Culinary Discoveries: Post-Mother

I think in alot of households, you learn to cook from your mother (although nowadays its not so common. People order out or eat oversalted tv dinners). Your mothers favorite dishes become yours in your adult/family life. I have to say that for me, that sooooo wasn't the case!

To start with the photo at the top, Filet Mignon in a cherry-cabernet reduction sauce is definitely something that is higher on the culinary challenges than boiling pasta, and dumping a jar of ragu on top of it. That is the next venture that I am going to try to cook. I wanted to compare and contrast some things that my mother made, to the things I make now that are soooo different.

This steak above, is just a regular store bought steak. Possibly a small London Broil seasoned with salt pepper, and garlic powder. Yeah it tastes good. But... something was missing. Perhaps FLAVOR! Also my mother made everything well done. I hadn't discovered RARE meat (lamb/steak) until I was in my early 20s going to the Columbia University Hospital Christmas Party with my friends' mom every year when I ate my first bloody piece of filet mignon. My mouth watered like the carnivore that I am, and it was love at first taste. I never cooked a piece of meat well done again! I didnt know what I was missing all those years! So many juicy flavors! Mmmmm I'm getting hungry just thinking about this.

Here are some other comparisons from my childhood meals in the 1980s NJ, compared with my favorite meals that I cook NOW in 2010-2011.

[Food] [Why]

Ramen Noodles Cheap

[My version/substitute]

Kraft Cheese and Macaroni. Its still cheap but tastes better. Plus you can combine it w/ any left over meat, add bbq, sweet and sour sauce or eat with pigs ina blanket (a fave of mine if I'm looking for a super cheap meal)

[Food] [Why]

Hotdogs Cheap and they have protein

[My Version]

Miso glazed chicken drumsticks. Get a light miso, season, throw in toaster oven or broiler. Done in 15min. MUCH better tasting than hotdogs and more high end..

[Food]

Spaghetti with Franceso Rinaldi Sauce Straight outta the jar over it.

[Why]

Cheap and easy to make. The sauce is supposedly seasoned already. It claims it is but...eh

[My Version]

Linguini (flat pasta picks up sauce more) with Amatriciana sauce. I found out about this sauce on the show "No Reservations" with Anthony Bourdain. I fucking love that man!!! OMG I won tickets to see him on Feb 10th too! I can't wait! He's so funny. He's a chef, who travels and talks about whatever during his travel in the country he's in. If you don't watch it, DO IT! Its on Monday nights at 10 on the Travel Channel. Amatriciana sauce, as I got from the episode (and added tweaks of my own) is Vodka sauce (preferably a higher grade one. They taste better!), 4 tablespoons of olive oil in a pan, a whole bulb (may not be for everyone but I'm accustomed to indian level spice by now) of garlic, minced, sauteed in the olive oil, oregano, basil, pepper, sea salt, onion powder, crushed red pepper for SPICE, if you're a spice lover like me, and sundried tomatos. Combine all that in a pan and cook. Add about 1/2 cup of a dry sherry (with a woody tone). When you are done, mix in fresh parsley, or sprinkle it on top of your dish. I also add chicken to this and sautee the chicken in the garlic and olive oil first, then add everything else. Plain pasta with Franceso Rinaldi sauce is so boring and bland compared to the foods I've eaten since those days. My amatriciana sauce is the best. I think its suppsed to be made with anchoivies but I dont like fish so i omitted them and added garlic.

[Food] [Why]

Shake n Bake Pork Chops Easy to make. shake in a bag and throw in oven.

[My Version]

12 different spices to form a dry rub- salt, pepper, oregano,paprika, seasoning salt, parsley, cajun seasoning, crushed red pepper, caeynne pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, cumin. Mix all togethber in a dry bin and rub the spice onto a wet piece of meat. Cook wrapped in tin foil slowly at 250deg and you'll have a nice juicy flavorful (shake and bake with 75xmore flavor than the real shake and bake.

I'm getting tired so lemme just do some another way....

She made chicken parmigiana. I basically make it the same way. No change, except I garnish my plate before I sit down to eat because I am artisitcally inclined and would like to present my food welll. I genereally dont eat sauce on the pasta since I'm kind of over with sauce. As long as the parm has sauce on it, I'm good. I salt the pasta with sea salt in the pot which gives it a nice zing.

