Skip to main content

Budget cooking: gotta stop forgetting

If you're anything like me, and God help you if you are, then you've probably had a conversation with yourself similar to the one I had earlier this evening: "How the fuck do you forget to thaw chicken for dinner four days in a row?"
So yeah, sardines may work for a day or two, but you've gotta have some variety, too, right? So tonight, I went for some veggies and pasta. In the red bowl, I had some sliced mushroom and zucchini; the blue bowl had halved cherry tomatoes, crushed and sliced garlic, some odds and ends from an onion, and a few big chunks of green(?) bell pepper; and my clear bowl had some chopped kale.
I started off by heating up my pan, adding some olive oil, and dumping in the blue bowl. This bowl was my sauce bowl.
I let all of that cook until I was able to pull off the tomato skins. Then I removed everything but the bell peppers until they were ready to peel. You can tell when they're ready because the skin gets all wrinkled up. Now, if you're a sane person, you wrap the pepper in some foil for 15 or so minutes, then you can peel them pretty easily. If you're a fucking moron like me, you just burn the shit out of your fingers for a few minutes while you strip the skin off. Note: it doesn't have to be perfect, but get as much as you can off to help the texture of the sauce get nice and smooth.
Once the peppers were out of the pan, I did a quick deglaze with some white wine, then dumped in the mushroom and zucchini from the red bowl. I let those simmer for a bit while I kept working on the sauce veggies.
Those sauce veggies were all in a bowl together, and I added a little bit of my pasta water to give it some liquid. I got my immersion blender pulled out and got to work on those veggies. I added in a tablespoon and a half or so of softened butter, as well as some salt and black pepper.
Once things were started to get pretty smooth, I started adding in some cream a little at a time. You can use a food processor or blender for this instead (in fact, I kind of recommend it as this shit didn't blend as smoothly as I had hoped), but hey, whatever sinks your ship.
While the blending was going (which took way too fucking long), I went ahead and added my kale into the pan and got it cooked down a bit.
Finally, I poured my bowl of sauce into the pan with my other veggies, seasoned it a little with salt and pepper, and let it all heat up together some. Finally, I dumped my noodles into the sauce, mixed it all up, and plated it up for dinner.
All in all, it was a very tasty dinner. Not vegan because of the butter and cream, but still pretty damn tasty. I scooped some into my bowl (could have used a plate, but I really fucking like this bowl), then cracked a little black pepper on top. The sauce had a great creamy texture and tremendous flavor; if you were so inclined to make it vegan, I'd recommend silken soft tofu instead of the cream and it will turn out pretty much the same.
Also, I remembered to put a chicken breast in the fridge, so I finally get to eat chicken again!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Voices in my head, or: Why do I cook?

Every time I chop a vegetable, slice a steak, drop garlic into oil, or scrub a pan, I hear voices in my head: my mom, my dad, my grandmothers, friends from college like James and Liz, friends from adulthood like Rick and Claudio, internet friends like NerdyCap , and tv chefs like Gordon Ramsay, Jeff Smith, Anthony Bourdain, Jacques Pepin, and Alton Brown, all of the folks who have taught me, directly in person or indirectly through books, tv episodes, or live streams, about cooking.  Steak frying with minced onion and minced garlic Sometimes I hear them instructing me on what I'm doing, the same words I've heard repeat in my head hundreds or thousands of times. "Don't let the garlic overcook or you'll get a bitter taste," mom says every time. Claudio often hits me with "If you hear them sizzling, they're sautéing. If they're quiet, they're caramelizing." "Why the fuck are you fucking doing this, you stupid donkey?!" ...
1 comment
Read more

My Mexican restaurant

Some nights (and weekends), I just don't feel like cooking, so I do go out to local restaurants from time to time. My most frequent haunt is El Idolo, a Mexican place just on the edge of Bartlett, TN. It sits a good 1/8 of a mile from the geographic center of the county, so it's reached easily enough from everywhere. They also have the best damn margaritas in town. I've come here frequently and long enough (since they opened, to be honest), that I don't order a drink - my server brings my drink when I've been seated. Incidentally, I go for the medium (used to be large, but they added a new size that's for my Sundays only) margarita on the rocks, no ice, no salt. When a new server starts at "the 'Dolo" (as we call it), it usually takes them 2-3 visits before they remember, and then it's smooth sailing again. Most places that I've ordered this just mix a normal margarita, then top it off with their mix; the 'Dolo says, "nah, hermano,...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Spicy Tuesday Night

 In my younger years, I did not enjoy spicy foods. Luckily, I grew up... Recipe for habanero cream sauce Tonight for dinner, I made chicken and veggies with a new favorite: habanero cream sauce. I started with a couple mushrooms, a couple radishes, some shallot, a little yellow bell pepper, and a few cloves of garlic.  I generally try to group ingredients by when I want to add them (I call them "firm," "soft," "aromatic," etc.). In this case, the sliced baby bellas and diced bell pepper were "soft," the sliced radish and slivered garlic were "hard," and the minced shallot and minced garlic were "aromatic." A little knife work, and they were ready to go, which meant it was time to tackle the habanero.  I cut it up last just to help prevent getting that heat mixed in anywhere it didn't need to go. I mince that shit down so I can mix it around pretty thoroughly, and I threw that into the a...
Post a Comment
Read more