Goth Panda

While we were in Wilmington, NC, we went to a nice little breakfast/lunch/brunch place in the downtown area. I don’t remember the name of the restaurant, but I do remember that I ordered migas. This was the first time I had ever had them, and I fell in love.

Migas are Mexican scrambled eggs with corn tortillas and vegetables. I pulled together some recipes off the internet and combined them to get my final version; these are probably closest to the Pioneer Woman’s recipe, but I did make a few changes. They are super easy to make and I think that after last night, they might be a new addition to my usual rotation of weeknight suppers.

So, migas! Here we go. First you chop.

This here represents half an onion, half a red bell pepper, and half a poblano.

I also chopped a Roma tomato, but kept it separate since you add it later.

Here’s half a cup of shredded cheddar and a Mexican four-cheese mix, combined. I am using up leftovers here, which is technically what migas are all about.

And here are some baked Tostitos. You can fry your own corn tortillas, and that probably tastes even better, but I didn’t have any. I broke these up, but I think they should have been maybe a little smaller.

Once I had everything chopped, I whisked together four eggs, a splash of half and half, some salt (not too much since the chips are salted) and pepper. Then I melted two tablespoons of butter into a nice big pan and added the peppers and onions. After they cooked over medium heat for about four minutes, I threw in the tomatoes for a minute or two.

Then I turned down the heat to low and added the egg mixture. When the eggs started to set, I added half of the cheese and the tortilla chips. I think it is essential here to add the chips before the eggs cook, so they can get soggy and fall apart in the egg batter, suffusing the end result with an awesome corn tortilla taste.

Then when the eggs were almost done, I added the rest of the cheese.

I served them with some black beans, sour cream, and salsa. I also made a slice of toast, because I usually eat eggs with toast, but I don’t think it was really necessary for this dish.

My scaled-down recipe was still almost too much for the two of us; in the future, I might use only three eggs. I also might omit the poblano. Most recipes call for jalapeno, but Mike’s not a fan. The poblano was a compromise and I don’t think it added much. I also think you could use less butter, if you were inclined. But for a dish I barely knew existed two weeks ago, migas are excellent, quick, and yummy.

Every couple of months, I amass enough Membership Rewards points from American Express to redeem them for the only thing I ever want: gift cards for Williams-Sonoma. Sometimes I know exactly what I want to get with these gift cards, and sometimes it takes me a little while to decide.

This time, I didn’t have any idea when I redeemed the points, but by the time the card arrived, I had made up my mind. I wanted a Cuisinart 1.5 quart ice cream maker, with extra freezer bowl, no less. The weather here had started to remind me that summer was on the way. I figured this was the perfect time to get one.

I have never made ice cream before, so I ordered a few cookbooks, including David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop. I tried to narrow down the choices for my first batch. I didn’t have any vanilla bean, so the classic vanilla was out. I was drawn to mint, chocolate mint, and coconut, which I thought Mike might like. But in the end, I went with peanut butter, which is not only one of my favorite flavors, but also was done “Philadelphia-style,” meaning with no egg custard, just cream. I thought that was not only appropriate, but the easier option.

Ice cream making requires some advance planning. You have to put the canister in the freezer for at least 24 hours, and you need to make the…batter? Can you call it a custard if there is no eggs? The stuff that will become your ice cream a day in advance as well, to give it time to chill in the refrigerator.

So on Saturday, I put my canister in the freezer. On Sunday, while the Artos was rising, I blended together some ingredients. Here’s 180 grams of smooth peanut butter.

And 180 grams of sugar. I knew this was going to be good when there were equal amounts of peanut butter and sugar.

Added 2 and 2/3 cups of half and half.

The recipe says to add a “pinch of salt.” I have already gone over how I need exact recipes to cook from or else I start to hyperventilate, right? Well, here is another piece of proof:

That’s right. I have a spoon to measure out pinches. I do not trust myself enough to pinch properly. Nicole at Pinch My Salt (our BBA Challenge leader) would probably be disappointed in me.

