What are you cooking/eating today?

(I say this having made toad in the hole before, of all things. Why? Because it's frickin called toad in the hole, how could anyone need another reason?)

This is one of my favorite fish to cook, but I haven't done very many things with it because it's so well-suited to my favorite way to cook fish that isn't salmon: simple coating in either crackermeal (breadcrumbs or Panko are substitutes) or sesame seeds, with a little salt and often whatever spices sound good at the moment, searing on both sides in a hot pan with enough oil to coat (they're not very thick, right? Searing will do nearly all the cooking), and then serving them with a squeeze of lemon, greens (collard, kale, mustard, what have you, washed well and dried, either cooked for several hours with beer and soy sauce and tasso, or stir-fried at as high a heat as the oil can stand with a little garlic thrown in at the last minute), and occasionally Teptartar sauce: bit of mayo, bit of chopped up pickled hot peppers, bit of green onion, bit of garlic.

Alternately, you can substitute tilapia for the chicken in my Blackened Chicken With Satsuma Vinaigrette recipe, on the "hit me with your best sauce" thread.

There is an art to cooking sausages however. None of this grilling nonsense unless you want to lose the flavour. They should be fried very gently in a heavy-bottomed pan, turning regularly to ensure even cooking. On no accoutn whatsoever pierce the skins as this reults in a disastrous loss of moisture (this is also why I don't hold with piercing chicken to see if it's done), this is why the cooking needs to be gentle. Cooked in this way the sausages should a ccrue an intensely savoury and sticky gel around their skins. Should take about twenty minutes to half an hour.

Then you put them between two slices of bread.

later I was thinking lamb chops, there's a nice rosemary and salt seasoning down there.

I won't be cooking tonight as I'm out boozing, but tomorrow I'll make some Thai green curry and also I'll marinade some chicken in yoghurt and spices for Wednesday as we picked up a big box of free range chicken pieces at the weekend.

Last night it was a small rack of young lamb, pink in the middle, puy lentils braised with pancetta,garlic and shallots, carrots done in a mixture of (a small amount of) water and butter and a few carraway seeds, and roast beetroot with red onions. It was weird to make a dinner with no rice, couscous or potatoes, but it worked quite well.

So far we have cooked: a potato gratin thing, spinach and potato curry (divine as always), big pasta and tomoato sauce thing, and yesterday an ill-advised risotto with porcini, sage and orange. It had quite a delicate flavour but was really too orangey, and in case I don't want delicacy when it comes to risotto, just nice rough comforting buttery, cheesy, mushroomy bite.

• a pound of small, whole red potatoes
  
• a pound of small, whole boiling onions
  
• very coarsely chopped celery
  
• Baby carrots
  
• Baby corn or canned corn (optional)
  
• A teaspoon of red vinegar (optional)
  
• 1 fresh tomato, coarsely chopped. (optional)

I'm prolly buying: a huge bowl of chili (with shredded cheese and tortilla chips, natch), salad and juice.

No cooking for me, tonight

I'd love that! Send it on, please...

Green Beans

The gist: I grew up on an ex-farm; it could've still been a farm, but we weren't farmers -- Dad made computers, Mom played tennis. We did keep the garden, though, and the fruit trees and grape arbor and raspberry patch and blackberry bushes. So I grew up used to produce being very, very fresh -- corn on the cob still tastes weird to me if it's more than, you know, half an hour old. It took me years to get used to grocery-store produce.

Anyway, point being, I never had canned vegetables as a kid except for canned peas on Thanksgiving because my grandmother liked them or something like that. So I grew up liking my vegetables crisp, or as near to it as they can be while still being cooked (carrots need to be cooked long enough to cook the raw taste off -- what's that thing called? that thing, you know, that goes away -- but I don't like them mushy).

... the point continues to fail to actually be.

Okay.

Green beans.

I like them hot and snappy, same way I like my women and my lava whips. Cook them, but don't overcook them. Salty and smoky are the flavors that work well to accentuate what's there without making you think it's something else entirely.

So, I go one of two ways or sometimes combine them:

1) A little oil (olive or sesame, usually), heated fairly hot; green beans already prepared with the ends snipped off and tossed in the freezer bag for soup stock; toss the beans in, stir until they change color, keep stirring for another minute or two depending on how old and large they are; add chopped garlic, stir another half a minute, remove from heat, sprinkle with soy sauce or Worcestershire sauce, which should bubble as it hits the hot oil and reduce down so that it's basically stuck to the beans.

2) Fry a couple pieces of bacon wicked crispy but watch you don't burn them; remove, pat with paper towels, crumble; keep the grease in the pan but let cool a little; put heat back on, and when bacon fat is hot but not smoking or anything, toss the beans -- prepped as above -- in. Stir until the color changes and a couple minutes more, toss a little chile-garlic sauce on (different from sriracha but available from same company; this is the chunky-ish one, not the smooth sriracha) -- but only a little, if you want mega-heat, put some Dave's Insanity in, it won't dilute the green bean flavor as much as if you used the Scoville equivalent of the chile-garlic sauce -- and then sprinkle bacon on top.

