No tomatoes, please

 In eight days I will be legally able to walk into an ABC store, buy the largest bottle of the hardest liquor I can find, and laugh in the face of the clerk who dares test the legality of my purchase. Because, yeah, I’ll be 21. And even though I’ll look like I’m 15 until I die, I can totally smack every waiter, bartender, grocery store cashier and the like in the face with my awesome twenty-one-ness.

God I can’t wait. I’m gonna make all those crazy drinks like I’ve always wanted to try, but don’t have the alcohol in the house to make. Like a vodka gimlet. Or a sidecar. What’s that? I dunno, but it’s probably awesome. I apparently have the magical power to mix amazazing drinks (I know this because I have worked many a nighttime catering in private residences, where old people get super drunk, and therefore do not feel the need to ID me before I give them their 6th drink), so I shall be so putting my mutant power to good use. Happy birthday to me!

So, apparently, this little delight is pretty much a staple across the pond. I was inspired to make this after I saw Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay (holy jesus don’t even get me started on those two…super hot) make this simple dish on their respective shows. Speaking of Jamie Oliver, I also stole his saying, up there in the title. If it sounds retarded, it’s him, not me. It sounds better with a British accent anyhow.

So, since I am a relative newcomer to the whole mushroom-liking thing, I was afraid I wouldn’t like this recipe, but it actually turned out really well, and was delicious and surprisingly filling, and also super yummy for people who don’t eat meat and need something a little heartier than zucchini and such. Ooh! This would also make a totally rad appetizer if you just took little circles of bread and toasted them up and put the mushrooms on them. Ya know, if you’re into being nice to people who come over to your house.

We used four kinds of mushrooms: the regular button mushrooms, cremini mushrooms (which are also known as “baby bellas” since they’re, ya know, immature portobello mushrooms), oyster mushrooms (which are the delicate light yellow mushrooms that don’t really look like mushrooms, and they have a lovely delicate buttery flavor), and shitake mushrooms (which I always thought shitake mushrooms were those little white straw mushrooms, but those are, uh, straw mushrooms). All of these were lovely and available at Harris Teeter, so not too hard to find these days.

All I did was wipe them off and slice up the buttons, creminis and shitakes, and just lightly tear the larger oyster mushrooms in half. The verdict is still out as to whether or not you can wash them though. Old crochety French chefs say absolutely not, because they take on a lot of water or some bs, but you can if you want to. The fertilizer kinda gets stuck on them and is hard to wipe off. I mean, the crap on them is pretty much horse shit, so, yeah, don’t wanna eat that. I don’t like to wash them because they do take on a weird rubbery texture that makes them somehow harder to slice, but then again, in a lovely bit of irony, the chef’s house is filled with knives duller than Britney Spears at a MENSA meeting, so it’s hard to even cut butter around here. Oh geeze, topical humor! God, I should write for Jay Leno.

So all I did was throw some butter and olive oil in a pan (butter for flavor, and olive oil so the butter doesn’t burn) and saute the mushrooms. The hardest part about this recipe is not putting too many mushrooms in the pan. I ended up doing three batches, because if they get all crowded in the pan, their water all comes out and can’t evaporate, and they basically boil, and that is no good. So, I threw the mushrooms in the pan and didn’t stir them and let them brown on one side and get some color. Then I threw in about one clove of chopped garlic and some fresh thyme (because dried thyme, I don’t care what my mom says, tastes like dirt to me. I can always taste it at Cosmic when they put too much thyme in their dang beans, cuz they taste like someone threw dirt in them. Then again, it is Cosmic, who knows? They probably did throw dirt in there too), and stirred it around. For some reason, when I saute garlic alone in a pan, especially when it’s all chopped up in tiny pieces, it ALWAYS burns. So I like to throw it in with whatever else I’m sauteeing, like onions or whatever, never alone.

