When life gives you watermelons, make dragons
Often times when someone asks me about what I do and I start the whole spiel about loving to play with my food, I get one of two responses.
The first comes from people who assume that means I like experimenting with recipes. They immediately picture me in the kitchen, creating new dishes, flailing about with bizarre spices, and cooking things they probably wouldn’t touch in a million years. Wrong.
The second throws out the term “food art.” I suppose that’s closer considering some of the funky dishes I’ve made to look like random creatures, but when I food art, the above is what I picture.
That dragon above? THAT is art. In all senses of the word, the artist has created something magnificent. I’d be thrilled if I could even do a fraction of that.
No really, I’d be quite content just managing to cut a watermelon in half without creating a huge mess….
And this dude? He managed that with TWELVE watermelons and two pineapples…. and somehow created scales on each and every one of them without getting bored or distracted by kids to the point of saying “oh, nevermind, a 3-watermelon dragon is probably enough anyway.” Impressive.
How to make pepperoni healthier – Fry it! :P
Yes, the title sounds contradictory, but it makes sense, really. I don’t actually fry it until crispy or anything, but rather, heat it up just enough to drain off some of that grease.
Don’t worry. You won’t be draining off all the flavor either. It’s no different than blotting off some of the pools of fat sitting on top of your delivery pizza. Sometimes it’s great, but sometimes, there’s just too much and it pours off. Ew. This is the prevention method for that.
For starters, I pretty much always cut the pepperoni either in half of quarters like above, depending on what I’m using it for. This is especially true when I’m baking with it, so for casseroles, pizza rolls, breads, etc.
Not only does the end product feel like it has more pepperoni and is manageable to eat, but this lets me skip the annoying step of pulling apart each slice. Once cut, you can crumble a pile and they naturally fall apart for the most part.
Then toss in a hot skillet and let them heat until some of the edges start to get translucent. The aim isn’t to cook them, so if any edges start to brown, curl, or get crispy, pull it off the heat. You only want it warm.
Tilt your skillet and you’ll get an image like this:
Yum, right?
Last step, let it cool off some and continue draining a bit in some coffee filter. You could use paper towels, too, but that’s more likely to stick and filters fit small cereal bowls more easily anyway.
I have no idea just how much this cuts off the top of the pepperoni, but I do know that it makes me feel way less nauseous after eating way too much pepperoni pizza. :P
Recent Comments