Maple Bacon Bars

All my hard work has finally paid off! I've been scheming up this idea for a while now, and with summer just around the corner I wanted to make up an ice cream sandwich that I could be proud of... and this one definitely made me happy.

Maple Macadamia Nut Ice Cream: I take two bottles of real CANADIAN :) maple syrup and some milk, eggs, and cream, and make an amazing maple ice cream. Then, after thinking through all my nut options, I settle for macadamia nuts. Normally I would use pecans or walnuts because those are the nuts I've grown up around. But since I'm in Australia now, and macadamia nuts are typical Australian nuts, I thought I'd throw them in. I toasted them first before lightly crushing them and folding into the ice cream so that they would stand up to the strong maple flavor. I normally find macadamias quite mild, but once they were nice and toasted, their nuttiness jumped up tenfold! Delicious. Creamy, not too sweet, crunch from the macadamias (which I must admit hold up much crunchier than pecans or walnuts which can have a tendency to go soft), and a punch of maple syrup flavor that lingers in your mouth. Perfection!

But maple macadamia nut ice cream is the easy part. The piece de resistance is the bacon brown sugar cookie that holds everything together! Smokey, chewy, bacon-y. It turns your maple macadamia ice cream into breakfast! Well my kind of breakfast at least :D

For my first batch, I sprinkled brown sugar on the bacon and baked it in the oven at 400F until it was crisp and the brown sugar was caramelized.

Looks good for a picture... but these cookies deserve more than just good looks

But I wouldn't advise you to do this. It makes the bacon taste more like brown sugar than anything else and you lose most of the bacon goodness. In the recipe below I have you chop the bacon finely before frying it in a pan on the stove at a medium heat until all the fat has rendered out and you are left with only really crispy bacon. Any fat or rind that remains on the bacon will only go soft and chewy in your cookie, not what you're looking for.

Bacon Brown Sugar Cookies

8 rashers streaky bacon
3/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
2 1/4 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder

First off get your bacon ready. Finely dice it and throw it into a cold frying pan. Put the pan over a medium to medium low heat and render all the fat out of the bacon. Once it's rendered out, fry the bacon until super crispy. In the end you want little bacon bits.

In a mixing bowl, cream together the butter, sugar, and salt until dissolved. Add the eggs one at a time. Then add the flour, baking soda, and baking powder. Stir until almost combined. Add your bacon bits and stir the whole thing until the dry flour has just about disappeared.

Drop the cookie dough by the heaping tablespoonful on a parchment lined baking sheet and bake in a preheated 180C oven for 8 minutes.

Make sure not to over bake these babies! You want them still soft with edges that have ever so slightly begun to caramelize.

Now all that's left to do is sandwich!

 

To make these bars, just bake one big thin cookie on a sheet tray. Cut it in half, pile on the ice cream, top with the other half and cut!

Franken-yeast... it's alive!

This is part 2 of my bread making adventure. Part 3 is actually proofing in a nice and warm spot at this very moment! Where did this mild obsession come from you ask? Well I’m not quite sure, but it may have stemmed from the fact that bread is just SO GOOD. And that somehow when I make home made bread it is okay for Nick and I to devour an entire loaf in two days without feeling bad about ourselves… I put whole wheat and other whole flours in my bread so it has to be good for us right??!

No matter. My motto is if it’s homemade it has to be good for you! No more questions. Now on to part 2 of my bread making adventure…

Last week I finished “Cooked” the book by Michael Pollan I mentioned in my last post. If you haven’t picked up a copy yet, you really should. He might inspire you the way he inspired me! In the book, he becomes obsessed with sourdough bread. And when I say obsessed, I mean it. He must have spent almost an entire year researching sourdough bread and travelling around the US to go to various famous bakeries trying to learn what their magic is behind some of those famous loaves. He even brought his sourdough culture with him on his field trips hoping to capture some of their “local bacteria” in what he described at first as his sad sludgy mixture of flour and water.

He goes into great detail about the entire process. I mean, if you aren’t a baker or just don’t know much about baking bread, I would definitely recommend his book. He is just a regular guy who learned how to make really great bread from a handful of recipes through trial and error. His recipe is a real “for dummies” kind of recipe. Sometimes when I read bake books, I find the bread recipes to be not specific enough for someone with no experience. How would someone who’s never made bread before know how “springy” a dough should be? Or how sticky is the right amount of sticky? These bakers have been making their bread for years and I find that when asked to explain their recipe, they just cant dumb it down enough for us normal once in a while bakers.

