Culinary Disasters

How can you go wrong with a recipe inspired from Rick Bayless?  Believe me you cannot especially if that recipe involves an entire roasted head of garlic.

The beautiful thing about this recipe is that it is very quick and simple especially if you already have roasted garlic laying around in the fridge.  If you do not then fear not because roasting garlic is about as idiot proof as it comes (cut top off garlic, drizzle oil, wrap in foil, shove in 350 degree oven for 45 minutes).

While the garlic is roasting fill your spice grinder with:

•  1/4 teaspoon whole allspice
•  1 teaspoon whole black peppercorns
•  1/4 teaspoon whole cloves
•  1/4 teaspoon cumin seeds

and beat into oblivion.

Squeeze all the roasted cloves of garlic into a bowl and mash them together with the spices along with 1 tablespoon of cider vinegar, 1-2 teaspoons of whole chili powder (ancho and guajillo), pinch of salt, and 2 teaspoons of dried oregano until thoroughly combined.

Rub this paste over your chicken thighs and grill over medium-low heat until the thighs are cooked through (another advantage is no marinade time involved).

Told you this is a freaking flipping hard recipe to make.

p.s. to those who miss the long winded rambling Jeff posts I apologize.  Work has been killing me lately and my ability to ramble nonsensical is losing out to my desire to sleep.  Fear not it will return shortly.

Tags: chicken, All // 11 Comments »

Another flipping bread post….man they seem to never end.  How to sell the bread?  Hmm…it is bread and it is delicious that good enough?  Oh wait it has a crispy outside and a chewy inside.

I am so lazy writing about this bread that I debated waiting a day and making this a Wordless Wednesday post……………….

If you are curious the meatballs were made from panko, eggs, lamb, veal, and sausage.  The sauce was basically the same sauce that was used in the roasted tomato and sausage.  The french bread was covered in roasted garlic and butter and shoved under the broiler for a couple minutes.  Combine and enjoy!

Tags: Bread Baking (BBA), All // 15 Comments »

If you would have told me a month ago I would be getting fresh tomatoes I probably would have laughed at you because this has been a horrible tomato year for me.  It started with 11 tomato plants (10 of them in raised beds and 1 little guy in a container on my back patio).  Thanks to a cool and wet summer and the fungus it brought I ended up having to rip out three of the tomato plants and the rest received a massive haircut to remove infected branches.  I was also swearing I was going to end up ripping them all out.  However, it seems like nightly I am walking outside with a large bowl and filling it up with tomatoes.  So thank you thank you thank you sun and warm weather for finally coming and saving my remaining tomato plants and making them extra delicious this year.

One of my favorite things to do with tomatoes is experiment with sauces especially if it involves blasting the poor tomatoes under a high broiler while standing by the stove perfecting my evil laugh as the tomatoes blacken and shrivel.  I also have a strong hatred of measurements in sauce making and usually rely on the good old method of I have a cutting board full of cut herbs and well the sauce needs more thyme so toss that in.

Since almost everything came from the garden or the farmer’s market I have submitted this to Andrea Meyer’s awesome event called Grow Your Own (click here to read more information).

For this recipe you will need:

• 1 lb hot Italian sausage
• 1 onion
• 1 green pepper
• 3 cloves of garlic
• Couple pounds of tomatoes (I used black krim, roma, and some other variety I planted that I have no flipping clue what they are but they are big, ugly, and red).
• 1 cup of red wine (I used chianti)
• Heavy pinch  of fresh thyme
• Heavy pinch  of fresh rosemary
• Heavy pinch  of fresh oregano
• 1 bay leaf
• Heavy pinch of crushed red pepper
• Kosher salt and black pepper
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Penne pasta cooked to ale dente with some of the cooking liquid reserved

Roasting the tomatoes:

• Slice the top off the tomatoes and make an X in the bottom of that tomato
• Stand them up cut side down in a baking dish
• Cover with extra virgin olive oil, salt, and pepper
• I also threw the garlic still in paper into the glass dish so that could get roasted with the tomatoes
• Throw under hot broiler until blackened and soft (about 5-10 minutes)
• Remove from the broiler, peel the tomatoes and garlic, and squish everything together.

Assembling the rest of the pasta:

• Over medium heat in a large sauce pot add in a squirt of oil and cook the sausage till browned.
• Remove the sausage and add in the onion and pepper and cook till softened (about 5 minutes) with a pinch of salt and pepper.
• Add the wine into the pot and reduce by 1/2.
• Add the sausage, roasted tomato mixture, and herbs into the sauce pot and cook for a good 15-20 minutes.  Make sure you taste occasionally to make sure you like the flavors.
•  When you are happy with the sauce toss in the penne and stir around until combined.  If the mixture is to thick add in a dash of the cooking liquid to thin it out.  Personally I love a good a thick sauce so I rarely add in any of the cooking liquid.
• Serve and enjoy with cheese and basil!

Tags: sauce, Quick, pork, All // 26 Comments »

Another weekend which means two more breads in the Bread Baker’s Apprentice challenge are done.  I wish all we did was bread but it felt like from sun up to well past sun down we were constantly tethered to the kitchen or garden.  Heck here is the just what I remember we did:

•  Canned 19 more jars of cucumbers, jalapenos, sweet peppers, and hungarian hot peppers (total canning jars used to date is 31).
• Turned compost
• Removed another colander full of tomatoes and of course had to remove the skins and boil them down with the other tomatoes for tomato sauce.  We started with about 8 quarts of tomatoes and ended with about 10 cups of tomato sauce.
• Removed about eight feet of beans that we deshelled and prepared for drying.
• Removed the rutabagas, blanched, and froze them

This is also in addition to fun stuff like grilling jerk chicken, making three pound of meatballs, catching a movie, and going out to dinner with friends.

On a side note I am starting to get sad because the beans and rutabagas were the last bit of life left in one of the raised beds.  However, the plus we have already started plotting and planning for next year’s garden and yes it is growing again.  Pretty soon my backyard is just going to be a garden.

The breads we did this weekend were the Italian and the French.  Since both of these were two day breads it was easy to start the starters on Friday and then finish making them on Saturday and Sunday.  We also went with measure over weighs for both of these breads (actually Heather started the starters she used measure which is part of her evil plan to convert me from the scale to the measuring cups).  It does seem the breads that are made with measure come together easier and quicker than the ones that we slave over a scale.

Besides the bread sticks we also made a loaf which was awesome served with melted butter and some roasted garlic.  Oh wait add roasted garlic to the list of stuff we did over the weekend.

French bread to follow later this week and as a hint it will feature the meatballs and some of the tomato sauce…..

As always in closing if you are interested in the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge our fearless host is Nicole at Pinch My Salt and you can read more about it clicking here.

Tags: Bread Baking (BBA), All // 28 Comments »

The only interesting item that happened with the cinnamon raisin bread is that we ran a little experiment while making it.  Heather always used measuring and everything I read (remember virgin baker until this bloody Bread Baker Apprentice) was you weigh everything.  However, during the course of the last couple breads we have found that when going by the scale we were adding a good 1/4 cup of extra flour to get the dough to form a ball.  She had to keep mentioning that she never had a problem while I was standing over the Kitchen Aid cursing as I added more and more flour praying and waiting for the dough to finally come together.

The experiment was simple one bread we used weighs and the other we used measuring cups.  I hate to admit it but the measuring cups came together a lot easier and rose more than the bread that I sat over a scale trying to get the ounces exact.  Unfortunately a taste test was not possible since the bread that was weighed was dragged to my grandma’s birthday party and the other was gifted to a co-worker who has been a huge help with some work stuff over the last couple of weeks.  The co-worker’s opinion of the bread was that it was freaking amazing and profusely thanked me however, like most co-workers they are just happy to receive anything.  The one that was weighed was a huge success at grandma’s party and everyone thanked us but once again they are family they are just more shocked that home made bread was served.

Tallying up the score I am going to go with the measuring cups won since it came together instantly and effortlessly.  Although we have discussed running a couple more experiments the nerdy engineer in me just loves the exactness of a scale so will be hard for me to pry away from using the scale (plus the flipping scale was not cheap so it needs to be used heavily).  Another advantage is I feel like I am doing something while I sit there with a tablespoon dumping more flour into a spinning kitchen aid mixer.

That is really all that can be said except the loaf breads are starting to look the same and photographing them is more or less snap snap snap ok it is bread so upload and hit submit in Wordpress.  I am excited though because french and Italian are on the schedule for this weekend and woo hoo that means subs and breadsticks…….

If you are interested in the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge our fearless host is Nicole at Pinch My Salt and you can read more about it clicking here.

Tags: Bread Baking (BBA), All // 12 Comments »

I think I found my problem and that is I am a twitter addict. Before I found twitter I had a perfectly content blog dealing in random crap with no real purpose or theme. Now my blog has been transformed into a bread baking machine and now well a nutella madman.  A huge thank you to Paula at Bell’ Alimento for hosting the nutella challenge (click here to read more information).

Once again like bread baking I have never used nutella (I know shun the non-believer) so I figured why the freak not….Well after the disaster of this ice cream I am now wondering why me???

Well clarification the ice cream never turned out to be a disaster but Jeff’s shiny object syndrome and lack of cat like reflexes proved to be my sticking point. This was attempt number three and if you are a FB friend or a Twitter peep you would have heard about my constant moaning about this and here is your proof that I finally was successful.

Round one went great everything came together perfect and life was great. I moved it to the freezer after pulling it out of the Kitchen Aid and froze it overnight. The next night I was to lazy to photograph it but still had to try it. Success and I loved the flavors. Woo hoo. Well here lies the problem in a moment of being distracted by a shiny object I completely forgot to put the ice cream back into the freezer. Doh!!!!!!

Round two was a wake up early morning a couple days later to take another nutella cream base for a magical spin in the Kitchen Aid before heading to work. I am in no way shape or form a morning person. Hell I despise them and everyone knows avoid me until my coffee mug is close to empty. So in a half sleep stupor and lacking caffeine I remove the ice cream out of the KA into the magical container to transfer to the freezer. The following thud and splattering of ice cream all over the kitchen floor was the proof I needed that the Colts made the right decision to never return my countless phone calls to try for a wide receiver position. After much cursing and a couple kitchen towels later my floors looked presentable and I drug myself to the shower beaten and defeated (in the shower tears of defeat can be hidden as just water running down your face).

So you can understand my skepticism for attempting round three. Hell after round two I was ready to drown the remaining cherries in rum and eat the rum soaked cherries and drink the remaining rum until I passed out.

Thankfully round three was a smashing success however, I have to say I approached everything with kid gloves and surgeon like precision.

For this recipe you will need:

• 2 cup whole milk
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 5 egg yolks
• 1 cup of sugar
• Dash of vanilla extract
• 2/3 cup nutella
• couple really generous handfuls of halves cherries
• 1/4 cup of your favorite coffee

Steps to success….

1. Over medium heat in a large sauce pan add in the 2 cups of milk, 1 cup of cream, and 1/2 cup of the sugar and cook until the sugar is dissolved (about 5 minutes).
2. While the sugar is dissolving beat the egg yolks with 1/4 cup of sugar until pale yellow.
3. Once the sugar has been dissolved in the cream mixture take about 1/2 cup of the cream mixture and stir it into the egg yolk mixture.
4. Once the cream mixture has been incorporated into the egg yolks dump the egg mixture into the cream mixture and lower the heat to medium-low.
5. Whisk this mixture constantly until the mixture coats the back of the spoon (I took it to a temperature of 195 degrees).
6. Strain the cream and egg mixture into a large bowl and whisk in the nutella and vanilla extract.
7. Cover the bowl and transfer to the fridge to relax overnight
8. In a bowl soak the cherries in the coffee and remaining 1/4 cup of sugar on the counter overnight
9. Freeze the cream mixture per your ice cream manufacturer’s instructions. When there is a couple minutes to go add strain the cherries and add them in.

I guess I should also thank Heather for her awesome suggestion of coffee macerated cherries…..

Tags: Dessert, All // 35 Comments »

Woo hoo time for another weekly installment of “As the Bread Proofs” (please read that sentence using your best cheesy soap opera monologue guy voice)….

Without fail we had to make focaccia on the freaking hottest day of the year.  Since we are two foodies trapped in a kitchen we decided it would be a great idea to caramelize some onions (cipoolini, sweet red Italian, white, shallot, spring onions and then my favorite garlic which is a Romanian red) to top the focaccia and hell why not can 12 jars of pickles all while waiting for the oven to come up to a sweltering 500 degrees.  This made the kitchen a wonderfully cool and refreshing 95 degrees.

However, it was well worth the insane heat and once the focaccia was out of the oven we damn near burned our mouths and hands tearing into it.  Definitely a bread we will be making again especially as the garden starts to produce more (looking at you Mr. Tomato).

The actual assembly of the bread it was pretty straight forward and yes this is another one of Peter Reinhart’s famous two days to make bread.  Unlike most of the breads this one actually had most of the work being done on the first day (most of the time the first day is just throw this stuff together till it resembles pancake batter and let it sit on the counter).  This one we were beating, kneading, proofing, folding, and shaping fools on day one.  The second day was the simple day which was just bring out of fridge let it double, top, and shove in oven.

Oh yeah besides topping with the caramelized onions we also grated a large amount of Parmesan cheese and threw that on the focaccia during the last five minutes of baking.

If you are curious the tomato “salsa” is nothing more than tomato, olive oil, sweet pepper, clove of garlic, thyme, oregano, basil, salt, and pepper.

If you are interested in the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge our fearless host is Nicole at Pinch My Salt and you can read more about it clicking here.

Tags: Bread Baking (BBA), All // 28 Comments »

I know most people are probably freaking shocked because for once it is not a bread post.  However, for those who are dying to see the Bread Baker’s Apprentice of the week you will have to be more patient because either the cinnamon raisin walnut or focaccia (which I have to say was my favorite so far) is going to get posted later this week.

I did feel this was a good post to participate in Elle from  Elle’s New England Kitchen Meatless Monday (truthfully I have no clue if this is her thing or just something she rambles on Twitter about).  For those of you who do not follow her blog (shame shame shame on you) she has been really gun ho on eating raw/vegetarian lately and has been posting some freaking amazing recipes.

This was also the perfect time to showcase the new wonderful red and black quinoa that was lovingly delivered to my front door.  I have to say this stuff rocks so thank you Heather!  Instead of just using one or the other I did a 50/50 combination of both of them.  It is really going to be hard to go back to the standard white quinoa I normally cook because the flavor is so much more intense and earthy on these two varieties.

Dang past that I really have nothing.  I used the garden to stall last week in a desperate attempt to think about something to write about for the next post.  I guess playing outside just sounded more interesting than using my few remaining brain cells to be witty/creative/funny so back outside I go because compost needs turning.

For this recipe you will need:

• 1 cup of quinoa
• 2 cups of vegetable stock
• 1 cup of cooked and drained beans (I used Italian rose beans from the garden)
• 1 clove of garlic finely diced
• 1 pepper diced (I used a sweet red pepper)
• 1 jalapeno divein and deseed diced
•  Good handful of onion (I used spring onions from the garden)
• 2 tomatoes diced (I used an early girl and black krim)
• 1/3 cup assorted herbs diced (I used thyme, oregano, sage, tarragon, rosemary, and parsley)
• 1/2 cup cooked corn
• 1/2 cup cooked peas
• Good glug of extra virgin olive oil
• Pinch of crushed red pepper
• Salt and peper to season
• Juice from 1/2 lemon

Steps to success:

• Cook the quinoa in the vegetable stock
• When the quinoa is done toss everything together
• Tada!  I know really freaking hard but dang it I have a lot of compost and weeding to do so simple dishes are perfect.

Tags: Quick, Healthy, All // 20 Comments »

Another week in the joy and joyness of bread baker’s apprentice.  Truthfully if I did not commit to do every recipe in the book I would have skipped this one.  I like cranberries and I like walnuts but ehh the bread just sounded ehh…boring.  Now the english muffins, focaccia, pizza dough, and baguettes those definitely make me want to do a happy dance.

This bread was pretty straightforward and thankfully only took a couple hours to make.  The tricky part was the braiding.  In the book it said you will have three ten ounces pieces and three four ounces pieces that are braided and then combined.  I ended with three pieces that were ten ounces each.  I probably screwed up somewhere but since I was not really interested in this bread it was easy to take the three pieces braid them, egg wash them, and not care. (Click here to read the rest…)

Tags: Bread Baking (BBA), All // 38 Comments »

There is a good amount of joy and joyness that comes from dating a fellow foodie and more joy if that foodie happens to also be a blogger.

Here are just a couple differences:

• Previous dates would look at me weird when I bust out a camera to snap pictures of food I have just cooked.  A fellow food blogger will help you dress the food, wipe off the plate, and throw out angle suggestions.
• A fellow foodie when wandering through the garden will just randomly grab a weed because it is an annoyance.  Previous dates would look at the dirt going yucky.
• A fellow foodie will think that planting radishes is the perfect date.  Previous dates would call me a cheap ass who is just looking for a day laborer.
• Wandering a farmer’s market with a foodie is an adventure in find the largest zucchini or a simple game of how awesome do these blueberries taste.  Previous dates would look at me with this impatient come on jackass we have reservations and they are just blueberries so grab a container and let us go.
• When you suggest a future date of canning tomatoes, making salsa, and everything else to preserve the garden harvest you do not get a blank stare of wtf did you just say…. (Click here to read the rest…)

  Tags: Bread Baking (BBA), All // 30 Comments »