Cooking In The Dark

Welcome to Cooking in the Dark.

The Kitchen.

I will go to the kitchen.

And although some recipes I cannot breathe,

still I'm sure I can do everything I need.

This show cooking in the dark, it is the key.

Pays a Matae topative Texan.

You know Cheryl should tell himself,

I know Dale Campbell would like to welcome you to this hair show.

Cooking in the dark is a presentation of Blind Mites Megamall,

at www.blindmitesmegalmall.com.

Holy Charlie, who are you?

Welcome to Cooking in the Dark.

It's a show of coming and I'm going to introduce to you the man

who proves to us every week that you don't need sight to cook dinner tonight.

Dale Campbell.

Happy New Year everybody.

I hope everybody had a safe one and a great one.

Ooh, I know I did.

Me too.

Yeah, and I kind of, uh, man, I kind of remember New Year's this year.

That's always, well, I'm going to say that's always important because I know you've had some.

There's been a few, it's like, wow, what day is it?

Oh, really?

Okay then.

So did you guys celebrate in Houston or did you go someplace else?

We just went down the Galveston again.

Oh, nice.

We go down there and, uh, I've seen a couple other couples,

went down and got, you know, got rooms at a hotel down there and just kind of

go bar hopping and restaurant crawling, I guess, all through the Galveston,

like the downtown area.

But this year we kind of ended up in one little bar,

and just kind of hunkered down and it's so funny, man, Galveston's such a late crowd.

I always forget, you know, it's, I call it the New York crowd, you know,

it'll be 10, 30 and nobody in the place and then at 11, 15, it's like, holy crap,

where do I really come from?

The bar's full, man.

That's fun.

But we had a good time.

Got in there, got to know the bartenders.

They took care of us and brought in the New Year,

but it was just kind of cold and damp.

It wasn't really raining, but it was kind of sprinkly, you know,

so there's one place we'd like to go to that's outside, but we,

yeah, we didn't do that just because of the weather.

Right, right.

But yeah, we rang in the New Year.

16 is going to be a great year, great year.

Today, man, it's kind of getting cold out there.

Just a bit, just a bit.

You know, Christmas came and went and holy cow, it was 82 degrees here, humidity,

oh, it was just horrible.

99.99% humidity, man.

Oh my gosh, Tiki, we were running the AC just because,

you know, just to get the humidity out, it was so sticky, nasty.

82 degrees.

I'm like, wow, Santa's not going to be able to land his reindeer here.

Oh my gosh.

Well, Chicago, I went home to visit my mom and my brother.

And Chicago, no snow, and it wasn't that bad,

weather-wise for the holidays.

No, it was like 75 in Chicago.

Oh, not that one.

But it was crazy.

Ain't everybody, you know, everybody gets suspicious.

They're like, um, why is it not snowing?

And yeah, below zero degrees.

Why's everybody on the shores of the lake, you know, sunbathing?

Good night.

What's up?

All the plants are like, oh, should we grow?

No, don't grow.

Exactly.

Don't do it.

Go back in, go back in.

But with this cool weather now, it's finally coming around.

I'm going to think, make something that my mama always used to make.

Man, it's just, it's a, it's classic gulash, I guess you can call it.

Now, she made it a couple of ways.

She made it with pasta.

She also made it with rice either way.

But it's pretty much just the same similar ingredients.

And then this is a real base recipe.

So I know people that do this and do that to it and go this way in that.

But we'll talk about that as we do it.

But the recipe we're doing is it makes a bunch.

And because it's just two, you know, two of us here are two of us most places.

You know, we thought we'd cut this recipe down a little bit and just kind of cut it in half.

Because it's a nice little easy recipe.

It calls for two pounds of ground meat.

We're going to use one, two cans of diced tomatoes.

We're going to use one, two cans of tomato sauce.

Well, you get the idea.

You know, we just kind of kind of cut some of the stuff down.

Now, three cloves of garlic it calls for.

I think we're going to use all the garlic.

God, like garlic.

Plus a little bit of garlic keeps the vampires away.

You know, you know, you do dangerous.

It is a new year.

They might be coming out.

Who knows where they are?

Come get my blood.

