OPTION 1:
I think it would be easy to reduce crime if you told people that heaven were like dining at Orange Shabu.

OPTION 2:
I HAVE HAD WAGYU BEEF SHABU SHABU: BEHOLD MY WORKS YE MIGHTY AND DESPAIR.

SO GOOD

A few blocks away from Taipei 101, this place is a chic Japanese take on traditional Chinese hot pot. The receptacle was a copper pot heated over a gas stove in the center of each table. Tables were separated by linen blinds. While I’m not entirely sure I am even qualified to list all of the stuff that went into the hot pot, a couple of things stand out.

• Oh my god wagyu beef. Soooo delicious.
• We had a special kind of pork, but the language barrier prevented me from understanding what made it special. It was served with a creamy sesame sauce, though, and that was phenomenal.
• Fresh shrimp and fish balls made by plopping the raw materials straight into the hot pot out of a piece of bamboo.
• We were served a special kind of tea, which tasted kind of like echinacea, but gentle and not medicinal. Its intention was to cool the body down after the hot pot.
• The almond tofu was like no almond tofu I’ve ever had. It was still silky and delicious, but held together much more firmly than almond tofu from a box.
• Instead of putting cellophane noodles into the broth at the end of the meal, they made it into porridge. Who was too fat to eat a lot of the porridge? This kid. However, we reserved a ton for breakfast tomorrow.

I was treated to hot pot because my aunt insisted that I should go easy on the greasy disaster on day one. Taiwanese food is less flavorful and more gentle than mainland Chinese food–she was worried that the broth would be too light for my boorish American taste buds. However, the broth we made (using, among the other ingredients, a combination of napa and white cabbage) was aromatic and complex, and made an excellent porridge at the end of the meal.

Tomorrow: the adventures of Chinese barbequed sea cucumber, aka, Jo’s most favoritest dish in the world.

Lunch bonus!: Taiwanese beef bourgignon is not nearly as good as Sophiese beef bourgignon.

Ingredients:

• Potatoes (yukon golds are best)
• Whipping cream
• Butter
• salt to taste
• 1-2 bulbs of garlic
• olive oil

Gloria will tell you that I am a measure-twice-cut-once kind of cook. I am very careful with quantities, and I don’t improvise very well. This is the one exception, so I’ll go over quantity pretty carefully.

HOW MANY POTATOES?
It’s hard sometimes to gauge how many potatoes you need. You really need to judge what the rest of the meal is like and how fat your diners are.

They are all different sizes! Fuck you!

I usually go for around half a pound of potatoes per person, if you have time to measure. If you don’t, about four people is four potatoes that you’d chuck to ward off a medium-persistent robber.

Step 1. Roast some garlic. I think we’ve gone over this in an earlier post, so here is an MS Paint synopsis:

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUU--

Step 2. Boil potatoes. I usually cut the potatoes into 2″x2″x1″ cubes, but it’s not an exact science. Gloria likes it when I leave the skins on, so I am lazy and leave the skins on. Boil them until they cut like butter with a fork.

Step 3. When your potatoes are soft enough, drain them really well, then put them in a mixing bowl. Drop 1/2 a stick of butter in there for around 4 potatoes. (Actually, regardless of how many potatoes I use, there’s usually a 1/2 stick of butter in it.)

Step 4. While the butter is melting, retrieve your roasted garlic and pop the soft cloves out of their pods. Put them into the mixing bowl with everything else.

Step 5. Take an egg beater to your potatoes, low speed. While the eggbeater is going, pour some whipping cream in. Usually I use anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2 cup, but it really depends on the texture you want. We used 1/4 cup for about 3.5 pounds of potatoes last week, and it made a smooth, dense mashed potato.

Step 6. Season. You want to use some salt, definitely, but it’s at your discretion. I love throwing some pepper into mine, and maybe some Lawry’s seasoned salt. But if you’ve got only one bulb of garlic in there, less intense flavors are necessary. Remember, the base is creamy and buttery.

It does.

Warning: There are no photographs in this review for three very important reasons.

1. The lighting was low and romantic.
2. No room in my classy purse for a camera anyhow.
3. Totally distracted by a boy who was both adorable and treating me, so it would’ve been maximum rude. (I am looking at you, Miss Wright.)

Given Mike Isabella’s notoriety and recent booting off of Top Chef to return to his delectable hunting grounds of Zaytinya in DC (one of my personal favorite restaurants), it is understandable that even several days in advance, their reservation-friendly tables were packed until 10:30. So after that failure, I forfeited my restaurant-choosing duties to the person who would be paying for it, and he selected a restaurant owned by the same conglomerate, Cafe Atlantico. Words cannot describe how much happier your life will be after going to this upscale casual neuvo latino eatery. But they’ll try their damnedest.

Drinks

Do yourself a favor and get them. Not off the wine list–go for their signature cocktails. Their mixologist is some kind of genius. I had a special for the night, the Mississippi Manhattan, which as far as I can remember included Maker’s Mark whiskey, meyer lemon juice, and tupelo honey syrup. The server actually lit a bit of lemon zest oil on fire before dropping the zest into my drink. I was in love by then. When I tasted this divine, unintimidating lemonade, I was in love forever, with a passion that only Bella and Edward can truly understand.

Kyle got a Salt and Lime Air Margarita, which was a normal margarita with light salt and lime foam on top. You think it wouldn’t make too much of a difference, but all of that divine lime taste and just the interesting texture of the drink made it tears-of-joy-inducing. Oh, I also hear that their mojitos are the best in town, so that’s something else to keep in mind.

Guacamole

Everyone and their mother will tell you: Jo is not an avocado person. I try to avoid it in sushi. I definitely try to avoid it in my Mexican food. I’ve had two good guacs before in my life, and I’m telling you now that this is one of them.

They’re made tableside in a stoneware bowl with just two wooden spoons. First the server asks how hot you’d like it (we went for medium and I barely tasted the heat). Then he rubs the bowl down with lime and puts in some diced onion, peppers, and other stuff I couldn’t see due to the aforementioned dim lighting and distraction. Then he just takes three avocado halves, drops them in, and mashes away. No mayo, no nothin’. I was completely stunned, especially when the bowl was handed to me and I swooned at the taste of it. Sometimes, all it really takes is the right combination of fresh ingredients–don’t let no one tell you different.

I ordered an appetizer (scallops and squid with puffed coconut rice), and while it was cooked perfectly, the thought of it was totally trumped by…

My Entree, the Best Entree Ever

Kyle got a skirt steak, which was a perfectly delicious skirt steak and I will not fault him on it.

I got the duck confit, which was served with parsnips, dried cherries, fresh herbs, almonds, and horseradish yogurt. The parsnips were sliced long and thin and looked like fettuccine, and they were served tossed with a bunch of fresh parsley. But the duck… oh my good lord the duck. The meat flaked on my fork like fish meat, and I just pulled it off and ate it like that. The skin had the dried cherries on it, adding a little tartness, but was otherwise lightly glazed with sugar. The sweet burst of fatty skin plus the perfectly brined duck just exploded in your mouth with just completely overwhelming levels of flavor.

I was entirely undone as a human being.

Dessert

We got quince sorbet with rosemary in it, and it was good. But not as good as that duck.

Cafe Atlantico: go there, but bring your smelling salts, because I guarantee if you pick the right things off the menu, it will give you the vapors for certain.

My stomach burns with the fire of a thousand pissed off suns.

This happens only rarely, because of my health nut CEO, but every once in a while, a vendor will send someone in the company baked goods, which are then scavenged ruthlessly by the flocks of office women. So when I see an alert from my boss entitled “cookies,” I tend to jump on that joy train and ride it ’til it stops.

Today, however, this preemptive strike has proven itself a horrible decision, and I blame you, Cheryl & Co. Collection, Finer Baked Goods.

From the variety box in my boss’ office, I selected two: famous buttercream cut-out cookie, and Frosted Caramel Pecan Chocolate Cookie. The other two I saw were Triple Chocolate Frosted Cookie and something white with a pumpkin iced onto it, both of which had obvious dietary danger peeking through the label. So I chose the two which looked safer, but in this case, fortune probably favored the bold. Or the ignorant. I wish to god that I had not put either of those cookies in my mouth.

The so-called Famous Buttercream Cut-out Cookie was white with white buttercream on it. My MO with buttercream is to have Gloria slather it on in a super-thin layer, or to scrape it off a cake entirely. As I went for the scrape, the cookie started falling apart in my hand. “Oh,” I thought. “A delicate, lady of a cookie. Well, one bite can’t hurt.” I should’ve known. The structural integrity of that cookie was so unsound that it melted, literally, in my mouth, leaving only the fossilized layer of buttercream and a hint of PTSD. I should’ve just spit it out, but it literally disintegrated.

Despite this foreshadowing, I abandoned the remainder of the white cookie and went for the second, the Frosted Caramel Pecan Chocolate Cookie. This one had real pecans on a sticky icing, which despite some crumble, could actually be scraped off. So carefully I scraped, but the caramel made the icing so furiously sticky that I ended up using a kind of fork-finger-and-napkin resolution, which actually grossed me out a little. “Ahh,” I thought, “this is what performing surgery on a zombie is like.” Things are falling apart, the center isn’t holding, and so as soon as a quorum of icing and pecans were off, I bit into the cookie.

While in a time trial, this one didn’t dissolve as quickly as the white cookie, it did have that rancid “melt in your mouth” feeling that I associate with THINGS THAT AREN’T A GODDAMN COOKIE. Moreover, the caramel flavor left a persistent stickiness in my mouth and I felt it going all the way down into my gut, where it is sitting there, brick-like, waiting to strike (with early-onset diabetes.) But this isn’t even the punchline.

Here’s the punchline: after my gag reflex kicked in from the second cookie, I disposed of them immediately in my trashcan, four feet away and behind me. I can STILL smell the fucking cookie. These cookies need a kind of ghostbusters-esque elimination process where you carefully seal the soul of the cookie in a nuclear-powered death trap.

This is what happens when you cross the streams, people.

Moral: Don’t fuck up a cookie.

This bean-and-meat bacchanal happened mostly because our benefactress Miss Huang loves chili. I love chili. It’s the greatest food on earth, and an elegant metaphor for personal philosophy. You start out life eating other peoples’ chili, sampling what each household has to offer. You train yourself to accept spiciness, or you eat chili without. Then you learn, develop your own. We had six positively beautiful chilis, variant in texture, taste, and originality, which were ranked only by the cruel whim of a discerning populace.

A. Jo: I have a hard time with beans–the outer skin throws off a chili for me, and I know that Ima have to pick that crud out of my teeth later on. I made a lady’s chili, light in flavor and spiciness, creamy texture, with turkey meat, corn, and red peppers as the highlight. I suggested and Mr. Q. R. Murphy agreed that perhaps my chili won because it was the sweetest.

B. Cara: This chili was my personal favorite. Reduced to the point of unpourability, it sat upon my hotdog and sagging bun like a great brooding titan, holding up the world on strength alone. Dark and filling, it had a cloying aroma, which according to the lady herself, was cumin. More cumin than imaginable. If you think you’ve used enough cumin, you haven’t.

C. Frazier: Frazier’s chili won the Maker’s Prize, for which there shall certainly be an actual, tangible prize at the 2nd Annual Chili Cook-off. Three meats (chicken, turkey, and bacon) and three beans were lovingly slow-cooked with his favored element: beer. (It’s super effective!)

D. Q. R. Murphy: Mr. Murphy’s chili was the most daring and perhaps the most distinctive of the six. Spurning both spiciness and traditional meats, he opted for a difficult-to-obtain ground venison and used, if I recall correctly, a metric ton of cinnamon. The spice and fragrance of the cinnamon seesawed with the gamey flavor of the deer meat.

E. Ryan: Having stolen my recipe partially from Ryan’s, I feel as if his suffered from placement, especially after the powerhouse of Q. R. Murphy’s.  Loaded up with a ton of veggies and beef, the secret ingredient was sofrito, a soup base that is used a lot south of the border. Also distinctive: Ryan’s chili was the most watery.

F. Paul: Paul’s chili was a strong contender for favorite, having ranked both in the maker’s vote and the popular. He took second place by a nose, after the discerning (and tie-breaking) vote of our benefactress pushed his upwards. Paul’s meats were ground chicken and turkey, but the most distinctive facet of his recipe were liquid smoke (which you can find at your local supermarket, also apparently referenced in The Simpsons) and vinegar, which gave it a sour tang that fought off the spicy kick admirably.  – Wait, something’s coming in. I’m being reminded that the secret ingredient of Paul’s chili is actually the essence of testicle, as demonstrated in the origin of his recipe.

With ample sampling cups and plastic spoons, Gloria’s guests sampled the chilis at hand and debated the merits of both. Corn: pros and cons. What beans? Would Donnie need a gastric bypass in order to survive another year? But in the end, there could be only one, and girly or not, I won that. See you next year, ladies.

Ingredients:

• 1 white onion
• 1 tbs vegetable oil
• 1 14 oz can chicken broth
• 1 28 oz can diced tomatoes
• 1 tbs sofrito (you can find it in the ethnic food aisle of your crappy grocery store most of the time)
• 1/2 lb of red lentils
• 1 lb of ground turkey (I like 97% fat free for this)
• 1 14 oz can tomato soup (I like Campbell’s!)
• 1 red onion
• 1 green onion
• Jalapeno peppers to your heart’s content
• 1 4 oz can chili peppers
• Frozen corn
• 1 lb ground turkey
• Worchestershire sauce
• Spices: Salt, pepper, chili powder, cumin, cayenne pepper

1. Heat up the vegetable oil in the heaviest pot you have over medium heat. You want the heavy pot so you can retain heat in your chili–the more it cooks, the more its components love each other. Who the hell are you to deny love? Throw in your onions and sweat them.
   (Sweating, you say? You’re trying to get the moisture out of the onions and soften them up without browning them. You can help this along by tossing some salt in there, but you’re eating chili, dude. You know sodium will propose to you by the end of the night; you don’t need to push your case right just now.)
2. Toss in your broth, the tomatoes (juice and all) and the sofrito. Pour in a half pound of the lentils. You could probably sub in green lentils, but definitely not French lentils. Red lentils give you the right, yellow-orange color. Bring this mess to a boil, then lower the heat and cover for 30 minutes. The lentils will get nice a mushy: if you can smash some on the side of a pot with a fork, you’re done.
3. While this is happening, get a nice non-stick pan and cook your turkey meat. Cook it on medium-high until the last bit of pink vanishes, then get it out of the pan immediately. I like seasoning the meat with your worchestershire sauce and some salt and pepper at this stage. The meat will cook through thoroughly in the stewpot.
4. In the hot pan, cook up your veggies. I usually don’t worry about the size of the chunks: I cut them big enough so that someone who doesn’t want them can pick them out. The jalapenos you prepare the way you want. I figure no one wants seeds, but the spiciness will come from the veins. I love the flavor more than the spice, so I usually devein my peppers pretty well, then cut them into chunks small enough so you wouldn’t know they were even there. They impart the flavor without the raw, unbridled terror of the elder gods. Again, cook until they’re just soft–they’ll stew a little as well.
5. Your chili base should be done by now. Most of the moisture will have come out of them, so you can just stir around the stuff and break up some of the lentils. Add another cup of chicken broth, or a cup of water and a bouillon cube. You’ll have to strain the base later, but it’ll ease your conscience about the amount of fluids. At this point, I like to use my immersion blender to smooth out the base. To add to the smoothness, throw in your can of tomato soup.
6. MONEY SHOT! Toss in all your stuff together, the meat, the veg, and the little can of chilis and the frozen corn.
7. Spice that shit. I do salt first, then chili powder, then cumin, then chili powder, then cumin (you have to make sure it’s balanced, so do this as long as you like), then cayenne pepper to taste. I don’t have exact numbers for you, just whatever you like.
8. This is the part where you let the chili cook, lid half-on, half-off. Let it chill out for however long you like. You can do as little as thirty minutes, or two hours. But you already thickened up the base, so as long as you get the stuff-to-liquid ratio right (I strained out some of the liquid into the sink), you’re golden. It doesn’t even have to reduce.
9. You’re done! Go off and win a fucking chili contest!

Well, there you go. Frazier has promised his chili recipe as well, and with all luck, so will a couple of the other kids. But like I said earlier, chili is a matter of personality and love, so I highly recommend you crafting your own. Good luck!

There is nothing that pisses me off more than having a bad chardonnay, and I had a bad chardonnay this weekend. I thought–”Oh, one cup can go into delicious risotto, and then I’ll drink the rest, nom nom.” The wine wasn’t good even when paired with the risotto that it went into (mushroom and sweet onion, if you must know.) Thankfully, Gloria and Frazier let me drink their chianti (straight from the bottle like a champ), and while I was slaving over the risotto, Gloria shoved a piece of prosciutto in my mouth. Friday’s hasty wine-and-cheese party yielded the following life lessons:

1. It doesn’t matter what you put on them, these Pepperidge Farm Butter Crackers are crazy delicious. I think at one point, I gave up on dignity and just started wrapping Italian cold cuts around them and shoving them in my face-hole.
2. Try things from your local grocery store’s wacky “gourmet food” section. Our Safeway sold us delicious Italian cold cuts and this unsubtle but definitely-got-the-job-done spinach dip.
3. Don’t trust a ho Chardonnay that you haven’t tried before. You can get lucky with a store-bought shiraz easily, especially if you look to Australia. You can even nail a good merlot or chianti or pinot grigio. For some reason, I’ve spun the roulette wheel for chardonnays and each time I come up bust. I’m looking at you, Francis Ford Coppola. I recovered, though. See below.
4. When you get your friends drunk and feed them, they can’t shut up about it. In honor of pleasantly drunk Gloria, here is the salad she couldn’t shut up about (adapted from The Pioneer Woman’s adapted salad).

Easy Caesar Salad

• 3 romaine hearts
• 4 garlic cloves
• 1/4 cup olive oil, plus 4 tbs olive oil
• 2 1/2 tbs mayo, mayo and mayo.
• A lemon
• 1/4 tsp worchestershire sauce
• 1/4 tsp salt
• salt and pepper and parmesan cheese to taste
• Oh, also some bread that you like to make into croutons.

1. Get a food processor or blender and process the crap out of your garlic cloves and the 1/4 cup of olive oil. Mumble incoherently at your housemate about how awesome that crap smells. Strain the oil into a receptacle, then save half of the super-minced garlic.
2. Juice the lemon. Mix the juice with the mayo, the reserved garlic, the worchestershire sauce, and the 1/4 tsp salt. Hit it with a fork until it’s mixed and citrusy and delicious.
3. Pause. Do yourself a favor. Make yourself some croutons. Cube the bread you got into… cubes… and then toss it with that olive oil you saved. Grind some salt and pepper over it, then toss again. Then put it all into a skillet over medium heat, and shake it around while you’re doing the rest. The croutons should be crispy, warm, and a little brown on the outside. Your housemate will flip her shit, I promise.
4. Pro-tip: Don’t ever cut your salad with a knife. Apparently, this makes it brown faster. Take your romaine hearts and tear at them with your hands.
5. Toss in the remaining olive oil (the 4 tbs, but really it’s just a matter of taste) and the salt and pepper to taste. Toss the salad.
6. Put in the mayo dressing. Toss the salad.
7. Put in some parmesan. Toss the salad.
8. Throw in your croutons. Toss the salad.
9. Watch as your housemate rolls on the ground, babbling about how awesome the salad is. (Don’t toss the salad.)

Now, for wine.

This past Sunday, Gloria, Mr. Murphy and I attended the Reston Wine Festival (sponsored by GM and the 2010 Buick LaCrosse–I promised.) It was a LOT of fun. There were great vendors and sweet swag. Giant gave me a free reusable bag, and GM gave me a free wine stopper. They also had this sweet augmented reality thing for the LaCrosse, which I probably could have played with for hours. The future!

But wines. It was nice walking around with Mr. Murphy, who took everything with a pleasantly open mind. We usually went for the drier wines first, and ended up picking several great winners–highly recommended, if you can buy wine around or from Virginia.

The great hit of the weekend (two bottles procured) was the Cabernet Sauvignon from Unicorn Winery. Peppery, fragrant, but still light enough to drink straight, it had this wonderful tannic flavor that bounced straight off the palate and did fragrant flips inside your mouth. I’m serious, guys, there’s a flavor party here, and everyone’s invited. The wine hawker did himself a great service by pointing out the $1 lamb chop stand nearby–this wine paired divinely with a meat. Soon, it will be deployed with Steak au Poivre.  Honorable mention: Unicorn’s Traminette, a wine invented by Cornell University, caused much consternation. I think it was only the cab sauv’s food pairing that made it victorious.

I cannot say enough good things about Vino Curioso, which after the Clifton Wine Festival, is a personal favorite of mine. Their Chardontage–a blend of four different chardonnays–is still one of the greatest beverages of all times. It’s definitely got the flavor of a white wine, but it’s got the intensity–the oomph, if you will–of a powerhouse bordeaux, all sound and fury, signifying you having a great day. Not only that, but their wine sellers are very invested in the brand, and each of their wines has a character and a lot of personality. A wistful sigh and a pleasant wine seller actually got me 20% off two bottles, which is why I ended up going home with their Snake’s Den cabernet sauvignon as well. The Snake’s Den got all-around approval, but a mixed review. Mr. Murphy thought it was like a delicious blow to the face, while Team Asian Girl thought it went down smooth and vibrant, like a dark velvet.

There were so many other delicious wines there, so I’ve only focused on things good enough to spend our collective and limited funds. The last of my purchases was from Fabbioli Cellars, which we loved in spite of ourselves. Fabbioli, unfortunately in my opinion, sells mostly dessert wines, which were definitely too sweet for the iron-like palates of Team Asian Girl. However, the great surprise of the afternoon was a potent rose, a blend of a white and red wine where you could actually taste the blend. I bought it almost entirely because of the guerilla assault on my senses–I really did not expect anything to come out of a rose, despite having been exposed to Fabbioli before.

That’s what I got! Thank you, GM for sponsoring our trip, and Great Grapes, or whatever the Reston Wine Festival was actually called! Next year, mo money, mo food, mo wine.

I have the cookies for you.  Unrequited loves will contact you.  You’ll look prettier.  You will see your enemies driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women.

I am much beloved and have friends who like me for my cookies. The first batch was halved, and the cookies barely made it out the door before Gloria and I devoured most of them. When I made this recipe the second time, I came up with about 4 dozen cookies with the Platonic ideal size of a cookie–maybe, 3.5″ diameter? You can make them smaller and more plentiful, or halve the recipe. Moral: only halve the recipe if you have no friends. And be prepared, with the power of these cookies, to make more friends than you ever desired.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

• Rum
• 1 1/2 cups of raisins
• 2 sticks of butter
• 1 1/3 cups light brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp salt (you can use less salt, but then we can’t be friends.)
• 3 cups rolled oats

Step 0. You don’t have to do this, and the second time I made these, I certainly didn’t wish to expend the rum. But if you want, soak the raisins for at least 30 minutes in some rum (I used Cap’n Morgan’s Spiced Rum.) I didn’t think I’d be able to tell the difference, but it does lend a layer of mystique and beauty to the cookie. I’m not even joking. If not, drink the rum, and leave your raisins the hell alone. They’ll still be good, just not sell-your-children-for-raw-c0okie-materials good.

Step 1. Cream together the butter, brown sugar, eggs, and vanilla extract. Doing this by hand is a drag, so make sure you have a mostly gooey base. The lumps of butter will come out a lot easier when you do step 2, but put something on the television and make sure the whole concoction is mostly free of giant lmps.

• FYI: no one ever has the right brown sugar when they need it. If you were a dunce and could only find dark brown sugar, substitute in about a 1/3 of a cup with white sugar.

Step 2. Whisk (or if you don’t want to wash a damn whisk, fork) together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Then, little by little, pour and stir it into the goop from step 1. You should have a beautiful, smooth cookie dough by the end of this step, with a caramel color.

Step 3. Roll up them sleeves and stir in the oats and the raisins.

Step 4. Don’t skip this step. Cover your cookie dough in saran wrap and put it in the fridge. Leave it, like one Miss Britney Spears, alone. The dough needs to rest for at least an hour, until it’s pretty well chilled through. Why? Because it won’t get to be round but also thick and chewy if it the dough has time to run all over the place. Then you’ll have flacid cookies, and your friends will all call me wondering why.

Step 5. Okay, I know. It’s hard to be patient. But look, after a while, go ahead and preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Here is some motivation for waiting:

These cookies are beautiful.

Step 6. Put cookies on some parchment paper (the baker’s choice for cookies!). I use two large spoons and fill one with a heaping spoonful, then scrape it off with another one. You can shape your cookies to be a little more circular. They’ll expand by about an inch each, so put them a couple inches apart. A dozen per normal cookie tray is good. Bake for approximately 8-10 minutes. I’d say do a batch, and see how they look at 8. They should look golden brown around the outside and still a leeeeettle bit raw in the middle. If they’re gooey in the middle, put them back in for a minute. If you overbake them by a leeeetle, then they’ll just turn out browner, but still delicious.

Step 7. After you remove each batch, let them sit on the hot cookie sheet for about 5 minutes before removing them to a plate where your friends will devour them.

Step 8. JUST BURY YOUR FACE IN THAT BUSINESS.

***

Bonus material: Here are some rousing endorsements of these cookies:

Donnie C.: “10 out of 10.”

Paul L.: “The secret ingredient is crack.”

Q.R.Murphy: Imagine a husk of a man trapped in the vice grip of a diabetic coma, but still giving a thumbs up as if to say, “Totally worth it.” Oh, wait, I think he just said, “These are good.”

Here are my five most favorite foods in the world:

1. Chinese barbecue sea cucumber
2. Spaghetti with meat sauce
3. Chinese sticky rice
4. Chinese beef noodle soup (thick noodles, please!)
5. Pizza (any kind except NY thin crust)

Thanks to the housewarming party last week, I feel like I can make an edible version of #2 and #5, the only two non-Chinese foods on the list. This means I am either inept or a race traitor, but most likely, I am both. However, thanks to extensive efforts by Karen to 1) advise me, and 2) give me a short break from playing Left 4 Dead every waking hour of my day, I managed to pull together a pot of Chinese Sticky Rice that is both delicious and easy (much like a certain someone’s mother I could list but totally won’t JOSH.)

Two more warnings: This food is the ugliest food in the world. I’m not kidding. Unless you grew up with it and have associated it Pavlov-style with the greatest flavors your mouth has ever known, it’s pretty hideous. No pictures, so I won’t dissuade you from doing making it. Two, this food requires Asians nearby, namely enough Asians to supply an Asian grocery store. While I’m certain that some of the ingredients can be substituted out without issue, there’s something about the Asian ingredients that makes this one special. Maybe I’ll try to cook a white person version, made entirely out of white person things. OR MAYBE NOT HOLLA BACK ISOLATIONISTS!

Ingredients:

• 3 cups Sweet Rice (do white people have this, maybe at their fancy organic stores? Either way, you can’t switch this one out.)
• 1-2 cups dried shiitake mushrooms
• Two chicken bouillon cubes
• 5 links (6-8 oz) Chinese sausage (I found it in the canned vegetable section of my local Asian grocery story, which makes pretty much zero sense–PS: It looks like beef jerky)
• 1/2 cup thin-sliced spring onions (only the white and light green parts)
• 1 tbs minced ginger
• 1 tbs vegetable oil
• 1/3 cup rice wine or medium-dry sherry (I ran out of rice wine, so used half and half)
• 3 tbs soy sauce
• 2 tbs oyster sauce
• 2 tsp sesame oil
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp white pepper
• 1 fingertip (human)

There is a lot of pre-prep to this dish, so give yourself an ample two hours and find something cool to do. I bet you could learn to knit or make a pine cone bird feeder in the intervening time! You could start a club!

1. Soak your rice in a large receptacle with cold water for at least two hours. The water doesn’t have to stay cold, but it ought to start there. Ancient Chinese secret: this step cannot be skipped. If you don’t soak out some of the starch, you will have some kind of starch disaster. Before you start cooking for reals, put your rice in a strainer, rinse with some more cold water, and drain.

2. About an hour before your rice is done, chop up your veggies (get a really good mince on the ginger, if you fear it as I do) and cut your Chinese sausage. Quarter it lengthwise, then chop it up into 1/2″ lengths. If you’re a dunce, you’ll use a santoku knife for this part, then forget that Chinese sausage has the consistency of beef jerky, then you’ll slip and cut the tip of your finger off. I highly recommend this method, because I don’t really like you much. Finish cooking the dish with an improvised bandage of paper towel, packaging tape, and utmost misery.

3. About 30 minutes before your rice is done soaking, prepare a bath of warm water (I used about 3 cups) and soak your mushrooms. The recipe called for about 1 cup, but I am a ho for mushrooms, so I used two… handfuls. The more mushrooms you use, the more flavorful your mushroom water will be: keep this in mind. After the mushrooms soak for around 30 minutes, wring them out (it’s gross and awesome) and give them a coarse chop. I did long slices, because I love mushrooms. Then, reheat your mushroom water a wee bit, and dissolve two chicken bouillon cubes in it. Extra flavor? YES MA’AM.

4. Prepare your seasonings. Put your booze, soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, salt and pepper into a bowl. No reason except so you won’t have to measure while stir-frying. That step goes hella fast, and if you’ve followed directions, you’ll be frying one-handed anyways.

Okay, time for the actual cooking! You’ll want a wok or something that fries things well, and (and this is critical, unless you want to spend 12 hours cooking this like me) something else that retains heat well. One day, ladies and gentlemen, I will acquire some kind of absurd scientific dutch oven. Until then, a pot with a tight-fitting lid will have to do for you.

5. Put a wok over high heat until it just begins to smoke. Put the veggie oil into the wok until it starts to smoke.

6. Spring onions and ginger in the wok! 30 seconds!

7. Sausage in the wok! One minute!

8. Mushrooms in the wok! One minute!

9. Bowl o’ seasoning in the wok! One minute!

10. SWEET JESUS THAT WAS FAST GET THAT SHIT OFF THE STOVE GAH.

11. Dump your drained rice into the wok and stir around until everything seems pretty well amalgamated.

12. Dump the entire contents of your wok into a heat-retaining receptacle.  This is probably a good time to add your mushroom chicken broth. Yeah, let’s do it now. Don’t worry that it doesn’t look like enough fluid–trust in the rice. While the stove is still on high, bring the contents to a simmer, then turn the heat to low. Cover tight, then let it sit for 25 minutes. After it looks mostly done (the rice will be brown and sticky, with some occasional white specks), take your rice off the heat, stir it a bit, then re-cover and wait for 10 more minutes. It should be done and tasty by then.

Alert: Don’t use a pot with a scraped-up and horrible bottom. The rice at the bottom will form a thin crust that comes out easily with soaking, but also is delicious. If you can peel some of that off, it’s like fried gold.

Do you have any of those spring onions left? Chop up the dark green parts and use it as garnish. As I said, I am a ho, so I like a little more soy sauce. Ancient Chinese warning: According to my grammas, doing this will make your skin dark. Like a black person. Oh, my people. Sometimes, you are so charmingly racist.

A special note from Karen, ranked by one Ted Yokoyama as the most Asian girl in our group: You can add a ton of different things to this dish! They used to make it with a pork that is no longer used. You can add thin-sliced pork and reminisce about the old days, when the British subjugated us with drugs! Or you can add tiny dried shrimps from the yucky aisle of your local Asian grocery mart! Sometimes you will see this dish pressed into a shallow bowl and upended on a plate, with sweet & sour sauce and crushed peanuts as topping!

In short, yes, I know this is a very basic recipe. But the point is that it tastes and feels RIGHT, and doesn’t take enormous amounts of effort to make, contrary to what most Chinese mothers will tell you.

Conclusion: RICE! You make! Make strong like ox!

Not even diabeetus could stop the frantic scarfing of the dish I’m about to convey to you.  No photography can make it look attractive. No other food can quash your need for chicken boudine. I have modified a Paula Deen recipe, my friends, and it is delicious like nothing you have ever tasted. 

Chicken Boudine

Ingredients:

• 1 can (10.75 oz) cream of mushroom soup
• 1 can (4 oz) sliced mushrooms
• 1/2 cup chicken broth
• 1/2 cup dry sherry (don’t you dare leave this out)
• 2 cups cooked, bite-sized chicken (we got ours from the salad bar)
• 4 cups egg noodles
• 3 cups cheddar cheese, grated
• salt and pepper
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1 cup panko bread crumbs

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Start cooking your noodles. It’s egg noodles, so you want to keep an eye on them; once that water’s boiling, they go pretty fast.

3. Combine soup, broth, sherry, mushrooms, and chicken. I was still waiting for my noodles to cook, so the sherry taste soaked straight into the chicken. It was mind-blowing.

4. Are those noodles STILL cooking? I’m bored. Microwave the butter until it’s melted, then toss with your bread crumbs and a fistful of cheese (maybe, like, 3/4 cup?) Wash your hands. I hate that buttery, crumby feeling.

5. Those noodles done yet? Oh, thank God, I am starving. Fold in the noodles and the remaining cheese until everything’s even coated. According to the internet, you could also add some frozen peas or pimentos or something. I think some corn would taste pretty good in this, myself.

6. Spread out your panko/cheese mixture on top, somewhat evenly.

7. Put it in the oven for 30 minutes. NOW YOU HAVE A DELICIOUS MEAL.

For reals. This may be the easiest thing I’ve ever cooked, but it came out stupid good. And though I said that there no pictures could make it look delicious (it kind of looks like a default casserole mess), Gloria tried. I am eating leftovers of this stuff tonight. Not kidding, dudes. 

This is the “something light” that Gloria had her salmon with. Shenanigans: called. 

shit guys I want some right now

Seriously, I can’t shut up about this. You can make this pasta in approximately 20 minutes, which to starving people spending too much time at the gym because now they live with gloria who eats, like, 30 gallons of butter every day but still keeps her girlish figure, is pretty awesome.

Oh, hey. Besides the header picture, which I REALLY encourage you to set as your background and stare at all day, you can ignore that DCist recipe. It is not the best. Mine is the best.

Ingredients (for two or three hungry folks):

• 1 3oz. package of pancetta, or 3-4 ounces of pancetta, depending on how fat you feel. You can also use bacon.
• 1/2 pound of pasta. We used gemelli. Penne may work better.
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 1/2 cup parmesan cheese, grated like a mofo. (I bought mine at the store, pre-grated, because I am lazy!)
• 1/4 of a white onion. Gloria suggested adding more onion in the end, so you can do that too.
• PEAS. ONE CUP OF PEAS.
• salt and pepper.

Instructions, optimized for time efficiency:

1. Prep work: Chop yo onion however you prefer. Want huge chunks? Go for it! Dice yo pancetta. Nothing too fancy, just to the chunks will give their delicious fat to you. Thaw yo peas. THAW THEM! I did it in the microwave.

2. Salt some water up, and cook the pasta until it’s al dente, or if you’re cooking for Miss “Can’t Move Her Dang Jaw”, until it melts in your mouth. The salt is actually somewhat critical, I’d say, so don’t forget it. And don’t use too much, Goldilocks.

3. Put a panon medium, then toss your pancetta in when it’s hot. You can smell the aroma of rich people bacon right there. Once you see a decent amount of fat coming out and sizzling, throw your onions in. Now you have onions cooking in pancetta fat, and you win cooking. Feel free to eat some of your onions. They are delicious. I went until my onions were mostly clear.

4. Everything will be fine on its own for a bit, so whisk (or fork) your eggy ingredients. When that’s nice, put in that cheese, and blend it all together into a nice, chunk mass. You want to coat all your cheese in egg, so it looks creamy.

5. Is your pasta al dente yet? How ’bout your onions, are they done? Good! Drain the pasta, but save the water.  Put your pasta back into the bowl it came from, kill the heat, and now work fast. Dump in your bacon, dump in your peas, dump in your eggy/cheesy stuff, and stir like the dickens until it’s all integrated. STIR. If you don’t stir, you’ll end up with scrambled eggs and pasta, which is not as good.

6. Okay, my pasta ended up a little dry. DON’T DO WHAT I DID. DON’T DUMP YOUR PASTA WATER DOWN THE DRAIN! If it’s looking a little dry, in step five, spoon in some of your pasta water and stir until it’s a consistency that you like. Then, finish it off by salting and peppering it. Taste it first–the pancetta/bacon probably salted it up a good deal for you already.

7. EAT.

Bonus: I paired this one splendidly with a Barefoot Merlot, which, if you’re still drinking it after you eat, turns sweeter after the food stops.

I essentially served myself and ate too fast for any attractive photos to be taken. Truly, pasta carbonara is the Loch Ness of foods.

PS: I love peas.