The Food N00bs

Flaming Breakfast Adventures

by Kal

Hi all -- long time no see. I could tell you what I've been up to since I posted last, but then I'd have to kill you.

I cook a lot less these days, thanks to a fortunate relationship situation where a devoted and excellent cook adores making me noms. For the last few months, I've accepted this gratefully and assured myself that this wasn't making me soft in my kitchen skills or anything -- I wasn't rusty, just disused, right? Right.

But alas, my wonderful in-home chef turned up sick, so today I volunteered to cook a simple breakfast for three: veggie sausage links, some toaster hash browns, four eggs over-easy, and a couple of slices of toast. You already know from the title of this post that something probably went horribly wrong in this plan, and oh yes, my friend, it went horribly, horribly wrong.

My toaster hash browns were fried to a beautiful golden brown, my veggie sausage was browning nicely, and my eggs were cooking a bit slow but not enough to concern me. I popped the bread into the toaster oven, then turned my back on it to deal with my reluctant eggs. Some minutes later, seeing the finish line of my meal preparation, I turned the vent fan off over the stove and promptly noticed smoke.

I turned around and realized the toast was smoking. Well, fuck, thought I. Something's burning in the crumb tray. I pulled open the door of the toaster oven to see whether I could salvage the toast.

I cannot emphasize enough what happened next.

The toast -- which was the source of the smoke, not crumbs in the tray -- greedily sucked in all that air from the open toaster oven door and FUCKING BURST INTO FLAMES.

Now, I have had a lot of kitchen misadventures in my life, and I watch a lot of Hell's Kitchen, but I have never, ever seen toast burst into flames, no matter how badly burnt. I shut the door and unplugged the toaster oven, thinking that just a moment without air would be enough to smother the fire. Sure enough, the flames died almost immediately. "Uhhh, there'll be no toast," I yelled toward the living room where my hungry breakfasters-to-be sat. I opened the toaster oven again to see how bad the situation was AND THE FUCKERS BURST INTO FLAMES AGAIN. This time, when I shut the door, they kept going. These were not little flames, either. These were flames that filled the six-slice-capacity toaster oven. Some of the flames were even freaking green.

"Uhhh, a little help?" I yelled.

My boyfriend ran in to help, and while I stood there thinking WHAT THE FUCK, FLAMING TOAST!, he threw baking soda on the fire and out it went.

We then laughed for at least half an hour about my toast flambee. If you have to set toast on fire, it's nice to do it for compassionate diners with a sense of humor. And I had no idea you could burn toast so badly it would become a small bonfire, so I learned something, too.

Until next time...watch those toasters!

Just a Silly Thing...

by Sorcha

...that I felt compelled to do, because I was so pleased with my frosting and the mouseover text kept going away before people could read the whole thing.

If you're familiar with the GQMF meme that's all over the 'net, you'll understand why I had to do this. Click on the wee picture to get the big one.
If you're not familiar with the meme, then Google it first. I'll wait. My favorites are probably the one for the actors in the Trek reboot, and the one for the witty and charming Tavi of Style Rookie. (You have to go back a few pages to find the link to it, but that's no hardship - even if you're not into fashion, she's an interesting and entertaining read, and she comes up with some awesome outfits. I especially like her homage to Edward Gorey. And did I mention she's only thirteen? Chica is my newest hero, yo.)

Shelfish Girl

by Sorcha

No, that's not a misspelling. This isn't a post about geoducks. I know you're heartbroken, but try to move on.

Anyway, here is a picture of my lovely new shelves. There's only two right now, but Mister is talking about adding a third. They'll hold my food processor, little baskets of cooking tools, and my cookbooks. Not all my foodie books, of course - for example, my French Laundry/Bouchon set would break those shelves, and it's not like I have anywhere near the skills to cook like Keller. Also, my boss has borrowed them for the moment. (He's actually eaten at the Laundry, lucky sod.) Also, there's only room, really, for the books I need while cooking - my other food-related books still live on my "coolest books ever" bookcase. But this will make it much easier and more convenient to bake - and do other cooking too, when I get back into that groove.

Baker's Joy Has Left The Building

by Sorcha

No, really, has Baker's Joy entered the Witness Protection program? I can't find that shit anywhere. I found a similar product made by Pam, but that's it.

Mr. Sorcha kindly put up a couple of shelves in our oddly-shaped, tight-on-storage-space kitchen to hold my cookbooks, small appliances, etc. Pictures to come.

