Spaghetti with Meat Sauce

Ingredients
Ground beef
Tomato sauce (two 8oz cans)
Tomato paste (one 6oz can)
Spaghetti noodles
Oregano
Basil
Garlic powder
Italian seasoning
Cavender's Greek Seasoning
Shredded Parmesan cheese


It's odd for me to write this recipe down since I've been making it for nearly twenty years and it's extremely simple... but the preponderance of canned and jarred spaghetti sauces leads me to believe it might be helpful to someone. Pre-made spaghetti sauce makes no fucking sense to me... it's like buying a sandwich in a jar. It's much cheaper and better tasting to just make it yourself. The very existence of pre-made spaghetti sauce is an indicator of a huge problem with modern food... some things are just too goddamn convenient. Get up off your ass and learn some shit.
This is a basic meat sauce with lots of potential for variation. You can omit the meat for use with ravioli and on pizza, or substitute the beef for Italian sausage or ground turkey for a spicier or lower fat option.

Cherry & Apple Phyllo Strudel

Ingredients
Granny smith apples
Fresh cherries
Brown sugar
Cinnamon
Phyllo dough
Butter
Graham crackers
Some sort of whipped or clotted cream would be nice but isn't required


Someone once asked me to do a dessert recipe. Unfortunately, I fucking hate baking and most desserts require a great deal of it. Why do I hate baking? For me, it's just too goddamn passive. You mix some shit, pour it into a pan, toss it in an oven and hope for the best. I like to cook actively... stirring and draining and flipping shit keeps me coming back for more. I like watching stuff change into other stuff. However, I've never been one to disappoint a pretty girl (and I mean that exactly the way you think I mean that) so here's a dessert with all the technical movement of a complicated sauce and all the goodness of those frilly little cupcakes all the morons are so fucking enamored with. Seriously, what the hell is up with cupcakes? They're just smaller than average cakes for Christ's sake. They actually have shops that make and sell NOTHING but cupcakes. What the fuck kind of ludicrousness is that? I couldn't open a sandwich shop and only sell club sandwiches, could I? You're goddamn right I couldn't. Anyway, here comes some strudel, but first:

A Word About Phyllo

It's just called phyllo, not phyllo dough. Phyllo is a paper thin Baltic/central Asian pastry that can be used in pretty much anything. It's the Swiss army knife of pastry... you can use it in desserts, main courses, snacks, and to repair your 1970 Ford Ranchero sedan. People tend to make a big deal about phyllo being "difficult to work with". In fact, when I told a friend I was making something with phyllo, they were inordinately impressed with my cooking skills. Don't buy into the hype: phyllo isn't difficult to work with assuming you're not a goddamn moron. The only thing you have to remember is to be careful with it and, if you start with frozen phyllo, thaw it very slowly (over 24 hours in your ice box) or it'll fall apart on you like your 1970 Ford Ranchero sedan.

Motherfucking Booze Time: Sparkling Wine

I was originally going to do this guide right before the New Year. Unfortunately, as you might remember, I was sick and didn't get around to it. Looking back, I'm glad I'm doing it now because one of the biggest points I'd like to make is that sparkling wine (including champagne) fucking rules. Sparkling wines should be thought of as standard wines and not some "special occasion" bullshit. The biggest issue to overcome here is champagne... that is, that all sparkling wines are considered inferior to champagne and the cost of a decent bottle of champagne dissuades purchase by the average wino (you and me). Don't fall into this group of slack-jawed swine fuckers. Think of champagne as a variety of sparkling wine, with its own pros and cons.

The History of Sparkling Wine or Why France is Stupid

Effervescence in wine is not new nor was it invented by anyone (especially not the goddamn French). Ancient Greeks and Romans wrote about it but had no fucking clue where it came from. They attributed it to demons, curiously never explaining why demons would use their terrible infernal powers to make little bubbles in booze instead of skinning infants or raining fire from the heavens. Wine from the Champagne region of France (today the only wine that can legally be called just champagne, which you would have known had you seen Wayne's World 2) had a tendency to both sparkle and explode (I'll explain why later). In fact, one exploding bottle would lead to a chain reaction that could claim an entire cellar and up to a half dozen French peasants. Yes, that does sound fucking awesome.The French didn't much care for glass shards  embedded in their little faces (pussies) and instead of trying to figure out why their wine was exploding, they, taking a page from the Greeks and Romans, just blamed it on the Devil. The volatile nature of the wine didn't stop them from shipping it to England, though. Why? Because fuck England. However, the English used stronger glass and cork stoppers when they bottled the wine, which kept it from exploding yet preserved the sparkle. In a big reverse "fuck you" to those French surrender monkeys, the English loved the wine and even figured out what made it effervescent. It's pretty likely that English merchants began producing champagne before the French using their grapes. The Brits taught the French how to do all this later... 200 years later.

