Beef in Ale Sauce

675 g chuck steak
290 ml brown stock
A little vegetable oil
1 tsp wine vinegar
3 large onions, sliced
1 bay leaf
2 cloves garlic, crushed
A little thyme & nutmeg
2 tsp browned flour
Salt & pepper
290 ml brown ale

Sweat the onions in oil until soft. Cut the beef into large steaks. Brown the beef in a hot pan with very little oil. Turn the beef only when it has gained color. Remove the beef and wash out the pan with water. If it is not burnt, keep it to go with the stock. Add the soft onions to the beef pan, raise the temperature and begin to brown.

Add the garlic and sugar, brown, add the browned flour, let it pick up a bit more color but do not let it burn. Add the ale and boil for two minutes, add the stock and boil again. Add the vinegar (to tenderize) and the thyme, nutmeg and seasoning. Put the meat and juices back into the pan, warm up, transfer to a casserole dish, add a lid and cook in the oven for two hours until the meat is completely soft. Serve with mustard mash & braised red cabbage.

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I haven't actually made this yet; the bf always does the honors. We usually make a double or 1.5x batch, and frequently run out of big enough pans to cook in. The meat always comes out completely tender, no knives needed. It's truly delicious. We serve it with mashed potatoes and a green (asparagus is always a good choice).

Guinness Cupcakes with Bailey's Frosting

I direct you to Dulcedo, where Dana has posted the recipe along with beautiful photos of sprinkle-laden cupcakes. Thank God for Notre Dame students!

My only addition to her recipe is to fix up some chocolate frosting and mix Bailey's in. Oh, that must be what heaven tastes like!!

Granddad Franklin's Potato Salad

10 white potatoes, still warm
2 medium peppers
2 celery stalks
1 onion
1 large tomato
1 cup mayonnaise
1 tsp mustard
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tbsp celery seed
4 oz pimentos
1 cup sweet pickle relish

Cut and mix? I haven't made this yet--maybe I'll sit down with Grandma tomorrow and figure some more detailed directions out. She is apparently the only family member (aside from Great-Granddad Franklin himself) who can make this potato salad right.

Scott's Pasta Salad

1 pound pasta
2 heads broccoli
1/2 head cauliflower
2 carrots
1 cup chopped chicken
1 red or yellow pepper, chopped and raw
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 cup freshly shredded Parmesan cheese
Salt & fresh ground pepper to taste

Cook and drain pasta. Cut broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots in bite-size pieces and steam until tender-crisp. Throw everything except the cheese into a big bowl and mix it up. The hot pasta will take a little of the edge off the raw garlic. Add the cheese last, on top of each serving if you like.

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I haven't tried making this recipe yet, but when I ate it (straight from the Kirner kitchen) for the first time, it was amazing. Now that I've rediscovered the recipe, I will make it soon!

Most Favoritest Pancakes Ever

makes ten four-inch pancakes

1 egg
1 cup buttermilk
2 tbsp melted shortening or salad oil
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp almond extract

Beat egg; add remaining ingredients in order listed and beat with rotary beater until smooth. Grease heated griddle if necessary. To test griddle, sprinkle with a few drops of water. If bubbles skitter around, heat is just right.

Pour batter from tip of large spoon or from pitcher onto hot griddle. Turn pancakes as soon as they are puffed and full of bubbles but before bubbles break. Bake other side until golden brown.

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This recipe, originally "Favorite Pancakes" from Betty Crocker's Cookbook of 1969, was a staple of my childhood. I changed the white sugar to brown sugar and added almond extract for truly delicious pancakes that are not your typical breakfast fare. With butter and real maple syrup, they are AMAZING.

Chocolate Martini

2 small orange wedges
A little finely grated dark chocolate or a mixture of equal quantities cocoa powder and confectioners' sugar
2 fl. oz. vodka
1 oz. dark chocolate with at least 70% cocoa solids
1 fl. oz heavy cream
Ice cubes

Rub the rim of a well-chilled martini glass with one of the orange wedges. Dip it in the grated chocolate or cocoa powder and confectioners' sugar mixture. Chill the glass and the vodka bottle thoroughly. Put 1 oz. dark chocolate in a small bowl with the cream and microwave on low power until melted. Stir until smooth. Pour the vodka and melted chocolate mix into a cocktail shaker, add plenty of ice cubes, and shake well. Strain into the chocolate-rimmed glass and serve decorated with the second orange wedge.

