OMG a Recipe: Takeout Cravings Made at Home

Everyone has really specific food cravings. For some, it's a big juicy hamburger, all the fixin's, with a side of crispy fries. For others, maybe it's an ooey-gooey cheese pizza, straight from the oven. Thankfully in our modern delivery-friendly times, we can order almost anything to be sent straight to our door or zip past a drive-thru and receive instant gratification. My cravings are a little different -- I really love the spicy heat of savory beef over a cold pickled salad, or the creamy richness of a peanut sauce. Living in the Seattle area, it's actually not difficult to get any of this -- even in Duvall, where I live, we've got two Asian/Thai places and a few teriyaki places right in town. But what if you're not as lucky, or if this craving hits at an odd time and all the restaurants are closed? Wonder no longer, I'm going to lay some Wasabi Knowledge on you.

Spicy beef over cucumber salad - restaurant meal, quickly made at home - Photo by Wasabi Prime

It was a dark and stormy night... well, more like a weird weather day, where the sun would be shining, but the rain was pouring down. This kind of weather means Wasabi is as lazy as sin, I don't want to leave the house, even to pick up delicious takeout food, so it's MacGyver Meal Time, and I match food cravings to what we've got on-hand. We had just gotten our latest CSA box of magical mystery fruits and vegetables. Which at this time of year is kale, kale, kale... and oh yeah, more kale! But there's some other things that show up, like broccoli and at the time, a late harvest cucumber or two, with skin as tough as leather. We were also getting other late summer things like eggplant, which people either cheer with joy or look at it with quiet bewilderment, as it's not a vegetable people deal with regularly, given its seasonal particulars. But it's a good thing, and it went so well in a creamy peanut sauce.

Putting together all the favorite flavors to answer my food cravings - Photos by Wasabi Prime

I wanted a Korean-style BBQ, kind of similar to kalbi, with the spicy-sweet sauce. I had a steak defrosting in the fridge, and with it still slightly icy, it's easier to slice the beef super-thin. I marinated about a pound of thinly-sliced beef for about a half hour (or more, if you have the time) in a mixture of: 3 tablespoons soy sauce, 2 teaspoons sugar, 1 teaspoon rice wine vinegar, 1 teaspoon sesame oil, 1 teaspoon cornstarch, and 1 teaspoon Sriracha or 1/2 teaspoon of chili flakes. You just mix everything together by hand until it's all coated. For the vegetables, use what you have -- I chopped up broccoli and kale with some thinly sliced onions. In a hot wok, add a little cooking oil, quickly stir-fry the beef until it's browned, then add in the vegetables to finish Use a little watered-down soy sauce to deglaze the wok and help make a sauce. Add more sugar if you like it on the sweet side. If I'm cooking more vegetables, I'll remove the mostly-cooked beef so it doesn't get rubbery, and give the vegetables more time to soften before adding the meat back in. In this case, the kale wilts fast and I like my broccoli with a little crunch, so it just needed minimal cooking time. This is usually how I do a fast beef stir fry at home; no real measuring or fussing with sauces, I just use what's in the fridge. If there's fresh ginger, garlic and/or scallions, I add it. Fish sauce is nice as well. If you have a container of spicy Korean kochujang sauce, which is like a spicy barbecue sauce, I'll add a little spoonful of that to finish, but again, if you don't have any of this stuff handy, the basics listed above will do fine.

The finished stir fry was served over some lightly pickled cucumbers. I partially skinned, sliced and seeded the somewhat tough cucumbers and let them sit in a light brine of a few spoonfuls of sugar and rice wine vinegar. It was more like a cucumber salad, as the vinegar didn't really have time to fully penetrate the slices, but it was fine. The crunchiness of the cold cucumber was nice with the spicy heat of the stir fry. It's a nice alternative to serving the beef over rice. Not that I didn't have rice -- I made a pot of steamed brown rice and saved it for one of my favorite at-home quick meals: spicy peanut sauce simmered with.. well, anything.

Pantry peanut sauce, at your service - Photo by Wasabi Prime

Keep plain peanut butter around. Unless you have an allergy, this should just be a rule for households. I rarely have peanut butter sandwiches, given our lack of bread around the house, but I swear we go through a giant jar of Adams u-stir-the-crap-outta-this-thing peanut butter every month. Either that, or we have Peanut Butter Elf Thieves silently attacking our cupboards. Or maybe it's just Indy -- she loves the stuff.

My go-to peanut sauce, which is generally pretty easy to make if you keep certain things handy in the pantry is this: 1 can of coconut milk (full-fat or low-fat, doesn't matter), 1/2 cup of plain/unsweetened well-stirred peanut butter, 3 tablespoons soy sauce, 2 cloves of chopped garlic, 1 teaspoon (or more) of Sriracha or a sprinkle of chili flakes. 1 teaspoon of chopped ginger if you have it. This is my pantry peanut sauce, when I have a Thai food craving and am too lazy to go out. I realize not everyone keeps coconut milk around, but it's a canned good, it'll keep for a while, so when you see it on sale, buy a couple and keep 'em on hand. You'll be thankful you did. Personally I really like the Trader Joe brand -- it just tastes more fragrant. It's somewhat Thai-inspired, just with less ingredients, but easy to make at home without buying the premade jarred stuff.

I usually brown and soften the vegetables I'm going to have with this sauce first -- in this case, it was eggplant and some onions. Oh yeah, and big surprise - KALE! When the pan is still hot, I put in the peanut butter, as the heat will help melt it down. It's still sticky as all get-out, so I start adding in the other liquid ingredients and sprinkle in garlic and Sriracha as I mix, getting everything incorporated. I add the coconut milk in last. It really brings everything together, will deglaze the pan and helps completely melt the peanut butter down.When it's all incorporated, I add in small cubes of extra firm tofu -- again, optional, but since this is a vegetarian dish, the added protein can't hurt. I could add it earlier, but mixing the sauce would just pulverize the tofu into mush, so I wait until the sauce is combined, so it can fully simmer in the mix of flavors.  I also throw in handfuls of unsalted peanuts for extra crunch. Not a requirement, but it's a nice textural thing. Take heaping spoonfuls of this stuff and pour it over rice and enjoy. Spicy, creamy, crunchy and stick-to-your-ribs good -- and it's fast. By the time the rice is done steaming, the sauce and vegetables are done.

Orange chicken, inspired by... mall food court! - Photos by Wasabi Prime

Remember the weird, day-glo orange chicken that's offered in the super-Americanized Chinese food places that haunt most food courts? Of course you do. It's alarmingly orange and oddly addictive, if you've spent any amount of your teenage life mall-ratting and perusing tapes at Sam Goody. It's orange in description-only, as an orange off the tree would not recognize this sauce as being a second cousin, once-removed, from his uncle's cousin's side of the citrus family. I found myself thinking of this mall-food when we had a bit of leftover orange juice from a brunch at our house. I know it's for drinking, but I thought, let's make a sauce out of it! Good idea? Meh, it's not like I was drinking bleach.

Consider this one a work in progress: I put about a cup and a half's worth of orange juice in a small pot and let it simmer until reduced by about a third. I added some soy sauce and sesame oil, then a few dashes of rice wine vinegar. It was a lot of "bit of this, bit of that," pushing and pulling the flavors in this orange juice concoction. I was trying to avoid adding more sugar, as the juice has plenty on its own. There's just no way to get it to the syrupy-sweet flavor of the mall food version, nor should you want to. The final result was just a savory orange-flavored sauce, but kind of ho-hum, to be honest. It went into a stir fry of chicken, onions and... say it with me now: kale. Let no one say we don't eat our greens at the Wasabi household. The final dish wasn't alarmingly orange, which is probably a good thing. I just wanted to see if I could make a sauce from orange juice. I think if I do this again, I'm using fresh pineapple, letting it simmer with the orange juice and letting it break down during the reduction, since it's got quite a bit of liquid if you use fresh chunks. You can't beat its sweetness and while I'll have to balance out the double whammy of acidity with oranges and pineapple, I think it will give me a more zippy, bright-tasting sauce. Revisiting this UnRecipe will have to wait until we're saddled with a surplus of orange juice, as it's another thing we tend not to keep around the house. Maybe it's a weird thing to want to make -- bad Americanized Chinese food -- but we're all products/victims of our upbringing, and we've all put our time in a mall food court or three. I just try to find a way to make a slightly less scary version at home.

Asian-inspired dinner at Casa de Wasabi, on a sunny/stormy day - Photos by Wasabi Prime

Mixed Plate: Thanksgiving Eats, Sugary Sweets and Poultry Fight Club

My family was never one for big Thanksgiving celebrations, due to the fact our family wasn't particularly large (just me and my parents), and we lived far from aunts, uncles, cousins and the like. But for my childhood years in California, my parents had a lot of friends in the Los Angeles area who were in a similar situation as they were -- transplants from Hawaii, too far to go over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house for the holidays -- so everyone would gather at a friend's house, and it would be these great big potluck dinners of thirty people or more, grazing all day. It was a non-traditional mashup of Thanksgiving and Hawaii food favorites, and it was heavenly. When we moved from California to Arizona, we were further isolated, and Thanksgiving just became a nice long weekend with turkey being optional as my dad isn't a fan of the other-other white meat, and frankly, the holiday started to feel like just another day. It wasn't until moving to Washington where Thanksgiving started to mean something again. Proably because I don't travel to see family, and the need to be close to friends and loved ones, the holiday feels more pronounced. The Refugee Thanksgivings began, with us doing a couple of Turkeyday hostings for those unable to battle the holiday travel zoo, or we'd be nomads ourselves, wandering to different households who so graciously invited us to their tables to feast, which is one of the best ways to rediscover the best of what Thanksgiving is.

Turkey, before the carnage - Photo by Wasabi Prime

A checkered holiday past only made this latest Thanksgiving all the more  memorable, as it kicked up the Turkeyday celebration up a few notches. We not only celebrated across the whole holiday weekend, we started a whole week before. Some friends suggested a dinner at The Herbfarm, a well-known restaurant in Woodinville that's quite an eating experience, as most of their dinners are composed of 8 to 9 different courses, all paired with wines, and the dinners tend to go late into the evening, finishing up around 11 or midnight. It's not an everyday dinner, to be sure. Mr. Wasabi and I have gone a couple of times before -- once for a birthday and the second time for friends who had just gotten married.  And it's also nice when a group of friends who are usually accustomed to hosting a big  Thanksgiving meal, decide they don't want to fuss with a feast, but want to enjoy the holiday itself being relaxed and lazy, so fourteen of us gathered at The Herbfarm a week before Thanksgiving to have a celebratory pre-func meal. It was memorable to say the least, the courses are always exquisitely prepared, there's more wine than you can shake a stick at, and I thank the Turkeyday Gods that we were in the private room, as we are a colorful bunch. Traditionally, we all try to list the things we are thankful for, a nice way to celebrate the season. My "What I'm Thankful for" is that we were able to have a fantastic meal, have a wonderful time, and super-bonus -- we didn't get kicked out for being total berzerkers.

Herbfarm Thanksgiving Pre-Func dinner - Photos by Wasabi Prime

The week of Thanksgiving is typically like some movie montage, where it's akin to Rocky Balboa running up steps, punching sides of beef, all to the heroic underscore of a fist-pumping theme song. People are wrestling giant birds, rolling pie crusts, perusing recipe websites to the point where they crash -- America gets down with its bad self, rolls up its sleeves and enters the kitchen like a gladiator ready to do battle with a row of centurions, primed for victory. Except for me. Quite frankly, I didn't do all that much. I barely took out The Big Grownup Camera -- most of these photos, minus some prep items were all shot using the ol' iPhone. It's called a vacation. I like to take them sometimes. 

Hotpot Thanksgiving, and oh turkey, we hardly knew ye - Photos by Wasabi Prime

Because of the big whammy of The Herbfarm, it took the pressure off Thanksgiving Day-proper. So we threw tradtion to the wind, gathered at a friend's house for pizza, chili and snacks, but also one special dish -- a friend had been craving ginger duck hotpot, from when she used to live in Taiwan. It's a common comfort dish, but oddly hard to find (if anyone has a recommendation for a place in or around Seattle that makes this, please let me know). So our friend scoured the internet, tracked down a few recipes, and put together a delightfully rich meal experience that ensured that we would, indeed have a bird for Thanksgiving, but way better than turkey. I'm sorry, turkey, but duck wins out because it's so freaking delicious. It was also the centerpiece for what will be known as one of the more memorable Thanksgiving celebrations. And not without its own unique brand of entertainment, as hotpot instructions are delightfully written in Engrish. The day was devoted to watching all three Lord of the Rings movies (yes, director's cut), back to back -- twelve hours, if you're thinking of doing this. There was a lot of beer. There was a lot of wine. Our livers were put to the test starting from noon.There was also an inflatable turkey lawn decoration that met an untimely fate. Turkey MMA? Poultry Fight Club? Call it whatever you want, but to put it simply: Thanksgiving Day was Awesomesauce.

Lots of desserts, drinking, and more pie - Photos by Wasabi Prime

Not to say I did absolutely nothing, lounging around like Jabba the Hutt, enslaved Muppets at my beck and call. Which isn't such a bad idea -- next Thanksgiving, perhaps. I made pie(s). I made fudge. I even made a post-Thanksgiving full meal, turkey with all the trimmings. I think I need to be on medication, I cannot stay still for the life of me. I made a brown butter pear tart, which was just a way to whittle down our copious amounts of pears. I wanted to try something new with the typical pumpkin pie, so I made a blend of pumpkin and sweet potato, which I have to say gives the texture a slightly lighter, but grainier mouth feel. Not bad, just different. One small roasted sugar pumpkin to one peeled and boiled sweet potato was my ratio, and then I used this recipe on Epicurious for Caramel Pumpkin Pie. I have to say, adding a caramel sauce to the pumpkin mixture is, as Charlie Sheen would say: Winning. It's sweet, but a dark, rich sweetness that sets it apart from the typical pumpkin pie. I did cheat on the whipped cream, getting the canned stuff, because the dessert needed to travel. I didn't want to make the whipped cream and have it deflate by dinnertime and I don't have one of those fancy whipped cream chargers. And let's face it, after lots of beer and/or wine, whip-hits and dispensing whipped cream directly into a drunken maw is pretty fantastic.

Thanksgiving at Wasabi's house, with an extra side of gluttony - Photos by Wasabi Prime

We still had turkey, it was just the day after, because I am a compulsive crazyperson and can't stay out of the kitchen. I brined and seasoned a 14-pound bird, did my typical dismembering of parts, as it's just easier for serving and I keep the carcass for soup later, and made sides based on whatever the CSA box had delivered. I made a sweet potato and roasted squash mash, potatoes with green beans in a mustard dressing, and shredded Brussels sprouts and caramelized onions cooked with bacon. And plenty of gravy and cranberry sauce. The main thing is always the cranberry sauce and turkey, as that is Mr. Wasabi's favorite thing in the known universe. It was a total UnRecipe Thanksgiving, as there was no measuring or recipe-following. The meal literally just happened. Short of the pie, which needed internet inspiration, everything else was made by the power of winging-it and cooking with what we had. Which I suppose is appropriate, as the Pilgrims didn't have Martha Stewart or the internet back in the old school Plymouth Rock days. And if they did, it would be a miracle of Divine Providence that they ever got that meal off the ground, because damn, there are a lot of choices over what to make for this hearty meal of thanks -- no wonder people feel overwhelmed.

Oh  Fudge - Photos by Wasabi Prime

And yes, I made fudge. Because that's so Thanksgiving, right? My mother can be credited with the drilled-in idea that you don't show up anywhere empty-handed. It's the Asian Way, along with being good at math and playing the flute, piano, and/or violin. Since I stink at math and am not musical, I play my one and only cooking card. We had a couple of Thanksgiving invites, and feeling bad we had to decline on one dinner, I wanted to make sure we showed our appreciation for the invitation, so nothing says "thanks for thinking of us," like a few sugary lead-like bricks of peanut butter and chocolate fudge delivered early. The second half of the batch went to the dinner we attended. Because nothing says "thanks for letting us wreck your house like a bunch of drunken hooligans," like fudge. Well, at least it was nicely-wrapped.

Pomegranates to the rescue (of my gut) - Photos by Wasabi Prime

All this food, all this debauchery. And what's left to do but try and cleanse one's sytem from all the earthly delights. I seeded a couple of small pomegranates, thinking I'd reserve the arils for salad or as a garnish, but instead it's been a great detox snack and topping for yogurt. We're awash in leftovers, but I'm definitely hovering around simpler fare to pace myself for the holiday food season that's now in full gear. Hope everyone else had as much fun over the long weekend and are just as excited for the rest of the holidays!

