Slicing Bell Peppers

Consider the bell pepper. Tangy, crunchy, perhaps a little on the sweet side. Handy raw, roasted, baked, stuffed, and any other assortment of preparations. And quite a healthy vegetable as well! In other words, a great ingredient.

Here’s a handy technique for when your recipes call for sliced bell peppers. I think many people would slice straight down the middle and work from there, but here’s a different method. Think of the pepper as a box, and then slice off the sides.  Given the rather bumpy nature of the bell pepper, this may seem counterintuitive at first, but observe and you shall see the greatness of method.

Grasp your bell pepper firmly and confidently, and hold your knife over the bell pepper, just to the side of the stem, then slice downwards. 

You now have taken off a “side” of the bell pepper’s “box.” Turn the bell pepper 90 degrees, and repeat the process again, and again.

Now you have some pretty flat pieces of pepper, ready to be sliced into strips fairly easily. A lot of the inner pith is avoided this way as well! That little end piece to the left can be dealt with however you wish.

I notice red bell peppers tend to be a bit more triangular rather than the more apple shaped green bell peppers. So rather than cutting them four times, reduce to three.

One!

Two! (Kind of a weird cut given the extreme divot in one side)

Three!

Another advantage to this method is how easy it is to stack the slices.

Place them on top of each other. And cut into some pretty even strips.

Tada! And that’s your handy tip for the day.

Cat Iron Therapy! Shout out to the Lange Foundation.

Oh Fran, you silly little monster. Another break from the cooking aspect and perhaps a little bit more on the therapy aspect. Pets are great therapy! They are fluffy and pretty tolerant of being made fun of since they don’t understand you.

I picked up Fran from the Lange Foundation in Santa Monica when I was living down south. They do good work, so if you’re down that way and need a little more furball in your life, I recommend it.

Look, she’s hugging my foot! What a cutie!

Wait a second! My socks aren’t food! This actually is pretty fun since she doesn’t really hurt me.

I think the edit to the following picture is necessary.

But in the end, it looks like she’s a bit embarrassed. Silly cat.

Warning Bad Milk Jokes Ahead! But Tres Leches Cake Too!

This dessert is LEGEN-DAIRY! Hey don’t have a cow! It’s just my nature to milk a joke as much as I can. Ok, don’t hit me!  I’m done for the time being. This is a recipe for Tres Leches Cake found from the cooking section of the one and only (and very lovely) Ree Drummond of The Pioneer Woman.

I’ve been meaning to do a dessert post for a while, and this seemed like a real winner. Simple ingredients, a direct presentation and likely a sweet clean taste. And I got to stab the cake with a fork too.

Please check out Ree’s website for the recipe, and enjoy the photos and vague directions!

Some fun and interesting ingredients. Flour, eggs, condensed milk, baking powder, milk, whipping cream (Heavy would be better! Dammit grocery stores stock it!), evaporated milk, vanilla, salt and sugar (not pictured).

Greased two pans instead of one in order to make better use of fridge space. I need to invest in some nonstick spray as well...

Mix together the dry ingredients and set aside.

Separate the eggs.

Add sugar.

Beat til a lovely pale yellow.

Add vanilla and marvel at how unattractive it is!

Then beat it again.

Slowly add egg mixture to dry ingredients.

And mix in lightly.

Egg whips whipped to soft peaks.

Don’t be a dunderhead like me and stop the mixer to add sugar though. Keep it going!

Still, seems to have turned out ok. Stiff, but not dry.

Fold into the batter gently.

Pour into your pan(s). Then bake!

Mix together all these wonderful three milks. Well, two milks and a cream.

Too hard to hold a milk jug and take a photo, so deal with it! Ah, baking a success! I think.

After the sponge cake cools, it is time for some stabbity stabbity!

Looks all right to me.

Add the Tres Leches!

Yes, all of it, really! It will soak in. I actually could have used a bit more of this milk mixture according to my taste testers.

Smells goooooood.

So good.

So good! So good! I got you! Hey!

Oops, a bit off topic. Time to whip some cream while that milk soaks into the cake.

Tada. Magic! A bit off, but not bad. I didn’t remove the cake from the pans by the way due to a rather stingy refrigerator real estate agent. It still works fine this way though, so this method may be a bit more convenient for those of you who want to save a cake.

And now pictures of cake.

These were udder-ly  (needed to get one more in) delicious! Creamy, milky, sweet, somewhat custardy in the right ways.

Encounters in the Wild–Exotic New Ingredient!

Here at Cast Iron Therapy, we’ll do anything to secure new and exciting goods for the latest in food trends! Looks delicious doesn’t it?

Just kidding, this has nothing to do with cooking, but it does take a bit of stress off of the household and the garden. We’ve had an intruder digging up all sorts of things in the backyard, and hopefully this will keep him from coming back.

Charming bastard isn’t he? Or maybe a she, I didn’t really check.

Anyway this backyard vandal was released at a regional park where raccoons live, so hopefully it won’t be coming back, and is happier doing what raccoons should be doing, rather than tearing up our plants.

Sorry, no racc00n cuisine folks!