A Little $pecial Occasion

Every once in awhile the master of dark desires gives us a reason to dress up, like a birthday or a funeral. In this instance it was my 27th Birthday. 27 is a really special age for artistic geniuses such as myself. Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, James Dean (not the porno actor) and Kurt Cobain all tragically died at this lucky number, often referred to as the "Twenty Seven Club." I one time wrote that in a birthday card to my best friend on her 27th birthday....and then she told me she had to have a biopsy on her boob. I felt like an asshole, but she ended up being fine. 

Assuming I'll probably die of an overdose this year (an overdose of 80s pop music and Halloween candy) - I figured if this is my last birthday I wanna eat the best possible thing I can think of. Hence the Lobster Mac n Cheese. About a month ago I was strolling through the grocery store and I saw lobster tails on a very good sale. Marked down seafood is probably suspect, but I had just quit my job and this seemed like the master of dark desires giving me a sign to spend what little money I had left frivolously. I looked at my half price lobster as an investment, so I stuck them in the freezer for a special occasion. 

A Little Pasta Party

I'm Italian, as I imagine you are too. Maybe it's just a sweeping cultural generalization, or we actually do have hotter blood pumping through our veins. Either way, we only deal in one of two emotions: unrelenting rage and jubilant gaiety. Rarely do the two mix. Except in the bedroom. The joy is brought about by many things such as pie, booze and the gentle purrs of my cat. The rage is triggered by mostly everything...from misplaced sunglasses to one of the good plates getting broken. Nothing is too small to get worked up about. Unfortunately for you non-Italians, there's no delicate way to deal with these unpredictable bouts of passion. It's best just to wait it out because there will probably be a pasta dish once the tantrum subsides. I keep this relic of my dad's college days in my kitchen to warn strangers that they're walking on eggshells. 

A Little Sunday Funday

Sunday mornings Chez Toulouse are an occasion worth looking forward to - we grocery shop at our local farmer's Aldi, then come home and clean the apartment to our favorite Judy Garland and Fleetwood Mac records. It's the Lord's day and I intend to do whatever the hell I want with it. Neighbors bedamned! Gin rickeys, holistic toilet bowl cleaner and The Man that Got Away sound like a Sunday-Funday to me. While I scoop the litterbox and work on my vibrato, a homemade marinara sauce usually simmers away on the stove. My hot Italian blood is only good for two things: exaggerated emotional outbursts and one helluva pasta sauce. I don't believe in jarred sauce, but I do believe in spending just as much and working twice as hard on sauce that basically tastes the same. In my poorer years, I lived on pasta and Ragu. Now that I'm a grown man with love handles, I try to consolidate my carb-intake to one night of the week. This ever-romantic weekend tradition is known as Pasta Sunday at my house. When all my chores are done, my plus-one and I slip into our best elastic-waisted bottoms and plop our fatasses down in front of a movie I rented from the lib'ary. That's amore!

A Little Spring Fare

I made five pies for a fundraiser this weekend (including a chocolate chess pie), but I won't be showing you that. Let's face it, winter is mostly over and while all the snow has melted away, the fat on your ass probably hasn't. Everyone told me after the age of twenty-five your metabolism slows down, I just figured like most laws, it didn't apply to me. Twenty-five breezed by in late night burgers and ice cream and I stayed skinny as a whippet, partially because of the manic period, but mostly because of good genetics. Now that I'm twenty-six, I'm a little bit wiser and a little bit wider. As a former fat-kid this is all cause for worry. My mom warns me about the hereditary "spread" that happens to people on her side of the family; a non scientific condition in which the hips and ass spread wider than the shoulders. As many of you know, I have an ass that won't quit, but after taking a good look around at the holidays, I'm realizing my fate if I keep eating with reckless abandon. I'd rather hate my reflection for all those hateful things it said to that bus driver than its flabby butt. That's why I'm starting with me. 

My plus-one recently embarked on a #cleaneatingchallenge which was just as annoying as it sounds. I did learn something though, and that is life's too short to count calories and read labels. Eat what you want. You can trust big food companies. That's why I choose Kraft Easy Mac for my family...

A Little Peasant Dinner

This doesn't count as pumpkin because it's squash. Don't get me wrong, I love autumnal cuisine, but there are other ways to cook seasonally without allspice and nutmeg. If you're like me, you're probably really lazy. Lately I've been entirely too lazy to go on a full-scale grocery run but as a person of limited means, I don't do much take out. Occasionally this means scraping the bottoms of my cabinets and figuring out which one or two things I need in order to justify a stop at Jewel for Halloween candy. In this week's episode I remembered that I had a dusty box of spaghetti in the back of my pantry, and a week-old roasted butternut squash decomposing in my fridge. It's a good day when I have an egg. The result was very elegant. All I had to add was fresh sage, bacon and cheese. A trip to Jewel under $5, well $8 if you account for the well-deserved pint of Ben & Jerry's. It takes a lot of money to eat this cheap. 

Butternut Squash Carbonara

Yes, I know it's not a true carbonara, but I don't really give a shit. Prosciutto tastes like human skin. Instead a used slightly crisped chopped bacon because this here is America damnit. I took a note from a Martha Stewart recipe I once screwed up and I started by frying the fresh sage in butter first. This resulted in more little crispy bits incorporated throughout. As you can tell I like any dish with crispy little pieces of fried things. Stay crispy this fall with butternut squash, arguably the tastiest squash. And cheap! I've got a family to feed. 

you will need the following: 

1 half roasted decomposing butternut squash

1 dusty half-box of spaghetti

1 where-did-this-come-from? egg

1 c when-did-I-buy parmesan cheese

3 tbsp chopped sage

2 strips crisped chopped bacon 

1/2 chopped onion

2 cloves minced garlic

2-3 tbsp butter

salt & pepper

1.) Boil spaghetti. Reserve 1 cup of pasta water.

