Recently, I've been cracking up a lot. And with good reason. A good friend of mine recommended me a facebook page, and since then, if I feel a bit blue, I just visit this page to laugh out loud. It is very efficient. But what is it, anyway?
Well. First off, it is a website that helps you decide what to cook for dinner, just don't let your kids read it: http://www.whatthefuckshouldimakefordinner.com/
If that's not funny enough, you can always go on FB and see what other foulmouthed lazy home chefs are posting: http://www.facebook.com/pages/What-the-Fuck-Should-I-Make-For-Dinner/129749833706859. I strongly recommend that you contribute to the wealth of knowledge there. Just make sure your recipe fits into a FB comment (what with the over 400 effin' characters it should not be hard) and it reads as a rant by Tony Soprano. And if you read my posts there, please forgive my French.
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Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Chopping Blog
A huge thank you to my Esteemed Readers, who complain, occasionally, that I do not write or cook anymore. The truth of the matter is that, after the enormous success of my beignets (http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/BeignetsHistory.htm) I went on a diet and it my cooking hence consists of mainly chopping stuff for salads. I went on a diet from my own cooking! Ouch!
However, because beans are so good for your diet, I cooked my famous Chili, based on this recipe: http://www.greatchilirecipes.net/sahara_chili.html, but I added lots of half-cooked beans and more cans of tomatoes to it. (It came out delicious, but I hat time to make it only a week after my workplace had the chili cook-off, so I didn't win the blue ribbon.)
Moreover, I discovered that there is a trick to the best salads, like, ever: I mix the chopped tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, and onions with the dressing and any crumbled cheese, douse it with some balsamic vinaigrette (http://www.vinaigretterecipe.com/VinaigretteRecipes/BalsamicVinaigrette.htm or Newman's Own) and let it sit together before I top some baby lettuce leaves with it. This way the vegetables that can withstand the vinaigrette for a while absorb all the flavor, and the lettuce doesn't wilt down to a disgusting wet newspaper texture.
My family also loves the Massaged Pasta Salad: use cooked and somewhat cooled pasta with it, al dente, and mix it with halved cherry tomatoes, lotsa olive oil, lemon juice, crumbled feta cheese, and fresh basil leaves. Add salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy, and please comment away with your successes!
And now I'm off to take a constitutional law exam for a job application with the Legislative Counsel Bureau.
However, because beans are so good for your diet, I cooked my famous Chili, based on this recipe: http://www.greatchilirecipes.net/sahara_chili.html, but I added lots of half-cooked beans and more cans of tomatoes to it. (It came out delicious, but I hat time to make it only a week after my workplace had the chili cook-off, so I didn't win the blue ribbon.)
Moreover, I discovered that there is a trick to the best salads, like, ever: I mix the chopped tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, and onions with the dressing and any crumbled cheese, douse it with some balsamic vinaigrette (http://www.vinaigretterecipe.com/VinaigretteRecipes/BalsamicVinaigrette.htm or Newman's Own) and let it sit together before I top some baby lettuce leaves with it. This way the vegetables that can withstand the vinaigrette for a while absorb all the flavor, and the lettuce doesn't wilt down to a disgusting wet newspaper texture.
My family also loves the Massaged Pasta Salad: use cooked and somewhat cooled pasta with it, al dente, and mix it with halved cherry tomatoes, lotsa olive oil, lemon juice, crumbled feta cheese, and fresh basil leaves. Add salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy, and please comment away with your successes!
And now I'm off to take a constitutional law exam for a job application with the Legislative Counsel Bureau.
Monday, April 26, 2010
This Time It Is Abel's Cooking
Well, this weekend I was supposed to study a lot, so I didn't make any plans to cook some swanky new dish. Instead, Abel volunteered to do a barbecue, especially as we were driving to Costco. You can get four huge slices of New York steak for half the price of a Steak Sandwich, so we went with that. I like the little fatty part at the end of each little slice. I made a salad with baby lettuce, tomatoes and feta cheese, and put the sliced beef on top of it. I could have whipped up a dressing, but decided to go with the Wishbone Italian, we have just too much of it at home. Wow, the kids liked the meat, the leftover mac-n-Velveeta and tortillas. Our neighbors were in attendance, because I promised Saarah that she could invite their daughter, Bailey, over to our house if she cleaned up the playroom. You should have seen the kids working at the cleaning up project, they were positively motivated! I know now the perfect bribe: just offer a little grrrfriend time for them, and they are perfect little housekeepers all of a sudden! (I also offered Saarah a Nintendo DS if she did her wakeup routine all by herself, but as of yet, she is still not getting one.)
