The other day at the store I noticed they had some ground lamb and decided to grab some, figuring I’d make a burger of some sort. I let the idea bubble in my head as I went through the store and decided I would most definitely want some slices of roasted lemon to go with this. Then last night it hit me, Lamb burger with roasted lemon and Tzatziki sauce.

Here’s the finished burger, recipe for Tzatziki follows.

Seriously, delicious!

Tzatziki, while a pain in the ass to spell is actually quite easy to make.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups Greek style yogurt*
1 cucumber peeled, seeded and diced
2 tablespoons of chopped fresh mint
3-4 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
Salt to taste

Method:
Put everything except 1/2 of the cucumber and salt into a food processor and blend smooth. Add remaining half of cucumber and pulse a couple of times, you want some texture to this. Salt to taste. The entire photo set is here.

Makes about 2 cups, great for dipping pita slices into, or topping a burger like I did.

*Greek style yogurt is thicker than regular yogurt, it’s starting to show up in major food chains under the brand “Fage” (Fay-eh) if you can’t find it, take two and half cups of regular plain yogurt, put it in cheesecloth, and tie it around a wooden spoon, then hang over a bowl for a few hours. As in this picture.

After a couple of hours more than a cup of liquid had come out of the yogurt and I was left with this.

As for the roasted lemon, take a whole lemon and wash it well using a vegetable scrubber (you’ll be eating the whole thing). Slice the lemon into equal thickness slices about an 1/8th of an inch, place on a pan, drizzle with olive oil and roast in a 400F oven for 15-20 minutes, watch carefully and turn the slices over so they don’t over brown on one side.

You can remove and pits before or after roasting.

ENJOY!

Charles

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It’s finally arrived where I live, temps are ranging from the mid 50’s to mid 70’s and everything is blooming!

Normally this would also mean that I’m stocking up on Flonase, Zyrtec and a handful of other drugs to combat my allergies to all things green and blooming (and also all pollutants and cats).

Last year when I was in France it got so incredibly bad, it was hard to have any fun at all.  I was miserable every day of the trip I was double dosing on Zyrtec & Flonase, I tried sudafed on top of that, and even threw in some Benadryl.

This picture was taken on a good day. Full size here.

On the worst day, I took over 300mg of Benadryl and had double dosed everything else.  Upon my return I realized that my allergies could prevent me from ever living in Paris, which is a long term goal of mine. So I had to do something about it. A few weeks after my return I found an allergist and began getting allergy serum shots.  My reactions to the shots were pretty severe and they had to bring me up to dose very slowly, I’ve been going for 10 months now and am 5 weeks from moving to getting shots every other week instead of weekly.  Just in time for this year’s trip to France.

So here we are, Spring the time of year when everything makes me itch and my nose run, and my eyes water, only this year none of that is happening and I’m not on allergy meds at all. I take one dose of Zyrtec a couple of hours prior to my injections (they insist) and that’s it.

If you suffer from allergies and have the means (check your insurance), I can’t recommend going through the treatments strongly enough.  Now let’s see how they hold up under the foreign pollens of France…

Charles

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My friend Jill pointed out this morning that due to my last name any toast I make is French toast, so we’re subtitling this recipe “Frenchy French Toast!” Jill also claims to have told me about putting orange juice in the batter over a year ago, this may well be true, but I had never tasted it prior to having it at Momma Norma & Deborah when I was in Ixtapa, Mexico.

When I went shopping yesterday the store didn’t have any juicing oranges, so I went with honey tangerines instead.
So, here we go:

“Frenchy French Toast!”

Ingredients:
4 to 6 slices of day old brioche sliced about a half inch thick
a few tablespoons of butter for the pan (a little before each batch)

Batter:
4 eggs (or 5 eggs if using 6 slices of brioche)
1/8 teasspoon (slighty heaping) ground cinnamon
1 Tablespoon good vanilla extract
1/3 cup Half & Half (or heavy cream)
Juice from 1 1/2 to 2 honey tangerines 1/3 - 1/2 cup depending on taste.

