2 cups Diced green tomatoes 1 cup Diced Roma tomatoes 1 cup Corn ¼ cup Diced fresh jalapeno 1 tsp Cracked black pepper 2 Limes juiced 1 tsp Lime zest 1 tsp Salt 1 Tbsp Lemon juice 2 Tbsp Fresh Garlic 1 Tbsp Fresh Cilantro
Instructions
Mix all ingredients and refrigerate for 1 hour before eating. Serve with tortilla chips or toasted pita.
Besides making fried green tomatoes, this is my favorite recipe to use green tomatoes. I made it for Basil’s in 2011, and I make it every summer when I grow tomatoes.
Unfortunately, cilantro doesn’t grow well in Eastern NC. After a month in the summer heat, the cilantro bolts and begins transforming into coriander.
Homegrown tomatoes and jalapenos work best, but it will probably take a month before most of you have fresh tomatoes or peppers.
Grocery store tomatoes are almost inedible now, but a farmer’s market (if you can find one) might be the best place to find tomatoes.
3 cups Flour 1 Tbsp Baking powder 1 tsp Salt 1 tsp Garlic powder 2 Tbsp Sugar 12 oz Beer (lager or amber) 2 ¼ cups Cheddar cheese
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 350° F. Mix all ingredients in a metal bowl except beer and cheddar. Stir in beer and fold in the cheddar. Form the dough into a log. Place on a greased cookie sheet. Bake for 50-55 minutes. Insert a toothpick. If it’s dry, the bread is done. Let cool ten minutes before slicing.
This is a quick bread recipe that uses baking powder rather than yeast. As far as I know, there isn’t a baking powder shortage in grocery stores.
There’s a yeast shortage, but I’ve taken care of that by growing my own yeast in a large number of sanitary fish tanks. I should have enough yeast to fill a thimble in three months. Just Kidding.
I made this bread nine years ago at Basil’s to compliment a chili recipe developed by Kenneth Fields. It’s perfect with chili but also goes well with creamy soups like potato and cajun stews like gumbo.
Try to use a lager or amber for the beer. A dark stout, gose, or light beer will not work well with this bread. Also, avoid heavily spiced or flavored beers.
Something like pumpkin spice pilsner or artichoke ale should be set aside for your friends who lost their taste buds from a tragic Pop rocks and Pepsi incident.
Man, where is the bathroom in this place? Hmm… I’ll just use one of those pod-looking things over there. Hey Ripley, can you send down some Charmin?
**** Ripley’s Words of Wisdom****
Ripley: Wait a minute, if we let it in the ship, we’ll all be infected. You know the quarantine procedure- 24 hours for decontamination.
Dallas: He could die in 24 hours. Open the hatch.
Ripley: Listen to me. If we break quarantine, we could all die.
Lambert: Will you open the God*#%ned hatch! We have to get him on the ship.
Ripley: NO.
In 1979, Ridley Scott brought horror into the science fiction world with Alien. The film started a trend that still appears as a storyline in today’s films. That storyline is: It’s fun to watch aliens terrorize people on a damaged spaceship.
Why is the ship always damaged? Every killer alien running-amok movie includes an asteroid impact, crash landing, exploding planet, or Oh heck, the space geese just flew into the air vents in its screenplay.
In Alien, the crew, who failed their planet landing exams, execute a clumsy landing that breaches the ship’s hull. They don’t precisely crash the ship, but they land it hard like they’re a couple of driver’s ed rejects.
Just once, Hollywood writers, I want to see a violent alien ravaging humans on a perfect, healthy ship.
The engines will not fail, the oxygen levels will always remain normal, the crew will not contract a foodborne illness from the blue food, and everyone on the ship will sing Jim Croce songs until a murderous E.T. rips them apart.
Is that too much to ask?
All petty bickering aside, Alien is a great film and one of the best in the horror/science fiction category. Sometimes, the movie feels like an old monster flick, but Boris Karloff never had an alien parasite smash through his chest.
