New Format

I ran out of steam and stopped updating this mostly because I felt too burdened by creative writing each night. It was a choice between putting time and effort into a blog post or drinking beer and not doing that. Also I'm probably not as funny as I think I am anyhow. So I'm going to be lazy and boring now and just show what I cooked. Also the beer I made, because beer is sweet.

For the relaunch, just a bunch of food pictures I took over the past few months but never wrote about. My phone automatically uploads pictures to Google+. This is the only use I have found for Google+.

I don't remember what this is, which is a shame because it looks delicious.

Birdshot Ale's namesake peppercorns and juniper berries. Brewpot at right.

Grilled fish lettuce wraps with grilled corn. This one was sweet. Grilled the fish with pepper, salt, and chili powder; then topped it with cilantro, sweet pimentos, and a smashed avocado and ranch cream. Corn was buttered and seasoned with the same mix as the fish, then grilled until brown.

Supremely lazy veggie stir fry, the peanuts are awesome.

Grilled pita stuffed with masala veggie burger, hummus, and sriracha. I wouldn't recommend hummus on veggie burgers, the textures are too similar and you just end up with mush. Some crunchy cabbage, carrots, or radish would go much better I think.

So that's the new lazy blog, let's see if I can keep it going.

Cooking Vignettes

Between moving and being lazy I haven't put anything here in some time. While I haven't written anything, I did take pictures of a pair of cooking adventures that I'll throw together from memory, and fabricate any details I don't remember. It will be like two truths and a lie, except about food, and probably with lots more lies.

First Ann's recipe for fish. I think it was mahi mahi, but it might have been halibut or dolphin. She greased a baking sheet and put the (very thick) filets on it. The topping was made from crushed pecans, breadcrumbs, heavy cream (I think? some kind of dairy), seasonings (I see salt there not sure what else, I would also have used pepper (possibly lemon pepper (whoa! nested parentheses!)), onion flakes (those were probably in there), and some sambal oelek), and probably some extra virgin panda oil (you get that from the first pressing of baby pandas). Now that I mention it, I think sesame oil would be good also, that stuff is great. Once you have the topping, you cover the fish with it and bake it. It comes out looking very similar, but cooked.

The topping was good but the thickness of the fish left it a little raw in the center. Ann liked it that way; I was less enthusiastic. I think it would have been weird to butterfly the fish though since it wasn't homogeneous throughought - the center started redder and differently textured. Maybe a longer cook at lower temperature, say 350ish? This post is seeming less and less useful as I go on.

On the side we had quinoa with chicken broth and broccoli which was also good. You make it by cooking quinoa in chicken broth and then adding steamed broccoli.

The other recipe was mine, so I'm both less required and more inclined to just make things up. It was pretty solid though. I made an egg wash with sambal oelek, chopped garlic, and lime juice. Also eggs. I soaked the chicken in that for a half hour. I don't know if eggs contribute to a marinade, but I figured the rest of it would be good. While that was chilling, I made a crust by mashing about half a bag of Tostitos (TM) and adding copious amounts of black pepper, chili powder, cumin, onion flakes, garlic powder, more cumin, paprika, and cumin. Cumin is delicious by the way.

 I put ½ inch of canola oil in a skillet and got it really hot. My limited experience with frying suggests that hot oil is the key. You should let it hang out in the pan for a bit, then tilt the pan to spread it around, then let it hang out some more until it gets really hot. Then you're wrong and it still isn't hot enough so wait two minutes longer than you think you should wait. Then dip the chicken in the tortilla chip coating and place it in the oil. I cooked it on each side until the chicken looked cooked. The chips didn't really brown as much as I was expecting so I couldn't use that as a guide.

I think it actually turned out really well, which is good because I usually hate cooking chicken. If only pork was actually a white meat...

Now that I'm reflecting fondly on that one, I should probably point out that I did not intentionally lie in the above description. Were I to lie, I would mention the balsamic vinegar and polar-bear-tears reduction I made to go on top.

We also tried twice to cook scallops, which I don't have pictures of. Scallops are really difficult to cook. We learned after the first disaster that you need to drain them, wash them, and dry them on paper towels first. Discard the scallop juice. It is no accident that scallops are not served au jus. Then put butter and some oil in a skillet and get it very hot. And to reiterate, you will always be wrong and it will not be hot enough, so let it get hotter. That gives them a nice sear and turns them into sea bacon. I still have no idea how to turn them into cooked scallops.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts

On the subject of how to force terrible, healthy foodstuffs to taste good: brussels sprouts. When I was a kid, these were prepared by boiling them. They were the most repulsive food I ever experienced, and to add injury to insult, boiling them removes a great deal of their health benefits.

Turns out they don't have to induce dry-heaves if you cook them properly. I've done it a few different ways now but this is by far the laziest.

Preheat the oven to 375 F. Start with fresh brussels sprouts and wash them. Cut off the stem and bottom bit and remove the outer leaves. Place them on a baking tin. My roommates like to cut them in half and place them flat side down, but I like them round so you can lazily shuffle them around halfway through to cook evenly. Drizzle the sprouts with olive oil, coarse salt and pepper. Bake for 20-25 minutes, shake them around, then bake for 20-25 more to your taste.

They come out looking like this and confusingly edible.

Recipe for people who really, really hate reading:

Remove stems from sprouts. Sprinkle with olive oil, coarse salt, and pepper. Bake for 40 minutes, agitating halfway through.

Broiled Tofu Sandwich

The last time I had considered making a cooking blog, the topic was going to be on learning to cook with less meat without hating yourself. Pork, chicken, beef, and shrimp are all pretty easy to make delicious by accident. Cut it into bite-sized pieces, fry it in oil and minced garlic. It's basically cheating. 


Tofu on the other hand is generally terrible. I searched online for recipes specifically advertised as "tofu for carnivores" and came up with "tofu scramble," which looked good. Mine was more of a pasta sauce and only sort of terrible. The next time I thought about it, I made a pasta sauce that worked pretty well. I sauteed about half as much ground sausage as I'd want in the sauce, then sauteed some tofu in the same pan and mixed both into the sauce. The tofu tasted like sausage, looked like feta cheese, and added some meatiness without being too intrusive or unhealthy. 
Some more searching and attempts yielded the following guidelines:


Always buy "Extra Firm" tofu. Really. "Firm" is not good enough.
For frying it's best fresh. If you want it absorbent and unnoticed it's best frozen, I'll freeze it and then dethaw it the next day just to get the change in texture from freezing. I'm still working on figuring out which form is best for what type of food.
In either case, it's packaged with way too much water. Poke a hole in the package and drain it. It's ludicrous. It still has too much water. Freezing helps get rid of a lot because it will form ice on the outside which you can remove. For fresh tofu, put it on a plate, hold the plate over the sink, and squeeze more water out of it like a sponge.
If you aren't too repulsed by now to eat it, you have tofu capable of not being disgusting. 


I thought I'd give this recipe from Ann's magazine a try because it suggested marinating and then grilling tofu, two things I had never tried that seemed like good ideas. I took some concepts and then ran with them based on what I had. 

First I made the marinade, which was also neat because it called for toasting the spices, then grinding them, for which we have a sweet mortar and pestle. I shook coriander, caraway seeds, a crumbled bay leaf (I removed the stem), and black pepper in a small skillet for a minute. I don't know what it accomplished but it smelled good. I dumped the spices into the mortar along with some paprika and ground them with the pestle. Next the recipe called for grinding garlic, which was not a great idea since it just got wet and stuck on everything. Next time I think I'll stick to chopping. Last I added olive oil and sambal oelek and poured the marinade over drained slabs of tofu and left it in the fridge for a few hours.


When it was time to cook, we set the oven on broil and put in a greased grill rack to heat up. Ann made vegetable skewers with grape tomatoes, onion, and zucchini; I made red pepper rings. For each I made a spice blend of salt, pepper, garlic, ground coriander, and paprika. We sprayed the vegetables with olive oil and sprinkled on the spice mix, then added them to the grill rack. 
After five minutes we added the marinated tofu and the pepper rings. Five more minutes and we flipped everything to cook for five more minutes.

To add to the sandwich, I chopped an avocado and made a sauce from ranch dressing and some leftover marinade. Then I piled it all up. In hindsight the grill marks make it hard to see that it's tofu, which is always a bonus because that stuff is more gross than my attempts at arranging a plate.

The sandwich was actually pretty good. If I did it again, I think I'd use raw peppers on the sandwich to add more crunch, but I think I'm in the minority in preferring raw vegetables to cooked. The tofu had a texture similar to eggs, so it might be decent in a breakfast wrap or something also.

Recipe for people who hate reading:

One 14 oz package extra firm tofu, drained and squeezed
1 TBSP coriander seeds
½ TBSP caraway seeds
coarse black pepper
1 bay leaf, crumbled
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp sambal oelek
4 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
¼ cup olive oil
Ranch dressing for sauce
Whatever other vegetables and sandwich toppings you want


Shake dry spices except paprika over heated skillet for 1 minute. Grind with paprika and add to mixing dish. Add garlic, olive oil, and sambal oelek and stir. Marinate tofu for 4 - 48 hrs.
Grill tofu for five minutes on each side. Remaining marinade is good for sauces: I used ranch; the magazine suggested mayo and barbecue sauce. Compose sandwich.

Shrimp 'n' Peanuts

Conveniently enough for the inauguration of this blog, I cooked two dishes tonight to prevent seafood from spoiling.


This recipe comes from Ann's copy of "The Essential Asian Cookbook," which will probably crop up pretty often in here.  It's comically easy to make and calls for sambal oelek in the recipe, which provides a convenient segue to explain my cooking philosophy, shown to the right. Sambal oelek is an Indonesian chili paste and my primary dietary staple. Most of the things I cook are actually just vehicles for eating chili paste.


I had some plethora of shrimp which I didn't carefully measure. The marinade is made from ½ tsp. of ground ginger, ½ tsp. of ground coriander, ¼ tsp. of tumeric, lemon zest, juice of ½ a lemon, and ½ a tsp. of sambal oelek. Since this recipe is actually supposed to contain sambal oelek, I naturally added double this suggested amount. Once the sauce is ready, peel the shrimp.  The recipe says to peel and devein but leave the tails on. 


That is objectively stupid. You can eat shrimp veins, they're just ugly. Shrimp are ugly, removing the vein will not make them attractive. Unlike veins, shrimp tails cannot be eaten. Leaving the tails on shrimp is a chef's way of telling his diners that he hates them. It's chefese for "I hope you choke on this." /rant


I peeled off the shells and tails from the shrimp and mixed them in with the sauce, chopped green onion, and ⅓ cup of peanuts. Then you leave that mixture in the fridge for an hour to marinate.


Cooking is also pretty effortless.  Heat oil in a pan or wok (I usually use canola - less saturated than other oils) and stir fry the whole mixture for ~3 minutes until the shrimp are cooked. Serve over rice or noodles.  

These were delicious and crazy easy.  Next time I'd probably add bell peppers for a Kung Pao Shrimp analogue. I think raisins, craisins, or dates could be good as well. There's not much in the way of sauce at the end though, so if that's your thing you'll probably want to modify it.

Recipe for people who hate reading:

Some shrimp - I probably had ~ 1-1.25 pounds
4 green onions chopped
½ tsp. ground ginger
½ tsp. ground coriander
¼ tsp. tumeric
lemon zest
juice of ½ lemon
1 tsp. sambal oelek


Mix ingredients in a large bowl and marinate in the fridge for at least one hour. Stir fry in hot oil for three minutes and serve.

Crab Gazpacho

I've been meaning to do this for a while but I've been too lazy/hungry to take pictures.  All the cool kids have cooking blogs now though, so here goes.


I had a pair of leftover crabs and thought this would be a neat twist on a traditional Maryland Crab soup.  I used this recipe as a guide.  Most recipes called for deseeding (or is it seeding? I can't imagine anyone would want to add seeds to a tomato, so maybe seeding gets the point across?) the tomatoes, so I did that and upped the tomatoes from 4 to 6.  I used only one large bell pepper because that's all I had.  I also added a diced jalapeno because those are good in everything (read: everything).  The recipe also called for a (de)seeded cucumber and an onion.

I used a food processor to coarsely chop all the vegetables and then stirred them around.  The jalapeno I just chopped by hand and added at the end.  {Note: at this point, if you decide gazpacho is stupid, you can abort and have a pretty decent salsa.}  I also didn't have tomato juice, so I found a hillbilly recipe for making it from tomato paste.  I reduced it a bit to one can paste and three cans water because I like thick soups.  Add the 3 cups tomato juice, ¼ cup olive oil, and ¼ cup wine vinegar, salt and pepper to taste, stir it around, and let it sit in the fridge for a bit to mix flavors and get chilled.

Secret Ingredient - The crabs, not the fruit

Next I had to extract the meat from the crabs, a primitive and barbaric practice taught to all members of the Baltimore tribe at age 3.  The great trouble I've found with using this process for cooking is that I always seem to end with less meat than I expected.  Also I'm usually not as hungry by the end.  It's a delicious mystery.  Once I had all the remaining meat in a bowl, I sprinkled some old bay on top, more or less reflexively.




I googled "crab gazpacho" and read a few entries, all of which suggested topping it with crabmeat prior to eating as opposed to mixing it in, so I did as such.  Behold.  

I should probably take pictures with a better camera than my phone, but blogger/google+ make that pretty convenient, and I don't know where my camera battery is, so that's unlikely to change.


I'm not a particular fan of tomatoes outside of Italian food, so I wasn't sure what to expect from this.  It was not bad, I think Ann liked it more than I did.  Between the tomatoes and vinegar it was fairly acidic, and the onion came through very strong as well.  The cucumber and red pepper were there mostly as a nice crunch, but the crabmeat got totally overpowered and didn't add much.  I sprinkled some sugar in the leftovers to try to mute the acidity, I'll see how that turns out.  Next time I think I'll use less onion and just serve it as a side dish with some bread.

Recipe for people who hate reading:

6 Plum (FYI, also called Roma, that was a fun five minutes in the supermarket) tomatoes, (de)seeded
1 Cucumber (de)seeded
1-2 Red bell peppers (de)seeded
1 Red onion
1 Jalapeno
3 cups tomato juice
¼ cup wine vinegar
¼ cup olive oil


Coarsely chop the vegetables and add to a large bowl.  Stir in liquid ingredients, add salt and pepper to taste, and chill in refrigerator.  I think this is one of those things that gets better as leftovers.  Top with crabmeat if you have nothing better to do with crabmeat (like eat it).

Update:

The sugar and overnight stay definitely helped. It was less acidic and more complex. I'd still call it a side dish though, and leave the crab out of it.