Asparagus, Prosciutto, and Mozzarella Pasta

Difficulty Rating:

To make up for all of the meat-free recipes I've been doing lately, here's one with delicious prosciutto, the yummiest of the Italian meats. Mmmm.

Recipe

2 pounds asparagus, trimmed
3/4 pound spaghetti
4 tablespoons olive oil
4 garlic cloves, minced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
6 ounces thinly sliced prosciutto, cut crosswise into strips
6 ounces smoked mozzarella cheese, diced (about 1 cup)
6 tablespoons thinly sliced fresh basil leaves

Cook the asparagus in a large pot of boiling salted water until crisp tender, about 2 to 3 minutes. With a spider or slotted spoon, remove asparagus from boiling water to a bowl of ice water to cool and stop the cooking. When cool, strain, cut asparagus into 1-inch pieces, and set aside.

Return the water in the pot to a boil, adding additional water, if necessary. Add the pasta and cook until al dente, tender but still firm to the bite, about 8 minutes. Drain the pasta, reserving 1 cup of the cooking liquid.

Heat the oil in a heavy large skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic and saute until fragrant, about 20 seconds. Add asparagus to the skillet. Season with salt and pepper, to taste. Add the pasta, and if needed, some of the reserved cooking liquid. Toss to coat. Add the prosciutto, mozzarella, and basil, and toss to combine. Turn off the heat. Season with salt and pepper, to taste, and serve.

Execution

This has a bit of a longer recipe than the ones I've been doing lately, but it's actually very quick and easy to make. Just chop up everything beforehand, and then it's a matter of throwing it in the pot.

First things first!

Ingredients

First you chop up all the mozzarella cheese. Put it in a cup or bowl or something and fill it with water to keep the cheese moist.

Then chop up the prosciutto into strips.

Chop the basil up as well. Then you boil the asparagus for a couple minutes until it turns bright green and is cooked but still crisp.

Take the asparagus out (I just used a spaghetti spoon) and put it in iced, cold water to stop it from cooking.

Keep the water boiling and use it to cook the pasta. Once the pasta is done, keep a cup of the water and drain the rest. While the pasta is cooking, chop the asparagus into pieces about 1-inch long.

Now comes the part where you put it all together!

Heat the oil and cook the garlic for half a minute to get it started cooking. Add the asparagus and salt & pepper. Cook it for a minute to get the asparagus all garlicky and extra delicious.

Now, add the pasta.

You'll have to use some of the liquid because otherwise the pasta is too dry to stir and it'll stick to itself. Just use enough so you can mix it up.

Now you add the meat, cheese, and basil and toss it for another minute or so before you turn off the heat. This'll get the cheese to melt a little, but it'll keep the pasta and garlic from burning.

Then you serve it with a bit of parmesan to sprinkle on top!

Nummy meat and asparagus! And cheese and pasta! Here you go, another fancy and delicious meal made in under twenty minutes. And you thought you didn't have time to cook.

Beef Stroganoff

Difficulty Rating:

I've got an investor! Squee!

My friend Dave has agreed to bankroll a few of my cooking projects so long as he gets to eat them, and this is a totally okay solution for me. As such, you now have a delicious Beef Stroganoff recipe thanks to his generosity. He also brought over a copy of the first disc of Firefly, which has disappeared from my house. Dave is totally the man.

Now, the only reason this is a 3 Cookie instead of a 2 Cookie is because I use Tony Chachere's, and that might not be available everywhere so I'm offering a substitute. If you can get Tony's you damn well should have some in your kitchen. It is the most awesomest of spices known to man. Screw Emeril - yes, I said it, screw Emeril. He got nothin' on Tony.

Recipe

2 lb ground beef
1 1/2 tbls salt
2 tbls pepper
2 tbls Tony Chachere's
3 tbls olive oil
1 small or medium onion, chopped
3 c. sliced white mushrooms
1 lb egg noodles, cooked
4 cans of beef broth at 14 1/2 oz each
1 1/4 c. sour cream
chopped garlic
a few tablespoons of SR flour

Substitution:
Every geographic area has its own local spicy goodness. Tony's is the Louisiana version. You can substitute with Zatarain's, Old Bay, or even Adobo if you add some cayenne pepper to it.

Heat oil over medium heat. Add meat and cook until nearly browned. Drain excess oil. Add onions and cook until soft, 3-4 minutes. You may need to add a little bit of broth (appx. 1/4 c) just to keep enough liquid in the pan to keep the meat from burning to the bottom.

Add mushrooms and garlic and cook until mushrooms release their juices. Add noodles, 6 cups of beef broth (a little more than three cans), and sour cream. Cook 5-10 min until thickened. If it isn't as thick as you'd like, use a fork to combine the remaining broth with two large spoonfuls of flour; add this to the stroganoff and stir well, cook another 5-10 minutes.

