There’s a little restaurant in Minneapolis called Maria’s Cafe.  They serve the most amazing corn pancakes in the world.  I won’t dare replicate their recipe because I know how much extra butter I’d have to put into it… plus it’s a respect thing yo.  If I ate buttery creamy corn pancakes all day, I wouldn’t appreciate going to Maria’s, and I’d probably be 500 lbs.  This recipe however, is a great alternative to the oh so creamy and buttery pancakes at Maria’s Cafe.  I googled a bit for recipes on the interwebs mainly to see proportions, and ended up with this.  Many recipes use variations of frozen corn, canned corn, and fresh corn.  I only had frozen on hand.  I also need a new skillet/griddle, because mine doesn’t heat very evenly.  *sigh*.

Evie’s Almost as Good as Maria’s Corn Pancakes

Ingredients:

• 1  cup milk
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 1/2 cups frozen sweet corn
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 Tbsp sugar
• 1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 large eggs
• butter spray

Directions:

1. Using a food processor, break up the frozen corn a little, a few pulses will do.  Combine corn and water and cook in the microwave for 2 minutes.  Do not drain.
2. combine 1 cup milk, butter, and corn mixture in small saucepan over medium heat. Let the butter melt, while stirring occasionally.  Milk boils over very easily.  When butter is melted, cool the mixture, lukewarm is good enough.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt.
4. In large bowl, beat the eggs. Add the milk and corn mixture, then gently stir the dry mixture, mixing until it is moistened and thoroughly combined.  Do not overmix!  The batter should be a little thinner than a cake batter, adjust with milk/flour as needed – Maria’s pancakes are thinner, and not as voluminous.
5. Let the mixture sit for about 10 – 15 minutes.
6. Spray a skillet with the butter spray, and place it over medium-high heat.  Pour the batter and cook the pancakes like you normally would.  I like mine super big ala Maria’s, so my pancakes are the size of a whole plate!
7. You can melt more butter over the pancakes here but I chose to omit it, I rather stuff my face with bacon.

If you are Asian, you know exactly what I’m talking about.  The big bowl of steaming liquid, little wire mesh spoons to cook your food with, eating a bunch of vegetables at the end and die to the amount of spices.  I wish I had some better pictures from the restaurant, but I don’t.  This post however, is not about hot pot, not really.  It’s about what to do with all that leftover you got because the hot pot is intended to feed 4, and you went there with 2 because you just had to have it.

We came home with a metric ton of raw fish, beef, chicken, pork meatballs, fried tofu, egg noodles, and spinach.  It was like going to the grocery store.  I suppose I could have had them pack up the hot pot broth, and used a bit of it in this ramen, but I didn’t think that far ahead.  You can of course make this ramen without having hot pot the night before, but that’s just not as fun now is it?

Evie’s Ramen #154

Ingredients:

• 5 slices of beef
• 5 slices of chicken
• 5 slices of fish
• 5 shrimp, cleaned and deveined
• 2 pork balls
• 2 pieces of fried tofu
• 1 cup cooked thin egg noodles
• 1/2 cup spinach
• 2 cups beef broth
• 1/2 tablespoon veal demi glace
• salt to taste

Directions:

1. Heat a pot of water over your stove for boiling the protein.
2. In a second pot, bring the beef broth to a boil and add the veal demi glace for extra flavoring.  Add the pork balls and let boil for about 2 minutes.  Then add the egg noodles and spinach and boil for an additional 3 minutes.
3. In the first pot of water, boil the beef, chicken, fish, and shrimp for 3 minutes.  Do this in a separate pot because we don’t want the nasties from boiling meat and fish to be in the ramen.  Turn off the heat and skim off the nasties from the top and discard.
4. In a large bowl, add the broth and noodle mixture.  Top with the drained protein.  Serve and enjoy!

After making this, believe it or not, I still had a bunch of leftovers but it was mostly the chicken and spinach.  I made a quick stir fry dish with the chicken, a whole onion, black bean sauce, and the spinach.  Totally delicious, but no pictures sorry.

This is the official I’m-Starving-What-Can-I-Make-In-30-Minutes-ala-Rachel-Ray meal.  I steamed some green beans from a bag, cooked some fish in parchment, and rubbed down a pork tenderloin with a the Walkerswood Jamaican Jerk Seasoning that’s insanely good.  I mean seriously, if you love spicy food, especially a peppery spicy, you need to get this.  A little of it goes a long way too, it is THAT spicy.

