Freelance illustrator Gary Simpson began writing a zombie-themed cookbook called Dead Eats in 2009. In the summer of 2010, he took his idea to Kickstarter, hoping to raise enough money to create a few prototypes of the book to send to literary agents and publishers. After 60 days, Gary had received pledges for only $745 of his $1000 goal. Here he talks about the experience and shares a recipe from the book.

L.V. Anderson: How did you get the idea for a zombie cookbook?

Gary Simpson: Well, the actual day that I had the idea, I was at the bookstore. I live in a small town in northern California, and they have one bookstore, and there was an entire wall devoted to cookbooks. I was picking up books left and right, checking them out, and there was an essential theme going on to them; each one started getting into a genre, almost. There was a bacon cookbook; there was one for vegetarians, vegans; how to cook like a restaurant chef and stuff like that. But they’re all still a little obscure. Looking at the ingredient list, it was like, you need this pickled pear and you need this type of white peppercorn, which you might not normally have in your pantry.

And there was one particular cookbook that really struck me, and it was a children’s cookbook; it was a Star Wars cookbook. It had these awesome pictures of cupcakes and cookies, and they had these little Star Wars figurines next to them. And the whole Star Wars theme was really detached from the actual food, but they gave them really clever names, like a Wookiee Cookie. These quirky little things that would interest a kid and possibly their parent to cook with them, and as I was going through it, I thought, “Nobody’s made a zombie cookbook.” Which, at the time, we were getting more and more saturated with zombies.

Did you intend this to be in any way an ironic commentary on the zombie phenomenon?

You know, I actually loved horror movies growing up, and it was kind of one of those—not so much counterculture, but not everybody was into it. And it is ironic, the fact that everybody seems to love zombies now. So yeah, the whole thing is wrapped up in a tongue-in-cheek presentation, like, well, if you’re interested in food and you’re interested in zombies, then there’s a zombie cookbook.

Did you write the whole cookbook before you did your Kickstarter?

I actually did. A lot of these recipes I knew in the back of my mind anyway. ‘Cause my dad worked for a hotel chain, and he was a restaurant manager, and he had all these recipes that he passed on to me. And my grandmother was a big farm cook, always making these huge portions for everybody. She taught me a lot of things. And there was a point where right out of high school when I had to decide whether I wanted to do illustration and fine arts, or if I wanted to become a chef. I enjoy cooking on a personal level; I like being able to see people’s face when they’re eating it. So I decided not to be a chef. Since then, I’ve always been an experimental kind of cook, like, let’s try this ingredient with this and give it to friends and family and see how they react. I actually had a large database of food, recipes I had acquired. So yeah, I actually did write the entire thing first.

How would you describe the way that you cook?

A lot of these would now be considered comfort food. Now the Food Network’s basically telling us there are all these different types of cuisine, and a really big thing now is comfort food and slightly Southern cooking, and if anything it’s all in line with that. When I studied, it was underneath a French chef and later an Italian chef, so those traditional ways of making food carried over into making things like steaks, burgers, cornbread. You know, simple things that people would make at home, but in a kind of fancy way.

So tell me about some of the names of your recipes that evoke zombie-ness.

Well, there’s a Brain Stroganoff, which is similar to beef stroganoff, but in the actual appearance of it, in the end it actually looks like a brain on noodles.

How do you do that? How do you make it look like a brain?

Well, you take loose meat, which is basically any kind of ground meat. And you combine it with panko or bread crumbs, and cottage cheese or goat cheese.

Okay. That sounds disgusting. I mean, it sounds delicious, but it sounds like it looks disgusting.

Well, some of these things are supposed to be over the top, like you’d almost make it on a dare. Like you would with haggis, Scotch egg, something that’s like, “I can’t believe I just ate one of those,” or “I’m never going to touch that.” There are actually a number of people that it appeals to.

Tell me about the people that it appeals to. What kind of enthusiastic responses did you get? Or, on the other side, was anyone grossed out by this idea?

The gross-out factor was more that there was a couple of vegans that said, “Can you substitute something for this?” or whatever. But for most people, it was more the curiosity: What this is going to end up looking like, and what does it taste like? It changed people’s expectations. Everybody I talked to in person about it loved it. Like they wanted to see something from it. Which is great, which is kind of the whole point of it. Talking to people online, same thing. I contacted about thirty different literary agents, and within the first day, I got ten responses.

And there seemed like there was a lot of steam building up, and one of the literary agents told me that I should sit on it for about a year, because sales are down. The reason why you saw so many at the bookstores is the recession; people were trying to unload them. So at that point, after reaching out to see what literary agents might think of it, that’s when I got involved with Kickstarter to see what other people think about it.

What specifically were you trying to raise the money for? Was it to put together a more polished version of the cookbook?

Yeah. It was basically the final part in making a project. Something needs to be tangible. You can pitch an idea; you can give an elevator pitch or whatever, but people need to have something tangible in front of them before they can truly get 100% behind it. So the money was just going to get a finished product, print out a couple hundred of them, and send them off.

And so once you decided to start a Kickstarter, what kind of promotional stuff did you do?

Really, I didn’t do anything. I’d never tried Kickstarter before, and at the time it was still a young platform, so the very first month that I went into it, I really didn't do that much to push it. I only put in a couple updates, I offered some stuff, but it was a pretty cold start, because I didn’t know what Kickstarter was going to do, if there was a platform to launch off of, or if Kickstarter internally would do stuff. I wanted to see where it would go.

What did you decide to do after your Kickstarter campaign was over?

I went back to the cookbook; I revisited it; I edited the hell out of it. It’s got three more coats of polish on it. And I still have it.

Do you have a literary agent now?

Not one signed on, no. I have a number of people interested, but I’m not ready to move forward.

Why not? Are you still waiting for the right moment?

In a sense, yeah. As far as marketing or promoting it, you do need to devote a portion of time to it, which unfortunately my work schedule right now doesn’t permit. I don’t have that much personal time anymore. And the zombie cookbook, I know that if I was going to devote time to it, I’d have to devote a lot. I just don’t have the time for it yet.

How do you envision it? If it’s something that comes to fruition someday, do you envision it being a full-color cookbook with photographs, or do you think that since you’re an illustrator you would draw illustrations for it?

The basic outlook of it would be a very kitschy Betty Crocker book, something from 1950s or ‘60s, but re-visioned in a zombie apocalypse kind of way. There would be pictures, of course, just because I know personally people want to see that kind of stuff.

So true, yes.

But there’d be a lot of—people love information graphics, so it’d be like what part of a human body equates to what part of a chicken, like taste-wise. So there’d be information graphics detailing that, and we’ll take a cow and a pig. And there’s still a lot of introduction to it. I know being in the kitchen a lot, you shorthand things. Like what’s the difference between a pot and a pan? Or what’s a spatula? Surprisingly, a lot of people don’t know what these things are.

So you want it really to be a very educational, basic source.

Yeah. Like somebody who’s taking home economics in high school or middle school could even do this stuff.

Do you think cooking is something that people should do more?

I think cooking is very inspiring. It’s such a basic thing to want to make something, almost in a craft-like way. On a day-to-day basis, creatively, I have to do XYZ for a client, but I’m still inspired because I cook every day. Putting peanut butter on a hamburger; in some strange way that's fulfilling and it's refreshing, and I think that should appeal to a lot of people. They should want to learn how to cook. We gloss over these things when we’re growing up, like how to write a check, how to open up a bank account, how to cook, how to save money. Just odd things that seem like they should be fundamental.

Do you have any concern that the zombie moment is going to end before this cookbook gets produced?

Not particularly. It’s pretty much an industry at this point. It’s like saying there won’t be anymore vampire-slash-werewolf movies. They already found an audience; same for zombies. It’s not so much a genre anymore, it’s an actual industry. There are zombie snack foods now and zombie shampoo. It’s weird, but it’s an industry now.

A RECIPE FROM DEAD EATS

SKULLCAPS

4 large Portobello mushrooms, stems removed
½ lb "sausage"
4 strips of "bacon"
4 oz. cream cheese
4 drops hot sauce
4 tsp salsa
4 slices Provolone or Swiss cheese
2 tbsp Graveyard Herb

1. Preheat the oven to 425°F/220°C. Spray a baking sheet with nonstick spray.

2. Heat a skillet over medium-high heat and when hot, add bacon and cook on both sides till crisp. Remove bacon strips, and then crumble sausage into heated skillet, reducing heat to medium. Cook sausage for 10-12 minutes or till all pink is gone. Chop and crumble bacon strips into bacon bits into a mixing bowl. Add sausage, cream cheese, hot sauce, and Graveyard Herb until blended.

3. Place the mushrooms on the baking sheet, filling each cavity with the sausage mixture, mounding it slightly. Add a teaspoon of salsa to each mound and place in heated oven. Bake for 22-24 minutes.

4. Stack slices of cheese one on top of each other on a cutting board, with a sharp knife cut a skull shape into the cheese. Separate the cheese slices and place one skull-shaped cheese slice onto each mushroom. Cook mushrooms an additional minute in the oven. Serve hot.

GRAVEYARD HERB

Makes 16 tsp (the size of a normal bottle of seasoning).

2 tsp thyme
2 tsp oregano
2 tsp savory
2 tsp paprika (smoked preferred)
2 tsp celery salt
2 tsp basil (sweet preferred)
2 tsp sage
2 tsp rosemary

Previously: The Unfunded Art Project Inspired By Victorian Human Skulls and The Connie Converse Album That Never Got Crowd-Funded


Was your Kickstarter unsuccessful? Want to talk about it? Send us an email with a link to your Kickstarter page at kickstarted@theawl.com.

L. V. Anderson lives in Brooklyn and works at Slate. Images and recipes are copyright Gary Simpson.

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I can hear the complaints already:

YOU: I’m very busy and have no time to craft fanciful sauces!
ME: No, you aren’t. Making sauce only takes around half an hour.
YOU: But I’m too important to concern myself with such matters!
ME: Fine, you’re excused. Go spend those I-Banker dollars on pasta prepared by professionals, and have it delivered to your tastefully appointed Brooklyn Heights rowhouse. Also, choke on it. Just don’t buy jarred sauce.
YOU: Actually, I’m unemployed and too broke to purchase exotic ingredients for foreign foodstuffs!
ME: In general, fresh sauce is no more expensive than jarred sauce.
YOU: I just lost both arms in a terrible farm accident!
ME: Oh my god, I’m sorry. Call me and I’ll come over and make you some sauce.

Glad we settled that. There is a common and insane notion that pasta sauce is a difficult and time-consuming thing to, best left to Italian grandmothers or smug pricks like Gordon Ramsay. But that's not true. Here's a recipe that will serve two comfortably, probably with enough left over for at least one lunch tomorrow as well.

At the most basic level, you need only five inexpensive and common ingredients: salt, garlic, some decent olive oil, an onion and a can of Italian tomatoes. If you don’t already have those things you can probably find them within walking distance, at most bodegas or groceries. That, and some pretty basic kitchen equipment and, as I said, about thirty minutes. So, come on. You’re an adult—throw out the Prego, stop your whinging and let’s make dinner.

1. Set a skillet on a burner set to medium, and drop a nice big splash of olive oil in there. After a moment or two put a little water on your fingers and flick them toward the oil. A pleasant sizzling sound should result, letting you know that it is sauce time. Add a finely minced white or yellow onion and several minced garlic cloves.

(Super-remedial sidebar: Do you not know how to mince onion or garlic? Wallow momentarily in your shame (you are a grown and educated adult!) and let’s take care of this. This cool video shows you how to peel an entire head of garlic in less than 10 seconds. Watch this Goodfellas clip for inspiration before chopping the garlic. And see this for a good onion lesson. Try not to chop off your fingers.)

2. So: oil, garlic, onion. Let this go for awhile, stirring it around occasionally (or agitating the pan on the burner if you’re trying to look impressive) until the vegetables are soft and mostly translucent. If they turn brown, throw everything away and start over. You'll only be out about two dollars at this point.

3. Now let’s discuss tomatoes. I like Cento's San Marzano peeled tomatoes best. They're “DOP” certified, which means that they are honest-to-god San Marzano tomatoes from a volcanic region of Italy, which, I guess, is some sort of big deal to Italians. If you’re not being observed by any Italian people while preparing this dish, you can probably buy some other variety. Either way, get a 28-ounce can and open it up while you’re waiting for your onions and garlic to cook. You can toss these into the blender for a few pulses if you like, or just dump the can, juice and all, into the skillet. The tomatoes will break down as they cook, but you may want to chop up anything that looks too big for a comfortable mouthful. Add a large handful of good coarse kosher salt, and a small handful of black pepper. That’s it—you have just made pasta sauce. Let it simmer for fifteen minutes, and then it’s time to eat.

Those are the three-step basics. Now some variations!

• Are you drinking wine as you prepare this? Of course you are. What the hell, dump in a cup of whatever you’re drinking with the tomatoes.

• Throw in some other veggies and herbs, like chopped mushrooms or diced eggplant. Maybe some seeded jalapeno. How about, oh my god, a mélange of other various peppers varietals? Some local organic fiddlehead ferns? Sure thing, Brooklyn, knock yourself out. But definitely finely chop some fresh parsley, oregano or (especially) basil, and put that in right before you serve it.

• Everybody is always going on about bacon now, right? Fine, whatever, cook some bacon (don’t burn it), then dice it up and toss it in with the vegetables, before the tomatoes go in. If you want to really impress everyone then upgrade your deli bacon from the deli to butcher-shop pancetta, or get really crazy with guanciale. Some Italian sausage, hot or sweet, cooked and sliced, is welcome in any non-vegetarian sauce. I guess you could put some cooked chicken in there, although I’ve never really seen the point of it. If I put chicken in pasta it probably means that I had some leftover thighs about to hit their expiration date, so I tossed them in as if I were disposing of a corpse. Remember that if you’re ever having dinner at my place. If you want to add red meats, then you are talking about that mother of all pasta sauce (and the foundation for the best lasagna) called Bolognese. You have also just embarked upon a fabulous three-to-six-hour journey, best for weekends, and beyond the simple weeknight dish that I came here to discuss. Enjoy.

• Shrimp, calamari, cockles, mussels, crab meat... use your judgment. Go bananas! Don’t actually add any bananas though.

• And to state the obvious: some finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, or whatever other hard Italian cheese you have, will make everyone prefer your sauce to if you had not added it. If you want it to turn your pasta into lazy weeknight lasagna, just add five or six spoonfuls of ricotta a few minutes before the sauce is ready, and stir the whole thing up before you serve it. You could also add a cup of cream to the tomatoes, and if you’re doing that then you might as well put a cup of vodka in. Holy shit, you just made your own vodka sauce. Isn’t this easy, you guys? Why would you buy sauce in a jar?

• Another variation, and my standard go-to these days, is puttanesca sauce, which means “whore’s style,” but because the sauce has such a strong, smoky taste, I prefer to think of it as “smoker’s style.” Start with three or five anchovy fillets, sliver them with your knife and toss them into the sauce before the tomatoes go in. Some people are horrified by these funky little fish, and you may want to keep them a secret until after your guests have eaten. No one will know because they don’t actually make the sauce taste fishy. They will just add a mild undercurrent that makes things more complex and interesting. They will also add a great deal of salt, so cut back a touch on the amount we discussed earlier. Other stuff for your smoker’s pasta: black, kalamata or green olives, pitted and roughly (read: lazily) chopped; half a jar of drained capers; and a goodly sum of red pepper flakes. Before you serve it add some fresh herbs: parsley and basil in particular, and while the standard recipe doesn’t call for it (are any Italians watching?) I usually grate some Parmesan over the top before serving as well.

Noodles: In the best case scenario you’re making your own, with a Grandma-approved flour-well method and a pasta machine, but again, that puts you a bit beyond our agreed-upon weeknight purview. I’m usually quite happy with the fresh pastas that FreshDirect sells (the egg fettuccine and linguine from Ravello in particular) but dry pasta has a place in life too. Whichever you choose, get your water for this started before your sauce so that it's merrily bubbling away when you’re almost ready to eat. Use a big pot, and fill it up about three quarters of the way. Add enough salt to make it taste like seawater, because that will make the pasta taste good, and don’t add any oil, because it doesn’t do a damn thing. Dry pasta boils for about 9 minutes, fresh pasta for only a minute or two. You will read that fresh pasta is ready when it comes to the surface of the water, but I haven’t found that to be the case. The important thing is not to overcook it.

Supposedly proper al dente pasta, when thrown, will stick to the door of the refrigerator. I don’t like throwing noodles around my apartment, so I generally just fish one out with a fork and eat it to see if I like the texture.

Don’t drain the noodles, and certainly don’t bother washing them, as they have just been boiled in saltwater, and are as clean as any food product will ever be. Instead extract the noodles with some kitchen tongs and put them directly into that big skillet with the sauce in it. A little water will go will also go into the sauce, and Gordon Ramsay would tell you that this starchy pasta water “binds” the dish, which I suppose means that it forms some sort of barely-perceptible flavor bridge between the pasta and the sauce. I guess that’s probably the case? Just do it, stir the whole thing up, and let it sit on a low fire for a minute or two so that it’s all the same temperature and integrated as a dish. It’s time to eat.

Super bonus extra credit: Here’s an easy trick that classes up the whole operation: put the plates you’re going to use in an oven set to around 200 degrees for the last few minutes of the process so that they are warm, and thus will keep the food warmer for a longer time. Take a warm plate, extract a tong-load of food and place it on the plate with a jaunty little wrist action. Then scoop up some of the fun stuff from your sauce (mushrooms, olives, whatever) and drop those around so that they’re looking good. Add herbs and cheese. You’re done, dinner looks great, and you’re feeling all smug and Ramsay-like, or maybe just grandmotherly. Either way, you have my word that you will prefer this to a jarred sauce.

Related: How To Cook A Bolognese Sauce and Half-Baked: How To Make A Pizza.

Brian Pritchett is a writer and web producer in Brooklyn.

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As a Korean kid growing up in American Samoa, I was part of a subculture made up of the families of Korean fishermen and sailors that had sprung up around the tuna industry of the South Pacific. (I know, there’s a musical in here, somewhere.) The heart of this community was Korea House, a blue-shingled, cantilever-roofed building, behind which were buried about a dozen earthenware vessels the size of Greek amphorae—it was in these we aged our gochujang.

Gochujang is a fermented paste made of red chili powder, glutinous rice powder, pureed soy beans and salt, seasonings like garlic and onion, all sweetened with a little sugar syrup and aged for, like, eons in buried earthen vessels. It’s about the consistency of hoisin sauce; perfectly uniform but slightly grainy. It brings to the table the perfect savory mix of flavors: spicy, salty and sweet, with an earthy finish and loads of umami. You may know it as the main finishing condiment for bibimbap, but it’s truly versatile, good for anything that involves rice or noodles, stir-fries and any soups or stews that could use a peppery, reddish cast. Oh, and it’s a main ingredient in spicy BBQ marinades, especially with pork.

One of the coolest and most flexible uses of gochujang is as a mother-condiment, the basis for other sauces and pastes. It can be mixed with doenjang (Korean red miso) to form ssamjang, which is great for lettuce wraps (ssam) and dipping vegetables, both raw and lightly blanched. But perhaps the best kick-around variation is chogochujang, which goes excellently with fish, sauteed and blanched greens, and can pretty much be used as Korean ketchup. Keep chogochujang in your fridge in a squeeze bottle; it will definitely come in handy for omelets, fried rice, etc. Use it as a marinade for burgers. You can even mix in a little extra oil and use it as a salad dressing! Don’t sweat orthodoxy with this condiment. (Interestingly, the peppers that go into gochujang were originally brought from America as part of the Columbian Exchange.)

Condiments have a way of serving as passports between traditional cuisines. In American Samoa, gochujang served as a go-between for Asian, Polynesian and American taste stylings. I can remember enjoying gochujang and chogochujang with kalua pig, breadfruit, kimchi and spam or canned corned beef on a taro leaf for a Sunday afternoon meal.

Later, when my family moved to L.A., and my parents were busy running a corner store, gochujang became a staple of the latchkey lifestyle for me and my brothers. Breakfast might be bokumbap, kimchi fried rice with Spam, tinged red with a healthy dose of gochujang and topped with an over-easy egg. For snacks we would make little maki rolls out of rice, canned tuna dressed with chokochujang and pickles. In a pinch, you can even make a meal of beef jerky or Slim Jims—remember, we were growing up in a convenience store—as long as you have some rice, some kind of vegetable and gochujang for dipping.

This wasn't quite as terrible for us as it sounds—gochujang is actually quite healthy. Fermented foods have long been singled out as the reason for Koreans’ superior digestive and immune system health. A few years ago, the Korean health minister claimed his country’s penchant for fermented food was the reason there were no human SARS infections in South Korea. I agree totally, but have to point out that my people also go all in on rhino horn, Reverend Moon and goblins that have the power to transfer tumors from and onto the living.

Aside from helping to ward off the undead tumor-demons, gochujang has many uses, and it’s the off-label ones that make a great condiment, so be experimental. Look for it in Asian markets and expect to pay between 4 and 8 dollars for a 500-gram container in-store, a few dollars more online. There is a confusingly wide variety of brands out there with inconsistent translation on the labels, but I think you’ll find that relative price is a good indicator of quality in this case. It’s also thought that Sunchang County produces the best gochujang, and you can generally find it called out in English on the package. So enjoy! Oh, and after cooking, don’t rub your eyes.


Related: A Tale Of Two Chilis


Ben Choi carefully curates a cabinet-cramming collection of condiments from his kitchen overlooking the San Francisco Bay.

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Every December 5, his birthday, the day goes something like this: At around 9 or 10 a.m., I scamper down the hallway to his apartment (even though we’re grown-ass adults we still choose to live dorm-style because it’s awesome) weighted down with packages and cupcakes and a bottle of bourbon. He makes coffee, into which we pour milk and Splenda and a goodly amount of that bourbon because I’m a “on birthdays anything goes” kind of gal and if we want to start drinking at 9 a.m. that’s what we’re gonna do. Go ahead and try to stop us, we’ve got bleach and guns. Then sometime around noon we decide that leaving the house might not be a bad idea and hey, are you a bit peckish? I’m a bit peckish. Let’s go get lunch and more drinks.

After lunch—so maybe by now we’ve made it to about 2 p.m.?—the siren song of International Bar becomes too much for us to resist and off we go for a few rounds of a Schaefer and a shot, which always seems like such a great idea at the time, doesn’t it? Oof. It is never a good idea and yet no one ever learns from their mistakes.

Generally by the time 4 p.m. hits we’re about pickled, which means, of course, that it’s time to go back home—sometimes we stop at Ricky’s on the way to try on wigs—and watch a movie about Rich White People. This year Six Degrees of Separation was up. Chaos, control; chaos, control.

Most years we’re passed out in bed by 7 p.m. It is the greatest day of the year as far as I’m concerned.

Right but: it all starts with cupcakes. Well, this might be the time to tell you that I’m not overly fond of cake in general and I’m doing this thing where I’m trying to be a little less do unto others and a little more do unto myself (it’s absolutely not working out well, in case you were curious; actually it’s been a disaster but that’s another story for another day) and honestly, I didn’t want to eat a damned cupcake. Plus, Matt is a hot sauce 'n' honey kind of guy and I really couldn’t abide the notion of putting hot sauce in a cupcake batter. So I got creative and oh man, did it ever pay off: instead of building this mess on top of cake I went with a popover base and it was BANANIMALS.

Okay shall I talk you through how to do this for the Matt in your life? You got it!

Popovers
Are you aware that popovers are DUMB EASY to make and you don’t even need a fancy pan for them (though, of course, I have a fancy pan for them because I am a spectacular ass when it comes to premium cookware)? Seriously, a regular old muffin tin is all you need and who doesn’t have one of those? (Don't tell me you don't.) Anyway, maybe it was the equipment issue but for some reason I was always terrified of popovers and then one day I was just like, “ALRIGHT GIRLIE, TIME TO CONQUER THAT FEAR” and yeah, I was being really stupid because there’s nothing to be afraid of. I use the King Arthur Flour recipe, which I like because the King provides baking instructions based on what kind of pan you’re planning to use (like a large muffin tin, a regular one, a miniature one or a popover pan), as well as flavor suggestions, which is so thoughtful!

For this purpose, however, I wanted to jack things up with hot sauce, so my recipe looked like this:

(1) Whisk together four eggs (room temperature, or as King Arthur suggests, bathe them in a bowl of warm water for 10 minutes before cracking), a cup and a half of milk (any kind!), a half teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of Tabasco sauce. A teaspoon of Tabasco will give the popovers a pretty decent but definitely not overpowering kick, though I must warn you that I’m a great abuser of hot sauce (I put it on my bagels, is that weird?) so you need to take that opinion with a grain of cayenne and adjust as necessary to suit your mouth.

(2) Dump in a cup-and-a-half of flour and whisk until there are no large lumps. Small ones are fine.

(3) Stir in three tablespoons of melted butter.

That’s it! I know, right? DUMB EASY. The baking instructions depend on what kind of pan you’re using, but if you’ve got a popover pan you want to bake them at 450 for 20 minutes before dropping the temperature to 350 and baking for an additional 15-20 minutes. The cups should be filled about ⅔ of the way up with batter. Two super super super important things about the baking process: the oven must be properly up to temperature and you mustn’t open the oven door to peeksies while they’re popping over.

Honey Buttercream Frosting
Another requirement of this custom designed batch of notcakes was that honey be a key player. Easy. So easy it’s almost an insult. Honey buttercream frosting done and done and done: using a hand or stand mixer, beat together one stick of softened butter with four tablespoons of honey and one cup of confectioner’s sugar. (If you're sugar-averse, start with half a cup of sugar, and move forward, while tasting.) Do that for, ooooh, three, four, five minutes or so? Then check the consistency and depending on how things are looking beat in another half to full cup of confectioner’s sugar.

To Assemble
Because I’m a person who loves to cook and feed and write about cooking and feeding, I would encourage you to make your own fried chicken. It is also easy. However, the birthday boy is tremendously fond of Popeye’s chicken and actually specifically asked if I would use Popeye’s and sure right of course you’d like me to save myself the time and hassle and clean up involved with making homemade fried chicken? YOUR WISH, MY COMMAND, ETC. So to assemble these, I frosted the popovers and then stuck a couple of Popeye’s chicken nuggets on top of them. We decided that function trumped form in our case, and frosted the popovers while they were hot, which made for an absolute mess, but a delicious mess that neither of us minded at all. (Also we were pretty well on our way to tanked by the time this happened and would have made a mess in some way, shape or form no matter what we did.) If you’re concerned with presentation (AKA, not drunk) let the popovers cool before you frost them. Pro tip from the King: If you can do so without the popovers getting too dark, bake them for an extra five minutes, which will help them to retain their popped shape even after cooling. This is where, if you were really loaded, you could cut up some WAFFLE CUBES and spike them on top with the chicken—but truly the popovers and the frosting are enough bread-syrup substance for anyone.

To Eat
There’s a great thing that happens when you bite or tear into a popover laden with stuff: everything collapses inward, landing in the hollow part of the popover and then you can kind of turn it into a sandwich, if a sandwich were covered in melted honey butter? Right. Just be prepared to be covered in frosting.

Jolie Kerr doesn’t really know how to stop doing nice things for people but if it involves being covered in frosting she guesses it will all be okay somehow. Amazing photo by Jason Lam.

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DESSERT
• Pie Crust. If we hear about any of you purchasing pie crusts, there'll be trouble.

• Cherry Clafoutis.

• Tardelle (aka Struffoli).

• Plumcot Yogurt Cake.

• Easy Lemon Meringue Pie.

• Lemon Squares.

• Pumpkin Flan.

• Tiramisu.

THANKSGIVING SAUCES
• Cranberry Orange Relish.

• Blueberry-Cranberry Sauce.

• Straight-Up Cranberry Sauce.

SIDES
• No-Rise Beer Bread.

• Stir-Fried Romaine Lettuce.

• Latvian Bacon Rolls.

• Mac and Cheese.

• Spiced Sweet Potatoes.

• Butter Crackered String Green Beans.

• Radish Chips.

ALTERNATIVES
• Bolognese Sauce.

• Pizza from Start to Finish.

• Latkes.

• Steak.

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One of the conceits of the book was "cracker cooking" and they sure don't mean Hubert Humphrey's beloved Saltines. So Spessard Holland's use of "cracker" here was not out of thin air; the former Florida Governor and U.S. Senator was a pro-tax Democrat who would have been using the term as an anti-Yankee (and anti-newcomer) badge of original Florida settler family pride.

Marvin Griffin was not only a great cook but also a total crook and an incredible racist and segregationist. Ta da! I'm surprised this recipe doesn't say "serve black people at a separate table."

No one talks about Estes Kefauver anymore but he was very nearly president and maybe should have been. Also that is too much sugar for a fruit pie.

