Cul-UN-ary

Check it out! I’ve got carrots growing. Nothing else...

Thu, 24 May 2012 17:13:13 -0400

Check it out! I’ve got carrots growing. Nothing else survived the winter but for some reason these little guys are still going.

Clam Spaghetti Thing I don’t know what to name it, but it...

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 18:16:11 -0400

So good it's steamed up my lens.

What is it with me and bread?

Clam Spaghetti Thing

I don’t know what to name it, but it was good. I was going to have raw clams for dinner, because I’d really like to try them, but we ended up deciding to do a recipe. Which we only sort of half did because we used our own stuff for a lot of it. I think it was pretty darn good.

I started off with Fregola with Clams and Mussels by Giada De Laurentis, but that didn’t really work out. I didn’t use fregola, I used spaghetti because we had a lot of spaghetti left over. I didn’t use mussels because we expected to eat raw clams tonight. There was no chicken broth boiling or anything of the sort. What I did do is as follows:

Ingredients:
Salt and pepper, to taste.

Enough pasta to feed your group of people. Make your usual amount of spaghetti, however much that may be.

1/4 cup olive oil.

1 medium onion, chopped.

2 garlic cloves, minced.

1 cup Marsala wine.

1 cup cherry tomatoes.

A bag of clams, cleaned.

1/2 cup Parsley.

Directions:
In a lightly salted pan, boil spaghetti until it is fully cooked. While the pasta is cooking, add the olive oil to another large pot and heat. Add in the onions and stir until they are translucent and soft. Add in the garlic and cook for about a minute. Pour in the marsala and the tomatoes. Stir and cook for a couple minutes. Add in the clams. Mix them into the sauce a bit, and then cover them. Let the clams steam until they are all opened. Put the spaghetti in a large bowl, and then pour the entire contents of the clam pot into the bowl. Add in parsley and toss.

I hope it is to your liking. I’ll definitely make it again. A little suggestion: Grate your own Parmesan cheese to garnish the pasta.

Rachel Ray’s Clam Bake Stoup It is not often I am critical...

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 14:54:10 -0400

It is hard to photograph frying meat.

Stuff in pot. Cooking. Vegetables.

Brand new kitchen. Look at that.

Goopy. Waiting for clams and shrimp.

The finished product.

Rachel Ray’s Clam Bake Stoup

It is not often I am critical of a dish. (That is a lie, but go with it.) This time, I’m afraid I must be. Two days ago I cooked Rachel Ray’s Clam Bake Stoup. It seemed easy/fun enough to make, with interesting enough ingredients and hey, there’s clams in it. I love clams.

It’s true, it was easy enough to make. I’m sure if I were a little more organized (ha) I would’ve had it done in at or under the 30 minutes most of her meals take. Lots of veg to cut. I like cutting veg.

After a quick stop at the local Whole Foods and snipping some herbs off the garden on the back porch, it was time to knuckle down and start cooking. My grandparents were along for the ride and we pretty much divided the work into equal thirds.

Everything went fine until it was time to add the broth. I let everything cook in the VERY dry pot for the amount of time it said, and then decided to moisten it up a little. Nobody wants burnt veggies. Come time to add the broth, most everything was cooked except for the celery. It was very hot, but very hard. I left it to simmer in the broth with the rest of the veg. It took about 15 minutes to get the celery to a good enough softness.

Aside from that, the whole cooking part went off without a hitch. The taste, though, I did not care for. There were clams present, but you don’t taste them or the shrimp in the soup. All that’s there is the overpowering odor of the fish seasoning and the saltiness of the kielbasa (a meat which I do not care for in the slightest anyway.) If you were to take the fish or the beef out of the soup, you would have something very nice. Together, though, the flavors were to competitive for me to enjoy them.

I think I’d rather just have some plain clams. And I did.

I forgot there were even hash browns in the stoup.

My grandparents loved the recipe.

