Hey, so my laptop’s power cord gave up the ghost last week, and I’m waiting for a new one to arrive sometime later this week, but until then, I can’t resize and upload any pictures. I’ve had a new post ready to go for days now, everything but the picture, but nothing’s going to happen until that cord gets here. It’ll probably take me longer to approve or respond to comments, as well.
I don’t like the fact that calling it “icing” instead of “frosting” is an actual distinction of meaning, and not just a regional difference. Although to be honest most people just call all types of cake topping by whatever their region’s word is, regardless of the actual nuances. I am going to put my fingers in my ears, therefore, and go NAH NAH NAH I CAN’T HEAR YOU if anyone wants to call me on the fact that this isn’t icing. Or maybe it is? I have no idea.
I made these cupcakes for the dinner party, but our guests were too full to eat them, so we ate a bunch ourselves, that night and later, and I took a couple to work for my friends. The cupcakes themselves were more pecan than butter, which pleases me, and Matt was amazed at the icing and how it tasted just like maple, even though there was no maple in it. They were the cause of the only emergency grocery store run – for cupcake liners; I had 2 – but they were also the first chance I got to use the cake stand I received as a Secret Santa gift at work. It’s fancy and glass and is really only useful for entertaining, since you can’t carry it to work or anything, but it’s nice to take pictures on. And speaking of pictures, I was really proud of my icing and pecan bits. It may not be professional quality, but it’s one of the better things I’ve done so far.
This is yet another surprisingly-not-as-fattening-as-you-might-expect recipe from About: Southern Food. I mean, it’s still cupcakes, nobody’s confusing it with health food, but it’s not the most shocking cupcake recipe you’ll ever find. I halved it and got 8 cupcakes, which was just about perfect. Oh, and I used regular flour instead of cake flour, although I did stir it in the bag before measuring, like they said.
Butter Pecan Cupcakes with Brown Sugar Icing
Ingredients
for the cupcakes
1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3 tbsp butter
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
the dreaded 1/2 an egg (beat it, then pour half of that in)
1 tsp vanilla
3 oz milk (just under 1/2 cup)
1/4 cup chopped pecans, broken up or chopped some more
for the icing
somewhat less than a stick of butter – halving the recipe accurately would have been one stick (1/4 cup), but that would have necessitated my opening another stick, so I just used the remains of the stick I had already opened. Something like 5 or 6 tbsp.
2 tbsp milk
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1 cup icing sugar
some more pecan bits for garnishing the top
Method
Preheat oven to 350.
Line your cupcake tray – this amount made 8 cupcakes for me – with paper liners.
Combine your flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl.
Cream the butter and brown sugar (the cupcake part, not the icing part) in the bowl of a stand mixer.
Beat in the egg and vanilla.
Stir in half of the flour mixture.
Now stir in half of the milk.
And now the rest of the flour.
Aaaand the rest of the milk. I don’t get the alternating thing either. It is just one of those “baking is science!” things that I am just going to accept and move on with.
Fold in the pecans.
Distribute the batter evenly amongst your cupcake liners, filling each one not more than 2/3 full.
Bake for 24 minutes or until the cupcakes are springy to the touch.
Cool in the pan, on a rack, and then eventually just by themselves on the rack when you run out of counter space.
In the meantime, make the icing!
Bring the butter, milk, and brown sugar to a boil in a pot over medium-low heat, stirring frequently.
Once it has boiled, set it aside to cool to lukewarm.
Whisk the icing sugar in and keep stirring until smooth and desired consistency is reached. I didn’t need to thin it out or thicken it up, but if needed, you can add more icing sugar to thicken it, or hot water to thin it.
Ice the cupcakes and sprinkle pecan bits on top.
I served this with the almond chicken at the dinner party. And I was all set to be little miss cleverpants and refer to it as “faux-lenta” because I used yellow cornmeal to make it, not something specifically designed and labeled as “polenta.” But according to my research, by which I mean reading the “Polenta” page on wikipedia, polenta is cornmeal. The site from which I got the recipe disagrees a bit, saying that polenta is a more specific subset of cornmeal; it comes in a variety of different grinds, for instance, and it is rather more difficult to find than ordinary cornmeal, but ordinary cornmeal can be used “in a pinch.” I wasn’t in a pinch per se*, but when faced with conflicting theories, I picked the one that allowed me to be right more easily, and went with the jar of cornmeal I already had sitting on top of the toaster oven instead of having to go out on a shopping expedition.
Polenta is, at heart, peasant food. Boiling up a bunch of cornmeal to make a mushy substance is far from hoity-toity, after all. I feel that peasants would be on my side with this one, and wholeheartedly support my use of plain old regular cornmeal – not that different from what they had in actual fact, and not different at all in terms of making do. Although I suppose “The Picky Peasant” would be a good name for a food blog.
Bacon-Sage Polenta
Ingredients
4 slices bacon
1 tbsp fresh sage, chopped
1 8-oz can corn kernels (or I guess they’re 8.5-oz cans. Whatever. An extra half an ounce won’t end your life.)
4 cups water
1 cup yellow cornmeal
1/2 cup parmesan (I may have eyeballed it and/or just thrown in handfuls indiscriminately)
salt and pepper
Method
Cook the bacon until crispy in the pan you intend to use for the whole thing. That’s right, that means things are going to get fried up in bacon grease, are you excited???
Take the bacon out and leave it to drain on paper towels.
Drain off all but a tablespoon of the bacon grease in the pan. I always find this step hard in recipes – I wind up spooning the excess grease out into my grease jar and it takes a hundred years, because I can’t just pour it for fear of pouring off too much. If you’re better than me at this, more power to you.
Saute the sage and corn in the remaining grease for 1 minute.
Pour in water and turn the heat up to medium-high.
You’re supposed to bring it to a boil first and THEN add the cornmeal, but I just added it straight away because I wasn’t paying attention. I don’t think it suffered; the texture was still pretty good and it cooked in the right amount of time. So whisk the cornmeal in, either right away or once the water boils.
Turn the heat down and let it cook, whisking fairly often, for 10 minutes. If it is getting too solid, add more water, but mine didn’t need it.
In between whiskings, break up your bacon into bite-sized pieces.
When the 10 minutes is up, stir in the parmesan and bacon.
Crank some salt and pepper over it and serve piping hot.
This made enough to feed a small army. Serves 4 to 5 indeed, sir – maybe as a main course, or if the 5 people in question are linebackers. Also, be careful when you’re stirring it. It bubbles thickly, like lava, and when those bubbles pop and hit you in the side of the finger, you could be forgiven for thinking it IS lava.
* who wants to bet that by including this phrase in a food blog, I get a bunch of search engine hits looking for the fancy restaurant?
Here’s the main dish from the dinner party (does it count as a “dinner party” if there’s only us and another couple?). I got the recipe here. I feel kind of abashed even linking there; this is someone with a glamorous life and fabulous photos, and I’m here not doing it justice. But it did go over well with my friends, so does it matter, really? They weren’t waiting for my photos to judge the dish – they just ate it.
I found that getting the second layer of crust – the almonds – to adhere was tricky. You dip the chicken in egg first and coat it in breadcrumbs, and then re-dip it and coat it in almond slices. I think I should maybe have let the chicken sit with just the breadcrumbs for a bit, because what ultimately happened was that some of the breadcrumbs would just wash off with the second application of egg. Mine didn’t get that wall-to-wall carpeting of almonds like in the original photos either, but enough stuck (and didn’t then come off in the pan) to give the general idea. So yeah – while it is really not a time-consuming recipe at all, the original post makes it out to be a total breeze, but it’s much more fiddly if you need your results to be perfect, with your chicken completely and evenly covered in both layers of coating. Oh, also, I used half the amount of butter, just because I only had one tablespoon left without having to open a second stick, but didn’t halve the oil, and I feel that I could have done so. I mean, some coating stuck a bit, but I doubt that this was due to a lack of fat in the pan, since it was standing and bubbling away in there.
Almond Chicken
Ingredients
**note: as with any recipe that calls for something to be coated in something else, amounts are approximate. Had I followed the original recipe religiously, I would have wound up with excess coating that I’d have had to throw out – and in fact did have to throw out a little bit anyway**
4 pieces of boneless, skinless chicken breast – enough for 4 people to eat, anyway, depending on their appetites
2 eggs (in fact, you might be able to get by with 1)
something less than 1 cup seasoned breadcrumbs, or just shake some into a bowl and refill as necessary
1 1/2 cups almond slices, or just shake some into a bowl and refill as necessary
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp oil
Method
Beat your eggs in one bowl.
Put some breadcrumbs in another bowl, and the almonds in a third.
Take each chicken breast or breast piece, and dunk it first in the egg, then in the breadcrumbs, then back in the egg, and then in the almonds. Do your best to get an even coating on there, but expect that some breadcrumbs are going to come off when you put it in the egg for the second time. Consider letting them sit after the breadcrumbs layer to let it harden a little before going in for round 2. I did not do this, but it may have been a good idea.
Leave the chicken to sit and set for a bit while you take care of the pan situation.
Preheat the oven to 400.
Take an oven-proof skillet that’s big enough for all your chicken, and melt the butter in it over medium heat (on the stove).
Once the butter is melted, add the oil.
Carefully move the chicken into the pan and cook for about 4 minutes per side, leaving them more or less alone except for when you flip them – you want to do all you can to avoid screwing up the crust. The original recipe had them only cooking for a couple of minutes on the second side, actually, which I guess makes sense because they’re about to cook in the oven with that side up. But I don’t think the world will end if you leave them 2 more minutes.
Anyway, whatever you choose to do, at the end of the stovetop searing period, put the whole skillet into the oven for 10 – 12 minutes.
At this point, you can either serve them or turn the oven down to low and keep them warm until it’s time for dinner (which is what I did).
It’s sitting on top of a pile of bacon-sage polenta, which is not really polenta, and anyway about which more later.
