Master Griller

Without fail, Tyler always wants to help (I use the world 'help' loosely) when it's a Carmine's night. Whether it's with me doing the cooking or Aaron with the chopping, he takes it very seriously.  It didn't take long, however, until helping wasn't enough.  Driven by the insatiable need for power, that all four-year-olds have, he wanted control of the kitchen.  He wanted to be Head Chef Walker.  Well, this town might be big enough for both of us, but my kitchen was not.  Something had to be done.  

I gave him domain over the kitchen table.  With a big bowl, mini wire whisk, cutting board, plastic knife, and scraps of leftover ingredients, he was set.  Now we were both happy.

The happiness was short lived.  You know how you never realize there's an "off" smell in the house until you've left, breathed actual fresh air for a few hours, and then come back home?  Well, that's what happened the day after I implemented my chef solution.  

At first, it was just a faint weird smell, where you can't really decide if it's remanence of yesterdays cooking or maybe the house just needs to be aired out.  By day two it's no longer a faint weird smell, it's growing into something ugly.  The problem is finding the cause.  You start walking from room to room like a blood hound, sniffing the air.  No luck.  The smell is in every room.  You can't ignore it and hope it will go away, and swearing about it doesn't help, so you spray every oder neutralizer you have and hope for the best. Seems to work for the people in the commercials, right?

Day three.  Did someone die in this house?  I did a quick headcount - Aaron's at work and all three kids were accounted for.  You'd think with something this potent you'd be able to walk right to it, but it had permeated the air and was not going away.  I laid down the law - no friends or electronics until we found the source of the smell.  It worked.  About five minutes later I hear arguing and Tyler crying, "Nooo!  That's my Carmine's dinner!"

Chef Walker had apparently been saving his bowl of cut up onions and garlic, aka: his Carmine's dinner, in the back of a cupboard.  He's lucky he's so cute.  

Although...I should probably point out that some people believe cutting an onion in half and leaving it out during the flu season will prevent anyone from getting sick, not to mention that garlic wards off vampires. Who knows, maybe Tyler saved us from a flu infected vampire that could have wiped out our entire family.  

While Tyler had been preparing his vampire flu remedy, I was preparing our Sunday night Carmine's dinner.  I decided to do a little grilling.  

Carmines: Porterhouse Steak with Peppers and Onions (pg 179)

While Aaron was really excited about this one, I was a little nervous.  I have never grilled steaks before. Not because I haven't wanted to, more because Aaron loves it and when he's happy, I'm happy.  Or something like that.  Regardless, steak is tricky for me because I don't like a lot of pink in the middle, and there seems to be a fine line between not a lot of pink and dry and chewy.  But this book has not let me down yet, and I figured tonight would be no exception. 

To start, I browned the garlic and caramelized the bell peppers and onions.  I love bell peppers and could stop cooking at this point and be perfectly happy.  The rest of the family - not so much.  Pity. 

Next I start to prepare the meat.  I've never bought steaks before.  It's either ground beef for taco's or a chuck roast for the crockpot.  After what must have seemed like a ridiculous amount of time bent over looking at different steaks, an employee came over and asked if he could help me.  

I said, "Yes, please.  I'm trying to find a 36 to 38 ounce porterhouse steak, with the bone still in it because I need to use the bone as part of the presentation when serving it.  I know porterhouse has something to do with a fillet and sirloin steak, because it says to cut those into slices, but I don't see any bones with the fillet or the sirloin."  

To his credit, at least he didn't laugh at me as he took the pre-packaged fillet steak out of one hand and the pre-packaged sirloin steak from the other hand and put them back in the case.  He then gave me a quick lesson on what a porterhouse steak was and how to pick one out.  Who knew the porterhouse steak WAS the fillet and sirloin steaks combined?  This steak business is very tricky.

It was time to start grilling.  I had my doubts on how how the meat would actually taste because the seasoning was so simple.  

True to form, the book guided me step by step on how to grill the meat perfectly.  I love that.  I had no idea, when grilling steaks, you should only flip them once and when you take them off the grill you should let the meat rest before serving.  

The down side to grilling in the winter is it's dark by 6:00 PM.  No worries, the phone has a flashlight function. And yes, I'm wearing rubber gloves in the video.  I can't help it, touching raw meat weirds me out. Besides, if I stopped wearing them, what would my friends mock me about?  Don't answer that.

I usually post a picture of it all put together, with a my little chalk board showing the name of the dish, but the children (I'm totally including Aaron in this instance) were way too hungry to wait for me to do all that.

Suffice it to say, they were not disappointed.  The onions and bell peppers were amazing and the steak was unbelievably flavorful.  Why do I doubt you, Carmine's??? 

When I asked each one what they thought of the meal, they all agreed...best steak ever!

Ooh, So Close.

This is why I should just stick with pancakes on non-Carmine nights.

I will not bore you with the details of why a twenty minute errand ended up taking two hours.  Frankly, I blame the stores advertising big clearance sales on their windows, it's impossible to fight that kind of temptation.  Needless to say, I wasn't going to get home in time to put the frozen lasagna in the oven for dinner, hence my phone call to Noah:

Me:  Noah, I need you to start dinner for me. Will you please pull the frozen lasagna out of the freezer and just follow the directions on the box?

Noah:  Wait.  What?  You want me to fix dinner?  I'm not sure I can do this.  I've never made a lasagna before, mom.  I don't think I'm ready for this.

Me:  You're not making it, you're just cooking it.  There's a big difference.  It's easy, I promise.  Just pull the box out, find the directions, and follow them.  Seriously, there's like three directions total.  Can you do that for me as soon as we hang up?

Noah:  (takes a deep breath)  Ok.  (another deep breath)  I can do this.  But, mom?

Me:  Yes...

Noah:  I'll need you to talk to Reagan and tell her she needs to stay out of the kitchen.  I have to concentrate on cooking and I can't have her bothering me.

Me: (slight eye roll) Noah - this should take you about 30 seconds.  You're going to be ok.  Just hurry and get it going and I'll see you soon.

As he's hanging up, I hear him yell, "Reagan!  I have very impor--." I'm not sure what he yelled after that, all that mattered was the lasagna was going to be done on time.  Success!

About 30 minutes later I walked inside to the smell of lasagna.  As I went into the kitchen, I was walking over to Noah to tell him good job, when I noticed something on the counter.  It took me a minute to realize it was the aluminum lid that comes on top of the lasagna.

Me:  Noah, awesome job on getting the lasagna in the oven.  

Noah:  Thanks!  Did I do it right?

Me:  Yep, you only forgot to put the lid on the top.  No biggie.

Noah: What are you talking about?

Me: (pointing to the lid on the counter)  That.

Noah:  (looking confused)  Yeah, I wasn't sure what they wanted me to do with that.  It just said to take the lid off and bend it in a tent shape.  I figured it was something for little kids to play with, like a tunnel for cars or something.

Me: (pause) Um... (paused again) Sure - we'll go with that.  Great job, babe.


If McDonald's can give a toy with their happy meals, why can't frozen lasagna come with a tunnel for toy cars?  Makes sense to me.

Snowzilla or the Apocalypse...depends on who you ask

One of the most entertaining parts of living in Virginia (which I absolutely love), is watching Virginians react to snowstorms.  As soon as the first snowflakes start sticking to the ground, all common sense fly's out the window.

First off - without fail - grocery stores everywhere will run out of bread, milk, and bottled water.  Without fail.  If it's going to snow, there will be a run on grocery stores.

And while it might have been a two-lane road yesterday, once it’s covered in snow, it’s fair game.  Feel free to drive wherever you want.  And if you want to make a U-turn, no need to wait for an intersection - just go over the median.  Median?  What median?  I didn’t see a median.  

There's also a very strange, I mean perfectly normal, correlation between snowstorms, driving, and hazard lights.  The only time I've ever driven with my hazards on was in a funeral procession.  Last winter, when I saw cars in front of me with their hazards on, I respectfully pulled over to let the funeral procession pass.  Only, there was no funeral.  Just people driving with their hazards on because it was snowing.  Apparently, when snowing, you should drive with your hazards on so people can see you.  Maybe if it was a really thick fog, I'd be on board.  But snowing?  "I was driving and hit a car because the falling snow had camouflaged it perfectly."  Said no one, ever.

