The Best Things to Keep Laying Haphazardly About the Kitchen

Recently, I ventured to a friends apartment. A few minutes after arrival, which included the mandatory hugging and squealing and best-friend pleasantries, her stomach growled. Mine, being the compassionate creature it is, echoed her stomach's feelings. Unfortunately for our stomachs, our wallets were also empty, which reduced us to spooning peanut-butter out of a crusty jar with plastic knives. It was, in the end, one of the best dinner's I've had. However, the situation did make me wish for at least a quarter of what resides in  Mother Superior's seemingly endless kitchen.

That's where this list comes in. Some of the best things even the saddest, more lifeless kitchens deserve, because not everyone likes huddling around a jar of peanut-butter, clutching plastic utensils like mindless cave people.

1. Extra Virgin Olive Oil. You can't go wrong with this stuff. It has enough flavor to stand alone as a light salad dressing, and is versatile enough to help sauté or toast or do whatever it is you do with EVOO. 
2. Vinegar. Balsamic is nice because, like EVOO, it can help dress things up. And any vinegar is great for when you have the hiccups.
3. Stand Mixer. No one likes whipping cream or creaming butter by hand. It hurts and it takes forever. Now, while stand mixers can be a tad expensive, they're wonderful to have around. Cakes, ice creams, anything that needs a good beating can be thrown in that sucker and bam, no more hand cramps from whisking like a mad man.
4. Bamboo Utensils. No matter what you're cooking, you can use bamboo. It doesn't scratch a surface like metal tongs or spatulas or spoons, it's lightweight, and it doesn't take on the flavor of what you're cooking like a wooden utensil. 
5. Sheet Pans. It doesn't really matter what you're making; pizza, bread, fries, chicken, anything that needs to be baked can be slapped on a sheet pan. Without sheet pans, there would be no life.       

Yes.

Saw this. Cried tears of joy at the clarity and simplicity of it all.


Props to S.B.LattinDesign for this magnificent creature.

The Poor Man's Panini

College, wonderful creature that it is, tends to sap the life out of everything, especially one's bank account. This does not mean, however, that you've been reduced to eating legitimately horrifying packaged noodles with a higher sodium content than the Dead Sea. The other night, for twenty bucks, I turned out a solid three sandwiches. By solid, I mean only half of mine was gone in a sitting. The other half made a nice breakfast-lunch-brunch thing the next day.

These relatively cheap sandwiches were made with simple enough ingredients:

• Bread
• Turkey
• Beefsteak Tomatoes
• Mozzarella
• Avocado

Now, with the bread and the mozz, I went a little fancy and bought fresh. If you're on a tighter budget, buy accordingly. And don't feel limited to mozz. Any type of cheese that melts easily, like muenster or cheddar or, please no, pre-sliced American singles, or whatever they are. Don't feel limited to turkey, either. It just so happens that I don't eat red meat. Any deli meat, thinly sliced. Any. On top of that, feel free to replace or leave out the tomato or avocado. But at that point you're stuck with a somewhat...dull... sandwich. Which is okay. I guess.

Anyway, the assembly of the sandwich is almost as straightforward as the ingredient list, except for maybe the 'panini' part. If you don't have a panini press, go the old school sauté pan route. Or, if you don't have a sauté pan, skip the whole warm-melty-ooey-gooey part of this sandwich. Assemble cold, like a man. 

With the stove, keep the heat on low until the sandwich is assembled, then turn it up depending on how dark and crunchy you like the bread. This way the cheese gets to melt, but the bread doesn't carbonize right off the bat. And make sure you're pan or griddle is hot by flicking a little water on it. If the water sizzles, you're ready to get your sandwich on.

Drizzle a little olive oil or spread some butta' on da' bread if you're going the panini/sauté pan route. It'll give the bread better marks and some crunch, to break up the textural monotony or relatively smooth ingredients.

1. With the oiled or butta'd side down, slap some cheese on that sucker. 
2. Hit the bread with the turkey or preferred deli meat next, one or two slices, nothing to heavy. 
3. Tomato and avocado, in any pattern you please.
4. More. Meat.
5. Your second slice of bread, also oiled or butta'd, this side up. And then flip that sandwich and get some more marks. More marks, more texture. Yes, please.

In pictures, that translates to this:

Step 1 (Photo by J.Cust)

Step 2 (Photo by J.Cust) 

Step 3 (Photo by J.Cust)

Step 4 (Photo by J.Cust)

Look at my marks. Look. At. Them.  (Photo by J.Cust)

Vindictive Baking

Recently, an aunt threw a party, and somewhere in this verbal invitation she dropped the "Be a dear, and bring something savory," bomb.

No. No I will not.

Making something savory isn't the issue. Armed with Mother Superior's kitchen and the god-send that is the internet, plethora of recipes that it holds, no wrong can be done. It's the telling of what to bring where the wrong lies. If you have a set menu, and all you need for the table is something highly specific, like Lebanese tabbouleh, yes, ask and you shall receive. But tossing out the vaguest "something savory" brings out the Vindictive Baker, who holds a deep seated issue with being told what to do.

The Vindictive Baker, knowing her aunt's pride in decorative cookies, decided a gingerbread cupcake accompanied by brown sugar buttercream would show off wonderfully. And not one of those faux powdered sugar and butter buttercreams. This baking excursion was the real deal, fresh nutmeg, simple syrup, closed star tip, and all.

Rejected vindictive cupcake (Photo by J. Cust)

Wilty Onions

Typically, I'm subjected to making dinner on Friday nights. A semblance of a social life tends to impede that happening, though, so my dinner shift is moved to Saturday night, seemingly spontaneously. Unless Mother Superior decides chili-dogs sound like a good weekend meal and I refuse to take part in the festivities. At which point I'm ambushed after a two hour trek through the woods and told Sunday dinner is on me.

This was all okay. Was there a fair amount of griping involved? Of course, but in the end, food is good. Most of the time; every now and then there are some rough patches. Like the wilty onion.

With a risotto, a fancy name for a wonderfully creamy Italian rice, one uses a white onion, preferably fresh, and not wilty. Unfortunately, by some misaligned cosmic foray, there were no fresh white onions in the drawer. Instead, there was half a red onion that had been left unwrapped on the kitchen island under the glare of forty watt bulbs. Hence the wilty.

Luckily red onions, when whole, are twice the onion necessary for a solid four servings of risotto. Luckily, there are sharp knives in the cabinet. Luckily, someone taught me how to trim up an onion.

The finished product (Photo by J. Cust)

When the wilty underbelly of that sad red onion-half had been sheared off and tossed unceremoniously into the garbage, things worked. The diced onion sweated nicely, the sweet potato smoothed out, the stove didn't blow up and set fire to the neighborhood. In the end, dinner was dinner. With a little kick. Someone may or may not have accidentally sprinkled a few too many chili pepper flakes in. Maybe.