Some Rice and an Upcoming Pot Roast

So here is the reason I haven't been posting so much lately:

This is pretty much what I've been eating. Sometimes the meat is chicken instead of ground beef, sometimes there's vegetables. Sometimes there's no meat and it's not pilaf, it's jasmine rice or something. There's usually cheese.

But some variation of this is what I've been cooking these days. Not very inspiring. But then this weekend I made this:

Pot roast. I like pot roast. I'm actually chilling it overnight, so as of this post I'm not sure how it turned out. I'm not terribly concerned though. If it works out how I want I'll have pot roast, potatoes and gravy all from one pot.

Just in case anyone is wondering what the Real Bob has been up to, this is pretty much it.

 But if I bought him a cat bed he wouldn't use it.

Easy, Basic, Low Fat Rice Pudding. Part One

2 cups 2% milk
1/2 cup rice
2-4 tbls sugar*
pinch of salt

Bring the sugar and milk just to a boil, add the rice and reduce heat to low. Simmer until the rice is tender and most of the milk is absorbed, ~30 minutes (maybe more). Chill in the fridge for a few hours or eat warm.

*different sugars will give you different flavors. I've used brown sugar, white sugar and honey, they are all fantastic.

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Mmm, rice pudding. Who knew something so awesome would be so easy? So this isn't going to be a big post where I do a lot of talking and share a lot of pics. Mostly because I don't have a lot of pics, but also because I'm going to be making it again soon and will post about variations in the future. This way I can just link back to this post for the basic recipe. Also I realized I hadn't posted this week... heh. Anyway, is this recipe awesome? Yes. Is it low fat? Yes! Which is good because my doctor very gently guilt tripped me into eating better. So, stay tuned for more puddingy adventures kids, for they are imminent.

Hawaiian Baked Rice

1 cup sliced ham, chopped
1 cup pineapple chunks
1 cup rice
1 cup pineapple juice
1 cup water/broth
1 cup pizza sauce
mozzarella, to taste
salt and pepper

Lightly brown the ham in an oven safe pot (wide/shallow is best), transfer it to a bowl then add the juice/water or broth. Cook the rice, then add the pineapple, ham and stir, reserving some of the ham and pineapple for topping if you want. Spread the pizza sauce on top. Put the cheese on top, as much as you like, and the toppings. Bake at 425 until just browned. Eat.

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Love this, it's so easy and spectacular. I got the idea when I read this post from Noob Cook (got idea=stole idea). It couldn't be simpler and it's wicked good. Wiffy uses cream of mushroom soup instead of pizza sauce, which I'm sure is lovely, but I wanted to make it more pizza-y so I used sauce. I don't see any reason that you couldn't use other things instead. You could use gravy and make it like Hawaiian haystacks, I bet that would be good. Or maybe a garlicky white sauce. Whatever floats your boat. So, shall we? Lets.

First, I took my ham and fried it up a bit. Gives it a little color and also adds some fond for extra flavor to the rice. Then I added the juice and water and let it come to a boil. Then the rice. Wiffy used a rice cooker, but I don't have one. Plus this way it's all done in one pot which makes for easier clean up, which is always good. Then reduce the heat, cover and simmer until done. Mix in most of the ham and pineapple, leave some out for topping if you like. Next, sauce. Spread that stuff around. Then cheese and toppings. Mmm, cheese. I don't care for bagged shredded mozzarella but I also hate shredding it myself. So I don't usually bother, I just chop it up. Much easier and it works just fine. Now into the hot oven until brown and delightful. Doesn't it look good? Yes it does.

Now another part of the recipe that I changed from Wiffy's is she added garlic to the rice. I didn't because my pizza sauce is pretty garlicky, but there's nothing stopping you from doing it. Hell, there's nothing stopping you from changing it up however you like. This here is a concept, not an absolute and don't let anyone tell you not to experiment. If you need ideas, stay tuned. I'm going to be making more baked rice, I enjoyed it very much.

Quick and Spicy Vegetarian Rice and Beans

1 cup rice
2 cups cooked beans
2 cup water or broth
1 cup chopped onion
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp blackening seasoning
salt, if desired

Saute the onion in some olive oil until translucent, add the garlic and stir for ~30 seconds. Add the rice and stir to coat in the oil. Add the liquid, seasoning and beans, cover and cook until the liquid is absorbed. That's it.

Note: You can start with dried beans. Take a cup of rinsed/sorted dry beans, put them in a pot and add water until they're covered by a couple inches. Add ~tsp of the blackening spice and let simmer until tender, ~2 hours. You can them use some of the liquid you cooked the beans in for the rice, I did half that and half broth.

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Here's a quickie, guess what makes for a killer rice and beans seasoning? The blackening seasoning from the shrimp last week! I know, shocking. I wanted something easy, so I looked over my pantry. I had pasta, rice and beans. I've been eating a lot of pasta so I went for rice and beans. I started with dry beans, but you can just use a can and it would maim the cooking time. Although you wouldn't be able to use any of the cooking liquid from the beans, which does add a nice flavor and texture. I guess it all depends on the time frame you have. With canned beans you could have this on the table in less than a half hour, I'm guessing. And who doesn't love that? Not that I ever eat at my table these days, unless you count the dinette set table my computer is on. Heh. The one thing about the seasoning is that I found it didn't have quite enough salt for this kind of thing. It was plenty for the shrimp, but rice and beans want a little more. Although it's not really required, you could easily do a low salt thing and it still tastes wicked good.

If you wanted to un-veg it you could add some bacon or sausage. Or put it in a tortilla with some taco or carnita stuff. That would also be wicked good.

Lamb Pilaf

Just a quickie today kids, I'm not even telling you about the butterflied leg of lamb I got the meat (and fat) for this from. Saving that for next week. But this was good. Really, really good. What I did was took the fat cap off the cooked leg of lamb, chopped it up, rendered it up and poured off the fat and cracklins (mmmm, cracklins). I got some good fond, deglazed that with some weak chicken broth, poured that off, added some of the fat back in and sauteed onions and garlic in it.

Then I cooked the rice like you would for any other pilaf (would have added orzo, but I couldn't find it, stupid unorganized kitchen), plus some salt, pepper and a little oregano, added the chopped up cooked lamb at the end and... well, that's it. Except I added the cracklins back in. Because I'm a madman. It was as unctuous as a dictator's sycophant, with little bursts of rich lamby goodness from the cracklins. I just love saying that, say it with me, "cracklins". Good times. If you like lamb, send me an email and I can try to make up a recipe for it.

Caramelized Onion and Beer Rice and Beans

Look! Food! Food that I actually made! Course, I don't have a recipe. Or more than that one picture really.... but it was pretty good. And hey, baby steps to getting back into blogging, right? Heh. Not to mention learning how to cook in my kitchen cubicle.

Part of the reason I don't have a recipe is that I actually somehow managed to ... misplace... all of my measuring devices and not a few of my other kitchen things in my most recent move. I know where some of them are, but I could have sworn I packed up my measuring spoons in with my pots. Ah well, good thing my mom taught me to cook without caring too much about exactitude.

I had never made rice and beans before so I just kind of winged it. I caramelized the onions, deglazed with some Sam Adams Boston Lager, added spices (mostly mexican, I think) added rice and a can of red beans and that was that. It was even vegetarian. Oh! And some green bell pepper, since I had some that wanted using. So sometime soon I'll have to remake it when I can tell you guys what I actually did. Heh.

Steak and Rice Enchiladas

I'm on a real Mexican kick, apparently. I've had the tamales, the Mexicanized shakshuka, that burrito wrap thing and the green chili enchiladas all within the past couple weeks. And that's just the stuff I've posted, I've made a couple things that I didn't get pictures of. Hope you're all not sick of it, we've got one more to go.

