Kitchen Accidents and Wasted Cake

I’m a clumsy person by nature, I always have been and I always will be – drunk, sober, in-between… it doesn’t matter.  At any given time, I have at least three (usually more) bruises on my body from running into shit or hitting myself on some object.  My hands are usually covered in a splendid assortment of cat scratches, or burns from cooking.  Spending so much time cooking, I’ve had several incidents involving knives to fingers, burns from the oven and boiling water, etc., but this week’s accident really took the cake.  I was making an artichoke pasta using fresh artichokes, which are evidently hard AF, when I attempted to quarter them with a large knife.  The knife slipped off the artichoke and came down on my fingernail – one of the worst pains I have ever felt.  I was honestly scared to look as I thought I’d cut through to the bone.  This is the second time I’ve ever had an injury involving a nail/toenail, and let me tell you – I totally know why they torture Prisoners of War by ripping their nails off now….

The pain doesn’t go away – my finger was THROBBING all night to the point that the pain kept waking me up out of my sleep, and the next day at work, it hurt to type at the keyboard.  Naturally I was slammed with work that day and therefore wanted to die. My finger still hurts, although it isn’t pulsating now.  The nail is basically cracked 3/4 of the way through from a horizontal angle starting at the cuticle… sexy, I know.  What can I say? I’m not a kept woman or lady who lunches, and therefore I will never have the unblemished, manicured hands of my dreams. Unless someone wants to make me a kept woman or afford me the life of a lady who lunches… but even then, I am so clumsy and like cooking/doing crafts etc., so my hands would never actually be nice.

My clumsy streak continued when I stubbed my toes so hard a couple of nights later, that I thought I broke a toe.  Luckily nothing was broken, I just chipped the nail polish and now have a bruise covering the top half of my foot  #blessed

In my last blog post, I was ranting about Dolly Parton not calling herself a feminist and how much it disappointed me – looks like I’m not the only one she disappointed: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/mar/03/dolly-parton-sister-ashamed-stars-silence-metoo-protest  Dolly’s own sister is pretty peeved at her as well.  Just thought I’d share – this is always a topic near and dear to my heart as a woman.

Anyhow, I feel like I’ve cooked such a random assortment of things over the last couple of weeks that I’ve neglected to share.  Work was insane this past week, and I worked late three out of five nights, so my cooking was kept to a minimum until this weekend.  I made these really awesome shrimp tostadas the week before last:

I cooked the shrimp in some minced garlic, smoked paprika, onion powder, cumin, salt, pepper, splash of hot sauce, and a splash of freshly squeezed lime juice. I also used purple (red) cabbage, which I now have a weird obsession with for some reason – it’s so much heartier and tastier than lettuce in salads, and so good for you vitamin wise.  I made a sauce that I both tossed the chopped cabbage in and then put a dollop of over the shrimp once plated.

For the sauce, I used a dollop of sour cream, about 2 Tbs. of mayonnaise, fresh lime juice, smoked paprika, and a generous squirt of sriracha sauce (hey – I never said these were authentic Mexican tostadas…).

I made fresh guacamole to top it off (smashed avocados, diced cherry tomatoes, granulated garlic, cayenne pepper, fresh lime juice, and chopped cilantro), and then fried the corn tortillas in hot vegetable oil.  Voila!  A relatively fast meal to prepare, yet very impressive when plated, semi-healthy, and insanely delicious.

I had some free time on my hands the week before last, and got the urge to bake a cake on a random week night.  Since I am avoiding do my taxes for now, among some other things I should really sit down and make myself do, I decided it seemed like a great idea to follow through with my desire to bake a cake.  Big mistake – it took so long start to finish (this is why I hate baking).

