UnRecipe: Local Color With Polenta and Sausage

Giggle all you want, but it all started with a sausage. A big, hot spicy one, if you must know. And Portuguese -- how exotic! Not that I'm one to cook-and-tell... oh, who am I kidding, I totally am! This one started out with a lone linguisa, which turned into a pleasantly colorful quick-draw meal on a weeknight, thanks to the random lovelies in our CSA box.

Polenta and sausage will never be the same when linguisa came to town - Photo by Wasabi Prime

Mixed Plate: Just Keep Cooking

I think back on why I started blogging. It's no different from most folks -- it was an escape from the general malaise of daily life, the endless cubicle grind that was threatening to suck the soul-marrow from my very soul-bones, if that's possible. It wasn't even about wanting to write about food, I just wanted to have A Blog About (Fill in the Blank). I chose food for two reasons -- a thoroughly enjoyable reading of Julie and Julia was still fresh in my mind, and it's something we interact with every day. Be you sinewy-thin Angelina Jolie's now-famous spindly leg or a competitive eater that downs two hundred hot dogs in under ten minutes -- we gotta eat. We deal with food on a daily basis, so why not focus on a topic with endless source material? I was reminded of this while I was standing over the stove for yet another quick-fix midweek meal. It wasn't a special occasion. It wasn't something I slaved over with hard-won rare ingredients. It was just... well, dinner. But maybe that's the point of this blog, to Just Keep Cooking.

Sometimes you just want noodles - Photo by Wasabi Prime

 It's all about the food, I have to remind myself. Not fancy, not drive-thru, not trendy restaurants or celeb chefs, just food, in the what-have-you contextual wrapper it comes in. Whatever shows up on the plate can be such an indication of what kind of a day it was. It's like an edible journal, or maybe an unhealthy emotional relationship with food. Whatevah. Blogs reflect so much of where we are in our lives and for myself, it's a lot of at-home meals. It's practical, cost-effective, and given the price of gas these days (when the price goes over $5 a gallon, watchout, it's apocalypse time), it's easier than schlepping around from city to city, tracking down something new to try. As homebody as it sounds, I like having dinner under my own roof. Cooking helps me disengage from the workday, which is a must. We've been sticking with our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) box of vegetables that arrive every other week, and that's really been driving our meals. It's a kitchen adventure because with the opening of every box, I feel the rusty cogs and wheels of my noggin starting to turn, planning ways to use everything up and hopefully attempt something new.

Just try something new, you might like it - Photos by Wasabi Prime

I've figured out my own ramen broth. I roast squash semi-regularly and keep it handy for pureeing into soups. I actually like beets. And I've made more pies in the last year or two than my whole life combined. That's what the CSA delivery has provided. Results will vary of course, I don't know what other people get from their Magical Mystery Box of Veggies/Fruit, but I'm guessing it's a similar challenge of figuring out ways to integrate the household meals around -- as Brad Pitt in Seven would say: What's in the boooooooox?! Having the blog as a repository to put all these random dishes is a nice compendium of ideas to remind myself that Tim Gunn was spot-on: make it work. 

Giving the wok a weekly workout (say that three times fast) - Photos by Wasabi Prime

Making it work can also mean a mofo f-ton of stir frys. Drag out the wok, see what's left of the vegetables, make sure there's some tofu or some sort of meat in the fridge (or not) and throw everything together. Depending on my mood, peanuts, coconut milk and/or peanut butter is added. It's a crapshoot every time. I feel a little guilty I make it so often and continue to post it, but then I think -- well, why the hell not? I'm not Martha Freaking Stewart. Most people have a half hour, maybe an hour, to prepare a meal during the week. Despite a self-regulated schedule, I'm no different than anyone else, and the point of celebrating food is the ability to enjoy it, both cooking and the eating. The biggest enemy is always time. Or to the point, not having enough of it. I've spent enough nights hovering over the stove and oven, preparing multiple courses, making a pile of dirty dishes, and when I can sit to enjoy this feast, the impending cleanup is the only thing nagging my mind. Food becomes drudgery, a chore. You start resenting what's on the plate, and it starts a backslide that convinces you that something in a styrofoam container is easier and therefore better. The Zen of fast food: if no one sees you get takeout greasy burgers and fries more than three times a week, it doesn't exist, right? I get tempted by this, the lure of pizza is a cruel siren, but somehow a little angel that looks like a nagging Asian Tiger Mom sits on my shoulder and says it's no more work to just cook up something fast in a wok, don't be so lazy. And remember to practice your math and play the violin for at least three hours after dinner. So "yay" to Stir Fry -- food guilt, absolved.

