Burgers and Texas Beer…hooray!

Ah.. burgers. Probably my favorite food. In the top 10 for sure. A juicy well cooked burger is pretty phenomenal with salty crispy fries on the side. Maybe a little dipping sauce for my fries….!

Also is there anything sexier than a pan heating and seeing that steam coming off it, waiting for a burger to hit it and hearing that sizzzzzzle?!

I guess it was time for us to do some more burgers! So we did 4 different burgers and 3 different tater tots and a fabulous new macaroni and cheese.  Aren’t you stoked? We also had a friend join us for this cookday.  So we all designed a burger! Err slider… we have huge appetites but even we aren’t able to eat 4 different burgers in a sitting, so we opted to make mini versions.

What’s on the menu?

Menu:

• Meatball Burger – Jake
• Macaroni and cheese burger -Jessica
• Southwestern Burger – Andria
• Gastro-Pub burger Me
• Pesto Tots
• Plain Tots
• Bacon cheese tots
• Hominy green chile macaroni and cheese

We started with the meatball burger. We bought some really nice freshly ground beef and pork at the meat market.  We did half ground beef and half pork for our meatball mix. We added a copious amount of freshly grated parmigiano reggiano and romano cheese, basil, oregano, egg and breadcrumbs.  Pretty much the way we always make our meatballs.  We instead of rolling into balls formed patties and set them to the side.

Pesto sounds like a perfect topping for this one! Pesto, roasted red bell peppers, mozzarella cheese and arugula all piled onto hunks of garlic bread!

You definitely want to try that! So we ended up adding 1 more thing to that burger. We wanted something “pickle” like.  Jessica had brought over one of those little crudite trays that she found for like $2 or something and in it there were some cucumbers and I had just bought these super adorable mini yellow tomatoes. SO a relish was born. I made a simple vinaigrette using rice wine vinegar to keep it light.  It was so good we ate most of it before we even topped the burgers!

With all that done we started working on our macaroni and cheese. Jessica had this macaroni and cheese at a restaurant in Dallas.  It was a white cheese with hominy and green chiles.

I started by making a roux and adding whole milk until everything thickened up.  I then added the already roasted green chiles and a poblano.  I let that simmer away for a bit to incorporate the flavors from the peppers. I then stirred in extra sharp white cheddar and some gouda cheese!  Let that get all melty and then stirred in the hominy. We mixed mini penne pasta into the cheese and poured the mixture into a casserole dish.  Smothered it in breadcrumbs. Baked in the oven @400 for about 30minutes.

I maybe forgot to mention we are all drinking our favorite Texas beers today too! The one pictured with the lovely macaroni and cheese is from Four corners brewery out of Dallas. It’s made with local honey. Definitely worth a try!

Our next burger was the reason we made the macaroni and cheese! Yup, you knew it was going to happen! We took some of that awesome ground beef made some patties. Added muenster and bacon.  Jess said it was perfection on a bun!

So onto my burger. So mine is a remake of burger I used to make in chi-town. I was the Executive chef at a gastropub in Wrigleyville, near cubs stadium! We sold a lot of these. So I wanted to make these for the holyshitnomz peeps.

I start by roasting garlic in the oven drizzled with some olive oil, when this is done and cooled off I mash it into some mayo that I mix with parmesan and lots of black pepper. This makes “Aioli” or what we used to  call crack sauce. This is one of the best things to dip your fries into you have ever had. Set this to the side for now.

Next step I think every burger needs a pickle element. Something to break into that juicy deliciousness. For this burger I was really inspired by my Texas roots and love of Mexican food.  Pickled red onions are the bomb.  There are several ways to make them. I was in a hurry so I used the stove top method.

So I top the burgers with the onions, bacon, extra extra sharp cheddar, back in chicago I used to top with an ancho chile jam… but I wanted to do something slightly different and picked Jufran.  Jufran Banana Sauce, its a brand of banana ketchup made in Pasig City, Philippines shown with a plate of plantain tostones. Banana ketchup or banana sauce is a popular Philippine condiment made from mashed banana, sugar, vinegar, and spices. I love LOVE this stuff. Its awesome on fries, burgers, chicken tenders..whatever really.  Try it! I also put a layer of the aioli on the bottom of the bun and arugula.

For our final burger we did a Southwestern style. We topped with monterrey jack, avocado, tortilla strips, and a cotija cilantro dressing we picked up at the magical HEB.

 

Our tots were really pretty simple. We just topped them with some of the pesto leftover from the burgers and mozzarella, roasted peppers and heated them up in the oven. Duly note how adorable the mini tots are! We also topped some with cheddar and bacon. We made some sriracha ketchup for dipping.

 

What will you put on your burger? Your tots? Share! 😀 😀 😀

 

Mexi-Asian! Lo-Mein Burritos!

Lo-mein happened in the holyshitnomz kitchen!  As you know by now we love frequenting Asian markets and cooking Asian fusion food. We found a few new ones out in Arlington that are really super awesome. One is specifically Thai and the other is chinese. It’s funny though we went to 2 different markets and could not find Lo-Mein noodles or even the wheat noodles that are used for them. So we opted for using some good ol fettuccini. It’s not exactly lo-mein but will work.

What is lo-mein? Lo mein (Chinese: 撈麵) is a Chinese dish with wheat flour noodles. It often contains vegetables and some type of meator seafood, usually beef, chicken, pork, shrimp or wontons. It can also be eaten with just vegetables.

Great, sounds wonderful.  So now we have lo-mein.. what should we put in it?

We opted for a veggie version because we are adding general tso’s chicken to our burritos.  Peppers, onions, bok choy and rainbow carrots. Rainbow carrots are awesome. I got mine at Trader Joe’s. The purple ones are absolutely beautiful!

We made the traditional lo-mein sauce of soy, sugar, garlic, sesame oil, and ginger. Keeping it simple. We also made some quickie General Tso’s chicken.  To throw in our burritos.

We set all this to the side and started working on our Kimchi fries! Jake and I had these at a food truck park when we first moved back to Texas.  We fell in LOVE!!!! Spicy, sweet, sour, savory everything works together so well!

We started by making a small batch of Korean beef bulgogi, we bought it pre-marinated so we just needed to heat it up real quick before adding it to our fries.  We love pepper jack so that’s the kind we got for the fries! Sweet bulgogi and pepper jack should be pretty awesome together.

We debated what kind of fry to layer all this yumminess into and picked out some crinkle cut fries. Figured all the ingredients will get all stuck into the grooves so you get a bite of everything on each fry!

We baked the fries for a bit before starting to layer all the ingredients. Kimchi (we bought bottled), white queso, the pepperjack, cilantro, and the bulgogi. Threw them back in the oven.  When they were done we sprinkled them with more cilantro, crushed peanuts, and a sriracha mayo.

While the fries were cooking we quickly threw together the burritos and a quick Thai ground chicken dish for tacos and a pineapple salsa.

We don’t have an official taco holder so we tried using my pan lid organizer. It kinda sorta worked. We’ll keep trying. Jake got the idea of warming tortillas in the oven lol…

We topped the Thai tacos with a little peanut sauce.  We also had a little salsa a friend of Jessica’s made. Super good!!

So these were our final products! What do you think?

Happy New Year! (I know, I know we are late)

Happy new year! We celebrated with a new year’s day brunch. We started with mimosa’s that we made with tangerine juice, absolutely delightful!

Our menu was:

1. Waffle biscuit and sausage gravy
2. candied bacon
3. mini quiche
4. Dutch Baby with ginger berry compote
5. Yogurt parfaits
6. chili powder spiked home fries

Nothing super crazy or fancy just good brunch food! Everything was absolutely delish! We even had friends join us. It was a really fun afternoon!

