Twisted Bee Ell Tee

I love taking classic dishes and putting a little something extra in them to add just that little bit more to their perfection.  And there is nothing more perfect than the classic BLT (that’s a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, for those few of you uninitiated).  But is that actually true?  No.  Because you can always add.  There’s the BELT, for instance: bacon, egg, lettuce, tomato (on a biscuit, no less).  And a variation of the grilled cheese that we like around these parts, the BTC (bacon, tomato, cheese).

As I have learned, adding avocado makes pretty much ANYTHING better.  In fact, I think I’m going to make a decree here for the Avocado Rule, which parallels the Pie’s Banana Rule, wherein adding a banana to anything (shakes, smoothies, pies) makes it better.  So this one is the same rule, but, you know, with avocados.  So we’re making a BALT (bacon-avocado-lettuce-tomato).

We don’t do a lot of sandwiches here at Ali Does It, but with the Pie away for the weekend it’s all I can really muster up the energy for.  This sandwich is at the high end of my give-a-crap level for the next few days.  So stand back in awe.

First you take a nice ripe avocado.  And you cut it open.  And you get rid of the pit.

And you empty it into a bowl.  I know, this is heady stuff.

And you mash it up with some garlic and some lime juice.

Until you have a marvellous guacamole.  I would use a whole avocado for one sandwich but the Pie doesn’t let me so I would recommend one avocado for TWO sandwiches.  Leave that alone for a bit.

Then you take a couple teaspoons of mayonnaise (whatever kind you want, it’s your sammich), and add a sprinkle or two of chipotle seasoning. Give that a stir.  Tada.  Now you have chipotle mayo.  CAN YOU EVEN HANDLE IT?  Me neither.

Slice up a tomato while you’re at it.  And wash and dry some lettuce.

Now you need some bacon.  However much you want, cooked however you like it.  I would recommend at least two slices of bacon per sandwich, but you can do what you want.  I’m not your mother.

Slice up some bread of your choosing.  This is a simple ciabatta.  Regular sandwich bread is standard.  What is the total BEST though is a nice fresh croissant (it might be my favourite thing ever, especially if you add some gooey Brie to your BALT).  Like the BEST.

Now you put it together!  Smear on some spicy mayo and soothing guacamole, then layer on your bacon, lettuce, and tomato and you’re good to go.

Did you need a DIY on how to make a sandwich?  Perhaps not.  But I don’t care.  Because now I get to eat this. With a salad that is mostly comprised of exactly the same ingredients: lettuce, tomatoes, bacon, and bread. Oh well.

Cheesy Bacon Scone-Off

Om nom nom nom.

That’s all I can really say about this recipe from The English Kitchen.  And this one from my pal Caroline at The Wanna Be Country Girl.  But which one to make?

Oh come on.  You knew I was going to do something ridiculous like that.  It’s in the title for Pete’s sake.  And any excuse to make these beauties twice is a good one.

So here we go.

Bacon, Cheddar and Rosemary Scones from The Wanna Be Country Girl:

First, fry up about 6 slices of bacon.  I discovered at the last second that my bacon was still frozen, so I did something genius.  While I was doing the dishes I popped the sealed package in the sink and when I was finished with washing up the bacon was ready to go.

Because I was so pleased with myself I made it a round 7 slices.  You’ll want to fry this up extra crispy.  Set it aside to drain and cool, then break into a million little pieces.

Preheat your oven to 400°F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, sift together 2 1/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons all purpose flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, a pinch of salt (if you’re using salted butter leave this out), and 1 tablespoon sugar (I actually forgot the sugar, and I don’t think it made much difference).  If you don’t have a hand sifter, you can shake your flour through a fine sieve instead.

Cut 6 tablespoons butter into small cubes (it’s like halfway between 1/3 and 1/2 cup butter) and plop that into the flour mixture.

Use a pastry cutter or your hands to incorporate the butter into the flour, so in the end all you get is crumbs.

Find yourself some fresh rosemary.

Take about three sprigs of that and chop it up so you end up with about 1 1/2 tablespoons fresh chopped rosemary.  Add that to the flour mix.

