Grilled Pig in a Blanket

When my son the lawyer was in college and was a big aficionado of steak houses, we used to joke that his favorite restaurant was the All Meat Meat House. Well, pig in a blanket is definitely a dish that would be on the menu at the fictitious All Meat Meat House. Readers should know it has nothing to do with hot dogs wrapped in bacon, dough or any other substance. No hot dogs period.
Pig in a Blanket is a pork loin wrapped with a sheet flank steak or round steak, sliced into rounds and grilled on the barbecue. My son would have loved it. I did not cook it for him and his wife, however, but for Mary and Bill,  and Joe and Katherine, old friends of ours who came to dinner. Joe and Katherine brought their 8 year old son, Alex, who has had the good taste to grow up to be a baseball fan. He brought along his collection of baseball cards for me to admire.
This is an easy main course to prepare, except for the grilling. I always have issues with the barbecue. Like many Americans, I once assumed that more was better in the charcoal department. Just load on those briquettes and go to town.  What you get in that case is charred, leather-like meat. Then, I became a Girl Scout leader. The Girl Scouts are the repositories of much terrific information, how to put up a tent, how to make a fire, how to grow into adulthood without becoming a teen queen, but for my money, the best piece of information is, that every charcoal briquette generates 25 degrees of heat. Of course, then, you have to give the meat time to grill.
So, in theory, one can precisely set the temperature of the grill by putting in the number of briquettes multiplied by 25 that results in the temperature at which you want to cook your food. So, if you want to "set" the grill at 350 degrees, you put in 14 briquettes, because 25 X 14 = 350. Well, that doesn't take into account the time taken up with drinking beer and chatting while the charcoal burns down, so your setting is somewhere around 200 degrees by the time you actually are ready to put the meat on. That is what happened to me. I took the top off the grill and was chagrined to find my 15 or so briquettes vastly reduced in size and covered with ash.
So, throwing Girl Scout training out the window, I crumpled some newspaper and put it on top of the smoldering briquettes and tossed another handful of briquettes on top of it. Don't try this at home, boys and girls. The newspaper flared up and sent charred fragments flying through the air, but it did ignite the new briquettes. When I finally took the meat out, it was probably somewhat more rare than indicated, but no one rejected it, or got sick in the intervening days.
The guests really liked Grilled Pig in a Blanket. If you want to make it, I advise putting in 15 to 20 briquettes, watching them closely to catch the moment when they are lit, but not burned down, and putting the meat on the grill at that point. Give yourself about 45 minutes to grill the meat, checking it at intervals. Don't get wrapped up in the conversation and forget to check.  If you have a gas grill, just set it at 350 or 375 degrees. If you have a crew of meat eaters, it will be a popular dish.

Grilled Pig in a Blanket

1 length of pork tenderloin, about eleven inches long
1 thin sheet flank or round steak, about 7 by 11 inches (about three pounds)
olive oil
salt and freshly ground black pepper.
juice of one lemon
1/4 pound butter, melted
1/4 cup finely chopped parsley
mushrooms au beurre

1. If pork tenderloin is not available, trim out the eyes of six small pork chops. If the tenderloin is used, wrap it carefully in the steak. Skewer with six skewers equally spaced. Slice between the skewers to provide six servings. Or, if the chops are used, roll each piece of meat with a length of steak trimmed to fit.
2. Place the meat on a grill over hot coals. When seared on one side, turn and brush the top of each serving with oil. Sprinkle the seared side with salt and pepper.
3. When the meat is cooked through, transfer to a hot serving platter. Squeeze half the lemon juice over meat. Squeeze the remaining juice into the butter and stir in the parsley.
4. Spoon the hot butter sauce over the meat and serve immediately. Garnish with mushrooms au beurre. Serves six.

Hot Chicken Salad (Gluten Free)

Hot Chicken Salad comes from the Midwest section of the cookbook. It is a dish that one would expect to find at a hot dish supper. We're not talking grand cuisine here. It's simple, fast and amazingly tasty. Of course, I would say that because I consider mayonnaise, one of its chief ingredients, one of the major food groups.
I made this for dinner for the two of us, and we polished  the whole thing off. No leftovers here. The mayonnaise, the croutons and the grated cheddar cheese all blend into an unctuous soothing mouthful.  I served hot chicken salad with the first green beans to come out of the garden. A great dinner, in spite of the fact that I sat down in the middle of the oregano patch as I was cutting some tarragon. My husband Bob had to come pull me out.
If the cook can get it together to poach a chicken breast in the morning, the prep time on this dish is not more than 10 minutes, and the cooking time is 15, so Hot Chicken Salad is a genuine half hour dinner dish. To make it gluten free, use squares of toasted gluten free bread, or gluten free croutons.