Mixed Plate: Gobble, Gobble, Gobble

Gobble, indeed. And I'm not talkin' turkey. As we enter the home stretch of Thanksgiving, and the imminent tryptophan-laced food coma to come, I started to flip through all the random photos I've taken in the last few months at various meetups with friends and events. It made me feel very thankful to have such a diverse group of friends and associates who are nice to invite me to gatherings and events where no one bats an eye when guests are whipping out their cameras to take pictures of the food. It also made me think, wow, I've been to enough things to where I fear jumping on the scales, Thanksgiving is coming up, and maybe I need to trade turkey dinner for a juice fast this year. *burp*

Sake cup and pourer set smiles with approval on a dumpling lunch - Photo by Wasabi Prime

My thoughts go towards stretchypants when I think of what it means to have eating and the celebration of food being a part of your profession. I would never consider myself a full-on culinary industry pro, just a very involved hobbyist, but that doesn't mean there aren't weeks where I'm not eating scandalously well. My mind immediately goes towards a day when I met a friend for lunch at Din Tai Fung, to quell our craving for soup dumplings and spicy wontons, as well as anthropomorphizing their sake cups and pourers (they're kind of the perfect shape for an ad hoc kokeshi doll, no?). Right after a dumpling-filled lunch, I went straight to a nearby hamburger spot to pick up the next subject of study and consideration for the A Hamburger Today column I contribute to on Serious Eats. In the span of a few short hours, I had my fill of dumplings then somehow expanded my mutant stomach to fit in a hamburger and onion rings. It wasn't that I was still hungry, I knew I would be passing by the place, I was on a deadline, and this was my only chance to take care of the burger excursion. Granted, this isn't an everyday thing, and I should be ashamed for saying I fit all that food into my gaping maw during a single afternoon, but instead, I'll just chalk it up to "just another day on the job."  And, oh yeah, pass the Lipitor.

Happy Hour goodness at RN 74 and Capital Grille - Photos by Wasabi Prime

It's always nice when you can combine business with pleasure. I don't go out every night to try different/new places, but when I do, I don't want it to feel so clinical, like I'm sitting and taking copious notes by myself at a table. I've been able to visit and revisit some places with friends during the almighty Happy Hour. It was nice to sit with a gathering of fellow food enthusiasts, Twitter-pals and food bloggers at Michael Mina's Seattle location of RN 74 one night, sampling some tasty items off their happy hour and trying their heart-stoppingly good foie gras sliders. Seriously, they exist, and like some buttery rich unicorn shoved between a set of mini burger buns, it's like finding the magical rainbow's end. And eating it. Their little pots of lamb sausage with white bean stew are heavenly, and I wanted to sit in their cozy railroad station-themed decor and not leave till morning. But, of course, restaurants frown upon that.

Another cozy spot I've haunted a few times is Capital Grille. It's near a spot where some friends work, so it's an easy meetup place for the holy happy hour. As the days get shorter, the air gets more chilly, I like these cozy, dark nooks full of hearty food. Their spicy calamari is one way to shake the chill off -- they aren't shy about the peppers, but that's why I like this so much. And during happy hour at the bar, they have their own potato chips sitting in baskets, still sizzling from the fry oil, if you get a fresh basket. I didn't say I'm a health nut, I just like places that have mood lighting that helps hide the fact I'm eating all the potato chips.

Cocktail adventures at BOKA - Photos by Wasabi Prime

A cocktail excursion a little while back at BOKA Kitchen and Bar was like a mixed drink wonderland. They've updated their drink menu to include over a half dozen new cocktails, from sweet to savory. They're making their own custom infused bitters and doing some fun things with drinks, like a porcini mushroom and thyme cocktail. I know, sounds crazy, but if you appreciate bold experiments that challenge the norm, give it a whirl, or just go for one of their other new drinks that are just as sassy but less savory. BOKA is near another one of my favorite cocktail hangouts, the Polar Bar at the Arctic Club Hotel. It had been too long since I'd visited, and it's usually a place I like to go in the winter, not just for the chilly theme, but the bar is perfectly cozy and small. It's best to go with just a small group or a friend you  need to catch up with. It's not loud, there's no crowds, the drinks are lovely, and on this trip, we had some very skull-a-riffic sips from their fancy bottle of Dan Ackroyd's Crystal Head Vodka. Yes, Ghostbuster Ray has a vodka, and it's in a pretty wicked unusual bottle. It was one of those nights where a lot of new things were tried, and the whole evening just felt like a little adventure. Never a bad thing, right?

Of course everything here happened across the span of a month or two; I'm no party animal, but it's a little staggering to see it all in one spot. Looking through the photos was a pleasant reminder to always keep exploring when you can, let the night lead you where it wants to go, and yes, a regular exercise routine is mandatory. My newest thing is to have salads for breakfast if I know it's a week of Big Eats. If that's the case, with the holidays coming up, it'll be salads till January! Happy Thanksgiving, all!

Food finds from the Seattle area and abroad - Photos by Wasabi Prime

UnRecipe: Just Beet It... Just Beet it...

No, I'm not wearing a sparkly glove on one hand and Moonwalking my way through the kitchen. But man, I sure wish I was! Sham-ON! Apropos of nothing beyond the fact that we wound up with some late-season beets, it's yet ANOTHER beet post. I keep hoping there's some subliminal message that will get through to Mr. Wasabi's brain that beets are not, in fact, gross. All we are saaaaaying... is give beets a chaaaaaance!

