Waffle Recipe

Felicia had asked about the recipe I used for the ham and cheese waffle experiment. I slightly modify the "basic" recipe from the Joy of Cooking as follows:

1 3/4 cups flour
1 TB baking powder
spoonful sugar
pinch salt
4 beaten eggs
1/2 stick melted butter
1 1/2 cups milk

Mix all the dry ingredients together, then all the wet ingredients and then the two groups together. Add a couple handfuls on sliced green onion. If trying the ham and cheese combo, make sure the cheese is between slices of ham, so it doesn't melt into the batter and create strangeness. Also, the batter can be spread very thinly upon the iron and atop the ham- the super eggy recipe will fluff up to fill any holes or patches. Waffle iron should puff open a bit while cooking; don't worry about it and don't bother pressing it shut. It's all good.

Other mods: use 3 eggs and more butter for a crispier, more traditional waffle.
And using soy milk instead of regular milk definitely weighs down the recipe, creating slightly tougher, duller waffles. :(

Where kids come, to play along…

Most of us have seen the famous foul-mouthed TV chef, Gordon Ramsay on one of his many shows.  I was watching his British show: “The F Word”, and in the first episode he made an herb encrusted rack of lamb.  I thought it looked really good, and easy enough, so I thought I would give it a go.

I will not go through, step by step how to make it, the recipe can be viewed here:
 http://www.bbcamerica.com/content/159/f-word-s1-recipe1.jsp
and here is the video clip from the show:

A warning, the recipe above is in the metric system.  I had to look how hot to set my oven to make it 200 degrees Celsius. 

And here is my attempt! 

Started out with my herbs, cilantro (the recipe I linked to called it “Coriander”…Crazy Brits), parsley, rosemary, thyme, and parmesan.  And I blended it all up with some bread crumbs.

 

I scored the fat then seared them in a very hot pan before transferring them to the oven.  They took a lot longer to cook in the oven than the recipe indicated. 

After brushing them with mustard I packed on the topping.  Then I put it back in the oven to crisp up.

I sliced it between the bones and served it over garlic mashed potatoes, and some asparagus. 

It tasted great!  by some miracle, it was perfectly medium rare, and was so tender.  Each bite tasted lightly of mustard, and the crust was very delicious.  I have never cooked lamb before, and my first try was a roaring success!

That’s right, she is just as tasty as she looks.

Diary of Sundays: Waffle-Crazed Carnivore

Nov 1st: I continue my waffle exploration with a corn meal based waffle, topped with sausage crumbles and a sharp white chedder. The sausage goes great with the rustic hearty waffle, but I feel the cheese makes the whole dish a little too much. I think it needs a nice lite sauce or gravy to mellow everything out. Unfortunately, my gravy skillz are non-existent, and the meal ends w/me feeling no closer to my waffle magnum opus.

Definitely studly, but not quite my vision.

Nov 8th: James to tackle steak and eggs again, and decides to attempt homemade hollandaise sauce as well. I try to talk him out of it; I say things like, "gravy difficulties don't even come close to this potential disaster!" He ignores me and concocts a delicious light hollandaise. I dump copious amounts onto my still mooing steak lovingly wrapped in bacon and think fondly of animals. A good day.

A bit of the ultra violence in a soft lemon cream sauce.
Mwa ha ha- feast your eyes upon this horror!

Nov 15th: No words to describe my delight! The waffle procedure went swimmingly well, and now I have little left to live for. Went back to my basic waffle recipe but added an extra egg (4 in total.) Added thinly sliced ham, surrounding slender slices of swiss cheese, INSIDE the waffle. Careful pouring, ham/cheese placement, more careful pouring... These waffles puffed up, full and light and beautiful and meat-filled! I have created a monster! First test run went so well, I began to add sliced green onion. Savory combination went even better! Then I tried to add double the amount of ham/cheese, but discovered my waffle machine does have its limits. I believe the next step will be acquiring a rotating waffle iron to better suit my meat-stuffing tendencies.

It's alive!

Handy and delightful even when chilled.

Prep work and a straining waffle iron. Seriously, where the hell did I get this little thing?

Asian Pear Salad with Pecans

A great autumn salad with contrasting textures and tastes. This is the first time I have ever tried Champagne vinegar. It has a light taste and comes all the way from France! Otherwise we'd have to call it Sparkling White Wine vinegar.

Dressing:

1/4 cup Champagne vinegar

1 tsp Dijon mustard (yet another ingredient from France!)

1 TB maple syrup (I use real stuff I bought in Vermont!)

1 tsp salt (I use iodized, but you don't have to if you think it's a conspiracy!)

1/2 cup light oil (I mix olive and non-genetically altered canola!)

Whisk together all the ingredients except the oil. Gradually add the oil in a steady stream as you wield a brisk whisk. (If you add the oil slowly while whisking, it emulsifies better.)

Salad:

Use a couple heads of frisée (that really lacy stuff) except I couldn't find any this week (now that IS a conspiracy) so I used finely chopped Napa cabbage this time

1 or 2 Asian pears (or as I keep hearing, "pear apples") thinly sliced

About 1 cup toasted pecans

3/4 cup crumbled gorgonzola or feta cheese

Toss the salad well with the dressing. It's really good!

