Cooking Up An Ice Storm, Day 1

Given the way the weather is going, perhaps we need a bad weather cooking blog...Here's what I made on the first day of what the Weather Channel calls Winter Storm Pax. Please post comments on what you've been cooking, too.

For breakfast, I pulled some brioche dough and almond paste out of the freezer and made a few pastries. Some of assembled pastries went back in the freezer.

During my last minute run to the grocery store, I snagged some chicken thighs for stock and chicken soup. I will have some of the soup today, the rest went into the pressure canner.

I also made some pizza dough and a pizza, with more than enough dough left for another pizza today. This is the first time I've made pizza since the snowpocalypse. My dough stretching and shaping skills are a little better but I still have a long way to go. I used some of the sauce I canned last summer and fresh organic mushrooms on the pizza.

And at night I made a peach cobbler using some peaches I vacuum packed and froze last summer. I was too tired to make a full-fledged crust, so I used this as an opportunity to work on my cobbler skills. I normally use half cornmeal in the cobbler, but I discovered that I had run out of cornmeal. Too late to do anything about it...

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Asheville NC: Luella's BBQ

Luella's is a nouvelle BBQ outfit on the north side of Asheville. It is nestled among the trees in a lovely neighborhood. The restaurant has lots of windows for inside seating and plenty of outside seating. Service was courteous and amazingly fast. This is a combination plate with pork and brisket. Both were very moist and tender. For the pork, I tried both the mild and hot vinegar sauces. To my surprise, I preferred the milder one because it didn't assert itself too much. I enjoyed the spicy tomato sauce for my brisket. The hushpuppies were very good. The fried okra was fresh out of the fryer and excellent. The slaw was of the vinegary variety, which I usually enjoy, but this version is heavy on the white stuff and didn't have quite enough variety in tastes for me.

Hapeville: Pit Boss BBQ

I just had a very satisfying meal at Pit Boss BBQ in Hapeville. I missed it on my first drive down the street---its location in the back of a liquor store is pretty low key. However, I considered that location to be auspicious for the quality of my meal, and I turned out to be right. The smoke billowing out of the chimney greeted me as I pulled into my parking space. The restaurant offers pork ribs and pulled pork, chicken, brisket, wings, and burgers. This is a popular place, so expect to wait a few minutes in line and then a few more minutes for your plate to arrive. In the mean time, you can entertain yourself with the Theater of BBQ that the store presents. The counter is a frontpiece to the main stage of BBQ as revealed by the kitchen window. The front of the kitchen centers around the grill with its burgers. The doors of the smoker fill the back of the kitchen. When they open, they reveal a full company of smoking meats. I was so entranced by the huge stack of ribs tha...

Pressure Cooker Candied Ginger

I made candied ginger a few years ago. It's not something I would do every day but I had a lot of fun doing it. I recently acquired a pressure cooker and it inspired an interesting idea to me: why not make candied ginger in the pressure cooker? It should be very soft and flavorful. Here is the result. I peeled two large ginger roots, cut them into small cubes, and put them in the pressure cooker with heavily sugared water. The traditional method first boils the ginger in plain water to soften it and then again in sugar water to candy it. The resulting candy was very tender but still with the characteristic ginger texture. It was also sweet without being overpowering. The traditional method leaves a lot of sugar crystallized around the ginger. The pressure cooker gives a much more subtle result. The ginger stays moist even after it cools but you can dry it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes. That inspired me to dip it in chocolate. While I was in the b...

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