Gravlax

I meant to post this before Valentine's, but couldn't find the time to do it. Sorry, guys.

But let's say you need to feed a naked woman, either because you fucked up big time and need a ticket out of the doghouse, or because some great miracle you managed to lure an unsuspecting victim into your filthy man-cave. Never fear, brother. I got your ass covered.

Just let me clear something: This shit needs planning. Not a lot of elbow grease, but definitely some planning. So get your ass ready as soon as you fuck up, or hook up.

Gravlax (grav = grave, lax = salmon) is an ancient recipe, dating all the way back to the Middle Ages, when scandinavian fishermen would wrap their salmon in birch leaves and bury it to ferment near the shoreline. Much like 17th century japanese fishermen fermented their fish in soured rice (SUSHI!). Actual fermentation is no longer that important, and has been replaced with curing.

So let's start with a 1 lb fillet of salmon. Carefully remove any bones left and skin it. If you lack the tools or basic motor skills, ask your fishmonger to do it for you, then leave the place with your head down and your shoulders shrugged in shame. Trim the odd bits from your fillet (and eat that shit raw, you big fucking pussy), then cut it in half.

Now, line a large baking tray with several overlapping layers of cling film. Place a few sheets of nori on top.

Mix 1.5 cups of regular table salt and 1.5 cups sugar in a bowl. Don't splurge the Benjamins on this shit, coz you'll be washing it off in a few days anyway. Dump 1/3 of the mix on the nori, then place the first fillet on top.

Sprinkle some more of the sugar and salt mixture on the fish, then a lot of dill, fresh or dried. Now take a small, raw beet root and grate the shit of of it on the fish. This will give it a nice earthy flavor and color it a totally gay shade of reddish purple that'll look awesome when we're done.

Add some more dill, salt and sugar and lay the second fillet on top. Sprinkle the rest of the salt and sugar mixture, then cover with a few more nori sheets. Now wrap this shit tight -and I mean italian-nun-tight - in several layers of cling film. Place it in a ziploc bag and forget about it in your fridge for 2 to 4 days.

Unlike when you're curing bacon, you don't need to fuck around with it during its curing time, so just place it in the fridge with something heavy on top and leave it be. Four days later, you'll be left with this:

Bear in mind, the longer it sits, the dryer and chewier it will be.

Unwrapt it, then rinse it thoroughly to remove all the excess brine and shit. Now slice it as thinly as your dumb gorilla hands let you and cover with cling film until it's time to serve.

Look at this beautiful motherfucker, bitch! It's like the bacon of the sea

See that pinkish coloring right there? Totally not gay... well, maybe a little, but fucking awesome.

To serve, let's make some Steward Spread. Traditionally, this is made with mustard, but I couldn't find any good european mustard to mix with my cream cheese, so I made do with the shit in my fridge. This is 3 oz cream cheese, 1 oz sour cream, the zest from 1 lemon, some dill, salt and pepper.

Also, gravlax is served on rye toast, but that's impossible to find here, so some regular sourdough had to do the trick. Spread with the sauce, then let your inner florist take over and arrange the salmon slices on top. Drizzle with some olive oil and sprinkle a few drops of lemon juice. Whatever gay-as-fuck decorations you feel are necessary are welcome. In this case, beet leaves and cherry tomatoes.

Trust me, if this big fucking hairy vagina liked it, it's fucking irresistible

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Gravlax

1      1 lb salmon fillet, trimmed and halved

1.5   cups sugar

1.5   cups salt

1      small beetroot, shredded

1      cup chopped dill

4      sheets of nori

1      shitload of cling film

1      ziploc bag

Spread

3      Oz cream cheese

1      Oz sour cream

2      lemons, zested, a few drops of lemon juice

1      Tbsp dill

1      tsp salt and pepper

1. Mix the salt and sugar in a bowl, then murder your fish with it. Sandwich the dill and shredded beetroot between the fillets, then cover in nori and wrap tightly with cling film.
2. Place in ziploc bag and leave it the fuck alone for 2 to 4 days.
3. Slice as thinly as you can, or like, or whatever, it's your fish.
4. Mix all of the spread ingredients, then serve with toast.
5. Fucking rule.

Peanut Butter Cheesecake Brownies

Legend has it some old lady in the late 19th century was famous for her chocolate cakes. As time went by and her brain started rotting, fuck-ups were more and more frequent. One time, she forgot to add any leavening to her cake, resulting in a flat and dense piece of chocolate bread. As she was making this in a hurry to entertain guests, she had no choice but to serve this turd-like montrosity and bite the fucking bullet.

Turns out her guests raved about it; and, like any normal, red blooded woman, she fucking lied through her teeth and said it was intentional. The brownie was born.

The recipe has changed over the years, becoming more dense and fudge-like as time passes. Still, being essentially a piece of unleavend bread, it's a staple in every retarded cook's home. Since it's already a fucked-up chocolate cake, it is nigh impossible to fuck up a brownie (though I've seen it happen), so fat kids everywhere burn their sausage-like little fingers every afternoon making litle squares of diabetes from a box.

I say fuck boxes. My atheromas will not be composed of boxed shit. My arteries will be lined with expensive cholesterol. The excess glucose in my blood will encrust my pancreas with diamonds. If I'm going, I'm going with style.

Which is why we're fucking doing this LIVE! With SHORTENING! Trans fats extremists be fucked.

Preheat your oven to 325°F. Grease a brownie tray and set it aside.

You'll need 8 ounces of semisweet baking chocolate. Melt if over a double broiler or nuke it in 30 second intervals stirring frequently until completely liquid.

Now, good chocolate can be a rare commodity, so sometimes you need to improvise. Whenever I lack good chocolate I prefer to substitute with cocoa powder instead of buying shitty chocolate bars. It's simple: I know what goes in, I control the percentage of cocoa solids and sweetness. So to make 8 oz of baking chocolate from powder, you'll need to melt 4 Tablespoons of vegetable shortening (or oil, if you're too much of a pussy) and dissolve 12 Tablespoons of cocoa powder in it while it's still hot. Then, you will add 9 Tablespoons white sugar and whisk until silky and smooth. I like to do this by hand with a whisk because the cocoa is a very fine powder and it will fly all over the kitchen if an electric mixer is used.

Yeap, shortening. Hide yo' kids... Don't be a pussy, it's 4 Tablespoons 

Aaaah, all that warm, delicious fat

I know the math is off by about 6 Tablespoons, but trust me, 1 Tablespoon of cocoa powder weighs less than a Tablespoon of sugar. In the end, you'll be left with roughly 230g of pure chocolatey goodness. Once you're done, nuke it in 15 second intervals with a stick of butter and stir until smooth. Leave this aside to cool.

Mini Sheldon Moment Alert!

Chocolate (from the náhuatl Xocolatl: Bitter sour water, referring to the drink consumed by the aztecs) comes from the Cacao plant (Theobroma cacao). It's believed that cacao comes from the mayan kawkaw, meaning "food for the gods". Incidentally, Theobroma means the same in latin. 

Moctezuma Xocoyotzin, the last aztec emperor before the spanish conquest, had one last truly diplomatic act: He served hot chocolate to Hernan Cortez, who immediately loved the drink and repaid Moctezuma's kindness by wiping away his entire civilization.

End Mini Sheldon Moment

In a separate bowl, mix 2 whole eggs, 1/2 cup sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract until fluffy (5 mins, tops). I fucking hate the word fluffy, but there's no other adjective for this. Mix it slowly with the cooled chocolate-butter mixture. It will thicken fast.

Now add 1/2 cup all-purpouse flour and a pinch of salt and keep mixing until it resembles play-doh. Set aside.

Up to this point, you could bake this concoction and make some kick-ass brownies, but that would put you in the same level as any other fat kid with an oven. We need to kick this up a notch. We need cheesecake.

Take 1 bar (9 Oz) of cream cheese and 2/3 of a cup of your favorite peanut butter and soften them for a few seconds in the microwave oven. Beat them with 2 whole eggs, 1/2 cup of sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract. Stop after 5 minutes and add and 2 Tablespoons of flour and 2 Tablespoons of sour cream, beat for another 5 minutes.

On to the building: First, spread the chocolate play-doh on the mold, making sure it's even. Then slowly drop big dollops of the cream cheese mixture on it and smooth it out with a spatula. Place the mold in the middle of your oven and don't look at it for 30 to 35 mins. Take it out and let it cool to room temperature.

Depending on the shape of your mold, this recipe will yield 18 to 25 squares of chocolate-y awesomeness. Go and fucking blow those fat girl scouts out of the water.

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Peanut butter Cheesecake Brownies
yields 18

Brownies:
8 Oz semisweet baking chocolate (alternatively, 12 Tbsps cocoa powder, 9 Tbsps of sugar and 4 Tbsps of the fat of your choice)
1 (3 Oz, 90 g) stick of butter
2 large eggs
1/2 cup of sugar
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp salt

Peanut butter Cheesecake
1 bar cream cheese
2/3 cup peanut butter ( I use chunky, it saves me adding nuts)
2 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsps (scant) all-purpouse flour)
2 Tbsps sour (generous) sour cream

1. Preheat your oven to 325°F. Grease a brownie mold. Line with parchment if you're insecure about your unmolding abilities.
2. Melt the chocolate and whisk with a stick of melted butter. Keep it above 90°F and never let it burn.
3. Beat the eggs, sugar, vanilla extract and salt on medium speed for 2 to 5 minutes, then pour slowly on the chocolate mixture. 
4. Add 1/2 cup of flour slowly and keep mixing until combined.
5. Soften the cream cheese and peanut butter in the microwave oven, then beat the shit out of them on high. Add the rest of the ingredients and beat for 5 minutes.
6. Spread the brownie batter on your mold, then drop big dollops of the cream cheese mixture on top.
7. Place in the middle rack of your oven, away from the walls, and bake, undisturbed, for 30 minutes.
8. Let cool until just warm and cut.
9. Fucking rule whatever it is that need ruling.
10. Show some respect and leave a comment, you ungrateful fuck.

