All posts by Drunken Chef

Recipe

Fresh Spinach in Butter and Garlic

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SPECIAL IMPLEMENTS

Large Frying Pan

INGREDIENTS

1 bag of spinach, preferably baby spinach

1-tablespoon olive oil

2-tablespoons butter

1 clove garlic sliced

Salt and pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS

Add oil and butter to the pan and heat it up. Add the garlic and cook for up a minute, but don’t let the garlic brown or burn (the garlic will get bitter).  Add the spinach to the pan a hand full at a time and toss until it’s all cooked. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve.

Enjoy life, stay healthy, and have a great weekend!

The Drunken Chef (Russ)

Recipe, Uncategorized

Day 3 – The Friendship Bread Adventure

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  • Friendship bread starter in a Zip Lock Bag

It is day thee of the friendship bread adventure. The Starter is doing well eating the sugar and flour and making carbon dioxide in the process. It just bubbling away. I transferred it to a zip lock bag and there is nothing to do but squeeze the bag now for a few more days. By the way, my wife thinks I’m nuts for starting this now.

Breakfast yesterday was easy. I toasted a bagel I got at 6am from the bagel place down the road. There are three bagel shops in this town but only one makes a decent New York City bagel. I had butter on mine and spread peanut butter on Jennifer’s. Lunch was nothing to speak of as I just picked up two roast beef sandwiches at the deli by work. I gave one to Jennifer and kept one for myself. I had plain potato chips, a Snapple iced tea and no pickle.

Dinner went well. It was the same meal as the night before, marinated skirt steak with all the trimmings. It was really good. This is best skirt steak I’ve had in a really long time, at home. For dessert, I wanted something different then ice cream. First, I wanted brownies, but alas I had no walnuts. I didn’t want brownies without nuts so I turned to the cake mixes. CUPCAKES! I thought. I searched for a can of chocolate icing next, being too lazy to make my own from scratch. That would be, as they say, a deal breaker. I found it-hidden among the cholates chips of all different sizes, shapes and flavors now. In addition to the frosting, there were all kids of nuts, everything expect walnuts. I held the last can of milk chocolate frosting in my hand and smiled widely; as I spotted the cupcake holders too. I went to work mixing up the batter with my electric mixer. Eggs, oil, water, yellow cake mix, ka-bam, batter! I poured the batter into a 4-cup liquid measuring cup to making filling the cupcake holders easier and faster. In no time, I had cupcakes in the oven. I did the dishes and turned on the dishwasher. Then just like that, they were done!

Now, have you ever waited for cupcakes to cool so you could frost them? It seems like they take for forever to cool! I waited and paced, like an expectant father in the waiting room. That does not happen anymore, now does it?! Nope, your ass, better be in that delivery room! (Tangent) Back.

The cupcakes were cool enough and I frosted them up. Hmmm. They needed something for a little pop, Nonpareils! I had a brand new unopened container of the little suckers and sprinkled some on top of the icing. Then I sent out some INSTAGRAM photos with the caption: “guess what I’m making?” I immediately received some responses. One of them was: Are you making cupcakes to bring into the office? Honestly, the cupcakes were for me, but, yes, I have them packed up and ready to go into the office this morning.

Well I’m off to work. If you’re just tuning in you can quickly catch up by reading about or better yet getting, the recipe for the starter here:

TH FRIENDSHIP BREAD ADVENTURE

So much to cook so little time.

The Drunken Chef (Russ)

Blog Post

Day 2 – The Friendship Bread Adventure

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  • day 2 – Starter
  • Marinated Skirt Steak
  • Roasted Potatoes
  • grilling potatoes
  • Grilling skirt steak
  • Steamed potatoes w/ oil salt and pepper
  • Marinating Steak
  • Fried Onoins
  • Radishes
  • Onion in pan
  • oil in cast iron pan
  • My dinner last night

It is day two of the friendship bread adventure. As you see by one of the pictures above, the starter is doing nicely. I had some issues at first. My directions say to proof the yeast for ten minutes until it because bubbly. Well ten minutes came and went and there was no bubbles. Sooo I added a pinch of sugar to the batter/mix and waited another ten minutes. Still nothing. Now I was thinking did I get bad yeast? I checked the date on the package. It said it was good until 2022. What was I to do? Should I throw it out and start over? Nope, I decided to heat some water in the microwave in a second bowl. I put the yeast bowl on top of the hot water bowl so it acted like a double boiler. I kept checking the temp of the yeast. It started at 87 degrees and then started rising. As the temperature rose those little yeast bastards finally got to work and were making Co2. Soon after the temperature hit 97 degrees Fahrenheit, I had frothy yeast at last. We are talking 30 minutes here, not ten, just so you know.  I started following the recipe again. I mixed the flour and sugar together and then added my room temperature milk. I mixed it well and added all my yeast and water (with a pinch of sugar). I a finale mix so it was well blended. Then covered it with plastic wrap and poked a hole to let out Co2.

