tasty

Bacon fat cookiestravaganza. Or, how to make you fall in love with me. Except that I probably wouldn’t tell you what was in these if I was trying to woo you.

~ wellfedemily ~ 9 Comments

I hadn’t had a peanut butter cookie in a really long time.

And when Nick went out to get dinner stuff, he mentioned that maybe I should do the dishes, and I was like, “If I’m helpful, maybe he’ll come home with a present!” So I did the dishes, and Nick came home, and I pointed out the four dishes I washed, and he wasn’t as impressed as I’d hoped, and then he asked if I bothered to clean out the fridge yet. Of course I didn’t. But I thought, I could at least open it and see what happens. And then it happened. The bacon fat resurfaced!

Mmmm!Please don’t quit on me yet. I promise you, this is worth your while.

Bacon fat is better for you than margarine, if you haven’t heard, and while I can’t actually back that up, it’s a fact, and if you want proof then I would be happy to recommend some literature that will help you along. And we’re in a recession. And I’m saving the butter for mashed potatoes. My grandmother used to make the best peanut butter cookies in the world using schmaltz (rendered chicken or goose fat), which would have been left over anyway, which she kept in the freezer just for baking. And being (constantly) broke, my cold little heart breaks when I have to throw stuff out. I always save my bacon fat.

The peanut butter cookie recipe I like the best comes from Fannie Farmer. I have long been a fan of Marion Cunningham, who is like everybody in the world’s grandmother’s cookbook (but not my grandmother, the story of who’s cookbook is a novel for another time) mashed into one divine being who makes everything you want to eat and is tall (I imagine) and regal and is friends with Jeffrey Steingarten, who is another kind of hero. I make half-batches of this recipe, because two dozen cookies is quite enough for me. The recipe in its full measure claims that it will produce 120 cookies, which I have never found to be true. This is either a gross miscalculation or they’re supposed to be tiny little cookies, and I hate little cookies because they’re a tease and before you know it you’ve eaten two bags of mini rainbow Chips Ahoy and you’re drunk and it’s 3:42 am and you’re crying on the kitchen floor (again) and the reason is embarrassing but also you wish you could carry on a conversation with normal people without saying something wildly inappropriate or them thinking you had tourette’s syndrome, for once, and who the hell let you have the phone in the first place?

Peanut-Butter Bacon Fat Cookies

(Adapted from the recipe for Peanut-Butter Butter Cookies from the Fannie Farmer Baking Book, circa 1984. Makes about two-dozen cookies.)

  • 1/2 cup bacon fat
  • 1/2 cup peanut butter
  • 1 cup light brown sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 1/2 cups flour
  • 1 tsp. baking soda
  • Pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Beat your bacon fat, peanut butter, and sugar together in a large bowl. You want the colour of the goop in the bowl to lighten and get creamy. Once it’s there, crack open your egg and drop the contents in, and keep beating the mixture.

Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt, mix well, and then slowly add it to the mixture in the bowl, beating until all your ingredients are combined.

Cookie doughIf you’re like me and you’ve never been disappointed by a hunk of cookie dough in your mouth, then sample away. At first you may think it’s a little weird – and it is. But in a good way. The bacon fat makes the peanut butter seem peanut-butterier.

Roll the dough out into balls about an inch or so in diameter. Place about an inch apart on a cookie sheet, and press the tops down with a fork dipped in granulated sugar.

Raw cookie deliciousnessBake the cookies for 8 to 10 minutes, and cool for a bit on a wire rack before eating.

I have to say I was pretty pleased with myself/these cookies, and not just because I used something in the fridge and therefore made progress toward a cleaner tomorrow. They are TASTY. You really ought to try this. I’m pretty sure a pound or so of bacon will produce enough fat for these, and then some, if you don’t already save your fat. Don’t waste fat. Baby Jesus cries when you wash the fat of the pig down the drain.

COOKIES!Seriously. You need to try these. Go render some pork fat, and then let me know how it all works out. Or, just come over for cookies and milk, and inhale my good baking stink.

An Unbalanced Breakfast.

~ wellfedemily ~ 8 Comments

Meat pancake? Only justifiable in the dead of winter when there is no fruit and everything is grey and dark and you just want to eat a hug. Or when you’re going to be doing a lot of exercise anyway and you can pass this off as an acceptable morning repast. Actually, I can justify anything, so maybe you can just have this whenever.

This is actually Toad in the Hole, which is something I would look forward to as a child, and which we would have often, mostly when Dad would cook. I used to cry when he’d add onions. Meat pancake. It sounds like a thing a dad would make.

And to be fair, it’s not all THAT bad. I mean, it’s essentially a pancake with the sausage baked into it instead of served on the side. And onions and bacon, and served with sour cream. So, it could be worse. It could be deep fried.

Toad in the Hole

  • 2 bangers (or large sausages … if you’re going to use the little breakfast sausages, use more)
  • 4 strips of bacon
  • 1 small onion, cut in half and then sliced long-wise, into strips
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1 cup flour
  • 2 eggs
  • salt and pepper, to taste (but because of the sausage and bacon, I don’t add salt. You can. No judgment)

Preheat oven to 400°F. Toss a greased pan into the oven as the oven heats.

Fry sausage, bacon, and onion (I like onion now – no tears!) in a pan on the stove until browned. You don’t need to add any oil. In fact, don’t, because you’re going to pour the entire contents of the pan into your batter (later), so don’t add more grease. Unless you’re into that. I’m not. Surprisingly.

Meat and onions in panIt doesn’t matter too much if your sausage isn’t fully cooked through at this point – it’s going to bake for a bit.

Mix together your milk, flour, and butter in a separate bowl. When the meat is done, empty the whole pan into the bowl, toss lightly to coat in batter. Pull the heated pan out of the oven and pour the contents of the bowl into the pan, making sure that the batter is evenly spread out. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until edges have pulled away from the sides and the top is golden.

Toad!Slice and serve. I like it with a dollop of sour cream and a breakfast cocktail.

Tasty!Eat. Resist the urge to nap. Maybe go for a bike ride, or to play frisbee golf. Meat pancake!

Ribs: Because meat sure is tasty!

~ wellfedemily ~ 4 Comments

This week at the market, they had ribs on special, in small quantities – just enough for dinner for two. Also this week, my Food & Wine magazine came, and the theme was barbecue. It seemed like Nick’s planets had aligned, and because sometimes I do nice things for him, I figured I’d get the ribs and make the meat. Because I am terrible at remembering anything, I ended up kind of combining and reinventing two recipes from this edition despite having the wrong kind of meat (the recipe calls for baby back ribs … I had a pork loin rib rack). So I will give you my version the Food & Wine recipe, because, quite honestly, my variations were awesome and I am awesome and meat is awesome and everything about these ribs is spectacular.

At the outset, I knew that if Nick said the ribs were “good,” I was going to murder him with a basting brush. IN THE HEART. For a creative writing major, he should have better adjectives, and lately, all the validation I get is, “it’s good.” Spent twelve hours to create a single loaf of bread? “It’s good.” Wriggled into a tight red dress that makes my boobs look like aggressive, smooth-skinned grapefruits? Barely looking up, “You look good.” WAS THE STAR TREK MOVIE NOT AMAZING AND HOLY CRAP WAS SULU HOT? “Yeah, I thought it was good.” Good. It’s his only word, and it’s driving me insane. And then I storm off and he’s all, “what do you want from me?!” And he should know better and probably should have been gay because it would have been easier, and maybe I should have been too. But I think the thing is, I shouldn’t bother with any of that stuff if I want a little attention. Slow-cooked meat is the way to go, and he’d better use an adjective that is adequate to describe the effort and the taste sensation. “Life-changing” would work, as would “epic,” “revelatory,” or “better than anything I’ve ever tasted in my life and this is why I married you, not just so that I’d have access to your grapefruit stash” which isn’t an adjective, more like hope that he will magically change and actually start uttering what I want to hear, at last.

Tomorrow I’ll go back to ignoring him and making what I like. And in case you’re all, “you constantly use the word ‘awesome’ like a half-assed coordinating conjunction so who are you to complain about Nick’s overuse of ‘good?'” And to that I say, I also overuse “fantastic,” “lovely,” and “ass,” so even if I am repetitive, at least I’ve got variety. I’m like dining off the KFC menu for seven days in a row – you think it’s all the same but there are actually subtleties that breed uniqueness with every experience. SUBTLETIES.

But, I digress.

Bourbon and Apple Pork Loin Rib Rack

  • 1 3 lb. pork loin rib rack

Rub:

  • 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
  • 3 cloves garlic, grated with a microplane or other fine grater
  • 4 tsp. chili powder
  • 2 tsp. kosher salt
  • 1 tsp. black pepper
  • 1/2 tsp. celery seed
  • 1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
  • 1/4 tsp. cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp. white pepper

Cooking liquid:

  • 1 tbsp. of the spice rub (above)
  • 1/4 cup apple cider (although, I used this, and it was excellent. I used this in place of cider in this and the barbecue sauce. If you can find an apple beer, use it)
  • 1/4 cup Wild Turkey (or bourbon of some other variety)
  • 1/4 cup apple jelly, melted
  • 1/4 cup honey

Early in the morning, but preferably the night before, apply the spice rub to the meat and let it get all tasty. Keep it in the fridge while this is happening. Take it out about an hour before it goes into the oven.

Preheat oven to 250°F. Place the spicy meat (uncovered) on a baking sheet, and bake for 2 1/2 hours.Raw meat with rubRemove the meat from the oven and place on a large sheet of aluminum foil. Drizzle the liquid mixture over top, and seal the meat in its juice. Put it on the pan and back into the oven, and bake for another hour.

During this time, you’ll want to make your barbecue sauce. I guess you can use store-bought, but you’ve got the cider/beer and the bourbon anyway, and homemade is way better.

Barbecue Sauce:

  • 1 cup bourbon
  • 1 cup ketchup
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup apple cider
  • 1 tbsp. apple cider vinegar
  • 2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
  • 3 cloves finely minced garlic
  • 1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
  • salt and pepper, to taste

Mix up the ingredients in a bowl. Save for when you toss that meat on the grill.

Barbecue sauceWhen the meat comes out of the oven, throw it onto the barbecue over medium heat. Cook for another 15 to 20 minutes, basting with the sauce.

Meat on grillSide dishes? I thought you’d never ask.

Toss some chopped vegetables in some olive oil with a little kosher salt and black pepper, and put them on the top rack – ten minutes should suffice. Oh! And do some corn! Same amount of time.

Vegetables in olive oil

Corn and butter with herbs

Pull back the corn husks (but don’t pull them off), and butter the corn with a bit of herb butter. I had some fresh lemon thyme from the pots on my deck, so I used that. Re-wrap the corn in its husks and set it on the top rack as well, 10 minutes.

Veggies on grill

Mmmm ... corn!

When the meat is done, pull it off the grill and let it rest, preferably for ten minutes. Serve with the vegetables (unpeel peel the corn).

Meal!So, Nick was all, “this is really good,” and at first I was content to take “really” as an improvement. But then he read the first part of this blog and was like, “it doesn’t taste like scabs!” So, we’re probably going to get a divorce. Oh! This whole meal went really well with this apple wine we bought last weekend. It would also be lovely with ice cold apple cider, or that apple white beer. But not with apple juice. NO.

And another thing? It’s time to clean the deck:

My gross feetSo, um. Friday! Also, sorry about this one. I started drinking at 2:00.

Got ketchup? Make udon.

~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments

I know. Sounds gross, right?

It’s not. I promise.

Sometimes it’s been a long week when you’re only a day into it, and your kitchen looks like this:

A hell of my own making.
A hell of my own making.

And you get home and your version of Nick is all, “Let’s rent Jesus Christ Superstar and get into that wine,” because he likes the hot, scantily clad ’70s chicks doing high kicks and because he knows I can’t say no to sexy Judas, and because we have a lot of really awesome wine right now. So dinner has to happen quickly.

I happened to have purchased some udon noodles and pork chops, inspired in part by The Wednesday Chef’s (hereafter TWC) recent post on egg noodles in soy broth. So I whipped up a batch of the noodles, and we drank an astonishingly good pink wine, and we watched a rock opera and then Robot Chicken, and it was good.

This recipe isn’t authentically Asian. Any kind of Asian. It involves ketchup. It’s essentially white trash fat noodles, but don’t let that turn you off. It’s kind of awesome. I only made it because it sounded weird, and it involved ingredients I had on hand already. Except for the noodles. And because I wanted to make a full meal out of it, I added vegetables, and I grilled some pork and scallops. I had the scallops in the freezer – five of them – and this was a good way to use up such an awkward number.

Noodles in Soy Broth via The Wednesday Chef (via Mark Bittman) but With Other Stuff so It’s Not Exactly the Same.

The pork and the scallops aren’t in TWC’s original recipe.

  • Two small pork chops marinated in 1/4 cup hoisin sauce
  • Five large scallops (optional) marinated in:
    • The juice of half a lime (reserve the other half and serve with finished soup)
    • 1 tbsp. mirin
    • 1 tbsp. soy sauce
    • 1 tsp. dark brown sugar
    • 1 tsp. sriracha

Throw these all on the barbecue. Or put them in the oven. Or fry them in a pan. Cook them.

The broth (adapted from TWC):

  • 1/3 cup ketchup
  • 1/3 cup soy sauce
  • 1 tbsp. rice vinegar, or to taste
  • 1 tsp. sesame oil
  • 1 tsp. sriracha
  • 1 tsp. finely minced ginger
  • 1 tsp. finely minced garlic
  • 2 cups fresh udon noodles
  • vegetables (use what you’ve got. I used a carrot, a cup of broccoli, two large bok choy stalks, and about a cup of mushrooms)
  • 1 bunch of scallions and a handful of cilantro to garnish

Over medium heat, heat a large pot. Add the oil, carrot, and noodles. Then add the ketchup, soy sauce, rice vinegar, sriracha, ginger, and garlic. When the noodles are coated and saucy, add six cups of water.

Flip your meat and scallops. Four to five minutes will have passed.

Bring the water to a boil, and then reduce heat. Toss in the broccoli and the hard part of the bok choy. Take the meat and scallops off the barbecue.

Add the bok choy leaves, mushrooms, and half of the scallions and stir to soften the leaves. Slice the meat into strips – it’s easier to eat with chopsticks, especially if you have no clean forks. Serve the soup in bowls, with the scallops and meat on top, garnished with the cilantro, the rest of the scallions, and a slice of lime. Enjoy. Serve with pink wine, and if you manage to get a slice of sun at the end of the day, enjoy outdoors. If not, eat in front of the TV.

The recipe makes enough for two and leftovers. There won't be any left over.
The recipe makes enough for two and leftovers. There won't be any left over.

The next time I make this, I am going to use less ketchup and more soy sauce, because it was a little on the tangy side. Which might not be a bad thing. You decide.

Soupy.
Soupy.

Porcupines.

~ wellfedemily ~ Leave a comment

I am Kung Fu Panda. Never seen it? Well, you should. But in case you haven’t, the main thing is that he’s a legendary dragon ninja stuck in the body of a super awesome roly-poly Jack Black panda bear. And his ninja skills only come out when lured by the promise of food. Got dumplings? I will kick. That. Hill’s. ASS. No dumplings? Screw you, I’m sleeping in.

