Homemade peanut butter cups

Saturday, February 2nd, 2013

Here was a good afternoon project: peanut butter cups. They were time-consuming, but fairly easy to make.

Food you'll need:

• 2 boxes Baker's chocolate (I used 54% cacao, which has 6g sugar per serving; could probably have used darker for healthier)
• Fat (I used 2 sticks butter; if you want healthier, go coconut oil; you'll probably need about 8oz)
• Peanut butter (I used a kind that has peanuts and a little sea salt; use a regular brand if you don't mind the extra sugar)
• Some water

Equipment you'll need:

2013-02-01 13.09.55• Double-boiler (or a metal bowl fitted over a saucepan, pictured, like I used)
• Rubber spatula
• Muffin pan
• Spoon

Get your double-boiler going (or, if using the fake one, fill a saucepan about a quarter full with water and start getting it warm over medium heat). In the top part of the double-boiler (or the metal bowl), put half your chocolate and half your fat.

Once the water is starting to get hot (it doesn't need to get to a boil – it'll get there eventually), start melting the chocolate and fat, stirring with the rubber spatula. When it's liquid, pour evenly into muffin pan.

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Put the pan in the refrigerator for a couple of hours, until the chocolate hardens. Spoon some peanut butter on (I'm a peanut butter junkie; I used a full 2-tbsp serving on each). You could, in theory, just use a dollop. I could not.

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Repeat the first bit with the other half of your chocolate and fat, pouring the liquid on top.

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Put back in the refrigerator for a couple of hours until it all hardens.

I mutilated this one taking it out, but this is what I got for the final product.

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02.02.2013 Food, Recipes No Comments

Jason’s homemade brocolli calzones

Monday, June 13th, 2011

This is a recipe by Jason, a Syracuse attorney known on Twitter as @jaseface1. I'm not usually a recipe kinda guy, but I'll mix it up and give it a shot when I get back into the starches in a few weeks.

1 package active dry yeast
1 cup warm water
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup ricotta cheese
1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella
1/2 cup fresh broccoli
1 tablespoon dried basil leaves (optional, i have a plant so i use some)
1 egg (also optional)

Dough: In a bowl, dissolve the yeast in water. Add the oil and salt; mix in 1 cup of the flour until smooth. Gradually stir in the rest of the flour, until dough is smooth and workable. Knead dough on a lightly floured surface for about 5 minutes, or until it is elastic. Lay dough in a bowl containing 1 teaspoon olive oil, then flip the dough, cover and let rise for 40 minutes, or until almost doubled.

Filling: While dough is rising, combine the ricotta cheese, mozzarella cheese, broccoli and basil leaves in a large bowl. Mix well, cover bowl and refrigerate to chill.

Preheat oven to 350-375 degrees.

When dough is ready, punch it down and separate it into 2 equal parts. Roll parts out into thin circles on a lightly floured surface. Fill each circle with 1/2 of the cheese/filling.. fold over, securing edges by folding in and pressing. Brush the top of each calzone with egg (or olive oil) and place on a lightly greased cookie sheet.

Bake at 375 degrees F (190 degrees C) for 25-30 minutes. Serve hot.

13.06.2011 Food, Guest posts, Recipes No Comments

Recipe: Chocolate, fruit and nut bark

Tuesday, March 8th, 2011


Yummy, dessert!

What happens when you're experimenting with high-cacao chocolates (because they're actually good for you!) and you come across one that is just plain inedible? You make something yummy, of course!

This was a 100% cacao chocolate bar. No milk, no sugar. Way too bitter to eat by itself.

If you're like me and don't have a double-boiler, you can fake one by putting water in a saucepan, bringing the water to a boil, and then putting a metal bowl in the pan.

In the bowl part of the double-boiler, melt the chocolate and a stick of butter (keep stirring them so they don't stick to the bottom of the bowl). Add some almonds, blueberries and raspberries. Stir until everything's coated and somewhat evenly distributed.

Line a cookie sheet, casserole dish or pie plate with wax paper. Pour the chocolaty melty stuff on top, and stick it in the refrigerator. It should harden enough to eat in about 3 hours.

08.03.2011 Food, Recipes 1 Comment

Recipe: Haddock and escarole

Tuesday, March 8th, 2011


Sorry about the unsaturated cell phone blurriness, but I was too hungry to grab my camera!

Sometimes dinner's just so delicious it needs to wind up on the blog. And so it was with Sunday night's fare.

This started with large haddock fillets rubbed down with a Central New York favorite – a Java Gourmet dessert rub (Keuka Lake). After letting the rub seep in a bit, I sautéed some banana peppers in coconut oil and added the haddock, cooking until done.

Meanwhile, in the other pan...

I started with a generous helping of sesame oil and added some chili oil. I had some leftover chopped onions, so threw those in there, and then added a head of escarole.

And that's it, folks. Easy, tasty, healthy.

08.03.2011 Food, Recipes No Comments

Quick & Easy Chili Recipe

Monday, February 7th, 2011

Tim: "Is this your 3-day chili?"
Me: "No, it was an afternoon quickie."
Tim: "Well, those can be just as hot sometimes."

