edibleunknown
nobody loves you like we do
Ingredients:
And set yourself on fire you shall. Particularly after eating this atrocity I invented last night.
Software:
1/2 lb. Ground Beef
1/2 yellow onion, diced.
1 med. Red Bell Pepper diced (this is a chile too, btw)
3 Habanero Chiles diced fine (fresh)
3 Thai Chiles diced fine (fresh)
1 Random Chile diced fine (Seriously. I bought a fresh "Hungarian" Chile from Vons.
Who the hell knows what subspecies of capsicum it is.)
2 Jalapenos diced fine (fresh)
3 tsp. Cayenne Chile (powder)
4 tsp. Naga Jolokia Chile (powder)
1 can Chipotles in Adobo (only use 5 of the chiles or so, diced)
1 14.5oz can Ranch Style beans
5 tsp. chili powder (I use homemade, store bought is sawdust)
1 cup beer (I used Peroni, because thats what I had)
Garlic Salt
Salt and Pepper
1. Brown the ground beef in a skillet, once browned, throw in onion and bell pepper. Season with Garlic Salt and Pepper to taste.
2. Done! (just kidding.)
3. Or am I?
4. No, I am. Drain the fat from the skillet. Throw in all diced chiles except the Chipotles. Soften.
5. In a soup pot, stock pot, pot of some kind, combine meat mixture, and rest of the ingredients.
6. Cook until it tastes good. Or until you can't taste anything because the chiles have beaten your
tastebuds into submission/mass suicide.
On a side note: I wish the preview pane hadn't gone away, but I do like the new post editor Tele.
Disclaimer: The below contains cynicism. If you think this is a kind of disease, I suggest you go beat yourself over the head with an iron.
It was Indian night, and I've never so much as had a curry.
Nevertheless, I had a great evil plan in the works: I was going to cook Indian food pretty much the same way as I cook all food, by sort of looking at a recipe on the internet and then adapting it for my own evil purposes. I was going to do this because I had zero idea what kind of spices I was going to be using, what the end result was supposed to be, and whether or not what I cooked could be considered as poison in the right jurisdictions.
The recipe starts with a cup of masoor daal, which the internet tells me is some magical, rare variety of lentil. Since I wasn't about to go on a Fancy Steve style treasure hunt just to find a lentil that probably tastes exactly the same as normal lentils, I used mealworms. Okay. Fine. I used lentils. But if the original dish was supposed to be all squirmy, everybody was going to be totally disappointed.
The instructions were to wash the lentils. I sighed heavily and hoped somebody would notice how I was pretty much martyring myself just so I could cook food invented by people who don't even eat prime rib. Unfortunately, there really wasn't anybody paying attention to me, not even me, so I finally gave up and washed the lentils. The tremendous sacrifices I make for these parties, right?
The next instructions from the supreme commander, aka The Interwebtubes, was to mix the lentils with water, cooking oil, turmeric, red chili powder, salt, onion, and tomato in some sort of pot. Whoa. That's a lot to process all at once. I'd be posting the amount of the ingredients here, but I wasn't really paying attention anyways. I finely chopped a massive onion and three tomatoes (I was making a triple-size recipe, for the gathering) and added these to the pot. Turmeric? I had that, because everything indian ever apparently needs it. For those of you wondering, it tastes yellow. The mexitexans probably say it tastes amarillo, which is a gay Texan way to say yellow. And what's this "red chili powder"? I judiciously decided this meant both red pepper and chili powder, both of which I have, because I am a man. So I dumped a lot of those in there.
Basically, after that point, I let everything cook for an hour and a half. Then I went and played video games. When the smoke alarm went off, I looked for a save point, saved my totally awesome robot ninja, and then went back to the kitchen. I was supposed to melt some ghee, which is Indian for "butter of the gods". I am not kidding. It smelled like delicious, and it comes in what looks like a Folger's can. After it was melted, I threw in some cumin seeds ("Hiss," said the seeds). In went a gallon of garlic and a metric buttload of dried chilies, which I crushed in my hands like beer cans. After everything smelled fried enough, I threw it into the lentils, mixed them all up, and was done with it.
I should mention that I was supposed to add something called asafoetida, which kills unborn babies, smells horrible, and attracts wolves. Since I know some unborn babies and not many wolves, I was going to add it, but that would have involved wandering around the smelly part of the international market, so I refrained. Instead I added saffron, which is expensive, in the hopes that it would make all the food taste like magic. Instead, it made everything smell like flowers.
Okay, I gave it a taste. But after I spit that out and gargled with bleach, I figured everything was alright. I put it in a bowl, drove over to Fancy's, and pre-dialed the ambulance.
I'm still formulating my article for my Greek Night dish, but in the meantime I thought I'd share something I had stumbled on the other day while making steaks.
First, a little background info. We bought some Omaha steaks from some wholesaler for pennies on the peso, and as a sort of celebration, we decided to have them with a pan sauce.
I get home, throw the cast iron 12 in the oven at 500 degrees, wait until its rocket hot, and start searing my steaks. While it's sizzling along, I start to look for things for my pan sauce. Button mushrooms, sure, those will work, butter, got that, garlic salt, check, white wine.... crap. There wasn't any white wine in the house. I did, however, find an old bottle of Nigori Sake, so I decided to give that a shot. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, Sake-wise, go here.
Anyway, I finish up the steaks, a la Alton Brown style, and throw the cast iron back on the stove. I put two tablespoons of butter in the pan, and waited for it to melt completely before adding the mushrooms. I know, some of you are screaming "YOU SHOULD'VE DEGLAZED FIRST!@#!#!". The reason I didn't? Sake is acidic, acid + nicely seasoned cast iron = bad. Editor's note: You wuss. It's cast iron. Just do it.
So, I started with the mushrooms to provide some cover for my nicely seasoned pan. I digress. I garlic salted and peppered the mushrooms while they were doing the saute mambo. Then, carefully, I added about 4 tablespoons sake, and deglazed the pan with that.
<
p>After deglazing was finished and the kitchen was filled with a smell not unlike a Japanese bath house, I added 2 tablespoons (approximately) of heavy whipping cream and combined. All in all, the sake made a fantastic substitute for white wine. It had a subtle sweet sake flavor, paired with the earthiness of the mushrooms and creaminess of the, well, cream. It just goes to show that necessity is the mother of.. something.
The first thing I made for Tapasgeddon, in order to get me in the mood for the rest of the cooking, was a white sangria. This one is loosely based upon this recipe, but I felt the need to make a few flavor additions:
In true slacker fashion, I basically chopped stuff up and threw it all together.
So far, it's good. I can't wait to taste it after it mellows a bit.