RPI - Yeast: Soft Pretzels

The Lowdown:

Pretzels are memory makers. Well, maybe they are memory enhancers. The memories of circuses, fairs, hockey games (or any sports game), concerts, rodeos, carnivals; and of course, Oktoberfest are all heightened by the food and beverage we consume during them. This theory isn't just related to cheap snacks during the aforementioned events. It can be a great meal you ate on a trip that defined the entire vacation. It can be a picnic on the beach that made your summer that much better. It can be a wine that always reminds you of a past anniversary. It can be an aroma emanating from a kitchen that reminds you of home. It can be a shot that ruined your birthday... like say a Bacardi 151 muff diver (I'll get my revenge for that soon enough).

In some unfortunate cases, these same events can be remembered by what came up. Back from the dead food. Food Zombies..? Once good food items coming back to life as an undead, decrepit version of a once loved meal. No need to over think this, it was just merely an after(life) thought.

Back to the events. One thing that all of these events have in common is the infamous pretzel -- salty, warm, doughy, and just plain classic. Sometimes it can even be your saviour when you've had one too many overpriced beers at a sporting event. Overpriced is an understatement. We've all seen them revolving around the heat lamp in those weird oscillating ovens. Some of you may have even wondered just how much salt can they actually fit onto one pretzel.

The fact is, we've all waited way too long in a line-up to get a hold of one of these salty treats. This is where this story starts. This installment of RPI, as the title states, is yeast. I was recently at a hockey game waiting in one of the said line-ups. Taking light years to get to the counter I starting thinking about how to make a pretzel at home. This is just a classic "one thing lead to another and here we are" story. Sorry to talk in bullet points, but I'm tired of typing. Farewell. My friends. Ciao.

The Playlist:

2.5 cups Flour
Flour, for kneading surface
1 tbsp Sugar
1 tbsp Yeast
1 cup Water, tepid
1 tsp Salt
1 tbsp Olive oil

The Skinny:

1. In large bowl: prime yeast by combining with water and sugar. Cover with towel and let sit for 10 minutes. Combine the flour, and salt into the yeast liquid.
2. Once dough ball has formed, generously flour a surface and kneed the dough for 7 minutes. 
3. Preheat oven to 450*.
4. Put dough back into the bowl and coat with olive oil. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise for an hour.
5. Cut dough into six individual balls and roll out into ropes and form into pretzel shapes. Sprinkle with sea salt and bake for 8 minutes, until browned. 

Stay Rad -h
Featured on: Premeditated Leftovers, 33 Shades of Green, Chef in Training, Food Renegade, Foodie Friday,  

Scalloped Potatoes

There are few things I love more than potatoes. I think that's the Albertan in me. I have a special fondness in my little heart for those bad boys.

It's been a long time since I've lived in Calgary, Alberta. In that time I've developed a raging affinity for other foods: pasta, polenta, homemade tomato sauce, chicken liver pate, cheese, wine. In fact, I often think my food-soul is Italian. 

And I have mostly managed to shake a lot of the Albertanisms that make me think of it as "little Texas" - big money, greed, Budweiser, big oil guzzling trucks, saying "get 'er done". Not that there is anything wrong with Alberta or Texas in and of themselves - I'm just a little more West coast than that. Or as the people I work with often refer to me, a little more social-communist. And I'm okay with that. I like shopping vintage thrift and up-cycling material goods. Smart cars are an excellent way to get around the city. And sauntering from one place to another, taking time to smell the flowers and breathe the air and watch the birds and lay on the beach all while being protected by universal medicine is A-okay with me.

But try as I might - potatoes linger both in my mind and judging by the popularity of the Paleo diet, my hips too, apparently.  Smother 'em in cheesy, creamy goodness and I've got the best of all worlds.

So while Italian may be my food-soul, potatoes are my soul-food. They remind me that I stem from a meat and potatoes kinda place. Filled with big trucks, oil money and bad beer. So I hold them dear and close to my heart. That and country music.

Scalloped Potatoes

(printable recipe) - serves 4.

