We skipped June because life got in the way, and are doing July a whole lot earlier. So, let's just call this the Scariest Recipe of the past two months.
We don't like to rag on one source for the scariest recipes. We go everywhere for them, we scour the food world for them, and even dream about them in our sleep. But never, and I mean never, have we actually gone ahead and MADE one.
Inadvertently, but still, made one.
Since we still don't have the gas to cook on our stove (a fact that constantly irks our landlord, and is about to irk our plumber when I don't stop calling him for the next nine-hundred days in a row until he LABELS THE GAS LINE SO THE GAS COMPANY CAN TURN IT ON!), we have been reduced to what I like to call the dregs of the foodie world:
Raw foodies.
Mostly.
We bought a hot-pot so we could have coffee in the mornings and have used it hence to melt butter and to make simple syrup. We also have a waffle iron and a rotisserie that my mom bought me for Christmas this past year. We have a lot of waffles.
No chicken yet.
But I digress.
Today, we wandered the city, just to do it. The Green Market in Union Square was unencumbered by the masses. We got a record player and a couple of new LPs. We got lunch at Wogies (a misanthropic tale that is bookended by sadness) and came home.
Hannah was hungry and we thought to ourselves...We will make our famous chili tacos, but with black beans and we will cook them in...
THE CROCK POT.
They were inedible.
Crock Pot Tacos
Recipe courtesy Matthias and Hannah's Dumb Asses
2 Cans Organic Black Beans
1 Cup Tequila
1 tsp Chili Powder
1 tsp Cayenne Powder
1 Onion, julianned
4 cloves Garlic, peeled
1 tsp whole cumin
1 Tbsp brown sugar. Yeah, that's right. Brown sugar.
Lime
Roast the onion, garlic and cumin in your rotisserie oven. Doesn't matter what temperature; this is going to suck anyway.
Throw both cans of beans into the crock pot. Add the tequila/spice mixture and stir. Add onions and garlic and crank that baby. Wait two hours, knowing that the only thing you've eaten today is a bowl of strawberries and two waffles and some gorgonzola that you're allergic to. Have some chips and salsa while you wait. It's better this way.
When the flavor isn't quite what you wanted, add the brown sugar. It will make it worse. Cringe in horror and do your best to fix it with half a lime. This only will result in the realization that there is no God, because if there was, He/She/It would NEVER allow such an evil concoction to manifest itself.
Abandon and eat leftovers.
writing by matthias, comic by hannah
Lest you should begin to think the Food Network and the internet are the only places to unearth horrifying recipes, I bring you a creation of my own imagining. Last night I had a dream that I was the challenger contestant on a new show called Iron Chef Amateur. As my opponent, I chose a large, boisterous, carnivorous fictional blogger (think Mario Batali with a Macbook, except mean and more pompous).
Just like the actual Iron Chef shows, we were given access to every ingredient, gadget, and method imaginable. But, because this was the amateur version, there was no secret ingredient, the show was thirty minutes long, and you needed only to complete one dish.
On the other side of Kitchen Stadium, there stood a rotund and bombastic man, armed with a meat mallet, three pounds of veal, and a vat of oil. I cowered in my corner, tempted by some wild asparagus, beautiful morels, a huge basket of lemons, and among a plethora of other options, a veritable garden of herbs.
Soon I heard the slamming of the baby cow flesh on the butcher block, I smelled the oil starting to cook, I heard Alton Brown’s voice out of my left ear, and Kevin Brauch came over to bother me. I was paralyzed with fear. I could feel my confidence shrinking with each crash of the mallet and each glimpse of the dredged meat. And the next thing I knew, ten minutes had elapsed and I hadn’t even so much as lifted my knife.
Somehow I pulled myself together, and pulled out what seemed at the time, to be a simple and fresh answer to Big-Bad-Blogger’s Weiner Schnitzel. I put on a pot of water, chopped up a handful of parsley, threw in a handful of salt and boiled the hell out of it for ten minutes. Then I came to my senses, and realized this was going to be the foulest thing to have ever graced the lips of any of the esteemed judges, so I threw in a minced carrot. I don’t even remember if I washed it. But wait! I should also add that I also toasted some sliced bread in another salvage attempt; at this point, it is pretty clear that I was unredeemable.
