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Murgh kali mirch (Indian black pepper chicken)
ingredients
- Juice of 4 lemons
- 1 Tbsp ground black pepper
- 2 Tbsp minced fresh garlic or garlic paste
- 1 Tbsp fresh ground ginger or ginger paste (not the dry powder if you can avoid it)
- 1 small minced hot chili pepper or red pepper paste
- 1 Tbsp peanut oil
- 1 medium red onion, chopped
- 1 Tbsp butter
- Salt to taste
- Additional black pepper
- 1 whole chicken, cut into pieces, bone-in, skin-on
directions
Combine lemon juice, black pepper, garlic, ginger, chili pepper, and peanut oil. Brush the entire mixture over all surfaces of the chicken pieces. Let marinate for 1/2 hour.
In a dutch oven or large stirfry pan with a lid, place the chicken pieces skin-side down. Add the chopped red onion on tp of the chicken. On medium-high heat, cook the chicken on that side, uncovered, until the skin just begins to get golden. Turn the chicken pieces over, brush the skin with a little bit of butter, add salt and pepper to taste, and cover the lid. Cook on medium-high heat until the chicken is nearly cooked through, 30-40 minutes (this depends on how big the pieces are).
Turn the chicken pieces over one last time and cook, covered, under medium-low heat until the skin turns a darker golden-brown. The golden-brown, almost crispy skin is what really makes this dish “pop”.
Serve over rice.
I exist forever.
by mark beadles on tue, jun 8th 2010 at 23:03 edt
I exist forever.
There’s a concept in the physics of relativity called a “world line” or a “world sheet”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_line
As you move from here to there through the three dimensions of space, you also move through the fourth dimension of time. Of course, your travel through time is much more constrained than your travel through space. You can move as fast or as slow as you want through space, in any direction. But you are traveling through time at the speed of light (it’s true) in the futureward direction, and there’s really nothing you can do about that.
So as you describe your journey through space, you are really describing a journey through a 4-dimensional universe. For a person, the path of You in your successive positions from your birth to your death looks something like this:
Credit: George Gamow, One, Two, Three, Infinity)
http://www.leptonic.com/skip/WLMblog/WorldLine-3.jpg
I call this path a World Worm (not to be confused with a wormhole). My World Worm started when I was born and will end when I die … right? Well, sure, from the limited point of view of another one of us poor humans. All that any of us can see is a single instant in time, and we can only remember the past. So someday You and I will no longer exist. Unless of course we step outside of the 4 dimensions and look at things from a timeless point of view.
From outside the 4 dimensions, the World Worm is simply ‘there’. It is there, was there, and will always be there – if one looks from outside of time. The diagram above shows a World Worm as it ‘is’, and will remain there whenever you care to go back and look at it.
You’re the same way, and so am I. Although we were born and will die, our existence is, has always been, and will always be a fact.
I exist forever.
Corn and kielbasa chowder
ingredients
- 3 tbsp butter
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 1 onion, diced
- 1 yellow bell pepper, diced
- 1 1/2 tbsp garlic, chopped
- 1 lb. kielbasa, sliced into thin disks
- Salt (sea salt)
- Pepper (Cameroun 3-color peppercorn blend)
- 1 bay leaf
- 4 potatooees, peeled and diced
- 2 qts. chicken broth
- 1/2 head Savoy cabbage, julienne
- 1 can cream corn
- 1 1/2 c whole kernel corn
- 1/2 c heavy cream
directions
Melt oil & butter. Add onions, garlic, peppers; season to taste. Saute until onion is transparent. Add
kielbasa, saute until just starting to brown. Add 1/2 the broth, bay leaf, and potato. Bring to a full boil.
Lower heat and simmer 20 minutes. Add cabbage, corns, and additional chicken broth as needed. Cook until
cabbage turns bright green. Add cream; check for seasoning.
Enjoy and relax. Yummy.
