Blueberry Buckle

Well its been a long time since I have had time to make a recipe, school just keeps getting in the way. I made this recipe a couple of weeks ago and just haven't had a chance to write about it, so here we go...

I have to admit Alton Brown can be a little over the top for me sometimes, especially when it comes to procuring raw ingredients. This is one of the rare occasions where following Alton's recommendations was surprisingly easy to follow. This is all thanks to my housemates' parents who picked a seemingly unending supply of berries for us. Frozen blueberries make a great addition to many things like cakes, muffins, oatmeal the sky is the limit really. This particular application from Good Eats 3: The Later Years, combines a coffee cake, a cobbler and fruit cake. This creation is called a buckle and may be familiar to those who have read the blog about the blackberry grunt and related cobblers. A buckle is made by adding fruit to a cake batter. It gets its name from the fact that the fruit "buckles" (as in structural integrity) the cake. If you have ever had a coffee cake with fruit, it is pretty much that. And I must not forget about my favourite part of all the streusel; a topping made of butter, sugar and spices. When it gets baked it gives a really nice crunch to the top of the cake.

I like this recipe in theory and will definitely give it another chance but I didn't have much luck baking it. It was supposed to be in the oven for 35 minutes but I had it in there for more like an hour or more. It was nowhere near done at 35 minutes so I got sucked into one of those dangerous cylces of continuously adding 10 minutes to the timer. Long story short it got overcooked and was rather dry. I still ate it and I could see how it would be really good had it not been in the oven so long. I am a little weary of our oven, it might be time to invest in an oven thermometer.

Verdict: Would make again. This time I will not over cook it so much

Blueberry Buckle

Oven Roasted Broccoli 

Broccoli from the Italian for little arms sometimes gets a bad wrap. It was even band from Air Force One during George Bush Sr.'s presidency. What is the reason for all this barbaric broccoli bashing (don't you just love alliterations?), I agree with Alton Brown on this one, overcooking and parties. If broccoli is boiled for too long, not only do many of its valuable nutrients escape into the water but it can take on a less than appealing grey colour. You may be wondering how parties have lead to broccoli's downfall, two words: vegetable platter. How many times have we all seen the barely touched vegetable tray at some family reunion? Broccoli is at its best when cooked for a short time under high heat. Although not terrible raw I certainly find it dry without some kind of dressing on it. Also there is a special group called super tasters that have more taste buds then your average person. For these people the bitter notes in broccoli's flavour can be overbearing. Don't worry, there are ways around this problem. Roasting broccoli brings out an incredible nutty flavour that can convert even the most hardcore broccoli hater. I usually just roast broccoli in oil and salt and pepper but the addition of panko breadcrumbs, garlic and cheese was really nice. This goes into the oven at 425F so careful monitoring is necessary. It will go slow at first but once the browning starts don't leave the kitchen, it can go from brown to black fast. I chickened out and pulled mine out a little early, but it was still delicious! What else could you want from a dish, fast (about 15 minutes total to make) and extremely nutritious. A serving of broccoli contains almost as much calcium as milk and more vitamin C then an orange. So give broccoli a chance and you will be rewarded! And broccoli took flight on Air Force One again in 1992 with the election of Bill Clinton.


Oven Roasted Broccoli Recipe

Hot Cross Buns

I thought I would be back in my routine of making at least one recipe a week but that really has not happened, mainly due to Sci Formal at Queen's University. I will not go into much detail but I have had a lot of work to do for it. If you're at all interested here is the website Sci Formal that will give all the information you need. The past years have been pretty cool!

This picture doesn't really do it justice

Hot cross buns have quite a history behind them. They modern notion of the buns were originally made for Good Friday with the cross being a symbol of the crucifixion of Christ. This version was not seen until 1773 while the origin of this bun could date as far back as the ancient Greeks. Saxons were believed to have eaten crossed  in honour of the goddess Eostre of which the word Easter is most likely derived. In the late 1500s it was illegal to sell hot cross buns unless there was a burial, it was Good Friday or Christmas. One final tidbit, English folklore says that a hot cross bun baked on Good Friday will not go stale or mouldy for the upcoming year. Whither you believe that one or not is up to you.

Hot cross buns are not much more than a sweetened and spiced bread with icing. If you have ever made a loaf of bread before this is no different. My recipe comes from the Joy of Cooking and the recipe is good overall, although I needed a lot more flour than the recipe said in order to bring the dough together. Flour is a tricky thing especially when measuring by volume and not weight. Depending on how much the flour is packed in the measuring cup you could end up with a very different result. I say this but I still don't measure by weight, I have never got around to getting a scale. Also depending on the humidity of the day the flour can absorb more or less water. Crossing the buns was a little harder than I thought, my icing was not really the right consistancy. I also had a lot left over so I just decided to pretty much dump the remaining icing on top of the buns. Did not look as nice but tasted so much better!

Verdict: would make again.

Broiled Salmon with Citrus Glaze

Well folks I am back, the craziness of getting back into university mode has past and now I can settle into my routine for the next 11 weeks or so. Speaking of being back to university I am returning to my student grocery budget, no more care free days of grocery shopping with my Mom's money in hand. Needless to say when the recipe required wild salmon which is pretty pricy I turned to my freezer and found some salmon fillets of origin unknown. I don't think I have ever eaten wild salmon before and I am curious about the differences between it and its farmed cousin. While on the subject of buying salmon it is important to note that frozen is many times better than fresh, depending on where you live. If you reside in a place like Vancouver the fresh seafood should be plentiful but for those of us in places like Ontario fresh seafood has a long journey ahead of it. Apparently grocery stores will even thaw frozen fish and pass it off as fresh, so be weary. Where frozen seafood is usually flash frozen on the boat it was caught on. All this said I am no connoisseur of salmon and the difference may be minimal, in the long run I just find frozen seafood a lot more convenient.

Time for the recipe, and it is a simple one. Only 5 ingredients: salmon (I'm sure you figured as much), salt, pepper, brown sugar and lemon zest. Everything but the salmon its mixed and put on top of the fish. 45 minutes should be allowed from the glaze to rest. I didn't have quite that long and it still turned out really good. I would say you could get away with as little as 10 minutes. Then just plop it under the broiler (or toaster oven) for about 8 minutes and that's it. The 1/2 teaspoon of pepper made it a lot spicier than I was expecting, so I would maybe drop that down to about 1/4 teaspoons. My favourite thing about the glaze is that all the ingredients blend together nicely and no flavour really dominants the palette, I should note some of this flavour blending my be lost if the rest period is too short.

Verdict: would make again. Fast and delicious, what else could you ask for?

Broiled Sockeye Salmon with Citrus Glaze

Chocolate Filled Pocket Pies

This is the type of recipe I really like, now that I have made it once the sky is the limit on different variations. I hate being confined to a recipe and that is the reason I started this blog, to force myself to follow recipes, in order to expand my culinary knowledge. Now down to business a pocket pie is exactly what it sounds like, a pie that could fit in your pocket. Many cultures around the world have their own variations some sweet, some savoury and some both, but the key is that this pie can be eaten on the go. One of the most famous varieties comes from Cornwall in the south of England. Miners would take pocket pies wrapped in newspaper down into the mines with them, so when lunch time came all they had to do was unwrap it and enjoy. Often one end of the pie would be filled with a savoury filling, basically like a stew, and the other end would be a sweet filling. Lunch and dessert all in one, what an idea! I hope I am not the only one who didn't make the connection between Cornish and Cornwall, Cornish being something from Cornwall. The Cornish "pasty" was some popular it was said the devil would never come to Cornwall for fear of being cooked into a pie.

This particular pie crust comes together via the biscuit method. Incorporating a fat into flour until it creates a crumbly texture and then stirring in some liquid. In this case the fat was shortening which gives the dough its flakiness and the liquid was milk. The filing was made from mainly butter sugar and cocoa powder, and this recipe makes a lot of filling! Once the dough is rolled out into rounds and the filling is complete we enter the danger zone: filling the pies. The recipe warns not to over fill or you will be sorry and of course I was sorry. I though I could crimp down the edges enough that I would be fine with a nice amount of filling... nope. Before we open that can of worms there are three cooking methods: baking, deep frying and pan frying. I went with pan frying because it is fastest. Now back to the filling dilemma, after a few minutes in the pan my crimp was pushed right out of the way by the chocolaty volcano that was oozing its way out of the pie. The recipe even warned that filling usually contain a good deal of water which turns to steam and increases in volume my about 1700 times. There was a reason steam used to power trains. Despite all the smoke from the burning filling left in the pan the pies turned out really good still. I think if all the filling had stayed inside the pie it would be overwhelmingly sweet, so maybe it was a good thing after all. Pan frying was fast but I think I would have preferred that more flaky pastry that comes from baking.

Verdict: would make again. There are so many options for fillings once you have the dough down pat you could have a different filling for each day of the year. Take my advice though for filling, when you think you have a good amount take about half of it away and you should be good.

Pocket Pie with Chocolate or Curried Mango Filling

Fried Okra

Raw okra pods (from the internet)

Okra is a green pod vegetable and is a member of the mallow family. Another famous member of that family is the cacao plant from which we get cocoa and then of course chocolate. Okra's flavour is a lot different from its chocolatey cousin (although in its raw form the cacao plant would not taste much like the chocolate we consume today, roasting and many other steps are needed to produce chocolate. That will have to wait for a later blog). Describing the flavour of something in words is in my opinion an exercise in futility but I will try anyways. The flavour is similar to that of many other green vegetables, think of combining the flavours of green peppers, broccoli and green beans and then turning down the flavour a few notches; okra's flavour is pretty subtle.

Okra is prized for its thickening abilities in Louisiana where gumbo is king. Okra pods contain a sweet mucilaginous sap that is a great thickener for soups and stews but it can also make the pods slimy. The amount of noticeable "slime" is dependent on the cooking technique, chopping and stewing produces a good deal where pan frying there is little noticeable "slime." My particular recipe called for whole pods breaded in seasoned corn meal and pan fried. With keeping the pods whole I barley even noticed the sticky sap, it was really only noticeable when the cutting off the stems. The seasoning of the breading was a nice addition to the subtle flavour of the okra and the corn meal crust got nice and crispy. One thing I would mention is that pods of the same size would work best although okra selection is generally not huge (here in Ontario anyways). The smaller pieces had a more tender texture while the larger pods retained much of their crunchiness. Its a hard call between the two textures I think I would look for smaller pods next time.

Verdict: Okra will not be a weekly addition to my shopping list I would definitely make this again.

Boiled Peanut Soup

Boiled and shelled peanuts

If I had to pick one favourite food, I think it would have to be peanut butter. I suppose it is more of a condiment then a food but that's besides the point. When I came upon the peanut episode of Good Eats I was excited to make something awesome out of peanut butter, after all it goes with everything and I have tried it with just about everything. One of the recipes was for a delicious looking peanut butter pie with chocolate and an Oreo crust but in the spirit of culinary adventure I decided to go for something I had never heard of. I had never heard of boiling peanuts let alone making soup out of them but I am always up for the adventure. All the steps are pretty straight forward but this is not something you can make in a hurry. Depending on the freshness of the peanuts they can take anywhere from 3 to 4 hours of boiling to reach the desired tenderness. I only boiled mine for about an hour and a half due to some fridge repairs but I don't think it hurt the results. Once boiled the nuts are very similar to the texture of a cooked bean. This makes a lot of sense since peanuts are not really nuts at all they are legumes. the legumes family includes other culinary staples like peas, soybeans and lentils. The worst part of the recipe is getting about a pound and a half of peanuts of of their shells, like I said if you're in a hurry find a different recipe. Once the peanuts are ready, the recipe calls for cooking bacon and onions, adding chicken stock, then seasoning. Once that is simmered for about half an hour blend and that's it. One thing I should have mentioned, the bacon is reserved for garnishing the soup. The bacons really makes the soup, it is a little bland on its own but the saltiness of the bacon plays well with the peanut's flavour. I was expecting a lot of peanut taste but it is more subtle then I was expecting.