But anyway, this, uh,

speaking of New Year's Eve and stuff, there was a,

a cop sitting outside this bar waiting to, you know, make his quota.

Because he was a couple tickets short for, for Drunkerress.

So he's sitting there waiting and waiting.

All of a sudden, about 1130 or so, this guy staggers out of the bar,

fumbling his keys around, drops him, picks him up, drops him, can't get him into the car.

Finally gets the car unlocked and gets in and he's just sitting there.

Just sitting there, sitting there.

Pretty soon somebody else comes out, gets in their car leaves.

Pretty soon somebody else.

Pretty soon, pretty soon he's the only car sitting in the driveway.

You know, in the parking lot there.

So, you know, he fires up and leaves, cop pulls him over immediately,

because he saw him walk out and makes him blow and gives him, you know,

the blood alcohol test and it reads 0.00.

And the cop's like, what?

And he makes him blow again.

Still 0.00.

He goes, what, what's up?

I saw you come out of that bar, stag running and fumbling about.

How did you become sober in 20 minutes?

And the guy goes, what do you mean?

He goes, I haven't had a drop tonight.

I've been the designated decoy tonight.

All right, y'all.

We're going to be doing classic gulash on the other side of this.

Happy new year, hang around and join in the fun.

We'll be right back, cooking in the dark.

Now here's more of the show with Dale Campbell and Cheryl Cummings.

All right, y'all.

We're back.

It's 2016.

Man, I remember used to be back in the day when we wrote checks, you know.

January, the first week of January was always hard,

because I'd always put the previous years, you know, on the checks.

Oh, it took a while, yeah.

Do you remember?

New year and new year.

Yeah.

So.

Yeah.

Here we go.

I've got a pot on the stove top here, girl.

We've got some medium-high heat under it.

I've added just a little bit of olive oil, maybe just around to it.

And we're going to get our meat browning up.

All right.

Do you want, should I read the recipe?

Yeah, go ahead and do that while we get this going here.

I'm just using a pound of extra lean ground beef.

You can use ground turkey meat.

You can use

ground chicken.

Yeah.

So here we go.

So for the classic goulash you need two pounds lean ground beef, two onions yellow diced,

three cloves garlic chopped, two 15 ounce cans of tomato sauce, two 40.5 ounce

cans of diced tomatoes, three tablespoons of soy sauce, two cups water, two tablespoons

dried Italian herb seasoning, three bay leaves, one tablespoon seasoned salt,

or to taste two cups uncooked elbow macaroni.

That's all you need.

Elbo macaroni.

Let me get the soy sauce out.

So I threw the meat in while our meat's um,

preparing itself.

While it's the eye, it's browning up.

And you don't really have to brown it all the way through.

Right.

But for maybe anybody who hasn't heard us talk about this before, how do we know

that the meat is browning?

By um, when you first throw a toss it in your skillet to brown it and browning meat y'all

is one of those skills.

Once you get it down,

godly it opens up so many doors or so many things you can do with brown meat.

Especially if it's breakfast sausage you can dump it in a big old pot of vellida cheese.

Make a cheese dip with some rotel.

When it'll feel kind of like putty,

silly putty um, play dough, you know, in the skillet,

as you're kind of messing around with it.

Once it starts browning though, it'll get um,

it'll get a little hard, get a little crumbly.

It won't feel so much like putty.

And if you let it brown, cook all the way through, you can actually pick it up

and crumble it between your fingers and you'll feel it just kind of

each little grain more or less crumble back down into the pan.

So we're just gonna let that do its thing right here.

Although just as you heard our lawyer just had this huge intake of breath, breath when you said

pick it up because we just want to say, please, please I'm pretty good.

With your tongue, pick it up with your tongue.

Please put your hand in the pan and pick up hot ground beef and call yourself.

We're gonna, yeah, and say, you told me from the smart people real quick.

You told me I could do that.

How to burn your hand?

Well, reach in the pot, pick me up.

That blind guy said to do it, so I did it.

Please, please start doing it.

How many, what's all wrong with that statement?

That's just what a judge needs on a Monday, man.

What?

All y'all get out of here.

All right.

All right.

We're gonna dice this on you know, quick, or maybe start.

