Unsociable Steak and Bad Breath Bread

Sometimes... no, most of the time, I just can't stand to be around people. Honestly, they make me fucking crazy. This doesn't really affect my every day life until it comes time to work, answer the phone, or otherwise function in the real world. Working at The Squeal of Delight Rib Shack puts me into contact with people just a little too much and sometimes I find myself craving, or even needing some time alone. Some Angry Chef Time...

Thinking about this brings up some things that I can't stand about people. In no specific order...

1. I hate it when people smile for no reason. When I'm driving along and see some pedestrian walking down the sidewalk with a big grin on their big, stupid face I almost want to veer the car off the road and take them out.

2. I hate people who always think they're right, because usually they're dead wrong.

3. I hate people who always go along with the crowd. When I find myself thinking like everyone else, I think again.

4. I hate people who use occurring events to justify unconscionable actions. Gangs of idiots attacking a fan of the opposing team, drivers who mow down pedestrians because they feel they have the right of way, and politicians running for office who pay money to ruin someone's reputation all fall into this category.

5. People who don't realize there are other people in this world that have to put up with them. This is, mostly, everybody besides me.

When I'm in moods like this, nothing helps except beer, TV and cooking. So with The Femme Nikita on the tube and a case of Milwaukee's Best Ice freshly cracked, I start to cook this week's dish.

What You Need To Get:

1 lb. Sirloin Steak

1 clove garlic (Garlic comes in white bulbs with multiple cloves. Steal one, whole bulb and save the rest for another time)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper (Use more if you're not a jackass)

1/2 teaspoon onion powder

1/3 cup flour

First, I tear or cut one the sections of the garlic bulb away from the rest. This is one "clove" of garlic. I peel off all the papery skin and cut the bitch in half so I have two chunks of smooth garlic with raw ends. Rub those raw ends all over your steak. Don't be shy. If you feel like you're not doing this step right try to remember that they could train ferrets to do this and you are a complete moron. Stop what you're doing, do not pass Go, get the hell out of the kitchen and find the phone number of your local Jimmy Johns.

Once the steak smells a little garlicky, I take the salt, pepper, and onion powder and rub it into the steak. Then, I coat the steak with the flour and let it sit a second.

The secret to making a good, pan-fried steak is to have the pan screaming hot when the steak hits it. Warm it up over high heat with some veggie or olive oil until you can feel the heat coming off the pan or when a drop of water spits when it hits it. The pan should resemble your personality after a bad day at work.

When you drop the steak into the pan you should hear a long hiss like a super-pissed off devil. The longer the hiss, the better you've done. Leave it on the pan in one place for about five minutes. DON'T FUCKING TOUCH IT. Leaving the meat sit will create a nice crust of char that you'll appreciate later. After five minutes, flip the steak and sear the other side.

In the mean time, start working on part two...

What You Need To Get:

One stick of butter

2 teaspoons minced garlic (Cut another clove into tiny pieces)

1 1/2 Tablespoons parsley

1 teaspoon thyme

Salt and pepper (to taste... so, a lot)

One loaf French or Italian bread (sandwich shops GIVE THIS STUFF AWAY at closing time)

Aluminum foil

This one is almost too easy. Mix together the butter, garlic and spices so that you're left, basically, with flavored butter.

Then take the loaf of bread and slice it like you would any ordinary bread EXCEPT, and here's the only tricky part, DO NOT slice it all the way to the bottom of the loaf. You should wind up with a loaf of bread that sort of reminds you of a slinky. It is not OK to try to make your loaf of bread go down the stairs of your apartment building.

Spread about a spoon's worth of the flavored butter into each slice that you've made on the loaf, and press it back together.

Then, put the bread in a pan, cover it with the foil (the shiny side should be on the inside, genius)and bake it at 375 degrees for about 10 minutes.

At this point you should have a steak that looks like its been through hell and a loaf of bread that smells great but looks like it's oozing pus. Trust me, they both taste delicious.

I take a long swig of beer and listen to the sounds of tires squealing, bass thumping and people screaming "Woot, Woot" outside my window. I'm glad I have this time to enjoy by myself. The world should be glad it doesn't have to enjoy my company. The Femme Nikita seems to not enjoy either of us...

