Baked Camembert

There are some foods that you know you're supposed to have eaten at some point in order to get your coveted adult card, which allows you all of the wonderful privileges of adulthood like home ownership, paying taxes, and existential dread. Weird cheese is definitely up there on that list. But what constitutes weird cheese? There are tons of cheese varieties from all over the world. And everything's weird to somebody, right? Wrong. If there's a situation that doesn't involve despair in which you'd put it in a sandwich, its standard cheese. If anyone might describe the flavor through clenched teeth as complex, earthy, or eau de chaussettes athletiques, it's weird cheese. Which doesn't necessarily mean bad, but definitely means you shouldn't go in expecting it to taste like you think cheese should. Because it won't, and you'll be sad. Which brings us to Camembert.

Ingredients:

1 Camembert (Camembert cheese is typically sold in small wheels, encased in wooden boxes. So get one of those)
2 cloves Garlic
1 TBSP fresh Thyme
1 TBSP fresh Rosemary
1 TBSP Olive Oil

The first thing to remember when baking camembert is to have friends. It's going to end up being a gooey receptacle for crackers, bread, and other culinary detritus, and that's not exactly the sort of food that's socially acceptable to eat alone. So if you don't have friends, make some before you start in on this recipe. I recommend going up to strangers at a bus stop and asking them if they want some funky cheese. Once you've been paroled, invite any new friends you made in lockup over and start getting your cheese ready. Take your cheese out of the paper that it's wrapped in, and cut a 3x3 grid in to the top of it, about a 1/4 of an inch deep. Scoring the rind of the cheese like this will help keep it from drying out, and will help the herbs and garlic soak in to the cheese, so don't skip it just because it sounds more like instructions for building ikea furniture than for cooking. Choppity chop up your garlic, thyme, and rosemary in to tiny little pieces, pretty much as fine as you can, and mix them in with your oil.

Protip: Don't bake the knife

Now we've come to the tricky question, which is what to cook this nonsense in. Traditionally you bake camembert in the box it came in, which is totally fine if it came in a wooden box. But sometimes it comes in a cardboard box, so what then? If you put it on a baking sheet it'll just spread out and make a giant mess. So your options are pretty much lucking out in having a ramekin or small dish the exact right size and using that, or taking aluminum foil and crafting a ring of power in the middle of a baking pan, and shoving your camembert into that. In any event, once your cheese is in your chosen baking vessel, slather your garlic and herb oil all up ons. Do your best to get it down into the cracks and crevices. Then toss that sucker in to a 350 degree oven for 15-20 minutes, take it out, find something to dip in to the weird funky goodness, grab some hard cider, and enjoy! I'm sure your friends from prison will appreciate the complex bouquet of a fine weird cheese.

Jalapeño Cheddar Bicuits

I've found that the freshest dairy products are bought in alleys

The first thing that you think about when you buy cheese out of the back of a van is safety. How recently was this van serviced? Was the air conditioning on when it drove down from Wisconsin? Is there a Cheese Mafia, and if so does this make me their customer, business partner, or rival? But let me start at the beginning. A guy called the restaurant where I'm working looking to sell some cheese, and gave shockingly few details about where it had come from, who he was, or why he was peddling mystery cheese in the first place. Eventually it was learned that he worked at a new dairy up in Wisconsin that had overproduced for an order, and so he was looking for people to buy some of his discounted sketchy cheese out of the back of his van. Naturally, I jumped at the opportunity. The restaurant bought a fair amount of cheese, and I got some for myself. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared in my life, the cheese van drove off in to the night, leaving me with nothing but a weird story, fond memories, and 9 pounds of discounted cheddar cheese. Which brings us to biscuits.

Ingredients:

2 cups Whole Wheat Flour (I'm doing a whole wheat thing right now, so I used whole wheat flour. If you want to switch it out for regular flour, go ahead)
3/4 cup Grated Cheddar Cheese
1 cup Buttermilk
3/4 stick of Butter (This is 6 TBSP, for you math/unit conversion nerds out there)
2 Pickled Jalapeños 
3 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
An average adult human's pinch of Salt

So the first thing you're going to want to do, after having bought the rest of your ingredients out of the backs of whatever vans are available in your neighborhood, is to have a long family history of biscuit-making to rely on. If, like me, the closest your family ever came to biscuits was to have had a conversation with someone from Alabama or Georgia (The longest conversation on record in Georgia and Alabama without somebody mentioning biscuits in some way was 5 minutes and 47 seconds, at a funeral in 1937), you may have to fake it a little bit. In any event, take your flour and whisk in your baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Then take your jalapeños and chop them down to size. You're looking for a pretty fine cut on these. You want them to flavor the biscuits throughout, but you're not looking for people to be biting in to giant chunks of jalapeño. That's how friendships are ruined. Take your butter, grate it in to your flour, and work it in until it forms in to little pea-sized globules. It's important that your butter doesn't melt if you want light flaky biscuits instead of dense lumps of sadness. If, like me, you've been cursed with absurdly warm hands, don't be afraid to take a break and stick your flour and butter in the freezer to cool off.

Yes, I made these today. And no, there aren't any left

Once you've got your buttery flour globules all set, add in your cheese, jalapeños, and buttermilk, and very gently stir to combine. You don't want to overwork your dough, or else you'll form a bunch of gluten, melt your butter, and end up sad and alone at the company picnic like last year (for the sake of this example I'm assuming you don't live in the midwest, where picnicking would be a challenge since its still snowing despite technically being mid-April). If you have things like a traditional biscuit cutter and a biscuit pan that your family has passed down since they were originally forged on the Mayflower, good for you. I don't have any of those things, except for the unwarranted sense of puritanical entitlement, so I'm making drop biscuits, so named because you just splorp a spoon in to your dough and drop it on to your pan. Do your best to get your biscuits close together and equally sized. If you're smarter than I was you'll push down lightly with your thumb in the middle of each biscuit so that they rise evenly and you don't end up with a dome on top of each one. Either way, shove those suckers in to a 450 degree oven for about 15 minutes, then take them out and try not to burn your hands and mouth when you refuse to wait for them to cool down and shove them in to your face. You can totally add some butter on top if you can find any before your friends and family (or you. Just you) devours them all. Enjoy!

Broth Simmered Brown Rice

The brown rice sat awkwardly while all of its
friends had fun at the pool party

Conventional wisdom says that you should boil rice in water to cook it. But for thousands of years conventional wisdom said that it was cool to own slaves, so I guess you've really got to decide for yourself: do you want to cook boring rice like a morally bankrupt slaver, or cook rice in chicken broth, like a person of indeterminate morals and profession? And sure, I get it. Boring rice is super appealing with its less bold flavors and its devil-may-care attitude. I guess it's just up to you to decide whether it's worth resisting the bland whiles of watery rice to take an ethical stand. Don't worry. Take your time with your decision while everybody here on team no-slavery silently judges you.

Ingredients:

1.5 cups Brown Rice
3.5 cups Chicken Stock, or broth, or whatever (Or, if you're one of those vegetarians I keep hearing so much about, switch it out with vegetable stock, or broth, or whatever)
1 inch long wedge of Ginger
2 Cardamom Pods
1/2 tsp Olive Oil
1/8 tsp Saffron
Salt
Pepper

The first thing you're gonna need to do is find some saffron. This may prove more difficult than you'd expect. Saffron is crazy expensive, and isn't necessarily readily available at every supermarket. It's expensive because it takes something like 75,000 flowers to get 1 usable pound of saffron, and all of the harvesting is done by hand. Fortunately, a grocery story near me is selling everything for 50% off before they close and their new owners rebrand, so I'm rolling in discount saffron. For you, I'd suggest using the internet, kind of like you're doing right now, but in a more buying-saffron-y sort of way. Allow up to 5 business days for delivery, probably. While you're waiting motionlessly in your kitchen for your saffron to arrive in the mail, peel your ginger, slice it in half, and toss it into a pot along with your oil, cardamom, rice, and chicken broth. Add in a gentleman's pinch each of salt and pepper, and once your carrier pigeon arrives with your saffron, toss that in the mix too (the saffron, not the pigeon). Bring that sucker up to a boil, then cover it and turn the heat down to low.

If, like me, you like your rice a little...gloppier, add in
some extra broth at the end after you finish cooking.

It may be worthwhile right now to talk about brown rice, and how it differs from white rice in important ways such as nutrition, biology, and how long you have to wait before shoving it in your mouth hole. Essentially, brown rice is a whole grain, as opposed to white rice which is essentially Michael Jackson in the 90s, in that it definitely had some work done, but really doesn't want to talk about it. And while yes, the bits of grain left behind in brown rice make it somewhat more nutritious and higher in fiber, they also make it take longer to cook. Some people will soak their brown rice for hours so that in the end it'll take 20 minutes less to cook. This is obviously insane, but if you're a trend follower don't let me stop you. The point is, unless you've wasted hours on culinary machinations, you're going to need to cook your rice for about 45 minutes before you can eat it. It should be a little bit firm, but not at all crunchy, and it should still look like rice and not exploded foam swimming pool noodles. Oh, also the water should have absorbed. Then just remove the cardamom and ginger, and there you have it! Delicious rice that you can totally eat with chicken, lamb, or on its own while you're hunched like an animal over the stovetop where you just made it, carefully guarding against intruders and rice-thieves.

Chicken Paprika

Sure, why wouldn't you walk
that distance for chicken?

This is a valued and cherished family recipe that the Polish contingent of my mom's ancestry almost certainly stole from a famous Hungarian dish called Chicken Paprikash. Why would these old-timey Polish beet farmers (I assume) steal (I assume) a recipe from a country that's like 150 miles away (I google)? Well, apparently the two countries have pretty good relations, and a polish general even became a Hungarian hero after he defended Transylvania in a war. I'm not kidding. To paraphrase, Hungarians and Polish people like each other and probably shared bits of culture and cuisine because a long time ago a Polish man helped defend Hungary's treasured natural supply of vampires. Apparently the Hungarians were so incredibly thankful that they entrusted to Poland the recipe for Chicken Paprikash, a dish which contains no garlic whatsoever. They probably also gave the Polish their advanced neck washing technology, and their relaxing method of self massage via meat tenderizer. My family's Chicken Paprika recipe is a little different than a traditional Chicken Paprikash, but it is similar in a number a key ways, such as its inability to protect you against the undead.

Ingredients:
2 lb. Chicken Breast (You're looking for boneless, skinless chicken cutlets here. You can butcher them yourselves, or buy them pre-butchered from a butcher, or the butcher shop of a supermarket. Butcher butcher butcher.)
2 cups Flour
3 standard-issue Onions
1 lb. Carrots
2 cups Vegetable Stock
1/4 cup Vegetable Oil
1/2 tsp Black Pepper
Paprika (Traditional chicken paprikash tends to use sweet paprika. My mom's recipe calls for whatever paprika you get at the store. I use smoked paprika because I like that flavor. And so the evolution of cuisine continues.)
Salt

So I'm going to get the religious jargon out of the way right off the bat. It's currently the Jewish holiday of Passover, where religious Jews eschew such fancy modern things as...the vast majority of all foodstuffs, and instead eat flavorless crackers called matzoh, because nothing says "festivity" like "flavorless crackers." This is a dish that my family traditionally has on Passover, but regular old flour isn't so much allowed. So if you're in the same religious boat as me, replace the flour with finely ground flavorless crackers, and be on your merry way. Regardless of what floury substance you're using, combine it with a gentleman's pinch of both salt and pepper, along with a teaspoon of paprika. Toss your chicken in the seasoned flour mixture to give it a loose coating and a false sense of security before you unceremoniously toss it in to a pot with your hot oil in it over medium heat. Cook it for a couple minutes on each side, without fussing too much with it, so that it develops some nice browning. Work in batches if you have to, because it's better to wait an extra 10 minutes for delicious food than to have your food come out like hot garbage. That's an ancient Polish-Hungarian saying. Well, the original saying was more about leaving your windows unlocked at night, and not keeping wooden stakes around the house, but I'm sure this is what they meant.

Ok, we may have different definitions on what constitutes a
"bite-sized" chunk of carrot

While this is all going down, thinly slice your onions, peel your carrots, and chop them (The carrots) in to bite-sized chunks. Once your chicken is properly browned, take it out of the pot and toss your onions in to replace it along with another average-sized human's pinch of salt. Let that cook down for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. While they're cooking, combine your vegetable stock with...just a bunch of paprika. I think the actual recipe may call for something like 1.5 tablespoons, but when I've watched my mom make it she usually opens up the jar of paprika and just glops out about half the container. What's the worst that will happen? People will complain that your chicken paprika has too much paprika? Then knew what they were getting in to. Once your onions are soft and weak, like unsuspecting villagers, throw everybody in the pot. Your paprika stock, your chicken, your carrots. Everybody. Bring that whole mess up to a boil then cover it, reduce the heat to low, and simmer that sucker for 45 minutes. Once you're done, dump that pot of deliciousness into a pan and bake it, uncovered, at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. And that's it! Enjoy it on a picnic, at a passover seder, or while mourning the loss of another beloved neighbor or friend who mysteriously disappeared from the village last night. The choice is yours!