Ingredients:

Approx 3 Lb (6 medium sized) Yukon gold Potatoes, sliced very thinly (use a mandolin on thinnest setting).

1 Onion, peeled & sliced very thinly in the same way as the potatoes.

2 Garlic Cloves, minced.

1 or 2 Sprigs of Fresh Thyme.

1 Bay Leaf.

2 1/2 C 2% Milk or Cream.

2 Tbsp Butter.

2 Tbsp Flour.

Pinch of Nutmeg.

1 1/2 C Gruyere Cheese, grated.

1/2 C Parmesan Cheese, grated.

Coarse Sea Salt & Fresh Cracked Black Pepper.

What to Do:

Pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees F & lightly grease a 9 X 9" baking dish.

Heat a medium sized saucepan over medium heat. Add the butter and melt until sizzling - add the flour and stir constantly until fragrant and just starting to change color. Remove from the heat and add the milk, stirring to ensure it doesn't curdle. Add the garlic, thyme, bay leaf, nutmeg and a generous helping of salt and pepper. Place back on heat and stir stir stir until the milk thickens. Remove from the heat and discard what's left of the thyme stem.

Ladle a little of the liquid into the prepared baking dish, followed by closely layered slices of potatoes so they overlap. Top with some of the grated Gruyere and another ladle full of the milk mixture. Repeat until the dish is full with 1/2" of headroom - you should end up with 3 - 4 layers of potatoes, finishing with the Parmesan cheese.

Cover with tin foil and place in the oven to bake for 50 - 60 minutes. Remove the cover and continue cooking for a further 10 minutes or until cheese on top is bubbly and golden.

Remove from the oven and let sit for a few minutes before cutting into. 

Eat.

What's your background? What foods or lifestyle choices do you hold close to your heart? What makes you who you are? What do you hang on to? What do you let go of? Are there any other country fans in the house?

Rippin' Another Blog: Poulet au Riesling

Good morning darling readers!

I was thinking this morning... How often do we food bloggers - and food blog readers - prowl the internet in search of the most amazing looking, sounding, tasting recipes, only to bookmark or pin or comment on them...and then they go forgotten...?

They go unmade.

And as a food blogger myself, I rarely make the same dish more than once, even if it was fucking spectacular. The exception being of course, if I have company over for dinner and I want to share a recent culinary success story with them.

But because I need new posts, I need new recipes. New ideas. New new new! So I prowl. We prowl. We find inspiration in each other. But rarely, do we actually follow someone else's recipe. We think it makes us more distinguished if we create our own. What food masters we are! Yeaaahhh.....

That's why I love Haydn and my series, Rippin' Another Blog. I actually get the opportunity to make someone else's dish. Of course there are the odd modifications or substitutions based on availability and personal preference but generally, it's their recipe. And what makes a food blogger feel better than when someone actually makes their dish? Pretty much nothing. Except letting them know you made their dish. Comments my friends, we all love comments. We pine for comments!

Something else I pine for? More of Katie's Poulet au Riesling. Chicken? Good! Riesling? Good! And I relish the opportunity to use a sweeter white wine in savory cooking than a dry one. Why the heck not, right?

I first became acquainted with Katie's blog, So Tasty, So Yummy, through The Secret Recipe Club - another fantastic medium I participate in @ Gastronomical Sovereignty through which I make recipes from other people's blogs. And let me tell you, I'm glad I did. She's clever, inspiring and kind of hot. And by kind of, I mean the chick is smokin'.

...and so is this dish. Bland chicken? Hells no! Sweet, creamy, herby, fantastic chicken? Yes!

Poulet au Riesling

(printable recipe) - serves 4.

Recipe c/o So Tasty, So Yummy

Ingredients:

3 Slices of Bacon, chopped.

4 Pastured Chicken Thighs.

1 Medium Onion, peeled and chopped.

2 Garlic Cloves, peeled and thinly sliced.

½ Lb Forest Mushrooms, thinly sliced.

6 Medium Sized Carrots, sliced.

2 C Riesling.

2/3 C Heavy Cream.

2 Tbsp Parsley, chopped.

1/2 Tsp Freshly Ground Nutmeg.

