Yummy ham glaze

Thank you, Smithfield brown sugar hams.

their glaze packet
one can of crushed pineapple in its own juice
a splash orange juice
two dabs peach preserves
one dab apricot preserves
one shot good triple sec (i used patron)
a squeeze of brown deli mustard.

bring to heat. chill thoroughly. then either serve cold over hot ham (my way) or warm for service. Yum.

My new favorite drink (for winter)

Yeah, I'm missing fresh watermelon being available. Sigh.

Here's what I'm sipping right now.

half oregon chai apple cider chai, half cookies and coffee Milwaukee frozen custard, stirred in a vintage McDonald's Garfield glass. Served with a spoonful of the custard on top. YUUUM!!!

Oh yeah. One shot good triple sec (Patron, perhaps) and one shot amaretto on top, then stir gently and sip. tasty drunky.

Crazy Fries Revealed! (PHOTO)

I finally got to try crazy fries. They were indeed crazy. Ingredients - blue cheese, hot sauce, nacho cheese, and ketchup.

I thought crazy fries were fries with EVERYTHING nonmeat they had, but whatev.



Unfortunately, the fries melted two holes in the box.

Today's cooking was awesome

If you don't know why chili dogs are awesome, you're beyond any help I can offer. These are made with toasted whole-wheat buns, my homemade chili, superbeefy franks, Nance's sweet-hot mustard and dashes of cilantro-infused everclear.

The result? Drunk food that gets you hammered. I'm either brilliant or retarded.


New York strip steak. I marinated it overnight in Cholula chili garlic, and it was delicious. This is the only good picture.

My new favorite drink

20 oz. fresh watermelon juice
one shot of Gentleman Jack

yum. Now that's a sippin' drink.

My ideal cheesesteak

thin-sliced ribeye in slices, not shreds, lots of caramelized onions, provolone and whiz.

you'd order it as "provo and whiz steak, extra wit"

Falcon Ridge Chili

Feeding a fuckton of people? Make this!

(between paragraphs, cook for an hour, partially covered, stirring every ten minutes.)

Cover the bottom of a gigantic pot with extra virgin olive oil. Saute four large Vidalia onions, chopped, with one head of elephant garlic, minced and two heads of regular garlic, pressed.

Cook on low until translucent. turn up on high and cover to brown. push that to one side and add three chopped kielbasa - one turkey, one lite, and one polska (all Hillshire farms or whatever's better - each is one pound) to the other side. Let it brown. Then, chop 3 tomatoes into small pieces, drain, and add. Stir. Add cumin (easy does it - I can't tell you how much - add some, stir, taste, repeat) then stir once more.

Cut three pounds of cubed chuck into smaller pieces. Toss in a 50/50 mix of fine cornmeal and flour. Add to pot. Be vigilant about stirring at this stage - it may be easier to remove everything from the pot before browning the meat. Some would brown it first, but I'm trying to more or less describe how I actually made it.

Add one large can dark red kidney beans and one large can light red kidney beans. If you like beany chili, feel free to MAKE IT YOUR OWN DAMN SELF OR AT LEAST NOT BITCH WHILE YOU EAT MINE. (Very little I write makes me laugh, but I titter maniacally whenever I edit this part)

Pour in a carton of organic chicken stock and a carton of water.

Brown one pound of 80/20 ground beef in a lot of chili powder. Drain, add. brown another pound of 93/7 ground beef in paprika and cinnamon. Drain, add.

Add one can Ro-Tel Mexican tomatoes and jalepenos and one large can of diced tomatoes, along with one large red and two medium yellow peppers, grilled, skinned and chopped roughly. They'll break up.

Empty a bottle of Cholula Chili Garlic (with the brown top. I originally did this with the original, which is fine, but I'm a garlic fiend) across the top of the chili. Turn the heat up. Let it bubble around for a bit until you see the sauce start to meld on its own, then turn the heat back to normal and stir.

Add two cans vegetarian baked beans and a whole bunch of crunchy sprouts - i like garbonzo, pea, and lentil - nothing stringy. I used a pre-pack mix with pea, cow pea, red lentils and chickpeas, a total of 36 ounces.

Turn up a little too high and cover, then rescue before it burns too much on the bottom, then scrape it off. If you've made enough and haven't burned too badly, this'll make the whole pot smoky and awesome. If not, then you blew a lot of money on tons of ingredients and burned them. Good job.

Simmer until thick. Let cool in fridge until fully chilled, then ladle into huge Ziploc bags. Stack and freeze these.

now the fun part - what I did wrong!