Carb cravings addressed regularly, in the comfort of home - Photos by Wasabi Prime

Most meals just aren't worth blogging about. They're not bad, it's just something everyone's already seen. More times than not, I'm making breakfast for dinner, putting eggs on everything and I've got a skillet staring back at me that looks like Wall-E or possibly Gollum as he's melting away in Mount Doom. Creepy. But browsing through random photos from my camera or phone made me realize that it's okay, as long as something's always cooking. Whether you realize it or not, you probably learn a little something new with everything you make -- a way of using a new ingredient or just getting better with something you already know. Cooking for yourself is a means of independence. So, just keep cooking, kids. And when in doubt, put an egg on it.

Wall-E agrees, eggs for every meal! - Photos by Wasabi Prime (Wall-E by Disney of course)

UnRecipe: At Home With the Lazy Cook

I like to imagine that if I had my own TV cooking show, it would be me, in my jammies, rummaging through the fridge and pantry, and just literally throwing together haphazard meals. And the opening credits would read: At Home With the Lazy Cook. It would probably be written in Crayon. With some of the letters written backwards.

At Home with the Lazy Cook presents... Brinner - Photo by Wasabi Prime

Not that the food on my pretend cooking show would be bad. It would just be very fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants-styled meals. Cooking without a net, as it were. Take for instance a recent Sunday dinner. Too busy to really go grocery shopping that week and on the tail-end dregs of our CSA delivery, I looked in the fridge and saw we had some thawed phyllo dough, a package of chopped spinach, goat cheese, and eggs. Sure, it doesn't fill anyone with a sense of culinary wonderment, but for something basic that's quick to prepare, it sure looked like Brinner to me. (Brinner = Breakfast for Dinner, get it? Thanks, Scrubs)

Brinner and a movie - Tron 2 = nostalgic and weird - Photos by Wasabi Prime

And so became the Sunday night casserole of eggs, cheese and spinach,with a phyllo crust, topped with more phyllo sheets. It was like an odd combination of spanokopita and a frittata, but gosh darnit, it worked. It kind of looked like a casserole that took a running leap through a pane of glass, as the phyllo crisps up nicely and just gets... well, shard-like. And we ate this, much to Indy's pleading stares as we finally saw Tron 2: Legacy. I think we were the last people in the First World to watch this movie that everyone was going nuts over, like, a million years ago. It was very pretty and looked like a world without dust, needing constant applications of Windex, and somewhere between all its heavily-dressed scenery, there was a plot. But if you asked me now what it's about, I couldn't tell you beyond the fact that Computer Generated Jeff Bridges skeeved me out. It did make me want to watch the original, which I loved for nostalgia's sake. My nostalgia also made me hungry for salty snacks so I mixed popcorn and rice crackers to make our movie night complete.

A Wasabi's work is never done -- what I'm doing when I'm not being lazy - Photos by Wasabi Prime

I don't want to make it sound like I'm The Lazy Cook out of pure sinful sloth. I commit way better sins than that - and how! I just didn't want to fuss in the kitchen anymore, as I'd already done some projects like pickling beets and making the latest supply of chicken stock. Making stock is like a two-day event for me. It takes time to let the ingredients simmer away, and a nuclear half-life to get it to cool down enough to put it in containers. At the risk of angering food safety inspectors, I let the stockpot cool overnight before portioning it out into the small army of yogurt containers I hoard, er, collect. The Mister hates that we have not some, but ALL of the yogurt containers. Like, in the known universe. I wait until they pile up and that's the Bat Signal that it's time to make another batch of stock. The holidays left me rich in chicken and turkey bones, along with a huge bag of vegetable and herb cuttings that I store in the freezer. When I can't put real food into the freezer because it looks like a compostable ice age in there, that's also an indication to get cooking on some stock. In a way, this feeds into my Lazy Cook mentality, as I always have a supply of stock at the ready, no need to hit the store. I tend to defrost one container a week, using it to deglaze pans, make quick sauces, or when I'm feeling the Lazybones Feeling come on, I'll make soup. Soup is the ultimate lazy dish, as you can throw in as many or as few ingredients as you have, but it's also deceptively lazy, as when you make your own stock, it's got a richness that you can't find in most store bought products. You feel like you're treating yourself to something really good, when you just threw some odd bits together into a bubbling pot of flavored chicken water. For a Lazy Cook, making your own stock is worth the fuss, because you can bank more time to be lazy later on. Makes sense, right? 

UnRecipe: Wasabi Two-Step

Consider it a kitchen lesson inspired by ballroom dancing. But without the B-list actors and questionable celeb wannabes. To avoid the temptation of a burger-and-fries run, but stave off the evils of mealtime boredom, I'll make a few things during the week for meals, just like anyone else. But I don't want to be stuck in the prep time vortex on days where there's just not enough time. Introducing... The Wasabi Two-Step -- no line dancing required. It's basic common sense time management: pick one slow-cook, large quantity, leftover-friendly dish for days that are short on fuss time and one quick-cook, minimal prep, smaller portion meal that's enjoyed freshly cooked. It's the slow-slow-quick-quick-slow of getting jiggy with dinnertime.

Chili and Rice is my BFF (Island style, yo) - Photo by Wasabi Prime

No duh, Wasabi -- did it take a rocket scientist to figure that one out? Hell, no! Brain surgeon, maybe. Very possibly an astrophysicist was involved. My last quick-slow cook week involved getting a slow cooker of chili going while I made a simple eat-it-now dinner of trout and garden greens. The chili was the basic UnRecipe of: chunks of beef, canned tomatoes, chopped onions, sausage and black beans. I throw together a mix of seasonings that I have never measured, so it's different every time (I know, bad recipe developer, bad, bad, bad!). There is no method to this madness, just throw it into the crucible that is the almighty crock pot and let it do its thing for a few hours, letting the cooking vessel do all the real work. That's how you get to be the master of your kitchen domain. Delegate to the robot army of appliances and hope they don't overthrow you in a high-voltage political coup.
One of the best things about chili and stews is the fact that it just gets better the longer it sits. It just ages like a fine, meaty wine. I'll make a chili a whole day in advance of when I want to eat it, just so it has more time to just soak in its own flavors, even in the chill of the fridge. Plus chili is one of those monthly go-to's that I still rely on, as my mother did the same. We'd have it at least once every two weeks, since it was so simple to make and it kept our family fed for several days. Poured over rice, of course -- a Hawaii favorite. I know it may seem weird, but just try it and you'll be a convert to chili and rice.

Summertime fish dish - Photos by Wasabi Prime

I know I'm not fooling anyone -- I clearly made this trout dish during the earlier part of summer, as witnessed by the fresh sugar snap peas. And I'm clearly backlogged on my food photos and posts! This was during the heyday of the Wasabi Garden's pea patch, where I was pulling handfuls of pods every day. Never a bad problem to have. I seared some trout filets we had from a friend's fishing trip, seasoned with some garden pesto, and deglazed the pan with some white wine, butter and sauteed whatever seasonal vegetables I had on hand -- peas, late spring onions, anything green. A dish like this felt very of-the-moment, as we were using things that were at their peak, no real plan in mind, just use what's there. Not that seared fish in a wine and butter sauce couldn't be done at any time of the year, but it was a nice way to work with the ingredients at-hand and enjoy them at their seasonal peak.

