Warning: Undefined variable $show_stats in /home/jdqespth/public_html/wp-content/plugins/stats/stats.php on line 1384

Category: Recipe

Death Bi Chocolate?

I do not have a baking talent… or really much of any talent for desserts.

So, dear friendslist, is it a plausible goal to produce something chocolatey and tasty (but not necessarily gourmet) for the Death Bi Chocolate people by Monday noon?

Especially considering that I recently re-injured my knee with the grotty cartilage?

Ingredients should cost no more than $15 and be light enough to be hopped across the street. Preparation should be able to mostly take place sitting down.

Are there any recipes that fit these requirements? (even if I don’t make something for the event, it’ll still be great to know if such recipes exist)

I know this isn’t the best year to try my hand at participating, but it has come to my attention that this year it will be held somewhere more local than it used to be, so I’d love to see the event do well.

Plus – chocolate!

Wisdom from the comments: Epicurious Chocolate Cake, Chocolate Orgasms, Whacky Cake, French Chocolate Candy, and these fancy shaped brownies:

Fancy shaped brownies are very easy. You will need:

brownie ingredients
a sheet of parchment paper
a half sheet pan
a spatula
cookie cutters

Line the half sheet pan with the parchment paper.
Spread the brownie batter over the parchment-lined pan. Bake till set. Let cool.

Cut in shapes with the cookie cutters. Place on a serving plate. Eat the scraps.

If desired, microwave butterscotch chips or white chocolate till they melt and drizzle over the cutouts. Lick the drips off your fingers.

Experimental risotto – Mushroom, bacon, and maple syrup

I think I’ll make mushroom risotto for dinner tonight – so the big question is whether I want to stick with what I know’ll be tasty or whether I want to try to add bacon and a tiny bit of maple syrup to change things up a bit.

I’m not usually a fan of maple syrup, but I think the bacon I usually use (for breakfast and stuff, I haven’t tried it in risotto yet) will taste… classier… with a bit of syrup drizzled about.

ETA: a drizzle of maple syrup worked even better than I expected.

Hot date

So I have occasional dates with a chef. It’s lovely.

And he brought gifts! I might have mentioned that I would occasionally like flowers, but this was better – he brought me salmon and eel and cucumber salad. That’s true romance.

Then he cooked the salmon for me (powdered garlic and ginger, 5 spice powder, ground nutmeg, and cracked brown mustard on the fish cooked in just a little olive and sesame oil, deglazed with rice vinegar and soy sauce, with sticky rice on the side), and we had some islay scotch to go with.

So usually I try to cook for him, instead of the other way around, because there’s less fun in doing for your down time what you do for work. But every now and then, it’s rather fun – and he’s generous about it.

Spaghetti Squash and Chicken Wings

Adventures in Spaghetti Squash
Ever since I was in Weight Watchers (senior year of high school) and some cookbook or pamphlet tried to sell me on spaghetti squash as a healthy alternative to pasta, I have been fairly pissed at that whole cooking trope.

Sure, it may cook up into stringy bits that are morphologically like spaghetti, but that doesn’t mean it tastes the same or should function the same – it’s a squash! A little marinara sauce on top is just gross.

I’ve ranted on this point many times over the years, just not before to you.

But then today I somehow managed to cook spaghetti squash so that it tasted just like cheap ramen. Kid you not. No idea how. I just sliced it in half, removed the seeds, filled the hollow with homemade stock, and baked it for an hour or so (cut side up because it’s tidier that way and doesn’t get as sodden as cut side down in water).

End result? just like ramen. So I added a drizzle of sesame oil, some soy sauce, and a bit of pepper.

***

Chicken wings
All right, so they weren’t chicken wings – they were cornish hen wings. See, my parents don’t eat as much as they used to, so after my mother made a dinner where each of them had a wee cornish hen my father had eaten half of one breast and my mother had eaten most of one breast and one thigh. The rest went to me.

And while I boned the chicken, I wasn’t going to strip the meat off the wee little wings because that was too little return for the effort – so I just pulled them off whole.

So you’d think a cookbook that was all chicken all the time and nothing but chicken would have a recipe for wings. Not so much. But I found a likely recipe for random chicken bits. I ended up summarizing the pepper, cilantro, garlic, lime, whatever, paste for the marinade as a heaping teaspoon of the thai paste I had leftover in the fridge. After a couple hours, I cooked the marinated wings in a bit of oil and then right at the end drizzled oil and say sauce over them for the sauce.

Tasty!