What the Kale?!

Hello friend.  Are you like me?  Do you sometimes stand around in the produce section of the grocery store thinking, “I should really be eating some of this healthy green sh*t,” before walking over to the cracker section and getting a box of Cheez-Its instead?  Have you tried a bite of chard, black kale, collard greens, or other strange leafy plant and spat it out immediately because it tasted like God was trying to poison you?  If you hate to eat green things but you also feel guilty about it, then have I got the recipe for you!  This week's meal was inspired by the fact that I woke up on Sunday with extreme "I'm not eating healthy enough" guilt.  I then wandered around my local farmer's market with that mindset and an hour later emerged triumphantly from the crowd holding aloft a large bunch of kale and four sweet potatoes.  Smug and satisfied with myself, I was then faced with the question of what the hell to make with a big bunch of kale and four sweet potatoes.

No.  No, I am not like you, pal.  I guilt-tripped myself into eating kale a long time ago.  It’s a superfood!  It’s got vitamins and minerals through the roof, a ton of fiber, even calcium (I’m looking at you, vegans).  Plus it has them little cancer fighting glucosinolates all in there.  In the leaves.  Y’know, glucosinolates?  Point is, it’s amazingly good for you, but it ain’t no ordinary green.  Unlike ice berg lettuce, kale won’t shamelessly whore itself out to any burger, taco or Chuck E. Cheese “side salad.”  When raw, kale is tough and bitter and spiteful.  It needs to know you respect it, you love it, you’ll even . . . massage it.  A little salt, acidity and, yes a deep tissue massage, and you’ve got kale showing you its soft delicious side.  Karen doesn't strike me as the type of person that is cool with pampering her food prior to eating it, so when she called me and insisted we make a kale and mango salad with dinner I was blown away.  I figured she’d gotten all body-snatched by an alien that did really poor research.  Turns out, Karen was ready to turn over a new LEAF.  LEAF.  Eh?

All right, so I didn't have much kale experience, but luckily for me the television in my household is almost exclusively tuned to The Food Network at all times, allowing me to be well acquainted with Guy Fieri shoveling food into his mouth in coronary proportions, Alton Brown being a total dick know-it-all and then cooking such amazing things that you forgive him almost immediately, and a little Indian food nymph know as Aarti Sequeira cooking up what I can only imagine are the most flavorful and delicious Indian dishes anyone has ever tasted.  I don't know this for sure, but the judges sure seemed impressed on season 6 of The Next Food Network Star.  Although the technology does not yet exist for me to confirm this assumption (Hello, Taste-O-Vision!  Where are you?  I'd like to eat some TV cheese now.) the judges' reactions were enough to make me jump at the idea of making Aarti's Massaged Kale Salad with mango and pepitas.  Except that I had never really heard of pepitas but I did have a bag of frozen slivered almonds and as I'm sure Tony will rant about shortly, I am all about taking cooking shortcuts that will lead to food reaching my mouth sooner, even if it's only by a few seconds.  So I went with almonds.  So sue me.

OBJECTION!  I'm now including a charge of libel in my lawsuit.  Karen did not JUST go with almonds!  She poured in a sorry heap of waxy still-frozen corpse nuts!  I'm all for almonds in a salad, they've recently become one of my favorite additions, but they must always be toasted.  It was one thing to shun pepitas, which are delicious and one of the funnest words ever, but raw almonds haven't nearly the machismo to compete with the flavors of any salad.  Toasting them brings out a huge amount of rich nuttiness which is then a perfect compliment to many salads.  Karen has become inured to my more fervent food convictions, so she ignored my roasting rant.  I wouldn't be denied so easily.  Shortly after sitting down to dinner I excused myself under the guise of getting something from the fridge.  A few seconds later a "ding" alerted Karen to my devious plan.

"Dude, are you toasting almonds?"  

"JUST TRY THEM!"  And she did.  Oh, if you could have seen the look on her face!  I could actually see every stubborn muscle in her body beaten into submission by pure roasted truth!  And you can too because I took a picture:

Booyah.  Well then, I think that's enough rant for now.  Since Karen thought up the salad, she made me conjure up a main dish.  A mango salad brought to mind caribbean food.  Then that brought to mind toucans, board shorts, and monkeys playing coconut drums.  I zoned out for awhile bobbing my head to those sweet monkey rhythms and then realized I didn't know diddly about caribbean food, but I knew I'd been wanting to make Caribbean Coconut Rice for a while.  To top that rice I settled on a cuban inspired Shrimp Creole from the impressively titled "Best Cuban Recipes" blog.


I suppose I should note that during this particular cooking adventure I was not in the best of health which may partly explain my laziness.  I'd been fighting a fever, wicked cough, and sore throat for about a week and so my contribution to this meal consisted of me throwing together my kale salad, falling asleep on the couch, popping up and shouting, "DON'T TOAST THE ALMONDS!", falling asleep again, waking up and wandering into the kitchen, stirring whatever dish Tony was making (even though I later ate this dish, I still have little knowledge of what it actually was), and hanging around long enough to nitpick everything Tony did.  I was sick and grumpy but wanted to get food made so I also contributed a half-assed plantain dish.  My roommate had made some pretty great plantain chips earlier in the week (which I ate when I saw them sitting on the stove, because if you leave food sitting in plain site, I'ma eat it) and so I thought that I would try to duplicate her efforts.  Tony suggested that we make something called "tostones" with the plantains which involved mashing and baking and garlic, to which I replied, "Ugh, let's just put oil on them and throw them in the ovenzzzzZZZZZ . . . . DON'T TOAST THE ALMONDS!"  

Anyway, I succeeded in making some flavorless plantain nuggets with the consistency of cardboard.  They can't all be winners.


It's true, Karen phoned it in this week, but I was happy to pick up the slack.  Sending me out shopping alone, however, was not a good idea.  I suffer from chronic indecisiveness, poor navigational skills and I can't go more than two hours without eating.  Basically, I'm hard-wired to suck at shopping.  Sending me to the store alone was tantamount to a parent pushing their blindfolded child into a knife warehouse with the directive to "Pick a sharp one.  Oh, and have fun!"  By the time I had been to three stores in search of shrimp, gotten lost and ended up starving to death in a cram packed Trader Joe's, I was stifling the severe urge to head butt everyone in line and trade the whole elaborate meal for In-N-Out and a beer.  Luckily, I made it back to my car, ravenously devoured some broccoli and hummus and I was back on track.  Glad I made it out alive because my Shrimp Creole turned out to be delicious!  Although, due to an unfortunate shrimp shortage at Sprouts, the recipe became a "seafood medley creole."  I used the Trader Joe's frozen shrimp, scallop and calamari combo, which is good, but some plump shrimp would have been better.  They would have mamboed around the edge of the skillet playing steel drums before diving in synchronicity into the delicious stew and bidding me farewell with a hearty "Thanks for deh steam bath, mon!"  Yikes.  I apologize.  

Looks ok, right?  I was skeptical because it seemed too simple: onion, garlic, bell pepper, white wine, tomatoes, and cumin.  Then you toss in your shrimp or perhaps aquatic medley or, hell, a thinly sliced dish towel.  It doesn't matter, the flavor is that good!  Not only that, but the rich semi sweetness of the coconut rice proved the perfect accompaniment to the smokey creole spice of the seafood.

Yeah, Tony done real good this week.  Which is why I feel a little bit bad for sending him shopping alone, denying him his precious pepitas, and then belittling his vegetable chopping skills.  The only other thing I contributed to this portion of the meal was to point out that, "Oh my god, this piece of onion is larger than the majority of the other onions!  It's what statisticians would refer to as an 'outlier' and will therefore ruin the entire meal!!"

Did I mention that I was sick and grumpy?  Soon after the offending onion I found an inordinately large tomato and the sh*t really hit the fan.

Luckily I followed this outburst by immediately passing out on the couch, allowing Tony to finish the meal unharangued.  Whatever he did with the rice and seafood concoction turned out really well and even through my clogged nasal passages I could tell that it was delicious.

The kale salad was also tasty.  Little Aarti did not disappoint, and at least my plantains looked pretty on the plate.  


At this point I was nearly delirious with exhaustion and cantankerous as Grandpa Simpson, but we had to press on and do dessert.  Remember those sweet potatoes I bought earlier?  Well, I hadn't been able to squeeze them into the meal and so was determined to make them dessert.  Sweet potato pie came to mind because it's a thing that most people have heard of, but making a pie seemed like a monumental task in my weakened state.  So I did a quick search for pumpkin recipes (because pumpkin can be replaced with mashed sweet potatoes and be just as good . . . better even!  Just you wait and see-uh who even cares.  I just want to sleep.)  My search revealed this recipe for Pumpkin Mousse Parfait that looked so pretty!  It was settled, ingredients were assembled, dessert was gonna get made.

Pumpkin pie-spiced sweet potatoes, whipped cream and gingersnap cookies; it's like sweet potato pie in a cup!  Well, sort of.  I admit, I ate nearly my entire parfait because I had a raging sweet tooth and it was brimming with nutrient rich sweet potatoes (another superfood!),  but it wasn't my cup of tea.  I concealed my true thoughts from Karen because I suspected that, due to her sickness and the lackluster plantains, she might use a ginger snap shard to stab me.  Don't get me wrong, it wasn't terrible, just a little too sweet for me and the inclusion of orange zest, the measurement of which Karen admittedly guessed at, was off-putting.  I would try these again with pumpkin and less orange zest . . . and in a pie shell.  Wow, they do look good, huh?  

What these mediocre desserts made me realize is that we on this blog may be denying our true selves for the sake of interesting and aesthetically appealing desserts or "pansy ass desserts."  I promise soon to make a real dessert consisting of no less than 3 pounds of chocolate and 12 sticks of butter because who are we kidding?  Decadence is the best way to do dessert and I am clearly over my "not eating healthy enough" guilt trip.  Sooooo over it.

Brony, I Shrunk the Burgers

King size candy bars, foot long hot dogs, KFC's Mega-Jug (*see below).  Historically, Americans have striven to make foods bigger.  Yet, as we exerted our gluttonous freedom by creating corn dogs that eventually resembled the size and girth of actual dogs, there was a small contingent of people who sensed a shift in the paradigm.  "Though there be freedom in eating until one's rib cage bends, why pursue the giant corndog," they called out gallantly from the marble steps of their local Wienerschnitzel, "when we can make tiny ones, MINI corn dogs, if you will, and thus, be able to eat like fifty of them?"  As elementary schools across the nation rejoiced in these hallowed words, the seeds of the tiny food revolution took root.  All right, enough with the history lesson.  For this week's meal, Karen and I made the most beloved tiny food of all: the slider.  

* That's right, it requires a handle and a whole lot of patriotism. 

Although we didn't choose the slider just because it's small (and cute as a button).  No, we chose it because Tony'd had some ground beef in his freezer for weeks that he had yet to use.  This was no ordinary "E. coli beef" from your average grocery store.  No, this was premium, organic, free range, 100% grass-fed, ground beef from cows who had been given the opportunity to study the arts and philosophy and come to the decision on their own to give their lives for the higher purpose of nourishing humanity.  In other words, Tony and I took one look at each other and said simultaneously, "Kick ass burgers?"  Yeah, gotta make some kick ass burgers with them cows.  There truly is no higher purpose for ground beef.


So here's how our burger plan of attack went:  Homemade buns (tiny ones!), caramelized onions, blue cheese, green stuff, done.

Onions.  Whether raw, grilled, pickled or simply fermented for weeks inside the stomach lining of a Siberian caribou, onions can liven up any burger.  As a rule, I don't mind a nice cathartic cry, like when I watch the final episode of The Munsters, but the burning feeling that causes your eyes to water when cutting onions, I hate.  Luckily, I had to slice the red onion, instead of chopping or, I shudder to think, mincing, so it was a near painless process.  After that I just threw the slices in a pan with oil, sauteed them until brown, sprinkled on some sugar and cooked them on low heat for enough time to eat half the pan under the guise of "just checking."  These take a long time and smell amazing, so I recommend you make more than you think you'll need.  Let's say, an extra 10-12 Tony mouthfuls.


All right, so I know that you can find hamburger buns in any grocery store.  I know that you can even get your hands on some fancy brioche buns at any T-Jo's or Whole Foods these days, but can you find tiny hamburger buns?  Oh . . . you probably can?  Well, in any case, I think you should make your own because it's fun and therapeutic to knead dough and I'm about to give you a kick ass recipe to do it!  Do I use the term "kick ass" too much?  Anyway, I mentioned in my food philosophy that I lived in Bulgaria for a time and one of the things that Peace Corps does when you settle in to your host country is to give you a cookbook chock-full of all your favorite American recipes made with substitutions that you can actually find in your country of residence.  For instance, you love pecan pie?  Well, start loving walnut pie because there aren't any damn pecans in Bulgaria!  (I checked.)  It turns out that hamburger buns are also a hard to find commodity in Eastern Europe and so the following bun recipe comes courtesy of Cooking in Bulgaria, 2008 Edition.


Sandwich Buns
This recipe makes 12 giant hamburger buns, so for sliders I cut it in half and made . . . nine?  Why the hell did I make an uneven number of buns?  I have no idea.  I also forgot to add the salt.  You should probably not be reading this blog if your aim is to cook good.


2 cups milk
1/4 cup oil
1/4 cup + 1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons dry yeast
1/4 cup warm water
6 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt


Heat the milk to scalding.  In a medium bowl mix oil, 1/4 cup sugar and hot milk.  Let this mixture cool.  In a separate bowl combine the yeast, 1 teaspoon sugar and water.  Let yeast mixture sit until frothy, then add the cooled milk mixture.  Whisk in 2 cups flour and beat until smooth.  Let rest 10 minutes.  Beat in salt and enough flour that the dough can be turned out on a floured surface.  Knead about 5 minutes, adding flour.  Divide dough into 12 pieces, shape rolls and let rise 30 minutes on an oiled cookie sheet.  Heat oven to 375F and bake 20 minutes.


The smaller slider buns will take less time to cook, so my rule is, "When they look yummy, they're done."  These looked pretty yummy, but I figured I'd smear some butter all over them anyway because why would you not do that?  Right?

Since Karen went the extra mile to make homemade buns, we felt justified in throwing some frozen Trader Joe's sweet potato fries in the oven to bake and calling that cooking.  It's the only way to get these delectable treats at home, as I'm not legally allowed to deep fry food and the homemade baked versions always get simultaneously soggy and blackened.  With the fries cooking, I had no choice but face the patties.  I've never made burger patties before, and our internet was down, so I had to rely solely on my horrible instincts and vague burger hearsay.  Karen insisted I pack the middles of the patties with a pocket of blue cheese.  I was hesitant, because of, forgive the technical jargon, the possibility of "Cheese Leakage."  Granted, I don't know much about engineering or architecture, but I know stuffing a building full of cheese isn't a good idea.  I tried to argue, but it was like telling a child on Christmas Eve that Santa thought she totally sucked.   

I solved the questions of seasoning and bleu cheese stuffing, only to face the most daunting task yet: cooking these little guys to a beautiful medium rare.  What I wouldn't have given to board the Magic School Bus and have Ms. Frizzle tell me what was happening inside those patties.  They turned out a bit overdone, but nonetheless delicious.  I'm generally supportive of tiny foods, but the burger is one item that benefits from heft as it uses its mass to protect the innards from getting overcooked.  In the show, this is the point at which Arnold would become queasy from my use of the word "innards" and the lizard would start a dance party.      

Despite all of Tony's nitpicking and crippling insecurities, those sliders were . . . you guessed it, kick ass.  Don't forget that one must toast the inside of the buns on a skillet with plenty of butter, add some greens with a bit of balsamic vinegar and you've got yourself a restaurant quality mini burger.

I will admit that stuffing the burgers with blue cheese meant that you didn't get any cheese in the first few  bites, but when you got to the center mmmm-MMM was it tasty.

And since we did such a good job of portion control with our sliders, we figured we deserved some dessert.  What goes well with all-American burgers?  Apple pie of course!  But what's way easier to make than an apple pie and tastes almost the same?  An apple crisp!  Well then, let's make one.  This crisp recipe comes courtesy of my BH&G Cookbook and is really easy.  


Along with kneading dough, I also find peeling apples oddly therapeutic so that's what I did.

Peel and slice some apples, cover them in sugar, cover that with oats, cinnamon, more sugar, flour, butter and some chopped nuts and throw that guy in the oven for 30 minutes.

If you don't already know that you must serve a crisp (or any other warm fruit baked treat for that matter) with a scoop of vanilla ice cream then you are probably also too dumb to put your pants on in the morning so how did you even get to this website in the first place?  I'm sorry, that was a tad harsh, but for real, you can't eat apple crisp without ice cream. 

Well well well, you've become quite the crisp expert, have you Karen?  It might interest the people to know that, prior to my mentioning it that day, you had NEVER EVEN HEARD OF A CRISP!  Then again, I'd never cooked burgers, despite always loving them.  It was a groundbreaking night, one full of little failures and big successes, tiny burgers and huge flavors and, most importantly, big happy bellies.  Then it quickly became a night of feeling too tired to breathe enough for our brains to work.  Do not operate heavy machinery after eating red meat, red wine and ice cream.  In fact, don't even operate tiny machinery.  

Hella Mozzarella

We apologize for the unannounced hiatus from food blogging last week.  Tony and I went on a little backpacking excursion, during which we ate naught but freeze-dried lasagna packets and drank naught but bitter instant coffee.  It was a foodie's worst nightmare and so we shall not speak of it, but instead get right to this week's meal, which is one that I can truly get behind.  First off, our recipe of choice is mainly cheese.  There are some veggies and spices thrown in for good measure, but it's mostly cheese.  If I didn't mention it in my food philosophy: CHEESE!  'Nuff said.  Furthermore, this week we introduce something that has been sorely lacking from our cooking adventures, namely, dessert.  Again, I may have failed to mention my love for all things sugary in my food philosophy, but let's just say that sometimes I eat "real" food simply so that I can feel justified in eating a big ol' plate of carrot cake, ice cream, or anything drenched in chocolate.  I'm still not sure exactly how that logic works, but in any case, I LOVE desserts and am quite fond on baking.  So all in all, this is a meal I got very excited about.

I don't eat a lot of bread or cheese, for paranoid health reasons, not because I don't love them.  I do love them, but more than bread, though less than cheese, I LOVE eggplant (to clarify, the hierarchy of love looks like this bread<eggplant<cheese).  Though eggplant seizes the throne whenever it's prepared with basil and black bean sauce at Thai restaurants.  I know what you're thinking, or what you will be thinking after I suggest you were thinking about it: how can you LOVE eggplant?  I love it because it's a selfless, yet bold fruit (yes, it's a fruit, don't get me started).  It cooks down to a texture that can only be described as mushy, yet it somehow makes mushy a positive by absorbing whatever flavors it comes into contact with and adding it's own sweet earthiness.  So I was excited by the recipe planned for this week.

Behold:  The Tuscan Eggplant Parmigiana.  It's canned tomatoes, basil, oregano, eggplant, mozzarella, and parmesan all put into a big pot.  That's it.  I'd actually made this recipe once before after stumbling upon it on some food blog or other, so I knew that it was super delicious, but this time Tony and I decided to do it a little differently by breading the eggplant with egg and flour (is it still called breading if you don't use bread crumbs?) before frying them.  In hindsight, I feel like the breading actually stopped the eggplant from absorbing some of the great flavors in the pot (basil, garlic, oregano, CHEESE) because I remember the dish being a tad more flavorful the first time around.  So anyway, my advice would be to follow the instructions (I mean, who do we think we are anyway messing with a recipe?) and make sure that your pan is very hot when you fry the eggplant so's it doesn't soak up tooo much of the oil, even though it's gonna be oily no matter what (yum).

