Easier Than Falling Off a Log
Archive for January, 2010
January 26, 2010 at 12:38 am · Filed under food, meals, soup/stew
This stew, from No Recipes, is very manly. And masculine. It is basically a roiling pot of testosterone.
Er, well, I don’t know, actually. I mean, all beef stews are manly, because big hunks of beef are basically the manliest meat there is, short of going out in the woods (or, for extra manliness points, the tundra), and killing some animal with your bare hands. No wussing around with guns. You need to PUNCH THAT DEER OUT.
Where was I? Oh yeah, the manliness of this stew. Right, so big hunks of nicely-browned beef and potatoes (big chunks are manlier than bite-sized bits, obviously), that’s pretty masculine, so’s a thick, gravy-like sauce, beer, bourbon, and rendering down pork fat to saute things in instead of mincing around with butter or olive oil. But although it had a bare minimum of vegetables in it (peas and carrots), it would be manlier with none at all, and also? Couldn’t it have used some bacon? And never mind the juniper berries I omitted from the original recipe. Berries. Decidedly not masculine, even, as I said in the comments on the original post, if you do make gin out of them. So if I made this stew again, I’d probably throw down with some bacon. If it was Matt only, there wouldn’t be vegetables, either (although I liked having them there, but I am an admitted girl). But really, all beef stews are pretty masculine, and this is still manlier than most, so it’s still head and shoulders, or something, ahead of the competition.
P.S., I halved it, although I screwed up some of the proportions, and we’ve still got a bit left.
Manly Man Stew
Ingredients
a 3/4″ cube of fatback, cut into 1/4″ cubes
1 lb beef chuck, cut into the manliest size possible while still remaining manageable…
1 1/2 tbsp flour
1 small onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, smashed
2 tbsp bourbon
1/2 a beer (so, 6 oz), and the original recipe says to chug the rest, but I found out it’s best to wait and chug it a little later in case you wind up needing it
1 cup chicken stock, and if you wind up not having enough, make up the difference with beer (see? what did I say?)
1/2 tbsp tomato paste
1/2 a bay leaf, more or less
1 large potato, peeled and cut into manly chunks
1 large carrot, peeled and cut into manly chunks
1/2 cup peas (I used frozen peas to no ill effect)
a generous amount of salt and pepper
Method
Put the fatback cubes in a big pot over medium heat and let them render. I honestly don’t know if you’re supposed to wait until they’re literally completely dissolved, but I wound up taking mine out once they’d gotten all brown and dry. If you’re more knowledgeable than me about the correct properties of salted pork fat, then do the correct thing.
Toss the beef with flour, salt, and pepper.
Brown the beef, 4 or 5 minutes per side, turning when necessary. And I mean brown, not just “not raw.”
Once you’ve got a crusty brown crust all over the beef, add in the onions and garlic.
Saute those until soft and browned, about 7 – 10 minutes.
Then pour in your bourbon. It will probably boil pretty much immediately.
Add your beer, stock, and possibly more beer.
Bring to a boil, although mine pretty much just went ahead and boiled without me having to turn the heat up, and then turn down to a simmer.
Leave to simmer, partly covered, for about an hour.
Toss in the carrot and potato and let it cook at least another half hour, or however long it takes for the potatoes and beef to be tender.
**Note – the liquid was reduced down to thick gravy by the time I threw in the vegetables, so I added about a cup of water so that the potatoes would have something to cook in. Do this if necessary, and don’t worry – that amount reduced down to thick gravy as well.**
Add the peas.
Cook until heated through, then eat with manly noises and scratching.
January 23, 2010 at 8:55 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
I made these to bring in to my new job, because that’s only right and correct – it’s a gift for people who already like me, and a bribe to people who don’t know me yet. If you start a new job and don’t bring in delicious baked goods, you might be a jerk. Or, y’know, maybe you don’t bake or something. You decide. Anyway, I sent around an email saying these little beauties were sitting around waiting to be eaten, but I had to let everyone down when I explained that despite their name, they don’t contain any actual scotch.
