Thug Kitchen: The Official Cookbook: Eat Like You Give a F*ck (9 page)
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Authors: Thug Kitchen
HOW TO BUILD A SALAD (AKA “PLANT NACHOS”)
We’ve fucking had it with all this salad shaming. You’ve probably had some bland-ass salads that wouldn’t satisfy a rabbit. Done right, salads are delicious and filling as all hell. It’s just a big bowl of plant nachos and we’re all about that. Here is a basic guide to building a salad with whatever random shit you have in your kitchen.
1. THE BASE: No matter where the fuck you’re taking this dish, you need to start off with some greens. This can be spinach, arugula, red leaf, a bag of mixed greens, romaine, kale, cabbage, or whatever you find at the store. Your bowl. Your rules. Generally, the darker the green, the healthier the green, but mixing dark leafy greens in with cheaper lettuces like green leaf will help you stretch your dollars but still mix up your vitamins. The leafy greens base should be about 60 percent of your salad bowl. (Just know that iceberg lettuce is a no-go. Yeah, it is the cheapest thing on the shelf but it’s a nutritional nonstarter.) Also, don’t always chop the greens the same way. That route is tired as hell. Add some variety by shredding some heartier greens like kale, cutting some crispy lettuces like romaine into thick ribbons, and leaving some leaves like arugula or chicory whole in the same salad to keep shit interesting
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2. THE ADD-INS: You always want to throw in a bunch of random veggies. A just-lettuce salad is some sad shit that should only be done the day before your paycheck hits. Add chopped-up vegetables like carrots, cucumbers, bell peppers, tomatoes, broccoli, or fruit like apples, pears, whatever the fuck you like. Add leftover roasted vegetables and potatoes while you’re at it. Cooked beans and grains are great here, too. All these extras bring a shitload of vitamins and minerals to your dish while adding even more fiber to keep you full and regular as fuck. These add-ins should count for about 35 percent of your bowl.
Use whatever is in season around your area so that you get the tastiest and cheapest shit available. Let nature mix up your diet for you
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3. THE TOPPERS: These are a small percentage of your salad (yeah, we checked the math) but bring all the flavor. Try some tasty toppers like toasted nuts, chopped fresh herbs, raw onions, some pickled vegetables, or a handful of croutons. This 4 percent of your salad is like the bow on your nutritionally dense plant present
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4. THE DRESSING: This should only be 1 percent of your salad and shouldn’t upstage all the hard work you put in throwing the rest of this nutritious deliciousness together. *COUGH* RANCH DRESSING *COUGH* Add your dressing a little at a time, toss well, and then taste. Add some salt and pepper, toss some more, and then taste again. You just don’t want a salad that has so much dressing on it that it’s almost soup, so slow your roll at the beginning and know you can always add more. Now go pick out a dressing and get grubbin’
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DRESS THAT FUCKER UP
Keep a bottle of these bastards in the fridge ready to go and you can have a salad on your table in minutes any night of the week. each recipe makes around 1 cup of dressing, which is enough for salads all week, unless you’re a maniac with dressing distribution. These will separate while you store them, so just shake the shit out of them before you use ’em. They will keep for at least 2 weeks in the fridge.
ROASTED CARROT AND CUMIN DRESSING
This one’s pretty thick but it’s really fucking tasty on a simple salad with red onion and cilantro. Hell, it’s good on almost anything.
3 medium carrots
1 teaspoon olive oil
¼ teaspoon ground cumin
Pinch of salt
1
⁄
3
cup white wine vinegar*
¼ cup water
2 tablespoons orange juice
2 tablespoons olive oil
1
Heat up your oven to 375°F. Chop up your carrots into chunks no bigger than ½ inch. Toss them together with the oil, cumin, and salt. Roast them in a small pan, covered, until the carrots are tender, 30 to 40 minutes.
2
Let the carrots cool for a minute then add them to a food processor with the rest of your shit. Blend it until it’s smooth. This could take as long as 3 minutes.