This is becoming a habit.

by Sorcha

I made another cake from scratch today.

This time I used Alton's fudge cake recipe and a simple cream cheese frosting recipe from allrecipes.com. Mm, frosting.   

Let me tell you, making frosting in the stand mixer turns out some smooth muthafuckin' shit. 

And the cake...oh, fuck, the cake. I was seriously worried that I was going to screw it up, because dude, it had some steps in there I'd never done. But I followed the lovely Alton's directions, and lo! there was delicious cakey goodness!

(I have no idea what up with the way there's a ridge around the edge, or why there's a perfect darker rectangle in the middle. I'm sure there's a perfectly logical baking explanation that, were I not such a n00b, I would know.)

You don't get a picture of the cake after frosting because while I can make cake taste good, I haven't yet mastered making it look good. Last time was an aberration. But here's a piece of it in my hand, right before it became a piece of it in my stomach.

Kal, a couple of our friends, and Mr. Sorcha and The Boy (temporary new name for Littlest) all pronounced it delicious, and I have to say, I think I made a damn good cake.

Holy Pillsbury, Batman, I can bake! Who knew?

Just a Quickie

by Sorcha

This evening I went to Powells' satellite store on Hawthorne (the one that's focused on home and garden stuff, not the regular one two doors down), to find more books about making nommy cakes. While browsing there, I found a cookbook published by the Junior League of Hampton Roads, the area of Virginia I grew up in. It was published in the mid-90s, not too long after I moved to Portland. I think I even recognized the names of a couple girls I'd gone to school with.

I didn't buy it, because I'm really in a baking groove right now, and where the hell am I gonna find soft-shell blue crab 3000 miles from the Chesapeake Bay? But it was fun to wonder about how that little book had made its way all the way across the US to meet me in a bookstore in Oregon. Maybe I'll go back another time and see if it's still there. It may want to go home with a somewhat-familiar face.

(I didn't end up buying any cake books, but I did go two doors down and find a Kurt Vonnegut and an Agatha Christie I hadn't read, plus a book on crime scene processing and an H.P. Lovecraft/August Derleth collaboration - all used. I have Alton Brown's baking book on order and a couple of cake books on my Amazon wish list. So it was a mostly-productive trip.)

If I Knew You Were Coming...

by Sorcha

...I'd have baked a cake.

Oh, wait, I totally did.

That, dear reader (I know there's at least one of you out there), is my first ever made-from-scratch cake, including made-from-scratch frosting.

The recipes for both came out of the book that came with my much wished-for Kitchenaid Artisan stand mixer. 

I made two changes to the cake recipe: it called for all-purpose flour and I used cake flour, because I've been wanting to see how much of a difference it makes. And it called for shortening, but I used butter, because that's what I had on hand and I didn't feel like going out to get shortening. Also, I like butter.

This wasn't the first time I've made frosting from scratch, but it's the first time I've ever melted chocolate. Here's a handy tip - melamine prep bowls? Not microwave-safe. Ow. Other than that, though, the chocolate-melting went well.

Something else I learned is that butter takes longer to soften at room temperature than I expected. The cake came out a little dense, but it tastes damn good. The frosting was more than a bit too sweet - next time, with this cake, I'm going to look for a recipe for a dark chocolate frosting instead. Believe me, when I think something is too sweet, it will make the teeth of normal people leap out of their heads and run away screaming.

It's a good cake, though. I'm gonna make more.

Om Nom Nom, Kronshe Kronshe Kronshe

by Sorcha

I love me some salad.

I realize that, to look at me, you might assume I subsist on Doritos, raw chocolate-chip cookie dough, and Crisco slurped directly from the tub through a large straw. (And if you do, you're a sizeist jerk.*) The truth is, while I do enjoy those things on occasion (except for the Crisco, ew), I also love to sit down with a big bowl of salad that is MINE ALL MINE and munch away while reading a good book. (Right now I'm reading one of Littlest's Christmas books, Badass, by Ben Thompson. Most awesome book of mini-biographies ever. You should buy it.)

While I do love my salad, however, I'm very picky about the ingredients. My usual at-home salad has only three: cucumbers (peeled), tomatoes (not peeled), and baby spinach. I used to use iceberg lettuce back in the day, but I like spinach better and it has actual nutritional value. Plus, you don't have to pull the tasty bits off of the thick, bitter ribs like you do with iceberg. You just dump it in the bowl and go, which, for someone lazy like me, is ideal.

