Hotel Cooking

Hey guys. I know it's been dead around here, but a LONG time ago I promised you posts after I was to get out of a hotel, but that never really happened. Mostly because I currently live like a nomad bouncing from hotel to hotel for 9 months of the year and live like a hippie for the other 3 months. So here is some hotel cooking for ya'll!

I have 2 pans (1 frying pan, 1 soup pot) and 1 hot plate. Tonight for dinner (and this will be dinner for quite a few nights as well) I sauteed some sweet potato and a golden beet with ginger, soy sauce, coriander, olive oil, onion, and garlic. When that was done, I cooked up some chicken, mushrooms, basil, salt/pepper, ginger, asperagus and cherry tomaters and called it a day!

Cooking takes an incredibly long time when you only have one burner, it's a bummer. I was going to throw some couscous in here too but realized that I wasn't going to be able to fit all the leftovers in my teeny tiny little hotel fridge, so I left that for another day.

It's taken a long time, but I feel like after a lot of practice, I'm just as good at cooking hotel meals as i was cooking home meals! It's mostly a matter of timing and washing my frying pan multiple times per meal.

Hope you all are doing well. let's start posting again!
-vmoneyyyyyyyyy

ps. golden beets are the BOMB

how do I work this thing

Okay, so uh my cousin V invited me to join this after I posted a picture of my Thanksgiving dinner on my LiveJournal but I don't really know what I'm doing or whether this post is appropriate for this blog or anything. In short, oh god how did this get here I am not good with computers.

Here is a good meal, photographed shittily.

It's shallot-garlic sautéed asparagus and whole wheat spaghetti (we were out of fettuccine, which by the way oh my God it has two "c"s? no wonder Bookworm doesn't think it was a word, dammit I was so pissed about that) with pumpkin alfredo sauce. The recipe called for evaporated milk (?) but we were out so I cobbled together something from it and the alfredo recipe from Joy of Cooking and it turned out pretty good, if a little less rich than I might have wanted because I didn't want to use a cup of heavy cream and settled for a mix of milk and half and half instead. Certainly better than it looks in the picture, which turned all orange for some reason and that certainly doesn't help with the contrast when half of your dish is orange in the first place.

Did I do it right?

Lamb

Weeknight dinner collaboration. Lamb, mashed sweet potatoes, and steamed asparagus. Comes with excellent gravy.

getting in some carbs

Sometimes I will go for a while without having a solid CARB. Yes, I know, carbs are everywhere. But you know what I mean -- the fat part of the food pyramid. And it was one of those days where I'd been walking around a lot, applying my brain to term papers, realizing suddenly that I need to EAT SOME FOOD. Anyway, when this happens I like to really do it up and make my own pasta, but I am ashamed to say that I wasn't in a real position to do this, so I went whole wheat dried. There were a couple of shrimps in the freezer, so I decided to do a sauce with those. Something about today was also screaming greens to me, so I picked up some arugula, along with asparagus, mushrooms, and shallots.

For Vanessa: A recipe, kind of. This could probably feed 4, 3 if they are mostly boys, or 2 really really hungry people who have been writing term papers all day.

1 bunch arugula, leaves cut down to half size
1/2 bunch of asparagus, tough ends snapped off and cut into thirds
2 shallots, minced
a handful of mushrooms, sliced
Maybe 4 or 5 shrimps, peeled and cut in half lengthwise (like butterflying them but cutting all the way through)
1/2 lb whole wheat pasta - spaghetti or whatever you want
a couple drizzles of olive oil, just enough to put a film on the bottom of your pan
fresh ground pepper to taste
salt to taste
fresh grated parmesan cheese to taste
about a shot of vodka
8 oz of tomato sauce

Get the pasta to al dente stage, drain and rinse.

Heat up a pan and add oil. Add shallots, let cook on a medium-low heat until soft, about 8 minutes. Add asparagus, swish around for a minute, then add mushrooms, swish for another minute. Toss in vodka and raise heat up to medium. Let the veggies simmer for about another minute and then add the tomato sauce. Add a few twists of black pepper and a shake of salt. At this point, if you want the sauce a little creamy, you could add some dairy. Reduce heat a touch, cover with a little venting, and let simmer for... I don't know... until delicious and reduced to a saucy consistency.

At this point, toss in the shrimps. When they just start to get pink, add arugula and push everything around until the shrimps are all the way pink and the arugula is wilted. This should barely take a minute since the shrimps have been thinned out and you don't want them to get tough, and the arugula should just barely be wilted and still bright green.

Reduce head to med-low and add the pasta and a few gratings of cheese, folding until nicely incorporated and the noodles cooked the rest of the way.

Serve in bowls with a little more fresh pepper.

The end!

That wasn't so bad...

I think that we can all learn a lot from asparagus.

To snap or to trim? Enter: the curious cook.

Grilling in the park

Top: Asparagus, marinated in olive oil, red wine vinegar, lemon, coarse sea salt, fresh black pepper. Orange juice can be subbed for lemon and is equally delish.

Bottom: Plantains at 1.5 turns. Great with some brown sugar and vanilla icecream