Archive | Cooking RSS feed for this section

Maine Take 2: Wild Blueberries

14 Jun

A few months after going to Maine and blogging about all our Nomming adventures, my father and sister decided to take a trip back to our favorite state.  I was between two jobs so, at the last minute, I joined them.  This was nearly 2 years ago, and these drafted posts have sat in my Drafts folder since then. At first I was avoiding posting so much about Maine back-to-back, and then time just got in the way.  I cannot believe these are back from August 2010!

We are embarking on another trip to Maine this weekend, so I figured it was time to update!

First things first… if you are going to Maine, find yourself a roadside stand advertising “Fresh Maine Blueberries” and make sure you stop.  We wound up buying huge containers of these and munching on them throughout all our trips, including on our way home.

DSCF1699

They are smaller than grocery store blueberries, and packed with more flavor and bit of extra sweetness.

DSCF1697

There ain’t nothing like them!

And if they happen to be selling some jarred wild blueberry jam, I recommend you don’t pass that up either!

Tags: ,

Recipes with Homemade Bread: Grilled Cheese and French Toast

17 Apr

It was very exciting to have finally successfully made bread.  We gave one loaf away to friends, but that still left us with more bread that we could eat between the 2 of us.  So… it was time to come up with some meals that included bread.  Which led me directly to grilled cheese and French toast.

Grilled cheese was up first.  I browned some shallots in butter first.

DSCF7432

Then I sliced some apples very thin and layered it up with Gruyere and the shallots and placed each sandwich in a pan with hot butter to brown up.

DSCF7435

The bread was browning but the cheese wasn’t quite melting  yet… so I turned the heat down and let ’em melt.

DSCF7436

And melt they did.  

Boy were these good!  The sharp cheese combined with the sweet apples and shallots made for an incredible grilled cheese sammie.  The homemade bread browned up nicely and maintained a crunch on the outside with some fluff on the inside.

DSCF7439

Next morning it was French toast time.  I actually realized that I hadn’t made French toast in quite some time, and really didn’t remember exactly what to do.  One thing I always disliked about French toast at restaurants is when it is nicely browned on the outside  but still tastes like normal bread on the inside.  I decided that if I really buried these slices in the egg and cinnamon mixture and left it for a while to absorb, that should do the trick.  Problem is, the bread was so fresh and fluffy that it started to fall apart.  Damn.  Had to just make do.

DSCF7444

They browned up really nicely and tasted great… on the outside.

DSCF7445

The inside was still lacking in the flavor… so I vowed to learn a better way.

DSCF7448

It was just a few days later that I saw a perfect “How To” from America’s Test Kitchen. Turns out, if you bake the bread first to dry it out, that solves the problem that I saw and helps it absorb the right amount but not be soggy. (Here is their recipe)

Next time!

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Frying an Egg on a Salt Block

3 Apr

We like salt in this house. A lot.

And we like experimenting with random food things that probably have no good purpose taking up shelf space in our small NYC apartment.

But hell… why not?

So when my awesome sister got Mike and me a Himalayan Salt Block, we were excited.

1DSCF7487

What is a Himalayan Pink Salt Block?  It’s a big block of pink salt.  OOOOOOOO!

It also allows you to serve thinly sliced fruits, cheeses, etc on a pretty salt platter that adds a hint of saltiness, and, MUCH COOLER, the ability to heat it up and then cook food directly on it.

The rules… heat it slowly so it doesn’t crack, and get it to a high enough temperature that you can cook on.  You are supposed to put your hand over it and when you can’t keep it there for more than a few seconds, it’s hot enough.  We heated it for the requested period of time but the hand test proved that it wasn’t hot enough.  So we heated for another… hour… and it still really wasn’t hot enough according to our hands.  But… away we went.

DSCF7485

We decided to go with breakfast, and we had some pancetta just sitting around, so we tried it.  After a good amount of time, we realized it wasn’t going to heat it enough to make me feel confident about not eating raw pork, so we finished it in the pan.

DSCF7490

Next try?  Eggs!  We left the pancetta grease on there to add some flavor, cracked an egg into a small bowl, and got ready to fry an egg on a salt block.

DSCF7491

I would have a picture of what happened next… but when an egg flows off the block, off the catch pan below, and onto the stove and into a flame… the camera gets thrown to the side.

20 minutes of scrambling to clean up later, we decided we needed a way to contain the egg… so I went through the cabinet and decided the outside rim of a tart pan would be the right size of containment without foregoing too much surface area.

DSCF7492

Once the whites were sufficiently cooked, we removed the ring to allow it to cook up the yolk a little more.  It took… a very long time.

DSCF7495

And still could have probably been a bit more “done,” but I do love my runny yolk!

DSCF7496

When we tried to do more than 1 at a time, it got a little messy, but the ring worked at least!

DSCF7497

Conclusion?  Fun to play with, but probably not very useful.  It didn’t really add the saltiness we were hoping for to the egg and it was a bitch and a half to contain and to clean.

I think very thinly sliced pieces of fish or meat will work much better, and no more playing with things that run all over the place.

I am happy to have a much cooler version of a cheese plate though!  (And a huge paperweight)

Tags: , , , , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →