Giveaway - Stove Monkey's Yumm 2.0 Tickets @ The Mercury Lounge

The Stove Monkey's are at it again! This Monday, June 7th at 8pm they are hosting the second rendition of Yumm at Mercury Lounge. Did you miss the first Yumm? Check out what you missed via Green Dog Wine's review of it. The second rendition of Yumm promises to be even better than the first as it will feature molecular cocktails courtesy of Mike Gulley, in addition to some amazing Stove Monkey's molecular gastronomy inspired food. I have two pairs of tickets to giveaway once again. Read through to the end find out how to win or better yet, head over to the Stove Monkey's websitehttp://stovemonkeys.com/ and order your tickets today!

The menu will include the following:

FOOD created by The Stove Monkey's

Liquid Nitrogen Poached Ice Cream – Ice Cream that is instantly flash-frozen in Liquid Nitrogen – Think Dip and Dots, who doesn't love dip and dots???

Coconut Bubbles – Bubbles like you blew as a kid that taste like coconut and have a sweet spicy finish (jalapeno) and of course, after tasting them the bubbles disappear in your mouth

Liquid Baked Potato – a  frozen liquid that tastes like Baked Potatoes infused w/ white Truffle Oil and Rosemary, coated in flour and tempura fried and served w/ Scallion Aioli

Inside Out Deviled Egg – A reversed Deviled Egg


Drinks created by The Alchemist, Mike Gulley

Banana’s Foster’s – A very fun drink that tastes like a bananas foster. It starts with a Bruleed Glass while you watch, then it's filled with Liquid Nitrogen Poached Ice Cream, and finished w/ reserved liquid nitrogen ice cream that vaporizes on top of the drink and can be inhaled

Maple Old Bacon Fashion – Tastes like a breakfast – Bacon infused Bourbon, Maple Egg White Foam, Orange Brulee

Mojito of Future – Jello shot version of mojito that has green mint caviars on top and finished with Coconut Bubbles.

Tickets are a steal at $7 pre-sale or $10 at the door. The ticket includes the cover charge and all the food you can eat. Drinks are cheap at $3 a piece! Head over to the Stove Monkey's website and order your tickets today!

GIVEAWAY!!!

The Stove Monkey's have once again given me two pairs of to giveaway to Yumm. To enter, they want to know what the strangest thing you've ever eaten is and why. Here's Matt from Stove Monkey's story:

Once upon a time (lol) I ate a raw fish eye. We were in the kitchen monkeying around and decided to eat the eyeball after butchering it. We drizzled Olive Oil, salt, lemon juice, and sriracha to enhance flavor. After chewing the weird texture we all decided it was a bad idea and tasted gross. If someone bet me 5 dollars to do it again I would not. Gross.

Leave a comment below telling us about the strangest thing you've eaten and you could win 2 tickets to Yumm this Monday at Mercury Lounge. You can have a bonus entry for posting a link to the contest on Twitter and another for posting to Facebook, just be sure to leave another comment with a link to your tweet/facebook message. Good luck and I hope to see you there!

Michael Gulley's Bio

The Alchemist 

In a day and age where the common perception of a bartender is simply one who is doing a second job or side gig to make extra money to get through school, twenty five year old Mixologist Michael Gulley is going the extra length to set himself apart as a true professional with a passion for crafting cocktails and entertaining in conversation. With thirteen years experience in the restaurant industry, Mike has moved up the ranks from a bus boy at a family diner in Brook Park, Ohio to managing the front of house operations for a restaurant in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Recently returning back to Cleveland from NYC, Mike has brought with him a determination to revamp the cocktail culture here in the Greater Cleveland area.   He is currently the Beverage Director at The Fairmount in Cleveland Heights and played a major role in changing the focus of the Fairmount from wine and martinis to classic cocktails that have modern spins with food infusions.  You can also find Mike whipping up crazy culinary cocktails around town with the guys from Stove Monkeys as the team’s Molecular Mixologist.

Providence Church BBQ Rib Burn Off

I'm sorry, I know it's been quite a while since I've posted anything. The real world has been keeping me very busy lately and I haven't been able to spend much time in the kitchen. All the time I have spent in the kitchen has been devoted to one thing, my first cooking contest! I go to Providence Church in Avon and a couple months ago they announced they were going to host a rib burn off to raise money to support the student ministry summer mission trips.  

Sunday, June 6, 12-4pm

Providence Church

35295 Detroit Road

Avon, OH  44011

 A minimum donation of $15 is requested

I've been looking for ways to become more active at Providence and felt God was calling me to this opportunity as soon as I heard about it. So I talked to the guy organizing the competition and the next thing you know I was signed up, to cook 20 racks of St. Louis Style ribs! Did I mention that before signing up I had only cooked one 1/2 rack of ribs in my entire life? Heck, I'd probably even eaten less than 10 racks in my life prior to signing up! What can I say, pulled pork is more my style but I like a good challenge.

So for the past month or so I've been making a lot of ribs. Like with all my cooking, I've tried my best to make everything from scratch and treat the food with the respect it deserves. In my opinion, the only way to properly make ribs is low and slow, on a smoker (a Weber Kettle in my case) with a big kiss of smoke from apple wood. Ribs don't belong in the oven and they should never be boiled. I wanna see the smoke ring!

No, those aren't rare, the pink is caused by the smoking process

I've created numerous different handmade rubs that started with me grinding down dried chilies and mixing them with a variety of herbs and spices; I've applied the rub directly to the ribs as well as with a couple of different handmade mustard slathers; and who could forget the sauce? While I am still in the process of finding the right BBQ sauce, I think I came pretty close tonight. Of course it's my sauce has also been completely made from scratch, even down to the ketchup and worcestershire sauce that went into the various sauces I've made.

I haven't even mentioned the biggest challenge - cooking 20 racks of ribs and having them all ready at once! I can squeeze 5 racks on my Weber at one time using a rib rack and they take close to 5 hours to cook. That means 20 hours of cooking time! Fortunately a friend has the same Weber as me and he's going to let me borrow it, so that will cut the time in half. Guess what I'll be doing all day Saturday? Let me give you a clue, it's going to smell really good in Avon Lake.

Honestly, I am still not very confident in my ability to pull this off, much less compete for the title against the other competitors. But at the end of the day, we will raise a lot of money for a really good cause, so I am happy that I decided to participate. If you are a fan of ribs, I hope you'll consider coming out this Sunday to support a great cause.

So tell me, how do you like your ribs?

• Falling off the bone or a little bite to it? 
• Covered in sauce or let the meat and dry rub shine through? 
• Smokey or baked in an oven?
• Spicy, sweet, a little of both?

I'd love to hear your thoughts and hope to see you on Sunday!

Breaking Bread with Michael Ruhlman's Ratio iPhone App

As a follow up to the piece I wrote on Michael Ruhlman's Buttermilk Dinner Rolls, I wanted to write about my second attempt at bread making. I made a garlic rosemary boule, once again inspired by Ruhlman, but this time I used Ruhlman's Ratio application for the iPhone. This app is a compliment to Michael Ruhlman's book Ratio, which if you aren't familiar with is a must have for any serious cook. It provides simple ratios for 28 key recipes for things like breads, pastas, cakes & cookies, sausages, brines, soups, sauces, custards, and more.

Michael Ruhlman's Ratio Application for the iPhone

Ruhlman's Ratio app made it very easy to make the bread. Not only does the app provide you with the ratios for many common recipes but it allows you to easily adjust the amount of a given ingredient and then it automatically calculates and converts the other ingredients in the ratio. The Ratio app includes instructions on how to make the dish and also offers ideas to modify the dish (like adding rosemary & garlic to to the bread ratio like I did below).

I followed Ruhlman's bread ratio (5 parts flour to 3 parts water) and used 567 grams of flour, 340 grams of water, 11 grams of salt, and 3 grams of yeast. Yes, those measurements are in grams, Ruhlman suggests using a digital kitchen scale for everything you cook, especially when baking.

I wanted to make a flavored loaf so I also threw in some chopped rosemary and roasted garlic cloves . I combined all the ingredients in my Kitchen Aid and mixed them until a dough formed that could be stretched to translucency.

I left the dough in the mixer, covered it, and let it rise for a couple hours until it more than doubled in size. After the dough rose, I kneaded it by hand for a few minutes, formed it into the shape I wanted and put it into a dutch oven (another tip from Ruhlman). I baked it covered for 30 minutes and then removed the lid and cooked it until it looked like this:

Garlic Rosemary Boule

The bread was pretty good but I am not sure how much I liked the crust from the dutch oven. The top crust was nice but I didn't really like the bottom of the bread. I'd be interested in trying some other pans to see the difference.

Michael Ruhlman's Ratio application is definitely one of the best apps I have for my iPhone. Have you tried it? I'd love to hear some of your success stories!