The chill of fall is really coming in which means it’s time to reluctantly, put away the grill, and clear out the oven for warm, hearty dishes.  It’s the time of year when the oven is in action constantly.  It’s energy-saving really because it will simultaneously cook and heat the kitchen.  Win-win.  Tonight I made baked chicken meatballs from Gourmet Magazine.  Another recipe to file under easy weeknight dishes.

The first time I tried this recipe I ground breast meat and it was dry and not very flavorful.  I decided to give the recipe another try, using ground chicken, as stated in the recipe, and wow what a difference.  They were so moist.  The best tasting meatballs I’ve ever had.

Added freshly grated mozzarella on top.  Melted nicely.

Just for fun, I made one meatball with a cube of mozzarella inside.  Nice little surprise if you want extra cheese but not really necessary to the dish overall.

The best thing about this recipe is its so good on its own you won’t even miss spaghetti.

Baked Chicken Meatballs
Gourmet Magazine, August 2009

my recipe notes:

• I made them really big (2″ diameter) since it was the main course, baked at 375 degrees for 18 minutes. but they would be great appetizer-size as well.
• As I mentioned above, I added mozzarella on top of the tomato paste.
• I didn’t have pancetta on hand but the dish was still very good.  I just added a bit more kosher salt to the chicken to compensate for the salty bite of pancetta.
• As an accompaniment to the meatballs, Gourmet suggests making pepperonata, a bellpepper side dish.  I kept things simple and just did the meatballs, but for a full recipe recap, Smitten Kitchen recently posted about the recipe and with great photos.

I Love Cookies especially the chocolate chip variety.  A couple months ago I decided to go in search of the best vegan chocolate chip cookie recipe.  Some were okay, some required rediculous ingredients eventually I just started experimenting on my own.  I ended up altering a recipe from my baking class years ago.  I replaced butter with canola oil and the eggs with applesauce.  Now afterthat and a few more tweaks we have a fantastic vegan rendition of the traditional chocolate chip cookie.

Ingredients

• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup canola oil
• 1/4 cup applesauce
• 2 tsp baking POWDER
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 pinch of nutmeg (opt)
• 1 bar of german baking chocolate chopped into chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees

First get out two bowls.  In the first place your flour salt cinnamon baking powder and chocolate chips.  Mix until all ingredients are well combined. 

In the second bowl add the sugar oil vanilla and applesauce.  With a wire wisk vigorously whip the mixture untill the oil and sugar are well combined.

Form a well in the flour mix to pour the oil sugar mix into it.  Once you have pourd the liquid in use a wooden spoon to fold the ingredients together.  Once everything is well combined use a spoon to portion out your cookies onto your cookie sheet.  You can make them whatever size you like.  Place the cookies in the preheated oven for 20 minutes. 

After 20 minutes pull them out, let them cool on a wire rack, pour yourself some almond breeze and enjoy.

At our recent Girlz Only group Marion did this amazing recipe with them and we all loved melting the gooey yummy ingredients and melting the chocolate, and of course eating it!

100g butter; 1 tbsp golden syrup; 1 tbsp demarera sugar; 1 tbsp drinking chocolate, (yes I know 1st recipe I’ve heard with it in too!); 16-18 digestive biscuits; 250g milk or plain chocolate.

Melt butter, syrup, sugar and drinking chocolate in a saucepan. Crush the biscuits, (hit them with a rolling pin – oh once they’re in a bag first!) and mix into the melted butter, sugar etc. Pour into a tray. Melt the chocolate and pour over the biscuit mixture. Leave to set. Cut into pieces to eat. P.S. If you’ve got a big family and husband who would like it – do double straight off I’d say!

ijk

(:

While busy exploring Twitter this week, I developed an instant obsession with photos of Quay’s 8 texture chocolate cake that adorned Reemski’s profile page (and check out her blog at http://www.tummyrumble.net/). The gooey, soft chocolate layers quickly prompted me to dig out my own chocolate brownie recipe that I had adapted from Nigel Slater’s “Very Good Chocolate Brownies” recipe. Here’s a teaser of the end result.