I checked on the starter an hour later and it was slowly bubbling. Nice. I decide now was a god time to make dinner. The day before I marinated some skirt steaks (posted on INSTAGRAM). I purchased them at Mathew’s Meat Market. Go there people, it is worth it. You will NOT be disappointed! Maybe I should not tell everyone. It seems when I do tell people about a good place a few months later I am waiting in line. Well, I want them to stay in business so…go.

Back to the marinade, I almost forgot. While I was there I, purchased other things besides the skirt steaks. I bought sea scallops that is was intending to make with a beet cuscus when I though company was coming over. Unfortunately, they could not make it, so the sea scallops will get put on the back burner to use a cooking metaphor.

On with the steak. I took out some of that skirt steak from the refrigerator to let it come up to room temperature while I prepared the potatoes. I was determined to get little white potatoes on the grill damit. So ounce again I steamed the potatoes in the microwave. OH YES! This time I purchase propane from that beer distributor I told you about, the Brightwaters Beverage Center. I also got beer. SURPRISE!

I had gone shopping at Uncle Giuseppe’s Marketplace on Deer Park Avenue too. There I picked up some string beans as a vegetable along with radishes and fresh figs for Jennifer. The figs were not for dinner.

I trimmed the string beans and put them in a pot to steam while I put the potatoes and meat on the grill. 

I served the potatoes and skirt steak with the string beans, garden tomatoes (purchased at Mathews) and radishes. We need to make radish rosettes tonight.

Click the links for the following recipes:

Steak Marinade II: inspired by my friends Rose and Bill

Steamed string beans

Grilled Potatoes

Skirt Steak

I will be making the sea scallops on a bed of beet cuscus soon I hope. Along with the deserts I had planned, an apple tart with vanilla ice cream.

So much to cook so little time.

The Drunken Chef (Russ)

How to Cook "American Style", Recipe

STEAK MARINADE II

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Steak Marinade

        Makes 1 cup (enough for two large steaks or 5 pounds of skirt steak)

SPECIAL IMPLEMENTS

Tupperware Season-serve Marinating Container or equivalent $39.00  

INGREDIENTS

½-cup Worcestershire Sauce

¼-cup Soy sauce

¼-cup olive oil

4 or 5 cloves of garlic

1 small onion diced

1-tablespoon course Dijon mustard

½-teaspoon ground ginger

¼-teaspoon black pepper

DIRECTIONS

Add all the ingredients onto a bowl, deep 9 by 13 inch baking dish or if you like me you have a special marinating container. You can easily find these on Amazon. Mine is Tupperware but other brands work well too I suppose.  Mix everything together well with a whisk and then add your steak. Turn the meat over every four hours or so. Marinate beef at least overnight or up to 3 days.

Serve with beer or an old vines red zinfandel wine.

The Drunken Chef (Russ)

Recipe

STEAMED STRING BEANS

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Steamed String Beans

SPECIAL IMPLEMENTS

Steamer Basket

Large pot with lid

INGREDIENTS

1-cup water

½ – pound string beans

Salt

Pepper

Butter

DIRECTIONS

Trim off the ends of the string beans. Wash well. My mother used to cut them into 1/3rds. Bring 1 cup of water to a boil in a large pot with steamer basket. Add the washed and cleaned string beans. Cover and cook for about seven minutes until they are just tender.

Recipe

GRILLED POTATATOES

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Grilled Potatoes

SPECIAL IMPLEMENTS

Barbeque

INGREDIENTS

¼ -cup water

1 – Pound potatoes

Olive oil

Salt

Pepper

Butter

DIRECTIONS

Wash and put potatoes in microwave safe bowl. Add ¼ cup of water. Cover with plastic wrap. Microwave on high for 6-minute intervals. Tetsing with a knife or fork until just tender. Carefully remove the bowl from microwave using oven mitts. Then remove plastic. Caution: the escaping steam burns! Remove excess water from bowl. Add 1 to 2 tablespoons of olive oil to bowl. Season with salt and pepper. Grill quickly over medium heat until slightly brown or grill makes appear.

