We’ve been obsessively experimenting with happy chickens – here you can see Old Hall Farm and Fosse Meadows Farm stands, both of which offer a perfect bird for a Sunday night roast with market vegetables. And pretty bunting.

Perry’s Farm and Ted’s Veg are great for stocking up on produce – I’ve been trying all sorts of fun and colorful things like green and red kale, red cabbage, Isle of Wight tomatoes, sorrel, cress, local apple and pear varieties, rhubarb stalks, and purple sprouting broccoli.

It’s all excellent quality, grown by small farmers and producers, and a great way to get involved in supporting the local community. Plus, it’s delicious.  Showing up at the market and buying whatever looks exciting is a great way to try out new vegetables and play around with different recipes.

I love broccoli, especially when it’s pretty and purple. I think it’s delicious on its own, but let’s be honest…isn’t everything a little bit extra awesome when you add cheese into the mix?

This fantastic creamy feta dip is adapted from Sarah (fellow Rambling Restaurauteur) and her amazing Persian dishes that we’ve enjoyed at Nowruz new year celebrations for two years.  She’s made addictive rhubarb lamb khoresh and homemade baklava and all sorts of deliciousness.  I borrowed her lovingly worn Persian cookbook to play around with some recipes for a dinner party and ended up with a version of a Cheese and Walnut Spread that goes perfectly with lightly steamed broccoli.

You have to start with a really good feta cheese and our choice of cheese the past few years has been this delightful can of unintelligibility.

Having just got back from Berlin yesterday, I actually think it’s in German, although the writing also implies Bulgarian? Who knows – it’s creamy, salty, and fantastic and that’s all that matters.  Go comb the corner stores for it and you won’t regret it.

If you happen to be so lucky as to have received a Slap Chop (of incredible infomercial entertainment value, including the remix) for Christmas from your brother, you can use it to crush some nuts. You won’t regret that either.

Add some chopped parsley and mint to the dip, along with lime juice, some olive oil, minced garlic, and salt and pepper. I happened to have some creme fraiche in the house from Ottolenghi’s amazing caramelised garlic tart which added a nice smooth tartness to the dip.

It’s great with crackers, great with flatbread. Great on carrots or probably any other raw or lightly steamed vegetable. I bet it would be good stuffed in a chicken breast or rolled up into meat or spread on a sandwich. Cheese spreads like this are great multitaskers.  Make it and I’m sure you’ll find another ten great ways to eat it. Like by itself on a spoon…

Super Easy Cheese,  Herb, and Nut Dip

What You Need:

I’ll be honest, I didn’t really measure any of this, so don’t worry about the proportions too much. Try, taste, adjust as necessary, and I’m sure it will be delicious.

A good hunk of feta cheese (the Persian book says 1/4 pound)

1/2-1 cup of nuts – traditionally walnuts, but I didn’t have any, so I used almonds. Also delicious.

A handful of fresh parsley, chopped into little shreds

A handful of fresh mint, also chopped into little shreds

Other herbs that would be good but I didn’t have – scallions, basil, tarragon, etc.

1 clove minced garlic

1/4 cup creme fraiche

1/4 cup olive oil – I think I left this out

juice of 1 lime

salt & pepper

What You Do:

Ummm…put it all in a bowl and mix it up. It doesn’t get any more complicated than that and it will take only about 5 minutes of your life. Scoop onto a piece of broccoli or animal flesh or grain product and eat. Happy times.

]]> http://eatfamilystyles.com/2011/04/11/sunday-farmers-market-trips-and-an-easy-cheesy-recipe/feed/ 0 http://eatfamilystyles.com/2011/04/03/real-bacon-real-excitement-and-a-really-delicious-caramelized-garlic-tart-obviously-with-bacon/ http://eatfamilystyles.com/2011/04/03/real-bacon-real-excitement-and-a-really-delicious-caramelized-garlic-tart-obviously-with-bacon/#comments Sun, 03 Apr 2011 16:34:01 +0000 mei http://eatfamilystyles.com/?p=3528 If  you’ve ever met me, you know I have a thing for bacon.

I love bacon enough for my sister and I to make an all-bacon Thanksgiving feast with 8 dishes including bacon stuffing, bacon mashed potatoes, and bacon-wrapped turkey. I love bacon enough to go to a Bacon Camp and make bacon sushi and take random photos of beautiful bacon dishes. I love bacon enough to do a 4-course Iron Chef-style bacon smackdown that included bacon chocolate and bacon cookies and have been known to make bacon cupcakes and even bacon macaroni-and-cheese cat cakes. Don’t ask. I even love bacon enough to tattoo it on my face.

So you can probably comprehend my fat-kid-in-a-candy-shop-on-Christmas-morning level of excitement when this package arrived in the mail. I actually jumped up and down and squealed like a pig.  A delicious, dry-cured British pig.

Understandably, most people’s first question on hearing about my bacon package is ‘How did you get that?!?!’ Meaning, obviously, ‘How can I get that!?!?!’  The answer is that I was sent the bacon from a PR company promoting ‘Real Bacon’; that is, British bacon dry-cured in a traditional manner that involves hand rubbing with salt and spices and at least 21 days of air-drying.  In contrast to a lot of imported bacon that’s injected with water and chemicals, this bacon doesn’t shrink to half its original size in the frying pan or give off a funky white gloopiness when being cooked which comes from the injected water leaching out, two things I’ve actually noticed recently when cooking bacon. Plus, the bacon comes from pigs that are compassionately farmed, which I’m all about. Well, that’s what the press release says, which may require a little more investigation.

However, the interesting thing for me was that the press release didn’t come from an expensive artisan bacon company, or even from one company at all. In fact, the bacon came from multiple different supermarkets at a range of prices from M&S to Morrisons, all in support of the ‘I love Real Bacon’ campaign.  And while I’m trying to look for supermarket alternatives for a lot of my shopping, it’s a bit unrealistic to get all my groceries at farmer’s markets  so it’s great to know that there are some better options. And the bacon certainly looked better than a lot of the inspidly pink, monotonously hued, fleshy rashers you sometimes see down those flourescently highlighted megamart aisles.

P.S. For those of my friends back home wondering why the bacon is a funny shape and less fatty and stripey than normal, this is what is called ‘back bacon’ in the UK, which is essentially a bacon-cured pork loin. The typical long and skinny slice of pork belly that we just call bacon, they call ‘streaky bacon’. In case you were wondering.  They held their size pretty well when fried up with none of the gross white stuff, had a nice salty meatiness and got a good seared crisp on the fatty bits.  Pretty damn good stuff.

Now I love bacon, and you love bacon, and I want to share the glories of bacon. Getting a massive box of bacon is definitely a good opportunity to have a dinner party.  But as much as I would like to just hand over strips of bacon for our mutual enjoyment, I figured it should actually be incorporated into a dish before I get accused of endangering the cardiac health of my dinner guests. Enter Ottolenghi’s Caramelised Garlic Tart of amazingness.

I’ve talked about genius chef-man Ottolenghi before and the usefulness of his incredible vegetarian cookbook, Plenty, during my month of meatlessness.  Every recipe I’ve tried so far, from the Very Full Tart to this ridiculously good soba noodles with mango and eggplant recipe, has been absolutely stellar.  But of course, even stellar can be better with bacon. I bet Ottolenghi himself, as a meat eater with an appreciation of the glories of vegetables, would agree.

Caramelised Garlic Tart with Goat Cheeses and, Obviously, Bacon.

All credit to Ottolenghi, except adapted slightly in honor of bacon.

What You Need:

375g puff pastry – easy to buy pre-rolled in the store

a few tbsps olive oil

Salt and black pepper

2 heads garlic, cloves peeled – I did this once and my hands smelled of garlic for hours. My recommendation for lazy people who don’t mind spending an extra pound – buy them pre-peeled. Your fingers and your friends will thank me.

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

1½ tbsp caster sugar – that’s just regular sugar for you Americans.

1 tsp chopped rosemary

1 tsp chopped thyme, plus a few whole sprigs to finish

120g rich, creamy goats’ cheese

120g harder goat’s cheese

2 eggs

100ml double cream  - heavy cream if you’re in the US

100ml crème fraîche

What You Do:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F and then roll out your puff pastry in a tart pan or pie tin. Create an outer crust lip, place some baking paper down, fill with beans and blind bake for 20 minutes. Take out the beans and bake for another 20 minutes or so, until the pastry is a light golden brown.

2. While the pastry is baking, cover the garlic in water and simmer for 3 minutes to blanch. Drain, then return to the pan with a splash of oil to lightly fry for a few minutes. Add the vinegar and 180 ml of water (about 3/4 cup) and simmer for another 10 minutes. Then add the sugar, the thyme and rosemary, and a pinch of salt.  Simmer for another 10 minutes until the liquid is reduced to a delicious-smelling dark syrup and you are tempted to eat whole cloves of garlic straight out of the pan.

3. Crumble the goat cheese and strew across the pre-baked tart case. I’m interested to experiment with some other cheese here, but I used one log of chevre and another white hard goat cheese and they were delicious.

4. Now this part is pretty exciting. Spoon the garlic and the sauce across the cheese. It looks pretty already, and you will want to try to eat it now, but don’t. It gets much better.

Hello Beautiful.

5. Whisk together the eggs with the double cream and creme fraiche and some salt and pepper. Pour into the tart case, letting some of the garlic peek out and show their face.

6. ADD YOUR BACON! I only did half because one of our guests doesn’t eat bacon. Sad, I know, but that’s more bacon for the rest of us.

7. Bake the tart for about 35-45 minutes, until the filling sets and the top is a lovely golden-brown color that you just want to lick.  Mmmmmm.  I’ve made this thing of beauty twice now for dinner parties and brunches and it’s always a huge hit.

For those of you who might want a healthier or non-meat version, remember that it started as a vegetarian tart and is still seriously delicious that way. Although….well, come to think of it, given the eggs and the cream, I should probably avoid references to health altogether.  But the important thing to know is that this tart, like just about everything, including breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, Thanksgiving, is just better with bacon.

A moment to savor: I am less than one week away from the end of a Month of Meatlessness.  Cue the shock. The horror! Why?! Well, after eating a few great vegetarian meals recently, my steak-obsessed boyfriend was interested to continue the trend. Out of a sincere desire to experiment with minimized meat consumption (combined with high-reaching ambition and some serious self-delusions), he audaciously proposed an entire month of vegetarianism. Within about 9 painful days, he was found ravenously destroying a blue cheese- draped venison burger at Borough Market. I, however, despite my love for all things bacon, took it as a personal challenge to finish the month without letting a piece of animal flesh cross my lips. To be fair – it actually hasn’t been too much of a lifestyle change for me.  I cook almost exclusively vegetarian at home and can be completely satisfied with a veggie entree when eating out. I only found myself mourning my meat-freeness once or twice when an entire side of smoked salmon tried to seduce me from the fridge and when an entire table of Malaysian meat dishes taunted me from a communal table while I sobbed quietly from the corner.

Near-misses aside, I’ve relied heavily on Yotam Ottolenghi’s new vegetarian book, Plenty, which I bought as presents for 3 people before finally purchasing for myself.  It’s so good and so beautiful, I think the man might be a genius.  He, like me, is a dedicated meat eater who also revels in the beauty and flavor of meatless dishes that showcase everything from the humble onion to the unexpectedly sexy baby radish. Inspired by his ‘Very Full Tart’, I made a similar but oh-so-very-slightly-less-full-on tart with creme fraiche instead of double cream and leaving out the ricotta.  You can really use almost any vegetables you like here. At a cost of only about 10 pounds, a tart this size could last at least 3 meals for 2 people, although it’s good enough that I ended up eating it straight out of the pan after an entire slice and a half. Prepare at your own risk….

A Very (slightly less than) Full Tart

Adapted very slightly from Ottolenghi’s Plenty cookbook

What You Need:

1 large yam or sweet potato, cubed

Working on my knife skills

2 zucchini, sliced

1 red onion, sliced

2 cloves garlic, chopped

2 large handfuls spinach

a few glugs of olive oil

1 package rolled shortcrust pastry (easy to find in a British supermarket, maybe use a pie crust without sugar in the States?)

350ml creme fraiche (or, you know,  a small container’s worth for those of you too busy to convert things)

3 eggs

1 small package feta (200g for you particular people )

salt and pepper

assorted herbs and spices – I put in a little cayenne and some mixed herbs that were lying around, but it’s totally up to you

1 small container of cherry or grape tomatoes, sliced in half

What You Do:

1. Toss the yam in some olive oil and whack it into a pre-heated oven at about 350F and after they get slightly soft (about 10-15 minutes ), chuck in the zucchini slices.

2. While those vegetables are roasting, saute the onion and garlic in a little olive oil. Once soft, add the handfuls of spinach and saute until cooked, then remove from heat.

