Cranberry Liqueur

Posted by Bob Weber on Aug 16th, 2007 in Personal, Recipes | 0 comments

Inspired by a recent posting on the health benefits of Cranberries, I’ve decided to share my secret recipe for Cranberry Liqueur.

Actually, this isn’t my recipe. It was given to me several years ago by a friend who got it from another friend’s Russian grandmother.

Regardless of where it came from, it is an excellent recipe, if kind of messy.

NOTE: These instructions are verbatim as they were sent to me. If you are under 21, or if alcohol offends you, please stop reading now.

1. Take one (1) liter of Everclear Grain Alcohol and 2 kilograms of cranberries (fresh, I’m guessing).

2. Put all of the cranberries through a meat-grinder and put into a large container (3 litter glass jar).

3. Pour all of the grain alcohol over it.

4. Let it sit for 3-5 days.

5. Then strain what’s in the jar through a gauze (the medical kind). You gotta squeeze what’s left in the gauze to get all the liquid
out of it. Collect all the liquid in any big container and discard the cranberry leftovers.

6. Then separately make sugar syrap: boil 4 cups of water (1 litter) with 2.5 cups of sugar. You’ll want to boil it on low/medium heat, stirring continuously until the sugar completely dissolves in the water. Make sure to watch it so that the sugar does not burn and stick to the pan. It’s easier to start by pouring hot (boiling water) over the sugar.

7. Let the sugar syrup stand and cool down.

8. Pour the syrup into the ‘cranberried’ alcohol stirring well. Chilling is good.

9. Taste it. If all went well – invite a bunch of friends over and get hammered.

That is the original recipe, here are some notes that were included for your reference.

Okay, so I use a 750 of Everclear since you can’t buy a liter anywhere that
I’ve found. That means you need 3/4 of all the other ingredients: 1500g
cranberries, 3 cups of water, 2 cups sugar.

Most people don’t have a meat grinder in their kitchen, so I use a blender.
The trick to using the blender is to rinse the cranberries down into the
blades. You don’t want to water down the drink, so I recommend rinsing it down
with Everclear. Also, I only did about a cup of cranberries at a time so that
I didn’t overwhelm my blender; yours may be more powerful than mine, though.

Most people also don’t have medical gauze laying around their house, so use
cheesecloth. You may have to get creative on just how to strain the cranberry
solids out, but last time I lined a sieve with the cheesecloth and then poured
portions of the liquid through.

Lastly, cranberry juice stains everything including counter tops, floors,
clothes and especially your hands when you’re ringing that stuff out. If you
spill some, I wouldn’t wait to wipe it up… I also usually use a glass bowl
instead of plastic, unless you want pink bowls.

I can’t emphasize how good this recipe is… if you like cranberry.

10 Minute Cooking School

Posted by Bob Weber on Jun 15th, 2007 in Educational, Food | 0 comments

You’ve probably already seen this, but I wanted to post it as a great example of the genius of Robert Rodriguez.

Many people would find the majority of Rodriguez work a little graphic (excepting Spy Kids of course), and that is unfortunate. Rodriguez is a supremely talented film maker as I’m sure you will see this Sin City Breakfast Tacos instructional video.

Will it blend?

Posted by Bob Weber on Nov 26th, 2006 in Food, Humor | 0 comments

Looking for the ultimate in blenders? Check out these videos from Blendtec’s TotalBlender.

I want one, but not sure $400 is worth making the perfect Margarita once a month.

Thanksgiving Dessert Recipes

Posted by Bob Weber on Nov 24th, 2006 in Recipes | 0 comments

While there are hundreds (maybe thousands) of recipe sites on the Internet, most of them don’t have much for commentary or reviews. I’m going to start a new category of this blog dedicated to my recipe creations and reactions to the recipes themselves. This particular post is going to be dedicated to Thanksgiving themed recipes – if you made anything new for Thanksgiving, let me know how it went and I’ll add it.

Here is my 2006 Thanksgiving Recipe

Chocolate Truffle Loaf with Raspberry Sauce

2 cups heavy cream, divided
3 egg yolks, slightly beaten
2 (8 ounce) packages Baker’s Semi Sweet Chocolate
1/2 cup Karo Light or Dark corn Syrup
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup confectioners’ sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Raspberry Sauce

Line an 8 1/2 x 4 1/2-inch loaf pan with plastic wrap. Mix 1/2 cup of the cream with egg yolks.

In a 3-quart saucepan stir chocolate, corn syrup, and butter over medium heat until melted. Add egg mixture. Cook for 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Cool to room temperature.

Beat remaining cream, sugar and vanilla until soft peaks form. Fold into chocolate until no streaks remain. Pour into pan. Refrigerate overnight or chill in freezer 3 hours. Serve with sauce.

Raspberry Sauce
1 (10 ounce) package frozen raspberries, thawed and strained
1/3 cup Karo Corn syrup

In blender puree raspberries. Stir in corn syrup.

