Snickers Caramel Corn

One of the most special aspects of the holidays is that they conjure up the craving of very specific foods that are really only allowed this time of year. Well, I guess not technically but can you really imagine eating peppermint bark in the middle of July? By restricting certain foods to once-a-year status, it seems to make them more special and I enjoy it all the more when it I know that its only around for a short while. So bring on the eggnog, the pannetone, the peppermint chocolate and, my favorite, caramel corn.

For me, caramel corn is one of those treats that I could “accidentally” eat a whole batch without getting sick of it (but probably getting literally sick along the way). With that said, I’ve actually never made caramel corn myself until about a month ago. It way overshadows the other stuff that I used to find so addicting and found it to be much easier than I could have imagined…though maybe this isn’t a good thing. My curiosity for making my own began with this recipe for dark and stormy caramel corn over at Lottie and Doof. I made the exact version and it was delectable. It has a thin crispy shell of caramel coating with just the right bit of saltiness and a good kick from the lime and ginger. A then realized that by taking the base recipe for the corn (without the additional flavorings) I could adapt caramel corn to any combination of flavors that I wanted. Oh, the possibilities!

So, in honor of today being National Chocolate-Covered Anything Day, I give you Snickers Caramel Corn. It’s peanut, it’s chocolate, it’s caramel…how much better could things get? I also topped it with a sprinkling of Maldon Sea salt for that perfect sweet and salty contrast. It literally tastes like a super fudgy and crunchy Snickers bar in Popcorn form. Make this caramel corn for all of your friends this Christmas and you are sure to start a new tradition that keeps everyone waiting eagerly all year long for more. Merry Christmas everyone!

Snickers Caramel Corn
Adapted from this recipe
Makes about 12 cups

Ingredients
1 stick butter
1 cup sugar
¼ cup light corn syrup
½ tsp. kosher salt
¼ tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cups coarsely chopped lightly salted peanuts
12 cups plain popped popcorn (using about ½ cup of kernels popped according to package instructions)
4 oz. dark chocolate, melted (I used 70% cacao scharffen berger)

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees and line a sheet pan with parchment paper. Also get all of your ingredients measured out and ready because the process goes a little quickly.

In a large heavy-bottomed pot, melt the butter, sugar, corn syrup, and salt over medium-high heat. Stir with a rubber spatula until everything is incorporated. Once the mixture starts boiling, stop stirring. If the caramel begins to turn brown in the center of the pot before the edges, however, it is ok to gently swirl the pot itself to evenly distribute the mixture. Let the caramel continue to boil until is reaches a nice amber color overall and lets off a caramel smell.

Remove the pot from the heat and whisk in the baking soda. Add in the vanilla (stand back, it will sputter) and keep whisking until smooth.  Dump in the peanuts and the popcorn and fold it into the caramel using a rubber spatula, coating the popcorn evenly. Spread the popcorn out onto the sheet pan and place in the oven for 20 minutes. Take the pan out about every 5 minutes and give everything a bit of a stir to ensure that it is all well coated with the caramel.

While the corn is cooking, melt the chocolate in a double boiler. Remove the popcorn from the oven and drizzle the melted chocolate overtop. Sprinkle a bit of Maldon sea salt on the chocolate. Set aside until the popcorn is cool and the chocolate is solid (a cold garage is a good place to do this). Once completely cool, break into bite-size pieces and watch it disappear.  

My favorite food(s), a recipe, and a must-have for your kitchen

Whenever anyone finds out that I have this little blog here or that I’m into food and cooking and stuff I am always asked the same question: “What is your favorite food?” It’s a question I used to dread, one that I think many people find difficult to answer. If I really like cooking generally that means that I like to eat most things (a much easier question would be about my least favorite foods…I’m looking at you cilantro and eggplants).

With the prevalence of the question I had to come up with a standby answer instead of hemming and hawing every time it was asked and usually responding with something along the lines of, “it’s too hard to choose, I couldn’t possibly pick a favorite.” However I do choose to answer in two parts – I give my favorite flavor and my favorite dish. That makes sense, right? A favorite flavor more often has to do with desserts or something, the flavor your choose when you go out for ice cream or pick out your birthday cake. Your favorite dish is that last thing you would want eat before you die or what you always seem to pick for an appetizer or entrée at a restaurant. It only seems natural that a “favorite food” question is divided into two categories. So here is goes.

