Arugula Rolls Take 2

I guess I've been neglecting this blog.  Sadly, kitchen experiments have fallen by the wayside in favor of my newer hobby, photography.  I'm having my first show this coming Friday, and I'm super excited.  I've been pretty busy getting ready for it though!

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Staying busy with photography doesn't mean I haven't been cooking, it just means I haven't found the time to document everything I've made.  Tonight was a whirlwind in the kitchen, as I'm looking ahead to a busy and disorganized week, and have no idea when I will have time to cook again before next Sunday.  I made crock pot pulled pork, tuna salad, baked chicken thighs, carrot soup, and arugula rolls.

Arugula Rolls Take 2

garlic

onion

mushrooms

kale

red wine

arugula

cheese

bread dough

preheat oven to 450

For the bread dough: Combine 2 tsp yeast, garlic powder, ginger powder, a dash of salt, 1 tsp sugar, 6 oz hot water, and a bit of olive oil.  Add 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour.  Knead in white flour until the dough is no longer sticky. Cover and let rise for 30+ minutes.  Punch down dough, add a bit more flour if necessary.  Roll out the dough into a large rectangle.  

For the filling: Chop some garlic, 1/4 of an onion, and a few strips of bacon (chopped), and cook til browned.  Add chopped mushrooms and kale.  When the mushrooms are almost done, add some red wine.  Let it cook for awhile, then spoon out the wine.  

Construct the roll: Spread shredded cheese and arugula on the rolled-out bread dough.  Add the cooked ingredients on top, sprinkle on some more cheese.  Roll up the dough.  Spread some cornmeal on a baking and lay the roll on the cornmeal. Sprinkle some cheese on top.  Bake for 15 minutes.

Broccoli Salad

1 1/2 heads of broccoli 

(steamed and chopped)

3 slices bacon

1 inch ginger root

3 cloves garlic

(chopped and cooked together in a skillet)

1 large spoonful of mayonnaise

soy sauce

ginger powder

mustard powder

(blended together)

small handful of chives

(finely chopped)

mix everything together

Diabolical Bacon Cookies

Somebody come save me from myself! I was left unsupervised on a rainy Sunday, and 45 of these appeared in my kitchen.  There are still 42 left...

Ingredients

1/2 stick butter

1/4 c vegetable oil

1/2 c brown sugar

1/4 c white sugar

1/4 c stout beer

4 slices of bacon

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

3/4 tsp vanilla

1 egg

1/2 c whole wheat flour

1 c white flour

mini chocolate chips

My new favorite stout (after Guinness of course)

Magic Hat's Heart of Darkness Stout

Directions

Chop the bacon into little pieces.  Throw it in a skillet on medium heat.  When the bacon starts to look crispy, drain the excess grease.  Add the beer, cook until the liquid has evaporated off.  When done, put the bacon on a paper towel to soak up any remaining grease.

In a mixing bowl, combine the other ingredients, in the order listed.  Add the bacon and chocolate chips last.

Put tiny spoonfuls of batter onto a baking sheet.  I got 3 sheets of 15 cookies each.   

Cook at 375 for 6 minutes.  

(Longer if you make bigger cookies)

Enjoy responsibly with some beer.

Loaded Burger

Cook up a batch of purist burgers.

Toast a bun.  

Cover the bottom bun with guacamole.

Add a slice of tomato.

Add a burger.

Add some bacon.

Add some onions & mushrooms.

Add the top bun.  

EAT.

Chili Cook-off 2013

2 years ago, my friend Josh and I entered a Gumbo competition.  Neither of us had ever made a gumbo before, but we threw one together and won the competition.  This year, we entered again, made our gumbo even better, and won again.  A month or two ago, we found out that there would be a chili cook-off.  Neither of us had ever made a chili before.  So, of course we entered.

Our Gumbo is known as Heart-Attack Gumbo.  It's got lots of bacon in it.  We wanted to go for the same theme with our chili, so we named it "Artery Clogging Chili."  It involved an entire package of bacon.  Also, a big hunk of beef, 3 or 4 cans of tomatos, some Guinness, some Jameson, some dark chocolate, some onions & mushrooms, some garlic, and various seasonings.  And we chopped up a little orange pepper thing...I don't remember what kind of pepper it was.  I can't stand spicy things so I didn't pay attention to that part.

Big pan of bacon cooking.  My apt. smelled pretty awesome!

We cut up the meat into cubes and rubbed it and a bunch of beef bones in some seasonings.

The meat got to take a nice bath in Guinness and Jameson.  It was like a spa...for meat.

I set the crockpot on low and let it cook all night long.  It got turned off about 12 hours later, before I left for work the next day.  I added 2 squares of dark chocolate at that point.  The chili took all day to cool off, and I put it in the fridge when I got home from work that evening.  

This is what I found when I took the chili out of the fridge this morning.  Grease much?

How bout a big pile of skimmed-off grease?

There were 17 chilis to taste.

Ours was by far the best.  And one of about 3 that didn't put me in severe pain...

Some happy tasters.

 Unfortunately, we only came in 2nd place.  We couldn't remember particularly liking the chili that came in 1st, but oh well.  Everyone has different tastes.  Maybe ours wasn't spicy enough for most people.  It was spicy enough for me to taste it...any spicier and I wouldn't have been able to eat my own chili!  

We'll be back next year, with an even better chili and hopefully win.  

We want to be gumbo champions AND chili champions!

Stuffed & Bacon-wrapped Chicken

Pre-heat oven to 375.

Finely chop a little bit of onion and celery.  Brown the onion in olive oil, add 1 clove minced garlic and 1 tsp minced ginger, cook for another minute or two.  Add the onion/garlic/ginger to a bowl with the celery.  Tear up 4 pieces of dried bread and add them to the bowl.  Mix with veggie stock until moist.  

Butterfly 3 b/s chicken breasts.  Spread some stuffing on top of each one, then roll them up.  Wrap each chicken roll with a slice or two of bacon. Place the rolls in an oven dish.  

Bake for 1 hr. 

Deliciousness.

You're welcome.

Cream Cheese Bacon Brownies

Because chocolate and bacon go with everything.  Including each other.  

Culinary match made in Heaven?

Cream Cheese Bacon Brownies

4 squares (4 ounces) of Baker's Chocolate

1 1/2 sticks of Butter

2 scant cups of Sugar

3 Eggs

1 tsp Vanilla

1+ cup of Flour

6 strips of Bacon

3 oz Cream Cheese

Put the Butter and Chocolate in a glass bowl and microwave for 2 minutes, then stir until fully melted. Add the Sugar, Eggs, Vanilla, and Flour, stirring well after each ingredient is added.  Chop the Bacon into small pieces and fry it.  Spoon out the grease and add it to your bacon grease jar for use in future kitchen adventures.  Chop the Cream Cheese into small pieces, then mix them into the brownie batter.  Pour the batter into a greased 9x9 pan.  

Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes.  

Brownies are done when you jab a toothpick into the center of the pan and it comes out clean.

Delicious-ness. 

Heart-attack Guinness Gumbo

Last year, a friend and I decided to enter the annual gumbo cook-off at the Pub.  We got up early that day, cooked all morning, showed up, and won.  Lots of fun.  So naturally this year we had to do it again.  This time, we started cooking at 8 PM the night before.  Since we were making it even awesome-er than last years, it took longer.  I didn't get home til 2 AM.  Good thing we didn't try to make it the morning of...it wouldn't have been done in time!

Here's a picture of last year's Heart-attack Gumbo:

Here's a picture of this year's Heart-attack Guinness Gumbo:

(there really is Guinness in it...yum)

Interesting that they are the same color...we spent way more time on the roux this year.

I'm not entirely sure how long it took last year, but we definitely did NOT spend an hour and forty-five minutes on it like we did this year.  

That's right, we whisked our roux non-stop for an hour and forty-five minutes. True dedication.

I was a little bit disappointed when I woke up this morning and my right arm hadn't doubled in size from that workout.

I can't give you our recipe or top-secret secret ingredients, but I can give you lots of pictures because I was having fun with my new camera.

meet Meg:  the only witness to the gumbo-magic

The Cooking

the chicken...heavily seasoned

The seasoning mix, thrown together by yours truly.  There was absolutely no measuring involved.

I threw a bunch of stuff into this bowl, and the bowl got dumped into the gumbo.

mushrooms, green peppers, onions, celery

some of the seasonings

BACON!

chicken thighs, cooking away in their bacon-grease bath

browned chicken waiting to go into the gumbo

Somehow our roux started out orange. The colors are a bit skewed here, but it looked a lot like tomato soup.  It eventually turned a very light brown, and then sloooowwwly darkened.

whisk...whisk...whisk some more...

The Cook-off

The tasting.  

There were only 4 entries this year.  They were all good and the rankings were pretty close, it got a lil tense as we watched the points coming in, but our gumbo pulled through and won in the end.

I think there ended up being 15-20 tasters.  They each got a tray with the 4 samples and gave each one a ranking from 1-4.

4: Deliciousness in your mouth

3: Yuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmy

2: Good

1: I'll eat it

All the points were added up and the gumbo with the most points won.   

Ours ended up with sixty-something points I think.

We each had a bowl of ours after the competition.  

We played countless dart games this afternoon, needed something to do while we drank our Guinness and waited for the results of the cook-off.

Looking forward to next year, when we will win for the 3rd year in a row!  

Nope, I'm not modest at all.