Archive for June, 2011
Why is it that we are expected to paint our own houses, build our own decks, do our own taxes and yet people are floored when I actually make something like burger buns from scratch? They don’t call for blueprints and hardware and lumber from Home Depot – only flour, water, eggs and yeast. Easy. I can’t build a deck, but I can make a bun.
And isn’t that the true meaning of convenience? Not the availability of Wonder Bread buns at 7-11 24 hours a day, but the ability to make your own, from scratch, in about the same amount of time it takes to get in the car and drive to the store. (Minus rising time, of course, but you’re not actually doing anything at that point anyway, so it really shouldn’t count.)
If you have burgers on the agenda over the next couple months, and I know you do, try mixing up a batch of these instead of those crusty generic Kaiser buns that make far too much of a mess anyway. Making them is fun. It’s not difficult. And your burgers will be the best dressed ones at the party. (Even when it’s not a party.)
In other news: the bean book finally squeezed through its final round of edits! Sue and I have spent approximately a thousand hours over the past 48 on speaker phone marking up the manuscript with red pen and sticky notes. It’s sealed up in a box and leaning on the front door, even if the (presumably overworked) FedEx guy never showed to pick it up today. Maybe tomorrow.
Brioche Burger or Slider Buns
1 cup warm water
1/4 cup milk
2 Tbsp. sugar
2 tsp. active dry yeast
1 large egg
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
3 Tbsp. butter
additional egg, for brushing, and/or sesame seeds (optional)
In a small bowl or measuring cup, stir together the water, milk, sugar and yeast. Let it stand for about 5 minutes, until it’s foamy. (If it doesn’t foam, the yeast is kaput – get some fresh yeast and try again!) Crack the egg into it and beat it a little with a fork to break it up.
Meanwhile stir together the flour and salt; add the butter and blend it in with a pastry blender, whisk or your fingers, rubbing it until it’s crumbly, as if you were making pastry. Add the yeast mixture and stir until you have a soft dough; beat it with a dough hook in your stand mixer or knead it on a lightly floured countertop until it’s nice and smooth; 5-10 minutes. It will be stickier than regular dough; resist the urge to add too much flour. Leave it tacky.
Place the ball of dough back into the bowl, cover it with a tea towel and let it sit for an hour or so, until doubled.
Divide the dough into 8-10 pieces (or 20 if you want wee slider buns), shape them into balls, place them a couple inches apart on a baking sheet that has been sprayed with nonstick spray or lined with parchment or a silicone mat, cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rise for another hour.
Preheat the oven to 400ºF. Brush the buns with a little beaten egg if you like, and sprinkle them with sesame seeds. Bake for 10-15 minutes (a bit longer if you made larger buns) until golden.
June 23 2011 | bread | 18 Comments »
Right. Like I said, every time I bow out and plea too busy to post, I wind up posting more. Go figure.
This bacon jam. I did it for Swerve last week, and then served it to Jim this morning on a grilled burger. (I made the burgers out of half ground sirloin, half Spolumbo’s chorizo sausage, squeezed out of its casing. Shaped the pattie around a thick square slice of old cheddar. Then melted another square of Gouda on top on the barbecue for good measure.
To make the bacon jam, you chop and cook bacon, onions and garlic down with brown sugar and coffee and maple syrup until it turns into jam. Really. You should make this.
Bacon Jam
1 lb good-quality bacon
1 small onion, chopped
4-5 garlic cloves, chopped
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup brewed coffee (hot or cold)
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar (optional)
1 Tbsp. grainy mustard (optional)
Roughly chop the bacon and cook it in a heavy pot; transfer to a bowl using a slotted spoon, draining off most of the drippings. Saute the onion and garlic cloves in the rest for 5 minutes, until soft and starting to turn golden. Return the bacon to the pan, add the brown sugar, coffee, maple syrup, vinegar and mustard and cook over medium heat for half an hour, or until deep golden and thickened to the consistency of jam. If you like, cool and pulse in the food processor for a finer texture. Serve warm or cold.
June 21 2011 | pork and preserves | 49 Comments »
Allison took pity on my cranky, overtired self and made a home delivery of finger cakes made with puff pastry, fig jam and bitter orange. They were still warm. Having made eccles cakes for fathers’ day she had leftover puff pastry, and decided to roll it and spread it with fig jam, then bitter orange peel, and fold it over thus. Brilliant, no? It goes to show there is a whole world of eccles cake possibilities out there, and you can cut them into any shape you want. I may or may not have shared.
She even took a picture as she made them and emailed it to me. Aw.