If you’re interested in downloading and trying out this recipe for yourself, you can find it at the following site:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/rachael-ray/clam-bake-stoup-recipe/index.html

I must say that I did not make the garlic bread croutons for the stoup. I feel like I would’ve enjoyed it a lot more if I had.

MANBURGER Now you might think that with all the Fleur-de-lis...

Mon, 30 May 2011 18:45:56 -0400

Looks a little bare beside that bacon.

Sauteed mushrooms in garlic? Two please

The manliest of space management.

Is that A1 running down the side?

Manwich ain't got nothin' on me.

MANBURGER

Now you might think that with all the Fleur-de-lis decoration and fancy french food that I am the kind of guy who looks at shows like Epic Meal Time with disgust, but really it’s just the opposite. I’m all about the dripping, cheesy, artery clogging, bare handed, beard dirtying goodness. I just save it for special occasions, like today: Veterans’ Day.

Sauté some mushrooms in a pan. Toss in some garlic. Oil and Butter plentiful.

Scoop those out and drop in a burger. Bacon helps too. Nice.

Get out some Worcestershire Sauce. Pour it on. Same with Frank’s Red Hot.

Cheese. Get it out. Slap it on.

Pull out a bun. Mayo. Slap on the mushrooms. Then rip up some onion and lay it on flat. We don’t want any space wasted.

Smack down that burger. Add the bacon. A1 on top. Squish down that top bun. A1 running down the sides. Beautiful.

Devour without blinking.

I must be doing something to this dirt. These weeds are...

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 17:54:35 -0400

I must be doing something to this dirt. These weeds are huge!

And then I realized they were the carrots that I planted last year. They’re kind of scrawny for such a long time underground. I don’t think they’re actually good to eat, since I was supposed to get them about three months ago, but never thought to.

I haven’t been cooking much, but we put in a bunch of new stuff, and after we’ve got the floor in I’d like to start cooking again. I’ve come across a bunch of new recipes that I haven’t been able to try out yet.

You’ve Heard of the Housing Crisis Since I was little,...

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 19:34:41 -0500

You’ve Heard of the Housing Crisis

Since I was little, I’ve made gingerbread houses with my Grandma. It’s one of our Christmas traditions, and we’ve always done a good job.

Above is my ten-second MS Paint Rendition of the “finished product” of our ginger bread house this year. I put “finished” in quotation marks because the house itself never was officially done.

It all started with a box. It was a thin, heavy cardboard box. It was red with white boxes displaying the directions on putting together a gingerbread house and two pictures of finished products made by people that, as my Grandmother lovingly put it, “have talent.” Included were 6 sections of the house, 5 bags of candy, and a large bag of delicious white icing that I was told to knead for a minute, immediately before being told to “stop that and help me get this table cloth off.”

Perhaps the icing wasn’t properly kneaded, but I blame the fact that the gingerbread house had been sitting in my garage freezer for, more or less, a year. The candy was still good. The gingerbread smelled fantastic. The icing was tasty, white, and bore the consistency of very soft clay, without the “stick to everything” properties that clay usually possesses.

So we start building the house. The front stuck perfectly to the side. It stuck perfectly to the other side. They fit seamlessly into the back. The roof went off without a hitch, and then we started decorating it. ”Put on the wreath already so it doesn’t get ruined.” I add on the solid-sugar wreath with a plentiful amount of icing. It stays. ”Let’s add some doorknobs.” We use gum drops as door knobs on the small cookie doors. ”Wait, the doors are supposed to be white.” We are viewing the side of the box for a basis of our creation. We detach the gumdrop doorknobs, and try our best at smearing the sewer sludge onto the doors, and begin going for the roof.

“Wait, my roof is falling off. Grab the gumdrops.”

I grab as many gumdrops as I can off of the point of the house.

“Grandma, your wall is collapsing.”

“Just get the roof.”

We fix the roof, and the wall continues to fall into itself.

“Grandma, the wall’s stuck. I can’t get my finger in.”

“Maybe we should just throw the whole thing out and try again next year.”

“I can fix it.”

I try wrestling my fingers into the small crack and try to pull the wall back up from its 45 degree angle, to no avail.

“Alright, let’s toss it.”

Black Bean Soup: The Cul-Un-Ary Super Anticlimax Edition If...

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 15:31:42 -0400

Al, how could you?

At least it tasted good.

Black Bean Soup: The Cul-Un-Ary Super Anticlimax Edition

If you’ve read my blog before, you will know that I tend to make things without any boxed or canned ingredients. At least that’s how I do it with main courses. From scratch, following a recipe. Last night I made Black Bean Soup out of a can. I got the rice from Chinese take-out from a couple nights before, and the only actual work I did involved chopping a quarter of an onion and stirring the soup.

I had never cooked a bean from scratch, and I didn’t think it would come out the way I wanted it to if I tried, so I went with the good ol’ (the only one in the store) Goya canned Black Bean Soup. I was trying to match the relatively simple recipe from the Columbia Restaurant in St. Pete, Florida.

As I said before, all I had to do was open the can, dump it into a pot, stir for 5 minutes, and put it over a bowl, quarter-filled with rice. The chopped onion went on top, and then it was the consumer’s job to mix it all together. The soup was nice, except a bit lacking in sauce, and it wasn’t far off from my goal.

If you want a great appetizer that’s done in 5 minutes, make this soup. If you’re looking for a meal, bring an extra can.

Great Scott! I’ve created life! So I started up my annual...

Mon, 31 May 2010 13:28:14 -0400

Great Scott! I’ve created life!

So I started up my annual garden again, and three days later, look what I’ve got to show for it! Of course, I can’t remember for the life of me which is which, but I’ve planted zucchini, cucumbers, carrots, onions, and something else I think. I was supposed to make a diagram, but there you go.

I can’t wait to start cooking with some of this stuff.

Happy Easter, everyone! I made a lot of things, but...

Sat, 03 Apr 2010 20:12:41 -0400

Eggs.

Eggcelent.

Happy Easter, everyone!

I made a lot of things, but unfortunately I didn’t chronicle them. I’ve got a while off and perhaps something might show up. Who knows?

Shepherd’s Pie A lot of people make their shepherd’s...

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 19:26:00 -0500

View one.

Closer

Oh no it's open.

Shepherd’s Pie

A lot of people make their shepherd’s pie with chopped beef. It’s a shepherd’s pie. Shepherds herd sheep. I would only see it fit that they also eat one or two of them.

Either way, I made shepherd’s pie, and took my own artistic liberty to it. Of course I used lamb, and I had to look hard for a recipe that used it, but I also used my good ol’ tried and true sauteed mushrooms. Just add them in just before you put on the mashed potato. Mix them in well.

The recipe was borrowed from Alton Brown. It’s a little too long to post, so I’ll just link you to it.

Alton Brown’s Shepherd’s Pie

I used red potatoes rather than Russet. Be warned, this recipe takes a while to make, especially if you’re a little disorganized. Thanks to grandma’s help, we got finished and cooked in about two hours. It might not be speedy, but it is delicious.

Edit for eloquence. 9:16 PM.

This is the first episode of Cul-Un-Ary’s own cooking...

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 21:09:00 -0500

This is the first episode of Cul-Un-Ary’s own cooking show. I’m making Rachel Ray’s Clam Chow-duh. You can find the recipe on Food Network’s website.

This should be quite enough to tell you that I have no idea what I’m doing.

Edit: I’ve moved to Vimeo, simply because it saves my video in higher quality.

New York Strip Steak Today I made dinner. It’s been a...

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 17:41:00 -0500

The full meal sitting on a plate.

The display. Not usually that opulent.

New York Strip Steak

Today I made dinner. It’s been a while since I was able to do so, and unfortunately due to it being winter and rainy, I haven’t really felt like grilling. Today I used the good ol’ oven. New York Strip has, by far, got to be the easiest steak to cook. It’s thin, tender if done right, and can be done in 15-20 minutes. The one you see here was brushed simply with A1 thick and hearty steak sauce. I didn’t use enough, though. Easy solution: put on more sauce.

I’d like to hear about any readers’ New Years, Christmas, or any other holiday feasts. E-mail me at photographyaws@gmail.com

I am really worried that nobody has bothered to tell me that I didn’t actually make New York Strip or describe it in this post. Edited March 5, 2010.

CulUNary Double-Feature Apparently Part Three

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:35:46 -0400

My dad used to make these eggs for me when I was little. He never told me the recipe, though. It took me 15 years to perfect it, and I don’t feel like you guys should miss out.

Scrambled Eggs Recipe That You Will Always Use Forever.

3 Eggs
1 Bag Shredded Cheddar Cheese
Bread Crumbs, Italian Style
1 Stick Butter

Grease a biggish pan up with Pam spray. Use a lot, as these eggs tend to stick. Take a bowl, and place the three eggs, yolks and whites, inside. Start to whisk. Once the eggs are a uniform mixture, add in about a small handful and a half of the cheese. Whisk until that’s uniform. Then add in a small handful of breadcrumbs. Start to melt about a tablespoon and a half of butter in the pan. Once the butter is liquid, add the eggs to the pan. Stir them and cook until they’re sort of dry.

I hope you like them as much as I did. They don’t even need salt.

Best served with Garlic Bread as a side.

CulUNAry Way-Late Double Feature Part 2

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:33:00 -0400

I actually meant to do this the day of the last post, but my computer froze and then I got annoyed and gave up.

My grandma saw this recipe on the Tele, and thought we would give it a go. Credit goes to Paula Deen and my Grandma, as she worked hard on this. She wrote the recipe down for me as follows:

Paula Deen’s Orange Coffee Cake

Heat Oven to 350*
1/2 cup Confectioner’s Sugar
1/2 cup Orange Juice (No Pulp)
Orange Zest from one orange
1/2 Cup Walnuts or Pecans, Ground to small pieces
1 Cup Granulated Sugar
1 Can Regular Biscuits
8oz Cream Cheese
Bunt Pan1
1 Stick of Butter, Melted

Take Each Biscuit, and stretch it out large enough to hold a large wad of cream cheese. Split the 8oz. of cream cheese apart evenly so there is one ‘piece’ for each biscuit. Place the cream cheese in the biscuits. Fold the biscuit over the cream cheese like a pierogie and press. Dip the biscuits into the butter and get a nice, even coat. Mix granulated sugar, nuts, and zest together into a large bowl. Cover each biscuit with the mixture as much as you can. Place the biscuits into the bunt pan seam down, in a star pattern. Leave an equal amount of space between each biscuit, but use a smaller pan so the biscuits stay together pretty close. Dump the remainder of the mixture into the pan. Cook 30-35 minutes.

Once the biscuits have cooked and cooled, mix 1/2 cup orange juce and 1 cup confectioner’s sugar in a bowl. Wisk until no lumps remain. Continue to add sugar if the viscosity is not to your liking. Pour this sauce over the biscuits to glaze once the pan has cooled.

And of course, someone gets to eat the orange with their biscuit things.

Thanks, Grandma!

CulUNary Double Feature Part 1: Onion Soup

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 18:17:30 -0400

I’m using Imageshack now to host the images. Click on the thumbnail to see it in full size.

If you’re one of those people that gets bad gas from lots of onions, (and I don’t know who doesn’t,) avoid this recipe. It tastes rather good, but I was rolling around my bed all night going ‘uuuuuugh.’ The enormous amount of cheese I put on top probably didn’t help.

The onions at first.

Of all the recipes we’ve done so far, it seems that this one took longest between each step. I had to mix the initial ingredients together, and then I waited. And then I stirred two other ingredients in, and I waited some more. It took probably around 40-55 minutes for the onions to brown, which is what the recipe called for, but jeesh.

Getting there.

After standing there for what seemed like hours of stirring, I got to stir something else in. The flour turned the onions from a dark brown mat of wet somethings to a bark brown ball of extremely doughy somethings. I didn’t even know onions could be doughy.

You think they’re brown enough now? Think again.

This recipe also calls for liquor, so make sure to have a well-stocked wine cabinet. It seems Julia’s life in France made her and wine inseparable.

The wine was added to the sauce, or the liquid of the soup. The liquor cooked into the broth, and it actually tasted genuinely good. We omitted the french bread, as Grandpa doesn’t like it.

I only had a quarter of a bowl with generous amount of Parmesan cheese on top (which nobody tells you will actually sink to the bottom and melt into a chunk of Parmesan cheese.) I couldn’t finish it. I enjoyed the taste, but I could feel my stomach inflating. Woof.

You can find the recipe for Onion Soup on page 43 of Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck.

There are a lot of spiders in the basement. There are a lot of...

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 18:04:13 -0400

There are a lot of spiders in the basement. There are a lot of spiders outside. There is virtually no way to get to the backyard without walking around a buttload of a spiders. I hate spiders.

Today, we were going to make a duck thing. I forget what it’s called. Due to time constraints, and the untimely death of a video game system, we were forced to cut that idea short. Perhaps tomorrow.

I volunteered to make steaks on the grill. It was fairly simple. Pour some Garlic and Herb A.1. Marinade into a bag along with three big steaks. Let them marinate for about four hours.

After the four hours is up, it’s time to light the grill. I prefer Kingstone Match Light charcoal. I used about 1/3 to 1/2 of a bag. I had some hickory chips to toss in there, but the coals light way too quick for me to have a chance to throw them in. I watched a spider be incinerated. After the fire went out, I waited about ten minutes and then threw the steaks on. About 10 minutes a side was a good medium well steak. I like mine a little bloody, but they were still good.

Grandma prepared the vegetables.

Yet Another Pasta Dish

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:48:30 -0400

This time, I’ve actually got a recipe for you. It comes straight from my family.

The perfect recipe for Bowties and Shrimp.

Salt
Pepper
1Tsp Garlic
A Stick of Butter
Bottle of Olive Oil
1/2 lb. Shrimp

1 Box Bowtie Noodles
Fresh, Ripe Honeydew as a dessert.

Start a pot of salted water boiling. While you’re waiting for that, start the sauce.
Melt about a stick or so of butter in a small pot. Take of heat and add the garlic. Pour in enough olive oil to match the amount of butter you added in. Leave off heat until noodles are in spaghetti pot.
Once water has boiled, add in bowties and shrimp. Bring the other pot with the butter, oil, and garlic back to a low heat. Add in salt and pepper to taste. Don’t let it boil. If it starts to boil, take it off the heat and stir it until ready to serve, and then just heat it up again.

See, it’s fairly simple. The honeydew we bought had to be some of the best I have had in my life. Simply delectable.

This is a great recipe for when you’ve got to cook for the family and you have no idea how to cook. It’s great and easy.

Spaghetti

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 19:55:58 -0400

So yesterday, for the first time in my life, I made spaghetti out of pure necessity. Now, I’ve always loved spaghetti, especially when coated in margarine, but making it was a very different experience for me. My memory fades back to when I used to enjoy medieval night with my father. He would make orzo and smoked salmon, and we would enjoy that at the table, just father and son. Those were the days.

Apparently the spaghetti he made relies more on the herbs than I thought. See, I was making spaghetti for myself and my grandmother, and I called him up to get his recipe. It called for garlic salt, pepper, oil, and two herbs that I can’t remember but have written down. I couldn’t tell if the jars of herbs had gone bad, so I walked up to ask grandma. She insisted that I just make normal spaghetti. Fine.

The trick I had always known was that if the spaghetti sticks to the cabinet when you throw the noodle at it, the spaghetti is ready. This worked after boiling for 5 minutes, but stopped shortly after. I thought the first try was a fluke, and continued boiling the noodles. They weren’t mushy per se, but they were definetly overcooked. I lathered on sauce, and poured on the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter spray stuff, but the flavor did not return to the noodles.

