benedictorious eggs and english muffins from scratch

ben·e·dict: (noun) a newly married man, esp. one who has been long a bachelor.

ben·e·dic·tion: (noun) an utterance of good wishes.  

food for thought.

we ate a lot of good food in hawai'i, and one of the best meals we ate was home-cooked "breakfast for dinner" eggs benedict made my by stepmom, kat. it was incredible. which is hard to say for someone who has hated poached eggs my entire life. i, in fact, am that jerk at the restaurant who asks to have the eggs benedict, "but could you make the eggs over hard instead of poached?" yeah. that's me.

but these eggs were awesome. and the hollandaise was divine. so it inspired me to embark on my own eggs benedict adventure. 

as usual, i'm always wondering: do i need to buy that? could i make it myself? plus i'm in the process of trying to clear out my cupboards before i move, so i decided to make english muffins. from scratch.
did you know that english muffins are baked on a griddle?

a word to the wiser-than-i here, if you're gonna make english muffins from scratch (or any kind of bread, for that matter) you need a little foresight in meal prepping. unless you want to eat dinner at 10pm, which is how it turned out for us. 

i found this recipe for english muffins, and used it as a rough guide. my tweaked version went something like this:

english muffins

    * 1 cup milk
    * 2 tablespoons white sugar
    * 1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
    * 1 cup warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
    * 1/4 cup melted butter
    * 4-6 cups flour (i used a combination of white and pastry wheat, and i didn't need the whole 6 cups)
    * 1 teaspoon salt

1. warm the milk in a small saucepan until it bubbles, then remove from heat. mix in the sugar, stirring until dissolved. let cool until lukewarm. in a small bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes.
2. in a large bowl, combine the milk, yeast mixture, butter, and 3 cups flour. beat until smooth. add salt and rest of flour, or enough to make a soft dough. knead until springy. place in greased bowl, cover, and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size.
3. punch down. resist the urge to knead - i read somewhere else that the "nooks and crannies" that we all love about english muffins (aka their ability to soak in butter) are formed by the less you handle them. roll out to about 1/2 inch thick. Cut rounds with biscuit cutter, drinking glass, or empty can. Sprinkle a surface with cornmeal and set the rounds on this to rise. dust tops of muffins with cornmeal also. cover and let rise 1/2 hour.
4. heat greased griddle. cook muffins on griddle on medium heat until they start to puff and brown - the recipe says about 10 minutes on each side, but i thought that was too much. keep baked muffins in a warm oven until all have been cooked (i'm not sure why that is unless you're going to serve them all immediately, so i didn't do that). allow to cool and place in plastic bags for storage. 

make some new friends, because you've just made more english muffins that you can possibly eat by yourself, three meals a day, until you're sick of english muffins.

the results: mine turned out a little closer to the bagel end of the bread spectrum than the english muffin end, but i'm pretty sure that's because i didn't have the patience to let them rise fully twice (remember i hadn't accounted for that in my meal prep time). other than that they're pretty tasty, and next time i might forgo the wheat flour and do straight white flour; i mean english muffins are a decadence anyway, so why bother trying to make it healthy?
did i mention that this was a meal of firsts for me? i haven't made english muffins before, and i've also never poached an egg. or made good hollandaise sauce. and both of those things have a reputation for being tricky.
the hollandaise was actually the inspiration for this meal because i made meringues a few nights before and had leftover egg yolks.
i relied on epicurious' basic hollandaise sauce recipe for guidance. here's the recipe with my thoughts added:

hollandaise sauce:
* 3 egg yolks
* 1 tablespoon cream
* 2/3 cup melted butter, cooled to room temperature (the original recipe says 1 cup, but that's a ton of
   butter, and the reviews of the recipe recommended cutting it down)
* 1+ tablespoon lemon juice,to taste (you can also use white wine vinegar, but i think vinegar's disgusting)
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* Dash of cayenne pepper

Use a small, thick ceramic bowl set in a heavy-bottomed pan, or a heavyweight double boiler. Off the heat, put the egg yolks and cream in the bowl or upper section of the double boiler and stir with a wire whisk until well-blended — the mixture should never be beaten but stirred, evenly, vigorously and continually. Place the container over hot water (if you are setting the bowl in water, there should be about 1 1/2 inches of water in the pan; in a double boiler, the water should not touch the top section). Stirring eggs continuously, bring the water slowly to a simmer. Do not let it boil. Stir, incorporating the entire mixture so there is no film at the bottom. When the eggs have thickened to consistency of very heavy cream, begin to add the cooled melted butter with one hand, stirring vigorously with the other. Pour extremely slowly so that each addition is blended into the egg mixture before more is added. When all the butter has been added, add the lemon juice or vinegar a drop at a time and immediately remove from heat. Add salt and a mere dash of cayenne.

