do a fair amount of cooking, and have for years, ever since I was in my late teens, living at home, and my mom started making more and more things that I didn't want to eat, and then especially once I was out of high school and keeping very late hours, so our mealtimes seldom overlapped.

Initially my cooking was very primitive and unhealthy; tons of pasta with canned (jarred?) sauce, hamburgers, beans 'n franks, canned soup, canned veggies, frozen pizza, etc.  I soon turned to semi-pure vegetarianism, cutting out all the beef and pig, and most of the chicken and fish, but I was still doing a lot of canned crap, dry cereal, etc.  Once I moved out and started doing all my own cooking, I got more inventive, especially since I didn't have the inclination/money to eat out very often.

I'm not going to give a full recap of my culinary development since age 16, though I might talk about that more at some point in a daily blog. What I am going to do on this page is collect all of the various daily updates in which I talked about food and recipes and cooking and archive them here for easy access.  I am pretty picky about eating and cooking, and I make a variety of things that are relatively uncomplicated and yet very tasty, and I've meant for years to write some down in detailed fashion, including photos and such. I've never gotten around to it yet, but if/when I do I'll probably put a full-fledged cooking/recipes section on this site, rather than just throwing in some "how to make ______" segments in the regular blog updates.

For now, you'll have to make due with this.

More recent updates are added on top of this page.

February 7, 2004

Super Burritos

So are you hungry?  I mean really hungry?  For I have perfected the ultimate burrito.  I just need bigger tortillas to show it off it.

The recipe is simple.  Malaya and I have long enjoyed plain burritos, which are a flour tortilla with refried beans and some chopped veggies on them.  It's a dish I brought up here with me, and I hesitate to call it a "recipe" since it's a bit too simple for that.  The customizations I make are to make very special refried beans, which are made in a large glass pyrex dish, like you'd bake cornbread in. Into that I empty a large can of vegetarian refried beans, a can of organic black beans (whole and drained), a good couple of splashes of spicy salsa, several ounces of chopped sharp cheddar cheese, about half a minced white onion, and spices.  Spices may include crushed red pepper flakes, chili powder, or more ideally minced jalapenos and/or death chilis.  I don't know exactly what death chilis are, but they sell them in the ethnic foods aisle at the supermarket, and they're like those long, gnarly pepper things things you fish out of your Chinese food, since you know that if you actually bite one your tongue will probably melt away like a spatula handle dropped on a stove burner. I take about 20 or those and cut them in two, and throw them in.  Malaya and I like it hot.

That whole pan of beans 'n stuff is nuked for about 10 minutes on high (stop to stir once) or else baked in the oven on 350 for a while, if we've got more time.  The whole point in heating is to get it mostly liquefied, so you can stir it all together into a nice muddy consistency.  And of course since it's better heated when you eat it.

The basic burrito uses a few scoops of that, spread over half a flour tortilla, with some squares of jalapeno jack cheese, and you fold that over and stick it into the toaster oven for a couple of minutes; long enough to melt the cheese, warm the beans (if they need further warming) and crisp the tortilla.  You can eat the whole thing or any part of it cold... it just doesn't taste as good.

Once that comes out we put chopped veggies on it.  These may include any or all of the following, in order of necessity: chopped purple onions, tomatoes, salsa, shredded lettuce, chopped bell peppers (any color), dabs of sour cream, black olives, green olives (watch the salmonella), or any other cold vegetables you enjoy on Mexican food.  I'm partial to cucumbers as well, on occasion, though I can be happy with just tomatoes and black olives, if need be.

These are usually eaten like a soft taco, I.E. folded over, rather than rolled up surgically, like the ones you get from restaurants (I can never find good, thin, flexible flour tortillas for that).  Leave a bit of a space at one end so you can pinch that side shut and not have too much smoosh out at the end you aren't eating first.

The new innovation to this classic meal is... taquitos. And then shrimp.

For a few weeks, since I had some at mom's over Xmas, we've been getting chicken taquitos.  These are also called rolled tacos, and are basically that; hard corn tortillas rolled over some cheese and meat (chicken, beef, whatever) and then allowed to harden so they are crunchy to eat. You can just nuke them for a quick soggy snack, or oven cook them, or nuke them and then toaster oven them, if you want them done faster. We tried various methods to eat these with vegetables, but the essential problem is that you're trying to eat something small and round, and that any ingredients you add are likely to fall off.

Smearing them with sour cream first, or eating two at once side by side worked a little, but the last couple of times we had them I just put four side by side, like a log raft, and ate them and the sprinkled vegetables (same as the ones listed above) all at once, with a fork.

The new innovation is copied from a Rubio's fish taco, which is just a flour tortilla with two or three strips of fried, battered fish, shredded cabbage, and white sauce.  To which I always add some spicy salsa, and ideally some tomato and black olive and sour cream, if I get them to go. (Which is no longer possible now that I live in the Bay Area, since the nearest Rubio's is in Emeryville, which is about a 15 minute drive with no traffic.  And there's always traffic.  Flour tortillas that are older than 20 minutes make me unhappy.)

What makes the very simple Rubio's fish tacos so good is the crunchy, hot fish in the middle, so it finally occurred to me that I could just put a couple of taquitos into the middle of my normal burritos (which are actually more like big soft tacos), subtract about 25% of the normal ingredients for space considerations (or don't and slop over a lot), and eat that.  And I did, and they were glorious.

The later innovation, made for the first time Thursday night, was to add a handful of frozen cooked cocktail style shrimp in with the rest.  And that made it even better, though every one of them I've made since has been alarmingly larger than the tortilla could hold.  We're buying a larger size of tortilla next time.

The overall meal from these is awesome, and very filling.  It's also a calorie train wreck, but you're lucky to eat two of these, so the total is probably no more than 600 or 700 calories, if you go easy on the cheese and sour cream.

The other problem is that they're hard to fix. Not that anything in it is physically difficult to prepare; it's not a souffle, FFS, it's just that there are a lot of separate ingredients, and you need to prepare them separately and only mix them together in the final product (and in your tummy).  So you've got to have warmed shrimp in a bowl, hot refried bean mix, chopped cheese, and the microwaved, warm, but not yet crisped taquitos all ready at once, to put together into the toaster oven.  I put the taquitos sort of on the side of the rest, since the rest doesn't get properly warm and the taquitos don't get properly crispy if they're lying on the wet refried beans+ in the first place.

And yes, I'm fastidious about my food preparation, when I want a particular taste.  You should see me dress up a frozen cheese pizza.

Then the moment it comes out of the toaster oven, you need to have all of the veggies ready to slap on it, cover with some sour cream, and chow down.  I've found that a Pepsi goes very well with them, though I of course think that Pepsi goes very well with pretty much everything, especially love handles, zits, and hyperactivity.

All I had to eat on Thursday was this dish.  I got up around noon, snacked a bit but didn't have any breakfast, then made three of them and ate them over the course of about an hour and a half, and was so bloated and satisfied by that that I never ate again, until I went to bed feeling slightly hungry, about 10 hours later.

Friday (today, as I think of these things, since even though it's Saturday morning at 3am, I've not gone to bed yet) I had just some toast for breakfast, then had two of those several hours later, and here it is, 8 hours later, and I've eaten nothing else all day except for a package of Ramen noodles.  And a Rice Krispies treat.  They're like a wonder diet food; you become content with one meal a day!

Of course it's a gigantic meal that takes 30 minutes to prepare, requires about 20 separate ingredients, and has more calories than many people on earth eat in an entire Superbowl weekend, but that's really not the point I'm trying to make here.

And yes, writing this has made me desperately want another one.  Now.

Fortunately I have these low calorie peanut M&Ms to stave off the cravings for actual food.

Ate dinner at the home of two friends of my dad last night, and it was scrumdiddilyumptious. They are a married couple, and the man does the cooking, and he's damn near a gourmet chef.  I've eaten there 4 or 5 times in the last couple of years, and every time it's the best food I have for a month.  Best in both quality, and tastiness.