I guess I’ll leave the pasta to the experts. Just mail me some, dad!

I’ll post that recipe if I unearth the sticky note.

Coq Au Vin

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 19:23:00 -0400

After finishing off the last of the Boeuf Bourgblabla, we decided to find a recipe equally hard to spell. The correct pronunciation for this one is “Coke-oh-vawn.” This one we started a little late, and it was not without its problems. For the most part, all of us had mentioned but had simultaneously forgotten to read the whole recipe before starting. As a result, we had begun to work the recipe out one step at a time. This was a bad choice. This recipe also makes use of the Braised Onions and Sautéed mushrooms. It seems they are very versatile. They tasted great with this recipe as well. One thing to remember is that you should always use the shallots. They add a lot of flavor to the mushrooms.

We started out very jumbled. The easiest part was preparing the mushrooms. We needed a little more butter to cook them this time, but that only helped. As Julia says, “more butter is always better.” The onions turned out to be a little trouble, but it all got sorted out. We placed the lid, which hovered about a half inch off of the pan, onto the pot, which must have squished the onions. It was quite comical to see little telescope-shaped tubes sticking out of the little round onions. Also, this time we found herb bags, which made seasoning much easier.

I didn’t have much to do with the chicken. My grandmother worked on that. I went around measuring out a bunch of ingredients we forgot as she browned the meat. Cooking chicken is the least appetizing smell there is. I had to plug my nose every time we walked past the skillet. Once it came time to pour in the cognac, my grandmother shielded herself with the top of the skillet, while I hid behind a table. We had to set it on fire to continue with the recipe. The fire was very uninteresting. Just shifting the chicken put it out. We used nearly a whole bottle of burgundy as well.

I spent probably about 45 minutes shelling peas. The result was about a quarter inch pile of extremely tiny peas that ended up not even being usable because I didn’t put enough water in the pot when I boiled them. We used a can of peas instead.

The sauce was delectable. It would go great on meatballs and bow tie noodles. The chicken was great even for people who don’t like chicken. The mushrooms and onions worked out perfectly.

I am really glad the sauce turned out good, too. I spent another 15-30 minutes just stirring the sauce in the pan because a whisk would “take off the Teflon coating.” The effort was worth it.

I’m totally packing myself a lunch of Coq Au Vin for lunch tomorrow.

For those interested, the recipe for Coq Au Vin can be found on page 263 of Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck.

The onions and mushrooms can be found on pages 483 and 513, respectively.

Dang. I’m hungry again!

Boeuf Bourguignon

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 18:56:00 -0400

Approximately two weeks ago, my family and I saw the film “Julie/Julia.” It was so immensely inspiring that, despite my hunger and general annoyance because of God-knows-what, we headed to the store and bought Julia’s cookbook. We proceeded to look up the recipe for Boeuf Bourguignon (which I had to spell check on Google.) We went to a couple other stores after that to pick up the ingredients.

Creating any foodstuff with my family from scratch was a semi-rare occasion. Usually, as bad as it sounds, my grandmother was left to plan out our meals. Occasionally I will grill, which I aspire to do more, but the elements have left it much too rainy on my days off. Sunday was great. There were small disagreements over me forgetting the stuff I needed and how much of what, as well as other tiffs, but all of us in the end were glad at the results. Cooking for hours had left us all tired, achy, and starving. The initial bite took place before I had even gotten my bowl away from the counter. It was delicious. The burgundy had soaked perfectly into the beef, and the sautéed mushrooms and onions were to die for. It has to be one of my favourite stews ever. The day ended with my stomach pleasantly full and warm, and my face ready to melt off with all of the excess tranquility.

If you are interested in cooking Boeuf Bourguignon for yourself, the recipe can be found on page 315 of Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck.

The mushrooms and onions can be found on pages 513 and 483, respectively.