300g brown caster sugar
250g softened butter
250g of the best chocolate you can get (darker is better and aim for ~70% cocoa solids)
3 large eggs plus the yolk of another egg
100g plain flour (Nigel uses 60g)
60g of good cocoa powder
1tspn baking powder
Optional: Pecan, macadamia or walnuts

The steps involved are simple:
1) Preheat the oven to 180C

2) Line a large baking tin (23cm) with baking paper

3) Cream the sugar and butter with a mixer until white and fluffy

5) Lightly beat the egg mixture and introduce to the creamed sugar/butter slowly with the beater running slowly until combined.

6) Pour in the molten chocolate and fold with a spoon. Add in the chopped chocolate bits.

7) Sift in the dry ingredients and fold in with spoon gently as to not knock any air out.

I enjoy these best warm at the bottom of a bowl of vanilla ice cream. Yum!

Apparently, some disturbed person thought “hey, I wonder if animal placenta is good for your hair?”. That is an idea the rest of us would have let go, the minute it crossed our minds (and we started gagging). It’s like the people that said, hey let’s make lipstick shiny by putting fish scales in it. Why? Because fish scales are shiny or whatever it was they were going for. If I was in that brainstorming session, I’d be the first to say, “yeah fish scale are shiny and gross I’m sure there are plenty of other viable options like shiny plant leaves and crystals.”. Or, how about the weirdo that decided to see if bird poop made a good facial. I refuse to believe that any type of fecal matter creates a good facial product. I get that maybe it’s given a scientific and professional thought such as the chemical make up of the substance or it’s the most financially feasible way to provide this benefit to the public. But you know, at the end of it all, bird shit is still shit and animal placenta is still a gooey blob of mucous, membranes, and tissue. Mostly, there both still icky!

I don’t mind eating fig newtons, but I’m really not a big fan.  The cookie/cake part is kind of dry and the figs are not a good combination with it.  Maybe there isn’t enough fig filling so the whole thing is just dry.  Instead of figuring it out I’ll just show you how I think figs can be great.

I was given a large batch (are figs in batches?) and was ready to experiment.  The logical thing to do would have been to pick a recipe and use as many figs as I could because I had A LOT.  Of course I don’t make things easy and wanted to try a bunch of recipes.  Hope this inspires some to give figs a try.

Proscuitto-wrapped figs stuffed with ricotta cheese.
Typically goat cheese is used but I personally think its a bit strong so I went with ricotta which is milder.

You can eat them without cooking but when I ate one, it was a big mushy bite in my mouth.  On top of that, the ricotta was cold.  I seared it on the stove on both sides just till the proscuitto crisped up.  That really brought out the saltiness of the proscuitto, added crunch, and balanced better with the sweet figs.  Also warm ricotta is so much better.

I know some don’t like the idea of eating the figs whole so using the same ingredients with mozzarella cheese and a crust, you have a grilled pizza.  This is my favorite way to have figs.  Great summer pizza and just something different from the usual pizza topping combinations.

While still warm, top with arugula so that it can wilt a little bit.

This doesn’t have figs but since I was grilling and had proscuitto and arugula on hand, I had to make proscuitto-wrapped peaches.  The first time I tried proscuitto was with this dish.  It is the best combination ever.  Serve them on top of arugula and make it a salad.  Next to roasted chicken to make it a meal.  I would eat it everyday of summer.

Fig and brie panini.  What I call a fancy grilled cheese.  Take a few slices of brie and figs and melt them between bread, preferably an artisan bread, they have a nicer crunch.

All melted, gooey, and warm

So these are all the savory dishes.  Can’t forget the dessert.  Up next, my fig tarts!

My little girl is a scientific mystery.  She does some things that her mother and I never did when we were the advanced infants of our day.  She’s so friggin’ cute that she can make you sick; but you’ll still have to smile–really.  She also does something that I didn’t do until I joined the Army some odd years back.  She swallows her food and tastes it later!  My precious little thing is still under a year old; but her spunk–I keep seeing my daughter as a real-life Raven.  I mean her character on television, though she is a light-skin, bright-skin like my little girl.  But yes, she eats foods new to her sight, scent and taste buds–whole, preferably. 

