"Why is Bacon So Good?" and the Universal Muffin

Because it's bacon!

This is one of Chuck's favorite sayings, so I thought I would try a recipe with several of his key food groups represented:

Spicy Bacon and Beer Muffins

If you  also love the noble pig, here's some real bacon-porn.

 Cooking Light has promised me these!  They look hearty!

 INGREDIENTS
Streusel
3 T dark brown sugar
2 t water
1/2 t Cayenne pepper
3 smoked bacon slices
3 T old-fashioned rolled oats
1 T flour
1 T unsalted butter, melted

Muffins
1 3/4 C flour
1/2 C packed brown sugar
2 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
1/4 t baking soda
2/3 C stout beer (I used Murphy's)
3 T oil
1 t vanilla
1 large egg, lightly beaten

INSTRUCTIONS

 1.  Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.  Line a baking sheet with foil; place a wire rack on the baking sheet.  I don't have a wire rack.  I used a broiler pan instead, which worked fine.  Don't forget the foil, or you will regret it.

 2.  To prepare streusel, combine 3 T brown sugar, 2 t water and Cayenne pepper in a small bowl.

 3.  Spread the mixture evenly over both sides of the bacon.  Or, just stick it in the sugar/pepper mixture and slosh it around.  But wash the Cayenne pepper off your fingers when you're done,  or you'll regret it.  This is becoming an "...or you'll regret it" recipe.  Bacon and beer, and fraught with danger!

 Place the bacon on the rack.

 Bake it for 18 minutes or until done. Yes, folks, we're bakin' bacon.   The drippings are full of sugar, so they will burn in the bottom pan and really gunk it up.  You won't care, though:  celebrate the invention of foil.  Remember that there is smoke from the burning sugar and the smoke is also infused with Cayenne.  Every time I opened the oven to check on the bakin' bacon, I had a fit of coughing.  More danger.

 Bake it at 400 degrees F for about 18 minutes, or until done.  Let it cool.

 Finely chop.

 3.  Combine oats and 1 T flour in a small bowl.

 Stir in the butter.

 Stir in 2 T of the chopped bacon; reserve the remaining bacon.  Threaten all those who try to pick at it and steal it by telling them that it has been infused with freakish amounts of Cayenne.

 4.  Reduce your oven temperature to 350 degrees F. Line 12 muffin cups with paper liners.

Lightly spoon flour into measuring cups and place in a large bowl.  Add remaining bacon, 1/2 C brown sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda.  Stir well.

 In a medium bowl, combine beer, oil, vanilla and egg.  Stir gently with a whisk.

 Add the beer mixture to the flour mixture, stirring just until combined.

 5.  Evenly distribute the mix among your muffin cups.  Think to yourself that they look kind of skimpy.  Cooking Light always manages to make their portions look huge when they are in fact small.  Yes, I know.  We're cooking LIGHT. Whatever.

 Sprinkle the streusel over the batter.

Bake at 350 degrees F for 18 minutes or until a wooden pick comes out clean.  Cool them for a few minutes, them take them out of their cups to continue cooling.

REVIEW
The kids loved them.  They ate them after supper last night and again for breakfast this morning.  I thought that the candied bacon was THE BOMB.  The muffins were a little bit ho-hum as a setting for them.  I find myself wishing I would just have the bacon back.  Chuck thought they should be sweeter and said that he likes his "muffins to be muffins".  I'm still trying to figure out what that means.  How do we define the Universal Muffin?  A question to ponder for sure.

Final analysis.  Ponder the Universal Muffin while eating bacon candied in brown sugar and Cayenne whenever you can.  Don't bother with these.

Salmon for Supper

Otherwise known as Kate's Kitchen Kapers and Kulinary Katastrophes

This one turned out fine, though:  it's easy, so go for it!

ROASTED SIDE OF SALMON WITH SHALLOT CREAM

Here is the picture from Cooking Light magazine.  They have promised both simplicity and guest-pleasing WOW-ness.  For once, we have no guests, so I will just try to WOW Chuck and my kids.  The magazine is also showing vintage serving dishes, dill sprigs and attractive sides.  Forget it!  We're just doing broccoli and roasted yams tonight.  I am pretty burned out on major cooking.

 Ingredients
1/4 C creme fraiche (I just used sour cream)
2 T finely minced shallots
1 T 2% milk
1 T chopped fresh dill
1 1/2 tsp fresh lemon juice
1 1/8 tsp kosher salt, divided
1 salmon fillet (I got about 1 1/2 lbs)
1 T olive oil
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 T chopped fresh chives

These are fairly pedestrian ingredients.  You won't have any problem finding them.  Try to ignore the picture of my lemon, which shows it to be a lime.  Not my fault!  My father-in-law brought home-grown limes from his garden in Santa Barbara (am I spoiled?), and this one had a very pale skin.  I thought is was a lemon until I cut it open and smelled it.  Oh, well.  We forge ahead.

I will cook on wood this evening, so I need to get the fire going about 40 minutes in advance.

Directions
 Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.

 The red wine and caramel corn are not on the ingredient list.  Those are (let's call them...) garnish.

 Do all your chopping and mincing, so you have tidy piles of shallot, chive and dill.  Do a little extra dill, because it is so yummy.

 Combine the first five ingredients and 1/8 tsp salt in a small bowl, stirring with a whisk.  Or just use a spoon, because the dill gets all caught up in the whisk.

 Place the fish, skin side down, on a parchment lined baking dish.

 Rub the fish with oil; sprinkle with remaining salt and pepper.

 I put mine in the oven with four sweet potatoes that were almost finished, having roasted away during the preheat period.  Try to ignore the over-exposure of this picture - my oven doesn't have a light in it.  Also try to ignore the yam with foil wrapped around its end.  it was getting a little soft on one end, so I lopped off the soft part and covered it in foil to maintain its roasting integrity.

bake at 450 degrees F for 8 minutes.

If you have a broiler, remove he fish from the oven, preheat your broiler to HIGH, and broil the fish for four minutes, or until it's done.  When I am using the gas burner in my oven, I have broiler capability; but not when I use wood.  I'll just bake it a little longer and sacrifice that toasty brown color we saw int eh magazine photo.

Yay!  Whew, it turned out!  Sprinkle the fish with chives, cut it into portions and serve it up with the creamy sauce.  

And quick, take the foil off the one yam and slice it open and get it onto a plate before the kids notice that there is a yam that is not like the others and fight over who has to eat it.  

Grapefruit Pound Cake

 Hooo, boy!  Here we are, back in Kate's kitchen for another round of Kitchen Kapers / Kate-astrophes. This month, Cooking Light is extolling the virtues of grapefruit and its cousin, the pummelo.  I have always been curious about pummelos, so I picked one up at the store, to my kids' excitement.  Nate declared it, "as big as my head!"  I was just grateful that he didn't say, "as big as my fucking head!"  He has been "f-word" free for a solid 36 hours at this point.  Long may it last.  I started peeling the pumello, while Sara told me that one of her friends' mom had cut it in half.  "Hey, lay off.  I'm exploring my world." I finished peeling it, pondered the pithy ball in my hand, and cut it in half.

I digress.  Where was I?  Grapefruit, and making it into cake.  Right. 

As always, let's start with the picture from the magazine.  Nom, nom!

 Ingredients: (My new kitchen is far less aesthetically pleasing than my old one.  Here, you can see the ingredients, my clapped out cookbooks, papers towel roll, nicked Depression glass and wall socket.)

Cooking spray with flour.  (Shit, I don't have that.  Screw it, I know how to dust a pan.)
2 C all-purpose flour
1 t baking powder
salt
6 T butter, softened (Yes, I softened the butter in advance.  I'm learning...)
6 oz cream cheese (The low-fat kind is fine)
2 lg eggs
1/4 cup oil
2 T grated grapefruit rind
1/2 t vanilla extract
1/2 C 2% milk
1/2 C fresh grapefruit juice
1 1/4 C powdered sugar

 Getting the grated rind off the grapefruit will soften it up a bit inside and make it really easy to juice.  Half a cup is about half of a grapefruit.  I juiced two whole grapefruits, though, because I was unable to resist drinking it.  I love grapefruit.

 1.  Preheat oven to 325 F.  Ah!  BUSTED!  HAHAHAHAHA!  I see now, looking at my photo, that I preheated to 350 F...which maaaaaaay explain a thing or two....

 2.  Coat a 10-inch tube pan (new!  just purchased from the thrift store yesterday!) with cooking spray and dust lightly with flour.

 3.  Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife.

4.  Combine flour, baking powder and 1/2 t salt, stirring well. 

5.  Place granulated sugar, butter and cream cheese in a large bowl.

 6.  Beat with a mixer at high speed until light and fluffy.  Realize that this blog is going to feature a lot of pictures of bland, yellow batter in a steel bowl.  Feel sad about the lack of colorful "pop" in grapefruit pound cake batter, but decide to persevere.

 7.  Add eggs, one at a time.

 8.  Beat in oil, rind and vanilla.  The dark shadow across the batter is me, taking the picture.  Can you see my outline?  My apartment just has one light; my old place was like a fucking veritable photo studio in comparison.

9.  Add the flour mixture and the milk alternately to the batter, beginning and ending with the flour.

 10.  Spoon batter into the pan.  Go outside and fly kites with Chuck and the kids.  Simultaneously bake at 325 F for one hour and ten minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out with moist crumbs clinging.  Remember to stop flying kites in time to rescue the cake.

 11.  Not realizing that the oven temperature SHOULD BE 325 F, NOT 350 F, feel slightly surprised by the brownness of the cake, but pleased nonetheless.    It's pretty!  Cool in its pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes.  Invert cake.  Cool on rack.

 12.  Place juice in a saucepan over medium-high heat.  Wonder if you are supposed to remove the pulp.  The recipe doesn't say.  Figure that, since you like pulp, the pulp will stay.  Bring the pulpy juice to a boil.  Cook until reduced to three tablespoons, or until you get sick of waiting.  Cool slightly.  Stir in powdered sugar and tiny pinch of salt.