What about you? What are your favorite ways to balance time and get a meal on the table?

UnRecipe: Dinnertime Weeknight Boogie

We all have those weeks. The ones where we bury our heads in a computer or a stack of documents and after what feels like a nuclear half-life, we raise our eyes to the horizon, see that the evening dusk has fallen and realize: Holy Craptown, it's dinnertime; what am I going to cook? OK, so not everyone says that, nor do they always make most of their meals at home, but seeing as how my day is split up into half-professional/half-Suzy Homemaker, I forget to clock out from the business end of the day and segway properly into the process of preparing something to banish the day's hunger. This is not a unique problem and I'm willing to bet everyone runs into this on a daily basis, so here are some examples of fast MacGyver Meals I've had to throw together over the recent months.

The thrill of the grill - Photo by Wasabi Prime

During the intermittent heatwave days of summer, I definitely take advantage of the grill. I know some people grill in the dead of winter, when it's pouring outside, taking on the Post Office "Neither rain, sleet, nor snow" attitude for cooking outdoors. I should adopt this attitude, given the BA-Barracus-grill that Mr. Wasabi chose for our household, but most times, I'm lazy and don't feel like rousting the family of spiders who have inevitably taken residence around the grill, nor do I relish trying to wrestle the awkwardly large cover back onto the grill when it's time to put it away. It's not a lot of effort, I realize, but in a post-dinner food coma, even the slightest bit of chores makes me cringe. But laziness be damned, I'll fire up the grill now and then, however instead of cooking one meal at a time, I choose to load up every square inch of those cast-iron grill plates and make something that will last the week.

The easiest, minimal-prep item is, of course, the ubiquitous chicken breast. Light on taste, low on fat and somewhat boring, the grill brings out flavors from the lowly chicken breast unseen in most cooking methods. A bit of salt, pepper, a light toss in oil, and the char of the direct flame helps produce some much needed flavor out of the paltry poultry. Plus it's the only way I've been able to really keep the meat juicy, since the quick and intense heat locks in both flavor and moisture. The rest of the grill is taken up by vegetables like zucchini sliced lengthwise, seasoned similarly, and this simple supply of meat and vegetables carries us through several meals, from eating it as-is or sliced up and tossed in salads.

Pseudo saltimbocca, done casserole style - Photo by Wasabi Prime

Another last-minute prep meal is anything that doesn't require a lot of messy prep. Who loves doing dishes? I don't see many hands going up. A recent night of frantic meal prep found the Prime throwing open the refrigerator and having an Iron Chef moment. Except that it wasn't so much what Chairman Kaga presented, it was more like, this is what's sitting on the shelves. Without the flourish of a man dressed like Liberace or even a dramatic unveil, I had before me: several defrosted chicken breasts, leftover slices of prosciutto, sweet potatoes, the last bits of pesto, and plain yogurt. Sounds unappetizing at first, but I made a saltimbocca-inspired dinner, using seasoned, lightly seared chicken breasts wrapped in prosciutto, layered with some fresh sage plucked from the garden, laid upon a bed of oven-baked diced sweet potatoes, with a sauce of pesto and yogurt, watered down with a little milk. Sounds a bit crazy, I know, but it turned out fine. The fatty cured pork kept the chicken moist as the oven did its work, cooking the chicken all the way through. Juices from the cooking meat mixed with the yogurt sauce and helped further flavor and cook the bed of sweet potatoes which had a head-start, roasting in the oven while I seared the chicken breasts in a pan.