Go ahead.

Wow.

But both the lawyer and I like tealed over what you said.

Well, I think we're gonna, no, I think we're gonna check your wine.

Yeah, I've still got the glass, but my bottle's empty.

I don't know what happened.

I don't know what happened.

We went to a restaurant and they, I'm gonna get a lid out and put it on the,

put it over this pot.

I'm using just a regular pot, y'all.

Well, because we're gonna be putting a lot of ingredients in here,

it says to use a Dutch kettle.

I'm using about a four-quart pot.

And remember, I'm cutting this recipe in half.

So if you're gonna be making this recipe whole, I'd use at least a six-quart pot, okay?

But we find my canive here.

We're gonna start working on this thing in.

I'm gonna cut off both root ends first.

Actually, I'm cutting off one root end.

And I'm putting it on sanding the onion up on that flat cut,

where I cut that end root end off.

And I just cut it in half straight down,

top to bottom.

Now I'm laying it flat again and slicing it into quarters.

Down, again, long ways, down where the, you know, from the root, from the root ends would be.

Right.

That allows me to kind of really peel off the,

oh, these are nice onions.

I can smell them already.

They said, these are yellow onions.

Oh, gosh.

So the recipe said two yellow onions, two onions, yellow diced.

Yeah.

So just regular onions.

Yeah, just regular.

If they don't have yellow, get white.

Yeah.

Um, look for onions that are about baseball size or so.

If you get one great big one,

you might just want to put one on the end.

And if you can't find onions, call me because I've got tons.

She'll get extras.

It's like, you know, I have this, this thing where I get these organic

fruits and vegetables.

And so onions are in.

Onions are in season, are they?

Oh my God.

Tim's like, you need to put that on your no list.

Yeah, all right.

We're done.

We got onions.

We'll have onions till January.

That's like, we're okay with the onions.

And the other thing that's in is potatoes.

Oh, yeah.

Now, I guess you're not getting too many apples in that, huh?

I get one so far.

I think the apples are going away because I used to get more,

but now we're done to like one or two apples.

Okay.

So yeah, I can't, I mean,

and potatoes have different types of potatoes.

I've got sweet potatoes.

I've got a little fingerling potatoes.

I've got like little,

they may be like red potatoes.

I'm just like, oh my gosh.

Oh cool, red potatoes are good too.

They are.

They are.

I just, I just have to.

How about whitey, do you got any white?

Or any butter?

Maybe.

I like those because the skins are so.

What do the butter ones look like?

They're kind of like white ones.

They're just like a smaller, they're like a russet,

you know, a smaller russet.

But, um, but their skins are real soft.

Right.

And they don't need to be, um,

you don't really have to peel them.

You know, before you, you prepare them.

We might have gotten those because the last sort of many,

you know, potatoes I had, I just roasted them whole.

Okay.

Delicious.

Just, I didn't hear anything.

Now our neighbor will take them and, um,

the red potatoes and just throw them in like a 450 degree oven,

just pound them for about 20 or 30 minutes.

So they get really hard and crispy.

And then, cut some in half and opens them up and puts a little butter and garlic mixture on them

and sticks them back into brown under the broiler again.

Oh man, they are just come out good.

I'm over here y'all back at the, um, meat.

Just kind of chopping it up a little bit.

I'm using a one of the bamboo utensils.

And man, I love these utensils, but I'm just kind of chopping straight up and down

perpendicular, kind of stirring the meat around.

Now as I flip it around, I can feel more of it breaking off in the individual pieces.

Does that make sense?

It does.

And there's not as much that one big piece of

play dough in there.

So I know it's cooking through.

Right.

So we're getting pretty good here.

As soon as I get these onions diced up,

we're going to toss those in too.

So we're getting there.

I've got one

stuff I'm more here to do.

So we'll get those going.

So I got to tell you this new year's eve,

we had a very nice time, sort of like you and your friends.

There's this marvelous Spanish restaurant down the street from us.

And they had a three-course pre-fixed menu.

Um, and so we went with some of those some friends.

And then at midnight, every table got a bottle of champagne and the silly hats and the

noise workers and all that sort of stuff.

