Creamed John O’Hurleeks

12 days of Festivus for the rest of us, Side, Vegetarian

We’re rapidly approaching the pointy end of our 12 Days of Festivus celebrations *sighs whilst simultaneously taking a deep breath* after catching up with Jase, Heids, Barn, Liz, Wayne, Mike and Pat, so I thought it was high time to charge our final side dish on the Peterman account.

Yas bish, my dear friend John O’Hurley is today’s guest of honour.

While I didn’t meet John-John until he walked onto the Seinfeld set, our friendship was instantaneous. Sure sharing the same sense of humour helped that cause, it was our passion for talking like a game-show announcer that truly brought us together.

Now while that eventually lead to a massive falling out after he got the host role on To Tell The Truth – “Just tell me John, the truth, why did you go behind my fucking back,” I screamed before lunging at him and pulling him in a pool La La Land slash Dynasty style – we were brought back together by my dear friend Kelly Monaco who creamed him in the first season of Dancing with the Stars.

Just don’t tell him it was me that rigged the show in her favour.

In any event, I like to rub that loss in as often as possible – “Oh calm down Johnny, I’m just joking. I got over you snatching my game show!” – so always whip up some Creamed John O’Hurleeks whenever he is in town.

 

 

I feel it is kind of redundant to tease this baby given the majesty of the ingredients list, but let me just say, this side is perfection. It is also probably really bad for your cholesterol … but choose your choice, you do you boo, etc.

Enjoy!

 

 

Creamed John O’Hurleeks
Serves: 6.

Ingredients
2 tbsp butter
4 leeks, thinly sliced
1 cup chicken stock
1 cup cream
salt and pepper, to taste
cayenne pepper, to taste

Method
Melt the butter in a skillet over medium heat until foamy. Add the leeks and cook for 15 minutes until softened and sweet. Add the stock, reduce heat to low and simmer for half an hour, stirring occasionally.

Stir through the cream, salt, pepper and cayenne and cook for a further fifteen minutes, or until gloriously reduced. Serve immediately and then devour, greedily.

 

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Jeffrey Tamburito

Cinco de Cuatro Celebration, Main, Snack

I know what you’re thinking – what the fuck are you doing back for Cinco de Cuatro when today is Cinco de Mayo, you fool? A) that is super aggressive, let’s keep it pleasant and b) I simply can not have a Mexican food celebration honouring Arrested Development without the Bluth patriarch himself, Jeffrey Tambor.

I mean sure, I’ve totally dissed and dismissed my boy – well Lucille’s boy, both of them – Tony Hale … but we caught up last year and he is ok with it. He wanted to give his onscreen family, particularly his sibs Will, Porsh and Jase, a chance to be featured on this historical record of my celebrity friendships.

Anyway, back to Jeff – we’ve been friends for decades after meeting through my dear, dear, dearly departed friend Larry Sanders. I was completely taken by his talent in Lazza’s show and when he came in to audition for Arrested Development, I knew he just had to play George and Oscar.

After it was tragically axed prior to him snagging an Emmy, I made it my personal mission to snag him the gold. When I started developing a little show for Amazon called Transparent, I suggested he audition and help support the T of my community.

At first he thought I asked him to audition for season five of Community in an attempt to keep it on the t-eev, and while he agreed, he was even more excited to find out it was Transparent and his casting would help boost visibility for a less privileged part of my actual community. Now I know that it is fucked up to have a cisgender man playing a trans woman, but Jeffrey knows that and is working hard to make it up to the trans community by advocating that he be the last.

Given that season four should be released in the next few months, I was far less political in our discussions and instead focused on getting myself some spoilers / convincing him to find me a nice juicy role in the inevitable season five. Obviously that required me to sweeten him up, which in turn obviously meant I had to serve up a big old Jeffrey Tamburito.

 

 

There is no better way to honour the legitimate holiday that is Cinco de Mayo than a big, fat, spicy burrito. Hot, fresh and altogether soothing, is there anything more you need me to say to get some pork on your fork?

Enjoy!

 

 

Jeffrey Tamburito
Serves: 6.

Ingredients
olive oil
1kg pork shoulder
2 carrots, roughly chopped
2 onions, quartered
5 cloves of garlic
2 bay leaves
a few sprigs of oregano
3 tsp cumin
2 tsp smoked paprika
200g chipotles chillis in adobo sauce, blitzed to a pulp
400g can of chopped tomatoes
1L chicken stock
3 ripe tomatoes, diced
4 shallots, finely sliced
1 red capsicum, diced
400g can of kidney beans, drained
juice and zest of lime
1 onion, diced
small handful of coriander, finely chopped
1 tsp turmeric
3 cups rice, rinsed thoroughly
6 cups water
12 large tortillas
Guacamole, grated cheese, lettuce, sour cream, sriracha and any other beloved accompaniments, to serve

Method
Preheat oven to 160°C.

Heat a lug of oil in a dutch oven, season the pork and seal on both sides until golden. Remove from the pan, add the carrots, onion, garlic, bay leaves, oregano 2 tsps of the cumin and the smoked paprika and toss around with the meat for a minute or two, or until fragrant. Add the chillis, tinned tomatoes and chicken stock and bring to the boil. Cover and transfer to the oven and cook for three-four hours, or until the meat is falling apart.

While the meat is cooking, combine the tomatoes in a bowl with the shallots, capsicum, kidney beans, lime juice and a lug of olive oil. Stir well, season and refrigerate until needed.

Then get the rice ready by heating yet another lug of olive oil in a large pan and frying the onion for a couple of minutes, or until soft and sweet. Add the coriander, the remaining cumin and turmeric and cook for a further minute before stirring through the rice. Cover with water, give a good whack of seasoning and cook, uncovered, over low heat for about twenty minutes.

Once everything is done, remove the meat from the oven and shred meat between two forks like a basic white girl says she is for a wedding and return to the pan on the stove top. Crank the heat up and simmer in the sauce for ten minutes or so, or until thickened and delicious.

To serve, heat a tortilla is a dry frying pan. Transfer to a bench, layer with your desired salad, the bean salsa, condiments and cheese and finally the pulled pork. Fold the tortilla over to enclose, seal the ends and roll to create a fat cylinder. Wrap in foil and transfer to the aforementioned frying pan to cook for a minute or so either side.

Before, obviously, devouring.

 

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Jessica Flaulters

Cinco de Cuatro Celebration, Main, Snack

Given that her wickedly delightful character Lucille is the creator of the passive-aggressive holiday, I couldn’t go past opening up our Cinco de Cuatro celebrations with a power-date with Jessica Walter.

To put it simply, Jessica Walter is a damn saint. I mean, the woman gave us three of the greatest female characters of all time, Lucille, Malory Archer and Tabitha Wilson from the criminally underrated 90210 reboot.

Actually … make that four, Fran Sinclair is probs the second best character of Dinosaurs, which coincidentally is how I met her.

Annelie and I were working on the hit show – as you know, her young years look inspired Baby Sinclair – and were quickly taken under Jess’ wing. Despite her the acerbic women she plays so well, Jess is such a sweetheart and wanted to make sure Hollywood didn’t destroy us.

While she clearly wasn’t able to keep us out of trouble for long, she always forgave our misdeeds and tried to help us be better. This lead to her getting me a job on Arrested Development writing her put-downs as an outlet for my sass.

Sadly Jess and I haven’t been able to catch-up over the last few years – given our hectic schedules – so it was delightful to be able to spend some time together … and work on convincing her to pitch the long-lost-twin-Duster storyline for season five.

I’m not sure how successful I was with the latter but given how delicious my Jessica Flaulters are, I assume they did the persuading for me.

 

 

Spicy, fresh and dripping in cheese, flautas are quite possibly my favourite form of rolled chilli-tortilla Mexican. Crisp on the outside, moltenous and gooey in the centre, topped with a little bit of my favourite (albeit trashy) lettuce and dickloads of avo? You can’t argue with that.

Enjoy!

 

 

Jessica Flaulters
Serves: 4.

Ingredients
olive oil
500g chicken breasts
salt and pepper
1 onion, diced
2 garlic clove, minced
1 jalapeno, diced
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 cup salsa, Struthers or store bought, I don’t mind
small handful fresh coriander, roughly chopped
1 cup cheddar, grated
1 lime, juiced
12 tortillas
iceberg lettuce, shredded
2 avocados
sour cream
Sriracha

Method
Preheat oven to 180°C.

Place the chicken breasts on a baking sheet, rub with a lug of oil and a good whack of salt and pepper. Bake for about twenty minutes, or until just cooked. Remove from the oven, shred the chicken and allow to rest / cool.

Turn the oven up to 200°C.

Meanwhile, heat another lug of oil in a large pan and sweat the onion and garlic for about five minutes, or until soft and translucent. Add the jalapenos, cumin and cayenne and cook for a further two minutes. Add the chicken and salsa, and stir to combine.

Remove from the heat and stir through the coriander, cheese and lime juice.

Grab the tortillas and place some of the chicken mixture along one end. Roll the tortilla and transfer the roll to a lined baking sheet. Repeat the process until the mixture is gone. Brush each with some oil and bake for about twenty minutes, or until golden and crisp.

Serve immediately topped with some lettuce, mashed avo, sour cream and Sriracha … and devour.

 

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Jack McGraveyard

Baking, Cake, Dessert, Halloween, Side, Snack, Sweets, Werewolf Bar Mitzvah

As you would have picked up by now, I have long been a support and inspiration to Teens over the years. None more so than when creating / fleshing out the life and times of one Kenneth Parcell aka my dear Jack McBrayer’s opus.

I first met Jack in the late 90s while he was attending the University of Evansville where I was lecturing in Theatre Administration. Shockingly, this was the one time I was actually qualified to teach what I was hired to do.

Jack always had an overabundance of talent, so I took him under my wing and mentored him to greatness. More importantly, since this is the one job I haven’t been run out of due to a scandalo, we have always remained close. After he graduated, I quickly convinced him to take up improv, got him a job at Second City and the rest, as they say, is history.

Or HERstory.

When Teens was developing 30 Rock, she was having trouble coming up with the Kenneth character so I regaled her with tales of my dear Jack and she developed the role with him in mind.

Obviously the whole Kenneth as an immortal being thing was inspired by my own apparent immortality – she thinks my time-travel is actually a sign of my own immortality – and the character of Hazel was based on my own horrid ways.

Jack has been busy lately, what with also starring in a modern Disney icon Wreck-It Ralph and its upcoming sequel, so we haven’t had much time to catch-up. Thankfully he was eager to clear his schedule for the Werewolf Bar Mitzvah and to split a big ole Jack McGraveyard.

 

jack-mcgravyard-1

 

Full disclosure – let’s pretend you haven’t noticed before, ok – presentation / themed edible situations are not my forte … but when they taste this good, you should just look past that.

With a brownie base as black as a lost soul, littered with walnut brains and rotten (cranberry) flesh and topped with a cream cheese grass, this is a graveyard that will make you happy.

Plus, Trump has a tombstone … that counts for something, right?

Enjoy!

 

jack-mcgravyard-2

 

Jack McGraveyard
Serves: 6-8.

Ingredients
225g dark chocolate
225g butter
2 tsp vanilla extract
¼ cup fresh coffee
200g raw caster sugar
3 large eggs, whisked
150g almond meal
100g walnuts, chopped
100g craisins, chopped
½ cup icing sugar
1 tsp milk
black food colouring
4 oval biscuits
250g cream cheese
1 tbsp double dream
green food colouring
extra 100g chocolate, melted, for decorating – I used a combination

Method
Preheat oven to 170°C.

In a large saucepan over low heat, melt the butter and chocolate together. Remove from the heat, mix in the vanilla, coffee and sugar, and allow to cool slightly.

Once it has had time to chill, beat in the eggs, almond meal, walnuts and craisins. Transfer to a lined, square baking tin and bake for 20-30 minutes, or until set but still a little gooey. Allow to cool completely.

While the brownies are cooling, combine half the icing sugar and milk in a small bowl with a drop of black food icing to make your tombstone lacquer. Dip the oval biscuits in and allow to set on a lined baking sheet, repeating a couple of times to build up the layers – clearly it was too hot for it to set properly in my house.

Meanwhile beat the cream cheese, remaining icing sugar and double cream in a stand mixture until smooth. Add in enough green colouring to turn it into grass, or slime, whatever you’d rather. I also added black, because spooky.

By now the brownie should be adequately chilled so flip it over onto a serving plate, and dig out space for four graves. Ice around the graves, chuck in the tombstones and return the dug-out dirt to create freshly buried mounds.

Drizzle with melted chocolate, adorn your tombstones and devour. Edible glitter and other kitsch decorative things are highly encouraged – this isn’t a low-rent cemetery!

 

As you can probably tell, we are very social but the fun isn’t only limited to celebrities! You can follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr and Google+.