Beety, not meaty - a tart for your vegetarian friends! - Photo by Wasabi Prime

'Twas the season of beets in this year of our lord two-thousand-and-eleventy. Or more to the point, the season where I wasn't foisting beets onto workmates because I didn't know what to do with them. Seriously, I'd get a bag full of  beets in our CSA deliveries, I'd stare at them blankly for a while and then hit the "bring it to work" button where I'd usually give them to my friend, Ms. Radish and Rose. She was one of the big proponents of beets, and I trust her taste, so I decided to be more persistent with the preparation of the rooty little buggers. Lo and behold, I honed in on a way to prepare them at home that wasn't too fussy, highlighted the sweetness of beets, and made it something I could enjoy eating and not feel like it was a chore to eat my veggies. As seen in previous beet-themed posts, this of course meant calling in the Puff Pastry and Goat Cheese Brigade, totally removing any and all health benefits that beets can provide, but what can I say? The crisp buttery flakiness of pastry with creamy cheese and sweet roasted beets is quite literally, unbeetable. Har har. I know, punch me now, I deserve it.

Hot Pockets, brought back from the Dark Side - Photos by Wasabi Prime

I blame television and mass media for this one. The annoying "Hot Pockets" jingle was stuck in my head one day (just you wait,  it'll get stuck in yours, too) and it ultimately led me towards craving the little crispy devils, but I stopped short of going to the grocery store and buying some over-processed ghost from my college years. Total disclosure, I lived off those things when I was in school, the magical pastry-burrito that you could throw into the microwave, frozen as a Cro-Magnon in the tundra, but somehow the weird coated paper sleeve would both heat and crisp the Pocket to desired Hotness. Move over Dumbledore, this here's real magic. And if you were really lucky, the first bite wouldn't napalm the skin off the insides of your mouth from all the molten cheese inside. Doesn't quite sell the magic of Hot Pockets, but you ask most anyone and those who went to college and had to fend for themselves during some lean times, they'll admit they went through a phase where they ate these bewitching microwavable hand pies morning, noon and night.

Much like people, I don't think foods are born evil. The idea of a little hand-sized pie is not a bad one. It's when it gets seized by the Big Business of Food, mass-produced and frozen for instant gratification that the concept goes to the Dark Side and takes over most of the known universe. I saw there was still good left in Darth Hot Pocket, and restored it to its earlier self, as Anakin Hand Pie, with some roasted beets and goat cheese sandwiched between a layer of puff pastry. I did have to use Darth Puff Pastry, going with frozen store-bought because I don't make my own, so maybe there was still a little bit of the Evil Empire in this. But we'll just call it "flavor," shall we?

Putting together the deliciousness of beet tarts and hand pies - Photos by Wasabi Prime

Of course, any time you make a little stuffed food item, be it hand pie or won ton, you always wind up with extra filling. I anticipated I'd have more beets and cheese than pastry, so I saved a couple of small sheets of dough, lined some mini tins and piled in the rest of the filling to make tarts. While the little faux Hot Pockets were crispy and light snacks, the beet tarts were a full meal, going well with a salad for dinner that night. It was most definitely one of those weeks where I was serving my cravings first and Mr. Wasabi was eating leftovers from another beet-less meal, but he at least eyeballed the tarts with hungry curiosity before slinking away and realizing it was a rainbow of roasted beets. Maybe one of these days, I can finally bring Brock over to the Beet Side.

And now, for something completely different - radish and risotto! - Photo by Wasabi Prime

And on a semi-related but out-of-the-blue note -- along with beets in our CSA box, we did find ourselves with quite a few radishes. It's sort of related, as it's a rooty-tooty vegetable and, like the beets, I was looking for a way to use them up. If I wasn't already worn out on salads, I'd have been thankful, but I wanted a way to use the radishes in a dish that was more exciting and quite frankly, hot. To go with the beet tarts, I found this recipe  for Romano Risotto with Radishes on Epicurious. Radish and risotto? Weird, right? But oddly, the buttery richness of risotto kind of mimics that richness of buttered bread when you have one of those radish tea sandwiches. You don't really cook the radishes into the risotto, it's more like you lightly pickle them and use it as a garnish. But it works well and the pickled radishes become a lovely pink color. It ends up being a nice, if not starchy/carby vegetarian meal, if you're looking for an interesting thing to make for Meatless Monday.

UnRecipe: Yes, Virginia, There Can Be Too Much of a Good Thing

You know you have these mental pictures rolling around in the ol' noggin, culinary creations that combine ingredients and flavors that in theory should work really well? Let's just say those good intentions often lead towards the Dark Side of indulgent culinary desires.

My stomach said yes, but my diastolic BP said hell no - Photo by Wasabi Prime

It was a simple enough notion: let's make a savory cheesecake. Cheese is one of those super-flexible ingredients that can transition from sweet to savory relatively easily, you just have to know which types of cheese works best and ideally, which cheese can play both sides. Cream cheese is most certainly one of them. You use it in the dessert variety of cheesecake, but the flavor is neutral enough to be used in savory applications. By taking a standard cheesecake recipe, omitting the sugar and adding some extra "oomph" of flavor with herbs and crispy pancetta, this notion of a savory cheesecake doesn't sound so bad... right?

To be clear, there wasn't anything wrong with the final product. My main concern was whether or not the cheesecake would set up properly -- technically it's more like a custard, not a cake, given its eggy-creamy batter which doesn't have much flour in it. The final baked good set up just fine. I made a savory crust, using some coarse breadcrumbs, a mix of panko, rye and regular toasted white bread. The crumbles were tossed with melted butter and pressed into a springform pan and baked for a few minutes to set up. The batter was a variation on a basic cheesecake recipe, sans sugar of course, using a mix of cream cheese and softened goat cheese. I mixed in a handful of chopped fresh herbs, mostly parsley, basil and some thyme from the garden. The last item I mixed in was a crumbling of pan-crisped pancetta for a meaty bite. The batter was poured over the crust in the springform pan and placed into the oven set to a low heat. I could have done the water bath, but it was fine, as the crust didn't crack during the bake time. All good in the 'hood so far, right...?

