Hobohalloweekend: Part 1

by Xani

Have you recovered from the shock of the new BCD look yet?  Pick your jaw up off the ground and prepare to start drooling over lots of new content.  Yes, somewhere in the fine print of our "coming out" post, we promised daily new posts during the Mobbies voting period.  An ambitious goal, but such is our commitment to you, dear reader.  (Also, we are a little bit crazy.)  Enough with the psych diagnoses, let's get to the eats!

So, How Do We Look?

by Xani and Erin

Soooo, notice anything different about your favorite food blog?  No, this one.  We gave ourselves a makeover!  It's been 3.5 years and the old look was getting a little stale.  We admit to being a little neglectful of our dear blog over the past couple of months, but loyal readers may have noticed our renewed fervor of late!  As part of this new chapter, we decided to spruce up the place.  Our new look is inspired by classic pin-up pictures (we love anything retro), and to look that good, you have to go to the best!  Stacey Barich, of Atomic Cheesecake Studios, is the mastermind behind these beautiful pictures.  [Ladies: see the evidence above, she is truly amazing and this is one of the most fun things we have ever done!  Highly recommend for yourself or for a gift - it's an experience of a lifetime.] This fierce revival of Black Coffee and a Donut conveniently comes just in time for...

THE MOBBIES!  Remember this, old friends?  Yep, the Maryland Outstanding Blog Awards (organized by the Baltimore Sun) are back for their sophomore round.  Some of you may recall that last year, with all of your votes, we came SO close to winning the title, but just missed it and came in second place in the "Foodie" category -- a crushing blow to our egos -- so this year we're back with a vengeance (and a yummy looking donut to entice you to vote).

Once again, we've been nominated in the "Foodie" category.  Voting begins November 2 (election day - remember to vote for us and in the real election too - voting is sexy!) at 8:00am and ends November 12 at 5:00pm.  Fans (who are registered with baltimoresun.com) can vote for us once per day in the "Foodie" AND the "Best Overall Blog" categories.  If you haven't already registered with The Baltimore Sun, it's quick and easy and they won't spam you -- we promise.

In exchange for your votes and undying love, we'll be bringing you exciting and delicious new content daily during the voting period (along with frequent reminders to vote...please don't unfriend us on Facebook, they'll come to an end eventually).

We hope you like the new look, let us know what you think in the comments!  We love you and can't thank you enough for all of the support you've given us over the years.  Let's keep it up!

Coming up next: our Halloween visit to the Big [Candied] Apple, and you know what that means: constant eating!

Get ready to rock the vote!  Goooo BCD!

X & EP
UPDATE:  Voting is now OPEN!  Go HERE to cast your vote for BCD!

STL Eats, Pt. 3: A Day of STL Specialties

by EP

On my last day in St. Louis, Annie and I packed in a lot of activities, including stopping by the Taste of St. Louis and walking around Lafayette Park. We also happened to pack three St. Louis food specialties into the day (and, well, our mouths): gooey butter cake, toasted ravioli, and Ted Drewes frozen custard.

Specialty #1: Gooey Butter Cake

Gooey Butter Cake may not be the most appealing name ever created, but people in STL are crazy for this stuff. It's a yellow cake made with butter, sugar, and cream cheese, then different ingredients/flavorings are mixed in. Annie and I went to Park Avenue Coffee near Soulard, a bakery that boasts 73 flavors of GBC! We ordered coffees and heard about the dozen or so flavors they had in the shop that morning (the flavors rotate daily; for any of the other 60 flavors, you need to order online).

Cook to Live, Live to Cook

by Xani


So, I managed to spend another entire weekend cooking.  What has happened to me??  I guess I'm figuring out that the challenge, excitement, and sense of accomplishment that comes with successfully preparing food, then sharing that food with my friend and family, is not such a bad way to spend one's time.  Plus, we got to eat like kings without leaving the house or shelling out tons of money at restaurants.  All good things.


Like last week, I want to share with you some of the things I cooked and what I learned.  I took more pictures this time!

