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...

You ever just been lazing around on a Sunday thinking, "Man, I have no chores, no responsibilities, all the time in the world, and plenty of energy to spend on cooking!" while surveying your property? Me neither, but I chose to ignore my responsibilities to spend a few hours making spaghetti and meatballs from as close to scratch as I could.  I actually read a recipe for making pasta. It said to make a "nest" out of two cups of flour, then crack three eggs into the middle with a little olive oil and salt. I decided I wanted to be fancy, so I added in some basil, oregano, and parsley. I like my noodles to be interesting. I would like to quickly note: I am not Jacques Pépin, Martha Stewart, or Garden Contessa, so I don't have fancy little herbs growing just outside my door. I like using fresh ingredients as much as possible, but it's not always possible. I couldn't find oregano or basil at Kroger, so I grabbed one of these little bastards. They're drie...

Yeah, you fuckin read that right. Bacon is already perfect, isn't it? Nope. It can be better. It doesn't need much, and you can customize it however you want, so it's a great way to start experimenting if that's been an intimidating premise for you. Don't be intimidated: it's bacon. As long as you don't burn the shit out of it, it's going to be fine. It's a simple enough process. Since I was experimenting, I cut all of my bacon in half so the pieces would be smaller and I'd have twice as many to share with others (i.e. my coworkers). Just lay that shit out on your pan; some folks say to use a wire rack on top of a cookie sheet, but I just rolled with my broiler pan. Basically, you want some kind of drainage so the bacon doesn't just sit in its rendered fat and get all greasy and shit. Now, I'm a fan of greasy anything, especially bacon, but for candied bacon, you want it to dry out a little bit. After the bacon is on the pan, put a "...

So I know a person or two who don't like eating carbohydrates because they hate happiness or something. I'm not sure. That's what I've been able to glean. Anyway, they like this lavash bread stuff, which is just really fucking flat bread that's low in carbs. Just for a comparison: a slice of white bread has (on average) 15g of carbs, a slice of whole wheat bread has (on average) 12g of carbs, and half of a lavash flatbread has (on average) 8g of carbs. Significantly less, right? So we're cooking with that shit. I decided to make a chicken flatbread with it because I wanted pizza and the bread was flat, so that was a win-win. I cubed up some chicken legs, seasoned them with salt, and browned them in olive oil. I made sure not to cook it all the way through since it was going into the oven and I didn't want to dry that shit out. I decided to use olive oil since this meal was kind of Italian-ish and so is olive oil or something. I also didn't want to fuck w...

So on Saturday afternoon and into the evening, I did my first cooking livestream since 2022. I decided to do my personal twist on Thanksgiving dinner which included some more traditional items as well as some fun changes. I do apologize for the shit image quality: these are all screen captures from the stream VOD.  The first course was simple enough: panko breaded and air fried chicken wings with cellentani in a creamy parmesan and asiago sauce. I included some ghost pepper in the corn starch I used to dredge the wings, then a quick egg wash, some panko crumbs, and into the air fryer for 25 minutes (15 on one side, flip, then 10 more). It was a hell of a start to the meals. Second course was an oven "smoked" turkey leg. I cooked it in the same fashion that I recently cooked the beef bottom round roast . It took a bit longer than I had intended for the turkey to reach an internal temperature of 160, and that ended up throwing off the rest of my timing for everything else in ...