Happy New Year everyone! Let’s make 2016 Delicious! 

Tex-Mex or Mex-Tex?

Tostados and Taquitos!

Howdy! Tostadas are awesome… but what are they?  The official definition of a tostada is:   “a Mexican deep-fried tortilla topped with a seasoned mixture of beans, ground meat, and vegetables. ” We see these all the time on every Mexican/Tex-Mex combo platter ordered in restaurants. Always kinda boring… never exciting. So let’s change that. These things have been long neglected.

When you think about taquitos what’s the first thing that comes to mind? 7-11 or those weird ones you get in the frozen department of your grocery store? I love these things don’t get me wrong but I think much like the tostadas problem we should improve on these items. No more boring bland taquitos I say!  What is a taquito some of you may ask.. “a Mexican dish consisting of a small tortilla rolled around a filling of meat and cheese and deep-fried.”! When ever I have ordered these in a restaurant they are always so dry and I dunno just not good. Not saying there are not some good ones out there just the majority..well suck.

First we started by buying our shells and tortillas. We would have made them but we wanted to concentrate on the fillings and toppings. We went to our nearby Mexican grocery store where they make their tortillas fresh. The packages we picked up were so fresh they were still hot! Gotta love that! I’d say that’s a giant perk of living in Texas. We also grabbed some produce items and some seasonings.  Keep in mind that shopping in your local ethnic stores is way more affordable than your regular grocery store.  We walked out with 4 bags of stuff for less than 12 dollars. Good food doesn’t have to be expensive!!!

For today’s cook day there were 3 of us as usual in the kitchen so we each designed a tostada and a taquito each.

Let’s start with Jake’s in typical Jake fashion he opted to make a bbq chicken tostada. First he rubbed the chicken with some Memphis style rub that I had made for a previous dish.  He then just cooked it through in a saute pan and then sliced it up.

Next we cut up some bell peppers, we bought a bag of those mini ones just for the fun of it and figured the small slices would look great on the tostados.

He decides that the rest of his tostada would be refried beans and cheese, then drizzled with a little bbq sauce.

On to mine! Being from New York I love putting apples in foods that you don’t expect it. One of my favorite pairings is apples and steak. I know most people think of apples with pork.. but trust me.. this works! As far as steak goes I’m a ribeye girl myself. How about you?   I just happened to have a good sized hunk of ribeye in the fridge from dinner the night before.  So I sliced it and reheated it low and slowwwly in bacon grease and apple cider.

 

While the steak is warming up I chopped up some apples and threw them into the skillet when I took the steak out.  I sprinkled the apples with brown sugar and a shot of bourbon and let them caramelize.  Being that I am pairing steak with apples I think its only natural that I top this beautiful tostada with some super extra sharp cheddar cheese, made in NY of course.  Before I put the cheese on this I top with a little cinnamon ginger pecan butter I made.

Jessica’s tostada was super fun! She opted for a triple layer with everything in it.  Each layer had each meat, cheese, and toppings. With extra extra cheese!!

Taquito time! Again 3 different ones! Let’s start with Jessica this time!

She found this awesome corn and black bean salsa at Trader Joe’s cowboy caviar or something like that.  She mixed it into some cream cheese and shredded  cheese. Slathered it on and rolled it up!

For mine I took more steak, cream cheese, blackberry jam, jalapenos and more shredded  cheese.

Jake’s was a bbq chicken pork chili refried bean combo.  Into the oven everything goes!

Why don’t you try making your own? We LOVED ours! Don’t forget the queso and guacamole for dipping!!

What’s better than Thanksgiving? LEFTOVERS!

So as you know the holyshitnomz kithens had their own Thanksgiving feast. So, now we were stuck with lots of leftovers. What to do? what do?  Obviously we need to make some awesome sandwiches! Because really isn’t that what we all look forward to?  Everything all piled up on some awesome bread..probably smothered in gravy.. yowza!

