Okay so I don’t know what y’alls grandmas were like, but mine were/are pretty hard. My mom’s mom used to chop ice out of a pond with an axe, wearing socks for gloves, and shoot deer in the head with a .22 rifle. She used to, and still does to some degree, make some truly unhealthy dishes. My dad’s mom taught me to make wine when I was six. Her parents were moonshiners. She as well had some dishes that could make a man’s heart explode.
One thing that both ladies’ cooking has in common is something that’s fallen out of favor in the home, recently: deep fat frying. Unless your grandparents were WWII-age or older, you probably weren’t exposed to much of it as a kid. Let me say right now: That’s a damn shame. So a kid has a few doughnuts fried in lard, you kick him out to play in the woods for six hours. he ain’t gettin’ fat. Unless he’s the fat kid in the group already.
Food fried in fat ain’t exactly awesome for your body. But, if you only eat it once in a while, and keep up a reasonable level activity, your heart probably isn’t going to give out at 30 or whatever. Just walk around a little extra. Or be a farmer.
Some people dig on molecular gastronomy, with all kind of foams and fogs and shit and man, if that makes you happy, fire up your immersion blender and go to town. I prefer the philosophical opposite, though: cooking simple, delicious food the way old people did. It’s rewarding! And it tastes good, usually. Also you only need like four ingredients and a cast-iron pan.
Today we’re gonna cook one of my favourite treats from when I was a kid: Rabbit Ear cookies. I remember getting a brown paper bag of them from my grandmother on easter when I was maybe seven or eight. The bottom half of the bag was almost translucent from the grease, and good lord, were they delicious. I’m assuming that most of you have never deep-fried anything, so don’t get insulted if you know all about deep-frying and I’m like “Okay be careful about the hot oil, because basically even the smallest mistake will end in a pretty horrible disaster.”
So let me say right now: Be careful about the hot oil, because basically even the smallest mistake will end in a pretty horrible disaster.
Deep-frying is messy, so the best solution is to think outside the house and do this shit in the yard. I use a propane-fueled camp stove, because it can crank out the BTUs, and it’s pretty easy to hold at a constant temperature. Don’t bother if you have some kind of whisper-lyte gnomette 1000 backpacking stove, because we need a shitload of heat. Constant heat is the key to frying. You gotta hold your oil at around 350 degrees for quite some time, and a stove the size of a snuff can is gonna have a hard time with a cast-iron skillet and a pound and a half of melted crisco.
Now a cast-iron skillet isn’t necessary, but it really helps keep your oil at a consistent temperature. If you don’t have a cast-Iron skillet, then what the hell man, go get a Lodge 12” at the hardware store. They’re like $25 and made in the USA, and they come basically pre-seasoned. Or look around in a thrift store. Today I used a heavy-bottomed stainless steel pan that I bought at goodwill for two bucks. It has a little higher sides than my skillet, and it holds heat okay. What I am saying here is that you gotta have a hefty pan. If you want your fried stuff to be light and crispy, you gotta cook it hard and fast, and that means you gotta keep your oil HOT AS HELL.
To make sure you got your stuff at a good temperature, you should have a candy thermometer. It will tell you when your oil is ready to rock. They ain’t expensive and will really help you get a feel for when you got your stuff hot enough, without tipping over in to OH GOD WHY IS THERE SO MUCH SMOKE territory.
Cooking outside has the added advantage of not making your house reek of delicious grease, and lessens the possibility of dying in flames. Both good things.
So what the hell IS a rabbit ear? Well, it’s a chunk of fried dough, twisted around some to form a crude V-shape, fried, and rolled in powdered sugar. Think of a cross between a cruller and a funnel cake, with just a little more body and crunch. The best part is, it only has like eight ingredients that you probably already have. The things you will need, are:
3 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons salt
1 egg
between a quarter and a half-teaspoon of baking POWDER. baking soda will not work.
1 tablespoon clarified butter (melt some butter. wait for the white shit to drop to the bottom. use the clear yellow stuff.)
3/4 cup milk (you might need like a tablespoon more if your dough is too crumbly.)
A big tub of crisco or whatever vegetable shortening is cheapest. (not butter flavoured, it should be waxy and white. You can also use lard if you are so inclined)
powdered sugar
Get all the dry things. Mix all the dry things together really well. Add the wet things. Knead the resulting dough until there are no dry bits and the texture is pretty uniform. Like I said, you might need to add juuuuuust a touch more milk and/or clarified butter. I did both. Warm up the milk before you pour it in so it doesn’t mess with the butter. Form the dough in to a ball and let it sit for an hour, then roll it out on a floured surface until it is a little thinner than pie crust, like 1/16-1/8”, or about 2-3mm. I found that it was easier to roll if you split the dough in to halves and rolled each one out separately. It should be thinner than your average pie crust, but not so thin it’s all coming apart.
