Foody things from 2013

Once again, i've got a backlog of posts from the last few years that i've neglected to actual post.

This last year I've found a few things food related which don't really need a whole post to themselves and have kind of ended up straggling as a non-entity. So there are a couple of posts coming about some of the slightly random bit of food stuff I've found in the last year. I might make it a regular thing for those bits that don't fit anywhere else.

As a regular at Costco, I've many times sampled their in store hot dog and soda for lunch. For £1.50 it's a bargain and you can refill the cup after while you wander about, or leave, either way.

Recently (read sometime in autumn '13) the Reading branch started doing a chili-cheese dog. 50p extra per topping, so in essence still a bargain, but with great toppings, come great problems.

Sometimes, they can get a little more generous then usual, not that i'm one to turn down a plentiful meal, but it does sometimes become tricky to hold. Even when cut in half, napkins are required.

In the same vein as before, both of these are from imgur posts and by extension of that, reddit. but imgur is where I found them, so that can have the credit.

The first was pretty simple, why dunk oreo's in milk, when you could just have a bowl of oreo's and milk, like you would cereal. they do soak up pretty fast and in fairness they do also make an oreo's cereal. But as that's hardly widely available in the UK, this is an acceptable, and delicious substitute.

The next is somewhat more radical. Sweet potato fries, and Nutella. Yes, that's right, read it again if you need to, I'll wait.

It works, it sounds a bit mad, but it really does work well, my parents were skeptical too, then we made it, and once the Nutella melted slightly and was more dippable it worked even better.

The potato was sliced fairly thinly into chips, shallow fried in the pan (they probably need more time to crispen next time) and then have a good sized teaspoon of Nutella dropped on top. The picture was taken about half way through the bowl. Like I said, they were good!

I'll probably do a proper write up on these sometime this year, there were a few things I'd change if/when I do it again.

And finally, Showing just how long ago this was (I've moved twice since I had this kitchen). What do you do when you've got a load of odd bits and pieces of lunch and snack food. Have all of it!

Granted this was for 3 of us (I think) and it was good. Plus it's actually pretty healthy, at least in comparison to the last few things i've posted. Probably worth doing again

Smoker advances

Another post from history, last time I used the smoker, while it was cooling down the lower saucer cracked, and then shattered into 3 bits. Somewhat annoying but not 100% unexpected.

The solution fixes two problems with the smoker. The first is that the fire is a bit higher, hence further from the saucer and less likely to be badly affected by the intense heat.

Secondly, the pot feet lifting the saucer create a gap around the whole circumference of the fire tray allowing loads more air into the base of the fire. This should (when properly supervised and fueled) keep the fire burning more evenly and effectively.

The first firing was pretty good and using a bigger joint (2.25kg, instead of about 1-1.5) it took around 6-7 hours to almost completely cook the pork shoulder. It was  still a little pink/juicy in the very middle so we finished it in the oven for half an hour, which was probably a bit too long. The flavour was good too, using mostly applewood, and some oak when we ran out.

Not Quite the Healthy New Year

It's a new year, and I should probably make another effort to keep updates coming more regularly. So what with New Years being all about healthy eating, here's something that's not, on pintrest. 

One sheet of ready made puff pastry, because new years eve is no time for making pastry when you could be doing anything else at all. Roll it out just over a foot square, ish. Or more or less, whatever, i'm not a cop.

The original has a large bar of chocolate, but it seemed like a much better idea to use Cadbury's Caramel, but the bar is a bit smaller than the one in the video, so...

...Improvise! Splitting the bar into three strips filled out the pastry much better, but then what to do about the large gaps? Marshmallows. Always marshmallows.

Cut in at an angle and fold the ends over to hopefully stop the contents leaking everywhere.

Slice the sides in strips and fold over in a lattice, alternate sides, then egg wash the pastry.

Bake it for 10-15 minutes at 180C and then see how it looks, if it's not golden yet, give it a bit longer.

Impressively very little leaked out, although it was fairly fragile, getting it from the tray to the plate was a bit trickier than imagined, but it survived.

It was everything I wanted it to be, and the caramel and marshmallows were the right decision, as expected.

Would I make this again, yes, would I probably die early as a result, yes. Would it be worth it? Yes.

Cooking with Music

With the purchase of the new MiniTop for the car, and the subsequent lack of GPS making it a bit useless for that, the reserve function got setup.

In the kitchen before this was a laptop on top of the fridge and some speakers under the upper cupboards with a sub on top. 

Replacing all of this:

...with this:

The volume knob also shifted with the reduction in cabling to under the cupboards against the fridge. Substantially tidier than before and sit next to the tablet itself.

The tablet will go into a wooden surround to hold it in place more securely, once it's made, which it isnt yet. So in the mean time it'll sit on top of the chopping board.

So far it's a success! although it's not hooked up to the music store as yet. But it will be.

The Pot Problem - Pt 2.

Half of the problem in this cupboard was solved by some hooks on the door, which was an effective and simple solution as well as being a cheap solution (which is always nice). 

With the lids out of the way, the problem of having too many pans and baking trays (not pictured, as they're always left out on the hob because they don't fit anywhere) still exists. All the pots would fit, but then the trays are a pain to get to, having the trays stood up means they fall over all the time and make way too much noise when they do.

B&Q to the rescue with some cheap Contiboard pretty much he same size as the current shelf. Coupled with a load of existing holes int he right places of the cupboard meant the trays get their own shelf and still have enough space to move things from the baking cupboard, plus a shelf for the trays at the very top instead of being on the counter.

the most surprising thing i found was a 6' length of contiboard 15" wide was £9.99 online, but an 8' length of the same width was £9.98, also online. Expecting things to be different in the store i went to buy the 6' length, and it was the same. So got the longer one and left with a bit extra material.

Maybe this'll stem the tide of over stuffed cupboards for a while, but i doubt it as i've been eyeing a set to replace my rather old, dilapidated pots.

The Pot Problem.

For years the cupboard in my kitchen for pots, pans and baking trays has had a problem. When the cupboards full the pan lids take up just enough room to get i the way of taking other things out easily. If the pots are stacked with the lids on them inverted they're not stable enough, and the trays just get in the way in general.

After seeing this instructables post I decided it'd solve the problem. The hooks i found weren't perfect but fortunately still had a big enough gap for the lid to sit in from Clas Ohlson 

Fixing the hooks wasn't too bad, they stuck well, although the fit was a little close as the lids on just fit in.

Fortunately the lid doesnt move when the door opens though so it should be fine.

 The smaller lid sits nicely to there should be room for a couple more once I get more.

The next problem is the lack of shelving space, but isn't something I can solve with a few sticky hooks.

Pulled Pork in JD Honey BBQ Sauce - The BBQ Smoker Finale

The BBQ smoker last weekend was a resounding success and to round off the recent BBQ trend thread for the time being here's what happened to the pork. 

The joint cooked and came out looking, well pretty black. I decided i'd chop it into smaller chunks and serve it along with the other meat and heat it through on the BBQ itself with the burgers, when I had an idea!

A few weeks back i'd made a sauce for the THaTLAN BBQ. We marinated the left overs of the 6Kg rib challenge (that's another post entirely) a number of us tried the previous night in it and served it in cups as a sort of starter if you will.

So this time, instead of using 1l of coca-cola as the base, i took some advice form a friends brother who's a chef. I got some brown sauce as a base (in this case HP Guinness flavour) and put about 1/3 of the bottle in a pan with what was left over from a couple bottles of maple syrup (probably about 50-75ml at most), some malt vinegar, some honey and mustard sauce and the juice (and some flesh) of a large lemon.

The mix looked a little short, so after adding another dose of everything I had I'd increased the volume about another 1/3 and whisked it more.

Next i raided the cupboard for more flavours, not that it tasted bad, just it couldn't hurt to add more at this stage. The next lot was basically just a rummage to see what I had ending up with Basil, Parsley, Oregano, celery and garlic salt, onion granules, mixed herbs, and some liquid seasoning, sometimes called liquid smoke.

This, and more of the mustard sauce from earlier went in the pan, along with 100-150ml of coca-cola which I'd used to rinse the maple syrup and mustard jars out with to avoid wastage. The whole thing got whisked again and then left to simmer for half an hour with the lid on. Then all the pork was poured in and left another hour to breakdown. I also added some of the fat from the joint which was taken off and chopped it as finely as I possibly could to allow the flavours to mix in more. In addition to this I also put 3-4shots of Jack Daniels Honey Sour Mash in the mix before the meat was added, just to make it that little bit more delicious.

After an hour or so cooking down the pork started to break apart and formed more of a pulled, rather than chopped pork. The pan went outside to the bbq and got thrown onto burgers for the last few minutes before serving them.

All in all, i'll probably end up making this again and give some better measurements and more pictures, this was put together in about 20 minutes while guests were arriving and got a good reception. Maybe with more time to think about stuff instead of just doing it, it wont be as good or spontaneous, but we'll see.

BBQ Smoker - v0.2

For version 2 (ok, 0.2) i swapped out the broken dish for a glazed one to hopefully give it more heat resistance and bought a pizza try which had holes throughout to lift the fire off the lower plate entirely. This also allowed air to come up through the base of the fire and burn far better.

Ideally i would have added holes to the saucer but wasn't sure if the lack of total protection form the eat would make it crack. Best try the first one without the holes and see what happens. At least its not wasted work if it does break now.

Took a while to get a decent fire going (as you can see by all the matches, which were dire and either broke striking or went out as soon as the head burnt) but once it went it kept a good temperature. For this one I used some scrap wood, but amde sure it was actual wood, rather than mdf/chipboard.

Because this time it was getting food! It generated a good amount of smoke, but having a very limited supply of wood at this point, it was never going to cook the whole chop.

The lid went on and then i decided to move it off the BBQ, party because i didnt want to melt the cover and party because if it toppled, maybe something would survive and lower fall.

The fire burned for about 40minutes, an the chop good cooked through on the George Forman along with another chop which hadn't been in the smoker as a comparison.

The difference in flavour was noticable even after only a very short time cooking in the smoker itself, so some success at least.

BBQ Smoker - v0.1

[From-the-archive-of-things-didnt-post-at-the-time: This post should have gone out last year, but didn't and as i've not improved it, and used it with success. It's about time]

For a while I've been wanting to try some different styles of BBQing. One specifically sounds and looks more delicious - slow and low.

Its fairly simple: Make fire, direct smoke over meat, leave for some time, tend fire as needed.

Firstly, the fire. Most large scale smokers in the US have a brick fire box and large metal box with shelves or racks four the meat. But, that's a tiny bit impractical. B&Q provided the answer, somewhat unexpectedly. A large thick walled plant pot upturned on a saucer makes a good firebox and another pot on top with wire racks for holding the meat.

The pot needs a hole cut for fuel and air to get in. Fortunately, the clay pot is soft enough a dremel eats it away nicely.

Sadly the enamel pattern is somewhat harder and took as long to cut through as the rest of the pot.

Once the hole is cut the inside of the pot and saucer got a liberal coating of fire sealant and the saucer had some holes drilled at the edge to draw air in.

Unfortunately about 15 minutes into the fire test, the saucer shattered down the middle. The pot at least stayed intact which as it took the most work is probably for the best.

The new saucer has enamel which should resist the heat a little better and i've got a pizza tray for the next test to lift the fire up to get air under it as well as maybe keep the saucer from breaking.

The top of the smoker is a straight sided pot, with a bell pot upturned to trap the smoke inside. To hold the meat up, i've made a rack from a couple of dish racks for a microwave. Soon i'll get some proper fuel for it and test it for a full cooking time on something.

Baked Alaskan Rasberry and Chocolate Chunk Brownies with Chambord

Whilst making this cheesecake for Norway Day we had to go to Tesco to get some supplies (namely food colouring). While wandering about the home baking section I had an idea to use up some remaining raspberries which has been frozen. While i didnt plan on making it tonight, when we got back form Tesco I had a couple drinks and half midnight seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea while I waited for the cheesecake to bake.

So heres the mix,m again, its premade, but i'm going to make it better.

The remaining pot of raspberries, delicious and defrosted.

The dry mix didnt look to have many chunks, so I improvised and found some Dairy Milk minatures in the chocolate tin. You used to be able to get a dispensing machine for kids to play with for these. Mine took 2p coins and dropped out a bar for each one. You could load half a box at a time and it made it last a bit longer, until you worked out how to unload all the coins again and just run them through or take the back off. But thats no fun.

Half a pack of those chopped into thirds made a nice pile of decent sized chunks.

Again, the mix needed and egg, some oil, and some water. Instead of water I added what was left of the chambord (just over a shot) and the raspberry mess

The mix was a bit thin due to the extra liquid from the fruit, so a few teaspoons of flour were added to bulk it out. Forgetting to use the sieve was probably an error...

... But part 1 of the instructions saved the day

The cheesecake had to be cooked in a hot water bath, and the only tin I had was an oversize cake tin. This turned out to be cakemix tight, but not water tight, so the pan I intended on using for the brownies was acting as a drip tray to stop the bottom of the oven being covered in water. As it happened the leaks were far from bad and what little escaped evaporated pretty fast.

Because of this, while I was waiting to get the pan back I had more free time, and what seemed like a good idea was to use the two egg whites left over from the cheese cake and try and make a meringue. Having never done so, and it being 1AM, i elected not to use the mixer and just put in some elbow grease.

First it got whisked to a foam and then gradually added caster sugar so as not to make it collapse. After about half an hour, heres the results. Firm enough to stand the whisk in and forming soft, but fluffy peaks. First attempt and making a meringue, first success.

In the mean time of finishing the whisking to end all whisking the cheesecake stopped leaking enough to retrieve the pan and line it with baking paper. The mix went in and hid under the other try catching the drips so it didnt get wet and would crisp nicely. After 20 minutes the brownie tray came out and I decided to put a layer of the meringue on the top as they were a bit thin at the edge.

There was just enough form the two egg whites to cover it.

Finally it went back in the oven to turn the outside a golden brown.