Pretzels

Okay, so I know I'm supposed to be doing the grilled scallops from the 400 Recipes book, but I'm being lazy.  Yesterday, I wanted home-made pretzels, so we made those instead.  If anybody's keeping track, this one's number 25 in the book.

It's not a simple recipe, first, you have to make a 'yeast sponge'.  Yeah, I didn't know what that means either, so I just followed the recipe.  It says to mix 10 g fresh yeast, 5 Tbsp water and 1 Tbsp flour together and let them sit for two hours.  Now, I don't have fresh yeast, but the back of my fast acting yeast says that you can substitute 1 sachet for 15 g of fresh yeast, so I just used 2/3 of the sachet.  Well, if this website is to be trusted, a yeast sponge is supposed to get all thick and bubbly.  My sponge did nothing of the sort.  Then again, that website also says you should use roughly equal parts water and flower, so I don't know what's going on here.

Anyway, I followed the recipe like a good little boy.  The next step is to mix the yeast for the dough with some water and milk.  Now, I know what you're thinking--Mix yeast sponge with water and milk--well that's wrong.  In fact, the recipe calls for more yeast: I was a bit confused at this point, but I've never made pretzels before, so on with the recipe.  Actually, let me just quote this whole step for you:

Mix the yeast for the dough with the water, then stir in the milk.  Sift 3 cups of the flour and the salt into a bowl. Add the yeast sponge and the butter and mix for 3 - 4 minutes. Turn out on to a lightly floured surface and knead in the remaining flour. Place in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with lightly oiled clear film and leave to rise in a warm place for 30 minutes.

Do you see my problem?  It tells you to mix the yeast with the water and milk, and then it never mentions it again.  That is my problem.  Well, I just went ahead and imagined that they said, "sift 3 cups of the flour and the salt into the bowl", and hoped for the best.  After that, it's just letting the bread rise a couple times, and then it's on to the boiling.  First, I'd just like to say that I don't think my bread ever rises very much.  I don't know what I'm doing wrong, of if my yeast is all dead or something, but frankly, my bread almost never doubles in size like they say.

After rolling and folding, the pretzels look like this:

The recipe doesn't say this, but it's a good idea to 'glue' the ends down using a bit of water, or they'll unfold during the boiling.  I learned this first-hand. 

I deviated from the recipe a little bit here.  The recipe says just to boil the pretzels in water for a minute, but I had read a few other pretzel recipes at this point, and they all called for boiling in water and baking soda, so I put some baking soda in there, and I think it turned out for the best. 

After boiling, you brush with an egg wash, season, and bake in a 350 F oven for 25 minutes and voilà, pretzels:

We seasoned these with Cornish sea salt, mostly, but some also had toasted sesame seeds, pepper, and there was even one with rosemary, thyme, and basil. 

Overall, the pretzels are pretty good.  The crust is a little hard and thick, and the inside is a little too chewy, but that could be from anything.  Maybe my yeast sponge wasn't spongy enough; maybe you are supposed to ignore that second bunch of yeast; maybe I kneaded the bread too much; or maybe the baking soda in the water did something.  In the end though, I think the baking soda added a little bit of that special pretzel taste.

I've since read a couple more pretzel recipes, and while I'm no authority, I'd say that this one isn't the best.  It just seems overly complex, which appears to be a trend in this book.  I think the next time I make pretzels, I'll use this recipe.

Chocolate Soufflés and More Sushi

Hello everyone, I know I said that I would be making the Grilled Scallops from the recipe book next, but I had some egg whites left over from making egg nogg, so I decided to make some Hot Mocha Rum Soufflés, recipe 330 from the 400 Appetizers book.

I think they turned out much better than my last soufflé attempt.

These didn't taste eggy at all.  If anything, they were a little too bitter, but I'll still give them a pass. They're quick and easy, and only call for stuff you already have around the house (assuming, of course, that you have eggs, butter, cocoa powder, coffee, rum, and sugar).  It's a tasty dessert.

We wanted to try our hands at another American sushi roll.  In case you've never seen one before, this is what's called a Philadelphia roll:

It's another inside-out roll, but it wasn't so bad this time, so maybe we're getting used to it.  Inside is imitation crab, avocado, cucumber, and cream cheese (hence the Philadelphia in the name).  There's smoked salmon on the top, along with a light sprinkling of toasted sesame seeds.  These rolls are delicious; I heartily endorse them.

