Yeah baby, happy new year!
Sure for many reasons, but happy for me for a few other reasons. While the holiday’s are great and all, it feels better to have all that in the past. Life is tough enough to do day by day, but to add that stuff on top of it can make it traumatic at best.
That being said, we did okay here. No disasters. Later 2008, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
And sorry for being gone for so long, I spent the entire New Years week on the sofa hacking up small furry animals. I didn’t get a good night’s sleep for over a week and it was getting a bit much. But yesterday it all cleared up and am feeling far better. Thank you Western Medicine, you rock. You know, there’s a reason why people all over the world are clambering for it.
What’s in store this coming year? What resolutions have I made? I don’t know and none. Resolutions are worthless to me. If I want to do something, I do it. I don’t need no damned resolution to cloud my ambitions, it’s my nature. I do have reviews I’m sorely late on, I’m a naughty reviewer. Sorry to everyone to sent me something to review and it hasn’t hit yet.
Where do we go after bacon and smoked pork ribs? I don’t know, only the future holds the answer.
Cheers to you all and thank you for your support over the year, it’s been GREAT.
xo, Biggles
ps – The photograph to the right there was taken with my old D200 and a far older Manual Focus 50 mm f1.2 lens. That my or may not be of any interest to you, but f1.2 is one wide open aperture. Its light gathering, and lack of depth of field ability is stunning to say the least. Not bad for a 25 year old lens, eh?
Author Archives: admin
move your camera in the air, like you just don’t care
Well, I’m pretty well set for the 2 dinners I’m hosting in the coming days, Thursday & Friday. Since the boys are here, it’s all about the gravy for tomorrow, that means turkey. Yeah, we had a turkey for Thanksgiving, but that’s okay. It’s all about the gravy.
For Friday, I have two racks of loin ribs & a tri-tip beef roast destined for the smoker. What else? Does anything after that matter? Pheh.
To each and every one of you, may warm & happy goodness be yours.
Biggles
ps – That’s an ornamental pear tree I shot while moving my camera to the right, with an up & down motion at f8, with a circular polarizer. And at a low ISO, it gave me a long enough exposure time to paint it for you. Cause that’s what that is, a painting. Get it?
Tree Drip
Hi!
What a long, strange trip it’s been – Country Style Rib Roast
Unbeknownst to me, I wound up with the same cut of pork twice in the same week. One ended up more like a steak, the other a roast (got this one from Omar). He couldn’t tell me what it was in English and it looked like an odd globule of meat to me, at the time. It wasn’t until I got home and started playing with it that I realized what it was and how I should go about preparing the beast, it was about 4.5 pounds of the Country Style Pork Ribs, all connected.
As you know, this piggy cut is full of meat, fat & bones and lends itself well to long and slow cooking. Dutch Oven or French Oven or Danish Oven cooking coming!
To be honest, I wasn’t very well prepared. I thought I had everything I needed to get the job done, but I didn’t. What I ended up with was missing maybe 2 dimensions of flavors. It was fricken great pork and juicy juice, but I know what I’m capable of and I missed a few things.
Preheat oven to 325 on bottom rack.
What I had:
4.5 Pork Roast
4 El Salvadorean chorizo links
4 glugs of good red wine
Carrots, onions, garlic & celery
Survival Spice
3 Balinese Long Peppercorns (tee hee, I just noticed a quote by me on their web site!)
And maybe a few other things I can’t remember.
Roughly cut up the roots & veggies, add to dutch along with the whole sausages. Wash, dry meat (really well), rub with extra virgin.
Liberally rub roast with Survival Spice, add liberal amounts of the spice over the bed of non-meat products.
4 glugs of wine to bottom of pan, do not glug over the meat.
But Biggles? What happened, this actually sounds really good? Well, when putting this together I wasn’t feeling herby, I didn’t have the fresh herbs I thought I needed. I went through some dried ones and decided to opt out. Dumbass. And, as it turns out the onion I had was too small and the head of garlic turned out to be the size of half a golf ball. I thought for damned sure I had at least 1 large head left. So, between the lack of the herb action, lack of garlic, onion & chicken broth, the sauce just didn’t have any dark, rich spark to it. See, I should have left the wine go by itself, it would have been just a tad better, but I decided to add 3/4 cup of water. I knew better, but I see chefs and read recipes where they’re adding water all the time. I neglected to use The Force.
Listen up folks, water is for ice cubes to put in glasses full of booze. Water keeps you hydrated when you’re at work or ghod forbid, when you’re exercising. Water has no place in slow roasted meat gifts, no sir. No ma’am! Heck, even those wacky vegetarians know to roast their veggies to make vegetable stock.