Execution

This recipe is fairly easy - you only need two pots, and the measurements are pretty much just about eyeing it and adding what you think you need. This is definitely one of those recipes that you'll adjust based on how you like it. I actually scribbled down a few changes in my recipe book just because of how I made it last night; the original recipe called for less beef and less sour cream, which, um, it's stroganoff, bitches. Gimmie more sour cream and beef!

The point is, play around with it. You won't mess it up unless you just accidentally dump half a pound of salt in it.

Ingredients:

I know my mushrooms are a little scuzzy, they were in the fridge for too long.

The first rule of this dish is prepping your food. Go ahead and chop all your garlic and mushrooms and the onion. Cook the noodles. Mix the meat and spices. Once everything's prepped, it'll literally just be a matter of throwing it in the pot in the correct order. Easy-peasy, as my gramma used to say.

I didn't really prep because it's mid-terms week and I've spent every available moment either studying or playing Fable II to distract my brain into working after I've burnt it out with studying. So I didn't mix the spices into the meat beforehand, I just dumped them on top. And that's fine too. :)

So! Heat the oil, dump in the meat and spices.

My spoon-holder is covered in spaghetti sauce because I made bolognase, which I forgot to take pictures of.

Cook it until it's mostly brown, but still has some pink in it. This'll keep it from burning in the subsequent cooking. Drain off the oil.

A quick note on draining oil - don't ever pour that crap down your sink. Yeah, sure, you can run the hot water and it'll probably stay liquid long enough to make it down your pipes, but it'll still run the chance of coating your pipes and eventually clogging the whole thing up. I use my gramma's old trick of an empty coffee can. Label the lid "Used Oil" or something, and then every time you need to drain your oil, put it in the coffee can and then freeze it. This will keep the oil out of the way, and once it's full you can just throw it in the trash without having to worry about it leaking or clogging or anything else.

Once you've drained the oil, add in the onions and cook those down too.

You should chop up the onions properly - I don't because my roommate is allergic to onions and they need to be big enough for him to pick out. That's why most of my recipes don't actually involve onions, but if you're a huge fan you can add 'em in wherever you want.

Keep an eye on the meat. If it starts to stick or burn to the bottom, open up one of the cans of broth and add a little bit. The recipe only calls for 6 cups, which is about 3 cans and a few tablespoons from the fourth, which means you've got some extra to work with if you need it.

Once the onions are softened, add in the garlic and mushrooms. Mmmm, mushrooms.

Cook that until the mushrooms "release their juices," which just sounds like a bad line from a Harlequin novel. It's pretty easy to tell: the mushrooms go from looking all dry and spongy to looking all juicy and delicious. Nummy!

Now you just dump everything else in - 6 cups of broth, the pound of egg noodles, and the sour cream. Mix it all together and let it cook for a few minutes.

It could very well be done now, depending on how you like it. Some people prefer their stroganoff to be more like a soup, but I like mine really thick. If you want to thicken it, take a few heaping spoonfuls of flour and dump it into the last can of broth, which should be about half-full if you're following my recipe exactly. Use a fork to whisk the flour into the broth, and try not to leave any lumps. It won't look particularly thick, but just pour it into the stroganoff and mix well. If you cook that for another ten minutes it should thicken right up.

Ohmigod so good. I like to eat all the noodles and beef, and then use bread to sop up what's left in the bowl. Sooooo good!

Puerco Pibil

Difficulty Rating:

I will start out by apologizing for some of the picture-fail that came out of this recipe. It is my first 4-Cookie Recipe, and as such it's a bit more complicated, with several steps to it. Plus I habenero-ed myself pretty severely, and my camera froze twice. So... yeah, there's like two pictures missing of the final product. But I'll explain 'em really well, I promise!

Anyone who's seen Once Upon A Time In Mexico knows puerco pibil. I first learned how to make the dish from watching Robert Rodriguez' video about it, but since then I've adjusted the recipe a bit so I hope you enjoy!

Recipe

5 tbls. Annato seeds (sometimes sold as Achiote)
8 All-spice seeds
1/2 tsp. whole cloves
1 tbls. whole black pepper corns
2 tsp. ground cumin
1/2 c. orange juice
1/2 c. white vinegar
2 habenero peppers
2 tbls. salt
8 cloves of garlic
1 lemon
6 limes
2 tblsp. brown sugar
1 shot of tequila
5 lbs. pork butt

Hardware needed:
Extra-large baking pan
Aluminum foil
Coffee grinder
Blender
Large freezer bag

Put annato, all-spice, cloves, and black pepper in the grinder and grind until powdered. Add cumin and set aside.

Remove veins and seeds from peppers and chop up. WASH HANDS! Add the peppers to the blender along with the orange juice and vinegar. Add the ground spices, salt, sugar, and garlic. Blend until smooth. Juice the lemon and limes into the blender and add the tequila. Blend until well mixed.