Okay, the grilled scallops are still coming up, and so are the lemon dreams, or whatever they're called.

Big Catch-up Week

Okay, I've recently been reminded that I have a blog, and that I should update it at some point.  Luckily, this friendly reminder just prompted me to use my camera on some of my many culinary forays.  So here you go: Cranberry-apple pie, California roll, and Thanksgiving dinner. 

Cranberry-apple Pie

This little beauty was made following the basic apple pie recipe in "The Joy of Cooking".  The crust was just a basic flaky pastry made with shortening because they were out of lard at Sainsbury's.  Honestly, I think it turned out better; I was never a fan of the meaty flavor lard adds to pastry.  I of course altered the filling recipe by adding 250g of cranberries, and a teaspoon of almond extract.  The next time you make an apple pie, add some almond extract: it changes everything. 

Unfortunately, the apples I used (I've forgotten what kind) were a bit crappy, and they got too soggy during baking, so my filling didn't firm up the way it was supposed to.  The crust was still divine.  I gave it that nice sheen on top by brushing with pure egg yolk and sprinkling the top with sugar and cinnamon.  Here's one more shot:

California Roll

I'm going to start out by saying this: I think California rolls would be way better if they weren't inside-out.  Now, I don't know much about rolled sushi, I've only made it a couple times, but I do enjoy making it; I just think that inside-out rolls, the ones with the rice on the outside, are a bitch to make.  I like it a lot better when the nori's on the outside.  It makes everything much easier to handle.

The above picture pretty much shows all the ingredients.  You need to make some Japanese rice, or some short-grained rice if you're in a pinch.  I got mine from SeeWoo here in Glasgow.   Interestingly, the rice actually comes from the US, which I read is the third largest trader of rice in the world.   Anyway, you have to mix some vinegar, sugar, and stuff into the rice.  We just used some sushi-rice mix, which is just powdered vinegar, etc.  Finally, you spread the rice on the nori (seaweed), flip it over, then place the fillings (avocado, cucumber, and imitation crab meat) on the other side of the nori, and roll it all up.  Doesn't sound so hard, and really, it's not, but turning the rice-side down is a pain, and you have to use plastic wrap on your rolling mat to keep the rice in line, so I don't like it.

Another useful trick is to cut it with a bread knife.  We tried with a regular knife a couple times, and it just crushed the roll.  I think I figured this out once before, but I didn't remember this time around.  Anyway, it was good.

Thanksgiving Dinner

So today's Thanksgiving, so we decided to make a big dinner to celebrate.

What you see in that picture is: beer, candied sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, white gravy, home-made cranberry sauce, corn on the cob, and green beans.  Oh, and turkey, of course.  The corn and green beans are just boiled.  Everybody knows how to make mashed potatoes and gravy, and the turkey breast was actually just store-bought: we just put it in the oven for an hour. 

The cranberry sauce was made following the recipe for cranberry relish in "The Joy of Cooking", and I have to say it ended up tasting more like oranges than cranberries.  We halved the recipe, so we had 1/2 pound of cranberries, 2/3 cup of sugar, 1/4 cup water, 1/4 cup of orange juice (fresh squeezed in this case), and 1 tsp of orange zest.  You just boil all of it together until you think it's done. 

The candied sweet potatoes come from this recipe, and honestly, they're pretty great.  Well, we quartered the recipe, and the actual amounts of sugar and butter are not quite right as they have written.  First, I followed the recipe, but the sauce was too thick and didn't coat the potatoes at all, so I tried again with a lot more butter, a little more sugar, and about the same amount of other spices.  I also made sure not to let it boil before pouring over the potatoes, because that makes it too thick.  After all that, I followed the recipe to the letter, and it turned out great.

Okay, that's all the cooking for now.  I'll try to be more diligent about in the future, but I'm also trying to write a thesis, so don't be surprised if I don't post again for a while.  Feel free to remind me though.  I'll do my best to oblige.

Pineapple Upside-Down Banana Bread

So, what do you do when you have a lazy Sunday, a pineapple, some pine nuts, and three bananas that you want to put to good use?  I have no idea, so instead, I made pineapple upside-down banana bread.

