10.22.07
Paula Deen, explained
I think this recipe pretty much sums her up.
Lasagna for dessert!
This recipe posted to a songwriting forum by the hard-rocking Chris of Billy’s Little Trip is just wrong on so many levels…
I enjoy all sorts of cooking, but I really enjoy making decadent desserts. I mentioned my Peach Cheese Cake last time, so I’ll go with something my Mother in law requests every time she visits.
Chocolate Almond Butterscotch Lasagna
This is a creation that I came up with after eating a chocolate mousse cannelloni at an Italian Ristorante. It wasn’t very good, the noodle was starchy and tough, the mousse was bitter, but after eating it I thought of the things I could do to make it better, and my friend told me of a pasta dessert that she had once and loved. So that was all the inspiration that I needed.
Basically it’s made just like lasagna, except with chocolatey, butterscotchy, almondy goodness.
The Noodles - After boiling and rinsing the lasagna noodles, I soak them in Creme De Menthe for about 20 minutes.
The filling - I beat together about 2 or 3 pounds of ricotta cheese, cocoa, powdered sugar, vanilla, almond extract and 2 eggs. (I add 3 tablespoons of instant coffee if I’m feeling mochaish)
The layers - start with the ricotta, then about a half cup each of semi-sweet chocolate chips, coarsely crushed toasted almond, then a layer of the soaked lasagna noodles. Continue layering except every other layer use butterscotch chips in place of the chocolate chips. I try to get at least 4 layers, preferably 5 and end with a layer of the ricotta, chocolate chips and almonds.
Bake - 350 oven for about 45 minutes, or until it has fully risen. Remove and let cool. I like it both warm or cold, but my Mother in law loves it warm and melty.
Serve - I mix up just regular cool hhhwhip, a little bit of the Creme De Menthe and some cocoa powder. Makes a great topping. Then after I add a big dollop of the cool whip, I shave either white chocolate because the contrast looks cool, or just regular chocolate. Serving sizes should be the same size that you would serve lasagna.
She always tells me I should enter it in a contest because it’s so unique. Then one day I was looking at a desserts cook book at Bed Bath and Beyond and there were like ten different Lasagna dessert recipes, lol. So much for being unique.
10.16.07
The best breakfast a growing body needs
There is nothing wrong with this at all.
(Link via POE-News.)
10.09.07
The Mysterious Voyage of Homer
From didcotmassif, a story of bravery, strength, and spiritual enlightenment:
Everyone has their version of the hottest thing I ate, here is mine….
“The Mysterious Voyage of Homer” the Simpsons episode where Homer enjoys the annual Springfield Chilli cook-off until he falls foul of Chief Wiggum’s “Guatemalan Insanity Chilli” and embarks on a hallucinogenic journey of self discovery inspired this recipe. I attempted to recreate this in our own kitchen achieving success that could never be called “mild”.
To make this hot enough we took the advice of a chap in a Jamaican grocers who offered us Scotch Bonnet Chillies otherwise known as Habenero (150,000–325,000 Scoville Units). The correct way to employ these little bastards is to put them whole into the dish while it cooks then remove it before eating - we foolishly chose to chop them and use them in the way you would a birds eye chilli.
To recreate the mysterious voyage/insanity aspect we chose to include 150 dried Liberty Caps (Psilocybe semilanceata) magic mushrooms of the welsh variety. We purchased these from a guy up the road called Glynn.The ingredients:
- 1x Tsp Cumin Seeds
- Vegetable oil
- 2 Cans Tinned tomatoes
- 3 Onions chopped
- 3 Bell Peppers
- 5x Scotch Bonnet Chillies (chopped)
- 1 Can Chickpeas
- 500g minced beef
- 1 can kidney beans
- 1 can refried beans
- Fresh Coriander
- 6 cloves garlic
- Mushrooms, to taste
To Prepare:
- Add oil & cumin seeds and heat until the seeds gently hiss
- Add chopped garlic, onions, peppers & chilli and sweat down for a couple of minutes
- Add mince and brown
- Add tomatoes and pulses and cover simmering for half an hour
- Add mushrooms continue to simmer for 15 minutes
- Add fresh coriander and serve with rice.