Pastilla
ingredients
- 1/2 c chopped fresh parsley
- 1/4 c chopped fresh cilantro
- 5 Tbsp olive oil
- 1/2 chicken, in pieces
- 1 sweet onion (Vidalia or similar), chopped roughly
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 pinches true saffron, crumbled
- Kosher salt
- Freshly ground black pepper
- 1 stick cinnamon
- 3/4 tsp ground ginger
- 3 eggs
- 1 cup blanched peeled almonds
- 2 tsp cinnamon powder
- 1/3 cup powdered sugar
- 6 sheets phyllo dough
- 1 stick melted unsalted butter (not margarine!)
directions
To prepare:
1. Combine parsley and cilantro.
2. Pour oil into large skillet (one with a cover). Add chicken pieces, onion, garlic, saffron, salt, pepper, cinnamon stick, ginger, and 1/2 of the parsley/cilantro mixture. Cook, covered, over medium heat for 45 minutes, turning occasionally. Your house will now smell like heaven.
3. Combine almonds, 1/2 the powdered sugar, and 1/2 the powdered cinnamon in a food processor. Process until well mixed but still crumbly.
4. Remove chicken pieces from skillet and put in refrigerator to cool. You will be pulling the chicken meat later.
5. Strain the reserved cooking juices to remove large pieces. Re-heat the skillet with the cooking juices to medium heat. Add the 3 eggs to the cooking juices and beat until soft-scrambled. Remove and set aside/refrigerate.
6. Let the chicken meat cool sufficiently. If you let it sit overnight in the refrigerator the flavor will blend quite deliciously. Pull the meat from the bones, and chop the meat roughly.
7. Assembly. Get a lasagna pan and butter it well, then assemble in the following layers:
i. 3 sheets phyllo dough, each sheet brushed with butter
ii. 1/2 of the almond mixture
iii. chicken meat
iv. remaining parsley/cilantro mixture
v. 1 sheet phyllo dough, brushed with butter
vi. scrambled eggs
vii. other 1/2 of the almond mixture
viii. 2 sheets phyllo dough, brushed with butter
8. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 30-35 minutes or until golden brown.
9. Remove from oven and immediately sift remaining powdered sugar over the top of the pie. Dust lightly with the remaining powdered cinnamon.
10. Serve hot or cold with harissa (Moroccan hot sauce).
This was a big hit! It’s like a combination of Baklava and Chicken Pot Pie. All three boys ate it up amid various yummy noises, and with my picky boys you know that means it’s a hit. A bit of work, but well well worth it. We served it with couscous and peas. Even my mom loved it. Yowzah!
Taquitos
Taquitos (aka flautas) the Beadles way isn’t fast food, but nice…and…slow…. El pollo es la llave! (The chicken is the key!)the chicken
- 2 whole chicken breasts, skin and bones intact
sofrito
- 2 Tbsp butter
- 1/2 yellow onion, dice
- 1/2 green bell pepper, diced
- 1 Tbsp garlic, minced
- 1 Tbsp cilantro, chopped
- 2 Tbsp tomato ketchup (got this tip from Ingrid Hoffman)
- 1 10-oz can Ro-Tel or equivalent “Diced Tomatoes and Green Chilies”
- 1/2 Tbsp adobo seasoning
- ground black pepper to taste
- 1 whole dried guajillo chili (if you like a hotter chili, use it!)
Set a large crockpot to its highest heat level. Add the sofrito ingredients (butter, onion, bell pepper, garlic, cilantro, and ketchup) to the pot. Let them heat, stirring occasionally, until the butter is melted and coats the vegetables.
Season the chicken breasts with pepper and adobo, and add to the crockpot. Pour in the contents of the can of tomatoes and chilies, along with the whole dried chili. Cover and cook in the crock-pot about 6 hours, literally until the meat is falling off the chicken.
Cool the chicken in the refrigerator for a little while until cool enough to pull. Pull the meat from the bones and set aside.
[Bonus: remove the skins, bones, and chili stem from the remaining liquid, and blend it all up until smooth. Save this delicious sauce for your next recipe.]
the taquitos
- 1 cup grated Colby, Monterrey jack, and Cotija (tajo) cheeses
- Buncha flour tortillas
- Vegetable oil sufficient for deep-frying in your favorite pan. We use a cast-iron skillet.
