Sally’s Kitchen & Stuff

My grannie used to make this for me when I was a kid. Once in a while I like to make it again - the BF refuses to touch the stuff, so I substitute with chunks of sausages. (What the heck did he think sausages were made with? Real meat?)

Ingredients
2 Cups (about 1 package) of chicken gizzards and hearts
3/4 Cup all-purpose flour
1/4 Cup italian style breadcrumbs
1 slice of ginger
1/2 cup of chopped green onions
Lee-Kum-Kee chicken marinade, to taste
1 Cup of chicken broth
1 small tin of tomato paste (optional)
Enough peanut oil to cover the bottom of your fry pan

Instructions
If you’re feeding this to guests (poor guests!), chop the meat into little unrecognizable bits about 1/2 inch cube sizes. Drech in flour and breadcrumbs, add ginger and a spoon of green onions, then fry for 15 minutes. It takes longer to fry innards than it does to fry meat.

Drain the oil out, add a cup of chicken broth, a dash of chicken marinade, and the tomato paste (I used this as a pasta sauce). Stir, turn the heat down to medium low, cover and let simmer for 15 minutes. Throw on the rest of the green onions at the last minute just to warm them up.

Serve over pasta or brown rice. And if anybody asks, it’s chicken.

And failing. Maybe I’m just not good at this yet, but whatever I cook in the thing just seems to fall right apart. I guess that’s the idea, but geez, the only thing that retained the shape in the gumbo were the sausages!

Chicken congee, however, worked like a charm. I had to put the chicken in a net so that I could pick the bones out AFTER the congee’s done, but 8 hours on low in a slow cooker seem to suit congee just fine; it turned out well stirred (weird, isn’t it) rich, no burned bits.

I’m going to try to make something entirely new this evening involving sausages and chicken. (It’s an obssession.) I also have paprika, chilli powder, and lots of cayenne at the ready. Oh, and rice.

I don’t know about you, but as a person with spring allergies, spring cleaning is the LAST thing I want to do with my nose. The moment I try to spray anything out of a bottle, I sneeze, leaving a film of whatever-it-is-that-comes-out-of-your-nose-when-you-sneeze behind. Gross. Kind of defeats the purpose, no? To combat my allergies (and I’m allergic to everything, come spring time) I’m switching to natural products this year.

You know those masks that you can get for cleaning? Forget those. Dust
gets in the side, and you can’t really breathe in them. Buy yourself a
microfibre cloth, fold in half, stitch the end line together. Pull a
string along the top, and another along the problem and voila! Homemade
mask.

Here’s a link to a bunch of stuff you can shake up for your cleaning needs.

To remove the smell of pungent root vegetables from your hands, simply run the cold water (NOT THE HOT WATER!) and rub your hands on a stainless teel utensil. If you run the hot water your skin will absorb the odor. Do this RIGHT AFTER handling the vegetables, not after you’re finished cooking.

Yes, it completely baffles me (and everybody else) why it works.

As for the garlic itself, after you peel and crush garlic, let it sit for at least 15 minutes before cooking. You’re letting the enzyme Allinase mix with the amino acid Allin, which produces Allicin that contains a sulfur. It’s been proven to slow down the growth of cancerous tumours. Yup. Garlic fights cancer.

Spotted something on metafilter today: Argentina on Two Steaks a Day.

I have an obssession with steak. Canadian beef is supposedly amazing, yet hard to get in Canada. We ship all our best beef to the States, then we get sort of ok American beef in return. I like my steak blue: it had its brief stint on the grill, enough to earn its beauty marks, yet is perfectly warmed and raw on the inside. It bleeds all over my plate and once made a date quite sick; though that’s another story.

Without the luxury of an indoor grill and stuck with the Toronto by-laws (no balcony BBQ-ing) I pan-fry my marbled steaks in a cast-iron pan, and feels guilty about the lack of grill-seasoning. Broiling will work too, but nowhere near as quick as a searing cast-iron pan.

Beef is the one food that needs practically nothing - rub it with a little salt and pepper and the meat does the rest. It renders a chef quite useless, aside from providing adequate trimmings like shoestring onion rings. But oh…how I’d love to visit Argentine to have the asado.

Since I work late and have very little time in the evening, long elaborate meals (which I LOVE to make on weekends) aren’t so appealing for this cook on workdays. So I’ve decided my next purchase will be a nice slow cooker with lots of room - enough for a roast, a pot of soup, or a stew for 8. Looking for the best one, however, brought up a whole stew (mind the pun) of other small appliances from the net. The covered BBQ-pit. A new rice cooker. (Ours is uh…old.)

Using individual appliances instead of your element all the time also saves a bundle on your hydro bill. So should I take over my counter space with gadgets that I’d actually use? Well, considering that a decent slow cooker is less than $50, and a slow cooking BBQ-pit is around $100, why not?

How Stuff Works: Slow Cookers Explained

This is pretty high in fat, but consider this: you’re splitting 8 slices of bacon among 4 people, with no added fat (aside from the bacon itself). How bad can it be?

Ingredients
8 Slices of thick-cut bacon, cut into 1 inch pieces
2 TSP fresh chopped chives
1/2 TSP sugar
24 frozen perogies (any kind. )
2 pinches of salt

1/2 Cup mayo
1 tsp of minced garlic, or 1 clove
1/2 TSP bacon dripping

Instructions
Put water on boil and boil perogies. When they all float to the top, cook for another minute, then lift and drain. If they’re sticky, brush a plate with a bit of olive oil before laying them down.

Cook bacon on medium heat in a heavy pan with sugar until lightly crispy and most of the fat is rendered out. Line a plate with paper towels and lay the bacon down to cool. Reserve 1/2 TSP bacon dripping in a separate bowl. (we need it cool)

Pan-fry perogies in bacon dripping, sprinkled with a couple of pinches of salt, 4-6 minutes each side, until lightly browned. Don’t try to flip them UNLESS you can feel it lifting from the pan as you turn them, and they won’t stick. You might need to do a couple of batches.

Dipping sauce: Mix minced garlic (yes, raw) into mayo, whip in bacon dripping, and sprinkle with chives. If you have time, stuff bacon pieces into the sides of the perogies where it’s soft. If not, just scatter over the top evenly.

My granny was a great cook. She could saute, stirfry, steam, even make quick soups from nothing but a plain old wok. She also taught me things like sticking sour fruits in our bucket of rice to ripen them; storing persimmins in cold water streams in the country to keep them cold, rubbing a stainless steel spoon on your fingers to get rid of the smell of garlic.

The question is, do those things work?

"A Spoon dangled in a bottle of champagne keeps it fizzy"
The mythbusters busted this one.

"Searing meat keeps the juices in."
I fall for this one regularly, but really, I just do it to make things taste better. When you sear meat, it caramelizes the surface and create complex flavours that make great sauces. But it doesn’t really keep more juices in than when you would, say, just stick the darn thing in the oven.

"Mayonaise spoils easily, so in a picnic, pack vinegrette based salads instead."
Complete BS. Both mayo and vinegrette contains vinegar. And they both keep well. Break out that mayo based potato salad!

"Always cook pasta with the lid off."
Lid on, lid off. Makes no difference, really. You’ll endup losing a lot of heat with the lid off, thereby using more energy. I choose to keep the lid on and check periodically by bite. Who came up with this one?

"Putting a potato in an oversalted soup/stew will soak the salt up."
Martha Stewart announced this one, I believe. Doesn’t work. Your best bet? Add more vegetables and water. Or if you’re in a huge hurry, throw in a cup of raw sugar. Chinese cane sugar works well.

"Eating from aluminum cookware causes Alzhimers."
This was news to me when the bf mentioned it, so I thought I’d look it
up. Turned out that the link is there, but the cause and effect is
reversed. Aluminum does not cause Alzhimers, but rather, Alzhimers
causes aluminum buildup.

"Wrapping celery in aluminum foil keeps it fresh"
I did a test of this last week. I washed and chopped, then wrapped one batch in saran wrap, and the other in aluminum foil. Both were kept in the veggie compartment of the fridge. One week later, both tasted the same, and the aluminum-wrapped ones are drier. I think it just needed to be in the dark.

"Drinking coffee cures a hangover."
A hangover is caused by dehydration. Coffee is a diuretic. Do the math. It can’t possibly work.

"Carrots improve night vision."
Um, not really. Vitamin A is good for your eyes, but carrots contain an OBSCENE amount of beta-carotene (which is converted to vitamin A as your body needs it) and your eyes only need a smidgen. If you throw back a steak, there’s vitamin A in it.

Feel free to add anything else in the comments!

We all do it. Sure, we might have company over by 7:30 pm, but here we are, frazzled and just barely home by 6. Whatever should we do? We open the freezer.

What can we do to make frozen delights (ICK!) taste more delectable?

Vegetables
Turn the heat right up in a skillet, use two spoons of oil and a bit of butter spray. Add seasalt, a clove of REAL garlic, and saute until thawed. Then add chicken broth until cooked. If something goes awry and you have mushy overcooked veggies, puree it and use it as a sauce for your entree.

Appertizer - Meatballs
Panfry them! Forget the spaghetti and sauce and serve it with something off beat like soysauce + fish sauce + ginger + green onions.

Entree (uh oh. Now we’re in trouble.)
Steaks will take you an hour to defrost, but will only take you 15 minutes to grill. If you have less time than that, go with chicken. 20 Minutes defrost (use warm running water - not hot), then it’s a cinch to fry / saute / grill. If you’re using frozen pre-cooked chicken, add seasalt and crushed garlic.

And whatever you do, DON’T EVEN think about using a "frozen entree" where you just stick it in the oven. They’re undisguisable. If you must use pre-packaged stuff, use something that comes with separate packages of sauce. Just substitute your own and your friends won’t be able to tell the difference. If anything says "add water," add wine or chicken broth.

Dessert
This one’s tricky. Too elaborate and people will know that it came out of a wrapper. Pick something that is easy to make in the first place (apple blossoms is a good choice) and top with fresh fruits / real whipped cream. Don’t try to pass off the frozen New York cheesecake as your own.

And that, is this week’s lesson (hard-earned by yours truly) on "if you don’t have time for it, fake it."

Yes, nobody noticed.