Alien involves a group of miners heading back to earth. The ship automatically changes course when it intercepts a distress signal, and the ship’s computer revives the crew from cryo-sleep.
When the crew land on a dismal planet, they move out in search of the signal’s origin. Instead of finding people in distress, they find a downed ship.
Kane, played by John Hurt, strolls around in his spacesuit and falls off a platform. When he gets up, he’s surrounded by several large, grimy pods.
The alien pods look like enormous avocados. Kane, for some reason, is fascinated by the pods and wants to take a closer look. Even when the pod slowly opens from the top and gurgles at Kane, the genius moves his head closer to the opening.
The gurgling increases, and an alien that looks like a combination of a crab and a scorpion springs onto Kane’s helmet. It’s a scene that’s intended to make you jump, and it does. It scarred the heck out of me when I was a kid.
Young Ripley… look into the light!
One night, in a hotel room in Pell City, Alabama, in 1981, I tried to watch Alien while I pretended to be asleep. My family was traveling to Texas, and we stopped in Alabama at the halfway point.
I remember my Dad telling me to go to sleep when he saw me watching the beginning of Alien. He didn’t change the channel. He sat on the other bed and watched the movie while I practiced my best impression of an obedient, sleeping six-year-old.
Telling a young kid, not to watch a movie with spaceships, aliens, and Sigourney Weaver is like asking Lenny the arsonist to burn with care when you hand him a flame thrower at a paper factory.
I watched the first space shuttle launch from a television wheeled in by my kindergarten teacher. Of course, I wanted to watch an R-rated killer alien movie.
However, my tolerance for horror and gore was at a low point when I was six. When the alien attacks Kane, I gave up trying to watch the movie and settled for viewing it in my nightmares that night.
Until the alien makes an appearance, Alien is slower-paced, but the last half of the film is a marathon of suspense and terror. There is a lot of running, sweating, alien drool, loud alarms, flashing lights, and milky android vomit.
If you want to take your mind off of the current state of gloom, try watching films where people deal with unbelievably horrible situations like Alien. It always makes me feel better.
Absurd comedies can also take your mind off of things, and another option is the American DaVinci, Bob Ross. Horror, comedy, or a brilliant artist with a huge afro. Take your pick. All three are distracting.
Franklin: If I have any more fun today, I don’t think I’m gonna be able to take it!
Tobe Hooper’s second feature-length film is full of bad decisions, and for a movie named The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, it’s odd that the lovable Leatherface kills only one person with a chain saw.
The film’s story involves a young woman and her brother who travel with their three friends to a cemetery in Texas to identify the vandalized remains of a family member.
They decide to search for their relative’s family estate in the country but eventually run into Leatherface and his family of killer rednecks.
When I was a kid, I heard rumors about a scary, bloody movie in which tons of people were murdered with a chain saw.
Years later, I realized the rumors were untrue, and most of the meatheads spreading the lies were children who had not watched the movie.
Compared to most horror films, Chain Saw is not a bloody movie. It may be more terrifying than any film in history, but its horror doesn’t rely on cheap thrills or gory carnage.
It had a tiny budget, around $140,000, but it’s hard to tell if you watch it in HD. When I was in high school, I watched it on VHS, and it was bleak and grainy.
I thought the faded colors were merely the marks of a low-budget film made in the early ’70s. I loved the movie when I watched it on videotape, but I was shocked by the remastered version on DVD.
In the remastered cut of the film, the sprawling countryside of Central Texas is bright and beautiful. The colors are crisp, the sun is intense and impressive, and the imagery draws you in. The camerawork and editing are not low budget at all. They’re brilliant.
Although the actors weren’t well known at the time of the film’s release, they aren’t too bad. They’re talented and believable performers, but their characters make incredibly stupid decisions throughout the film.
This includes picking up a disgusting hitchhiker, letting the hitchhiker borrow a pocketknife, reading horoscopes from American Astrology, and wondering into an isolated home that Ed Gein would be proud of.
I don’t think it’s a slasher film, but it popularized the notion that young adults enjoy walking into dark places and dilapidated homes. It certainly influenced the dumb teenager craze of the ’80s and ’90s.
The jarring sound effects and grisly images propel you into a twisted world that makes you cringe. It’s horror at its finest, and I don’t recommend viewing it with young children or the grandparents.
Unless, of course, your family consists of cannibalistic bumkins who sell human barbecue. If that’s the case, they’ll really dig it.
Hugging these ladies makes me angry. Hey Janet, jump in the shower real quick, I want to try something. (from an Italian Movie Poster)
I’m adding reviews to the Film Lists section of the website, and the content will be split up into a series of blog posts. Although the current lists focus on horror films, I’ll add more genres in the future.
I’m not covering every type of film (no documentaries on Hungarian, accordion virtuosos), but I’ll review movies I enjoy and believe others will appreciate.
When I decided to create a “best of” horror section, I viewed the movies, made notes, and tried to remember the first time I watched each film.
I didn’t read other critics’ reviews or lists from The American Film Institute; I solely used my brain to publish the lists. Like many of you, my opinion of a film changes over time, and as it’s often the case, I like the flick more after seeing it a second or third time.
The biggest problem I encountered while developing the lists was how to rank the films. All twenty-five are exceptional horror films, and although Psycho ranked first and Lords of Salem ranked twenty-fifth, the order is less important than the film’s impact on the world.
Psycho (1960)
I believe Psycho should be ranked first because it changed the film industry and the country forever. There’s nothing like it. The shower scene, creepy Anthony Perkins, gorgeous Janet Leigh, Bernard Herman’s excellent and memorable soundtrack, and high-caliber camerawork set Psycho apart from any movie made before or since.
Before the premiere of the film in 1960, filmgoers often arrived and departed theaters at odd times. Hitchcock persuaded theater owners to forbid anyone from entering the theater after the starting time.
The director wasn’t being extreme in his requests. He understood that anyone arriving late would not understand what was going on. Missing the shower scene and first murder, which might have been a good thing for some, would warp the viewer’s understanding of the plot.
Hitchcock’s shocking murder scene in the shower convinced many Americans (including Janet Leigh) to follow Ernie’s (from Sesame Street) advice and make bath time more fun.
I think that changing your bathing habits because of a horror movie is strange, but I’m fascinated when art influences everyday life. Even Homer Simpson changed his bathroom habits after watching Lethal Weapon 2. He started checking behind the toilet for a bomb before sitting on the commode.
Norman Bates, played by Anthony Perkins, is unlike most villains in horror movies. He’s friendly, hesitant with his words, menacing, and completely bonkers.
Perkins’ performance was so convincing and notorious that his career suffered after Psycho. He continued to work in movies and television, but producers were reluctant to offer him major roles. Norman, the psychopath, would not grab the starring role in a romantic comedy or adventure film.
From the opening shot to the finale, Psycho is a scary film that never loses steam. Inventive editing, a jolting soundtrack, and Oscar-level acting propel the “pulp” material into a masterpiece. It’s a sordid tale, and although it recently turned 60 years old, it’s still relevant and entertaining in the year 2020.
If you’re nervous or a little freaked out after watching the film, relax. Have a few drinks and take a long, hot shower.
When your extended family rolls into town to visit, do you enjoy dining with them at a Chinese restaurant? Have any obnoxious family members embarrassed you at the restaurant by making a scene or saying something inappropriate?
I have to answer yes to both questions. Szechuan Gardens, a restaurant in North Carolina I visited for over twenty years, served incredible Chinese food. My extended family was often treated to Szechuan’s, and as for the second question, I was usually the family member who made the embarrassing scene possible.
I didn’t disappoint the family by saying something profane or disturbing, it was my shenanigans that caused a ruckus. Until I was eleven or twelve years old, I had a bad habit of unscrewing the salt shaker tops and placing them back lightly before I left a restaurant.
I don’t know why. I guess I was a slightly-rotten kid. I never witnessed the outcome of my anti-social acts, until I dined with my Uncle and his family at Szechuan’s.
When I finished stuffing Mushu Pork in my mouth, I absentmindedly fiddled with the salt shaker and performed the disastrous act that came right out of the Anarchist Cookbook.
My Uncle reached for the salt shaker and dumped a quarter-cup of salt over his General Tso’s chicken. He looked right at me and said, “It was You.” My Mother and Sister joined in with my Uncle in angrily explaining the evils of “over-salting” someone’s food.
I never performed the NaCl overdose on anyone’s food again. When I was caught in the act, I wished that a distraction would divert the family’s attention away from me. Something like a stumbling waiter, a drunken manager, or a batch of insulting fortune cookies would do.
They Kicked Me Out of the Fortune Cookie Writers’ Guild
If you receive any of the following fortunes after cracking open that cookie, don’t blame the server. Unless he or she claims to be the author of the messages.
This paper is printed on 100% recycled poison.
Many have died to bring you this message.
You have the mark of the devil behind your left ear.
After you finish eating that cookie, your soul is mine.
Reading tiny messages on paper is the first step to not being a complete moron.
While you were enjoying an authentic Chinese American meal, I put sugar in your gas tank.
Steal this fortune…and the salt and pepper shakers, the silverware, and the nifty gas lamp.
In the past, you couldn’t contract syphilis from a fortune cookie, but the future is now.
Have you heard the one about the priest, the rabbi, and the one-eyed pianist?
Do you have a high tolerance for pain? A strong stomach?
No animals were harmed in the making of this cookie, but plenty of animals were killed.
There will be blood is not just the name of a movie.
This cookie had one day left before retirement.
How often do you get diarrhea from eating fortune cookies?
Don’t eat the paper, Einstein!
How many woodchucks does it take to urinate on a fresh batch of fortune cookies?
3lbs. Center Cut Pork Loin 2 tbsp Kosher Salt 2 tsp Chili Powder 1 tsp Cumin 2 ½ tsp Oregano 1 cup Yellow Onions diced ¼ cup Olive Oil 2 ½ tbsp Fresh Garlic 4 quarts Chicken Stock ¼ cup Lime Juice ½ tsp Cayenne Pepper 2 tbsp Black Peppercorns 1 tsp Fresh Thyme ½ cup Fresh Basil
Instructions
Cut pork into ½ inch pieces and coat with salt, chili powder, cumin, and oregano. Cook in a large pot on medium-high heat with olive oil about 2 minutes per side.
Remove pork from the pot and set aside. Add onions, cook for 5 minutes and add garlic.
Cook 2 minutes and add chicken stock, lime juice, cayenne pepper, and black peppercorns.
Add pork, bring mixture to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and add fresh herbs.
Cover pot and cook for 2 ½ hours. Stir every 10 minutes. Heat oven to 400°F.
Remove pork from the pot carefully with tongs and place it on a lined baking sheet. Pour ½ cup of liquid from the pot over pork and bake for 20 minutes.
Remove pork from the oven and pull apart with tongs.
You may be frustrated with the same old’ recipe you use for Taco Tuesdays or Tortilla Thursdays. If you are, try making Pork Carnitas. It takes more time to make than the average taco-meat recipe, but it’s worth it.
If you refrigerate the sliced pork after you’ve covered it with the spice rub for 4-6 hours before you sear it, it’s even better. Yes, the recipe already takes 3 hours to complete without waiting another 6 hours to cook.
However, pork benefits from a longer marination period. The meat is tougher than a beef tenderloin or chicken. It can sit overnight in the refrigerator if you prefer to prep it the night before.
After stewing the pork for 2 ½ hours, it’s critical to bake it in the oven for 20 minutes. The meat is easier to pull apart with tongs, and the extra baking time crisps the meat and gives it the right texture.
Serve the carnitas with taco shells, tortillas, hoagie rolls, or kaisers.
They’re delicious in a soft tortilla with sour cream, shredded cheddar, pico de gallo, and diced cilantro.
Save the cooking liquid if you have leftovers and want to reheat the cooked pork later. Add some of the liquid to the meat when you store it in the refrigerator and save the rest for re-heating the pork.
2 Large Tomatoes diced 1 chopped Green Pepper 1 tbsp Fresh Garlic ½ cup Olive Oil 3 cups Beef Broth 1 diced Cucumber 1 ½ tsp Salt ½ tsp Paprika ¼ cup Fresh Basil ¼ cup Fresh Parsley 3 tbsp Lemon juice ½ cup Tomato Paste
Instructions
Blend all ingredients in a food processor except 1 tomato and cucumber.
Add tomato and cucumber and refrigerate for 1 hour before serving.
Serve with 1 tbsp toasted breadcrumbs and 1 tbsp fresh parmesan.
If you’re tired of making the same old soup recipes, try this fresh Gazpacho. When I served this soup for Basil’s in 2005, some customers were reluctant to try a cold soup.
Once they tried a bowl of the tangy, refreshing soup, they changed their opinions and became Gazpacho fans. The fresh herbs make a huge difference. The dried versions of basil and parsley will not give the soup the same punch.
If you want to make a vegetarian version of the soup, substitute vegetable broth for the beef broth. You can also prepare the soup in a more traditional manner by blending the toasted breadcrumbs (use 1 cup) with the vegetables.
This will give the soup a thicker consistency, but I prefer serving the breadcrumbs and cheese on top.
There are infinite versions of Gazpacho. Some are spiced up with hot peppers and cumin, while others add white beans to the soup.
Try adding other fresh vegetables and herbs, and you can adjust the heat by adding fresh jalapeno the recipe.
I think the soup is better without adding heat or spices because the cucumber, tomato, and green pepper flavors are more prominent.
2 tbsp Olive Oil 1 cup Diced Red Onion 4 cloves Roasted Garlic ⅓ cup Fresh Cilantro ½ cup Cold Water 1 tsp Salt 1 ½ tsp Cracked Black Pepper 3 ½ quarts Chicken Stock 4 cups cooked Rice 1 slice of Lemon 1 tbsp Shredded Fresh Parmesan 1 tbsp Sour Cream
Instructions:
Heat olive oil in a skillet and cook onion for 4 minutes- until translucent.
Purée cilantro, roasted garlic, salt, pepper, and ½ cup of water in the processor for 30 seconds.
Combine cilantro mixture, onions, and chicken stock in a large pot and bring to a boil.
Reduce heat to simmer and cover. Cook 22 minutes and remove from heat.
Serve over bowls with ½ cup warmed rice.
Top with sour cream and shredded parmesan. Place a lemon slice on the side.
Serves 4-6
I made this soup in 2009 as a soup du jour, and after receiving a lot of positive feedback, I featured it on the monthly chef special.
You can roast the garlic in the oven, or you can toast the garlic, with the skins on, for 10-12 minutes in a skillet on medium-high heat.
Cooking the garlic in the oven makes it tender and creamy, but since you blend it in a processor, its consistency isn’t important.
Leftover chicken is ideal for this recipe, but you could buy a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store if you don’t have cooked chicken on hand. I don’t recommend using canned chicken for this recipe (or any other) since the flavor’s disturbing, and it resembles cat food.
Since the recipe is inexpensive to make, it was perfect for the recession times of 2009. It’s a great soup for any season, but if you see another economic downturn coming, break out your cilantro chicken recipe. It will ease your financial blues. Enjoy!