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Recipe from 500 Cocktails by Wendy Sweetser. I had my first chocolate martini last night and absolutely had to recreate it!! This recipe qualifies as a dining hall friendly because all of the necessary ingredients (except the vodka, of course) can be found at your local cafeteria of choice. I used a mixture of melted dark chocolate (with half-and-half) and chocolate syrup with the vodka and rimmed the glass with chocolate syrup and dark chocolate shavings. Best hint: make too much...and then drink the leftovers!

Crackpot crockery

Hello all! I know I've basically dropped off the face of the earth since September, but here I am again! Still super busy (junior year blahs), but I am cooking again. I came back this semester with a crock pot (or slow cooker) and I'm experimenting with dining hall scraps and other fun concoctions. So far I've made a lot of rice, steamed dumplings and buns, chicken soup, something akin to glutinous rice gruel, sushi, and apple cider using my crock pot. I'm sitting in Angela's room right now and her roommates are getting ready for a party and making chili in their crock pot. Theirs is a normal size; mine is only 1.5 quarts- which is perfect for one person and a few friends.

I hope that I'll be able to write some notes here about what fun stuff I'm making; time is a precious commodity these days. Until then, I leave a link to an NPR story talking about something I happen to be very passionate about:
Pollan: Cut the nutri-hype. Eat real food.
Read it if you want, but listen to the story (top) and the interview (mid-way through), they provide much more detail.

Fall food

Heh, so you may have noticed that I haven't updated in a long while. Back at school life is really busy. And by really busy I mean super busy. I doubt I'll have time to write in here till Christmas, or maybe fall break. I am trying to keep my LJ in the loop though. BUT good news- pumpkins are in season! Adele and I both have our own personal pumpkins to smile at us from our desks. =) Mine will only last until I have time to eat/juice it. Yum!

Harry Potter eats update

I bought lots and lots of jelly beans from Kroger, the candy store, you name it, and finally snagged a little baggie of Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans (along with a chocolate frog and a wonderball, whee!) which I mixed in the bowl that's been sitting on our table for the past week or two. I think my parents are a little wary of what they might pull out of there, but really, the chance of a vomit or earwax is very slim compared to, say, a root beer or cream soda. There are tons of those, and I personally think the root beer gets kinda icky after too many of them.

I did finally make pumpkin pasties, which were basically mini-turnovers. Really simple (except the folding and sticking dough together) and really yummy! Great snack for anytime.

As far as butterbeer goes...I've tried a few different things, most recently making hard butterscotch (with homemade butter and all) and dissolving the entire batch into a 2-liter of cream soda so that it's all ready-made. That's probably the best method I've found yet, and it's in the fridge already so it's nice and cold when you want it. Actually, the other night I had a terrible time sleeping, and about 3 am I got up to drown my sorrows in comfort food. I heated up a foamy mug of butterbeer and sipped that alongside a plate of cornbread & honey. It was very comforting. I can definitely see myself living off of that next winter the way I lived off of apple cider my freshman year. =)

Oh yes, and I ordered $20 worth of screamin' sour pop rocks from poprockscandy.com...48 little paper tubes of 'em. They're stored in my room along with a few bags of regular fruity ones from Food Lion, two boxes of sour nerds, and crayola gummi frogs to make chocolate frogs with. That ought to tide me over for a while.

Crudo

aka Italian sashimi

I heard on NPR's cooking podcast a few weeks back about crudo, which is raw fish served with (generally) olive oil, lemon or lime juice (or sometimes vinegar), sea salt, and pepper. Their story about it is here, with more details in the audio file. I did some online searching and also found an article from the San Francisco Chronicle about it. It sounded really interesting, so I went to Sake House tonight to get some fish.