Note: If you proceed with care your Hollandaise should not curdle. If it does, however, don't despair. Finish adding the butter as best you can. Remove sauce to a small bowl, clean the pot and put a fresh egg yolk in it. Start over again, using the curdled sauce as if it were the butter.

that recipe's verbatim because it turned out quite well. i cut down the butter (as mentioned) and bumped up the lemon juice because i like a tangy hollandaise, but other than that i think the instructions were spot on.

while all of this english-muffin-cooking and hollandaise-sauce-stirring was going on on the stove, i decided to do the asparagus and the bacon in the oven, separately, so they wouldn't take up my stovetop space. the asparagus turned out a little dry, but bacon in the oven is great - and requires do much less attention.

finally, the poached eggs.
i've been intimidated by the notoriety surrounding poached eggs and how difficult they are to make. thankfully, i have the internet. so i didn't have to figure out how to make them myself. i recommend these guidelines, which tell me that those little cups that hang on the side of your pot are actually not only cheating but making your eggs steamed rather than poached. good thing, i didn't have those anyway.
here are the main tips: bring your water to just under simmering, add a tablespoon of vinegar and a little salt: the vinegar will help your whites stay put and not feather out all over the water. once you gently slide your eggs into the water - turn off the heat, cover, and let sit for 3 mins.
admittedly, i let mine sit for a bit longer than 3 mins because i'm grossed out by runny yolks, but that's what poached eggs are all about, i suppose, so go ahead and do that for yours. now, i also went through the extra step of dipping my poached eggs in warm water after removing them from the pan because i really dislike the taste of vinegar, but this adds several extra degrees of hazard with the potential to have those whites you worked to keep together fall all apart (which definitely happened to me), so proceed with that at your own risk.

and voila - breakfast for dinner has never tasted better. i mean, butter + eggs + bacon + asparagus, what could be bad?

bacon and bubbles at the beach... plus a surprise

last weekend was my birthday. and sele's - we're birthday twins. we decided to celebrate our lives with two of our favorite things - bacon and champagne. it was a great party.  good friends with blankets in the sun, eating bacon and drinking champagne - what more could you ask for?

i had to scale back my ambitions for making bacon treats for the party - so i wouldn't spend the whole day fussing in the kitchen and get out to enjoy myself.  i had a few ideas of bacon dishes i wanted to try, and a lot more that didn't get made.
included in the things that didn't get made are:
bacon truffles
peanut butter bacon cookies
bacon rice crispies
bacon jam
bacon (as in, making it yourself...another time)

i found this recipe for bacon pops: basically goat cheese balls rolled in crumbled bacon, pecans and herbs - and i love all those things, so that was definitely on the menu. it didn't exactly turn out the way i expected - the bacon and pecan mixture didn't so much crumble as it did melt into a kind of sticky, chunky butter, and i didn't feel like sticking lollipop sticks in them, so they were a little mushy - but really, with those ingredients it was bound to taste good.  serving with slices of apple was a good move - as there's only so much bacon and cheese one can eat before needing a pallet cleanser.

i had intended to make bacon-wrapped cherries, which seemed like a wonderful combination of sweet and savory, but i guess cherries are out of season now - so i returned to the classic bacon-wrapped dates stuffed with more of the goat cheese-herb filling.  very tasty, though i have to say aryn brought bacon-wrapped dates stuffed with gorgonzola, and i think gorgonzola is much tastier in that dish.

sele made bacon waffles that she filled with dulce de leche ice cream in a kind of choco taco-like effect.  awesome. 

sele also contributed the best bacon-themed gift:

yes, that's bacon lip balm.  it's an experience that really can't be described.  you'll just have to try it.  don't worry, it's vegan and kosher.