So you can imagine what it was like as Snowzilla was getting closer.  People weren’t preparing for a snowstorm, they were preparing for the apocalypse.  There was no telling who would make it out alive and who was going to starve to death, in the 24-48 hours it would take the plows to clear the main roads after the storm.  Panic was in full force.  Stores were running out of everything in record time.  

Check out lines went all the way to the back of the store.  Milk and bread, forget about it.  That was gone before you even got in your car.  By the time you get there, half the produce section is gone.  A friend foolishly thought she could just grab a couple of potatoes.  This was no drill, my friend, this was Snowzilla.  

Now I don't have a cow to get my own milk, or the ability to make bread, because yeast hates me and refuses to cooperate.  Nor do I have a garden to grow my own produce.  But I'm not worried, because I watched The Martian.  Thanks to Mark Watney, Space Pirate, I know what needs to be done to grow potatoes.

You know how the saying goes - when life gives you poop, make potatoes.  Or something like that.  

In the end, Snowzilla came and we all survived.  A friend of mine measured 27" in her backyard.  That's pretty legit for 24 hours.  The fact that they canceled school for seven days, was maddening.  Don’t they know the buses could just drive with their hazards on and they’d be fine?

Regardless – when snowed in, what better way to spend your time than cooking Carmine’s.  Because Grandma was visiting, I wanted to make something she'd enjoy.  She loves shrimp and I love saying parmigiana, so what's more perfect than Shrimp Parmigiana?

Shrimp Parmigiana (page 162) 

When I went to the store to buy some fresh shrimp, the guy behind the seafood counter had me follow him over to the freezer section.  He grabs a bag of frozen shrimp,  hands it to me and says, “We take these bags out in the morning, thaw the shrimp, and then put them on ice behind the glass counter.  If you want, you can buy this bag, put the shrimp in room temperature water for 20 minutes, and thaw them yourself.  Otherwise, I can charge you more for thawing them for you, this morning.”

Frozen bag of shrimp it is. 

While the shrimp was thawing in water, we made the breadcrumb (pg 283).  Who knew it was so easy to make your own??  Since I forgot to take bread out of the bag the day before (shocking, I know),  I threw them in the toaster and that worked just fine.   

My breadcrumbs are on the left and a store brand on the right.  I'm not sure if they should have been finer, like the store ones, but that was the best I could do with my blender.  I guess, for the sake of future breadcrumbs, I have no choice but to go buy a food processor.  A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do...for the sake of future bread crumbs.  For now, mine tasted way better, so that's what counts.

Once the shrimp was thawed and breadcrumbs made...this was the fastest and easiest recipe.  It took me about five minutes to have everything else ready: cheese sliced and grated, eggs whisked, flour and breadcrumbs on different plates and oil heating up in the pan.

        

I don't even like shrimp, but when I flipped those suckers over and saw that golden crust...I didn't care what it was, anything that looks that good needs to be eaten.  I'm going to learn to love shrimp if it kills me.

When they were all fried up, I topped them with two different cheeses and threw them under the broiler until the cheese was all melted and bubbling in parts.

**The recipe says "four 1/8-inch-thick slices fresh mozzarella," and the instructions say to cut those slices in half and top each shrimp with a slice.  However, the recipe calls for 16 large shrimp.  I'm not sure if it was supposed to say eight slices of mozzarella or to cut the four slices into fourths instead of half.  I went with eight slices so there would be lots of cheese covering the shrimp.  Either way, shrimp smothered in cheese is freaking awesome.  

Once the shrimp was done, I grabbed a plate and dished some up for my mother-in-law, Cynthia.  She loved them!  As for me...this recipe is going at the top of my list for whenever I have to take an appetizer somewhere.  They were amazing right out of the pan and still just as good when they were cold.  

At this point in my post, I usually go over the family reviews.  However, I cannot confirm or deny if in my excitement I shared the rest with my friends, leaving none for my family.  All I will say is that one minute I had a full plate of Shrimp Parmigiana and the next minute it was gone.   

My only saving grace was the fact that I made another Carmine's meal for dinner (which I will post next).  So with full bellies and a promise of another round of Shrimp Parmigiana, everyone was happy.  Whew!