cleanse time again

No butter for the butter lady?!? What? No coffee, dairy, red meat, pork, booze, cigarettes, hookers? I know it sounds crazy but I do this twice a year for two weeks just to rid my body of my own toxic life style.  I figured new year, new city, new job, new show in February, sounds like a good time to get a fresh start.  It can be delicious at time.  I just made salads for my roommate Diba and I.  Arugula and mixed greens with olive oil and garlic seared chicken, flax seeds, and balsamic vinegar.  Simple and delicious.  With the future fast approaching (always) I am determined to learn moderation, while it may not be a daily practice for me it should be something I am capable of.   I will try to find a delicious detox/cleanse recipe to post for you (the seven readers of my blog).  I also promise not to blog about the colon cleansing process details for you.

Also come see the show February 13 at Chez Bushwick.  It is going to blow your mind!

Lets see if I can give you some recipes.

I started the preparations for my New Years dinner at around 2:30am. I started the pork roast around 3:00am and made hummus until about 6:00am. Started back up around 1:30pm, serving dinner around 7:30pm. Libations included lots of Prosecco, beer, and Jameson. I will try be as clear as I can be in my recipes, but remember, I never use timers or measuring devices, and don't plan on starting anytime soon. Common sense is your best friend when cooking.

Roasted red pepper hummus:

Photo cred shout out goes to: Ashley Mathus

1. Roasted red pepper
1 12oz can chickpeas
3 heaping table spoons tahini
Juice of 1 lemon
3 cloves garlic - chopped
dash cayanne pepper
dash kosher salt
few cranks black pepper


1. Drain Chickpeas except for a few table spoons of liquid which you will use to thin the hummus.
2. Put in blender or food processor with rest of ingredients.
3. Blend on high until smooth.

Garnish with olive oil or chili oil.  You can roast the red peppers yourself in the oven by halving them, brushing then with olive oil and cooking them at 450 for about 20 minutes.  Warning: If your oven is dirty (as mine always is) your kitchen will get smokey, as mine did, at 5:30 in the morning.



All Night Pork and Sauerkraut:

5.5 lb de-boned pork shoulder
one large package sauerkraut
16oz Newcastle or any good brown ale
ground coriander
brown sugar
paprika
jane's krazy mixed up salt
kosher salt
black pepper
whole grain mustard
flour
butter

1. Rub pork with flour, several generous shakes of paprika, several generous shakes of coriander, Kosher salt, jane's k.m.u.s., and black pepper.
2. Brown pork on all sides in a skillet with about a tbsp butter
3. Put Sauerkraut in bottom of crock pot, juices included
4. Sprinkle brown sugar and a generous amount of all seasoning
5. Lay pork on sauerkraut fat side up
6. Rub with whole grain mustard
7. Pour beer over the pork
8. Put lid on and cook on high for about an hour. Turn down to low and leave for at least ten hours

This recipe is great for left overs. Pork and sauerkraut sandwiches are so delish!


Roasted New Years Day Get Rich Stew:

Southerners say that eating black eyed peas on new years day brings wealth.  Never hurts to try.


24 oz dried black eyed peas
1.25 lb spicy Italian Sausage (I used turkey because Nicole doesn't eat pork)
1 large yellow onion
4-5 sweet potatoes
8 cups chicken stock (homemade is best or low sodium chicken broth works too)
1 large yellow pepper
1 large roasted red pepper
Paprika
Onion powder
Jane's k.m.u.s
Black pepper

1. Rinse black eyed peas and put in giant pot with enough water to cover them bring to a boil
2. Peel and cube sweet potatoes
3. Check if peas need more water, sometimes they absorb it really fast, make sure they don't dry out
4. Add sweet potatoes and 1/2 chicken stock
5. Cut sausage into chunks brown in cast iron skillet
6. Add to soup
7. Juliane onion add to skillet that sausage was just cooked in sautee until browned. add to soup.

