Bombay Sliders!

Tonight's dinner is Bombay Sliders (turkey burgers with Curry-Garlic Sauce). I used THIS RECIPE FROM EPICURIOUS - Delish!

However, I totally forgot to by Hawaiian rolls to use as the buns. Doh! Luckily I was rising some whole wheat sandwich bread this afternoon, so I turned it into whole wheat english muffins!

The recipe is from the always delightful Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything (this is the whole wheat, english muffin variation on his Sandwich Bread recipe on pp. 228-230).

Ingredients:
1.75 cups all-purpose flour
1.75 cups whole wheat flour
2 teaspoon salt
1.5 teaspoon instant yeast
2-3 Tablespoon honey
2 Tablespoon softened butter, plus more for greasing the bowl
1 to 1.33 cups cool milk

1) Place the flour in the container of a food processor fitted with the steel blade. Add the salt and yeast and process for 5 seconds. With the machine running, add the honey, softened butter, and most of the milk through the feed tube (you'll probably need a little less than 1.33 cups since you are using honey, a liquid sweetener). PRocess for 30 seconds, then remove the cover. The dough should be in a well-defined, barely sticky, easy-to-handle ball. If it is too dry, add milk 1 T at a time and process for 5-10 seconds after each addition. If it is too wet, which is unlikely, add a T or two of flour and process briefly. Knead for a minute or so by hand.

2) Grease a large bowl with butter or oil. Shape the dough into a rough ball, place it in the bowl, and cover with plastic wrap or damp towel. Let rise for at least 2 hours, until nearly doubled in bulk **CLH TIP: My house is kinda chilly, so I like to heat the oven up to 170 and then turn it off, then let the dough rise in the warm oven.** Deflate the ball and shape it once again into a ball; let rest on a lightly floured surface for about 15 minutes, covered.

3) Cut the dough into 12 roughly equal pieces. Using just enough flour to enable you to handle the dough, shape each into a 3- to 4- inch disc. Dust with flour and let rise for 30 to 45 minutes, or until puffy.

4) Preheat a griddle or large skillet over low heat for about 10 minutes; do not oil it. Sprinkle it with cornmeal, then bake the muffins, a few at a time, on both sides, turning occasionally, until lightly browned; a total of about 15 minutes. Cool on a rack and split with a fork before toasting.

I'm not a master breadmaker yet, but these were OK. The sliders and sauce were YUMMY especially with Bubbie's Bread and Butter pickle chips. YUM.

Speaking of cake....

Today I made brownies. This is an adaptation of the Ghirardelli Award-Winning Brown Recipe, with a couple of twists.

You will need:
2 eggs
3/4 cup of sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 cup butter, melted
3/4 cup Ghirardelli sweet ground chocolate and cocoa powder
2/3 cup all-purpose flour (I actually used 1/3 all-purpose, 1/3 whole wheat)
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
*Using a spoon, stir the eggs with the sugar;
*Add the vanilla.
*Stir in the melted butter.
*Sift the chocolate powder with the flour, baking powder and salt and stir flour mixture into the egg mixture.

At this point, you could just spread the mixture in a GREASED 8 inch square pan. HOWEVER, I recommend this twist.

CLH TWIST: Spread half of the mixture in the pan - spread it all around so it covers the bottom of the pan. Then take some chocolate bars and place them flat on top of the brownie mix in the pan. I used one caramel bar and one orange-chocolate bar. Then spread the rest of the brownie mix on top of the chocolate bars, making sure the spread it out to cover the entire area of the pan.

*Bake 20-30 minutes or until just set. Let cool completely. (CLH TIP: I did wait to let them cool completely. oops).

THESE ARE RIDONKULOUSLY TASTY.

Mug Cake!

There are MUG CAKE HOW-TOs (like this one from WIRED) floating all over the web, but I figured my loyal readers (AKA my cat Baxshebo) would want the CLH seal of approval.

I made a yummy Mug Cake just this evening. Here's how:

*Spray a large-ish coffee mug with cooking spray

*Put the following in said mug:

-Nine (9) tablespoons of hot cocoa/hot chocolate mix
-Four (4) tablespoons of whole wheat flour

*Stir together.

*Crack an egg into the cocoa/flour mix and stir to mix.

*Add 3 tablespoons of canola oil and 3 tablespoons of water and stir well - make sure to scrape all of the dry mixture from the bottom and incorporate it into the batter.

*stir in half a handful of chocolate chips

*Microwave on high for three (3) minutes.

The cake will rise above the top of the mug before your eyes as it cooks. After the beep, carefully remove the cake-in-mug from the microwave (use a potholder - it will be hot) and dump the cake onto a plate.

Listen - this isn't about presentation. It's about having chocolate cake for stuffing down your gullet five minutes after your initial decision that you want chocolate cake. It tastes best hot and fresh!

Getting Comfortable in the Kitchen

At least for me, it was important to get comfortable in the kitchen before I started to try Real Cooking. This cooking in this blog is meant to be Real Cooking for Beginners, but I've been doing a much better job with Real Cooking because let myself become familiar with basic kitchen processes. Feeling like a dunce in the kitchen can be the CAUSE, not just the result, of Fail Dinners! So if you feel like a non-cook, you can start out slow like I did.

A great way to do this is making easy-to-assemble meals that only require you to really cook the toppings. One of the first things I did was make spaghetti (just boil it) with pasta sauce (just pour it from the jar) with meat (which you kind of have to cook). Pre-cooked sausages are the easiest! I like to use Amy's Chicken Sausage. Cut the links up into chunks. Heat up some olive oil in a pan, and sautee the sausage chunks in the olive oil. Then add your pasta sauce and sautee for a couple of minutes. As you can see, you are using pots and pans, and oil and ingredients, but you aren't really cooking. It's idiot proof and delicious, and you get pretty comfortable sauteeing.