NOTES: Serve with butter, salt and pepper.

Enjoy life, stay healthy, and have a great weekend!

The Drunken Chef (Russ)

How to Cook "American Style", Recipe

Grilled Skirt Steak

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Grilled Skirt Steak

SPECIAL IMPLEMENTS

Barbeque

INGREDIENTS

Skirt Steak

Marinade I (Teriyaki) or Marinade II (Rose & Bills)

DIRECTIONS

If your butcher has already pealed and cleaned the skirt steak for you then all you have to do is add it to the marinade of your choice. Let it marinate overnight. Turn the meat over every four hours except while sleeping. If they have not taken the time to remove the fat and silver skin off the meat, you will have to do it yourself. The silver skin will make it extremely chewy and unpleasant to eat.

After the meat has marinated. Preheat the grill. Add skirt steak onto the hot grill and cook on high with the lid open and grill for one minute. Turn down the grill to medium. Cook 1 more minute. Turn steaks 90 degrees. Cook one minute. Flip. Turn heat to high. Cook one minute. Turn down grill again. Turn meat 90 degrees. Turn grill to low and cook two more minutes or until your beer or meat is done. Thin skirt steak will be well done. Fatter pieces will be medium and pink. Let the steaks rest only long enough to serve with grilled potatoes and beer.

Enjoy life, stay healthy, and enjoy Septemeberfest!

The Drunken Chef (Russ)

How to Cook "American Style", Recipe

The Friendship Bread Adventure

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For all incentive purposes, it is essentially fall. In the fall people bake. So get your loaf pans ready. I am not a big baker, but I do bake.  I am a better chef then I am baker. To me, being a chef is the easier of the two. I have a lot of respect for other chefs and even more respect for bakers.

All this leads me to my story about friendship bread. For those of you who have never had it, it is addicting, not only to make, but also to eat! I received my first zip lock bag with friendship bread starter about twenty years ago. I have always talked about cooking with my fellow coworkers so it was only natural that one of them would ask if I was interested in baking a loaf of this stuff that I had never heard of. They may not have even asked me. They may have just thrust it upon me like a quest to find the Holy Grail or a Golden Fleece.

I accepted the challenge with the vigor of a young man (back then) and followed the directions as they were passed along to me. Then I proceeded to pass a bit of this goo called “starter” and the recipe to the next few unsuspecting coworkers while eating four loves of this stuff I made myself. It was indeed and amazing experience. However I did NOT save any starter when I when done and without the starter I could not make any more of these scrum-dilly-umtious loaves. It took several years before I saw this recipe come around again. By now, I had very much missed the cake like substance I had once had in the fall while drinking my coffee. This time I received the starter goo in a different building and I was a little older and a little wiser, but the recipe looked and tasted exactly the same. It was like the miracle of the friendship bread calling too me.

I learned my lesson from the first time of giving away all of the starter. I gave out the recipe and starters but always made sure to keep one batch of starter and copy of the recipe for myself. I kept making theses loaves of deliciousness every ten days and passing on the recipe to many, many, many more unsuspecting people as would take the stuff and make it. This included not only my sister, but all her coworkers as well! As I heard a group of people talking about this cake in the coffee room I thought; what have I done?! It was like and bad science fiction movie now that kept growing (like The Blob staring Steve Macqueen). Months of baking went by and just after Christmas Day I could eat no more Friendship Bread or I would spontaneously combust. Covering the walls in cinnamon. That or I would have to start buying stretchy pants. Mind you all this baking started BEFORE Thanksgiving. I finally decided to freeze my starter in the hope that in the fall it would still be good. Somehow I doubted freezing this starter would work.

In the New Year, I researched a few different recipes on Friendship Bread starter and found one that seemed like is would work best. I tested it out and gave more starters away for opinions the very next fall. My original frozen starter never came back to life, but the new recipe for a Friendship Bread starter (below) worked! It even freezes okay according to one of my coworkers.

It has been at least two years now since my last endeavor into this Friendship Bread baking frenzy, so now is a good time as any to start it again. It takes time for the started to get to be a good enough quality, taste wise, for me to giveaway so I discard my first extra batches myself and give away the stuff starting with the second batch. You guys can always let me know what you do in the comments section below.