This is a 3-hour chili recipe, but if you used a stove-top pot instead of a crock pot, it would go quicker.

You'll need:

1 lb black beans, rinsed
1 lb kidney beans, rinsed
2 lb ground beef
1 med onion, chopped
1 jar salsa
6 habanero peppers
6 jalapeño peppers
chili powder to taste
water
olive oil (or your favorite cooking oil)

In crock pot, combine the beans, salsa, two chopped jalapeños and some chili powder. Stir it, then put it on high.

Finely chop the rest of the peppers (I used a Magic Bullet, which made life easy). In a medium pan over medium heat, sauté the peppers and onions in some olive oil. Add the ground beef and some chili powder.

When beef is browned, drain off the liquid and add the beef, onions and peppers to the crock pot. Stir. Cook on low, stirring occasionally. If it starts to look dry, add water as necessary.

Eat.

07.02.2011 Food, Recipes No Comments

How to make borscht

Friday, January 14th, 2011

If you've been following my daily food intake on Facebook, you'll notice that I'm having a bowl of borscht every night.

Last Sunday, we made enough soup for the week. It's ridiculously easy, and tastes better as the week goes on.

Ingredients:

6 fresh beets
1 beef bone (we used a split knuckle bone, because it's what was available)
Water

Preparation:

1. Cut the greens and ends off the beats. Wash them thoroughly.

2. Place the beets and beef bone in a large pot of water. Bring to a boil, and keep boiling for 2 hours.

3. Remove the beets from the water; put them in a bowl and get them cool enough to handle.

4. Peel the beets, then shred them.

5. Put the shredded beets back in the pot. Simmer until you're hungry.

You may want to add some salt and pepper to your bowl, but you might not. Up to you. I like it with pepper, not salt. Yummers.

14.01.2011 Food, Recipes 2 Comments

Homemade Paella

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

I haven't really had a chance to try something new in the kitchen for a while. So I thought, "Hmm, who wouldn't love some paella tonight?" And there was paella.

I cooked the rice in a rice cooker; it's white rice with turmeric, because apparently saffron is unavailable in my local supermarket. I did a quick Google search in the spice aisle, and discovered turmeric is "the poor man's saffron." Good enough, I guess. It was tasty anyway.

While the rice was cooking I had two other items on the stove:

• A pan with diced onion, diced red pepper, hot sausage and bay scallops, seasoned with black pepper and dried parsley sautéing in olive oil
• A pot with littleneck clams and shrimp (I also got two cherrystones to serve as a strong visual, for presentation – that's the big clam you see on the right).

When the rice was done, I mixed in some peas. I drained the sausage/scallop mixture and added it, then the clams and shrimp and tossed the whole lot together.

We enjoyed it with this year's Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais Nouveau, which is probably the best vintage in a few years. I always forget how much I like this wine.

30.11.2010 Food, Recipes 1 Comment

Recipe: Tropical fruit pork

Monday, November 8th, 2010

This one was real easy and really tasty. I'm not actually sure how much pork I used; I got a huge tenderloin and cut it into a few parts and froze most of it. But you could use this on any amount of pork that fits in a 9x13 casserole dish.

- Pork, cut into bite-sized pieces
- 2 bananas, sliced
- 1 can apricot nectar
- 1 can banana nectar

Bake at 400 degrees for 45 minutes or until fully cooked.

I did this with steamed baby carrots.

08.11.2010 Food, Recipes No Comments

Mushroomed Steak and Scallops Over Rice

Friday, September 3rd, 2010

I'm getting really good at the one-pan thing. Sure, I did the rice in a cooker, but here was last night's dinner.

I used chuck steak and bay scallops to keep the cost down. The chuck steak gets soft enough if you cook it in enough liquid, and it turned out that the bay scallops were the right choice here, since sea scallops would have taken over the flavor of this dish and made the creativity part of it moot.

We started by sautéing some sliced baby bellas, then poured some condensed mushroom soup in there. We had some leftover sun-dried tomato marinade we had used on some chicken, and of course added a healthy amount of the best stuff on earth (Sriracha).

We added some diced red bell pepper, then the bay scallops and cubed chuck steak, poured the whole thing over some jasmine rice, and enjoyed it with a Gnarly Head Cab.

03.09.2010 Food, Recipes 1 Comment

Recipe: Catfish with Mushroom AwesomeSauce

Thursday, April 15th, 2010

Let me tell you about this catfish I made last week. And the sauce that went on it. Holy heck it was amazing.

I sautéed the catfish (2 fillets) in butter, mustard seed and a splash of drinking (not cooking) sherry. Specifically, I used Harvey's Bristol Cream.

The sauce, which is where the real magic was:

1. Sauté five large sliced mushrooms in butter and mustard seed
2. Pour some Harvey's Bristol Cream sherry on it (probably about 1/8 of a cup)
3. Add 2 tablespoons of half & half
4. Let simmer until there's just enough liquid left to pour over the fish (with the mushrooms, of course)

It's more of a hearty, winter sort of sauce, but it was delicious. Give it a shot, let me know what you think.

15.04.2010 Food, Recipes 1 Comment

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