I Know, I Know

I'm a bad blogging guy. I made promises of a post related nature and didn't then actually, you know, post. To partly make up for it here is a picture of tuna noodle casserole. No recipe, just the picture. I don't feel that bad. Heh. And I don't have a recipe for it, I just put a bunch of stuff in a pot (it's one pot too!) and then baked it. On allergy medicine. So my memory is a bit blurry, although I do remember it was wicked good.

Another way I'm going to make up my post shortfall to you guys is what I'm making for lunch right now. It's pizza, inspired by a ridiculous sub called steak mafioso. It is also wicked good, I'll be posting about it Monday. Or Tuesday. Probably. Here's another picture of the casserole. Thank you for your time.

One Pan, Spicy, Black Bean, Chipotle Sloppy Joes. Or Maybe Chili.

1 lb ground beef
16 oz can black beans, drained
16 oz can of plain tomato sauce
1 cup diced onion
1 cup diced green pepper
2 cloves of minced garlic
1 1/2 tsp brown sugar
1 1/2 tbls red wine vinegar
1 tsp chipotle powder
sharp cheddar cheese
hot sauce to taste
salt and pepper to taste
oil for browning

Crumble and brown the beef over medium high heat until ~3/4 cooked, then push it to one side of the pan. Add the onions and peppers, saute until the onions are translucent, then add the garlic. Saute for ~30 seconds more then mix everything together. If the beef starts to over brown while you're dealing with the vegetables just give it a little stir. Add the vinegar and stir real quick to deglaze a bit. Turn the heat down to low, add the tomato sauce, beans, chipotle powder, brown sugar and let it simmer for ~15 minutes, stirring occasionally, or until it's as sloppy as you want. Add the hot sauce, some salt and pepper if it needs it and serve on a toasty roll with the cheddar. If you put the cheddar underneath it melts when you put the sloppy joe stuff on.

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If you put beans in sloppy joe does it make it chili? Not all chili has beans, but they share most of the same ingredients. I guess my chili recipe is more broth based than tomato based and it's more complex than sloppy joe. Plus I probably wouldn't use canned tomato sauce in chili... hm.

Anyway I think I'm going to call it sloppy joe, since I ate it on a roll. I didn't really get any prep shots, but I did get one that I think shows pretty much what it's like in my new kitchen. Peppers in the dish drainer, can of tomato sauce in the sink. Yeah, that's a paper plate for a cutting board, none of my real boards fit in a safe way and my knives need sharpening anyway. My spices are behind me on top of a big, round, plastic sugar container so I'm afraid you can't see them. Once I get a kitchen table set up (in the bedroom, with the fridge of course) I'll have a lot more prep space and that will be good.

I like doing it all in one pan like this. Not only because it's just one thing to wash, but as the beef sits to one side finishing cooking the fat drips down and kind of auto-greases the pan. At least it does if your stove is slanted like mine, otherwise you can just tip it a bit with the onions and peppers towards you every once in a while so some gets down there. I like 90/10 beef, personally, I find it just the right ratio so I don't need to add more fat or skim any off at the end.

And now here's a gratuitous pan shot to pad out the end of the post since that's really all I've got. Like how I slipped that in real subtle? Heh.

So, what do you guys think, sloppy joe or chili?

Easy No Bake Cheesecake

9" graham cracker crust

8 oz softened cream cheese
15oz can sweetened condensed milk
1/3 cup lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla

Beat cream cheese until fluffy, mix in everything else. Fill the crust evenly, cover it with plastic wrap and chill for at least 3-4 hours. Serve with the topping of your choice. It will keep, covered in the fridge, for at least 4 days. I can't say for sure past that as I've never seen one last any longer.