What is my favorite flavor? Coconut. Always coconut. Ice cream, chocolate bars, cakes, thai iced tea, whatever. If it has coconut I generally like it. It can be paired with rich flavors (coffee, chocolate, vanilla, caramel), fruity ones (lime, pineapple, berries) and savory applications, like curry. Coconut for the win.

What is my favorite dish? Pizza. Good pizza, that is. I like the classic Neapolitan style with the blistered crust that is chewy yet light. With the simple tomato sauce, mozzarella and basil. But I love unique toppings too. Maybe that’s why I like pizza so much. Its so customizable yet always ends up with a perfect balance of salty, sweet, and tangy. A good pizza is perfection and never fails to make me the happiest person alive. (P.S. You all know my weakness now…you are free to take advantage of this and take me out for pizza anytime you need a favor.)

I would gladly eat pizza for every meal but luckily I have enough self-control and enough proximal distance from any really good pizza shops to keep that from happening. But naturally I have experimented with my own pizza-making quite a bit, not to mention I worked as a pizza-maker in my little hometown pie-shop for 3 years during high school. The earlier attempts were okay, certainly edible but nothing to brag about. I tried different dough recipes and different cooking surfaces but nothing really quite blew me away until I did find the absolute best of each. Together, they create what is arguably the closest thing to wood-fired oven pizza without the wood-fired oven. Let me introduce Jim Lahey and his book “My Pizza” and the Baking Steel.

Jim Lahey’s dough recipe falls right in line with his other famous no-knead methods. You simply mixt up a little flour, yeast, water, and salt, let it sit overnight, and the next day you have stretchy and supple pizza dough. It has a slight bit of tang, a nice chew, and makes a perfect fluffy crust filled with little air pockets. The Baking Steel is a relatively new piece of cooking equipment out there. It started as a kickstarter project but turned into something huge. Essentially its nothing more than an enormous slab of steel that you cook pizzas on but there is science behind it that makes it the best home oven pizza-baking option.  Essentially, the steel may not get as hot as something like a pizza stone but steel is an excellent conductor of heat so the pizza get a perfectly crispy crust in minutes. I definitely recommend it for the pizza enthusiast who wants to empress their friends and family with the best pizza they’ve ever had. It comes with a cool carrying case too made from old recycled billboards (mine has a piece of The X-Factor in it). So, without further ado, here’s how I make my pizzas.

The Best DIY Pizza Dough
-Jim Lahey’s no-knead pizza dough from “My Pizza”, found here. Each batch make 4 pizzas. The rest of the book has excellent sauce and topping ideas too.

Sauce
– a can of whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes, crushed with your hands until smooth and seasoned with salt and olive oil.

Toppings
– get as creative as you like. For the pizzas in the pictures above I used fresh mozzarella, kalamata olives, Italian sausage, and marinated garlic cloves.

To assemble and bake
– Place the Baking Steel or other baking surface in your oven and preheat to 500 degrees. Allow the oven to heat at 500 for 45 minutes then reduce to 475. Take a piece of your prepared dough and stretch it out on a pizza peel in a circular shape with a little cornmeal on the bottom so it doesn’t stick. Add your sauce and toppings. Slide it onto the Baking Steel and let cook for 4-5 minutes. Then turn the broiler on and continue to cook for about 2 more minutes. Slide onto a cutting board when it’s done. It should have a few black, blistered spots around the edges. Don’t forget to turn off you broiler and reset the oven to 475 degrees after taking out each pizza. Cut into 4 pieces and eat immediately. The most important step is to take your time and don’t try to bank out all four pizzas a quickly as possible. Serve salads, olives, and other finger foods in between each pizza and enjoy the whole experience.

Chai Tea Ice Cream

One of the few redeeming features of colder weather is the excuse to spend the evenings and weekends hidden somewhere under a blanket, lost in a book and with a constantly replenished hot drink in hand. My usual drink of choice is vanilla rooibos tea but I’ve also always been a fan of hot chocolate. I used to go for the classic packet of Swiss Miss, dehydrated mini marshmallows and all, but have favored the Aztec style “drinking chocolate” in the more recent years, those teeny cups of almost entirely melted chocolate with a tad bit of milk to thin it out and sugar and spices to sweeten and flavor it. However, the one drink that I’ve always loved the idea of but never really liked once I was drinking it is chai tea. It seems so perfect in concept; you can’t go wrong with warm frothy milk infused with a mild black tea and warm spices. Yet, the store-bought chai tea bags are always so tannic and the spices totally overwhelm the delicacy of the tea. There are also those cardboard cartons of chai tea concentrate but they are so loaded with sugar I feel like I’m drinking syrup. I am aware that I could have easily looked up a recipe and made it myself, but with so many disappointing experiences with chai tea, I guess I never really felt inspired to pursue it.