3.  Unroll the pastry and place in a tart pan or rectangular tray, then prick all over with a fork to prevent from bubbling up. Once the vegetables are nice and soft and lightly browned to your preferred degree of doneness, put the empty pastry shell into the oven for about 10-15 minutes to brown.

P. S. I didn’t grease the pan and it was fine.

P.P. S. If you’ve got dry beans and are a big overachiever, you can weigh down the pastry and blind bake it. If you don’t and you’re lazy like me, just make sure to prick the pastry well and keep an eye out while baking and poke any big bubble.

The uncooked tart, tomatoes upright and smiling.

4. Beat the eggs into the creme fraiche and crumble in the feta cheese. Add some salt and pepper and any herbs and spices you feel like.

5. When the tart crust is a nice light golden color, take it out of the oven and dump all the cooked vegetables in.  Pour the eggy cheesy mixture around them, then take the tomatoes and arrange them sliced half up so the can be seen all red and pretty on top.

6. Chuck the whole happy deal back in the oven for 30-40 minutes or so.

7. When the filling is golden and only very slightly jiggles when shaken, take the tart out. Let cool for as long as you can stand it, then slice and eat. Try your best to save some for breakfast and maybe even lunch, you won’t regret it…

You might argue that he does a lot of things that are absurd. Especially if you are his son, who is obviously responding to his own probably forcibly donned gem-studded crocs with a classic pose for the camera: palm to forehead accompanied with expression of serious psychic pain.

But I digress. There are few things that are not improved with a fried egg with an oozy, slightly runny, richly yellow yolk. I just never thought that thing would be pasta. It was an “I didn’t know you could do that!” sort of moment. Sort of like a lot of feminist theory. Too far? Okay. I digress again, obviously.

We didn’t have a pasta roller (we have since acquired one), but we did have a lot of bicep power between the three of us (Baniel, Captain Tinyfeet, and Beanpie), so with the guiding light of Mario Batali shining upon us and our almost embarrassingly low level of experience, we started to make pasta. We also turned to Alice Waters and Alton Brown for support, and learned that we were to use semolina flour (which comes from durum wheat and is higher in protein) for a better, yellower, more beautiful and pliable dough. Some people just use AP flour, and some use a mix, but we got semolina flour at Weggie World, so we decided to go for it. We didn’t have a recipe guiding us, so we played it by ear.

We experienced failure – heartbreaking, I-guess-we-just-won’t-eat-any-dinner-because-we-don’t-deserve-it failure. But we learned from our mistakes. And also Skyped with Amin, who had actually read Alice Waters’ guide to making pasta dough. And we did way better the next time.

Our improvised pasta dough recipe and a guide to uova di raviolo after the jump. You don’t need a roller, but if you need your arms the two days after, you might want one.

Our Basic Pasta Dough Recipe: Our basic pasta recipe is as follows – and keep in mind that we consulted few experts other than engineering student extraordinaire Amin Younes while we were putting this particular part of our recipe together.

Make a volcano on the table with 3 cups of semolina flour (or a well in a bowl – see Serious Eats for what that looks like) and fill the middle with 4 egg yolks.

Why egg yolks, and not just whole eggs? Max should probably weigh in on this in terms of the properties of egg yolks as opposed to whites, but as far as I’m concerned, why have less cholesterol when you could have more?

Right? As a side note, my new favorite way to separate yolks from whites is just to crack all the eggs into a bowl, and then scoop out the yolks with my hands, one a a time, passing them from hand to hand – it’s easier on the yolks, and fun to do. Just make sure your hands are clean if you have plans for meringues or egg white omelettes. Erm… probably your hands should be clean regardless, actually.

Where were we? Oh, yeah, yolks. Four of them. If you’re not convinced, you could probably also use 2 eggs instead. Add a sploosh (maybe 2 TBS) of olive oil and a pinch of kosher salt to the center of the volcano, and then work the liquid into the flour starting from the middle of the volcano so it doesn’t spill all over the table. Mix with your hands!

Once the liquid is incorporated, continue to knead and gradually add water, about 1 cup in all, while you’re kneading. Keep going. Is the color pretty consistent? Is the dough past crumbly, but before sticky? You’re done adding water. Knead until you’ve worked the dough for about 15 minutes. I usually stop when it looks something like this, or maybe a few kneads after.

Then, we tightly wrap the dough in saran wrap, and rest for 45 minutes. Don’t know why. I’ll let you know if I find out. After that, it’s ready to use – roll it out by hand, or with a roller. Experiment with fillings – go crazy! We’ve tried spaghetti (or at least, thin, circular strands of pasta), ravioli, and tortellini and have gone rogue with probably half a dozen different cheeses, three bean salad, grilled fish, pork belly, celeriac puree, and a few other items.

Though Food Lab research on how to cook pasta is kicking Alton Brown’s skinny ass all over the place in terms of water requirements (how hot and how much), his and probably your grandmother’s wisdom about at least a gallon of water, salted and boiling for pasta (for about 4 people) is still legit when it comes to pasta that’s fresh.

A Guide to Uova Di Raviolo: We read over Mario Batali’s Food Network recipe for this culinary gem, but took a lot of creative license with it, and you should too! Here’s our basic guide for about 4 raviolos.

Roll out enough pasta dough so that you can cut eight rounds of dough that are about 6 or 7 inches in diameter. (this should only be about 1/3 or 1/2 of the dough you made in the above recipe, if that). The rounds should be a few millimeters thick – if you’ve eaten lots of ravioli you’ll have a good sense of the thickness you want. You can do this with a rolling pin or a pasta roller, and bowls/plates are great for cutting rounds – just place your bowl upside down on the pasta and cut around the edge.

Place your rounds on a floured surface, or parchment or wax paper – just make sure they don’t stick!

Mix about 1 cup ricotta cheese with a handful of chopped, blanched spinach (just pop it into boiling water for five seconds). Another vegetable could be good here too, like pureed celeriac or shaved caramelized fennel. Season with kosher salt and white and/or black pepper to taste. Batali also adds parmesan, which we opted out of, but you could add any kind of delicious, strong cheese, really.

Your filling should be perhaps a little saltier than you want it so the flavor of the ricotta and spinach can stand up to the richness of the egg yolk and whatever sauce you put on your raviolo.

Spoon equal portions of the ricotta mixture – about 1/4-1/3 cup, if I had to guess – onto the centers of four of the pasta rounds. Then, use your finger to spread the mixture into an ring – the hole in the middle should be about an inch and a half wide – just the right size for an egg yolk and a little bit of white.

