Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Hot Morning

Some mornings I feel that my kitchen has horrible lighting. But also I feel like I can't fully wake up. And I'm groggy and I'm whiny and unable to think straight, so I look forward to something to get me excited, and happy and going.

So, today I made myself some chilaquiles for breakfast! Yay!

Ideally, of course, a nice husband, boyfriend, or fuck buddy would be the one making them for you. But, the truth is that chances are that you are the better cook and it is probably a better idea for you to make them yourself.

I love chilaquiles, they are easy to make, delicious, hot, and crunchy. You can throw an egg to one side and beans to the other, and you are in heaven, Mexican heaven. Your morning just gets better, brighter, and more exciting. And this before you even taste them, just by smelling them your day betters.

That's until you get the shits.

The only thing I'm not too excited about is that by making a dish like this you realize how much oil goes into frying the tortillas, and you panic and you already don't want to eat them. Same way you don't want to eat bacon when you remember that pigs are as smart as dogs and all around awesome and social animals. But just like the first sight of bacon removes the remorse and the mental images of a beautiful intelligent animal suffering, the cautionary fear of developing heart disease disappears the moment you see golden crispy tortillas.

I love the food I grew up with. Notice how there's no cheddar cheese anywhere? Leave it out some days, you'll be able to taste greatness. If you can though, find some queso fresco and crumble it all over everything on that plate, sadly I was out of it.

Sunday, July 27, 2014

With a Pestle in Hand!

A few weeks ago I got my very own, and very first, pestle and mortar, nothing fancy, nothing great, but something!

Since then I've been extremely excited about the possibilities, about all foods that I now I can make! Of course, it'd be easier to buy a food processor and make them with that but that also costs a lot more money money that I rather spend on drugs, porn, and video games.

I must admit that even if I had one I'd probably still occasional choose to attack food with my pestle, smashing things and crushing things makes you feel quite great in the end. As long as they are digital or not sentient or alive, of course.

So, I decided to try and make a dish that I quite love because it is so fresh and so tasty, and in theory so easy to make. In practice it turns out it was true, not hard at all to make! As usual, and because I like to pretend there's more hours in the day than I actually have to spare, I made everything from scratch. I had quite a lot of fun doing it too, from roasting the sesame seeds to make the fresh tahini, to smashing everything together into a creamy heavenly food, it was neat.

The end result I think could have use more smashing and crushing, as well as more garlic, but, it was passable and exactly what I was craving today and I am now incredibly happy. At some time though I'd love to learn how to make my own pita bread from scratch.

But, next thing I do should be to take a nap!


Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Dreams of Mochi

Many years ago I had mochi for the first time and I fell in love. It was squishy, sweet, yummy, strange. Love at first bite.

A few weeks ago I came across a video online that showed an older lady and an older man beating the shit out of rice, the video was about making mochi. Immediately I got excited, "This can be done by my mortal hands!" I thought, and a few days later I went to the local Japanese market and bought what I needed: mochigome, sweet rice flour, adzuki beans, etc.

Today, a few weeks after I got all that, I finally got around making my mochi. It was a complete and utter failure. After about an hour of beating the rice the way you would a demon haunting you at night, the rice just didn't have the right consistency. So I gave up, threw it on the counter on top of some flour, and hoped it would magically fix itself. It didn't.

After emptying half my box of rice flour on my dough in hopes I would be able to wrap it around anything I wanted, I accepted defeat. My mochi ended up being incredibly floury, and kind of bitter.

Thankfully my anko was very tasty, so the end result was edible and to a degree enjoyable. But next time I know what I need to do to end up with some quite amazing mochi.

I had some leftover mochi dough at the end and I remembered that one of the videos I saw earlier had a picture of deep fried mochi wrapped in nori. So I cut some of my overly floury mochi into squares and did what humanity has always done when they want to be happy, threw it in a pot of boiling oil.

This was the highlight of my culinary adventure, fried mochi wrapped in nori. So good, incredibly so!

I'm already hungry, what should I make next? Stay tuned, and find out!