What the Bleep Happened to my Rump Roast?

Where did Tricia go?

2012-01-31T21:30:00.003-06:00

While What the Bleep is on hiatus, please check out my other project, Gourmaleo!

How to Avoid Baking Drug Free Brownies that Still Give You Cotton Mouth

2011-09-08T19:41:00.002-05:00

Dear Tricia, I'll admit it, I'm not the greatest baker but I love to try and pretend like I know what I'm doing. Whenever I make brownies, they always end up too dry. What am I doing wrong?

I'd like to point out that its perfectly fine to not be a great baker. If you were a great baker, then you've probably had some sort of faint idea that you should try and make a career out of it, which I do not suggest by any means at all. Unless of course you enjoy the following: low income, no insurance, long hours, early hours, late hours, holiday hours, overnight hours, no overtime, lots of overtime, burns, scars, cuts, stained hands, an impossible schedule to coordinate a healthy relationship with another person, and a general lack of anything resembling a savings account.

But good on you for giving it a shot, regardless of your career choice. So let's talk because there are several things that could be happening here.

First of all, if you're using the same recipe every time and getting dry brownies, there is actually a possibility that its just a crappy recipe. Uh huh. It might not be you. That happens, especially when anyone and everyone can post recipes online without actually checking them or even just spell checking them. (HeLLO! There's a big difference between a teaspoon and a tablespoon, especially when it comes to things like baking powder and salt.)

If you're generally getting dry brownies with more than one recipe, you have to remember that a baking time in a recipe is just a guideline. Say, for instance, you preheat your oven for 5 minutes before you put in the brownie batter, compared to an oven that's been preheating since 1974, 30 minutes of baking is going to give you 2 drastically different batches of brownies. So check on those guys about 2/3 of the way through the baking time and see how they're doing. If they're almost done, you may need to take them out sooner than the recipe said. (See that, recipe?! You're not the boss of me!) There's a common sense thing that eventually happens with baking- you check things to see how they're doing, and take them out of the oven when they're done, not when the recipe said.

Always make sure you measure exactly. That's the difference between cooking and baking (ask any chef and they're usually one or the other but never both. Total sacrilege.) Flour should be leveled at the top of the cup, not randomly scooped out of the bag and thrown in the mixing bowl without seeing how much was really measured. Because guess what? If there's too much flour, your brownies are going to be dry.

Already over baked the brownies and now you're screwed? Actually, no you're not. You just have to make a simple syrup. If you're prone to over baking things, it's always good to have a simple syrup on hand in the fridge to help mend the mess ups. Just boil 2 cups of sugar and 1 1/2 cup of water until the sugar is dissolved. Pour about a cup of this over the brownies and let them sit for an hour. It helps add moisture to the brownies and can actually save you when you think you just went too far. In baking anyways... not in life. If I had a fix for that, I'd be writing this blog on a private island somewhere with a pet unicorn named Tupac.

On a side note:

I am still being courted a very well known publisher who's name rhymes with SchRandom ScHouse, and as much as they love yours truly, they love blogs with a large following even more. What the Bleep Happened to My Rump Roast doesn't exist without its readers, and the more readers I have, the more I am able to blog because YOU email me the material. If you love what you read here, share it on your Facebook, Twitter, and anywhere else that might skyrocket my tiny blog into d-list super stardom. As always, thanks for your support

Love, Tricia.

How to Cook Salmon if You're a Diet Vegetarian

2011-09-05T12:05:00.001-05:00

Dear Tricia, How do I cook salmon? Love, your pescatarian friend who can't cook pescatarily.

Alrighty my non committal vegetarian friend (is it animals with legs you have a problem with? Does that include shrimp?), you can do this. Ready? Set? And here we go.

My favorite easy recipe for salmon requires an oven and a stove. You're going to start it off on the stove and finish it off in the oven, so go ahead and preheat that baby to 375 degrees while you get some honey, limes, and chili powder ready.

Let's pretend you're cooking 2 salmon fillets. Are you pretending? Ok, you'll need 2 tablespoons of honey, 1 tablespoon of fresh lime juice (use the real stuff here- the fake lime juice out of a bottle is like designer impostor perfume, except with produce. Besides, you can buy 8 limes for a dollar at Fiesta right now. Go get on that bargain train.), and 2 teaspoons of chili powder. Mix it up with a fork or a whisk until it's you know... mixed.

Get your salmon ready. That just means taking it out and blotting it off with a paper towel to absorb any extra moisture. Then take your glaze and pour it over both salmon fillets. There's no reason to try and be neat here- just pour it over the salmon and turn it over to get the glaze on both sides. While you're doing this, get a saute pan hot. If the knob on the stove goes from 1-10, put it at an 8. Let the pan get hot for at least a minute, and then add 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Let that get hot for about 30 seconds. Now take the salmon and put in your pan, skin side up. If you bought the salmon without skin, then congratulations, you can skip that step of deciding which side to cook first.

You should be able to hear the salmon when it touches the pan. If you can't, then you didn't get your pan hot enough. (See my eggs and bacon video blog here for what that sounds like. Plus, it'll probably make you giggle.) All you're doing here is letting that glaze start to caramelize while the salmon cooks about halfway. It's easy to tell when that happens because the color of salmon goes from red to light pink when it cooks. You can see this happening just by looking at the side of the salmon. In the meantime, DON'T MESS WITH THE SALMON. Don't get nosy and start poking it to see what the other side of the filet looks like. I'll spoil the surprise- it looks like a cooked piece of fish. If you do this, you'll just break the salmon apart.

When half of it is pink, take a pair of tongs and grab on to both sides of the salmon. When I say both sides, I mean the sides where you're watching it change from red to pink. Don't try to slide the tongs up under the part that's cooking- that tear it up. So, grab on to the sides and gently wiggle it loose from the pan. If it's not coming up, you can take a spatula and try to loosen it. Whatever you do, just flip the salmon over. Then put the pan in the oven and finish it off in there. (Very important- does your pan have a plastic handle? Don't be stupid and try to put that in the oven. Put the salmon onto a cookie sheet or baking dish instead. Plastic and high heat don't go together very well.)

Let the salmon finish in the oven for another 7-8 minutes, or until there is a thin strip of red left in the middle of where you watched the magical color change that indicates done-ness. Cooking it until its completely pink means you'll end up with dry salmon because even when you take the fish out of the oven, it will still keep cooking another 5 degrees or so. So take it out when it looks just under done.
The reason why I say "OR until there is a thin strip of red left" is because it may very well take more or less time than 8 minutes, depending on how long you let your oven pre-heat. I can't be responsible if you started preheating your oven last Tuesday and now your fish is over cooked. And don't be afraid to let your own personal preference make the call. I like my salmon pretty medium rare, and some people like it dry and hard as a rock. Cook it how you want- you're the one responsible for that, now that you know how to cook salmon.

Go check out one of my other blogs on an easy fish recipe that you can easily substitute salmon for. Let me know how it turns out!

The Easiest Brisket You Will Ever Make and Then Promptly Devour.

2011-08-27T10:51:00.000-05:00

Brisket. That magically delicious cut of beef is crazy good. I'm talking about getting downright ugly while you eat- that's how good brisket is. And its actually so freaking easy to make that its retarded. (I'm sorry- until a new word is given as a replacement for retarded, I'm still using it.)

First, do yourself a favor and get an overview of where brisket comes from on a cow here. This is one of my proudest blogs its has pretty pictures too.

Then take inventory of your spice shelf. You're going to take a tablespoon of everything that looks yummy and put it a plate. No. Seriously. There's no recipe here- does garlic powder sound good? Use it. Oregano? Go ahead. Red Pepper Flakes? You have my permission. And don't forget salt and pepper. You want to make sure you have enough seasonings to coat the brisket, so if you're only using 4 different spices, try 2 tablespoons of each. (P.S.- coffee and cocoa powder can transform your brisket into a straight up Husband Catcher.)

Now take your brisket and roll it around in the spices. Pat it down to make sure they stick, and while you're doing this, get a large skillet hot. Once your brisket is coated and your pan is hot (if your stove knob goes from 1-10, keep it at an 8), add about 3 tablespoons of oil (I use coconut oil because I eat like a cave girl, but that's another blog for another time. If you're super curious, check out this blog) to the pan and let it get hot. Take your brisket and throw it in the pan. Sear it on all sides, about 2 minutes on each side. Tongs come in handy here- you can manhandle the brisket this way without burning your hands. This is basically gluing the seasonings to your brisket and its adding some additional flavor by browning the meat slightly.

To cook your brisket you have 2 options- use a roasting pan in a 300 degree oven, or a crock pot. I happen to love using my crock pot. I got it for $11 at Target and I use it all the freaking time because its hella convenient. Come on- if you read my blog you know how much I love little smokies- how do you think I get those babies so plump and delicious?

Roasting pan or crock pot, put in 1 chopped onion and then put the brisket on top, fat-side up. Pour in about a cup of stock or tomato juice* and turn it on low. (Or cover it with the lid and close the oven door.) The brisket will be done in 4 hours, but I turn it on before I go to work and come back 8-10 hours later. Holy deliciousness, Batman. You just made yourself a damn brisket.

I'm not a big fan of recipes, but for my seasonings, I use the following: garlic powder, coriander, oregano, parsley, red pepper flakes, coffee, cocoa powder, salt and pepper. If you want to give this mixture a try for your first brisket making experience, it's pretty much a win win. You're welcome.

*Please note that, if you're using tomato juice in a roasting pan and covering it with foil- the tomato juice can react with the foil and end up tasting kind of weird. Covering your brisket with something else first, (like parchment paper) before you wrap it in foil will protect the tomato juice from splattering up and hitting the foil. Let's avoid weird tasting brisket, shall we?

It's a Twitter Party, Everyone!

2011-08-23T19:51:00.000-05:00

Hi all! If you missed out on my very first live Twitter Q&A a couple of weeks ago, then you missed out on a once in a lifetime experience.

Actually, you just missed out on a once in a 2 week experience. It's time to do another one! Huzzah!

My second Twitter party is coming up TOMORROW, Wednesday August 24! If you're not on Twitter yet, now's the time to join. Follow whatthebleep1 and send me your questions/ disasters/ all around f-ups starting at 7pm (CST). That's right- get your questions answered in live time instead of waiting to read them on the blog! The last party was a huge success, so grab a cocktail, get in line early and start tweeting me!

Killer Guacamole From Outer Space

2011-08-23T19:44:00.001-05:00

Dear Tricia, I need a killer guacamole recipe for a party. Anything different?

Yes, and first off, I would just like to profess my utter and undying love for avocados. A moment please.

Thank you. That is all.

For guacamole, it's easy to instantly think "Mexican!" when you're adding ingredients, but you can also branch out and jump to a different continent for some avocado inspiration. Today, we're going Mediterranean.

First you need to roast some garlic. Go ahead and roast this entire batch, but you'll only use a couple of cloves for your guacamole. Save the rest to add to other recipes, or just smear it on crusty bread, dig in, and avoid large crowds for a couple of hours.

Peel every clove in a head of garlic. Then put them in a piece of foil drizzle with a tablespoon of olive oil, and wrap up the foil tightly. Cook this at 325 degrees for about 30 minutes, or until the garlic is really golden brown. This is making the garlic less garlic-y and more sweet. Its absolutely delightful.

Then take 2 of your golden delicious roasty garlic cloves and smash them up on your cutting board with your knife into a puree.

In a bowl, mash 3 large avocados and mix in your garlic really well.

The mix in the following ingredients:

half a lemon, juiced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon paprika
3/4 teaspoon cayenne
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 cup roasted red bell peppers, chopped small (out of the can or fresh- no judgment)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

And if you like your dips spicier, add double your cayenne pepper and add a clove of chopped, raw garlic. Mix everything up nicely and serve with pita bread and fresh slices of cucumber. Hell. To. The. Yes.

Quick Fix for Sucky Sauce!

2011-08-16T18:55:00.001-05:00

Dear Tricia, If I tried to be ambitious and make my own pasta sauce, and it came out too thin, what can I do to fix it?

In need of a quick fix? You've come to the right lady. Good skills in the kitchen are all about improvising, and you can quote me on that. (um... can someone please quote me on that? And copyright it? Thank you.)

If your sauce is cream based, you're in luck because you can just keep cooking it. Don't boil the living daylights out of it, but keep simmering it on low-medium heat (that's like a diet boiling) until it thickens up. Not working fast enough for you? Add some grated cheese and stir it in until it melts. That usually does the trick in a pinch. A quick trick for your sucky sauce pinch, if you will. Say that three times fast. Now do it after 2 margaritas. And... go!

If you've made something non cream based like marinara or a wine sauce, just let it reduce some more. Reducing means you're cooking it down to evaporate some of the liquid out of it. This also helps concentrate flavor. However, if you're doing this to a giant stock pot full of 2 gallons of marinara sauce, you're going to need to reduce it for like 2 weeks to get it down. First of all, keep the lid off. Otherwise the condensation will stick on the lid, drip down back into the sauce and contribute to a never ending cycle of watery disappointment. Then add tomato paste about a tablespoon at a time, and stir. This is going to alter the flavor a little- make sure you adjust with salt and pepper. Continue to let it simmer and you should be good to go. Still on the thin side? Add some grated parmesan as a last resort. Your lactose intolerant friends are going to get parmesan, and dammit they will like it!

For the sauce disaster prone- keep a roux on hand. Here's what to do:

In a sauce pan, melt half a stick of butter over medium heat. When it's melted, start adding flour and stirring until it looks like wet sand. This shouldn't be more than 1/2 cup of flour or so.
Once it looks like wet sand, keep stirring until the roux turns a golden brown. You'll start to smell it cooking, and that's a good thing. Anything less than golden brown will make a sauce taste like paper mache. Gross city.

Keep this mixture in an airtight container in your fridge. Anytime you want to thicken a sauce, just add it, a tablespoon at a time, to sauce on the stove and let it simmer. Future sucky sauce pinches = resolved!

Now can we take a minute to revel in the grossness of the advertisement above? Convenient, yes. Haunting? Also yes.

What the Bleep is Gluten?

2011-08-08T20:28:00.000-05:00

It's video blog time, my friends! Demystifying all that is gluten... don't forget to subscribe and share your comments! Special thanks to Hair by Jessica!

How to Make Meatballs in a Pinch

2011-07-31T10:59:00.000-05:00

I love meatballs and think that most meats should be available in ball form. In fact, one of my first blogs ever wrote was tackling someone's meatball conundrum. (Which ended up with a sweet thank you note that I also posted on the blog) I found a recipe that, though completely legit, has a few things I would adjust to make the process easier if you have limited ingredients, time, or space in your kitchen because hey, not everyone keeps fresh herbs in the house or has the time or space to sautee up a pan of meatballs.

Here's the original recipe, published in the New York Times in 2007. It's legit, but it's not always practical.

2 pounds ground beef 
1 cup fresh bread crumbs
 1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan 
1 heaping tablespoon chopped fresh basil  
1 heaping tablespoon chopped fresh parsley 
1 teaspoon kosher salt 
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
 1/8 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper 
2 cloves garlic, minced 
2 eggs 
3 tablespoons olive oil.
1. In a large bowl, mix all ingredients except olive oil by hand, using a light touch. Take a portion of meat in hand, and roll between palms to form a ball that is firmly packed but not compressed. Repeat, making each meatball about 2 inches in diameter.
2. In a large, heavy pot heat olive oil over medium-high heat. When it shimmers, add meatballs in batches. Do not crowd. Brown well on bottoms before turning, or meatballs will break apart. Continue cooking until browned all over. Remove meatballs to a plate as each batch is finished. Let meatballs cool slightly; cover and refrigerate until needed.

Here's my version:

2 pounds ground beef or ground turkey
1 cup bread crumbs (fresh is better, but out of the box will work in a pinch)
1/2 cup finely grated parmesan, or 1/4 cup parmesan out of the green can
2 heaping tablespoons dried basil
2 heaping tablespoons dried parsley
1 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt or 3/4 teaspoon table salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon garlic powder or 2 teaspoons of already chopped garlic out of the jar
2 eggs
1 tablespoon of olive oil

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. In a small bowl, mix parmesan, bread crumbs, basil, parsley, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes and garlic. Pour a glass of wine and take a sip because wine makes everything more fun.
3. Put beef or turkey in a large bowl and add bread crumb mixture to it. Mix well with your hands and when everything in combined, roll meatballs in your hand about the size of a golf ball.
4. Spread oil on a cookie sheet (with sides is preferable) and cook in oven for about 30 minutes. The size of your meatballs will determine when they are done, so give them a little longer if you made larger ones, or take them out earlier if you made smaller ones.

Hey, have you joined Twitter yet? Now's the time to do it because I'll be hosting a live Twitter Party this Wednesday August 3 at 7:00 central time. Follow whatthebleep1 and I'll solve your culinary dilemmas in live time. Tell your friends too!

A Second Helping of Rubber Chicken

2011-07-26T21:09:00.000-05:00

Dear Tricia, Chicken: no matter what I do, it is dry. I've marinated it, quick fried little tenders, and they only time its not dry is when i do "chicken in a pot" stuffed with lemons and oranges and surrounded by veggies and drowned in white wine.

Well kudos to you and your pot o' chicken. Lemons and oranges? That's so fancy sounding!

I covered chicken waaaaay back when I first started blogging (here and here if you want to go back a couple of years), so its about time I talk tips on chicken again.

The absolute easiest way to cook chicken without turning it into a mouthful of boot is wrapped in foil, in the oven. Whether you prefer chicken breasts, thighs, tenders, whatever- season it, wrap it in foil, and cook it at 375 degrees until its done. If you cook chicken tenders or something smaller in size like that, just line a pan with foil, put the chicken on it, and cover it with foil. You don't have to individually wrap them or something. That would be a HUGE waste of time and foil. The great thing about cooking chicken this way is that you don't have to do much, just throw it in the oven and let it go. This is when I make a cocktail, but that's just me. Tenders are usually done in 10 minutes at the most. Chicken breasts, depending on how large they are take closer to 25-30 minutes. You can also experiment with new ways to season chicken without putting in a bunch of thought or energy. Even if you just throw a clove of garlic and some sprigs of fresh herbs (hello, that's like ZERO effort) in with the foil, the chicken is still going to get some great flavor because its steaming inside the foil. Steaming is what makes flavors infuse into the chicken. Infuse- use that one to impress your girlfriend next time you cook dinner for her.

If you want to step it up and put a little more effort into your dinner, you can start with a hot pan, add some oil, and just sear the chicken on both sides to get it brown. Then finish it off in the oven like I talked about in the effort-less paragraph, but have your oven temperature at 400 degrees. This helps keep the chicken juicier than just cooking it entirely in the pan, which tends to give you a chewy outside and some rawness in the middle. This also gives you a lot more color on the chicken because the proteins brown in the pan. That's called the Maillard reaction- when proteins brown. The name comes from a guy named Maillard. It's not french for anything (actually its French for "buff" whatever the hell that means), he just wanted to name something after himself.

Ok, here's a little secret if none of these tips are working for you: FREAKING EVERYONE overcooks their chicken.   That's one of the reasons why I get emails about chicken being dry or rubbery. It's really that simple- don't cook it as long.   I wonder if people are so afraid of the slim-to-none chance of getting salmonella, or some other strange illness that Fox News is trying to make you live in fear of, but either way, there is a difference between cooked chicken and chicken that's been cooked until its awful. Get a thermometer if you're not sure. 165 degrees is the magic number. If you're cooking by color, pink chicken might even be safe, depending on what you've marinated the chicken in and how much hemoglobin happens to be in the tissue.

What to do when your chicken is already over cooked? Easy- make tacos. I wrote a blog on making authentic pulled tacos that taste like Mexico and not North Dakota.   All you have to do is pull the chicken apart into little pieces and follow the directions on the sauce, you just skip the part about cooking the chicken, since you've already cooked the daylights out of it.   Mmm Mmm pollo.

My Chicken is Old and Boring

2011-07-20T18:25:00.000-05:00

Dear Tricia, I'm bored with chicken. I always grill or roast it and I need something new that's hopefully not too difficult for me to ruin dinner.

Chicken can be boring- I totally get it. I have a couple of ideas to save you from your mundane poultry lifestyle, and luckily the first one I've already covered in my NYC Tacos, Texas Style post from a while ago. These are great because you can make a big batch and just heat it up as you need it, and it's really delicious when you're drunk. All you need to do is stock your spice cabinet with a few things that will serve you well in your taco making future.

My second glorious idea is actually really simple but it can pass as kind of gourmet if you're trying to impress someone. (Or just yourself, that's cool too.) You take a chicken breast (skin on or skin off, its up to you) and sit it on a cutting board in front of you with a sharp paring knife.

That's this little one:

Not this one:

So if you're right handed, you put your left hand on top of the chicken breast and hold the knife in your right hand. Holding the knife parallel to the counter (or cutting board, or whatever you're cutting on top of) take the knife and cut a pocket along the side of the chicken. Cut as far over to the other side of the chicken without cutting that side open. What you're trying to do is make a safe little house to stuff some awesome fillings into without them leaking out of the sides.

Once you've cut a pocket into the chicken, season both sides with salt and pepper. Now let's talk fillings options. You want to pick things that aren't messy. If you're going to use cheese, that's great, just make sure that you stuff the cheese towards the side that's closed, not the side you cut into. This way the cheese doesn't leak out and make a mess. We're going for non-messy here, Messy McMesserstein. Here's some ideas, but you can get as crazy as you want. You know me- I'm all about encouraging you to screw around in the kitchen. Have some fun you rock star.

Bacon (cooked), pecans and blue cheese
Pepperoni and mozzarella
Roasted red peppers and pesto
Sausage (If you're using raw sausage, make sure it's cooked all the way through before you serve the chicken. We'll get to that in a sec.)
Olives and artichoke hearts
Spanish Rice and pumpkin seeds
Gummy bears
Just seeing if you're paying attention
Mushrooms and onions

Once you've got your selected stuffing, (and you don't need a whole lot, just a few tablespoons per chicken breast) just put it inside the chicken. Get as much as you can in there without it just falling out and making a mess. And remember, if you're using cheese, stuff it in first so it's up against the closed side.

Then get your oven heated to 400 degrees. Have a pan ready and get it hot over medium high heat. That means if the numbers on the knob go from 1-10, it should be at a 7. When the pan is hot, pour about 2 tablespoons of olive oil in the pan and let that heat up for a good 10-15 seconds. Then put your chicken breasts in the pan. Did you hear the chicken start to sizzle? Good, that means your pan was hot enough. Were your chickens silent? Then your pan wasn't hot, and that's not going to ruin dinner, but it won't give your chicken a really pretty brown color. Next time don't be afraid to crank up the heat, ok? Don't pussyfoot around here.

Cook the chicken on one side until it's halfway done. How can you tell? Well look a the side of the chicken where you cut into. The part that's still kind of translucent and pink is the raw part. The white part is cooked. When it's half white and half pink, it's half done. Then you flip the chicken over on its other side. Give it about 2-3 more minutes here. Then put it on a cookie sheet or sheet pan and put it in the oven. Even better if you can have the cookie sheet already hot, inside the oven to accelerate the process. The whole process on top of the stove should take you 8 minutes tops, unless you're cooking some monster huge chicken breasts. What are they feeding those chickens?!

You're going to let the chicken finish cooking in the oven because I've found this makes the chicken more tender and juicy, plus it lets you have a minute to make a cocktail. Bonus. The chicken should be done within 10 minutes. Again, just make sure there aren't any pink parts. And if you've stuffed the chicken with raw sausage, the chicken is done with the sausage is completely cooked. Be really careful with that. No one likes a raw sausage surprise.

After the chicken is done, pull it out of the oven and let it rest for a few minutes before you serve it. This keeps all of the juices inside the chicken, and not leaking all over your plate. That's tip three for keeping things non messy.

Are you ready to try this one at home? Go have fun and send me your photos and comments. Easy as pie, right? Easy as chicken pot pie.

The Basics of Cookies- It's All Here!

2011-07-07T20:25:00.000-05:00

Over the last few years of writing this blog, I have received tons of very specific baking questions; about cookies being flat, or why butter needs to be room temperature, or whatever else it is that befuddles you about baking. So today I'm going to give you the Cliffs Notes of baking cookies. It's ALL in here. You must have caught me in a good mood! (Or maybe it's the margarita. Oh, summertime...)

On your ingredients:

Unless you have a recipe that specifically calls for you to keep your ingredients cold, It will always help if you have your ingredients at room temperature. This is especially important for eggs and butter. (See my blog on Why Eggs and Butter are the Axl Rose and Slash of Baking for the science of it) Eggs and butter don't like to mix together because they're both made mainly of fat, but if you have them at room temperature, they get along better. Its kind of like those mean girls in sororities who hate each other, but after a few beers they're best friends and crying about how much they love each other. Heat is the beer in this situation. It makes everyone a LOT friendlier.

Baking soda, baking powder, and salt are all the same thing- they're forms of sodium. And under a microscope, sodium and sugar look very similar. Sodium looks like little glass boxes with perfect corners and sugar looks like a little glass box with a lot of jagged edges. Both of them help incorporate air into cookies. We'll get to how much of that you want in a minute. But cookies recipes that have you cream your butter and sugar together should tell you to cream your sugar, salt, baking soda, and/or baking powder together. Go ahead and mix sugar, salt, and your baking soda/powder at the beginning and let them join the butter party. Everyone's invited!

Extra stuff like chocolate chips, oatmeal, raisins, whatever should always be added last. That means DEAD last. Wait until you've added your flour and what's in your bowl is the perfect example of cookie dough. Then you can add your extra stuff. Why? Because I said so. And because it keeps the chocolate chips, fruit, etc in tact so that you get whole bits of delicious surprises as you bite into the cookie. Oh, and because that extra stuff tears up gluten, which makes your cookie more crumbly. It's not the end of the world or anything, but if you want to know a brief overview about what the &%!@ gluten is, read this blog.

Baking soda and baking powder are NOT the same! Read this ancient blog I wrote to find out why.   Make sure you use what your recipe calls for.

On mixing:

If a recipe tells you to "cream the butter and sugar together," that does not mean that you should beat the shit out of those two ingredients. With most cookie recipes, you want to just combine the sugar and butter until they're blended. (Room temperature sugar and butter, remember? Don't make me repeat myself.) If you incorporate too much air into the cookie, it spreads out and gets flat and crunchy. And judging by the emails I get in my in box (which is whatthebleephappened@gmail.com, for all of your fan mail/ questions/ Whole Foods gift card donating needs) you all prefer soft, chewy cookies like we all grew up with out of the Soft Bake package.   Try to hold back. Just blend the butter and sugar (and salt and baking soda/baking powder) until they're combined.   Then move on to the next step.

Eggs are usually the next step. We've already gone over that you've let them get to room temperature. So now that you've mastered the art of letting an egg sit out on the counter for half an hour or so, make sure you don't add it too fast. If you have 2 eggs to add to a recipe, add them one at a time. Add Egg #1, and let the mixer blend it in. At first the eggs look like they're separated- you'll actually see little fat bubbles that don't want to mix. But if you're patient, and if your butter and eggs were room temperature, it will eventually blend together. Then you want to turn the mixer off, take a rubber spatula and scrap all the way down to the bottom of the bowl to make sure you mix in any butter/eggs that have been left alone at the bottom, untouched. Like little orphans. Please. Don't ignore the orphans. Then, and only then, can you add the next egg. If you happened to be making the most giant batch of cookies ever and you needed to add 100 eggs, you obviously wouldn't add them 1 at a time. You'd add them like 1/4 at a time. Use your common sense here, people.

On Baking:

Let's talk preheating. You preheat your oven for a reason, people! If I can quote myself here from yet another ancient blog, "While a hot oven will force a cake into its submission and make it rise like no one's business, an oven that's not pre-heated will basically just sip a cocktail, nudge your cake and ask, "Do you want to bake or what? Yeah, I didn't think so." Put your cookies in the oven to BAKE. If your oven isn't hot, what's the point? A slow, painful death to the chocolate chips? There's so much happening: high heat makes water turn into steam which helps things rise, which helps baking soda finish its very important job, which makes sugar caramelize into golden pieces of heaven... Just preheat the damn oven until it beeps at you, ok? And then give it another 10 minutes or so for good measure.

Chill the dough before you scoop it out and lay it on a pan. Even better, scoop it out, lay it on the pan, and then chill it. Freeze it, even. This gives you a chewier, softer cookie every time.

Your recipe doesn't always know how long to bake your cookies for. 12-15 minutes doesn't always mean 12-15 minutes. I remember working a pastry externship at a lovely restaurant in San Francisco with a very lovely chef who went on to star on many a Bravo and Food Network TV shows, and if there's one thing I learned there, its that you don't bake things for a certain amount of time, you bake them until they're done. Every oven is different. How cold or hot the weather is affects baking.   Humidity affects baking. So if your recipe says 12-15 minutes and after 15 minutes you look at your cookies and they're still doughy and undercooked, then leave them in there longer. WE ALL KNOW WHAT A COOKIE LOOKS LIKE. Trust yourself to make that decision to say "Yes. This cookie is finished and I will now remove it from the oven because the time has come." The same goes for cookies baking much faster than you think. If those suckers look done at 9 minutes, then you better take them out before their prescribed time of 12-15 minutes. And if you don't and you burn them, it's your fault. You saw they were done, didn't you?

