meds such as Warfarin should consider avoiding Kale, says Wiki, because Kale increases Vitamin K levels, whereas the meds are attempting to reduce vitamin K levels).

The black beans in the Feijoada are according to Whole Foods (http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=2) extremely nutritious, a great source of antioxidants, fibre, protein, and minerals. The vegetable protein in the beans compliments the animal protein in the pork.

The broth used in the Feijoada is a natural source of many helpful nutrients such as Gelatin, which ounce for ounce is extremely high in protein (http://www.westonaprice.org/foodfeatures/brothisbeautiful.html).

Cooking up 5-star tasting food at minimal cost in money, energy, time

I have made important strides forwards in the art of cooking in the past few weeks.

I have figured out how to produce five-star restaurant or five-star hotel type taste, while at the same time minimizing the amount of money expended (using inexpensive ingredients), minimizing the amount of time and energy expended (simplification), and not bothering with referring to any recipes.

My first success was:

Meat ingredient: boneless steak from Whole Foods, on sale at $6 per pound.

Marinade ingredients: curry leaves, crushed red pepper, tamarind brick, clarified milk made from buffalo milk;all mixed up in a blender.

I chopped up the meat into approx 3/4 inch by 3/4 inch cubes. I mixed up the meat in a bowl with the marinade. I let the meat sit in the marinade for 1-48 hours. I put the marinated pieces of meat shish-kabob style on a skewer (long stick-like sharp pointed thing). I turned on the gas flame on the oven and cooked the meat directly over the gas flame for about 5 minutes per piece of meat. I then mixed the cooked meat with a little clarified butter made from Buffalo milk and ate it, sprinkling some sea salt on it.

My second success was:

Meat ingredient: boneless london broil steak, on sale from Hannaford for $1.89 per pound.

Marinade ingredients: fresh coriander leaves, small very hot-flavored green peppers from the Indian store, crushed red pepper, cayenne powder, Jamaican all-spice berry powder, pitted dates, sea salt, tamarind brick, clarified butter made from Buffaloe's milk, 'liquid smoke'.

The process of cooking this second time was the same as described above, only this time I found that sprinkling some fresh lime juice using a piece cut from a lime on to the finished product is also tasty.

The main difference this second time was the pitted dates in the marinade which I felt was a good addition.

This second time I felt that the use of the powdered Jamaican all-spice in the marinade, was a mistake. Seems dried powdered spices work well for grilling seafood (I saw a cook at Whole Foods do this), and for curries in which the dried powdered spices are intensely cooked for a long time. Dried powdered spices in a marinade however, penetrate into the meat and never get cooked as much as they should if a proper taste is to be produced.

However after the all-spice had been mixed with the marinade for at least 24 hours, seemed the allspice blended in real good and began to seem to be an honorable part of the marinade.

This second time I discovered that each skewer of meat can be cooked for as little as 3 minutes.

First time I tried this recipe, marinating the London Broil for just 1 hour seemed enough. Third time, 4 hours of marinade seemed insufficient, the meat being too hard to chew. Seems what happened, is that my teeth and gums got tired out the first time after the meat had been marinated for an hour; thus the third time, the meat being marinated for 4 hours seemed insufficient because my teeth and my gums had been worn out by chewing the meat (London Broil is relatively tough). I estimate as of now, that London Broil that is used with this marinade should be marinated for at least 24 hours. Then again you might be the type whose teeth and gums do no not get worn out by chewing meat that is relatively speaking slightly tough. Or mayb e the problem was that the most recent time, with the meat marinated for 4 hours, I was beginning to run out of marinade so had less to use per pound of meat.

To some extent I have second thoughts re the use of the clarified butter in the marinade; however, the fact remains that it is difficult to turn meats like boneless fatless meats into something that tastes like a five star restaurant produced food, yet I succeeded in the trick (without spending lots of time or energy or referring to cumbersome recipes) by employing the buffalo-milk clarified butter in the marinade.

I am indebted to Sasanka Chandra for discovering the clarified butter made from buffalo milk at the Apna Bazar (http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&safe=off&rlz=1T4GGLL_enUS300&num=100&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=%22apna+bazar%22+waltham&fb=1&split=1&gl=us&view=text&latlng=16854212408803434689).

Apparently, despite the fact that reports indicate that the clarified butter made from buffalo milk is nutritionally and also taste-wise superior to clarified butter made from cow-milk: clarified butter made from buffalo milk is very difficult to find in America; and, people are so backwards in their attempts to be forwards, that in America the clarified butter made from buffalo milk is labeled as 'Desi' (translation: country, hicksville) clarified butter, with the fact that it is made from buffalo milk hidden from the public.

Sasanka and his father Pramod Chandra were able to discern that the 'Desi" clarified butter was actually clarified butter made from buffalo milk.

They were able to do this even though the clerk working at the store, did not know if the clarified butter was made out of cow milk or buffalo milk. Thus you have a real problem trying to tell the difference between clarified butter made from cow milk and clarified butter made from buffalo milk. Clarified butter made from buffalo milk tends to be yellower in color, smells different, and definitely tastes different. I guess what you might need is some South Asian type who can tell the difference between the two.

Strange, I always request tourists to bring clarified butter made from buffalo milk back to America for me when they return from their trips to India, and here we have those who produce clarified butter made from buffalo milk and sell it in the US, too embarrassed to admit that the clarified butter is made from buffalo milk not cow's milk.

There is some farm in the Boston area in Vermont or something that makes yogurt and milk made from Buffalo milk but they do not make clarified butter made from buffalo milk.



The remaining challenge is to somehow combine the marinade with grilled vegetables, so as to produce grilled vegetables and plenty of liquid sauce that are flavored similarly to the meat, and which can then be combined with rice for a tremendous dish. Problem is this marinade on the first try never lost its pasty texture, even when cooked in a pan.



Third Success story:

A desert people were very impressed by:

Grind up lots of pistachios. Mix pistachios, organic half and half, cane sugar, the flesh of one mango, and French vanilla ice cream. Serve, enjoy. Simple.

@2009 David Virgil Hobbs