Michael on the other hand gives so much detail in his recipe it’s pretty much fool proof! Have a question about something? He’s answered it. He’s already laid down the ground work for us! He’s compared recipes, joined in amateur bakers discussion boards, picked famous bakers’ brains, and compiled all the information he can into an easy to follow recipe! At least one that’s a great jumping off point. Your first loaf may not be beautiful (mine definitely wouldn’t place in a beauty contest), but it will be delicious. And it will be great practice for your second, third, fourth, and fifth loaves until you have your perfect ratio of ingredients and have mastered the kneading, shaping, and scoring! I’ll tell you, I’m hooked. 

Michael Pollan’s Sourdough Bread 

FOR THE STARTER

50g whole grain flour

50g unbleached all-purpose flour

100g warm warm

Wash your hands with NON-antibacterial soap. Combine all the ingredients in a see-through container and use your fingers to mix them. (The naturally occurring bacteria on your clean fingers are what get the process started!) Leave your starter uncovered in the sun for a few hours. Now take your starter out of the sun, and put it in a cupboard keeping the container open to the air, stirring vigorously for about 30 seconds once a day.

Day 1

 

The wild yeast and bacteria on your fingers, on the flour, and in the air will eventually start to eat the sugars in the flour and ferment. Essentially the bacteria will start eating and then burping. This “burping” gives you the carbon dioxide bubbles which will eventually raise your bread!

Day 6

As soon as bubble start to appear on the sides and it smells like yeast, feed your started daily. To do this, throw away 80% of your starter, and replace it with the same 50/50/100 ratio you started with. Mix in the new mixture with the old mixture until smooth and cover it. Place it back in the cupboard. By the next day your starter will be ready to use! If you’re not ready to use it, dry it out with your 50/50 flour mixture, roll it in a ball, and leave it wrapped up in your fridge. When you’re ready to use it, throw 80% away and continue the feeding process until it comes alive again.

Day 8 after it's second feeding!

FOR THE LEAVEN

100g whole grain flour

100g unbleached all-purpose flour

200g warm water

2 heaping tablespoons of starter

The night before baking your bread, combine the flour, water, and your starter. Mix thoroughly, cover with a towel, and leave out overnight.

MAKING YOUR BREAD!    

600g whole grain flour

250g unbleached all-purpose flour

150g rye flour

900g warm water

25g salt

The night before baking the bread, combine the flours and 850g water. Allow to soak overnight, covered. This process helps soften the bran in the whole flours to produce a loaf with a better rise.

Now is time to test your leaven to see if it is strong enough to raise your bread. Drop a tablespoon of your leaven into a glass of warm water. If it floats you’re all set! If not, Michael advises adding 1 1/8 tsp of yeast to your dough. But I would just say to go back and make another leaven making sure your starter is super bubbly. What’s the point of making your own starter if you’re going to add commercial yeast to your dough anyways??

Combine your leaven with your soaked flours. Let this mixture rest for an hour. Now is time to mix your remaining 50g of water with the salt. Work this salt water mixture into your dough.

Knead until you get a smooth ball. Put it in a bowl and cover with a tea towel. Leave your dough in a warm spot for 5 hours, folding the dough over itself four times in a clockwise motion every hour.

Once it smells sour and sticks together more than it sticks to your hands or the bowl, you’re ready to divide the dough into two balls. Roll with both hands, and cover them with a towel for 30 minutes.

By now the balls will have slightly flattened. Grab the four corners of each ball and fold towards the center to make a rectangle. Grab each of your newly made corners and fold them towards the center also. Now with the heel of your hands, roll the dough away from you so the top looks tight and the dough is cylindrical.

Proof each loaf in a flour-dusted bowl for 3 hours until they look puffy.

Preheat your oven to 250C with a large ceramic-lidded casserole inside. When ready, take out the casserole, plop one loaf inside, score the top with one stroke of a really sharp knife, cover with the preheated lid, and put back in the oven. Bake for 20 minutes, remove the lid, and bake for another 20 minutes.

For a first attempt, I'd say it turned out okay!

The bread is done when it is dark brown, crusty, and sounds hollow when you tap the bottom of it.

Let cool for at least an hour (if you can stand it) before cutting into it. This preserves the (hopefully) delicate structure you have created inside of soft bread and air bubbles. 

It doesn't really have the big air bubbles characteristic of sourdough breads, but it sure tasted good!

So all in all I was slightly disappointed in my first loaf. It rose which is a plus, but it didn't quite rise enough to get those big air bubbles inside like sourdough loaves should have. the crust was chewy and crispy which was great, but not quite dark enough. Next time I'm going to add a bit more leaven, let it bulk ferment and proof for a little longer, and bake it for longer as well.

Sorry I don't have any more photos, once we sliced into the loaf it was gone in two days! It toasted beautifully and held up really well underneath a pile of sauteed wild mushrooms and a poached egg. Weekend breakfast heaven!

Recipe testing: Sesame seed bagels

Okay, apologies for the slight hiatus in posting. With everything that’s been going on with jobs, visa paperwork, and other time consuming things that present themselves at the busiest moment possible, I’ve had to put writing on the back burner. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been hard at work cooking! I’ve got two, accidently related posts coming up. And this is the first.

This post is about bringing back the basics; slowing life down, and taking the time to do things yourself. And while I won’t be hand-washing my clothes, or changing the brake pads on my car anytime soon, I will definitely be making these bagels again. In fact, I had such a great time with this recipe that I was inspired to start my own sourdough culture to be done with commercial yeast forever! Exciting right? Just getting you all on board for my next post :)

Homemade bagels AND home-cured gravlax with dilly cream cheese... stop it, I know

But back to the bagels. Between all the recent stressful moments, I’ve been spending as much time as possible laying in the sunbeam that perfectly shines on my outdoor lounge. And what better activity to do while relaxing in the sun than read a favourite author? It doesn’t matter which book you choose, any one written by Michael Pollan is a winner. In his newest book “Cooked” he illustrates a true back to basics lifestyle from the origination of Carolina BBQ, to home fermented vegetables, brewing beer, and baking bread.

In the book he makes a good point. We are making more money, working harder, and spending way more time doing things we don’t actually enjoy doing. And for what? Two weeks holiday? A new car? New clothes? More stuff? More stress? I can create more than enough stress on my own thank you very much. With only two days per week off work, is shopping really the best thing for us? Is the only legitimate form of leisure really consumption?

Not for me it isn’t. I get way more pleasure out of learning how to do things for myself, and then doing it better than I could buy anywhere else. Cooking especially. I mean how great do you feel when you spend all day comparing recipes, prepping ingredients, and hosting a great big dinner party for all your friends?! Super!

These bagels are my first attempt at bagel-making. They are one of the many things I miss from home, while also being one of the few things I can actually make (Kraft Dinner’s mysterious powdered cheese sauce still evades me). And as my toughest critic, I would say these bagels rate a 7/10. They looked great, and had a great chewy exterior, the way proper bagels should. But the inner crumb was a little too crumbly, and they were definitely too small. I’m working on improving the recipe and will keep you posted on the results!

The great thing about these bagels, and the reason why I’m sharing the recipe is because they were really good. They were really easy to make, and look totally impressive. Nick and I are hosting a friend for the next few days, and I’m definitely going to be making up a batch of these bagels.

“You mean these ole’ things? Nah, we’ve always got them hanging around” ;)

Sesame Seed Bagels

25g butter

125 ml milk

1 tbsp caster sugar

1 tsp dried yeast

1 egg, separated

250 g bread flour

6 5x5 inch squares of parchment paper

Melt the butter, milk, and sugar in a sauce pan until the sugar is completely dissolved. Turn off the heat and let cool to body temperature. Add the yeast and let sit until foamy, 10 min. Whisk in the egg white and ½ tsp salt.

In a big bowl sift your flour. Make a well in the centre and pour in the yeast mixture all at once. Knead until smooth and elastic.

Cover with plastic wrap and leave in a warm spot. Rise until doubled.

Divide dough into 6 pieces and roll each into a ball (using flour as necessary). Poke your finger through the centre of each ball and spin around to make a bagel shape. Place each shaped bagel on its own square of parchment paper. Cover and rest until slightly risen, 30 min.

Meanwhile bring a large saucepan of water to boil and preheat oven to 200C. Add 1 tbsp baking soda to the water (this is a substitute for lye which is normally used when making bagels).

Slide bagels with paper attached in batches into the boiling water, turning once until puffed. The bagels will slide easily away from the paper. Remove each boiled bagel with a slotted spoon and transfer to a nonstick baking sheet.

Combine the remaining egg yolk with 1 tsp water and brush over the bagels. Scatter with sesame seeds and bake approximately 20 minutes, or until golden brown.

Now the fun part... all the many ways you get to enjoy them!!

Mix up some home-cured gravlax, fresh dill, and cream cheese. Smear it on thick with some sliced cucumbers. Delicious.

Breaky to go!

Easy peasy toasted with peanut butter

YUM!

Happy and Healthy Animals Always Taste Best

Have you ever seen a chicken’s “fingers”? or a pig’s “bacon”? I find it curious that we transform the meat we eat on a regular basis to look like anything but the actual animal we are eating. Whether it’s a natural defense against the ugliness of eating something that was once living, or simply something people have grown up with not questioning, I can’t say. 

We aren’t eating Babe, 
the cute little pig with the rest of his life rolling in mud and making friends with other barnyard animals ahead of him, 

we’re eating “pork”; uniformly sliced and packaged for a convenient stir-fry, streaky smoked bacon for breakfast, and thick cut pork chops for the grill. But none of these products look like a pig. Maybe the closest we get to actually recognizing the animal is when we leave the skin on the roast, but even then it’s not called skin, it’s crackling.

It wasn’t until I saw the reaction when a contestant on Masterchef roasted a pig head that I realized not everyone thinks about where their food comes from. The entire week prior to air, the commercial showed the roasted head being pulled out of the oven with ominous scary music in the background! Pigs aren’t scary. Roasted meat isn’t scary either. But I could feel the unease the moment Australia saw that roasted pig head, and the pig looked back. Because there’s no avoiding the image of Babe when his head is roasted and served on a platter at your dinner table.

And that’s exactly the point I want to make (aside from letting you in on the secret that the best part of the pig is its cheeks and jowl). I am against people forgetting that what they eat everyday actually was a living thing, which is what happens when we go to the grocery store and pick up carts full of dismembered, chopped up, and neatly packaged meat. Because it’s at this moment that people stop caring about the product they are buying. It’s easy to forget that that coq au vin was once a chicken when its feet are taken off and its legs and neatly arranged and cling filmed.

I don’t agree with vegetarianism as a means towards the end of animal cruelty. Because as poetic as it sounds, spending the rest of your life eating vegetables isn’t going to keep the billions of cows out of the slaughterhouse. Talk is cheap. What you need to make a difference today is money. The power of supply and demand is a force to be reckoned with. And as a consumer, you have a lot more power to control that force than you might at first think. It’s all about who your dollar supports. And if you are against cruelty to animals, then you should be supporting the hundreds of farmers doing meat farming the ethical way. It may be a little more expensive, but you reap the benefits not only in supporting a sustainable and ethical meat farmer, but in the intense flavor of the meat! That is what meat is supposed to taste like! I check up on this website at least once a week. Check it out: <http://www.sustainabletable.org.au/>

The website has got a great list of ethical butchers in Sydney and Melbourne. And the best part about shopping at one is that they’re always really friendly, and ready to share (or trade!) tips. When you ask for something maybe not on display, they go to the back, bring out a forequarter of an animal, and show you the piece they are going to cut! Really cool.

Sunday’s Southern feast was a special request by Nick. Creamy mac ‘n’ cheese, collard greens, jalapeno corn bread, delicious. 
But the big star? Slow Roasted Beef Brisket! Oh my, it was amazing. Crunchy “bark”, tender meat, sticky sauce. But the best part? This tasted BEEFY. Thanks to my butcher’s ethical, hormone free, beautiful, and delicious meat I feel good about buying and eating. Especially eating… I may not have a smoker (or even outdoor grill) at home, but I make a MEAN slow roasted brisket :D

Brisket comes from the breast of the cow. It is a thin sheet of muscle that has a lot of fat on one side. For the most part the whole cut of meat follows one grain, so that when you slice it thinly you don’t have to worry about which way to cut. You cook it low and slow to ensure the collagen in the meat breaks down and turns into gelatin resulting in tender meat that practically melts in your mouth. And the best part of this kind of cooking? Brisket is so cheap! Feed up to 8 people for $25? Yes thank you.

Slow Roasted Beef Brisket

Go to your local (ethical) butcher and ask for a beef brisket. They will show you the piece and you get to choose how big you want them to cut it!