Now it was time for judgment. The arbiters were a Ted Allen impressionist, the actual Jeffrey Steingarten, and some other forgettable airhead. After attempting to sample the platter of schnitzel laid before them, Steingarten overturned the judge’s table, sending schnitzel pucks and wine goblets all about, stood up and bellowed, ‘This is not cuisine, this is a breaded hockey puck! Never before have I been so disgusted by the maltreatment of an animal!’ This outburst ate up a good portion of time, so I was miraculously saved from public ridicule, and the outcome of the battle was ruled a first in Iron Chef history: a draw by inedibility. 
Salted Parsley and Boiled Carrot Soup
Recipe courtesy of my imagination, insecurities, and some unconscious trauma
Ingredients
6 cups water
1 cup flat leaf parsley, chopped
1 generous handful sea salt (approximately .5 cups)
1 carrot, possibly unwashed, minced
Boil water, parsley, and salt for 10-15 minutes.
For the last 5 minutes, add the carrot.
Serve with sliced bread toast.
Recoil with embarrassment.
comic by hannah
Matthias and I are home cooks. Neither of us has received any formal training, whatsoever. Aside from being voracious readers of blogs, cookbooks, newspapers and food magazines, there is absolutely no reason why we should be considered any kind of experts on food and spew out our recipes and thoughts into the interwebs. But, we do consider ourselves to be conscious, ethical consumers, a couple who linger over breakfasts and dinners (and snacks), a girl and a boy who appreciate the thoughts and ingredients that go into satisfying our eyes, noses, mouths, and sometimes fingers.
But there is a line drawn in the sands of home cooking on the internet that we will not cross. That, my friends is the 'resource' and frustratingly googlebombed cooks.com.
Like so many of you, we do not believe that cooking at home is a matter of assembly. In our experience, we have found cooks.com to be saturated with horrifying 1950s style casseroles, 'easy' preservative-laden shortcuts and substitutions, and typographical errors with sparse and passionless directions, all designed to get something that resembles food onto the table to fill up your belly and let you go on your distracted way, with the vague hint of satiety.
I knew that I wanted to feature this site as April's scariest source, and I knew I wouldn't have to do much digging to find something truly horrifying to share with you as a disgusting recipe. But, in the 'seafood' section, I came upon something called 'Tuna Rice Pie'. I didn't know it would be that easy. An abbreviated search on the interwebs, turned up nothing as to the origins of this monstrous concoction. I could find no cultural heritage, point of origin, or mythology surrounding this excrescence. So, I am going to assume that once upon a time, in 1947 someone had an almost empty pantry, a hungry family, and an oven. There is nothing wrong with this state of living. Life and poverty get in the way and we can't all be foodies all the time. But we should probably never ever ever make this.
And so, it is with a reinvigorated fear of tuna, canned cheese soup, and casserole, that I bring you The Scariest Recipe of the Month: April edition: Tuna Rice Pie.
There are apparently some variations on this culinary offender, some resembling the beloved pot pie, and some closer to quiche, but I have picked what I believe to be the most disgusting incarnation.
Also, one more question: what is converted rice?
Please, if you can offer any cultural or culinary insight that might make this a little less nauseating, do correct or inform me. I love learning.
image sources respectively: EJF, EPH, Andy Warhol
comic by hannah
The Scariest Recipe of the Month is a monthly feature in which we showcase a recipe from the internet or television that we have found and utterly flabbergasts us. They usually include scary ingredients, scary preparing methods, or just horrible ideas. This is one such thing.
This month, I thought we'd go with something scary in the sense that someone out there actually thinks that this is a recipe. it's not a recipe. it's directions for pouring something into a glass of ice.
Back in July when we were having some...problems...with our apartment, we went back to Lancaster, PA, where I went to college and where many of my friends still reside. We were playing poker (Hannah had just learned how to play the night before back here and she totally whupped me.) and drinking. My friend Harry, who was nice enough to let us crash at his place, suggested we try a drink from this bottle of something he got for his Anniversary. it was this unholy, unnatural sky blue hazy liquid, that looked like something out of an 80s punchbowl.
It was called Hpnotiq and it is shnarsty. It tastes like isopropyl alcohol combined with the slight twinge of burning paraffin and red phosphorus. It is shit-ass. I'm not kidding. We think it's pronounced 'hip-no-TEEK,' but there's a good chance it's 'hypnotic.'
However you say it, it's awful.
So, I was watching, idly, Semi-Homemade With Sandra Lee the one day on Food Network. And if you don't know what this is, my god, please watch. Please. the woman's idea of a good recipe is opening a packet of McCormack's seasonings and dumping it into a pile of undisclosed meat and whacking it into the oven.
