Wote in the Kitchen.

Tonight! We return to our programming with a conundrum. We are hungry, the house is empty, and we’ve already put on pajamas so no going to the store for extra supplies. I’ve rooted around and found the following:

Materials Two sweet potatoes. One onion. One head of garlic. Olive oil. 3/4oz Earth Balance. 3/4oz Coconut oil. 1.5oz Flour. One pint Soy milk. One teaspoon red miso paste. Nutritional yeast. Herbs de Provence. Paprika. Cumin. Chipotle powder. Panko. Salt & pepper.

Right, so we’ve found ourselves some tasty things. Let’s combine.

I chunked the sweet potatoes into pieces about as big as the end of my thumb, rough chopped the onions, and peeled and halved all the garlic. Toss with some olive oil and salt on a baking sheet, then oven at 375 for about 30 min. Toss it once in the middle. While that’s going, bust out your scale and measure out your coconut oil and Earth Balance. If you can eat butter, that would go well here instead of both of these. Remember that this is by weight, and the fat/flour has to match pretty closely to work well. Set the fat into a skillet on medium heat to melt, then measure out your flour. Gluten free baking mix works well here, I like Bob’s Red Mill when I’m cooking for nongluten folks. Since this is just for me, I’m using wheat.

Make yourself a roux. I trust that you know how to do this, but in case you don’t, I’ll let this guy tell you all about it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNT-rVQxiys

Bear in mind that if you’re doing this vegan, it’ll be a bit drier. Add some olive oil in if it needs it, to hold it together. Cook it for about 5 minutes or so on med-low to get rid of the floury taste, then add in the miso paste and combine. I use a little gravy whisk my dad gave me, it’s perfect for this sort of thing. Then pull off the heat, add in the miso paste, and whisk in the soy milk a quarter cup or so at first, then all the rest. Put back on very low heat, add in about a teaspoon of nutritional yeast, a healthy palm full of HdP, and a rough half teaspoon of paprika, cumin, and chipotle. Wing it here until it smells good. I added in about a teaspoon of fresh black pepper.

Go ahead and let that sit on low for the rest of the time your oven is going.

So, this is a basis for a dish here, but it’s by no means complete. What else do you have in your fridge or freezer that looks good? It’ll probably work in this. I’ve got this great little 8″ square baking dish that’s about 3″ deep, and I put the last half cup or so of a can of french friend onions in the bottom, and half a bag of vegan ground beef substitute that I had leftover from enchiladas last week (which was super good but I forgot to take pictures of it, I’m sorry, I’ll do it again with a camera). 

Mix oven vegetables into whatever else you’ve got, then pour the sauce over it. Mix that up, add a thin layer of panko (and if you’ve got a cooking oil spray give it a mist so the panko gets golden and pretty), and toss it into the oven for about 25 min.

Okay, so let's say you want to impress someone. You've got a person you like coming over for dinner, you want to make something that'll blow their mind. The answer lies in simplicity, my friend. No overly complex and showy dishes here, just good and honest fare that tastes great. 

I give to you: red sauce.

Materials One yellow onion. Half can tomato paste.  Red wine. Herbs de Provence. One zucchini. Handful mushrooms. One bell pepper. Handful garlic. Large can tomatoes. Spiral pasta.

Get out a deep skillet. I use my cast iron, but it’s well seasoned and pretty much bulletproof by this point. Some people have opinions about using a cast iron for acidic dishes like tomato-based sauce, but I find it works well for me. Your results, opinions, and cookery-based nerd rage may vary. Use what you’ve got on hand. Fair warning, this is going to involve a bit of carbon on the bottom of the pan. Nothing a little boiling water won’t solve, but I don’t recommend using a Teflon-coated implement. Right, warnings over. Let’s cook.

Chop that onion into pieces about the size of a nickel. The more even they are the more evenly they’ll cook, and the better the dish looks at the end. Remember, we’re impressing someone tonight. While you’re at it, chop up that zucchini by quartering it longways then slicing thinly, making little quarter circle pieces about the same size as your onion bits. Do the mushrooms and bell pepper now too. Halve the mushrooms then slice about the same, slice the pepper vertically and then chop into the same size. All samey here is the goal.

Guest sous hands. Cooking is more fun with people you like!

Toss the onions (and a little oil) into the pan you’ve carefully selected on med-high heat. Cook for about 5 minutes or until they look something close to this:

At this point, drop in the tomato paste and mash it around. Keep the heat med-high, we’re burning this paste on purpose.

Sweet action shot, no?

Open that bottle of wine you've got. I like something cheap but drinkable, usually a blend. Trader Joe’s usually has one in the $6-7 range that’s pretty tasty. This week ours has a question mark on the label, and was pretty good. We’re going to deglaze this pan every few minutes with a splash of wine. The paste will burn a bit, and the onions will get darker spots, and stick. Toss some wine in, just a couple tablespoons, and scrape the bottom with something. I use a silicone spatula.

