Tonights dinner was a old standby something I borrowed from Michael Smith and messed with a bit. It’s a simple chicken breast butterflied open and then stuffed with pesto and provolone (only pesto in the original) then wrapped in a couple slices of prosciutto and baked in the oven (350F for about 30 minutes). Server along with it is some simple steamed asparagus (tossed with butter and kosher salt) and over roasted potatoes (seasoned with salt, pepper, paprika, cayenne and granulate garlic).

All in all a super tasty dinner and start to finish done in 1 hour could be a half if you did boiled potatoes since the potatoes take about an hour in the oven.

Categories: Culinary Experiments, Photography
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This evening for dinner since we had some left over veggies in the fridge I decided that it would be a good night to make pizza. I started with making the dough this afternoon after work, when starting any new project (not that pizza is new to me) I tend to got Alton Brown for recipes. They tend to be well researched and usually require little if any tuning. My pizza dough recipe is a derivative of this recipe from the Flat is Beautiful episode of Good Eats. The few modifications that I make are

• I dissolve half the sugar and all the yeast in the water before adding to the mixer
• I added about a half of a cup more flour as the dough tends to be too sticky
• I add only 1.5 teaspoons of salt instead of 1 tablespoon

After mixing and kneading I also deviate from the recipe, I tend to want pizza now instead of tomorrow so the dough just rises on the counter for a couple hours before I use it.

I then split the dough and round it out with some flour into a pizza shape and lay it out on the peel ready for topping.

Todays pizza was going to be mixed veggies so I just cut them all up to relatively equal pieces and sauteed them quickly to free some of the moisture and pre-cook them a bit since the pizza bakes hot and fast.

Then it’s a simple as laying out the toppings
Sauce first (less is more here one or two spoonfuls tops)

Then the toppings (veggies in this case)

Finally the cheese (I was being lazy today and just bought a package of pre-grated pizza cheese)

While all this is happening I have my oven getting roaring hot (500˚F with the convection fan on) with my pizza stone on the rack

Pizza goes on to the stone,

and bakes for 5-7 minutes once the cheese is melted and browned on the top and the crust is a nice golden brown it’s ready to go.

Let the pizza rest for 3-5 minutes to let the cheese set up a bit and then slice and consume.

Categories: Culinary Experiments
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On the weekend I baked some bread for a friend of Shannon’s who has just had a baby.  On the way to deliver it we made a few stops and so were tortured by the smell of fresh baked bread in the car for a couple of hours, so I decided last night that I should make some bread for us as well.  I made my standard batch of dough based on the Black Canyon Sourdough from sourdoughhome.com, which is quite a good source of sourdough baking information.  My only change is to reduce the amount of white flour to 500g from 750g, and to up the whole wheat to 380g to make up the difference.  I find that the bread comes out nicer with more whole wheat.  For the flours I use standard Robin Hood white bread flour, my whole wheat however I get fresh ground from Prairie Mill Bread Co. they mill it fresh and you can just waltz in whenever and pick up a 5lb bag.

I split my batch of dough into 2, the first I formed into a traditional boule and proofed it in my reed proofing basket that I dusted with wheat bran.  The second I rolled out into a 9”x12” rectangle, and coated with grated cheddar. I rolled it into a log and proofed it in a standard loaf pan (I don’t have any pictures of the building stages cause I was in a hurry).  Once all the dough was proofed (about 2.5 hours later) I baked the cheese loaf off at 375 for 30 minutes.  The boule I baked a bit differently, it went into my La Cloche clay baker that had been pre-heated to 450.  The boule baked for 20 minutes with the lid on and then another 10 with the lid off to develop the crust. 

Everything turned out pretty decent (in my humble opinion):

I had a couple pieces of the cheddar bread this morning for breakfast toasted and I have to say they turned out really good for a first experiment.

Categories: Culinary Experiments, Photography
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It’s my fiancée’s birthday today so last night I made her birthday cake.  It’s a traditional southern coconut cake, I used Alton Brown’s recipe from his Coconut Cake Revival episode of Good Eats.  It turned out pretty awesome, it was a lot of work though so I wouldn’t suggest making this for an everyday thing but a birthday or some other special occasion this would be a good choice for a coconut lover.

One note, buying coconuts at the grocery store is full of dragons, I got 1 completely rotten one, and a couple that had some black sections but were mostly fine.  So be careful.

Full Set of images are on Flickr

Categories: Culinary Experiments
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One night last week I decided to make burgers for dinner, since I didn’t feel like making plain old burgers I decided to make blue cheese stuffed bison burgers.

• .5 kg ground bison
• 1 large egg
• 2 tbs sweet chili sauce
• 1 tbs dijon mustard
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 onion (diced small & caramelized)
• 1/2 package cream cheese (4 ounces)
• 4 ounces blue cheese
• 1-2 ounces panko bread crumbs

The process is simple enough I started by dicing and caramelizing 1/2 a sweet onion

Once the onions were caramelized I moved them to a bowl to cool so that they wouldn’t start cooking the meat once I started mixing the burgers.  Next I mixed the cream and blue cheeses together into a paste, at first I tried doing this with them at room temperature but to make it easier I heated it a bit in the microwave for about 15 seconds to loosen it up a bit.

Setting aside the cheese mixture it was time to make the burger mix

After mixing this with a wooden spoon I added the bread crumbs a bit at a time until I had the consistency I wanted.

I then formed thin patties out of the burger mixture, I made the patties extra thin since we will be sandwiching 2 together around the filling to make the final burger.

I ended up with enough meat to make 3 of the filled patties and one non filled patty that was a bit on the small side.  Next I put about a tablespoon and a half (give or take) of the cheese filling on half the patties.

After getting each patty filled to about a centimeter from the edge Take the other patty half and place it on top lightly pinching to seal the outside edge.

  All ready to go on the grill

I threw the burgers on the grill for about 6 minutes a side until they looked done to me.

My bun all ready for consumption after a light buttering and toasting

The final dinner with kernel corn as a side

Over all they turned out really good, except for the mouth burning of the hot cheese when biting into the burgers.  All the photos are available in this flickr set.

Categories: Culinary Experiments
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Last night’s dinner was a fairly simple affair but I thought I’d share it since it looked pretty good and tasted even better.  It consisted of a grill steamed salmon filet with lemon and dill, roasted garlic brown and wild rice (packaged), lightly steamed broccoli with grated Balderson 3 year old white cheddar.

The salmon is super easy to make.

• Lay down a double layer of foil
• lightly oil the foil with olive oil
• lay the salmon filet down and season with salt, pepper, and dill  (fresh or dried)
• Slice 1/2 an onion into rings and lay the onion rings on top of the filet.
• Thinly slice a lemon and lay the slices on top of the onions
• Put a single layer of foil on top and crimp the sides up tightly
• Cook on the top rack in a 400 F grill for 20-25 minutes.

Categories: Culinary Experiments
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The Monday Treat for the office this week was Baklava, unlike previous attempts this one was made using Alton Brown’s recipe from Good Eats.

The recipe is available here: Good Eats Baklava.

I had to make some slight deviations from the recipe, I couldn’t find any shelled/unsalted pistachio’s so I just used almonds and walnuts only.  I also forgot to pickup all spice so it was just completely omitted.   The recipe still turned out much better then the 2 alternate recipes I’ve tried from Allrecipes.com. I do however have a couple of comments, firstly Alton’s suggestion to thaw the phylo pastry in the microwave was a disaster, it got all gooey and I had to throw a whole box away so I would suggest thawing in the fridge.  Secondly there seems to be slightly too much syrup as my 9×13 had a good half cm of syrup left after all the baklava was consumed, but I suppose it’s better to have too much rather then too little.

Here’s a snap I took of the 2 I kept back at home for us.

Overall it went over well with everyone at work and there were no leftovers for the vultures once I had passed them out.

Now to decide what to bring for next week, hopefully the new pantry will be done this weekend so I can have some time to bake something.  Perhaps I’ll pull something random out of the Cookies and Squares book I got for christmas.

Categories: Culinary Experiments, Monday Treat
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I made a lovely little steak dinner for Shannon and myself this evening.

I started with a nicely marbled Ribeye I picked up from Sobey’s on my way home from work.  I lightly lubed it up with canola oil and then liberally applied kosher salt and finely ground fresh black pepper.

While I was doing this, my large cast iron skillet was heating up to sun like temperatures (also known as 500F) in the oven.  Once it reached heat I put it over high flame on my largest burner to get it as hot as possible.

The steak was seared on each side for 1 minute then fired into the oven for 3 minutes on each side to hit a nice medium rare (my steak was still a bit chilly from the fridge if I had let it actually hit room temp it would have probably been more like 2 minutes a side for medium rare).

To serve alongside I cooked up some frozen corn, and balsamic glazed fried mushrooms. To finish off the steaks they were topped with a healthy dose of English Stilton.

Final results are presented below.

Categories: Culinary Experiments, Photography
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Yesterday Shannon and I had a very nice Dinner

The meat is Beef Short Ribs, this time I decided to use the large meat only pieces of short rib but I think it’s better with the thinner cross cut beef short ribs.  The meat was marinated in the follow recipe for 8-10 hours.

Marinade

1 cup Soy Sauce

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil

1 tablespoon minced garlic

1 tablespoon grated ginger

1 tsp – 1 tablespoon red pepper sauce (I used a chili oil that had piece of red chili in it)

Put all the ingredients into the blender and blend until well mixed.  Marinate the meat in the fridge overnight/all day in the mix.

BBQ the ribs to your desired level of doneness for the big pieces I believe I BBQ’d for about 20 minutes.

The fries are even easier, just cut up the sweet potato into french fry shapes, coat in oil cook in a pre-heated 400 F oven for 30 minutes in a single layer on cookie sheets.  I flipped the fries every 10 minutes.

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Jalapeno Cheese Bread

Originally uploaded by msroest.

Jalapeno Cheese Bread

• 500g Bread Flour
• 2 tsp sea salt
• 1 tsp instant yeat
• 300 ml luke warm water
• 250g Swiss Cheese (ementhal/gruyere)
• 100g Pickled Jalapeno Slices

Combine flour,salt,yeast in the workbowl of a mixer or food processor. Add the water slowly until a dough ball forms. Knead dough until a small piece window panes. Cut the cheese into 1cm cubes and knead into the dough. Roughly chop the jalapeno slices and knead them into dough until well integrated.

Place the dough in a ungreased bowl, cover with saran wrap allow to rise for 1.5 – 2 hours. Once risen seperate into 2 pieces cover lightly and allow to rest for 15-20 minutes. Form each piece into a tight ball, and allow to proof for 30-45 minutes.

Preheat oven to 475 F, with a baking stone inside.

Put the loaves onto the baking stone, and spray the inside of the oven with water and reduce the temperature to 450. Bake 40 minutes or until the crust is dark brown.

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