I decided to get salmon, tuna, red snapper, and sweet shrimp, and Jenny gave me some spicy tuna as well. I took these home and drizzled them with different flavors, basically following the combinations I found in those articles and a few other places:
tuna + lemon juice, olive oil, sea salt, & black pepper
red snapper + lime juice, olive oil, & salt
sweet shrimp (amaebi) + lemon juice, olive oil, salt, & pepper
salmon + herbed bread-dipping oil, salt, & a few drops of lime juice
spicy tuna + sesame oil, soy sauce, sriracha hot sauce, scallions & I think a little lime juice. The spicy tuna itself already had the hot sauce and scallions, along with fish roe and Japanese mayonnaise.

It was all basic, but really good. I think the main attraction with this dish is the blending of really subtle flavors, for which I have no sensitivity. To me it all tasted delicious, but it was nothing more than my love, raw fish, in a different arena with olive oil and citrus juice. I couldn't really taste the salt and pepper until I really piled it on a piece of tuna, which was good and crunchy. I have a feeling that all those italian chefs fighting for a garlic-less culture of subtle shifts in flavor were rolling over in their graves when I did that. What can I say, I like bold flavor.

We (my parents, Michael, and I) ate this with rolled grape leaves and rather large crostini with different cheese and mediterranean spreads. It was quite a different culture at our table tonight. Thoroughly enjoyable.

Avocado: fruit or vegetable?

Notes to remember:

My mom keeps making this great lime chicken, which mostly involves sauteeing chicken breasts in butter, lime juice, and garlic powder. I added avocado to mine, yum!

Also made a really quick avocado smoothie with avocado, milk, and chocolate syrup, all mashed up and dumped in a cup drizzled with more chocolate. If I felt like getting the blender dirty I'd blend it all up with ice, but I'm just too lazy tonight.

I think I'll fix something for John and Betsie on Sunday and leave it in their fridge for them to find when they get hungry (after they fly back from Texas). I'm leaning toward lime chicken with avocado and my favorite fruit salad. I wonder if those two would go together at all...guess I'll try it and find out. Oh, and I'll add some grape tomatoes to the chicken, because there are a thousand of them coming off Betsie's plants. Yeah. We'll see what happens.

Chilled Cucumber Soup with Smoked Salmon and Dill

1 1/2 tbsp butter
1 cup onions, chopped
4 cucumbers, peeled, halved, seeded, cut into 1/2-inch-thick slices (about 5 cups)
1 8-oz russet potato, peeled, cut into 1/2-inch dice
3 1/2 cups chicken broth
3 large fresh dill sprigs
6 tbsp fresh dill, minced
1 tsp salt to taste
1 cup crème fraîche or sour cream
3 oz smoked salmon, cut into 1/2-inch pieces

Melt butter in heavy large pot over medium heat. Add onions and sauté until slightly softened, about 3 minutes. Add cucumbers and potato; stir 1 minute. Add broth, dill sprigs, and salt. Increase heat and bring to simmer. Reduce heat to low; cover and simmer until cucumbers and potato are tender, stirring occasionally, about 25 minutes. Working in batches, purée soup in food processor until smooth. Return to pot. Cool 15 minutes. Whisk in 1/2 cup sour cream and 4 tbsp minced dill. Cover and chill until cold, about 4 hours. Serve with a dollop of sour cream in center of each bowl; sprinkle with smoked salmon and remaining minced dill.

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Another excellent recipe from epicurious.com that did not taste at all like I expected. Apparently crème fraîche is like fancier, whippable sour cream. Also take note of the pureeing the soup in BATCHES; I have a bad habit of overfilling my food processor and leaking liquid whatever all over the place. The smoked salmon goes really well with the dill and everything, although if you leave the leftovers mixed together in the refrigerator as I did, the soup sucks all the flavor out of the salmon and you get slices of tasteless, very oddly textured orange stuff instead. Not terrible, but it was surprising.

Hogwarts Sweets

Late as usual! For the Harry Potter premier, I used recipes from britta.com although I just came across this post on yumsugar.com with more cute ideas. I hope to try them all eventually, and I can't wait till pumpkins are in season to try juicing them.

