Meatball Soup to Make Way for Friday's Fish Fry

I love Lent.  Fish on Fridays and weekdays dedicated to carnivoric catering at home. One of my favorite recipes for Lenten days-avant Friday is meatball soup.

I use Progresso Italian breadcrumbs and 1 pound of ground beef 90% lean and 1 pound of ground pork from Jack & Pat's Old Fashioned Butcher Shop in Chicago Ridge.  These guys are wizards with meats.

First I make the meatballs

1-pound ground beef 90% lean
1-pound of ground pork
2- large eggs
4-large cloves of garlic smashed and chopped
1 -cup of Progresso Italian Breadcrumbs
1-pinch of kosher sea salt
1-Vigorous round of black pepper mill twisting, choking and turning like it was the neck of an elected official on your front porch
1-pinch of red pepper flakes
1-pinch of Frigo Four Cheeses flakes
A handful of fresh basil chopped up fine.

In a clean bowl and with clean hands mix all of the above

Make meatballs the size of a Titleist Pro V1 about two dozen - place a dozen on each of two cookie sheets that have been cover with wax paper.  Freeze one for later.  Refrigerate the other cover with more waxed paper overnight.

In a two quart pot*add the following:

Make or purchase four cups of Beef Broth
Rough chop a large red, or white onion
Add one cup of fresh lime juice
1/2 cup of brown sugar
Three crushed and chopped garlic cloves
One cup of Lillies' Hot Smoky Barbecue Sauce
One 12 oz. can of chopped tomatoes
Chopped fresh basil

Bring to a gentle boil and add 12 meatballs.

Reduce heat to low and cook until meatballs are done. Usually on the stove top about twenty-five minutes.  I prefer to leave it on a very simmer for more than a bit longer.

Add a couple of handfuls of baby spinach a bit before serving and  cook until wilted.

Serves 4 people or four nice meals with three meatballs each and garnish with Frigo Four Cheeses flakes.

It is mighty fine.  Serve with real crusty Italian bread.

*You may also use a Hamilton Beach slow cooker set on low four hours. Do not set on high, unless you intend to keep a close eye on the soup. Here (above) is what it looks like getting underway.

"Peachy Cool Arrow" Hickey's Chicken Thigh Tortilla Soup!

Hickey

 I am a chicken thigh guy.  Now, I like my legs and  breasteses as much as any

Irlandesa Gringo, but for full flavor, nothing cooks up like chicken thighs.

Hence, I break with Yankee Food Channel and eschew the breasts - I eschew with my teeth.

So, for real tasty Tortilla Soup I go with the thighs


 Hickey Chicken Thigh Tortilla Soup

Ingredients
2 tablespoons light olive oil
1 large red onion, diced
3 tablespoons minced garlic
1 jalapeno, finely diced
Liberal use of Goya Adobo Powder*
6 cups low-sodium chicken broth or 2 Boxes of College Inn
One 14.5-ounce can fire-roasted diced tomatoes
One 14.5-ounce can black beans, rinsed and drained
6-8 chicken thighs, boneless and skinless
2 limes, juiced, plus wedges for garnish
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 cup roughly chopped fresh cilantro leaves

Directions

In a large skillet brown the hell out of the chicken thighs - use a few dashes of Adobo powder when turning thighs. Cook all the way through 5-6 minutes a side, or 180 degrees on a good meat thermometer.  Cut up the thighs once they cool.


In a large saucepan heat the vegetable oil. Add the onions and cook for 2 minutes. Once the onions have softened add the garlic and jalepenos and cook for another minute. Pour the chicken broth, tomatoes and beans into the pot and bring to a boil. Once at a boil lower heat to simmer and add your chicken thighs. Cook the chicken for 20 to 25 minutes; then remove and cool.  When cool enough to handle shred it and set it aside - dash with Adobo. Add lime juice and fresh cilantro to the pot. In a serving bowl add a mound of shredded chicken. Ladle soup over chicken and top with a lime wedge, grilled tortilla strips, avocado slices and Good Mexican cheese - not of that Kraft Mixes.

Serve with Sparkling water and good Mexican Beer - Pacifico, Victoria, Dos Equis, Tecate, Model - Hell, they are all good - like Czech beers.

Mexicans, Culchies, Homies and Euro-rash Rednecks work like badgers and eat like kings.

*Adobo Powder is one-stop shopping for great Mexican flavors (salt, paprika, black pepper, onion powder, oregano, cumin, garlic powder, and chili powder.)

Chicken A Go-Go with Adobo!

I have mentioned to you, my legion of reader, that I am a strange agent.  No, Really.  Things generally tickle my fancy no end, or some things can get my bushy eye brows a 'twitching and  I go all Yosemite Sam, until my native milk of human kindness once again flows,  like the mighty Kankakee River over Washington Street Damn. Yes, sir.

About two weeks ago, I bumped into a pal of mine who owns great culinary chops and we chatted recipes like two old spinsters at National Tea.

I gave him some lamb recipes and he introduced me to Mexican Adobo spices. The guy is a tall blonde Loogan* (or Lugan) from over by Marquette Park and played some ball at St. Rita, as the south side patter goes.

Adobo is a blend of these spices:

• 1/4 cup smoked paprika. (most recipes call for sweet)
• 3 tablespoons ground black pepper.
• 2 tablespoons onion powder.
• 2 tablespoons dried oregano (preferably Mexican)
• 2 tablespoons ground cumin.
• 1 tablespoon chipotle chile powder.
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder.

I am a huge fan of smoked paprika.  Here's a bit of history, Smoked paprika comes from the  Capsicum annuum peppers of the La Vera region, where growers harvest dry the chiles over wood fires. It gives any a recipe for a stew, paella or goulash a great outdoorsy scent and flavor.

The Mexicans know how to make everything taste wonderful, because any land where Spain planted its flag is home to Adobo.  This  method of  marinating food in lquids with the above mentioned mix, has preserved meats, as well as flavored stews. Portugese, Filipino, Mexican, Spanish cuisine and eats from the Azores is Adobo friendly.

As I am cooking for one most days, I prepare enough for  a few days.  Since I have an empty nest, the whiners have flown, leftovers are not something to squeal about.  I cooks what I likes!

Here is a handy and simple recipe:

Adobo Chicken:

• 1 cup of diced onions
• 1/2 cup of diced celery
• 1/2 cup of diced carrots
• three Roma tomatoes cut into wedges
• three boned chicken breasts
• 2 tablespoons of crushed garlic
• 1/2 Cup of Adobo Spice
• 1/2 cup of chopped cilantro
• 1 whole line cut in halves
• 1 tablespoon of Olive Oil

In your Hamilton Beach Slow Cooker Layer in order

Onions - cover with Adobo

Celery - cover with Adobo

Carrots -cover with Adobo

Chicken Breasts covered in Adobo spices

Crushed Garlic

Chopped Cilantro 

1/2 Lime squeazed over all

Cook on high for two hours then with a fork break up the chicken like pulled pork and then set on LOW for another four hours. 

This serves as a protein base for Bib Lettuce wraps.  Skillet fry cabbage with spicy Korean BBBQ sauce and serve with Adobo chicken.  It is nice over rice, or sided with roasted potato wedges. Use the other lime half with you dinner.  Garnish as you wish.  

Adobo is great for Lamb, pork and beef as well. 

Thanks to a son of Lithuania, this Narrow Back eats like a Padrone. 

* Loogans: Lithuanians, Balts from over by Marquette Park. arguably the most attractive** of the Caucasian ethnics - Loogans are proficient at Math, Hygiene, Culinary Arts, Height and Spelling.

** Find a homely Loogan. Good luck with that. 

South Side St. Paddy Parade is Looming and a Pot of Slumgullion is Just the Thing

slum·gul·lion(ˌsləmˈɡəlyən)
noun: USinformal
noun: slumgullion
cheap or insubstantial stew.

Insubstantial?  My broad manly rump, Hombre!  Who is writing these WEB definitions?

Before I bolt the hood, exchanging the shouting and bag piping of the annual South Side St. Paddy's Day Parade, for lowing of black and white dairy cattle in Dodgeville, Wisconsin ( home to best Cornish pasties that side of Bridgeport) and the expected dusting of March snow, I shall pot up a mess of slumgullion.

