Here are some ingredient notes: If you’ve never had quinoa, it is an experience I highly recommend! In addition to being tasty (something like ever-so-slightly bitter couscous) it’s also obscenely nutritious. Tamari is a gift from god. Carménère is one of my favorite kinds of wine, and the particular label I used (Chono) is Chilean and I think the grapes are grown organically, since they serve it at Yield. The flavor notes include “roasted red peppers,” “dark chocolate,” and “leather.” So… heh. I got it for $14.99 at a nearby “under $15 per bottle” store. :q

There are obviously many variations you can make on this recipe. For example, you could use a wine other than carménère; my opinion on the “cooking wine” issue is that you should use a good wine but hey, you only need a cup and you can drink the rest! Couscous would be a worthy (yet somewhat less nutritious) substitute for the quinoa. If you can’t find nori, but have fresh sage in spades, then you can replace the nori with sage leaves fried in olive oil or browned butter (not as vegan). Finally, ignoring the vegan theme, this would be an excellent side for a roast chicken. PS I totally made the whole thing up, so if you think it’s missing something, please let me know (also, please come up with a shorter name).

[This is a fairly "easy" vegan recipe because the ingredients are widely available. It doesn't have agave syrup or arrowroot or seitan or "nutritional yeast flakes" (shudder).]

Quinoa with mushrooms, nori, pinenuts, and a carménère-tamari reduction

• 1 cup quinoa, rinsed and drained
• 2 cups water
• olive oil
• 1 shallot, finely minced
• 1 1/2 cups roughly chopped mushrooms (I used some mix of gourmet kinds from Green Giant)
• 2 sheets nori (toasted), crumbled
• 1/2 cup pinenuts (not toasted)
• 1 tablespoon tamari soy sauce, plus extra to taste
• 1/2 tablespoon white rice vinegar
• 1 cup carménère (or other spicy red wine)
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
• salt and pepper

1. Prepare the quinoa: It’s basically prepared the same way rice is prepared. You put 1 part quinoa 2 parts water into a pot, then bring it to a boil, cover it, and bring the heat down to “negligible.” Do this *while* you make the stuff that goes into it (as opposed to right before or after).

2. Sauté the shallot on medium in olive oil until translucent, then add the mushrooms, a dash of tamari, and half the crumbled nori. Sauté until the mushrooms have rendered all their liquid, then bring the heat up to medium-high to burn off said liquid and (ideally) char the shallots a little. Remove to a bowl and cover with a paper towel.

3. Wipe the saucepan from the previous step dry, but leave any traces of shallot or nori that got singed to the pan if you can (we want them in the sauce). Toast the pine nuts briefly on high heat until they’re fragrant and they’ve rendered some of their oils. Remove to a bowl.

4. Reduce heat to medium, and immediately deglaze the still-hot pan with the wine. Reduce the wine by a little less than a half, then add the rice vinegar, tamari, and brown sugar. Reduce slightly, until flavors have combined. Reduce heat to low, add the thyme, then taste and adjust for sugar, tamari, salt, and pepper.

5. Mix the mushrooms and pinenut mixtures into the quinoa (now done and hopefully still quite hot). Serve drizzled with the wine-tamari sauce and garnish with remaining nori.

I served this up with Henry/Rachel Ray’s famous roast broccoli (which came out mostly wrong because I did it wrong), and Smitten Kitchen’s strawberry-rhubarb crumble. As for the latter, I totally skipped over “butter” the first time I read the ingredients, so I ended up substituting vegetable shortening, which is less good.* Definitely a winner, though, so I’m looking forward to making it again. :v

The reason dinner was something of a failure was that I totally forgot that Ryan doesn’t really eat at all. XD So I ate most of it myself, though he sampled everything and approved. Also, he took a tylenol and could only have a touch of wine, so I ended up drinking nearly the entire bottle myself, but hey… it helped me sleep!

* By the way, Crisco has trans fats in it as does anything with “partially hydrogenated” whatever-the-fuck. They can say it contains zero grams, so long as it has less than one gram. Thanks FDA and food industry lobbyists!

You can find a pretty good transcript of the recipe here (but not quite complete, annoyingly), if you don’t have the cookbook. Note that you will also need her instructions on sauteing mushrooms (this one is a direct, complete copy) and brown-braising pearl onions (close enough), even if you think you know how to do these things.

Some notes:

• One of the best things about the original recipe is the detailed information on wine. It recommends pairing with “a fairly full-bodied, young red wine, such as Beaujolais, Côtes du Rhône, Bordeaux-St. Émilion, or Burgundy,” and using any of those or a Chianti to go into the stew.
• 3 cups of wine = 1 bottle. I doubled the recipe. Whoo!
• I bought pre-cut-up stew meat, some of which was cut a lot finer than the other, and on the whole big chunks worked a lot better for drying and browning.
• Conversely, I couldn’t find an unsliced chunk of bacon anywhere, and regular old thick-sliced seemed to work okay.
• I over-salted because I forgot, as always, to account for the massive amounts of salt in bouillon cubes. Use caution, or perhaps better beef stock.
• Blanching helps when you realize you have to peel 48 pearl onions.
• I couldn’t really get the sauce to thicken in the end, but it seemed to end up okay just letting it reduce a lot even if it never really reached light-spoon-coating consistency. =/

For extras, here is the rosemary bread recipe I have been fussing with of late. It’s sort of long but that’s because the procedure is the complicated part; sorry. Start this ~3 hrs before you want to eat it.

• 2 1/2 tsp yeast, which is~1 packet
• 2 c. warm water, ~110-115 F, which is warm but just shy of scalding
• 1 Tbsp sugar
• 2 tsp salt
• 4 c. flour. Bread flour is nice if you can get it, and if you do not consider extra gluten cheating.
• 2 tsp. minced fresh rosemary plus more for topping. Fresh is important! You can sub out some for fresh thyme.
• olive oil, corn meal, sea salt

Dissolve yeast in the warm water and sugar. If it’s NOT instant/fast-acting/bread-machine yeast, give it <5 min to froth up. Otherwise, immediately add flour, salt, and 2 tsp rosemary and stir until blended. Do not knead! Cover and let rise for 1 hour or until double in size; bonus points for putting it someplace slightly warm and moist.

Oil a baking sheet and sprinkle with corn meal. Perhaps try oiling your hands instead of flouring them, as the dough is super sticky, then divide it in half, shape each half quickly and loosely into a round by tucking the edges under, and place on the baking sheet. Cover and let rise another hour. The stickiness is again a problem; cooking-sprayed plastic wrap is the only thing I’ve managed to use that DIDN’T stick horribly and make the top of my loaves lumpy.

With bread, some last-minute rising happens in the oven and for that you want things hot and steamy (har). Start heating your oven early, maybe half an hour into the second rise, to 450 or “lots.” My oven here has no numbers on the dial between 350 and 500 so I use my imagination, but I don’t think getting it too hot is a possibility. If you have a pizza stone, put it in now. Also put a cast-iron skillet in the bottom of the oven (or something else which can be raised to high temps empty, then have cool water thrown in it without exploding).

When bread is again about doubled in size, brush with olive oil and top with more rosemary and plentiful crushed sea salt. Get yourself some water, maybe 1/4 cup, on hand near your oven as now you must act quickly! Put the bread in (just stick the pan on the pizza stone if using one, unless you want to get fancy and try to slide the bread onto the stone directly), dump the water on your previously-heated skillet or whatever where it will send up exciting clouds of steam, and close the oven door quickly. Bake 10 min, adding more water for steam if it runs out. Then turn the oven down to 375 and bake another 20 min or so until it’s golden-browny.

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.

The Pioneer Woman’s pictures are much better than mine so you should go look at them, but here are some Things I Learned, or changed when I made it, or WOULD change were I to make it again (sadly, the rest of the apples are fated for apple butter so that cannot be just yet):

• It says 9-10″ cast-iron skillet. I used a 10″. It overflowed while baking, and the cake came out thicker, compared to the apple layer, than I would have liked. I should’ve used the 12″ skillet!
• Cut down the initial butter melting in the skillet to 10 Tbs (4 Tbs less) and this was PLENTY – although don’t get me wrong, the butter/caramelized sugar/apples slow-cooked in same are still the point of this thing.
• Also sliced the apples thinner, into twelfths not sixths. This was preferable, I think, as thin apples = fitting more in the pan = yes. Also, better distribution of apple-to-cake.
• The spices were a little blah even though I threw in more cinnamon. Could probably take some allspice, cloves, etc. – it’s super sweet and I think a little more of a kick would compliment that.
• My fatal error: put this on a baking sheet when you stick it in the oven! Slightly over-crowded 10″ skillet + bubbling-over caramelizing sugar and butter + floor of gas oven = smoke-filled kitchen.

In conclusion, you should probably be smarter than me when it comes to setting sugar on fire, but this cake is still delicious.

Ingredients:

• 2 Green Bell Peppers
• 3-4 Jalapeño Peppers
• 1-2 White Onions
• 1 Large Can Tomato Sauce (~29 oz)
• 1 Can Tomato Paste (~12 oz)
• 1 Bottle of Beer
• 3 Cans of Beans (16 oz each)
• 1 Pound Ground Chicken
• 1 Pound Ground Turkey
• 1 Pound Thick Cut Bacon
• Seasoning Mix (described below)

Seasoning Mix:

• 2 tbsp. Chili Powder
• 1 tbsp. Seasoned Salt
• 1 tsp. Onion Powder
• 1 tsp. Garlic Powder
• 2 tsp. Cumin
• 1/2 tsp. Salt
• 1/2 tsp. Oregano
• 1/2 tsp. Paprika

1. Finely chop onions and peppers into ~1/4″ pieces.   Put peppers, onions and beer into  a large pot or slow cooker.  I used a bottle of Yeungling Lager, but most beers should work and will add their own unique flavors.  For stove-top cooking set to medium heat, or for slow cooker set to highest setting.
2. In a large frying pan cook the bacon.  Remove from heat when the strips are a dark pink.  Even if you like to go whole-hog and get your bacon super crispy keep in mind these will be in the chili for a very long time so getting them just-done is the way to go.  Set aside the strips on a plate between paper towels to absorb excess grease.  When all the bacon has been cooked pour out excess grease from the pan into a metal or glass container, leaving about 2-3 tbsp. in the pan.
3. In the same pan cook the ground chicken with about 1 tbsp. of the seasoning mix. When the chicken is fully cooked, drain and add to the pot or slow cooker with the vegetables. Repeat the process for the ground turkey with 1 tbsp. of the seasoning mix and 1-2 tbsp. of bacon grease. After the chicken and turkey have been added to the mix reduce heat to low.
4. Pat excess grease off of the bacon with a paper towel and slice the bacon into small pieces (about 1/4-1/2″  wide). Add bacon to the pot.
5. Strain all liquid from the beans and add to the pot. I used a combination of kidney beans, black beans and navy beans. Add tomato sauce, tomato paste and remainder of seasoning mix to the pot and stir thoroughly.  Fresh tomatoes could be used but I like to keep the tomato as a liquid base for the other ingredients.  If fresh tomatoes are used you should finely chop enough tomatoes to constitute about 1-1.5 quarts (32-48 oz).
6. Allow to simmer for 3-4 hours or longer if possible, stirring occasionally.  I ended up cooking the chili overnight for a total of about 12 hours.  This allowed a richer flavor to develop which I think worked out well. However it did end up burning slightly on the bottom which ended up making the flavor a little smokier, but unfortunately also caused the bottom quarter or so of the pot to be thrown out. In general it would be best to cook this throughout the day so as to keep an eye on it at all times.

This makes I believe about 6 quarts of chili. Serve with shredded cheddar cheese and sour cream or ranch dressing.

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!

So what do you do with summer squash? Probably the most delicious thing to do is to bread it and fry it and eat it with marinara, but that’s not really very “health conscious.” Instead, I decided to make risotto, because I’ve never done it before (GASP, I know rite? D:). The roommates were all down in Santa Cruz at the beach, so I decided to invite my friend Morgan over to be my guinea pig, and for company!

Summer squash risotto

• About 8 summer squash, chopped into 1/4 inch cubes
• [unqualified] olive oil or vegetable oil (for frying)
• Salt and black pepper
• 1 medium onion, chopped very fine (almost minced)
• 3 large cloves garlic, minced
• 2 cups arborio rice
• 1/2 cup sherry or white wine
• (at least) 5 cups warm chicken or vegetable broth, plus 1 cup more
• 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil or butter (for flavor)
• 1/2 cup parmesan cheese, grated
• 2 tbsp dried thyme leaves (or to taste)… oregano and rosemary also probably work nicely
• If you’ve got them, roasted pumpkin seeds or sunflower seed kernels would probably be a delicious addition

So yah, risotto takes a fairly long time to make, it turns out (and I was going to do work today… maybe). It’s not very difficult, but there are a few steps:

1. Heat about a tbsp of oil in a large sautée pan (I used a wok, actually) on medium-low. Toss squash until well coated and cook to desired level of tenderness, add salt if desired. I didn’t cook it too much because I wanted a little resistance to the bite and the fresh, squashy flavor to stand out because it tastes like summer.



2. Remove squash and set aside. Pour oil into your cooking thing until the entire bottom has a shallow coat of oil. Add the onions and cook on medium-low, stirring occasionally, for 15 freaking minutes or until translucent. Add the garlic and cook for 2 more minutes.
3. Add the rice and toss until the onions, garlic, and rice are mixed, and the rice is coated with oil.
4. Turn the heat up to medium, and immediately add the booze, mixing well for 1 minute.
5. And now for the fun part! Add broth one cup at a time to the pan, cooking until the liquid has evaporated/been absorbed by the rice. Do this forever, or at least until the rice is done. It can be a little al dente, that’s okay. If you run out of broth (as I did), water works fine (though you might need to adjust the salt later), also you can add a little more booze if you want. Make sure to save at least one cup of broth for the last part! The goal here is just to make sure the rice doesn’t dry out during cooking, so you have to be mixing it CONSTANTLY. You cannot stop. No exceptions.
6. By the end it should have approximately the consistency of well, risotto, or maybe sticky rice if you are more familiar with that. Really, it doesn’t matter an awful lot so long as it tastes grrreat! When it’s reached the desired consistency and rice-cookedness, move it to a large serving/mixing bowl, fold the squash into the risotto, and then add the extra cup of broth, the parmesan, the thyme, and the tasty olive oil or butter (if you’re cheating). Salt and pepper to taste, and voilà: risotto!

Morgan and I ate it with fresh, unadorned cherry tomatoes and—more importantly—wine glasses filled with milk, because we’re classy dudes!

Back to flying…

So here’s my problem.  When I make up recipes, I think things will be GREAT.  They are not always great.  I feel like I’ve got imagination, but terrible form.  The form will come with either practice or reincarnation after I light myself on hot, hot fire.   Or maybe, I just have to get Sfofie to teach me how to do things without dying.  Again. 

The challenge:

I was so disappointed with Guatemala that I wanted to make a nice, tropical-themed meal that wasn’t too hard to make. 

The plan:

Tropical food to me means blending flavors.  The safe blandness of chicken, with the tangy surprise of jerk rub.  Cayenne pepper with mango.  I wanted to make the Jabba’s Palace of food: A party in your mouth, bounty hunters okay.

- Coconut rice with capers.

- Ham and pineapple rounds, with toasted paprika.

- Grilled romaine  hearts, with pineapple flavor.

The fail: 

Cast iron grill pan has failed me.  Also, I have failed myself.  I also suspect that my current kitchen’s fan is not powerful enough;  I smoke up my apartment like a latchkey kid.  But I’m just trying to grill some damn lettuce. 

The most successful bit by far was the ham and pineapple rounds.  I found a pastry round just the size of pineapple slices, and cut a thick slice of ham into perfect little circles.  I cooked the ham, just a couple minutes over medium heat in a skillet, and threw the pineapple on the grill pan on medium. There was some olive oil involved, and the pineapple came out smoky and delicious.  I toasted the paprika in a dry pan on medium-low for about two minutes or so, and it came out tasting smoky and just right… and then I forgot to put it on the pineapple.

Bonus round: I marinated my pineapple for around an hour in spiced rum. Not sure if it made a difference in flavor, but my rum tasted DAMN fine. 

The part that should’ve worked in theory was the rice.  I just Japanese extra fancy rice, toasted it a bit in oil, and then dropped in a can of coconut milk and a can of water.  I forgot to cover it (fault 1), and I didn’t let it cook long enough because it was looking like the rice was ready to melt into some kind of sad mush (fault 2).  The taste was great–the coconut is light and happy, and the capers give it a sharp kick in the nads.  One caper per bite was usually enough to totally end my world with happiness.  For next time: cook rice like not a retard.  (PS: this rice really is good. I’m not a huge fan of coconut, but I gorged on this stuff when my mom made it in Belize. Try it! You won’t be 

The grilled romaine was a fail so epic, Xerxes would’ve shook his head in shame.  I’d be like, “Fuck you, Xerxes, you couldn’t take out 300 dudes at Thermopylae!” and he’d be like, “It’s lettuce, Jo.  You messed up grilling already-prepared food.  What the hell is wrong with you?”  Fault 1: So you brush a little oil on things you grill. “Cool,” I thought, “I’ll make something neat and emulsified, and have a nice flavored grill thing. And look, all this leftover pineapple juice…” Let me tell you something, kids. Don’t make an emulsion out of pineapple juice, mustard, and olive oil. It doesn’t fucking work. It doesn’t make the tangy, sweet, savory thing you want, and the texture is disastrous. Also, don’t cut your romaine hearts in half when you grill them. Tiny pieces of lettuce will fall into the cracks, stick, and ultimately smoke up your entire house. 

If I had another shot at this one, I would just lightly oil up the romaine, then make a separate vinaigrette, I’m thinking raspberries and white wine vinegar. The flavor of my weird stuff didn’t even come out. I ended up gorging on leftover pineapple slices and drowning my sorrows in liquor.

Business as usual.

Here’s the thing about salad.  It should be so easy to get fatties to eat salad.  The key to great salad is to make sure that every ingredient is impeccable.  The romaine has to be crisp and fresh (I use the bag stuff–so shoot me. It’s crisp!)  The dressing has to be dressing that you like.  I have been hard-pressed to find dressing that I like, until I found this stuff.  It’s about as strong and pungent as your average momma, and you don’t have to use much of it to get a real face-pounding caesar delight.  You have to have croutons.  Parmesan to taste.  And sometimes, if you’re feeling cheeky, you need chicken.

I have made the best chicken in the world.  On the same site with the caesar dressing, there’s a recipe for croutons.  I have made chicken in the same oven as those croutons are cooking, and hoo buddy, it’s good.

Ingredients:

- Two skinless chicken breasts. In the grocery mart, they sell huge bags of individually sealed chicken breasts, any of which can be frozen for forever. They’re delicious, skinny, and they defrost under warm water in about 30 minutes: all around win. 

- One lemon, sliced thin enough to cover two slabs of chicken. 

- Some parsley, chopped.

- Some garlic, smooshed. 

- Olive oil.

- Salt and pepper.

1. The crouton recipe tells you to heat some oil on low, smash two cloves of garlic, and move it around for around 3-5 minutes with any kind of spoon you like. If you’re making croutons too, just double al l that. I crisped the croutons at 250 degrees Fahrenheit.

2. After your oil is smelling fragrant, throw in the parsley. No reason.

3. Put your chicken slabs down on a sheet pan. You can wrap the sheet pan in aluminum foil if you like.

4. Slather that bitch in some of your olive oil. 

5. Salt and pepper some of that until you feel better. I was worried at first that the salt would leech some moisture from the chicken, but we’re going to fix that.

6. Pour the olive oil, parsley, and garlic on the chicken. Spread it out some. 

7. Now for those lemon slices. I squeezed all of them lightly as they went in, but I wanted to keep most of the lemon in tact. Squeeze them gently, then just cover your chicken in them. The lemon moisture will seep into your chicken, keep it moist, and make it delicious.

8. LET’S DO THIS! I popped it into the oven for 45 minutes. I got a little paranoid about it not cooking all the way through, so I cut a slice into the fattest part of the breast.

…. Hehehehehehe.

8. But it turns out that that probably wasn’t necessary. 

Yay!