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.