Americans spend over 700 million dollars a year on kitchen knives. With statistics like that, you’d think that every man, woman, and child in the land of the free are experienced masters of culinary cutlery.
Children should be butchering cattle by age five, and teenagers should be experts at the knife game featured in Aliens.
How can we spend so much on cutlery? We haven’t disrupted the restaurant industry with our blade love.
The National Restaurant Association reports the projected sales of US restaurants in 2019 totals 863 billion dollars.
Knife blocks are a common feature of the American kitchen. They display your fancy steel, and they prevent your blades from getting scratched up in a drawer. I should know; I have two of them.
Yes, it seems excessive to have over twenty kitchen knives, but I have an excuse. I’m homeschooling a large group of butcher apprentices, and as you know, I need tons of cutlery for training. Actually, the truth is less entertaining or insane.
After purchasing an inexpensive knife block, I inherited a block of 1982 Chicago Cutlery (when the company’s product was manufactured in Wauconda, Illinois rather than China), and I frequently use the bread knife and chef’s knife.
Alfred Paulson founded Chicago Cutlery in 1930 as a knife-conditioning and sharpening operation. With a steady supply of butchers and commercial retailers, he expanded his business to include knife manufacturing.
Before the company’s takeover in 1988, the knives were crafted by hand. The handles were made from American trees, and the blades were made with U.S. Steel.
Mine has held up well for being 38 years old, and I recommend buying a used set if you can verify the knives’ production date.
Although I have enough steel to declare war on Vermont, I realized that I rarely use most of it. I have three sets of steak knives. As Marlon Brando said, “The horror …. The horror!”
Unless I begin serving well-done beef to dozens of dinner guests each week, I don’t need steak knives. At the restaurant and in the kitchen, I seldom use more than three types of cutlery.
It Takes Three
There are countless myths and clichés concerning the number three, but sometimes, I buy into the idea that good things come in threes.
Except for The Godfather Part III, Episodes 1-3 of Star Wars (at least there were two sets of excellent trilogies), the second and third Matrix films, and the last two Hangover movies, I like trilogies.
I respect the holy trinity of Cajun cooking, which includes onions, celery, and bell peppers. I admire the inept three branches of our government, I’m thrilled by documents that require three signatures, and when I had hair, I excelled at lather, rinse, and repeat.
The same goofy nonsense (my sarcastic analysis of the lucky number) applies to cutlery. All you need in your kitchen is three knives: a chef’s knife, a serrated knife, and a paring knife.
Many of you may also use a carving knife and a cleaver. A well-made chef’s knife can accomplish many of the same tasks unless you need a cleaver for your daily butchering of large animals.
A long-bladed carving knife is handy, but how often do you slice a whole turkey, ham, roast beef, or pig?
If you answered, “very often,” you could use an 8-10-inch chef’s blade. A chef’s knife or butcher knife is the most useful tool in your kitchen. Unless you’re cutting baked bread, a chef’s knife will slice, chop, or slaughter all your meat and produce.
I use a paring knife for peeling apples, slicing peppers and grape tomatoes, and cutting cheese. You can use a chef’s blade for the same jobs, but a sharp paring knife is safer and more comfortable on Los Manos.
Did you sit on my Bread, Chief?
A sharp serrated knife that has points similar to those on a tree saw is perfect for cutting bread. If your dime-store bread blade mashes rather than slices your Uncle’s famous beer bread, buy a better knife.
A lousy knife will make your slices of bread look like they were used as hemorrhoid pillows. The sat-upon look of your food will not impress the in-laws or escaped prisoners.
I understand that it may seem hypocritical only to promote using the holy trinity of steel when I own more knives than the average human, but I’m trying to change.
It’s difficult to sell or donate knives given to me as gifts, and I can’t part with inherited cutlery. I’ll admit it. I’m a sentimental maniac.
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