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.

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.

What happens when it snows 400 feet outside, you are too lazy to shovel your car out and  go to the grocery store, and there’s nothing edible left in the fridge?  You turn to your freezer.  Luckily, there is GOLD in my freezer.  Sean’s mom bought us a bunch of fillet mignons and lobster tails for Christmas, bless that woman or else we would have starved to death today.  STARVED.  I also found a bag of frozen green beans, nothing is growing on it so I assume it is safe to eat.  We will find out soon I guess.  I whipped up a simple butter sauce for both the steak and lobster, and cooked the green beans with some garlic.

Garlic-Shallot Butter Sauce with Surf and turf

• 1/3 stick of butter
• 1/4 cup of olive oil (you can use all butter if you want)
• pinch of salt and pepper
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 3 medium sized shallots
• 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Cut up the garlic and shallots a little, melt the butter, and mix all ingredients in a food processor until the garlic and shallots are really finely chopped up.  This sauce was good for 2 fillets and 2 lobster tails with enough left over for dipping.  If you don’t like spicy, omit the cayenne!  Cooking is all about using ingredients and flavors you like, mix it together, experiment.

• 2 fillet mignons
• 2 lobster tails

Cut the lobster tails in half down the middle.  Brush butter sauce over steaks and lobster.  Cook in a cast iron pan over high heat until steaks are medium rare (if it’s anything else it’s CRAP).  Work in batches if necessary, cooking the steaks first so they can rest while the lobsters are cooking.  Small fillets should take about 3 minutes on each side, lobster about the same.  Cook the lobster on the shell side first, and turn over on the flesh side last.

In a separate pan, cook the green beans with one clove of minced garlic, add a pinch of salt.

Do you find it weird that I have shallots, but no other real veggies/food in my fridge?  I find it kind of weird.

Hello!  I suck at blogging, but hey here’s a new post!  So… I started using this app foursquare on my iPhone lately and it’s really cool you see, it posts your location, when you go places, you check in, and you broadcast where you are, so stalkers can stalk you, but you get to be mayor of places!  Like it’s really cool!  You get stuff for being mayor, like RECOGNITION, and POWER, and ROBOTS.  Ok the last 2 aren’t true.  I became mayor of a local pub because Sean and I love the place, because we went there like TWICE A WEEK… sometimes three times but please don’t tell anybody.  I held on to my fame for about a week, and today I was ousted.  Very sad.  I have turned to blogging to heal my emo wounds.  So you see, this futile attempt at becoming the mayor of a restaurant caused days and days of not cooking and thus not having material for my blog and thus suckitude.  But hey, I made this delicious peppery pasta carbonara dish (which I make a lot, because it’s delicious, and super easy, and full of bacon).

Voila!  I cook!

This is for 1 serving, recipe from epicurious.  I used a thin spaghetti, and had no tarragon or parsley so I substituted green peas.

Ingredients:

• 2 bacon slices, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1/4 pound spaghetti
• 1/2 tablespoon unsalted butter
• 1/3 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano plus additional for serving
• 1 to 2 tablespoons chopped tarragon or parsley
• 1 large egg

Directions:

1. Cook bacon in a 10-inch nonstick skillet over medium heat until crisp. Transfer bacon with a slotted spoon to paper towels to drain.
2. Meanwhile, cook spaghetti in a 4-quart saucepan of salted boiling water until al dente. Reserve 1/3 cup cooking water, then transfer spaghetti with tongs to a small bowl, shaking off excess water, and keep pan of water simmering.
3. Pour off all but 2 teaspoons bacon fat from skillet, then whisk butter into fat in skillet over medium heat. Add spaghetti, reserved cooking water, cheese, and a rounded 1/4 teaspoon pepper and cook, stirring, until sauce is thickened and almost completely absorbed, 2 to 3 minutes. Add bacon and 1 tablespoon tarragon and toss. Season with salt and pepper.
4. Break egg into a cup and gently slide into water. Poach at a bare simmer to desired doneness (we prefer a firm white with a runny yolk, 2 to 3 minutes).
5. Serve pasta topped with egg (transfer using a slotted spoon). Sprinkle with remaining tarragon if desired.

And here is some egg porn, because you can’t have a poached egg without egg porn.

I love my ramen noodle!  It doesn’t get any easier than just throwing a bunch of stuff in a pot and add some noodles.  Here is what I did for this bowl, and I’ll share my deep dark secret with you on how I flavor the broth.

Evie’s Ramen #131

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch of soba noodles
• a handful of enoki mushrooms, cleaned
• 3 baby napa cabbage
• 1 medium carrot
• a few slices of Asian BBQ
• 1 egg
• 2 tsp beef broth
• 1 tsp veal demi glaze
• cilantro for ganish

Directions:

1. Cut your carrots into pretty flower shapes!  Very optional, you can just slice them, but I had some extra time and making carrot flowers is fun.  I first cut my carrot into a 2 inch section, make sure the bottom and top are flat as can be so the carrot sits up completely straight.  Then I cut V-shaped sections all the way down the length of the carrot.  This might take a little practice to perfect.  After you’ve cut about 5 or 6 Vs all around the perimeter, making sure they are evenly spaced, turn the carrot sideways and cut them into slices.
2. Boil 3 cups of water, add the beef broth and veal demi glaze.  This is my secret ingredient as of lately, it’s super flavorful in any broth!  I purchased mine pre-packaged but you can also make your own, it just takes about oh 50000 hours.
3. Meanwhile in another pot, boil 4 cups of water, this is your blanching water.  Add the carrots, baby napa, and mushrooms.  Blanch everything for about 2 minutes or however long to get your desired texture (you might like a crunchier vegetable for example).    Drain and set aside.
4. Poach an egg using the blanching water, or if you prefer poaching it in a pan you can do that as well.
5. To the beef broth, add the BBQ, they only need about a minute to warm up.   Fish the BBQ out and set aside.  We cook the BBQ in the flavored broth as opposed to the blanching water because we want to keep the meaty flavor.  If you don’t have any Asian BBQ, you can substitute fried thick-sliced bacon.
6. Add the soba noodles to the beef broth.  Follow the directions on your package, but typically the thin kind takes about 2-3 minutes to cook.
7. Assemble all your ingredients!  First using a pasta spoon, grab all the noodles out of the broth and place in a bowl.  Then arrange the vegetables, egg, and meat over top.  Last, pour the broth over everything but make sure it doesn’t drown, then garnish with cilantro.  We pour the broth last to warm the vegetables up again if they got cold, and add a little flavor to them before eating.

And there you have it, another pretty bowl of ramen.  I think if there was a most-ramen-eaten-by-a-single-person award category, I would probably win it.

Ohh look at him, a real shrimp that’s not processed, SO SCARY!!!  No my friend, do not be scared of this delicious sea-bug.  I will show you how to clean and devein Chuck here (yes I named him Chuck).  Why would you even buy an unprocessed shrimp as opposed to the nicely packaged shrimp in a bag?  Well one, a pound of giant shrimps like these will cost you ~$15/lb at the grocery store if you’re lucky.  If you clean them and devein them yourself, they are $5/lb at the Asian grocery stores.  For smaller shrimp, $3.50/lb.  It takes about 5-10 minutes to process them, definitely worth the time!  Plus I spit on those who lets a good shrimp head go to waste.  SPIT!  You have to eat the shrimp heads, suck the brains out, nomnom.  Ok if you are too scared to eat the head, reserve the head and peel for a shrimp stock, it’s got mmm mmm flavor.

First, rinse Chuck under cold water and give him a good shower.  Then take some kitchen shears and give his tentacles a good trim, and feel free to snip off the tip of the head including the eyeballs, who wants to look at eyeballs when they’re eating Chuck?  The spike on top of his head is quite pokey, so be careful when handling, take your shears and follow the contour of his head and snip it right off.  Think of it as a shrimp mohawk, and you’re the establishment and decided that he has to be shaven bald.   When you are done, your shrimp should look like this, no more eyes, tentacles fairly trimmed down (you can leave them on too if you like tentacles… ):

Now it’s time to devein Chuck.  This is the part where we remove his intestinal tract, it’s usually full of dirt and shrimp poop, so we really don’t want to cook that along with our shrimp.  First, make an incision right between the head and the body with your kitchen shears, about an inch long.  You can actually go the whole way as well and sometimes it might be very necessary if your shrimp has really dirty poop.  These were fairly clean and I only cut an inch to keep the integrity of the shell a little better during cooking.  You should see the vein after you’ve made this incision.  See where I’m pointing to it with my index finger?  That brown line there is the poop chute.

