Brussels Sprouts

Brussels sprouts have a bad rap. They're one of those things that foodies seem to like, but normal people hate, and it doesn't have to be that way. They can be tasty and easy to prepare, really. First a little background because Brussels sprouts have a cool history.
Brussels sprouts may go as far back as Roman times, though they were probably modernized in Belgium in the 1300's. That's why they're Brussels sprouts by the way, not Brussel sprouts, which is what I thought they were when I was a kid, they're named after Brussels Belgium where they were grown and became popular. They came to the U.S. with French settlers to Louisiana, which might make them sort of a Cajun food. That's pretty weird if you know anything about Cajun food and Brussels sprouts. They're related to cabbage and broccoli and kale and all of those other green leafy things that we love to eat. Enough history, on to the cooking!
There are a few ways to cook your sprouts, but this is the method that I've settled on through some reading and much trial and error. Most people, and most methods, over cook the sprout and it gets mushy and that's not good. You want them to be cooked, but still a bit crisp, it takes practice and it's worth it.

These are good. Honest.

Sauteed Brussels Sprouts
1 lb brussels sprouts (or whatever you want to cook)
2 tbs or so of bacon grease
a dash of garlic salt.

Start by cutting the lumpy end off of the sprout. This will also release the outer layer of leaves, pitch both of those. Heat up a pot of water to boiling and throw the sprouts in for one minute. Drain them and run them under cool water. Cut the sprouts in half lengthwise, if you boiled them too long they'll be cooked all the way to the center, you don't want that. You want them to be cooked only about 1/3 of the way in. They should still feel crisp when you cut them. Throw your bacon grease in the pan and heat to medium high. This is why we're using bacon grease by the way, more that it's delicious flavor, is it's high smoke point. If you don't have bacon grease (and I feel sad for you if that's the case) then you can use half veggie oil and half olive oil. If things start to smoke then turn down the heat until they don't. Sprinkle the garlic salt in the pan and place the sprouts in the pan cut side down and let them sizzle, checking them every minute or so until they brown. Serve warm and enjoy. If you like, sprinkle some Parmesan cheese over them, it's delicious. If you try this and don't like it, don't give up, there are other ways out there to cook Brussels sprouts, you just need to experiment until you find one you like. I do hope this is the one you choose though, I think they're yummy.

Macaroni May #4

This week I'm continuing on with the theme of very quick pasta based meals. Meals you can cook in less than 20 minutes that taste good, are balanced, and you can feel good about feeding your kids.

Chicken Alfredo and Green Beans

The key to this meal is to cut the chicken thin, and cook it hot. Start your pasta at the beginning because, as usual, it's what's holding up the show. Cut the chicken thin and cook it hot in a pan with a bit of olive oil and some garlic salt. You want it to be hot enough that the oil is not quite smoking. It only took me about 5 minutes to cook three sliced chicken breasts in a pan once it was hot. Nice, cooked through, and browned. Perfect. While that's cooking start a big pot of water to boiling to blanch the beans. Blanching is simply cooking them for just a short time in boiling water, and then cooling them with cold water. If you did it really properly you'd cool them all the way down to stop any cooking action and then heat them gently right before eating. Cooking them like this gives them great color and keeps them crisp, sort of half way between raw and cooked as far as texture goes. When doing very quick cooking like this, I boil them for 1-2 minutes and them cool them to just warm and serve, it's fast and is my kids favorite way to eat beans. Top with butter or Parmesan cheese and they're perfect. I always snip the ends off the beans, I'm not even sure why, but it's the way I've done it since I was a kid and I sometimes wonder if the beans will explode if I don't. I'm not willing to take that chance, so I snip, and that's the hardest work for this whole meal. The last thing to get ready is the alfredo sauce. As usual I use sauce mix from a packet and I add a dash of liquid smoke to it and one tsp of lemon juice per packet of sauce. It makes all the difference in the world. Two sauce packets work well for our family of 6. Finish up by adding the chicken to the sauce, drain the noodles, add them, and plate everything. It's a crazy few minutes in the kitchen, and a little slower than last week at 18:43, but still fast enough to get us all out the door for soccer. This is another meal that my kids eat fast, and that's always a plus.
We've got one more week in macaroni May, and I've got something completely different, and even faster, in mind.

Macaroni May #3

Middle of the month and I'm working on knocking some serious time off dinner. There are days when an extra five minutes can make a difference. With that in mind, I switched pasta type this week to a thin spaghetti. I personally don't like the texture quite as well as macaroni and it doesn't hold the sauce as well, but due to it's very thin dimensions, it cooks quicker.

