Motherf***ing Amazing Enchiladas

Quick props to my friend Maddie Oatman (contributor to Mother Jones), who hosted me in her family's house in Keystone and served up some f***ing incredible homemade enchiladas.

Click here to see her incredibly creative and extremely tasty recipe.

She has the same sensibilities about enchiladas as I do about sandwiches (see my previous post about how sandwiches are like feminism). These enchiladas prove that if you think this particular category of rolled up pocket of goodness must include some kind of animal flesh, you're nothing more than a close-minded piece of sh** who hasn't tried these enchiladas yet....

I mean, look how f***ing happy we all are to eat these things.


I'm going to make them tonight. Hopefully I won't f*** them up!

Motherf***ing Meatloaf

In the beginning…

The genesis of this blog post, like the majority of my blog posts, starts with virus-induced delirium.

In this particular case, two-days of vomiting and a severe electrolyte imbalance, despite the best efforts of well-meaning roommates and the BRAT diet, allowed me to explore new horizons of madness, previously unavailable to my brain, satiated as it previously was with the perfect balance of nutrients.

However, now that I was half-starved and feverish, I was able to wrap my head around new concepts, the first of which was a problem that I’ve wrestled with for a long time:

Meatloaf – What the f***?

Compound word consisting of meat and loaf.

The first word presents a problem for me: How could I make something that has, in its very name, the object of avoidance for me and the rest of my fellow vegetarians?

The only saving grace of meatloaf, I supposed, was that the latter half of the compound word consists of “loaf,” implying bread, which I could consume guilt-free.

Hooray!

After a google search, however, I discovered that meatloaf doesn’t even have any f***ing bread in it. I was beyond livid, but determined to break the lexical chains that have bound generations of meatloaf lovers who love neither meat nor loaf, but only the beautiful combination of their metamorphosed flavors.

Why now?

I guess I should explain why I was so focused on this particular dish:

1. My sister had recently passed along a recipe for “Meatless Loaf,” as a homely substitute for Turkey during Thanksgiving. I wanted to try that sh** out. If she could do it, I could certainly do it and I would do it better than her because she's always trying to upstage me and do things better so this was my chance to show her who's boss. Who's boss? Me, that's who's boss, why would you even ask that?

2. My roommate, who had recently undergone dental surgery, could only eat things with a certain squidgy consistency. Meatloaf’s squishy texture would be the perfect dish to appease her.

3. It has a similar color to certain kinds of vomit, which gave me a feeling of nostalgia for my previous status as a puking invalid unable even to complete the most elementary of tasks.

Tangent: I hate being f***ing sick so f***ing much it makes me want to puke

The last reason that I was so focused on making this dish is an overt desire to overcome the limitations of sickness in general.

Sickness f***ing blows. It’s the most inconvenient thing ever created, especially for Type-A motherf***ers like me. I have a constant need to maximize my productive capacity and efficiency at all times.

In fact, when I read this Postsecret post, I practically sh** all over the place with self-recognition. You know you do this sh**:

As you can imagine, for a sick f*** like me and 80% of this work-slave society, being sick is like being in the Ninth circle of Hell.

Motherf***ing theories of production

You are presented with incredible amounts of free-time, which for our overworked society is a f***ing hot commodity, to say the least.

With that free time, you can do all sorts of productive things. You are presented with this incredible opportunity to have actually PRODUCED something by the end of the day. I’m not the only person who thinks that producing things makes people, happy, ok?

Check out these two dudes’ theories. One’s about sh** and the others’ is about making sh**.

With those PRODUCED things, you can either look at them, heave a self-satisfied sigh, and say, “Well, I’m officially a badass motherf***er. Look at all this sh** I just made!”

Or, you can tell your friends about it, which is like saying the previous sentence to yourself, except better, because then your friends feel worse, which should make you feel better (Do you ever catch yourself in the middle of an act, thinking about how your going to tell your friends about doing that act and relishing in the fictitious created future even more than the actual doing of the act? That’s so f***ed up! I do it all the time!)

