On Vacation

I know this is a new blog and all, but I am aiming to do about one post a week, if possible. THAT BEING SAID, Kitchen with a View will be on hiatus for pretty much the entire month of June while it relocates to sunny southern California. Look forward to more unrepentant douchebaggery in the month of July, unless of course I spontaneously develop a horrible case of bug-up-my-ass and post some random shit before then.

Until then... Get. The. Hell. Out. Ofmykitchen.

Face Melting Chili

Chili's one of my favorite things to cook. Why? Because my chili kicks ass and tastes amazing and will burn the roof off your mouth. It's freaking killer. A lot of people don't like to share their chili recipes, which is stupid, because the recipe doesn't make the chili, the cook does. If you don't have enough confidence in yourself to know, for a fact, that no one else is gonna be able to do it as awesomely as you are, then you need to get the hell out of the damn kitchen. True story.

So anyway. I'm gonna try to teach you how to make this totally kickass chili, and I'm gonna bet that yours will only ever be a mere shadow of an infinitely greater reality. Think you're up to the challenge?

So this is what you're gonna need:

1 medium spanish onion

4 peppers of various colors

2 cups of sliced baby portobello mushrooms

1 pound of lean ground beef

4 cloves of garlic

A jar of jalapeno peppers

2 cans of diced tomatoes and peppers

2 cans of chili beans, UNDRAINED

2 cups of vegetable broth

Ground cumin

Chili powder

Mustard powder

Ground ginger

Dried cilantro leaves

Bay leaves

Garlic salt

Regular salt

Ground black pepper

Olive oil

First you're gonna need to chop up that onion. It should look like this:

Is it perfect? No. Does it bother me? Yes. OCD is a terrible affliction.

You're gonna saute that onion in a large pot with some olive oil and salt. While that does its thing, chop up your peppers. You'll know you've got the right peppers if it ends up looking like you murdered a rainbow and weren't intelligent enough to dispose of the mangled corpse. Also, mince up that garlic and chop up your mushrooms. I actually bought minced garlic and used it for this recipe. Does it make a difference? Probably.

Once the onions have sauteed to the point where they're beginning to turn translucent, add your peppers and your minced garlic. Let this heat up for a little while.

In another pan, brown your ground beef. I like to dust it liberally with cumin and some chili powder, and add a few shots of hot sauce while it's cooking, but that's just me.

SUCCESS:

Go back to the pot of dead rainbow. Now's a good time to add those two cans of diced tomatoes and peppers, and the mushrooms. I also like to chop up the jalapenos (you'll want about a third of a cup, chopped) and toss them in now too. I also added like 3 teaspoons of the juice from the jar of jalapenos for extra facemelty goodness.

Now add the beans. Stir it around a little. Add the 2 cups of broth. Stir it some more.

It's time for the dry spices. You're going to add to your pot: 2 teaspoons of ground cumin, 1/2 teaspoon of chili powder, 1/2 teaspoon of garlic salt, a healthy dash of mustard powder, and a pinch of ground ginger. Stir it all up and taste test. Add salt and pepper as needed.

It should look like this:

Now add about a teaspoon of dried cilantro, stir it up some more, set your heat to low, and let the whole thing simmer, covered, for like an hour. Or whatever. It's fucking chili, it just gets better the longer you cook it.

Thanks for the pot, Grandma. It's my favorite.

Now everyone get the hell out of my kitchen.

Highfalutin' Cowboy Beef

Once upon a time, there was a girl who bought a 3 pound chunk of top round. She brought the beef home, sat it on the kitchen counter, and considered it. She considered it for a good long while, about 5 minutes, before she got bored and stuck it in the freezer. A few weeks later, she pulled it out of the freezer and put it in the 'fridge, and then forgot about it for like three days. Finally, remembering the beef, she once again pulled it out and set it on the counter and considered it.

That day, a new beef was born. An amazing roasted chunk of cow was laid upon the table and viewed by many in awe, and summarily consumed, and it was good.