Pork tenderloin and lots of colorful veggies - Photos by Wasabi Prime

My third MacGyver/Pan-to-Oven quick dinner is with the Other White Meat, using pork tenderloin. It's a good thing to make on a cool night, especially now that we're starting to see the evenings chill down a bit more. I toss some root vegetables in oil with some salt and pepper and let them roast in the oven for a bit. Then I'll season up a pork tenderloin with whatever favorite seasonings I have on hand and sear it on all sides in a pan. I'm not looking to get it fully cooked, just get a nice crust, and then move it into the oven, sitting atop the vegetables that have already started roasting. I deglaze the pan with a bit of beer and then toss in some thinly sliced red cabbage, which is one of my favorite inexpensive go-to side dish veggies. It holds up nicely to the cooking process, just wilting but not totally falling apart, plus the color remains incredibly vibrant. If I have shallots, a bit of onion or even apples, I throw those in as well. A bit of cider vinegar and either sugar or honey to balance the sweet to sour, and the remainder of the beer helps cook everything down. Pork tenderloin, roasted vegetables, and a side of bright purple-red braised cabbage -- again, not fancy, but it can be done as a weeknight meal with plenty of leftovers for the next day's lunch and dinner.

I always talk about the magic of leftovers, and maybe it's too gauche a thing for the art of fine cuisine, but most of our meals are basic out of necessity and the lack of time. I end up spending more time figuring out ways to take shortcuts, but also not rely on a lot of processed things for those shortcuts. And yes, it results in a lot of UnRecipes where exact amounts and increments don't exist, but I think like most home cooks, we get inspired by seeing what others do, and just make up the recipes on our own while we tinker in the kitchen on our own last-minute meal prep -- wouldn't you agree?

OMG A Recipe: Lazy Dinners With the Prime

It's been somewhat busy and I haven't had as much time to fuss over meals, but I refuse to defer to the drive-thru window. Not that I have anything against crispy fries or bizarre condiments called Horsey Sauce, but I regard them as a periodic indulgence, not an option, so even if our dinners are in the realm of humbler-than-humble-pie, whatev's, at least it's a home-cooked meal and it microwaves well for lunch the next day. Some of my go-to weekday dishes are ones where there's literally a handful of ingredients and you could easily qualify for the "10 Items or Less" lane at the grocery store. And you could probably include the six pack of beer without wondering if they're counting the item as a single thing or six cans.

Meat + Veggies = SIMPLE. - Photo by Wasabi Prime

More of a winter dish, but great in a pinch for rainy cool days, one of my favorites to make is roasted  veggies and sausage, served over beer-braised red cabbage. It's so simple because the ingredient list is just that. I'll just toss together some oil, salt, pepper and whole grain mustard with sausages and whatever vegetables are in season and oven-sturdy, and let the oven do its roasty-toasty work until everything's fork-tender and caramelized. While it's roasting, I'll slice up some red cabbage and cook it down with a bottle of beer, most likely some cheap bottle or can of something that was leftover from some random BBQ or camping trip. Come on, you know you've got that random mystery beer languishing in the back of the fridge -- let it find its special purpose and cook with it!

So this is suposed to be an OMG a Recipe, so basically the recipe is:

Combination of vegetables (onions, potatoes, squash, peppers, whatever)
Sausage of your choice, insert dirty joke here
Mustard, salt, pepper, vegetable oil to coat, and roast it all at 375 degrees. Bazam. Done.

Head of cabbage, preferably purple because it looks prettier than plain cabbage once cooked down
1 bottle or can of mystery beer that you don't know who left in your fridge
Slice cabbage thinly, sautee in a pan and add the beer as it cooks down and let the liquid evaporate off as the cabbage cooks down and gets drunk-alicious.

Easy cookin' for easy livin' - Photos by Wasabi Prime

One of my favorite simple homemade meals is a dish my mom made when I was a kid, which is pork tofu. And the reason why it's great to make is, that's basically all it is. Pork and tofu. Okay, and maybe some green onions. It's flavored with soy sauce, a bit of sugar and you can add more flavors like ginger or add more vegetables, but this is good, basic farmer food that's tasty over rice. I think my grandfather would make this for my mom and her siblings when growing up because they grew green onions, they always had a supply of pork and tofu was an easy staple to get. And my grandfather was a soy sauce fiend; he'd pour it over everything which made everything taste better and resulted in everyone now on high blood pressure meds.

