Anger Burger

I can think of only one thing a vegan ever taught me: how to make all-natural homemade cookies taste like storebought.

Perhaps you are asking yourself, why would a perfectly nutbag vegan baker want their cookies to taste like Chips Ahoy?  Hopefully you are answering yourself, too, because I got nuthin’ other than: because they taste like forbidden.

The secret ingredient, for whatever reason, is cardamom.

I swear this to be true.  The next time you make chocolate chip cookies, whatever your regular recipe, add maybe 1/8th of a teaspoon (up to a 1/4, taste the dough as you mix) of ground cardamom — so little that you essentially can’t even taste it — and it’s like a magical artificially flavored fairy came along and tinkled on your cookies.  I’ve mentioned this here before, but I thought I’d reiterate having just recently made my favorite Immature Style chocolate chip cookies again.  I’m telling you: cardamom.

I hope.

Please, please ignore the grout.  I’ve bleached it so much I burned my nose.

Like a lot of cooks, my mom and I have holy grails.  We occasionally reach them, and this is why we keep cooking rather than break down into lurid CMYK Hamburger Helper purgatory.  One of my mom’s big ones was one-at-a-time pancakes and I remember the day she called me, voice raised in gloating victory.  I’VE DONE IT.  I’VE FINALLY DONE IT.

I wooed a boy with the promise of banana pancakes.  True!

Store-bought pancake mix, for being so simple, is alarmingly disappointing.  And really, pancake mix is basically just flour and leavening agents — your inability to do this yourself marks you as a noob more than your Mario Batali cookware¹ does.  Sorry, betty.  Get used to it.

Chocolate-bar  pancake for me.  It was that kind of day.

Originally the pancakes were for camping, when the ability to mix just two individual pancakes for her and her husband was the difference between making them and skipping them in favor of something less wasteful.  After the great formulation she realized she could be making herself a single pancake for breakfast at home as well.  But that is neither here nor there.  The point is this: with the dry parts mixed and stored away and a jar of the wet mix kept in the fridge, a single pancake is only a small bowl, a spoon and a hot skillet away.

Again with the grout.

So what’s with the forgiveness part?  Well.  Let me tell you.  I didn’t exactly ask my mom if I could share her master pancake recipe with you guys, but I’m sure she’d say yes.  I mean, it’s you guys.  We love you guys.

Starr’s Pancakes
a single pancake is simply 1/4 C. of dry mix with as much wet mix as needed to make it thick but still barely pourable, about three spoonfuls or something, it depends on your buttermilk.  and the buttermilk is crucial, in my opinion, don’t substitute it with plain milk or something else.  vegans have their own blogs, go find them.

dry mix
2 1/2 cups flour
2 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. salt

wet mix
1 egg
1 cup buttermilk
2 Tbsp. melted butter.

• There’s really not a lot I can teach you if you don’t know how to make pancakes.

• Also, the wet stuff keeps for a little over a week in my observation, depending on how sterile your container is.

• I also replace the butter with flax oil and add maybe 1/4 cup of ground flax seeds to the dry mix, but that’s only for people who are obsessed with their brains being lubed with enough Omega-3 fatty acids.

• You might also notice there is no sugar in the mix.  This is intentional, and a reminder to soak the cooked pancake with so much maple syrup that it drips all over your shirt.

• I almost forgot! Don’t mix the wet and dry together until just before cooking — the baking soda reacts with the acid in the buttermilk and poofs it up really quickly, which is in large part what makes fluffy, lovely pancakes.

¹I actually own a Mario Batali spatula that I hate and should just give to a bum and get  over it.  Whenever it gets warm, it curls.  True story!

It happens more regularly as I age, but still with a disconcerting rarity: I invent something for dinner and it works.

I mean, you know how it goes.  Or maybe you don’t: you throw some shit together, maybe you’ve got some ingredients that are borderline botulism-breeders, but either way you just start cooking and sometimes it’s okay, but much of the time you end up with some kind of prison-movie prop food.

This time I had some potatoes, just bought some spinach, and had half a tub of plain yogurt that was taking on an interesting new hue.  Sounds like the dinner bell!

As soon as I realized what I had, I half-remembered-half-fantasized an old recipe for some kind of Indian yogurt-rice, a tangy, light dish with lots of chopped cilantro.  I also had some cilantro!  Things are coming together now, eh, Milhouse?

But that’s where everything stops being Indian.  My favorite curry power, the Japanese S&B Oriental Curry Powder (found in most grocery stores), has a decidedly non-Indian flavor to it, but is the exact curry flavor you want for something like curried deviled eggs or curry ketchup.

I still get surprised when an entire 9oz. bag of spinach cooks down into little more than the density of three eggs, but it does, so don’t stop adding it to your pan, even when it seems like enough.  It won’t be.

I really must get a white plate so my food stops looking like it’s visiting from the 70’s.

Sunday’s Curried Potatoes and Spinach
i know it looks like a typo, me calling for low-fat yogurt, but in this instance the tanginess of the yogurt is more important than the creaminess. i know; what is the world coming to?  end times.

