give a dog a bone

Bone marrow has been on my mind for days now and I was finally able to satisfy the craving. Each little nibble I got from soup bones or pork chops only made me want it more. On my recent trip to Chinatown I spotted some fairly decent marrow bones, I say fairly decent because they were mutton not the big and hefty beef that I was hoping for but they were going to have to do.



I roasted them in a 400F oven for about 15 minutes liberally coated in salt while I sliced a nice crunchy baguette lengthwise to make some toast.



While there was not nearly enough marrow to satisfy my craving it did do a fine job of making my toast a little more tasty.

winging it

What do you do when you have a few wonton wrappers and some random vegetables sitting around that need to be used up? Vegetable gyoza comes to the rescue. Now before you get all up in a tizzy and correct me in my culinariousness I am going to concede that true gyoza are made from a different dough than a wonton skin but these are pinched in the gyoza way thus they are gyoza - so there.



The filling is a little bit of this and that like carrots and ginger and spinach, green onion and a tiny bit of celery all mixed with a little cornstarch to bind and creased into the skins then fried until golden.



I made a little dipping sauce out of siracha chile sauce, soy sauce and rice wine vinegar and served up the quickest and tastiest lunch you could want and as far as I am concerned these are gyoza but if you want to make the real ones here is a gyoza recipe.

Dont forget about my calendar!

casual casserole

Needing to make something tasty but also needing a lot of it I often turn to baked pasta dishes but that idea just was not ringing my bell and then it hit me - enchiladas!



I dry rubbed some ribs, wrapped them in banana leaves and foil and cooked them until the meat shook off the bone.




I removed the meat from some perfectly roasted ribs.




Layered tortillas cheese, meat and onions.



Covered it in red chile sauce and repeated until the pan was full.




Baked it until it was bubbly and delicious and then set it out to be gobbled up. Sometimes vats of food are the answer.

you gotta be in it to win it

MarxFoods is having a contest and you could win:

9 premium ground beef patties (1/3lb each)
4 Top Sirloin Center Cut Steaks (8oz each)
4 Ribeye Steaks (10oz each)
4 New York Strip Steaks (10oz each)

You can read more about the samplers here.

The deadline is January 26th. Good Luck!

looks are deceiving

Look closely at this photo and tell me what you see.



If you said cheeseburger with ketchup you are looking close but not looking close enough and you know I didnt eat it, I dont put ketchup on my burgers or hot dogs.



If you said cheeseburger and fries but this one has melted cheese and no ketchup then you might be closer still.



If you said seasoned fries then you hit the jackpot. Seasoned fries are easy to make. You slice your potatoes and rince them till the water is clear then blanch them quickly in hot oil let them cool, dust them with seasoned flour and then dunk them in the seasoning bath. Seasoning bath? Whats that? The seasoning bath is a light and watery batter made with a little flour and your favorite seasoning flavors that is thin enough to drizzle off a spoon. Now you put the floured fries into the flavor bath and then one by one in the hot oil so that they dont clump or stick together and fry until golden. Delicious, simple and oh so - not average.