Crazy Days and Crazy Nights

May 20, 2022August 28, 2022 / toothpicktales / 7 Comments

My day officially started with me leaving my lights on when I parked my truck at work. You see, I drive a wonderful little 1994 Ford Ranger pickup, and back in the olden days, cars and trucks didn’t have fancy sensors and computers that would automatically turn off headlights. I love the truck and wouldn’t give it up for the world, but I’m prone to “Nutty Professor” moments that make me forget the little things in life, like turning off headlights, while I ponder the great mysteries of life, or trying to solve work problems, while I drive to work.

Fortunately, one of my co-workers arrived almost two hours after I arrived and exclaimed, “You must have a really good battery because your lights are still on!” She was right, on both accounts.

I made the long trek through the warehouse and went outside and turned off the lights and whispered a silent prayer. Lo, and behold, when I cranked the engine, the truck started like a champ! Indeed! What a battery…especially since I had put the poor battery through the same sort of torment four or five times during the last few months!

I felt unbalanced and slightly out of control for the rest of the day. Some might use the phrase, “getting out on the wrong side of the bed”. I told myself that I was in for a real treat of a day! Sometimes, the life unbalanced leads to unexpectedly good things. Other times, it can lead to a chaotic mess that wreaks havoc on everyone and everything in your wake.

On the way to work I listened to the CD “Fragile”, by the band Yes, and when I was driving home, I was listening to the CD “Bloodletting”, by the band Concrete Blonde. Anyone who knows anything about these two albums, or bands, should pick up on the notion that my day was a little off kilter.

I recently took on a new assignment at work. It’s been exciting and rewarding, and it has been a refreshing challenge. Sometimes I feel like an Olympic swimmer, and twenty minutes later I feel like I’m barely treading water. That sort of back-and-forth sensation might make other people nervous, but those are the waters I enjoy swimming in the most. Swimming at peak performance and swimming to survive are both exhilarating experiences.

As I drove home, listening to Concrete Blonde, I thought of Stevie Ray Vaughn’s rendition of Jimi Hendrix’s “Little Wing”.

Stevie Ray Vaugh was no fool. His covers of Jimi Hendrix songs were nearly perfect. He paid homage to the brilliant, raw power chords of Hendrix and he lovingly reworked them, (and then mastered them), and the end result was like a swinging hammer draped in satin and silk. I have nothing but admiration for Jimi Hendrix and his contribution to the evolution of modern music, and to my endless enjoyment, but I have to say, there’s no cloud in the great blue skies that Stevie Ray can’t fly over!

Listen to Stevie Ray Vaughn’s rendition of “Little Wing”. Tight. Clear. No Lyrics. This is a cover song like no other. Slick finger work, up and down the fretboard. Jazz and Rock and Electric blues, all wrapped up with strength and subtlety. What a tribute!

My journey was nearing an end and I realized that I needed to finish the work week with a good dose of pizza. I pulled into the driveway, went inside, laid my wallet and keys on the counter and immediately started the pizza dough. I always make two or three pizzas and tonight I decided on three. I knew two of them would be traditional, Italian cold cuts, beef with mushroom, but the third was still a mystery.

It wasn’t until I pawed through the refrigerator a few times that the third pizza became clear, in my mind. I found 2 ounces of crumbled blue cheese that needed to be used and wondered what I might pair it with. About a half hour later, while the dough was still rising, I remembered I had a smoked chicken thigh, left over after last week’s grill, and I knew I had found a perfect match. I imagined the finished pizza in my mind, and I knew that a slight drizzle of Sriracha sauce would complete the deal.

There aren’t a lot of blue cheese aficionados in my family, which is a subtle way of saying, I like blue cheese and most of the family tolerates it, or detests it, so I thought this might be a good way of promoting my old friend, blue cheese.

The pizzas came out of the oven, one by one, and they were sliced and presented, side by side, on the kitchen counter. We all grabbed some slices and sat down at the table and quickly jumped into lively conversation.

My son briefly discussed plans about moving into a house with his friend. My daughter gave us an update on her boyfriend’s recent bout with Covid, and my wife had just finished a phone conversation with her 80-year-old aunt who wants a pair of red ballet slippers.

The dinner, and the conversation, was going well. Until the cat made a sudden and unfortunate appearance.

Our cat came from out of nowhere and skittered across the kitchen floor, leaving a slimy trail of poop behind her as she fled, out of sight. That killed the entire family dinner instantly. Some of us jumped up to go after the cat. Some of us ran to grab Clorox wipes to clean up the mess. Some of us just gawked at the trail of mess that was left for us to clean up.

Two minutes later, my son and daughter were removing plates from the dinner table, wrapping up leftover pizza in aluminum foil, and washing plates. Dinner was officially over, and I, the slowest of eaters, still had two pieces of uneaten pizza on my plate.

“What about the pizza?” I selfishly thought. “Does anyone want to say anything about the sort of genius mind that could come up with the notion of a pizza made with char-grilled chicken and blue cheese, with a delicate drizzle of Sriracha sauce?”

As I sat there at the table, still trying to eat the last few bites of pizza without thinking about cat poop, I realized that this is all part of the game. It’s all part of the deal. It’s family at it’s best. It really capped off a weird and funky day, quite nicely. I really couldn’t have asked for, (or expected) any other sort of ending to this topsy-turvy day.

So, now as I write, the clock finds its way to midnight and I pass from Friday to Saturday, in the blink of an eye, while

I listen to Vangelis : Blade Runner soundtrack (Esper edition). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3fz6CC45ok

R.I.P Vangelis – Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassíou! Your masterful compositions will never be sidelined or sullied by a ridiculous cat!

It almost seems anticlimactic now, but here’s my recipe for grilled chicken blue cheese pizza:

Ingredients:

Homemade pizza dough (see some of my previous posts on pizza, or use your own recipe)

1 grilled chicken thigh (grilled bone-in, skin on, then deboned, skin off, and chopped)

2 ounces crumble blue cheese

2 ounces Mozzarella cheese

½ cup marinara sauce

Directions:

I roll out the dough and pre-bake in a 400º oven for 10 minutes, flip over, and bake another 5 minutes.

Add sauce to the semi-baked pizza

Add Mozzarella

Add the grilled chicken

Add the blue cheese

Bake at 400º for 10 minutes

Slice and serve!

Smoked Pork Enchiladas

August 23, 2020August 23, 2020 / toothpicktales / 11 Comments

There’s a reason why I turn to Mexican food so often. Mexican cuisine has a rich and long history of embracing other cultural cuisines while maintaining its own identity. Some cultures have a tendency to cling to strict tradition, when it comes to their cuisine, while other cultures are more willing to change and adapt.

When it comes to cooking at home, versatility and adaptability is the name of the game! So, when it’s time to plan a meal, I want to use items that I am familiar with but I want to combine them in new and interesting ways.

I can stuff anything I want into a tortilla and call it a taco. I can wrap anything I want in a tortilla and cover it with sauce and it becomes an enchilada. My imagination is only restricted by considering the taste, texture and nutritional quality of the final outcome. Once I consider those aspects, the rest of the process is a simple matter of deciding what cooking methods I want to use to achieve my goal.

I pulled some fresh chilis from the garden and I cooked down some fresh tomatoes to make a sauce. I had leftover smoked pork roast in the refrigerator and Monterrey Jack cheese and corn tortillas. The rest of the ingredients were spices that I always keep on hand.

And that is why I’m making Smoked Pork Enchiladas!

Ingredients:

1 red jalapeño, seeded and sliced

3 small poblano chilies, seeded and chopped

1 Tbs cooking oil

2 cloves garlic, smashed

½ cup diced onion

1 ½ cups tomato sauce

2 Tbs red chili powder

1 ½ Tbs cumin powder

1 Tbs Mexican oregano, crushed

2 tsp garlic powder

1 lb. smoked pork roast, sliced and chopped

12 oz Monterrey Jack cheese

10 corn tortillas, softened by dredging in hot oil.

Directions:

Prepare the chilies. Remove the stems and seeds. Slice the jalapeño into thin rings.

Remove the stems and seeds from the poblano chiles. Slice and dice the chilies.

Add 1 tablespoon of cooking oil to a large, oven-proof skillet. Set the heat to low/medium heat. After the oil is hot, add the chopped poblanos and garlic. Simmer and stir for five minutes, or until the chiles and garlic sweat and soften. Add the onions and saute for another 5 minutes.

Remove the chiles and garlic and place on a cutting board. Chop the chiles and garlic into smaller pieces.

Add the tomato sauce to the pan and cook at medium heat. Add the cooked garlic, chilies and onion. Add the red chili powder, cumin, oregano and garlic powder. Simmer and stir for ten minutes. Remove the sauce and place in a bowl.

Slice and chop the smoked pork and place in a mixing bowl. Shred 12 ounces of Monterrey Jack Cheese. Set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the chopped pork and 8 ounces of the shredded cheese. Reserve the other 4 ounces of cheese for the topping.

Spread the tomato sauce mixture across the bottom of an oven-proof pan. A thin layer is all you will need.

Prepare the enchiladas by placing a few tablespoons of pork and cheese mixture in a tortilla. Wrap the enchilada and place into the pan. Repeat, until all of the enchiladas fill the pan.

Cover the enchiladas with the remaining sauce.

