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Archive for the ‘Food and…’ Category

Just in time for the weekend, here is my favorite brownie recipe. It’s quick and delicious. It’s also in metric, because once you get a scale and get used to the routine, the weight method is indeed easier and more consistent. Making fewer dirty dishes is an added bonus. Also, cocoa powder means no waiting around to chop and melt chocolate bricks. I have a double boiler but yeah, no.

Brownies

Time: 30-40 minutes
  • 142 grams butter
  • 42 grams cocoa powder
  • 200 grams sugar (I use brown sugar or half brown and half white for a nuttier flavor)
  • 2 eggs
  • 60 grams flour
  • Dash salt
  • ½ t. vanilla extract
1. Preheat the oven to 350F (175C). Line an 8-inch square pan with parchment paper (or grease with butter, but parchment paper makes for fantastically easy clean up).
2. Melt butter in the microwave on low (30% works for me). Use a whisk to stir in cocoa powder until smooth, then add sugar, eggs, flour, salt and vanilla, mixing after each addition. The batter will resemble quicksand, only tastier.
3. Pour into the pan and bake 20 minutes, or until set in the middle.* Let cool and cut.
*Note: This recipe can be doubled with no trouble, use a 9×13-inch pan and bake for 25-30 minutes.
P.S. Upon reflection, I feel bad for those of you without a digital scale. Here you go:
  • 10 T. butter
  • ⅓ C. cocoa powder
  • 1 C. sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • ½ C. flour
  • Dash salt
  • ½ t. vanilla extract
Enjoy! I know I will:)

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I read with lunch. Sometimes speculative fiction, of course, but often other types of writing as well, including nonfiction. Right now I’m reading Pandora’s Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal by Melanie Warner.

Appropriate lunchtime fare, wouldn’t you say? Allow me to share with you two fascinating excerpts:

You probably don’t think of your lunch as being constructed from powders, but consider the ingredients of a Subway Sweet Onion Teriyaki sandwich. Of the 105 ingredients, 55 are dry, dusty substances that were added to the sandwich for a whole variety of reasons. The chicken contains thirteen…. The teriyaki glaze has twelve…. In the fat-free sweet onion sauce, you get another eight…. And finally, the Italian white bread has twenty two….
— p.11

Yum. And lest you think that a salad at home is necessarily pitfall free:

… using fat-free dressing on a salad can prevent you from absorbing many of the vegetables’ healthy (fat-soluble) phytochemicals.
— p. 18

This has been Learning@Lunch. Enjoy:)

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The Asian grocery down the street can have some amazing  deals. This past week it was daikon (aka white radish) for nine whole cents a pound, and lemons, nine for $1. Now, I picked up some daikon because, well, why not?, but I also bought as many bags of lemons as I could carry. I love lemons, their color and acid taste, the way their juice brightens almost any dish, and the fact that they don’t even need to be fresh to be good. In fact, sometimes they are better when they’ve been preserved. On the off-chance that you too have been blessed with citrusy goodness, I include my recipe.

MOROCCAN PRESERVED LEMONS
One of the best chicken dishes I’ve ever tasted involved these savory morsels of salty sour goodness. The Restaurant Marrakech in Fez serves poulet citrone with chicken stewed to the tenderest perfection in a bright yellow potion of salty preserved lemons and olives and onions. I haven’t reconstructed the recipe but I’m working on it.

2 lemons
½ cup fresh lemon juice
⅓ cup coarse salt

1. Wash the lemons well. Cut them into 8 sections each and place them in a glass jar. Add the remaining ingredients, cover tightly and shake to combine ingredients.
2. Leave the lemons at room temperature, shaking the jar every day, for 2 weeks. Rinse lemons before using.

Note: From The Dean & DeLuca Cookbook. Recipe scales well, and once ready, lemons will keep in the refrigerator for ~6 months.

Doubled recipe in a 750ml jar. Trust me, you want to pack these in something water-tight.

/zomg delicious!

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I Hear Winter Is Coming

We put the garden to bed this weekend. Finished uprooting the tomatoes, stripping all scarlet runner beans, and thanking the basil for its heroic effort in these Northern climes. In an effort to retain some essence of summer just that much longer, I brought in a few clippings of the apple mint. Prodigious stuff, this plant will take over a garden if you let it, but in a container it is content to produce huge, gorgeous, fuzzy leaves with a distinctive but mild mint flavor. Terrific in spicy peanut noodles, chickpea salad, or smoothies.

Apple mint

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Thanksgiving (v1.0.ca)

I have just given my very first Canadian Thanksgiving. It was a lovely mix of friends and family, and of course, food.

* Menu for a Canadian T-Day (appetizers and alcohol are assumed, because… well, because):

— Turkey with stuffing and gravy

— Tortiere (meat pie to us English speakers)

— Green beans with lemon, butter, and anchovy sauce

— Mashed cauliflower with herbs and boursin cheese

— Orange cranberry sauce

— Pumpkin pie (Tried a new recipe, from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything; I wasn’t sure about the added step of pre-cooking the pumpkin mix, but the result was a deliciously creamy custard-y filling. Recommended.)

Funny, none of the Canadians at the table knew what they were supposed to be thankful for, so we settled on friends, family, and dinner:)

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… Is Not A Lie:)

Image

Have a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster too, while you’re at it.

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— Perfect my margarita recipe (frozen, no salt, fresh limes);
— The end.

Sadly not so much, but I like to dream.

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Dinner

— Home-grown tomato salad with local (i.e. backyard) basil, mozzarella and goat cheese salad
— Crusty Italian bread (the bread was crusty, not the Italian)
— Shrimp quick-stewed in a bit of water with lots of lemon juice, salt, bay, pepper, scallions, sherry, and olive oil, then topped with a reduction of the cooking liquid. So delicious Mr. Man licked the bowl. Me too, actually.

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