* Rice vinegar works, too
.
Great on all kinds of salads, goes really well with cilantro and basil, and is tasty as hell over some noodles.
TOASTED SESAME DRESSING
½ cup rice vinegar
1 tablespoon citrus juice*
½ teaspoon soy sauce or tamari
2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
3 tablespoons olive oil
Pour all the ingredients into a jar and shake that shit up. Taste and add more of whateverthefuck you think it needs.
* Orange, lime, or lemon works best
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BASIC THUG KITCHEN VINAIGRETTE
2 tablespoons diced shallot or sweet onion*
1½ teaspoons Dijon mustard**
¼ cup red wine vinegar
¼ cup rice vinegar
¼ cup olive oil
Pour all this shit together in a jar and shake the fuck out of it. Taste and add more of whateverthefuck you think it needs. You can switch out the vinegars with what you like to find your favorite combo. If you want to mix it up even more, add 1 teaspoon of your favorite dried herb or herb blend and shake that shit in.
* You can sub in 2 cloves of garlic instead
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** This brings the whole dressing together. Trust
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ALMOND CAESAR SALAD
WITH HOMEMADE CROUTONS
That empty spot on your plate where a salad should be? Fill it with this and then send your thank-you cards to us.
MAKES ENOUGH FOR 4
1
⁄
3
cup sliced or slivered almonds
1
⁄
3
cup hot water
1 to 2 cloves garlic
¼ cup olive oil
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon rice vinegar
1 tablespoon capers*
1 head of your favorite lettuce, chopped up
A handful of Homemade Croutons (recipe follows)
1
Put the almonds in a glass with the hot water and let those fuckers soak for about 15 minutes. Chop up the garlic. When the almonds start feeling sorta soft, throw them in a food processor or blender with the water they soaked in, the garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, mustard, and vinegar. Blend it all up until there are no more large almond pieces and it starts to look creamy. You know what the fuck Caesar dressing should look like, come on. Add the capers and run it again for another 5 seconds just so they get chopped up. Chill until you are ready to eat.
2
Serve a couple tablespoons of the dressing over your favorite lettuce with homemade croutons because you know how to live.
*
These pickled motherfuckers are near the olives at the store. They sound all fancy, but 1 jar will last you forever and class up your fridge. Throw them in the
House Marinara
with some olives and red pepper flakes and you got yourself a puttanesca, you crazy motherfucker
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HOMEMADE CROUTONS
MAKES ENOUGH FOR 4 SIDE SALADS
½ loaf day-old bread (enough to make 5 cups of cubes)
3 tablespoons olive oil
1½ tablespoons lemon juice
1½ teaspoons garlic powder
1 teaspoon dried thyme
¼ teaspoon paprika
¼ teaspoon salt
1
Crank your oven to 400°F.
2
Cut up the bread into bite-size cubes. You should get around 5 cups. In a big bowl, combine the rest of the ingredients and mix. Add the bread pieces and mix that fucker up to make sure all the pieces get some love. Pour that out evenly onto a baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes, stirring halfway through to make sure that shit doesn’t burn. Serve right away or keep them in an airtight container in the fridge.
HOW TO ROAST GARLIC
Roasted garlic adds a nice buttery sweetness to just about anything like pasta sauce, salads, and dips and it’s easy as hell to make. Stay away from any restaurant that charges extra for this; that’s some roasted robbery.
1. Heat your oven to 400°F
.
2. Pull off all the extra layers of paper around the bulb of garlic. You want that son of a bitch to stay in one piece, but it doesn’t need all that skin holding it back
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3. Slice the top
¼
inch right off the bulb of garlic to expose the tips of its innards. Yeah, the motherfucking innards
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4. Wrap the whole thing up in foil and drizzle
½
teaspoon olive oil over the top before you close it up. Roast in the oven until the cloves look all golden and smell goddamn delicious, about 40 minutes
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5. Let it cool for a bit and then squeeze out as many cloves as you need. It will keep for at least 2 weeks in the fridge
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