Cooking

If we are going to cook, let's actually do it. I really liked this post and I wanted to share it:

Don't Be Fooled by Some Celebrity Chefs

Photo credit: Brad Barlet/Getty Images

My daughter was angered by an article in the Globe and Mail today, and suggested I write a post about it. It was about the Canadian launch of Gordon Ramsay's new cookbook entitled Gordon Ramsay's Fast Food (2008, Key Porter Books).

According to the article, what makes the food so fast is this: You open a jar of "gourmet" sauce and pour it on whatever you are cooking, or you buy already roasted meat to put on top of your pasta. It seems is the in thing to do for readers of Nigella Lawsons' Nigella Express (2007, Hyperion) and Martha Stewart Living's Great Food Fast (2007, Clarkson Potter). Apparently, so says the article, "people will think you fussed and fussed." Well, I think people can tell a processed food over homemade anytime.

I can tell you I have made lots of easy, fast recipes that my guests have thought I fussed over, without opening a jar of sauce or buying ready-made ingredients. I remember years ago, when I was hosting a barbeque, and I was making chicken satay, I sent my husband off to the grocery store for ingredients. When he had trouble finding something, he asked a clerk who pointed to a jar of satay sauce and said, just buy that. He said he could, but it was pointless because I'd never serve it. He was right. That isn't to say I don't used canned items. I do, but I've used canned tomatoes when they are out of season, and canned beans and the like, just not ready-made food.

There are a number of things at issue here:

1. We have become so enamoured of celebrity chefs on television, and the difficult menus that they seem to effortlessly pull off while we watch their shows, that cooking seems scary and challenging. It's not.

2. We are being encouraged to consume products that are expensive, highly processed, and filled with chemical additives that we don't need or want in our diet. Read Michael Pollan.

3. As I pointed out in my post about eating out for my birthday, chefs use much more salt and fat than anyone needs. So do bottled sauces. Your food can still taste great without that.

Don't be fooled into thinking that you can't put an easy, quick meal on the table without resorting to pouring something ready-made out of a jar.

Smashie Bars

I created my own kind of chocolate bar last night - Smashie bars.

Smashie Bars
1/3 cup corn syrup
1/3 cup honey
1/2 cup cocoa
1/2c up peanut butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
3-3.5 cups marshmellow
1/2 cups toffee bits
1 cup peanuts
3 cups vanilla rice krispies

Put the corn syrup, honey, cocoa, PB and brown sugar into a saucepan and heated it until it all melted and almost came to a boil. Then I added in the marshmellows and stirred until it was all mixed together. In the meantime I put the peanuts, toffee bits and rice krispies in a bowl. I then poured the mixture from the saucepan over the dry mixture and mixed it all together. I then pressed the mixture into a greased 8x8 square cake pan and let it cool slightly. While it was cooling I melted chocolate chips and poured it over the top of the bars covering completely.

Left it to cool overnight and cut into bars.

Ok - so here is the consensus on the bars. I like the bars but they could do without the peanuts. People like them with and without - but I think they would be better without... but chocolate and nuts - people always enjoy!

Happy Easter!

Scrumptious Peach Cobbler

I may be a little too Northern for Peach Cobbler but I love it anyway. Here is my favorite recipe, taken from Gourmet, and modified.

Active time: 20 min. Start to finish: 45 min.

6 large peaches, cut into thin wedges
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon cornstarch

For biscuit topping
1/2 cup all-purpose flour and 1/2 cup wheat flour and 1/4 cup of oats
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 stick cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1/4 cup boiling water
1 tbsp. cinnamon

Preparation

Cook peaches:
Preheat oven to 425°F.

Toss peaches with sugar, lemon juice, and cornstarch in a 2-qt. nonreactive baking dish and bake in middle of oven 10 minutes.

Make topping while peaches bake:
Stir together flours, oats, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. Blend in butter with your fingertips or a pastry blender until mixture resembles coarse meal. Stir in water until just combined.

Remove peaches from oven and drop spoonfuls of topping over them. Bake in middle of oven until topping is golden, about 25 minutes. (Topping will spread as it bakes.)

Baked Pears

Sometimes I want to bake something that still might be a little bit healthy for me, so I created this recipe. You can make it singularly or simply multiply the recipe for as many pears as you need.

Ingredients
1 Pear
1 lemon, halved
1/2 cups dry white wine
1/2cups sugar
the zest of 2 navel oranges
twocinnamon sticks
1/4 cup Grande Marnier

Directions
Peel the pears, leaving the stems intac. Drop into a bowl of cold water with the lemon juice

In a saucepan combine the wine, 1 cup water, the sugar, the zest, the cinnamon sticks, and the liqueur, bring the liquid to a boil, stirring until the sugar is dissolved.

