Psycho's Crazy Recipes

[psycho_666]

009. Fridge Cleanup Rice.

OK. My idea was to make Zucchini, Tomatoes and Rice meal. However the store was closed tonight for God knows what reason, so I had to use whatever I had...

So I started chopping stuff up...
Carrots:

Sausage, leftover from the cake a few days ago:

Then, zucchini:

And mushrooms, because mushrooms...

Then, all the sudden, I remembered I had those:

So i just threw them in...
Spiced up the things with salt, pepper and spicy red pepper powder (not flakes) for color more than anything else...

Filled up with water - threw in the oven...

There we go... Simple and tasty...

[psycho_666]

Summer has begun, zucchinis are everywhere, so I am starting a zucchini diet for a while. From now till I get sick of it, there will be a few different zucchini meals, starting tonight with oven baked zucchini and tomatoes...

[psycho_666]

010. Oven Baked Zucchini with Rice and Tomatoes.

OK, here is one of the best meals ever made, theoretically.
Now, why is that? Because all ingredients are synergising with each other perfectly. Here is the "dry" theory:
1. The zucchini have a lot of liquid stored inside them, the rice eats liquid like nobody's business...
2. The tomatoes add quite the acidity (look at me being culinary snob), and zucchini are doing great with sour flavor overall (vinegar dressing and stuff)...
3. Zucchini loves dill. I mean they love Dill... LOVE DILL...
OK, here's the deal:

Chop roughly the garlic, chop the onion as well...

Peel the zucchini and slice them on thin slices (like half an inch)...

Spread on a single row in a baking tray...

Spread some of the onions and garlic, with some salt, pepper and dill...

Slice the tomatoes the same way, spread them on top...

Then put the rest of the garlic and onions, some more salt, pepper, dill, etc...
Then another row of zucchini...
After each row of vegetables, spread some rice. When baking the rice will expand and basically become the main ingredient.

Fill with water, until it's entirely covered, then throw in the oven...

Check in about half an hour and take out when the rice is fully cooked. And there you are...

[psycho_666]

011. Zucchini Meatballs.

Story time:
So we have something in this country, named kufte:

It's usually made with ground meat and spices. It can be grilled, oven baked or pan fried. The English word equivalent is meatball. It's not the food equivalent, or at least not complete 100% equivalent.
So here are pan fried meatballs without any meat, but instead - zucchini.

We start with the zucchini. They are the main ingredient. You want a lot, and I mean a LOT of them. You peal and grate them.

Put some salt on... Actually a lot of salt on. The salt will suck out the liquid from the zucchini, the liquid will wash the salt away, so it's a non issue even if you put too much salt on.
The zucchini are full of liquid, and you want most of it out...
After about 20-30 minutes squeeze the liquid and use just the dry zucchini:

You will have like a quarter or even less, from the original amount... So you want to use a lot of zucchini for this one...
Then you add the white cheese. I crush it manually, but you may grate it as well...

Then you add the egg, some black pepper and dill. Zucchini loves dill. It adores dill. It's like... It really loves dill...

Then just mix and squeeze and ... stir i guess...

Now the concoction will spurt even more liquid, which is fine. To take care of the extra liquid we add flour. A lot of it.

Then you mix up. Then you add extra flour, and you mix up again. All that until there is no more liquid. Keep in mind the zucchini have extra liquid, so you may want to add some extra flour.

Frying is next.
You have 2 ways of doing this.
1. You just make a ball out of this, squeeze it a bit and throw it in very hot oil, or:
2. You use flour. You make the ball, squeeze it a bit, throw it in the flour, roll it over and then fry it up.

And there you are... On the left you can see couple balls rolled in flour, and on the left the lonely "naked" one is siting.

Fry for as long as you like. Some people eat zucchini raw, so it's fine if they are just lightly browned, but I love my food well done, so I tend to slightly overcook...

2 things I want to say about the recipe:
1. As I said before, zucchini works great with sour flavor, so you may want to make a yogurt garlic sauce, or vinegar garlic sauce (with dill), and I personally prefer the vinegar and garlic dressing.
2. This is appetizer, or starter or whatever word you want to use. This is not a main course. It's amazingly tasty, but don't count on it feeding people up. It's just a zucchini meal. For proper dinner you need way more than just that.