So maybe some low sodium soy sauce is in order, but it's a good, easy meal to make, no real recipe required. It's one of those dishes where I always feel like I'm home when I eat it, and because I'm so eager to eat it, that's why there's no "ta-daaaah" shot of the finished dish. But I have to give props to Wasabi Mom yet again, because while meals like this weren't anything fancy, they were the staples of my formative childhood years and seeded the mindset that cooking at home is neither a chore nor a big production, and that as long it's homecooked, it's good stuff. And I mean homecooked, not prepared, as in, hey, I bought this premade, prepackaged pot roast sitting in weird preservatives and shoved it into the microwave to warm up before serving.

Cooking cues from Wasabi Mom - Photos by Wasabi Prime

UnRecipe: Tough Turkey, Marsala!

Some dishes just aren't meant to be fancy, just quick and easy. That being said, don't be a lazy fool like me and make dumb grocery store choices. For the most part, I think simple meals with a modest list of ingredients can easily become favorites, since they work so well into a weeknight schedule, and chicken or turkey marsala is definitely one that falls into that category, as long as one knows which shortcuts to take and which ones to avoid.

Who you callin' Turkey? - Photo by Wasabi Prime

My usual go-to for finding recipes is Epicurious.com, and they have an ample online library of dishes, old and new. If you wish to follow a more traditional chicken marsala recipe, I'd recommend using one of their recipes, like this one with sage. The version I wound up doing was a bit more truncated than what Bon Appétit had to offer. In general, I recommend doing any dish the traditional way at least once, so you get the full experience of the flavors. And then you can be a harried late-night grocery shopper like me, rushing to grab whatever I could at the last minute.

As mentioned before, this weeknight meal was inspired by the lack of time and planning. I knew the basics for the traditional recipe, but super-simplified things for the sake of getting a meal on the table. I know, I know, food is life, but when you're a part-time food blogger and a full-time cubicle jockey, sometimes something's gotta give so you don't wind up in the drive-thru agreeing to get fries with that. The finished sauce was all marsala wine, no broth, but I enjoy the dry, sweet sherry flavor, so it didn't bother me. I should have run out into the garden to snip some fresh herbs, but it was already dark when I was cooking, so a sprinkle of dry thyme won out -- fresh is absolutely better, so don't succumb to my mistake of late-night cooking.

Something worth noting: my new favorite side dish is broiled broccoli. Inspired by the Broccoli Blasted at Seattle's Belltown neighborhood wine/foodie bar, Black Bottle, I started taking large chunks of broccoli, tossing with olive oil, salt and pepper, and laying them out on a baking sheet right underneath the broiler. It just takes a few minutes to get get the tops crispy, and turn the whole thing a bright, perfectly-cooked green. The broccoli remains crunchy, but with a smoky flavor of the nearly-torched florets. I think drizzled with a bit of pork fat, it would make the dish even better, getting smoky under the heated coil, and then served with the crispy cracklins sprinkled atop the greens, but I'll save that experiment for another day when there's bacon in the fridge.

'Shrooms make everything better, even tough cuts of meat. - Photos by Wasabi Prime

Nearly on the outskirts of FoodFail, my only regret was that I used pre-cut slices of turkey breast -- pesky meat department shortcuts! Their thin cutlets belied an unanticipated toughness, and no, I didn't overcook it. Maybe this should have been called Jive Turkey Marsala. So let that be a lesson to shortcut-takers everywhere -- butterfly some chicken breasts and pound the living Valhalla out of it to make a proper whisper-thin paillard, as your efforts will be rewarded in the all-important eating phase of the meal. I usually make this dish with chicken, but I hadn't defrosted any chicken breasts and I totally admit to being sucked into the siren song of pre-sliced turkey breasts on the late-night grocery store run. A mistake I'll not soon repeat. Aside from that one transgression, the meal was still acceptible to hungry tummies, and leftovers were swiftly cleaned up, so the Wasabi household did not turn their noses up in effigy to tough turkey, but I do promise to be more mindful of my timesavers.