A quick nod to Cakewrecks

Yay!  I used my new mixer for the first time last week.  Isn't is awesome?  It came with dough hook, whisk, and standard mixing attachments AND a spatula.  Thanks Mom!

  


  Anywho, I read about 5 blogs somewhat regularly and 3 of them happen to be food blogs.  Cakewrecks is one of them.  It's like a failblog for professionally decorated cakes.  Maybe that doesn't sound so funny to you, but let me tell you, it's hilarious.  http://www.cakewrecks.blogspot.com/  The Cakewrecks author is a funny lady and often has posts dedicated to cakes decorated in chocolate icing in extremely unfortunate shapes.  More about that later. 

  So last week I made a cake because I had cake mix.  It was pretty tasty.  Here are a few photos:

Mixing up the Duncan Hines Butter Golden cake mix.  Yes, I condone bake cheating.  Now, I think most things taste better if made from scratch, but cake from a mix just tastes so good! 

This is the mix in the greased and floured pan.  I included this photo because I was amazed at how much the cake mix increased in volume, but you can't really tell with my sub-par photography.

I cut the cake into 2 halves so I could layer it and used a homemade chocolate buttercream icing.  Easy peasy.  It's just butter, shortening, cocoa, powered sugar, and a little milk.  No measurements necessary, in my book.  Just get it to the consistency and flavor that you like.  An electric mixer help when you like really fluffy icing.

Back to my Cakewrecks reference.  So I iced the cake and had a good amount of icing leftover.  The author likes to point out that many professional bakers make swirls of chocolate icing that very unfortunately look like swirls of poo.  Generally it's unintentional, but it's hard to think of anything else when looking at a brown swirl of any kind of paste.  So poop-swirl trim it was on the Tuesday cake!  I'm 23 and poop jokes still make me laugh.  What can you do?

Chocolaty, buttery goodness.  NOM.  My next post will be slightly more experimental and will include a recipe, not to worry.  Happy eating!

Sweet potatoes are 75¢/lb right now. Just sayin.

  For those of you who know me well, you might be aware of my two main food obsessions:  Sweet potatoes and pesto.  I could dedicate an entire blog to recipes I have invented for these two foods.  

  Today, however, I will stick with the sweet potato.  They are the super food.  They are nutritious, delicious and cheap (no joke, they are 75¢/lb in the store right now).  Hash, pasta, fries, the possibilities are endless.

  I looked at my pantry (aka the shelf above my counter... hey, a girl can dream) today and saw black beans.  Thus began my usual recipe creation process.  Type in random foodstuffs one has in one's pantry into google.  See if any recipes pop up.  Read a few recipes for inspiration.  Combine new ideas with established food knowledge.  Start the experiment.

  Sweet potato chili?  How did I never come up with that??  So I did a little research into how others made theirs, wrote down a few tips, and then went to cooking.

I have been making chili for years and years, first with my mom, and then on my own as an easy one-pot meal.  The above have become my staple chili ingredients, then I can expand from there.  That's 2 cans of Rotel with green chilies, one can of black beans, and one small can of corn.

And these are my staple chili spices.  Adobo is the wonder seasoning.

I started by peeling and dicing 2 large sweet potatoes and sauteing them in olive oil until slightly browned on the outside.  Then, add one heaping tsp of cumin, one heaping tsp of chili power, a Tbsp of adobo, and a few dashes of cayenne pepper to the potatoes.  Let the spices warm up in the pan with the potatoes for a minute or two while you get your canned ingredients open.

Open the black beans and corn into a colander and rinse with water.  The Rotel will add enough liquid and the potatoes will add enough starch, so rinsing the beans and corn and straining them is important.  Add the beans, corn, and 2 cans of Rotel to the pot.  If you like a thick chili, add a teensy bit of cornstarch to the pot, if you like a soupier version, leave it out.  Bring it all to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes.  This is going to make a LOT of chili, but it freezes well, not to worry.

And boom!  There you go!  Chili is one of the most simple and satisfying things you can make.  I like to eat my chili with some sharp cheddar grated over the top and the white girl in me likes to eat it with saltines.  I imagine cornbread or tortilla chips would go just as well with this chili, haha. 

The beurres

Tilapia with lemon shallot beurre blanc

Tilapia with lemon shallot beurre noisette.

I am an avid fan of cooking shows... Alton, Ina, Anthony, they are all my TV buds and my inspiration.  This is tricky since I haven't had cable tv for the past 2 years, but I am getting off track.  Regardless, the show that has made the biggest impression on me is Alton Brown's Good Eats.  His shows were lessons in gastronomy and have taught me quite a bit...plus, he never fails to make me laugh. It is because of this that I chose his recipe and guidance for my very first attempt at the infamous sauce, Beurre Blanc.

  I have tasted many a beurre blanc at Sensi and have watched several videos on how it is done.  It is delicious, no doubt.  It's the battle of white wine, lemon juice, butter, and cream that scared me.  How could this be done without curdling?  In terms of the other beurre colors, noir and noisette, the task is a bit simpler.  As long as you don't burn them into oblivion, they're going to taste pretty darned wonderful.

Clockwise from left: Cream, salt, pepper, parsley, white wine, lemon, tilapia, shallots, butter.

Get everything you need together (mis en place).  The photo above shows the ingredients needed for beurre blanc.

1 Tilapia fillet
1 minced shallot
1/2 c white wine
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp cream
6 tbsp cold butter
salt, pepper, and parsley to taste

Season with salt and pepper and pan sear the tilapia in olive oil on med high heat to create a nice crust on the outside of the fish. (I cut the fillet in half down the middle.  One side is always thinner than the other.)

Place in oven on broil in a foil packet to continue cooking while you make you sauce.

Add shallots, white wine, and lemon juice to a pan on high heat and cook for 3 minutes to reduce the liquid.

Once reduced, add the tbsp of cream and let bubble.  Reduce the heat to low.  Then, start adding the butter one tbsp at a time, whisking to incorporate.  *** This is the tricky part!  The idea is to not let the butter completely melt, but just to soften it to a stage somewhere between liquid and solid.  To achieve this, take the pan on and off the heat to regulate the temperature.  You never want to let the butter bubble.***

 

 

Once incorporated, your sauce should look a little something like this.  Thick and smooth (besides the shallots).  Add parsley, salt, and pepper to taste.  

When you read you begin with ABC, when you blog you begin with...?

  So here I am, still awake at 2am, post-Valentine's Day pandemonium at Sensi (my puppies are barking!!), beginning this blog. A friend convinced me to to start this a few months back and I finally stopped procrasterbating today.  I got a surge of energy when I saw all of the excited responses to the tilapia I posted up on Facebook.  It looks like some people want to see what it is that I'm cooking and how I'm cooking it!  Who knew? 

   As an amateur cook I tend to occasionally follow recipes to the T, often morph recipes into my own, and, as of late, create recipes off the top of my head.

  I'm not 100% sure yet how this space is going to flow, but you can be sure that I will be sharing recipes, photos, and thoughts on food I've made and maybe even good food someone else has made for me.  I think I'll start with 2 recipes per week with wiggle room. 

  So stay tuned if you would like a virtual window into my kitchen... and then come over and eat!



P.S. A cookie for anyone who can pick out my intentional misspelling =P