Tag: paprika

I obviously don't want to take up much kitchen space at EU Zero, so I prepared the lamb smear (which the lamb will be dipped in before the panko roll) here at home.

So far, the ingredients look something like this:

• 3 Tbl Olive Oil (oregano flavored)
• 3 Tbl Tahini
• 1/2 container spreadable goat cheese
• 1 tsp fresh thyme
• 1 stripped twig rosemary
• Onion powder (to replace 1/4 onion)
• Garlic powder
• Black pepper
• Paprika (just a dash)
• Soy sauce (just a dash)
• 1 tsp fresh dill
• Lemon juice

So far, it tastes rather strongly of tahini... but a lot of the flavors that come after come in notes. The goal, of course, is to augment lamb and maybe obscure the slight mutton taste, not to become the flavor of the dish. So the lamb won't be very thickly covered.

The thin coating is the reason I decided to experiment so much with this dish. I haven't seen any recipes online that suggest coating lamb with either tahini or goat cheese, so I may be well on my way to a tremendous flop.

Stay tuned.

Chicken Pot Pie.

Think about that steam curling up from the crust.

Chicken Freaking Pot Pie.

The Pennsylvania Dutch enslaved an entire nation with this rustic dish, which is one of the few meat pies enjoyed this side of the Atlantic (I KNOW YOU'RE THERE, NATCHITOCHES MEAT PIE. I will find the filthy, forbidden love that is deep fried meat pie some day).

The PD's (like they call them back in the hood) also brought us pretzels, apple butter, and funnel cakes, because they are sheer butter-encrusted evil. Their plan is to fatten all of humanity and use their disgusting man-fat to grease the largest slip-n-slide in history. But, you're not cleared for that information.

Her Tartness did the crust for this one, so I'll let her add that one.

1. I cut up two chicken breasts (p.s. - they liked it) and half a white onion (small cubes for the chicken, finely chopped for the onion). Utterly confused by what I was going to do to make these chunks into some sort of pie, I sweated the onion in a stick of butter.

WHAT? Butter comes by the stick. It's how I measure. We are a very skinny family. Bite me.

1. The chicken went in after the onion was clear, along with some soy sauce, pepper, paprika, finely chopped celery (2 sticks) and garlic powder.

2. Double barrel action after the chicken was thoroughly cooked as I unceremoniously plopped one can of cream of chicken and one can of cream of mushroom into the skillet. It sat there, jellied, like some disgusting panna cotta. I stirred it all in anyways.

3. Once it was less... upright, I threw in some mixed vegetables (frozen). What goes with mushroom and chicken? The T herbs! In went some fresh thyme (man, what I would have given for a marijuana smoker to break down those two twigs) and dried tarragon. When things thinned out a bit too much I added a tablespoon of cornstarch and stirred it in.

4. Tasting... what do I need? More soy sauce. A dab of worcestershire. Meanwhile, Tart-on was making some kind of dough as I simmered everything on low.

Magically, all those ingredients with the crust fit perfectly in a circular 9-inch baker. Turned oven to 400. Docked the crust with a fork and brushed it with one beaten egg. Put into the oven. WAITED A HORRIBLY LONG FORTY FIVE MINUTES.

1. Littleroq asked for chicken pot pie for BREAKFAST the next day. Take that, Marie Callender. I have evaded your charms.

Note: Why do I add soy sauce to so many things? Because the MSG in soy sauce makes everything taste like store-bought.

While doing a rush dinner, I decided to take some very basic cooking applications and try to come up with something fast and unique. Here's the cooking method and the result.

First, I sweated a mirepoix (carrots, celery, and onions chopped thin) in butter over low heat while I halved some chicken tenders and flattened them (with a plastic potato masher). After giving them a once-over in pepper, kosher salt, a crushed red pepper, and some garlic and onion powder, I spread them evenly around the skillet (where the onions had gone clear).

Since the tenders had been flattened, I was afraid to lose moisture, so I covered them and let each side cook on low for about seven minutes apiece (until white). Finally, I got out the bear of honey and spread a thin glaze across the tops of the chicken, raised the heat to high, and scorched the honey on both sides. It came out tasty, with a good balance between spicy and sweet; it was a little too spicy for LittleRoq (I actually used three crushed red peppers in my initial run) but can be toned down without losing much flavor.

The balance in this one is between red pepper and honey; it would also work well with a bit of smoky sweet paprika in the initial spice mix. I'll have to delve into honey-pepper-paprika more fully in future unrecipes.

Maybe it's my genes; maybe it's because I'm not Jewish; or maybe it's just because I'm working my way up to cannibalism. Either way, nothing goes with pork chops like hot sauce.

Now, this doesn't mean your dish HAS to be spicy (unless it's meant for my consumption). Hot sauce comes in two basic varieties- the thick kind you either brush onto food or add in small dabs, and the watery Louisiana style hot sauce which is less about heat and more about flavor. Obviously, I stock both and use the latter for most of my cooking.

Tonight, I took some pork chops (hooray for sales!) and treated both sides with a small amount of hot sauce, cayenne, garlic pepper, and salt. (Other potential additions are: minced garlic, crushed red pepper, chili powder, small amounts of ginger, cumin, or paprika). After melting down a small amount of shortening, I cooked it for about seven minutes per side (until the center was white); had I not been so hungry, I'd have given it the sear treatment before the cooking on medium.

Seeing as how I used about a teaspoon of each ingredient, the taste wasn't as hot as previous variations; instead, the hot sauce imparted its own fresh-vegetables taste that took it out of standard weak-chops fare and placed it somewhere in the upper troposphere.

Not my best shot at this one, by far; but certainly quick, easy, and worth eating on a budget. Viva le hobo!

Go ahead. Use Google. Search for fried chicken. You'll find a plethora of articles that all tell you the same basic things. Everybody knows how to fry chicken. It's the next step on the evolutionary ladder above boiling water. The ability to fry chicken is what makes us BETTER than the most common bird on the planet, for goodness sakes. It's part of our genetic cerebral snide superiority- if we can eat it, we're better than it is. That's why people seek out alligator, bear, and shark meat in markets- the ability to eat something that has at some point eaten one of us makes us not only better than the animal, but the poor primate it managed to digest.

But I digress.

I'm not going to tell you how to fry chicken. It's more intuitive than the screwdriver. But there are certain things that should be part of your regular shopping list and they all make our ruthless domestication policies worthwhile.

1. BUY LARD. Or, if you're one of these health-conscious types, BUY SHORTENING. For the sake of the species, buy SOMETHING that is thick, greasy to the touch, white, and melts into a massive pool of chicken frying goodness. Any neighborhood is likely close to an ethnic or just-plain American store that sells pig kidney fat in huge blocks (love the Manteca). If nothing else, invest in a deep fryer (with which you can cook EVERYTHING) and some peanut oil. Culinary adventurers, buy ambergris. Shark fat. Clarified schmaltz for the ultimate one-upsmanship of the chicken. Or take a note from Fight Club (enough said).

2. Get something to bread chicken in. I use tupperware. Grandma used paper lunch bags. Dump in flour, breadcrumbs, and whatever you want- last night I used basil, thyme, cayenne, pepper, garlic salt, and anything else I could grab from the spice cabinet. Don't get the expensive spice jars full of old, tasteless stuff- buy the cheap little sacks on the sidekick-display at the end of the produce aisle. 99 cent cayenne goes in everything. Even a little cayenne and paprika will make it taste better without appreciably increasing the hotness factor (capsaicin pansy).

3. Have chicken on hand. I've been stalled from frying chicken several times just by not having it around. During Hobo Week, I buy the huge bags of frozen, genetically-engineered Elephant Whale Buffalo chicken breasts. Boneless and skinless = easy cutting. This is an economy based upon ease of attainment and use, people. Get your nearest livejournal self-inflicted injury specialist and a razor blade to cut the meat into strips if all else fails.

4. Insert chicken in choppy chunks into your mixed and shaken flour-crumb-goodness mixture. Raise temperature to medium (for shortening, which otherwise has a slight tendency to EXPLODE) or medium-high (for good old god-given lard) and let it boil into a puddle of clear, fatty goodness. Have a skillet lid, or at least another skillet. Burning fat hurts, which is why they used to dump it from crenellations onto erstwhile castle invaders.

5. Since not everybody appreciates spice like I do, I don't put crushed red pepper into the crumb mixture. Instead, I buy the bag of whole dried peppers and crush them in my fist into the heated lard. I am therefore genetically superior to the red pepper. Don't let the pinks crush the peppers for you- nothing says loving like the horrible imagined screams of chiles while you pulverize them in your opposable-thumb having fist (people without thumbs: you're still superior to them. The chiles aren't going to squeeze YOU into boiling lard).

At first, I was just pouring in the seeds; however, since I know that the heat actually comes from the chile's placenta (which coats the seeds), I just toss the whole mangled pepper corpse in.

And yes, I talk about corpses often while cooking. And eating.

Cook until meat stops being pink, then cover and jack that heat up to high (take THAT, shortening can warnings) so you get a mild scorch on your crumbs. Then reduce heat, flip chicken, and scorch it AGAIN.

Covering the skillet makes for juicier chicken. Minor scorch action makes for crispier outsides. You can do what you want to it- you're BETTER than chicken.

If we weren't meant to eat them, they wouldn't be made of meat.