Now get at that dough with a knife, and cut it in to strips between 3/4 and 1” wide and 4-6” long. Pinch the middle of the dough together about the long axis, and then fold the two halves together to make a crude bunny-ears shape. You ain’t got to do this, but it makes them easy to flip, and just frying ripped pieces of dough makes it look like you didn’t even try. WHAT WILL THE CHILDREN THINK???????
Get your crisco up to 350F. You want a good two inches of liquid in the pan, enough to cover the pieces you drop in by a good margin. Save some scraps of dough, and drop one in when the oil gets close. If it at first sinks and pretty quickly then rises to the surface to fry, your oil should be good. This is a way to test if you ain’t got a thermometer.
Toss some of those suckers in to the oil, baby! And by that I mean gently drop them in. You only want to fry like five or six at a time, so you don’t cool your oil off too much. Let them go until the edges turn golden brown and the color starts to move towards the middle, then flip them. It should only take like 30 seconds or so, and less on the second side. The only way to get good at this is to practice, and develop a feel for what’s perfectly crispy, what’s undercooked, and what’s just hideously burned. Remove the ears from the oil with a slotted METAL spoon, and lay them on a plate with a couple paper towels on it to soak up some of the grease. Let the oil heat back up some before you toss in your next batch.
Once everything is all fried and delicious, and your ears have cooled off a bit, put some powdered sugar in a ziplock bag or tupperware or whatever with you got on hand. Put in a few ears and shake them like a baby that JUST WON’T SHUT UP FOR ONE SECOND WHILE DADDY TALKS TO THE BANK. Repeat until all the ears are done. You can add cinnamon or some shit if you want.
So there you have it! Deep-fried desserts 101. Next time you go to the fair and some dude wants to charge you like six bucks for a funnel cake, just be all “HELL no!” and make some golden-fried treats at home.
The best thing about this dish, besides everything about the way it tastes, is how simple and cheap it is. You can afford to mess this one up a couple times without breaking the bank. If shit goes south halfway through, toss the whole mess, crack a beer, and start again. My grandma would be proud.
Here are some pictures.
This is what it looks like when you melt a half-tub of crisco.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Monday, August 31, 2009
ACK MONDAY ACK
Okay there internet, this is as close to a real blog post that I have yet made. Everyone knows that I sleep from about three to eleven. That is the way my body works. I get the most work done from nine or ten at night to two or so. Today, though, horror of horrors! My eyes snapped open to a total BrightMare world, where people got on their way to work and were awake when you are supposed to be awake. This has caused all types of trouble.
First off, how in the hell am I supposed to justify eating three tuna sandwiches for breakfast if I am doing it at regular breakfast time? That's ridiculous! I don't want to be some guy who eats fish sandwiches for breakfast. From there it is one step to finding the socks I had on yesterday and thinking "Why not? They aren't that dirty or stretched out." Before you know it I am eating raw bacon right out of the package and laughing at Fran Drescher. I don't want that to be me, internet.
Secondly, I interface better with people when I get up at my usual time. When I am well-rested and starting my day, everyone else is going in to the lunch-time slide, where their every thought and action is dulled by a vicious combo of hunger and the onset of severe boredom. If I should be, say, shopping for building materials at a local home-improvement warehouse, most employees I approach will simply take me to the 3/4" wall brackets, without inquiring about what my project is or why I need galvanized parts. Sometimes I do not feel like mentioning these things. Then again, if I am feeling jovial, I can drop charisma all over the joint. As long as you aren't too crazy about it, a little humor can make that last hour before someone's break just totally fly by. When they are eating a meal at home, they might think of me and the joke I made about PVC glue. These are important reasons to wake up four hours later than almost everyone else.
There is also the feeling which crops up around three PM that your head is filled with greasy rags and that your eyelids have hair on the inside of them but I think everyone gets this at some point during the day.
I thought that me and sleep had an uneasy truce worked out, but apparently that slick bastard is one step ahead of me, yet again. People from both sides of my family are able to just drop off when they so choose. I am jealous of this fact. My body is not built for sleep. This 3-11 scheme usually works, but today it let me down. What the hell, body. What in the hell.
