Today was not a good day for Spanx. It wasn’t the best day for a boiled dinner either, and I know, it could not sound less appetizing. Technically it wasn’t boiled, but slow-cooked. Either way an unusual choice - I’ve never eaten corned beef brisket before, let alone cooked one.
But. Every time I haul out my slow cooker (it’s not that big a deal, really) I get all giddy over it and go on a slow cooker kick for awhile before putting it away again. After the pulled pork fiasco I wanted to give it another go, so stopped at the grocery store on the way home and perused the meat section.
I’m not sure if you’ve seen those sealed plastic packages containing corned beef brisket in brine - they have them at Safeway, and every single time I see them I pause and ponder it, partly because they are foreign to me, and partly because Mike always said that corned beef brisket was the only thing his dad made for dinner growing up that was edible. His dad was famous for getting deals on cheap cuts of meat (shoes, really) and ancient chickens and boiling them in beer until they turned into some sort of unidentifiable jerky. Served with boiled-to-death potatoes and unpeeled carrots. And maybe some broccoli so mushy you could spread it on toast.
I figured a brisket, corned or not, was an ideal candidate for the slow cooker and so finally grabbed one, if only to shut up the little voice in my head that went hmm every time I saw them. For the past 20 years. (Mike and I started dating when I was 16. Or 17? Yes 17 - soon after the 1988 Winter Olympics. After having a crush on each other for a year and having teenage angst about it to everybody, our friends locked us in the basement at a party until we made out. Even then it took a good 4 hours to get the nerve up. So there you go - you know how old I am.) That adds up to a lot of time spent going hmm.
It turned out to be brilliant for the slow cooker - all I did was upend the package into the pot, cover it with water, and set it for 6 hours. (I wonder if Stephanie has tried this?) I was taking over traffic duties on CBC this afternoon and broadcasting live from Globalfest, so knew I wouldn’t arrive home until close to 7. After 6, Mike pulled the brisket out of its broth and set it aside, added some baby potatoes, chunked carrots and turnips (it seemed like a good fit) and wedges of cabbage to the broth - this is called New England Boiled Dinner - and it’s one of the recipes I pulled out of Cooking Light years ago and stuck in my to-make recipe binder. (Their photo looks far better than mine though.) So crank the slow cooker up to high and cook the veg until they are tender - or pour the broth into a pot and do the same thing - and you have these fantastically salty, seasoned veg to go with the meat.
The brisket did shred very satisfactorily with a fork - I love that. But overall I was less thrilled with it than Mike was. It was OK, but I wouldn’t likely make it again. Except the corned beef brisket part, which was damn tasty. It would make a fantastic Rueben, with saurkraut and Swiss cheese.
And I just realized that last night’s and tonight’s dinners rhyme - back bacon biscuit and corned beef brisket. Maybe Mike will write a song about it.
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August 16 2008 | beef and one dish and slow cooker | 4 Comments »
As much as I love writing this blog, it sometimes feels as if I have homework every night for a year. Tonight, the dog actually ate my homework.
Back bacon on a peach biscuit seems as unlikely a dinner as any I can think of, but it was actually quite a tasty handful.
It all came about as a result of my being a bad sister/friend. Yesterday I made plans for a swim/playdate with my sister and K, and got caught up at work for 6 hours instead of the 1 1/2 I had planned on. (I keep asking for time management skills for Christmas, but so far Santa hasn’t delivered.) Before leaving the house I made a batch of biscuits with brown sugar and peaches to bring for our lunch, which instead sat on the kitchen counter all day. Biscuits just don’t keep well, even in the freezer, so I threw them in the freezer and swore it would only be for a day or two - as you know, I hate wasting food, so I tried to think of some use for them besides warming them and slathering them with butter or turning them into peach shortcakes. (I had just finished the Plum Browned Butter Bliss. Speaking of - I made a Peach Browned Butter Bliss to bring to the studio this afternoon, and as you can imagine it was quite well received. If you really want to make an impact, bake it at work. Make sure you toss the peaches with a little cinnamon, and you will distract the entire newsroom with the absolute best kind of baking smell. And get this: a full-sized, deep-dish pie plate fit in the toaster oven. D came over from her desk and stared at it as it baked its Bliss on a filing cabinet, and said to it, “why do I even own an oven?” Which is true, really - if you can bake things like pie in the toaster oven, why heat up an oven-sized one?)