Boom. Yes, Governor Collins, that is a perfect spoon bread recipe. (Governor Collins would go on to lose a U.S. Senate election because he was photographed with Martin Luther King Jr.—but he was only working! He wasn't actually marching in Selma, good heavens no. Still lost the election though.)

This recipe was written a few years before Paul Butler was deposed from the DNC by John Kennedy for not kissing enough Kennedy butt.

Probably we should all go read a history of how the Republican-led legislature of Michigan shut down the government in opposition to Governor Williams in the late 50s. Seems relevant!

Adlai Stevenson III II (WHATEVER, HISTORY IS COMPLICATED) was just the first to oppose the dreadful LaRouchites. Oh Lord, replace the Crisco with butter please.

Lo and behold, former Senator George Smathers knew how to cook a steak!

And State Supreme Court Justice Roberts was a real bragger.

In fancy places, we call the calamondin the calamansi. Nelson Poynter, founder of Congressional Quarterly and funder of the Poynter Institute, well... this one goes out to Jim Romenesko.

Who? Well, Claude Pepper was on the cover of Time... twice, and said crazy leftist things (for decades!) that would get you run out of D.C. on a rail these days.

Robert Meyner beat Malcolm Forbes for reelection in New Jersey. Malcolm Forbes! That would have been amazing. Then we would never have had Jim McGreevey.

We're just filing this one away for when we're trapped in the woods. Yow.

And then there always has to be a funny guy. Who... isn't. (Frank Trippett was however apparently an amazing reporter, so we'll... try to forgive this lapse.)

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John Ore: Hey, guess what time it is.

Ben Choi: What time is it, John? Did I miss Indigenous People’s Day again?

John: Well, it's Chili Season™. It's that time of year when the air gets a little crisper, college football conferences start realigning—and tourists switch from Crocs to Uggs. Perfect for whipping up buckets upon buckets of chili. And hoo-boy, do I have a recipe for chili. You?

Ben: Oh yes, I have a chili recipe for you. As a fellow Angeleno, you must remember the chili con carne they used to put on chili fries and chili burgers and chili dogs at Carney's or Tommy's or Pink’s?

John: Remember it? I broke one of my two vegetarian streaks of high-school on a chili burger from Carney's! But was it the chili, or the chili burger sitting on my shoulder like the Devil, trying to stain the white robe of the vegetarian Angel on my other shoulder? Carney’s chili seems like good chili for a Manwich, but can it stand on its own as a meal?

Ben: Well, my chili is based on that chili, but it's a little more stand-alone, a little fancier in a poly-ethnic way. Texas cowboys cribbed off Mexican ingredients and tastes for their chuckwagon staple, which El Paso chollos (re-)reimagined and took with them to the City of Angels; and this Korean-American is going all David Chang on it. I use four kinds of pan-roasted dry chiles, Puerto Rican sofrito, a pickled habanero pepper, tequila, cocoa and oxtails. I live in the Bay Area now, so there's a little more Chez Panisse in this this recipe. (And John, we call it a Personwich.)

John: Now hold the phone, I'm the multi-ethnic cook around these parts. Your recipe sounds awesome, but that ain't chili! Where are the beans? Where are the Fritos? What sort of cheese goes on top of that? My chili is suitable for occupying Wall Street, or occupying your couch on New Year’s Day watching the Winter Classic. Does Alice Waters even follow hockey?

Ben: You know, authentic Texas chili is a no-bean proposition. And I honor that tradition (along with Caribbean, Mexican, European, and Korean) in this dish. Don't get me wrong; I love my standard truck-stop bean chili with cheese and onions and sour cream. But if I wanted to keep it simple: Wendy's has a drive-thru.

Texas red was originally made with just chiles, spices, beef and beef suet. Those vaqueros didn't even use tomatoes. I've opted for oxtails, which fill in for both the stew meat and the suet, and satisfy the memory of my East Asian ancestors. I can't expect you to understand, Senor Round-eye. That oxtail is so lovely and unctuous—even after defatting. Nice round, smooth, beef flavor. What can I say, I source locally but think globule-y.

John: Don't tell me you favor Texas BBQ over Carolina BBQ as well. Them's fightin' words. Chili is as blue collar as it comes, my former nose tackle friend. I honor THAT tradition by keeping it familiar while sprucing up the basic ingredients, Brooklyn-style. Three ground meats, three kinds of Goya beans, and most importantly: a beer. Something you'd feel proud to throw cheese on top of, not find on a tasting menu. Chili for the people.

Defatting? That's un-American.

Ben: Actually, I like Carolina pig pickin's and I totally support your populist stand, but I'm standing up for the freedom of my people: Americans, not American'ts. [Pipe in patriotic music here]

My recipe fights for the purist's aesthetic from the ramparts of pluralism. My chili is a melting pot—full of poor huddled masses of beef. And full of freedom... culinary freedom carried by immigrants in their decorative pottery. What you call "foreign," my people call "mays." We may choose to use oxtails, and we may choose to defat, and we may choose to omit the cheese and keep it kosher, my mensch.

John: We may have to agree to disagree to agree. As a member of Liberal Coastal Media Elite, I'm obligated to replicate Hormel while using Berkshire pork and Sriracha and Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket ingredients. I'm also obligated to watch sports while I make it, because watching sports is a delivery mechanism for beer, and beer goes in chili.

Did I mention the Fritos? What do you serve your chili with, apart from a binding UN resolution?

Ben: Yeah, my organic oxtails are replacing a quarter tub of REX manteca (lard). Also, instead of masa harina I used Bob's Red Mill corn flour. What can I say? My chili con carne has been taking anglo-management courses.

As for the sports, I'm afraid they've been replaced by podcasts of “This American Life.” But I did use a little tequila to moisten the Mexican hot chocolate and cocoa I threw in towards the end.

As for the Fritos, I usually cut corn tortillas into little ribbons and deep fry them in my wok with a little peanut oil and sprinkle them on top, like in tortilla soup. Alternately, there's always the chili-cheese burger configuration favored by Ban Ki-moon, or the chili-fries Boutros Boutros-Ghali can't seem to quit. I think Kofi likes it layered on a thin pan of Jiffy cornbread.

John: Sounds like a shadow government conspiracy to me. If you can't buy it at the bodega, it doesn't belong in the bowl. Who will stand up for the Everyman?

I will.

It's on, my friend. Show your cards, and we'll compare recipes. The Internet—as with all things important—will decide.

JOHN’S TRIPLE-THREAT CHILI

Ingredients:
• 1 lb. each of ground beef, pork, and lamb (Three Meats)
• ¼ cup olive oil
• 4 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 1 ½ tbsp. chili seasoning
• 1 tsp. each of Sweet Hungarian Paprika, Smoked Spanish Paprika, Bradley Farms Paprika (three paprikas)
• Red pepper flakes to taste
• Kosher salt and pepper to taste
• 1 large Spanish onion, chopped
• 1 large green pepper, chopped
• 1 large red pepper, chopped
• 1 medium jalapeno, de-seeded and chopped
• 16 oz. of each: black beans, pinto beans, kidney beans (three beans)
• 2 28oz. cans whole or crushed San Marzano tomatoes
• Bay leaf
• Frank’s Red Hot, Sriracha, Tabasco to taste

• Fritos
• 2 cups grated cheese

(Serves 8)

Any good chili needs to start with meat! It's what's for dinner, and you might as well splurge while you can afford it. I recommend ground beef, pork and lamb, about a pound of each. I’ve used veal as well, but the lamb really adds a rich flavor that the veal just can’t. Plus, eating veal is mean?