[psycho_666]

012. Layered Vegetables with Topping

So keeping with zucchini theme I found this quite interesting recipe and decided to change a couple things. First I added the topping and then I just used whatever I happened to have at hand...
So here it is.
The ingredients are as follows:

It's simple meal. Peal and slice on thin slices, like half centimeter...

And we start the fun part...
You prepare your baking thingie of choice, I use those small baking plates, they are perfect for a single portion, so I use 2 for myself, and start layering the veggies... Between the layers you can add any spice you want. I keep my meals fairly "clean", so I use only salt and pepper, although the tomatoes can take basil and parsley, the zucchini loves dill, the potatoes can take quite a nice amount of savory, so a mix of green herbs will fit nicely. I still like to keep my meals fairly "bland" as of late.

And that's it. Add a bit of water, throw in the oven on medium heat for an hour... Check the potatoes, since they are the slowest to cook, and you are done...
Unless you are wanting to prepare the topping as well...
An egg, some milk, some flour, mix, add spices (salt and pepper)...

When the veggies are fully cooked, cover with the batter. You want it slightly thicker than a pancake batter.

Put back in the oven for a few minutes, then grate some cheese and put on top as well. Or do like I do and peel scales from it.

OK, unexpectedly, but not unreasonably, the topping have arisen. Massively... So a bit less of it would be better for the inside of your oven...

Bake for a few more minutes, until the cheese melts and starts to brown a bit and you are done...

OK, afterthoughts...
1. You don't want too much liquid when putting on the topping. You want the topping to bake, not boil. So don't put too much in to begin with.
2. Again, the easiest way to test if potatoes are cooked - poke them with a fork. If the fork gets in - they are done. If not - then not.
3. Don't worry about oversalting the thing. There are potatoes in it. They will eat all the salt.

[psycho_666]

So I was looking for good zucchini today, for the recipe I wanted to make, and there were non in my local store, so I said "whatever, there is a market near my workplace, I will check there"... Surprise, surprise. Saturday, the market doesn't work...
So I asked one of my colleagues at work "Chinese or Indian?" with the intention to make neither and he said Indian...
So here it is, my easy to make chicken curry with rice and veggies...

013. Chicken Curry with Rice and Vegetables.

Here are the ingredients:

Now... The eagle eyed amongst you may have noticed the absence of the chicken in this chicken curry ingredients picture. Well spotted. The chicken is a deeply frozen breast, that was enjoying a nice melt down experience and missed the family photo.
Anyways. The rice - in a pot with salty water, on the stove, 1:4 rice to water, cause I don't cover the pot. Oh yeah, check often, cause it likes to stick to the bottom...
Meanwhile, chop the onion and the garlic...

What I like to do with the garlic is crush it with the side of the knife and then chop it as roughly or as finely as I want...

Now, when the rice is almost fully cooked, add part of the garlic, part of the frozen vegetable mix and some black pepper...

Basically I just made rice and vegetables...

The mix I'm using consists of carrots, sweet corn, pees, green beans and red pepper. 4 different colors, various flavors, shapes, textures, etc etc... Look at me being culinary snob again...
Meanwhile in chicken land... I chopped the boob onto bite-sized pieces.

A pan on the stove, an oil in the pan, the onion and garlic in the pan, the chicken meat with the onion and garlic, when done - the rest of the vegetables in the pan with the meat...

You know bechamel sauce? Yeah, this is what I'm going to make now with a twist...

Instead of flour only, I use curry powder and flour in 1:1 ratio. More curry will make the taste too strong, the more flour will be just beshamel with a bit of curry. So 1:1 ratio...

What I like to do for plating this meal is use large soup plate, use the rice to make a well, put the chicken in the hole of the well and cover the chicken with the sauce...

PS: Now, there are a couple great things about this recipe...
1. This is the most complex version of it. Almost everything you change may make the recipe simpler and easier to prepare. Remove the frozen veggies mix, remove the garlic, use potatoes instead of rice... It's just simplifying it...
2. You can adjust this thing according to your personal taste. You can use pork instead of chicken (done it, it works fine), use potatoes, be it mashed, french fries, saute, whatever instead of rice (done it, works fine), you may add more spices to make the taste more complex or remove ingredients to make the main flavors - chicken, rice and curry pop out more... It is extremely open to interpretation. Hell, you may use tofu for vegetarian tofu curry...

Now I use this version mainly because my father doesn't enjoy plain white rice, so i put vegetables in, and the chicken boobs are kinda expensive here, so i use the veggies to increase the quantity...
Works fine. I love it.
Enjoy.

[Marten]

Id marry you Psyco
Awesome meals. Wish I could eat them !

[psycho_666]

Wish I could eat them

Well, start cooking then...

Id marry you

Why? We could just live together and be happy without signing pieces of paper...

[psycho_666]

014. Zapekanka.

There is no strict recipe for this one. There are some requirements though...
The main ingredient are potatoes. You add meat, but lacking meat I use ham, although I believe chicken to be the best fit... You must add other vegetables, in my case zucchini, but carrots, onions, mushrooms and other stuff are welcome. You may add rice, which I will, and you must top with cheese and melt the said cheese... So here we go...

Basically the idea is, that almost all the ingredients are pre-cooked. Except the meat. So I need to cut the veggies and boil them until ready. The rice also needs to be prepared.
So let's cut the vegetables in bite size chunks...

Now all I need to do is boil the potatoes, the zucchini and the rice...

Now this is all a preparation. If you have already boiled rice, you may skip a step. If you also happens to have boiled potatoes at hand, you can just move on and completely ignore this part...
The next part is frying everything together, mostly to cook the meat and eventual other raw vegetables you may use, like carrots, onions, etc. Even zucchini you may or may not want to pre-boil. People eat raw zucchini (although I find it disgusting), so you may just fry it up.
So this is the main step. Frying the meat and all the vegetables. If you have sour cream or even milk, you may use it as a sauce. I lack both, so I would have no sauce.
In the pan I put a bit of salt, pepper and curry powder...

Then I would throw the onions and the raw meat in... In my case only ham...

After the meat is fully cooked, you throw in the already cooked vegetables...

Eventually you may want to pour some sour cream in, to make a sauce, but since I have no cream nor milk, I'll just add some white cheese and the rice...

There you go... Give it a few minutes to cook and mix flavors...
So here's a thing I did... I boiled all the vegetables and the rice in the same bullion. That bullion had all the potato and rice starch and flavors and everything. I added it to the frying pan and surprise, the starch kinda made a nice sauce for the meal...
So what's left is to throw it in the oven with some cheese on top with the only purpose of melting the cheese on top.

Since everything else is literally ready to be eaten, the only goal of the baking is to melt the cheese on top.

And there you are. Your dinner is ready.

If it looks like I am improvising and I don't really follow a recipe, we'll, it's because I don't. Zapekanka is one of those fridge cleaning recipes, that use whatever you have. The first time I cooked this for myself I used potatoes, chicken, mushrooms and cheese on top. It's completely different thing than what I am showing now, but it is still Zapekanka. It's like the Chinese fried rice. There is no strict recipe, you just need meat, vegetables, egg, rice and spices. That's it. Here you need potatoes, meat and cheese on top. That's it. Anything else you add will be welcome, but it's not necessary for the standard recipe.
So yeah, next time I hope I can finally make the Greek zucchini I wanted to make for a week or so...

PS: the cheese I used on top was a complete crap. It was supposed to melt and cover the entire thing, but c'est la vie...

[psycho_666]

As i promised the last time around:
015: Greek Zucchini.

Now this is extremely simple recipe. It's just really thin zucchini slices, breaded with corn flour and pan fried in really really really REALLY hot oil. That's all there is to it...

The ingredients are as simple as you can get. Zucchini, egg, corn flour and wheat flour.
Now the best way to make those kind of zucchini is to basically start pealing and stop when there is no more zucchini to peal from.

From that point it's simple.
Roll in wheat flour, roll in egg (the recipe says egg white, but it's half past 1AM as I am cooking this and i am really hungry), then roll in the corn flour.

Then fry. That's it.

Now at this stage, there is more breading than actual zucchini, and that is the point. If you eat the thing now, it's fine. It's breaded zucchini. Nothing special, but not bad at all. The corn flour adds certain texture to it...
Now, if you happens to have a garlic yogurt sauce at hand (yogurt, garlic, salt, dill)...