So what could I make for dinner that would incorporate a peach biscuit? Pulled pork! Peaches go with pork. Biscuits go with pork. It made sense considering I was taking over traffic duties on the Homestretch today, which would keep me at work right until 6, and you can do pulled pork in a slow-cooker. I dug miscellaneous bits of pork shoulder and pork tenderloin out of the depths of the freezer, thawed them in a bowl of hot water, browned them in a skillet, then a sliced onion, and deglazed (read: got all the yummy bits off the bottom of the pan) with half a can of root beer. (If you ever have a half a can of flat root beer or Coke, this is a good use for it. Not exactly healthy, but hey, you were drinking pop anyway, weren’t you? Apple juice works too, but isn’t really that much better - it has the same amount of sugar even if they do add vitamin C back into it.) Then I dumped it all back together and set it to cook all afternoon before I left. Browning everything first creates flavour, which makes a difference even when you’re cooking something in the slow cooker.
When I came home I pulled the pork with two forks and popped the frozen biscuits in the toaster oven (the plan was to add some barbecue sauce to the pork - pulled pork is essentially shredded pig candy), and went upstairs to read/reenact Mortimer, Be Quiet! with W; we were halfway through when a large and familiar crash came from downstairs. This is one downfall of having a 6 month old puppy who can stand up and almost rest his paws on your shoulders (I’m 6ft tall if I stand up straight, which isn’t very often) - besides costing a fortune to feed and being starving all the time he can also easily access bowls and skillets that are precariously close to the edge of the counter; he has downed two half pounds of butter in the past week as well. And I suspect the butter presently in the dish has a licked crevasse out of it, not spread-marks from a knife…
You can imagine how this story ends. Plenty of expletives and instead of pulled pork I unceremoniously pulled out a small package of back bacon, frizzled it up in a skillet and we ate it stacked onto plain biscuits, wrapped in a paper towel, on the back porch. W thumbed peas from their pods and intermittently threw them into/at our mouths. Back bacon is another ingredient I rarely have in the house but recently bought because it’s so much leaner than regular bacon (the puddle on the paper towel in the photo up top is juice, not grease): 100 grams of back bacon contains 100 calories, a little less than ham. (As a point of reference, when I had a job at a sandwich shop - no, not a sandwich artist job - each sandwich contained 60 g of meat.)
Hey, if it’s good enough for the midway, it’s good enough for my family.
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August 14 2008 | sandwiches | 7 Comments »
(Frozen Lean Italian from the Superstore.)
If a picture is worth a thousand words, can this speak for itself?
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August 13 2008 | leftovers | 2 Comments »
It’s occurring to me now that what may have planted the seed to make chicken salad sandwiches was A and I joking on the weekend that one of her chickens should be named Salad Sandwich.
There was leftover grilled chicken in the fridge, and so I hacked it up with a green onion and the last of the blueberries and added the final scraping from the jar of Hellman’s Light, and I think that was it. I toyed with the idea of adding some mango and curry powder, but was just craving a plain old chicken salad sandwich. (I’m not sure I would have wanted one as badly had I made the aforementioned connection earlier.)
I’m glad I didn’t mask the raspberry chicken flavour - this is the great thing about leftover chicken that has been marinated or cooked in some sort of sauce - the flavour translates over to the chicken salad. I love chicken salad sandwiches but rarely make them and am always disappointed when I get one out - they are never as chunky as they ought to be. These sandwiches were suitably chunky.