Now, just as a bit of background, I have a somewhat philisophical approach to cooking. One of my culinary philosophies is that a dish is only as good as it’s ingredients. My mother has a fantastic Pecan Pie recipe, best I’ve EVER had, and it is made with Karo syrup and (of course) pecans. One year a relative wanted the recipe and at the next family function she brought a pie. She was dissappointed when it wasn’t as well recieved as Mom’s generally is. Later she confessed that instead of Karo she used maple syrup and instead of pecans she used walnuts. While substitution is a perfectly valid, and often creative, technique when cooking, one should never be surprised when use of substandard or incorrect ingredients results in a less than desired outcome.

In keeping with this philosphy I visited the local grocery store that I felt had the best selection for Gourmet type ingredients. I was in search of an excellent chocolate for my creation. Unfortunately, the story I chose didn’t have any significant selection. The only chocolates in the baking supplies aisle were Bakers and Ghirardelli. Now there is nothing wrong with Ghirardelli, but it is a mainstream brand which I could have purchased in any local store. Dissappointed I continued to scour the store for the other ingredients (including a loaf pan which I strangely didn’t own). During my search I also found a selection of Nestle baking chocolate. On a whim I decided to purchase semisweet Ghiradelli and a package of dark Nestle baking chocolate, which I later combined to give the loaf a bit more flavor.

Once all the ingredients were purchased I headed home to make the dessert. Unfortunately I didn’t get this done as expidiciously as I would have liked and a prior commitment forced me to put the dessert making off until Thanksgiving morning.

I got up early yesterday morning and began my dessert construction. Everything went smoothly until I reached the raspberry sauce part. I didn’t realize I needed light Karo syrup, and of course didn’t have any in the house. I completed the loaf per instructions, stuck it in the freezer and headed off to the store, again. Thanksgiving morning grocery shopping was amusing. The store was full of men, most of whom were obviously not bachelors like me. Most of these guys were wandering around the store looking completely lost. I’m fairly confident that the only time these guys even see the inside of the supermarket is on holidays when they are ushered off to get last minute items and (more importantly) get themselves and the children out of Mom’s way so she can finish getting ready. Finally, armed with my Karo and a strainer (which I also didn’t have) I headed home.

The final step was to make the raspberry sauce. Blending the raspberries wasn’t a problem, but straining them was largely unsuccessful. I don’t know if there’s a strategy to this, maybe cheesecloth would have worked better, but I didn’t have that kind of time. Eventually I just called it good enough and headed out to celebrate Thanksgiving.

Conclusions

The Chocolate Truffle Loaf with Raspberry Sauce was generally well received. The sauce still had a few seeds in it, not sure what to do about this. The loaf itself had great flavor, but didn’t ever seem to setup. It was almost runny. I’m not sure if I didn’t beat the whipping cream long enough, or if the recipe just makes a kind of gooey desert. Perhaps if it had been in the freezer overnight there would have been an improvement.

Overall, I would recommend this recipe, but definitely don’t wait until the last minute, beat the whipping cream untill it’s pretty stiff and use a cheescloth if you want a nice smoothe raspberry sauce.

Greeley BBQ

Posted by Bob Weber on Nov 20th, 2006 in Food, Greeley | 0 comments

Last wednesday long time Greeley restaurant Bubba’s Bar-B-Que closed. The IRS seized Bubba’s due to unpaid taxes. To many local residents this wasn’t a surprise. Bubba’s had been trying to re-invent itself for some time with a redecorated interior and a bar.

For me there were three reasons why Bubba’s ultimately failed. The first was pricing. Bubba’s was a buffet and not particularly cheap. The problem was nothing on the menu was much cheaper than the buffet. It wasn’t a place where I could stop and get a $5.00 quick lunch. In fact, everytime I ever went to Bubba’s I came out stuffed – which brings us to the second cause for failure. Bubba’s encouraged patrons to partake in their ‘all-you-can-eat’ buffet. For many of us who are attempting to watch our wieght, buffets are a large temptation. Personally, I avoided Bubba’s for that very reason. The final reason fo Bubba’s demise was the food. I love BBQ and used to love Bubba’s, but over the last few years the quality of the food just wasn’t there. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t great. The combination of (at least percieved) higher prices, lower quality and the temptation to gorge myself made me avoid Bubba’s. I probably hadn’t been in there twice over the last 12 months and appearantly most Greeley residents hadn’t either.

So, while Bubba’s is gone, but RJ’s is back!

RJ’s BBQ opened last spring in the old Dunkin Donuts building on 10th St. While the Barbeque was good, and the prices OK, the parking, seating and service languished. A couple months ago they closed, but last week they re-opened. Now they are across the street in the old Qdoba location. Not only that, but they also have a lunch sandwich special with a 10 minute guarantee. Looks like they are trying to fix some problems.

I hear many Greeley residents complain about big chains moving in and small businesses being pushed out. While this is true to a degree, sometimes it’s also just time for businesses to change. The BBQ restaurants in Greeley are in flux right now, and while we’ve lost Bubba’s we have gained RJ’s. Let’s all get out and support them.