Bacon and chile-garlic sauce. What kid's not gonna eat his green beans now?

Cooking for me today: ... uh, none. I was on campus for thirteen hours. I did have a lamb/pesto sandwich I'd made last night, though.

On the menu tonight a la casa de Sam: peanut butter on flour tortillas and diet dr. pepper. GET IN ME!

(oh perhaps my lunch of school cafeteria cheeseburger type thing with fries will save my eating day. Actually the only thing that saved that burger was some jalapenos I scrounged up. If it burns enough, you can't taste it!)

Nah. Cooking's one of those things that, the more you do it -- I mean, both in total, so you've got the practice, but especially in terms of frequency, so that you have stuff on hand, and there's leftovers you can use, and things like that -- the quicker it goes. And, you know, I'm home five days of the week :)

Dishes
1 Large slow-cooker crock pot
1 very large nonstick fry pan
3 Large mixing bowls

Main Ingredients
1 lb of lean Beef for stewing, cut into 1/2 cubes
1/2 lb Bacon
3 Cans (16oz) Stewed Tomatoes (add more if you want a milder recipe.)
1 Can (16oz) Black Beans
1 Can (16oz) Pinto or Pink Beans
1 Can (16oz) Dark Red Kidney Beans
1 Can (8oz) Shoepeg or White corn
2 Bell Peppers
1 Red Onion
1 Vidalia Onion (or white onion if Vidalia is unavailable
2 Tablespoons maple syrup (REAL not synthetic)
1 Large Chili Pepper (Anaheim preferred, but you can use Anchos for extra sweetnees anmd heat)
1-2 Teaspoons freshly chopped Jalapeno, Scotch Bonnet or Habanero (in that order of heatness)
1 Tablespoon Mexican oregano (1/2 Teaspoon if freshly grown)
1 Tablespoon Cilantro (1/2 Teaspoon if freshly grown)

Liquid Maranade Ingredients
1 Cup lime juice
1 Teaspoon Worchestershire sauce
1 Teaspoon Tabasco

Dry Marinade Ingredients (For milder recipe, cut levels of everything -- but the masa -- in half)
3 Tablespoon Masa (finely ground mexican cornmeal)
1 Tablespoon Cumin
1 Tablespoon Chili Powder
1 Tablespoon Curry Powder
1 Teaspoon Cayenne Pepper
1 Teaspoon Paprika
1 Teaspoon Fresh Cracked Black Pepper
1 Teaspoon Garlic Powder

Garnish
Shredded "Mexi Cheese" (Sharp Chedder, Colby, Monterey Jack, Asiago)
Corn or Tortilla Chips.

PREP
1) Start up crock pot. Put in the stewed tomatoes, coarsely chopped large chili pepper and chopped Jalapenos. Cover and simmer.
2) Put all the Liquid Maranade Ingredients in Bowl #1. Stir Thoroughly. Cover.
3) Put all the Dry Marinade Ingredients in Bowl #2. Stir Thoroughly. Cover.
4) If the stew meat is in chunks bigger than 1/2 inch cubes, cut them down to 1/2 cubes.
5) Put the stew meat in the Liquid maranade. Stir until all the meat is throughly coated.
6) Cook up the 1/2 lb of bacon. KEEP THE BACON GREASE IN THE PAN. Put the bacon in the crock pot and then add the maple syrup on top of the bacon. Cover and simmer.
7) Allow the stew beef cubes to marinate for *at least* 20 minutes. Stirring occasionally.
8) Remove stew beef cubes from the Liquid Marinade, straining off the excess. Put the stew beef cubes into the Dry Marinade. Stir Thoroughly until stew beef cubes are evenly coated.
9) Allow the stew beef cubes to marinate for *at least* 20 minutes. Stirring occasionally.
10) Remove stew beef cubes from Dry Marinade. Fry them up in the bacon grease. (Yes, unhealthly...but it tastes sooooo goood.)
11) When they are seared to a golden brown, add them to the crock pot.
12) Open each can of beans, drain juices into crock pot, but beans into Bowl #3. Put Bowl #3 in fridge to chill.
13) Cook this mixture for at least 6 hours.

HALFWAY POINT
1) Coarsely chop the Red and Vidalia Onions, and the Bell Peppers. Add them to the mixture.
2) Taste. If too spicy, add more stewed tomatoes, and a scosche more maple syrup.
3) Cook this mixture for another 2 Hours.

LAST STEP
1) Add Beans and Shoepeg/white corn.
2) Cook for one more hour.

SERVE
with shredded cheese melting on top, and corn/tortilla chips on the side.