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By Chile Doctor, posted August 31st, 2010, at 8:54 am
School’s moving right along now. We’re not quite to the “same ol’ grind” stage, but just thinking about the grind made me hungry. For a grinder. Also known as a sub sandwich or a hoagie. (I can hear the purists lining up now to load up their sligshots with gobstoppers for ammo. Okay, they’re not exactly the same thing. But you three critics really, really need to get a life; most folks can’t tell the difference. So there.) I didn’t want the same ol’ same ol’, so I started thinking. Maybe a different filling? I mean, really different; not just a change in cheese or something.
Then it came to me, as if in a dream. Why not some Asian-style filling? Sweet and sour chicken came immediately to mind, as did chicken tikka. Now the juices were really flowing! I could take some onions and peppers, add some chiles and hot sauce, and make a really killer filling. All the ingredients were to hand; I simply had to get going. Within a few minutes I was enjoying one of these scrumptious hand meals:
I made mine extra hot, using Bufalo hot sauce and plenty of red, ripe jalapeño peppers. We’ve got those nice chiles in abundance this time of year hereabouts, at roadside stands and produce markets everywhere. (They’re nearly as ubiquitous as tomatoes right now.) I scored a pound of the beauties for a buck over the weekend; they had so many I could have probably talked them into two pounds for no extra scratch, but I didn’t want to spend some of my weekend pickling the extras. Maybe next weekend.
This style of sandwich can produce meals as different as Phillie cheesteak, to other Asian dishes (how ’bout General Tso’s Chicken? Or Twice-Cooked Pork?), to Indian (besides chicken tikka, you can make a Vindaloo or Rogan Josh, or even Aloo Ghobi as filling). The trick is to make the dish with its signature sauce, but not too much sauce (or too loose) or you’ll have to wrap that rascal in a diaper. Learn how to make this meal and you’ll have variety for the whole summer…
Enjoy the (Asian-American Sandwich) Heat!
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Technorati : American food, Asian food, chiles, sandwiches, summer
By Chile Doctor, posted August 25th, 2010, at 11:51 am
Kids these days. I’ll tell you. They are not only the same picky eaters that your parents accused you of being, they want stuff you never considered. Like spicy food. Thai, Vietnamese, Mexican, all with plenty of zing on the tongue. Even school lunchrooms are paying attention to the trends in spicy and zesty. (Not to mention better prepared, and more nutritious.) They seldom settle for the same ol’ ketchup on their fries, either.
Luckily, that’s where you’re headed too! (My wife claims that, in my case, it’s because my taste buds have been scorched too often, and they’re getting tired, and so they need more and more capsaicin. She’s a hardcore kitchen cynic.) The American palate, for all age groups, is enjoying more spices and more heat than ever before in their foods.
If you’re a vegetable gardener, you have another problem this time of year. One that your kids don’t often help you solve. (And I’m not talking about the tilling, planting, fertilizing, watering, spraying and weeding.) You can only feed your family so many tomatoes before there’s a rebellion on your hands. Even if they enjoy the round, red fruit as much as Garrison Keillor; even if you thrive on salads; still, there are usually more tomatoes on hand about this time than you can even give away. (Ever notice how the neighbors begin to avoid dropping by for a cup of coffee nowadays? It’s not your Right Guard.)
Here’s something you can do that addresses both situations:
Okay, this one’s not a small recipe. Anything that starts with ten pounds of a vegetable can’t be considered small, at least for home cooks. However, most years we could easily double the recipe and still have produce available for the county fair‘s dunking booth attraction. (The Texas Renaissance Festival even has an attraction called the Tomato Torment, and they still don’t make a dent in local red-globe production.) One of the beauties of this concoction is it doesn’t go bad quickly. It’s not the commercial stuff, so it doesn’t have enough chemical preservatives in it to make it last to the next ice age. It will stick around well when refrigerated, though; and canned it may last for years. (I haven’t tried that, though.)
You get to control the heat to any setting you like. Shoot, you don’t even have to add any chiles, if you don’t want. (So why are you here, exactly? The baby food aisle is way over there.) I set the recipe to one chile per quart of product; that’s actually quite mild, to my taste buds. (Warning: See Note Above.) You can use other chiles as well. Once the product has been puréed enough, you won’t notice any chile bits, just the heat. Or maybe you like your ketchup to have a bit of texture? That’s also a possibility. Heck, you may choose not to put your sauce in a blender and take it for a whirl. That makes a nice, somewhat chunky dipping sauce. (It’s still good on sandwiches, just not so much on French fries.)
