Ilyka Damen

The Comments to This Are Killing Me

Killing me, I tell you.

Favorite bits:

I know this recipe! My stepdad was in jail last year. It’s called “Jailhouse Burritos”!

Just when you thought burritos couldn't move any lower on the food chain, they totally, totally do.

This is one of the favorite meals the inmates here. Our guys add cheetos though. Ive always wanted to try it but I would never tell them that.

Oh now hey. I'm sure they'd be happy to share.

I still eat it and I have been out of jail for a while now.

HAVING to eat this I understand. Choosing to, not so much.

Finally, if you think I've been abusing the caps lock lately:

LET THE SOUPS SWELL UP STIR AND COVER AGAIN FOR A COUPLE OF MORE MINUTES TAKE THE TORTILLAS LEAVE THEM IN THE BAG AND PUT THEM IN THE REMAINING WATER IN THE HOTPOT, ONCE THEY GET WARM GET THEM OUT AND MAKE SOME OF THE BEST DAMN SEAFOOD TACOS YOUVE EVER HAD. ENJOY

OKAY

(Ramen blog courtesy of Dr. Alice.)

Sick, Wrong Things I Eat

Hard-boiled eggs, halved, each half spread thinly with horseradish. Because eggs don't have enough fat and cholesterol already, see. You?

P.S. I am aware that I have asked this before. So what? It's a timeless topic.

The Essence of Immaturity

Last night my boyfriend cooked us a fish entree--this stuff, in fact, but with cod instead of catfish. That meant I had to mix up a batch of the spice mix used for it: Emeril Lagasse's "essence." It's just paprika and cayenne and oregano and thyme with garlic and onion powders, plus salt and pepper--no big deal.

It didn't even strike me that funny at the time, that there's some goof out there calling a pedestrian spice mixture like that his essence. I was only annoyed that I hadn't halved the recipe, because we wound up with way too much of this stuff.

Today, however . . . .

"Oh, hey--your soup?"

"Yes?"

"It's been kicked up a notch."

"Did you--"

"Yup. Partake of his essence!"

"Damnit, I knew there was something--all I can taste is thyme. It's like Thyme with Bacon. Here, taste it."

"No way, I hate bean with bacon. Besides, I'm not that kind of girl."

"Would you quit saying things like that?"

"I don't understand about the thyme, though. I only used a little. Just enough for you to be able to savor Emeril's essence."

"STOP it! I can't even look at this stuff now."

"I'm sorry. I thought it essential."

"Let's essence up your salad."

"NO! I--oh wow, that is just sick if you think about it."

"How do you think I feel?"

"'Waiter, there's an essence in my soup.'"

"Why didn't you just douse the hot dogs in it while you were kicking things up a notch?"

"Yeah . . . I could have hollowed them out, you know, and put the essence IN them. So it'd be more--"

"I'm throwing the essence away. It's not having a good effect on you."

"No way! I used the last of my garlic powder for that shit!"

UPDATE: It occurs to me that in substituting cod for catfish, my boyfriend won himself an evening of rubbing another man's essence into his cod pieces.

PLEASE, SOMEBODY, STOP ME.

Idle Thought While Researching Comidas Típicas de Colombia

If Americans really are too fat--and the consensus seems to be that we are--then that, I assert, results more from our collective exercise deficiency than from the foods we eat. Inventors of the Big Mac? Yes, that's us all right, but come on: Even this overweight American can only recoil in horror from a dessert recipe calling for nine egg yolks and 1-1/2 pounds of sugar.

UPDATE: Furthermore, your average Irish-American potato-lover (yo!) is a total fucking amateur, because to the best of my knowledge, even the Irish haven't figured out a way to put three different varieties of potato into one dish. And they didn't then make it their national dish, either.

UPDATE, AGAIN: I swear on any sacred item you offer me that my professor has this photo posted on her "Sobre Colombia" page:

My boyfriend is now firmly convinced of two things:

1. I have the coolest profesora ever.
2. Someday, somehow, he will visit Colombia.

"Of course you will!" I chirped in response to item 2. "Blindfolded!"

Don't Need No Silicone, I Prefer My Own

What IS this with the silicone pot holders everywhere? Permit me to be completely irrational about this for a minute: I don't like 'em. I won't buy 'em. I don't care if they work 1000 times better than cloth ones. I don't care that if I'd just give them a chance, I might fall in love. The answer, silicone pot holders, is NO.

