At our wedding, we had some amazing cornbread muffins. Since then, Jess and I have been craving cornbread of the same caliber - soft, moist, sweet, and not gritty.
Today I may have stumbled upon the solution. Last week we tried the recipe off the back of the cornmeal bag. Blech. Gritty. Dry. NOT what we wanted. We looked at Alton Brown's recipe (in his I'm just here for more food book), picked up a few hints, and then modified his even further. The result was outstanding. It was very cakey- not very gritty.... and nice and sweet (though to get to the level of sweetness of the muffins at my wedding, we'd need even more sugar!)
Ingredients:
3/4 c buttermilk
3/4 c cornmeal
1/2 c cakeflour (you could also use all-purpose flour, just use about a tablespoon less).
2 Tblspn butter, melted
pinch salt
1/3 c sugar (1/2 cup if you want it to be sweeter- more like a dessert muffin)
1/4 c vegetable oil
1.5 tsp baking powder
1 egg, beaten
Add 3/4 cup buttermilk and 3/4 cup fine cornmeal to a mixing bowl. (If you need to, blend or food process your cornmeal to get it finer - this will help keep it from being gritty).
Let your buttermilk/cornmeal mixture reast for 15 minutes.
Preheat oven to 425.
To the soggy cornmeal mixture, add the beaten egg, the oil, and the butter. Whisk it all together.
Add the sugar, then the dry ingredients.
Once everything is mixed well, PAM a 7" round cake pan... or double this recipe and use a 9" round, or use a bunch of muffin tins... who cares. The 7" round should be checked at 15 minutes, and will probably need another 3-5 minutes. We settled at 20 minutes for a beautiful golden brown. It yielded what would have been about 8 muffins, and they were DELICIOUS!!!! I'd have taken a picture, but... there aren't any left!
Monday, July 30, 2007
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Walnut Pesto
This recipe for pesto is fairly basic - nothing fancy here. Of course, that's the trick; prepare a really easy, basic dish that tastes like you slaved over it for hours, not minutes. The original comes from The Joy of Cooking, with only a few little tweaks. Avi suggested I use walnuts (I hate pine nuts), and I use the fresh basil from our garden, which is particularly yummy, but of course store-bought would be fine.
Ingredients:
2 cups densely packed basil leaves (about 3 good girl-sized handfulls)
1/3 cup walnuts (smallest bag size at grocery store)
2 cloves garlic
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese (NOT the stuff in the can! Buy a wedge and grate it!)
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
Directions:
Combine the basil, walnuts, garlic and cheese in your food processor and process thoroughly. Through the feed tube, pour in the olive oil slowly as the machine runs. This can be pretty messy, and you may need to add more oil to get the right consistency, depending on just how densely you packed your basil into those two cups. Add the salt and pepper to taste (I use a fair bit of pepper). Cover immediately with saran wrap to keep it from turning brown, and refrigerate until serving.
See? Quick and easy. I like to cook some fettuccine and pan fry some chicken breasts seasoned with salt and pepper (and maybe dusted with a little grated Parmesan) to accompany my pesto, but you can serve it just about any way you like.
And the best part? Leftovers make an awesome lunch with a small loaf of crusty bread.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Schadenfruede Pie
I've not posted a new recipe or cooking experiment in a little while. To tide anyone over who has been disappointed, I direct you to science-fiction author John Scalzi who has come up with a tastefully tangible example of what the titular confection would taste like.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Fajitas: Multi-blog Spectac-u-larrrr
For this recipe I am expecting you to have followed the entire blog. We're going to combine components of previously posted recipes into this meal. Watch me as I link.
This is a marinade that I made up for the steak portion of the fajitas. I think it would work better with chicken, these flavors seemed to be at odds with what the steak wanted to taste like. It still made for an interesting meal.
Steak Marinade
4 Limes
2 lbs steak (skirt steak will work best, but you have to let it soak in this for at least 24 hours)
a splash of the best tequila you can find
pepper (I like to grind black and white pepper into the bag until my hands don't work anymore)
1 Tbsp cumin
1 Tbsp cilantro
4 cloves garlic
1 cup white vinegar
2 Serrano peppers, sliced
Cut up the limes and squeeze out some of the juice into a gallon sized ziplock bag. Add ingredients and let sit for 24 hours. Make sure that the entire steak is covered by the
sauce.
*time passes*
Okay, let's make some fajitas!
