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!