Hot Chicken Salad

2 cups diced cooked chicken
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon grated onion
2 cups diced celery
1 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 cup slivered almonds
1/2 cup grated sharp Cheddar Cheese
1/2 cup buttered croutons

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
2. Mix together all the ingredients except the cheese and croutons and turn into a greased baking dish.
3. Combine the cheese and croutons and sprinkle over top. Bake fifteen minutes. Makes four servings.

Sausage with Cream Gravy and Biscuits

This is a real Southern recipe, popular in the 1950s and 60s. Actually, I either ate, or was given the opportunity to eat, biscuits with cream gravy in 2004 when I was hiking on the Appalachian trail in Virginia. So it is still around. However, unless you have been diagnosed as actually lacking in cholesterol, I wouldn't advise eating this more than, say, once every ten years, although it is tasty in a heavy way.
Pick a biscuit recipe, or get those refrigerator dough biscuits available in the grocery store. I made my own, using a recipe from the cookbook. The recipe said to knead the dough and then roll it into a long tube. Cut rounds off the tube and place them on a baking dish. Well, my tube was flat, and the edges didn't meet, so my daughter's friend Laura pointed out that my biscuits looked like snails. They were still edible.
I fried the Bob Evans sausage and made the gravy. I did not use a cup of water and I also used less flour, probably around 1/4 of a cup. The reason for using less flour is, sausage has much less fat nowadays. The instructions say to remove all but one third cup of fat. Well, I don't think my pound of Bob Evans sausage generated even one quarter cup of fat.
 Two cups of heavy cream make a thick sauce. Salt and pepper punch things up a bit so use a lot of both. If we went away from the dinner table groaning a bit, it was to be expected. I would serve this to a group of Appalachian Trail maintainers, or other people who had spent the day engaged in heavy manual labor. They could burn it off.

Sausage with Cream Gravy and Biscuits

1 1/2 pounds sausage meat
1/3 cup flour
1 cup water
2 cups evaporated milk or heavy cream
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
6 hot biscuits, split

1. Shape the sausage into twelve patties and fry in a heavy skillet until brown and thoroughly cooked. Remove patties and keep warm.
2. Remove all but one-third cup of fat. (See introduction.) from skillet. Sprinkle the flour over fat in skillet and mix. Gradually add the water, stirring constantly.
3 Stir in the milk or cream. Season with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, stirring. Return patties to skillet and reheat.
4. Serve on top of the biscuits. Makes six servings.

Salmon with Avocado (Gluten Free)

Looking back to the days when I posted ten to twelve recipes a month on the blog, I realized that I was able to do so because Bob and I ate this stuff for dinner. So, Friday, I went through the cookbook looking for fish recipes that my dear husband would eat. Basically, he eats any kind of fish that is not shellfish. I settled on the salmon with avocado because...it sounded good, and looked relatively easy.
What we have here is broiled salmon spread with a mild guacamole. Quick and easy, but not something to set the culinary world on fire.  Bob liked it. Laura liked it. It's something mildly different than just plain broiled salmon. If you wanted to make it more exciting, I would advise more garlic as a contrast to the mild tasting salmon.
If all the fans of avocado meatloaf are wondering, the recipe comes from Washington State, not Southern California.  So it probably wasn't in the mythical avocados for every occasion cookbook that I imagined the avocado growers wives publishing in 1948.

Salmon with Avocado

1 salmon fillet (about two pounds)
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons butter
3 ripe avocados peeled and seeded
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
3 sprigs parsley
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 clove garlic chopped
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
1 lemon

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
2. Place the salmon flat, skin side down, in a baking dish. Sprinkle with salt and black pepper and dot with the butter. Place in the oven and bake exactly twenty minutes. Remove the salmon from the oven and pour off any liquid that has accumulated. Carefully transfer the salmon to a hot serving platter.
3. Meanwhile, combine the avocados, red pepper, parsley sprigs, onion, lemon juice, garlic and salt and pepper. Puree in an electric blender, stirring down with a rubber spatula as necessary. When blended, spoon the mixture over the hot salmon. Sprinkle with the parsley.
4. Trim the lemon and slice thinly. cut each slice in half. Use the garnish the dish. Makes six to eight servings.