Bacon Jam is Made of Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice

Consider me a convert to the Church of Bacon Jam. I had seen this floating around the blogosphere for a while, and I had my doubts. It was the onions that swayed me. In my opinion, only good things come from the long slow cooking of onions (see also : French Onion Soup, Burgers with Caramelized Onions and Blue Cheese). Also I had some leftover bacon from last week's pasta with bacon and tomato sauce. Since I had everything on hand, I decided to go for it.

Bacon Jam from Minimally Invasive

1 1/2 lbs. bacon sliced into 1-inch pieces
2 yellow onions, peeled and thinly sliced
4 cloves garlic, smashed and peeled
1 tablespoon bourbon
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup pure maple syrup
3/4 cup very strong brewed black coffee
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon (or more, if you like) cayenne pepper

Cook bacon in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat. (I did mine in two batches.) When bacon is browned, use a slotted spoon to transfer to a paper towel-lined plate. Drain all but 2 tablespoons of drippings from the pan.

Place Dutch oven back on the burner and adjust heat to medium. Stir in the onions and garlic and saute until onions are mostly translucent, about 10 minutes. Deglaze with bourbon. Stir in the bacon and remaining ingredients and bring to a boil.

Turn heat to low and simmer, uncovered, until onions are meltingly soft and the liquid is thick and syrupy, 30-40 minutes. If mixture starts to become dry, add up to 1/4 cup of water.

Transfer the bacon and onions to a food processor and pulse several times or until the bacon jam is a spreadable consistency. (I used the trusty immersion blender) Scrape into a jar or container with a tight-fitting lid. Store in the refrigerator for up to one month.

I can't even tell you how amazing this stuff is. Words do not describe. Everything slow cooks and melts down into this beautiful syrupy, onion-y, bacon-y goodness. I was eating it out of the pot with a spoon. Then I divided it up into jars. Two quarter pint jam jars and one slightly larger jar. It's not processed like jam, so it will only keep in the refrigerator for a month or so. Don't get me wrong, I don't think I'll have much of a problem eating it all. The first order of business last night was toasting some home made bread from last week and smearing a giant spoonful on top. Next up, more bread and possibly a home made grilled cheese with a little of this stuff thrown in.

fear of cooking with rice noodles...conquered!

I'm not going to lie, cooking with rice noodles always freaked me out for some reason. Then again I have long consider most Asian wok style cooking outside of my abilities as a Chef. Part of this was feeling uncomfortable with the flavor palette, and some of it was my resistance to prep everything before cooking. I tend to cook my preparing and chopping as I go, which doesn't fly with wok cooking. But looking through recipes this weekend and faced with a serious and near constant craving for Asian and Thai food (I'm going to blame weekend chats with Brian that always involve a long discussion on what he's going to eat) I decided the time had come to put up or shut up.

So this is an approximation of Pad Thai. I must have looked through half a dozen different recipes for this. In the end I went with this one from Use Real Butter / Chez Pim because it seemed the most authentic, was scaled for one serving, and provided the most instruction and explanation. (In case there was any doubt the pickled turnips were omitted). Because of the snow i didn't feel like venturing to the Asian market (the Wegman's international foods isle had everything but taramind paste) so I was lazy and used a Pad Thai sauce. Worked pretty well, although the sauce is on the sweet side and needs some kind of spice to it. Aside from that the texture was awesome. And rice noodles totally not scary. It is jumping around the kitchen, king of the lab good. I will be making this all week. Fear conquered.

pumpkin breakfasts : the good, the bad and the ugly

So there's no doubting my commitment to pumpkin. I love mixing pumpkin puree to pretty much anything. This week I attempted two pumpkin breakfast recipes - pumpkin oatmeal and pumpkin pancakes.

First the bad - I tried this Pumpkin Spice Steel Cut Oatmeal. I might have done something wrong, but mine turned out bland and thick enough to spackle my walls with. I definitely want to try it again though, maybe with brown sugar.