If you bake a lot, I recommend investing in a couple of good sheet pans. Home bakers call them cookie sheets, but we in the industry (or we who used to be in the industry and have since escaped, thank the universe) call them sheet pans.   They're usually made of aluminum, they have durable sides, they're uber sturdy and will last you a gazillion years if you treat them right, and if you line them with parchment paper instead of coating them with butter and flour, they're super easy to clean. Do yourself a favor and purchase a couple from a restaurant supply store, not Williams Sonoma or Sur la Table. As much as I love those two stores' cookbook selections, they'll charge you triple for a shopping experience with better lighting. Not worth it.

On what to do when you've messed up:

Cookies a little over done? Too much baking soda and the texture is all funky? No problem. Freeze it and save it to blend it into a milkshake when you want to eat your feelings. Crumble it into a bowl and pour milk over it and pretend like you're 8 years old watching Saturday morning cartoons eating a Cookie Crisp. (God, how I MISS Cookie Crisp. Damn you, diets!) Puree it up and use it instead of graham cracker crumbs for a cheesecake crust. Homemade chocolate chip cookie crust? You just made like 14 new friends. Puree it up, freeze it, and rim a martini glass in it for some kind of decadent signature holiday drink.   You can do that with almost anything! I once drank a martini in a glass rimmed with pretzels. I don't remember much after that, but I'm pretty sure I enjoyed it.

What the Bleep Happened to My Breakfast?

2011-07-02T17:17:00.001-05:00

Here it is, my pets- my inaugural video blog all about breakfast. Post your comments below and let me know if you love it or hate it. Special thanks to Jessica Albritton at Hair By Jessica for her magic work. As always, thanks for reading (and watching)... now go tell the world what you've learned!

How to shop for chocolate like a cheapskate

2011-06-19T18:16:00.000-05:00

Dear Tricia, When making chocolate cakes, what do you think gives you the most chocolate taste: melted chocolate chips, baking chocolate or powdered cocoa? You know, the most bang for your buck?

Awesome question, with kind of a definite answer, and kind of not. Let me back up for a moment and explain the difference between the 3 chocolates in question.

Chocolate chips are almost always semi sweet or bitter sweet. Sweet is the operative word here: it means that sugar has been added. Any time sugar has been added to chocolate, there is less cacao (not to be confused with cocoa- sorry all you Dyslexics), and cacao is what gives you that chocolate-y taste.

Unsweetened baker's chocolate is 100% cacao. (Side note, remember what we all did as kids? You mom would be using it in a recipe and you would insist on trying it, even though she warned you that you wouldn't like it. And you'd try it anyways and be so surprised that it was awful? Ok, back to chocolate now.) By itself, bakers chocolate it gross, but once you add it to a recipe with lovely fat and delicious sugar, it gives you great chocolate flavor.

Cocoa powder, simply put, is roasted cocoa beans that have 75%-90% of the cocoa butter removed (cocoa butter is what gives chocolate that melty, buttery feel in your mouth), and then pressed and ground into powder. It also gives you great chocolate flavor. Some, but not all cocoa powders are 100% cacao.

The first thing I have to address is that the recipe used is a huge variable here. A recipe made with a lot of egg whites is going to give you a lighter tasting chocolate cake than one with butter and sugar and loads of cocoa powder. Knowing that, lets talk bang for your buck. I'm always up for a bargain. (Picture me shopping at Fiesta yesterday for produce- 20 limes for a dollar? Hell yes.) To try and be as accurate as possible, I have taken prices of chocolate from my local Fiesta Super Mercado (in Dallas, home of our national champions, The Dallas Mavericks, thankyouverymuch) and averaged them out with prices from a supermarket outside of Chicago and prices on Amazon.com. I do not recommend purchasing your chocolate off Amazon.com, by the way. Its kind of overpriced. Stick to Fiesta. Plus, all those limes....

On the back of any box of Hershey's cocoa powder, there is a conversion chart for using cocoa powder instead of bakers chocolate or semi sweet chocolate chips. Since I'm only on my first cup of coffee, I'm going to use their chart as an example to tell you which gives you the best deal.

Let's pretend you're using a recipe that calls for 2 ounces of bakers chocolate. If an 8 oz box of bakers chocolate costs $6.84, then each 1 oz square costs about 86 cents. That means you're using about $1.72 worth of chocolate for your recipe.

Your average 8 oz can of cocoa powder costs $3.59. It takes 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder to equal 1 ounces of bakers chocolate. So for this recipe, if you substitute cocoa powder instead of baker's chocolate, you'll use 6 tablespoons of cocoa powder. If there are about 45 tablespoons of cocoa powder in a can, that means each tablespoon costs about 8 cents. So 6 tablespoons equals about 48 cents worth of cocoa powder. (Are you listening, Mrs. Bilbrey? I was paying attention in fifth grade math.)

Now let's talk chocolate chips. Those guys, semi or bittersweet, have sugar in them- completely different than our sugar-free friends we just priced out. If you use them in place of baker's chocolate, you want to make sure you take out about 3 tablespoons of sugar for every ounce you use. Just a head's up. But for consistency, let's price it too. Chocolate chips weigh the same as baker's chocolate, they're just in little delicious kiss shapes. The average price of a 12 ounce bag of chocolate chips is $3.36. That means every ounce is about 28 cents. This means your recipe will use about 56 cents of chocolate.

It looks like cocoa powder is going to win here, but if you want to get really technical, chocolate chips and cocoa powder are actually going to come in pretty damn close because when you use the chocolate chips you have to take out some of the sugar. Less sugar means less money, and every bit counts. If you take the sugar variable out of the equation, cocoa powder is going to be your cheapest bet.

And here's a helpful hint- anytime you use chocolate in a recipe, add a little bit of fresh-brewed coffee. It brings out the chocolate flavor and you'll never taste the coffee. What else have we learned here? That I has friends all over the country who can give her a heads up on regional chocolate prices, I totally love a bargain, and I'm a secret math genius. I also clip coupons. You heard it here first.

This is why your friend's mom's cookies don't kick ass anymore

2011-06-13T21:47:00.000-05:00

Dear Tricia, My friend's mom bakes awesome oatmeal cookies but, recently they have been coming out thinner than usual. Why?

3 reasons, and I'll make this quick because I need you to fix that problem, make a new batch, and send them to me pronto. Words can't describe my love of oatmeal cookies. I can get seriously ugly on a batch of those suckers.

First, you know how when you bake, you always read to cream the sugar and butter until its light and fluffy, and the butter turns from yellow to almost white? Well that's a prime example of what you don't want to do with cookies. Cakes- yes. Cookies- no. Over creaming the butter and sugar just makes the cookies spread out more, and they get thinner and flat. Picture the sugar granules punching little air pockets into the butter- its like watching one of the Kardashians, or Toddlers and Tiaras on TV, and slowly, your brain just gets filled with air. This is great for cakes, because it makes the cake rise up, but with cookies, it just makes them spread out. So keep those Kardashians and mini drag queen-looking lady babies away from your cookies.

Second, make sure your oven is fully pre heated. Get that oven entirely up to temperature before you even start making the cookies. If you put a tray of cookie dough into an oven that's not hot enough, the butter just starts to slowly melt out and the texture of your cookies will suck. If you put your oven into a primed and hot oven, the water inside of the butter evaporates and the steam helps the cookie rise. Pair that with the baking soda, and your cookies are doing the job they were meant to do. So give them a nice office to do their job in. Cookies like heat. They're like those iguanas, laying out on a scorching hot rock Mexico, soaking it all up, the crazy bastards.

Third, baking soda is what makes cookies spread. This is important- you need your cookies to spread out a little. But make sure you're measuring correctly, because extra baking soda means extra spreadage. And double check that you're using baking soda, not baking powder. Don't get those 2 confused because they do things totally different. Read this blog from a billion years ago to find out why.

Ok, suggest those things to your friends mom. Tactfully, I hope. You don't want to be all "Your cookies aren't awesome anymore and Tricia said this is why." And let me know how it turns out! (After you send me a batch, of course. Thank you.)

Cook this Tonight

2011-06-05T09:53:00.000-05:00

Dear Tricia, Cod: what the heck can I do with it? Preferably easy. Preferably so easy my husband can grill it. Thanks.

Unless you have a fish grilling basket (that wire contraption that protects the fish while it's grilling so that it doesn't fall apart on the grates), cod isn't the best thing to grill because its super delicate and thin. However, the technique and kind-of-a-recipe that I'm about to share can be done in an oven or on a grill. Ready? Grab your fish. (Wash your hands first, you grossy mcgrosserstein.)   I made this last night with halibut because it was on sale and I had just finished another day of work on a weekend, so I wanted to cook something fast and easy. Here we go!

Pre heat your oven to 375 degrees. Take a big piece of foil (big enough to wrap your fish entirely) and spread it out. Put your fish on the foil and season it with salt and pepper and a clove of chopped garlic. Then take whole sprigs of fresh rosemary and thyme and put them on top of the fish. For a 3/4 pound filet, you'll want to use about 3 sprigs of thyme and 2 sprigs of rosemary. Then take a couple of pats of butter and place those on top of the fish. Wrap the fish in foil and put it on a sheet pan. Throw that sucker in the oven for about 12-15 minutes, or until its fully cooked.   "But Tricia, how will I know when it's done?" Fish is done cooking when its no longer translucent (meaning it's solid white), and definitely done if you start to see little solid white globs of protein start to seep out of it. This is called albumin- you'll see it when you cook chicken and pork too. Its totally fine if you see it and eat it; that just means it's done cooking. The reason why this recipe works so well is because its a) not messy, b) the herbs and garlic basically steam with the fish and you get that yummy, herby flavor with pretty much zero effort. You can make this with any thinner, white fish, like tilapia, halibut, or turbot.

As I said before, you can "grill" this too- just put the foil on the hot grill instead of in the oven and close the lid.   Having this on the side while you're grilling burgers, etc, totally ups your fancy factor. Then when you open up the foil for your guests, all "ooh la la" style, they'll think you really know what you're doing, and you can just smile and pull one of those "What, this simple thing?" reactions. I love those.

Cod, huh? Did you know that cod has been a super duper traded fish since the Viking days? That's the year 800 if you've ever read a history book. Cod was like corn is to us- it was a huge staple that survived all kinds of plagues and kept money rolling back and forth between countries. And then in the 1400's when Portugal got all into the cod trading scene, they found out about the killer profitable cod fishing in North America, way before Columbus even came around. Suck on that, Columbus.

We're moving on up...

2011-06-05T09:12:00.000-05:00

Hey all! I was featured as a guest blogger on (a)musing foodie yesterday! It's a super fancy-looking blog that touches on all things food with really gorgeous photos, to boot. (And its approved by yours truly, as I've made it plain and clear that I hate most food blogs.) I talk some more about eggs, the most commonly emailed topic I receive in my inbox. Head on over and get your daily dose of irreverent cooking know-how!
As always, thanks for supporting my blog, and don't forget to enter to win a gorgeous bottle of Syrah from Flat Creek Estate Winery and Vineyard. Hurry up! The giveaway ends Tuesday!

Flat Creek Estate Wine....giving away a bottle of heaven!

2011-06-04T07:16:00.000-05:00

In partnership with Flat Creek Estate and our dedicated drones at RAW Marketing, we will be giving away a bottle of Flat Creek Estates Syrah to one lucky fan who we draw from the combined entries. I tasted this bottle of heaven at the Buffalo Gap Food and Wine Summit back in April and, even in my vino-induced haze, knew that this was by far the best of all the wines there. (And there were a lot. I tasted ALL of them. And then I went back for refills just to be sure.) It turns out that that these Texans at Flat Creek know what the heck they're doing with grapes and a barrel.

Just enter your name and email address below to enter! The contest will run from 8:00am Saturday, June 4th to midnight Tuesday, June 7th. One lucky winner will be drawn from the entries at random and will be declared "THE WINNER!" The winner will then be announced Thursday afternoon on our Facebook page and by email.

"This wine is 100% Syrah & 100% harvested from Flat Creek Estate vineyards that are a decade old this year. Syrah is one of the best reds for Texas and this Syrah just keeps getting better. Starting two years ago, the vineyard training method was changed to the Smart-Dyson method allowing greater fruit production while improving already excellent fruit quality. This training method is visually very attractive as it produces a "curtain" of vines extending to the vineyard floor & reaching toward the sun. The Syrah vineyard welcomes you when you enter the Estate."

Fill out the form below (your info will be kept confidential and I promise not to sell it to naughty websites or flood your email with spam about black market pharmaceuticals). I need your contact info if you win!

Oh, and if you would like to know more about Flat Creek Estate, and follow everything they have going on, you can find their Facebook page here: Flat Creek Estate.

Good Luck!...now go my pets, and spread the word! Who doesn't like free wine? And GOOD free wine, at that!?

How to be a wine snob without knowing anything about wine

2011-05-30T10:52:00.001-05:00

Dear Tricia, I know that pairing red wines with red meat is and white wines with white meat is the standard rule, but that's really all I know about wine.   I'm not good at this kind of thing- is there anything else you can tell me that's easy to remember, but makes it sound like I know what I'm talking about?

You sound just like me. "Just tell me enough to make people believe what I'm saying." This didn't go over well with my chef instructors at the Culinary Institute of America, so I stuck around for the whole 2 years to learn everything I could instead. But with wine, you'd have to start reading now and not stop until you were 120 years old to learn everything. And then after a 5 minute break, you'd still have to keep reading because trends change so quickly. There's a lot to learn, so here's the Cliff's notes.

You can stick with the red wine and red meat rule or the white wine and white meat rule, but you also want to think about sauces or how the meat is prepared and go with that. For example, chicken or pork with something lighter like pine nuts and braised leeks is going to do well with a white.   But chicken or pork in a hearty caper and shallot sauce would pair well with a red. All you have to remember is with something is heavier, you want to pair it with a red. Did you just pair a red with a white meat? You rebel, you.

Anytime you've got a super rich, heavy food, like duck or sausage, you want a really tannic (read: it makes your mouth start to pucker) red to help cut through the fat. This is where you leave the realm of drinking wine that tastes nice and move into really complimenting your dinner and making it taste even better. It's yin and yang. Regis and Kelly. Cheech and Chong. The same goes for something fried- you want something help help cut through the oily flavor and texture. Think of your basic tempura shrimp, and this counts even if its just take out, you want to pair it with an acidic white to help cut some of the oil. Think pinot grigio or any un-oaked* white from Chile or Argentina.

Let's talk "oaked" and "un-oaked." All this means is whether or not the wine was aged in oak barrel or a steel barrel. Steel barrels give white wine a crisp, drier flavor and body. California wines are mainly aged in oak barrels, and that gives them a heavier, richer body, which I happen to hate. Millions of people think otherwise, but whatever, it's my mouth. I once had an organic chardonnay that tasted like I was making out with an oak tree. It was Bonterra and it was nasty. Never again, Bonterra. You disappoint me for life, regardless of your organic namesake.

Food and Wine magazine came out with a list of new wine pairing guidelines a little while back and there were a couple of good points for you to remember if you want to sound like you know what you're talking about. "Serve an un-oaked wine with anything you would squeeze a lemon or a lime on." That citrus, clean flavor acts like a little squeeze of lemon on any kind of fish, even salmon. Yeah, throw that one at your friends and watch them look at you like you know a thing or two.

For spicy foods, alcohol makes things taste spicier. So drink something lower in alcohol content. (Remember that post I wrote about getting jalapeno in your eye? You would not want to pour wine in your eye. Just a heads up.) You can't go wrong with a reisling when you're eating spicy food.

For desserts or hors d'oeuvres, you can never go wrong with champagne. And as I've said before,
offering your host or hostess of a dinner party a bottle of champagne will always go over much better than a Chinese finger trap. Who doesn't love a little bubbly? Someone with no soul, that's who.

The most important rule of wine is to drink what you love and not take it too seriously. If you're going with what's trendy, just know that wine trends change all the time. Remember when "Sideways" came out? Paul Giamatti's character made his love for pinot noir and his hatred for merlot very clear. Coincidentally, merlot sales dropped 2% that year, while pinot noir sales went up by 16%. But if you love merlot, then keep drinking merlot with whatever you like. Having the confidence to know what you like and what you don't makes you more much more credible than spewing off a bunch of random wine vocabulary words.   And if anyone gives you any bull, just tell them you're into non traditional, alternative wines right now. No one ever knows how to respond to that one.

Your Alfredo Sauce Blows and This is Why

2011-05-25T15:40:00.001-05:00

Dear Tricia, Alfredo sauce is supposed to be one of the most basic Italian sauces to make but mine never seems to come out just right. I've used several different recipes some with a roux some with out but it just doesn't taste as good as the ones in the restaurants. Any suggestions?

After a couple of emails with this particular reader, I received a couple of links to recipes that produced said less-than-stellar results. Tyler Florence's recipe on the Food Network website was one of the culprits, that bastard.

I'm going to back up for a minute and talk Alfredo sauce. Alfredo is one of those sauces that has been adopted by Americans as one of our favorite comfort foods. Its what you want to eat when you want to eat your feelings or maybe when you take your high school girlfriend on a fancy date to the Olive Garden. Its predominant ingredients are butter, cream and parmesan cheese. And a heart attack. Italians don't recognize Alfredo as a traditional sauce. Their version of Alfredo is simply pasta with butter and parmesan, or Fettucine alla Romana. Our bastardized version has upped the ante with the extra cream and lots of it. Here's Tyler's ingredients:

1 pint heavy cream
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
Freshly cracked black pepper
Chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley, for garnish

You know why this recipe doesn't taste like the ones you've had in restaurants? Because there's no effing salt in it. That doesn't make it a bad recipe either, because parmesan has salt in it. But it's not nearly as salty as what your line cook is preparing behind the scenes and that's why you think its lacking. Cooks are notoriously heavy handed with the salt: that's just how we're wired. Hell, I'll salt a filet mignon 3 times while its on my grill in the back yard. It brings out the flavor. Salt is our taste buds' friend. Do not be afraid of it. Embrace it and your taste buds will reward you. Start with 1 teaspoon and work from there. If you want more, add some more. Want less? Be my guest.

I started looking around at other Alfredo recipes (which you won't find in a traditional, credible cookbook because it's not a classic sauce. The closest thing you'll find to it is bechamel.) and noticed only about half of them use salt. Again, this isn't to say it's a bad recipe, but if you're used to tasting the Alfredo sauce at the Olive Garden, then there's your culprit. Talk about heavy on the salt: corporate restaurants have their stuff jam packed with sodium and preservatives. Holy crap its scary. I have a hard time believing that stuff doesn't come frozen out of a bag, thawed out and serve en masse. I hate to burst your bubble. The Culinary Institute of Tuscany that you see advertised in their commercials isn't a REAL school. They do not send their $8.50 an hour cooks to Italy to learn authentic cuisine. That. doesn't. happen.

Sorry, done with my rant.

The other culprit is your cheese. Real parmesan reggiano has a much stronger taste than Americanized, fake parmesan cheese. If you're not using the real thing, you're not getting the real flavor. That's like ordering a Red Bull and vodka at the bar, and the bartender handing you a stale cup of coffee with cough syrup in it. So try the real parmesan reggiano along with the extra salt. That should solve your dilemma, because the technique of the recipe is fine. Let me know how it works out for you. You can thank me with a bowl of endless bread sticks.

*Side note, I have no problems with Tyler Florence, whom I've never met. Sometimes I just get a kick out of calling people names for no reason every now and then when I'm having a rough day. Sorry Ty Ty. Can I call you Ty Ty?

Corn Porn

2011-05-18T12:02:00.001-05:00

Dear Tricia, My cousin and I were discussing fresh corn. Some people like to eat it fresh off the stalk, (if they’re lucky to have a garden), some like it cooked soft. How long should it be cooked? Is it a personal choice? What’s the best way (to keep the fresh taste) to cook corn, boil, grill?

Excellent question. First off, if I may, I'd like to give a shout out to the great state of Colorado and their Olathe sweet corn because it's the BEST corn I've ever had. Its so good, in fact, that they have a sweet corn festival every August, in honor of their lovely local export. Loverboy performed at the festival in the early 2000's wearing a purple jumpsuit and, rumor has it, he looked more like a singing eggplant than a rock star. I can't blame the guy for shaking his purple ass for a paycheck. Hey, everybody's working for the weekend.

There are 5 different types of corn and the corn you're referring to is sweet corn. Pop corn is an entirely different type of corn than the kind you eat off the cob. And the corn that is grown for animal feed (its called dent corn) is different as well because its higher in protein. Flour corn, which is really high in starch, is meant for grinding. Have I lost you yet? Sweet corn is higher in sugar than the other types, which is why it tastes so damn good. This is why some people prefer it raw- its sweet right off the stalk.

When you cook corn, the starch inside of it converts to sugar. And since sweet corn is already higher in sugar, the extra starch that turns into sugar makes it even sweeter.   So, raw sweet corn isn't going to be as sweet as cooked corn. There is no rule for how long to cook it- its entirely your preference.   The best way to keep the taste is also your decision. The only difference between grilling and boiling it is that you'll get that roasted, grilled taste if its cooking over an open flame, while boiling will just soften and cook the corn.

By the way, if you ever have the urge to make ice cream, save the corn cobs (rinse them off first) and make corn ice cream.   Its kind of amazing. Just take your basic vanilla ice cream recipe:

2/3 cups sugar
2 eggs
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 2/3 cups milk
1 cup heavy cream
2 teaspoons vanilla

Beat the eggs and sugar together.
Heat the milk, cream, salt and vanilla.
When simmering, slowly pour the hot milk into the eggs while whisking.
Put the entire mixture back over low heat and constantly stir until it coats the back of a wooden spoons.
Strain and chill overnight.
Pour into ice cream maker and freeze (follow the manufacturer's instructions)

Except, you want to let about 2 or 3 corn cobs steep in the hot milk and cream for about an hour first. Get the milk and cream hot, put the corn cobs in and just leave it on super duper low heat. Then take out the cobs before you mix it with the sugar and eggs. Its to die for. It reminds me of Corn Pops cereal. I gotta have my Pops...

Corn season officially started in May and goes until about September, so its the best time of year to find out how you like your corn cooked best. And then it'll be October, when the Texas State Fair begins and we can enjoy corny dogs with gusto.

And yes, that cornfield in the photo above is real. Uh huh.   America is funny.

Wine and Dessert and Yum and Yes Please.

2011-05-15T18:54:00.000-05:00

Dear Tricia, Can you make dessert with wine? I need something new to make for dessert and I think I want to try doing something with wine, but I'm not sure how or with what.

Absofreakinlutely. There's a couple of ideas I have for you- one is super amateur if you're not feeling so adventurous or if you're pressed for time, and one requires just a little more work.

1. Pouring a really yummy dessert wine over fresh fruit. Seriously, it's that simple. Cut up some strawberries and peaches, put them in a little bowl and pour a sweet dessert wine over it- no more than a quarter cup or so. Then toss the fruit in the wine, sprinkle some raw sugar (the brown sugar that has really big grains) on top, and put a little dollop of whipped cream on it. You can use the stuff from the can- I don't judge. It's really light and summery, and it takes like 18 seconds. You can also do the same thing with sorbet. Just pour a little bit of wine on top and serve it in a martini glass. You just took dessert and made it uber fancy.   Your rich neighbors will be oh so impressed. Even better, take the fruit, top it with the sorbet, AND pour the wine on top and serve it all in a nice glass.   Holy yes please.

My favorite wine to do this with is St. Supery Moscato.   All of their stuff is awesome, but the Moscato is good enough to make you want to drink it straight out of the bottle with a straw.

2. Poaching. Don't be afraid of that word. Poaching is not as hard as it sounds, especially when it doesn't involve eggs. You can poach pears in white or red wine here, just pick whatever you like the best.

Pour 3 cups of wine and 1 cup of sugar in a pot. Bring it up to a boil so that the sugar dissolves. While you're waiting on that pot to boil (because that's kind of boring and I'm sure you'd rather be doing something else), take a pear and peel it with a vegetable peeler. Then you want to cut it in half, lengthwise. When your wine and sugar has come to a boil, turn it down until its just barely bubbling. So if you boiled it on 10, you want to turn it down to about 4. When it's simmering, take the pear halves and put them in the wine/sugar/heaven concoction. All you're doing is cooking them so that they get soft, but while they're softening up, they absorb all the flavors of the wine, that lucky little pear.

The pear slices will want to float up- sometimes you can take a big metal bowl and press it down on the pears just until they're submerged.   If you pour water in the bowl it keeps it weighted down and the pears in the wine. See that? You're like a poaching McGyver. You want to cook the pears until they're tender, just enough so that if you try to put a butter knife in the pear, you shouldn't have to push very hard at all. Think of the texture of canned pears- that's what you're going for. When the pears are soft, leave them in the pot and put the whole thing in the fridge. If you stir the liquid around often, it'll cool down faster. I know, you're thinking "But Tricia, why don't I just take the pear out of the liquid? It'll be so much faster that way." It'll also dry the pear out and no one will want to eat your gross dried fruit with a thick skin on it. This way the pear stays moist and keeps absorbing the flavors at the same time.

When it's cool, scoop out the middle part where the core usually is and get rid of that. Serve the pear with a little spoonful of creme fraiche in the scooped out part and drizzle it with honey, straight from the bottle. Throw a few crushed pistachios or almonds around it and you're done. Freaking sweet, my friend.

My favorite white wine to do this with is any riesling, but like I said- just pick your favorite and go with it. There's no wrong way. For reds, anything by Fall Creek is killer. Again, their wine, especially the shiraz, is so good you want to just take a bath in it. The thought has totally crossed my mind on multiple occasions.

Now go impress your friends with your new found dessert skills. Go forth and be fancy. And if someone will buy me one of those wine rack bras, I totally promise to use it and give you a full review of its merits.

The refrigerator nazi is ruining my lunch break

2011-05-09T20:33:00.000-05:00

Dear Tricia, At work we have a fridge Nazi who doesn't want anything stored in the fridge. I used to go shopping for my lunches each week and store them in the crisper bin. With my busy schedule of full time work and full time grad school, I need to leave my lunches at work. Now that I can't, what do you suggest I can buy that doesn't require refrigeration and can be kept in my pantry that the Nazi has lovingly dubbed my "Holocaust cabinet?" (Seriously). Side note: I usually have tuna in packets, nuts, canned soups and Healthy Choice Fresh Mixers.

Heh, you said crisper bin. That's so funny- it makes you sound so polite and stuff. Except when you call people Nazis. Its weird though that Fridge Nazi gives you space in the pantry, but not the fridge. That makes no sense to me. Who is this person??!

You've got a good start going with the tuna packets, etc. I like that. Don't forget that chicken and salmon also come in cans and packets.    Toss that stuff in some mayo, mustard and relish and slap it on some bread for a quick chicken salad sammy. Keep a can opener at work. Amy's also makes really good organic chili that kinda blows my mind.

Here's something that's kinda interesting though when it comes to making sandwiches or tuna salad with mayo: people freak out about mayonnaise being left out. I had a super Type-A client (we recognize our own kind in a heartbeat) who was really specific about her gourmet picnic menu because she didn't want any mayonnaise in it. "It'll get us all sick in the hot sun!," she told me.   Ok, I get that. I don't want hot mayonnaise either. If you read my deviled egg blog in April, you'll know that I HATE mayonnaise, whether it be hot or cold or covered in kisses from David Bowie in his Labrynth costume. But guess what? It won't get you sick if you leave it out. The pH of mayonnaise is actually too acidic to host any kind of bacteria. For instance, if potato salad goes bad, it's the potatoes that get you sick, not the mayonnaise. If anything, the mayonnaise helps preserve the potato salad longer. So if you decide to make a sandwich with some mayo on it, don't worry about keeping it cold. It's the other stuff on the sandwich you want to think about.

When it comes to keeping things cool, people tend to forget that you've actually got a 4 hour window of leaving food out at room temperature before you're at risk of getting sick.   This comes in handy if you get to work at 9 and eat around 12:30. You're good to go. Seriously. Don't worry about it.

You know what's really good? Asian tuna salad. It's just like regular tuna salad with mayo and mustard, but instead of relish, you throw some sesame oil and sriracha in there and add some sesame seeds. All of those extra things are non-perishable. Yum yum doodle dum.

Peanut butter and bananas rolled into a tortilla is such a guilty pleasure of mine. That little bit of heaven is A.O.K. to leave out, the bananas just turn brown.

I know that, should the health inspector read my blog, they would freak out over me saying this... but cooked bacon is safe. Bacon is so well-preserved by the salt that its cured in, that you should have nothing to worry about when you wake up on Sunday morning and find the bacon you left out after cooking it at 2am on Saturday night.   I fully support your decision to eat that.

I wish I had a better solution for veggies and fresh fruit- those guys just need to stay refrigerated after they're cut. But if you're game for stocking up your Holocaust closet for a few days, a lot of it will be fine for a few days if its not cut. Think about shopping in your local grocery store: which veggies and fruit are set out at room temperature? Apples, bananas, avocados, tomatoes, onions, pears, oranges... use that as your reference. Other really yummy non perishable things to add to your lunch to make it feel more veggie-friendly: dried sugar snap peas (I think they're marketed as snap-eas), dried carrot or beet chips, and dried cranberries.

I looked up the definition of Fridge Nazi on urbandictionary.com and here's what I found:

One or a group whose sole purpose of existence is the stocking of delicious, predominantly gourmet, food in a refrigerator. In the case that said sustenance is consumed, Fridge Nazi becomes livid with indignant fury at perpetrator of such a heinous and ignominious infraction of eating food from a refrigerator.

Sounds like your Fridge Nazi is the kind that doesn't even contribute to the fridge, they just boss you around. No worries- you're in grad school! Someday you'll be Fridge Nazi's boss and will be able to stock your own personal gold and diamond encrusted fridge with all kinds of delicately perishable items covered in David Bowie kisses.

So... do you just boil the wine, or what?

2011-05-01T11:07:00.000-05:00

Dear Tricia, I have no idea how I'm supposed to cook with wine. I don't know what to cook in it, when to add it, or what kind to use. Please help this clueless reader.

No need to be embarrassed of your clueless-ness here. I understand how daunting it can be to try something that seems oh so gourmet, but its actually very easy and you have lots of options. Let's talk fancy pants vocabulary first. When you're talking about cooking with wine, what you're usually doing with it is deglazing the pan. You know how after you cook meat or veggies in a pan and there's that layer of brown residue stuck to the bottom?   Well that brown stuff is where all the extra flavor is. It's called fond and you want to get it off the pan and into some kind of sauce. Pouring a small amount of liquid in the pan usually does the trick. That's what deglazing is: pouring some kind of flavorful liquid in the pan to get the fond off the bottom. You can use stock, you can use vinegar, or you can use wine. Wine is great because it gets the fond off the bottom and adds tons of extra flavor at the same time. And it looks like you know what you're doing.
So let's pretend you're cooking a nice chicken breast in that pan.  And when you're done with the chicken, you take it out and set it aside and wonder, "Hmmmm, how can I get this delicious fond off the bottom of the pan and create a lovely little sauce to pour over the chicken and impress my girlfriend? Oh, I know! I'll use some white wine and it'll be so good that she'll be ready for make-out city later!"  So pour in about a quarter cup of wine (usually you'd want to use something you're ok with drinking, not that bottle in the back of your fridge that's been open since last Halloween) and stir it around with a spoon or a whisk. The little brown bits will be released from the pan and then you want to wait while the wine cooks down to a teeny tiny amount, which is called reducing. After its reduced in half (which is really a mere few spoonfuls), add some a touch of chicken stock and about a tablespoon of butter. Whisk in the butter, throw in a bit of salt and pepper, pour that over your chicken breast and you're done. See? You've learned the words reduce, deglaze and fond all in 2 paragraphs. Watch as I expand your horizons even further.   Yeah. Get ready.
Let's talk Italian food for a hot minute.   When I make marinara sauce (and I say that word like an American does, not like Giada on the Food Network with her overly-enunciated Italian accent, jarringly thrown in the middle of a sentence) I like to brown my onions, peppers and garlic and then get the fond (yeah, it comes from vegetables too) off the bottom of the pan with some red wine. I pour in about a half a cup and let that reduce until its almost syrupy. There's no rule here about how much to pour in.   You could pour in an entire bottle and let it reduce, it'll just take longer. (And then what would you have to drink while you're cooking?) After its reduced, I'll add the tomato sauce and then season it up.
So let's go back and review this. I know it sounds like a lot at first but it's super easy. Add the wine (while the pan is still over high heat) and let it reduce by half. Add a touch of stock, a tablespoon of butter, and season it.
As far as what kind of wine to use with what, you usually want to use red with something heartier, or with red meat. White wine is great for fish and chicken. Again, use something you'd want to drink. Cooking with wine is not a way to get rid of bad or old wine. Then your sauce will just taste like old wine sauce. Eww.
When you get comfortable with sauces, start getting creative. Put some chopped up artichoke hearts and a squeeze of lemon in white wine sauces. Add some capers and fresh herbs to red wine sauces. And always season and taste it. Salt and pepper go a looooong way, especially if you're trying to get to make out city with your lady later.
Let's also talk about open flames for a second. You know how when you're watching chefs on TV and they pour some wine in the pan and it all catches on fire for a second? Looks fun, right? Well mostly likely that's not going to happen in your kitchen unless you tip the pan and try to invite the fire into the alcohol. Also, wine doesn't have as much alcohol in it as cooking with sherry or hard liquor. Those guys will flame up no problem, but if you're using a gas stove and are afraid of becoming a burn victim, just pour it in and don't tip the pan.

What the bleep happened to your eggs?!!

2011-04-28T17:37:00.000-05:00

Alrighty my little pets, I started asking for your "what the bleep happened to the eggs?!" photo submissions on my Facebook fan page over Zombie Jesus Day weekend and I thoroughly enjoyed them all, especially the ones of cute kids staining their hands dying eggs. My favorite, however, was from reader Andrew Chandler, who had a spiritual What the Bleep moment in his kitchen. Andrew, thank you for sending in your photo of "zen eggs," fried in sweet cream buddha... er butter.

Thank you to everyone who sent in your photos- I loved seeing all of them! On to the next major holiday- my birthday! Feel free to send me lots of birthday wishes and bottles of bubbly.

Deviled Eggs Without the Mayo= Magic in Your Mouth

2011-04-25T19:36:00.000-05:00

So lately I have found myself a little stressed out with trying to find time to blog, work a full time job (that includes planning the catering for weddings that are all going to take over my life starting next month), take care of my home, keep up with some kind of fitness routine that leaves my ass cheeks free of dimples, and have a tiny bit of free time to just... hang out. Not the case lately. So yesterday has been in the works for 2 weeks: I purposefully had planned a day of only partial work and a lot of fun. I knew it had to include cocktails and Mario Kart, and it happened to be that yesterday was also Zombie Jesus Day. What's something you must take part in on the day of the risen Zombie Jesus? Deviled eggs. Yessiree, nothing screams Easter like those fantastic little half moons of paprika dusted heaven. (Plus, they're awesome if you're on the Paleo diet, like myself, which is something I'll have to blog about later.) It's pretty frequent that I toot the horn of old school, kitschy kitchen favorites like lil' smokies and green bean casserole and of course, deviled eggs SO fall in that category. They're just too good to make fun of.

My dilemma yesterday was making them without mayonnaise. Yes, "Mayonnaise" is the title of one of my favorite Smashing Pumpkins songs, but it is NOT one of my favorite foods I find it pretty repulsive, all jiggly and strange-smelling. Zombie Jesus told me I needed to find a way to make deviled eggs sans mayo.

A traditional deviled egg recipe calls for you to boil your eggs, cut them in half, scoop out the yolk, and mash it up with a bunch of mayonnaise, some mustard, salt, pepper, and whatever seasonings your cute little face desires. Like this one- let's take a Paula Dean recipe, since she's a fan of the high-fat cooking (And making one syllable words sound like 5 syllable words, bless her southern heart):

7 large eggs, peeled and boiled
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1 teaspoon mustard
1 1/2 tablespoons sweet pickle relish
salt and pepper to taste
paprika to garnish

Halve eggs lengthwise. Remove yolks and place in bowl.

Mash yolks with fork and stir in mayonnaise, relish and mustard. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Fill egg whites evenly with yolk mixture, garnish with paprika.

If you tried to make this recipe and just took out the mayo, it wouldn't work. The egg yolks just get grainy when you mash them up- they need a binder. A binder is any ingredient that holds the other ingredients together. Like mayonnaise in a potato salad- it binds everything together so that your Aunt Sue can glop it all on your plate with one swift thwack of a wooden spoon every 4th of July. I wonder what mayo binds up in your stomach? Food for thought.

So if you take out the binder, you need to find something else that binds it instead. And I think I tweaked it enough to make it work just about the same. It paired perfectly with my Bloody Mary and Mario Kart. Here's my version, free of the mayo and of the southern accent:

7 large eggs, peeled and boiled

1 raw egg white, or 3 tablespoons egg whites from the carton

1 1/2 tablespoon olive oil

1 1/2 tablespoons mustard

1 1/2 tablespoons sweet pickle relish

salt and pepper to taste

paprika to garnish

I just subbed out the mayo for an egg white and olive oil and upped the mustard. And coming from someone who hates mustard too (I know- I'm SO weird! I don't get it either, it's just how my taste buds like to be treated), these deviled eggs were awesome. I also added some cayenne pepper to make them have a little bit of kick. Feeling creative? Try these ideas:

1. Add some chopped up brisket to your egg yolk mixture and then go find yourself a long-term lover with those bad boys.

2. Add some chopped up sun dried tomatoes to the egg yolk mixture, and top them with crumbled goat cheese and fresh basil. It's your new dish for girls' night and they're all going to treat you like you just won Top Chef, except you don't have that annoying, overly-dramatic, TV-ready personality.

3. Add a heavy dash of chili powder, fresh cilantro, and a little bit of cooked, finely chopped bacon. Uh huh. It's magic. In your mouth. You're welcome.

Brown Eggs vs. White Eggs

2011-04-22T08:34:00.000-05:00

Dear Tricia, I've always thought that brown eggs were better for you than white eggs. Please tell me I'm right.

Well, I can't, because that would make me a liar and no one likes a liar.

The only difference between brown eggs and white eggs is... da da dum.... they come from different breeds of hens. That's. It.

Yeah, sorry I just burst your bubble. But that's what I'm here for!

According to my friends at the American Egg Board, white eggs come from white feathered little ladies (with matching white ear lobes) called Single Comb White Leghorn hens, who happen to lay white eggs. Brown eggs come from red feathered little ladies called Rhode Island Red hens. Red hens also have matching red ear lobes. (They accessorize so well!) White hens happen to be smaller, so they eat less. This can sometimes make their production less expensive, so if you see a difference in price, that may be a factor. But it doesn't make their eggs taste any different, or mean that one is healthier than the other.

This all leads me to wonder a plethora of other egg related questions... do the Rhode Island Red hens have accents? Do they talk just like Lois and Peter Griffin? And what do the uniforms at the American Egg Board look like? I think a field trip might seriously be in order.

1888 Giveaway Winner!

2011-04-11T22:44:00.000-05:00

Congratulations to the delovely Jane Crumpler, who won our very first giveaway! Jane will be receiving a bottle of 1888 Dirtiest Martini Mix for her help in spreading the word about What the Bleep Happened to My Rump Roast?! I've also bumped her culinary dilemma up to the top of my email box as an added little bonus. You can thank her for your new found, fancy knowledge of ice cream. (See below!)

Thank you to everyone who entered, who subscribed, who favorite-d me on Facebook, who tweeted, and who shared my blog with someone. There's still more surprises in store very soon!

Ice cream, you scream, we all scream for that frozen stuff with different names...

2011-04-11T22:36:00.000-05:00

Dear Tricia, As I was walking home from work today I started to think of a few of my favorite summer things since we're finally getting warm-ish weather. One of those things is ice cream. Yet, FroYo and frozen custard seem to be the new rage. So what's the real difference between ice cream, frozen custard, frozen yogurt and gelato? They are all delicious to me but I'm sure at least one of them has to be better for my waistline than others. Right?

Ahhh... the dilemma of chefs making things and words too complicated. I run into it often. So many vocabulary words, so little patience, and so many brain freezes.

To answer your question about some being better for your waistline... well, yes and no. But we'll get to that in a minute. After much research (and this includes going back almost 10 years to my culinary school notes on Frozen Desserts, taught by a very stuffy chef with a very stuffy mustache who had NO sense of humor. I'm pretty sure that there should be an awesome sense of humor prerequisite when it comes to rocking a 'stache, but this somehow this guy got by without anyone noticing.) And after going through my notes, my Bible (also known as Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking), the ever-so helpful, yet stylistically outdated The Professional Pastry Chef, and the FDA's standard on ice cream classifications (Yes, they have one), I think I have found the information to clear up your frozen dilemma.

First let me describe how those frozen desserts are made. You start off by making a base- this is your mixture of dairy and sugar and flavorings (and in some cases, eggs, which we'll get to). You cook up this delicious, flavorful concoction over the stove, and then you let it cool down and you put it in an ice cream freezer. An ice cream freezer churns the base as it freezes it. So as its churning, its incorporating air into the base and making it grow larger in volume. Incorporating air helps make the ice cream creamy. Little air bubbles find their way in between all of the little fat bubbles and make it nice and fluffy and smooth and delicious. (And all of those other lovely adjectives) This is called "overrun." Overrun makes the base turn into a much larger amount, because its incorporating so much air into it. You can overrun the ice cream as much as 100%, which means your base would double in volume. In slow person terms, that means it gets twice as big. For example, a gallon of water weighs 8 pounds. But a gallon of ice cream can weigh as little as 4.5 pounds because that's how much air has been incorporated into it. (Legally. By the FDA. I swear- they regulate this stuff. Big Brother is SO watching when you eat your feelings at night.) This is also part of the difference between the 4 frozen desserts in question.

Ice cream is made with heavy cream, milk, and egg yolks. (And sugar. Sugar is in everything, especially in what we're talking about today) It's made the same way I just mentioned- the base is cooked, cooled, and then churned. The overrun of ice cream is usually at least 20%. Ice cream that gets super overrun (like 100%) is typically crappier ice cream. (read: the store brand stuff that my neighbor's mom used to buy us in 1988.) That also means it's going to be a little less flavorful. Soft serve ice cream is a perfect example of overrun ice cream: it's light, super soft and aerated, and pretty mellow on the taste buds. The higher quality ice creams, like Ben and Jerry's, Hagen Daaz, that $8 per pint local stuff at fancy stores, etc. aren't really overrun- they're more dense and a lot more flavorful. And Big Brother does not make ice cream companies put the percentage of overrun on their labels.

Frozen Custard is super similar to ice cream, but it has less overrun (so it's a little more dense) and more eggs. This is another thing the FDA regulates. The finished product must contain no less than 1.4% egg yolks (Ice cream typically has less eggs that that.) and those are the only differences. Oh, that and frozen custard is typically served a little warmer, so it's softer. Not much else, so don't be blown away by the fancy name.

Gelato is a tricky one to start bragging about less fat. It has less fat than ice cream because it traditionally is made with milk and not cream, but it also adds more eggs to keep the texture creamy. It also has less overrun than ice cream, typically less than 15%. (And if I'm wrong on that percentage, blame Chef Stuffy 'Stache. He's the one who graded me on it.) Just to go over what we've already talked about, less overrun = denser, less airy. Got it?

Last but not least, frozen yogurt is just how it sounds. The base is made of yogurt, (or milk and a fermenting agent to turn it into yogurt), and milk, and typically no eggs. It's the lowest fat content out of the bunch, and awesome if you live in Lactose Intolerant City, Population: Me. No seriously, I DIG on the frozen yogurt. I once went to Yummilicious every single day after work for a like a week straight, and then tried to hide it from people, like I didn't have a problem or something.

So, when it comes to which is better for your girlish figure, frozen yogurt wins with gelato not being far behind, and frankly the other 2 aren't really that much different from each other. And if you really want to impress your friends with this new found knowledge of frozen treats, check out the FDA's guidelines on how ice creams are classified and can be labeled. It's terribly dry reading, but fascinating to know that our government paid someone to decide that stuff. I love America.

Now how about that movie up above starring Ron Howard's creepy brother, Clint? How did I miss that one when it came out in '95?!!?

Thank you for your support.

2011-04-11T07:13:00.000-05:00

The 1888 Martini Olive Press Giveaway is officially over and the winner will be announced this afternoon. Big thanks to everyone who participated and shared us with their friends we couldn't do this without you!

Who Wants a Martini on Me?!

2011-04-07T07:35:00.001-05:00

In celebration of our new website design and continued plans for world domination...I raise my glass to you all! Now you can join in indulging in one of my favorite cocktails...a dirty martini!

If you've read at least one of my blogs, you know I am a big fan of the cocktails and creating the perfect dirty martini is sometimes a "what the bleep" moment in itself- much like trying to perfect a recipe. When you use olive brine from the jar to make a dirty martini, there's a fine line between tasting like a glass of heaven and tasting like a glass of ocean water. That's why I love 1888 Dirtiest Martini Mix so much- its so simple: juice from pressed whole olives without the overly salty flavor, so your martini tastes perfect every single time. It takes all of the guess work out! It also adds that perfect little "oomph" to a Bloody Mary, or as a marinade for chicken. I use it for EVERYTHING!

Want to win a chance to have a bottle of your very own? GREAT!! Let's do it...

In partnership with 1888 Premium Olive Press and our dedicated drones at RAW Marketing, we will be giving away a bottle of 1888 Dirtiest Martini Mix to the fan who refers the most followers to our blog.

"1888 Dirtiest Martini mix is the only dirty martini mixer made from whole, premium Spanish olives. We use a two-ton press to extract true olive flavor, resulting in the perfect balance of olive, pimento and brine. So whether you like your martinis dusty, dirty or downright filthy, insist upon a recipe that uses only the finest ingredients. Don’t gamble with your drink—choose 1888 and get lucky every time with the perfect dirty martini."

You must make sure to fulfill ALL entry requirements, including the form below! The contest will run from 8:00am Thursday, April 7th to midnight Sunday, April 10th. The fan who refers the most followers to our Facebook page AND website will be declared "THE WINNER"! In case of a tie, the person who reached the most referrals first will be the decided winner. The winner will be announced Monday afternoon on our Facebook page and by personal email.

So here's what you have to do: remember... you can't win if you don't share! Sharing is caring, my friends!

Fill out the form below (your info will be kept confidential and I promise not to sell it to naughty websites or flood your email with spam about black market pharmaceuticals). I need your contact info if you win!
Become a public Google follower of the blog (click the "follow" with the Google friend connect button on the right-hand side of the screen.
Become a fan of "What the Bleep Happened" on Facebook >>(click here)
(Optional) Follow us on Twitter at WhattheBleep1, heck go ahead and increase your chances by sharing with more friends!
Share us with your Facebook friends and make sure they list YOU as who sent them!

Oh, and as a courtesy, you could show our wonderful sponsors some love as well...they've been working really hard for me lately, so a little shout out would be kind gesture....but not too much- their egos only need the gentlest of boosts! 1888 Olive Press Facebook Page & RAW Marketing Facebook Page.

Good Luck!...now go my pets and spread the word! You can say you were a fan when it all began!

Speaking of Fish... Bones are Sucky!

2011-04-06T22:17:00.001-05:00

Dear Tricia, So on the fish casserole note, I wonder if you can tell me what the secret is to deboning a fish. I found some gorgeous trout last week and ended up pitching it out because it was so full of bones it was inedible. Suggestions?

Yeah, that's the thing about eating animals... they have bones. And when it comes to larger animals like cows or buffalo, or even just chickens, their bones are much larger and no problem to get rid of. I mean, the best tasting part of a T-Bone steak is eating the meat right off the bone, but that's just not the case with fish. The bones are small, pointy, and they hurt like hell when you accidentally swallow one, or when you're choking it up. Gross.

There's really no secret to deboning fish quickly or easily. If you're talking about buying a side of fish at the grocery store (not an entire fish) it just takes a clean pair needle nose pliers. It's an annoying, painstaking process that effing blows, but it does the job. The tiny, skinny little bones that are lined up separately along the entire side of the fish are called pin bones. I call them pain in the ass bones. If you lay the fish on its side and run your finger along it, you should feel them just ever so slightly poking out. Those little bastards are playing peek a boo and its now your job to take your needle nose pliers, grab the tip of the bone, and just pull each one out. If you run your knife along the bones, that should help them poke out a little further.

If you don't have needle nose pliers, tweezers work too, they're just a little harder to hold on to if they get wet, and you might end up pulling a Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman where she accidentally flings escargot across the room. Except take out the escargot and charming Maitre D', and add flying tweezers and yourself, frustrated and smelling like trout.

After you've pulled out all of the pin bones, you'll want to run it under water and rinse it off to make sure there's not a camouflage bone stuck on the fish. Not the best way to surprise your guests.

This is a case where I've found that shopping at a higher end grocery store can come in handy. If I go to my Whole Foods seafood department and ask them to debone the $60 of Chilean sea bass I'm purchasing, they're most likely going to do it, even if that damn hippie does it with a fake smile. (And I'm allowed to call them hippies, FYI. I worked at/got fired from Whole Foods and its true! Hippies! Lots of 'em! But if they'll debone my fish, I don't really don't care.) If I go to my regular joe grocery store down the street and ask them to debone my fish, they're more likely to roll their eyes and help the guy behind me instead.

You can debone your fish before or after you cook it, but I find that for ease of handling, it's a little easier to deal with cold fish than hot fish. If you're not eating the fish right away, you might find that 1. Letting the fish cool down first helps 2. The bones actually come out a little easier when its cooked.

If we're talking about deboning an entire fish, back bone, ribs, and all, my trying to describe on a blog it isn't going to help you. You need to watch someone, and unfortunately, my video blogs are much further down the road. So I went on You Tube and tried to find the most comprehensive video (geez, there's so much crap on the internet), and also one with a dreamy looking guy as a bonus. So far, this one's the winner.

I'm sorry I don't have an easier fix for you. Unfortunately, this one just take some good ol' grunt work, but if you're not crazy about the grody feeling of needle-like surprises poking you all the way down to your belly, it's definitely worth it. Plus, it gives you an excuse to go to the hardware store and buy a fun new toy. And if you happen to find a pair of pliers in hot pink or perhaps a nice shade of lavender, feel free to ship them to me... I promise I'll pay you back!

*I would just like to point out that yes, that IS Steven Seagal manhandling a fish guitar. Is it real? Probably not, but I like the idea of muscles and ponytails and gills and music.

First Days of Spring and Fish Casseroles

2011-04-02T21:35:00.000-05:00

Dear Tricia, On this first day of spring, I'm going to experiment in my kitchen with fish. I have tilapia, salmon, tuna, and cod. I'd like to do some sort of casserole....because I'm a girl, I'd like it to be mildly healthy. Suggestions?

Yes. My first suggestion is to not make a casserole. I know, I know... I pimp out old school delights like lil' smokies and meatballs with ketchup and grape jelly like there's no tomorrow, but I have some reservations about telling you to throw a bunch of fish and random leftovers in a casserole dish and call it dinner: it makes no sense. I LOVE seafood, and I firmly believe it should be eaten with a tad more dignity than that. (Not that you can't whip up a batch of your grandmother's tuna noodle casserole and enjoy it with gusto- but you're not writing me about tuna noodle casserole. And I probably can't compete with her recipe.) I just don't think you should diss the fish. No one likes a fish disser.

I can however, tell you how to make a really easy fish recipe in a casserole dish. It's no muss, no fuss, and super healthy.

Any of those delightful fishies in your fridge will work for this and measurements are for 1 filet. So if you want to cook 4 filets, multiply the recipe by 4:

Preheat your oven to 400.

Have the following stuff ready:

Half a shallot
5 cherry or grape tomatoes cut in half and ready, and mix them with 2 teaspoons of capers.*
1/8 cup vegetable or chicken stock; or white wine

Put about a tablespoon of olive oil in the casserole dish. You don't need to spread it out to cover the whole pan. Just pour it in the middle.

Mince the shallot. (Mince means cut it really small. I don't want to insult your knowledge, but some people just don't know.) Spread it in out in the olive oil in the shape of the filet of fish you're using.

Then season the fish with salt and pepper. I don't like to tell you how much because some people like to use a lot of salt, and some people like to go heavy on the pepper. Use however much you like.

Put the fish, seasoned side down, on the shallots. The top it with the tomatoes and capers. Pour about another teaspoon of olive oil on top of the fish/tomato/shallot delightfulness.

Pour in the white wine or stock. Bake this for about 12 minutes (depending on how old your oven is, or how done you like your fish. Tilapia is thinner, so it'll probably be done in less than 10 minutes.)

Squeeze a wedge of lemon over it and it's done. You can also chop up some fresh herbs and sprinkle them on top for a little color and extra bright flavor. This can be eaten by itself, or on top of a bed of cooked spaghetti squash. Cooking spaghetti squash is super easy: you just poke a bunch of holes in it and stick it in the oven for an hour. (Some people microwave it because it's faster. I like to put my oven to work.) Then you cut it open, scrape out the seeds, and run a fork over the strands of squash to loosen them. It's like fake pasta. Seriously, I haven't eaten pasta in almost 2 years because spaghetti squash is such a decent, low carb, low calorie substitute. 5 ounces has something like 40 calories. It's one of those foods where you're pretty much burning more calories by chewing it than you are actually digesting. Move over celery, you've just been replaced!

So that's your quick and easy fish in a casserole dish. Fish in a dish. I'm suddenly feeling very Dr. Seuss-like. It's not a traditional casserole, but it's hella fast and it only requires 5 ingredients. In fact, when you look up the definition of the word, all a casserole is is "food cooked in a casserole dish." So I guess I've done my job here. And I guarantee it'll impress the gentlemen more than tuna noodle. (Hey, I don't make the rules, I just pass them along to you, my dear readers.)

On a side note, there are some big things happening with the blog in the next week. Keep checking back for some sweet surprises!

*Capers are something I used to hate. They're a floral bud from bushes in the Mediterranean that are pickled. They can be a little salty and sour, but I like them with fish. You can sub these out with chopped black or green olives, or maybe go sweet with some golden raisins. There's no rules here- have a martini and start playing around with it.

On Asparagus and Your Stinking Tinkles

2011-03-30T18:47:00.000-05:00

Yes, I said tinkles. Remember when you used to say you had to "tinkle" instead of saying you had to "pee?" Well I'm bringing the word back. Anyway, I digress.

I wanted to talk about asparagus making your tinkles smell funny. It's not a culinary conundrum, per se, but it's one of those cool "Did you know..." factoids that you can bring up at a cocktail party. (If you're cool with discussing bodily functions at cocktail parties, which I'm always up for.)

So asparagus makes your tinkles smell funny, but you may not know this because that's how your DNA was written. Yeah, I know! Keep reading. Asparagus has a fancy sounding amino acid in it called methionine. Methionine contains sulfur, and I think we all know what sulfur smells like. (And tastes like, if you went to my summer camp in the mid 80's. Thanks for that learning experience of sulfur water, Camp Crucis.) So when the methionine leaves your body, it gives off that potent sulfuric smell. But here's the crazy thing- not everyone can smell it! Only about a quarter of the population (of the entire planet, because asparagus is eaten everywhere) can actually detect the smell, but it's still there, plain as day and they're blissfully unaware. The rest of us have to experience the asparagus aftermath, which I consider a hidden talent, genetically encoded into my DNA.

Another oldie but goodie... let's talk veggies and the Golden Girls!

2011-03-27T16:00:00.000-05:00

In honor of the departed Bea and Rue, I've decided to pay homage to our favorite girls and talk vegetables.

Dear Tricia, Why do you blanch things? What's the point?

Good question, fancy pants. A lot of home cooks don't blanch veggies when they're getting down and dirty in the kitchen. To start off with, let me explain what blanching is, for all of the readers out there who think I'm talking about the promiscuous Golden Girl.
Blanching is when you take vegetables (most commonly green ones) and you cook them in salted, boiling water for about 10 seconds. Then you take them out and "shock" them by putting them in a bowl of cold water. The ice water stops the cooking process. Fun, right? Well what's the point in it, you ask? In restaurants, this is super convenient because you've already started cooking the veggies, and when an order comes in, the cook can just finish them off in a saute pan with some butter in it. It's a big time saver when there are 30 tickets up, and your chef is screaming at you "Just get the %$!& plates out, you %&!@& &*$%!" (Welcome to my life. It's like working on a pirate ship.)
At home, the big reason why you'd want to blanch your veggies is because it keeps their color. Anytime you cook vegetables (or fruit, for that matter,) they start to oxidize, which is fancy-terms for turn brown. Blanching them keeps their color so that when you finish cooking your green beans, they stay bright and colorful as a rainbow... a green bean rainbow.
The most convenient reason to blanch at home is if you're having a dinner party or cooking for a large group. When you have your veggies blanched ahead of time, you can just slowly reheat them in a saute pan and take them right to the plate when its time to serve dinner.
So, some things to remember when you're blanching:

1. Make sure your water is salted. It adds flavor. (Please refer to my post on pasta for more details and other hilarity.)
2. Have your ice water ready. If you take out the veggies and have to wait to get your bowl of ice water, then you're not blanching. You're just unprepared.
3. If a recipe you're following says to blanch for longer than 10 seconds, like some will tell you 5 minutes, go ahead and follow the recipe. But then send the author of the recipe an email that says "That's not blanching: that's just boiling a pot of green beans for a while and then sticking them in ice water."
4. Be happy about your new vocabulary. You're becoming more and more like me every day!

Now, if we could only find a cooking method that shares the same name with Bea Arthur... That would really make my day.