With it, some soup I made with a small acorn squash and the last third of a can of pumpkin puree from my fridge. This is a good basic curried squash soup to which you could add apples or pears, or even apple juice. If I plan for it I use butternut squash, but any kind will do - acorn, hubbard, pumpkin - don’t bother with spaghetti squash, I don’t think.
Curried Roast Squash Soup with Pears
Cooked winter squash of any kind is much easier to peel than raw squash. If you don’t have time to roast, cut it in half, place both halves on a plate or baking dish, and cover them with plastic wrap. Pop them in the microwave for about 10 minutes, which will make it easier to peel once they are cool enough to handle. This soup freezes really well, so double the batch if you want a stash tucked away for the next few months.
1 butternut, acorn or hubbard squash, or small pumpkin
a drizzle of canola or olive oil
1 Tbsp. butter
1 onion, finely chopped
1 tsp. - 1 Tbsp. curry powder or paste, or more or less to taste
1 ripe pear, peeled and chopped
1 Tbsp. grated fresh ginger
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 L chicken or vegetable stock
1 cup milk, evaporated milk or half and half (optional)
Salt and pepper to taste
Preheat the oven to 400°F.
Cut your squash in half lengthwise and scoop out the seeds. Place it cut side down in a roasting pan that has been sprayed with nonstick spray and bake for 40-45 minutes or until very tender. Set aside until it’s cool enough to handle. (You can cook the squash up to 2 days in advance; keep it covered in the fridge until you need it.)
Heat the oil in a large saucepan set over medium heat and sauté the onion until soft. Add the curry powder, pear, ginger and garlic and cook for a few more minutes, until the pear starts to soften. Peel the skin off the cooked squash using a vegetable peeler, paring knife or your fingers, and cut it into rough chunks. Add it to the soup with the chicken stock and bring it to a simmer. Reduce the heat and cook for about 10 minutes.
Purée the soup in a blender, or use a hand-held immersion blender to purée it right in the pot until it’s as chunky or as smooth as you like. Return the soup to the stovetop, add the milk or cream (if using), season with salt and pepper, and stir just until it’s heated through.
Serves 4-6.
W ate oatmeal. He is the only toddler I know who won’t eat anything that resembles baby food - yogurt, applesauce, even juice. Weirdo. The lady who owns the corner store tried to give him a freezie the other day and he swatted it away and ran as if it were poison.
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August 12 2008 | sandwiches and soup | 1 Comment »
Bookmark this page. Seriously, do it now, before you forget.
I wasn’t sure what to call this. Technically it’s more cake than pie, but calling it cake doesn’t do justice to a pieplateload of juicy fruit topped with a sweet, crunchy topping; it’s not a pie either - it has no pastry but is baked in a pie plate and cut into wedges. The fruit-topping ratio is reminiscent of a crumble or a cobbler, but this is easier than any of the above. I could go as far as to call it foolproof.
Generally I don’t make dessert on a regular Monday night, but I had bought red and yellow plums on the weekend with something specific in mind - cobbler? Pie? Upside down cake? It was something, but today I had no idea what it was, and flipping through the rained-on-and-dried-out magazines on my front step gave no clues. Also, I happened to have whipping cream in the fridge, which almost never happens. So I couldn’t really not make something out of the plums.
I picked up one of my favourite cookbooks, Classic Home Desserts by Richard Sax (a cookbook Mike bought me literally decades ago just because he knew I liked cooking), and flipped through to a recipe I was instantly drawn to years ago, probably because the intro begins with: “Stick a bookmark right here, and leave it in.” It’s called Ligita’s Quick Apple Cake (pg. 383), but it doesn’t need apples. Richard describes it as a “custardy batter quickly poured over apples and baked to a crusty gold.” I wouldn’t describe it as custardy, but would zero in on the browned butter - a simple step that intensifies the nutty buttery flavour a thousandfold. (I cut the butter by a third to 1/2 cup, and will likely try to reduce it a bit more next time, although it undoubtedly contributes to its crunchy, buttery bliss. I would have licked out the butter-melting pot if I wasn’t afraid of burning off my tastebuds.)
