Olive Bread Making Adventures

I should start by saying I’ve never made bread before.  

If you’ve ever had homemade bread, you know that it is damn good and no store bought, abnormally squishy bread could ever compare.  But making bread… wow, what a process.  

It takes commitment to make a loaf of bread in your own kitchen.  Heck, I’m not even talking about good bread.  To make a good loaf of bread takes a whole other level of competence and patience.

As you may know, I am not a patient person. 

However, I was going to be a guest at the house of some friends and I wanted to bring a little thank you present.  What do you bring a group that includes a health-nut, a chocolate allergy, and a cookie-holic?  

The only thing I could think of was bread.  

My father found me this recipe for this Japanese/Chinese style bread that I wanted to try, but for a gift I felt I needed something more special.  More artisan. Then, this food memory hit me on the head: there was this bread I had when I was in the south of France with green olives, topped with sea salt.  It was the absolute tastiest thing you could have especially with that warm, ocean breeze on your back. I remember seeing olives (which I used to hate) in a whole different life after eating that bread.  

So olive bread it was.  

Foolproof Roast Chicken

Is your mouth watering yet?  I know mine is.

Roast chicken is one of those things that is incredibly impressive and impossibly easy.  It mostly just requires that you give it tons of love, care and time.  The only trick I have with this: high heat and clean oven.

This recipe is super tweakable.

Foolproof Roast Chicken

(List of ingredients are on the fly – use what you have, don’t use what you don’t.)

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F (on the roast setting, if possible.)

Clean your chicken. Yes, yuck. Yuck, yuck, yuck.  This may mean taking off its neck, taking out some organs, trimming the flappy skin off, cleaning out the inside of the carcass.  Yes, I will admit it, I’m a wimp and I wore gloves. Yuck, yuck, yuck.

Put your chicken into a baking dish.  Rub your chicken down with room-temperature butter.  Similarly, you could give it a nice douse of olive oil – but butter tastes better.

Salt and pepper generously on both sides of the chicken.

This is where you can get creative.  What do you want to stuff your chicken with?  I like a few chunks of butter, a cut up onion, a bundle of fresh herbs (thyme or something else peppery and savory) and maybe half a lemon, sliced.

Midnight Chocolate Chip Cookies

These cookies are so bad ass, they need no introduction.

You’ll need:

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs 
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 (12-ounce) bag semisweet chocolate chips, or 12 ounces of semisweet chocolate cut into chunks
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon fine salt

Evenly position 2 racks in the middle of the oven and preheat to 375 degrees F.

Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

Put the butter in a microwave safe bowl, cover and microwave on medium power until melted. Cool slightly. Whisk the sugars, eggs, butter and vanilla in a large bowl until smooth.

Stuff-Your-Face Chocolate Cake

Have you ever read my all time favourite book, Matilda?  Or watched the movie? (It’s directed by Danny DeVito – and one of my most un-guilty pleasures.)

Do you remember the scene where one of Matilda’s classmates snuck into the Trunchbull’s office and ate her chocolate cake, and then she made him sit down in front of an assembly and eat the entire cake?  

That moist, gooey, irresistible, makes-me-almost-wish-I-were-Bruce-Bogtrotter death-by-chocolate cake?  

This is that cake.  

Imagine me as Bruce Bogtrotter, with this baby slabbed on my grimey hand.  

I know, it’s not the prettiest cake in the world.  Its rounded top would make any pastry chef shudder – but I couldn’t afford to slice off any bit of deliciousness.  Don’t judge it. Its gooey-ness will certainly make up for its less-than-perfect attributes.

I made it as a birthday cake, took one bite, and holy smokes, I’m eating the Trunch’s cake.  It is that good.  

Lemon Yogurt Mini-Cakes on City Bandit

Once upon a time, I made lemon yogurt mini-cakes.  

It’s been a while, but here’s the recipe. 

This is a spin-off of a classic French everyday cake.  I learned the recipe back when I was an exchange student in France from my host mother.  She made one of these cakes about every week, and I absolutely adored them.  They were so light and fluffy, not too sweet.  You could eat it as a snack, dessert, with cream or chocolate or berries; it didn’t matter, it was so versatile.

