Holy pancakes, Batman!

Breakfast for dinner is the best, and if you disagree I'll have to rethink our friendship. Right before I started making them I suddenly had the urge to improvise. As I've written before, I am a HUGE fan of Krusteaz pancake mix. Why? Because it makes absolutely perfect pancakes and can be purchased at Costco in 10 lbs bags. What more could you ask for? The one thing I would suggest is to never follow the instructions on the back for how much water to use. It's just straight-up wrong. Experiment, find the right texture for you.

Rather than make normal, delicious pancakes (boring) I looked in my fridge and pulled out whatever I thought would make for a delicious mix in. Settling on Kirkland Organic Strawberry Spread and Hershey's Chocolate Sauce I dumped the two in my Vitamix with some water, similar to how I made the apple pancakes.

The resulting chocolate strawberry pancake was absolutely fantastic. I found myself spooning the batter out of the mixing bowl, something I never do with normal pancakes. They weren't overly chocolaty and the slight tartness from the strawberries contrasted beautifully with the maple syrup from Sugarbush Farm.

Oh, and it doesn't hurt to use this stuff... I've been cooking everything with it recently. If you see it, buy it. Well worth the extra money, believe you me.

Dummy's birthday / Ice Cream Bonanza

Since Mother's day I've been on an ice cream tear. I'm certain I'll forget a few flavors, but I've made:

• Peanut butter ice cream with peanut butter swirls
• Mint cookies & cream
• Cinnamon spiced chocolate chip cookie dough
• Coconut ice cream with salted caramel swirls

As indicated in the Duck & Beer post, I used that as practice for Dum-dum's birthday (btw Dum-dum / Dummy is my sister). So refer back for the main course. As for dessert, I told Courto that I'd make absolutely any ice cream flavor she wanted. The result of her creativity was salted caramel ice cream with Nutella swirls. Behold:

The ice cream I've been making has been bonkers good. I know that sounds cocky, but seriously, it's delicious. So good that my girlfriend's mother literally told her entire family that the mint cookies & cream ice cream I made was the best ice cream she's had in her entire life, and apparently she used to work in an ice cream parlor.

I'm in the process of freezing a batch of orange creamsicle ice cream (made by reducing a bottle of Sunkist orange soda down into a syrup and adding that into the base). If the base is any indicator of how the ice cream is going to taste then we're in for a treat.

Duck & Beer

A couple of months ago I randomly bumped into a college friend and teammate who I hadn't seen since graduation. I can't quite remember how one thing led to another, but a couple weeks after that chance encounter I ended up at his place with another friend taking my first steps into the beer nerd world. I can still remember the taste and feeling that night of my first sip ever of a sour beer. Being a complete beer newbie I offered up my cooking skills to feel not like a useless parasite at beer tasting night. My buddy Andrew told me that he was planning to serve a flight of Trader Joe's Unibroue Vintage ale, 2011 through 2013.

After a lengthy discussion that in no way distracted me from more important things, we decided that it would pair particularly well with a darker fruit such as dates or figs. Having never cooked duck before, I decided to do sous vide duck breast with a balsamic fig glaze. Paired with that would be maple mashed sweet potatoes and sauteed spinach with garlic chips.

This meal served a dual purpose: it was my sister's birthday the next day and I was able to use this an test meal and to do 95% of the prep work ahead of time. The kicker for Courtney's dinner was the dessert. One more picture of the duck because it was beautiful:

Super late Mother's day post

Mother's day in my family is always celebrated with food. Since my mother moved to Florida we've used it as an excuse to eat extraordinarily well during her visits; Mother's day was no different. We went to her friend Diane's house where I was cooking with her boyfriend Philip. Philip grew up in the states on a farm that his super duper Italian grandparents, aka he might as well have grown up in Italy. His grandfather used to go mushrooming in the forest and bring back the freshest, most delectable mushrooms and his mother would cook absolutely brilliant food. As such, Philip is no slouch in the kitchen... he even inspired the change of the title of this blog (from 'Food Project' to "Will Work For Flavor"). A couple of days before the big day Philip called and we hashed out a plan for the meal. He'd be making the veggies and potatoes while I did steak and dessert.

