Random Cougar Life

I put up some recipes (sort of) on my cooking site! One is a marinade for salmon, here. (let marinate for at least two hours) And one is pan seared pork chops, here. I haven’t put instructions on cooking on the pork chops, but they are to be seared in a pan/skillet/whatever. look up “pork chop cooking times.” for times. I’m gonna add all that in, but that recipe has been sitting on its butt doing nothing for a year!

I totally forgot to update with the gravey recipe!! I hope this is posted in time to help everyone who needs it.

fill a small pot with chicken/turkey broth, season with summer savory, celery seed, tumeric, celery salt. Do not use any other salt, just celery salt. Also add black pepper, white pepper (if available) and garlic powder. 

giblets (internal organs and necks) dice everything very small, except any necks, and place in pot.

celery, chop celery and place in pot.

thicken gravey 1 tsp flour at a time 

also, if your cooking vegetable dishes, add a small bit of a vegetable from one or two dishes. EXAMPLE I’m going to be cooking asparagus, so after triming the spears i use any leftover grean parts, not the tough, white root, but the softer  leftover bits.

Sorry its so short and not very thorough, I have to get in bed so I can work in the morning. Hope its helpful!

[I don't have time to add the gravy etc. right now, I'll add it later]

I have been meaning to post this for a while, as I was gonna give April a recipe for stuffing. I finally got around to it, whee. These recipes will be much neater that the stew recipe, since that was mostly a throw your leftovers into a pot and let simmer deal. The ingredients purchased for the stuffing is more than you will use, so I have made this a sort of “set”. When I make these dishes I tie in the flavors to my other dishes (the difference between a good meal and a great one). So if you are making a whole meal, this will give you a stuffing (which can be used as a rice dish instead of a stuffing), a marinade for your meat dish, and a dressing for a salad.

What order should you cook these in? I recommend preparing your meat dish first(in this case 2 cornish game hens) and get it started, then work on the rice, and very lastly do the dressing.

Ingredients? Just to clarify, the ingredients purchased for the wild rice stuffing are the same ingredients used in the dressing and marinade. Reserve all your liquids!

Liscensing rights. This recipe is not to be published or sold for any amount of money. This recipe is the property of one the owner of this blog, Jessy-Ni and is only to be used for personal cooking or charities. Anyone can print as many copies of this recipe as they wish for their own personal use, or for distributing free of charge, as long as it is credited to the author. This recipe maybe linked to but is not to be copied onto any other webpage, unless it is so posted by the author of this recipe.

Wild Rice Stuffing With Peaches and Blackberries - Makes enough for two cornish game hens (For Turkey: One recipe is good for 5lbs of turkey, double as needed for each extra 5lbs of your turkey)

Ingredients

• 2 packages of wild rice (any brand is fine)
• 1 jar of peaches (or two cans or three fresh peaches)
• 1 large bag of frozen blackberries (or 3 containers fresh blackberries)
• pine nuts to taste

Preperation and Cooking

1. Set out frozen blackberries to thaw.
2. Cook all wild rice according to instructions (if cooking for a turkey, don’t overflow your pan! Cook exactly enough for your pan size and allow time for all of the rice to cook).
3. Once wild rice is done add 3/4 jar of peaches (or two fresh peaches, or 1 and (1/2) canned peaches) and 2 cups blackberries (frozen or fresh) to the rice. Pour out 1/4 cups of the thawed blackberry juice from the bag (If not enough juice, or using fresh blackberries, then press a handful of blackberries into a mush like consistency and mix with the juice) and add 1 tablespoon of peach syrup (if using canned peaches taste juice and see if it is too salty. If it is too salty, or if using fresh peaches, then mix 1 tablespoon honey instead).
4. Mix thoroughly (preferably with your hands, if you or whoever your fixing this for has issues with germs, then use plastic gloves to mix. Don’t use naturally derived latex, as it is an allergen. Click here for more information). When done the stuffing should have a homogenous mix of peaches, berries, and rice.
5. Add pine nuts to taste and mix in.

Blackberry Peach Vinegarette – Makes 2 cups of dressing

Ingredients

1. 1 (1/4) cups extra virgin olive oil
2. (1/2) cup baslamic vinegar
3. (1/4) cup frozen blackberries
4. 1 tablespoon peach syrup

Preperation

1. Combine all ingredients in a tightly sealed jar. Shake very vigorously, until all ingredients are thoroughly mixed.
2. Sample dressing and if not sweet enough add 1 teaspoon peach syrup, shake again, and taste. Repeat until dressing has desired sweetness.
3. Once dressing is at desired sweetness, refrigerate until cold.
4. Serve chilled. If desired sprinkle salad with pine nuts and a few blackberries or peach slices.

Peach and Blackberry Cornish Game Hens – Serves 4-5 people (if scaling this up for a turkey don’t fill anything into the body cavity during those steps, just syrup) (And for Pete’s sake don’t put your stuffing inside until the bird is done cooking!)

Ingredients

• 2 cornish game hens
• 2 handfuls of blackberries
• remaining peaches
• reserved peach syrup
• summer savory
• celery salt
• pulped celery (optional)

Preperations and Cooking

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees Farenheit.
2. (optional step) Take (1/2) celery stalk and turn it into a pulp, either grate it or put it through a food processor.
3. Wash thoroughly your cornish game hens and check inside their body cavity for any gizards, hearts, etc. Remove everything from the body cavity and rinse it out very thoroughly. Your hens may or may not have come already “tied up”, usually the twine is wrapped around the chest and easy to release the tension from without cutting. If no twine has been provided don’t worry, cornish game hens are much smaller than turkey and will keep moist untied with only a little bit more attention.
4. Once hens are rinsed, prepare to season them by placing them over a bowl or cutting board. One hen at a time. Sprinkle over the top enough summer savory to give it a fine dusting. Sprinkle just a few dashes of celery salt and cover with half the celery pulp (optional).
5. Rub the seasonings into the cornish game hen, using your hands. You want to massage the hen to get the the seasonings deep, past the skin and into the muscle. You should do this for about five minutes to ten minutes. When your done, both the top (back) and bottom (chest) of the hen should be evenly coated and of a uniform color. Check the wings and legs to make sure they don’t have too much seasoning on them. If you used the celery pulp and have an excess of seasonings, remove the excess from the first hen and place it on the second hen. Repeat the seasoning and rubbing process on the second hen, making sure that seasoning is evenly distributed.
6. Place the cornish game hen so that the body cavity opening is facing upward, pour in two tablespoons of peach syrup and ensure the spine is coated with it by placing it on its back and rubbing the inside of the body cavity thoroughly (if you can’t rub the inside of the body cavity place it on its back and let sit for 5 minutes). This helps prevent the meat from drying out during cooking. Repeat for the second cornish game hen.
7. Again taking the cornish game hen and placing the body cavity opening upwards, stuff a handful of blackberries inside. Repeat for the second cornish game hen.
8. Place in a basting dish and place in oven to cook. Keep unused syrup to the side, or in the refrigerator.
9. [If not tied, or very moist hens are desired] Check every 15 minutes and baste fresh syrup on top of the hens for 1 hour. Then, check back every 30 minutes until done. Basting as needed from the already present syrup (cooking time varies significantly depending on your own personal oven, check the owners manual for specific times) [If tied, or if less moist hens are desired] Check every 30 minutes, basting as needed. At least adding syrup during basting two to three times, then using existing syrup.
10. Remove from oven and let cool. Serve over wild rice stuffing, garnish with reserved peaches.

Whenever I’m chopping up meat to use in a meal I always save the bits that don’t go in the recipe and use them for a stew. I was just thinking of posting it up here so other peeps could use it, since its efficient and a cheap, great for college students . Its not gonna be in normal recipe form though, since it sorta varies on what you have in your kitchen. Most of the ingredients are optional, since it uses all your leftovers and stuff. The only stuff you really need is meat and veggies and water, enough to fill your stew pot at least halfway with.

Contents: Equipment, Meats, Adding Stew Base, Thicker Stew, The Other Bits (Veggies), (Beans), (Pasta), (Seasoning), The Best Bit, The End

Need:

• stove top
• 1 really big pot
• Meat (amount variable)
• 2-3 cans of veggies
• 2 cans tomato (optional)
• 1-4 cans of tomato paste (optional) OR 1 jar of spagetti sauce (optional)
• beans, fresh or canned (optional)
• Pasta (optional)
• Fresh Veggies (optional)

Equipments

First off, you gotta have a stove top, or I guess you could make a fire and use the coals for heat transferring… But either way you need heat making and a really big pot. Not like, that little pot you use for rice even though it overflows and is really gross to clean up, like a damn big pot you could put like, a dog in, and not a tiny little shit dog but a kinda big terrier, or something.

