Foodgeek Blog

I’ve started making dinner for my brother, sister-in-law, niece, and myself on Monday nights.  I’ve tried to vary the menu up from week to week, and last Monday my brother gave me an easy opportunity to continue to do so.  We were sitting, eating a fairly rockin’ pork roast I had made, even if I say so myself, and he said, “Next Sunday I’m going to give you four random ingredients, like they do on Chopped.”

I was thrilled, as this was what I’d been trying to get them to do all along.  It’s fun for me, because I’m an improviser, and it works out because I don’t do great with giving them ingredient lists far enough in advance for the shopping to be convenient for them.  Anyway, Sunday night I got my ingredients:

• Tomatillos
• Duck sauce
• Rice pudding
• Cinnamon pita chips

I crushed the pita chips, seasoned them with cumin, garlic powder, and black pepper, and used them to make a crusted chicken breast dish.  It came out pretty well, although if I make it again I’ll use a food processor to crush the chips rather than a meat mallet.  The large chunks didn’t stick extremely well. I’ll also use less cumin, and move the oven rack upward a notch halfway through the baking to get a crunchier crust.

I made some garlic mashed potatoes.  No magic there, other than simmering the garlic in the milk and butter before adding it to the taters.

I used the rice pudding to make some drop biscuits.  I found a basic drop biscuit recipe and used a combination of the pudding and milk to make the batter.  They were ok, but if I make them again I’ll add some sugar.  I left it out because the pudding itself was sweet, but the biscuits came out a little salty tasting.

I had been going to use the duck sauce and tomatillos to make a sort of tapenade for the mashed potatoes.  I chopped the tomatillos and simmered them in the duck sauce, and found it to be a little too tart.  Once I added brown sugar, though, it swung to the other end of the flavor spectrum and became too sweet for the potatoes.  Instead I used it as a glaze for some carrots I cooked in the microwave.

All in all, I’d say it came out pretty well.

I made breakfast this morning. I didn’t make bacon, but I couldn’t think of a pun involving the word “chorizo.”

Here’s the menu:

Eggs

Chorizo sausage

Hash browns*

Buttermilk biscuits*

Orange-banana-pineapple juice*

Coffee

*Ok, you caught me. Bob Evans brown & serve hash browns, buttermilk biscuits from a tube, and orange-banana-pineapple juice from frozen concentrate. It’s not that I don’t know how to make these things, but I was hungry darn it. Also, I have no buttermilk.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks (as you can imagine.) A musical for which I was playing percussion just closed last weekend, then Christmas, there hasn’t been much time for me to just stand around and relax lately. As the hash browns were experiencing a little Maillard mayhem, I was leaning against the counter and drinking coffee.  A wave of relaxation ran over me.

I’ve been kind of stressing out over other life-related stuff lately, too, and the sudden and unexpected calm was really nice. I guess sometimes you just have to chill the hell out before life can get calmer (as opposed to waiting until life gets calmer before you chill the hell out.)

Anyway, back to breakfast….

Delicious.  Over-easy eggs (or dippy eggs for younger readers.)  The hash browns were fantastic.  And I’ve found chorizo to be an excellent breakfast sausage.  Nice little kick to it.  The juice is excellent.  And the best manual drip coffee I’ve made in a while.

That’s all.  Have a great day.