Orange Roughy Lunch

I have fond memories of Orange Roughy dinners, particularly when I lived in Tyler, Tx. The address of my first home I really made memories at was: 306 Ridgecrest. I remember the white cabinets in the kitchen with the red handles and knobs. I remember playing Skip-It in the backyard. I remember two huge and massive Oaks that dotted our front yard. Now they're gone. The Oaks, not my memories.

Anyways, still jogging down memory lane - Our Orange Roughy suppers usually consisted of carrots, potatoes, and onions in individual parcels seasoned with Kraft Italian Dressing that were baked in the oven. We would buy most of our groceries at Albertson's. I'd ride in the under-carriage of the cart and get in trouble for "dragging my feet."

Anywho - fast forward to today: August 27, 2014 @ around 10:30ish this morning. I was shopping at Smith's Food & Grocery here in North Las Vegas. I've been craving seafood for the last week and today, my craving got the best of me. I found myself at the fish counter when I was only supposed to be at the store for only water and some medicine. I'd been thinking of doing a "Fish Piccata" blog entry for the longest (like 2 months) and my intentions were just that as I perused the morning's fish display case. Cod loins were on sale for $1.99 but a clearance item caught my eye. I picked out my pickens, bee-lined it to produce for lemons. Left that section with green beans ($.79 for one lemon? No thanks).

Headed home. Watched some of the US Open, watched 2 hours worth of YouTubes - then it was time for lunch!

Which brings us here. An Orange Roughy Lunch. No baking. No Kraft. 10min. to prepare.

 

not pictured: EVOO, Salt, Pepper, Wine, and Paprika

 

snip snip. I left the tails

 

chop

 

I rinsed the fish. It did have a smell, but the smell was gone with the tap water I rinsed it with. It was on clearance, so I'm not complaining. Lemon juice would have been nice to rinse with as well. 

 

blanch in salted boiling water. a lemon slice would have been nice.

 

preheat skillet over med-highish heat for a couple of minutes

 

season the fish however you please. I chose salt and paprika.

 

I added that much EVOO

 

my green beans did the ALS Ice Bucket challenge. Question: Where and How was all that donated money spent and distributed? I need to know. Also, this may be wrong but I still don't know what ALS is. I mean I know it stand for: Airman Leadership School ... but other than that. I don't know, maybe I should care more.

 

obviously there was a thin end to this piece of fish. I draped it up the sides of the pan, allowing most of the heat to cook the thicker part of the fish. In hopes of even cooking and so the entire piece would be done at the same time without over or undercooking. phew.

 

I added the already chopped tomatoes within 60 seconds

 

looky there! The thin side shrunk into the pan itself. Must've been ready for some heat.

 

scoot

 

scoot. Make way for the beans!

wait. first flip. (my favorite spatula)

 

ok. Now for the green beans.

 

 

post-pepper

 

added a teas or so of capers along with a teas or so of caper juice

 

shimmy shimmy shake

 

unblurry

 

wine time. just a splash of this stuff.

 

THE END

Tomato Mulch & Penne Pasta

Let's play a game, called: Guess the Movie. Okay? Ok!

"You know, I mean, I'm not poor or anything, but I eat a lot of spaghetti"

Pasta is a nice pantry staple for lots of reasons. It's cheap, it's a no-brainer to prepare (if you can boil water, you can cook spaghetti), and let's face it - pasta is romantic. (Lady & the Tramp. Need I say more?)

Okay, so trying to leave movies and justified reasons as to why one should keep pasta in one's pantry aside - I must say, I don't really like the stuff. It's boring and drab to me. I mean, I'll eat it and am not disgusted by it - but if I went the rest of my life w/o another plate of pasta - I don't think I'd notice.

Here's where it gets a little complicated for me, though. See, while I could take or leave spaghetti & all that other Italian "hoop-plah, rustic this, bellisimo that" - I could not give up on pasta salad. It's one of my favorites. Very not-traditional Italian (supposedly, a "true" Italian never makes pasta salad. that's what I hear anyways) but I don't care about that. I like pasta salad. There I said it. And I'll say it again, and again, and again.

It's the end of summer, and tomatoes are kind've dwindling. They've past their "peak" as far as summer is concerned this year. It's kind've a good thing though for me, because that means they go on sale at the grocery store! Yay! Roma's are 99cents for a pound. I even bought a package of 6 for 99cents at Fresh & Easy this weekend. *Also, fun fact. A tomato's scent is not the actual tomato itself. It's the stem that gives off the familiar smell. Cool, huh*

Now you have a sort've "back story" on my excitement for tomato sales and my feelings for boring spaghetti and love of pasta salad - let's stop with the run-on sentence and get to the recipe already.

Ingredients:

1/2lb De Cecco Penne
2 Roma Tomatoes
Salt

Directions:

Boil Water, Add Penne, Cook til al dente
Pulverize Tomatoes, add to drained & still warm pasta

Refrigerate up to 3 days

I did just that. I was fresh out of basil (both live & dried), had no EVOO on hand, and did not add garlic because I'm on a garlic strike. (I'm seeing how long I can stand to cook without it. So far it's been 14 days and I haven't really missed it. Surprising and weird). Any of these additions would have been great to include.

Fast forward to today. It's day 3 and my pantry and fridge are stocked. The only imagined and wished for luxury I now have is a small $1.99 Pompeian bottle of EVOO. I add 1/2teas dried oregano, about 10 whole canned black olives sliced, some shredded leftover chicken, and a splash or two of white wine vinegar (I'm guessing 1teaspoon's worth, maybe more). Next go around, if I want to duplicate this "made-over" Day 3 version again, I'll repeat all of the steps up until the addition of the white wine vinegar. I feel like the vinegar would end up making the pasta mushy if stored too long. I can't say for sure, but better safe than sorry - and will add the vinegar last minute or just before serving.

totally mixed this salad with my bare hands

 

dress to impress

 

ready for its close up

 

FORKED! the perfect bite.

