Aioli and potaotes

It's been a while since I've used the mortar and pestle. I've been thinking about Spain quite a lot lately. I'm craving contrast to my current environment. Maybe it's the rain. Maybe it's my personality. Perhaps it's because I'm a Gemini. Whatever.

Above I'm slow roasting potatoes in the pan with some onions and garlic. I like em this way because they come out nice and meaty. The pan it slightly oiled.

I take the garlic out of the pan after a bit, depending on how strong you want the mayonnaise. I'm feeding kids here so I need to roast them a bit. I throw em in the mortar and pestle with some lemon, sea salt, and olive oil and I crush around. I throw in an egg yolk, a dash of mustard and continue grinding and melding until it's a bit thick.

There we go. Dash of paprika on the potatoes. Nice aioli and potatoes. Salud!

The macaroni, the shrimp her wife and their lovers

The above is a bowl filled with cucumbers, red pepper fruit and onions. They're bathing in salt, lime and vinegar, preparing for their marriage with baby shrimp, elbow pasta and fresh tomatoes. Talk about bigamy. Sheesh!

The shrimp is seen here with tomatoes and some homemade mayonnaise awaiting the dowry from the little elbows.

Ahhh....the glass breaks and we can all say mazel tov! The pickling stuff is added and now we have a lovely shrimp and macaroni salad!

Pork fried rice with a ray of sunshine

This is a no-brainer. I made the typical combination of rice wine vinegar, soya, sugar, fish sauce onions, cucumbers and garlic. Stir fried the rice with the sauce and threw in an egg. Some chunks of pork and we good to go, yo.

Minimal month will come to a halt soon. Then our asses are gonna get spicy and crazy again. Speaking of crazy I composed a horrific jingle for the Heady Pepper that sounds a cross between Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka cruising through the dark tunnel, Michael Jackson's Thriller and Ethel Murman on Paoti.

Jam on it!!!

I woke up one morning and saw some fruit that was just about past it's peak - some plums, pears, and apples. I decided to make a jam. I threw the fruit into a pot with about a cup of sugar, water, a pinch of nutmeg and a dash of cinnamon. I brought it to a boil and let it simmer for an hour or two until it looked like...


Delicious and no preservatives!

And I enjoyed one of my favorite meals. Scrambled eggs with a ton of black pepper and home made jam on toast!

I used to be a diner addict before I left the US. Unfortunately my tolerance has been reduced as my cholesterol level has gone way down since I've been away. When I go back I get the post diner food coma. But now I can emulate my favorite aspects of diner cuisine without the dry mouth, chest pains and shortness of breath.

Weirdness

In keeping with the theme of the last few weeks, this proved to break through the ever tightening challenge of using what remains in the cabinets.

Here we have some ground pork from the freezer, the rest of a bag of penne and a Spanish style tortilla made with carrots instead of potatoes. Crazy I know. Everything cooked separately and then baked a bit in the oven and held together with a home made mornay sauce.

Call for entries - I need a jingle!

The Heady Pepper needs a jingle! Do you have musical talent and/or just love to futz around with cool programs like Garage Band or even Soundtrack Pro? Audacity or Wavepad? Feel like composing a jingle for the Heady Pepper? How fun would THAT be?

The jingle should be fun, silly and a little porn. Lots of pops and bubbles with a bit of sizzle. I'm thinking Esquivil meets Brigitte Bardot.

The prize for the winning jingle? An original drawing from Jonathan David Bauer and an episode of the Heady Pepper dedicated to you. The Heady Pepper is going to be HUGE so just keep that in mind. *wink*

Please send your compositions to littlebigbauer@gmail.com in MP3 format.

I can't wait to hear what you come up with.

Shepherd's Pie and life lessons and talking out of my ass

Sort of Shepherd's Pie. I've heard of lamb, goat or beef or ox in this. I used ground pork. See, my mother in law was kind enough to deliver a few packages of the minced swine to us so we are grateful. Nothing to really explain here and nothing elaborate. Ground pork with root vegetables, peas and a mashed potato topping with sprinkled millet flakes. Yes i still have not used up the bag of millet. I did use a concoction of wasabi, soy sauce and maple syrup with some paprika for the seasoning. I often substitute Kikkoman for salt in certain dishes.

