Prison Spread Deluxe: The Second Offense

I'll give you all a moment to stop rolling your eyes...

Done?

Ok.  I found a more complicated prison spread recipe!  The basic one I made earlier was good but I didn't really explore.  It would be like making a vanilla cake and saying “Ok!  That’s all for cake!  No need to experiment!” if I didn't try another version.  Also, I’m broke.  Anyway, this particular recipe is based off of something called “pork rind soup”. The process this time is a bit more like what you'd have to do in prison.

Well, guess what?  We have another record breaker!  My search for pork rinds took me to 6 and was fruitless.  I’m actually happy about that because I hate pork rinds and the amount I needed would have left me with excess.  

You Need

Doritos: .50

A spicy beef stick of some sort

Hot sauce

Mayonnaise

Spicy nacho cheese

Ramen

Cheez-its

Pickle relish

Total: $1 - $10

Make yourself some ramen, but don’t add the spice pack yet.  While that’s cooking, dice up the beef stick and set aside some chips and cheez-its.

If anyone cares, that's about a half serving of cheez-its

Drain off most of the water and transfer the noodles and remaining water into a ziplock bag.  Crush up the chips and cheez-its and microwave your nacho cheese for about 20 seconds.  Now add the crushed chips and cheez-its, cheese, diced beef stick, a spoonful or packet of relish, a spoonful or packet of mayonnaise, some hot sauce and the spice packet to the bag.  Seal it and knead the bag to mush the stuff together.   

 

Now wrap the bag in a towel and let it cook for about 5 minutes.

Ohh, that is mad spicy.  I like it.  You can taste the cheese more than in the first recipe.  It has a sticky, soft and creamy texture.  The chip chunks are soft, but not soggy and the slim jim is less chewy.  The relish adds an occasional small hint of sweetness.  I think too much of it would have made it too sweet and overpowered the cheese.  What’s nice that that the relative scarcity of the added chips and meat means that it’s very distinct when you get some in a mouthful, so the flavor is somewhat dynamic.  Gotta admit, I didn’t expect this recipe review to need this much depth and complexity...or any at all to be honest. Stay queer!

Sausage Milkshak- I mean, sausage and ice cream dip.

I was cooking datil pepper sausage for non-blog purposes today. As I lovingly parboiled it, taking care to avoid puncturing the casing, I thought to myself “It’s too fucking hot!”  Followed shortly thereafter by “What am I going to make this week?  I still haven’t gone to *spoiler* OR *spoiler*…and I still have those bread crumbs. How the hell am I going to use them all?”  So I pondered…

and pondered…

and pondered…

for a good 20 or 25 seconds. (I ponder quickly).  An idea was hatched.  An idea that would provide me with all the wonders of sausage, a way too cool, off and an excuse to use some bread crumbs.  So come friends.  Come with me on this journey.

 

You will need:

Sausage

Cheese

Condiments you like

Relish

Vanilla ice cream

Seasoned bread crumbs:  I’ll never be free, they’ll be with me always.

Total: $10 - $20

The sausage was already cooked by the time I made up my mind.  You can make sausage in a bunch of different ways, just look it up.  The trick is to cook it evenly over a medium to low heat and avoid puncturing the casing. If you don’t have the time or patience I guess you could just buy your favorite type of brats or hotdogs.  Odds are good that you won’t be able to find datil pepper sausage or sauce easily but if you can get your hands on it then go for it.  

Rip up about 3 oz of sausage into small chunks.  Throw that, some ketchup, mustard, relish, 2 oz of cheese, a quarter cup of bread crumbs and about a cup and a half of ice cream into a blender.  Fuck around with the proportions to your taste. 

Now blend!  Blend it before God and all the bones of the saints!  Ok, now you’re done.

 

Drinking this gets real nauseating real fast.  However, if you repurpose it as a sandwich spread or dip it’s quite good. On a hunch I put some on toast and suddenly I was enjoying it.  I suppose the consistency and flavor are only good in small doses.  Makes sense sort of, I mean you wouldn’t want a tall frothy glass of mayonnaise, would you?  It’s got a sweet, spicy, tomato-y flavor to it and it’s VERY thick.  You still get the hint of sausage in their too.  I guess it’s a partial success?  Kinda?  Maybe?  Well, either way, that’ll teach me to put off buying supplies.  Stay queer!

Prison Spread

“Spread” is a general term for ramen + whatever the fuck else (usually other junk foods from the commissary) cooked with hot water in a trash or ziplock bag.  I figured I should explain that straight away because people react to the term "prison spread" with varying degrees of apprehension whenever I bring it up. Microwaving may be involved depending on the prison and the prisoner’s level of privilege.  Apparently it’s very popular and it’s easy to make enough to share with cellmates.  This is my second foray into prison food.  I’ve been looking into prison food recipes a lot lately because they're so easy and inexpensive. You know what I noticed?  Prison snacks tend to display creativity, whereas dorm food tends to display laziness.

That’s a bit telling, isn’t it?  Meditate on that the next time you’re writing yet another unappreciated screenplay/short story/ sonnet/ song about two Williamsburg twenty-somethings trying to come to grips with their feelings of mutual attraction while being faced with with the soul-crushing ennui caused by living in a world where consumer culture is so prevalent and poisonous that the only way to rebel against it is to ravenously indulge in very worst and most tasteless parts of it and look down on others who do so without irony.  Please do so for twice as long if there’s also a subplot about one or more characters reconciling with rich parents that never understood them.  You know, the one you have that’s totally going to blow people’s minds and open their eyes to the corporate dystopia and social stagnation that only you were special enough to notice?  (I’m VERY happy to be done with college. Can you tell?)

*Ahem*  Yeah, so prison spread…

You need:

Top ramen

Nacho cheese

A can of tuna

Hot sauce

Pretzels

Total cost: $1 - $10

Ok, I know I said that this is usually done in a trash or chip bag but frankly I just don’t want to.  I’m cheating and using tupperware. This is my reward for not being too big a nuisance to rich, white people. Anyway, start by breaking up the ramen in the bag.  Dump it into the bag or container and set aside the seasoning packet.  Now, add your can of undrained tuna.   

You can either add pretzels to it as it is, or you eat the spread on them.  Hell, do both if you want.  I think I’ll use them for dipping though.  

Add just enough hot water to cover it, seal up the bag or container and let it sit for about 2 minutes, more if you want softer noodles.  While that cooks, heat up your nacho cheese in microwave, if available.  Once the spread is done cooking, drain carefully drain off about half of the excess water (or don’t, it’s up to you) and add the cheese and seasoning packet.  Top with hot sauce and mix it up.

Awesome.  It’s like the best chip dip ever. It’s a spicy cheese dip with soft pasta and meat after all.  Like the slim jim surprise, it’s ridiculously filling works well as a comfort food.  You know what?  I see no reason why this should be kept in the domain of prison.  Set this shit out at a party next to a big bowl or pretzels or tortillas chips.  Yeah, it’s not fine dining but, if anyone complains, just invite them to read what goes into pate sometime.  There are a ton of ways to make this too.  Add whatever you want.  Mayo, popcorn, jalapenos, veggies, etc.  There’s no one recipe for spread, it seems like ramen is the only consistent ingredient.  For the sake of authenticity, stick with stuff you can get in prison, barring things like toilet sangria…unless you’re over 21 of course.  Stay queer!

Sinner's Sandwich and Breakfast Club Sandwich

I don’t have a camera right now.  Sorry.

Every now and again you’ll see a character in a movie, video game, tv show, etc. whip up a weird meal of some sort.  Sometimes it simply isn't food (The fraggles eating girders) and sometimes it’s because the ingredients just don’t make sense (Birdemic's entire raw fish and random, possibly inedible, seaweed that wasn't even cleaned soup). I wonder about them sometimes so I decided to make two of them that come from the latter category.  The first is the “sinner’s sandwich” from Deadly Premonition, a video game that I recently acquired.  The second is the sandwich the weird chick from The Breakfast Club eats at lunch.

You need:

Cap’n Crunch or a knock off thereof

Butter or margarine

White bread

Whole wheat bread

Pixie sticks or fun dip

Sliced turkey breast

Strawberry jam

Total cost: $10 - $20 

For the sinner’s sandwich spread strawberry jam on two slices of bread.  Add some turkey and top it off with cereal.  The type of bread and cereal is unspecified.  I went with multigrain and corn flakes because I'm eating both of these sandwiches in the same day and I don't want to get diabetes. In the game, the protagonist overhears that another character ordered this and calls it a “sinner’s sandwich” because it sounds like something someone would only eat as an act of repentance, sort of like wearing a hair shirt or self-flagellation.  The protagonist is persuaded to try it after the customer overhears and insists that it’s actually quite good.  The protagonist is shocked to discover that it’s delicious.  Skip to 0:56 to get to it.

It’s actually good!  It tastes like turkey with slightly sweeter cranberry sauce and the crunch of the cereal is really nice.  The first thing that came to mind was Thanksgiving.  It’s not good enough to warrant the protagonist’s shocked reaction and order change but it is quite tasty.  Then again, he is a huge weirdo. I think that going with a relatively bland cereal like corn flakes was a good choice because I think that a sugary cereal would have made it too sweet.

One of the most famous scenes in The Breakfast Club is the lunch scene because of the weird sandwich that Allison makes.  To recreate it, butter a slice of white bread and a slice of wheat bread.  Spread the contents of a pixie stick or one bag of fun dip evenly over both slices.  Take a heaping handful of cereal and crunch it on to one slice so that it sticks in the butter. Repeat this process with the other and carefully put the two halves together.  The way the other characters react to this is priceless.

In retrospect, it was a terrible idea to have a cup of coffee before eating this.

Wow, this is more surprising than the sinner's sandwich.  It’s like a crunchy, strawberry cream filled pastry. It’s the sort of thing you eat after going through a rough breakup while listening to cheesy love songs on repeat.  My only real complaint is that I’m now uncomfortably energetic.  

I expected that at least one of these would be bad or at least taste funny.  I admit this is probably mostly because the characters who eat them are both very weird. Although, in fairness, the guy who orders the sinner’s sandwich isn’t the one who came up with the recipe.  Stay queer!

A couple of big ol' faggots nestled in a pile of rainbows.

Seriously.  Happy NY pride everyone!  The name of the dish "faggot" comes from “fegato” which is Italian for liver.  Basically it’s a big wad of liver, as you may have guessed.  Faggots are often made with bacon and some of the more less commonly used organs of various livestock. This is a basic faggot recipe because I couldn’t get my hands on any venison heart or pork belly or anything of that nature.  Not for lack of trying. Let's just say I livened up a few butcher's days. So enjoy these basic faggots any old time.  Hell, bring ‘em around at Thanksgiving.  Nothing says family fun like a baker's dozen of faggots at the dinner table.  I hear your grandfather loves them.  Anyway, you need:

1 lb of veal liver

Sage

Bread crumbs

A medium yellow onion

White rice (not parboiled, it makes the color less vibrant)

Food coloring

Beef stock

Total cost: $10 - $20

Bring some water to a boil and add however much rice you feel like making. Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes, stir, remove from heat, and set aside.

Chop about a cup of onion as coarsely or finely as you’d like.  Mix with 6 oz of bread crumbs and set aside.

Savor this step.  The hurt is coming.

Set the liver on a clean cutting surface.

You need to get this minced.  Liver is a BITCH to chop.  To make it easier, you have to peel off the membrane on the liver.  Trust me, its gross but it’s worth it.

I don’t have a mincer.  If you do just use that.  If you don’t you can mince it with a sharp knife while pretending that you’re in a happy place.  Start by chopping it into strips.  Remove any veins you find. Trust me, you will know them when you find them. On the plus side, after the initial chopping is done, the liver itself is soft enough to rip and knead by hand to make it into small pieces.  I would like to take the time to mention that this process is making me look back on the tripe recipe with fondness.  I have to wash my hands every time I want to use the camera or handle anything and it smells like cat food.  It also looks like cat food.