Now, let's be fair. Hannah and I are not the world's greatest cooks. We're pretty good. But we're not the world's greatest cooks. It's early in our foodie career and we've still got lots of ground to cover. But I assure you, we do not think that easy baking solutions include slapping marzipan on a store-bought sheetcake and pressing cupcakes into them. That's just simply not baking. Sandra Lee, however, believes that this is the paragon of the culinary world. She is the world's laziest cook. World's Laziest. And her food just looks horrible.
It her "Ocean Breeze" cocktail is this month's scary recipe. Food Network calls it the Hypnosis cocktail, but she calls it Ocean Breeze on the show.
Recipe? Oh, you'd better freakin' believe it!
Ocean Breeze (Hypnosis)
Ice
Blue-colored fruit-flavored cognac and vodka liqueur (recommended: Hpnotiq)
Blueberries, for garnish
Place some ice cubes in a tall glass. Pour in some liqueur and garnish with blueberries. Serve immediately.
Please read that again.
The ingredients are ice, some sort of blue-colored fruit-flavored cognac and vodka liqueur (the only one of it's kind being Hpnotiq) and blueberries. She's telling you, you idiot monkeys, to pour a liquid into a glass and then add blueberries. And because it's very possible she's evil, those blueberries are from Chile. And you know how we feel about blueberries from Chile.
Scariest recipe of the month, ladies and gentlemen. A woman's instructions on pouring a terrifyingly bad liquid into a glass.
Gyeh.
This will be a monthly feature, occurring after we have gotten through the previous month, in order to properly represent the scariest recipe that we have found of that particular month.
Hannah and I are Food Network junkies. We make sure that, every day, if we can, we watch Giada, Ina Garten (crazy bitch) and then follow it all up with that dame of domesticity, that paragon of the palette, you know her, you love her, the one, the only...
PAULA DEEN!!!!
This Episode aired February 14th, Valentine's Day, and let me tell you, whoever got this recipe for a Valentine totally hates their life. Without further ado, and without dragging this out much further, so that I can appropriately ridicule this recipe:
Paula Deen's Cheesy Ham and Banana Casserole.
This is the most horrifying foodstuff we can think of. Absolutely. Hands down. There is nothing on this planet that is more disgusting to think of than ham and bananas. Except maybe cheese and bananas. From Food Network's Website:
"Today’s show is all about bananas and wait till you see some of the sweet and savory dishes Paula’s got up her sleeves. First off are her crunchy and buttery Curry Crusted Bananas. Then she’s turning bananas into a savory Cheesy Ham and Banana Casserole--wait till you see the surprise ingredient she’s adding. She’ll top off the menu with a Fried Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwich that is so sweet and delicious, you may want to save some for dessert."
The surprise ingredient? Are you sure it's not...HAM? Because I was pretty damned surprised to find out that you were adding lunchmeat to bananas. Lunch. Meat. Also, please be sure to pay attention to the rest of those things: Curry crusted bananas. Curry. Crusted. Bananas. And the Fried Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwich. I can't fault her on that last one. I have in fact had one of those and yes, they are delicious. Strange in texture, but delicious nonetheless.
This post, however, is not about The King's culinary proclivities. This is about a Banana ham fuck brain aneurysm.
Oh, Paula.
So this month, Paula wins the dubious award of "Scariest Recipe of The Month." If any of you are brave enough to try this, I've enclosed the recipe.
And any one of you chef's in training: send us your scariest recipe and see if you can't beat Paula in March.
Paula Deen's Cheesy Ham and Banana Casserole
(Recipe courtesy of PaulaDeen.com)
Butter
12 slices white bread
8 large slices deli ham
4 bananas, sliced on the bias
2 cups shredded Cheddar
2 cups crushed potato chips
6 slices cooked and crumbled bacon
4 large eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup cream
Pinch freshly grated nutmeg
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Butter a 9 by 13 glass baking dish. Butter both sides of the bread and layer 6 of them into the bottom of the baking dish, overlapping them as necessary but keep them even. Layer the slices of ham on top of the bread and then the bananas, 6 more slices of bread, then the cheese, potato chips, and bacon. In a separate bowl, beat together the eggs, milk, cream, nutmeg, salt, and pepper. Pour this over the casserole almost to the top. Bake for 45 minutes until brown and bubbly. Cut into squares and remove with a spatula, like lasagna.
Yeugh.
