Thursday, September 23, 2010

Taste Sensation: How to Make Rocket Potatoes AKA Failurepie

Psychological Footing:
Begin with an idea, half-conceived in both potential methodology and probable outcome. Approach task confidently as many of your attempts at culinary high seas adventuring have been successful, however opportunities to cook with such abandon are rare and always met contentiously.

Physical Ingredients:
Two habenero peppers. Three jalepeno peppers. A bundle of green onions. Potatoes. Milk. Butter. Kosher salt. Fresh ground pepper. Rye flour. Corn starch. One egg. Corn meal.

Steps:
Get a pot of water out. Use tap water, even though you know your house was built during the salad days of the Coolidge administration so you must be certain that the water comes in through lead pipes. Assume boiling gets rid of the lead. What else can you do?

Cube the potatoes. Ignore the one that's a little green in parts because that's not mold, sometimes potatoes are green a little like that. It's not important to know how many potatoes for this recipte. Just eyeball it, but since five peppers will be going into it, its safe to use a lot to help deaden the hotness.

Also note, the size and uniformity of the cubed potatoes is irrelevant. So long as the potatoes get cubed and you have not hurt yourself, you have successfully cubed the potatoes.

Dump potatoes into the water. Rinse the habenero peppers, cut off the tops and throw them in the water as well to boil more or less whole. Leave in the seeds for that is where the hotness is. Let it cook.

The step to peel the potatoes was not skipped. These are skin-on mashed potatoes.

While this is boiling, take time to relish in the moments where this seems to be a good idea. A taste sensation. How hot these thick and creamy mashed potatoes will be. It's nice to believe in lies.

While that's all boiling, chop up the jalepenos in little bits. Don't decide what to do with them yet. Just realize that whatever step comes next, these need to be chopped up now. Put some kosher salt in with the water. You've heard that's good for boiling stuff. Respond to the living room and watch an episode of True Blood.

When the potatoes are yielding to a knife, but not entirly soft, you should be able to smell the sweet hot of the habenero and it nearly burns your eyes from its spicy heat. Now, dump in the jalepenos. Decide this on a whim. Be sure to include the seeds again for this is where the hotness lies. Ignore the feeling that these potatoes will already be bracingly hot due to the habenero essence mingling throughout all the potatoes. You already have the jalepenos chopped...what else can be done? Let them boil for a while, say 5 minutes, while the last few exciting moments of the True Blood episode transpire.

Return to the kitchen. Strain the potatoes and peppers. Put into a bowl. Put on some butter, a few teaspoons and apply milk as you would to a bowl of cereal. This means pour in milk until you see the milk through the bits in the bowl. As for the amount of butter to add, do what feels natural and go for about 3 tablespoons because that's abotu how much butter was left in that half-used stick anyway, and you were just going to use half that much, but you cut the stick wrong, so what else could be done? so just go ahead and do it. Now add kosher salt and some fresh pepper to taste.

Get out the eletric handmixer. Turn to the lowest setting. Commence.

Hot milk and bits of pepper will be flung around the kitchen, but ignore that. Sometimes kitchens get messy, go for it. This is still a taste sensation. Keep working the hand mixer. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going.

Notice now that it's not getting creamier. It's not doing anything, really. Realize you've made some kind of creamy pepper potato stew. Whip it some more. A bit more. Keep going. Give up.

Now comes the creative part. This simply must be thickened. Turn on the oven to 350 degrees. Add some rye flour. Some being the exact measurement. Also shake in a little corn startch because that thickens up stuff as well...and you've had success using it before with the faux chicken pot pie. Throw it in the oven and let it bake while the oven preheats. It goes without saying that this should be done with an oven safe container, though you probably didn't use an oven safe container to hold the potatoes at first. That's okay. Doing dishes is fun like penance. Respond to watch another episode of True Blood.

When the oven is through heating up, give the potatoe mess a bit longer to cook, say 2 minutes. Pause True Blood. Remove from oven. Understand that his has done very little, making it about the consistency of cream of mushroom soup fresh from the can.

Eat some anyway because it's late and fuck it, you're hungry. You've tried, maybe it won't be that bad.

It's bad and scorchingly goddamn spicy. They would rub this stuff on testicles of detainees at Guantanamo to hear their deepest truths...hot enough to burn leukemia from bones...hot enough to warp time around the bowl where when you see it it is actually three minutes into the future. Eat some anyway. You've worked hard and remember that time you drank beet juice. How the first drink was delicious but the third tasted like bird vomit. Maybe this will be the reverse and it will get better.

It will not. Experience vurps like coughing shards of sun. Sweat. Survive.

Continue watching the True Blood episode.

Immediately become concerned about taking a shit the next day and know that nothing will be worse unless you also eat an entire four pack of light bulbs and some razors as well tonight. Consider taking some ice into the toliet with you in the morning to rub gently on your anus to soothe your pains (it will not come to this, thankfully).

Once it settles, try to fix the problem because there is a lot of this mess left. Pause True Blood. Dump in about a cup and a half of corn meal. Maybe a little more. A lot of corn meal. Put an egg in there, too. Why not? What you gonna do? Fuck it up? Honestly.

Stir it all up real good. Set oven to 375 degress. Throw it in the oven and let it warm up while it bakes. Let it cook until the top turns brownish or so.

You're not eating any of this tonight so let it cool on the stovetop. Continue to recover while watching the thrilling end to this episode of True Blood.

Cover. Store in fridge overnight.

Lament publically in your failure. Give the concoction a jazzy name or two. Take that one dump you were deathly afraid of, gritting it out like cowboys do when bullets are cut from them. Chewing on a leather strap is not necessary to endure it, but think later that it would have been helpful.

Remind yourself that last time you tried to make mashed potatoes normally you had messed that up, too, so wonder what made you think pepper infused mashed potatoes would be better. Be undeterred. Stay confident in your abilities. Wait for a chance to try your potatoes.

Know you can cook. You are good at it. This is just one failed experiment. It will get better. And, you never know, maybe this will turn out okay. Maybe rocket potato bake will be a taste sensation...


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