Bastardized Pesto!

Hey folks! I'm back with a new video. The pesto here is my own and I call it pesto because that's just what I want to call it. Don't expect this pasta to be smothered and drenched in a giant, green, oily mob of sludgy pesto. This is light. Enough fresh basil to taste, plenty of garlic and - SPICY just like I like it. Almonds instead of pine nuts because...well....just don't have any pine nuts. It's cold, late and rainy so grocery shopping was a no-go.

contrast

Different! Very different! Night and day. A whole other animal. What am I talking about? Meals, lifestyle, hair, clothing, birthdays - from how I grew up until now. Generationally (if that's a word) speaking it makes sense. That's what happens, but these differences play so vividly in my memory from childhood to now that I wonder what planet I came from and what planet my daughters will think they came from.

Growing up my meals were rich in protein and processed foods. Lots of Kraft singles, mac and cheese, filet-o-fish sandwiches, pizza, hot dogs and hamburgers. Empire chickens with metal "K" tags too. The meat at home was all kosher though, but despite that most of it was like what many other kids of the 70s who were living in cookie cutter neighborhoods were eating.

Birthdays always consisted of ordered cakes from the local bakery or Carvel ice cream cakes with Fonzie or the Pink Panther. Ice cream cake for my fourth birthday party and my first kiss caught on the 8mm camera. Five was the pink panther. Six showed Abbot and Costello movies. Seven I sneaked a swig of Wild Turkey (don't tell my mother).


not the actual tortilla in this photo

For my daughter's 5th birthday party the other day everything was home-made as most things are here... at home. Home made pancakes including a dinosaur for the birthday girl. Tortilla Espanola inspired my my Spanish friend Marina who makes the greatest tortilla on this side of Southern Denmark. Actually the greatest tortilla I've ever tasted. I think I'll cry now. And my wife's famous lasagne, which I won't share because it's hers and not mine. Trust me though. She doesn't cook very often, but when she says "lasagne", I listen!



OK I'm not a baker. I can bake if I really set my mind to it, but I'm more a free spirit in the kitchen. I don't do directions well with my need to improvise, but I need to learn the classics before I can go abstract right? So anyway I combined two recipes for this chocolate cake. One Scandinavian recipe and one American. And I won't get into it because I HATE the word recipe, but you can have a visual. That's all.

So my present neo-hippie life - summer herb garden, fresh ingredients, earth-friendly heating system and paperless bank statements - makes me wonder what my kids will take with them and leave behind. Perhaps they will live a Jetsons existence with meal capsules or download their daily nourishment. Who knows.

This has been another non-instructional food post by me. Do what you want! I'm not your mother!

Pizza delivery!

Pizza. Oh yes pizza. From Violetta's and Joey's on Long Island - two of my favorite pizza joints as a child - to Joe's on Carmine Street, THE Famous Ray's, Golden Pizza ... then Two Boots. Of course my favorite village pizza as a child was John's pizza where my uncle used to take me. Pictures of Frank Sinatra and a few other talented mobsters, pre-Sopranos covered thewalls with their nervous signatures. The City fascinated me the most when I had no sense of proximity. Lincoln Center may have well been right next to FAO Schwarz, which could have been next to John's. It all made sense one day when I moved just a couple of blocks away from John's to what will always remain my favorite neighborhood.

But wait. We were talking about pizza right?

Last night I tried a variation on Mark Bittman's fried pizza. Please see the video along with that link too. Bittman, a.k.a. The Minimalist has one of my favorite cooking shows found on the front page of nytimes.com. It doesn't appear everyday and I'm not sure of it's frequency, but it's worth me looking in to. I'll let ya know. The videos are always in the 4-6 minute range.

Anyway I took some pizza dough that I prepared. Take a little dry active yeast in a bowl with a little flour, sugar, salt and olive oil..lukewarm water, let it activate over a few minutes until it puffs a bit. Then throw in a couple of cups of flour, a pinch more salt and let it sit til it rises a bit. Pound that, knead it and make a round circle. Let it sit for a couple of minutes. Not too long. We're not making a loaf of bread you know.

What I did differently was I let it get crispy on both sides in a pan with a bit of olive oil, then I put the topping on and threw it in the oven for the last bit. Some tomato sauce, jalapenos, aneheims, and habanero, fresh garlic and mozzarella cheese. Oh my god..the gas in the end, but it's worth it.



And voila! The only unfortunate thing in this process is that I forgot to take a picture with the good camera in the end. I got so caught up in the process and I was so hungry that I only snapped a shot with my iSight camera from my computer. But just imagine the flavors, colors of the green jalapeno, the yellow aneheim, and the red habanero, the neutral garlic, all over the red sauce and trapped between melted mozzarella. Then came the fresh basil leaves, which were placed over it all...oh...wow. So, so, so good.

Mac and cheese and thoughts about Italian mail order brides

First off I'd like to nod to the right side of my screen where I find this link in one of my google ads. This is an "ad for content" ad. Have I indicated in any way in this arena of food videos and simple posts about what we're eating these days, anything about Italian mail order spouses, Italian food, Chianti, Linguine, Mario Puzo or Sicilian Pizza (which I think might be from Long Island - the one I'm thinking of)?

I would love to create a dish based on any number of my favorite Italian dishes, but I have not done so yet. What has tipped off my AdSense to hang such an ad on my page? Google - if you choose to drop me from AdSense then that's OK. I'll invest my 12 cents elsewhere. The 12 cents that I made this year. That's right - nobody is reading this blog/video blog. Or if you are then why not visit sometime if you're only getting access via a feeder. It's cozy in here. OK the fact that I just mentioned that I made 12 cents from AdSense, alone might get me off the team. Whatever.

For those of you who are just joining now, I love to cook. And eat. And watch cooking shows. And read food blogs. I create dishes based on what I've tasted in the past. The dish might either be a random original creation or a bastardization of a dish that I've been in love with at one time or another.

One such dish that has stayed with me since childhood and beyond is macaroni and cheese. I don't buy the box version because it doesn't really exist here other than the very rare Netto find or the exorbitantly priced box found in the American store in Copenhagen. And no Annie's noodles, which pisses me off. If I'm going to junk-food-it then let it be Annie's and not Kraft. Although I have a weakness for Kraft food, I can't really admit that now can I? And since nobody is reading this anyway then not to worry. I don't make the southern, condensed milk version either. What I do is a simple bechamel turned mornay with Irish cheddar.

I was inspired to make mac and cheese because my 4 year old daughter was having a sleepover play date. Her first. I had to make something that would suit the local danish child's palate. What to do. I didn't want to just make hot dogs or frikkadeller (Danish meat balls). I wanted to do something simple though. Something tasty made with fresh ingredients. I thought - what could be more perfect than mac and cheese?

The result? Absolute bomb. Failure. No child present ate this meal. Not even my 2 year old who eats everything. The one who devoured the porbeagle shark. I wondered why. Sure kids have random tastes and moods when it comes to food. I've been trying to get my kids to have an "open palate", or open mind when it comes to food. Why didn't they like it? Who knows? Maybe because the elbow pasta, which they're not at all accustomed to looks like brains.

In any event We (the adults) ate it up and it was yummy. The second day I made a simple pesto to roll around in it since the brats wouldn't touch it anyway.

For breakfast the following morning? Home Made pancakes! Huge Success!

Regal Porbeagle!

At one point my almost two year old had round cheeks filled with all the little bites of this shark I cut for her. She loved it. Porbeagle shark, cubed and cooked in a shallow broth of water, olive oil, lime, salt, red onions, garlic and thinly sliced parsnips. Yes I'm really into these parsnips nowadays.

Served with yellow rice and a tomato, habenero salsa, avocado and basil.

When I was a kid I went fishing with a friend of my dad's. I always threw up off the side of any boat as a youngster...even got a little woozy on the Central Park Canoes, but the highlight of that day fishing was the shark my dad's friend caught. Thoughts of Robert Shaw's half came to mind. Thoughts I pushed out of my mind while preparing this meal. Even as I sliced the meat of the shark I tried pushing "harpoon" out of my mind.

It's more about the thin pickles!

My 4 year old daughter chose hot dogs yesterday in the supermarket. While it's not always my first choice, family is a democracy (well within reason) and it's nice that she gets to practice the art of choice once in a while and feel accomplished at it. So we got these chicken dogs.

As a four year old I had more of a penchant for burgers than franks, but to each her own. Actually I had a penchant for anything with ketchup. Ooh that reminds me of a ketchup I made once with fresh tomatoes and rhubarb. That's another story.

The pickled cucumbers were triggered by pickled onions I made the other day for shrimp ceviche, in which I poured boiling water over papery thin sliced onions. I let them soak in salty, hot water and then allowed them to soak in vinegar and lime juice for 30 minutes or so. Fast pickling. The process led me to think about the pickled cucumbers that Danes like on their hot dogs. It's always experimentation with me. I grabbed a cucumber, sliced it ever-so-thinly and repeated the process. The vinegar, lime and salt just loved those emaciated pickles. Delicious!

The scoop on the plate is carrot and parsnip salad with avocado and tomato in a vinaigrette. Then some oven roasted potatoes shaken in a bowl with salt and paprika.

A bit different from the frozen Hebrew National franks I grew up with or the Ball Park franks that grew "blump" when ya cooked em. Nowadays I don't keep kosher and I avoid hot dogs that that get boners when warmed up. I like my poelser with ketchup, dijon mustard and those yummy pickles. I also enjoy chili dogs.

And the bun was nothing to write home about. Store bought, generic hotdog bun.

Tomorrow I'm making Porbeagle stew. It's not quite endangered yet. Yes it's a shark.

Changes!

I will begin making some changes to The Heady Pepper and would love to have your input. In an attempt to post more frequently, I would like to implement some in-between-video posts. They might involve culinary history, personal experiences with food like the first time I ever broke the kosher laws and more!

There is nothing more fun than making these cooking videos, but they are extremely time consuming and add up to be rather costly. Each video is shot in a few hours and takes about a day, usually to edit. I would like to spend more time doing them, eventually making one a day, but at the moment I don't generate income from this vlog so I need to spend time doing other things in order to contribute to putting some of the most wonderful dishes of food on my family's table. *begin violin music*.

Hopefully by adding posts in between videos, I'll be able to hold your attention in the interim. The most current video will remain atop and posts will appear regularly about food! Comments will still be open on all posts and all past videos can easily be found in the archives below.