Firehouse Chili Cornbread Casserole

I thought the ratio of cornbread to chili too high. Thicker than I'd like. If I make it again I'll use a deeper and smaller (less surface area) dish with 1/2 the amount of cornbread batter.

FoodWishes Youtube video
All Recipes for amount as written steps

Difficulty: Easy Peasy. Make the chili, make the batter, top with the batter in a casserole dish and bake. Had most ingredients on hand, so shopping was negligible.

Cleanup: The timing for this gave plenty of time to "clean as you go". By the time the casserole is done in the oven you'll have a clean kitchen.

Ingredients

Finished in casserole dish

Plated in unwiped bowl. 

Cincinnati-Style Chili

I made this recently and it was fantastic. Probably the easiest Chef-John-dish I've prepared thus far. Super easy. It yielded a wonderful chili to go over spaghetti, but it can do double-duty as a hot dog chili. Wow! We'll be making this regularly. I did a mix of grass fed and regular ground beef at 90% lean. Great Super Bowl half-time dish.

FoodWishes YouTube video
All Recipes for amounts and written steps

Difficulty: VERY easy. Cut onion, press garlic, and add other stuff to pot. Mash till smooth. Bring to boil, lower heat and simmer for an hour or so.
Cleanup: One pot, cutting board, knife, garlic press, wooden spoon, masher, ladle.
What I did differently:

• Added bay leaf after mashing ingredients together. Thought it might get broken up and would be hard to find the pieces to remove. 
• I reduced salt to two teaspoons instead of three. 

Ingredients

Need to work on food photography skills

Moroccan Spiced Pork Roast

This is a Chef John / All Recipes dish I recently prepared at home. My first go at it produced a wonderful dish, but next time I'll make a few adjustments based on the results.
Recipe: Chef John's Video on YouTube / All Recipes ingredients and directions

My results yielded a less juicy pork roast and fewer pan drippings that in the video. It was not dry, but not juicy. Be patient when spreading the paste even if you dry the roast. It took a while to loosen up the paste so it to spread easily. Back of a spoon worked better than hands. I added a couple of parsnips to be veggie mix . I like parsnips.

Planned Changes

1. I will probably wet brine the pork roast in 1/4 cup table salt dissolved in 2 cups cold water for about 2 hours. Then butterfly and season with the paste. This in an effort to produce a juicier roast.  
2. Use a porcelain or other not-no-stick roasting vessel. Maybe a large cast iron skillet. The non-stick roasting pan I used left little fond.
3. My lack of pan drippings I will attempt to correct by adding some diced pork belly with the vegetables in hopes it will render and caramelize during roasting. The issue may have been with my very lean roast with very little fat cap.

The Moroccan spice paste was fantastic. It perfumed the entire roast and filled the house with pleasurable aromas.

Difficulty: Easy Peasy. Other than butterflying the pork roast, this requires no special skills or tools.
Cleanup: Minimal. A few bowls, measuring spoons / cup, the roasting pan, knives, cutting board, spoon and that's about it. Everything will be clean by the time you are done roasting. 

Ready for roasting

Final product was delicious!

Ham and Split Pea Soup

It is only fitting the first item I post is the first Chef John dish I made. This recipe is very easy thanks to the video. You can sense this is an early recipe from Chef John -- no cayenne and you can barely detect the cadence that will become his signature. I made this again yesterday using a smoked ham shank (store was out of ham steak).
Here is the link to Ham and Split Pea Soup on All Recipes.
Here is the link to Ham and Spit Pea Soup on FoodWishes blog. This post from 2008 uses Adobe Flash which is probably not supported for most.

My changes

• Add 1 to 1 1/2 tsp toasted caraway seeds when adding the split peas.
• Use 6 1/2 cups of water and about 3 tsp Better than Bouillon chicken base instead of the broth+water
• A pinch of cayenne
• Ham steak or one those smallish boneless hams works great. Ham shank was a good substitution.

Degree of Difficulty: Easy. This should present no difficulty for anyone who watches the video. Being patient to let the split peas soften is probably the only step to watch for. Taste a pea as the estimated time passes.
Cleanup: Minimal. One pot, spoon, ladle, cutting board, knife, small skillet

Ingredients

Sweating aromatics

Meat pulled from ham shank with bone

Serve with crackers