Crystalized Pumpkin

Northern Mexico is probably best known for its beef, but there's obviously a lot more to our food than that. Roughly 30% of Sonora's surface is desert, which means traditional dishes are simple and calorie-dense. So this being November, Mexican Cuisine Pride Month, I decided to try and make one of the most traditional sonoran desserts: Crystalized Pumpkin.

Pumpkins last for months without much need for special attention, and chances are you'll find them dirt-cheap just about anywhere around this date. It's the perfect occasion to step the fuck away from the canned shit and prove to yourself you have a moderate measure of usefulness.

Start with a large pumpkin. A good way to tell if the pumpkin was vine-ripened is taking a good look at its overall shape and state of the stem. Vine-ripened pumpkins are somewhat flatter, since they're left on the ground longer. The skin is thick and irregular, but has no blemishes or scraped spots. The stems are thorougly dry and tough, much tougher than the skin, and the whole thing feels heavy for its size.

This is a 16lb pumpkin I got from my grandfather. Clean the surface and split it open using a meat cleaver and a hammer.

Scrape all the shit from inside and throw it away, then rinse the pumpkin and cut it up into manageable sections.

Peel it with a knife, then chop it to evenly sized chunks, about 2 cubic inches each. You need them to be uniform so they'll cook evenly. We're left with rougly 14 lbs of flesh.

This is calcium hydroxide, otherwise known as lime. Yeap, the same shit you'll find in construction sites. Don't be a fucking pussy, it's perfectly safe. We're soaking the pumpkin in a very alkaline solution before cooking, a process akin to the nixtamalization of corn.

SHELDON MOMENT ALERT!

Plant cell walls are soluble in alkaline solutions, which changes their structure. The cells take up massive ammounts of calcium, which increases the pumpkin's nutritional value. The alkaline solution denaturizes most of the protein found in the pumpkin and breaks up its sugars, essentially starting a chemical caramelization process. This means the pumkpin will change its consistency and resist the long-ass cooking time without disintegrating into a paste, which is good.

If you're too much of a pussy to use lime, you could use red limestone from South Asian markets and pay dearly in both time and money; or you could use baking powder and risk a bitter taste... ooooor you could just grow a pair, it's up to you.

Place the pumpkin chunks in a very large pot and fill with enough water to cover it, then add 1 Tbsp lime for every pound of fruit. Give it a good stir and let it soak for 24 hours. BE FUCKING CAREFUL, don't fuck around, don't breathe it in, try not to get too much on your skin. If you do, rinse it off with vinegar or you'll be nixtamalizing your skin off.

The next day, take it outside and rinse it thoroughly with clean tap water a few times to get rid of the excess lime. Wash the pot and fill it with 2 cups of water for every pound of fruit. Add 1 lb of piloncillo for every 2 lbs of fruit, the peel from a few oranges, some cinamon sticks and a fistful of cloves to make a thin syrup.

Once the sugar dissolves, add the pumpkin, lower the flame to medium and just fucking forget about it until the syrup is thick and sticky. This being 16 fucking pounds, it took me 8 hours to cook the damn thing.

 As with all crystalized fruits, you can take it out of the syrup, roll it un sugar and let it dry over night. We keep it in the syrup and store it in air-tight jars. It will last up to 6 months in your fridge.

Serve warm with some strong coffee, or pour it over vanilla ice cream. Be fucking awesome.

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Cubierto de Calabaza (Crystalized Pumpkin)
Yields a fucking lot, adjust quantities following proportion

14lbs of cubed raw pumpkin
14 Tbsps lime
Water

7 lbs piloncillo
3 Oz cinnamon sticks
1/2 cup whole cloves
Peel from 4 oranges.

1. Once you've dealt with the pain in the ass that is prepping the pumpkin, soak it in a solution of water and lime for 24 hours. Rinse thoroughly.
2. Make a syrup using 2 cups of water and 1/2lb of piloncillo for every lb of pumpkin. Add cinnamon, cloves and orange peel (entirely up to you) and boil.
3. As soon as the syrup boils, turn the heat down to medium, add the pumpkin and cook until the syrup is reduced by half.
4. Be fucking awesome, mexican grampa style.