French Onion Soup | Revisited

My favorite category in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking is the soup section. No surprise, I love soup. The simple yet decadent soups in this book have a special place in my heart. With very few ingredients you can make something really delicious. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the “more is more” food idea, but less ingredients and more attention shown to them will (most times) give you better results than a long complex recipe.

DIY Cocktail Bitters

Hands down, bitters are my favorite way to add super concentrated flavor to a cocktail. All you need are a few shakes to transform a regular drink into something more polished. More recently bitters have gone way outside the classic Angostura or Peychaud's*. There are so many interesting and awesome flavors/flavor blends available. They can be a little hard to get your hands on though, often necessitating buying online. That can also make them expensive. Today let’s try something that should be a little easier and cheaper. Though it does involve some waiting!

Butter Rum

Over the holidays I was reading the NPR food section called “The Salt”, and they described a Christmas Cookie cocktail. It sounded sweeter than my taste, but they discuss “Fat Washing” of alcohol which peaked my interest. I know, sounds gross right? The cool thing about fat washing is even though you add fat to alcohol, when you strain it you remove all the fat but are left with the taste of it. We don’t want pools of grease in our drinks, yuck. This isn’t that at all!

Dying Aida Cloth

For those of you that cross stitch you’ll know how hard it is to get colored aida cloth in any size above 14. (For those of you who don’t cross stitch, aida cloth is the grid you stitch on and the higher the number the smaller the grid). I was looking for a 22 size black or navy, nearly impossible! But, but…it’s fairly easy to buy white 22 count Aida and any color of Rit dye you desire.

Homemade Ketchup: Study #2

Take 2! I made ketchup a while ago, and it was just awful. It tasted like it would go better on a cake than a french fry. I didn't feel inclined to try again until I saw this Whiskey BBQ Ketchup on the Minimalist Baker while I was looking for a baked french fries recipe (the fry recipe is killer too). It didn't have cinnamon or what I associate as bakery spices, and the idea of a smoky whiskey ketchup was super intriguing. Oh man this stuff is good! Yay! I'm forever indebted to them for posting this recipe.

Cozy Three Cheese Macaroni: Study #2

'Cozy' is a euphemism for fattening. Kinda like how comfort food is usually fried or full of butter. Well this is 100% comfort food. Homemade macaroni and cheese is usually topped with bread crumbs and baked. While I do like that kind, sometimes I resent that part. It takes way longer than I think it should and a lot of times it dries it out. This time because of impatience and for the sake of experimenting, I just didn't do that part. I don't regret it.

Rose Simple Syrup: Study #2

Something like 14 years ago I worked at a garden center. First job! When Mother's Day rolled around that spring I used my discount (and split it with my brother) to buy my Mom a 'Mr. Lincoln' hybrid tea rose.

Homemade Ketchup: Study #1

It's pretty easy to make ketchup, mix tomato paste and a variety of spices. I have found it a little harder to find a mix of spices that I like. I made this version, from Simply Scratch. I'm sorry to say that Nate and I found it far too dessert-like. All we could taste was cinnamon. I'll be trying a more savory looking recipe next time I think, or cutting way back on the cinnamon. I really like the texture of this homemade ketchup a lot more than pre-made bottled though!

Rose Simple Syrup: Study #1

Simple syrup sounds so easy, and it is. Kinda. I want to make some interesting simple syrups to experiment with in cocktails, lemonade, soda etc. Every rose syrup recipe you look up states you have to use food grade roses. Not being able to find food grade fresh roses (they aren't blooming in gardens yet) I bought some food grade dried rose petals and buds from Amazon. They had pretty good reviews of being strong and tasting good.

Roast Duck: Study #1

I looooove duck. It's like the filet mignon of poultry. The best is at a nice restaurant when they cook it medium rare. Mmm. Around the holidays when I saw a full frozen duck (I don't recall seeing one around before) I snatched it up. It's been hanging out in the freezer since then. Last weekend I finally had a day and evening free to roast it. I read up about methods, times, temps etc. There were lots of recipes that claimed 'perfect crispy skin!' but none had time x temp instructions. What is up with that? Not every duck is the same poundage. Should one really roast them all for the same amount of time? I saw times from 1 hour to 3 hours. My mind was boggling. So I decided to use my chicken equation.

Scalloped Potatoes: Study #1

Just like the Macaroni and Cheese, this is not actually the first version I've made of this dish, but it's the first I  have written about. It won't be the last... I have had some really good scalloped potatoes, but I haven't recreated them myself yet.

This recipe comes from Food.com under 'Southern'. I only changed out the salt for cracked pepper (I always salt to taste) but otherwise followed the recipe. I used really nice extra sharp cheddar and Yukon gold potatoes. To be blunt, this was boring. It just tasted fatty and starchy. It needs garlic or onion or something else. One reviewer said she used a squirt of mustard and some minced onions, that sounds intriguing. The best part of this was the cheese burned to the side of the casserole dish.

Macaroni & Cheese: Study #1

I LOVE macaroni and cheese. Of all varieties. I tried this "Out of This World Crab Mac and Cheese" that I found through Pinterest. It was mid-holiday and I did not feel like leaving the house nor ordering in (un-showered recluse?) I only changed a few things to accommodate what I had/didn't have. Instead of evaporated milk I used about 3-ish ounces heavy whipping cream and the rest 2% milk. I didn't have enough crab (only 6oz canned) so I bulked it out with bacon. Which, I realized in hindsight, totally overpowered my crab meat.