Pesto, Pasta, Prawns, Portabellos, and Peas

The meal this week looks and sounds fancy, and it sort of is, but it's also very easy and super quick. The pasta is self explanatory, start it first. The peas are boiled in water in the microwave. The pesto sauce comes from a jar which is probably cheating on some level, but not really. While all of that is going on, take one pound of the smallest thawed raw shrimp you can buy, and cook them in a hot pan with olive oil and a little garlic salt. It only takes a few minutes to turn them pink and when they're pink, they're done, don't over cook them. Pop them out of the pan and while it's still hot, put in the mushrooms. Use fresh ones, sliced. If they're holding a lot of moisture then they'll cook in their own juices, if they're dry then add a little olive oil to the pan. Again, they cook very fast, so pay attention. Toss the shrimp, mushrooms and finished pasta with as much pesto as you like. I only use 3-4 tbs for the whole recipe for the kids because their gentle little taste buds get overwhelmed. For me, I use more. Serve with peas on the side and you have a quick alliterative meal. This cooked up in 16 minutes and 42 seconds and I was so happy with myself that I had to give me a high five.

Macaroni May #2

Last week I set the bar at 20:55 for preparing a quick meal. This week I made a better meal and I beat that time, barely.

Sausage Spaghetti and Broccoli
One jar spaghetti sauce
Some sort of pasta
One pound of sausage
Broccoli
I won't insult anyone's cooking ability by explaining how to cook this meal. If you've managed to keep your kids alive then you can handle it without my help. 
Simple spaghetti is nothing more than noodles and a jar of sauce. It's not bad, but adding meat to it makes it taste better and it makes it a more complete meal by adding a protein source. Ground beef is traditional, but sausage is better. I use a turkey breakfast sausage because my kids don't like things that are too spicy, but I think Italian sausage is best. You can brown it in a pan in less time than it takes to cook noodles. For veggies, I steamed broccoli. You can cut the heads up while the water heats and it too is done before the noodles. In fact, the noodles are the slowest part of this whole operation and nearly caused me to miss my mark. I finished the meal in a terrifyingly close 20:44. I think I need to switch pasta types next week if I really want to bring my times down. Some sort of thin spaghetti perhaps. 
Anyway, the point is that in a shade over twenty minutes I was able to cook up a meal that had a protein, a starch, and two vegetables (sort of) one of them fresh. It was a meal that was eaten fast and everyone made it to soccer on time. We were actually a few minutes early. I'm really enjoying the process of optimizing meals for cook time. Wait until you see what I have on tap for next week.

Macaroni May #1

May is here and with it comes sports and cramped schedules. If you've got practice in the evening then there is precious little time between when the kids get home and when they go out again and it's hard to find the time to cook food that doesn't suck. One of the great fall back foods is macaroni and cheese. You keep in in the cupboard, it's always there to be ready to eat in 20 minutes, the kids always eat it fast. The only problem is that it sucks. It's not good nutritionally, it has way too much artificial stuff in it, and it's hard to feel like you're doing good parenting when you make it. At least for me.
What to do?

It's ok, but I can do better. Much better.

I'm convinced that macaroni isn't the cure all that it seems to be. In the same 20ish minutes that it takes to make a box, you could actually make a good dinner with better food, or at the very least, supplement the macaroni so it's only a minor player in the meal. The first order of business in Macaroni May is to set a cooking standard. How much time does it really take me to make macaroni and cheese, from pot on the stove to macaroni on the plate. In that time can I prepare add on's that make the meal not suck so much? In that time can I make whole other noodle based meals that are awesome? Nutritious and delicious? 
For a calibration meal I made a box of macaroni and cheese and added ham steak and frozen mixed veggies. On my sucky electric stove it took 20:55 from the time I turned the water on to when I started scooping the macaroni out. A gas stove would be faster, but I don't have a gas stove, I have a sucky electric stove, so that's my calibration time. The veggies I boiled in water in the microwave and that only took 8 minutes. The ham steak took about 10. If you haven't had ham steak, look around your store and find it. Instead of buying a whole ham, you're essentially just buying a thick slice off the big end of the ham. It's cheap and you don't have a whole ham to deal with. Fry it in a pan in it's own juices until it's warm. Done. It's not the best meat in the world, but it's quick, it's protein, and pretty much all kids will eat ham fast enough to get out the door for soccer. With this meal I had a big pile of veggies, a protein source, and a smaller pile of macaroni and cheese. Nutritionally it's so much better than just making a couple of boxes of macaroni and it doesn't take any longer. It's not the best meal in the world, but it gets us out the door on time and it's fairly well balanced. It's also a great baseline. I've got four more Tuesdays in May to write about food. Can I make better, tastier, more nutritious meals, that are still based around cheap pasta in less than 20:55? I think I can. I think I can pretty much kick macaroni's ass. Stay tuned.

The Briney Deep

This makes meat better.

Note: This is another requested post. My wife got all bent out of shape when I said that she should brine some chicken breasts before she baked them the other weekend. She insisted that I hadn't revealed the secrets to how I brine things and suggested that I was hoarding knowledge so that I could remain valuable around the house. She might be right, but here it is anyway.

Brining meat is simply the act of soaking meat in water that has had salt added to it. Most people know it from ham, hams are brined and that's part of why they are delicious. In addition to salt, adding sugar and liquid smoke will dramatically improve the flavor of almost everything. I brine beef and chicken and shrimp. The only thing I don't brine is pork because pork is awesome just the way it is. For a better explination of brining than I'm capable of giving you, read this.

Brining meats, a primer.
First some rules:
1. Thawed meat only.
2. You need enough water to cover the meat.
3. The thicker the meat, the longer the brine. Shrimp for 30 minutes or so, chicken breasts for an hour, beef roast for three. Interpolate everything else from this.

Take your meat and cover it with water in some container that holds everything. Keep track of how much water you add. For every quart of water, add equal parts table salt and sugar, 1/4 cup to the quart. Add 2-3 shakes of liquid smoke per quart as well if you want too. It makes it taste better, so you probably want to. Cover the meat, put it in the fridge for the allotted time, pull it out, dry it off and cook it. It's just that simple. There's some osmotic pressure differential thing driving moisture and sugar and salt and liquid smoke into the meat. It will be moister and taste better compared to an unbrined piece of meat. If your recipe calls for salting the meat when you cook it, back off a bit so things don't get too salty. For a slightly different flavor, substitute honey or maple syrup for the sugar (about half of the amount of sugar you would have added.
When you have the time, brining meats before you cook them will make them better. I think it's the single biggest reason that restaurant meats taste different than things cooked at home. Use what I have here as a guideline, but not as a final answer. Brines can be as simple as just salt in water or can involve a list of spices and buttermilk and god knows what else. Look around on the internet and in cookbooks. Apply techniques from one recipe to another, from one meat to another. This is good stuff.

Bread Crumbs

Leftover bunny bits.

Last week I wrote about making bunny sandwiches. You might have noticed that the finished bunny sandwich was much smaller than the piece of bread that I started with. After noticing that, you might have wondered what I did with the leftovers of four loaves of bread missing only bunny shaped centers from them. Bread crumbs.
Bread crumbs aren't rocket science. They're literally just the crumbs of bread. I usually save the butts of my loaves of bread and put them in a bag in the freezer until it's full and then make bread crumbs. That's what I recommend everyone do as bread crumbs are useful for meatloaf and chicken nuggets and all sorts of stuff. Making the butts into bread crumbs is easiest with a food processor, and that's the method I use.

Bread Crumbs
One bag of bread butts, or bunny cutouts, thawed.
Oven at 200 degrees.
Food processor.

Breadcrumbs. Ingredients for good food.

The drier the bread is the better it will break up. Heat your oven to 200 degrees. Lay the bread out on a few cookie sheets not overlapping too much. Place the sheets in the oven and wedge the door open a crack with a wooden spoon. Bake them for 20 minutes and check. When they're dry, they break. Take them out and break them into smaller pieces and cram them into the food processor. Grind them into oblivion. Bag them back up and put them back in the freezer until you need them. You could get creative and add spices to them and make them Italian bread crumbs, or herbed bread crumbs or something. I don't do this to a whole batch. I prefer have a big bag of plain ones and then spice them as each recipe calls for it. If you know that you're making them soley for meatloaf or something like that, you could combine the meatloaf spices right into the bag. That way you simply need to mix the meat, the egg and the milk and presto!, you're done. Just an idea.

Save your butts, use them for cooking. Make bread crumbs.

Bunnies

So many bunnies....so many....