Find yourself some sharp cheddar.  If you have access to a Costco or you live in Ontario, make it a lovely Balderson aged cheddar.  It makes everything better.

Gren knows exactly what the cheese grater looks like, where it’s stored, and what it does.  Unfortunately, I am not as liberal with my cheese droppings as the Pie is so he was disappointed today.  Grate up about 1 cup sharp cheddar and add that to the flour mix.

Crumble up your bacon and add that to the flour mix.  Give the whole thing a good stir so everything is evenly distributed.

In another bowl, plop 2 eggs and 1/2 cup heavy cream (whipping cream, in Canada).  Stir that up.

Pour the liquid into the flour.  Stir it around as much as you can.

Eventually you will need your hands to make everything stick together into a ball. Knead that ball once or twice inside the bowl.

Dump the ball of dough onto a lightly floured surface and pat it down to a thickness of about 1 1/2″.  Use a cutter or a knife to divide it however you wish, and transfer it to the baking sheet.

Bake for 12-15 minutes, checking to make sure they’re not browning too much.

This one was pretty much fresh from the oven and the butter melted just looking at it.

See?

We may have eaten these for dinner one rainy night.  Don’t judge us.

Cheese and Bacon Scones from The English Kitchen:

Preheat your oven to 425°F.  Grab yourself a baking sheet.  

Fry up some bacon.  The recipe calls for 4oz of bacon (who weighs bacon?  The British, naturally), but in the interest of fairness I just used the same amount as I did in the last batch, which was 7 slices bacon.  Go for extra crispy, then let it cool and break it up into wee bits.

Sift together 3 1/2 cups all purpose flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 teaspoon cayenne, and 1 teaspoon salt into a large bowl.  I love my sifter, but a simple sieve is easier on the hands and a mite quicker. If you think your cayenne might be extra fresh, I would recommend using slightly less than a teaspoon — that stuff can build on you.

Use a pastry cutter, and then probably your hands, to work 2 tablespoons cold cubed butter into the mix, until you have a crumb-y consistency.  Same as the last one.

Grate up 1 cup sharp cheddar (again, go Balderson or go home).

Add that to the flour mixture, along with the broken bacon.

Whisk together 1 egg and 1 2/3 cups buttermilk.  You can sour milk with lemon juice, or vinegar but it’s not quite the same.

Make an extinct volcano with your dry ingredients (dig a crater, yo) and pour the wet stuff into the hole.

Mix this into a soft dough with your hands while trying the whole time not to knead it.  Apparently in this recipe kneading is a no-no. Dump your doughy mass onto a floured surface and pat the sticky stuff down with your hands until you get a little square patty about 3/4″ thick.

Then you cut it into about 15-20 pieces. I decided, for science, to do mine the same way I did with the previous recipe, to get a better idea of how each one cooks.  Sliced into thick wedges, yis b’y.

Plop those onto your baking sheet and pop them into your oven for 10-14 minutes, or until they’re risen and a nice golden brown. Just remember that this time is for the smaller square scones. If you make them big fat wedges you’re going to need to bake them for about 20-25 minutes.

This recipe says to let them cool on a wire rack, but I’m not sure I can wait that long.  Where’s my butter?

AND THE WINNER IS

Okay well there is no winner.  They’re both amazing.  I loved the fluffiness and slow heat of the English Kitchen version, and the flaky rosemary-ness of Wanna Be’s was amazing.

I mean, if I make these again I’ll probably combine my favourite elements of the two, and come up with my own version.  I always thought scones were hard, but these ladies have certainly corrected that assumption for me!

Guinness Lamb Stew with Wild Rice

I know you all think I’m weird because I don’t like soup.  But spooning hot liquid into my mouth (and spilling it down my face, because that’s how I roll) is not my idea of a good time.  I do, however, have a fondness for stew.  Especially stew with beer in it, because beer is a great tenderizer of things.  And because I like beer.

I’ve had this stewing lamb in my freezer for a while and I decided it was probably time I do something about it.

So I took it out, put it on a plate, and patted it dry with a paper towel.

Then, in a bowl, I took a small scoop of flour, added salt and pepper, and gave it a stir.

Into that I hucked the lamb cubes, and gave them a stir as well.

I heated up my trusty cast iron skillet with a few tablespoons olive oil inside.  Then, shaking the excess flour off the lamb, I plopped it in the skillet to brown.

While that was going on I cut up some vegetables: carrots, an onion, and a package of mushrooms.

I didn’t have any potatoes, that classic stew thickener, so I decided to use rice.  This wild rice blend from Trader Joe’s is excellent.

I took the browned lamb cubes out and put them on a plate to rest a few minutes.

Then I added a bit more oil to the pan and chucked in the vegetables, giving the onions a wee bit of a head start in the cooking.

Once they’ve softened you can add the rest.

Now you can chuck the meat back in.  Then I plopped in some parsley, Newfoundland savoury, rosemary, and thyme.  If I’d had sage I would have used that, just to make up the lyrics to that “Scarborough Fair” song.

I also added a few more tablespoons flour.

At this point I ran out of space in my pan so I transferred the contents of the skillet to a larger saucepan.  I used a bit of beef broth to deglaze the pan a bit and poured that into the pot, along with the rest of the beef broth (about 3 cups).

Then came two cans of Guinness stout (minus a sip or two, for quality control of course).

Then the rice.

Then I brought it to a simmer, lowered the heat, and let that gently bubble away, stirring every so often, for about an hour.

Excellent. Even more so the next day.

Pork Ragu with Fettucine

Oh winter.

While Gren may adore this particular season (at least until his little feet get cold), I do not. Some days I just want to wrap myself up in as many blankets as I own (which is quite a few) and count down the days until spring. But I can’t, and this is why people invented comfort food.

This particular recipe comes from a recent issue of Real Simple magazine, and it does the trick. The Pie and I have a resolution to use our slow cooker more (because it’s AWESOME), and it was really nice to come home the other day to a house that smelled like awesome had been slow-cooking in it for hours and hours. And the preparation takes no time at all. I did ours the afternoon before, which was a weekend, and put it in the fridge overnight. Then before I left for work the next morning I popped the crock on the pot and turned it on and blamo kablam it was done.

So let’s get around to that preparation, shall we?

Start by scrubbing and chopping up a large carrot. I ended up using two because I wasn’t sure if mine qualified as large or not. Do the same with a medium onion and 2 cloves of garlic (I may have used the whole head, but I really like garlic and this head was pretty old).

For spices, you’re going to need about 1 teaspoon dried thyme, 1 teaspoon dried oregano, and about 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt and 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper. But feel free to add more or less if you choose.

You also need a large (14oz) can of diced tomatoes and a small can of tomato paste. The recipe calls for just 2 tablespoons of the paste, but that’s like a third of the can and I would just have to figure out what to do with the rest of it so I used the whole can.

Chuck all your vegetables and spices and canned goods in a 4-6 quart slow cooker (for scale, this one is 6 quarts).

And you need a hunk of pork shoulder or pork butt (haha, butt), about 1 1/2 lb.

Trim off the larger hunks of fat and cut the shoulder/butt in half.

Pop that in the slow cooker as well and give everything a stir to coat it in tomato juice (the acids in the tomatoes will help to tenderize that sucker).

Cover it and let it cook on high for 5 to 6 hours or low for 7 to 8 hours, until the pork is super dooper tender.

About twenty minutes before you want to eat, cook up a package of fettuccine according to the package instructions (normally fettuccine takes about 12 minutes to cook to al dente).

While that’s on the go, take two forks and shred all that lovely slow-cooked pork in the slow cooker.

Drain your pasta and plop it into the slow cooker on top of the pork stuff and give it a thorough stir.

Serve, spraying bits of tomato juice everywhere (at least, that’s what I did). Grate some parmesan on top and eat your way into ragù heaven.