I got the recipe from Appeale. Apparently these little delights are an Iowa thing. I may have Canadianed them up a bit, though – I thought I had enough Karo syrup, but it turns out I had more like half of enough. I ran up to the Hi-Lo to try and grab some more, but it was MLK day and they were closed! I didn’t have time to go to the real grocery store, which I knew was open, so I came home and substituted the rest with maple syrup. Guys. This is a very good idea. You might think that with the peanut butter, chocolate, butterscotch, and now maple, there would be too many flavours competing in your mouth, but they all go together really well. It is pretty sweet, though, and sticky, so small pieces are the best way to go.
Maple Scotcheroos
Ingredients
1/2 cup corn syrup
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 cup sugar
1 cup smooth peanut butter (or I suppose you could use crunchy, but bear in mind it’s going to be mixed in with a bunch of crunchy cereal)
6 cups – ahem – crisped rice cereal
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips or chunks or hacked bits off a block, it doesn’t matter, you’re going to melt them anyway
1 cup butterscotch chips
Method
Get a pot big enough to hold all the cereal and pour the syrups and sugar into it.
Cook over medium heat, stirring, until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture is bubbling.
Remove from heat.
Stir in peanut butter until it’s fully melted and incorporated.
Gently stir in all the cereal until it’s all well coated.
Spray a 13×9 pan (or be cool like me with my 8×12 casserole dish) with cooking spray.
Spread the mixture evenly into the pan.
Put your chocolate and butterscotch chips in a bowl and melt them together in the microwave.
Spread evenly over the cereal mixture in the pan.
Throw the pan in the fridge to cool completely (seriously, completely – otherwise you get gooey stretchiness and drag the chocolate coating around with every cut if you just leave it to sit on the counter until it’s no longer particularly warm) before cutting.
January 23, 2010 at 12:33 am · Filed under Uncategorized
I’m pretty sure people from pulled-pork parts of the country make this with more than 3 ingredients. I’m also pretty sure they get all aghast if you mention barbeque sauce out of a bottle (even if it is the Jack Daniels kind). Too bad for them. This is good and easy and the only thing I’m from the south of is Canada, which doesn’t count. So if anyone is allowed to make cheater pulled pork, it is me. And I will, and did, enjoy the heck out of it.
The recipe, insofar as one needs a recipe, is from Guilty Kitchen, although I hope she wasn’t feeling guilty about making this. I certainly wasn’t. The only thing I changed was using regular old pork chops (which, I know, slow-cooking things mean you’re supposed to use tough meat, bear with me) because our supermarket didn’t have pork butt steaks and I haven’t worked up the courage to go into Meatland yet. To paraphrase Steven Seagal, “thass right… Meatland.” There’s a butcher shop across the street from our supermarket and that is its name. I envision a theme park of meat. But I am also a little intimidated because I’m not all that knowledgeable about the subject, so I haven’t gone in yet. And that is the story of how I used a too-tender and non-slow-cooker-requiring cut of pork to make this pulled pork. Not that it made a difference, I just guess I could have saved myself some money if I’d bought cheaper, tougher meat and it would have turned out just as well. This amount I used works for 2 people.
Slow-Cooker Pulled Pork for Cheaters
Ingredients
a couple of smallish pork chops
1/2 cup BBQ sauce
1/4 cup water
Method
Chuck all the ingredients in a slow cooker.
Put it on high for 3 1/2 hours.
Shred the pork with two forks. You can do this in the slow cooker, but mine is small and I had a hard time, so I took the pork out and shredded it on a plate. Whatever suits you.
If you took the pork out, put it back in and mix it with any remaining sauce so everything is nice and saucy.
Serve on soft buns. Don’t be a loser like I was with the shredded beef I made donkey’s years ago and bake crusty buns to serve them on. That defeats the purpose of supertender shredded meat.
January 16, 2010 at 11:16 pm · Filed under food, meals, pasta
Matt objects to baked macaroni and cheese. I don’t, but I also don’t care all that much. If I don’t get to eat that kind, it’s fine. So finding good stovetop recipes is a plus for me, because most of the cool-looking or particularly delicious ones out there are oven-baked. And I know I’m Canadian and am therefore supposed to have a weird affinity for Kraft Dinner (hey, hey Americans, keep your pants on, it’s different from the American version, which is even named differently, “Kraft Macaroni and Cheese”), and I do, but liking something lo-fi like that does not prevent me from liking nice versions of the same thing.
I saw this recipe on Life’s Ambrosia, and maybe the number-one thing that made me want to save it immediately was that one of the three cheeses was Havarti. Loooove Havarti. In fact – and any high school friends reading this can confirm – during the nice weather parts of the year, a bunch of us routinely went down to the beach on a Friday afternoon with a slab of (supermarket) focaccia bread and some Havarti, and sand got in it but we didn’t care. We felt like classy … um… well, if you know me, you know what I was going to say here. Hi, people for whom I am keeping this blog PG-13! Indeed, after I made the macaroni and cheese and had most of the hunk of Havarti left over, I went to When Pigs Fly bakery and got some of this bread (which they have as a ciabatta on their website, but what I got was definitely a focaccia) to eat with it.
Um, where was I? Oh, right, cheeses… so yeah, the third cheese was Gruyere, and I thought that would be completely easy to find, but the grocery store didn’t have it! And I realize our grocery store isn’t super swankypants and I shouldn’t expect fancy cheese, but it is an allegedly Super Stop & Shop, so it has a cheese department. If you have a cheese department, it is not unreasonable to think it would be likely to have Gruyere, which isn’t even that out-there as cheeses go. But it did not. So we used provolone instead, which led to meatball subs later on in the week… not a bad trade-off, ultimately.
3-Cheese Macaroni and Cheese
Ingredients
1 cup dry macaroni
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp flour
3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup grated cheddar cheese
1/4 cup grated (or just chopped up really small – ours was sliced, and it’s impossible to grate a slice of cheese) provolone
1/4 cup finely chopped Havarti – who can grate a soft cheese like that, anyway?
1/2 tsp seasoning salt
a few hearty cranks of pepper
1 green onion, chopped
Method
Cook pasta according to package directions.
Take it out to drain, and leave it in the strainer while you do the next stuff.
In the same pot, melt the butter over medium heat.
Whisk in the flour until smooth.
Let it cook for 1 minute to get that raw flour taste out.
Whisk in the milk.
Bring to a simmer but not a real boil.
Dump in all the cheeses.
Stir until they are all melted.
Add salt and pepper.
Stir in the macaroni.
Cook 5 minutes.
Stir in the green onions.
Remove from the heat and let stand 5 minutes before serving.
January 16, 2010 at 12:19 am · Filed under food, meals, soup/stew
This was supposed to be made with leftover turkey, but we ate all that before I made the soup. So I just chucked a chicken breast in the oven with some appropriate herbs and then shredded it when it was cooked, and pretended it was leftover turkey. It tasted good, even if not distinctly turkey-esque, so while this is not the same as the original (from the always fabulous Tokyo Terrace), it’s not dissimilar, particularly since I used miso paste as well. By which I mean I got to use up some of my zillion-dollar jar of red miso paste sitting in the back of the fridge. It’s not going to go bad, or anything – it’s already fermented, after all – but I don’t want to feel like I wasted a bunch of money on an ingredient I’d only use part of, in one thing, and throw out the rest.
This is the halved version for two people.
Chicken Ramen with Miso
Ingredients
2 cups chicken stock
2 packets dry ramen noodles (which I, and nobody else not from Canada, call generically “Mr. Noodles” in the same way you might say “Kleenex” or “Crock-Pot”), not counting the flavour-packets
a mushroom or two, sliced
1 rib celery, diced
1 carrot, julienned or matchsticked or whatever slim stick-type cut you like to do (or can do)
about a cup of cooked chicken, shredded – I just used a smallish chicken breast and didn’t really bother about measuring
1 tbsp red miso paste (or, well, I only have the one kind, I don’t know if you used some other kind of miso paste, it would probably be good)
1/2 tsp soy sauce
1 green onion, chopped
2 tsp ginger, grated (or just chopped really small; it gums up my grater so I don’t generally grate it)
Method
Make the ramen according to package directions, except for the part where you add the flavour packet.
Once you’ve taken the noodles out to drain, use the same pot to bring the stock to a boil.
Add the miso paste and the soy sauce to the stock and stir until all the miso is broken up.
Now it’s time for assembly! This is assembled food!
Divide the noodles amongst the bowls.
Put the veggies and meat on top.
Pour the broth over everything.
Garnish with ginger and green onions.
