Friday, August 30, 2013

Olive oil, chocolate and sea salt cookies

This was a super long summer because I overextended myself.  Sadly, the first thing to go when my time is limited is my baking.  I love to bake so I'm happy to report I'm back from my crazy summer with a fantastic cookie recipe.  I found this recipe via Capitol Hill Style and it's a keeper!  Soft and super chocolatey without being overly sweet, I ate like 4 when I was trying to figure out how to photograph chocolate cookies at 9pm in a kitchen with no natural light (not that it would've mattered after dark).  Shockingly, I didn't make any adjustments to the recipe though I'd like to throw out that the dough is weird.  Usually I eat about a cookie's worth of dough when I make them but something about the olive oil was a little off-putting.  The cookies are divine, the dough was weird.  Weird!



Olive oil, chocolate and sea salt cookies

Ingredients:

1/2 cup olive oil
1 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
3/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 Tbsp hot water
1/2 tsp sea salt
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
sea salt for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 350.  Dissolve baking soda into hot water.  Mix olive oil and sugar together in a medium to large mixing bowl.  Add the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition.  Add vanilla extract and mix well.  Add cocoa powder, flour and salt and mix well.  Mix in the baking soda and water mixture.  Mix in the chocolate chips.  Using a tablespoon scoop, scoop dough onto lined cookie sheet.  Sprinkle just a teeny bit of sea salt on top of your cookies.  Bake for 10 minutes.  Allow to cool for 5 or so before removing cookies from cookie sheet.  Devour with a glass of milk.

Monday, August 26, 2013

Bokum wings with feta dressing


One of Dave's all-time favorite Korean dishes is Jaeyuk Bokum, a spicy and sweet pork dish.  It's delicious and he's kind of known for loving it in my family.  I was craving some chicken wings and I wasn't feeling a vinegary buffalo sauce so I thought I'd give the bokum sauce another try.  You see, I attempted to make Bokum wings for the Super Bowl this year and used the same sauce I would for the pork and it almost burned my face off.

These wings definitely have some kick so I wanted a cool and creamy sauce to go with them.  I have a deep and undying love for bleu cheese and bleu cheese dressing but no bleu cheese in the fridge.  Bleu.  However, I have 2 containers of feta because Kroger was having a BOGO on it and you don't look a feta BOGO in the mouth.



Bokum wings

Ingredients:

15ish frozen chicken wings
salt
pepper
2 tbsps kochujang (spicy pepper paste from your friendly neighborhood Asian market)
1 tbsp ketchup
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp vinegar
1/2 tsp garlic powder

Preheat your oven to 375.  While your oven is heating, mix kochujang, ketchup, honey, vinegar and garlic powder in small saucepan over low heat.  Bring to a simmer and let it cook for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Turn your burner to warm and let the sauce hang out.

Once the oven is hot, put your frozen wings on a foil-lined baking sheet and sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Cook for 20 minutes, flip, sprinkle on a little more salt and pepper and let cook for another 20 minutes.

When your wings are done, heat a large frying pan to medium and add your wings and sauce.  Turn wings to coat and let cook only a couple of minutes.  The heat helps the sauce flavor the wings more than just pouring sauce on.

Serve with feta dressing

Feta Dressing

Ingredients:

1/4 cup mayonnaise
1/8 cup sour cream
1 Tbsp white wine vinegar
1 tsp garlic powder
2 oz. crumbled feta
salt
pepper

Mix everything together and stick it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.  Serve with hot bokum wings.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Philly Cheesesteak Sloppy Joe Sliders

I love cheesesteaks.  I've even been to Philadelphia before but not tried a cheesesteak.  I think it's to preserve the cheesesteaks I actually eat as somewhat authentic.  So anyway, I saw this recipe on Pinterest and got super excited.  I think this is an okay recipe but not nearly as amazing as I'd built it up in my mind.  Also, I want my sloppy joe's to be nice and sloppy.  This was more of a loose meat sandwich (which is a terrible name for a sandwich because nothing sounds appetizing about loose meat) so they were messy.

The original recipe comes from Blogchef.net and I opted not to make the cheese sauce, instead I just put 1/4 of a slice of provolone on my sliders.


Ingredients:

1 Tbsp olive oil
1 lb ground beef
1 onion, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped
1/4 cup steak sauce
1 cup beef broth
salt and pepper
slider buns
provolone slices

Heat olive oil in a large frying pan over medium heat.  Add ground beef and cook until mostly browned, breaking up pieces.  Add the chopped onion and bell pepper and cook until the onions become soft.  Add salt and pepper.  Stir in steak sauce and beef broth and simmer until slightly thickened, probably 7 minutes.  Taste and add more salt or pepper if needed.  Scoop onto slider buns and top with 1/4 slice of provolone cheese.

Recipe from blogchef.net

Saturday, August 3, 2013

Recipe test - Honeyed Shrimp and Polenta

I have tried polenta in restaurants several times and have been wanting to have a go at it. Being vaguely cheap and conscious of always buying things and then having them go bad before I use them, I wanted to try cooking polenta directly from cornmeal instead of buying the pre-prepped tubes.

I found this recipe at thekitchn.com, and put it to use. It seemed to do the trick, though the polenta was pretty sticky and I am not sure if that is how it is supposed to be or not. I might consider trying to make it in smaller quantities in the future because this yielded a buttload.

Then I went on to step two, which was to incorporate the polenta into a dish from epicurious.com, Honeyed Prawns and Polenta. I don't like the word prawn, so from now on I will be calling them shrimp, like a good American. On all of the British TV shows I watch they call them prawns and it just sounds icky to me. And it makes me think of the aliens from District 9, which was a fantastic movie. Back to cooking...

I do love shrimp. I like to try almost anything with shrimp, and I like to try to make new things with shrimp. In fact, I tried cooking them directly over the flame of my gas stove on skewers the other day because I was too lazy to bother setting up the grill. A little iffy, but it works!


While the polenta looks like a solid thing here, once you pierce the crusty layer it is all jiggly and soupy. Polenta and shrimp baked and then plated in a pleasing manner with parmesan, parsley and capers because, as blogger The Pioneer Woman says, Martha may be watching.


And then I proceeded to douse it in more parmesan and devour it. The capers were unnecessary, and did not compliment the honey-sweet taste of the dish. Otherwise, pretty delightful. The brown bits of the polenta were the best parts by far. Not such a fan of the soupy part, so baking in a thinner layer would go better in my opinion. The recipe called for currants, which I did not have, and they may have added some more goodness because I can see that they may have been a fruitiness missing that I would have liked. Though I found that the polenta reminded me a bit of corn bread and then I really wanted corn bread and wished I had it instead of the polenta.

I am a bit torn on the shrimp. The tomato paste and honey did work on one level, but I think maybe it could have been thinned and spruced up in some way.

If you love polenta, then this might work out for you. If not, this might not be the best intro.