Basically, I was thinking I should make banana bread to get rid of the bananas, but I saw the pineapple and thought maybe I should make pineapple upside-down cake instead.  Then I though "Put those hands together, my friend."  Well, I didn't bother looking to see if anybody had ever done this before; instead, I just turned to my trusty copy of "The Joy of Cooking".  The recipe for banana bread is quick and easy, and I fully endorse it.  The recipe for pineapple upside-down cake is pretty good, if I remember my past exploits correctly; although, I've definitely found better recipes online (sorry, I can't remember where, it was years ago).

I was only using the top of the pineapple upside-down cake recipe, which is basically: melt butter in pan, add brown sugar, arrange pineapple and cherries, pour batter on top--very simple, only the recipe wants to use a cast-iron pan, and mine doesn't fit inside my tiny oven.  I chose to use my large (1 Liter?) souffle dish that I used bought for the Amaretto Souffle.  I figured this would be better for the banana bread too, since it's usually cooked in a loaf pan with steep sides.

In the end, it all tasted pretty good.  It's not pretty though.  I used entirely too much butter and sugar for the top; although, some may argue I used just the right amount, since the caramel topping ended up coating the sides as well.  Instead of canned pineapple rings, I used chunks I cut from the fresh pineapple, so that didn't look so pretty, and they didn't stick to the top very well, probably because of the too much caramel topping.  The banana bread also ended up being much more moist and cakey.  I don't know if that's just from the recipe, or if the extra moisture and oil from the topping had something to do with it.  I also had to cook it extra long to firm up the center of the bread.  It was only about 15 minutes extra.

Cookies! (meh)

Okay, so I made these peanut butter chocolate chip cookies today.  The recipe's pretty simple, and we all know how to make cookies, so I won't spend much time on them.  Basically, it's a simple chocolate chip cookie recipe with some extra peanut butter. 

My only change from the recipe is that I didn't have any chocolate chips, so I chopped up some Green & Black's Dark Cooks' Chocolate and used that instead.  The chocolate itself is pretty good, probably too good for these cookies, in fact.  I'm going to have to buy some more for hot chocolate some day.

In the end, the cookies look like normal cookies, but in my opinion, they're not as good.  Maybe it was my peanut butter or something, but these were just a bit too dry.  Also, the chocolate was just a bit too dark for this recipe, maybe it'd be better with some milk chocolate or semi-sweet.  Oh well, next internet recipe is for Lemon Melting Moments--some kind of lemon-frosting cookies.

A Failed Attmept

Well, I finally got around to making the Roasted Garlic and Aubergine Custards with Red Pepper Dressing from the cookbook. This was a long and challenging recipe. I don't know why they'd put it in a book of appetizers and party recipes, because it's too complicate for a party. Basically, you have to roast the garlic, grill the peppers, fry the aubergine (eggplant), and finally mix it all together to make the custard. Then, to top it all off, you have to make the dressing, which isn't that hard, but it's still another thing to have to do. Frankly, I think it takes too long to make, and there are too many things that could go wrong. I don't mind making it for myself, or with a bit of help, but if I were having a party, this is not something I'd make for my guests. Also, it's got loads of garlic in it, so even though it tastes good, it'll make your breath reek for the rest of the night and into the morning.

First, here's a picture of the dish from the book:

Now, here's a picture of my completed dish:

Notice a difference?

There are two things that went wrong here. 

1) Too much cream and not enough egg.  I didn't want to make six custards, so I cut the recipe in half.  I made sure to cut everything in half, except maybe the amount of aubergine, but in the end, I don't think that mattered.  The recipe calls for 1/2 pint of cream and 2 large eggs.  I used 1/4 pint cream, and 1 medium egg.  Okay, so I used an egg that may be a couple ounces lighter, but I don't think that made a lot of difference.  I think I should have used two eggs, and probably a little less cream.  I mean, I cooked these things for 10 minutes longer than the recipe calls for, and they still didn't firm up.  I finally gave up because the top was looking all right:

but when I flipped it over, the bottom still needed cooking:

More egg and less cream would have fixed this problem.

2) Look at that picture at the top again.  See how it's all browned and crispy?  Do you know how you make custards?  Do you know what the recipe says?  The way you make custards, and the way the recipe says, is by baking them in a water bath.  This is to ensure that the custard doesn't dry out, and that the custard is cooked at a constant, low temperature.  Do you know what doesn't happen in a water bath?  Crispy, brown edges, that's what.  I don't know how they made what's in the picture, but it wasn't the way they said in the recipe. 

