Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Thirteen easy pieces
It’s Thursday on the East Coast, and that’s good enough for me, especially since my only other ideas for tonight were
- I am a Warcraft Widower (or, How My Son Used a PC Game to Win the Oedipal Challenge)
- I’m average! Praise the Lord, I won’t have to get my suspensory ligament severed after all! (Been reading about average erect penis lengths in Redbook lately.)
Yeah, that’s it. Slim pickens, my friends. The muse has been working her hiney off on my romance novel, so she tends to kvetch around blog-writing time.
Below the cut: thirteen simple and delicious recipes to get you through the day.
Breakfast
1. Lox. This requires a modicum of foresight and planning, but the prep time is negligible and the payoff is huge. From your supermarket, you will need:
Good quality lox (Nova is great stuff)
Spanish onion, thinly sliced (just a few slices)
Cream cheese — full fat, please
Any high quality bread. Don’t settle for a lousy bagel if you can get a good loaf of pumpernickel instead
Garnishes: capers, dill, gherkin pickles, lemon slices. Whatever you like.
Prep: Dish it all out and eat.
2. Bullseye. Fried bread with an egg in it. Mmmmmmm good. If I could remember the REAL name for this dish, I’d give you a pic or a link. Someone want to help me out?
Cut a one- to one-and-a-half-inch hole out of the center of a slice of bread. Butter each side, then toss it into a frying pan on medium-high heat. After a minute or so (the down side should be golden), crack an egg over the bread so that the yolk ends up in the hole. Add salt, pepper. Let it cook for a while. Break the yolk if you dislike soft yolks. Flip. Cook. Eat.
3. Cinnamon toast. This is another dead-easy favorite. The better the bread, the better the toast.
Combine about 2 tablespoons of granulated sugar with 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of cinnamon. Lightly toast two slices of bread. Smear liberally with butter. Cover the buttered side with the sugar/cinnamon mixture. Broil until bubbly.
4. Matzoh brei, the ultimate Jewish comfort food:
Use plain matzoh for this, none of that egg crap. Break up a whole matzoh cracker into pieces no larger than a quarter (a one-inch diameter circle). (Crap. 2.5 cm circle. Happy now?) Slosh about 1/2 cup of milk onto the matzoh and season with salt and pepper. Let the milk soak in. Beat 2 – 3 eggs and pour them onto the matzoh. Mix well. Fry it up, taste it, and correct for salt and pepper.
Some folks like their matzoh brei sweet. I’ve never made it that way, but I suppose I would leave out the salt and pepper, add a touch of vanilla, and serve with syrup.
Lunch
5. Jake’s favorite burrito.
Put three heaping tablespoons of refried beans near the edge of a flour tortilla. Add two slices of American cheese, folded in half. The cheese should cover the beans. Add about a tablespoon of barbecue sauce. If you have any leftover meat (roast beef or chicken is ideal), add about one or at most two tablespoons of chopped meat — but this is optional, and Jake prefers NO meat.
Fold the tortilla in half, covering the beans and cheese. Microwave for one minute. Open the tortilla and fold yourself a burrito. Fry it in vegetable oil until crispy on all sides.
Prep time: 5 minutes or less.
6. Banh mi — only the best sandwich on the planet. As with lox, you’ll need to plan for this one. But if you have all the ingredients, the prep time is minimal and the result is indescribably good. You’ll need:
Small French rolls, AKA hoagie rolls (about the average length of a male penis)
Cilantro
Pickled cucumber and carrots (see below)
Mild pate — liverwurst or braunschweiger works well
Thinly sliced little green peppers — the hot ones
Mayonnaise
Some sort of meat — roast pork or roast beef work well
Pickled cucumber and carrots:
Julienne some carrots and cucumbers. Toss with a few tablespoonfuls of rice wine vinegar and a wee bit of sugar and salt. Let it sit in the fridge for at least an hour or two to pickle.
Preparation: Toast the bread in the oven. The meat should be at room temperature, and the other ingredients should be at fridge temperature. The bread needs to be crispy on the outside, warm on the inside. Slice it in half. Smear with mayo. Smear with liverwurst or other pate. Add meat, cilantro, carrots and cucumbers, and green peppers if you’re using them (oh, but you’ll be missing out on 50% of the experience if you skip them!) The result provides such a marked contrast in flavors, textures, and temperatures, you will have a gastronomic orgasm.
