Totally stole this from a restaurant

This is Tawm

Tawm took me to this restuarant

Where I ate this

It's CALABAZA RELLENA! 

 

I don't know!  All I know is that it is delicious and all I want to eat for the rest of my life.  Most of the last month has been a series of depressed attempts to replace this dish in my life, and extreme self-loathing for taking French instead of Spanish in high school.  Also, I simply do not trust Google Translate for this reason:


Original:  Calabaza Rellena
First Attempt English:  Fill Pumpkin
Second Attempt Spanish:  Llena de calabaza
Second Attempt English:   You fill the pumpkin
Third Attempt Spanish: Que se llenan la calabaza
Final Attempt English:  That fill pumpkin

Anyway, weeks of pining after this amazing Latino-fusion dish, Irv and Shelly's came to the rescue!

They sent me a Butternut Squash!  Not only is it the tastiest of all the squashes, it is the edible bowl of Calabaza Rellena!  It was a sign from the magic-appear-at-your-door-on-Wednesdays produce gods!  So I set out on my mission:  create a recipe from memory only.

YOU WILL NEED...
1-2 Butternut squashes (depending on how many people you are serving)
1 cup of rice (or a couple bags of instant Uncle Ben's)
1 Zucchini
2 Handfulls of crimini mushrooms
10 pieces of shrimp
Butter... a stick of it?
About 1/4c brown or white sugar
Cayenne Pepper, brown pepper, red pepper, cajun seasoning if you have it





Step One:  READY THE EDI-BOWL!

1.  Cut the top off of the Butternut squash and dig out the insides like a jack-o-lantern.  You don't have to carve a face into it if you don't want to.  It is just highly recommended.  And awesome.
2.  Peel and cut the remainder of the butternut squash into hashbrown-sized squares.
3.  Rub brown sugar (or honey) on the inside and rim of the butter-nut-o-lantern and butternut squares.
4.  Put on foil covered cookie sheet in over for 25 minutes at 350.  After 25 minutes, take out squares, but put the bowl back in for another ten minutes.

Step Two:  MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RICE PATTY...
1.  Make some rice.  This is not complicated.  Buy a back of instant Uncle Ben's White rice and throw it in a pan of boiling water.  Follow the directions on the box.  YOU CAN DO IT!

Step Three:  FUN WITH KNIVES

Imagine this guy->

Is these ingredients ->

 

DISMEMBER TO YOUR HEART'S CONTENT

Seriously, though, just chop 'em up and throw them into a large frying pan with a little butter and cook until mushrooms and zucchini are tender.

Step Four:  MAKE THE SAUCE

1.  Melt a half stick of butter, 1/4 c of heavy cream, and about 1/4 c sugar in a pot.  This be your sauce.  Just don't burn it.  Then it be your shame.

Step Five:  MAKE YOUR SHRIMP INTO BUTTERFLIES

1.  The term "butterfly shrimp" confused me for many of my young years, but now I have mastered the technique.  And by mastered I mean I have watched somebody do it.  Clean your shrimp and make a cut all the way down the back so that they look like squishy, gray, unappealing butterflies.  Throw them in a small saute pan with the spices (you can make it as spicy as you want) for about 5-7 minutes.  Do not overcook.  This can also be done with chicken if you happen to hate shrimp.

Step Six:  MIX IT ALL TOGETHER AND TIME IT PERFECTLY LIKE A BOSS

1.  Take that butternut bowl out of the oven!

2.  Mix that sauce into the rice along with the sauteed veggies!

3.  Dump that rice mixture into the butternut bowl!

4.  Throw that blackened shrimp on top!

BOOM!  You've got Calabaza Rellena!

Until next time...

"Why did I move here, I can't feel my face" Stew

So recently I have been dressing a lot like this:



Why pull out the parka?  Because Chicago looks like THIS:


Okay, so I actually look more like this:                   Than                  THIS:
                                                  



Anywho, the current conditions in the Second City inspired this week's recipe:

"Holy Sh*t Chicago is Freezing. WHY DID I MOVE HERE I CAN'T FEEL MY FACE" stew.

I remember my childhood growing up in Athens, OH.  Yes, we got our share of blizzards, especially in the early 90's.  Once the snowstorm settled, the sun would come up and we would wake up to a wonderland of virgin snow that we would later deflower with our sledding competitions and snowball fights.  Even though there was four feet of snow on the ground, the air would be warm enough to play all day in.

...




Temperatures dropped to below zero with a wind chill of FROSTBITE.  I was very close to ripping open a tonton and hibernating for the winter in some cozy space-kangaroo innards.

You will find that most of my recipes in the winter are a reflection of my laziness/hatred of the cold.  This one is no different.  And that, once is again, is the great thing about soup and stew.  You throw a bunch of stuff in a pot and a couple of hours later TADA!  FOOD!

