TheNHBushman.com

UPDATE: I want to make sure that everyone understands this event is taking place on September 1, 2007.

Recently, I blogged on the Ghost Month activites that went on in our neighborhood. This evening I was informed that Shao-hui would host another grill party tomorrow, beginning in the afternoon.

I want to stress that her marinade is awesome and if you love grilled food, you need to be here!

I know it’s short notice but if you need directions, please send email to thenhbushman@gmail.com.

I hope that everyone reading this can join us tomorrow!

technorati tags:Taiwan, Hukou, grill, Shao-hui

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Photos by MJ Klein

Just when you thought it was safe to read my blog and not see any posts about karaoke, here is another one!  Wednesday afternoon our friend Michael Turton came over.  Also Saumen was in town so we got together and went to several places.

Whenever we get together, we walk around shooting anything and everything.  No wonder people are always giving us strange looks.

This is what Saumen and Michael were looking at: someone moving a sofa into their home with a crane.

In the same neighborhood, one of those impossibly thin buildings native to Taiwan.

This is the other side of Hukou – the Filipino side.

And this is what we went for – fried squid!

We had the place all to ourselves….  So, we finished eating and when to….

Shao-hui’s of course!

Michael sings Billy Joel

Here you see that our first bottle of Sang Som Royal Thai rum is nearly finished.  We cranked out about 12 songs and decided to go to a new place we hadn’t gone to before.

Once inside we were bathed in a combination of blue and pink light.  Here we see the boss lady (R) and her friend pounding down some rum too.

Saumen called his cool friend Agnes to come over and join us.  We were glad he did, but pissed that he waited so long to call her!

Agnes likes to sing too, so naturally we did some duets.  Notice bottle #2 to the far right.

A very rare occurrence indeed, but Hui-chen also joined in!

Some songs you just can’t do sitting down!

Would you like to join us next time?  We hope so!

technorati tags:Taiwan, Hukou, karaoke, Saumen, Hui-chen, Agnes, Michael Turton

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Photos by MJ Klein

Well, it’s Ghost Month in the Chinese speaking world. I’m not going to explain it, I’m just going to show you what people do for it. Usually at this time of year people are in a very generous mood, and this year was no exception.

I started the evening off (Sunday, August 26) by going to one of the Thai places that I don’t ordinarily frequent. I was hoping to find throngs of happy people partying. But, the place was dead.

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Photos by MJ Klein & Hui-chen

When this old world starts a getting me down

And people are just too much for me to face
I’ll climb way up to the top of the stairs
And all my cares just drift right into space
On the roof, it’s peaceful as can be
And there the world below don’t bother me, no, no

The Drifters, 1968 (I personally knew Mr. Bill Pinkney who recently passed away).

We love our rooftop cabana. It’s a great place to escape the heat and catch some air and relax with a cool drink. We like to cook up there and invite friends over to relax and enjoy the sights from 5 stories up.

Today, Hui-chen and I spent several hours “up on the roof” and I took lots of photos this time. After all I wouldn’t want to be accused of making it all up!

The only drawback is the amount of stuff that I have to carry up there every time we want to hang out on the roof. The floor below is our “party room” with all of the stuff we use on the roof. The good part of it that I get exercise hauling the stuff upstairs.

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I can’t remember the last time I did a blog post without any photographs.  This is one of those rare occasions.

Hui-chen asked me to cook a pork tenderloin in the Dutch oven this evening.  I used the 10″ model.  After burning it out and seasoning it with olive oil, I added some sea salt and browned the meat.  After the tenderloin was well browned, I added about a KG of garlic (just kidding, but a good amount!), carrots and potatoes.  Originally we weren’t going to use those vegetables, but at the last minute Hui-chen decided that she would like them.  Last to go in was a ton of basil.  Lately I’ve been using a lot of basil and I’m concerned that most of the dishes that I have made recently have been basil based.  Even so, the flavor of the basil permeates the meat and the results are excellent.