The truth is, aside from the budgeting issue there's the time issue. That is for cooking and posting. This is reality. I would love to cook all day, paint all day and write all day, but I have a family. I'm job hunting. I'm not always the Heady Pepper. Sometimes I'm just plain old Heady. Or Head. Or just plain He. I am he as you are he as you are me. No. Nobody dropped acid into my mash. Just a little association game.

I guess that leaves me (and you) with this realization - I don't always cook fancy tancy dishes. I'm removing my mask now. The truth is I wanted to post more and not just when I make something out of this world. It's like when I make some nice sketches and throw the crap ones in my pocket so no one can see. Life is about hit and miss I'm learning. I suppose life is kind of like shepherd's pie. No it's not. It just is what it is right?

Mark Bittman rocks!

You know...I discovered Mark Bittman some time after I began the Heady Pepper. I guess I can say that if Bittman were an art movement I would be a Bittmanian. I found that he, like me, does not claim to be a professional cook, but is a passionate home cook. He writes about food (far better than I ever can) and his videos are entertaining and simple. I will always refer to him as he has both inspired and influenced me.

So here's what I did after watching his tomato jam video.

This was one of the greatest things I've ever tasted. I made my own version as I didn't have ginger and threw in a couple of things that Bittman didn't use, but please just watch the video and get the basic gist. Then take it from there. HO LEE SHIT it's good. I used this Santa Fe pepper i had growing in the garden.

Again I used the tomatoes from the garden and AGAIN CHICKEN!!! Oy! But this jam can go on anything. Meat, bread...I even smeared some onto my forearm and licked it off. And I discovered it makes for a great depilatory.

Funny salad

OK I think the epiphany has not arrived, but instead a sort of a groove. The level of creativity is growing and....WAIT!!!! DING DING DING!!!! EPIPHANY!!!!

Whew! First groove then epiphany. This tuna potato salad might not sound so appetizing to some foodies with gourmet tastes, but it's leading to something. It's the wax on wax off or paint the fence meal. One of them. This whole exercise (OK veering off into epiphany) is working the muscle of ingenuity. When this is all over on 10 September I will be stronger, better and faster. My instincts are sharpening with each meal. Each budgeted meal is stretching my imagination. I'm cooking for a family of 8. I have 3 jobs. Instead of throwing hot pockets in the oven I'm finding creative ways of dealing with second rate cans of tuna! The previous scenario was a complete metaphor. I actually have a family of 4 and no job and wouldn't think about preparing hot pockets either. Unless I was really stoned. That or steak-ums. Or for a hangover...OK moving right along.

This salad consists of a can of tuna, potatoes and mixed greens. Tomatoes from the garden and for the dressing? For the dressing...let me digress.

Back in 1990 when i was in college I had a part time job at a place called Chicken on the Range. Horrible place to work. The boss would say things like, "move it you fuckin' Jew" and charged minimum wage earning employees staff meals by taking X amount of dollars out of their paltry paychecks. There were some redeeming moments though. Like when the boss was away I would get to practice my culinary chops by getting behind the line and making chicken sandwiches. The cook who was a Chinese/Jamaican part time drug dealer used to let me get back there while he toked up a spliff. Normally I just bagged or delivered the chicken. Anyway there was this dressing they had...real white trash - Honey bbq. Back to the point...

I re-created this dressing by pure accident. In my rush to come up with something to dress this salad with I threw some mustard into some honey and mayonnaise with some...HA! I can't remember what gave it the bbq flavor. Oh well. It was yummy though.

This experiment is making me draw on memories and resources that are unconventional for what naturally comes to me in my present culinary life. Next thing you know I'll find a bag of dip mix and try and make a soup out of it. Sorry Melissa.

The Heady Pepper will resume it's normal level of "quality" by mid September when things even out. And I promise a video soon! I threw in some nostalgia to compensate for the lame meal. Undskyld.

Chicken Verde!

Is this deja vu? I'm rather disorganized and I'm quite sure I've posted something similar before, but this is minimal month and, as this is one of the more exciting dishes of this period I'm proud to be redundant. And I did mention that during this time of budget cooking there will be repetition.

We seem to be eating a lot of chicken. There's a reason why chickens make the sound: cheap, cheap! OK maybe chickens don't make that sound, but cheap is what they are. Usually unless we buy the fancy ones who live in federal prison for tax evasion.

