July 31, 2018

Pickles 2: The Ginger-ing

All you vegetables are just pickles to me
Pickles are awesome. This is an undeniable fact. Some of you might remember that I have strong feelings about pickles, because I've actually totally made them before on this very blog. To be honest, that might be my favorite post that I've made, and not just because of the multiple links to the exact same video clip from the Little Rascals. I'd say it's like 50/50 delicious easy pickles and Little Rascals. The point is, last week when I was supposed to be sitting home alone writing a blog post in a pile of sadness caused by not traveling, I totally was in south Florida instead. It was incredible despite, technically, being in Florida (The gator wrestling capital of the world). And while I was there I ate at a restaurant that served me the best damn pickles I've ever had in my life. I seriously considered asking for the recipe. And by "seriously considered," I mean "I totally did, but they shot me down." You know, like when a guy at work seriously considered asking out Candace from accounting. The point is, they wouldn't give me the recipe. And I only know one solution to that sort of rejection.

Ingredients:

1 English Cucumber (While the nationality of your produce isn't really my business, in general English cucumbers don't have big seeds, and are longer and narrower. All of which are good things since we're going to be cutting everything in to bite-sized slices. So just this once, god save the queen)
2 standard-issue Carrots
1 Red Onion
3 cloves Garlic
1 standard-issue hunk of Ginger
1.5 cups Water
1 cup Apple Cider Vinegar
3 TBSP Salt
1.5 TBSP Honey
2 tsp Black Peppercorns
1/2 tsp Saffron threads
1 Star Anise pod
1 Lime

Now, I just want to be clear. I started experimenting with weird pickle flavors because of the pickles at this restaurant, but I didn't re-create them. Much like Jack Black said, this is just a tribute. A tribute which happened to turn out tasty and super easy to make, which worked out as a nice bonus. That said, the first thing you're going to have to do is make your brine. So throw your water, vinegar, peppercorns, honey, salt, and star anise in a pot and set them to boil. Yes, boiling vinegar will make your whole kitchen smell like vinegar. Yes, it'll be worth it for the food. Plus, you neighbors will stop complaining about you never inviting them over for meals. While this is going down it's time to deal with your vegetables. Peel and roughly chop your ginger and garlic and throw them in to some container with a lid. Peel your carrot and slice it into thin rings. Similarly, slice your cucumber into thin rings, and then peel your onion and slice it in to...not rings. Cut your onion in half and then just slice it relatively thinly. The exactitude of each knife cut isn't important. These are pickles. They'll turn out ok even if they look a little weird, just like children. Just make them bite-sized and as uniform as you can, and then throw them in your container along with your saffron. Slice your lime, add it in to the party, and you're like 99% done with this recipe.

Delicious on tacos. Or burgers. Or cardboard.
Once your brine boils, turn the heat down and let it simmer for about 10 minutes or so. Then dump it all over your jar of vegetables. Let the whole mess get down to room temperature before throwing a lid on it and dumping it in to your fridge. Now here's the deal. Since you cut everything thinly, these pickles will take shape pretty quickly. After about 4 hours they should already taste pretty pickley and delicious. That said, the longer they sit, the more intense flavors will get packed in to them. They should last for a couple of weeks in the fridge. Or, more accurately, if they were in your fridge for a couple of weeks they'd still be good to eat. There's no way they're actually going to last in your fridge for more than a couple of days though. They're just so tasty. Also, pickles are super refreshing on a hot day. Which is all that Florida knows how to do, I think. The locals there start wearing heavy coats and boots when it drops below 80. I'm pretty sure it would take me all day to explain to them the concept of what snow even is. Anyhow, happy pickling!


July 18, 2018

Cheddar Spaghetti Squash Casserole

"Sometimes life hands you an unreasonable amount of cheese. It is up to each of us as occasionally upright members of the human race to determine how we'll react. Will we let sloth and time turn that cheese to mold while it sits unused in the refrigerator, or will we take bold action? Create something great from nothing, and leave a legacy for the future?"

Rare portrait of Washington kicking the British apart.
When George Washington said these words, they were met with applause by an enthusiastic young nation, tired of war and eager for a prosperous tomorrow. They were also met with some confusion, since the refrigerator wouldn't be invented for another 50 years or so. Which only makes it more inspiring. And it's just as relevant today as it was then. It speaks to our will, determination, and perseverance. When you've got an apartment full of discount cheese from the back of a van and misshapen produce sent to you by the internet, what are you to do? This. This is what you're to do.


Ingredients:

2 reasonably sized Spaghetti Squash 
3 Cups Broccoli Florets (If you want you can totally use fresh broccoli, cutting the florets off and then steaming them before using them in this recipe. But for an application like this, I'm totally cool with using frozen broccoli from a bag that you let defrost. Follow your heart)
3 Cups Cheddar Cheese Sauce (The best way to get cheese sauce is to steal it from work, like I did. If you get caught by security, I've mentioned the method behind making it here. And also here)
1.5 TBSP Pickled JalapeƱos 
2 tsp Garlic Powder
1/4 tsp Black Pepper
1/4 tsp Chili Powder
Salt
Olive Oil

The first thing you're going to have to do is deal with your spaghetti squash. If you haven't used this ingredient before, don't worry. It's pretty cool, and also pretty easy to work with, which is cool in and of itself. So it's cool squared (Math puns!) but we still have to prep it a little bit. Cut each of your squash in half with a cold and pitiless stare. Then, with grim efficiency, scoop all of their seeds and guts out in to the trash. Rub the dismembered squash corpses down with your garlic powder, black pepper, chili powder, olive oil, and a large human's pinch of salt. Throw that nonsense in a 375 degree oven for about an hour. While you're cooking your squash, it's time to deal with your cheese sauce. Heat it up over medium heat. Roughly chop your jalapeƱos, and throw them in to the party so that their flavor can really get in there. Taste it and add salt if needed. That seemed like an hour's worth of work, right? If you have time left over, feel free to use it solving international crises, fighting crime, or sitting motionlessly on your couch while staring at a rectangle on your wall. Whatever floats your boat.

Florescent lighting notwithstanding, that's some
Grade-A deliciousness right there.  
Once your squash is cooked and out of the oven, take two forks and get ready to go to gourd town. As the name might have indicated to some of you, spaghetti squash has this weird thing where it breaks up into strands with roughly the same shape as spaghetti noodles. So shred the crap out of it until you have a big pile of vegetable based pasta substitute. Discard the peel (It knows what it did) and throw your squash strands into a bowl along with your broccoli and your sauce. Splorp that all together until it looks relatively uniform and it makes unpleasant squishing noises. Spread your cheesy gourd goop evenly into a baking dish and throw it a 400 degree oven for about 1/2 an hour. Your telltale signs that it's done are the cheese bubbling and turning a darker color, the edges getting crispy and browned, and it smelling up your entire apartment with deliciousness at 2 in the morning. Then pull it out of the oven, try to resist immediately digging in to the burning hot cheesy goodness, fail, treat your burns in order of severity, and repeat!

July 10, 2018

Crock Pot Pastrami

You may as well call this pastrami Suleiman the Magnificent.
Because of its distinctive onion hat. Historical puns!
There's something to be said for food so easy to make that a blindfolded dog with some pretty severe physical handicaps stands a chance of getting it right. Aside from the obvious benefit of cheap canine labor, sometimes you just don't have the energy to make anything real. And so you end up eating take out, or ramen, or take out ramen. But not the actual delicious Japanese dish of noodles, meat, broth, and whatnot. Takeout top ramen from a plastic pouch. Because I'm sure hipsters have invented that restaurant by now. The point is, we make bad decisions when we're tired and hungry. Fortunately, with a small bit of planning you can turn reasonably few ingredients into absurdly delicious food. Also, I've been making a bunch of healthy food lately, so it kind of feels good to just make a giant slab of red meat.

Ingredients:

1 Whole Pastrami (Any reasonable deli or butcher counter should be able to get you this. Mine is about 2.5 pounds. It's literally just the entire slab of meat that they'd slice pastrami from if you ordered it like a normal person)
2 Carrots
2 Zucchini 
1 Standard Issue Onion 
2 Cloves Garlic
2 tsp Olive Oil
1 TBSP Water
1 Standard Issue Human's pinch of Black Pepper
Salt

So, the first thing you'll notice about this recipe is that it's barely a recipe at all. Remember, the idea is to make something easy and delicious. So we're taking an already cooked piece of delicious smoked meat, and gently heating it to render out all of the fat and make it absurdly tasty. We're also throwing vegetables on the bottom to soak up all of that smoky, peppery goodness as it cooks out of the pastrami. Kind of like a turducken, if you don't think about the fact that it's in no way like a turducken. Anyway, the first step on your path to glory is to cut your zucchini and carrot into chunks. Personally, I prefer cutting them into rings. They're large enough to not just turn in to mush, but small enough to easily grab with a fork. But ultimately the star here is the meat, so the way you cut the vegetables that are here to play backup to said meat really isn't that important, no matter what their IMDB pages say. Dice up your onion and garlic, and toss all of that veg in the bottom of a crock pot (And no, i don't care what brand of slow cooker you use. But crock pot has become the generic term. If I needed a kleenex, I wouldn't ask you for a generic facial tissue of your choice, so just shut it). Add in your oil, water, and black pepper, and get ready for the existential dread you'll feel about salt.