Enchiladas have an awesome stew-like kind of vibe in that you can use them to finish off all kinds of leftovers. When I made these I had a chunk of steak leftover from fajitas, two tortillas and some leftover rice pilaf so I figured I'd just whip something up with those. So I took those, some chunks of cheese, diced red onion, green chilies, some Mexican seasonings and mixed them up. Noodles was curious about what I was doing when I brought the bowl of filling over to the window for better light, but none of it was for her. Heh. I made a quick enchilada sauce with an eight ounce can of tomato sauce (I love those things), garlic, onion and some adobo seasoning and spread a bit on the bottom of a little casserole dish I have. Then I filled the tortillas up with lots of filling (no point in screwing around), rolled them up and dropped them in. The rest of the sauce on top, a goodly amount of cheese, some time in the oven and that's that. It came out pretty good, but the sauce needs a little work so I don't feel too bad about not having a recipe. I actually have been looking for a good red enchilada sauce, anyone have one they especially like and want to share?

Taco Burrito

Oh yeah. Something else to do with a mountain of taco meat. This here is some saffron rice (I would have put in green chilies if I had some, that's good times), a bunch of taco meat, crushed tortilla chips, lettuce, spicy cilantro sour cream and a mess of cheese. Good frigging times kids.

That's really it for this post, other than some admin stuff. Like the fact that I'm on Twitter now. So if you're interested in hearing what I cook but don't post about why not follow me? That's probably all I'll be tweeting (that's the proper term, right?) about. Unless you want my advice on something. I can't promise it'll be good, but I'm a friendly guy, I try to be helpful. Heh. Frankly, me being on Twitter is kind of weird, I don't really know what to do with it. But hey, everyone else is doing it, so why not? I also heard that there's a popular cliff nearby for jumping...

Italian Fried Rice

-2 Italian sausages (~1/3 lb)
-1/2 cup chopped onion
-1/2 cup chopped pepper
-2 cups leftover rice
-1 tsp chopped fresh oregano
-1/2 tbl chopped fresh basil
-2 tbls fresh parsley
-2 cloves of garlic, minced
-1/4 tsp ginger, minced
-2 tbls parmesan cheese, grated
-pinch of red pepper flakes
-salt and pepper

Heat up a nonstick wok, stir fry pan or saute pan over medium/medium-high heat. Brown the sausage breaking it up into small pieces as you do. Once it's cooked transfer it to a paper towel lined plate, leaving a little of the fat in the pan. Add the onions and cook them until slightly soft and browned. Add the garlic and ginger and cook until fragrant, about 30-40 seconds. Add the peppers and cook them until they are as soft as you like. Transfer the vegetables to the same plate as the sausage. Add about a tablespoon of olive oil to the pan, let it get hot and add the rice. Stir it around to coat it with the oil and then let it sit for a minute to get crispy. Stir and repeat until it's as crispy as you want. Add the oregano, parsley, basil, parmesan, red pepper flakes and salt and pepper to taste. Mix it to combine then add the vegetables and sausage. Mix it up again and let it cook for a little bit to make sure every thing is hot.

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When I made the garlic pan fried noodles last week there was quite a bit of interest in some Italian/Asian fusion. Sure, a lot of the interest was from me, but that's fine. I'm going to explore the idea anyway. Heh. We got some Chinese take-out the other day and ordered extra rice so I would have some leftovers to play with. I decided to Italian it up, see how it went. It went quite well. Quite well, indeed. I basically just used an asian method of using leftover rice with Italian style stuff. Like standard fried rice you could use anything you want, really. It's like stew or casserole, clean out the fridge.

