We've all been there. Its dinner time, or four in the morning (which in the circles I frequent, are pretty much the same thing), and you're hungry. So you check the fridge - nothing. You check the pantry - less than nothing. You check the icebox - same old story, not even a lonely rabbit carcass. You try to scrape the congealed remains of that last glass of wine you spilled off the foyer floor, but there's not enough there to do anything with.
Oh sure, you've got STUFF, and with a little linguistic gymnastics you might call it FOODSTUFFS, but there's no meal there. You know it when you've got a meal, your cooking brain just knows it, but right its not doing you any good. In fact, right now its mostly despairing because a lot of the stuff in your larder is about to go bad, but you've got no place for any of it.
This is when you have to stop using your cooking brain, and start using your cooking balls.
This is when you have to chuck everything you've got into a pan or a mixing bowl or the stove, fire up your intuition, and open yourself to the possibilities before you. You've got no recipe, no guide, and no idea what the crap you've thrown together is gonna look like. This is the really fun part about cooking, the breakneck pace you have to set for yourself, the mental flexibility and problem-solving skills you thought you gave up when you quit dating, and the sheer fearless creativity that defines true art. You shouldn't be intimidated by this prospect, or even humbled - every professional cook has had to go through this at some point, usually as part of the hiring process. True story - most cooks are, as a sort of test, given a mish-mash of seemingly random ingredients and tools, a time limit, and a dinner party of four or so, and told to make something of it.
Some people call this "cleaning out the fridge," or "cooking with the garbage disposal." These are fair enough names, I suppose, but they sound a little domestic, a little relaxed. You should never be relaxed when you're cooking like this. You should have your hair in a rat's nest, you should be wearing a stained and tattered robe (and nothing else), you should be pacing back and forth across your kitchen, frightening your pets and family/roommates, muttering arcane and terrible phrases under your breath. Because if cooking is magic (and I believe it is), then this is the wildest, darkest, most dangerous and uncontrollable magic of all. This is Culinary Necromancy.
Recommended cooking music: '80s punk, especially the Misfits and the Ramones, supplemented by stuff like Night on Bald Mountain and Uranus the Magician.
Obviously, the resulting recipes will be one-of-a-kind, spur-of-the-moment things, befitting particular situations, and when you decide to call upon your own necromantic powers and summon your own culinary demons, you'll have different ingredients, tools, limitations, and circumstances. You can, if you like, follow the instructions (such as I ever provide all of you with anything like specific instructions) for these recipes to the letter and create your own incarnations of these evil but delicious meals, but the real intent behind this is to inspire you and illustrate how the process of Culinary Necromancy works. I want to show you what I did when faced with the empty wasteland of a kitchen, so that you'll have a better idea of what to do when you find yourself in similar dire straits. This is inspiration, not instruction. Kinda like porn, in that sense.
And now, for our first of many such examples of this dark and evil practice, Omniphage proudly presents the recipe for:
ZOMBIE POTATO STEW
Old potatoes are like old girlfriends: they just get uglier the longer you have to look at 'em, but you just can't seem to either get rid of them or find a use for them. The worst part is that most places sell potatoes in those giant nets that hold roughly a berjillion of the damn things, and there's no way you're gonna use up all of those as quickly as you'd like. Hell, I come from Midwestern and Irish stock, and even I have my limits for potato consumption. So you use the potatoes you bought for a casserole, or hash browns, or batting practice or whatever, and now you've got a bunch of extras just sitting around, growing fur and eyeballs.
Spinach is likewise sold in gigantic amounts and, like potatoes, it gets old fast, especially the hydroponically-grown stuff. The difference is that spinach can be used in just about any meal, but then, if we had the makings for a normal meal, we wouldn't have to turn to the Eternal Powers of Darkness and Punk Rock, would we? Spinach is also bulky as hell, especially considering how much it reduces when you cook it, and it just takes up space in the fridge that could be better used to hold, oh, say, beer, or leftover pizza, or the mailman's heart, or the whispering roses that just showed up on your pillow that one night. So even if its not going bad, using up extra spinach can only be good for your kitchen.
Flat beer is nobody's friend. Flat beer that went flat because you couldn't drink any more of it even at prime drinking temp is even worse. This may seem to go against my previous statement of "if you wouldn't drink it, why the hell would you cook with it?" but stay with me here, and I'll explain. Rogue Brewery makes an weird, fascinating brew called Chipotle Ale. Guess what its brewed with. Now, I like ale, and I like spicy things, and I like beer that encourages me to continue drinking it. But there's just something really odd about taking a sip of beer and tasting the smoky spice of a dried jalepeno - usually I'm drinking beer to cut and neutralize spices after I'm done with them. So I drank as much of the Chipotle Ale as I could, but I have a rule that's served me well so far - if you're drinking a beer, and every time you take a drink you have to follow it with water, then you should quit kidding yourself and stop drinking that beer. Life's too short to drink beer (or eat food) you don't genuinely enjoy. However, I didn't pour the Chipotle Ale down the drain, because I saw potential for it. I re-capped it as best I could, and put it away for a time when I'd have use of it.
(Quick tangent. Herein lies a good lesson for practioners of Culinary Necromancy: Never, ever throw and ingredient out just because you didn't end up needing it for a recipe. Unless it is at risk of going bad quickly, seal it up and store it. Always be thinking about potential uses for such unwanted bits and pieces, plan ahead, make notes, and above all, do not despair if you can't think of something right away. Your fridge might not thank you for it, but your trash can, your wallet, and your taste buds, will.)
So what did you do with going-bad potatoes, too-big-for-its shelf spinach, and flat, weird beer? Well, I'll tell you.
Get a wok, making sure its big enough to hold all the potatoes you'll be needing to get rid of. Get those potatoes washed and chopped up good and small, a bit bigger than bite-size. If these are especially old potatoes, this will also help to identify which ones have already betrayed you and are harboring dark spots and mold. Set your chopped potatoes aside in a big bowl, and get together the makings for the stew components.
Pour a bit of cooking oil into the wok. You can use olive oil if you like, but really you should save that for your more prima dona recipes. Normal vegetable oil will do just fine. Get the pot going over medium heat. When the oil gets hot, pour in the chipotle ale (I'd bought a 40 oz, since that was all they had, and barely drank off the neck of the beer, leaving me with something like 35 ounces of the stuff), along with four or five squirts of Tabasco sauce, or whatever brand of hot sauce you have and want to get rid of. Throw in as well five taps of Worcestershire sauce, and a few shakes of ground cinnamon. Get that up to simmering heat, and through in the potatoes.
Notice that your wok is definitely more full than you're probably used to - we're using a wok instead of a pot here because we need wide volume more than tall volume. The objective here is to cover the potatoes with the beer so that they actually boil in it, which probably won't happen in a pot because the beer simply won't go very high in one. If it really bothers you that you're making stew in a wok, then go to the sink, splash water on your face, and remember that these are your tools, and that its your responsibility to use them to fit the situation, not just the situations they've been used in before. Relax - Emeril isn't going to bust into your kitchen and punch you in the face (BAM!) for using your tools "incorrectly."And even if he did, so what? This is your kitchen, your place of power, your sanctum sanctorum, and you can do whatever you want in there.
Allow me to repeat that: YOU CAN DO WHATEVER YOU WANT IN YOUR OWN GODDAMN KITCHEN. This applies especially to Culinary Necromancy, but really it works across all spectra of cooking. Do what works, and use your head, but never refrain from something just because grandma from the old country or your favorite Food Network star wouldn't like it.
Let the potatoes boil for a while. While this is happening, the liquid is also going to reduce down to more of a thick, stewy consistency. When the potatoes are losing a bit of their hardness, get out a packet of rice and your spinach. Whatever rice-in-a-bag you've got will do just fine, I personally used some Uncle Ben's wild rice mixture. Now here's the interesting part - grab the flavor packet out of the box, and pour it into the simmering stew along with the spinach. Stir it up so the spinach and flavor stuff is evenly mixed in, then throw your rice in the microwave with as much water as needed (back of the box should tell ya). When you're nuking the rice, go about five minutes less than what the box tells you to do - you'll finish cooking the rice in the stew itself. While this is happening, start stirring the potatoes around. Watch your stew - it should still be more liquid than solid if not, turn the heat down a bit, and add in some more beer - you'll probably want to drink beer with stew anyway, so just crack one open a bit early and pour some in there. When the rice is done, throw it in, stir it up. Taste-test the rice and potatoes - they should come to doneness at about the same time. When they do, get the wok off the burner, and get your bowl(s) ready. Grab whatever cheese you need to use up out of the fridge (I used sharp cheddar and it was glorious), and throw it into the bowl, then spoon the Zombie Potato Stew over it. Stir it up so the cheese gets nice and stringy. Serve hot, eat with a spoon. Store the rest of the stew (you more than likely made a lot, since this was, at least in part, an effort to get rid of unneeded stuff) in the fridge or freezer for later, when you're hungry but your powers are too drained for Culinary Necromancy.
And by the way, if Emeril did happen to come by to chastise you, hit him in the head with the now-empty wok (BAM!-), bake him in the oven, chop 'im to bits, and store him in the freezer. Like I said before, never waste potential ingredients.
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