My Swiss Chard is a Bed Hog!

2011-03-12T08:40:00.000-06:00

Dear Tricia,
My swiss chard is taking over my garden! Any recipe ideas?

Holy hell, yes. Chard is one of those delicious leafy greens that can be successfully thrown into just about anything but a bowl of Fruity Pebbles. And that's so awesome that you have a garden! I wish I could garden but I am doomed to killing most plants and flowers. I only know how to make them taste delicious. Side note: I once visited a friend when I lived in Austin, who had the most gorgeous garden, filled with tons of chard, cucumbers, jalapenos, tomatoes... It was awesome. I stood there picking hot tomatoes, warmed by the sun, and eating them straight off the vine. I had revelation. I envisioned myself joining a co-op, harvesting my fruitful crops of veggies, making organic meals 3 times a day, living off the earth... and then I looked down and saw the massive amounts of bug bites that had instantly populated my legs, and went back inside to make a grilled cheese sandwich.

Anything that you like spinach in, you'll like Chard in. Let's talk prep: swiss chard is a little bit thicker and waxier than spinach, so I recommend steaming it first: First, you'll need to rinse the chard, and cut the big stem from the middle of it. Chop the green leafy parts into small pieces and set those aside. Then get a pan really hot. No, seriously, like.... really scorching hot. (This is not the time to have happy hour while cooking if you're accident prone. Read: me.) Let your pan get hot, and have a lid and a small glass of water ready. Then, put that pile of green leafy deliciousness in the pan, put about a 1/4 cup of water in with it, and close the lid quickly.

This should be really loud if you got your pan hot enough. If you didn't, then this will be a slow, anticlimactic process. Don't blame me- I gave you sound advice.

The water will instantly started steaming the chard- and it will make your abundant pile of greens shrink down to a much smaller-looking amount. Go ahead and stir it one or twice, but you want to keep the lid on most of the time. Also, throw in a bit of salt and pepper. Nicely done.

The chard is done when all of the water has evaporated, and the greens are darker and much softer. You can eat the chard just like this if you want (or if you're on a cleanse from all of those martinis you had in February). I like to put a little bit of sesame oil or tamari in with it, stir it around and eat it like so. You can also make a quiche- you can make anything into a quiche, actually. Quiches are Leftover City.

There is a very basic quiche ratio: 1 cup of milk to 6 eggs. Just beat those guys together with some salt and pepper, and pour over a frozen pie crust with your lovely steamed swiss chard on it. Add a handful of cheddar cheese and maybe some bacon in that sucker and pop it in the oven at 375 for about 40 minutes or until its not jiggly anymore. Done. Seriously, like the easiest thing to make. And if I read one more food blog romantically droning on and on about the minuscule details of some one's amazing Quiche Lorraine, I'm going to puke. It's not rocket science, bloggers.

Anytime you use steamed chard to turn into a lasagna or a quiche, make sure you squeeze all of the moisture out of it with a paper towel first. (AFTER it's cooled. Let me make that mistake for you.) Otherwise, the water leaks out and makes a mess. And I'm pretty sure your goal was to make something edible and not watery when you wrote me, right?

Swiss Chard is one of those really awesome super-foods. It has at least 13 different known types of antioxidants (those help keep the Cancer away), plus it also has this really unique thing called Syringic acid (scary word, but its not related to syringes, or anything you'd ever see on Intervention) which helps regulate your blood sugar. Bonus!
You commonly see it in the grocery store with white or red stems, but there's also a variety called Rainbow Chard, where the stems look just like they sound. Its my favorite- not because it tastes better or anything, but just because we can all use some more rainbows in our diet.

On Bacon and Why I Hate Food Blogs

2011-02-06T10:50:00.000-06:00

This entry is a double whammy. I threw a brunch party yesterday and cooked a massive amount of bacon. Bacon is something I often get asked about: how do you get it crispy without burning it? Do you cook it on the stove or in the microwave or the oven? How high do you turn up the heat? I've touched on it lightly here where I tell you what to make your boyfriend the morning after you first seal the deal. But seriously, It's like adults are completely independent people who suddenly turn into helpless children when it comes to cooking bacon. Not a problem: let's talk.
Getting perfectly crispy bacon comes from cooking on a low to medium temperature for a longer amount of time. If you throw some bacon in a pan and turn up the heat really high, it's going to burned on one half and stay limp on the other. Limp bacon is something we all want to avoid. So you have two options:

1. Put the bacon on a sheet pan or a cookie sheet (with sides! You don't want bacon grease to drip all over your oven. It'll make every other food taste like bacon for the rest of time, and its effing dangerous.) Have your oven preheat at 375 degrees and put the bacon in there for about 20 minutes. During the course of 20 minutes, you'll want to flip the bacon over a couple of times. It's cooking 2 ways here- in the bask of 375 degrees, and in the sizzling bacon grease. If you flip it over, both sides get to cook in the grease and that's what makes it cook evenly.

2. Put the bacon in a pan on the stove over low/medium heat. If your knob goes up to 10, you want to keep it about 4 or 5. Same thing- as the bacon lets go of all that grease, you want to flip the bacon over a few times to make sure both sides cook in it. Keep the temperature where it is- like the timeless lyrics of the Beastie Boys say, "Slow and low, that is the tempo." I"m pretty sure they were referring to bacon in that song. If any of your bacon is starting to turn black before the middle of it is fully cooked, you turned the heat up too high. Don't do that anymore. Pause for effect.
After you cook the bacon, the last bit of crispness comes from draining the grease off- just let it sit on some paper bowls and blot it. Then enjoy your crunchy bites of salty heaven.

Okay, now let's talk about why I hate food blogs. I needed a quick biscuit recipe yesterday and thanks to the power of Google, came across the one I needed that happened to be on someone's blog. It was the perfect example of why I hate food bloggers.
I bring this up because people come up to me all the time, asking me if I've read this or that food blog by someone I don't care about. I don't read food blogs. I hate 98% of them. The other 2% that I can tolerate are ones that are written by chefs who tell you about their lives in the restaurant industry, or something substantial like that. I am not a blogger. I am an agency-represented writer/ex-chef who offers sound advice that makes you laugh and it just so happens the internet is the best way to get it to you at this point. I don't romanticize and reenact some easy as crap recipe that takes anyone else 3, maybe 5 minutes tops to make, describe in 17 paragraphs how it tasted and then take styled photos of it while offering "witty" anecdotes about my husband's reaction when I accidental dropped a biscuit in dish water. (This is for real. I read this when I was painstakingly doing why-I-hate-food-blogs research yesterday.) I don't think I'm Julie from Julie and Julia. Don't get me wrong: I love that movie. But the movie was already made- lets get back to the real world now.
On a side note, Anthony Bourdain offered a published intro in his latest book by holding a contest. Anyone could enter and write about why you should cook well. I looked through those entries and they were all written by the type of food bloggers I hate- romanticized bullshit about how a tomato reminds someone of their grandmother's curtains when they were little. This is ANTHONY BOURDAIN, people. He writes about eating raw meat and doing cocaine and camping in the middle of Thailand while eating local fish heads. I was disgusted by those entries. I imagine he was too. Or, at least I hope so.

On the other hand, If that's what you happen to enjoy- no judgement, and thank you for reading- then please enjoy this photo I took of an adorable kid at my brunch yesterday- who happens to be wielding a fist full of bacon. Notice how crispy it is. Now go practice.

Help out the Cake Fraggles!

2011-01-22T18:14:00.000-06:00

Dear Tricia, I was making a 3 level cake for my boyfriend's birthday, and decided to try and save some time by baking the whole thing in one bundt pan. I tried compensating for baking time, but after the cake mostly baked and cooled, the whole thing collapsed in the pan because there was some uncooked batter in the center. I ended up throwing out the whole thing and not making life any easier. Was there something I did wrong other than not baking it long enough? And in the future, what could I have done to salvage a dessert from a mostly (but not entirely) baked and collapsed cake? And also what are ways to convert 3-layer recipes into something less work intensive?

Wow, I'm impressed! I've never made a 3 level cake for anyone without it involving a paycheck. Not even my husband. (I got him beef jerky for Christmas though. Pretty sure that counts for something in the Awesome Department.)
Basically what you did wrong was put way too much batter in the pan- there was just no where for it to go. Let's imagine you're back to square one and you're making the recipe in 3 pans. Each pan has... let me think of something cute and memorable... Cake Fraggles. Right, each pan has 3 Cake Fraggles that do the heavy lifting and push the cake batter up to rise and become a fluffy delicious birthday treat. As the cake rises it uses the sides of the pan for some extra support while those Fraggles do the heavy lifting. Got that image in your head? Ok, now imagine taking all of the cake batter, putting it in 1 pan, and expecting just 3 Cake Fraggles to lift up 3 times as much weight. It's too heavy the cake isn't going anywhere- definitely not up. So now you've got 3 exhausted Cake Fraggles who have given up and are moving on to cocktails by now, and cake batter that is just going to sit and sit and sit. Even if you left the pan in the oven for an entire day, the outside would over bake and be a crispy hot mess before the inside came anywhere close to baking. It's too much mass in too small of a space to give you the same results.
I hope I didn't get too far out there with the Cake Fraggle references. In my mind they're adorable and magical and house trained.

So what to do with the mass of uncooked batter? If you're cool with eating potentially raw eggs**, I recommend mixing it in with ice cream or adding heavy cream and putting it in an ice cream maker for some cake batter ice cream. For the stuff that is baked, you cut it into pieces and put it in a bowl or a parfait glass (let's be serious, who owns parfait glasses?) or a martini glass and layer it with fruit and whipped cream for a ghetto version of a trifle. You can also blend it up into cake crumbs, and use that to garnish your next baked goodie (free of What the Bleep moments I hope) like on the top of cupcake frosting or on the side of a cake.

In the future, if you're wanting to make a smaller version of a tiered cake, you've got to make less batter, first and foremost. Take your recipe, cut the measurement of each ingredient in half and go from there. If you fill a pan with batter and the pan is more than 2/3 full, you're in trouble. I don't event like to fill the pan more than half full, but you know your recipe better than I do. You've got to have some room on the side of the pan for the cake to rise. Give the Cake Fraggles a break already.

**For anyone who says "You can't eat raw eggs! I'd never do that! It's gross!" I just want to remind you that, next time you're digging into the raw cookie dough/eating your feelings, guess what's included? Raw eggs. I doubt that knowing that will stop you next time either you flip-flopper.

What's New for What the Bleep Happened?

2011-01-07T17:28:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year, my little pets! 2010 was AWESOME- thank you for sending in your culinary quandaries, for sharing my blog with your friends, and for your support. 2011 is going to be even better- the publishing industry is finally starting to warm back up after an economically challenging year (read: no one wants to spend money on producing new books) and my book is back on the table at a couple of different publishers. What they really want to see is my blog getting more and more visits.

I need your help!

If you like reading the crazy stuff that I write, please tell your friends about it, post a link on your facebook, become a fan of my facebook fan page, subscribe to the blog, etc. Just think, you can say you knew about me before everyone else jumped on the bandwagon. Won't that feel good?

Again, thanks for reading and get ready for a lot of What the Bleep Happened surprises in 2011....

NYC Tacos, Texas Style

2011-01-02T11:49:00.000-06:00

Dear Tricia, As you know, I have moved up to New York and recently I have met a boy. I want to cook dinner for him tonight and I have been racking my brain (and reading all the archives in your blog), trying to find something that would impress but not bankrupt me or embarrass me (just in case I messed it up, you know.) He has never been to Texas and I talk about Texas all the time, being the wholesome Texas female that I am, and I decided that I want to make tacos!! We're talkin, Torchys/Gueros/cart-on-the- side-of-the-road-on-the-east-side-at-2-in-the-morning-with-fresh-lime-and-cilantro kind of tacos. I've never really made pork before and I'm not bad with chicken, I just want it to have that umph like they do at home! Can you give me a good recipe for some impressive, delicious tacos that will school my new beau and bring me a little piece of home to these yanks up here in NY?

Hell to the yes. Let me just pause for a second to reminisce the days of living in Austin where taco carts were abundant and delicious. The days when you could order a Democrat taco and a Republican taco and the two parties would unite peacefully in your belly. Those were glorious days. I think I can even hear Willie Nelson in the background.
Since you're most comfortable with chicken, and now is not the time to potentially mess up dinner for your new manfriend, lets stick with that.
The thing about cooking a really flavorful ANYTHING, whether its sauce, or soup or just some pulled chicken tacos, you have to have a really strong, flavorful base. The base is the first thing you put in the pan- its what will give you the umph, as you so eloquently put it, and its what you should spend the most time on. In this case, its seasonings and onions.

1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 onion roughly chopped
1 overflowing teaspoon of cumin
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
a big pinch of salt and a couple of twists of the pepper grinder
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
3/4 cup salsa (try not to use Pace picante sauce. If you have to use something out of a jar, I recommend Joe T. Garcia's if you can find it, or something that has the words "fire roasted" on the label. Darker red salsas are better.)
1 cup chicken stock
about a half a lime

First and foremost- get your stuff ready first. Measure everything out, have it ready in little bowls or tupperware or whatever fits in your tiny NYC kitchen. (Do you even have a kitchen, or are you using a hot plate on top of your ironing board? Just curious.) Getting your shit ready before you start makes your life easier in general.

Put a sauce pot over medium heat and let it get hot, for at least a few minutes. This is something that I can't stress enough in cooking- you have to have heat. Don't be a pansy.
Then put in the olive oil and let that get hot.
When the olive oil is hot in your already hot pan, add the onion, cumin, chili powder and the salt and pepper. Stir this around and let the onions soften and get brown. They're going to start to look dark as the spices coat them, but don't be afraid because this is what makes your tacos taste awesome.
After the onions start to soften, about 3-5 minutes, add the chicken stock. Stir this around to get all dark stuff off the bottom of the pan. Then add the chicken and the salsa.
Turn down the heat to let it simmer and cover the pan and let it cook for about 20 minutes. What's a simmer, you ask? That means the liquid has a steady stream of a few small bubbles on the surface. It's like a Diet Boiling.
After your chicken is fully cooked, take it out and let it cool. Turn the sauce pot back up to about medium and let it reduce.
Reducing means you're going to let about half the liquid evaporate, so your cup of chicken stock will reduce down to about a half a cup, which makes the flavors more concentrated. See? You're already less of a gringo than when you began reading this blog.
When your chicken is cool enough, you can start to shred it. Just pull it apart with your fingers or with a couple of forks and then, once your sauce is reduced, add it back into the pot. Turn down the heat to low, add that squeeze of lime, and you're good to go.

You can serve these tacos on whatever tortillas you like, add some fresh slices of avocado, sour cream and some roughly chopped cilantro.

Here's the deal with tacos- don't let this recipe limit you. If you like more heat, or less spice or you think cumin tastes like feet, then add something else instead. You can't break this recipe. The point is to cook the seasonings with the onions and make sure you get that flavor developed first, and the rest is gravy. Or tacos, rather. And if the end product is too watery, that means you're not reducing your sauce enough. A half a cup of sauce spread out over the bottom of a pot isn't a lot- its only 4 ounces. That's like a third of a tall coffee at Starbucks. You just want enough to coat the shredded chicken. And this recipe works for beef and pork too. Go do it to it and good luck with your manfriend. Hope he doesn't end up being a douchebag or something though, because he's going to want to stick around after these tacos.

If things work out and you decided to seal the deal, don't forget to check out my blog on making him breakfast the morning after here. I wrote this when my husband and I started dating, and now we're legal. Was it the breakfast? Not sure, but my marriage license thinks so.

Ethylene Gas is Straight Up Bananas

2010-12-22T07:56:00.000-06:00

Can we talk about bananas for a hot minute? I have this food pet peeve- we all have them- and one of mine is when bananas get brown spots on them. I hate that. I think they taste disgusting when they're really ripe. Seriously, its gross city and my taste buds are the mayor. I like my bananas with the tiniest hint of green on them, which means I usually get to eat 1 banana before the rest of the bunch gets spots on them and I let them rot and make banana bread.
Sometimes I feel bad for talking smack about bananas (No, I do. I have actually found myself looking at bananas and thinking "I'm sorry guys.") because they actually have this really cool thing they can do that a lot of other fruits can't: they produce ethylene gas. Ethylene gas is this really powerful thing that makes other fruit around it ripen faster. Produce companies (they used to be called "farms") have ripening rooms where they can store fruit to ripen before its shipped to grocery stores. No picking ripe tomatoes from the plants anymore, they just pick them early and stick them in a room pumped full of ethylene gas. Bananas produce so much of it that it can't really be contained- it goes through cardboard boxes, shipping crates, even concrete. It's a super power. Bananas totally deserve to wear a cape for that.
I have this really awesome fruit bowl that I got as a wedding present and I want so badly to be able to store all the fruit together in it with bananas on top, just like some awesome fruit bowl pin up photo of perfection, but I can't. If the bananas sit on top of the onions, the onions get a brown mushy spot on them where the bananas were, or the onion starts to grow shoots faster. Mr. Sweet Potato starts to grow little root mustaches, and the pears might as well just commit fruit suicide. Its like back when you're in elementary school and no one wants to sit next to the kid who farts all the time. (What were his parents feeding him??) Bananas are the farting kid. Out of courtesy, you'll probably want to keep the other kids at a distance. The ethylene gas is just that powerful. But its kind of awesome in a way. If you need to ripen your tomatoes, you can just store them next to some bananas or put them both in a bag together for an afternoon. Its like 7 minutes in ripening heaven. Ethylene gas needs oxygen and room to warm temperatures to do its thing though, so don't go and put a banana and a tomato in a vacuum packed bag from one of those as-seen-on-TV contraptions and stick it in the freezer and expect it to work, dumb ass. Give it some room to breathe. Anyways, consider this my public apology to bananas because they don't really get enough credit for being such hard working little farters. Good job guys.

Snoop Dogg Loves His Nog

2010-12-12T11:39:00.000-06:00

Dear Tricia, Our milkman dropped off a couple of recipes yesterday using Egg Nog. One recipe is Egg Nog Bread Pudding and the other is Egg Nog French Toast. Do you have any other suggestions (other than adding some good booze) for this seasonal drink?

No, my only suggestion is adding good booze. Just kidding, that's only my gut-reaction suggestion. I'll give you some other ideas too.

In addition to your email, I got a question from a friend wondering what kind of alcohol to add to egg nog for a wow-inducing cocktail. (No, seriously. The instructions were that it had to "wow" someone. I'm not making that up.) While I am not personally a fan of eggnog (thanks Stomach, and your lactose-hating evil ways), I am a fan of coffee. And I know that during the holidays, people freak out over eggnog lattes at Starbucks. It's like, come November, everyone's Facebook statuses suddenly change to "It's Egg Nog Latte time!" "Gingerbread Lattes are the best!!" "I love my sugary, overpriced seasonal coffee beverages!" So my thought was an eggnog latte martini:

3 parts eggnog
1 part espresso vodka

Shake it with ice and strain into a martini glass. Top with a little grated nutmeg.

If you happen to have an espresso machine in your home (lucky), then foam a little bit of milk and put that on top. Then you get an ice cold, yummy martini, complete with hot foam. Why, hello there temperature contrast. Don't mind if I do!

If you're not a fan of boozy drinks, then I do have a couple of ideas for you.

1. Eggnog pudding= its super simple: buy a packet of instant vanilla pudding mix. Follow the recipe on the side of the box that will tell you to add 2 cups of milk to the pudding mix, stir, and chill, except use eggnog instead of milk and add an extra 1/8 teaspoon of nutmeg. You can eat it by itself or pour it into a pie crust to make eggnog pudding pie. But make sure you say it like Bill Cosby, otherwise it won't work.

2. I love the eggnog French toast idea, and just wanted to share with you all how freaking easy it is. Instead of dipping your bread in egg, just dip it in a bowl of eggnog. There's already eggs in the eggnog (what a brilliantly obvious statement) so you'll still get delicious, crusty pieces of breakfast heaven. Add some rum to your syrup to top it with and find a comfortable spot to take a nap on in your post-breakfast nog coma.

3. If you have an ice cream maker, dump that stuff in the ice cream maker and turn it on. Done. No, seriously, a basic ice cream recipe consists of cream, milk, eggs, and sugar. Guess what eggnog is made out of? Nope, you're wrong. It's not made out of holiday magic and sparkles, it's made out of cream, milk, eggs and sugar. Put it in an ice cream maker, turn it on, and when it's frozen, put a spoon in it and put the spoon in your mouth. Crazy good, right?

By the way, if you want a fancy coffee drink without the hooch, try adding some eggnog to your coffee instead of milk. It'll save you $4 that you would have spent at Starbucks, and then you can save up your money to buy me a Mr. T cookie jar or a Christmas sweater featuring a snowman wearing gold chains like Snoop Dogg's. Street cred, yo.

And Christmas Cookie Season Begins...

2010-12-05T10:58:00.000-06:00

Dear Tricia, Any tips on how to ensure our Christmas Sugar Cookie decorating event, Thanksgiving weekend, ends with soft delicious cookies and not me in tears with a floor covered in cookie crumbs? I'm just not a fan of hard cookies. Help?

Well, first of all, I apologize for being late. My full time job is an event specialist for a catering company and I am in the middle of Christmas party madness and Hanukkah hell. I love my job very much, but I just wanted to clarify that, although I wanted to answer your question on time, my schedule hasn't allowed it. (It was either blog or have a pre-bedtime martini and, if you regularly read my blogs, you'll know that the martini will always win in my world.)

So, let's talk decorating cookies. Harder cookies are ideal for decorating because the icing doesn't pull any crumbs off them and make a mess. But I understand your love of soft cookies (when I first started this blog, I think I got "how do I make soft cookies?" from about a dozen different people), so here's my favorite recipe for softer sugar cookies:

1 cup margarine
1 1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup sour cream
4 cups flour

Preheat your oven to 350. No, seriously. Go preheat your oven. Get it hot before you start baking. Don't be dumb.
Mix the baking soda, baking powder, salt and flour together. Set aside.
Cream the margarine and the sugar until just combined. Do not beat the shit out of the butter and sugar. You're going to mess up the recipe if you cream them until they're white and fluffy. Go read this blog entry. Then continue.
Add the vanilla and the eggs, one at a time. Scrape down the sides of the bowl in between each addition.
Add the sour cream.
Add the flour.

When you roll out the cookies, make sure you put them back in the refrigerator to get them cold again before you bake them. The freezer is even better. Then bake them, depending on how bad ass your oven is, for about 15 minutes or so, or just until the edges start to brown.

Now I'm sure you're wondering why I said to use margarine instead of butter, because if you know me, you know I love butter and think that margarine is weird and creepy. Without going into the science of what exactly makes margarine weird and creepy, let me just tell you that when its cold, butter is hard and margarine still magically remains soft. Let that be your visual of why your cookies will be softer and save me the trouble of grossing you out and turning you off of margarine forever. Margarine = soft cookies. Plus, you've got sour cream in there too and the extra fat will help keep them soft.
These cookies may get some crumbs in your icing, but you asked for soft cookies, so that's what you get. I always try and deliver.

And if you ever want traditional sugar cookies that are ideal for decorating, the "My Cookies are Vulgar and Offensive" blog will give you the best recipe, courtesy of my Aunt Mary. Plus, there's a picture of some hilarious cookie cutters of people doing it that I'm dying to use. And by the way, does anyone know where I can buy this Mr. T cookie jar?? If someone can find that for me I'll be eternally indebted to you and will be able to say "I pity da fool" with more street credit. Cookie jars= street cred, right?

On a side note, I'm on this signature cocktail kick with all of my holiday parties and I have to recommend the delicious champagne flute full of heaven better known as The Poinsettia. It's half cranberry, half champagne, and all awesome. You're welcome.

Libby's is Never Gonna Give You Up, Never Gonna Let You Down...

2010-11-15T19:23:00.000-06:00

Dear Tricia, I tried to make a real pumpkin pie without using a can of Libby's pumpkin pie mix. I followed a recipe where I roasted the pumpkin, added eggs, sugar, spices and evaporated milk. I thought that since I made the pie from scratch it would taste even better than coming from a can, but I was sorely mislead. My pie did NOT taste like the pumpkin pie I'm used to. Why? Was it the recipe?

First of all, I totally just Rick Rolled you in the form of a jack-o-lantern. And if you don't know what that is, I'm surprised you still like my blog. Moving on....

Actually, no it wasn't the recipe- it was the pumpkin. Pumpkin pie such a misleading name for a pie: its not made from the pumpkins you and I know as pumpkins. Libby's has a monopoly on the canned pumpkin industry- they produce about 85% of the world's canned pumpkin and it all comes from a very special, trademarked type of pumpkin grown in Illinois.

Libby's developed a sort of cross-bred type of squash called a Dickinson Pumpkin. It looks more like a giant butternut squash than a pumpkin and its got lots of extra pumpkin meat inside, unlike that wimpy guy you use for carving your gnarly jack-o-lanterns. A Dickinson pumpkin is trademarked by Libby's as their own proprietary seed. (Read: no one else has access to growing or harvesting it except for Libby's.) That means no one else's brand of canned pumpkin is going to ever taste like Libby's because they're the only ones who can grow that tasty little squash. Smart huh? And terribly frustrating if you like to make things from scratch. Their proprietary seed is off limits to you, me, and everyone else who wants to know.

Remember last year when there was a warning that canned pumpkin would be scarce because bad weather affected so much of the canned pumpkin industry's crop? I read about one non profit group who takes produce not-fit-for-harvest and donates it to shelters and soup kitchens. After Libby's crappy harvest of pumpkins last year, the non profit took it upon themselves to ask for a donation of the crapkins and Libby's wouldn't allow it because their proprietary seed is off limits to anyone but the consumer who buys the pumpkin in its final, canned form. (What, you don't think someone would take that crapkin to a professional and try to cross breed their own copy? I'd totally do that. And then I'd sell it to all of you. I'd call it Magic Unicorn Glitter Pie Mix.)

If you want to make a pumpkin pie from scratch, I'd suggest taking whatever recipe you used and try using equal parts of both butternut squash and pumpkin instead of just pumpkin.

And by the way, you're welcome for your newest bit of food knowledge to drop at your company's holiday party this year. That's one even your boss will be impressed with, which might help him forget what you said about him at last year's party after one too many eggnogs. Yeah, we all heard about it.

Stuff It.

2010-11-07T16:18:00.000-06:00

Dear Tricia, Being a non-native in Colorado and coming from Texas, I have had many conversations with my friends and coworkers about whether it is called "stuffing" or "dressing." Is there a difference? Or is it just different lingo for different areas?

This is a great question to start off my month of Thanksgiving-themed blogs! Stuffing or dressing: which one is it? My immediate thought was that stuffing is cooked inside the bird and dressing is cooked outside, but this one had me scratching my head so I went to several different sources to try and find an answer. The Food Lover's Companion, which most of us in the restaurant world will deem as the most reliable source of culinary information, was no help at all.

Stuffing: see dressing.

Not awesome. For the first time ever, the FLC let me down. Jerk. So I decided to go back a little further and check out my husband's unabridged, second edition Webster's Dictionary. (Its a mammoth book- 16.4 pounds to be exact. Yeah, I put that sucker on my bathroom scale.) This edition was published in 1934, so I went back a good 80 years to see what they thought then:

Dressing: a. the spice mixture added to the bread, etc., used in stuffing a roast. b. a seasoned mixture as of bread, nuts, or oysters, often used to stuff poultry or roasts.

Stuffing: any seasoning preparation used to stuff meat; a composition of bread, spices, condiments, etc.; forcemeat; dressing

Yeah, that didn't tell me much either, except that dressing is used as stuffing. Then, when you start to get into the difference between stuffing being used as a noun (like a bowl of stuffing) or a verb (you're stuffing the turkey), things get really unclear.

The only difference I can find, when there is a difference explained at all, is that dressing is cooked by itself, while stuffing is cooked inside the turkey. However, there are still so many stuffing recipes that are cooked outside of the turkey. They're used interchangeably and have the same ingredients. Case in point, epicurious.com's food dictionary has this little gem to offer:

stuffing: see dressing

Ugh... not again. Way to give me a whole lot of nothing, epicurious.com. What that does tell me though, is that dressing and stuffing may indeed just be regional differences. So I started looking up the history of stuffing in the south, and let me tell you, they do NOT like using the word stuffing. Chef Eve Felder, one of the deans at the Culinary Institute of America, claims that stuffing isn't a pleasant word, so in the South, they called it dressing. Those southerners- so polite and gentle.

Then I went to my Facebook fan page for the blog (Have you joined it yet? You're missing out.) and started asking where everyone is from and what they call it. Everyone responded pretty quickly- from Maryland, Pennsylvania, Texas, California, Florida, Tennessee, New York... seems that majority of them call it stuffing, and the ones who call it dressing are from the south. Not everyone from the south called it dressing, but the only ones who even mentioned the D-word were southern.

So the answer? I'm going with both. Dressing and stuffing are the same thing, with the same ingredients, sometimes cooked outside of the turkey, sometimes cooked inside. (Or sometimes layered in between glorious layers of duck, turkey, and chicken like the culinary wonderment that is the Turducken.)

