Bacon Bloody Mary

The wonderful @not_friends articulated my feelings on body image well today.
"Being slim doesn't rid you of body issues, just as being larger doesn't necessitate them. Unrelated concepts."

IN BREAKING NEWS
Bacon Bloody Mary is A DRINK, YO!

Picture by http://www.flickr.com/photos/mhaithaca/

Ingredients

60 mL vodka
3 slices thick cut bacon
2 cups tomato juice
1/2 tsp celery salt
1 Tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
2 teaspoons hot sauce
1 teaspoon olive brine
1 lemon (juiced)
1/2 lime (juiced)

RIM SALT
1 Tablespoon celery salt
1 Tablespoon sea salt
1 Tablespoon granulated garlic
1 Tablespoon smoked paprike
Pinch cayenne pepper
Pinch black pepper

Preparation

Bake bacon in oven at 400°C for 20 minutes until crispy, cool on paper towels. When cooked, break two of the slices into pieces.
Blend tomato juice, celery salt, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, olive brine, lemon and lime juice into blender with one piece of the bacon, diced.
Blend until bacon is incorporated into the mixture.
Rim two glasses by rubbing with cut lime and dipping in rim salt mixture.

Garnish with celery stalks and a piece of crispy bacon, over ice if desired.

 (Recipe adapted from e is for eat)

Lemon meringue pies (with raw coconut hazelnut crust)

Oh, dessert, how I love thee.

Growing up, we had dessert every night. Mostly New Zealand icecream, but often apple, tamarillo, feijoa or pear crumbles, with heaps of oats and brown sugar. Winter was microwaved chocolate self-saucing pudding, butterscotch pudding, berry sponge pudding… we were very lucky kids.

These days I try not to eat refined sugar every day. A few squares of dark chocolate is a great dessert for me, and regardless of the benefits of flavonoids. I just cannot overeat dark chocolate. My friend Reuben called me a chocolate lightweight for this very reason.

Sometimes, though, desserts are great to bring to dinner parties, or to treat workmates, or just to eat with a fork in front of Pitch Perfect wearing your flannel PJs. Yup, I have those days too.
SO yeah, lemon meringue pie is, for me, the most simultaneously grown up and childish of desserts. It’s très elegant but fills me with infantile delight. BEST thing is, I found a way to make it with HONEY. I’ma write another post about my love of honey some other time, but I REALLY like it. This pie is adapted from recipes from Cupcake Project and Health Food Lover.

I highly recommend making this in small ramekins because you're going to need to eat it tonight. If you can't afford honey or don't like the taste (or you're allergic!) there's so many recipes for decent lemon meringue pie on the internet, good luck with your pie making!

Ingredients

PIE CRUST
1/4 cup almonds, soaked in purified water 1-2 days, drained
1/4 cup hazelnuts, soaked in purified water 1-2 days, drained
8 pitted dates, soaked in warm water 20 minutes and drained
1/4 tsp natural vanilla extract
1/4 cup shredded coconut
Pinch sea salt

In a food processor, pulse all ingredients until the almonds break up, then puree.

PIE ASSEMBLY PART I

Press into as many ramekins as you have/need. This really depends on the size of your ramekin, yo. Or if you have a big pie dish, press into this.

LEMON HONEY (some call this lemon curd)

2 egg yolks
2 lemons, juice and zest
2 Tablespoons honey (maple syrup would also work here)
1/2 cup cultured organic butter (organic butter just tastes amazing, feel free to call me a snob)

In a bowl beat the egg yolks, lemon juice, zest, raw honey until thick. 

In a double boiler (with the water at a simmer) whisk the mixture until thick and the mixture coats the back of a spoon. Take off heat. 

Melt the butter, add to the mixture, slowly, while whisking.

Sieve the whole mixture and place into a sterilised jar and refrigerate if not eating immediately.

PIE ASSEMBLY PART II

On your ramekin/pie dish pie crust, spoon as much lemon honey as you want to cover the bases and give a really good lemony hit.

 HONEY MERINGUE

1 cup light honey
1/4 tsp salt
2 egg whites
1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract.

In a double boiler, heat honey to boiling. In a bowl combine salt, egg whites, vanilla. Beat with an electric mixer at high speed until whites form peaks. Slowly pour in honey. Beat for 5-7 minutes until the meringue holds its own shape. You gotta work quickly here! Time, and meringue, waits for no one. Pie assembly Part III needs to start while the meringue is still hot!

PIE ASSEMBLY PART III

On your lemon curd/pie crust work of art, spoon out your meringue quickly while it's still hot.

Eat within 3 hours of making, because that meringue doesn't stay pretty for too long. The honey kinda wants to return to liquid, I think.

Enjoy!

Beef and lentil CHILI

I don't know about you, but I love chili. And I'm also poor. So if I can sneak cheap, cheap red lentils into a recipe and they taste as good as if I leave them out, I'm happy to do this.

If you're rich or have access to half a cow and a mincer, please feel free to replace the lentils with MORE MEAT.

There's a vegetarian recipe that goes alongside this one, but I'll be making both of them on Thursday, so please feel free to wait to make the chili until I take mouth-watering photos of two giant pots of hot mess. Or, you know, you could imagine what the chili would look like served on a bed of rice, with a coriander garnish, a side salad and topped with a fried egg. Up to you.

Also, CHILI should always be written in capital letters. That's the way things are.

OK there are a million variations and maybe before you go to your local store, or supermarket, or food co-op you need to answer a few questions for me.
1) Do you like spicy foods? This will help you decide to buy green (less spicy) or red (more spicy) chillis, add more canned tomatoes, use half a can or full can of chipotle peppers, and use less or more chilli powder.
2) Do you like many varieties of beans? Four bean mix in a can may be a good option for you.v
3) Are carrots and zucchini your friends, or do you prefer a more Americano meatnricencheese kinda meal? Or even no rice, just a big ole bowl of chili?
4) Do you have access to decent chipotle? If you're cooking in Wellington, New World Schaffer's has heaps of Mexican accoutrements.

I'd highly recommend buying some corn masa and making your own tortillas. This is what I'll be doing. It's how my lovely Asher's birthday will be celebrated. Oh, way to ruin the surprise, Anna.

Ingredients:

400-500g ground premium beef/venison
1 cup red lentils
2 large onions, dicely finely
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 carrots, chopped
2 teaspoons-2 tablespoons chili powder (as desired)
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and chopped (if you have one, otherwise, green or red chilli pepper)
2 cans chopped tomatoes
2-3 cups stock as needed (homemade chicken or beef bone broth is best) 
1/2-1 can chipotle peppers
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon dried marjoram
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 can black beans, small red beans, kidney beans, (drained and rinsed) or chilli beans or soak and cook your own beans (best)

Preparation:

Cook first 3 ingredients in a large saucepan until meat is browned, stirring until it crumbles; drain off excess fat. Add everything else. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer, stirring occasionally, for A REALLY LONG TIME. Slow cooker is your friend.

Garnish with coriander, serve a multitude of ways. Freeze excess for chili enjoyment while hungover. Oh, yeah.

Flickr/cjzurcher

Chickpea and spinach curry

So I asked a few of my best Twitter friends (who are also my friends in real life, we're a bunch of internet geeks) which were my favourite foods they make I should blog about.

Chickpea curry is one of my favourite foods. It's hearty, healthy, makes your house smell like India... and I make it wrong. I have been to India. None of the curries I ate tasted anything like what I make. Then again, none of the curries I buy at the takeaway store down the road taste like the curries in India. The beautiful Indian men who cook them change them for our tastes. Less sulfuric black pepper, less mustard seeds, more cream and butter and richness and thickness. Anyway, I love my chickpea curry. I hope you do too.

Ingredient:

1 medium onion
2 tablespoons coconut oil or ghee

1 teaspoon garlic
2 teaspoons curry powder
2 teaspoons garam masala
1 teaspoon ground tumeric

3 teaspoons ground cumin

1 standard can diced tomatoes
1 standard can OR 300 g chickpeas
200g spinach (fresh or frozen, baby or adult)

Directions:

1. Chop the onion very finely while the oil heats in a large pan. Or make some ghee. It's really easy and so so delicious. Also very good for you!

2. Add the onion and garlic and cook, stirring frequently, until the onion is translucent.

3 .Stir in the curry powder and garam masala, ginger and cumin. Continue to cook, stirring frequently, for one to two minutes longer.
4. Add the canned tomatoes, and chickpeas, simmer (with some fresh stock if you have some around) until the curry is almost the consistency you like.
5. Add the spinach, cook until soft.

6. Serve with quinoa, brown rice, or cauliflower rice. 

Flickr|blackbiscuits

Freeze any leftovers in meal-sized containers for a very quick and delicious work lunch (or a dinner when you run out of food in your house, although maybe you're more organised than me and that doesn't happen to you...)

Oh and if you want to be REALLY fancy a decent butter chickpeas recipe can be found HERE

 

Shiny! New! Mine!

I've been posting an awful lot of tweets about what adventures I've been getting up to in the kitchen recently. I think being unemployed gives me a helluva lot of time to actually THINK about what I want to cook, but not much $$$ to spend on ingredients.

Do you cook more when you have the time to? I definitely go through phases of "I want to eat less sugar, I'ma cook more" or "I crave ALL the baking, I want to bake more" or "it's Summer and all I want is salad and steak and omelettes, every day". So I'd say my relationship with cooking is definitely fraught, I'm currently living in a flat without my expensive designer pots and pans so it's SO MUCH HARDER to clean up after cooking.

I do a fair amount of cooking at the #dudefortress where the lovely Asher lives with the lovely Simon and occasionally the lovely Sam. I don't even try to cook for Sam the three year old, all he wants to do is toast crumpets and eat them with chocolate sauce and broccoli. I KNOW, RIGHT? Asher has more refined tastes, so I've been cooking heaps of mashed potato (when I buy some herbs to pot out, I'm looking forward to mash/herb combos) and sausages (Commonsense Organics do some amazing gluten free sausages, Wellingtonians).