Equipment:
Bowl to make the batter and dunk bread in.
Large plate to rest the soaked bread
Medium pan (non-stick)

Method:
Whisk all the batter ingredients together until eggs are well beaten.
Soak each slice of Brioche on both sides, holding it under the battter until it is well absorbed.
Place each slice on the large plate while working on the others.

Heat pan over medium heat, put in butter to coat the pan and cook the brioche 2 slices at a time.
Keep the heat at medium to medium low and cook until golden on bottom, flip and cook other side, flip one more time to re-warm the other side. Repeat with remaining slices and serve; preferably with organic grade B maple syrup.

Note: If you’re making a larger batch or just want everyone to be served at the same time then, preheat your oven to 200F and place the cooked slices in the oven on a cookie sheet until ready to serve everyone.

If you have the time, bacon as a side would be perfect with this.

Filed under: Cooking, Food, General, Recipes by Charles
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This recipe is adapted from The Mixer Bible which is a great ‘go to’ if you have a stand mixer, in fact, it’s a must have.

NOTE: This recipe includes 3 rises that total 7 hours, start this early in the day if you want it for dinner.

Brioche:

Ingredients:
1 package active dry yeast
3 Tablespoons warm water (100F)
1 teaspoon sugar
2 1/8 cups all purpose flour (unbleached)
3 eggs at room temp, beaten.
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 and 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temp (if you only have salted butter reduce the salt by half)
1 egg beaten (for brushing over the bread)

Equipment:
Stand mixer with flat beater and dough hook attachments
1 9×5 loaf pan (greased)
Veg oil spray
cups, spoon, spatula, bowl.

Method:
Proof the yeast in the water with the teaspoon of sugar.
In the mixer put in the flour, eggs, salt, sugar, & proofed yeast/water mixture
Mix with the flat beater until a dough forms
Replace the flat beater with the dough hook and knead on speed 2 for 2 minutes
begin adding the butter 1 Tablespoon at a time, incorporating each before continuing, periodically stop and scrape down the bowl and pull the dough from the top of the hook. Towards the end you may need to increase speed to 3 or 4 to incorporate the butter. When done you’ll have a dough that resembles thick cake batter.

Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in warm place free of drafts for 2 hours.
Punch down and let rise covered at room temp 1 more hour.
Move to fridge and chill for two hours.

Flour your work surface, take the chilled dough and work into a ball by tucking the edges under, repeatedly, when you have a smooth ball, begin to shape it into a rectangle that will cover the bottom of the loaf pan.

Grease the loaf pan with veg oil spray, place the dough in the pan and cover loosely with plastic wrap. Allow to rise an additional 2 hours at room temp, until the dough comes to the top of the loaf pan.

Preheat oven to 375.
Brush the top of the loaf with a beaten egg.

Bake for 40 minutes or until bread reaches an internal temp of 190F

Remove from pan and cool on a rack, 30 minutes and serve.

This is what the dough will look like when you’re done adding the butter.

Time for the final rise in the pan.

Fresh from the oven, resist the tempation to eat it for 30 minutes.

So light, so tender, so buttery, so delicious.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s installment, Brioche French Toast.

Charles

Filed under: Baking, Food, General, Recipes by Charles
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The above photo is the embarrassing stack of unread magazines that I need to go through. Months worth in fact. The purpose of this post is to publically shame myself into getting this done. I subscribe to these for inspiration, for new ideas and for food, obviously.

So, tomorrow I’ll be in a car for a couple of hours as a passenger and I’m using that time to go through the magazines and cut out the good bits, the things I want to make, the things I want to experiment with and places I may want to go.

To be completely honest, that isn’t all of the magazines, there’s probably about half that many that I just passed on to family members because I was too busy to be bothered. I’ve got some time on my hands, and it’s time to use it.

Charles

Filed under: Food, General by Charles
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Okay this is dinner in under an hour BUT most of that time is passive.

Roasted Butternut Squash & Panko Crusted Pork Chops.

Ingredients:
1 package pre-peeled and cubed butternut squash
1 package thin cut boneless pork chops (under a lb total weight)
Panko breadcrumbs
2 eggs
cup of milk
1/2 cup seasoned flour (flour with salt, pepper etc)
1 cup Safflower oil
1/4 cup Olive oil plus more for drizzling.

Set oven to 400F (no need to pre-heat)
make sure that the pieces of butternut squash are more or less the same size arrange on baking dish, drizzle with oil and sprinkle with a little salt & pepper. Put in oven and set time to 50 minutes.

Set up a wet/dry/wet/dry/rest  Breading Station (Bowl, plate, bowl, plate, plate)
In the first bowl put the cup of milk and the pork chops
first plate gets the seasoned flour
second bowl gets the eggs (whisk well)
second plate gets the Panko, keep the package handy you’ll need more than you think.
third plate gets nothing this is where the chops go before the frying pan.

Go relax until the timer says 10 minutes.

When you get to the 10 minute mark take a large frying pan, add the safflower, and olive oils set heat to medium high.

Go to your breading station dredge each chop one at a time in flour, shake excess, dip in egg on both sides, then put into panko and press panko crumbs into both sides, place on plate to rest. Repeat.

When finished test the oil for temp (a drop of water will do) and when ready add the chops one at a time. This part will go quickly, about now the timer should be going off, turn off the oven. turn your chops over when they’re golden on the bottom and cook other side until golden.

Serve.

By using thin pork chops by the time they’re golden on both sides they’re fully cooked.

Here’s how mine came out.

Enjoy! I sure did.

Filed under: Cooking, Food, Recipes by Charles
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Well, first off this is my first attempt at making a food video, it is thankfully, silent.

I was inspired by a story about crepes over at NPR. Crepes are of course notoriously easy, and notoriously a pain in the ass. Sure simple enough in theory, but no thanks I’ll stick to the cheat I used in the video.

Enjoy, and add some whipped cream on top.

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I first tasted passion fruit ice cream 3 years ago in Paris and just fell in love with it. A couple months after returning I got a craving for it and decided to track down a recipe, I found just the right one in Ultimate Ice Cream . Really great flavor, consistency, just like the fine custard ice cream I had in Paris.

After this batch is ready, I’m making some Mango to go along with it.

Ingredients:
3/4 cup sugar
4 egg yolks
1 teaspoon AP flour
1 1/2 cups half and half
1 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup passion fruit concentrate (check asian or hispanic markets)
1 1/2 teaspoons good vanilla extract

Beat the yolks and sugar until thick and pale yellow, then incorporate the flour.
Bring the half and half to a simmer, and slowly beat the half and half into the eggs.  Pour back into the pan and heat over low-medium heat until custard starts to thicken, do not let it boil it will curdle.  Strain the custard through a fine sieve.  Allow it to cool off a bit then add the vanilla, heavy cream and passion fruit concentrate.

Chill the mixture until completely cold, then follow the instructions on your ice cream maker.  Your end results will be a very soft serve, you can eat it as is, or put it in a container and freeze further.

Filed under: Desserts, Food, General, Recipes by Charles
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So, I’ve been talking with friends lately and trying to find inspiration for things to make and things to try with food while I have this unplanned downtime.

As I mentioned in the Focaccia post I’ve been looking through my favorite cookbooks and choosing some of those things to make.

I bought the book below some time ago, so long that Amazon doesn’t remember when I purchased it. And I obviously spent some time going through it. I vaguely recall this may have been around April 2006 when my job got crazy busy and stayed that way. So, the book went on the shelf, and I just grabbed from there tonight and had a total WTF !?? moment.

I think I’ve found the inspiration I was looking for, some of them seem to have been tagged for skills reasons more than taste. But I think it’s clear I need to spend some time in The Book of Appetizers.

Filed under: Food, Recipes by Charles
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As evidenced by yesterday’s fictional post, I’ve got some time on my hands and what better way to spend that extra time than with some of my favorite cookbooks. The recipe I used comes from The Mixer Bible and is one of my favorite breads to make. And if you don’t like onions, there are many other possibilties. How about a lattice of roasted red pepper, or slices of Gorgonzola stuffed olives, tomato and mozzarella. Anything you have on hand can work, and not too much of any topping, it’s about the bread after all. In the photo below I’ve used half the amount of onion in the recipe.

It’s damn tasty!

Filed under: Baking, Food, General by Charles
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