I felt that I had created a great flavor combination with the last rice dish I posted. It would have also been a complete meal according to the food chart they taught us in the 80’s. I started wondering what else I could do to make a complete meal. According to the original meaning of the word ‘mess’, these recipes probably qualify. Most modern cooking would probably be considered. Now if you’re the type of person who likes their food to stay on it’s own side of the plate, you could say you don’t like a mess, but if you’re a fan of pizza, lasagna, and chili you’re out of luck. This recipe is also pretty advanced. The amount you dessicate the tomato spinach mixture will affect your final baking time. Anyway this is where the term mess hall comes from and on to the recipe.

Ingredients:
Condensed liquid add in:

• 1 15 oz can diced tomatoes
• 1 15 oz can tomato sauce
• 1 9 oz bag spinach
• 2 Tbsp hot sauce
• 4 cloves garlic minced

Dry ingredients:

• 2 1/4 cups cornmeal
• 2 1/4 cups cake or all purpose flour
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 Tbsp baking powder

Liquid ingredients:

• 4 large eggs
• 1 1/2 cups buttermilk
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil

‘Filling’:

• 1 lb sausage
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 8 oz bag of shredded cheese

Instructions:

1. Brown sausage in large frying pan.
2. Mix in medium bowl with sour cream and cheese.
3. Set aside.
4. In sausage oil over medium heat add diced tomatoes and spinach.
5. Cover and steam spinach until it is wilted.
6. Simmer, dessicating the mixture. When mostly dry and creating paste on the surface of the pan add the tomato sauce, hot sauce, and garlic. I have found a rubber spatula works best when trying to dessicate a mixture.
7. Repeat the drying until you think you have the majority of the water removed or you feel you are in danger of burning.
8. Set aside and allow to cool.
9. Mix together dry ingredients with whisk in large bowl.
10. Set aside.
11. In medium bowl beat eggs. I used a fork.
12. Add buttermilk and oil.
13. Continue beating until emulsified.
14. Add tomato spinach mixture.
15. Mix well with rubber spatula.
16. Mixing with rubber spatula add 1/3 of liquid and tomato spinach combination into the dry ingredients.
17. Mix well.
18. Repeat until all of the liquid is incorporated into the dry ingredients. This is your cake batter.
19. Pour 1/2 of cake batter into 9 x 13 inch pan. Spread level.
20. Layer ‘filling’ over top of first half of batter.
21. Add remaining cake batter over filling and level.
22. Place in preheated 375 degree oven for 40 to 45 minutes until top is golden brown.
23. Allow to cool to eating temperature. Serve and enjoy.

I realize I have very few critics to my food, but I think I’m a good enough cook to have a blog about it. Some dishes still stand out from the crowd though. For that reason I feel like I should write this recipe down. In addition to the taste the food was visually pleasing. Before I packaged it for my lunches at work it was just sitting in the pan cooling and it was possibly even pretty. If I were a food photographer it would have been a pleasing subject.

Ingredients:

• 1 5 oz can diced water chestnuts
• 1 15 oz can tomato sauce
• 1 15 oz can diced tomatoes
• 1 12 oz bag spinach
• 1 lb breakfast sausage
• 4 cloves garlic minced
• 2 tbsp hot sauce
• 1 1/3 cup rice
• Water
• 1 tsp olive oil

Instructions:

1. Brown sausage in large frying pan. I use a 14 inch frying pan. Ultimately the size of your pan will determine how much rice and water you use, and how much the recipe makes. My amount of rice is based on a 14 inch frying pan with semi-wok style sides. You might have to expirament with amounts for your pan.
2. Remove sausage from frying pan and set aside for later.
3. Add olive oil to sausage drippings and renderings. Turn burner to medium heat.
4. Add water chestnuts and fry until slightly golden.
5. Add tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, garlic, and hot sauce.
6. Add water to about 3/8 inches from the top of your frying pan.
7. Bring to a boil.
8. Reduce heat to medium low, taking care to retain a simmer.
9. Add rice.
10. Stirring occasionally cook according to the directions of your rice, or simmer 20 to 30 minutes.
11. When the majority of the water has been absorbed into the rice fold in the bag of spinach in 4 or 5 batches.
12. At this point you should have very little standing water. If you have a little don’t worry it will evaporate as it’s cooling.
13. After pan has reached an eating temperature fold in sausage, serve, and enjoy.