Slumgullion is the food of the working people who built America!  Not Howard Zinn activists and trust funded hair-shirts of the 21st Century American History textbooks, but the real people, former slaves, black, white, brown, yellow and tawny.  They are Edna Ferber's Midwestern Jews, Bohemian, Alsatian immigrants; they are John Dos Passos' Portuguese, Irish, WASP, and Begian adventurers; They are Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, Richard Wright's Bigger Thomas and James T. Farrell's Studs Lonigan.  They are slumgullion eaters.

Slumgullion is a varietal staple that can include Chinese five spices, Mexican cumino, Japanese ginger, Hungarian smoked paprika, or just salt and black paper.

You need a cauldron, Dutch oven, iron pot or slow cooker of some volume.

Beef and Pork are the usual cuts of meat, but chicken, squirrel, turtle, or fish will work as well.

Root vegetables, or macaroni, pasta, rice or noodles will add substance to savories.

Here is my offering today.

                                               Pat Hickey Slumgullion

two lbs - of chuck cut like Fajitas dredged in three good tablespoon of flour, smoked paprika and cilantro

One 1/2 cup of Mire Poix( celery,onion and carrots)

Five medium potatoes peeled - I use three Golden Yellow and two Russets

Five sprigs of Rosemary and five sprigs of thyme

One 16 oz. Can of Crushed Tomatoes and one small can of tomato paste

Two long dashes of Worcestershire sauce

A pinch of crushed Red pepper flakes

One five quart Hamilton Beach slow cooker

One skillet with three tablespoons of Olive Oil

Methode: À la manière de Hickey

In a large plastic bag add flour, smoked paprika and cilantro; Mix well and add the beef and roll it , bounce and knead the hell out of it  and let sit for about ten minutes.

Add beef to the skillet and brown it.  When good and brown make room for the mire poix and saute and them blend all together, Cook until all vegetables are tender-ish

Peel and coarsely cut five potatoes and place them in the bottom of the slow cooker.

Pour meat and mire poix mixture over the spuds.

Add 16 oz. can of crushed tomatoes and then the tomato paste and mix them together over the meat and spud.

Squirt five dashes of Worchester and sprinkle crushed red peppers over the tomatoes

Layer rosemary and thyme sprigs and mushrooms on top.

Cook on low for twelve to 24 hours. This will be ready to put in the ice box when I return from Wisconsin Sunday night and then Hold the Phone all week!

Serve with Pat Hickey Cornbread - Preheat oven to 425 degrees

2 cups of Aunt Jemima Corn Meal
one Jumbo egg
one can of creamed corn
2/3 cup of milk
two tablespoons of sugar
one tablespoon of good vanilla extra

Mix it all with a fork

Pour contents into a pie tin or cast iron skillet and drizzle honey over the mixture

Bake for 25-28 minutes.


This is perfect for the snowy weather expected next week.  I'll be eating it up to Friday next.  Then eggs, mushrooms, spinach, peppers and Giardinara.

I Shall Arise and Go, And Make Some Corn Bread!

I had a swell Thanksgiving!  Did not overdo the helpings and avoided my usual the Gibraltar-like renditions of smashed garlic spuds and stuffing and decided to forego the traditional fifth helpings.

Took a vigorous walk from the garage to my couch in the basement and watched recored episodes of Cheyenne. Where will he be camping tonight?

It is now Saturday and I made a pot of Brunswick stew* last last week.  My son is stopping by after work this afternoon and the lad can work a fork like his Mom and Pop.

Nothing goes better with Brunswick stew like a golden brown cast iron skillet full of corn bread.

I do corn bread good. Pre heat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Butter a good cast iron skillet  9" diameter I used soft Kerry Gold

1. Cup of Gold Medal Flour
1. Cup of Quaker Corn Meal
1. Cup of sugar
1.tsp. of sea salt
1/4 cup of Honey
1. Jumbo Egg from Marianno's
1. 10 oz. can of Green Giant nibblets corn
3 & 1/2 teaspooons of Calumet Brand Baking Powder
1/3 cup of Peanut Oil - Mr. Planters, Please.
1 generous dash of Vanilla extract

Mix it all in a bowl with good sized fork.  Don't mix too well.  Spread it pie tin and toss it in the oven for 25 minutes.  Check with a butter knife for doneness. Dance to doneness~!




When it is 'doneness' let oven cool down to 145 degrees F. and keep corn bread nice and warm until your eaters bang open the back door and squeal, " It it done?"

Then ladle out some Brunswick stew 
Cut corn bread into diagonal slices for dipping.

Use softened Kerry Gold butter for eating corn bread, like an American.


*I use chicken thighs and pork shoulder, corn scraped from the oven roasted cob and replace Greathern Beans for the lima bean - lima beans are just wrong on so many levels.

To Celebrate Another Debate I Will Not Watch, I Made 10 Layer Chop Suey!

Vote.  Vote and then keep it to yourself.

I can not make America Great, again.  I can make Chop Suey in the Slow Cooker. Chop Suey is as American a dish as Turkey and Stuffing - Trump and Hillary. Some believe chop suey was first mixed up for the transcontinental railroad workers, others that it was a joke on Americans.  One visitor to the U.S. in 1904 wrote that Americans ate a dish prepared by Chinese restaurant owners called chop suey, but that Chinese would not eat themselves.  Either way I am and have been a huge fan.

The greatest Chop Suey joint was George's located at 79th Street just east of Ashland, back in the 1960's.  Nothing matched George's, but he gave my Mom his recipe ( so he said) and I share it here - no wok; pig pot.  Kinda like me.

Two Lbs. of cubed pork shoulder meat and chuck beef - marinated in a dry mix of salt, white pepper, cinammon and ground star anise.

I cup of chopped celery
2 chopped onions
2 cups of mung beans sprouts
1cup of water chestnets
1- cup of chopped mushroom
3- chopped garlic cloves
2Tsps of grated ginger
1 generous pinch of crushed red pepper

I half cup of Hoisan Sauce
several manly dashes of Kikkoman Teriyaki Sauces

Layer as follows

 1. celery
 2. onions
 3. marinated meat
 4, mung bean sprouts
 5. water chestnuts
 6. chopped musrooms
 7. Chopped garlic
 8.grated ginger
 9. Hoisan sauce over all
10. Crushed Red Pepper

Cook on High for two hours
Cook on Low for four hours

Serve over good sticky white rice

Hickey's Diversity Leg of Lamb

Diversity Leg of Lamb Ready for the lid and six hours of slow cooking magic


My Grandma, Nora ( nee Sullivan) Hickey, came to Chicago in 1912 from a one room cabin with a dirt floor outside of Caherciveen, County Kerry.  Nora had seven sisters and a little brother; she was the oldest and the family threw an American Wake for her, before heading to Queenstown in Cork and trip over.

She landed at Castlegarden, NYC and immediately upon release from Immigration took a train to Chicago.

Here, she worked in the kitchen 'a great home' on Prairie for the rich Yanks run by an African American woman and several Mexican women as her assistants,

Here, Nora Sullivan learned from the hands of the daughter of a slave and escapees of the Revolutions in El Norte how to properly prepare food.

Unlike so many Irish families in America, the Hickeys ate more than boiled grey beef, mashed spud sand cabbage.  We grew up with spices!

My Mom was a lousy cook until my Dad showed her how to make dishes other than burned pork and canned carrots.

The males in my family are exceptional cooks.  I ain't too bad.

I have recently fallen- in -love -all over again with the Hamilton Beach slow-cooker (AKA crock pot) and have larded my thick bones with soups, ragouts, Lancashire Hot Pots, cassoulets, goulashes and slum gullions of every variety.

Craving goat tacos a la Birrieria Ocotlon on east 106th in South Chicago - I used lamb shoulder and chops.  Not bad.  I also got tired of chewing down on missed bones.

Leg of Lamb - big bones - was the key.

Per the male sense of opportunity, Spices, vegetables and herbs became intriguing dramas.  The resultant dish comes from wonderlands and influences - Japan, Mexico, the Caribbean.

Here it is.

Celery chopped one cup

One large Vidalia Onion chopped

Two large Poblano peppers - cut lengthwise

One large red peppper  - cut length wise

Two Lbs Leg of Lamb whole and bone-in trimmed of fat

1/2 cup of Caribbean Jerk Spice for lamb rub

1/4 cup of Kikoman Teriyaki sauce

Big bunch of Cilanto

Methode:

Layer Celery Onions on the bottom of the Crock

Apply heavy doses of Caribbean Jerk rub to the trimmed leg of lamb and place over the celery and onions and then pour 1/4 cup of Teriyaki sauce over the lamb

Layer Poblano and Red Pepper strips over the lamb.

Turn Heat indicator on high and cooked covered for six hours - longer if you wish.  Then remove the leg bone and joints from the lamb - the meat will shred and fall away.

The natural fats and water in the vegetables will make a superb broth. Chop and sprinkle cilantro over the individual portions. 

Eat this with tortillas, flat breads, rice, coucous, or spuds. Here she is with about four hours of cooking.

I have not had any complaints and even a few lascivious notes from women in Morgan Park with whom I have shared portions and the recipe.

Voila!  Six hours and change later- The lamb falls away at the touch.  I will let this cool; pop in the ice box and serve it later with couscous.

Let me know how this works out for you and if it does not, keep it to yourself.
 Me?  I'm on it!

Slow Cooking from a Slow Guy -Hickey's Lancashire Hot Pot

Now, that I no longer need to cook for my bairns, as they are all out of the nest, I prepare food for a few days at a time.  The Hamilton Beach Slow Cooker is an exceptional device - Ratatouille, Soups, Pulled Pork and one of my ethnic favorites Lancashire Hotpot.

Lancashire was often the destination for the Irish, prior to coming to America.  Liverpool, home of the Beatles is called the Capital of Ireland and three of the fab four were Irish to the bone.  The docks of Liverpool provided passage fare for Paddy and Mick and Larry, my County Kerry grandfather.

One of the first phrases of praise came from my Grandpa Hickey - Lawrence - Larry - Father who rated every product, food, attitude, fashion, or manner by the standard - Liverpool.

" Jesus, that is a fine soup. Tastes like it came all the way from Liverpool.  Liverpool was as much of a standard of excellence as one's ability to dig:   "He has the honors and degrees, but he can't dig worth shite,"or "That Mossy Enright is a hell-of-a-man! He can dig so. Not as good as Martin Ford, mind you, but good."

I learned to cook from Larry's sons and daughters.  My Grandmother was a magnificent cook who learned her arts from two Black women and a Mexican lady.  Granny Hickey could lay down some serious cooking chops and spiced up many dishes.

Hickey men do the same.

• Here is what I call Lancashire Hotpot.  I go to Pat & Jacks, County Fair, or Mariano's for lamb.  I use a lamb steak cut from a leg of lamb* with the bone ring and all of its tasty marrow and a pound and half of lamb cut into bite sized pieces.
• I use a pound and a half of Melissa's Baby Dutch Yellow Potatoes. I leave them whole - a traditional Lancashire hot pot uses thinly slice potatoes as the last layer browned in the oven.  The Baby Dutch are small and fall apart nicely.
• Eight thin carrots cut into chunks
• One large Vidalia Onion cut up in chunks
• A paste of basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary, olive oil, and garlic  2- 3 Tablesoons Worcetershire sauce
• Sea Salt and Coarse Black Pepper
• One cup of celery chunks

I layer the celery on the bottom of the hot pot. Dash of Sea Salt an black pepper, Then the Lamb steak - salt and pepper, a layer of whole Baby Dutch Yellows, Salt and Pepper.  Next a Layer of Onions and One big teaspoon of herb paste.  Then  the lamb chunks -salt and pepper.  Another layer of Onions. Then the carrots and the  remaining potatoes more salt and pepper and the remaining paste. Eight or nine generous dashes of Worcester Sauce. Cover.

This needs NO water or broth. All of the juicy goodness placed in the pot works up a storm!

Cook on high for six hours and on low for another two. Serve with a great crusty bread and a side dish of red cabbage, or not. It is plenty good. Oh, do not try and eat the lamb bone ring. Tough on the buckers.

* I have used lamb ribs and chops as well - seared in butter. 