So we take, we can't we usually take ours with us.

We've got one friend that she mixes up shots.

So she keeps those kind of hidden on her on her person.

So when we're in places or walking between places, we whip those out.

Do those.

We got our blowers, our crazy hats, our

stuff snakes.

I mean, all kinds of craziness.

Your guys are organized.

Who are never that organized?

Oh, we're as old.

We've been doing it a lot of years.

We've got a lot of leftovers.

A lot of leftovers.

Oh yeah, let's use this again.

Okay.

But it was fun.

We had a nice time.

Yeah, yeah.

That's why new years should be, you know, good friends, good people.

Yeah.

You know, our friends from Dallas couldn't make it down and we couldn't get up there.

So our other friends were in Russia, you know, our neighbors.

So, um, you know, they were celebrating just as they were

ringing in the new year.

We were getting kind of dressed to go out because they were,

what about eight or nine hours ahead of a seven hour something like that?

Crazy.

You know, it's okay.

Got a big old pile of onion on here.

On your, yes.

So we're going to dump that in.

I'm using the flexible chopping mats.

Which we love, love, love.

Why?

Because you can chop things up and then sort of

fold it up a little bit like a funnel and take it right over to your pot and

funnel it right into your pot.

Very, right in.

Very nice.

Yeah, they're just really great.

I remember one time playing football back in my,

before I blew my knee out.

Oh god, I got drilled.

Oh, knock the wind out of me.

I think that is the worst feeling in the world.

Laying there, you can't breathe.

You just got drilled.

But you just can't breathe.

You can't catch your breath because all the wind got knocked out of you.

Wow.

It's a little bit of a panic stage.

Just peeling some garlic here real quick.

So, share.

How are you doing it?

I'm just using a little steak knife.

I cut off both ends of the garlic.

And now I'm just kind of

using the steak knife to just kind of peel off the

dead outside layer of the garlic.

Nothing fancy.

I've got a fancy garlic peeler.

No, we've been off for a couple of three weeks.

Yeah, I'm actually just doing two because one of these is huge.

So that's even better.

That's the other thing that's in season.

Garlic.

Oh, nice.

The vampires are not.

Ahoi, matey.

So I have to think about something that requires a lot of garlic.

Well, you got potatoes.

I do have potatoes.

I could.

Garlic, I would make some twice baked garlic mashed potatoes.

Ooh, that sounds nice.

Because those you can wrap back up and you know,

you can make a whole bunch of them and then just freeze them.

Right.

That's a good idea.

Next.

Now, whenever I do a garlic, I always think of that movie goodfellas.

Because then if they talk about him slicing the garlic super thin.

So it kind of melts.

That's where you get the maximum flavor.

So.

And then I've heard that another person uses a truffle slicer.

Which slices the garlic super thin.

But I have not yet to find one.

I did find one but I wasn't paying that much for that.

Oh, my gosh.

Oh, because it's truffles.

And there you go.

Straight from the polo palette.

Yeah.

That sounds like a lot.

Okay.

Oh, that's smelling good already.

Now, we just put our garlic in and our onions.

So we're going to stir this back around a little bit.

And we need to let the garlic and the onions cook down a little bit.

Which probably take about three or four or five minutes.

So while that's doing, I think we're going to take a little break.

Good idea.

Good idea.

We'll be right back.

We'll talk about what we're going to do because the next steps are not much to them.

You know, kick back and have some wine.

I'm just kind of stirring everything up.

I can definitely feel before we go to break y'all that the meat is browned.

It's kind of all flaky.

I don't really feel any soft lumps like Play Doe in it anywhere.

So perfect.

We'll take us a short, short and we'll be right back with cooking in the dark.

It's a new year.

Now with more of the show, here's Cheryl Cummings and Dale Campbell.

Welcome back to more cooking in the dark.

Okay, let's revisit our recipe.

Which part of it?

The ingredients portion.

Okay.

So I think we started off with the lean ground beef.

Right.

With onions, two onions diced.

You did that.

Garlic cloves, you did that.

Right.

Those are in the pot.

Tomato sauce.

15-ounce cans.

It calls for two.

And then two cans of diced tomatoes.

14.5-ounce.

Soy sauce.

Three tablespoons of that.

Why don't you hop on down to the direction so we can give everybody a feel of what we're going to

be doing here.

This is one of those recipes.

It takes a little bit of prep time.

But then it's pretty much one of those ones where it just kind of does its own thing.

Be a good idea.

Have a timer on hand when you do this recipe.

This is true.

So all right.

So we'll let the onions and the garlic and the ground beef all sort of

mill together and cook.

Yeah.

Kind of.

The recipe recommends like maybe 10 minutes.

Okay.

And now, and then you're going to add in, you're going to add in the water,

the tomato sauce, the diced tomatoes, the soy sauce,

the Italian seasoning, the, what I'm missing.

We pretty much add everything in except the,

the, um,

except the noodles.

Yeah.

And then you bring it all to a boil.

Okay.

We're adding in our water.

Right.

Then we're going to add in our tomato sauce and our diced tomatoes.

Right.

Right.

Here's one variation I made.

Y'all, I'm using diced tomatoes with basil, garlic and onion.

Ooh, that should add a nice little flavoring to it.

Yep.

And I really, yeah, we really like those.

They're great with all types of different recipes.

And then let's see, we did the sauces.

Oh, the soy sauce.

Okay.

And then it calls for three, is it three tablespoons?

But you're cutting it in half.

It does call for three, but you're cutting it in half.

Yeah, three tablespoons of, of, of soy.

Yeah.

So I will probably add about one and a half, maybe two.

And then the Italian seasoning.

Right.

It calls for two tablespoons of that.

Okay.

And then three bay leaves.

Got those in there.

And then...

I've taken the bay leaves and broken them in half and actually put them in a,

in a tea ball.

Oh, that's a good idea because then you can get them out.

So when it's time to take them out, they'll just pop right on out.

That's a brilliant idea.

Because I always, I'm like, I don't have any cheese cloth,

but I do have tea balls.

Yeah, tea ball will work just as easily.

Yeah, I love it.

And it makes it a little bit easier.

Okay, we've got our seasoning in, we've got our tea ball in.

And do you put in your seasoning salt?

Seasoning salt in.

All right, so now you're going to lower the fire,

lower the heat, cover and simmer for 20 minutes.

Okay.

Stirring occasionally as it says right there in the recipe.

Perfect.

Let me stir it up a little bit.

We're definitely boiling.

Now we want to cover and simmer that way.

It'll help keep the moisture in.

We won't cook out all of the, um...

liquid.

Very good.

Okay.

Cover that up, turn the heat down to a low,

perfect.

We're simmering.

Now...

20 minutes.

20 minutes.

You know what goes good with this?

What?

Cornbread.

Ooh, cornbread goes good with almost anything.

Yeah, I like picking up y'all.

The little cornbread mixes.

They're cornbread, corn muffin.

That work either way.

Right, right.

Are you telling us you did pick one up or you just started to choose?

Yes, I did.

Next, I got it right here.

Awesome.

Cool.

In fact, we're going to make two of them.

Oh my gosh, wow.

So this is pretty simple, right?

Yeah, this is very simple.

Just this and egg, a little milk.

And then I always add a little sugar.

Mm-hmm.

And stir it up.

If it's a little too thick, add just a little more milk.

I start off with about two thirds of a cup of milk and the egg.

So we're using two mixes, two eggs.

And we're going to end up using just about a cup of milk.

I've got them in the perfect bowl here.

Let me get our oven preheated.

So they'll go right in the oven.

So oven preheated at like 350 or 375?

I'm going to go, yeah, 375.

Okay.

Okay.

I want to get a little sugar out too.

I always add about two tablespoons of sugar.

Does it matter?

Is it like white sugar or brown sugar?

Just white sugar, yeah.

Just regular sugar.

Just makes it kind of a sweet cornbread.

Kind of, again, kind of takes me back to when I was a kid

with my grandma cooking.

Man, I guess as you get older, I was talking to a,

hey, she's gosh in her 20s.

Go on the college and we were joking.

She asked me, you know, how New Year's was and blah, blah, blah.

She goes, and then on Thursday, then you got to do it all over

again on Friday.

And I'm like, nope.

I go in the day we would have been out there doing that.

As it was for us, we just laid low on Friday.

Yeah.

Getting old, damn.

Friday was beautiful.

I mean, you just started like,

I was like, oh my gosh, a date off, you know what I mean?

You know what I mean?

To do.

Nothing.

No word to really go.

I mean, you could go if you wanted, but it's like,

yeah, I didn't feel like doing that.

Definitely not going to drink them.

I am so excited when I'm just like,

oh, a day and I don't have to look at my computer.

Yes, isn't that the truth?

You have check emails.

I don't have to respond to anybody.

Just a time to, like you said,

get away from everything and detox.

We need time to just like, you know, have some time to think about other things.

Right, right.

Okay, we've got our eggs in.

Yeah.

Add our milk.

Get a fork here and start stirring this up.

Oh, can I tell you about something fun we did.

We did tons of fun things in Chicago.

Okay.

Sound Star Wars.

Okay.

Which I totally recommend.

It has audio description, so it's doable.

Okay.

And then we went to this restaurant.

And the reason we selected that restaurant is because the Chef Slash owner

is a young lady who is totally blind.

And she used to work for Charlie Trotter who had one of the, like, four or five star restaurants

in Chicago.

Okay.

And so it was like a real, you know, Fancy Smanche,

Almond Guard type restaurant.

Right.

And when, like, other people are like, oh, we don't know who we want to blind person in our kitchen.

He actually stepped out there and took the chance and hired her on as a sous chef.

Okay.

And she worked for him for many years up until he passed away.

Okay.

And then she opened her own place.

So let me just say the food was delicious.

Excellent.

We've got to get her on the show to come and, you know, maybe make a recipe or something for us.

That'd be awesome.

And it was very nice.

Excellent.

And her restaurant, she's online, correct?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Easy to find.

And you said it's a small place.

Yeah, it's not huge.

I mean, I think we went with my brother and I think he said there maybe like six or seven tables.

Okay.

So, and I know she also, you know, part of what they do is the cater stuff to you.

Right, right.

But just to like, I think I can't remember if it was a Saturday or Sunday book.

We were out someplace.

We were like, oh, what's the name of that restaurant?

Yeah, let's go check her out.

Very cool.

Because they had a piece of it here on NPR.

So that's how we live in Nevada.

That's right.

That's where you sent that to me.

Yeah.

Or Tim did anyway.

Which was nice to check out.

Okay.

We're looking good here.

I've got an eight by eight pan.

Glass pan that we've sprayed.

I'm going to dump our cornbread mixture into that.

And we'll get that going too.

So, let's take a little break here.

We're going to slide these pan cakes.

Pancakes.

We're going to slide this cornbread into the

oven.

375.

It's going to bake for about 30 minutes.

That'll be perfect.

When we come back, we're going to add our

pasta to our goulash.

That's going to simmer about another 20 to 25 minutes.

And dinner is ready.

My kind of cooking.

When you can do it and just walk away.

Go sit down, have a smoke, drink some wine with Cheryl.

Kick back.

We'll be right back.

Cooking in the dark.

Classic goulash.

Now, more of the show with your host,

Dale Campbell and Cheryl Cummings.

All right, y'all.

Come on back.

Pull up a table, sit down.

You know what I say?

If you got something bad to say,

he's about somebody come sit by me.

Oh my gosh.

While we're breaking Cheryl,

let's rinse out these

poy-fick bowls real fast.

Which I've got to tell you I love.

Thank you.

Oh my gosh.

I'm going to have to tell you

I love.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

You got your red ones.

I did.

The beauty.

Excellent.

I say good, good, good.

They are just so great, man.

The perfect mixing bowls, y'all,

from one cup to 12 cups.

And all sizes in between.

But gosh.

That right there, I just mixed up the cornbread in them

and took it and just poured, I mean,

if you went to pour out muffin,

you could probably pour out individual muffins, you know.

Right.

Because of the pour spouts and all that works so well.

All right, let's turn our attention

back to our goulash.

We've got our last step here.

We've got some nice simmering action going on there.

We're going to add in two cups of pasta.

This is uncooked pasta.

Now, I'm cutting this recipe in half.

