#dc cooks

[recipesfromdc]

Now that I don't have to worry about my friend seeing it and the surprise being ruined, I can post this. Surprise birthday cake for me and my friend. Rough estimate of 8 hours spent, not counting the times I've practiced to make sure it was feasible. Vegan crepe cake with whipped coconut frosting and berry topping.

[classywastelandbread-blog]

Hey! I need suggestions!

Some of my friends and I might be holding an Overwatch League viewing party thing next Saturday for the title matches at the end of Stage 1.

I volunteered to make pretty much all of the food...any suggestions for Overwatch-themed food? Any jokes you noticed while playing and thought hey, that would be fun rendered in food? Any references to food you noticed in-game?

Tell me if you’re willing to share! I want to have fun making this food (well...more fun than usual because I love cooking) and I’ll certainly post successful recipes if people are interested :D

[classywastelandbread-blog]

Tonight’s itinerary: 

Cook dinner

Eat. Actually eat. DC, you haven’t fucking eaten all day, fucking EAT

Finish Honored Spirits chapters (yes...there are two)

Maybe work on Cards

Maybe work on Only So an Hour

[classywastelandbread-blog]

My favorite steak marinade

Yet another recipe that none of you asked for.

Steak of choice (I like fattier cuts which soak of the vinegar and honey beautifully though to be entirely honest I can’t tell you what cuts I get haha ^^;)

~1/2 - 1 cup balsamic vinegar 

~1/4 cup olive oil

salt

pepper

1 Tbsp honey

3 cloves garlic, smashed

additional spices to your tastes (I use ground garlic, fresh sliced ginger root, smoked paprika, and sometimes cumin or chili powder)

Mix marinade together until honey is entirely incorporated.

Pour into a  zip-top sealing bag (I usually use a quart-sized Ziplock bag since I typically only cook for myself) over meat. Make sure that the marinade covers all of the meat. Carefully add more liquid as necessary. 

Seal in the bag, squeezing out as much air as possible - air pockets mean that portions of the steaks may not come in contact with the marinade. If the steaks are “stacked” in the bag, you will only need to “mix” more often.

Marinade in a bowl (to catch any potential drips) in refrigerator for an hour to an hour and a half, massaging the steaks and marinade and flipping the bag over every 15-20 minutes. 

Pull out of refrigerator and let come to room temperature, still marinating i bag, for 30 minutes-another hour. 

Remove steak from marinade and pat dry with a paper towel. Season steak again with salt, pepper, and a little of whatever other spices you had added to the marinade. 

The steak should have absorbed some of the spices from the marinade but it will be very subtle. Adding just a little more when the steak is about to be cooked will be able to boost the flavor just a little bit. 

Cook steak in a hot pan to desired temperature. You should not need to add more butter or oil as some of the olive oil from the marinade will assist you with this. 

The idea of the honey is to cut some of the...brininess from the vinegar so add accordingly. The olive oil adds flavor as well so a seasoned olive oil works really well too...I just don’t have any of that haha. 

This is one of two steak marinades I regularly use - the other I use for skirt steak fajitas. My friends love both of these, even though the meat usually ends up being stained dark brown by the marinade. The other steak preparation I use is a chocolate-coffee rub.

If anyone is interested in the Feelings or Fascinating Back-Story behind this recipe...I don’t really have much of one. I gained this recipe (somehow...honestly not sure how) when I was living with my aunty in Virginia. Since I liked to cook, I made a lot of food for them there and this was just something I wanted to try since it sounded so...odd. 

In some ways, that was the best steak I had ever made, mostly due to her lovely wood-pellet grill. It brought a lovely smokiness to the marinade that I had never been able to recreate very well. 

Edits/Additions:

One of the reasons I love this recipe so much is that it doesn’t matter what grade or quality of olive oil or balsamic vinegar you get. Obviously good quality increases the enjoyment of the dish but even the cheapest balsamic vinegar will give you a pretty great result regardless. 

Another fantastic thing about this recipe is that even if you don’t get the ratios perfect, you’ll still get something delicious. If you put too little honey, then the result will be something a little more sour; too much honey and it’ll be a little sweet and you have to be careful about not burning the sugar in the recipe. Even so, the meat will still become delicious and tender. 

You can use the marinade to make a sauce as well. Just pour out the marinade into a pan and let simmer and boil. Keep an eye on it to keep the sugars from burning but eventually you can have it reduced into a balsamic sauce. 

[classywastelandbread-blog]

So my ex in college didn’t know how to cook. Like...pasta was difficult for them it was that bad. 

When they decided to go to med school, their mum asked me if I could please give them recipes so her baby wouldn’t starve without me there to pamper them? Spoiler alert, they didn’t appreciate it and threw away the booklet I made.

Well, I found the document I used to list all my recipes. At some point I’ll probably get around to posting some of them :D 

[recipesfromdc]

Butternut Mac & “Cheese”

1 1/2 cups butternut squash

1/2 large onion

Noodles of choice

3 Tbsp cashew butter

Salt

1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar

1 tsp dijon mustard

Garlic powder

Black pepper

Smoked paprika

Turmeric

Nutmeg

Add butternut squash and onions to a pot and cover with water by an inch or two. Bring to a boil, turn down heat to medium, and simmer until vegetables are tender.

Cook macaroni to package direction, drain, and save some of the cooking liquid. 

When squash and onion are tender, drain, and reserve some of the cooking liquid. 

Add squash and onion to high-speed blender with cashew butter, mustard, and lemon juice. Add remaining seasonings to taste and blend until completely smooth. 

Add sauce to cooked noddles and toss until all are coated. 

[classywastelandbread-blog]

Now that the title matches for the Overwatch League are finished and I’m back at home in my apartment after traveling over all of Kingdom Come, I can talk about food :D

The final dishes ended up being: 

Ta’ameya with homemade pita and baba ganoush

“Raising the Steaks” tacos

Moira’s punch

Apple PIE, PIE, PIE

Everyone also liked the steak taco marinade so I’ll probably post that later. 

Also, apparently I should wear button-down (-up?) shirts more often because I was told that I look like a “damned handsome motherfucker” :P 

[classywastelandbread-blog]

Ta’ameya / “Pea-lafel”

So this recipe is kind of broken into two parts...an “actual” recipe for Ta’ameya and the one I butchered for the “peas and thank you” prompt proposed by a bunch of people. For the most part the recipes are more or less identical but one ingredient is changed and the amounts are very slightly adjusted. 

Ta’ameya:

Dried fava beans (1)

Chopped red onion

Tahini paste

Parsley

Salt

Pepper

“Neutral oil” for frying (2) 

Sesame seeds

Flour or bread crumbs (optional/as necessary)

“Pea-lafel”:

~1/2 bag frozen peas (3)

Dried fava beans

Chopped red onion

Tahini paste

Parsley

Salt

Pepper

“Neutral oil” for frying

Sesame seeds

Flour or bread crumbs (optional/as necessary)

Soak beans in water overnight or per instructions. (Typically a 2-cup bag is soaked in 6-8 cups of water overnight but regardless I tend to follow directions on the bag regardless of what I think of them.) 

Add soaked beans, red onion, tahini paste, parsley, salt, and pepper to a food processor and blend until it turns into a paste. (4)

Toast sesame seeds. They can either be added to the dough or used as a coating for the patties formed - dealer’s choice. 

Slowly add spoonfuls of flour and/or bread crumbs (5) until it holds together. 

Fill a pan with a layer of oil and heat. 

Add your patties to the oil and fry until the surface is golden-brown. Remove from heat and let rest on paper towels to get rid of excess oil.

Serve as desired. (6)

Notes:

If you can’t find fava beans, you can “replace” with chickpeas - but then you shouldn’t refer to it as ta’ameya, since that is one of the major distinctions I’ve found between ta’ameya and falafel. 

If replacing with chickpeas, you can either use dried chickpeas and soak them overnight as the recipe indicates, or you can “cheat” and use a can of them and skip the soaking.

“Neutral oil” refers to an oil with a high smoke point and not much flavoring. The point of a “neutral” oil is to not have the taste of oil added to the flavor of whatever you’re frying - you only usually see neutral oils requested for certain kinds of vinaigrette 

I believe the bag of peas I used was frozen sweet peas. Or frozen sugar sweet peas? Baby sweet peas? (Ugh. You choose.) 

So my food processor broke and I haven’t gotten around to getting a new one - they’re expensive, you know? The primary difference between blenders and food processors is the requirement for liquid: blenders need them to more easily move food around as it blends, but food processors need less. 

If you don’t have a food processor, don’t fret! You can use a blender, but you need to be more careful with how you treat your “dough”. I “cheated” by waiting to add the tahini later (after everything else was blended) and adding a little bit of water and olive oil to the mix. 

If you add liquid, you will need to make up for it later, as a watery dough will not hold up to frying. You can add flour or bread crumbs, which I recommend doing anyway to bind everything together so it forms cohesive patties while frying. 

Be careful about adding these binding ingredients, as they do have their own flavor which can also affect how your patties would taste. Especially for this, less is more. 

I served with fresh pita, baba ganoush (because my pita wasn’t coming out too well and some of the rounds turned into crackers rather than a fluffy dough -_- ), feta cheese, cucumber, and red onion.

Feelings:

“Pea-lafel” was inspired both by “peas and thank you” in the Diner on the Route 66 Map of Overwatch and by an episode of “Guys Grocery Games”. On the episode of “Guys Grocery Games”, the prompt was for the contestants to create an international dish using only certain aisles, one of which was the frozen foods section. Someone created a falafel with peas rather than chickpeas so when ta’ameya was suggested as a potential dish to represent maps and characters of Overwatch, I was all over it.

A confession, however: this is the first time I’ve made a falafel. Also...it’s more or less the first time I’ve had it when I was sober. The last time I had it, I was more or less blacked-out drunk and I only remember it in the vaguest of concepts. Fortunately (or unfortunately) most of the people that ate my “pea-lafel”/bad attempt at taameya, also didn’t have much experience. Still, they enjoyed it. Once I am more familiar with it, I may come back and make adjustments as necessary.