Category Archives: Edibles

Cherry Galette

Here, have a recipe. This has been sitting in my drafts for months. I’m such a slacker.

pastry

1¾ cups flour
¾ tsp salt
¾ cup butter
cold water

mix flour and salt together. cut in butter with pastry blender. add water 1 tbsp at a time until everything sticks. divide in half. put one half in the fridge to chill. put the other half in the freezer so you can skip the pastry-making step the next time you want to make this. or you can make something else with it. regardless, pre-prepared pie crust.

(sidenote: maybe someone told you pie crust is hard to make? it’s so not. it’s like 4 ingredients, and one of those is water. just don’t start kneading it like it’s bread dough and you’ll be good.)

cherry filling

30 cherries, pitted and halved (cherry pitter, ftw)
¼ cup sugar
1 tsp almond extract
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp tapioca

mix everything together, and let sit until all the sugar has dissolved and cherries have macerated.

roll out pastry, place in pie plate. add filling. fold pastry into center over the filling.
brush with water and sprinkle with demerara sugar.

bake for ~30min at ~400°F. more or less. you know.

Cinnamon Buns

Recipe source: out of my head. MasterChef, here I come 😉

In small bowl, whisk together 1 cup of warm water, 1 tbsp olive oil, 1 tbsp honey, and 1 tbsp yeast. Set aside for a few minutes until the yeast puffs up.

In a medium-size bowl, stir ½ tsp salt into 2 cups unbleached flour.

Add yeast mixture to flour and combine. Turn your dough ball out onto a floured surface for kneading. The dough will be on the wet side at this point, but I think it’s much easier to add more flour to too-wet dough than to add more water to too-dry dough. ymmv. So, that said, have more flour on hand to dust the dough with as you knead. When it gets sticky, add more flour. Knead dough for about 5 minutes.

Coat your dough ball in more olive oil and place in a bowl to rise. (Don’t skip this step or you’ll be sad when you go to remove your risen dough from the bowl and it’s stuck.) Cover dough/bowl with a towel and place in a warm spot to rise. Come back in an hour. Set a timer so you don’t forget.

While you’re waiting, you can prepare the filling. Melt ½ cup butter. Mix in: 1 cup brown sugar, 1 tsp cinnamon, ½ tsp nutmeg, ⅛ tsp cloves, ⅔ cup dried cranberries, ⅓ cup walnuts.

Ding!

Ok, your dough is now all puffed up. Flour your surface again and turn the dough out onto it. It should just fall out of the bowl, but help it out if it sticks a bit. Using your hands (you don’t need a rolling pin), stretch it out into a rectangular shape. Spread the butter-sugar mixture over the dough. Try to get it all the way to edges.

Starting on one of the short sides of the rectangle, roll the dough up. Before you cut the roll, use your knife to (gently) mark 9 evenly-spaced slices. Tip: Start by marking the middle slice, then the 4 on either side. Once you’re happy with your spacing, cut.

Place the slices in a 9″x9″ pan. Cover and let rise again for an hour. (Set your timer again.) Near the end of the hour, preheat your oven to 400°F.

Bake for 15 minutes. Yay, all done. EAT.

Boston Baked Beans

When I was a kid, canned beans were one of three weekend lunch staples (the others being Kraft Dinner and Campbell’s soup, of course). Each can always had a single piece of fat, which I surmise allowed them to labeled ‘pork and beans.’ I don’t think this was as big a selling feature as the makers imagined. We called it the ‘prize’ as in “ew! you got the prize!” No one ever ate it.

Beans were second in the hierarchy after KD (like all Canadian youth, we had an irrational love for macaroni-with-powdered-orange-cheese). We ate them with Worchestershire sauce, a habit we picked up from a babysitter we once had.

As an adult, I somehow got roped into eating tomato sauce beans, which always tasted meh to me. I put it down to not being so keen on canned food anymore. That is, until I discovered there are two kinds of beans: the tomato sauce kind and the molasses kind. Aha! It was the molasses beans I wanted.