2 Tbsp. olive oil
3 petite waxy potatoes, diced small
1/4 white onion, diced small
3 cloves garlic, diced
1/2 C. water
1 Tbsp. mild curry powder (S&B is best)
1/2 inch worth of grated fresh garlic GINGER
9oz. bag of washed baby spinach leaves
3 heaping spoonfuls of low-fat plain yogurt
1/2 C. chopped fresh cilantro
2 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. kosher salt
1/2 tsp. fresh ground black pepper

• In a saute pan over medium heat, warm the olive oil and add the potatoes, onions and garlic.  Saute for a few minutes, being careful to keep them from sticking to the pan.  Add the salt, pepper and curry powder, and continue to saute another 5-7 minutes, or until the potatoes take on a little bit of color.

• Add the water and lower the heat a little, stirring occasionally until the water is gone and the potatoes are nearly done, another 10 minutes at the very most.  If you need to add more water to keep the potatoes from sticking, do so.  Don’t go crazy, though.

• Start adding the spinach.  I chop my spinach by carefully placing big handfuls on the cutting board and coarsely and barbarically chopping at it until it’s broken down a little, but you don’t have to.  Add the spinach in handfuls, stirring after each time, until the entire bag is wilted into the potatoes.  This will take about 5 minutes.

• By this time the potatoes should be cooked through and the spinach should be just wilted.  Turn off the heat, add the yogurt and the cilantro.   Test for salt.  It might need more, the spinach tends to counteract it.

A note about cooking salmon: salmon really benefits from a quick salt rub.  About 1/2 hour before cooking time, heavily salt the salmon, wrap it in a paper towel or piece of plastic and allow to sit in fridge for 20 – 30 minutes.

When it is time to cook, rinse the salmon thoroughly under cold water and pat dry with more paper towel.  The salt adds just enough seasoning to the salmon that it often doesn’t need anything else, and tenderizes it a little too.  But be warned: more than 1/2 an hour and you’ll start curing the salmon and will then have a rubbery texture when you cook it.

Instead of a big lead-in, I’ll get to the point: make this recipe.

I lied.  There’s a lead-in.  You see, I’ve mentioned this before, but I have this habit of finding recipes online and belligerently believing that there is something wrong with it, even though it is alluring to me.  Perhaps because it is alluring to me.   To put a finer point on it, I tend to believe recipes are too good to be true.  It’s a strange quality of my kitchen hobbyism, and one I’ll just lump under the amorphous description of Anger Burger, like some complex Zeitgeistian German description-word.

Emma Christensen over at The Kitchn shows up with this “Lemon-Scented Pull-Apart Coffeecake” which immediately sends me into rage mode (wtf with that name, yo?), in no small part because her photos of it look fucking delicious.  Immediately afterward the in-laws came for a spell and the recipe went to the not-literal backburner.

And then, today.  Which shall forever hence be known as THE DAY THE LEMON BREAD ARRIVED.

I am reluctant to say anything that might dissuade you from making this bread — after all, I got it right in one try, and that’s saying a lot — but in all fairness, it’s a hair finicky.  Sort of.  I think if anything, it takes a little faith courage.  For example, the dough itself is a little on the sticky side, and as much as I hate recipes that say “you might need a tablespoon of flour to help keep the dough from sticking” (usually this means “YOU’LL NEED SIX TABLESPOONS AT LEAST”), I fought the urge to load it down with more flour to better knead the dough with.  In this instance, wetness is your friend.  Wetness means a nice texture.

The description for how to form the bread is confusing at best, and an incomprehensible logic puzzle at worst.  As Emma Christensen says, the best way is to just visualize what you’re going for (a loaf of individually shaped slices) and go with a gut feeling.  Also, seeing photos of the final product helps a lot.  In a nutshell, you’re rolling the bastard out and layering.

I think that Emma is onto something with allowing the dough to rest overnight in the fridge.  When the time came for me to roll the dough, it was fussy.  I ended up fearing for the worst the entire time I was making the layers; mashing and pulling and pinching each floppy, warm, recalcitrant layer into place, until I was certain I had molested the dough beyond its ability to work it out in therapy.

I was wrong.  Even with this struggle, the bread was perfect.  The bottom gets that cinnamon-roll bottom thing, the sugary, sticky, candied thing.  The top fins are crunchy.  Each piece is saturated with just enough lemon zest to make you smell lemon on your own breath for the next hour.  Ugh.  I’m so full right now and I’m still salivating thinking about it.

So while its a little more work than making cinnamon rolls from scratch, I think it might just be a superior product.  Each sheet is thin and double-coated in lemon sugar.  The loaf shape encourages picking at, the kind of thing you serve for houseguests as a late breakfast and come off looking like Captain Domesticpants, Ph.D..

Long story short: I think this is my Gladiator sweet bread.  Forged in adversity.  Tested in battle.  Victorious in the belly.

Lemon-Scented Blah Blah-Blah Blah Blah
i highly encourage you to read both Emma Christensen’s recipe comments and the original recipe in addition to reading mine (mine has very few alterations, just to be clear).  all together they provide a slightly easier time of it.

dough
2 3/4 C. all-purpose flour
1/4 C granulated sugar
2 1/4 tsp. (1 envelope) instant yeast
1/2 tsp. salt
1/3 C whole milk
2 oz (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
1/4 C. water
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
2  eggs, at room temperature

lemon filling
1/2 C. granulated sugar
the grated zest of 3 lemons
the grated zest of 1 orange
2 oz unsalted butter, melted

• Stir together 2 cups of the flour, the sugar, the yeast, and the salt in a bowl; set aside. In a small saucepan, heat the milk and butter over low heat just until the butter is melted. Remove from the heat, add the water, and set aside until warm (120 to 130°F), about 1 minute. Add the vanilla.

• Pour the milk mixture over the flour-yeast mixture and, using a rubber spatula, mix until the dry ingredients are evenly moistened.  Mixing by hand, add the eggs, one at a time, stirring vigorously after each addition just until incorporated. This can be done in a stand mixer, but isn’t necessary.  This is also very fussy and takes some patience.  Add 1/2 cup of the remaining flour, and resume mixing until the dough is smooth, 30 to 45 seconds. Add 2 more tablespoons flour and mix with a little more vigor until the dough is smooth, soft, and slightly sticky, about 45 seconds.

• Sprinkle a work surface with 1 – 2 tablespoons flour and center the dough on the flour. Knead gently until smooth and no longer sticky, about 1 minute, adding an additional 1 to 2 tablespoons flour only if necessary to lessen the stickiness. Place the dough in a large, greased bowl, cover the bowl securely with plastic wrap, and let the dough rise in a warm place (about 70°F) until doubled in size, 45 to 60 minutes. While the dough is rising, make the filling.

• OPTIONAL ALTERNATIVE: After letting the dough rise, stick the whole thing into the fridge and allow to chill over night.  The next day, resume recipe as normal.

• In a small bowl, thoroughly mix together the sugar and the lemon and orange zests.

• Gently deflate the dough. On a lightly floured work surface, roll out the dough into a 20-by-12-inch rectangle. Smaller is better than larger.  Using a pastry brush spread the melted butter generously over the dough. Cut the dough north-south into 5 strips, each about 12 by 4 inches — again, erring smaller is better than larger here since the second rise will fill up the gaps in the pan.  Sprinkle 1/5th of the zest-sugar mixture over one of the buttered rectangles, lightly rubbing and pressing the sugar into the butter. Top with a second rectangle (it’s ok to manipulate it roughly into place, it can take it) and sprinkle it with 1/5th of the zest-sugar mixture. Repeat with the remaining dough rectangles and zest-sugar mixture, ending with all your rectangles now all stacked on top of each other.

• Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a 9-by-5-by-3-inch loaf pan. You don’t need to flour or parchment it.

• Slice the stack  through the 5 layers to create 6 equal sections, each about 4 by 2 inches. Fit these layered strips into the prepared loaf pan, cut edges up and down, like a loaf of sliced bread. Remember that the dough will fill the space up as it rises a second time, so don’t feel like it has to be perfect.  Loosely cover the pan with plastic wrap and let the dough rise in a warm place until puffy and almost doubled in size, 30 to 50 minutes. Press the dough gently with a fingertip. If the indentation remains, the dough is ready for baking.

• Bake the bread until the top is golden brown, 30 to 35 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool in the pan for 10 to 15 minutes.

• To remove the bread  from the pan, gently run a butter knife between the bread and the pan.  Have a cooking rack ready where you want the bread to go.  Using a clean, doubled kitchen towel in your left hand and a oven mitt on your right (switch that for lefties), pick up the pan with your right hand and lay the towel over the top of the bread, covering it with the towel.  Now, holding your left hand firmly over the towel and bread, gently turn the pan over into your left hand, letting the loaf free.  Quickly then, gently roll the bread back upright onto the cooling rack.  It might come apart.  Such is the way of things.

• If you are so inclined, drizzle the top of the warm bread with cream cheese icing, as follows:

3 oz. cream cheese, room temp
juice of one lemon
1/3 C. powdered sugar, sifted

• The bread is best, by far, when still warm.

OMGyouguysWTF?  You ever have that thing where you’re gone for like three weeks and when you get back home your boyfriend has bought a bunch of weird groceries¹ and has too many freelance jobs stacked up and the next thing you know you’re trying to reorganize the kitchen and do 12 hours worth of research for him?  Thrilling.

Last night I wanted to make some kind of casserole so I could pull a heat-n-eat when he got home at whatever horrible time (9:30, last night), and so out came the old recipes from my bookmark stash.  The one I’d wanted to try for a few weeks was this kind of unremarkable but alluring potato and cauliflower gratin from Dutch Girl Cooking.

Lookit my purdy bowl!  More on that later.

Foremost, I knew that I wasn’t going to parboil the cauliflower and potato, I was going to roast it.  There’s just no question that roasting provides a better flavor, and something about it seems less… I don’t know.  Steamy.  I don’t have a good explanation.

Secondly, I knew I wasn’t going to put tomatoes in it.  As mentioned previously on Anger Burger, I have a disease that doesn’t react well to tomatoes.  Not always, but often enough that unless I really want them, I don’t eat them.

So in summary, I found myself at the usual crossroads, flirting with the devil: That looks great!  I’m gonna totally alter it in nearly every way!

The result was a casserole that looked absolutely lovely, right up until I put the cheese sauce on it.

And then it kind of looked like upchuck.  This photo is a little more flattering than the actual more pinkish, chunky tone the whole thing had, a twist that so irritated me that I never took a photo of the finished product.  Because honestly, it wasn’t any better looking.  It was worse.  It looked like baked upchuck.

But surprise!  It tastes awesome.  I just have to figure some way to make it that doesn’t make me think of regurgitating.  My first thought is: don’t bake it.  Just stir the vegetables into the sauce on the stovetop, but… I think that might even be worse.  The second solution is: back off on the paprika.  It doesn’t add that much flavor, and it is the sole culprit for the sickly pink tone.  Lastly, make it like Dutch Girl makes it: broil the top for nice brown bits and then sprinkle it with parsley.  Parsley is distracting.

