Category Archives: improv

Feb 02 0 comments
dinner, improv

frozen pizza plus

Many times, out of laziness or a lack of resources for better ingredients, I will take some prepared food and attempt to add flavor and nutrition to it. Sometimes I fail epically but most of the time I end up with mouth watering yummy.

My sis and my coz can both attest to my last foray into indulgence. She also pointed out to me that some of her favorite dishes that I have prepared came from a drunken stupor. Like the time I made scones and I didn’t have the right ingredients but somehow, magically, we still ended up with scones.

I’d like to start measuring the correlation of my drunkenness to my ability to whip something up. I will liken it to the ‘uncanny valley‘ factor. The more drunk I get, the better the food is. Until I hit the valley. Then anything produced after that point will be met with revulsion. Am I making any sense here?

We took a squarish four cheese Costco frozen pizza out of the fridge and started pre-heating the oven. This is where some of my philosophy for food comes in. I am sure there were plenty of ingredients we could have put on this pizza to make it more nutritious and more appetizing, but I always go with the ingredients that look like they need to be used. Items that are almost gone and will get thrown out if not used with other things.

I saw a quarter of a red onion and a quarter of a roma tomato in the fridge. Perfect. These things naturally taste good on pizzas. Especially with each other. I also cannot resist placing fresh garlic on frozen pizzas. If you ever have a frozen pizza and fresh garlic in the house, it is a must. Being drunk, I was feeling adventurous. Hell, I’ve had pizzas with tomatoes and onions on them before, but have I ever had a pizza with pimentos on it?

Tonight was the night to find out. After the pimentos made it to the pizza I started feeling a little more adventurous and thought that some more green would help the pizza taste and look yummy. Tarragon. I haven’t used tarragon very much in the past so I used that as an excuse to use some now. After this I realized I wanted some spice in my pizza. Tapatio. Tapatio is one of the best hot sauces out there, it has no vinegar.

We were just about done but then I realized that no pizza can be harmed with some oregano. So in went the oregano and out came the pizza eight minutes later because after all the chopping and dicing, the pizza was almost done.

I can’t describe how amazed I was with myself. At first I just attributed this feeling to narcissism combined with alcohol. After the first three pieces I had to have seconds but my little sister had already beat me to the second serving. This is when I realized that maybe it wasn’t all in my head. My final confirmation was when I woke up and was craving the last six pieces but they had already been consumed by my cousin. My mouth is watering right now just thinking about it. I can’t wait to make this for somebody so that I can try it again.

p. s. If you can tell me why I called it pizza plus and list the source, I will truly respect your trivia prowess.

Jan 06 2 comments
improv, quick fix

curry pineapple rice

I would love to share a picture of what I just made, and my last meal for that matter. I don’t have a camera. We will just have to imagine what these meals look like until I purchase a camera to take pictures.

You can tell when my pantry is getting low and these are my most favorite times to cook because it forces me to use up items that I normally don’t get around to using. I also come up with creative combinations that are usually not so bad. Today was no exception.

I started boiling some rice. About one and a half cups of medium grain rice. This should cook to about three cups. While this was cooking, I starte some butter in a frying pan after quartering a few white pearl onions. I love to prep while food is cooking. It is sort of a juggling act. I used extra butter in the pan, like one tablespoon and a half because I wanted the curry to have something to stick to.

I found a hot pepper in the fridge from Carl’s Jr and thought it would be a good idea to chop that up and throw it in with the butter and the onions. These peppers are quite spicy and flavorful so be careful with how much you use. One is plenty. A little teeny tiny one. After cooking the onions, butter and hot pepper for a moment, I dumped in about two teaspoons worth of curry powder. I could be wrong, I just eyeball the stuff.

Then I pulled out the large can of pineapple bits that I have been saving to cook with some rice. I drained these well because I didn’t need the juice to cook anything with. There was plenty of butter in the pan. Pineapple and curry are a great mix.

Right about this time the rice was done cooking. I just placed it on top of the pineapple-curry mixture and let everything stew together for a few minutes and gave it a few stirs with some sea salt to bring out the rest of the flavors.

For only using three major ingredients and two minor ones, this meal turned out pretty decent. Took me, maybe, thirty minutes at the most. Cooking with an empty pantry always produces food that you don’t have on your regular menu.

p.s. Some sweet basil and a splash of coconut milk would have been perfect with this. That would have taken this meal to the next level.

*update – I think that I will use a red bell pepper next time along with some basil to add color to this dish. It was a bland yellow, but yummy.

Jan 06 0 comments
improv, quick fix

shells n shallots

I was hungry and bored and my pantry was bare so I just threw a few things together and thought I should share.

Totally did not intend for that to come out the way it did but it happened so this will be a short post.

I had some celery that was getting ready to go out the door. To give meaning to its existence, I started frying some in butter. I used about two stalks of celery and one tablespoon of butter. I didn’t have a plan in mind. Sometimes I just start cooking an ingredient and make up my mind as I go. Maybe I can call it Jazz Cooking.

The smell of the celery cooking inspired me as I was pecking through my cupboard. Shallots would go nicely with whatever was going to happen with the celery. At this point I was really getting hungry so I decided to boil some shell macaroni while the celery and shallots were softening. I didn’t think that a capful of vermouth would hurt at all. Along with the vermouth I added about two cloves of garlic. Garlic and shallots go good together. Especially on noodles, which were about done boiling.

I wanted something smooth and creamy so I added just enough milk to barely cover my ingredients, minus the shells. Whenever I have something creamy I always crave black pepper so I liberally shared my pepper grinder with the ‘sauce’ that was now forming. If I had white pepper I think I would have used that for this meal instead of black.

Now it was just a simple matter of tossing the shells with the yummy sauce I had just cooked. I got about three servings out of this meal and it was worth it. Especially when I topped it with some asiago.