It’s been a long time…

It’s been a long time, I shouldn’t have left you without a dope beat to step to…..

Ok, I think it’s been a few months since last I posted anything. I kind of noticed it when I got an email from BlogSpot, kind of like an e-version of a welfare check. Not the kind you cash to buy lottery tickets, but the other kind, where someone comes to your house and knocks on the door because you haven’t gone to work for a week. Then it hit me, like I said to myself “damn, it’s been a while hasn’t it?” Did I ever tell you my internal monologue voice sounds like Sir Richard Attenborough? “Trials of Life” look it up amigos, in a word….savage. Anyway, I don’t really have a good excuse. I didn’t lose interest, I didn’t get lazy(er), I didn’t cash my welfare check and hit the lotto…I think mostly the summer came and I got too dang busy to really cook anything. Or I should say, I still cooked, I just forgot to take pictures the whole way through. Dude, I have like 5 posts’ worth of 25% content where I started taking pictures of food then like part way through I’d forget to finish the pictures. I was like an internet version of that one a**hole in the neighborhood who keeps buying cars and lawnmowers to “fix ‘em up” when in reality they sit on the front lawn like a dealership that never sold sh*t. Maybe someday I’ll do an amalgam (mash up) of all the stuff I started but never finished. Like some rapper’s posthumous album but instead of old songs it’s just pictures of raw meat and cut up veggies…food cooking that you never see plated. Wouldn’t that be fun boys and girls? No? Well I’m back babies! Get ready to read about some stuff you never knew you always wanted to care about.

So….I looked back on my prior posts and thought, damn I do a lot of pulled pork related dishes! Nothing wrong with pulled pork, it’s amazing, but after a while I get tired of showing the world all the ways I can pull my hog along with the accompanying pictures. I wanted to show you my new meat. With that undisturbing thought in mind, let’s take a trip to Kansas City, where I just got back from visiting my dad’s family. I could go on about how awesome and funny they all are but that would take too long. And they would probably get upset that I didn’t put enough in about how awesome and funny they are…let’s just say, I couldn’t be happier or luckier than to have people like them in my life. Visiting my grandma took me back to when I was 10, eating all kinds of good Mexican food, the way the house smelled (it smelled the same!), walking to the corner store to buy baseball cards, running around Worlds of Fun, seeing Branson, learning about BaldKnobbers (real thing, look it up after this), playing with my cousins that I never got to see, getting the living sh*t scared out of me during thunder storms, looking at locust skins after they molted…those are some really great memories, minus the storms. When my Godfather and his wife invited me to cook steaks at their house, I knew I had an opportunity to get back in the saddle and ride this 3 legged donkey of a blog into the sunset again. So what did I do? I drank beers and BBQ’d, just like I was taught to do.

Polly Wanna get Eaten?

1 Parrot Fish thawed
¾ can of coconut milk
Kimchee base to taste
1 Mango chopped to sh*t
½ Onion diced to sh*t

1 Roma Tomato cut the hell up
4 sprigs (WTF is a sprig?) of cilantro chopped all over
2 banana leaves

Parrot fish is delicious. It is a beautiful tropical reef fish and you can buy it frozen at Asian markets. But! Be warned!! Parrot fish come whole. I mean whole….as in tits, guts, and nuts whole. And, these babies take some prep work. First, you have to clean it by slitting the belly open and pulling everything out. My fish had sand and seaweed in its stomach still. Yours might have a little wooden puppet, an old Italian guy, and a cricket with a top hat. They also have barbs on their fins so you may want to cut them off or just be very careful. I poked my hands really good a couple times and it hurts like hell. Also, they have really big scales that you have to scratch off. I’ve added a YouTube video on how to scale one. It’s work. But it’s worth it. Once the fish is prepped, place aluminum foil out, put two the banana leaves on top of the foil and put the fish in the middle of it all. In a bowl, mix all the coconut milk, kimchee base, fruit and veggies, stir and coat the fish. Get some of the mix in the belly, in the gills, all over. Wrap with one banana leaf, then the other, then wrap in foil and place on the grill. Cook one side for about 10-15 minutes, flip then cook the other side for 10-15 more minutes. Remove from the grill, uncover and if you like, you can add more of the mix on the fish.

Say the Maggi word

6 whole baby bok choy separated
1 pack of firm tofu cubed
Maggi seasoning or soy sauce to taste
1lb Ground Pork
½ lime

Let me start by saying, Maggi. Is. Delicious. It isn’t soy sauce, it isn’t Worcestershire sauce, it is a Unicorn. No, it is a rainbow made of kittens. No, no, it is a Unicorn on a rainbow made of kittens being ridden by Santa Clause. It comes in what looks like a genie bottle because it makes your culinary wishes come true! Now what you do is, in a wok, or large frying pan on high heat, cook the ground pork. You don’t need to season it, just cook it. Well, add white pepper and chopped ginger if you like. I would have but I didn’t have any. Once it is cooked add in the bok choy and stirring occasionally, cook until it is soft, about 5-6 minutes. Add the cubed tofu and add the Maggi, or soy sauce to taste, squeeze the juice from the lime into the frying pan and slowly fold it all together. Be careful not to smash up the tofu.

KC Grilled Steak

My uncle made the steak, you will have to ask him. It was amazingly cooked to perfection. He would expect nothing less, it is bred into our family. Being humble is also something we are very good at.

There you have it. Now, I do have my new phone with sweet new apps so I may start getting fancy on that a** and adding video clips or stuff like that. I’m also up on Instagram now too, so look me up at daislanani, and tell your friends to get with my friends and we can be friends, sh*t we can do this every weekend. Is that a’ight with you? Keep bangin’. All right y’all, until next time, be cool.