I’ve watched my two–tooth sporting, smiling and babbling, almost ten-month-old murder a banana without prejudice.  She has these Gerber Biter cookies that go from hard–to gooey–to gone, just like that!  Yesterday’s lunch was the spaghetti leftovers from the previous evening.  I think I needed two spoons to keep up with her demands for more.  It doesn’t really surprise me, though.  After all, she’s been trying to stand since mere hours after her birth.  Mickey’s Playhouse, Handy Manny and Imagination Movers move her to dance, smile and coo at–frighteningly–the appropriate times.  She’s so good, in fact, she’ll be a PC by the time she’s 2.  How’s that for you people that spent your money on the most expensive flash cards money can buy?  Yeah, you people who swear by My Baby Can Read.  I am a doting father; but not a lying one.

For all of her genius, however, she is unrefined.  And luckily she’s young enough to not notice, understand or care.  Did I mention that she can down a juice box? 

I’m jealous of her natural abilities already.

I’m Lawrence Peoples.  Welcome to my blog. 

Peace

Okay, haha, real funny, Planet Earth. A guy starts a blog about the signs of apocalypse, and you start making mysterious blobs all over the place. Those blobs in North Carolina were creepy enough, now you’ve created a huge blob floating of the coast of Alaska?

The strange mass is “thick and dark and ‘gooey’ and is drifting for miles in the cold Arctic waters” and, although no one is sure whether or not it’s alive, they say it’s “certainly biological.” Also:

“It’s pitch black when it hits ice and it kind of discolors the ice and hangs off of it,” [Alaskan blob authority] Brower said. He saw some jellyfish tangled up in the stuff, and someone turned in what was left of a dead goose — just bones and feathers — to the borough’s wildlife department.

Okay, I’ll admit that the stuff about the goose is pretty freakin’ creepy, but enough is enough. I want a cool apocalypse! Give me robots or aliens or zombies — anything but the amazingly underwhelming monster created by the generation that thought TV dinners were high society living.

A blobby apocalypse is looking more and more likely, people. If you want die in an exciting way, we’re going to have to work together. Go into your parents’ garages and pull out the old cans of spraypaint. Make sure to look for the word “fluorocarbon” on the label.

Just checked the website and the scores were posted for the Final Exam I took today. I was sure I was in the “A” category, but not positive. I am not above making a read-back error (although I will strive to never do that in my professional career).

I worked real hard for this. Just like all my classmates. The mood was serious and intense. We were all first-course nervous.

The professor posted a message saying a few of the questions were reviewed and modified for accuracy. You may have an additional point or two on your score.

Click over to the grade section…yes! Official! I am now solidly in “A” territory! What a boost for the next semester! Longer and harder I hear. More intense. We’ll be getting right into the good stuff. I have to keep up!

Thank you, all, again, for the suh-port! It helps when you know you have people out there pulling for you!

Thank you professor! Now I can say how awesome she was without sounding like I am sucking up.

Good luck fellow students! If any of them might happen to ever stumble upon this: I hope you are just as happy as I am!

I feel like I took a marshmallow pill or something. I’m getting all soft and gooey.

Drink time! I’ll make it a beer. We only have one in the house so it will be a short celebration, but it’s all mine!

I’m going to go outside, fill up the bird feeder, take a seat, watch the wildlife and soak it all in enjoying the moment. Talk later.

My two lady friends, Nikki and Amie, just returned from Peru and were kind enough to bring back some wonderful bittersweet chocolate. The packaging is charming and reminded me of illustrations in books like “The Kittens Who Lost Their Mittens” or “Jack and Jill” from Golden Books.

I originally thought about making truffles but I’ve been obsessed with souffles lately and so I found a really simple recipe in the Seasonal Kitchen by Perla Meyers. I’ve been slowly making my way through all the recipes in this book, tweeking them to my personal taste as I go along, and this one turned out to be a naughty, chocolate mess (literally).
There are three principles that must be followed for this recipe to be successful:

1. You MUST use good quality chocolate. Do not skimp on this part or you will be sorely disappointed by a lack of complex, chocolately flavor. I was lucky enough to have some on hand thanks to Amie and Nikki.

2. Watch the timer carefully during baking. You do not want to over bake or it will turn out dry. When you take it out of the oven, the middle should be a little runny. This will result in an amazing, gooey texture.

