At last! My switch to a food-dedicated blog

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Yum! Homemade "hamburger buns"

As aforementioned, cold weather seems to call me to experiment with baking yeast breads. Thus it was that earlier today — when I asked Kara to accompany me to the local bakery and she refused — I didn't exactly feel put out that I'd be able to work on a batch of "hamburger buns". Yes, that's in quotes. The thing is that I haven't yet found a bun or roll recipe which didn't produce a sickeningly sweet bread. Today I thought I'd give my go-to white bread recipe a shot, halving the amounts and shaping the dough into rounds, rather than dropping it into a loaf pan.

I substituted half the bread flour with (all-purpose) whole wheat flour, and brushed the tops with melted margarine, rather than shortening.

It worked spectacularly! These are a little more crusty at the top than store-bought hamburger bans, but it's a welcome change. I got a nice crumb, too; that's practically unheard of for a bread which I haven't added extra protein (i.e., egg) to. I daresay I'm going to end up making this when I'm next searching for a dinner roll recipe.

P.S. Faithful readers (both of you), I'm getting really sick of having to massage the code for a blog post, so I'm going to switch to the "new" Blogger formatting shortly. I will update this page to link to the new one when that occurs.

Dammit.

I think I might have an egg yolk intolerance. After yesterday's "intestinal blowout" (as I so lovingly refer to such incidents), I realized that the past 3 times this has happened (all within the past month, lucky me!), I ate eggs for breakfast.

Apparently, my body wants me to become vegan. I'll be damned if I'm going to forgo hamburgers, pulled pork and rib eye, 'though.

Dairy-free beef Stroganoff

This is an adaptation of Chef John's Beef Stroganoff recipe, omitting the butter, using shallots in place of the onion, increasing the quantity — and roasting — the garlic, and making use of Tofutti's Sour Supreme in place of the sour cream.

This isn't the first time I've made it and it won't be the last. Also, it's one of those dishes which magically tastes even more awesome on the second day.

Lunch-time "go-to"

I've been making variations on this quiche recipe fairly frequently around here. It's a good way to get in the three food groups I have remaining to select from, it refrigerates well, lasts for several meals and is a big hit with my young'un. Today's version used whole wheat pie crust, ham, chives, spinach, organic eggs, organic soy milk, salt and pepper. As expected, it was a success!

Happy Birthday, Little Sister

In related news, I'm going to have to make sure I only make a batch of these for special occasions. I made these at 10:00 am and over half of them are gone now.

Well, it ain't Kentucky...

...but it is my second foray into making fried chicken.

I can hardly believe it myself, but when I made a batch of fried chicken late last year because I was running short on time before dinner and had a whole chicken to cook, it was my first batch of fried chicken, ever. It turned out really well. The chicken was moist, the outer coating was crispy and satisfying. Obviously, it's not the sort of main I want for every meal, but once every few months can't be too bad, right? Right?

Well, I've been sick for the last several days; sick, with 6 chicken thighs thawing in the refrigerator. So — with time running out on what to make before the chicken spoiled and little interest in an elaborate and time-consuming preparation — I made another batch of fried chicken last night.

I've been using vegan buttermilk as a wash. Once that's done, I've been dredging in a mixture of flour, salt, pepper, paprika and panko. I didn't quite get the salt content as high as it ought to have been; the chicken was a little bland. Also, I've discovered that adding panko to the breading just results in scorched panko. So I'll be omitting that step for tonight's batch.

Still, with a little tweaking, I think I've got a quick and easy recipe for a lot of chicken.

A little bit of baking today

Cupcakes are definitely a go-to baked item around here. I try not to bake sweets often (pre-Diabetic conditions and refined carbs don't go together very well), but those that I do make are often cupcakes. These are the aforementioned basic vegan chocolate cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.

This time, they were paired with vegan cream cheese frosting. Of all the frostings I've made from that book, this one is hands-down my favourite. As a bonus for readers, both of these recipes are available for free online!

Another iteration of my go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe

This time, I showed some restraint and only made a single batch of cookie dough. I've also broken slighly with the recipe and am chilling the remainder of the dough in a large flat shape in a freezer bag for tomorrow, rather than chilling in golf ball-sized hunks.

As usual, the small batch of cookies made from the "day-of" dough lack the yummy caramel-flavour that comes from chilling, but they're still yummy enough for a family of 3 to eat all of them.

A piece of cake

It turns out that its possible to make a damn good vegan pineapple cake by slicing and coring a pineapple, cooking the pineapple slices in margarine and sugar, then topping it with a simple vegan crumb cake batter, omitting the "crumbs". This is the second one I've made and I think it's going to be something of a staple while pineapples are available fresh in the grocery store.

It's been kinda busy around here today

The last time I made a chocolate ganache tart, I had the foresight to make a second pastry crust batch for freezing. That made today's repeat of that recipe a lot easier. All I had to do was make the ganache and pour it into the baked, then cooled crust. Additionally, we're doing pizza for dinner again tonight, so I also made a large batch of pizza dough so that I had enough to also set some aside to freeze. We've had success with a pizza stone on the grill, I'm happy to report.