(My search-fu tells me the beans I remember were Libby’s, which has since been bought out by Heinz, makers of the bland tomato sauce beans.)

Rather than reverting to food in a can, which would inevitably be a disappointment, I decided to try making them. How hard could it be? Not very, it turns out. I used this recipe from Simply Recipes. I basically followed the recipe as-is, but I’m not going to say “exactly” because it always amuses me when someone comments on a recipe: “This recipe is great! I followed it exactly! Except… [long list of substitutions, additions, deletions].” lol. Anyway, here are my notes:

Step 1. I soaked the beans overnight and drained them.

Step 2. There were only 2 tbsp of Dijon left in the jar, so I used 1 tbsp of yellow mustard to make up the difference.

Step 3. I used 4 pieces of bacon, chopped up into very small pieces. Going for flavor, not unwanted “prizes.” (I think they’d be fine without the bacon, but would need to sub in some oil/salt.)

Step 4. I baked them in the oven in the big pot I make soup in (I don’t have a dutch oven. The pot worked fine. I don’t think the beans care what kind of handle(s) the vessel you use has ;)). They didn’t need any additional water, but I did check on them and stir them a few times. I took them out after 7½ hours, because they were done.

Verdict: delicious! Will definitely make these again. Super easy, just requires a bit of planning ahead.

Chocolate Chip Blondies

So you want chocolate chip cookies, but you’re feeling too lazy to roll out dough balls. Make these instead! Tastes like a chocolate chip cookie, takes minimal effort.

(I wasn’t sure what to call these. I was calling them Chocolate Chip Cookie Brownies in my head, but it seems like brownies-sans-cocoa are typically called blondies, so I went with that.)

In a small bowl, stir together:
1¼ cups flour
¼ tsp salt
½ cup chocolate chips
(optional) ¼ cup nuts

Set the dry ingredients aside.

In a second, slightly bigger bowl combine the remaining ingredients.

First, soften:
½ cup unsalted butter

Then, add:
1½ cups brown sugar

Finally, beat in:
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla

Mix in the dry ingredients.

Pour into an 8×8 pan and bake at 350°F for 25 min.

Potatoes + Eggs

So this has become my go-to meal when I don’t feel like cooking or it’s too late to make anything complicated or I’m at that “I need to go grocery shopping” stage. It was inspired by the photos in this post, but I hadn’t taken a picture of my (not-so-fancy) version until now. Double yolk egg! Had to take a photo of that:

And then… what? The very next time I made it… another double yolk? Yes, two double yolks in the same carton of eggs, and weirdly they both end up in this meal, in the same place in the pan. Insert spooky music.

Better photos the second time, I think. So anyway, here’s the recipe. Why do you need a recipe for such a simple meal? Well, I think I’ve tried every conceivable method possible for making home fries + fried eggs, but this way? They turn out perfect every. single. time. Also: zero mess. Win.

Ingredients:
cast iron pan
olive oil
1 russet potato
2 eggs
salt + pepper
sriracha

Method:
Preheat oven to 400*F. Chop russet potato (it must be a russet! skin on!) into cubes. Pre-cook in microwave until pokeable with a fork. Scoop potato cubes into cast iron pan (yes! it must be cast iron!) and drizzle with olive oil (not too much, just… enough). Toss the cubes around in the pan until they’re all coated in oil (la la la). Place in oven. Wait. Ok, gotta tell ya. I don’t time this. I go by smell. When you start to smell the potatoes cooking, take them out and give them a toss. Back into the oven. Wait some more. When the potatoes start to smell done, take them out and push them over to one side of the pan. Crack your eggs into the pan. They will half-cook when they hit the hot pan. Stick the pan back in the oven. This last step will only take a few minutes, so pay attention (unless you like hard yolks, in which case, wander off!). Otherwise, leave the eggs in the oven just until the whites set and then you’re done. Season to taste. Personally I’m a bit obsessed with hot sauce (currently the ubiquitous rooster sauce), so that’s a must, but ymmv. I’ve spared you the ‘after sriracha’ photo, since it looks a bit like a crime scene. Oh, right. The best part is that you eat it right out of the pan. No dishes! Just don’t forget to use oven mitts when you’re carrying it to the table 🙂

Sweet Potato Curry

I couldn’t find a recipe that was exactly what I wanted so I just made one up. Ended up pretty good, I thought, though it’s hard to go wrong with curry paste + coconut milk. I love that everything in it is yellow-orange-red.

Ingredients
canola oil
1 yellow onion, chopped finely
2 cups vegetable stock
1/2 cup red lentils
1 sweet potato aka yam, cubed
3-4 small carrots, diced
red curry paste
1/3 cup coconut milk
lemon juice

Method
In a 12-inch skillet, saute onion in a bit of oil until translucent. I added some of the curry paste at this point. Add the vegetable stock and lentils. It’ll be soup-like at this point, but that’s ok. I pre-cooked the sweet potatoes in the microwave for a few minutes just to make sure they wouldn’t end up crunchy. Add the sweet potatoes, carrots, and more curry paste to taste. Let simmer, stirring occasionally, until it thickens to a curry-like (vs. soup-like) consistency. Add the coconut milk. (To be honest, I didn’t measure this, but I think that’s about right, judging from the amount I had left over.) Simmer a few minutes more. I added a bit of lemon juice right at the end, for the sour in the magic sweet-sour-salty-spicy combo. Serve with jasmine rice. Makes 3-4 servings.

food. don’t waste it.

I saw this at The Kitchn and thought it was pretty cool. It’s a poster from WWI.

It and many others can be found at the Library of Congress website (as pointed out by a helpful commenter).

Deja Vu

So I’m perusing The Kitchn, as one does, and I see this post (Why This Is My Favorite Cake Pan) and I laugh because that’s my cake pan, or rather pans. I have two:

I’ve always said they’re the best and I’d never get rid of them, but you know what’s even better?

Pie plate with slider bar. Sure, it’s hideous. But it’s also awesome.

Orange Brownies

I’ve been playing with this recipe. It started as a basic brownie recipe, but I had this idea of using orange flavoring instead of vanilla, because orange + chocolate = yum, and I’ve kind of been obsessed with citrus zest lately. (Blame the Microplane.) Also, the recipe was a bit on the cakey side, so I decided to work on that, too.

1 cup unbleached flour
1/3 cup cocoa
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup sugar
3 tbsp orange zest (~zest of 1 orange)
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 egg, beaten
3 tbsp orange juice (~juice of 1 orange)
3 tbsp water
1 tsp orange (or lemon) extract
2 squares semi-sweet chocolate, melted

In a medium size bowl, stir together flour, cocoa, salt, sugar, and orange zest.

One ingredient at a time, add in melted butter, egg, orange juice, water, orange extract, and melted chocolate. Mix until thoroughly combined.

Pour in to 9×9 pan. Bake for 20 minutes at 325F.

Scooped Again

A few days ago I saw an ad for chocolate cream cheese. Damn. Another missed opportunity to get rich.

You see, I’ve always had the habit of snacking on chocolate chips when I don’t have any other dessert items around (doesn’t everyone?). Sometimes, I’d take a spoonful of peanut butter and a spoonful of chocolate chips, stick it the microwave for a few seconds, swirl it together, and voila! poor man’s peanut butter cup. (Actually better than the real thing if you find the real ones too sweet.)

A while back, I didn’t have any peanut butter, but I did have cream cheese. Hmm, I thought, chocolate and cream cheese = chocolate cheesecake. So into the microwave with slice of cream cheese and spoonful of chocolate chips, swirl it together, and yes, poor man’s chocolate cheesecake. That you can eat with a spoon.

So yeah. Someone really needs to hire me to be an ideas person.