Stuffed Bell Peppers

This past weekend Sarah and I had a friend come to visit, so I looked in the fridge to figure out what I wanted to make for dinner. We had three bell peppers that had been in there for a little over a week, so it seemed the appropriate thing to do to cook those up. I decided to stuff them, which tends to be hit or miss for me (I think I may actually have a previous post on here about stuffed peppers from when I lived with Lilly) but I'm happy to report these were one of the better variants of them that I've made thus far in life.

I threw a tomato and some onion into my little food processor followed by a couple of garlic cloves.

Then I put in two sausages (I went with a chicken sausage that had apple bits in it) and an egg. I proceeded to blend it up for a few moments until it looked pretty unappetizing. 

Then I stirred in some melted butter, some stuffing mix (which I failed to capture a picture of, but I used the pepperidge farm stuff that comes in a bag, that lives in my pantry for occasions like this and to top baked mac and cheese...of course), and a little bit of water to just get everything moist, but not so much that it wasn't immediately absorbed.

Then came the peppers of course. Halving them, discarding the seeds, and filling them up with the sausage and stuffing mixture.

I topped them with shredded mozzarella and threw them in the oven at 400*F until the cheese was starting to turn golden brownd. 

We ate them with a small side salad and some prosecco, and I was glad they didn't come out terrible. One did magically become unstuffed in the oven though... I'm still not sure how that happened, but I just scooped the filling back into the pepper. Sarah liked how they tasted but wasn't a fan of the texture of the filling, it was too smooth and possibly too moist. But other than that success! See you next Tuesday!

Curry Chicken Salad

For this post I'm going to attempt a video post again. The actual filming fared far more successful then the last time (let's not talk about that...). Anywho the curried chicken salad came out great as always. Sarah and I had most of it for dinner as open faced sandwiches on a slice of home made bread as seen above. I ate the rest of it just out of a container, plain for lunch the next day. It's just so good. This time I made it from the left over chicken from a beer can chicken we had made the previous weekend when we had friends over. Last summer I just grilled up some chicken breasts to make it. You can also make curried potato salad the exact same way, just sub potatoes for the chicken (and personally I wouldn't use any sweet ingredients at the end, but to each their own), and that's also a delicious treat! So here goes nothing, see you next Tuesday!

Bread

Once upon a time when I was in college I made all my own bread for a while....my sister told me that I needed a girlfriend upon hearing this fact. Recently I've picked up this habit once more, because honestly as long as I'm home for a good chunk of the day on Sunday, why not? It's cheaper to make a loaf than to buy one, it's not that hard, it smells amazing, and it tastes pretty darn good too. But before I continue on to how simple it is to make a loaf of bread, I want to regale a tale of a certain housemate I used to live with. While in Providence my second residence was in a house with four other people. One time when a vacant room was filled a boy from Arkansas moved in. After a few weeks I asked him one day how he was liking Providence. He said it was nice, but that he couldn't find cheap bread. 

I won't lie, this piqued my curiosity so I bite and asked him the obvious follow up question: is bread that much cheaper in Arkansas? To which I got the response, 'Oh yeah, it's only like 98 cents a loaf at Walmart' ...'Have you tried going to Walmart here?' 'No, I probably should though' 'Where have you been getting bread?' ....turns out he'd been getting it at convenience stores. You know, only the most expensive place, typically, to buy a loaf of bread. The most amazing part about this conversation though was that as it turns out was that each other housemate had at some point or another in that week had the same conversation with him. 

The fact that he was so fixated on cheap bread could only then be met with the irony that when he moved out the boy who then filled his room baked a loaf of bread just about once a week. While I no longer live there, and neither does our bread making friend, I can only hope that whoever moved into that room also has a special relationship with bread. Anyways...

To make my weekly loaf for sandwiches and whatnot, I start with 3 1/2 cups of flour. Lately I've been using a roughly half and half unbleached white and whole wheat mixture, but all white flour will work as well. Add to that a 1/2 teaspoon of instant yeast and 2 teaspoons of salt. Then mix it up with 2 cups of warm water. Now you can definitely just mix it with a spoon, but I'm lazy and just use the bread hook on the Kitchen Aide.

This will leave you with a wetter bread dough that won't really hold it's own shape, but is perfectly suited for a loaf pan. Usually you'd want to just used an oiled loaf pan, but since the bread is removed from it before finishing being baked, I've occasionally run into trouble with the bottom sticking to the pan. So lately I've been using parchment paper to line the pan to guarantee a clean pop out, but it will leave an imprint of the parchment folds on the bread. Which I'm totally fine with, cause I loathe when it sticks to the bottom of the pan.

Pour the dough into the pan. Then cover it with a wet dish towel.

Put it in a warm place to proof (rise). I put it in an oven that I preheat for a few minutes then turn off. 

Let it rise until it's even with the top of the pan (usually about 2 hours). Then bake it at 450*F for 30 minutes.

Take the bread out of the pan and place directly on the oven rack to bake for another 10 to 15 minutes. In theory it should sound hollow when tapped when it's done, but I never quite know what that means, so I just make sure not to burn it. 