Coarse Sea Salt & Fresh Cracked Black Pepper.

What to Do:

Heat a Dutch oven or enamel roasting pan over medium-high heat. Throw in the bacon and cook until crispy. Remove from pan and set aside.

Season the chicken well with salt and pepper. Sprinkle with nutmeg. Arrange skin side down in the bacon fat and cook until brown and crispy. Remove and set aside with the bacon. 

Discard all but 4 tablespoons of the fat. Reduce the heat to medium and sauté onions and garlic until soft. 

Add the mushrooms and carrots, stir and continue cooking until heated through, approx. 3 minutes. 

Turn the heat to high and pour in the wine. When it comes to a rolling boil put the chicken and bacon back in the pot. Turn the heat down to medium-low. Simmer uncovered until the chicken is cooked through, approx 45 minutes. 

Remove the chicken from the pan. Add cream and boil until sauce is reduced somewhat and starting to thicken. Return chicken to the sauce. Add parsley and serve.

Eat.

Do you ever actually make the recipes you find online? Or do they get lost in Pinterest land?

Rippin' Another Blog: Shepherd's Pie (Not Cottage Pie)

I don't talk too much about my romantic relationship on my blogs.

But John is instrumental in helping me get my posts done. He is endlessly supportive in his words, unquestioningly generous in his efforts to help me get the shots I need and constantly puts up with being served cold food because of said photo needs. He also eats everything. Good or bad. And he's honest too.

Honest about shepherd's pie.

I know right? In this moment you're like, wtf?

I grew up eating shepherd's pie. Or so I thought I did. Fast-forward 15 years or so and I learn that what I thought I was eating all those years was a farce. Or at the very least, a cultural hiccup.

Cottage pie V. shepherd's pie. 

Cottage pie is what we typically call shepherd's pie in North America. Ground beef, carrots, peas, onions, potatoes, baked in the oven and (hopefully) smothered in gravy. Uh, yes. Yum. Yes? Yes. 

But what this very clever and sexy beer-drinking physics-loving film-geek Brit told me was shepherd's pie must entail lamb. Hence the shepherd. Baaaahhh! (sheep noise). With beef it's simply cottage pie. And with the dish being of the English variety, he should know.

Rug. Ripped. Out. From. Under. Me.

Luckily he was there to catch me and I've been calling a spade a spade ever since - cottage pie = cows, shepherd's pie = sheep. Unless of course I want to give him a hard time... and then I conflate the two. Because I'm a bitch like that.

Speaking of bitches .... this recipe comes courtesy of a little blog titled The Domestic Man. It's okay to segue bitches because men can't be bitches. Can they? I followed his recipe to a T - actually, I followed it right into my stomach because it was Ah-mazing! Thank you Domestic Man for making my mouth happy and my blog a space to speak out about a very important issue. Baaaahhhh!

Shepherd's Pie (Not Cottage Pie)

(printable recipe) - serves 6.

Ingredients:

1.5 Lbs Ground Lamb.
3 Medium Russet Potatoes, peeled and chopped.
1 Small White Onion, diced.
1 Medium Carrot, diced.
1 Celery Root, diced.
2 Cloves Garlic, minced.
1 Tbsp Tomato Paste.
1/2 C Chicken Broth.
 2 Tsp Worcestershire sauce.
1/2 Tsp each fresh thyme and rosemary, stemmed and chopped.
1/2 C Frozen Peas.
3 Tbsp Butter .
1/2 C Heavy Cream.
Coarse Salt & Fresh Cracked Black Pepper.

What to Do:

Fill a large saucepan with the potatoes and cold water. Bring to a boil over high heat and cook until potatoes are fork tender - approx 20 minutes.

Drain and return the potatoes to the empty pot. Add 2 Tbsp of butter, the cream (starting with 1/4 C and adding more if necessary), and a good helping of salt and pepper. Mash until smooth but be careful not to over mash or you'll end up with a sticky gooey mess. Cover and set aside.