Now for a little about the peanut and how it saved the South. In 1910 the Southern Unites State's cotton crop was devastated by boll weevils, a beetle that feeds on cotton. With farmers down and out in steps our hero George Washington Carver, a scientist at the Tuskegee Institute. He published a pamphlet detailing how to grow peanuts and 105 ways to prepare them. Some of the more interesting were: peanut milk, peanut sausage, peanut orange punch and the list goes on and on. Now a days Southern states produce a great deal of the world's peanuts, with Georgia producing almost half of the US crop. America ranks third in global production, behind China and India. Another interesting factoid: once fertilized the peanut plants' flowers droop down and push themselves underground. Being underground protects the young peanuts and allows them to mature without being disturbed.

Bacon garnish

I am adding something new to the blog, a final verdict. I thing the true test of a recipe is would you make it again? Some recipes that taste good are just not practical because of time to make, strange apparatus or ingredients that you will use once and then will sit in the back of the cupboard until the next ice age. Hopefully this section gives the overall feeling I had towards the dish and if it is worth making.

Verdict: would not make again.

Boiling and shelling just takes too long for a soup that is good but not amazing.

Boiled Peanut Soup Recipe

Chocolate Peppermint Pinwheel Cookies


Merry 151 days until Christmas, that's right only 4 months and 30 days left to finish your Christmas shopping. So why am I making Christmas cookies in July? Well that's what my random recipe generator told me to do and I figure I will have a leg up come the holiday season. This cookie looks impressive and will sure get you some nods at the various Christmas events we all attend. Though this recipe is not super difficult I would say if you have not made sugar cookies before this is not the one to start with.

The recipe starts off with a typical sugar cookie dough which is then divided in half to become the chocolate portion and the peppermint portion. The chocolate half gets melted chocolate and vanilla, while the peppermint half gets peppermint extract and candy canes. Since it is July candy canes are in short supply, although I did find a couple kicking around the house. For the rest mint candies have to play the part. Once the doughs have been mixed up and allowed time to rest comes the challenge, rolling the doughs together. The peppermint dough is placed on top of the chocolate and the fun begins. In the episode of Good Eats Alton Brown uses a flexible cutting board to assist in rolling. I don't have one such cutting board so I just went for broke and starting rolling. This produced a lot of cracks in the dough and bits falling off, it was not a pretty sight. I did manage to complete the roll and stick on all the pieces that had fallen off. To my surprise when I cut the cookies the insides looked a lot better than the outsides and I ended up with something similar to the pictures in the book. Some practice I'm sure would help, good thing it is only July. As for the taste it is a solid sugar cookies that will fill you with Christmas cheer.

Chocolate Peppermint Pinwheel Cookie Recipe

Angel Food Cake

Angel Food Cake Secret Weapon

I was all set to make this cake last week. I had glanced at the recipe earlier in the week and thought I had everything I needed. We had 9 eggs in the fridge which I thought would be plenty, the recipe called for 12, hence this entry is a little later than usual. It is really only the egg whites that are needed so instead of separating a whole carton of eggs I turned to the angel food cake secret weapon (not actually that secret) a carton of egg whites. One carton contains 16 egg whites, enough to make the cake and a nice omelette to go with it. If for some reason you really want to separate the eggs yourself, the leftover yolks can be frozen in an ice cube tray for later use.

Angel food cake is based on an egg white foam created by thousands of bubbles. In order to make bubbles in a liquid there needs to be something to break the surface tension of the liquid. Take water for instance, it will not create stable bubbles on its own, this is because the water molecules are too attracted to each other. Add soap and the surface tension is reduced allowing bubbles to form. Bubbles are round because a sphere has the least surface area of any shape and thus is the easiest to form. Egg whites contain a good deal of protein and when broken up, by physical agitation, they allow bubbles to form. These bubbles gives angel food cake its lightness and its lift, as there are no chemical or biological leaveners (baking powder, baking soda, yeast) in the recipe.

Egg White Foam

One of the famous qualities of this cake is that it is fat free, no butter, no oil, no nothing and I can't say that the fat is greatly missed. Its even pretty low in calories, approximately 173 calories for 1/12 of the cake (that's according to http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/recipe_analysis.php, pretty cool site). The cake is pretty sweet and almost reminds me of a marshmallow in flavour. The cake on its own is pretty good but it really shines when paired with something else like jam. Toppings are great but they can quickly send the low-calorie and fat free status out the window.

A few notes on pans: this cake is supposed to be baked in a tube pan, this was not a problem. The problem occurred when the recipe said to turn the tube pan upside down to let it cool. This was supposed to stop the cake from falling and loosing its lightness. After about a minute upside down the cake fell right out of the pan therefore I am not sure if the upside down part is a good idea. Secondly, in order for the cake to "climb" the walls of the pan during cooking the pan should not be greased. As you can imagine the outside layer of the cake sticks to the pan, leaving a nice mess. I shouldn't complain too much, a soak in some hot water removed the stuck on cake without too much effort.