I think my body knows that my brain is dealing with some stupid bullshit right now, and is pulling the oldest trick in the book - the one where I don't sleep for a week and then go in to a fugue state and do all kinds of nutty actions which bring my deals to a head, for better or for worse. Then I fall asleep until my brain gets me in trouble once more.
I swear to heck, brain and body, you better get your contact information straightened out and stop yelling about things that are outside of your control, or I will pull this car over right now and give you both such a licking that you will suffer post-traumatic stress disorder every time you see someone with an ice-cream cone (or bar).
Oh also I am growing my mustache back for a little while.
First off, how in the hell am I supposed to justify eating three tuna sandwiches for breakfast if I am doing it at regular breakfast time? That's ridiculous! I don't want to be some guy who eats fish sandwiches for breakfast. From there it is one step to finding the socks I had on yesterday and thinking "Why not? They aren't that dirty or stretched out." Before you know it I am eating raw bacon right out of the package and laughing at Fran Drescher. I don't want that to be me, internet.
Secondly, I interface better with people when I get up at my usual time. When I am well-rested and starting my day, everyone else is going in to the lunch-time slide, where their every thought and action is dulled by a vicious combo of hunger and the onset of severe boredom. If I should be, say, shopping for building materials at a local home-improvement warehouse, most employees I approach will simply take me to the 3/4" wall brackets, without inquiring about what my project is or why I need galvanized parts. Sometimes I do not feel like mentioning these things. Then again, if I am feeling jovial, I can drop charisma all over the joint. As long as you aren't too crazy about it, a little humor can make that last hour before someone's break just totally fly by. When they are eating a meal at home, they might think of me and the joke I made about PVC glue. These are important reasons to wake up four hours later than almost everyone else.
There is also the feeling which crops up around three PM that your head is filled with greasy rags and that your eyelids have hair on the inside of them but I think everyone gets this at some point during the day.
I thought that me and sleep had an uneasy truce worked out, but apparently that slick bastard is one step ahead of me, yet again. People from both sides of my family are able to just drop off when they so choose. I am jealous of this fact. My body is not built for sleep. This 3-11 scheme usually works, but today it let me down. What the hell, body. What in the hell.
I think my body knows that my brain is dealing with some stupid bullshit right now, and is pulling the oldest trick in the book - the one where I don't sleep for a week and then go in to a fugue state and do all kinds of nutty actions which bring my deals to a head, for better or for worse. Then I fall asleep until my brain gets me in trouble once more.
I swear to heck, brain and body, you better get your contact information straightened out and stop yelling about things that are outside of your control, or I will pull this car over right now and give you both such a licking that you will suffer post-traumatic stress disorder every time you see someone with an ice-cream cone (or bar).
Oh also I am growing my mustache back for a little while.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Double-post Sunday night
Hello again, internet. I almost forgot to mention a crisis. Since the point of the internet is to mention crises, I feel like I have made a serious error. I am sorry, internet.
As is my custom on Friday nights, I left my home for a pint at the Nelson House, a quiet, clean establishment located just a couple blocks away. It is the kind of place where you can read a newspaper at the bar, and nobody calls you a "college-boy faggot." You can talk to an older lady or gent about tomato plants, or healthcare, or any number of topics.
But you cannot do this when the bar is closed for two weeks.
I will expand more on this theme at a later date.
As is my custom on Friday nights, I left my home for a pint at the Nelson House, a quiet, clean establishment located just a couple blocks away. It is the kind of place where you can read a newspaper at the bar, and nobody calls you a "college-boy faggot." You can talk to an older lady or gent about tomato plants, or healthcare, or any number of topics.
But you cannot do this when the bar is closed for two weeks.
I will expand more on this theme at a later date.
Some people were talking about Oktoberfest
Today was a chilly day, internet. I knew this when I stepped from my bed. It is a true fact that I am a huge fan of robes, and so today, when it came time to pick one, my hand passed over my thin summer cover, and instead went with a thicker, terrycloth option. Knee-length wool socks were added.
It was the kind of morning that fires up a part of your brain, if you were born and/or raised in or near the country. Long-dormant instincts kick in, and you start noticing things. When was the last time I put mink oil on my boots? Has that wood been drying long enough?
The part of my brain that lights up the most, though, is the part that knows about shotguns. During the spring and summer, there is little use for a shotgun. Groundhogs are taken with a rifle that spends most of the day slung across your back. When walking along the edge of an alfalfa field, the thought of lugging around a fourt-foot-long over/under in the July sun is just an awful proposition. But now, on a cool morning like this, it seems to make a lot of sense.