So here's what I found in my house:

In case you can't tell what these are from my atrocious photography skills...
-The long white things are called parsnips.  I have never cooked a parsnip before, so it's another Irv and Shelly's adventure
-The little white blurry thing is garlic
-two small white onions
-Two sweet Potatoes (not shown here)
-An unidentifiable squash that I didn't end up using because it had been sitting in my food basket since Thanksgiving.  It's kind of just photobombing this picture.
-The orange things are carrots.  Idiot.

Step One

 -Peel the carrots, parsnips, potatoes, onions, and garlic.
-Cut the carrots and parsnips into large chunks and place into a lightly sprayed largish saute pan and begin to brown on low.  Cover with lid.
-Quarter the onions and cut up the potatoes into chunks about the size of the carrots and parsnips
-Dice up about three cloves of garlic
-Throw the onions and garlic into the pan to begin to brown as well

Step Two

-Drizzle olive oil into the bottom of the stew pot until it covers the bottom.

-Unwrap the cheap and questionable beef stew meat you bought from Aldi and be sad that it isn't lamb.

-Put burner on low heat and begin to brown the meat slowly.  

-While meat is browning, add the chopped sweet potatoes to the saute pan with the rest of the veggies.

-When meat is done browning, take it out of the stew pot and place it in a bowl.

Step Three

-Pour a can off beef broth into the empty stew pot and whisk to get the flavor off the bottom of the pot.  Keep the burner on low heat and add the meat back into the pot.

-Take the roots and veggies of the burner and pour them into the soup pot and stir until everything is mixed together.

Now for the fun part...                                Step 4: BEER!

-Take a can of Yuengling or whatever beer happens to be around and pour half of it into the soup.  Sound weird?  Yup.  Taste awesome?  Yup.

-Then drink the rest of the beer.  Do.  Not.  Waste.  Beer.

-Fill the stew pot with water until it reaches a point where it is almost covering everything in the pot.  Too much liquid and it will just be weird soup.

-Now what you want to do is add a bay leaf and some salt and pepper to taste, cover it with a lid and cook at an EXTREMELY LOW temperature.  The lowest you can get on your stove top. You are going to want to cook this for three hours +, or until the fibers holding the beef together begin to soften making the meat melt-in-your-mouth deeeeeeeelicous.

Sick Day Soup

Here's what I love about soup.  You can throw anything you want into a pot with some water and people will eat it.  The weirder the ingredients, the more people praise it.  Easiest target?

Wicker Park Hipsters

I live in Bucktown, which is a neighborhood  considered to be conjoined twins with the Wicker Park hipster mecca of Chicago.  This is a damn lie.  Wicker Park is where people go to spend a lot of money to look poor.  Bucktown is just where you go to spend a lot of money.

I swear this leads up a soup recipe.

Anyway, my point is this.  You can get a hipster into anything if you tell him (or her... it's hard to tell.  Sometimes they are wearing the exact same outfit) that he (or she) has never heard of it.  I figure I could make a killing in Wicker park just by extracting things from my refrigerator, throwing them in water, and naming it after some obscure subculture.

I imagine the sales-pitch would go something like this.  (again, I am enlisting the help of owls)

Hipster:  What's in this soup?

Me:  Some pretty obscure ingredients.  You've probably never heard of them.

Hipster:  Oh really.  What's it called?

Me:  I call it Steampunk Delorean Soup!

Hipster:  I need to eat all of it before it goes mainstream!

  

ME

And how did I come up with this clever business venture?  A fever dream of course!

For the last ten days or so I have been pretty sick with some kind of crud, so all I wanted in the world was soup.  However the last thing in the world I wanted to do was leave the house in any way.  Where some would see a sad spiral into eating the crumbs out of the Christamas cookie tin, I saw opportunity for the mandated weekly blog entry.

It starts with one very important ingredient.

ALWAYS HAVE THIS IN YOUR PANTRY.  For my tradition of Sick Day Soup (throwing all the food I have into broth and eating it no matter what it tastes like)  Vegetable broth can be used in all kinds of cooking and tastes WAY better than chicken or beef broth.  I found a can of this in my kitchen my problems vanished.  No zombie-esque walks to the 7-11 for a can of condensed Cambell's for me!  No sir.  I cracked that puppy open and began to raid the fridge.

What I found:

  

Red cabbage, crimini mushrooms, an onion, and some leftover ham from the six pounds of pig my parents dragged to Chicago.

So, without any particular goal in mind I set to work.

1)  slice up 1/2 the cabbage until it looks like this:

Also slice up the onion and some garlic (this isn't cheating.  You should always have a crap ton of garlic in your house NO EXCUSES).  Throw those into a pan with some olive oil and saute away on a low temp stirring occasionally.  

2)  While cabbage and garlic are sauteing, chop up the mushrooms (I assume any kind will work, I just happened to have crimini in the fridge) and set aside.

3)  Slice up whatever leftover ham your parents have left in your fridge into cubes.  Throw cubes and mushrooms into the saute pan as well and stir frequently for about three minutes.  Basically just make sure you don't overcook the mushrooms.

4)  Empty the contents of the saute pan into a soup pot.

5)  Pour in can of vegetable broth fill with water until contents are just covered.  Throw in a dash of salt and pepper, stir, and cover with a pot lid.