Anyway, because of finals, I may not be cooking that much, I still wanna do the eggplant parmesan this Friday, after studying Evidence for five days straight, I will need the distraction. And we will have beignets on the weekend after my finals.
Anyway, because of finals, I may not be cooking that much, I still wanna do the eggplant parmesan this Friday, after studying Evidence for five days straight, I will need the distraction. And we will have beignets on the weekend after my finals.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Chicken Paprikas, Bread Pudding and Visiting In-Laws
As preparation for the Patino Banquet, we took our children to my in-laws in Tracy (it really is Stockton, but saying Tracy makes it so much nicer) and they promised to return the infants to our house on Sunday. So my mom and I were thinking of surprising them with a very Hungarian meal. We decided, perhaps very unoriginally, to go with Chicken Paprikas and Cucumber Salad, but then I tackled the loaves of dried bread, and after grinding two baguettes into bread crumbs, I could not do more. I looked up bread pudding recipes to use up the remaining one loaf of whole wheat french bread from Safeway, and found this gem of Amish bread pudding recipe: http://www.momswhothink.com/easy-recipes/bread-pudding-recipe.html
And I followed the recipe very faithfully, but tripled the amounts, because really, who has only three cups of dried bread at home. You either have none, or you have tons of dried bread, at least in my household. When we put the bread pudding in the oven it didn't look like anything appetizing, but in puffed up into a nice, crusty on the outside, melting soft on the inside goodness, and it really wasn't that much of work. And when we were done with the Paprikas, we even made the sauce for it, which I strongly recommend, because it is a lot prettier with the sauce on the top.
The Paprikas is a Hungarian stew, that is NOT a Goulash, because a Goulash is built on caraway seeds for flavor, whereas the Paprikas is built on paprika. You start with diced onions (you may add some small red bell peppers, too) and oil, and sautee the onions until it's glassy, then you pull the pan off of the fire and add the paprika. We only use Szeged Sweet Delicacy, but it should not cause you to stop considering this flavorful dish - Safeway carries this type of paprika with admirable regularity. When the paprika released its color in the oil, you may put the pan back on the stovetop, and add your chicken, after blotting it in paper towels, so it's properly browning without releasing too much juice and drying out. It is the best to use chicken thighs with the skin and bone in, but if that's too much fat for you, just add the boneless-skinless thighs and a couple of wings with the bone and skin. The bone releases a lot of good flavor and gelling ingredients into the sauce, and cooking it with chicken breast is not going to yield the characteristic Hungarian dish. (But I cooked it with chicken breast for my then boyfriend, and supposedly, that was the meal that sealed his marriage intentions towards me, so it can be safely said that you can't screw this dish up with improper meat selection.) Once you browned the chicken on both sides lightly, you remove them to another pot, and add another dose of chicken to the same red oil; usually we make a lot of this dish, and yet, we never have enough leftovers.
When all the chicken is browned, you combine them all with the oil-onion mix, one quartered tomato, and add just enough water to cover the chicken. We usually cook this in the pressure cooker for 15-20 minutes, then turn off the heat, and wait for a bit for the cooker to cool. Time to make the cucumber salad: slice the peeled cucumbers on a mandolin, and make a dressing with aromatic herbs and garlic. Resist temptation to eat this salad before the chicken is ready. Now we are moving on to thickening the sauce for the chicken. We use sour cream, 3 Tbsp and combine it with 3 Tbsp flour, until smooth. Slowly, mix in small bits of the chicken's cooking juices, until it achieves the thickness of heavy cream, then pour over the chicken, gently stir (your chicken will fall off the bones by now) and let it boil for a minute or so. If it's not thick enough, you may add 1 Tbsp corn starch mixed with a bit of cold water, and hope that it will thicken up, or you can repeat the sour cream mixture process for a more creamy consistency. And voila, your dish is ready.
We would have served this with home-made noodles, called Galuska, but we were by now too tired... and we have heard by this time that my in-laws had dinner already at home, so they are not very hungry... and so we decided to go with elbow macaroni, a totally acceptable choice with this Chicken Paprikas. We had a splendid dinner, even the in-laws ate it, because, really, nobody can resist the smell of a Paprikas, and then we had the Bread Pudding, which came out absolutely superb, and made us all feel frugal yet able to afford luxuries.
And I followed the recipe very faithfully, but tripled the amounts, because really, who has only three cups of dried bread at home. You either have none, or you have tons of dried bread, at least in my household. When we put the bread pudding in the oven it didn't look like anything appetizing, but in puffed up into a nice, crusty on the outside, melting soft on the inside goodness, and it really wasn't that much of work. And when we were done with the Paprikas, we even made the sauce for it, which I strongly recommend, because it is a lot prettier with the sauce on the top.
The Paprikas is a Hungarian stew, that is NOT a Goulash, because a Goulash is built on caraway seeds for flavor, whereas the Paprikas is built on paprika. You start with diced onions (you may add some small red bell peppers, too) and oil, and sautee the onions until it's glassy, then you pull the pan off of the fire and add the paprika. We only use Szeged Sweet Delicacy, but it should not cause you to stop considering this flavorful dish - Safeway carries this type of paprika with admirable regularity. When the paprika released its color in the oil, you may put the pan back on the stovetop, and add your chicken, after blotting it in paper towels, so it's properly browning without releasing too much juice and drying out. It is the best to use chicken thighs with the skin and bone in, but if that's too much fat for you, just add the boneless-skinless thighs and a couple of wings with the bone and skin. The bone releases a lot of good flavor and gelling ingredients into the sauce, and cooking it with chicken breast is not going to yield the characteristic Hungarian dish. (But I cooked it with chicken breast for my then boyfriend, and supposedly, that was the meal that sealed his marriage intentions towards me, so it can be safely said that you can't screw this dish up with improper meat selection.) Once you browned the chicken on both sides lightly, you remove them to another pot, and add another dose of chicken to the same red oil; usually we make a lot of this dish, and yet, we never have enough leftovers.
When all the chicken is browned, you combine them all with the oil-onion mix, one quartered tomato, and add just enough water to cover the chicken. We usually cook this in the pressure cooker for 15-20 minutes, then turn off the heat, and wait for a bit for the cooker to cool. Time to make the cucumber salad: slice the peeled cucumbers on a mandolin, and make a dressing with aromatic herbs and garlic. Resist temptation to eat this salad before the chicken is ready. Now we are moving on to thickening the sauce for the chicken. We use sour cream, 3 Tbsp and combine it with 3 Tbsp flour, until smooth. Slowly, mix in small bits of the chicken's cooking juices, until it achieves the thickness of heavy cream, then pour over the chicken, gently stir (your chicken will fall off the bones by now) and let it boil for a minute or so. If it's not thick enough, you may add 1 Tbsp corn starch mixed with a bit of cold water, and hope that it will thicken up, or you can repeat the sour cream mixture process for a more creamy consistency. And voila, your dish is ready.
We would have served this with home-made noodles, called Galuska, but we were by now too tired... and we have heard by this time that my in-laws had dinner already at home, so they are not very hungry... and so we decided to go with elbow macaroni, a totally acceptable choice with this Chicken Paprikas. We had a splendid dinner, even the in-laws ate it, because, really, nobody can resist the smell of a Paprikas, and then we had the Bread Pudding, which came out absolutely superb, and made us all feel frugal yet able to afford luxuries.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Risotto with Friends on our Street
I am happy to report that I made the risotto following a recipe from Real Simple, and because our neighbors, Ashley and Nikki, took our daughters for the better half of the afternoon, I made enough for all of us and carried it over to their house. It is so quaint and very European to have your neighbors become your friends and do these impromptu visits with them, and to cook for each other, because you feel like cooking a large batch. The key to risotto is that you add onions to melted butter, toast your rice a bit in that buttery mix, and then add a large cup of wine, or two. So the first thing that goes into the rice is the wine. You then add small batches of broth and let the rice absorb it, one half-cup at a time, and you can even stir the rice, which creates the characteristic risotto texture. Some people don't like their rice sticky and are averse to risotto, but no such picky people live on our streets, and even if they were, it's risotto, so you have to have it a bit mushy. If it's not sticky and gooey enough yet, in the end you add a lot of cheese to it, and then ham, green peas, and then you are left with this gooey gloppity glop, which is delicious and creamy and soothes your soul. It was perfectly fit for this rainy, crazy April Sunday. And the same Pinot Grigio that I used for cooking went just perfectly with it. The only problem was that the broth I used was particularly salty, plus the ham was salty, and thus, the end result was a bit over-salted. Next time I will use just half of the broth and the rest will be just plain water. Even the kids liked it, but of course, they liked Ashley's home baked brownies a bit more. Oh, well.