Ragoût de boeuf à la manière d' Epstein- Not Much More to Do: Cook Using Readings from Joe Epstein as a Timer

No Leo Football; bugger all on TV; it's cold; I'm Tap City, until pay day. I took out my 1947 Wagner Ware dutch oven and gave it s good washing and let dry overnight and thought of making a weekends worth of good eatin' ragout - chili, goulash, or maybe stew.  Yeah, stew.

Not just stew, but Ragoût de boeuf à la manière d' Epstein - Joseph Epstein.  Last winter, I made this concoction and used Joe Epstein as my timer. No kidding.

Ergo, I defrosted two pounds of County Fair stew meat and roasted six red potatoes and put the spud back in the icebox overnight.  I cut stew quality onions, carrots, celery and a small stalk of fennel and did the same.

So I'm making stew.

I use Tony Cachere's Creole Seasoning instead of standard season salt.

I will brown the beef once I shake the bovine cubes in black peppered flour - one pound at a times in cooking oil and once browned up nicely take the meat out with a slotted spoon and set aside.

Then I add the five cups of vegetables the 1947 Wagner Ware dutch oven gave scald the hell out of them.

After a sound scalding, or roots, stalks and bulbs, I return the browned beef and two tablespoons of Tony Cachere and mix well with a wooden spoon.  After that I pour cold tap water three cups and 1 1/2 cup of beef stock and bring to a rolling boil uncovered.

I reduce the flame in the stove top to simmer and cover and will read from Joseph Epstein's Essay's in Biography - George Washington, Henry Adams. ( forty minutes) 

That should be about time to give the wooden spoon another workout and make sure I am getting the 'good stuff' scraped off the bottom.

Return to Essay's in Biography - George Santayana and Adlai Stevenson.( forty minutes)  

At this point in my process I take the cut and roasted potatoes chilling in the icebox and add them to the mixture.

More wrist work with the wooden spoon.

Read the rather longish essay on Henry Luce ( twenty to twenty five minutes) and then taste what I have wrought.  Add appropriate seasonings and water.

Turn off the heat and allow to cool.

Put the stew in a tupperware container and place it in the ice box for Saturday's enjoyment with biscuits that I pop out of the cardboard can, because I am one lousy baker. 

Parodies Lost, or Milton in Monee

Outside of Crete- Monee, Illinois is a massive trucker stop and in it long-distance knights of the road can get a shower and meal. A question was posed to the hard-biten by life, 'I have-witnessed it all and change' fry cook and proprietor, Billy Foy.

One Ace of the Highways dropped in and posed playful questions of the onion and spuds chopping master of the house, launched his lanky as he launched his haunches onto to the rotating stool and asked, "Hey! How have you been, Billy Foy, Billy Boy? Hey, How have you been, Smelly Billy?"

Without looking up from his labors, the truck-stop Rick Bayless snorted, " I have been sleeping with your wife, she fills a hole my life, But she's a dumb thing and doesn't  seem to bother."

Unfazed the jimmy engine-braker continued, " Did let she you in house, Billy Foy, Billy Boy? Did she let you in our house, Fetid Billy?"

Flipping the diced Vidalias and Yukons, the Monee mess masher handed back, " She opened her garage, where was parked your vintage Dodge, and we nailed things right on your back-up starter."

The lanky road warrior was abashed, " I'll have the spinach - pie, Billy Foy, Billy boy. I'll have the spinach pie, Mephitic Billy."

With the contempt of Agamemnon for Menelaus, the Cretan cuisinier turned and said, " You'll get better than your wife, there's the door, I gotta knife ( snort) How about Chun King, or the #$%^ing salmon platter."


If this reminds you of anything, it really shouldn't.

Fight The War on Women! Don't Lecher. Let's Move. . .to the Kitchen.

 



 Lechery -noun: "excessive or offensive sexual desire; lustfulness." Webster's Dictionary

Kinkiness comes from low energy. It's the substitution of lechery for lust. Germaine Greer: "A groupie's vision" (October 1969),

I detest lechery.  There is nothing more unbecoming a man void of Christian backbone, manly steel and American patriotism, than to act the leering fob and dandy moueing daintily but with an undercurrent of threat at a winsome maid, or mouthing veiled intentions of delights to come. Pathetic.

