Black Eyed Peas

As I said in my post about pork stock, the basic recipe I was using to make my black eyed peas wasn’t much of a recipe at all – it was more like a sentence:


“Oil, Cajun trinity, andouille sausage, garlic, salt pepper, bay leaf, ham hocks, a bag o’ peas, some stock, cook for an hour, hour and a half.”

But, you know, you don’t need any more than that.  Like a lot of my favorite recipes, it’s dead simple, and yet you’ll never be able to figure out exactly what magic is at work to transform such ordinary ingredients into the delicious amalgamation it becomes.

Here you have your aromatics:

And you add that yummy pork stock you made (or whatever stock you have – homemade is seriously best.  Not only is it the most flavorful and has more gelatin for thickening potential, it’s completely without unnecessary additives).

Try it sometime.  It’s cheap, it’s easy, its redonkerously flavorful, and it will feed you for about a week.

By Matt Good on January 23, 2011 at 12:39 am | Posted in Food Talk, Foodporn | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Pork Stock

I was in Orlando a bit ago for some technology training for work, but before I left, I wanted to make Kristin some black eyed peas.  For those of you who haven’t been following a long, slow arc southward, black eyed peas are not really peas, but beans.  And when a southerner speaks of making black eyed peas, she’s going to do a heck of a lot more than boil them.

The recipe my bud John told me was roughly, ” oil, Cajun trinity, andouille sausage, garlic, salt pepper, bay leaf, ham hocks, a bag o’ peas, some stock, cook for an hour, hour and a half.”  Now, it’s not really necessary, but I thought it would be rad to make some pork stock for this, and I just so happened to have some rib bones I saved from some past gorging…  So here it is:

It smelled awesome.  Stay tuned for more details on the black eyed peas.

By Matt Good on January 23, 2011 at 12:15 am | Posted in Food Talk, Foodporn | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

(Woman Laughing Alone With) Salad & Salmon

Inspired by this aggregation of awesomeness.

"Salad's funny because it thinks it's real food!"

The salmon was purdy good though.  Four kinds of plants in that meal.  FOUR KINDS!  South Beach friendly.

By Matt Good on January 5, 2011 at 11:31 pm | Posted in Foodporn, South Beach | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Lentil Soup

Just your basic lentil-based foodporn:

I *think* lentils are okay on the South Beaches.  Hope so!

By Matt Good on January 5, 2011 at 11:24 pm | Posted in Foodporn, South Beach | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Southbeachy Foods – Chicken Cacciatore (Kinda)

Well, after a lovely Christmas and New Years, Kristin wanted to start doing a reboot of the South Beach thing.  So, today we (well, mostly just her) started.  I made some Chicken Cacciatore with some small modifications, and sauted asparagus, as well as a romaine salad with a homemade vinaigrette, thanks to a recipe from one Ms. Child.

Note: Beer is not South Beach friendly.  This is my plate :)

Like our Christmas Tree?

By Matt Good on January 3, 2011 at 9:24 pm | Posted in Food Talk, South Beach | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Les Halles Onion Soup

Les Halles Onion Soup

From Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook.  Fricking great.  Two lessons:

  1. Adding a bit of port and a bit of balsamic to the soup seems like a big flavor hack (and as such is awesome)
  2. My broiler sucks and I’m buying a blowtorch

Side note, I love watching really flavorful stuff reduce slowly for a long time.  Reminds me of the recipe for “Weapons Grade Ratatouille” that I want to try sometime soon…

By Matt Good on November 21, 2010 at 2:33 pm | Posted in Foodporn | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

6 Year Old’s Beet & Cheedar ‘sotto

This recipe comes to me by way of my friend and Kristin’s classmate Beth, and apparently was created by a six-year-old kid.  Who reads Food & Wine magazine.  And knows what a risotto is.

Needless to say, the kid is sort of an elite.

Okay, well, anyway, it was delicious (even if the photograph makes it look kinda alien and scary):

Here’s the recipe, if your interested.  Even Kristin, who is not a big fan of beets in general, liked this dish.

By Matt Good on November 20, 2010 at 4:16 pm | Posted in Foodporn | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Leg of Lamb

Lambs.

Cute.  Frolicky.
Delicious.


I like to eat a lot of different species.  Is that so wrong?  I’m not content with white potatoes, chicken, beef, and (if you’re lucky) pork.  So I hauled my butt down to the local meat market (we actually still have one around here and I’d like to keep them in business) and bought an obscene amount of leg of lamb.  I made an intense roux, and mashed in some roast eggplant, more or less following this recipe.

Of course I had to modify it a bit.  The recipe called for lamb shoulder, but the market only had leg, so I switched from braising to roasting (seemed to be the M.O. with this cut).  But the eggplant paste-crap (say it in French at it will sound good, i swear) was one of the coolest food things I’ve ever done.  Delicious and fun to make.  Anyone else do lamb out there?

By Matt Good on September 3, 2010 at 11:07 pm | Posted in Foodporn | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

PIZZAAAAA

Made with Trader Joe’s whole wheat pizza dough, a crap ton of mozzarella cheese, red onions, green peppers, tomatoes, and basil.

Note on the TJ’s dough: The package says to put the toppings on & bake for 10-12 minutes.  I did this once and MAN O MAN WAS IT A FAILURE.  What you do is roll it out and bake for ten minutes, THEN add the toppings, then for another 10-12, then hit the broiler on for 1:30 to brown things a bit.  Finicky? Maybe.  Worth it?  Oh yes.

By Matt Good on May 14, 2010 at 11:07 pm | Posted in Foodporn | Tagged , , , | Comments (1)

Instant noodles can be grown up food too

So here how to make a delicious, nutritious, and cheap meal in under 6 minutes.

Ingredients:

Pack of stir fry veggies (if fresh stir fry veggies aren’t available, I like green onions, garlic, red onions, red peppers, mung bean sprouts, broccolini, sugar snap peas/ or green beans, mini-corn is good to, basically any collection of veggies)

Pack of instant noodles

(looking for at least 1:1 ratio of veggies to noodles, we actually like around 1.5:1 veggies to noodles)

2 eggs

  1. Boil water and boil the noodles for 3 minutes at the same time take veggies and put them in a skillet on medium heat.  Add the spices from the instant noodle pack to the veggies.
  2. When noodles are soft drain,
  3. Put the veggies into the pot that you made noodles in, then put the noodles on top of that.
  4. Lightly stir the two eggs and then scramble them in the pan that veggies were in (do this so you get the flavor of the veggies and seasonings into the eggs)
  5. And then combine the noodles and veggies back into the original pan
  6. Eat and think how wonderful this is
By Ian Kitterman on May 12, 2010 at 5:14 am | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (1)