I find these things too shockingly ugly to permit them to take up residence in my home. And I swear I'm sewing myself a set of my own if I can't find some decent, non-ugly, cloth pot holders. (Not oven mitts--please, don't get me started on oven mitts. I am a spaz, remember? I need that which can be grabbed in a hurry. I don't have time to screw around with oven mitts.)

Now to learn how to sew!

UPDATE: Nooooooo!

I'll Just Turn This One Over to You

Not to say that I don't have my own opinions about the matter, but I think here I'm more interested in finding out what the rest of you think:

. . . if you cannot deal with the fact that an animal has to die so you can eat its flesh, then, you shouldn’t be eating that animal in the first place. It isn’t necessary for most humans to eat meat anymore–human knowledge of nutrition and the global marketplace have made vegetarian diets more pleasant, palatable and nutritionally sound than ever before.

So, if you don’t -need- to eat meat for its nutritive value, and it squicks you out to think of eating an animal, then why not just stop eating meat, and while you are at it, stop whining about it?

Hey, and vegetarians? Don't feel excluded. Your opinions are particularly welcome here.

Picked this up at the Accidental Hedonist, where there are some foodblogging awards in progress. (Vote Food Whore! That's my endorsement, anyway.)

Via these same awards I also found this blog, 18th Century Cuisine. Very curious about that one, and I'm looking forward to reading more of it.

Foodstuffs

You're going to be sick of holiday food eventually, so when you get around to craving something different, if you love Indian food as much as I do, check out Indian-Recipe.net, which I found through a commenter's recommendation at The Kosher Blog.

And what exactly was I doing at The Kosher Blog? Bookmarking this gorgeous saag paneer recipe, that's what. It's got that air of authenticity without requiring half a produce market's worth of ingredients, making it just what I was looking for. Saag paneer recipes tend to hit that so-complex, you-might-as-well-just-eat-out point all too often, but this one I think I could handle. Simple, but not simplistic.

Anyway, delicious stuff. Enjoy!

Tamales

So when I lived in the Phoenix area my ex-fiance and I used to head out to Ricardo's whenever we had a cold, and actually pretty often when we perfectly healthy.

I think by now the effects of capsaicin on mucous membranes are pretty common knowledge, so we'll dispense with why it was so helpful when you had a cold. I'll just mention that good salsa is both cheaper and more nutritious than most over-the-counter decongestants, and we can move on with this.

We always suspected Ricardo's was owned by Mormons, but this was in those dark times before the internet when you couldn't just trot home and look that up, so I'm not sure--but Ricardo's didn't have a liquor license. That was the down side. It's a little odd munching on chips and salsa and washing them down with a coke.

But there were up sides, like the food.

What made me Ricardo's bitch for life was the green chile tamale, an entire $4.95 with rice and beans, and maybe $1.00 extra to have it covered in green chile sauce and melted cheese.

Then I moved to Dallas and never tasted anything so delicious again, except maybe the grape leaves at Hedary's--maybe.

It's occurred to me that it might be helpful to tell you what tamales are, although then again, maybe not. I never know if I'm being condescending if I suddenly go all Wikipedia on you people, i.e., "a tamale is . . . ." Yes, yes--we know, Ilyka, shut up. My relatives in New York tell me they have Mexican food there now. I mean besides Taco Bell. So maybe this is not news to you; however:

Basically to make a tamale you take corn dough, masa harina, and whip it up with lard or shortening (note: lard's great for biscuits, rice, and pastry, but for this I prefer shortening), and then pat it out into a 3/8"-inch-thick rectangle about 4" x 6", and spoon a little filling down the center (pork is popular, though the variety I'm talking about here is vegetarian, just green chile).

Then, you sort of package it all up so the filling's in the center, and you wrap it in a corn husk and steam it until it's all cooked through.

Now I know the way I just described it makes it sound like mere stuffed cornbread, but tamale devotees know that it is anything BUT stuffed cornbread. The trashiest of the white trash can make you stuffed cornbread, but good tamales are an art.

As someone who's tried and so far failed to make them properly at home, I can tell you: They're simple in concept, easy to screw up in execution. If your masa harina is poor quality, they taste stale. If you don't get just the right balance of fat and harina, they come out too greasy or too crumbly. If you don't steam them long enough, they are doughy in the center. If you steam them too long, they toughen. If you overhandle the dough, they are too dense. If you don't work the dough enough, they won't hold together. And so on.

