Category: Cooking

In which I bake!

On By Luther M. SilerIn Cooking3 Comments

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I was gonna post a picture of the mangled mess my soft pretzels became, but, uhh…

Turns out it didn’t matter.

Recipe post!

On By Luther M. SilerIn Cooking8 Comments

1546085_10152121413308926_871113375_nIt’s Vegetarian Week 2, and apparently I can’t get through a vegetarian week without quinoa raising its unpronounceable grainy face somewhere.  Plus since I was the only one who didn’t have to go to work today, dinner was obviously going to be on me.

“Peruvian” Quinoa Stew

“Peruvian” is in quotation marks because I somewhat doubt the provenance of the recipe.  First, acquire and chop up all of the following:

  • About two cups’ worth of onions; I used four little ones
  • Two cloves of garlic
  • Two small zucchini or one really big one
  • Tomatoes (I used a can of diced; you can chop the hell out of a fresh one or a couple of fresh ones if you like; it won’t matter)
  • A bell pepper
  • A stalk or two of celery
  • A carrot or two

I generally do a mise en place setup; in other words, get all my shit chopped up and in little bowls before I start actually cooking anything.  Put the onions and garlic together, the carrots and celery together, and the zucchini and bell pepper together.

Before you start sautéing anything, get the quinoa going: boil about a cup of water in a small pot, and once it’s boiling put in half a cup of rinsed (RINSED!!! TRUST ME!!!) quinoa.  Cover it and leave it alone for ten to twelve minutes; basically pretend it’s rice.  You can start cooking everything else once the quinoa is in the water; the timing will work out nicely.

Get a big flat-bottomed wok or Dutch oven and put a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil in it.  Sauté the onions and the garlic together for about five minutes on medium-high heat, stirring frequently, then toss in the celery and carrots and put a lid on the Dutch oven.  The celery and carrots should cook for about five more minutes; take the lid off and stir a couple of times while that’s happening.  Check the quinoa at this point and see if it’s absorbed all the water.  If it has, keep it covered, fluff it like it’s rice, and pull it off the heat; if not, add everything in the next part and then pull the quinoa after you’ve got the pot covered:

Add the following to your vegetables:

  • Your tomatoes;
  • A cup of vegetable stock;
  • two teaspoons of ground cumin;
  • a teaspoon of ground coriander;
  • half a teaspoon of chili powder;
  • a teaspoon of dried oregano;
  • a few shakes of cayenne pepper

Stir it up, cover the pot, turn down the heat a bit, and let it simmer for another ten or twelve minutes.  If the veggies are soft by then, toss the quinoa into the wok and stir everything up.  You’re done.

Add a bit of cheddar cheese and maybe some sour cream once it’s in a bowl.  Delish.

In praise of maligned foods

On By Luther M. SilerIn Cooking26 Comments

IMG_1045Here’s my policy on trying new foods:  If you can adequately demonstrate to me that any given food is eaten by any community of actual humans, anywhere in the world, on purpose, I’ll try it.  I’m specifying “on purpose” so that I can avoid eating foods that are clearly only considered “food” by necessity.  If something is only eaten because the people who eat it can’t afford to eat anything better or because they live in some sun- or ice-blasted hellhole and there is literally no other food anywhere, I reserve the right to refuse to try it.  But if you take those people and move them somewhere with a McDonald’s and a subscription to the Pie of the Month club and a generation later they’re still eating Grandma’s famous recipe for fried boar nuts, then I’m gonna try me some fried boar nuts if you put ’em in front of me.

There are really not a whole lot of foods that I’ve tried and won’t eat.  I don’t like raw onions under most circumstances (guacamole being a rare exception); cook them at all and I’m all good.  I’m not fond of peas if they’re mushy; peas that are cooked so that they sorta “pop” when you bite into them are fine.  Green beans, baked beans.  And I’ve reaffirmed this week that parsnips aren’t food.

(I’m doing the vegetarian thing again this week, in case you haven’t figured this out yet.  I accidentally ate a piece of sausage and pepperoni pizza yesterday, so I’m doing a bad job.  But dinners have been consistent.)

Let’s talk about Brussels sprouts.  Brussels sprouts, quite possibly the least popular vegetable known to American culture.

I’ve had Brussels sprouts once.  My wife made them.  She is also not fond of Brussels sprouts, so we were both experimenting.  They were boiled.  (EDIT:  My wife claims my mom made them.  This is odd; my mother never made Brussels sprouts when I was a kid.)

I spit the damn thing out.  I don’t do that with food, guys.  I don’t care how bad I think something is, I’m gonna finish at least a bite of it before I punch you and refuse to have any more.  My mouth sent me an immediate and unambiguous “this is not food WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING” message and I spit it out as authoritatively as if some miscreant had placed a live bee into my mouth.  I’m not sure it was even in my mouth long enough to register the taste.  Nope.  Not food.  Gone.

