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Category Archives: Baking

Belated Bonus Food Pic: Fiddlestix’s Irish Lunch

Posted on April 12, 2013 by TJDietsch

fiddlestix st patricks day

I can’t believe this picture is almost a month old at this point. Sorry about the lack of posts the past few weeks, hoping to get back on the horse. Anyway, even though I had this fantastic plate of Fiddlestix food on St. Patrick’s Day, I can still remember how fantastic it was. If memory serves you’ve got corned beef, braised cabbage, mashed potatoes (possibly with horseradish?) and Irish soda bread that was quickly cooked or warmed on the stove. I can’t remember exactly how it was prepared, but there was something special about the corn beef. Maybe it had Guinness involved? I think that might have been it. Anyway, this is what I think of when I think of amazing corned beef. I’d love to see this meal on the regular menu which is made all the better by that delightfully crisp soda bread!

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Posted in Baking, Beef, Bonus Food Pics, Bread, Greens, Holidays, Irish, Potatoes, Restaurants, St. Patrick's Day, Vegetables. Bookmark the permalink.

Making Nigella Lawson’s Toad In A Hole

Posted on February 21, 2013 by TJDietsch

How can you not at least stop and read a recipe called Toad In The Hole? That’s what happened to me while looking through Nigella Lawson’s Nigella Kitchen and landed on page 452 (you can also check it out on her website here). I saw the picture of an overflowing bread-thing, then read the name and was already in even before I discovered the main protein in the dish is sausage!

The beauty of this recipe is how simple it is. You mix up the batter ingredients and then cook the sausage. Instead of getting sausage in cases, removing them from the cases and then making patties, I simply bought the loose variety and cooked it without forming in the pan. Once that was all done, the batter got poured in and the whole pan went into the oven. Bingo bango.

While that cooked, I whipped up an onion gravy the recipe of which was on the same page but doesn’t seem to be on her site. All you need to do for this is cook two finely sliced onions in oil for 10 minutes before adding two teaspoons of sugar and letting cook for another 3 minutes. At that point, add in four teaspoons of flour, two cups of beef broth and a few glugs of red wine (I had merlot).

As Lawson says in the intro to the recipe, this makes for a perfect weekend meal because it doesn’t take too much work and it’s super filling, rich and tasty. I liked how the loose sausage really integrated into the entire bread aspect of the dish and would recommend going for that if you’re trying the recipe. I like sausage patties for breakfast, but if you want the best distribution, try loose.

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Posted in Baking, Books, Bread, Chefs, Cook Books, Herbs, Nigella Kitchen, Nigella Lawson, Pork, Recipes, Sausage. Bookmark the permalink.

Baking Birthday Cake For My Lady

Posted on January 8, 2013 by TJDietsch

Sunday was my wonderful wife’s birthday. The one thing she asked for was for me to make her favorite cake with her favorite icing. That happens to be the batter recipe for Betty Crocker’s Sour Cream Chocolate Cupcakes with Martha Stewart’s Fluffy Vanilla Frosting (Cupcakes page 302). As I’ve said before, I’m not much of a baker because I don’t like sweets or deserts too much, but of course I’m going to do my best to make her birthday a happy one.

I got the cakes going in the morning which was as simple as popping all the ingredients into the mixer in the proper order (everything up to and including the baking powder). The only changes I made (as noted in my wife’s printed out copy of the recipe) were using hot water and vegetable oil instead of shortening. Then I mixed in the eggs and popped the baker’s chocolate into the microwave for 2 minutes and then into the mixer. Done. Those went into heart-shaped pans with Crisco and some flour and then into the oven at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.

Later on in the day, I made the icing, which also was pretty simple. Again, it’s a lot of putting things into the mixing bowl, but my wife did suggest I sift the powdered sugar which took the most time. To add a little pizzazz I used some pink food coloring and as you can see, it came out a nice shade of neon pink.

The last part was icing the cake and that’s where I ran into some trouble. I’m more of a “it needs to taste good, not always look good” kind of people, so the first draft of the icing looked pretty crummy. Em came in and finished it up, which is good because otherwise it would have looked like an anatomical heart cake and no one really wants that in that shade. As far as I know, it turned out pretty good. Of course, it only mattered if Em liked it and she did, so there you go. Happy birthday!

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Posted in Baking, Birthdays, Cake, Holidays. Bookmark the permalink.

