I want to advise you not to try this at home, but really you should. Especially if you happen to be a marathon runner in need of a carb load or someone who is trying to put on weight. (ie: not me.)
For the first week of July, I can’t help but be swept up by the Stampede, and inevitably a pot of canola oil shows up on my stovetop with which to fry corn dogs and mini donuts, which goes along way toward winning friends and influencing people. This year I was challenged to make deep-fried mac & cheese; a midway staple that popped up a few years ago, but the novelty has worn off in the presence of newer deep-fried products with higher gross-out factors, like deep fried Coke, Oreos, and this year – jellybeans. (For those of you who are curious how one might deep-fry Coke, they just make a sort of beer batter with Coke and flour, and dribble it into hot oil. The result is a little like those crispy bits you get in the bottom of your fish & chips box, only sweeter. I can’t imagine the markup on this particular product.)
I am more old school – mini donuts (but only from the vendors with the yellow and orange sign – preferably the one closest to Weadickville) maybe a Fiddlestick (those slabs of vanilla ice cream dipped in chocolate and doused in chopped nuts), and Mike and I always share a corn dog, which is enough for me for the year. When in Rome, you know.
As it turns out, deep-fried mac & cheese is a lot like far more refined arancini, which is not at all balked at, and in fact those with appreciative palates have been known to pay upwards of $8 at certain Italian groceries about town for one. And although it might be a little more lowbrow, it’s simple to make. Just like risotto, mac & cheese solidifies overnight in the fridge, so that you can cut it into neat cubes which are easily rolled in shallow bowls of flour, beaten egg and Panko (in that order), and fried in hot oil. They are crispy on the outside, soft and cheesy within. (They reminded me of those old-fashioned marshmallows dipped in coconut.) I made some for CBC this morning, and fortunately my sister and her kids popped in around dinnertime and kindly allowed me to pawn off the rest. Otherwise I’m sure it would have whined at me from the fridge until I put it out of its misery.
Deep-fried Mac & Cheese
1 batch macaroni and cheese, from a recipe or a box of that white cheddar stuff
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 large eggs
2 cups Panko (Japanese breadcrumbs) or breadcrumbs
canola oil, for frying
Prepare the macaroni and cheese and pour it into a pan – a 9″x5″ loaf pan works well, or a 9″x9″ square pan. Cover and refrigerate overnight, or until solid.
When ready to fry them, put the flour, eggs and Panko in three shallow dishes; beat the eggs a little with a fork. Heat the oil in a deep pot until a bit of bread sizzles when put in, but the oil is not smoking. Cut the macaroni and cheese into blocks about 1″ x 1 1/2″, roll each in flour to coat, then dip in the egg, and coat in breadcrumbs. Fry in the hot oil until crispy and golden. Transfer to paper towels to drain. Serve warm.
Makes about 2 dozen squares.
One Year Ago: White Beans with Tomatoes, Spinach and Bacon
July 07 2009 | appetizers and pasta and snacks | 33 Comments »
Successful Stampede party last night, which the dishwasher is still working on the last remains of. I’m sure the house won’t be back in order yet (which suggests it ever was) by the time we leave for Tofino next weekend, but we may make enough from bottle returns to pay for our trip. Luckily, last week I was the big winner of the CBC beer pool – every summer, everyone who wants to play brings in a 6-pack of interesting beer. I went home with 23 of them. It was a Stampede miracle.
We paid homage to the midway with homemade corn dogs, mini donuts and churros, and added something new to the menu: taco in a bag. This was last year’s midway newbie – a bag of zesty cheese Doritos, cut open in the front as if it were one of those mini boxes of cereal you used to take camping when you were a kid, and topped with a spoonful of seasoned ground beef (I sautéed mine with onions, garlic, chili powder and cumin), some neon cheese sauce (Mike talked me into letting him buy a 1 kg jar of Whiz, which we microwaved, and I must admit it worked perfectly – taco in a bag doesn’t have the same gross-out factor made with homemade cheese sauce started with a roux), shredded lettuce, salsa and sour cream. You then eat it however you can manage – with a fork, your fingers; towards the end of the night I saw someone close up the bag, mash it up with his hands and then upend the contents into his mouth.