So you take it down off the wall and give it a looking-over. The extra-thick layer of oil you put on it last winter is still there. You push the lever to open it up, and peer down the barrels. Shiny and bright. Of course, you'd expect nothing less of yourself, but there is always the fear that a spot of rust might have formed where an errant finger laid months ago. There are all kinds of shotguns, but cool weather always makes you think of your favourite.
As you look your gear over, you don't really think about squirrels and rabbits and pheasants. Sure, you know they play a part, but more than anything else, you think about the time in late December, when you were walking through a pine bottom, and a snow squall blew in. The way that to this day, you've never seen or felt anything so quiet. The snow fell so thickly that you couldn't hear your footsteps, or even your breath. Or you think about walking across a field of corn stubble, the ground thawing slightly with the morning sun, footsteps becoming softer as you near the treeline, on a day where even your lungs remind you how bright and clear it is every time you take a breath. That shotgun, that pair of boots, that vest were all there with you.
So you snap the gun closed and put it back up on the wall, make some coffee, and put the mink oil on your boots. It isn't time, yet, but you know it isn't far off, either. The short days and cold wind make us all, in this part of the country, turn inward a little. But it isn't always a terrible thing. A pot of squirrel stew wouldn't taste the same if you'd been out carousing with your friends at the lake all day. Winter will be long, but at least you know it's coming. And you know where you'll be.
It was the kind of morning that fires up a part of your brain, if you were born and/or raised in or near the country. Long-dormant instincts kick in, and you start noticing things. When was the last time I put mink oil on my boots? Has that wood been drying long enough?
The part of my brain that lights up the most, though, is the part that knows about shotguns. During the spring and summer, there is little use for a shotgun. Groundhogs are taken with a rifle that spends most of the day slung across your back. When walking along the edge of an alfalfa field, the thought of lugging around a fourt-foot-long over/under in the July sun is just an awful proposition. But now, on a cool morning like this, it seems to make a lot of sense.
So you take it down off the wall and give it a looking-over. The extra-thick layer of oil you put on it last winter is still there. You push the lever to open it up, and peer down the barrels. Shiny and bright. Of course, you'd expect nothing less of yourself, but there is always the fear that a spot of rust might have formed where an errant finger laid months ago. There are all kinds of shotguns, but cool weather always makes you think of your favourite.
As you look your gear over, you don't really think about squirrels and rabbits and pheasants. Sure, you know they play a part, but more than anything else, you think about the time in late December, when you were walking through a pine bottom, and a snow squall blew in. The way that to this day, you've never seen or felt anything so quiet. The snow fell so thickly that you couldn't hear your footsteps, or even your breath. Or you think about walking across a field of corn stubble, the ground thawing slightly with the morning sun, footsteps becoming softer as you near the treeline, on a day where even your lungs remind you how bright and clear it is every time you take a breath. That shotgun, that pair of boots, that vest were all there with you.
So you snap the gun closed and put it back up on the wall, make some coffee, and put the mink oil on your boots. It isn't time, yet, but you know it isn't far off, either. The short days and cold wind make us all, in this part of the country, turn inward a little. But it isn't always a terrible thing. A pot of squirrel stew wouldn't taste the same if you'd been out carousing with your friends at the lake all day. Winter will be long, but at least you know it's coming. And you know where you'll be.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
HELLO BLOG
HELLO WORLD
Okay so this is the first time I have made a blog that is not a joke. This creates an interesting scenario, as I only know how to parody others' blogs, and know nothing of what goes in to a blog of my own.
All I know is that my main man Jimmy T. says I need to have a blog, and so here it is. You're welcome, internet.
So I guess this is where I talk about things I do or like, and I will just step right in here and say that man howdy, have I had a thing for glass recently. I have worked with all kinds of materials before, for legitimate construction projects, art purposes, and projects that I started for fun and then quit and never touched again. (It is the god-given right of any man to quit a project whenever he wants, and never even think about it again. Anyone who says differently is probably a boring person who considers putting together Ikea furniture a "project")
Glass is one of those things that has always (rightly so) terrified me. There are few ways to salvage a glass item that you have messed up with, by even a little bit. Also, the splinters of it lodge in your hands are impossible to see to get out. When you start a glass project, you can't even afford to mess it up a little bit, because it will explode everywhere and then you have to start all over, and in addition to that, there is broken glass all over your workshop. That is not a fun combo.
