My mouth waters…

I love surfing food blogs. It always makes for a mouth-watering experience. Here is one of the recent culprits from one of my favorite sites, Chow.com:

I hope to fix this soon. In case you do too, here is the recipe:

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 cup whole milk
4 tablespoons unsalted butter (1/2 stick), melted and cooled slightly
1 large egg
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
3/4 cup strong brewed coffee, at room temperature

INSTRUCTIONS
Heat the oven to 350°F and arrange a rack in the middle. Coat an 8-by-8-inch square baking dish with butter and set aside.
Combine flour, 3/4 cup of the cocoa, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl and whisk to break up any lumps. In a large bowl, whisk together 1/2 cup of the granulated sugar, milk, butter, egg, and vanilla until evenly combined and smooth. Add flour mixture to milk mixture and whisk until just combined (some lumps will remain).

Transfer batter to the prepared baking dish and spread evenly. Combine remaining 1/4 cup cocoa, remaining 1/4 cup granulated sugar, and brown sugar in a small bowl until well mixed, then sprinkle over batter. Pour coffee over batter, do not stir, and place in the oven.
Bake until cake is bubbling, puffed, and set at the edges but still a bit loose in the middle, about 25 minutes. Remove to a rack and let cool 5 minutes before serving.

Comfort Food

The picture above is of one of my favorite comfort foods. When I was a kid, I could frequently be found with the griddle, some Bisquick, a batch of bananas and some powdered sugar making fluffy, fragrant and smoothly sweet banana waffles. They were sinfully delicious and beat some of my other favorites by a mile such as pepperoni pizza, tuna casserole, McDonald’s fries and Snickers bars. As you can tell I am not one of the healthiest of eaters. And I am curious, dear readers, what are some of your favorite comfort foods? Let me know. =)

Weekly Photo Challenge: Breakfast

It is a snowy Friday morning here on the ranch. And here is this week’s selection from the photos of Linda Kuster for the weekly photo challenge. I think my friend, Carly, is making blueberry pancakes…

Pizza’s true origin?

South Korean pizza chain, Mr. Pizza, wants you to know the true origins for one of the world’s favorite foods. This satirical advert almost had me ready to book a flight to Seoul.

From cukes to pickles

Our food contributor, Nadeanne, has taken a liking to canning. I suspect should I ever need tips on surviving away from civilization she will be the go-to person. Here she is making some pickles.

It all starts with a very large pot.

A whole lot of cukes…

…makes a whole lot of pickes.

Farmers Market Bounty

My dear friend and Nascence’s food contributor, Nadeanne, recently made the move over the mountains to our state’s capital, Helena. Here are a couple of pics from her trip to the farmer’s market.

My mouth waters…

It’s almost Egg Nog season…

Does anyone else share my love for this delicious but seasonal concoction?

Umami Ketchup and Psychophysicists

This is an oldie but a goodie from Malcolm Gladwell. He tell us the story of Howard Moskowitz who is what is called a “psychophysicist” who helped design the flavors of the popular Prego spaghetti sauces. He then begins on the humble condiment that America loves: Ketchup.

There are five known fundamental tastes in the human palate: salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami. Umami is the proteiny, full-bodied taste of chicken soup, or cured meat, or fish stock, or aged cheese, or mother’s milk, or soy sauce, or mushrooms, or seaweed, or cooked tomato. “Umami adds body,” Gary Beauchamp, who heads the Monell Chemical Senses Center, in Philadelphia, says. “If you add it to a soup, it makes the soup seem like it’s thicker—it gives it sensory heft. It turns a soup from salt water into a food.” When Heinz moved to ripe tomatoes and increased the percentage of tomato solids, he made ketchup, first and foremost, a potent source of umami. Then he dramatically increased the concentration of vinegar, so that his ketchup had twice the acidity of most other ketchups; now ketchup was sour, another of the fundamental tastes. The post-benzoate ketchups also doubled the concentration of sugar—so now ketchup was also sweet—and all along ketchup had been salty and bitter. These are not trivial issues. Give a baby soup, and then soup with MSG (an amino-acid salt that is pure umami), and the baby will go back for the MSG soup every time, the same way a baby will always prefer water with sugar to water alone. Salt and sugar and umami are primal signals about the food we are eating—about how dense it is in calories, for example, or, in the case of umami, about the presence of proteins and amino acids. What Heinz had done was come up with a condiment that pushed all five of these primal buttons. The taste of Heinz’s ketchup began at the tip of the tongue, where our receptors for sweet and salty first appear, moved along the sides, where sour notes seem the strongest, then hit the back of the tongue, for umami and bitter, in one long crescendo. How many things in the supermarket run the sensory spectrum like this?

Remembering pop culinary masterpieces

I was surprised to see so many snacks that I liked in the recent past on Buzzfeed’s list of 25 foods that you’ll never be able to eat again. It is a hall of tragedy with respect to “pop culinary masterpieces” like French Toast Crunch, of course, which was one of my favorite breakfast snacks until it mysteriously disappeared from grocery shelves. Apparently snack food is much like television shows insofar that as soon as I like one it usually gets cancelled.

An unexpected find

I am not much of a drinker. But I have come to the slow, very slow realization that when I do drink, apparently I like whiskey. I used to drink it as a source of pride for where I come from (I am obliged to mention that Bardstown is the Bourbon Capital of the World) but now I have found a smooth drink and yes, it is made in my hometown. I didn’t even know they did these but you can find anything on Youtube, here is a whiskey review of Evan Williams Honey Reserve (by a guy I suspect is also a Kentuckian):

The Funnies: Jim Gaffigan & Hot Pockets

Is there anyone funnier when talking about food? I think not.

The search for Pimento Cheese

After a year living in Montana there are some comfort foods whose absence I have grown to tolerate: Big Red, Barbecue Fritos, White Castles, Krispy Kreme, Bourbon Balls…but pimento cheese is not one of them. I have searched at all the groceries and have simply resigned to making it at home.

A recipe from NPR’s Wright Bryan:

1 pound sharp cheddar cheese

1/2 pound Monterey Jack cheese

2 medium kosher dill pickles (the original version of the recipe called for Claussen’s pickles, but I’ve found that most brands suffice)

2 or 3 cloves of garlic (three cloves yields a powerful garlic punch; adjust the amount to suit your taste)

1 4-ounce jar of pimentos (or pimientos, as they are also called), drained

Cut all ingredients except the pimentos into large chunks. (The pimentos are already chopped.) Place all ingredients in a food processor and pulse just long enough to roughly chop. You don’t want to puree the ingredients, just make them pliable for the next step.

Put in large bowl and mix with about 3 good tablespoons of mayonnaise. (I use Duke’s, a Southern brand based in Richmond, Va., that many pimento-cheese aficionados prefer.)

Refrigerate, but set out for 20 to 30 minutes before use.

America + ranch dressing: A love affair

Oh how so many of us, myself included, love the flavorful gloop that is ranch dressing. Slate’s Brendan Koerner gives us peak into this decades-long and artery-busting romance:

Once ranch was available in a bottle, Americans fell in love with its rich-yet-inoffensive taste. It is devoid of potentially objectionable ingredients, such as chili sauce (a key component in Thousand Island) or anchovies (found in Caesar and Green Goddess). And perhaps more important, ranch is fattier than humdrum Italian, which is basically a gussied-up vinaigrette. Ranch dressing, which arrived at a time when mayo had gained a reputation as a diet-buster, was essentially a socially acceptable form of the gloopy condiment. It quickly became the preferred way to infuse otherwise healthy dishes with a palatable amount of fat. The salads offered by chains such as Little Caesars or McDonald’s were soon accompanied by packets of ranch, to the chagrin of nutritionist.