We also had roast corn, Native American style, which is cooked in the husk over the fire.  This is one of my all time favorite foods and I have made many a camp meal out of roasted corn.  Local stores cut the husk off and it’s often difficult to find corn with the husk intact.  Many shoppers will pull the husk back to inspect the corn and you have to deal with that also.  Since corn is sold by weight in most places in Taiwan you might have to deal with the smartassed person at the weigh station, who in my case, made a snide remark to another customer about how the foreigner was so stupid that he was paying for the husk by leaving it on.  The result is worth any ridicule!  Also, truth be told, I have been buying corn for years without opening the husk and I have only found a couple of bad ears of corn.  Just give it a squeeze and if it’s nice and firm, it should be good.

I decided to not add any liquid to this batch, but to roast the ingredients dry.  Using the lid for the 12″ and a “divot”  or lid stand, I made a cooking platform for the 10″ to rest upon.  The reason that I did this was because the grill full of charcoal was just too hot and the food would have burned.  By placing a limited number of coals on the 12″ lid, placing the 10″ upon the lid and then adding top coals, I was able to very easily control the heat.

This is what the divot looks like.  It’s designed to hold a lid off the ground to keep it clean.  Remember, everything about Dutch ovens is hot so you can’t just put a lid down on a table.

Our local store didn’t have any whole pineapples, so we bought a can of sliced pineapple.  Hui-chen used our blender and made a puree of pineapple that I used to finish the roasted pork tenderloin and vegetables.  I am definitely going to try using a whole pineapple for the next time because the flavor of the reduced juice of pineapple matched the pork/basil meat flavor so well.

I promise that I will get photos next time!

technorati tags:Dutch oven, cooking, pork, tenderloin, pineapple

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Photos by MJ Klein

I love the outdoors, and I especially love cooking outdoors. Food just tastes better when cooked outdoors! Recently I’ve posted on some Dutch oven style cooking, my wood smoker in Thailand, and of course I’ve blogged on grilling here in Taiwan and Thailand too. Now, I’ve been indoors for 2 days and I’m already whining about it! I can handle wintertime and lots of snow, and that doesn’t stop me from cooking. But this awful typhoon rainy weather is depressing, so I’m going to blog more on one of my favorite topics:

Outdoor Cooking!

Mmmmmmm….. Dutch ovens on the fire! I have these 2 (plus one more) with me in Taiwan. I do miss cooking with them as much as I used to back in New Hampshire. This shot was taken at my friend Kim’s home. I have friends in the US that like to hang out just for cooking!

This is my first gill invention before I designed my first large system. The ring keeps the fire from the center of the grill so you can put something like a whole chicken on the grill and have the heat indirect. But before I get into that, I have to clear up something about the definition of the word “BBQ.” If you are cooking directly over a fire, and the heat is high and the cooking is fast, you are absolutely not barbecuing. You are grilling. BBQ is a slow cooking process using indirect heat. I will show you examples of this later.

The ring in the above shot allows one to do real BBQ on a grill because it allows the heat to be indirect, on the outside of the cooking chamber. The ring can also be used to concentrate a small amount of charcoal or wood in the center for small batches of food.

This is a shot of my wood smoker in my backyard in Derry, New Hampshire. Notice the wood pile. You can buy log wood at any convenience store in NH.

This smoker (just like the one I had made in Thailand) has an offset fire box, which means that the firebox is below the level of the cooking chamber.

Here you can see what I mean. We are looking through the cooking chamber through the hole in the firebox and into the firebox on a lower level. The idea is that the hot smoke comes up from underneath the food, flows past the food and then out the smokestack.

In this shot you can see my tripod leaning on the right side of the table. The tripod is used to hang Dutch ovens over a fire just like in the movies.

There really isn’t any reason for me to post this photo at all. Except that I’m going crazy being indoors and this shot is of something I love to do outdoors! Well you can see in this photo that the smokestack protrudes into the cooking chamber, which ensures that the chamber is always filled with smoke/heat.

Once the fire starts to burn down you can add the food. Many people don’t realize that burning wood is poisonous (like a house fire, duh!) and cooking over burning wood can make you sick unless its charred over. In the case of the photo above, the logs are just about charred over. Only the ends are left to char and then the food can go on.

These are Arkansas style pork ribs. What I wouldn’t give to find a butcher in Taiwan that knows this cut. I’ve tried to find one, unsuccessfully. These are the best smoking ribs, IMO!

OK, the wood is charred over, the meat is on, the damper is down and the process begins. You want to keep the smoker close to 100C. Unlike grilling, cooler is better. Wintertime is the best season for real pit BBQ!

