Food: I'm pretty good at cooking and eating.

 Howdy!

The Old Man here.

Growing up I was very fortunate to be around some gals who were some of the best cooks ever. Like an idiot, I never paid any attention to how they went about making their awesome dishes, I just ate them. When I became an adult, I wanted to learn how to cook these delicacies, but by this time these wonderful ladies were either dead or not cooking any more.  It came down to Ma teaching me what she knew, and me teaching myself or learning from friends. 

When I was a kid, my great grandma, Rosie, was in her 70s and 80s but was still able to churn out crazy good Hungarian fare. My favorite of hers was chicken noodle soup, or Hungarian penicillin as I like to call it.  She had an old kerosene range that she cooked everything on, even though Uncle Albert had bought her a very nice electric range in the late 1960s. Assorted chicken pieces, onion, carrots, celery, salt and pepper would be constantly stewing in a big stock pot to be sure us kids never ran out of broth. Her noodles were their own food group.  I remember her arthritic fingers rolling noodle dough thin as paper, hanging the sheets up to dry for a few hours, then cutting them thinly and boiling them for a few minutes. She would then strain the chicken and veggies out of the broth and start ladling it into bowls of noodles.  Bowl after bowl my sisters and I would eat until we were miserably full. The adults were pigging out on Rosie's other delicacies, paprikash chicken and cabbage rolls. As a kid, they didn't measure up to noodle soup, but as I grew up, I found myself more and more eating them as much, or more than, noodle soup. I make my version of Rosie's noodles and broth and everyone loves it. To me, it will always pale in comparison. 

Paprikash chicken is wonderful in it's simplicity. Chicken, paprika, tomato juice, and salt is the basic ingredients. If you look up paprikash recipes, you'll find there are a bunch of ways to make it, and none of them are wrong. My addition is sliced onions and mushrooms. All you have to do is remove the skin from the chicken pieces, coat them with paprika, and brown them in butter in a skillet. As you layer the chicken in your roaster, add the onion and mushrooms to each level along with a few sprinkles of paprika and salt. After the chicken is all browned, deglaze the skillet with some tomato juice and pour on top of everything in the roaster, then pour the rest of the tomato juice in as well.  Put the lid on and cook in the oven at 325 for 3-4 hours.  Make a big batch of mashed potatoes, and put the chicken and gravy on there and enjoy. Grandma V would make this and cabbage rolls for me until arthritis and dementia robbed her of everything. Thankfully, Ma learned how to make this and taught me. It's a winter time family favorite now, and I've taught my son in law to make it so he can carry it on. 

When I tell people that i make cabbage rolls, a lot of them say, "Oh I make those too!" Then they proceed to tell me how they make them and its similar, but different, to mine. Like most ethnic dishes, there are countless recipes for any dish. Stuffed cabbage they call it. In our family, cabbage rolls will always be the proper name for these pillows of greatness. Cabbage rolls are the most labor intensive and time consuming of the Hungarian dishes that I cook. First, you need 2-3 heads of flat leaf cabbage, if you can find it. If not, regular grocery store cabbage will do. Take off the outside 2-3 leaves and use them to line the bottom of your roaster to protect the rolls while they cook. Next, fill a big stock pot half way with water and bring it to almost a boil.  You dont want to cook the leaves, you just want to soften them a bit. As the leaves soften, peel them off the head and remove the thick vein that goes down the middle with a paring knife. Be careful as to not tear the leaf. Beforehand, put 3-4 lbs of ground beef in a big bowl, add in 2 cups of rice, and start adding tomato juice, mixing it all together with your hands. You want this to get sloppy. Grandma V used to say, "When you think it's too sloppy, add some more tomato juice." When you have some cabbage leafs ready, put some of the hamburger concoction in the leaf, fold the sides in, and roll it up. As you make layers of rolls in your roaster, cover each layer with sauerkraut and pour some tomato juice on as well. Once you filled the roaster, put the lid on and cook in the oven at 350 for 3-4 hours. I've caught grief in some food groups from people who are Polish, Czech, Slovakian, who make theirs with a tomato sauce, serve it all over mashed potatoes, and I didn't know what I was doing. I basically told them all to piss off without telling them to piss off. It's a skill I posses. Eating rolls this way has been the way in our family for over 100 years, and we're not stopping any time soon. 

Another type of food that I'm known for is Cajun food, which originates from Louisiana. Now you may ask how a Hungarian kid from Illinois came to be so adept at cooking Cajun food. Well, back in the early 1990s I worked with a guy named Malcom Bourgeois from Jeanerette, Louisiana. Malcom was a transplant from the Baton Rouge branch of the equipment company I worked for at the time. When he got to Oklahoma City he was a  bit like a fish out of water, but I had to work with him closely since he was the inventory manager of the parts warehouse I worked in. We became good friends, and one day he invited me to his house to eat gumbo. I had never eaten anything Cajun in my life, and it changed my culinary life drastically. I ate gumbo until I couldn't move. So after much begging on my part (and getting the OK from his mama) he wrote down the recipe for his gumbo. As time went on, he taught me how to make jambalaya, red beans and rice, and how to do a crawfish boil. All of these recipes were Mama Bourgeois' own family recipes, so I have always made them just how I was taught to honor her trusting me with them. After a while I noticed that Malcom was losing a lot of weight, and was calling in sick a bunch. I asked how he was doing and he assured me he was OK and not to worry. Then he transferred back to Baton Rouge, and I knew something was wrong for sure. He just kept on telling me he was fine and not to worry. Then one day, HR hung a notice in the break room that my friend had died from leukemia. He had been diagnosed while in Oklahoma City, decided against any treatment, and went home to die. I miss him like crazy and I thank him every time I cook one of his wonderful recipes. 

I forget who gave it to me or when, but at some point in the late 1980s, someone gave me one of those cheap, bullet smokers as a gift. It had a dome lid with a vent, a grill grate to set the meat on, a water pan, and the charcoal pan. I had absolutely no idea how to use this thing, but I was determined to figure it out. Looking back, that thing was an absolute nightmare to cook with. It was a constant fight to keep the cooking temps where they needed to be, and the design just wasn't efficient. At the time, though, I didn't know any better and just thought that's the way it was. That BBQ was hard work and hope for the best. My first cook with this thing was a 12 lb turkey for Thanksgiving. I started my fire at about 8 pm the evening before Thanksgiving, and I was up and down all night trying to manage my fire. By nothing but pure beginners luck, it turned out perfect. The skin was browned and crispy, the meat was moist and delicious, and it was a big hit at lunch. I had been bitten by the BBQ bug. I used that bullet smoker for years and until it finally fell apart. By this time, Baberino and I were together and she bought me an Oklahoma Joes offset stick burner smoker for my birthday, one year. Again, I had no idea how to cook with this thing, but I jumped in with both feet. I made a lot of mediocre BBQ before I started figuring out what I should be doing. I tried it all. Low and slow. Hot and fast. Marinades and dry rubs. Wrapping or not. Soaking the wood in water or not. As it turns out, none of these options are really wrong. You just have to find what works for you, and what you like. Although fire management is easier in a stick burner, it is no less important. Being a firefighter, playing with fire while cooking a chunk of meat is the bees knees. BBQ is a big part of my life and I've become known for it. 

As time and blogs go on, I will go way more in depth on all of these subjects, as I have only scratched the surface on my life as a cook. They say sharing a meal with family and friends is one of lifes most loving events, and I can say, without a doubt, this is the truth. 

Until next time.......

The Old Man