Hawaiian Flamethrower Chili

When it comes to cooking for your coworkers, you’re typically in one of two modes.  There’s the standard food day mindset where you fulfill your role in the delicious symphony of dishes organized by your team; delighting in the oohs and aahs of your peers as they savor your culinary creation.  Food days are about peace and love and carbohydrate overload.  “Here, have this homemade peanut butter brownie… and a hug.” 

But not all brownies are served with a side of hug; some are served with a merciless smirk and a burning rage by a maniac who has promised to bring the world to heel via toffee crumbles and chocolate shavings.  This brownie isn’t for food day and wasn’t made with love… This brownie is to rule them all; this brownie is for the workplace cookoff.

Something changes in the human psyche when you substitute competition for cooperation.  With the flip of a switch a man will change from Guy Fieri to Conan the Barbarian; trading bowling shirts for a broadsword as he aims to destroy Flavor Town.  It’s no longer important that you simply enjoy their creation, but that you grant its flavor favor above all other dishes.  This is no longer about delicious, it’s about destruction.

Conan demonstrates how to properly chop onions

On Thursday, December 14^th, I participated in a chili cookoff at work.  This is an inside look at my chili preparation process.

Unlike most workplace competitions I’ve witnessed, this chili cookoff was split into four separate categories:  Texas Style, Homestyle, Vegetarian, Flamethrower.  From these, an overall “Most Popular” would also be crowned.  Now, anyone who may have stumbled through the Orders department on November 29^th and witnessed the absolute circus of torture as we sampled various hot sauces that ended in regret and suffering might have correctly guessed ahead of time that I’d be entering the Flamethrower division. 

The Flamethrower division requires a delicate balance.  Sure, Conan, you’re ready to burn these metaphorical villages to the ground in the name of victory; but if you LITERALLY burn the judges to the ground, you’re only going to succeed in looking like a jerk.  So while “flamethrower” is certainly a license to open carry capsaicin into the workplace, you still need to aim carefully or you might face a life-time crockpot ban.  Which, I can speak from experience, is a real thing. 

Beyond the concoction of a fantastic and fiery sauce, there are a lot of choices that go into chili.  To start with, which meat(s) to use is of paramount importance.  I kicked this question around for a full week before the competition.  Chicken?  Beef?  Ground Turkey?  Well, there’s one thing that is absolutely required:  Candied bacon.  Some people think chili is about tomatoes or beans or the chili peppers that are required for a dish to technically be chili.  Those people are wrong.  Candied bacon is the staple of any chili made in my kitchen; this is not negotiable.  It’s true, the vegetarian category will never be my home.

An important sidebar here:  I’m not above taking the easy exit in a cookoff.  I once took second in a chili competition by buying three cans of Campbell’s Chunky Chili and adding brown sugar and bacon to it.  Campbell’s Soup Company has a market cap of 14.8 billion dollars; Ted from accounting drives a twenty-year-old Ford Ranger… I took those odds and then took a nap.  But now I’m older, and wiser, and that tiny bit of pride I actually possess demands I deliver something fresher and hopefully tastier than a reheated soup with a facelift.  So it was off to the store!  I’ve included my recipe in the sidebar, in case you need your own kitchen adventure.

If you’re like me and you enjoy fresh ingredients in your dishes, then you know food prep can be an onerous task.  This is where I can offer you a tiny bit of life advice, dear reader:  Upgrade your kitchen gear.  Get a legitimate, non-Target Brand knife set and some good cutting boards.  Get a nice set of pots and pans and take good care of them (they’ll last for a long, long time).  Buy an Instant Pot (it’ll change your life) and a good crock pot.  Quality tools make it easier to do a quality job, and when you can produce quality in your kitchen cooking becomes far more enjoyable. 

Of course, that’s not to say I actually produce quality in my kitchen.  I don’t own a cookbook (except the Bob’s Burgers Burger Book: Real Recipes for Joke Burgers) and I like to shop without a list and only a vague idea of what I’m actually trying to create.  But hey, I’m good at chopping vegetables, my chicken cooks quickly and to perfection, and I have plenty of sauce pans in my test kitchen to experiment with my Blair’s After Death sauce.  Practice makes perfect, they say… and hopefully guarantees the judges survive this experience.

The first practice run was an adventure to be sure.  On Thanksgiving, I heaped a tablespoon of After Death sauce on my turkey.  I knew it was a bad idea, but sometimes you have to dive headfirst into a bad idea if only for entertainment purposes.  Sweating, tears, and hiccups immediately materialized and I spent the next half hour fighting my mouth inferno.  My second experience was on the ill-fated hot sauce tasting previously mentioned, where we basically combined hot sauce with hot sauce until we could see into other dimensions.  So, yah, to this point I have no idea how it will blend with other ingredients.  The weekend prior to the cookoff I mixed a teaspoon into a can of Campbell’s Chunky soup (I obviously love me some Campbell’s) and stirred well.  That teaspoon was more than enough for the 12 ounces of chicken and dumplings as my lips were ablaze for an hour after my meal.  It was obvious I would need to exercise caution.

Mmm, fresh chef-ables.

I ultimately settled on six teaspoons of hot sauce by taste testing throughout the process.  There’s danger in this method, however.  As the dish cooks, some of the liquids that diluted the sauce evaporate and the concentration of hot sauce increases.  So, you taste, sense a bit of fire, and make a guess at how hot the dish will actually become.  If you’re smart, you’ll actually have a cup of your chili before you serve it to the judges so you know exactly what they’ll go through.  If you’re me, you put it in the crockpot at 7:30 p.m., leave for volleyball, get home at about 11 p.m. and won’t feel like eating anything and shrug off the testing.  I mean, how lethal can chili be?  Then you have dreams of that one chili cookoff where everyone got food poisoning from the bear chili and you wake up in a cold sweat at 3 a.m. wondering if maybe you should possibly sneak into the kitchen right now and have a cup.  On the other hand, though… sleep.  Live life on the chili edge, my friends. 

This is not a toy...

Of course, if you live on the edge, you have to be prepared for the consequences.  When the reviews came back mixed, I knew I was immediately out of the running for best chili overall.  Actually, I knew that as soon as one of the judges said, “I don’t like spicy food.”  After the tasting, I received a mixture of comments somewhere between “It was delicious and I went back for more” and “I need more milk, why did you make it so hot?!”  Why?  Why did man first mount a horse?  Why do people keep venomous snakes as pets?  Why did we dream of playing hopscotch on the moon?  There’s an intrinsic drive in humanity to test our limits, face our fears head on, and push forward into new frontiers.  I knew the sauce was potentially dangerous, but it had to be done.  Humanity may stop to look, but we always leap.

Lookin' tasty!

When the supply of chili was obliterated and the votes finally tallied, Chris Hains and his Texas Style Steak Chili stood alone as the day’s big winner by securing the votes of both the judges and the crowd at large.  Apparently things like “steak” and “not setting faces and GI tracts on fire” are admirable traits in food competitions.  For his efforts, Chris brought home a sweet prize  of 84 dollars and the peace of mind that comes with obliterating your work place rivals.  Surely, Hains-ville would rest easy that night.  Chris Davidson also graced the podium, placing third with his own Homestyle Chili and netting a $10 prize.

The point of this was to win, let's not lose sight of that.
But once that option's gone, burning the place down
is a pretty satisfying outcome.

And me?  I failed in my quest to burn Flavor Town to the ground (unless Flavor Town is a place that lives in the hearts and minds of the judges who were forced to guzzle bottles of milk after trying my chili… In which case I definitely burned it down).  But I happily took second place and my $20 bounty; semi-successfully walking that fine line between consuming my foes in an inferno and finding favor with fiery flavor amongst the judging panel.  They may have both brought me to the same place, but the fear and uncertainty of deploying a ridiculously hot sauce in a chili cookoff made this experience far more entertaining and gratifying than following a “color by numbers” recipe or reheating a can of soup.

Pepperoncini Roast Beef

There are a ton of little things you can do for yourself to improve the quality of your life that you may not consider on a daily basis.  Buy a body wash that is good for your skin and doesn’t smell like a twelve year boy trying to score with the college sophomores his older sister invited over on Thanksgiving break.  Invest in some good cutlery - Cooking is exponentially more satisfying when you can re-enact Kill Bill scenes on your vegetables.  Get a good bed – rest is important, yo.  If the quality of your sleep improves, the quality of your life improves.

Yah, spray that Axe body spray on your balls
and feel the burn, little Timmy.  Sweat all you want,
you’re never getting invited to that pillow fight

Anyway, all of this is to say that the Head Chef of my Relationship made an executive decision and chose  to improve my life last weekend by upgrading my crock pot to something that is full size and programmable.  Prep your food, chuck it in the crock pot, and come back 6-8 hours later and indulge yourself in something delicious.  And let’s be honest, something delicious will always improve your life.

Since she was so super excited about this new kitchen contraption, she wanted to prove how amazing my life would be going forward.  I tried to convince her, like, look, we already bought it, you can stop trying to sell it to me.  Let’s just stick with the dessert you were going to make, of the buffalo chicken pull apart bread, or the litany of other delicious food ideas you’ve been pitching.  But no, crock pot dish it had to be. 

I want a knife that handles peppers like
Uma Thurman handles Japanese boys.

Ultimately we landed on something that doesn’t really have a name.  So we’re going with Pepperoncini Roast Beef.  And, let’s be honest, it sounds and looks like a terrible idea. 