So, what have we learned? Not only was sparkling wine not invented in France, those frogs didn't even fucking like it when they first tried it and probably weren't even the first to produce the shit with their own grapes. Yeah, France is full of morons.

Ladolemono Chicken Parmesan

Ingredients
Tomato sauce (2 small cans)
Tomato paste (1 can)
Pasta (penne or cut ziti will work)
Garlic
Basil
Chicken breast tenderloins
Feta cheese (crumbled)
Parmesan cheese (shredded)
Dijon mustard
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Oregano
Lemon juice


This recipe was inspired by a post on the excellent food blog Potter's Kitchen for a quick, traditional Chicken Parmesan. I'd wager that if you asked the average American what their favorite Italian food is, chicken parm would be in the top 5. Its deliciousness lies in simplicity of concept: pasta, sauce, breaded chicken, cheese. It's so simple a concept, in fact, that it's just begging for some variation and substitution. But what variation? Well, I'm Greek and it's Italian... plus, around 100 BC, those motherfuckers stole our gods. It's time to pay the fiddler, bitch.

Now, we could just dredge some chicken in olive oil and call it Greek, but we have more cajones than that. My second favorite traditional Greek sauce (after tzatziki) is a simple lemon and olive oil sauce called ladolemono. It's used as everything from a marinade, to a dressing, to a dip for chicken, lamb, and seafood and it's really fucking delicious. We can make a simple Greekish tomato sauce with oregano and basil, and we'll give feta cheese a headlining role beside the parmesan (or parmigiano-reggiano if you buy the real stuff).
Foodies like to bandy about the word "deconstruction", which usually means spreading the ingredients out on a plate and making you assemble it yourself. A deconstructed PB&J would be a half a loaf of Ethiopian rye bread, a glob of peanut butter mixed with almonds and avocado smeared "artfully" on a plate, and a small German shoe filled with apricot and owl vomit jelly. It's not so much deconstructed as it is unnecessarily fucked with, and not usually for the better. This is more of a logical reengineering.

Motherfucking Booze Time: Gin

I fucking love pretty much everything about drinking. I like the taste, the culture, the variety... the whole kit and caboodle. I'm a drinker, there is no doubt. However, we've seen a decline in recent years of knowledgeable drinkers. Too many dumb motherfuckers show up to a bar, plop down their money, and order a drink because they heard it on the TV machine. "Herp derp, gimme a jack an' coke!" "Derpy herp-herp... Jager bomb, please!" Fucking shoot me now. Half of these mongoloids couldn't tell you what "Jack" (an American whiskey) or "Jager" (a German digesteif) is, other than a liquid they drink to get fucked up and make bad decisions. It's essentially the booze equivalent of fast food.
This is why I'm starting a new series here on the Box called "It's Motherfucking Booze Time." I'm going to give you a quick primer on a selected booze, including production, taste, and history. I'll also include a selection of drinks made using said alcohol. It's like the Encyclopedia Brittanica, except not obsolete. The first entry in our series is gin.

What the Fuck is Gin?
To understand what gin is, you need to understand what neutral grain spirit is. Neutral grain spirit (also known as pure grain alcohol or pure grain spirit) is a spirit derived from mash distilled at so high an alcohol by volume that none of the flavor of the mash is left behind. Think of it like blank, flavorless alcohol. Some people do drink this shit, and usually brag about it later... which is kind of like bragging to a friend drinking a Dr. Pepper that you like to drink carbonated water. Yeah, congratulations asshole. NGS provides the basis for many alcohols, including gin.
Gin is really more a taste than a traditional variety of alcohol. That taste is derived primarily from juniper berries, which aren't berries at all... they're really cones with fleshy scales. Other botanicals, berries, and spices are added to give individual gins their desired flavor, but juniper berries are king.
Contrary to popular belief, most common alcohols (gin, whisk[e]y, rum, vodka, tequila) come in at around the same alcohol by volume... that is, about 40%. While you may find higher alcohol versions of many of these drinks, only whisk(e)y and gin will be at LEAST 40%. Alcohol by volume is just what it sounds like... what percent of what's in the bottle is ethanol. Sometimes the ABV is given as a proof. To determine the ABV, simply cut the proof in half... 80 proof is 40% ABV, 101 proof is 50.1 ABV, and so on.

