The Frugal Guy Cook

I have been remiss about posting on this season of Hell’s Kitchen regularly, so now we’re about to see the top three be pared to two finalists.

I just have a few things to say about the last couple episodes.

Bobby I had pegged for a finalist, despite their making fun of him in the very first episode, and his apparently poor leadership skills the first time those were tested (perhaps enhanced through editing). The catch was whether Hell’s Kitchen would break the alternating sexes and/or races mold. Did you really think a woman would win American Idol this year? Least of all a black woman? If they follow the pattern, the script, the storyline, this year’s winner will be female, or at least white. Bobby winning would have broken the pattern and shown they ry not to follow one (or are doing the opposite). Jen winning, well, that would almost overplay the pattern thing.

Petrozza I had pegged for cannon fodder at the outset, shades of Dominic, but he has been steady, if not always clearly outstanding, more similar to Rock Harper than I’d noticed until just lately. And why does he go by his surname, Petrozza, rather than his first name, Louis?

I fear I’ve always liked Christina because she’s cute, but she also seems competent and not as obnoxious as Corey. The two of them have both had their moments of pure bitch, but I perceive Corey more so. I like to like the winner. It still bothers me that Michael won the first season, because I found him too annoying, however competent.

Hell’s Kitchen really played it close to the vest this year, disguising the fact that anyone had sufficient ability to be worthy of winning. I’m still skeptical, but the past couple episodes, particularly the final four, really showed there’s more there than we’d seen. I figure they didn’t want a repeat of Heather and Rock being obvious finalists from near the beginning of the season. Entirely aside from the issue of the winner being leaked, as happened last year.

At this point, I see it being Petrozza versus Christina, with a slight edge to Petrozza. However, if it’s Corey versus Christina, I think Christina takes it, and if it’s Corey versus Petrozza, I think Petrozza takes it. If Jen had somehow made it that far, I don’t think she had a chance. I am so glad she’s gone. They famously edit people to be more annoying than they really are, but I got the impression Jen didn’t need much help.

Hell of a way to conduct a job interview.

The top three is a very telling episode, when each one calls and runs things for a while. Christina could fall apart on that, but Corey strikes me as weaker.

As for the challenge, lunch for 80 pregnant women, what about the issue of soft cheeses and shellfish and whatever? It struck me as odd for the contestants to go into that not aware there might be restrictions. Not that the risk is high, but hey.

I never remember to point to it, even though I get three copies of the e-mail announcing it each week, but readers here are likely to be interested in Carnival of the Recipes.

Not sure I buy the long food chain stuff, but it is pretty sad that bananas will get scarce and costly. Hard to believe more hasn’t been done to diversify and study/fight the plague.

Just a quick link without as much comment as I would like for Recipe Deal Breakers: When Step 2 Is ‘Corral Pig’.

It doesn’t take a huge amount for me to stop cold, but I’m the master of substituting or taking a recipe merely as suggestion, or inspiration for something perhaps only marginally related. Substitution should not be an epiphany.

Still, it’s usually a matter of ingredients, especially since usually the stuff I’d have to run out and buy will be expensive and never used in anything else before the remainder expires. Sometimes it’s tools or techniques. I can’t afford to buy new implements. I am not familiar with all too many techniques. It’s not that long ago I thought making a roux was some mysterious thing you had to go to cooking school to know about, when it’s really something elementary with a fancy name. One reason I couldn’t see myself on Hell’s Kitchen is I don’t know some of what even the most edited to look hopeless contestants do. I’d be a cross between Elsie and the traditional older heavy guy who leaves quickly. For all most of them probably know far more, I’m shocked at some of the things like taste challenges, in a “how are you a chef if you can’t taste or smell” sort of way. But I digress wildly.

How about you? What stops you cold when you see a recipe that you otherwise might try making?

I haven’t been posting about it regularly, as I might normally. That’s in part because it was on adjacent to American Idol, in part because of the kids going crazy when we dared try to watch 2 hours of TV, in part because I just haven’t been posting as zealously, and in part because this season… Yawn.

We are now down to six contestants.

There is no clear indication who will be the finalists or who we should start rooting for. I don’t know if that’s poor contestants, or great editing, perhaps influenced by the leak last year that Rock had won, and the fact that most of us reacted to that with “duh, it’s obvious nobody could beat him.”

It seems clear they cast the show with a small number of likely winners rounded out with people who have no chance, or who even fit specific roles, even if editing is required to mold that.

It seems clear that Bobby is a prospective winner, but they did shoot him down right at the beginning, if only to mislead us, he appeared incapable of being a team leader early on, and he would violate the unofficial rule of alternating specs of winners. He’s male. He’s black. So was Rock, just last season. Not right, and maybe they’re going off script because we expect it, but we expect him not to win based on Rock winning last year. In fact, we expect a woman to win.

I had a positive impression of the woman who left after being burned too severely to continue, and wondered if they were losing one of their prime prospects with her.

I was about to type “the last two women,” which tells you what I think of Jen, because I was thinkin g of the two other than her. I thought Jen might be one of the qualified contestants, but she seems just to be designated bitch and not as capable as she imagines herself. The other two women are coming to impress me enough to think it could be one of them in the final. Even both of them. And who knew, you can dislike each other but work well as a team! It should be interesting to see what happens after the switch back of Jen and Matt to their original teams.

I thought there might be something unexpected to Matt, and he’s shown sense a couple times, but I believe he’s there mainly for character. The previews made it appear his week to go will be the next one, but they’re so misleading with previews, it could be Jen, or someone less expected.

Petrozza is really off the radar. He seemed to be in a class with Matt, yet now appears quietly competent and thoughtful. Could it really end up Petrozza versus one of the girls? Probably not, but he seems almost a wildcard.

At any rate, the show doesn’t seem so great this year, but apart from giving us contestants who are more seriously qualified and less cast to expected parts, I’m not quite sure what I’d do to help it.

Via Rob Sama, this is a great article on restaurants in China. Some of the food sounds intriguing, and not at all what you might expect of “Chinese food.”

You know, I love Hell’s Kitchen, notwithstanding how boring it’s been this year, and the lack of evidence that any of the cast – face it, they’re cast – are qualified to win (which may be good acting and editing, after Heather and Rock were too obvious, even before Rock’s win was leaked). I also loved the first season of the American version of Kitchen Nightmares. Both are more about business than cooking, especially the latter. Gordon Ramsay is a big part of the reason they are good.

Thus it’s sad to see him completely losing it, assuming he’s not being quoted wrongly or out of context. There are plenty of reasons to use local and iin-season, even emphasize it. One of those would be marketing. Good business. However, in addition to the questionable hype about “carbon footprint” and debunked global warming hysteria that’s all about grabbing power, the more efficient production, greater variety, and global flow of food has been a boon to human health and longevity.

I meant to add that I lose a lot of respect for anyone who goes all “there ought to be a law” over something, because no, there ought to be very few laws. To suggest that it’s in any way acceptable to fine restaurants over the seasonality of what they serve is heinous at best.

I’ve been meaning for ages to post this guest recipe courtesy of Beth Mauldin. I’ve used it many times as my preferred banana bread recipe since she sent it to me over a year ago.

It’s also flexible. I’ve substituted a little corn flour into it, which gave it a grainier, almost dry result, which turned out especially good for banana bread french toast. The amount of banana can vary significantly and it’ll still be good. It can be doubled readily, as I did with the latest batch. I ran out of brown sugar, so for the two it was one part brown to almost three parts white sugar, plus a squirt of honey. I also added an extra egg, making it an egg and a half per loaf (large eggs, not extra large as I normally prefer – again, it’s not exacting). The dough was the least wet I have ever seen, with the modified double batch, puffed up higher than normal, and gave a delicious result.

Let’s get to it…

Beth Mauldin’s Banana Bread

2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoons salt
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/3 cup milk
1 egg
1 1/2 cups bananas (usually somewhere near 2 bananas)

Mix all the dry ingredients together.

Add in the oil, milk and egg, mix, then add and mix in the bananas last.

Bake in a loaf pan, greased as appropriate, at 350 for 55 – 60 minutes. I find it’s usually shorter, but it’ll depend on the foibles of your oven.

Enjoy!

The kids love pancakes, and they’re an inexpensive, easy meal, not driven out of line even by the addition of scrambled eggs with ham and cheese.

I bought a bag of corn flour a while back, and haven’t used it for anything except as a substitute for part of the white flour in a banana bread. That I won’t do again, as I thought it detracted, rather than added. Then again, the bit of the banana bread we made into French toast may have been enhanced by it.

A few days ago, pancakes it was, and for us that means Bisquick. I’d like to test making scratch pancakes sometime, but Bisquick is convenient and tasty.

