Guest cook night: Mina!

Mina has a strange allergy. Mina is allergic to grains. Not a gluten allergy or something like that, but a wierd annoying all encompassing grain adversion. This makes things difficult when you're not a big cook and your repertoire is limited to salads.

We needed something easy but tasty to go with for this one, and figured ultimate fries from scratch might be fun.

Ultimate Fries

What We Used:

• Potatoes (white with skin on)
  
• Oil (grapeseed is my oil of choice, but another low-flavor oil like canola would work)
• 1 lb Ground Beef
• cumin
• coriander
• garlic powder
• black pepper
• Chili powder
  
• Salsa*
• Cheese

*Salsa (we opted to go home made for the salsa, so here's what we used)

• 3 Tomatoes (roma)
• 4 Cloves of Garlic
• 1 Jalapeno Pepper
• 2/3 Onion (we had more sweet onion left over)
• 1/2 Red bell pepper

Note that there's usually cilantro in fresh salsa, but I got this frightening look on my face when it was brought up, so Jess dropped the subject.I LOATHE THE STUFF. I had to cut a large bucket of it by myself in college. BLECH!)

Mina acted as my sous chef tonight for chopping up the Salsa ingredients. I started with the tomatoes, then did the peppers and onions, dicing everything up nice and small. You can opt for a chunkier salsa if that's what you'd prefer. When it comes to the jalapeno's, if you want it to be REALLY hot, you can keep in the white inside of the pepper and the seeds, since that's where the heat really comes from. I'm a bit of a weenie and opted to scrape the white and the seeds out before dicing it up. My husband also has a bit of a time with spicy stuff and since he needs to eat as well, we went with mild.

To make Garlic easier to cut, try pressing it with the flat side of a chef's knife. The skin will come right off without problem! And pressing garlic releases more flavor. Chop it all up fine, stir the ingredients together in a bowl and let it sit and blend flavors while preparing the fries!

Cut the potatoes into fry shaped pieces. Easiest way to go about this is to cut them length wise, then in thin spears. Heat plenty of oil in a pan since you're pretty much deep frying these things to start them off. When the oil is hot, put the spears into the oil a bit at a time ( and you can do this by either placing them in with your hand if you're brave and slightly heat proof like myself and Jess, or you can use tongs or a spatula if you're not used to it, like we had Mina do ) and cook them till they're a golden color and soft. If they're getting too dark, just turn the heat down. Salt the lovelies as you go, either when they're in the pan or out!

Cook the ground beef with the spices until it's cooked through. Then it's time for assembly!!

Put the fries in the bottom of a pan that's broiler proof. Put the ground beef over top the fries, then the salsa on top of the beef. Cover it all with cheese and put it into the oven until it's a delicious melty hot mess. YUM.





Meanwhile, I was getting started on the cheesecake. The lack of flour in everything but the crust made it an ideal treat and GOD I love cheesecake.

(too much. Much too much)

The recipe is out of some old book, but it's been changed and adapted and handed off to me by my mother, so here's the version I use

Orange Chocolate Cheesecake

Crust

• 1 1/2 cups Oreo cookie crumbs
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1/3 cup butter melted
  

Filling

• 3 packages cream cheese, softened
• 1 cup white sugar
  
• 5 eggs
• 2 tbsp orange liquor (we use Grand Marnier)
• 2 squares semi-sweet baking chocolate

I preheated the oven to 350 as soon as Sam was done with the broiler.

For the crust I mixed the oreo crumbs and sugar together, then added the melted butter. All of this was pressed into the bottom and a little up the sides of a springform pan, then baked for 10 minutes.

While the crust was baking, Sam and Mina were mixing the cream cheese and sugar. Once the cheese and sugar was smooth, we added the eggs one at a time, then the orange liquor.

I melted the baking chocolate in a glass measuring cup in the microwave, because I'm impatient and didn't want to use the double boiler. We added one cup of the cheese mix to the chocolate and mixed well.

When the crust was cool(er), the (not chocolate) cheese mix was poured into the pan on top and smoothed. I then spooned little blobs of the chocolate on top, and cut the blobs with a knife to make a marbling effect. The cake was put back in the oven for 55-60 minutes with a pan of water to keep the air moist.*


*Most cheesecakes call for a water bath, which involves wrapping the bottom of a springform pan in tin foil then placing in a pan of water to avoid warping. I've never had warping problems with this recipe but I do get cracks occasionally, so I like to put something with water in the oven to keep the heat in there nice and moist.

I LOVE this cheesecake recipe. It's a bit more fun that traditional new york style, and the crust is probably my favorite ever. Too bad the Kitchen of Despair's oven is too hot and we ended up overcooking the stupid thing.

This is my angry face.

See? Too dark.

What the N00b learned:

• The oven is too hot.

-Sam and Jess