Dry Rub:

½ c brown sugar

¼ c paprika

2 tbsp salt

2 tbsp celery salt

1 ½ tbsp. onion powder

1 ½ tbsp. chili powder

1 tsp cumin

1 tbsp black pepper

1 tsp dry mustard

½ tsp cayenne

PLUS: One bottle of your favourite BBQ sauce. Or use your own recipe! Mine is kinda special and I’m not ready to share it on the internet just yet :D

Combine all the ingredients in a bowl. Sprinkle liberally over the brisket, making sure you coat everywhere. Place the brisket on a rack over a roasting pan and cover with plastic wrap. 

Refrigerate the brisket at least 4 hours or overnight. This process initially draws moisture out of the meat. But let it sit long enough and the seasoning as well as the moisture will work it’s way back into the meat leaving you with a perfectly seasoned piece of meat all the way through. If you don’t have time to do this, skip the step all together. Salting the meat for any time less than 4 hours will only serve to draw moisture out of the meat.

Now time to cook. Bring your brisket out to room temperature for 30 minutes. Preheat your oven to 100C. Pour one bottle of beer into the bottom of your roasting pan (you want the beef to sit on the rack without touching the beer). Seal the pan with aluminum foil and place in the oven. Don’t move the brisket, or open the door for the first 4 hours. After 4 hours, take the brisket out of the oven and baste it with a thick layer of BBQ sauce. Cover with foil again and cook for 30 minutes. Repeat this process until the brisket has had 6 hours of cook time. At 6 hours, depending on the size of your brisket, you have to judge if it needs more time (up to 8 hours total). You want to be able to put a fork in the middle of the brisket and for it to break apart without much force. Not as “fall apart” as a pulled pork, but definitely tender and soft.

So, after 4 hours baste every 30 minutes with BBQ sauce keeping the brisket covered with foil until the last 20 minutes of cooking which is done uncovered to ensure the BBQ sauce caramelizes nicely.

Once cooked, remove the rack and brisket to a board to rest covered in a foil tent. Pour all those delicious drippings into a pot with a little more BBQ sauce. Stir together and bring to the boil to serve alongside the brisket.

Once the brisket has rested 20 minutes, thinly slice against the grain. Move your knife in as few long, and fluid cuts as you can manage so as not to damage the now delicate and tender beef. Transfer to a platter, pour over any juices that may have come out during resting and cutting, and serve! AH-MAZE-ING. 

I hope I inspired you to at least look into investing your dollar in ethically produced meat. It just tastes better, and you’ll definitely feel better about eating it too!

 

Dear Australia, I present to you: Sloppy Joes

Sometimes you just need something easy. Easy to make, easy to eat, and especially easy to clean up. My go-to easy meal is usually some kind of burger. Meat, bread, toppings, done. But my lack of an outdoor grill turns this "easy" option into a big, greasy, set-off-my-fire alarm, kind of mess. Option 2? Another one of my favourite comfort foods: Sloppy Joes! I'm not sure if they're very well known outside of Canada and the US, and I have to admit my mum never made them when I was a kid either, but these delicious, and as their name would suggest, sloppy, sandwiches finally found their way into my life when I was living in Vancouver.

I was a culinary student living in a huge shared house in Kits with 15 of my best friends. Life was great, but Sundays were the BEST. Why do you ask? Because of our family dinners! And Steph's Sloppy Joes definitely set it off. I remember growing up, there was an ad for a product called "Manwich" that was on tv constantly. Weird right? Does it stand for manly sandwich? Who knows. I was never sure if it was a can full of just the sauce, or the meat too. Anyways, the idea of canned mince kind of grossed me out, so I never tried one. It wasn't until I ate Steph's home made version that I realized, duh, its just mince with tomato sauce on a bun. No can necessary. In fact, doing it completely from scratch means you can make it taste even better!