Judging a dish that looks like it was dreamed up on the spot can be a bit tricky.  If the dish is terrible, is it the fault of the recipe (which the chef created) or the fault of the chef for doing a terrible job of following the recipe?  And if the chef created a recipe so complex that she couldn’t follow the recipe and the end result was terrible, is it because the chef is a terrible chef or a terrible creator of chefables?  Chefables being a word I made up for the overarching category of things that chef’s would create.  Because there’s totally not a word for that yet.  Can I copyright “chefable?”  I feel like I may have stumbled onto my billion dollar idea.  Anyway, let’s get back to the point.  If you make up your own recipe, and what you deliver sucks, it’s a lot your own damn fault.  Yah, feeling a little buyer’s remorse on that crockpot yet? 

So let’s get down to brass tacks… or peppered beef… or whatever.  Let’s start at prep difficulty.  The dish itself really doesn’t seem that hard to make, honestly.  Like a drive by fart, really:  Fire and forget.  Throw all your chefables into the crockpot, set it at high for six hours, and go take a nap. Yah, that’s right Sharon, we take naps… lots of naps.  But there was the whole mashed potato thing that added some difficulty.  Which brings up a tangential question:  At what ratio of sour cream to potato are mashed potatoes no longer mashed potatoes?  Cause I’m pretty sure the ratio got pretty damn close to 60/40 barely in favor of potatoes.  The recipe may say “add sour cream to taste,” but what it means is “use all the unopened sour cream, open new sour cream, use all that, then wonder why there isn’t more sour cream.” 

At least the final result looks beautiful, right?  I mean, don’t get too distracted by green stuff.  A lot of people may not be into the pepperoncini, and that’s cool.  Feel free to exclude them, it’s a free country.  But the plating, yo.  Gorgeous.  Potatoes and beef and gravy and a splash of random color… and you get to put that in your mouth, bro. 

And what happens when it’s in your mouth?  First of all, that beef comes out so ridiculously tender and juicy.  I mean, I had leftovers the next day and when I stabbed it with the fork it squirted juice at me.  When was the last time you had roast beef like that?  The answer is probably never.  Cause your crockpot sucks and doesn’t have a timer.  The au jus is amazing as a seasoning, and the gravy with the sour cream potatoes… Add it all together and it’s a really solid three.  Now you’re wondering… three?  What the hell?  You were just talking about the all juicy and the au jus-y and the gravy and you’re going to give it a three?  Well, umm, the pepperoncinis.  They were…  Umm.  They weren’t terrible… they just seemed… out of place.  The interesting thing is that they pick up so much of the beef flavor that the peppers are actually pretty tasty.  But, still… just… out of place.

Which brings us back to the chicken and egg type conundrum.  Is the chef’s execution or the flavor of the dish to blame?  I have no earthly idea, so they both get threes.  I could have given the chef’s execution a five and the flavor a one, but that assumes that the chef doesn’t suck at following instructions to combine chefables.  Maybe she does suck, and the execution should be a one and the flavor is a five in spite of her worst efforts.  I don’t know.  Either way, combine them, average them, and three is the result. 

It looks weird going in...

But let’s wrap this bad boy up.  Remember when I was talking about simple things that can improve your life?  A good, homemade meal can dramatically improve your life.  So when this thing averages out to a little better than three and a half, you have to remember that I was accustomed to eating Taco Bell and microwave burritos that easily rated a one (unless you poured queso over the top of them, then you’re pushing a two and a half).  So, yah, when I say three and a half what I’m saying is I ate those leftovers every night for a week.  Was it spicy biscuits and gravy good?  No.  But it sure beat the fuck out of Taco Bell.

Biscuits and Sausage Gravy

Biscuits and Sausage Gravy

Due to its general deliciousness, it’s super easy to forget that gravy is essentially liquefied

animal fat, flour, and milk.  It’s like killing the animal wasn’t quite enough; we needed to render its fat into a delicious dressing to further fuel our carnivorous rage.  Which is why pigs probably exhaled a collective “oh shit” when human beings discovered biscuits and gravy. 

There are few things better in this world than breakfast food.  The problem is if you want the really good stuff you have to get out of bed at a decent enough hour to either make it yourself or at least make yourself presentable for other human beings so you can go to a restaurant (favorite breakfast place right now, by the way, is Ronnie’s Restaurant… get a cinnamon roll).  Both of those options are just massive pains in the ass; it’s the weekend and I have zero intention of getting out of bed before 11.  Unless golf is involved. 

But for you, my four faithful blog readers, I made the sacrifice of getting out of bed early last weekend so my girlfriend could cook me breakfast.  As I sat there on the couch watching Samurai Jack, I pondered whether my heroic sacrifice of sleep was worthy of some sort of medal or Federal Holiday; the experience was that traumatic.  But you’re worth it, dear reader, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.  Also worth it:  That giant plate of orange tinted biscuits and gravy. 

Here are some things this week’s recipe taught me.  First of all, frozen biscuits are ok to use.  I wrongly assumed that because they were frozen it would mean, somehow, they weren’t fresh.  Blame Wendy’s I guess.  But either way those damn biscuits came out as close to perfect as I could imagine.  The only way they could have been any better is if I didn’t have to get out of bed before 11 a.m. to eat them. 

Second, I learned that if you substitute spicy sausage into your recipe, you could get some unexpected color results.  In this case, the gravy came out with a slight orange tint that I would not have expected.  You’re probably thinking “Aluminum Chef AJ does not tolerate deviations from standard presentation.  That’s probably going to hurt the score.”  Normally you’d be right, but look at that photo and tell me you’re not thinking about licking your computer screen right now.  No, there will be no orange penalty on this day. 

That's a spicy piggy...

Actually, it’s hard to find anything to penalize in this dish.  Chef’s execution?  Adding spicy sausage instead of the standard was a flair that melted my stomach’s heart… which is totally a thing that will earn you a five every time you can pull it off.  For once I wasn't adding Frank's Red Hot or Tabasco sauce to my breakfast.  Jimmy Dean's hot meat was all the spice I needed to start my morning with a kick.

Put a price tag on this, I dare you.

Prep Difficulty?  This dish is so easy I was just texting the process to myself as I checked in on the kitchen every few minutes.  Sure, there’s some judgment involved (adding flour until the gravy is thick enough for your liking), but like I said in the intro:  Grease, flour, milk and stir.  Don’t like it spicy?  You're wrong, idiot.  But it's still a simple switch.  Even the frozen biscuits eliminate the terror of ripping open those pressurized tubes of bread that double as IEDs in times of civil unrest.  The most complicated part of this recipe was deciding what to call the stove top pot that was used, and I think we can all agreed I nailed that.

This was pretty tasty...

Cost would be a perfect 5 as well, because how can you put a price tag on this pork-laden sorcery?  Of course we lose a bit in opportunity cost.  Yes, the biscuits and gravy were delicious, but I’m never going to get back that opportunity to sleep in on Saturday morning.  And even though I know you completely sympathize with my pain and suffering, you probably think it's hardly fair to blame the chef for the early morning; and you’re likely right.  Especially when you consider that there was a nap immediately following breakfast.  Yep, I’m living the dream, folks. 

Of course, what it all comes down to is how rocking the party is in your mouth.  Well, this was a party that should have been shut down by the cops.  I'm legitimately sad for vegetarians (and people of faiths whose diets are restricted from pork) everywhere because they are not invited.  It hardly seems right to give such a simple, non daring dish a perfect score in taste; but sometimes things are perfect because of their simplicity.  This is definitely one of those times.  

Let's be honest, the whole dish was perfect.  And maybe it's a case of the chef knowing her

audience and being sick of getting mediocre scores; like "fuck you chubby, you want something delicious? BOOM!"  If that's how this happened, i'm not even mad.  It could have come with a note saying "made with all the spite I could muster," and I still would have eaten every bite and licked the plate.  And that's how you know you earned a 5.

Sausage gravy over flaky biscuits; the perfect way to remind pigs why they are where they are on the food chain.  

Chicken Chorizo Patty Melts

Damn, you's a sexy dish... a sexy dish...
Click here for the recipe

I love that David Guetta song, it really tells a story.  Girl walks in, whole room is in awe, and he's over here in the corner working his hardest to come up with a pickup line that, in his own words, won't be "disrespectful."  Ultimately, he lands on "Damn you is a sexy bitch."  I think we can all agree he nailed it.  

Anyway, there are a lot of nasty rumors floating around that I’ve gone full Guetta and have enslaved my girlfriend, taken her shoes, and locked her in the kitchen (she likes it there, I swear!).  So it only seems fair that every once in a while I step up, cook one for the team, and allow myself to be critiqued.  I decided I’d get my turn in the rotation out of the way early and posted up in the kitchen with a bottle of wine, some raw meat, and cooking gear that was not up to the task. 

Hidden behind this bottle is
my roommate's neti pot that's
been in the kitchen for six
months.  Disgusting is in the
eye of the beholder, I guess.

On the surface, a chicken-chorizo patty melt sounds like the perfect American dish to celebrate Cinco de Mayo.  I’m pretty sure Mexico has chickens… and chorizo, duh.  But in reading and reviewing the recipe I knew I was in for a nightmarish time due to, well, my general culinary retardation.  I mean, I didn’t make it this far in life without knowing how to pour milk on cereal, follow basic recipes, or at least knowing where the closest taco bell is (literally 2 minutes from my apartment and a perfect backup plan in case this all goes horribly sideways); but there are some things that I just lack the experience and bravery to cope with.  A small example:  I made brownies a couple months ago and didn’t pre-treat the dish I baked them in.  As a result, they stuck to the pan with such ferocity that only half of the brownies were actually consumed.  If not for the girlfriend, who has a weird disease that makes her LOVE to clean, I probably would have just thrown the dish in the trash with the brownies.  It was that bad. 

So when I looked at this recipe and saw “gently and thoroughly combine ingredients by hand” I couldn’t even get my brain around to the myriad of sex jokes that should be involved, because all I could really see was RAW MEAT.  Surprising considering I just butchered two turkeys three weeks ago, but I hate touching raw meat.  I don’t know if it’s because of all the salmonella horror stories I heard growing up, or because I worked at a grocery store and every time chicken went on sale the entire register would become coated in a half frozen slime that consisted of blood and juice, but either way I’m just not a fan.  So, the wine was definitely a necessity. 

Sure, I butchered this with a hatchet
and a hunting knife, but it was still gross.

Anyway, I get to the part where I’m supposed to mince the garlic and curse at myself.  Two

weeks ago, I very clearly stated that you should buy your minceables preminced; now I’m staring down the microplaner having ‘Nam-like flashbacks to the horrific sounds the girlfriend was making week 1.  MOTHER FUCKER.  Well, no worries.  It turns out I lack the finger dexterity to actually mince garlic, as whole chunks of it keep slipping out of my hands.  At this point I feel like I’m in one of those shitty infomercials where a person can’t eat potato chips without dousing themselves with gasoline and spontaneously combusting.  “There has to be a better way!”

There is!  The girlfriend did it for me.  I highly recommend forming some sort of partnership with someone who likes to mince for you.  So convenient! 

Sadly, this ineptitude combined with the wine is how we ended up with a zero in chef’s execution.  As I dumped the perfect pound of ground chicken into the mixing bowl, I eye-balled the chorizo grumpily.  I needed 6 ounces to every pound of chicken.  What I had was 1.26 pounds of chorizo.  I’m fairly certain (I never did check) that a pound is 16 ounces, and so 1.26 pounds is like, 20 ounces.  So I needed about 1/3 of the chorizo I had.  But then I thought, “It certainly can’t hurt to have more chorizo than called for, right?”  So my ratio actually ended up being about 1 pound to 10 ounces of chorizo.  I slammed my wine and poured another glass.  Then added the rest of the ingredients to the meat bowl.  Ugg, here we go.

In much the same way that I forgot to pre-treat the brownie pan with some sort of lubricant, I

Oh look, our first zero!

also failed to pretreat my own hands.  I hate raw meat, and now raw meat was sticking to me like crazy.  I could barely form it into patties and get it onto the plate.  Part time Chief Kitchen Safety Officer and Fulltime Girlfriend came into the kitchen laughing and sprayed my hands with some non-stick spray which left a disgusting, buttery coat on the outside of my patties.  It probably didn’t actually hurt anything, the patties tasted fine.  By the way, we’re done with half a bottle of wine in the first ten minutes of me being in the kitchen.  This is not going to end well.  Or begin well, for that matter.  I forgot to add the salt to the meat mix.  I think to myself, “that’s no big deal,” and press on.

Patties in the fridge, we get to the onions.  I hate onions.  I won’t tell you why here, just know it’s personal and maybe a little gross.  But I know my judge loves them, and sautéed onions are typically ok.  I get to work on chopping and cooking, and things are going pretty well to start.  Once I have everything chopped and sizzling, I pull the meat back out of the fridge and consider my next cooking question:

What the fuck really IS a griddle, and how is it tactically superior to a sauce pan when it comes to making patty melts?  In addition, why is a griddle so damn needy?  The instructions constantly call for wiping it down and brushing in oils.  I fail to see why this clingy, dramatic cooking utensil would add any value to my life whatsoever.  I mean, is this exclusively a southern thing? “Sun coming up, I got cakes on the griddle… Thank God I’m a country boy.”  Cause, I just use a sauce pan for my pancakes and that turned out just fine that one time I made pancakes Easter morning like 5 years ago. 

Chicken ain't nothing but a funny, funny riddle
who's answer is 160 degrees internal temp.

I guess my point is, I don’t own a griddle, and will be cooking my meat in a sauce pan.  Which should be fine.  Searing and cooking the patties actually goes quite well, but then we run into some legit issues.  I chose pita bread over the naan because the naan were so tiny I was afraid they wouldn’t work.  Turns out, the pita was just way too huge for the endeavor.  The patty took up about half of the actual space inside the pita, but this was our only option at this point, so we press on.  The onions are looking and smelling pretty solid at this point, as well, and everything is coming together just in time for the construction of sandwich number one.  I put it together and throw it on the stove to sear the bread and melt the cheese, and realize I probably have the heat too low on the sandwich, and need to turn the heat off on the onions before they burn. 