Here’s the thing, though:  I can’t always trust myself.  I spent the first year of our marriage saying things like “I don’t usually like shrimp, but…” every month or so until my wife pointed out that maybe I actually did like shrimp.  So when she found a recipe for roasted Brussels sprouts and wanted to incorporate them into Vegetarian Week 2, I decided to roll with it.

They smelled good while they were roasting.  Good sign, I thought.

“They’re not bad,” she told me as I was sitting down at the table.  “Maybe a little bitter.”  She doesn’t like these things either, remember, so I inspected her face carefully for signs of deception.  She was quite entertained when I’d spit the previous attempt out, so this could have all been a ruse.

I speared one with a fork.  Did my best Joe Bastianich impression as I lifted it to my nose, stared at it disdainfully, and smelled it.

And tasted it.

PEOPLE OF AMERICA!   HELL, PEOPLE OF EARTH!

Why the fuck is boiling Brussels sprouts even a thing Jesus they’re goddamn delicious roasted WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?

I know the picture above doesn’t look like much.  Here’s the recipe:  Brussels sprouts, apples, pears, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, a little olive oil, cinnamon, sea salt.  Mix and roast.  Serve over brown rice.

By the end of the meal I was literally using my hands to pack more food onto my fork.  I could eat this forever.  Same vegetable I spit out when it was served to me boiled.  Delicious, delicious, delicious, go eat some right now.  There’s a teeny bit of bitterness if you eat one solo but they’ve got this awesome nutty flavor to them and combining them with fruit and a bit of cinnamon is bananas good.  Apparently there were supposed to be some (unroasted) cranberries scattered over the top as a last step; I can only imagine that making things better.

Seriously go eat some Brussels sprouts right now.  Just don’t boil them. Why the hell would you boil them?  You clearly already have heat and that’s the only thing you need to roast stuff.

Somebody bring me some lutefisk; I’m on a roll.

Storm Food: entry 1

On By Luther M. SilerIn Cooking2 Comments

Note that a) the storm has not started, and b) I’m pretty sure that my initial impression was correct: that beef stroganoff, while unquestionably delicious, would look considerably prettier if I photographed it before it was cooked.  Remember, Burneko’s recipe:

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Om nom goddamn nom.

In which we’re all gonna die

On By Luther M. SilerIn Cooking, Teaching15 Comments

537194_522538491102596_1957075624_nStorm’s coming; not sure if you’ve heard about it or not.  In my neck of the woods they’re predicting somewhere between six and twelve inches of snow tonight through to tomorrow morning, depending on where you look, and temperatures– not wind chills– around ten to fifteen degrees below zero for Monday.  Along with 20-30 mile an hour winds, which will probably mean wind chills around forty to fifty degrees below zero.

The governor of Minnesota has apparently cancelled school in the entire state on Monday.  He did this yesterday.  My local school corporation/state government isn’t quite as on the ball but I figure there is exactly zero chance that there’s going to be school on Monday (and if there is, I’m betting we’ll have around 30% of our students) and a pretty damn good chance that there won’t be school on Tuesday either.  There’s always a delicate balancing act in situations like this; on the one hand, fucking cold; on the other hand, many of our kids are flat-out going to be safer and, more importantly, better fed at school than they will be at home.  I know for damn sure some of my students get their only hot meals of the day at school.  Then again, a lot of those kids who aren’t getting fed properly at home don’t have coats, either.

Now, in this specific case, it’s pretty clear-cut– if there are really ambient temperatures of fifty below zero outside, the buses aren’t even going to start– but if you’ve ever wondered why the big districts don’t close at the same rates that smaller/more rural ones do, that’s probably a big part of it; student safety cuts both ways.  Either way, I don’t really mind; I’ve had enough of being off of work and am looking forward to getting back– which will probably last through all of an hour or so of actual school.

The wife made a trip to the grocery this morning, returning with piles and piles of food; the two of us sat down and put together three or four days of meals and went out and got everything we needed.  I’mma eat real good for the next few dinners, y’all:

As usual, recipes are heavy on Thug Kitchen and Albert Burneko, and both of these sumbitches need to give me a cookbook I can buy now.

Also?  My wife bought me a mortar and pestle.  Which means I can grind up those dried ghost chilies I bought a while ago and make death chili.  Which I won’t even be able to eat, and neither will anyone else, but omg excited.  I need to find some uses for it other than grinding up those peppers, I think, but surely there’s something out there.

Wait!  I have one:  I can also commit felonious assault, because holy shit is this thing bigger than I thought it was going to be:

1511328_10152077570593926_11820727_nStay warm the next couple days, y’all.

 

Sweet to death: spherical Oreo things!

On By Luther M. SilerIn Cooking4 Comments

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We’re all bringing treats to work this week; this was the experimental dessert I alluded to the other day. The recipe claims these are called “Oreo Balls;” I’m partial to “Reindeer Shit” myself. Super easy instructions:

1) Smash the hell out of a package of Oreos.
2) Fold in a package of cream cheese.
3) Roll them into tiny little balls (these are probably too big; this dessert is incredibly rich)
4) Place on wax paper on a cookie sheet; freeze for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, melt a package of chocolate chips.
5) Use a spoon to dip the balls into the chocolate, then put them back on the wax paper and back into the fridge. Eat.