Anyway, I'm not going to post all the recipes individually, but here's what I made (with Ellen's help):

Cauldron cakes - handles kept falling out so I glued them on with chocolate. They were good, but they smash easily.

Licorice wands - red and black with white and dark chocolate. I like the rainbow + sprinkles idea.

Cockroach clusters - I would crush up the chow mein noodles a little more next time or maybe use rice krispies or something. Oh, and I used peanut butter and chocolate chips. They were basically haystacks, but shhh!

Butterbeer - a big hit with Betsie and me, although no one else would try it. I drank all mine cold, but I can't wait till this winter when I can drink it hot and fizzy. Mmmm! Made with homemade butterscotch sauce too! Britta's recipe was really just inspiration since I can neither buy nor leave the house with butterscotch schnapps, and I don't know where to find butterscotch flavoring. Lots of other recipes mix cream soda or root beer (hmm) with butterscotch sauce, so I just did that. Some actually just mixed butterscotch and milk like hot chocolate butterscotch. That sounds good and warm, but I think I would die of sweetness.

Edit: Yesterday I mixed 12 oz of cream soda and about 1.5 oz of butterscotch sauce in a saucepan and heated it (although I couldn't find my hand mixer or egg beater to make it frothy), which was delicious. I can imagine that would be heavenly during the cold winter. Also, drinking it hot kept the butter in the butterscotch from separating like it did when it was cold. That wasn't so bad though; it would make this delicate foam on the top that just melted in your mouth. I also saw a recipe that involved mixing the butter, cream, sugar, and cream soda all together before cooking it. I wonder how that would change the taste/consistency. Whenever I use up all the butterscotch I already have, I'll give that a try.

Acid whizbees - the most interesting creation by far, which I decided must be a mix of acid pops and fizzing whizbees. I couldn't find pop rocks or sour lollipops/hard candy, so I bought shock tarts and sour nerds. I stuck 'em in a double boiler on the stove and experimented with melting- always an adventure! The nerds didn't really melt, so I just crushed them up and mixed them with the shock tarts, which mushed up beautifully. I made them into little balls (which stuck to the waxed paper, but I'll use a candy mold or something next time) and covered them in white chocolate. I thought they would end up like jawbreakers, but they were delightfully soft when I bit into one, and very sour! I mixed the remaining nerds with white and dark swirled chocolate and made little blobs with those, and then coated the rest of the shock tarts in chocolate as well. What can I say, I was getting lazy.

Edit: Betsie informed me that the swirly chocolate with nerds mixed in was the best- and that it was quite a surprise! That, of course, was the point. =) I'm thinking that chocolate with pop rocks and sour nerds, maybe molded into cuter shapes than squashed swirly things will be my best bet for fizzing whizbees. I need to just order a crate of pop rocks. I hope they never stop making them...that would be a very sad day.

I liked the way these last turned out a lot, especially the surprise of the sour center when your mouth thinks it's eating chocolate. Even the nerds aren't sour until you bite down. If I had pop rocks, I'd probably just mix them with chocolate like always and make little blobs. Actually, I would love to do the shock tart center with pop rocks around that or mixed in with the chocolate coating. That would be a surprise!

Sorry, no pictures. Britta's are all better anyway. I was hoping to get some pictures with my friends when they were eating their little goody bags that I packed for them, but no one else seemed quite as excited about them as I was. I should expect that. =p I am going to try pumpkin pasties as soon I feel up to making pie crust (Would you believe that I could not find a single can of pumpkin anywhere I looked?? Insane...) and experiment with cream soda and butterscotch. And maybe some treacle. I was so excited to find out that that's just molasses, although I'm not really sure how I feel about molasses tarts. Or fudge o.O

Thoughts on the movie here. I'm pretty sure there's no spoilers. Also soon I hope I can start on my Marauder's Map. I just need to decide on a few things...such as what I'm making a map of and what random Latin words to scribble all over it. But this isn't food! Must not...corrupt...blog... ^^

Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Hogwarty Hogwarts, teach us something please!

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is coming out tomorrow night! I'm going to see it with some of my friends, and since I keep running into different Hogwarty recipes online, I decided to try some of them. So this morning I made butterscotch sauce for butterbeer and tonight Ellen and I made cauldron cakes, licorice wands, acid sour candy things (sort of a desperate combination of fizzing whizbees and acid pops, and cockroach clusters. I can't wait to sneak them into the theater and give them to everyone. =D I'll post recipes and pictures tomorrow, but I've been neglecting my LJ for way too long. I'm going to give that some love tonight.

another week

My dad made some kind of creamy turkey noodles for dinner tonight. I don't know what all's in it; I was asleep when he made it. But it was really good and I ate most of it, so I just added to what was left for lunch tomorrow. Over angel hair pasta, there's a little turkey etc. left, now mixed with soy sauce omelette and mushrooms and onions sauteed in butter and cream. The bits I had were yummy!

One of my favorite ways to cook eggs (besides soft-boiled) is with a little soy sauce and sesame oil mixed in. It gives it such a nice salty flavor, and it's easy and fits in with lots of other stuff. I also like the tamago omelette that you find with sushi, although I've only made it once. It's sweet and light (when you don't burn it) and seems like it would be a good accompaniment to cold noodles or something.

Fourth of July's this Wednesday. I think we're going to the park with a picnic to watch fireworks. Grandmom's making her father's potato salad (a recipe which has heretofore never been successfully copied by anyone else, although I am going to attempt it), mom's making blueberry muffins, and I'm making paprika fried chicken. I think we'll leave the guys in charge of desserts. ^^ In case you didn't get it, that was red white and blue food. Mmmm, that chicken was so good, I can't wait to have it again!

Chicken with Goat Cheese and Artichoke Hearts

Yay, I get to post my own recipe now! I guess technically I stole it from Bonefish Grill, but I don't remember them putting capers or chives in their dish... =) Let's see if I can remember what I did this time, and hopefully I can go back and figure out some specific measurements at some point.

Cut chicken breast into bite-sized pieces. Melt butter in skillet or pan along with chopped chives and parsley and cook chicken. Deglaze pan with milk or cream, add capers and artichoke hearts and reduce. Top with goat cheese medallions or crumbles.

I confess...I haven't tested the last bit yet, with the cheese. I'll have a verdict after lunch tomorrow. I can see where with the sauce it'd be too much creamy stuff, but I'm hoping if I use it sparingly it'll fly. When I added milk and cream, I also put in some flour because it looked like it was going to be really thin. It was probably quite unnecessary, because I just had to add like another cup of milk to make it liquidy again. I have a hunch that heating and reducing would have worked just fine. I'll make this again at some point and refine. Ooh exciting, I'm a real chef!

I plan to serve this tomorrow with broccoli and fruit salad (made with pineapple, red grapes, blueberries, and strawberries and maybe some wheat thins on the side. I'm meeting John for lunch with this, so I put some extra time into it. As in, I actually planned what I was going to make (colors and everything) before even going to the store. Amazing! I think I'll take the rest of that cucumber soup along as well, it needs to get eaten, and I want to spread the word about it. That recipe will be along very soon, promise.

Engine-Revving Baked Chicken Wings

1 cup hot sauce
1 tsp garlic salt
24 chicken drummettes
2 tbsp butter or margarine
1 cup Bisquick baking mix
3/4 tsp onion salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
Blue cheese dressing

Stir together hot sauce and garlic salt until blended. Pour over drummettes; cover and refrigerate at least 4 hours but no longer than 24 hours.

Heat oven to 450 degrees F. Melt butter in 15-1/2" x 10-1/2" x 1" pan in oven. Stir together Bisquick mix, onion salt and peppers. Remove chicken from sauce; discard sauce. Coat chicken with Bisquick mixture. Place in single layer in pan.

Bake 25 minutes; turn and bake an additional 20 to 25 minutes or until chicken is golden brown and juice is no longer pink when centers of pieces are cut. Serve with chunky blue cheese dressing and celery sticks.