Chop the pork into 2-inch squares. Put the meat in a large freezer bag and pour the blended mixture over the meat. Close the bag and squish to distribute. Place this in the refridgerator for 4-6 hours, turning every half-hour to hour to redistribute the spices.

Place meat in extra-large baking dish and cover with foil. Cook at 325 degrees for four hours. Serve over rice.

Execution

If this wasn't so damned delicious it would just be torture. This is not a hard recipe, but it is grueling and takes all day. But I do like to do this when I'm having a party and want something that I can set out buffet-style for people to eat.

Ingredients:

Now, if you'll notice there next to the garlic I have two different kinds of peppers - red ones and green ones. The green ones are the habeneros, which are what the recipe calls for. However, you can't always find them in your local grocery store (I wasn't even sure these were habeneros since they're usually orange or red, but apparently these just weren't quite ripe enough) so you can substitute with equal an equal amount of scotch bonnets.

Also note that although the container on the counter says "Dog treats for good dogs," I do not actually have a dog. I have a cat named Captain Dog, who is always good. Mainly because he's always sleeping. Like this:

He's very lazy.

So! First thing's first - you're probably going to have to de-bone your pork. Pork butt, by the way, is not actually the butt of the pig. It's the shoulder. So if you go to the store and see no pork butt, only pork shoulder... you know, buy it. It's the same thing.

Don't cut all the fat out since that's what makes it juicy and yummy. If it's got skin on it, though, get rid of that. I usually buy a 7 lb. pork shoulder so it yields about 5 lbs. of meat. You can just keep it in the roasting pan while you do the rest of your deeds. Also, I lost the picture of the meat in the roasting pan, so here's what it looks like pre-cooking and you can just imagine it all cooked and stuff:

I always buy the throw-away aluminum ones because this gets kind of gross otherwise.

Next comes the spices! If you're like me and you occasionally grind your own spices for recipes, make sure you have a grinder that's specifically for spices. You can use a regular old coffee grinder, which runs about ten bucks at the cheap places, but DO NOT, for the love of little apples, ever use the spice grinder to grind coffee. The cross-contamination, it is dreadful to the tastebuds.

The original recipe calls for grinding up your own cumin too, but I've searched and searched and never found cumin seeds available for sale, so I just use ground cumin and throw it in with the rest once I've ground them all up.

Once you've got that done, set it aside and prepare yourself for the habeneros.

WEAR GLOVES.

I really don't know what to say other than that. Most people say you can just wash your hands immediately afterwards and be fine. But some people (like me, which I discovered this weekend) have a serious reaction to the capsaicin, which is the chemical that makes the pepper spicy. This might, say, make your hand feel like it's on fire for about ten hours after you chop up the pepper, even though you washed your hands six times. You might even spend all day with your hand in a bowl of baking soda and ice water wishing for death. Let's just say that wearing gloves is a safe bet.

What I will do for delicious food, my darlings.

Cut it open, remove all seeds and veins (the inside connecting parts and anything NOT the same color and texture as the fleshy middle).

Then you just chop it up into tiny little pieces.

Then wash everything that ever touched it.

Next dump those spicy little suckers into the blender, along with the orange juice, vinegar, spices, salt, sugar, and garlic. Bleeeeend.

Put the cover on! You don't want this all over your counters! Now blend. Yesss.

Juice the lemon and limes (the original recipe called only for 5 lemons, but I prefer it with limes) and add that and the tequila to the mix.

Now, dump all that raw meat into a large freezer bag, pour that gooey red mess on top, close it up and squish it all around. Stick it in the fridge and let it soak for a while. Soak-soak-soak. Every now and then just squish it around some more so it gets in all the meat. I say leave it about 4-6 hours. The good thing about this recipe is that you can do this the night before, and then when you wake up you're all ready for cooking.

Once that's done, just dump it back into the aluminum pan, spreading it out evenly so it can all cook. Cover with foil and stick it in the oven for about four hours. You can take it out at 3 to 3 1/2 hours, the meat will just be a little more solid. Four hours makes it more the consistency of pulled pork, where the meat just sort of shreads and falls apart. This is really just up to how you want it - if I'm throwing it over rice, I like it a bit more solid. If I'm making sandwiches, I'll cook it longer.

The cooking really is the easiest part. I'd suggest serving it over yellow rice with a bunch of very cold beers. I only had white rice in the house, so this is what it looks like:

Mmm. The cooking process and the little bit of brown sugar keeps the peppers from completely overwhelming the dish, making it spicy but still very flavorful. And you've got five freaking pounds of it, so you can feed an army or just feed yourself for a week!

And I promise you, for all my complaining I love this dish. I only make it once a year, but I eat the hell out of it when I do!