Big Daddy Paul

I am prone to burst out into cooking. I have a culinary form of Turret’s syndrome, except instead of swearing, I start preparing food. Many of the very worst things I have ever made were created in a creative outburst of this type: beet gnocchi that was so bright it resembled a baboon’s ass, [keep your hands off your junk] habanero hot sauce, and apple pancakes so dense you’d have thought I was making antimatter.

Malcolm with the newest member of our family

Even with all this misses, sometimes my experimenting pays off. Last night, while Malcolm was eating his dinner, I made mayonnaise. I think about mayonnaise quite a bit during the course of a day, so the thought was not completely random. Plus, I noticed earlier in the day that we were almost out of what I call the “Great White Goo,” and the thought of our house being void of the super substance was more than I could take. So, I started with Alice Waters’ cookbook and three  minutes later, I had mayonnaise. What have you done with your last three minutes? Do you have a condiment to show for it? If not, I’m about to change your life.

Take an egg yolk, and add a pinch of salt. Add a squirt of lemon and a squirt of water. (Don’t know what a squirt of water is? Put some in your mouth and then squirt it out! ) Start whisking. Slowly pour a cup of oil in the bowl while whisking, and keep whisking until your arm feels like it is going to fall off. Then, switch arms and keep whisking until the mayo is light and fluffy. Add salt to taste. You can use olive oil, but I used canola oil last night. The olive oil we have right now is a little gamey, and I didn’t want the mayo to suffer. When it was done, the mayo was absolutely perfect, and Malcolm used it to wash down his broccoli. That’s right, a vehicle for vegetable intake. Does it get any better?

I am never buying mayonnaise in the store again. This is good, because the mayo I made had exactly five ingredients. I took a quick look at the healthy hippie mayo I got at our healthy hippie grocer and it had 14 ingredients, including something called “soy protein isolate.” I’m not sure what that is, but it’s probably not making me any thinner. Plus, even though it’s organic, my mayo is cheap. It costs around $.50 to make, about 15% as expensive as the hippie stuff. I could elaborate about mayo, how it’s going to revolutionize Malcolm’s education or enhance our marriage, but I won’t. It’s enough to say that making your own is simple, cheap and tasty. And now, back to the kitchen, I gotta feeling I am going to make something kick ass with turnips in it!

Now, I am not talking about giant steaks or plates of nachos that will make your colon cringe.  Those things will be around for a long time and for good reason.  I am talking about large agricultural companies that put tons of crap in their food and are secretly trying to poison your dog.  Well, I have no proof of the last part, but still, processed food is not good for you.  I say eat whatever the hell you want, just use real food to make it.  All those companies out there putting crap in our food: look the hell out!

Item #1 – Hashbrowns.  Hashbrowns don’t need to be frozen and taste like cardboard.  I had a bunch of potatoes sitting around from a recent shipment of our produce box the other morning and I thought, “Why not turn these lumpy brown tubers into a tasty breakfast treat?”  So, I did, and you can too! Just peel the potatoes, grate them with a cheese grater, and then cook them in a non-stick pan with oil or butter (maybe four or five minutes a side).  It’s easy, and it is way cheaper than paying a big food company to process the food and make it worse for you.  I think I ended up paying around $.12 for those hashbrowns, and they tasted better than lame excuse for hashbrowns that they freeze and give to you in a plastic bag. Paul: 1, Big Food: 0.

Item #2 -Applesauce.  Don’t go buying a big jar of that expensive, crappy applesauce with a bunch of extra sugar, unnecesary ingredients and the large severed human ear that inevitably makes its way into the batch.  Whenever you have a hankering for what the French refer to as sauce of the apple, just do this: peel an apple, core the apple, put the pieces in a blender, turn blender on, and then enjoy the freshest most delicious applesauce you have ever tasted.  We use fuji apples, but I would think almost any variety would do.  Sure, you’ll have to clean your blender, but you should have been spending more time with your blender anyways.  What kind of blender owner are you?  Cost for a bowl of applesauce: $.69.  Paul: 2, Big Food: 0.