That’s it: I’ll call it Browned Butter Bliss. Today, Plum Browned Butter Bliss. This is one of those great go-to recipes that you could use with apples, pears, plums, peaches, berries, apricots, cherries… really anything that needs to be turned into something any time of year. I love the combination of sweet crunch on top and juicy sourness underneath, and the look of both yellow and red plums together.
Oh right, dinner. It seems uneventful after the Bliss - a big salad yukaflux with roasted beets, blueberries, peas from the garden and grilled chicken which I painted with some of the raspberry vinaigrette leftover from last weekend before I grilled it. It sounds much fancier than it actually was.
But seriously - Browned Butter Bliss. Once you make it, it will turn into one of those things that you stir together on autopilot whenever you need something fruity and delicious.
Browned Butter Bliss
(by way of Ligita’s Quick Apple Cake in Classic Home Desserts)
8 or so plums, thickly sliced, or apricots, or 3 peaches, or the original calls for 3 tart apples, peeled and thinly sliced
a squeeze of lemon juice, if you’re using apples
3/4 cup + 3 Tbsp. sugar (or to taste, according to the sweetness of the fruit)
1/2 tsp. cinnamon (or to taste)
1/2 cup butter
2 large eggs
1 cup all-purpose flour
Preheat the oven to 350°F and butter a pie plate.
Toss your fruit in a bowl (or the pie plate) with about 2 Tbsp. sugar and the cinnamon; spread into the plate. Melt the butter in a small saucepan and keep cooking it, swirling the pan occasionally, for about 5 minutes or until it turns golden. Pour into a bowl.
Stir the 3/4 cup of sugar into the butter, then the eggs, then the flour. Pour over the fruit and sprinkle with the last tablespoon of sugar.
Bake for 40-45 minutes, until golden and crusty, and the juices ooze from around the edges. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream or thick vanilla yogurt.
Serves 8.
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August 11 2008 | cake and dessert and sweet stuff | 4 Comments »
It was C’s birthday today, and with all the stuff I had to remember to bring along, I forgot my camera on the ledge beside the door. (I did, however, remember to charge the batteries before we left.)
Dinner was spectacular, as it always is at my sister’s house - grilled steak, sausages, potato salad, green salad, corn on the cob, and chocolate cake with ice cream and berries. Luckily though, I can regress to lunch, which is something I’d kind of like to tell you about (and ask your opinion on) anyway.
A (it appears I know too many people whose names begin with A) turned her kids’ playhouse in the back yard into a chicken coop, and yesterday aquired 5 beautiful laying chickens. She did months of research - years, in fact - before going ahead and scratching “have a chicken coop” off her life’s to-do list. The playhouse made a perfect coop, and she has a large, high-fenced, corner lot backyard. Chickens take care of bugs, weeds and much of your kitchen compost, and provide an organic, free-range egg or two per day, per chicken. There is a bylaw in Calgary against owning livestock within city limits, and chickens fall into the livestock category. Before I go into any more detail, how would you feel if one of your neighbours got chickens? Or if it was allowed, as it is in Victoria, Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Chicago (etc.), would you go ahead and get some yourself?
I was over when they arrived, and 3 eggs quickly appeared. Since the kids were out and she was sure they’d want to be around at the first sign of eggs, I brought home the first and cooked them for lunch. I wanted to do a little more than just poached eggs on toast, and have been meaning to try a version of eggs poached or baked in a chunky, tomato-ey ratatouille or Pipérade (a saucy combination of tomatoes and peppers from the Basque regions of France and Spain) since reading about it some 10 years ago. Even my neighbour, who - I’ve just made the connection - is French, poaches his eggs in stewed tomatoes or pasta sauce.
Now, I only call this Pipérade for lack of a better description, and with the addition of chorizo I doubt it would techinically count anyway; really I just sautéed a purple onion, a crumbled chorizo sausage, some red and yellow pepper (I keep bags of chopped peppers in the freezer for occasions such as these) and a few cloves of garlic in some olive oil, then added an overripe tomato and the last of some pasta sauce in the fridge, and a spoonful of tomato paste, and a pinch of Italian seasoning… really just make yourself a good, thick, chunky tomato sauce.
It should be thick enough that you can make little divets in the sauce and break an egg into each. Now you could turn the heat to medium-low, put a lid on it and let them cook, or slide the pan into a 400F oven for about 5 minutes to bake them. Either way, there is the option of sprinkling the eggs with a little grated cheddar or crumbled feta or goat cheese and putting them back over/under the heat until it melts. (Just don’t overcook the eggs, like I did.) If you want to do little individual baked eggs, divide the tomato mixture among ramekins and break an egg onto each; put them on a cookie sheet and slide into the oven. Serve on (or with) toast. I wished I had some olive rye from Rosso today.
So - any chicken thoughts?
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August 10 2008 | eggs and one dish and vegetarian | 7 Comments »
It’s far too hot to cook. Fortunately, one of my favourite breakfasts can do double duty as dinner.
I recently discovered Dorset Cereals; although the locovore in me protests the air miles it earned flying all the way from the UK, I must admit I was lured in first by their packaging and second by their ingredient list: grains, nuts and fruit, and lots of it. No sweeteners, even. It will never replace my crunchy granola, but it is wonderfully real, clean and wholesome-tasting. I’m pretty sure that eating it makes me a better person. And some cereals come with quite possibly the most brilliant use of a cardboard box: Far more fun to a kid than a dinky plastic toy. (Although the Battlestar Gallactica pencil toppers and Tron zip-racers were pretty cool.) In Calgary, you can get Dorset Cereal at The Cookbook Company and London Drugs, of all places.
And because it has hovered around 30 degrees all weekend, we have been hooked on iced coffee; I wrote a piece on where to get the real stuff in FFWD this week. As I did my research I stumbled upon the secret to iced coffee: cold brewing. Here I was, traipsing through life thinking that an iced coffee was no more than a regular coffee cooled down and poured over ice. Although there’s nothing stopping you from cooling down your regular Joe and serving ir over ice, cold-brewed coffee has a lower acidity and less bitterness than the heat-brewed coffee we’re accustomed to, allowing for flavour nuances in the beans to come through.
All you need is some medium-ground coffee, water and a jar. The ratio is half a pound of coffee to 5 cups of water (or for a smaller batch, 1/3 cup coffee to 1 1/2 cups water); stir them together in a bowl or jar, cover and let the mixture steep overnight. There is some debate over whether a 12 hour vs. 24 hour soaking time is best; either way, you have a 12 hour window in between, which allows about as much flexibility as anyone could ask for.
After steeping, strain the sludge; first through a fine-meshed sieve, and then through a coffee filter to get rid of all the grit. (Alternatively, this whole process could take place in a French press; let it sit for as long as you want it to, then press and pour it out.) Dilute the resulting coffee concentrate 1:1 with cool water or milk, or pour it straight over ice and spike with cream. (Pop your blend in the microwave or use a kettle of boiling water if it’s a hot cup you’re after. Besides the fact that this method makes a fine cup of iced coffee, it’s a revelation to know it’s possible to “brew” with nothing but your ground beans and a jar. Hello camp coffee.)
This homemade coffee concentrate will also suit the purpose if your goal is to recreate an Ice Cap in your blender: to ¼ cup concentrate add ¼ cup coffee cream (18%) or half & half (10%), 2-3 Tbsp. sugar and 5 ice cubes, and pulse until it’s a sippable consistency.
