So let’s talk about “the Hangover".

When I promo’ed “The Hangover” on Facetagram, I called it out as “Potatoes, chorizo, poached eggs, roasted red peppers, habanero Hollandaise, some other shit I can't remember at the moment” because honestly, when I make it, there are usually only four “musts”. Chorizo, potatoes, Scoville Units, and eggs. Everything else is optional. But I’m a food blogger, so I have to do more than I normally would. It’s either that or do “Top 53 marsupials you should never use when making pate en croute” clickbait bullshit. It’s bad enough I’m doing the daily food lore thing.

I mean, I like the food lore thing, but it feels so desperate, mostly because it’s kinda desperate. I need to food. Yes, I used food as a verb. This hobby has gotten out of hand and I’m getting a little obsessed. I’m OK with that, but I need to monetize it. Just trying to do it with integrity, which is really damned hard. I don’t like the affiliate link business model because it means I have to change what I do and how I do it to move products. Uniformity is for robots and that’s not my bag.

The “influencer” model isn’t much better. Kids, you may not realize it but prior to this era, “influencers” were called “salesmen” on good days. The other days, they were called “drummers”, “mountebanks”, “grifters”, “con artists”, et cetera.

No offense to “influencers”, except where accurate, of course. A lot of “influencers” I’ve observed have no idea they are just mouthpieces on someone else’s digital medicine show. Our culture’s predilection for self-deception knows no bounds. I'm not bearing the innocent any malice. I was there once, too. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll shill the fuck out of products if A) I like the product and B) there’s a company that doesn’t mind me using phrases like “I’ll shill the fuck out of products.” If I can't be me, I'm not interested.

When I was young, parents would often tell their children to “stop hanging out with that guy. He’s a bad influence.” I like that notion, being a bad influencer. Getting people to step out of their comfort zones and try something new. Like claiming ownership of their minds, souls and bodies, maybe. Or preparing a dish geared to alleviate a hangover.

This weekend began by picking up the offspring at his place on Saturday. Wait. That’s not accurate. It began with clarifying two pounds of butter. I rely heavily on clarified butter for a lot of my cooking. Calorically, most fats fall out around 250 calories an ounce, so from that perspective, they are all the same. Now you can do the whole good fat/bad fat thing, but honestly, I really only care about two things. Smoke point and flavor. Notice smoke point comes first.

The ”Smoke Point” is the temperature where oils start to break down and burn. Standard butter starts to break down at 300° F, whereas clarified butter is good all the way up to 486° F (according to Wikipedia). That’s a mammoth difference. Honestly, I prefer bacon fat or duck fat, but butter is cheaper and I’m all about the cheap.

Anyhoo, I was running low on clarified butter and I knew I’d need a bunch for the habanero Hollandaise, so I went for it.

As long as I was prepping the clarified butter, it also seemed prudent to go ahead and make a mess of bacon jam, roast my red pepper, and par cook my potatoes for the Hangover the next day. The whole point of the Hangover is that it’s easy to cook when you’re hungover until the Hangover kicks in to alleviate your hangover. That sentence made perfect sense. It’s comforting and medicinal. The Hangover. Not the sentence about the Hangover.

Once the mise en place was done, the Offspring was collected and we headed off to the Autumn Equinox festival at Saint Arnold’s brewery. The festival started at six, so we were going to grab dinner there first and then hit the festival which is exactly what we did. Mrs. Otherdamncook had the Pizza Margherita, I had the meat version, and the Mighty Offspring (MO for short) had the Bratwurst. I would also have, but the wife and I had sausage for dinner the previous two nights.

No idea why we’re fat.

MO and I sampled the “Prost, Ya’ll” while we waited for dinner to be delivered. The wife had the root-beer. She’s the responsible party and Saint Arnold’s makes an excellent root-beer. “Prost, Ya’ll” is a blend of Saint Arnold’s Oktoberfest and Tarnation with cinnamon and vanilla added. It’s quite lovely. The pizza was good, MO seemed to enjoy his bratwurst and I think we were all feeling festive and autumnal. It was honestly a really good meal. Not so much for the food and beverages, but for the company. It’s nice to be out and about, amongst our own kind. There are only three of us, after all.