Bake in a 350° oven for 30 minutes. Top the enchiladas with the remaining 4 ounces of cheese and sliced jalapeño. Return to the oven for another 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and allow the enchiladas to rest for about 5 minutes before serving.

Serve with crisp lettuce, a splotch of sour cream and a whole, pickled jalapeño.

¡Más sabroso para Tex-Mex! (give it a tasty Tex-Mex finish)

Power Outage Pizza

August 10, 2020August 10, 2020 / toothpicktales / 8 Comments

Yes, it’s another pizza post. I swear I’m not making pizza every day…really! The last post, Shrimp Pizza, was actually from last May. I just now got around to posting it.

This post is from Sunday, August 9. I had no intention of submitting a post because there was nothing novel about my approach to the pizzas – – until the power went out.

I have been dubbed an “essential worker” during this pandemic and I’m not entirely convinced that my work is essential but apparently, others do. Many of my fellow employees have either contracted the virus or have been exposed to people who have tested positive which has resulted in several employees being asked to self-quarantine for 14 days. On top of that hardship, we recently replaced our old operating system with a new one and we’ve spent the last several weeks learning how to operate the new system. Needless to say, It’s been a stressful time.

I’ve been working long hours and six day work weeks for the last few months and I don’t foresee that changing in the foreseeable future.

I say all of this to illustrate how important Sundays have become. Some of my Sundays are spent decompressing, as I try to forget about all of the craziness and other Sundays are filled with lots of domestic chores that I have ignored because of previous decompression Sundays. This last Sunday was a mixture of work and relaxation. Yard work filled the first part of the day, before the temperature crested 95° and became too hot to work outdoors, and that was followed by making pizza dough, followed by a short nap, while the dough was rising.

There was a beautiful balance to the day, until the power went off. An electrical power transformer in our neighborhood failed and several houses lost power for about six hours. Of course, I didn’t know how long the power would be out so I decided to finish the pizza-making process on the outdoor grill. I prepared the grill while there was still some sunlight. I prepped the ingredients for the pizza and made my tools handy, a la mise en place.

By the time the coals were hot, I had about 30 minutes of sunlight remaining. I rolled out the dough and took them to the grill to bake.

Back in the house, the last shafts of sunlight faded and candles were lit. Baked pizzas were carried inside, one by one, to be sliced on a dimly lit cutting board. And, just as we all settled down to eat, the power came back on.

We turned the lights off and ate by candlelight.

Now that’s a great Sunday!

Bon appétit!

Ingredients:

5 cups flour

2 cups water

1 Tbs olive oil

¼ cup pitted Kalamata olives

¼ cup pitted black olives

¼ cup julienne sliced onions

2 oz sliced capocollo

2 oz sliced hot calabrese

2 oz can of anchovies, packed in oil

12 oz mozzarella, horridly crumbled by hand

6 slices of sun dried tomatoes, probably less than 1 oz

¾ cup marinara (I used a thin, homemade marinara sauce)

I made three pizzas. Each pizza started with a base of marinara and Mozzarella.

The last shreds of light on Italian cold cuts

Pizza Uno: Anchovy, onion and olives

Pizza Due: capocollo, onion, olives and sun dried tomatoes

Pizza Tre: hot calabrese

Directions:

Prepare the pizza dough, using the flour, water an olive oil. If you want to see one of my pizza dough recipes, check it out here.

Let the dough rest and rise for at least one hour.

Sprinkle an ample amount of cornmeal on three baking sheets.

Separate the dough into three equally sized balls. Roll them out with a rolling pin and transfer them to the baking sheets.

Bake one pizza at a time by sliding the pizza dough onto the hot grill. Add tomato sauce (marinara) and add cheese and toppings of your choice.

Close the cover of the grill and bake for about 10 minutes. Lift the cover of the grill and inspect the quality of the pizza by carefully prying up a portion of the pizza and checking the crispness of the bottom. You’ll know when the pizza is done. Pull it off and place the next pizza dough on the grill. Repeat until all of the pizzas are done.

I used a very thin homemade marinara, made with just a hint of anchovy… Shhh!…don’t tell anyone!

As I mentioned above, in the Ingredients section, I crumbled the mozzarella, rather than grating or slicing it. The sun was setting and I needed to get the pizzas on the grill, pronto! But, there’s more to it than that. Random chunks of mozzarella are perfect for grilled pizza. The pizza has a marvelous haphazard, spontaneous look, texture and taste. I suppose I could say that it is “rustic”. Yeah, that’s it.

Don’t forget to thank the service crew members that come out to replace your transformer in the unrelenting August heat. Sure, they are getting paid for their work, but take a moment to realize that while you are sweating over a hot grill, they are sweating twice as much. And don’t forget, they are the real essential workers!

Quick Chicken Enchiladas

August 3, 2020August 2, 2020 / toothpicktales / 2 Comments

Sometimes we just have to throw something together in a hurry. This happens to the best of us, especially now. It feels like the whole world is closing down on us and we have so little time to find joy. So little time to give comfort to others. So little time for ourselves.

Yes, times are strange, but one thing remains. We must eat, and eat, we will.

Many people have influenced the way I cook. One of the many cast of characters was the mother of my friend, Barry.

Ginger Hornburg was a sweet and feisty, pint-sized woman. Her husband, Jack, was a giant, in stature and in heart. The two were mismatched, when seen side by side, but it was clear that they were made for each other. There was love there, and it was plain to see.

On one occasion, I watched Ginger make dinner. Her recipe for chicken enchiladas was typical for the time…shredded chicken, cream of mushroom soup, shredded cheese and corn tortillas. Bake and serve. Done!

When she realized that I was interested in watching her cook she made a point to tell me that the key ingredient was green chilis. To prove the point she showed me a small can of Old El Paso diced green chiles (mild). I’ve never forgotten that. Green chilis are essential for chicken enchiladas.

I’ve grown and changed as a cook but I haven’t forgotten essential truths. Green chilis are the defining touch to Tex-Mex chicken enchiladas and I have Ginger to thank for that!

Let’s make a fast and furious enchilada dinner.

I made these enchiladas while having a Zoom meeting with distant family members and then I followed that with a phone conservation with another friend.

Start to finish time for this meal was about 45 minutes. I remember when I could crank out a meal in 30 minutes. Oh, those were the days. I must be getting slower in my old age. Or, maybe I’m learning to savor life’s little moments. Yah… whatever!

I was lucky to have some grilled chicken in the refrigerator.

Chicken Enchiladas – mas rapido!

I intentionally overstuffed these enchiladas because I wanted to use all of my left over chicken and I wasn’t working from a recipe. I was doing the thing I do best…pulling things out of the refrigerator and pantry and whipping up a quick meal.

As I mentioned previously, the key to this dish is pickled jalapeños. Seriously, the pickled tanginess of the chilis is the defining element of true Tex-Mex chicken enchiladas. No exceptions. Don’t mess with Texas and don’t mess with Ginger!

No walk-through photos on this one. I was too busy Zooming and talking to people on the phone! Scroll down to see a photo of the finished dish.

Ingredients:

1 ½ cups water

2 chicken bouillon cubes

1 Tbs butter

1 Tbs flour

2 cups grilled chicken, shredded and chopped

2 green onions, chopped

3 whole pickled jalapeños, chopped

1 cup fresh spinach, roughly chopped

1 ½ Tbs cumin powder

1 Tbs red chili powder

2 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp dried oregano

6 corn tortillas

8 oz Monterrey Jack cheese, shredded

¼ cup sour cream

½ cup fresh cilantro

Directions:

Add the chicken bouillon cubes to the water and heat in the microwave for 2 minutes. Remove and set aside.

Prepare a roux by heating butter in a skillet. Add the flour and whisk. Add the water and whisk until the sauce thickens. Remove the skillet from the heat set aside.

Prepare a round 9 inch casserole dish. Smear a little of the sauce on the bottom of the dish.

In a mixing bowl, combine the shredded chicken, green onions, jalapeños, spinach, cumin, chili powder, garlic powder and oregano. Mix with a spatula or wooden spoon.

Soften the corn tortillas in hot oil and set aside.

Apply a heavy portion of the chicken mixture to each of the tortillas and roll the tortillas. Place the rolled enchiladas in the casserole dish. Rotate the enchiladas to coat all sides with the sauce.

Top with cheese and bake at 350° for 25 to 30 minutes, or until the top is bubbling and golden brown.

Serve with sour cream and cilantro.

And please, take time to show young people how you cook, even if they are wild-eyed, scraggly teenagers!

Rockin’ the Kitchen!

April 1, 2020April 1, 2020 / toothpicktales / 3 Comments

As I mentioned recently, my wife and I are working for “essential” industries. We are still putting in regular hours at our respective companies. Working in an environment that involves close human contact at a time like this can be nerve racking. Sure, when we are at work, we focus on the jobs that need to be done. But, when we come home we think of the risks we take each day we go to work.

We are not exceptional. Many people are experiencing similar types of anxiety. We all deal with it in our own ways.

A few days ago, after a mere 4 hours of sleep, my wife awoke at the crack of dawn and went straight to the kitchen. She spent the next 10 hours baking. When my wife bakes, or cooks for that matter, the result is always impressive. This particular baking marathon was fueled by her love of our family and her need to occupy herself with something meaningful. It surely wasn’t fueled by a good night’s sleep!