First, I cooked up a couple Italian sausages. I like nonstick for making fried rice. You don't get quite as good a texture but you don't have to use anywhere near so much oil, making it less heavy. Once the sausage was browned, cooked through and broken up I moved it to a paper towel lined plate. I left about a half a tablespoon of fat in the pan to cook the vegetables in. Which is what I did next. First the onions, then I added the garlic and ginger, then finally the peppers. I just heated the peppers through, pretty much, since I don't like squishy peppers. I moved the veggies to the plate with the sausage and heated up some olive oil in the pan. You want to use just enough to lightly coat the rice, but not so much that it gets all oily. I used about a tablespoon, I think. Maybe a little less. Should have measured it, sorry about that. Then I tossed the rice in there and stirred it to coat everything. I let it sit for a minute, then stirred it and let it sit again. I did that a couple times until there was some browning on the rice. I know you can't see it, but I assure you there was some. Then I added the sausage and veggies back in, as well as the herbs and cheese. Stirred it around to combine and make sure everything was hot and that's it. Italian fried rice. It was wicked good. Next time I will be making some changes, of course. I liked the ginger in there, it added some nice flavor, I might add a little more. But I'm not sure, I don't want it to become overpowering. A splash of white wine would have been good, so would some tomatoes somewhere in there. I was thinking maybe a little balsamic vinegar, maybe some broccoli and chopped spinach. Chopped prosciutto or salami would be good too, I expect. Maybe some of those pickled hot peppers whose name I can't remember. What do you kids think, what else would be good in Italian fried rice?

Something To Do With Leftovers: General Gau's Fried Rice

Yep. This is exactly what it sounds like. I had some leftover General Gau's chicken and white rice. So I made fried rice out of it. It came out quite well, but I didn't take any pictures of the process. Partly because I'm still working on my fried rice technique, but mostly because I'm all doped up on cold medicine and can't hold the damn camera still to save my life. And don't even ask me to set up a tripod, I'm lucky I didn't set myself on fire frying the rice, let alone fiddling with other stuff while I was doing it.

Basically all I did was fry the two day old rice, in a hot wok, with some garlic/ginger/canola oil. Then I added maybe 3-5 tablespoons of the sauce from the chicken (I'm not really sure how much. See above, re: cold medicine) and stir fried it till the liquid was mostly absorbed. Then I added in the chicken, chopped up into bite sized pieces and kept stirfrying it till it was all heated through. That's it. Next time (and there will be a next time) I'm going to go all out and add more veggies and stuff to it. But this was a test run, to make sure it would work. And I didn't have to do too much stuff, which was also part of the goal.

Experiment: Black Tea Rice Pudding

3 cups whole milk
1/3 cup basmati rice
2 tbls sugar
1 egg
2 bags of black tea like English Breakfast
pinch of salt

Pour the milk into a pot, put the tea bags in, bring it to a simmer and let reduce until it's about 2 1/2 cups. Add the rice, salt and sugar and let cook until the rice is tender, about 20 minutes, stirring frequently. Whisk the egg and add a couple tbls, one tbl at a time, to it, whisking the whole time. Slowly add the egg mixture to the rice and milk, again stirring the whole time. Cook for another minute or so, until thick. It's best hot.

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This was one of those things that seemed like such a good idea at the time but just didn't quite work out the way I had hoped. I was looking for a light, creamy dessert that tasted like a good cup of tea. What I got was some wicked thick goo that tasted like... something else. It's not that it was horrible, it just wasn't that good. I'm going to try it again at some point, make some changes and see how it goes. For one I don't think I'm going to put an egg in next time, I think that is what did in the texture. I also might not use basmati, but that was the only rice I could find around here and I didn't feel like going to the grocery store. The nutty flavor was actually pretty good with the tea, but I think it might have been too competetive. Anyway, here is what I did.

First, as the recipe states, I poured the milk in a pot. Tossed in the tea bags and let it simmer for a while. Another thing I might change next is instead of infusing the milk with the tea using a half a cup or so of very strong brewed tea. Then I added the rice, sugar and salt and let it cook until it was tender. I didn't get shots of whisking the egg, or whisking some of the hot rice mixture into it but I assure you that that's what I did next. I took the tea bags out at this point. Then I poured it slowly into rice, stirring constantly. I used a whisk for this and it broke up some of the rice, which kind of sucked. But it also reincorporated the skin that had formed when I walked away for about three seconds while it was cooking and that was good. So I cooked and stirred until it was thick. Very thick. Much thicker than I thought it would be. But there it is, black tea rice pudding. It wasn't great, but I think with some changes it could be. More experiments are clearly needed.