My biggest conundrum was how to serve. I love the ooey-gooey flavor of warm, melty cheese, but the problem with serving a slice of the cheesecake too soon is the fact that the center hasn't set yet, so the slice starts to resemble Jabba the Hut. Waiting for it to cool and set up for perfect slicing means you have chilled cheese -- not a terrible thing, but I wanted warm melty cheese goodness. I Benjamin Button-ed this thing and had it meet in the middle. I let the cake cool in the fridge, but then made a spicy tomato and kalamata olive relish, served hot, poured over the slice. The first bite was like a million flavor explosions went off in my brain. Incredibly rich, velvety-creamy cheesecake, super-savory hits of pancetta, kalamata olives, and the crisp crunch of the crust. It was like staring into the sun. You went blind from the sensory overload. And that's when it kind of hit me -- holy crap, I have the rest of this slice to eat and a whole rest of a cheesecake to finish. Of course, I wouldn't finish it in a single sitting, but knowing that much richness was in my immediate future, it's no wonder my vitals are off the charts. When I die, I won't be buried, I'll be a new fuel source for future generations.

Weapons of mass destruction - Photos by Wasabi Prime

So, what was the end lesson in this UnRecipe? It wasn't a failure, just a misadventure in too much of your favorite stuff is way too much of a good thing, especially if you love fatty cured meats and gooey cheese. I think I would make this again, but in small, bite-sized tart sizes. They would allow for fresh-from-the-oven eating, since as a bite-sized mini tart, you don't have to worry about slice integrity. And I could top with a little shard of pancetta, which would look prettier than the little bits that just got mixed and essentially lost into the batter. So, I consider this a dish something that's still a work in progress -- stay tuned, I'm sure it'll get revisited soon enough!

UnRecipe: They Call Me Pasta Feelgood

Well, it's official. Baby, it's cold outside. Not frozen, icy streets cold (yet), but nippy enough to where we can pull our favorite comfort food recipes out, and nestle into that favorite set of sweatpants and oversized sweater. If in space, no one can hear you scream, during winter, no one can see the muffin top from beneath all that polar fleece, right? But when the dour weather comes a-calling, sometimes the answer can be sitting in a plate of hot pasta.

Rigatoni-toni-toni has done it again - Photo by Wasabi Prime

I had a wicked craving for a heavy, rich Bolognese sauce over a plate full of rigatoni pasta. I love the shape and the way a hearty sauce just clings to it, nestling into the tube-y pasta. It was such a specific craving, too -- had to be this exact sauce with this exact pasta and I wouldn't take no for an answer. It's because it's the perfect bite of pasta and sauce, with minimal mess, since the pasta isn't long strands. It's a wonder how the idea of spaghetti pasta got saddled with marinara in the United States, since the sauce just falls off those slippery round noodles. I realize it was an issue of availability during the the early Melting Pot years of America, but many generations later, despite the fact we can get products from any part of the world, spaghetti and meatballs persist. I guess it's yet another testament to how once something gets into our food crave vocabulary, no matter how culinarily illogical it may be, we hang tough and don't let go. This specific desire for rigatoni and meat sauce felt like a mix of something old and something new.

Something borrowed from Mom's recipe favorites after a hard day - Photo by Wasabi Prime

I furthered my comfort pasta craving with another totally tubular pasta, penne, making a baked Chicken Florentine with some leftover cooked chicken, some wilted spinach and a cream sauce. This is probably more in the vein of spaghetti and meatballs, an ad hoc Americanized version of something more legitimately Italian. This was a dish my mom would make for me when I was younger, and it felt like such a treat. It was simple and I went through an odd phase where I preferred cream sauces over red sauces with my pasta. Maybe I had an early Death Wish, who knows. But bless her heart, she would make this dish for her finicky daughter in the winter months, a wonderful baked pasta treat, and every bite felt like all was right with the world.

This is how I self-medicate - Photos by Wasabi Prime

I never really felt that macaroni and cheese was a comfort food, more like something fast and cheap, since I had it from a blue box the first time I ate it. It wasn't until years later, having it from scratch, that you realize what a powerful drug it can be. For reals, it's like crack. And while I can make the food that evoke memories of home, family and safety during times of need, when I make macaroni and cheese at home, it's totally Me Time, and the world can take a hike. Good old mac n' cheese is the one dish that can be made at a moment's notice, since the ingredients are basic and likely in the pantry and fridge. I should just start calling it Mac n' Cheese n' Prozac, since that's basically what it ends up being. You stop, slow down to make something simple, and sit somewhere quiet to enjoy it. Maybe that's why cooking can be theraputic; you have to focus on it and not what's distracting you, and the immediate reward is, of course, eating. The world seems a little more manageable if you can stop for a little while and make something that tastes good.
I'm certainly not advocating being a full-on emotional eater, lest my wardrobe become nothing but Forever Lazy onesies. But I have to admit food holds emotional triggers for a lot of people, and there's a reason why pasta in general is considered a "comfort" food.  By giving in to indulgent meals once in a while, when the craving is so specific and clear, or after a particularly rough day, I can honestly say the food is truly savored and enjoyed. And somewhere in the afterglow of pasta-belly and stretchypants, I do feel a little happier.