STL Eats, Pt. 2: What's...Pappy's, precious?

by EP

My second day in STL was chilly and drizzly and I was glad to start the day with a trip to an old college haunt, Kaldi's coffee. After a nice cup o' joe and a piece of pumpkin bread, Annie and I were off to the downtown area to check out Pappy's Smokehouse. Yes, immediately following breakfast, we found ourselves waiting in line for lunch at Pappy's at approximately 10:45am. The rule around there is they make what they make, and when they run out, they're out - get there too late and you're out of luck.

I just made this...

And it has totally blown. my. mind. Stay tuned to see what I do with it!!

X

Taking Stock, Making Stock

by Xani

Let me not waste time explaining why I haven't blogged in so long. Yes, I've eaten at wonderful restaurants and cooked fabulous foods, yet the blogging hasn't happened. I wish it had, but let's not dwell on the ancient past, let's look to the recent past/future! This weekend I cooked up a storm and I want to tell you all about it! This post will be light on the pics, but let's not let that keep me from blogging. Here we go!

The first thing I want to share with you is the awesome technique for making chicken stock that I discovered this weekend. I was feeling the need for a freezer-full of stock as so many cozy fall recipes for soups, stews, etc require stock or broth. While BCD mom raised us on a diet of College Inn chicken broth, hoarding dozens of cans in the pantry at all times, I've become sufficiently brainwashed to think that only homemade stock will do. But, we haven't been eating that much chicken at home lately, and we didn't have a stockpile of bones to make the base of the stock. So, I remembered this recipe for chicken stock which starts with three whole chickens, and after reading the comments, decided I could modify this technique to serve my purposes. Here's how it went:

Ingredients
2 (5-pound) roasting chickens
2 large yellow onions, unpeeled and quartered
4 carrots, unpeeled and halved
3 stalks celery with leaves, cut into thirds
3 parsnips, unpeeled and cut in half
15 sprigs fresh parsley
10 sprigs fresh thyme
10 sprigs fresh dill
1 head garlic, unpeeled and cut in 1/2 crosswise
2 tablespoons kosher salt
2 teaspoons whole black peppercorns

Method:
1. Wash chickens and remove and discard/find another use for the packet or innards. Put chickens in LARGE pot, cover with cold water. Bring to boil, reduce to a very slow simmer, simmer for 1 hour, skim scum/impurities off the surface periodically.
2. Carefully remove chickens from water. Let cool until they can be handled, then carefully pick the meat from the carcass (after 1 hour the meat should be mostly cooked, but not over-cooked. I harvested almost 3 pounds of meat from the chickens, which I separated into white and dark, and packaged and froze for later use such as chicken soup, enchiladas, or chicken pot pie).
3. Put all bones, skin, carcasses, etc back into the pot as you pick the meat (also pour back in any liquid that came out with the chickens). Continue to barely simmer (just a small bubble coming up here and there- if you cook too aggressively your stock will get cloudy) for another 2 hours.
4. Now it's time to add the veggies, herbs and seasonings. Many stock recipes have you add everything at the very beginning, but Michael Ruhlman recommends adding them only for the last hour of cooking, and for good reason-- too much cooking and the veggies break down/get soggy. This can cloud your stock, plus the water-logged veggies soak up so much of your precious stock! So just add them for the last hour, and keep the pot at that bare simmer...
5. It's been four hours, the stock is (almost) done!. Remove all solids, using tongs and a slotted spoon/strainer, pressing the veggies gently on the side of the pot to press out absorbed stock. At this point, I chose to keep simmering my stock for a while to reduce and concentrate the flavor a bit. When it reaches your desired intensity, let cool a bit and strain through cheesecloth.
6. Put stock in the fridge for several hours or overnight. Any fat will congeal on the top and can be skimmed off easily (mine had almost no fat even though I started with whole chicken).
7. Now you should be left with a large quantity of rich, flavorful chicken stock! This can easily be frozen for future use.

