ODG Eats

Now y'all know I love to experiment, and I generally go into my experiments with a plan, an experimental design, if you will. But after playing for a few days with squid and not royally fucking anything up, I was feeling a little restless, so I decided to just say "yes" to whatever popped into my head. Dry fried ginger, pattypan squash, and red onion? Sure, that sounds like a good combo. Purple sweet potato, shishitos, and sweet onion dry fried? Why not? What if I dump some some butter into that ginger/squash/red onion pan? I bet that will taste good. How about I dust some chopped squid with salt and oat flour and squirt it with some fresh lemon juice? I'm sure that will be fine. And I bet what will be even better will be tossing that squid into the ginger pan. That's when I remembered how much I loved that squid that was cooked low and slow. Unfortunately, I was out of white wine, so I looked in my fridge and saw some high pulp Simply Orange orange juice. I poure...

So it seems the only ways I know how to cook things are hot and fast, low and slow, or medium and...medium. Anyway, having done the hot and fast method on my first squid experiments, I decided to try to do a low and slow next, and, naturally, my mind went to squid stew. I'm not going to bore you with all of the details. Suffice it to say, I started with some chopped shallots and coarsely minced ginger in sesame oil. Just so you know: it's tough to go wrong with shallots and ginger in sesame oil. The flavor, the aroma, the appearance, the sound, the flavor...these three together hit all of the senses. I mean, I could probably just sauté shallot and ginger in sesame oil and eat it straight with a spoon.  A lady at one stall of the farmer's market sold me a carton of shishitos for $3. At first, I was stoked about the price. Later, I was concerned I wouldn't get through all of them. I had shishitos two meals a day for almost a week before they were gone. This stew used five...

Okay, full confession? I've never watched Squid Game. Never even really felt the desire to. Just doesn't sound like my kind of thing. Different strokes for different folks and all that shit. However, unlike some people, I'll eat some fucking squid. Different strokes, after all. Now, I've eaten quite a bit of calamari in my day, and I've maybe eaten squid a time or two with a different preparation, but, if I have, I don't really remember much about it. However, I did buy some squid on a whim at a local market and decided that 4th of July's long weekend was the perfect time to start experimenting with it. First off, I learned a lot about squid biology via some hands-on experience. While my original intention was to do everything blind and figure it out for myself, I decided to go ahead and Google an anatomical diagram so I wouldn't kill myself accidentally. I spent quite a bit of time with the knife cutting the two squid up and sorting out the edible parts...

A couple weeks ago, I had to go into work on a Saturday to rollout a pretty big project. Princess Nadia came to chill with us while we were up there, and everything went smoothly, so hooray! Also, my boss brought in a few Papa John's pizzas for lunch while we were up there. After we were finished, he told us we needed to take the food with us, so I opted for the pizza. The next morning, I was hungry, but I'm not a fan of Papa John's when it's fresh, much less when it's been refrigerated overnight. I was presented with a quandary: what the fuck am I supposed to do with this dried out pepperoni pizza and God awful "garlic" "butter" "sauce?" I started off by scraping the cheese and pepperoni off of the crust. Granted, that was not a smooth process, and I ended up with some bits of bread still stuck to the saucy cheese. At this point, I wasn't totally convinced of what I was going to do, but I knew I wanted to use the different parts of...

You know, folks always talk about the financial expense of moving to a new place, and, while that was pretty rough for me, the emotional and time expenses were pretty high, too. There were definitely highs and lows: a new kitchen not half covered in a shitty roommate's drug paraphernalia, no more groceries going missing after said paraphernalia is utilized, lots of changed routines leading to some hobbies falling by the wayside...as in, I've been too fucking busy learning my new life to update the blog. But that doesn't mean I haven't been cooking and trying new things. For some reason, I got on a polenta kick. Even tried mixing lentils into polenta (in my supreme creativity, I call it "polentil"). I'm going more pescatarian for a little while to help lose some weight. I say "more pescatarian" because sometimes life says "here's some leftover pork at work, have a bite." I've also been hitting the farmer's market weekly for m...

I decided to try out a new concept: plain seasoning on my food with a bold sauce to kick it up a few notches. I was thinking that a pretty boring salmon fillet with a super flavorful sauce would be a fun way to put food on the plate. Sort of a "oh, this isn't that great, but wait! There's more!" kind of deal. I just salted the salmon and poached it in olive oil. Meanwhile, I also made some mashed potatoes with some sautéed green onion and orange bell pepper mixed in. A little butter, a little cream, yada yada. The potatoes were great. The salmon was boring. So how about that sauce? I made myself a roux (butter mixed with flour), then added in some white wine, and I let that simmer while I cooked the fish and potatoes. Unfortunately, it thickened up a bit much, so I added some more wine. With the extra wine, it was too watery, so I dropped in some creme fraiche, all while repeating my Randy Marsh impersonation of saying, "creme fraiche!" That gave it a great ...

So I've gotten bored with circles. It seems like everything I cook is a  circle nowadays. There are so many shapes. Why is it always fucking circles? So I looked at a lot of minimalist, abstract, and cubist art, picked up some square and rectangle cookie cutters, and decided to play around a little bit. Granted, I started off with a circle. I used my circular cookie cutter to pull out some cylinders of tofu. I seasoned my tofu with some of that M9 seasoning I've mentioned a few times , then I seared it up in olive oil. Since I was doing vegan, that meant no butter, which made me sad. I'm sure it's probably marginally healthy or something, but goddamn I love butter. I started up a pot of rice while the tofu was cooking; I included some sautéed onion and mushroom with the rice, puffed the rice up a little bit by sautéing it in the oil, too, then dumped in some water seasoned with salt, turmeric, parsley, and thyme for it to steam. When the tofu was done, I swapped ou...