Zucchini

There are delicious foods in the world that do not photograph well in spite of what your Facebook and Instagram friends may think.

This would be one of them.

::cue Law & Order intro::

It's based off a dish my dad used to cook all the time when I was a kid, except his version is vegetarian, everything is made from scratch with fresh ingredients, and he loads it with something like two sticks of butter, which the dish (and more specifically, my version) doesn't need.

Ground beef
Chopped onion
Garlic
Zucchini, sliced not too thin
Sliced mushrooms
1 can diced tomatoes
1 jar spaghetti sauce
Herbs of your choosing
Huge bag of mozzarella cheese

Brown the beef, drain, set aside.

Same pan, in a bit of olive oil or butter, sautee onion (~1/4) until translucent. Add one or two crushed cloves of garlic and cook for a minute or two. Add well-drained can of tomatoes (I used one that had oregano and basil) and cook for about 5 minutes, stirring and crushing the tomato bits as much as you can with the spoon. Add spaghetti sauce (how big the jar depends on how much beef you have and how thick you want the sauce to be), simmer for about 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Here's where you would add herbs/spices - I used oregano, parsley, a bit of fresh grated ginger... if I lived with culinary thrill-seekers I might have added a small can of chipotles (or chipotle powder.) I would also suggest adding about a teaspoon of sugar or so.

Remove from stove, stir in ground beef. In a greased pan, layer slices of zucchini and mushrooms with a layer of the beef sauce, and a layer of shredded mozzarella; keep layering until you reach the top of your pan (finishing with cheese.) Bake at 425F for 25-30 minutes or until cheese turns golden. Let rest for 5+ minutes so the juices settle before you dig in.

You can't cut into this like you would lasagna. This is a messy dish, and there will be trails of cheese following your ladle and getting all over the outside of your bowl (don't even think of putting this on a flat plate.)

I made this a few hours in advance, so I had to put it in the fridge and it was cold when it went in the oven; so I baked it at 350F for 10 minutes covered in foil before cranking it to 425 and baking uncovered for another 25.

Tuna patties

Where I come from this would be a more complicated process involving boiling potatoes, cutting them, making a mash out of them with a decent flavor, and all that before you can even START making the dish itself.
I make the pantry version because it's quicker.

1 pouch instant mashed potatoes (there's a variety of flavors, pick any one you like)
Canned tuna (I use 4 small ones because that's usually what's in my pantry. You could get a big can, I guess)
1 egg
Bread crumbs
Crushed garlic
Parsley (FRESH parsley changes the flavor of these things tremendously, but I don't have any. =( )
White pepper
Olive oil

Preheat oven, 400F.

Make the mashed potatoes following the directions on the package. Mix in the garlic (as much as you want), bread crumbs, parsley, and white pepper. Set aside to cool a bit while you drain the tuna.

Add the tuna BEFORE adding the egg, because those potatoes retain heat well and you don't want scrambled egg in your mix.

Make patties in whatever shape or size you desire, brush some olive oil on both sides, and set on a cookie sheet. Top rack, 400F for about 15 minutes (they'll start looking a bit dry), then flip them, turn oven down to 375F, and give them another 15-20 minutes.

This would make about 12 decent patties, but I skimped a bit and they ended up being 13, so I didn't have room for that last one on the cookie sheet. I made it in the toaster oven and it came out crispier and more golden than the others (which I kinda liked better, personally).

You can eat these in sandwiches if you'd like. I prefer them over lime juice-sprinkled iceberg lettuce. They taste like summer to me and my 9-year-old loves them.

(I also put some grated ginger in them to appease my ginger fixation. The child did not notice and I didn't feel the need to fill her in)

Stuffed mushrooms

Bear with me, I'm going to try to remember what all was thrown into the mix.

White button mushrooms (the pack had 24 big ones)
1 8oz pkg cream cheese
BACONNNN
Chopped onion
Minced garlic
Bleu cheese crumbles
Parmesan cheese
White wine vinegar (it WOULD have been white WINE, but I don't have any)
Bread crumbs
Assorted herbs from my pantry (namely - thyme, parsley)
Chicken bouillon powder
Olive oil
Butter
Salt & pepper

If you're looking for measurements, you're on the wrong blog.

Preheat oven, 400F.

Cut up the bacon into small pieces (I used 3 nice, thick slices), fry it up, set aside to drain. Hang on to that bacon grease for a minute. Hold it like you don't wanna let it go. YOU LOVE IT AND YOU KNOW IT.

Clean the mushrooms with a damp towel, separat the stems, and chop those up like the little bitches they are. Throw some herbs in there, a dash of the bouillon powder (how much you use will determine how much salt you'll need), bread crumbs, salt, pepper, all that jazz. Mix those up a bit, set aside.

Over a medium-high flame, heat just enough of that bacon grease to coat the surface of a pan, add a dab of butter, and cook the onion and garlic until they start to turn golden. Add the mushroom mixture and a splash of the white wine or white wine vinegar. Cook for about 5-ish minutes, stirring frequently. It should look like a gooey brown paste and smell like the food of the gods.

(This is where my father made fun of my mushroom-stuffed mushrooms and guess who doesn't get to have any, now. If you guessed my father you get to pat yourself on the back, good job!)

Transfer to a bowl and add the bacon, some more of the bread crumbs, and the three cheeses. Mix well and set aside.

Line up your mushroom caps with the stem(less) side down. Mix some olive oil into the rest of the bacon grease and lightly coat the tops of the mushrooms using a pastry brush.

Stuff the caps with the cream cheese mess and press the stuffed sides into a combination of bread crumbs and parmesan cheese in a shallow bowl. Set them on a baking sheet as you go. Make sure you use the kind with sides and not a flat cookie sheet, because they WILL release liquid and you don't want it sizzling at the bottom of your oven.



Bake for about 15-20 minutes or until the tops turn a pretty color and you're done!

Try not to eat too many. 'Shrooms are best in moderation, as we all know.

From the depths of my Freezer

At any given point in time I can usually dig around in my Freezer and find a bit of awesomeness.

Because I freeze EVERYTHING.

What I had in the fridge were some baby carrots, celery and onions, which by itself meant I could pretty much do anything I damn wanted.

Got some plain white rice to steam, sucker-punched my veggies in a tiny food processor, set everything aside for some stir fry I plan to whip up with some beef from... The Freezer. I usually buy a few extra packages of stir fry beef from the store, get home, wrap the entire package tight in a couple of layers of Saran wrap and forget all about them (in The Freezer) until they sound like a good idea again. They freeze well, and defrost remarkably quick.



But that's for dinner tonight. Later.
In the meantime, I could go for some soup.

Simmer some more of those chopped veggies with some chicken broth (I don't have any at the moment, so it was water and chicken bouillon), a good clove of minced garlic, some herbs (thyme, parsley, cilantro--my folks always say it's pointless to use those last two together, and I disagree), and added lime zest from The Freezer... I left that on the stove for a good 40 minutes or so, then dug around The Freezer for some more stuff.

Frozen corn.... what's this, a baggie of shredded beef? Alright... this kinda looks like an ice-cube shaped lump of blanched spinach... yeah, I think I remember doing that, okay... Sweet.

Bowl: beef, some of the cooked rice from earlier, broth. Sprinkle of lime juice. If I had avocado this would be perfection. Daughter's vs. mine: mine has the spinach and cayenne pepper. YUM.

Cheesy spinach dip

What's all THIS crap??

This is me reaching fairly randomly into the refrigerator when I realized I had a huge bag of spinach I'd forgotten about, that needed to be used Real Soon. Like, NOW. Told my sister to bring home some chips and I got to work.

WARNING: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. I DO NOT GUARANTEE RESULTS, NOR DO I PROMISE GOOD HEALTH

Tablespoon of butter, tablespoon of flour over low heat, cook a few minutes. I added about 1/4 cup of white wine, which in this case turned out to be Riesling, and even I know that's not a good idea. Riesling's too sweet, you want a dry wine, maybe a Chardonnay or a Sauvignon Blanc. It's what I had, and instead of skipping the wine altogether, I went with it. I do what I WANT.
Now, this would have been fine and dandy like so, maybe more wine, but noooooooo. I went a weird direction and added..... MILK. To an acidic wine. I believe in my heart of hearts that I knew somewhere in my subconscious that this was a Really Bad Idea, but, like I said, I do what I WANT. Can you guess what happened? Curdling happened. I almost gave up on it then, but I had faith in this little abomination I was creating and I kept simmering until it became smooth and creamy again. Believe it or not.
I added a bit more milk (probably ended up using about 3/4 of a cup total, give or take).
Then I started throwing stuff in, not all at once, but little by little. CHEESES. Shredded Monterey/Colby blend, bleu cheese crumbles, grated parmesan. Dashes of white pepper, parsley. Stir frequently, and while that's simmering and melting and coming together....

In a large pan heat some olive oil, add super finely chopped onion and garlic and saute over high heat until translucent. I added the huge amounts of spinach and covered, stirring occasionally until wilted. Drained it as best as I could and added it to my cheesy mess up there.
I simmered that for a while until it was nice and thick and cheesy and as scrumptious-looking as you can allow yourself to imagine it to be after you've seen it in its curdled stage. Removed from heat and added a couple of tablespoons of cream cheese, stirred until well incorporated, and voila.


It turned out to be delicious and everybody present loved the hell out of it and now it's completely gone, but that's not the point.

I still don't recommend trying this out for yourself.

(Aside from eating it with chips, I poured some over rice and it was awesome. Maybe making it thicker and baking it inside croissants would be fantastic. I could also see it over seared salmon. But seriously, don't make this at home)

The Carnivore Agenda, Spaghetti edition

Make no mistake: When given the chance, time, ingredients and caffeine, I would much rather cook pretty much everything from scratch. It's hard to tell from nearly every entry here, but I am ALL for spending 8 hours in the kitchen working on two or three dishes.

That is not the case, today.

An 8-item grocery list turned into a full cart, and in the interest of coming up with a quick dinner we decided on Spaghetti, the Faking It version.

1 box spaghetti noodles
1 lb ground beef
1 jar spaghetti sauce of your choice*
Roughly chopped spinach
Chopped parsley
Garlic
Grated ginger
Oregano
Chipotle (powder or en adobo)
White pepper
Bay leaves

The most pain-in-the-ass part of making spaghetti is getting that huge pot of water to BOIL ALREADY. Huge pot of water, some sea salt and a few bay leaves thrown in. While that's taking its sweet time, brown the beef and drain all the fat. Lower heat to a simmer, pour spaghetti sauce in (*I like the mushroom or meat ones). Add spinach, a clove of crushed garlic, some ginger, oregano, as much chipotle as you think you can handle (I add just a dash for flavor, not heat), white pepper, a couple of bay leaves. Simmer that until your water FINALLY BOILS, and leave it on there through the 9-11 minutes it'll take the pasta to cook (watch for the splatters). Just before the pasta is done, add the chopped parsley and another clove of crushed garlic into the sauce.
Drain pasta, remove sauce from heat and stuff your face with awesome.

Now, the garlic toast thing really works better with a baguette or something to that effect, but I don't have that kind of foresight when I do groceries. Soften some butter in the microwave (soften, not melt), add salt to taste, crushed garlic (because there just isn't enough garlic in this post already) and whatever herbs rock your boat. Spread over some bread and put it in the oven at 300F for some 10 minutes or so.

If you're worried about the garlic, that's what wine is for. Tomato dishes = red wine.