Cajun Style Dinner

My collegue Iceman and I decided to be good practicing Catholics (i.e. I don't eat meat any day of the year so not eating meat Fridays during lent is perfectly cool for me), and made a Cajun themed dinner full of vegetables, fish, and booze. We used a cauliflower recipe we found on recipezaar.com and bought some Cajun style catfish from Whole Foods. Whole Foods is notorious for having delicious fish... Anyway, the recipes follow.

Cajun Cauliflower in Garlic Sauce
(original recipe at http://www.recipezaar.com/Prudhommes-Cajun-Cauliflower-in-Garlic-Sauce-85029
I modified it a little bit to my own specifications.)



Whenever I cook I tend to use 2-3 times as much garlic as the recipe calls for, and it always turns out well. This recipe was no exception.

Ingredients:
2-3 cups cauliflower florets
1.5 TBSP salted butter
2-3 large cloves fresh garlic, minced
1 TBSP Tabasco sauce (It was pretty hot, so you might want to use less if you don't like really spicy food)
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1 tsp cajun seasoning

Okay, so the recipe called for "blanching" the cauliflower. I had no idea what the fuck blanching was, so I followed the directions here: http://www.ehow.com/how_13887_blanch-vegetables.html . Basically, you prepare boiling water, and ice water. You put the cauliflower in the bowling water, and boil until "tender but firm." Then, you put it in the ice water, and let it sit there a bit until it's cold. It's really easy and doesn't take long... maybe 5 minutes of boiling the cauliflower?

Heat up a fry pan and put the butter in. When it starts bubbling, add the garlic, and saute for about 30 seconds, before adding the cauliflower. Cook the cauliflower until brown, then remove the pan from heat and add the Tabasco, cilantro and cajun seasoning. I just kind of eye balled all of these ingredients, and approximated the amounts above. Obviously, if you like your food less spicy, don't use so much goddamned Tobasco. You can add a little more flavor but throwing in a couple pinches of salt of season all. I personally like it hot (and so does Iceman), so I threw in a fuck ton of Tobasco.

The dish was a total success. Delicious.

That was course 2. Now, let's go back to course 1: Hurricanes. And no, I don't mean the 40. A hurricane is a drink made out of vodka, light rum, 151, gin, amaretto, triple sec, grenadine, pineapple juice, and grapefruit juice. We used a recipe from http://www.drinksmixer.com/cat/3226/ and modified it a bit. That drink was just too damn big. We basically halfed it and did a few other things.

I measured all of the shots in a 1/2 shot glass. So a measurement of "1" means 1/2 shot and a measurement of 1/2 = 1/4 shot. Got it? Good. If you want to make them with a full shot glass, fine, but, let me warn you, you'll be hammered. The Slurricane is pretty strong and doesn't even taste that boozy.


3/4 vodka
3/4 gin
3/4 light rum
1 Triple sec
1 amaretto
1/2 Bacardi 151
1/2 grenadine
pineapple juice
grapefruit juice
Tobasco sauce

Oh, and we added a few drops of Tabasco, as a special touch.

I made this in a 16 oz glass. Fill 1/2-3/4 with ice. Pour in all your shots, then fill with pineapple and grapefruit juice. I, personally, like to put a bit more pineapple than grapefruit, but that's just my preference. Anyway, it's a pretty good drink, and will get you pretty hammered.

I can honestly say I don't think I've ever gotten so drunk from one single drink that was so delicious.

Okay, and onto course 3: Cajun seasoned catfish filet from Whole Foods.

Now, this was just a prepackaged, preseasoned fish from Whole Foods, but let me tell you, any time I've gotten one of these--any fish, in any flavor--it's been delicious, and this was no exception.

We baked the catfish at 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes and it came out pretty much perfect. Crispy and flaky and... whatever, it was pretty good. I'd recommend it.

So that was our Cajun extravaganza. I was going to take a picture of the cooked fish but it was so delicious that by the time we remembered to photograph it, we had already eaten the whole thing!

Happy trails.

Ethiopian Cuisine

The other night, I had the pleasure of dining at Abyssinia, an Ethiopian restaurant/bar at 45th and Locust Sts in Philadelphia.

I ordered shiro wot, which is made of split peas and spices and things (I think that's what it was... I could be remembering incorrectly. Either way, it was some type of gooey legume and it was absolutely delicious.) It was served without forks or knives or spoons. The only eating utensil was injera--a pancake-like bread made out of teff flour. You just scoop up the food with it and enjoy!

The portion I was served did not look huge, but by the end of the meal, I was too full to finish the injera.

I think my entree cost around 7$. I'd say that's a pretty good price for food so delicious. I plan on returning to Abyssinia in the not so distant future. I wonder if they have any good drink specials...

Ah, well, that's another adventure for another time.

I think I'm going to try to cook some Ethiopian cuisine sometime in the near future. We'll see how it goes.

Noodles with Peanut Sauce

So I'll begin with a recipe I've been making just about every other day for the past week: noodles with peanut sauce. It's quick and easy, and I usually make it in just one pot. I don't really have a recipe for this... I just kind of wing it and it's always delicious. I approximated the amounts of each ingredient below.

Serves: 1-2 people

Ingredients:

1 bundle of cellophane noodles (probably 1/3 or 1/2 package)

2-3 Tbsp chunky natural peanut butter

1 Tbsp soy sauce

1/4  -1/2 tsp ground ginger

2 tsp olive/peanut/vegetable oil

Optional add ons:

1-2 cups broccoli florets

1-2 cups small tofu cubes

other vegetables of your choosing.

My procedure:

Put the noodles in a small pot and cover with water. Set on stove and bring to a boil. If using broccoli, I just throw some frozen florets into the pot with the pasta and let them boil up. While the pasta is cooking, mix together the peanut butter, soy sauce, oil, and ginger in a small boil. Stir until well combined. Once the noodles are fully cooked, drain the noodles and the broccoli, then put them back into the pot. To make stirring a little easier, you might want to cut up the noodles. Pour the sauce over the noodles and broccoli (oh yeah, and tofu or whatever) and stir until all the noodles are well coated.

I have made this recipe in the past by sautéing the tofu in peanut sauce and combining it with the noodles at the end... with possibly some more peanut sauce. Of course, you can always just throw the tofu into the pot at the end without frying it up first... works just fine, but the tofu doesn't turn out quite as flavorful.