And the good - and by good I mean life-changing-ingly good - Martha's Pumpkin Pancakes. These things are perfection. I don't understand people who issue blanket statements like "I don't like pumpkin" and their experience with pumpkin is based in a couple bad Thanksgiving pumpkin pies.

Pumpkin Pancakes

Whisk 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour; 2 tablespoons sugar; 2 teaspoons baking powder; 1/2 teaspoon each cinnamon, ground ginger, and salt; 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg; and a pinch of ground cloves.

In a separate bowl, stir together 1 cup milk, 6 tablespoons canned pumpkin puree, 2 tablespoons melted butter, and 1 egg.

Fold mixture into dry ingredients.

Melt some butter in a skillet over medium heat; pour in 1/4 cup batter for each pancake.

Cook pancakes about 3 minutes per side; serve with butter and syrup. Makes 8 to 10.

Sunday Supper Club - Tomato Soup & Grilled Cheese

A trip to the farmer's market had me buying a whole bushel of tomatoes for a couple of bucks. I'm planning on canning most of them to use throughout the winter, but I decided to make some soup with the rest of them. The grilled cheese sandwiches involved muenster and thick slices of country white bread.  Amazing. The perfect meal for inviting friends over to share on a Sunday evening.

Tomato Soup
(Slightly Adapted from Former Chef)

2 cups chopped carrots
2 cups chopped celery
3 cups diced onions
6 cloves garlic, minced
12 cups chopped fresh tomatoes
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 cups water or chicken stock
2 Tbsp kosher salt
2 tsp. sugar

1. Rough chop all the vegetables. It doesn’t matter what they look like because the soup will be blended later, but make sure the carrots, onions and celery are all about the same size so they cook at the same rate.

2. In a large soup pot, heat the olive oil. Add in the carrots, celery and onions and cook until the onions are translucent, about 10 minutes. Add in the garlic and cook another 5 minutes, but don’t let the vegetables brown. Add in the tomatoes and water or chicken stock. Allow to simmer for about an hour, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes break down and the carrots are soft.

3. Puree the soup (I used an immersion blender - a regular blender would do as well) add the salt and sugar to taste.

[This is the point in the original recipe in which they strained the soup to remove the tomato skins, but tomato skins especially blended ones, don't kill people, and I hate straining so I just left them in, the soup was then was a tad chunkier, but not noticeably]

first soup of fall - roasted apple, red pepper and tomato

Yesterday dawned windy and sunny but with a chill in the air. After the heat wave for most of the previous week, it felt like fall had finally arrived with the first days of September. I went to the farmer's market in the morning and bought a couple of things that I thought I would use - apples, peaches, red peppers and some big tomatoes. I had no specific plans, but later on I knew exactly what I wanted to make for dinner - soup.

After a little Googling, I found this recipe, which happened to use most of the things I had bought earlier. It seemed like a match made in heaven. I wasn't sure exactly how it would turn out, especially since I made some changes to the recipe. In the end, it was exactly what I wanted. Mine had a thick-ish consistency, almost like home made tomato sauce. But it was sweet and smokey and hearty and it was perfect for eating a big bowlful out on the porch with Liz.

zucchini and corn quesadillas

I had forgotten about how good these quesadillas are until the other night, when I needed something to make for dinner. They are a perfect dinner for the end of the summer when both zucchini and corn are cheap and plentiful. They are also really quick, easy and very delicious.

The original recipe makes two medium sized quesadillas, which is great and all, but it's a lot one person. Half of a large quesadilla can make a solid meal for one person with some leftovers. So here's a rough halving of the recipe from Ezra Pound Cake.

Corn and Zucchini Quesadillas

Adapted from “Everyday Food” & Ezra Pound Cake


Serves 1-2 depending on hunger.

2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 medium onion, coarsely chopped
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 smallish zucchini, halved lengthwise and roughly chopped
1 cup fresh corn kernels (or the kernels from 1 ear of corn - frozen corn works too)
Dash of chopped fresh cilantro (optional)
2 flour tortillas (12-inch)
1 cup grated Pepper Jack cheese

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. In a large skillet, heat 3 tablespoons oil over medium heat. Add onion and 1 teaspoon salt, cook, stirring occasionally, until onion is soft, about 5 minutes. Stir in garlic, cook 1 minute more.

