Dumb Chef

[dumbchef]

Quarantine Tortilla

A sequel to Taco Night: For One! in which I make a flour tortilla.

Prep time: 2.5 hours

Cook time: 1 hour

Cleanup time: 2 hour

Taste: Does the job. Not a flour tortilla. Way too salty.

Overall this was one of my more successful interactions with flour.

[dumbchef]

Shitty Sardine Tartine

Yeah hi.

It's been four years since "Eggs over difficult." I stopped writing because I was convinced that I had become too skilled to continue. "I'm a culinary master now", I thought. "I've simply become too competent to support this brand."

Clearly my readership would see through my charlatan attempts at appearing inept. My winking self deprecation as I deftly retrieved masterpiece after masterpiece from the oven. Nay, I must find another creative outlet.

Then today, I finally decided through sheer force of will to tackle the mammoth task of making a single smoothie. I bought a vitamix three months ago. I bought frozen smoothie ingredients one month ago.

This fucking smoothie albatross has loomed over my life for all of 2018. It's like debt. It reminds me of itself daily. It inspires dread and hopelessness. I know I need to do it. I want to do it. I just don't know how I'm ever going to.

This made me realize that maybe...yeah...maybe I can still qualify to write this.

My average meal prep/cook/cleanup time is three hours. I spent an entire Sunday two weeks ago working up the courage to cook a single plate of rice in an Instant Pot.

I started a two person company a year and a half ago where I did all the work and it failed in no small part because the mental strain of cooking for myself every day was far and away the most overwhelming part.

Last Sunday night I watched the Shape of Water and made myself a dinner consisting of two pieces of crispbread -- one piece had laughing cow cheese smeared on by the second piece. The second piece just had loose sardines (in water). The sardine piece still had remnant cheese on it.

For dessert I ate about 50 dates out of a ziploc bag. So, I'm back. Hello.

[dumbchef]

Eggs over difficult

Yesterday my friend made eggs over easy on bread and I was like wtf how did you do this you are a culinary genius.

Today I am going to try to cook eggs over easy for the first time.

12:09 put on pants

12:22 I underestimated how far this farmer's market was.

1:03 I am back home. Fuck, totally forgot about the dish situation. Every time I run the dishwasher it cakes a bunch of white shit on the dishes. My solution has been to add new dishes and re-run it hoping this will be the time it works. Now I am out of plates, bowls, cutlery, and lime squeezer.

1:36 Now is a good time to admit to myself that I don’t understand how the sink works. Here’s the deal, there are two sinks. I think one is for liquids and one is for solids. The solids one has a garbage disposal. The liquids one doesn’t drain though unless you pull a tab on it because oh shit maybe so you can keep soapy water in there to do dishes. I’m gonna try it now.

1:48 Now I have a sink full of water and dish soap. I have used half of the dish soap.

1:53 Are you kidding me? I have done one glass in what feels like 10 minutes.

1:54 This other glass seems clean enough already.

1:59 Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck the thing is draining again don’t take my dish soap how do you work???

2:00 I put in a bunch more water and it stopped draining? I have done four glasses and a single pot.

2:01 This bowl seems clean enough already.

2:03 These two plates are pretty much fine.

2:13 Ok I am about 70% done. The standing water strategy has broken down because this shit is starting to smell fucking foul. I drained it out. New strategy: dish soap on the sponge plus spray setting on the faucet.

2:17 I have sprayed soap water all over my shirt. Fuck you, bowl curvature.

2:32 I am losing steam. There are so many utensils. I am hungry.

2:41 Ok I am done.

It’s go time on these eggs.

Here’s the procedure as I understand it:

Heat up a pan on medium for a few minutes

Add butter

Crack the egg right into the pan. The membrane keeps it together? This seems like a highly likely vector of failure.

Salt and pepper that egg right on its dumb yolk

"When it is starting to set" flip it over

Unclear

I’m probably gonna want to eat these eggs fresh. So I’ll make this tomato mozzarella olive oil thing first, and cut this grapefruit, and start this broiler (for the bread)

2:52 I don’t have a bread knife.

2:52 I have purchased a bread knife on Amazon. Today I will use a butter knife. The speed of the internet really highlights the opportunity cost of doing things in real life.

2:58 How do you open this cheese?

3:10 I have made the tomato mozzarella olive oil thing, and spooned out some grapefruit, and started the broiler. It is now time to cook this egg.

3:19 Whelp, the smoke alarm went off. I guess I will just start the broiler when it’s time to heat the bread and not before. Ok, gonna cook this egg for real.

3:34 I have now cooked two eggs. Neither of them are over easy. As expected, the whole egg broke apart and spread out.

What I have now are essentially fried eggs. One day I will solve the mystery of how to make eggs over easy. Today is not that day.

Eggs over easy on bread with a tomato mozzarella thing

Prep time: 3 hours, 20 minutes.

Cook time: 15 minutes

Cost: idk, the farmers market was all cash. 40 bucks?

Taste: Meh. The eggs taste like the spatula I used to flip them. Fuck that spatula. The bread is pretty good. The tomato thing is slightly worse than the raw cherry tomatoes would have been.

I have successfully made and eaten a balanced breakfast. It is 3:51 pm. According to Facebook, two different people I know got married this weekend.

[dumbchef]

Squid quesadilla

Not a good idea.

[dumbchef]

The thing about cast iron

Is that you have to clean it right after you use it and you can't use soap.

BUT, it is super hot ESPECIALLY when you forget to turn off the burner that's on high for like, 3 minutes, as you eat a quesadilla made of leftovers in bed.

Cast iron is a super good conductor of heat though, and when you leave it on a microfiber towel to chill out the next night you will come home to this:

So now I am faced with a decision. I want to make another leftover quesadilla. Should I (a) use water and a sponge to scrub off this grafted-on microfiber towel or (b) cook through it?

As I write out this question I realize that (b) should not have been considered as a legitimate option.

**Update**

That didn't work. There is still a bunch of microfiber grafted on. And I can't soak the thing or use soap bc it's cast iron. Hm. I guess I'll just make the quesadilla in the other pan and wait for this whole thing to blow over.

[dumbchef]

See?? Who eats this much cilantro in a week? What are you guys doing with all your cilantro?

[dumbchef]

Taco night! For one.

My fridge currently looks like this:

So why don’t you come with me as I liveblog a fun-filled foodie adventure for a man who can only reliably cook one dish.

The only way I can trick myself into putting in the two hour effort it inevitably takes to cook myself one depressing meal is by imagining the Minimum Edible Product, also known as the “what if I lose all motivation and need to rapidly make myself shitty embarrassing food that I will gobble down in shame and tell no one about” contingency plan.

Minimum edible product for a quesadilla:

Put olive oil in a cast iron pan and heat on high heat til it’s almost smoking. Put shrimp in there. Turn them over after a minute or so.

Spray a little olive oil onto a skillet and put a flour tortilla onto it with a single slice of cheese on it. Turn the skillet up to high.

Once the cheese is starting to melt, put the shrimp on top of it.

Peel it off with a spatula

Eat in the dark.

OK, it’s 8:22. Let’s go to the supermarket! I am wearing a towel.

8:26: Ok I'm dressed. Let's go!

8:33: Walking into whole foods. List: Onions Shrimp Cheese Table grapes I just walked in and forgot about everything but these table grapes look good Shopping cart I can't live blog this hold on

8:39: I have: a family size thing of pineapples some table grapes two green juices peeled garlic. I am standing in front of the onions bc I forgot whether I want white or yellow onions. I'm going to guess white. I'm unsure of the difference. This decision will haunt me for the rest of this shopping trip.

8:48 I always feel like I'm buying too much cilantro

8:58 Ok I think I have everything. Shrimp, cilantro, garlic, onions, peppers, cheese. Tortillas at home. I am in the soda aisle, weak with hunger.

9:12 I am exiting the whole foods.

9:25 OK I am back home. I want to sit down, because I'm hungry and because I have too many groceries to put away now. I drink 1/3th of this giant drinkable yogurt, put Drake on the bluetooth speaker, and resolve to get up and put stuff away and get started.

9:40 I have put all the groceries away. I have drunk more of the giant drinkable yogurt. Time to start chopping and cooking these onions and peppers. It takes about 40 minutes, so I start them first.

9:48 The onions and peppers are chopped, the stove is on. It took me an hour and a half to get to the part where I turn the stove on.

Now I have some time before I have to do anything, so I should explain this onions recipe. I got it from Mark Bittman's "How to cook anything: the basics" and I no longer remember what it said. Here's what I do:

Throw onions in a pan with NO OIL. Cook onions COVERED on MEDIUM HEAT (I have tried uncovered and high heat separately, and each time they burned)

Take the lid off and stir every 5 minutes

After 15 minutes, add oil

Continue stirring and checking and tasting every 5 minutes til they're how you want them

9:56 I have stirred the onions. They're looking a little burnt. I thought I smelled them burning a little. I turned down the heat. That was a big game changer when I realized you could adjust the heat in a recipe depending on what was happening inside the pot. I'm going to begin cutting the avocado for the inside of the Quesadillaish

10:02 The onions looked and felt a little dry, so I added the oil early at 10 minutes. The avocado is cut.

10:09 The onions are tasting good, they'll be ready in 5 minutes. I just diced the garlic. Now I just wait.

10:15 OK it's go time. I move the onions to a plate, they're a little burnt.

10:20 I put some oil in the skillet and turn the heat up to high. I throw in the shrimps, after a minute I turn them over and they look like this:

10:24 I put the tortilla over some spray olive oil on the other skillet, put the cheese on it, and then throw all the other ingredients on top of it

10:29 I have finished cooking and plating everything. This is the final product:

Prep time: 2 hours

Cook time: 30 minutes

Cost: $96

Taste: OK. The tortilla is stale. I can't close it because I put too much crap in it. And there's too much hot sauce in it to taste much of anything else. Plus I'm kind of full from all the drinkable yogurt.

Overall this is one of my more successful taco nights.

[dumbchef]

Ohhhhhhhh, that's what the freezer's for.

The problem with cooking is you end up eating a shit ton of moldy food you cooked and waking up with hot shits at 5 am.

OR you realize this is no way to live and you have to throw out a shit ton of food because it goes bad. Raspberries go bad in a day. One day.

There is a solution. Here the whole time I thought the freezer was for ice cream and vodka. It turns out if you put meat or I'll bet even fucking vegetables in there, it doesn't turn it into not-food.

There's a whole subculture of people who have been doing this the whole time http://www.wikihow.com/Freeze-Food

All you need to do is throw food in there when you get it, then later you can just put it in the fridge and its as if you just got it from the store.

Just think of your ground beef or sausages or whatever as Sylvester Stallone in Demolition Man or Brendan Fraser in Encino Man.

IT WILL COME BACK TO LIFE, THIS IS A GAME CHANGER!

[dumbchef]

The secret sauce: how to turn meat into food

Before I started cooking at 29, I would be at the supermarket and whenever I saw stuff like this:

I would be baffled by the mystery of how the hell does that stuff turn into this:

Then I had a huge a-ha moment. Heat! It sounds crazy, but the only thing separating meat from food is heat.

I always thought you had to know the right spices and stuff to add and you had to do special kitchen stuff to make this happen, but it's just chemistry.

All you need to do is use heat. Once I realized that, kitchen appliances beyond the microwave became way more approachable. They're all just old fashioned ways to add heat to meat to turn it into food.

I went to an Ivy League school.

[dumbchef]

Why did nobody tell me about the broiler?

Guys, what the fuck. You knew there was a part of the oven that grills shit. You knew it was called the "broiler" and you knew it cooks shit in like 5 minutes without you having to pre-heat shit.

This whole time I've been refusing to use the oven for myself because it seemed wasteful to heat up an entire miniature room for half an hour to 400 goddamn degrees just so one person can eat one crappy meal.

Why have you hidden this information from me for my entire life?

[dumbchef]

How to fuck up squeezing a lime

Micheladas are dope. Last week I decided to learn how to make them, so I bought a lifetime supply of Maggi (one bottle) and looked up how to make them online. It all seemed so easy.

So I made four that day, they had way too much Maggi in them, and it took too damn long to squeeze the limes. Then I found this guy:

You can fucking squeeze a lime in 10 seconds. Game changing, you guys.

For my second michelada of the day today, I was like "do I even need to cut the lime before I squeeze it?"

Yes. Turns out if you cut a lime before you squeeze it, the squeezer will beat the lime. Otherwise the lime will beat the squeezer.

I am thirty years old.

[dumbchef]