I also added 1/8 of a teaspoon of vanilla extract. I have Tahitian vanilla extract from Trader Joes.

Are Tahitian vanilla beans better than other kinds of vanilla beans? I don’t know.

Then I blended it in my blender. Interestingly enough, my blender will only work on one of the outlets in my kitchen. I don’t know why this is so. I do know that it means my blender was sitting on the floor.

So I put this concoction into my refrigerator to chill overnight. All next day at work I think about how I am going to come home and churn my ice cream up. I get home and immediately set everything up to churn. And, as those of you who are following my Twitter or Facebook status know, it was a huge failure. I churned for 30 minutes, and it looked exactly the same.

I had frozen and chilled everything that needed to be frozen and chilled. So what went wrong? I thought it might be the temperature of my freezer was not low enough. I turned down the thermostat and moved my thermometer into the freezer from my refrigerator. I put the other bowl into the freezer, the “custard” back into the fridge, and figured I would try again.

Today I got home from work and checked the freezer. My thermometer said that it was a nice -10 degrees in there. So I set everything up again, and with no small amount of trepidation, started to churn. Within five minutes I started to see crystals form. By 20 minutes, there was real ice cream in my bowl. And after 30 minutes, I had this:

People, this is really, really good stuff.

I might have licked this beater. Oh, who am I kidding? I TOTALLY licked this beater.

My spirits were only slightly dampened when I sat down to figure out the calorie content. I forgot that adding peanut butter is adding an ingredient that is higher in calories than either the cream or the sugar by themselves. It seems that I will be eating this ice cream in 1/4 cup servings. But it really is worth it.

Mike has a few very favorite things in the food world, and one of them is crepes. We went to Montreal a couple of years ago, and I think we subsisted the entire time on crepes in one form or another. Savory crepes for an entree. Sweet crepes for dessert. You get the picture.

I was a little nervous about trying to make them, though. Mike’ mom gave us an awesome crepe-making appliance, which might have helped my nervousness. But I think it is the attic, which is where a lot of my kitchen equipment ended up after moving. Because I have a lot of kitchen equipment. And not a large kitchen.

[Somehow I am still buying more. Whenever I come home with something new, Mike asks, "Where are you going to put that?"]

So if I want to make crepes without climbing up a ladder, it is going to be just me and the pan.

I turned to my King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion for a recipe, called “Parisian Street Vendor Crepes.” This is a lofty goal of a title. I would be happy with “Crepes That Don’t Completely Suck.”

I melted some butter in the microwave, so it would be cooled by the time I needed to add it. Then I whisked together some flour and salt and made a nice well in the middle.

Then I beat some eggs and milk with my whisk.

The recipe says you should add about half of the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients.

It was about here that I started to suspect that a whisk was not the right choice of tool, since clumps of flour started getting caught in my whisk.

I added the rest of the wet ingredients, and it evened out in the end. Then I stirred in the melted butter.

I covered it with plastic wrap and let it sit for an hour. This was the easy part. The part I was afraid of involved the pan and the flipping. Surprisingly, it wasn’t that hard. It was pretty easy to tell when the crepe was ready, and not too difficult to flip them. The hardest part was getting the batter to swirl and fully cover the pan before it cooked. I don’t think any of mine were a nice, proper, circular shape.

Since I didn’t have any savory fillings prepared, I figured Mike would probably just have his with butter and maple syrup. I had another idea.

I added just a little Nutella to my crepes.

Okay, a lot of Nutella.

This experiment encourages me to try more new things. Maybe soon I will face my fear of omelets.

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Anadama Update:

I have been eating it toasted with veggie cream cheese. Mike has been eating it with peanut butter, lentil soup, and wrapped around vegetarian hot dogs.

