indian chickpea chicken

Bon Appetit is killing it this week! First the pornographic looking patty melt, then this indian-spiced chicken and chickpeas  begging me to make it. I'm a fan of Indian, it smells so exotic and aromatic to my traditionally mid-american flavor palate. I have a deep affection for cumin, and i love the bright yellow turmeric, the handfuls of garlic. I also enjoy working with big hunks of meat like these chicken legs, which are unseparated thighs and legs. They look rustic as fuck! and the leg breaks right off of the thigh. I made this the night before, that way I could just shove it into my oven on a lazy weeknight and eat. 

I DID burn the shit outta my left forearm, near my wrist?I baked this in my large cast iron deep round pan on the third rack, and when I went to geab it out of the oven an hour after putting it in, I had drank a couple beers and was pretty exhausted at that point, and got too lazy and my forearm hit one of the upper oven racks. It didn't hurt a bit, no burn or sting or irritation at all, but I can see a big red line on my forearm now from where it burnt me. I hope it scars over. My chickpea chicken scar. I love food-related injuries. I have knuckle scars from hand graters and sharp can lids, a wrist scar from the shake machine at the steakburger shack i worked at years ago, oven burns, grease sears, grill scalds, you name it, I love them all. 

This recipe is easy enough, though imma marinate the legs overnight next time to really drive the flavors deep into the meat. Peel the skin off the chicken and salt the meat before frying it in oil, 10 minutes on each side, until they're a nice golden brown color. I saved the skin for rendering later on, i just throw it in the pan like I would oil or bacon. Very tasty! Jewish chefs call it "schmaltz." There's a cook book I'd like to try with a bunch of chicken fat recipes in it. Reminds me of the other kosher cookbook I want real bad. Add it to the wishlist!  

Remove the chicken and rest it in a dish. Fry some onion in the schmaltz left in the pan, add a shitload of garlic and cook them soft, 10 minutes or so. Add some indian spices next: thinly sliced ginger (buy the fresh shit, the knotty ugly little root next to the jalapenos in the produce aisle? infinitely better than the powder version), coriander, cumin (omg add a handful, do it, dump it in there), turmeric (bright yellow), and cayenne pepper (or hot sauce). Add a can of rinsed chickpeas and some broth, i threw some frozen broth cubes in and topped it off with a couple cans of half-spent room-temp pbr. Scrape the brown bits off the bottom of the pan before returning the meat to the pan. If any juice accumulated in the bottom of the dish you were resting the chicken in, pour that tasty shit back in the pan. 

Nearly cover the chicken with beer or broth and simmer it, then stick the whole thing in the oven for a little under an hour. Cover it if you can, i didn't have a big enough lid. I could have used an oven pan, but I wasn't too worried about it at the time and it turned out fine. I stuck the pot in the fridge and reheated it in the oven a couple days later, it was very good! I meant to put spinach in there, but I was so lazy I skipped it. And skipped the yogurt. Next time I'll do it proper. I have some tikki masala that's been marinating in seasoned yogurt since Sunday, I think I'll make that tonight and post an update on how yogurt marinades work. I did not fuck around with the spice, either. I shoveled it on in there! It's a pretty red color already. Can't wait to show it to you!

This was an easy dish, very cheap, too! $4 for over 3 pounds of chicken, garlic and ginger are cheap, cents a piece. Indian spices are cheapish, but you can buy rock-bottom priced ones of comparable quality from any foreign market near you. They come in little plastic packets for around a buck a piece. Beats McCormick's $4 for an ounce bullshit. Yogurt's a buck, chickpeas are less than that. Ta da! Looks good, smells good, leftovers aplenty, too. "Your coworkers are gonna be so jealous," my homie says when I make a really nice meal. I didn't bring any in today, though. Today was company catering Wednesday! Cheese bread and toasted ravioli and supreme pizza! Margherita pizza is apparently not inspired by the tequila lime drink? Inspired me to do a series of mixed-drink inspired pizzas. Stay tuned for that idea to develop. 