Because of the timing,

we had a small audience.

Actually, it's budget cuts.

So.

It's quite amazing what you can do

when you start with zero.

Okay.

Yes, isn't it?

It's amazing.

So are you absolutely using albomecaroni

or are you using?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

But you could use something else, right?

Like, you could use pin-a pasta or use, I mean, I think,

yeah, but I mean, this is classic goulash.

This isn't new age goulash.

Sorry.

I'm sorry.

I guess if it was, if it was beach goulash,

you could use pasta shells.

You know, but I mean, pin-a pasta would be good.

I mean, pin-a pasta is one of my favorite pastas.

Right.

I just like the way it cooks up kind of a long,

kind of skinny noodle thing, you know,

that are, I mean, not long and skinny,

but what are they?

Maybe a couple of inches long or anyway.

That's just one of my favorite pastas.

But I always keep a couple two or three different types

of pasta on hand or try to.

Stuff to make stuffing, you know, just quick stuff in the kitchen.

So we've got our pasta in.

All right.

Let me stir that up here.

And I think this last step, it's 25 minutes.

Yeah, we just cover it.

And let it simmer away.

And let it simmer away.

Now, show us reading something very interesting here.

And we'll talk about that real quick.

This recipe can also be

one thing that's cool about this recipe when I first saw,

it's a one pot meal.

Everything's done in one pot, you know.

And then as Cheryl was reading it,

and we're kind of looking through it,

it can also be made in the crock pot,

which is very cool.

The one difference is where we added,

the crock pot takes a little longer.

You still have to brown your meat,

and you still want to throw in the onions in the garlic,

and let that all cook down.

And then you take it and just put everything in the crock pot.

All the ingredients, okay.

The pasta included.

Dump it all in the crock pot.

Put the lid on it, put it on high,

come back about an hour later, and it's done.

So again, this recipe is one of those cool ones.

It's two, the main recipe is two onions diced, yellow onions, diced them up,

two pounds ground beef, two cans of tomato sauce,

15 ounce cans, two 14 and a half ounce cans of diced tomatoes,

two cups of water, then about a tablespoon or so of Italian seasoning,

three tablespoons of soy sauce,

a little seasoning salt, three cloves of garlic,

and that's about it.

Toss it all in, and then two cups of pasta.

Pretty simple recipe, pretty easy.

You know, it's one of those things where it takes a little long,

because you've got to let it, it's got a couple of

simmering stages, if you will.

Kind of let the flavors melt together a little bit, which is nice.

That's awesome.

I've gotten them when I make my chicken noodle.

Soup.

I'll try to make it tonight before and let it sit overnight.

Oh, that sucks.

And then heat it up the next day.

Yeah, that stuff goes.

It just goes together.

Right.

But I mean, to make a crockpot version of this,

it's even easier.

It's easier.

Yeah, and said, I mean, you still have to brown your meat and stuff,

but once you do that, dump that in your crockpot,

and then dump all the other ingredients in.

Just open cans and keep dumping.

And then add the pasta, stir it all up, put the lid on it,

you know, high for about an hour to hour and 15 minutes come back.

And you should be good.

What you want to do is you want to know what,

I mean, your meat's already going to be cooked,

so you're good there.

Everything else is going to heat up and blend together,

but you want to make sure your pasta is cooked.

You know, you want to make sure that pasta is done.

I'll, you don't want it all dente.

I don't like all dente.

Yeah, not for something like this.

Or crunchy.

Thank your mac and cheese a little undercooked when it breaks a tooth.

Come back and play again, my friend.

Oh gosh.

Now the cornbread we've got go at y'all,

we're just using cornbread mix.

So we ended up using two boxes of that.

We mixed it to the butt directions on the box

and tossed it in our 375 oven.

That's going to take about 30 minutes to bake on that.

Our pasta, our goulash is coming up,

be almost done.

So sure, want we take a quick break right here?

We'll come back, we'll have you read the recipe,

and we'll start serving our goulash.

Now with more of the show.

Here's Cheryl Cummings and Dale Campbell.

Welcome back to work, cooking in the dark.

Where they at, Cheryl, do you see them?

Where they at?

