Completely Odd Cooking Habits

     I think everybody has an odd cooking habit or two. A certain way they stir, a special pan. That sort of thing. Not in my family. My family's odd habits are a bit more esoteric and idiosyncratic (BONUS FOR ADVANCED LANGUAGE SKILLS).

Toothpicks in cakes
I'm not talking about the time-honored tradition of using a toothpick to check if a cake or bread is done through. I'm talking about my grandmother's (my dad's mom, henceforth referred to as "Loretta") predilection for hiding toothpicks INSIDE the cake. I remember she made a pretty awesome Fred Flintstone cake for my birthday when I was little. I also remember nearly choking to death on a toothpick buried in the cake. My dad pierced the roof of his mouth with another toothpick hidden inside. I recall exactly what he said to his mom: "JESUS LORETTA, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU? WHY ARE THERE TOOTHPICKS INSIDE THE CAKE?" She went on to explain that she needed the toothpicks to support the cake and keep it from collapsing. She apparently had special load-bearing toothpicks. The problem was, you never knew if you had a piece with a toothpick until you speared one through your cheek.

Eating Loretta's cakes was very much like playing Minesweeper.

Cooking without a recipe
In all my years living at home, not once did I ever see either of my parents consult a cookbook or recipe. No exaggeration here. Never. I'm assuming they memorized recipes and then burned the paper copy in the interest of National Security. My dad's chili varied from batch to batch. Apart from his standard 1lb meat=1 can tomato sauce=1 can kidney beans, it was up for grabs. My mom had a recipe that consisted of putting a load of rice and water in a baking dish, throwing in a bunch of chicken breasts, onions and green peppers and covering the whole thing in tomato sauce. Everything was wonderful, but to this day, I still have no idea how to exactly replicate anything from them. Maybe that was the point.

Cryptic Names
Many recipes in my family had really goofball names. "Fall-apart Chicken" was fairly self-explanatory, but somewhat ominous. Was my grandmother (my mom's mom, henceforth referred to as Bubby, not the toothpick grandma) referring to chicken cooked so long the meat simply fell from the bone, or was the chicken leprous? "Wally's Dressing" was another classic. No indication as to what is in there. This sounds more like a reason not to go into Wally's room than a recipe.

"Stay out of the bedroom, dear. Wally's dressing."

Possibly it was referring to bandages for a wound on Wally. Actually, it was a combination of oil, elbow macaroni and chicken livers.

Horrifying Jell-O Suspensions
I'm not talking about the fun fruit and marshmallow in a Jell-O mold we all know and love. My mom made a great one with whipped cream that was layered. Very picturesque. No, I'm talking about the occasional Jell-O that made it to our table from some of the more damaged members of my family and their friends. Specifically, I remember a story of someone serving my Bubby a Jell-O with gefilte fish suspended in it. Green Jell-O no less. As the story goes, Bubby blew a gasket. It is said she announced, "WHO PUTS GEFILTE FISH IN JELL-O?! FUCKING [the religion of the person in question. I'll just go ahead and leave that part out as to not offend anybody]." My Bubby was a firecracker.

     I'm sure if I take some time and work with my therapist I can dredge up more alarming memories for you for another day.

Good times!

Zucchini Boats

     I do most of the cooking in the house. This is by design. The wife doesn't approve of my cleaning methods, which consist largely of wiping everything off the counter on to the floor. We have struck a bargain. I cook, she does the bulk of the cleaning apart from my non-stick pan and cast iron skillet. There was an incident years ago in which her enthusiasm with a scouring pad resulted in the untimely demise of my Emeril non-stick egg pan.

     There are times when I insist the wife step up and cook. I have a couple of meals that, even though I am fully capable of cooking them myself, I prefer that she make them. I consider them her recipes. She made them first. It's only right that the onus of cooking them always fall to her. Among these recipes are a wicked good tuna casserole, zucchini bread, potato casserole and zucchini boats. She found the recipe for these zucchini boats on an ancient CD-ROM: "Easy Chef's One Million Recipes." She actually made a couple of modifications (a girl after my own heart); the changes and notes will, as always, be in blue.

Ingredients

• 3 lg. zucchini
• 2 tbsp. onion, minced
• 3 tbsp. butter
• 1 c. soft bread crumbs (she uses an equal amount of dry Italian bread crumbs. You know, the ones in the cardboard tube)
• 1/2 c. tomatoes, cooked and chopped (she just sauteed them in a little olive oil for a few minutes)
• Salt & pepper to taste
• 1/2 lb. Monterey Jack cheese, shredded (she subs in cheeses at a whim. Hardcore. Sometimes she'll use Mozarella. This time she used a 6-cheese Italian mix.)