Similar quandaries include the sprinkle/jimmie debate, the sub/hero/hoagie dilemma, and of course, my favorite: soda/pop. (Even though we all know it's soda. Le duh.)

A What the Bleep? Oldie but Goodie...

2010-10-30T12:31:00.000-05:00

In honor of the most sacred, precious, and meaningful holiday of the year... lets talk pumpkin seeds again. Here's one from last year that I love.

Dear Tricia, Pumpkin carving season is upon us, and I hate for anything to go to waste. It turns out pepitas are one of my favorite salty-go-with-beer accessories. The problem is, when I harvest those little seeds of joy myself and try to roast them, they turn out to be chewy bits of hell. How do I get the crisp, salty bites of love that I crave?

First of all, kudos to you for not letting those little gems go to waste. This reminds me of the rocky mountain oyster post I wrote a few months ago, except that my readers will actually eat pepitas. Pepitas are roasted pumpkin seeds, by the way. It's how they're referred to in Mexican cooking and you'll often see them in the bulk section of the grocery store labeled as such. The difference between what you see in the store and what's inside a pumpkin is that what's inside the pumpkin seed still has the hull, or shell around it. Inside the hull is a little green kernel that is a little easier to chew, but both are completely edible, and to take the hull off the seed is pretty labor-intensive, so for this blog entry, I'll refer to the entire seed. Plus, if you're going to ask me about eating these while drinking beer, I'm going to assume that you're not up for the dextrous challenge. No judgement though.
Oh, and I should probably write a quick disclaimer. I woke up with a cold this morning and have about 4 different medications running through my body right now, so my wit isn't exactly up to its usual ninja-like speed. I'm also cranky because I was supposed to dress up for a charity Zombie pub crawl today, and as much as I'd like to suck it up and drink vitamin C- packed screwdrivers in full zombie regale, I had to cancel. So instead, I'm medicated and experimenting with pumpkin seeds. But regardless, I'm happy to educate you, dear readers.
This is was an email I didn't immediately know the answer to. My first thought was that you're probably not cooking them long enough, but it's not that simple. In my research, there are a few different methods to getting crispy pumpkin seeds. Some people claim that boiling the pumpkin seeds before roasting them works. Others think that a low oven temperature does the trick. On my medicated no-funday Sunday, I tried 4 of these different methods. I also managed to do other super important things, like catch up on my Real Housewives of Atlanta.
With each experiment, I used 1/4 cup of fresh pumpkin seeds scraped straight from a soon-to-be jack-o-lantern. I rinsed the seeds to get all the pulp off and then set them on a paper bag to dry off for about half an hour. Before roasting, I tossed each batch in 1/2 teaspoon of olive oil and 1/2 teaspoon of sea salt.

Batch #1: I boiled the pumpkin seeds in salted water for 10 minutes. Then I roasted them at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.
Batch #2: I roasted them at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. I also started to get the spins from cramming so many vitamins into my bloodstream.
Batch #3: I boiled the pumpkin seeds in salted water for 10 minutes. Then I roasted them at 275 degrees for 1 hour.
Batch #4: I roasted them at 275 degrees for 1 hour. I think I also had made about 13 trips to the bathroom at this point from drinking so much hot tea and water.

The results? Batch #4, the seeds that weren't boiled, and baked at a lower, slower temperature were the crispiest, crunchiest and least chewy. The ones that were boiled were a little tougher than the pepitas that weren't boiled. But each one was nowhere near being a chewy bit of hell. So apparently, slow and low... that is the tempo. The only reason I can come up with for boiling the seeds first is to give them a saltier flavor (from the salt in the water), but if you prefer saltier pepitas... then just add more salt. Its not rocket science.
I just used salt and oil for my seasoning, but you can definitely get creative here: try tossing them in a little cayenne for spicy pumpkin seeds, garlic and parmesan for something Italian, or cinnamon and sugar for sweeter snacks to go with your beer. You can also use cooking spray if you don't want the fat or calories from olive oil.
Aside from tasting awesome with your beer, pumpkin seeds are also really good for you. They're high in protein, omega fatty acids, Vitamin A (to keep your eyes healthy while squinting with jack-o-lantern-carving concentration), and Potassium (to help your keep your hands from cramping).
Now back to my pepita experiment snacks, Family Guy, and thinking of something non-traditional to carve in the pumpkin. A Christmas tree, perhaps?

I must mention that my adorable and dear friend Dawn sent me this doozy of a question, and I promised her I would include the photo her ninja jack-o-lanterns from last year. So, yes, friends, I know the creator of the masterpiece in the photo above. That's just how awesome my network is.

My Martini Glass is Stressed and Needs a Drink

2010-10-24T10:09:00.000-05:00

Dear Tricia, This is a safety hazard question, so I wanted to ask the expert. I went back and read about exploding casserole dishes in the oven and blow torching "cold" glasses, but I'm still not sure. I want to use a martini glass to decorate a cake and use sugar/corn syrup mixture to make it look like there is a vodka/cranberry drink in the glass. And I am scared to put the hard ball sugar into the glass and breaking it. I like my eyes, granted they need a little work, but I would like to keep them working. So, will I cause the thin martini glass to shatter by pouring 325 degree melted sugar into it?

Great question, and thanks for referencing the blog I wrote about a gazillion years ago about breaking dishes in a hot oven. And also, I find it hilarious that you want to "ask the expert" about a safety hazard since I'm consistent about running into doors, dropping breakables and slamming my fingers in drawers. I'm a walking disaster and I have the bruises to prove it.
To digress for a second, and for those who don't want to go back and read the older stuff (you're missing out), I have to mention a day in culinary school when my partner and I were taking a blowtorch to a dessert served in a champagne glass. Since she was from the Virgin Islands, and I'm from Texas and neither or us carry the word "cold" in our vocabulary, we took the glass right out of the refrigerator and put the blowtorch to it. It immediately shattered. So, like dumbasses, we tried it again on another glass. Shatterific. Our teacher wasn't crazy about us. (And I wasn't crazy about her either, if I must say. So there.) The point is, you can't take a cold glass and immediately put something hot in it because there are little pockets of air inside the glass that expand when they get hot. When they expand too fast or too much, they explode and break the glass. And then you're left with a dessert served in broken glass while 20 fellow students look at you like you just farted.
So I understand your hesitation. Let me break down the science of it: when things get hot, they expand. My fingers swell in the summer time when its hot as hades outside. Carbon dioxide bubbles inside a cake expand in the oven and make the cake rise. And air pockets inside glass expand when you heat it. The problem is, glass is a terrible conductor of heat. You could pour hot sugar on half of a glass plate and the air pockets inside that side of the plate will start to expand, but the other side of the plate's little air pockets aren't doing anything because the heat is taking too long to travel over there. So with the inside of one part of the plate expanding and the other side doing nothing, there's a lot of "thermal stress" going on. (What a terrible term. How much stress can a dish go through? Get a job already.) And with all the "thermal stress," it breaks.
So how do we avoid that?
First, you need to make sure your martini glass isn't made from blown glass. Hand blown glass (shouldn't it be referred to as mouth-blown?) has much more irregular pockets of air than generic glass that is made from pouring molten glass into a mold. Not sure if yours is hand blown? I found the most comprehensive checklist here . If you're buying your martini glass at the Dollar Store, I don't think you have to worry about it being blown. Lucky you: functionality and its a bargain. But if you're buying a martini glass somewhere all posh-like such as Crate and Barrel or ZGallerie, try asking the people who work there. (That's how I found out my new glasses were blown, which explains why they all like to break in the dishwasher. Not awesome.)
Second, you need to ease the "thermal stress" the glass is going through... you know, like giving it a xanax. By slowly bringing the temperature of the glass closer to the temperature of the hot sugar, it puts less stress on the glass once you start adding liquid magma-like substances to it. While you're cooking your sugar, put the martini glass under the tap with running hot water and just let the water run. Don't just splash some warm water in it at the last minute: really let the glass get hot so that when you pick it up to dry it off, its super hot. This is going to help warm up the glass enough so that the temperature of the hot sugar isn't so shocking. When your sugar is almost ready, stop the water, dry off the glass, and its ready to pour the sugar in. And when you're finished pouring the sugar in, don't do something stupid like put it in the freezer. Mixing and matching temperatures is never a good idea.
I'm curious to see how your experiment turns out. Send pictures. Happy fake martini-creating! You should reward yourself with a real one after your dessert success.

And that's how the carrot cake crumbles.

2010-10-09T09:00:00.001-05:00

From my Facebook fan page:

My mother emailed me asking how to fix her friend's crumbly carrot cake. The e-mail said the cake had excellent flavor and moistness, but crumbled to bits when it was cut.

Ahh, carrot cake. Who doesn't love carrot cake? Or, rather, who doesn't love that its a delicious vehicle for cream cheese frosting into my belly? Yum. (On a side note, when I worked in a bakery, I always tried not to laugh when customers would get carrot cake because it was "healthier." It's cake, my friends. Cake with frosting and cream cheese. Lots and lots of both... But, whatever makes you happy.)
Crumbly carrot cake is a disappointment. I'm disappointed already. But there's a couple of very simple things that I want to talk about before I go into the possibility of it potentially being a bad recipe.

1. The size of the carrots and extra goodies you add at the end may be your culprit. For those of you living under a very large rock with no sunlight or ways of communicating with the outside world for the past 300 years, carrot cake calls for lots of extra stuff besides eggs, butter and sugar. You have your shredded carrots, raisins, nuts, pineapple... lots of bits and pieces of yummy little things. When you start adding all of this to cake batter, its going to disrupt the gluten. To put it very simply, gluten is the protein that holds your cake together. But when you start to add lots of stuff to your cake batter, it tears apart the gluten, making it much harder for the cake to hold itself together- hence the crumbliness. (Yes, crumbliness is a word. I checked.) So carrot cake, to begin with is going to fall apart a lot easier than something very simple like a plain chocolate cake just because its got a lot of extra gluten-tearing crap in it. Something your alleged "mother's friend" may want to try is shredding the carrots smaller, chopping the nuts smaller, and possibly even pureeing them all together. In most home kitchens that aren't pimped out like mine is (thanks to the miracle of wedding gifts- thanks everyone!), you're going to use a cheese grater to grate the carrots, which gives you pretty large-sized shreds. If you use a microplane (or some people just call it a zester), you get really small, fine shreds of carrots that aren't big and jagged enough to tear apart so much gluten. Here's what it looks like: I use mine all the time for lemon zest and parmesan cheese, its a well spent $15 investment.
I'm a fan of just pureeing everything together because when you add the nuts and fruit and carrots at the end, it gives you a really smooth batter with all the flavors but none of the chunks that make the cake crumbly. Its not your traditional looking carrot cake when you slice it- there's no giant shreds of carrots, but there's also no crumbliness. That's how you make awesome meatloaf too, without the annoying look of those little presumptuous chunks of carrots and celery. Yuck. (Plus, I just really like to use my food processor. So much fun that I'm borderline embarrassed.)

2. Lets talk about cutting cakes. Cutting cake is something I've done a LOT of, especially wedding cakes. (And that's a blog for another time. Holy Drama, Batman.) When you cut a cake with lots of stuff in it, you've got to use a serrated knife. That's the knife that has the little jagged teeth on it that hurts really bad when you cut your finger. (Let me make that mistake for you- you don't have to do it yourself.) When you use a serrated knife, you have to saw, not just push down. The teeth are on there for a reason: it looks like a saw because you have to SAW. By sawing with the knife, the knife does all the work and cuts the cake without destroying it, as long as you don't start pushing down. Try this next time: saw saw saw... don't press down.... saw saw saw.... don't press down. Make that your mantra. You'll be amazed at how nicely you can cut a piece of cake without tearing it apart.
Something else to consider when cutting cake, and this may be obvious to you, but its not to everyone: let the cake cool before you cut it. For real. Cutting warm cake, no mater what kind it is, is going to give you really messy, crumbly pieces. If you stick it in the fridge and cut it when its cold- even better if you're going to neat slices. But warm cake and a knife will never bode well for avoiding crumbliness. (I LOVE that word!)

3. I don't know what kind of recipe she used- perhaps its an old family recipe that's 100 years old- but I want to point out something.

Are you ready for it?

Wait for it.....

Wait for it......

Sometimes, recipes are BAD!!!!

No, its true, especially now that everyone can put whatever they want on the internet, and that includes a lot of really terrible recipes. Honestly, sometimes recipes just don't work. If you prefer to find your recipes online, try and avoid sites like cooks.com, where anyone and everyone can upload a recipe to share. There's no double checking on that website- some of the recipes are good, some of them are really horrible. For pretty solid, free recipes, I'm a fan of epicurious.com which features recipes from Bon Appetit and Gourmet, both of which (until the publishing industry started to crumble too) were super reliable sources. And for the best of the best recipe websites, I'd recommend joining cooksillustrated.com, which is $35 bucks a year. If you haven't read any of my blogs where I geek out of this website, let me tell you... its the best test kitchen in the country. They test recipes over and over and over again until they WORK, and as a bonus, you're never inundated with pictures of Rachael Ray, like some other food websites. This is the magazine that broke the news about using vodka for the flakiest pie crust ever. But if you're into cookbooks and not the internet, the best baking recipes I've used over the last 10 years were all found in The Fannie Farmer Baking Book. The basics, like chocolate chip cookies, banana bread, and carrot cake, are all really killer.
And what do you do when your recipe is bad? Just because a recipe is bad doesn't mean you can't change it. Play around with it, add some things, take some things away. Don't be afraid to have fun and make mistakes. I mean, if the author of the recipe already gave you a crappy recipe, you probably can't make it much worse. But if you do, you can always send me an email.

Oh no, my eye!

2010-09-19T12:40:00.000-05:00

I received a fairly frantic phone call from my brother-in-law the other day. He had been slicing a jalapeno, and before washing his hands, accidentally rubbed his eye. Not good. If you've ever been in that situation, I'm sure you know why the burning and stinging was bad enough to call me and ask what to do.

I have been in this situation before. Its not fun. I've cut hot peppers and then absentmindedly touched my face, leaving a big red stripe on my cheek all throughout dinner. Real cute. Capsaicin, that unfriendly little oil that lives deep inside peppers and burns the living daylights out of your mouth, and whatever else it comes in contact with, is a pretty resilient monster. And to be honest, there's not a magic fix-it that will make the burning instantly stop. That's why pepper spray is such an effective self-defense tool. I'm sorry, but there are no ninja skills on the planet that make a hot pepper not burn- especially if you rub it in your eye. There are a few things that can take the potential for 8 hours of burning and cut it back to 45 minutes or so. Let's talk.

First of all, plain old water won't do a whole lot. Capsaicin is an oil and it needs something stronger than water to rinse it away. That's like trying to rinse out a frying pan full of oil with water- its not going to do jack squat. Weirdly enough though, If you want to help remove capsaicin from your hands, rub some vegetable oil on your hands and then wash that off with soap and COLD* water. Make sure you get underneath your nails too. The Pepper Spray Store (yes, there is one) recommends using Dawn soap over other brands. I'd try it myself if I was willing to sacrifice my own comfort for the sake of science, but my eyes are already burning from Drano fumes coming out of my clogged kitchen sink, which would be a huge variable and won't give me an authentic result. Um, yeah. That's why I can't rub jalapeno in my eye today. Right.

Milk- There's a protein in milk called casein that loves fat. Since capsaicin is a fat, casein will surround it and help remove it from you skin and carry it away like a magic little dump truck. Opti Free (the saline and eye care company) recommends using milk on your skin to help alleviate the pain by first soaking the area in cold milk, and then washing with soap and water. While they don't suggest using milk to soak your eye, there's no good reason why you can't perform a little eye flush with cold milk. Is it the best idea to put food on your eye? Not always. Is it going to make you go blind? No. I'm pretty sure I'd put milk, lint, bologna, whatever in my eye if someone told me it would get rid of the pain. Put milk in a shot glass and tip your head over it. Press the glass against your eye and tilt your head back, letting the milk cover your eye. I know its hard, but try to keep your eye open and blink as much as you can. Oh, and milk alternatives won't work. Tempting, but almond, soy, and rice milk are too big a wussies to fight that mean capsaicin.

Saline- Pretty much the safest thing you can put on your eye. Your tears are natural saline, so squeezing a bottle of saline (you know, that salt water stuff people store their contacts in) into your eye and washing it out as much as you can will help. Again, this isn't going to make the pain go away instantly. Its just like eating spicy food: the heat eventually fades away, it doesn't just stop all of a sudden. If you buy an eye flush or have one of those fancy first aid kits that includes an eye flush, its made of the exact same thing.

You're going to want to keep your eyes closed, but try and blink as much as you can. Your eyes will produce natural tears that are trying really hard to get the burn out. Good job, tears.

Oh, and make sure you wash your hands lots and lots before you use the bathroom. Just like it stings your eyes, capsaicin will sting you everywhere else- even in the places the sun doesn't shine. And its a lot harder to put milk on those places... Just read the comments about bad jalapeno stories on my Facebook fan page for proof of your own.

For prevention next time,or if you're just really sensitive to capsaicin, you can always cut peppers while wearing rubber gloves. Not latex gloves: rubber gloves. The big yellow ones. Capsaicin will make its way through latex. Just remember that if you use rubber gloves, to wash those after as well. Le duh.

* Why cold water and not hot? Capsaicin affects nerve endings called VR1 receptors, which normally change shape when they detect heat. Capsaicin tricks them into changing shape without actually feeling hot temperatures-- you'll even sweat and everything. If you use hot water, the VR1 receptors will deform even more, which is what the capsaicin is already doing. Long story short? It makes you feel even hotter.

Reason #957 Why Sugar is Awesome.

2010-09-05T12:05:00.000-05:00

Dear Tricia, Let's say someone is making something and uses a little too much cider vinegar...is there something said person can do to counteract the vinegar? What about salt or other spices? This is purely hypothetical...I never make mistakes. I have a friend that is curious.

Of course its hypothetical... Is it the same friend who spilled red wine on my white couch last month? Because I know I certainly didn't do that. I never spill anything, ever.
Being vinegar- happy is an easy fix, and all it takes is.... wait for it...... wait for it.........

Sugar!

Right, sugar. (Suck on that, Dr. Atkins! Sugar can be awesome!) Start adding sugar a little at a time, stirring it in to whatever you screwed up and tasting it as you go. There's no recipe or formula here. Sorry. You messed it up and the universe isn't going to coddle you anymore. But keep adding a little bit of sugar until the flavor starts to balance out. If you're making soup, you may want to add a little brothk or water, or whatever the base of the soup is and that may help out as well.

In trying to figure out the science of why sugar works, I stumbled across the pH scale. Remember that lovely pH scale in 7th grade science? Acids are on one side of the pH scale in the 0's and 1's. Bases, or alkalines, are on the other side over in the 13-14 side. Neutral is right in the middle around 7. (In my mind, Lindsay Lohan would be at 0 with battery acid, Betty White would be at 14 with drain cleaner, and Jennifer Love Hewitt and her brain cell-robbing facial expressions would be neutral at 7.) Vinegar is acidic- it hangs out with the 2's and 3's in Lindsay Lohan's neighborhood on the acid side of the pH scale. I thought that maybe, to cancel out all that vinegar flavor, sugar might be hanging out with Betty White on the base side of things. But I was wrong: sugar is neutral, right around 6 and 7 with pure water and Jennifer Love Hewitt. So it's not counteracting anything, just masking the flavor. And that's fine too, because it still fixed your problem. Er, I mean, your friend's problem.

Another Oldie but Goodie... Unsolved Chili Mysteries!

2010-08-31T19:39:00.000-05:00

Dear Tricia, My husband loves chili...but every time I make a batch it either turns out too cumin-y or too chili powder- y. What is the best combination of spices for a hearty chili? Also, what is the best kind of meat to use? Is bison good? And the beans, which kind should I use there? Please help me please my baby's belly!

*I should warn all of you that if I suddenly go missing, I have been kidnapped by the International Chili Society. I'm wearing grey shorts, a white shirt with a the Star of David on it, and ski boots.*

I thought this would be a pretty light-hearted blog entry... its just chili, right? Well I was wrong. The International Chili Society proved me waaaaay wrong. Yes, there is a society for chili and, yes, it is international. And they have rules. I'm afraid to type too loud in case they hear me and read this and tell me I'm wrong. Shhhhhhh.
First of all, I'm going to give you a quick history lesson. There are two groups of people that can be credited with the first chili. Supposedly, Ranch cooks were one of them. Why? Because they usually had meat that was about to go bad and needed a good way to cover up the impending taste of rotten death. Chile peppers did a nice job covering it up. By stewing the chile peppers and meat together (that's what "chile con carne" actually translates to: chile pepper with meat), they came up with a hearty dish, used up what was going to be thrown away eventually, and the cowboys ate it right up. And if you read my Rocky Mountain Oysters post from Monday, you'll realize that throwing away anything was unheard of... even the cow's family jewels. The second group of people credited with making the first chili are the Aztecs, though theirs harbors a lot more anger. Supposedly, they were so angry about the Spanish Conquistadors invading their lands, that they killed and cut up the Spaniards, seasoned the meat with chile peppers, and ate them. Mmmm... cannibal chili. It gives Spanish Chile a whole new meaning, doesn't it? Can you imagine Fox News doing a story on that? "Aztec Cannibals Make Invaders into Chili." They'd probably blame it all on President Obama.
So lets get to fixing your chili, shall we?
First rule: lean meat only, preferably not ground. Lean meat is tougher, but the reason why you want to use it is because you're slowly cooking it in lots of flavorful juices that will tenderize it. So yes, bison is good because its lean. Ground meat will fall apart if its cooked slowly in so many juices, so cube up it up into medium sized chunks. Any stewing meat is ideal, and as a recession bonus, its cheap. Please refer to my "The Beef on Beef and Getting Grilled on Grilling" post for a quick lesson on the different cuts of beef. There's also a pretty picture to look at.
Second Rule: No beans. Since I live in Texas, we're going with Texas-style chili. And Texas-style chili NEVER has beans in it. If you must add beans (Shhhh! Don't let the International Chili Society hear you!), add them after you've finished cooking the chili so that they don't break down into mush. According to the history of chili (and its lengthy), if the cook lived in a poor area, they could bulk up the chili by adding beans, but that was not ideal. If you must disobey The International Chili Society, then just use whatever beans you like, because you're already in going to get in big trouble. And if you don't, then I'm telling on you. You can buy actual "chili beans," but kidney beans and pinto beans are perfectly fine too. Just use what you like best. Its like me and box wine: sure, I'm supposed to drink fine wine out of a bottle, but do I always want to? No. I'm just not that fussy. So... Franzia it is.
Third, we're going to talk about spices. Adding spices to chili is about as personal as picking out underwear, except imagine having 6,000 different types of underwear to choose from. Its exhausting and there is no right or wrong choice. What I learned from "Chili Cookoff Confidential" is that its not so much about what spices you use, but when you put them in. This is what's called a "dump." Go ahead and laugh... I did. And the fact that I'm talking about dumps and underwear in the same paragraph is purely coincidental, I promise. But the chili pros swear by mixing up all the spices at the beginning of the cooking process, and adding them to the chili in 2 or 3 "dumps" along the way. You add the first dump when you cook the meat. The second dump goes in when you're adding liquid to the meat to make the gravy. And the third dump goes in right before you finish cooking the chili. This is actually a really smart idea because spices change flavor as they cook, and in the case of cumin, it tends to get a little bitter. So you're probably adding the right amount of chili powder and cumin, but not at the right time. Whether or not you use two or three dumps seems to remain controversial in the chili world. But again, there are also 6,000 different types of chile powder to choose from, so there is no possible way to be right or wrong here. You'll also get better results by using different types of chili powder together, not using one kind. This makes the flavor of the chili more robust and complex, not just spicy. If you can find it, chimayo chili powder is my absolute favorite. And anytime you happen to travel to the southwest, especially New Mexico, make an effort to buy different regional types of chili powder that, most likely, you can't get at home. That's a much better souvenir than a stupid shot glass with the coyote with the bandanna, howling at the moon. God, I hate those.
So in conclusion, remove the beans, use lean meat, and add your spices in separate "dumps. " That should help your chili dilemma and fill your husbands belly with happy results. For more information on chili, check out the International Chili Society's website, www.chilicookoff.com. And if I suddenly go missing, that should also give you a hint to where kidnapper took me.

**Shortly after this blog was posted last year, Michael (who is now one of my favorite people in the world) from the International Chili Society contacted me and had me judge one of their cook offs in San Antonio. Turns out they're really passionate about chili, but have no interest in kidnapping people.**

Shelby, drink the juice.

2010-08-17T19:46:00.000-05:00

Dear Tricia, I love biscuits and gravy, and I really want to know how to make real gravy from scratch. Am I in over my head? Is this something I have any chance of learning before I'm a grandpa?

Biscuits and gravy ARE AWESOME! Its my favorite thing to make for Sunday brunch and I like to get all southern when I make them... you know, quote lines from Steel Magnolias and talk like I'm from Mississippi. And doing my impression of Julia Roberts as she's about to go into Diabetic shock is always a fun bonus. "Don't talk about me like I'm not here!"

No, you're not in over your head. Gravy is actually a really simple sauce that anyone can master. And as a bonus, all you need are a few ingredients. So as soon as you master this recipe, you'll be really psyched that you can have an almost empty fridge but still be able to make gravy.

Here's what you need:

1/2 pound breakfast sausage (you can use ground sausage or sausage links. If you use links, just peel off the casing and use the meat inside. The casing is that weird rubbery thing that holds it all together. Throw that part away.)
1/3 cup flour
2 cups milk
salt and pepper

1. Heat up a pan on a stove over medium-low heat (that means if your oven knob goes from 1-9, put it at 3 or 4. Or 3 1/2 if you can't make up your mind. Whatever. Just make a decision.) and put the sausage in it.
2. Break up the sausage into little pieces. I like to use a wooden spoon, but you can use whatever works best for you. What you want to do is "render" the fat, or slowly pull all the fat out of the sausage. If you have the heat up too high, you'll sear the sausage and give it dark color on it and the fat will stay inside. That's a no-no. With gravy, fat is good, so you want to gently ease it on out.
3. When the sausage is fully cooked, add the flour and start stirring. What you're doing is making a "roux", which is a cooked mixture of fat and flour. The flour is what's going to thicken up your gravy, but you need to cook it a bit first so that your gravy doesn't taste like paper mache. (Not that I know what paper mache tastes like. Especially not because I tasted some in 1988 when I was making mummies out of action figures with my cousins.) So stir and cook, stir and cook, and wait until the flour starts to turn a little golden. Go ahead and give it some color... you're not going to burn it as long as you keep the heat at medium-low.
4. When the flour has some color on it... like the color of apple sauce, add the milk. Now you're going to need to use a wisk. Stir the milk and sausage and roux together and try to wisk out any lumps. (Not to be confused with pieces of sausage.) Keep wisking and let the milk get really hot. As it gets hot, the flour will thicken it. If its taking like 10 minutes, then the heat isn't high enough. Turn it up a little and watch the magic happen. When the gravy starts to bubble a little, its done. Remember, its going to thicken up as it cools too, and if its too thick, you can thin it down a little with more milk.
5. Season it with salt and pepper. You probably don't need as much salt as you think: the sausage has a lot of that already and is what mainly flavors the gravy.

Now, if you take out all of my babbling, here's the quick instructions:

1. Cook sausage over medium-low heat.
2. Add flour, stir, and cook until golden.
3. Add milk and wisk until thickened.
4. Season with salt and pepper.

Just like that. 4 easy steps, 3 main ingredients: its one more item that you can add to your list of "things that aren't rocket science." On a side note, you don't always have to use sausage- my Grammie Sue (who was awesome because she crocheted little crafty ducks that were jelly bean holders and when you squeezed it, a jelly bean would pop out of its crocheted butt) used chip beef, and you can also use bacon. Whatever floats your (gravy) boat.

Demystifying Polenta: Its Just Ground-Up Corn!!!

2010-08-03T19:04:00.000-05:00

Dear Tricia, Polenta is intimidating me. It's cornmeal so I think that I like it, but I both of my experiments have been failures. The first time it was all my fault. I burnt it and take complete responsibility. The second time, Polenta puffed up it's big Italian chest, bit it's thumb at me, and got lumpy. It tasted okay, but I felt gypped. Maybe I didn't "rain the grain" properly. I don't know. Also, I can buy polenta in both the bulk and refrigerated sections of Whole Foods. What's that about? I suspect the tubes of polenta are there so I can be lazy, but the recipes I find always call for the grain.

Yeah, polenta has this really intimidating reputation for being some kind of elusive magic food that no one can master, not even Bruce Lee. To add to the hype, there was an article about it in the New York Times earlier this year called "Taking the Fear out of Making Polenta." I think that's really sad and ironic because polenta started out as a peasant food way back in the day. Those peasant dudes didn't have to go to culinary school to figure it out: its just porridge. Don't be afraid of food. Have fun with it, and if you mess up, then just start over or try it again some other time. Okay, off my soap box now.

