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by Katt Kasper

A New Tradition: Mock Holiday Borscht

The great thing about being an adult is that you’re free to either continue the traditions of your past, or to create totally new ones of your own design. I’ve started one that I call the “Mock Holiday.” It’s usually held the week after an actual holiday because it’s cheaper to rent costumes and they’re more available. Costumes, you say? Well of course! Holidays should be festive, and besides, it’s always better to overindulge and possibly have the contents of your just-eaten dinner magically reappear, while wearing someone else’s clothing. Our mock holidays are always planned around a lavish dinner prepared and contributed to by each member of the family. And when I say family, I mean a twisted group of like-minded acquaintances that meet on an annual basis to dine, drink and celebrate each others’ company, always at the expense of the poor bastard who has to host it at their place. Some of our past Mock Holidays have included a ‘Zombie Thanksgiving’ where each participate had to dress up in full pilgrim attire while sporting their best white-faced, brain craving makeup; ‘Super Hero Trans-Gender Christmas’ where everyone arrives dressed as their favorite opposite-sex comic book crusader, (you should have seen my She-Hulk); and our ‘Easter Playboy All-Nighter’ where all of the guys dressed in pajamas and smoking jackets, and the girls dress up as….bunnies!

Our one rule about following a traditional holiday with a mock holiday is that we can’t have traditional food like turkey for Thanksgiving or ham for Easter. Our Mock Holidays are just an excuse to get together and eat copiously, so it’s up to the current host to decide the menu. ‘Zombie Thanksgiving’ featured deep-dish pizzas while ‘Easter Playboy All-Nighter’ had lobster thermidor. Our only tradition is to be untraditional!

This weekend is no exception. To celebrate ‘Slave Labor Day’ (which is the buzz-kill of all holidays as it marks the end of summer), forget about brats and burgers and say hello to a traditional Russian feast featuring ice cold vodka, borscht and beef stroganoff! Why Russian? Hell, why not? Actually it’s where my finger landed when I closed my eyes and picked a volume from my cookbook library. And that’s the reason why I’m including my borscht recipe. It’s a little untraditional as I like to sear my beef cubes prior to boiling my stock, but then that seems to be the central theme here. So go forth and celebrate ‘Slave Labor Day’ in style! And help me make a decision here; should I go as a Chinese railroad laborer or an Egyptian pyramid builder?

Katt’s Borscht

by Katt Kasper

Cooking with Booze: Beer-Battered Baja Fish Tacos

Inebriated……clobbered……blitzed……hammered……obliterated……tanked……soused……ripped…..oh, sorry. I was just looking at some pictures of past dinner parties that I’ve hosted. And I’ve made a shocking realization—my friends can’t hold their liquor!

I don’t know why it’s taken me this long to figure that out, considering that on two separate occasions my mailbox ended up on the hood of someone’s car shortly after the conclusion of my party. Or the time that one of my friends unwillingly used the sprinklers on my lawn as his alarm clock. (He still made it to work on time. Air traffic controllers start pretty early around here.)

Could it be that I’ve missed the warning signs in the past? I thought those Christmas card mug shots were pretty funny. And if the guy on the corner doesn’t like people driving across his lawn, he ought to put up a fence! Could it be that we’re just getting older, slowing down, becoming (dare I say it?)….responsible?

Now that most of my friends and I are in our mid to upper fifties, I guess that a little easing up should be expected. Some of us are on our second or third spouse, hip, shoulder or knee. Could that piece of charcoal that passes as our liver be next? Does alcohol compliment food, or the other way around? What was I talking about……?

Oh yeah, booze……hooch……giggle juice……rotgut……moonshine……grog……sauce…..god, my mouth is watering. Man, I need a drink. And some food. Oh yeah, food! THAT’S what this piece is supposed to be about. Food that soaks up booze. Fried food, like fish, which I hear is good for your brain, although I can’t remember who told me that. Fish tacos are not only fried, but they’re even MADE with booze. So here’s a recipe that covers all the bases and still gives you a good dose of omega-3s, which the brain cells that aren’t slaughtered by the alcohol will be very happy to receive.

Katt’s Baja Brain Boosters

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by Katt Kasper

I Are Sophisticated

So-phis-ti-ca-tion. [suh-fis-ti-key-shuhn]. The art of becoming less naïve and more refined. The quality of refinement—displaying good taste, wisdom and subtlety rather than crudeness, stupidity and vulgarity. To become more worldly through cultivation or experience. To….

Ah, who am I kidding? I got nunna dat. I’m about as sophisticated as a Pop Tart. And just as square. Like a lot of you I sometimes pretend, but eventually I get found out. Like the time that I ordered the Trout Almandine special, and once the waiter placed it in front of me I asked him where they hide the tartar sauce. Sophistication always looks good, but sometimes it’s a lot of hard work. Take Beef Wellington. I’ve made this dish twice. It’s a half-day event. And each time that I served it to my sophisticated friends, they went bat-shit crazy. Couldn’t get enough, they said. I on the other hand, couldn’t wait to go out and get a Quarter Pounder with cheese.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate the finer things, it’s just that sometimes all of the extra hard work and cost just doesn’t seem worth it. I wanna be sophisticated, I just don’t wanna work too hard at it. Anyway, I recently had the need to provide a high-end breakfast for a special ‘friend’ that unexpectedly spent the night. A couple of eggs over easy and some Jimmie Deans just wasn’t gonna cut it. I needed sophisticated but do-able. And I just happened to have the perfect recipe. I call it, “The Morning After” breakfast. It also works for Mother’s Day and special occasions. Throw back a couple of Mimosas while you scarf it down and you’ve got the perfect start to your day. And if there’s an MMA bout on cable, it’s like Christmas morning!