That changes the taste completely. The garlic sauce is really important part of the greek zucchini though. If you don't like garlic, you can make plain yogurt sauce, but ... garlic guys... garlic...

PS: You want to pan fry this, at least a bit. If you throw the things in the deep fryer the whole oil will be wasted. so you want to fry them at least a bit in a pan. Then you may throw them in a deep fryer for extra crunchiness.
Garlic sauce though...
Next time, since I have all that corn flour left, i am going to make a traditional bulgarian corn bread - prosenik. Hopefully...

[psycho_666]

Truth time...
I'm going to make an easy recipe. Really easy recipe...
016. Prosenik.

STORY TIME...
When I was a tiny little psychopath, growing up and becoming even more psychologically damaged, I had two grandmothers, like, well, let's say, uuuuh, I don't know, most of you... And just like any self respecting psychopath I adored one of them and did not the other one, God rest both their souls. However, the one I didn't like as much as the other made this simple corn bread and that... Oh man... That cornbread... I loved that cornbread.
Seriously, it's a cornbread...

Corn flour is the main ingredient. So we have 2 units corn flour (let's say tea cup) and 1 unit wheat flour. Proportions...

What you need is larger grained corn flour. You don't need fine grained. All i have is fine grained ATM, and i barely found that one. Surprisingly difficult to find corn flour locally.
Anyways, mix the flours up and add the yogurt, that is already mixed with half a tea spoon of baking soda and half table spoon of vinegar.
Keep in mind the yogurt will increase in size as soon as you add the soda, so just throw it in the flour mix.

That's supposed to be half the cup...
Anyways, mix with the flours and add some salt...

Then add to the mix a couple tablespoons of vegetable / sun flour oil. Mix it up again.
It should look smoother than before. It should also not stick to the sides of the bowl.
The batter is something in the middle between a batter and a dough. It is way thinner and "liquider" than a dough, but much thicker than a batter. IDK really how to describe the consistency of it.
Anyways, oil up a baking tray/forms/whatever and pour the batter/dough in.

Throw in a hot oven (officially 200C), then lower the heat down after like 15-20 minutes (150-160) and let it bake for about 30-35-40 minutes. Basically until ready.
Keep in mind it will grow in size...

Or not...

OMG, just that with yogurt...

[psycho_666]

Here is a fast and easy recipe. Going back to the zucchini theme, the Italian call this Orzotto, the Greek call it Ktiftaraki, but bugger the Greeks...
017. Zucchini Mushrooms Orzotto.

It's really fast and easy to make. From start to eating - around 30 minutes.

So starting with the zucchini. Peal and slice on thin thin slices. Very thin. They will cook, get softer and almost dissolve into the meal.

Throw in a frying pan on medium high heat with some oil.

Then chop the mushrooms, again, thin thin slices. When the zucchini slices are ready (have a little bit of brown color on them) you add the mushrooms.

Cook for as long as you like according to your personal mushrooms taste. Some people eat raw mushrooms, so it's not big deal...

OK. Now it's time to add the orzo... This is not rice. It's actually pasta, shaped like rice.

Throw it in the pan and fry for a couple minutes, so the pasta can soak all the flavors from the oil...

Then you just add water.

Ok. I added clean water, but you may add chicken stock (as the original recipe states) or bullion cube, devolved in the water. But if you add clean water that means you will have to pick up your own spices. In my case I simply used a bit of curry powder.
When the pasta is almost cooked you grade some parmigiano in the pan. I lacked parmigiano and bugger going to the store while it's raining, so I just chopped some yellow cheese I happened to have it the fridge.

Steer a bit until it melts, then you may add some butter. Or not. I happened to have butter, that is just sitting in the fridge for the last few weeks and I have no legitimate use for it, so I threw it in...

And there you go.
Italians call it orzotto, the Greeks call it Kriftaraki, I call it dinner.

[psycho_666]

So 19 will be Orange Chicken. But to do that, I want to make the Chinese fried rice first, so I can use it in the Orange chicken recipe.
018. Simple Chinese Fried Rice.

Here's the thing. There is no strict recipe for this. However, there are requirements, and i'm going to share them with you.

Here we go... We have different groups of ingredients, and we will mix them up...
First, we have the flavor ingredients. I use garlic and onion, but you may add fresh chopped ginger, or if you like spicy food - chopped chili pepper...
Throw in a frying pan for a minute or so...

After that, you add the meat. I use just chopped chicken, but you may add pork, beef or whatever. Some people add raw chopped sausage, so yeah, whatever you feel like.

I also decided to add some mushrooms. Why not...

Now is the time to add the hard vegetables, such as carrots. But since I use frozen vegetable mix, it is not really that big of a deal. So I just threw them all at once.

Once everything is done - add the already boiled rice. Wouldn't be much of a fried rice with no rice, would it?

Add soy sauce. Wouldn't be much of a chinese recipe with no soy sauce...

Alright, once all done, clear like a third of the pan. Beat an egg and pour some of it in the pan.

Now if you have a proper non stick pan, when you try and scrape the egg, it will come off in a flakes or scales or whatever you want to call it.

Cook the rest of the egg, steer a bit and you are done.

It have a lot of ingredients, although I have streamlined it to one meat type and frozen mix veggies, no playing with ginger, no extra chinese spices and ingredients.
It's fairly simple and easy to make chinese style fried rice.
Enjoy.

[Helium_3]

I love this thing but I was using a different recipe. I'm gonna merge the recipes but with large grained corn flour and I'm gonna add chopped leek. We usually add both white cheese and leek to make it juicier. It can end up somewhat dry without them.

[psycho_666]

We usually add both white cheese and leek

It's not really a prosenik then, but since I like both leek and cheese i will try it out and share MHO...

Tonight - Orange Chicken, or Fried Chicken with Orange Sauce.

[psycho_666]

019. Orange Chicken.

So I found a nice chinese recipe for this thing. I have changed a few things to be able to use easily obtainable ingredients and spices.
So here they are:

First let's slice the chicken breast (or you may use a boneless skinless thigh). Throw in a bowl and let's marinade with soy sauce, rice wine or sake, or just water if you don't like alcohol cooking, some pepper and corn starch or wheat flour. I use flour.

One more thing. If you use thigh - that's all... If you use breast, you may want to add a pinch or two of baking soda. It helps tenderize the chicken breast and make it juicier.
Mix up and leave it rest for now. You should get something like that:

Here's the tricky part... The sauce.
This is the thing, that I have changed the most.
Soy sauce

Sugar

Garlic, finely chopped, this is the sauce after all.

Hot Chili powder. You may also want to use flakes of chop fresh chili pepper. Your choice. If yopu don't like spicy food - skip this one.

Vinegar

Orange fresh from one orange.

Mix it up...
Cooking time.
Roughly chopped garlic, in a hot oil for a bit. Fry until you start smelling the garlic from the pan. Usually less than a minute.

Then throw in the chicken. At that point the meat and the flour would have reduced all the marinade, so it becomes like a breaded chicken.

Fry until done. Then just add the sauce. Steer the sauce before adding in the pan. There is sugar and other stuff, that will sink to the bottom.

Now, the sauce is going to thicken massively, The meat is going to soak part of it, the starch/flour is going to thicken the rest, and some of it will vaporize. When that happen, you may want to add some orange pieces or chopped green onions... Or both.

Steer almost all the time. You want everything to be coated in the sauce. Also you want to allow the fruit to give some fresh flavor in the pan.
Now, I have boiled some plain rice and throw it in a bowl...

I used plain rice, although you may also use the fried rice from the previous recipe. The fried rice itself have a lot of flavors already as it is, and if I add the orange chicken on top it will become an explosion of flavors. If you fancy that - go nuts. I like to use plain rice, because the leftover sauce from the pan will coat it and will give it it's flavor.

The original recipe involves Hoicin Sauce, Garlic Chili Sauce, soy sauce, sugar and orange juice. I just improvised and used the main flavors of those ingredients. If you have them - feel free to use them, but there is no store locally, where i can find hoicin sauce, and garlic and chili are common enough to the point where I skip the sauce and just use the garlic and chili.
And that's it...
Now. If everything goes according to plan, tomorrow I will try and make something sweet. A peach Revane.

[psycho_666]

020. Revane.

WARNING:
If you have any issue with sugar - avoid this like the plague.

