Blackened catfish

The Chief Taster likes to tease me about my affinity for spicy foods.  She claims it is because I can not smell things, so I like those strong, spicy flavors.  I think she teases me because she's envious of my high pain threshold, and secretly disappointed and ashamed that her delicate German palate can't handle those delicious Cajun dishes.

Blackened catfish is a happy medium.  Heavy on flavor (while still allowing the catfish itself to feature prominently in your mouth), and just enough spice to warm you a little.  I used this recipe, and I offer this warning: remove the batteries from your smoke detector before you begin cooking.  Then--this is key--put them back once the air has cleared, and before you go to bed.  Don't even bother thinking your range hood fan will keep the smoke moving enough.  You're fooling yourself.  Open all the windows, turn on the fans, but silence that smoke alarm, because if you have one, it'll activate.

On the other hand, if you need to test the efficacy of your smoke alarm, this recipe has an added benefit.

I only missed one thing: I forgot to drizzle butter over the fillets when I put them in the pan.  It didn't seem to matter, because I swear upon all the dogs I have ever loved that this stuff is amazing.  I almost wept twice that night: once when I had to run down the hall with a chair to kill the smoke alarm while I was still trying to manage things in the kitchen (I also had a barley millet skillet and some popovers in the works) and just felt frustrated and stretched thin, and once when I first took a bite of that delicious fish.  If it weren't for all the smoke (which is normal, and to be expected when you cook something with "blackened" right in the name), I'd make this twice a week.

Barley-Millet Skillet

If you can find a copy of the Sacajawea Cookbook (at the time I wrote this post, Powell's had two copies left), and you like big game and grains, it's an Off Belay Cafe-endorsed investment.  On the one hand, some of the dishes are a laughable, because so many of them--even in the "vegetables" section--open with "1 pound of elk/bison/venison/beef.  A friend, leafing through while I made the Barley Millet Skillet for the first time, noticed that there is one recipe which appears twice in the book, with different names, but with identical ingredients and procedure.  On the other hand, I've never made anything from this cookbook and reflected later that I feel no need to ever make it again.  It's all good.  Maybe because most of it starts with a pound of meat, but not necessarily.

I like this dish as an all-purpose side because it's full of vegetables and grains, and pairs well with everything to which I've introduced it.  Plus, it's more interesting than just another serving of rice, and the name rhymes, so it's fun to say.  Go ahead, try it!  I'll wait here.

I bought our barley and millet bulk, and it wasn't until after I'd made this the first time that we realized that the "quick-cooking barley" specified in the recipe might be something we could have found in a box elsewhere in the store.  By then, we'd already figured out how to fake our way through with what we had, and we were happy with the results, so I bought bulk the next time we wanted it, too.  Here's the catch: barley cooks in about 45 minutes.  Millet only takes 15.  Solution: I toasted the barley in the skillet first, then dumped it into the simmering broth to cook while I toasted the millet.  When my timer was down to about fifteen minutes, I added the millet.  Stir well with this addition.  I forgot to stir it once when I was too busy and distracted in the kitchen, and the millet was a little too crunchy.  While the grains kept each other company, I stir-fried the veggies.

Barley, toasting in a big skillet.  You may hear little pops, like tiny popcorn.  That's normal, but remember to stir it so you don't get a bunch of burnt grain.

Toasting millet.  Use just a little olive oil for both grains.  It will cook better, and make it easier to scrape everything into the broth later.

Carrots, bell pepper, and red onion.  This is a slight diversion from the recipe, because these are the veggies I had.  That's the nice thing about recipes; they're usually pretty flexible.  This is also good with broccoli or celery.

Blackened catfish is in the background; we'll talk about that next week.

When the grain is done cooking, it will probably have absorbed all the broth.  Then you can dump it into the skillet with the veggies and let everybody get warm and cozy together before you lean out the kitchen door and bellow, "come gitcho vittles!"

Beef Stroganoff

I first made this for the Chief Taster when I still lived in Oregon, and she came out for a visit.  It's one of those dishes I usually think of as "quick and easy" until I actually start making it, but I've had enough practice with it that now all the things that seem to happen at the same time and used to stymie my calm aren't the concern that they used to be.  I had made it for myself once before her visit, but I'm pretty sure I can remember saying a lot of colorful and panicky things while cooking it for her that first time that were generally met with a timid, cautious call from the couch.  "No, I'm fine!  Don't mind me!"  I would frantically reassure her, moments before adding, "Oh, crap!  It's all over the counter!"

I'm better at planning it now, and I do things a little differently than the recipe suggests.  You can't tell from the results.

Beef.  It's what I sometimes make for dinner.

 We each have a 12" Lodge skillet.  Normally, that's what I use to cook pasta sauce, or whatever combination of meat, onion, and garlic goes into a larger dish.  It would work for this, too, but instead of topping the noodles with the beef mixture, I like to mix them both together once they're each done cooking.  This calls for a larger pot.  A pound of egg noodles already barely fits in the pot I use for pasta, so I cook the beef, onions, and mushrooms in the larger half of a Lodge Combo Cooker, which gives me plenty of room to cook the saucy portion, and to stir in noodles later.  Dad got me a large set of Lodge cast iron several Christmases ago, and since that time I've barely used the Cuisinart pans I was once so proud of selecting for myself.  I still use them when I need pots (pasta, rice, some soups), but I fricking love cooking in these skillets.  Plus, cleaning them is a breeze.  Sometimes all I have to do is run a paper towel around inside, and I'm done.

The other picture was a mess because the steam caught all the flash.

I prefer mixing in the noodles because the Chief Taster's lunches are almost always leftovers from dinner.  Adding sauce right after draining the pasta keeps it from sticking together, and make sit really easy to dish into microwaveable single-serving containers.  Voila, leftovers are done!

Just typing this post made me hungry.  The pictures are killing me.

Mince

There are a lot of kitchen instructions that people who cook a lot just take for granted.  I cook a lot, so I'm often guilty of this.  I recently learned (as I worked with someone else from a recipe card I had written) that not everyone knows that T is tablespoon and t is teaspoon; perhaps I'll cover kitchen abbreviations and conversions someday.  In any case, as you spend more time in kitchens, and experiment more with food and cooking, you will also start to take a lot of things for granted and eventually forget that there was a time when you didn't know them.  I will try to remember that I've also forgotten, and because I'd like this guide to be accessible to everyone, I'll occasionally post tips on how to do those things that any cook should know.  If it sounds too patronizing, understand that is not my goal--it probably just means that you didn't need that particular lesson.  If I get it wrong, let me know.  We're all learning here.

How to mince garlic cloves:
Break a clove of garlic from the bulb.  You can easily do this by holding the bulb in one hand and rolling your thumb against a clove.  If you're starting a new bulb of garlic, you may have to peel off some of the paper first to expose a bulb.

Peel the paper off the individual clove.  There's a knack to it, but once you figure it out, you're set.  It usually helps to work from the bottom of the clove, where the papery skin is thicker.

Use a big, sturdy kitchen knife for this part.  Put the clove on a cutting board, under the side of the blade.  Press down (carefully--after all, knives are made to be sharp, and the palm of your hand is a nasty place to get cut) on the blade using the heel of your palm to crush the garlic clove a little.  You don't have to flatten it--just smoosh it a little.  The picture shows me using a finger, but that's because I only have two hands, and couldn't get a shot of me using my palm while holding the knife and the camera.  Zaphod Beeblebrox might be able to manage, but he's a barely-functional drunk, and not to be trusted with your food.

Slightly smashed.  Unlike Zaphod Beeblebrox.

minced!

Next, chop up your slightly smashed garlic clove into even smaller bits.  I usually go at it from a couple different angles to get all the pieces nice and small, but maybe you want big chunks of garlic.  Who am I to judge?

Apple Cinnamon Muffins

Dad bought us a pair of muffin pans for Christmas, and as of this writing, I've only used them to make two things (multiple times each): popovers, and apple cinnamon muffins.  I have no regrets, but someday soon I'm going to try some other muffins, and maybe, if I get extremely ambitious, tiny pies.

In the meantime, there are muffins.  I got the recipe from Betty Crocker, but the one she posted online uses Bisquick, and that's not what I have in my book.

Start by slicing the apples thin.  You can peel them first, but  if you chop them finely, it really doesn't matter, and you get better fiber and nutrient content this way.  Also, I am lazy.

Stack up a few slices and cut them in both remaining directions.

Got everything in the bowl?  Good.  Mix it up.  If you feel it needs more cinnamon, or nutmeg, or maybe even a little ground cloves, those are all good.  Anything that works in an apple pie works in apple muffins.

Admittedly, this looks pretty awful now, but this is just a big pile of batter (with raw egg), so you shouldn't eat it,  anyway.

Spoon your batter into the muffin cups after greasing the bottoms only.  The recipe I have says it makes a dozen muffins, so I just try to get roughly the same amount in each cup.

After baking.  The Girl prefers them with streusel topping, but I had an eight-hour drive ahead of me, so I was lazy that morning.