But don’t let me discourage you from making this, it was really very good.  It’d be perfect for a potluck for the blind.

Cauliflower and Potato Gratin
i think this is one of those “even people who don’t like cauliflower will love this!” recipes, even though it kind of gives me the willies to type that.  then again, I think oven-roasted cauliflower is magical.

1 head cauliflower
about 1 lb. potatoes / 4 medium red potatoes, give or take
1 medium leek, finely sliced
1 clove garlic, finely diced
2 Tbsp. olive oil
2 Tbsp. flour
1 1/2 C. milk
8 oz. gouda cheese, grated
1/2 tsp. sweet paprika
1/2 1/8 tsp. ground nutmeg
salt & pepper

• Chop and roast the cauliflower and potatoes at 400° for about 15 minutes until very nearly done.  I prefer tossing the raw pieces in a bowl with a little olive oil OR giving a good solid coat of olive oil to the pan.  The goal, of course, is to get them nice and golden-flavored but not entirely cooked, hence the pretty high temp.  When done, turn the heat down to 350°.

• Meanwhile, in a saucepan, saute the leeks and garlic in the olive oil until softened, about 5 – 7 minutes.  Add the flour and cook over medium heat about 2 minutes.  Stirring quickly, add the milk slowly, take care to get rid of lumps as you go.  You also might not need all the milk.   Keep adding it until the texture of tomato soup from a can (prepared – does that make sense?).  Add the seasonings – as much sweet paprika as you dare, the nutmeg, and a little salt and pepper.

• Just before you’re ready to use it, add 2/3 of the grated gouda to the sauce and stir through to melt.  As a side note, I really don’t like the smoked gouda, because I have a problem with smoke flavor.  But if you like smoke flavor, use that.  I don’t.  Is all I’m saying.

• Layer the cauliflower and potatoes into a 9×13 baking dish (no need to be fancy here, it’ll all be buried) and pour over the cheese sauce.  Top the gratin with the remaining 1/3 grated gouda.  Bake in the 350° degree oven for about 20-30 minutes, or until bubbling and browned.  It’ll almost certainly need a jaunt under the broiler to get those nice brown bits going.

¹ Almond milk, namely. I threw it out because I thought a houseguest bought it while I was gone, but it turned out Mike just had a hankering for it. In the event that you think he had a sudden urge for healthful eating, I’d also like to point out that he ate a burrito filled with french fries. TRUE.

I’m one of those fun-killing blow-hards that spits at Valentine’s Day, expounding that expressing love for one another should be a daily activity and not one saturated with weird expectations and sub-standard chocolates laden with cheap vegetable fats.  Likewise, I find Thanksgiving to be a particularly ironic holiday; I am lucky to have a family I universally like, but most people I know can only tolerate an hour of their own kin, even lubed up with White Russians.

All Anger Burger family meals tend to turn into little Thanksgivings, and that’s the way we like it.  Getting everyone together for a “little fish dinner” feels so casual at first, but quickly becomes extravagant.  We can’t help it.  My mom, for example, realized she didn’t have prepared tartar sauce, so she quickly made some from scratch.  And it was lovely.  And went marvelously with some fresh, locally made lox and a Ritz cracker.

Some families have alcoholics, my family has fishoholics.  We can’t just sip a beer eat a piece of frozen fish.  We have to get some fresh rock cod and sablefish.  And then we have to make some homemade beer batter and deep fry it until it is crispy on the outside and soft, buttery and so moist on the inside that the batter will get soggy if you wait too long.  This isn’t foodie-ism, this is pure gluttony.

The next day was a long-promised treat with my dad, the consumption of miracle fruit that he missed out on last summer when I did it with the rest of my family.  Miracle fruit is a West African berry of total unremarkableness, other than the fact that for about 20 minutes after chewing one up everything sour tastes like candy.  True!  My dad was game, but it was also the late afternoon and frankly, he didn’t yet comprehend the Super Duper Awesomeness that he was in store for.

Several whole citruses and a few canker sores later, we were still smacking our lips in delight and gluttony.  If you’ve never heard of miracle fruit, read the Wikipedia link up there, it explains it pretty well.  And then, all of you: order some.  We used the tablets and they work just great, though their effect lasts only half as long as eating fresh or frozen fruit.  It’s difficult to describe with enough emphasis, but grapefruits and lemons become the most incredible, unbelievable candy you’ve ever eaten.  My dad went to just taste one or two pieces and like me ended in silence, hunched over the sink while gobbling down whole fruits.  The worst part is the realization that grapefruit will never taste this delicious again.  Unless you eat another miracle fruit.

Homemade Tartar Sauce
homemade tartar sauce really is better than what you can get in a jar.  no food starches, no added sugar, just a piquant mayonnaise-based condiment.

1 C. good mayonnaise (NOT MIRACLE WHIP, FOR FUCK’S SAKE)
4 T. not-sweet pickles (cornichons are best)
2 T. sharp white vinegar
3 T. capers, drained
salt
pepper
fresh or dried dill (optional)

• Put everything in a blender or food processor and blitz until the large pieces are all knocked down, but small chunks remain.  It will appear to be weirdly runny at first, but if you let it set up in the fridge for an hour or two it’ll be more like tartar sauce.

• If you don’t have a blender or food processor, just finely chop everything and add it to the mayo.  Rustic!

• Also: this is really easy to mess with.  Add different herbs, vinegars, spices, pickled jalapenos, roasted bell peppers … as long as there is vinegar and something sort of vaguely pickle-flavored, the result will be tartar sauce.

Southerners don’t need an excuse to have a feast, but they take a kind of twisted delight in pretending like they do.  My fraternal grandmother, Evelyn, was famous for frying 30 pounds of chicken on Sundays  – of course, each Sunday about a dozen people other than family would also just coincidentally show up.  And that was just a Sunday.  Imagine what she did on Easter or the 4th of July.

New Years ranks up there as a feasting holiday¹, and while I may not have personally grown up in the South, I can’t imagine starting off the new year without a big pot of black-eyed peas, collard greens and a screaming hot iron skillet of cornbread.

Each Southern cook will also quickly assure you that their recipe is the most authentic one.  It’s kind of a tradition.  For every family that has a heart-attack if you put sugar in their cornbread, there will be another family who spits out unsweetened stuff.  And while you might imagine that black-eyed peas and collards can’t be made without ham in them, I promise that granny Evelyn made my dad special pots of vegetarian peas and collards every year, and lord help you if you told her she was making them wrong.  You’d have pinch marks on your arms for the rest of your life.

What few alterations I’ve made over the years are made from love and from my DNA-gifted right to claim that my recipes are more correct than anyone else’s.  For example, grandma didn’t use frozen black-eyed peas, but I’d use nothing else.  She also would have frowned at putting good balsamic vinegar in the greens rather than dosing them heavily with chili vinegar just as they’re done cooking, but what can I say.  I’m right and she’s wrong.

Anecdotally, every year I forget to go shopping for the black-eyed peas and collards until midday into the new year, and this year was right on schedule.  At 3pm I panicked, threw my pops in the car with me and we raced off to Olympia’s Westside Top Foods to get our groceries — only to discover that they never carried frozen black-eyed peas and were sold out of both canned (blech) and dried.  Defeated, I decided to make pintos and then discovered that Top was also sold out of all greens.  That’s right.  No fucking mustard greens, kale, collards or chard.  Oh hell no.

Safeway came to the rescue.  They had actual collards, which shocked me, and a whole freezer shelf stocked with frozen black-eyed peas.  In a moment of exuberant success, my dad also purchased a 10lb. frozen lasagna.  He lives alone.  Any single ladies in the Olympia area looking for a silver fox with a nearly unlimited supply of lasagna?  This offer won’t last long.

While this meal is traditionally eaten on New Years to promote prosperity and good luck, I don’t see any harm in encouraging prosperity and good luck all year round.

Vegetarian Black-Eyed Peas
if you can’t find frozen (or even fresh!) black-eyed peas, don’t get the canned stuff, get dried ones.  the canned ones are alright for certain things, but when making a pot of just peas, it’s important that they have plenty of time to simmer in a flavorful broth.

1 lb. bag frozen black-eyed peas
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1/2 onion, diced
4 cloves of garlic, chopped fine
1 large carrot, peeled and diced
3-4 cups of good vegetable broth (I actually prefer Swanson’s over anything else)
3 bay leaves
salt & pepper

• In a medium saucepan, saute the onions and garlic over medium heat until lightly softened, about 3 minutes.  Add the frozen peas, the bay leaves, and enough broth to just cover the peas.  Bring to a low simmer and allow to cook uncovered for about 20 minutes.  Check on it occasionally, just in case.  For example, just in case you’re not used to your dad’s crazy induction cooktop and you keep scorching the bejesus out of shit.

• Salt to taste – it will almost certainly need more, black-eyed peas are a notorious black hole for salt, but go slow and add the last amount of salt just before serving.  I used almost two tablespoons of kosher salt in this recipe.

• Add the diced carrots and continue to cook over low heat for another 30-40 minutes.  I like my peas nice and soft, so I go for upwards of 1 1/2 hours total (even with these frozen peas).

• If you’re so inclined (I am), just before serving, take a large spoon and mash up some of the peas to thicken the broth a little bit and give the whole thing a more interesting texture.

Vegetarian Collard Greens
collards are a little bitter by nature (hardly any at all, don’t panic) and are much tastier when balanced out with a little sweetness and sourness, which is where the balsamic vinegar comes in.  if you’ve never had them before, you should really try them – they are meatier than kale and need almost an hour of cooking, but I think they’re worth it.  also, and no kidding: one giant bundle will only feed two people – really.  like spinach, it will seem like its enough to feed eighteen people, but I swear it’ll only feed two.

1 bunch fresh collard greens
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 Tbsp. butter
1 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
salt
1/2 C. juice from the black-eyed peas, if you’ve got it

• Prepare the collards by washing them thoroughly in cold water and snapping the thickest parts of the stems off (and throwing them away).  Cut the collards up by rolling a few leaves into a tube and then slicing it into about 1-inch pieces.

• In a medium saucepan, heat the oil and butter over medium heat.  Add collards, adding just a few handfuls at a time and stirring to deflate them before adding a few more handfuls.

• Add about 1 tsp. of salt or so.  It will probably need more, but you can wait until serving.

• If you’ve got it, add about 1/2 cup of the liquid from the black-eyed peas and turn the heat down to a low simmer.  If you don’t have it, you can add a splash of water (maybe a 1/4 cup) but it won’t be as good.  Keep an eye on it and cook for 30 minutes, uncovered, stirring occasionally.

• Add 2 teaspoons of balsamic vinegar and stir through.  Cook another 15 minutes.

• Before serving, add 1 more teaspoon (making a tablespoon of vinegar total) and stir through.

Totally Authentic Southern Cornbread
grandma always used Albers cornmeal, and always used the Albers recipe.

1 C. cornmeal
1 C. flour
1/4 C. sugar
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 C. whole milk
1/3 C. vegetable oil
1 egg

• Preheat oven to 400°.  Oil an 8 or 9-inch cast iron skillet with a few spoonfuls of canola or other unflavored oil.

• In a bowl, mix together the cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.  Add the milk, vegetable oil and egg.  Stir together until combined and pour into pan and bake for 20-25 minutes.

• When top of the cornbread is puffed and golden brown, remove from oven and serve immediately.

• Note: my grandmother preheated the cast iron pan in the oven as it warmed, pouring the cornbread batter into the sizzlin’ hot pan and then putting the whole burn-bomb back into the oven.  This made a really crispy, practically deep-fried bottom to the cornbread that is a Southern specialty.  I liked this as a child, but I find it to be unnecessary as an adult.  She also greased the pan with a few big spoonfuls of Crisco, which I don’t recommend for those who value their health.

¹ This is terribly redundant.  All holidays are Feasting Holidays to a Southerner.

The Anger Burger household doesn’t make fudge.  Fudge has broken our cold, diamond-hard hearts too many times.  If you don’t already know (welcome to Earth!), fudge is essentially just sugar, milk, butter and chocolate cooked until it reaches a certain temperature, after which its whipped into a light, soft texture, then allowed to set until it can be cut into pieces.  In a way, it is just chocolate frosting.  Which is not a bad thing.

Things are inevitably more complicated.  Fudge is an old-fashioned confection that traditionally wasn’t even made with chocolate.  It is sweet sweet sweet and made sweeter by the option of many a cringe-inducing additive like maraschino cherries.  Many recipes don’t use unsweetened chocolate, but semi-sweet, a move that dilutes the already tenuous chocolate flavor further into Candyland.   In Angerburgerlandia, fudge should be very chocolaty, and include nuts.  That’s it.  But lets cover some more ground before I start testifyin’.

Sometime in the last few decades, Kraft decided to plow into the room, half-sloshed on Appletinis, and declared that fudge was now called Fantasy Fudge, which required their Jet-Puffed Marshmallow Cream and no longer included heavy cream, but evaporated milk.  This is interesting on a few levels.  The marshmallow is there to simplify, relying on thickeners like xanthan gum and egg white rather than sugar reaching soft ball stage.  The evaporated milk cuts around the issue of lowering the water content of the candy, making it thicker and richer.  In a way, Kraft ain’t all crazytalk here.  But in another way, I don’t know that a big tub of artificial flavor and Blue #1 is how I want to tell my family I love them.

Everyone that is surprised my boiling fudge made a weird buttcrack, raise their hand.

So what’s the big deal, why not make fudge from scratch?  Because there can only be one fickle bitch in the kitchen, and she is me.  There’s a fair amount of food science involved, but the point is this: fudge has such a high sugar content that it easily crystallizes, making the end result grainy rather than frosting-smooth.  Keeping it from crystallizing is a game for people who don’t burst into tears when they waste a big saucepan full of expensive ingredients.

Which then brings me to Bonnie Jean Gorder-Hinchey’s  fudge recipe in the October 2009 issue of Fine Cooking magazine.  We’re a sucker for anything that claims to be foolproof, and well, here we are.  Gorder-Hinchey may not have used the word “foolproof” in the article, but it was certainly implied, which led to us calling it “The Titanic Fudge.”  Either way, we decided to go for it, in large part because it’s just a holiday tradition for us to make a ruined batch of fudge.

You can imagine how shocked we were to discover that it wasn’t ruined, and not for lack of effort.  Every step took longer than her guidelines and looked weirder.   The recipe is a tedious one, taking over four hours of nearly constant attention and ended with 20 minutes of using a hand-mixer.  Like most candy-making, it takes a kind of vigilant OCD that is as tiring as it is exhilarating – assuming it works.  But lo, it did work.  To our great shock.  And of course by “works” I mean we are already planning to alter the recipe, because that’s how we roll.  My mother and I both felt the final product was even more overly sweet than we were prepared for and are too tempted by the lure of adding another ounce of chocolate to keep from fiddling with it.  Also: the family is begging for more.

The reviews over at Fine Cooking are evenly split between loving it and having total Titanic-level wipeout failure, which is pretty typical of fudge recipes and goes even further towards us renaming the fudge “Olympic Fudge.”  Did you know the Titanic has a sister ship that never sank?  It even crashed into stuff.  No one gets remembered for doing their job well.

Olympic Fudge
by Bonnie Jean Gorder-Hinchey
copied from Fine Cooking verbatim, see original print here
some notes: the times in this recipe are mere advisories – pay more attention to the temperatures than the times.  for example, in Gorder-Hinchey’s instructions she notes the fudge will take 1 1/2 hours to cool down to 110° but ours took nearly 3 hours — this can be easily explained by us having a deeper, narrower pot.  All of the effort of her recipe is to minimize the possibility of forming crystals, but these are merely techniques for minimizing, not for defeating unequivocally.  You must still take great care not to disturb the crystals from the sides of the pot.  adding 1 tsp. more salt, 1 C. chopped, toasted nuts and 1 more ounce of chocolate makes for a more adult flavor.

3 Tbs. cold unsalted butter; more at room temperature for buttering the thermometer and pan
3-3/4 cups granulated sugar
1-1/2 cups heavy cream
4 oz. unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped
3 Tbs. light corn syrup
1 tsp. table salt

• Lightly butter the face of a candy thermometer and set aside.

• Put the sugar, cream, chocolate, corn syrup, and salt in a large (4-quart) heavy-duty saucepan and stir with a spoon or heatproof spatula until the ingredients are moistened and combined. Stirring gently and constantly, bring the mixture to a boil over medium heat, 7 to 12 minutes. Cover the saucepan and let the steam clean the sides of the pan for 2 minutes.

• Clip the candy thermometer to the pot, being careful not to let the tip of the thermometer touch the bottom of the pot, or you might get a false reading. Let the mixture boil without stirring until it reaches 236°F to 238°F, 2 to 5 minutes. Take the pan off the heat and add the butter, but do not stir it into the mixture. Set the pan on a rack in a cool part of the kitchen. Don’t disturb the pan in any way until the mixture has cooled to 110°F, 1 to 1-1/2 hours.

• Meanwhile, line the bottom and sides of an 8×8-inch baking pan with foil, leaving a 2-inch overhang on two opposite sides of the pan. Butter the foil. Set the pan aside.

• Remove the thermometer from the fudge mixture. Using a hand mixer, beat the mixture on high speed until it is a few shades lighter in color and thickens enough that the beaters form trails that briefly expose the bottom of the pan as they pass through, 10 to 20 minutes. Pour the thickened fudge into the prepared pan, using a rubber spatula to help nudge it out of the pot. You can scrape the bottom of the pot but not the sides; any crystals that stick to the pot stay in the pot. Smooth the top of the fudge with the spatula. Set the pan on a rack and let the fudge cool completely, about 2 hours. The fudge will be slightly soft the day it’s made but will firm up overnight.

• Turn the fudge out onto a clean cutting board and peel off the foil. Turn the slab of fudge right side up and cut it into 25 equal pieces.  The fudge will keep for a week to 10 days stored in an airtight container at room temperature.

Long ago my mom, Starr, made the mistake of making a Jello recipe she came across called “Raspberry Dream.”  I’ve searched online for a source for the recipe, but the words “raspberry dream” pull up about 4,000,000 old lady recipes including everything from whole Oreos to crushed pretzels.  Urgh.  That was the sound of my dinner coming back up.

When I say she made a mistake, I mean this: this salad is now the epitome of Christmas.  We quite literally cannot have a Christmas without it, and partially because she refuses to make it any other time of the year.  Why?  Because it wouldn’t be special, otherwise.

Normally we don’t use pureed fruit, but see the recipe for details.

I’m 100% on the Christmas-Only Christmas Jello bandwagon, here.  You can’t just go making it willy-nilly.  It’s special.  It’s once-yearly.  I’d be like making candycane cookies in July.  Cats would lie down with dogs.  Rain would fall up.  I just can’t risk the stability of the universe so that someone can have Christmas Jello in March, you know what I mean?

We’re making two batches here, one strawberry and the other raspberry.

The salad itself is a throwback, but that’s a great deal of the charm.  It’s not classy, but I guarantee that it will be gone if you put it out at a dinner party.

It doesn’t hurt that it involves a pint of ice cream.

The above photo is from this year, where we just served it in the bowl it set in and topped it with pureed fruit.  No one noticed that it isn’t what we usually bust our lady nuts doing:

This one was from last year.  Or maybe the year before, I don’t remember.  Also note:  whole frozen raspberries in this version.

Which is to make it in a fancy mold.  So the lesson here is: no one cares what shape it’s in, as long as it’s still mom’s Raspberry Dream.

Starr’s Raspberry Dream
this year my grandpa is still healing from having his teeth pulled, so we decided to make the Dream without whole fruit (seeds!) and instead included the equivalent amount of pureed, strained fruit into the mix.  After it set, we topped it with more puree – you could also wait until it was nearly set and swirl it into the top.  But unless someone just can’t eat the seeds, I’d go with the original recipe.  It’s much easier.

1 (6oz) large packet of raspberry Jello
2 C. boiling water
1 heaping C. frozen raspberries, still frozen
1 pint premium vanilla ice cream (we always use Haagen Dazs), still frozen

• In a large bowl, measure 2 cups of boiling water.  Stirring steadily and vigorously (but without sloshing or getting crazy), slowly pour in the powdered raspberry gelatin.  Keep stirring for about 3 minutes, or until the gelatin has visibly totally dissolved.  If there are still small grains visible, keep stirring.  Don’t worry about it getting cold, worry about it dissolving all the way.

• Cut the ice cream into big chunks.  This is easiest with a large knife, just cut the pint in half, paper and all, and then pull out the halves and quickly hack them up.  Add them to the gelatin and stir carefully and continuously.

• Stir in the frozen raspberries.  Don’t just dump them in, you want to make sure they circulate, both to thaw and to drop the temperature of the gelatin quickly.  You actually are trying to rapidly cool the mix at this stage so that it starts to take on a nearly pudding-like consistency before you put it in the fridge.  If it is too warm when it goes in the fridge, the raspberries will all settle and the Jello might separate a little — this is fine, as far as taste is concerned, and isn’t even too much of a deal visually.  It’s kind of neat, actually.  But it’s better if it’s all consistently incorporated, I think.  Anyway, it should be perfect by this stage, what with the frozen raspberries and the ice cream and all.  Just go slow, you’ll be fine.

• Cover and place into fridge overnight.  If you are using a mold, you can help unmold by gently resting the bottom of the mold in a sink with a shallow layer of hot water, or by placing onto a towel soaked in hot water.  Not too long!  Just a brief dip will do.  Then place a plate over the top like a lid and invert.  However, you may discover that no one is impressed with this business and opt for serving it in the bowl you mixed it in.  I’m just saying.

It’s a rough way to get off to dinner.  The pungent, lingering odor of what can only be described as, well, ladymeat.  It’s fish sauce, so there is definitely a fishy quality to it, but if we’re being honest here I’ve got to say that it doesn’t smell like fish as much as the already overmentioned bagina — and I’m not even a full paragraph into this recipe yet.  Fish sauce possesses a salty, musky odor that fish alone doesn’t have, and while not unpleasant, it is unnerving at best.  So, maybe not every-day Cupie odor, but certainly post-gym sans-shower.

So anyway, hungry?  This is one of my all-time favorite recipes that I have until now entirely forgotten to share with you.  It was originally a New York Times article in early 2008, and some very cursory and half-hearted searches for “iron pot chicken” on Vietnamese cooking sites has turned up firstly that it is probably actually ga kho to, or “clay pot chicken,” and secondly that there are as many versions of it as there are versions of chocolate chip cookies.  And I don’t want to turn into one of those people who gets all choked up on whatever traditional method there might be for a recipe – in all honesty, I don’t care.  I love this version and will likely never stray from it.

Anyway, it’s stupidly easy.  You start by cooking onions down in fish sauce and sugar until it starts to caramelize.  You don’t need an iron or clay pot for this, and while it might be nice if you happen to have one, it’s one of those circumstances where I’m all, dude, just get out the frying pan.  It’ll be okay.  Of course, this is where is starts to smell.  I never experimented with my own gender, but take of this what you will: I find the smell of onions and fish sauce cooking to be painfully intoxicating.

By far the trickiest part of the recipe is being brave enough to caramelize the sugar.  I took the above photo just before I added the chicken, and it was maybe two or three minutes too soon.  It could have been darker.

Anyway, the chicken immediately starts to weep juices and the caramel is reduced to a sauce in no time.  I find that there are two important factors with this dish: the first is that using white meat is a total mistake.  The longer the chicken can simmer in the sauce, the more delicious it gets, but white meat just can’t take more than a few minutes of cook time.  The second issue is that the pieces should be fairly small, smaller than bite size but not too small.  About the size of sugar cubes.  This provides the best ratio of surface-to-interior on the chicken pieces, allowing for more of the chewy, salty-sweet ambrosia that is in store for you.

The result is incredible, far more than the sum of its parts and certainly one of the easiest one-dish meals I make.  Besides, the allure of announcing “Vagina Chicken” for dinner is too compelling to pass up.

Vagina Chicken
serves two or three – recipe is easily doubled and the leftovers are just as good if not better.  My recipe is altered somewhat from the original, found here.  A note on fish sauce (’nuac mam’ in Vietnamese): get a decent brand like 3 Crabs (it has three crabs on the label) or my second-favorite, Squid.  For christ’s sake, don’t get the Thai Kitchen garbage.  Also: the chicken can be replaced with just about anything – shrimp, pork, tofu, whatever.

4 Tbsp. fish sauce
3 Tbsp. brown sugar
2 T. vegetable oil
1/2 medium onion, cut into eighths
1 lb. boneless, skinless chicken thighs cut into sugar-cube sized pieces
1-inch knob of ginger, chopped fine
lots of fresh ground black pepper
1/2 to 1 C. chopped fresh cilantro

optional – fresh Thai bird’s eye chilis

• In a medium-hot pan, saute the onions in the vegetable oil just until warmed through, about a minute.

• WAIT, I ALMOST FORGOT!  Start cooking your rice now, if you’re going to have rice.  Phew!  I was almost too late.

• To the onions, add the fish sauce and the sugar,  stirring  to dissolve the sugar.  Again, over medium-high to high heat, continue cooking, stirring occasionally to distribute everything, until the sauce starts to caramelize.  Depending on how hot your pan is, this can take as little as 5 and as much as 10 minutes.  If this step makes you nervous, just go slow and it’ll be alright.

• Add chicken to the caramel and continuously stir for a few minutes, making sure to really saturate each piece with caramel and gently scraping and dark bits off the side of the pan.  Add the chopped ginger and the fresh pepper.  Rather than cook with hot chilis, I prefer using lots of really good quality fresh ground black pepper.  In fact, I often call this “Vietnamese pepper chicken” at home because calling it “iron pot chicken” doesn’t help Mike remember what it is.  Turn the heat down to medium and continue cooking until the juices and sauce have reduced by about half, another 10 minutes or so.  In fact, in the past I’ve forgotten to cook the rice and have turned the heat down to low while the rice cooks for 25 minutes, and the chicken turned out as good if not better.

• When chicken is done, add the chopped cilantro.  It can take a lot, so really load it up.