Last night began with hors d'oeuvres, which were thick slices of very small and crunchy-crusted French bread, covered in some sort of diced olive spread, with two kinds of hard cheese.  Flavor explosion. Dinner was a big salad, along with baked chicken breasts with rosemary and fresh parsley and a bunch of other amazing spices.  Those were served with sautéed mushrooms and shallots, gourmet tomato-basil pasta with lots of fresh garlic, steamed asparagus, and broccoli/squash chunks, as well as some painfully-potent Italian red wine that I didn't especially care for.  But then I'm not really a wine-drinker.

Everything is served at once, all hot and ready to go, all with very individual flavors.  It's the sort of meal you could get in a really nice small restaurant, and which would probably run you around $50 a plate.  Not including the $80 bottle of wine, or the desert, which was two types of chocolate gelato with a scoop of vanilla Haagen-Dasz for variety, served with ripe strawberries.

Every other time I've eaten there it's been similar, with really interesting food and large portions, and served fresh from the stove top.  Since they do such interesting cooking all the time, they have the ingredients all on hand, and there's always something like a whole bag of chopped fresh parsley, odd exotic dried herbs and spices, imported canned mushrooms, etc. Things anyone can buy, but that you don't normally get outside of a good restaurant, since you'd use them once for one recipe out of a cook book, and then never again.

I'm been gradually ramping up the complexity of what I cook over the years, but since I'm cooking for myself 99% of the time, and I don't soon get bored eating the same stuff, I don't take the time/effort to make things that are too complicated.  It's not worth spending an hour to make a six-dish meal just for yourself, unless you are really a gourmet. And I'm not. I'll spend that long on recipes at times, but it's when I'm making enough of something for multiple meals, and something that's good warmed up the next day or three. Not just one quick meal. I suspect if I were living with a GF/wife I'd be a lot more creative and inventive in what I prepared when it was my turn to cook.  I enjoy cooking, I just don't care about eating enough to spend the time on really shiny gourmet stuff, though I do prepare better than fast food or junk out of cans/bottles.

January 20, 2003

I also made a ton of semi-home made pasta sauce, so I'll be eating that with a variety of pasta for the days to come.  I used to just buy canned sauce, generally Newman's Own, since once I got a taste for it I couldn't eat any other varieties.  All of the Prego, Ragu, etc types tasted like ketchup; sugary and bland, and I tried damn near all of them at one time or another.

My dad makes his own sauce, or at least makes most of it, and it was always a lot better than any canned type, so I finally began to emulate him about a year ago, and have grown to like my own.  The problem is that I like it too much, and it's spoiled me for any store brand. So when I make it I make a bunch and freeze some for a week or two later, and eat very well while I have it.  But the rest of the time I eat a lot less pasta, since it's a lot of work to make up my own sauce, and as I said, I'm spoiled for it.  And I refuse to settle for just nuking some overpriced sugary tomato paste.  So when I have pasta it's far better than it used to be, but I actually have a lot less of it.  Sounds like my sex life.

Well, not really.

Just for a quick how-to. The key to really good home made sauce is to stir fry and use a lot of olive oil.  I'll open up two big cans of tomato sauce, generally some marinara type, Trader Joe's usually.  Pour them into a huge pot and simmer, throwing in a bunch of spices (garlic, Italian seasoning, red pepper, more garlic, black pepper, more garlic) and cut up some black olives and throw those in also, along with a bunch of extra sharp cheddar cheese.

While that's simmering (for long enough to melt the cheese and blend everything) you are cutting up veggies to stir fry.  I generally go with about 1 green pepper, though yellow is good too.  I love red bell pepper, but it looks just like tomato in the sauce so go with a color that will provide contrast.  Plus greens are usually far cheaper than red/orange/etc.  I also like to put in about a dozen sliced mushrooms, chop up about a quarter of a purple onion, and carrots.  Carrots?  Yes carrots.  Credit to dad for that one; they add some nice texture, once they've been cooked enough to not be really crunchy.

Put all the veggies into a bit skillet and douse with enough olive oil to lubricate, without having much sitting oil.  Do those on medium-high for about 5 or 6 minutes, stirring constantly.  You want to crisp everything w/o blackening them.  You can try and stir fry the black olives, but I find it's about impossible, since they are just too wet.  Plus you can't see if they are getting burned, and they tend to just shrivel up like a lone olive puck perched on the pizza crust.