Thank God, for all of the daughters of Sappho who happen to be the leading voices Feminism, pitching up the tone of battle-song in this our current and eternal War on Women.

Hell, I surrendered to the superior gender decades ago.

To Ms, Greer's point cited above as the last refuge of us lazy scoundrels. Lechery is a lazy man's lust.  Lechery begets the objectification of women. I'll have none of it!  I am an energetic satyr!!!!  A good natured goat and a randy roisterer.

To fight lechery I stay brisk with the spatula, bowl and whisk!  Cook baby!

Here is my cooked offering.

                                        Hickey’s Don’t Lecher Meatloaf*

Ingredients

·                                 1 pound lean ground beef

·                                 1/2 pound ground veal (or more ground beef)

·                                 1/2 pound ground lean pork

·                                 2 eggs

·                                 1/2 cup fine bread crumbs

·                                 3/4 cup chopped parsley

·                                 1/2 cup finely chopped chives

·                                 3 tablespoons fresh basil, finely chopped  and 1 tablespoon dried basil 

·                                 Thick cut Bacon slices to cover top

·                                 2 dashes each Tabasco, Kikkoman Teriyaki Sauce (long arm dashes)

Directions

·                                 1

Preheat oven to moderate (350°F).

·                                 2

Put on chefs gloves or sandwich bags (disposable and not brown paper) In a clean mixing bowl, combine all the ingredients except the bacon slices. Using the hands, blend well - work the hell out of it. You do not want a typical breaks too easy meatloaf.

·                                 3

Line a nine-inch pie plate with aluminum foil and shape the meat mixture into an oval loaf. Place the loaf on the foil and cover with bacon slices.

·                                 4

Bake one and one-half hours. Do not eat !!!!!   Put it in the icebox and eat something else.   Chill over night. Slice thinly and serve over red onion circle on good coarse pumpernickel bread. 

 

Woman can't get enough of my cold meat loaf and rough cut pumpernickel!

* a carnal interpretive hand dance in and through the chuck, pig and baby calf derived from the New York Times Book of Recipes. 

Cooking With an Amana Dryer and a Taste for Adventure!

"Sorry, Borman, there'll be no left-overs on this meal spinning in te Amana!"

I am a pretty good journeyman cook - not a chef mind you.  I can whip up a very tasty skillet full of wholesome goodness and plate up treats for the kids that will have them howling for seconds.

Smoking meats and fish, grilling and the peanut oil boiling of birds have been paths upon which I trod and loosened the leggings of delighted guests with modest to wild success.

Now, following this winter of our discontent and seepage in the basement with its attendant mold, Spring calls dryer methods to mind.

My Dryer. My Dryer will serve to remedy the hunger that the hoary days of these last four months roil in our tummies.  My Peoples Gas bill is paid up, so let's get cooking.

First,  La omellet de démarrage d'un ouvrier avec des oignons, de l'ail, fromage irlandais et polonais saurkraut et saucisse mexicaine par Hickey!

One dozen eggs
1- pound of good Bobaks Polish Sauerkraut
1-pound of Kerry Gold Irish White Cheddar (shredded)
1- pound of Cacique Chorizo
1-White Onion chopped
1-Red Onion chopped
1-Vadalia Onion chopped
1-Stalk of Celery Whole
1-Bunch of Cilantro chopped
9- cloves of pealed garlic
One pair of good of Red Wing -Irish Setter Work Boots ( L&R) new if possible.
A good stout plub 5" in diameter
Standard gas operated Domestic Dryer. Pre-heat to Real Hot.
Duct Tape -la seule chose qui va faire!

In a large bowl break, add and beat the dozen of eggs. Salt and pepper to taste and add a splash of water, milk, or cream. I like to add paprika, but that is just me.  Toss in the onions, cilantro and garlic.  Hold the celery.

Pour the egg mixture evenly into each boot, tie up the laced and cap with a good stout plug of some sorts and duct tape any and all openings.

Toss in the boots and the big old stalk of celery. Autoriser L'Omelette roulée!!!!!

You should have pretty good idea about when it's done.  Eye balling the job, never hurts.

Dig In!