Haul out a big honking stock pot and heat about 1/4 cup of olive oil. Drop a few cloves of chopped garlic into the oil over medium heat until aromatic. Toss the meat on top of that, along with the seasonings. I’m sure you have Lawry’s from the Piggly Wiggly laying around, but if you feel like an upgrade, both Fairway and Penzey’s have great spice options. A well-stocked spice cabinet is like a well-stocked liquor cabinet: both exist in my house.

Brown the meat but DO NOT drain the fat! The pork and lamb are pretty lean anyway, and the fat adds an indispensable flavor and depth.

Next, add a chopped Spanish onion—cannonball!—and some diced red and green pepper. But not too much. This is chili, not a salad. Incorporate the chopped veggies with the seasoned meat, add the chopped jalapeno and cook until they soften. You could honestly stop here and have a pretty decent burrito filling, but let’s proceed, shall we?

Now you are ready to add tomatoes. Did you know Italians never had tomatoes until they were brought back from America? Fuck yeah! So that gives you license to use any manner of packaged tomato products, including San Marzano.

I do know that any chili worth beans needs beans. Three types of beans to be exact: black beans, pinto beans and kidney beans. Feel free to mix-and-match with your favorite beans, cannellinis would be cool, even black-eyed peas for New Year’s Day. Dried beans are cool if you have the time to soak them overnight, but Goya canned beans are groovy as well. I’m brainwashed by Bloomberg to rinse my canned beans to cut down on the sodium, so I need something to replace the liquid from the cans. Enter beer. Of which you’ve already got copious amounts on hand, because, well, it’s October and it’s the best sports month of the year and you live close to Eagle Provisions.

Add the tomatoes, beans, beer and bay leaves to the pot and stir the hell out of it. Feel free to add your favorite flavor enhancers like Tabasco, Frank’s Red Hot, Sriracha or extra seasonings like red pepper flakes. Chili is awesome in that way: it can be tailored to the tastes of the individual. Your guests can also tart it up after serving, like a good Bloody Mary.

Let it all simmer for an hour or two to merge the flavors. If there’s too much liquid for your liking, you can simmer uncovered to let it reduce to the consistency you prefer.

When it’s ready to serve, line a bowl with Fritos. Do you know how hard it is to find Fritos in Brooklyn sometimes? Top the Fritos with generous helpings of chili, and add cheese. Last time I used Dubliner, which isn’t a traditional chili cheese like cheddar, but it melts and tastes awesome on chili.

Eat two bowls before unbuttoning your pants and settling into an uncomfortable, yet satisfied, coma on your couch in front of the TV. Save or freeze any leftovers: chili, like Jeff Bridges, gets even better with age. It also likes to be called The Dude.

BEN’S CHILI CON CULPABILIDAD BLANCA

Ingredients:
• 2 lbs. of oxtails
• 1 tsp. canola oil
• 1 large yellow onion, diced
• 1 medium green bell pepper, diced
• 3 tablespoons of homemade chili powder (recipe follows)
• ½ cup of homemade sofrito (recipe follows)
• bay leaf
• 1 shot of good tequila
• 1 ½ cups of water
• 1 ½ cups of chicken stock
• another shot of good tequila
• 1 wedge of Mexican hot Chocolate
• 1 tbs. of cocoa powder
• 1 pickled habanero pepper, slit lengthwise
• 2 tbs. of masa harina or other corn flour
• salt to taste
• the juice of 1 lime

(Serves 4)

This is kind of a long-haul, oxtails take some braising and defatting, but the lip-sticky goodness of all that gelatine more than makes up for the wait. I use a pressure cooker to shave some time off the process, but you can totally use a dutch oven if you don’t mind a 4-hour braise time.

Start with the fresh oxtails. Heat canola oil until shimmery on the bottom of a dutch oven or pressure cooker at medium/high. Add oxtails and spend about 9 minutes getting them good and browned on all sides. They should be pretty tame, now. Set aside.

Stir onions and peppers into pot, scraping up that oxtaily fond. When that’s getting transluscent, throw in the shot of tequila, then the sofrito and a bay leaf. After that’s given off some steam add the water and chicken stock, and put back the oxtails, with whatever liquid has transpired.

If you’re using a pressure cooker, batten it down and set it at high pressure (15 psi). When the little tab thingy pops up, reduce heat to low in steps. I usually go down to medium/low (about 4) when it reaches pressure, then down to low (say 2) 5 minutes later. That should keep the tab popped up; set the timer for 1 hour and 15 minutes and go watch the PBS NewsHour.

If you’re using the Le Creuset, bring it to a strong boil and then reduce to a mild simmer, think somewhere between Ray Suarez and Perry Como, mild but not medicated. You’ve got about four hours to kill. Go watch Martin Scorsese’s No Direction Home.

Now you should have a nice pot of braised oxtails in an oily brown fluid. Fish out the oxtails and put them into a separate bowl to cool. Discard bay leaf. Pour braising liquid into another container to cool. When they are no longer piping hot, cover both with plastic wrap and store in refrigerator overnight. This is the only way to reliably defat; I’ve never had any luck skimming something with this much collagen in it. Poor Meg Ryan.

What you should have now is a cold brown liquid with a perfect disc of beef tallow on top. Remove the tallow and keep it in a jar in the freezer; it’s great for making hash browns or home fries. Pour the brown liquid into a saucepan, add habanero and bring to a boil.

Use fingers to tear meat from oxtail bones onto a small plate. Try to make sure cartilage caps don’t wind up with the shredded meat. I do this by being proactive and nibbling off the caps myself and spitting them into the compost container when I’m done with them. It’s a Korean thing. I’m pretty sure Daniel Dae Kim does this, too. That’s why his hair is so curly.

Now for some chocolate. Take a single-serving Trivial Pursuit wedge of Mexican hot chocolate and flake it with a sharp knife and cut into a gritty pile. Add this to the boiling saucepan along with the cocoa powder and second tequila shot. Now add the corn flour/masa harina. It should thicken in just a few minutes.

Salt to taste, reincorporate the shredded tail meat and let that Michael Buble for just a few minutes more. Squeeze in the lime juice, serve with crispy corn tortilla ribbons, on fries, or on a cheeseburger. Now remember all the great things immigrants have done for America. Imagine Danny Trejo passing a bowl of lime wedges to Yo-Yo Ma as Edward James Olmos and Linda Ronstadt gently tinkle their wineglass charms and Alice Waters pours. Voila, dinner for my people!

Chili Powder

Ingredients:
• 4 or 5 dried ancho chiles (that’s actually redundant, anchos are always dried)
• 3 or 4 dried New Mexico chiles
• 3 dried guajillo chiles
• 3 dried cascabel chiles
• 3 tbs. whole cumin seeds
• 3 tbs. granulated garlic
• 2 tbs. Mexican oregano
• 2 tsp. smoked Spanish paprika

Preheat a large cast iron skillet over high heat. Remove stems and seeds from all chiles, and slice them into manageable strips, say about ¼ inch. In a couple of batches, pan roast chiles until quite dry and fragrant, set aside to cool. Do the same for cumin until they are an even toasty brown; you’ll know you’re done when the first seeds begin to pop. Let cool.

Now, again in batches, put a third of each ingredient into a blender and process to the consistency of hourglass sand. You can also use a spice grinder, just up the number of batches accordingly. You should end up with enough for this recipe plus about a cup. It stores well in an airtight jar, and comes in handy for soups and rubs.

Sofrito

Ingredients:
• a large onion, cut into 1-inch chunks
• 4 or 5 pepperoncini from a jar
• 6 cloves of garlic, peeled
• 2 pickled habaneros, stemmed and seeded
• 12 oz. grape tomatoes
• 1 large red bell pepper, cored, seeded and cut into 1-inch
• 1 bunch cilantro
• 5 leaves of culantro (optional, you can replace with a little extra cilantro if you can’t find culantro)

Put onion, peperoncini, garlic and habaneros in the bowl of a food processor; pulse a few times. Scrape down bowl and lock it down. Now let it run, and use chute to add remaining ingredients. You’re aiming for a pesto-like consistency.

It keeps for the better part of a week in the fridge, but I recommend scraping it into ice cube trays for freezing. I almost always have a freezer baggie filled with sofrito cubes on hand. A few cubes should deepen up the flavor of any soup or rice dish.

John Ore and Ben Choi saw TSOL open for X in the 1980s. Just thought you’d like to know.

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And sure, you could just drink the beers but perhaps you are also a person who likes a good recipe? Because if you’re a person like that, those stray beers might start talking to you as part of the whole Shining thing you’ve achieved and are all, “Make me into beer bread! Everyone loves a recipe with alcohol in it! BREADRUM! BREADRUM!" *makes creepy finger gesture*

Or maybe it’s just that beer bread can be as stupid easy to make as you want it to be, and it’s Fall and curling up with your needlepoint while a loaf of homemade bread bakes in your oven just sounds so cozy and delightful.

So shall we? Yes, let’s shall.

The first order of business is to get a big ol’ bowl, into which you should put these things. The goal here, besides putting beer inside you, is to end up with a product that looks like bread dough. Since beer comes in bottles, unless you live in a bar with taps and kegs (and, if you do, can I come live with you?), we’ll be working with a specific liquid measure. Let’s start here:

• 2 ½ cups flour (here you can go with white, wheat, or a mix-y-match-y of things, like maybe wheat-and-rye?) with some reserved
• 1 tablespoon sugar or honey
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt

Now stir that stuff up so it’s mixed together. If you want to get fancy, and by all means you should get fancy, look at you, you fancy thing!, you can add a tablespoon or so of a spice blend you like (I often use this CRAZY HOT stuff a friend bought off the Amish) or you could mix in some cheese, say about a half cup of it, or you could use your imagination! Hell, you’re already talking to the beer bottles, I know that brain of yours is capable of creative thinking!

All that’s left to do now is add the bottle of beer, and we are referring to a 12-ounce bottle of it, and you should do this slowly because you can’t possibly be so stupid as to not know what would happen if you furiously beat a bottle of beer into a dry mix that has leavener in it, right? (Just checking.) (Dummy.) Ooh also? The dummies among us probably need to be told that the type of beer used will affect the flavor of the bread. (The kooks have already been told that by the talking beer bottle.) I saw some flap recently about pumpkin beer (which, ew yes ew, sounds pretty vile) but actually might be pretty delish in beer bread? Think about it. Ooooh, you know what would be super cute? Use pumpkin beer and then top the bread with salted pumpkin seeds (and then you could also bake a few razor blades into it and give it out on Hallowe’en! Oh my God, no don’t do that).

So, once you have incorporated all the beer, you may find this a wet sloppy mess. Add flour until this resembles dough—something between zero, ½ and a whole cup of flour will make it dough-like. Use your best judgment! (Ha ha!) It should be neither super-sticky nor super-dry.

Pour the batter into a buttered loaf pan and bake at 375 for 45 minutes, checking after 30. If you want a crustier bread, spray it with water before and throughout, and/or put a roasting pan of ice and water in the bottom of the oven. If you want a shiny bread, brush the top of the dough with an egg wash (1 egg + 2 tablespoons of water). That’s it! I know, right? So stupid easy! And/or crazy easy!

Jolie Kerr isn’t even sure. Just... go with it.

Photo by freethehops.

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So much reconciliation happens over a good meal, when we live in the sensory moment and let past hurts drift into history. I am going to help you reclaim your dignity and trust by spending some time with tequila in the kitchen. The results will put you in a mind of Mom and home, rather than Mom would be ashamed and How will I get home?

Don’t jump immediately to the assumption that cooking with tequila means Mexican food. Tequila is a liquor, not a theme. And even if I wanted to steer you to Mexican cooking, I couldn’t teach you much. I have an enormous respect for the variety and complexity of Mexican food, and I’d be happier if you consulted an expert.

Sin embargo, in crafting a tequila-fortified meal, the old adage applies: “If it grows together, it goes together.” Many of the central ingredients and tastes of “Mexican” food (indulge the shorthand) belong in these recipes: acidic fruit and tomatoes, corn, herbs, mild cheese, and peppers both spicy and sweet. My goal is to help you cook, not force you to shop, so I assure you that you can do a lot with ingredients you have at hand no matter the grocery situation in your neighborhood.

No fevered hunts for the best tequila, either. Buy a bottle you’ll like sipping while you cook. I suggest cooking with tequila reposado, that is, tequila that's been aged a few months in oak. It retains the traditional vegetal tequila flavors but is a little sweeter and more wine-like, so it melds with other components better than unaged tequila (labeled blanco or silver). I chose Tequila Espolon because it had the least shameful/racist/douchey branding of any on the shelf. It turned out to be pretty good!

SAFE AND SWEET
A way to reunite with tequila without the risk of getting up to your old shenanigans is to do it during the day among friends who don’t know your embarrassing past. Tomorrow at work, invite some colleagues over to watch the Texas-Oklahoma game on Saturday&emdash;a frozen tequila dessert will be great during the second half (after nachos, of course, in the first half). Tequila goes so well with citrus juices and tart fruit purees, it requires almost no instructions at all to figure out how to make a lime- or pineapple-tequila sorbet. Here’s a recipe to build on. If you don’t have an ice-cream maker, put the mixture in a baking pan in the freezer, and stir it up with a fork every 20 minutes until it’s all frozen and slushy. (This won’t stay slushy forever, so make it Friday night.)

For something more adventurous, you can make a simple syrup with tequila and one of the “woodier” herbs (rosemary or thyme); you can use this to flavor anything from ice cream to buttercream to pound cake, substituting all or part of the sugar in a recipe. Of course, you already know about Margarita Cupcakes.

SIZZLE
Your most basic, minimal-prep use of tequila for dinner is in the sauté pan. A shot of tequila in there with fish, sliced skirt steak, or even firm veggies like green beans or bell peppers will come through very nicely. You can even flambé, though you won’t get that syrupy, reduced sauce you’d get from whiskey.

If you're going the vegetable route, you need to make sure there’s a good deal of fat in the pan. Tequila will play up some of the “green” and bitter flavors (in a good way!), but this needs to be balanced. I suggest sautéing in butter (rather than oil) and also crumbling some nice salty, mild cheese like queso fresco over the dish.

With a little more planning but a lot less effort, you can also marinade meat in tequila that you’ll later grill. A booze marinade is particularly good if you want to impart spiciness from, say, jalapeños into the meat, because capsaicin is soluble in alcohol and fat.