One package of each thing made 30 of them and they were probably too big; I’d shoot for 40 in a batch. They were gone quickly. Good stuff.

In which a good idea is a very bad idea

On By Luther M. SilerIn Cooking, idiocy1 Comment

IMG_0880Yesterday was kinda weird.  Right after waking up in the morning (in fact, what woke me up in the morning) I got sick again.  At least as sick as I’d been the other night, but… uh… different directionality, if you know what I mean, and if you don’t feel free to make something up.  I spent all morning lying around and moaning, with my wife alternately telling me just to go back to bed or to at least try and take a shower.

Then lunch happened.  I had to force myself to eat something; I don’t even remember what I had.  And suddenly, wonder of wonders, I felt a hundred percent better.  In fact, I felt so much better that I ended up making dinner:  farfalle!  Nothing super complicated; pasta with onions, garlic, red pepper, and spicy Italian sausage sautéed in olive oil, with a  sauce made from heavy cream and crushed tomatoes, topped with fresh basil and pecorino cheese.  I’d not had farfalle before; it’s delicious and I may well reach for it instead of spaghetti the next time I want pasta.

This is how healthy I was feeling, by the way: it seemed to me a good idea to make spicy food for dinner.

It was not.  It took about an hour after dinner to be certain of that.  But trust me.  It was not.

I went to bed weak and shaky again and not sure if I was going to work today; waking up at 4:30 in the morning with urgent needs answered that question, and I’m typing this at my desk in my office, back in “completely fine except for five minutes out of every sixty” mode.  I will be at work tomorrow and for the rest of the week if I have to install a Port-A-Potty in the hallway outside my room; putting a sub into the last week before Winter Break is just not fair and it would probably be good if my kids actually learned something during this window.

I am making Experimental Dessert tonight; I shall report back on that tomorrow.  Assuming I can walk and breathe, which I ought to be able to.  (I’m eating the rest of the pasta for lunch, BTdubs; digestive issues be damned, it was good.)

More later; I have a Real Post planned but 350 words of lead-in about illness and food doesn’t really seem right.

Is that a plank in my eye?

On By Luther M. SilerIn Cooking, Parenting, Politics3 Comments

20131129-104132.jpgSo here’s a novel way to have Thanksgiving: don’t have any turkey, because your oven betrays you again and the turkey doesn’t even come out of the goddamn oven until everything else is on the table and cooling, and then you find out (because you didn’t make the turkey, and you’ve never made a turkey, and you didn’t know this) that a turkey has to “rest” for half a goddamn hour after coming out of the oven and therefore everything else is going to be well and truly goddamned eaten before the turkey is even ready.

S’fun. You should do it. We call it Side Dish Thanksgiving. My mother did some sort of corn casserole thing that was basically just corn and sautéed onions and bloody cream cheese, of all things. It was delicious. We did Thug Kitchen’s stuffing recipe (needed a teensy bit more liquid, but otherwise great) and Albert Burneko’s mashed potatoes with roasted garlic, because we can’t cook a meal around here anymore without referencing either Thug Kitchen or Foodspin and really why would you even want to cook without using recipes from one of the two anyway. And green bean casserole and crescent rolls and a multitude of pies (which is the proper collective for pie) and two different kinds of deviled eggs, because have you ever made deviled eggs with sriracha? Holy God.

I am not going to be shopping today.

I’m getting more conflicted about holidays as I get older. I boycotted Christmas entirely last year; I made it clear to everyone that I wasn’t buying any presents for anyone and they were not to buy anything for me either; I really want to raise the boy in a way that he grows up substantially less materialistic than I am and one of the main ways to do that, I think, is to cut the emphasis on getting stuff around holidays.

Sounds great, right? All principled and shit, until I get to the part where I tell you that I ordered a PS3 (not a typo; 3) from Amazon yesterday so that I didn’t have to go stand in line at Gamestop at midnight to fight for one of the eight exactly-identically-ridiculous PS3 packages that they have in-store. A 250 GB PS3, which can’t be had for $199 by itself, plus two games, one of which is the entire reason I want a PS3, for $199, plus Saturday shipping for less than tax would have been. It’ll show up tomorrow sometime.

Which is as far as my “no materialism/no shopping on Thanksgiving/no shopping on Black Friday” thing gets me: I spent $200 on an electronic doohickey that I don’t actually need, on Thanksgiving, so that a low-wage Amazon employee can package it and mail it on Black Friday so that somebody else can scramble to get it to me on a Saturday by 8:00. Which should be about when I’m getting home from work. So, yeah, I’m all big and bad and principled and won’t go shopping on Black Friday… because I ordered my shit online on Thanksgiving.

Maybe I work on my own materialism before I try reprogramming the boy.