It is really easy to make bad tamales, is my point. And Dallas restaurants know all about bad tamales.

A Dallas tamale is maybe an inch in diameter--oh, never mind the dimensions and the details; a Dallas tamale looks like the end result of a week of constipation, basically. Dallas tamales are tiny and bullet-like and tough as nails. The pork-to-dough ratio is nauseating; it is like they tried out for the taquito team, didn't make it, and decided to call themselves tamales instead. They are inevitably served with red chile if you're lucky, and chili con carne if you are not. (Dallas does not acknowledge the existence of salsa verde, even though you can buy tomatillos in any supermarket there. But no, your average Dallas chef would rather take those innocent tomatillos and saute them with bok choy and linguine, and open a fusion restaurant.)

You know how the explanation Tolkien gave for the origin of the Orcs was that Melkor perverted a bunch of elves and then bred them, being unable to create any life of his own? That is the Dallas tamale, right there. It is the Orc of the tamale kingdom. It is sad. I gave up ever ordering tamales in Dallas because even to look at one made me cry.

Anyway, the other day I saw a dozen tamales labeled "green chile" in the frozen section of the Albertson's, and naturally I tried to convince myself that they could not possibly be any good, that it would be foolish to buy them, and besides, hadn't the tamale broken my heart enough in the last decade? Then I threw them in the cart anyhow.

It turns out they are good.

They are not Dallas tamales.

They are joyous, fluffy little creations with just enough hot to offset the bland masa, even without sauce and cheese on top.

I will never live anyplace that does not have green chile tamales again.

Junk Food of Patriots

My boyfriend won't eat this stuff. I have to make it when he's not around, which only makes it that much more difficult for me not to consume the entire box in one sitting.

Still, though . . . sometimes I wonder how he can call himself an American.

Now What?

Damn me, I seem to have gone and bought a turkey the other day at the store.

Well, I mean, I'm poor. It was $0.79 a pound. That's right: Cheaper than the roasting chicken I was going to buy instead.

Now I've got this bird in the fridge, all nicely defrosted, and I have no idea what to do with it . . . other than I have some fresh sage that I think I can use with it. So do you stuff that in its behind or what? Or I could make an herb butter with it, I suppose. Does thyme go well with turkey? Because I have some of that fresh too.

Stupid, stupid Ilyka. A turkey. It's not like I'm going to be eating one at my parents less than 2 weeks from now, is it?

Blogging will be nonexistent while I learn how to roast a turkey the hard way. Why must I do everything the hard way always?

UPDATE: "Turkey is not the easiest thing to mess up," said Rob, in the comments, and as usual, Rob is right. That bird was gooooood.

In Which I Take Time Out from Computer Games to Eat Something

I had migas this morning and mom always taught me to share, so there's a recipe for you in the extended entry. Oh, it isn't anything fancy. For fancy food you go here or here or, shoot, half a dozen other places. I just make stuff that tastes good to me. Your mileage may vary, etc.

Migas or Something Like That

4······eggs, beaten with just a splash of milk
1/2···chopped red or green bell pepper
1/4···minced white onion
1······minced serrano or jalapeno pepper
1······deseeded chopped small tomato*, or substitute 1 heaping tablespoon salsa cruda
2······corn tortillas, "chipped" (cut into small triangles, about 2 cm each side)
2······good handfuls grated cheddar or colby/jack cheese
1/4···cup vegetable oil
salt, pepper, New Mexico chile powder, chives

*Note: In Europe and other parts of the world in which tomatoes need not be the size of baseballs, ignore the descriptor "small." In the U.S. use about half a beefsteak, or one plum tomato, or one of those little ones that come still on the vines and usually have the phrase "Euro-style" somewhere on the label just so you can feel like a total poseur at the grocery store which, if you're buying those, you probably are. Well, c'est la vie.

Heat up the oil in a good nonstick saute pan and toss in your bell pepper, onion, and chile pepper. When they start to go a bit soft, toss in the chipped corn tortillas and mix it all up to get everything evenly coated with oil.

