Stop the Presses!

Pizza buns made in a a muffin tin are INFINITELY SUPERIOR to flat mini pizzas. I made them for breakfast a couple mornings ago.

I used my giant muffin tin and squished the jumbo biscuits as much as possible to fit. I could have used the normal sized muffin tin but I wanted as much room for cheese as possible.

I used the same one spoonful of sauce but in the future, two seems more proportionate.

Then I added the toppings. I layered the pepperoni ones: sauce, pepperoni, cheese, more pepperoni, more cheese. (I really love cheese. Have you figured that out yet?)

Again, I used the two types of cheese: pizza blend cheese on the left and taco blend cheese on the right. I made a pepperoni one of each as well.

I baked them in my real oven at 400F for 15 minutes and they came out perfectly!

You can see a slight dimple in the one on the right. That's what happens when you turn your back for two seconds and you have a nosy cat in the kitchen.

Pepperoni pizza bun with taco cheese! It needed more sauce but oh man, look at that crust! You can see how flaky the biscuit crust got while still being soft on the inside. They came apart nicely without pulling all the cheese off with the first cut. I loved the crispy cheese edges!

Pizza bun with regular pizza cheese! Soooo much cheese! It made me really happy! I made four pizza buns, ate two immediately, and refrigerated the other two. But just a few hours later, I got hungry again! So I popped the last two pizza buns in my toaster oven for about 10 minutes and they reheated beautifully! These are definitely a recipe to keep and make maybe every week! They hold a lot more toppings in the pizza bun variation than in a flat mini pizza, and I can't wait to try other toppings. I think sausage and mushroom and ham and pineapple might be next!

As I type this, I am very hungry and I have no more pizza buns. Super sad.

Mini Pizzas

This is a throwback to middle school when we were required to take a 6-week cooking class and made ridiculously easy things. This was one of the recipes we made, and it was so dead-simple I've remembered it  with no problem for... oy... 14 years?

Anyway, moving along from how old I am, this recipe is great for people who "can't" cook, don't have a lot of time, have kids, or are none of the above but just like pizza. Which is everyone, right? It's super simple, super versatile, and super quick. I had these done within half an hour of walking in from the grocery store.

1 can of biscuits, regular or jumbo depending on your preference. I got jumbo but I think I'd go with regular from now on. I was just really hungry and my concept of size and portions goes out the window when I get hungry.

1 jar of pizza sauce.

Cheese! Who doesn't love cheese? I got two types of cheese, Pizza Blend and Taco Blend, because I really, really, really just love cheese and variety.

Toppings of your choice! I picked pepperoni, a classic, but in the future I would love to experiment with chicken, onion, garlic, mushrooms, fresh tomatoes and mozzarella, ham and pineapple, etc. But no olives. I despise olives.

Running Tally of Foods I Hate:

Olives

Celery

I preheated my toaster oven to 400F, which is probably more like 425F since it gets hotter than it should but it's not the end of the world. I covered a tray with aluminum foil and cooking spray because I'm lazy and hate washing dishes. I unwrapped the can of biscuits, jumped when it popped open, and smooshed four biscuits out flat on the tray. The rest of the biscuits went in a Ziploc bag and into the fridge.

I just used a large spoon to spread sauce on the biscuits.

This is the fun part, this is the part where you get your kids involved making a huge mess with cheese and generally destroying the kitchen, but the end result is worth it! I think it would be a lot of fun to have a pizza bar at a party, with a ton of different cheeses and toppings for everyone to make their own mini pizza!

I baked them at 400-425F for about 12-15 minutes, until the cheese was melted and the biscuits looked done.

Verdict: Super delicious, quick, and easy! I ate two immediately and took the other two to work for dinner. I ate the leftovers cold and they were still delicious. I'm tempted to go make four more right now! I also want to try a variation that is made in a muffin tin. Because I'm just in love with things made in a muffin tin right now!

Pot Roast and Vegetables

I've been sick with bronchitis for almost a month. Hence, not a ton of cooking or posting. I'm slowly coming out of it, and to get my strength back up, since I also have iron-deficiency anemia, I needed meat.

via Imgur

I'm a Whovian and the opportunity was too good to pass up. I'm almost laughing too hard to type.

Okay so, I kinda have issues cooking meat. I have this horrible fear of not cooking it enough and people getting sick. At the same time, I'm concerned I would overcook meat. There's apparently a family history of overcooking meat because of a fear of undercooking it. So with that in mind, I threw caution to the wind and decided to make a pot roast and vegetables. My mother used to make it and I loved it.

I found a reference recipe on allrecipes.com and headed to the grocery store after work (my usual routine since it's two blocks from my work). My boss, who also does a lot of cooking, recommended getting a pot roast kit that has the seasoning mix and a bag. I found one thankfully, since I couldn't find the "browning sauce" that the recipe called for. From there, I pretty much disregarded the recipe. I grabbed white onions (in hindsight, yellow would have worked better, but white was still delicious), red skin potatoes, and carrots. Then I literally stood in the meat section looking over the beef for ten minutes thinking to myself, "Why can't it have a 'pot roast' label on it?? I have no idea what I'm looking for!" I ended up googling on my phone which cut of beef is used in pot roast. I got a good-looking chuck roast, not quite 3 lb.

When I got home, I was feeling exhausted again, so I sliced up a Roma tomato and sprinkled it with kosher salt and black pepper as a snack before going to bed. It turned out to be a good choice, because that day wasn't a pot roast sort of day. It was warm and mild, more of a salad day, Dad said. The next day was chilly, rainy, and dreary, a perfect pot roast day!

Dad was off work, so he made coffee while I started the pot roast and vegetables around 9:30 am. I roughly kinda followed the recipe on the back of the seasoning packet. I preheated the oven to 350F and opened the roasting bag into a 9x13" pan. I have a weird aversion to touching raw meat but I laid the pot roast in the bag without freaking out. Then I thoroughly washed my hands (gold star for me for not cross-contaminating!) and started chopping up the vegetables. I chunked up two large white onions and broke them up over the roast in the bag. I peeled the carrots and cut each into four pieces, and into the bag they went. I cut the potatoes, skin on, into big chunks, and can you guess where they went??  Then I grabbed six cloves of garlic, peeled them, and crushed them with the flat of my knife to get the juices going in the roasting bag.

Biggest clove of garlic I've ever seen!

The recipe on the packet didn't say anything about putting the vegetables in the bag with the roast and seasoning mix, but I wanted all the flavors to get down together. So, six potatoes, six carrots, six cloves of garlic, and two onions later, I pretty much couldn't fit anything else in that bag! The original reference recipe called for two carrots, one onion, and three potatoes. Pfffft, amateurs. (Also, no celery in my recipe. Celery is an abomination.)

I added the seasoning mix to 1/4 c water and tipped the bag up to pour it in over the vegetables. Then I just squished everything around in the bag until I saw the juices running everywhere.

I closed the bag with the handy tie that keeps it slightly open to let steam escape. I put the pan in the oven and set the timer for 2 hours. This is the part where I had to trust the recipe. I would have no control over the doneness of the meat or even be able to tell if it was done. But the packet said 2 hours at 350F for a 4 lb roast, and mine was slightly less than 3, so the meat should be fine.

So for the next two hours I sat in my room right off the kitchen, bumming around social media and trying to distract myself from the amazing smells in my kitchen. Dad took a nap in the recliner with the dog. I had to open the oven for a moment at twenty minutes to go just to check on it and smell it!

Finally, shortly before noon, it was done!

I decided it would be easier to store leftovers if we just kept it in the same pan. So I slit the bag open and slid the roast and vegetables into the pan. You can see the juices and how everything has cooked down! I really wish the pictures shared the smell! It smelled amazing, and the house still smells like garlic and onion and I love it!!

Such a hearty meal deserved a substantial drink!

Dad and I spent the next half hour in our respective spots, his recliner and my bed, yelling to each other about how amazing it all was. As soon as I finished eating, I heard a distinctive engine outside. My brother had come over to take the dog for a walk, but I had to tease him that of course as soon as I cook, he shows up! So my brother, Dad, and I sat and chatted for a while before and after he took the dog for a walk, and eventually I headed off to bed, full and happy!

Verdict: AMAZING. I don't want to eat anything else ever again. It was that delicious! The flavors came together perfectly. Again, next time I'll use yellow onion instead of white but it in no way ruined this. Everything cooked through well but didn't turn to mush. And oh my goodness the roast! I am pleased to say that it cooked all the way through properly, it was tender and juicy, and ohhhhh the fat off the roast was like butter. I'm drooling just thinking about it! It had amazing flavor from the seasoning and from the garlic and onion. Is it blasphemy to say that I think it's better than my mother's pot roast and vegetables? It is seriously the best thing I've ever eaten, and I am proud beyond belief that I cooked it myself! I can't wait to dig into the leftovers, sitting and marinating even more in the juices! Dad had more for dinner that evening!

