Thug Kitchen: The Official Cookbook: Eat Like You Give a F*ck (18 page)

3
When it is done simmering, turn off the heat and stir in the lime juice. Serve right away with your favorite toppings.

*
Fire-roasted tomatoes are damn delicious if you can find them
.

**
You can buy canned pumpkin puree or cut up a fresh pumpkin into chunks, steam it until it is tender, and puree the fuck out of it until you have 1½ cups. If you try to make this chili with pumpkin pie filling, don’t complain about how fucked up it tastes. You did that dumb shit yourself
.

***
Whatever beans you prefer in chili are cool, but if you need direction, half black bean and half pinto make a solid combo. And yeah, you can use two 15-ounce cans
.

TORTILLA SOUP

This old-school Southwestern soup is so goddamn good, even your grandma would approve. Just don’t let her catch you swearing in the house.

MAKES ENOUGH FOR 4 AS A MAIN, 6 AS A SIDE

1 yellow or white onion

1 carrot

1 bell pepper

1 to 2 jalapeños

4 cloves garlic

1 tablespoon olive oil

2½ teaspoons each ground cumin, dried oregano, and chili powder

1
⁄
8
teaspoon salt

1 can (14.5 ounces) low-salt diced tomatoes*

¼ cup tomato paste

5 cups vegetable broth

1 tablespoon lime juice

6 to 8 corn tortillas, cut into 1-inch squares**

1½ cups cooked chickpeas***

Toppings: Chopped cilantro, minced jalapeños, avocado, shake from the bottom of your tortilla chip bag

1
Chop up the onion, carrot, and bell pepper into pieces about the size of a chickpea. Mince the garlic and jalapeños. Now you’re ready to get down to business.

2
Grab a large soup pot and sauté the onion in the oil until it starts to look a little see-through, about 2 minutes. Add the carrot and bell pepper and cook until everything is golden, another 3 minutes. Add the jalapeños, garlic, spices, and salt and cook for another 30 seconds. This should smell pretty goddamn dope right about now. Add the diced tomatoes and tomato paste. Make sure that you stir that son of a bitch around enough so that the paste isn’t just sitting in a clump. Add the broth and let that all come to a simmer.

3
Now it’s time to take this motherfucker up a notch. Add the lime juice and tortilla squares. Stir everything up and let that all gently simmer together until the tortillas get nice and soft, about 10 minutes. Now turn off the heat and grab your immersion blender and pulverize that bastard until it’s nice and smooth. If you don’t have an immersion blender, you can throw this all in your regular blender in batches too. Your call. Taste and add more of whatever you think it needs.

4
Serve this up with chickpeas piled in the center of each bowl, with chunks of avocado, some minced jalapeño, and some cilantro. Chip shake is welcome, too.

*
Regular or fire-roasted would be dope here
.

**
If you like a thicker soup, go with 8
.

***
Or one 15-ounce can

CHICKPEAS
AND
DUMPLINGS

This stew is thick and our personal favorite. If you’ve never had some version of this Southern staple, then GET THE FUCK ON IT. These dumplings are rolled out like delicious fluffy noodle things and not just those shitty drop dumplings other people use. Yeah, that’s right. Shots fired in the dumpling wars.

MAKES ENOUGH FOR 6 HUNGRY MOTHERFUCKERS

DUMPLINGS

1 bunch of chives

2 cups all-purpose flour*

2 teaspoons baking powder

¾ teaspoon garlic powder

¼ teaspoon salt

½ to 1 tablespoon olive oil

½ to 1 cup unsweetened plain almond milk

SOUP

5 to 7 leaves of kale**

2 sweet onions, chopped into bite-size pieces

2 carrots, chopped into bite-size pieces

3 ribs of celery, chopped into bite-size pieces

1 small crown of broccoli, chopped into bite-size pieces

3 to 4 cloves garlic, minced

2 teaspoons plus ¼ cup olive oil

Salt

2½ teaspoons dried oregano

1 teaspoon garlic powder

½ teaspoon ground black pepper

¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper

7 tablespoons all-purpose flour

½ cup white wine***

10 cups vegetable broth

3 cups cooked chickpeas****

1½ cups frozen green peas

1
First thing, make the fucking dumplings. Chop up the chives into little pieces and set them aside. Add the flour to a medium bowl and whisk in the baking powder, garlic powder, and salt. Drizzle in the olive oil and mix it all up. Add ½ cup of the milk and stir it all together. If your dough still looks really dry, add a couple tablespoons of the rest of the milk until you can form a kind of shaggy ball. If you add too much milk, the dough will be sticky and hard to handle, so slow your ass down. Knead in ¼ cup of the chopped chives, making sure they are all mixed in and the dough looks like it has its shit together. (Set the rest of the chives aside.)