But instead, you’re in pain, exhausted, delirious, and a million other uncomfortable feelings, which allow you simply to EXIST, and not produce…Thus inducing a sharp feeling of inadequacy and squalor. F***ing hate that sh**….

So I decided to produce, and produce this recipe I did.

WHAT ABOUT THE F***ING RECIPE ASSHOLE!

My disclaimer for this recipe is that it A REALLY LONG TIME and is a bit elitist because you have to have a f***ing food processor. If you don’t, you might as well not make this recipe because it would take for-f***ing EVER.

It involves three basic processes:

1. Prepare ingredients

2. Combine ingredients

3. Squish ingredients into a funny-looking paste

You do this probably a dozen times. Kind of like your stomach does. So in a way, it actually saves your stomach some time by imitating the first stage of digestion. So maybe the net time taken to prepare, make, eat, and digest this recipe is the same as any other. Just in this recipe, the digestion happens up front. Weird.

Ok, anyway, here’s the recipe. It does make a f***ing tasty meatloaf, so get ready:

Alright, so this is copied from this website, but I changed some shit, so it’s not exactly the same.

1 medium sweet potato

1 medium onion

1 medium carrot

ANY OTHER VEGETABLES YOU WANT

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 15-ounce can cannellini beans (or other white beans), drained and rinsed

14 ounces extra-firm tofu (one 14 to 16-ounce package)

2 tablespoons soy sauce

2 tablespoons tomato paste

1 tablespoon GOOD mustard

1 egg (optional. If you’re vegan, obviously don’t use the egg. Just don’t put it in the f***ing recipe and voila it’s vegan!)

1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped

1/2 tablespoon rubbed sage

1 tablespoon thyme leaf

1/2 tablespoon dried rosemary, crushed

1 1/2 teaspoon salt (or to taste)

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1 teaspoon paprika

2 tablespoons nutritional yeast

1/2 cup chopped almonds (optional)

3/4 cup quinoa flakes (I know, I had to look this shit up. If you can’t find them/afford them, buy some f***ing corn flakes)

Steam up a swot perderder and get it nice and soft and supple. Choose a method. I have a rice maker that steams that sh** up nicely.

Mince the onion, carrot, and “ANY OTHER VEGETABLES YOU WANT.”

Heat a large, non-stick skillet. Add the minced vegetables, including garlic, and cook, stirring regularly, until they become tender, about 6-10 minutes. Add more oil by the teaspoon if necessary to keep the vegetables from sticking or becoming dry. Once they’re softened, add the drained beans and mash them lightly with a slotted spoon or spatula.

Place the peeled sweet potato into the food processor along with the tofu, soy sauce, and all seasonings, including nutritional yeast. Process until fairly smooth. Add the walnuts and pulse a few more times. Scrape the tofu mixture into a large mixing bowl and add the quinoa flakes and the cooked vegetables. Stir well.

Preheat oven to 375F.

Put the mush into a container or on a baking sheet and make it into a fun meatless sculpture work of art. Like this sh**

Bake for 25 minutes or until the top is evenly browned. Loosely cover with aluminum foil and cook for 20 more minutes. Check to make sure that the center is firm; if not, give it a little extra time. (You can also remove the foil and cook for 5 more minutes for a crunchier crust.) Remove from oven and allow to stand for 10 minutes before slicing and serving.

The best macaroni and cheese

Before I start writing up this recipe, I'd just like to take a moment to tell you a bit about it. This is a macaroni and cheese recipe, obviously. That doesn't really convey its glory though. Let's put it this way instead: the recipe you're about to read contains 4 1/2 cups of cheese, has white pasta sauce poured over it, and has cornflakes crunched on top. You heard me, cornflakes.

I'm assuming that at this point you're sufficiently tantalized by the thought of this food that you would agree to give me, at minimum, a controlling ownership stake in your first two or three children to be able to taste it. Instead of that, however, you're about to get it for free on some internet page with a profanity-and-bean-based title. This is called the Miracle of User-Generated Content, and incredibly serious people devote military-grade brain cells to writing pompous essays about it.

In other words, this isn't just a macaroni and cheese recipe. It's a shining embodiment of a 21st century cultural phenomenon. Damn.

Macaroni and Cheese: The Right Way
Ingredients:

• ~3 cups of elbow macaroni (9-10 oz. dry, if you have a scale)
• 3 tbsp. grated onion
• 1.5 tsp salt
• 3/8 tsp black pepper
• 1/4 tsp white pepper
• 1/4 tsp thyme
• 4.5 cups shredded cheese (I use a mix of mozzerella, swiss, and cheddar, with a little asiago thrown in for zest. You can mix it up if you want.)
• 3 cups thin white sauce (see below)
• 1.5 tbsp. butter

Steps:

1. Preheat oven to 375
2. Cook mac according to package. Drain.
3. Prepare thin white sauce according to directions below.
4. Mix the onions, salt, pepper, and cheese together into what will henceforth be referred to as the "cheese muck of deliciousness" (CMOD).
5. Place 1/2 the mac in an ungreased 3 qt. casserole dish.
6. Cover with 1/2 the cheese muck of deliciousness.
7. Add second half of the mac.
8. Cover with remaining half of the CMOD.
9. Pour the white sauce over the whole thing. Distribute somewhat evenly.
10. Dot with butter.
11. Crunch cornflakes on top. Realize that crushing a handful of cornflakes is possibly the most satisfying sensation there is, and that we could probably end war if we could somehow get every major world leader to do this when they wake up in the morning.
12. Cover (with the top of the dish if you have that, with aluminum foil otherwise). Bake for 30 min. covered, then uncover and bake for an additional 15 min.
13. Cool and serve. Swear undying vengeance against the false macaroni and cheese prophets who convinced America that orange goo in any way resembles the real item. Realize that these people are almost certainly the leading candidates for "what's wrong with America" and are almost solely responsible for the moral decline of our culture.*

Thin White Sauce"Like a white sauce, but thinner!" --Wm. Shakespeare

Makes 3 cups, the amount required above.

Ingredients:

• 3 cups milk
• 3 tbsp. butter
• ~2 tbsp. flour
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 3/8 tsp pepper

Steps:

1. Melt butter over low heat
2. Blend in dry ingredients
3. Cook until smooth
4. Stir in milk, turn up heat
5. Heat to boiling, stirring, boil and stir for 1 min.

There you have it--the best macaroni and cheese (I don't make this boast idly). There's nothing I can say that will top that, so I'll just leave you with a link to a cartoon of a bear who is not able to understand cheese as well as he might wish.

*"But Glenn Beck!" you exclaim. Do you think I hadn't thought of this, people? Don't you realize that there wouldn't be a Glenn Beck if we all ate this macaroni and cheese regularly?!

Split pea soup w/ sweet potatoes and extra veggies.

History's greatest minds have faltered, over and over again throughout time, when faced with one vital question. What if I want to make split pea soup, as frequently served with ham, but I don't have a pig? Or, even worse, what if I don't want to eat a pig at all? (This variation of the puzzle eliminates the "go find a pig" out used by Aristotle.)

Today, we at Motherf**cking Black Beans pronounce this puzzle solved through the power of vegetable stock, sweet potatoes, and parsnips. Beyond being a massive contribution to human intellectual advancement, the recipe below is perfect winter dinner food.

(The idea here is that you're replacing the juices from the ham with the veggie stock; sweet potatoes are the most satisfying meat replacement I could think of, but if you overdo it the soup gets too sweet, so I turned to the parsnips to make up the remainder of the additional chewy bits.)

Ingredients:

• 2 tbsp. vegetable oil
• 1 white turnip, peeled and chopped
• 2 carrots, chopped
  
• 1 medium onion, chopped fine
• 1 package of split peas
• 1 sweet potato, peeled and chopped
• 2 parsnips, chopped
• 2 cups veggie stock
• 6 cups water
• 2 bay leafs
• ~1 tsp. salt.
• Other spices. I think we went with some pepper and oregano, or something. Do what you feel is right.
  

Steps:

1. First chop everything up. Be creative with the veggie selection if you want--I think you want a mix of flavors--some sweeter, some more earthy--and a mix of chopped sizes. I'm thinking about throwing in some radishes next time.
2. Get a big pot. Cook all the veggies except the sweet potatoes in the oil over medium heat for about five minutes; stir a lot.
   
3. Add veggie stock, water, split peas, sweet potatoes, and bay leaves. Cook for 45-50 minutes, until desired degree of aggressive thickness is achieved. Do the spice thing as desired.
4. Eat. I recommend some cheesy bread to go with it, since that's a nice change of pace. As you can see from the photo at right, this is legitimate Company Food*, and will also bring you dangerously near to overdosing on seasonality. I intend to eat absolutely staggering amounts of this dish this winter.

As you may have noticed, I found my camera. (It was in a plastic crate of my belongings in Bennett's apartment for a year--who knew?) Be warned, John--if you want to contend for the sought-after distinction of having the most aesthetically pleasing posts on this blog, you're going to have to step up your game.

*Company Food (n): Food that can be served to guests without shaming your parents by giving the impression that you were raised in a dog kennel. Definition varies by occasion and setting, but experts generally agree that the term excludes leftovers, stale bread, and anything eaten directly out of a can.

New Motherf***ing Sandwich on the Block

I got this idea from this amazing sandwich I had at Trident Booksellers and I’m basically stealing their idea. I’m not sure that this is the exact recipe and I changed it so if you work at Trident and you’re pissed, f*** you because it’s not the same recipe and I don’t even care that you’re mad because I really like your bookstore and would probably like you so let’s just make up, ok?

So here’s the basic formula for the sandwich:

Goo + cheese = goocheese, or tasty f***ing sandwich filling.

Check out this goo:

1. some super-tasty mustard, like horseradish mustard or Dijon mustard. The kind of mustard where you can see the mustard seeds because that’s why they call it mustard. It’s because of the mustard seeds. So why does everybody eat that French’s bulls**t that doesn’t even taste like real mustard and actually tastes like someone is squirting spoiled vinegar down my throat!

2. Avocado. Squished. You may choose your preferred squishing method. Perhaps with a mortar and pestle (though this method is very messy and completely unnecessary but could be cool to try).

3. Hummus (see homemade hummus recipe below).

Alright, so now that you’ve got your goo, spread that sheezy on some bread. How much? As much as it takes for you to goo the bread up...duh

Now cover that breadgoo with some cheese. I like Havarti dill for this particular sandwich, but choose whatever kind of cheese you like. Could be cheddar for all I care. Actually, I really don’t give a f*** so I don’t know why I’m choosing to spend a whole paragraph on this bullsh**

Alright, not that you’ve covered the breadgoo with cheese, pop it into a toaster oven. Don’t have a toaster oven? Well, then you’re screwed because if you put this cheesy breadgoo vertical, you’ll have a hot mess on your hands…Actually mostly on your toaster.

So that’s it. Goo, bread, and cheese. But damn that’s some good cheesybreadgoo. Enjoy b**ches.

Best F***ing Sandwich You'll Ever Eat

I say this phrase almost every day:

"When it comes to sandwiches, I don't f***ing mess around, ok?"

Sometimes I say it loudly. You know, when I get excited or I feel like yelling. Sometimes I say it softer. Eyes down, in a kind of a menacing, barely perceptible whisper, until the "ok," when I lift my head and look straight into their soul...

People choose either to be offended or intrigued by this, but I don't let it faze me. I just continue to make f***ing amazing sandwiches, mostly to spite the people who believe that a sandwich is a creation solely for carnivores.

Allow me to explain:

Many feminists have decided to take back words like c**t or p****y or b****h (If you don't know what the *'s stand for, ask your older brother, or maybe it's time to leave your cave). I think in a society in which almost all institutions, societal and linguistic structures, and social norms have been crafted by white males, this is a legitimate undertaking in order to subvert some of these oppressive linguistic structures.

In the same way, I think the creators of the sandwich were most definitely carnivores, and as a vegetarian, goddamnit, sometimes I feel f***ing oppressed!

