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.

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.

Tuna Ring, in which my ability to speak English deserts me

It's Friday.

I don't observe Lent, but it does give me an excuse to make some people around here eat fish.

There's a delicious abomination called a Taco Ring, you may have heard of it or even eaten it before. It involves croissant dough, ground meat, taco seasoning and a metric ton of CHEESE. It's pretty awesome, really, but I always feel like such a phony Mexican when I make it, because, seriously, taco seasoning??

Anyway, as I said, it's Friday. No meat for J today. We IMPROVISE around these parts.

Tuna Ring
Croissant rolls dough
Canned tuna (I used a 12oz can)
1 metric ton of shredded cheese
1 egg
Bread crumbs (what, about 2 tbs.? Give or take?)
Finely chopped parsley
Sprinkle of ground ginger
Sprinkle of garlic powder (which I hate, but this was a lazy, fakin'-it sort of meal)
Annnnnnnnnd...
Mashed potatoes. Again, I'm going half-ass on this, so I used instant. This was about making a Really Quick meal, not a gourmet one, bear with me.

Preheat oven, 375 degrees.

Drain tuna, mix with everything else.

Lay out the croissant triangles on an ungreased cookie sheet so they make this circle thing. It's a tricky thing, and I'm sure a masters degree in applied geometry would help make this easier, but do the best you can. Spoon the tuna mush onto it and fold the dough over it so that you end up with an actual ring. I could have taken pictures, but didn't. What. I'm just going to use pictures other people have successfully taken of a taco ring.


My croissant circle of doom never looks that cool.

Bake according to the directions on the dough can, usually 12 or so minutes at 375 degrees or until a nice, golden brown.

Mind you, this is what/how much I made. Yeah, after piling up all that tuna and the mashed potatoes and ALL THAT CHEESE, it was almost too much for just one can of croissants. And maybe my little circle of death would've looked much neater if I'd used two, but it worked out.

If I'd wanted to spend more time on this thing, I may have used roasted (or super finely chopped fresh) garlic, fresh grated ginger, maybe some steamed spinach. I'm kinda feeling some chopped green olives, here, or jalapeno.

Maybe next time.

Chicken and Rice v2.0

Yeah, I got nothing on Kroger's baked chicken.

I made a different version of that other chicken and rice, in which I actually purchased uncooked chicken and marinated it and did my experimenting around with it for a while.

Let's see, what's in here... some red onion, parsley, ginger, garlic, lemon zest... added after the picture was taken - balsamic vinagrette, honey, lime juice, mustard, thyme, ponzu sauce... I don't know, I just raided my fridge and made it up as I went.

I left that in the fridge for a few hours, baked it, cubed it, decided I had used perhaps Way Too Much Onion and ended up making a very plain cream sauce (as opposed to the onion cream sauce in the post linked above). It was good, I guess. I mean, I'm glad I liked it, because I ended up making obscene amounts of it and have pretty much been eating nothing but for the last 4 days, but I'll take crispy, roasted chicken skin over skinless any day.

Reason/excuse = I actually made this for the pot luck at work and I wanted something that could easily and quickly be ladled onto a plate with minimum fuss. Thus the lack of bone and skin.

Unhealthy love for Ginger, brought to you by poor grammar

Powdered ginger has its place (the store's shelves), but nothing compares to the taste and smell of the fresh, grated, Real Thing.

That said, as much as I love the stuff, I just don't go through it quickly enough before it starts going South. And you know what I hate? The actual act of grating it, because my grater is tiny and lame, and more gets stuck in the little holes than what comes out through them.

Alas, not anymore.

I freeze my ginger. Shave the peel off, wrap it in a couple of layers of plastic wrap and a couple of layers of aluminum foil, and freeze those suckers. Then, when I need it, it's like shaving ice, and nothing gets stuck to the grater. In fact, I can even grate it with a butter knife.

This was one of the better epiphanies I've had while Not Spending Time In Barcelona.

And now, a picture of awesome ginger that does NOT belong in the freezer: