Guest Blogger: Ma Green

Hello, all.  Karen here.  It's been an eventful week in the world of the Green family.  Over the weekend, Brother Tony graduated from Chapman University with a B.A. in screen writing!  Watch for his name  in the future as that brief flicker before one of your favorite, critically acclaimed, and cancelled-too-soon comedy shows (or so I'm predicting).  We're just so proud of him.  The whole family came down to Orange to celebrate the day.  And by "celebrate" of course I mean "eat copious amounts of food."  The entire weekend was one giant meal after the next . . . followed by snacks.  Unfortunately though, between the fine Mexican meal at Cha Cha's and the adventurous fare at Honda Ya, not much cooking got done.  So in lieu of our weekly cooking adventure, we offer you a guest blog written by the one and only Ma Green outlining her food philosophy.  Enjoy!

Ma Green's Food Philosophy. . .


My favorite meal, as a kid, would have to be hamburger patties.  These were generally skillet-cooked and mine would be covered with, no, not ketchup, not A-1, or my mom’s favorite, Worcestershire, but . . . barbecue sauce.  Chris and Pitts barbecue sauce to be exact (or Piss and Critts if you’re amused by that sort of thing).  I don’t think KC Masterpiece had been invented then.  Said burger patty was generally accompanied by canned pork-and-beans (the white glob of “pork” to be avoided at all costs), and a canned vegetable (corn, green beans or peas).  Frozen vegetables must not have been invented yet either.  Of that “vegetable” selection, canned corn (sometimes of the far-less-preferable creamed style) would have been my first choice, followed by green beans (often pleasantly enhanced with bacon grease), and lastly, those icky grey-green mushy peas.  Let’s face it, peas lose a LOT in translation when canned.  Peas are still not a favorite, except when left in the pod, and of the “snap” variety, which are delish.  Yes, times have truly changed (to a certain extent)!   


Surprisingly-or not-ground beef patties (with KC Masterpiece) is still a favorite meal for me (see “comfort food”).  That patty though, is always grilled (with charcoal) and accompanied by a wedge of fresh onion, cottage cheese (with more onion as in “chopped green”) and steamed-or better-yet, blanched-broccoli. 


In the “good-ole-days”, we ate margarine and drank far too much Shasta soda; Shasta being cheaper than Coke and Pepsi.  Their cherry cola was my favorite followed by cream soda.  We never went “out” for dinner (it was too expensive), except for the occasional treat of Jack-in-the-Box burgers, which we never referred to as “fast food”, that term having not been coined yet (I don’t think).  Jack-in-the-Box must have pre-dated McDonalds, in Chula Vista anyway.  


OK, I just looked it up and Jack-in-the Box opened in “San Diego” in 1951.  McDonalds opened in San Bernardino in 1940, closed in 1948 and reopened three months later with a menu reduced to nine items, including a 15-cent burger.


I do like to cook, especially when I have more time (weekends), but I admit that cooking for a family of four could be a real chore when you work full-time.  Bill was pretty easy, but would have loved for me to bake fresh bread every week, like his mom did (yeah, right!).  Karen was not a picky eater and pretty brave, even loving tomatoes.  Tony, by his own admission (and I remember it even better), seemed to think I was trying to poison him.  He didn’t even like spaghetti sauce for cryin-out-loud!  It was chicken fingers or nuthin when he went out.  They all liked “Near East” rice pilaf; it was a staple, as were frozen potatoes in just about any form.  Even Tony, thank heaven, liked broccoli, and we ate lots of marinated/grilled chicken.  In fact, I grilled most all meat unless it was raining.  Speaking of which, salmon too, was pretty much fool-proof.  Tacos are a no-brainer . . . always good (especially if it’s raining).  Cooking on Fridays is against my religion-so to speak-and we always did pizza (not too much sauce, Tony).


So let’s jump forward and I will say that food has undergone an absolute RENAISSANCE, which I will sum up in the following (but not-limited-to) list:
Olive oil . . .YES!
Balsamic vinegar . . .YES, again!
So many new cheeses
Farmer’s Markets
Oh, yeah . . .cilantro!


My philosophy, in a nut-shell (see pine nuts, pistachios, walnuts, pecans and peanuts), is that food is fun and cooking with my kids (who can now enjoy wine with the meal) is one of life’s greatest pleasures!
Karen and Tony:  I love you more than pork and beans . . . I mean hamburger patties (or even olive oil), I love your blog, and I thank you for allowing me to contribute to this admirable endeavor.


ALL my love, mum 

Bolsillo Caliente

Hello again.  We're so glad you're back!  Honestly, the tone of last week's blog was so quarrelsome and despondent that I thought we may have lost some people.  On that note, I am happy to report that this week's cookery was the most joyous of adventures.  It was merry, wacky, jubilant, and whimsical.  In a word, it was empanadas.  For those of you who have never heard of or had the immense joy of tasting an empanada, it's a stuffed pastry that can be sweet or savory.  It's of Spanish origin and is widely eaten in Latin America.  Tony's mentioned to me several times that he follows a food blog with some impressive and authentic looking Mexican food.  So I finally popped on over to Pati's Mexican Table to take a look.  Everything appeared delicious as promised, but I took one look at this photo and it was decided.  We are gonna make the crap out of those empanadas.