Final thoughts: when I go for dessert I want something really rich and dense, so angel food cake is not my favourite dessert in the world. It is a viable option for those with a sweet tooth looking to watch their waste lines, but beware of excess toppings!

Recipe: Angel Food Cake

Braised Oxtail 


Here we are again in the "variety meats" section in the Joy of Cooking. Variety meats are all the good stuff: tongue, heart, liver etc. There is so much unexplored territory here it is hard to choose and sometimes find theses interesting meats. This time I went with possibly the most accessible of the variety meats: ox tail. It is pretty much what it sounds like except it is not really from an ox (an ox being a bull that has been castrated) just a regular cow. Ox tail is a very boney piece of meat which is the reason it is so good for slow cooking. The pictures of the bones are at the bottom so if you don't want to see them you don't have to scroll down all the way. There are some important food science concepts dependent on them so I figured they were worth including. I have mentioned this before but I think it is worth saying again, the more a muscle is worked the tougher and more flavourful it gets. So just think of how much a cow moves its tail, therefore ox tail is really tough. Locked away behind all the toughness and connective tissue is lots of big beefy flavour and the only way to unlock it is with slow cooking. There are several types of slow cooking but braising works well for this application since the meat is submerged in liquid it keeps it from drying out. I guess I should define braising and distinguish it from stewing. Braising is usually done to a whole piece of meat submerged in a flavourful liquid, while stewing is small uniformly cut pieces of meat cooked in a flavourful liquid.

I often find that slow cooked meats lack the big flavour I am after. They may be tender but take them out of their sauce and the meat itself is rather bland; this is where ox tail is different. Since some of the pieces are about 50% bone there is a lot of flavour. The flavour comes from the marrow of the bone, the same concept as boiling bones to make a stock. This not only flavours the stock the meat is cooking in but also adds something to the meat itself. Moreover, ox tail contains a good deal of collagen (the protein that makes up connective tissue) which when cooked breaks down into gelatine. The gelatine helps to thicken the liquid and gives the stew incredible body. Body is a hard thing to describe if you don't know what I mean. The best way to describe it is a smooth but substantial mouthfeel.

The recipe itself is very simple if you have a lot of time on your hands for the slow cooking. The meat is browned, submerged in beef stock and put in the oven for 4 hours. Then vegetables are added and the mixture is cooked for another hour. After 5 hours the meat should pull right off the bone. The stock is strained and used to make a gravy and there you have it. Two small notes, this is very rich so the addition of a little bit of acid would be nice and there is a good deal of fat in the stock, take time to skim as much as possible off. Skipping this step will leave your stew somewhat greasy. These points are very minor, I loved this recipe. I had a little trouble finding ox tail. I had seen it at the grocery store before but it is not something that is in stock all the time. I had no luck in to chain grocery stores and had to go to an actual butcher shop.

The moment I know you have all been waiting for: the bones. A cow's tail is tapered from the base of the spine to the end of the and thus ox tail pieces come in different sizes. The three bones below are a sampling of some of the sizes. The two larger pieces are from the base of the spine area and are shaped as you would expect a vertebrae to be. Notice on the ends of the bones there is a little cap. This a spinal disk, the piece of cartilage that separates vertebras. If you have ever slipped a disk that piece is out of whack. As you might have guessed the smallest bone is from closer to the end of the tail. Hopefully you have learned something and are not grossed out. I will say I am no bovine biologist, I did do some research but if you are a bovine biologist please comment on how I did and even if you are not please comment anyways.

Raw Ox Tail

Parsnip Muffins

I forgot to get a picture before shredding the
 parsnips so here is one from the internet

This recipe comes from an episode of Good Eats entitled "Undercover Veggies" and gives a few recipes to hide parsnips in everyday baked items. Vegetables can get a bad wrap with kids and many adults so sometimes the chef has to do a little sneaking around to make sure everyone gets all the nutrition they need. I will admit I have done this but it is for the greater good. And now to parsnips, like many ingredients featured on this blog, I had never encountered a parsnip before. They look sort of like a carrot but are beige in colour and have a flavour that is well... hard to describe. I took a bite of one raw just to get a sense of the flavour (they are usually eaten cooked) and it tastes a lot like a carrot but there is something a little different about it. Parsnips can apparently get very sweet, although the ones I had were not particularly sweet. The sweetness is at its maximum when in the ground over the winter. Parsnips store energy as starch which is converted into simple sugars in a process called respiration. In cold weather (below 50 F) respiration slows and the sugar builds up in the cells, this prevents ice crystals from forming. Therefore the parsnip does not freeze and the build up of sugars taste make the parsnip taste sweeter.

Slivered and roasted almonds on top

The muffin recipe was pretty standard except for the addition of plain yogurt and the parsnips of course. I am not sure what difference the yogurt made as a posed to something like milk to moisten the batter. Like the parsnip itself the muffins had a certain je ne sais quoi (French for "I don't know what"), but overall was similar in flavour to a carrot muffin. This recipe only called for nutmeg but if you added the other typical carrot muffin spices I think it would be very hard to distinguish a carrot muffin and a parsnip muffin in a blind taste test. No doubt it was a good muffin but I think I prefer the classic carrot muffin to the parsnip version. Although I would very much like to try roasting parsnips. Something for another day.

Parsnip Muffin Recipe

Chicken Fried Steak

Today we are talking about cube steak. A cube steak is a tough cut of beef that is tenderized by perforation. The perforation cuts through the connective tissue that makes certain cuts tough. Tough cuts come from parts of the animal that do a lot of work, legs and the like. The more central on the animal you go the more tender and expensive the meat gets. Hence the price and tenderness of beef tenderloin, its about as far from either leg as you can get. Like many things in life though there is a trade-off the tougher cuts have more beefy flavour and a much cheaper price tag. Usually a piece of bottom round cooked quickly in a hot pan would be shoe leather, but perforate that same piece of meat into cube steak and it can be cooked quickly without getting to tough. If you are from Canada, like I am, you may find cube steak labelled as minute steak.