- Chicken, from above
Heat your oil in your favorite frying thing. Place a bit of chicken and a bit of cheese into a tortilla, roll as tight as you can, and put in the pan. Repeat until pan is full. Fry until golden-brown on both sides, turning only once. Place on paper towels to drain the oil. Repeat until you’ve cooked as many as you want.
the meal
Serve fresh, hot taquitos with your favorite condiments. Ours include:
- Salsa, pico de gallo, or picante sauce
- Sour cream
- Frijoles refritos
- Lettuce
You may have a lot of pulled chicken left over. This is good. Put it in the fridge and it’ll be even better the next day!
Texas-style barbecue rub
This is a mustard-based rub for beef or pork. It’s not Tex-Mex spicy, rather it’s got a nice peppercorny bite to it. It works best for large cuts of meat that are barbecued with smoke for a few hours. We used hickory smoke.
ingredients
- 1 1/2 Tbsp sea salt (or kosher salt – anything non-iodized)
- 2 Tbsp mixed peppercorns (eg green/white/black/red), medium-coarse grind
- 2 Tbsp garlic powder (not garlic salt)
- 4 Tbsp brown sugar
- 2 Tbsp Colman’s mustard (or other dry mustard)
- 1 Tbsp Hungarian paprika
- 1 Tbsp ground cumin seed
The above amounts were for a 4-lb pork loin. Adjust the amounts in the same proportions if you use more meat.
Wings
ingredients
- 2 dozen uncooked chicken wings, thawed (you can buy them frozen in 4-lb. bags like breasts)
- vegetable oil spray
- sea salt
- ground black pepper
Buffalo Sauce
- 1/4 cup Trappey’s Red Devil hot sauce
- 3 Tbsp unsalted stick butter
- 1 clove garlic, finely minced
Teriyaki Sauce
- 1/2 cup Kikkoman soy sauce (I use low-sodium)
- 1/2 cup orange juice
- 1/8 cup Heinz ketchup
- 1 Tbsp rice vinegar
- 1/8 cup brown sugar
- 2 cloves garlic, finely minced
- 1/2 tsp fresh ginger, shredded
directions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Take any excess feathers off the wings. Coat the wings with vegetable oil spray. Salt and pepper to taste. Bake the wings on a cookie sheet for about 45 minutes until crispy and golden brown.
Meanwhile make the sauces.
Buffalo sauce: Melt the butter over low heat in a saucepan. When butter is melted, remove from heat. Add hot sauce and garlic and stir very well. Pour into a medium sized bowl and set aside.
Teriyaki sauce: Combine all ingredients in a saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring often, until the sauce just begins to thicken. Remove from heat, pour into another medium sized bowl, and set aside.
When the wings are cooked, remove from the oven. Put 1 dozen in the Buffalo sauce, 1 dozen in the teriyaki. Mix each batch very well until completely coated in yummy sauces.
Serve HOT with celery and blue cheese. Probably beer, too.
Pear-fennel salad
ingredients
- 1/2 lb bacon
1 bulb fresh fennel
1 Asian pear (the round Japanese pear aka nashi, not the harder-to-find Chinese pear)
1 bunch fresh mesclun, torn into fork-size pieces (we used some volunteer lettuce that had sprung up in our garden)
2 oz goat cheese
citrus-balsamic vinaigrette ingredients
- 1 oz real old balsamic vinegarr
1 oz extra virgin olive oil
1 oz orange juice
dash of salt
generous dash of pepper
directions
Well beforehand, even a day, cook the bacon until quite crispy. Drain, pat off excess fat, and crumble.
Combine all the vinaigrette ingredients and shake together well. The recipe above gives the amount enough for a salad for two. To make more vinaigrette, just keep the ingredients in their 1:1:1 proportion.
Wash all vegetables thoroughly. Cut any long stems from the fennel and save for another dish. Trim the base and the outer leaves to remove any tough parts. Quarter the fennel and remove the innermost core. Finally, slice with the grain into matchstick-sized pieces. Peel and core the pear and slice approximately the same thickness as the fennel.
Combine the fennel, pears, and lettuce and dress with the vinaigrette, coating everything well. Top with crumbled goat cheese and bacon.
Light, satisfying, and surprising: the bacon doesn’t make it too heavy; the tangy cheese and crunchy, juicy pears and fennel give a great mouth feel and freshness; and the unusual combination of fruit and anise flavors against the bacon and cheese’s saltiness and umami is a real treat.
