The Spiteful Chef

I don’t know what it is about weekends… Maybe it’s all the free time. Maybe it’s because my weekends are usually a jacked-up melange of hangover pain and running pain. Usually one morning of each. Either way, we end up eating a ridiculous pile of things on the weekends, compared to our relatively sane eating patterns during the week. Yesterday we did two things: Jack and shit. Both of us were hung over and sore, and both of us had knee pain that caused us to hobble around the house looking for things we’d lost the night before and yelling about the youngsters being too loud outside. It was like the prequel to our old age together. So we sat. And we ate. And we sat.

Dinner was great, though–Shepherd’s pie and a dessert trio that did not go with one another, let alone with shepherd’s pie. I’d never had shepherd’s pie before. I thought I’d hate it, since I don’t like to have gravy on my mashed potatoes (unless by gravy you mean a rich, nutty sauce comprised of butter and salted butter alone). It ended up surprising me. Chris was happy as a fat kid wee-wee deep in a tub of vanilla frosting. I browned up some onions, roasted garlic, and sliced mushrooms in butter. I then added a can of tomato paste and a pound of lean ground beef. I stirred it until the beef was all broken up and the paste had developed a dark burgundy tone. I added a splash of red wine, Worcestershire, and beef flavored “Better than Boullion” paste. Once it had gotten sufficiently thick and hearty, I stirred in a few cups of steamed green peas. Topped with mashed potatoes (made with fat-free half and half and Brummel and Brown yogurt spread–on account of all the sitting not being worth shit for calories) and 2% milk cheddar, it was baked until the top crunched and the inside had taken on a Trump-like richness. GAWD.

I will say that on account of my sluttish laziness I took my first short cut EVER on mashed potatoes. I am a stickler about ‘taters. I won’t eat them in restaurants unless they’re very upscale, and I try to avoid eating them at other peoples’ houses. I live in perpetual fear that someone will try to slip me either potato flakes or pre-packaged potatoes of some kind. Or reheated potatoes. Or unintentionally lumpy or pasty potatoes. Anything bad, really. So I hold myself to the same golden standard. Yesterday I saw, for the first time outside of television, those new peeled and quartered Ore-Ida steamer potatoes. They’re just pre-peeled and pre-cut, so you steam them in the bag, open them, and then mash them with your own ingredients as you would if you had peeled and boiled them yourself. I was doubtful, but I am now COMPLETELY impressed. I prefer to mash yukon golds, but in a time-crunch these were invaluable. There’s nothing added to them, so they tasted just like they always do when I make them. Seriously. You should try them. Ten minutes to perfectly fresh mashed potatoes. And they loved being on top of my pie.

Then for dessert, I made a lemon-vanilla angel food cake and some blueberry and vanilla rum panna cottas (mostly stolen from Choosy Beggar Tina’s blog–thanks much). I served them up with lemon curd I had leftover from a tart, and it was a great trio.

Except I over-rummed and under-sugared the blueberry layer of the panna cotta, so it tasted like a straight-up Jell-O shot. Thank heavens I am such a big fan of Jell-O shots! The white layer was all sweet, buttermilky goodness. And the lemon curd went amazingly well with the angel food cake. BTW, homemade angel food cake is simple to make and tastes like a whole different animal from the grocery store stuff. It’s like comparing a cross-eyed tabby and a majestic white tiger. Or something.

Today we went for a quick(er than usual) 10 mile run since we were still sore and weren’t feeling up to a full half-marathon. We got home and made some concoctions Chris has been talking about, and a dessert I’ve been dreaming about. He’s actually pretty good at thinking up new food ideas. Anyway, here are the step-by-step photos. I was feeling camera happy.

Sweet pork egg rolls:

Ingredients:
8 lb pork shoulder roast
1 jar (my homemade) salsa
1 C brown sugar
1 can pineapple chunks in juice
1/4 C Frank’s red hot
Garlic and onion powder to taste
Brown the pork. Put it in the crock pot with everything else. Cook until it’s falling apart. Remove the pork. Boil the remaining liquid until it’s reduced to a slightly thicker consistency. Shred the pork and return to the sauce. Serve over rice. Have multiple orgasms.

The next day, put leftover pork mixture into egg roll wrappers, roll them up. Determine that they’re leaking all over the cutting board. Wrap them in a second wrapper, telling them loudly “You wanna act like a hooker, I’ll treat you like a hooker. I’m going to double-wrap you.” Fry them up and serve with a homemade cilantro-honey-lime vinaigrette.

Drool.

Then we had shoestring fries (soaked and double fried for extra crunch)topped with Chris’s completely genius spicy seasoning mix served with ketchup *ACCEPTABLE ON FRENCH FRIES* and coarsely ground pepper mixed together.

Finally, we had fresh flour tortillas drizzled with honey and cinnamon-sugar mix, topped with balls of fried, homemade buttermilk sorbet that had been coated in crushed cinnamon toast crunch batter. I love myself. I love this dessert.