We dumped 5 tons of sand in the middle of the street behind PYT at the Piazza at Schmidts. 100 strong we ate clams, lobsters, mussels, crabs and the greatest corn bread ever!

A lot of work went into pulling this madness off and I have a lot of people to thank for making it happen:

• Tommy Up and the amazing staff of PYT for giving us their space for a day and lending a million helping hands.
• The Piazza and Tower Properties for letting us take over for the night.
• JP Boudwin, Zack Driver and Kevin Ludwig for cleaning up the sand when we were done
• Michael Campagna of Ava for making sure we got the goods to make the meal for the masses
• Bart Mroz and Jesse Middleton of Open Chefame for choosing me to film this live monstrosity of an episode (and footing the bill)
• Brian McElaney for filling his nice clean car with  a half ton of live seafood and taking photos of the event.
• Paul Ritchey and Joe Williams for filming and editing the episode
• Leroy Conroy, Jesse MacPherson, Mike Matzik, Matt Phillips, Rebecka Weidman, and Leonard Wimbush: A kitchen dream team that I hope will make my future restaurant a success.
• and especially Dan Platt, who helped me keep my sanity and helped pull the whole thing together

Matt Phillips provided the baking chops for the Clam bake. This Jalapeño-cheddar Corn Bread may have been my idea but the recipe was all his, and it was real damn good.

Procedure Jalapeño-cheddar Corn Bread

1. In a bowl, evenly mix flours, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder and salt.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together milk, oil and eggs until evenly mixed.
3. Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until combined; do not overmix.
4. Add jalapenos and cheddar to cornbread mixture.
5. Spray a 9-by-13-inch cake pan with cooking spray or a standard muffin pan.
6. Place cornbread mixture in pan or fill muffin cups about half way. Distribute batter evenly.
7. Bake at 325 degrees for about 35 minutes. Halfway through, turn pan around and bake until the middle of the cornbread springs back.

The Open Chefame, Eating Crowe, PYT, Phoodie, Dining by Design Clam Bake went off without a hitch. Phillies traffic even kept the seafood from arriving until 20 minutes before we started shooting our Clam Bake episode of Eating Crowe, but we could not be kept down! 5 tons of sand + 100 people = a hell of a good time. Check out the pictures from the event. Video and recipes will follow soon.

My first experience making sausage of any kind. Doing it in front of people was risky business. Josh and I had a blast stuffing meat with each other and the hot dogs turned out well. I can’t wait to take a charcuterie class in the upcoming semesters.

WARNING: Dick jokes a plenty!

I posted pictures a little while back from the August Open Chefame. Well a few weeks ago the Chefame I cooked at was in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Two full color pages of cooking splendor. Take a trip over and read the article on philly.com. Look Who’s Cooking.

Thanks to Amy Z. Quinn for an amazing write up of the event!

I was so excited about this that I forgot to post it anywhere! Last week, Ben Kessler of Unbreaded featured our Cherry Coke Pulled Pork Sandwich Episode! I’m pretty excited about it. Unbreaded is one of my favorite food blogs. I also loved one of the comments on the story, Larry said, “Pretty good show but that beard scares me.” Right on Larry. Wait until you see Josh and me together in the next episode. We may have to rename the show “Back Woods Cookin’ with Scruffs and Billy”.

Thanks Ben for the props!

We’ve had some very kind words from around the web about the food we made at Open Chefame on July 27th. I also have some good shots of the behind the scenes action that I’ll throw in below.

Mary Bingham at WCdish wrote, “Each bite was absolutely perfect and dripped with summer goodness.” Sounds AWESOME! Well, that was in reference to the dessert in particular but Mary had nice things to say about all 5 dishes put up by Sarah Feidt and me.

Livia from No Counter Space gave nailed me in her description writing, “Tim Crowe, of Eating Crowe, was loud and enthusiastic and eager to be the center of attention. Clearly, he was having a lot of fun.” Am I that easy to read? Hell yes! She also had great stuff to say about the food that Sarah and I plated up, in particular my grilled corn relish, Sarah’s quail and our very successful tres leches starwberry shortcake.

Thanks to both Mary and Livia for inflating my already ridiculous ego and for the link love!

This has 3 major elements to this recipe. All of them can be done at the same time with some good time management.

Process for braising pork shoulder

1. Preheat the oven to 350° and place the dutch oven onto the stove to begin warming it up.
2. Take the pork shoulder and cut it down into pieces about the size of a fist.
3. Prep the aromatics. These will not be served with the dish, therefore they don’t need to be cut in any fancy way. Cut about 3 celery stalks into large chunks, quarter 1 onion and cut about 10 serrano peppers into halves, leaving the seeds to add a kick.
4. Lightly coat the pot with olive oil and begin to sear all sides of the pork shoulder.
5. Once they are lightly browned, throw in your aromatics and a few bay leaves.
6. Pour in just enough broth to cover the contents of the pot and bring to a boil.
7. Cover and put in the oven for about 2 to 2 1/2 hours.
8. Once the pork is done braising, you can take it out of the liquid and use 2 forks to pull apart and shred the cooked meat.

This part was not done in the video, but is awesome, delicious and important! The braising liquid has tons of porky, spicy goodness in it. You don’t want to lose that.

9. After you have pulled the pork, strain the braising liquid into a small sauce pan.
10. Simmer the braising liquid over a low flame to reduce until the braising liquid is a thick sauce.
11. Add a bit of butter to mellow the flavors and salt to taste.
12. Pour this sauce over the pulled pork and mix it in.

Process for the Cherry Cola BBQ sauce

1. In a small sauce pan, slowly reduce a liter of cherry cola, gradually adding more to the pan as it cooks off. This is a long process, so there is plenty of time while the pork braises.
2. After you’ve reduced the cola, in a larger pan, saute and brown 1 roughly diced onion and a few garlic cloves.
3. Add some brown sugar to help caramelize, 3 tablespoons of dijon mustard, a good amount of paprika, a little chili powder and a whole lot of ketchup.
4. Mix in the reduced cola and allow to simmer.
5. Pour the sauce into a food processor to break down the large chunks in the sauce.
6. Taste and season to your liking.
7. The sauce can be mixed with the pork, or just dizzled on top.

Process for the cole slaw

1. Take 1 full head of cabbage and remove the outer shell. We used half red and half white. Cut in half, remove the core and thinly chop.
2. Place the chopped cabbage into a collinder and mix it with a lot of salt. This is to remove any extra moisture. Place collinder into a sink or a large bowl to catch excess liquid. Allow this to sit for about 1 hour.
3. Thoroughly rinse the salt off of the cabbage and allow it to drain or squeeze out as much of the water as possible.
4. In a medium sized bowl, combine 3-4 scoops of mayonnaise, with about equal parts buttermilk and just a little bit of pickle juice to add some tartness.
5. Toss the cabbage in the sauce and serve on the sandwich or as a side dish.

These Cherry Coke Pulled Pork Sandwiches are crazy good. I think this is one of my best creations to date. The spiciness of the pork, with the sweetness of the Cherry Coke based barbecue sauce and the creamy goodness and crunch of the cole slaw makes an amazing combination.