If I was on the ball, I'd have browned ALL the meat off first - that way, the excess flour and cornmeal (which you'll get if you try to coat too much of it at once) caused burning issues but only mild stickage. That would also have let me drain grease from the kielbasa, but my chili benefits from the leaching of the flavors - and everythign else in the chili is dense and meaty - the kielbasa becomes soft, much like in the traditional Polish cabbage and 'basa, and gives its flavor to the chili.

I may have gone overboard in the direction of dense and meaty with this chili, but here's my tip for taking care of that - legit, not-from-concentrate no-artificial-anything orange juice. In a pinch, you can use orange soda, which actually works better. Tomorrow I'll simmer, taste, and perhaps hit it wiht a shot of low-acid orange juice concentrate if the flavor portrait is too dark. (I know I just said not from concentrate but guess what? I can't afford that, and this is the same stuff but more potent so I can use less of it)

Last time I cooked with olive oil I used plain 'ol olive oil. Never again. Store brand extra virgin is miles, MILES beyond it and the difference was evident the second my pot started getting hot. Rachael Ray may be evil for many, many reasons, but she's right on always using extra virgin. (I refuse to call it what she does)

I like chili on rice, with enough rice that it's more of a chili-rice amalgam - even though the gravy on this one is fucking delicious, I'd rather have it infusing grains. It'd be lovely on couscous, or mashed potatoes. Stuff arancini with it for all I care. (hmmm.....)

Summer salad

one head romaine lettuce
two Anjou pears
one ripe peach
two avocadoes
three medium Roma tomatoes

After washing the lettuce, lay it parallel with the edge of your cutting board and cut perpendicular, making half-inch wide ribbons. Stop when it starts getting light green. Chop everything else and squeeze together by hand. it shoudl create a light avocado dressing. i accented with garlic powder and season-all, which is delightfully chintzy but tasted good so fuck off if you don't like it.

Then I nuked some grilled kielbasa too long until it dehydrated, making meaty croutons. Yum.

I like pain

well, certain types of pain. the feeling right after you burn yourself on cast iron while making breakfast - that adrenaline jolt from half-awake to very much so and not stopping anytime soon, thank you very much - that's nice. I also like hot food.

The best Indian in College Park is down University, more into Langley Park, definitely a little sketchier territory than CP (two women who were joining us for dinner didn't come after averting what appears to have been an attempted carjacking) but Tiffin, oh my fuckin g-d Tiffin is worth it.

i'm a heat freak. i ordered extra spicy. then i clarified. "Try to kill me," I told the waiter. "A Korean waitress once told me I take heat well for a white boy."

He laughed. I knew I was in trouble when it came out and everyone was stealing looks at me, waiting for the first bite.

The hilarious part is that i went ot the bathroom and then the food came, so my spicy chicken was in the middle of the table, and i was eating wiht a tableful of people who ordered as mild as possible. (wusses!) but two of the three ended up with some on their plates.

they didn't realize which was mine. one had to create a barrier on his plate wiht his knife to avoid his food touching the oil from mine (jesus, what are we, six?) and one ate a small piece and felt warm from the neck up the rest of the meal (which i have no complaint about, yay trying).

Korean heat is bad,yes. Sichuan heat is bad, too, especially with the right peppercorns and the numbing sensations they bring, but the numbing makes it hurt less.

Indian food doesn' thave numbing, and this sauce didn't have any fat. Breaking my wrist hurt less than dinner tonight, but it was managable pain because I could stop it whenever I wanted. We had traditional super-mild creamy pile-o-ghee dishes on the table too. I let it flame for about five minutes, drank six glasses of water in rapid succession and then hit up the mata paneer.

i'm eating the leftovers now. g-d it burns...burns so good. I should note that the flavor is still there, it's just a little outweighed. i'd order this regular spicy next time because the flavor depth is a little overwhelmed by the heat.

Today's rice noodle spaghetti

1 package rice n00dz
1 can of the leftover crushed tomatoes from yesterday's curry
the rest of the chicken stock
a couple onions
a package of ground beef (about a pound)
one kielbasa
one pound mozarella cheese

it's not going to be anything fancy. i'm just hungry.

EDIT - it came out well. I added some fresh mozz thanks to my crazy housemate D and next time I'll cut back on the overall amount of cheese. Fresh legit mozzarella is much better than Kraft part-skim, that's for darn sure. This is not a red-stained noodles dish - the sauce is more background, and I like it that way.

An email to my mother turned into somewhat of a recipe

but I didn't take pix because it looks like meaty diarrhea. Tastes great, though.

"The natural chicken" is Perdue chicken in a similar package with green highlights. It's air-chilled, no antibiotics, and I really should get to the store to document it because I can't find it on Google.

