Another Batch of Frank's Hot Sauce Cone Recipe

The past couple of weeks I have been busy using up all the little bits of left-overs from the garden.  We finally had our first frost that killed off the remaining pepper and tomato plants but some of the herbs are still going strong along with the chard.  A few days ago I posted about the batch of Frank's Hot Sauce Clone recipe I made using cayenne peppers from my garden.  The sauce came out amazingly like Frank's!  I canned the sauce for longer term storage and just to see how canning would affect the flavour.

A couple of days ago I used the rest of the cayenne peppers that had been left sitting on the counter to redden to make another batch of the Frank's clone.  The peppers were aged in that I had allowed them to sit for almost a week before using them so more in keeping with the original Frank's hot sauce.  There were more cayenne peppers so I ended up with about a litre of sauce.  I used garlic powder for this batch in keeping with the ingredients listed on the bottle of original Franks' hot sauce.

I am not above begging family and friends for any fancy bottles they are discarding.  Pictured is the resulting clone sauce poured into a fancy bottle and a mason jar.  Unlike the last batch I did not can the sauce.  Hot sauce is quite acidic so will keep nicely in the refrigerator without being canned.  The mason jar is on its way to a friend who is begging for hot sauce so hopefully it is enjoyed!  I really thought the fancy bottle was rather cute, what do you think?  

Kitchen Quick Tips - Bacon

The date stamp on vacuum-sealed bacon reflects the last date it should be sold.  Bacon should be used within one week of opening the package.  It can be frozen for up to a month if desired.

Beef Roulade Stuffed With Spinach and Provolone

During our first visit to our vacation home one of the meals we cooked at home was a deli prepared  stuffed flank steak.  At the time I though this would be a very easy dish to create at home.  The stuffed flank steak is officially called a roulade.  Roulade comes from the French word rouler that translates into roll.  Typically a roulade refers to meat rolled around a filling.

I decided to try my hand at creating a roulade using a round steak with a little help from my husband who insisted on helping.   The first step with a roulade is pounding the meat thin using a mallet (1).  We placed the meat between two sheets of wax paper to pound it thin.  Once the meat was pounded thin we topped with washed fresh spinach and provolone cheese slices (2). We  rolled the meat jelly roll (a sweet cake based roulade) fashion starting with the narrowest end.  The resulting roll (3) was then ready for slicing.  We used toothpicks to secure the slices for cooking (4).  Each slice was cut to about 1 - inch thick.

One rather small round steak was enough for six generous roulade slices.  We placed the roulade slices on a Silpat® lined baking sheet.  The slices looked quite tasty!  Each slice was secured with a toothpick for baking.  We did not use any additional seasonings although sprinkling on something like garlic pepper would be a nice addition. 

We baked the roulade slices at 180ºC (350ºF) until medium well and the cheese was bubbly.  The slices did shrink a little with cooking but that's to be expected.  The cooking time was about 20 minutes.

My gosh this was a lovely meal!  We served the beef roulade with steamed potatoes and rutabaga.  The cooked roulade slices were smaller than those from the flank steak but they were very filling and every bit as tasty!

What I thought was quite interesting is even though this was a round steak that we could have devoured between the two of us, there were left overs!  It's not like the stuffing was particularly filly but the entirety of slices made a huge difference.  There was certainly enough that we could easily have fed four people.  We had leftovers for the following day.  So this is an effective way to reduce meat per serving without noticing the amount of meat has been reduced. 

Beef Orzo Soup

My husband was at hunt camp but I decided with the weather cooling I wanted a pot of homemade soup but what I didn't want was to get soup burnout.  This happens when you eat the same soup over and over for the entire week.  I came up with a way to have five nights of different soups simply by mixing and matching pre-cooked ingredients and adding in a fresh ingredient or two.   The first dish I made using the ingredients was the beef noodle bowl recently posted.

An upcoming Frugal Kitchens 101 (Nov. 29, 2010) will go into greater detail of the method I used for the five different soups.  Honestly it is such an easy method it falls under the duh moment as to why I didn't do this sooner!

Pictured is one of the soups I made that week featuring orzo.  This soup ended up being very different from the beef noodle bowl.  I used some of the same key ingredients but used orzo instead of chow mein noodles and I added in black beans.  I sprinkled in cherry tomato halves and chopped onion but omitted a garnish. 

This was a very tasty soup that was much appreciated on a chilly fall evening.  The interesting thing is by having the ingredients in the refrigerator individually it took me only the length of time to cook the orzo to put the soup together.  The only other prep I did was cut 3 cherry tomatoes and dice a slice of onion to toss on top.  Quite frankly this meal came in at under the 15 minute mark and did I tell you how yummy it was? 

A few things I should point out with respect to any of my homemade soups.  First my soups never have an actual recipe.  They are always toss this in, toss that in and see what happens.  There are always my tried and true basic ingredients but I'm not afraid to experiment when it comes to soups.  Second, the number one requirement for any of my soups is nutrition.  That means I pack soups full of good, hearty ingredients.  Third my soups must look and taste good.  That means I'm looking for good, full bodied soups that get their flavours from with lots of bright colours.