As some of my readers know, last year I made the leap from serious home cook back into the world of professional cooking - as an instructor and as the owner and chef of Sabor Del Sol a modest street food and catering company that operates here in Laramie, Wyoming - primarily at the Laramie Local Community Market, a farmers market here in town that I helped organize this last year. 

Sabor Del Sol specializes in Paella, though I maintain a much wider menu, Paella has become our most sought after offering. We cook out paella almost exclusively on site in one or more of our enormous paella pans. The farmers market is our primary market, however we do offer catering for a few special events each year generally for groups of 100 or more. 

This last week we cooked up a great new recipe for a Fire Roasted Green Chile and Chicken Paella Topped with Crumbled Goats Cheese. I decided to set up a camera and shoot a video documenting the cooking process for the Rogue Gourmet since up to this point I haven't actually even mentioned that I have started cooking again professionally. 

So without further delay, here is the video. I hope you enjoy it!

Professionally I am a designer. Recently I have been working on a new project to bring my interest in food to bear on my professional life; so I have been keeping my eyes open for great food related websites, mobile applications and designs. This morning I ran into this fantastic visual guide to grilling on the Visual News Blog: 

"We’ve all been there before: You cut into your seemingly medium-cooked, char-broiled burger only to find it’s still a little too pink inside. What gives? Many things can affect how long it takes to properly grill perfectly moist and tender meats, seafood, and vegetables. Take the guesswork out of grilling with this guide to average cook times. The guide provides average times for a wide variety of beef, poultry, pork, and vegetable items you might plan on throwing on the grill this summer—all you’ll need is a watch and a meat thermometer."

Click here for the full size guide (big enough to print!). Visual News is a great resource and honestly is loaded full of wonderful eye candy for those of you who are visually inclined. Also worth checking out is their Visual Guide to Seasonal Produce.

Original Post via: Visual News

As some of you know for the last year and a half I have been changing the way I eat. I have been trying to get away from eating as many grains and legumes, sugars, dairy products and processed foods as I can. Instead I have been focusing on eating whole foods; vegetables, nuts and seeds, wild caught fish, and naturally raised animals, like local grass fed beef, or when I am lucky wild game harvested locally here in Wyoming. 

I have placed a great deal of emphasis on finding the best ingredients that I can find, organic over conventionally produced products, local whenever possible, and always the freshest and most flavorsome products I can find. 

I do give myself a day a week for indulgences like beer, cheese, a great loaf of crusty bread or a desert, but the rest of the week I have given up entirely eating the vast majority of the foods in the categories I listed above. Note: If you are interested in why I have decided to make these changes in my diet check out this article. 

If I tell you the truth, one of the things that I miss most on my diet is a good sandwich. I should also note that I am not usually one to search out alternatives. I lived once in a vegetarian household and was always bewildered by my veggie roommates quest for meat "substitutes"; Soy Sausage, Tofurkey, fake bacon, bean burgers, gluten based faux chicken. I wasn't and am still not a fan of any of these products, and I when I started my own eating project I made a concerted effort to change the way I eat, not try to fool myself into believing that I was still eating this or that now forbidden food item. Instead I let myself have the occasional indulgence on Saturdays, or when I eat at a friends house. 

So, all that said, I did find myself searching for a good sandwich - without bread.

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"The wonderful world of DOUGH Donuts in Brooklyn, New York... Your eyes will glaze over with the amount of colorful sugar you're about to see."

DOUGH Donuts: A Far Cry From The Old Fashioned from SkeeterNYC on Vimeo.

I recognize that this video is effectively and advert for Knorr, but the advertising is discrete. Marco Pierre White is one of my favorite chefs, and these steaks look delicious. I couldn't resist posting this video, and I might not be able to resist actually making this for dinner tonight. Enjoy.

"Meet Chef Jeremy Spector of The Brindle Room in Manhattan's East Village, a cozy, charming, neighborhood restaurant that sears up quite possibly, the best tasting burger in New York City. 

Chef Jeremy walked me through the design of The Brindle Room burger, explaining in detail what makes them so sought after and so terribly addicting. For me, it's all about the meat. There's something special about the beef in this burger. You can taste it in every bite, and feel the flavor develop with every chew. It's a quality that Jeremy likens to "a fine cheese or good wine". Truly, a burger for meat lovers." (video link)

Video by foodcurated.com 

CADE (Part 1): Building Artisan Slaughterhouses to Feed the Demand for Grass-fed Meat

It should be noted that these videos contain some very
frank and honest imagery that some people may find disturbing. 

Others it may make hungry. Diversity man, it makes life interesting.

"Meet Chris Harmon, a local farmer and the Executive Director of CADE, The Center for Agricultural Development & Entrepreneurship. CADE is a non-profit organization working to help build the necessary infrastructure so that farmers can survive and thrive in upstate New York.

More and more people are interested in knowing where their food comes from. And with local grass-fed meat in high demand along the East Coast, many farmers are looking towards repurposing their unused dairy land to raise animals. But to feed this demand, farmers need more local USDA-approved slaughterhouses. Slaughterhouses, with skilled butchers, that can help farmers make extra income off of their new crop of pasture-raised animals. And right now, there aren’t nearly enough of them. Therefore, building more meat processing plants is a necessary step to help revitalize a dying farming industry upstate, a step that CADE is using all its resources to grow."  (video link)

CADE (Part 2): The Good Slaughter: A Proud Meat Cutter Shares His Processing Floor

“My hope is that my children will have the same passion for this as I do…”

"Meet Larry Althiser, the owner and head meat cutter for Larry’s Custom Meats in Hartwick, NY, a small farming community in the Northern Catskills. Larry takes pride in his slaughterhouse. He’s been butchering and processing animals for over 30 years, learning through hard work his philosophy on the right way to slaughter animals so we can eat.

I spent two days upstate with Larry at his brand new processing plant to learn firsthand how animals become food – a rare opportunity to tell the story of transparency in the meat industry. Truth be told, I was very, very anxious going into this shoot. The night before, I tossed and turned in my bed, restless for hours. I just wasn’t sure if I was ready to see the whole process, to film what I’d been shy to film for years. But, I had to do it. It’s a story I wanted to tell, a good story about a proud butcher open to teaching his trade, and a story I felt compelled to share with many others, like me, who didn’t want to be disconnected to their food any longer."  (video link)

Videos by foodcurated.com

Hearing Anthony Bourdain, Eric Ripert, José Andrés, and April Bloomfield talk about their favorite kitchen tools won't make you a better chef. But that doesn't mean you can't learn from them.

For day 2 of The Rogue Gourmet's Video Week - Move, Eat, Learn - Three short films from Rick Meriki: 3 guys, 44 days, 11 countries, 18 flights, 38 thousand miles, an exploding volcano, 2 cameras and almost a terabyte of footage... all to turn 3 ambitious linear concepts based on movement, learning and food ....into 3 beautiful and hopefully compelling short films.....

Move

Eat

Learn

Filmed and Directed by Rick Mereki

A short vignette of Yoshi Masuda--a coffee enthusiast who is sharing his passion for coffee with victims of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami.

Directed/Edited/Shot by Mackenzie Sheppard
www.mackenziesheppard.net

In a fit of apparent OCD over the weekend (and some inspiration from my wife) I finally got around to sorting through and organizing my herb and spice collection. I took the doors off the cabinets and added a couple of removeable shelf/organizers to each shelf to create a new layout. I think it may be the first time I actually like the way that my collection is organized and displayed. Best of all, for the most part, all the common spices are immediately available. 

In the past (up until Sunday) my spice collection has been hidden behind closed cabinets, and as every spice stayed in it's own package, the lot was criminally disorganized. In fact the collection is actually taking up less space in my kichen that it did before - and it adds a great apothecary quality to the kitchen that I think I love. 

I still have to actaully create some kind of order for the spiced and do some trim and finishing to make everything completed. but I think I am really happy with it.