A home experiment for the night! This is an attempt at my godmother's recipe for goulasch, which I admittedly haven't attempted in a good long while. I'm a big fan of miscellaneous pasta dishes when you're running low on things (today is egg noodles and rainbow rotini), and this batch is made with some chicken (shredded canned kind -- good pantry staple!), a doctored red gravy/spaghetti sauce (I'll never reveal my secrets), sweet corn and diced onions. Garnish with red pepper flakes (if desired) and an Italian blend of cheese (mozza, asiago and... Provolone, I think?). I'm missing my fresh bread and gelato for the ideal, but I'll live. It's simple, hot, filling, and more importantly, CHEAP! And this is definitely one of those recipes that cures nicely the second or third day.
0 Comments
FROM scratch, black bean chili! This shit is ON FLEEK!
...God, I hope that saying doesn't keep, it's so awful. But I did really love this experiment. I made chili with a can of chili, a can of black beans, my usual mess of spices and jam and what-the-hell else, and then popped it into a bowl, some cheese on top, and some tortilla chips. After a long day that wasn't necessarily so great, just having the spoons to cook something from scratch, fool around, and then have a hot and hearty comfort food dinner to be proud of. Plus, the beans are a nice protein boost, and it stretches one can of chili into a nice, full pot, and they're also a lot less expensive than more chili, hehehe. Also, I just really love black beans. I really, really do. I'm trying to embrace this southwest aesthetic, don't judge me. The best thing about a potatoes bake like this is that you can keep the leftover taters for breakfast in the morning! Chicken breasts roasted with garlic, lemon pepper, basil, oregano, parsley, and a tiny bit of chili powder and bouillon in the taters bath, for flavor. I MEAN, LOOK AT THE HERBS ON THAT SKIN. WOWZA.
I'm not even going to lie to you and call this a 'home experiment', because it is pretty straight forward buffalo chicken. The star here is Frank's Red Hot buffalo sauce, which is a gorram phenomenon out here in Tucson. Like, it's freaking everywhere.
Growing up, we ate spaghetti A LOT. Like, the red sauce I put in all my pasta is forever engrained in my brain as "spaghetti sauce", even though I've tried to teach it the new trick of "red gravy" to limited success. Even when my dad put it in manicotti, lasagna, what have you, it was always spaghetti sauce. The only other big pasta dish I had was my godmother's goulasch, which she made exclusively with macaroni, and I always make it the same way she did.
Velveeta "shells" with cheese was something introduced to me by a room mate. And when I finally started buying groceries for myself... I wondered at why fun bowtie noodles (as I'd always called them as a kid) and corkscrews were so neglected. Especially when they were the same price! What was the point between angel hair and spaghetti? Were lasagna noodles just for casseroles? Feeling adventurous and rebellious (and really, they're the same price! You aren't going out of your way or anything) I started buying farfalle and rotini (especially when they had the multicoloured ones) for my own sport and amusement. There's nothing quite so fun as being at the end of a paycheck and dropping the last bits of three different kinds of pasta into a bowl. Long snakes of spaghetti dancing with a vegetable garden of rotini and the happy bowtie of farfalle... You forget how sad you are that you're broke and have more fun with your dinner than is absolutely necessary. But that smile is wonderful. What about you? What's your favourite kind of pasta? Can I challenge you to buy an odd noodle next time you go grocery shopping? And don't limit yourself to Italian pastas, either! Get some egg noodles or pancit or rice noodles from the Asian aisle! Discover the joys of udon at your local Japanese restaurant, or try pho for the first time. You'll thank me later! So named because you just throw ALL THE THINGS in a pot! I will say, my chili game was stepped up a huge notch when I first attempted as much of Captain Robert's Infamous Pyrate's Blood Sauce as I could reasonably accomplish (given a limit of his loooong list of ingredients), and I've since made worchestershire sauce a fairly mandatory ingredient in most of my stews, soups, broths, chilis and general other savories. Another person boasted that her fantastic meatballs were made with grape jelly, so I started putting barbecue sauce and a jam or jelly into my chilis for a sweet balance. I wasn't much of one for beans growing up (my father scowled when I insisted on bean-less Hormel chili for Frito Pie night when given the opportunity to pick it out myself, or I'd sit there and spoon the beans out of my chili like an ingrate), but as I've gotten older (and eaten poor) I've grown to LOVE black beans in my chili (although pintos are hardly any good for a quesadilla, and even then only just to make them pallatable). So here's the question. How do you do your chili? Comment below!God bless in-laws. Jo's mom dropped by with some noms for us today, including a rather tasty (and a little spicy, nice amount of black pepper) turkey pot pie!!! SO TASTEH.
One of my wife's favorite recipes is my homemade yellow Thai-style curry. It's her usual when we go out for curry, and I've been perfecting it, until it tastes better than restaurant curry! This could just be flattery, but she inhales it quite happily every time I make it.
|
Brunch w/ BlakeHalf-boricuan, half-corn fed Indiana hick. Stir in a taste of the southwest and serve in LA, on the rocks. #BrunchWithBlake #FoodPorn #LAFoodie Archives
July 2021
Other ProjectsCategories
All
|