What are some of your favorite things to do with leftover Thanksgiving yumminess?  I know some people make mash up bowls and casseroles. I’m all about a mash up bowl but we wanted to do some more interesting holyshitnomz style eats!

If you read our Thanksgiving post then you know what we have to work with. Your normal leftovers.

We started by choosing what kind of sandwiches to make.  We decided to do a few different ones. Obviously waffles as bread is in the works.

We started with our leftover mashed potatoes and whipped them up into waffle batter!  We added eggs, flour, baking powder, some salt and pepper until it resembled batter.

 

We set this to the side to rest while we worked on getting everything else together. Obviously we have to whip up some bacon!

 

Next we start talking about the macaroni and cheese and the leftover stuffing.  Jessica requests we make some macaroni balls. I think about the leftover stuffing and risotto balls pop into my head so obviously stuffing balls are about to happen.

I took the stuffing and mixed it with some egg and started shaping balls in the palm of my hand filling it with various leftovers like green bean casserole. cranberry sauce, cheese….! Then shape them into the balls covering the fillings then rolling in breadcrumbs to seal them up. We opted to shallow fry these so they wouldn’t break open.

I took cranberry sauce and spooned some dijon mustard and honey into it to make a dipping sauce! Turned out pretty good! We also heated up some leftover gravy for a dip.

Back to waffles and sandwiches.  So we poured the batter into the waffle iron and our first round didn’t turn out very good. So we tried again adding more batter this time! Huzzah! We got it!  We also tried out some stuffing but our stuffing was too chunky and it didn’t quite waffle but the crispy parts were awesome…

We made 3 different sandwiches. A turkey club, your typical everything leftover thanksgiving sandwich and a california style grilled cheese.

Take a look at our awesome appetizer platter!!

Tell us about what you did with your leftovers 😀

Turkey day!!

So the holyshitnomz rew got together for a later thanksgiving dinner! Just a few friends got together for a yummy dinner. Everyone brought a dish to pass and and it was a delightful day! Did you enjoy your turkey day? I know we a

re late posting. It was a busy time! Wait until the next post where we use our leftovers in fun ways!!

Menu:

1. Apple and citrus roasted turkey
2. Brussel sprout gratin
3. Buttermilk mashed potatoes with chives
4. That 1950s green bean casserole
5.  Sausage stuffing
6. Jessica’s famous bacon extra creamy macaroni and cheese
7. Rolls
8. Bourbon Apple cider gravy
9. cornflake and pecan sweet potatoes
10. Jalapeno cranberry chutney

11. Mini pies!! cinnamon roll apple, bourbon pecan, and plain ol american apple!

Everything was absolutely amazing. Wait until our next post with the fun and quirky things we did with leftovers!! Hope ya’ll had a great holiday. What did you eat???

We entered a contest!

“The Chefs’ Roll Art of the Plate Contest sponsored by Cardinal International family of brands: Chef & Sommelier, Arcoroc, and Tiger-Glass had hundreds of chefs from across the US participate to receive a free dish, or canvas if you will. Once received, they plated their most stunning dish and entered a photo of it via our online contest.”

We entered! We received a bowl and a wine glass in the mail to use. We got the tall white bowl on the top row.  Since we are kinda casual we weren’t sure what to make. So we brainstormed and chose a soup.  But in typical Holyshitnomz fashion we had to make something else too. What goes better with soup than grilled cheese sandwiches? Nothing my friend.

Menu:

• Thai butternut squash peanut soup 
• brie and pear bagel sandwich
• Extra sharp cheddar apple bagel sandwich  

We started with the soup.  We were pretty stoked to be making something different.  A little lighter than our usual menus! This soup is full of yummy ingredients like butternut squash, carrots, onions, garlic, and spices!!

After getting all those delish vegetables prepped we sweated them out in a pan with extra virgin olive oil. Get all those good flavors going.

