cheese + carbs = there are other foods??

you totally want to eat these

I wanted to try my hand at a biscuit / savory muffin / bun type thing today, and after spending ages scouring the internet for recipes, I realized I couldn’t find one that really grabbed what I was going for.  So I improvised using the measurements from a few other recipes as a guide.  The result is a super fluffy, moist, and light cheesy biscuit-type dealie.  We’re having these as a side with a massive salad made of peppers, tomatoes, cucumber, feta, toasted walnuts, and grilled chicken.  Yummeh.

To make the biscuits of win, you need the following:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon white sugar
• 2 tsps baking powder
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 tbsp dry mustard powder
• 1 tsp red pepper flakes
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 1/3 cup melted butter
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 egg
• 1 cup very old cheddar, grated
• 1/2 cup parmesan, grated

If the nutmeg seems weird to you, nutmeg is an awesome way to bring out the favour of cheese.  No idea why.

Mix together the dry ingredients, and then separately beat together the wet (not the cheese).  Add the wet ingredients to the dry, stirring until just combined.  Fold in the cheese.  The dough will be stiff and gooey.  Fill a greased muffin tray with the dough (I got a yield of 12) and bake at 400 for 15 minutes.  When a toothpick inserted comes out clean, you’re good to go.  They should get all pretty and golden on top with a bit of a crispy exterior, but stay fluffy and moist on the inside.  Serve them warm!

 

roasted garlic bread

Oh my hell — deliciousnes.

I wanted a yummy side dish for a simple pasta dinner tonight.  We had a simple whole wheat rotini with a roasted vegetable sauce.  Roasted veggie sauce is so easy — roughly chop about 2 red peppers, 4 plum tomatoes, and half a red onion.  Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with cracked pepper and fennel seeds, and pop it in the oven at 375 for about 40 minutes.  Afterwards, throw the whole shebang in the blender and whiz it up until it’s smooth.  Serve it over nice pasta and enjoy with some grated parmesan.  It’s fresh and really lovely.

i'd hit that

But I wanted something to make it a little more special, and I’ve also been meaning to try my hand at making bread again.  So behold: roasted garlic loaf.

This is a Taste of Home recipe and it’s easy if a bit of a time sink.  I will say that I didn’t want subtle flavour here so I doubled the herbs and tripled the cheese.  That made it significantly more awesome.  I also let the bread rise for about 90 minutes the second time, mostly because I wanted it to come out hot from the oven in time for dinner, but I think this gave me an even lighter, fluffier loaf.  Such a lovely bread with a perfect soft core and crisp exterior.  I could really eat this with anything.  The recipe makes two loaves, so I’m going to go ahead and freeze the second one to have with soup later this weekend.  I will report back with how it handles being frozen.

 

ninja makes Christmas dinner

I’m obviously excited about the holiday as I was home from the market before 7 am with the last of our Christmas goodies.  Once I go in search of juice and a few other things later today on my way to my volunteering gig, I will be ready to rock and roll for tomorrow.  Having done Christmas and Thanksgiving on our own for the last few years, my husband and I are starting to develop some of our own favourite holiday traditions.  Setting out on your own is fun, because you get to take the things you love about Christmas with your family of origin and make them special to you.

here's one i bacon'd earlier (sorry for the crappy cell phone pic)

Here are a few of my favourite tricks, tips, and traditions for cooking the Christmas feast.

1. Bacon.  Duh.  If you’re following the blog, the addition of bacon to the meal will neither shock nor surprise you.  This one comes from my family.  In order to keep the turkey moist, rather than using a cooking bag, covering the pan, or wrapping the bird in butter papers, I use bacon.  It seals in all the turkey’s own juices, adds a phenomenal smoky flavour, and is delicious.  Further note: this is the only acceptable use of the term “turkey bacon.”
2. Go boneless.  I have no earthly idea how to carve a bird.  When I carve something, the end result is an unappetizing meal and a lot of wasted meat.  Enter boneless turkeys.  We’ve been getting the President’s Choice Boneless Stuffed Turkey for the last few years; they cook from frozen, so they’re easier to manage, and some wonderful person came up with the idea to replace the bones with stuffing, so they’re more delicious.  They still look exactly like a regular turkey, because the leg and wing bones are left intact, but to carve it you just cut the whole thing in half and slice it like a ham.  It’s genius, I tells ya.  (This year, since it’s just the two of us, we went with a stuffed turkey breast; it’s supposed to feed six, so we’ll have leftovers, and with some bacon I’m sure it’ll roast up nicely.)
3. Flawless roasted potatoes start with parboilling.  Boil your potatoes in salted water until just pre-fork tender before tossing them into the roasting dish with the baconized turkey.  Then they only need to roast for the last 1/2 hour or so and because they go in the roaster softened, they absorb more of the roast drippings and thus are yummier.  Works with carrots, too, though they have a tendency to go all squooshy in the roast drippings (in an awesome way, I think).
4. Bacon up your sprouts, Mabel.

I haven’t yet decided on what to do about dessert — maybe a nice soft gingerbread cake like last year, or some banana cupcakes.  (I also made chocolate peppermint cupcakes for my husband’s work for today, so if we have some of those left over we may just enjoy them.)  Pictures of the feast to come, if the meal looks appetizing.  Otherwise, just imagine that it did.

Merry holidays!

 

lettuce-based salads and I are done, professionally

a salad can be a thing of beauty

I decided to try my hand at making a chopped salad.  We had a friend over for dinner last week, and I had already decided on making my famous burgers (with bacon and cheese right in the patty! let me know if you want more details) but I needed to fancy it up with a side dish.  Salad is always good with burgers, but can I just say that I hate hate hate leafy salads?  I lose all my foodie cred here, perhaps, but I just have never been good at observing the nuances between different types of lettuce.  They all just collectively bore the crap out of me.  Whenever I eat leafy salads I am slightly disappointed (unless the dressing is awesome), and I inevitably make a mess with a piece of lettuce the size of my fist somehow tucked into the bowl.  No thank you.

Chopped salads are great because everything is chopped to a relatively uniform size, meaning you get a different mouthful of awesome in every bite (and no wrestling with unruly oversized lettuce leaves).  For this salad, I used radicchio, avacado, cucumber, tomatoes, carrots, shallots, and dillweed.  For a crunch, I added toasted walnuts (roll ’em in olive oil, sprinkle with salt, and pop ’em under the broiler — watch them like a hawk, and take them out the second the colour turns).  I made a very very simple dressing of olive oil, balsamic vinegar (2:1 oil to vinegar ratio), chopped garlic, a squeeze of lemon juice, salt, pepper, and a pinch of sugar.  Toss the salad in the dressing and leave it to marinate for a good long time (at least half an hour).  The results are simply splendid.  It also makes a great main meal with some feta cheese mixed in and a nice crusty white bread on the side.