Topping the loooooong list of "seemingly simple cooking techniques that I always screw up" is frying.  I usually bake my eggplant parmigiana in order to take a cowardly stance against frying, but eggplant is just so good with a little breading that Karen and I decided to go for it.  I used some egg and flour instead of going the extra bread crumb mile.  Everything was going well, my little eggplant slices were sweated (sweating refers to salting the eggplant cutlets and letting them sit, allowing the bitter juices to seep out), egged and floured and smiling waiting to be popped into the oven for a nice warm sauna of yumminess to finish a veritable full spa treatment.  Instead they found themselves plunged into a half inch of under-heated oil in a mishapen skillet where they slowly absorbed oil and occasionally found patches area hot enough to fry in.  Sorry, eggplant buddies.  Don't get me wrong, it turned out pretty good, but eggplant can be a fickle fruit, so don't you dare cross it.

Tony Note: I see a disappointed face in each oil soaked cutlet.

While Tony's spirit was being crushed by eggplant and a misshapen skillet (that's my bad, probably time to invest in some quality cookware) I had the incredibly easy job of opening a can, chopping some basil and garlic, shredding some cheese, and putting stuff in a pot.

Karen Note: I see a food surface that needs to be covered in CHEESE!


Because my job was so easy, I also whipped up some rosemary bread à la Macaroni Grill.

It was okay.  I mean, it was bread and it had rosemary and it was covered in butter (awesome), but for my money there is no better at-home bread recipe than No Knead Bread.  So I think next time I'll just add some rosemary to that bad boy and call it a day . . . or two days since it take about 20 hours to rise and get all bread-like.

As you can see, we couldn't wait the 10 seconds it takes to get a picture to devour the bread.  So although this meal may not look that appetizing (sorry for the stained table cloth) it was pretty awesome, really easy, and very filling.


Oh, but it's not over!  The food part was so simple that we decided to invest our extra time in some strawberry shortcake, one of my favorite desserts.  Karen and I got into a spat over this dish as we are wont to do.  Though less heated than past squabbles, "Bake Vs. Fry", "Mince Vs. Chop" or "More Chocolate Vs. No, Karen, we can't fit anymore chocolate in this," the question of "Biscuit Vs. Angel food cake" was nonetheless contentious.  I swear by a Martha Stewart recipe that involves buttery, crumbly biscuits as the proper strawberry vessels, but I've never tried angel food cake.  Karen, having tried my recipe, swore that the lighter and more pious option was better.  I was skeptical, but excited to put this to the test.  Unfortunately, angel food cake required a level of precision and technique that we didn't feel comfortable with, so we settled on Hot Milk Sponge Cake.  This would prove a poor decision, something the less than appetizing title should have warned us of.


While I still maintain that angel food cake is the ONLY way to do strawberry shortcake, I'm ashamed to say that I took one look at the complicated, finicky instructions in my BH&G Cookbook ("Make sure your utensils are clean.  The smallest amount of oil or fat on beaters or a mixing bowl will compromise the volume of the beaten egg whites."  WHAAA?) and I just plain chickened out.  One day I hope to conquer the more delicate baking techniques such as adding sugar "when soft peaks form," but for now I just wanted cake, so I went with a recipe that I'd used previously for tiramisu.


Karen gets right to work fudging things up by mixing the ingredients in the wrong order.  I hate to think what hellish beast would have emerged from that oven if we had gone with the angel food cake recipe.

While Karen handled measuring, mixing and any task that might involve higher level thinking, I cut up strawberries and poured sugar all over them.  And I done it real well.  Promise.  

QUIZ: Which plate was prepared by a person with enough patience and forethought to consider what the photo would look like and which was prepared by a thumbless monkey? 

Trick question, I do TOO have thumbs.  I was just excited.

A final word of wisdom: not a single dessert doesn't benefit from a pinch of salt.  It brings out the flavor, and when you decide to make Hot Milk Sponge Cake, you need to coax out every bit of flavor you can.  

Okay, you know that cake was totally delicious when it was covered in sugary strawberry syrup and homemade whipped cream.  Just because it tasted a little hot and kinda milky and spongey . . . well, just shut up.

This meal had its flaws, indeed.  Just like babies, they don't always turn out quite right.  As always, though, Karen and I had tons of fun and despite the abundance of cheese and adding salt to the dessert, this meal was much better for you than what we could have gotten at Macaroni Grill.  I heard the water alone contains half your daily calories!

Kickin' It with Brisket

All right, so barbecue is intimidating, right?  Every Food Network show I have ever seen on the subject has led me to believe that “real” barbecue takes exactly 92.64 hours of closely monitored cooking in a handmade smoker sanctified by the King of Barbecue himself, a man that I imagine weighs 900 pounds and has a Fu Manchu mustache so glorious it would make you weep.  Well, I don’t know if what we made this week would be considered “real” barbecue, but it was smothered in barbecue sauce, it was delicious, and we did it in under three hours.

I too fear the culinary Goliath that is BBQ.  For one, my hipster mustache doesn't grant me the BBQ expertise that the more substantial Fu Manchu bestows upon its owners.  For two, red meat throws up all kinds of health and sustainability red flags in my brain.  On this occasion I held my tongue, knowing that such concerns would invite disdainful glares from my sister and perhaps even a righteous wedgie.  Besides, I can rationalize enjoying BBQ at restaurants, so figured I could apply the same logic to a special Sunday supper, even though Karen's apartment lacks the rusted license plates and taxidermied gators that would have completed the ambiance.  

