Just A Classic Evening, AKA Delicious, Low-Carb, Broccoli-Based, Almond-Sprinkled, Hot Sauce-Poured, Cheese-Grated, Vegetarian/Vegan (if you use vegan cheese) Baked... Thing.

Hello there!

What a crazy week it has been for me at work. Honestly, it's been months since I felt so drained out of energy and maybe that's why I haven't even been cooking. But well, this week is almost over so I decided - that's it! I gotta do something with my life!
I was returning home today amidst all those random faces and the snow (did I ever mention I hate winter?), exhausted, sleepy... I was walking by this Thai food restaurant. I almost went in to buy some fried rice, when suddenly I remembered two things:

1. I made a promise to myself that I would have some "me" time this evening. I even left my laptop at work, otherwise it would just stare at me and try to seduce me to work, like it always does when I actually have important stuff to do. Good thing important doesn't always have to mean urgent. Let's just say I plan to do it soon. This Eisenhower dude would be proud of me.
   

2. My girlfriend isn't home tonight, so I'm not accountable for anything! Not that I ever am. Of course I'm the boss at home, my half-Mexican DNA wouldn't allow me to say otherwise. Altough, I have no idea how to do most home-stuff, so she saves my ass. And she is probably going to read this so I should apologize and tell you all that she's the best.

3. Once in a while I have a few months of eating only low-carb. I actually feel very well while eating only LCHF dishes but sometimes it makes me feel like I can't count. Not sure, maybe it's just me.

So, what's the best way to spend some time alone?
First, I thought about spending my time like this:

NatGeo is cool, but lions? C'mon, that's too normal. Whisky is cool, sure, but not on an empty stomach.

So I decided too cook something for you guys!

Okay, so this is just going to be a side dish. I really wanted to eat a good steak tonight but I have a lot of food in the fridge and it would be unwise to waste food, which costs money, which I should be using to buy cripto and hold until 1 BTC is worth at least 100 million. Duh, like that's not going to happen. Yeah, sure.

Here's how I made this Delicious, Low-Carb, Broccoli-Based, Almond-Sprinkled, Hot Sauce-Poured, Cheese-Grated, Vegetarian/Vegan (if you use vegan cheese) Baked... Thing.
Was that clickbait enough? Great, then let's get to it.

So, I always like starting by having everything prepared in the kitchen. By doing this, I make sure I don't forget about anything. Also, imagine if you were to cook a feast for 10 people. Do you think it would be possible for you to search for everything as you cook? Ok, so now I'm going to slice some onion. Oh, I've got to stir the stew. Someone take that cat out of the oven! Crap, the meat is burning! So is the cat!

... Oh whatever, let's just buy some take-out Thai fried rice.

So by prepared, I mean having my broccoli all nicely cut into smaller pieces, I don't really like having long stems there. Not sure if that's what you call them. Just imagine that a broccoli is a tree. So I don't like having long broccoli trunks. There, I said it.

I cooked that broccoli in boiling, not-too-salty-water for around 8 minutes. Then I drained it and just let it sit there while I did the rest.
By the way, do you see that knife sharpener? I've been using it for months and I still don't know if I've been doing it correctly.

The title is super clickbaity but I always deliver. Let's move to the hot sauce.

So, there's some onion, garlic, basil, jalapeño, chopped tomatoes (I sprinkled some dried oregano on them) and worcestershire sauce.
Okay, a few things about these ingredients:

1. I'm going to blend this whole thing, so I'm not going to chop that garlic. There's just no need to make my hands stink for the next few days. I'm only going to squash it a bit with the side of the knife.
2. As for the jalapeños, I buy them raw and then I do my magic. I just hate buying procesed jalapeños in Poland. It's as if the only thing they did was cut them and give them a vinegar bath. The recipe for those is one I'm very proud of, so for sure I will be sharing it with you in a few weeks when it's time to prepare some more. If you are interested and you don't want to wait, there's a lot of videos on youtube how to make "jalapeños en escabeche", you can look it out. Those probably won't be as good as mine, though. Modest.
3. As for the basil, there's one thing i have learned. You don't want to take all those fresh leaves, smash them in your fist and start cutting. You gotta be gentle with them, otherwise a lot of that flavour is going to be left on the cutting board. 2 easy steps:

Largest leaf at the back, smallest at the front. We love us some nature so we roll it into a blunt, but we will not light it up (yet), instead we are going to start cutting very gently.

So there you go, Basil Cutting 101. Let's move on.

Heat up a pan, coconut oil in. Give it 20-30 seconds, then onion and garlic in. Let the onion brown a bit, then we can add the jalapeños. Now we add some salt and pepper + the worcestershire sauce. Watch out, the oil may go crazy! Let's say we stir this for a minute, then we add the tomatoes with the oregano and the basil. After we simmer for a few minutes, it should look like this.

Now we can just mix the sauce in a food processor. It should come out like this.

So, now is the time to taste this thing. That was actually a great idea, because again I remembered that I'm home alone. My significant other doesn't really like spicy food, thus, I should take advantage of the fact that tonight I'm only cooking for myself.

This is a pretty hot sauce that my mom brought me from Mexico last spring. It's basically dried hot peppers with garlic and olive oil. Nothing fancy, you can add anything you like. Heck, I would add some habaneros if I knew where to buy some of those fresh here in Warsaw.
So just keep stiring the sauce until it thickens a bit.

Let's move on.

Broccoli, salt, pepper, olive oil and sprinkled almonds. In it goes into the oven, 180C, 5 minutes. Then we take it out, pour our sauce in, and it should look like this:

In again, out after 8 minutes, then we make use of that cheese. Honestly, just use the cheese that you like the most. As long as it melts, it's going to be great. If you are vegan, use some kind of tofu or nut cheese. I used some parmigiano, then I realized it wouldnt be enough, so I added some weird yellow cheese I had in the fridge. Out and it looks like this:

Hey, don't hate me, I love cheese.

Oh, yeah, sorry. It was supposed to be a side dish

As I already mentioned, I had a lot of food I didn't want to waste but most of it is meat. This great chicken was cooked by my girlfriend's grandma. As for the weird baked thing we just made, I added some sour cream because I love it on everything.

So that's pretty much it for now, I really hoped you enjoyed it. The broccoli is very good. Of course, I just made it, what else could I write about it. If you have any thoughts, criticism, please feel free to comment. I'm always open to discussion.

Just one last word. I was very skeptical about sharing a traditional recipe post, because I don't like recipes myself. What I have learned to be important while cooking is being original, trying out new stuff. Even if you eat something and you thing "WOW, THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER", well guess what. It could've been better. That's called improving. Maybe trying to improve is just in my nature, but hey. It's been working out pretty good for me so far :)

OZ