So there it is, my best stock yet! Mine came out a beautiful brown color, completely clear, with a nice roasted flavor (even though i started with all raw ingredients), and good sweetness and aroma from the veggies. I have already used some for risotto and chicken pot pie, and I'm so excited to have all that "poached" meat reserved for later. This is a lot more cost effective than just throwing the meat away after stock-making, too.

I cooked up a bunch of other recipes this weekend, too. No time to blog about each in detail, but here are some links and notes, and I'm happy to discuss with you in the comments, if you have questions.

New Year's Eve eggnog: Why am I making eggnog for a party on December 31 in mid-October?? Because this aged eggnog is supposed to be a revelation, and needs weeks or months in the fridge to mature. We'll break it out to ring in the new year, and hopefully not give our guests food poisoning.

Angel Food cake: I had 12 egg whites leftover from the nog-making, and a brand new tube pan that just arrived in the mail this week. I HAD to attempt my first angel food cake-- and I think it came out pretty good!

Lobster-ish Risotto with shrimp: I had a bit of frozen lobster stock in the freezer (made from the remnants of one of BCD Dad's big lobster gorge-fests) and decided to supplement it with some of my freshly made chicken stock and make risotto. I served it with some large pan-seared shrimp on top, and Mom's Caesar salad on the side. While I thought the risotto texture was good, the lobster flavor was very mild.

Buttermilk Waffles with apple topping: We had 2 cups of buttermilk hanging out in the fridge, so we tried this recipe on Sunday morning. It was just ok, I think next time I'll go to the trouble of separating the eggs and whipping the egg whites, to try and achieve a lighter, fluffier waffle. I also made a warm cinnamon apple topping from some of the apples still lingering from our apple-picking trip 2 weeks ago. Cooked the sliced apples with a little water, brown sugar, and cinnamon until apples were soft and the liquid had mostly evaporated. Finished with some lemon juice, butter, and a touch of cream. So much better than plain old syrup!

Chicken pot pie: Perhaps the pièce de résistance of the entire weekend, I made this for Sunday dinner. I used Ina Garten's recipe for the filling, but used a baking powder biscuit recipe from Martha Stewart's Baking Book as the topping (instead of doing a pastry topping). The filling was AMAZING-- loaded with veggies, and yes, delicious, moist meat from the stock-making. The sauce (which used 5 cups of my fab new stock) was SO rich, flavorful, and velvety. The biscuits were very simple, I added a bit of chopped thyme to the dough and also laminated the dough (folding it into thirds and rolling out, repeating, as in puff pastry) to make it extra flaky. I baked them right on top of the pot pie filling in my Le Crueset dutch oven. Perfect hearty fall dinner fare, with plenty of leftovers.

...And would you look at that, it's lunchtime, and I've got some of those leftovers waiting for me in the fridge! Hope you enjoyed my return to blogging, even though it was light on pictures. Now that I'm back in to the swing of things, it's time to dust off my camera again!

Happy cooking,

X

Calling All Baltimore Foodie Friends!

Have YOU ever wanted to be a food critic? Well here's your chance! Baltimore Magazine is having it's first ever dining-review contest. The contest is to find three restaurant critics to help Suzanne Loudermilk, senior food editor, review restaurants for the magazine’s annual Best Restaurants issue. The contest goes until Oct. 27. CLICK HERE for more info and to enter!

A few details:
To be selected as one of three winners, contest participants should write a review of their favorite Baltimore area restaurant in 150 words or less. The entries will be judged by Suzanne based on creativity, writing style, and food knowledge. The only rules are as follows:

• You must be 21 years or older to participate.
• Only ONE entry is allowed per person.
• Your work must be original and not more than 150 words.
• Baltimore magazine staff and family members, professional chefs and restaurateurs, food bloggers (we are not allowed to enter-- major bummer!!), and paid and published reviewers are not eligible to participate.

Hope one of our clever, funny, and discriminating readers ends up winning this thing. Will you tell us what its like to be FAMOUS??

More posts coming soon (pick your jaw up off the floor, thanks),
X