Continuing with the theme from last week of "Meals I Would Never Usually Make," I have no idea why we chose to cook a giant slab of red meat.  I don't usually cook meat because 1) It's expensive and 2) It's ooshy.  It's all full of blood and fat and tendons and bones and, just, no.  Until it's cooked of course and then it is all kinds of awesome, which is exactly why I left the meat handling to my brother.  But before we get to that, I must give props again to my BH&G Cookbook.  Once we decided on barbecue, we flipped through its hollowed pages and found an Oven-Barbecued Beef Brisket with homemade barbecue sauce that sounded just scrumptious.  This decision led us to the grocery store, specifically the meat section, where we stood silently perusing the shelves for a good four minutes before Tony turned to me and asked, "What's a brisket?"  Goooooood question.  

As it turns out, this is a brisket:

Luckily, my cookbook also contains a meat map, showing you the precise location of cuts of beef on the cow.  Although, you really don't want to know which part brisket comes from . . . Ha, just kidding.  It's the armpit.

The store had two differently priced cuts of armpit beef.  We took pause, wondering why the brisket we chose was a full dollar per pound cheaper than all the others.  I pointed out, as a possible reason, the thick layer of fat completely covering one side, like icing on a meat cake.  No problem, I assured Karen (and myself), not realizing that I would be tasked with scraping the icing off this particular meat cake.  Karen played the gender card on me, putting me in charge of the defatting.  I enjoy working with raw animal flesh no more than she does, and I'm pretty freaked out by spiders, so the gender card can suck it.  Alas, sharpest possible pairing knife in hand, I set about my depraved task.  Luckily, Karen was chopping onion next to me so that any inquiry about my tears could easily be dismissed.  Harder to explain was why I spent the night weeping in the bath tub.  

While Tony was sawing off gobs of fat . . .

I was mixing up a delicious and tendon-free sauce in which to roast the brisket.  I don't know copyright laws (nor do I care, so don't tell me) but I'm assuming that I shouldn't copy and post a full recipe from a published cookbook.  I will say, however, that this sauce contains water, onion, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, chili powder (I used chipotle powder, uh duh), beef bouillon, red pepper, and garlic.  This was literally the best picture of me mixing sauce.  There were worse ones . . . 

Moving on.  At this point all you gotta do is pour the sauce over the brisket, cover it with foil, and bake at 325°F for three hours, turning once.  We baked ours for a little over two hours since it was a wee bit smaller than the 3-pounder the recipe called for and we also (and I did not realize this until re-reading the recipe just now) failed to turn once!  Even though our brisket turned out succulent and flavorful, I can't imagine the heights of succulence and flavorfulness it may have reached if only my brother and I payed closer attention to recipes.  Such is the trade-off when drinking several glasses of red wine while cooking, which is totally worth a few mistakes, so whatever.

Dern it!  We didn't flip once?!  Curse those glasses of red devil's spit!  Speaking of devil's spit, we made a BBQ sauce worthy of just such a kitschy name, though it wasn't spicy, so perhaps "Marmot Spit" would be more appropriate . . . though I don't see how.  I just know it should have the word "spit" in it.  Anyway, I regard BBQ sauce with as much, if not more, trepidation as the meat.  I'm very particular.  Thus, I was skeptical that the BH&G Cookbook could impress me, but it provided us with a nice sauce made of onion, garlic, apple juice, tomato paste, vinegar, brown sugar, molasses, paprika, horseradish, Worcestershire, sauce, salt and pepper.  I also added some spicy mustard because I felt it was missing a little something.  [NOTE: I do not condone the use of yellow mustard, but I admit to the merit of the fancier mustards as long as they don't do that little poop thing on my finger when I pop the top.]  

With sauce simmering, Karen and I engaged in a very drunken-sounding argument over proper pronunciation of "Worcestershire" (Work-ester-sheeer!) and then turned our focus to side dishes.  

One of my favorite dishes to make, ever, and this may sound weird, is cauliflower and . . . well, that's it.  If you take a head of cauliflower, chop it up, drizzle it in olive oil, spread it out on a pan, and roast it at about 400°F (depending on your oven) for about 20 minutes, and sprinkle with some salt and pepper then you got yourself a tasty treat.  You can do the same thing with brussels sprouts and it rocks!  Don't ever let any brussels sprouts-haters tell you any different.

Simple and vegetable-based was the theme for the side dishes.  I was afraid my stomach would find the red meat an unfamiliar trespasser and thus, had to send it in with some old regulars.  Like cabbage.  Mmmm mmmm.  Nobody don't like cabbage.  I dressed red cabbage, shredded carrot and thinly sliced red onion (for lack of green) in cider vinegar, rice wine vinegar, sugar, garlic, mustard (fancy kind), red pepper flakes, salt and pepper.  It turned out surprisingly good.  

I also invited sweet potato fries to join the adventure.  They were the frozen kind that you pop in the oven, so they don't require much explanation.  Though Karen did give them a dousing of truffle salt.  That reminds me, stop everything you are doing, mortgage your house, sell your family, and spend ALL YOUR F%*ING MONEY on truffle salt.  NOW!  