2. Add zucchini and frozen corn kernels, cook, stirring occasionally, until zucchini is soft and corn is tender, about 6 minutes. Remove from heat; stir in cilantro, if using.

3. Brush one side of all tortillas with remaining 1 tablespoon oil; lay 2 tortillas, oiled side down, on a baking sheet. Place half of the filling on each, and sprinkle with half the cheese. Place remaining 2 tortillas on top, oiled side up; press down gently with spatula to seal.

4. Bake until cheese has melted and tortillas are golden brown, turning once, about 10 minutes. Remove from oven; let cool slightly. To serve, slice each quesadilla into wedges.

Pita with Red Peppers, Onions and Feta

I used to make this a lot for dinner my first year here, and then I sort of forgot about it. It's an awesome, late night - don't know what to make for dinner. It also helps that the ingredients are things that are often on hand.

I included a recipe below, although it's very self explanatory - chop up veggies, and eyeball the proportions on top of the pita. Normally I use 1/2 to 1 red pepper, half a smallish onion, a handful of feta and recently I've added a bit of minced garlic. I could also see dressing this up a bit and sautéing/caramelizing the onions before putting them on the pita, since the onions in this version have a bit of a crunch to them. But mostly when I make this I'm sort of desperate for food as quickly as possible.

Pita with Red Pepper, French Feta and Red Onion
(Adapted from Not Eating Out in New York)

1 pocketless pitas
1/2 to 1 medium red bell pepper, thinly sliced
1/2 medium onion, thinly sliced
handful of French feta, crumbled
olive oil (about 1 Tbl)
freshly ground black pepper and salt to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place pita on a baking sheet and arrange peppers, onions and feta on both. Drizzle with 1 Tb of olive oil. Sprinkle with pepper and a touch of salt. Bake for about 8 minutes. Remove from sheet and let cool a moment before serving.

Cakes of Pan. And Sour Cream

Yesterday was sort of a long day. I got home late from campus, with not a lot of food in the fridge and a lot of snow on my car. So I decided it was the perfect time to try out this Sour Cream Pancake recipe (from Pioneer Woman by way of Smitten Kitchen).

Normally, I make buttermilk pancakes, and I can't say these sour cream pancakes tasted much differently. But maybe I was just too hungry. These were however, the perfect pancake size recipe for one person. Normally I halve the other recipe, and still have way too much batter. With the wacky 7 tablespoons of flour, this was perfect.

44 garlic clove soup. vampires keep away.

My mother occasionally buys peeled garlic in bulk from Sam's. So when I was looking around for a recipe on a cold winter day, this 44 clove garlic soup from smitten kitchen fit the bill perfectly.

For the record, I used all peeled garlic and I left the garlic in the oven a little bit too long. Still worked out amazingly. I wasn't really sure what flavor this soup would have when I started out, but I was very surprised and I'm definitely planning on making this again.

camembert and cherries on ciabatta

So last night I'm trying to decide what to make for dinner. I had settled on adding chicken to the pineapple fried rice I was going to make. But I made the mistake of flipping thorugh my "to-make" recipes, and I couldn't get this Rachael Ray recipe for Grilled Cheese with Fresh Cherries out of my mind. Which is how I ended up buying ciabatta, camembert and cherries.



Things I didn't have included thyme, a grill, and apparently the right kind of bread. Apparently I didn't read the recipe very closely and I didn't realize it wasn't so much grilled cheese like, as toasting the bread. I have to say I think it turned out pretty well. I used the recipe to make half the cherry component and half the wheel of cheese for one sandwich.



Tonight I decided to use the other half of the cheese and some apple slices, and grilled this panini style. It's hard to say I liked it more, but I sort of did. Either way, I would highly recommend either permutation.