You might be tempted to pipe the mixture onto the pasta, but we’ve found that creating the ring by moving the ricotta mixture creates a good seal that holds the egg inside the ricotta ring – you don’t want egg white leaking out and ruining the sealed raviolo (this is what happened in the picture below!).

Then, place 1 egg yolk (and some white, if you wish, but not the whole thing!) in the center of each ricotta ring. We use Happy Hens chicken eggs – if you can get your hands on some eggs that are really fresh, or even some duck eggs (oooh…), you’re a badass and will be rewarded in spades. This is a good time to stick a little pat of truffle butter (or any other kind of butter, for that matter) right on top of or next to the yolk.

Then, place pasta rounds on top of each pasta-ricotta-egg unit. Use your fingers to press down right at the edge of the ricotta ring, and try not to leave too much air into the raviolo. Then, use a fork to seal the deal. You may wish to use an egg wash (egg white + water) or some other form of moisture to help seal. You may also want to trim the edges so you have a nice uniform raviolo (the upside down bowl trick works great here too).

Bring a gallon of sea-water-level salty water to a boil. This salt is realllly important! It will make your pasta absolutely heavenly. While you’re waiting, you should probably make a butter sauce – try 1 stick of butter and some fresh herbs (tarragon, thyme, whatever you have) in a saucepan over medium-low heat until it takes on a nice brown color and a delicious, nutty smell. Beurre noisette = yum.

Once you’ve got a rolling boil, very gently pick up your uova (you may want a spatula or turner) and slip it into the water. Stir it around a little to keep it from sticking to the bottom of the pot. Most fresh pastas cook in 2 or 3 minutes, but for a delicious, oozy but well warmed yolk, you should give the uova about 5 minutes of cooking.

We actually prefer 7 minutes:

The yolk is creamy, not solid, but not watery either. But we’ll let you decide how you like yours done. Spoon some beurre noisette on top, and enjoy this heavenly, decadent, delicious homemade treat. And then try to tell me there is something that can’t be improved with an egg yolk and a little truffle butter. Let us know how it goes!

]]> http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/06/03/pastravaganza-and-other-portmanteaux-a-maverick-recipe-for-basic-pasta-dough-and-a-non-recipe-for-the-craziest-ravioli-youve-ever-had/feed/ 11 http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/05/08/the-easiest-recipe-ever-or-insert-in-a-pickle-pun-here/ http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/05/08/the-easiest-recipe-ever-or-insert-in-a-pickle-pun-here/#comments Sat, 08 May 2010 18:34:23 +0000 irene http://eatfamilystyles.com/?p=3249 Pickles are just one of those things. Salty, sweet, sting-y and sour, pickles can really transform an eating experience (or, if you’re like me, they can be an eating experience in and of themselves). So, when I learned how to make pickles, I was converted – I’ll never buy pickles again. Here are three reasons why you shouldn’t either…

I know it might seem like those three jars were the three reasons, but I have three more in case you aren’t satisfied.

First reason: making pickles is ridiculously easy. Here’s the recipe: combine 1/2 cup rice wine vinegar (also known just as rice vinegar), 5 or so TBS of sugar, 2 or so TSP of kosher salt with 1 cup very hot tap water. Stir to dissolve the solids, and pack your picklee into a mason jar or tupperware. Cover the produce with the brine, cover, and refrigerate. That’s it. I’m not kidding.

Second reason: almost any kind of produce, be it fruit or vegetable, super-fresh or a little on the old side, can be made into a delightful pickle. Trimmed, julienned, or sliced, vegetables like beets, carrots, celery, cauliflower, fennel, shiitake mushrooms and cabbage make great pickles. Fruit makes great pickles too: try cherries, or chunks of plums, pears, or watermelon.

Third reason: lots of different spices can make your pickles more distinct and complex. We’ve been thinking about coriander seeds, fennel seeds, chinese five spice, cloves, and cinnamon

The pickles will be at their height of flavor in about four days. However, you’ll probably still be amazed by their flavor when you sneak into your refrigerator later that day and try one – or just take them all out on to the porch and stuff your face like we did.

Now, I know some of you may be thinking, “Irene, this recipe has four ingredients including water AND about 3 steps: you’re asking a lot of me. Measuring spoons, refrigerators – this is far too hoity-toity for my tastes.”

That’s why there’s an even quicker, easier recipe: combine sliced cucumbers with three parts sugar and 1 part salt: for 2 cucumbers, 1 tbs sugar, 1 tsp salt. Toss and let them sit for 10 minutes. If they’re too salty, rinse them. And then gorge yourself on the easiest pickles you’ve ever made. Just beware, we’ve only tried this with cucumbers – I’m not totally sure if it would work with all the other produce we’ve listed, but feel free to give it a try and make sure to slice really thin.

This recipe is just one in a series adapted from David Chang’s Momofuku, a much beloved cookbook documenting the rise of the small but mighty Momofuku restaurant empire in New York City’s East Village.

Hilarious. Say hello to the squirty cream and a slice of sweet potato pie.  But wait, dessert first? Nothing wrong with that, but let’s rewind a bit to cover this Southern-inspired feast from the beginning. Sadly, I failed to take photos of the slices of warm cornbread with chunks of sweet corn and a dusting of paprika. You’ll just have to imagine them stacked in cute little baskets and served with pretty rounds of colorful green, red, and yellow jalapeno-chile butter.

Next up, shared ramekins of creamy mac & cheese with a crunchy cheddar and ciabatta breadcrumb topping, served up baked, browned, and bubbling.

The main course was a stomach stuffing plate of pulled pork with homemade barbecue sauce on freshly baked rolls, dirty rice (made satisfyingly, mouthwateringly dirty with chicken livers sauteed in the trinity of green pepper, celery, and onion), and a light lemony cole slaw.

We had an extreme overabundance of pulled pork, which is never a bad thing, although this picture’s a bit extreme. WARNING: GRATUITOUS PULLED PORK PICTURE AHEAD.

I had fun playing mad scientist with all the spices and condiments in foodrambler’s kitchen to make the sauce.  Despite doing my best to write down the ingredients as I sprinkled, stirred, splashed and tasted, I completely failed to get a coherent recipe on paper.  If you don’t care about measurements or timing, here’s sort of what it looked like:

An Extremely Inexact Barbecue Sauce Recipe

What You Need:

2 onions
2 cloves garlic
2 jalapenos
splash of vegetable oil
2 cans chopped tomatoes
maybe a 1 and 1/2 cup of cider vinegar
about a 1/2 cup of honey
maybe 1/2 cup of brown sugar
a few tablespoons english mustard
a looooooong squirt of ketchup
a splash of orange juice
a few shakes of chili flakes
some sprinkles of paprika
white pepper
black pepper
salt
umm…I’m forgetting stuff…oh well.