I turn back to the second patty and load it on the pita with the cheese and look back at the stove.  Between sips of my third glass of wine I wonder “Why the hell is the cheese not melting on the sandwich on the stove?  And wow, those onions must have been super hot, they’re still sizzling.”  The Chief Kitchen Safety Officer pokes in the kitchen to check on the tater tots and points out my culinary retardation.  I turned the onions up all the way, and turned the burner below the sandwich completely off.  It’s too late.  The sautéed onions are now burnt black and inedible.  I have brought shame to my family.  I discreetly attempt to jump off the balcony.  The Chief Kitchen Safety Officer saves me.  She’s always paying attention.  Jerk.

At least the sandwich that’s being judged got onions, and the rest of the cooking was fairly  straightforward after that… because I was out of things to screw up.

This is helpful for spicy food
and shitty club music...

Plating turned out nicely on this one, splitting the sandwich in half around some tater tot nachos, and posts a strong 4 out of 5.  I’m actually going to rate this one pretty decent in terms of prep difficulty, the fact that it came out edible despite my idiocy and drinking is pretty amazing and speaks volumes to the actual simplicity of the dish.  Definitely look for a bread product that is the size of normal sandwich bread, and don’t burn your onions and you’ll be fine.  Hell, no one would have even known I forgot the salt if I hadn’t admitted to it.  The girlfriend actually scored the dish a solid 3.5 out of 5 (which is better than anything she’s cooked, BOOM!).  She felt the recipe could have used an even larger ratio of chorizo to chicken, even though I overshot the recipe by a solid 66%.  The recipe recommends dipping your sandwich in ketchup, which is dumb, so we used a spicy ranch sauce instead and it was pretty wonderful. 

I will give you this warning, however.  Red wine and chorizo might be delicious in the mouth hole, but it’s a bad, bad combination on the stomach.  I had the worst acid reflux I’ve had in a long, long time; and that was after I took Zantac.  If your gut doesn’t do spicy or just isn’t into the super acidic, you might go easy on the chorizo for this one.  But if you’re trying to find a way to spice up a patty melt or a burger, mix in some chorizo for sure.

Anyway, despite the trauma of the experience, I was happy to feed my girlfriend for once, instead of the other way around.  It’s not like I haven’t cooked for her before, but I’ve never grabbed a recipe I’ve never tried and just went for it.  And while going for it left me drunk, frustrated, and up for a good chunk of the night with heartburn; I’m pretty excited for my next turn in the kitchen… sometime in 2019.  

Jalapeno Popper Tater Tot Chicken Casserole

Hot out of the oven and looking delicious...

So, originally this blog was supposed to be about the snack food we served at game night.  It would have included wonderful delights like buffalo chicken bread, philly cheese steak pull aparts, and taco queso.  But it turns out I got drunk before game night even began, so all I really remember about the food is "oh shit this is delicious!"  Also, no one ate any of my blueberry jalapeño cream cheese dip, and it made me sad when the girlfriend threw it away at the end of the night with most of it still remaining.  It was delicious and I'm still a little bitter.  But not so bitter that I won't write up Sunday's dinner:  Jalapeño Popper Tater Tot Chicken Casserole.  Which is entirely too long for the name of a dish.  But that's a key component to running a food blog - dish titles that include as many of the ingredients as possible.  Personally, if I were really trying to attention whore I would have called it Bacon Jalapeño Pepper Popper Tater Tot Rotisserie Chicken Mexican Cheese Casserole.  But the more reasonable, slap a hipster side of me would have gone with Chicken Tot Casserole.  But I guess that's why I'm over here slumming it with a free blog I write for giggles.

By the way, ever start a new blog quietly, and only tell a couple people while you work on the concept to get it off the ground?  Then, in that awkward time where you've only told one or two people, one of those people mentions the blog in front of someone who knows about your fantasy hockey blog and they have a completely unwarranted, knee jerk, butt hurt reaction.  I guess that's just one of the many unforeseeable risks of game night, though.  Well, that and getting drunk enough that you don't remember anything about the dishes you were originally going to review...  And getting kicked in the left nut while trying to crawl an oreo from your forehead to your mouth using only your face muscles.

Anyway, to compensate, the head chef of my apartment went slumming on Pinterest again, and pulled the recipe you can see in the sidebar.  Which actually ended up being super weather appropriate on a weekend when all my favorite outdoor activities were cancelled due to frigid temperatures and persistent rain.  A tater tot casserole is the epitome of a comfort dish, and were I more like the food blog we pulled the recipe from I’d regale you with tales of building snowmen all day to retire to a cozy sofa with a melty grilled cheese and a steaming bowl of tomato soup.  But we’re not that blog, we’re this blog; so instead let me tell you how you score dueling two’s in plating and execution.

Looking good, pre-bake, too.

This recipe isn’t super complicated.  The list of ingredients isn’t really short, but it’s not like anything listed is super complex.  Hell, the chicken is already cooked!  So when you’re taking your first bites of tot casserole and you stop, and admit that you completely forgot to include one of the ingredients, you’re gonna get knocked down a few pegs.  This wasn’t some strategic decision made to wow my pallet, this was a total blonde moment.  And the result was sort of evident in the final product as it was definitely missing a bit of creaminess I expected.  I’m not saying the casserole was overly dry by any means, so it’s not like I was raging through the kitchen smashing plates.  But I definitely considered it.  Except there were no plates. That’s right, my dinner was served in a paper bowl as if this were some sort of white trash diner.  That’s how you roll a pair of twos. 

