Cooking

I make food things

Drinking time

After a long day working, writing, working on business plans and just overall tiring myself out I like to have an adult beverage. My roommate tends to join me in such ventures and I thought I should share what we have going in the cups when we try to change the world from our little apartment.

Kraken’s Revenge:

2 shots Kraken rum, 1 shot Triple Sec, 1 scoop vanilla bean ice cream, top with the root bear of your choice.

Comrade Kraken:

2 shots Kraken, 1 shot Triple Sec, a half cup of root beer before topping off with heavy cream.

Redneck Margarita

2 shots Patron Orange, half a capful of cream de menthe, a cup of Mountain Dew and top off with ginger ale .

It should alwys be said to drink responsibly. It is never fun when you get hung over. I have more coming this week but let’s get some fun going before we get to the meat of the matter for the week.I just thought that as goofy as it is to try these out if you have the time.

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Excerpt – Time, Fire, and Cuisine

To this day I cannot say how this classifies. It does not have recipes on every page like a cookbook, but it does have a flow I think so it just remains as a food book. Which if you do not know seems to be a good way to surmise my writings so far. I write about food, how food reacts in the world, how it can be made, how it can be tasted, and really I think you get a better appreciation for it that way. Otherwise it is just another food porno in the world where you can get just get a good camera and some clay and tell people what you created.

From one book to two, with pages that will be switched in and out before it is done.  Then begins the illustrations slash the getting the agents to look at it. If they like it then great if not then I will just have to learn and move on

December 1st – At the beginning

Writing this “little project” has been at the best of times vexing and at its worst one of the fastest routes to a migraine I have had to go on. Trying to figure out what recipes would be best suited while balancing the stories and techniques were difficult with some of the experiences as unique as any piece of fiction.

The reason those pages are there though are to help shed light on the kinds of people and situations that may have gone one. To eat a restaurant is a complex issue of so many things done well that sometimes it is just as much fun to watch the whole thing as it is to just eat what is on the plate. In every kitchen around the world there are many people trying to make their way through life from the server to the chef each with a story to tell. Since you cannot make it through the world without listening to a few you might as well enjoy the ones you do listen to.

Now, with the last month of this project I can truly say that with all the techniques, experiences, terms, ideas, and of course recipes there should be something for everyone to learn one thing at least. If I managed that I would call this a success whether it is how to plate, cook, do things on the fly or even my own little opinion in a grand world.

We all seem devoted to the end product without thinking about everything that made it get there. It seems to happen to me whenever I do go out and I have a great plate that I think of the stories that plate of food told of how it got there to the hands making it. Machiavelli, the man often credited to such a school of thinking, is dead. If people sold in to it as much as they say then at least he would have found a way to continue breathing.

Enjoy the last portion of this book as much as I did writing it, even if it just a couple laughs at my own opinion in life.

December 31st – Final Test

This book hopefully has taught some valuable lessons or at the very least made you chuckle once. Now for the exam. In previous tests you had to use what you gleamed to make a meal. After your finished you need to compare to the dish you had to make at the start. For this time make three dishes from previous experience two of them have already been chosen.

For the first dish: Remake your first test dish and improve upon it using everything you have learned.

Made:_____________________________________

Second dish will be the dish incorporating recipes or formulas in your own plates. Improve upon this recipe and truly make it your own.

Made:________________________________________

The last dish will be your own. Have a friend pick one protein, one starch and one vegetable without your knowledge. Cook for them in the span of one hour a dish a full composed plate of food with the three main ingredients and whatever you have in your pantry.

Made:_______________________________________

Friend: ______________________________________

Protein:______________________________________

Starch:______________________________________

Vegetables:___________________________________

See how far you have come in the span of a single year. Every day you spent reading this either for a few minutes or few a couple hours. Learning what can be in the kitchens as well as the techniques and a good many recipes can be enough for a book. If anything I hope this will not sit loveless on a shelf instead being carted around as a fun read or even as a foot stool because this thing was much bigger then I thought at the beginning and I am proud to see it done .

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Excerpt – Time, Fire, and Cuisine

For some reason this salad is on most of the menus I see so after a while I just broke down the plates in to numbers I can handle. Having the walnuts made in larger batches means you can play with them in other things like cereal or your go to grazing snack. For those who do not like blue cheese then I have used a good brie as a substitute and a little more salt on the salad overall to balance. Salads really get the short end of the stick because to do it well you must compose a dish without so many of the long cooking methods found in normal entrees.

Revising wise I think my grammar could be done by a sixth grade who just had his first Jack and Coke but that’s okay because it will be a funny point to start from. Everyone should have that point where they start a project where they can look back and just laugh at how bad it was with their friends.

November 6th – Blue pear salad

For the greens you want equal parts of mache and arugula lettuce as well as whole spinach leaves. Check all of it for rotting bits as well as bugs before putting it down to work on the rest of your items. You can do this in a main bowl where everything else will be added or you can save it all in different smaller containers so you can toss it all and go quickly later in the day.

1:1:1 Arugula to mache lettuce to salad spinach

In the case of the vinaigrette you want to use your best oil and vinegar. A good pair to shoot for is a virgin or extra virgin olive oil matched with either champagne or balsamic vinegar. Each will work with the other ingredients. Make sure to whisk it or even build it in your food processor to keep longer before breaking.

3:1 Good oil to champagne or balsamic vinegar

Mix well before putting away. Add some walnuts to the amount of a quarter of the total greens. Before adding them straight to the greens you can candy them with a mix of butter and brown sugar in the ratio of six to one. Melt the butter before tossing your sugar in to dissolve.

4:1 Total greens to walnuts

6:1 Butter to brown sugar to candy your walnuts

Next take some blue cheese to half of your walnuts to add some salt to the dish. Make sure to not burn your nuts as you candy them.

2:1 Walnuts to blue or Gorgonzola cheese

Toss everything together before topping and enjoying. Finish everything with pear fans cut on top.

Did an extra one since summer is coming around a nice salad wouldn’t hurt.

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Excerpt – Time, Fire, and Cuisine

Coming from the Pacific Northwest there just has to be some recipes with seafood. This one is a good way to do any white meat fish and it doesn’t take million dollars to make either. Chicken works well for those who do not do well with fish. On previous pages you can also see how people are supposed to grow so that nothing is impossible and after reading my books you could cook a lot better. That would be the plan at least

October 6th – Fish a la Piccata

Translating loosely to miller style fish this works best with white meat fish fillet. Trout is the recipe here but halibut and cod can work if you so chose. Any white meat fish is acceptable as long as it can hold through a pan frying. The fat of choice for this recipe is a blended olive oil or clarified butter. Pat the fish fillet dry before dusting with an all purpose flour. In the pan an ounce of your choice of fat should be simmering from the heat.

Place your fish in the fat to let it cook. If one side has skin then you will want to let it cook more on one side then the other. On the other hand skinless fillet can be found although they do break up easier. As the meat cooks you will want to make a sauce to accompany it.

Mince six small capers with a heavy pinch of parsley so that you are left with equal portions of each.

1:1:1 Minced capers to minced parsley to lemon juice

After your fish cooks dump the sauce ingredients in to saute for a moment. Next you will want to remove it from the heat while swirling a pair of small half ounce chunks. Monte Au Buerre in full affect your sauce should be warm and ready while your fish has rested slightly before plating.

Pour a small portion of the sauce under the fish as it rests against your starch and vegetable of choice before ladling a small amount over the top of it. It should have a nice looking dark colored sear that can hold up to the sauce.

If the salty flavor of the briny capers isn’t really up your alley minced sweet pickle or cornuchons can be supplemented for a portion or for the entire part of the capers.

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Excerpt- Time, Fire, and Cuisine

Sometimes when you need to impress people you need to just get them some food. When you use an alcohol for cooking it is always good to use something of a mid shelf booze. A lower one if you need to burn it off first never get the bottom shelf stuff as most times that stuff is not fit to remove fingernail polish let alone drink.

September 17th -Fruit Romanoff

This dessert comes from much the same line as the zabayon sauce. Both are sauces that work to best show the texture and flavors of fresh fruit. Made from whipped cream folded in to an equal part of sour cream this is easier then to whisk heavy zabayon.

1:1 Heavy cream before whipping to sour cream

Mix the sour cream with a shot of brandy for every cup. Then add an equal part of brown sugar to brandy to the sour cream.

8:1:1 Sour cream to brandy to brown sugar

Whisk the heavy cream until it reaches medium peaks. If you have an electric hand held mixer I would suggest using it especially if your not to strong in the elbow or are not making large batches at a time.

Fold your whipped cream in to your sour cream in thirds as to not lose any of the air you worked to put in to it. For making desserts for events it handles well in if it is made the day of the event. If you hold it for more then twelve hours the bacteria in the sour cream will continue to do their work making your sauce more tart and throwing off the balance. It becomes a sweet crème fraiche and is definitely usable just not for the original purpose.

You can use it to layer different fruit between layers of sauce. Compotes of pear and apple can also be used as well as any small dice in a small amount of sauce. Being dairy based it gives you a lot to work with for what else you can use. Other alcohols in reduced form, cheeses, other fruit, some vegetables, classic dessert sauces, chocolate. Being only slightly sweet makes it an easy tool when creating desserts to your own will.

This is not a bad desert when time is working against you and you have some energy to spare. Warmer months and fresh fruit with a homemade sauce

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Excerpt – Time, Fire, and Cuisine

One of my first friends in college was a Hawaiian girl and between my accent. I sound like a complete bumpkin accent and her pigeon speak it seemed we could understand each other without having to talk to anyone else. The difference is akin to Moxxi from Borderlands with her normal voice and her accent. Below was the first dish she told me about back on the islands.

It was also with her that we talked what kind of books and what we hated about cookbooks nowadays. They seemed like glory shot filled food porn magazines and they did not teach or better someone’s cooking ability. Having this up now on my own blog kinda makes me look back at the path to get here and to any would be authors wanting to start a book of any kind. Be in it for the long haul.

July 9th – Spam musubi

Knowing that musubi is a Hawaiian dish on default we are going to pair it with something that is about as integrated in to the island cuisine, spam. Looking at the can some people may not enjoy the taste of such a thing and if that is the case you can remove the spam for some spicy Portuguese sausage.

Start your preparation by taking some good sushi rice or in the case that none can be found some medium grain rice cooked so that it is slightly sticky. This can be done by finding a rice grain with a lot of starch and only rinsing it once in cold water quickly. Like the Japanese sushi you will need to create a blend of your favorite vinegars to flavor the rice. I prefer mixing a batch of vinegar that is a quarter of the dry rice by volume. My vinegar mix starts off at 3:2 rice wine vinegar to apple cider vinegar.

After mixing up the vinegars in a container and your rice is cooked you want to remove the rice from the pan in to a bowl preferably wooden. Wooden bowls, not being so popular though may be hard to get to so just relax before taking your favorite mixing bowl out.

Before you flavor the rice though on a cutting board take your spam, remove it from the can and cut in to slices as big as your middle and ring finger combined. Begin cooking these in a pan letting them crisp up a little before topping your rice.

Place your rice in to a bowl and with a firm spatula begin breaking up the rice until you get a half dozen large clumps. Then slowly pour in your vinegar while breaking down the sticky ball so that they have a slightly tacky surface while appearing moist.

Shape your sushi to be held with two fingers. Begin shaping your race making sure to wet your hands as the rice will stick to your palms less. Finish by topping your creation with your fried spam or sauteed sausage. Matches well with anything teriyaki flavored as well as a light seaweed salad.

Sushi rice – 4:1 dry rice to vinegar mix by volume

Vinegar mix – 3:2 rice wine vinegar to apple cider vinegar.

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As a Rough draft grows and morph in to different projects it is always nice to see what needs to be done to finish it up. Right now the dates have to go, basic grammar and spelling checks because I was too sleep deprived to hammer the fine details. Lengthening and pictures of course. Still same rules as apply with these excerpts as the last set. They are all first draft and we have along way to go on them.

 

 

July 2nd – American Cuisine

American cuisine is more then the few chefs on television all the time. In fact even thinking they are representing American cuisine is like saying the trail blazers are great foot ball players only because they play a pro sport. Many may even see it as a joke on words like jumbo shrimps or common sense. Exploring my home country’s cuisine can maybe get a better view of your own home whether its another part of America or another country altogether.

Some of the basic points of this part of the book will be learning how ingredients made their way to each section of land. Distinguishing how the food was grown, sold, or brought in speaks to the way things were back in the era where such foods were new as well as how they were valued. For many of the older recipes certain things had to be done so that the food would be able to hold longer with less effort. Back in older eras such as the wild west or the pioneer rush eating food was a had to do action and not so much as something to be fussed over much. Flashy sauces and more costly ingredients making their way in to the dishes of the era were more found in the establishments popular in larger cities. Moving to the more rural areas such things may only be made rarely or bought in to save time while celebrating.

Respecting these people who in the untamed times of each section could make simple food taste so good should be revered as nowadays we may face different problems such as the loss of flavor and the increase of artificial chemicals. Time was not so liberally implanted as it took time for the families of the past to pickle and preserve everything they could while thinking up the recipes to get the most bang for their buck.

We all need to try and make the best food we can so we can live the best lives we can. This does not take an over abundance of food though which is something we must learn within our borders.

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Excerpt – Life, Love, and Cooking

This was originally a project that had started years ago because I wanted to show that one could make better food by better understanding it. How knowing some of the basics could build in to masterpieces on a plate, and no matter what we all need to eat. Typing this up is just the start of another step as instead of taking that project in full (about 129k words) it will be split in half for just about 62k in words.

Revising has to be done, word choice improved, pictures put in and a whole list of things that will in complete honesty may add up to absolutely nothing financially. That wasn’t why I did this project though, as I did it so that maybe someone out there in the real world. Someone who feels like they can’t do something will read it and even if they don’t agree on anything else find solace in the point that the world can be created by those willing to work for it and make it better. Enough waxing philosophically from the sixth month here is the last excerpt of this project.

June 26th- Meat loaf

This homey American dish has been recreated in almost every house with countless different flavorings. All meat loafs do have some things in common.

First is the use of ground meat whether its pork, turkey, chicken, beef or any other meat that can be ground. Lentils are even used as the base in a vegetarian option loaf.

Vegetables are often chopped in small chunks to give the loaf more texture when it is finished as well as a bit of extra color. The most common vegetables are the three belonging to the french mirepoix celery, carrot, onion.

Next is the glue that holds the entire thing together as it cooks. Eggs are one of the most popular items whether in yolks or whites separately or together are often used to bind everything together. For those who cant use all ground meat or those who want to cut the fat will often add bread crumbs in various forms. Sometimes old bread will be soaked in milk before being added to the ground beef.

Taking your meat in a bowl you would first add the vegetables and mix before finishing with the addition of your thickener and flavorings. Mixing until everything is amalgamated you would then shape it so it can fit in a high walled dish. Before setting it in the oven it can be wrapped in bacon to provide more flavor. As it cooks a large amount of fat will be left in the bottom of the dish with which you can make a gravy.

Meat loaf works well in thin slices for sandwiches while thicker slices can work for an entree all their own. It pairs well with hearty vegetables like scalloped potatoes.

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Excerpt – Life, Love, and Cooking

In my book  is also has some pages about some of the problems come from how food gets to us. Since I have started this writing project some light has been shed on this. It still has enough issue that it should still be here.

 

May 12th- Chocoholics beware

Used since the ancient empires chocolate has always hit a sweet spot to those who can afford it. Chocolate as we know it as a labor intensive product that takes whole cocoa beans roasting them down like coffee to be made in to a liquid and from the chocolate essence added with sugars, flavorings, and other items to form candies and desserts around the world. Can you think of a world with no chocolate at all?

The problem is that as time goes on the majority of chocolate is made from a system that puts cycle after cycle of products, but does not allow the land to recuperate after growing. Cycle after cycle of growing not only drops the quality and soon after the quantity of what they can make. Less chocolate is made and companies have to bid for the mass quantities at higher prices before sending it down to the consumer. After large corporations buy their fill next the smaller companies would buy what they could often at a higher price so multiple levels of business have to raise their prices to turn the same profits. Now nothing is set by a single provider and while there are multiple suppliers the second set will not make a great amount. Instead they will make a small set of artisan level chocolate with unique beans, processes, and flavors.

The reason many companies become unique is to find a reason they can effectively market to produce a higher profit then other companies who produce more en masse. Making it across the board for chocolate price hikes to the consumer as well as your restaurants, bakers, and family run businesses. It will take time until companies can be established where a steady flow of supplies can be made in a cycle that benefits both nature and man.

Something else that may fall in to this problem later again is the coffee bean and really any thing that has been in the same farming processes in a finite amount of land.

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Excerpt – Life, Love and Cooking

April 27th – Beef by numbers

Cooking cuts of beef to preferred doneness can seem rather scary to the uninitiated. Ending with an overcooked or vastly undercooked slab of meat can unnerve someone. When you ask how things should be cooked and get a half dozen different answers you need to learn the signs of difference which can come from one of two ways. First way it can be measured is by touch for as the protein cooks it gets tougher. Now there are some numbers you can check if you have a digital thermometer it will be the quickest way to get the temperature only do so when you feel you are just about done. Heat will continue to cook the meat so you want to aim just a few degrees lower then your target and let carryover heat finish the job. Take your reading from the top of the meat until you are comfortable with your skill. For the sear most look for on thicker steaks marks you will need to make them faster with a hotter grill. All numbers are in degrees of Fahrenheit

Blue – This is the rarest of all and you should remove it from the grill when it reaches 115 and the carry over should take it to 120.

Rare – Remove as it reaches 120 and let the residual heat push it to 125

Medium Rare- Remove at 125 and let residual heat push it to 130

Medium- Remove meat at 135 and let the residual finish it at 140

Medium Well- Remove at 145 and let residual heat bring it to 150

Well done – Remove at 155 and let residual heat finish it at 160

Brick – Cook to 165 and the finishing heat will bring it up to 170

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