My Favorite Team's Balls

It's barely September and already it's starting to get a little chilly here in the Angry Chef neighborhood. It seems like every year that bitch, Mother Nature, makes summer just a little bit shorter. In some ways this is a good thing: I'm not sweating through my shirts at work anymore, I don't have to smell the unidentified animals my redneck neighbors grill, more TV is on the way, and, most important, one of my favorite sports, football, begins.
Please, please don't start to think I'm talking about soccer. The World Cup is great every four years but that's my limit. I'm talking smash mouth, hard nosed, 1st and ten, down and dirty FOOTBALL (with helmets, for non-scrimmage games). There are few substitutes.
First of all, let's review the teams you can not possibly cheer for and still enjoy this site. Real chefs do not like the Dallas Cowboys or the Minnesota Vikings. Real chefs believe that you should not call yourself a football team if your cheerleaders are more of an attraction then the game you play is. Real chefs believe that you should not call yourself a football team if your mascot has ponytails and your playing field is named after a mall (honestly Vikings, what was your second choice, "Victoria's Secret Dome"?). If you are a fan of either of these two teams you should log out right the fuck now and go check out The Justin Beiber homepage. Join a wiffleball league and have someone bruise you to death with one of the bats.
OK, now that all the rejects have been weeded out, we can get on to serious football appreciation. I won't tell you who the Angry Chef's favorite team is, because I believe in choice. I may hand you a box of Kleenex if you're a Browns fan. I may wonder if football is really the sport you're interested in if you're a Dolphin's fan. I will roll up my windows and lock my doors if you're a Raiders fan. And I will ask you how my buddy, Ditka, is nowadays if you're a Bears fan. Because hey, that's choice. I choose to back a team that is all about getting the sack. Enjoys a nice rack. Breaks the opponents back. Is constantly on the attack. Etc...
So just before the Sunday game this week, I call up my sous-Angry chef, Tulip, and tell her to get her ass over here. And we start on the first of many football munchies.
What You Need To Get
3 Tablespoons of butter
Half a Cup water
Pinch of salt
3/4ths of a Cup flour (ask any elderly neighbor)
3 eggs
3/4ths of a Cup grated Gruyere, Swiss, or Cheddar cheese (These rank from classiest, to true fan, to get your ass off the couch on the rating scale. I use a combo of all three.)
1 lb. celery root (you won't be able to find this if you're shopping at your local Quickie Mart)
1 lemon
1/4th of a Cup mayonnaise
2 Tablespoons mustard
2 Tablespoons water
Salt and pepper (to taste, so a lot)
We start with the cheeseballs, or, since I learned this in fucking France, the "choquettes". First, I cut the butter into little bits and throw it in a pan with the half cup of water and the pinch of salt. I let this come to a melty boil.
In the meantime, my sous-Angry chef, Tulip has sprayed a baking sheet with some Pam and sprinkled it with a light coating of flour. This will be the surface that the balls will bake on. Kind of like the tundra of your favorite teams stadium.
I take the pan off the heat before it really gets going and slowly stir in the flour with either a fork or a whisk. GO SLOW. You don't want to fuck this part up. Make sure there aren't any lumps or chunks of unidentifiable shit in it. When it's all mixed in, I put the pan back on a low, low, heat.
Once again, while constantly stirring, I SLOWLY add in the eggs and the cheese. If you do this right, you'll soon get a a thick, moldable (is that a word?) dough.
My sous-Angry chef, Tulip, uses a spoon to scoop out walnut sized hunks of the dough onto the baking sheet, while I jokingly suggest that this may be all the action she sees this month. I don't know why, but I'm almost in a good mood. She does not appreciate this and begins to suggest other things she could do with the spoon. So the mood passes.
When we have about 16 balls, and we're out of dough, we stick them in a 400 degree oven for about 25 minutes. After that, we'll turn off the oven, open it up, and let the balls cool down slightly inside. We will probably make more at halftime.
While the balls are cooking, I move on to step two of our football munchies. I start with the celery root (it looks like a potato that no one asked to the prom), peeling it and then grating the whole thing into a bowl. Watch your hands, real chefs only bloody their knuckles on telemarketers and people who sing about "five dollar foot longs" at Subway.
Then, my sous-Angry chef, Tulip, takes the lemon, slices it in half and squeezes the juice into the bowl with the celery root. She still seems angry, but maybe she's just relaxed around me.
After that it's a snap. We take what's left, the mayo, mustard, water, salt and pepper and add it to the mix and stir. And there you have it. A great dip for crackers and veggies and deep fried anything. I like Scoops and Triscuits. My sous-Angry chef, Tulip, likes jalapeno poppers and donuts. To each his own. It's all about choice.
We sit down with our "choquettes" and dip and admire their regal colors. Then, we watch our team beat the crap out of any pretenders that dare to take them on. There might be some sort of metaphor here, but I'm too into the game to figure it out...