Ok, so tonight your preparing some meats of your choice and you like to clean your own meat. Whichever meat your using (except for fish and shellfish) trim it so that there is muscle still attached to the ligaments and fat that your cutting off. Depending on how busy your kitchen is for that meal, either freeze the bits or cook them right there.

Meats

When you decide to cook them, either sear the trimmed bits in olive oil on a pan, or grill them (one of those george foreman grills works fine).

Once the meat bits are done, take them off the fire and make sure your really big pot has a little water in it (about 2-3 cups) put the meat bits and juices in there, turn the fire on low, and start on the next step.

Making stock! If you cook a lot, you usually have boullion laying around and can put 2 teaspoons of the appropriate flavor in your really big pot and fill the pot half way with water. If you don’t really like cooking or don’t have a whole lot of seasonings you can use some other things for a stock base, such as tomato juice, vegetable juices, or tomato paste and water.

Adding Stew Base

First check your pantry for canned veggies. If you have alot of canned veggies (peas, green beans, corn, hominy, mixed veggie, etc.) use 2-3 cans of your veggie of choice. This should have filled your really big pot about halfway. If you don’t like thick stew then add some water and your done! Let it stew for 3 hours and hooray, stew.

Thicker Stew

If you did all of this (except the waiting 3 hours bit), and think the stew still looks thin, there are a few ways you can make it thicker. If you happen to have tomato based spaghetti sauce lying around, put the whole container of that in there. If you actually buy tomato paste and/or canned tomatoes DON’T put the spagetti sauce in there, and instead put in 2 cans of canned tomatoes (diced, whole, it doesn’t matter) and one can of tomato paste. Stir thoroughly, and if it is still too thin, put in another can of paste and stir thoroughly again. Repeat until thickness satisfaction has been met. Let cook for 3 hours on low heat and you have stew.

The Other Bits

But wait, what are all those other ingredients for? Well, I’m going to tell you.

(Veggies)If you’ve got any fresh veggies lying around that you know your never going to use, go ahead and chop them up and throw them in the stew pot. If they’ve started going bad, don’t worry, cut around the bad bits and throw those away, and put the good bits in the stew.

(Beans)Alright, if you saw a bag of raw beans on sale and just couldn’t resist them, but know your never gonna get around to cooking them, here’s your chance! Rinse the beans thoroughly in a bowl or strainer, and drain. Add to the stew, and let sit for about 5 hours on low heat, or until the beans are soft and done. Also, if you just like beans, and keep cans of them around, go ahead and add a can of them if you like. But DON’T add any flavors that have HONEY, SUGAR, MAPLE(unless it has ham or bacon in it, that’s ok), or some variation thereof in the title. A little sweetness is fine, especially if you used chicken or some other poultry, but those flavors are TOO sweet and might throw the rest of  the flavors off. If you like really sweet things, then go ahead. Keeping in mind that SPAGHETTI SAUCE, if you used it, has garlic and onion flavors in it, and usually oregano and basil, those seasonings usually don’t mix well with very sweet seasonings.

(Pasta) Ok, so when you got your canned veggies you realised you had a flaming ton of pasta in your pantry and have no idea how you can possibly eat it all. Well luck for you, your making a stew! If the pasta is anything other than angel hair/”normal”/fettucini go ahead toss it in your stew, and when the noodles are soft and squishy your done! Yey, stew. But maybe you bought a Sam’s Club Valu Pak of long noodle stuff, and really want to use some. Well take about 2-3 handfuls of pasta and break it in half, then put it in the stew. If you think that’s still too long for you, break it further until your satisfied. If you think that isn’t enough pasta just add some more until your happy.

(Seasoning) Add just about anything you like to it, EXCEPT salt. Remember guys, you just put like 3 or more canned goods in there, you don’t NEED any more salt!

The Best Bit

Now we are at the best bit! You just made a stew, and you might not know what that means, so let me share.

It means you can eat for at least four days now without doing ANYTHING except heating up your bowl of stew.

Also, if you keep adding water or other stock to the stew it can last even longer, pretty much until you decide your damn tired of it, or until you get your next paycheck! The best kinda food for poor college students, and once you have it all cooked you just have to reheat it!

The End

Alright, that’s everything! I hope you guys find this useful, if you have any questions just reply and I’ll answer