super bowl food!

well, i could write a big long rant on this (and procrastinating later, i just might), but I'd rather turn your attention over to Lynda's wonderful documenting of our Super Bowl food stadium

also, my stomach hurts.

Breakfast (and burritos! thanks Tressa!)

Thanks to a suggestion from one of my favorite readers, I now deter from my usual course of lunch items and provide you with an extra special all-stock-photo extravaganza (since i mainly blog about what i cook and eat, and i'm not making all of this food in this economy. also, lazy.)

breakfast

While you can generally scrounge up whatever for lunch or dinner, breakfast is generally the most important meal of the day. So I will provide you with some delicious options for your taking.

Number 1: Breakfast burritos

I am exceedingly excruciatingly fond of really really well cooked scrambled eggs, so that may impact this. However, our methods differ.

As follows:

1) Heat a skillet up to decent heat (mid-high), and put down 2 strips of good bacon. Cook to desired done-ness, but recognize that crispy, not chewy, bacon works best in a burrito or sandwich. seriously. I've had my share of sandwich related disasters.

2) When finished, lay on a sheet of paper towel, turn your stove down to mid-low, and pour out the bacon grease. Wipe down the pan with a little bit of paper towel, and put in some olive oil or margarine

3) Crack two eggs into a cup, with about a tablespoon of milk, a pinch of salt and pepper, and a smidge of dijon mustard. Scramble the crap out of them, and let your pan come down to a nice, light heat.

(serious business)

4) Pour into the pan, and immediately start stirring. This seems counter productive, but you'll be making amazing, delicious soft scrambled eggs. Do NOT overcook here, as these will seem less done than you think, but you want them lightly cooked rather than the kind you get in diners (like some places in downtown Guelph. Feh!)

(extra big for extra detail)

5)When finished, take these off the heat and into a bowl. Preheat your toaster oven to a baking setting around 400degrees. Don't have one? You'll be fine. Begin assembly of your burrito. I recommend the big tortillas for this one:

a) Put a very light coating of any condiments (ketchup, sambal oelek, dijon)

b) Grate (finely) some nice old sharper cheese, like a good old cheddar or gruyere

c) Put your eggs (still steaming hot), on the cheese.

d) Lay down the bacon (if using)

e) This explains the whole wrapping thing better than I ever could.

f) If in the toaster oven, pop it in until it starts slightly browning. GBD.

g) Serve with nice fruit, or tomato slices for maximum goodness.

Variations:

Cheesewise, cheddar will be a nice evenly balanced one. Gruyere will be stringy and a bit sharper, mozzarella more soft. All are good.

Add in some other things, like herbs to the eggs, tomato slices (salt and peppered) in the wrap,caramelized onions, sauteed spinach, or other veggies make a nice add-in.

Number 2: Yogurt and granola

1) Put fruit (blueberries, raspberries, cut up strawberries) in a mug/cup (1/2 to 1 cup)

2) Lay on a good bit of yogurt. (same-ish as the berries)

3) Drop a few heaping spoons of granola

4) Don't be delicate, and mash them all together and enjoy.

(if it's not this pretty, you're doing it wrong. or you don't work for good housekeeping magazine)

Variations:

Before the granola, blend that sucker up

Toast the granola by putting it in a hot dry pan, for added crunchiness and flavour

Number 3: Hangover delight

Tomato juice, LOTS of hot sauce, and some horseradish.

Variations:

Vodka.

Enjoy!

pizza hack attack

Yes, it's another post on pizza. This time though, I've got pictures (so it did happen for real!)

This one is of another nature though - I tried one of the crazy "pizza hacks" online, to replicate the impact of a zillion degree oven for five second pizza you get in a real pizzeria, and not your home oven.

Let's just say... mixed (tasty) results.

First, take a cast iron pan, and put it on a hot burner. Get your broiler going too, and hot as hell.

On a cutting board, lay out your dough to fit in your pan (thin. very thin.), put on the sauce (like the girlfriend and I's garlic insanity sauce), and cheese (I used a mix of mozzarella and a little bit of old cheddar).

You ready? Ok. Go.

Drop the pizza in the hot pan. Wait.. five seconds, and bump it under the broiler. Leave it there till the cheese gets all golden and tasty, and pull it out. Immediately remove it from the pan, drop some herbs, wait a bit, and cut and eat.

This is your reward. Eat it, and enjoy.

Oh, the "mixed results" were that it was kind of burnt on the bottom (you want it crispy, but not too blackened), and my apartment is full of smoke from using a crappy cast iron pan covered in food grease, before freaking out and replacing it with the good one. But.. ohnomnomnom.

:(

edit: oh, the stuff on the first pizza is my hot sauce from the pho post. so good on pizza. and technique credits to the crazies here

zuppadoop

Depending where you are right now, it's probably somewhere between 'cold' and 'hellish ice cave of hell - on ice'. We're leaning towards the former in Guelph, thankfully, but it's still worthwhile to make some tasty soup to warm yourself up.

For this, you will need:

• one sweet potato


• one red onion


• one red pepper


• half a head of garlic


• about an inch of ginger. two if your girlfriend/boyfriend/partner/spouse/roommate is a really big into ginger. like this fella.


• veggie stock, about eight cups

You can be really awesome and start the day ahead by roasting the vegetables and refrigerating them. This helps them thicken the soup later. Otherwise, do it, but don't worry too much about the day ahead thing.

You'll want the sweet potato peeled and in inch-ish cuts, the onion in thicker crescents, and the pepper however you want them (about the same size as the sweet potato). Yes, they'll blacken, but it's tasty. Toss these with olive oil, rosemary, thyme, salt, pepper, oregano, basil, and so on and put them in a roasting pan together at 400* for an hourish, turning on the half hour.

Next up (or next day, if you're great), star by chopping the garlic and peeled ginger roughly, and cooking on a lowish heat with salt to get them nice and fragrant. When this happens, put in the stock and your roasted vegetables. Let this simmer for a bit, and crank out the immersion blender and blend that sucker to oblivion. If you're not the king of yard sales and don't own one, you can use a blender/food processor, but make sure that it's cooled down. Otherwise steam will work its magic and make you very, very displeased.

I returned this to the simmer, left it for a while, and for a little 'extra' tossed in some gnocchi. You can use a ravioli (plain-er tasting, like a ricotta or something) or other pasta, and use the soup as you would to cook pasta, but just go easy on it (and use fresh pasta, otherwise it might scorch the soup). the pasta will also do the double duty of adding a bit of extra starch to thicken the soup, and will be mighty tasty.

Sit, enjoy, and remember that the days are getting longer again.

Holy Crap, its Chili Chicken.

Hey all,
I'm just about finished at my current co-op job, and I've come to note some big traditions here that I'll definitely miss. One that harkens back to the days of their old office at Rexdale (yes, THAT Rexdale) is a love for Indian-Chinese food. Indian Chinese food, in the sense that I'm familiar, is insanely spicy and delicious, and not for the faint of heart.

A usual run takes about ten of us up there for a bowl of hot and sour soup and my favourite, Chilli Chicken. Some go for fish, some get it 'dry' (without sauce, and spicy as all hell), but I got for the Chilli Chicken, Wet, with Half Rice (because they give you an entire farm's worth sometimes.

To experience this, go anywhere around Rexdale and Martin Grove in Toronto, and look for Hakka Chinese food. It's complicated where this name comes from and applies, but so, so worth it. We go to the China Garden at Airport and Derry Road.

Also, yes - my love for Canadian-Chinese food is more and more strengthened by this place. It's a dangerous mix, but so. damn. good.

Anyways! Here's the recipe, with no photos (sorry) because it's a pretty speedy, involved recipe. Like many dishes, most of the work is in the prep, with little cooking time.

You'll need

• 2-3 Green chilis (minced or sliced)
  
• A clove or two of garlic (minced)
  
• About an inch of ginger (minced)
• Half a decent size onion (thin slices)
  
• 2-3 chicken breasts or 3 thighs (chopped)
• 2 tbsp soy sauce, mixed with a pinch of salt and pepper, and some cayenne/chili powder if you're a badass (Like a certain Mr. Kalra. Man, that guy is intense about his spicy food)
  
• 1 Cup water
• 1 tbsp corn starch dissolved in 3 tbsp water - keep this aside and ready, and stir again before putting in. It tends to separate quickly.

On med-high heat, cook the chilis, garlic, and ginger until your apartment smells delicious (as I assume it already does. Then toss in the onions. Brown those suckers.

When content with the onions, toss the chicken in to cook. If it has skin or fat, leave it in for maximum goodness. Also, the fat renders, yadda yadda, helps form the base of the sauce, blah blah.

When the chicken is cooked through, toss in the soy sauce mix to cook for a bit. It will smell very strongly like soy sauce, but begin to sweeten. When it smells less like overpowering sodium juice , and more like good stuff, toss in the water. This seems a bit odd, and it is to me, but I'm not familiar with the cooking style really.

Let this mix come to a boil. Then stir up and toss in your cornstarch mixture. Quickly mix this to integrate, and let it thicken. When thickened pretty well, cover and leave for a few minutes. Serve this over rice, and burn your eyebrows off and lose any kind of a cold you ever had in your life. To reduce the spice, cut back on the chilis - but that's really part of the appeal so you're missing out if you do.

The cornstarch is an odd addition to me, not being particularly familiar with it. Turns out it's a very important part of sauce construction in Asian cooking, so for more information, go here (also looks like a pretty amazing recipe.

The chicken can also be replaced with tofu if you swing that way.

Enjoy! Don't blame me for singed eyebrows and steam coming out of the ears.

edit: thanks to Hooked on Heat for helping me get my fix

vegetarian pho-king gold

Hey all.
So I have this odd sort of fascination with Pho, ever since I was introduced by a friend of mine. Something about it is therapeutic - maybe the spices and steam, or maybe that you're eating a gallon of broth and all the trimmings. Either way, I decided to take it on at home.

HOWEVER.

A lot of my friends are vegetarians, and my apartment is a sweat lodge at the moment. So simmering beef knuckles for eight or so hours just ain't gonna happen. Luckily, I found a pretty nifty veghead recipe online that still does the trick.

As follows (thanks elliemay.com)

- Make eight cups of vegetable stock. You can use the cubes, or if you have some good homemade stuff, that's neat too. Again, sweatbox - I used the cubes.
- Put a large pot on medium-high heat, with nothing in it. Then toss:

• 1 small unpeeled onion, quartered


• 2 unpeeled shallots, halved


• 8 garlic cloves, halved


• a 1-inch piece of ginger, coarsely sliced


• two 3-inch cinnamon sticks


• 2 pods of star anise


• 4 cloves

in. DO NOT (yes, I mean it) put olive oil or any such nonsense in. You basically want to burn these suckers - I have no idea why, but getting a good scorch on these things does the job. When you're content, and your apartment is smoky - toss in the broth and 3 tbsp of soy sauce. Simmer this sucker for twenty-five minutes and strain into another pot.
It'll look like this:



Then, cook some rice vermicelli (they look like sticks of rice) - about half a handful - according to package directions. Set these in bowls to keep warm.
No picture. I tried, it looks pretty fugly.

Toss on some sliced green onions, and prepare your platter of accoutrements.
I used

• mint


• lime


• bean sprouts (big ones

Isn't that purty? Also, keep a bottle of this nearby:
You can find it at any respectable Asian grocer. Sriracha works too, but I like the chunky stuff where you can see pieces of garlic and chilis. - I used a Vietnamese place nearby for everything in this recipe. It also totalled about.. twelve dollars for four LARGE (there is no other way with Pho) servings.

{Side note: I heard a story once about a guy who went to the address on the back of the bottle, and it was an empty lot. Thus is the mystery of the most amazing hot sauce in the universe. I use it on pizza and eggs like it's going out of style, and has already shown up in next year's American Apparell catelog.}

To finish!
- Top your noodles and onions with broth. Use a massive bowl. Trust me. You'll eat it all.
- Rip up some mint (or basil, that's nice too.) leaves and toss them on.
- Toss in a handful of sprouts
- Squeeze a lime wedge
- Stir in some hot sauce

and voila:
Giant bowl of Vietnamese cure-all.

{Side note the second: Pho is apparently pronounced "fuh" - think of that next time you go to the Pho-King.}

pizza? ohnomnomnom

Okay. So this is the latest post after months of not posting - basically, I've lived at home for a few weeks, and barely cooked. So to start writing again, I figure I can write about the best home-made pizza I've ever had.

If you know me, you know I cook A LOT of pizza. With a lot of weird things. But it's still sort of kind of pizza. Here's the basic recipe:

- Good dough, about fist size
- Good sauce, about half a cup (cook chilis, garlic,and crushed tomatoes together for eons - there's a good sauce)
- Good mozzarella cheese, about... a heaping half-cup grated.

Heat your oven between 450 and 500 degrees.
Spread out the dough BY HAND - but not too much, or else it gets messy. Get it really thin.
Ladle on sauce, spread it around
Put on cheese.

Here's where it gets tricky.

Put it in the ludicrously hot oven, aiming to not get your eyebrows singed.
Cook until the bottom is well done. I mean nice and well done - like this:


(side note:this is known as a "pizza upskirt" shot. google it. i dare you.)

THEN
Take out, turn your oven broiler on full whack. Put the rack close to the broiler (the top element)

Put your pizza in and watch the cheese and top crust go all beautiful and golden brown and delicious. This is pretty critical if you have thin crust pizza, so you don't have to cook it to black on the bottom to get some colour on top.

Take out, let rest, and then eat the whole thing in one go like I did before I posted. So no pictures. Sorry folks, next time. Anyways.

VARIATIONS:

Put some genoa salami on it - either on top or under cheese, depending how you like it (crispy or hidden.

Saute spinach, lots of garlic, and sauce, then top with that in lieu of sauce. Don't do this before a date (smelly breath + spinach in your teeth = no kiss goodnight)

THE MARC SPECIAL - caramelized onions, blue cheese, and crispy (burnt) bacon with everything else. This turned into pizza soup once, but IT WAS STILL GOOD. (even if a certain someone's mom thinks I'm a loser.)

OR toss some cheese curds or old cheddar in with the mozzarella. makes it a bit tastier, I find.


That's all for now. (hopefully) more to come soon!