Mixed Plate: Have a Holly Jolly Holiday Madhouse

Tis the season for holiday stress. Can you believe it's all descending upon us already? We all have those days where you feel like Chuck Heston, stranded on a planet that has inexplicably been overrun by sentient, British-accented apes, only to realize, OM Freakin' G, it's our own planet, and oh hey... is that Malcom McDowell under all that fake fur? But hey, it happens to the best of us, even C-dawg with his giant toothy grin and love of firearms. I don't have a grand finale set against a long, dystopic lonely beach with Lady Liberty's arm sticking up from the sand like a giant popsicle stick. Instead, I will deal with the pressures of a marathon holiday schedule the best way I know how -- pasta. And lots of it.

Take THAT, Salmonella - I ain't afraid of no food poisoning - Photo by Wasabi Prime

I didn't make the pasta from scratch. And this isn't a meal for anyone else but myself because these days, I'm very much on-the-go and dinner is often the only break in the day I can enjoy. So this becomes the cure for busy, stressful days, maning I want to do as little work as possible and reap the greatest returns in the smallest amount of time. It's the American Way, dammit. I don't really know why carbohydrate dishes inexplicably become that go-to dish to provide instant relief, they just do it. Like magic! And it doesn't even matter why a day was bad/busy/stressful, only that it wasn't anything serious, nobody died, the itching and burning will subside, and multiple arrests do not equal multiple convictions. Tomorrow, after all, is another day, as Miss Scarlett would say.

For many, pasta-nirvana is an ooey-gooey plate of macaroni and cheese (that's coming up!). Which I'd heartily agree if I wasn't the one making it, as it can take more than a few steps, and I needed comfort -- stat. My go-to pasta 911 dish that helps me crawl into my Hobbiton happy place after bad mojo is a basic pasta carbonara. Pasta, bacon, shreds of parmesan, lots of pepper, and a big ol' fat raw egg on top. Salmonella threat be damned, I'm not letting a food scare rain on my pity parade.

Pasta: heeere I come to save the daaaaaaaay! - Photo by Wasabi Prime

If that bad day inevitably multiplies into a bad week, made sure to follow with the same course of medical attention: pasta, cheese, a bit of booze, repeat as necessary. At the time, I had the added benefit of an issue of InStyle magazine arriving in the mail, so a rapid recovery was assured, especially with glasses of bubbly on hand. As comic book antihero Hellboy would say, "I want hot noodles." The wisdom of the damned spoke true, so I got my hot noodles, tossed with homemade pesto and a raw egg for richness. This combination of comfort food with a new magazine full of pretty, shiny pictures seemed to quiet the demons in one's head and fight back the nefarious deeds of a day gone wrong. And despite the x-number of days till Xmas, I'm shutting my brain off just so I don't have to think about the massive to-do list that's looming over my head right now. Happy place, happy place, happy place...

UnRecipe: Doing Minimal Harm With Chicken Parm

Minimal harm to one's waistline, anyways. I had been feeling my tummy's yearning for Italian food and threw something simple together for a quick meal that resulted in some minor respiratory difficulty and tasty Chicken Parmesan and Roasted Zucchini.

Stop coughing, you big baby, it's just red pepper flakes turned into an airborn weapon - Photo by Wasabi Prime

So the "minimal harm" part is a half-truth. I made a pantry marinara sauce with the last can of chopped tomatoes and a couple of cans of tomato paste, along with some dried herbs. Nothing fancy, I just needed red sauce and it seems silly to buy the premade stuff in bottles (more than likely sweetened with corn syrup) when there's canned tomato goods available. Before the tomatoes came into the picture, I added chopped garlic into olive oil warming in a pan, as well as red pepper flakes. Unfortunately, the oil was warmer than it should have been and I was very liberal with the red pepper flakes, creating an airborne pepper spray effect that permeated the kitchen and living room. It sent Mr. Wasabi into a coughing fit and while I was holding back my own desire to hack up a lung as I fanned the fumes into the stove vent, I insisted it was nothing and he just needed to cowboy up. Once again, a strong, healthy longterm relationship built upon the foundation of denial and insults. Dr. Phil, eat your heart out.

Aside from that kitchen incident, the meal was pretty straightforward. I had defrosted some chicken breasts and split them lengthwise to make them thinner. Lightly breading them and browning them in a pan, they chilled out until the anthrax marinara sauce was ready, and then nestled the little chickadees into the saucy pan. I layered the chicken with slices of Provolone cheese and shreds of Parmesan, and placed the whole pan under the broiler until melted and bubbly. I'm pretty sure this isn't the official way to make this dish, but I'm somewhat certain that if you went to Italy and asked for chicken Parmesan, they'd look at you like a crazy person and tell you to go back to America for your bowl of Spaghetti-O's, so I don't feel too bad about not being particularly authentic about this UnRecipe.

Cheesy, melty, roasty deliciousness - Photos by Wasabi Prime

As for the roasted zucchini, this was the voice in my head saying, "These roast beautifully and they'll be a healthy pasta substitute." I'm pretty sure this imaginary voice in my brain is a liar-liar-pants-on-fire. There is nothing as good as pasta. But I also enjoy having a meal and not having my stomach feel distended and in pain, as I seem to be suffering from both discomforts when I have bready things lately, so the zucchini won out. I'm starting to discover the particulars with the way we eat, with the extreme cutback of breads and pasta, seem to lead towards my stomach becoming Ground Zero for much umbrage when I do indulge in something carbo-licious. Does it stop me from having baked goods and other tasty treats? Hell to the no. Just beg my pardon in advance for switching into drawstring sweatpants immediately after a meal and stretching out on the couch as I fall into a deep food coma.

UnRecipe: Onion Soup is Good Food

We have skeletons in our closet, or more to the point, bones in a box freezer. Whittling down our meat locker of animal protein delights, I'm left with several packages of soup bones. Now that the chill of winter is nearly upon us and it makes good sense to have a pot simmering all day on the stove, I made a big batch of beef broth. The end result was a meal of Onion Soup with Parmesan Crisps, which is never a bad idea for a cold, rainy day. Plus it's a nice prefunc for the gastric bypass we're all going to have to undergo after Thanksgiving next week.

Soup's On! - Photo by Wasabi Prime

I'm no expert at making broths, and I know beef can be a little trickier than chicken, as there's more flavor from a whole carcass than a segment of bone, even with some marrow in it, so there are extra steps people take to get as much flavor as possible. I just roast the beef bone for a bit before letting it take the plunge into a pot of water for a few hours to simmer away. In terms of spices, I add things like whole cloves, a star anise if I have it, bay leaves, and peppercorns, but don't go overboard, as I don't always know how the broth will be used. I'll usually let it reduce down a quarter before calling it done; the result isn't overwhelmingly rich, but for basic soups, it's a nice thing to have on hand. The first time I took a stab at broth-making was almost a year ago, on an older version of Wasabi Prime that was on Vox. Check out this blast from the past when I made beef broth.

Onion soup seemed like a delicious reward for a day's work of simmering. Notice I'm not saying French onion soup. The final result is too different for purists, so the Français factor gets dropped out of respect. The UnRecipe-ness of this was that I started out with a classic French onion soup recipe, but puttered around with it. A recipe that's similar to what was produced is on Epicurious -- their onion soup with loads of thyme.

While thyme was on my side (har har), bread and a soft, melty cheese was not. Let's be honest, we order French onion soup because we want the floating toast with the blob of crispy, molten Gruyere sitting atop the little soup tureens. Not that the finished onion soup wasn't delicious, but it was going to be melted cheese or bloody murder at this point.

Not wanting to go to the grocery store for the missing ingredient walk of shame, I rummaged the refrigerator and found some grated Parmesan cheese. Turning the oven on to 350 degrees, I pulled out a cookie sheet and silicone mat, and made little flat rounds of cheese sprinkled with fresh cracked pepper. The oven did the work, melting the cheese into crispy golden wafers. While I won't say this is as satisfying as a piece of toast with melty cheese, it worked as a quick fix to garnish the soup and add a little extra flavor as it melted in.

I couldn't eat another bite! Not even this waaaaaafer thin round of cheese? - Photos by Wasabi Prime