A simple tequila-and-fruit sauce will be great on sautéed or grilled meat or seafood. I made one with nectarines, rosemary and jalapeño. (NB: I wanted to use fresh cayenne but mine overstayed its welcome in the crisper, so I used jalapeño instead. As for the fruit, you could substitute anything tart and firm-but-not-hard, like plums or green mangoes.) Here’s how to do it: Reduce a cup of tequila over medium-low heat to about half. Meanwhile, soften a diced onion in another saucepan. Add two peeled, chopped nectarines to the onions to start them softening. Pour the tequila in with the fruit and add the chilis and herbs. You want to keep this on the heat until the fruit is pretty well cooked. Partially smash the resulting mixture with a wooden spoon before serving. This particular combination is great on crab cakes, which I served with spicy mashed turnips.

SAUCE
I promised that we wouldn’t dwell on dumbed-down Tex-Mex because tequila is more versatile than that, and frankly we don’t need to be dredging up any spring break memories you may have from San Padre Island.

So, remember how tequila’s “green” flavors benefit from fat? To play that up, you can make a creamy, mildly peppery sauce that is great with fried fish, chicken or pork.

Do you know how to make béchamel? Definitely memorize this, because it's very versatile. (I never know how much and where to cuss in a recipe, so please revise according to your own fucking preferences.)

1. Warm up a saucepan on a medium burner. Put two cups of milk in a glass measuring cup in the microwave for three minutes. (If you have no microwave, just do this in a separate pan. Bring it to a boil.)

2. Melt two tablespoons of butter. Wait for the foam to subside.

3. Sprinkle three tablespoons of flour over the butter, one tablespoon at a time, whisking between each. Make sure it gets very well combined. After the third tablespoon, keep whisking for about a minute. Let it get half a shade more golden so you can be sure the flour is cooking a bit. Nothing bad will happen if you let this darken a little, but the resulting flavor will be more gravy-like. (FYI, this is roux.)

4. Slowly pour the hot milk into the pan while whisking vigorously. It will thicken pretty quickly. Add a generous amount of salt (and white pepper if you have it). Don’t let it get too thick, which will happen if you keep cooking it or if you let it cool off. Keep it warm on a low burner or in the oven

Okay, so now that you can make a béchamel, you can modify it a zillion different ways. What I have done is softened diced poblano peppers in butter, reduced a cup of tequila by half, then added the tequila to the peppers and simmered them together for 10 minutes, then poured the mixture into the béchamel. This is not at all spicy, so a few shakes of Cholula bring it to life. I served the sauce over cornmeal-crusted fish with cumin-scented pumpkin on the side.

SUNSHINE
Nothing can help you recapture a wholesome, platonic friendship with tequila like having it for a civilized breakfast—and not in the “hair of the dog” sense. Tequila is definitely a late riser and doesn’t come easily to the morning meal, though you could overcome that resistance quickly and simply by pouring a shot into a pan of sausage hash.

A more adult approach to getting tequila at breakfast might be a tequila tomato sauce to serve with corn and a fried egg. The sugar from slowly stewed fresh tomatoes works into tequila’s woody, slightly sulfuric structure beautifully. Here’s how to make tequila tomato sauce—bear in mind that you could use dry white wine instead of tequila. Also bear in mind you'll need to make this in advance unless “breakfast” for you is in the middle of the afternoon.

1. Sauté three cloves of garlic in a thick layer of oil over medium heat.

2. Throw six chopped tomatoes in the pan. Do not peel or seed these tomatoes; you’ll lose flavor, and it’s not worth the effort. I like to add chopped oregano at this point, but parsley, tarragon or the traditional basil would be great, too. Sprinkle everything with salt.

3. Add 3/4 cup of tequila to the pan and reduce the heat to low. Simmer for 1-1/2 to 2 hours. Stir periodically, ensuring that nothing is sticking to the bottom of the pan.

4. After everything is really soft and soupy, put it all in a mesh strainer over a bowl. Use a rubber scraper to push it through. Tomato skins and some other undesirable bits will be left behind.

This weekend, I served this sauce with both grits and corn salad, though a reasonable person would have done one or the other. For the corn salad, I cut fresh corn off the cob, sautéed it in a little oil, squeezed a lime over it and crumbled queso fresco into the bowl. If you add a fried egg, don’t let it be too runny—you already have a sauce, and you don’t want a weird, goopy mess.

There should be no doubt about what is the perfect beverage to serve with this breakfast: Tequila Sunrise.

K. Emerson Beyer, environmentalist and gadabout, lives in Durham, N.C. and tweets as @patebrisee.

Thanks to Martin Solem for his experiments in tilt-shift photography.

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However.

While I may be a simpering twit, I’m also a touch competitive. So as this recipe unsharer went on and on and on about how she makes the BEST brownies and they’re like CRACK and everybody who has ever had them just RAVES about how GREAT they are, I sat on my barstool working myself into a silent rage.

And when I got home, several glasses of wine-with-ice deep, I hit Google like I’ve never hit Google before looking for a base recipe I could tinker with. I resolved to make replicating these brownies my mission in life.

I thought it would take years. I was willing to make that commitment if it meant that I could snatch the BAKER OF THE BEST EVER BROWNIES crown off her head and wear it atop my locks until the end of time.

I further resolved, in what will henceforth be known as the Royal Decree of HRH Jolie of The Most Glorious Empire of The Best Ever Brownie Bakers, that once the recipe was perfected I would share it with the world so everyone can make The Best Ever Brownies for their people. I just... do you think it would maybe be okay if I keep the crown?

Well, I won. And I'm keeping my vow. So here it goes.

Turn your oven to 350 degrees.

In a 3- or 4-quart saucepan, melt a stick-and-a-half of butter with 2 ounces of unsweetened chocolate. Since these are The Best Ever Brownies you should use the highest-quality chocolate (and butter!) that you can find, though I’ll whisper to you behind my hand that a batch I made using Baker’s, which is basically the Alpo of the unsweetened chocolate world, was met with oohs and aahs and a whole lot of paws surreptitiously darting toward the plate for just one more, I swear this is my last one OH MY GOD I CAN’T STOP WHAT IS IN THESE THINGS?!?

Once those two things are melted, turn the heat off and move the pot to a cold burner to let it cool down for a spell.

Now stir in the following things:

A heaping ¼ cup of cocoa powder
2 cups of sugar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup flour

When that’s all nicely mixed, pour the batter into a 8”x8” square pan that you’ve lined with greased foil such that the foil drapes over the edges of the pan.

That’s pretty much it, except for the secret part. The crack part. Have you guessed yet what it is?

It is salt.

But not just any salt. Maldon salt. Himalayan pink salt also works, as does Sel Gris. Kosher salt does not work; neither does table salt. You need rocks, Jenny from the block. About a teaspoon of ‘em, but kind of eyeball it, giving the top of the brownie batter a pretty good coating with the stuff. Once you’ve done that, put the pan in the oven, let everything bake for 30-35 minutes before cooling for one hour at room temperature, followed by one hour in the refrigerator. Cut them into 16ths.

Have you ever wondered what your friends look and sound like when they orgasm? Because fair warning: you’ll find out, and you should know that before you trot these babies out because it’s actually a really disturbing thing to know. (The silent ones freak me out the most.)

Jolie Kerr bakes the best-ever brownies and has the crown to prove it.

Photo by various brennemans.

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