Directions

1. Cook zucchini in boiling salted water 10 minutes. 
2. Cut in halves and scoop out centers. Mix pulp with remaining ingredients. 

   

   Don't completely gut the zucchini.
   You're just scooping a trench down the middle to hold the filling.

3. Fill zucchini and top with cheese. 
4. Bake in 350 degree oven for 15 minutes. 

These are great served with marinara sauce!

Serves 6.

Good times!

Terms I Can't Bring Myself To Use

Sammie
As much as I like Rachel Ray, I just can't bring myself to say "sammie" in place of "sandwich." I don't call them "sammiches," so it feels wrong. It's a bit too cutesy for me. Rachael Ray has a proclivity for needless frippery in regards to culinary nomenclature. See what I did there? I could have just said she uses cutesy language for her food. Instead I needlessly changed out the language. A sandwich doesn't need a nickname. It needs a side of potato chips and a pickle spear.  Also, I associate the word with something entirely different.

Probably not what Rachael Ray had in mind.

Slider
"Slider" is a very specific term to me. It does not refer to any small sandwich. To me, "slider" refers to a hamburger from White Castle. I feel like my belief system is being challenged when I see any fanciful small sandwich called a slider. Sliders are called such for good reasons. They slide out of the box. They slide down your throat. They slide out of...well, you get the idea. If you have a small hamburger or sandwich and you didn't get it from a White Castle, it's not a slider. It's just a small hamburger or sandwich.

Harold and Kumar enjoying sliders (or slyders), aka White Castle hamburgers.

Spatchcock
The problem here is that, according to my wife, I have the maturity of a 12 year old. So when a recipe calls for spatchcock, or someone tells me that they had some spatchcock last night, I have a hard time not reacting inappropriately.

I'll just keep calling it "butterflied" until I can grow up.

Fondant
 I know fondant is all the rage with cakes and cupcakes and the like. There is no denying the end result of skilled fondant use is truly amazing.

Then you get something like this.

However, fondant does not look appetizing to me in any form. It reminds me of paraffin, which I try to avoid using in my cooking if at all possible.  Nor does it even sound appetizing. Fondant sounds like something you'd use in masonry.

Well, that's enough gentle fun for today. Good times!

An Observation On My Parents' Cooking

     I was lucky enough to grow up in a house where both parents cooked. Granted, they did not cook every night. Both of my parents worked full time jobs. Mom usually wasn't home until about 5 PM and Dad an hour or so later. They wouldn't cook every night. Usually they'd cook a few big meals that we could eat on the rest of the week.
    On its own, this isn't anything special. Lots of parents do this. What stands out in my memory is that I don't recall them ever consulting a recipe when they cooked. I can't remember many of my recipes, no matter how often I cook them. I'm completely incapable of making my meatballs without the recipe handy. My parents either had fantastic memories, or were tremendous freestyle cooks.
     Generally my Mom came up with the core recipes. Dad would often just riff on her recipes. My Dad's chili that I've spoken of before is actually based on my Mom's recipe. She had some solid recipes. She did a chicken, veggie and rice dish that she could throw together in minutes. I swear by her meatloaf recipe. Even my wife, who normally doesn't like meatloaf, likes this meatloaf. She had a London Broil with garlic potatoes that was astounding. And as a Jewish Mother, she could deal out the chicken soup and matzoh balls like no body's business. Some day I shall speak to you of her sausage and neck bones in tomato sauce.
     Dad had his standards as well. He did a fantastic linguine in white clam sauce. He was the master of all things grilled. Nobody could make an omelet as good as him. His chili was the stuff of legend. He made a wonderful fried matzoh for breakfast. He eventually would take over Thanksgiving cooking duties from my Mom and did a wonderful job of it.
     I owe a good deal of my passion for cooking to my parents. Without ever trying, they showed me that, with very little effort, you could put good, home-made food on the table. There's a little of my Mom and Dad in everything I cook.

Oh, stop it.

Good times!

Why I Cook, A Story In 1600 Calories

     I've been seriously cooking for a bit over four years now. I really enjoy cooking, but it wasn't a critical part of my life. It was just something I did to put food on the table. Most of the time it was crap food. We ordered out a lot. We ate out a lot. When you see my entries for Nutritionally Irresponsible Cooking, this is the sort of thing I was regularly putting on the table. Which leads to a doctor's appointment I had.
     I was just getting a routine physical for work. The doctor took my blood pressure. He asked me if my head hurt. He asked me if my vision was impaired. He asked me if I had any chest pain. I told him no on all accounts. He waited a bit and took my blood pressure again. He then asked the same questions. I told him if he kept asking me, I was likely to eventually develop a headache or chest pain. He arranged for me to have an echo-cardiogram. He was worried about edema,  high blood pressure, thickening of the heart. I went in and had the echo.

Sorry.

     In the end, it was nothing. I had mildly elevated blood pressure and was retaining water. My heart was fine. I was put on blood pressure medication and diuretics. The doctor told me I needed to drop weight. The doctor had successfully scared the hell out of me.  I was a shade over 320lbs. I asked his advice for weight loss. His advice was this:

• Limit intake to 1600 calories a day
• Most non-starchy fruits and vegetables can be counted as zero calories
• Take in the calories however you want. If you want to take your daily calories in ice cream, have at it.
• Once a week, you can double your caloric intake if desired

     That was it. And that was the genius of it. If I wanted to eat sweets, I could. I'd just run out of calories fast. If I wanted a big-ass salad, basically all I paid for in calories was for dressing and non-veggie toppings like cheese, eggs and meat. I found a good calorie counter for my iPod. I entered everything diligently. Every meal. Every day. I started carefully considering what I ate. If I kept to lower calorie foods, I naturally gravitated to healthier items. 

     That's where I realized I needed to cook more. If I cooked from scratch, I had total control of the calories in the meal. I could tweak recipes. I found 300 calorie cookbooks. I fell in love with cooking. I enjoyed making something that didn't at all taste like it was lo-cal, but actually was. The weight started coming off. To date, I've lost about 65 pounds with no notable exercise. I've been stuck at about 255-260 for the past two years. This speaks volumes for the diet. It creates weight loss, then maintains that weight loss. Now I've started to add regular exercise to the mix, and little by little, the weight is coming off again. My goal is 235. We'll see what happens. In the meantime, I will continue doing what I enjoy, and that is putting good food on the table.

Good times!

Nutritionally Irresponsible Cooking: The Cooking Mixture

     The first time I had this particular dish, I was camping with some friends in Kentucky. We were wrapping up a long day of doing whatever it is we were doing. I remember shotguns and building a barn door. The rest is kind of hazy. Anyway, we were tired and hungry. When the subject of dinner came up, some one suggested "The Cooking Mixture." The rest of the group nodded sagely at this suggestion. I had no idea what the Hell they babbling about. I just sort of shrugged and gave a weak OK. I just wanted to eat.
     A backpack was brought out and from that backpack came an assortment of cans. A cooking pot was located and set upon a small propane stove. Cans were opened and dumped in. A block of Spam was diced and added. Vienna Sausages might have been put in. The whole concoction was set to bubble. A large bag of Fritos was opened and dumped in. Finally, with some ceremony, a bottle of Tabasco sauce was brought out. I estimate about half of it was shaken into the mixture. We ate every last bit. I'm sure this is a direct cause of my low-grade high blood pressure.
     There is no doubt the Cooking Mixture was delicious. It was however, Horrifyingly Unhealthy. The amount of sodium and fat in this dish has to be off the scale. I'm honestly afraid to calculate it. We speculate that the dish is actually healthy due to convoluted logic. We figure that the sodium pushes our blood pressure so high that the fat never has a chance to settle and cause blockages. Granted, if our blood pressure should ever drop, our arteries would immediately harden solid and we'd drop dead on the spot.

QUICK! QUICK! GET ME SOME MORE COO....

        This is one of those recipes that changes depending on who is cooking it at the time. The version I'm showing you today is not exactly how it was the first time I ate it. Why is that? Simple, you're not supposed to remember. It's a fluid recipe, much like my chili. The base remains the same (pork and beans) but pretty much everything else is up for grabs. Throw in some chopped up Slim Jims. How about a bag of Beer Nuts? The sky's the limit!

Ingredients

• 1 can, 15 ounce Beefaroni
• 1 can, 12 ounce Spam, diced
• 1 can, 15 ounce pork and beans or baked beans
• 1 bag,10.5 ounce chili cheese Fritos
• Tabasco sauce

Directions

1. Open cans and deposit into cooking receptacle
2. Apply heat until bubbly (the ingredients, not you)
3. When bubbly, pour in the bag of Fritos and Tabasco sauce to taste (don't be a wuss, put in half a bottle)
4. Serve with copious amounts of cheap, evil-smelling beer.

Good times!

Cooking Vocab: Expensive Ingredients

     I have a lot of cookbooks and cooking magazines.  After careful perusal of said sources, I have noticed there are clear indicators of an expensive recipe. There are certain ingredients that will have a  distinct impact on your bank accounts.  Ingredients that should at least include a hand-job for what you have to pay.  Here is a small sampling of words that will cost you money:

Any Ingredient that Involves Molecular Gastronomy:  This fad can go away now. I have no need to play Bill Nye the Kitchen Guy. If you're using liquid nitrogen in your cooking you probably have too much time and money on your hands.

Gruyere: This cheese is a go-to for fondues, baking and melts. If you go to a good restaurant, it should be floating atop your French onion soup. It is mellow and delicious. It is also about $15-20 per pound. Just buy some Swiss or Emmental.

Kobe Beef: It used to be if you bought Kobe beef a while back, you weren't buying Kobe beef. It wasn't actually legal in the United States. Well, now it is, and it's hundreds of dollars for a steak. It may be the greatest piece of meat ever. But it has no place in the MCK. If you're blowing enough money to feed a family of four for a couple of weeks on a single piece of meat, you are truly an irredeemable asshole.

More than likely enjoying a piece of Kobe beef as you read this.

Prosciutto: My God I love prosciutto. One of my favorite recipes is a pork loin stuffed with Italian sausage and wrapped in prosciutto. However, that prosciutto costs in the range of $7-15 a pound depending on quality.

Saffron: About $100 per ounce. There are no acceptable substitutes. Is your paella going to survive without it? Probably.

Truffle: I don't care if it's the solid or the oil. I don't care how wonderful they are. They're damned mushrooms. They're over $1,000 a pound, with some varieties soaring into the $3,000 and up range. I'll just buy a container of porcini and blow the other $990 on booze.

     And that's enough gentle fun for today. The only thing better than a lame post is a lame post posted late.
Good times!

Thanksgiving

     Well, it's getting to be that time of the year again. Thanksgiving is right around the corner. I have now cooked Thanksgiving dinner for the last nine years. Each year it gets a little easier. Cooking Thanksgiving does not have to be a traumatic ordeal. It likely still will be, but I am about to regale you with several handy tips that have proven extremely useful in my Middle Class Kitchen. These tips may save you a few bucks, your sanity and possibly the lives of your guests.

Set the menu in advance
Figure out what all your side dishes and desserts will be and stick to that menu. Make your list of ingredients and stick to it. You will not be needing anything else because of the next step.

Set your guest list in stone
Know who's coming well in advance. You have a vegetarian relative come in from out of town at the last minute? Too bad. They can get a nice salad at Denny's. You're not making special dishes at the last minute.

Hold out for a sale/giveaway on turkeys
This is a yearly tradition. Usually if I wait long enough, I can find a grocery store that will give you a 12-15 pound turkey if you buy $50 in groceries. You know damned well you're going to spend that much on ingredients so just wait. Contrary to popular belief, no store is going to run out of turkeys.

Prepare as much as you can ahead of time
We do a number of dishes that can be done a day or so in advance. Most casseroles will hold up just fine. Rolls can even be done days ahead and frozen.  Get those pies done the night before.

REMEMBER TO DEFROST THE GODDAMNED TURKEY
For the love of all that is holy, give the turkey enough time to defrost. Don't be that person soaking a frozen bird in a sink full of hot water. A completely defrosted turkey is important.

Especially if you're deep-frying it

And while you're defrosting, don't forget to take out the baggie of spare parts. I actually managed to forget and leave it in there while the bird cooked. No harm done. I think.

Keep your family out of the kitchen at all costs
I don't care what you do to keep them out of there. They are going to want to help and they must not be allowed to do so. Send them away. Let them watch a parade. If they enjoy watching large college students run into each other on television, have them do that. Just keep them out. They'll want to make slight adjustments or offer advice.

Manage the clock
Figure out how long each dish will take to cook. Make a little chart. Put in the dishes according to the chart so they come out all at once, or close to it. You'll thank me for this tip some day.

Just use canned cranberries
Nobody has ever said how great the home-made cranberry sauce was. Just open the can and dump it out. One of my favorite Thanksgiving memories is that cylinder of cranberry sauce with the can ridges still in it.

Drink
Keep a couple of bottles of wine handy. Maintaining a nice buzz is critical to making it through the Thanksgiving dinner prep. You say you're starting cooking at 9am? Great! Zinfandel is a great accompaniment to bagels and cream cheese. Plus, if you're half in the bag, you're much less likely to stab an in-law in the head with a carving knife!

Good times!

Cooking Vocab: How You Know You're In Trouble

     Cooking has an extremely extensive vocabulary, one which I'm not motivated to learn in its entirety. In fact, there are certain words that let me know if a recipe is likely to be a colossal pain in the ass. Words that indicate the slightest error will result in a gut-wrenching nightmare. Those specific words that indicate a recipe is likely to be, as they would call it in the Old West, "Highfalutin." I find recipes with many of these words are often meant to impress, and that impression often costs more than I am willing to spend. This list is by no means comprehensive:

Aioli: I use aioli on my BLT's all the time. IT'S CALLED MAYONNAISE. Yes, I know that aioli can be more than that, but slapping an "aioli" on a recipe makes it sound freakishly pretentious. "Please, try my fried baloney sandwich with honeyed kohlrabi aioli."

Best Ever: These words indicate a recipe that will be made in a slow cooker and is not, in fact, the best ever.

Crudite: IT'S A FUCKING VEGGIE PLATTER.

Deglaze: Not a terribly time consuming or difficult process, but if done with wine, is a great chance to set your stove on fire.

Emulsification: Pretentious. You're just mixing stuff that doesn't want to be mixed. Like salad dressing. Or hollandaise sauce. Or your family. Just call it mixing. Nobody is impressed.

Foam: Foam should be in your beer. Period.

Gremolata: While gremolatas are usually nothing more than lemon peel and some chopped herbs, something about the word and it's placement in a recipe strike me as needlessly pompous. "Chicken with Gremolata." What's wrong with "Herbed Chicken?"

Slider: My good friend Rachael Ray is horrifically guilty of using this term. It seems any small sandwich is a "slider." Please take this simple quiz before applying "slider" to your small sandwich. Is your small sandwich actually a hamburger you bought from White Castle? No? Then it's just a small sandwich. Knock it off.

     That's enough for now. Join me next time when I actually post about something useful! Good times!

On Gordon Ramsay

     I am not kidding when I say that Gordon Ramsay is one of the main reasons why I cook. I'm not talking the FOX TV Gordon Ramsay. I'm talking the BBC Gordon Ramsay.  If you've only watched Ramsay on FOX, all you've seen is a Scotsman screaming profanity. Don't get me wrong, he screams profanities on the BBC as well. However, he also imparts a great deal of useful cooking knowledge there as well.

Like when to use a nonstick pan.

     While much of what he cooks is complicated, with expensive, hard to find ingredients, he does do quite a bit of far less imposing cooking. His Cookalong Live series of videos on the Channel 4 website offer outstanding tips for the aspiring home cook. These videos walk you through everything from making pastry crusts, to cooking whole meals, to simply sharpening a knife. I also enjoy his show "The F Word." The format is like a variety show. It's hugely entertaining and each season follows him raising some animal or another to eat at the end of the season.  Good times.

     So what's the point of this little diatribe? Mostly to fill in the Friday post. But really, I'm babbling on about  Ramsay because it appears that he's honest and passionate about his cooking. He wants everything to be just right. And then there's a quote you'll hear endlessly: "Simple, honest food, made from locally grown ingredients". That's what I'm looking to do here. It doesn't have to be spectacularly complicated to be spectacularly good. Whatever it is you're cooking, just use the best ingredients you can and cook it right. Enjoy!

Welcome to the Middle Class Kitchen

     I notice that there's a proliferation of food blogs on the internet. I also notice that the economy is tanking and that things do not appear to be getting better any time soon. Food and the economy are linked like sausages. That's where the problem lies for the average middle class kitchen. I see wonderful recipes in magazines, television shows and on the internet. Unfortunately, many of these recipes use ingredients I can't pronounce, let alone afford. I'd love to use Gruyere in my cooking, but not when a pound of it is almost 30% of what we spend in a month for groceries.

Delicious and $20 a pound.

     I love to cook. I love to present large, fancy meals for my family and friends. It pleases me to no end to have that moment at the table where everybody stops talking because they are too focused on the food. I want to do this thing that I love and not go broke doing it. Will I eventually do a recipe that's pricey? Yes, it can't be helped. Unless it's absolutely required, I will do what I can to keep costs down.

     So what's my goal here? I want to talk about food and drink for the Middle Class. You may ask, "what is the Middle Class Kitchen?" Statistically, it's a kitchen in a house with an average income of around $30K per wage earner. There's two of us in my house, so that's easy math. I'll touch on more specifics later on.

There will be no molecular gastronomy or degustation menus in our home. If I can't get the ingredients at a local market or at a reasonable price, I'm going to start substituting. I don't need to break the bank to cook well.

   I simply want more people to sit at a table where the primary sounds are those of clinking silverware and happy diners.

“Oh, do you like it? I'm not partial to desserts myself, but this is excellent.”