Being Mother's day I wasn't willing to gamble with the main course. I sous vide some steaks and made Sri Racha hollandaise to go over them. Philp made green beans, oven roasted cauliflower, and hasselbeck potatoes grain. Everything was phenomenal, aside from it being pointed out that the hollandaise looked like Velveeta. Gross.

Where I did gamble was dessert. I had given up on making ice cream over a year ago but decided to give it another go, but not from the Ben & Jerry's ice cream cook book that I had used exclusively. This time I made a custard base, and boy oh boy did it open up a whole new world  for me.

My original foray into ice cream making failed because the ice cream was too grainy (ice crystals too big). While the texture wasn't perfect in this batch, it was completely smooth; the ice crystals were miniscule. Jackpot. I accompanied the ice cream with my browned butter chocolate chip cookies because my mother had never had them before. I barely remember her reaction to them, I was too busy in la la land dreaming of all of the ice cream I'd make.

Oh, and here's a pic of the fam. Grandpa looks so happy!

Pomme Purée - late post

Having never made a simple mashed potato recipe that I've been proud of I decided to try the french style of mashed potatoes, called Pomme Purée. They're essentially a rich and creamy cousin to traditional, fluffy, 'murican mashed potatoes. This was paired with bacon wrapped asparagus, sous vide steak, and some absolutely fantastic whole wheat sourdough made by my buddy Nate.

To make the mashed potatoes especially smooth I bought a potato ricer from amazon.com. It worked pretty well, however the end result would have been improved had the potatoes been cooked a little longer and put in a food processor at the end. Next time. Oh! I also used homemade chicken stock from the "Game of Thrones Dinner" bones to elevate the flavor in the mashed potatoes. Yummmmm.

Super late Easter post

The best traditions in my family all revolve around food, and Easter a day reserved for stuffing our faces with delicious lamb. My feelings about lamb are this: If you don't like it there is something wrong with your brain/taste buds. This was the first year that I decided to help with the food, and I made two sauces to go with the lamb: mint pesto, a family favorite, and tzatziki, a condiment that I'd never made before. Unsurprisingly I went to serious eats for the tzatziki recipe, and it was delicious. Unfortunately yours truly was a little... overzealous... with the mandolin and ended up slicing off the tip of my right ring finger. I am happy to report that, despite said trauma, yours truly managed to finish the recipe and we had both sauces that I intended to serve. I am not particularly proud to admit that I had to wait to finish said recipe until we returned from the hospital and that I nearly passed out not once, not twice, but three times. Luckily my uncle is a surgeon who works at said hospital (which is five minutes away from my grandparents house) so as soon as I mutilated myself he took me to his office and patched me right up. I debated posting a picture of the wound, but it's pretty gross so I'll spare you. Enough gross stuff, here's a picture of the mint pesto in process:

For those of you who don't know what Lent is, the crash course version is that it's a period of time during which many observers of various Christian faiths give up something meaningful to them. It ends the Saturday before Easter. Common things to give up for lent include booze, chocolate, meat, swearing, and sweets. My girlfriend, who was coming with to my family's Easter celebration, had given up sweets. In the middle of the Lent period she informed me that she was really craving coconut cream pie, so I decided to surprise her with one. My buddy Josh helped me make it, and it was delicious. I will say that the custard didn't set perfectly, so I made it again a week later and it was perfect.

Game of Thrones Dinner

When thinking about what to make for a Game of Thrones themed dinner I was cooking with my sister roast fowl kept coming to mind... I mean, what's more medieval than roasting an animal carcass nearly whole (aside from this)? Surprise surprise, I turned to Serious Eats that had a lovely tutorial on how to oven roast chicken. If you cut out the spine of a whole bird, effectively butterflying the chicken, and roast it on a wire rack at 400 degrees the thigh meat will hit 170 right when the breast meat hits 150, meaning that the chicken is cooked perfectly the entire way through and both thigh and breast meat are tender and juicy. I also smeared the skin with olive oil, salt, & pepper. It worked like a charm!

Apple, Cinnamon, & Nutmeg Spiced Pancakes

Continuing on the pancake route I decided to alter the Krusteaz mix yet again, this time by adding cinnamon, nutmeg, & apple pie spice to the mix. Results were ... well I'll definitely be doing this again.. Repeatedly. Although I'll probably use more cinnamon next time!

Apple Pancakes

For the first 2-3 years after my return to Boston I was pretty obsessed with pancakes. During those years I probably made somewhere around 500 pancakes (measured by the number of 10 lbs pancake bags we went through). I made a myriad of varieties, such as chocolate chip, banana, strawberry, and blueberry. I even got a bit fancy, making peanut butter & Nutella stuffed pancakes and a PB&J pancake sandwich (both of which were crazy delicious). I never, however, altered the mix. I always used simple, basic Krusteaz.

Let me be the first to say that there is NOTHING wrong with Krusteaz; in fact it's amazing. With the right amount of water (I have no idea how much water they recommend, I just go by feel at this point) it makes a light, fluffy, delicious canvas for maple syrup. I was about to make pancakes for myself one morning and I had the insane/brilliant idea to replace the water with blended apple (used 1/4 apple for 2 small pancakes). Now, some people will ask me why not just cut up the apple and put it into the pancake like I would with a banana. No. That would be all messed up texture wise. Gross. No thank you. I used my Vitamix to be certain there were no surprise chunks waiting mid pancake.

What I ended up with was a light, fluffy, delicious pancake with the exact same texture as a normal pancake that had a fantastic apple flavor to it. Yum!

Eggs Benedict continued

I'm still obsessed with my discovery of Sri Racha hollandaise and look for pretty much any excuse I can to make it. Dad has never had eggs Benedict before? Eggs Benny w/ Sri Racha hollandaise. Girlfriend leaving for London? Eggs Benny w/ Sri Racha hollandaise.

There are two differences for this rendition of Eggs Benedict... the hollandaise also had sea salt and paprika in it and the English muffins were fried in bacon fat (omgbaconfat 10/10 would do again).

Cinnamon french toast with a cream cheese glaze

List articles, generally speaking, are annoying; they're a cheap way to draw you in by making their pointless, mundane content seem more exciting. A very quick search on Buzzfeed's front page yielded several such articles, chief among with was "9 videos you can't miss this week". I can miss them, and I will, thank you.

Rant over, there are some list articles that are super awesome. The same quick search on Buzzfeed took me to "17 Ways To Eat More Nutella" and "27 Ways To Experience The Holy Matrimony Of Peanut Butter And Chocolate". These are obviously good things and make their list article nature tolerable. A couple weeks back my sister sent me the article "31 Life-Changing Ways To Eat French Toast". Now, when I see an article title like this I'm imagining people eating french toast while doing a split between two trucks moving backwards at ~30mph. Stupid title aside, the article had some awesome ideas for french toast variations such as Nutella and bacon stuffed french toast, caramel apple french toast, cannoli stuffed french toast, and cinnamon french toast with cream cheese glaze. Last weekend I recreated the latter and dayumn it was good. Quick question, is it playing with your food if you do it before you eat? SMILEY FACE!

Because the article has a link to the recipe I won't bore you with it here, but damn it was tasty. The cream cheese glaze had cinnamon and nutmeg and was bonkers. Yep, bonkers.

To go with the french toast I did scrambled eggs with aged cheddar and pan fried maple breakfast sausages from Walden Local Meat Co. If you're actually reading this terrible blog and haven't seen my post about them, I'd suggest you check it out. They're awesome and you should support them.

Grilled Cheese continued!

A few posts ago I wrote about making a apple-cheddar-bacon-egg-caramelized shallot gourmet grilled cheese. Aside from blowing my mind, it taught me that a grilled cheese is an awesome format for creative deliciousness that has to be explored further. Since then I've made two more... aside from the innards, the biggest difference is that I've fried these in the bacon fat from  said bacon. The first picture is cheddar, guacamole and bacon grilled cheese while the second is cheddar, avocado, heirloom tomato and bacon.

Also, it should be noted that I kind of cheat when it comes to grilled cheese making. This is how I guarantee that the cheese is nice and melted:

Ivy Championships and Nutella stuffed chocolate glazed doughnuts

A few weeks ago the Ivy Championships were held at Harvard so a bunch of my fellow Brown alumni were in town to watch. They came over for brunch and I decided to use them as guinea pigs for the Nutella stuffed chocolate glazed doughnuts I've been wanting to make. I was overconfident with my memory of the dough making process and messed it up pretty badly, but the concept totally worked. When I finally do this again and make the dough properly they're going to be aaammmaaazzziiinnngggg!

By the way, I did these by making the dough, rolling it about twice as thin as normal, applying Nutella to the center of the doughnut, putting two halves together and using water to create a seal of doughnut dough around the Nutella stuffing.

Walden Local Meat Co.

I don't understand all the fuss about companies like Facebook and Google saving data about us. If it means that they're able to use said data to provide targeted advertisements for things that will add value to my life I'm one happy camper. Facebook really knocked the ball out of the park by showing me an add for Walden Local Meat Co. In a nutshell Walden Local Meat Co.'s business is to deliver a monthly allocation of locally sourced grass fed meats right to your door. I got my first delivery earlier this week and have included a photo of the bounty below (I'm paying for 6 lbs monthly and received 7.5!). They also send you a cute little book with recipes and a thermometer. By the way, their customer services is phenomenal. Before signing up I had a few questions; they responded almost immediately with detailed and helpful answers.

2 x beef short ribs, 2 x country style pork ribs, 1 x maple breakfast sausages, 1 x ground beef.

For the first meal using Walden's meat I invited my sister over for some pork ribs. The book suggested slow cooking them in barbecue sauce, so I decided to cook them sous vide in a bag filled with Stubb's Smokey Mesquite sauce. We used this because it was 1) in our fridge and 2) didn't have high fructose corn syrup in it. The end result was actually really nice, the meat had a very nice smokey bbq flavor. Instead of using more sauce we simpy put the leftover sauce and juices from the sous vide bag in a bowl for dipping.



One of the sides was oven browned potatoes and sweet potatoes. In the spirit of going full fat kid I tossed them in bacon grease which unsurprisingly made whole house smelled like bacon. And the potatoes ended up with a really nice hint of bacon flavor. Yum!

Our other side was a mixed green salad with pear, gorgonzola, pecan and a savory fig vinagrette that my sister made. It was delicious.

Cinnamon spiced pumpkin pancakes

How can you improve Trader Joe's pumpkin pancakes? Add cinnamon. Seriously - try it. It's amazing. I woke up craving this not long ago but we didn't have milk, and only had 1/2 of the amount of mix necessary for the smallest portion you can make with one egg.

I planned on compensating for this by substituting water for the milk and by beating the egg pouring half of it out before adding it in. Unfortunately I was dumb and added way too much water so I had to compensate by adding flour, which would have caused the pancakes to not rise enough, so I added some baking powder as well. A little bit of cinnamon later we had some absolutely delicious pancakes ready for eats.

If you can look at that pancake and tell me it doesn't make you hungry/look ridiculously tasty we can't be friends.

Grilled cheese on crack

I got an email from my girlfriend recently that made my mouth water instantly:

Bacon + egg + onion + apple + cheese. Mind blown.

http://elitedaily.com/envision/food/these-insane-grilled-cheese-sandwiches-prove-the-possibilities-are-endless-photos/

Obviously we made it, and it was better than expected. I cooked the bacon in the oven at 400 until it was allllmost at the desired level of crispiness (so that when making the grilled cheese it would firm up that last little bit and get perfectly crispy), sliced cortland apples (because they looked the best in the grocery store), fried the egg to a nice over easy, added aged cheddar cheese, and topped it off with caramelized shallots. It was ridiculous. Ridiculously awesome.