Breakfast of champions. Maybe not the champions who
win awards, but certainly the ones who win at life.
So here's the deal. Good pastrami is already pretty salty. You're still going to need to add in a little bit to season the vegetables, but how much kind of depends on your starting point. You can estimate based on your previous pastrami experiences, assuming you've had any, you can just slice off a piece of pastrami and taste it to get a feel for its saltiness, or you can wildly speculate based on nothing. No matter which of these methods you choose, you've got about a 50/50 chance of getting it right, but at least you'll feel better knowing that you tried. Kind of. Anyhow, salt your vegetables, and stir that nonsense up. Then toss your pastrami haphazardly on top of that mess, preferably with the fatty side facing down, and let it cook on low for about 6 hours. You'll know it's ready when you literally get woken up by the deliciousness wafting down the hall and realize that you fell asleep while you were supposed to be cooking food for your blog. Then shred that meat up with any forks, bare hands, bear hands, or other implements of culinary destruction you have lying around, and enjoy! Don't let the fact that it's 90 degrees outside stop you.

July 4, 2018

Savory Sweet Potatoes

Cayenne is shy, but was socially obligated to be in the picture
Happy 4th of July! It's a special time of year when we Americans prepare burnt offerings for Uncle Sam in hopes that he wakes from his enchanted slumber and smites our enemies. And like any good holiday, it's got a pretty heavy food component to it. The traditional fare is usually grilled meats, like burgers, hot dogs, chicken, which are awesome, but it's side dishes that really make it in to a festive event. Think about it this way: if you were on the run from zombies, or ninjas, or gluten or whatever, and you had to stop briefly to make food, you'd totally char some meat over a trash can fire. But you probably wouldn't make cole slaw, potato salad, and succotash. Or sweet potatoes, which brings us to today (roll credits).

Ingredients:

4 Sweet Potatoes

1.5 TBSP Olive Oil
1/2 tsp Chili Powder
1/2 tsp Cumin
1/2 tsp Garlic Powder
1/4 tsp Onion Powder
1/4 tsp Smoked Paprika
1/4 tsp Oregano
1/4 tsp Cayenne Pepper
Salt
Black Pepper

The first thing you're going to need to do is get over your hangups. There's often a stereotype of men doing the grilling of meat, and of being weirdly territorial over their grills. Other men are forced to sit in huddled groups talking about classically manly things (killing spiders, Babe Ruth, and Monty Python), while women are relegated to the kitchen to prepare vegetables and talk about traditionally female things (eating salads, dealing with Time Warner Cable, and multi-tasking). Personally, I doubt that this is an actual phenomenon that ever happens outside of television ads and sitcoms. Don't get me wrong, I know plenty of people stupid enough to insist based on some weird gender-based pride that they have to do a specific job. I just don't know anybody willing to play along, especially when that means eating subpar food on a rare day off in the summer, just to satisfy some idiot's need to feel important and special. Anyway, the point is peel your sweet potatoes, and cut them in to long thin wedges, roughly shaped like french fries. Congratulations, you've done like 90% of the work for this recipe.
Delicious, healthy-ish, and orange. Living the dream.

Take all of your spices and mix them together into a giant spice concoction. Or blend. Or whatever. Dump that nonsense into a bowl along with your sweet potato wedges and your oil. Mix until everything's coated, and then spread your sweet potatoes out on to a couple of baking sheets, keeping them in one layer as much as is possible. Throw that into a 400 degree oven for 35 minutes, and you're pretty much done. All that's left is to eat your delicious sweet potatoes along with your traditional meal of beer, charred meats, pickles, and beer. And to watch a fireworks display, in which we fire explosive devices into the sky, symbolizing the American dream to eventually wage war on the clouds and bring their sky-treasure back as tribute. Happy 4th of July!