Patty Melt

I get a great deal of my inspiration from my Facebook feed. At any given time, I can scroll past half a dozen recipes, all insanely appealing, all future inhabitants in my browser bookmark folder aptly titled FOOD, yes in all-caps, you KNOW it's in all caps, dude. I've began printing out my favorites and saving them in a dedicated three-ring binder, stuffed with page protectors so my pages don't tear from ingredients or bleed the ink away, which is what usually happens when i hastily scrawl the basics of a recipe on a grid piece of paper and leave it on my prep counter. It's gross, better just to write it once and save it. Or print it, in this case.

I didn't print this one as I scrolled by it, though. Didn't even jot notes down. Patty melt, so what? I wore a bright-red bowtie and ugly ass stiff black apron when I worked on either sides of the counter at Steak n Shake in my late teens and into my early 20s. The paper hats. The plastic gloves. The ugly work safe shoes. The cumbersome waist-clip headset on overnight shifts, or the pockets overflowing with pens and straws and sometimes ice, so i'd have to stop and dump everything out so my tips and server pad wouldn't soak through. I don't miss it. That's where I first heard of a patty melt. Back then, to me it was just a gross ass sandwich older folks bought. It was a double with american on rye with pickles and mustard and carmelized onions. No thanks, buddy. Not nearly as popular (or as delicious) as the Frisco Melt, a double with swiss and american on sourdough with lettuce, tomato and thousand island on the side.

We moved more two ounce black plastic portion cups of that neon orange sauce than we did fries, I say this without exaggeration. Those skinny fries dipped in thousand island? Forget about it! I found a recipe  for the stuff, in case you want to unironically make yourself a gallon batch of it, and slather it to literally everything. Like reubens! Or, realistically, frozen bag fries, you disgraceful sack of human garbage. Set your kitchen of fire. But first, be sure to mention it on your medical history forms when you check into the hospital for heart failure. There should be a field for that right there on the form.

So I was never very impressed with the sandwich, myself. I assumed they were a restaurant-specific thing, like the Frisco, as I didn't hit up many burger shacks at the time and didn't think to look it up in my free time. It's a freaking PATTY MELT, who caaaares!

I remember it being mentioned in a rap song way back in the day, and I cannot for the life of me find the song by googling "car full of white women," the hook, the only part of the song I can remember except for the line, "take em to Waffle House, I need a paaaaatty  melt." I didn't know Waffle House sold patty melts!

I've only ever ordered their hashbrowns all the way, after stumbling into a booth after 2am drunk as fuck with my crew after bar close. I'd use the bathroom (you always gotta pee like crazy at that time of night in that condition, never freaking fails), take my heels off, stick my legs across to the other booth/lap, light up a menthol and order black coffee and iced water and a plate of this with well-done spuds and white gravy on top, eyeing the tableside condiments for ample napkins and a bottle of pickled pepper sauce as the waitress jotted down my order. Holy shit, what a plate of god-awesome.

I like to fold it all over on itself with a fork, soak it in black pepper and hot sauce and eat until my freaking heart stops, stopping only to sip my water or hold up my cup for a refill (waffle house coffee forever, dude, not even kidding, fresh ground for the win). I usually have enough to take home with me, but it's not really edible once you sober up. You become acutely aware that your one-true-drunken-love looks like vomit in the sunlight. I mean that honestly, it looks like someone held their head over a styrofoam clamshell and retched into it, but with less liquid.

Now that I'm older, I don't play the wait-in-public restaurant game as often as I used to, unless there's a bunch of us or I don't wanna stop chatting with the person and can't relocate to a more private environment (with a television and a bed/sofa/floor) for the evening. I'd much rather take a drunken walk through Walmart, delegating a cart pusher as I wander inebriated through the aisles in an attempt to perceive my wasted cravings non-intellectually, relying mainly on my peripheral vision at this point and vain attempts to cue soberer memories of foods that won't put me at risk of burning my goddamn house down in a liquored wave of edible intentions.

One of these days, I'll try making the Garbage Plate, another hashbrowns all-the-way idea that's supposed to be out of this world. Late-night hash forever, man.

