July 28, 2006

• The Giant Squid hits up his Cook's Illustrated cookbook. Basically, those people teach retards like me how to cook 3 and 4 star dishes, using stuff you can buy just about anywhere. They taught me the secret of brining, then pan-searing, then oven-roasting chicken. Hot damn did I wrap my tentacles around that.
• Instant cous cous + frozen or canned veggies + Quorn product (fakey meat) = delish
• Frozen Mac and cheese... but, but ketchup on it... mmmmmmmm... :)
• For a pasta dish or pizza -- go for the best dried Turkish oregano you can find, or better yet the Penzey's pizza spice, and spice that bad boy up right. I find it makes a decent topping after cooking, but before cooking it will make your kitchen smell like a pizzeria.
• 2 great variations on a yummy can of Progresso lentil soup: 1) heat soup, garnish with salt, pepper, finely grated Parmesano, eat with walnut Levain bread = YUM!! 2) heat the soup to a simmer then add 1/4 cup cous-cous and cover (turn off heat) the cous cous will cook in the soup and make a thick pottage (?) that is yummy & provides protein complemetary. season to taste if you wind up eating mac'n'cheese outta the box (my fav lazy ass comfort food) black pepper and a grating of a sharper type cheese like parmesano does a lot to "adultify" the taste experience. (I highly recommend Annie's mac'n'cheese in the difficult to find Mexican flavor--if you can find it)
• Fantastic thread idea!
• Two words: Greek Seasoning. I'm sure Grecian culinary experts will cringe like an Indian cook who hears of "curry powder", but bear with me. They sell this stuff in most grocery stores, and I have no idea what's in it. But the deal is this: Be it a pork chop or a chicken breast or even a New York Strip, pour a half handful of Greek Seasoning into a ziplock bag, add meat, and shake. Then grill on your barby or on a George Foreman clone. Eat. Fantastic!
• I don't know about instant, but one of the benfits of the airlines not wanting to feed passengers is that there are some pretty decent frozen entrees out there. We've found two or three brands of orange chicken which are quite nice, for examplw. Also, Gordon Biersch (sp?) garlic fries are exceptional. Kahiki has some nice stuff, including decent egg rolls, samosas, and small dinner combos, including General Tso's chicken with rice. Unlike most frozen "Chinese" things, they're not over sweetened. We've been living on pasta salads the last few days. Takes a bit of chopping of veggies and boiling of noodles, but some bottled salad dressing (Especially Annie's Goddess or Soy Sesame) makes it quite nice. Or you could call for pizza delivery.
• If you have a Trader Joe's nearby, you can buy a helluvalot of pre-made stuff that you just heat up and eat. My favorite is their precooked teriyaki chicken. Prepare some of their awesome pre-cooked jasmine rice, some green beans or broccoli, and you're set. That's some mighty good (and fast, since you nuke everything) eating.
• Buy a can of frozen lime juice. Dump the frozen lime juice in a blender. Add a can of 7-Up. Add a can of tequila. Add 1/3 can of triple sec Add some ice. Blend. Forget about Summer cooking.
• Tonight's dinner: Unscrew bottle of Trader Joe's Two Buck Chuck. Allow to breathe. 1 lb package of Trader Joe's Frozen Stir Fry Vegetables A few tablespoons of Soy Vay Teriyaki Sauce (purchased at Trader Joe's) 3 cut up Trader Joe's Chicken Breast Tenders (cooked at the beginning of the week ) Stir Fry for 5 minutes. 1 Piece of Trader Joe's Lavash, microwaved for 15 seconds. Fill Lavash with stir fry. Wrap. Eat. Drink. Note how remarkably similar in taste and texture this is to Mongolian Barbecue with pocket bread. Make mental note to look for sesame seeds at Trader Joe's next time. Belch contentedly in Trader Joe's General Direction. (I didn't have the two buck chuck purchased from Trader Joes. I actually had Diet Dr. Pepper purchased from Albertson's. (Sorry Joe.))
• A few of my lunches this week: 1 Piece of Trader Joe's Lavash, microwaved for 15 seconds. Handful of Trader Joe's American Salad 2 cut up Trader Joe's Chicken Breast Tenders (cooked at the beginning of the week) A few tablespoons of Trader Joe's Spicy Thai Peanut Salad Dressing Fill. Wrap. Eat.
• Ramen noodles, very versatile. Cook 'em up and drain all the water, then add honey, soy sauce, sometimes a dash of tobasco and/or worcestershire, and half the seasoning pack. you can throw in some fresh broccoli too and make it extra healthy.
• If you have a rice cooker, much cheaper than Trader Joe's precooked rice is their uncooked rice. Beginning of each week, I make 3-4 cups of brown rice. Brown rice is like eating cockroaches. But it's good for you, and it doesn't make me sleepy like white rice, and Trader Joe's has magical potions that can take the texture and taste of cockroach and turn it something much more palatable. Done right, and eating brown rice is like eating ladybugs. My favorite product these days is Trader Joe's mixed, cut up, peppers. $2.49 gets you frozen sliced red, green, yellow peppers. With Trader Joe's various simmer sauces (korma, marsala, thai yellow curry, thai red curry, cacciatore, ...) or with some teriyaki sauce, you can take chicken or steak, dump some sauce on it, toss in some peppers, put it on top of the refrigerated rice, microwave for 3 1/2 minutes, stir it up, and actually have a pretty darn yummy and good looking meal of steak, peppers, and ladybugs.
• What danapiper said, but you can buy all that stuff and Udon noodles at Trader Joe's too.
• You mean you can cook rice if you have a special machine for it? *makes mental note*
• I mean you can cook Traders Joe's rice if you have a special machine for it. I will not be held responsible for what you do with Wal*mart rice. *staples new note on top of Wolof's mental note*
• I have two special machines. One is called a "hotplate", another is called a "saucepan". Used judiciously, I am able to cook any type of rice whatseover with these techno-marvels. It truly is incredible!
• I am pretty sure that is unauthorized and you risk voiding the warranty of the rice.
• Frozen Chinese food..you know, frozen dinner kind? The kind that's just faintly soy-sauced. I add about a tablespoon of peanut butter to it near the 1 minute left mark. Oh, and peas in ramen. Recent summer food, because I don't even want to go near the kitchen? Cucumber sandwiches on diet wheat bread. It's amazingly lazy, but it's cold, and that's what's important.
• 1. Put rice in pot 2. Cover with water to first knuckle of finger 3. Bring to boil 4. Turn off stove 5. Put tight fitting lid on 6. Let sit for 20-25 minutes 7. Eat You can use chicken stock instead of water, add salt, or a bullion cube, or a bit of olive oil. Next week: I'll share my family secret recipe for making ice cubes!
• Hmm, chicken flavored rice with fingers. But you can be arrested for that.
• 1 can tomato sauce 1 stick butter (salted/unsalted, your choice, just don't use margarine or some fake butter-like crap) 1/2 onion put all three into a saucepan. cook on med-low until the onion is fully cooked (5-15 minutes, depending on how big a mess you want from bubbling tomato sauce). add onion to compost heap. use sauce on anything that such a sauce would go on. chill the leftover sauce and swab on your nipples. it's that good. trust me.
• I'll share my family secret recipe for making ice cubes! Oop! I know I have a notepad around here somewhere.
• For making things taste less like they came out of a box, I recommend decent extra virgin olive oil. Nice Parmesan often adds a little something, too.
• what plegmund said. decent olive oil and parmesan will enhance most dishes. also, buy a big bag of pine nuts and roast them gently before storing them in the fridge; you can then add them to salads and pasta dishes. frozen herbs are a great time-saver and enhancer. i add garlic to just about everything. i've recently discovered pre-chopped frozen garlic. it's wonderful for days when i couldn't be arsed spending time in the kitchen (e.g. recently, when it's been 90 farenheit at 9pm ). i also keep a stock of frozen pre-chopped shallots, coriander, basil, chives, rosemary, and "mixed herbs" (thyme + oregano + basil, i think). these save 5 to 10 minutes prep time per meal, and i never worry about running out of fresh herbs.
• ramen noodles+dried shitake mushrooms=less pathetic +sliced green onions at the end=almost looking like the picture
• rice+tinoftuna+tomatopuree+mayonnaise=bachelor chow straight from the pan Worcestershire sauce perks up tinned soup Spray cream perks up Jaffa Cakes. Beans on CHEESE on Toast
• The Divine Casserole: An original recipe Ingredients: 1 box Kraft Macaroni & Cheese™ 1 Morningstar Farms™ Griller™ veggie patty Make mac 'n' cheese. Microwave Griller™. Cut up latter; add to former. Feeds two -- or one hungry person. (Also: Cut-up carrots really improve ramen!)
• > Beans on CHEESE on Toast heresy! it's CHEESE on Beans on Toast.
• Break up a brick of uncooked beef-flavored ramen noodles into tiny pieces, boil them, add the seasoning packet, and drain off the water. Then open and heat up a can of chili. Hormel's is pretty good. Feel free to experiment, of course. Now, carefully open a bag of corn chips or Doritos along all of its seams and spread the bag out flat. Arrange the chips in a neat pile on the bag. Spread the ramen noodles over the chips, and dump the chili on top of that. Top with grated cheese or, if you really feel like dirtying some dishes, Ro-Tel cheese dip. Now watch bad movies and drink a lot of beer. You will fart, frequently.
• I like to add a can of tuna fish and a can of peas, both drained, to Kraft Mac and Cheese. It's like a tuna casserole.
• Dry-package Knorr soups are vastly improved by adding Italian meatballs from your local frozen meat supplier. And dry wonton noodles. And whatever bits of leftover vegetables you have wilting in the crisper. Whatever you've got, throw it in there, and the original instant soup is now real soup.
• I like to add some of the nicer unsalted canned vegables (yes, I said "vegables;" that's how I say it) to Progresso soups. Cooked carrot are teh great in Lentil. More mushrooms, or peas or green beans. go into the Cream of Mushroom. I like the Uncle Ben's and Zatarain's precooked rice, but only when I'm feeling like some extra salt and sugar in my diet.
• Sorry muteboy, but it's definitely cheese on beans on toast, so the cheese (grated) melts into the beans. Although to be honest, I favour putting the beans (with cheese topping) in a bowl with the toast kept separate - doesn't go as soggy.
• I have been known to slice a couple of grape tomatoes in half and put them on my Kraft mac & cheese.
• You sick fucks.
• Add a generous pinch of sugar to anything tomato-related that came out of a can - it makes the flavour rounder and takes out the acidey pre-packaged taste. General multi-purpose condiments that are good to have hanging about (many of which have been mentioned upthread): frozen chopped parsley, coriander, garlic paste, sesame oil (you only need a teensy amount, it's very pungent), nam pla, Worcester sauce, bay leaves (bung one into anything that's saucy and about to go on pasta while it heats up), olive oil and parmesan cheese, tabasco, sliced spring onions. And never underestimate the power of ketchup.
• I've never tried freezing garlic or herbs, but given how often I throw them out half-used because they've spoiled, I think I need to consider it. Another lazy recipe: sautee some chopped onions, throw in a bunch of rice (I use arborio because it's what's on hand) and cook it in roasted pepper/tomato soup (instead of water). Add assorted frozen veggies at the end.
• And never underestimate the power of ketchup Very true! And not in a slather-it-over-your-food way... instead what you do is you mix it in secretly, no more than say a tablespoon into stir-fries while its cooking.
• Easy Tortilla Soup 1 Family Size Can CondensedCampbell's Chicken w. Rice Soup 1 Family Size Can Water 1 Can Ranch Style Beans 1 Can Rotel Tomatoes 1 Can Corn (drained) or ~1 cup frozen kernel corn 1 Can White Chicken Meat Mix, Heat to boiling, reduce to simmer, cook thoroughly ~30 min. Serve over tortillas with shredded cheese on top. Sorry its not vegetarian; I guess one could substitute vegetarian broth, precooked rice, black beans and extra firm tofu (added just a few minutes before its done) and it would wind up much the same.
