Sounds good!
Last night, I did a home shake and bake of boneless skinless chix thighs that I had brined for 36 hours in buttermilk, pickle juice and Louisiana hot sauce. Gives them the Chik-Fil-A flavor and turned out very well.
Tonight I have a couple nice steaks for the wife and I to have our NYE together. Have some collard greens and ham made up as one side, the other side will be pan seared steak house style mushrooms cooked in just Irish unsalted butter, fresh coarse black pepper and rosemary salt. Steaks will of course be reverse seared in oven (sous vide gets them too wet to properly crisp) then seared with home made garlic rosemary butter in cast iron. Served with a nice glass of Malbec. Extravagant dinner but, it is NYE and we mostly stay home throughout the year. I saw Tomahawk mentioned. To me, it's just an oddity and people egregiously overpay for them due to the weight of the bone. It's a ribeye. But hey, if you want to double the price for some bone that placebo tests have demonstrated has no impact on flavor, go you.
NYE at BIL's house for wife's familyXmas/NYE drinkathon post Phins victory. Finger foods were requested. Snagging some good beef, chicken, and guava empanadas from a solid Argentine restaurant nearby. I'm an empanada nut and to me, the Argentinian style is the best. Columbian has a potato outside that I don't like texturally. Peruvian puts some weird confection sugar on them blegh. Venezuelan has potato's in the filling. Argentinian ones have that nice gnarly pastry dough on the outside which is just killer. If I can't find any Argentina empanada, I typically go straight into Jamaican beef patty.
NYD. Keeping it Southern. Gotta go Blackeyed Peas and ham. Soak the peas the night before. In they go with smoked ham hocks, chicken stock, dash of blackened seasoning, dash of Worcestershire, bay leaves, sautéed onions and celery into the slow cooker for 6 hours. Once you get to the point you can smash a pea with a spoon, ladle out a decent helping, smash them into a paste and reintroduce them to the pot as both a thickener and flavor intensifier. Peel meat from hocks and discard the rest.
For anyone doing steaks, check out this video on searing. Forget his ridiculously priced meat thermometer but his science on the sear is spot on. Keep in mind, before you do the sear, get the steak in a 200 oven to 17 degrees from your target temperature first. You'll get 10 degrees carry over from a post sear 8 minute rest and you'll get 7 out of the sear. This is reverse sear and ends up with perfect temperature wall to wall when the steak is cut later. Unless you have a 1700 infrared or gas fed commercial broiler, this is the way to go. Don't forget to liberally salt the morning of to aid the sear later.
Happy New Year.
