Acknowledging that I am not a master chef (yet!), I rarely stray from a recipe, knowing that my untrained deviances will lead to probable disaster.  However, I was inspired by a bread pudding a friend made for Christmas, and decided to try and turn it around into a suitable New Years Day brunch item.

The original bread pudding recipe is fantastic because 1) it is incredibly hard, pretty much impossible, to screw up, 2) it is very light and with a hint of sweetness - an excellent base for experimentation.  Trust me on the hard to screw up part.  I scorched half a loaf of bread, tooled around with the cooking time, then drowned the poor thing in a pond of butter, and was still able to resuscitate it. The very simple recipe can be found on the BBC website, and yielded the following:

It’s super simple:

Ingredients

3 free-range eggs
3 tbsp caster sugar
2 cups milk and cream mixed together, half and half
½ tsp vanilla extract
1 loaf white bread, croissants, brioche or panettone
50g/20z butter
large handful raisins, soaked in a liqueur of your choice (or Marsala is good)
double cream or custard, to serve

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.
2. Mix the eggs, sugar, milk and vanilla extract together in a large bowl.
3. Slice the bread of your choice, toast and butter it and arrange in overlapping slices in the bottom of an ovenproof dish, leaving some edges sticking out at the top so that they crisp up. Scatter the soaked raisins over the top and then pour in the egg mixture.
4. Bake for 30 minutes in the preheated oven and serve warm with cream or custard.

I added way too much butter that wasn’t cooking off, so I had to take it out of the oven, pour out the extra butter, and toss it back it.  I also found that it needed at least an extra 10 minutes more to cook than what the recipe called for. I skipped over the raisins and cream, opting to go with the simple brilliance of the pudding itself.

After the improbable success of my first try with the recipe, I was riding fairly high on my horse, and knew I couldn’t wait to get back in the saddle.  Having a pot luck brunch to attend, the wheels of the cooking brain started churning.  What if I made bread pudding a brunch item?

So here was my thinking: remove most of the sugar, and all of the vanilla, and essentially you have an omelet and toast baked together.  And there’s lots of things that go well in an omelet.  I settled on onions, peppers, spinach, cheddar, and rosemary. However, I am positive that anything that works in an omelet will work here.

The key is to saute the extra items first, especially if you are using meat, as the bread pudding cooks at a fairly low temperature.  So I softened up the onions and peppers for a few minutes in a skillet, added the spinach for the last minute just to wilt it.  I wisked up the egg mixture sans vanilla with 1 tablespoon of sugar instead of three. In the pan, I did a layer of bread, a layer of veggies and cheese, another layer of bread, then the egg mixture over the top. And then into the oven it went!

I cannot describe in words how yummy this is.  So yummy I shocked myself.  If you took french toast and an omelet and baked them together, you might get something halfway as tasty as this. Sweet, savory, filling, and delish-a-rama.

How does your garden grow? All that work in the garden is finally paying off and I have more tomatoes than I know what to do with. So, at this point of the year, I like to put the surplus of tomatoes to good use and make gazpacho. Gazpacho is a Spanish cold tomato based soup and it is easy to make.

I’m the type of cook who doesn’t like to follow a recipe too closely. So, here’s how I made the soup this time…

I hit my local farmer’s market in Okemos, Michigan this weekend and loaded up on additional veggies for this dish. I simply combined several roma tomatoes, a cucumber (I like English cucumbers - they do not have seeds), green, yellow and red peppers (remove seeds), red onion, clove of garlic, a splash of balsamic vinegar and olive oil, and salt and pepper to taste. Whirl all of this in a food processor until it is the consistency you like.

The nice thing about gazpacho is that you can customize it - add other vegetables or spices like hot peppers, cumin, parsley, chives celery, lemon juice… you get the idea. Experiment - make it your own.

When I had the soup in Barcelona, Spain, they strained the soup to remove any seeds or chunks of vegetables. I don’t mind the tomato seeds or small chunks of cucumber, so I skipped this step to strain the soup. They also served toppings like green pepper and croutons on the side.

I simply topped mine with some avocado and basil plus some crostini with goat cheese on the side. Perfect summer dinner especially when you don’t want to heat up the kitchen with the oven.

I need your help. I’ll have more veggies and herbs overflowing from my garden. What are you going to make with the surplus stock from your garden?

photo courtesy of flickr user Aaron M

The Chicago Sun Times has blessed us with 50 sumptuous ways to enjoy our tomato harvest.  While not everyone is knee deep in tomatoes this summer due to the blight (poor Martha), some are reaping the rewards of summer.  And the Times know how to put these red orbs to use.  Some of my faves I want to try, the first one I’m going to test out for lunch:

Turn sliced tomatoes into a gratin, with a topping of bread crumbs and grated Parmesan and a finishing splash of heavy cream.

Shake up the Tomato Mojitonico, a signature of Nacional 27 mixologist Adam Seger. It’s a muddled concoction of chopped tomatoes, cucumbers, a lime wedge, a handful of herbs, rum and tonic water.

Roll out a pizza Margherita with slices of ripe tomato, fresh mozzarella and basil leaves.

Try with peach wedges for another summery combination.