This was the other recipe I attempted this weekend that I have labeled a semi-fail. It was not a complete failure, since it tasted good and we ended up eating it, but it did not turn out how I expected. I know ciabatta is not the tallest bread in the world, but this came out very thin, like a flatbread. I am not sure if I messed up somehow, or if that is how this recipe is supposed to work. Let’s look at the evidence.

The recipe is called “The Very Lightest Ciabatta,” from the King Arthur Flour website.

I made a sponge. It got all nice and bubbly, like a good sponge should.

Mixed up some yeast, flour, salt, and sugar:

Added some dry milk:

Why, hello, macro lens.

Added water:

And oil:

And my bubbly sponge:

Kneaded it up for a full eight minutes with my trusty Kitchen Aid, after which it looked like this:

Then I let it rise for one and a half hours.

Now this next part may have been a problem. You have to pour out the very liquidy dough, divide it into two pieces, and put it on a cookie sheet. So far so good. I used an oiled quarter sheet pan as my “work surface,” dumping the dough into it to divide:

I divided it with my bench knife, which I initially forgot to oil. Please don’t make this same mistake.

Then I scooped up each piece with hand and the bench knife, and laid it out on the cookie sheet. This was not the easiest thing in the world to do. Then you are supposed to let them rise covered in oiled plastic. Well, I did this, but I did not like how the plastic kept sticking to the dough, even though I had oiled both plastic AND dough. I wonder if this kept it from rising enough.

They did get puffier, but they expanded more outward than up. Is this normal ciabatta behavior?

I poked it and let it rise again, covered (despite my misgivings). I had to separate the loaves again with the bench scraper when they were ready to bake:

When I took it out of the oven, it looked like this:

It tasted good, but it looked like the flatbread you get at Cosi.

I might need to try another recipe. I think there is a recipe for Ciabatta in Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, which will give me the chance, since OHMYGOD I have signed up to bake the whole book as part of a Twitter foodblogger challenge and what in the world was I thinking? Especially since my last two breads have turned out so badly? I hereby reserve the role of dark horse.

So I had two baking projects this weekend. One was not exactly a fail, but not exactly a win, either. The other one, however, is always a crowd-pleaser. At least at my house. Where the crowd consists of Mike.

Banana bread! This recipe comes from the King Arthur Flour Baking Companion, but apparently isn’t posted on their website.

It goes like this (as I remember, possibly incorrectly):

Take two eggs.

Mix with a cup of sugar and two teaspoons vanilla. Here’s the sugar anyway. You might have noticed on the other photos, but I got a new macro lens last week.

And mix these together. Then take between 7 and 9 ounces of very, ultra, super-ripe bananas.

These are some sad-looking bananas. I also froze them, and that didn’t help their looks.

Mash them up with a potato masher and add them to your mixer bowl.

In another bowl, mix together a teaspoon each of baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon, and half a teaspoon of nutmeg.

Add flour (11 3/8 oz.) and whisk to combine.

Then! Sift!

This was the first time I used my new sifter. I lost my old sifter, and then I bought a replacement sifter that broke on the VERY FIRST TRY. Then I ordered this one from KAF.

It worked well, but I think I prefer the fluffy piles that result from just using my fine-mesh strainer as a sifter. The downside is that is so messy. This is at least nicely contained.

Add these dry ingredients to your mixer bowl and mix some more.

Then add a cup of buttermilk, yogurt, or sour cream (I used buttermilk because I always have buttermilk and I am always looking for something to use it in).

Next you add your super-secret special ingredient. It can be chocolate chips, or whatever else you think might work. I added half a cup of coconut, because Mike is also a coconut fiend.

Then there was something about a greased and floured pan, which I read as, “Spray with Baker’s Joy.”

Scrape it into the pan. I topped it with some sugar sparkles.

Then you bake it for at least an hour at 350. I think mine actually needed to be baked for fifteen minutes more to be done on the inside, using my foolproof skewer testing method.

Then you let it cool on a cooling rack. If you are me, you come back to find pieces missing already.

More macro shots: