No, not Jagermeister! Thank you very much. Not that I haven’t had my fill of that uber-sweet spirit on occasion, this is a “Jager” of a different sort. This dish is one of my most favorite dishes, “of all time.” When I was stationed at my first and only permanent duty station in the Army, I had my first there. My first experience with schnitzel, what did you think it was the first of? We used to go to the officer’s club at lunch on certain days and eat the wiener schnitzel with mashed potatoes at lunch. Let me tell you, the “O” club was much nicer than the “E” (enlisted-men’s) club. Mind you, that was the only thing, besides their quarters that I envied about being and officer. It’s a political thing that I would rather not explain…

So…this Panko crusted beautiful veal scallop in mushroom sauce is a true German dish. Well, at least the protein is. I tried to make spaetzle while I was making this, but, alas, I really botched the spaetzle, so in the garbage it went. What a shame, but the duck fat Dutch potatoes worked as a great replacement!

Schnitzel is very similar to chicken fried steak. It is typically pork or veal, I uses veal, breaded and fried. Wiener Schnitzel is not only a fast food restaurant in southern California serving hot dogs, rather a veal or pork cutlet breaded and fried, served with a lemon wedge. Jagerschnitzel is Hunter’s schnitzel, and I am pretty sure that it is the mushroom gravy that makes it “Jager", per se.



The above picture is McKinnley in a perplexed state. He tends to get in them quite often when I am in the kitchen. That is him peering into the kitchen for one reason or another. He is an extremely intelligent breed of dog. When I scoop food from the cutting board to the cooking area, he stares at the floor waiting, just waiting, to see if something, anything, drops from my hands. He isn’t allowed in the kitchen. So he will lay at the kitchen entry with his nose across the threshold, or put his paw across the threshold. This, you see, puts him in a defiant state, puts him in the kitchen. I have to remind him (read: yell at him) to “get out of the kitchen” for him to pull his paws back. It is a healthy exercise or maybe just an exercise. In any case, meet one of my doggies who likes to watch.

On to the dish, but first a couple of shout-outs.

I received a meme from Nikki over at Nik Snacks. She cooks up some really great dishes as well as blogs about technique. Check her out. Well, this meme has me answer a bunch of questions like an exam. So with abandon, here are my responses:

1) LAST MOVIE U SAW IN A THEATRE?
The Bourne Ultimatum. I usually wait for everything to come on DVD. I like my home theater!

2) WHAT BOOK ARE U READING?
Grisham’s “The Broker.”

3) FAVOURITE BOARD GAME?
Chess. WHAT!?

4) FAVOURITE MAGAZINE?
GQ

5) FAVOURITE SMELLS?
My wife’s…

6) FAVOURITE SOUNDS?
A 4-4 beat with a violin.

7) WORST FEELING IN THE WORLD?
My knees when I attempt to return to earth from a lay-up.

8) WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU THINK OF WHEN U WAKE?
“Drop your …. and grab your socks!!!”

9) FAVOURITE FAST FOOD PLACE?
Mr. Orph’s Kitchen.

10) FUTURE CHILDS NAME?
Not gonna have any, but I like Skyler and Hayden and Zeus.

11) FINISH THIS STATEMENT—’IF I HAD A LOT OF MONEY I’D…
Buy a bigger kitchen and more cars!

12) DO U DRIVE FAST?
When I had my BMW 7-series, I got her up to 145, my current car has gone 135+, so no.

13) DO U SLEEP WITH A STUFFED ANIMAL?
My wife is stuffed with organs, does that count?

14) STORMS–COOL OR SCARY?
I just paid a ton of $$ for my front lawn to be sodded, so yeah, rain, baby, rain!

15) WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST CAR?
A 71 green Impala. We called her Bomba Verde! That is “green bomb". I put house speakers in the rear window. It was soooo old that is had an FM tuner. Plenty of back seat space though, I must say!!!

16) FAVOURITE DRINK?
Cognac! Not allowed to have that anymore.

