Ingredients:

2 cups cornmeal
2/3 cup flour
4 tsp baking powder
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp chipotle chili powder
1 1/3 cup milk
2 eggs, beaten
1 large fresh jalapeño, de-seeded and diced
1/2 can (or 1 small can) whole kernel corn, drained
1/4 cup corn oil

The Process:

Preheat oven to 450°. Mix all dry ingredients together; stir in milk and eggs until thoroughly combined; stir in jalapeño and corn; stir in oil.  Thoroughly grease 9×13″ baking dish; pour the batter in and bake for 20 minutes.  Let it cool for at least 10 minutes before cutting into it.

Ingredients:

4 packages cream cheese at room temperature
4 eggs
1 cup sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
4 tbsp flour
8 graham crackers, finely crushed
1/2 stick butter, melted
2 tsp ground cinnamon

Tools:

9″ springform pan
cookie sheet
big bowl
big spoon
rubber spatula
electric mixer

The Process:

Make the crust: combine graham crackers, melted butter, and cinnamon.  Press evenly into the bottom and 2 inches up the side of the springform pan — this is the hardest part of the whole process.  Bake at 350° for 10 minutes.  Cool completely.

Make the filling: beat the cream cheese, sugar, and flour at low speed until just combined.  Add the vanilla and then the eggs, one at a time, letting each egg combine in before adding the next.

Place the crust pan on a cookie sheet; pour the filling into the crust.  Bake on the cookie sheet at 300° for one hour – it likely will not be completely set yet.  Turn off the oven and open the door for one minute to let a lot of the heat escape. Close the door and let it sit in the turned-off warm oven for another hour.  Remove from the oven and let it cool for another hour.  Loosen the outer ring of the springform pan and remove it.  Cover the cheesecake with plastic wrap and refrigerate it for at least a couple hours.

Variation:

For Chocolate Cheesecake: melt 4 oz semisweet baking chocolate; stir into the filling just before adding the eggs.

Tips & Gotchas:

Hey, I said it was easy (as cheesecakes go — try looking up some other recipes) , not fast.  It takes a long time.  But it’s cheesecake, so it’s worth it.

Make sure your cream cheese is well-softened, at room temperature is best.  And don’t beat the filling too much or too fast – it should be almost like stirring, just to get the ingredients combined — that’s why you start with soft cream cheese.  Beating it too much will whip air into it and cause it to puff up and crack while baking.

Ingredients:

3 lb boneless pork chops
lots of fresh garlic, like 10 cloves
1 onion
2 roma tomatoes
1 8 oz can tomato sauce
3/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp chipotle chili powder
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1 or 2 tbsp corn starch
1/2 lb fresh green beans
1 can sliced water chestnuts
3 cups cooked rice

Tools

Slow Cooker
Sautee Pan
Big Spoon
Big Knife
Cutting Board

The Process:

Crush the garlic and mince.  Add to a large bowl with tomato sauce, soy sauce, brown sugar, and spices.  Stir to combine into a marinade.

Cut up the pork into large cubes, about 1″; chop the onion into thick 1″ chunks. Might as well wash and snip the ends off the green beans and chop the tomatoes while you have the knife and cutting board out. Add the pork and onions to the marinade and stir thoroughly to combine.  The liquid should cover the meat.  (You can optionally do all this stuff the day before and let it sit in the marinade in the fridge for many hours.)

Put the mixture into the slow cooker and let it go on high till it gets hot (maybe 1/2 hour), then turn down to low for 4 hours.  Stir in the tomatoes about 30 minutes before the time is up.

Just before serving time:
Start the rice cooking — how you do your rice will determine when you start it so that it will be done but still hot by the time everything else is ready.
The pork mixture’s sauce will be quite thin — thicken the sauce with corn starch: dissolve 1 tbsp corn starch in a couple tbsp water and mix till smooth, then stir into the pork mixture.  If it’s still really thin, repeat with a little more corn starch.  It will thicken more in the last step, so don’t make it too thick now.

Heat a large skillet with a little oil.  Sautee the green beans with a little soy sauce and water for about 5 minutes, stirring/flipping constantly.  Add the water chestnuts and continue to cook till the green beans are getting tender.  If you want them softer, put a lid on the skillet and add a little more water to let them steam for a few minutes.

When the green beans are as tender as you want, you’re done except for the combining.  Turn off the heat and add the pork mixture (still hot right out of the slow cooker), stirring to coat everything evenly.  The sauce will thicken more at this point.  Serve over rice.

Ingredients:

1 lb dry black beans
1 green pepper
1 onion
4 roma tomatoes
2 big fat jalapeño peppers
a bunch of fresh garlic, like 8 cloves
1 tbsp cooking oil
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
2 tsp chili powder
2 tsp ground cumin
3/4 lb bacon or salt pork
1/2 cup fresh cilantro

Tools:

Slow Cooker
Sautee Pan
Big Spoon
Big Knife
Cutting Board

The Process:

Soak the beans: Rinse the beans and cover them with a lot of water (they’ll expand so make sure the water level starts out a good inch or more over the top of the beans).  Use the slow cooker (not turned on of course) if you don’t want to ‘dirty’ another pot. Let them sit ‘overnight’, or 12-15 hours.  Drain and rinse them till all the water runs clear.

Put beans and six cups of water in the slow cooker and turn on high. Using the big knife on the cutting board, chop bacon or pork into 1/2″ pieces and add to beans.  Let the slow cooker go on high for 2 hours or low for 3-4 hours until beans are starting to soften.

Using the big knife on the cutting board (both cleaned after the earlier bacon chopping), mince the garlic; chop onion, green pepper, and tomatoes into chunks (not too fine – maybe 1/2″); quarter the jalapeños lengthwise and then cut them into small pieces .  Sautee the garlic with the oil for a minute over medium heat using the big spoon to stir.  Add onions and peppers and sautee for 3-4 minutes until the onions are clearish.  Add this mixture to the slow cooker with the tomatoes and jalapeños.  Add salt, pepper, chili powder, and cumin.

Let the slow cooker go for another 2 hours on low temperature until the beans are tender but not coming apart.  Remember, if you turn off the heat and continue to let it sit, it will continue to cook.

Taste the bean soup and add more salt to taste if needed.  Add more chili powder and/or cumin if you want it spicier.  Chop up the cilantro and stir it in at the end.

Ingredients:

a big brisket (10 lb)
salt, pepper
lots of fresh crushed garlic
some simple spices
bbq sauce
some water

Tools:

gas or charcoal grill
large roasting pan with wire rack
large tongs – two sets, preferably

The Process:

If there are big pockets of fat on the brisket, trimming them off is fine; but leave the big layer of fat on the “fat side”.  Rub the entire brisket generously with salt, pepper, garlic, red pepper, etc.  Rub generously with BBQ sauce.  Cover with plastic wrap and store in the refrigerator overnight.

Grill the brisket on a gas or charcoal grill for 30-40 minutes to sear the outside on all sides.  Turning 3 times (twice on each side, 7-10 minutes per side) is sufficient.  Use tongs to turn the meat.  Transfer the brisket (using tongs) to a large roasting pan with a wire rack that stands off the bottom of the pan, making sure the brisket’s fat side is up.  Pour water in the bottom of the pan, but not so much that the meat sits in it.  Cover the brisket tightly with foil, but don’t wrap it (leave the bottom open).  Put in a 450° oven, then turn the oven down to 200° right away.

Let the brisket cook at 200° for 18 hours.  If at any time during the cooking you see that the water is gone from the pan, add more along the way.  15 minutes before eating time, remove from oven and place it on a cutting board still covered in foil until it’s time to cut into it.

Tips & Gotchas:

Use tongs to handle the meat – don’t use a big meat fork to stab it, because the searing keeps juices in and stabbing takes juices out.  Searing it on the grill is just to keep the mess and smoke and stuff outside.  You could do this in a large dutch oven or something inside but it’ll stink up the place.

Honestly, precise seasoning is not important.  Salt, pepper, garlic, red pepper are all good.  But I would avoid stuffing garlic cloves inside because of the stabbing issue mentioned above.  I use Tony Cachere’s Creole Seasoning which is a little spicy, but it doesn’t make the meat spicy.

To keep it from drying out, the three big issues are:

• water: keeping water in the pan while it’s cooking; bbq sauce helps moisten the meat too
• foil: covering with foil keeps moisture from evaporating off the top
• fat side up: you want it to drip down into the meat, not just off the bottom

Precise cooking time is not important either.  There’s no formula for number of hours per pound or anything – just make sure it’s many hours at low heat and you keep water in the pan.  200° for 18 hours or even longer is great and works well if you want to start it the night before; or 220° for 10-12 hours is fine if you want to start it in the morning for that night’s dinner.

Yeah, you can follow the instructions on a box of Kraft or something, but there’s something in me that makes me want to make a real from-scratch cheese sauce that isn’t powder stirred into liquid.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups dry macaroni
1 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp flour
1 cup whole milk
1/2 lb cheddar cheese, grated
sprinkles of salt

The Process:

Boil the macaroni in salted water till almost done.  Dump it into a colander to drain – don’t rinse it! – and let it sit while you do the other stuff.

In the same pot you just boiled the macaroni in, make the sauce:  Melt the butter on low heat and dump in the flour, stirring to make a roux.  Add the milk and slowly heat it on no more than medium heat, stirring most of the time, not letting it boil, till the liquid starts to thicken.  It may take a few minutes, so be patient.  Remove from heat and stir in the cheese, half at a time, till the cheese is melted pretty well.  Put it back on the low heat and stir till it’s pretty smooth – If it’s too thick, add a little more milk; if it’s too thin, add a little more cheese.  When it’s pretty smooth, add the macaroni back in, along with some salt, and stir it till it’s all smooth and consistent.

Tips & gotchas:

Don’t overcook the macaroni.  In general, overcooked pasta is not as good as properly cooked pasta, and the macaroni will continue to cook a little in the sauce anyway.

Don’t start the roux with the pot so hot that the butter sizzles and turns brown.  Burned butter is not good in anything.

You may be able to get away with using margarine and/or skim or lowfat milk… but hey, this is macaroni and cheese, so I’ve not tried that.

LOW HEAT for the sauce.  If it’s too hot when you add the cheese, the cheese will glob and the butter will separate and you’ll be left with a stringy globby oily slop and there’s no way to fix it.

My experience and others’ advice is to not rinse the macaroni.  I think it has something to do with the sticky starchiness adding to the sauce and avoiding water getting into the sauce.

Ingredients:

1 C (6-8 oz) strong coffee
1-2 Tbsp sweetened condensed milk
Cubed ice in a tall glass

The Process:

Brew 1 C strong coffee. Mix with sweetened condensed milk. Chill for a while in the fridge and pour over ice in a tall glass.

Tips & Gotchas: Make the coffee strong. The way I do it personally, I use our home espresso maker with 2 tbsp finely-ground coffee and less than 8 oz water (not really an espresso because there’s a lot more water). Making one cup in a standard home coffeemaker won’t do the trick because it’s next to impossible to get a good strong cup this way. Use an espresso maker and mix one part espresso with one part water; or use a French press with a lot of ground coffee. Milk and sugar doesn’t seem to work – sweetened condensed milk is the way to go. You really need to chill it for a bit (or at least let it sit to cool down significantly), and use big iced cubes instead of crushed or pellet ice; otherwise the hot coffee will melt the ice quickly and you’ll end up with weak lukewarm coffee, which is really bad.