Recently, however, my mom and I went to brunch and got one of the best yet simple desserts I think I’ve ever tried. It had an apricot vanilla panna cotta with white chocolate shortbread crumbles, a bruleed apricot (yes it did have a crispy sugar crust on it) and a quenelle of 5-spice ice cream on the side. One spoonful containing a little bit of each of the 4 components together was nearly magical but each separate component by itself was quite good as well. I was especially intrigued but the 5-spice ice cream. It was delicious, yet I’ve always found 5-spice to have a little bit too much anise flavor for my taste. This reflection of course then led to the idea that maybe I should make my own spice ice cream but a little more geared to my own preferences, which then led to the light bulb moment of, “Hey! I should make chai tea ice cream.” Maybe I never had much luck with the drink but things could be different when translated into frozen form, right?

So, when temperatures soared to a very unseasonable 90 degrees this past weekend and the last thing that I had on my mind was burrowing under the covers with a warm cup of tea, my ice cream plan seemed just like the right idea. I used the basic ice cream base from Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home and played around with it to get the chai tea flavor right. The flavor that resulted is just how I’ve always dreamed that chai tea would be like but of course in cold solid format. The stand out flavor is the tea itself. It imparts very delicate rosy floral notes and an even stronger caramel, honey-like flavor. After the taste of tea comes the sweetness of the cream itself and finally, standing in the background, the flavor of the spices. The cinnamon and clove are warming, the peppercorn and anise add a slight savoriness to offset the sweetness, and, my favorite, the cardamom, adds a smoky floral essence. The texture is lovely too; it’s more so like gelato in its dense creaminess that becomes almost custardy when it begins to melt, despite not having in eggs in it. Though I wont be giving up on my rooibos anytime soon, I think that my success in the chai flavor department has convinced me that I’m finally ready to give hot chai tea a try again, totally made from scratch this time…at least once it actually starts to feel like autumn around here. Anyone have any recipe suggestions?

Chai Tea Ice Cream
makes about 1 quart
adapted from Jenis's Splendid Ice Creams at Home

Ingredients
2 cups whole milk
1 Tbs + 1 tsp cornstarch
1½ oz. softened cream cheese
1/8 tsp sea salt
1¼ cups heavy cream
2/3 cups white granulated sugar
2 Tbs light corn syrup
¼ cup English breakfast tea leaves
2 cinnamon sticks
10 black peppercorns
10 whole cloves
2 cardamom pods, crushed open to expose the seeds
¼ tsp 5-spice powder
1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix 2 Tbs of your milk with the cornstarch in a small bowl to form a slurry. In a large glass bowl, whisk the cream cheese with the salt until smooth. Set these aside.

Combine the remaining milk, heavy cream, sugar, and corn syrup in medium sized saucepan. Heat on medium, while stirring, until steam starts to rise from the milk and it is warm to touch. Add the cinnamon sticks, peppercorns, cloves, cardamom pods, and 5-spice powder. Cover with a lid and set aside to infuse for 45 minutes.

Once you are ready to continue, fill a large bowl with ice water and set aside. Remove the lid to your saucepan and set it on medium high heat. Bring to a boil. Once boiling let it continue to rapidly boil for 4 minutes. Remove from the heat, add the tea, cover and set aside to steep for 10 minutes. Strain the mixture using a fine sieve to remove the tea and spice from the milk. Return the milk mixture to the saucepan and bring back to a boil. Once boiling, whisk in the cornstarch slurry and boil for 1 more minute.

Carefully whisk the hot milk into the bowl with the cream cheese and whisk until smooth. Stir in the vanilla extract. Pour the mixture into a gallon zip-lock bag, and place the sealed bag into the bowl of ice water. Let chill in the water for 30 minutes, replenishing ice if needed.

Once chilled, snip a corner of the bag and pour the ice cream base into your ice cream maker, churning according the manufacturer’s instructions. Once frozen, pack in a freezer safe container and freeze for at least 4 hours before eating.

Eggy Crumpets

October is tomorrow and I have no idea where it came from. Did summer even actually happen? I seem to recall a brief 3-day vacation to Boston and the occasional blistering hot and hazy day but all in all it’s as if rainy spring days slipped into fall leaving rarely any room for interruption. Although, it is hard to complain when nearly every day these past 3-weeks has brought crisp and dry air, deep blue skies, cooler temperatures and warming suns. Perhaps summer could have been more, well, summer-y, but I’ll welcome fall any day.

I’ve actually recently wondered why springtime is representative of new beginnings and youth when it’s the fall that seems to reawaken the child in me and makes me feel alive after drowning in the heat of summer. Fall is early mornings waiting for the bus on the first day of school, cross country invitationals, homecoming dances and high school football. It’s the 4 months I spent in London and England, meandering about tiny village streets amongst crimson leaves and golden beams of sunlight. It’s the whiff of that sweet, rich smoky smell that permeates the country air. And of course it is my most favorite of all foods.

My forays into the world of food and cooking began in my mid to late teen years and I was naturally attracted to fall foods and flavors. Most vividly I remember my friends and I coming back to my house to after a homecoming dance. My mom had prepared a monstrous spread of fall treats to satiate our post-dancing appetites. There were sliced honeycrisp apples and caramel dip, crackers with hunks of cheddar and smoked gouda, slices of baguette, apple butter and cold grapes, and bottles of sparking cider. I was just in awe of the amazing variety of complex flavors that existed amongst these foods and it was at this point where my interest began to turn into a passion.

A few years later I studied abroad in London in the fall of my junior year at college. I was living in an apartment and cooking for myself for the first time and I definitely took advantage of this newfound ability. I went to markets every weekend and cooked very elaborate dinners, all very much sticking to the seasonal fall theme. For breakfast, however, I kept things much simpler. The mornings held early classes and weekend excursions, leaving little room for elaborate breakfasts. Luckily, I was never in short supply of a loaf of phenomenal bread from local bakers and so that made up the grand majority of my breakfasts. But one morning before a 3-day weekend trip, I was out of all groceries and the only option was a forgotten package of crumpets in the corner of the cupboard. I was skeptical of the texture, having read that an undercooked crumpet is not too far from a round disk of rubber. But, I let it hang out in the toaster until golden, spread over a thick layer of butter and jam and took a bite into the most pleasantly surprising foods I’ve tried. The texture is crispy yet custardy and each of the little holes fills with butter, gushing out with each chew. They are definitely made for comfort on for cold-weather mornings.

I spent the next few years at home dreaming about those crumpets but unable to find them until I discovered them at by nearby Wegmans. I ate the crumpets in the traditional manner, toasted with butter, but later started looking for alternative ways to prepare them. I soon came across a recipe for eggy crumpets by none other and the great Jamie Oliver. He takes the crumpet and gives it the French toast treatment, dipping it in a mixture of eggs and spices and frying it in a buttery skillet. He pairs it with the classic fixings of maple syrup and bacon but I decided to take the crumpet and make it a little more savory. I spread some goat cheese over each crumpet and topped them with roasted cherry tomatoes, sautéed kale, and flaky sea salt. The acidity of the tomatoes cuts through the richness of the eggs and cheese and the earthy kale just balances everything out. It’s the perfect indulgence on a beginning-of-fall afternoon, made with the last of the summer cherry tomatoes and perhaps paired with a chilled glass of cider. It’s a dish you’ll return to with nostalgia year after year.

Eggy Crumpets with Roasted Cherry Tomatoes
Adapted from Jamie Oliver
Serves 1

Ingredients
2 crumpets
1 egg, beaten
a pinch of smoked paprika
a pinch of red pepper flakes
salt and pepper, to taste
a pat of butter
½ cup cherry tomatoes
olive oil
2 leaves of kale, stripped from the stem and torn into pieces
goat cheese

*Please note, I realize that the ingredients aren’t very precise but go by your instincts when seasoning and assembling. If you like more spice, add more. If you like lots of tomatoes and tons of goat cheese, by all means use as much as you like and vice versa.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Tip your tomatoes into a small roasting dish and lightly coat them with a drizzle of olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Roast for 20 minutes, shaking them around in the dish occasionally, until shriveled and slightly blistered.

While the tomatoes roast, prepare the crumpets. Beat the egg in a wide shallow dish and add the paprika, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper. Add the crumpets, flipping several times to coat and letting them soak for about 5 minutes. Heat up a skillet on medium heat and add a pat of butter. Once hot, place the crumpets in the skillet (I recommend setting them in the pan so that the holes are initially facing up. That way you can pour any extra egg into the holes. Flip the crumpets to cook the other side and cook until they are golden and cooked throughout. You can add the kale to the pan alongside the crumpets a sauté for a few minutes until crisp tender.

Spread some goat cheese overtop each crumpet and top with the roasted tomatoes and some of their juices. Serve with the kale on the side and sprinkle with flaky sea salt over all.

Wicked Feta

Among those who live in the D.C/Metro area, the lucky ones are aware of the wonder that is Cava Grill. Haven’t heard of it? Let me enlighten you. Think of the concept of chipotle, replace the Mexican theme with Greek food, pile all of these delicious Greek dips and spreads, meats, and vegetable toppings into a bowl of saffron basmati rice instead of a tortilla and that’s the short version of the story. But it’s the small, amazing details that have made Cava my go-to lunch spot every single Saturday (and probably much more often that that if I were a person of lesser self-control). To start, they are very transparent about the ingredients that they use, something that let me see that they barely use any soy protein/oil in their food, a pretty big deal for me since I have a soy allergy. The food is also incredibly fresh. A sign by the entrance lists the local farms where the meat came from, the vegetables are bight and vibrant, and nothing ever tastes artificial or overly-seasoned. It’s the only “fast-food” spot that I leave feeling really good about what I just ate.

One of the defining features of Cava are their dips and spreads that they dollop onto their “bowls” and also sell in nearby grocery stores. They include things like hummus, harissa, tzatziki, and baba ghannoush but they’re most famous dip is a little something they call Crazy Feta. It’s a concoction of feta, jalapeno, onion, and olive oil all mashed up into a spicy, salty, and chunky dip. I did buy it at the grocery store once, forking over a little more that I really wanted to for a teeny little tub of the dip. It was delicious, as always, but I was thinking there had to be a way to make this on my own, hopefully saving a couple bucks in the process. So with a little research and a couple tweaks, I have created Wicked Feta, my silkier and smoother version of the crazy variety.

The one thing that I am not crazy about with the real Crazy Feta are the chunks of raw onion in the mix. That’s why I like roasted garlic instead for that pungent savoriness without the harsh tanginess of the onion. I also decided to whip the feta rather than mashing it to maximize its ability for easy spreading and dipping and just for the simple pleasure of the creamy texture that comes with it. The garlic is sweet and subtle, the cream cheese rounds out some of the tang of the feta, lemon juice brightens the whole thing up, and there is just enough roasted jalapeno to leave a lingering backdrop of heat in the mouth.

I like to think of this more as a condiment rather than just a veggie dip too, though it would of course be great alongside some hummus with a selection of fresh vegetables and pita chips. But there are so many other things to do with it. Imagine spreading a thick layer overtop a juicy lamb burger, or dolloping spoonfuls over some roasted cauliflower. You could make a tartine with some thick crusty spread, a layer of the spread, and wedges of marinated tomatoes or mix it with some cooked Italian sausage and onions, stuff the mixture into some cremini mushrooms and broil until bubbling. Sorry Cava, but I think that your craziest of feta cheeses just got a whole lot more wicked.

Wicked Feta
Adapted from this recipe

Ingredients
8 oz. feta cheese
3 oz. cream cheese
1 bulb of garlic
2 jalapeno peppers
Juice and zest of half a lemon
2 Tbs. olive oil
black pepper, to taste

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Cut the top off of the bulb of garlic and rub the top with olive oil. Wrap up in aluminum foil or parchment paper and place on a baking tray. Place in the oven to roast for 30 minutes. When you have 10 more minutes remaining, coat the jalapeno peppers in olive oil and place the on the baking sheet alongside the garlic. Turn them every few minutes so they char evenly. Remove and let cool for a few minutes.

While the garlic roasts, add the feta to a food processor and pulse a few times to break it up. Add the cream cheese and let the food processor run for a couple minutes until creamy and smooth. Scrape down the sides of the bowl occasionally so everything mixes evenly. Once smooth, add the olive oil and lemon juice/zest and let the machine run for another 15 seconds. Pop out four of the garlic cloves from the garlic bulb and add them to the feta mixture and mix until well incorporated. Save the rest of the garlic for another time. Cut the jalapenos in half lengthwise and remove the seeds and membrane. Depending on how hot you like things, add the jalapenos accordingly. I used about 1½ jalapenos for my dip and it has a mild-medium heat. Chop them coarsely and add to the food processor along with fresh cracked black pepper to taste. Pulse a few times until well mixed.

Transfer to a bowl and let chill for at least an hour before serving to firm up. If serving as a crudité dip, add a little drizzle of olive oil and pepper overtop.