Here’s the roast just before I installed the glass lid and gently slipped it in to the oven.
Here’s the same pot 3.5 hours later. Not bad for a Tuesday evening, eh? The rich porky smells mixed with the wine and veggies were absolutely to die for. But, due to my Tuesday ineptness, it fell short of my expectations. In the immortal words of Big D, “NEXT !!!”
Biggles
flat seared pork steak – Highland Hills strikes again!
Here’s the pork steak I was talking about earlier this week, procured from Ted of Highland Hills at the Berkeley Farmer’s Market. Keeripes man, what great meat!
He said something about it being Country Style Pork Ribs and it does look like it now, it didn’t when I brought it home. See, it looked like a morass when I got home, but when I finally started playing with it, it all came in to place. Wanna know something funny? It’s the same cut that I came home with the other day after visiting Omar at Joya de Ceren here in Richmond. Wait until you see what I did with that one.
Kinda makes sense now, eh? Since it was Monday night, I didn’t have time for anything fancy, apply kosher salt for an hour and a half before.
Preheat large cast iron skillet, oil it a little. Bacon, goose or duck fat is preferred. And by preheat, I mean get that sucker smoking hot. Install meat to pan and rest a decently flat somewhat heavy object on meat. I used a lid from my camp 10″ dutch, a perfect match. Your first side is the presentation side and give it the longest sear. Flip when all caramelly, cook to 138F and rest for 8 to 10 minutes.
The pure, succulent pork was absolutely amazing. The hard sear really brought out the flavor of the pork and nothing else. Such a treat for a tired ol’ Monday evening. It makes frozen peas with butter taste good. Errrr, edible.
xo, Biggles
Frozen windshields & behind!
Last night it got down to 28 and the previous night the same. It rarely gets below 40 here in Richmond and deicing a windshield isn’t something we do on a regular basis during the winter. I do know better than to dump warm water on it though, we just sat there with the defroster going until it sluffed off. Cool, eh?
And, I’m so boned! I still have a small handful of books I was supposed to review before the coming holiday. Man, Tiny E and I just got the tree last afternoon! GAH !!! Sorry everyone, I’m late.
Biggles
Old Clay Chicky – works just fine!
Saturday was fun. Chilebrown & Ms. Goofy showed up at my door before 8 am for a trip to the Ferry Plaza in San Francisco. We took separate cars, I followed. Man, it was cold, windy and cold. Even so, we met up with a gaggle of local food bloggers, was nice. The best part though was giving Taylor of Fatted Calf 2 hugs! I don’t get over to SF that often, once every 2 years or so. It was special. On the way back, decided to hit up the Berkeley Farmer’s Market and knabbed me a large pork steak from Ted of Highland Hills, talked with Eric the knife guy and chatted with another pair of food bloggers. A great morning indeed.
On the way back home stopped by the old family stronghold, where Grampa, Gramma & Uncle Ralph live. I had some mail to pick up, truck registration & a few food mags. Gramma asked Gramps is they should give the clay chicken cooker to me. They asked and I said, “sure”. I already have a clay cooker, but what the hell.
I had no idea it was the 30+ year old fambly cooker from eons ago. No idea. When I saw it a chill ran down my spine and couldn’t believe it. I mean, my sister and I grew up with that damned thing.
As you can see it’s pretty well used, oh yes. It’s got a glaze on the inside, top & bottom. It’s thick too, not some cheapass rig, plus it’s got a lip to help seal it tight. Nicely done!
Was considering doing a pork roast, the pork steak or a chicken. Turns out the chicken was the most doable for dinner. I don’t normally do veggies in the bottom, too much moisture for an open roasting situation and the bottom of the meat gets all gray and not caramelly. But this clay roaster is all about the moisture.
In the bottom went a few little carrots, half an onion and about 9 cloves of Big D’s home-grown garlic, 3 chugs of Zin and the last bit of chicken broth. I shouldn’t have done the chicken broth, I’d forgotten how much liquid shows up in the final product, oh well. These are the things I have to learn to suffer through. Salt the chicken, I used dried basil, but who cares. It’s all good. And of course you gotta add the butter!
I felt like setting the oven to 375 and after a half hour, installed the covered chicky.
See?
How’d it taste? No, better than that, much better. The red wine, garlic, and rich chicken flavors were absolutely amazing. Amazing with a capital A.
To finish it up, I pulled the chicken out, put the juices in a fry pan and reduced it. Then hit it with an immersion blender to make a rustic “sauce”. Chicken never tasted so good!