The recipe says it serves four but the Pie and I think that serving size is immense, so we would say that it more accurately serves 6-8, and it’s especially good the next day when all the juices have been sucked into the fettuccine. When I brought it to work everyone became jealous of my delicious leftover lunch.

Pork Medallions in Tomatoes

This recipe mostly started because I received this can opener from Ando and Teedz for Christmas.

They told me that they wanted photographic proof when I figured out how to use it.

So here you go. The instructions are a little vague, saying simply that you put it on a can and rotate it slowly.

And if you think that there was something lost in translation, the French version says pretty much the same thing, but with more poetry. Literally, it tells you to sprinkle some poetry on it.  The accompanying diagram implies that you do something like this:

Which of course doesn’t work. There’s just not enough leverage.

However, if you use it like an old army (or camping) can opener, it works quite well.

And now that I’ve gotten that 14oz can of tomatoes open, I should figure out what to do with it, eh?

I’m so excited with the possibilities that my hands are shaking.

I also have a lovely pork tenderloin here, from which I have removed the silvery skin and excess fat.

So I sliced it into medallions, which I seasoned with salt and pepper.

And chopped up an onion and some (rather overgrown) garlic.

Then I heated a bit of olive oil in a cast iron skillet and browned the medallions, setting them aside when they were fully cooked.

Then I chucked in the onion and garlic and gave that a stir.

Lovely and soft now. I also squeezed in some lemongrass, oregano, and basil. Sounds like an odd combination but I like the lemongrass with the tomatoes.

Then I added the tomatoes and brought it to a simmer. Smells so good!

For a bit of starch, I added a generous sprinkle or two of this teeny star pasta, stellette. It takes pretty much no time to cook, about 7 minutes. If you want to skip this part, you can serve the dish on a bed of rice instead.

When the pasta was ready I chucked in the medallions to reheat.

And that is that. A hearty, hot, and quick meal for a cold, dark, winter’s night!  How’s that for poetry?

Russian Potato Salad

One day, way back in December, it was brisk and sunny in St. John’s, and then by the afternoon it looked like this:

Fortunately, a few days after that, we had a rare sunny day, where the light poured into my kitchen even into the afternoon (which, considering my windows face north and east, is amazing).

But BAM.  It was that alluvasudden-it’s-winter phenomenon that seems to happen to many Canadian cities.  I was preparing for a pre-holiday potluck and Kª had just informed me (online from tropical Kansas) that Kº had gotten a job in Russia and that they were moving back there in February, and taking Il Principe and the Incredibly Little Hulk with them (not like they would have left them behind, of course).

Having recently read Sasha’s recipe for Russian Potato Salad (or Olivier Salad) over at Global Table Adventure, I thought that it would be fitting for me to make this easy and cheerful salad for our holiday potluck (and I definitely left a substantial chunk of it with Kº when we left for Ottawa).  So this one’s for you, the Russians-who-formerly-lived-downstairs.  Прощайте и удачи.  Have a safe trip!

First, we boil.

Plop 4 large eggs into a pot of water, bring that to boil, then turn the heat off and let that sit with the lid on for about 20 minutes.  In another pot, boil up 3 large carrots and 2lbs potatoes.  Boil them until they’re just tender, not mushy.  Rinse them with cold water to cool them down and then peel them.  It may sound tricky, but it’s actually easier.

Then, we chop. Gren helped/cleaned the floor.

Chop up those eggs quite fine.

As well as 3-4 large dill pickles.  Make those into tiny cubes.

In fact, cube everything, your potatoes, your carrots, as well as 1lb cooked ham.  You’ll also want about 2 cups peas (I used frozen), but you don’t need to chop those.  That would end badly.  I also chopped up those green onions I’d been saving.

Mix all that cheery goodness together and season with salt and pepper.

I also decided that potato salad isn’t potato salad without some paprika.  This is a sweet smoked variety from Spain.

Then you slather on the mayonnaise, about 1 cup to 1 1/2 cups, depending on your preference.  Only dress the salad you plan to eat, as it will get soggy after a while.

Tasty!

