Candied almonds. 2 cups of almonds, 1 cup of sugar, 1/2 cup of water, a tablespoon of cinnamon, dash of red pepper, and cook it all down in a frypan stirring constantly until it suddenly goes dry. Dump it out on butcher paper to cool. Please don't burn yourself, sugar burns are really, really bad. Put the kid and the dog in the kennel together before making this. Let them out when they turn 18.
Medium. The key is the really, really constant stirring, especially once it starts to bubble. It'll bubble a lot for a while, then the bubbles will slacken off and it'll just be kind of syrupy. Then, all of a sudden it will go dry-ish. That's when all the water is gone and the sugar has recrystalized. If you keep going after that the sugar will caramelize and you'll get kind of an almond brittle effect, but to do proper brittle is more conplicated. But anyway, as soon as it crystalizes pour it out on the butcher/parchment paper. Have that laid out in advance. Use your stirring implement (I have a cheap bamboo spoon) to break up any clumps of nuts. Also, put water and soap into your pan right quickly if you want the remaining sugar ever to come off. Basically, nuts out of the pan, pan into the sink, turn on the tap, back to the nuts breaking up the clumps, add soap to the pan and turn off the water when it's full, walk away for 15 minutes to let the nuts cool. New trick: It works with the same amount of cocoa powder (unsweetened, pure cocoa powder) as with cinnamon for chocolate nuts. With hazelnuts, cocoa, and a bit of salt, you could have....
Ran 20oz prime bone-in sirloins with a bacon-scallop topper, miso-carrot puree, and wild mushroom risotto for a special tonight. $80. Killed an 8 pack case by 7:30. Should have ordered two cases.
Almost smoked out my kitchen because I had the heat on the wrong burner and overheated my frying oil. All I wanted was to fry my spring rolls and turn them into not spring rolls. That was a horrible mess. But I saved it by baking them instead. Cabbage, carrot and TVP in a Korean barbecue flavor (a packet came with the TVP). I also undercooked my broccoli because, well, the broccoli was on the burner I thought I was heating. The rice was fine! No adventure there. All in all it was really quite delicious, I just need to remember I'm not good at frying things.
TVP... the mainstay of gas station microwave burritos! Charlie D had a car and one night we drove off base to get microwave burritos. Sat on the hood of his car and ate them, then on the way back to base I realized that he was going on deployment at the end of the week and I was getting out in two weeks. We had a quick moment of "well, probably never see you again" and that was that. No idea what happened to him.
I made a cracker plate. Crackers, cheese, kolbassa, pickles, olives and a croissant. I like to nibble.
Cracker plates/low-grade charcuterie rock! Sunday lunch sometimes looks like this around the Aschendale apartment:
So...you used them to lure in something palatable, like rats? Really, really not a seafood guy, sorry.
Scallops are the only shellfish I will eat, and only if damned fresh. They can be very good. I imagine Rhode Island is a lonely place if you donât like seafood
I hear you. And I'm sorry too. Seafood is 27% of the business model. You can eat, but you're missing out.
Made my traditional Christmas eve quiche! Mozzarella, bacon and onions with enough left over for breakfast. The turkey ought to be interesting tomorrow. It takes great stealth to unpack the fridge and stow the leftovers just right.
Iâm bastardizing chicken parmesan. I donât have any parmesan, so Iâm using provolone and a fire roasted tomato marinara.
Made an omelet for breakfast as opposed to my normal breakfast of....nothing. With pepperoni and cheese cause...that's what I had.
It was a delicious Christmas lunch. I am not a vegetarian, but I do have veggie tendencies... call me veg-curious, but venison is terrific meat. Our little haunch was swapped for a bottle of ex-brother-in-law's wine by a guy who "manages" a herd of deer in woods near the vineyard, possibly the best meat I have ever eaten - certainly the best "lean and beef-like" meat. full scoff - haunch of venison with roast shallots, whole carrots, beetroot, potatoes, mashed swede, steamed green beans, carrots, boiled sprouts, chestnut stuffing balls, and "3 pigs" (pieces of pork chipolata, halloumi, and frankfurter wrapped in bacon), creamed horseradish and gravy made with the meat juices (meat was cooked in port, so quite some gravy...) I have done a fair few Christmas dinners over the years - they are usually quite stressful (it has to be good, people don't want "ok" at Christmas), but somehow this one was very easy to cook (the meat can stand for ages, the roasted veggies take a long time and can wait in a hot oven, the swede can be re-heated before mashing, gravy can simmer away... the only timing-sensitive bit really was the steamed/boiled veg) Unless you have venison (c: Yesterday we had "beef" in black-bean sauce and sweet shredded chilli "beef" with noodles and egg-fried rice - really amazing Christmas dinner leftover meal (but if we'd had turkey there would have been a soup... probably with noodles)
Turkey. Did pan stuffing yesterday, will do the bird (stuffed, you can never have too much stuffing), mashed potatoes, and gravy today. Smoker's busted so I can do a stuffed turkey. This time it's with a brandy brine, and the stuffing has sun-dried tomato and herb sausage rather than Italian. No sage in the bird. I'm cautiously optimistic, but the brine recipe didn't call for it, so... we'll see. Also, the taters will have bits of homemade bacon mixed in. Still deciding on skins but I'm leaning towards not.
...Does it count as cooking if it's heating up store-bought barbeque wings in the oven? Side note: cooking with a cast iron skillet is amazing because you can just plonk that bad boy right in the oven, no problem.