So ever since then, whenever I'm too tired for anything fancy and just want to dig into something so so so so good, this is what I make. But don't worry, this isn't just your run-of-the-mill Sloppy Joe recipe. I'm never too tired to put delicious finishing touches on things :D

Easy oven fries: bake with salt, pepper, olive oil at 225C turning twice until golden and crispy 20-25 min

My Sloppy Joes

For the filling:

500 g beef mince

1 large onion

4 cloves garlic

2 carrots, shredded

1 celery stalk, finely chopped

1 cup any combination of vegetables, pureed in a food processor (I used zucchini, pumpkin, and spinach)

2 small cans pureed tomato

1 tbsp honey

salt and pepper

1 bay leaf

1 tbsp paprika

In a heavy-bottomed pot, sear and break apart the mince until it is a lovely dark brown. Don't move it around too much. Let one side caramelize nicely before mixing it around. This is the hottest temperature and driest environment you will get you beef on so this is the only chance you will have to caramelize. Once liquid goes into the pot there is too much liquid to allow for caramelization. Once that is done, add the onion, garlic, carrots, celery, and vegetable puree. Cook 10 minutes until everything is soft. Add the remaining ingredients and bring to a simmer. Cook on low for as long as you have patience for. The longer you cook it the more tender the final result and the more developed the flavour. Plus, if you cook it for a longer amount of time, you are allowing yourself more time to evaporate liquid meaning you are allowed to add more flavourful liquid into the dish! Rich beef stock? Deep, dry, red wine? Yum! As long as you cook the moisture out of the final product, add as much flavouring as you'd like! I cooked mine for about 3 hours.

You want your filling to stand up on its own when slopped onto a bun. Not quite as loose as spaghetti sauce. But don't worry if your face looks like this after dinner. There's no avoiding it.

I don't know this baby, but the other picture option was of a man eating a sloppy joe. His picture made me lose my appetite, so I chose the happy baby :)

For the rolls:

6 crispy rolls

2 cloves garlic

3 tbsp butter

2 tbsp chopped parsley

Salt and Pepper

This is a step not to be missed. It is the ultimate finishing touch. DO NOT SKIP! It's so easy and will make a world of difference to your dinner.

In a bowl, combine the garlic and butter. Microwave (or if you don't like to use microwaves do this step in a pot) until the butter is melted completely. Now add the parsley and seasoning. Slice your rolls in half. Brush each halved roll with garlic butter (you can even make MORE garlic butter if you want!) and arrange cut side up on a baking tray. Grill on high heat until they are golden brown and crispy, about 5 minutes. Keep a close eye on these because they can go from beautifully toasted to burnt in a few seconds. And then you will have to eat your delicious Sloppy Joes on the sliced bread you keep in your freezer, while still inhaling the aromatic burnt toast smell coming from your garbage can.

So that's it! Beautifully toasted garlic rolls? Check. Yummy (and secretly healthy) Sloppy Joes? Check. Just serve with some oven fries and homemade coleslaw, and you have a little slice of my kind of heaven.

Take a look at these glorious left-overs!

Showing off!

Okay, so this post is less of a recipe blog, and more of me showing off all the hard work I've been doing lately!

I recently became the new mother to a beautiful ice cream churn. And while I normally keep a healthy affectionate distance from all my kitchen appliances, this one has got a pull on me! Who couldn't help but fall in love with the machine that helps create this:

A strawberry ice cream SNOWMAN!

I am living through the most temperate winter of my life. It's a beautiful and sunny 16C outside today, and it's the middle of winter! I still can't get over it. I grew up making snowmen 5 months of the year, and now the only way I'll see snow is when I make it myself. Hence the inspiration to make my snowman. And the best part about this little guy? You get to eat the whole thing without having to worry about the "yellow snow" :D

So that strawberry ice cream was a definite success. And I'm sorry but I'm not sharing my recipe. A girl's got to have a few secrets!

Next up was my deep dark chocolate ice cream. And honestly, when working with ingredients this beautiful, there's no other option than complete, blissful, chocolate heaven.

Dark Callebaut Chocolate

When I make fruity ice creams (like my fresh strawberry) I like to keep the base light so that the natural flavours of the fruit shine. But for this chocolate recipe I enrich my base with egg yolks, giving the base a luscious and creamy consistency perfect for melting chocolate into.

Being the good baker I am, I always measure out all my ingredients before even starting the recipe. This one took me a bit by surprise because once I'd measured everything out and taken a step back to survey my work, I quickly realized that there couldn't possibly be enough chocolate compared to the amount of dairy in the recipe! My measly pile of chocolate standing up against those full measuring cups of milk and cream looked like David and TWO Goliaths!

I just couldn't let my first chocolate ice cream recipe turn out not chocolate-y enough. So I took matters into my own hands and did what anyone else in my 'home alone ice cream maker' position would have done. I doubled the amount. And this is what happened.