Nothing excites me like not having to make decisions, so I was ecstatic to find Karen had already chosen a couple recipes.  She had used our leftover plantain from last week and cooked a test batch of "tostones" (which I had suggested last week in place of the chips that ended up sort of sucking) so we decided to do a rebooted attempt at plantains, frying them not once, but twice.  Delicious, no doubt about it, but something about deep fried plantains and dough filled with pork butt sounded a bit filling.  Probably the pork butt part.  So I added my own two cents and suggested we pair this meal with a salad.  Karen grunted a hardly audible sound of consent, and we had ourselves a full fledged meal.   


For the record, I am not opposed to salads.  I just think that they're kind of stupid to eat in a world where sandwiches exist.  Anyway, the empanada recipe was our most extravagant so far.  It has a rather lengthy and varied list of ingredients.  I mean, green olives and raisins together in one flaky buttery pocket!  It's madness!  But Tony and I were really on top of things this week so we popped on over to our local Sprouts and picked up every thing we needed for Empanadas of the Immaculate Conception, an avocado and lime Mexican-y salad, and plantains "Take 2" and made it back to the kitchen by 3:00pm to start the cooking.


The one problem we encountered was that it was not avocado season, meaning that all the avocados being sold in the greater Los Angeles area were plucked not from a tree, but from the nest of an overprotective Dragon holding a machine gun and the prices reflected this.  I was disgusted at having to drop two dollars on a single avocado, but once I have my heart set on this, my favorite of all fruits, I can't be swayed.  And let me tell you, boys, this was an avocado to get your heart set on.  It was perfect.  

No, you hang up first!  That was stupid.  I'm sorry.  I'm just nervous.      

Back in the kitchen, we busted out the aprons, put on some tunes (tUnE-YarDs to be exact), and burst into joyous dance.  No seriously, Tony did the weirdest lankiest lookin' thing with his arms that I've ever seen and I went full on "robot penguin" which consists of sticking your arms straight down at your sides and moving them in tight circles while waddling back and forth.  Yes, we were that excited.  And yes, we are that white.  Here, look:

Glorious.  

The jovial mood only grew from there as I began to make the empanada dough and had the immeasurable pleasure of dumping two whole sticks of butter and an entire packet of cream cheese into my mixing bowl.

If only every meal could begin this way.

There was something fiendish, even terrifying, about the way Karen was gazing into that bowl of butter and cream cheese, as though she saw in it the promise of a new world order, a horrible dystopian future in which every meal begins and ends with butter and cream cheese.  She was in her element, so I let her do her thang and got to work on the meat.  Unable to find pork butt, we settled on some much less hilarious pork shoulder.  I chopped the meat and set it simmering with garlic, onion, carrot, bay leaf, peppercorns, thyme and salt.  I was essentially boiling a bunch of meat, which is not a preparation I'm used to and which produces some very unappetizing grayish brain meat.

I quickly sauteed some onions and garlic and got that brain simmering in tomato sauce.  

Meanwhile, I mixed up the pastry dough faster than you can say "brain meat" and, as Tony mentioned, moved on to the tostones part of the meal.  I couldn't let my tasteless cardboard plantain nuggets be the final word on plantains for this blog, so during the week I'd whipped up some fried plantains courtesy of Alton Brown, damn know-it-all is always right about how to make things delicious.  Anyway, these double fried, garlic-y, savory plantains went over muuuuuch better than the previous week's so I made them again to go along with our latin theme.  Unlike my neurotic brother, I have absolutely no trouble frying any and everything  that I can get my hands on.  I love to hear the sound of sizzling and feel the hot oil splash against my skin.  Actually, no, that part kind of sucks and so I have a habit of throwing things into the oil and then running away squealing and ducking for cover like a hysterical piglet.

But just look at those babies frying up to a nice golden brown.  This recipe is fun because you get to smush the plantains and then fry them again, soaking them in a little garlic salt water in between.  After all that they sort of just taste like really good french fries.  No problem there.

**SPOILER ALERT: Do not look at the platter next to Karen's head!  Those aren't finished empanadas!

Success!  The empanada filling flavors had satisfactorily mingled, or as well as one could hope for at a party with such disparate guests as green olives and raisins.  Fun fact: green olives prefer to be called manzanillas when they are used in a Spanish or Latin American dish.  Don't you forget this, or else you'll have to go to two different stores because the first one didn't even have manzanillas, just these stupid green olives.

A truly inspiring sight, manzanillas, raisins, almonds and pork all hanging out, having a grand old time.  And who's that tree branch looking thing in the back?  Is that cinnamon stick?  Yup, cinnamon stick showed up.  