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August 09 2008 | leftovers | No Comments »
A few weeks ago when I made ceviche I chopped a little too much halibut, scallops and shrimp and so froze some in a ziplock bag to make seafood chowder with another day. Tonight, I came across that little frozen white lump while rummaging around for ice for my coffee.
For some reason, seafood chowder seems like a summery meal (all that fish), when in fact it’s better suited to a cooler fall or winter day (all that heat). As if we weren’t melting enough before dinner, now we’re practically puddles on the floor.
But it was tasty. When I go to make something like this, something that I don’t often make, I flip through a few books and search a few sites to see what people in the know are doing with it. I read about New England Fish Chowder from 50 Chowders: One-Pot Meals — Clam, Corn & Beyond, in which it is referred to as “the gold standard of chowders”, but which only used fish, onions and potatoes; no corn or other seafood. I found a similar recipe for corn chowder, this time thickened with flour and flavoured with garlic, in The New Best Recipe put out by Cooks Illustrated (a truly fantastic resource, sort of a new-era Joy of Cooking; it explains everything, experiments and illustrates what happens if you do this or that). In the end I sort of morphed what I had read with what I would have done had I just winged it to begin with - soups are easy to do that way. I let the potatoes thicken the broth rather than use flour, and added just half a cup of half & half at the very end to make it creamy without being as crazy high-fat as those versions made with copious amounts of heavy cream.
Seafood Chowder
(all measurements are approximate)
a drizzle of olive or canola oil
a small lump of butter
1 small purple onion, finely chopped
1 tsp. dried thyme, or 1 Tbsp. chopped fresh
1 bay leaf
1-2 lbs. Yukon Gold, russet or red-skinned potatoes, preferably new, scrubbed and thickly sliced (if they are baby new potatoes) or chopped
1/2-1 cup frozen, fresh or canned corn kernels
3 cups(ish) chicken, fish or vegetable stock, or water
1-2 lbs. chopped whitefish, scallops, shrimp or a combination
1/2-1 cup half & half
salt & pepper
chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley or chives, for garnish (optional)
In a medium-large pot set over medium heat, melt the oil and butter together and saute the onion for about 5 minutes, until soft but not golden. Add the thyme and bay leaf and cook for another minute. Add the potatoes, corn and stock - make sure there is enough liquid to cover the potatoes - if not, add a little more water until it does.
Bring to a simmer and cook for 10-15 minutes, until the potatoes are tender. Dump in the seafood and stir until it turns opaque - this should only take a couple of minutes. Don’t overcook the shrimp, or they will curl up and get tough. Stir in the cream and season with salt and pepper.
Divide among bowls and sprinkle with parlsey or chives. Serves 4(ish).
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August 08 2008 | soup | 1 Comment »
I grew rainbow chard in my garden. And peas. From nothing! Me! When I picture myself gardening, the image that comes immediately to mind is Bill Murray strapped to the front of a sailboat in What About Bob? yelling “I’m sailing!”
I’m gardening! And I didn’t even kill anything. Except maybe my basil. Check this out: fresh peas and rainbow chard grown by me. And not even peed on (I fenced them off). There’s much more just like it.
So we sat out in the yard this afternoon shelling peas and eating them straight up, because there really is no other way to eat peas you grew your very own self. And because I also grew chard, I decided to make the roasted chick peas with garlic and chard I made a few months ago and lost the photos of. I didn’t bother with the second round of garlic (crushed and sauteed along with the chard) and it was plenty garlicky - in fact, the garlicky oil made me think that these roasted/fried chick peas would be fantastic on a salad, their oiliness acting as a starter for the dressing; all you’d need to do is dribble on a little balsamic. Mike devoured this and called it “unbelievable” despite its lack of meat. (Any absence of meat can be more than made up for by the presence of garlic.)
(W would not touch it. He had chicken tortellini.)
