Archive | June, 2011

Pancake Party

23 Jun

 

One thing I get complimented on often is my pancakes.  I think this is funny, because pancakes are SOOO easy.  All you need is a few tricks of the trade.

Oh… and a little extra of a secret ingredient that isn’t so secret… vanilla.

I always like to make my batter in a measuring cup, because it makes it so easy to pour the batter onto the pan.  I originally used this measuring cup to mix vinegar with milk and let it sour (it takes 5 minutes, and adds a wonderful taste to pancakes!)

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And I love that the center burners pull out and a griddle pan locks in.  Makes for a lot more room to cook pancakes!

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I add extra vanilla to my pancakes which gives it a little extra somethin somethin.  Most recipes call for about half of what I put in, but everyone seems to like them when they are extra vanilla-y.

So what is the key to pancakes that are not overcooked but not raw on the inside?  Bubbles!  In the below picture, you can see a pancake just start to bubble with one little hole.

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You want to wait until it looks like that across most of the surface.

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So when you flip them over, they are perfection.  (Hint: if they are getting too brown before bubbling, turn the heat down… if they aren’t browned enough, turn it up.  If you get mass bubbling and no browning, turn them over to cook on the other side, then flip them back over to brown to your liking on the original side when the pan is hotter)

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Not everyone likes chocolate chips in their pancakes (I call these people “crazy people”) so I always make a plain batch and then mix in what I want (this is another great reason to use the measuring cup to pour… you can make small batches with different mix-ins).

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Mmmm pancakes.

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RECIPE

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Ingredients

  • 3/4 cup milk
  • 2 tablespoons white vinegar
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 2 tablespoons white sugar
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 egg
  • 2 tsp. of vanilla
  • 2 tablespoons butter, melted
  • cooking spray

Directions

  1. Combine milk with vinegar in a medium bowl and set aside for 5 minutes to “sour”. (I do this directly in the measuring cup)
  2. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Whisk egg and butter into “soured” milk and add the vanilla. Pour the flour mixture into the wet ingredients and whisk until lumps are gone. (I like this recipe because it’s one bowl and one measuring cup, which I re-use to pour the batter)
  3. Heat a large skillet over medium heat, and coat with cooking spray or butter. Pour 1/4 cupfuls of batter onto the skillet, and cook until bubbles appear on the surface. Flip with a spatula, and cook until browned on the other side.

 

 

 

 

Homemade Popovers… that worked!

21 Jun

Every once in a while I get a craving for pop overs.  My obsession started at BLT Steak, and I have since tried to make them myself, and found a restaurant in NYC that is dedicated to this fluffy baked good.

What makes popovers so wonderful?  They are crispy (and cheesy at BLT) on the outside and pillowy soft on the inside.  The first time I made them, they didn’t pop quite well enough and they were also a bit too eggy inside.  So this time, I decided to try a new recipe.

I read about a million recipes and reviews of those recipes and decided to try a classic one.  The tips said that it was best to put the popover tin in the oven while it heated (something about the popovers releasing steam when the room temp batter meets the hot cups, creating extra pop… but this was wildly contested and refuted).  Then before you pour in the batter, you pam and flour the cups (so they fully release and have room to pop).  So that’s what I did…

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Then I mixed up the batter (careful not to overmix)

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Then I poured in the batter and put it in the oven, turned down the temp when I was told to, and DIDN’T peak.  While it may be a wive’s tale, the #1 tip I always hear about popovers is that they can deflate simply by opening the oven door while they cooked.

But these just looked perfect.

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Total crispy poppage.

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And they slid right out of the cups and didn’t deflate! (SCORE!)

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They were so beautiful that I just kept taking photos.

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And the inside?  Perfect!  Mostly hollow with fluffy deliciousness.  A touch of butter and I just wanted to go and shout from my rooftop “I made popovers! And they WORKED!”

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RECIPE
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Ingredients

  • 2 eggs
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • Pam
  • Butter

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C). Butter popover pan and put it into the oven while it’s preheating.
  2. In a medium bowl beat eggs slightly, Beat in flour, milk and salt until just smooth; being careful not to overbeat.
  3. Spray the cups with pam and flour them
  4. Fill popover cups 1/2 full.
  5. Bake at 450 degrees F (230 degrees C) for 20 minutes. Decrease oven temperature to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) and bake for 20 minutes more. Immediately remove from cups and serve piping hot. DO NOT OPEN OVEN during cooking.

Otto

16 Jun

I have been to Otto 4 times now: Once for a wine tasting (awesome), once when I just ordered a plain pizza (dumb), this time below (f-in awesome), and recently where I repeated the wonderment of my order from the previous time.

I am now completely enamored with Otto, Mario Batali’s NYC “Pizza Place” (and not just because it’s Batali’s).  To call it a pizza place seems too plain… it can only be described as a super-duper-awesome place that happens to serve the best-damn-pizza when it comes to really unique pizzas and, oh yeah, has the most outrageous wine selection and olive oil gelato (more on that later).

Since it’s hard to explain any other way, here are the meny pages from the night we went.

First, the specials.

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Then the food

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Then the wine

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And another page of wine…

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And just in case you still haven’t found some wine…

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The space itself is pretty beautiful, with nicely laid out tables in the back (pictured below) and a great standing wine bar up front.

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And we happened to be sitting next to some of the biggest wine bottles I’ve ever seen.

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So how about the food?  We started with a selection of meats…

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And cheeses

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And a sampling of apps that sounded scrumptious (they were)

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And then the pizzas came out.  One is just a little more than a single person can eat as a solo entree.  If you’re hungry, you can probably polish one off, but I always recommend getting one to split and then getting a few other additions.  (We dined with about 10 people… so prepare for pizza overload)

First up was the prosciutto with arugula

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Then a good ol’ fashion original

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Pepporoni

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Mushroom

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White

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Clams

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(I found the fact that it included the shells very interesting.)

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And then… the pizza de resistance… the truffle, guanciale, and egg.

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This was so flogging good that I live in utter fear that if I return, it will not be on the specials menu, and then… I will cry. Let me put it this way… this is how truffles are meant to be.  The flavor fills your mouth and has such decadence to it that it tastes like you must be eating something that can only be described as other-wordly.  This pizza has turned truffle scoffers into truffle lovers.  I compare all other truffles to this pizza.  I sit here now, on an airplane somewhere between Denver and Los Angeles, hoping that for some reason we need to land in Las Vegas because I happen to know there is an Otto there.  It is just. that. good.  (FML… I’d trade my right arm for a piece of this right now)

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Ok… back to reality… er… dessert.

I believe this was the banana butterscotch coppetta made with butterscotch gelato, peanut brittle, coffee burboun sauce, and caramelized banans.

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Or maybe this was?

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Or this?  Gosh darn it! Someone at the table got that.  And then two other people go… two other things.

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And the rest of us got the trio of gelatos.

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A fantastic way to try the flavors you love

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And test a new flavor that youv’e never tried before… like olive oil.

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Olive oil gelato you say?  YES! Someone said I MUST get this and I’m so glad I did.  I made a few more believers on this evening as well. They put flaked salt on top and it is just mm mm good.

Oh Otto… how I love the.

Now hand over the truffle pizza and nobody gets hurt.

Total Nom Points: 8.5 out of 10 (9.5 for the truffle pizza)