Anyway, I still ate it, and you can't go wrong with cream and garlic, so it was pretty tasty.  Actually, I quite liked the dressing.  It's just roasted pepper, tomato, red onion, roasted ground cumin, olive oil and vinegar.  So it's nothing surprising, but it's still pretty tasty.  I might make that again.

Next recipes: Number 189 from the book: Grilled Scallops with Brown Butter (Where am I going to get unshelled scallops?), and The Yummiest Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies.

French Bread Pizza

So, I've finally gotten a chance to cook again.  The computers are shut off at work for half the week, so I've got time at home.  Technically, I'm working on my thesis, but I can't spend all day doing that.  No, no, I need to do some cooking between pages or writing.

Anyway, I finally got to make some Chicken, Bacon, and Ranch French Bread Pizza.  That link has two recipes in it, actually, and I made both of them.  First, there's a recipe for French bread.  I made that on Sunday, and it looked like this:

Not terrible.  I think it could have used a little more sugar for the yeast and a little less kneading from me because it's pretty dense in there.  I followed the recipe to the letter, but in the end, it's not much like French bread at all.  Still, it's passable bread for general consumption.

Next, the pizza part.  I waited until Monday to make the pizza, but I marinated the chicken over night.  Toppings-wise, I went to three stores, and couldn't find any ranch dressing (What's your deal, Glasgow?), so I had to use some "garlic sauce".  It tastes like ranch dressing without any extra spices.  The rest of the ingredients were basically what it says on the recipe, except I through some mushrooms on that baby too.  Before cooking, it looked like this:

Baked, it looked like this:

Looks tasty.

But really, it only tastes kind of 'blah'.  I think all the flavors here are just kind of plain, and there are no sharp, interesting notes here to really enjoy.  It tastes like garlic, oil, and salt on a whole lot of bread.  Well, I guess that's what pizza generally tastes like, but I'm not into that.  My chicken was marinated with salt, pepper, cumin, cayenne, and hot sauce.  Maybe it should have been barbecue. I think instead of ranch, or 'garlic sauce', I should have used something like the white sauce at Pizza Hut.  Sure, it's more fat, but that stuff has flavor.  In the end, I'd say this pizza's a lot more work than it's worth.

Tasty Salad

Feeling in the mood for something healthy today and inspired by my recent stay in Italy, I thought I'd make some kind of refreshing salad today.  I went through my cupboards and found some black-eyed beans and decided I needed a bean salad.  I didn't have much else, so I had to go shopping for some of the other ingredients, but I present you to the recipe I invented:

Tasty Salad:
1 red bell pepper
1 can black-eyed beans (mine were in salt water, but I drained them, so maybe it doesn't matter)
4 spring onions
2 tsp baby capers
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp olive oil
1/4 tsp coarsely ground cumin seeds
1/4 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
1/2 tsp coarse sea salt

Chop the bell pepper and spring onions and mix with the beans and capers in a bowl.  In a separate small bowl, mix the lemon juice, olive oil, cumin, pepper, and salt until they are well combined.  Pour the olive oil mixture over the bean mixture and stir with a wooden spoon.  Enjoy immediately or let sit for a more mixed flavor.

I ate about half of it right away, and it is delicious.  I like the taste of cumin in a salad.  Until recently, I only had cumin in cooked dishes, but a nearby restaurant, The Two Figs, puts it in everything, and while their food isn't that good, the cumin is.  I'm letting the rest set until after dinner, or perhaps I'll have it for lunch tomorrow.  I can't wait!

Extra-thick Pancakes for Breakfast

Just a quick post today. I've spent some time this morning experimenting with making extra-thick pancakes.  Here's the recipe I invented for this purpose:

Ingredients:
1 cup flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
0.5 tsp coarse sea salt

3 Tbsp golden syrup
1 egg
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup melted unsalted butter
1-2 tsp vanilla extract (I like vanilla)

Instructions:
Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl and stir until well mixed.
Combine the wet ingredients in a smaller bowl and stir until well mixed.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix until just combined, clumps are okay and preferred.  If there are no clumps, you have over-mixed; good luck with your chewy pancakes, loser.  Seriously though, it's not a big deal, just don't stir too much.

Pour the batter onto a pre-heated pan in whatever size you would like.  I used my 12-in cast-iron frying pan, it's pretty well-used, so I didn't need to butter it or anything.  Keep the heat around medium-low, lower than you would usually use for pancakes, since you want to cook these through without burning the bottom.

I also tried to pipe the batter into the pan by filling a plastic bag with the batter and cutting off a corner.  I cut too much corner off, so I wasn't really happy with this method, but maybe I'll try it again sometime to see if I can do better.

Basically, I made the pancakes this thick by adding extra baking powder and using less milk.  I'd say it turned out pretty well.  Even without any toppings, these are delicious.  Once again, I'll stress the magic of course sea salt: In cookies, cupcakes, or even pancakes, that tiny fleck of salt in every other bite makes a good food into an amazing food.

Top these babies with some salted butter (the salted kind is imperative, unsalted butter just won't do here) and some maple syrup, and you've got yourself one delicious breakfast.

Now, feast your eyes on this:

That's almost the entire batch, so if you want to feed more than just yourself, I'd suggest doubling or tripling the recipe.

Quick Cupcake Post

Today, I made cupcakes!

I've decided I'm not going to say much more than this:  If you click on the cupcake link, you see that they're Cherry Coke Cupcakes, and if you scroll all the way into the comments, you'll find a recipe for buttercream frosting.

I thought that Cherry Coke flavored cupcakes was a pretty good idea.  It probably is, but these cupcakes, while still tasty, don't really taste anything like Cherry Coke.

There is one thing I really liked about the recipe, and I'm just going to quote the recipe here:

In a saucepan, boil the Coca-Cola, and cherry syrup gently for five minutes. Melt in the butter and cocoa powder.

Do that, just that, and drink it.  That shit tastes fantastic.  I'm definitely going to use that as the basis of a hot chocolate some day.

I guess the next recipe I make will be the crazy aubergine custards from the recipe book, and after that, maybe some Chicken, Bacon, and Ranch French Bread Pizza.

Saturday Evening Skewers

Hello again.

I've finally gotten some more cooking done.  Well, sort of, this wasn't much of a feat.  You see, I finally got around to making recipe number 14, Mozzarella and Tomato Skewers, from the "400 Appetizers & Party Recipes" book.  It's a pretty simple recipe, and only calls for about 4 ingredients, bread, tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil.  What's had me putting it off for so long was my lack of skewers.  You see, they don't sell them at my local Sainsbury's.  Of course, now that I've gotten some from Sea Woo, the Asian supermarket, a new store has opened up right next to Sainsbury's that does carry skewers; just my luck. 

Well, I went out this morning and spent entirely too much on groceries, which I've been doing far too often, I'm afraid, and among those groceries were the requisite ingredients.  First, you cut the crusts off the bread, cut into quarters, cover with olive oil, and bake.

Look at all those slices of bread!  It takes three breads for each skewer, and here I have forty two pieces, which will eventually make fourteen skewers.  Since each skewer also gets two pieces of mozzarella and two slices of tomato, I'll need twenty eight of each.

Once the bread is baked, you just stack them up: bread, cheese, tomato, basil, bread, cheese, tomato, basil, bread, and put a skewer through them.  I took fresh basil leaves off my basil plant.  I thought the poor thing would be stripped bare by this recipe, but it turns out these plants are dense with leaves.  I hardly made a mark. 

If you're making these, I suggest you stop at this point.  This is basically a stacked Caprese salad, and it's delicious.  However, the recipe says to drizzle it all with olive oil, add some salt and pepper, and put it all back in the oven until the cheese starts to melt.

Fresh out of the oven, they've all shrunk a little bit, so you've got to push them down so they stay together, and be sure to let them cool before you try one, unless you want a mouth full of lava-hot molten tomato juice.  Once they've been baked, the top piece of bread becomes scratch-the-top-of-your-mouth crispy, and the other two pieces are soggy.  That's not to say that they're not still delicious.  I've already finished about ten of these things for my dinner.

After all that, I was left with the problem of what to do with all the crusts I had cut off the bread.  I've heard that people around here like to eat their bread pudding, so I thought I'd give it a try.  I read some recipes online and from "The Joy of Cooking", but none of those were really what I was looking for, so I made my own recipe.

Ingredients:

Crusts and Heels from 1 small bag of white bread, chopped into sticks
3 eggs
~3/4 cup double cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp mixed spices
1/4 cup white wine (I'm trying to get rid of the stuff)
~3 tbsp butter
handful of pine nuts
~3 tbsp golden syrup

I basically just raided my cupboard for some things I could use to make it.  You put the pine nuts in with the bread and chop the butter up to place on top.  Then, mix together the remaining ingredients and pour them over the bread.  Let it sit for a while and press the bread down so that it soaks everything up.  I put it in a 350℉ oven for about 30 minutes.  In the end, it was a little dry, but not bad.  It tastes a lot like French bread, but it's in the shape of a pie.  I kind of like it.

If I've ever got a bunch of bread sitting around, I might make this again.

All right, next on the list are, Cherry Coke Cupcakes, from the internet and, Roasted Garlic and Aubergine Custards with Red Pepper Dressing, from the book.  Maybe I'll get to that someday.

A Collusion of Carbohydrates

Today I made a very special pizza.  To begin, I'd like to say that I'm not a big fan of making pizza.  I love eating pizza, and actually, I quite enjoy topping the pizza, but I just don't like making pizza crust.  My problem with pizza crust is two-fold:

1.) You have to make it in advance.  I hate making things in advance.  This is why I rarely make any kind of yeast-bread.  Making in advance assumes you know when you're going to want something, and I usually don't decide that until the last minute.

2.) You have to shape the pizza dough.  I don't mind kneading dough, I really don't, and I don't mind occasionally rolling things out.  I mean, I don't exactly enjoy rolling out dough, but usually I find the end product worth it.  This might be a good time to point out that pie-crust is only just worth it: I generally cringe before making pie-crust, but the finished product is so damn good!  But patting out pizza dough, and then stretching it out into some kind of pizza-shaped circle is just a pain in the ass, and I don't often think it's worth it.

Those are the two reasons I don't often make pizza.  I suppose the second one would go away with practice, but let's face it: I won't make that many pizzas unless I start working at a pizzeria.  That said, this pie crust wasn't too bad.  Sure, I still had to let it rise for two hours, and it was still a pain to shape, but it tasted all right.

By the way, I made Mashed Potato Pizza.  I like mashed potatoes, so I figured I'd give it a try.  I topped my pizza with the mashed potatoes (of course), bacon, mushrooms, and two kinds of cheese, Swiss and Leicester.

Here's the crust with the potatoes, bacon, and mushrooms:

You can't see it, but I put basil, rosemary, and thyme on top of the crust, under the mashed potatoes.  Then comes the cheese:

And when it's done baking, it looks like this:

Looks fantastic.  Incidentally, it also tastes fantastic.  It probably tastes so good because of the two cloves of garlic in the mashed potatoes, garlic is addictive, but the crust was pretty tasty too.  This recipe will go in my keep folder, but mostly for the crust.  The potatoes make a tasty addition, and the rest is just regular pizza stuff, always tasty.   

Grapefruit: Who Knew?

Sorry, it's been a long time since I last posted, and this one isn't really about me cooking.  Actually, I've been thinking lately that I should write about some other things that interest me, but we'll see how lazy I am when it comes to actually doing anything about it.  It's hard enough for me to just take pictures of my food before I eat it, let alone posting said pictures with description.

Anyway, this post isn't about that, it's about grapefruit, and the mystical interaction grapefruit have with drugs (I'm assuming grapefruit is its own plural).

You see, for the past couple of weeks, I've been suffering from a bad case of folliculitis barbae, or barber's itch.  It's an infection of the hair follicle, usually by your common Staphyloccus aureus bacteria.  I finally went to the doctor about it, and he prescribed me a course of oral Erythromycin.  Erythromycin is some basic broad-spectrum antibiotic with a pretty rich history of its own, so I suggest you check out the wikipedia article. 

Everything seems to be working out, and though I've only been taking the Erythromycin for two days, I'm seeing a great reduction in itchy bumps in my beard area, and little-to-no side effects!

I was doing some research on my condition and treatment, mostly wondering why I was given an oral treatment instead of a topical one, when I came across this little gem:

"Do not eat grapefruit or drink grapefruit juice while you use Erythromycin."

From here.  That caught my attention.  Nobody told me not to eat grapefruit.  What's going on?

Well, it seems that grapefruit isn't just your usual citrus fruit; it also messes with an enzyme in your stomach that generally breaks down a bunch of the medications that are usually taken orally.  If you eat grapefruit with your medication, the enzyme doesn't work, and you end up with a lot more of said medication in your system than your doctor intended.  At least that's what I gather from this source and this source [pdf].  I think that's pretty awesome, and I wanted to share.  That second source is a pdf listing a lot of the drugs known to have an interaction with grapefruit, if you're curious about your own medications. 