Pork Roast. My mother used to just put that honey/soy marinade on it and cook it. It was good. I can make that too, altho I use vietnamese light soy and more honey to balance the acidity of the flavors.

I also put hoisin and sake (rice wine) you can ge it at the liquor store and bake it and it gives it a chinese spareib taste with a twist.

Another thing I can do is make a soy, sherry ginger and cinnemon marinade with chives and shallots, marinade it, bake it on low temp and have an exotic south asian (thai vietnamese or indonesian) flavor to the roast.

Hamburgers. She would cook them in a greasy pan. Sean with Garlic/onion powder and pop em on our plate. I make them on the grill season with the same (since garlic falls off), cook em mediumrare, put honey smokehouse from jack daniels sauce on them, toast the bun and serve. All my friends loved them.

Meatloaf. Not a fan. Never was. Someting about meatlof makes me nauseous. I prefer to get a whole chicken and season it with lemon pepper seasonings, cook it then serve with lipton herb and butter rice. I dont know how to make that stuff but its great.

Noodle Roni. That is made from Rice A Roni, just for pasta. You add milk and margerine to a packet of powder and pasta and it becomes a meal. For those I would just say I can make 3 different sauces on my own for you.

Carbonara Sauce - Margerine, chicken stock, flour, garlic, 2 thin chicken cutlets, add heavy cream, 1/2 cup of grated parmesean cheese, pepper, fresh parsley. You get a much more high end result and it is restaurant grade.

Basil Cream Garlic Sauce- Margerine, garlic, 1/2cheese, heavy cream, bunches of basil leaves depending how much flavor you want. i like alot. simmer and serve

Alfredo Sauce - heavy cream, half stick of butter, one raw egg, mixed in1/2cheese or less to get thickness you want. Parsley to garnish.

That's all I can think of. But the way we cook is very different. I notice alot of people feed their kids a hotdog, and peas and carrots, or a pb&j sandwich, or some cereal. Sometimes chicken lightly seasoned or marinaded in italian dressing. I do know people personally around my age who love to cook and it shows, since they are performing more upscale dishes than the typical person. If I ever get to have kids, my kids are gonna hate eating over their friends houses cuz I'm so accustomed to this type of cooking (thanks Top Chef!) and the fact that culinary arts has become one of my hobbies and I enjoy creating new dishes. They are probaly not gonna wanna eat anything at their friends houses. So be it though. You only live once. The way things are going economic wise, terrorist wise, and astronomically wise, who knows how much longer we'll have left. Just live like each day is your last! Get some change into your diet.

KGB is stalking me ♪♫

I am so glad I live in a country that allows the freedom of speech. If I were in the old Communist Russia, somebody would've come lookin' for me, and I would've disappeared in the middle of the night, never to be head from again, where I'd likely be shot execution style in a black sedan with blacked out windows, or thrown in some gulag to rot and die.



About every 3 months, congress threatens to stop unemployment. Every time it puts us on edge about how we are going to make ends meet. They stopped extensions a few months ago. I watched a friend lose her home and move out of state where she knows noone because she had no other choice. Another friend is thinking of doing the same. I know I could be next. Except I wouldn't move. Where the hell am I gonna go??? I said I'd stay here til the bitter end. I still have some fight left in me. I worked too hard to get to the shore and i'm not leaving without a fight. Though I'm generally considered a failure to my other working, young professional friends, who are living in (it seems) the lap of luxury, shopping, new cars, exotic vacays, buying houses, remodeling kitchens (seems like every single person is doing this!!!!!) getting married, investing in stocks and so on...., I have to keep on trucking with my loser self and survive. Its easier to be around people who don't have as much money, and I can say "I'm broke" without being looked down on. I was doing ok for a while, but I'm about to dip into poverty once again. I did in June, and again in Sept.



Congress reinstated the UE benefits but now is talking of lowering NJ's UE payout because its "too high" and doesnt give incentive for people to get back to work. For this, I must rant...

There are not enough JOBS for the 10% of this population to get back to work. So punishing everyone else just because a small few sit home and collect and dont look for work is not fair. There is no way every single person, or even an acceptable portion of them will return to work. Where are they gonna work? Who is hiring?And I speak from experience that when you apply to a low level, unskilled job, you most likely will not get called. Some of those jobs wouldn't even pay the bills anyway. Sometimes you may be better off on UE waiting for a job that will cover the expenses. If you can meet all your expenses on UE, and a job calls you wanting to pay you half of the UE, and you know you'll lose your home if you take it, um.....what would most people do? WAIT for something else! I mean if you have UE. If you don't, you have to take it and hope Burger King will hire you for the night shift. I can't even get a min. wage job either! I've applied at every place around here. No callbacks. None whatsoever.

