UnRecipe: It's My Pity Party and I'll Eat Comfort Food if I Want To

Long day. Too much to do. Frustrating situations with no end in sight. Somebody call Wasabi a Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaahm-bulance, it's time for a Pity Party! So how about a little cheese with your whine, or better yet, big heaping plates of simple favorites to just take your mind off the fact that all these little things  just don't matter. Or at least I keep telling myself that!

This meatloaf doesn't sing, but it tastes real good after a long freakin' day - Photo by Wasabi Prime

Even though I do most of the cooking in our household, I'll rely on dishes where the oven does most of the work for the everyday meals. I know I've featured meatloaf many times on this blog, but per the title of this post, it's my pity party and I'll make whatever the hell gets me closer to that glass of wine or cocktail at the end of a particularly taxing day. Boozeahol in hand? Goooooooooooooooooooal! What makes meatloaf so magical? Aside from the periodic singing of a verse of Bat Out of Hell, meatloaf is easy-peasy to make and season as you wish, and in our case, I usually have the basic ingredients in our freezer and pantry. I like serving it with some kind of side vegetable and this time I had yams in the pantry. Chopping them into big chunks and just boiling them in salty water before mashing with some parsley and milk made for some very brightly-hued mashed potatoes, but they were a nicely sweet side dish with the savory meatloaf.

Who needs antidepressants when there's brownies and bubbly? - Photos by Wasabi Prime

You can't have a pity party without dessert, so what better treat to go with the all-American meatloaf? How about a good old-fashioned brownie to take the final edge off the day. As Homer Simpson would say, it's like homemade Prozac -- "Needs more ice cream." I've been sticking with the triple fudge brownie recipe from The Newlywed Kitchen cookbook lately. Yes, it's got five eggs, two sticks of butter and a big ol' mess of chocolate, but you don't get to your happy place without a few indulgences now and then. Luckily, because it's such a rich, decadent dessert, you have one small slice and you're good. At least for a few hours and then you inevitably sneak a second one. But hey, you've had a rough day. You deserve it. And as Scarlett O'Hara would say, "Tomorrow... is another day!"

UnRecipe: the Universe is Expanding, and so is the Wasabi Waistline

How to begin this post.... Perhaps with the wisdom of the great furry feline philosopher, Garfield, where he once said that diet is simply "die" with a "t." Or maybe I should just submit this blog to This Is Why You're Fat-dot-com, because it's been a marathon of eating well for weeks and our antacid supply is ransacked like Whoville after the Grinch came a-callin'.

'Twas the Night Before Xmas, not a creature was stirring, only my rumbling tummy - Photo by  Wasabi Prime

Probably not the most graceful way to start the new year, but let's be honest, it's the one period out of all the months where advertising goes from encouraging luscious cuts of ham, rich chocolate desserts and pure holiday indulgence, straight to the unceremonious guilt-ridden Special K diet and the weirdly adorable orange muppet that Weight Watchers uses to anthropomorphize one's insatiable food cravings. Why do you confuse my mindgrape, Madison Avenue? You tell me I should eat with abandon, and then riddle my conscience with shame?? Just for that, I'm crawling into my Snuggie and eating a cheesecake while watching The Housewives of... marathon, and I'm not coming out till next Christmas!!

I'll likely do my usual holiday detox of soup to give my insides a break from all the rich foods we've been having. It'll be kinda nice not to finish each meal with a Tums chaser because I clearly have lack of impulse control. Stop me before I om-nom-nom again! But there's no harm in enjoying the memories of the holiday food that took the vacation from my gaping maw to my stomach.

Over the Christmas break, we mostly ate at home, but had a steady stream of friends to join us for meals -- best gift of all, good company. On the Eve of the Eve, we had a little group luncheon. I was craving Vietnamese style bahn mi sandwiches along with barbecue, so the two cravings became one with a braised pork shoulder shredded and mixed with a spicy black bean sauce, spread into a split baguette smeared with a lime and chili mayonnaise and topped with pickled vegetables. Our friends clearly have great minds that think alike, bringing two bags of the Thai-spiced potato chips, which went super-duper with the sandwiches. We brought holiday/back by enjoying sweets like mini cupcakes and peppermint chocolate whoopie pies for dessert. It was a drawstring pants kind of day, for shizzle.

Nothing says holiday like Asian bbq sandwich... right? - Photos by Wasabi Prime

For just Mr. Wasabi and I, we kept things un-fussy on Christmas Eve with a meatloaf of turkey, beef and chopped porcini mushrooms. Big slabs of the loaf de meat were served with a porcini gravy and a side salad of pears dotted with winter fruits like pomegranate and dried cranberries. Have to keep it simple if we're to be in bed before Santa's arrival!

The porcini sauce and pear salad did double-duty on Christmas night, when we had a friend over, and we served up mini Beef Wellingtons -- Baby Wellies, as I annoying like to call them. I didn't go the traditional route; I used flattened cuts of tri-tip versus tenderloin, which were seared lightly and then topped with sliced morels tossed with salt, pepper and mustard. Not the typical mushroom duxelle, but whatever -- this holiday was laid-back with friends and I wanted to work with what I had versus fretting over having exact ingredients. I always buy those packages of dried wild mushrooms, and it felt like the right occasion to bust it all out. And puff-pastry hides all sins after you wrap everything up in a little bundle and bake it off. I prefer doing the miniature version of Beef Wellington, especially for a small group because it's cute on the plate and when you do it with a whole tenderloin, it never cuts perfectly and the puff pastry always slides off, resulting in Hot Mess City. I don't care what the chefs on TV say or do, it never looks as perfect as how they make it. You serve a little individual parcel of steak-stuffed puff pastry with a porcini sauce drizzle, along with some puree of roasted cauliflower and broiled broccoli -- shazam, it's holiday dinner. Eat, drink, enjoy. Especialy with a giant wheel of brie in a star-shaped brioche -- much thanks to Ms. J for bringing that delicious bomb of om-nom-nom over!

We ate, we drank, we drank some more, and were super-effing merry! - Photos by Wasabi Prime

The food party rocked Christmas morning as well -- I skipped making breakfast because we were blessed with a delicious tin of homemade cookies by my favorite Angry Peanut, Miss Annie, who sent that, along with a funny Christmas card of a surly looking cat, all from the lands of Nevada. Cookies for breakfast? shhh... don't tell my mother! At this point, we considered the concept healthy eating a wash, so indulge now and pay the dire consequences later when they discover your arteries look like a giant Payday bar. I also gave Mr. Wasabi a box of his favorites, straight outta our homeskillet Washington State, Aplets and Cotlets, yo!! They're basically fruit jellies with nuts, which is kind of holiday-appropriate, and they go real nice with a big glass of thick eggnog, to wash it all down in slow motion.

Surly Christmas cat asks, can you handle this (fruit) jelly? - Photo by Wasabi Prime

The food theme spread into our gifts this year from loving friends and family. It was a lot of homemade thihngs, which I love extra-so. Knitted potholders, homemade vanilla extract, and goodies picked up from farmers markets and craft fairs like lavender sugar, soap made from goats milk and artisanal chocolate of all kinds. My Auntie S gave me a copy of Roger Ebert's The Pot and How to Use It, his cookbook full of wise and witty observations, and a ton of easy recipes using only a rice cooker. Where the heck was this book when I was in college?! I'm eager to try some of those out, so keep an eye on future posts! And Mr. Wasabi got a new bottle of rye, appropriately named Redemption. This made an appearance in some recent cocktails, and made our holiday incredibly merry and bright.

Crazy enough, this doesn't even cover the post-Christmas meals cooked by friends or New Years Eve. Makes you want to throw on a pair of sweatpants right now, doesn't it? Call this blog post aversion therapy, but I'm off to go run a mile or count my daily intake of almonds so I can save room for next Christmas season.

Merry Christmas... to my gut - Photos by Wasabi Prime

UnRecipe: Meat n' Potatoes

There's nothing fancy about meat loaf, but it's one of those dishes we all return to many times over. It's like a giant hamburger, minus the bun. Maybe that's what makes it such an All-American dinner staple. And there's no single, authentic way of making it, so it becomes this cultural symbol of comfort food, like chicken soup, where no single person gets to own it, but everyone gets to have a part in it. So to that, I say, Hooray to you, Meat Loaf!

Meat loaf the meal, not the singer - Photo by Wasabi Prime

Not unlike a lot of people, my mom used to make meat loaf. Not because it was fancy or because our family was craving it, but because it was simple. And, to be honest, I didn't much care for it, mostly because at the time, I wasn't a fan of hamburgers either. So weird, right? Downright un-American. But I think one of the significant turning points in my long, notorious history as a picky eater was when I had to start making meals for myself and I discovered the magic behind meat loaf. It's easy, relatively inexpensive and it yields plenty of leftovers. Ground beef, seasonings, an egg and some breadcrumbs to bind, and either shape into a loaf or shove into a loaf pan before letting the oven do its thing -- shazam, done.

I've done variations on the loaf of meat, using ground turkey, seasoned pork sausage, mixing in finely chopped vegetables, shredded cheese, and seasonings that make it Italian-themed or Southwest-themed. It's as versatile as making hamburgers, adding different ingredients and flavors as one desires, which I think also lends to its refusal to disappear from restaurant and home kitchen menus.

It was nice to have retro-worthy dinner, keepin' it real with meat loaf. But there was a little gilding of the lily by roasting some sweet potatoes with herbed grey salt and par-boiling some asparagus and tossing with gorgonzola crumbles. The meat loaf itself was a little fancier than usual, being mixed with chunks of gorgonzola cheese, giving it a nice richness of flavor. Even with all the little extra upgrades, it didn't push the meal into anything fussy, it just emphasized how comforting a meal like this can be, and how good it is to have a home cooked meal.

Asparagus cooking and a meaty loaf, baked fresh from the oven - Photos by Wasabi Prime

UnRecipe: I Can Haz Cheeseburger Meatloaf and Squash Gratin?

Oh, LOLCats, your childish humor and bad spellingz will never cease to entertain me. The only thing more appealing to people than cute animal pictures is violent gore, so this post has already gotten off to a stellar start. In the process of making a very humble but delicious dinner of Cheddar Meatloaf and a Creamy Prosciutto Squash Gratin, the Prime had an epiphany: blades on mandoline slicers are sharp. Damn sharp. And this meal reheats marvelously after waiting a few hours for an open wound to clot. Lesson learned.

Meat, Cheese/Cheese, Meat! - Photo by Wasabi Prime

We'll go with the good news first: meatlof is a simple way to incorporate a lot of leftover goods sitting around the fridge. Because we're getting ready for a vacation, I tend to clean out the refrigerator and cook up whatever perishables are sitting around. A chunk of cheddar from the Au Revoir, Gourmet gougères post was shredded down and incorporated into a basic mix of ground beef and turkey. The cheese adds plenty of fat, along with a raw egg, so I opted for the other-other white meat instead of the usual addition of ground pork. A few splashes of worchestire sauce, salt and pepper kept the seasonings simple, and the loaf of meatiness was formed on some parchment paper on a cookie sheet and put into the oven for baking.

So far so good. A béchamel sauce was whipped up for the squash gratin -- butter, flour, milk, some salt and pepper. No problem. Enter the scary serial killer music that lurks at the base of a movie score's orchestration, slowly starting build as I pull out the new mandoline slicer from the drawer. I envisioned it as the perfect tool to render bright golden table squash from the local farmer's market into wafer-thin slices. The plan was to spread the discs of squash evenly, sprinkle chopped prosciutto in between each layer, topping each level with the white sauce before a final layer of sprinkled cheese.

The house of cards came tumbling down when a slip of the plastic guard with the odd-shaped squash caused my thumb to run across the blade and a flip-top lid was born. Crap. Thumb was pressure bandaged, and the awkward ballet of trying to make food with one's unfavored hand began. Unfortunately, the ballet was interrupted by several intermissions of "There's blood on the floor. Crap, it's my blood," and multiple wound dressings. A lumpy, but gore-free left-handed squash gratin baked in the oven and finished along with the meatloaf. Despite The Incident, the meal was delicious, so that should be a tribute to the comforting power of meatloaf and cheese. The meatloaf had the satisfying familiar flavor of a cheeseburger, sans bun, and the gratin was creamy, savory, and the squash roasted down nicely in the oven. Was it worth the mutilation of an integral member of the Right Hand Family? Don't be ridiculous, of course it is. I've got eight more perfectly good fingers and one more thumb to go through before calling it quits.

Left-handed squash gratin and accomplices in The Incident - Photos by Wasabi Prime