Chicken & Steak Fajitas
You've had chicken & steak brining and marinading for the last 1-2 days, and now you're very hungry. Pull those bad boys out and fire up your grill. We're going to cook the meat whole and then slice it into smaller pieces later; this way you have more control over the done-ness of your steak. Also, I think everything tastes better after being exposed to charcoal.
Remove steak from bag. Remove chicken from bag. Get ready to transport them to the grill.
Save the marinade from the steak's bag. This is going to turn into fajita sauce.
For the sauce -
Marinade
bell pepper (yellow & red), sliced
Spanish onion, sliced
This is so easy I hesitate to mention it. Heat the sauce until it boils, reduce to a simmer and add the onions and peppers.
Grilling
For the time being I'm going to assume the reader knows how to grill and understands how they want their steak cooked. I tend to use a high heat so that the steak is rare to medium rare. I'd throw the chicken on first and give it a 5-7 minute head start on the steak. Don't worry about that chicken - after brining it for a day it's not going to overcook. It's dummy proof.
Remove meats from grill and cut into slices.
You're ready to enjoy.
Take your sauce, assembled meats, add some guacamole, and roll them up in your homemade tortillas. Thanks for playing.
This is a marinade that I made up for the steak portion of the fajitas. I think it would work better with chicken, these flavors seemed to be at odds with what the steak wanted to taste like. It still made for an interesting meal.
Steak Marinade
4 Limes
2 lbs steak (skirt steak will work best, but you have to let it soak in this for at least 24 hours)
a splash of the best tequila you can find
pepper (I like to grind black and white pepper into the bag until my hands don't work anymore)
1 Tbsp cumin
1 Tbsp cilantro
4 cloves garlic
1 cup white vinegar
2 Serrano peppers, sliced
Cut up the limes and squeeze out some of the juice into a gallon sized ziplock bag. Add ingredients and let sit for 24 hours. Make sure that the entire steak is covered by the
sauce.
*time passes*
Okay, let's make some fajitas!
Chicken & Steak Fajitas
You've had chicken & steak brining and marinading for the last 1-2 days, and now you're very hungry. Pull those bad boys out and fire up your grill. We're going to cook the meat whole and then slice it into smaller pieces later; this way you have more control over the done-ness of your steak. Also, I think everything tastes better after being exposed to charcoal.
Remove steak from bag. Remove chicken from bag. Get ready to transport them to the grill.
Save the marinade from the steak's bag. This is going to turn into fajita sauce.
For the sauce -
Marinade
bell pepper (yellow & red), sliced
Spanish onion, sliced
This is so easy I hesitate to mention it. Heat the sauce until it boils, reduce to a simmer and add the onions and peppers.
Grilling
For the time being I'm going to assume the reader knows how to grill and understands how they want their steak cooked. I tend to use a high heat so that the steak is rare to medium rare. I'd throw the chicken on first and give it a 5-7 minute head start on the steak. Don't worry about that chicken - after brining it for a day it's not going to overcook. It's dummy proof.
Remove meats from grill and cut into slices.
You're ready to enjoy.
Take your sauce, assembled meats, add some guacamole, and roll them up in your homemade tortillas. Thanks for playing.
Monday, July 2, 2007
Brined Chicken
I've got a two step recipe for y'all to follow. Here's the thing, though. Brining is a process best left to sit for at least several hours - even better if it's a day. I'll get you started on the brine and then return tomorrow with the rest of the recipe.
You need:
1 gallon sized plastic bag
1 buncha salt
1 working faucet
1 amount of chicken
1 lotsa citrus (lemon or lime - juice in a bottle or fresh doesn't really matter)
1 bit of flavor you want to infuse in the chicken. I like pepper, so we'll use a pepper combo.
There are a few reasons why you should brine. First, brining chicken makes it very, very moist. It's nearly impossible to burn a piece of chicken once it's been brined. Second, it's a great way to introduce flavor to the inside of your meat. The food science is simple and I'll use language that reflects that. The chicken absorbs the good flavor in the water and locks it in because of a process I invented called osmosis (someone else might've come up with a better term for it, that's just what I call it ;-) The salt water is the key to flavor country. Don't skimp.
I've done it with other meats, but chicken seems to be the most versatile.
Get your bag, fill it with water. Add enough salt so that the water itself tastes salty. Add your chicken and citrus. Lemon juice is easiest to come by, but lime gives you a slightly better flavor. I tend to add about a cup of citrus but you can eyeball it. If you're using fresh lemons, you're going to want to use at least 4, cut into large pieces.
Now add your pepper. I like a cayenne, black and white pepper mix. The pepper will be somewhat diffused by the water, so think Tablespoons not teaspoons when you're doing this (consider how much chicken you are preparing when judging how many Tbsp of your peppers to add). Toss in some minced garlic, a tsp of cilantro, and 1/2 tsp of cinnamon - just to make things interesting.
Seal the bag, shake it up a bit and make sure that there's enough liquid to completely cover all pieces of chicken. Now - sit tight. I'll be back tomorrow with part deux of the Brined Chicken Adventure!
You need:
1 gallon sized plastic bag
1 buncha salt
1 working faucet
1 amount of chicken
1 lotsa citrus (lemon or lime - juice in a bottle or fresh doesn't really matter)
1 bit of flavor you want to infuse in the chicken. I like pepper, so we'll use a pepper combo.
There are a few reasons why you should brine. First, brining chicken makes it very, very moist. It's nearly impossible to burn a piece of chicken once it's been brined. Second, it's a great way to introduce flavor to the inside of your meat. The food science is simple and I'll use language that reflects that. The chicken absorbs the good flavor in the water and locks it in because of a process I invented called osmosis (someone else might've come up with a better term for it, that's just what I call it ;-) The salt water is the key to flavor country. Don't skimp.
I've done it with other meats, but chicken seems to be the most versatile.
Get your bag, fill it with water. Add enough salt so that the water itself tastes salty. Add your chicken and citrus. Lemon juice is easiest to come by, but lime gives you a slightly better flavor. I tend to add about a cup of citrus but you can eyeball it. If you're using fresh lemons, you're going to want to use at least 4, cut into large pieces.
Now add your pepper. I like a cayenne, black and white pepper mix. The pepper will be somewhat diffused by the water, so think Tablespoons not teaspoons when you're doing this (consider how much chicken you are preparing when judging how many Tbsp of your peppers to add). Toss in some minced garlic, a tsp of cilantro, and 1/2 tsp of cinnamon - just to make things interesting.
Seal the bag, shake it up a bit and make sure that there's enough liquid to completely cover all pieces of chicken. Now - sit tight. I'll be back tomorrow with part deux of the Brined Chicken Adventure!
Fermented black beans? WTF?!?
Who would have thought that fermented black beans would give a dish such great flavor? Who would have thought that black beans are not just confined to Mexican cooking? (ok, people more culinarily enlightened than myself) And who would have thought I would have learned about black bean and stir-fry from guys named Ken and Curt? Seriously, WTF?!?
Ken and Curt are current and former coworkers of mine, respectively, and these two Chinese guys have started to show me the real way to do stir fry, fast, hot, and with tons of flavors. Curt introduced me to black bean stir-fry one day at lunch, and not long afterwards I tried making it on my own based on his recipe. I thought I was hot shit cooking with an ingredient that only had the nutrition information in English on the label, that is until Ken saw me eating it for lunch. After some mocking of my technique, he started letting me in on little secrets of the actual stir-fry technique, and supplying me with proper ingredients! So, after much learning, here is how to make some killer black bean stir-fry…
What you need:
Beef for stir fry, cut super thin (we use top round, because we buy it in bulk from Costco) ~1 lb
One onion cut into strips, again, thinner is better, ~1/4” wide
One red bell pepper, did I mention stuff should be cut thin?
Snow peas, these you don’t have to cut
Fermented Black Bean Paste (more on this later)
For the marinade
1/2 cup dry sherry
1/2-cup soy sauce (go for the real stuff from an Asian grocery store that was actually made from fermented soy beans, so much more flavor!)
Garlic (~2-3 cloves diced fine)
What you do:
Mix up the marinade, and drop in the beef for at least an hour. Remember, slice the beef super thin. Start some rice cooking, and the clock is ticking at ~20 minutes, just enough time to bring it all together. Slice up the pepper and onions and set them aside for easy access.
Now, get your wok out and get it going at full blast, turn up the burner to 11, 10 just isn’t going to cut it. At this point you will want to turn on an exhaust fan, open a window and take the battery out of your smoke detector. Stir-fry is all about cooking food really fast, on super high heat. It keeps the meat from overcooking, and it gets the veggies hot, but they stay crisp.
Put some olive oil in the wok, and when it’s hot, drop in some of the black bean paste (a teaspoon full to start), break it up into the oil and let it cook for half a minute. This helps open up the flavors of the black bean. You can add it later, but it doesn’t taste as good. Now start cooking the meat, a little at a time, keep it moving in the wok, and as soon as it is almost done, dump it out into a bowl for holding for later (if you have a big arse wok, you don’t need to do this, but ours is small, and too much food in it drops the heat too fast). Each handful of meat should only take a minute or two. Cook up all the meat, adding oil and black bean as necessary to make sure all the meat gets seasoned.
