Martha Stewart Tilapia Time!

Not really.  But I do want to share my latest obsession.  I go through food phases where I obsessively prepare the same food for days on end.  This time, as before, it has been tilapia.  But I'm trying to be more health-conscious.  I used to fry it, then I breaded it with dijon, now I bake it.  Get into this shit.  Reasonable caloried, baked fish, high in protein:

-preheat oven to 400 degrizzles F
-pat dry your tilapia filets

-prepare a baking sheet/pan with tin foil and spray with non-stick, fat-free spray

-season one side with salt, pepper, and dill (I like to use lemon pepper mix, so I go easy on the salt)

-place seasoning-side down on foil



-season other side

-place a pat of butter on each filet to cover each

-place lemon slices on each filet in order to cover

-bake for 20 minutes

 -remove the lemon slices and SERVE it, girl

22 g protein, 2 g fat, and NO carbs.  Delicios as hell.  BAM.

Textual Intercourse: Food Network Thanksgiving Live

OMFG KILL IT WITH FIRE

Textual Intercourse: Ina Garten

I watch at least one episode of Barefoot Contessa every day, and I'm always finding more gems.  In her Ask Ina section, her response to a question about gravy is priceless (ps she used the same recipe and same footage 3 years running: make a new one!).  It's simultaneously bitchy gayness and mean girl.

 me:  OMG rarely her NY accent comes out and it's mazong.

me:  Toss it all togethah

Mia:  She covers that shit up like a teen pregnancy

From Ina's Kitchen

Well, not quite.  But from Ina's kitchen in Mia's head.  She wrote this phenomenal ficticious Ina Garten recipe.  Please enjoy!

Boeuf Bourguignon



Step 1: Put on Shent.
Step 2: Curl Bangs.

BAM.  We are ready to go!

Ingredients:
3 1/3 lbs grass-fed, antibiotic-free, massaged filet mignon
30 pearl onions. The ones with real pearls in the middle, please, it's worth it!
1 lb baby bella mushrooms. This means they MUST be picked from the earth, by a baby, named Bella.
2 carrots from your garden (OBVS)
Butter and Olive Oil (pressed by hand please)
1 cup of GOOD red wine, I always say, don't cook with it unless you would drink it by the glass! Or bucket!
4 excitable faggots
1 rich husband


Take one of the excitable faggots, and put him to work! He needs to cut the boeuf into 1-inch cubes. And I'm not fucking around here! Anything smaller or larger than 1 inch will be discarded immediately because of the severe impact it has on the flavor. You might want to buy a little extra filet if this is your first time making a real recipe. It's pretty reasonably priced.

Saute the pearl onions until they are soft and the pearl in the middle has come out to say hi! Leave these in the dish, they will impress your guests! Add the mushrooms, and give baby Bella an onion (KEEP the pearl) for her hard work. Add the carrots. Saute until the aroma of money fills your house! Then add the boeuf.

Jeffrey always manages to sneak his way to the kitchen by this point, so use another faggot to distract him so that you can eat chocolate in your walk-in pantry alone!

Drink the red wine in there too.

Once the 3rd and 4th fags find you, it's time to eat! Enjoy! And make sure you eat all of the food except for one scoopful for Jeffrey. The faggots will get upset if you try to feed them.

One Ina to Rule Them All

I've always loved the Food Network.  But I watch it in a whole new light now.  This is all thanks to Mia, who is responsible for my current love affair with Food Network Television hosts.  After browsing through all (as of this date) 310 pages of FNHposts, my eyes have been opened to the quirks of celebrity chefs.  While I can't stand some of those people, I do have two favorites.  Anne Burrell and Ina Garten.

Yeah, I made this.  Jealous?

Anne Burrell, or AB (since we're tight like that), just seems like a fun person to be around.  She's energetic, exciting, and knowledegable.  Her hair is ridiculous, and I love it.  On her own show she's super sweet and fun, but whenever she's in a judge role on something else, she isn't afraid to be stern.  She loves "brown food" and orange skin.  I always assumed she was a lesbian, but I have no idea what her orientation is.  I watched her cook an amazing looking Grilled Chicken with Dijon and Meyer Lemon on Secrets of a Restaurant Chef last night, and I noticed something that made me love her even more:  she's pretty damn faggoty.  Actually, my exact text to Mia was:

And this is a good thing!  When she seasons things, she puts on a "sprinky dink" of kosher salt, etc.  When she drizzles balsamic vinegar on figs, she says you only need a "drippy drop."  That's some gay shit.  Then there's the way she constantly talks to her food, which is adorable by the way.  She'll be brushing a chicken with mustard glaze while cooing in a gaywad voice "HELLO DAAAHLINGS."  It's kind of fantastic.  In that episode alone, she said HELLO DAAAHLING to her food no less than six times.  Keep doing what you do, Anne Burrell, because you make my damn day.