Today's lunch was fire-grilled steaks, half-bagels from our local bakery (which only offers their enormous bagels on the weekend) and — yum — fire-grilled peaches with brown sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon. The peaches exceeded our expectations; the fuzz develops a crust which is similar to the charred "shell" that develops around a fire-roasted marshmallow. Matt and I ate half a (small) basket of Ontario peaches because of how fantastic they are when grilled.

Christmas came early this year!

When Emma asked how one handles squash blossoms, I thought she was asking for cooking suggestions. When she then stated that she'd bring them over during a visit on Saturday, I was literally speechless with excitement! Much gratitude, then, to the Hungs for sharing some enormous zucchini blossoms from their garden with me!

These were stuffed with a cream chezz, sea salt, black pepper and fresh thyme mixture. They were then battered in a flour, ice-cold water and egg wash and fried in a shallow cast iron skillet, turning each blossom once to fry both sides.

They were unbelievably delicious!

Dairy- and egg-free lemony cupcakes with "cream cheese" icing

I made these for my father's birthday and thought I'd make up another batch today!

The cupcake recipe is an adaptation of the Golden Vanilla Cupcakes recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I went with the oil-based option this time and used tapioca flour in place of corn starch because I didn't have any of the latter in the pantry. I also replaced the vanilla extract in its entirety with lemon extract.

The Vegan Cream Cheese Frosting recipe is from the same book. I omitted the vanilla because I've found the frosting too runny in the past.

They're delicious.

More food porn

What you are witnessing, my viewing audience, is our go-to go-to pizza dough, brushed with olive oil and topped with PC Tomato Basil Bruschetta Topping, sliced white mushrooms, chopped grape tomatoes, black olives and crumbled bacon. On our grill.

I don't think I've ever had pizza that good before.

Home-smoked, "Slow and Low" Barbecue Pulled Pork

When Kara was still a baby, I found myself exhausted so much of the time that my interest in cooking fell completely by the wayside. I also found that it was near-impossible to find the time. So it was that Matt found himself not only the "breadwinner" of the family, but also the cook.

One of Matt's early finds was this Pulled Pork Dry Rub recipe. It's been so popular around our place that made has made two double batches in the span of time since Kara was born.

I realized when we recently put out our very first barbecue on our patio that it was only a matter of time 'til the two met.

Today was that day. When Kara got up, I pulled the pork shoulder which had been in the fridge out to come to room temperature. Once we made our way downstairs for the day, I started soaking maple wood chips in a bowl of cold water. I also applied the dry rub to the pork shoulder. I lit the firestarter and got it nestled within the coals in the barbecue. After the wood chips had soaked for ½-hour, I drained them and scattered them on the lit coals. The barbecue lid was left closed for it to come to temperature, then I added the pork shoulder. By 8:45 am, dinner was prepped and cooking!

During the course of the day, the temperature on the barbecue fluctuated from 190° F to about 250° F. Around mid-day, when I tried to lower the temperature by opening the lid, I caused a flare-up, which resulted in a brief spike in temperature to about 400° F. I was able to bring that back under control and the barbecue stayed at about 220° F for the remainder of the day.

Only half of the shoulder was shredded for tonight's dinner, with "seconds" for Caty and me and a packed lunch for Matt. Tomorrow night's dinner will likely use up the rest.

There was a lingering smokiness to the flavour that I've simply never experienced in barbecued meat before, and the rub mellowed right out, having cooked that long. I can safely say that I've never had homemade meat that good ever before in my life and I think making it the best pork ever will come down to finding a complementary sauce for it. It's definitely a new favourite!

Father's Day baked goods

In the tradition of baking something I've never attempted before on this occasion, I made a chocolate ganache tart this year. I wanted to use my previously discussed go-to pie crust, because I didn't want the crust to overpower my filling or make the end result overly sweet. This is the recipe I consulted for the filling, substituting the heavy cream with soy creamer, and omitting the pistachios. I'm pleased to say that this worked out fantastically, and I wouldn't hesitate to make it again!

Who'da thunk?

It turns out that if you've gone about 3 years with your caffeine levels only spiking during the tiny amounts you get from dark chocolate and the very occasional iced green tea, getting a slice of chocolate-mocha cake gets you so wired that you're literally sweating. Who knew?

On a day like today...

When one's toddler wakes from sleeping an hour after bedtime, then wakes — screaming, no less — an hour before her usual waking-time and refuses to go back to sleep, then has a day in which the toddler refuses to co-operate with one's plans to run errands, then refuses to nap, it's quite easy to forget to take a picture of the pasta you made from scratch because the errand-running that didn't happen included getting pasta for dinner.

Still recovering, but pampering myself for it

Tonight's dinner was homemade pizza. Mine had bruschetta topping, black olives, sliced mushrooms, crumbled bacon and drizzled mayonnaise on it.

Chocolate chip cookies!

I can't even remember the last time I made these. Mind you, that could mean that I made them in February, the way my brain works these days.