OK, story time...
So, it's like a tradition in my country to make pickled stuff. Cucumbers, peppers, chilies, even fruits... Not sour, just sweet... Strawberries, peaches, cherries, apricots, apples, some people even use quince... You just soak the fruit in sugar and water and keep in the basement, or in the attic or somewhere cold.
Google translate it as tutti-frutti and I say bollocks to that.
Anyways, here is basically a fruit cake, soaked in syrup...

Yeah, that's all there is to it. Eggs, flour, sugar and fruits.
So, remove the hard thing in the middle, that google translates to me as a "stone", but bollocks to that... Again...
Then what I did was boil for a moment the fruits. Actually just soaked them in hot water.

So, the fruits have soaked a bit, if you want, you can peal the skin now, but on the other hand we now have a hot water, that is full of peach flavor. Just add sugar and you have your syrup for later on.
Next up is the batter. Proportions are simple - 4 eggs, teacup sugar, teacup flour. I did 50% extra...

Once you have the eggs and the sugar, beat it up until white foam starts to appear on top. It took me like a couple minutes. At that point add the flour and a tea spoon of baking soda.

OK, mix up, batter done.
So, oil up a baking tray and spread the fruits on the bottom. Usually I like to cover the entire bottom, but it's Sunday and I am using what I could find... All, that I found.

Then cover with the batter. Make sure all fruits are covered. They will burn otherwise.

Keep in mind the batter will increase in size. Massively.

Remember what I said when i made the sausage and cheese cake in recipe 3-4-something? Actually recipe 6... Poke with a stick. If the stick comes back out dry - it's ready. If it have batter on it - well it is not.
So there we go...

No, remember that syrup with peach flavor? Well, poke the desert with a fork here and there, then pour the syrup all over it.
Keep in mind, the 4-1-1 standard size desert takes around a litter of syrup to properly soak.
Yeah, that think just drank like a litter and a half of syrup. And it's not soggy. There is not exes liquid. It just soaked it up.

Yeah...
OK, again, this one desert have about a kilogram of sugar in it. If you have any issues with sugar - imagine I skipped a number or something. Don't try this. If you love your sweet deserts though - oh, you will love this.
You may completely skip the fruits. Just add vanilla extract or some flavor. Otherwise it will be really plain.

I have no idea what i'm going to do next time...

PS: I forgot to mention kinda important detail...
At the end of the day, you have 2 ingredients - the cake and the syrup.
You need one of them to be hot, the other - cold. Since i made the syrup first, I cooled it and used cold syrup and hot cake. Or you may want to cool the cake down, slice it up, to allow the syrup to go everywhere, and use hot syrup. The choice is yours. You just need one hot and the other - cold. No matter which one is which.

[psycho_666]

021. Chicken Zucchini Stir fry.

Alright. The idea was to do something completely different, but it didn't work out, so I worked with what I had.

So first I sliced the chicken boob to quarter inch slices.

Then I prepared all the vegetables, by roughly chopping them to about a bite sized pieces, but not too small.
Roughly chopped garlic

Mushrooms, just sliced to 4 pieces

Zucchini...

Also chopped some onion and prepared some FMV, because I'm kinda in my FMV phase, FMV being Frozen Mix of Veggies...
So frying pan on the stove, a bit of oil, salt and pepper...
Chicken in, fry until done, add mushrooms, then add onions and garlic, eventually carrots and other hard vegetables.
When all is done, meaning you can smell the garlic flavor coming from the pan, you add the rest of the veggies.

When everything is done, meaning a few minutes, add some soy sauce.

This entire thing should happen in about 5 minutes. The thing just need to fry for a bit. Most of the vegetables can be eaten raw, and the only thing, that truly needs cooking is the chicken meat, and this is why we start with it.
So I had some boiled rice left over from a couple days ago, so I just used it.

Then I just put the fried meal on top.

The reason I used the glass bowl this time is simple. It helps visualize how the sauce coats the rice and flavors it. It's just a plain rice. Or at least it was, before I put the rest on top...

Again, you can use the recipe 018 - Chinese Fried Rice... Or you can use plain rice, that will be flavored by the specific meal on top.
OK, have you seen Food Wars (Shokugeki No Soma)? It's an anime about food. Well, if you have not - watch episode 1 of season 1. This is what I will try to make next time.