We plowed through 48 tacos in a bag (although I suspect some of the kids were just eating the chips), somewhere in the vicinity of 70 corn dogs (they were gone before 8pm) and double batches of churros and mini donuts, doused in buckets of cinnamon sugar. And as I was calculating just how many people might show up (and remembering how warm mini donuts have in the past been received like a swarm of locusts, I made a quick batch of World Peace Cookies, which I had needed an excuse to make; plus, logs of dark chocolate dough in the fridge ready to pull out, slice and bake and serve warm while people milled about seemed like a really good idea. We went through all three, obviously, except for a small stump of one I found in the fridge this morning, which after coming home from the Stampede I sliced, baked and devoured warm on the couch.
(Dinner itself was roasted chick peas with garlic and chard. I love that stuff. Mike does too – so much so that he suggested we choose a night of the week and actually implement RCPWG&C night, like meatloaf night. Are we getting old?) Here is the original recipe – I have since streamlined it to just roasting a rinsed, drained 19 oz. can of chick peas in my cast iron skillet with lots of olive oil and whole cloves of garlic at 450°F until golden, then tearing up most of a large bunch of chard, ribs removed, and adding it to the pan on the stovetop with salt and pepper. Add a splash of liquid if you like, lid it for about 10 minutes to help it wilt. So much better than the sum of its parts.
Honestly, these very nearly brought tears to my eyes; I highly recommend making them for anyone who needs cheering up or impressing. I don’t know the origins of the recipe’s name, but I was certainly at peace, until there came to be only one left and I got all panicky that they were almost gone and I might not have them again for awhile. So I plotted taking a stash of dough to Tofino, which would be a very bad idea considering my past record of cookie dough consumption during late-night games of Scrabble.
World Peace/Korova Cookies
Not quite as heavy as shortbread, with the texture of a sable and flavour of a brownie (I brought out my Bernard Callebaut cocoa for this one); adapted from Paris Sweets, by Dorie Greenspan, by way of SmittenKitchen
I doubled the recipe because it’s exactly the same amount of work to mix up twice the amount of dough, and why wouldn’t you when it gets shaped into logs and shuffled into the fridge to slice and bake later anyway? You never know when you’re going to need to pull out the troops to help settle the unrest.
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 1/4 cups butter, softened
1 1/3 cups packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. fine salt or fleur de sel
2 tsp. vanilla
1 1/2 cups good-quality chocolate chips or chopped dark chocolate
In a small bowl, combine the flour, cocoa and baking powder; set aside. In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugars for a few minutes, until nice and light. Add the salt and vanilla and beat for 2 minutes more.
Add the flour mixture and stir by hand or beat on low speed just until it starts to come together; add the chocolate and stir or beat just until everything is incorporated.
Turn the dough out onto the counter, gather it into a ball or rough log, and divide it into three pieces. Shape each piece into a log that’s roughly 1 1/2 iinches in diameter. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 3 hours, or freeze for up to 4 months. (You don’t even need to defrost it before baking — just slice frozen logs and bake as you normally would.)
Place a rack in middle of the oven and preheat it to 325°F. Cut the logs into 1/2″ slices with a sharp knife (if they crack, just squeeze them back together) and arrange onto a baking sheet (no need to spray or line it), spacing them about an inch apart.
Bake for 12 minutes – they won’t be firm, and it will be hard to tell if they’re done, because they’re so dark. Don’t sweat it. Let the cookies cool for a few minutes on the sheet, then transfer them to a wire rack. Eat warm, or cool completely.
Bake the cookies one sheet at a time for 12 minutes — they won’t look done, nor will they be firm, but that’s just the way they should be. Transfer the baking sheet to a cooling rack and let the cookies rest until they are only just warm, at which point you can serve them or let them reach room temperature.
Makes lots.
One Year Ago: Bacon & Egg Spinach Salad
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July 05 2009 | cookies & squares | 24 Comments »
Wow, 2 days and it seems like I haven’t been here for weeks. HOW did it get to be July? I wouldn’t believe it if the calendar didn’t say it was so.
To give a quick rundown of those 48 undocumented hours: I spent most of July 1st shopping and cooking for a barbecue for 60 that happened last night on a beautiful farm out toward Airdrie, with about a 6 hour chunk of the afternoon spent a) at my sister’s new house eating Dilly Bars and b) a backyard Canada Day party potluck, to which I brought maple cupcakes and forgot my camera. W was in little boy heaven; 19 kids in the rec room with air hockey, video games and rock band wii. Mike was in big boy heaven across in the field playing soccer for 3 hours. I ditched them at about 7 to go home and get some work done, and had to go back in my PJs to drag them out at close to 10.
Yesterday I was up at 5:30 to head to the CBC pancake breakfast, at which I took a dunk in the dunk tank (why do they not make dunk hot tubs?) in my jeans skirt, which I’m pretty sure went up over my head as I went in, then spent the rest of the day prepping for that dinner on the farm, with two 3 year olds and a 4 year old in the house (which worked out quite nicely, actually; there were miraculously fewer skirmishes than there would have been demands on me to entertain/remove forks from electrical sockets had W been on his own). I headed out (with, as it turns out, far too much food, and did I mention I set off their smoke alarm?) at around 4 and got home at close to midnight, in a hailstorm, having forgotten my wallet, almost run out of gas and driven to Airdrie to get $6.50 worth’ using the change I scrounged up from various nooks and crannies in the car.
So tonight I was absolutely not up for cooking. At all. (Besides, I was making 100 pavlovas for a demo at the Stampede on Sunday and food for our Stampede party tomorrow. So technically I was cooking anyway, just nothing edible in the immediate future.) We picked up some chicken Vietnamese subs downtown at Thi Thi (really, truly the best in town) and ate the last of a lemon buttermilk pudding cake I made for an article on desserts affected by gravity. It’s one of those cakes that separates into an airy cake and zingy sauce; it’s a nice, light version – some tend to be really heavy, with twice as much sugar. This makes a nice summer dessert; it can be made ahead and chilled, then served in a bowl with fresh berries.
Lemon Buttermilk Pudding Cake
Lemon pudding cake and frozen pineapple mousse were my Grandma’s staple desserts; this version uses buttermilk and has a more souffle-like texture than many versions that are made with boiling water poured overtop. Adapted from Bon Appétit, January 2005.
1 1/2 cup buttermilk
1 cup sugar, divided
4 large eggs, separated
1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup butter, melted, or canola oil
pinch salt
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
In a large bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, 1/2 cup of the sugar, the egg yolks, lemon juice, flour and butter until smooth. In a clean glass or stainless steel bowl, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form; continue beating, gradually adding the remaining 1/2 cup sugar, until the mixture is thick and glossy and holds stiff peaks. Gently fold the whites into the buttermilk mixture and scrape into an 8”x8” or 9”x9” pan that has been sprayed with nonstick spray.
Set the pan into a larger pan – 9”x13” works well – and pour enough hot water into the larger pan to come halfway up the sides of the inner pan. Bake for about 45 minutes, until the cake is puffed and golden, and the top is springy to the touch.
Remove the cake from the water bath and cool for at least half an hour if you want to serve it warm, or cool it completely and then chill in the refrigerator before serving in shallow bowls, with a spoon. Serves 9.
As I write this I can hear Bon Jovi emanating from the Stampede grounds (You Give Love a Bad Name – every word) – ooh, and now fireworks. We live close enough to see them from the roof if you climb out W’s bedroom window (he is going to have an easy time of sneaking out in a decade or so) and to walk down to go on rides and get mini donuts, or watch the chucks from the top of Scotsmans hill. All of which is a lot of fun, but to be perfectly honest I’m glad we’re heading to Tofino next weekend. (And yes, bringing my laptop! And possibly my HD camera to do some GoodBite stuff.)
One Year Ago: Broccoli-Cheese Soup and Upside-down Caramelized Onion Pan Bread
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July 03 2009 | cake | 69 Comments »
