A surprise! (not if you were there)

I could say anything about this, but it would ruin the surprise, so here goes:

- Crisp up half a pound of bacon so it's not chewy at all. Take this, and crumble it up (or chop it), and reserve in a bowl.

- Now, simmer some water (about two inches) in a medium size sauce pan. Top this with a good, sturdy bowl that will handle and transfer the heat.

- Add chocolate chips into this, about half a pound. Melt these down.

- Add the bacon.

half shrouded in mystery, half shitty photo work.

- Spoon these in equal amounts to little paper muffin cups. When finished, remove the bowl (carefully! it is hot as hell) and eat the chocolate from it.

-Put on a baking tray into the freezer to set. Remove, and...

CHOCOLATE COVERED BACON

delicious, salty, creamy, smooth, beige (more brown, really)

Perfect for snacks, gifts, treats, and movies-about-crazy-people marathons

Sunday afternoon double-post!

So, this school thing. I've got a paper due Wednesday, and a finance midterm the next day. What to do? Procrastinate and cook, obviously.

Today, I bring you the COMFORT FOOD DOUBLE POST (post post post post..)

For starters, breakfast. Well, not really, but it's what I ate for breakfast today.

French onion soup

You'll need:

- one onion, sliced thinly

- some red or white wine

- 4 cups of stock (veggie, chicken, beef, whatever)

- two slices of bread

- mozzarella or gruyere (only had mozz on hand today)

- one big bowl, and a good size appetite

Heat your oven up to about 425.

Put an 11x13 baking tray on the burner, and heat it up. Drop some butter and/or olive oil in, and get it nice and warm (melted and foamy, possibly browned butter). When ready, drop the onion in, and try and get it in a nice layer. Pour in the wine (about 1/2 to 1 cup), and cook it a bit on the heat. Put it in your preheated oven, and cook for about 20-30 minutes.

As usual, your apartment will smell amazing, and those 4am piano players upstairs will be jealous. While this is in the oven, get your stock nice and simmering. When it's out, deglaze the pan, and combine this whole mixture with your stock. Scrape off all the good burnt bits, thems good eating.

Simmer this for about 20 minutes, which will start to dissolve and break down the burnt goodness. When ready:

Turn your broiler on full whack, and move a rack close to it. Put your soup in a good, oven proof bowl (I have a particularly intense set myself, i recommend going for sturdy and everything-proof over fanciness). Put two slices (toast if you want) of bread on the soup, cover with grated cheese, and broil it till the cheese is GBD. Take it out (use an oven mitt, doofus), and be awe inspired, then eat it.

Next up, lunch.

SWEET POTATO FRIES

some hate them, I love 'em. Also, easy.

You'll need:

- one big-ass sweet potato (mine was over a pound, I think)

- italian herbs mix (yeah, it's easy. want to fight about it?)

- kosher/sea salt

- olive oil

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees.

Take that sweet potato, and peel the hell out of it. Don't even bother washing it. Also, regular potatoes you can skip on peeling (in fact, I recommend it, for nutritional goodness), but NOT sweet potatoes.

Slice off the ends, and do half-inch discs of it. Then, take these and chop them into fries (if you need help with this, that's unfortunate for you). Toss these with olive oil and a good couple pinches of seasoning and salt.

Spread out aluminum foil over a cookie sheet (optional, but you'll hate it if you don't), and spray with some kind of cooking spray (don't cheap out on this stuff, kids. believe me. I know). Lay out the fries in a single layer and bake for 15 minutes, turn over, and bake for another 10. This is a bit laborious, but necessary so they aren't just burnt mush.

Tasty goodness. Plate 'em, and eat them with something to dip in on the side, like so:

That, as you may recognize, is the hot sauce I love dearly. After this shot was taken, I mayormaynothavecombineditwithsomemayo. Delicious. Also, don't ask about the movie on the right.

Enjoy!

bread! oh snap.

Holy crap, I made bread! It is wonderful, and magical, and delicious, and oddly... easy.

Well, not that easy, but easy enough.

You will need:

• 1 pound hard bread flour


• plus more for dusting


• 1½ teaspoons salt


• 2 teaspoons yeast (7 grams)


• 13.5 ounces warm water (about 1 1/3 cup, but use your judgement)


• cornmeal


• 3 tablespoons olive oil


• Optional: a few cloves of garlic, minced

Note the flour is in weight, not measurements. It's a weird baking thing, and involves me going to the bake shop and buying several bags of carefully measured one-pounds of flour. Hard bread flour, too. For Guelphers/ites, the Flour Barrel on Wyndham downtown is great.

As follows:

Whisk the flour, yeast, and salt together in a big bowl. Mentally prepare yourself.

Slowly (and i mean slow) drizzle in your water, integrating it with a fork into the mix.

Flour your hands, workspace, and cat. Drop the doughey mess onto the workspace, and knead it (fold and squish, rotate, fold and squish, rotate) for about five minutes.

(at this point, you can fold in the minced garlic. it is delicious)

Clean the bowl, put it in the bowl, cover with a clean kitchen towel, and put in your oven with the light on for an hour to rise. Put a little sticky note on the oven so someone doesn't inadvertently turn it on.

When risen (about double the size), oil up a 11 by 13 pan, and scatter some cornmeal. This will give it a nice crunch. Drop the dough in, watch it sink down, spread it out to fit as best as you can, and put little indents in with chopsticks. Not too deep, but a little bit. Let it rise again for about half an hour with the towel again. I put mine under a radiator this time. Works like a charm.

About now, you want to preheat your oven to 425. This sounds a bit early, but gets your oven (and apartment) nice and hot, but also consistently hot. Oven thermometers are... not your friend.

After rising, ever-so-gently brush it with olive oil. There are lots of air bubbles, and you don't want to disrupt them. Scatter some coarse salt (kosher or sea) over the top, and put in the oven for 25 minutes to an hour.

Take it out, and witness the glory:

oh wait, that was the 'past failure'. those things were basically rocks. try this:

Eat it hot, fresh, with lots of butter. it is all the ohnoms.

Thanks to paupered chef for saving me from bread-faildom.

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.