Now, toss in the onions with whatever oil is left in the wok (shouldn’t be much), as soon as they are broken up in the pan, toss in the snow peas. Like the beef, keep them moving around in the wok, sitting=burning. The onions and peas will take 3-4 minutes to cook, but the peppers only need about 1-2 minutes tops, so… After 2 minutes with the onions and peas, toss in the pepper, and keep tossing in the pan. The rice should be just finishing up now, so toss the meat back in the wok and toss everything together. Serve it up and enjoy!
Black Bean paste:
You have some options here… We started out with pre-made paste, just scoop some out of the jar and you’re good to go. It tasted fine, but it had MSG in it. Then Ken gave me a package of just the fermented black beans, and suggested we make our own paste. It’s pretty easy, just take the black beans, and put them in a food processor and blend them with some olive oil, ginger and garlic. There is no precise ratio of the ingredients, so just go by feel, keeping in mind that the goal is to taste the black bean, not to mask it with garlic or ginger! You should be able to get either at a good Asian grocery store.
Ken and Curt are current and former coworkers of mine, respectively, and these two Chinese guys have started to show me the real way to do stir fry, fast, hot, and with tons of flavors. Curt introduced me to black bean stir-fry one day at lunch, and not long afterwards I tried making it on my own based on his recipe. I thought I was hot shit cooking with an ingredient that only had the nutrition information in English on the label, that is until Ken saw me eating it for lunch. After some mocking of my technique, he started letting me in on little secrets of the actual stir-fry technique, and supplying me with proper ingredients! So, after much learning, here is how to make some killer black bean stir-fry…
What you need:Beef for stir fry, cut super thin (we use top round, because we buy it in bulk from Costco) ~1 lb
One onion cut into strips, again, thinner is better, ~1/4” wide
One red bell pepper, did I mention stuff should be cut thin?
Snow peas, these you don’t have to cut
Fermented Black Bean Paste (more on this later)
For the marinade
1/2 cup dry sherry
1/2-cup soy sauce (go for the real stuff from an Asian grocery store that was actually made from fermented soy beans, so much more flavor!)
Garlic (~2-3 cloves diced fine)
What you do:
Mix up the marinade, and drop in the beef for at least an hour. Remember, slice the beef super thin. Start some rice cooking, and the clock is ticking at ~20 minutes, just enough time to bring it all together. Slice up the pepper and onions and set them aside for easy access.
Now, get your wok out and get it going at full blast, turn up the burner to 11, 10 just isn’t going to cut it. At this point you will want to turn on an exhaust fan, open a window and take the battery out of your smoke detector. Stir-fry is all about cooking food really fast, on super high heat. It keeps the meat from overcooking, and it gets the veggies hot, but they stay crisp.
Put some olive oil in the wok, and when it’s hot, drop in some of the black bean paste (a teaspoon full to start), break it up into the oil and let it cook for half a minute. This helps open up the flavors of the black bean. You can add it later, but it doesn’t taste as good. Now start cooking the meat, a little at a time, keep it moving in the wok, and as soon as it is almost done, dump it out into a bowl for holding for later (if you have a big arse wok, you don’t need to do this, but ours is small, and too much food in it drops the heat too fast). Each handful of meat should only take a minute or two. Cook up all the meat, adding oil and black bean as necessary to make sure all the meat gets seasoned.
Now, toss in the onions with whatever oil is left in the wok (shouldn’t be much), as soon as they are broken up in the pan, toss in the snow peas. Like the beef, keep them moving around in the wok, sitting=burning. The onions and peas will take 3-4 minutes to cook, but the peppers only need about 1-2 minutes tops, so… After 2 minutes with the onions and peas, toss in the pepper, and keep tossing in the pan. The rice should be just finishing up now, so toss the meat back in the wok and toss everything together. Serve it up and enjoy!
Black Bean paste:
You have some options here… We started out with pre-made paste, just scoop some out of the jar and you’re good to go. It tasted fine, but it had MSG in it. Then Ken gave me a package of just the fermented black beans, and suggested we make our own paste. It’s pretty easy, just take the black beans, and put them in a food processor and blend them with some olive oil, ginger and garlic. There is no precise ratio of the ingredients, so just go by feel, keeping in mind that the goal is to taste the black bean, not to mask it with garlic or ginger! You should be able to get either at a good Asian grocery store.
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