Taco Pie

Ingredients
Refrigerated crescent rolls
Hamburger
Mexican tomato sauce
sour cream
Shredded cheese
Nacho cheese flavored tortilla chips DORITOS! THEY'RE FUCKING DORITOS!
Cumin
Chili powder


Food is one of the biggest ways in which we define culture. Where you come from and what you ate growing up is a big factor in your personal culture. Scots eat haggis, Italians dig on pasta, and black people in the south chow on collard greens... we all know this. People (Americans at least) love food from other cultures, and I'm no exception. However, no one ever shares MY culture with others. I'm going to change that.

White Trash Cuisine

I was born white trash... that is, extremely financially disadvantaged Caucasian most often (but not always) found in the American south. That's just the way it is. Some people might be offended to be called trash. Well, it's the common fucking nomenclature so you might as well put on your big boy pants stop being a little bitch about it. It is what it is, and honestly, all things considered, I'm pretty proud of it.
Don't confuse southern white trash with the other common cultural group in the South... rednecks. We aren't, as a general rule, rednecks. I didn't grow up listening to country music, going to the rodeo, wearing a big hat, or shooting guns. While some things will overlap (mobile homes, for instance) that's all primarily redneck culture. White trash culture is born from extreme poverty and city life. We're the welfare cases all of the fucking Republicans love to throw under the bus... the "getting knocked up before your Sweet 16" crowd. Everything in white trash culture stems from poverty. I'm talking about families that live on less than five grand a year in many cases.
I don't mean this to turn into a Sally Struthers commercial. It's just the way it is, and as it stands, I wouldn't change much about the situation in which I was raised. White trash can grow up and do all right... plenty of people have.  But the ability to feed a family of four with your last six dollars isn't a skill you lose. When you have to make do, you start getting inventive. This is where white trash food was born. We're talking Hamburger Helper, SOS (shit on a shingle), Spam, friend bologna, Bar S hot dogs, Kool-Aid... do you find yourself feeling kind of bad about this? Well fucking quit it. I genuinely love this food, and still make it despite not really needing to. I just ask that you approach it like you would any other culture... and you can start with Taco Pie.

Tomato Basil Pasta

Ingredients
Radiatori pasta (or any spiral pasta like rotini or cavatappi)
Olive oil
Garlic powder
Cherry tomatoes
Fresh basil
Lemon juice
Parmesan cheese (shredded)
Feta cheese (crumbled)


There's snow on the ground here in east Arkansas and the temperatures are dropping well below freezing. I fucking love the cold, to the point that I like to walk outside when it's at it's coldest and just stand around. Nothing makes you feel more alive. The odd thing about this weather is that it makes me crave things that most people would eat during the summer... ice cream, fresh fruit, that kinda shit. This is a simple and exceedingly good pasta dish that most people would say belongs in the summertime. Fuck those people.

Mango Curry Pork Chops

Ingredients
Boneless pork chops (4 or 5)
Mango nectar
Olive oil
Garlic powder
Curry
Basil


The holidays are over and it's time to get back in the thick of things. Right after Christmas, I sat down and said, "Man, it sure would be nice for some combination throat/nose sickness to drop by and fuck me in the face." Wouldn't you know it, that's just what I got. It's a goddamn Christmas miracle. My favorite part of being sick, aside from feeling like I swallowed broken glass and downing hot tea like an eighty-year-old British headmistress, is the inability to taste or smell anything. This called for a dish that had both a powerful flavor and a strong scent. Sounds like a job for curry powder.

Curry versus Curry Powder
What we're using here is curry powder, not curry. There is a huge difference in the two, which you should be aware of, lest you look like a fucking idiot in front of friends and family. The word curry basically means sauce in the Indian language Tamil (Slurpee Indian, not casino Indian). Many people think that curry has a specific taste... it doesn't. It's used much like we would use the word soup. Curries from different parts of the Indian subcontinent vary widely in taste. Curry powder has NOTHING to do with actual curry. Curry powder is a mix of vaguely Indian spices including coriander, tumeric, red pepper, and cumin. There's nothing inherently Indian about curry powder. Much like chutney, curry powder was invented by some (undoubtedly British) wiseass who took the name without really caring to understand what it was. So, once again, fuck you India.