Ashes to ashes, roots to branches
Fire burns; fire kills. Fire reduces wood and bone to ashes. From the ashes grow new forests which in turn are consumed in fire and fall to ash. The forests have learned to subsume this cycle; the ashes feed the next generation’s seeds. There’s even a sort of tree termed a fire-climax pine: the Obsipo pine not only survives fire, but depends on the heat to open its cones and release its seeds.
The phoenix is a fantasy, a dreamed-up bird that burns only to rise again. We humans aren’t so lucky, are we? The firebird sees his perennial reinvention simply as part of his nature. It’s simple for the phoenix to rise up from the embers. We humans, though: we really have to work at it. Reinvention and rebuilding are born of necessity but they ain’t necessarily easy.
I’m pushing the metaphor too much here, of course: fire is our enemy, but ever since Prometheus earned his life sentence fire has also been our tool. The trick’s in putting that fire to its best use. But rest unassured: you’re not going to avoid getting burned.
Car crash, cancer, bankruptcy, prison; bereaved spouses, torched houses — only a few among us will escape disaster, and honestly I’m not sure they’re truly the ‘lucky’ few. Resiliency’s such a useful capability and if you don’t learn it sooner you may regret it later. What gives some people the knack to rebuild themselves from scratch? Or, what makes some people unable to rise after a fall?
Part of it is that luck, or that unluck: crush a man to pieces and maybe he’s reduced to rubble. I won’t venture to guess why that fate befalls some; I’ll just note that in the end none of us escape it. But there’s a whole lotta bad luck that’s not mortally bad. When this submortal luck chooses you, how do you see it? As defeat and despair? As a challenge to rise above? Or even as an opportunity and a second (or third, fourth…) chance?
Reduce the tree’s trunk to ashes and perhaps its rootstock will survive. It may remain a ruined stump, technically but not practically alive. It may shoot out a few sucker branches stabbing forth green but really not a tree now, we must admit. Or it might, just might, grow to full height again. But look: the tree that grows from the ruined stump will not be the same tree that stood before. Not a leaf, not a branch, will remain in place or grow as it once grew. It’s the same tree, but not the same tree.
I don’t quite understand it and I’m living inside of it; but then I’m not a phoenix, just a man.
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Prometheus: From thoughts of death I freed the minds of men.
Chorus: What medicine finding for this malady ?
Prom: Blind hopes I gave them, in their breasts to dwell.
Chor: A priceless boon they have received from thee.
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Revolution and Freedom
Evidently some of you have been curious about the results of my one year post-transplant checkup. Your curiosity is heartening! So here we go.
I often like to start these posts with a bit of history in case I’ve got new readers, a useful fantasy that keeps me writing. In brief: umpteen billion revolutions of the Earth ago matter and energy were arranged into a Universe; forty-two-or-so revolutions ago some bits of said matter and energy were rearranged into Me; and twenty years ago bits of Me (namely my Kidneys) decided this arrangement wasn’t for them and staged their own revolution. My new arrangement is that I’ve spent a couple years on dialysis, and through the altruistic goodness of others I’ve received two kidney transplants. Don’t worry, it actually hasn’t interfered with my life as much as you’d think, though it does make for interesting conversation.
Last December my college friend Shark and I arose underwent twin operations; a surgeon removed a kidney from him and another surgeon installed it into me. Read the rest of this blog if you want to know what’s happened between then and now. Anyway, Monday was my approximately one year checkup; now you’re up to speed.
The one year checkup is a milestone in kidney transplant success. If your kidney is working fine after a year with no hiccups, then it will probably work for decades. See: six months after my first transplant, I had a “major rejection episode” that required a hospital stay and heavy-duty immune system killers, and the kidney still lasted 17 years.
The lifetime of a second transplant is strongly predicted by that of the first. If the first one lasts a decade, the second one probably will work at least that. When they were preparing us for this recent transplant, my surgeons told us that this would probably be my last transplant as I’ve known them. What they meant is that either this transplant will last the rest of my natural life; and if not, by the time I need another one they won’t be doing kidney transplants this way any more. Over the next decade or so they expect that technologies like growing kidneys to order from scratch, or kidneys from pigs that are tailor-made for humans, or the like will be commonplace and replace the need for human donation. Prometheus’ revolutionary gift keeps burning today, no?