2.) Fry chopped sage in butter until crispy. Then add squash, onion, bacon and garlic and cook until warm.

3.) Slowly add in spaghetti and mix with squash and bacon. Add slashes of hot pasta water to keep the pasta moving.

4.) Shake in cheese while stirring in 1 egg. Keep stirring over heat until egg is mixed with cheese and pasta.

Serve Immediately. 

A Little Pasta Sunday

If you're reading this, it probably means you're also awake at 4:30 in the morning. In my new life as semi-professional baker for Bang Bang Pie Shop I keep the hours of a farmer. That means waking up before the rooster crows and going to sleep sometimes before the sun even sets. That being said, it beats the hell out of corporate life.  I'm on a vision quest folks, I'll see ya when I run out of peyote. The plus side is that it's really brought my cat and I closer together. In the case of yesterday morning, Baby Toulouse's never-ending appetite for crushed up pretzels and water got me out of bed on time, after I slept through my alarm. I'd say sorry for the long gap between posts, but if you're really that into my blog, your life is probably sad. 

A Little Buonasera Dinner

Since there aren't any good holidays to look forward to for awhile, I've decided to focus on cultural stereotype-themed dinner parties. It's tough to do Italian without eating a box of pasta or a pallet of meatballs. It's also hard to refrain from Giada-like pronunciations of basic words like Spaghetti. My guests know better than to eat my meatballs, unless they wanna spend the next day puking and pooping themselves sick. I have a meatball curse - you stand warned.  

When I think Italian, I think about the two most complimentary words in fine dining: Olive.Garden. Fortunately I don't live in the suburbs, so the closest to Darden dining we have in the city is Maggiano's by Lettuce Entertain You. Spending good money on Italian food seems like a terrible waste, considering you can make noodles and sauce in about ten minutes for like two dollars. Even the fanciest of concoctions can be done at home for far less, and probably far better. 

Eggplant Parmajean with Spaghetti Squash

I've heard this dish pronounced as parma-jean, more often than not because I grew up in Ohio. A few summers and studio apartments ago, I went through a phase in which I made chicken parmajean almost every night. I'd sit by an open window and eat my unnecessarily complicated dinner while watching assholes and their brats play in the rooftop pool of the condo across the air shaft. For that reason, I romanticize this. Now that I'm cooking for vegetarians more often, I swapped out the dead bird for dead eggplant, which I recently discovered isn't as gross as it looks. I accidentally had this once at a work function catered by Maggiano's and I don't remember liking it much. Mine's better. I served it on spaghetti squash because I'm getting skinny-fat. 

A Little Religious Occasion Dinner

It's that time of year again. The time when birds start singing, flowers bloom out of the ground and then a big fucking snow storm comes through and ruins April. It's also the time of year people have vaguely religious dinner parties. The only temple I worship at is currently under federal investigation, so I can't say whether lasagna is traditional to any other religion than my appetite. Whether you're a spiritual person or not, someone will ask you to attend their vaguely religious dinner, be it Easter or Passover. Just last night I went to my first homosexual Seder. There are few things in this world I wouldn't do for good brisket including, but not limited to, murder. The best part of being in a Facebook relationship with a vegetarian is that I get to eat his portion of brisket. I know, you're all tired of reading my vegetarian recipes, but you can't imagine how sick I am of eating them. My rule for vegetarian cookery is that I'll never stoop to that vegan bullshit. I'm not even trying to hear about nutritional yeast. The key to making brisket-lovers enjoy a brisket-less dinner is giving people a dish worthy of a main course. That does not include salad or soup, unless it's lunch at Olive Garden and it's available in a never ending quantity.

A Little Pumpkin Pasta Dish

Pumpkin-Bacon Pasta

I've been dreaming of this for like a week. I took a recipe from Martha Stewart and changed it up. Don't get me wrong, I worship at the church of Martha, but most of her recipes tend to need a little tweaking. The bacon was my idea, and what a good idea it was. I took some notes from her user comments, some of her users are pretty bitchy, housewives can be brutal. Anywho, this dish was great and ever so cheap, but when I say use salt, I couldn't be more serious. Pumpkin is really dense so it takes a lot of salt to season it. 

You will need the following: 

1 box of penne pasta

1 tbsp coarsely chopped sage

1.5 c pumpkin puree

1 clove garlic (minced)

1/2 c half n half

4-5 slices of thick bacon

1/4 tsp pie spice

1/4 tsp red pepper flakes

SALT & pepper

1.) Boil pasta, save one cup pasta water. Drain and set aside. 

2.) In empty pasta pot, fry bacon until mostly done. Then add in sage and fry 1-2 minutes. 

3.) Mix pumpkin puree and pie spice. Toss pumpkin into pot and heat lightly. 

4.) Add pasta water and garlic. Continue to lightly heat. 

5.) Pour in half-n-half. Stir and heat only until sauce is warm. Season with pepper flakes and salt. 

6.) Once sauce is mixed and warm, remove from heat and mix in pasta. Toss thoroughly and serve. 

Great for a group!