Biggles
Buffalo Bill’s Beef Jerky – Black Pepper – A jerky review
Editor’s Note (that’s me, eh): There’s going to be a few of these jerky reviews and am going to use the intro from the first one, for all. So, if the first part seems a little redundant, it’s because it is, foo.
A few weeks ago the fine people at Jerky.com sent Meathenge Labs a load of jerky for our consideration. MmMmmm, Review Jerky! I smell a party comin’.
A meeting of the minds were scheduled for a mid Saturday get together. These would be, Cookie & Cranky of I’m Mad and I Eat, Chilebrown and Ms. Goofy of Mad Meat Genius, Zoomie of Zoomie Station, Sourdough Monkey Wrangler & his monkeys (even if for a few moments to share some home brew) and a good friend.
If you so choose, please visit for a few snapshots of the afternoon.
Here’s the new stuff, you knob.
This jerky comes to us in a thin, dry form that takes quite a bit of pull. And I believe I’ve figured this Western Cut thing out, huge pieces! What I wasn’t expecting right off the top was a warm, rich beef meat flavor. I don’t know if you can see it in the picture, but one can actually see the fat between the meat there, this my good people is a flavor delivery system. It says it has some teriyaki & brown sugar in there, and it does. But there’s also wine, which cuts the sweet to some degree so it doesn’t go too far. The black pepper is a warm peppery ride that takes a little while to finish. Since it is quite dry and has fat in there, the flavors mingle for quite some time as you chew along.
I like the fact that the meat flavor is given a chance to play, it’s a good thing. So far, this jerky brings more to the table than most. An excellent performer and there’s plenty in the bag for everyone.
Thank you so much Jerky.com for your care package, we enjoyed the afternoon greatly.
Biggles
PS – My new glasses won’t arrive to next week or the one after. I’m using an old pair from years ago and working on the computer or any reading is quite difficult and makes my head hurt. Not sure what the next few weeks will look like, here.
hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil
Alright, so I knew I was going to be late in to work this morning because I had to wait for the phone guy. Tiny E showed up sick on Sunday and knew Monday would be at home, okay. Z and I got up and were ready to hit the road at 6:45 and I decided to clean my glasses, like I do every morning.
Ping! Why do I have my glasses in my left hand and a lens in my right?
Sigh, no driving for Biggles this dark and early morning. Fine, I’ll just cruise the net. No, the screen was a complete waist of time. Okay, I’ll just watch tv! No, even with a 36″ tube that didn’t work either. Dammit! See, I’m nearly legally blind in my left eye and my right isn’t much better, glasses bring me back to ‘normal’, at least my vision anyway. Do I have a spare? Sure, at work!
The sun came up and wore my prescription sunglasses to go get them, yay. No yay, the prescription is so old I’m nearly typing this by silhouettes of the letters. Grrrrr. And speaking of prescription, the phone number of the place where I buy my specs has been disconnected or is no longer in service. Phlesbsbsbsbsttt !
Mondays, right?
What didn’t suck? Last night’s supper, that’s what. I procured me a top sirloin beef steak from Ted the Rancher (Highland Hills Farm) at the Berkeley Farmer’s Market on Saturday morning. Ted’s herd is the true organic, grass fed, heritage breed situation. Usually I find grass fed beef not to my liking, the grain does give a distinctive flavor that I adore.
Pulled it from the fridge Sunday, let it sit out for an hour with a kosher salt rub.
The cast iron griddle with grills up, super heated. Rub bacon fat all over steak.
Grill hard until done, a rare medium will do nicely, thank you very much. Wow, and double wow. I really have to admit Ted’s top sirloin was absolutely divine. I’m going to do this again soon, I can hardly wait. I apologize for any illnormal writings or editing of the pictures. I had to do it based upon feel and silhouettes, I can’t see worth a pinch of moon poo.
Biggles
Meathenge featured on The Perfect Pantry
I can’t remember when I started reading Lydia’s The Perfect Pantry. It wasn’t too terribly long ago, I don’t think. Not only does she know what she’s talking about, able to lay it down well, but she’s fun. So many attempt to write well about what they know, but it’s no fun. I like fun, fun is good.
On a regular basis, she’s got this thing she does. Readers send in their pantries to share, I’m #45 in that game. I wasn’t going to participate because my pantry lacks pretty much everything. But what the heck, eh?
Here’s a direct link to Other People’s Pantries #45 featuring my wonderful pantry.
Biggles
Umpqua Indian Foods Premium Steak Jerky – Jalapeno (roll the “n”)
Editor’s Note (that’s me, eh): There’s going to be a few of these jerky reviews and am going to use the intro from the first one, for all. So, if the first part seems a little redundant, it’s because it is, foo.
A few weeks ago the fine people at Jerky.com sent Meathenge Labs a load of jerky for our consideration. MmMmmm, Review Jerky! I smell a party comin’.
A meeting of the minds were scheduled for a mid Saturday get together. These would be, Cookie & Cranky of I’m Mad and I Eat, Chilebrown and Ms. Goofy of Mad Meat Genius, Zoomie of Zoomie Station, Sourdough Monkey Wrangler & his monkeys (even if for a few moments to share some home brew) and a good friend.
If you so choose, please visit for a few snapshots of the afternoon.
Here’s the new stuff, you knob.
This is a handmade product from the Oregon Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians. Hmm, band of Indians? Okay.
At the start of this jerky taste off, I wanted to make sure each one was tasted and reviewed on its own merits. Not to compare it to others, or what-have-you. It had to stand on its own, by itself. To be honest, I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, it’s more of a meat tooth. Just in case you haven’t guessed that already. Not that I didn’t enjoy the others, but I like this one a lot. For my own personal tastes, this one hit the spot.
It’s fairly thick, medium dry with a good solid chew factor. The fat and the chile pepper quickly send a green spike throughout your mouth. Not too complicated and finishes cleanly. The ingredients list some teriyaki & maple sugar, but they are very subtle. Jalapeno comes in #3 on the list and it shows. I like this jerky and it likes me, I can tell.
Thank you so much Jerky.com for your care package, we enjoyed the afternoon greatly.
Biggles
Thanksgiving Day Gone – What now?
Make stock?
Here are the beginnings. Oh sure, I forgot to truss the pretty bird, sorry about that. But the breast turned out creamy, juicy and it just didn’t matter. For me, Thanksgiving is more about friends & family than producing the “gourmet” crap.
Share the love,
Biggles
Hawaiian Jerky Co. – Pineapple / A Review!
Editor’s Note (that’s me, eh): There’s going to be a few of these jerky reviews and am going to use the intro from the first one, for all. So, if the first part seems a little redundant, it’s because it is, foo.
A few weeks ago the fine people at Jerky.com sent Meathenge Labs a load of jerky for our consideration. MmMmmm, Review Jerky! I smell a party comin’.
A meeting of the minds were scheduled for a mid Saturday get together. These would be, Cookie & Cranky of I’m Mad and I Eat, Chilebrown and Ms. Goofy of Mad Meat Genius, Zoomie of Zoomie Station, Sourdough Monkey Wrangler & his monkeys (even if for a few moments to share some home brew) and a good friend.
If you so choose, please visit for a few snapshots of the afternoon.
Here’s the new stuff, you knob.
Here’s a jerky I wasn’t expecting, a fruit. Hmm, okay, sure I’ll bite. And we did!
This jerky is individually wrapped, very thinly sliced, as you can probably see. Tell you whut, it’s huge in flavor. I’ve never been to The Islands and have always heard that the pineapple served there is by far the best you can get. And in these slices deliver. It’s dried, but after a moment it rehydrates and sends a smooth, rich pineapple sensation throughout. I don’t detect any smoke flavor, the package lists the ingredients as pineapple & honey. That’s it. And brother, it’s a winner. We all enjoyed this treat immensely and would most certainly recommend it to anyone, jerky lover or no.
Thank you so much Jerky.com for your care package, we enjoyed the afternoon greatly.
Biggles
Saturday Fires
Just do it.
And then? I did it.
Blam! Just like that.
Taqueria Del Palmar – El Cerrito, CA – v2.0
Keeripes! I just checked the last time I wrote about Taqueria Del Palmar and it was fricken’ over 3 years ago! Weren’t we just 23? No, huh.
It was soon after that the food seemed to fall off kilter, I think I had 5 off meals in a row. Big D wasn’t impressed either. So, we let it go for a while.
Well, Mr. Owner Guy is back and the last few weeks have been pretty fricken’ good. The warm house-made tortilla chips fried in lard seem to be as good as they should be. The meat is tender, flaky, full of good flavors and plentiful. The red sauce on the Burrito Especial is also house-made. Everything, so far, is spot on and I will return again this week and more than a few times next week.
Plus, get this. I noticed their prices are lower, at least on the burritos. Yet another reason why I stopped going. I mean, nearly 10 dollars for an All Pastor Burrito? Yes, the size of the rig is down as well, but that’s fine by me. It’s still way large enough for a 220 pound, 6’2″ tall man to get a good lunch down, perfection. If you haven’t been in a while, it’s worth a return trip.
Taqueria Del Palmar
11252 San Pablo Avenue
El Cerrito, CA 94530
510-307-4312
xo, Biggles