Kintsugi Kitchen

One of my fave recipes is 50/50 ground beef and pork w/cumin and cinnamon. Damn fine and super simple. Onions are a must. Panko if I'm turning them into meatballs or patties. Usually a tomato based sauce, sometimes marinara sometimes cream&curry à la butter chicken.

 

due to religious constraints, there are times where i have to work around ALL MEAT PRODUCTS or ALL DAIRY PRODUCTS. the solution: sometimes u just need some fake meat.

Spoiler: fake taco meat!

1 can chickpeas, drained.
1 smallish head cauliflower, broken up into chickpea-sized bits.
1 tsp each garlic powder, onion powder, cumin, salt.
2 tsp chili powder.
1 tbs lime juice, olive oil, water.

mix all that shit up.
dump all that shit on a baking sheet.
let all that shit hang out at 400 degrees for 30 minutes. push it around a couple times halfway through so it doesn't get too comfortable. bam. meatless tacos.
it's really good with avocado and cilantro and beans. it tastes just like meat. don't ask me how.

also, there is no reason any self-respecting hipster should not be processing their own nut butter. it's fucking good as hell, and it takes like 15 minutes of active participation. i like pecan butter. it tastes like pie filling and contains way less sugar than pie filling.

Spoiler: you'll thank me for this.

like two cups of nuts.
a nice big pinch of salt.
fun additives (agave, maple syrup, vanilla extract, etc).

get... like... two cups of nuts. sure. dump them in a big bowl. put some water in there. go about your business for six hours. come back. rinse the nuts.
got clean nuts? baking sheet at 100-120 degrees. go to bed. wake up 8-12 hours later. you've got warm dry nuts. put them in a food processor and just... let it go.
"but hanka! it looks all grainy and nasty!" shhh. walk away. come back in five minutes. it'll be okay. the friction of the blades on the nuts will warm it up and all the oil will come out of the nuts and it'll be good.
dump in some salt. yes, even if you're making a sweet butter.
let it go another minute.
dump in your fun stuff. want thai peanut sauce? use peanuts and add in some red curry paste, sugar and white vinegar.
want pecan pie tasting oatmeal topping? use pecans and add in maple syrup and vanilla bean paste. don't have that? use liquid vanilla.
want to really impress your jewish friends? use walnuts and add in dried raisins and dates and some strong wine around easter, and tell them you accept small bills as thank yous.
the possibilities are endless.
WARNING! USE ONLY NONPERISHABLES. OTHERWISE THIS SHIT WILL GO SO FUNKY WHEN YOU FORGET IT'S IN THE BACK OF YOUR FRIDGE FOR THREE WEEKS.

 

sorry for double posting but i'm full of top-shelf content today. i should have a cooking show.

Spoiler: you can tell it's hot out because the russians are eating their beets cold.

go into your local ethnic food aisle until you find the kosher stuff. find the big glass jars of cold borscht. you can tell they're the good shit because they look like they've never been in contact with a beet, ever. get one of these.

eggs.
green onions.
cucumber.
carrot.
basically whatever is laying around in your fridge and you want it gone.

boil the eggs hard. cut everything up. dump your beet water into a vessel and add your garbage vegetables before they spoil. the lovely beet taste conceals the fact that you're actually eating everything you don't want to throw away. it's actually really good.

Spoiler: balls in your mouth.

let me just say if you've never had matzo balls, you've got one thing in common with hitler, probably. fix that. try my balls. you're gonna love my balls.

buy some matzo meal. failing that, buy some matzo. failing that, hit a local friendly jew up for some matzo. we always buy too much and it keeps forever, so i guarantee you any of us will have extra. break that shit up into sand texture. i like using a food processor, but you can also put it in a bag, tape a picture of your ex on, and go to town. whatever gets you through the day.

here's your ratio. you can multiply this based on how many matzo balls you want to eat, because they're fucking good.

4 eggs.
2 tbs chicken fat. oh, you don't have chicken fat? tsk. this is antisemitic discrimination. use vegetable oil.
1/4 cup chicken broth. some people use seltzer water. these people are awful.
1 cup of your matzo sand.
some salt and pepper.

mix all that shit up. throw it in the fridge. go about your business. come back several hours later and make some balls. they should be small. they absorb a ton of water. i like to finish them by simmering 30 minutes in the chicken soup i'm going to be serving them in, but if you hate flavor and happiness, you can finish them in salted boiling water.

 

Oo, another recipe for the "make cauliflower not be gross" file, thank you!

(it also does a really good job of pretending to be pasta if you steam it til it's almost done then roast it for a few minutes, at least in tomato-based sauces)

In other news Pepperidge Farm now makes bread with cheesy swirls and it will make a grilled cheese sandwich from God's own lunch counter.

You need two slices of this stuff, butter, a strong flavored cheese, a melty cheese, and maybe some bacon or spinach or whatever other accessories you like. With normal bread I like to smush grated parm or asiago onto the buttered sides of the bread where it will cook into a crispy cheesy crust but with this bread it's not necessary. So good.

 

oh, spinach reminds me! this chick i was dating made the best pasta with spinach.

wilt a handful of spinach in oil with a few chopped-up cloves of garlic, add butter and cream and romano/parmesan (pick one, i like romano) and salt and pepper until it's a nice pasta-saucy consistency, add to cooked pasta. it's fucking good. i don't have proportions, but it's hard to fuck up. add the cream slowly, cook it down for a while.

not the healthiest thing, but who gives a shit, it's pasta with cream sauce, it's fucking good and it takes you like 20 seconds.

 

Spinach-and-maybe-some-other-stuff + cream sauce + pasta is the best. the best.

Hell, sometimes I don't even bother with the pasta. Big bowl of garlic butter sauteed mushrooms, shrimp, and spinach, little dollop of cream and parm, just put that straight in your face. unf.

 

Tell me how it turns out!! I've only tried the sprite/strawberry(/peach) version but that does indeed sound delish. (I wish I had a blender now, I want to try different combinations...)

 

Do you think Cheerwine would work out well with this? Because I'm half-tempted to mix this and a ice cream float together, and blend frozen berries with Cheerwine and top the lot with soft-serve frozen custard or vanilla ice cream. I know I certainly want to try this with lemon-lime soda and strawberries though, good lord.

Also, aside from this: spam musubi is delicious and surprisingly awkward to make without a press. I didn't want to go for one because I didn't want to spend five bucks on a unitasker based around a dish I might not actually like, but the small rectangle tupperware bottoms from Ikea worked for a reasonable mold. They're filling for the size too, so we still have like three or four left over, not counting marinated spam slices I ran out of rice for, and they look like they'll keep well in the fridge.

 

I've never had cheerwine but I don't see why it wouldn't? You would just want to pick a fruit that tastes good with cherry. That ice cream thing sounds absolutely amazing though do iiiiiit :U

 

hanka, i love how you write recipes. just. love.

can you buy canned chicken fat?

 

thanks i try to really convey how abrasive i am in person over text

i have no idea. we have some hanging out in a soup can pretty much all the time. if you cook a chicken in the oven standing up (there is a wire apparatus for this exact purpose) or make beer can chicken, all the fat goes out into the pan you're keeping it in, and you can kinda dump it into a vessel. this is the inferior way of producing schmaltz.

this is the more involved way of producing schmaltz, but it involves having a lot of chicken skin and fat on hand and willingness to sweat over the stove. a bonus: you get gribenes out of this way, which are crispy fried pieces of chicken skin, and they are delicious. think the superior kosher version of cracklins.

note: a lot of jews have roast chicken once a week, so saving all the useless bits is not out of the question. the sabbath chicken is a whole tradition. also, if you haven't had chicken liver, it comes highly recommended.

 

I do the cooking in my household, or have until this point. I'm also what you might call 'really fucking poor' and 'soemtimes unable to leave the house' so I'm always willing to get creative with what I have on hand.

That said, homemade spaghetti sauce, 'whatever you have in the cabinet' version:

-Tomatoes of some kind. Like, fresh, ideally. Maybe two normal tomatoes, or a box of cherry tomatoes? Nice. You could probably make this with canned but I never have. Just get enough tomato to be two/three/four cups who cares if it's all the same kind or not.
-Garlic of some kind, lots. Got a bulb (reccomended)? Mince two or three cloves. Got powder? Like a tablespoon at least. Maybe both. More garlic.
-Basil of some kind (ideally.) Fresh, dried, in a refrigerated goop, whatever, few teaspoons of that.
-Olive oil or vegetable oil or sunflower oil or, whatever, honestly, we're all desperate here.
-Some salt, maybe a teaspoon or two. Not a lot, the flavor will be done by the other goodness.
-PEPPER. GO CRAZY. A few teaspoons of black, maybe peppercorns, a teapoon of dried Chili Pepper REALLY makes this (or more)... choose one or two of the above
-Rice vinegar, or white vinegar, or just, use what you have. I GUESS this is optional but it tastes so much better with like two splashes (idk two tablespoons?) of rice vinegar so add it if you have any. Maybe balsalmic is a bad idea though.
-Optionals: rosemary, oregano, ground beef (I'll tell you later), whatever other spices your little heart desires
-Probably corn starch for thickening

Chop everything. Chop everything SMALL. Put a pot on the stove on about medium heat, heat up the oil, and then toss in your minced garlic (if you have minced garlic) for a minute or so. After it's tan but not brown (or if you don't have garlic) throw in your tomatoes. Usually I actually chop my tomatoes as I'm going, throw a few in to fry, chop more, eventually get to a pot of tomato slush, but that's stressful so be smarter and chop ahead of time.

You're going to want your tomatoes to boil, and then you immediately reduce heat to a simmer (like boiling, but gentle.) Ideally before the boil but whenever you can manage, toss in your pepper(s), your other garlic (you have more right), your basil/rosemary/oregano/what have you, salt, any other spices you want. Usually at this point I'm tasting as I go on and believe me when I say this is ALL TO TASTE and you should taste before you just dump in more chili flakes or salt. Note: When it's hot and you can only taste little sips, you're getting a diluted taste. It'll taste saliter/spicier/more intense once it's cooled and you're getting mouthfulls, so it's a good plan to get to a taste that's almost enough for you and then stop.

Add the vinegar and stir it in. At this point you should let it all bubble and mingle while you make your pasta (or your garlic bread or meatballs or lie down for a minute) and that's never going to hurt it, like, simmer it as long as possible, tbh. Tomatoes are juicy and you want this thick. If it doesn't simmer long and it's dinner now and you don't have time and fuck my gay life, whisk a tablespoon of cornstarch (or flour I guess??) into a small amount of hot/ideally boiling water and stir that into the sauce while on the stove to thicken it. I would tell you to just add corn starch to the sauce, but in my experience, that just causes the corn starch to clump, so whisk it into a small amount of water and pour that in.

The ground beef is an optional ingredient to make this a meat sauce--thaw about a cup, brown in another pan with salt and garlic (probably not necessary but, more garlic), drain away as much fat as possible, add to sauce in later stages (like, after vinegar and before starch). It's delicious, trust me.

Serve on whatever pasta you boiled on the backburner (and keep an eye on it, your attention will be on the sauce so it's easy to overboil the pasta) and a side of delicious berries for balanced meal. Yay!

Another thing: if you ever have leftover meats of any kind, put a pot with a cup or two of beef or chicken broth on the stove, some chili pepper or other spicy flavoring, throw in chuncks of the leftover meat, boil as long as you have patience, thicken with corn starch maybe, serve over rice. Best possible way to eat leftover meats.

 

Alsoooo I just made bread. The bread is delicious though could have MORE FLAVOR so maybe I'll make it an herb bread next time.

Here's the recipe, from an old church cookbook my parents mysteriously aquired from a lutheran church in Iowa like, twenty years ago. I followed to the letter except for not having shortening or milk, used butter and almond milk instead.



Like I said, delicious, excellent sandwich bread, but I feel like it could be MORE so idk herb bread next time.

Here are the loaves themsleves : 3 aaaaaaahhh

 

I have plans to make gluten free banana bread...
I bought the stuff a week ago. Bananas are definitely over ripe now. Maybe tomorrow I will have the spoons to finally bake it and I can show it off.

 

Ended up cooking AND baking today so I feel like ranting about that. :D
So we had some chicken alfredo... with seafood, so not really alfredo but that was the base inspiration for what I did. Though it's a little tricky because I have to eat gluten free and (mostly) lactose free.

Had some really fine chopped up onions that I didn't end up using a couple nights back so I sauteed those up with a good chunk of butter and a couple spoonfuls of minced garlic, then salt and pepper and poultry seasoning mix and some really good condensed chicken bouillon stuff I got in the fridge. I'd tell you what it is but I've forgotten the name of it. Maybe I'll edit it in later.
So while that's going I got some bacon frying in another pan, still frozen so it was pretty easy to chop into bits. They both simmered down into delicious carmelized crispyness.

Got another pot with shrimp and scallops in it; the shrimp just needs to be reheated but the scallops gotta cook so we kept it on low with a lil water in it and it did the trick. There was enough water in the frozen seafood, so it cooked one without overdoing the other. Those went into another pot that had been gently simmering with butter, a couple teaspons of coconut oil, another couple tablespoons of garlic, chicken bouillon, and sliced shallots. This will later become The Sauce.

The onions and bacon got mixed, after taking off a lot of the bacon fat because. Wow. Much hog. Such fat. Had to split them between the two pans to get all the chicken in with the bacon and onions.
Chicken breasts, pre-sliced. In hindsight, we should've diced them. Lilydale chicken's not bad but it didn't shrink as much as we thought they would. Diced bits would've been better bites than the huge chunks of slices.

And while those cooked then we made the sauce. Two versions, because my roommates aren't lactose free, and added cod, and I had different stuff for mine.
Mine was lactose free half+half, lactose free swiss slices, which I had to break into bits because it doesn't melt well, and then a few dollops of vanilla lactose free yogurt. The last part may sound weird for a savoury dish but trust me... it's REALLY good and helped make up for the lack of fat because normally you'd use 18% cream.

So all of this went on top of GF fuscilli noodles (those are the larger style of corkscrew noodles). The ones I had were PC so they're just corn. Pretty good but leftovers aren't that great, they tend to crumble.

So we got: noodles, alfredo seafood sauce, pan grilled chicken bacon onions. Then on top of that I had diced tomato and green onion.

 

Just did this with fresh blackberries and raspberries. There was probably more fruit than sprite, so it needed a teaspoon of sugar.

 

Try your smoothie/slush with a little bit of ginger in it. That's how I do mine, and pretty much the same mix of frozen berries. Though I don't use sprite, usually OJ and a little bit of my vanilla creamer (lactose free; mmm palm oil!)

 

yea, I actually added the sprite afterwards and the pitcher was at least 75% fizz. Also, I usually do smoothies with about 1/4 cup greek yogurt to 1.5-2 cups frozen berries, with enough ice to make sure it doesn't seize up. Also, honey to taste.