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.
Last night, I decided to do away with a bunch of leeks by whipping up some sort of soup with them, mostly because I'd wanted to try vichysoisse for months. I can now say that, whatever it is I made last night, I ate it and it was fantastic.
The Queen of Tarts is always acting all high and mighty, baking bread and cookies and I think probably even people every night. She'll casually pull out some flour and other stuff, get a bowl or something, and in twenty minutes she'll be yanking a tray of golden brown tastiness out of the oven. Her demeanor seems to say, what, bread? Oh look, here it is. Easiest thing in the world.
So, for Russian night, I decided to make a mushroom pastry. I'd show her. I'd whip up a huge plate of tasty mushroom foods and then I'd be the one who shrugs modestly. Oh yeah, those pastries? Totally easy.
I started the night before with:
The recipe I was following told me to cut the whole thing together with a wide knife. Not knowing what the heck it was talking about, I got a butter knife and cut the mixture together while watching Bob the Builder. By the end of it, my shoulders were totally and completely sore.
The next day, I sauteed:
I added some pepper and tarragon during the cooking process, then set it aside to cool down while I pulled out the dough.
Of course, the dough didn't look right. It kept falling apart. It was impossible to roll. So I got out the pastry knife (yeah, I didn't know we had one the night before) and cut in an additional half stick of softened butter. The dough formed a nifty ball immediately. Victory for me.
I started rolling the dough out, but it was pretty sticky, and it kept tearing in places. In fact, it took me an hour to roll out, but I learned one vital fact you'll need if you ever work with dough: flour is your friend. If your dough even begins to give you lip, cover it (and your rolling surface) with flour. You cannot have enough flour on hand. It's mathematically impossible.
Once I had the dough rolled out to about a quarter inch, I cut it into squares. I mixed a cup of grated parmesan into the mushroom mixture, put teaspoonfuls of it into the squares, and folded them diagonally. After all the little triangley things were made, they were brushed with egg yolk, sprinkled with caraway seeds, and put into a 350-degree oven for twenty minutes.
Were they good? Yeah. They were good. They were pretty darn good. But I couldn't shrug and be all modest, because my shoulders might have fallen off.
Supercook is a pretty darn awesome site, where you enter the ingredients you have and it gives you a list of recipes you can make with them. It assumes you have water, salt, pepper, and sugar (sugar is a pretty big one), so I've been trying to find the largest number of recipes for the smallest number of ingredients. So far, it's butter & onions (12 recipes)...
Update: make that butter and flour (79 recipes).
I don't know why nobody ever told me that Alfredo sauce was easy to make, but I've wasted far too much of my life buying the glass jars of commercially made pasta sauce when a great alfredo is almost as easy.
Just last week, we were running a little short in the food department, so it came time to try and scrounge what we could out of what was sitting around in the house. To that end, I collected the following ingredients:
I melted the butter while the pasta started boiling. Once completely melted, I added the milk and whisked it all together, then whisked in the pepper and garlic salt. After the egg noodles were done, I drained them thoroughly, put them in the milk mixture, and began to fold in the cheese.
That's it. The best recipes are disgustingly simple. Although, after I ate the noodles, I felt like my heart was going to explode. This is some heavy stuff, friends. Don't get addicted.
After a mixup where the beans I had originally planned for a Boston Baked Beans dish didn't manage to fully soak overnight, I had to run to the store and grab some ingredients to quickly whip up a backup dish, broccoli and ham gratin.
After cutting the broccoli down (including stems) to florets and small discs, I put them on to boil. After they'd softened slightly, I spread them across the bottom of the baking dish. Next, I mixed up a bechamel (melted the butter, mixed in the flour, then took off the heat and mixed in the milk). After putting the milk back on the heat and whisking heavily, I added a dash of sage and mustard, then ground in some pepper.
After tearing the ham into shreds and laying it across the top of the broccoli, I added the bechamel, covered the top with cheese and breadcrumbs, and put it into the oven at 350 degrees for half an hour.
Unfortunately, I let it cook a little longer, and I really shouldn't have; the broccoli dried up a bit. I'm looking forward to trying this one again sometime soon, however.
Here we go! For this EU night, I decided on making Cheesesteaks. Alas, they weren't traditional, in the fact that they weren't made with Cheez Whiz (Seriously. Apparently, a hot dog vendor in Philidelphia invented cheesesteaks when he got bored with his regular faire). This is the recipe. alas. it is not exact. Why? Well because its up to you the amount of ingredients you want on the thing. Not me.
Also, note that the cut of beef required (suggested) for these is a mysterious cut known to few as "Eye of Round" Roast. In my earlier, uncertain years, I worked at a Smiths Food and Drug in the Meat department. I know quite a bit of beef from my Father and Grandfather as well, but I had never heard of this cut. I dont know why. Ask your butcher, or use a Rib-Eye steak or comparable marbled cut of beef. You can't tell the difference. Except in price, maybe, the Eye of Round is very cheap, $11 for 2.5 lbs or so. (Note: 2.5 lbs is enough to make 10 sandwiches, and thats just meat and cheese.)
2lb. Eye of Round roast,
or comparable portion of
meat to stick in sandwiches.
8-10 Dutch style sandwich rolls (very flaky crust).
16-20 Slices of provolone cheese
? Frenched onions, chopped bell peppers, mushrooms
sweet cherry peppers, anything you want on there.
1 Spray bottle or mustard bottle filled with
clean water.
1 Bottle of Steak/Grill seasoning (optional)
Start by putting the roast, or other meat in the freezer for an hour or two. You want it frozen, but still pliable. Rock hard would be bad, and hard to cut. While its freezing, cut the vegetables, watch TV, do something.
Frozen enough? ok, get a serrated blade, yes, the type you cut bread with. What you're looking for here is to shave very thin slices of beef off of the roast. Since the beef is frozen, it should be easier to cut without tearing. After you've sliced all of the beef very thin, set it aside in a bowl. I would suggest you get a two burner cast iron griddle for this, they're good for pancakes, eggs, pretty much anything, but great for this. Lay it across one front burner and one back burner, and turn the heat on the front burner to high, and the back burner to low.
Throw a cup or so of your veggies on the front part of the griddle, and saute until desired done-ness. While this is cooking, preheat the oven to 175 degrees. If the vegetables begin to stick to the griddle, hit them with a squirt of water from the mustard bottle, it will prevent them from sticking. Once they're cooked to your liking, move them to the back of the griddle. Throw a cup of the sliced beef on there, and cook to desired doneness and again, hit with a squirt of water if it starts to stick. Once this is cooked to your liking, combine the cooked vegetables and the beef together and cook for a minute or two, blasting with water when you need to. With the spatula, form the mixture into an oval shape, and then put two slices of provolone on the oval, almost covering the meat but try to keep it off of the grill. Hit the top of the cheese with two or three squirts of water, and the steam from this will melt the cheese very very quickly.
Get one of your sandwich rolls, and cut lengthwise along one side, in the typical hot dog bun fashion. Lay the bun open side down onto the meat, and then slide the spatula underneath the entire mass. In one motion, flip the whole mess over, and you should have a Philly Cheesesteak! Yay!
I know it seems like quite a bit of work, but they are mighty tasty.
I was seriously in need of some sour cream yesterday, so I browsed the internet for a couple beef stroganoff recipes and generated something that turned out to be pretty darn fantastic.
After slicing a half-pound sirloin steak into small strips, I dredged them in flour, garlic salt, and pepper, then sauteed them in butter along with a quarter onion (diced). I added a couple dashes of Worcestershire and soy sauce (that combo is my secret weapon for meat dishes). After the onion was transparent, I added some sliced mushrooms, a shot of apple cognac (any brandy would be fine), and half a can of chicken broth. Once the whole mixture thickened, I added half a cup of sour cream, reduced the heat to medium, and let the sauce thicken.
Over buttered egg noodles, this one was pretty fantastic. There was just a hint of the apple flavor from the cognac. If I do this again, I will wait to add the steak until after the onions are done; it certainly wasn't overcooked, but I would have liked it to be a little less cooked anyways.