What You Do:

1. Saute onions, garlic, jalapenos in the oil until soft.

2.   Chuck in everything else.  Let it cook and reduce and thicken a bit. Play around with it. Taste, taste, taste. Add more of whatever if necessary.

3. Pour over your shredded and pulled pork and let simmer on the stove even more until tender as hell. Yum.

After this major carb load of cornbread, macaroni, rolls and rice along with a heaping scoop of pulled pork, most of our guests were suffering from serious Southern food coma. Which meant it was time to pull out our two intense sugar bomb desserts.

Option 1:  Sweet Potato Pie with a florette of Squirty Cream and a gentle snowfall of nutmeg.

Option Two: A delectably tacky and addictively delicious Pineapple Upside-Down Cake with canned pineapple and glace cherries from the twisted genius mind of Sara.

Just like my imaginary Southern grandma used to make.  I can just imagine her whipping out this beauty as we sip sweet tea (with generous shots of bourbon) in the gazebo under the magnolia trees and gossip about the neighbors.  Syrupy, sticky sweet and superb.

And in case you’re wondering, that plate was licked clean before you could say ‘Oh Grandma, I couldn’t possibly eat another bite.’

Hooray! It’s time for another Rambling Restaurant Singles Night featuring an aphrodisiac dinner, so you know things are bound to get hot.  Particularly when you have five people in a veryverycozy kitchen and have fresh bread baking in the oven, a giant vat of soup bubbling on the stove, and ten large pork loins popping and fizzing boiling oil all over the place.

Really. Hot. Temperatures. Luckily, there was also a dining room full of really hot people (yes yes, as in extremely attractive) all mixing and mingling on the other side of the curtain.  To get their taste buds primed and hearts racing, we served four courses featuring ingredients thought to have aphrodisiac qualities.  Of course, both dessert courses featured what is inarguably the most guaranteed aphrodisiac of them all – a large quantity of alcohol. Which is how we started the night as well, with glasses of passionfruit, raspberry and rosebud fizz.

Each cocktail came with a little tag marked with a suit denoting where to sit for your first table, along with some silly icebreaker questions inside to spark conversation or incite passionate debate.  Our eleven brave men and eleven brave women scattered amongst four tables to wait for these shiny happy braids of dough…

…to toast to perfection into these lovely browned plaits with a soft and fluffy white interior.

Ripped into chunks wafting thin trails of steam, these rolls dipped and dived  into large bowls of rich and creamy Jerusalem Artichoke soup, garnished with a swirl of hazelnut pesto, a flourish of extra virgin olive oil and a twist of crushed black pepper.  My apologies for the blinding glare of reflective soup.

While soup was seductively sipped, Michelle and I played with the searing loins. Seriously, that joke kept us entertained throughout the entire dinner service. She and Sarah had busted their asses stuffing and assembling the pork loins over the last few hours and the marscarpone, sage, asparagus, and pancetta – filled rolls were works of art.

Take the pork loin, pound it furiously, and lay it out on a flat surface. Line up your fresh ingredients in a narrow strip lengthwise about two inches in from the edge.

Roll the flattened loin into a narrow tube, keeping the pile of ingredients towards the center, and secure with an array of torturesome looking toothpicks.

And then…ta-da! A beautiful, colorful, and flavorful cross-section of meat, vegetable, and cheese. It’s like all your  essential dietary needs in one satisfying bite.

Sear the loins (don’t be restrained here – make it hot and fiery!) for a minute or so on each side until lightly browned, then wack them into the oven until your desired level of doneness.

We served the pretty little meat spirals (prettier in person, I promise) with gravy, roasted potatoes, and a wilted spinach and toasted pine nut salad with a red wine-honey-english mustard dressing.

Following the main course, it was time for more table switching, more new friends, and of course, more food.  For dessert, we served a fantastic find of Sarah’s called a St. Valentine’s Syllabub – an old school English pudding, popular from the 16th-19th century, consisting of heavy cream, lemon, brandy, white wine, sugar, and…some other stuff.  Since the cream required a lot of arm action to whip and solidify, I handed the bowl over to the lone male in the kitchen and instructed him to ‘beat it until you get a bulky whiteness.’

Uh. Oops. Sexual innuendo so thick you could scoop it with a spoon.  And layer it with toasted almonds, juicy red raspberries, and top it with a tuile biscuit heart (in my defense, ‘bulky whiteness’ is exactly what you’re aiming for in the recipe. I did not make that up).

Such adorable tuile hearts, just the right consistency to break or crush or stomp into pieces, as foodrambler said. However, we should also remember that hearts can jiggle and wiggle, bewitch and bewilder, and they can most certainly intoxicate.  Especially when served as a Glow-In-The-Heart Gin & Tonic Jelly, as molded by the fabulously inventive jellymonger duo of Bompas & Parr.

Under normal light, it’s an architecturally impressive jello mold that packs the wallop of  a silky smooth G&T in one cool and condensed mouthful. Way classier than a cherry red gelatinous mess of jello shot in a Dixie cup.

But it gets so much cooler. Just add blacklight and it glows! It’s like magic! Especially after ingesting many spoonfuls of gin-soaked jello!

We gave one to each table to share and then split another one behind the scenes. And then another. By then, things were starting to get a bit hazy.

Which meant, time to head off to the pub!  A Rambling Restaurant Singles Night would never be complete without a proper visit to the pub.  At which point this story must end. Can’t give away any secrets! You’ll just have to come along next time…

]]> http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/02/16/a-rambling-aphrodisiac-dinner-complete-with-searing-loins-and-gin-tonic-jelly/feed/ 6 http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/02/07/ridiculously-good-spiced-brownies-served-with-almonds-and-some-thoughts-on-good-eating/ http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/02/07/ridiculously-good-spiced-brownies-served-with-almonds-and-some-thoughts-on-good-eating/#comments Sun, 07 Feb 2010 16:29:15 +0000 mei http://eatfamilystyles.com/?p=2763 I’ve got an absolutely amazing brownie recipe for you. Dense, fudgy, moist, a resounding wallop of chocolate amidst an unexpected touch of spices and a subtle nudge of saltiness upon encountering a buried almond. Now, I’m fully aware that I am often given to hyperbole, but I’m not exaggerating when I say these brownies are some of the best I’ve ever eaten. Make them yourself and I bet you’ll feel the same.