Total thumbs-up on the natural chicken. It has texture and it takes flavor WAY better than any I've used since I started cooking. I did a quick marinade in Cholula chili garlic (knew i was gonna use that), seared them while I caramelized onions in butter on the other side of the pan, then added it to the gyro-sliced (flat, thin ribbons) kielbasa. Topped with a can of coconut milk and a knife-edge-ful of red curry paste (just eyeball it, seriously) and a dollop of crushed tomatoes, I schushed it around in the skillet until the sauce was a uniform color, let it cook, then repeated that two-step a few more times. As the sauce cooks, it'll separate a little - don't let it go too long or the kielbasa will leach all its flavor. five minutes tops on that step.

then i served it on rice that had been cooked in organic free-range chicken broth.

the rest of the broth is freezing now. after it's nice and solid, i'm going to cut the box off and serve slices of it on something hot.

yum.

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Lettuce Lunchmeat Maki

Lay down six top leafs of romaine lettuce, overlapping them mostly, to form a slighly larger rectangle of romaine. top with miracle whip and sharp/creamy mustard. add bread and butter pickle slices, as well as sliced ham torn into small pieces. roll. eat by hand for the maki version, or batter and fry for sheer insanity.

Sauce Number 36

brown a pound of ground turkey in the pot you're going to use for sauce. meanwhile, boil water for noodles.

drain and remove the turkey, then brown off a pound of lardon-style-cut kielbasa. After that, saute finely chopped onions until translucent. Deglaze with tomato sauce. Spike tomato sauce with red thai curry paste.

Add meat to sauce, melt a block of mozarella in there, and serve over noodles.

Damn. I'm so hungry I'm gonna go make it.

Chicken-Fried Take 2

When some people can't focus, they clean, masturbate or get high. I cook.

Pound out cubed steak to half its previous size. Drench in Cholula chili garlic sauce.

Prep your cast-iron skillet with enough oil to immerse the steaks. Turn on.

Set up the stations - apple-cinnamon pancake mix spiked with steak rub, eggwash, more spiked mix.

When the oil's hot, coat the steak with flour, shake off the excess, egg it, flour it again, then fry that sucker until golden brown and awesome.

Pictures posted as soon as...yikes, I left my camera in the kitchen.

The Ham and Cheese Omelette Experiment

I usually eat Dannon All Natural yogurt for breakfast with a piece of fruit. Lately I've been craving something more substantial.

Three eggs
frozen ham
cheese you've grated yourself (don't buy prebagged shredded cheese. it's a trick on people who don't own graters)

i like the ham cut into confetti, as small as possible. cook it in the pan until the pan dries up, then transfer it out. grate the cheese, and leave the cheese and ham in two piles on a cutting board near your pan.

Pull the eggs from the fridge at the last possible moment. Whisk briskly and add to a hot pan that you've greased with a little butter that's then been allowed to brown.

once the omelet starts to set up, poke it down to the center with a silicone spatula. this is pretty much an essential tool for cooking. buy one now.

once you can get under the egg with the spatula, see which side's setting up more. sprinkle the cheese and ham on that side, then flip the uncovered side over to form a half-moon.

I can usually do this with one spatula, but today I tried a second or two early and ripped my omelet. No fuss - I just flipped the other half over and served it on the other side. Two silicone spatulas would be as close to foolproof as possible for this one.

Serve with fresh salsa made by my awesome bud Brenda and a little Cholula chili garlic sauce. Yum-o in under 30.

I've been using colby jack cheese in this lately, and it's worked nicely, but I need to up the ante with some fun sausage and smoked cheddar. Too bad the eggs here suck. Maybe the organics will have more flavor.

EDIT 2: Organic eggs DO have more flavor. Aidells sausage, however, is ludicrously overpriced. I also did the dish with smoked cheddar and chopped honey ham and I'm not doing that again - way too much smoke for something with eggs. Smoked cheddar alone, with the outside shaved off, would probably be fine.

EDIT: Jessilee, who I fantasize about more than she knows, asked a good question in comments. Why the fuck DO I chill eggs before whisking them?

Because I tried letting them sit out for a little while to come to room temperature versus as cold as possible when I made breakfast for the fam on Sundays (my initial foray into cooking) and the cold eggs came out better on all fronts.

Since I forgot this too, I like to use a stick of butter directly on the pan to butter it, THEN whisk the eggs. It lets the butter brown. Brown butter is awesome.

Pita Pit secret menu exposed!

Now, Pita Pit doesn't have a secret menu per se. They're all about customization normally, so asking for grilled spinach, steak, and gyrom meat is no big deal. You can even customize orders placed via campusfood.com.

The one thing they have made, however, is called the Heart Attack - gyro meat, philly steak, extra cheese, and bacon. It was created to mock sorority girls who order double meat double cheese with a diet soda.

South Street Steaks secret menu exposed!

A late-night mid-study munchie run proved most fruitful.

South Street Steaks mixed my buffalo fries with equal parts ranch, blue cheese, and hot sauce, a mild variation of the menu option.

This got me thinking, and I chatted up the man working the grill.

Yeah, there are a few things you can order off-menu there. Like crazy fries, fries "with everything that can go on fries."

Then there's the Philly Steak Frite, fries topped with steak topped with Cheez Whiz. "It's great if you want something unhealthy but not a cheesesteak." Similar to the Pittsburgh Primanti Brothers' style, but minus the coleslaw, in case it sounded familiar to any Stiller fans. (Go Burgh!)

The cheesesteak hot dog is still in the works. "I tried it once, and it failed spectacularly."

An attempted chicken ceasar cheesesteak is impossible to try now, and you wouldn't want to anyway. "I think we sold, like, two." They don't have the dressing anymore either.

All quotes courtesy the grillman, who identified himself as the restaurant's owner. Last I checked, they have three, two of them male. I should've gotten a name. If it helps, he likes ketchup on his steaks like me.

This is a Burning Myself Frequently exclusive.

Ideas?

I'm thinking of taking on a cross between Chinese boneless ribs in a brown sugar chili sauce and a gyro. Any suggestions?

Can-based Chicken A La King

2 cans cream of something (mushroom, celery, chicken, whatever. don't use two of the same unless you suck)
a pound of processed leftover chicken. I chop mine.
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can chickpeas
a big handful of parsley

drain all the veggies, remove all the soup, add to one large pot or pan or whatever the fuck. chop the parsley rough, then add it and the chicken. stir briefly and finish with fresh black pepper.

reheats well in the microwave. it's breakfast.

serve over whole wheat egg noodles.

The Mother Sauce Rap!

Need I say more?

"Veloute is made with stock...."

Plans for this weekend

M-A-R-Y-L-A-N-D Day is Saturday, so I'll hit up campus for free nitrogen and Dairy ice cream and a journalism school notepad.

Then we fire up the grill and do some beer can chicken. I'm stoked.

While Googling for "beer can chicken" I found a link to a site called Cooking For Engineers, which amuses me in name only - that's rare. I'll have to check it out later - deadline is, as always, my main focus.

Pictures I've been forgetting.

This time we've got the rice noodle spaghetti (aka Clean Out The Fridge Pasta) and some skillet porn.

Egg rolls - yum

So good, I didn't take pictures. But I did shoot one of my skillet after a scrubbing and good fry session - I can see myself in it.

The trick with these is practicing. Try it the way they show you on the box, then roll a few taquito-style, then fold the sides before you roll, then roll it like a...hand-rolled cigarette.

Oh yeah - it'll suck unless you use a thin skin - the ones that had a double layer were way too chewy.

The fried ones were done in a cast-iron skillet with vegetable oil high enough to go halfway up the egg rolls. I make fat egg rolls, apparently.

I also baked some in an oiled pan, and they turned out nice, but I flipped them too early. They require flipping to get GBD on both sides, but they've gotta be hard on the heat side to be worth flipping.

Cheesy Psuedokonomyoki

1 package rice noodles
leftover frozen baby vidalia onions, warmed through and chopped
1 block mozarella cheese, chopped half fine, half in 16ths.
butter
garlic
red curry paste.

when the noodles are boiled, throw them into a large pan that contains the rest of the ingredients, and combine with tongs. Eat immediately, or let cool, freeze, then microwave for a psuedo-noodle cake.

I write about restaurants that haven't opened, too.

Like in this story, which is the first google hit for "diner-type restaurant"

It ran on the bottom left of that day's front page.

A1, yo. It's not about the steak sauce, cause the steak sauce sucks - it's about eyeballs.

Braised Drumsticks

I did this with smoked turkey drumsticks available at my local supermarket. They're cold-smoked, so they need to be cooked all the way, meaning this recipe could be done with a drumstick of pretty much anything. My inspiration was the Disneyland turkey leg, even though I've never had one.

Place two drumsticks in a pan. Fill the pan half way with a 6 parts to one mix of cranberry juice and good apple cider barbecue sauce. Cover with foil and put on the top rack of your grill or oven at 350. Check and baste every fifteen minutes because I'm too lazy to recook this one.

If you're using a grill, get extra drums and toss a few on the hot part with a little oil. Flip when you see the bottom golden, and cook half as long on the other side. Hold the bone with something head-resistent, and you've got a snack until your braised drums are done.

Wine Journal - Episode 1

If I keep drinking wine but not taking notes, I'll never remember anything, and what's more Web 2.0 than monetizing your brainfarts?

2004 Matthew Fox Merlot. California. Obtained from groovy lesbians who were moving out.

I drank it with leftover Ledo's pizza. (Go to Ledo Restaurant, not the ripoff bullshit Ledo's Pizza places) It was good. Tannins weren't too heavy, and the sweet Ledo's sauce danced nicely with the fruit.

I used a glass that had been left out for two days in a sauce, chronicled in the last post, and it was very noticable. This one definitely needs decanting and would be great in sangria.

Cleaning Out The Fridge Pasta

Boil smoked turkey wings in covered pot. (I can buy these, along with smoked necks and drumsticks (much better) at my supermarket. If you can't, ham hocks maybe?)

Cut up 1 knockwurst and 2 bratwurst, grilled and slathered with grainy brown mustard. saute the pieces until they get some color.

remove the sausage and brown a pound of ground beef.

when the wings are done, pull them out and put them in the freezer - they're too hot to work with just now.

Boil rice noodles in the turkey water after rinsing them - the gelatin in the water leads to clumpiness otherwise.

When you can hold the wings without severe pain, tear the skin off, grab them by the ends, and twist like you're giving someone an Indian burn. (each hand in opposite directions) peel the meat, bite off any nasty stuff at the ends, then chop to your desired consistency. I didn't beat it up too badly, but I love all things gummy and chewy. If you can't stand gummy and chewy at all, make this recipe with only a kielbasa for the meat and you'll be happy.

when noodles are done, drain them and build the sauce in the same pot.

1 can ragu four cheese spaghetti sauce
the meat
a big lump of sauerkraut
leftover sauteed onions and apples

stir together and serve over rice noods. i added a glass of leftover merlot and it worked nicely. no parmesean, amazingly, though now that i write that, i'm tempted to add it. there's sriracha in there too, like everything red i eat. habanero would be overkill, but a small dab at the beginning of the sauce-building would be great with the merlot - yay fruity.

Psychoactive Casserole

So good, you'll think you're high. With the optional illegal ingredient, you will be.



2 cans cream of chicken soup

1 pound whole-wheat egg-free egg noodles

1 pound kielbasa

10 oz. leftover chicken.

1 Strongbow hard cider (it's very dry, so a Woodchuck would result in a much sweeter sauce - something I didn't want here)

black pepper

Cholula chili garlic sauce

3 cloves of garlic.



Put a pot of water on to boil. Pour 1/4 of the Cholula in with the water. Peel a clove of garlic, chew it up, and spit it into the water. This is how I deal with not being able to find the garlic press.



In a separate pot big enough to hold the finished dish (aka something big, duh) mix the cream of chicken soup and the Strongbow. Stir to combine, cover, and simmer on medium. Taste, then add less black pepper than you think you need, then taste again. Add a whole clove of garlic, get the flavor straight, then turn it off. I didn't add salt.



Cut the kielbasa into four pieces. Cut the pieces in half lengthwise, then cut those pieces lengthwise. You should have little fingers of sausage. Cut dice-size chunks from the fingers and saute 'till brown.



My chicken is always frozen, so it has this weird texture that I really like. I soaked it in water and broke it up by hand, then tossed it in a skillet and emptied my bottle of Cholula on there. Cook till heated thoroughly and fully Cholula-stained, then add all ingredients to the pot with the sauce. Fold to combine, then add....



Kif. Just put it on the top, then fold it in, leave over heat for three more minutes, then serve with a Strongbow.

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Tried new fruit for breakfast today

I used to work produce, so I'm pretty jaded when it comes to fruit - the more you see and handle, the better you get at picking the ripest.



My honey tangerine wasn't super-juicy. It had that exoskeleton quality some oranges get where they're rough around the outside but orangey in the middle. The honey flavor wasn't pronounced. I had to eat half of it at one time to get any real honey goodness.



The Cameo apple BEGS to be made into hard cider. It's subtle, sweet, and soft, like a cute girl in a cashmere sweater. Just like said girl, you'll start eating this apple and won't be able to stop until there's juice running down your face.



...memories....

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Pigs in a blanket!

Hooray for Hebrew National hot dogs and Pillsbury Garlic Butter crescent rolls, this recipe's only two ingredients.



Pics to follow...

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