Sliders

 

I doubt there are very many great places to get good sliders west of the Mississippi.  After I recent trip to the Eastern U.S. I decided to try to make some as authentic as possible. Please keep in mind, sliders are NOT just a tiny burger on a dinner roll.

Zuchinni relish burgers

Mmmm, zesty zucchini relish burgers!

I doubt if anyone needs a recipe for making hamburgers.  Prepare them the way you like them best then continue on with these ideas.

This idea works best if you butter and toast your buns (okay, HAMBURGER buns).  I used onion buns made with corn meal.  Toast only the bottom half as you will be toasting the top half with the completed sandwich.

Pita Po Boys

 
 
Something light for hot summer days... Pita Po Boys. Combine equal parts mayo & seafood sauce with some banana pepper rings and mix in the fried shrimp. Add lettuce, some cuke slices and whatever else you like into the warm pita.

Yep, it's as good as it sounds.

Taco pie

Here is an alternative to handheld tacos, the taco pie.  Same ingredients but intended to be eaten with a fork.  And easy to make.  The mashed potato shell works well with the ground beef and other components.

BLT Lite

Here's a simple light meal that is a variation on the favorite BLT.  The only difference is substituting a whole grain pita for the less healthy white bread.  It actually makes a surprising difference in the taste as the stuff inside isn't overpowered as much but the bread.  Not that there's much that can overpower the taste of bacon.

Zeberka Wieprzowe w Kapuscie

Zeberka Wieprzowe w Kapuscie  translates to country style pork ribs and sauerkraut, a simple to make and hearty traditional Middle European/Polish/Bavarian holiday meal that is reputed to bring good fortune in the New Year.  My grandmother lived in an area hit hard by heavy winter storms with blankets of deep snow.  One of my favorite memories growing up was when we visited her for Sunday dinner on a freezing winter morning and she had already been up since 4 AM cooking.  She never read a cookbook, everything she made was based on recipes that had been passed down for generations and based on her excellent instincts of what would taste best together.

My secrets to making real NY pizza

I'm from New York.  I feel I have a right to say I know what a great pizza should taste like.  But I don't believe in those so-called reviews that pit one type of pizza against another and declare a winner.

The beauty of pizza is there are endless ways it can be prepared and to limit yourself to only one of them limits your enjoyment of life.

Beef Stroganoff

I have been making Beef Stroganoff since soon after I got my own apartment after college.  It has never been made exactly the same, nor tasted exactly the same, and to me that's a good thing.  It has always been my "go to" meal to make and serve to good friends, in fact Dr. Jim has been reminding me for 40 years how he remembers the first time I served it to him when we were young guys living in Chicago.
This recipe does not require the most tender cuts of beef, but I suggest treating this as a “steak meal” and using a lean, tender cut of aged beef.

The Joy of Homemade Potato Salad

Have you had a phobia about making home-made potato salad?  Do you dutifully get that junk from the store deli that looks like they made it an hour ago but was actually scooped out of a huge cardboard container and made about 6 months ago in a mystery factory in Cleveland?

Did you know you can make enough potato salad to feed your entire family for about 50 cents and after you taste it you’ll know why I call the store stuff garbage?

Pork shanks and cabbage

This is more like Irish corned beef and cabbage than it is traditional Middle-European pork with sauerkraut.  It is my own creation.  Actually most of what I do is based on hearty ethnic foods that I mess around with until it comes close to tasting like what my grandmother used to make.

Kick Butt Gumbo

This is something that sounded good on a cold rainy night. Except living in Phoenix there is no such thing as a cold rainy night so we pretend by cranking up the AC and letting a lawn sprinkler hit the patio door. Since we don't have lawns here there's not a lot else we can do with the lawn sprinklers anyway.

It was pretty easy to make and had enough "kick" to make sure my Mylanta supply didn't go to waste.

I call it my Kick Butt Gumbo: