CABBABASA

This is a pretty easy dish that tastes great. Some people call it Kielbasa and Cabbage (or German Skillet, as our recipe book reads) but these names are too pedestrian for distinguished CHEFs like ourselves.

We’re going to mix this kielbasa with superstars BACON, ONION and CARAWAY. Cabbage can come too. LET’S DO THIS —>

You’ll need:
2lb Kielbasa sausage
1 white or yellow onion
1 head of cabbage
10+ slices of BACON
Sugar
Caraway seeds
Water
OPTIONAL peas, dinner rolls. I heartily recommend the rolls, but the peas were a bit unnecessary.

Cut your BACON into 1″ squares, dice your onion, and cut your cabbage head into wedges (try to keep them together). Mix 1 tablespoon of sugar in about 1/2 cup of water. Fry your BACON, and, when it’s done, remove it and fry your diced onion in the grease. Then lay your cabbage wedges (leave out the core) in the skillet and and pour the half-cup of sugar water on; cook this for 20 minutes on medium heat, covered. You’ll probably have to add a bit more water later on; do this if you think it might be burning. After the 20 minutes, cut up your kielbasa in 3 – 4″ pieces and throw it in on top of the cabbage. Cook this for another 10 minutes. Cover with caraway seeds and the BACON and serve!

The Bloody Mary or How I Learned to Drink Something Else While Watching Zombie Flicks

Mixed drinks are alright but they’re generally easy to figure out. You put this sweet thing with that sweet thing, you choke it down, then you’re drunk.

This is why the bloody mary stands out. After all, how many salty cocktails have you had? It’s by far my favorite drink. It seems like a meal in so many ways! It goes well with beer, as if to hide its filthy alcoholic nature!

What you’ll need:
Tomato juice (I don’t recommend vegetable juice)
Worcestershire sauce (as a replacement, I use Angostura Bloody Mary Seasoning)
Tabasco sauce
Celery salt
Vodka (this drink is too flavorful to suffer much from shitty vodka. Save your money and get the cheap stuff!)
Optional garnish (olive, pickle, celery… go nuts!)

Get a receptacle. I really like mason jars because they impart a certain Midwestern class to a drink, and also you can shake your drink right in your cup! Pour in your vodka (one to three shots), several squirts of tabasco (I use about four), several drops of Worcestershire (three or four, or two dashes of Angostura) and two shakes of celery salt. Cover this with 1 to 1.5 cups of tomato juice and stir (classy Midwesterners will shake). Garnish with an olive (you deserve a prize at the bottom). Serve!

Thirsty readers will note that a bloody mary goes down well with a beer (sort of like coffee and orange juice).

The Celebration of Authenticity

My family eats a lot of stir-fry, but we’re relatively uncultured about it; it’s usually something that amounts to beef gravy with soy sauce and rice, which is pretty barftacular.

I’ve decided to try to spruce things up with tools I like to call veggies and having a strategy. Today, the veggies are broccoli, carrots, onion and mushrooms. The strategy is to make them delicious.

Cooking time for the stir-fry is 12 – 20 minutes, so plan the rice accordingly. This will feed 4 hungry people to bursting.

What you’ll need:
Rice
1 – 1.5 heads of broccoli
1 carrot
1 white or yellow onion
10 – 12 of your favorite mushrooms (I used Baby Bella)
1lb chicken breast
3 cups chicken stock
Fish sauce
Soy sauce
Maggi seasoning
2 tbsp arrowroot powder
Ground black pepper
1 – 2 cloves garlic, minced
Olive oil
Salt (MSG? Maybe this is where the deliciousness strategy kicks in.)

Chefs take note: My goal for preparing this meal involved not obliterating the veggies like my family is wont to do. The carrots and broccoli need to cook more than the mushrooms and onions, so separate these into two sets of ingredients and you can add them at different times! Celebrate your veggies.

Prepare your marinade: dissolve the arrowroot into 1 cup of chicken broth, and put some soy sauce (one tbsp?), fish sauce (some squirts? I avoided this because my mom hates fish, but you can go nuts), and a bit of Maggi (a couple squirts here as well — it’s strong) into the mix. After cutting the chicken, pour about half  of this over the pieces and set it aside. We’ll use the other half when we make the rest of the sauce. This is when you can cut the rest of the veggies! Celebrate them or you’ll get the hose.

In a wok (or other device you use to heat food to extreme temperatures while keeping it contained from the heat source) fry the minced garlic in a bit of olive oil. When that looks awesome, throw in your marinated chicken chunks (draining any excess marinade). Grind some pepper on there. Stir-fry these until they will no longer give you salmonella, and remove them from your wok.

Throw in your broccoli and carrots, and pour a bit of chicken broth in with them. You can spoon a little bit of our marinade in, too, if you’re feeling frisky, and pepper / MSG those bitches. Keep the wok a little wet, as we’re cooking stuff that is pretty tough. When you’re getting close to satisfied with them, throw the onions and mushrooms in (pepper, MSG, you know the drill). Stir fry these things until you’re good and happy and then remove them from the wok.

Pour the rest of your chicken broth in there and bring it to a boil. You can easily vary the amount you put in, but I recommend you err on the side of less rather than more — you don’t need your fixins floatin’. When that boils, pour in the rest of the marinade, and cook until thick (add more arrowroot if that doesn’t happen in a couple minutes). Now pour the chicken and veggies in and serve over a bed of rice. YOU’RE DONE! Your father will love you for cooking a meal, and he might even share some comments about the meal’s authenticity, which is a complex subject that we’ll save for another time.

Hi my name is Tim and I am a chef

Vy and I cooked together a lot over the past year, and, now that I’m at home and not on the Dining Hall’s feeding tube, I have culinary experiences to share! So, on the rare occasion that I cook something Vy hasn’t already posted about, you’ll be hearing from me.

Now, my first confession: I tried to take a picture of one of my cats in a pot, but neither the cat nor the pot were having any of it. I had to wash the pot with the bitter taste of defeat in my mouth; consider this my first willing sacrifice to the Kitchen Bitch.