So, after you’ve sauteed the mushrooms and they’re cooked and have some color to them, then put salt and pepper on them. DO NOT salt the mushrooms before they are nice and browned, or the salt will draw all the moisture out of the mushrooms and they will boil in all the liquid. So at this point, all you have left to do is throw a little white wine in there, let the alcohol cook out, and voila! Mushrooms! All you need is the toast. You can either put bread in the toaster, but we just took some nice soft sourdough bread and sliced it up and sprinkled olive oil on it and broiled both sides under the broiler until they got nice and brown and toasty. Then throw the mushrooms on there. My mother insisted on putting chives on top because she has this weird obsession with them and insists on putting them in everything. But you don’t have to do that. So, it seems rather convoluted and hard to explain, but for realz, it only takes like, 10 minutes, and it is freakin delicious.

Mmm….DO IT

So, I went to The Shop yesterday to visit and troll the aisles of fine Italian goods for something truly utterly disgusting. And I might have found it. You’ll notice that this week’s abomination is a lovely canned wonder from the far reaches of…New Jersey, I guess? Probably Italy by way of New Jersey. It is bright yellow, with some sort tomato/fish-headed chef, which I guess is supposed to make me feel better about eating this? I dunno. What is this mystery canned item, you ask? Umm, the can says it is called Cuoco, and also that it is a “seasoning” for macaroni. With sardines! Huzzah!

According to the ingredient list, it has young fennel, sardines, raisins and salted sardine puree. So, two things I definitely hate (raisins and fennel), and one thing that I have not yet tried but know I will hate (sardines). I think my boss Josh made this for lunch one time in the shop. All I recall is that I came in for work one day (too late for lunch, thank god), and the entire store smelled like rotting ocean carcass. It must have been lent or something and he could only eat fish. “Fish.” And I remember gagging and going over to the stove, and seeing this, a gray paste, all dried out from sitting around for a while with some matted buccatini. And I thought I’d try it and see how disgusting it is for myself.

On top there seem to be some vague instructions to heat it in a pan with olive oil and mix it with buccatini, which is like really super thick spaghetti with a little hole in the middle. It’s entirely too cumbersome a pasta to actually eat, but that is what’s recommended, so I’ll go with it.

Even while opening the can, the grey oil seeps up through the newly cut opening between can and lid, and the fishy smell hits you right away. Then when you dump it out into the hot pan, it’s even fishier and greyer, dotted with gross plump raisins and huge chunks of sardine sprinkled throughout.

For the first time ever in my life, I was hoping the flavors of fennel and raisin would stand out, saving me from the oily hell that is the sardine flavor. I salted it generously, somehow hoping that it would be too salty to really taste the sardine, and as it cooked it started to smell slightly sweet and (almost) deliciously complex from the raisins and probably the fennel. This might not be too bad. But god of evil gods was I wrong.

As I put the pasta in the pan, it seemed to suck all moisture from the Cuoco, and I was just left with the horrible image that had been stuck in my brain from before: dry, matted pasta with grey chunks of dry nastiness spread throughout. I threw some of the cooking water in there, hoping it would become slightly unstuck, but, alas, it did not help.

I put some in a bowl and sprinkled some more olive oil on top and some cheese, hoping that the saltiness of the cheese would blot out some of the sardine flavor that I knew was coming. My dad helpfully joined in, I guess so we could have the shared painful experience, but he’ll eat anything and never say it’s bad, so, of course, he was nonplussed by it. I took that as a sort-of good sign, manned up and shoved some of the pasta in my mouth.

The first sensation was one of slight sweetness, and mostly just of the pasta that was in my mouth, and all I could think was, “Damnit, this is not that bad. Again.” Then the horrible, overwhelming flavor of fish fish fish hit me in the back of the throat like a ton of, I dunno, fishes. I couldn’t swallow, and my panicking mouth just kept sending messages to my brain to spit the crap out before it was forced to hit my stomach. Which I did, onto the floor. I was in such a panic that I completely missed my bowl and all of it plopped onto the floor, generally in the same state as it was before I ate it since I only got a few chews in before I freaked out.

My dog wouldn’t even eat it, and I’m pretty sure she eats her own poo. Or she would if she could. Eww.

So now my house smells like fish ass, and I just found out that there are buyers coming to look at our house in an hour and a half. Oops.

So last night I was testing a recipe for Cook’s Illustrated, and I remembered how in love I am with bok choy. It’s one of those things that you never really think about or care about trying, but once you have it, you’re all, “Damn, why did I not try this before?” I dunno, maybe you’re lazy. But seriously, bok choy is really great. Even though the recipe didn’t turn out so hot (that’s kinda what I hate about recipes, every one I’ve ever made is kind of not very flavorful, especially ones for Asian things. Wtf recipes.), the bok choy was seriously the best part. I kind of wished we had just sauteed it by itself and just eaten that.

So that picture above is baby bok choy. The regular kind is a lot bigger and the stalks are white with dark green leaves. Like, oh yes, right there:

Either way, it’s delicious. For the bigger kind, wash it and chop it up into smaller pieces, and for the baby bok choy, you can just wash and then slice the entire bunch lengthwise, or  tear all the separate stalks off and saute them. It’s so good sauteed or blanched for a minute. It’s got such a light buttery flavor, almost velvet-y. For a green, it’s quite mild, and it’s so delicious. Oh man, I’m getting excited just thinking about it. When you’re done sauteeing just throw some sesame oil on it and some sesame seeds and you’re good to go. Yum.

Yeah, sorry, not very inspired today, but I got other stuff going on. Gross food abounds tomorrow!

So, well, I’m here, I swear. Alive and well. Not that you were paying attention. So, I took the site down for a while, assuming that myriad people were willing and/or able to help me out with my web design predicament. But alas! They all failed. So, hey, everyone I know: suck it.

Obviously, this is not the real layout. I am enlisting outside (read: paid) help for that. I just chose this one because it was weird but not terrible and with boobs and/or pictures of copiers and crap like most Wordpress templates out there.

But for serious, after a long story that I will not recount here, I am taking the rest of this semester off woo hoo! And to keep me from going crazy and getting depressed from boredom and feeling like I’m a failure for not doing amazing things with my life, I am making this Web site my job. I will be working my butt off to put up content (hopefully) every day. In order to stick to that, I have even devised weekly posts that I will be putting up, so you generally know what to expect on a given day. Here’s the tentative schedule, which will probably change soon as I get things figured out and start writing and such:

Monday: “Rummage” - Since we generally have the best bounty of leftovers on Monday, I will be rummaging through the fridge/pantry/the huge box of crap I brought back from school to create a new and exciting made-up dish oooh! This week’s dish? Didn’t go so well. Here’s hoping next week’s dish goes slightly better.

Tuesday: Tuesday will be kind of a free-for-all day. I’ll try to put up restaurant reviews, my adventures in picky eating, or whatever myriad love letters or recipes I feel like putting up.

Wednesday: “Gag Reflex” - In continuing the awesome feature I did over on the Dive blog, every Wednesday I will subject myself to something amazingly disgusting. Or maybe not. Awesomeness shall ensue.

Thursday: “Pot O’ Gold” - This will be one-pot kinda things. This could be the day when I spill all my mom’s secret recipes for gumbo and chili and stuff, since most of these things are made in one pot. This one might end up being another free-for-all day if I run out of ideas.

Friday: “Drinkin’” - Since I shall soon be 21, I will be able to try out all those crazy-ass drinks I’ve always wondered about (buttery nipple, anyone?). I’ll also be detailing my awesome trips to the ABC store and their righteous indignation at my buying alcohol, since I look about 15. I’ll hopefully be mixing some cool drinks and then drinking heavily with my mom on the back porch while we bitch at each other. Pretty much business as usual.

So, yes, I will be doing cool awesome daily things. I’ll be easing into the posting every day, so it won’t totally be every single day for a while, but hopefully I’ll work up to it and this Web site will be awesome and everything you always hoped and dreamed.

Ciao!

~Rachael~