Reviewing my cooking journey so far, I'm realizing how easy it actually is, and how satisfying it is to cook a good meal and have people appreciate it. I'm not a patient person, so to have (almost) instant gratification with food makes me happy. If I want food, I want it now. If I want success, I want it now. That's why I'm having a hard time getting around to making sourdough starter. I'm not good at planning ahead. If I want sourdough bread, I want it NOW, not in a week when the starter is ready. I'm a recipe shopper too. I'm not good at just grabbing stuff at the store. I have a recipe in mind, in my hand, and I shop from that. I'm not great at planning. I'll need to work on planning and stocking up if I'm going to have my own restaurant! On that note, I'm having an existential crisis about what I want to do with my life, so I'm still not solidly signed up for culinary school. I'm still weighing the pros and cons of everything I could see myself doing as a career. Fear of commitment? Definitely.

Pasta = Life

Last Saturday...

Me: "You hungry?"
Dad: "Not at the moment."
Me: "Okay I cook."

I'm half Sicilian, on my mother's side. Food has always been plentiful. Since most of my extended family is Jehovah's Witness, we didn't celebrate birthdays, and instead that side of my family had get-togethers for anniversaries. Everyone brought at least one covered dish for the get-togethers, and we would congregate at my grandparents' house or at the house of one of my aunts. There was always plenty of food to go around and leftovers to take home. However, learning to cook wasn't a big deal in my family. To be honest, I've never had a fantastic relationship with my mother, so I didn't really learn to cook until... now? So in my quest to learn to cook, I wanted to try a good Italian dish, simple to start out with, to pay homage to my heritage. A while back my Dad said something about seeing a recipe for one-pot pasta, so I searched online and found one from Damn Delicious. I was really bad about taking photos since I was really hungry and just wanted to get it done, but here's my take on it:

1 lb spaghetti (I used thick spaghetti)

12.8 oz package of smoked andouille sausage, sliced

1 large onion, thinly sliced

3 c halved grape tomatoes

2 c fresh basil leaves (I chiffonaded them, if that's the correct past tense, because whole leaves floating around would annoy me)

4 cloves garlic (I minced them instead of slicing them)

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

1 c grated parmesan (I got the GOOD stuff, the stuff recognizable as cheese, not the powdery stuff, and I just threw in the whole container, roughly 1 c)

In a large stockpot or Dutch oven over medium high heat, combine spaghetti, sausage, onion, tomatoes, basil, garlic and 4 1/2 cups water; season with salt and pepper, to taste. I love everybody-in-the-pool meals! The only minor change I'd make is that the recipe states 5 minutes of prep, and it was more like 15, between slicing the onion, sausage, and basil.

Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, until pasta is cooked through and liquid has reduced, about 8-10 minutes. I was mildly concerned about the pasta cooking evenly since it didn't fit the entire length in the pot, but in the end I had nothing to worry about. I just kept stirring to make sure the other ingredients cooked through in the water, and eventually all of the pasta was underwater, and then I cooked ten minutes more from that. Stir in Parmesan. Serve immediately.

I also got a Caesar salad from the deli counter, frozen breadsticks, and cheesecake. Okay I'm not going to lie, I cooked an entire healthy meal simply because I wanted to eat cheesecake. I love cheesecake, so sue me.

Oh my goodness, this turned out so good! The andouille sausage is a little spicy, and I'm not a fan of sausage or spiciness, but I LOVED it! I loved using fresh ingredients. I really enjoy using fresh produce. (My brother works at the new Hy-Vee grocery store in town and says the produce section is phenomenal so I can't wait to go and die of happiness there.) I liked how the grape tomatoes got all wrinkly, and how the texture of the dish didn't get weird from the skins being on. Everything cooked down really well. I think a yellow onion would have worked better than a white onion in this case, but that hardly affected how much Dad and I loved this dish. He skipped salad and had two plates of pasta instead! I like the thicker spaghetti in it. I think it suited the more substantial flavor of the sausage more than thin spaghetti would. We both ate our fill, but it wasn't a sluggish sort of full feeling. We were full but still felt like we could get up and do some work. We didn't, but we could have if we wanted to! I have a digestive disorder and can't eat a lot at once, so being able to fill up on something healthy that won't drag me down makes me super happy.

It was a really good Saturday. We had a good lunch, then we listened to oldies radio and had coffee and cheesecake before I went to bed in the early afternoon (I work nights). I posted the above photo on Facebook and said I might have made too much, but between the two of us eating on it and taking it in work lunches, it was gone by Wednesday! So, oh darn, I had to cook something else! Which brings us to the next post...

Brought to You by the Letter C, as in Caramel Coffee and Corn Cakes!

...and Cold. Short post today since I've caught the cold my dad has had for the past few days, so I didn't do any major cooking this week. Monday was National Crab Meat Day, and I intended to make some crab salad and Cheddar Bay biscuits, but that was the day the cold hit me, so it didn't happen. I did however fry up some corn cakes for a simple breakfast with some Folgers Caramel Swirl Coffee, so I will share that learning experience.

I used Granny's Fried Cornbread.

2 c cornmeal
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 c self-rising flour

*record scratch*

Do I HAVE self rising flour?? Whoops. Quick jump over to allrecipes.com for a self-rising flour recipe!

Self-Rising Flour:
1 c all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder

Stir or sift together.

Back to the main recipe!

1 c water
1/4 c bacon drippings or cooking oil. I used canola oil.
1/2 c milk or buttermilk. I used buttermilk.
1 egg

Gently stir all ingredients together in a bowl. Drop batter with a large spoon onto a hot, well-greased griddle. I greased my griddle with butter but in hindsight, I think I'd rather fry them in a skillet of bacon grease. I think it would add more flavor, cook more evenly, and hey you now have bacon for breakfast with your corn cakes! Cook as you would for pancakes, turning to cook both sides. Serve with butter. I drizzled syrup over mine. My preference is for real maple syrup, but all we had in the house was low-calorie "breakfast syrup." (I obviously did not plan this ahead of time.)

They were passable, but they seemed to cook a little funny. Comments on the recipe suggested adding sugar, and butter to thin them out, and I think I'll try both next time. I put the leftovers on a plate and covered them with tinfoil, but I had to put the plate in the safety of the microwave because my carb-fiend cat tried to get to them! My cat is just like me: carbs, carbs, carbs! I can leave a burger, salmon filet, crab cakes, etc. unattended and he has no interest in them. But if I sit down with a pastry, he is right in my face trying to steal it!

"Just stretching. Not trying to get apple turnover. Nope."

In other news, I got accepted to both our local community college and the college about 40 minutes away that has a Culinary Arts and Hospitality program! I would like to get my gen eds out of the way at the local college so I don't have to commute for class while juggling a full-time night shift job, but it may take less time to just jump into the CA program at the farther school. So, deep breath, I'll talk to advisers at both schools and go from there!

I Did A Thing With Stuff

I'm resurrecting this blog! Why? Because I just decided to go to culinary school. Why? Because I want to open a restaurant. Why? Because I really like food and I did a thing with food and had a blast doing it, and since then I've been mentally flooded with food ideas, and because I'm half Sicilian so sharing food is in my DNA.

Blog Objective: chronicle my food journey. Specifically: food I cook and bake, recipes I create and how they turn out for good or bad, my culinary education, and hopefully breaking into the restaurant business.

Tying in with my other passion, sewing, I will be making aprons in various novelty fabrics (bacon-print fabric!) and sharing them as well, simply because it's impossible for me to take things 100% seriously.

But to begin with, here is the thing I did last week:

For a little background, I am obsessed with anything made in a muffin tin, and mashups of all kinds. So I got it in my head to make a meal mashup muffin.

Let's do a thing with stuff!

I found a couple recipes on allrecipes.com that sounded good: a savory corn muffin, and a cream cheese and sour cream mashed potato. I already have a recipe for cream cheese mashed potatoes but I didn't have it with me at work and I was going to get groceries after work, so I just found a new one that sounded good.

I also bought a tin for giant muffins.

Baking in progress!

I did the corn muffins first so they could bake and cool while I made everything else.

1 14.75-oz can of creamed corn

2 c yellow cornmeal, divided (I bought a huge sack of cornmeal and didn't realize we had a tub at home... looks like we'll be having a lot of corn muffins! Whoops!)

1 c buttermilk (They didn't have small containers at the store... again with lots of corn muffins in our future!)

2 large eggs

8 tbsp melted butter (I always use butter. NEVER margarine. I'm picky about that.)

1 c all-purpose flour

1 tbsp white sugar

1 1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp baking powder (Once when I was little I mistook tsp for tbsp. Cake overflowed in the oven. Whoops!)

1/2 tsp baking soda

Adjust oven rack to middle position and preheat oven to 450F. Put muffin tin in oven to preheat. (This is the first time I've ever preheated a pan of any sort.)

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, bring creamed corn to a boil. Reduce heat and stir in 1 c cornmeal to make a thick, pasty mush. Stir in buttermilk, eggs, and butter. I used a wooden spoon with a flat edge so I could scrape the bottom of the pan in case the mush was sticking and burning. Also make sure it's no longer boiling when you start adding to the corn because you don't want the eggs to cook in the mush.

In a mixing bowl, mix remaining cornmeal with flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir until just combined. (I prefer large, wide bowls that I can get my arm around to stabilize while mixing.)

Remove muffin tin from oven and coat with nonstick cooking spray. Divide batter evenly among the cups. I used a spring-action ice-cream scoop and used two scoops per large muffin cup. I made six large muffins and four small muffins in the end.

Bake until golden brown. Approximately 15 minutes for regular muffins. I did my large muffins for 30 minutes and checked them by inserting a knife, which came out clean. They were a bit too crumbly for my purposes, so I will try 25 minutes next time and see what happens. I let them cool in the pan until I could handle them, then put them on a wire rack to finish cooling.

While the muffins were in the oven, I started the potatoes.

Aren't we forgetting something?

9 large potatoes (The bag said they were large potatoes but I think it was a liar so I put in 12. Maybe not 12 next time. This made a ton of potatoes.)

1 8-oz package of cream cheese

1 c sour cream

2 tbsp butter (I had a stick already cut down to 4 tbsp so I just chucked that in, nbd.)

1/4 c minced green onions (The only green onions they had at the store was a big package already chopped up. One, I'm not paying 3 times as much just because it's already processed. Two, I'm not going to use as much as the package contained. So I used my brain, thought "Sour cream and... chive!" and I bought chives instead. I used the recommended 1/4 c.)

Salt and ground black pepper, to taste.

Here's where we went off-script. I put the potatoes in a stock pot and covered them with water. Yep, didn't peel them. I forgot that step, to be honest, but it turned out well so I played it off like I did it on purpose. I boiled the potatoes until I could easily stick a knife in them. I drained them, then put them back in the pot and mashed the bejeezus out of them.

The finish line is in sight!

Then I dumped in the cream cheese, sour cream, butter, and chives. I just held the chives in one hand and snipped them with scissors over the measuring cup until I had the right amount. I mashed everything together, tasted it, added salt and pepper, tasted it again (I double-dipped my spoon, so sue me), and declared them the best potatoes I've ever tasted.

Lots of potatoes! I'm glad we like mashed potatoes in my house.

While the potatoes were boiling, I also cooked up an entire pound of bacon. Why? Because the words "leftover bacon" do not compute.

I can still smell it... and feel the grease burns on my hands. (Worth it.)

I also heated up the can of baked beans. Usually I doctor up baked beans too, with extra barbecue sauce and brown sugar. I didn't this time, and I wish I had. I think it would have added a more significant flavor to the beans that would have been amazing. Next time!

So we reached the assembly process! I was certain we had a small biscuit cutter that I could use to hollow out the muffins, but I couldn't find it anywhere. So I improvised. With the lid to my vodka bottle! The muffins were a bit to crispy and they crumbled a bit when I pushed the lid into them, and I think the hole was too small. Lessons for next time!

I gave the scraped-out bits to my dog because he is spoiled.

Then I used a spoon to fill it with baked beans.

Needs more bean space!

I wanted to pipe the mashed potatoes onto the top, all fancy-pants. I had searched the grocery store for piping bags in the most logical places: housewares, and the baking aisle with the rest of the cake decorating supplies. Only later was I told that piping bags are actually in the CRAFT section with wedding stuff like cake toppers. Because that makes sense. (Sarcasm.)

So I tried to use a plastic food storage bag, which worked on ONE muffin before the side seam blew out and I said, "Screw it, I'm not making them for anyone but friends and family" and used a spoon to smush the potatoes onto the rest. I garnished them with pieces of bacon and called it a success!

Obviously my piping skills need work but it was delicious so I don't care.

Cross-section view!

I had a TON of fun making these. I enjoyed the challenge of juggling four things at once, making sure things would come together at the appropriate times. I posted this photos in progress on my personal Facebook page. A friend of mine who does a ton of baking commented, and I said we should open a restaurant with her being sweet flavors and me being savory flavors! Now I just need pretty pieces of paper that say I can cook and run a business!

via Skeletor Is Love

All other photos in this post are mine. No infringement intended by showing brand names.