4. Use good quality, organic, free range eggs. These eggs have a better consistency, flavor and stronger viscosity which helps to keep the souffle upright and fluffy.

3. Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty. When incorporating the egg whites with the chocolate mixture, use your hands. The reward for being dirty will be a lighter, more delicate texture. (A bonus of this is that you get to lick your hands clean afterward.)
Now let’s get messy.

Peruvian Chocolate Soufflé

Adapted from ‘Mousse au chocolate souffle’ by Perla Meyers

Ingredients

4 egg yolks

1/2 pure cane sugar

3 tablespoons of pisco or bourbon

6 oz of bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped (try Scharffenberger)

4 Tbsp. sweet cream butter, softened to room temperature

6 egg whites

Confectioners’ sugar

Method

1. Preheat oven to 457°F. Butter the inside of a 4-cup soufflé dish or 4, 1 cup individual soufflé dishes and then sprinkle bottom and sides with sugar. Shake out the excess sugar.

2. In a large mixing bowl beat the egg yolks with sugar until the mixture is light in texture and pale yellow. Stir in pisco or bourbon until well combined.

3. In a heavy bottom saucepan melt chocolate over very low heat. Be careful to not scald the chocolate or it will ruin the consistency. Beat in butter 2 Tbsp. at a time. Remove from heat and add the egg yolk mixture while constantly stirring.

Left: When melting chocolate, stir constantly over low heat to prevent scalding. Right: Lightly mix egg whites into chocolate mixture.

4. Beat egg whites until they form soft peaks but are not too stiff or dry.

5. Add a little of the beaten egg whites to the chocolate mixture, then reverse the procedure, folding the chocolate mixture lightly into the whites. Don’t be afraid to your hands! Do not worry if the egg whites are not completely incorporated into the chocolate.

6. Pour the mixture into the souffle dish and place in preheated oven for 12 – 15 minutes. Bake slightly shorter amount of time if using individual souffle cups. The center should be slightly runny when done.

7. Remove from oven and sprinkle lightly with confectioners’ sugar. Serve and enjoy.

Peruvian Chocolate Soufflé with Humphry Slocombe's White Miso Pear ice cream

To add even more decadence we decided to pair this with Humphry Slocombe’s White Miso Pear ice cream but a rich vanilla or coffee ice cream will be delightful too. This soufflé is also great as leftovers because it takes on the quality of  gooey brownies when eaten cold.

Another sunny day, perfect for a BBQ, and celebrating Father’s Day.  I was trying to keep it simple and not get overly ambitious with too many dishes and yet somehow still spent 3 hours prepping and grilling.  Isn’t it worth it though for good food?  The menu was All American and it somehow worked out that all the dishes had a sweet flavor.

First got all the burgers on the grill.  I know, I know, Bobby Flay would freak out that the cheese is not completely melted.  (I’ve heard his burger method about 3 times in the past month).  Nevertheless, it was taken off the grill at just the right time.  Perfectly medium rare.

We made two types of burgers and thought it would be fun to do sliders.  That way we had room to eat both kinds.  First was the cheeseburger with sharp cheddar and caramelized onions.  We used a dinner roll, toasted, for the bun.

I love burgers with all the fixings but sometimes the fewest ingredients can make for a great burger.  I think we achieved that with both kinds.

Onto the pineapple burger.  For this we used Monterey Jack cheese, which may have been a bit too mild considering the other flavors combined with it, but still added a nice gooeyness to the overall texture.  On top of that is a little bit of BBQ sauce.

Grilled pineapple chunks on top.  Pineapple rings would have been the best but that somehow was overlooked when grocery shopping.  Actually fresh pineapple was forgotten completely and had to settle for canned.  I know, canned, is not ideal, but I figured if we skewered them and grilled them, it would add a homey flavor.  It worked out.

Platter of sliders

Gotta have veggies.  Grilled squash and zucchini, picked fresh from the farmer’s market.  Drizzled with olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper for flavor.

I really am on a milkshake kick right now.  I thought a pineapple shake would go well with the pineapple burgers.  To make it a little healthier I used a combination of vanilla ice cream and passion orange pineapple yogurt.

For dessert, raspberry and blueberry shortcake with vanilla ice cream and whip cream.  This is based off of the Cheesecake Factory strawberry shortcake, my favorite dessert there.

