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As promised, a tutorial on the bracelets I recently made! This is going to be picture-heavy. You will need: a couple feet of beads, leather cording and matching embroidery floss, the bar half of a toggle clasp, scissors, pliers, three needles, tape (I used painter’s tape because it’s sticky but not too sticky), and a measuring tape of some sort.
There’s something so appealing about candy bark. Maybe I just like the excuse to eat enormous pieces of candy. Yeah, that could be it. Anyway, it’s really easy to make, but the version I’m sharing with you tonight is only for serious, serious bacon lovers. It is so smoky and rich that I can eat one little piece and I either have to stop or move on to something lighter. You’ll need:
First, fry your bacon and chop it somewhat finely. Keep the grease if you want your bark to be really out of control bacony (and you know you do!).
Melt your chocolate in a double boiler. When all of the chocolate is melted, stir in your lard and bacon grease, and keep stirring until uniform.
Pour the melted mixture into a lined 8″x8″ dish. You can use wax paper or parchment paper for this step. Sprinkle your bacon evenly throughout the chocolate (if you made too much, you get to eat it. Yay!) and put the pan into the freezer.
I’m not sure how long it takes to freeze because I went and did other stuff for a few hours, but I don’t think it’s long. When you’re pretty sure it has hardened, dump it onto a cutting board and gently peel the paper away:
You’ll have to work out your own method of dividing it up into chunks. I find pressing the blade evenly in (and, optionally, whacking it) gives a pretty good line all the way across the brick. In any case, you will have delicious, rich little chocolate bacon squares. You’ll have to store them in the freezer.
Enjoy! The guanciale was delicious in eggs, but I wanted to see what else it could do. I already had plans and supplies for a bacon and scallop dish from Primal Blueprint Quick & Easy Meals, so I decided to use the scallops. Close enough to what I had planned – hopefully better! I had 14 pieces of guanciale left, and 24 scallops. A couple of the pieces were fairly small, so I set those aside and cut the others in half across the short axis (if I had cut them across the long axis, half of the pieces would have been all fat, and I wanted all of them to be similar in composition). The pieces were large enough to cover the scallops, but not wrap them, so I stuck a toothpick in each to prevent excessive curling:
We had some smoky scamorza left over from Heather’s visit (Revival Market impulse purchase! Can you tell we love that place?) and it seemed like it would make appropriately decadent chapeau for the scallops. I cut some little chunks and pressed one side of each into panko bread crumbs for a little crunch:
My advice: make sure you do this ahead of cooking the scallops, and set them on a plate. You’ll want them to be ready and next to the oven when you need them.
Broil the scallops for six minutes. At the end of six minutes, pull them out and quickly stick a piece of your panko-covered cheese on top of each one, then pop them back in for 2-3 minutes (you’ll want to watch them starting at two minutes, because the cheese melts and the guanciale crisps up very quickly at this point):
Et voilà! Guanciale-wrapped scallops with melty scamorza and toasty panko. Could that have been any easier?
Oh yes — you probably want to know how this tasted. Well, Mark ate the first couple and said, “Wow.” And then he kept saying it, louder and louder with each scallop. And he fist-bumped me. By the time we finished, I knew I’d be making these again. In this setting I detected a richer quality to the guanciale, versus regular bacon — especially considering how very thin the pieces were! The cheese and bread crumbs provided a really nice touch, though I might press more crumbs into the cheese next time. Overall, it was one of the best things I’ve made in recent history! You could serve these as appetizers — the toothpicks will be handy for guests to pick them up – but I’d recommend keeping them for yourself. Of course you can use American-style premium bacon (which I will probably have to do most of the time since guanciale is not a daily item at Revival), but this was so filling that you will probably want to be judicious in your bacon use, especially if you buy the thick kind like we do. Mangia! When Mark and I were in Honolulu last June with friends, we had one especially spectacular dinner at BLT Steak. It was one of those occasions where you order way more appetizers and sides than you know you’ll need, just because it all sounds so good. Imagine our surprise when the waiter brought out the bread course, which consisted of popovers the size of footballs! Well, maybe Nerf footballs. But trust me, they were huge. BLT brings the popovers out with a little card that tells you exactly how to make them, and enough people have fallen in love with those popovers that you can easily find the recipe online. I do have a popover pan, but you can make them in a muffin tin if necessary. They won’t be quite as enormous, but that means you can eat more, right?
The pan was a gift last Christmas, but I put off making them because I was sort of nervous about it. I have read that you have to follow the recipe just so, and I was afraid to do something wrong and end up with unpoppedovers. Finally, my craving for popovers was too great to deny, and I decided I was going for it. I halved the recipe, which turned out to be a good call because apparently my pan is not quite as enormous as BLT’s.