Paper bowls... PAPER BOWLS?!

Prep difficulty gets a friendly four; even the chopping of vegetables wasn’t that bad, even though I had to do it myself.  I did deduct a point because after chopping jalapenos I rubbed my eye.  Sorry, but you can’t score a five in prep difficulty if anyone cried; even if it was my own damn fault.  The cost also scores favorably; none of the ingredients are going to break the bank and the recipe makes enough for six people at least.  So offsetting the plating and chef’s execution we score a 4 and 5 in prep and cost.  And all of that brings us to the moment of truth, the flavor.

The title itself makes a huge deal out of telling you every last damn ingredient in the dish, but it falls well short of delivering on the jalapeno popper it promises.  I can see where they tried, though.  The inclusion of garlic salt, cream cheese, bacon, and jalapenos is an honest attempt to create that popper flavor.  But it fails miserably.  The garlic doesn’t come through at all and the jalapeno is muted (which is a shock when you consider how damn large the peppers we used were) behind the green onions.  I need to find the person who came up with this recipe and shove my inferno fingers their eyes.  The bacon is definitely a welcome addition (we even used pre-cooked) and the cream cheese and Mexican cheese blends are delicious.  But in a dish where the popper ain’t poppin’, I’m definitely going to be adding hot sauce to these leftovers. 

After all that, I’m sure you think the dish was barely edible.  Well that’s just not true; I even had a

Pineapple-Ghost Pepper jelly
over cream cheese on the side.

second bowl.  It’s just that the title lied to my face like I’m some punk bitch who won’t paint excel cells yellow and red.  That’s right, YELLOW AND RED, RECIPE.  WHO’S THE PUNK BITCH NOW?!  Anyway, my point is that the end result was still pretty tasty, even if it didn’t pop and even if the chef skipped whole ingredients and served it in a paper bowl.

So who scored worse, the recipe or the cook?  Good to see you’re asking the tough questions, dear reader.  The truth is we just come out here, you know, and try to take it one meal at a time.  A recipe, the cook, and the eater are like a team, you know.  And, um, there’s no I in team, right?  It’s not really fair to blame a loss on any one person… we win as a team and lose as a team.  So, you know, even if

this was a loser; it’s not like you can just say “it’s the cook’s fault for skipping ingredients.”  Especially if you want your team to be a harmonious one.  So, in the interest of harmony, we’ll share the blame on this one.

Even though the cook totally blew it when she skipped an ingredient, sucking the score down from 3.8 to a 3.2.  The cook had no comment.  Mostly because she doesn't know any of what I've written yet.  Which means I'm probably going to be murdered.  Avenge me, dear reader.  AVENGE ME!

Firecracker Salmon

Salmon, quinoa, and crusted snow peas.

Have you ever cooked a meal for someone and thought, “Look at that ungrateful lard ass; just shoveling my culinary masterpiece down his throat like coal into a boiler… I deserve better than this.”  You probably think every morsel of your craft should be savored, considered, and worshipped.  But what if pausing the shoveling leads to someone savoring, considering… then spitting your masterpiece out?  Are you really prepared for the feedback?  I mean, you should never ask questions you don’t really want to know the answer to.

This isn’t going to be one of those pretentious, worshipping lemonade inspired cupcakes on a sunny summer day food blogs.  This is going to be a merciless deconstruction of my girlfriend’s cooking.  Before you take up arms in her defense, she asked for it, and I’m sure she take offense at your assumption that she needs your protection.  If anything, you should probably be concerned for my well-being.  I wholly expect my life to end six months from now, choking on a dry piece of salmonella-ridden, three week old chicken. 

Anyway, if you’re interested in this week’s recipe, check out the side bar.  I hope the quick rating system helps you out as well.  Any major changes that we make to the original recipe will be noted to be fair to the chef; artistic license carries a far lighter penalty than failing to execute the simple, color-by-numbers style recipes she operates from.  For example, this week we substituted out the god-awful Sriracha hot sauce (also known as “smoky ketchup”) for the ridiculously spicy and delicious Stubbs Habanero Pepper Wing Sauce.  Had the hot sauce been terrible, I could hardly fault her for trying.  Of course, had she brought Sriracha into my apartment I most definitely would have had to kick her out.  Cooking for someone you care about definitely carries risk. 

Also, we won’t be linking to those blowhard, pretentious food blogs we rip the recipes from; I would never subject you to such a terrible form of torture and I’m firmly against enabling those narcissists with any additional attention.  If you’re looking for awesome recipes, the girlfriend pulls the majority of them from Pinterest.

At any rate, let’s get into this week’s recipe:  Firecracker Salmon.

It’s been well over a year since I’ve had any form of fish (sushi) and I can’t even guess at how long it’s been since I’ve had some form of fish made inside my own abode.  Bad fish in a restaurant?  You probably go home sick.  Bad fish in the home?  You stay home sick and your apartment smells like rotting pond fruit for a few weeks.  When you tell someone, “Sure, you can cook some fresh salmon fillets in my kitchen.”  You’re really saying “I trust you not to ruin my living space.”  And I did trust her… Mostly.  I mean, I was definitely preparing myself for the worst.

And speaking of preparing, let me warn you about some key components in the preparation of this dish.  When I told the girlfriend that I was giving this dish very poor marks in the “Prep Difficulty” column, she immediately objected, “It wasn’t that difficult!”  Totally.  That steady stream of profanity I heard from the kitchen as she nearly grated her flesh on the microplane while mincing ginger and garlic certainly made the endeavor seem simple.  So, my first piece of advice if you attempt to recreate this recipe?  Buy your minceables pre-minced, or accept that there may be some blood lost in the kitchen. 

Graphics by Excel....

Of course, that wasn’t the only struggle.  We didn’t buy our fresh fillets skinless, and apparently that means it’s also not boneless.  I’ve pulled my fair share of bass and crappie out of our regions ponds and lakes, but I was completely unaware of something called pin bones.  But as she went to rub the marinade into the fish, she made the shocking discovery that those tiny stabbers were still residing firmly in the meat.  So, if you’re a completely uncultured barbarian such as myself, be prepared to sterilize and sacrifice your only tweezers to the cause of the kitchen, because pulling pin bones out by hand is NOT an option.  If it weren’t for the fact that I’m pretty confident pre-minced garlic and deboned salmon exist, this dish would score a solid 0 in the “Prep Difficulty” category and further tank the score.

Pin bones... See you at the
crossroads, Tweezers.

The cost wasn’t too terrible, but fresh salmon fillets from Sprouts were a bit pricey in comparison to some of the other options we could have chosen.  Overall our shopping trip was around $50, including side dishes and a few gummy bears to snack on while she prepped (Sprouts gummy bears, people… might be the best thing you ever put in your mouth).  We also over-purchased on the salmon, and had enough left to feed at least one other person.  I may have cheated and bumped the cost up an extra level after actually putting the dish in my mouth.

So, so good.

Before we address the flavor, I do want to note the only points I deducted for chef’s execution.  It’s always funny to be sitting in the other room and hear someone in the kitchen go “uhhh… oh no.” As noted, we subbed out the shitty ketchup (Sriracha) for some real hot sauce, but the recipe only called for a tablespoon of hot sauce.  I looked up from the shit show that is the 2017 Kansas City Royals to see the chef scooping hot sauce out of the bowl, as she added nearly a full cup before she realized that she had severely over sauced the mixture.  Ultimately, we rode it out and used about three times the amount of hot sauce as recommended.  We’re not afraid of spicy, as you’ll likely see again in the future.  Other than this minor slip up, the recipe was followed closely, and the fish was marinated for just short of 24 hours before baking.

The plating of the dish was pretty solid.  We garnished the fish with green onions as recommended, and served it with a side of red-pepper quinoa (straight from the box) and panko and Parmesan crusted snow peas; and I won’t lie the whole thing looked delicious.  I also had a glass of petite sirah, which may have been a poor choice.  I do love wine, but I’m no sommelier.  I do know that the petite sirah overpowered the fish quite a bit. 

Looking good here...

At this point, the plate was in front of me, and it was time for the moment of truth.  A little further in front of me was the chef who was eagerly awaiting my honest feedback; but also knows where I live so I was preparing myself to temper any negative reaction that might leap from my tongue.  We took the first bite together and savored it, considered it… and simultaneously came to the same conclusion.  “Meh.”  The fish had some spice but not overwhelmingly so.  Past that, the only flavor it had was fishy.  It wasn’t bad, but it was mysteriously lacking in flavor.  The fish itself was perfectly cooked and flaky, but ultimately we both settled on the same approach to eating it; breaking out chunks and mixing it into the quinoa or snow peas and eating them combined.  Which made sense, because the snow peas were ridiculously delicious. 

Ultimately, the dish scores a total of 3.2 out of 5 on my rating scale, and is only saved by the side dishes and the plating.  I really wouldn’t recommend anyone go out of their way to recreate the recipe unless you just love the taste of salmon and want to add a bit of a kick (or if you have piles of minced ginger lying around and don’t know what to do with it).  It’ll probably be quite a while before we revisit fish in my apartment, and I suspect we’ll approach it in a more traditional, citrus-flavored manner when we do.  But I’m happy we gave the recipe a shot and overall I enjoyed the meal, even if the main dish scores a unanimous “meh.”