Would you like to know how to create such a masterwork of meat?

Shit yeah, you would.

So the principle behind this roast is pretty simple. I had a chunk of beef, and some espresso beans, and I thought: Why the hell not? Coffee and beef pair nicely together, complementarily savory, but in this recipe they get a jolt from some chili peppers and freshly ground fennel seed. The result explodes with flavor... and will also keep you up all night! Keep the heel for yourself, it's freaking FANTASTIC.

To start, you'll need: one medium sized (around 3 pound) top round roast with a decent layer of fat, some espresso beans, coriander seed, fennel seed, chili powder, ground cayenne pepper, ground cardamom, ground cinnamon, black pepper, and coarse sea salt.

Begin by washing the roast in warm water and patting it dry, then set it on a roasting rack with the fat layer on top.

In pinch bowls, assemble your rub ingredients. You'll need about half a cup of whole espresso beans, half a tablespoon of coriander seeds, a teaspoon of fennel seeds, and a couple dashes each of ground black cardamom, cinnamon, chili powder, and cayenne powder. Fennel's a strong flavor, so a little goes a long way, but by all means if you love you some licoricey goodness then go nuts. In a separate bowl, assemble a mixture of coarse sea salt and ground black pepper.

Rub the roast liberally in the sea salt and black pepper mixture, then set it aside for a minute or two. The coarse salt will use this time to melt and absorb into the beef, which in conjunction with the espresso rub will lock in pretty much every drop of moisture. Also, the pieces of sea salt create little bursts of salty flavor, adding variety to the meat, which is great because uniformity is for punks.

While the meat sits, grind up the other stuff you have in your pinch bowls (espresso beans, fennel, coriander, chili powder, cayenne, cardamom, cinnamon). I use a coffee grinder for all of my spice mixtures, and in fact I use the same one that I use to grind my coffee, and it comes out perfectly fine so... screw it, I figure. Once it's good and ground up, it should look a lot like dirt, and smell like something you might pay $15 for at a Starbucks.

Rub the dirt all over your meat. It should now look like a solid clump of dirt. But like, good dirt, the kind farmers get really excited about when they're tilling or whatever the crap it is farmers do for a living.

Well shit, look at that. You rubbed the crap out of that meat. Good job. Now you can cook it. What I like to do is throw it in the oven at 375 degrees for about 10-15 minutes uncovered, and then cover lightly with a piece of aluminum foil and drop the temperature down to 325 degrees and cook for another hour or so. Actual cooking times will varying depending on the size of your meat and whether or not your oven sucks. My suggestion? Use a meat thermometer. I pulled mine out at 120 degrees, so that it would be medium rare.

When you're happy with how dead it is, remove your delicious roast from the oven and allow it to rest, covered, for about 10 minutes. Roasting is exhausting, and your beef has been doing it for kind of a long time, really, so it totally deserves this brief reprieve before you eat the shit out it.

Once it's good and rested, you can carve it up. This is what it should look like if you didn't screw it up:

People always like to ask me shit like: “So, what do you make to go with a roast like that?” Fuck if I know. I nuked some freezer-burned spinach. It sucked. The roast was killer, though.

Now get the hell out of my kitchen.

Welcome to the Kitchen

Hi, my name's Sara and I like to cook. I think it's totally the best goddamn thing I could possibly be doing with my spare time, which I have a crap load of on account of how incredibly alone I am here in my mid-to-late 20's. Fortunately and entirely without any precedent whatsoever, I'm actually a pretty capable cook; as such my food generally does not suck, and other people have asked how to replicate it. In fact, several of my friends said some words about me posting my recipes online, and naturally I thought: fuck that, I'm so awesome, I'm gonna be completely original and make a cooking blog instead.

This is my cooking blog. There's only one rule, and it's considerate enough to come in the form of an easy-to-understand if/then statement:

If you don't like to cook... then get the hell out of my kitchen.