If you have never had a popover, they are airy, eggy, and super-moist. BLT adds gruyere to theirs, which is delicious, but they are just as good plain. We used parmesan on some of them, but it doesn’t melt like gruyere, so it flakes off and is a little messier. I couldn’t fit all of the batter in my pan at once, so I stored the remainder in the refrigerator overnight and let it come to room temperature the next day while dinner was reheating. I don’t think you’d want to try using it cold, since part of the instructions are to heat the pan before you add the batter, but at least I’ve proven to myself that popovers aren’t nearly the fuss they appear to be! We don’t eat a lot of bread these days, but I think we may be eating a lot more of these…
Happy Memorial Day weekend! I will be poolside, so posting will resume on Tuesday. Be safe, have fun, and eat something delicious! …is not another cake ball how-to. Everyone is making these. People have devoted entire businesses to selling them (though I think most of those people call them ‘cake truffles’). So let’s just meditate together on the greatness of them, instead. I like to use a devil’s food mix and a dark chocolate frosting (yes! I buy preprocessed ingredients for these, and I love it!) for the balls themselves. The first time I made them I just melted 12 oz of Scharffen Berger 70% and 65% together for the coating. I can’t be bothered to temper chocolate, because I hate multiple steps and because I have a refrigerator where I am happy to keep the finished balls for the duration of their very temporary existence. But the problem was that I ran out of chocolate. So this time I used the ganache recipe that I use to top chocolate cheesecake — 6 oz of 70% chocolate, 1 tbsp sugar, and 3/4 cup heavy cream — and doubled it. I had more than enough.
They remind me of doughnut holes at the uncoated stage. It takes ALL of my willpower not to just start popping them in my mouth…
…especially given how frustrating I find the coating process. I am going to come up with something better than what I’ve tried so far, or I am just going to start eating them as-is. Directly from the bowl, with a giant spoon. It’s win-win, as I see it.
What’s your favorite cake ball flavor combination? I might consider breaking out of my triple-chocolate rut. Blogmistress note: Tonight’s post is by my sister Heather. She is one of the best cooks I know, so you should definitely make this. She doesn’t have a blog — yet. Thanks for filling in, Heather! I love soup. I love vehicles for melted cheese. I love wine. I love Amber. Not in that order of course. So when she asked that I make french onion soup as an accompaniment to Thanksgiving dinner, I was psyched. Now normally I make this for two, so when I adjusted the ingredient list to serve all of us and Amber and Mark left the grocery store with 23 pounds of ingredients, they questioned me. Oops. Here is what I made/watched Mark make while I directed from the couch while drinking wine.
Mark and I checking out our handiwork Heat 1/2 cup olive oil and 1/2 stick butter over medium low heat. Once the butter melt, add 8 cloves minced garlic, 4 large sliced onions, 6 sprigs of thyme and 2 bay leaves. Cover and sweat about 30 minutes. Turn the heat up and carmelize for 15-20 minutes until colored. Briskly stir in 1/2 cup of flour and deglaze with 1/2 cup sherry, 1/2 cup red and 1/2 cup white wines. Add 32 ounces of chicken broth and 48 ounces of beef froth. Heat to boiling and simmer for 30-45 minutes until reduced by about 25%, season to taste with salt and pepper. Pour soup into 4-6 bowls, top with cubed baguettes and shredded swiss cheese. Broil 1-2 minutes until the cheese is melty and browned.
Melty, cheesey goodness. Who doesn’t love a good vehicle for cheese? I’m SO full right now, because of this:
Ms. Childfree Chic highlighted the recipe on her own blog recently, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before Mark and I were eating it! The recipe itself is here. As usual, I made a few modifications. One thing I really like about this soup a the lack of vegetables that I have to work around. I actually like carrots, even though I blended them in the lentil & sausage soup. The only ingredient that gave me pause in this recipe was the onion. So I blended it! Problem solved. And even though I don’t like to see vegetables floating around in my soup, I do like to see herbs floating around, so I added about half a teaspoon each of dried marjoram, basil, and parsley. I could have added more and it still would have been good. Mark and I were talking last night about people who think they can’t cook. I think a lot of people are under the impression they will ruin a recipe if they don’t follow it exactly, but that’s not necessarily true, especially for a soup. I used a little more beef than the recipe called for. It also called for three carrots, which I find silly, so I bought a bag of petite carrots, chopped them down to smaller pieces, and used all of them. I added potato chunks until they seemed about equal with the carrots. The last thing I did was double the broth so it would cover the ingredients — that was important because of the most substantial modification I made. I just wasn’t up for all the steps in the recipe, so I reduced it to two: chop the things that need chopping, then dump everything into a crockpot. I let it cook on low for about 6.5 hours, and the beef was so tender it was falling apart. You just can’t mess up crockpot cooking. Actually, you can, and I did once — but I’ll tell you about that another time! Even though it’s been in the upper 80s here in Houston, I am DYING to start wearing my fall clothes. It’s just not cool enough, so instead I’m starting my celebration of fall with homemade soup! I have been craving the lentil and sausage soup that they serve at Carraba’s. That soup is amazing, and there are tons of recipes to be found online so you can make your own version at home. But the thing is that they all have chunks of vegetables in them. I really hate the texture of most cooked-down veggies. So I picked a recipe and fixed it. Any cook can tell you how essential mirepoix is, but what if you hate chunks? Or chopping? I’d have carpal tunnel before I got everything chopped to an acceptable size where it wouldn’t squick me. The answer: blend it! I threw the zucchini in there because I knew I wouldn’t want to eat that, either. I ran out of room for the onions on the first pass:
So I added them for the second:
That’s a double batch of mirepoix, because the recipe only called for two stalks of celery and I didn’t want a bunch of celery rotting in the fridge. The bag of carrots had a little more than I needed for two batches, so I used them all. I really don’t think you could mess this up, since it’s just the base.