To complete the breakfast menu I made a very yeasty pancake. I would recommend them with either the blueberry syrup or the black cherry syrup. I made the recipe for one, but it could easily be doubled or tripled.

Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup cake flour or all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp dried yeast
• 1 tbsp granulated sugar
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 egg
• 2/3 cup buttermilk
• 1 1/2 tbsp olive oil
• Olive oil for pan

Instructions:

1. Combine flour, yeast, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda in small mixing bowl.
2. Whisk together until homogeneous.
3. In another bowl beat egg with a fork.
4. Add buttermilk and olive oil.
5. Use fork to emulsify liquids.
6. Pour liquids into dry ingredients in about four equal iterations, mixing combined mixture with whisk after every addition.
7. Place in room temperature environment until mixture doubles, about 90 to 120 minutes.
8. Whisk down, cover, and place in refrigerator until about a half hour before preparing pancakes.
9. Remove from refrigerator.
10. Let stand about a half hour.
11. Prepare pancakes frying them in olive oil.
12. Serve and enjoy.

So this is basically the same recipe as blueberry syrup, but I might have just eaten one of the best breakfasts of my life and feel like writing. I’ve always been a fan of pancakes and waffles and the sweet side of breakfast. I came up with a recipe for some very yeasty pancakes which I will post next. Somehow everything went together extremely well. Anyways so I’m working the night shift and weighing what I want to do with my forthcoming time off. I have just eaten a helping of the blueberry ice cream I posted recently, and I remember being very disappointed in the black cherry ice cream from the local creamery near where I grew up to the point where I threw it out. At the time, some twenty years ago, my buddy told me I should write the company and see if I could do the world a favor and improve this flavor. The thought that struck me, multi-tasking in the workplace was that I could make a black cherry ice cream in a similar manner to the method of the blueberry ice cream. Now granted what I’m going to come up with won’t be cost effective to sell, but it will be a definitive improvement. So in order to make the ice cream first I need syrup.

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs fresh black cherries
• 4 cups granulated sugar
• 1 cup Karo syrup
• Water

Instructions:

1. Depit and destem all of your cherries and place them in a large pot.
2. Cover the cherries with water submerging them by at least one inch. Your main interest here is to have enough water so that an immersion blender won’t splash.
3. Bring to a boil and simmer for 20 to 30 minutes.
4. Blend water and berries with immersion blender until there are no particles larger than sand.
5. Add sugar and Karo syrup.
6. Continue boiling off liquid until you can see the bottom of the pan in the trails of your stirring utensil. In order to do this you will have to reduce the heat and stir more often when conduction overcomes convection. i.e. a more viscous mixture will have more conduction where as a less viscous mixture will have more convection.
7. Store or serve and enjoy.

My mom, like many midwestern moms, made a lot of casseroles while I was growing up. I’m not sure where many of them came from. Probably an amalgamation of newspapers, magazines, cookbooks, friends, and family would be close. One of these casseroles was titled Mexican caserole by my mother. It kept changing over time,so I was of the mindset that she was playing with it. I decided to make my own version of it. I wasn’t under the constraint of trying to make supper in just a few hours in the afternoon before my father came home. I had all day to make something I would enjoy for probably a weeks worth of lunches at work. I have some steps which are time consuming, but the dish comes together quite quickly.