PS: I love Shokugeki No Soma...

[psycho_666]

022. Gotcha Pork Roast (Food Wars s1e01 recipe).

I am writing this as I am still eating it.
Oh deer... This is really good. I will say - the sauce is making it really good for me. I have changed the recipe slightly to be able to use what I have, so if you can use the original ingredients, you probably can get better result. Still, I am extremely happy with the final result.
OK, here we go...

So, boil the potatoes and mash them. I like to peel the potatoes before i boil them.

At that time chop some onions and mushrooms...

You need to fry the onions.

Once the onion is browning, meaning it's done, you add it to the potatoes and the mushrooms.

Now. All that is fine. Time to move to the bacon...
The recipe says "thick cut bacon". However, I can have either thin slice bacon (that I am using) or thick cut (that is really thick, like an inch or something). There is no middle ground, and i believe the middle ground is exactly what I need.
Anyways, i use the thin slices in my usual baking plates...

The original recipe uses thyme, so I add some in, since I lack the fresh one.
Also, potatoes (and pork mostly) are very happy with savory, so I added some. Then I added like half the potato mushrooms onion mix I have and I top it off with thyme and savory again before I wrap it up...

Throw in the oven. It says 375 Celsius for about an hour... But this is not the thick stuff, that actually needs cooking. It's thin slices, so i baked it like 40 minutes. on medium heat in the oven.
Meanwhile I noticed i had some bacon left, so i fried it up. I definitely don't want to eat raw bacon.

Then I poured some red wine into the same pan with the bacon flavors, added soy sauce and butter in it and basically boiled it for 15-20 minutes...
It doesn't thicken, so just boil until the butter mix with the wine.

So when the meat is done - that's it...

Now, in the anime, Yukihira have used some thread to tie up the roast. Also keeping in mid he uses thicker bacon slices, my guess is it's entirely my fault, that the roast is open.
I turned it over in a plate and covered it with the wine sauce...

NOW... Even though the anime says the main attraction is the bacon juices in the potato filling, in that particular version, that I have brutalized, the sauce and potato filling combo really makes this meal AMAZING...
I did not expect that from wine, butter and soy sauce mix. Really, it's amazingly tasty.\
The phone cam is butchering the colors a bit. I am using merlot as a wine, and the merlot have a really unique color. Nothing to do with the color on the pictures though.

[psycho_666]

023. Penne with Zucchini and Tomatoes.

Since i couldn't find decent zucchini for stuffing (not up my a** you dirty dirty people), I used what I had to do what I can...
So I looked at YouTube and find a recipe I have changed to use whatever I had instead of the specific recipe ingredients.

Now you just throw a pot with salted water, and while it's heating up, you chop roughly garlic

then zucchini at large pieces

then tomatoes, although the original recipe asks for cherry tomatoes...

So, throw the garlic in the cold frying pan with cold oil.

The recipe says, that if the oil and the garlic heat up together, then more flavor is released into the oil. If you throw the garlic in hot oil and it start sizzling, the garlic fries before all the flavor is released. There could be some truth to that, because I have smelled the garlic at the other side of the kitchen while chopping some cheese...

The recipe says parmigiano, but I'll be buggered, if I go to search for parmigiano at 1am... So i used whatever cheese i had in the fridge.
So when you smell the garlic in the kitchen throw in the zucchini...
I forgot to take picture of it. I just fried it up. When the zucchini starts to change color (browning), then add the tomatoes.

Add some salt, pepper and basil. Fresh basil is better, but I had dry basil, so I used dry.

At that point, the pasta should be done... So throw the pasta in...

Steer and steer. And when the pasta is properly coated with all the flavors, add the cheese, be it grated, chopped or whatever.
Steer again for a bit, give it a couple minutes for the cheese to melt. If you use cherry tomatoes, they do not release any liquid what so ever, so you may want to add a bit of the water, where the pasta have been boiling. If you use standard tomatoes, then they will release a surprising amount of liquid and you don't need to add anything else.
Then just plate and you are done.

It's a simple meal. There are like 5 things inside it. I believe the recipe will work just fine with spaghetti, tagliatelle, macaroni, etc etc...So whatever you feel like, or more accurately, whatever you have on your shelves.