How to make bachelor chow

So if you need a cheap meal to not absolutely suck here is what we call ramen which has more salt then anything else you can put in your body outside of a salt brick. It does last a long time. When making ramen you usually drop it in some water microwave it until soft, add seasoning and mix.

Now often times ramen can get very boring so here some tips to help make the meals a little easier to get down. When you cook your ramen in water it rehydrates it however after it gets soft you can continue cooking. I like to saute it in a non stick pan or with a drop of oil to get some color on the noodles before tossing them back in the broth.

Next is the sauce for those who do not know the bullion packet has the majority of the salt and many times you can make a quick sauce to toss with your noodles with.

After you make a sauce you could finish it back in a small amount of broth or just let the sauce do the job in the pan before grabbing a fork and jumping in.

Between making the noodles fried or soft, sauces, and broth combinations you can make thousands of dishes and even whole cookbooks have been written on the subject, but those are the things that can turn a simple ingredient in to something not so boring.

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Chicken a la kiev

Chicken a la kiev is a dish I found a recipe to in the old cookbook. We will do some slight changes here is what you will need.
Chicken breasts (skinless and boneless)
Egg for breading
Breadcrumbs for breading
Seasoning for the breadcrumbs
I use a combination of parmesan cheese and old bay to season my breading

Compound butter –
A compound butter is a butter mixed with other things to add more flavor and has been used in kitchens as a form of sauce. In this recipe my compound butter was made with an addition of crushed garlic, green onion, and honey mustard with a splash of lemon juice.

After mixing it all together you want to put your butter in the freezer. If you like everything a certain shape you can fill up an ice tray half full so you get little squares of butter already setting up.

Butterfly your chicken and after the butter has frozen stuff in the middle of the chicken before breading it up and dumping it in a frypot already heated up. Let it cool and dress as you see fit. If you do not feel comfortable putting frozen butter in raw chicken then you can put the butter on top before plating. The butter will melt to form a sauce to match the chicken.

After plating garnish with what you want. I use a small little piece of muenster cheese to work with the small amount of butter.

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Broth making

We will be going over stock and broth making. The major difference between the two is whether the addition of meat is included with the bones. When you get bones you want to get five times the amount of vegetables for the stock. Now in this case I will be using ham shanks for my broth and the basic stock mixture of vegetables of celery, carrot, and onion. You can use mushroom and bell peppers as well. Equipment wise you will want to get something called cheese cloth so you can do a final strain without getting a lot of chunks in the stock. If you have no bones from a recent roast then you can use something like in my case ham shanks. Roasting the bones, meat and vegetables would result in making the stock a brown stock. Now the color whether it is white or brown just signifies if things have been roasted.

Using the ham shanks this will be a brown pork broth. Starting cooking the bones or shanks in this case in pot with a little oil to brown the meat and bones while you cut the vegetables. It does not need to be the best cutting if your a little self conscious about it.

After cutting your vegetables toss them in with the bones to give them some color. When some time passes you want to add your water to the amount of ten times of the mass of the bones. So if you add 1lb of bone you want 5 lb veg and 10 lb or 10 pints since a pint of water is equivalent to a pound. Get everything in the pot after your roasted what you want and let it simmer until two thirds of the liquid is left.

As I was making the stock the roommates needed to eat so they decided to get something else going.

Line your strainer with the cheese cloth before draining the stock. The cheese cloth will catch the smaller pieces of matter left in the stock the strainer will miss. Let your stock cool and you should have a fat cap form on the after it cools down as well as the stock turning in to a bit more like jello. That means that the gelatin has been pulled from the bones and that is what gives the stock a quality that separates it from many things you can buy now a days.

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Stuffed Chicken with cheddar and mustard sauce

So with this recipe your going to need the following for one plate

2 4oz portions of boned and skinned dark meat chicken, 2 oz cheddar, 3 slices of bacon, olive oil for pan frying. For the sauce add a tablespoon and a half of dijon mustard, a tsp of honey, and a quarter cup of heavy cream.

So start out with your pan on medium heat and begin to cook your chicken after both sides have been flipped and cooked through. Stuff them with cheddar and let it sit for a moment while the bacon cooks. Drain the pan of your fry oil before dropping your bacon in to the pan. Cook your bacon through while making sure that it does not turn to glass. This will be the layer between your sauce and the chicken.

While this recipe is very rich the sauce should have a very refreshing bite. Either from the horse radish and acidity in the mustard or from additional seasoning. Other ways you can roll it is using addition of chives or cayenne pepper for additional color. The light heat of the seasoning or the fresh aroma of the chopped chives adds anew dimension to this. When you make the sauce all you have to do is put it all in a clean pan let it simmer after whisking together until the volume decreases by a third to a half.

Layer your bacon on top of your chicken and pour the sauce on top of the bacon gently then enjoy. So hope you enjoy and hopefully after eating this you get one step closer.

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Guest Blogger: Broken on the orgasmacake

I guess I have to do this something about guest blogging or whatever. I am Broken from the planet of gratuitous sarcasm. These are the cupcakes that the first taster named the orgasmacake. We did it for an anime convention and when we found out we could not sell it we decided to give a few out. These are an easy enough recipe and unlike Big T I don’t cook much so I use cake mix. Start off with your cake mix of choice and proceed with making the batter as it follows on the box with one major difference in this batch.

I used some of Big T’s Cherry Dr. Pepper instead of the water. It adds a little bit of flavor. The big thing in this will be the hidden chunk of chocolate chip cookie dough in the center cupcake. I buy mine premade, your looking for a chunk the size of a d6 (6 sided die)

Mix your eggs and oil and cut your cookie dough to the size needed and then add your cake mix. Make sure it is smooth. Oh and make sure you put papers in your cupcake pan. It is not fun to fish them out without papers. When you construct your cakes pour half your batter in it before dropping in the cookie dough ball, and cover with the remaining amount of batter. Bake the cakes until they are done. Cool them off and enjoy.

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The earned sandwich

Hope you all had a fun month. So Valentine’s day has come and gone with much ado. This recipe is all about what you need after a harsh night of love day activities. Get some protein back in your system with the earned sandwich.

Here are your items needed : 4 slices thick cut bacon, 2 slices wheat bread, 1-2 oz slices pastrami, one egg, some semi soft cheese of choice (In this case Gruyere), and sweet mustard.

Get some paper towels and begin with cooking your bacon. you want it crisp with some give. Let it drain and leave all the beautiful bacon grease. That grease will be what you fry your egg in do so on medium heat, and if your a little nervous you can lower the heat and let it go a little slower. The hard thing will be that when you try to flip it. When the outside is cooked through but the yolk

is just beginning to cook through that is when you should put it aside.

After this you should have a little bacon grease left in the pan. You can use this to toast the bread slightly or to warm up the pastrami. For mine below I used it for the pastrami. The wheat bread I get is nice and soft and combined with the semi crunchy bacon provides some contrast texture wise. If you want to cook your pastrami top it with a little bit of the cheese and try not to flip it just letting the heat come through to start it.

Building your sandwich because you earned it .

Get your sweet mustard and lightly dress one side of the bread with it . Then layer cheese, bacon, egg, pastrami, and bread.

While the egg and bacon is cooking you can cut your cheese. For mine I wanted it that it was just warm. placing on some on top of the hot egg when it began to rest and topping it with hot pastrami made the cheese a team player on this sandwich.

Yes, I forgot to wipe my plate before taking the picture. It is always amazing how you never think of things until you see pictures of it.

In either case this is the earned sandwich. If you prefer your egg more cooked then just give it a little more time in the pan. Next blog post will be coming soon. Until then everyone, have a good one.

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February 11, 2014

MrBigTAnderson

Eggs Magda: Start by gathering the following ingredients. 2 Jumbo Eggs, 1/4 cup Green Onions, 1/4 cup grated Gruyere cheese, and 1 tablespoon Dijon Mustard. At the end of this recipe you should have a very smooth cheesy set of scrambled eggs that is very nice on a slice of toasted wheat bread.

Start by cracking your eggs in a pan over medium low heat and whisk in your dijon mustard.

You will want to break up curds with a small whisk scraping gently from the bottom of the pan as it cooks.

After the color has changed you want to add the cheese and turn off the heat. Whisk it all together until it melts before finishing with the green onions. Whisk together and serve.

Simple but delicious. Serve with toast and bacon for a breakfast of champions.This recipe was for one portion. When making multiple portions though there is not much change in the process to make it.

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Some of the hardest people to cook for

In a kitchen there are two major problems. One is you find out that you have a table of food critics and the other is you have a table of true cooks. Not those that announce that they have been cooks for years because often times those that do that in a restaurant are about as good in a kitchen as a critic. I am talking the old school been there thirty years and have forgotten more about food then most people know.

One can utter a word based out of stupidity and the business dies the other can tell exactly what you are doing by the plate. So you have to be on your “A” game because your little tricks will be on full display to them.

What is surprising is critics often have no culinary experience to draw from and that is the norm. You want the best food then you go ask a cook. This article may seem a bit harsh, but I do agree with the point.

http://gawker.com/5913046/food-critics-are-worthless

Food critics to be food critics are just not that good you can either go to sites where you can get a wider range of experiences or you can just ask a cook where he would go to get some good grub. If in a city a cook is impressed enough to respect the food he is given then that is the highest show of respect.

What is sad is that it is a very rare moment where a food critic that gets respected in the writing circles has actual kitchen experience. The same is true for health inspectors. Often times you do not need any experience to become one. You could see though how past experience in a kitchen would help when you need to grade it because if you know all the tricks then you know where to look.

Cooks can really be useful in a lot of different aspects if you think hard enough, but that is true in nearly any job.

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Working in a national park

For those who have never had the experience of working in a park let me tell you what it is like. You and a group of people living, working, and hanging out together. I worked at Mount Rainier as a cook for a couple seasons. If you do not have a car then you will be stuck in one spot a lot or you will get really good at organizing car pools. If you want to work one to get a try of it be aware it is seasonal work, bu often time working the full season will allow you unemployment.

There are some good things about it though. I met a lot of people there that I would have never talked to otherwise. My friends list is beginning to look like a United Nations cast. You will to as for the most part people do not want to burn bridges here. I’m not that much of a social person, but I have gone drinking with Turks, ran obstacle courses with a blond Canadian, worked on cars with the Sengalese, and partied with the Jamaicans, not including the times I had with my British, Chinese, Thai, Czech, and other American friends I made here.

I got my camera working now and here are some of the pictures I took while I was on the Mountain for the 2013 season

If you like the view then you will like working in parks. Many times they have things you can do provided you are not working. Writing or drawing pass the time quite well. You have to bring your own entertainment, but some areas in park have wi fi for workers only.

Hope your holidays went well. Just needed to put this up and get some nice pics on here.

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Cooking for the holidays.

So. I still have problems believing this. I got the fudge done my mint marshmallow fudge, no problems. The ganache is set and all i need is the cocoa powder for the rolled truffles. Well doing all the work with chocolate you get it on you. So I asked my friends to see if they could give me a hand just packing together the popcorn balls. Three grown adults should be able to figure this out no problem while I can go and freshen up.

I say SHOULD because not only did my black cherry popcorn balls not get made no one had any idea what to do. Pour warm syrup over popcorn pack into balls and let chill. I have gotten grade school kids to do this without any hiccups. So I get all clean and I walk out of my room in the fortress of nerditude and two of my friends have popcorn stuck to their clothes with only two balls made. Minus all the syrup they start asking how everything was supposed to happen. I take whats left of the syrup and warm it up again before making one in about a minute.

Everyone just stops right there after putting together that I had everything ready for them and was gone for a half hour. I got one done in less then a minute. My roommate looks over at the other two ( he was supervising due to his bad hand)

“Wow, who feels like an idiot?”

The others raise their hand and I face palm hard enough before having a good group laugh with everyone. We all know that stupid moments happen so we made dark chocolate and cherry flavored popcorn instead. Which tasted pretty well after melting the chocolate to drizzle the cherry popcorn as well as all the spare popcorn another friend told me one thing.

“We cannot cook at all, but we should have told you that beforehand?”

Me and my roommate laughed.

Everyone then went out to subway for dinner.

Happy holidays folks, its good to laugh every once in a while.

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