Done!  Here!  I held up the skillet and demanded Karen turn the meat stew into empanadas while I spent my remaining time hanging out with avocado, maybe making a salad.  Or is it too soon?  Do you think avocado even likes me?  I'm not good enough, AM I?  With a firm backhand, Karen brought me back to my senses, then delivered a proverbial backhand by informing me that we had to actually put the meat stuff into the dough stuff ourselves.  Moi?  I don't bake and this process really towed the line.  However, it can't be that hard, right?  I summoned every bit of knowledge I had on matter and spatial relations, and I managed to do this:

"KILL IT!  KILL IT!"  Karen yelped, as she cowered in the corner clutching her rolling pin, crying what I'm pretty sure were joke tears.  Har har, very funny.  You try it.  You shmuck. 

Yes, fine, ok; Karen's didn't have a gaping hole in it.  And yes, mine looked like a pumpkin spliced with road kill begging to be killed and put out of its misery, but in my defense . . . whatever, I don't even care.  I'm calling avocado, it accepts me for who I am!  

Since this post has been totally and completely out of order from the get-go I'll stick with the theme and talk about rolling out the empanada dough.  Now, you might ask, "Hey, didn't you just stuff the empanadas?  How could you stuff the empanadas and then roll out the dough?"  To which I reply, "How do you know that we don't have a time traveling kitchen?  Huh?  You don't.  And I'll never tell.  So shut it."  The dough had been chilling in the fridge for about an hour while Tony fussed over the stuffing and fretted over how the world would judge him and his unnatural avocado love (harshly, by the way) and I couldn't wait to get it out and start the rolling.  On my list of favorite things to do in the kitchen, using my rolling pin is right up there with apple peeling, bread kneading, and sliding across the floor in my socks.  So I was excited to roll out the empanadas and find a suitable sized circle to use as a cookie cutter.

Rolling pin excitement verging on madness!  Anyway, I grabbed a random piece of tupperware and started makin' some circles, not really knowing how big we wanted our empanadas.  On a side note, this is where I wish there was a synonym for "empanada" because the writer in me feels that I have repeated that word one too many times.  So from now on, I will alternate the use of "empanada" with "Spanish Hot Pocket."

Is this the right size?  I uhknow.  As Tony's mutated drooling first attempt would show us, no, it was not big enough.  But since I couldn't find a better cookie cutter, I cut them and rolled them out a little bigger, so that explains the lopsidedness of the first batch of Spanish Hot Pockets.  Luckily though, and I'm not sure if you knew this, but being slightly lopsided in no way affects the deliciousness of this item.  They did get a little prettier as we got more practice.  Here you can see the progression of prettiness from left to right smothered with egg wash and sesame seeds.

Anyway, they all look good to me once they're baked.  I just wanna pinch their little cheeks.

It was almost time to dish up when I realized I had to make the salad, meaning it was time for avocado and I to . . . errr, ok any attempt to keep up this "being in love with the avocado" metaphor is going to result in explicit descriptions, so consider it abandoned.  I sliced it up and tossed it with romaine lettuce, cilantro, a cumin-lime vinaigrette and feta cheese.  Cotija cheese works even better if you've got it.  This combo is fresh, the flavors complement each other and you can throw a bunch of other stuff in there too like corn, bell pepper, black beans, a taco, whatever.  Ah yes, I also added in some pepitas which, if you read last week's entry, you know is a food that Karen does not respect.  (That is correct.)  I don't know that I changed her mind, but the salad was good.  The Spanish Hot Pockets, on the other hand, were amazing.  Utterly fantastic.  The dough was sweet and buttery, the meat was salty and tender, the olives chipped in a great tang and these things are so portable that you can tuck one into your cargo shorts, overalls or other large-pocketed clothing and hit the town.  

What better way to wrap this meal up than some delicious alfajores, shortbread cookie sandwiches with Dulce De Leche in the middle?  How about not having those because someone (me) didn't realize that it takes a minimum of two and a half hours to make Dulce de Leche?  You'll have to tune in next week to see the alfajores in action.

Let me just reiterate before wrapping this up that these empanadas were friggin' fantastic.  They are hands down the best thing that we've made so far.  While they do take a bit more work and patience and it helps to have a fun cooking partner, they're totally worth it.  And since this blog cares not for linear order or the nature of time, I will let you in on another secret.  We actually cook our meals while writing about the previous week's adventure, meaning that we made these Spanish Hot Pockets last week and this week made a different delicious meal which we'll tell you about next week.  Confused yet?  I only tell you this because I ate one empanada each day for dinner after cooking these and by Thursday when I finished my last one I felt such an extreme feeling of loss and sadness that I knew this recipe was something special, something worth holding on to, worth fighting for.  Worth dying for?  No, that's ridiculous, but worth adding to my "make these as often as humanly possible" list of recipes.  I highly recommend that you try them.  And then freeze one and mail it to me.  I'll wait.

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!