When Knitting Was a Manly Art

I love to cook.. I’ve spent the whole day in the pizza kitchen cooking for other people and since I got off early tonight, I decided to cook a quick and easy dinner.

German Shepherd’s Pie… Sauerkraut, Kielbasa and mashed potatoes.
I’ve got a big pyrex casserole dish and in it I place 4lbs of a good bagged sauerkraut, drained in a colander. Mix in a nice sized bunch of green onions, sliced thin. About 3 tablespoons of brown sugar on top of the sauerkraut. I usually slice the kielbasa thick and brown the sausage than place it on top of the kraut. Then mashed potatoes spread over the top — I usually cheat and use potatoes flakes — and then Parmesan spread over top. Oven preheated to 350F and pop it in for about 55 minutes, until top is light brown and kraut is bubbling. Yum…

Eggs — Thanks to Mark Bittman and Alton Brown I can now cook the Perfect™ fried egg. The secret is low heat. On my stove, I set the burner at *about* three (range of 1-10). Heat pan for about 5 minutes and add a small amount of salted butter (salted butter provides all the salt I need for eggs). If it sizzles, it’s hot enough. If the butter starts to brown, you’ve got too much heat. I crack the eggs into little pyrex dishes we got for other purposes. This allows me to dump both eggs into the pan at the same time and no worries about broken yolks. Preset your timer to 3 minutes. Once eggs are in the pan I like a little fresh cracked pepper and place a lid on the fry pan and start timer. Don’t peek… If you’ve hit the sweet spot, you will have two perfectly fried eggs. Tender, whites done and just enough loose yolk to dip your toast into. If you didn’t hit the sweet spot, the yolks will probably be completely set, but the eggs are still pretty good and you can make adjustments the next time.

Food related — sort of… This could be the start of a hectic couple of weeks. We’ve got a young cook who is most certainly going to be fired before the start of next week. He’s one of three kitchen closers (myself and the owner’s son are the other two) and already his imminent loss has me working an 8am-6:30pm shift on Sunday. Sigh… Just when I think things are settling down…

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