• yeah, those canned soups are good flavour boosters. One that's tasty is to cook pork chops in Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup. Yummy.
• Heck, I just pour those things cream soups over anything and bake it for half an hour.
• You can get the previously noted Chef's magazine cook book, or Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles, and learn lots of tricks. Someone - perhaps Bourdain himself, but maybe it is Madeleine Kamman - noted in a cook book that if you're cooking and you're a little nervous, the flavors will seem lopsided toward salty and sour, so until you're pretty sure of your perceptions don't try to adjust things at the last minute.
• Green bean casserole is almost as good cooked in the microwave.
• COOK EVERYTHING WITH DARK BEER Seriously. Pancakes, porkchops, you name it. It's good.
• I have a similar thing for bourbon. Especially dessert. If it has chocolate or nuts in it, add bourbon.
• Mandyman makes me sport wood Mandyman is a stone cold fox I don't eat much pre-prepared food. Sometimes I get Trader Joe's nan but that's pretty good out of the box. In the summer I get a lot of nutrition from smoothies. I also eat like 7 cucumbers a week. Seriosly though, soybeans. Just dump them in anything. Fish after it's been pan fried. In my fake meats too.
• Second the soybeans. Steam, salt, eat. Yum.
• You felt that, in the midst of a conversation about food, announcing that the image of another thread participant caused you to become sexually aroused was appropriate because.... ?
• What, no basil recipes?
• There is a semi-permiable membrane through which such backchatter in a person's mind can slip through and splatter in written word, Ralph. I think it's called Poor Impulse Control. *grabs playing cards and tabloids next to checkout*
• Corn chips in mac'n'cheese is da bomb. I use a small bag of chips, open the top a bit*, then smash the bag a couple of times with my fist. I stir about half of the contents into the completed mac'n'cheese, stir, and devour. Its tasty and the bag smashing is excellent exercise. Oh. And sometimes, when I'm feeling really culinary, I add more milk and a handful of that pre-grated cheddar that comes in bags. There's no such thing as too much cheese. *This step is vital, otherwise the chips will explode all over and you'll have rather too much exercise cleaning it up. Unless you have a dog, then its as simple as sweeping all the chip bits onto the floor. This can be a good thing, because the dog will clean your linoleum at the same time. Not well, but still...
• Salsa Lizano Marinade, dressing, condiment. Improves everything.
• Oh snap my bad how inappropriate of me I hope the internets can forgive me. BTW I was just making positive comments sorry if it spoil'd your appetite.
• My standby comfort food is rice and cheese. Cook up some white rice, then add shredded cheese to it. Yum. If you're feeling sassy, add some cajun seasoning to it! You can also add various veggies to pretend it's healthy. I also like to make the boxed Zataran's jambalaya and add low fat smoked sausage to it when I'm lazy. And lots of cajun seasoning. I'm sensing a theme, here. I like a rice cooker for brown rice. While white rice takes 15-20 minutes and is easy, brown rice can take up to an hour and it's hard not to scorch it to the pan. Rice cookers make it poifect every time.
• um, can we organize some sort of award for PatB??? because that comment deserves some sort of recognition for its raw truth and comedic brilliance. and I do agree, there is no such thing as too much cheese!
• Always add an extra egg and some vanilla extract to a cake mix.
• That reminds me, The Underpants Monster, a friend used to make cakes from The Cake Mix Doctor that were rather delicious. And yes, god bless cheese--the solution to, and cause of, my thighs' problems.
• there is no such thing as too much cheese! You cheesey little monkey.
• path - Kahiki used to be a restaurant here in Columbus. It was a tiki paradise. Its site was bought out to build a Walgreens, and it was demolished even though it was on the National Register of Historic Places. The punchline, IIRC, is that the Walgreens failed. I have heard that the former owner, who runs the packaged food company, has all the restaurant's fittings and fixtures in storage... so Kahiki may yet rise again. Mickey got my mac n cheese hack - bitty bits of fresh tomato. Kraft makes a shaker-jar cheese blend of parmesan, romano, and asiago that's great to have around. When I'm making canned tomato soup, I usually make frozen garlic breadsticks, crush Italian herb blend into the soup in generous amounts, and when it's hot and in bowls, top the soup with a thick dusting of the cheese blend. Eat accompanied by the breadsticks. Yum! I also like Mrs T's Potato and 4 Cheese Blend pierogies. Fry them lightly, over medium-low heat, covered, in some "healthy" spread like Smart Balance. Add minced garlic in olive oil from a jar (a very good thing to keep around). These are a nice snack for people like me, who like the pasta/potato/cheese trifecta. There are some really good frozen meals out there right now (well, for frozen meals)... we really like Stouffer's Bistro Classics. They seem to mostly be terrible for you, though. Any frozen dinner seems to be better if you plate it as if it were normal food. Some need salt (particularly if you go the Healthy Choice route). In Bistro Classics, I like the sesame chicken, the grilled rosemary chicken with fontina cheese pasta, and to a lesser degree, the bourbon steak tips and the monterey chicken. All of them need to have a decent vegetable or salad prepared to go with them. As addressed by The Giant Squid, any recipe in Cook's Illustrated's The New Best Recipe will turn out well if you do it as instructed, and there is an explanation of what choices they made. My cooking has improved by leaps and bounds since I started obeying my Cook's Illustrated masters. The complaint I've heard about this book is that you're out of luck if you don't like things made the way the editors consider "ideal" (IE, if there's a specific cookie that you like crispy that they think ought to be soft). A lot of the recipes are in a lot of their other books, like the baking book and the Cover & Bake book. They assume you own a food processor and a dutch oven, though. But my god, the difference between my xmas turkey in 2004 and 2005. (Um, I do eat salads now and then, you know....)
• Somewhat off topic but nontheless important is Ralph's Rule of Sandwiches: In most cases the choice between halving a sandwich by slicing it into two rectanges versus two triangles is entirely optional, however a grilled sandwich or panini MUST be cut into triangles. When placed on the plate, the cut sides of the sandwich must both face inward, preferably separated by a 30-degree angle in which chips or pickle slices may be served.
• My Ralph, I never knew you were so..uptown!! MonkeyFilter: never underestimate the power of ketchup MonkeyFilter: there is no such thing as too much cheese! Lest we forget these immortal comments.
• It's also good to use Mountain Dew or some other lemon-limey soft drink instead of water in cake mixes. It makes them fluffier.
• Okay, I've got one. Buy a can of condensed potato or mushroom soup, a can of mixed vegetables, and a frozen pie crust (preferably the kind already in a tin). Mix the condensed soup and the vegetables with just enough milk to thin it out a bit. Season with black pepper and dried thyme. Then pour it into the shell and cover it with the other shell in the package. Bake for 25 mins or so at 400. Delish! Though arguably more work than you wanted. Several meals though.
• Mac & cheese makes me, uh, sport wood.
• And I second Medusa's suggestion of Progresso lentil soup, though in my case I add pepper, a bit of curry, and random veggies like maybe potatoes and zucchini.
• Bisquick. Impossible pies Yum.
• coleslaw!!!
• The other night I cooked a can of Progresso Lenitl with a can of sweet corn and a handful of Gold Medal corn muffin mix, pepper, and onion powder. Lenitllicious! (I haven't had impossible pie in centuries. Time to dust off the ol' Bisquick box.)
• Get Your Grub On
• What is GRUB? 1. grub is healthy, local, sustainable food for all 2. grub is food that supports community, justice, and sustainability 3. grub should be universal News Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen goes into its third printing! Anna and Bryant are currently filming The Endless Feast, a 13-episode series that explores the connection between the earth and the food on our plates. The Endless Feast will air on PBS in the spring of 2007. Nifty! Thanks for the link-up, H!
• Maggoty pie!
• I added extra brown sugar to one of those boxed apple crisp mixes a couple weeks ago. m i l33t n da kichin now? Damn, shoulda added raisins. But I froze, man!