Monthly Archives: June 2010

Mush

This dish . . . well, I can’t tell you exactly how it came about, but it’s been evolving during our 5 years of marriage into the glorious thing it is today. It could be called “simple stovetop ratatouille” for those of you who might feel guilty serving something called “mush” to your unsuspecting families. This recipe serves 2 very hungry adults—but it’s easy to multiply the quantities.

Ingredients

(2 servings)

1 TBS butter

1 TBS olive oil

2-3 medium zucchini, chopped into cubes

1 pint of cherry or grape tomatoes, halved

6-10 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 to 3/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp black pepper

1 TBS olive oil/butter to fry the eggs

4 eggs

Serve with steamed white rice

Optional: blue cheese crumbles

First, put your rice on—I use my trusty rice cooker. Dice your zucchini, garlic, and tomatoes. Don’t fear the garlic—I like this dish as garlicky as I can get it.

Smash that garlic!

I used to use the flat of my knife to crush the garlic cloves, which almost cost me a severed hand once. Then, I read The Pioneer Woman, and she set me straight. Smash the cloves violently with a can! The papery skins come right off:

 

Heat the olive oil and butter together in a skillet. Once the butter has melted, add your zucchini.

Cook on high for 6-7 minutes, until the zucchini pieces are starting to get golden.

Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Add your garlic and halved tomatoes, and lower the heat to medium.

Let it cook away for a while, about 12 minutes, stirring occasionally until it becomes mushy and delicious (but not too liquidy).

Still too liquidy

When you drag the spatula across the pan, it should leave a space instead of immediately filling with liquid.

The "dragging the spatula" test

When the mush is about done, heat some butter or olive oil in another non-stick skillet and add your eggs. We like to do 2 per person, overeasy. If you’re averse to dirtying another pan (as I sometimes am) you can push the veggies to the side of the mush pan, add your butter/oil to the center, and cook your eggs in the center of the mush.

Serve up individual bowls: start with a nice pile of rice, add a layer of veggies, and slap the eggs on top. If you like your food to look pretty, construct a little arrangement like this:

Sans eggs ...

But if you’re like me, that neat little pile will soon become this (don’t be frightened):

.. and with eggs in a mushily delightful pile!

Have a bite, and you'll be enslaved to mush for the rest of your natural days

If you’re a blue cheese addict like I am, some crumbles on top are never amiss.

I swoon over this bowl of delights every time. It’s so good that it’s what I requested my husband to make for my birthday dinner this year. Just don’t skimp on the garlic! If you do, disappointment and despair will pursue you to the end of your days. (not really) (then again, who can fathom the consequences of garlic-skimping?)

Click here for printer-friendly version: Mush

 

The Cooking Disaster Chronicles, Part 1

It was called “Summer Garden Delight”. It was summer time. We were bored. I was young and innocent. The kitchen seemed like a great place to do something highly amusing. We threw some vegetables in a pot. We threw in some chili powder. We added water. We threw in some more chili powder. Did I mention that I was young and innocent?

Thank you, Mom, for letting us go at it with no instruction or guidance. It was an important step in our maturing process.

The perpetrators of the Summer Garden Delight

Look at the blond one. It was all her fault! She led me down the primrose path! She instigated the chili powder debauchery, I swear!

Years later: a more mature approach to the kitchen

(please disregard the leopard print underwear hanging from my belt)

Our concoction was completely inedible. I wish there were a “lick and taste” option on the computer screen so that y’all could understand exactly how inedible this was. Then again, I just got an image of people in offices across America dragging their tongues over their computer screens—OK, bad idea. At least that mental picture is saving me a trip to the patent office.

Also, can anyone explain why I just said “Y’all”? I’m not Southern. The blog made me do it!

Back to the point: since that fateful day, I prefer to cook edible things. I generally abstain from heaping in tablespoons upon tablespoons of chili powder, for example, which my husband appreciates–I just know he does. So in the spirit of human progress, and to celebrate my personal and culinary growth between ages 9 and 27, tomorrow I am posting a recipe called “Mush”. Just as “Summer Garden Delight” was a poetic name but a hideous substance that only an alien freak would consume, “Mush” is a hideous name for a delicious dish that no alien would ever consume. Are you confused? Well it’s kind of like one of those “this is like that” questions on the SAT. Right? Right. OK, try not to get hung up on the name and instead envision a very simplified form of ratatouille, in a skillet. I’ve even thought of re-christening it “simple stovetop ratatouille” … but it’s been “mush” for so many years that renaming it might throw the universe off its orbit. Its simplicity makes it the perfect work night meal. And the garlicky flavor … out of this world (not literally “out of this world”, because that would make it alienesque, which as we have already covered, it is not).