I am sickened that people are always trying to punish the unemployed. Using threats to get them back to work. They dont want to borrow from the federal government anymore to fund UE, but when the UE'd people reach the end of the line, they will apply for welfare, housing assistance, section 8, medicaid and other assistance programs. Someone will need to pay to house these people who can't pay their rent/mortgage anymore. Someone will need to put them in shelters, hotels, affordable housing. Someone will need to feed these people. Someone will need to foot the bills for the kids to get vaccinated and see Drs. Someone will have to pay for training programs to get these people jobs (which don't exist anyway). Who will be paying for that if NJ exhausted its money? THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.



I have temped during this time and I have met many temps who have told me they lost everything. Their home, their car, their children. Have no credit. Bankrupt. Sleeping on a friend's couch until the friend gets tired of them there. Can't even afford to keep a car on the road (insurance/gas) to look for a job. So many people have these stories. I know I could be one of those people. I have tried to work as much as I could, doing the shittiest of the shitty jobs you can think of. I've been treated like an idiot. Like I had no capacity to do anything but rip paper, or file. I've lost my dignity. Why? To survive! The last thing I want now is for congress to pull the rug out from under me and punish me for not finding a real job by cutting my UE down in size. I dont know what my new UE will be in Aug. Iread an article today that says that it is now 2/3 of the previous income (which in my case was low paying temp jobs). Before it was 60%. So it should be slightly higher. I was worried my new UE would be too low to live. It may be. I wasn't able to score a temp job over $14/hr this year. Last year I did. It just seems like theres never any rest if you're unemployed. You are always left to worry every few months, while you see people around you prospering and succeeding. I can't seem to get past that though. I hate watching my friends succeed while I fail. But there's no hope. I used to be successful too. Used to be.



The next 2 months will be very tense ones as I await my fate of my new UE payout in April, and to see if I get an extension to cover me from Feb 9 when my UE runs out til April when my new claim starts up (since I worked I get a new claim). And congress will probably throw in a few more attempts to stop UE or cut it down I'm sure. This country is going to hell. I dont' know how we're gonna get out of this. I refuse to live this way. I want to live comfortably. I want to work. I'll work my ass off. I'm not lazy. As long as I'm bringing home $, and I can survive on it, I'll do whatever it takes. Becoming a nurse will take YEARS since Unemployment blocked me from taking too many classes at a time. I'm no longer allowed to go full time. Even at night. I feel like they are trapping me in the system. They want me off UE, but every time I think of a way to gET off, they block me from doing it. I'll be on for a while. I dont plan to stop working. They have to pay me UE as long as I work. Its cheaper to let me have my way. Its your loss though, Uncle Sam. Your loss.




In other news...
I had a good Xmas. First xmas I didn't spend alone!!! Yay! Hung out w/ one friend on Xmas Eve, and 2 more on Xmas day. The day after xmas wasn't so great.

There was a huge snowstorm that dumped 3 feet of snow onto the Jersey Shore (I'm not exaggerating). From Dec 26, 2010, to Dec 31, 2010, I was stuck in my apt. Unable to go anywhere. My apt is small. I hate being locked up in small spaces. Day 2 I was able to hop down the street in crotch high snow to the end of the block to see if that street was plowed, and hop back. It sucked all the energy out of me.


This is my car on the second night of snow imprisonment. I am walking on frozen snow in the middle of my street, and looking down at my car which is burried up to the windows almost. My car is high off the ground compared to most cars.

Below is my street, looking back towards my house from my car. 3ft of snow in the street.



On New Years Eve the plow finally came through. Our township (Neptune) probably couldn't plow us out because they cut costs and couldn't pay people to do it. Our mayor repeatedly said on the website that plows would be thru the town by the morning. Every morning there was nothing. We had plows come from Maryland to get us out. My town was on the news for its pathetic snow clearing plan. Neptune itself is kinda ghetto and thats why I'm not surprised. My portion, is actually a part of Neptune but is not ghetto.
My message to you!

Once again, glad I'm not in communist Russia. Or someone'd be knockin on my door tonight and I'd never be heard from again. My blog is becoming commonplace for anti-government rants.