Make Tomatoes Provencal the Julia Child way, from Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom (Knopf, 2000). Fill halved, seeded and juiced tomatoes with a mixture of ½ cup fresh white bread crumbs, 2 tablespoons minced shallots or scallions, 2 minced garlic cloves, 1 to 2 tablespoons olive oil and salt and pepper to taste. Drizzle with olive oil and bake in a 400-degree oven for 15 to 20 minutes, until lightly browned.

When you think of a raging party, what do you want to reach for?  A jello shot?  Or a cupcake? Now you don’t have to decide!

I Heart Cupcakes has the recipe to end all recipes for your next shindig.

One thing I didn’t expect when I started vegetable gardening is the great flowers that many vegetables plants produce on the course to growing food.  Green bean plants have cute little purple drops and tomatoes sprout small bursts of sunshine.  But the king of the garden is definitely the squash blossom.  These massive orange flowers tower above anything else.

I didn’t happen to plant squash this year, so I have no blossoms of my own to contend with.  However, at the Dupont Farmers Market I stumbled upon entire baskets of just squash blossoms.

Now when the whole edible flowers fad hit restaurants in the US a few years back, I admit I was a bit derisive of the project.  Eating flowers?  Really?  I was confident it was a gimmick and refused to partake.  After all, it was obvious they were just dressing up their plates to make a bland dish exotic.  Flowers couldn’t possibly taste good or else we would have been eating them all along.

However, seeing a full basket of them called to me as a challenge.  I believe in trying new things, right?  How could I say no to the humble squash blossom?

So I took a basket home, and started googling for a recipe.  There was lots of recipes calling for stuffing the blossoms with cheese and other strong flavors, which didn’t seem right.  I wanted to know what the blossoms REALLY tasted like.  So I battered them very lightly with just flour and a teaspoon of baking soda after rinsing them gently.  I tossed them in a frying pan with a very light oil (NO OLIVEOIL).  And, Voila! Crispy squash blossoms. Unlike Robin, who I suspect had used a too strong oil, these blossom crisps were light and airy with a slight nutty crunch and a very mild yet delicate creamy center. Absolutely delightful!

Test your caffeine know-how.

Don’t cheat!  Answer and awesome coffee drink cheatsheet here.

I love to travel, and when I do, I feel that it’s incredibly important to experience the local tasty treats. After all, travel should be a full-sensory experience, food, beverage, sights, smells, etc. But when it comes to regional favorites, my #1 can be found in my own home state, about 8 hours north - the pasty. (That’s pronounced paah-stee and not pay-stee, which is something completely different.)

The pasty is pretty much amazing. With it’s origins in Cornwall in the UK, it gained American notoriety in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan when a group of Cornish and then Finnish miners immigrated to the area to work in the many iron and copper mines circa 1864. The pasty was fashioned Michigan-style out of necessity more than anything, as wives were able to bake the vegetables and beef into an enclosed pastry crust that was easy to keep warm, and equally easy to warm up while down in the mines. You don’t need a fork and knife to eat it, as it’s meant to be eaten end to end, held upright to keep the juices in.

You can tell a true pasty from the imitators by one simple ingredient - the rutabaga, a cousin of the turnip. But most pasties are made up with lean ground beef, potatoes, onions, carrots and salt and pepper, wrapped up in a flaky crust. Now there’s variations that replace the beef with chicken, or vegetarian pasties, and that add things like cheese, broccoli, alfredo sauce, and tuna (hmm) among others. There are lots of delicious recipes out there, try one out for yourself (see below).

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Makes FIVE gallons.  Enough to feed your burgeoning militia. It’s an Idaho thing.

photo courtesy of flickr user MHogan35

Apple Pie without apples seems like some demonic abberation, but Kat over at Slashfood delivers the goods.  You’ll never believe what’s in it.

The back story on Mock Apple Pie is that Californian pioneer women in the 1850s were trying to recreate their home town favorite from back east, but apparently there wasn’t a ready supply of apples in California at the time.  These days it seems crazy if you can get fruit or vaggies that don’t come from California.

But since I don’t, I’m have to stick to their recipe widget. Throw in a few food items, and presto! Allrecipe’s Dinner Spinner tells you what to make for dinner. And tonight, my internet overlords tell me I am making Sweet Potato Pear Bake for dinner. How could I argue with that?

H/T Robin.

Guinness as cupcakes? Oh yes. They always said that Guinness is a meal. Now its a dessert. Cupcakes Take the Cake has the recipe. I only wish I had found this last week.

Update: Tee and Cakes up the ante with Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes:

So I decided to branch out at the farmers market this weekend. Instead of just sticking to the recognizable apples, pears and sweet potatoes, I also picked up something that looked like white carrots. Turns out, they’re parsnips.

As I mulled over the interesting purchase with my friend Eddie, a very sweet older woman interjected herself into our conversation. She riffed off a half of a dozen different preparation methods for the albino carrots, all of which I promptly forgot. But she did convince me to buy the parsnips. So tonight I experimented. I ended up going for the roasted garlic, onion and parsnips recipe I found online. Turns out, parsnips are to carrots as plantains are to bananas. I highly recommend, at least the few bites I had that didn’t turn into charcoal. Word to the wise - 35 minutes on this recipe probably would have resulted in a somewhat less blackened and more enjoyable outcome. Still yummy though.