I was asked to cater a snack for the preschool party for my four year old last Thursday . Ok, that's not exactly true, what really happened is that I signed up to be the head of the party at the beginning of the year, then I forgot, then I was reminded by the teacher on Tuesday. Ooops. So I had to do some quick figuring and get something together that wouldn't suck. This is pressure time, I feel like I'm representing all stay at home dads, and any deficiency that I might have in putting this together could reflect badly on stay at home dads everywhere! All of them! In the whole world! Maybe that's too dramatic, anyway, I settled on grapes, orange slices, cheese cubes, and turkey sandwiches. I also made sugar cookies to frost for desert. Not exactly ground breaking stuff but a fairly well balanced meal and most kids can find something they like to eat. It sounds simple, but for some reason I can never do things the easy way.
First I buy all the stuff, then I have to get it ready. The cheese is easy, just chop big blocks into little blocks, then bag them. All I have to do is not cut myself. Nearly pulled that off. Quick bandaid and it's on to grapes. Those are the easy too, pluck them, check for stems, rinse and bag. No problemo. On to oranges. All I have to do is peel about 60 oranges. Crap. Not technically difficult but holy cow does that take a while. On to sandwiches, and where I get derailed. Sandwiches are fine, but wouldn't bunny sandwiches be better? Yes, yes they would. Using a cookie cutter I cut out the turkey. Easy. Now I need to cut out the cheese, but I don't want to make the sandwiches until right before the party, because I don't want them to get soggy. So I unwrap each piece of cheese, cut out the bunny, and then wrap it back up. Next I cut out the bread, and while I only had to cut out 48 pieces of turkey and cheese, I have to cut out 96 pieces of bread. Bread doesn't cut as well with a cookie cutter as you might imagine, not even fluffy white completely nutritionally deficient bread, just so you know.
I did get it all done (I even made sugar cookies in the shapes of bunnies and flowers during all of this) and brought it all into school. I spent the 20 minutes before the party assembling all of the sandwiches so they looked perfect. Then I passed out the food, and quite frankly, it was perfect. It was healthy and cute and everything that you could possibly want in a preschool party snack. I'm very happy with how it all turned out, but I'm glad I'm not signed up for the next party. At least I don't think I am.

Bacon Corn Bread Muffins

This is one of the recipes that my wife thought up during our spring break bacon week. We were eating bacon almost every meal, and it was getting hard to come up with new things. For a starchy side I decided to make corn bread muffins, my wife suggested I add bacon to them. Bacon corn bread muffins, that's a good idea! Nothing revolutionary, you're just adding bacon to corn bread and cooking it in a muffin tin, but they were delicious. They really are much better than regular corn bread muffins, and that's saying a lot, because corn bread muffins are delicious to start with. I use Jiffy brand corn bread mix to make my muffins. I know, you're all sitting there slack jawed at the thought of me baking from a box, but let me explain. They're good. I've tried a half dozen other corn bread recipes from scratch, and none of them are as good as Jiffy. It's cheap, it's made in Chelsea Michigan, and I'm a fan. I make no appologies.

Bacon Corn Bread Muffins - makes about 9 muffins
1 box Jiffy Corn Muffin mix.
1 egg
1/3 cup milk
3 slices of cooked bacon, chopped finely
Mix the box mix, the egg and the milk, add the bacon and mix. 
Let it sit for five minutes. Really, it's important, it makes the muffins better.
Restir gently and fill muffin cups 1/2 full. Using paper cupcake liners keeps them from sticking, highly recommended.
Bake 15-20 minutes until golden brown.

Corn bread muffins are good.
Bacon corn bread muffins are better.

Watch Your Dough Man!

Release me........

In my unending quest to promote home bread baking, I want to show you what happens if you forget that you have dough rising for a couple of extra hours. It's not ruined, it just gets big and climbs out of the bowl. Ooops. I punched this batch of dough down and put it in the pan for it's final rise and it turned out great. If you're running a bakery, consistency is really important, people want to buy a consistent product. If you're making bread at home, you can ignore a lot of what you read about baking bread. Too much water? It'll be fine. Too stiff? Probably be okay too. Too little yeast? Things will just take longer. Too much yeast? Things happen faster. First rise too short? Second rise will take care of it. First rise too long? Punch that sucker down and forget about it. It turns out that baking bread at home isn't as precise and demanding as all of those bread books will have to believe. All you need is some flour, water, salt and yeast (either tame or wild) and you're good. Everything else about bread can vary quite a lot and it'll still turn out fine. There's some sort of allegory for life and parenting here, but I'll be darned if I know what it is. There are lots of different routes to great bread, and great kids, and a great marriage, sometimes you've just got to give it a go and be happy with great results, even if they're not quite what you expected when you started.

Strawberries and Whipped Cream

Strawberries and whipped cream is such a simple delicious dessert. It give your kids a serving of fruit and a kick of healthy dairy based fat with very little sugar. In order for it to really be good, you need to make whipped cream from scratch though. It's quick, easy and it's always better than anything you buy in a plastic bowl or a spray can.

Whipped Cream - From Betty Crocker's New Cookbook
For 1 cup of whipped cream:
1/2 cup heavy/whipping cream
1 tsp powdered sugar (granulated will work, but powdered mixes in better)
1 tsp vanilla (optional, but not really because it's soooo much better with vanilla)
Put it all in a chilled bowl and whisk until you get whipped cream. That's it. Really. Whip longer for stiffer whipped cream, less for softer, we all have our preference. Too much and you end up with butter, so be careful. If you have a mixer with a whisk you might need to make a double batch with one cup of cream to really let the mixer make enough contact with the cream to whip it. Experiment. Also, you can vary the sweetness of the whipped cream. Less sugar when you're putting it on something sweet like angel food cake with chocolate syrup, more sugar with something like tart berries. You can add all sorts of other extracts like lemon or mint instead of vanilla if you want to get all crazy. Whipped cream is extremely simple and yet has the option to go wherever your imagination can take it.
I'm a little shocked that people buy whipped cream to be honest. We almost always have a quart of cream in the fridge and whip up a batch whenever we have something to put it on, at least once a week. Pull out a whisk and a bowl and make some whipped cream this weekend to put on something. Strawberries are easy and healthy. Your world will be better for making your own whipped cream, I promise.

Bacon Week

It's spring break this week and due to an overlap of my wife's work commitments and my exceptionally poor planning we're not taking any trips. It's not that we're not doing anything, there's a lot of sword fighting and robot programming and that sort of thing going on, so we're still having fun. We're also having bacon week.
We get up and make bacon for breakfast on most weekends. It's such a lovely meat. This weekend we were sitting down to eat it, and my wife commented that since we were home this week we could have bacon every day. She meant it as sort of a joke. I took it as a challenge. Saturday and Sunday we had bacon at breakfast. Monday we had grilled bacon and cheese sandwiches. Tonight we're having bacon and spinach stuffed pork roast. Tomorrow will probably just be bacon for breakfast again though I may head off and find a recipe for bacon muffins or something depending on my motivation level. Thursday is bacon pizza. Friday I'd like to do something with bacon and seafood. Maybe bacon wrapped shrimp, maybe some sort of bacon and salmon dish. People don't mix bacon and aquatic foods as much as they should. That would be a whole week of bacon right there, but I'll probably extend it into next weekend just because I can. Nine days of bacon.
There are no recipes in this food post because I haven't cooked anything bacon related yet that is deserving of one. I will pass on a bacon related tip though. All of that bacon grease that's left in the pan when you're done cooking, save that. Put it in a jar and put it in the fridge. It's the best oil ever for making popcorn the old fashioned way in a pan. The smoke point is high and it makes the popcorn fantastic. Do this, your life will be better for it.

Dumplings

There are a few different foods that are referred to as dumplings. I haven't made Asian style dumplings yet and apple dumplings are for another post. What I'm writing about today I call traditional savory dumplings. They're very similar to biscuits, but they're cooked right on top of a lightly boiling stew or soup. They add a bit of thickening to the stew and they're simply fantastic. Other than their taste, their main advantage is that they don't require any extra pans making cleanup just as simple as before. These are the simplest easiest way to add a home made starch to your meal from both a prep, a cooking, and a cleanup standpoint. What's not to like?

Basic Savory Dumplings - from King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion
Note: This is is double batch which is perfect for my family of 6 in a 10 inch pot. Adjust as needed.

Ingredients:
One pot of lightly boiling stew or soup
2 cups flour
1 1/5 tsp salt
1 tbs baking powder
4 tbs butter
1 cup milk

Mix the flour, salt, and baking powder in a bowl. Cut the butter into small pieces and cut into the flour mixture with a pastry cutter or pastry fork or whatever technique you would normally use to make biscuits. I prefer a pastry cutter. Add the milk and mix gently until it's all stuck together. Let it stand for 10 minutes. Using a spoon or your fingers, drop balls of dough about the size of a golf ball into the stew. I get between 8 and 15 balls depending on the mood I'm in. Doesn't seem to matter, it always turns out great. Let the dumplings cook uncovered in the simmering stew for 10 minutes uncovered. Cover and cook for 10 more minutes. Remove from heat and serve.
If you want to spice things up you can add a bit of garlic powder or rosemary or a pinch of cayenne pepper or whatever sounds good. Different soups are complimented by different flavors so experiment and see what you can come up with. Dumplings are fantastic.

