Posted by parker
8 months ago
When I learn a new cooking technique, I sometimes see the potential to expand it to other applications. So last week, when Noah showed me how to make tortilla chips, I started planning some frying of my own.
Specifically, last night I sliced up one of my favorite root vegetables and fried some sweet potato chips. Simple process: put about 1/4" of vegetable oil in a high-sided pan. Heat oil. Slice sweet potato as thin as practical. (I imagine a food processor would be helpful here.) Then pop the slices into the hot oil until they start to brown. (If you want to hurry the process, push the slices under the surface a bit; they tend to float in the oil, which slows the frying process.) Remove them with tongs and place them on a paper towel to drain.
This is a lot of work for relatively few chips, of course. The advantage to doing the work yourself instead of just buying a bag of Terra chips is, one, the price, and two, the ability to season them to taste. The sweet potatos don't always require salting, for example, and it's possible to cook up one's own seasoning mixture with, say, paprika, or cumin, or some other appropriate spices. (Suggestions?)
Posted by parker
9 months ago
Every month or so I make a big casserole that follows a recipe I learned from my mother. When I was growing up, we used to be able to finish a batch off in about a meal and a half (all four of us for dinner, plus leftovers for my father's lunch the next day.) When I was in my first job, I discovered that the leftovers microwaved extremely well, and a batch was about three days of lunches and dinners for me, which for a single apartment-dweller is a pretty good yield.
The puzzle was, what to call it? Growing up, it was "American Chop Suey" (which is one of the names it's known by.) When I left home and started associating with people who might be expected to know what real chop suey was, however, that name started feeling a little silly, and I tried to avoid it; why make this dish, which I liked, into a pale imitation of something authentic? (My paternal grandmother made another version of this dish which was hard to recognize as the same thing and certainly wasn't something I would've tried to imitate.)
Some research found that the dish is also sometimes known as "American Goulash," but having eaten Hungarian goulash, I think I can safely say it's not that, either. I then realized that, in the shift to email and text-based communication, my family had adopted the relatively meaningless abbreviation "ACS." So that's what I call it now: Ay-see-ess.
It's a great single-guy (or single-father) recipe because it requires almost no measurement and very little prep; with one or two exceptions, all the ingredients go in right out of their supermarket packages.
- 1 box elbows (whole wheat is fine)
- 1 pound ground meat (ground beef is the original version, but ground chicken or turkey is fine)
- 1 can tomato soup concentrate (e.g. the iconic Campbell's can)
- 1 can tomato sauce (a 12-oz. can, I think - slightly larger than the soup can)
- a dollop of ketchup (maybe a quarter cup, but whatever)
- About half an onion, chopped (this is the extent of the preparation)
- (Optional) Paprika and/or chili powder
Boil water and put the pasta in to cook. While it's cooking, brown the ground meat with the chopped onion in a skillet. If it's not non-stick skillet, you'll want to heat some oil in the skillet first, and put the onions in for a minute or so before the meat. The meat should get chopped into relatively small chunks in the course of browning. You can sprinkle some paprika or chili powder on the meat in this process for some extra flavor; I like the kick of the paprika, especially when I'm using turkey.
Meanwhile, mix the tomato sauce, soup concentrate, and ketchup in a casserole dish. (This is why I never measure the ketchup; I just squirt it in on top of the soup and sauce.) When the meat is browned, add to the mixed sauce and stir well. Finally, when the elbows are done, drain them and mix with the sauce and meat. If your casserole dish isn't quite big enough, you may need to be careful about this.
You can serve this immediately at this point, and refrigerate the leftovers for as much as a week, serving out portions to microwave at work as lunch.
Posted by parker
9 months ago
Earlier this week, I found myself chasing down ingredients for a particular stir-fry recipe I am not yet at liberty to share. Three in particular turned out to be difficult: peanut oil (sesame oil is easy to find, peanut oil much less so), "Stir Fry Sauce" (a distressingly non-specific description), and stir fry noodles.
I may have been able to chase down all three at our local Whole Foods, but for some reason I convinced myself, instead, to drive a few miles more to the World Market, a small Asian grocery. This business used to be located in a nondescript cinder-block structure which would be considered a "shack" if it wasn't so concrete, sharing its parking lot with a porn store. Now it has moved to a more solid building with more reputable neighbors, and my own recent Asian experiences persuaded me to take a look.
I found my peanut oil and stir fry sauce without too much trouble, in an aisle which also featured cup noodles which will never be found in a mainstream American grocery store. (Every one, without exception, was labeled "Very spicy" or "hot".) The stir fry noodles were a bit tougher, because I needed "4-6 ounces" and all the packages were much larger than that. Eventually I discovered "yakisoba" which was sold in packs containing three 5-ounce packages, and since the packaging said "stir fry noodles" I assume this is what I wanted.
While there were many foodstuffs on inventory which I may never have call for (many different ways of packaging whole fish, for example, or fowl) I was intrigued by the spices, curries, and noodles available (including one brand from Vermont). I'll be back!