Also, upon some thought, the reason for my troubles in getting the chicken coated might have to do with the relative size of the chicken pieces to the bowls the coatings were in. However, I also forgot to mix the egg with water, so presumably it should have been stickier from not being watered down, right? Anyway. I’m kind of on the fence about this dish. It tasted delicious and everyone enjoyed it, but it’s kind of hard to love something that constantly throws your failures in your face.
However. The little remaining bits of crust that stuck to the pan? Nibbling on those later was delicious.
This was the second part of the appetizer when we had our friends over for dinner on Saturday. I thought I was being super cool, but then all of a sudden romescos are blowing up all over Tastespotting, so I guess I am uncreative and boring. On the other hand, I brought the leftovers in to work with a bunch of pita wedges, and it went over pretty well – hi, work people who now have the address of this site! So evidently not everyone is bored with it yet.
I got this recipe from Dinner With Julie, and barely altered it at all. The only alteration I had made was a mistake, actually. No one noticed… but I guess they all know now, don’t they!
Romesco Dip
Ingredients
2 roasted red peppers (I used the jarred kind, because I’m fundamentally lazy)
1/4 cup sliced almonds
1 garlic clove, peeled (I kind of used the biggest one on the head, because why not? This also means that this dip repels vampires. No word yet on whether it also repels people who read those Twilight books… but here’s hoping)
2 slices French bread, or 3 if your bread happens to be, er, flat… and they were toasted in the original recipe. I forgot to toast them. Whoops.
1 tbsp, maybe a bit more, balsamic vinegar
1 tsp paprika
5ish tbsp olive oil
salt
Method
Toast the almonds and the clove of garlic in a small pan over medium heat for 3 minutes. Or don’t. I did, but I’m not sure it really made any difference.
Put them into a food processor and add the bread, torn into chunks, as well.
Process until everything is crumbs.
Add everything else except for the olive oil, and process the heck out of it.
Add the olive oil gradually, as you process, until you have the right consistency. Which is allegedly mayo-like, but mine was too grainy to be mayo, and every photo I’ve seen is too. Do it until it looks appropriate for dip, ok?
Serve with something to dip into it. French bread and pitas are both proven successes here. I only wish I had had the presence of mind, and of deli meat, to put it in a sandwich.
We had a couple of friends over for dinner last night, and I got the chance to make tons of food. Of all the things we ate, I made everything but the salad (I sliced a cucumber and chucked some cherry tomatoes into one of those bags of salad mix, and we used bottled dressing. Sue me), PLUS they tried our homemade stout. Next thing you know I’ll be making my own clothes and furniture. Hahaha, except not.
So for an appetizer, I made this french bread with – and in! – a Romesco dip. The bread was delicious and everything, but I either did something wrong or left something out, because the dough was way too wet, or whatever you call not stiff enough. Maybe I did the math wrong halving it for one loaf instead of two. See, when I was leaving it to rise the second time, after it was supposed to be shaped into whatever size loaf you want? It was more of a puddle than a loaf. And it isn’t that it didn’t rise – well, ok, it didn’t rise so much as expand, but it did get bigger, so it wasn’t that the yeast wasn’t working. So I just threw my hands up and baked it in a roughly-shaped puddle, and called it foccacia to my friends, who didn’t object.
French Bread
Ingredients
2 1/4 tsp yeast (or one packet)
1/4 cup warm water
1/4 tsp sugar
1 cup hot water
1 1/2 tbsp (that’s 1 tbsp, 1 1/2 tsp) sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup oil
2 1/2 – 3 cups flour (except I evidently needed way more)
Method
Dissolve yeast and the first 1/4 tsp sugar in the warm water in a small bowl.
In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the rest of the sugar, the hot water, the salt, and the oil.
Mix in 1 1/2 cups flour until well combined.
Stir in the yeast mixture.
Add the rest of the flour (and more if necessary), mixing thoroughly. The original recipe said that the dough would be quite sticky at this point, and mine was, but I don’t know what else to suggest if you want to avoid the fate of my puddle of dough.
Let it rise in the bowl for an hour. The original recipe says to mix it a couple of strokes every now and then during this rise, and I only did so once, near the start – we went out to the grocery store and I wasn’t home to mix it! Maybe that’s where I went wrong?
At the end of the hour, roll out your dough, if it requires rolling and doesn’t just spread, to the length you want, and then roll from the long side and tuck the ends under. This, needless to say, did not happen with me. Not for lack of trying. I just sort of poured it onto the baking sheet – I wasn’t about to chance transferring it to a board to be rolled out, and then to the pan – and tried to press it into a rough shape. Maybe it’s because the baking sheet was oiled, since the pan you bake it on is ultimately supposed to be greased, but I was throwing flour all over the thing, it’s not like it didn’t have the chance to absorb any. ANYWAY.
If your loaf has structural integrity, make some diagonal cuts across the top of your loaf. If not, you can skip it, because it won’t make any difference.
Preheat the oven to 400.
Leave the bread to rise on the pan for another 30 minutes.
Bake it for 25 minutes, or 30 if you want more crustiness (the good kind).