7. Grilled cheese sandwich, the original panini.
This works best with white bread or a good quality whole wheat. Use two slices of American cheese — cheddar simply doesn’t get gooey enough. Smear the bread with peanut butter if you really want to confuse your kid. Slather with butter, fry until golden brown and gooey.
Dinner
8. Upset stomach pasta, for Karen or Jake when they — you guessed it! — have a bad tummy. Beth blogged a recipe like this recently, but I can’t find it, and she doesn’t have it listed in her recipe area. Beth, feel free to blogwhore a link to yourself in my comments.
Boil your pasta of choice in lots and lots of salted water with a bit of olive oil thrown in. Boil it for as long as the package tells you to boil it. Our favorite brand: De Cecco, hands-down the best. Drain the pasta. Toss with additional olive oil, salt, and pepper.
Bland? Yes, but it’s for upset tummies, remember? If you want to jazz it up, you can bless the olive oil with garlic (fry crushed garlic until golden, then remove the garlic) before tossing it with the olive oil. Karen likes a bit of parsley, sauteed shallots, and chopped sundried tomatoes, but that’s getting beyond the realm of “easy.” A teeny bit beyond the realm, but still.
9. Steamed clams. Go down to the beach and dig yourself about two pounds of clams —
Okay, kidding! Just wanted to make sure you were paying attention. (This one was Jake’s idea. He’s on a roll today. When he put the milk away into the fridge, he said, “Say hello to my dairy friend.”)
By the way — all the Scarface wav files are exactly the same. Check it out.
9. Ribeye steak, pan-fried, adapted from The Commander’s Kitchen cookbook. The only hitch to this recipe is the fact you really really need a cast iron pan.
Sirloin or ribeye steaks, 1.5 to 1.75 inches thick, ideally at room temperature (but this isn’t critical)
kosher salt
pepper
cast iron skilletPut the skillet over high heat. When the pan is hot, add the steak(s). Cook 2.5 minutes on high heat, then 4.5 minutes on medium to low heat. Flip. Repeat (2.5 on high, 4.5 on low). Eat.
Since discovering this recipe, I haven’t prepared a single steak on the barbecue. Why bother, when this one is perfection incarnate?
Pun intentional 😉
Dessert
10. Baked apples. Granny Smiths work well; I haven’t tried many other varieties.
Cut each apple in half at its equator. Core it if you like, but this really isn’t necessary. Sprinkle the bottom half with sugar and cinnamon and replace the top half. Bake at 350 to 400 F until all soft and gooey. Serve with vanilla ice cream.
11. Dusty road sundae.
This can be quite simple: two or three scoops of vanilla ice cream, a generous dusting with malted milk powder, and whip cream. Add some hot fudge sauce and chopped roasted peanuts for the classic dusty road sundae, but in my opinion, these aren’t even necessary.
12. Yummy pecan brittle topping. Karen and I sampled this at A Taste of LA many years ago. I don’t make it that often, but it does fit the bill for dead easy.
Caramelize a half cup of granulated sugar. If you don’t know how to caramelize sugar, let Kate tell you how it’s done. Take the caramel off the heat and add a cup of chopped, lightly roasted pecans. Stir quickly, coating the pecans. Dust lightly with cinnamon. Serve over vanilla ice cream.
After-dinner drinks
13. Good ‘n Plenty Martini — I invented this one tonight!
1 teaspoon Absente
1.5 ounces of ice cold Hendrick’s gin
Stir and drink. Yummy. (I’m sure Pernod or any licorice-flavored booze will substitute for Absente. Absente’s all I had.)
Any questions? Leave a comment, and I’ll link to your Thirteen.
View More Thursday Thirteen Participants
Technorati tag: thursday thirteen
May, if you start baking, be sure you make enough for all of us.
Kate’s high hopes for her sons’ summer vacation
Pat truly does give us a weird list!
D.
I’d make enough for all of us, except that it’d be green and blue and every other color mold comes in by the time it gets to you.
The egg in the toast is called bird’s nest, birdie in a basket, holey toast, egg in a hole or bullseye toast. I try to get Biff to stick around in the morning so I am always dreaming up recipes to get him excited. Unfortunately my kids saw what I made and expressed curiousity. I was like, “damnit, go ask one of your nannies to make you a poptart”. Anyway, Here is a link to the picture:
http://familyfun.go.com/Resources/Features/Food/famf0400eggs_eggtoast.jpg
[…] Doug's Easy Recipes require more Flour, Sugar, Butter(fat) and Eggs […]
peanut butter on grilled cheese??
I do make the cinnamon toast, but I use brown sugar instead of white.
My TT’s up, finally.
RE:
Lox – We just call it smoked salmon here as we already have lochs, and it gets confusing. We’ve tried many times to make salmon sandwiches, but end up just eating the salmon with our fingers. Have you tried gravadlox? MMmmmmmmmmm.
Steamed clams – made me homesick a little.
Baked apples – we do this all the time, and you’re right; Granny Smits are the best. We prefer to core the apples because when they’re done we take them out, all hot and steamy and then stuff a few marshmallows down the hole. Bliss!
Ribeye steak – You don’t oil your meat first? I always oil the meat first so it won’t stick to the pan. You mean, I could save a few calories and not oil my meat?
GnP Martini – Choo Choo Charlie! I wanna party with you!!
Marge — thanks, and welcome to Balls and Walnuts.
Darla, I’m on my way.
Lyvvie, no, you don’t need to oil the steak if you are using a well seasoned cast iron pan. I’ll write a post about seasoning cast iron if people are bewildered about this. Anyway, I suspect oiling the steak would get in the way of good crust formation.
You should, Doug. It surprises me how many people don’t know how.
will try some, as it’s different from egyptian food,, it’s a great list
happy tt 🙂
#7 put a smile on my face. I’ll have to try a couple of these recipes. This is a good idea for a list.
Thanks for stopping by. Have a wonderful day. Take-Care…
OK, I’m not Jewish (perhaps you guessed by the last name) and I didn’t grow up eating matzoh brei, but my partner’s Jewish and makes it around Passover and … ugh, matzoh brei is just gross.
wowwww! thanks for that list. i will definitely try them out.
I have 13 up but nothing useful like yours. Lox. YUM.
What’s Absente? Fake absinthe? Does it smell like tar?
#9 You know, the problem is, when you’re married to a butcher, that you sincerely do not have that many recipes for meat. If the meat’s good, and the pan’s hot, salt and pepper is all you need.
Friends keep asking me for marinades, etc, but honestly, we don’t use them.
OK, oiling the steak–shouldn’t interfere with crustage, but may not be necessary. Oil=heat. If you pan is kind of hot, oiling the meat will make it crust faster. If the meat is lean (not the case with rib-eye) then oil will prevent some sticking. Restaurants oil all meats which go on the grill–heats the flesh faster when it’s not on direct heat.
Basically, you can oil or not oil. Isn’t that the way with cooking? And meat.
The nomenclature alone is crazy-making.
Kate, no, it doesn’t smell like tar. Yes, it is fake absinthe, but since I’ve never had real absinthe, I don’t know how close it is. To me, it tastes like any other licorice-flavored booze. Not bad, but I can’t drink it straight.
Suisan, I’ll have to try oiling it. I never had any problem NOT oiling it, though.
Better late than never, but thirteen songs ripe for the listening!
Nice list, Doug! I’ll have to try some of them eventually.
~Sapph.
#2 — I always thought this was called “Toad in the Hole”. Maybe it’s a British thing — they eat Spotted Dick too. (Oops, Wikipedia proves me wrong. Nevermind.)
And “American cheese”? Is that just code for “processed cheese slices”, aka “one step away from Cheez Whiz”? If so, I don’t want to hear you making fun of my Chicken à la King recipe anymore.
(Not that I don’t use processed cheese…)
Oh, and my 13 is up, too, over here.
I think Toad in the Hole requires sausage. Okay, point taken regarding American cheese (but it melts so well!)
what’s the stuff that smells like telephone poles and turns white when you add ice??
and since I’m here asking OT questions anyway…what’s the name of the 60s show where the guy gets stripped of his army stuff and his sword broken? I can’t remember a thing about it except the show always started out with that scene. Old, old show.
I don’t know. Is it ouzo (spelling)?
F-Troop?
[…] Thirteen easy pieces Get Stickam for Free. […]
[…] 5. Cook the chops just as you would a ribeye steak on a cast iron pan (see recipe number nine, here). When you have finished cooking the chops, turn them onto their narrow, fatty sides — the “edges,” essentially — and sear a minute longer on low heat. Sear each edge this way for a minute, and while doing so, add the mixture of shallots, rosemary, garlic, salt, and pepper to the pan. There will be enough grease in the pan to saute these items. […]
I know I’m a little late for this party, but I wanted to let you know I did steaks à la Dr Hoffman last night, and they were fabulous. Top sirloin, no oil, just a smoking hot pan and a little cajun seasoning salt. I would agree with your assessment that this beats the hell out of barbequing, except that the bbq method doesn’t fill my house with smoke.