Fried Zucchini

There are very few foods that feel as weird as battered deep fried vegetables. You take something that has an aura of purity and healthfulness and then you do about the worst thing you can possibly do to it, make it starchy and greasy. Why? Delicious, that's why. I'm not suggesting that your daily intake of veggies should be fried, but every now and again it's a good way to break up the monotony. This recipe is for fried zucchini, but you can fry about any vegetable. In fact, the county fair scene the last decade or two has show us that "you can fry anything" isn't limited to vegetables, not by a long shot. To at least pretend that we have an understanding of basic nutrition, we'll just stick to zucchini.

Battered Deep Fried Zucchini - assembled from far and wide on the internet.
3-5 medium zucchini, cut fairly thick.
1 cup flour
1/2 cup cornstarch
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup water
2 tbs water
1 egg, mixed
2 tbs oil
2 cups peanut oil or enough to fill your frying pot to cover the zucchini when it's frying

Put the peanut oil in the pot, wait, first a word about oil. The reason we use peanut oil is that it has a high smoke point. This means that we can get it hot enough to cook without burning it, about 375 degrees. Butter has a smoke point of about 350, extra virgin olive oil about 400, corn oil (what is usually labeled vegetable oil in the store) at 450, and peanut oil at 450 or so. Since we want to cook at 375, butter would burn and olive oil would actually be starting to smoke (I've tried it). Of the oils that are left I think that peanut oil works the best and since I'm in the south, that's what I use. Ok, back to the cooking. Fill your pot with the oil. You can use a deep fryer that sets the temperature automatically, or you can do it on the stove. If you do it on the stove you should really have a thermometer that is capable of reading to 400 or so to check your oil temperature. Also keep in mind that you're cooking a big pot of oil on a stove, and if you have a gas stove, a big pot of oil over an open flame. Pay attention and know where your fire extinguisher is before you start. Really, not even trying to be funny, burning down your house is serious business so make sure you have a fire extinguisher before you start heating oil on the stove. Lots of people fry things all the time without burning down their houses, I don't want to freak anyone out here, but according to the National Fire Preventaion Agency 42% of all home fires were caused by cooking. This is probably the most dangerous thing you can do in your kitchen. It's like extreme cooking. Hard core. Back to the cooking again. While the oil heats, mix the 2 tbs water, the egg and the oil together. Mix all of the dry ingredients together. Mix your wets with your drys. Let them sit for about 5 minutes. Now your oil is hot and it's just a matter of dipping your zucchini slices in the batter and gently sliding them into the oil. If you drop them you splash oil on yourself. That's bad. Wear pants. Even so, be careful. Don't crowd the zucchini in there, only do 5-7 slices at a time for somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes, whatever it takes to get them brown and beautiful. Scoop them out with a slotted spoon and let them drain on a paper towel on a plate. You might notice that there's not a whole hell of a lot of seasoning in these and they don't have a very strong taste at all. You might like to salt and pepper them when they come out of the oil. You might like to try and add the salt and pepper to the batter. You might like to try and marinate your zucchini in something before hand to impart some flavor. You might want to use all of these experiments to make this a lot, because even though it's not as healthy as making zucchini basically any other way, it is delicious.

Softening Dwarf Bread

In the Discworld series of books by Terry Pratchett there are dwarfs, amongst other things, and the dwarfs have dwarf bread. Dwarf bread is a staple of the dwarf civilization and it has some interesting properties, such as it's ability to enable the eater to survive off a single loaf for several days (by making you realize that you're surrounded by other things that look more edible), never going stale (possibly because it's always stale), though it's primary use for the dwarfs is that of a weapon. When experimenting with bread, I've made a few loaves that could be considered dwarf bread. They taste fine, but actually eating them is hard work. Inevitably what's missing from my baking is some sort of fat. Adding fat to any bread recipe will yield a more tender loaf. The reverse is also true, if you take out some fat, your bread will build some body. The toughest, weapons grade, loaves of bread consist of nothing but water, flour, salt and some sort of yeasty stuff. If you happen upon a recipe that is fantastically tasty but takes heavy machinery to cut and chew, add one tablespoon of olive oil (or butter) and try it again. The bread will be softer and more edible, especially for kids. Don't ever be afraid to change a recipe to suit your taste. Learn what each ingredient does and how varying it will change the outcome of your baking. Add some variety, it's the spice of life after all.
Having said all of that, it's Shrove Tuesday today and you should all be making pancakes for dinner tonight.  This is the one day of the year where it's not only ok to make pancakes for dinner, it's actually encouraged. If you're only going to be Catholic one day a year, forget Christmas or Easter, be a catholic on Shrove Tuesday.