Why would I make such a boring, plain ass sandwich like this here patty melt, you ask yourself? It all comes back to the Facebook, I guess, when I saw this photo alonside this patty melt recipe:

Sweet Steak-Patty Virgin Mary, look at that oozing thing. It's borderline pornographic! I almost had to turn away! "Culinerotica," my homie called it once. Mmm, buddy, what a dirty, sassy little burger.

Speaking of Dirty Burgers, I am absolutely obsessed with Trailer Park Boys. It's been on of my favorite shows since I first saw it all those years ago. Think Cops from a criminal's perspective. In one of the later seasons, two of the actors, notorious for cheeseburger eating and big, sweaty guts, partner up in an RV restaurant called The Dirty Burger. It's pretty much just two sweaty fat guys grilling burgers and screaming at each other, what's not to love? I always wanted a food truck, or a restaurant or catering business, to be totally honest. Not practically, it was little more than an idle fantasy of mine, but I often wonder about it, logistics aside, what it'd be like to own my own food shack, make my own menus and recipes and price it all out, etc. I'd have a cafe-bookstore, with zines and buttons and tea and take out options and a stage for poetry and rap battles and small batch beers or whatever. It's fun to think about. My daughter's in on the dream, too! Feels good to fantasize about food.

Thinking about patty melts and dirty burgers and Steak n Shake reminded me of Winstead's, this KC-based steakburger and milkshake restaurant with tissue paper-wrapped cheeseburgers and butterscotch milkshakes. I used to eat there as a kid in KC, and thought of them out of nowhere as I was writing this. Freaking Winstead's! I'm in half a mind to take a road trip up there one of these days, purely for tissue paper cheeseburgers and butterscotch milkshakes. I'd get a hotel room with a swimming pool on the roof, or something. A motel 6, more than likely. Bet I could get a good deal on one that the methy transients can't afford, though? Beats debating the cleanliness of my bedspread and turning up crackled Law and Order reruns on local stations to drown up the domestic noise all around me. I could go to that Barnes and Noble on the Plaza that I used to walk to with my sisters from our apartment just up the street. I could go to the Nelson-Atkins and see the choice exhibitions again. There's not too much nostalgia attached to that city for me, save for the gallery and bookstore and Winstead's, I suppose. Still, might be worth the trip? What's wrong with a little impulsive travel, as long as it's affordable?

The patty melt was the easiest thing ever to execute: slice two onions thin and sautee them in butter or oil for a half hour or so, until they're brown and gooey. Mix a pound of beef with ketchup and garlic+onion powder, salt and pepper. Quarter and press thin, like the size of the rye bread you're using, and grill for a couple minutes on each side. Place sharp cheddar on the bread, then the burger, and top with onions and swiss. Cover with the second bun, and paint the outside of it with mayo. I used my kewpie japanese mayo, but you can use whatever's in your fridge. Yes mayo, stop being such a puss canoe and swipe a big ole glob of the white stuff right on there. Clean the pan or use a new one, lower the heat and put the sandwich on there, mayo-side down. Press it down with a weighted pan, cook a couple minutes until the bun is brown, then mayo the other side, flip and press. Cut lengthwise and serve with pickles and mustard. I had neither, sriracha was all I needed to scarf this sucker down in under two seconds.

I was so wrong about you, patty melt, from the bottom of my heart, I apologize. Will definitely be making again, eventually, when I spring for ground beef again, which I do not do often, as it is expensive and I usually don't do burgers for dinner. Very happy I did, though. Holy cow, that oozing cheese, those onions, that meat, the mayo, amazing. Definitely try this one, takes two seconds and is obscenely delicious for how simple the ingredients are.

Quick Chili

A buddy of mine showed me a photo of a KC-San Francisco hot dog face-off ad promoting the World Series. The KC one looked fine, saeurkraut is perfectly acceptable on a frank. But the weird shit the Cali dog had sprinkled all over it, avocado and peppers and corn, CORN? You gonna put CORN on a goddamn dog? That's too ridiculous for me, and I told him so, but it's resulted in an only half-joking recipe concept of the impossible hot dog, just six or seven dogs with the most unimaginable shit on them, hot cheetoes and chips and garlic and feta and shit. Just no corn, please. It's like biting into candy, totally takes me out of the dish. I'd rather chew on a big chunk of cilantro, and i've got the mutation that makes it taste like dish soap. Genetically incapable of tasting it. Is it good, or what? It's not soapy to you?

All this back and forth over the goddamn hot dogs got me craving chili dogs, i have a can of easy cheese in my cabinet from making cheesesteaks the other day (i should post that recipe...) and it'd go perfect on a chili dog alongside a swipe of sriracha or sour cream or something. That somehow turned into chili dog casserole, because Google was drunk as fuck and suggesting shit out of left field for my dinner search. Clicked over to images and saw some waffle fries soaked in chili, and was sold. Chili fries for dinner, it's decided.

Instead of the three ingredient route -- can of chili, jar of cheese, bag of fries -- i took the more strenuous road and made all three myself. Not only does it save me some cash, it makes sense to me to make it myself. I feel silly paying for walmart (or whoever makes the fries at the fry factory somewhere out of state) to feed me. I can feed me, I can make some goddamn fries, they're not even hard, it's potatoes in oil.

(Spoiler alert: I TOTALLY fucked up my fries and ended up turning my chili cheese fries into a casserole by mixing all three together. Wasn't even mad.)

I looked up a couple recipes for the dish, for inspiration and time saving tips. I didn't want to spend all damn day making chili (and chili proper outghta take all day, from my experience), or fiddle with a bunch of subtle niche ingredients like cocoa powder or whatever. Simple, straightforward food. I spent under $20 for the ingredients: ground beef was damn near $5/lb, when sitting next to it is ground pork for $2, and ground turkey for the same. So I'm getting twice as much meat for half the price. "Functional fixedness" may make this decision seem a little obscene, but I challenge you to open your mind and save your cash, sub out the beef for white meat and see how you like it. I'm from Texas, we ate beef damn near daily throughout my childhood, I absolutely love it. I've gone months without buying it ground, though, because a girl's gotta have purchasing limits, and I outright refuse to pay that much for that little. Like green peppers. I OUTRIGHT REFUSE TO BUY GREEN PEPPERS FOR 80 CENTS A PIECE. A PIECE! ABSOLUTELY NOT! One of the reasons I'm planting raised beds in the spring is the price of these goddamn peppers. Don't you know I love you, green pepper? AND YOU DO ME THIS WAY? WHY.

I did use green pepper in this chili. I got it three for a buck at the local produce stand. I'll do a post on them sometime, grabbed a couple photos from there yesterday when Fish and I stopped in after walking the dog at the park. Nothing better than veg shopping with your family to put a sentimental spin on your Sunday, that's a fact.

I grabbed a couple jalapenos, which were like a quarter, and some garlic, which was around the same. I cook with a crap ton of garlic, so I usually need to buy three bulbs a week, just to use in my meal plans. I love roasting it in oil for hours, it gets all squishy inside and you can squeeze them out into a jar and keep it in your fridge for whenever. I spread it on toast. My dad hates it when I roast garlic, says I reek of it for days afterward. I took it as a compliment. He definitely did not mean it as one.

Quick tip, since we're on the subject: peel all of your garlic at once!
1. get 2 metal bowls or cake pans
2. put bulb in one, squish it with the back of the other to break it into pieces
3. invert the top bowl/pan and SHAKE THE SHIT OUTTA THAT GARLIC, 20 seconds or so.

Ta-da! Peeled garlic! It's a neat trick. Personally, I just like to mash it with the side of my cooking knife, but it's a time saver if you hate picking out garlic paper from the smelly insides (I do not).

Needed pinto and red kidney beans, half a buck a can. I prefer dry beans, but this is quick chili, no time to overthink it. The goal here isn't "best chili evah," THAT goal comes next month, when I compete in my company-wide CHILI COOK OFF and will WIN or KILL MYSELF. I will drown myself in my own subpar chili. I will dump it out on the side of the road. I will feed it to my dog.