As the potatoes boil, heat a large pan over medium heat. When hot, add the lamb and brown, stirring often. When it is almost entirely cooked drain the meat, reserving the fat. Set the meat aside and add a couple of Tbsp of fat back into the pan, along with the rest of the butter. Melt and add the onion, carrots and celery. Cook until softened (approx 8 minutes).

Add the tomato paste and garlic and massage into the mixture. Saute a further 2 minutes.

Dump in the herbs, broth, Worcestershire and salt and pepper to taste. Stir and simmer until the liquid thickens slightly - approx. 3 minutes.

At this point you can turn your oven on to 450 degrees F.

Remove from the heat and reintroduce the lamb to the mixture as well as the peas.

Dump the lot into an 8" baking dish or roasting pan and spread even.

Gently top with the mashed potatoes - little bits at a time until it's even all over. Bake in the oven on the middle rack for 30-45 minutes or until the top of the potatoes gets crispy and slightly golden.

Pull from the oven, let rest 5 minutes, and then dish up! Feel free to serve with your favorite gravy recipe if you like gravy. Who doesn't like gravy?

Eat.

How do the people in your world make your life better?

Can men be bitches?

RPI: Chorizo Potato Boats (choo choo!)

Oh goodness!

I find it so amusing that Haydn and I both - inadvertently - chose childhood favorites for our chorizo RPI assignments. Great minds think alike!

Okay, maybe not so much childhood as teenage/young adult-ness. And while we're at it, maybe not so much great minds either. When I still lived in the the small-ass town where I grew up (think no-where Alberta), bumper-skiing and Budweiser were cool, gas was $5.00/litre and gettin' down on the farm (literally) was how we got down - bonfires, pickup trucks and all.

One night a week my friends and I would cruise - and by cruise, I mean see if we could break the sound barrier in my girl friend's volvo - into the city and hit up Boston Pizza for late night snacks and cokes. And if we felt really adventurous, some of us would even get long island iced-teas - the drink of all barely-legal kids everywhere. 

One of those snacks was potato skins. Oozy gooey semi-veggie friendly potato boats of unhealthy goodness. Well I'll tell ya what - I did them one better. I kept most of the potato, smashed it up with a little milk, butter and sour cream and then mixed in some seriously flavorful additions.

I give you, chorizo potato boats. All aboard!

Chorizo Potato Boats

serves 4 - (printable recipe)

Ingredients:

2 Large Russet Potatoes, washed and well dried.
3 Links of Spanish Chorizo, casing removed.
1/2 Onion, peeled & finely diced.
1 Garlic Clove, peeled & chopped.
Handful of canned/jar Artichoke Hearts, roughly chopped.
2 - 4 Sundried Tomatoes (depending on size), roughly chopped.
1 Roasted Bell Pepper, thinly sliced.
1/4 C Black Olives, pits removed and roughly chopped.
1/2 C Aged White Cheddar Cheese (or other flavorful good melting cheese), grated.
Smoked Paprika for dusting.
Approx 1/2 C Milk.
2 Tbsp Sour Cream + Extra for serving.
2 Tbsp Butter + Extra for serving.

2 Tbsp Fresh Italian Flat Leaf Parsley, chopped.
Coarse Sea Salt & Fresh Cracked Black Pepper.

What to Do:

Pre-heat your oven to 425 degrees F. 

As the oven heats, stab the potatoes with a fork all over to ensure they don't explode in the oven. Place on a baking sheet and and bake in the oven for 1 - 1 and 1/2 hours or until fork tender. Remove from heat and let cool enough so you can handle them.

While the potatoes are cooling heat a large frying pan over medium heat. Add the chorizo and break up well. Cook thoroughly, stirring often. 

Add the onion - allow to soften. Toss in the garlic, stirring for about a minute or until fragrant. Toss in the artichoke hearts, tomatoes, bell pepper and olives. Mix well and heat through. Set aside.

Once they have cooled somewhat, slice in half and spoon the inside of the potato out of the skin and dump in a bowl. Add 1/4 C of the milk, butter and sour cream along with a good helping of salt and pepper. Mash baby mash! If necessary, add more of any of the above to taste and find a good texture. Take care not to over mash because over mashing = starchy goopy mess.