For the pork, I basically took 2 tablespoons of this stuff, rubbed it all over, and cooked according to package directions.  This does not mean that you should use 2 tablespoons.  We have a very very high spice tolerance, and I almost cried a little from the spiciness at the end, but man was it ever worth it.

For the fish, I took a bowl and laid down my parchment paper.  This makes adding the wet ingredients a lot easier and mess-free.  Put in the center your fish of choice – I used a sea bass.  Then throw in there 1 slice of ginger, 1 stalk of green onion, chopped up.  In a separate bowl, mix a tablespoon of soy sauce, a tablespoon of Chinese cooking wine, maybe a dash of seasame oil, and a pinch of sugar.  Drizzle the sauce on top of the fish.  Tie together with food-save thread, place on a cookie sheet and bake according to directions for your fish.  Sea Bass is thicker, so it took about 25 minutes at 350.  A smaller thinner cut of fish should only take about 10 minutes.

And voila, a somewhat non traditional surf and turf in 30 minutes.

So lately, I’ve been on this giant egg-on-a-sandwich kick.  When I made this BLT last week, I couldn’t help frying up an egg and putting it on top.  I wish I would have taken a cross-section photo because let me tell you, it was gorgeous – but the sandwich was too good to stop eating it and sorry to say, food comes before photos.  There is also a slice of pepper jack cheese under the lettuce.  Man, what a great sandwich that was.  I want to eat another one after looking at this photo but I ran out of focaccia bread.  The bread, oh hey, I made the bread!  It’s super good.  Let me show you the recipe.  It is here, at King Arthur.  I didn’t have any pizza dough flavor, so I added 1/2 tablespoon of garlic powder, 1/2 tablespoon of dried minced onions, and a few sprinkles of basil.  The recipe is in the egg post below as well, because bread you see, is multipurpose.

Hmm… would it be wrong of me to whip up a few slices of bacon for an afternoon snack right now?

Oh yes egg, show us your gooey orange inside.  Melt down that fork.  Oh yes.  Wait, is that bacon back there?  Oh yes bacon, yes yes let me eat you.  I have to confess, I made *4* slices of bacon, but only put 2 on the plate so I don’t look like a total fattie.  But I totally ate 4 slices of bacon, yes, and 2 eggs.  I’m pretty sure I have more cholesterol than blood at this moment.

And let me introduce you to my coffee mug.  I will have to put them away soon since spring is coming, it’s not totally wrong to use snowman mugs in the middle of summer is it?  I’ll think about it.

I’m sure you guys don’t care about how to cook eggs and bacon right?  The focaccia however, I made myself, and it’s quite delish.  The recipe is adapted from King Arthur Flour.

Starter
1 cup (4 1/4 ounces) King Arthur 100% Organic White Whole Wheat Flour*
1/2 cup (4 ounces) cool water
pinch of yeast
*Substitute regular white whole wheat flour, or unbleached all-purpose flour, if you  like.

Dough
2 cups (8 1/2 ounces) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
3 tablespoons (1 1/4 ounces) olive oil
1 tablespoon Pizza Dough Flavor [substituted with 1/2 tablespoon garlic powder, 1/2 tablespoon minced onion flakes, and a dash of dried basil]
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons instant yeast
1/2 cup (4 ounces) lukewarm water

The night before you want to bake the focaccia, mix the starter ingredients together just till they’re combined. Cover, and let rest at room temperature overnight.

Next day, mix the starter with all of the dough ingredients and knead briefly; 5 to 6 minutes, by hand or machine, is all this dough needs (kneads). If you’re using a bread machine, program for dough or manual, but hit the cancel button after 8 minutes of kneading.

Cover the dough and let it rise for 60 minutes. Remove it from the bowl, and fold it over a few times, to redistribute the growing yeast; then let it rise for another 30 to 60 minutes.

Spray a half-sheet pan (18″ x 13″), or similar-sized pan, with non-stick vegetable oil spray, then spread with a thin layer of olive oil. (Yes, grease the pan first, then film it with oil. This will make the focaccia’s bottom crust crisp.) Place the dough on the pan, and pat and stretch it into an 11″ x 15″ rectangle (approximately; don’t be a perfectionist about it). The dough will shrink back somewhat; set your timer for 15 minutes, and stretch it out again. Repeat once more, if necessary, to make it about 11″ x 15″. Brush the dough with olive oil, cover, and set it in a warm place to rise for about 60 to 90 minutes, till it’s nicely puffy. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat your oven to 400°F.

Bake the focaccia for 18 to 20 minutes, until it’s golden brown. Remove it from the oven and place it on a rack to cool. Yield: about a dozen 4-inch squares.

My work has an annual chili contest, this is the 2nd year I’ve submitted a chili.  In the past years, judges always complained the chilis are too hot.  So this year I tried to tone it down a little with only 2 habaneros and 4 fresnos.  Chili is hard to judge – ours was judged based on consistency, color, smell, and taste.  The consistency aspect is a little easier, the chili should not be watery, or thick like a paste.  The color and smell however are harder – I guess it shouldn’t be black… but what’s a good chili color, and what makes one chili’s color better than the next?  I am not a huge fan of the chili smell, there are much better smells in my opinion, like bacon sizzling in the oven… mmmm bacon.  I don’t really know why and how to judge if a chili smells better than another chili.  Taste is pretty subjective to the taster, this year apparently all the judges wanted more spicy and none of the chilis delivered!  So this year, most of the contestants toned down the spiciness of their chilis, and it just happens that this group of judges wanted spicier chilis!! Oh cruel timing, I should have added those two extra habaneros that I purchased.

I am sad that I didn’t even get the hottest chili like last year because I held back.  The hottest chili award went to a chili with only 1 habanero and a few comments that it wasn’t hot enough.  I loled.   Next year, they are all going to PAY.  At least 5 habaneros… at least.

So I don’t believe in Chili recipes – Chili is something that you make by throwing a bunch of stuff into a pot.  Here is the stuff that I threw into the pot.

• Ground Turkey
• Pork Belly
• Beef Stew Meat
• Onions
• Canned Tomatoes
• Canned Kidney Beans
• Canned Chiles
• Chili Powder
• Cayenne Pepper Powder
• Habaneros
• Fresnos
• Green Pepper
• Tomatillos
• Onion Flakes
• Garlic Powder
• Brown Sugar
• Cumin
• Salt

I didn’t get the consistency out of the pork belly that I wanted.  I wanted it to just melt in your mouth, and the way that it cooked in the chili was disappointing, it was a little too much like pork chunks.  Next time when I incorporate pork belly into a chili, I’m going to stew it first in the oven for a few hours and then add it to the chili.

In an attempt to cook healthier foods, I came up with this fennel and turkey ravioli dish.  It was inspired by a fennel and artichoke ravioli recipe, but I have no artichoke, and plenty of ground turkey in my fridge.  It was one of those nights, scrounging in the fridge for whatever that’s left, and try to come up with something that doesn’t taste like dog barf.  This definitely did not taste like dog barf, I enjoyed it a lot.  During the making of this, I had an egg emergency – I had 3 eggs total, used them in making the fresh pasta.  This is usually not enough for 3 cups of flour, so I had to put in some extra olive oil and extra water to make it come together.  Then as I was preparing the stuffing, I realized… hey… most people would use an egg to bring the stuffing together… I HAVE NO EGGS.  Despite the fact that the grocery store is about a mile from my house, going outside is just a terrible terrible option.  I live in Minnesota, it’s cold out there!  Also, if I went out to get just eggs, I would feel like it’s not efficient, and I would try to buy other things, which would take an hour, and I was hungry.  So in place of an egg – I used feta cheese as the binding agent.  It turned out delicious, and one less egg is always good for my waistline.

Evie’s Fennel and Turkey Ravioli

Ingredients:

Pasta Dough:

• 2.5 – 3 cups of flour
• 4 large eggs (or in my case, 3, and some water… )
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• fennel frond, minced

Ravioli Filling:

• 1/2 lb ground turkey
• 1/2 cup feta cheese
• 1/2 cup diced fennel
• Salt and Pepper to taste
• 1 teaspoon fennel seeds

Pasta Sauce:

• 1 28oz can diced tomatoes
• 3/4 cup sliced fennel
• 1 teaspoon fennel seeds
• 3/4 cup red onions
• 2 tablespoons capers (or olives)
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste

Directions:

Pasta Sauce:

1. In a large pan, heat up a tablespoon of olive oil over medium heat.  Add the fennel, fennel seeds, onions, and garlic.  Cook for 6-8 minutes until soft.
2. Add can of tomatoes with juices, tomato paste, and the capers.  Cook for about 5 minutes more.  Sauce your raviolis right away to prevent sticking.  Make sure you time your raviolis and sauce to be done at the same time.

Raviolis:

1. Mix the pasta dough by combining all ingredients, and then mix by hand or mixer, I use a mixer.  More in depth details here.  Cut it into 4 pieces, and roll it out using your awesome KitchenAid pasta roller, you do have one right?  I rolled the ravioli dough at the level 7 setting, so they are not complete paper thin like the level 8 setting.  For every piece of dough, I roll it out through level 4, then I cut it in half with a knife and roll it out some more into level 7.  Two sheets of pasta will make approximately 12 raviolis.    I love adding the minced fennel frond, it’s really visually appealing in this pasta.
2. Mix the filling by combining all ingredients in a bowl.  On the stove, boil a big pot of water to cook your raviolis in.
3. Lay one sheet down on your working surface, make sure the back is sufficiently floured so it doesn’t stick.  Use your ravioli cutter and lightly score the dough into the final shapes.  This helps you determine where to put the glob of turkey stuffing.
4. Spoon about a tablespoon of filling onto the pasta sheet.  Make sure you don’t overfill them, we don’t want them to explode.  Then use an EGG WASH (1 egg, 1 tablespoon of water) and brush every exposed pasta surface lightly.  See, I didn’t have an egg wash, because I had an egg emergency.  I used water.  It held fine.
5. Take the other sheet of pasta, and lightly layer it over the first two globs of filling.  Give it enough slack so the two pasta sheets touch.  Repeat to cover the rest of the raviolis.  Use your fingers and pat down the areas you egg washed.  Make sure there aren’t huge air bubbles near the filling.  You might have to pat the filling down a little for the ravioli cutter to travel over them.
6. Use your cutter, and cut out the raviolis!  This is my favorite part.  Super fun.  Separate them right away, I put them on some sheets of paper towels until they are ready to go into the pot.  Stack the sheets when you have a lot of them made.
7. Boil the raviolis for about 3-5 minutes in batches of 10 or less – you don’t want them to stick to each other.  Use a slotted spoon to fish them out, use them right away by saucing to prevent sticking.
8. Garnish with a little bit of fennel frond and serve!!

Ok the salmon wasn’t terribly hard to find, but fennel was.  I’ve struck out at super target, the asian grocery stores, and uh, ok I only looked at two stores.  I’m pretty lazy ok?  I found some fennel bulbs at Kowalski’s down the street, imagine that, my local neighborhood grocery store had what I was looking for, all I had to do was drive 8 blocks and pay $3.50 for each bulb.  Why is fennel so expensive?  It is delicious tho and I would probably buy it again (A++ would buy again yes).  I got the idea of fennel + salmon from a wedding caterer we tasted at.  Their food was quite mediocre and tasted like catered, but they did make a great salmon dish with large chunks of fennel, onions, and tomatoes.  So I went on (surprise surprise) epicurious, and found this great recipe to try.  I’m not really trying to get all my recipes from there, they just have the best iPhone app in the world and it’s so easy to cook with a recipe on my iPhone.  Soon I will be cooking with recipes on my iPad, March please come sooner.

Here is the original recipe, and I deviated from it, quite a lot.  Mostly because I didn’t have some of the ingredients on hand, also recipes are guidelines meant to be broken, as long as you do not destroy key ingredients and proportions.  [like omitting flour from banana bread... that's a bad thing.]

For the risotto, I had no clam juice, and I had no fresh clams to extract juice from [insert image of me juicing clams].  I substituted chicken stock, and a cup of Eddington’s tomato basil soup that I stole from somebody at work this afternoon.  I started off with the oil/butter and onion base, added the rice, then worked in chicken stock and tomato basil soup.  Cooked it according to the recipe, added the parmesan cheese, and so forth.  This turned out incredible and my mind grapes are working furiously to find other soups that would work great as a risotto stock.

For the veggie mixture, I omitted the tarragon and spinach, added a bit of the fennel stalk (tastes like celery), and used a can of tomatoes.  The fennels needed more than 3 minutes to cook, more like 6.

Honestly, the salmon and fennel were pretty damn good and I would probably make it again, but the real winner here was my genius risotto creation.  I am seriously thinking about sending Sean out to Eddington’s once in a while to get this soup for me so I can make the risotto.  I would send him because I’m lazy, and we have come full circle as to why I can’t find fennel.

I still have a bulb of fennel left, what else should I make??

Do you have:

• A package of Ramen? (Or noodles and stock)
• Tomatoes?
• Bacon?
• Eggs?
• Frozen Peas?