It's ok, I tell myself. Calm down. A sandwich is just a rubric...a structure within which you can place almost any f***ing thing you want. A sandwich is a man-made creation, not a historical imperative. Hah!

So why not take back the sandwich?

If you're someone who's demanding an alternative to meat that's almost surely come from animals who've been bathed in their own shit, been systematically tortured, and been shot up with antibiotics by transnational agribusiness corporations...the residual effects of which ultimately end up polluting our countrysides and waterways...then this sandwich is for you.

If you're someone who is tired of mediocre attempts at a vegetarian option at a sandwich shop (thing dry, flaky veggie burgers), then this sandwich is for you.

If you want to stop systematic racial, ethnic, and economic discrimination; if you want to stop industry from polluting our bodies and our earth; if you want to close the income gap, stop global warming, create healthy, supportive communities, and save the whales, THEN THIS F***ING SANDWICH IS FOR YOU!!!!

Ingredients:

Homemade pesto:
poo-load of basil (2 cups, chopped and packed)
1/2 c. parmesan
1/3 c. almonds (normally, pine nuts should go here, but pine nuts are way too expensive. Why are they so f***ing expensive? That makes pesto into this elistist yuppie, inaccessible spread, and that's unfair. So use almonds or even peanuts because you're an equitable human)
1/2 c. olive oil
poo-load of garlic (3 gloves, or 4 if you f***ing love garlic)
salt and pepper to taste

Bread (2 slices. duh, it's a f***ing sandwich!)
Cheese (brie or goat)
Sliced green pepper
Sliced tomato

A note about this recipe. Don't skimp on the ingredients. Get fresh basil for the pesto, and get fresh bread. For example, I have a bakery next to my house called Canto 6 that has the most amazing 7-grain bread of all-time. I also recommend "When Pigs Fly" Bakery's bread in Somerville. For those of you outside of Boston, I'm sure you have some awesome bakery close to you. Go there and buy the bread. This sandwich is worth it.

Ok, so here's what you do:

1. Make the pesto by putting everything in a blender and blending
2. Smear that shit all over two slices of your tasty bread
3. Put on the cheese and the sliced veggies
4. TOAST or put in a Panini press
5. Enjoy the best sandwich you'll ever eat
6. Enjoy even more the fact that you just made a sandwich that challenges the very fabric of the universe of sandwich-dom and you've just stuck it hard to our carnivorous sandwich-making forefathers who sought to undermine universal access and enjoyment of sandwiches by all people.

Apple-Butternut Squash Soup

Some days you wake up in the morning and want to rock the "it's fall in New England" thing so hard it hurts. On those days, you may want to eat this for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Ingredients:
1-2 butternut squash
2 apples
1 can veggie broth
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 onion
1 1/2 cups water
1/4 tsp thyme
1 tsp salt
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
1 cup light cream

1. So the first thing, actually, is to figure out how much squash you have. The recipe I was working from called for about 3.5 lbs of squash, so I've been guesstimating their weight using a set of hand dumbells for comparison. I made a full recipe with a ~3 lb squash, and a 3/4 recipe with a slightly greater than 2 lb squash, and those were both good. When I made the smaller recipe, I still used the full can of veggie broth and decreased the water.

2. Cut onions (small), peel and cut apples (small slices), peel, cut, and de-seed squash (1/4 inch pieces). Butternut squash, incidentally, are Not Fucking Around as a vegetable--that's some seriously laborious chopping.

3. In the bottom of a 4 qt saucepan, sautee onions in vegetable oil for 10 mins.

4. Add everything else. Cook for 30+ minutes.

5. If you have a blender, you could pull out some of the mix and blend it, but who has a blender really? I used a strainer and a fork to mash up some of the bigger squash bits. It will be pretty textury soup, but that feels right to me.

6. Eat. Serves 8 if you made a full recipe. I recommend eating it with other summery tropical dishes like potatoes and brussel sprouts.

I've realized that I write recipes tailored to people who have the exact same stuff in their kitchen that I do (strainer but no blender, hand dumbells but no scale). (Technically the hand dumbells aren't usually in the kitchen.) I'm okay with this.