This is starting to smell amazing, and we’re only halfway there. Deglaze this about four times, until the paste is much darker than it started, then toss in the rest of the vegetables and a healthy layer of the herbs. Reduce your heat to a medium-low.

Let that cook for a few minutes. Crush that garlic, then chop it small. Don’t use a press, what’s the matter with you? Garlic press crushes the cells of garlic in a weird way, which strongly affects the taste! Pressed garlic tends to come out more bitter, but crushed and chopped garlic is a wonderfully smooth garlic flavor.

Stir that up real nice, and let it cook for a bit, until it smells amazing. Now add those crushed tomatoes, stir it up. Let this come up to bubbling, then reduce the heat to a simmer and let it hang out for a bit.

Throw on your water for pasta now. Remember to salt the water! It doesn’t help it go faster, but it gets some salt in the pasta which is tasty.

Do another good layer of the herbs de provence, while you’re at it. If you used unsalted tomatoes, this is a good time to toss a teaspoon or so of salt on the sauce, and a half dozen grinds of black pepper can’t hurt.

Now’s the hard part: let it simmer, stir it sometimes, and just let it sit for about twenty minutes. Long enough for your water to come to a boil, and your pasta to cook, and then for you to drain the pasta and portion it out. 

Right. So tonight, I don't really care to spend a lot of time cooking, and I'm sure not going to the store at this hour. My pajama pants are already on, and I've got a movie cued up. 

The solution:

Fried rice.

Nice thing about fried rice is that there's no way to goof it up. Here's what I've got to work with:

Materials 2 strips thick bacon. Bacon fat, squared. 2 eggs, beaten. High temp oil. 2 green onions, chopped thin. Some fried onions. 2 cups day-old rice. Use leftovers! Hoisin sauce. Soy sauce. Rice wine.

Get yourself a nice cast iron skillet. Chop the bacon into small pieces (I like to slice longways, then cut into squares), throw it into the pan on med-low. Cook it slowly, it should take about 15 minutes and turn out nice and chewy.

Pull it out of the pan, leaving as much fat in the pan as possible. Put the pieces into a small bowl. Don't use a paper towel or anything, you want that fat. Turn the heat up.

Beat those eggs, then drop them into the hot pan. Let them make a big omelet-looking thing, shake the pan so it spreads out. Use a silicone spatula to break it up, making gaps in the middle so it spreads out even more. When it's mostly cooked, start breaking the eggs up into chunks about an inch square. Don't be picky here, just break them into bite-size pieces. Put them on top of the bacon pieces, same bowl. Why not?

So, fun part. Add a little canola oil to whatever bacon fat is left in the pan, maybe a little extra bacon fat if your pan is on the dry side. You have been saving your bacon fat from breakfasts, right? If not, start. Get a half-pint mason jar, fill it with the leftover fat. Let it cool on the counter before putting it into the fridge, then seal it up. Go back to a medium heat. Toss in the green onions, then a couple spoonfuls of fried onions, like you get at the store for thanksgiving. I had some in my cupboard needing using/ Regular onions would work fine, just cook them soft here.

Turn up the heat to high. Add the rice, crumbling as you go so it doesn't chunk up. Put a few tablespoons of hoisin, a couple tablespoons of soy, and a couple tablespoons of rice wine over the top. I usually don't bother measuring here, just enough to color the rice and add good flavor. Oyster sauce is also good in place of hoisin. Heck, I've used teriyaki.

Put the eggs and bacon back in. Now mix it while it cooks, letting it sit a few times during so the rice gets a little color on it, then mixing it up again. Cook it for about 10 minutes, then drop that in a bowl. Add a little salt if it isn't salty enough for you.

Lazy food. Aw yeah.

This soup is an adaptation of a soup I saw Alton Brown make in a video someplace. This video, in fact. It's quite delicious, and turns out quite well without the parmesan rind, though the rind adds a meatyness that's hard to replace. This one takes a while to cook, but is worth it at the end.

Materials 2 cups mushrooms, chunked. I like crimini and shiitake mixed.  Mirepoix (diced small): -2 carrots. -2 large pieces celery. -1 large yellow onion. Handful garlic, minced. Rosemary. Herbs de Provence. Large can (35oz?) whole tomatoes. 2 pints vegetable stock. 3 pints water. 8oz butternut squash, chunked. 2 double-handfuls of curly kale, in small pieces. Half a large lemon, or one small one. 2 cans white beans (I like navy beans or great northern beans). Water from the bean cans. No, really. 1 piece of parmesan rind, about 4 square inches. 1 tablespoon Red wine vinegar. 3 tablespoons soy sauce. 1 tablespoon nutritional yeast. Chunky salt.

Get yourself a nice big pot, The kind with a couple small handles instead of one big one. That kind of big. Mine's an 8 quart, which seems to be enough, but I wouldn't go smaller.

Drop a bunch of oil in, use a decent high-temp oil like safflower or canola, and heat the oil up fairly hot. In go the mushrooms, and cook until they're getting crispy. VERY HIGH HEAT. Take them out of the pot and set aside. 

Drop mirepoix into the oil, maybe add a little extra if it needs it. Reduce the heat to a medium-low, add a big pinch of salt, and cook until the carrots are soft. Should take a while, but don't rush this part. Let it cook slowly, it does something with the sweetness of the aromatics here that's simply wonderful.

Take a moment to relax. While you're relaxing, consider that herbs eventually lose their potency, and if you don't remember when you bought your rosemary or herbs de provence, you might consider getting yourself new ingredients. I really like local co-ops, Whole Foods, and the like for this. Their spices and herbs are very cheap for reasonable amounts, and are almost always much fresher. I should probably do a post about herbs and spices at some point. Consider that on the list.

Okay, back? Great. Open up that can of tomatoes, and get yourself some tongs. Into the pot go the following: tomatoes, garlic, a teaspoon or so of fresh rosemary chopped into tiny bits (or 2 teaspoons of dried, ground with a mortar and pestle), and about a tablespoon of herbs de provence, crushed with your hands. Just pour it into one palm, then grind your hands together over the pot. Add some fresh ground black pepper if you want, I usually do.

Let this cook for a bit, as you use the tongs to ruin the structural integrity of the tomatoes. They don't need to be chopped, just ripped apart and opened up. Chunky is better here.

After about five minutes of this, add the stock, water, soy, (and parmesan rind if you're using it), then throw it up to high heat and bring it to a boil, then toss in the kale and the squash and reduce it to a simmer. Put a lid on it. Let this go for half an hour or so, until the squash is cooked through. 

Right, ready to finish this up? Add the beans, mushrooms, red wine vinegar, and the juice of that lemon. Keep it simmering for about 15 minutes until the beans are heated through. Add the nutritional yeast right at the end.

Apply to shallow bowls, and put some shaved parmesan on top if you're into that. Add some of that chunky salt. Yeah.

Simple biscuits, based off my southern grandfather's family recipe.

Pictured here the day after baking. These were done with earth balance and coconut oil, no egg.

Materials 2c flour (I like to use 1/3c cake flour, but it's not essential) 4 teaspoon baking powder 1/4 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon salt 4 tablespoon cold butter (for non-dairy: 4 tablespoon earth balance, or 1 coconut oil and 3 earth balance, all very cold) 1c buttermilk (non-dairy: 1c unsweetened soy or hemp milk (trader joes organic soy works great) plus 2 tablespoon apple cider vinegar, let sit for five minutes) Maybe an egg? If you want for the tops.

Oven to 450F

Mix the dry, then get yourself a nice hefty metal spoon. Smoosh the butter/equivalent against the side of the bowl until it's well worked in and crumbly. Add milk, stir until it just comes together.

Important step: let it sit for five minutes here. Don't touch it. Just leave it be.

Come back, give it a quick turn to make sure there are no dry bits. Flip bowl onto counter with a lot of flour on. Gently mash flat, fold into quarters, then stand it up on edge and smash again. You want to fold it three times.

Pat flat to about an inch thick. Get yourself something round and smooth to cut them, I use an old fashioned glass. Drop some flour on the counter and rub the glass in it to prevent sticking.

Cut as many as you can before re-combining the scraps, then work it as little as possible to get it to another flat shape. If I can't get more than two out of the scraps, that has gone well.

Lay cut biscuits on a sheet pan (a little oil or a silicone mat helps) in square formation, edges touching. Push the center of each down a bit with your thumb, it helps them rise flatter. Bake for 15-17 minutes, they should be a touch lighter than golden brown.

You could use a beaten egg yolk and a brush for the tops, or some butter, but I usually don't bother.

I've been threatening to start a cooking blog for a while. It's a slow day, seems like I may as well get this going. I'm Jared, or Wote. My main blog is @WoteNoise.

I cook by feel and instinct, usually. Baking is another matter, I'm pretty strict about measurements and ratios (unless I'm making bread), but there's always room to play. I'm more likely to base a dish off something I've done but change it a little than I am to make it the exact same way.

Cooking is a relaxation for me, it is an art that I can share and a way to let off stress. I cook when I get home from a long day at work, I cook when I'm anxious, I cook when I'm depressed. It's my zen space, I'm more confident in the kitchen than I am most places. 

I love a challenge. One of my favorite evening plans is to grab an ingredient I've never used, or am unfamiliar with, and base a meal on it.