It’s not because of my skill at baking, which can more accurately be described as the ability to read and generally follow instructions. This brownie is based on a great recipe from Smitten Kitchen who adapted it from another great recipe from Baked in Brooklyn. Eat anything from these justly celebrated dessert creators and you’ll probably bust out the superlatives too. Plus, it’s got a lot of butter in it, and we all know the important kitchen equation: butter = awesome.

But the brownie got me thinking more about the food we eat and how it’s produced. If you just want to skip ahead to learn how to make these brownies yourself, scroll all the way down.  But first, some brownie pondering…

***

Sitting at my crumb-covered kitchen table with a belly almost uncomfortably full of dessert and one hand still clutching a few chocolatey morsels, a surprising realization came to me: I almost never eat brownies made from scratch.

Do you? I’m curious. Think about it. Despite being a fan of brownies, I rarely buy them from bakeries.  Restaurants don’t often offer brownies on the dessert menu, and even if they do, I’m not likely to order something I can just as easily bake at home.  And that’s the thing – brownies are a homestyle, comfortable, familiar, fifties housewife/school bake sale kind of dessert.  A dessert that almost universally, at least in my world, came straight out of a box.

A brownie recipe from my childhood would look like this: pull the Betty Crocker box out of the cupboard. Pop the plastic bag of brownish powder, add an egg and some vegetable oil, stir in a big bowl, bake in a pan and cut into squares.  No need for complicated baking equipment, kitchen knowledge, or really any degree of thought or effort.

On the contrary, baking brownies from scratch takes not only a fair amount of time and effort but also a great deal more money.  I decided to make spiced brownies for the Rambling Cafe at Somerset House Design Fair over the holidays and found myself choosing between a box of brownie mix under £2 and the ingredients to make them myself for almost £8, which didn’t even include the flour and spices I already had in my cupboard.  Since we care about making good, real, food with high-quality ingredients at Rambling Restaurant and it fits into my general ethos of food and cooking, I went with the expensive choice. But I was annoyed that these were my options.  I’m willing to put in the work;  shouldn’t that save me money?

pause for brownie ogling.

I was chatting about this mid-brownie devouring with my friend Alexis, who mentioned that a roast chicken from her supermarket costs less than buying the whole raw chicken and taking several hours to season and roast it herself. Like so many pre-made items in our supermarkets at refrigerators these days, you have to be crazy to make it yourself. Or you just have to be willing to spend more money, take more time, and expend more effort. You have to love the process of cooking and appreciate the taste of homemade food and value the act of creating something yourself (and enjoy the kudos you get for preparing something delicious from scratch). Sure, sometimes the professionals do it way better, and that’s absolutely worth paying for. But too much of the time, you’re trading flavor, health, and taste for convenience and price. And all too often, the money you save reappears as hidden costs externalized in our health care system, the polluted state of our environment, serious issues with factory treatment of workers and animals, the little time spent enjoying the sharing and eating of food with people in your life, the disconnect with where our food comes from, and so many more problems associated with our current methods and industries of food production and consumption.

Michael Pollan, in books such as The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food, has written a great deal about the American food industry over the past century and how governmental systems were put into place with the goal of creating cheap calories so people could afford to eat. In addition, companies like General Mills (owner and creator of brand name Betty Crocker) produced convenience items that allowed people, almost exclusively women, to spend less time in the kitchen and more time pursuing their own careers or interests. It was a profitable enterprise for those huge conglomerates that arguably had the positive social benefit of achieving more gender equality in the home and workplace (I’d actually be very interested to research that exact connection). But these industrial methods also made high-calorie treats like brownies and chocolate chip cookies and french fries and microwave pizza widely accessible,  affordable and effortlessly replicable in your own home. Which, in turn, have contributed towards making people extremely unhealthy and so we find ourselves in the midst of this obesity crisis the United States and increasingly more Westernized countries face today.

Browsing a bookstore a few weeks ago, I flipped through a few pages of Michael Pollan’s new book Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual (full review and commentary coming soon from Irene Bean!). One of the rules talks about the notion of treats and how we’d all consume a lot less junk food if we had to make it ourselves. Imagine how much work it takes to produce a french fry and how much less you’d eat them if you had to peel and slice potatoes, purchase and heat large quantities of oil, and risk first-degree burns instead of sidling up to the McDonald’s drive-thru. And you could probably cut down your brownie eating if you had to spend $10 on chocolate, eggs, sugar, and flour rather than $2 on a box of dehydrated chocolate mix.

Clearly this doesn’t make sense for plenty of people who have neither the time nor the money nor a general idea of ‘fun’ that includes two sticks of butter and a cupboard full of spices for experimentation. But it speaks to a way that perhaps we should all be eating, both for our own health and the health of our planet. New York Times writer Jane Brody covers this idea succinctly in her recent article on Pollan’s book, ‘Rules Worth Following, for Everyone’s Sake.’

So take a stand. Make those expensive, rich, chocolatey, effort-full, amazing brownies.  Shun the prepackaged and the processed in favor of the butter and the eggs and the chunks of good chocolate. They might take a bigger chunk out of your wallet, but you can feel good about making them. And most importantly…they just might be the best brownies of your life.

gratuitous brownie porn shot

Ridiculously Good Spiced Brownies With Almonds

Adapted from the Smitten Kitchen recipe who adapted it from another great recipe from Baked. I added a few more spices, took out some other ingredients I didn’t have around, got rid of an egg (my mom walked by while I was baking and said ’5 eggs? Do you really need 5 eggs?’ and I said…you know, probably not. And I didn’t miss it).  Feel free to play around with the spices depending on what you like and what you have in your cupboard.  Also, I only had chocolate with almonds in the kitchen, which I never would have bought but ended up being surprising little crunchy bites of toastiness.

What You Need:

1 and 1/4 cup flour
1tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp white pepper
12 ounces dark chocolate with almonds, or add separately if you want ‘em. Or walnuts. Whatever’s your bag, really.
1 cup (2 sticks yeeaaaah) butter, chopped into small chunks.
1 and 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract

What You Do:

1.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and butter the sides of a pan.

2. Mix the flour and all the spices in a bowl.

3. Stick the butter chunks and the chocolate chunks into a heatsafe bowl over a pot of boiling water. Stir every so often until the mixture becomes chocolatey smooth, so silky and fragrant that you could pour it into a chocolate fountain and jump in. Don’t though – you have brownies to make. Unless of course you’ve changed your priorities.