When the tortillas start to go a bit soft, toss in the chopped tomato. Or just cheat and scrape the last tablespoon or so of picante sauce out of the jar so you can get rid of it and have room in the fridge, like I did this morning. I probably shouldn't admit this, but when I haven't had any fresh tomatoes around I have even been reduced to throwing in a couple of Taco Bell sauce packets, albeit with results best described as "deserved." I told you this was not a fancy recipe.

Season contents of pan with salt, pepper, and chile powder to taste. You could throw other seasonings of your choice in with that, but if I see you reaching for the cumin I am going to cry for you. The trouble with people who don't live in the Southwest attempting to cook Southwestern food is that they have somehow acquired the notion that cumin goes into everything. I blame Bobby Flay, simply because I don't like him and because, well, why not? Anyway, cumin goes into a lot less Mexican and Southwestern cuisine than you think. Put the cumin down.

Did you beat up your eggs yet? Hurry up and beat your eggs up before the stuff in the pan goes all soggy. Pour them over the stuff in the pan and swirl to coat. Sprinkle one good handful of grated cheese into the eggs. Sort of fold, rather than outright scramble, everything together. You just sort of go around bringing the cooked eggs from the bottom up to the top and so on.

When the eggs are done to your taste turn off the burner, sprinkle the other good handful of cheese over the top and sprinkle chives over the top of that, and either throw a lid on the pan for just a minute to melt the cheese or show off what a purist you are by sticking the pan--the pan with the flameproof handle, naturalmente--under the broiler for a second. Unless you have your own salamander at home, in which case you could stick it under that and oh, p.s., I hate you.

This serves approximately:

Two starving, hungover people in need of the greasy breakfast cure, or
Three normal people, or
Four people who are horrified that you didn't beat the eggs with skim milk and use fat-free cheddar. Say, those eggs are from free-range chickens, aren't they? Aren't they?

Spam Sushi

Who else, I ask you, is going to give you elegant recipes for lamb piccata, roast leg of lamb, and . . . Spam sushi?! (See comments to the post for that one.) Apparently it's something called "musubi." I had to look it up on account of this is kind of a Spam-free household I've got going on here.

Oh, you nutty Hawaiians.

But actually everyone has something they eat that other people might think is kind of lowbrow. I have some Jamie Oliver cookbook that includes a recipe for a "Fish Stick Buttie." This is a disgusting concoction, favored by Brits as a low rent comfort food, in which frozen fish sticks are cooked and then mushed between bread slices with too much ketchup. I suppose it's no different from a fast-food fish sandwich in this country, really. Maybe it's the ketchup I balk at. And somehow, to me, a breaded fish patty is okay but the sticks are like, wrong somehow.

So what's the most potentially-disgusting-to-others thing you eat? I'll go first, but I have to warn you: it's truly disgusting.

Yes, it's Fritos and cottage cheese! (Or, as my boyfriend refers to it, "curds and whey." Yeah, he thinks he's funny.) Because it's my very most favorite disgusting snack, there are lots and lots of rules about how to make it, too.

1. The cottage cheese should be Breakstone's. All other cottage cheeses are inferior.

2. The cottage cheese should not be nonfat. It should be 2%, small curd.

3. The Fritos must be plain. Old. Regular. Fritos. Not "Scoops." I swear to you that I can pass a blind taste test between the two, so don't try to play me like that. No chili flavor, either. Plain. Old. Regular. Fritos.

4. Now having met requirements 1-3 above, you open up the cottage cheese container and drain off the excess liquid. Overly-wet cottage cheese is sad cottage cheese.

5. Put one heeeeeeaaaping tablespoon of the cottage cheese into a medium-sized mixing bowl.

6. Sprinkle enough Fritos (regular!) over the cottage cheese to attain a 60/40 ratio of Fritos to cheese and, no, I'm not kidding about this and yes, your margin of error in this matter is relatively small.

7. You will want to be mixing these in with a fork and adding more Fritos, if necessary. Use a light touch so as not to break too many of the Fritos. Be thorough enough so that all Fritos are coated equally.

8. Place in serving bowl and watch boyfriend flee from room screaming, "And you bitch at me for eating sunflower seeds?!?"

9. To hell with him anyway. Let's eat!

I told you it was disgusting.

By the way, this remains the only way in which I will consume cottage cheese at all, and if you were going to say "cottage cheese is, like, to vomit," well, I agree with you . . . unless you marry it to the Fritos first. A 60/40 ratio, please.