So here are some whole legs stabbed and stuck with garlic and rubbed with yummy spices.

Here are some of those garden fruit/berries that we'll use for the verde sauce. I've substituted green tomatoes for tomatillos and threw in a couple of almost ripe ones for substance and balance. There's a santa fe pepper and a green pepper.

Process it with some vinegar and salt and lime juice. Throw in some cilantro if you have.

Yellow rice as usual because my 5 year old daughter will not eat rice that I don't add turmeric or saffron to. The chicken slow cooked for about 2 hours in the oven. Until the end when I set it to grill. Slightly too long as you can see the garlic sticking out suffered 3rd degree burns. No big deal. Just rub some Zhen Shi on it or another burn ointment before eating. Just kidding.

Use some of the juice from the chicken to add to the green sauce.

Penne in minimal month

Fresh ripe tomatoes from the garden

In this second week of tight budget shopping I'm getting bored and anxious. I want to go to the store and get high just choosing ingredients on a whim. But this month is anti-whim. Or is it. Or isn't it. Is it completely non whimsical to use what you have around in the cabinets and fridge? To pick what's growing in the garden? After a couple of weeks of limitations there's sort of a conflict that occurs. And then a vision! Like any good ritualistic form of deprivation, there's a positive lesson to be learned through some kind of epiphany. I have not reached that epiphany yet, but I'll let you know when I do. For now the experiment continues.

I found a bag of penne in the cabinet, a quarter bottle of red wine, which amazes me that there was an unfinished bottle of wine in the house, and some root vegetables. We still have some olive oil, which would impress even the Macabees considering how much I normally use. And by now in our little garden where the killer snails don't pay any rent so we the sluglords have to go-a-salting, hang some beautifully ripe tomatoes. Oh and some fresh green peppers. Quite bitter if you ask me so I threw in a touch of sugar to offset the bitterness and the acidity of the tomatoes. Not much because these tomatoes are quite sweet.

So after some garlic, onions, peppers and tomatoes, a splash of red wine and a pinch of sugar and a little more than a pinch of salt along with a little squeeze of a lemon...we have this simple red sauce over this over-cooked Penne I boiled. I am an awesome cook! Believe me. For all you know I can't even boil pasta. Both things are true in this case.

I once made this sauce, enraged in Spain for about 8 people. My friend Jennifer was there and she told me I cook like an Italian grandmother. I wouldn't tell this to my friend Melissa who I suspect knows more than one Italian grandmother personally, but I'm OK. I'm not perfect and I have a lot to learn. Like remembering that I leave stuff on the stove or in the oven.

I'll be posting a few more meals that are not necessarily in order, but are all from this past week.

Dansk mad

To many of you who might be reading this - the title does not indicate any kind of mad Dane. Mad, which is pronounced ... oh jesus. OK I cannot begin to phonetically spell how this would be pronounced. Try MEL as in Mel Torme, but swallow the L, which most Danes will tell you really sounds like a soft D. Nothing to do with an English D. It really sounds like an unfinished L that's being swallowed with a boiled potato.

So anyway this evening's meal is a no-nonsense, simple Danish classic: small intestine! Kidding. It's a type of sausage called medister. A thick and lanky schlong of a sausage that wraps itself in any given pot. I boiled that shit for a couple of minutes then finished it in the pan. Talk about exotic! Served with boiled potatoes, salted and drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with paprika. OK the potatoes veer more toward Spain, but I'm not Danish and red is my favorite color. So there! I made a typical brown gravy as well.

The sausage is normally served with plain boiled potatoes and brown gravy. There might very well be a roedkaal pronounced rull- (swallow the Ds to appease your Danish friends and pretend they're Ls) call. Rull-call. Oh and remember to French your R. I don't mean tongue kiss it. I mean in a way you'd try and sound French when saying meRci. Roedkall (I'm using the Latin characters because the Danish letters might not show correctly - rødkål) is a warm red cabbage concoction. We can get into that at a later date.

roedkaal

Whatever you choose to do, medister can be served with a huge variety of side dishes as it's a mild, lightly salted sausage that won't overwhelm it's significant others. Medister is the easy going party of any relationship. I guess you can say that I might be considered medister. Nah. I'm way spicier and more handsome if I do say so myself.

Egg and cheese Chapatis!