Now with your fingers/nails, grab a hold of the vein and pull it right out.  It helps to straighten the entire shrimp body when doing this.  If the vein isn’t coming out very easily with a little pressure, consider splitting your shrimp out all the way to the tail.  Rinse your shrimp under cold water to remove any residue.   This is what should be coming out.

As you can see, Chuck and his fellow shrimp did not eat a big meal before their deaths, so their intestinal tract is not that dirty.  I’ve seen much worse, where the entire thing is just black.  Gross.  It’s not harmful to you if it’s not cleaned 100%, it might just make your shrimp a little sandy and gross psychologically, but it’s not gunna kill you.

After your shrimp is prepped, time to fry them!!

Evie’s Salt and Pepper Shrimp

Ingredients:

• 1 lb head-on shrimp, cleaned and deveined and dried with paper towel
• 1/4 cup flour
• 2 tablespoons corn starch
• a pinch of salt
• 1 tablespoon kosher or sea salt
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon Szechuan numbing pepper (optional) or a few slices of jalapenos
• enough canola oil to cover the shrimp in the wok in batches

Directions:

1. Combine the flour, corn starch, and a pinch of salt in a large bowl.  Add the cleaned and deveined shrimp, toss to coat.
2. Heat up canola oil in wok, the oil should be about 375 degrees, but I just gauge it by eye.  It should not be smoking, and it should look hot and glossy enough for a proper fry.
3. Fry the shrimp in batches, 4 or 5 at a time.  I had about 14, so finished frying in 3 batches.  They don’t need to be fried very long, about 4 minutes should do it, lay the shrimp on a paper towel to drain.
4. Discard the oil and wash the wok and reheat.  Add the kosher salt, ground black pepper, and the Szechuan numbing pepper to a hot wok.  Stir for about a minute so the pepper can get a bit aromatic and flavorful.  Add the shrimp to the salt and pepper mixture and stir to cover, about another minute.  
5. Plate and Serve Chuck and his friends with sauteed pea shoots over rice!

Yay my food and wine magazine is here!  To celebrate, I made a recipe from it.  I went to SUPER FOODS and Dragon Star in frogtown last weekend and got about a dozen littleneck clams.  Except I think they were labelled wrong, and they should have been called bigneck clams, because they were huge.  Way bigger than what I think littleneck clams should be.  Aren’t they huge? (That’s what she said).  Ok maybe you can’t tell the scale from this picture, but look at the size of these clams compared to the thickness of the spaghetti noodles!

This recipe was super easy and I would definitely make it again.  The steamed clams were delicious, I paired it with some white wine (duh) and Sean was scared at first because he’s particular about some seafoods, but he loved this dish.  You might think this dish need to be salted, 1 pound of spaghetti and all, but the natural saltiness from the clams are perfect and this dish does not need any extra salt.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound spaghetti
• salt
• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
• 2 dozen littleneck clams, scrubbed (or 1 dozen giantneck clams!)
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/4 cup finely chopped parsley
• fresh ground black pepper

Directions:

1. In a large pot of boiling salt water, cook the spaghetti until just al dente, then drain well.
2. In a large, deep skillet, heat the olive oil.  Add the garlic and crushed red pepper and cook over moderately high heat, stirring occasionally until the garlic is lightly browned (~1.5 min).  Add the clams and water, cover and simmer until the clams open, about 5-8 minutes.  It took my gargantuan-neck clams about 8 minutes.  Discard any clams that don’t open.
3. I modified the recipe here by taking out the clams, before I added the spaghetti and chopped parsley to the  skillet and season with pepper.  I didn’t want to toss the clams with the spaghetti, it’s a lot easier to just take them out.  Toss over moderately high heat until the spaghetti absorbs some of the juices, about 1 minute.
4. Transfer to bowl and serve!

SEE HOW GIANT MY CLAMS ARE?  *snicker*