We stalled until the majority of the vendors had their booths set up. Not a whole lot of them. Thorn and Moon, who are largely responsible for their monthly Night Market and as a consequence, every other damn Night Market in Houston, usually have more vendors, but this was at Saint Arnold's and the venue is different. MO referred to it as the most efficient RenFaire he ever visited. It’s worth noting he did walk away with hot sauce from Grimm of Galveston (He bought me some as well.) and a hanging raven planter. (He’s single, ladies. And he has a job.)

We also ran into an old acquaintance from Houston occult circles (no pun intended) and it was really awesome to reconnect. He seems to be doing well, despite also diving into the culinary world. People project all manner of things. This man, Thomas, has never projected anything to me but an amazing, gentle kindness. I’m glad he’s OK. Professional cooking is brutal.

We didn’t stay long, again, it wasn’t a huge affair, but we had a very good time. We’re middle-aged twilight goths. We come early and are usually home shortly after dark. I’m night blind and the chauffeur for our merry little band, so it is what it is.

Seeing as neither MO nor I were likely to have a hangover in the morning, I grabbed a six pack on the way home. I felt judged by the guy at the counter when he asked if I would drink it all that evening. I told him yes, but in truth, I only had one beer, the rest going down as I write this. Take that, Judgy McStoreClerk!

This morning arrived and it was the time of the cooking. I began by making countertop biscuits. I call them that because I make them directly on my cleaned and sanitized counter. It’s the same recipe as appears on one of the Sunday Suppers, but no bowls are involved and I use my dough blade extensively to minimize touching the dough with my bare, butter melting hands. They turned out well, despite being overcooked. I got distracted finishing my mise for the Hangover.

Then things went sideways as far as promoting my efforts went. For whatever reason, I turned into my mother and couldn’t figure out how the damned camera worked. I did manage to get some really nice footage of the inside of my shorts pocket. Thanks, Mom. It’s nice to know that as we get closer to the annual thinning of the veil, (Halloween), you’re making your presence felt. I love you. I miss you. Stay the hell away from my kitchen.

Let’s talk Showtime. Honestly, that’s all we can do since I buggered up the filming.

It started with donning rubber gloves and dispatching the habanero into little tiny bits. I thought little tiny bits would be best for the Hollandaise. Next time, I will soak them in Everclear to extract more heat prior to usage. Experimenting is how I learn. Blogging about it is how I remember later.

While that was going on, I cooked off a pound of loose chorizo. Apparently, Johnsonville makes chorizo now and honestly, it’s really good. I was surprised as I tend to stick up my nose at corporate white people takes on ethnic cuisine. My only real complaint is it wasn’t greasy enough. I rely on bright red chorizo grease for my potatoes. No problem, though. I happened to have ample amounts of clarified butter on hand. Mise en place, kids. Embrace it. You’ll never be taken by surprise and your biscuits will never burn.

Please note my hypocrisy.

When the habanero was thoroughly destroyed and the chorizo was cooked through, the sausage was relocated, and the par cooked potatoes were fried in the low grease yield, augmented with clarified butter.

Onion jam, salt, cayenne, red pepper flakes, sauteed mushrooms and roasted red peppers were mixed in. The sausage was brought back to centerstage and incorporated. Half a dozen eggs were dispersed across the top and it went into a medium fast oven until I was satisfied with the eggs’ doneness. I wanted the yolks to remain runny but didn’t want to poach as I normally would if I were just making one serving.  The Mighty Offspring was here and he needed feeding. It was also a stalling tactic while I focused on my “habanero Hollandaise”.

Hollandaise is easily my favorite sauce. It’s so easy and so versatile. It’s also one of my favorite sauces to make at home, where the Health Department never visits. I hate making it in a restaurant where the Health Department does visit. In my world, there are no bain maries involved. Just me, my whisk, my egg yolks, my acid, my seasoning, and my hot, clarified butter.

The habanero Hollandaise is just regular Hollandaise with one change and one addition. The change is key lime juice for my acid. The addition is, of course, chopped up habaneros. The sauce was extremely well executed. The habanero did not really assert itself the way I wanted. The Hangover is about fire and grease and comfort. Good thing I used so much cayenne and red pepper flakes in the “chorizo hash” part of the Show.

Overall, the Hangover is exactly what I wanted it to be. Yes, I took shortcuts that I would not have if it were just me and my hangover, but it was MO and me and honestly, neither one of us were in a bad way this morning, so other than my wife’s biscuits, it all worked out.

Onward and upward. Happy cooking!