A Couple Delicious Family Recipes

Getting down to the nitty gritty.  Start the countdown on the journal jar.  Here goes #5...

What is your favorite food?  When you cook for my family, what do you enjoy makinng most?

Interesting.  I wonder who wrote that.  And if I've ever cooked for his or her family.  I don't think my mom wrote all of these prompts in the journal jar, but I could be wrong.  So there's a mystery person out there, that I've secretly been cooking for before, and that I enjoyed cooking for-- so much in fact that there are a series of events from which I should choose a favorite?  Or maybe it's just a typo.  Hmm.  Yeah-- when I cook for my family, when you cook for your family...  Alright, enough.

My favorite food is undoubtedly pizza.  I love pizza.  Pizza, pizza, pizza.  Mushroom and olive, sausage and green pepper, sausage and pepperoni, ham and pineapple, chicken and garlic... all so good.

But when I cook for some other person's family...

No.  When I cook for my family, I enjoy making recipes with the pressure cooker.  Two of my favorite recipes involve the pressure cooker--  homemade shredded beef burritos and stuffed artichokes.

Hmm.  Those two don't sound so good together.  But they're delicious on their own.

The key to the burritos is the stew meat.  You place some stew meat-- chunks of beef-- in the pressure cooker with some water, maybe a little white wine, and close it up.  Cook it on medium heat (with the pressure cooker rocker valve a-rockin' away) for about 25 minutes, until the meat is tender and stringy.  Then you can add spices and refried beans to get your base substance for the burrito, and then assemble as you like into a warm tortilla with cheese, olives, sour cream, guacamole, onions, tomatoes, lettuce, hot sauce, salsa... but remember you gotta wrap that tortilla around all the goodies, so don't over stuff!  Fun to prep all the fixin's and assemble at a burrito bar sort of thing.

The artichokes are yummy and quite healthy.  You cut the tops off of the 'chokes and spoon into the leaves a mixture of breadcrumbs and parmesan cheese.  Then you place them in the bottom  of the pressure cooker with about a quarter inch of water.  We've been adding a dollop  of flax seed oil onto each 'choke so the edges of the leaves don't singe.  I also like to add a little white wine to the mix--  pour a little over each 'choke.  Then cook 'em for about 25 minutes, until the leaves are spread out and easily peeled off.  Then you just eat your way down to the heart-- you've gotta dig it out of a bit of spiney stuff, once the leaves get too small and tender to eat, but man, it's worth the work.  The heart is a wonderful delicacy, salt and peppered to taste.

Cooking Up Steam

Describe your cooking skills as a young person.  How did you learn to cook?

Thanks to the journal jar for this bubbling subject.

Seems to me I've blogged about this before already.  I'll have to get back to you on that.

I learned to cook mostly from my mother, who included me and allowed me to help her while she was cooking.  I would chop the vegetables, measure out spices, stir the sauces... just do the stuff that you have to do to cook, but just not be responsible for it all.  It's empowering to pitch in and help and end up earning some credit for a meal because you helped.  It's another thing to be the one in charge of the cooking.

A quick search of the blog provided this previous visit to the journal jar-- check it out here.  It reminds me of another aspect of cooking that I learned, but this time from my dad.  He taught me the art of BBQ.  And what an art that is.

But the real "formative" training in cooking was received in the 3rd grade, when our babysitter Sally Singleton came to the classroom and took a group of kids to the school cafeteria to cook a recipe.  Each week she took a group of kids and taught them a recipe, and then we eventually all made cookbooks for our mothers for Mother's Day with all of the recipes.  I bet my mom still has that recipe book somewhere, all covered in grease splatters from my repeated renditions of Waikiki Meatballs and Stir-Fry Vegetables.

I think I really learned to cook when I went away to college and started living on my own.  That's when I had to get creative and learn to cook with what I had.  Some of the stuff I did was delicious, other stuff not so good.  But I experimented and started to put meals together and balance tastes with textures.  And I started pairing things with wines, too.  All this made for more interesting dishes.  I once made dinner for my parents when I was home from college.  My friend Pete had helped me pick out some wine to cook with and serve with the meal.  The meal kind of amounted to a chicken stir-fry with vegetables-- snowpeas, to be sure-- but it fit the bill.  It was a success, and my mom remarked, and I remember, that I had "become quite the cook."  She may be a bit biased.

Journal Jar Re-entry

What say we visit the Journal Jar again?  Oh Boy!  So exciting!

Describe your cooking skills and your favorite thing to cook.

Oooo.  Okay.

I love to grill.  We don't do it very often anymore because we don't really have a good grill.  Just the one we used at tailgates mostly, and we just don't break it out.  It awaits our gumption in the back yard.

I love barbequed steak.  I love barbequed chicken.  I love grilled corn on the cob.  I love grilled tomatoes.

But I also love to stir fry.  Stir fried vegetables rock.

Truth be told, though, I don't cook anymore.  My wife does.  Not because I can't but because she's better.  She can put a meal together like nobody's business.  I can do some of this and a little of that but I don't rock like she does at the total package.  So I stay out of the way most of the time and let her create the miracle goods.  And she does.

I used to like making soup or stew.  Split pea with ham, or veggie beef stew.  Chili.  Lentil soup with linguicia and spaghetti noodles, like my grandmother made.

So I'm a good cook, but I just am living in the shadow of my wonderful wife.  She would probably prefer that I cook, but she's better at it than I am.

It used to be fun, grilling with a beer in hand, charring meat and savoring the sizzle.  But we go out to eat mostly now.  Way too much.  Maybe that will change.

One of my special recipes, culled from my 3rd grade cook book, is Waikiki Meatballs.  Fun to make, cuz you get to squish the meat mixture between your fingers to blend your meatballs.  A real crowd pleaser, and kids have fun making them.

Another specialty is my stuffed artichokes, made in the pressure cooker.  Delectable.  Great with BBQ chicken.

Why am I getting hungry?  I just ate.  Salami and Boursin cheese with french bread.  Yummy.  Washed down with a beer.  But I love to talk food.  Our families do too.

Another use for the pressure cooker-- burritos.  Pressure cook some stew meat for about a half an hour, add spices and refried beans and you've got the base for some killer burritos.  Slice and dice tomatoes, onions, olives, cheese, sour cream, guacamole, salsa-- that's a big ass yum goin on.

So.  I can cook.  I can cook well.  But my wife cooks best.  Final answer.

Our Thanksgiving dinners are out of this world.