Yes please....

One of the best things about this time of year...The mandarin oranges get cheap. I can, have, and plan on making myself sick on these. They are just too good to stop eating.

I walked and I walked and I walked and I walked
I stopped for to rest my feet
I sat down on an old oak tree and there went fast asleep
I dream I'm sitting in a swell hotel, hungry as a bear
My stomach sent a telegram to my throat:
There's a wreck on the road somewhere.
I heard the voice of a porkchop say: Come on to me and rest
Well you talk about your stewing beef: I ain't know what the best
You talk about your chicken, ham and eggs, and turkey stuffed and dressed
But I heard the voice of a pork chop say come on to me and rest

"I heard the voice of a Porkchop"
--Taken from the album "Snockgrass", sung by Michael Hurley

Enchiladas para cena

SO hungry, so I made enchiladas for everyone. When you make enchiladas you gotta make a ton, or it's just not worth it.

my pictures turned out kinda sad and dull. But the food was amazing. Chicken, beef, and a little round dish just for Rachel with cheese enchiladas.

These Little Piggies Went to Market...

Rachel and I go to the Farmer's Market about once a week around here. They have the best fruit and veggies in the city... and we usually pick up some homemade bread, or honey, or something also. So! Today, we documented our trip.



Rachel's first persimmon! Ever...

Local oysters, yummy!


Lunch. Whiskey-fennel sausage and chicken-turkey-curry.


Giant Buddha's-Palm Citron.


A day at the market! Show us markets around where you live.

Paris and Felicia’s little tortilla pockets

When Felicia was visiting me, we made chiles rellenos with homemade tortillas for dinner one night. The next day we found that we had leftover everything. So for breakfast we invented these little pockets. We were quite proud of ourselves, only to find out there is a real thing very much like these. Oh well.

We started with:
Grilled Poblano Peppers
Cheese (In this photo I used Mexican cheese)
Tortilla dough (see my last post)
Some Chorizo (already cooked)
and Cilantro (AKA Coriander).

I chopped the cilantro and cut the pepper into strips (peel off the skin first). Then we flattened out some tortillas, just like normal (see making corn tortillas). The I would takes some chorizo, a slice of the pepper, a sprig of cilantro, and some cheese and place it in the middle and seal it up like a ravioli or Chinese dumpling.

I try to get it as flat as possible, so that it can cook evenly on the comal. You cook it just as you would a tortilla, but you might need to press down on the edges to make sure they cook, as it is not completely flat.

They are done when the outside looks just like a cooked tortilla. Later, at the suggestion of my friend Dominick, I tried frying them, which turned out really well!

I like to make a few of both kinds, and sit down to watch a movie with these as snacks.

When you bite into one and get melted cheese, chorizo, poblano and fresh cilantro flavors, it makes you so happy. A caveat though, the raw forms so not store in the refrigerator well. I would cook it slightly. then store it.

Making your own corn tortillas!

Making your own corn tortillas is not that hard, and tastes far better than the store bought ones.

You will need:
Masa Harina (look in the Mexican section of your grocery store)
Salt
And one of these things (a tortilla press):
Mix together some masa and water with a little bit of salt. Use your hands. If it sticks to your hands it is too wet. Keep adding small amounts of flour until the mixture can form a ball and does not stick to your hands. Kind of like play-dough.

Open up the press and place an opened plastic bag over it. Place a small ball of dough on the side with the handle.
Close up with the ball of dough between the plastic and press down.
Try to get it flattened evenly, I sometimes rotate it and re-press to get it uniform. Open it up and peel it from the plastic. Now place it on your comal or griddle, set to a medium heat.

Let it cook and flip it when I allows itself to be flipped. If you have to force it off the cooking surface, it still needs to be cooked on that side. If, by the time you can flip it, it is burnt, your stove is too hot. Repeat for the other side until it looks done! Make a bunch and wrap in cloth to keep them warm and soft!

I topped mine with some simmered pork, salsa and slices of avocado. They tasted awesome.

Special thanks to Natalie, who was my hand model in these photos.

I'm pretty sure most of us on here have seen Anthony Bourdain's television show, No Reservations. And if you haven't, you should check it out or download some episodes. Very entertaining and lots of interesting locales and food. But I also just picked up his book, Kitchen Confidential, a memoir/chef's letter to the public. Viewing the workings of restaurants from the back of the house. Which is easy for me to relate to, as mostly he bitches about horrible customers and people who should never own a restaurant. Sounds like my life. But the real center to the book is his growth as a chef, his realization that he really didn't know that much about food when he was just starting out. At times, the book can be very sweet and tragic. A great companion to No Reservations.

Food That You Step On

Potatoes are a staple in Peruvian and Bolivian food, and one dish, chuño, is particularly interesting. I watched a fascinating episode of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, where, in Bolivia, he visited a farm where they prepared this potato.

