Morning Is A State of Mind

So, one unfortunate thing about my significant other is that he doesn't generally like breakfast food.  I, on the other hand, could eat breakfast food all the live-long day.  In fact, about the only thing I don't like about breakfast is that it is technically supposed to happen in the morning.  Just ask anyone who has had the misfortune to try to talk to me before my first pot of coffee what I think about the usefulness of mornings.

So, the following recipe is usually made in my home on a weekend afternoon, which still passes for "breakfast" when it's your first meal of the day, if you ask me.  And it is so good that even the ordinarily breakfast-spurning sig other requests it regularly.  We even have it for dinner, sometimes.

Perfect Butterscotch-Chip Pancakes
Adapted from Alton Brown, I'm Just Here For More Food

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour (or 9 1/2 oz or 270g by weight, as is Alton's way)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder (1/8 oz or 3g)
  
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda (1/8 oz or 3g)
• 1 teaspoon salt (1/4 oz or 6g)
• 3 tablespoons sugar (1 1/2 oz or 42g)
• 2 large eggs
• 2 cups buttermilk, at room temperature (which I usually achieve by zapping for about fifteen seconds in the microwave, right in the measuring cup)
• 4 tablespoons butter (1/2 stick), melted and slightly cooled (about thirty seconds in the microwave)
• Generous handful or two of butterscotch chips.  (Chocolate chips can be substituted, but I really like the buttery-candied flavor the butterscotch chips take on, and they go perfectly with the butter and maple syrup I use as toppings.)
• Extra butter for lubing the griddle.

Process:

1. Combine the dry ingredients:  pulse the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and sugar together with a few quick bursts in the food processor.  Alternately, you can just whisk them together, but the food processor will aerate the flour, much like sifting, which is good for texture. 
2. Combine the wet ingredients:  in a separate bowl, whisk the eggs until the whites and yolks are blended.  Whisk in the melted butter until combined.  Then whisk in the buttermilk. 
3. Combine the wet and dry ingredients (see note, below).  Whisk together until just combined, and no dry streaks remain.  Do NOT attempt to beat out every little lump, or you will over-mix.  
4. Let the batter rest, undisturbed, for five minutes.  Small bubbles should appear. 
5. Heat an electric griddle to 350 degrees.  (You can use a griddle pan on the stovetop, but electric griddles are cheap and awesome, such a snap to use and clean).  Water droplets should dance across when the surface is ready. 
6. Just before dishing out the batter, fold in the butterscotch chips (give them a quick, gentle stir until just mixed in.)  The reason for doing this last is that they will settle to the bottom of the batter bowl otherwise. 
7. Dish the batter onto the griddle surface.  I like to cook four at a time, forming batter pools about four inches across. Let them cook on the first side for approximately 3 minutes.  Bubbles will form across their surface, and the edges should start to look dry.  
8. Flip quickly and carefully with a large spatula, as the top surfaces will still be wet and could splatter.  Let the second side cook for approximately 2 minutes, until they release easily from the griddle surface.
9. Remove the first four, re-butter the grill, and dish out the next four.  Continue until no batter remains.  I generally get about twelve pancakes out of this recipe, or sixteen if I'm dishing each portion a little smaller.  Serve with butter and real maple syrup.  They are best when very fresh, so we usually start eating the first batch as the next one cooks (which admittedly, takes some juggling). 

Notes:

If you are a fan of Alton Brown, you will recognize this as the Muffin Method.  Alton says you should always add the combined wet ingredients into the combined dry ingredients, and not the other way around, because this reduces mess.  But I really don't think it makes any difference.  Especially if you started the dry ingredients in the food processor, and the wet ingredients in a bowl, it makes most sense to just dump the dry into the bowl with the wet, and whisk in there.

Alton also recommends buttering the griddle and then wiping the butter back out before applying batter.  I disagree with this completely - the butter adds golden flavor as well as a crispy exterior to the pancakes, which is also why I think the surface should be re-buttered before each batch.

One thing Alton is right about is that buying a kitchen scale is good for procedure.  It really is incredibly simple to measure out the ingredients by weight once you have one.  You just put the bowl on the scale, punch the "zero" or "tare" button, add the first ingredient until you hit the target weight, hit the zero button again, add the second thing, zero again, etc. Takes the stress out of measuring, and essentially eliminates measuring cups and spoons if you go whole-hog with it. 

I do recommend that you buy buttermilk for this recipe.  I used to be annoyed by the presence of buttermilk in recipes because it wasn't something that I tended to keep around, but then I discovered that you can buy it in very small amounts to reduce waste, or buy a whole half-gallon and it actually keeps for weeks so you can get tons of use out of it.  I like reduced-fat buttermilk better than fat-free or whole.  If you really don't have buttermilk but want pancakes anyway, use clabbered milk instead - measure out just slightly less than 2 cups of regular reduced-fat milk (or whatever you've got) and add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice - bottled is fine for this.  Let this sit for five minutes, and the milk will begin to curdle.  It looks scary, but it does the trick.  It will be slightly thinner and less tangy than real buttermilk, and the texture of your pancake may be somewhat less fluffy. 

This recipe, as with most baked goods, technically calls for unsalted butter.  But I've made this with salted butter and really didn't notice a difference in this application.  It's true that unsalted butter, when cooked, has a slightly "purer" flavor.  However I insist on salted for all table use, including topping these pancakes. 

Be It Ever So Humble

So, Monday was semi-officially a snow day here in Washington DC. The government was on liberal leave, schools were closed, and although I work neither for the government nor a school, I decided that I was going to take a snow day. Well, a semi-snow day, anyway. I got up, saw the drifted banks outside, checked my Blackberry and saw that practically my entire team was going to be working from home, and I thought, what the hell, me too. This is notwithstanding the fact that I live two easy blocks from the metro station. But anyway.

The way my bleary eyes saw it, I had three options at this moment. I could (a) go back to sleep, (b) fire up my computer, dial in to the office network, and get workin', or (c) make up a batch of fresh Cocoa Caramel Turtle Treats for no obvious reason. While I waited for my coffee to finish brewing, I went with (c).

Cocoa Caramel Turtle Treats (aka "The Crack Bars")
Adapted from Cook's Country

Despite the name, these are not actually treats for turtles. They are Rice Krispie bars made awesome with the addition of chocolate, caramel, and toasted pecans.

Ingredients:

• 3 tablespoons butter (although unsalted is standard in recipes, I use salted whenever possible because it's what I keep in my kitchen for eating)
• 1 full bag marshmallows (10.5 oz bag of the small ones are best - if you only have the big ones, cut them into pieces first to make melting easier)
• 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 teaspoon salt (but only if you used unsalted butter in the first place, like a dummy. Otherwise a mere additional pinch will do)
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 5 cups Cocoa Krispies
• 1 cup pecans or rough pecan pieces
  
• 15 Kraft classic caramels, cut into quarters - although you may want to leave a couple as halves for added chew. (Don't forget to take the wrappers off first, no matter how early in the morning it is.)
  

1. Put your pecan pieces on a small baking sheet and toast in a toaster oven for about five minutes. They should begin to smell deeply pecan-y, without smelling burn-y. If they're whole, chop them into nice craggy pieces.

2. Use some extra butter to grease up an 8x8 inch pan - glass, metal, ceramic, doesn't matter. Don't use butter spray here because this pan isn't getting cooked, so if you use spray it will sort of pool up. Do this before you start, because the process moves quick, and you'll need the pan before you know it.

3. In a large saucepan or pot, melt your 3 tablespoons of butter over medium-low heat. Once the butter is melted, dump in the marshmallows, the chocolate chips, and the salt. Stir constantly until all the marshmallows and chocolate have melted and formed a cohesive, evenly chocolate-colored mass. This will happen more quickly than you might expect, in a matter of minutes. Once it has all come together, add the vanilla and stir to incorporate.

4. Take the pan off the heat and dump in the Cocoa Krispies. Stir as deeply as you can, to coat all the cereal with the marshmallow mixture. After you've given it a few good stirs, add the toasted pecans and the caramel pieces. Continue to combine - I recommend a sturdy wooden spoon - until you have thoroughly incorporated everything. Depending on how hot your mixture still is, some of the smaller caramel pieces may begin to melt, too. (This is why it's nice to have a mix of small and large pieces - if the smaller ones melt, great, and you'll still have nice big chunks, too.)

5. Once your Treat mixture has come together, quickly turn it out into your buttered pan and smooth it into the corners. Then - and this is the hard part - let it cool completely! Then cut into squares and devour for breakfast, lunch, dessert, or all of the above.

Joining The Ranks

Does the world need yet another food blog? Well, I guess that depends on how much time you've got on your hands. Me, I have almost none. But I guess that's why I find it significant that every spare moment I do have, all I want to do is think about food.

I'm not a chef, I'm really only a novice cook, but I'm a pretty darn experienced eater. In a sense, of course, we all are, but I'm continually surprised to find that people around me consider me a "foodie." First of all, I find that word ridiculous - is someone who likes books a bookie? - but also, I never used to think that my obsession with food was anything unusual. Who doesn't like to eat? Isn't that like saying that you don't like to breathe? Or sleep? All of which are wonderful things?

Still, despite my trying to brush off the title, I can't help but notice that my co-workers and friends sometimes turn to me in restaurants to ask for an interpretation of phrases on the menu. I get asked for restaurant recommendations. Sometimes when I cook for people, I get asked for recipes. (My favorite thing to get asked for, of course, is seconds.)

The point of all this is not to say that I'm something truly unique or special. I don't think that I am. I have just come to realize that for a Washington DC-area professional whose career has nothing whatsoever to do with the kitchen, I ingest - and digest - not only an unusual quantity of food, but an unusual quantity of food knowledge. It really is my principal hobby, and to be honest, my singular obsession. And I want a place to talk about what I've learned, even if it's only to myself.

For those who care about source material, I do have a fairly extensive list of influences. I consider myself a student of multiple wonderful cooking teachers, none of whom, unfortunately, I have ever actually met - my dearest favorites being Alton Brown of The Food Network and Molly Wizenberg of Bon Appetit, also the author of the blog Orangette, which is clearly an inspiration (and I have linked it, above). I also love Dorie Greenspan, M.F.K. Fisher, Alice Waters, Gourmet, Michael Pollan, Cooking Light, Food & Wine, The New York Times on Wednesdays, Southern Living, Cook's Illustrated, Cook's Country, and any other publication by the fabulously fastidious Christopher Kimball... okay, this is getting embarassing. But the point is, I devour food writing, horrific pun intended. So to the extent that I can chime in, just a little - even if it is just to point out little tidbits of what these other luminaries have already made available, I think that this is worth my while.