This shot was taken from my back door. People have told me that they can smell the smoked meat for miles around. I’ve made deals with local restaurant owners, trading a plate of my smoked pork ribs for their food! Properly adjusted, the smoke should have a bluish hue to it. When its running in the zone, I call it Barbecue Blue smoke.

A few hours later, this is what you get!

This is the beauty shot. Man, I miss that smoker!

Now, you thought I was joking about cooking outdoors in wintertime, didn’t you?

This is my back door in winter.

A side shot of the yard. That is a car underneath the snow.

This is the cooking area of the yard, in winter. Notice the smoke coming out of the smoker? Yeap, that’s right! We’re smoking pork ribs!

This is how I spent my winters in New Hampshire – out by the smoker and drinking Jack Daniel’s Hard Cola (no longer made I hear). Notice the needle on the thermometer, right where I want it to be, a cool 100C. The smoker runs so cool in wintertime and you never have to worry about it taking off and going out of control with a breeze.

Most of the time I would have a second fire going so I could burn down the wood for adding it to the firebox later. Remember adding unburnt wood is dangerous and makes the food taste bitter.

The parting shot: Snow falling, charcoal fire burning, Chinese wok in the snow, used for vegetables cooked over the firebox, machete handle sticking up out of the snow (behind the wok) used for splitting wood, and the smoker going nicely.

technorati tags:USA, New Hampshire, BBQ, grill, smoker, ribs, smoked

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Anyone need a guitar player with 40 years experience (30 years studio experience), discography in the dozens, who has toured and played on a national level including radio airplay?  I’m fun at cookouts.

technorati tags:Taiwan, bands, music, guitar, strat

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Photos by MJ Klein

Hui-chen and I were eating at Shao-hui’s when I noticed that the sky had turned a deep orange color – absolutely stunning!

I went out to photograph the sight (with her Canon) and I saw this:

Sorry for the water droplets on the lens.  This is actually a double rainbow.

technorati tags:Taiwan, Hukou, typhoon, rainbow, sky

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Photos by MJ Klein

I grew up in Florida. When I was a kid, Hurricane Donna scored a direct hit on St. Petersburg, Florida where my family lived. From Wikipedia:

Donna holds the record for retaining “major hurricane” status (category 3 or greater on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale) in the Atlantic Basin for the longest period of time on record. For nine days, September 2 to September 11, Donna consistently had sustained winds of at least 115 mph. From the moment it became a tropical depression to when it dissipated after becoming an extratropical storm, Donna roamed the Atlantic from August 29 to September 14, a total of 17 days. While crossing the Atlantic Donna briefly achieved Category 5 strength. After its voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, Donna moved north of Puerto Rico and Hispaniola before crossing the Bahamas. The storm made its first Florida landfall in the community of Marathon, centered on Key Vaca in the middle Florida Keys. At this time, Donna was a Category 4 hurricane with estimated maximum sustained winds of 140 mph and gusts of up to 180 mph, with a minimum central pressure of 27.46 inHg (930 mbar). A storm surge of 13 feet was also reported.[1] The storm crossed into the Gulf of Mexico and its course shifted northward. Donna paralleled the southwest coast of Florida until it made a second Florida landfall between Naples and Fort Myers, again as a Category 4 hurricane. After crossing the Florida peninsula, it continued and moved back out into the Atlantic Ocean near Daytona Beach. Donna headed up the East Coast, and made another landfall at Topsail Beach, North Carolina. It then finished its trip by heading into New England, with a final landfall across Long Island, New York. Donna, unlike Hurricane Charley which followed a similar track in 2004, was a slow-moving storm. Donna dumped 10 to 12 inches of rain in the southern half of Florida, along with about seven inches in the northern half. The three weeks prior to Donna’s landfall produced a 6-7 inch surplus in rain before the hurricane hit, exacerbating the problem.
Hurricane Donna – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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From Bushman’s Typhoon Blog

A super typhoon is now threatening northern Luzon, Philippines.  This powerful storm is going to either directly hit, or pass very close to, Taiwan.  Here is the summary:

The satellite photo:

The very well defined eye is an indication of the power and strength of this storm.  The tighter and more defined, the more powerful the storm.

region of China on Monday, Aug 20.

technorati tags:Taiwan, typhoon, SEPAT, EGAY

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