17) FINISH THIS STATEMENT-IF I HAD THE TIME I WOULD
Play something…golf

18) DO YOU EAT THE STEMS ON BROCCOLI?
Sometimes. Weird question…

19) IF YOU COULD DYE YOUR HAIR ANY OTHER COLOUR, WHAT WOULD BE YOUR CHOICE?
Not grey…

20) NAME ALL THE DIFFERENT CITIES/TOWNS U HAVE LIVED IN?
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Abington, PA, Paoli, PA, Elkins Park, PA, Jacksonville, NC, Augusta, GA, Columbus, GA, Atlanta, GA, Roswell, GA, Granada Hills, CA.

21) FAVOURITE SPORTS TO WATCH?
American football, tennis, golf, baseball, soccer, women’s softball.

22) ONE NICE THING ABOUT THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU?
She seems to be one of the people I actually may have known in another life. The connection is real. She is a genuine, straight-up, on-point, person; very dynamic!

23) WHATS UNDER YOUR BED?
Monsters?

24) WOULD U LIKE TO BE BORN AS YOURSELF AGAIN??
Absolutely!

25) MORNING PERSON OR NIGHT OWL?
Yes!

26) OVER EASY OR SUNNY SIDE UP?
Depends on the day; I like them both.

27) FAVOURITE PLACE TO RELAX?
In my chair! Every man over 30 should have a chair. I am working on my 2nd one. This one is leather!

28) FAVOURITE PIE?
Not humble; apple crumb.

29) FAVOURITE ICE CREAM FLAVOUR?
Homemade.

30) OF ALL THE PEOPLE U HAVE TAGGED, WHO IS THE MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND FIRST?
No clue…

I have also been the beneficiary of the Yummy Blog Award award from Bren over at FlaNboyantEats. Bren, thank you very much! I truly appreciate it!

In my next post, I will pass the award and the meme on to other blogs. My birthday this month turned me officially “old” so you must pause with me as I pause…for the cause.

“Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.”

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The pasta salad can be a thing of beauty or a complete failure. I have made both and I have had both. The pasta salads that are served at the cafeteria where I work are consistently bland, dry, and with overcooked mushy noodles. What’s worse is that they charge for them by the ounce!!! So I pay $5 for what amounts to little more than a side dish serving of what masquerades as pasta salad with the all the texture and taste of a crushed and powdered moon rock.

No frankly, I like my pasta salad to be creamy, well seasoned, with al dente noodles. I can’t really be that hard, especially if I can do it. And I do it all the time. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a pro; just a bit more proficient over the years of making mayo soaked, mushy, vinegary, glop, I now know a thing or two.

Usually, there may not be anything inherently interesting about pasta salad. It’s noodles, protein, and dressing. I think more and more some of the pasta salads I’ve had over the years at picnics, mess halls, and school cafeterias; they fall into the unimpressive/uninteresting category. Don’t you agree?

This dish I compiled is a winner for me. I make it quite often in the summer months. Last year it was one of my staples when going to the Chastain Amphitheater. We used to get a subscription for 5-8 shows every year. Chastain is where we would go to sit under the stars and hear top jazz musicians and on occasion some top pop musicians (last year we saw John Legend with Corinne Baily Rae). It is a great atmosphere. You’ll see people with trays covered with linens, candles burning, wine a pouring, and food ranging from the I-didn’t-feel-like-cooking purchased sandwiches to gourmet platters and spreads. The theater even has a couple of catering services. Well it was here that this chicken pasta dish was born.

I particularly like the fact that it is substantive enough to be more than just a side dish. The chipotle flakes add boldness while the avocado adds an extra layer of creaminess. As for the texture, the red onion adds a nice crunch against the sweet cherry tomatoes and fusilli. This recipe isn’t etched in stone, mix and match, add and subtract ingredients. The main components are the chicken, the pasta, and the avocado. Well, at least for me they are.

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What are we to do when we have purchased so many $5/lb beans from Rancho Gordo? I mean, with gas prices at close to $5 a gallon, that $5 a pound for beans seems, well, I dunno, relative? Well, I just can’t eat the mega-mart beans anymore.

You know it is almost a shame. I got my life together at 25. Up until that time, I was pretty much a Robert Downey, Jr., I don’t stand in line at clubs, kinda guy. I made a decision to join the Army, get off the streets of Philadelphia, leave the clubbing life, and protect this country and all of you beautiful people. Of course, I had an agenda. I didn’t become all GI Joe and whatnot, leaving my wild all-night-long life for expletive yelling cadre for nothing. There was a plan. I was going to serve the government, actually become its property, and it was going to provide me with an opportunity to obtain a marketable skill. This plan worked out for me.

So I manage to “do my time", get honorably discharged, manage to actually miss the experience (read: but not the minuscule paycheck), and parlee the entire experience into a decent engineering career. Now after all this, all my sacrifice, all my pain, all those long, long, marches, most excellent weaponology training, I get a decent job, and I find that I need to get a second job, maybe a third, just to pay for gas!!! I am not happy Mr. Bush! I may be a conservative, but this is truly ridiculous! I am especially furious, because I have one of those sporty cars that requires, you know, REQUIRES I SAID, premium gas. Dangit, I have to fill tomorrow. Crap! Are any of you guys hiring? I know, let’s start a food blogger gas fund and hope that people contribute. Whaddya say?

Well there but for the grace… go I. And I now find myself cash-poor but, belly full! The latter is most important to me, mind you.

I must mention that I was recently given the Arte y Pico award from Su-Lin at Tamarind and Thyme and, get this, from Ruth over at Ruth’s Kitchen Experiments. This is truly an excellent recognition for me. This award is given for creativity, design, interesting material, and contribution to the blogger community. I really thank both Su-Lin and Ruth for thinking of me, and my blog, for this award. I truly appreciate it.

Now, as any meme requires, I am to pass this award on to 5 other blogs that I find are worthy. Here are my choices for this award:

1. Kim at A Yankee in a Southern Kitchen. Kim makes southern dishes with Yankee passion. But her blog prose is almost poetic.
2. A true inspiration to me is Claudia over at Cook Eat Fret. It was her blog that got me started really. She prepares such great dishes and pushes the boundaries along with her prose pushing the envelope.
3. Katy at Sugarlaws is another cook whose passion I admire. She blogs her creations with the passion and conviction of a state prosecutor who has all the evidence needed to crush that punk who stole your, your, your…whatever! Do feel lucky punk? Well…do ya?
4. Krysta at Evil Chef Mom creates dishes that are imaginative. Her prose which usually involves her husband and charges is always a great read.
5. Sharon at Culinary Adventures of a New Wife is definitely one of my favorites. Her dedication to her husband and cooking, her perspective, is evident through her prose. Enjoy it Sharon. I’ve been married for 5+ years and I am still on my honeymoon!

On to the meat of this post…so to speak. We love to go to our local Mexican restaurant which is right around the corner. Now there is a Taco Hell nearby attached to a KFC and both are equally awful. I am not sure that I can identify the “meat” in those tacos and burritos from Taco Hell. We try to stay away from those two places.

I lived in Los Angeles for a couple of years back in 1974. Yes I am THAT old. We had a housekeeper who was Mexican and no one in my family could speak Spanish except me. That worked out nicely for me in the cucina con la comida. I got to learn a lot about making burritos. Maria used to make me burritos for breakfast by simply tossing the disc onto a gas eye, flipping, then filling. Oh so good.

This is my redition of the basic beef and bean burrito supremo. The supremo is the guac, sour cream, shredded lettuce, and ripe chopped tomato, atop the burrito. This is truly easy to make and equally as easy to devour!

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I first had veal saltimbocca (translation: “jump in the mouth") at Lucia’s restaurant which is literally “around the corner” from our house. I cannot tell you how excellent the combination of succulent veal, spinach, ham, and provolone cheese, in lemon butter sauce is. It made me a believer.

I did a little research and found that veal saltimbocca is really a variation on veal scallopini originating in Rome. Also, it is traditionally constructed with fresh sage leaves instead of spinach and usually not with cheese. I, however, need my cheese. I have seen some versions where mozzarella or gruyere is used. Personally, I don’t think gruyere is apropos, but hey, it’s still cheese.

So for my interpretation of this dish, I took veal cutlets, thinly cut from the top round, cut against the grain, and pounded them out further. I then topped the veal with prosciutto and toothpicked it all. I have also done this by rolling the veal into a log and then toothpicking them. Either method is equally as tasty I assure you. I like to round this out with a pan sauce using either madeira or marsala wine combined with some good chicken stock and, naturally, a healthy pat of butter!

Mangia!!!

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As rustic as an elegant risotto can be, I makes it!

I mean, I love the creamy, cheesy, buttery, morsels that make up a decent risotto. How can one not? It has only been about four years now that I have been eating this creamy rice dish and I wonder how I could have been missing out. I dated an Italian girl for 10 years, some moons ago, and I never manged to have risotto. Well, maybe I did and just thought it was a deliciously creamy rice dish.

Naturally, there is a bit of work in preparing risotto, but as many of you know, it really is worth the effort. Beck has no issue with being my sous chef when it comes to handling the rice side to a meal, except when it comes to risotto. Then, I am on my own. I don’t mind though. I have made it so many times now that it is almost instinctive. I don’t even baby sit the pot anymore. I can actually multi-task during the twenty minute stir-fest.

I do wonder how, on Hell’s Kitchen, that Gordon Ramsey reality show filled with expletive beeps, the contestants have so much trouble making a decently cooked pot of this rice. Theirs is even parboiled! They should be able to push out a creamy, cheesy, pot of goodness in about 3-4 minutes. But alas, they under cook it, they overcook it, they outright ruin it.

Just like pasta, we want it al dente, and when it is creamy, we want to add all of the real caloric goodness; a pat of Plugra, 3/4 cup of grated Pecorino cheese, and maybe, just maybe, a splash of cream.

I decided to jazz up a wild mushroom risotto with some fresh asparagus, fresh sugar snap peas, and fennel. I have done risotto a bunch of different ways; with shrimp and lobster, saffron and chorizo, butternut squash and pumpkin seeds, and just plain, but this version is definitely one of my super favs!

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Well…now that I am literally back on my feet, Beck and I are about to make the obligatory journey to Philadelphia. We usually travel there at least twice a year. It is my home town, whereas Beck is originally from Knoxville Tennessee, having spent most of her formative years right here in Roswell, Georgia.

I love going back home. Mostly because I get to spend some good quality face time with the family, but definitely because of the cheesesteaks! You bet I’ll be blogging about them after I return. You can’t get a good cheese-steak outside of Philly and we always have them on the first day back, when we can that is.

Like most cities, Philly has it’s unique culinary treasures. The cheesesteaks and hoagies are among them, but one of my all time favorites is scrapple. Now Becky loves pork as much as I do, but she cannot bring herself to indulge in this crispy, tasty breakfast meat. It is made from exactly what it’s name implies, “scrap"ple. Now, don’t be fooled, it really tastes good, trust me. My mom and grandmom and great grandmom have been serving it up for a whole lotta years. I am fortunate that my local Publix market carries it. Scrapple is a Philly tradition for breakfast. Although it’s ingredients may not sound appetizing, I personally think it is one of the tastiest breakfast meats out there. Scrapple is a savory mush of pork scraps and trimmings combined with cornmeal and flour, often buckwheat flour. The mush is formed into a loaf. You slice it thin and fry it up till it is crispy on the outside. You’ll find it served up in diners all over the city and beyond. When I was in high school, they used to serve it to us for dinner with mashed potatoes and maple syrup. The syrup was for the scrapple. Mashed potatoes with syrup would just be gross!

For this traditional breakfast, I teamed up scrapple with homefries and Becky’s new favorite dish, creamed chipped beef on toast. This would be a big breakfast that you will be able to find at any diner. You won’t be served any grits nor will you find any biscuits and gravy. Nope. This is the traditional fare from my home town and it is truly delicious. The soldiers in WW2 called creamed chipped beef on toast, “SOS” for “shit on a shingle". I think they may have been served too much of it. When I was in the army, the mess hall served last night’s leftover hamburger patties, chopped up, in a milk gravy, over toast. YUK! Now, THAT is truly “SOS"!!!!

So if you ever find yourself in my old stomping grounds, make sure to try the “SOS", along with some scrapple and have a cheesesteak for lunch. You can have a salad for dinner if you feel guilty.

If you are feeling daring, give this dish a try. I promise you, you won’t be disappointed.

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Normally I leave the sweets to my sweet. But every once in a while I venture down the avenue toward a dessert. This one turned out pretty tasty. I was sort of flying by the seat of my pants, as I often do, and I managed to turn out a tart-like crisp that I could be proud of. I had planned to make this for the Royal Foodie Joust, but I had not been feeling very well over the past few weeks and I didn’t get a chance to enter it. I made it nonetheless for our enjoyment and enjoy it we did.