6) Put it on high heat, wait until it gets to a boil then IMMEDIATELY lower to the lowest setting of heat you have.  (If you are like me and have a gas stove, this is a delicate balancing act between perfectly cooked food and a gas leak).

7)  When you are done, it should resemble this:

Looks disgusting, right?  

IT WAS DELICIOUS.  I dub this recipe a success and it goes in the recipe book.  Mazzocca out.

Post One: I get talked into not one, but two New Years Resolutions

Once upon a week ago, I was very intoxicated at a New Years Eve party.  I am usually careful and cautious at events that center around the new year for two very good reasons:  1) Champagne corks are a menace and 2) New Years Resolutions. I gave up on the NYE tradition of making promises I couldn't keep when I realized I didn't have a future in politics.  Why let yourself and everyone else down if you aren't lobbying for a public office?  This year it went awry.  It's my fault.  I let my guard down.

It all started at Rosebud Italian Restaurant in the heart of Little Italy in Chicago with a plate of Lobster Ravioli

In case you aren't familiar with the Chicago Culinary scene, Rosebud is DELICIOUS.  They manage to keep the place classy while still being friendly, only falling prey to the Italian stereotype of a Sinatra shrine.  But that's okay because Sinatra is the best performer who has ever lived. 

Anyway.

During the evening I had a bowl of minestrone,  bruschetta, some absolutely insane cheesecake, and of course the all important bowl of pasta... stuffed with seafood... covered in sauce.  If you have ever wondered why us Italians are so loud, carry ourselves with a lot of bravos, and are right all the time it all boils down to one simple fact:  enough pasta will give you the illusion of superpowers.  For instance:  the illusion that because you have eaten a meal of 80% carbs you can drink champagne and make good decisions at the same time.  Such was my downfall.

The first culprit was a bottle of Pinot Noir.  Innocent enough with dinner and split with three other people.  We made our way back to my apartment, happy and full of pasta (ergo indestructible).  We decided to gear up for our friend's New Year's party by playing an awesome, but dangerous game:

Star Trek:  The Drinking Game

Netflix was kind enough to oblige us with the full Star Trek series.  The one without Kirk, but we watched it anyway.  To give you an idea of the outcome, here were the rules:

Take a drink every time:

1)  Someone says or does something racist that is actually meant to look tolerant.

2)  Someone says or does something sexist that is meant to look tolerant.

3)  Every time Jordi forgets he isn't hosting Reading Rainbow

4)  If the doors to the bridge lead to a different room than they did in the previous scene

5)  Any extended shot of someone looking concerned for way too long

6)  Whenever Patrick Stewart looks annoyed at the appalling performances of the other actors on the show.

Needless to say, we were on top of the world by the time we reached the home of this man:

Owen.  Freaking.  Lowery.

There were balloons, dinosaur decorations, DINOSAUR FINGER PUPPETS, food made of things inside of other things.  And booze.  Lots and lots of booze.  We were all flies in his seductive web of festive streamers.

About an hour until midnight we were all called into the kitchen, which knowing Owen I assumed would be a sing-along.  I am always down for a sing-along, so I got my incapacitated ass into the kitchen ready to sing my heart out to The Unicorn Song (a group favorite).

But I was wrong.  Horribly, horribly wrong.  Owen brought out a bag of what looked like shredded documents and announced that he was giving us all New Years resolutions.  I was trapped... but I didn't realize it.  Why?  Enter...

This jerk.

Champagne gives me an overwhelming feeling of cheer and can do-ness that when mixed with pasta powers is a recipe for bad bad things done with a gigantic drunken grin on my face.

So I stayed in the room.  And to my surprise... no harm done!  My resolution was to buy a cup of coffee for a stranger once a month.  I am a supporter of caffeinated goodwill, so hell yes.

But then midnight came... and many more bottles of champagne... and I stayed in room.  Damnit Champagne Nicki.  Why did you stay in the room.

Enter... KELLYE THE ROOMMATE.

Look at them sly gypsy eyes.  She knew what she was doing.  Oh.  She knew.

I wish I could go more into detail about what followed, but at that point I was doing things like this (dramatic interpretation by pictures of owls I found on google):

Kellye Owl:  

You should totally start a cooking blog as a New Years Resolution.

Nicki Owl:  

OMG I TOTALLY SHOULD!

Not only did I accept this immediately, I was exactly as enthusiastic as the owl above.  I told everyone about it, in detail, and now... thanks to Champagne Nicki (that really really does look a LOT like that ow.)... I have to do it.

What I am proposing...

 I am currently enrolled with a program called Irv and Shelley's Fresh Picks which delivers local, farm-fresh produce TO MY DOOR.  This is both awesome and delicious.  The problem is that I can't identify half of the stuff they give me.  What I will do is once a week invent a recipe (no cheating!) with whatever they give me + whatever happens to be in my house.  If I fail with a recipe I promise not to withhold information, you will know of my shame.  

If I succeed, it goes in the recipe book.  And if you happen to be Kellye the Roommate you have to eat it.