Valentines: Chocolate Covered Strawberries.

Today is Valentines Day. I hate buying stuff for Valentines day. "Look, the store sells chocolate!" I'd rather make something. That's not to say that I always do, but it's what I'd like to do, and today I'd doing it. I'm taking the wonderful chocolaty shell from buckeyes and instead of applying it to the outside of delicious peanut butter and sugar balls, I'm going to do it to strawberries.

Finished product. A tray full of love.

If you're a dad, and you're at home, you still have time to do this. I'm posting this up early Valentines morning and even I haven't made them yet. I can't make them ahead because of the surprise factor. Well, I probably could, but the small children who can't keep their yaps shut couldn't handle it. So I'm making them this afternoon during nap time, just hours before my wife gets home so that I can reduce the opportunities for anyone to squeal. Of course, my kids will be all excited that I made them  chocolate covered strawberries and my wife will be lucky to get a few before they're all gone. I might still need to hide a few. A surprise within a surprise. I'll post a picture after it all happens, but I thought I'd get this published early in the morning to give all of you an opportunity to run to the store and grab some strawberries and chocolate and get it done before your wife gets home.

Chocolate Covered Strawberries
1 pound strawberries
6 ounces chocolate chips (semi-sweet, milk chocolate, dark chocolate, whatever you like)
2 tbs shortening
Wash the strawberries and gently dry them. You might want to set them on a cookie sheet in the fridge to dry for a while before you drip them. Water in melted chocolate is bad. Heat the shortening and chips in a double boiler or a glass bowl floating in a pan of hot water. Stir until smooth. Grab the strawberries by their leaves and dip them. Roll them around a bit to get them covered. This isn't exactly brain surgery. Place them on a sheet of wax paper on a cookie sheet and then put all of them back in the fridge to cool and harden. Serve and enjoy.

I'll edit this post later to post a picture and let you know if my wife liked them. Really though, except for the people who are allergic to strawberries, who doesn't like chocolate covered strawberries? This is a slam dunk. Good luck!

Edit: These were so easy to make. I used dark chocolate because that's what my wife likes. They look so cool. If you make these and have any chocolate left over, animal crackers are a pretty fantastic way to clean out the bowl. It's good to be the daddy. Happy Valentines Day!

Bialy Recipe - From The Naked Elm

A bialy is a weird little roll that is sort of a cross between an english muffin and a bagel. They have a depression in the middle that is filled with chopped onions and they are chewy and soft and delicious and perfect. They originated in Bialystok Poland in the mid 1800's with Jewish bakers and were thinly spread around the world with the Jews that were driven out of Poland. I had my first one last summer at The Naked Elm in Blue Mounds Wisconsin before they were open. The Naked Elm is my sister's bakery, and she was testing out all sorts of bread in her new wood fired oven. I fell in love with bialys at first bite and finally demanded that she give me her recipe. The recipe she gave me was the small version of the one she uses in the bakery and made about 24 bialys. That's still way to many for me to make to eat at home so I cut it to a 1/3 recipe. I also converted it from grams to normal measurements because that's the kind of baker I am. So what you've got here is a recipe that has been divided and converted and baked in a different kind of oven than it is intended for with inferior ingredients.  They're still incredible.
The recipe is after the jump, a little advanced maybe, totally worth it.

Pesto Stuffed Pork Chops

Time for another recipe that looks and tastes like you're some sort of master chef, but is really ridiculously easy. It's almost a tragedy that I'm writing this for stay at home dads because I could have totally used a meal like this to impress chicks in college. I suppose you could just impress your wife with it but that's not quite the same, you know she's spending the night even if your food sucks. I suppose it's just as well that I didn't possess this sort of culinary power in my misspent youth...... on to the recipe!

Pesto Stuffed Pork Chops
4 thick cut boneless pork chops.
1/4 cup prepared pesto sauce
1/4 cup plain bread crumbs
1/4 cup parmesan cheese (cheap is ok, fresh shredded is better)
1 tbs olive oil
salt and pepper

Mix the pesto, breadcrumbs and cheese in a bowl and set aside. Your pork chops probably have one side with fat on it, you want to cut a pocket on the other side. Use a sharp pointed knife and just work your way around in there. You're trying to make a little meat purse for the pesto mixture. The smaller the opening the better the filling stays in and the bigger the pocket the more you can fit in. Like many things in life, you're looking for balance here. After you cut them, stuff them with the pesto mixture. Work it back into the pockets as well as you can. Better distributed filling means better distributed flavor. Now put the olive oil in a frying pan and brown the chops for 3-6 minutes on a side. Whatever it takes to get them brown. Salt and pepper them and place them in a baking pan, uncovered, and bake at 350 degrees for one hour.
That's it. Cut, stuff, fry, bake, done.
The only downside to this recipe is that your wife is likely to think you should be cooking this well all of the time. Enjoy.

French Bread

I'm a sourdough man. I like raising my little bowl of yeast and bacteria. I like feeding them and mixing them up with different flours to make breads and pizza crusts. I like their wild and slightly unpredictable behavior contrasted with the nurturing and care that they require. Sourdough is some seriously manly stuff.
My wife on the other hand, when she bakes, is a bit more refined. She likes to follow the recipe as written. If it says use 1/2 cup, you use 1/2 cup, not pretty close to 1/2 cup more or less whatever it'll work out. If it says knead for 5 minutes, she's setting the timer and she'll knead until that sucker beeps. She also likes the predictability of domestic yeast. Add this much, rise for this long, get regular, predictable, and I grudgingly admit, yummy, bread.
To go with the shrimp bisque she made last weekend, she made french bread. It didn't have the flavor of my bread, but it was light and tasty and perfect for dipping in soup. It also make a fine sub bun the next day. She's good at this baking thing.

French Bread: from Betty Crocker's New Cookbook.
3-3 1/2 cups flour
1 tbs sugar
1 tsp salt
1 package dry yeast
1 cup very warm water (120-130 degrees)
2 tbs vegetable oil
Cornmeal
1 large egg white
1 tbs cold water
Poppy or sesame seeds if you want

Mix 2 cups flour with sugar, salt and yeast in a large bowl. Add warm water and oil. Mix at low speed (mixer) for 1 minute. Stir in remaining flour 1/2 cup at a time until dough is easy to handle. Turn it out on a lightly floured surface and knead for 5 minutes. Place in a greased bowl and turn it so all sides are greased. Cover and let rise somewhere warm for 1 1/2 to 2 hours until double.
When it's risen, divide dough in half and roll each half out to a rectangle 15x8 inches (my wife gets out the tape measure for this, really) Roll up the long way pinching the edges and end to seal. Place both loaves on cookie sheet lightly covered in corn meal. Cut 1/4 inch deep slashes across the top at 2 inch intervals with a very sharp knife. Brush tops with cold water and let rise uncovered for 1 hour or until doubled.
Heat oven to 375. Mix egg while and 1 tbs cold water and brush over loaves, sprinkle with seeds if you want to. Bake 20-30 minutes until golden and hollow sounding when you tap them. Enjoy. I did.

My Wife Cooks Too

Take out the edible parts and cook the shells.

I look at cooking as part of my job as a stay at home dad. I shop, I plan the menu, I cook. When my wife asks how she can help I usually tell her to go play with the kids so they stay out of the kitchen. She can cook though, she does quite a good job of it, she even enjoys it. When she hasn't cooked in a while things sort of build up in her and she puts her foot down and demands to cook a fantastic meal for us. It feels really weird to just sit around and wait for dinner to get done, but a man has to do what a man has to do.

Add some of these and cook more.

End up with this for dinner. So good.

Finish with these for dessert.

This weekend my wife cooked, shrimp bisque, french bread and asparagus for dinner and big New York black and white cookies for desert. Normally when I write about food a recipe follows, but not today. I usually pull my recipes from older cook books or public sources online or from my own experimenting. The shrimp bisque and and the black and white cookies are recipes that are in the current Feb/March issue of Cook's Country. As the recipes are still on the news stands I feel a bit weird about just passing them on, so I'll just give you some pictures of the meal and let you know that I will be giving out the french bread recipe later in the week. If the food looks good (and it tasted amazing) then you can pick up the recipes at the store. Cook's Country is one of the few things we have a subscription to and it's worth every penny. This isn't exactly quick cooking, my wife did spend pretty much all day in the kitchen on Saturday, but sometimes that's just what you need.