Now, as I said, I'm picky about salad, like I am about a lot of things. Thus, there are some things that I just plain don't like. For your edification, just in case you ever invite me to your house for salad and feel like putting up with my childish whims, I'm listing them, along with the following rating scale:

Meh - I don't like it that much, but I can eat it, especially if there's not a whole lot else on the menu I like.

Bleh - I don't like it at all, but I can either pick it out or eat around it without it bothering me.

No Fuckin' Weh (Yeah, I'm committed to this rhyme scheme) - Dealbreaker. Sorry, mum, no salad for me today.

THINGS THAT SORCHA DOES NOT LIKE IN SALAD

1. Raw Broccoli - Much like Norwegian singer Ida Maria likes you so much better when you're naked, I like broccoli much better when it's cooked. I can eat steamed broccoli with just a bit of salt by the plateful. Raw broccoli, OTOH, makes me sad in my tummy. Rating: Meh

2. Raisins - I like raisins in one place, and that's in raisin bran. Don't put them in my lunchbox, don't put them in my oatmeal, don't put them in my cookies, and damn sure don't put them in my salad. They look like bugs against the green stuff, and that's just not something I want to see in my food. Rating: Bleh

3. Salad dressing - I have yet to find a salad dressing that is more than just barely tolerable. Oil and vinegar, ranch, blue cheese, Thousand Island (which looks to me like someone ate it once already) - I've tried a bunch of dressings and they all just ruin my day. Rating: No Fuckin' Weh

4. Carrots - Carrots are another vegetable I adore, but not in salad. Shredded carrots are all right, but carrot coins can go fuck themselves. Rating: Meh (shredded carrots); Bleh (carrot coins)

5. Mushrooms - No, please. Just, no. I can pick them out, but I'd rather not have to. Rating: Bleh

6. Celery - My feelings for celery, along with the fact that I am lazy, are one of the main things standing in the way of my becoming a really good cook. I hate, hate, hate celery. I hate it raw, I hate it cooked. I hate the taste, and the texture, and the way it has those little channels running up through it. *shudder* Celery is not a vegetable, it's an alien species that will eventually try to take over the world. It hates us, and it hates us even more when we put peanut butter and raisins on it and give it cutesy names. Rating: Bleh with a strong inclination toward No Fuckin' Weh, depending upon how long it's been around the other vegetables.

7. Radishes - Why do people eat radishes? I imagine that if finely-chopped glass had a flavor, it would be "radish." There must be a reason people like them, but that reason, like the reason that people enjoy listening to Celine Dion, is, and always will be, a mystery to me. Rating: See "Celery."

8. Fruit - I love fruit. But not in my vegetables, please. Rating: Bleh, although that becomes a bare Meh if I'm able to pick it out and eat it separately.

9. Onions - I have, over the years, developed an appreciation for the way cooked onions flavor a dish. I have never developed an appreciation for the way raw onions make me want to run away, flailing my arms and screaming. And contrary to what you might think, picking them out is useless - they've already turned all the other crunchy, delicious salad veggies to the dark side. Rating: No Fuckin' Weh

On a completely unrelated note, I'm trying to come up with a new handle for Littlest, since technically, as of sometime last week, he's not really the Littlest Food N00b anymore. "Youngest" just isn't as catchy. "Snarkiest" is a title that changes hands among my family and Kal with some regularity. And "Malest" is not grammatically correct. I'd continue calling him "Littlest" but he knows where I sleep. If anyone's actually reading this and has an idea, feel free to let me know. Unless you're going to be trollish about it, in which case you can follow the example of the carrot coins and go fu- well, you know.

*Just kidding.**

**Maybe.

Image: Suat Eman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Shake and Bake

A while back, Littlest got a yen to make a cake. He looked up a recipe online and made a pretty damn good cake from scratch, all by himself.

Today, I came home from work to find he'd made cinnamon cupcakes, also from scratch, with lemon frosting. (Not scratch.) They're goooood.

I may have a future pastry chef here.

(And the "shake" part in the title of this post? He took some of that leftover unflavored gelatin and made Knox Blocks with some pomegranate juice we had in the fridge. Yummmm.)

It's The Marshmallowest Time of the Year

by Sorcha

Recently in a chat, I was wishing for peppermint marshmallows to put into my hot cocoa. A friend found this recipe, and Littlest (only in the sense that he's the youngest, these days, because he's nearly as tall as I am) and I amassed our ingredients and set to work.