I usually only bake when I have to (Christmas, special occasions, etc.), but I really don’t like the process of baking.  Not only is it time consuming (batch in – batch out of cookies over the course of hours, waiting for shit to cool before frosting it, etc.), but the precision required is painful for me.  I guess I don’t really like to follow instructions or something, but in baking you HAVE to follow directions to a fault, otherwise it goes horribly awry.  Cooking is great, because as long as you know the basics (how to make a sauce, how long to cook things, what combinations of food and seasonings go together), you can improvise.  There really isn’t much improvisation to be had in baking.  Anyhow, I think I enjoy the decorative part of baking.  Sometimes I just want to see pretty, pink-frosted cupcakes, or in this case, frost and decorate a cake.  I decided to make a red velvet cake, and it turned out alright – nothing to write home about.  The recipe I used called for buttermilk and red food dye.  I have heard the best recipes call for mayonnaise (sounds gross, but keeps cake moist) and beet juice to dye the cake (but ain’t nobody got time for that on a Wednesday night). Next time, I guess I’ll go all out with the beet juice dye.

Enough about my failed cake though, onto the pasta recipe that was out-of-this world delicious and nearly cost me a finger:

I’m a real junkie for artichokes – fried artichokes, artichoke dip, artichokes on salad, pizza – anything artichoke. *** A WORD OF ADVICE*** fresh artichokes are a real bitch to clean, whittle down to the edible parts, and also take FOREVER to cook.  You’ve been warned.

INGREDIENTS:

• 4 large, fresh artichoke heads
• 1 cup grated Pecorino Romano cheese
• 1 cup dry white wine
• 3 lemons
• 4 cloves of finely minced garlic
• 1/2 red onion, finely chopped
• 4 Tbs. olive oil
• 3 Tbs. butter
• Box of pasta – rigatoni or penne
• Salt and pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS:

• Peel the tough, outer leaves off of the artichokes and then trim the ends. You’ll basically end up with an artichoke that is 1/3 of the size of what you initially started with.
• Using a small knife, shave/whittle the base of the artichoke (the point where the leaves were attached), so you see the white, tender part of the base.
• Cut the artichokes into quarters – be careful… they’re hard to cut! :p
• Place the artichokes in a pot of enough water that they are fully submerged, salt the water, and squeeze in the juice from a whole lemon
• Bring the water to a low boil.

• While the artichokes are boiling, put on a pot of heavily salted water for the pasta and bring to a high boil.
• While you wait for the pasta water to come to a boil, heat the oil in a large saucepan over low-medium heat.
• Add in the minced onion and cook about 6 minutes or until tender and translucent.
• Add in the minced garlic and cook for another 3 minutes, being careful not to burn the garlic.
• Once the artichokes have been cooking for about 15 minutes in the hot water, drain them and add them into the saucepan with the garlic and onion.
• Add in about half of the butter (1 and 1/2 Tbs) to the saucepan and increase the heat to medium, stirring the artichokes so they’re coated with the butter/oil and cooking evenly.
• Salt and pepper the artichokes, squeeze in the juice of half a lemon, and then add the white wine – the heat should be high enough at this point that the wine makes a sizzling sound and steam comes off the pan when you add it in. Stir the artichokes frequently.

• Add the pasta to the boiling water, and cook according to time listed on pasta box.
• You’ll want to occasional taste-test the artichokes, to make sure they’ve become tender, and also see that you’ve seasoned appropriately (add more salt, pepper, or lemon as necessary – do keep in mind that Pecorino is a very salty cheese though, and will add a substantial amount of salty once added to the pasta).

• Remove the artichoke saucepan from heat once they’re cooked through and tender.
• Grate about 1 cup of the Pecorino Romano into a separate bowl

• Once the pasta is cooked, drain the water and add the pasta into the artichoke saucepan, or add the contents of the artichoke saucepan into the pasta pot with the pasta (whichever pan/pot is more accommodating)
• Add in the rest of the butter (another 1-2 Tbs.), the Pecorino cheese, and juice from another lemon
• Stir everything together until the pasta is coated and all ingredients are evenly dispersed.
• Serve hot and accompany with a glass of white wine… or two 😉

I’m so happy it is Sunday – I just wish every day was Sunday.  The only day of the week geared specifically towards taking it easy, lounging around and consuming food in excess.  Maybe I’ll get around to filing my taxes tonight – I know the outcome is going to be depressing, which is why I’ve been putting it off as long as possible.  I wanted to attempt a food vlog this weekend, or at least set up a Twitch account – I’ll look into that later. I’m not the best at technology and have no video editing skills of which to speak, so I’ll see what I can do.