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I also cooked some potatoes to go along, using cumin and cayenne with a sweet potato, a red potato, and a russet potato. I burn-fried half in a skillet and cooked the rest in our little toaster oven. I never quite managed to make them crispy; I guess you have to deep fry them for that. I cut them into all sorts of fun shapes that mostly fell apart when I cooked them, but there were some hearts and stars and flowers that looked more like H's and even some little potato smilies!

The wings I used were rather large, so it came out more like spicy southern-baked chicken, which was very tasty. My parents were doing the 'kids crowding the kitchen' thing and they couldn't keep their fingers out of the pan once I pulled it out of the oven. =) Guess smell is the best advertising, and they'd been smelling the hot sauce since at least 6.30 this morning. Boy, that'll wake you up.

This isn't the only recipe I'll try for buffalo chicken, but it was a decent one I found at about.com last night that didn't involve deep-frying. Definitely good; I'll get some smaller drummettes next time and try another recipe.

I've been wrapping up their little tupperware bentos (have I done my lock&lock pitch yet?) using colorful bandanas as furoshiki and doing the basic wrap with the extra corner folded in. I used to do the four-tie wrap, but it never comes out looking quite as neat or seems to cover the entire top. Plus, with the basic wrap you can tie the ends again (like in the watermelon wrap) to make a little handle. Kawaii! So I'm going to dig around downstairs or go to Walmart and buy some pretty fabrics to do the same with. I'd like to make some insulated bags so I can keep things hot inside them, but I need to do a little research first.

Chicken With Red Grapes and Mushrooms

in a thyme cream sauce

2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
1 cup sliced fresh mushrooms
1 cup red wine
1 cup heavy cream
1 tbsp dried thyme
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 cup seedless red grapes, rinsed and dried

Melt butter with oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. When hot, add chicken breasts. Brown 3 to 5 minutes on both sides until golden. Add mushrooms, and saute for 2 to 3 minutes, or until soft. Deglaze pan with wine, making sure to loosen any brown bits from bottom of pan. Simmer for 5 minutes. Stir in cream. Add salt, pepper, and thyme. Reduce heat to low, and cover. Simmer for 5 to 7 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove cover. Reduce cream for 3 minutes, until thickened. Add red grapes, and heat through.

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This is a fantastic dish! I made this for dinner last week and my parents and I nearly died of deliciousness. Even the cold leftovers tasted great. I ended up having to add more grapes because we had way too many they were gone with dinner. This was also a good vocab recipe; I learned what 'deglaze' and 'reduce' meant. =)

I was hoping to find some angel hair pasta to serve this over, but all we had was whole wheat spaghetti. It wasn't bad. At allrecipes.com they suggest bowtie pasta or wide egg noodles. Personally, I think everything worth eating can be eaten with rice, but I try to cater to the Italian in everyone as well. ^^ They also suggest using white wine rather than red and adding garlic, which both also sound wonderful.

Honey Orange Glaze

2 tbsp orange juice
1 cup honey
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves

Mix and baste preferred meat while baking.

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The recipe uses ham, and that's what I used, but I just grabbed some already sliced from our freezer and oh dear, now it's been so long that I don't remember what I put with it. Must have been carrots...and maybe broccoli too? This is why I should take pictures before I let myself get lazy and wait a week before updating. But whatever I made, it got thumbs up from both parents. =)

Avocado, Tomato, and Corn Salad

makes four servings

1/2 avocado, chopped
1 cup cherry tomatoes, cut in half
1 cup fresh, frozen, or low-sodium corn
1 lime, juiced

Combine and toss. Wow, that was easy.

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The original recipe (from who knows where, my mom sent it to me) didn't say to halve the tomatoes, but I went ahead and did it. After poking around a bit, there's a recipe on foodnetwork.com that does say to do that, and has a fancy dressing with cilantro and olive oil and stuff. Really, the lime juice was just fine. They also added red onion. Meh. I put this in our lunchboxes with some leftover lime chicken my mom made and the vegetable remains from the cow bento. Might've been some flatbread too. Yum!