Chocolate was always my favourite banana split flavour...

Well, the banana split didn't "just happen"... but I'll get to that next. This ice cream is so chocolate-y and sinfully delicious. It is rich and surprisingly not too sweet. And the real kicker? Right before it was finished churning, I swirled some peanut butter into it! Sweet baby Jesus. Best decision ever.

So, back to the making of the banana split. While I was warming up my ice cream scoop to take this picture, and eating my "mistake ice cream balls" I heard (and I swear I'm not making this up) Elvis's Blue Christmas. Yes, I do listen to Christmas songs when I'm home alone. Well anyways, I don't know if you got the connection as quickly as I did, but I immediately dropped my spoon and gathered everything I'd need for my Elvis banana split masterpiece. Banana, chocolate peanut butter ice cream, crushed peanuts, drizzle of honey, the only thing it's missing? Some crumbled up crispy bacon, mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Drooling yet?

Well if you aren't, that's okay. I did a photo shoot. Enjoy!

Is this my best angle?

How about this?

I think I like this one best!

Mum will be so proud: Dinner with Okra

I've never been a fussy eater. Some may think my dad's 'eat what your mother puts in front of you or don't eat at all' approach is a bit harsh, but it definitely gets the job done! Even as a kid I just couldn't skip a meal, no matter how gross I made it up in my mind to be. I guess it's lucky I became a chef rather than an accountant. If I wasn't running around and exercising at my job all day, I'd be a 300 pound pencil pusher! Imagine that, haha :D

Anyways, getting to the point, I grew up eating everything my parents ate for dinner (well with the exception of fried livers... my dad showed us kids a little mercy). However, as we grew up, clever kids that we were, we began to notice a potential loop hole in the rule. Anything that both parents ate, we had to eat as well. But what if it was something that only our mum ate? Game off! We were free to side with whichever parent we wanted to. Mwahaha. And the one thing that fell into this category? Okra.

 My dad hates okra. He says its slimy and furry and weird and he won't eat it. And what kid is going to eat something like that? No kid that's who. I don't think I even tried it.

It wasn't until I ate a delicious gumbo at my favourite Southern restaurant in Eugene, Papa's Soul Food, that I discovered okra could be my friend. Well after a few years experimenting with it, and a delicious roasted lamb with okra in Greece this past summer, it is now on my list. It's not always around, so I always get really excited when I see it at farmers markets.

Well last week was my week! I saw it from across the market. A humungous, green, beautiful pile of it. Roasting it in the oven with potatoes, green beans, and chicken makes it a delicious and healthy one pan meal. Serve with a hunk of bread and feta cheese... my mouth is watering already!

Don't think you like something? Well when was the last time you tried it?

Oven Roasted Chicken with Okra

1 whole chicken, cut into 8 pieces

500 g okra

500 g green beans, ends trimmed

4 waxy potatoes, cut into bite-sized pieces

salt, pepper, oregano

1/4 cup olive oil

1 onion, fine dice

3 cloves garlic, mashed to a paste

1 celery stalk, fine dice

400 g tinned tomatoes

3 tbsp chopped parsley

 

On medium high heat, sear the chicken pieces skin side down until some fat has melted out. Flip and sear all sides of the chicken until they are nice and brown but not cooked all the way through. Place the chicken in a large roasting pan. Scatter the okra, green beans, and potatoes around the chicken. Season with salt, pepper, and oregano.

I forgot I added halved mushrooms too!

 In the same pan you seared the chicken in, add the olive oil and onion on low heat. This may look like a lot of oil, but don't worry, extra virgin olive oil is good for you and it won't be greasy I promise. Once the onion looks soft and translucent, add the garlic and celery. Cook for 5 minutes then add the tomatoes and chopped parsley. If using whole tomatoes, blend them before adding to the pan. You want a nice tomato sauce. Cook this for 10 minutes until it looks like it's come together nicely.

For homemade tomato puree, just blend 400 g fresh tomatoes with parsley (and I added mint)

Pour the tomato sauce over the chicken and okra evenly. Shake the pan a bit to make sure the sauce is everywhere and then put it in a 180C oven for about 45 minutes until everything is cooked, browned, and smells delicious!

Now all that's left to do is let rest 5 minutes before digging in, bread in one hand feta in the other!

It may not be beautiful, but it is SO GOOD. Don't forget to use the bread to mop up all the delicious sauce at the end!