We're ready to eat.

Come back in, we're your big stay outside.

We're ready to eat.

What am I saying?

I know.

I know.

Whoops, damn.

Is this a new leaf that's been turned over?

Damn.

The one who shares.

Not my food, back up.

Not unless you clean the kitchen, dang it.

Oh, wow.

But look, there are people who are waving their hands around.

Yeah, that's because I've been squirting them with water.

That's all right, we have fun at break time here.

Hey, our pasta is tender.

I just, I reached in and grabbed some, Cheryl.

Please, don't say things like that.

I use my slotted spoon and dipped a little bit out.

Tip your fingers in, I keep water on the stove top.

So I dipped my fingers in the water and just touched and found a piece of pasta.

I think it was pasta.

Yeah, it was pasta.

And it was nice and soft and done.

So I'm pronouncing our goulash ready.

Our cornbread is out and it's ready to go.

So, hey, if you're here in the studio.

I just say notice my bowl and my plate.

I don't see well, well.

Yeah, I knew you'd try that.

I wondered what that clanking was during the break.

Hey, like, like, like, sound like our cat and your mouth.

I can see the bottom of my bowl.

Wow.

So you shake the bowl, cover up the blank spot and they're all good to go again.

Okay.

Don't let me see the bottom of the bowl anywhere in here though, Danny.

All right, so one more time, read this recipe out.

And while you're doing that, I'm going to, now do you want your cornbread in the bowl

with the goulash on top of it?

Oh, that's lovely.

No, I want separate.

Okay.

Notice.

Bowl.

You'll have to go, you'll have to go to the end of the line for separate.

In plate.

Oh, bowl and plate.

I see how you work.

Okay.

All right, so here we go.

We need two pounds lean ground beef, two onions yellow diced,

three cloves garlic chopped, two 15-unx cans of tomato sauce,

two 14.5-unx cans of diced tomato, three tablespoons of soy sauce,

two cups of water,

two tablespoons of dry Italian herbs,

season three veils, one tablespoon of seasoned salt,

or to taste, two cups uncooked elbow macaroni.

Perfect.

Those are all the ingredients.

And some variations, I mean, like I used the garlic and onion and basil diced tomatoes

in mine.

You could do that.

You want to turn it up a little bit, use some rotel tomatoes.

You know, I mean, play with your, that's your goulash.

I remember, now my mom's didn't have pasta,

every now and then to have pasta, but a lot of times it had rice in it.

Oh, yeah, that sounds nice too.

Mm-hmm.

And it could do the follow the same format the last stage,

throw your rice in and just let it simmer and cook.

You might want to add a little more water though.

You know, like I'll do with the red beans and rice,

it comes out of a box.

I'll add an extra can of beans,

an extra cup of rice,

and then I'll add two more cups of water to it.

That makes sense.

Just to make it, just to cook it up,

but it makes a little bit more.

But yeah, there's all kinds of ways you can play with this recipe.

The cornbread, again we use, was just cornbread.

I think there's a little eight and a half ounce box.

There are enough to, it's actually cornbread muffin mix, I believe,

and it makes like six muffins, you know?

Mm-hmm.

But I usually combine the two, add a little sugar,

mix it up to the directions on the package,

and throw it in the pan.

Loaf pan, you know, bake it up a bar pan,

and that works out good too.

So, well, let's check it out.

But listen, welcome to 2016, y'all.

We've got a full slate of shows, man.

I was sitting there pondering in my head, you know?

We've got the Valentine show coming up, your day offs coming.

We've got St. Patrick's.

We've got the birthday of my favorite author, Dr. Seuss.

I think we're going to have to make a roast beast,

maybe a smoked beast this year.

Yeah, I think so.

A lot of fun coming up on 2016, y'all.

Y'all need to hang with us.

We are cooking in the dark.

The best dang show for the blind that gets you fat

and proves you don't need sight to cook dinner tonight.

Hey, she's Cheryl Cummings.

I'm Dale Campbell.

Don't go anywhere.

We'll be back next week.

Cooking in the dark is a presentation of Blind Mice Megamall

at www.blindmicemegalmall.com.

Cooking in the dark was produced by THC Productions.