Murder Me Meatloaf

Christ, I've been working a lot of hours. These last few weeks have been a confused haze of dreaming, butchering, drinking, and Big Brother episodes. That's right, I watch it. I would challenge you to find something better for me to watch on TV, but that would mean I'd have to divert my attention away from America's homemade "Truman Show" and on to your boring ass. Anyways, I haven't had any time to keep up with my e-mails or phone messages and I feel like I've missed almost all of my summer. Plus, people are getting pissed.

My Angry sous- chef, Tulip, left me a message yesterday that seemed just a little bit less friendly then her usual upbeat and carefree calls. "I know you're there, damn it," she began (I WAS home, but I didn't want to miss the toll-free number to get those interchangeable Tupperware things that you can store anything in). "Listen. You owe me beer and a dinner from those aprons I lent you. Don't think I'm gonna fucking forget. Plus, YOUR stupid fans are sending mail to my shit now, asking for more of YOUR stupid recipes. Some of them think you're DEAD. Me, I can only hope. AND, they're asking how they can get to prove they're a better cook then you. I can't take this shit anymore. Call me when you get up, asshole."

I'm no expert on the female psyche, but it sounded like my sous- Angry chef, Tulip, was a bit annoyed. So during commercials after work the other night, and between sips of Blatz, I got myself showered, cleaned up the apartment, and warmed up the stove.

I called up my sous -Angry chef, Tulip, and told her to get her ass over here.

She told me to fuck off. So I went over to her place instead.

What You Need To Get:

1 lb. ground chuck (It has to be chuck. Don't fuck this up.)

Half a Cup Ketchup (Easily free at your local McDonalds)

1 Egg

1 Cup Oyster Crackers

Quarter Cup Milk (Doesn't matter what kind. OK... NOT chocolate. And if you drink "skim", you're trying too hard.)

Half an onion

Half a green pepper

Salt and pepper

2 Cloves Garlic (Use two Tablespoons of the bottled, minced stuff)

Oregano

Bacon

I was right. Tulip was not very happy with me. After she slammed the door in my face, I let myself in and proceeded to the kitchen while she sat in her Lazyboy watching "So You Think You Can Dance". I was gonna tell her what I thought of that show, but then figured that the criticism coming from the rest of literate America must be hard to ignore.

Anyways, I had a gourmet feast planned.... wait for it...meatloaf. Yes, I know what you're thinking. Perhaps, you may say, the Angry Chef is losing it. Maybe, you're thinking meatloaf sucks. Perhaps you're disappointed that I haven't taken to any French or Italian dishes lately. Here's what I'm thinking: You're all fucking Donkeys (thank you Gordon Ramsey).

Meatloaf is great, storeable, easy to make, and versatile. Its a go- to recipe that everyone will think you put a lot of work in to. Plus, it's hard to fuck up. If you really don't like meatloaf you should log off this site and go back to the latest crossword puzzle at "Highlights: For Kids". You need more training.

I start by basically dumping all the ingredients, except for the bacon, into a big bowl. There's only a little preparation for this. I smash the oyster crackers to bits with a rolling pin, or hammer, or heavy pan (this part is fun, even though I am rudely told to shut up. Not by my sous-Angry chef Tulip, but by one of her neighbors.). I dice the green pepper and onion. And I use my best judgement on how much of the salt, pepper and oregano to use. About a palmful or two of each.

This is where things got weird. My sous- Angry chef Tulip stomped into the kitchen to see what I was doing and suddenly I heard the song "Unchained Melodies" playing. She thrust her hands into the ingredient mix bowl and began mixing everything into a ball as the two tenors sang something incomprehensible about "time goes by... so slowly". She looked like she was thinking about something completely different, I think she did anayway, as she molded the meat into this oddly, phallic shape. It was all really confusing. It was almost like some sort of weird ghost of the Righteous Brothers had entered the room. But after that, me and my sous-Angry chef, Tulip, were cool. So, I blew it off.

Anyways, Tulip formed the mix into a loaf and put it on a rimmed, greased baking sheet. I put four bacon strips over the top of the loaf. Bacon is like pepper, you can't use too much, so feel free to use more if you like.

I set it in the oven at 350 degrees and let it alone for about 45 minutes while we heckled "Dateline" and some old Whoopi Goldberg movie ("Jumpin' Jack Off" or something). Then I spread some extra ketchup over the top of the loaf and let it cook about another 10 minutes. Done. It was good for dinner last night and cold sandwiches today.

Tomorrow, I have to look at my e-mail. My sous- Angry chef Tulip tells me somebody's been making death threats. I'm thinking they'll never have time to catch up with me...