Monday, May 7, 2012

Lovin My Oven...Curing the Oven....Day #2....5-5-2012

It's Cinco De Mayo Today.  Our friend Buzz is coming over for  tacos tonight. He's on his own as his wife Chris has been in the hospital, and is now recovering at her mother's home out of town..  So, even though the oven is not completely cured I figured what the hell, I'm going to cook something in there.   It's driving me crazy that I have this amazing oven, and I"m not cooking anything in it.
The first food items to be cooked in the Forno Bravo Casa 2G oven,  aka the FB 1000, or the FB 1/2 Ton, were two Chipolte chilies, and one Guajillo chili, which formed the basis of my hot salsa for our meal. These cooked on the oven floor at 350 degree for about 15 minutes. After they cooled I took the seeds out, and I put the chilies in a food processor, removed the large pieces that wouldn't process, and in a small mixing bowl added the juice of one lemon, and a couple of teaspoons for water. We now had our hot sauce.
I cooked up some simple white rice with salt and black pepper, a dirty rice, and  heated up a can of organic black beans. I'm not afraid or embarrassed to admit that I use canned products. If it's good, and easy, it's for me.
I cleaned three Anaheim green chilies, and stuffed them with sharp cheddar cheese, sprinkled a little olive oil on top with fresh  ground black pepper and salt, and cooked them in the oven in a square 9 inch baking pan for about 20 minutes. The pan was covered with aluminum foil. No dredging in egg whites, just simple and plain.
Geri made a guacamole with the meat of two avocados, lemon juice, salt, black pepper, a dash or two of hot sauce,  a half of jalapeno pepper minced,  2 cloves of garlic minced, and fresh cilantro from the herb garden.
The meat du jour for this meal was two chicken breasts cut into 3/4 inch cubes, and  marinated with lemon juice, salt, black pepper, olive oil, and cayenne pepper.
Geri also made a salad of bitter bitter greens, tomatoes, cucumber, lemon juice, olive oil and S & P.
We had a nice bottle of red wine Buzz brought over, and I baked the corn meal taco shells in my Lovin' Oven for about 5 minutes with some melted sharp cheddar cheese on them.
I cooked the chicken in a non stick skillet on the Lynx grill at 350 degrees.
We took a quick walk after dinner up in the Oakland hill, and by the time we got home I was worn out.
I had left the oven at 350 degree when we left, and when we returned home about a hour later the oven was smoking away at 350 degree.
The curing instructions tell you to close the oven door at night to retain the heat. Now, I am a skeptic at heart,. You might say an East Coast pessimist . It runs in my family. But when I awoke this particular morning I grabbed the handle of the black oven door and dam straight if it wasn't warm to the touch, and best of all the temperature gauge read 250 degrees.  After a a few scraps of the SF Chronicle, a couple of pieces of kindling, and some fresh air she fired right back up again. Foron Bravo has lousy building instructions, and their DVD just outright sucks, but their curing instruction are spot on,  and their oven rocks the Cazbar.
Today I'm going to cure that oven at 400 degrees, tomorrow 450,  and Tuesday 500. Thursday night the boys come over for a hoot-n-nanny, rock and roll jamboree,  and I'll be cooking pizza for my musician buddies.
Sunday April 12 is Mother's Day, and then we have our grand opening, with a huge meal planned, and the maiden voyage  of Geraldine's La De Da Cafe begins.
You gotta love your Mother.
More to come.

Peace,






Make Food, Not War

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