The world may think bacon is just a trend and will be replaced by something new, but I don’t care. I will always eat bacon-wrapped tasty things and I will always keep at least two packages of bacon in the freezer for backup. If you braise a hunk of slab bacon, I’ll eat it. I still enjoy the piece of candied bacon in the bloody mary at Small Bar, even if I can’t really taste the bacon vodka that’s in it.
Bacon is good. I’m sorry, that’s just all there is to it.
It started with the brownies. I was craving something chocolate, something rich, something baked. I had stared at the Sweet & Salty brownie recipe in Baked Explorations many times. So, I just made them. I made them with the full intention of having a square or two and then taking the rest into work. I wasn’t even fully invested in them, using the salted caramel sauce from Trader Joe’s instead of making my own (it goes in between the layers of brownie batter, for a bit more salty/sweet loveliness). I haphazardly sprinkled on the sugar/sea salt mixture, thinking it was more for decoration than anything else. And then, I ate one.
I ate one brownie, then I ate another one. I ate one more after they cooled. Then a fourth, because it looked silly just sitting there all by itself in the row. I placed them in a container and then into the fridge. They never went to work. Well, they did, as part of my lunch for the next week and a half. I think Travis may have gotten in one or two.
These are dense, fudgey brownies. They are not too sweet, using both dark chocolate and cocoa. There is a sweet/salty layer of butter caramel in the middle of each bite and then there a sprinkling of sugar and salt on top. This was a brownie that becomes the standard for brownies.
Until I added something that made it completely ridiculous, a little bit naughty, and absolutely fabulous…
Sweet & Salty Brownies (from Baked Explorations)
1 1/4 c. AP Flour
1 tsp. salt
1 Tb. dark cocoa powder
11 oz. dark chocolate (60-72%), chopped
1 c. (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. firmly packed dark brown sugar
5 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla
Topping – mix together 1 1/2 tsp fleur de sel and 1 tsp sugar.
Note: I was a bit bad at following directions, not to mention I totally used a jarred salted caramel sauce instead of making the one in the recipe. But the brownies still came out amazing! And, really, you should own this book yourself and then you can follow it word for word.
1. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Line a 9×13 pan with parchment paper.
2. Melt the chocolate and butter over low heat. Once melted, remove from heat, beat in the white and brown sugars, and let it cool to room temperature.
3. Meanwhile, combine the flour, salt, and cocoa in a separate bowl.
4. Add 3 eggs to the cooled chocolate mixture and whisk until combined. Add the remaining 2 eggs, 1 at a time. Mix in the vanilla. “They” say that if you mix too much at the point, the brownies will get too cakey, but I haven’t found that to be a problem yet.
5. Pour the flour mixture over the chocolate/egg mixture and fold until no more white streaks remain. Pour half the batter into the pan. Drizzle salted caramel sauce over the brownie batter until a decent-looking layer has formed. Try to avoid the edges so the caramel doesn’t ooze out the sides and make a sticky mess of itself. Pour the rest of the brownie batter over the caramel and smooth out the top.
6. Bake for 30 minutes (mine needed 40 minutes for the tester to come out clean), sprinkle on the salt/sugar topping, and let cool completely in the pan. Slice as desired. Eat while warm, cool, cold, and any where in between.
It’s definitely not the most photogenic of meals, or maybe I’m just not good enough to make it look pretty. But it is simple, easy, relatively quick, and very tasty. It’s also something I think is pantry-ready, assuming your pantry is stocked with curry powder and lentils. Your pantry should always be stocked with an onion or two and lots of garlic.
Molly Wizenberg’s (aka Orangette) Curried Lentil Soup has been making its way around the internet, after appearing in Bon Appetit magazine. I happened to have a carrot slowly withering away in the fridge, so I thought I’d whip it up while waiting for the lone carpet guy to install new carpet in the dog room and while Travis played outside breaking concrete with a sledgehammer.
Because I remembered my Vindaloo curry powder (from Penzey’s) packs a wallop, I paired it with some sweet curry powder. Even so, the soup has quite a kick to it, at least to me. The pureed chickpeas add heft and thickness to the soup, but it’s not a creamy soup as if you had added cream or half and half. I consider it a pretty healthy soup. Even with the piece of crumbled bacon (bingo bacon!) I put on top.
This is what you eat for dinner when you’ve shared a Costco carne asada bake and gelato at 3:00 pm. I wanted to make a snack for dinner – something not too heavy, something that could be eaten in bites here and there. There was half a “brick” of cream cheese in the fridge that hadn’t gone bad and a pack of krab in the freezer, along with a bag of mini peppers waiting to get eaten. Krab dip was sounding pretty good.
There’s no recipe for this. I have a recipe for a hot krab dip from my mom, but it uses cream of mushroom soup and cream cheese, among other things. I wanted something a little lighter, considering the late lunch we’d eaten earlier that was nowhere near a healthy meal.
I sauteed a shallot and a couple of cloves of garlic in olive oil over low heat until they were soft. Then, I threw in the cream cheese until it was soft, added 1/2 cup of yogurt (I didn’t have sour cream), some lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce and salt to taste. Fold in some chopped krab and dinner is served!
It’s actually not that bad. I thought the yogurt would give it a funny flavor – you know, that flavor that tells you someone subbed in something healthy in place of something tasty. But the cream cheese and shallot masks any of that and you get a fairly nice dip for veggies, pretzels, or pita chips. Not too bad for foraging in the fridge!
I made pickled eggs: one using this recipe from Bon Appetit and another from Momofuku. The one on the left is pickled, on the right is the soy sauce egg. They’re both a little rubbery on the outside, but the regular pickled one isn’t pickly enough for me. It’s only been in for a day, though, so maybe after a few more it’ll be better. Or maybe I need to use a different vinegar. The soy sauce one is pretty strong, though. Definitely take them out after a few hours (although, Travis feels it could use more “pickling”)!