 

marty and i were enamored with these mimosas we had recently at our friends hannah and win's wedding that included a splash of port, so we recreated those for the party.  these were a huge hit - though i can't tell you how many times we had the conversation:

"it's a mimosa - with port,"

"what?! there's PORK in here?"

i guess that's what you can expect when you're having a bacon and champagne party.

and then, toward the end of the party came one of the biggest suprises of my life...

it went something like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

i said "yeah."

bacon hugs.

giving gifts is one of my favorite little pleasures.
especially if it's the perfect gift.
so when i found this item via craftastrophe i was thrilled.
not only is it so true,
and we both share a serious love for bacon.
but it's especially funny to give a jew.
and supporting independent artists and crafters is always a good idea.


happy half-birthday, sele!

love day cooking

valentines day was a week ago, but if you're like me you're always looking for ideas to store away for next valentines day, so i thought i'd share the menu from our meal. we decided to stay in and cook at home this year - i think the hype around going out to dinner for valentines is crazy and i wanted no part of that. but i did want to celebrate the day by trying out some new recipes.

oven grilled flank steak - recipe from nytimes food blog bitten. this is a great and easy way to get the outsides of your steak nice and singed on the stove and then cooked in the oven. plus i always like a dish in a cast iron pan that doesn't need to dirty extra dishes. i especially like the part of the recipe that says, "when the smoke becomes intolerable, take it off the stove" that didn't happen, but i prepped myself to detach the smoke alarm in case it did.


here are the steaks smothered in carmelized shallots.


and we made a trip over to the fish market in rockridge to buy fresh scallops, which i marinaded for a moment in a passionfruit, lavender, maple, sesame oil sauce and then seared on the stove.


sauteed broccoli & collards with bacon.


smashed potatoes - of all the things on the table that night, these definitely were the most discussed, as in "i only want to eat potatoes like this for the rest of my life." more on that later.


and finally, i attempted a molten chocolate souffle, recipe from bitten again. i was skeptical of the short baking time, so i left them in there a little longer which kind of ruined the molten effect, but they were still tasty. especially with homemade whipped cream. and i'm a fan of anything you can make in a rammekin.

so the "smashed potatoes" recipe comes from pioneer woman, via veganyumyum. they call them "crash potatoes," but i like my name better - i think it's more accurate and it's a reference to a phrase i used to say as a child every time i came to the top of an escalator. not sure what that was about... ah, kids.
they are really everything that's good about potatoes: they have the crispiness of homefries, the tenderness of mashed potatoes, and the nutrious skins still on like baked potatoes. plus they're way healthier than the way i make mashed potatoes because they only have olive oil and spices drizzled on them. fabulous.


so the idea is: you boil the potatoes whole (i used the pressure cooker for the first time with potatoes and it worked great in 10 mins), then you lay them on a baking sheet and cut a little "x" on the top of them to help them smash more gracefully. then you take your potato masher (or a fork) and smash them. then drizzle them with olive oil and spices - in this case i used rosemary, salt, a little lavendar,black pepper, and a little crushed red pepper - just because it was valentines day and i felt like we should have the color. then you bake them in a hot oven (450 degrees) for about 20 mins or as long as they are still getting crispy and not burnt.


here's my little romantic decorative craft project, thanks to mayamade for the inspiration. i cut out heart shapes from brown paper bags and then sewed them into strings using a running basting stitch on the sewing machine, which was really fun.

thanks to sele for the food photo documentation.

bacon roundup

i've started trying to eat healthier lately, which has put a damper on my bacon experimentation. in lieu of actually making and consuming bacon, i'm living out my bacon obsession vicariously through the internet. i recently discovered bacon today - who knew that there's a fake newspaper dedicated to the "daily updates on the world of sweet, sweet bacon"? some stellar highlights from bacon today include:bacon brownies. again, bacon + chocolate: what could be bad?

bacon cinnamon rolls: it's like they were made to swirl together like that.
and last but certainly not least...

bacon flavored diet coke: i can't tell if this is for real or not, but it seems to have a lot written about it on the internet, so i want to believe.

what i like about bacon is the potential to combine both food and craft in one project. and even with my new-found adventurousness with pork products (like the bacon cups), i cannot even come close to the bacon tiara.

hats off to the pork princess for this one. i can't even pretend i'm going to try this project. if for no other reason because the tutorial starts off with the following safety warning:

You are going to be working with an enzyme that bonds protein. You are made of protein. Unless you want to glue your lungs together or glue your eyelids to your eyeballs, you absolutely must follow these safety rules. We cannot be held accountable for any mishaps you might have while working with transglutaminase (aka "meat glue").
1. Wear protective gear: goggles, gloves, and face masks. Also wear long sleeves, long trousers, and closed-toe shoes.
2. Work in a well ventilated area.
3. Do not work around pets, children, or adults who are not also wearing safety gear.
4. If any area of your body comes into contact with the transglutaminase, flush it thoroughly with water and consult a health care professional.
5. Read the MSDS for Activa TG-RM.
After storing unused transglutaminase, we also recommend running a HEPA air purifier for 60 minutes (longer for larger spaces) prior to removal of safety gear.

that's serious business. these ladies have taken the bacon craft to a whole other level with the use of transglutaminase - i just can't follow that.

cards and birthday bacon

after a bit of a blogging hiatus due to an internet breakdown here at the house and an immune system breakdown that left me in bed on my birthday (boo), i am back with updates of my recent domestic attempts.
i've been experimenting with handmade cards incorporating fabric and thread notions. the first is a cutout of kalo (taro) the staple food and genealogical ancestor of the hawaiian people - which, incidentally they are trying to genetically engineer and patent right now. check it out here.
the second is an embroidery design i made for nia, marty's niece who i bonded with in oklahoma this summer. she wrote me a letter on her birthday, so i reciprocated the favor with a card on mine.
on the subject of birthdays, sele and i celebrated our joint birthday yesterday. she was able to get me out of the sick bed long enough to enjoy hot toddies and bacon-wrapped figs, which she boiled in a red wine, raspberry, black pepper reduction - fantastic.
the dragonfly quilt is coming along. i was finally able to break through my design-block with the help of a pattern found in unraveling the history of quilts and slavery, which i originally checked out of the library in hopes of learning more about the use of quilt patterns to deliver coded messages during the underground railroad, but the book did not, in fact, address that. the next steps will be to create some borders around what's there and collaborate with marty on adding payton's initials into the empty 8th square around the circle.

project bacon

i've been obsessing over bacon lately.
after years of vegetarianism, i started eating bacon at the beginning of this year, and like many former vegetarians (and naughty jews) i know - i'm fascinated with bacon.
one tried and true bacon confection that everyone seems to love: bacon-wrapped figs (sometimes stuffed with gorgonzola) - perhaps aryn will guest blog that tutorial.
some other bacon treasures i've discovered are:

• the bacon candy bar. bacon + chocolate, what could be bad? other than the fact that it costs $6
• this question i found on the internet: how much bacon should be added to rice krispies treats?
  
• and finally, bacon cups.

a few weeks back, while all i could think about was breaking my "master cleanse" fast - i found the idea for bacon cups on the blog not martha. if you've had any interaction with me since then you've already heard about these. they are inspired by the infamous bacon placemat, but then not martha took it to a whole new three-dimensional level. i really recommend reading her tutorial - because she has beautiful photos and her cups turned out way better than ours.
but since i've been talking it up so much, here are the photos from our attempt at bacon cups.first of all, my muffin tins were too small to wrap bacon around, so sele generously offered her ceramic ramekins. these were nearly the right size and shape, but a little too short and squat - as in the bacon couldn't wrap all the way around the cup, which compromised the structural integrity of the finished product.i agonized over what to fill the bacon cups with - since the salad was pretty but i thought a kind of lame attempt to pretend that eating bacon cups is a healthy choice. we decided to try several different fillings: egg salad, regular salad, caramelized peaches and apples.the whole process was highly enjoyable and the bacon cups were very tasty albeit ugly. the tips i have for those of you who want to make your own bacon cups are this:
use large muffin tins, like not martha says - i think that shape would work better.i only thought of this after the fact, but i think weaving a placemat out of the bacon and then laying it over the cup mold may work better than what we did, which was to weave directly on the cup. but i'd have to try it to see.
document the process and share it back to us - so we can all learn from each others' bacon adventures.