Harry Potter Edition–Two Butter Beers on the House.

Well, it’s the end of an era I suppose. The books have been read, and now the movies have all been released. I’m speaking of the Harry Potter series of course.

I’ve many memories of times spent with this series, starting by dubiously listening to a friend telling me her mom was reading it, then deciding I should get into it as well. I burnt through three of the books to catch up then eager awaited the fourth. Spending a few lovely days in July to finish the Goblet of Fire. Reading The Order of the Phoenix by the Clinique counter at the UC Davis Bookstore while chatting with my friend who worked there. Gasping collectively at finding out what happened at the end of The Half Blood Prince. And cheering (silently) in my head with various spoilerish things etc etc Deathly Hallows.

I suppose there’s something to look forward to with this somewhat mysterious Pottermore thing, and I’m hopeful that great things shall result. But at any rate, this is a rather notable milestone for the world of Harry Potter, so here’s a few mugs of butterbeer for everyone.

I tried two different recipes, so if you’d like to see them check out the very cool thebakedbeen and then check out the recipe on Mugglenet.

I opted to try the more complex recipe first. With sugar, vanilla, a pinch of salt, milk, heavy cream (had to use heavy whipping cream sadly) and butter, it sounded amazing, but would it work? Also, special thanks to my friend Janis who was my photographer and fellow Deathly Hallows cohort.

Sugar is melted over medium heat at first, with the help of a rather distracting forearm.

It’ll slowly melt, and perhaps clump up, but don’t worry!

This! This is the perfect color to add the butter.

I added it here though, which might be slightly late, due to fumbling around a bit. Still, it worked out! Don’t worry!

It’ll slowly melt in… oh the goodness….

And the cream! It’s a sauce, a glorious buttery sweet sauce.

Not the best picture, but you get the idea. It’s goodness. It’s… magic? Ok, set aside the magic and resist diving in. Because you’ll probably burn yourself.

In a pot, heat up some milk over medium heat. Add vanilla.

Once it simmers… add that delicious delicious goodness.

All of it.

A rather nice color and aroma hm…

And whisk it if you don’t have an immersion blender…. hrm this is taking a while.

Screw it! If you’ve got the hardware that will work, use it.

Damn skippy.

Got the mixture nice and frothy.

Oh  yes. That’s right. Glorious buttery frothy milk concoction.

A very very nice warm drink. I could see having a glass of this while sitting by a fire and reading a good book. And then perhaps guiltily hitting the treadmill afterwards.

Will the much simpler contender win though? This is really all you need. Butterscotch topping, a cream soda (or club soda), a little bit of butter.

That’s…. an awful lot of butterscotch.

Oh well, we’re committed. Bit of butter goes in, and the lot goes into a microwave.

It was bubbling like nuts, but died down by the time I got it out to take a picture. I’m hopeful! Let it rest for a half minute.

Oh yeah! It’s bubbly! But is this really enough liquid to syrup here?

I whisked this vigorously to get the syrup incorporated, but this was such a pretty picture.

And there it is, my second cup of butterbeer. Verdict? If I wondered why there was so much butterscotch topping before, I was utterly aghast by now. The taste going down is good until the finish hits you. It is overwhelmingly butterscotchy sweet, and for me at least, that’s not a good thing. Maybe club soda instead would have cut some of the sweetness, but I really think this would do better with… much less topping. It did have some fizz though, which the first wanted, but not nearly enough to even be in competition.

I loved thebakedbeen's version. Check out Sabeen’s blog, it’s a winner!

Once again, a toast to the end of a great literary journey and a notable film adaptation. Think I just might start reading the whole thing again tomorrow..

An Attempt at a Vegetarian Dish–Black Bean Burgers

For a particular project I have in the future, I have reached a new goal, and that’s to expand my menu to be able to accommodate a wide range of tastes, nutritional needs and restrictions and be able to address similar kinds of limitations to the cooking repertoire.  Pursuing some expertise in vegetarian dishes seems to be one of the more obvious ways to improve how best to cater to a larger eating audience.