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August 07 2008 | one dish and vegetarian | 1 Comment »
No, I wasn’t at a church supper - this is the name roadfood writers Jane & Michael Stern dubbed the combination of creamy macaroni & cheese topped with chili - a good enough reason to start going to church, I think.
But guess what. Today I hung out and had lunch with the Cirque du Soleil’s travelling chef, and then she took me on a behind-the scenes tour of the Corteo Big Top. I went on the stage, and saw some of the performers stretching in the artists’ tent and everything. I’m not even ashamed about how much I gushed over the whole experience. How cool a job is cooking while travelling with Cirque for 4 years? The only thing that makes it cooler is that Amira rides her motorbike when they pack up and move from city to city. (I think she should have her own show on Food Network.)
I assumed that with 150+ mouths to feed three times a day, the food would be pretty much foodservice; not so. Among Amira’s offerings were some of the best made-from-scratch mac & cheese I’ve tasted (I’ve been disappointed more often than not by restaurant mac & cheese) and homemade meatballs she made with ground beef, sauteed onions, breadcrumbs and cream, and they were ethereal. She simmered them in a tomato “gravy” (you know good old-school chefs when they refer to tomato sauce as gravy) that had started its life with the leftover bits of smoked beef brisket from a barbecue the night before, and was simmered for 7 hours before being pureed and added to the meatballs. Out of all the options I chose these two things mostly because I wanted to try them, but also because I love the combination of cheesy mac and tomato-saucy chili, and this was similar. I suppose both are more grown-up versions of macaroni and cheese with ketchup.
So this planted the seed for dinner. When I opened the fridge to evaluate our options, I discovered a small pot with the last of the chili we had a few days ago (lucky for me it improves after a few days) and so made some quick mac & cheese (just a creamy stovetop version, not crumbed and baked) to put it to bed on.
But since I don’t now have a recipe to offer up, only an idea, I’ve been thinking I should share my bacon maple caramel corn recipe, since I’ve been inundated with requests for it since I made a batch on CBC Tuesday morning, to fill the empty bowl that Mike Heltay (realtor extraordinaire) bid an astounding $875 for during the empty bowls benefit for the Calgary Interfaith Food Bank earlier this year. Thanks Mike! I promised to fill it with bacon caramel corn, and I’m sure that jacked up the bid at least $700. So here it is. In his wife, Phyllis’ words: the holy trinity of corn, caramel and bacon, all morphed into one. (If you want to use more bacon or drippings, be my guest.)
(Sorry I don’t have a photo - just imagine deep caramel corn studded with chunks of bacon.)
Bacon Maple-Caramel Corn with Pecans
3-4 slices bacon
6-8 cups air popped popcorn (about 1/4 cup kernels)
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup maple syrup or corn syrup
2-4 Tbsp. butter
1 tsp. vanilla
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 cup pecan pieces or halves (optional)
Preheat oven to 250° F. In a medium skillet, cook the bacon until crisp. Transfer to a plate, crumble into chunky pieces and reserve 1-2 tablespoons of the drippings.
Spray a large bowl with non-stick spray and put the popcorn in it, along with the pecans if you’re using them.
Combine the brown sugar, corn syrup, butter and reserved bacon drippings in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat. Boil without stirring, swirling the pan occasionally, for 4 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla and baking soda. It will foam up at first.
Quickly pour over the popcorn and stir to coat well, adding the reserved bacon. Tongs work really well for this! Spread onto a cookie sheet or roasting pan and bake for 30 minutes, stirring once or twice. Cool.
Makes about 7 cups.
Per cup: 244 calories, 4.4 g total fat (2.4 g saturated fat, 1.4 g monounsaturated fat, 0.3 g polyunsaturated fat), 3.3 g protein, 49 g carbohydrate, 14.7 mg cholesterol, 1 g fiber. 16% calories from fat.
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August 06 2008 | snacks and sweet stuff | No Comments »
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