Item #3 Popcorn. A long time ago, when times were simpler, we all drank in the morning and smoked in bed.  Back then, popcorn was not made in a microwave.  I am glad to say that we have broken the chains of bondage and no longer make popcorn in the microwave.  Neither should you.  Add a generous amount of canola oil to a saucepan, and fill the bottom of the pan with a layer of popcorn.  Put a cover on that pan, because there’s gonna be an explosion, a flavor explosion! Shake the popcorn pan every now and again until it pops regularly.  Then keep shaking it until it stops popping.  Pour the popcorn out into a bowl, add a little pat of butter into the pan to melt in, then put back about half of the popcorn into the pan to coat with butter.  After returning all of the popcorn to the bowl, add a couple shakes of salt and toss.  I guarantee that you will not find better popcorn for watching 30 Rock, and it is quicker to make than loading a bag of bizarre orange shit into a tin box and zapping it with invisible rays.  This popcorn is so good it will make you want to drink in the morning and smoke in bed, and a bowl of it costs around $.50.  Paul: 4, Big Food: 0.  That last one was a blowout.

Putting large agricultural businesses into bankruptcy is a fun and tasty way to spend your nights and weekends.  I highly suggest you try it.  You can buy everything you need for these three items in bulk or in the produce aisle, so you will need little or no packaging, making the earth proud of your gluttony.  It is cheaper and may even be quicker than the processed versions.  Better yet, most of this stuff will come to you in a local, organic produce box, so feel free to order one of those.  I am not saying you need to eat perfectly, I sure don’t.  Just doing little things like these three things, though,gets us pointed in the right direction.

Anyone else got any tricks up their sleeves?  Anyone found a severed ear in their applesauce?

There is a lot going around about swine flu right now.  In fact, I thought Malcolm had it last night.  He had a high temperature, oinked when he sneezed and was wee wee weeing all around the house.  Classic symptoms.  When he woke up, they were gone.  Close call!

I took the opportunity to think about pigs and realized they they are easily my favorite animal, to eat!  While most people are out there trying to protect themselves from swine flu, I got me a bad case of swine lust.  What an animal!  You can eat it for breakfast, lunch or dinner.  You can eat it for fine dining or at a taco truck.  It comes in many different flavors, colors and textures.  Try as you might, you will not be able to come up with one organism that provides so many different amazing things to eat. Take that you stupid old cow!

One of the crazy awesomest things that the pig has given us is pulled pork.  It is pretty easy to make, so I thought I’d share the recipe.  This is a simple version.  I have a more complicated version which involves brining the meat and sleeping with your neighbor, but I’ll leave that for another time.

1. Buy a 5-7 pound pork shoulder from the store.  Ironically, this means you will be looking for what they call pork butt, even though it is from the shoulder, not the butt.  Why is it called the butt?  American’s love butts!  Can you imagine Sir Mix Alot singing, “I like big shoulders?”  I can’t.  If you can, buy pork raised humanely.  Being a pig sucks at the end, when the pig is slaughtered to become out food.  The least we can do is let the pigs have a little fun before becoming our breakfast.  I trust Niman Ranch, although I can’t always find it.

2. Take the meat out of the refrigerator an hour before beginning to cook it.  Put a rub on it.  I use a couple of tablespoons of paprika, chili powder and onion powder, with a hefty dose of salt thrown in there for good measure. Rub it all around the outside of the pork until it has a nice coating over it.  Then wash your hands, you have the residue from rubbing spices into a butt on your hands!

3.  Cook in an oven at 175 degrees for around 5-6 hours.  It is done if you stick a fork in it, pull it away, and a chunk of pork comes with it.  It is not done if if you stick a fork in it, and it squeals loudly.  Take the pork out of the oven and let it rest for an hour.  You can pull it apart without waiting, but the juice that squirts out of the roast will burn you and set fire to the kitchen.  While the pork is resting, play some nice mellow music for it, maybe Jack Johnson and try your hardest not to pick at it.  You entire house will smell like pork deliciousness, so leaving it alone will be tough.

4.  Put the pork on a cutting board and pull it apart with 2 large forks.  Small forks will cause your hands to cramp, so the larger the fork the better. I rip off a big chunk from the main carcass and then pull it apart until the meat is in long, thin chunks.  Toss with liberal amounts of barbecue sauce.  This expression is why I am a liberal.  Being conservative with anything, especially barbecue sauce, is just plain wrong.  Put it in a sandwich and you are set.   It will change your life.  When done, it should look like this: