I love to experiment while cooking. You're not being judged on Master Chef on technical presentation, you're in your own private kitchen fulfilling the #1 Rule of Cooking which a Jamaican chef explained to me once and that is whatever pleases your palate. Cooking, dunno know why but it's alot like politics - My way of cooking is The way - when just give me something good to eat, something that sticks to my ribs. Anyway bought a swordfish steak last week and here's what I did:
Diced up a small tomato, 1/2 a white onion and a jalapeno, all small dice (on Master Chef they'd have to be perfect squares but I ain't into the ocd style of cooking). Put them in a small bowl and added some olive oil and mixed it up. Drizzled everything on top of the swordfish and then some bread crumbs and even some Parmesan (dunno if Joe Bastianich would approve but fuck him), the whole idea being to give it that toasted appearance. Got my oven preheated to 400 (don't tell anyone but it was actually a toaster oven) and then put the steak on a foil tray. OK oven ready and so on another tray just below that was my asparagus which was drizzled with some olive oil, salt & peppa and a freshly crushed garlic clove. I prefer freshly crushed garlic to the bottled kind but whatever. So I'm watching the thing for about, oh I don't know 10 or 15 minutes, even used a small flashlight to see what's going on in there and towards the end just cranked that baby up to 450. Total time about 20, 22 minutes and put the bad boy on my plate with the asparagus kind of on each side. I actually think Gordon Ramsay would have liked it and the guy in the middle but Joe would have just taken a bite and walked away. You know I do my own thing in the kitchen and it rocked!! The cat outside even smelled it from all the way out there and came in and jumped up on the table. The things you can do with such modest equipment and it's good for you too. I didn't do anything radical like you see in some cookbooks and put a pineapple on top, chefs must be getting bored or something these days. Bon appetit!
No matter how good it is and no matter how much effort you put into it, your own cooking is just never quite as good as if someone else made it. Man I hate that.
ReplyDeleteI also think coffee taste better when someone else brews it!
ReplyDeleteDon't get me started on quiche! everyone got their own way but mine rocks. Cooking is too rules oriented today. Yeah there has to be a few rules and you have to do things that make sense and know what you're doing but it's not like fixing a car. It's more creative and the goal should be to have fun. My favorite fish is not swordfish though but salmon. Swordfish does not have a dominant flavor, kind of a mild delayed flavor but I'll eat it from time to time.
ReplyDeleteVery impressive... where's your vegetarian recipes?!
ReplyDeleteWhat is your opinion of the vegans? you know those who take vegetarianism to the next level and won't even eat dairy products? had a customer at work once who ordered a special vegan-style Thanksgiving Day meal. She didn't look too healthy.
ReplyDeleteVeganism is something you can't take lightly. If you're going to be serious about it you have to be intelligent, do your research, know your nutrients and know about all the hidden things in food and other products. If you do that, there's no problem. Kids have been raised from birth as vegans and haven't had any trouble.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that occurs to me is that your customer might have had some other food issues, like an eating disorder of some type. There are people who adopt diets like veganism as a cover for a really dysfunctional eating pattern.
I've been a vegetarian most of the last 25 years; I was a vegan for 3 but I couldn't sustain it. For the past 10 years being a vegetarian has been a religious requirement; however, we do take dairy products (but not eggs). Even with dairy, though, you have to watch: so many yogurts use gelatin as a stabilizer and so many ice creams have eggs in them. Reading labels is an absolute must.
If it was a religious thing, I could probably learn enough to manage being vegan; but I have serious issues with the fruitarians, and as far as the raw folks go, well, more power to them but I'm far too attached to soup and big pots of yummy stuff with beans in it.
And if you're interested I can give you the names of a few really great vegie cookbooks.
Well when you stop to think about it plants and vegetables and fruits are living things too. Hey why don't we just do the right thing and starve ourselves to death and then the various organisms can have the planet to themselves.
ReplyDeleteNobody's tellin you to be a vegetarian. You're right that plants are also living creatures too, but it's the lesser of two evils.
ReplyDeleteThis is ultimately a choice every person has to make for themselves. I'm happy with my choice. If you're happy with yours, then what's the issue?
That being said, I'm sure that you must have ONE good vegie recipe in your arsenal. :)
Yeah, roasted veggies. Get a few red, green, yellow and orange peppers rocking. I kinda give the bias to the red and green but whatever. Cut 'em up and then some yellow and green squash. I like to cut those up at an angle for a bigger slice but other folks do it their way. Next up an eggplant which I cut down the middle and then cut into big half moon slices, not too thick though. BTW you know you have a dull knife if you have trouble cutting your eggplant. Then a nice red onion and some mushrooms. The mushrooms can be sliced but lately I just leave 'em whole. Of course wash everything, hell throw in some asparagus if you're game and put it all in a big mixing bowl. Oil, salt/pepper, garlic powder or crushed garlic, maybe some parsley flakes, even some oregano or crushed basil. In short whatever floats your boat. Put on some latex or vinyl gloves and mix it all up well and put the veggies on a large tray with foil underneath and spread 'em out and use two trays if you have alot of veggies so they cook better. Oven at 350 or 375. Dunno know why but I'm more a 350 guy. Leave in oven anywhere from 20-30 minutes. I go by how they look before I take 'em out. Folks seem to go for the mushrooms first.
ReplyDeleteWe had a chef who sliced some eggplant on the slicer rather thin, dipped 'em in a big mixing bowl of eggs and then breaded them. Probably added some salt & pepper to the egg mixture along with maybe some parsley flakes and even parmesan, at least that's the way I used to season the chicken cutlets. Then he fried them in the deep fryer until I began complaining about I always had to clean the fryer so he began baking them. So there you go, roasted veggies and fried eggplant.
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