wilkes

GoWilkes: Cloves are not necessary -- I just like them as a flavor enhancer. You may like to add a little stick of cinnamon if you care for a little spice; however, it's the sort of receipe you can experiment with. Let us hear how it turns out for you.

I find that you can use red or white wine in just about any recipe that you have..imparts a nice tast to any meat/fish dish.

Also, I find that haveing a touch while cooking, can lead to a lot of imagitive cooking!

I'm with you, about half of my recipes came up from my experimenting.

Pretty much any recipe that includes white meat (chicken or pork) or fish can use a little liquor somewhere. If it's a sweet dish (especially one that uses honey), I'll add rum, and if it's a zestier dish, I might try to add tequila. It helps when you smell the sauce to determine what "kick" might work well with it.

Whitehawk, the recipe for ham sounds awesome! I'm looking forward to trying it. How important are the cloves, though? I usually don't care for the flavor of cloves.

Hmmm, thanks for the new recipes to try.

I don't have much experience cooking with alcohol but I did make a white wine cream sauce with butter, lemon juice and garlic to pour over shrimp scampi with fettucine. It was pretty good and I just winged it without a recipe. I like being creative and trying all types of things in the kitchen. It seems the older I get the more I like trying to come up with different spins on old favorites. It's weird, when I was younger the kitchen would have been the last place I looked for excitment.

GoWilkes and others, here's a trick I like to use:

Panfry or saute with a little butter, a nice, thick ham steak in a good, heavy duty skillet. Don't use a cast iron skillet.

Remove ham and deglaze the ham drippings with 1/4 to 1/2 cup brandy or rum

2 to 3 tbsp brewed coffee,

1 tbsp dark brown sugar, and

2 or 3 whole cloves.

Bring back to light boil.

Then add canned peach halves sweetened in heavy syrup into the mixture. Peaches should be placed cut side down.

Reduce liquid until it reduced to less than half.

Spoon over peaches then remove peaches to a plate. Add ham back to mixture, thus coating both sides of ham.

Add peaches back to cover ham, cover, remove from heat until ready to serve. This works well with fresh pineapple, peeled apricots, or firm pears (fresh or canned.)

My MinL (who wouldn't eat anything unless her mother or grandmother had cooked it) used to enjoy this and my sons like it as well. Wife does not like it because she doesn't care for any meat that is sweet or glazed.

I am most impressed with your cooking skills Jason! These are some great ideas, we will have to give them a try soon!

KellyG, this is for you. You asked what recipes I make that use alcohol, and I thought that some others might have a few suggestions, too.

I've made prime rib with a shiraz, and I've made steak marinade with tomato sauce and a merlot. These are very easy, and I just add wine to taste.

I don't know what you call this, but I have a pan that has a full pan in the bottom, and another pan that sits on top that has holes in it. I use this to bake chicken, and I'll often pour chardonnay or sherry into the bottom and cover the whole thing with aluminum foil. This lets the flavor of the wine or sherry soak into the chicken, but it never actually touches the meat.

I posted before about mixing honey and dark rum to use as a glaze for frying chicken breasts. I've also done the same with pork chops and had excellent results, although I'm more likely to mix honey with apple juice for pork chops. I've been wanting to try apple brandy with honey on pork chops, but I haven't tried that yet.

You can also mix honey, tequila, and lime juice as a glaze for frying chicken breasts. I don't keep tequila very often, so I've only made this once, but everyone seemed to like it.

I use rum on a lot of dishes, now that I think about it. It's made from molasses, so when you cook with it it gives a strong, very sweet flavor. You can just put honey and rum in a pan, let it fry for a few minutes on medium heat until it stops bubbling, then pour it over rice as an excellent side dish.

I'd forgotten about using rum so much, but I think I'll play with it a little and see if I can post a few specific recipes. Bushman, do you have any?