Ridiculously good cookies
I realize this may be a bit of a controversial claim, but I’m fairly confident that these are the best chocolate chip cookies in the world. They get slightly crispy at the edges but stay nice and chewy in the middle. The sea salt means they aren’t overly sweet, particularly if you use high quality dark chocolate.
But don’t take my word for it: try them for yourself. Recipe after the jump. Continue reading
I recently made a pizza with asparagus and goat’s cheese and fortunately had a decent amount of asparagus left over to enjoy for brunch the next day. I decided that I would use streaky bacon in lieu of prosciutto in this classic dish in combination with roasted asparagus and a poached egg. It is such a simple meal that it almost doesn’t require instructions, but just to be sure everybody is on the same page:
Cook the streaky bacon to your desired crispiness-level and drain on kitchen roll.
Drizzle olive oil over the asparagus, season and place into a fairly hot oven until it is cooked, but not burnt. This should only take about 7-10 minutes.
Before placing the asparagus in the oven, heat a saucepan with two or three inches of water to a boil and reduce the heat to barely a simmer. Crack two room temperature eggs into shallow dishes, being careful not to break the yolks. After the asparagus has been in the oven for 3 or 4 minutes, add 1/3 cup of vinegar to the simmering water (this helps the egg whites to stay with the yolk). Very gently add the eggs to the simmering water and allow to softly simmer for 2-3 minutes. Carefully remove the eggs one at a time with a slotted spoon and allow to drain on kitchen roll.
Remove the asparagus from the oven, top with streaky bacon and a poached egg, finish with black pepper. Enjoy.
- Ryan
How serendipitous! I just logged on to write a post about the homemade pizza I made last night, only to learn from Eve that it used to be called Italian rarebit. Amazing.
Last night's homemade Italian rarebit
Anyway, I had an inexplicable urge last night to make pizza, so I whipped up some dough using a Jaime Oliver recipe. I halved the quantities, and used self-raising flour because that was all I had in the house. I also used the food processor instead of my hands for the first time. I don’t think it’s faster, but it avoids the sticky hands problem. I also found the water quantity specified by the recipe far too high – I didn’t use all of it and still had to add much more flour.
After letting the dough rise and rolling a quarter of it out into something vaguely circular, I topped it with tomato sauce, spinach, mozzarella, carmelized onions, plum tomatoes, and goat’s cheese. And I still have enough dough for three more pizzas ready in the freezer for an evening I need an easy dinner solution.
- Anna
According to my favorite stupid food show these days, pizza was known as “Italian rarebit” when it made its first appearance in post-war Britain.
-Eve
by Flickr user missy & the universe (Creative Commons licence)
This easy pasta dish is surprisingly tasty, it only requires 3 or 4 ingredients, and active time is a minimal 2-3 minutes. My version was inspired by a recipe in Nigella Express that uses sundried tomatoes, but I’ve never liked sundried tomatoes (the texture is wrong), so I substitute roasted plum or cherry tomatoes instead.
Instructions as follows: preheat the oven to 200c, then halve a punnet or two of small tomatoes. Spread over a baking tray, drizzle with olive oil, then season. I sometimes add minced garlic at this point as well. Stick the tomatoes in the oven for 20 minutes, and cook the pasta whilst they’re roasting. When the pasta is ready, drain (reserve some cooking liquid, you may need it to thin the sauce). Stir in the roasted tomatoes and mascarpone. You can also use cream fraiche.
I’ve cooked this for two different people in the last couple weeks and it’s been very well received both times. Not bad for something so effortless!
- Anna
Actual food-related blogging to resume shortly.
In the meantime, photographic evidence that a little illness doesn’t have to compromise a classy party spread.
-Eve
Nature's miracle
Lemsip and tea, I tell ya.
Sure it turns the tea a frightening shade of electric orange, but I’ve always found that a very healing color.
-Eve
If you’re my sister, the answer to the above brainteaser is: good + good = good.
A few brave souls tested this equation at our 4th of July barbeque by combining ribs and vanilla ice cream (cookie dough ice cream was rejected as a clearly silly idea). Surprisingly, the majority who were brave enough to taste it were in favour, though I’m inclined to attribute this to the beer consumed earlier rather than the merits of the combination itself.
- Anna
Posted in American food
Tagged 4th of July, bbq, cookie dough, good + good, ice cream, ribs, weird combinations
If I were a more committed food blogger, this post would go something like this:
‘Last week I made a cake which went hilariously wrong, but still managed to taste great so I tweaked the recipe and now it’s perfect. Here it is.’
But alas, I’m not, so it’s not going to. Instead I’m going to link to a recipe, tell you how I tweaked it, how it went hilariously wrong, and how I suspect it could be perfected by you at home. Or by me at some point in the future.
I wanted to bring this sour cream and lemon pound cake to a 4th of July bbq. Stef had already lent me her tube pan (they’re hard to find in this country) and I woke up early to shop for all the ingredients. But there was no cake flour. Now, I’m a fairly inept baker and I didn’t really know what cake flour was, so I figured I was just having some American/British confusion and bought the bag that said PERFECT FOR CAKES on it. Seemed reasonable enough.
Based on the reviews and my own ineptitude, here’s what I wound up using:
Grease and flour a large tube pan and preheat the oven to 350.
The assembly procedure is quite simple, and I followed the directions to the letter (adjusting for altered quantities). It all went wrong in the pouring stage. The tube pan I had was smaller than the one called for, so I filled it up to about an inch from the top, leaving about a cup left over. But because the PERFECT FOR CAKES flour I’d bought was self rising, this wasn’t nearly enough room. Five minutes after I put it in the oven, the cake was already breaching the top of the pan. 20 minutes it and it was shedding cake all over the oven. I had to take it out a few times during the baking process to scrape burning bits of cake from the oven floor.
Also, because it had risen so high the top of the cake got too close to the heat source and started to burn, so I had to lower the rack right down to the bottom of the oven.
I thought the cake was a sure failure, and texted Anna to say the bbq would be down a dessert. But my cake and I persevered, and after 70 minutes, when a knife inserted came out clean, I took it out of the oven for good, turned it out onto a rack after cutting through where the cake had baked over the edge of the tin, and it started to look a lot more promising. It also collapsed a bit, which was encouraging.
And it was great! As indicated above, though, I would definitely cut the sugar and up the lemon to suit my tastes. I would also stick with the self rising flour next time. The big lesson is pour a lot less of it in the pan, or use a (much) bigger pan. And start it out on a low rack just to be safe.
-Eve