The veggies proved effective guides for the red meat and everything went together nicely.  It wasn't restaurant BBQ, but it was a great success, especially for a first attempt.  I'm glad Karen and I tried it.  I urge you to try new things in the kitchen; take risks, maybe fail, maybe not, but have fun!  Even if your mustache doesn't extend majestically around your mouth and down to your chin. You can Fu Man DO it!

Our Food Philosophies

Welcome to the Green siblings' food/cooking/arguing about food and cooking blog.  For our first entry, before we get into our weekly meal, my brother and I thought that we'd lay out our thoughts on food, a little Food Philosophy, if you will, so you know why we wanted to write about food in the first place.  Please enjoy the following longwinded food related essays.  (Also, from here on out, I will be writing in a cool dusty blue and the Brony (brother/Tony) will be writing in "bright motha' effin' red," as he put it.)


Sister Karen's Food Philosophy:


I love eating.  There are a number of factors that dictate my food philosophy, which I will get to momentarily, but the overarching theme is that I just love food and I love eating food.   When you think down the list of activities you are required to do on a daily basis (brushing your teeth, showering, talking to people, evacuating your bowels) can you think of a single mandatory activity that is even half as much fun as eating?  Well, I can’t.  Food is delicious and the fact that I should, nay MUST, eat food every single day is just icing on the cake.  Food makes any activity better, whether it be a social gathering, curling up on the couch to watch a movie, or taking a long car ride (Twizzlers, anyone?).  Fortunately, my love of eating has parlayed nicely into a growing love for cooking.  

Aside from my intense love of all things edible, I must attribute my interest in cooking to two things: first, my mother and second, Bulgaria.  I must thank my mother who, despite always having a full time job with two kids and a husband who did little to no cooking (sorry, dad), managed to cook balanced meals for her family, and did so the majority of the time.  Cooking was the rule in our house, not the exception.  Frozen, packaged, processed, and fast foods of course made the occasional appearance at our table, but they were largely a treat or novelty, to the extent that when I would have dinner at a friend’s house and discover that they ate boxed mac and cheese or Hot Pockets most nights, I was somewhat appalled.  So thank you, mom, for giving me an appreciation of real food and an early sense of superiority over those who succumbed to the greasy allure of our faux food nation.  That said, I love boxed mac and cheese and Hot Pockets.  More on that later.  

Now, to thank Bulgaria.  My love of cooking really got a kick start a few years ago when I decided to sign up for the Peace Corps and was sent to a teeny tiny village in Eastern Europe with no fast food places, one village restaurant that served french fries and meatballs, and very few packaged meals (Bulgaria has their share of chips, candy bars, and snack foods, but very few meal options akin to American frozen TV dinners).  Not only was I forced to make things from scratch, but I had to start at the basics.  Most meals would consist of rice or lentils, onion and garlic, and whatever vegetables were in season at the moment.  Most families grew their own fruits and vegetables and raised live stock and the whole experience left me with a better sense of where food comes from and what constitutes real food. 

But have I mentioned that I love boxed mac and cheese and Hot Pockets?  Yes, I am aware of the growing foodie movement.  I’ve done my due diligence on the local, organic, micro-biotic, vegan food movements, etc.  I’ve read Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore’s Dilemma.  I’ve seen Food Inc. and taken much of the information to heart.  I know that I should eat real food and avoid trans fats and crazy chemicals and that I shouldn’t support giant corrupt companies that mistreat their workers, harm the environment, and make questionable and unhealthy “food.”  For the most part, I try to make conscientious decisions.  That said, sometimes I just want a box of Cheez-Its and an entire bag of mini-Reese's cups for dinner and I am perfectly okay with that.  I’m afraid that I’m a bit too impulsive and prone to bouts of ravenous hunger and/or pure boredom eating to stick to my food principles too strictly.  Plus I just like things that taste good, unlike my brother who seems to have had a trans fat detector implanted in his brain and an inhuman tolerance for salad.  I’m just not that diligent.

Anyway, the last factor I will discuss at this time that shapes my relationship to food (I’m sure there are sooo many more, but all this writing has made me hungry so I’ll wrap it up) is that I am pretty much broke all the time.  I would like to think that I have a sophisticated palate and can appreciate the finer things in life, but my current profession as a part time science teacher limits my food choices quite a bit.  So, no caviar and gold-flecked desserts for me.  A lot of my meal choices come down to me grumbling like an old lady in the grocery store (“Eh, can you believe the price of apples these days?  What am I, a Rockefeller?”) and then grabbing whatever has the lowest cost per unit.  

Being broke may actually work in my favor however, because I am also easily overwhelmed by choice.  One of my biggest food dilemmas is that when I sit down to plan a dinner and ask myself, “What sounds good?” more often than not I come back with the answer, “Everything.  Literally, everything.”  If it weren’t for being limited by money and laziness, I might very easily spiral into a fever of indecision each night which would begin with me searching methodically through every food blog and cook book I’ve ever come across and end in me curled up on the kitchen floor, spatula in hand, smacking away hallucinatory images of beef fajitas and thai stir fry.  “I want all of you!  AAALL of you!  Oh, why do you tempt me?!” I would cry.  But luckily, I am limited by my budget and what is available to me at my local grocery stores.  I rarely go out of my way to pick up hard to find ingredients.  Why drive yourself crazy, right?

All right, so that is where I stand food-wise.  If you share any of those interests or dilemmas then I hope you will enjoy the wacky adventures* of myself and my brother as we attempt to feed ourselves on a weekly basis.

*Disclaimer: Most wacky cooking adventures on this blog may not be considered “wacky” nor an “adventure,” but have been dramatized to appear as such.  Just go with it.


Brother Tony's Food Philosophy:


Food is complicated.  I have a love/hate relationship with it.  It wasn’t always this way.  There was a time when my food groups consisted of candy, Burger King, and whatever mom was making for dinner that night.  Any food I hadn’t been exposed to in the first few years of my life, especially foods that seemed exotic, healthy, or smelled like they had mustard in them, I wouldn’t give a chance.  Food was so easy.  For me, at least.  My mother, on the other hand didn’t appreciate my subtle supervisory role in the kitchen.  “What’s that?  You puttin’ that on the chicken?  It’s not mustard, is it?  Hmmm, smells exotic.”  She deemed me a “picky eater,” a phrase that mothers regard with the same dismay as “sickly” or “lupus-filled.”  I preferred to think of myself as opinionated and it was my opinion that I had already discovered all the good foods in the world and that other people had very very stupid taste buds.  I also didn’t need to taste food to know that it was terrible.  I went off instinct, a practice, I now realize, must have pissed my mom off something righteous.

I coasted through eighteen years of my life in ignorant bliss, never worrying what stuffing tasted like.  Yes, that is how backwards I was.  Stuffing!  Butter and bread and butter and chicken broth and butter was deemed too much of a risk to my taste buds. I never wondered what tofu tasted like (I was shocked to discover the answer was “nothing”).  I had never had Thai or Indian cuisine and I was sure Sushi was a fabrication of Hollywood.  Then, within a matter of months, coinciding with my freshman year of college, I experienced a renaissance in my relationship with food.  I was forced into a meal plan at school, and after a few weeks of overcooked spaghetti in “cream sauce.”  I was desperate enough to venture into the world of cooking.

Concurrently, my girlfriend at the time began exposing me to all manner of food I wasn’t accustomed to.  When I first gave in and tried “that green swampy muck that probably tastes like gutter water” I nearly wept.  Guacamole was amazing!  Thus began my love affair with avocados.  I hadn’t found all the good foods.  In fact, I had missed most of them.  I had been wrong.  So so wrong.  From there, my palette exploded.  I wanted to try everything.  Except anything that had yellow mustard in any way associated with it.  After all, a man must have a code.

I was high on the possibility of food.  I even began to enjoy cooking to the point that I considered a career in the culinary arts.  But my love of food was soon perverted by fear.  The political side of food crept up on me, as did the vague claims of scientists and self-prescribed food aficionados.  I had read Fast Food Nation a year earlier and that laid the groundwork of paranoia that would be my undoing.  I became obsessed with buying only foods that were organic, non-GMO, sustainable, grass-fed, omega 3 rich, trans fat free, preservative free, free range, etc., etc., until the only thing I could eat was kale.  One day, as I attempted to chew through undercooked organic kale enchiladas, I realized I had sapped all the fun out of food.  It struck me with the clarity that can only be brought on by messing up an enchilada.  It’s damn hard to screw up tortilla+cheese+sauce.  I decided to stop worrying so much.  I adopted the mantra of one of my favorite books, Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: eat food. not too much. mostly plants.  The first time through, I had missed the book’s intention of making food enjoyable again and had focused on the problems with the food industry and health concerns.

I’ve managed to mellow out a bit and I’m learning to enjoy food again, though I’ll be damned if I’m going to eat a non-organic peach and allow those cancerous pesticides to wreak their demonic havoc on MY BODY!  Ok, I have a ways to go.  On the positive side, my trek through the bleak world of food facts was born of a real passion and interest in food and I’ve come out with an appreciation for companies and organizations that genuinely care about the effect of food on the planet, the economy, and the health of humans.

I haven’t, however, recovered my love for cooking, as classes and work have made it merely a necessary evil.  I’m resigned to the fact that I can’t make food that is restaurant quality, though I have disproved that many times.  I’ve given up on making hummus altogether.  I simply cannot replicate the taste of the store bought stuff.  My sister has pointed out that perhaps my standards are too high.

That’s why I’m excited to spend Sundays cooking with my sister.  I get to relax and take my time.  We level each other out.  I’m impatient and get hungry two or three times over just waiting for the oven to preheat.  She’s more patient and enjoys building up a fierce hunger to pair with a meal.  I’m more concerned with health factors such as additives and chemicals, and Karen is more concerned with figuring out how she can fit more cheese into a recipe.  “Think I can just inject cheese right into this?” I oft hear her call as she stands over a dish holding her cheese syringe.  She’s all about taste, something I need to rediscover in cooking.  I’m learning to enjoy cooking again, not loving it again, but that will take time.  I’ve been burned in the past.

So here’s my food philosophy in a nut shell: Everything in moderation except taste.  And avocado.  Tons of that.   And yellow mustard.  None of that.