I also made a cognac heirloom tomato soup but forgot to take pictures, which might be for the best. I don't have a sieve so in order to get rid of the seeds (for textural purposes) I put it in my Vitamix. Unfortunately the basil leaves made it look a weird brown color, so I added red food coloring to make it look more... reddish. The result was an orangey red soup that looked totally bizarre but was decently tasty the night of, and absolutely delicious after a couple of days in the fridge.

Marrow burgers

Sometime last year I was presumably drunk when Will Ford first told me about the burger at Craigie on Main. Obviously I wanted to go to Craigie and eat it (it's really is as good as you'd assume) but he suggested that we make a clone and he pointed me in the direction of a video made by Serious Eats profiling the Craigie burger. I've done it a few times now and the most recent iteration was the most successful.

In the above linked video Chef Maws says that they use "All grass fed meat divided into three tiers... very very very beefy, a little chew like short rib, and then sirloin type stuff, and shoulder type stuff. So we add in our own bone marrow fat and suet which adds really good beefy flavor and we put some dehydrated red miso powder on there. It's tremendous flavor and even if you don't know it's there it's the umami factor. It's heightening other flavors that are going on in the burger.

That's a lot and he says it really quickly. There's a great article on eater.com called "Anatomy of an Icon: The Craigie on Main Burger" which gives us a pretty simple equation for determining which cuts of beef to use:

(shoulder or chuck or brisket) + (short rib or hangar steak scraps) + (sirloin tips or another highly marbled cut) + bone marrow + suet. 

When making this burger I always go to Savenor's to get the highest quality beef I can find, and because I know that I can get bone marrow and suet there. I try to keep the ratio even between the different kinds of beef and the bone marrow/suet. You can get a sense of the ratios I use in this picture.

Dehydrated miso powder is actually the most difficult thing to find. That or my MSD is really bad (male search deficiency). My friend gets it at the Harvest Coop in Central Square, Cambridge. Now if you have time you can buy some red miso paste and dehydrate it yourself (which I'll probably do for a future iteration) but when you're not thinking days ahead the store bought version is perfect.

Normally the Craigie burger only comes with lettuce and onion for toppings unless heirloom tomatoes are to be found which mean summertime. Which is why I was hella confused when I saw these suckers in the grocery store. One of my childhood friends works in the fruit business and has since told me that they're from Mexico, but I seriously freaked out with excitement when I saw them. People looked at me funny in the grocery store. I was not ashamed.

I forgot to take a picture of these, but I got the sesame seed buns from Iggy's. They're awesome.

The process from here is pretty simple when you break it down. Grind the meats and fats together. Form the patties (don't pack them too tightly). Cook. The cooking can be a bit technical but it's not very difficult.

If you watched the video you know that monsieur Maws uses a CVap oven before frying the burgers. A CVap oven is essentially a low temperature, high humidity contraption. Because I don't have a professional kitchen my solution is to turn the oven to 350 and add ice cubes to a tray that I stick in the bottom of the oven. I then turn the oven off and let it cool. My reasoning behind this is that you can more liquid in the air at higher temperatures, so by the time the oven has cooled down to the desired 130 the air is hopefully saturated with water vapor. Hooray science!

The rest of the process is exactly what you'd expect. Fry the suckers in a big pan using a not inconsiderable amount of butter. I usually recruit (read: order) my friends to help with plating and the likes. The jobs are:

• Bun toasting
• Plating prep (getting the lettuce, onion, and tomato on the bun)
• Cheese stuffs

That last job is the most fun by far, but it has to be given to somebody you really trust. In this case I had my buddy Andrew do it... he's a PhD candidate in chemistry at MIT and somebody I have no qualms about handing my blowtorch over to. Or didn't until I saw this picture. The person in charge of cheese is responsible for cutting the cheese (hehe) and for melting the cheese with said blowtorch. I've found that this is the best substitute for not having a salamander.

16 people, 22 burgers, total mayhem. But super fun. I want to do this again sometime soon when I can relax a bit.

I'm turning into the [chocolate chip] cookie monster

Hand chopped chocolate. Warmed dough (to melt shavings into said dough). Yum.

I'm not going to even bother getting my hands on other chocolate as I mentioned in a previous post. That's how good the hand chopped block of El Ray Bucare was:

I do, however, think that I could improve them by simply making them smaller. I'd guess that they'll spread out less and I can end up with a more risen, fudgier cookie. I'm making 5 dozen cookies for my triathlon team for the triathlon expo coming up so I'll do a little experimenting there. Viva la cookie!

Doughnut tasting and eggs Benedict with Sri Racha Hollandaise

I had a very good morning recently. And by good I mean unhealthy. Said morning began with eggs Benedict with Canadian bacon and Sri Racha hollandaise. Unfortunately I didn't thicken the hollandaise quite enough round one so it was a bit runnier than optimal (as you might be able to notice see in the picture) but I put it back on the double boiler and fixed it for round 2. I am convinced that there is no better hollandaise that that which is made with Sri Racha.

After the brunch shenanigans a few weeks ago one of my friends suggested that I do a doughnut tasting which basically means that I was able able to make a ton of different doughnuts without suffering the consequence from eating them all myself. I did three doughnuts: glazed doughnuts (yeast raised), chocolate glazed doughnuts (baking soda raised) and apple cider doughnuts (baking soda raised).

The yeast doughnuts are the  most difficult and the most terrible... as in I threw them out after frying two terrible batches. I definitely messed up something serious because they did not proof properly, I'm guessing that the milk was either too hot or too cold when I added the yeast (hey, give me a break, I was in a rush). Turns out that I really need a ThermaPen.

The apple cider doughnuts turned out fantastically. They had a light and cakey texture and you could really taste the apple cider. Next time I do them I'll probably use more cider and cook it down more to get an even more concentrated flavor. The cinnamon sugar also somehow felt ... dry I guess? Regardless I'd have to label them as a success but I'm excited to see how I can make them better.

Now, the chocolate glazed doughnuts were not quite as big a hit as the apple cider doughnuts but in my mind they have the most potential. The texture and great and the flavor was great (I'm especially happy with the flavor given that I used cheap cocoa powder... I can't imagine how these will turn out when the cocoa is decent). I also just acqured a wire drying rack so they won't have clumps of dried icing on their bottoms anymore. And I've left the most exciting imrovement for last - I will stuff these suckers with Nutella. The plan is to roll them twice as thinly, cut then normallhy, put nutella on the halves and use a little bit of water to seal the halves together. Nutella stuffed chocolate glazed doughnuts. Now THAT is going full fat kid!

Dinner party

Last night we had a handful of people over for dinner (8 including myself) and the menu included:

• Sous vide filet with a blue cheese crumble
• Bacon wrapped asparagus
• Russet potatoes oven roasted in duck fat and thyme with thinly sliced shallot rings.

I'm really happy we didn't have any vegetarians over because I totally didn't realize that the meal was completely vegetarian unfriendly. Oops.

The filet was cooked at 131 for an 1.75 hours and seared with my blowtorch aka my attempt to make sous vide cooking manly.

The asparagus were wrapped in thinly sliced bacon and set in the oven for ... I seriously have no idea how long. Until they looked done? I'm really particular about my bacon and just watch it like a hawk until it's awesome. Because of the potatoes they were in the oven at 500 degrees for a time, then 400 degrees.

I pretty much had nothing to do with the potatoes other than finding the recipe and lending a small helping hand here and there because I had my friend Josh over to help (thanks Josh!). We followed serious eats recipe for ultra crispy potatoes. They were delicious but not as crispy as we hoped, I think that we left them in the boiling water too long.

Oh, and the wine didn't suck at all. 1998 Penfolds Bin 389 and a 2010 Colline Novaresi Barbera (which makes me realize how much more I need/want to learn about Italian wine).