And now.  The queen of Food Network.  Ina Garten.  Words cannot accurately and fully express my feelings about Ina, but I'll try.  First of all, her ensembles.  She pumps a very particular look.  It's kind of like rich white lady casual gangsta realness.  She pretty much only wears what has been dubbed a shent.  I like to imagine that she exclusively wears shents and has one for every occasion.  Shent pajamas.  Terry cloth shent bathrobe.  Silk shent with a starched and popped lace collar for intimate times with her husband Jeffrey. 

Her presence on the show is so calming and soothing.  She's so motherly and comforting.  I just want to hug my face into her denim-shented bosom.  She ran a specialty food store in the Hamptons for years, then sold it so she could focus on other (moneymaking) opportunities.  She's well known for frequently cooking for her many gay male friends.  She's a registered democrat and supports Planned Parenthood, so you KNOW she cool.  Ina is famous for phrases that she peppers throughout her program.  She asks an approximate average of 15.8 rhetorical questions per episode such as "how easy is that?" and "how bad can that be?" 

Also mine.  BAM.

Her husband is never home, but she prepares chicken for him on Friday nights.  Ina prefers to use "good" ingredients, and she never fails to let you know.  In a recent episode I saw, she said she likes to use "good red wine vinegar.  Just smell it, you'll know if it's good."  I'm sorry, Ms. Garten, but I don't think I would know.  That's what I love about her.  Silly poor person, don't you know the olfactory difference between good and bad red wine vinegar?  However, sometimes she will let you know that "store-bought is fine," which is such a subtle throw of shade, I love it so much.  Without explicitly saying it, she means: if you're not a millionnaire like me, you lowly commoner, you'll just have to make do with your "bad" ingredients from your chain supermarket. 

I'm quite proud of this one actually.  Arrested Contessa.

This morning I Googled "Ina Garten shirt" because who wouldn't want one?  It led me to her website and perhaps one of the most hilarious unintentionally funny Q&A pages ever.  She only uses "good" a few times, but I love that in her responses, she uses "unfortunately" 12 times.  It's always referencing something exclusive and unattainable to the likes of you derelicts.  For instance, I enjoyed this question about her shent:

How can I find the shirts that Ina wears on the show?




Unfortunately, I have my shirts made for me by a dressmaker in NY City. I wanted a certain style and couldn't find it in enough colors, so I had them custom made. The original shirt came from Eileen Fisher, so that's a good place to look.

Then in response to someone's difficulty in preparing a lemon cake, she writes:

I'm sorry that you had a problem.  Cooking the lemon filling is a little bit delicate.

As if to say, well that's certainly never happened to me.  What kind of ham-fisted, bad technique are you using?

The products and items she suggests buying are mostly rather expensive.  My favorite however has to do with her silver bowls (which I'd like to point out that Mia happens to also have (I'm going to steal them!)):

Where can I find Ina's silver bowls?



The bowls are old hotel silver that have been re-silver-plated. They're from a wonderful company called Hotel Silver. They're antiques, so you can't be sure of any particular dish but Hotel Silver is sold at Bergdorf Goodman in NY City on the 6th floor and online at CassandrasKitchen.com. I like them because they're the kind of silver you can use every day.

THIS BITCH IS TRIPPIN'!!!  SILVER YOU CAN USE EVERY DAY?!?!?!  Sounds legit. 

My plan is pretty much to move with Mia to wherever Ina is and insinuate ourselves in her circle.  Then she'll adopt us.  Can you imagine how amazing it would be to have Ina Garten mother you???  Well, hopefully it wouldn't get all Jewish grandmothery in the way that she'd guilt trip me about everything and passive aggressively insult me at every turn--you know what?  Fine, I'd put up with it.  Just cook for me, giggle nervously, ask me a million rhetorical questions, and narrate everything you do in soothing tones.

When I think about it more, Ina has some faggotry up in her as well.  As we learned in Paris Is Burning, a faggot will pull a stunt on you, and you won't even realize it until days later.  She could say something about an ingredient or pan, and next week you'll say to yourself, wait a minute, was she reading me?  Wigs off to Queen Ina.

If You Love Food

"Is the foie gras fresh?  Is it delicious?" -Phaedra Parks, Real Housewives of Atlanta

And I know you do.  Half of what Mia and I text each other about is food.  My bestie Sunshine has started his own food blog!  He's kicking it off by reviewing restaurants in the SoMa disctrict of San Francisco.  So the next time I visit him I can just load his site and see what to suggest.  I'm really digging his writing style.  It's got a hint of Gwyneth Paltrow, but without the pretension; so it comes off as genuine, relatable, and expert.  I can't wait for more!

Sweet Dreams

I had a dream last night that I was taking part in one of those Food Network sugar competitions. I just remember pulling a packed sugar figurine out of a mold along with my co-chef (a sassy black woman of course). It was a little less than a foot tall, and it was our prototype. We knew if it went well, we would be making many more. It was a sugar statuette of Bea Arthur, complete with shoulderpads, gown shape, and what would eventually be a sequins clutch purse. This bitch was ready for the big charity ball! Sidenote: damn, those old bitches were always going to charity balls. Imagine how many jersey sequins super-scoop-neck-to-the-knee tops and floor-length skirts those twats had. !!! I know, right? I remember thinking that it was shaped so well and all we had to do was airbrush it. The interesting part was that it must have been brown sugar. I guess we were making Black Bea Arthur. You know that exclamation (well, you nerds might) "Merlin's beard?" Well, I want to start saying "Bea Arthur's beard!" It's not "fetch," I'm going to make this happen.

Hannukah Cake

My contribution to our holiday dinner was preparing a dessert with my cousin. We decided to make a chocolate almond cake from a Julia Child recipe. We doubled it so we could stack them. Here's the recipe:

REINE DE SABA (Chocolate and Almond Cake)CAKE:

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoon granulated sugar
6 large eggs, separated
2 pinches salt
8 ounces semisweet chocolate, melted with 4 tablespoons brewed coffee
2/3 cup finely pulverized (ground) almonds
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1 1/2 cups sifted cake flour, returned to sifter

CHOCOLATE BUTTER ICING:2 ounces semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
2 tablespoons brewed coffee
6 tablespoons unsalted butter


Instead of buttering and flouring a cake pan, use parchment paper. Just line two 8-inch diameter cake pans that are at least 1 1/2 inches deep with the paper. This will make your life so much easier. I am never greasing a damn pan again. Martha Stewart would be proud. In a 3-quart mixing bowl, cream butter and 1 1/3 cups sugar together with an electric mixture for several minutes until mixture is fluffy and pale yellow. Beat in egg yolks until well blended. Beat egg whites and pinch of salt in medium bowl until soft peaks form. Add remaining 2 tablespoon sugar and beat until stiff peaks form. Fold chocolate mixture into butter-sugar mixture, then stir in almonds and almond extract. Alternate folding in a portion of the egg whites and sifting some of the flour in until they're all together. Turn batter into prepared cake pan and bake on middle rack of a preheated 350-degree oven, about 25 minutes or until cake has puffed and 2 1/2 to 3 inches around the circumference are set so that a cake tester in that area comes out clean. That's how long the recipe says to bake it, but ours was done in more like 15 minutes. Julia says to melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pot of simmering water, but eff that noise. Pop that shit in the microwave. No problem. We actually ran out of chocolate, but as it happened, our G-Ma (we were cooking at her house) had some 20-year-old Hannukah gelt, so we mixed in what we needed. Beat butter into chocolate, a tablespoon at a time. Place the icing in the fridge to set up a little for spreading consistency.

We actually made a different icing for the center layer between the two cakes. This is it:

2 cups powdered sugar

1/2 stick softened butter

2 tbsp brewed coffee

1 tsp almond extract

1/8 tsp salt

1 tsp cocoa, sweetened or not, whatever.

Just mix the shit together, and it will be ready for the middle layer.

Spread the middle icing on top of one cake, place the other cake on top, and trim the edges if you think it will make icing it easier. Spread the chocolate icing all over. We then placed sliced almonds all around the outside of the cake before placing it in the fridge to set. Leave it out for maybe an hour at room temp before serving. I individually placed the slices on the cake, while my cousin sort of threw them at the cake. The picture at the top of the post is my side, and the one below is hers. It looked. . . special, and certainly tasted no less delicious!

But Classy, Though

Ten points to Gryffindor! for anyone who can place the reference for the title of this post.

An recent obsession of mine has been making buffalo chicken wraps when I get home from work. Complete with "Mexican cheddar jack" cheese and sour cream. I don't use the already flavored "buffalo chicken" from the store, but regular chicken tenders and store-bought buffalo sauce. Today as I prepared to assemble my snack, I needed to open a new bottle of sauce. It had plastic wrap around the top, but there was no perforated section to remove that would make it simple. I held the bottle in one hand, and a pair of scissors in the other, and decided that a quick stroke toward the lid would take care of my problem. As I did so, the lid popped off with a portion of the glass intact, and spicy buffalo sauce ejaculated all over the kitchen.

My first thought was of sabrage: when a saber is used to sheer the top off champagne bottles, taking the collar of glass with it. I had to laugh at the déclassé reflection of champagne to buffalo sauce and saber to scissors. I'm perfectly happy with my ghetto, country version.