After cooking this "all day" on Sunday, I finished preparing for the Mock Trial this morning and it went just fine... but it was during the lunch hour, so I was hungry and became very thirsty by the time I had to speak, and it sounded like I was exasperated when the judges asked me questions, when the real trouble was that my throat was dry and I got winded with so much talking. After the trial, I quickly warmed up some leftover risotto, and had a fine afternoon, with creamy mushy yumminess in my tummy. Life is definitely better with risotto.
After cooking this "all day" on Sunday, I finished preparing for the Mock Trial this morning and it went just fine... but it was during the lunch hour, so I was hungry and became very thirsty by the time I had to speak, and it sounded like I was exasperated when the judges asked me questions, when the real trouble was that my throat was dry and I got winded with so much talking. After the trial, I quickly warmed up some leftover risotto, and had a fine afternoon, with creamy mushy yumminess in my tummy. Life is definitely better with risotto.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Nagyi, This Is For You
It was the second anniversary of Nagyi's departure, and it is not getting any easier. This year, the anniversary also coincided with Good Friday, and then Easter Sunday coincided with Abigail's fourth birthday (she is our younger daughter, if you didn't know that yet). So on Good Friday I attempted a Cioppino, thinking that Nagyi never had the luxury of seafood at the grocery store in Hungary. I am so very lucky living on the California Coast, picked up some king crab legs (cost an arm and a leg, which Nagyi would NOT approve) and some tilapia filets, and used the cioppino mix from the jars right there. I don't know why I got so lazy, I should have made my own sauce, because the soup came out fine by me... but Abel (my husband) and my mom (she lives with us) thought the soup had a funny aftertaste. As a result, I have more cioppino in my fridge than anybody in the house cares for, and it will go bad if not finished by tonight. But guess what, I have to attend an event at school, put on by Anne-Marie, something about unenumerated constitutional rights, as we have a policy of attending each other's association events. Alas, I will not eat at home tonight. (Anne-Marie will have sushi served at the event, which is great, and if Abel and the girls eat the seafood, we will all smell like fish tonight.)
And I spent Saturday editing an article about the corporate governance of Chinese Listed State-owned Companies, so I had to take it easy the next day. For Easter Sunday and Abi's Birthday, I warmed up a precooked Ham, opened a can of chipotle chiles and mixed two of those with three tablespoons of light mayo, which came out really spicy and went nicely with the ham and the thinly sliced boiled eggs. We added some vegetables, and cooked jasmine and forbidden rice, and mixed the two together (the kids loved it!), but really, the main attraction was a hit: ham, eggs, with chipotle mayo. Having a Birthday Party on Easter Sunday was enough reason for us to watch three movies, and for me to top it with a House, M.D. episode, skipping any studying.
The movies worthy of mention are Family Law, from Argentina, which inspired the theme of this Blog, and Mi Familia, by Edward James Olmos, which was simply great. Seeing Argentina made me more homesick than seeing East L.A. made Abel... Yes, Budapest is a lot like Buenos Aires, case in point is the movie Evita, which was made entirely in Budapest.
And I spent Saturday editing an article about the corporate governance of Chinese Listed State-owned Companies, so I had to take it easy the next day. For Easter Sunday and Abi's Birthday, I warmed up a precooked Ham, opened a can of chipotle chiles and mixed two of those with three tablespoons of light mayo, which came out really spicy and went nicely with the ham and the thinly sliced boiled eggs. We added some vegetables, and cooked jasmine and forbidden rice, and mixed the two together (the kids loved it!), but really, the main attraction was a hit: ham, eggs, with chipotle mayo. Having a Birthday Party on Easter Sunday was enough reason for us to watch three movies, and for me to top it with a House, M.D. episode, skipping any studying.
The movies worthy of mention are Family Law, from Argentina, which inspired the theme of this Blog, and Mi Familia, by Edward James Olmos, which was simply great. Seeing Argentina made me more homesick than seeing East L.A. made Abel... Yes, Budapest is a lot like Buenos Aires, case in point is the movie Evita, which was made entirely in Budapest.
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