recipe

2021-12-192021-12-19 episode 272

Salted Toffee Crisps

For the span of a whole weekend in early December it seemed like I couldn’t look on my social media feeds and subscriptions without seeing a recipe for some kind of homemade chocolate toffee bar.

In fact, I saw this (or a variation of this) recipe online on Youtube, Instagram, and Twitter no less than four times before I got curious enough to copy the ingredients into my shopping list and try my hand at baking my own version.

What is your best winter treat recipe this year?

It turns out it was a fast and simple treat with lots of room for variation (particularly in the topping) making it a year round sweet with opportunity for a holiday twist only limited by your imagination in substituting the nuts for candy, sprinkles, or whatever.

Salted Toffee Crisps

150g Crackers (Saltines or Graham) 250ml Butter 250ml Dark Brown Sugar 500ml Chocolate, Chips (Semi Sweet) 250ml Chopped Nuts (Cashews or Peanuts) 5ml Sea Salt

While you are preheating the oven to 400F you can line a baking sheet with some parchment and tile out the crackers to completely cover the base of the sheet. The butter and brown sugar go into a saucepan and combine to a boil for a minimum of three minutes. An experienced candy maker is going to jump in here and substitute some exacting time and temperatures for the right crack stage of cooking sugar, but I did this blind without a thermometer (because that’s what the internets promised me would work) and it worked just fine. After the boil, the mixture coats the crackers and the baking sheet goes into the oven for five to six minutes. A dash of salt is followed by spreading the chocolate chips on the hot toffee and smoothing it even as it melts into a decadent coating atop the still-hot candy layer. I topped with chopped peanuts, but online I saw crumbled candy canes, M&Ms and other kinds of nuts, too. Cooled, this cracks or cuts into cookie-sized pieces and (if it lasts longer than a few days) holds up in the freezer for the holidays.

Enjoy!

Thirty one topics. Thirty one posts. Not exactly a list… but close. In December I like to look back on the year that was. My daily posts in December-ish are themed-ish and may contain spoilers set against the backdrop of some year-end-ish personal exposition.

2021-10-252021-11-05 episode 232

Recipe: Classy Cordon Bleu

The recipe has a different name in our collection, but as the kid pointed out half way through her portion last night “this is basically just fancy cordon bleu, right?”

She pronounced it with an impeccable French tongue, too. I guess ten years of French Immersion school has finally paid off.

But she’s not wrong.

Or, at least, not too far from correct.

Anyone familiar with the already-kinda-fancy dish cordon bleu knows that a bit of chicken breast is rolled or stuffed with some ham and swiss cheese, spiced, breaded and baked. It’s a tasty bit of chicken dish with a surprise, creamy filling.

This slightly upscale alternative (which we poached from some long forgotten YouTube cooking channels) is a bit of chicken rolled or stuffed with some fancy ham (prosciutto) and some fancy cheese (we used some boursin herb and garlic), spiced, skipped the breading, and baked.

Our classy version hits the same notes as the original: savoury chicken, a warm creamy inside, but adds some unique notes that bring it up to an elevated, but still cook-at-home, quality.

Plus I get to use my big Staub braiser.

the recipe

4 slices butterflied chicken breast
1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon black pepper 1 teaspoon paprika 4 tablespoons soft herb cheese 8 slices prosciutto 4 tablespoons sun dried tomatoes 8 pieces fresh basil 2 tablespoons olive oil
¹/₄ cup lemon juice ¹/₂ cup chicken broth

After combining the salt, pepper and paprika into a rub for the chicken breasts, coat with the seasoning and lay out on a surface. The chicken is “stuffed” with a layer of each of the soft cheese, prosciutto, sun dried tomatoes and fresh basil, rolling it into a tight coil and holding together with a skewer or toothpick.

In a large cast iron braiser (or using a frying pan and a baking dish) fry the rolls about a minute per side in a bit of oil, then pour the mixture of the lemon juice and chicken broth into the braiser (or baking dish with the chicken) and bake for about 15 minutes at 425F, turning once.

2021-06-102021-06-10

The Mustard Files: Spicy Spring Dijon

I’m a bit of sucker for interesting mustards.

In fact, it used to be I’d make a special trip to the local farmers market each spring to stock my pantry with a few variety of jars of flavoured mustards that would almost always last the year …but not much longer.

The sad part is that I’m the only one in my house who loves the yellow sauce, so I’m always buying and creating mustards for an audience of one.

Creating? You ask.

Why yes, if you can call starting with a store-bought mustard and experimenting with adding your own spices and seasonings to it to enhance the mustard experience, then of course creating.

Often I’ll spin up a little bowl of spicy mustard or curry mustard or garlic mustard to accompany a plate of bratwurst or a pan-cooked chop of some kind.

And tonight was no exception.

30ml dijon-style mustard 4 pinches of curry powder 2 pinches of ground cumin 2 pinches of cayenne pepper 1 pinch ground ginger

This particular blend turned into a medium-spicy mix that reminded me of a trip to Berlin and eating sausages on a busy street corner from a paper tray in the rain.

Appropriate then that I served it with some local sausage and looked out the window at the evening’s downpour.

2021-06-082021-06-08

Pan Fried Mushrooms

I keep a cast iron pan near my barbecue for exactly one reason: my wife loves grilled mushrooms on her hamburgers.

I know very well that a well-seasoned pan atop an outdoor gas grill has a whole host of purposes, but when you have a system like this that ain’t broke… why fix it?

We eat barbecued hamburgers at least a few times per month over the summer, and without fail we slice up a couple cups of fresh button mushrooms, toss them into the blazing hot pan with a pat of butter and a clove or two of crushed garlic.

Recipe

2 cups of sliced button mushrooms 1 tablespoon of crushed garlic 1 tablespoon of butter

The fungi heat and sizzle and brown up with a rich, lovely aroma as the burgers grill up nearby, and everything is usually ready to eat just in time, as I swoop the plate full of patties into the house with a steaming hot bowl of grilled mushrooms alongside.

These go great with hamburgers, but I’ve been know to toss grilled mushrooms atop a steak, beside some grilled pork, as part of a veggie medley, or even just to nibble on their own.