UnRecipe: Dinner With the Divine Swine

Thanks to countless food-related television shows, pork has been the protein du jour for a good while. And really, why not? Hosts wax poetic over the various parts, the crunch of the crispy-fried skin, the richness of the belly, even the gnawing of its wee-wee curly tail. It's one of those animals where you can pretty much eat it from rooter to tooter, which is probably why it's such a popular meat for so many cultures. I love pork, but for much less exciting epicurean pursuits -- I often have the more vanilla cuts like the tenderloin or shoulder, easily found in grocery stores, and I appreciate it because they can be a quick thing to prepare on a busy weekday. Even if I'm not roasting a suckling pig in my backyard for forty people, I can still find ways to celebrate the fact that it can really be Some Pig!

Double pork rainbow, omigawwwwd -- Photo by Wasabi Prime

Pork tenderloin really is The Other White Meat. It's lean, which is good for health reasons, but that also means there's not much fat, aka, flavor. That just means you have to bring the noise, bring the funk to give it tastiness. Heavy seasoning isn't a bad thing; it can take strong herbs like rosemary very well. However, given it's lack of fat, if you overcook it, it'll go from zero to hockey puck, lickety-split. I usually like to brine the whole tenderloin, season, then pan-sear before roasting the whole thing. Lately, I've been slicing the tenderloin into medallions and pan-searing before letting it simmer in a light sauce or letting the oven finish it off. I decided to cross the streams and use bacon with the tenderloin, wrapping each medallion with a slice of bacon, securing it with a toothpick which definitely gets removed before eating or... OUCH -surprise! For a relatively easy weeknight meal that could work for an at-home date night, bacon-wrapped pork tenderloin medallions is a pretty lil' thing to top a roasted carrot puree. Carrots have such a nice color which is retained after it's been cooked, so roasting several pounds of 'em until fork-tender and buzzing with some milk or cream in a food processor until smooth is a sweet, rich side dish for the pork. The carrot puree would also work well with fish or chicken; the sugary sweetness from the carrot is a nice counterpart to milder-flavored meats.

Not fancy, but tasty and fast weeknight meal, with a stuffed pork roast - Photos by Wasabi Prime

The cutting of tenderloin into little medallions and serving over a root vegetable puree is a good "for company" or "make a pretty dinner" dish, but for just us at home, nothin' special, I'll make a pork roast where the oven or slow cooker does a lot of the work. While not picture-pretty, a stuffed pork roulade isn't a bad way to spend the night at home. Like the picture-pretty dish, this one was a bit of a farmers market/CSA special. I had kale, mushrooms, onions and beans. From whatever the Magical Mystery CSA box and impulse buy from the farmers market yields, that's how the meals get decided. I chopped up the mushrooms and kale, cooked them down and that became the filling for the pork roast. The roast is sliced in a way so that it "unravels" into a sort of flattened surface, the filling is spread evenly, and then it's rolled back up and tied. The roulade gets seared in a hot pot, the pork is removed briefly to deglaze the pot's surface with some marsala, lightly cook some thinly sliced onions, and then the pork is placed back into the marsala onion sauce. I sprinkled in some raisins and a dollop of mustard before putting a lid on the pot and letting the oven finish the whole thing. Having one of those meat thermometers where you can leave it in the meat without having to open and close the oven is helpful. In less than an hour, we had fork-tender slices of stuffed pork, with a sweet onion marsala sauce, dotted with raisins. I don't really like raisins, but with pork, they're perfect -- they also work well mixed with apples to stuff pork chops!

Letting the vegetables take the lead for flavor - Photos by Wasabi Prime

Even though a lot of the cuts of pork I use don't have the strongest flavors, I don't mind, as I find it's more interesting to pair them with different vegetables and sides. Especially with a CSA delivery, where you don't always know what's coming, it's nice to have the meat be the neutral part and be creative with how the vegetables and other ingredients push flavor.

Mixed Plate: Baked Goods for Goodness Sake

One of the reasons the Seattle area is such a special place is not only is it full of incredibly multitalented and creative people, those same creative and multitalented people like to get together and activate their Wondertwin powers for good. Case in point: you need sweet stuff, the new Cakespy book, Sweet Treats for a Sugar-Filled Life is FULL of sweet stuff, and for even more sweetery goodness, the second annual Will Bake for Food bake sale fundraiser extravaganza is gearing up for more sugar-addled charity goodness! Let the sugar rush... BEGIN!!!!!

Because nothing bad can happen at Tiffanys... when you're eating a cookie - Photo by Wasabi Prime

So, I'm writing this post on a wicked sugar high, thanks to the sweet little Tiffany and Co.-inspired bonbon recipe from Jesse Oleson's new book. I feel like I could flap my arms and fly to the rings of Saturn from the buttery-sweet sugarbuzz I'm on right now, these cookies are so addictive. The recipe didn't even have a picture-perfect photograph of the cookies, Jesse's adorable little drawings of anthropomorphized cookies being all sassy-like were enough for me to say, that's it, I'm making these! Best known on the interwebs as Cakespy, Jesse wrote this incredibly cute, sweetly clever cookbook-slash-illustration bonanza that is now available in bookstores and an Amazon.com account near you. It's a mix of colorful photos mingling with Jesse's signature illustrations, guiding you through each recipe. I like this book because it's got an attitude all its own. These aren't fussy desserts that will fill the hearts of the baking-fearful full of dread, they're a mix of classic comforts and easy to make treats that combine prepared sweets with homemade touches. It reminds me of a book I would have enjoyed with my mom when I was little, inspring and demystifying the art of baking, as there are a lot of recipes in here that you could do with a little one, with minimal need for ovens and sharp objects. Baking and cooking shouldn't be work or drudgery, it should be fun, creative and a way to express yourself, just like this book.

Easy-bake cookies, dangerously quick to make and eat! - Photos by Wasabi Prime

The Tiffany Bonbon recipe was super fast and easy to make -- I literally whipped up the dough in the morning, baked everything, and had it iced and decorated by the afternoon. The recipe recommends filling the cookies with something extra, like nuts, chocolate or coconut. Since I'm awash with Halloween candy, I used chocolate covered maltballs, aka, Whoppers. They were easy to push into the centers of a dough ball made with a cookie scoop, a handy tool when making these cookies, since you'll get evenly-sized shapes. Since the recipe doesn't require baking soda or baking powder, the cookies pretty much stay the same shape and size you form the dough into when you bake them. I'm already thinking of more cookies I'll make with broken up candy bars or peanut butter cups, as I've got a ton of those leftover as well. The dough for these cookies is buttery and rich, like a shortbread, but more creamy. As simple as the recipe is, you get a really satisfying cookie. It's easy to decorate and you can make it as simple or as fancy as your patience will carry you. I'm already thinking of putting this one into the Christmas cookie roster, maybe adding a little cocoa powder and doing a chocolate version, so stay tuned!

Will Bake for Food 2: The Cookie Empire Strikes Back!

The recipes in the Cakespy book are so easy, I hope you not only get this book, but use some of the recipes to make some baked goods if you're thinking of being involved in the upcoming Will Bake for Food event, happening in Seattle on Saturday, November 12th. Last year's event raised hundreds of dollars and this year's event hopes to do the same and more, fighting the good fight against hunger, with the Emergency Feeding Program being the beneficiary group this year. Unfortunately, bad timing is preventing me from being present at the event, but I still want to voice my continued support for this community effort, taking something as simple and good-hearted as a bake sale, and making it extra fabulous with well-known local bloggers, cool raffles and oh yeah -- hella delicious homemade sweets! So, please mark your calendars, tell your friends and family about this event, and do your part to help stamp out hunger in our own community.

Elegant and sweetly delicious - Photos by Wasabi Prime

UnRecipe: It's Always Sunny in Chimichangaville

What insane crazyperson would be inspired by a TV series where one of the main characters gained an unhealthy amount of weight and walked around an episode with a black garbage bag full of fried fast food, foisting it on all his friends? Answer: this crazyperson. The Prime is just a permanent dweller in TV Dinner-land, and it's time for Chimichangas.

Meals inspired by the Sunny funny bunch - Photo by Wasabi Prime, cast photo from IMDB.com

One of Mr. Wasabi's favorite TV series is It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, probably one of the most inappropriate, offensive sitcoms full of the worst bunch of rude-a-saurus rex characters you'll ever meet. Which of course is why it's so damn funny. I haven't seen every episode, but I've seen such classics as when the gang gets addicted to meth or Dee tries to get into the black market baby-selling business. Shenanigans galore!! Friends and Seinfeld this ain't, and that's probably why it's the one sitcom I can somewhat tolerate, as most sitcoms are so milquetoast and the humor feels about as canned as a block of Spam (sorry, Spam). So when the new season of Sunny came out, with Mac getting beefcaked-out on fast food, hauling a Hefty bag full o' fried goodness, why wouldn't you be inspired by such a culinary feat??

Mac gets hefty, but Wasabi tries to keep it healthy when a food craving comes on - food photos by Wasabi Prime

Chimichangas are one of those Americanized cultural dishes, much like General Tso's Chicken or Teriyaki beef bowls. It doesn't really exist in the natural culinary landscape, but it took America to take an anomalous dish and breed it into our knowledge of unhealthy but delicious food-based lifeforms. Kind of like white tigers. Chimichangas may have started out as a simple, basic burrito, but then Southwest TexMex-style cooking got a hold of it and dropped it straight into a vat of fry oil. The tortilla gets all crispety-crunchety, the inside becomes a melty mix of fatty meat, cheese and maybe a scrap of a vegetable or two, and if you can avoid burning all the skin off the inside of your mouth as you bite into it, it's pretty darn delicious. Much like watching an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, it's a big ol' naughty, indulgence that you can't help enjoy every minute of. I remember eating these when I used to live in Arizona and also remember the fry oil hangover that inevitably follows. It's a deep-fried lethargy that's like no other, and I feel my arteries harden just thinking of those bygone days of ill-conceived meal choices. Ahh.... memories.

Of course, a lack of nutritional good sense and sitcom humor behaving badly won't dissuade me. I wanted to make a Chimichanga that wouldn't be a one-way ticket to Lipitor-Land. I made two different batches of fillings -- a Southwest-style mix of peppers, black beans, chicken and corn, then a hash of kale, sweet potatoes and sausage. I used phyllo dough in place of tortillas, brushing a couple of sheets with vegetable oil and rolling up some of the filling and making little packets that could be baked in the oven. The dough crisps up nicely in the oven, baking it according to the package directions, and the filling is already cooked, so the oven time is just to give it that crunchy bite. Once they were done, I let them cool a little and they were small handheld snack-sized munchies that came in handy the Saturday night I made them.

We were invited by friends to have drinks last-minute that night. Fortified on baked faux Chimichangas, we managed to keep the Kraken from fully being unleashed after several beers and much karaoke. Usually food like this is what you eat after a long booze bender, but in this case, it ended up keeping the night from being a total washout. Saved by baked Chimichangas. There's a first time for everything. It's not to say we didn't wake up with a little bit of a hangover (mostly the sore-throat feeling from howling out "Sweet Caroline"), but that's where the leftover kale and sweet potato hash filling came in handy -- throw a fried egg on it, and we could forget all our shenanigans from the night before. Don't worry, no meth or black market baby-selling. That I remember, at least...

Leftover kale hash hides all sins from the night before - Food Photos by Wasabi Prime