And so Bike to Work Week comes to an end. That this event coincided with the start of boot camp was unfortunate – I went from sedentary to super-active, biking a total of 150 kilometers (just over 93 miles) and doing no fewer than 400 crunches this week. Know what I learned? Exercise is for chumps. Eating is the best thing ever, followed very closely by sitting. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

My reward? After weeks of waiting for the arrival of the day of my glorious reservation at Les Faux Bourgeois, my deep desire for fattening, fancypants (but inexpensive, because as you know, I am flat broke) French food will finally be sated tonight. For a review that’s not (inevitably) tainted with a string of OMG!s, check out Sherman’s Food Adventures. If you’re content to wait until tomorrow, I’ll tell you all about it in my extra-special way.

At the moment, I’m working up a bit of anxiety over taking pictures of my food – usually I hate doing that, because I like to pretend I’m cool and in restaurants all the servers and the other people know of you is the groomed and polished version of yourself you present for the two hours you’re there, and I like to think that they’ve all given me the once-over “Wow, there’s a snazzy gal,” so I can dine comfortably without the sticky awkwardness that usually follows me around. But I want to tell you everything about the food. So the battle continues: Be cool and enjoy the food? Or dork out and photograph everything and then wax ecstatic on the Internet about duck confit and tarte flambée Alsacienne? Why am I pretending I’ve ever been able to pass for cool? Fine. Expect some blurry photos of French bistro fare tomorrow.

In the meantime, I am compelled to share with you a recipe for porcupine meatballs, because it rained several days this week during my gruelling ride home, and because when meatballs roll into my mind, it’s quite impossible to roll them back out without indulging. So on Wednesday night, damp and shivering, I arrived home to prepare myself a large pot of comfort food with little nutritional value.

Porcupine Meatballs

Meatballs:

  • 1 1/2 lbs. lean ground beef
  • 1 carrot, grated
  • 1/2 cup uncooked long-grain or basmati rice
  • 1/2 cup dry breadcrumbs
  • 3 cloves finely minced garlic
  • 2 tsp. oil (I used bacon fat. You can too! Or butter? You can do whatever you like.)
  • 2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1 tsp. black pepper

Sauce:

  • 3 cups tomato sauce (I used canned crushed tomatoes because I like them best)
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
  • salt and pepper, to taste

Preheat that oven of yours to 350°F.

In a large bowl, combine all of the ingredients for your meatballs. Once everything’s in the bowl, mash it all together using your hands. There is no better way to ensure that the mixture is combined thoroughly without overmixing and destroying the texture. If you’re squeamish, you could wear gloves, I guess. HANDS.

Mix the sauce ingredients together in a separate bowl. You don’t have to use your hands for that.

Form the mixture into balls about an inch and a half in diameter. Place the balls in an ungreased casserole dish (preferably one you can cover with a lid). When the bottom of the pan is covered in balls (hee hee), pour about a third of the sauce over top. Keep balling and saucing until the pan is full.

Cover, and bake for 45 minutes. When the buzzer goes, take the lid off and bake for another 15 to 20 minutes.

Hot meat in pot

If I were feeling kindly disposed to my housemate, I might have grated some cheese over top and slid it back into the oven for another few minutes. But my cheese grater is dirty. So I didn’t. Serve on rice.

porcupines!

Anyway, the time has come for me to tame my bangs, put on a dress, and go for French food. It has been too long in the coming!

Old-Fashioned White Bread from Sponge and Homemade Butter.

~ wellfedemily ~ 7 Comments

What were YOU doing at 1:00 this morning?

I was in my bathrobe, sitting on the kitchen floor and having big ideas. I couldn’t sleep. It was Sooin’s bachelorette party last night, and as I’ve been a tad under the weather and it was a forty-five-minute drive away, I decided to only go the dinner part, and to not drink. I drank about fifteen Diet Cokes, and then got home and tried to go to sleep. No luck – I was abuzz. Then I decided that I would make a bread sponge in anticipation of a luscious loaf of sourdough in the morning. But it doesn’t work that way. A sourdough starter takes three days, and if I was thinking clearly, I would have realized that sooner. So I made a regular bread sponge, because I made butter and don’t care to wait three days to eat it, and resolved to start a sponge for sourdough at 1:00 some other morning.

Sponge

SDC10245It’s a good idea to save a knob of your last batch of dough to add to your bread sponge. I keep a little ball of it wrapped in plastic in my freezer, so that it can be pulled out and dropped into a frothy batch of sponge and allowed to ferment and grow yeasty, yielding a richer, crustier, OMG-so-much-better loaf of bread. You don’t need much – a bit of dough about the size of a golf ball is plenty.

What is a bread sponge, you ask? Well. It’s very simple. It’s a portion of the ingredients you’re going to use to make your bread, just thrown into a bowl a few hours or a day or two in advance. Science happens in the bowl, and you end up with a loaf that’s soft and chewy on the inside, with a crusty exterior that just begs to be torn into with teeth. Also, because the yeast gets its little selves in there a bit earlier, the mix ferments a bit and develops a much better flavour. You can really just whisk everything together in a bowl and then go to bed. Eight to twelve hours later, you just put the rest of your ingredients together and proceed as usual.

Sponge:

  • 2 cups warmed milk
  • 1 teaspoon yeast
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 little dough ball

Whisk together the milk, yeast, and flour in a large bowl. If you have a ball of dough, defrost it quickly and drop it in as well. Cover with plastic wrap and a kitchen towel, and let sit at room temperature for 8 to 12 hours.

SDC10244

When I woke up this morning it was sunny for the first time in a week, so I was super-impatient, so the sponge only got about eight hours to get good, but it still smelled yeasty and sour, like the perfect start to a homemade loaf. I started in immediately, because I wanted to go out to play.

Here’s the bread recipe. For the butter, go here. Follow her steps exactly. These two in combination will give you an earth-shattering foodgasm, and you’ll be all, “Thanks, Emily. I’ve always liked you.” No really. Make the butter. It won’t save you any money, but the taste (and gloating about how you made your own butter) will be totally worth it. I’ve got big plans to use it on a barbecued ear of corn tonight. BIG PLANS.

Another recipe for white bread, but this one’s different, okay?

  • bread sponge (see above)
  • 1/4 cup warm water
  • 3 tsp. yeast
  • 2 tbsp. sugar
  • 2 tbsp. melted butter (plus extra for greasing your bowl and your loaf pans)
  • 1 tbsp. salt
  • 4 cups flour, plus extra for kneading

Combine the yeast and the water. When yeast gets foamy, add it to your sponge. Add the sugar, butter, and salt as well, and stir to combine. Add your flour and stir until mixed, and then dump the lot onto a floured surface to begin kneading. As always, please knead for eight to ten minutes. If you have athletic, powerful arms, it may take less time – you want the dough to become elastic – but I have flabby “looks good in sweaters” arms, so I knead for the full amount of time. Muscles are for chumps, right?

Transfer your dough to a large bowl that has been buttered lightly on all sides. Do round things have sides? I guess if you don’t know, they might as well. Cover with plastic and a kitchen towel, and allow to rise in a warm room until doubled in bulk. About an hour, hour-and-a-half. You know the drill.

dough in bowl, risingOnce your dough is big and smells good, dump it out onto that floured surface again (add new flour), and cut it in half. Form the dough into two loaf-pan-sized rectangles. Place your dough into your pre-buttered loaf pans, cover again with plastic and a kitchen towel, and allow to rise again, about an hour/hour-and-a-half, until the dough has risen an inch or so above the tops of the pans.

dough in pans

Preheat the oven to 375°F. I brushed the tops of my loaves with some melted butter and sprinkled them both with Kosher salt, but this is optional. Put your loaves into your oven once it’s raring to go, and bake the loaves for 35 to 40 minutes.

Cool these on wire racks. I find that bread tastes better once it’s cooled and then reheated (toasted), because there’s a complexity of flavour that develops once the bread does it’s sciencey thing on the racks.

BREAD!I sure hope you made the butter.

Butter, homemadeButter your homemade bread with the homemade butter. Revel.

Homemade bread with homemade butter.I realize now that I promised Heather the key to easy spaghetti carbonara, and am now about a week late in following through. I don’t have any bacon at the moment, and I just made butter, so the next pasta I make will probably involve this butter and the beautiful leaves of sage that are flourishing on my deck, but that’s not to say it isn’t coming. Give me a week. Then I’ll tell you everything. I promise.

Sweet potatoes are the best thing ever for you. Even if you get swine flu. Though if you get swine flu, call me, because I’d like to lick your door knobs.

~ wellfedemily ~ 1 Comment

I woke up this morning and was dying (again). Rheumatoid arthritis is a pain and I go through a lot of Kleenex and am all kinds of sexy. Fingers crossed for swine flu, though, which I actually want because I’m pretty sure I could lose, like, twelve pounds just throwing up, not to mention all the wasting away. Very convenient, much easier than fitness.

So I decided to spend the evening in pajamas watching the best movie ever and eating soup in an attempt to be fully recovered by the weekend, which is supposed to be hot and sunny, which means I won’t feel like soup at all, and you should embrace desire when it strikes you. So soup today, and then fish and chips and hefeweizen on a patio on the weekend. Oh, I’ve got dreams.

I’ve decided to share my feel-better recipe for sweet potato soup, because there’s a reasonable chance that other people are feeling battered by this weather, and because maybe you’ll make the soup and with any luck it will be the last time you’ll need hot soup until November.

This recipe makes about four bowls. Enough for tonight and lunch tomorrow anyway, even if my math is wrong.

Sweet Potato Soup

  • 1 onion, diced
  • 1 tbsp. minced ginger
  • 4 cloves minced garlic
  • 1 carrot, chopped
  • 1 sweet potato, chopped (about three cups’ worth)
  • 2 cups chicken stock
  • 2 cups coconut milk
  • 1 cup of water
  • 1 lime, zest and juice
  • 1 tsp. sambal oelek (or more, to taste. No sambal oelek? Use hot sauce.)
  • 1 stalk lemongrass
  • salt and pepper, to taste

In a large pot with a bit of oil, heat your onions, garlic, and ginger until golden. Add in your carrot and sweet potato, and toss until coated in all that garlic/ginger goodness. Pour in your liquids, zest and juice your lime into the pot, and throw in the sambal oelek so that it can eke it’s spicy glory all over the place.

Fan out the base of your stalk of lemongrass, and let it sit in the pot. I find that too much lemongrass makes stuff taste like dying, but doing it this way lets you get just a whiff and a taste of it, which is all you really need.

Soup!

sdc102211

Simmer this all together until the sweet potatoes and carrots are tender, about ten minutes. Maybe less. You should probably test for yourself.

Once everything is tender and smells good, you’re going to want to purée this. Part of feeling better quickly is not expending extra energy on chewing. Also, smooth soups taste better, because all the tastes get jumbled together. Glorious!

I serve mine with a poached egg in the centre, which you may recall is how I served the pea soup, but don’t worry – there isn’t a poached egg in every soup we eat around here. I like it for the richness the yolk gives, and the extra bit of protein. And also, I like eggs. We buy them by the 30-pack. For the two of us.

soup in bowls, with eggsAnd you know, I do feel better. Sweet potatoes, ginger, and the spicy hot sambal are all terrific when you feel the weight of a thousand pounds of symptoms rattling around in your chest.

Tomorrow is my Friday, so I’d best be getting to bed so I can rest up and endure it – after that, it’ll be all feasting and frivolity and feeling fantastic. Also tomorrow, I’ll sign up for bootcamp. I really think some violent influenza would be easier to stomach.

New Jersey Crumb Buns. Or, “Be Nice to your Wife, Jerkface.”

~ wellfedemily ~ 14 Comments

Until recently, I had no idea what a crumb bun was. They don’t exist on the west coast, and especially not in Canada. Apparently they only exist in New Jersey, which isn’t terribly helpful, and unfortunately, they are a thing that Nick is not content to live without.

About six months ago I acquired a recipe that purported to be authentic – hours of following the recipe EXACTLY and letting the bread rise to the precise specifications and topping the whole thing with a crunchy streusel topping, also from the recipe. The result?

“These aren’t them.”

“The topping’s too crunchy.”

“Yeah, I don’t really like these. Good try, though.”

That he is not smothered in his sleep is a testament to my enduring patience.

And so crumb buns were largely forgotten. By me. Nick speaks of them often enough that they never fully disappear, and fails to understand that, “crumb buns – you know, like, I don’t know. They’re kind of like cake, but not, and the topping is, you know, crumbly and stuff” is not a description I can work from.

And then, recently, as luck would have it, Nick’s parents went to New Jersey. They brought some home, and I set out to copy the recipe.

This is a crumb bun. Tasty!
This is a crumb bun. Tasty!

These have a yeasty, subtly sweet, almost eggy taste. And while Nick swears that the most important part of these is the streuselly crumb topping, I’m inclined to believe that he has no idea what he’s talking about – the base is the part that’s the riddle. I made two batches of dough before I got to a recipe I felt would work. The final dough smelled a lot like the crumb bun sitting on the arm of my couch, so I figured that’d be a start.

I figured out the problem early on: Lemonade. How am I supposed to be creative if I’m all inhibited and crap? Right? Of course! So I popped open a bottle of prosecco and set to work. Result? The right stuff.

So with the dough rising in it’s buttery pot of incubation, it was time to microanalyse the crumb part of the crumb bun. It’s not completely soft, but it’s not crunchy either. It’s buttery and cinnamony and slightly nutty, and the recipe I used for these those many months ago was right on with the taste, even if it was way off on the texture. Solution? Add more butter. (Fact: “More butter” is almost always the correct answer.)

Here’s the recipe.

New Jersey Crumb Buns

Bun part:

  • 2 tbsp. yeast
  • 1 cup whole milk
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tsp. vanilla
  • 4 cups all-purpose flour, plus 1/4 cup for kneading

Crumb part:

  • 1/4 cup almond butter
  • 1 1/2 cups butter
  • 1 cup light brown sugar
  • 2 tsp. cinnamon
  • 4 cups flour

Heat the milk until just warm, about 105°F. Forty seconds in the microwave should do it. Sprinkle your yeast over top and let sit until foamy, about five minutes.

Meanwhile, cream together the sugar, salt, and butter – beat these until the sugar dissolves and the butter becomes fluffy and lighter in colour. Beat in the eggs and the vanilla. Pour in the yeast-milk mixture and continue to beat. At this point the batter will separate and you’ll probably think that you’ve ruined everything. I promise, you haven’t. Add in the flour gradually while continuing to beat the mixture.

The dough that’s produced will end up quite a bit softer than a regular bread dough. Flour your work surface, and knead the dough – eight minutes should do. It should be soft and elastic and have a slight sheen. Place the dough in a large greased bowl and cover with greased plastic wrap. Throw a kitchen towel over top, and let rise in warmth and comfort until doubled in bulk, about an hour and a half.

Make your streusel. Cream together almond butter, regular butter, cinnamon, and brown sugar. Gradually add in your flour, the same way you did with the bread part. Don’t over-beat this – you’ll see it form loose, crumbly chunks. Break apart any overly large crumbs with your fingers – crumbs should be about the size of peas. Refrigerate these until ready to use.

Cover a baking sheet (make sure it has sides) in buttered parchment paper. Once your dough has grown to the appropriate size, give it a quick knead, and stretch it out so that it’s about 10 x 16 inches. Cut into rectangles approximately two inches wide by four inches long, and lay them out on the pan so that they’re close but not touching. Brush the tops with milk, and sprinkle about half the streusel over the tops, pressing lightly to make sure it sticks. Cover the pan with plastic wrap and allow to rise until doubled (again). One-and-a-half or two hours.

When the buns have risen, sprinkle the rest of the crumb over the tops.

Heat your oven to 375°F. When the little red “the oven is not ready” light shuts off, put in the buns and bake for about thirty minutes. Cool on a rack, and then, when cooled, sprinkle these with confectioner’s sugar. Inhale. Delightful smell.

Crumb buns cooling on rack.

When Nick finally ate one of these, the reviews were mixed. The bread part is spot-on. Tremendous news, as that was the part I was most concerned about. The streusel?

“It’s better from the store my mom buys them at.”

He gets nothing. Ever. And I’m pouring out the rest of his beer.

The crumb wasn’t as soft as he’d wanted – it turned out a bit softer than an apple crisp kind of topping. Still good though. In the end, he ate but half of one of these. I have more than two people can eat left over, and they’re going stale waiting for validation. They are, or I am – either way, it’s not good. I’ve never liked Nick.

A blurry photo of a crumb bun in action.
A blurry photo of a crumb bun in action.

I am not sure whether I am going to continue to play at this – I think if Nick wants soft streusel topping, he can find a recipe and make it himself. He has to learn sometime, and I figured out the bread – that was the hard part. I have an inkling as to what might make it work. I might even share my theory with him. But for now, he gets dishes. And a healthy amount of fear.

A day of many delights: Rapini, and then blackberry scones.

~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments

When I came home today, I found this:

NoteWhich is a shame, because I came home with a fabulous bottle of sparkly pink wine and a huge hunk of his favourite cheese, and for all he knows, I could have been amorous. And I was. But not for him: Whole Foods opened on the corner yesterday, and today I paid my first visit (and healthy chunk of my payday earnings).

I didn’t even cry at my wedding.

I enjoyed a good long wander through the store, making mental notes of all the things I’d buy someday when I have a lot more money than I do now. The stack of salts, all different colours and textures in their plastic containers labeled with their exorbitant prices were so mesmerizing I stood staring, slack-jawed like a brain-damaged mule, for a good ten minutes, my eye shifting slightly to the left to the stack of Le Creuset pots in every colour before shifting back. I died a little inside when I realized that to buy any desirable combination of these would render my financial situation unliveable for the next two weeks, so I walked away slowly, barely keeping back the tears.

And then I found the cheese section! Needless to say, I am the proud new owner of $40 worth of cheese. So, three different kinds.

The goal today was to write about scones – and I will, I promise, because I bought a hideously expensive container of frozen organic Abbotsford blackberries, and the scones happen to be revelatory. But I got all tripped up by this:

Rapini with lemonAnd I discovered that if you shriek in the grocery store, no one will ask you if you need help, but you’ll find yourself with all the space you like.

My favourite thing to do with fresh greens, such as this vibrant bunch of rapini, is to sauté them in a little butter, olive oil, garlic, lemon zest, and too many capers, then toss them with pasta and add a generous helping of parmesan cheese and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. You don’t need a recipe – it’s impossibly simple. Salt and pepper to taste, and a bottle of good wine for accompaniment, and you’re set. And then you end up with this:

Pasta with rapini and capersAnd the whole time I was eating it, I was all – “this cost under five dollars to make – why do I ever eat out?” Well, it might have cost more, but I amortized the cost of the cheese over several meals.  Which is what you do when you budget.

So I ate all this, and drank most of the wine, and was just about ready to ease into my favourite kind of stupor when I realized that I was going to make scones. And I started making the scones and realized that in my shrieking Whole Foods love fest, I didn’t buy milk. But whatever, right? You can make scones without milk. I made mine with yogurt and a bit of water in place of the milk. DELICIOUS.

Here’s the recipe (with milk, because that makes good sense).

Blackberry Lemon Scones

(makes about eight)

  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
  • 2 tbsp. sugar
  • 1 tsp. lemon zest
  • 1/4 cup butter (plus a bit of melted butter to brush over the tops)
  • 1/2 cup milk (I used peach yogurt, because that’s what I had)
  • 1 egg
  • 1 cup frozen blackberries (I prefer to use frozen berries for these because they keep their shape better than fresh berries)
  • 1 tbsp. turbinado sugar (or regular, but I promise, it’s not the same)

Preheat oven to 450°F.

Combine your dry ingredients (including zest) in a mixing bowl, and mix well. Add the butter, working it in with your fingers until it’s fully integrated and the mixture looks like bread crumbs. Stir in the milk and the egg, and then the berries, and mix only until the dry ingredients are moistened. Form into a ball.

Lightly flour your work surface. Empty your bowl of dough, which by now is very pretty and marbled with purple juices. Knead lightly. Pat the dough into a circle about a half-inch thick, and paint with the melted butter. Sprinkle the turbinado sugar over the top, and press lightly to make sure it sticks. Cut the round into eight pieces.

Place your scones about an inch or so apart on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes.

Clearly I have no idea how much an inch is.
Clearly I have no idea how much an inch is.

No matter how big a mess your apartment (or life) is, baked goods always make everything okay.

These turned out mostly scone-shaped. Some of them are shaped like retard scones, but they are no less tasty. I am just really bad at geometry.
These turned out mostly scone-shaped. Some of them are shaped like retard scones, but they are no less tasty. I am just really bad at geometry.

You know what the weird thing is? I got a raise today, and the best part of my day involved rapini and blackberries. That’s not to say the raise – though small – isn’t good news: it’s enough to cover another two bottles per month, if I choose wisely. And more wine is always a thing to delight in.

Rehab, when I finally get forced into it, is really going to suck.

Scone. On plate.Serve the scones warm. They are great with butter, but if you’re all alone and no one’s watching, a drizzle of maple syrup makes these indulgent and fattening. Some days, there is nothing better.

Scones. Soup. Codeine. Trifecta?

~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments

Pre-baked scones

I’m feeling much better. And Nick came home and was very sympathetic and the kitchen is mostly clean now, so I made soup and scones and everyone is happy and we’re watching Iron Chef and Nick is trying to teach me to take pictures that aren’t blurry but he should know by now that I can’t be taught much of anything as far as technology is concerned. Also, I’ve ingested more codeine than is probably healthy today, so it’s a wonder I’m even upright. Apparently the camera isn’t as simple as he thought. He keeps asking me questions. Why does he keep asking me questions?

Since Sunday tea, I’ve been all loins-aflame for scones. Also, my pots of herbs on the deck are growing wildly – specifically the spearmint and the thyme, which are dominating their respective pots and choking out the other plants. Stay tuned for a recipe for minty English potatoes later this week – for now, I needed to tame the thyme. I chopped up a bit of the parsley for these as well.

Potato and herb scones with cheese

(makes 4 scones … you could double the recipe and make more!)

  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 1/4 tsp. baking powder
  • 1 tsp. sugar
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1 grated cooked potato (I baked mine, but it would work just as well with boiled potato. I would have boiled mine but I had no clean pots.)
  • 1 large clove finely minced garlic
  • 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
  • 1 tbsp.  chopped fresh thyme
  • 1/4 cup grated cheese (I used pecorino because that’s what I had. Parmesan, or even cheddar, would also be good.)
  • 1/4 tsp. ground black pepper
  • 2 tbsp. cold butter
  • 1/4 cup milk
  • 1 egg

Preheat the oven to 450°F.

Combine your dry ingredients (including the herbs and cheese) and potato in a mixing bowl. Stir well. Add the butter, working it in with your fingers until it’s fully integrated and the mixture looks like a big bowl of crumbs. Stir in the milk and the egg, and mix only until the dry ingredients are moistened. Form into a ball.

Lightly flour your counter, which is hopefully clean like mine was before I made these, and dump the dough out onto the surface. Knead lightly. Pat the dough into a circle about a half-inch thick and cut into four pieces. I thought the pieces looked ugly, so I rounded the edges and corners.

Place your scones about an inch or so apart on an ungreased baking sheet, top with a bit of grated cheese, and bake for 10 to 12 minutes.

Scones, hot from the oven.It’s the fresh herbs that make these so delightful – because they aren’t baked for all that long, they kept their bright green colour. Which, as it happens, matched the soup. You should serve these hot from the oven and slathered in butter. Dipping is optional.

Spring Green Pea Soup

(Serves two)

  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 tbsp. fresh ginger, minced
  • Zest and juice of one lime
  • 1 can coconut milk
  • 1 cup water
  • 2 1/2 cups fresh or frozen green peas
  • 1/3 cup fresh chopped basil
  • Salt and pepper to taste

While your scones are baking, throw your ginger, garlic, and lime zest into a pot with a dribble of oil. Whatever kind. It doesn’t matter all that much. As the garlic is turning golden, pour in the coconut milk and the water, and juice the lime right over the pot. Let it come to a boil together, and then reduce the heat to medium. Add your peas and simmer until they’re soft, two or three minutes, then remove from the heat, add the basil, and purée the mixture in a blender or with a hand blender, which is probably one of the greatest kitchen tools ever.

Return the mixture to the heat to keep warm and adjust your seasonings. I found that I wanted a bit more acidity, so I added a splash more lime juice to cut the sweetness of the peas. If I had some jalapeno peppers, I would have added them as well. But it’s two days before payday, and two dollars for peppers is completely out of reach at this point. Poverty like ours is a skill!

I like to serve this (hot, of course) with a soft poached egg in the centre and a light sprinkling of black pepper. Try it. It’s super good that way.

green soupIn a few days, once I’ve had a chance to wander down to the market and see what’s fresh in fruit these days, I’ll give you a recipe for sweet scones – note: You really ought to go out and purchase some turbinado sugar to top them with. Crunch! You’ll see what I mean.

dinner!Nick just shouted at me that my camera sucks and that I’ll just have to learn to take better pictures. I thought that was the case, but he needed an hour’s worth of fiddling plus some time Google-searching to confirm this for me. It’s all very exhausting, this learning and typing and eating. It could be time to shave some T3s over a bowl of ice cream and take a bath.

Conclusion? Soup makes you feel better, scones are delicious, and sedatives are the root of all happiness.