However you choose to set the sauce consistency and zest, I’m fairly sure you’ll make something that the kids will like. And if not, well, at least you got rid of a few of the tomatoes…
Enjoy the (Zingy Red Sauce) Heat!
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Technorati : chiles, dipping sauce, home canning, ketchup, kids, snacks
By Chile Doctor, posted August 24th, 2010, at 11:39 am
Classes started today. I’ll list that as the excuse for the paucity of daily postings hereabouts. After all, as “new” faculty hereabouts, there have been more meetings than the BP disaster glee club. HR, committees, welcome this and signing that; the amount of stuff to do was frankly surprising, and I can’t really be considered a rookie at this stuff. Still, it’s been fun, enlightening, energizing, and a massive drain on my food blogging resources.
The preliminaries are behind us, though. Say what you want about the economic situation, and schools struggling for students and so on; I’ve got the largest Organic class ever in the history of this university, and my Intro to Chemistry is oversubscribed too. We’ll see if my particular prosperity survives contact with my first tests.
I already ate a Lucky’s, to start the semester off right. A nice tuna sub with Baja Sauce, just the right amount of zest and spice. With extra dill pickles, it was a fine meal. I’ll be back for more of that sort of fare this semester, as there clearly won’t be time to go off-campus but once a week (if that) for lunch, and I don’t have the facilities to prepare bring-along sack lunches.
Oh well.
That said, it’s time I get back to prepping for lecture. I feel a lot like Lucky the Bulldog (pictured above), trying to get his duck in a row. I’m sure, if I ever get the time to slow down, that I’ll truly wonder what I’ve gotten myself into. Thank Heaven for overloads…
Enjoy the (Back to School) Heat!
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Technorati : Lucky’s, classes, life, school, university
By Chile Doctor, posted August 16th, 2010, at 4:29 pm
Classes haven’t officially started yet, but we’re ramping up here at the University for Yet Another Semester. It’s my first as full-time faculty, and I’m already about a month behind. Or so. Teaching a full load of chemistry classes and labs at a liberal-arts school isn’t for the faint of heart! I’ll be leading the Organic Chemistry effort, lecture three times a week and two big labs. My “lower stress” sessions will be in Introduction to Chemistry, a class for non-majors. No lab for me on that one. I’ll also be scheduling the visiting seminars for the year, and leading the Chemistry Senior Seminar capstone effort. I’ll also be assisting one of the business profs with the Business of Science capstone.
On weekends I’ll get a nap, I hope.
It’s not as bad as it sounds, though. And I asked for it; more proof that you should be careful what you ask for!
On the food front, I suspect I’ll be doing a lot more consumption that preparation this season. With no full kitchen available at the Barracks, and no time to plan and execute, I’ll mostly be downing instant noodles and coffee. At least the grill’s good to go this semester. Speaking of which, I wonder what’s for dinner this evening?
Ah, the carefree life of a dream job…
Enjoy the (Back to School) Heat!
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Technorati : classes, cooking, life, school, university
By Chile Doctor, posted August 13th, 2010, at 9:27 am
On Tuesday the End of the World as We Know It made an appearance, and almost nobody noticed…
The Location: Times Square, New York. (That ought to give you a clue, right there.) The Scene: The Grand Opening of the new, unique, and glamorous Pop-Tarts World. That’s what I said: Pop-Tarts World. Yep, sushi has taken on a whole new dimension, right there in the middle of things. (At least New Yorkers would claim it’s the middle. From way down here, we’re not so sure.) You can go in and lay your cash down and get an immediate sugar overload. Prices range from Rice Krispies Treats with Pop-Tarts Pieces for $1.29 to a variety of concoctions starting at $4.29, not including toppings (50 cents each). They’re just like you used to eat as a kid, only more expensive. And hand-prepared. At least the topping art is. Non-pareils, choco syrup and more.
One of the points of interest in all this: Kellogg’s, the maker of Pop-Tarts, had the COO of Gigunda Group, the marketing organization that is executing this idea, present for the Grand Opening. He was quoted, when asked about all the calories on the nutritional facts lists, as saying, “Kellogg’s takes nutrition very seriously– It’s also a good way to provide information if people have food allergies.” That’s the best they can do? Food Allergies? WHAT ABOUT THE CALORIES??
Maybe he’d already done too much sampling of the product himself, and was slipping into a diabetic coma all his own. Or maybe that’s just the way New Yorkers think about this kind of stuff…
Enjoy the (Sucrose Overdose) Heat!
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Technorati : Follies, Pop-Tarts, nutrition, weird food
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