Fold in the chorizo veg mixture as well as the cheese until well blended. 

Gently spoon the potato mixture back into the skins. Pile high. And set back onto baking sheet. Sprinkle with smokey paprika. Place back in oven for about 30 minutes.

Remove from heat. Top with the chopped parlsey. Serve.

Eat.

What kind of "trouble" did you get into growing up? What were some of your favorite dishes?

 This post is linked up with the Hearth & Soul Blog Hop via the 21st Century Housewife; Tasty Tuesdays; Tuesday Talent Show; Cast Party Wednesday; Whole Foods Wednesday; Frugal days, Sustainable Ways; What's in the Box;

I like it hot and cheesy!

I've missed you lovelies!

Due to a ridiculously busy week of also family visitations, work schedule fuck ups, Haydn's birthday, university convocation, hair appointments, and the need to finish the last book in The Hunger Games, I took last week off. And you know that? I'm damn glad I did!

It just needed to be done. 

Those of us with blogs know how time consuming they can be, but my wonderful friends who aren't obsessed with their computers don't realize that between 3 posts a week @ Gastronomical Sovereignty and 1 here, I probably waste spend near 40 hours a week cooking, taking photos, editing photos, posting, promoting, and doing general blog things. It really is about 10 hours a post - and while I love it, I needed a week off. 

But now I'm back! And that also feels damn good.

And to celebrate? How about a little cheesy spicy goodness? For this week's make-something-from-another-blog-post I decided to pull out a little trick from Kimberly @ Rhubarb & Honey.

The chick is fuckin' rad and so is her food philosophy. She also happens to partake in The Secret Recipe Club with me - and while I may not get as my SRC assignment, it doesn't mean I can't give the woman props and make something from her blog.

Her recipe has less fat in it than mine does but I have a slight fear of anything "low fat" or "non-fat".... If they take the fat out of an ingredient, they have to replace it with something. What is that something??? Ick! So instead, I went all-fat. And let me tell you, I'm pretty sure my thighs are feelin' it. But it's all good because anything that is cheesy and spicy makes me a happy girl... 

Speaking of which, have you read 50 Shades of Grey??? I'm on the first book right now and I've never read anything so outright cheesy and hot in all my life. But it's Summer time - when else during the year can you indulge in such sauciness?

Gooey Cheesy Baked Jalapenos
 (printable recipe) - serves 5 - 6.

Ingredients:

6 Jalapeños, halved and seeds & ribs removed.
1/2 Cup Cheddar Cheese, grated.
1/4 C Cream Cheese, whipped.
4 Scallions, finely chopped.
1/2 Cup Whole Wheat Flour.
1 1/2 Cups Panko Crumbs.
4 Large Egg Whites.
Course Sea Salt & Fresh Cracked Black Pepper.
1/2 C Sour Cream.

What to Do: 

Pre-heat your broiler and line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Place a wire rack on top and lay jalapenos on rack, broil for approx 2 minutes or until they start to char. Allow to cool completely and turn the oven down to 400 degrees F via the regular element.

In a small bowl combine the cheddar, cream cheese and half the scallions. Gently spoon & tightly pack into eat half pepper.

Place the flour and panko crumbs in two separate shallow dishes, seasoning both with a little salt. In a third bowl, whisk the egg whites until foamy.

Dredge each jalapeno through the flour,s haking off the excess, followed by the egg whites, and then the panko.

Place back on the wire rack/foil lined baking sheet again and season with salt and pepper. Bake until breading is golden and cheese is melted, approx. 20 minutes or so.

As they brown, mix the remaining scallions into the sour cream and season lightly with salt.

Serve baked jalapenos with the sour cream on the side for dipping.

Eat.

What do you do to relax? How do you know it's time for a break? Good Summer read suggestions, darlings?

 

This post is linked up with Whole Foods Wednesday; Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways; Cast Party Wednesday; Simple Lives Thursday; Showcase Your Talent Thursday; Full Plate Thursday; Tastetastic Thursday; Fresh Bites Friday; Fight Back Friday.