But whatever, I want a set of mint julep glasses made outta Grolsch bottles. How the hell do you cut the top off a grolsch bottle, you ask? Well, don't try and score it freehand with a glass cutter, because you will mess it up every time. Even if you are Dr. Steadyhands McPerfect, your score marks will not match up. So, obviously, you gotta build a set of v-blocks. You score your bottle, heat it with a torch, quench it, and if you did it all right the top just pops off in your hand. If you did it wrong, the bottle has cracks in it that look minor but will cause it to explode for no reason if you touch it wrong. Also, sometimes you gotta snap off little bits of glass from the edges, which basically means that you are creating tiny shards of glass on purpose. My method for combatting this has been to do this chipping underwater, in a five-gallon bucket. What I am going to do with a five-gallon bucket full of water, bottle necks, and glass splinters has yet to be determined. But I am getting closer to having a full set. I have so far made two grolsch cups, and am in the process of wet-sanding the edges so that they don't cut your face when you drink from them. The edges are not as even as I like, but that is something that would have to be taken care of with grinding, I think. Screw that, man, these are loaded with home-y imperfection. I should sell them at a farmer's market for way too much money.
The bottles I have had the most luck with have been old-assed soda bottles. The glass is mega thick, and also pretty uniform. I made a nice pencil-holder out of a nehi bottle.
After that I might try and rig up a heating element from some nichrome resistor wire I acquired from high-school back in the day, and my car battery. (Nichrome wire is theoretically used to make your own rocket ignitors, danged if I was about to pay money for them suckers.)
We will see if this cures the problem I have been having with overheating the score-lines I have made in my bottles, which causes vertical cracking.
Today was a brush burning day out at the property. Combined with yesterday's Chainsaw Rodeo, I am feeling it in my arms and torso. There is only one cure: take the Honda out for a little Proficency Run. See you later, internet.
Okay so this is the first time I have made a blog that is not a joke. This creates an interesting scenario, as I only know how to parody others' blogs, and know nothing of what goes in to a blog of my own.
All I know is that my main man Jimmy T. says I need to have a blog, and so here it is. You're welcome, internet.
So I guess this is where I talk about things I do or like, and I will just step right in here and say that man howdy, have I had a thing for glass recently. I have worked with all kinds of materials before, for legitimate construction projects, art purposes, and projects that I started for fun and then quit and never touched again. (It is the god-given right of any man to quit a project whenever he wants, and never even think about it again. Anyone who says differently is probably a boring person who considers putting together Ikea furniture a "project")
Glass is one of those things that has always (rightly so) terrified me. There are few ways to salvage a glass item that you have messed up with, by even a little bit. Also, the splinters of it lodge in your hands are impossible to see to get out. When you start a glass project, you can't even afford to mess it up a little bit, because it will explode everywhere and then you have to start all over, and in addition to that, there is broken glass all over your workshop. That is not a fun combo.
But whatever, I want a set of mint julep glasses made outta Grolsch bottles. How the hell do you cut the top off a grolsch bottle, you ask? Well, don't try and score it freehand with a glass cutter, because you will mess it up every time. Even if you are Dr. Steadyhands McPerfect, your score marks will not match up. So, obviously, you gotta build a set of v-blocks. You score your bottle, heat it with a torch, quench it, and if you did it all right the top just pops off in your hand. If you did it wrong, the bottle has cracks in it that look minor but will cause it to explode for no reason if you touch it wrong. Also, sometimes you gotta snap off little bits of glass from the edges, which basically means that you are creating tiny shards of glass on purpose. My method for combatting this has been to do this chipping underwater, in a five-gallon bucket. What I am going to do with a five-gallon bucket full of water, bottle necks, and glass splinters has yet to be determined. But I am getting closer to having a full set. I have so far made two grolsch cups, and am in the process of wet-sanding the edges so that they don't cut your face when you drink from them. The edges are not as even as I like, but that is something that would have to be taken care of with grinding, I think. Screw that, man, these are loaded with home-y imperfection. I should sell them at a farmer's market for way too much money.
The bottles I have had the most luck with have been old-assed soda bottles. The glass is mega thick, and also pretty uniform. I made a nice pencil-holder out of a nehi bottle.
After that I might try and rig up a heating element from some nichrome resistor wire I acquired from high-school back in the day, and my car battery. (Nichrome wire is theoretically used to make your own rocket ignitors, danged if I was about to pay money for them suckers.)
We will see if this cures the problem I have been having with overheating the score-lines I have made in my bottles, which causes vertical cracking.
Today was a brush burning day out at the property. Combined with yesterday's Chainsaw Rodeo, I am feeling it in my arms and torso. There is only one cure: take the Honda out for a little Proficency Run. See you later, internet.
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