Simmer the syrup for 5 minutes.

Arrange the pears, drained, on their sides in a baking dish and pour the syrup over them.

Cover the dish tightly with foil and bake the pears in the middle of a preheated 375°F oven for 30 minutes.

Remove the foil, turn the pears over gently, and replace the foil.

Bake the pears for 20 to 30 minutes more, or until they are tender.

Let the pears cool, transfer them carefully to a deep serving dish, and ladle the cooking syrup with the zest over them.

Chill the pears, covered, overnight and serve them with some of the syrup.

Butterscotch Coconut Cookies

Last night I made butterscotch coconut cookies. They are pretty good but I had some problems with the dough. The recipe calls for you to mix all the dough together then add the coconut and butterscotch chips. I always mix in chips by hand - I feel that it gets a better distribution throughout the mix then using the mixer. But last night when I added the final two ingredients I could not get the dough to mix with them. I ended up having to put it back on the mixer stand and beat the chips and coconut in. I thought that would be the end of my difficulties but I was wrong. Now that the chips and coconut were finally integrated the dough wouldn't stick together. I ended up having to press the balls the same way you would try and create a snowball from snow that doesn't want to stick. Not a huge fan of the difficulty in forming these cookies, but all in all they tasted pretty good.

1 1/3 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
11/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1/2 sugar
1/2 packed brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 3/4 sweetened shredded coconut
1 1/2 cups butterscotch chips

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt together. In a mixing stand cream the butter, then add the granulated and brown sugars mixing until no longer gritty. Add the egg and vanilla and mix together.

Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix on low. Then add the coconut and butterscotch. Form into 1 inch balls and bake for about 15 minutes.

Hello Dolly

I don't know what is in a typical Hello Dolly - but I made up my own recipe the other day, and everyone at work loved them. People at work are starting to make requests - I have been told that Date Squares would be nice, and the Hello Dolly's are a result of a co-workers love of coconut!

Hello Dollys
1 box of graham crackers crushed
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup unsalted butter
1 cup chocolate chips
2 cups coconut
1 can condensed milk
1 1/2 cups pecan pieces

I mixed the crushed graham crackers, butter and sugar together and pressed them into the bottom of a 10 x 15 glass pan. I then put it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes until the crust was firm. I let it cool for about 10 minutes.

I then covered the crust with the pecans, followed by the chocolate chips and then poured the condensed milk over the top. This was followed by a generous sprinkling of coconut. I then put the whole pan back in the oven for about 15 minutes until the coconut was a golden brown colour and nicely toasted.

Let the bars cool for an hour and then cut them up into bars - they were fantastic!

Oatmeal Scotchies

This recipe is delicious. I ate so much cookie batter that I only cooked 33 cookies- oops!

Plus, a woman in my office called me an angel and that the cookies were heavenly.

Ingredients

3/4 c. butter, softened
3/4 c. sugar
3/4 c. brown sugar
2 eggs
2 1/2 tsp. vanilla
3/4 c. white flour
1/2 c. wheat flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt
3 c. quick oats

Directions

Preheat oven to 350. Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and Vanilla, continue to mix. Add flour (white and wheat), soda and spices to the same bowl. Stir in oats and morsels.

Drop by teaspoons onto cookie sheets.

Bake 8-10 minutes.

Let cool slightly on sheet before allowing to cool on cookie rack!

Whole Wheat Bread

I haven't posted in awhile because I forgot how to log-in- thankfully Ash saved me and I now am able to post! Ash is pretty much my hero and she is also my pseudo-Mom. Really I would forget to put on clothes if not for her.

So I made this easy and delicious bread last week- it was so good that my friend almost cried out in delight. He did cry out later but that may have been from more than just the bread :P

Whole Wheat Bread

1 c. milk

¼ c sugar

2 tsp. salt

1 package yeast

2 c. whole wheat flour

4 c. white flour

Preheat oven to 375

Bring ½ cup water to boil; mix with milk, salt, sugar in a large bowl. Let cool.

In separate container mix ½ warm water with yeast, let stand.

Add yeast to wheat flour and two cups white flour to liquids. Beat thoroughly, turn onto floured board, add enough flour that the dough is not sticky. Kneed dough for 5 minutes, let stand for 10.

Place dough is a mixing bowl and cover with a warm towel until double in bulk. Knead dough again and divide into two halves.

Grease loaf pan and place dough in pans. Let dough rise until double in bulk again.

Bake at 375 degrees for 55 minutes. Cool and then take out of loaf pans. Enjoy!