Deconstructed Caramel Apples

We made caramel sauce.

Do not be afraid of trying this. It was wicked easy and delicious.

Ambrosia
We altered this recipe to fit our needs.  The original has excellent pictures to reference when deciding if the syrup is caramelized enough to add the cream.

2 cups sugar
1/2 cup water
3/4 cup heavy cream, lukewarm, split into 1/2 cup and 1/4 cup portions
2 Tbs butter, cut into pats
2 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt

Combine sugar and water in medium saucepan.  Heat over medium-high.  To reduce crystallization, cover cooking syrup for one minute so the steam will wash any unmelted sugar off the sides of the pan. Continue to cook until the syrup has changed to an amber-brown color around the edge (will be lighter in center of pan).  The mixture may not be deep enough for a candy thermometer to be effective, but if it is, the temperature should be 350 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Remove from heat and immediately stir with wooden spoon or whisk.  Add 1/2 cup heavy cream and butter while stirring.  The mixture will foam up and steam, so don't stick your head or hand right over it.  Stir until combined.  Add remaining heavy cream, vanilla and salt and stir until caramel is smooth.  Transfer to a heat proof jar and cool on countertop for an hour before sealing or storing in the refridgerator. 

Thouroungly lick, then soak the pot, spoons, etc. in hot water before you attempt to wash them. Seriously, they are sticky. Let them soak for at least as long as it takes you to eat half the jar of caramel.

So far we know that this stuff is excellent on apples (especially sprinkled with smoked sea salt), on ice cream, and by the spoonful.  I imagine that it would be amazing on just about anything desserty or breakfasty.

Relativity Pie

I started my second year of pre-med classes last month: Physics and Organic Chemistry. So, I spend a lot of time doing homework now, but I am also reading Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. It has taken me all summer to get through the series, partly because they are huge, complicated books and partly because I was waiting to read them until I could afford to buy them. I know myself well enough to know that I would want to own these.

Whilst reading, I encountered a passage which simultaneously made me think about reference frames (physics) and pie (yumm). Daniel (fictional) and Isaac Newton are riding in a carriage, recently swept out of a club where they were about to consume dinner. Daniel is understandably distracted by the presence of pies in the carriage, but Isaac seems to have forgotten them entirely.

"Isaac, though better equipped than Daniel or any other man alive to understand Relativity, shewed no interest in his pie--as if being in a state of movement with respect to the planet Earth rendered it somehow Not a Pie. But as far as Daniel was concerned, a pie in a moving frame of reference was no less a pie than one that was sitting still: position and velocity, to him, might be perfectly interesting physical properties, but they had no bearing on, no relationship to those properties that were essential to pie-ness. All that mattered to Daniel were the relationships between his, Daniel's, physical state and that of the pie. If Daniel and Pie were close together in both position and velocity, then pie-eating became a practical, and tempting, possibility. If Pie were far asunder from Daniel or moving at a large relative velocity--e.g., being hurled at his face--then its pie-ness was somehow impaired, at least from the Daniel frame of reference. For the time being, however, these were purely Scholastical hypotheticals Pie was on his lap and very much a pie, no matter what Isaac might think of it."

As a result of reading this, I was obviously overcome with desire for pie. Daniel and Isaac are eating savory pies, which I could not make due to the fact that we had neither meat nor vegetable in the house. We were generally short on food, but I was able to rustle up some (year-old) frozen cranberries and apples (one partially eaten).

I don't have a recipe for the pie, because it was largely improvised. For crust, I used one of the pat-a-cake pie crusts from the Joy of Cooking. The rest was based on what I had for ingredients and a love of warm fall spices. This post has been languishing in limbo waiting for me to write one (I have confusing notes on what I did somewhere). I decided to just post it and hope that it inspires further pie-making. I recommend lots of brown sugar and cinnamon.

S'Mores

Zucchini Fritters

I take pictures of food way more often than I write about it. Sometimes the food (or the pictures) does not turn out as well as I planned. Sometimes I take the pictures for other reasons, such as wanting to brag to my mother. Most of the time I just don't get around to writing. Life is too distracting.

I was exploring my old picture files and found this one of zucchini fritters.

It isn't the most appetizing. And it looks like I was using way more butter/oil than I actually was because my stovetop wasn't level. But, zucchini fritters are still delicious, and now it's zucchini season again.

I'm not really into most vegetables. I like them in theory. I like reading about them, looking at pictures of them, imagining a future where I grow them. But in reality I am not a fan. So, it's good for me to find a recipe which disguises super-cheap (often free in the case of zucchini, once the season gets going) vegetables as something delicious. Of course, it's not hard when the solution involves bacon, garlic, and cheese.

Zucchini Fritters
4 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
1 medium zucchini fritters, shredded
1 1/2 cup shredded cheese (I've used cheddar, but experimentation is in the future)
2 garlic scapes or 1 clove garlic, minced
2 eggs, seperated
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup masa or cornmeal
2 Tbs sour cream
dash cayenne pepper & salt

--mix all ingredients except egg whites
--whip egg whites and fold into batter
--drop by the 1/4 cup onto medium-heat greased skillet and fry until golden
--suggested serving: with tomato, avocado and sour cream

Derby!

Now, you might think that the Kentucky Derby is an event celebrated only by those in the South, those interested in horses or gambling, or those with TVs who can actually watch the event. But you would be wrong! Derby Day can and should be celebrated by anyone with a love of goofy hats or delicious minty cocktails.

To the left you will see an example of an acceptable hat for Derby Day celebrations.

Now, when Pirogi and I do celebrations, we generally have to go all out--make a day of it. We also needed to clean out my fridge, which had an inordinate amount of meat in it. Normally, I buy/eat meat once or twice a week. In my fridge, I had chicken, kielbasa, steak, and bacon. The bacon and steak were both from farms near where Pirogi's parents live and pretty delicious.

So, Derby Day began with a proper breakfast.

French toast with strawberries, bacon, pineapple, coffee. I have never succeeded at making french toast before, so this was super exciting.

Dinner was barbecue chicken,
asparagus, onion, and biscuits. But, of course, the highlight of the evening, the entire reason for Derby Day (besides the horses, I suppose) was the mint juleps.

First step: minty syrup (my job)
1 cup white sugar
1 cup water
1/4 cup chopped mint

Boil until sugar is completely dissolved, then remove from heat and let steep for 1 hour. Strain and cool.

Second step (Pirogi's job)
bourbon
mint syrup
Mix and serve over crushed ice with mint sprig garnish.

20 Mule Team Borax

Sanna Sanna Ho

Easter Eve (Holy Saturday?) dinner:
Breakfast (consumed noonish): Lemon Rolls with Cream Cheese Glaze from the kitchn


Dinner: Eggs Benedict and asparagus


I made the hollandaise sauce using Alton Brown's method. It was super easy, but attention-needing so I was glad that Pirogi was taking care of the other egg-related preparations. I don't have a double-boiler or a metal bowl, so I had to balance a corel bowl in my saucepan.