4. Remove the bowl from the heat and stir in the sugars. Once the mixture has cooled a bit, whisk the eggs in one at a time, trying not to overmix or the brownies will get cakey.

5. Fold the flour/spice mixture into the chocolate soupiness using a spatula.

6. Bake for about 30 minutes. Important note: contrary to what you might have learned back in the day from Betty Crocker about using a toothpick to test for doneness, you DO NOT want your toothpick to come out clean or your brownies will not be moist and fudgy. You want a few little crumbs on the toothpick. For an adorable illustration (complete with brownie-eating monster!) check out this drawing from the amazingly talented Claire Murray.  She’s got some other fantastic and whimsically illustrated recipes as well as some funny random drawings.

I wish I had a brownie monster friend to help me finish off the pan sometimes.  Eating way way way too many brownies is just a possible side effect of baking some of the best brownies you’ve ever eaten. Oh, and I’m still curious. When was the last time you ate a brownie from scratch?

I should be kept far away from deep frying machines.

Don’t get me wrong – I love a crunchy, golden, batter-encrusted item as much as the next arterial disease-scorning glutton.  The problem is, I never know when to stop. I’ll start off with a perfectly reasonable goal, like 15 or 20 deep fried Mars bars. But by the end of the evening, everything that is fit for human consumption and hasn’t been tied down has gotten thrown in the boiling oil and things are just getting out of hand.

Lest that look of horror on your face prevent you from reading further, let me inform you that I didn’t consume all those crispy, glistening, gooey-with-hot-caramel-and-melted-chocolate deep fried candies on my own. Foodrambler and I made the deep fried Mars bars for Burns Night at Rambling Restaurant, a Scottish culinary extravaganza starring our homemade haggis (so not as disgusting as you might think…eventually).  In case you’re wondering, deep fried Mars bars are a genuine Scottish delicacy according to Wikipedia.  To enhance the Scottishness of the dish, foodrambler had the inspired idea to batter the chocolate logs in another Scottish delicacy: the violently (and controversially) orange-colored soft drink known as Irn-Bru.

I thought that was a genius idea, until I tasted Irn-Bru. It boasts the gloriously saccaharine taste of Red Bull, the vaguely citrusy overtones of dishwashing detergent/washing up liquid and the unpleasantly chemical reminder of cough medicine or assorted cleaning product. However, it’s the 3rd best-selling soft drink in the UK behind Coke and Pepsi, so someone somewhere is drinking it and it just may be Sarah, our third woman in the kitchen on Burns Night. Apparently, the exact recipe for this magic brew is known only by the chairman of the company and one other person, and they are not allowed to fly on the same plane. Hilarious.

We decided to give it a fair chance in a Deep Fried Mars Bar Batter Taste Test. In the name of culinary exploration, the Irn-Bru would face off against a beer batter (Carlsberg, if you’re curious) and a traditional milk batter. We found a classic batter recipe (details below) and tried several variations with each of the liquids.

This bubbly mess is what you get when you add Irn-Bru to a bowl of flour, cornstarch, and baking soda. Warning: this activity will lead to you scraping a floury gluey mess off all your countertops for the next week.

After tasting way too many little bits of deep fried candy, we settled on the classic milk batter as the best. The artficial aftertaste of the Irn-Bru came through too much in the batter and the beer tasted slightly sour and too thin, but the milk batter was thick, rich and indulgent. The beer batter could be great for savory items, and I’d be interested in trying other liquids, but for a sweet dessert dish the milk batter was perfect.

Of course we had to try deep frying some battered haggis balls too. That sounds like a really bad insult.

Get out of my sight, you battered haggis ball.

After playing around with the various batters, the deep fried haggis balls and the haggis-stuffed deep fried English muffin, not to mention three other preparations of haggis, the scent of batter grease was making us feel seriously ill.  We put away the deep fryer until the actual Burns Night, which is when we broke out the big guns to deep fry half a Mars Bar for each of our 20-odd guests to be served with a hefty dollop of cranachan. Cranachan is a light and highly alcoholic Scottish dessert involving whipped cream, honey, raspberries, toasted oatmeal, and a serious splash of whiskey.

And here’s why I should stay away from deep fat fryers.  Once the oil is boiling, bowls of batter are within reach, and there are edible items within the vicinity, I can’t stop myself from tossing things in.  We started with a second round of Mars bars, because they were there. Then I peered through the fridge and found a block of cheddar cheese. Cut into pinky finger-sized slices and dipped in batter, these tongue-scorching oozy and cheesy mouthfuls were a beautiful bit of batter-encased delight. Good idea.

Deep frying a spoonful of creamy cranachan? Bad idea. Actually, I think the deep-fried cream has potential to be delicious (like tempura-fried ice cream…mmm) but the whisky-soaked cranachan traces in the greasy batter remnants was just nauseating.

Pouring the remaining batter straight into the increasingly gross oil in an attempt at funnel cake? Even worse idea.  Straight up fried dough is amazing, but not when the oil has already been used to fry several dozen chocolate and caramel bars, a block of cheddar cheese, a Scotch-infused spoonful of cream, and several small household pets.  Kidding about the pets though – the cat really didn’t like being dipped in batter and couldn’t fit in the deep fryer anyway.

Kidding.  I don’t have a cat….anymore.

I just can't quit you.

In case you want to have your own deep frying adventures, here’s a very easy recipe for batter:

Deep Fried Mars Bar (And Anything Else Fryable Within Reach) Batter

What You Need:

1 cup flour

1/2 cup cornstarch or cornflour

pinch of baking soda or bicarbonate of soda

milk (or beer or Irn-Bru or liquid of choice)

What You Do:

It’s pretty simple. Mix the powdered ingredients. Whisk in the liquid until it approaches the consistency of a light pancake batter. Dip delicious or random or curious items into the batter and carefully place into the boiling oil. Let cool, place in mouth, repeat.

Just make sure you know when to stop.

]]> http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/02/06/playtime-with-boiling-oil-experimenting-with-deep-fried-mars-bars/feed/ 7 http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/01/31/adventures-in-haggis-making-sheep-innards-beef-kidney-fat-and-fun-with-a-deep-fryer/ http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/01/31/adventures-in-haggis-making-sheep-innards-beef-kidney-fat-and-fun-with-a-deep-fryer/#comments Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:34:37 +0000 mei http://eatfamilystyles.com/?p=2720

When I was told we’d be celebrating our Rambling Restaurant Burns Night with poetry, whiskey, and homemade haggis stabbing, my thoughts went like this:

1. Awesome! I’ve always wanted to try haggis.

2. By the way, what’s Burns Night?

3. And while I’m asking…what, exactly, is haggis?

4.  A sheep heart, lung, and liver minced and mixed with oatmeal and onions and stuffed inside a sheep stomach? <gulp> We are definitely going to need that whiskey.

Haggis, to most ignorant Americans like myself, is one of those iconic Scottish associations like kilts, bagpipes, and Mel Gibson covered in blue facepaint and exuding a throaty roar for ‘FREEEEDOOOM!’ We might have heard of it but almost certainly wouldn’t be able to say what it’s made of, only that it has something to do with terrifying animal parts and probably shouldn’t ever be consumed until after seven shots of Scotch.

Well, let me set the record straight on two fronts.

1. As much as you may love William Wallace in a skirt, kilts weren’t invented for another three centuries (one of the many twists of truth contributing to Braveheart being second on a list of ‘most historically inaccurate’ movies ever made).

2.  Haggis is, shockingly, absolutely delicious.

However, it took quite a long time and a lot of work to get it to that point. And I’ll be  honest, there was a fair amount of  grimacing, gagging, nose-holding, and are-we-really-serving-this-to-paying-customers?-questioning along the way.  It all started with my haggis-making partner-in-crime, foodrambler, hunting in vain and then finally securing three lamb’s plucks – the windpipe, heart, lungs and liver – for our haggis adventure. Following this recipe from the Guardian by Tim Hayward, she began the adventure the previous evening by cutting out the windpipes (blecch), boiling the plucks for several hours then leaving them to cool overnight in the murky cooking liquid.

A rubbery white sheep heart above and a massive chunk of liver below. Not exactly the most appetizing start to a meal, is it?  Don’t worry though, there is deliciousness to come…

Once out of the liquid and cut into cross-sections, the lungs were smooth and vaguely spongy while the heart was uncomfortably pink and muscly looking.

Being the intrepid culinary explorers/deluded masochists we are, we sliced off minute pieces of the heart, lung, and liver to taste them in all their unadulterated glory.  I’m sure you’re not surprised, but this turned out NOT to be a good idea. Offal is generally not the most appetizing of foods when you haven’t added any additional seasoning or flavor. Then add in the fact that the innards were ice cold and straight out of a disturbingly sewage-colored meat bath and both of us ended up jumping up and down and squealing in disgust at the musty lumps of chilled sheep innards in our mouths.

Lesson learned, we returned to the daunting task at hand. Dicing six onions was the easy part. Next, we tossed the heart and lung into the food processor and pulsed it gently into a fine mince.

Next, we grated the liver in the food processor to avoid the pasty textured chunks from turning into pate. Here’s a photo from foodrambler’s haggis post of me working the magimix on the meat.

I think the expression on my face is veering between skepticism, bemusement, horror and disgust. Note how I am as far as humanly possible away from the food processor in a vain attempt to avoid directly inhaling the stench of chopped lamb bits.  Below, the pungent strands of sheep liver.

All the dicing, slicing, and mincing of the heart, livers, and lungs began to fill the kitchen with a distinctly unpleasant smell. The thought crossed both our minds simultaneously: this smells exactly like cat food. Then the uncomfortable realization came to us…in fact, this is what cats eat. We are literally making cat food.

As you can see, it looked like cat food too. But just when we couldn’t really hold our noses much longer, we started mixing in the onions lying underneath the offal mince and all of a sudden, the smell changed. The sharp onion scent cut into the decaying meaty odor and the mixture somehow became warm and almost familiar, like the rich wafting steam of a slow-cooked stew.  The transition was aided by the inclusion of a generous amount of salt, white pepper, sage, thyme, and mace (the outer layer of nutmeg) for a layered and wintry hint of spices.

The general smell of the kitchen was further enhanced by the comforting aroma of toasted oatmeal, both of the rolled and Irish steel cut variety, which we wacked into the oven until lightly browned and then added to the pot.

But haggis wouldn’t be complete without one last element of grossness and that came in the form of eight boxes of shredded dried suet.

I had to look up ‘suet‘ on wikipedia to even find it in the grocery store – in case you’re wondering, it’s the raw fat that surrounds beef kidneys.  It looks like rodent turds made of candle wax.

Once we’d added a few ladlefuls of the sheep pluck stock to moisten and plunged our hands deep into the pot to mix, the haggis was smelling remarkably good and ready to be cooked.

Except, unfortunately, due to a stolen sheep stomach incident at Selfridge’s as well as a mail-order mishap with a backup ox bung (the attractively named last yard of a cow’s large intestine) we had nothing to stuff our haggis into.

Forced to experiment, we came up with a bunch of alternate showcases for our haggis:

1. Steamed in the oven by surrounding scoops in a layer of plastic wrap and then aluminum foil.

2. Oven roasted

3. Pan-fried

4. Formed into balls, dipped into batter, and deep fried. Having just acquired a deep fat fryer for Rambling Restaurant, you can expect to see a lot of deep fried items making an appearance on this blog.  Right up until my first heart attack.

5. Finally, after playing around a bit in a game of What Tastes Good Deep Fried? (Answer: EVERYTHING!) the ultimate haggis preparation came to us in a simultaneous bizarre great-minds-think-alike moment.

I present to you – Haggis. Stuffed into an English muffin. And deep fried.

It’s a Boston creme donut gone wrong or maybe so right – a rich, warm, meaty inside surrounded by a crunchy, oily,  golden exterior.  It was shockingly, decadently delicious, but I couldn’t eat more than two bites without feeling my arteries harden in protest.

The verdict of the haggis cooking comparison? Steamed was unanimously voted the best, as it allowed the oatmeal to cook, soften, and become infused with the intense meaty flavors of the offal. The roasted was okay, the pan-fried was too dry and crunchy with bits of oatmeal, and the deep-fried options were delicious but way too over the top for a meal ending with deep fried Mars bars.  Instructions for that coming up soon…

All in all, haggis making was an entertaining, educational, at times both delicious and disgusting experience.  Along with the traditional accompaniments of neeps (mashed swede, or rutabaga), tatties (potatoes) and cranachan (a Scottish dessert of whipped cream, honey, whiskey, raspberries and toasted oatmeal), my understanding of Scottish culinary brilliance has increased by leaps and bounds over the past few weeks. Add in a real Scot reading Burns’ Address To A Haggis followed by a stabbing…and the haggis experience is complete.