New Hampshire Bonus Food Pics: Steak Bombs, Cinnamon Buns & Breakfast

Posted on October 29, 2012 by TJDietsch

Two weekends back, we headed to New Hampshire to attend the surprise birthday of my wife’s long time friend. While there we hit up a few restaurants and ate some food I just had to brag about.

Just take a second to behold the glory that is a New England steak bomb sandwich. I don’t even know what’s in it, but I love it and want to eat one every day of my life, a life that would probably be all the shorter for such an experience. Anyway, this particular sandwich of the gods came from a place near my inlaws’ house called Giovanni’s and I highly recommend getting this food in your face if you can. Even after sitting in a bag on the way home, this was still a wonderful, cheesy thing of goodness.

Before heading home on Sunday, we went to breakfast at my inlaws’ favorite place, Janie’s. We’ve been there lots of times and I like that they always have a list of specials in addition to their regular menu. This time I got a bratwurst and sauerkraut filled omelet that was pretty tasty, but probably could have used more kraut. The real spotlight of the meal for me was that giant cinnamon roll I only ate half of so I could eat the rest for breakfast the next day. Man, I really need to get my oven fixed so I can figure out how to make these things, they’re my one real dessert weakness.

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Posted in American, Baking, Beef, Bonus Food Pics, Breakfast, Eggs, German, Omelets, Restaurants, Sandwiches, Steak. Bookmark the permalink.

Cooking Baked Haddock & Vegetables

Posted on July 16, 2012 by TJDietsch

Hey gang, sorry about the incredibly long delay in posts. Two weeks back we headed back home for a wedding and vacation with my folks. I set up a few posts to go live then, but not a ton. We got back last week, but I was swamped with work, meaning the blogs fell to the wayside a bit. But I missed it and you dear readers, so here I am, back in action. I’m hoping to make up for lost time this week with a few extra pieces.

Anyway, I was looking for a fish recipe and came across one for Baked Fish & Vegetables in Best of the Best Recipe Hall of Fame Fresh From The Market Cookbook on page 150 in the book. It was hot and I didn’t want to do a lot of work, so this recipe was pretty perfect. For the fish, I went with haddock and got to work.

The majority of the work on this one is spent cutting up carrots, green onions and celery, cleaning mushrooms and then mixing up a combination of pepper, paprika, oregano and thyme. After getting everything ready, you clean off the fish, put it in a baking dish, mix in the herbs and vegetables and pop in a 450 degree oven. What 45 minutes and you’re ready to eat.

I’m a big fan of mushrooms and soups, so I loved how this fish smelled when it came out of the oven. I was a really delightful smell. I think when I mixed the herbs in, I had put the veggies in first and it didn’t quite get to the fish which was a little bit of a bummer. However, the vegetables were flavorful and partially made up for it. I think if I make this again, I’ll use some more fresh herbs and maybe a few other spices, but it’s a great base for a simple fish dinner.

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Posted in American, Baking, Herbs, Onions, Seafood, Vegetables. Bookmark the permalink.

Baking Peanut Butter Banana Bread

Posted on January 18, 2012 by TJDietsch

I don’t do a lot of baking. For one thing, my wife is a killer baker, so I don’t feel the need, but I’m also not that big on sweets. Never have been. But, we had a trio of rotting bananas sitting in our fruit bowl and I figured I’d give banana bread whirl. I don’t believe I’d ever cooked it before, but I know it’s a pretty basic baking thing, so I said I’d try. My wife suggested using a recipe she had for peanut butter banana bread. I have no idea where this recipe came from, it’s just printed out in her cooking binder, but it was pretty simple and I got to work.

First I greased the loaf pan with Crisco, set the oven to 325, got my 1/2 cup of butter softening and started measuring things. I got a cup of sugar, 3/4 cup of peanut butter, 1 3/4 cup of all purpose and 1 teaspoon of baking soda (combining those last two in one bowl). After smashing up the bananas, I broke out the mixer and mixed the butter and sugar–which is apparently called “creaming”–then added a pair of eggs, beat that, then mixed in the peanut butter, bananas, flour and baking soda until it was all mixed together.

That went into the greased loaf pan which went into the oven for 70 minutes and we had some tasty bread. I was worried that it hadn’t cooked long enough because the center was kind of mushy, but it turns out that I like banana bread with some mushiness in the middle. Overall, this was really simple and I like how baking is more of a science with exact measurements and the like. You don’t have to think as much when making simple things like this, which was perfect at the time.

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Posted in Baking, Bread, Dessert, Fruit. Bookmark the permalink.
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