8. Add julianed yellow pepper to skillet sautee til browned. add to soup
9. Chop garlic, sautee til brown. add to soup
10. Add rest of chicken stock
11. Add roasted red pepper and a generous amount of all seasonings
12. Let simmer for at least and hour; several makes it richer (pun intended)

Hipster Chicken 

1 4lb whole chicken
1 can PBR (or other canned beer)
butter
paprika
kosher salt
black pepper
jane's k.m.u.s.

1. Brine chicken for at least an hour in fridge.  disolve half cup kosher salt in water and submerge chicken. Kosher chicken is already brined, so if you have a kosher bird skip this step
2. When done brining rinse chicken in cold water and pat dry with paper towel
3. Shove a few pad of butter under the skin, this will make your chicken so moist it melts
4. Drink half your beer
5. Set beer upright, spread those chicken legs, and ease the chicken onto the can
6. Put in roasting pan
7. Add water to the bottom of pan, I also usually and an onion or garlic for aromatics.
8. Rub bird with paprika, salt, pepper, janes k.m.u.s.
9. Put in the oven at 450 for about 10-15 minutes
10. Baste and turn oven down to 350 for an hour or an hour and a half basting regularly.

great things are never easy, but sometimes funny

So I decided the best way to celebrate the new year would be a feast with some great friends and some traditional "good luck" dishes. I love a good reason to cook a large meal and invite people over and celebrate hedonism together. That, and since I had to work on New Years Eve I wanted a  reason to party. I decided this a few days before NYE, and realized the only time I would have to shop would be before I went to work on NYE day.  Don't worry, hilarity will ensue (or at least it would have if you had been following me around with a camera during the shopping trip). I decided the night before what I was going to make, and wrote a list of necessary ingredients to get in Williamsburg the next day. I sleep a little later than I intended to on NYE - and then I don't know something happened. I tried to figure out where I was going to get a pork shoulder while chugging a cup of coffee.  Found some place that looked good off the Lorimer stop on the L train, figured I would be able to walk around and find the rest of the groceries I needed. Good thing I didnt write down the address of the place I was looking for, and couldn't remember the location.   I found a natural food store and decided to start there. I got about half the items I needed there, figured that I would happen across a butcher at somepoint. Nope.  I must have walked in fifteen different concentric circles when eventually the bags started to weigh me down, leading to settling on some grocery store that looked pretty big, gracious and fresh and mentioned something about carrying natural foods. It's pretty much a typical Brooklyn grocery store, vaguely hispanic but holding a few more natural and organic products. Cool, I get the rest of the shit I needed home, including a 5.5 lb deboned pork shoulder (my neighboorhood only had bone in and I refused to ever try that again without a deboning knife). Ok, I think I can handle carrying these groceries, but I had forgotten how far I walked from the train. "Naw man!" I tell myself, "Every day is a work out!" I slugged back to the train, took a small break and tried to get myself together. Figured there had to have been a place that sold those old lady grocery cart things around. Still ambling, I found a hardware store and the lady said she has them, however, none happened to be assembled. My new BFF then tells me that it is easy to assemble a cart made of plastic and poles, and, desperate at this point, I buy it (massively overpriced I might add). I start trying to put it together in the store, and it happened to be as easy as putting together a piece of Ikea furniture, which I am a miserable failure at. Getting more pissed off by the minute, I'm about to tell the nice clerk to "take this fucking piece of shit back and give me back my money.  I will take a cab" Here enters the very nice employee, trodding over to my pile of bags and offers to put it together for me. He does it in about five minutes flat.  Thanking him, I head out the door to the Sicilian Bakery.

I get to the train and carry my heavy-ass cart down the two flights of stairs and try to fit my cart through the metrocard entry. That was an embarrassing failure, as I almost got myself stuck between, in and around the revolving bars. Realizing that there is no attendant existent to open the gate for me, it hits me that I will have to sludge to the other subway enterance.  Aggressively grabbing my heavy, awkwardly shaped, mediocrely crafted, expenisve cart back up two flights of stairs, down two blocks, down two more flights of stairs, I get to the bottom of the platform and the attendee tries to tell me he doesn't let people through the gate to go upstairs and cross the street. I almost cry and he must feel bad for me because he gets up and goes through the exhausting process of unlocking the door with his keys instead of staying in his glass office and pushing a button. I am kidding. I appreciate this guy not making me carry the cart back up and down. I only have one more flight down and three flights up when I get back to my stop. Awesome! Why do these carts exist? They dont float up and down stairs. They don't carry themselves. They only work well when if where you are going is in walking distance, and if that was the case, I would've been able to carry it by myself. I guess that is why you only see old ladies and fat people with them. A co-worker of mine once said her life was "like a slow motion epiode of Benny Hill." Never has that line applied to my life as much as it did today, and that shit would have been even more hilarious if I could have sped it up for you, and you and you.

Welcome to the future

Holy Crap! Its 2010!!!! I am excited to be living in the future even if I don't have a wristwatch that doubles as a phone, a robot that follows me around and cleans up after me, or health insurance. I do have a cell phone that tells time, a gay best friend who sometimes follows me around and cleans up after me, and a hope to get on medicaid in New York state. I also have big plans to make all of my dreams come true in the next decade. That being said I know a few people liked and followed this blog, and it is a good way to encourage more cooking in 2010, and the production of my direct to internet television program "Get Stuffed with Mary Jo". So here we go into the future together.

finally!

Grocery co-op to open in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood

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using up stuff in the cabinets

I wanted to have Stephanie and Laura over for dinner, but my funds were low. So I looked though my cabinets and realized that there sure was a lot of random food in there and all I needed was a few ingredients and I got myself a nice ol' casserole that is sure to feed 4. I had some whole wheat veggie Armoniche ( crinkly cylindrical spiral pasta) that I never used because Demetrius is not a fan of whole wheat pasta, some cream of celery soup that Jill got for me to eat after I had my wisdom teeth out ( but cream soups on there own i find kind of gross), frozen peas, and a lot of leftover swiss cheese from a weight calculation snafu at the grocery store (the true catalyst for the dinner), a pretty solid base for an awesome casserole. We just went down the street to the local grocery store to grab a few supplemental ingredients. I got some chicken breast and some prosciutto for protein, and some fresh leaks for flavor. Putting everything together proved to be pretty quick and easy. I sliced then marinated the chicken in some garlic, white balsamic vinegar, olive oil, herbs de Provence, and a few other spices for a couple of hours just to keep the dish flavorful, I then sauteed the chicken in olive oil adding the sliced leeks. Once the chicken was browned I added the pasta, about two and half cups of swiss cheese, one can of cream of celery, cooked peas, and the prosciutto. Stirred it until the soup was warm and threw it in an oven safe dish covered it with layer of shredded swiss on top and baked it at 350 for about 30 minutes. The casserole came out lighter than I expected which was nice. The peas played off the proscuitto perfectly and the leek complimented the flavor nicely without overpowering. The only thing I would change is the pasta. I just found the whole wheat too mealy after baked. Maybe even a risotto would work. There is always next time.

did you know that gluttony is the gateway sin?

I learned this and many other fun facts at Ina and Jacob's Easter potluck brunch. I never realized my friends were all so creative in the kitchen. Every type of baked egg dish from strada's to quiches were well represented along with delicious pasteries and desserts. Ina was also stationed at the blender for a good part of the afternoon whipping up batches of her mother's peach mimosa's which were sweet and bubbly. I made an onion casserole, which is my grandmothers recipe. It is made from butter, onion, swiss cheese, cream, egg and ritz crackers, a yummy heart attack in a pan. I am going to ask for the rights (from my dad) to the recipe before I post it, it might be a secret Bono family thing. One thing that I am definitely stealing from this brunch is the amaretto strawberry shots. A really fun way to "do shots" without the unfortunate falling off the barstool, waking up with a headache, getting into fights with strangers type side effects. They only require light preparation and three ingredients: strawberries, amaretto and whipped cream. Just cut the top off of the strawberry and hollow out a small hole for the amaretto, top with whipped cream and enjoy.