A warning: I may be brief and perhaps uninspired when it comes to recipes this week. (In fact, I may have been sparse the past two weeks already. Sorry ’bout that.) My lack of time management skills means I a) never get things done while I’m away, and 2) seriously underestimated how much cooking (and prepping and cleaning and serving) for 30 space/horror celebs would require (even with Wade‘s generous help, on fathers’ day even), and although it was great fun, it sucked up my entire weekend. Which I kind of needed to finish the work I didn’t get done while we were away. And so I’m scrambling – I’m on BT every morning this week (searching for Calgary’s best pizza! a tough job, but somebody’s gotta), and the final (FINAL!) edits of Spilling the Beans are due, plus the index. I have CBC two mornings and a dinner tomorrow night and a class on Thursday night, and a post a day to write for Babble, and stories due for Swerve and Parents Canada and Apple, and about a half dozen food photos, and I was called in to cover CBC traffic this afternoon, so chances are good it may happen again. And that’s just this week, and I’m not keeping up. Quelle surprise.
Of course every time I bow out and say I need to disappear for a bit, I don’t. So we’ll see. Also, I have Disneyland to tell you about, and Elvira. We hung out and talked about food yesterday! Really. She wants me to send her the recipe for Elna Edgar’s marinated asparagus. And she told me about a roasted cauliflower pasta she makes, with olive oil and garlic and anchovies and breadcrumbs. Which of course I have to make, not only because it sounds fab but because Elvira shared it with me. (!!!)
June 20 2011 | leftovers | 4 Comments »
Life is weird, isn’t it? Today I fed William Shatner, Max Headroom (aka Matt Frewer), and Tia Carrere, all at the same time. They sat around a table in the gold room at the Calgary Comic Expo and chatted (about the Vancouver hockey riots, mostly) like something out of a bizarre dream. I fully kept expecting to look down and be wearing no pants.
Later, Jonathan Frakes, Felicia Day (who was totally lovely, and raving about her morning visit to Jelly Modern!), Adrienne Barbeau, Doug Bradley and Elvira – I can’t list them all, but there were about thirty in total comic/space/horror celebs and agents, mostly from LA.
Tia had requested split pea soup. I wasn’t fully confident of my split pea soup-making abilities, but Wade, who swept in and was my cooking-for-the-stars wingman, picked up a couple of ham hocks while we were out of town, which made it easy. I half improved, half followed a recipe from Bon Appétit, and it worked. Everyone liked it. Also, they were just happy to not be stuck in a green room with hot dogs and Doritos.
Especially when they saw the white cheddar biscuits to go with.
Sadly, no cameras in the room meant I couldn’t properly document this crazy dream.
I’m still prepping for tomorrow – leg of lamb and naan and falafel, quinoa spinach salad, marinated asparagus, and more roasted plum cheesecakes in jars. (Small – 125 mL – lidded jars make them good to go, when you need a portable snack while signing autographs.) The dregs of pea soup made an effortless, if late-night, dinner.
Split Pea Soup
from Bon Appétit, May 1996
a drizzle of oil or dab of butter (or both – the original just called for butter)
1 large onion, chopped
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped carrots
1 1/2 lbs smoked pork hocks
2 tsp dried leaf marjoram (optional)
1 1/2 cups dry green split peas
8 cups water
In a large pot, heat the oil and/or butter over medium-high heat. Add the onion, celery and carrots and sauté until soft, about 8 minutes. Add pork and marjoram; cook 1 minute. Add peas and water and bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, partially cover the pot and simmer soup for an hour or so, until the vegetables are very tender.
Transfer hocks to bowl. Puree about half the soup in a blender (or using a hand-held immersion blender) and return it to the pot with the un-pureed soup. Cut the meat off the bones, discarding the thick layer of fat; dice the pork and return it to the pot. Season with salt and pepper and heat through.
Makes lots.
June 18 2011 | freezable and soup | 10 Comments »
We’re home from Disneyland. Arrived late last night, threw a load of laundry in but are still unpacked. Didn’t make it through all my thoughts and photos to post them here (yet), but will soon. I foresee the boys going into almost immediate Disneyland withdrawl.
Looking in the fridge, I found these strawberry-rhubarb cheesecakes in jars, which I made the morning we left, and forgot to put in my sister’s fridge for them to eat while we were gone. Pondering cracking into one for breakfast.
And then I start cooking for Shatner! (And Elvira! Linda Blair! Tia Carrere!) It’s the Comic Expo this weekend, and they all gotta eat.
Maybe I’ll make strawberry-rhubarb cheesecakes in jars! Desserts in jars are a great way to serve a crowd – you can screw on the lids and keep them in the fridge until you’re ready for them, then stack them on a table with a glass full of spoons for people to serve themselves. Easy. Hip. It’s easy to wing it – layer graham crumbs, cream cheese beaten with sugar and cream, and preserves or compote or any kind of fruit you like. (If you need more direction, I posted a formula (and more photos) over at the Family Kitchen.)
June 17 2011 | Family Kitchen | 8 Comments »
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