Now I don't ricpic to get worried.....

But I got a new oven this week.

My old one was about twenty years old and it started to fall apart. The oven door fell off a few times and now it wasn't closing all the way. It really got beat up because I use it all the time. I don't bake very much but I prepare roasts and all kinds of baked savory dishes.

The new oven is just a standard everyday one from Sears. I didn't go crazy. When I bought one for my Mom it was an industrial strength Viking stove. It was a big magilla to install and we had to buy a stove hood and exhaust that cost almost as much as the stove. I didn't want that so I went minimalist.

Always buy a stove on the hottest day of the year. For the same reason you buy an air conditioner in December. That's when you can get the best deal.

I bet ricpic would agree. Just sayn'

Beef and broccoli Trooper York Style

So since Good Food has closed I have to find a new source of meat. It is not as easy as all that. I can't just go to the supermarket because the crap they have there sucks. I have to to the other Italian market Mastellone which is about five blocks away instead of across the street. Now Vinny the butcher is also the owner but he is not into meat as much as Mike from Good Food. So his stuff isn't as good. And he is not behind the counter to cut it fresh. I have to hunt him down to get fresh meat. Or take what is in the case. Now that can work because sometimes some stuff is fresh.

On Sunday night he had some good beef strips. To use in making bracoles  or for a stir fry. Which is what I used if for to make beef and broccoli.

Frist I got about four packages of meat which was about three pounds. I sliced the already very thin slices into smaller pieces. I then took 17 cloves of garlic and a whole piece of ginger (cleaned and peeled). I put them into the food processor and ground them up and put them in some oil in the wok. I cooked them until they started to brown and then threw in the meat. I cooked that for about fifteen minutes until well browned. I reserved that and then put in four heads of broccoli which was only the florets that I had chopped up. (I saved the rest of the broccoli to make soup) I threw the broccoli florets into the residues left from cooking the meat and added some olive oil to lube it up a little.I flashed fried it until it was nice and crispy. Then I threw the meat back in. Added a nice half cup of low sodium soy sauce and three tablespoons of hoisin sauce. If you are going to cook chinks you need the hoisin sauce. It is the key ingredient in most of your tasty dishes. I slopped that around for a while to coat everything with the sauce.

Served it with brown rice. It was delicious.

If you are gonna cook pasta............

You need to invest in these two vital kitchen tools.

First is the spider. No not the asshole form "Goodfella's" him you shoot in the foot. The spider is a strainer at the end of stick that allows you fish pasta out of the water and drain each cupful individually. It ends the mess and danger of carrying the pot over to the sink to drain in a colander. Here the pasta pot is right next to the sauce pan and you can add it right in. Then their it the large spaghetti fork. Works on the same principle. Fish out a handful of spaghetti and add it directly to a bowl or as I prefer to do add it right into your sauce. If you can cook it al dente you can let it cook a little in the sauce and get all of that flavor working for you! Add on a shitpot full of cheese and you gotz some good eating there paisan!

I use one or the other of these tools every day. Just sayn'

I still hate it but what are you gonna do?

Sometimes you can hate something but you still have to deal with it. You know like your team losing in the playoffs or Obama becoming President. That's me and brussel sprouts.

I hate brussel sprouts but the wife loves them. We had them recently when they were shredded like cabbage and she has been after me to cook them for her. When we were on vacation at Seatuck last month we spent a lot of time in "Home Goods" which is a store that Lisa loves to shop in. While I was there I scored a couple of discount cook books that are coming in handy. One was the big titted guinea bitch from the Cooking channel and the other was Jacques Pepin from his PBS show.

In the book he had a brussel sprouts receipe that I adapted for the wife.

Ingredients.

A shitload of brussel sprouts.
Bacon
Olive Oil
Gruyere Cheese
(White Balsamic Vinegar which I added)

Basically you cut your bacon strips into four pieces. Cook until crispy and take out of the pan but keep the oil

Shred the brussel sprouts so it looks like the cabbage in the inside of an eggroll. Toss it into the bacon fat and sautee it up until it is soft and cooked.

Throw the bacon back in and mix it up.

Drizzle on some olive oil for flavor. Then pout on some White Balsamic Vinegar for flavor. Smush it all around.

Serve it warm as a side dish along with a nice t-bone steak.

It came out pretty good.

Mix up the Mushrooms dude!

I had a bunch of mushrooms left over from Thanksgiving so I decided to make up another batch for an appetizer last night. But I mixed it up a little.

As usual I used parsley, bread crumbs, garlic and pecorino romano cheese but I mixed in a healthy amount of ricotta before I stuffed the shrooms. That made the mixture nice and creamy. In the joint where we had the wife's party they made mushrooms with ricotta and spinach but this mixture turned out a lot better. The bread crumbs made it crunchy but the ricotta made it creamy.

It turned out pretty good.

I just find it hard to sit around.

Even though it was vacation time I find it very hard to just sit around. I am always doing something. What I mostly did this vacation was cook for my daughter and all of her friends and her Florida realtives.

I made a big pot of meatballs and sausages and then some pork and some tortilines in cream sauce with peas and fanook salad and caprese salad and regular salad and a whole bunch of stuff.

I just have to go-go-go.

That's why when somebody approachs me with a course of action, I just can't sit on my ass and let it lay. It drives the wife crazy.

Just so you know.