The whole "rain the grain" concept: forget about the term. Let's not over complicate what "slowly sprinkling the cornmeal into the water" is. Its cooking, not meteorology. Even my Bible, (and every other professional cook or chef's Bible) The Professional Chef, doesn't use that term. You're making a big bowl o' gruel. Not a big deal. And when it comes to who's higher on the food chain, you will always win over polenta, hands down.

Alright, so traditionally you boil salted water in a pot, and slowly sprinkle the polenta in while you stir stir stir. When it all has been added, turn down the heat and keep stirring to prevent those naughty little lumps. Its not a quick process- give yourself at least half an hour- and if you don't stir enough, you'll get lumps. If you have the heat up too high, you'll also get lumps then. My guess is that you had the heat up too high: both times, not just when you burned it. But just to be sure, I tried a couple of different methods to find an easier way for you to succeed next try.

First try: Alton Brown's method. While I'm not a big fan of the Food Network, I do love me some Alton Brown. He's kind of like a male version of myself, but he cusses less and I probably look better in heels. And that's ok... I love him all the same. Anyway, he has a recipe that makes polenta in the oven, so you don't have to stand there and stir for 40 minutes when you could be doing something else more important. (Like playing Lego Batman on Wii or making margaritas.) Here's the recipe:

2 tablespoons olive oil
3/4 cup finely chopped red onion
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 quart chicken stock or broth
1 cup coarse ground cornmeal
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 ounces Parmesan, grated

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large, oven-safe saucepan heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the red onion and salt and sweat until the onions begin to turn translucent, approximately 4 to 5 minutes. Reduce the heat to low, add the garlic, and saute for 1 to 2 minutes, making sure the garlic does not burn.
Turn the heat up to high, add the chicken stock, bring to a boil. Gradually add the cornmeal while continually whisking. Once you have added all of the cornmeal, cover the pot and place it in the oven. Cook for 35 to 40 minutes, stirring every
10 minutes to prevent lumps. Once the mixture is creamy, remove from the oven and add the butter, salt, and pepper. Once they are incorporated, gradually add the Parmesan.

And that's it. You leave it cook in the oven, stir it a few times, and when I tried it... it was completely free of lumps. And super easy, too. I like that, and it probably fits in a little better with your schedule than standing over a stove for longer than an entire episode of "Family Guy."

I wanted to try something else too. I went back to that New York Times article... the one that supposedly takes the "fear" out of making polenta, and I checked out what the author's secret was. He swore by making a slurry of polenta and water first (traditionally, a slurry is when you mix cold water and cornstarch together first before you add it to a sauce to thicken it. This is to prevent lumps), then "add it to not-to-high heat, bring it to a boil, reduce it to a simmer and gradually add more water as needed to keep the mixture smooth and loose."

That's confusing as all get-out. (Its also the same method for making risotto, but that's another blog for another time.) Seriously, not to knock another writer, I mean... he does write for the New York Times and I don't, but it didn't really take the fear out of making polenta. I'd venture to say it adds more fear to it. An amateur would need the Polenta Whisperer to use that recipe. So I tried it anyway and it worked fine too- no lumps. But it took the traditional process and added like 3 more steps to it. It was so much more time-consuming than the oven-method and it gave me the same results. No thanks, New York Times.

So, if I were you, I'd try Alton Brown's method. It gave me lump-free polenta and it also took less time with half the work. About your polenta-in-the-tube question. Its just a convenience product- like buying frozen waffles or TV dinners. If you like to chill polenta, slice it, and grill it, that's why you'd buy it already made in a tube. Not gonna judge... go on with your convenience-loving self if it makes you and your belly happy.

When I get time (and an extra $35 for the annual fee), I'm going to try Cook's Illustrated's recipe for making polenta in the microwave. I'm feeling pretty good about it, but I'll keep you posted. In the meantime, let me know how your next run goes. I always love What the Bleep feedback.

Thanks for reading, and make sure you join my Facebook fan page where I get to interact more with my readers. Word.

More on Avoiding the Rubber Chicken

2010-07-18T10:17:00.001-05:00

When I first started this blog, I wrote about reheating chicken breasts without making them rubbery. I wanted to expand on that for a minute and let you know about this awesome product that I found.
First, I should explain that I like to cook a bunch of chicken breasts at the beginning of the week and keep them in the fridge so that my husband and I can take them to our respective jobs and eat them for lunch. (I use the word "respective" loosely, as my current job totally blows.) Reheating that chicken in an oven is obviously impossible at work, so its either eat the chicken cold, or microwave it. Either way makes the chicken harder to eat, so I've started marinating the shite out of all the chicken before I cook it. Remember what a marinade does? It starts breaking down the fibers of the meat before you cook it so that you get a more tender product. Its like sending Mr. T in to give your meat a good, eight hour talking-to before you put it on the grill. But I don't always feel like mixing up a marinade from scratch (I've got to save my energy for more important things like cocktail hour and writing this blog... the two sometimes happen simultaneously), and that's where this awesome product comes in.

1888 Premium Olive Press is this killer dirty martini mixer that is the very first of its kind. (Google it and order some pronto! Or, if you live in Texas, you can find it at your liquor store.) Seriously, no one else has ever thought of this, and that's just crazy: its made by pressing whole olives in a giant gazillion-pound press, taking the olive juice and bottling it. This happens to make a dangerously good dirty martini because your cocktail ends up tasting like olives, not ocean water. It also makes a bad ass marinade. I have been pouring 1888 over chicken breasts, salting them, and letting them sit overnight before I roast them in the oven. This way, not only is the chicken super tender when it comes out of the oven, but it stays super tender when I eat it cold or reheat it in the microwave. It only flavors the chicken lightly, which I like, because a lot of marinades are BBQ or smokey flavored, and I'm not always in the mood for that.

As advanced as the culinary arts have become, its funny that there are still only two ways to tenderize meat. You either marinate it, or beat the crap out of it. For real, those are your two options. Even on an angry day, I'm much happier to pour a bottle of olive juice on my chicken than start a fight with it. (And then I can enjoy a martini at the same time. Score!)

Tricia's Top Five Reasons Why Showgirls is the Best Movie of All Time

2010-07-06T19:18:00.000-05:00

Okay, not really. I'm writing about cooking stuff, I just thought I'd change it up a bit to give my google searches some variety and to try and expand my fan base. I do think Showgirls is an awesome movie, by the way. It makes me laugh for the entire 2 hours.

Dear Tricia, What would your top 5 kitchen utensils or items be? Why? Any specific brand(s)?

Top 5 is the perfect number for you to ask for because once you start getting up to 10, the kitchen tool junkie in me starts to show her true colors. For real, you should have seen me when I opened up some of my wedding gifts. "A citrus reamer?? I've always wanted one of these!!" I don't know if my husband was ready to see that side of me. Alright, this was tough, but here goes.

1. As far as knives go, you don't need an entire fancy set. Let's be real- you're never going to use all of them and you probably don't need extra crap on your counter top. So a chef's knife is most important. A chef's knife is a large (usually between 8-10 inches), all purpose knife with a straight blade (as opposed to a serrated blade... you know, those zig zag-shaped blades that you use to slice bread with and it hurts extra bad when you cut yourself? Um, hypothetically speaking, of course.) that is used for any chopping, dicing, slicing, etc. I prefer my Global knife because it comes in two sizes and the smaller one fits my hand better. Its also really light and easy to sharpen. (Knives are a whole other blog. Read that one here.)

2. A paring knife. That's the tiny knife with the tiny handle and straight blade that is used to slice really small stuff and cut fruit with. I use my paring knife for little things like picking lemon seeds out of lemons and other random tasks that don't even involve cutting. I prefer a Shun paring knife because it has something like 14 types of steel in the blade, and again, really easy to sharpen. I've had my knives for years and don't plan on getting new ones anytime in the near future. Both of my knives are Japanese... leave it up to those guys to make as awesome of knives as they do cars. Driving around in my Honda and using my Japanese knives makes me feel like I'm representing my Japanese homies pretty well.

3. Tongs are basically an extension of your hand. They're completely awesome and they're probably every one's favorite utensil in professional kitchens. I used to carry mine in my back pocket. Tongs are used to grab hot stuff, flip it over in a pan, take hot pans out of the oven, grilling, and can be used anytime you don't have a hot pad or a towel. Instead of using a spatula to move stuff around in a pan, they give you more control to grab things and move them where you want- you gotta show that food who's boss, and tongs will help you do it. I'm not brand specific when it comes to tongs, they just need to be sturdy ones that aren't too big to handle comfortably, and they need to be all metal so that they don't melt when you're handling said hot stuff.

4. A heat-safe, rubber spatula. I make a lot of eggs (and coincidentally, most of my blog questions happen to be about eggs), and a rubber spatula is the best thing to cook them with. When you're scrambling eggs, or making them over-easy, or whatever, a rubber spatula keeps everything from sticking to the pan and because its flexible, gives you more control. A plastic spatula is a disaster. I hate them. Also, you need a heat safe spatula so that, duh, it doesn't melt in high temperatures. Nothing says unappetizing like melted plastic in your food. Restaurant supply stores sell my favorite ones (they're always white with a red handle), but if you're not near one, Williams Sonoma and Sur La Table sell Le Crueset ones that are really sturdy. (And they always come in pastel colors around Easter. Bonus!) Don't buy the Cuisinart ones: I accidentally ate a splinter that came out of the handle of one of those. Unpleasant doesn't even begin to describe the cat-hacking-up-a-hairball-like noises I made during that experience. It wasn't cute.

5. A good non- stick pan for cooking omelets. (Wanna know if its spelled "omelet" or "omelette?" Click here.) I make omelets ALL THE DING DANG TIME. And to get an omelet to flip without sticking, I've found that a non stick pan with no scratches is completely necessary, especially if you don't cook a lot. In order to keep it scratch free, don't wash it with a metal scrubber or use any metal utensils in it. A non-stick pan is also great for making good eggs over easy. One blog reader on my facebook fan page specifically calls this pan her "egg pan." I call mine James.

I feel like I'm neglecting to mention all of my favorite baking tools: my Kitchen-Aid mixer, my mini offset spatula, and my squeezy citrus juicer. The blender is also super helpful. And that food processor that I'm saving up for is going to be awesome. And my French press coffee maker. And my Blu Ray player so that I can watch Showgirls...

Fourth of July= Pie and Blowing Things Up

2010-07-02T15:14:00.000-05:00

I have to make some peach pies on Sunday for my family, and for those of you who are into some good ol' American pie for the 4th of July, I wanted to repost my vodka pie crust blog titled "American Pie and Vodka, and no I'm not Talking about Tara Reid." The crust is the most flaky, amazetastic pie dough you'll ever use, and yes, it uses vodka. I've heard that when you get it just right, rainbows spontaneously occur, and unicorns magically appear in your backyard.

Dear Tricia, I'm told my pie crusts are pretty good. But I ran into a recipe that calls for vodka! I know the alcohol would bake out, but why in the world would I even want to add it? (And if I was going to pick a booze to add, it would be tequila....)

Sometimes when I think I'm too much of a bad ass in the kitchen (or just too good at pretending like I am), I get an email like this that makes me think, "Wow. I really don't know!" So this was a fun one to research.
It turns out I'm not that behind on my baking skills, as this is a recipe that Cooks Illustrated (For those of you that aren't familiar, Cooks Illustrated is sort of like an awesome science magazine for recipes... everything is fool-proof and it never features Rachael Ray!) just developed last year that had most bakers scratching their heads. They suggested that you take half of the water in the pie crust recipe and substitute it with vodka. So, if your recipe calls for 1 cup of water, use 1/2 cup of water and 1/2 cup of vodka. "But why in the world would you want to waste good vodka?", you ask. If you'd rather have a martini than a glorious flaky apple pie, then get out of the kitchen and go ahead and get back on Facebook. But if you're willing to donate the martini to the pie crust, then this recipe guarantees the flakiest pie crust you'll ever taste. Here's why:

1. Gluten doesn't form in alcohol:
What the hell is gluten? Well, if you're a loyal reader, you should know this. But if not (shame on you!), here's a brief overview: if you've over-worked your pie dough and then try to roll it out, its super hard to get it to roll without it springing back like a piece of elastic. That's because it has a lot of gluten in it. As a visual, pretend that water and flour are like... thanksgiving. And too much thanksgiving = elastic pants.
When you mix water and flour together and keep stirring/kneading/over-all-messing-with it, gluten forms. Gluten is a natural protein that makes baked goodies like bread chewy. But when you're making pie dough, you don't want a lot of gluten to show up at the pie crust party because it makes the crust end up chewy and tough. This can be avoided by not over-working the pie dough. You simply mix the water/butter/flour together until it just forms a ball and then refrigerate it. It's also a lot easier to roll out that way. But as an added bonus (I feel like I'm channelling Billy Mayes here), gluten won't form in alcohol. It's like magic! For some strange reason, gluten just hates alcohol and stays far far away.

2. The alcohol evaporates in the oven:
Lets play pretend again. Pretend you have a really soggy and wet pie dough that you put in the oven to bake. What you're going to take out of the oven in 45 minutes is a doughy, heavy, definitely-not-flaky pie crust. Not enough of the water evaporated out of the dough so it just stayed gross and soggy. But what alcohol does is evaporate completely in high heats. (The same thing happens when you cook with alcohol... you keep some of the flavor but the boozy stuff disappears.) So if you're taking half of your water and substituting it for alcohol, half of the liquid is guaranteed to evaporate, and some of the water will evaporate too. This makes a flaky, light pie crust.

So why use vodka and not some other delicious liquor? Vodka is the most odorless, tasteless alcohol, so it leaves a classic pie crust flavor without any other interference. But if you prefer tequila (or bourbon, like myself. Helloooo Woodford Reserve), why not use it? Have a little nip for yourself and then try it out and let me know what happens. Any other liquor will have more sugar, which means your crust might possibly brown more, but keep a good eye on it while its baking and use some foil to cover the top if it happens to get too dark.
Another helpful hint I learned from researching this recipe is that the dough can be a little more wet and difficult to work with, so try rolling the dough out in between pieces of wax paper or parchment paper to avoid bigger mess to clean up later. But if you're sampling the tequila while baking, a mess might be unavoidable anyway. And I support that.

Here's the recipe:

2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon table salt
2 tablespoons sugar
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/4-inch slices
1/2 cup cold vegetable shortening, cut into 4 pieces
1/4 cup cold vodka
1/4 cup cold water

Procedure
1. Process 1 1/2 cups flour, salt, and sugar in food processor until combined, about 2 one-second pulses. Add butter and shortening and process until homogeneous dough just starts to collect in uneven clumps, about 15 seconds (dough will resemble cottage cheese curds and there should be no uncoated flour). Scrape bowl with rubber spatula and redistribute dough evenly around processor blade. Add remaining cup flour and pulse until mixture is evenly distributed around bowl and mass of dough has been broken up, 4 to 6 quick pulses. Empty mixture into medium bowl.

2. Sprinkle vodka and water over mixture. With rubber spatula, use folding motion to mix, pressing down on dough until dough is slightly tacky and sticks together. Divide dough into two even balls and flatten each into 4-inch disk. Wrap each in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 45 minutes or up to 2 days.

For similar blog entries, check out my archives under the titles, "Rootin' Tootin' Gluten" and "Whoever made up the phrase "Easy as Pie" was a Big Fat Liar."

Last One is a Rotten Egg!

2010-06-21T16:33:00.000-05:00

Dear Tricia, Last month I bought 2 -18 count organic eggs around 6pm, put them in my trunk, came home, parked in my garage and forgot they were there… 2 hours later (ugh!!) I remembered and put them in my fridge. I ended up throwing them away, but hated doing it…would you think they’d be good still? I’ve heard that cooking with room temperature eggs is better anyway…how long is “room temperature” before you start letting it rot? Hate wasting food, but hate getting “wasted” more.

Good question! I understand your hatred for wasting food and money. Like I always say, nobody likes a waster. But unfortunately, I have news for you that puts you in the waster category. At 2 hours, your eggs were just fine. Insert sad face here.
What's funny to me about Americans (not that I'm not American, but I just notice that Americans seem to be especially concerned about refrigerating EVERYTHING) and their refrigeration habits, is that they think that anything left out at room temperature is going to go bad immediately. I know people who request ice to pack their groceries in for the 20 minute ride home, which seems a little ridiculous. Let's not forget that produce grows outside in the hot sun, and that eggs come from warm chicken lady holes.
In Europe, you'll usually find eggs at the grocery store out at room temperature, far away from the refrigerators. Their system of putting expiration dates on eggs is based on when the egg was laid, not when it left the farm like it is here in the States. So their guidelines on refrigeration are obviously different than ours, but you don't seen some crazy Egg Plague taking over Europe either. I've also seen eggs out at room temperature in Grenada, part of the British West Indies. I ate them and I was fine. No Egg Plague for me, I've avoided Salmonella, and have only gotten food poisoning from calamari and bad hockey arena food. (Ugh. Never again.)
"But what about eggs giving me Salmonella, Tricia?" Here's the deal with Salmonella: you don't get it from eating undercooked or spoiled eggs. A chicken has to already have Salmonella in their body in order to get Salmonella into the egg. It happens before the egg leaves their body, and before the egg even has a shell around it. And even then, if you boiled the egg, you'd cook the Salmonella right out of it. It's not like an automatic thing that magically happens if you leave an egg out and then it just gets Salmonella. That would be some form of crazy ninja bacteria that doesn't exist yet. But ideally, that's why you're not supposed to eat raw eggs. And people are usually good about that until it comes to eating raw cookie dough. Then it doesn't seem to matter anymore, does it?
Here's my humble opinion... that's why you're here, right? According to the Egg Safety Center (eggsafety.org), you can only leave eggs out for 2 hours at room temperature before they are unsafe. And frankly I think that's a load of crap. A humongous pile of steaming crap, covered in Salmonella. Especially because the health department and food safety books will tell you that you have a 4 hour window. There's no set standard, just a lot of overly cautious, super litigious people who are afraid you might get sick and then sue them. Do you want to avoid eating room temperature eggs if you're like 98 years old with pneumonia, or you have the immune system of an AIDS patient? Probably. But for most of us... its fine. Every bakery and restaurant I've ever worked in leaves eggs out at room temperature all day. I've written about this before when I talked about how room temperature eggs are best used in baking. And you were just fine after you ate that delicious piece of Red Velvet cake that I baked.
Now would you use those eggs to make cookies if you cracked them open and they smelled rotten? No, of course not. You always want to use your best judgment when it comes to food safety, and you can read more about that here. So remember to use your eyes, nose, and brain. And when you go to Italy and eat that fritatta at breakfast that is oh-so-delicioso... just remember that those eggs didn't ever see a refrigerator.

When Vegetables Attack!

2010-06-14T11:23:00.000-05:00

Dear Tricia, I need to find a way to use up everything when I buy a lot of veggies.

I got this question on my Facebook fan page (thanks, Erin) when I opened up a little conversation about vegetables. And its a good one, because no one likes to throw food away, unless you're a waster... and no one likes a waster. On a side note, I can totally relate to this because when I lived in San Francisco, I used to go the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market every Saturday and come home with a bag full of random produce that I had no intention of cooking within a week. It all just looked too pretty not to buy. Some people splurge on shoes, I splurge on pretty vegetables.
When I need to use up random veggies, (which never happens anymore, because feeding my husband is like feeding a 14 year old, garbage disposal stomach of a boy) I always make them into an easy enchilada casserole. I've written about this before too, when I was writing about how to eat your feelings without getting cellulite, but I'm happy to share it again. You'll need said excess veggies, a package of corn tortillas, two cans of enchilada sauce, a can of refried beans, and shredded cheddar cheese. (I like to use non fat for everything, but you can use whatever you want.)
To start off with, cut up your veggies into bite sized pieces. Steaming them without any gadgets is easy; just get a saute pan really hot (and seriously, wait until its really hot or this trick won't work), throw the veggies in there, pour in 1/2 cup of water and put a lid on it. When the water is completely evaporated, your veggies will be just about done. You don't want to crowd the pan and dump like 2 pounds of veggies in there because that's too much to cook at once. So do it in batches... just enough veggies to cover the bottom of the pan. When you're done, put all of your veggies together in a bowl.
Next, get a casserole dish ready. Put two tortillas in the bottom. Using a spatula or a knife, spread a healthy layer of refried beans on the tortillas. Then put a layer of vegetables on top. Pour about a 1/4 cup of enchilada sauce on the veggies. Repeat this until you've filled up the dish. You should use up the entire can of enchilada sauce. Once you've finished, put two last tortillas on top and pour the other can of sauce on them. Top it with a layer of shredded cheese and throw that sucker in the oven at 375 degrees for about 20 minutes. When its melted and gooey, its ready, and you can eat your feelings, not get cellulite, and use up your vegetables. Congratulations, you just killed 3 birds with one stone.
Bird murderer.

The Truth about Tilapia

2010-06-08T10:10:00.000-05:00

Dear Tricia, Talk to me about tilapia.

Talk to you about tilapia? Hmmm, should I tell you about that time it got in trouble in the 9th grade for selling history essays to jocks for $50 a pop? Or I could tell you about that one time it formed an all-girl group called the Hot Sundaes but got hooked on caffeine pills and ruined their chance at mainstream stardom. But you probably don't want to know that kind of stuff about tilapia. I'm guessing you want to know how to cook it. No problem.
Tilapia is a mild-tasting, white fish that lives in warm, shallow, fresh water. (Read: it doesn't come from the ocean.) Its super healthy for you because its high in protein, and low in carbs, fat and calories, unless its farm-raised. Farm raised tilapia is more commonly seen in grocery stores and its actually really high in fat. Try to avoid any farm raised fish if you can, especially tilapia. Its more expensive, but I believe that its completely worth it. Just my opinion.
Because tilapia filets are usually pretty small (you can only eat about 30% of the entire fish, which isn't much, compared to say tuna, where about 50% of the fish is edible), it cooks really quickly. And because its so mild-tasting, you can season it with whatever you want.
If you're on a health kick, the easiest way to cook tilapia is by preheating your oven to 400, putting it on a piece of foil to keep it from dripping, and seasoning it with anything you like: I like to go old school and just use Old Bay Seasoning. But look in your spice cabinet and use what sounds good... anything lemony or garlicky is awesome too. Put it in the oven and it only has to cook for about 8 minutes. (This may vary. If you preheated your oven like I told you to, it will be around 8 minutes. If you turned on your oven and then put the fish in right after then its obviously going to take longer. Le duh.) "But how will I know if its done, Tricia?" Its simple. The fish was kind of translucent when you put it in there, right? When the fish is solid white, then its done. If you're not sure, take a knife and open it up a little bit... the center should be white. And if its just about there, but not quite, you can go ahead and take it out of the oven because it will continue to cook another 5 degrees or so. (This is called "carry over cooking." It happens to every kind of meat when you take it out of the oven or off the stove.) Finish it off with a squeeze of lemon or lime and you're all set to go. Simple, and easy.
If you want to get a little fancier and aren't concerned about calories, try this:
1. Get about two tablespoons of butter ready, and chop up a clove of garlic. (The already chopped up stuff in the jar works fine too.)
2. Get a small bowl of milk ready and take your piece of tilapia and dip it in the milk. Make sure both sides get coated. Then sprinkle both sides with grated Parmesan cheese. Press down on the cheese lightly to make it stick on the fish. (If you don't like Parmesan cheese, you can use breadcrumbs. You can buy them already made at the grocery store, or click here to learn how to make your own.)
3. Put a saute pan on medium-high heat on your stove and let it get hot. (You can also do this while you're coating the fish.)
4. Melt the butter in the pan and put the garlic in there while its melting. Stir it around a little so that the garlic gets coated with butter.
5. When the butter is melted, put the Parmesan tilapia in the pan and let it cook for about a minute or two.
6. After a minute or two, use a spatula to turn the filet over to finish cooking. As soon as you turn it over, turn the heat down to medium. It should take another 2 minutes or so to finish cooking. Again, you'll know when it done when the fish is no longer translucent.

If its taking longer than this to cook, then you're not letting your pan get hot enough before you add the butter. The butter should make noise when you put it in the pan. Noise is good when you're cooking: it means something's happening in the pan. When you get good at that, you can start slamming pots around and slamming oven doors and dropping f-bombs and pretending like you're a professional chef. That's how it is in the real world.

On a side note, I would like to apologize for the month-long gap in my blogging. I got married in May and have been a little preoccupied. But I'm back from my honeymoon now and will get back to my regular writing. Thanks for reading! And don't forget to share your favorite blogs on Facebook and Twitter using the links on the right.

Easy, Cracker!

2010-05-07T08:51:00.001-05:00

So I'm going back to an oldie but a goodie again, but for two very good reasons that all happened yesterday. Yesterday morning while my fiance was making me some post-birthday hangover eggs, he asked me for help on how to crack an egg without getting shell in it. And then last night while I was up late obsessing over this cool new show called Future Food, I saw an infomercial for a product called the EZ Cracker. It's a little plastic contraption of sorts that cracks an egg for you without getting the shell in it. Here's what they claim:

EZ Cracker is the new and easy way to crack and separate eggs. It cracks eggs, separates egg whites, and strip shells from hard boiled eggs in just seconds. Now you can enjoy eggs without any mess or hassles. You no longer have to worry about tiny pieces of egg shells getting into your food.

Right, because I stay up late at night, losing sleep, worrying about tiny egg shells in my food.

One of the first questions I received when I started this blog, was "What's the proper way to crack an egg? I always get pieces of shell in mine." I'm going to rewrite that blog here so that you can learn how to crack an egg with your own two hands, like a big boy, without having to shell out $20 bucks (Pun Alert!) for a plastic piece of shit that sounds like its a large African American man, yelling at me. "Easy, cracker!!"

1. Use a FLAT surface to crack the egg. If you use the lip of a bowl or the corner of the counter top, the edge just causes more unnecessary breakage that create tiny broken pieces of shell. What you're trying to do is create one simple broken line so that you can put your thumbs in there and open up the egg. You don't want to smash the daylights out of it. Then you'll look like one of the stroke victims in the commercial who act like they only learned hand-eye coordination yesterday. So just tap the egg on a flat counter, and put your thumbs in the crack to open up the shell. Easy peasy.

2. Don't be an idiot and bang things against the egg like in the commercial. Seriously, don't. The "actor" (I wonder how much she got paid) was banging a fork against an egg and it cracked all over the place and made a mess. Its just you, the egg, and a counter top. Leave the foreign objects out of it. (And why a fork?? Why not something substantial, like a meat tenderizer or something?)

3. If you get shells in your egg, use a big piece of shell to get the little pieces out. I know, it tempting to stick your fingers in there and chase that piece of shell around for like 10 minutes because "I can grab it, just wait a second," but swallow your pride and use a piece of shell. It works the fastest, every time.

4. If you're baking something and you have to add eggs to a recipe, crack the eggs in their own bowl first. Then if there's any shell in it, you can pick them out first before you add them to your Aunt Tillie's morning glory muffins. If you try breaking an egg over the side of a bowl (that's your first mistake. I said to use a flat surface.) to add them right into your recipe mix, you're probably going to get shells in everything, especially if you're new at this whole cracking of the eggs dilemma. And then you'll be digging around the batter trying to find a piece of shell, when you could have followed my advice and cracked the eggs in their own bowl.

5. To peel boiled eggs, all you need to do is put those eggs in a bowl of ice water as soon as they're done cooking. I swear by this trick. Its called "shocking" the eggs. Let them chill in the water until cold and they'll take off their shells like they were on "Huevos Gone Wild."

6. To separate egg whites from the yolk, crack the egg on a flat surface. But then, when you break open the shell with your thumbs, keep the egg in the biggest of the two shell halves. If you tip the shell and jiggle it around a little, the white will pour off the side and leave the yolk in the shell. If that's too difficult, you can break the egg into a bowl, and then use one of the shell halves to scoop the yolk out.

** My Aunt read this entry and emailed me, reminding me that you can use your fingers to separate eggs. You can crack the egg into your hand, an let the white slip through your fingers while the yolk stays in your hand. While she's right, one of my mentors in a restaurant I worked at wouldn't let me do this. We saved all of our whites to make meringue and she insisted that the oil on our hands could interfere with how fluffy the eggs would whip up. Since her resume is WAY more impressive than mine, I've never been able to use my hands to separate eggs since.**

So, to sum up, you have to trust your own two hands here. If you create one simple crack in that egg, let your thumbs do the work and just pull the egg apart. You don't have to get violent. Because, as much as I love cool kitchen gadgets, I do not love unnecessary ones that waste your money. (Although I'm sure an arthritic old lady could benefit from an EZ Cracker, but she's in a very small minority.) I'm sure you could use that $20 for something much better, even if you really want the Bacon Wave that comes as a free bonus gift. Call me old fashioned, but we got along fine without it until now (and the Bump It... and the iPad...), so I think you'll survive if you just learn how to break eggs with your own two hands like a real man. Or woman. And I'm looking at you, Rachael Ray.

Quick Update for Everyone!