If you have 3 or more of the above, you can make this kicked up ramen.  I make this one, all the time, because I usually have all these ingredients in my kitchen.  This looks pretty delicious right, you’re probably wondering, why would you throw that up!  Well, it wasn’t voluntary.  So a few days ago, a coworker of mine convinced me to start the Beachbody Insanity workout.  It was Sunday night, and I figured why not, I’m motivated from watching the Olympics all week, lets do this!  So I made dinner [this ramen], I ate it, omnomnom, while watching the USA vs Canada Hockey game [GO USA!].  About an hour later, the game is over, we kicked some Canuk ass, and I felt so great, lets start Insanity!!!  Well… I highly underestimated this workout routine.  Let me list my follies:

1. Eating a pretty big dinner.
2. Working out 1 hour after eating a pretty big dinner.
3. Did not read the warning labels and PDFs that came with Insanity – who reads manuals?
4. Extreme OCD at times.
5. Assuming this workout video is similar to other workout videos – in that you are suppose to follow along.
6. Assuming that the little Asian girl is the weaker out of the two people demonstrating with the trainer.  The other is a dude, with muscles.
7. Participated in a 3 month long program to keep my couch from flying into outer space (i.e. I sat on it, for a long time.)

I am sure there are more follies, but that’s not the point to this story.  I started the video, got through a pretty rough warm up, tried to follow the little Asian girl through out all the sets.  At the 4th set of workouts, I totally realized that she’s what you would call… HARDCORE.  She was kicking the dude’s ass, I’m pretty sure she’s a robot.  At this point I’m already half way in, I figured I can just power through it with what energy I have left.  At the end, I had a little bit of a second wind and went a little crazy with the plank leg raises… Right when we started the cooldown stretching, I suddenly felt a little woozy and started seeing stars.  I sat down, put my head between my legs, and hoped it would go away.  NOPE, not when I just ate nommy ramen 1.5 hours ago.  I threw it all up.  I worked out so hard that I threw up.  If you think about it, that’s pretty HARDCORE isn’t it?  So maybe, I did beat the little Asian chick on the video…. (ok no not really.)

The joke is on me tho, apparently this video, if I had read the manual, is a fitness test.  You are suppose to do only as much as you can do, and you were NOT suppose to follow along.  Throughout this entire video series, you are suppose to rest when you need to rest, because they call it INSANITY for a reason.  This is what I get for not reading the manual.  Just remember kids, read the manual if you don’t want to throw up like I did.  The only regret that I have is throwing up precious bacon.  :(

Evie’s Everyday Ramen

Directions:

1. Take 1 or 2 slices of bacon and cut it into 1/2 inch pieces.  Cook bacon in a small stock pot until it’s to your favorite bacon consistency.  (I prefer a softer chewey bacon myself).  Drain the bacon grease.
2. Take a tomato and cut it into about 8 pieces.  Add the tomatoes directly to the bacon over high heat, it will sizzle, cook down the tomatoes until they are tender and there are tomato juices on your bacon.
3. Carefully add 2 – 3 cups of water to the pot.   Let it boil, and add the spice packet.  [If you are using noodles and stock, add 2-3 cups of stock instead.]
4. Add your noodles and frozen peas.  Let it boil for a few minutes to tenderize your noodles.  No more than 2 or 3 minutes should be needed for most ramen.
5. Meanwhile, crack open an egg and whisk it.  At the end when the noodles are soft and ready to eat, drizzle the egg mixture into the pot.  This is how you make egg drop soup!  Turn off your burner right away, we want the egg to be light and fluffy, don’t boil it.  It will cook the second it reaches the boiling water.
6. Top ramen with fried shallots and drizzles of sesame oil and serve!

What do you do when you have too much tomatoes and basil left over from your pizza?  You make a caprese salad!  I apologize for the lack of bacon in this dish.  I’m sure you can sprinkle some on top… now why didn’t I think of that when I made this.

Evie’s Last Minute Caprese Salad

Ingredients:

• 1 tomato
• handful of basil
• 1/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
• salt and pepper

Directions:

1. Slice up the tomatoes and arrange on plate.
2. Chiffonade the basil and layer on top of the tomatoes.  (This is where you roll up the basil leaves, bigger leaves on the outside, smaller leaves on the inside) and slice thin, illustrated below.
3. Sprinkle with shredded mozzarella.
4. Whisk together the olive oil and vinegar, pour over the salad.  Salt and pepper to taste.