I find that making this cake in Canada, it works best in muffin tins.  I don’t know, maybe it is the consistency of the yogurt that we have here or something, but every time I’ve tried to make this cake in a cake pan, it always ends up turning into a tough and chewy mess.  In muffin tins however, they rise beautifully and have the most gorgeous golden colour.  

Mystery of the Mango-Honeydew Nectarine – SOLVED!

Remember a few weeks ago, when I ate a delicious but perplexing fruit called the mango-honeydew nectarine?

I, along with many Googlers who came across my post, had a few big questions about this fruit:

1) What on earth is a mango-honeydew nectarine?  Is it really a mango-honeydew-nectarine hybrid?  

2) Why the Disney/Pixar label on the fruit?  Since when did Disney/Pixar start manufacturing fruit? 

Finally, after extensive researching, I think I’ve at long last, traced down its origins and solved the mystery.  And everything points to one culprit: marketing.  

A Los Angeles Times article dated this past July offered some insight into this blossoming designer fruit industry, and the new, unique varieties offered at local markets:

Within Reason or Out of the Question? Rules for Restaurant Employees

100 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do, from the New York Times, November 2009.

Never will you ever find a more thorough list of no-nos for restaurant employees. 

This list is for the nit-pickers, the fine-dining frequenters, the self-proclaimed VIPs to cite all the reasons why they had a bad service at dinner the other night.  

As someone who works in a restaurant, there are a few things on this list of musts that I find unrealistic and verging on ass-kissing.

“97. If a guest goes gaga over a particular dish, get the recipe for him or her.”

What’s the point for them to come back to the restaurant?  

Ask me what is in the dish, I will tell you every ingredient.  But to get the chef to recite the exact recipe and cooking method to me to scribble down so that I can pass this on to a customer?  Fat chance. 

“23. If someone likes a wine, steam the label off the bottle and give it to the guest with the bill. It has the year, the vintner, the importer, etc.”

Now this. Is. Ass-kissing.  

Look, there are a lot of people who believe that paying and tipping means they are entitled to anything they want, including treating restaurant staff like they are below them, or expecting that unreasonable demands be met.  Trust me, it is difficult enough to maintain professional and composed when people are not treating you with respect. For people like this, I don’t even want to say goodbye to you when you leave the restaurant.  I do anyway.  But I am sure as hell not going to steam the label off your wine for you. 

I Heart Madeleines

“I raised to my lips a spoonful of the [little madeleine] . . . a shudder ran through my whole body and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place.” – Marcel Proust

Mmm.  Madeleines.  There is just something about these cheery little spongy cookie-cakes that make even Proust get all gooey inside.

I could eat these all day long.

I often like to torture myself by going into kitchen supply stores and wistfully fantasize about all the pretty things I can’t currently get my hands and wallet on.  Like All-Clad measuring cups and spoons.  Or a Le Creuset French oven.  Or the boysenberry KitchenAid stand mixer.

However, one fateful trip to Warshaw (discount kitchen supplies heaven) and ten bucks spent later, and at least one of the items I’d been dying to get into my pantry could be crossed off the list.  A pan to make madeleines. 

Vegetable Soufflé with Chicken Zucchini Salad

That’s it.  I’m convinced.  Soufflés have to the best and easiest answer to spicing up dinner for anyone. 

I’m a big fan of eating anything that has been fluffed up with egg whites and air. Mmm, mmm.  Makes meals that much fun! Bring on the soufflés. 

This soufflé was plate-licking good, and packed only with fabulous, fresh ingredients.  And check this – I did it without buying a single ramekin.  Investing in ramekins would allow my soufflé to get more height, however, for just a simple Tuesday night dinner, a semi-high, super scrumptious soufflé served me just fine.  

Mango-Honeydew Nectarines?

August 19 Update – Finally found out what on earth these things are!  Find out here. 

What are these weird hybrid fruits?

I saw these in the supermarket the other day and was so curious, I had to pick some up. Mango-honeydew nectarines? What can that possibly be?

I didn’t see these until I got home, but the stickers on the fruit.