Stir fry until everything is starting to burn a bit.  Oh, put in spices too.  I like a lot of red pepper for spicy-ness in stir fry.  Once that's done, you just dump it all into the pot with the simmering sauce, stir that up, and let it simmer while you boil water and cook the pasta of your choice.

The sauce made with this method is very thick, almost like a stew.  It's not a runny liquid style, and you end up eating it almost like Chinese food over noodles.  I generally use a spoon and eat it with shells or rigatoni, and there is much stirring around in the bowl/plate to get proper amounts of sauce with pasta per bite.  There is virtually nothing left over when you eat it, since as I said, it's like stew over pasta.  No runny red moat of tomato sauce in your plate afterwards, unless you really missed on the ratio of sauce to pasta when you were scooping it out.

And in what I hope is needless to say, you do not store the sauce on the pasta.  If you make more pasta than you eat at once, put it in Tupperware or Corningware with enough olive oil that it won't all stick together permanently.  If you leave the sauce on the pasta and refrigerate it, the pasta absorbs all of the liquid and you end up with supersaturated pasta and a few dry bits of tomato and mushroom and such lying atop it.

Then again, if your idea of good pasta is Chef Boyardee, you can probably disregard most of the preceding.  If you haven't already.

The really good pasta I make is when I do Alfredo.  It has similar ingredients, but there is a lot less sauce, and I usually stir fry shrimp as well, and then pour the Alfredo into the skillet over the stir fry.  That makes much less, since Alfredo is so amazingly thick and rich that you put less of it over pasta.  It's best on egg noodles, but I've not made it in a while since it ends up costing about $6 for a bowl of sauce.  Which is a lot less than 1/5th the amount would cost at a restaurant, but somehow seems like a lot for home cooking.

July 26, 2002

I made some food of the medium-complexity type a couple of days ago, namely a huge pot of tomato-based pasta sauce, and I've eaten far too much of it the last two days.  I stir fry a large pan of sliced carrots, black olives, red peppers, green peppers, and mushrooms in olive oil with a lot of hot red pepper, black pepper, garlic powder, and Italian seasoning over it.  Stir and grill those for about 5 minutes on medium, and then dump them into the big pot of simmering tomato paste.  Better you get some sort of Marinara style, rather than just plain tomato paste.  I melt some chunks of extra sharp cheddar cheese in the sauce, along with all of the grilled veggies and more garlic powder, and that makes a ton of very chunky pasta sauce.  It's almost like a stew, and you ladle that onto your pasta of choice (I had angel hair yesterday, egg noodles today) and eat it with a spoon, in almost the sort of proportions you'd get with Chinese food over noodles; so the plate is pretty well clean when you finish, as opposed to a normal spaghetti meal where you have lots of very liquid red sauce left over.

I know, fascinating.

Anyway, it's hella savory, and I can just eat plate after plate, probably putting back on the inch or two I lost off my waist during the last week and a half of working almost every day.  I'm skinny anyway, and getting back into my old habits of doing several hundred sit ups a day, so it's all good.  As the kids say.

I do have faint plans to do some recipes on this site at some point, since I cook 95% of my food, and don't do anything so complicated that it's not easily related or repeated.  I know so many guys who hate their diet, are overweight, spend a lot more than I do on food, and eat almost nothing but fast food crap like burgers and pizzas.  Their idea of cooking is nuking a Cup 'o Noodles, which I'm not beyond partaking of myself from time to time, but it's hardly a nutritional staple. 

You can live on shit like that perfectly well up 'til about age 25, but after that you'll start to get fat from it.  Changing metabolism always seems like a lame excuse when you're 18 and can't gain weight to save your life, no matter how much you try to eat (this was me, BTW), but when you get into the late 20's and suddenly find yourself growing a belly while eating less than you did 5 years before, it's sort of a shock to realize the adults were right all along. And even if you aren't worried about being fat or not, you have to eat, so you might as well eat something tasty and inexpensive, rather than just more crap in a paper bag.

Would anyone read and try my recipes?  I have no idea; my cooking is almost entirely self-taught, and very far from gourmet, but it works for me for the last decade or so that I've been living single and making all my own food.

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