I accidentally invented taco-flavoured nasal decongestant tonight.


*wow*. Just... it's been a half hour, my face is still flushed, and my nose is still running. I liked it. "oh yeah, the burn, the burn...."

Word to the wise, when dealing with your spice cabinet, especially if your rack is full of 1 1/2 pound containers of spice (a size not often seen outside of a restaurant kitchen) is to not go with what you *think you know*

but to always check the label.

particuarly if you have cayenne pepper in a container next to the taco seasoning mix. Oddly, for this brand, the two are very similar in colour.

"[*whistling*] and two tablespoons, and three tablespoons, and four, and [*whiff*] Sweet Zombie Jesus What In The Firery Pits of Cajun Hell Is This Stuff?"

Chemical warfare. Tasty tasty chemical warfare. I added the usual amount of taco seasoning on top of the excessive cayanne and, everything said and done, I actually like it -- but I'll be eating this batch of taco filling rather sparingly and cut with a fair number of beans, and the bulk of it is going into the next batch of chili (that's going to be one very fine damn batch of chili, I already know) so no wasted food, just a lesson learned and some very clear sinuses at the moment.

...actually, I think it needs a little hot sauce. (I'm going to regret this in the morning.)

It's that time of year.

Find:
one whole chicken-- in parts is handy-- un-frozen, even more so.
onions, garlic.
I guess 4? bouillon cubes. I was using granules, and went with two heaping spoonfuls (as in, spoons I eat with. The smaller cereal spoons, not the larger serving spoons)
6 quarts of water, maybe more.
Pot for all of the above.
6 hours in which to cook. (or crock-pot it, your option)

Simmer for 6 hours. Fish out chicken parts (a slotted spoon or rice skimmer may be your friend here; you can run it through a strainer but hot liquid is a pain in the ass). Go back and look for more chicken parts, I bet you missed some small bones.

Set the meat aside to cool,
meanwhile...

Add 3 lbs. frozen veggies. I found packs at the mega mart actually labelled Vegetable Soup Mix. It has okra in it, but that's OK, I'll eat okra. It's a natural thickening agent, too (think gumbo). Bring back to a simmer, and give it a half hour.

At this point you can de-bone and chunk your chicken, and add it back to the pot. To this I also added two 1oz. packets of chicken gravy mix. So maybe it's more of a stew than a soup.

I plan to eat this strait-up, and also over egg noodles. It's not a chicken noodle soup per se, I guess you might even call it a pasta sauce in that application.

Bonus: the whole house smells like chicken soup. I feel my fever going down already.

After running a few errands this morning, I decided to set up camp in the kitchen and do the n+1th batch of chili. Mmmm... chili. Now a purist might object, and say that in fact my signature dish (wait? is this my signature dish? I need to remember to ask old roommates at the next football tailgate, which unfortunately will be 9 or so months from now) is not chili con carne, but instead just some sort of meat and bean spicy soup.

Yeah, whatever. It's still damn tasty.

Following the success last week of stovetop beans for the burrito recipe, I decided that from-scratch was the way to go this Friday as well. Abridged version: 1 lb. bag of beans, a short boil and then a one hour 'quick soak', and drain. Return beans to pot, add two chili seasoning packets (let me check... those are 1 1/4 oz. packets), a cup of tomato sauce, 5 cups of water, a few spices (cayenne, garlic powder, and a bay leaf today) and cook to specs.

To this I'm going to add the rest of the 29oz. can of tomato sauce, two cans of spicy refried beans, two more chili seasoning packets, and four pounds of MEAT. I usually use ground turkey. Or coarse ground chunk. The local megamart didn't have quite enough turkey so today I'm trying both.

Why not both? Sounds mighty tasty, in fact. This may be a start of a trend, and eventually a half dozen or more animals will have to die to go into my chili recipe.

Right before serving I'll add two cans of diced tomatoes (w/ green chilies), because the flavor is so much better if you don't cook the tomatoes long.

##

Instead of writing (or working, for that matter) while cooking this morning, I was drinking beer (nothing tastes like "a day off" quite like beer for breakfast) and reading through the archives on the Hot Sauce Blog. Makes me want to try a couple dozen new sauces, or hell, make my own. I guess I should head on down to the Dekalb Farmers Market and see what kind of peppers they have. Heck, I should work on my own chili spice mix and barbeque sauce too.

Oh and I suppose after lunch, I'll trying writing a bit more, too.

I'm about to go all Escoffier on your asses, so you better takes notes.

I'll wait; get a sheet of paper, or fire up a word processor.

Often I post recipes. Often I use these little windows of foody experience to also impart on you ungrateful internet masses some of my hard-won culinary expertise. Actually, I'm just a hack, but since quite a few of you know even less than I do about cooking, I can get away with sounding like an expert.

Right now my house smells Awesome. You have no idea, really, since there's no way to transmit this over the internet, but damn, someone call up Mrs. Blind and tell her that her son knows how to *cook*.

It's pot roast. (I tend to use these huge slabs of chuck for my pot roast). Now, in the past I've used [redacted] and fresh herbs and [redacted] and it's made a really great dinner, with the vegetables that have been roasting in beef juices and [redacted] for four hours, and plenty of sauce for the garlic mashed potatoes. But unfortunately I can't post that recipe because a friend of mine is pretty damn possessive of that particular dish (since I invented and cooked the recipe specifically for her birthday) and if I post that one to the blog, I think she plans to cut off my balls. or something similar. Perhaps not surprisingly, I'm not going to ask for details, or risk the currently-vague-but-still-ominous-un-named-retribution from the 5 foot terror.

(and now she's going to kick my ass for picking on her height. just can't win...)

That's a great recipe (and yes, I'm saying that now just to mess with you) though what I'm doing tonight is almost as good and is even easier to fix.

Now let's review why I conjured up the ghost of Escoffier, and just who that turkey is. Hell, I don't feel like explaining: wiki, go read.

Traditional French culinary sauces seem to require whole sides of beef or a flock of poultry, a kitchen herb garden, a well stocked pantry, a staff to mince veg and simmer crap for hours, and really, no one has the time or interest for this kind of thing anymore.

So, here is the new version of the five mother sauces:

- A quart jar of tomato sauce
- 2 taco (or chili) seasoning packets
- Butter
- processed, microwavable cheese
- a can of cream of mushroom soup

I'm sure these are rough analogies to the actual five suaces, but I don't give a crap. And #3 is surely the most underated of the five: need a sauce? Add butter to the dish.

Sometimes it really can be that simple.

Tonight is a pot roast using #5. Cream of mushroom soup. On top of that, I added a packet of onion soup mix, fresh mushrooms and onions (I often use fresh versions of ingredients to hide the pre-made sort)...

Well, let's get into details, shall we?

As per a previous pot roast posting, season both sides with salt and pepper, sear both sides of your roast in a skillet, put the large hunk of meat to a disposable roasting pan--
and now, on top of that,
smear the contents of one can of cream of mushroom soup on top of the roast. Sprinkle the contents of one packet of dried onion soup on top of that. Add a half pound of sliced mushrooms, and a cup of sweet onions (sliced or diced) along with at least a cup of water and a teaspoon of minced garlic. You'd like your liquid to come up a bit more than halfway up the side of your cut of meat.

Cover the roasting pan with foil, and then roast at 350 degrees for at least three hours. You don't need to do anything to the roast in between now and then, just let it go. (honest. no turning, no basting, just... leave it)

At this point, if you wanted vegetables, you might be thinking about how to cook those. This dish begs for mashed potatoes, so you might think about cooking some of those.

And three and a half to four hours later? (along with torturing anyone withing smelling range of your oven for 2+ hours?)

A roast that falls apart (no need for a carving knife) in a lovely mushroom-onion-gravy. Really, really nice.

I was browsing through my hit logs, seeing what people were typing into google and other search engines, mostly for the upcoming draft beer FAQ (these count as questions in my book, though they aren't asked directly) and I had to laugh a little at a few of the searches-- like the "japanese schoolgirl" fan in Malaysia (sorry, dude. hope that picture search works out for you, [*snort* *chuckle*]). Other than that odd abberation, it seems folks surf in here after looking for one of three things:

- draft beer crap
- one of the bar reviews, or
- a food question

Anyway, I thought I'd take a moment to honestly answer a few of these (non beer) questions culled from the searches:

To the Australian looking for a Jager Sauce recipe: (Australians, plural? It's been searched several times. And why Australians? Anyone able to give me some input?)
I gave this a glancing blow in one of my "chicken and" recipes, but at the time I was doing a cream based psuedo-stroganof instead of a jager. I'll go over the other for you now, in detail.

Jager Sauce
I first encounted Jager (German "Hunter") sauce when it was generously glomped over schnitzel. First here in the states, and also memorably in Deutschland itself. (my host family compared me to a magician, because I made it disappear, and also to a 'mining machine'-- I believe in the states we'd refer to it as a front-end loader-- because of the way I was shovelling it down. needless to say, that Jagerschnitzel was damn tasty.) It's basically a brown gravy with mushrooms. Here's how I'd try to duplicate that sauce today:

Shop:
(for 2 servings)
teaspoon beef bouillon (or 1 cube)
8 oz. mushrooms (buying pre-sliced is awfully handy)
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour or corn starch
water
+ pan drippings, but you don't really buy these

Hardware:
The pan you just cooked schnitzel in, for the aforementioned pan drippings. (or whatever: also works well with steak, salisbury or otherwise-- or any cutlet for that matter, whether it originally mooed, oinked, gobbled, bleated, barked, or whatever) (I'm kidding about the dog, people. don't email me)

Lab Procedure:

add the sliced mushrooms and cook down until they are, well, cooked.

Deglaze the pan with a little water, ~a cups worth. Add your bouillon, and simmer over low heat until disolved.

Now, you could make a roux on the side in another pan, but I'm going to assume you're lazy: add your butter, stir until combined, and then sprinkle in the flour and stir the gravy until you get rid of lumps. Takes a while, I know. My trick is to make a slurry with a little water and the flour, shaking well with a martini shaker before adding to the pan. But then, I'm the sort of guy who has not one but three martini shakers knocking around my kitchen. (and I don't even drink martinis. odd, that.)

Simmer to reduce, or add water to thin your gravy until you've got your desired consistency.

##

More webby-searchy goodness:

Q: "chili gravy for beef burrito recipe"
A: I think you may be looking for a mole (pronounced mo-le) sauce recipe. I can't say I've ever done Mole, so I'm sending you to wikipedia and the food network

Q: "how many servings in a gallon of chili"
A: I hate to do this to you, but... that's 4 quarts, or 8 pints, or 16 cups to the gallon...
...oh, wait. apparently, that was supposed to be for chili dogs, as evidenced by a later search. So, 16 tablespoons to a cup...

Yes, I'm being sarcastic. I'd figure on 3-4 tablespoon of chili for each dog, [*crunching*] so roughly 50 chilidogs out of a gallon, assuming of course that the chef helped himself to a cup or two while cooking. It happens.

Maybe I should rebound search that to find the guy serving chili dogs in the UK somewhere. Not that I'm going to be in the neighborhood, but it's always good to know.

so posting the recipe yesterday inspired me in some small part, and tonight I did another batch of chili.

$15 for 5 quarts. (this is why I have a category of recipes called 'bachelor chow': cheap eats we don't mind eating every day for two weeks running. That could also be called the foundation for the non-fiction project, in fact)

There are significant differences between what I cooked tonight and the recipe posted yesterday. I'm not posting the damn recipe again. Short of renaming this the Chili Blog and posting every last variation I happen to come up with... it's a lot of work as is, dammit.

(Speaking of... I'm going to work up my own spice combo, as opposed to relying on pre-mixed and expensive spice kits. I've warned the roommate, that there may be a lot of chili of varying quality to dispose of in the near future. His response was somewhere between a non-chalant exclamation of "cool, dude." and the serene bliss of a boddhisvata in contemplating helping others escape earthly bonds and achieve nirvana. That is to say, I think he's looking forward to it.)

My secret ingedients may yet remain secret. I might post them to the intarweb. There is a long development phase, and also, I need to work up a batch size somewhat smaller than the multiple-gallon version that I typically make, because-- particularly for experimentation-- it'd be a shame to waste that much food.

as long as we're on the subject of meat...

Here's a recipe written and posted to spec for a friend who wanted chili for this Saturday's tailgate. See, this internet thing is interactive. Granted, Todd has my email address so it was fairly easy for him to ask me, but even you could make a request, in the comments on a post or on the tagboard.


Assembly Line Chili
...so called because it's a scaleable solution to the chili problem.

Shop:
(for one iteration)
1 14 oz. can each of:
- black beans
- garbanzo beans (chick peas)
- kidney beans
- diced tomatoes with green chilis
- refried beans ("spicy fat-free" is good) (optional)
1 8 oz. can tomato sauce
1 bell pepper (optional)
1 really big vidalia (or other sweet) onion
1 package (~1 lb.) ground turkey, or coarse ground chuck
1 package Carroll Shelby's Original Texas Brand Chili Kit (or similar)
a little oil or butter

Hardware:
Collander
Gladware 13 cup container (3/4 of a gallon; it's the big deep square one)
Skillet

Recommended beer: yes.

Lab Procedures:

How many times have I cooked chili? I've done several barrels worth, I'm sure. (a 'barrel' as a unit of measure is 31 gallons). Is this my best chili recipe? Maybe not, but then again chili is very subjective, and getting the right blend of spice, burn, bulk, lower costs, and meaty goodness is a balancing act that will never come out the same way twice.

roughly two years ago I posted what is now an obsolete version of this one.

The best thing you can say about this recipe is that it's fast: no need to simmer for hours on end, just make and eat in an hour or less.

You might notice some similarities between this recipe and the burrito filling. There has been a certain amount of cross-pollination between the two, to the benefit of both IMO.

Start: Drain and rinse beans, 3 cans. My choices are above, pick whatever varieties you like. Dump beans in the gladware container. To this add the diced tomatoes without draining, and the small can of tomato sauce. Refried beans are added as a thickener; if you use them don't bother with the masa (fine ground corn) flour that is provided in the chili kit.

Next: Pre-heat a skillet over medium heat. Dice the onions, and bell pepper if you like peppers. Saute the veg in a bit of oil or butter. When these go soft and the onions are translucent, dump these on top of everything else in the gladware container.

Meat!: Don't bother to clean that skillet; add your meat to the pan and brown over medium high to high heat. Then drain the fat, and add the spices from the chili kit. You can skip the salt, and if you're using refried beans as a thickener, you can also skip the masa flour. Mix the spices in with the meat and a quarter cup of water, and keep it over flame just long enough to heat through.

Add the meat to the rest in our container-slash-mixing-bowl. Getting this mixed is quite a workout-- I'll add a bit of water and/or light beer to the chili just to loosen it up to a point where I can stir it. We mix this in the gladware so we can then just lid it and dump it in the fridge-- fewer dishes to clean is always a good thing.

This is "assembly line" chili because the three steps can be done concurrently (one person each on beans&maters, cooking the veggies, and cooking the meat) and because as soon as you're done with one batch, you can immediately start into another (without cleaning the skillet, even)

Notes:
This is actually a chili concentrate recipe-- when serving, I'll add water to a portion just like I might to a can of condensed soup. Often I serve up just a bowl at a time, though you could take this from the fridge or freezer, add to a large soup pot with water, and simmer over low heat until everything is warmed through.

Some of my friends (Bob) might argue that there is nothing wrong with the "concentrate" as is and would actively argue against adding water, and in fact might also consider the 13 cup container to be--at most--just a serving and a half. maybe 2 servings if there is a loaf of sourdough bread to go with it.

Serving suggestions include the aforementioned sourdough (while re-heating a pot of chili I'll eat a whole loaf a bit at a time, dipping it into the chili as it cooks. Oddly, by the time dinner is 'ready', I'm full.) or crackers, hot dogs, etc etc hell I've already posted this

If you wanted to cook beans from scratch, 1 cup dried beans will give us about 2 cups cooked beans, which would be roughly a can's worth.

One could also omit the beans entirely and use twice the amount of meat. I think I know what I'm cooking for dinner tomorrow...

When I did the garlic bread for Thursday night's dinner, I did it the usual way: slice a loaf of nice sour dough french bread on the bias ('cause it looks all fancy like, that and we get a larger surface area on each slice), melt a stick of butter in the microwave, add an obscene amount of garlic powder to the butter, brush the butter w/ garlic liberally on both sides of each slice of bread and over the top of the loaf...

hopefully you read these in advance before you try the recipes, because you really needed a long piece of foil (longer than the original loaf), using that as a work surface for all of the aforementioned butter slathering-- or you can clean one really messy counter later...

and wrap your bread in foil, pop in the oven at 350 degrees or so and give it 10 to 15 min.

You can prep a loaf in advance, and keep it in foil in the fridge for an afternoon, or overnight.

##

This is fine for a family dinner. However, for single servings (and I'll concede that a 20" loaf of garlic bread may in fact be a [*cough*] single serving) it is a bit much to go through.

So this afternoon (having bought two lovely loaves of the sourdough, now freezing for later consumption) I decided to do a batch of garlic butter, to have on hand.

I almost hesitate to call this one a recipe.

Garlic Butter

shop:
8 oz. tub of butter
obscene amount of garlic powder (or to taste)
an ounce or so chopped parsley.

hardware:
a mixing bowl
a spatula
a fork

lab procedures:

first, a note on butter. I bought [ahem] Land O Lakes Spreadable Butter with Canola Oil (8 oz.) [/endplug] because it comes in a tub (which I reused), I've purchased and eaten it in the past, and true to the label it is in fact 'spreadable' more-or-less right out of the fridge.

You could use two sticks of regular butter, or buy whatever brand of margarine, oleo, or butter-substitute suits your fancy. Heck, with the amount of garlic I usually put into this, an adventurous vegan could likely use silken tofu with no noticeable difference.

(note to self: garlic silken tofu? might be something there...)

So-- what there is of the recipe: Leave your butter on the counter for a half hour or so to soften. Dump in a mixing bowl, add as much garlic as you can stand, and combine with a fork. Since I had some fresh flat-leaf parsley on hand (leftover from the Turkey Schnitzel) I chopped some of that up very fine and mashed it in with the rest. Then, using a spatula, put the newly-seasoned butter back in it's tub (or some other handy container) and re-refrigerate.

I'm not sure that the parsley adds much in the way of flavor; it's primary purpose is as a clear visual warning: "Dude, this isn't plain butter ". (I also took a marker and wrote GARLIC on the lid.) Other herbs, though, can certainly be added with excellent results. (It's hard to go wrong with the Simon-Garfunkel-Loadout: parsley, sage, rosemary, & thyme.) (& as is typical: it'll be better after a few days in the fridge, when the flavors have had a chance to combine and disseminate)

Aside from bread, garlic butter can be added as a simple 'sauce' to fish, primarily, but also to chicken and even steak. (one of the best things to do to fillet mignon, if it isn't already wrapped in bacon, is to simply add a healthy dollop of herbed garlic butter)