The process is strange- potatoes are left in cold mountain air, to freeze at night, thaw in daylight sun, freeze again, and so on. The end result is a naturally freeze dried potato, and can be white or black in appearance. Within the freezing process, the potatoes are trampled by bare feet, I believe in order to remove the skins to further aid the freezing process. Andrew Zimmern even had the opportunity to try his hand (or foot, haha) at trampling the potatoes, but was soon told he was smashing them too harshly as he did it with too little love, and was too overweight. What a bummer, eh?

The whole process dates back to before the Inca Empire, and, not surprisingly, the potatoes can then last for years. Now, you can even get chuñu in a can, although I have no idea if you could find it here in America.

Anyway, I was watching this show with my friend Erika, who is from Bolivia, when she then told me she actually had some chuño from when her father last visited. I was totally fascinated by the whole thing, and nibbled off some of the potatoes she had. They were extremely light, hard as clay rocks, and tasted like potato flour. Travis, her husband, claimed they (chuño) made one nasty dish, which of course made me desperate to try them in a prepared dish.


Well, tonight I got home and Erika had dropped some off some prepared chuño for me! Just what I'd been craving. :)

She had mentioned she usually makes a soup, but this was a sort of stir fried preparation, dark and crumbly, with a very inviting aroma. She had included a mild sort of pico, which I just spooned on top and dug into. The consistency and texture reminded me of a ground beef, mild and meaty, with a slight potato under taste. I'll have to ask her if she cooked it in an animal fat of some sort; there also appeared to be perhaps flecks of scrambled egg thrown in as well. The whole thing was delicious. I ate it so quickly that I couldn't take a pic, and James had only one bite, but now I am dying to have the chuño soup.

I have no idea why Travis doesn't care for the dish. It wasn't tripe-with-ginger and green-onion amazing (I'll eat three plates of that in one dim sum sitting, easy), but it was tasty, comforting and intriguing. I can imagine it makes a great breakfast base, and I just may have to go throw some potatoes out my back door and hope it freezes tonight.

Oh yeah...

Massive tuna sandwich for lunch. I was full for three days...

Put 'em on the glass

If I could, I would snort lines of peeps off a mirror.

Cream of Potato soup.

I love a good creamy potato soup. Papa used to take us to Elmer’s every Wednesday night, and the soup of the day for Wednesday would be cream of potato. But since we would go at the end of the day, it would have been cooking all day, and when I got my bowl, it was closer to delicious mashed potatoes than a soup. I loved it.

Anyway, I had some potatoes at home that were going to go bad soon, so I decided to make a hearty cream of potato soup with leeks. Sort of to usher in the cold weather.

First thing I did was peel some potatoes and cover them with water to cook them. I had some chicken broth in my freezer that I used to boil them, but water itself would be fine I am sure. I added some salt and a bay leaf to these boiling potatoes.

Then I washed and chopped the white part of 3 leeks, an onion, and some garlic and placed it in a different pot with some butter.

I cooked this in some butter on a decent heat until everything softened and looked tasty. By this time my potatoes were pretty much cooked as I had sliced them very thin. I added the potatoes and the liquid I cooked them in to the cooked leek/onion/garlic mixture.

I added cream, some dill (I have been trying to find out when to use this herb), salt and pepper, and a small amount of thyme. I let it simmer until it thickened up slightly.

I put it a bowl , topped it with chopped chives, Italian parsley, and some bacon that I fried up. Man it was good. Probably not so healthy, but worth every bite.

If I had to change something, maybe I would have left the skins on the potatoes, just to create an interesting texture contrast. But it was still great.

Flour Tortillas and Plastic Plates

I found this flour tortilla recipe awhile ago and the last couple of times I made it I really liked it. The tortillas always end up pretty thick and chewy. Plus, they are super simple and easy to make. So, without further ado, here it is.

Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 tsp vegetable oil
3/4 cup water or milk

Or, you can see the picture below if you are illiterate.

*not pictured, water and/or milk. Good luck figuring that out to those unable to read.

Now for the directions:

1. Mix ingredients together in bowl! I use my hands, less dishes that way. It should be somewhat sticky. Kneed the dough until the stickiness goes away. About 2 minutes.

2. Cover and let the dough sit for 15 min. Then divide up the dough into as many balls as you like depending on what size you want your tortillas. Then cover and let them sit for 20 min. (I'm not sure why it needs to sit since it doesn't rise, but it really does make it better)

3. 4. Roll out the dough pretty much as thin as you can get it. When you roll it out it's very stretchy and resilient so you don't have to be very gentle. They fluff up ablot when they cook too so no matter what you do they will end up being thick and chewy.

5. 6. Finally, set it in a pan on lowish heat with no oil or anything. Once you see it start to bubble you can flip it. Set the hot tortillas in a folded towel or whatever you like.

* Instruction pictures are numbered in wingdings font.

And finally, you can eat them! they stay pretty good wrapped up in the fridge too. Just warm them up again.

Here is the final project, pictured with paris's salsa! Notice that the tortilla is partially eaten because I couldn't wait. Oh yeeeaaassss.

* plate is a plastic miffy childrens plate with seperate sections to keep your food from mixing together. Like this one! Moni and Rachel gave it to me for christmas since I like using baby utensils.