Beer Bread and Mussel Stew

So, opted for a simple meal, but it being simple means it’s accessible! So I figured I’d drop this here, since I’m trying to get back to writing again. Ahem

Mmm mussels

So the mussels were frozen as garlic herb mussels. Defrosted with a bit of water and a closed lid on a medium low heat.

Added:
1.5 Cups of Vegetable Stock
Salt, pepper and paprika to taste
Bottle of Angry Orchard

Towards the end of cooking, dash of lemon juice and about two tablespoons of heavy cream. Also fried up some peppered bacon to add to it.

Now, mind, I was a lil worried about the lack of nutrition. So naturally, I fried some potatos and onions into crispy and then added them to the stew.

Let it simmer for awhile on low whilst I made beer bread.

Beer Bread
Recipe located here.

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/4 cup honey*
1 bottle (12 ounces) beer
1/4 cup butter, melted

Add ingredients together, mix. Generously butter pan of your choosing. Heat oven to 350. Back for about 40-50 minutes to get that nice touch of browning to the top.

End result was simple, overall pretty simple to make. My only gripe is I didn’t have better vegetables to add. I’ve been too tired for complex meals or baking overall, but a new sourdough starter has been created, so I’ll probably be making sourdough discard recipes soon.

Stay tuned.

Absolutely Indulgent Steak Sandwich

In my defense, these were originally supposed to be crostini. A friend and I were talking food and he mentioned these crostini he’d made and…You know how the last one was “basic bitch recipes to do easily?”

This is not that.

First things first. We garlic confit some beets. Take beets (in my case, vacuum sealed, skinned beets), dice into cubes, add to an oven-safe ramekin with about half a head of garlic, peeled as individual cloves. Preheat oven to 450 because you don’t want to wait 2 hours for the confit. Stick in oven, and check out as it turns into the color of a sunset (I’ve actually literally never had beets before outside of salads. I am *fascinated*)

Also decide to pickle red onions. Because. (source: https://www.loveandlemons.com/pickled-red-onions/, these go on everything)

Two cups of white vinegar, two cups of water, ⅓ cup of cane sugar, 2 tbsp of salt.

Cut red onions into short strips, place in jar with two teaspoons pepper corns, garlic to your hearts desire. When salt and sugar has dissolved, pour over the onions, gently close jar and let sit on the counter for awhile. When warm but not hot, stick in the fridge.

Check your bread. Discover your baguette is moldy (nooo) and mourn the hard work. Toss moldy bread out. Do a lil biga for a ciabatta. Grab two slices of current loaf (challah). Discover inside of loaf is a tiiiny bit squidgy. Fine, pan fry it.

Let the steak dethaw. Salt, pepper and paprika both sides thoroughly. Preheat cast iron to medium high heat. Add some vegetable oil to the pan to preheat with it until shimmery. Go back three times in a row for the spatter screen. Start one side, place screen, clean glasses from spatter.

Flip to the other side. Add a tablespoon of butter and two crushed garlic cloves, baste the steak as it cooks. Take out when done to your preference. Let rest for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, pull the beets out.

With the steak scrapings in the pan, add two Tbsp of butter, and stir with your basting spoon. As the butter melts, add your remaining onions that didn’t make it into the pickle jar. (Let the record state I also made fudge caramel chocolate chip brownies for future me)
Toss in a generous slug of red wine, worcsetshire sauce, salt, pepper, and reduce for a little while. Add about a teaspoon of duck fat. After mixing, add about a tbsp of flour to thicken, and then about a 1/4 cup of chicken stock for more homogeneity. Pour into a heat safe bowl.

Dice up some basil leafs off your plant.

Timer goes off. Slice steak thinly.
Toast bread with butter on each side. Smear one side with spicy brown mustard. Add steak in correct layering so as to hope to not come apart. Realize this is futile as the bread is challah so the sandwich may not survive the dip process. Don’t care! We proceed.