There is nothing really special about it, just some mangos, raspberries, a crunchy topping, and viola…add the obligatory scoop of ice cream and you’re in business!

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I want to be very clear about this, I don’t know a thing about Asian cuisine. Not one thing. I do know that when I spoke to a coworker who went to China for a graduate school trip, she told me that the food that we are used to eating at our local take-out is not what she experienced in country. Wow! No General Tso’s chicken? Um, no… She told me that it was really different.

Now here in the Atlanta area, we have an area which is predominantly culturally Asian. For those who are familiar with this area, I am speaking of the Buford highway area; or at least a small part of it. That area also has a rather large Latin community as well. It isn’t like it was for me when I lived back home in Philly where we had a Chinatown. I guess this area is similar, just not nearly as large or as pronounced as Chinatown in NYC, Philly, or San Francisco. I do know that the food I have experienced in all of those places is very good, but I really have no idea just how authentic it is.

That being said, I still have the good fortune of having a really, really, good Chinese restaurant just around the corner from my house where my favorite dish is their House Egg Foo Yung. This comes to me piping hot with pork, shrimp, chicken, in a really tasty omelet smothered in a really tasty gravy. Oh, how I love this dish. You know, you know, I plan to make it.

Well, this past week has been filled with pain. I had an attack of gout which left me sleepless for 42 out of 48 hours. My ankle swelled too the point that I call it a “Hobbit foot", and I am still having a horrible time walking. I worked from home for 6 days, then gimped into work for one day this week. I tell you, I would not wish this “King’s disease” on anyone!!!

I did manage to make a nicely tasty stir-fry dish using a throw together of vegetables, chicken, and a handful of cashews. I would call it “cashew chicken", but I am pretty sure that since I made the sauce from a variation of a Moo Goo Gai Pan recipe, it wouldn’t be appropriate. No, this was simply my putting a bunch of stuff together into my new wok and enjoying the result. It was indeed, not authentic, but very, very good. Better than any take-out, in my opinion. Feel free to try my recipe and call it authentic; as in an authentic take on what we believe to be Chinese food. At least it was cooked in a wok. I would have fried some ice-cream if I knew how. Is that even authentic?

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Well, we’ve dumped our ISP. They came back on line on Tuesday with a really, really weak apology, something to the affect of “we’re sorry for any inconvenience the outage has caused…” What?! They went dark with no notice and there was no way to contact anyone. Their business office is about a mile from my house and there was no one in the office, the doors were locked, and no communications, even to their parent company’s home office in California. Oh, the irony of that was, their parent company, Next Phase Wireless, answered the sales extension with a human who had no information, but the technical support extension was greeted with, “all circuits are busy"!!!!

In any case I am able to post again. My blog is hosted elsewhere which is why the blog was still up, but I had no Internet access except from work and I could not do blog work there. That could be trouble.

This post has me most proud though, especially after Claudia busted my chops for the lasagna rolls. You see, I had poked her at her site about making her own pasta and then here I was using dried noodles. Methinks me a hypocrite. I got pasta attachments for my KA mixer at Christmas and have yet to use them. Until now that is. Let me tell you, it was extremely easy and the pasta was noticeably different, and by that I mean much better. The texture and the flavor were definitely superior to that of my normal 12 year-shelf-life dried pasta I buy in the super market. A huge difference! I am not just drinking the do-everything-yourself Kool-Aid here people, I mean it, it is much better. And so very easy.

It took, all total, about thirty minutes to make the dough, roll the dough, cut the spaghetti, and get it on the drying racks. Thirty minutes! It is worth it.

So what better way to inaugurate my attachments than to relieve them from their garage captivity, and make a classic dish that I have never made before; spaghetti alla carbonara? It seemed like a fairly easy dish to compose. Since I had recently purchased a nice sampler package from La Quercia which included some really nice guanciale, the traditional meat in carbonara, I figured this had to be done.

So, please try your hand at making pasta. If I can do it, most anyone can. I give you my interpretation of spaghetti alla carbonara con pasta fresca.

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