Another really yummy way to get comfortable with the stove is "homemade" pizza. You can buy pizza crusts and pizza sauce packets from Whole Foods. Then you can create your own pizza with whatever cheese and toppings you want. This makes me feel like I have created a "recipe" - it's all about building confidence, yo. I like to use shredded mozzarella and sometimes gouda. I learned HOW TO CARAMELIZE ONIONS FROM ALLRECIPES.COM. Except I use a buttload of brown sugar. After deglazing once, I add a few slices of turkey bacon and a little more brown sugar and, if necessary, oil, and cook until the turkey bacon is crispy. This makes a really tasty, sweet n' savory Brown Sugar Caramelized Onion & Bacon pizza. After making this a few times, I felt pretty safe in the kitchen and moved on to the recipes you see (and will see) here!

UNAPPETIZING POST - Cleaning your shower drain

The shower in our master bedroom has been draining poorly for a while now. For the past week, I have been treating it with Bio-Clean, an eco-friendly, bacteria-based substance that is supposed to eat up all the organic materials that clog drains and also not hurt the seals or puppies or guppies or whatever. I have had good results with Bio-Clean in the past, but the situation has been pointing towards a plumber-call. I am against this because I just had to break down and call Mr. Handyman after a Fail Drapery incident, and I am a common law homemaker, dammit, so I plucked up my courage and suppressed my gag reflex and WENT IN THERE.

I put on a rubber kitchen glove (I love rubber kitchen gloves). I picked up a screwdriver and a wire hanger, with the hook part bent haphazardly. I unscrewed the floor drain on the shower...and, in three parts, dragged out a clump of hair equivalent in size to THREE DEAD RATS. Mind you, I was already pretty grossed out after Clump Retrieval Part One, for which I only used my gloved hand. Then I had to use the hook and boy was I unhappy about it. When there was nothing else to retrieve, I looked at my three-dead-rat-sized clump and tried not to hurl. Then I grabbed a plastic Walgreen's bag, did the dog-poop-pickup bag reversal move with the clump, threw the heavily soiled kitchen glove in there for good measure (hey - a single kitchen glove is still much less expensive than a visit from the plumber), tied it off and threw the whole mess into the garbage, shuddering.

If a wuss like me can clean her shower drain, so can you, following the above easy steps.

PS: If I didn't have so much hair left on my head, I would be disturbed by the sheer volume of hair that I clearly lost in order to create those three dead rats. I heard recently that pregnant ladies don't lose much hair, and if that is true, I am clearly going to look exactly like this when and if I am lucky enough to get preggo:

Bao!

So I was feeling adventurous last night and decided to try to make some bao.

It turned out really well. I wasn't completely in love with the improvised filling I made, but now that I know that I can make the buns I am really excited about making more delicious bao in the future. It takes some time; you need an hour for the dough to proof, and you make the buns by hand. But it's satisfying, fun and yummy.

I sort of combined two different BAO RECIPES (one from livejournal user chumas in the food_porn community and another from the excellent cooking blog The Cooking of Joy). The links are there, and here I'll tell you what I did.

1. I used the DOUGH RECIPE from The Cooking of Joy, omitting the glaze step.

2. During the rising hour, make the filling. I will probably try the Cooking of Joy's method of buying char siu sauce and putting it on pork next time. But since you asked, here's what I did this time: veggie crumbles (fake ground beef) & stir fry veggie mix & fresh onions cooked in one skillet in canola and a dash of sesame oil, and then mixed with with a crazy sauce of sesame oil, hoison sauce, soy sauce, a junk load of honey, powdered ginger (fresh would be even better), and a little sugar, all to taste, cooked in a separate skillet for 30+ minutes and "deglazed" with water at least once to thicken. Coat the filling with this sauce, and continue to reduce the rest for a dipping sauce.

3. Follow directions from Cooking of Joy for dividing up and filling the dough - I was only able to make 12 buns out of my dough. Once you have divided the dough, preheat your oven to 400, and start heating water in your steamer. Then start filling. If your filling is fairly wet, as was mine, you might not be able to close the bao as demonstrated on the Cooking of Joy, but I found it fairly simple to just pull dough from either side and seal in the middle, about three-four times all the way around. I just let them rest while I was making them - I didn't do the second, 20 minute proof step, though I did have to wait a couple minutes for the water to boil in the steamer and the oven to make it to 400.

4. I steamed half and baked the other half of my bao. I liked them both ways and will do this again! To bake (from chumas/food_porn): Arrange the balls so they're about an inch apart and bake in the oven at 400*F for about 17-20 minutes. Peek in around 17 and if the balls are a golden brown, they're done. Let rest for a minute and chow down. To steam (from Cooking of Joy), add water to your steamer (I used my stock pot with the steamer insert) and heat on high. Once the water is boiling, place the buns in your steamer and steam for 13-15 minutes. And chow down.

Cookies

Cookies scare me much less than bread. I've been making them for years. Here are a couple of delicious cookie recipes I've made recently and LOVED.

I've twice used this RECIPE FOR CHOCOLATE COVERED CHERRY COOKIES from awesome blog Lovin' From the Oven, and it is divine.

CLH TIP: Make sure to use 2 TEASPOONS of cherry juice in the chocolate sauce (like the recipe says) rather than two tablespoons (like I did the first time). Also, be sure to place the cherry halves cut-side up in the cookie divots.

Most recently I made really chewy, yummy, WHOLE WHEAT CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES from the also awesome blog Serious Eats.

CLH TIP: It's OK to eat more of these because they have whole wheat flour in them*

*may not technically be true