As my friend pointed out, that’s to be expected from an organ that filters toxins out of the blood.  I honestly felt kind of sick a few times and it made my friend lose her appetite at one point.  I don’t wanna put you off of all the joys that faggots have to offer, I’m just giving you a heads up.

Dump the liver into the bread crumbs, add 4 tsp of sage and mix it all together.  Kneading it by hand worked better for me than a spoon.

Roll the mixture into 8 small balls and place in an oven safe dish.

Pour a can of beef stock in the dish and put a pat of butter on top of each faggot.

Cover with foil and bake for 15 minutes at 350.  Afterwards, take the foil off and bake another 15 minutes.

While that’s cooking you can make the rainbow rice.

Put a bit of rice into a resealable bag and put some food coloring on it.   

Mush the rice inside of the bag to distribute to the food coloring.   

I'm sure I don't have to tell you how to make orange and purple from your standard red, yellow, green, blue food coloring pack.

When the faggots are done, serve them on the rice and spoon some of the broth over them.

I think this is the best picture I've taken so far.

It’s like a liver meat ball.  The onion adds a nice extra bit of texture to it.  If you like liverwurst, as I do, you’ll definitely like this. I’m reminded a bit of pate.  I don’t know if rice was the right choice of side dish, I think mashed potatoes might have been better.  Not because they taste bad together, but the gravy doesn’t absorb into the rice as it would with potatoes.  All in all, these faggots were a nice addition to my day.  By the way, the more you let them marinate, the better they taste and they're good with spaghetti sauce.

Well, I’m off to the city today to see the parade and meet some friends.  If any of you are planning to join the festivities remember to stay on the charming side of drunk and the right side of the law.  Happy pride, huzzah for NY legalizing gay marriage and stay queer!

Fried Tripe

I’ve decided to dive head first into the wide world of offal and I sincerely hope you pictured that in your head.  Tripe is eaten pretty much everywhere in the world, so it must be at least palatable.  I’m hesitant to try it, but I've enjoyed liver and pate in the past so I guess it’s not so different…aside from the attached stigma I mean.  If nothing else, you can’t say tripe isn’t versatile.  There are a billion different recipes for it.  Between my own laziness, and the fact that I recently inherited what can only be described as an irresponsible amount of bread crumbs from my old roomies, I think a simple fry recipe would be good.  

You need

Beef tripe: Tripe is inexpensive to the point of being worrying.

Flour

Bread crumbs: Seriously, they gave me 3 full canisters of bread crumbs.  

Total cost:$1 - $10

This smells kinda like cat shit.  I'm not kidding.

Now the hell of it, aside from smelling like cat shit, is that you have to boil tripe for a long ass time to tenderize it.  Tripe is really tough and hard to digest so people with digestive disorders and gout should steer clear of this.  Prior to cooking, it also has to be cleaned.  I got mine from a store and I'm sure it was cleaned before it was packaged, but better safe than sorry.  Improperly prepared tripe is terrible for you and dangerous to eat.  Submerge the tripe in cold water and let it soak overnight.  Change the water frequently and scrub off any stuff clinging to the tripe.  Again, there weren’t any nasty things on mine and the color was fine, I’m just being cautious.  

Anyway, once that’s done, toss it into a big pot of water and bring it to a low boil.  You can spice it if you want.  Toss in a bay leaf or some nutmeg or whatever.  Apparently you can make good stock out of tripe, but frankly I just don’t want to.  Cover it and let it boil until the tripe is tender.  Depending on the type of tripe and how big the pieces are this can take between 1 and 6 hours.  Mine was honeycomb tripe cut into thin strips so this took me about 2 hours.  

This smells a bit like someone vomited stomach acid into a bowl of warm saltwater.  Again, I'm not kidding.

 It’s tender enough when you can easily cut it with a kitchen knife.  Cut the tripe into strips if it isn’t already.  Mine are about the size of a finger.  I rubbed the stripes down with black pepper and salt.  Feel free to experiment with different spices, those two just seemed like the safest choices.

  

Using flour and water, make a thin paste to coat the strips.  Dip the strips in that and roll them in bread crumbs.  

Heat some oil in a skillet over medium heat.  If you’re not sure when it’s ready, put a drop of batter in the pan.  If it’s hot enough, the oil around it will start to bubble.

Fry each strip until both sides are golden brown, about 2 minutes per side.  Transport the finished strips onto some paper towels to drain.

Be honest, would you be able to recognize this as tripe?  Also it doesn't smell bad anymore.

Ok, I swear this is true:  it’s kind of like a cross between fried calamari and a mozzarella cheese stick.  Like calamari, it’s chewy and the meat itself has little flavor, but like the cheese it’s kinda ropey and soft.  By itself it’s fine, if a little boring.  Some Dijon mustard livens it up nicely.  Honestly, I could see this fitting in at a pub or grill quite nicely, provided that the name was changed or the locals were just really ok with tripe.  I'd like to experiment with more spices and maybe some different batters. This really surprised me.  Stay queer!

Slim Jim Surprise

Say what you like about prisoners, but they can be damn creative when it comes to food.  Prison cuisine is inexpensive and relies on ingredients that you can find at most gas stations, making it ideal for a shiftless, lazy, delinquent such as myself.  So, without further ado,  let’s take in all of the exotic luxuries of prison, with hopefully fewer shankings and destroyed futures.

You will need: 

A slim jim or similar beef stick

A bag of regular corn chips

A bag of spicy corn chips or puffs of your choice

Water

Total cost: $1 - $10

I’d like to mention that I had to go to FIVE stores for this recipe, which is the record. Apparently this part of Long Island is too good for slim jims.

Officially harder to get than instant jellyfish and quail eggs.

Feel free to use whatever brands and flavors of chip you want, prison cuisine isn't terribly delicate.  As I understand, the important thing is that the snacks are corn-based and that at least one of them is spicy.

Before we begin, I should let you know that this is SHOCKINGLY fattening.  I didn’t expect a wad of chips and beef jerky to be healthy or anything, but I’ve clocked this at about 910 calories and 59% of your daily sodium requirement.  I mostly blame the Fritos.  I plan my caloric intake around my blog posts but for fuck’s sake.  No wonder there are so many porkers on those real life prison shows.

Anyway, once you’re done apologizing to your body, crunch up both bags thoroughly and mix them together in one of the bags.  Never did I ever think I’d be glad that bags of chips are mostly air. Oh, that's another cool thing about prison cuisine; few to no dishes have to be cleaned. 

Add about an eight 1/8 of a cup of hot water a little bit at a time.  Heads up, the bag is NOT a good insulator.  You want just enough that the chip crumbs turn into a thick mush.  If necessary, drain off any excess water.   

Hungry yet?

 Cut or rip the beef stick into sections shorter than the widith of the bag.   

Now cram those into the mush.  Try and get them into the center and covered.   

If only the evidence had been hidden so well...

 Now tightly wrap the bag closed and rolled down as far as it will go.  Let it sit for about 5 minutes.

 Rip the bag open and ta-da!

It's kind of like a tamale (which makes sense because another, much more depressing, nickname for it is "prison tamale") and I’m really surprised at how well it’s holding together.  It’s a little bland though.  Hot sauce makes it better and the slim jim keeps it from tasting too boring.  It’s isn’t bad per se but it’s less tasty than each of the ingredients separately.  The flavoring of the chips is kind of lost so it's like a big wad of unsalted corn chip.  Then again, compared to prison food I’m sure it’s great.  I will admit that it is pleasantly warm and very filling so it’s probably a decent comfort food, which is half of the point of prison cuisine.  I get the feeling that I would like it much more if I were really drunk.  This thing seems like it’s specifically designed for the munchies.  Stay Queer!