What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words!…(Cooking-Night 11)

…His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.

Good Morning Everyone!

Coming to you live from Amityville (or the basement)! Here we go again. (Good luck.) This is the truth. And by telling the truth. Let’s generate some fear. Two things are for certain: we have something or we loss something. In either case, we are driven, motivated, captured, enthralled by fear. For the things that we have: we fear losing them. Not just a complete lose but a mere change, a small alteration causes an ounce of trepidation from the dripping-faucet of our anxiety. Thus to avoid said trepidation, we establish a routine or linger through what is common and mundane, yet enjoyable. (Merely to avoid fear of course.) As for the items that we have lost, we dread having suffered a loss or we dread trying to get said lost back. The change already has been made. The item has already been altered. As such, in our attempts to recover what was lost, to go back to the way things were, to rebuild what was demolished, we in the back of our minds know that once recovered, things will be different. Thus, we have to adjust. We have to alter how we keep the lost item that was recovered. And no one is that comfortable with change. Fear is powerful. And it’s all in your head. Boo!

We don’t fight no more
We done close that door
This time for sure
We can’t stand no more

Fussin’ and a-cussin’ each other
When we’re souls to your brother
Livin’ in this world we all live in

We are back in our minds, again

Cooking-Night 11: (Heads of) Cabbage

Bawarchi’s Dish: Cabbage pizza

Ingredients:

1. 2-3 cups regular flour
2. 2-3 tablespoon oil
3. 3-4 tablespoon of butter
4. 1/4 lb mushroom
5. 1 red bell pepper
6. 2 green chilies
7. 10-12 fresh basil leaves
8. Salt and black pepper to taste
9. 1 whole cabbage (~1/2 lb)
10. 1 teaspoon of baking powder

Chop all the vegetables (cabbage, mushroom, red pepper, green chilies, basil). Add 2 tablespoon oil and baking powder to flour and mix it well. Now add water to it and make a soft and bit sticky dough. Let it sit at room temperature for an hour. In the meantime, in a hot pan with 1-2 tablespoon of butter, add flour and cook till its brown. Add appropriate amount of milk to it and cook it well so that it forms a thick creamy paste. Set it aside. In a separate skillet, sauté mushroom, cabbage, pepper and season them. Add the prepared creamy paste to it and mix well. Now roll the dough, spread it on a baking pan covered with buttered foil. Spread the vegetable mix on top of the dough. Add green chilies and basil followed by Parmesan cheese. Bake it in oven at 500 degrees for 8-10 minutes. Cabbage pizza done!

Corn (YuMi)’s Dish 1: Shrimp over Cabbage and Sweet Corn

Ingredients:

1. ½ head of cabbage shredded
2. ½ lbs shrimp
3. ¼ cup coconut milk
4. 1 can sweet corn
5. Salt, pepper, random spices to your liking and flour

Coat shrimp in flour seasoned to taste (these tastes include a peppery concoction which caused all of us in the room to cough except for Miss Cook and Bawarchi for some strange reason…the shrimp were red when Corn brought them), sauté until shrimp are pink. In a separate pot, sauté cabbage, seasoned to taste, in butter or oil and coconut milk until cabbage is tender. Add can of corn and cook for 15 minutes. Plate shrimp on top of cabbage mixture.

Corn (YuMi)’s Dish 2: Sautéed Chicken and Cabbage

Ingredients:

1. ½ head of cabbage shredded
2. 1 lb. chicken cubed
3. ¼ cup coconut milk
4. Salt, pepper, random spices to your liking and flour

Brown chicken (apparently not seasoned at all) and set aside. In a separate pot, sauté cabbage in butter or oil with coconut milk. Season to liking. Cook until cabbage is wilted. Add chicken to mixture and mix well. Cook for an additional 15 minutes on medium heat.

Penny Picayune’s Dish: Nilagang

Ingredients:

1. 1 head of cabbage wedged
2. 1 lb. buffalo steak cubed
3. 3 potatoes cubed
4. ½ lb. string beans
5. 2 Italian purple eggplant
6. 1 head garlic minced
7. 1 onion wedged into 4 pieces
8. 1 tbsp. black peppercorn
9. 2 tbsp. patis
10. 1 tbsp. vinegar
11. 1 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
12. 10 cups water
13. Salt and black pepper

Sauté garlic and onion in oil. Add meat, black peppercorn and water. Bring water to boil, then simmer for 15 minutes. Add potatoes and string beans, seasoned to liking. Simmer for 10 minutes. Add cabbage and eggplant seasoned to liking. Simmer for 30 to 45 minutes minutes. Remove eggplant and place in dish. To dish add garlic, vinegar and olive oil. Mash eggplant and mix with fork. Serve nilagang over rice topped with eggplant sauce.

Wash Your Hands’ Dish: Russian Cabbage Pie

Ingredients:

For Pie Crust:

1. 1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2. 1 tsp white sugar
3. 1 tsp salt
4. 2 tbsp butter
5. 4 ounce cream cheese, softened

For Filling:

1. 3 tbsp butter
2. 3 small red onion, chopped
3. 1 small head cabbage, shredded
4. dried oregano
5. dried basil
6. dried tarragon
7. salt
8. pepper
9. 8 oz fresh mushrooms, sliced
10. 4 oz cream cheese, softened
11. dried dill weed

Place eggs in a saucepan and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil, and remove from heat. Let eggs sit in hot water for 10-12 minutes. Remove hot water, cool, peel, and slice. (It might be smarter to let the eggs sit in cold water to cool if you can’t handle the heat.)

In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar and salt. Cut in butter until  mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in cream cheese until mixture forms a ball. At this point, my flour still looked like flour, not forming any ball-like object. I may have used a little more flour than called form, but the dough ball wasn’t happening. Upon suggestions by other, I mixed in some oil at first, but still no dough ball. Then I mixed in water, turns out you do need water, (a lot of my recipes seem to omit common sense items like water and salt), just enough to get the dough going. Take about 2/3 of the dough and roll the crap out of it, so that it’ll fit into a 9 inch pie dish. Roll out the remaining 1/3 to form a large enough circle to cover the dish. Stick in refrigerator and chill.

Shred the cabbage (a tedious process) and chop the onions (damn onions). In a large skillet (or pot) melt 2 tbsp butter. Add onions and cabbage and saute for several minutes. Season with oregano, basil, tarragon, salt and pepper (use the spices with discretion as too much may really be too much). Cook, stirring occassionally, until cabbage is wilted and onions are soft. Remove from pot and set aside. Melt another 1 tbsp butter and saute mushrooms until cooked (they shrink too).

Now the fun part. Take the remaining cream cheese, and spread over the bottom of the pie shell. Arrange eggs in a layer over the cream cheese. Sprinkle with dill weed, then cover with cabbage mixture. (You may not need all depending on how deep your pie dish is) Make a final layer with mushrooms (also use with discretion if you don’t like mushrooms, you probably can omit it if you really hate mushrooms) and cover with circle from earlier. Seal and flute the edges of crust. Cut a few slits on the top to let the air escape so a mess doesn’t happen in your oven.

Bake in preheated oven at 400 degrees F for 15 minutes. Reduce temperature to 350 degrees F and bake for 20-25 min or until golden brown. It might be a good idea to butter the top to help the pie become golden brown. Remove from heat, let sit for 10-15 minutes and enjoy.

In the end, they were laughing in hysterics. It was the ice cream.

And that would do it. Until next time…Farewell and fare well.