I watched a demo done by Chuck Siegel, the owner of Charles Chocolates out of Emeryville, CA.  Definitely glad to have been eating my Burgermeister Burger and Graeter’s Ice Cream because watching this on an empty stomach would have been brutal.

Since he was demoing on the counter the best way to see was really through the above mirror.  Here he is rolling out the graham cracker dough.  He specifically uses graham flour in this recipe.  Not sure if I’ve seen it in stores before.

Cutting the graham crackers into nice generous sized portions, I’d say a 4″ square

At the stove, waiting for the simple syrup to get to soft ball stage.  The simple syrup then gets added to the mixer, and after several minutes of whipping, you have homemade marshmallow.

Samples went around for us to taste   If you haven’t tasted homemade marshmallows, it really is so different from the packaged version.  So much more fluffy and soft.

The marshmallows just out of the oven.  Love the caramelization of the marshmallow on top.  No graham cracker on top because his recipe for the graham crackers are a bit more cake-like, so with one on top it would crumble.  No complaints here, they look good as is.

Unfortunately when I was hungry again later in the day they had sold out.  I guess I will have to make my own.

The recipe for the s’mores can be found on the website:
Charles Chocolates S’mores

]]> http://rhodribrady.wordpress.com/2009/06/10/%e2%80%9ci-didn%e2%80%99t-ask-for-your-life-story-%e2%80%9d-6-%e2%80%93-light-bulb/ Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:22:06 +0000 rhodri89 http://rhodribrady.wordpress.com/2009/06/10/%e2%80%9ci-didn%e2%80%99t-ask-for-your-life-story-%e2%80%9d-6-%e2%80%93-light-bulb/

• It’s always difficult when you get taught two different things; one thing at home and another thing at school.

I remember being told by my teacher that if you ever want to know whether a light bulb is broken, all you need to do is shake it, if you can here stuff jumping around in there; it’s bust.

I gleefully arrived home to tell my parents about this new found information by going into the cupboard, grabbing the nearest light bulb I could see, and shaking it violently; to my surprise, I was told, “light bulbs should never be shaken, rather they should be held very delicately.” Utter confusion to my poor developing brain.

• One of my very earliest childhood memories is of a searing burning sensation in my right hand.

Being rushed to the cold water tap, after touching a turned on light bulb. Lessons like that are literal occasions when we: learn the hard way.

I never ever never touched one again.

• In my early teens we went to a popular Swedish home product retailer.

Amongst other things, we bought the… Coolest. Light bulbs. Ever. For a start, mine was red. (My brother got a green one.) Which meant that when I read at night, the whole room would be illuminated like a secret blood filled cave – or something scary/creepy to that effect.

Same same, but different.

But the light bulbs got even better! They had these spikes all over them which made them look a bit like a mace! I know what you’re thinking, doesn’t that make the installing process much harder, surely you can’t hold the thing due to it’s immense spikes? The spikes were all flexible and a bit gooey (but not sticky).

Coolest. Light bulbs. Ever.

• I loved the concept of glow in the dark stuff.

I had glow in the dark stars and planets, stuck all across the ceiling of my bedroom.

I was also in possession of some glow in the dark crayons.

I also had those vampire teeth which you bit in your mouth, they were glow in the dark too!

The thing I loved about these things the most (beyond the fact that they glowed in the dark) was that they never ran out! If they started to lose they’re luminosity, you could just hold it next to a light bulb for a few seconds and it would be bright again.

I used to think that the longer you held the thing there, the brighter it would be. At one point, I distinctly remember the wax crayon melting in my hand, emitting a foul stench and creating a bit of a mess.

• Then there was my torch.

Again with the different colours thing, which I loved; the torch had a button which turned the light red, and then green. I thought it was really cool to press both at the same time, which just made it kind of dark.

I used to turn all the lights off and create lightning bolts on the wall by jiggling the torch repeatedly. Much of the joy of this particular passtime was brought on by my little brother crying at the sight of scary lights on the wall, and my yelps of doom.

In the end my torch broke, it had been badly affected by all that moving about; which just goes to show, I should have followed my Father’s advice “light bulbs should never be shaken, rather they should be held very delicately.”

As has been the habit: