Lekker: Burgundy Mushroom Sauce

So, yesterday's sauce was a positive vat of cheesy, tangy indulgent goodness that usually causes pans to be licked clean. At least, in my house. If that was too rich or too high calorie or too indicative of the way life SHOULD be led for you...well then here's a sauce for you! Lean, bold and veggie-ful, this is intended as a topper for steak but works over chicken breast as well.

Burgundy Mushroom Sauce
makes about enough for 4 servings

What You Need
1/2 cup butter (OK, it's not THAT lean...)
1 pound baby bella mushrooms, washed, dried and sliced
4 cloves of garlic, minced
3 whole green onions aka scallions, sliced
1 1/2 cups red wine: it's right there in the name, you should use a Burgundy, but let's be real we're 23 and we're gonna use whatever we have--Merlot, Cab Sav, Pinot Noir and Malbec will work as well
S&P, to taste
1 T butter further
Fresh parsley, minced, to make it look like you actually worked hard on this

Super easy!

What You Do
1. While your significant other/friend with benefits/guy-you-just-met is working on grilling the steak, melt the butter in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Don't let it turn brown, just melt it and throw in the mushrooms, garlic and green onions and cook 'em all down, stirring until the mushrooms are a nice golden brown color. Don't they smell heavenly at this stage? God I love it.

2. Dump in the wine and turn down the heat to more of a simmer, and allow it all to cook until the liquid has been reduced by about half. Salt and pepper to taste. All done! When you're ready to serve it, take it off the heat and swirl in that last tablespoon of butter and the parsley and voila. Gorgeous. (P.S. Don't be afraid to add more wine if you see the sauce thickening too much.)

Coppola Pinot Noir, incidentally my favourite red wine and also because I didn't have my own photo.

Lekker: Let's Talk About Sauces: Blue Cheese Sauce

I've always been a gravy girl. As a little kid I would beg and plead with my Mom to let me eat the gravy from a roast chicken or a pot roast--that and nothing else. Those who know me well know to double their gravy portions for a dish if I'm coming over. I don't know why I love it so much, but that same strange obsession expanded into other types of sauces as I got older and explored more. Sauces seriously should be their own food group.

Soooo, over the next couple of days I'm going to be sharing a few of my favourite sauce recipes while I work on batches of other things.

Sidebar: the more I type it the weirder the word "sauce" looks, and sounds in my head. I once forgot how to properly say the word "vegetables" because I repeated it an incorrect way over and over in my head. I can't find the clip on YouTube, but the bottom line is that it's Tigger's fault. The bouncy jerk from Winnie-the-Pooh, him.

Anyhoodles, this recipe is for the most idiot-proof, simplistic and most delicious blue cheese sauce I've EVER come across. I am not at all exaggerating when I say that a fight once broke out at a dinner party over who would get to lick the pan after I made this. Previously, I had also smacked a dear friend with a wooden spoon (hard) because he licked the spoon before I could. (Brat.)

I always serve this dripping over some simply sauteéd pork chops, but it works just as fantastically over a steak too. It's amazing as a drizzle over some roasted veggies if that's your thing. Or just through a straw. Whatever. I'm not here to judge.

Baller Blue Cheese Sauce
the amount of blue cheese you decide to use will determine how much sauce you have, so just eyeball it depending on how many people/pork chops you have

What You Need
1 cup of higher quality crumbled blue cheese, or Gorgonzola, if that's what you can find (I'm not saying "higher quality" to be a food snob here, but in my experience, the store brands are really shitty dried-out chalky shams of what blue cheese should be--so go to the deli or imported cheese section to find something slightly better. With cheese, as with men, never settle!)
~3 tablespoons heavy cream (No, you may not substitute half-and-half here to make it "healthier"--this is a sauce MADE OF CHEESE, what are you doing. Stop it with that.)
Freshly ground black pepper

Seriously, that's it.

What You Do
As I said, I usually use this with pork chops, so after I'm done sauteéing those and they're staying warm somewhere else, in the empty pan with all the lovely pan drippings in it (drained of fat though) throw in the cheese over very low heat. Add the heavy cream and stir constantly with a wooden spoon until the cheese is nicely melted. (Employ aforementioned wooden spoon to smack grabby hands away from dipping in to "just taste".) Use the heavy cream to adjust the consistency of the sauce. If you seriously need me to explain that to you, it means add more cream if you prefer it runnier, and cook it down slightly if you like it thicker.  Add black pepper to taste and just TRY to avoid inhaling all of it before you can spoon it over the chops.

Blue cheese, courtesy of someone named Charlotte Julienne on Google, because I'm fresh out of my own photos of blue cheese lying around. Oddly, when I Google image searched "blue cheese" there were a BUNCH of images of pot. I don't know what's going on in the world of marijuana at the moment, but apparently that's a thing. Blue Cheese Weed. K.

Lagniappe: FAIL.

Consistency is not my strong suit. My best friend Ghost once told me I was predictable in my unpredictability, so it's safe to say I won't be sticking to some sort of blogging "schedule"--my life is structured enough, thanks!

It's not that I'm not cooking though. I always am, usually about 5 days a week, tooling around with new recipes or finessing old ones with the eventual goal of posting them here. But, like any human I am prone to failure and not all of these recipes are successes! Whether it's due to human error on my part or a poorly written original recipe, the gaps in posting can be chalked up to something that didn't work out.

My godfather Harry suggested that I *do* write about my failures to have a more balanced viewpoint, but without any positive conclusion (this recipe was totally screwy, but LOOK, here's how I fixed it!) it's just a long FAIL blog post and no one wants that. For example, do you want to read an entire post about how the Lemon Blueberry Loaf I attempted on Monday was too moist, too dense, and wayyyyy too much work with glazing this and sifting that and zesting this and the other thing? At the end of the day it's just me being mad at a cake on my counter and what is THAT? No.

If I think a recipe is worth another shot (that cake is not, btw) I will continue to work with it and tweak it (like the Crispy Zucchini Cakes I attempted and screwed up--too much onion, too much moisture, cakes too big and tall) until I have a success, where I will write about it and mention how I royally effed it all up before so that you don't have to waste your time making my same mistakes. See: History; repeating itself, et. al.

tl; dr I don't blog about my failed cooking escapades because that's stupid and not the point of this blog.

I'm in Long Island with my Bonus Parents (godparents that are way more than godparents) this Labor Day weekend so I won't be doing much experimenting. In the meantime, drink one for me to toast the end of summer (BUT WHO IS REALLY WANTING TO TOAST THAT??? COME HERE SO I CAN SMACK YOU!) and I'll be back in the kitchen with flour on my nose and sugar sparkling on my skin next week.

The shitty, ill-fated Lemon Blueberry Loaf.

Lagniappe, or, A Little Somethin' Somethin'

I used to date a guy (we'll call him Lupin) from New Orleans who taught me all sorts of awesome Cajun slang while we were together, to my increasing amusement. They sure do have a fascinating way of talkin' down there! My favourite word is "lagniappe" which sounds ugly the way it's spelled (lag-nee-ap-pay?), but is actually pronounced "LAN-yap". It means "a little extra" and is used when purchasing something from a vendor. For example, when a baker throws in an extra donut for free (to make a baker's dozen of 13), that is lagniappe; or if I were to go to a street market and purchase some veggies and said to the vendor "How about some lagniappe?" he might throw in a bunch of cilantro or something for me. Apparently it's still widely practiced in Louisiana and I LOVE this concept and custom.

I'll be using this word in my blog post titles for things that don't fit strictly into the "Lekker" (food and dessert recipes) or "Liquor" (drinks, obvi) categories--just a little somethin' somethin' extra.

So, here's today's lagniappe, which had me laughing my ass off on Pinterest yesterday.

MIND. BLOWN.

Lekker: Bread & Butter Pickles

There are lots of reasons why I love to cook, to bake, and to futz around in the kitchen in general.

One is that I love to engage my mind by expanding my skill set and learning new things about flavour combination, technique, and food chemistry.

Two is that I like having a hobby that is productive of something, where I have something to show for it at the end of the day. Creating something (a dish) out of nothing (just "ingredients") to share with others is fulfilling, to me anyway.

Over the weekend I had some time to kill on a gloomy Sunday afternoon and a brand new mandolin that I was just itching to use, so I decided to refer to Reason #1 by attempting homemade pickles for the first time. I like these low-investment experiments because even if I screw it all up, all I've lost is a cucumber and some vinegar, so no tears shed. (Pshh, as if.) Plus, I *LOVE* pickles. Claussen Dill Spears are my all-time favourite; you find them in the refrigerated section because they're not hot brined like most pickles (and this recipe is) so they are suuuuper crunchy and bright and sharp in flavour. I've always asserted that these pickles are the best appetite suppressant out there. I don't know if it's the acidity of the vinegar or what, but whenever I'm feeling like I want to snack for no reason I just chomp on a few of those and I'm satisfied.

This recipe is not for those kind of pickles. Sorry to disappoint after all that raving, but I have no clue how to make those. Blame it on my ADD, baby. THIS recipe, however, is for a basic bread-and-butter type pickle that goes well on sammiches and could be further processed into a BOMB sweet relish. Up to you. You don't need to have a mandolin to make this, as long as you've got a steady hand with a knife and a good eye for making even slices. I, however, find using the mandolin very peaceful and way too much fun to the point that now I'm just looking around my kitchen for things I can slice, julienne, or crinkle cut. (But not my hand; I managed to slice off part of my finger by accident by getting too enthusiastic and misjudging how much room was left between the cucumber and my digits. Oh well. Respawn!)

Don't those feathery fronds looks just so pretty floating around in there? Note how I did not stuff my jar properly. Lesson learned for next time. 

Bread and Butter Pickles

What You Need
1 large English cucumber (those are the long skinny ones in shrink wrap)
2 cups distilled white vinegar
1 cup white granulated sugar
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon mustard seed
1/2 teaspoon celery seed
1/8 teaspoon turmeric (sidebar: this spice is a real superfood; sneak it in wherever you can)
1 bunch dill fronds, about 1.5 cups

Righty-o then, here we go.

What You Do
1. First thing to do is prep the veggies. Slice up the cucumbers into pickle-sized slices, whatever that means to you. On a baking sheet lined with paper towels, sprinkle down a layer of salt. Lay the cucumbers down and sprinkle more salt on top. Let sit for about 15 minutes to draw out some of the moisture, then press down with another layer of paper towels to pat them dry.

2. While the cucumbers are sweating it out like a whore in church, you can mix up the brine. In a medium saucepot over medium heat, combine all the other ingredients except the dill fronds and bring to a boil so that the sugar dissolves completely.

3. Stuff your cucumbers into a large glass jar and layer the dill fronds amongst them. I didn't use enough for this batch as you can see so definitely add more since the taste really gets mellowed out by the brine.

Really, stuff the jar full because they'll float and move around and you'll suddenly wind up with more space that you expected.

4. Once the brine comes to a boil, pour it slowly and carefully into the jar. It should come all the way to the top of the jar without much brine left over. If you are panicky about not having enough brine, add another cup of vinegar and another 1/2 cup of sugar in step 2. But really, these are just pickles, there is no reason to get panicky. Seal the jar and stick it in the fridge to...well...pickle! After 24 hours you're good to go. Nom nom.

So like I said, if you want to take it a step further you can drain the pickles and chop them into relish. These got the green light from both housemate TB and I as-is, though I do prefer a less sweet pickle and will therefore continue to tweak this recipe. I'm also going to attempt cold brining to see if I can replicate the crispness of my beloved Claussen Dill Pickles.

Liquor: Pimm's Cup

I love brunch, and I love day drinking, so it should be a surprise to no one that I love morning cocktails. There's just something about a light drink in the lazy morning that is the epitome of complete weekend indulgence and relaxation. I've been warned that I will find myself swept up in the melee of soccermomhood before I know it (SCARY!) so I'm making a good effort to enjoy this kind of life while I can.

Mimosas will always be my favourite and the go-to classic for most places, although my dear friend and often brunch partner Lilypad always goes for the gold with a Bloody Mary. This cocktail, though, is a wonderful alternative that many Americans aren't aware of: the Pimm's Cup. It's actually a very old cocktail that was historically enjoyed by the colonists (in fact I first discovered it on a fall trip to Colonial Williamsburg a few years ago) and by their erstwhile compatriots back in Britain for eons before that. The sweet, utterly refreshing taste is the perfect way to wake up on a beautiful lazy Sunday, but in fact you can drink it at any time of day, really, since the alcohol content is only 25%. Hell, you can throw it in a tumbler and call it iced tea if you want--don't let those other soccer moms judge you!

Pimm's Cup
makes 1 bomb-ass wake up cocktail. Sunflowers optional.

What You Need
Pimm's liqueur
Sprite or 7-Up
Sliced cucumber, for garnish (this is NOT optional!!!)

What You Do
Stack a tall glass with ice, and fill with Pimm's about a third of the way. Top off with Sprite or 7-Up, add a cucumber slice or two and one on the rim for garnish, and you're golden.

Seriously, the cucumber slice is not optional. The point of including one on the rim is so that every time you tip the glass up to take a sip, your nose takes a whiff of the cuke as an accompaniment to the flavours of the liqueur. There is science behind garnishes, people!

Lekker: Cheesy Baked Spaghetti Squash

Here's another little gem that was pinged my way by the mysterious Lucas, shared between housemate TB and I for dinner last night. He's getting back on his vegan/vegetarian diet so we're making good use of the overabundance of vegetables from our garden, and everything you see here was grown by him. On a personal level, it always pleases me when I have an opportunity to show my gratitude to TB for being such a thoughtful, caring and creative housemate. He informed me last night that he's planted spinach, turnips and beans for the fall simply because I made a throw-away remark last week that I'd never cooked with turnips before and wanted to. He's awesome, right?! Thank youuuuu Craigslist!

I also like this recipe because it's INTENDED for two people. Come on y'all, don't be #foreveralone on this one--call up a friend or neighbor to join you (or a secretly despised enemy...just remember which half you put the arsenic into.)

The photo does not do this justice; I dunno WHAT was going on with my iPhone/kitchen lighting here...trust me, it's delicious. 

Cheesy Baked Spaghetti Squash
makes 2 large servings

What You Need
1 large spaghetti squash
2 T olive oil, divided (that means you aren't going to use it all at once, read the recipe)
4-6 Roma tomatoes, depending on their size. Use your judgement as usual.
a large handful of basil
4-5 chives
about 3/4 cup good quality Parmesan cheese, or more, whatever you want
S&P, to taste

What You Do
1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Now, we gotta slice that squash in half lengthwise and you will quickly realize that it's kind of a mother of a task. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD BE CAREFUL. Use a really sharp large knife (or a meat cleaver, for reals) and GO SLOW and again, BE CAREFUL. Drink your wine AFTER this part. It is *so* easy for the knife to slip. It took me a hot minute to get it done, but eventually I did get into it. (Protip: Don't waste your time with serrated knives. They don't work and you will only wind up with a growing pile of reject knives in the corner of the cutting board at which your roommate will glance suspiciously.)

2. You got it open without stabbing yourself? YAY! It's all gravy from here. Using a spoon, scoop out the seeds and the obviously stringy bits. Brush the squash (the inside parts duh) with about 1 tablespoon of olive oil and add salt and pepper. On a foil-lined baking sheet, turn them cut side DOWN and put them in the oven for 30 minutes.

All nicely brushed, now flip 'em over and into the oven they go.

3. So while that's rockin' and rollin' in the oven, you can dice up your Roma tomatoes, the chives (KEEP CALM AND CHIVE ON!) and basil and add it all to a big bowl with the other tablespoon of olive oil, and a wee bit more salt and pepper if you like. I just let it marinate for about 15 minutes while I waited for the squash to finish cooking.

Obviously I didn't use all of that, I'm just showing off here.

4. After about 30 minutes in the oven your squash should be done. Take it out of the oven and flip it over carefully to check the insides. They should be soft. If not, throw them back in for another 5-10 minutes. But if they're done, let them cool for a few minutes until you can handle them. Turn on the broiler in your oven because it'll take awhile to heat up. You'll want to use a fork to shred out the insides into the awesome little spaghetti-like strings that give this bad boy its name in the first place. So fun! Dump those into the bowl with the tomatoes as you gather it all up.

5. So once that's all combined, you stuff it back into the shells of the squash and top it with Parmesan cheese. Please, do not insult these beautiful vegetables by using that powdered crap. That is not cheese. You can find the good stuff in the specialty cheeses section of any grocery store.

6. Broil for 3-5 minutes or until the cheese gets all nicely browned and melty and smells like heaven. I suppose you could serve this with grilled chicken or something else, but TB and I loved it just as is.

The ONLY thing I would do differently would be to add some crumbled bacon when it comes time to stuff everything back in the shells. I think it really could benefit from that richness, but honestly we were both scraping the shells with glee anyway so I'd say it's a success.

Voila! Serve with a glass of white wine. (Because of course.)

Lekker: Homemade Feta-ish Cheese

I suppose this recipe is the one that started this blog in the first place, and if I made any sense at all I would have made this the first entry. But whatevs. I tried my hand at this last weekend for the first time on a whim and posted the results to Instagram. My friend Eliza begged for the recipe and gave me the push I needed to start this little thing, so here we are!

I got the idea from a buddy of mine, Lucas, who I'm fairly certain is some sort of international secret agent or former drug lord. Jury's still out; all I know is that he's already retired at age 32 and does nothing all day except cook delicious things whilst drinking and sends me pictures of all of it. Drives me bananas, but he gives me good recipes so we're still friends. This came about because he had picked about a dozen ears of fresh corn from his garden and wondered what to do with them. I suggested a simple roasted corn salad, which calls for feta cheese, and two hours later I get a photo that features a pan of insta-made feta cheese. WHAT?! That's a thing? You can do that?