In the TV show, Homer could only manage to eat the insanity chilli by coating the inside of his mouth with wax, that may have been a sensible precaution. In reality the burning of the mouth was a mere overture to the symphony of excruciating pain in our stomachs for the next 24 hours or so. The agony of our stomach acid in retreat was heightened by the psychedelic mushrooms and the empathy factor that they add to the mix, our pain was communal - we all felt it we all felt waves of euphoria and waves of cramps together on a cosmic level.
We felt the capsicum burn our mouths our throats, large and small intestines we felt it burn our extremities…it burnt our minds. Not only were we experiencing a large amount of pain, running eyes and noses , we were laughing our heads off and feeling euphoric rushes through our bodies. Never before have I felt the razor’s edge dividing pain and pleasure so acutely.
At the time I did not know that large doses of chilli alone could encourage psychotropic effects, the walls of the room began to bend and our vision was heavily distorted, unfortunately at this point I chose to have seconds. Homer was befriended by a talking dog who became his spirit guide, helping him to achieve an understanding that Marge was his soul mate. We were less fortunate than Homer but we still learned some minor but pertinent lessons:
- Illegal class A drugs are not always as dangerous as over the counter bought vegetables
- Farts can burn
- There is such a thing as a chilli flashback
Roux aux Plastique
To get things started, why don’t I share a story about a nasty kitchen mishap which left me a few utensils short in the end?
Roux is a mixture of flour and fat, and is usually prepared by taking equal parts of each and putting over a low flame and stirring it constantly. The flour slowly toasts and develops a rich, nutty flavor and aroma.
It is a staple of French and Cajun cuisine, and many years ago I was going through a Cajun cooking phase, and made variations of gumbo and jambalaya fairly often. However, I was usually rather conservative in making my roux, and would often just keep it fairly pale, or sometimes even just toast flour on a baking sheet in the oven.
One night I decided to see how dark a roux I could make.
It started out well enough. One cup of flour and canola oil, put into a non-stick saucepan, put on low heat. Unfortunately, I made two mistakes: first, I got impatient, and second, I used a Teflon spoon.
It took several minutes before I realized anything was wrong. The roux was toasting quickly, but didn’t develop any dreaded black spots. However, while stirring it, I noticed my spoon was getting shorter, little by little, but speeding up. I pulled the spoon out to see what was going on, and of course the end was melting, leaving behind a trail of plastic. Realizing my mistake, I quickly threw the spoon into the sink, and rushed to the drawer to find a more appropriate utensil — at which point the roux began to burn.
I grabbed the first non-metal stirring utensil I could find, a rubber spatula, and began stirring again. This second utensil began to melt immediately.
At this point I realized the roux was lost and put the saucepan into the sink. Fortunately, I was smart enough to not immediately try to rinse the pan out (which would have certainly caused a lot of steam and hot oil to splatter everywhere, and would have most likely ruined the pan), but if the spoon had been salvageable at that point, it was certainly lost now; I had placed the very hot pan on top of the spoon.
Since then, I have always made roux in a stainless pan with a metal or wooden spoon.
10.08.07
Welcome to Schadenfood
The German word “Schadenfreude,” which literally means “destructive joy,” describes the sense of pleasure at the misfortunes of others. “Schadenfood,” then, could be taken to mean the sense of pleasure at unfortunate food.
As a home-cooking enthusiast who is regarded by my friends and family as a pretty good cook, I am nonetheless intrigued by the darker side of cuisine. Many sites, such as the Lileks Gallery of Regrettable Food, take a casual look at the seedy side of culinary catastrophes, but there is a real gap when it comes to understanding the true horror that awaits those who are a little too open-minded when it comes to their pursuits.
I hope for this to become a sort of food-related Worse Than Failure, where people can share their own horrors of hors d’oeuvres and epitaphs of epicurean epicaricacy. I hope that you will join me on this journey of dietary depravity.