Jalapeno Poppers

I have had many a deep-fry party in my day, and for some reason they always seem to turn out the same. Deep-fry parties are like pancakes - the greatest thing ever at first, but by the end you're sick of them and vow to never have one ever again. And also, you can smother everything with butter and syrup. But just like pancakes, the DFP always manages to find a way to creep back into your life to pull your life expectancy down just a touch. And that's why I love them so darn much.

This is a deep fried classic and we didn't do much to mess with it except wrap it with bacon. You will need jalapeno peppers, cream cheese, gouda, bacon, flour and breadcrumbs.



1. Cut the tops off the peppers and scoop out the seeds. Use a piping bag to fill them with cream cheese or any filling of choice. We used a smoked salmon flavored cream cheese mixed with shredded gouda.




2. Wrap the peppers with bacon. Cut each slice in half, drape one half over the open end of the pepper, and wrap the other half around.





3. Dip the bacon-wrapped peppers in a batter made of flour, water and salt. Cover with breadcrumbs and deep fry at 375F until bacon is cooked through.



The poppers were pretty effing delicious, but very spicy. If you don't like spicy food, you're just gonna have to man up.

Poppers with loaded potatoes

Meat Roll-Up

If you haven't been living in a hole for the past decade, you must have noticed the recent trend of restaurants and fast food places with "healthier choice" menus. It seems like everyone's offering salads, whole grains and smaller portions nowadays. It's disgusting. But worry not - these menus are the boy bands of the food world, and like any other trend they will soon become sparse. And old. And fat. And will try to make a failed comeback years later after reinventing themselves when we barely remember what they were. Then we can go back to eating better tasting foods with tons of calories and fat. Just to make sure we're ahead of the curve, we created something that could probably kill a child or a small adult if ingested without caution.

In true Late Night Chef fashion, we started making this thing around 2am. There was debate over what to call it, with names like "Meat Torpedo" and "Meat Slug" being thrown around. Since I forget what we actually decided on, here's how we made the Meat Roll-Up:



1. Ingredients: Sausages, cheese, ham, ground beef, bacon, beer and flour. Plus any seasonings, and skewers to hold the bacon in place. (Pictured right: our grocery list.)






2. Cook the sausages fully using any method, and wrap with a layer of cheese and ham.






3. Create a mat of ground beef, and wrap the ham/cheese/sausage. Make sure any holes are sealed up. We also added another layer of cheese here.





4. Wrap beef/ham/cheese/sausage with bacon, and use skewers to hold in place.





5. Place in 400F oven until ground beef is cooked through.







6. Meanwhile, mix up some beer batter. We used a simple mix of flour, salt, Stiegl beer and some cayenne.






7. Fill a pan with enough oil to cover at least half of the meat roll. Set heat on medium-high (or about 375F) and deep fry to your hearts content.




We made 8 of these things. Each one was about 8 inches in length and weighed well over a pound. Afterwards we put on bathing suits and slip-slided around our grease covered kitchen.


- Angie, Charles, Howie, Marcus & Michelle