 13.  Drizzle over cake.

14.  Realize that your career as a food stylist is going NOWHERE.  Shrug.  Eat cake.

Well, I'm No Einstein...

...and I'm not his brother.  I'm better, 'cuz my bagels are SOOOOOO tasty!  I know:  I'm bragging.  It's really unbecoming in a woman my age.  Tough! Try this recipe and you too can feel superior to either (or both) of the Einstein Brothers. 

My cooking magazine promises me that, "These bagels could have a smack-down with any New York deli's."  Well that's dandy, except that I have never been to New York.  How 'bout, "These bagels will beat the pants off those clammy ones you buy in the grocery store."  SOLD!  Here we go.

 Ingredients:
2 C warm water (100-110 degrees F)
1 tsp. active dry yeast
about 6 1/2 C  bread flour, divided
1 T barley malt syrup (What the fuck IS this?  I searched high and low.  Watch, it probably comes in a huge, expensive jar as well.  The instructions say to omit it if you can't find it.  My friend Cliff suggested using molasses instead.  OK, we'll try that.)
2 tsp. kosher salt
Cooking spray
12 C water
3/4 C sugar

Instructions

 1.  Combine 2 cups warm water and yeast in the bowl of a stand mixer (Thanks, Cliff, for having one of these.) fitted with a dough hook.  Fuss ridiculously over the temperature of the water.  Too cool!  Too hot!  What if I kill the yeast?  Let stand 5 minutes or until bubbles form on the surface.

 I SAID..., "Until BUBBLES form on the SURFACE...."  Shit!  Where are the fucking bubbles?.  The yeast is dead.  I killed it, I know!  Try again.  Hyperventilate a little.  Where are the "bubbles forming on the surface"!?!  Rationalize.  C'mon, Kate:  that's 2 cups of water and only a teaspoon (not a packet) of yeast.  Let's have some faith, here.

 2.  Lightly spoon about 6 1/4 cups of flour into dry measuring cups:  level with a knife.  Add flour, syrup (AKA molasses) and salt to yeast mixture.  Boy, that molasses looks a little dark.  The recipe calls for  a tablespoon of barley malt syrup, but I only put 2 teaspoons of molasses in the mix.

 3.  Mix dough at low speed 6 minutes.

 4.  Turn the dough out onto a floured surface.

 5.  Knead 2 minutes, or until smooth and elastic.

 6.  Add enough of the remaining 1/4 cup flour, 1 tablespoon at a time, to prevent dough from sticking to hands.  Uh-oh.  My dough was never sticky.  It never stuck to my hands.  I review the recipe and can't see anything I did wrong.  I feel a sense of impending doom.

 7.  Place dough in a large bowl coated with cooking spray, turning to coat the top.  Cover and let rise in a warm place (85 degrees), free from drafts ( like the oven, turned off but with a bowl of hot water in there), 30 minutes.  Go read a book and toast your feet by the fireplace.  Check on it.  It has done nothing.  F-U-C-K.  Show it to Chuck.  Chuck makes optimistic noises and says it just needs a little more time.  He even turns the oven on low for just a few minutes.  I decide that trusting Chuck often works for me  I go back and read my book for about 15 minutes more.

 VOILA! 
8.  Breathe a sigh of relief.

 9.  Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and divide into 12 equal portions.  Working with  one portion at a time (cover remaining dough to prevent drying), shape each portion into a ball.

 Make a hole in the center of each ball using your index finger.  Using fingers of both hands, gently pull dough away from center to make a 1 1/2 inch hole.

 11.  Place bagels on a baking sheet coated with cooking spray.  Lightly coat bagels with cooking spray; cover with plastic wrap (or, if the house where you are cooking has no plastic wrap, tear up a bread bag and use that instead.). 

 12.  Let rise 10 minutes (Bagels will rise only slightly.).  Here you can see Chuck's experimental technique for bagel formation.  He saw me pinching the hole into the middle of one and  paused.  Then he took a dough ball and rolled it out gently with his fingers  and pinched the ends together.  You can see an example here.  I think it looks nice, huh?

13.  Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.

14. Combine 12 cups of water and 3/4 cup sugar in a pot, and bring to a boil.  Get distracted by a very nasty phone call Chuck is receiving from his ex, and fail to take photos for several steps.  Sorry!  Gently lower three bagels into the pot.  Cook for 30 seconds.  Transfer bagels to a wire rack coated with cooking spray. Repeat the procedure with the remaining bagels while listening to Chuck's ex on speaker phone.  Forget to put sesame seeds on, but this is the moment to do that if you are less absent minded than I and you want to.

15.  Divide the bagels between 2 baking sheets (or, if you can't find two baking sheets, use a baking sheet and a pizza pan.  Whatever.) lined with parchment paper.  Bake at 450 degrees for 7 minutes.  Rotate pans and bake for 7 minutes or until golden.

 Yay!

16.  Cool on wire racks.  Or try to, because the bagels have completely adhered to the parchment paper.  Instead of transferring to a wire rack, burn your fingers while trying to peel the paper off.

They are hot.  They smell delicious. 

17.  Eat the paper.  Good source of fiber.