Apparently.

Farmer Henry shows you how, here, and he's the most adorable farmer I've ever seen.

His video is for making goat's cheese, which obviously uses goat's milk. I didn't have that on hand and Lucas had made it with cow's milk and enjoyed it that way, so I followed his lead. 

I halved the recipe as well since my thighs do not need three cups of cheese sitting in my fridge, so here goes:

Homemade Two Hour "Feta"-ish Cheese
makes about 1.5 cups of cheese

I have "feta" in quotation marks there because this isn't a TRUE feta cheese. It's not brined for a week, and it's not made out of sheep's milk or goat's milk. I did try a second batch with goat's milk, but having done zero research on it I used the only goat's milk I could find at the store which was ultra-pasteurized--which you apparently cannot use. It refused to curdle (stubborn brat) and I wound up throwing it all down the sink. As soon as I can get my hands on some sheep's milk, I will be making this recipe with that--plus experimenting with a brine for a few days. But that's all for later, for now, CHEESE!

What You Need
1/2 gallon whole cow's milk (I used organic)
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
cheesecloth (which you can usually find in the grocery store by the alu foil and cling wrap; sometimes I think it's called butter muslin and you can use either)
a strainer of some kind 
Optional: olive oil, lemon juice, salt & pepper for seasoning

What You Do
1. Pour the milk into a large non-reactive metal pot (that means no aluminum) on the stove over medium-low heat. You'll need a wooden spoon and a bit of patience for this part, because you're going to have to park your butt at the stove for about 15 minutes to bring that milk to a slow boil. Stir gently and constantly to keep it moving, otherwise you'll scald the milk and it'll taste all weird. Don't be a lazy ass and turn up the heat, it'll get there.

2. As soon as it gets to a boil, turn off the heat and add the 1/4 cup of vinegar and stir gently. This will cause the milk to break and you'll see curds start to form and the liquid around it (called the whey) will go yellow. Give it a minute or two to finish curdling. Looks disgusting at this stage.

3. Now comes time to strain it. You'll need a large bowl with a strainer set up inside it, into which you will lay your cheesecloth nicely. The point is to ladle or pour this mixture into the cheesecloth, which will be supported by the strainer, so the whey can be collected in the bowl. I'd do this in the sink if I were you. You'll then want to gather up the cheesecloth and squeeze more of the liquid out of it. The drier you get it, the firmer your cheese will be.

Yes, that's the strainer from a salad spinner. It's all I had. Don't judge me. Also, this was after I had poured out all the whey, because there was a LOT and nearly made a giant mess on my countertop. Hence the sink suggestion.

4. So at this point, having done more research after the fact, I learned that most cheese makers tie up the cheesecloth into a nice little bundle and hang it from a wooden spoon that's been laid over a bowl so that it can drain further for a few hours. I didn't know this and would have been too impatient anyway, so I just squeezed the hell out of it until it looked like this:

That's the great thing about trying new things in cooking. When you have no idea what you're doing, it's hard to care too much about doing it "perfectly." Wine helps with this.

Hooray! I then dumped it out into a bowl and tasted it. It was kind of bland and I was sort of disappointed until I remembered that Farmer Henry in all his adorable overall-ed glory told me I could season it however I wanted. Feta cheese has a tang, right? So in went salt and pepper, lots of lemon juice and a little bit of extra virgin olive oil, fluffed with a fork until I thought it tasted great.

The olive oil added a bit of colour, but it wasn't actually yellow, those are just my kitchen lights.

I smooshed it all down into a little Pyrex container trying to compact it as much as possible to form nice crumbles and stuck it in the fridge to cool down and firm up for a few hours. In the meantime I poured myself a(nother) celebratory glass of wine and bragged to Lucas and my friend Ghost about my clear supreme excellence in cheese making. (Nevermind the batch of goat's milk cheese I promptly screwed up not 20 minutes later.)

I ate it sprinkled over grilled eggplant and tomatoes for dinner in the evening, and it was awesome. TB is not a huge fan of feta but he tossed it into a stir fry later in the week and gave me two thumbs up. Will absolutely be doing this again, and you should give it a whirl too. It's easy and pretty step-by-step, and who cares if you screw it up? All that's wasted is a half gallon of milk.

Stay tuned for further variations. I refuse to be thwarted in my quest for a magnificently creamy goat cheese bedecked with fresh cut basil from my garden.