Grate parmesan over the steak. Add the caramelized onions cooked in the pan, the beets, gently distributed, as much goat cheese as your heart desires, drizzle with aged balsamic glaze (which is hhhh still one of the best things I’ve ever spent money on), basil shreds, and orange zest. Cut sandwich in half. Dip into the sauce.

Take a bit and nearly fall over from how utterly delicious it is. This is absolutely one of the most gilding the lily things I’ve ever cooked, and I’m not mad about it at all. Good lord.

Anyways the rest of the steak gets to become breakfast, the challah is fucking amazing, I’m totally making it more often. And the dip. Also the brownies smell delicious as a gift for future me.

Goddamn

Basic Bitch Nachos

These are not in any way intended to be authentic anything. These are just “a meal I throw together when my brother and I are super tired.”

The brother part being relevant because he’s a celiac, so I largely have to figure out ways to cook for him that are safe and in quantity that meets both our needs. This is fine – at this point I’ve had a decent amount of practice at this.

Basic Bitch Meals continues. Per the title, the bitching probably will too.

Ingredients! (These are sort of per your preference of what you like)
Ground meat (beef, chorizo, hell turkey if that’s your preference, albeit, it’s not mine, but something you can throw into a pan and toss some seasoning on)
Chips! (tortilla! You can fry your own by cutting up corn tortillas but I am..not very good at frying so I don’t generally do this!)
Beans (literally can of black or refried beans)
veg! (salsa, onions, pico de gallo, pretty much whatever you like in your nachos)
(optional also: green onions, scrambled eggs, hell you could probably even do the meat shakshuka style for eggs)

Dump meat of choice into a preheated pan. In this case, we mixed beef and chorizo, and broke it up and let it sit. Added a premade taco seasoning kit, some extra cayenne, ground red pepper, salt, pepper, and extra garlic (diced, crushed or just powdered tbh.)

Let it sit and cook – give periodic stir to prevent burning and more even cooking.

Pour beans into a microwave safe bowl and warm it up – 1 minuteish.

Prep a tray with foil or parchment paper. Dump half the chips across the tray, add cheese, beans and meat. Stick in the oven at 375 for ten minutes so everything finishes cooking and gets homogenous.

Proceed to adulterate and stuff in face.

B r u n c h

I’m aiming to be doing this twice a week, so…

Gonna be another part of the basics – this is basically “adulterate ur eggs” and a tiny lil – basics of gravy/au jus/sauce

Eggs:
4 eggs
Chunk of Feta
1.5 tsp Cream cheese
salt to taste
pepper to taste
1 shake of red pepper flakes
Squeeze of srirachia
1 Tbsp milk

Beat with a fork, mashing the larger/chunkier ingredients (cream cheese and feta, namely) into a more cohesive and breaking apart bit until relatively homogenous. Cuss as you realize you have left out the lox and tear apart maybe two pieces of lox to add to the eggs.

Beat again until homogenous (all coexisting n shite)

Heat cast iron. When up to temp, add butter and butterfly the sausages. Allow butter to heat, add eggs and push around. (I did not do this. I added the sausage first on the rationale that meat cooks faster. The most consistent lessons I relearn with cooking every goddamn time is…cook time remains god…but don’t try to one skillet these. ANYWAYS)

When the eggs start to form cohesive lumps, continue pushing them around until they look wet but not liquid. Dump onto plate.

sausage:
maple sausage, butterflied and pressed to hot cast iron (with a little bit of butter). Keep periodically checking and pressing down with the spatula. remember to flip bc they have sides when butterflied. Remove from pan.

au ju:
1 tbsp maple syrup
1 tsp brown sugar
1 tbsp heavy cream (or beef stock or chicken stock, or hell, if you’re feeling a particular flavor profile, coffee or beer.) to deglaze
salt
pepper
garlic powder (to taste)


Basics of any sauce – leftover fat scraps and/or fat (in this case, scrapings from the sausage and butter), something to deglaze with (in this case, about a tablespoon of maple syrup, then heavy cream) and lower the heat while mixing (medium to medium low heat)

Add seasonings to taste, and brown sugar as it starts to come together and keep stirring. Add a generous pat of butter (call it half a tbsp)

Pour over the sausage. Toast bagels, apply toppings as you like.

Terda. It’s breakfast.
This is sort of my approach when I have time and I wanna be a little extra. The au ju/gravy/reduction whatever you want to call it on this day that ends in y, is just a nice little tipple over the top. Things you could do to it include you could add coffee, you could use ghee instead of butter (if you so chose). If you wanted, could add cajun and crawdaddy meat.

Any and all of these things would work! Just, y’know. Think about what things you like the taste of.
And report back with results.

Basic Bitch Whitesauce

I am not remotely a consistent poster. I’d like to do better about that.

ANYWAYS you fine and fickle creatures, we’re talking basic throw together meals today because we’re all tired as fuck and sometimes you need to just make a quickie meal.

So the basics of any decent white sauce, in my opinion. (Bear in mind everything here is just that, opinion, if you disagree, go make your own, I’m not the grand arbiter of jackshit.)

-Butter and/or olive oil (1-2 tablespoons depending. if doing both, one each)
-Aromatics (i tend towards yellow onion, white onion or if I’m feeling a need for sweeter, shallot. Either way, dice it up, and once the fat looks good and bubbly, or in olive oil’s case, shiny, add your onion of choice). You can also add garlic, but I frankly suggest waiting until the onion starts to cook down. Garlic burns faster.
-Garlic: either shake it between two metal or glass bowls to remove the skin, or smoosh it with the side of your knife. 2-3 cloves, minimum, I tend to use about 4.
-Thickener. You can either use flour (like, a tablespoon), or pasta water (mm starchy water)
-Lemon juice! Add to taste, but frankly, about a tablespoon works for basics. More if wanted.
-Spices! Salt, pepper, and according to what you’re cooking. You’re doing pasta? Rosemary, thyme, red pepper flakes, always good. But not always gotta be pasta – if you’ve thickened with flour, you can add old bay if you want a more New England approach (and are, say, cooking either seafood, chicken, or biscuits and gravy tbh), you can make it for pierogi (which I also recommend old bay or paprika for)

Cook it on a medium high heat at first, and then drop it to a low heat if you’re waiting for your starch/carbs to cook. Stir as you cook, and when it’s sorta the “coat the back of the spoon texture” it can be done. Lid off if you want to cook off extraneous liquid and for it to thicken.

Things you can add also: White wine, hard cider, and if you want a heavier stick to your ribs sauce, heavy cream. By and large, I don’t, so I don’t always because this is just a basic light sauce which can honestly go on basic pasta.

The bitching of this is largely that white sauces, I’ve found, can “break”, i.e. not come together very well. That doesn’t mean they’re not salvageable – nor able to be tasty. Buuut it mostly means pay attention to your heat. Do not abandon your white sauces, they burn slightly more easily but to be honest, I’ve used this to top steak, pasta, pierogi…it’s pretty much whatever your little heart can dream of – but it’s not that hard, and it does make a quick meal answer.

I use a lot of premade, preassembled stuff. I have a limited amount of spoons per day so like. Adjustable stuff like this? Way, way easier to cook for me.

Your very rough update on food and bitchery. Behold, I still live.

Pasties

Drawing from this recipe for to have a reference.

Ingredients:

Pastry:
3 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup and 1 tsp ice-water (in my case, closer to like…1.5 cups tbh, but all of it at a slow drizzle whilst the food processor ran)
1/2 cup chilled butter (+1 tbsp) cubed up
2 egg yolks

Add flour, salt and baking powder to the food processor. Mix. Add butter. Pulse until wet sand. Add yolks. Mix. Drizzle cold water whilst it runs until it becomes a ball moving around the chamber of the food processor. Pull out, shape into a disc, wrap in plastic wrap and stick in the fridge 1/2 hour at least, but until you wanna use it. You can also freeze it, it’s nigh standard pastry/pie dough.

Filling:
vension loin
ground beef
1 medium yellow onion
yellow and purple small potatos

Brown gravy:
Beef scrapings
Bouillion
1 Tbsp of butter
2 Tbsp of flour
1/2 tsp worscetshire sauce
2 Tbsp of heavy cream

Brown gravy made from the scrapings from smash burgers for dinner. Hubba Hubba. (Okay, in seriousness, I’ve been working a manual labor job after sort of hopping around awhile. So I’ve been too tired to cook or bake or document enough for this. Just for bragging rights – smash burgers were topped with Good Brie, and the fries were made in a cast iron with homemade poor man’s aioli. Ahem. Back on topic)

Remove pastry dough from fridge, cut pieces roughly fist sized off, roll out, wet the edges and spoon some of the mix (seasoned!) into the now circular pastry dough. Fold it over onto itself, crimp the edges as prettily or as ugly as you like.

Preheat oven to 350 Fahrenheit. Put pasties on tray with foil, brush with eggwash (and in my case, top with some parmesan grating and some dried rosemary).

While those are baking! Take cast iron full of delicious delicious scrapings and start the heat on low. Add a Tbsp of butter to help deglaze, a bit of flour (I tend to eyeball, vague recipe I’m using for reference point says 2 Tbsp. Potato, tomato, whatever thiccness u want.), a bouillion cube (or paste, or stock whatever you have on hand, really) and gently whisk it in. Keep whisking until no lumps Remain. Lumps of flour = lumpy gravity that makes disgusting powder in your mouth. Ask me how I know.

Pepper, salt, and, because I’m a lil bit of a reprobate, gonna use some of the duckfat from Crimbus dinner. Ahem. (A Tbsp.)

Add worsecesrhesruehire sauce, keep cooking it down until thiccness desired, then add in a little bit of heavy cream. Stir until homogenous and delicious looking.

Curried Chicken Pot Pie

This is a recipe I’ve sort of been playing with for the last 3 years or so. Recipe first, bitching or what have you after. Bear with me, I’m exhausted and this is my first time writing this one down.

Curried chicken pot pie, as bastardied by yours truly, with significant help and input from friends and other people’s recipes.

Pie Crust Recipe:
Current favorite is here for pie crust. Short version if you don’t wanna link clicky:

Two and a half cups of flour
Two sticks of (very) frozen butter
Cup+ of ice water
Tsp salt
Tbsp sugar

Cut up butter into chunks with a very sharp knife. Add 1.5 cup of flour to the food processor (if you have one). Add salt and sugar. Briefly pulse (if by hand then sift or whisk together). Add butter. Pulse in food processor until resembles crumbs. (Cut up butter until about pea sized, then reach in and smoosh, lots. If you don’t like touching, recommending using an item for it. Can use also two butter knives or if you have it, a pastry cutter. Do you, is what I’m saying)

Pour into a bowl. Gradually add a tiny bit of ice water at a time, whilst turning over with a rubber spatula. Once it starts to come together and no more pockets of loose flour, pour onto a counter (lightly floured if sticky, or add flour/water as needed, but not a lot. Gently press together. Form into a larger disc. Cut in half. Form each half into a desk, wrap thoroughly in plastic wrap, let sit in fridge for at least 1 hr. Dealer’s choice. Can also freeze.


Ingredients:
Chicken thighs (breasts will also do, tho I tend to break them down more than thighs) for the no. of people you’re feeding.) (2.75lbs)
4 tbsp butter
1-2 Yellow onions (white can do) diced
(recommend, also, carrots and celery if that’s what you prefer in pot pie. I don’t, so I usually substitute for crunch and sweet/less sweet with bell peppers finely diced. Could also add parsnips if to your tastes. )
Garlic to preference (in my case, about 5 cloves) minced
(Optional: This time I added a tandoori seasoning mix from a local store. Previous times I have not, so ymmv. if you got the goods, got nuts. If not, no worries)
2.5 tsp cumin
1 tsp curry powder
1 tsp red chili powder
Some smoked paprika
1 tsp thyme
2 bayleaves
1 stem of rosemary
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup chicken stock

Dice onions and garlic. Season chicken breasts with salt, pepper, paprika, and thyme until generally coated. Heat pan until metal is hot, then toast the curry powder, cumin, and red chili powder to the pan to pan toast them. Trust me, it’s delicious. It’ll change the color of the spices a little, keep them moving, make it a very short trip to pan, then pour over the chicken.

Add neutral oil to pan. Add onions and garlic. (at this point, if you have them, also veg re: carrots etc). Allow to sit and simmer for a minute. Should pick up whatever leftover spices left in the pan. This is good, move it around a lil. Pan should be on high heat, or medium high if it’s a cast iron.

Add chicken, skin side down if you have skin on (I do not), into the hot pan, and let that cook for a bit until it starts to form a crust on bottom. Flip each piece over once it’s gained some color. Add 4 tbsp of butter to the middle of the pan and lid it, while lowering the temperature to a solid medium heat (on mine, a 4)

Once the butter has completed melted, move everything around a little, and then let it cook awhile longer. At this point, add heavy cream, and the rosemary. Have them all simmer together for awhile at a low heat. Add paprika, curry powder, salt, pepper etc to taste as per your preferences. Add bayleaves. Add about a tbsp of flour (more if you want it thicker.) Chicken stock should also go in at this point. Lid it, leave it on low and leave it alone.

Prep pie crust: Take bottom half out of the fridge, roll it out. Any firm cylinder will work for this – seriously. I used a poster tube one time when I couldn’t find a rolling pin.

Anyways. Lightly flour your cylinder. Lightly flour your pie crust. Roll it out. When you have it to the thinness you want – I’d personally say not see through but floppy, like it’s a fabric. Don’t ask me for measurements, I honestly do not know.

Roll pie crust into your baking vessel of choice.
Par bake! (Pre bake a lil so it holds up better. Since this is a gravy pie, I want it to not fall apart, ergo..par bake). Set oven to 425.

Either poke your dough with a fork all over so it can expand, or you can add aluminum foil to the middle in a large basket shape and fill with rice/dry beans to serve as dry weight. I personally have pie weights because I make a lot of pie.

12-14 minutes is the recommended time for a parbake. I am paranoid, so I do 12. Set a timer on your phone, microwave, oven, I don’t care, just set a timer. You will not remember. Something will happen. Be kind to your brain.

I need to get more pie weights. ANYWAYS. Par bake your crust. Return to the chicken on the stove. By now it should be tender enough to pull apart with tongs, fork or whatever your implement of destruction is. I added a little extra flour and pepper to thicken it up and took the lid off for awhile. I want it to thicken up a little more before I put it in my pie crust.

Remove other pie crust from fridge and roll out again, to appropriate thickness and lightly flour your cylinder and counter before you do so.

When pie crust sufficiently par-baked, pull out of oven, fill with chicken stew, top with *other* pie crust, and brush with one egg, beaten with about a tablespoon of water.

Drop oven to 375. Stick pie into oven. Bake until you deem done – I usually go with when the crust starts to lightly brown at the highest points.

I’ve been sort of playing with this idea for the last two or three years because I love savory pastries. Love pie crust, and Shepherd’s pie, but generally don’t enjoy chicken pot pie bc of the cooked carrots and peas. I wanna like them, I do, but I just cannot with the textures involved. It gives me the heebs. No shade to anyone who does like them, I just don’t, and y’know, while I was at it, why not make it more flavorful?

Especially considering how Michigan winters get.
The first iteration of this pie, came out beautifully except.

I left the burner on. When I took the pie *out* of the oven, I put it on the still…on…hot…burner. Long story short, the pie dish collapsed on itself which was alarming, no pie was had, many tears were shed, and I had to buy my roommate at the time a replacement pie dish. I also got myself one because it’s a really good pie dish.

Second time I made this took forever, but made it for a passle of folks and this time, well. I figured I should probably actually write it down this time, and come back to this lil space. So tell me, y’all, what’s your favorite comfort food when November gets raw with the cold? I wanna know.

Breakfast Sandwiches

Food first, then some bitching.

Ingredients:
Sourdough bread slices (enough for however many people are eating)
1/2 shallot
5 cloves of garlic
2 tablespoons mayo
teaspoon gochujang chili paste
honey
salt (to taste)
pepper (to taste)
maple apple sausage
1/4 cup of beef broth
Tbsp of maple syrup
2 heaping tbsp brown sugar
Eggs (overeasy, hard or medium as you prefer)

Take preferred breakfast meat of choice. In my case, maple-apple sausage. Butterfly, then put in cast iron face down after cast iron gets ripping hot. Weigh down as per preference and ignore it. Dice up half a shallot, and about four or five cloves of garlic.

Mix a spoonful of gochujang chili paste, a dollop of your preference of honey, salt, pepper and garlic into mayo to make spicy garlic aioli.

Cut bread in half and put into the toaster oven for 5-10 minutes. Ignore.

Start to cook shallots with salt and pepper in some basic olive oil.
Flip butterflied sausages.

When done, remove sausages to drain, similar with shallots. To the cast iron the sausages had been in, add maybe 1/4 cup of beef broth, the brown sugar and slowly mix as you drizzle the maple syrup and lower the heat from ripping hot to about a 3 or 4. As it starts to form a syrup, take off heat so it doesn’t burn.

Cook shallots until done (your doneness varies on preference).

Cook eggs to preferred amount of doneness.

Assemble delicious breakfast sandwich:
Spread aioli on now toasted bread, add sausage, shallots, place egg on top, then top with the sweet au jus, salt, pepper and enjoy.

….

The bitching is mostly, I’m cooking because I’m fucking sad and it makes mea really good cook because I just..don’t wanna be sad. That said, my response to *being* sad has been to cook – especially for other people. It’s a good distraction, and it’s enjoyable. This was an experiment, mostly based on chasing flavor pairings I really enjoy. There were no complaints and the leftover au jus and aioli became a steak sandwich at about 5am.

We cooked. We bitched. Behold, I still live.

Beignets and Electional Response

There is no such thing as politics not connected to food. We’re gonna stick to the usual but.

Yeah.

Recipe drawn from is here

Ingredients

• 2 tsp dry active yeast
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 1/2 cups warm water
• pinch of salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup evaporated milk
• 1/4 cup shortening
• 5 1/2 cups bread flour
• Powdered Sugar to Taste

Instructions

• In a large bowl, dissolve the dry active yeast in warm water. Add a tsp of sugar and let it sit for about 10-15 minutes
• In a separate bowl, add the condensed milk, eggs, and remaining sugar and mix.
• Add the wet ingredients to the yeast mixture and give it a whisk.
• Add half of the bread flour and the shortening and mix
• Add the remaining flour and mix until well incorporated
• Beat until nice and smooth, you want a soft, slightly sticky ball of dough
• Turn onto a floured surface, knead until smooth and elastic
• Place in a greased bowl, turning once to grease the top, cover and let it rise in a warm place for 2 hours
• Punch dough down, Turn onto a floured surface, roll the dough out with your floured rolling pin and then cut into small squares or rectangles.
• Fry in vegetable oil for about 2-3 minutes on each side
• Sprinkle with powdered sugar and enjoy!

Nutrition

Calories: 318kcal | Carbohydrates: 52g | Protein: 9g | Fat: 7g | Saturated Fat: 2g | Cholesterol: 33mg | Sodium: 34mg | Potassium: 138mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 10g | Vitamin A: 90IU | Vitamin C: 0.4mg | Calcium: 68mg | Iron: 0.7mg

I could not cook anything for the last 3 weeks. I have been expiring and emotionally overwhelmed and depressed but like. This needed to happen, and I took requests. So Boyfriend requested beignets, since he misses NOLA mid plague. So I did all of that – but for the two hour rise, the boys went and skateboarded and my girlfriend and I hung out.

And while we were doing that, the election results came forward. We, as a batch of queer, disabled, neurodivergent folks, cried from sheer relief that things can finally move forward. The work is not done – but it can do more to start.

Have a pretty food pic, y’all. I did damn good.

20lbs of Tomato Is More Than You Think

No, really.

No, really.

A lot more than you think. ANYWAYS, I’m basic bitching off some of my mom’s advice (hi Mom!), Marcella Hazan (who should be worshipped as a god for her books both having sections for antipasti, explicitly. Ho-ly shit, bechamel stuffed mushrooms is a Thing and I don’t even like mushrooms.)

And this lady. Which like. To be fair, this is my ex spouse’s fault.

Let’s be clear. My ex spouse contacted me while I was in the depths of one my food madness’ and they got ahold of me like “Hey. Do you want 20lbs of tomato because otherwise they’re going to waste.”

I’m a nice Jewish..creature. I don’t like food being wasted.

Anyways. That resulted in tonight’s madness, because I really did not fucking think about how goddamn many tomatos 20 goddamn pounds of tomato are. So.

(this is, in fact, one of five bowls we had going for prep)

To make tomato sauce from fresh tomatos:

De-stem tomatos.
Boil for roughly 30-60 seconds, blanche (i.e. stick in a bowl of ice water), peel of skin, and then cut up, and cook together until consistency you want. Add vinegar or lemon juice(1/4 – 1/2 a cup) and salt (2 teaspoons, optional)

That’s it. Technically.

However, as I am not a fan of White People Seasoning, and if I’m giving 20lbs of tomato sauce to friends, it’s going to be my goddamn tomato sauce, of which I have many, many particular opinions on this.

So like. Just for the record, I had help. I had three other people in my house, which is a luxury during pandemic, to help me de-stem, blanche, peel, etc. But I was sort of…the organizing factor.

Secondly, this is still my ex spouse’s fault. Faelin, I blame you.

Also mom a little. (Sorry mom, I watched you doing this shit way too often)

So the way I did this was more like..

De-stem etc.
“Roommate, two teaspoons of salt is for 15 pounds, how much, bounced up for 20, for White People?” (Let the record state, I am a goddamn white people, I am not White People for seasoning, goddammit)
It was determined hence, that about a tablespoon and a half for dry seasonings, about 2x for wet (i.e. red wine vinegar, basil infused olive oil)

De-stem, blanche, peel, chop and cook your tomatos.
Periodically apply emulsion blender to and get spattered in the face. Ignore the tomato bukkake, it’s fine. (Don’t google that. Promise me. You don’t want to.)
When finally fucking done adding tomatos to pot (and it is a Horrifyingly Large Stock Pot)
1.5 Tbsp Salt (stir)
1.5 Tbsp garlic powder (stir)
1.5 Tbsp onion powder
1.5 Tbsp rosemary (stir)
1.5 Tbsp oregano
1.5 Tbsp thyme (stir)
1 cup of Red Wine Vinegar (stir)
1/4 Cup of basil-infused olive oil (stir)
Have roommate stand over pot and grind pepper into pot until deemed enough, whilst actively stirring. Do this to prevent pocketing. Dry nasty pockets of spices are gross. Don’t fuckin’ do it.
Additionally added two rinds of parmesan and an entire stick of butter, because I’m a fucking monster. Don’t care, most of this sauce is going in the freezer once it’s canned.
(Or to friends, because this is a lot of sauce)
Allow to simmer on a medium heat through dinner (dinner was steak, shrimp and potatos done spanish style. I’m a fancy bitch when rewarding people for the assist)
Lower down for another hour post dinner collapse. It will make its own tomato paste, scrape the sides for it.

It begins…

Some sauce….

More goddamn sauce

Anyways, we all tried it, and pretty much universally the response was Eyes Bug Out, Holy Shit That’s Good, so I’m calling it a win for now. Pics of jarred product to come. I promise, it’ll be purty.

But learn from my mistakes. 20 fuckin pounds is a lot of goddamn tomato.