January 10, 2010 at 11:25 pm · Filed under food, side dishes/appetizers
I brought these curry cashews to Christmas for snacking purposes, and OH MY GOD they are ridiculous. You literally cannot stop eating them once you start. You end up having to remove yourself from the room. I have an extra can of cashews sitting on the counter (I overbought when I was making them) and I am seriously considering turning them into curry cashews as well. If you want this kind of temptation in your life, read on; otherwise, you should probably stop here and go do something else.
The recipe comes from Les gourmandises d’Isa, which the astute among you may notice is in French. Thank you, 6 years of French immersion elementary school! You know, even when I lived in Montreal, I didn’t feel like I needed the language to get by. I mean, it helped, it made things easier, but I could’ve gotten by without it. But where do I really find it coming in handy? In Boston, maybe the least Francophonic city in the US, reading recipes online in French!
Curry Cashews
Ingredients
3 cups unsalted cashews (or if, like me, you could only find the salted kind, get the “lightly salted” kind and omit the salt in these ingredients)
if your cashews are unsalted, 2 tsp salt – omit if salted
1 tbsp curry powder
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp cayenne
1/4 cup water
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp butter
Method
Preheat the oven to 350.
Grease a baking sheet.
Spread out the cashews on the sheet in a single layer.
Bake for 10 minutes or until fragrant.
While they’re baking, mix the spices (and the salt, if adding) in a bowl and set aside.
When the nuts are ready, take them out and just leave them lying around until you need them, but leave the oven on.
In a pot, bring the water, butter, and brown sugar to a boil, stirring constantly.
Stir in the cashews gently, just enough to get them coated.
Turn down to a simmer and leave it to it for 3 minutes or until the liquid is completely evaporated.
Stir in the spice mixture until everything is well coated.
Spread the nuts back out on the baking sheet. I hope you didn’t throw it in the sink or something.
Put it back in the oven to bake for another 10 minutes.
Let cool before devouring compulsively.
January 10, 2010 at 1:09 am · Filed under dessert, food
The third cookie I made for Christmas (which, yes, I realize was 3 weeks ago, I’ve got a bit of a backlog of posts to write) was these lovely little fluffy cardamom-flavoured nuggets. I think cardamom might be my favourite sweet spice – and I know it’s not only for sweet stuff, but in a sweet context, it’s a favourite. Pretty sure cumin is my favourite savoury spice, in case you’re wondering. Anyway, these little bites are small and fairly light in the mouth, and the icing has a deliciously prominent vanilla flavour, and it’s got sprinkles, so you can’t really go wrong. Well, unless you don’t want to buy ground cardamom. It is expensive. I’ll cop to that. But I had bought some to make something down at Matt’s mom’s house once, and I told her she could keep it, but she had given it back to me because she didn’t have much need for it. So I was fortunate enough to have some hanging around. The buttermilk is in both the cookies and the icing, but I didn’t find that the whole thing had any pronounced buttermilk flavour. Maybe it does. I can’t really tell.
I got this recipe from Sugarcrafter, but I had to guess on one point – she talked about adding the “buttermilk and flour mixture.” I had to assume she meant add the buttermilk, and also add the flour mixture, as opposed to adding a mixture that already included both flour and buttermilk. What I did worked, so either my interpretation was right, or it doesn’t matter. But you know what does matter? Commas!
Cardamom Buttermilk Cookies with Vanilla Icing
Ingredients
for the cookies
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter (one stick)
1 egg
1 1/4 cups flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cardamom
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup + 1 tbsp buttermilk (not separated, but there’s no more sensible way of describing the amount you need than that)
for the icing
2 cups icing sugar
3 tbsp buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla
Method
for the cookies
Preheat the oven to 375.
Grease a cookie sheet.
Using a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugar.
Beat in the egg.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, cardamom, baking soda, and salt.
Stir the buttermilk into the wet ingredients in the stand mixer bowl.
Stir in the dry ingredients until just combined.
Scoop tablespoon-sized balls of dough onto the baking sheet.
Throw it in the oven for 10 – 12 minutes.
Let them cool completely on a rack before icing them.
for the icing
While the cookies are baking, or more likely while they’re cooling, make the icing.
Beat together all three ingredients until smooth.
Drizzle over the cookies.
Sprinkle with sprinkles!
January 7, 2010 at 1:14 pm · Filed under dessert, food
Here is the second of the three cookies I made for my Christmas presents and stocking stuffers and whatnot. Yes, it’s pumpkin. What? Let’s be honest, even if it was pumpkin season, I’d still be using canned pumpkin, so what’s the difference?
The recipe comes from Chocolate Chip Trips, and the only thing I really have to add to her recipe is a response to someone in the comments. They had complained that trying to “improve” a chocolate chip cookie by adding pumpkin was pointless and stupid. My response is that this isn’t supposed to improve a chocolate chip cookie by adding pumpkin, it’s improving a pumpkin cookie by adding chocolate chips!
Oh wait, no, I did make one alteration. The original recipe called for pastry flour. Pastry flour is similar to cake flour, more similar, at any rate, than either is to all-purpose flour. I don’t have either pastry flour or cake flour hanging around the house, but what I do have is a hot tip, from Joy the Baker, explaining how to magically turn all-purpose flour into cake flour. The secret is this: you replace 2 tbsp per cup of all-purpose flour with 2 tbsp of corn starch. Then you sift it together really well, it has to be really incorporated and not just mixed in, but that’s all there is to it! Boom, no need to buy two bags of flour.
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
1/2 cup all-purpose flour (left alone)
1/2 cup EITHER pastry/cake flour OR all-purpose flour with 1 tbsp taken out and replaced by 1 tbsp corn starch, then sifted together thoroughly (in fact, I whisked them since I don’t have a sifter, but if you’re thorough it shouldn’t matter)
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1 egg
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
3 tbsp butter, melted
1/2 cup + 1 tbsp pumpkin
1/2 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup chocolate chips (I used up the last of the dark chocolate chips left over from the chocolate coconut bars, and then made up the rest with semi-sweet)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
Method
Preheat the oven to 325.
Grease a baking sheet – the original recipe said 2 baking sheets, but I think I only used one, and just had the cookies getting a little cozy on there. Do what you’ve got to do.
Whisk together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the egg and the sugars until smooth and light.
Reduce the speed and mix in the butter, pumpkin, and vanilla until fully blended.
Mix in the dry ingredients until incorporated.
Stir in the chocolate chips and walnuts.
Scoop big old spoonfuls onto your baking sheet(s). The original recipe said 1/4 cup-size scoops, so seriously – go to town. They don’t spread out much; rather, they fluff up vertically, so no worries vis-a-vis the cookies melding into one giant… delicious… pumpkiny… hmm. I’m sorry, I got a bit distracted there.
Ahem. Anyway, chuck ‘em in the oven for 14 – 16 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
Devour them with your face.
January 2, 2010 at 11:27 pm · Filed under dessert, food
I made 3 cookies this Christmas, and I put them in people’s stockings, in Matt’s grandfather’s present, and in a Secret Santa gift I sent out (ironically, to someone in a town we were right near in Connecticut). This was one of the three.
The recipe comes from Cookwoman Food (at least, that’s how I’m parsing it – I might be wrong, but this way makes sense, doesn’t it?), and it’s a lot like a 7-layer bar, except it has fewer layers, and more of them are chocolate. A chocolate base, then chocolate chips, walnuts, and coconut on top. So… a 4-layer bar, and half of the layers are chocolate. P.S., the chocolate base has chocolate chips in it, too. Does that count as a layer? Does that bump us up to 5 layers, and more than half of the layers being chocolate? 7-layer bars are always kind of sketchy with their definition of a layer, anyway, so you might as well count this in.
Chocolate Coconut Bars
Ingredients
for the base
1 1/8 cups flour
3 tbsp cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 egg
1 cup dark chocolate chips
for the topping
2 eggs
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 cups coconut
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup dark chocolate chips
Method
for the base
Preheat the oven to 350.
Combine all the base ingredients together.
Press into a baking pan; I used my 8 1/2×11 pan, but the original recipe, and normal people, used a 9×13.
Bake for 10 minutes, but leave the oven on when it’s done.
While it’s baking, make the topping, by which I mean mix together all the topping ingredients.
Spread the topping on the baked base layer.
Chuck it back in the oven for another 20 minutes or until a knife comes out clean. Don’t be fooled if your knife goes through a chocolate chip and comes out gooey from that!