Today, I am staring my first batch of “starter” to ultimately make two loves of Friendship Bread. I dare you to follow along with me these next few upcoming weeks leading up to Thanksgiving to see if it is a disaster or a delicious hit this year. I double dare you to join me in making said “starter” listed below and getting even more people involved in this wonderful tradition in your neck of the woods!

I am attaching the “starter” recipe below. Then in the next 10 days, I will provide you with the actual recipe to make the loaves of Friendship Bread itself. They call it friendship “bread” but it is really a cake. A yummy, cinnamony cake that is like heaven with coffee. Trust me! When it comes to coffee I do not #&%$ around. This is good shit. So lets go bake!   

The Drunken (blabbering) Chef (Russ)

You can follow me and this whole process on INSTAGRAM here:

Friendship Bread “Starter” Recipe

        Makes 4 to 5 starters

SPECIAL IMPLEMENTS

Plastic spoons

Glass Bowls

One box heavy duty Gallon Zip Lock type Bags

INGREDIENTS

1 package of active dry yeast

¼ cup of warm water (110 degrees F / 45 degrees C)

3 cups all-purpose flour (divided)

3 cups whole milk (divided and at room temperature)

3 cups granulated sugar (divided)

DIRECTIONS

(Do Not Use Any Metal mixing spoons, measuring spoon or bowls)

In a small bowl, dissolve yeast in the water. It is very important the water be the correct temperature. Use an instant read thermometer for this (see Gadgets article). Hot water will kill your yeast and cold water will take forever to bubble. Yeast is a live organism that omits carbon dioxide and that is why it bubbles. Let the yeast stand in the water for 10 minutes. In a large 2-quart glass, plastic or ceramic bowl, combined 1 cup AP flour, 1-cup sugar and mix well or it will all clump up when the water is added. Slowly stir in 1-cup milk and then the yeast mixture. Cover loosely and let stand until bubbly.

Consider this day 1 of a 10-day cycle. Leave loosely covered in a warm place in your kitchen until day 2. Just not on top of the radiator or stove! That’s a bit too warm.

On day 2, stir and transfer starter into a zip lock bag. On days 3, 4 and 5 squeeze the zip top bag several times or stir with a plastic or wooden spoon. Let some carbon dioxide escape from the bag when necessary. I have had one burst open because I forgot to let the air out and it was all over my counter and very messy.

Day 6; stir in 1-cup of AP flour, 1-cup granulated sugar and 1-cup of room temperature milk.

Days 7 thru 9; stir or squeeze the bag.

Day 10; stir in 1-cup AP four, 1-cup sugar, and 1-cup milk. Stir well. Remove 1-cup of batter to 4 to 5 zip lock bags.

NOW it’s DAY 1 again. You can give one cup (zip lock bag) to each of your friends along with a copy of the recipe found here: “Amish Friendship Bread”.

Begin the process all over again. I think by the second or third batch is when the batter is the tasting its best.  

NOTES: Serve with coffee and add chopped walnuts or cholate chips for an extra twist.

Enjoy life, stay healthy, and have a great weekend!

The Drunken Chef (Russ)

Recipe

Hummus in the House

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Last night I made some home made humus. Just because I needed a snack and just because I could. I had all the ingredients including the once hard to find Tahini.

Home Made Hummus

        Serves 4

SPECIAL IMPLEMENTS

Food Processor

Chef’s Knife

Cutting Board

INGREDIENTS

1 can chick peas

¼ cup Tahini

4 to 6 tablespoons olive oil

2 to 4 tablespoons water

1-tablespoon lemon juice

1 clove garlic peeled and chopped

1-teaspoon ground cumin

¼ tsp Onion powder

¼ tsp salt

Paprika

DIRECTIONS

Drain and rinse the chickpeas well. Add into you food processor. I have a small one that holds exactly one can of chickpeas. Larger food processors may require you to double this recipe.  Add the clove of chopped garlic, 4 tablespoons of olive oil, 2 tablespoons of water 1-tablespoon lemon juice,1-teaspoon ground cumin, pinch of onion powder, pinch of salt. Blend well on high. Slowly add 2 more tablespoons of olive oil while blending. Add 2 more tablespoons of water if the humus is not smooth enough.

Move to a glass bowl. Top with parsley, a sprinkle of paprika, and a drizzle of olive oil. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

NOTES: Serve with celery sticks, carrot sticks and pita bread.

Enjoy life, stay healthy, and have a great weekend!

The Drunken Chef (Russ)