2
On a well floured surface, roll out the dough about
1
⁄
8
inch thick. (Think thin crust pizza.) Cut the dumplings into pieces about 1 inch wide and 1½ inches long. You will have some fucked up sizes because that’s how shit is, but don’t stress. They will be fine. You should get around 70 dumplings. Stack them up on a floured plate and stick them in the fridge uncovered.

3
Make the soup: Remove the hard stems from the kale and slice those leaves into 1-inch ribbons. Set aside until the very end. In a large soup pot, heat up the 2 teaspoons oil over medium heat. Add the onions and a pinch of salt and sauté until the onions start to brown, 5 to 7 minutes. Add the carrots and celery and cook for another 3 minutes. Add the broccoli and garlic and cook until the carrots are getting soft but the broccoli still has some bite, another 3 minutes. Turn off the heat and dump all that shit into a medium bowl and set it aside. Make sure to scrape out all the veggies because you are reusing that pot. Fuck extra dishes.

4
Mix the oregano, garlic powder, black pepper, cayenne pepper, and ¼ teaspoon salt together in a small cup. Warm that soup pot back up over medium heat, add the remaining ¼ cup oil, and whisk in the flour. It should look somewhere between glue and runny paste. Yum? Keep stirring that shit around until it smells kinda nutty and looks a little toasted, about 2 minutes. Toss in the spice mixture and keep stirring for another 30 seconds. Whisk in the white wine. The flour will ball up with the wine and make it look like frosting or some shit like that. Slowly whisk in 2 cups of the broth. Mix that up until it is all incorporated and starts to look thick, like movie theater nacho cheese. Slowly whisk in the next 4 cups of broth and make sure it’s smooth with no chunks of flour. Whisk in the remaining 4 cups broth and let it simmer, whisking every minute or so, for about 15 minutes. The broth should thicken up and start to look and taste kind of velvety. You know what the fuck we are talking about. Try it. Fucking awesomeness without 2 sticks of butter.

5
With the pot still simmering, add the dumplings a couple at a time so they don’t get all stuck together in a clusterfuck of dough and dying dreams. Once they are all in, gently stir them around once so that everybody is bobbing around in the broth. Let them simmer together for 3 minutes so that the pot gets a chance to warm back up. Add the chickpeas and sautéed veggies and let them all simmer together for about 10 more minutes or until the dumplings don’t taste raw.

6
Once your dumplings are on point, add the green peas and sliced kale. Yeah, that’s right, just dump the peas in frozen because who gives a fuck? Cook for another 2 minutes so that the peas warm up and the kale wilts. Turn off the heat and throw in ¼ cup of those chives from earlier. Taste that shit and see if you want more herbs, spices, or salt to get it where you love it. Serve immediately and top the bowls with some of whatever chives you have left.

*
Whole wheat flour is a little too dense for these fuckers, but give it a go if that’s what you got and you are feeling brave
.

**
Spinach or collards will work here too
.

***
Whateverthefuck you like to drink will work. Out of wine? Just use broth
.

****
About two 15-ounce cans if you aren’t cooking your own
.

WEDDING SOUP
WITH
WHITE BEAN
BALLS AND
KALE

Combining this soup’s ingredients makes a flavor commitment so strong that it’s in the fucking name. Once you taste it, you’ll vow to never go another cold day without a bowl of this in your life.

MAKES ENOUGH FOR 6 PEOPLE WHO CAME HUNGRY

WHITE BEAN BALLS

Cooking spray

1 large yellow onion

3 cups cooked white or cannellini beans*

½ cup whole wheat bread crumbs

3 cloves garlic, minced

¼ cup
nutritional yeast
or flour

2 tablespoons olive oil