Things I'm Never Going To Do On This Food Blog.

I am never going give you a recipe without giving up the original source
I can't figure out what is wrong with some people. What's the mentality in trying to steal a recipe or photo and passing it off as your own? My wife and I are both teachers. We understand the importance of citing your sources. Make changes. Make it your own. Credit where you got the original information. This is not difficult. 

I am never going to knowingly disappoint you
I'm here to entertain and hopefully provide some useful recipes and information. Sometimes, there will be duds. I can't deny that will happen. I will, however, willingly identify said duds so you know to proceed with caution when using that information!

I am never going to make you run around on your own for goofy ingredients
I normally try at all costs to avoid expensive or hard to find ingredients. When possible, I'll tell you where to find them, or at the very least what to substitute for them. I'm not going to leave you flailing around in the kitchen trying to figure out what to do about a troublesome ingredient.

I am never going to make you sob in frustration at an overly complicated recipe
Much like the last comment, I'm going to do what I can to avoid overly complicated recipes. I will, however, attempt to make them now and again. I've been known to make a fairly convincing Beef Wellington. If that happens, I'm going to walk through the process with you. I'll provide lots of reference pictures. I'll let you know if something worked great or didn't work. Don't fret, we're all in this together.

I'm going to keep doing this food page/blog even if you stop visiting
I really started doing this for myself. I just wanted somewhere to store recipes and notes. It then became a reference for a limited group of friends and family. It eventually snowballed into what it is today. It was here before you found it and it will be here long after you grow tired of me or I invariably say something offensive and you leave. I'm not going anywhere.

I'm never going to try to be something I'm not. I'm just going to try to be helpful
I'm not operating on false pretenses. I know I'm not a chef. I barely qualify as a cook most days. I'm a kitchen hack and I'm fine with that. I have my moments of great success where I feel like I can do this for a living. Then I try to make cornbread in the waffle iron and realize maybe I should stick to education. So I'll do that. I'll share information with you and together we will learn in the kitchen.  





Take a moment to soak that all in. 







Yeah, you just got Rickrolled.

You are totally justified in un-liking my Facebook page now.

Good times!

Ingredients I Never Seem To Have In Stock

     I can't even count how many times I've gotten pumped to cook a recipe, then had to stop because I was missing a critical ingredient. Time and time again I tell myself that there are certain things that I must keep in stock if I'm going to be successful in the kitchen. Time and time again I completely forget to pick those things up at the grocery store. Some of you may ask "Why not just run to the store?" It's matter of principle. I screwed up by not having the item in stock. I am therefore entitled to a meltdown/tantrum until I can find a substitute for the item or an alternate recipe.

KHAAAAAAAn't find any smoked paprika!

Here's a few of my regulars:

Buttermilk
I almost never have this in the kitchen. The one time I bought it I never used it. It just sat in the fridge until it went off. I almost got completely derailed on St. Patrick's day when I went to make some soda bread and realized it called for buttermilk. There was no way I was going to put on pants and go to the market, so I just found out how to use milk and lemon juice to make ersatz buttermilk. Now I only need to worry about not having milk and lemon juice in the kitchen.

Heavy Cream
I am continually in need of heavy cream. I have lost count of the times I've found a recipe I really want to make and had to find something else because it asked for heavy cream. On those rare occasions where I do haul my carcass to the market in town, more often than not, they're out.

Gruyere
The bottom line is Gruyere is too damned expensive to just keep in the house. If I'm using Gruyere, it's because I planned the meal way in advance.  Maybe if I hit the lottery I'll consider keeping it in regular rotation.

Prosciutto
I love prosciutto. The problem is, it's not one of those things that pops into my mind when I'm making a grocery list. For me, prosciutto is a weekend special meal ingredient. It's also not something the local market carries, so if I want it, I'm driving half an hour round trip to go get it.

Spanish Chorizo
This isn't for lack of looking. For whatever reason, I can't get the cured chorizo anywhere near me. You know where I can find it? Target. Not even kidding. Unfortunately, that target is nearly a half hour away. However, there's a really good liquor store right down the street so it's not a total loss.

Good times!

Food I Have Trouble With

     I'm a grown man. I should be beyond this sort of stuff. My tastes have matured and I should be able to enjoy the myriad of foods available to me. This is not the case. There are just some foods and ingredients that I can't handle. Sometimes it's the taste, sometimes it's the consistency, sometimes it's childhood scarring.

"Souffles don't rise down here. When you're down here with us, you won't rise too!"

      Here is a small sampling of some of the foods I can't get past:

Blue Cheese

I know I should like this. I LOVE cheese. I have a few problems with blue cheese. For one thing, it's too pungent. Every time I have it in a dish, it tends to overpower everything. I also have a problem with the fact that it's fundamentally moldy cheese. When I see stuff growing on the cheese in my fridge, the first thing to go through my mind is generally not "Oh boy! A gastric delight!" You'd be pissed if somebody threw a piece of fuzzy cheddar on your burger and told you it was supposed to be that way.

Cherry Tomatoes

This is almost embarrassing. When I was like five or six, there was a cherry tomato in my salad. I picked it up with my fingers and bit into it. It squirted me directly in the eye, nearly blinding me. To this day, something like 35 years later, I still can't eat a raw cherry tomato. True story.

Swedish Potato Sausage

My mother-in-law's side of the family is Swedish, and year after year she attempts to inflict these on me. She calls them "potato skorka," but if you do a Google image search, you don't see pictures of sausages. Swedish Potato Sausages are actually called "potatiskorv" which leads me to believe that the Swedes are afraid to say the sausage's true name. Possibly they fear they will summon an angry sausage god that will lay waste to their town.  Nevertheless, these are just horrible. Imagine a bratwurst made of nothing but salt and gristle. Then make it an unappealing shade of beige. 

Potatiskorv knows the gate. Potatiskorv is the gate. Potatiskorv is the key and guardian of the gate.
Past, present, future, all are one in Potatiskorv.
He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. 

Swiss Chard

Tastes like dirt. It doesn't matter what I do with it. I've steamed, blanched, stir-fried, boiled, pickled, baked it in with other things, left it raw. It just tastes like I'm eating chunks of my yard. It's very aesthetically pleasing though, and ends up in the garden more for cosmetic reasons than anything else. 

Whole Mushrooms

If a mushroom is sliced and cooked, I'm fine. If it's a whole mushroom, I can't do it. Even a stuffed mushroom cap. There's something about the consistency. When I bite into a whole mushroom I get this weird feeling that somehow Freud would have something to say about it.

Panettone

Don't get me wrong, I love my in-laws to death, but they have some strange tastes. Normally I love Italian food. My father-in-law's side is Italian and they have great food. The desserts are wonderful. Except panettone. Every year these are secreted on my holiday table. I see that cardboard box and just despair. They are the consistency of a kitchen sponge and fairly devoid of notable flavor. They are useful in case of the apocalypse as they have a shelf life that would make a Twinkie envious. We opened one last December and it was largely unchanged into mid-March. 

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!

Substituting Ingredients

     This week's recipe allowed for some substitution of ingredients. As I mentioned, creative substitution is one of the core skills in the MCK.  Many of the magazines and cookbooks I use have absolutely fantastic recipes that call for things I simply don't stock in my kitchen, or can't find at my markets even if I did want to keep them in stock.  If you're like me, you'll also make substitutions to keep costs down. Granted, there are times when you simply can not make a substitution.

Case in point

     I'm not going to waste time listing the myriad substitutions for ingredients. There are plenty of web sites and books out there that can do it better and faster than I can. In my recipes, I'll definitely list any substitutions I think might apply. I will give you a few of the ones I use a lot, though:

• 1 teaspoon dried herbs = 1 tablespoon fresh
• 2-3 tablespoons bottled lemon juice = juice of one medium lemon
• basil = most herbs (If this substitution ruins your recipe, don't come after me. Anybody who knows me knows that taking my advice comes with a certain level of risk.)
• red onion=close enough to a shallot

   Sometimes you may end up substituting nothing in place of an ingredient. For dinner last night, the wife made a vegetable pasta bake that called for fennel. Neither of us is a big fan of fennel. We left it out and don't feel the dish was lacking for it.   If you're familiar with a recipe, try changing it up. Start with a basic tomato sauce recipe. Add garlic next time. Leave out some onion. Throw in some neck bones (my folks used to do that all the time). Play. Have fun.

     Don't be afraid to experiment with substitutions. The second time I made apple butter, I substituted Jim Beam for 1/4 of the water asked for in the recipe. Now my apple butter is in high demand. If you're good, I'll post the recipe. Some of my greatest successes in the kitchen have occurred because I decided to swap out a few things here and there to cover ingredients I was missing.  Exercise some caution, however. Don't go making more than one or two substitutions if you can help it. Change too much and you run the risk of completely changing the nature of the recipe. This isn't always a bad thing, but at least give the original recipe a try as closely as you can the first time. Most importantly, enjoy.