Oh, and if you were wondering, I think my doctor prescribed the oral treatment because my case was pretty advanced.  I mean, my condition had actually improved a bit in the few days previous to my doctor visit, but the fact that it comes back with a vengeance whenever I shave convinced him that we needed to come at this hard.

Raspberry Bars

I made some bars on Sunday.

They taste pretty good.

I'm sorry, I'm not feeling particularly talkative (writative? There's got to be a word for this.) today.

Anyway, the bars are pretty easy to make, first, you make a simple shortbread crust and bake it.

I would suggest modifying the recipe to have more butter.  They only call for a little more than one stick, but I found that overwhelmingly lacking, especially when the recipe asks you to mix in the flour until combined.  That flour will never combine with so little butter.  I broke down and used a mixer, which probably lead to my crust being too hard and crumbly.  If you're going to make this recipe, use more butter.

After you bake the crust, just mix up all the other ingredients and pour on top.

If you look closely at that picture, you'll see that some of the runny red liquid has gone behind my wax paper.  That is bad.  Despite what the recipe says, this stuff cooks up sticky, and it was a bitch getting it out of the pan when it was all cooked.  I blame the stuff behind the wax paper in particular.  Also, everything behind the wax paper is wasted topping.

Part of the process requires squeezing all the juice out of a couple cups of raspberries.  That left me with a bunch of pulp that I wasn't ready to just throw away.

I decided to use it to make some jam, since that's how I roll.  The jam was pretty easy: I just took the pulp, added the lemon zest I had leftover from the bars, some sugar, a little bit of corn starch, and finally, some of the tastiest orange juice ever:

Orange juice with lime in it!  What will they think of next?  Anyway, just boil that up until it gets thick, and throw it in a jar.  It looks like this:

and it spreads like this:

That's me making my lunch the next day.  I made all this on Sunday, and I didn't actually try the bars, because they were cooling, until Monday.  The above picture is my usual PB&J for lunch on Monday.  I don't always have PB&J for lunch, so maybe I shouldn't say usual, but it's my default if I don't have any leftovers or anything.  Now I have homemade jam to go on them, so I might step up the sandwich eating until it's gone.

Inside, the bars look nice.

Although, you can see that the crust would have been better if it had more butter.  The topping takes some getting used to: It has a nice flavor, but a weird, jelly-like texture.  I'd say that the texture gets better with time though, because it seemed a lot better on Monday than it did on Sunday.  Now it's almost Wednesday, so I'll bring the rest of the bars into work and see what everybody else has to say.

The bars are pretty nice, I'd suggest giving them a try, but they're nothing spectacular.  I'd say I'm more excited about the jam, maybe because it's a recipe I just made up, maybe it's because I like jam.

Dessert!

Well, after I made the black pasta and posted about it, I decided to make some tasty dessert.  So I tried my hand at a Strawberry Dumpling.  The thing is, I didn't have enough strawberries, so I opted instead to make a red berry dumpling.  The original recipe calls for a pint of strawberries.  Using strawberries, raspberries, and cranberries, I was able to get what amounts to a little more than a pint, but I went with it anyway. 

The recipe is pretty simple:

1. Cut up your berries, mix them with sugar, and let them sit for a while until the get juicy.

I mashed mine up with a pastry blender to bust up the cranberries.  Fun fact: cranberries are like little balloons that pop when you squash them!

2.  Make some simple biscuit dough with flour, baking powder, salt, butter, and milk.

3.  Then you just boil the berries and plop the dough in there for about 15 minutes.  The dough plumps up and cooks through.

The dumpling in this picture is the brainy-looking thing.  My mistake was two-fold.  First, I stirred the dough into the berries a little bit when I first added it.  I don't think I should have done any stirring.  Second, I was supposed to turn down the heat once I had added the dough.  I didn't do that.  I don't know if that actually had any effect, but I wish I'd followed the recipe more closely.

In the end, it looked like this:

Not beautiful, but still, I'd eat it.  I did eat it.

That's some ice cream on top, definitely a good idea.

I'd say this is a great recipe.  Next time I make it, I'll avoid the cranberries.  Even if they are fun to pop, they made the sauce just a little too tart.  I thought I could get around that by adding more sugar at the start, but I think there's more to it.

Coming up some time in the future, from the recipe book: number 14, Mozzarella and Tomato Skewers, and from the internet:  Raspberry Lemonade Bars.