Nah, I'm being dramatic. I'll eat every bit of it. I love chili! It freezes so well and has such personality! So thick and saucy with so many unique yet overlapping components, holy crap, I can't wait to put all of myself into that goddamn chili pot. Not for this one, though. The goal here is "better than canned chili." I'm not buying canned chili, dude. I will mock others for buying it. It is disgusting. I ate some here at work, with some fritos and rotel and cheese? IT WAS AWFUL. I HATED MYSELF FOR IT. THE SHAME WAS WORSE THAN THE MIDDAY STARVATION ALTERNATIVE. Screw canned chili, that's what this is all about, is what I'm saying here. It's fucking awful, don't buy it, chili takes two seconds, we're almost done shopping.

I had onions already, had the seasonings, picked up some chili powder, just in case, and those mexican bags of cumin/comino. Great smell. Cumin is my very favorite spice. I love it deeply. Had what was left of an 18 pack of PBR in the fridge, needed evaporated milk and shredded sharp cheddar though, for the cheese sauce? Grabbed a big can of diced tomatoes, as well. Had pizza sauce at the house for more tomato flavor. Time to check out.

I have a large pressure-cooker I use for my chilis, soups and stews. I mixed the pork and turkey together and heated it in a little oil. Chopped up my ingredients, opened my cans, rinsed my beans, and got to it. Nixed the meat, added the onion and garlic. Added the meat to the rinsed beans, tomatoes, and seasonings: paprika, chili powder, brown sugar, pepper, cumin. Nothing fancy, just poured it all on top and waited for the veg to soften before dumping the seasoned meat-bean bowl on top, and adding some beer, some old coffee, and some frozen broth cubes I keep on hand for exactly this moment. Lowered the heat, covered it and left it alone while I made the fries and cheese sauce.

Sauce was easy, just cheese and corn starch in a pan with hot sauce, mustard powder, paprika and evaporated milk. Thickens fast, tastes ridiculous. Tried making the fries: scrubbed and sliced the spuds into fries, boiled 10 minutes, dried on a pan for 5 minutes before frying and sitting for a half hour and then refrying. One of these steps I fucked up: maybe the oil wasn't hot enough? Need a kitchen thermometer. Maybe the potatoes weren't dry enough? Use paper towels. Maybe they didn't rest long enough? Don't be so rushy-rushy next time (inherent issue here, it's chili cheese fries, just get it done, dude!). All in all, the flavor was there, but they never got crispy. So I threw it all in a casserole dish (saving a deep tupperware full of chili for another day, score!) and baked it for 20 minutes or so. It was pretty good! Ate mine with sriracha.

So next time you feel your arm extending towards that Hormel of Wolf Brand tin at the supermarket, REMEMBER I AM TRYING TO ZAP YOUR ARM IN INDIGNANT PSYCHIC DETERRENCE. Don't play around with some broke ass meat in a can, dude. You're better than that, I KNOW you are. Do what I tell you, make yourself some quick chili, make your house smell awesome, get some fritos and some sour cream, make some cheese sauce, and go fucking nuts. It's cheaper, healthier, you get more out of it, portion- and flavor-wise, and cooking is SEXY, baby! Everybody loves a female or fella who cook. Dump any spice you want in there, play around with beans and beers, etc. This would be good on noodles, as well, make yourself a cheap-ass chili mac? Freezes insanely well, too!

Do it, dude. Do it for America. Do it for Heather. But mostly do it because you deserve it. Don't underestimate your skill or interest, here! Get in the goddamn kitchen and make me some chili!

meal plan: bottom of the fridge

I was debating between posting my back-of-the-freezer meal prep I did today and just laying on my bed watching another episode of MST3K when my friend Cara posted this on Facebook:

It's a sign. A sign to food blog!