The biscuit was not part of the recipe but I thought it was a nice
addition

This episode had recipes for the two most popular cube steak dishes. The first is known by many different names: country style steak, Salisbury steak, Swiss steak etc. All of them are basically a floured and seared cube steak slow cooked in a brown sauce. This looked pretty good but I went for the Texas staple: chicken fried steak. I remember hearing about this mystery meat when I was younger. Is it steak? Or chicken? Or some kind of mutant chicken-cow hybrid? As cool as a feathered cow would be chicken fried steak is cube steak done has if it is fried chicken. That means breaded and pan fried so it gets a crispy brown crust just like fried chicken. It is usually served with a peppery white gravy, called sawmill gravy. Why it was named after a sawmill I am not sure. Apparently Texans are served up over 800,000 chicken fried steaks per day and I can see why they are pretty darn delicious. My only problem was the gravy was a little bland. I think there was not nearly enough brown bits left in the pan to flavour the gravy. I fixed this with lots of salt and pepper and it actually turned out pretty good. Again I will be honest about my deviations from the recipe, Alton Brown bought a roast, cut steaks and perforated them himself. His reasoning was that in lower quality cube steaks many different pieces of meat can be sticked together. Personally I am not all that bothered my this possibility and it didn't want to go and by the tenderizing thing that he used. Cubing your own cube steaks is a possibility and you may save a little money but I will take my chances with the store bought variety.

Chicken Fried Steak Recipe

Macerated Strawberry Pudding

Coca-Cola Product Placement

This week we get two recipes for the price of one! One of them I was pleasantly surprised about, the other sadly somewhat disappointed. Let's start with the good news, the first recipe and necessary to make the second recipe was macerated strawberries. Macerating is just soaking a food in a liquid to both soften the food and allow it to absorb some flavour. Macerating is very similar to marinading and the definition, as with a lot of things in the culinary world, can get a little bit fuzzy. Macerating usually involves fruit and a sweetened liquid, usually some kind of alcohol, where marinating is primarily done to meats (vegetables are often marinated as well) and involves an acidic liquid. To macerate my strawberries I used red wine, honey, sugar and lemon zest. I am not much of a wine fan, in fact I couldn't even tell you what kind of wine I used besides red. I found half a bottle in the fridge, I think it was left over from Christmas. Despite my aversion to the flavour of wine, the sugar and especially the lemon zest was an excellent combination with the flavour of the strawberries. This would be perfect for ice cream or yogurt or just right out of the container. Also the longer it sits the better it tastes!

Un-openable Can

Now for the bad news. The second recipe used the macerated strawberries to make a sort of no-bake bread pudding. The can with the pop can sticking out of the top of it is the rig used to create this dish. Rounds of stale bread are layered in the can with strawberries and the macerating liquid in between. The pop can is used as a weight to compress the pudding for the 8 hours it needs to sit in the fridge. The first problem with was that it was really hard to find a can (at least in my kitchen) that was openable at both ends and the right size for the loaf of bread. Most of the cans had bottoms like the picture to the left, that you can't use a can opener on or were way too big. Once I found a can assembly went smoothly, although I would recommend cutting the rounds and then letting the bread stale instead of the other way around. I was hoping for a creamy smooth texture when I pulled the can off but I guess there was not enough liquid for the bread to absorb. This left some tough and crunchy parts. Maybe with more liquid this would have been more successful (I did only make one after all) but the comments on foodnetwork.com said this recipe was hard to get right. This is not for the kids; there is no cooking involved so all the alcohol is still there.

And now in closing a few tidbits about strawberries:
- Strawberries get there name from the straw that is used to keep there vines from rotting when in direct contact with the ground
- A single strawberry contains about 200 fruits. The seeds are technically the fruit and the fleshy part is just there to hold them

I forgot to mention this recipe is from Good Eats: The Early Years and here is the link Macerated Strawberry Pudding.

Plantains 

Banana, plantain comparison. Plantain is on top

First of all I cheated a little, the page I was supposed to pick a recipe from in the Joy of Cooking contained the most average sandwiches that don't really require a recipe (BLT etc.). This shows that the Joy of Cooking really does have a recipe for everything that you could ever want to cook but if you were new to North American cuisine you may want to start with the basics I suppose. Anyways I decided to move on to the next recipe on my list, plantains. I had been curious for a while about the differences between a banana and a plantain, they certainly look similar. In their raw state a ripe plantain tastes like a banana but much more subtly flavoured and far less sweet. From what I have read plantains are almost never eaten raw. The raw taste wasn't bad it was just very bland. The recipe was really simple, just cut the plantains into rounds and saute them. The pieces really like to stick together so I would suggest placing them in the pan instead of just dumping them in, like I did. This will ensure more even cooking and less burning. Cooking the plantains really distinguishes them from bananas. The inside of the slices had a consistency more like a cooked potato and according to the Joy of Cooking green plantains can cooked like a potato. After cooking the recipe suggested salt and pepper which was good but I also tried some powdered sugar, which I much preferred.

Certainly looks like a banana

Plantians are grown in most tropical climates from the Caribbean to Asia, with Uganda, Ghana and Colombia being the top producers. Plantains are consumed in many different types of dishes around the world but the common theme is that they are cooked like a potato, usually boiled or fried. It is a little strange looking at what is on your plate and thinking okay that looks like a banana but then eating it and realizing it is more like a potato. This ingredient has certainly sparked my curiosity and I would definitely buy them again.

Green Bean Casserole

Doesn't look like much but it was really good

I used to be a green bean hater but I have been slowly coming around to like them, if I had only had this casserole sooner! Its no wonder that this has become a classic dish but usually made from the recipe on the back of a soup can. Although the soup can version is pretty good the from scratch version is way better.  But speaking of the soup can version this leads nicely into green bean casserole history.

In Good Eats 3: The Later Years Alton Brown brings up an interesting point. American cuisine was only really coming into its own in the past century or so while most of cuisines have existed for many hundreds of years. At the turn of the 20th century home cooks began to look for connivence products made possible by the industrial revolution. In 1897 Dr. John T. Dorrance was working for the Campbell Preserve Company when he discovered a way to condense soups. 32 oz of soup in a 10 oz can, sounded like a winning idea. It was such a hit that the Campbell Preserve Company became just Campbell's Soup. They began to publish recipes that would incorporate the condensed soups and many classic dishes followed. It was not until 1955 that Dorcas Reilly of Campbell's Soup first concocted the green bean casserole (she was inducted into the inventors Hall of Fame in 2002 for the green bean casserole).

Even without the soup cans this casserole is still really easy to make. Cook the green beans as you would have to even for the soup can version and then it is as simple as sauteing some mushrooms and adding stock and cream. The onions on top are just coated in flour and breadcrumbs and baked for about 20 minutes.


Green Bean Cassarole

Stone Fruit Pouch

Before Cooking

This week's recipe is from an episode of Good Eats all about cooking in pouches. Pouches can be made from many common kitchen items like aluminum foil (good for the grill) or parchment paper which I had never really thought of using. Since parchment paper will not crimp like aluminum foil will, Alton Brown used staples to hold the pouches together. I was a little dubious about putting staples in the oven but they stood up pretty well even at 500 F. Parchment paper is also great because unlike aluminum foil it will not react with acidic foods and can be reheated in the microwave (the staples would need to be removed of course).

Cooking in this manor far predates the silicon impregnated parchment paper we have today. For centuries 

tamales have been cooked in pouches made of either corn husks or plantain leaves. Across the Atlantic there is a whole family of dishes, called dolma, that use grape leaves to hold a variety of fillings, from meats to grains. Dolma is most popular in the area of the former Ottoman Empire, southeastern Europe to northern Africa. Further east, in India banana leaves are used in a similar fashion. 

After Cooking

Now for my recipe. The first two in the episode were for fish and I was not really in the mood for that kind of endeavor, so I opted for the dessert option (dessert is always a better choice anyways). This pouch consisted of ginger cookies, I had some mini gingerbread men, apricots, plums, lime juice and sugar. Put all that in the oven, wrapped in parchment and in 12 minutes you have an amazing ice cream topping. Sour but sweet at the same time, with fruit that is perfectly tender and the cookies become almost like pudding. This is a favourite for sure. 

On Ice Cream 

Stone Fruit Pouch Recipe

Stuffed Peppers and Caramel Sauce


Don't be alarmed, the caramel sauce is not on top of the peppers or anything I just decided to do two recipes for this entry. Since there is not a terrible amount of interesting information on stuffed peppers I thought I would add the next recipe on my list to this entry.

Stuffed peppers are exactly what they sound like. I had only ever had them at the university cafeteria, and they were okay, nothing too special. Mine weren't really all that exciting either, but still pretty good. Since I am doing my best to follow the recipes I had to make a choice between cheese and rice for the filling or ground beef and vegetables. I went with the rice and cheese version although I really would have liked to do a combination of the two recipes. Something for next time I guess. One thing I would recommend, that I think the cafeteria may have skipped on, is steaming the peppers for 10 minutes before putting them in the oven. This way they are tender instead of hard and crunchy. One last note for fans of this blog yes that is another gratin on top of the peppers, they seem to be popping up everywhere.

I have committed to full disclosure on this blog so I will come out and say it... my caramel sauce was a disaster. I had made caramel a couple of times before without a recipe and I had no problems, so I was surprised this didn't work out. First a little about the recipe, basically caramel is sugar and water but this recipe from Good Eats: The Early Years had two other ingredients in the main caramel. The addition of cream of tartar and corn syrup is to prevent re-crystallization. WARNING this may bring back nightmares from high school chemistry. Dissolving the sugar, which is almost pure sucrose, into the water creates a solution. A given amount of water can only dissolve a certain amount of sugar, when a solution reaches this point it is saturated. When heated though the solution can dissolve more sugar, becoming supersaturated, but at a price. Any sudden movements can send the sucrose out of solution and you have to start again. This kind of thing does happen to supersaturated solutions as I found out in high school chemistry when I spilled a supersaturated solution on my pants. It definitely re-crystallizes, but that's another story. Adding the cream of tartar, an acid, breaks down some of the sucrose into its base parts glucose and fructose. These other sugars get in the way of the sucrose reforming into crystals. The corn syrup does the same thing because it is mostly glucose. When I had made caramel before I had never run into problems with crystallization, so these extra ingredients may not be necessary.

"Finished" sauce

Weird separated caramel sauce

Since I don't have a candy thermometer I just had to guess my caramel's temperature. Ideally it should be between 320 and 360 fahrenheit. Its basically a game of chicken between you and the molten sugar. Add the cream to cool it off too early and you lose lots of caramel flavour but go to long and it will burn. Had I added the cream to mine about 5 seconds earlier it probably would have been okay; it was only slightly burned. It you have ever burned something (I think we can all say that we have) a little bit of burnt flavour goes a long way! To had to the list of problems when I added the cream to the caramel it curdled, leaving a very rough texture. Once cooled it even separated from the rest of the caramel. This is bizarre, the recipe said to just dump all the cream in at once which is what I did. I can't figure out what went wrong. I will have to try this again sometime and not burn it before I can really make a judgement on the recipe.

Caramel Sauce Recipe

Orange Marmalade 


Well I'm finally back, now that exams are done and I am home for the summer. I hope to keep the entries rolling out at least once a week.

This week we are dealing with oranges and orange marmalade to be exact. Here we are at another cross roads in culinary classification, what constitutes a jam or a jelly or marmalade? Here is the quick version: jam has both fruit pieces and fruit juice, jelly is translucent and made from only sweetened fruit juice and as for marmalade its definition is a little fuzzy. Marmalade usually contains the peel of the fruit, like an orange, but marmalades can also be made from things like onions which obviously do not have a peel like an orange. Moreover, in North America we like our marmalades sweet while across the pond in the UK they prefer a more bitter taste. All of the above have two things in common, they fall into the fruit preserves category along with many other spreads (compotes, chutneys, fruit curds, etc.) and they are jelled with pectin. Pectin is a substance that is naturally occurring to varying degrees in fruits and it is activated by sugars and acids. Pectin is a big topic so I will give it its due in another blog.

Boiling Oranges

Orange marmalade is typically associated with England but it was actually a Scottish invention. Marmalade like substances, called Quince jelly, first arrived in England as far back as 1495 onboard Portuguese ships. About 300 years later a Scotsmen by the name of James Keeler took his Spanish oranges to market but could not sell any of them because they were so bitter. Keeler's wife did not want to waste the oranges so she cooked them in sugar and water and the rest is history.



As for my marmalade, I was pleasantly surprised by it. I am not the biggest fan or oranges so I was not really looking much forward to this recipe. It turned out to my liking though and is great on bread and crackers. It is really simple recipe, which you can find below, hasn't changed much from Mrs. Keeler's method. Slice up some oranges boil them and add sugar, instant (about an hour total cooking time) breakfast sensation. I might say to hold back a little of the sugar mine was a little sweet, but don't hold back to much or the pectin won't be able to do its job. I only made half the recipe because I don't have the 8 quart pot the recipe called for but it all turned out okay. Since I was not making an industrial size quantity I also skipped the preserving part, if you do the same make sure the go in the fridge.

This recipe is from Good Eats 3: The Later Years Orange Marmalade

Beet Green Gratin 

This weeks random recipe landed me on page 30 of Good Eats 2: The Middle Years and the episode dealing with beets. I had never really eaten beets before and I was not all that keen on it. I think beets have got a bad rap over the years. The chapter offered to recipes: one for pickled beets and one for a dish with beet greens. Since I didn't want to wait a whole week for the beets to become pickles I opted for the less adventurous beet green dish.

So what is a gratin? I asked myself the same question. It sounds pretty fancy but it is really a very simple technique that is common to many dishes. All a gratin is is some kind of toasted crust on the top of a casserole like dish. If the crust is made of bread crumbs (usually buttered), cheese or in this recipes case, Ritz crackers, they all fall under the gratin category. The macaroni from the last entry could also be classified as a gratin. So that's the meaning behind the fancy name but it doesn't really say much about the actual dish. Basically it was just a quiche, without a crust. Eggs, some cheese, mushrooms and the beet greens all baked in the oven, nothing to complicated. I will say that the beet greens, which were Swiss chard by the way, were not my favourite green. I would have much preferred spinach for this application. I think the Swiss chard was a little too earthy for my liking. I'm not really sure what "earthy" really means but they throw it around on the food network all the time. Does it mean that earthy foods taste like dirt? Not really sure but I think it fits with the Swiss chard's flavour (I'm not saying they taste like dirt though). Now that we are all throughly confused, try out this dish and see if you can describe Swiss chard's flavour better.


Recipe: Beet Green Gratin

Macaroni and Cheese


Another classic recipe from Good Eats: The Early Years. Rumor has it that Thomas Jefferson's household were the inventors of macaroni and cheese, although this is debatable, he did serve macaroni and cheese at at least one state dinner. Jefferson tired to have the signature noodle made at his home but they did not live up to expectations so he ended up importing them from Italy along with multiple cheeses. The general population was introduced to this dish in 1937 when Kraft introduced their signature product. Due to its low cost it became a favourite for depression and World War II era cooks.

Slightly brunt macaroni

Before reading up on this dish I had totally the wrong idea about what macaroni was. I had always thought macaroni refered to the shape of the pasta, but it really means the pasta was made with only semolina flour, from durham wheat, and water, no eggs. The shape of traditional noodles for mac and cheese are called elbow and there are hundreds of other shapes and sizes that fall under the title macaroni. While we are talking about ingredients I found a few interesting tidbits about cheddar cheese. Cheddar is a popular choice for macaroni (I'm still going to call the dish just macaroni even though we all now know that is a very ambiguous term) with its sharp flavour. Once a curds are created from cow's milk they are staked one on top of the other. The weight of all the cheese curd pushes the moisture out of the cheese giving cheddar its texture. This process is called "cheddaring," and is named for a village in the south of England where the cheese was first made. Without additives cheddar is a pale yellow colour not its signature orange. The addition of annatto seeds don't do much for flavour but give the cheese the colour we all know and love.

As for the actual execution it was going great up until the very end, the macaroni and cheese had been in the oven for the prescribed half and hour but the cheese on the top had not reached that glorious golden brown colour. I decided to crank up the broiler, I'm sure you can see where this is going, I got distracted... making a salad of all things. When I remembered it was too late, the top was already starting to smoke. The damage turned out to be not that bad, once the burned parts were mixed in with the rest they weren't that noticeable. Despite the burntness it was delicious! My pervious experience with homemade macaroni I found most of the sauces to be somewhat bland. This sauce certainly did not fall in that category, the addition of dry mustard and paprika really boosted the flavour! I would highly recommend this recipe.

