Thug Kitchen: The Official Cookbook: Eat Like You Give a F*ck (16 page)
Read Thug Kitchen: The Official Cookbook: Eat Like You Give a F*ck Online
Authors: Thug Kitchen
MAKES ENOUGH FOR 4 AS A MAIN AND 6 AS A SIDE
1 teaspoon olive or coconut oil
½ yellow onion, chopped
1 fist-size russet (baking) potato, peeled and cut into cubes about the size of dice
1 carrot, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon ground coriander*
½ teaspoon ground cumin
¼ teaspoon salt
2 cups red lentils, rinsed
6 cups vegetable broth
½ teaspoon grated lemon zest
1 tablespoon lemon juice
½ cup chopped fresh cilantro (optional)
1
Grab a large soup pot and heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onion and let it sauté for about 3 minutes, until it starts getting all soft and vaguely golden. Yeah, that’s right, “vaguely golden,” motherfucker. Now add the potato and carrot. Sauté for another 2 minutes and then add the garlic and spices. At this point, your place should start smelling choice. Sauté for another 30 seconds and then add the salt, lentils, and broth.
2
Let the lentils simmer, uncovered, until they’re soft and kinda falling apart, 15 to 20 minutes. Stir this every now and then. Add the lemon zest and juice and turn off the heat. Now you can stop if you prefer a chunky lentil soup, or you can blend half of it for a creamy chunky hybrid thing. It’s your soup, so own that shit. The blended soup will thicken up if you throw it back on the stove with some low heat for a minute or two, just watch. Magic, bitches.
3
Serve warm, topped with some chopped cilantro if you want.
*
Coriander is a super tasty seed of the cilantro plant, but it doesn’t taste a damn thing like cilantro; it’s on another level. If you can’t find it at the store, just leave it out and use an extra ½ teaspoon cumin
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HOW TO MAKE VEGETABLE BROTH WITH SCRAPS
A lot of recipes in here call for vegetable broth and we don’t want you just relying on that shelf-stable bullshit you get at the store. You can totally make that flavored water yourself from scraps you are leaving behind as you cook. It is as easy as stuffing scraps in a bag and boiling water. Look at your fine ass, saving money and reducing waste.
Keep a gallon bag in your freezer and throw in scrap bits of produce you end up with as you cook. Think ends of onions, carrot peels, celery, garlic, shallots, green onion pieces, and the ends of leeks. Also, toss in any shit you might have overbought and is starting to look not so hot. Mushrooms, bell peppers, fennel, and herbs like parsley, rosemary, and thyme that got dried out or wilted as fuck are great too. Just don’t throw in bitter shit like cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, or Brussels sprouts or anything that is starting to rot or mold. Basically, if you think that the water some vegetable was boiled in might taste good, then try that fucker out. This is the simplest shit there is.
1. When your bag is really full, it’s time to get boiling. You want around 5 cups of scraps. Add the scraps to a large pot with around 9 cups of water
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2. Get this going to a good simmer over medium heat. Add 1 teaspoon of salt and some pepper to give it a little more flavor. Add 2 bay leaves if you’ve got them. Let this all simmer together uncovered for around 1 hour to get all those flavors out
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3. Turn off the heat and then let the pot cool down. Strain out all the veggie scraps using a mesh strainer or some cheesecloth and you are good to go. You can freeze this broth for later, or store it in the fridge for up to a week. Throw your gallon bag back in the freezer and wait for it to fill up again
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VEGETABLE-NOODLE
SOUP
WITH GINGER MISO
BROTH
Stop fucking with that deep-fried ramen and its foil-wrapped flavor fibs. This soup is perfect for when you feel a cold coming on but your ass is too worn out to cook. Take the few extra minutes to make this and put that ramen back in your zombie apocalypse kit where it fucking belongs.
MAKES 2 BIG-ASS BOWLS OR 4 SIDES
BROTH
4 inches fresh ginger
2 big cloves garlic
1 carrot
6 cups vegetable broth or water
10 sprigs cilantro*
NOODLES AND VEGGIES
8 ounces soba, udon, or rice noodles
¼ teaspoon soy sauce or tamari
1¼ cups broccoli cut into bite-size pieces
1½ teaspoons red
miso paste
**
1 carrot, cut into thin matchsticks
1 cup snow peas cut into matchsticks
1
⁄
3
cup thinly sliced green onions
Your favorite condiments***
1
To make the broth, peel the ginger by scraping the skin off with a spoon. Cut the ginger into ¼-inch-thick slices. Thickly slice the garlic too and chop the carrot into big chunks. Grab a medium pot and turn the heat on to medium. Once the pot is hot, add the ginger and carrot chunks and let those fuckers go on the bottom of the pot with no oil or anything. Keep stirring them around off and on for 2 minutes. It’s cool if they stick, just rip them off with the spoon and keep going. Now add the garlic and do the same shit for another minute. Pour in the broth or water, add the cilantro, and let that veggie hot tub simmer for 15 minutes.
2
While the broth is doing its thing, cook the noodles according to the package directions.
3
When the broth has simmered 15 minutes, pull out all the ginger, garlic, carrot, and cilantro with a slotted spoon. Add the soy sauce and broccoli and simmer for a minute or two until the broccoli has lost its raw edge, then turn off the heat. Scoop up ½ cup of the broth and dissolve the miso paste in it, stirring until the chunks are gone. Pour that back in the pot and give it all a taste. Fucking great, right?
4
To assemble, grab a handful of the noodles and place them at the bottom of a bowl. Add a handful of the carrots, snow peas, and green onions. Ladle the hot broth and broccoli bits over and let it sit for a minute as the carrots and snow peas soften. Top with some more of the green onions and some of your favorite condiments.
*
Stems and all, bitches
.
**
WTF?
See tip
.
***
A squeeze of lime juice, a dash of toasted sesame oil, and a splooge of Sriracha are usually the way to go for condiments, but you do you
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MISO PASTE
Miso paste is made of fermented soybeans and grains and comes in a fuckton of flavors. Because it’s fermented, it’s full of probiotics and all that good shit that helps your gut do its thing. Always add miso last to soup so you don’t overheat it and kill all that good stuff. You can find it in the fridge at a well-stocked store or at your neighborhood Asian grocer. Yeah, take your ass down the street and try new things by supporting a local business, motherfucker.
POZOLE ROJO
Part soup, part chili, pozole is a hearty dish that you can trick out with a fuckton of toppings.
MAKES ENOUGH FOR 6 HUNGRY PEOPLE, NO FUCKING PROBLEM
5 large dried chiles*
2 cups warm water
1 large onion
5 cloves garlic
1 zucchini
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder**
1 teaspoon olive oil
8 ounces tempeh
2 teaspoons soy sauce or tamari
1 can (29 ounces) hominy***
1 tablespoon dried oregano
2 teaspoons ground cumin
¼ teaspoon salt
5 cups vegetable broth
1 teaspoon maple syrup or other liquid sweetener
Juice of 1 lime
Toppings: Sliced cabbage, sliced green onions, radishes cut into matchsticks, cilantro, sliced avocado, lime wedges
1
Grab a big pot or griddle and toast the dried chiles on both sides until they get a little bendy and soft, about 2 minutes. Don’t let these fuckers burn. Stay focused. When they are all good, throw them in a bowl with the warm water and let them soak for 15 to 20 minutes.
2
While that’s going down, chop up the onion, garlic, and zucchini. When the chiles are nice and rehydrated take them out of the water but hold on to the water. Cut off the chile tops, remove the seeds, and chop them all up. Throw them in a blender or food processor with the water they were soaked in, the garlic, and cocoa powder, and run it until the chile-garlic paste looks all mashed up with no big chunks left.
3
Heat up the oil in a large soup pot over medium heat. Add the onion and sauté that shit for 2 minutes. Grab the tempeh and crumble that fucker right into the pot in dime- and nickel-size chunks and sauté until both the onion and tempeh start to brown, about 3 more minutes. Add soy sauce for a little flavor. Next, add the zucchini, hominy, oregano, cumin, and salt. Stir that all together and then add the chile-garlic paste you made earlier. Toss that all around so that everything is well coated and then add the broth. Cover that bastard and let it simmer for 15 to 20 minutes to get all the flavors to combine. Next add the maple syrup and lime juice. Taste that fucker and adjust the spices to the way you want it.
4
Serve hot with your favorite toppings.
*
Guajillo, ancho, whateverthefuck kind of big chiles you can find hanging at the end of the spice aisle
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