Why with the blogging?

Back at long last.
I was intending to update this a bit more often, my main problem was not being sure what I intended to do with it.
I really wasn’t sure why I ‘m doing this, either. I’m a fairly private person unless you’re actually in the same room with me, but the idea of writing this as if it were a private diary seemed absurd. I don’t have the ego to believe that my jottings are of enough interest to the web in general but the intention of writing is to be read so… why was I doing this again?
Foremost in my mind was to get me used to writing regularly and second was definitely to have a venting space for minutiae, mundanity and general mind spills.
But I worried about tone whiplash, moving from crafted fiction to my normal disjointed randomness seemed wrong.
And then, when the zombies were chasing me, I had an epiphany.
Not for real zombies, which would be cool, I tend to have nightmares if I let my body temperature drop during the night. This seems to be some kind of defense to stop me freezing to death and at some point this mechanism has evolved to giving me true dredged-from-the-subconscious-depths nightmares designed specifically to force me awake. With no provocation I’ll probably put a couple of them up here sometime. This one involved being attacked by zombies and trying to hold them off with a slotted spoon.
God knows why the spoon, apart from the sheer frustration of trying to break the grip (and the arm bones) of a rotted corpse using only the edge of a fragile kitchen implement that seems to have no use except for getting potatoes out of the soup. It worked though. And I awoke to one of those seasonal cold snaps that have been hitting at the moment. Bloody cold it was.
Luckily after the last of these I invested in a small heater which has to live next to the computer because it’s the only power point in the room. While I was awake I thought I might as well write something, but a combination of being so cold my typing stuttered and being unable to remember a password lead me to afore mentioned epiphany.

“Start another blog”.
D’oh as they say. This site can be for rambling and grammar atrocities and the other will be for more constructed stories. Here is also, when I get the proper equipment, where I’ll be placing artwork and compromising photos of those I know. Or links to them anyway. Problem solved.
BTW If anyone has bothered to link-hop here from the Whitechapel boards, ‘Tanuki” was a spur of the moment choice for a screen name and while I like it, it isn’t that ‘me’.
Degenerate Boy is a song I’ve felt a link to. It’s not an exact fit, the ‘d’ at the end represents a fair amount of time passing,  but it sums up a time and an entropic attitude still lurking around my hind brain.
So…
If you come back expect run on sentences, slang, nonsense and run on sentence streams of conciousness that come to an abrupt end.
That’s it for now. Have fun.
Ric.

Degenerated Cooking #1

Well I thought I’d blast this thing off with a look into the world of guy cooking. There are no Chef’s measures here, this is all seat-of-the-pants, oh-shit-the-kitchen’s-on-fire-again* stuff.

Be warned.

So the first culinary impairment I will teach you is my Garlic/ Parmesan Cottage Fries . It’s easy to make and even easier to adapt to your particular tastes.

To start you will need 3-4 small or average washed but unpeeled potatoes (this makes one serving and a snack for later for me). Par-broil them for 2-3 minutes or until mostly cooked through, so that they will hold their shape when cut into roughly 2-3cm chip shapes or cubes. If you have no sense of time and completely cook them through so they won’t hold their shape, don’t worry! roughly cut/ mash them and change the name of the recipe to Smashed Potatoes.

You can prepare these a little bit earlier and I find allowing them to cool makes them crispier in the long run.

When you’re ready to cook get out the rest of your ingredients:

500g or so swiss brown mushrooms, rough chopped or pulled apart by hand.

2 cloves of garlic or a teaspoon of minced garlic (If you really like garlic try roughly cutting 5 or 6 cloves of garlic and frying them like the potatoes).

roughly 2 knobs or tablespoons of butter. Unsalted or margarine is ok.

teaspoon olive oil

Roughly a third of a cup shaved parmesan.

Rough chopped parsley

Seasoning. For this I use sea salt and fresh milled black pepper to taste, but experiment. I’ve used paprika, rosemary, cardamum & mustard seeds at various times. Store-mix lemon pepper also works beautifully.

OK, got everything you want? Let’s move to the fun part.

In a really hot skillet or heavy bottomed pan melt  the butter, when it’s melted and starting to brown add the oil into it and coat the pan.

Then you can add the potatoes, the mushrooms (add these later if you don’t like them well cooked), the garlic cloves (if you’re using them) and did I mention bacon? No? Diced bacon goes well with this if you want. Diced chorizo or chinese sausage also goes reeaally well, depending on the mix of other flavours you’re using.

Start stirring all this through the melted butter & oil and this is the time to add the rest of the butter. The important thing is to lightly coat the ingredients, you really don’t want it too oily or it won’t crisp as well.

Leave it for maybe a minute and then start adding the seasoning to the top, this is also where the minced garlic goes if you’re using it. Mix everything around and let it settle. You can turn the heat down now.

All you need to do now is to mix everything and not let it settle and stick to the pan, treat it as a stirfry but you should be getting a nice crispy texture to it now. The important thing is to let it get brown but not burn.

When you think it’s getting to near how you want it, start breaking up the shaved parmesan over evrything, mix it in and shake the pan about. A little more pepper here doesn’t hurt.

The mushrooms will be pretty brown by now if you added them first and when you see the parmesan has melted into the crispy, crusty texture turn off the heat.

Add in a bit of the parsley, mix it through and let it sit for a moment.

This makes a great, if not exactly uber-healthy, side to go with a steak or barbecue or add a little sour cream for a damn good snack on it’s own**.

And remember, customizing it for your own tastes is half the fun.

Enjoy

*The smoke detector is your friend and makes a handy timer for how long to cook it for.

**I would provide a photo but I ate it all before I remembered. It was delicious.