What better minimalist recipe is there than chapatis. And the Minimalist himself- Mark Bittman is here to show us how he does it on the grill. I always love his videos.

I used graham flour instead of straight wheat flour, but they were yummy just the same. Here's my unconventional twist though. I enjoyed mine with soft-boiled egg, salami, cheese and ketchup! The Heady Pepper can be trashy if he wants to be!

Chicken balls!

This is actually the 3rd dinner in the minimal month experiment. We did some food shopping to replenish staples and chose a small variety of items to stretch at least until the end of august.

Wasabi chicken meatballs rolled in millet flakes and baked in the oven. Lamian noodles and a similar sauce from the other day. Soy sauce, honey, cucumbers, onions, rice wine vinegar, fish sauce and lime juice. During this time the food will get eclectic and even repetitive while exhausting the ingredients in the kitchen.

These lamian noodles are the ones you find in Raman packages. I knew a group of Koreans in college who lived on Raman. OK who didn't live on Raman in college, but I loved what they did with it. They'd crack an egg into it and pour half a bottle of chili sauce in. I still do that to this day. Talk about minimal.

Minimal month!

This is a perfect opportunity to get to the basic idea of what the Heady Pepper was originally about - improvisation. Only these coming weeks there is the element of necessity. We're on a shoe string budget at the moment. Summer vacation, private school tuition and whatever other circumstances have led to us tightening our belts. But we can still be inventive with what we have. So here's the experiment:

Use every last bit of edible substance in the house before going on our next food shopping venture. Of course we still want to provide top lunches for our new school girl and feed our children with healthy, well rounded meals. Healthy and well rounded meets frugal and inventive. But what happens when you're down to a quarter bag of bulgar and a quarter bag of quinoa, some root vegetables, cucumber and a variety of condiments? Oh...and a couple of cans
of tuna? You get Bulgar, quinoa, tuna casserole!!! Whooopeee HURRAAHHHH!!!


Maybe not. But it tastes just fine though. Garlic and tomatoes, quinoa and bulgar toasted on the pan. Then some water to boil and cover and simmer. Then I sautéed some onions with cucumber, added rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, lime juice, honey and fish sauce. Can of tuna and all set. Very nice, light dinner served with mixed greens from the garden.

I'll warn you that these next several posts will not offer anything fancy or beautiful. This is about restraint, discipline and practicality. We shall resume with finer ingredients in about a month, but for now let's see how we do.

The next dish, which actually came first is whole grain pasta in...well a chicken broth! HAHAHA. YES! One piece of chicken taken out of the freezer. A whole leg (thigh and drumstick) browned and slow cooked in a pot with some root vegetables. After around 3 hours on low heat the chicken all fell apart in the broth. The broth reduced and the pasta was added. Throw some parsley on top and some chili peppers (habenero only for me), green beans and that's done. It was frickin delicious and strange at the same time. But it worked. And there were even leftovers the next day.



Tomorrow it's definitely time to get some staples for the cabinets and see how long we can stretch the next round of groceries. Nothing fancy. Nothing exotic. Simple and cheap.

And when the time is right I may even squeeze out a video.

Braised ox tails!

Where have I been? On Summer vacation. Where else? It's been a busy time. I've been eating other people's food and taking a break for the most part from this computer. Why don't I begin with my most recent favorite dish - ox tails in coconut milk! Of course I've been cooking some enjoyable dishes, but I want to backtrack a bit seeing as I've been absent for a while.

I love gamy meats as you probably know by now. Lamb, goat, ox tails...love liver. I once had some fresh turkey that a college friend's brother shot in his backyard. It was nothing like store bought turkey. It was especially tender and gamy. Yumelicious! But without further gobbledygook let's move onto some tail...

Let's begin by browning the pieces on all sides. I used walnut oil, salt and pepper here.



Then add some flavor. I have some fresh ginger, plenty of garlic, cinnamon stick, lime leaves and chili peppers. They're on medium heat in the same pan with the ox tail fat from the browning and the walnut oil.


Then put the ox tails back in and allow to simmer for a couple of hours in Coconut milk and whatever kind of curry you like. The flavors will meld.


After a couple of hours remove the tails and let them settle. Strain the broth and then reduce it to a sauce.


Throw some fresh herbs like cilantro into the sauce! Add some salt to taste.


I serve it with some saffron rice.


So go get some tail and love it like I do!