Wingin’ It Wednesday: Rooty Toot-Toot Soup

I made this as a fridge clean-out soup back before Christmas.  I had some beets left over from making lip gloss and I sure as heck wasn’t going to eat them as-is (because beets, to me, taste like dirt).  Couldn’t waste them, though.  Nope.  So I thought I would chuck them in a soup, hide the flavour that way, while revealing the lovely colour that they do have going for them.

First I chopped up an onion and sautéed it with garlic in olive oil until it was soft.  Then I added in chopped carrots, parsnips, and a sweet potato.

We’d had some steaks the night before and I’d fried up three from the package.  The leftover one had been rather runty and was so marbled I thought the Pie might find it too tough, so I basically minced it and chucked that in as well, with some beef broth.

Simmer that down until the vegetables are soft, then purée them with an immersion blender and shazam, cheery, rosy soup! If you find it a little thick, feel free to thin with water or more broth.

Pork Tenderloin with Pomegranate Braised Cabbage

I actually cooked this recipe up on Hallowe’en, but with my garnish it looked so darned festive I had to push back the publishing date to sometime when people start thinking of roasting chestnuts and Frosty the Snowman.  But for authenticity I am listening to Toccata and Fugue in D Minor while I type this up.  Spooky.  Yet festive.

Anyway, there are lots of things you can do with pork tenderloin, and they’re extra handy when you’re in a rush because they cook so quickly. In addition to roasting up nice and tender in the oven, you can also slice up raw tenderloin into medallions for a fast fry, which is what we do here.  This recipe, modified a bit, comes from a recent Every Day Food.

First you want to peel off all the silvery skin on your pork tenderloin, to make it extra tender.

Then you can slice it up into relatively thin medallions.  Mine are about 3/4″-1″ thick.

Then you will take a small cabbage (red one will be prettier, but I prefer the taste of green) like this one.

And chop it all up into shreds.

Now, heat some oil in your beautifully seasoned cast iron skillet and cook your pork medallions on medium-high until they are done all the way through and slightly brown on the outside.  Put them on a plate somewhere and cover them to keep them warm.

Then take your cabbage and plop it in your still hot skillet.  Cook that, tossing occasionally, until it’s all wilted.

Then pour in about 1 1/2 cups pomegranate juice.

Raise the heat a little bit and let that simmer down until it’s reduced to about half and starts to thicken.  I used unsweetened juice, so I suspect if mine had had more sugar in it it might have thickened a bit more (notice how there are two incidences of duplicated words in that sentence?).  At this point, add in about 3 tablespoons butter and a dash of red wine vinegar and you’re ready to serve.

I garnished my rather sadly coloured green cabbage with some steamed frozen peas and some fresh pomegranate seeds for festivity’s sake, and we had roasted potatoes on the side.  It was highly tasty.

Spaghetti Squash “Pasta” with Bacon, Mushrooms … and Squash

It’s only after he spends the evening helping me put all this together that the Pie tells me he doesn’t like spaghetti squash.  Well, too bad.  I like it just fine.  And it’s a great gluten-free pasta replacement.  Plus it’s good for you and stuff.  Not to mention kind of cool.  This recipe involves a bit of pre-preparation, but then you can just toss everything together at the end and it looks like you planned it or something.

Start by preheating your oven to 400°F.  Put a cooling rack on a baking sheet and line it with BACON.  However much bacon you want. Alternately, you could fry this up, but I figured I’d do all the cooking parts at the same time, plus I needed the stove top for the other stuff.

Take a spaghetti squash, cut it in half and scoop out the stringy bits and seeds.  Brush with olive oil, salt, and pepper and place cut side down on another baking sheet.  I also cut up another, non-spaghetti squash I had lying around and put that on the sheet as well.

Shove the bacon and the squash into the oven.  Let the squash roast for about 45 minutes, until it’s all tender and smooshy.

Cook the bacon, flipping halfway through, for 15 to 20 minutes, or until it’s as crispy as you like it.

Gren tried being extra affectionate with the Pie in the hopes he might get some bacon.  His dastardly plot was unsuccessful.

While that’s on the go, cut up some other vegetables.  I used an onion, cut into strips, and some mushrooms, sliced.

I sautéed the mushrooms in a bit of butter and caramelized the onions in olive oil on low heat.

Then I chucked the bacon (chopped) in the pan with the onions and mushrooms and left that on a low heat while I prepared the squash.

I cut up the other squash into cubes and tossed that into the pan.

Then I took a fork and went to work on the insides of the spaghetti squash.

I love how it really looks like spaghetti.

Then I chucked all that into the pan as well and tossed it.

Added in a jar of basil pesto, gave it a good stir.

Tada.  It ain’t pretty but b’y was it tasty. Especially with a bit of parmesan cheese dusted over top.

Guinness Beef Stew

Oh yeah.  The fact that my fingers are going numb with cold right now tells me it’s comfort food season.  And what’s more comforting than a nice beef stew?

The other day at Costco I went a bit nuts and purchased one of their large packages of excellent stewing beef.  ”I’ll make boeuf Bourgignon,” I said, forgetting two important things: 1) I am horribly allergic to red wine; and 2) I do not own a Dutch oven.

So scratch that.  Let’s cook with beer instead.  I took a bit of inspiration from the Guinness Storehouse website, and a little from Jamie Oliver, but other than that I just kind of winged it.

First I started off by roasting some of my vegetables.  That’s 1 head garlic, with the top chopped off, 1 package white mushrooms chopped in half, and 1 package pearl onions, peeled.

Drizzle those with olive oil and roast at 400°F for about half an hour, and give the onions and mushrooms a good stir about halfway through.

Then I peeled and roughly chopped 3 parsnips and 4 carrots, and a small bunch of celery.  And some potatoes, which aren’t in this shot.  How many potatoes?  I don’t remember. I didn’t take a picture of them.

That all goes straight into the pot.

You can tip in the roasted onions and mushrooms, too.

Save the garlic on a plate for a little bit.

Now you can work on your meat, and this is going to take a while.  This is whatever size the package of stewing beef is that comes from Costco, which is extremely large, but the beef is truly excellent and I highly recommend it.  I cut my chunks in half just to make them more manageable with a spoon.  Then  you pat them dry with a paper towel and put them on a plate.  You could use a clean tea towel to dry your meat if you were feeling environmentally conscious, but let’s face it: ew.

In a bowl, mix together some flour (I used buckwheat just in case a gluten-free person came over for dinner sometime in the future – but then the Pie pointed out that Guinness has gluten in it so I’m an idiot), salt, pepper, and cayenne seasoning.

Spill some of that onto a plate and spread it out.  Roll your meat chunks in the flour.

Brown the meat, working in small batches, in that skillet you already used on medium heat.  Add some more olive oil if it starts to dry out and smoke.  Chuck the browned beef into the pot with the vegetables.  This is probably the most tedious step, and takes a while.

Once you have browned all the meat, pour about 3 1/2 cups beef broth into the vegetable/meat pot.  I found this concentrated stuff at the grocery store. All you have to do is add boiling water. Sure takes up less space in my cupboard!

Tie a bundle of thyme and rosemary together and chuck that in as well.  I find if you tie the bundle string to the handle of the pot it makes getting it out later a lot easier.  Bring the contents to a simmer.

In the skillet that you have been using, plop a little butter and more olive oil and let that melt.

Add in the garlic you roasted earlier and mash it with a wooden spoon.

Then pour in 2 cans Guinness stout beer and bring that to a simmer.

Scrape the bottom lots with your wooden spoon.

Pour that whole lot into your bubbling stew and let that simmer with the lid off, stirring occasionally, to reduce for a while (at least an hour).  You may find you have to add in a bit of corn starch after a while for thickening if you used a gluten-free flour.

We served ours with some beer bread made out of Mill Street’s Oktoberfest.

You can simplify all this by doing it all in a slow cooker, but I find I prefer the sharper flavours of the roasted vegetables and the constant stirring — you’d still have to brown the meat before slow-cooking it anyway.  But boy it is time-consuming.

Worth it, though.