Well, more like I hit the grocery store on the way home from work one day and amassed the ingredients, including way more unflavored gelatin than I will ever use in my entire lifetime. I needed three packets, and the only box they had held 32. Apparently, they're expecting the Jellocalypse at Fred Meyer. Had I known that I needed a minyan to use all the gelatin I'd be forced to buy, I'd have gotten my posse together for Jello wrestling. Seriously, up until this point in my life (and I'm staring forty in the face), I have never once made anything with unflavored gelatin. That would be why I'm a food n00b, not a food hax0r. You knew what this was coming in, don't get all snotty now.

Anyway, I digress. Who knows, maybe having all that powdered animal protein taking up space in my cupboard will inspire me to get creative.

I hauled all the ingredients home and we set to work. Well, we started to set to work, until I realized that I would need a candy thermometer, which I did not have. I had a meat thermometer, an ear thermometer, and the old-fashioned under-the-tongue (till Mom leaves the room and you heat it on the lightbulb to convince her you need to stay home from school) kind. None of these go up to 240 degrees, of course, and it's not the sort of thing you can just guess at. Candy and baking, as far as I'm concerned, are two pursuits that require a certain amount of precision. (Along with tattoos, but that's for another time.)

So, without a candy thermometer, all we could do was stare sadly at the sugar and corn syrup as they taunted us from the counter, safe in the knowledge that they would not be cooked that night. The next day, I had to pick up my car from the body shop downtown, thanks to my job's overcrowded parking lot and the creative parking choices of those using it. Mister dropped me off and, as it was a couple of hours till the car would be ready, I hit Sur La Table for the thermometer. (Along with a free mini-latte, from someone demonstrating one of those fancy machines that are basically Cool Ways To Make Instant Coffee That Doesn't Suck.) Thermometer in hand, I trooped up Burnside and, after a brief internal debate over hitting either the Dollar Tree or Spartacus (link not safe for work, kids, or certain religious sects), was joyfully reunited with Peabody (my green Cube, first new car I've ever had and am paying for all by myself almost like a real damn grownup.)

Blah blah blah, this has nothing to do with making marshmallows, I know. So what all this means is that last night, Littlest and I were finally able to make our marshmallows. There was a brief moment of "not again" when I realized I had to sift powdered sugar and we do not own a sifter (n00b, remember), but a mesh teaball came to the rescue and worked just fine. This was without a doubt the messiest, stickiest, goopiest thing I've ever made, and it was a hell of a lot of fun. (It would probably have been less messy and more fun if I had an actual stand mixer instead of a little hand-held - 15 minutes of mixing gets boring, yo.) My kitchen looked like the set of a low-budget bukkake film (if you don't know what that is, look it up - on second thought, you probably don't wanna know), but the marshmallow goop seemed to be about the consistency it should be. Instead of just red food coloring folded in, we used red and blue both, because we're like that, and I added about a half tablespoon of vanilla extract in addition to the peppermint the recipe called for.

We dutifully let the marshmallow goo sit overnight - what we could get out of the bowl and off the spoon, anyway. Today, I had to hunt down the bag of powdered sugar, which Mister, the compulsive tidier, had put away. I attempted to follow the instructions for removal from the pan (slide a knife around the sides, tip over) but the marshmallow (at this point, it was still just the one big one) was having none of that. I ended up having to wrestle it out of the pan, which left me with a lump of marshmallow dough the side of a baby's head. Nothing to do but grab my knife and dive in.

The resulting marshmallows, far from being tidy little squares, looked like refugees from the Island of Misfit Candy. They were stickier and denser than I'd expected, though whether I screwed something up along the way or my expectations were off and the marshmallows were fine, I have no idea. The peppermint taste, which had been overly strong in the fluffy goo stage, had eased up somewhat. Still a big strong, but perfect for their intended use - making the Sorcha-family's hot chocolate minty fresh. I made me a cup and ohhhh, yeah, that shit was decadent. It actually left Littlest speechless, which, since he's my kid, doesn't happen very often. (That's a ferret on the side of the cup, by the way. I like ferrets.)

So, the result was pretty satisfactory. I'd suggest that if you're going to be eating these straight up, rather than putting them in something, you might want to cut the peppermint extract to 3/4 tbs or so, but they're perfect for hot beverages. I really want to do this again, with other flavors - but not until I get me a Kitchenaid stand mixer. Not only would it be easier, but I'm pretty sure that the hand mixer was traumatized beyond rescue by the thick marshmallow goo. RIP, little Betty.