This is a great picnic salad - no mayo, light and fresh, and costs close to just a $1 to prepare. I could go on and on about other variants and additions. But, less is more sometimes. This is onna those x's.

Cast Iron Chicken

Ingredients:

Chicken
Salt

Directions:
Gut, Trim, Rinse, and Dry the Chicken (optional: scrub chicken inside and out with salt, and then rinse and dry - when and if salt is available to spare)

Render Chicken Fat

Sear, Baste, Flip, repeat at least 8x over the course of 25min.

Remove from heat of pan for at least 10min.

 

my means of a chicken set-up to air dry. I'm creative.

Proof: a "hair" dryer is multifaceted

unintentional risqué photo taken. intentional explicit material added to this post.

set a pan over high heat. I used leftover,-salted Crisco Vegetable Oil. I used the same cast iron pan I slovenly left out on my stove with the said leftover oil from a previous time of cooking. If you MUST know. 

Bottom left: Rendered schmaltz from this chicken's trimmings. Right: 1st look at the 1st flip. Check out that skin. Top right: Action shot of a flip.

basting

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fun Game Time: Guess which plate is mine and which plate is Jason's.

Reference(s)

Suffering Succotash

I hear good things about Keller. Anthony Bourdain is one of my favorite writers and TV Show hosts. Check out Kitchen Confidential (the TV series and book)

Two Fer Bless this Blog

Both poems written before I was 20years old. I typed and printed them about before moving to RAF Lakenheath and even being married. Dad has copies. I dunno about Mom.

Anyways. Here we go.

Poem 1:
I was too withdrawn
It did not make a difference
Evening, night, or dawn
I just lay there in silence
No desire to talk at all
Because you always made my words
That had cast over like a shawl
It was fall when you left me
Left me to cry and weep
I had no other choice
None other than to leap
Down to where I am right now
A place where I can see
That no one will ever be there
No one ever, but me

Poem 2:
Title - Loves Me

I was born and was accepted by a family of three
They loved who I was they loved me
They watched me grow and I filled them with joy
That no one else could produce, no girl or boy
I started to creep, crawl, and walk
Gurgle, mumble, sound, and talk
I soon wouldn't be quiet and then started to run
And instead of not liking, they had always had fun
Watching me learn and making me, me
Seeing what I, soon would be
I was a normal kid, always wanting to play
I was always outside, until the day
That I became busy with almost too much
Like talking, going, visiting, and such
But I still had time to always see
That my parents will always love me for me
I'm always changing what I feel and think
I could change in just a wink of a blink
Sometimes I'm difficult maybe seem even hard
But they would still enjoy me with no regards. We're a family. (I added the "we're a family" part just now. Ad lib)

Happy Homecoming to all adopted and to be adopted. Families matter so much to me. They keep me alive.

Meatloaf

I wrote down this meatloaf recipe, only when my Mom and Dad haggled me for it & I'd moved away.

I watched the recipe cooked on TV and it all started there. I can't say for sure when. But! I can say it was when Sara Moulton was still on air on Food Network. Her show was Sara's Secrets & that Moulton was the mousiest of mice-women. She wore converse shoes though, which I found out later on and thought her to be cool.

ANYWAYS! My family loves this meatloaf because it is never dry, supple, and tastes good. The topping is perty good too.

Happy Accident: I made the recipe verbatim, the first go-around. I am a full fledged believer that when I'm trying someone ELSE's recipe, I should do just as they say/instruct. I feel it's disrespectful otherwise. Dad will most likely disagree totally with me on this particular belief. Whatevs, I'm always right.

Oh yah, back to the happy accident. Well, the meatloaf turned out so well that my parents wanted to see the recipe - they couldn't believe or were obviously trying to figure out what it was I did so differently. Turns out, the recipe called for 2lbs of ground meat. I'd just used 1lb. WHOOPS!

So anyways, I still to this day use only 1lb of ground beef. I unknowingly stretched a dollar back then, and I must say - I really could care less. All I care is that my meatloaf is yummy and doesn't taste like a mysterious loaf of meat. That sounds horrid.

For my meatloaf, I only use ground beef. Sometimes 85/15 and sometimes 92/8 (that's the fat to meat ratio if you're wondering)

But feel free to add ground veal, turkey, or whatever you have on hand. Trust me, it's going to be fine. It's just a loaf of baked meat. Order pizza if it's that bad. Jeepers.

Meatloaf crucials: Dried thyme, Ketchup, and a nice family

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

no oven. sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

 

 

 

Going to give a rough-drafted recipe from memory. Mom is digging up the one I gave her. I'll edit when she sends it to me via text message.

1lb Ground Beef
1 1/2tsp dried Thyme
2 Eggs
1/2c Milk

1/2c Grated Parm

1/3c Grated Onion
1/4c Heinz Ketchup

1tsp Dijon Mustard
dashes (8) Tobasco
1.5 - 2c of bread crumbs. (fresh or store bought dried)

Topping:
1 1/2c ketchup
1Tbl Apple Cider Vinegar
1/4c Brown sugar

Directions -
Flake beef and season with thyme, S & P (about 3/4teas Kosher salt per Pound of Ground Beef is a general 'need to know.

Whisk rest of ingredients together

Dump over beef. Add bread crumbs. Mix to combine.

Butter/Oil and Parm/breadcrumb a baking dish. Dump in meat loaf (or free form on a cookie sheet)

Bake @ 350 for 45min. Add whisked together topping. Bake additional 15min and then (optional) Broil for 5min.