After the veggies were getting going we added some Madras curry powder, cayenne, and cumin! Always cook your curry for a few in the oil to bring the full flavors out! No bland curry here!!

Then we added the broth and the squash and carrots then it was simmer time!

The soup needed to simmer for about 45 minutes. So during that time we started the prep work on our bagel-whiches.

Maple black peppered bacon from HEB is pretty good! The Tillamook extra sharp is pretty awesome.. I mean seriously awesome if you like the crystals and crumbly kind of cheddar with a sharp taste.. definitely try it!

Putting the bagels together with all the yummy ingredients was pretty fun!

The soup at this point is almost done. We puree it and start setting up for plating!

Ready to see how we plated everything? 😀

Tah-Dah! Below is our entry photos! Everything was really really good! But we are ready to go back to our holyshitnomz style!

What do you think? Pretty enough to win?

 

Hot and ready…

 

Do you daydream about pizza? Do you wish every meal included some hot cheesy meaty doughy goodness? Join the club!

We here at holyshitnomz definitely agree pizza is supreme! I know we have dabbled in a little pizza topping items here and there but we have yet to make a pizza! Jake and I are from NY and I lived in chicago for several years so I think I know quite a bit about GOOD pizza. Jess is just obsessed with it.

Jake and I found this awesome Italian market in Dallas Jimmy’s food store and while we were there picking things up we found pizza dough “imported” from New York and just had to try it.  We called Jessica and told her about it and thus pizza day was decided!

But now we have to figure out what kinds to make! Pepperoni? Meatsa Meatsa? XXX-cheese? Potato? Breakfast?

• Quad meat with sausage, pepperoni, meatballs and bacon
• Pesto Alfredo bacon and veggies
• Super duper hot sausage
• Breakfast

We started by cooking up some Italian sausage, peppers and onions, and bacon!

Next we worked on our sauces. We made sausage gravy for the breakfast pizza, basil pesto alfredo and  I had some marinara in the freezer that we took out.

Now that we had all our components ready we started working on the dough!

Alright let’s top these babies!! We have chicago style giardiniera, cherry peppers,  pepperoni, lots of cheese from Trader Joe’s (the quattro formaggio is freaking awesomeness), eggs, and all those sexy meats!

Lets do this!!

Into the oven they go!!

Are you starving and browsing pizza hut yet? Hahaha… get ready to drool! Finished pizza!!!

Finito!

Ima go eat some more pizza!!!!

Time to make the donut…burgers!

Donuts! Donuts! Donuts! Burgers!! Yeahhhhh! Another breakfast day at the holyshitnomz kitchen! Are you like super stoked or what?  A cat wearing donuts? Uh if you don’t know Ms. Jessica owns a lovely kitten creature named Gizmo. Who is quite the celebrity…seriously… has his own instagram and everything! Speaking of instagram.. do you follow ours?? Holyshitnomz follow us! There are always more photos and stories there!! Sometimes even posted DURING cooking day!

Well let’s get started! Todays menu consists of donut burgers, French toast rollups, one bite burritos, bagel and donut skewers  and breakfast fries!

Our main players today! Donuts from a bakery nearby.. we went with the glazed variety. Our thoughts were that glazed donuts are kind of a blank canvas. White bread for the french toast rollups and Idaho potatoes for fries!

Let’s start with the rollups! We took white bread and sliced off the crusts, then we took a rolling pin and flattened each piece out. We made 3 different rollups. Blackberry jam and cream cheese,  “popper”, and a cinnamon sugar.

As you will see above we dipped the rollups in your standard french toast egg mixture and sprinkled them with cinnamon and sugar.  Then fried them in butter in a pan just like you would if they were toasts!

Moving on to the breakfast fries… fresh cut fries with sausage gravy!!

So for the fries we smothered them in sausage gravy and well… ya know..  cheese!! Baked them off in the oven until everything was melty.

So for the burgers we took sausage and ground beef, cheese, peppers and onions, and our all time favorite pig candy bacon put these on the donuts and grilled them to get them warm and toasty!

So, for appetizers (as if we needed them) we took everything bagels and quartered them with bacon slathered with green onion and  chive cream cheese and skewered them! We also took donut holes (they always come free with donuts here)more cheese and bacon threw those on skewers too!

Our 2nd appetizer was 1 bite burritos! We filled tortillas (HEB’s 50/50 tortillas, half flour half corn BEST TORTILLAS EVER!) that we used a cookie cutter to make irles that fit in a muffin tin with eggs, sausage, peppers and onions topped with cheese! Then baked off in the oven 😀 😀 😀

These were pretty freakin’ good! We served them with a little apple and jalapeno salsa!

This was an awesome breakfast cook day! 😀

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Egg Rolls and Nachos whaaat?

 Doesn’t everyone love Asian food? Egg rolls? Stir fries, awesome noodle dishes, unique vegetables?  So many options for putting foods together.

In our usual Holyshitnomz fashion we are not capable of leaving well enough alone.

So today we bring Asian Fusion Street food cook day! Huzzah!

Let’s start by talking about the ingredients we used for this cook day! We had an adventure day at an amazing Asian market out in Grand Prairie, TX Hong Kong Market. We bought a plethora of noodles, vegetables, and wrappers for next to nothing! Gochanng is an awwwwesome Korean chili paste that is spicy and sweet all at the same time. This stuff is way more awesome than Srirachacha. At least I think so.  Here’s a look at everything we will be working with today!

Now that you know what we are working with lets start with our menu!

So… like you guys know we love nachos right? So obviously Asian nachos were just going to happen! Right? I mean really who are we kidding?

So for the nachos we opted to use wonton skins as our chips.  We fried them lightly until super crispy.

We did triangles so they would look like tortilla chips. Delish!

It took us a little bit to decide what we would use as toppings for these nachos. Eventually we picked egg roll filling! Like the ones you get at the buffet that you eat too many of and regret it later… lol

For the filling we took cabbage and shredded it, carrots,  and made chinese BBQ pork stir fried it all together and topped our wonton triangles with it.

We definitely needed to do some cheese sauce and some kind of sauce so we opted for a nacho cheese sauce, mozzarella and a sriracha  crema. We also wanted something more to get that I just ate at the chinese buffet feeling.  White steamed rice!  For a crunchy topping we went with chipotle peanuts!

You want some don’t you? I have to say I think this was 1 of my favorite things we have made. Definitely worth the work!

So on to dish #2 we love love love pad thai, we also LOVE egg rolls.  PAD THAI EGG ROLLS!!

So we started by making pad thai noodles with some chinese 5 spice grilled chicken (5 spice is just one spice not 5 different ones combined). To make pad thai noodles you have to soak them in warm water before cooking them.  We ran out of bowls so we had to use a roasting pan haha! The noodles we bought were like $1.19 at the Asian market. Seriously shop there! We just used a bottled pad thai sauce to save time.  So in the egg rolls we rolled up the noodles, more peanuts, bean sprouts and some of the chicken.  Then deep fried them to golden brown and yummy. Not the prettiest things (we need to work on our rolling) but so good!

So I dunno about where you are but the Thai restaurants here have these things called cheese rolls. Basically they are a cream cheese egg roll.  You know we had to make a version of that. We opted to turn these into popper egg rolls. cream cheese, jalapeno and cheddar cheese.  Want a great superbowl appetizer? Make these babies!

So we also made some spring rolls with fresh rice wrappers but I’m going to be honest.. we need some more work with those lol!!

Lastly we threw together a veggie stir fry and a little green papaya salad just because!

I hope you enjoyed today’s cook day as much as we did!! Explore your Asian market and see what you find!!