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First, a warning. This is some seriously rich, sweet stuff. Really. But I loved it when I was a kid (still do, it turns out). For a long time I even went so far as to have it on my birthday instead of cake. Of course that decision was helped by the fact that I had already had cake twice in the last couple weeks because of siblings birthdays. Not that I didn't also love cake, mind you, but after so much of it you sometimes want a change of pace. I suspect my mom appreciated it too since all her cakes were made from scratch and this is really, really easy. Heh.

Unfortunately I really didn't get many pictures of it. In fact I only got the one up top, this one and one at a slightly different angle. I'll put that towards the bottom, to pad things out a bit. The reason I didn't get many pictures is because it got eaten pretty quickly. See, my girlfriend loves it too.

The original recipe, which I believe my mom got off a can of sweetened condensed milk, had you cover it with canned cherry pie filling. I don't particularly care for canned cherry pie filling, so when I was a kid I would eat it plain, usually. But it's good with any pie filling/macerated fruit, really. Or hot fudge, whipped cream and nuts. Or some kind of caramel concoction. Rum caramel sauce would be particularly awesome, I think. I've also thought of doing a layer of chocolate on the bottom or cinnamon in the crust. What do you guys think, what would you put on it?

Sloppy Joe Casserole

I've managed to catch another cold, so I'm going to share this with you guys real quick and go back to bed. It's something that had been bouncing around in my head for a while and I finally got around to making it several weeks back. Why didn't I post it then? Well, I was hoping to find a way to make it more... visually appealing. Maybe a garnish? Hmm. Ok, we're just going to move along here.

I'm afraid I also don't have lots of pics for it, but it's so simple I don't think they're needed. All I did was make some sloppy Joe stuff and then fill a casserole dish with it, top it with a small mountain of pepper jack cheese (the perfect cheese for sloppy joes, just so you know) and then top that with a bunch of frozen seasoned french fries. I believe they were Zesties. I pre cooked the fries a bit to defrost and get them started crisping. But that was it, other than baking the whole thing at 375 for fifteen minutes or so, until crispy and bubbly. The Joe was still pretty hot, since I had made it right then, so it didn't need that much time. I was pretty much just melting the cheese and finishing up the fries.

I think next time I'm going to do the Joe a bit different, with lots more veggies that are cut into bigger chunks. Since it's a casserole and all. Maybe even an additional layer of cheese and potato in the middle. Maybe cut the fries into small cubes to get a more jagged topping for more crunchy brown bits. But even as it was, this was awesome. It got a great crust around the edges, the creamy/spicy pepper jack goes great with the sweet/slightly spicy filling and the seasoned fries were the cherry on top of the cake. If you don't mind a mangled metaphor. Well, the cold medicine is clearly kicking in so back to bed for me. But give me something to read while I'm incapacitated. What's your favorite casserole?

Gonna Be Late Today...

but here's a taste of what's going up.Later.

Roast Beef Hash

(all measurements are approximate)
2 medium red potatoes, scrubbed and boiled
1 1/2 cups cubed roast beef
1/2 cup diced onion
salt and pepper

Preheat about a 1 1/2 tbls of oil in a nonstick skillet to medium heat. Cut the potato into 1/2 to 1 inch cubes. Add them to the pan and stir them gently to coat. Let them sit for a minute or two. Add the onion and stir gently to combine. Let them sit for another couple minutes. Add the roast beef and stir gently. Add salt and pepper to taste. Let them sit, flipping with a spatula every few minutes and pressing them slightly to maximize contact with the heat. Do this until they develop a brown crispy crust on most sides. Serve immediately.

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Hash is a great way to use leftovers. If you have a couple of boiled or baked potatoes from the night before and a chunk of some kind of meat you are good to go. Some people like their hash smooth, I like it chunky. I used some leftover roast beef from a piece of beef I roasted a while ago, I'll be posting about that next week. But first, the hash.

This hash was wicked simple. Just potato, onion and roast beef. If you wanted to go nuts you could add whatever you wanted, hash is a concept not an absolute. The potatoes were just boiled and then cut into half inch cubes, the onion is just diced sweet onion, and the roast beef is cubed like the potatoes. You could cut the pieces as small as you want or even run it through a meat grinder or food processor. I've seen recipes that do that but like I said, I like it chunky. Now while I was prepping that stuff I had my skillet on low with a chunk of fat that I had trimmed off the roast rendering in it. Because, well, beef fat is good. I didn't get quite enough before I was ready to start so I wound up tossing in a little bacon grease too. The key to getting hash brown is enough fat. You don't need tons, but you should be able to ever so lightly coat pretty much everything. Now first I turned the heat up to medium, removed the chunk of fat, let it get hot, and added my potatoes to give them a head start on the browning and make sure they were coated in fat. Well browned potatoes are the best. After they had sat for a couple minutes I added the onion and stirred it gently in. After that had sat for a couple minutes I added the beef and then stirred it in. At this point I also started squishing it down a bit with the spatula. You don't want to mash the potatoes, but you do want to get as much stuff touching the hot skillet as possible. This is the other key to good browning. And browning = flavor, as you all know. Some of the potatoes will break a bit and have little pieces come off. That's fine, they will turn into little browned chunks of flavorful loveliness. So, you should flip the hash every once in a while, pressing down gently between each one. Add some salt and pepper at this point, if you like. Or you can wait till it's done and add it to taste then. If it's not browning enough leave it alone longer. If it's starting to burn, turn down the heat and maybe even pull the pan to an unused burner for a minute. Just let it sit, flip and squish. Here it's just getting going. And just about finished. So that's it, roast beef hash. All kinds of things would be good in this, like peppers, a bit of cream, top it with cheese at the end, other veggies like broccoli or carrots. A bit of garlic would have been nice too. I will be making it again and changing it up, but it was wicked good just as simple and straightforward as this. I'm entering them in Mays Potato Ho Down too. That's really why I'm posting them before the roast beef itself, to make sure I get it in on time. Heh.

Chocolate Chip Buttermilk Pancakes

Dry:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3 tbls sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
Wet:
1 1/2 cups buttermilk or clabbered milk
3 tbls butter, melted
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract (I only used 1/4)

chocolate chips, maybe a cup

Whisk the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. In another bowl, combine the wet ingredients. Mix the wet ingredients quickly into the dry ingredients. Don't over beat. Give just enough quick strokes with a whisk to barely moisten the dry ingredients. Ignore small lumps. Preheat a griddle to medium, medium-high. Melt some butter on it and pour light 1/4 cups of the batter on. When bubbles start to form and break put on some chocolate chips then flip. Cook till done. Serve immediately.

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I know I've mentioned before that I love pancakes. But what makes pancakes better? Chocolate, baby. Buttermilk helps too. But chocolate. I could bathe in chocolate chip pancakes. I wouldn't get clean, I suppose, but I would enjoy the hell out of it. Anyway, I believe this recipe is from The Joy of Cooking originally. All I did to it was cut the vanilla in half (I didn't want it to be too strong a flavor) and add the chocolate chips. It's a great recipe. The pancakes are tender, fluffy and very flavorful. They also freeze really well. Just wrap them tightly in some foil once they're fully cooled and toss them in the freezer. Then whenever you want some pancakes pull a couple out, microwave them for maybe twenty seconds or so and there you go. They aren't as good as they are fresh, obviously, but they are better than the boxed ones and the speed can't be beat. So here's how you do it.

First, you want to put your flour, baking soda, baking powder, sugar and salt in a bowl. Whisk it up. Then in a separate bowl put your buttermilk (or clabbered milk), eggs, vanilla and melted butter.More whisking. Now dump the dry stuff into the wet stuff and whisk it just enough to moisten the flour. Little lumps are fine, they will cook out and if you over mix it the pancakes will be tough. And you don't want that. Now just pour some batter onto a preheated griddle. My griddle is pretty small (I think it's ten-twelve inches, but I can't find my tape measure so I don't know for sure) so I use light quarter cups. But if you have a bigger griddle or don't mind making only two pancakes at a time you can use more. Now here is a big pancake trick. You want to let them cook till bubbles start breaking. See this? You want to give it maybe ten more seconds after that point. I had what I thought was a good shot of exactly the time to flip, but it turned out to be blurry. And getting that crappy pic caused me to overcook one of them too. See the sacrifices I make for you guys? Heh. Anyway, when the bubbles start breaking you want to put the chocolate chips on and flip 'em. Then give them another thirty seconds or so (I usually rip a hole in one with a fork to see if they're done) and that's that. Plop them on a plate, cut out a wedge so people can see the chocolate, put some syrup on there and it's breakfast. Or dinner. Or a snack. Or whatever kind of excuse you can make for eating them.

A Super Fudgy Brownie

I'm pressed for time this weekend, but I wanted to do a little something for you guys. So here, look at this thing. It's one seriously fudgy brownie. I had used the brownie recipe, but wound up... well, taking them out a little early. They were still wicked good though. I'm probably going to update the brownies' post sometime next week since I got more pictures. But not today, I've got things to do. For a change. Heh. Hope everyone has a good weekend.

A Simple and Basic Creamy Garlic Potato Soup

2 lbs potatoes, peeled and cubed
2 cups broth (chicken or vegetable)
2 cups milk (sub some out with cream if you like)
2 large cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 a large red onion, diced
1 bay leaf
salt and pepper
1 tbl butter

Saute the onions in the butter over medium heat, till they are soft. Add the garlic and the bay leaf and saute for another 30 seconds to a minute. Add the broth, potatoes and milk. Reduce heat to low and let simmer, stirring occasionally, till the potatoes are done. About 30-40 minutes. Remove it from the heat and blend it with an immersion blender. Serve hot with some kind of topping.

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I had never made potato soup before this. Can you believe it? I can't, especially now that I know how easy it is. I hadn't made one of the greatest comfort foods! The mind boggles. Anyway, this recipe is adapted from a couple different ones around the net, changed up to suit my tastes. It's thicker than average (most called for at least five cups of liquid), because I like it thick. I didn't add any additional things to it, except some cheese at the end, because I wanted to start with a blank canvas, so to speak. This soup is great partly because you can add whatever you want to it and partly because it's good just how it is. It's also very rich and creamy with just 2% milk. So it's even low fat! Of course it would be better with some heavy cream, but what isn't? Heh.

First, I got my ingredients together and took a really bad set of pictures. I'm not even going to show them. You're going to have to take my word that I prepped all the veggies, dicing the onion, mincing the garlic and cubing/peeling the potatoes. One other thing that would be good would be to do half and half carrots and potatoes. You would just want to cut the carrots a little smaller, since they cook more slowly. Anyway, then I browned up the onion. Once it was browned I tossed in the garlic and bay leaf. I used two really big cloves for this and it could have used more, in my opinion. Just so you know. Once the garlic was sauteed a bit I poured in the broth, added the potatoes and then the milk. I figured it wouldn't be good to add the milk first since dairy can be delicate and adding the broth would cool everything down. Then I just let everything simmer till it was tender. I don't remember exactly how long it took, I forgot to pay attention. Sorry about that. But once it was done it was time to smooth it out. You'll want to pull out the bay leaf first though. I first tried using a potato masher. It was woefully inadequate. So I just whipped out the immersion blender and that did the trick. Some salt and pepper and that's it, a basic creamy potato soup. Now you can add anything to it you can think of: cheese, bacon, chicken, zucchini, parsley, mushrooms (if you really wanted to), pepperoni, chives, raw onion, broccoli, cilantro, peppers, more cheese, sour cream, nuts, carrots, sweet potato, sunflower seeds, corn, meatballs, whatever you like. So what would you add?