Mac and Cheese Recipe

Rice Pudding


Last week's random recipe from the Joy of Cooking was rice pudding. I had really only had rice pudding once before this so I didn't really know what I was in for. The Joy of Cooking presented two recipes: baked and a stovetop verison. I opted for the stovetop version because I was short on time. Turns out rice pudding is ridiculously easy to make. Cook rice, add milk and sugar and cook until thick, that's it. I added some cinnamon and nutmeg to mine, just to up the flavour a bit. We drink skim milk so that's what I used but I bet it would be a lot better with whole milk or with some cream added.

I mentioned I was short on time this week hence
this crappy picture

This entry seemed way too short so I thought I would google rice pudding and see what comes up. Turns out rice pudding is prevalent in almost every culture. Wikipedia lists several varieties from Asia, Africa, Europe, North America and South America. The majority have the typical rice pudding backbone of rice cooked in milk, while some use ground rice to make more of a porridge then a pudding. The differences come in the form of the extra flavourings that are added. Cinnamon is an overwhelming favourite and shows up in rice pudding in almost every part of the world. I was hoping to see some really interesting ingredients added to rice pudding around the world but flavourings seem pretty standard. Besides cinnamon some other common additions are: nutmeg, ginger, raisins and orange zest. There are however some interesting Christmas rice pudding traditions in Scandinavia. An almond is hidden in a big bowl of rice pudding, whoever gets the almond in their portion has good luck for the year. Rice pudding shows up in so many places around the world because it is really easy and really delicious... so go and make some, you won't be disappointed.

Gyro with Tzatziki Sauce


I printed off the recipe for this dish last summer and never had the chance to make it so I was very excited when its page number came out of my random recipe generator. Gyro is basically a meatloaf made from lamb that is usually cooked on a rotisserie. Our barbecue doesn't have a rotisserie so I opted for the oven.

Though gyro is synonymous with Greek cuisine the best guess says that it hails from New York City, where it was first mentioned in print in the 70's. The word gyro comes from the Greek for rotation, like gyroscope, although gyroscope is pronounced with a "j," gyro is pronounced with a "y." Tzatziki on the other hand is very old and very Greek. A sauce made from garlic, cucumber and Greek yogurt. On a side note I highly recommend Greek style yogurt, despite its high price point. It thick and creamy texture cannot be matched by traditional yogurts.

Technically my gyro wasn't really gyro at all since it didn't really do any rotating, but as a meatloaf I would still give it high marks. I am pretty new to lamb so the flavour was new and different for me, a nice departure from the usual ground beef. The loaf came out a little under seasoned but I think that was the chef's fault not the recipes. On a warmed pita with tzatziki, onion and some feta it was a winner in my books. I find gyro at restaurants gets bogged down with too much lettuce and tomato, leaving be thinking "where's the beef?" (or in this case lamb). So I left them out all together, the more meat the better!

Homemade Tzatziki 

As usual the recipe link: Gyro Recipe. Again if anyone has any comments please leave the below.

Common Food Additives 


Unfortunately this is a very busy weekend for me school wise so I doubt I will have time to make my recipe for the week. So I thought I would write a quick entry about something cool from another book I got last Christmas, Cooking for Geeks. Its a great read for anyone interested in science and cooking. It has lots of graphs and charts as well as some science humour, that I very much appreciated. This is sounding way too much like a sales pitch for the book, so I better get to the point. One of the most interesting parts of the book deals with common food additives and what they are used for. I have selected a couple to talk about, it sure makes reading the ingredient list on foods a lot more interesting if you know what all those crazy sounding chemicals actually are for.

Carrageenan
Seaweed in your chocolate milk? Well kind of, carrageen is a polysaccharide that is derived from seaweed. The seaweed is dried in the sun and then ground into a powder. This powder shows up in many common foods, especially dairy products, where it improves creaminess. It can also be used to create gels like those found inside Gushers and it is even used in some beer to remove proteins that cause the beer to go cloudy. Carrageenan is not a new kid on the culinary block, as far back as the 15th century it was being used to thicken dairy products. Following World War II the manufacturing process was industrialized and its been an extremely popular additive ever since.


Maltodextrin 
A starch that dissolves in water but not in fat, why is this important? Maltodextrin is mainly used to create powders from fatty foods, when the powder is in your mouth it dissolves back to its original form. A quick check of the Doritos bag shows maltodextrin as the third ingredient. It is used to turn cheese into a powder that will stick to the chip. This is one example of many, imagine powdered butter, peanut butter or olive oil, the possibilities are endless.


Lecithin
Commonly from soy beans (sometimes listed as soy lecithin on packing), lecithin can be used as an emulsifier or lubricant. An emulsifier helps to combine two ingredients that don't normally mix, like oil and vinegar in salad dressing. It is a common additive to salad dressings and mayonnaise. In home made dressings, like caesar, and mayonnaise the lecithin comes from eggs, another good source but not as useful for mass production. Lecithin is also used to help stabilize those foams they have severe in fancy gourmet restaurants. Finally, lecithin is also a main ingredient in non-stick sprays as it is very slippery stuff.


Transglutaminase
This one is really cool but some of its applications make be cringe. Transglutaminase is basically meat glue, it bonds certain proteins, allowing pieces of meat to be effectively "glued" together. This is how such delights as McNuggets and deli ham are created, a kind of Frankenstein's monster of meats all glued together into a hunk. Granted McNuggets and deli ham are quite delicious it just a little scary where they come from. There are some more appetizing applications like bacon wrapped scallops where transglutaminase is used to keep the bacon from falling off. It also can be used to thicken dairy products by binding some their proteins.

According to Cooking for Geeks these additives are all available online, I would really like to try some of them but I think that will have to wait for another blog.