Let it cool completely before cutting into it ...I know it's hard, but it will stay better longer that way. Nom nom nom. See you next Tuesday!

Huevos Rancheros

It's safe to say that huevos rancheros is a favorite breakfast dish of both Sarah and I when we go out to eat. Lately though it's become a favorite week night dinner in our house. Perhaps a little less than a traditional version of it, it's super easy (and delicious) to make. 

So for a while we had been making it on corn tortillas, which is how it's typically made, but we find that while we don't always have corn tortillas around we almost always have flour tortillas in the house, and it works out equally as yummy either way. I spread refried beans on one half of the tortilla and fold it in half (if using corn tortillas, since they're typically smaller, I use two tortillas and spread the beans in between them).

Heat one side on the stove over a medium (I put our knob to 6) heat. 

Once it's flipped over put some salsa on top and next to it. (I usually put one spoonful on it and two next to it and spread them out). Then you want to quickly crack two eggs into the salsa being careful not to break the yolk. I tried for a long time to get the eggs to sit on top of the tortilla and not slide off, but found that the whites didn't cook quite enough (really for Sarah's liking, I'm a little less picky about having some stray runny whites) so usually just crack it on the tortilla now near the edge and let it slide off so that there a some amount of whites over most of the pan.

As soon as the eggs are in cover it with a glass lid. It'll get steamy and hard to see pretty quick, but you'll want to leave it on there until it almost looks like the yolks have turned pinkish when looking through the lid, but really it's just that the whites over the yolk have cooked. 

Carefully remove them as soon as they're done cooking from the pan and put them on a plate so that you still have ooey gooey runny yolks, yummmmmm. Toss some shredded cheese on.

And serve with some avocado and sour cream. Seriously, the best. See you next Tuesday!

Roasting Coffee

Okay, so maybe I've gone completely off the deep end, but I've begun roasting Sarah and I's coffee at home. It all started on a car ride home from an outlet mall just before the holiday season came underway when I decided it would be cool to own a coffee roaster because aside from freshly roasted coffee for yourself you could custom roast it for the coffee lovers on your list. So I decided I'd keep a casual eye out for a cheap roaster on craigslist/ebay, but in hopping online and looking up info about home roasting it turns out the gateway roaster for most people is an old popcorn maker. Challenge accepted. I went to my (then) local thrift store, The Lucky Dog, and got an old air popper for five and a half bucks. From my research when selecting one the older the better as they tend to get hotter. I didn't have many options since they only had one on hand, but I figured I'd give it a go. I'm pretty convinced the one I ended up with must be newer since it doesn't get hot enough to go very far beyond a light roast and even that takes a little longer than most of the time charts I've looked at. Anywho, I did end up making coffee for people for Xmas, but never again. Birthdays perhaps, but the amount of coffee it took to even do little (adorable) tiny bags that would make a single pot for everyone took what felt like foreverrrrr. But I have been roasting coffee every Sunday night for Sarah and I, and for a weeks worth of coffee it takes around 45 minutes from getting everything out to putting it away, which I can live with most weeks. 

I got my green coffee beans from smokinbeans.com where a 5lb bag clocked in a between twenty and thirty bucks. Aside from the beans and the air popper I use a measuring cup (1/3 seems to be about the right amount for the popper), a rubber spatula (both for the rubber part and for the wood handle), a mesh strainer, and a bowl. 

If you're going to try this at home make sure there's good ventilation. Near an open window. Outside on a porch. In the past two months I can't even tell you how many times I've set off the fire alarm roasting coffee. Currently since I'm still in New England and it's hella cold out so I'm not going to open a window (spoiler alert to adult life: heat is expensive in the winter) I set everything up on a cookie tray on the stove top under the exhaust vent like so:

The bowl is there to catch the chaff when it flies off the coffee bean, it certainly doesn't catch ALL of it, but most of it for sure. 

Once you turn the popper on and put in the beans in you want to make sure that the beans don't stop moving. I usually pour them in fairly slowly and they keep moving, but if they need a little help give them a stir with the wooden handle of a spoon or spatula.

I find that a little over six minutes is the right amount of time for how Sarah and I like our coffee. Below is an example of the chaff off a round of roasting:

Like I said I'm pretty sure my popper doesn't get quite hot enough, so I stick a rubber spatula over the opening for three to four minutes of the roast to try and trap a little extra heat in there. Once the coffee is done roasting it needs to be cooled off as quickly as possible, so I dump it into the mesh stainer and gently shake it around for a few moments.

While Sarah liked the coffee I was roasting she missed flavored coffee, which is what we normally were buying beforehand. The last couple of batches I added a little bit of vanilla extract and some cinnamon sticks to give it some flavor. Then more recently in addition to the vanilla and cinnamon I added coco powder. 

Once the coffee is done roasting it does need to be in a container that will allow it to off-gas over night, I just keep the mason jar we store it in cracked open a little the night after I make it and then close it for real after I make my coffee in the morning. If you're a crazy person like me and want to try roasting your own coffee in an air popper I'll leave the links I used to figure it out below. See you next Tuesday!

Roasting Links:

Coffee Geek

Sweet Maria's (has videos)

DIY Coffee Roasting