Ingredient:

• 5 tomatillos
• 1 16 oz jar salsa
• 1 15 oz can tomato sauce
• 1 15 oz can diced tomatoes
• 1 15 oz can refried beans
• 1 15 oz can pinto beans
• 1 lb smoked sausage
• Water
• 1 cup rice
• 1 cup Mexican blend cheese
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 24 6 inch corn tortillas

Instructions:

1. Add olive oil to medium-large saucepan and heat until shimmering at medium heat.
2. Add tomatillos and reduce until sauce.
3. Add tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, and salsa.  Bring to a boil.
4. Add rice and cook until thickened, adding water if necessary to get desired tenderness of rice.
5. Allow to cool off heat.  Set to the side.
6. Once cool place in large mixing bowl.
7. Mix in pinto beans, refried beans, and smoked sausage cut up into bite size bits.
8. Place 6 tortilla shells on bottom of 9 x 13 inch pan in a 3 x 2 formation.
9. Place 2 cups of mixture out of the large mixing bowl on top of tortillas.  Spread flat.
10. Repeat layers of tortillas and mixture 2 more times.
11. Finish with a final layer of tortillas.
12. You might have some mixture remaining.  It makes great tacos as a leftover.  Refrigerate in sealed container.
13. Bake in medium 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.
14. Remove from oven and add cheese.  Top tortillas should be browned and curling at this point.
15. Place back in the oven and continue baking for an additional 10 to 15 minutes.
16. Allow to cool slightly so that caserole will cut and serve more easily.
17. Serve or package and enjoy.

Getting an ice cream which has a big blueberry taste is something I’ve never really found. You can find big chocolate taste or big peanut butter taste in ice cream. After making the blueberry syrup, I had a new ingredient in the fridge. Not common in grocery stores and not liking waste, I needed ideas to aid in it’s consumption. I always trying to make posh ice creams. I might try to resurrect an old passion and make soda. Anyways if I only use it for pancakes the syrup will last a long time. I’m guessing it’ll probably last 6 months or so in the fridge.

Ingrdients:

• 1 cup Blueberry syrup
• 1 2/3 cup skim milk
• 1 1/3 cup heavy cream
• 2 cups blueberries
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup water

Instructions:

1. In medium pan cook blueberries, sugar, and about a cup of water.
2. Cook until mixture thickens like jam trying to leave berries as whole as possible.
3. Place jam mixture in refrigerator for 1 hour.
4. In 2 quart bowl mix blueberry syrup, skim milk, and cream with whisk until frothy.
5. Prepare mixture in ice cream machine according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
6. After ice cream has been prepared stir in jam loosely with rubber spatula.
7. Either serve immediately as soft serve, or package and freeze as hard serve to be enjoyed later.

This might seem like a simple recipe. There’s only a few ingredients, but it is not a common ingredient in grocery stores so I am including it here. The syrup comes together fairly easily. The blueberries keep the syrup from becoming candy, by having too many particles which are non sugar in the mix. You can remove a larger portion of the water and still not have candy than you can in a mixture which is mostly sugar. I remember my parents making a blueberry syrup when I was a kid, and I purchased a souvenir bottle from a Blueberry festival in a town a lived in for several years, which I still have. This is great on pancakes, however I used it in a blueberry ice cream recipe, which is forthcoming, as the sweetener.

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs fresh blueberries
• 4 cups granulated sugar
• 1 cup Karo syrup
• Enough water to cover the blueberries in the pan by a half inch

Instructions:

1. In large pan bring blueberries and water to a boil over medium high heat.
2. Cook until softened 30 to 40 minutes.
3. With immersion blender puree blueberries and water until you have particles smaller than sand.
4. Add sugar and Karo syrup.
5. Reduce heat to medium.
6. Cook, stirring when necessary, until you can see the entire shape of your stirring utensil left behind on the bottom of the pan. You may have to reduce heat and stir more often as the mixture thickens in order to avoid burning.
7. Allow to cool.
8. Package or serve.