Tag: potatoes

Cheesy Potatoes
If you’ve been to some sort of party that hasn’t had cheesy potatoes as a food option then I’m not sure what’s going on with the people you know. Every graduation party, wedding, or other social event should have cheesy potatoes. If you aren’t a good enough host to have cheesy potatoes, then I’m not going to be a good enough guest to stay. It’s just… not cool.

What a lot of people don’t realize is how easy they are to make. Seriously, 8 bucks and 45 minutes later you have yourself an enormous pile of cheese and potatoes. Who doesn’t like that combination?

Ingredients
- 2 lb. bag of hash browns – Get the diced variety. The ones that are cut into squares.
- 1 bag shredded cheddar cheese
- 1 cup sour cream
- 1 can cream of chicken soup
- Butter
- 1/4 of a large, yellow onion, diced.
- Salt, pepper
Directions
- Mix everything together, throw any remaining cheese on top, and bake for 45 mins. Really difficult.
Just for the record, I’m not really down with putting Cornflakes on top. If you want a little texture, throw some breadcrumbs on it. Don’t be crushing up breakfast cereal and putting it on food. That’s just weird.
July 26, 2010
Dinner at Home

One thing I don’t emphasize enough on this blog is my love for cooking. I would be lying if I said that I didn’t love eating out, but the more I learn to make meals the way I like them the less I enjoy eating out at places unless they have something really special that I am looking for. My style of cooking is a little different, because I enjoy throwing a bunch of different things together, measuring be damned, and hope it turns out good. This is how I’ve always went about the process, and I’ve learned a lot more because of it. Rarely do I ever follow recipes exactly how they are written. I always like to change things and add my own ingredients. This is what makes it fun for me.

I cooked a big dinner the other night which consisted of some of my favorites. I felt the need to share. Maybe next time I’ll try to write down a recipe. Until then, enjoy the pictures.

The dinner started off with an appetizer plate consisting of garlic stuffed olives, grape leaves, artichoke hearts, and a feta spread. The plate is drizzled with a pureed combination of garlic, olive oil, and red pepper. This is how we do fancy over here.

One of my favorite things to make is baked potato soup. Why? Well, to be completely honest because it’s nearly impossible to screw it up. You can throw almost anything into the pot, taste it, and if it needs more of something you just throw it in. Cheese? Great. Broccoli? Throw some in. Sour cream? As much as you like. Chili beans? That’s kinda weird, but sure. It’s like an pot of imagination soup. Oh, and I forgot the best part. The most integral part of any baked potato soup is bacon.

My baked potato soup starts with the most delicious smelling combination in the entire world. Sauteed onions and garlic. Keep this a secret, but I have plans to turn this smell into a candle and market it nationwide. From there I pour in some chicken stock, whole milk, a little flour, and 3-4 potatoes with a dash of salt and a good amount of pepper. I let this boil until the potatoes are soft, then I let my immersion blender go to work. I’m not a big fan of completely pureeing potato soup because I like a few chunks of potatoes in my bowl. After the blending, in goes some crispy bacon, green onions, and whatever kind of cheese you like. I stick with either Romano and/or cheddar.

This particular night I attempted to make a salad. If you’re a regular reader you probably know that I’m not much of a salad guy. Just never saw the point. For some reason I decided that I was going to try and make a salad that I could enjoy. The ingredients pretty much ruined the entire point of a green side dish, but I made a salad. Give me some credit here. My best idea for a salad that I could eat ended up being a buffalo chicken salad. This consisted of baby Romain lettuce, Frank’s red hot mixed with ranch dressing, buffalo style chicken, and crumbled bleu cheese. This turned out to be pretty tasty. If I’m going to eat salad, this is what I’m going to require from now on.

Since a hearty soup and salad just weren’t enough, I made a main course for some reason. I mixed up some ricotta and Romano cheeses with chopped spinach, pancetta, and some random Italian spices, and stuffed them inside of some Manicotti shells. I poured some Bove’s roasted garlic marinara sauce over top, and left them in the oven on 350 for about 15 minutes. If you’re ever looking for a quick dinner, this is perfection.

I understand this might be the most random combination of foods you have ever seen, but it was a fun dinner. The tastes didn’t exactly go together, but who really cares? The food was delicious, and everyone was full at the end of the night. Until the next time I undertake a cooking endeavor such a this, I bid you good eating. Damnit, that sounded too much like Alton Brown.

January 8, 2010
Christmas 2009 – The Main Course

Yesterday I brought your our Christmas Eve appetizers with a promise of further deliciousness today. Well folks, here it is. It just doesn’t get much better than this for me. Apparently this dinner is my responsibility next year. If that’s what is required of me in order to enjoy this meal from now on, I’m pretty sure I can accept the challenge.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, public for the first time, the Moors family Christmas dinner.

This dinner isn’t anything fancy or incredibly difficult to prepare. We stick with the Steak Au Piovre, which is pepper steak in fancy French talk, and twice baked potatoes. We’re meat and potatoes kind of people. My Father has been making this same thing for the last seven or eight years and it never gets old. The whole family looks forward to it every year.

Like I just said about 20 words ago, the preparation for the meal isn’t too fancy. The quality of the meat is the important thing here, with the seasonings and juices that eventually form adding a little flavor to go with it. The meat we tend to use are club steaks, which are cut from the short loin, next to the rib end, and when cut properly, they are delicious and tender steaks. Think of this as a T-bone steak without any of the choice tenderloin muscle in it. Depending on where you’re from, you might know these steaks as Delmonico steaks, though that name is more often used for rib-eye steaks.

Good quality meat is key, but another important aspect of the steak is fresh ground pepper. We picked up some fresh ground from the Spice Merchants in Ann Arbor which gives you a much better taste than simply relying on the same pepper you’ve had lying around for months. Past that, the only thing you really need is fresh parsley and chives, and some good Cogniac for the flambee at the end of the cooking process. By flambee, I mean pouring the Cogniac over the meat and setting it on fire. That’s the fun part.

I’ve already given you a look into this ancient family recipe, and by that I mean recipe that was pulled out of an ancient cookbook, so from here I will only offer photographic documentation.

For some reason all of the basil ended up on one steak. It was distributed evenly.

That last picture may look a little rare, but that’s exactly how I enjoy my steak. I remember trying a steak in Paris a few years ago and being completely disgusted by how little it was cooked. Since then, I have really grown to appreciate a perfectly cooked steak. Now, it’s amazing to me how many people go into a restaurant and ask for their steak to be cremated. The less juices there are the less taste there is. Once your steak has been fried for a short time the juices are sealed into steak. From this point onward the heat is forcing those lovely juices out of the steak.

Just want to say special thanks to my Father for sharing this meal with us every year. The man doesn’t like to cook, but he sucks it up and makes this dinner for us every year. Also, thanks to Uncle Jim for some of the photography.

December 27, 2009