2010-04-30T11:47:00.000-05:00

Hello my little pets,

Some of you have been asking me how everything is moving along with my book so I thought I'd give you a little update. Right now, my agent is still in the process of finding the right publisher, so I'm in this weird place where there's a lot of hurrying up and waiting. It gets a little frustrating, but I know that we will find the right fit and What the Bleep will soon move on to become something you can buy in a bookstore.
I apologize for the blog being a little slow lately. I'm less than a month away from getting married (to the most lovely, talented, and creative man I've ever known) so I've been a little preoccupied with wedding planning and traveling.
I also need your input, ideas, and questions! What the Bleep Happened to My Rump Roast? is, and will always be, an interactive blog. So if you like reading it, please keep sending in your dilemmas, but more importantly, share it with your friends. Sharing is caring, people! The more readers I have, the more questions I get. The more questions I can get, the more often I can write. And the more often I can write, the more blogs you get to read. And in the end, everyone wins! (Except for the cast of "The Hills." They'll never win at anything. Ever.)
You can click on the Facebook Share link on the right side of the your screen for every blog that you enjoy. And if you haven't already become a follower, what the hell are you waiting for? And I'm sure if you put my blog in your Facebook status for an hour or two, your cyber friends will enjoy reading it a lot more than reading that you just decided on Subway for lunch. So riveting.
As always, thanks for reading, for your support, and for helping me do what I love to do.

On Goat Cheese...

2010-04-19T11:31:00.000-05:00

Dear Tricia, Goat cheese might be my favorite out of all the cheeses...behind brie of course. Do you have any suggestions on ways to use it besides crumbling it on a salad?

Hell yes I do! I f-ing love goat cheese. And you're right... brie is superior, but that's another blog for another time. Lets talk goats.
For pasta: if you ever make a white cream sauce for pasta, or use one out of a packet (Hey, I don't judge), you can whisk in a handful of goat cheese into the sauce until it melts to give your sauce some extra oomph. So good. If you've never made a cream sauce from scratch, I found a simple one for "alfredo sauce" (its not really alfredo sauce but its still good) that cheats and uses cream cheese.

1/2 cup butter
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese
1 teaspoons garlic powder
2 cups milk
6 ounces crumbled goat cheese
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper

Directions:
Melt butter in a medium, non-stick saucepan over medium heat. Add cream cheese and garlic powder, stirring with wire whisk until smooth. Add milk, a little at a time, whisking to smooth out lumps. Stir in goat cheese and pepper. Remove from heat when sauce reaches desired consistency. Sauce will thicken rapidly, thin with milk if cooked too long. Toss with hot pasta to serve.

You can also cook chicken breasts with goat cheese stuffed in the middle of them. All you have to do is take a seasoned, raw, boneless chicken breast (with or without skin. That depends on your own preference.), lay it flat, and cut a little pocket into the side of it. Try to keep one side open and one side closed. Take your goat cheese and stuff it into the middle of the chicken. Cook your chicken in a skillet on both sides for about 3 minutes and then finish it off in a 400 degree oven until its fully cooked- about 5-8 minutes. When you cut into the chicken, there will be ooey gooey melty goat cheese and its completely awesome.

For dessert: take your favorite cheesecake recipe and substitute half of the cream cheese for goat cheese. I know, this might seem weird but, trust me, its better than the first time you heard the New Kids on the Block sing "Please Don't Go Girl" in 1988. (Oh, that Joey McIntyre. His voice gets me every time.) When its finished and cool, drizzle it with honey and serve with some fruit. So freaking good.

For cocktail party hors d'oevres: take a package of goat cheese and mix it with a teaspoon of cinnamon and 1 tablespoon of honey. With the palms of your hands, roll the mixture in little balls and then roll them in chopped pecans. Chill and serve. Oooh la la.

Inversely, you can make savory version of those delectable little goat cheese balls (I hope you can come up with a more appetizing name, though. Let me know.) using black pepper, minced fresh chives, and any other yummy herbs. These are really versatile and you can use whatever you think sounds good at the time. Be careful with roasted red peppers though... if you mix everything up too much it turns pink. Which could actually be fitting if you're having a valentines day party (blech) or a baby shower for a baby girl (double blech.)

If you're reading this post and you hate goat cheese, I understand. It took me some time to like it too, but I have some advice for newbies: don't buy any goat cheese that says "aged" on the label. Look for words like "un-ripened," "fresh," and "young." These are the goat cheeses that taste more mellow and are easier to eat if you're new at it. But have some balls and give it a go sometime... It won't kill you. And when you love it, you can come back here and I'll say I told you so.

Hollandaise? Holla!

2010-04-15T11:27:00.000-05:00

I was talking brunch with some of my readers on my Facebook fan page (have you checked it out yet?), and got a request for a hollandaise sauce recipe. This is a bold undertaking, my pets. Hollandaise has a reputation for being really moody and unpredictable if its not handled right. Its pretty much the Mickey Rourke of sauces. But that's not going to stop me from taking this heavy hitting question and punching it in the face.
Having a good hollandaise recipe isn't as important as having good technique. How you handle the sauce is going to be what will make, or literally, break it. That's what so fussy about hollandaise- if its not made just right, it separates or "breaks," and turns into a gloppy, disgusting mess.
So, lets start with a recipe and I can elaborate from there. This is my favorite hollandaise recipe: I used it when I ran a hotel kitchen in Telluride and had to make hollandaise every morning. Every cook has their own method of making hollandaise (and of course they all think theirs is the best because they're usually arrogant butt heads), but my recipe eliminates half of the steps that you'd normally use and doesn't involve whisking in a bowl over a double boiler. Only pansies do that. And you're not a pansy, are you?

1/4 cup water
1/2 lemon, juiced
salt to taste
6 egg yolks
4 ounces clarified butter

First, lets talk about the clarified butter. Clarified butter is butter that has all of the milk solids and water cooked out of it- its just pure fat with nothing else to get in the way. In restaurant kitchens, there's usually a big batch of clarified butter made every few days and you can grab from that. At home, that's usually not the case. If you want to clarify your own butter, its not impossible. All you're really doing is melting butter in a pot, letting it simmer, and then skimming the white foam off the top. I looked up instructional videos on it, and the least obnoxious (everyone thinks they're a natural born cooking show host these days...) I've found is here. If you want to buy butter already clarified, you can find it next to the butter at the grocery store, sometimes called "ghee." Same thing.
Alright, so now that you've got your clarified butter, lets go.

1. In a small pan, melt the clarified butter. The goal is to have it ready and warm, but not screaming hot. This is why I melt the butter first so that it has time to cool off a little.
2. Separate the egg yolks from the whites (save those for an omelet) and have them ready in a bowl.
3. In a small pot, bring the water, salt, and lemon juice to a simmer over medium heat. As soon as it starts to bubble, turn the heat down to low and add the egg yolks. Here's where technique matters: whisk the daylights out of those eggs. The goal here is to whisk air into them to get them light and foamy. If you whisk too slow, the eggs will start to cook and will make the sauce gritty. Gross. So whisk whisk whisk! And when the color gets lighter and they start to look fluffy...
4. You can start adding the warm clarified butter very slowly. This is the second part of the recipe where technique matters. If you dump all of the butter in at once, you're just adding fat to more fat (yolks) and it won't emulsify. (What's emulsifying? Check out one of my older posts here.) So add the butter in a very small, slow stream, and keep whisking like a banshee. Once you've added all of the butter, your sauce will ideally be smooth with no lines of oil in it. Then you can add whatever seasonings you want: cayenne pepper, black pepper, Worcestershire, weed... whatever suits your fancy pants.

I know, I know... you tried making it and are wondering why it separated. Here's what you may have done wrong.
Temperature is so important when you emulsify. So remember that you have to turn the heat down to low when you add the eggs. Also, was the clarified butter too hot? If its too hot, the hollandaise will break as soon as you add it. (You weren't listening to me earlier, were you?) Also, did you add the clarified butter too fast? Slow down, buddy.
So now what? Did you break the sauce and want to cry because you wasted half a dozen eggs and all that clarified butter? Well, you don't have to toss it. Get a new bowl and put a couple of tablespoons of warm water in it. Then slowly add the broken hollandaise into the bowl of warm water while whisking it. That trick usually works for me, and one of my CIA instructors, Chef Pardus, always swore by that fix-it. He was a smart man. He also teased me a lot because I was always cutting my fingers open. Just make sure you add the hollandaise to the water, not the water to the hollandaise. Chef Pardus will be proud.

Yet Another Reason to Hate Baby Showers

2010-04-08T09:36:00.000-05:00

Dear Tricia, I have to go to a baby shower and we're all supposed to bring a "covered dish." What in the world does that mean? I don't have that kind of time, or any dishes with corresponding covers. Please help.

Ugh, lame. First of all whoever is planning said baby shower SUCKS as a hostess. Hostess-ing means you're supposed to do all the grunt work, not lay it on everyone else. Let me be the first to tell you that. And second of all, since your shower is obviously going to be awful (not that most baby showers don't suck to begin with), I think you should just buy a gift online and ship it to the mom/slave-to-be. She'll get her gift (which is all she wants anyway), and you're in the clear. Just an idea.

Alrighty, covered dish (church talk for "pot luck") ideas should be simple. Especially in your case since it sounds like you're super busy. I have a several options.

1. Deviled eggs. This might be too time consuming for you, but its a thought. Everyone loves deviled eggs. They're almost as awesome as Little Smokies. For reference, please visit an older blog I wrote about deviled eggs, "The Devil and His Eggs" (under "eggs" in the archives) where there's a basic recipe.

2. Spinach Artichoke Dip. Again, I've written about this when a distressed, busy young woman had a pot luck to go to. You can read that entry, "Is That a Salad, or Did You Just Fart" (under "pot luck" in the archives) and use that recipe if you want. Its super easy.

3. This one may be up for debate, but I'm pretty sure everyone and their mom loves some green bean casserole. And its a nice treat because nobody ever makes it after Thanksgiving. If you show up with green bean casserole, you're probably going to be the popular one at the baby shower. Here's the rookie version of the recipe:

Preheat oven to 350

2 cans of French-style green beans
1 can of Cream of Mushroom soup
3/4 cup of milk
2 cups of French fried onions
1 teaspoon of pepper

In a bowl, mix up the soup, milk, and pepper until all the lumps are gone.
Stir in 3/4 cups of the fried onions and all of the green beans.
Put in a casserole dish (or any oven safe dish or pan that will fit everything inside of it) and bake for 25 minutes
After 25 minutes, evenly cover the casserole with the remaining fried onions.
Bake for 5 more minutes and voila! Done. If you do it the night before, you can pop it in the oven for 15 minutes when you get there to reheat it.

If you don't have a corresponding lid for your dish, its no big deal- just cover it in foil.

Now, you might be wondering at this point, "Tricia, why not just bake some cookies or make a simple dessert?" You know why? Because that's what everyone else is going to do. That, or they'll bring cheese and crackers. If you bring green bean casserole it will be a welcome change from dairy and sugar city, population: you. And the never-ending "awwwww's" and "how cuuuuuute's" and decorations that look like pastels threw up all over the room are reason enough to give you a stomach ache- why make it worse with crap food?
I have spoken.

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

2010-03-31T10:34:00.000-05:00

Dear Tricia, Since you've mentioned a few of your favorite cookbooks here and there, it'd be cool to see a top 5 or top 10 list of your absolute favorite/can't-live-without cookbooks.

What a perfect idea! And how, because my other favorite thing to talk about, next to food, is myself. Well, that and the vast array of music trivia that I know for no good reason. (Did you know that Bret Michaels wrote "Every Rose Has its Thorn" in a laundromat in Dallas? Well now you do. You're welcome.)

1. On Food and Cooking- Harold McGee
I commonly refer to this one as my Bible. And, while it doesn't have recipes in it, it explains the history and science of everything thats involved in cooking and baking. Some of the content is kind of dry (Its my dream to re-write it someday in my own style. Ooh! I want to email my agent with that idea!) but it answers every question you've ever had about food by getting down to the science of it. And you can't argue with science. (You hear that, Fundamentalists?)

2. Chez Panisse Fruit- Alice Waters
This is both a cookbook and reference book for me. Alice Waters, founder of the famous Berkley restaurant Chez Panisse, wrote about every type of fruit- when its in season, how to pick the good stuff, the history behind it, etc. Then there's recipes to follow each subject. She has a book on vegetables too but I'm partial to this one for no good reason.

3. The Last Course- Claudia Fleming
When I first ventured into pastry, Claudia Fleming was still the pastry chef at Gramercy Tavern in New York City. She wrote a book of her signature recipes and its still my favorite dessert cookbook to this day. In 2002, I spent a weekend in Boston and was able to try some of her desserts, made by the woman herself, when she was the guest chef at Finale.

4. The New Professional Chef- The Culinary Institute of America
I have to pay homage to my alma mater here. This is, by no means, a progressive cookbook. But what it does offer, are old school, traditional recipes and instruction on every basic cooking method and ingredient, ever. Its huge. Seriously, its like 12 pounds. And it has recipes on everything from Beef Bourgignonne to Waldorf Salad.

5. Cheese Primer- Steven Jenkins
If you're interested in anything about cheese, this will be like porn to you. I love this book almost as much as I love my dog.

6. I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence- Amy Sedaris
I don't like this book for the recipes, I like it because its hilarious. It makes me laugh every time I open it. Amy Sedaris is my hero. She made a tiny tear-away 2007 calender for a friend of mine (Only one degree of separation between you and me, Amy!) one Christmas. It was 2009.

7. Barefoot Contessa's Back to Basics- Ina Garten
If I had to pick a cookbook written by a celebrity chef, this is the winner. Ina Garten's show on the Food Network, Barefoot Contessa, is like taking a Xanax with a martini chaser. Seriously, the film work is pretty sexy. Her recipes are ones that you can and actually want to make in your own kitchen, unlike a lot of celebrity chef- written cookbooks I've read, and even though a lot of them are French influenced, they're not overly complicated. Plus, she's not annoying as all get-out, unlike most celebrity chefs on the Food Network. (I'm looking at you, Rachael Ray and Giada De Laurentiis.)

8. Fanny Farmer Baking Book- Marion Cunningham
I considered leaving this one off the list just to avoid any other professional cooks making fun of me. Again, this isn't a book of progressive stuff, but sometimes you just don't need to reinvent the wheel, you know? This book has my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe and my favorite banana bread recipe. When I ran a hotel kitchen in Telluride, I used those two recipes every single day because those were the ones that I got the most requests for. Well, that and my peanut brittle... but that recipe is a secret.

So, that's my top 8. Again, a lot of these aren't cookbooks- they're reference books- but that's what I use most these days to keep the blog going. And its always good to try and learn about the food while you're cooking it. It cancels out all the damage from those Real Housewives of Orange County marathons.

Do the Mashed Potato!

2010-03-28T11:16:00.000-05:00

Dear Tricia, I love mashed potatoes and make them a lot, but sometimes they get really gluey and pasty. How do I make them fluffy all the time?

This is an easy fix. There's a few different things you can change to make your taters fluffy all the time, but first lets figure out if you're using the right potato.
Potatoes are divided into two basic categories: waxy and starchy. Starchy potatoes (like Russet potatoes) are super high in starch content and don't have a lot of moisture in them. That's why they are great for things like baked and mashed potatoes- they fall apart easily when they're cooked. On the other hand, that's exactly why you don't want to use them for things like potato salad- they'll fall apart when you start to mix everything and just turn into mashed potato salad, and that's gross and then you'll ruin the 4th of July. Waxy potatoes (like Yukon Gold or Red potatoes) are higher in moisture content and lower in starch. That means they hold their shape really well when they're cooked and are better for things like potato salad or scalloped potatoes, but they're terrible for mashing. So first and foremost, make sure you're using a starchy potato if you want to make mashed potatoes. By the way, did you know that there's no such thing as an "Idaho Potato?" But something like 98% of potatoes grown in Idaho are Russet potatoes, so that's what they're talking about if someone mentions these so-called "Idaho" potatoes. Now you can correct them. I like to act really smug when I do that.
Alright, so now that you're using the right potatoes, lets talk about how you're mashing them. And try to sit up straight while you're reading- your posture is bugging me. When you boil the potatoes, the little starch molecules inside the potatoes mix with water and swell up. When it comes time to mash them, you're basically breaking the wall of the little starch molecules, letting out the water, and making the potatoes more gluey. So the more you mash, the more gluey they get. This is why you NEVER want to mash potatoes in a mixer- it mixes them way too much and they get gluey in like seconds. Just remember- beating the crap out of potatoes gives you crappy potatoes. Simple, right?

You can do two things to mash them into fluffy success:

1. Use a potato masher. That's the funny, kind of swirly shaped metal tool with a handle on it. Its really basic, but it works. And remember, just mash the potatoes until you get most of the lumps out and then call it a day. Being an over achiever when you're mashing potatoes doesn't give you better results.

2. Buy a ricer. A ricer is a super cool tool that most kitchens I've worked in use to mash potatoes. The ones in kitchens are big and a little confusing to put together, but now you can buy smaller ones for your kitchen at home that are super simple to use. Its just like the Play-Do attachment that you used as a kid that made the long, skinny spaghetti shapes and it presses the cooked potatoes through small holes without overworking them. Then you can add your hot milk, butter, and all the extra fixings that make your mashed potatoes awesome, give it a quick stir and you're done. If you like having fun kitchen equipment, a ricer is a good one to have, especially if you make a lot of mashed potatoes.

Alright, so now what do you do if you made gluey mashed potatoes and you haven't read this blog yet? You don't have to trash the potatoes. If you've got the time, you can scoop the potatoes into little balls, dip them in beaten egg and breadcrumbs, and cook them in a pan of super hot oil. When they're brown, they're done... drain them on some newspaper and you've got potato croquettes instead. No one will ever know you messed up to begin with. There are some great potato croquette recipes online, especially on the Food Network's website because they're super basic. Happy mashing.

One of These Things is Not Like the Other

2010-03-23T08:55:00.000-05:00

Dear Tricia, What's the difference between a muffin and a cupcake? I tried to make muffins and the recipe stunk. The muffins had too many blueberries and it kinda sunk into the muffin pan.

I know... muffins and cupcakes go in the same little paper cups that go in the same little muffin pans and they look so alike too. Baking can be hard and those little guys are probably reveling in the fact that they're making it harder. Jerks.
But there's three major differences between the two and I'm happy to share those with you.

1. Cupcakes have more sugar in them- usually double the amount. They also have more fat (oil or butter... it depends on the recipe), though not always double.

2. The way you mix them in the recipe is usually different too. Muffins are pretty simple: you mix the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking soda, etc. The stuff that's not wet. Duh.) in one bowl and the wet ingredients (eggs, oil, water, etc. The stuff that's not dry. Unless you've had one too many bong hits, this should also be common sense, but no judgment.) in another bowl. Then you stir them up together just until they're mixed. It's really simple and fast, actually. That's why they're awesome for breakfast- you can have them mixed in the time it takes to brew a pot of coffee.
Cupcakes have a more complicated mixing method that is used in most cake recipes too. First, you have to cream the butter and the sugar together, then you slowly add the eggs, then you add the dry ingredients. It takes an electric mixer, and its more time consuming. In fact, I've wrote two separate blogs on how to master this method. (Why Butter and Eggs are the Slash and Axl of Baking is my favorite one.) Not all cupcakes use this method... but unless they come out of a box, a lot of them will.

3. Cupcakes usually have frosting. And while I'm totally supportive of eating one at every meal, you won't usually see them at the breakfast table.

The thing about putting heavy stuff in a batter is that its easy for it to sink to the bottom, especially if there's a lot of it, like in your recipe. Some recipes just aren't good recipes. And unfortunately, except for yours truly, there's no bad recipe police squad. But when it comes to adding extras, like chocolate chips in cookies, or nuts in banana bread, or berries in muffins... you can always change that to what you like. That's not the case for super important measurements for baking soda and salt and things like that, but for the rest of it... feel free to make your own rules.
Next time when you add the blueberries to your muffins, toss them in flour before you stir them in. This should help keep them afloat in the batter while your muffins are baking. (The protein in the flour helps make a little safety net around the blueberry that keeps it from sinking.)
If you ever have crappy muffins that have sunk, like yours did, you don't have to throw them away. Break them up in little pieces and eat them on top of yogurt and fruit. Serve it for brunch, calling it a "yogurt and muffin parfait" and you'll be so gourmet. Oooh la la...

Dreidel Dreidel Dreidel, I Made You Out of Egg...

2010-03-18T10:05:00.001-05:00

I got a voicemail from a friend the other day asking me if I knew how to tell a hard boiled egg from a raw egg without cracking the shell. He knew, and of course I knew (because I know everything and am the smartest woman alive), but he was with someone who didn't know. I was caught a little off guard by this. I posted a poll on my What the Bleep fan page on Facebook (Have you checked it out yet?) to find out who else knew... and everyone knew. I assumed it was this thing we all learned in 1st grade science, or maybe on 3-2-1 Contact! for those of you Gen X-ers, but apparently I was wrong. Some are still in the dark. Let me turn the light on for you.

When an egg is raw, the yolk and white are still in their liquid form. Obviously. You can shake the egg, roll it around the counter top, whatever... and the yolk and white will be able to move around inside of the shell. When you boil the egg, the white expands briefly before it finishes cooking and the cooked yolk stays put inside of the white. In their solid forms, they are stuck in place and can't move around.
If you stand a hard boiled egg up on its butt- the bigger end- and spin it like a top, it will spin for like ever. If you do the same to a raw egg, it will just wobble and fall over because the liquid insides are moving around and making the egg lose its balance. This is the trick. Just spin the egg like a top (or a dreidel, if you're Lexi) and see if it keeps spinning or if it falls. Simple as that. And if you didn't know this, I'd send an email to your school board and ask them why they never taught you the stuff you really needed to know in elementary science. Jerks.

And Oldie But Goodie for St. Patrick's Day

2010-03-17T09:44:00.000-05:00

In honor of the holiday where its socially acceptable to drink before noon, here's a blog from a couple of years ago to help get you in the Irish spirit... And yes, that's me in the hat and beard. I was most definitely in the spirit of St. Patty's when it was taken.

Dear Tricia, I am very proud of my irish heritage, but what kind of self-respecting Irishman doesn't know how to make corned beef? What makes corned beef corned? With St. Patrick's day only a few months away I'm
starting to freak out a little bit because my rigorous drinking schedule precludes me from much cooking. I can't just serve potatoes again this year! Help me out here.

Well, my Irish friend, I've found some helpful info for you. Let's get down to business. First of all, corned beef is usually a brisket (but sometimes a round roast... all hail the mighty rump roast!) that is pickled (or "cured") in a brine. A brine is a very salted, seasoned liquid. That's what they also do to bacon. So, the brisket gets soaked in the brine and then cooked. The Oxford dictionary defines "corn" as a small hard particle, a grain, as of sand or salt. So "corned" refers to the grains of salt used to cure it. Those pesky Brits; so pompous with their fancy pants vocabulary. You can also take the corned beef one step further and smoke it. That's what pastrami is. You almost always will buy corned beef already cooked so all you have to do is slice it and serve.
Wanna know the history of it? Too bad you don't have a choice: continue reading. When Irish immigrants came to New York, the lower east siders decided that they wanted a cured meat that was similar in taste and texture to their beloved Irish bacon. So they learned a cheaper alternative from their friendly Jewish neighbors and started using corned beef instead. (insert politically incorrect Jewish joke here.)
St. Patty's Day always happens during Lent, and if you were raised Catholic (like I was, which is why I'm the furthest thing from Catholic as an adult) you know that you're not allowed to eat meat on Fridays during Lent. However, if St. Patrick's Day falls on a Friday during Lent, some bishops will pardon your heathen ways. It's rare: the next St. Patrick's Day on a Friday during Lent won't happen for another 9 years. In the mean time, enjoy your corned beef and Irish Car Bombs and green shirts and pinching. If you can slice up a corned brisket and serve it as a sandwich, I think your party guests will be content. All they're looking for is a sponge for all their alcohol anyways, right?

Imposter Chocolate Chip Cookies!

2010-03-03T09:19:00.000-06:00

Dear Tricia, My dad makes AWESOME chocolate chip cookies. When I asked for the recipe he told me he used the recipe off the back of the Toll House bag. So I tried to make cookies at home and they didn’t taste right. The only thing I could come up with, is the he used “real” vanilla extract, and the only thing I had was “imitation” vanilla that I use to keep my cake icings white. Could the “imitation” be the flavor culprit?

Hmmm... they tasted different when you only changed one thing, so my first instinct is to say, yes, that's the culprit. That's just logical. But I can't write a one sentence blog, so lets take a quick class on vanilla, shall we?
Real vanilla extract comes from vanilla beans, which are grown in hot, humid areas ranging from Mexico all the way down to the West Indies and South America. Vanilla has been around since the 15th Century (well, I'm sure its been around longer, but that's when "we" discovered it) and is the second most expensive spice in the world, right behind saffron. Vanilla is so expensive because it takes so damn long for actual plants to grow. A vanilla plant will need 3 years just to be strong enough to grow the vanilla blossoms that will turn into vanilla pods. But remember 4th grade science and all that talk about pollination? Well the only insect that can successfully pollinate a vanilla blossom is one single type of bee that only lives in Mexico. And as I've already mentioned, vanilla grows in lots of places outside of Mexico. So guess who has to pollinate it? The growers. Vanilla has to be pollinated by hand within 12 hours of the blossoms opening. That's it. A 12 hour window or nothing else. After each blossom is painstakingly pollinated by human hands, it needs another 10 months just to grow the vanilla pods, which are what we use for baking. That's a pretty high maintenance plant. Super needy. (Ladies, when it comes to relationships, don't try to be too much like a vanilla plant. Positive results probably aren't in your favor.) But then it keeps going... after the pods are harvested, they have to be aged, dried, cured, "sweated", conditioned... it goes through a months-long process of being wrapped in fabrics and left in boxes and dipped in boiling water and all kinds of booby traps that help it develop its characteristic flavors. No wonder its so freaking expensive.
So, back to Imitation Vanilla. You know how every celebrity has a designer perfume? Like Paris Hilton, for example, will go on and on about how her perfume has components of grapefruit, musk, and vanilla, and cheap hooker in it? The designer imposter version of her perfume probably only has a limited number of those components in it. Most likely the cheap hooker one, since that's the most recognizable. Well vanilla has 171 identifiable aromatic components. (Imagine having the job that defines all those... crazy.) And imitation vanilla only has 1 of those components in it, Vanillin. And unfortunately, vanillin is produced as a by product of the paper industry. Gross. This is why the complexity of the real deal is so much more noticeable than the fake one. And possibly why your cookies taste different than your dads.
If you decide that real vanilla is something you want to include in your baking, you don't always have to use vanilla extract. You can also find ground vanilla pods (vanilla powder), vanilla sugar, or you can use the whole pods, which can get expensive.
The other thing I thought of... butter. In baking, you're usually supposed to use unsalted butter because salt is already going to be included somewhere else in the recipe. Find out if he's using salted butter, or maybe you are and didn't realize it. That could also affect the flavor. Let me know how it works out for you.

My Fudge is Taunting Me

2010-02-22T09:44:00.000-06:00

Dear Tricia, My fudge came out ooey-gooey. And what the hell is a "softball?"

Gross. Not because your fudge came out ooey-gooey, but because I hate fudge. And yours sounds awful. So lets fix that, pronto.
When you cook the sugar/water mixture for your fudge, you have to boil the sugar to a high enough temperature until the water evaporates out of it to make it set up and harden a little bit. If you don't cook it long enough, there's still too much water in the mix and it stays ooey gooey- hence, your dilemma. And then you're left with gross fudge and you have to send me emails and I'm sure you have better things to do.
The magical temperature that you're aiming for is 235 degrees Fahrenheit. This is called "softball" stage, but its name has nothing to do with the scary women who throw giant balls really fast for sport. Especially since these softballs are hot as all hell. It gets its name because if you drop some of the 235 degree sugar into a bowl of cold water, when it cools it will form a soft, mold able ball of sugar. If you kept cooking the sugar, it would continue on to "hardball" stage (nothing to do with that loud, yelling-all-the-time Chris Matthews) at 255 degrees, eventually to hard-crack stage at 300 (in the cold water it will harden enough so that you can break it), and then full-blown caramel at about 335 or so. But for fudge, you don't have to worry about most of that. You just have to get it up to 235 degrees.
Your problem thus far, is that you didn't cook the sugar long enough to get it to softball stage. The easiest way to do this is by buying a candy thermometer. You can get them at craft supply stores, some grocery stores, or an overpriced kitchen furnishing store like Williams Sonoma. Try the grocery store first and save yourself a few bucks. Candy thermometers are rad because they clip on to the side of your pan so you don't have to hold them, and they have all of the temperatures and stages (like softball) printed on them for easy reference. Seriously, they make cooking sugar so easy that you would be wasting your time to try and guess if sugar is at softball stage by putting it in a bowl of ice water. That's how they did it in the old-school days, so if you're progressive enough to be able to use the Internet, then you can be progressive enough to buy a $9 candy thermometer. Plus, the less you handle sugar, the less likely you'll be to get it on your skin, and that's no fun. 235 degrees is freaking hot. Let me make that mistake for you.
The other thing about working with cooked sugar is that it doesn't hold its temperature for very long. You have to work really fast with it while its still at softball stage. If you cook it to 235, and then you turn off the stove and go get the rest of your ingredients together to mix into it, the sugar is going to cool down and affect the potential for ooey gooey-ness. So, if you have to stir in milk or condensed milk, or whatever other ingredient to your softball stage sugar, be prepared and have it ready to go. And if you're a frequent reader, you should know that applies for anytime you're cooking or baking to begin with.
Back to my Real Housewives of Orange County marathon...

The Case of the Spooge-ing Cinnamon Rolls

2010-02-15T08:34:00.000-06:00

Dear Tricia, My cinnamon rolls keep pooping out all their goo and I can't figure out how to make this stop. I tried proofing the hell out of them after rolling them wicked tight, but when I baked them, the dough kinda withered and the filling just spooged out all over the pan. Any ideas?

This is going to be one of those questions that ends up in my 2nd or 3rd book. My agent told me she sees this blog published as a series, so I'm going to make one of the books focus more on the advanced questions that I sometimes get in my email box. Because seriously, most people don't make cinnamon rolls from scratch. So good on you for that.
There's a few things we can trouble shoot here. First of all, the part where you roll them wicked tight: that's gotta go. Let me back up though. Here's what's going on inside the dough:
Yeast is this little, magical, live being that eats and poops, just like everything else on the planet. After it eats sugar, its main source of food, it leaves behind carbon dioxide and water as a waste product. (Fancy term for poop.) And the carbon dioxide bubbles are what make the bread rise when you proof it (for all of you non-bakers, that's when you let the dough rise before you bake it). When you let proof the dough, the carbon dioxide bubbles are forming, and when you bake it, the bubbles expand.
This is where the rolling it wicked tight part doesn't work. When the dough is getting bigger in the oven, the yeast needs somewhere to grow and expand. And if you've rolled it really tight, there's nowhere to go but up. So then you've got a cinnamon roll with the center popping up and out, possibly causing all of the filling come out with it.
Proofing the hell out of the dough is also something that you might want to change. I'm going to quote my favorite reference book, Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking. Even though he's not the expert when it comes to baking bread, he is the expert at explaining food science and chemistry, so what he says goes. "When poked with a finger, fully fermented dough will retain the impression and will not spring back." What over-proofing bread (what you're doing) will look like is a wobbly water-balloon looking thing that, when you poke it, has the potential to just collapse. It probably already does that, since you said its withering. So if you proof the hell out them and then bake them, the heavy filling is likely going to climb out on top of the cinnamon roll simply because the dough is weak enough to let it. And no one likes weak, girly-man cinnamon rolls.
Last thing: what's your filling like? Does it have a ton of sugar in it and not much else? In baking, there are 2 categories of ingredients: liquifiers and stablizers. Things like flour and eggs are stablizers, and surprise! Sugar is a liquifier. So if your filling has brown sugar and corn syrup and powdered sugar and all kinds of other sugars in it, it just wants to make the filling thinner and goopier, and melt when it bakes and make a mess and get all over everything. That's fine and dandy, but it contributes to your filling spooging problem. I don't want to re-write your recipe- there's probably a very good reason why you use that filling- but it might need more stablizers in it, even if its just nuts and a little bit of egg white. So if you have the creative freedom to do so, make a thicker filling that stays put.
So, you're going to need to proof the dough less to give the dough more muscle to support the heavy filling, and roll it looser to give the dough somewhere to grow besides up. If these don't work, try messing around with the filling to make it thicker. And then let me know how it works out because the suspense is already killing me.
For more blogging on liquifiers and stablizers, check out my post, "Damn you, Cream Cheese Frosting!" Also, if you're on Facebook, check out the fan page for Chef Richard Coppedge, my breads instructor in school. He's super smart when it comes to anything involving yeast, and he can also do the splits. (While you're on there, don't forget to become a fan of my facebook page too.)

Things They Don't Teach You at the CIA

2010-02-08T09:20:00.001-06:00

While filing my taxes this morning (Fun!), I was looking through that big envelope of "important stuff" that I keep in my desk drawer. You know, we all have one of those envelopes or file cabinets of old tax returns, doctors stuff, college transcripts, passport, politically incorrect and very offensive handmade cards from your best friend... I found something I wrote while I was the executive chef at a gorgeous little boutique hotel in Telluride, Colorado. I was fresh out of culinary school when I wrote this (well, it had been a year... I was stale out of school?) and after working my first important job in the food industry, learned a whole lot to say the least.

Things They Don't Teach You at the Culinary Institute of America

1. You can never judge a book by its cover. Sometimes the best employee is tattooed, pierced, and looks all together tore up. Its the most innocent looking ones that turn out to be the crackheads. (Yeah, you'd just assume that when they go out for a "smoke break," its for a cigarette, but you could be wrong.)

2. Be kind to your maintenance man. He will save your ass when your freezer breaks down in the middle of a holiday weekend.

3. Learn how to fix your major appliances: dishwashers and refrigerators especially! This saves oodles of money and stress because, again, they will always break down in the middle of a holiday weekend.

4. If you're looking to hire someone who's detail oriented, don't hire someone with typos on their resume.

5. Write ups and documenting your employees may seem to be a stupid concept and very annoying, but its so helpful when firing some one's snotty, insubordinate ass.

6. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Especially on a resume.

7. Always lead by example.

8. Don't get drunk with your employees.

9. If you have to work extra hours instead of hiring half-assed help, just deal with it. Its better to get things done right than sit around on your day off, worrying about what's going on at work.

10. Get a good night's sleep before a busy day. If you're out partying the night before and come to work with a hangover, you may feel like shit but trust me... you look worse than you feel. And everyone else has to look at you. Cut them a break already.

11. Drug tests are crap. Some employees are just more pleasant to be around when they're stoned.

12. When you're the new boss, start out as a Nazi and slowly work your way into being the nice guy. If you do this inversely, you won't get taken seriously when its time to be a Nazi.

13. Work every position or station in your kitchen. This gives you a good idea of how long it should take to finish every task. Then you've got a better picture of your labor costs and who's not cutting it.

14. Keep your kitchen spotless. A good health inspection will give you just as much pride as putting out a good plate.

15. Be kind to your vendors, reps, and neighbors. What you put out will certainly come back to you.

16. That smell? Its the grease trap. Make sure it is maintained regularly so that it doesn't overflow during the middle of a holiday weekend, when everything else will break down. And be nice to the grease trap cleaning guy. His job sucks.

17. Don't hire someone just because they're cute, no matter how sexually frustrated you are, or how tight their ass is.

18. Bribes are and will probably always be effective for getting what you want.

19. Leave work at work. No one wants to hear you complain about your day over cocktails.

20. You will never use 95% of what you learn at the CIA.

When Did Salt get So Confusing?

2010-01-30T15:11:00.001-06:00

Dear Tricia, What's the difference between regular iodized table salt, kosher salt, and sea salt? Is one better than the other?

Salt has become this thing in the culinary world that, all of a sudden, went from being a really boring and every day ingredient to this gourmet item that you have 3 million options to choose from at the grocery store. Its insane. I partially blame the Food Network, but I know its not only their doing.
First off, all salt is the same chemical makeup, sodium chloride, or NaCl on the good old periodic table of elements. No matter where you go on the planet, and how much you're paying for that gourmet salt that was harvested from magic waterfalls by Aboriginal midgets in Croatia, it all looks the same under a microscope: perfectly square molecules made up of sodium and chloride.
Table salt is what most of us probably grew up with: the blue container of Morton's with the little girl holding the umbrella on it. Table salt is harvested from underground mineral deposits. It is heavily refined into small, fine grains, and has an anti-caking agent added to it so that it doesn't clump together. It also usually has iodine added to it, which is a necessary mineral to keep you from being retarded. (Hey, I didn't make that up: google it. Go on. Do it. See?) Because of the need for iodine in our diets and a huge population of people who are deficient in it, iodine was added to salt to sneak it in to our diets and prevent the R-word. The same goes for enriched flour, but that's another blog for another time.
Kosher salt is harvested from underground mineral deposits or from the sea, and doesn't have any additives. The biggest difference between table salt and kosher salt is clearly visible, unless you need to go back to eyeball school: kosher salt is super coarsely ground so that the grains are much bigger. Its name isn't because its kosher (all salt is kosher, by the way), but because its the salt used in koshering meats, or drawing the blood out of them. Vampire salt.
Sea salt is harvested by evaporating sea water. Duh. It also is usually more expensive than kosher or table salt because its more labor-intensive to harvest, and it can be fine or coarse grain. Its just as refined as table salt and can contain additives, so if you're looking for something additive free, make sure you read the label.
Okay, now here's the big question: what's the real difference between them? Is one saltier or better than the other? Well consider a spoon full of table salt and a spoon full of kosher salt. The spoon full of table salt is going to taste saltier simply because you can fit more grains of salt in it. By weight, that spoon of table salt is going to be heavier than the coarsely ground kosher salt. What that means for cooking is that if the a recipe calls for a teaspoon of table salt and you want to use kosher, you're going to need roughly two teaspoons to get the same flavor. In reverse, if a recipe calls for a teaspoon of kosher salt and all you have is table salt, use half a teaspoon. The same rule can apply for sea salt, depending on how coarse the grain is. In every kitchen I've ever worked in, we've used kosher salt. Its pretty universal in the restaurant world.
I posted a question on my What the Bleep facebook fan page (have you checked it out yet?), "Do you have a salt preference?" Some of the replies I got... Hawaiian, Fleur de Sel, Cypress Flake... I wasn't sure if they were types of salt or types of weed. But depending on which region you get certain salts from, the ocean water has different mineral contents that affect the color and flavor of the salt. In a blind taste test where you're tasting the salt by itself, you might notice some differences in flavor. But are you going to be able to taste it once its on the food? Probably not. And unless you have a wad of cash burning a hole in your pocket, I wouldn't worry about spending a lot of money on gourmet salt in hopes that its going to change your cooking. You'll have much better luck in doing that by reading my blogs. Then you can just give that wad of cash to me.

Silicone and Cindy Crawford: How it Relates to Your Tart

2010-01-20T09:16:00.000-06:00

Dear Tricia, I've recently acquired a silicone dish for baking pies, tarts, cheesecakes, etc. I must say, it works pretty well, but I've noticed a big difference concerning the crustiness of some of the things I bake. For example: I like to make a kind of salty tart out of a crust (pâte brisée), tomatoes, mozzarella and dijon mustard. With the tomatoes, you can imagine that I have a hard time keeping the "wateriness" to a minimum. When I use the silicone dish, the tart comes out pretty darn watery, but with a glass or metal dish, the water seems to disappear! The question is this really: What is the real difference between silicone dishes and normal baking apparatuses (I know that's latin based, so it's gotta be apparati or something stupid like that)? Are the pros and cons for each one aside the obvious "crustiness" that comes from using normal baking dishes?

Ooooh, I love this one. Mostly, because it involves physics and I'm always trying to up my game in that department. After much research, I couldn't find the information I needed in relation to baking dishes, so I emailed my favorite chef, Peter Greweling, who is my mentor, my former instructor, and author of Chocolates & Confections, and the recently released Chocolates and Confections at Home. He also loves martinis, so we share that priceless connection.
A baking dish basically serves two purposes: to hold the batter or dough, and to transfer heat from the oven to the product inside of the baking dish. When its transferring heat, that's called "conducting." Lets talk about conducting heat: remember that topic in elementary school? Everything conducts heat. Good heat conductors are metals: think aluminum foil, iron, steel... things that baking dishes are often made out of. Glass? Eh... its okay. Silicone? Not awesome. Imagine holding a two cups of super hot coffee, one is made out of aluminum, and one made out of silicone. Which one is going to burn your hand faster? The aluminum one, because it conducts heat better, or transfers the heat to you faster.
Lets apply that to baking dishes. An aluminum or steel tart pan is going to take the heat from the oven and transfer it to the tart dough super fast. That, in turn will caramelize the sugars in the dough really well, brown the proteins in the flour like a champ, and give you a brown and crusty finish. Because your silicone baking pan, though convenient to use (we'll get to that in a minute), doesn't conduct heat very well, its going to give you a less crusty and lighter colored tart if you baked it at the same temperature. The same idea applies to the watery tomatoes inside the tart. The heat is being transfered throughout the entire product and the idea is to make the water in the tomatoes evaporate, but if its not getting enough heat to do that, the water will just hang out and create a sog party. Gross.
Silicone baking dishes are a newer revolution in the baking world. For gazillions of years, we've been baking things in metal pans. But this new idea of silicone pans is great because they're flexible and things don't stick to them, so you can literally peel the cake pan off a cake without having to bang it on the counter top to get it out. Tart pans are notorious for being little assholes. You put all that work into your gorgeous tomato tart creation, but if the crust sticks to the sides of the pan, it breaks and cracks and disappoints everyone and ruins dinner. So I get why silicone tart pans are ideal. It may give us cancer 50 years down the road and we end up with PVC pipes as intestines, but oh well... it's FDA approved and they know everything about everything, right?
So, back to your dilemma. All you really need to do is turn up the temperature of your oven to create more heat. If the recipe says 375 degrees, go up to 425 and see how it does. If the tart fillings start to dry up too much, put a piece of foil over them to keep them covered until the crust is finished... or you could just turn the oven down a little at that point: whatever works for you.
Lets summarize today's physics lesson. Metal baking dishes are like the Cindy Crawford of baking dishes: if heat was makeup, she don't require a lot of it to be smoking hot. Silicone baking dishes are like Sarah, Plain and Tall: sure, she's practical and efficient, but she needs a hell of a lot more makeup to get to Cindy Crawford's level, doesn't she?

Uncle Sam Wants You to Vote for Me!

2010-01-18T20:40:00.000-06:00

In hopes of expanding my blog networking skills, I'm entered in this month's pin up photo contest on www.pinuplifestyle.com. Got a few seconds? Do you think I'm totally adorable? Go check it out and vote for my photo so that I can win some cute aprons. :) New blog post coming in the next couple of days!

Here's the address for the voting: http://wildfireapp.com/website/6/contests/17010/voteable_entries

Dude, Your Crock Pot Reeks

2010-01-12T20:03:00.000-06:00

I received a great email question, and because of the time crunch, I emailed it back before I posted a blog. Here's a copy of the email exchange.

Dear Tricia, I have a question for you, but you are probably not going to get to it in time, but I thought I'd give it a try. I bought a roast late last week (Friday the 8th) and this morning finally put it in the crockpot. The sell by date on it was Jan 11th. (Yesterday) It had some brown parts on it, and it had a little bit of a funny smell. As it's cooking, I can smell that funny smell a bit still. It's only been cooking about 1 hour. I'm not sure if it's unsafe to eat or not. What I had planned to do was cook it til it was very easy to shred. Then I drain out the juices and fat and shred it and then add some salsa and seasonings and have the meat in tacos. What would you do?

Thanks so much for reading. I'm going to just answer your email first instead of posting it on the blog since I'm short on time for writing this week and since your situation seems to be kind of pressing. No one loves food poisoning. But if the sell by date is January 11, that usually means you have a couple of days to eat it before it's spoiled, otherwise it would say "use by." This is a liability thing for grocery stores and it just clears them if you happened to get sick and tried to blame it on the butcher. Brown spots are fine: that's just oxygen settling into the beef and changing the color, or "oxodizing." It's ugly, but its not unsafe. However, if you think it smelled bad, go with your gut. The best call for bad food is a judgment call, and that involves using your nose, eyes, and brain. You can also call the meat department at the store you bought it from and ask them how many days after the sell-by date you can cook it. They might have a better idea than me. But again, if its smelling bad... better safe than sorry. Or you can just go ahead and make your delicious tacos, give them to your arch nemesis, and see if they get explosive food poisoning. I'd love to hear the results about that one.
In the mean time, feel free to check out my blog entry on leftovers in the archives, "On Top of Spaghetti, All Covered in Mold." It gives you some more specifics on certain types of leftovers' shelf lives and I also bash the health department a little bit. God I love doing that, especially on a bad day.

Its a Nice Day for a White Wedding Cake

2010-01-08T17:38:00.001-06:00

Dear Tricia, How can I make WHITE white cake? Can I bake with the yolks? Do I have to separate them?

I'm going to refer back to an older blog from last winter about how to get white butter frosting:

OK friend, easy answer. Your icing turned yellow because half the ingredients in your recipe are YELLOW. The only way to fix this is to use icing with no yellow ingredients, or perhaps one of the following:

1. Learn to breed albino cows that make white butter with their milk.
2. Use only egg whites, or even better... use the white shell too for extra whitening. Hell, throw in some whitening toothpaste while you're at it. And a dash of Oxy Clean!
3. Re-construct the color spectrum so that our eyes see yellow as white. I see this one as the most feasible option.

For real though, anytime you want white icing, you're going to have to use mostly shortening as the fat because it's white. Even with butter cream icing, and listen up brides because this is directed at you, you'll never get solid white frosting because butter cream has BUTTER in it. It is yellow. It is not white and it never will be. (Although I've seen some crazy mothers of brides get away with some crazy stuff... maybe one of them will figure out how to change the color spectrum.)

This question is along those same lines, but on a less-extreme level that I promise I will judge you much less for. I think I might have been having a bad day when i wrote that.
You can't get white cake that is truly white if you add a bunch of whole eggs because yolks are- you guessed it- yellow. So the goal here is to add as few yellow ingredients as possible, or a large amount of whipped egg whites to offset the color. Think of angel food cake and how virginal white it is: the main ingredients are sugar, egg whites, flour, which are all white. However, those ingredients don't make for a very sturdy cake... Angel food cake would be like the Michael Jackson of cakes: super frail and white. But if you're looking for a sturdier (isn't it weird that "sturdier" is a real word? I think its weird.) cake that is less squishy and more suitable for decorating, you're going to have to add a few extra ingredients that will also make it less white, like whole eggs or butter, and that's ok, as long as the white stuff is the main ingredient.
Here's a recipe for a basic white chiffon cake with the whole egg, but you separate the whites from the yolks and beat them separately. It involves a few more steps than your average cake recipe, but if you can master it, is a traditional cake recipe that you will be able to use forever. When I was in pastry school, this was the type of cake we used for our basic white wedding cakes. It does have a fair amount of butter, but because of all the egg whites you're using, it will still be pretty white. My favorite recipe is from the Fanny Farmer Baking Book, but I've made some modifications to it.

1- 10' Cake

2 1/4 cups cake flour*
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup vegetable oil
6 egg yolks
3/4 cup water
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
8 egg whites

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
1. Combine the flour, 3/4 cup of the sugar, baking powder, salt, and sift them together into a large mixing bowl.
2. Add the oil, egg yolks, water, and vanilla and beat until completely smooth.
3. In a separate large mixing bowl, beat the egg whites until they begin to foam. Slowly add the remaining 3/4 cup sugar and beat until the whites are stiff. **
4. Gently stir in 1/3 of the egg whites into the batter.
5. Drop the remaining whites on the batter and fold them in.
6. Pour into ungreased cake pan with parchment paper on the bottom.***

Bake until top is golden brown and the middle springs back when you press it with your finger. If you're using my oven, that's 25-30 minutes, but it could take way less in yours. Stop letting your oven timer rule your life and just check it every now and until for golden color and to test it with your finger.

*Refer to my "Hyper Hypo Loves Christmas Cookies" blog entry on why you should use cake flour instead of all purpose flour.
** Refer to my "Diana Ross, Daryl Hannah, and Your Meringue" blog entry on more tips for whipping super fluffy egg whites.
*** If you grease the pan, the batter won't have anything to grab on to as it rises. When its done, use a butter knife to loosen the cake from the sides of the pan and turn it upside down on a rack to cool.

What the Bleep's Guide to the Perfect Cocktail Party

2010-01-01T12:03:00.001-06:00

I'm sitting here, basking in a glorious day-after-hosting-a-perfect-cocktail-party glow. I LOVE to entertain. I love to bust out my mismatched platters and stock the bar and make finger foods. I also love little smokies, so any excuse to eat them is awesome. For me, entertaining comes easy, but I understand if its not easy for everyone. That's why I'm writing this guide for you. As long as you get creative and remember to have fun, you can also have the perfect cocktail party and help me bring them back into routine entertainment for our misguided generation.

1. LITTLE SMOKIES ARE BACK!
For your party food, make main 2 items and then serve a couple of snack platters. (Like a cheese plate or chips and salsa.) Making a huge variety of food is not necessary for a cocktail party: its not a dinner party. You only need basic accompaniments for your guests to munch on while they imbibe. And making too many items is going to stress you out at the last minute when you should be getting dressed. I know this for a fact when I had a total What the Bleep moment with curlers in my hair, profusely cussing out my stuffed rosemary potatoes and throwing things.
What to prepare... what to prepare... I know this sounds weird, but you can't go wrong with little smokies. I'm serious. Cocktail weenies in a basic sauce of ketchup and grape jelly served up in a crock pot is a total crowd pleaser. If you think it's white trash, then I'm here to tell you that I've officially dubbed it as being back in style and full of spunk. People will laugh and love it.
For your other main item, make little ham and gruyere puffs sandwiches... they're super easy and your guests will freak. Ina Garten, also known as The Barefoot Contessa, also known as my hero, can take all the credit for this recipe. Here's what to buy:
A package of puff pastry dough from the freezer department at the grocery store
A package of black forest ham sandwich meat.
Gruyere cheese, shredded
Dijon mustard
One egg

Puff pastry is a super buttery, flaky dough that, when you bake it, tastes and feels like a croissant. A box should have 2 squares of dough. Let them thaw in the refrigerator, and then take one piece and set it out on your counter. Spread a few tablespoons of mustard on the puff pastry, leaving about an inch of room at the edge of the pastry.
Put a layer of ham on top of the mustard, again, leaving about an inch at the edges.
Top the ham with a thin layer of gruyere.
Beat the egg with a few tablespoons of water and brush it on the edges with your finger or a pastry brush. This is called "egg wash" and its the glue to hold the top layer of puff pastry on. So after you've painted a layer of egg wash on the border, take the other piece of puff pastry and set it on top. Press down on the borders just to make sure its sealed, but try not to leave finger marks.
Bake this at 400 degrees for however long it takes for the puff pastry to get really golden brown. And no, I don't know exactly how long that is because everyone's oven is different. Lets make it a ballpark figure of 15-20 minutes. But if its not really brown by then, leave it in until it is. You're the boss, not the oven timer. Always remember this: you are higher on the food chain than your oven timer.
Once you've pulled the puffed up goodness out of the oven, let it cool for about 10 minutes and cut it into little squares to serve. A serrated knife will work best.. if you saw with the knife, it will give you a cleaner cut that won't ruin the pastry. Saw, saw, saw... let the knife do the work for you.

2. YOU DON'T HAVE TO PRETEND YOU'RE A BAR
Provide beer and wine, or liquor. Don't feel like you have to stock a full bar with tequila, gin, scotch, and vodka options. Buy some wine, a variety of beer (a dark and a light), and some mixers. Let your guests know what you're offering- if they happen to enjoy drinking Rusty Nails, chances are they'll know you don't have a big bottle of Drambuie waiting for them and they'll bring their own.
I had a fanfreakingtastic New Years Eve cocktail party this week and I let my guests know that I was providing beer and wine. If they wanted liquor, they could bring their own and I would have mixers for them. It was a smashing success because everyone knew exactly what would be at the party. And as long as you keep everyone in the know, no one will be disappointed.

3. MAKE GIFT BAGS
This is a special touch that people don't think about. It also helps out if there are stragglers... if worse comes to worse and you have to physically escort them out, at least they'll have some free loot to take home that will distract them from the fact they just got kicked out. Think of things that fit in with the theme of your party. If its around Valentines Day (blech... I hate that day), give them a little bag of conversation hearts and candy. For New Years, I gave little hangover kits: a bottle of water with an Emergen-C packet, and a party noisemaker. The noisemaker wasn't necessarily for the hangover, but I'm sure it was used while the guest was creating said hangover. Be creative and remember you don't have to spend a lot of money. You can even find cool stuff at the dollar store.

4. PARTY'S OVER!
If you plan on having everyone gone by midnight, let them know that the party is over at midnight before they get to the party. Include that on your evite, text message, phone call... whatever method you used to invite your guests. Again, this is so that there's no surprises, and so that no one talks naughty about you after the fact on their Facebook statuses.

5. GET RID OF YOUR CRAP!
Door prizes are a great way to get rid of crap. Seriously... its like a cocktail party and a garage sale are the same thing. If you have some gently worn household objects that want to give away, call it a door prize and draw names out of a hat. I did this will all my Christmas presents that I didn't want and it was a HUGE success. I'm not even joking. You can't make this up.

6. ATTEMPT TO BE A HOSTESS WITH THE MOSTESS
I don't think that most of my fellow Gen X-ers know what proper hosting etiquette consists of. I'm not saying you should bust out any Good Housekeeping etiquette guidelines from 1954 or anything, but you can still be gracious. Offer to take people's coats/purses. Or at least have a place to put them besides the floor behind the door. Look around... are people's drinks starting to get low? Go get them a refill- it'll make them feel like they're actually a guest in your home and not at a frat party where people have to forage the fridge for beers. Do people know each other? Introduce them pete's sake... not everyone has the skills to walk up to a total stranger and strike up witty conversation, so make it easier on them. These are very simple things that are a lost art. Lets make sure they don't disappear like Phil Collins' career.

Have any other tips that I've forgotten? Make sure you leave comments. I'm interested in your feedback on this one.

Diana Ross, Daryl Hannah, and Your Meringue

2009-12-27T09:43:00.000-06:00

Dear Tricia, The meringue on my key lime pie always weeps. Why does that keep happening?

I'm going to go back to one of my older blogs about egg whites and re-teach it here today because this is an email I frequently receive. Plus the original blog entry was really about why you add cream of tartar to play dough, so it might have been a little round-about. Before we begin, I want to point out to the non-bakers that meringue is a fluffy topping made out of egg whites and sugar. You whip them up until the egg whites turn from goopy clear stuff into a billowing cloud of solid white awesomeness. You just beat the egg whites and sugar together, right? No, not exactly.
Its common for meringues to "weep", or start to fall and leak out water. This is because when you whip egg whites, you're "coagulating" the protein in the eggs, which is a fancy pants term for protein bonding with other protein. When the proteins bond together, they hold in all the water that is floating around the meringue. If the proteins aren't doing that properly, the water will find a way to leak out, or "weep."
Under a microscope, egg whites are tiny strands of tightly wound protein. They look like a big mess of little corkscrew-y, spring-y shapes. Actually, they look a lot like Diana Ross' hair, post 1980. In order to get the egg whites to expand and turn into a fluffy meringue, you have to get them to straighten out. When they're fully expanded, they'll look like long waves of protein, triple the size of the corkscrew ones. If we're comparing apples to apples, the fully expanded protein will be shaped more like Daryl Hannah's mermaid hair in "Splash," all long and loose and wavy. If Daryl Hannah's mermaid hair is going to hold in water and actually remain stable, there are a few things you have to do:

1. Add about a half teaspoon of cream of tartar while you begin beating the eggs. Cream of tartar is like hair spray for Darryl Hannah's hair. If the proteins are bonding with all the other proteins, cream of tartar will make sure they stay bonded.*

2. Use room temperature eggs. Egg whites can be like demanding Hollywood actors: they have all their requests for how big they want their trailer, what kind of food they'll eat, who their co workers are, before they can do their job the best way they know how. Egg whites demand to be room temperature before they'll whip up into a meringue. It works better than using cold whites, so let them come to room temperature before you start whipping them. And no, leaving the egg whites out won't make you sick. A lot of bakeries, if they know what they're doing, leave egg whites out all the time for this exact reason.

3. Don't just turn the mixer on high and expect the whites to instantly fluff up. You have to gently persuade the proteins to unwind. Imagine trying to style Diana Ross' hair into Daryl Hannah's hair: you wouldn't just put a comb in at her scalp and pull, would you? No, that would probably break some of her hair off. Protein will also break if you just start whipping it as hard as you can. Start off by turning the speed on low for a few minutes. Let the whites loosen up a little and then turn it up to medium for a few minutes. Then move into high speed to finish off.

4. Don't dump all the sugar in at the beginning. As if trying to get the proteins to coagulate isn't hard enough, you're adding an extra ingredient to it that can get in the way. After you turn the mixer speed up to medium, wait for the eggs to start to get foamy. Then, and only then can you start to slooooowly add the sugar. How slow? You want to still be adding sugar to it right before the meringue is finished. This just makes sure that while the proteins are bonding with each other, the sugar doesn't interfere too much.

So, to summarize, be gentle with the egg whites, keep them at room temperature, and don't dump the sugar in at once. Got it? Avoid being rough, cold, and dumpy. In meringues and in life.

*Harold McGee's book, "On Food and Cooking," (also known as my Bible) recommends adding 1/16 teaspoon of cream of tartar per egg white.