Now, there’s a great big hulking caveat looming significantly behind all this. The above only applies if you take care of yourself. Most of the taking care of yourself if stuff we all should be doing anyway: watching our salt and cholesterol, eating a balanced diet, exercise, et cetera. You’re all doing that, right? Right. But of course there’s more to it than that. You have to take your megadoses of medicine mutliple times a day: currently I’m taking about a dozen medicines scheduled into four time slots every day. The meds have unpleasant and even deadly side effects. I monitor my weight and blood pressure and temperature because any bad moves there can be an indication of problems. Maybe some of you have read the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. and recall the warning of his doctors: “Self-neglect might have killed him.” On the more likely bet that you’ve read Harry Potter, then I’ll use Mad-eye Moody’s words: “Constant vigilance!” Yeah, I know, it’s not like I have leprosy or Lord Voldemort on my tail, but facts are facts: at least 10 percent of kidney transplant patients fail to take their medicine and, and non-compliance is a sadly important area of research.
It’s hard, so I’ve made it automatic. I just do it. It’s what I do like breathing, eating, and going to the bathroom. I take my medicine every day. I eat right and I avoid the demon rum. I exercise. When it’s tough, I consider the alternatives. One alternative is dialysis, or as I affectionately like to call that, living hell. The other alternative to living with kidney failure, though, is Not Living. Actual Hell. I’m not sure what being dead is like but I’d rather not find out; I like living a lot even when it’s tough. There’s cool stuff in the world, and some people that I like.
From December to July I returned to the transplant clinic every week to get blood drawn, took my BP 4 times a day and was on fairly high doses of meds. In July it looked like everything was going well so they said I only had to return to the clinic once every two weeks and they lowered my meds some. But the one year point is what my surgeon calls “graduation”.
I’m glad to say I graduated with distinction.
At one year, my blood work is that of a normal, healthy 42-year old male. Maybe my cholesterol’s a little high. The kidney is doing its job perfectly (creatinine of 1.0 for you kidney geeks). There are no signs of rejection and my bone marrow is working like it should. The point of maximum risk has passed and I’m doing great; better than the first kidney, actually. Living donors are always better.
From now until forever, I’ll get my blood drawn just once a month and see a nephrologist every six months…status quo like I had been doing for 20 years already. I no longer need to visit my transplant surgeons since by now it’s obvious that everything’s been hooked up right and the organ’s not going anywhere. “Everything’s still in place,” as he put it.
I had become very sick in the year leading up to this last transplant, and as I now realize, I’d been becoming sick for many years. My last kidney didn’t work at 100% after that rejection episode, and I went for a good decade with about 25% normal kidney function. It did damage to my body: my muscles, my joints, my endocrine glands, even my skin. My body is now undergoing a major rebuild, its own sort of revolution if you will. My muscle mass is increasing — think “return to normal”, though, not “Lou Ferrigno” — although, yeah, one of the meds I’m on is testosterone, to counteract the effects of all the steroids. My joints were once riddled with gout and now that’s pretty much gone. It’s nice to have all this stuff working again so I can get on with my business of life and many more revolutions around the Sun.
I see upon reflection that I’ve shared a lot today, and some of it’s disturbing or at least not-fun stuff. I’m not bringing these things up to gain sympathy, which I need only a
little of. See, things can get tough. In my life it’s kidneys. In other people’s lives it’s earthquakes, or abuse, or mental illness, or what have you. We could all pretty easily feel sorry for ourselves, couldn’t we? It seems like it might be much easier just to let someone else worry about taking care of things, no? Our lives always have a built-in excuse for why we couldn’t do this, couldn’t do that, because it’s not our fault these things happen to us, right?
I learned at the age of 22 that the alternative to a life of suffering isn’t freedom from suffering. It’s freedom from life, which is no freedom at all.
All right, folks, thanks for reading. The checkup went ok.
about mark beadles
I write the things you read here. Polymath renaissance redneck. I build software, stories, and young men. More...on the desk
around the web
in the vault
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