This was me earlier today, staring into my fridge, then freezer, then cabinets, making this circuit a couple more times until saying "fuck it" and pulling out everything to see what I could make happen for dinners this week. Saturdays are usually my day to shop and meal plan, then I get all my cooking done for the week on Sundays (as much as I can, anyway). I had done a bit of planning in a post I shared the other day, but spent all of Saturday at a rap show in the park and woke up this morning with neither the desire nor the energy to go to the grocery store (which is so close to me I could walk there).

To avoid turning self-imposed home-bodiness into an excuse to shirk my culinary responsibilities, I took it upon myself to satisfy my domestic duties, initiating my weekly ritual with self-inquiry:

"Dafuq are we eatin this week?"

I started by pulling out every frozen item in my freezer that had entree potential, usually meat: couple bags of pork chops, a couple bags of chicken (thighs in one, legs in another), and a pack of andouille sausage (they're like cajun brats, I use them in my slow cooked red beans). There was a bag of broccoli, and a bag of peas and another of carrots, some broth cubes, and a shitload of frozen bananas. I pulled up some recipes for the bananas for later on this week (pancakes and pie, if I can manage it!) and began thawing out the assorted animals.

I had saved a post on Facebook for honey mustard chicken, so I thawed the thighs first, salted them and put them in a roasting pan. In another dish, i made some dijon mustard out of mustard powder, white wine, garlic, onion, honey, cumin, oil, mayo, salt and pepper. poured this over the chicken and sprinkled some rosemary on it before shoving it in the oven at 350 for 45m. Once this baked, I packed the thighs (skin-on) into a deep tupperware container and shoved it in the fridge for later on this week. I saved the liquid at the bottom of the pan, the sauce and schmaltz, and added it to some rice I had rinsed and shoved in the cooker. That's one meal, squared away.

I saw a big bag of tilapia in my freezer and realize I write FISH down for dinner every damn week and never make it. I make really good fish, too! I make a quick tartar sauce of mayo, relish and lemon, garlic or whatever, and paint the fish, then dip it in panko and bake it brown, serve it with some of that chickeny mustard rice i just made and some broccoli. There's two!

Since I have so much rice and pork, combining the two just seemed...natural? Also I bought the carrots and peas for it last week, but got bronchitis and was in no mood to cook. Marinated the chops for a couple hours in soy sauce, apple cider vinegar, chili paste, cumin, brown sugar, onion, garlic and a little oil, baked them for a bit and chopped them into chunks, saving the bones in my freezer to be turned into broth eventually. Mixed the meat with the veg, added some soy sauce, garlic and onion, and lined two larger deep tupperwares with rice and split the stir fry over each. One went in the freezer, the other in the fridge. That makes three meals.

I thawed some chicken legs and kept moving my bottle of basalmic vinegar out of the way as I was making the first three meals, so I figured I'd find a marinade calling for it. Added honey to the vinegar, with some brown sugar, garlic and onion, whisked it all up and poured it over the chicken in a deep tupperware in a single, alternating layer. These are still in the fridge, so tomorrow I'll bake the legs for a half hour, reduce the glaze and paint it on the legs. It'll be good with rice and broccoli. Four meals so far!

I love kielbasa, so when I saw this insane looking cheesy noodle kielbasa skillet pop up on my Facebook feed last week, I knew I had to make it. Had all the ingredients on hand, too! I had these little tiny circles of pasta I threw into the skillet with the meat, peppers, green chiles, canned tomatoes and cheddar. That's five meals.

We have company catered lunch each Wednesday at my work, and this week there was this VAT of spinach artichoke sauce. Nobody puts it away, it just gets trashed, so I boxed it up and brought it home with me. Boiled some spaghetti and linguine and split it into three deep tupperwares, then poured the sauce over it. Six!

So that's my magic act, turning "I have no food in my house" into "LOOK AT ALL THIS FOOD WE HAVE" in an afternoon. I definitely recommend combing through your ingredients and doing the same thing when you're a day or two before your check or you're having one of those evenings where you're just incapable of heading to the store. Been there. Pull it all out of the fridge, freezer, cupboard, lay it all out, and make it happen. There are ingredient recipe sites, as well, if you're really stuck. Beats eating beans right out of the can with some stale ass bread heel, that's for sure.