The beauty of this dish is that it doesn’t require any special knife stills. If you can hack up some vegetables and walk away with all of your fingers still attached, you can make this dish. The hardest part is getting the eggs into a bowl without breaking the yolk.

Morning After Eggs

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by Katt Kasper

Bread Porn (Literally)

I was thinking the other day about my first time. I was young and inexperienced. She was much older and had an intimidating reputation. The ladies in town used to point and talk about her in hushed tones, but she didn’t mind. She was confident in her skills and she told me that she didn’t care what anyone thought. She did it purely for the pleasure.

When I showed up at her place I was surprised to see that she had everything laid out and ready. There was more to this than I’d imagined, but she assured me that I needn’t worry.

“I’ll take it slow” she purred. It all came together remarkably quick and before I knew it she gently took me by my hands. “I want you to do this” she said. “You need to be forceful and firm. Work it between your fingers. Here, let me show you.” Kneading, massaging, and pulling, her strong hands working their magic while I took it all in. Then, it was my turn. “Don’t be afraid to get a little rough” she cooed. “Be aggressive!”

Just as I started to feel confident she stopped and looked me in the eyes. “Now I want to put it someplace warm and watch it rise.” She poured oil into her hands and rubbed them together. “Once I’m finished we’ll cover it and let it rest. Then, when it’s ready I want you to use yours hands one more time, just like I showed you.” I was eager, and after what seemed like an eternity she finally said “It’s time!” I was surprised when I looked down to see that it had doubled in size. And I’ll admit that she took my breath away when she punched it down and slapped it on the counter top. “Now we’re close!’ she excitedly said. It was amazing to see how she pinched, pulled and rolled it under her palms, preparing it for its final destination. “Are you ready?” she teased. I nodded. “Then do it! Put it in!’ she cried!

I don’t know who’s a sicker puppy; me for writing this garbage or you for reading it! But hey, how many boring ‘How to Make Bread’ recipes have you had to endure? At least this kept your attention.

Bread Porn

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by Katt Kasper

Friday Fuck-Up: The Gremlin Incident

The kitchen Gremlin. I have one. And he only makes his presence known when I’m cooking for company. I do occasionally like to cook outside of my comfort zone, and in the past I’ve discovered new dishes and taste combinations that I hadn’t expected, and was so blown away that I couldn’t wait to master and introduce them to my family and fellow foodies. But then, HE appears and all hell breaks loose!

I have two dishes that I have previously produced in world-class fashion and couldn’t wait to share with others. One is the classic béarnaise sauce. I loves me some steak, and I can’t think of a more perfect, decadent accompaniment than a just-made, thick, buttery béarnaise. The first three times that I attempted this sauce it came out perfect! I couldn’t wait to have the gang over for a French gorgy, and watch their eyes roll up into the backs of their heads after they took their first bite of a perfectly cooked dry-aged filet mignon smothered in the crack cocaine of butter sauces.

But the Gremlin had other ideas and decided at the last minute that a greasy version of egg drop soup would (for some evil reason), be the only sauce that came off my cook top. A hurried second attempt produced a scrambled egg dish that looked like yellow cottage cheese. What the hell? I had this down! I could feel the ghost of Julia Child bitch slapping the back of my head as I whipped up a sorry version of a Dijon crème sauce in its place.

My second Gremlin dish is one that I initially tried on a dare.

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by Katt Kasper

Cooking with Grandma

Whenever I watch the investigative crime show CSI, I always stop and think, “This is nothing! If that team wants to solve a REAL mystery, they ought to try cooking with my Grandmother!” Hey Grissom, what’s the difference between a smidgen and a pinch? And you guys are pretty liberal with that Fingerprint Dust. You ever heard the term, “Waste not, want not”?

In his cooking books, Paul Prudomme lovingly describes how as a child he worked at his mother’s side, learning her methods and techniques, while proclaiming his gratitude and love for her guidance and patience. My grandmother on the other hand, graduated with honors from the chain smoking, martini drinking, ‘No Measuring’ school of cooking, where the term “A little bit of this and a little bit of that” was the universal code for “I don’t know how much I used, so stop asking!” My earliest cooking memories involved my grandmother’s instruction on how to work the wheel of her Zippo in order to light the next filter-less Chesterfield. These little, white fire sticks, I learned, are essential time-monitoring devices, and were relied heavily upon during the preparation of a dish. “Two more smokes and that bread will be done rising!” she’d tell me.

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by Katt Kasper

The Price of Passion

I consider myself a passionate guy. I’m passionate about food, architecture, cooking, the list goes on and on. Having many different passions makes for an interesting, vibrant life. However, combining too many of them at once can come back and bite you in the ass. Case in point; I have two very successful friends who are a same-sex couple and work in the entertainment industry. Their passion is architecture and remodeling, and a few years ago they bought and completely rebuilt a stunning, mid-century modern home in the Hollywood Hills, with huge glass windows and a fantastic view of not only the city below, but the iconic Hollywood sign as well. They have excellent taste and spared no expense. The kitchen is to die for. State-of-the-art, professional, restaurant-grade Wolf and Viking ranges, stoves, warming ovens, you name it—this place has it! It’s a cook’s wet dream come true. And the place is packed with one-of-a-kind designer furniture. It’s the ultimate in hip, cool and sexy.

So when my buds asked me to house sit for a long weekend while they took their newly adopted son Frederick on a mini-vacation, I jumped at the chance. Now, I’ve cooked for these guys before so they knew I was salivating to get my hands on their kitchen and they only placed one restriction on me. They just had a custom Bensen neo sectional couch made (with chaise), and had it covered in white, velvety, brushed cowhide. They requested that I abstain from using it. “Don’t you worry” I shouted, “It’s radioactive as far as I’m concerned!”…and I started to make plans for my ‘Night of Passion.’

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