Now, consider the vegetarian burger, to which I turned to this well reviewed recipe on allrecipes.  As a grilling item, it is a social dish. As a burger it takes some things that don’t look like a burger at all and manages to transform it into… something that actually approximates the original in looks surprisingly well.
Unfortunately, the usage of eggs in this dish (not pictured because I’m a ditz), renders this not quite vegan, but still, I think I’m making great progress here. The rest of the ingredients, clockwise from the left: Bell pepper (green was called for, but I had red), black beans, ground cumin, chili powder, bread crumbs, chili sauce, onion (any kind) and garlic. The lack of salt in this dish confused me, but then again I’m one of those strange people who marinates their burgers.



As these things are pretty quick to assemble, you may want to preheat your grill at this point.

First, rinse and drain the beans. At this point I’m expressing a bit of dubiousness. How could these blackish gray things look like a burger?


And you only need half an onion and bell pepper.

Cut into pieces for the food processor.

Next, the beans are placed into a medium bowl.

And mashed with a fork.

Looks great doesn’t it?

The finely chopped onion, garlic and bell pepper from the processor are then added to the bean mixture.

The chili sauce, cumin, and chili powder are added to the egg…



Beaten…

 
And mixed into the rest of the stuff. Hrm, it’s actually looking a little like ground beef now. And thanks to the spices, I actually started to get into the idea of these burgers, it started smelling really good. Bread crumbs and the egg are also added at this point. Add enough bread crumbs to make it really come together. I added a lot more bread crumbs than the original recipe called for.


And formed into burgers.


Place some foil on the grill and gently place the burgers on. Avoid contact with the chicken on the other side of the grill that you are making due to a rather skeptical father. These are grilled 8 minutes a side.

Serve with your usual burger stuff. Here I’ve got some grilled onion, tomato and lettuce.  I’m thinking something else would have really kicked it up a bit, something to add a bit of a savory touch, perhaps a bit of mayo? I’m not sure what would work from a more vegan perspective. Thoughts would be appreciated!

Here’s a cross section view! I think this is something I’ll definitely work on again, and I think I’ll add some soy sauce to add some umami. The burger definitely had the right look and a pretty good smell to it. The texture didn’t quite have the resistance of a regular hamburger as was expected, but actually a leftover burger taken out of the fridge the next day and microwaved actually seemed to have developed a better texture. Maybe some chilling may be involved with the next attempt as well?

Recipe adapted from allrecipes contributed by LAURENMU

Ingredients

• 1 (15-16 ounce) can black beans
• 1/2 bell pepper, cut into smaller pieces
• 1/2 onion, cut into wedges
• 3 peeled garlic gloves
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 1 tablespoon cumin
• 1 teaspoon Thai chili sauce or hot sauce
• 3/4-1 cup bread crumbs

Directions

1. Heat up your grill, and get it hot!
2. Mash up your black beans with a fork in a bowl.
3. In a food processor, finely chop bell pepper, onion, and garlic. Then stir into mashed beans.
4. Beat the eggs with the chili powder, cumin, and chili sauce.
5. Stir the egg mixture into the mashed beans. Mix in bread crumbs gradually until the mixture is sticky and holds together. Make  into four patties.
6. Grill the patties about 8 minutes on each side.

Another taste of my summer–Root Beer BBQ Sauce Part 2–Ribs!

This is a follow-up to the earlier post about Root Beer BBQ Sauce. This is one of the best ways I can think of to use the barbecue sauce to impress friends, coworkers and family. With the combination of herbs, spices and the sweet juicy sauce coating your pork ribs, you’ll have yourself a great time.

Everything in place here, 4 pounds of ribs, some of my special dry rub (roughly 3 parts kosher salt, 1 part dried chervil, 1 part dried parsley and 1 part cayenne as you feel like adding), and a small container of the barbecue sauce.

Cut the ribs into manageable pieces so you can fit them onto the grill. The less pieces you have, the less times you have to use your tongs to move things around. But smaller pieces give you more maneuverability. As it was, these two rather large pieces took up quite a bit of the grill.

Then take your dry rub and coat the ribs with a nice light layer. My method is to make sure as much of the surface is touched with salt without going overboard. Cover this up…

And get your grill ready. Here I am using my friend Mike’s chimney starter, which seems to have a decorative “hole in the wall” motif. Still worked fine though. After the coals get to about this level of glow, set the coals along one side of the grill so you have a hot side and a cooler side.

Here’s Mike’s dog trying to convince me to feed him now.

If you’ve arrived later than you’d like due to perhaps an exam that took longer than expected and your ribs cooking time would be long enough to starve your guests, I recommend you have a great friend like Dominick who brought his own grill and made us his hot Italian Sausage.

He even slashed some of them in half and filled them with delicious cheese. So yes, having other prepared friends is a key part of an enjoyable backyard party.

I’ve missed a few steps here, but I was enjoying the company of friends and some good brews.

1. Place the ribs on the hot side, and get a good sear on both sides, perhaps 10 minutes a side.

2. Move the ribs to the cool side of the grill. If the grill is a bit small to completely move the ribs over, you can use some foil as I did to shield away enough heat. Cover the grill and adjust the baffles accordingly to keep the heat from going crazy, but also to keep it from dying as well. It’s not an exact science, but a timer of some kind and some beers works great during this step.

3. After an hour of that, check on your ribs and then brush one of the sides with sauce. Cover and wait about least 20 minutes. Flip over again and wait at least another 20 minutes. With the case of a hotter grill setup like this, you probably want to wait no longer than 45 minutes for this step, but the main thing to do is make sure the ribs don’t dry out or burn.  So keep an eye on them every so often and keep the ribs on the cold side, and eventually you’ll be rewarded.

And here’s the finished product. The military combat knife isn’t necessary for the carving but it’s a nice touch.

Cut through each rib for serving, make sure to grab one before they’re all gone…

…because if you blink, that’ll be your last chance to have one. Have a good grilling season everyone!

Cream Cheese Stuffed, Bacon Wrapped Jalapeños

Also known as Atomic Buffalo Turds, Armadillo turds and all sorts of other animals that need to do various things. By the by, this is my first time trying to blog using the Windows Live Writer so hopefully this post won’t stand out terribly, but if so, you know why!

The process for making these are probably just what you’d imagine it to be. But I need a reason to show off some pretty pictures right? I recommend wearing some food quality plastic gloves for this process by the way. Here are the ingredients I’ve used. Cream cheese, jalapeños, bacon. I think you can use whatever white cheese you’d like, but something milder would probably work better. Pepper jack might actually be interesting, but probably redundant.

Slice the peppers in half.

Remove the seeds.

And stuff with cheese of your choice! Cream cheese is advantageous in terms of ease.

Wrap each pepper half in half of a bacon slice. Or a whole slice if you’re feeling particularly sumptuous. Spear with a toothpick to secure the bacon. Do a better job of me with covering all of the cheese with bacon if you’re going to be grilling and need to turn it over due to overly hot temperatures in the case you don’t have full control over the charcoal.

Grill or baking the stuffed peppers. If grilling, I’d recommend indirect heat if possible, covering and keeping an eye on it, checking it say, every 5 minutes until cooked. As I didn’t have that option I actually had to flip it onto both sides to cook the bacon. If baking, it is 10-15 minutes in a 450 degree oven.

Once finished, have a cold beer or perhaps a glass of milk ready and enjoy!

Pizza Can be a Little Healthier if You Try!

Summer, a time to be totally lazy. That's why this post is a blatant recycle of previously blogged posts with a slight difference. At any rate, eating more vegetables seems to be popular among health circles, so I figure a great way to eat more vegetables is to put them on pizza. Broccoli in particular works great on pizza, along with the staples of mushroom and red bell pepper. Observe.

Mushrooms, bell pepper and broccoli are sliced up into appropriate pieces. Mushrooms and bell peppers have are pretty forgiving in terms of thickness, but the broccoli should be sliced thinner in order for the heat of the oven to brown the florets and soften the stems. Ideally, the broccoli will seemingly melt into the cheese. 

(Note: this is assuming an oven temperature of 500 degrees F or higher. The oven I use goes up to 540.)

Toss everything into a boil with a liberal dousing of olive oil, a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Assemble the pizza  as per usual.

And enjoy your pizzas. These pizzas would have been completely vegetarian if not for some ham, which was requested by one of the fussier eaters today.

Is this really all that healthy? Well, it cuts some of the fat of the more luxurious meats, so healthier, but I wouldn't go all the way to call it a health food. But that's not the point of pizza is it?