I put half in a freezable storage container for the next time I want to make soup:
I don’t think it will be in the freezer for long, though, because Mark went wild over this soup. It really is delicious! As for recipe tweaks, there are no measurements given for the spices, so I used a teaspoon of each and added rosemary. I think it worked great. You’ll want a lot more than a teaspoon of the red pepper if you want it to be spicy, though. I bought a 1.2-lb package of sausage, which is more than the recipe calls for, but if you love sausage like we do, go for two packages. You won’t be sorry!
The best part is that I made the mirepoix a day ahead, so making the soup was super-easy. Another tip: brown the sausage in the soup pot (before you add the other ingredients) so you don’t lose any fat. Fat = flavor! In other news, I brought this home tonight from Toastmasters:
My question was about my biggest challenge. I talked about trying to fit into my current work environment, which values quite different things than my previous place of employment. Guess a few people could relate! I was in the produce section and found something I’ve been wanting to try for a long time: dragonfruit! There was a basket of small yellow guavas next to it, so I grabbed some of those as well. I bought a banana for a thickener and some pre-cut pineapple for sweetness:
If you’re not familiar with dragonfruit, it is pretty neat. It grows on a cactus and tastes a bit like a kiwi, but milder. (To my disappointment, it does not taste like dragonfruit Starburst.)
You can cut it in half and gently pop the fruit out to separate it from the skin:
I’ve seen photos of the skin used as a bowl, with cubed fruit placed inside. I think that would be an adorable summer side dish! But I was going to blend the heck out of my dragonfruit, and I did, after slicing the stem ends off of the guavas:
I have to admit that this smoothie really didn’t do it for me. It was pretty mild, and Mark thought it was a perfect combination of sweet and tart, but like my smoothies really, really sweet — so I poured a bunch of mixed frozen fruit in there until it looked and tasted more like what I’m used to. I didn’t see any reason to share a photo of that. If sweet and tart sounds good to you, I will offer this advice — make sure you blend the heck out of it with a powerful blender, because between the dragonfruit and the guavas, it’s seed city. Have you tried dragonfruit? One of the best things since moving to Texas is discovering chorizo. Actually, oddly enough, I first tried chorizo in Montana, so let me rephrase that — one of the best things since moving to Texas is the wide availability of chorizo. I would happily eat it at least three times a week. What I don’t understand is how chorizo has never risen beyond the breakfast menu. It’s good at ALL times of day! My hope is that one day it will enjoy the kind of renaissance that bacon has seen for the last few years. Until then, I’ve got two preferred sources. The lazy source — that is, the nights we don’t want to cook — is La Mexicana, a great family-run restaurant that has served Houston for almost 30 years. They’re open late, the prices are a steal, and you can get desayuno all the time. I order chorizo scrambled with eggs, and refried beans. We always start with an appetizer of refried beans, melted cheese, and chorizo — so it’s kind of like having the same thing twice, which is awesome. The other source I like is Whole Foods. They make it fresh, and it is outstanding. We have made chorizo-based breakfast tacos several times for company, letting everyone fill their own at an assembly line, and they’re always a hit. Despite the number of components, they are very easy and we usually have leftovers. We cook up the following:
Sometimes we oven-roast one or two small red potatoes per person, diced and tossed in oil and assorted Mexican-type spices. Our grocery store makes fresh tortillas, so we’ll warm a stack of them in the oven while everything else is cooking on the stovetop. Mark is the official breakfast chef at our house, so I beg him to cook this meal whenever we plan to have a lazy Saturday (Sunday, as you know by now, is spoken for). Sometimes I beg for it for dinner. :)
What meal can’t you live without? |
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