The recipe calls for two cups of Bisquick. I used under two cups, but added an ambiguous somewhere between 1/8 and 1/4 cup of the corn flour. The total was somewhere between an even two cups, and a little below.

The corn flour was not overt in the resulting pancakes, but the batter was thinner than normal, without adding extra milk as I usually have to do. It also seemed to affect in a subtle, positive way how they “tanned” in cooking. They were tasty, perhaps subtly less cakey.

I’d absolutely do that again. I also wouldn’t mind making my own corn pancakes, as opposed to using Jiffy corn muffin mix. I figure follow a recipe for scratch pancakes, which I could probably guess at edibly enough if I were stuck without access to a recipe, but use half or more corn flour mixed with white flour.

Anyway, I just thought to mention it. I have a backlog of stuff to post here, though I won’t generate much new until we are financially more stable. There’s only so much I could post about cooking on the cheap, before I start trying things I’ve not made and perhaps not wanted or been able to afford before, let alone now.

We love chicken Rice-a-Roni, and usually eat it as part of a periodic meat-free supper, which gives us variety and saves a little money. Well, until we’re so broke that Rice-a-Roni is a luxury versus, say, plain rice.

I’d realized recently that I could probably make something vaguely like Rice-a-Roni myself. I don’t know exactly what they use for flavorings, apart from obviously chicken, and I’m pretty sure there’s salt, saffron and sage in there. Chicken seasoning, generally. I may even be wrong about the saffron, and I certainly can’t replicate that as I have yet to spend the $21 required to buy some at Wal-Mart.

Most of the time I will search online for recipes to examine and, if not follow, source for ideas. I didn’t do that. Deb had suggested breaking up spaghetti into tiny pieces for the pasta component. We had some we were given that looked thinner than the store brand we usually buy, so I used that, ultimately cutting little bits off a few strands at a time with kitchen shears. Worked well, aiming them into a cup, with just a few jumpers.

I used almost a cup and a half of white rice. Someone in the family gave us a 10 lb bag of Goya brand. Usually we buy and use brown rice, but it’s nice to have both available, with white being better for this. To that I added a quarter cup or so of pasta bits. The proportion looked remarkably like Rice-a-Roni, so I figured I was on the right track.

In the meantime, I had put a cup of water in the microwave for a couple minutes, then dropped a bullion cube into it. In practice the dish needed two, so next time I would add the second one up front.

To the water I also added seasonings. Mainly I wanted any that would benefit from softening and releasing flavor in the water, like celery flakes, but for convenience I ended up putting all of in there. I was conservative with everything except the turmeric, and that wasn’t intentional. It was mainly for color, but the flavor worked, as long as it wasn’t all you could taste, which is why I ended up with the second bullion cube. Which was still a good idea, based on volume. I also added white pepper, rosemary, savory, poultry seasoning, lots of (powdered) sage, and tiny bits of crushed bay leaf, oregano, cumin, marjoram, and probably something I’m forgetting. Plus salt, which feels weird because I seldom use it, and at that I didn’t use much.

I followed the standard procedure, as if it were an oversized box of Rice-a-Roni. Three tablespoons of butter, melted in a frying pan that has a cover, then the rice and pasta tossed in and swished around to get coated with butter, stirring periodically until a lot of the pasta picked up a tan.

Then I poured in the cup of seasoned broth, and added about two more cups of water. It looked like it was going to run low later, so I added a quarter or so more. Rice cooking proportions, basically.

In this instance I added a bullion cube to the pan while there was still substantial water, after I realized I needed more, and I sprinkled on more poultry seasoning, sage, and rosemary to help enhance and balance the expected flavor. Mostly, though, I simmered and stirred until done, exactly as if it were Rice-a-Roni. Our poor high-sided frying pan has seen better days, so I have to watch it or it sticks badly in the middle, closest to the heat, where the coating gets mosts stressed.

It was beautiful to look at, nice and fluffy. Everyone loved it, but it was extremely mild in flavor. You knew you weren’t eating Just Rice, but it could have stood up to a lot more herbification. Now I’m eager to experiment. I can picture how I would improve on it, modify it, even make completely alternate varieties, like beef.

We ate it with a giant butternut squash, which was tasty and added heft to the meal, and green beans, which the kids – well, Valerie – ate better than I’d expected. Excellent combo.