I love a good kitchen hack, and when it’s suggested by none other than Alton Brown, I can’t resist.
When I saw him make watermelon juice without first peeling and dicing the watermelon, I was riveted. We tried it at the cottage last weekend and it totally works. It’s also so much fun. We mixed the watermelon juice with vodka and lime juice and topped it up with some sparkling water.
You can of course cut up watermelon and puree it in the blender. Either way you choose to do it, I suggest pouring the juice through a sieve to remove the lumpy bits. You want a smooth juice.
This week I tinkered with the recipe we created on the weekend. Our watermelon wasn’t that sweet, so I made a simple syrup. I decided to flavour the syrup with basil, since watermelon and basil are a really delicious flavour pairing. The basil takes this cocktail from good to great.
This would be the perfect cocktail to celebrate Canada Day or the 4th of July!
My youngest sister is a kindergarten teacher. I tell you this because it will help to explain the sentence that comes next. For my mom’s 82nd birthday, she organized a sleepover party. Mom’s 6 children, assorted spouses, and 14 grandchildren were all invited over to mom’s for the night, complete with pajamas and sleeping bags.Such a momentous occasion called for an epic party snack. I knew immediately what I wanted to bring ….Chicago popcorn. In case you’ve never heard of it, Chicago popcorn is a mix of caramel corn and cheddar cheese popcorn.That sweet-salt combo is delicious and highly addictive.
I started with the cheddar popcorn first. Most of the recipes I found online called for a mixture of cheddar cheese powder, dried mustard and a pinch of cayenne. Melted butter was the instrument of choice for getting all that powder to stick. In the midst of all these similar recipes, there was one that stood out like a beacon, calling to me. It was the headline of this one that got my attention. “Alton’s convinced he’s “cracked the code” on the cheesy dust found on Cheetos.”
Cheetos are my guilty pleasure. But not all Cheetos are created equal. Alton Brown put it much more eloquently than I ever could, “The best flavor on earth is that of crunchy Cheetos. Not the regular ones. They’re crap. Just the crunchies.”
If Alton Brown could recreate that flavour to put on popcorn, I needed to learn the secret. The first ingredient is the requisite cheddar cheese powder, which you can buy at Bulk Barn, or online, or just rip open a bag of the powder that comes in the box of KD. In addition, Alton includes buttermilk powder, nutritional yeast and Kraft parmesan cheese (that stuff in the green can). Those last 2 ingredients are real umami bombs.For the caramel corn, I started out with my favourite caramel corn recipe (minus the nuts). When I tasted it with the cheddar popcorn, the texture was all wrong. It was way too hard. I did a quick online search and learned from Sally, that a tiny bit of baking soda added at the end of the cooking process will cause the mixture to foam up. This foam contains thousands of carbon dioxide bubbles. Once the caramel is poured over the popcorn and cooled, the trapped air bubbles create a softer texture. So you won’t break a tooth.
I can not imagine anything more lovely than being presented with a box of these dark salty caramels from your valentine. They are unbelievably deep, dark and delicious, hovering ever so closely to the edge of bitter but narrowly escaping, thanks to the judicious addition of salt. These are adult caramels, for grown ups with a mature palate that no longer desires cloying sweets.
We have Alton Brown (and my sister Bonnie) to thank for this genius recipe. Reading through the ingredient list I did a double take when I came to the 6th ingredient…soy sauce! Soy sauce brings the funk to these caramels. It adds to the deep dark colour and provides a salty element as well as contributing umami, that savoury flavour that makes your mouth water.
If you are a fly by the seat of your pants baker, the kind who likes to bake free form, without any recipes or directions, and you know who you are, then this recipe is not for you.
If you are faint of heart and don’t like danger or risk taking, then this recipe is not for you either.
Making these caramels requires precision and nerves of steel. You need to stand over that pot and watch the candy thermometer. When it looks like the caramel is very dark and you are convinced it is going to burn any second now, do not remove it from the heat until the temperature registers 350°F. Have faith that Alton Brown knows what he is talking about. He is wise. If you remove the caramel too soon, you will end up with your grandma’s insipid blah caramels. If you are patient, you will be rewarded with caramels that have a depth and complexity of flavour that you have never experienced before.
That being said, please do not bypass the first step of the recipe where I instruct you to test your candy thermometer. Candy thermometers are not infallible.This molten caramel is VERY hot so wear oven mitts and resist the urge to lick the pot. It will take a good 3-4 hours to cool to room temperature so again, patience is required. After 3 hours I refrigerated them so they would firm up even more, making it much easier to get nice clean square cuts with a very sharp knife. I found this pretty little box at Target last week. It is part of the Nate Berkus Collection and is intended to be used as a jewellery box. I tarted it up with some pretty ribbon and turned it into a bon bon box.For storing the caramels, it is best to wrap each one individually in parchment paper.
This morning I had the opportunity to bike the countryside of the Emerald Isle (Ireland). The lush pastoral landscape offered endless hills in 40 shades of green. The climbs were steep, with very little opportunity for cruising. My heart rate went into the red-line zone (gasping for air and unable to speak a coherent word) and I was dripping in sweat.
Sadly, this was just a virtual tour of the Irish countryside. Our instructor at today’s spin class, the very funny Roger, has quite the active imagination. He took us for a ride in the stunning Irish countryside and promised us that if we pedaled hard, there would be a pub at the end of the ride with a cold pint waiting as our reward. About halfway through the ride Roger sang out, “put your arms up in the air”. I raised both arms and gave him fist pumps. My husband and daughter looked the other way and pretended they did not know me. Apparently instructors always yell out these instructions, but no one ever follows them. Oops!
Roger kept talking about a bonus track. I had no clue what he was referring to until 45 minutes into the class, when we normally begin the cool down, he told us to ratchet up the tension on our bikes for one final hill. This was a special 60 minute class. Lucky me! I survived. Sadly there was no pub at the end of the ride. Just the dregs of my now lukewarm water bottle.
Annoyed that I didn’t get my visit to the pub, I decided that I deserved a treat when I got home. Hot chocolate and marshmallows seemed like the perfect way to cap off my morning.
To be honest, growing up, I was never really a marshmallow fan. At overnight camp I would stick my marshmallow into the camp fire and set it on fire. I would remove it, blow it out and eat the carcinogenic burned crispy part and throw the fluffy inside away. I never did have the patience for toasting them golden brown. Yet another quality I admire in my husband. He will wait until the fire has burned down to low embers and hold his marshmallow just at the right height to obtain that perfect burnished bronzed colour.
I only recently began a love affair with marshmallows several years ago, after a lunch at Jean Georges in New York City. The meal was delicious but my favourite memory of that lunch was the Bon Bon trolley that they wheeled to our table at the end of our lunch. As the waiter approached our table with the trolley he opened a huge glass jar filled with handmade pink marshmallows and lifted one out with tongs. Then he proceeded to cut each one in half with very fancy silver scissors. I inquired whether marshmallow cutting was a position you had to be promoted to. He responded that it was an entry-level job. I am still thinking about applying! Just in case you are wondering, the Bon Bon trolley also held cotton candy, salted caramels and assorted chocolates. It was a pretty special day for me! Ever since that day I have wanted to try my hand at making my own marshmallows.
I knew that making marshmallows requires precision and a candy thermometer. I turned to my favourite culinary scientist for the how to, Alton Brown. Gelatin and ice-cold water are placed in the bowl of the stand mixer. Then sugar, water, corn syrup and salt are placed in a heavy bottom pot and brought up to 240° F. The mixture should then be allowed to cool to 210° F and then poured into the stand mixer bowl while it is mixing on low-speed.
Then you turn the machine up to high-speed and mix for 12-15 minutes until the mixture cools to lukewarm. In the last minute of mixing you can add any flavourings you like. I added some vanilla bean paste. While it is mixing, prepare a 9 x 13 inch pan by spraying it with Pam and then coating it with a mixture of cornstarch and icing sugar. Then tip the goo into the pan and spread it out with an oiled spatula. This is a very gooey mixture. Dust the top with more cornstarch and icing sugar and put it aside to set for at least 4 hours or overnight. Resist the urge to lay your head down on this pillowy softness. It will not end well.
I topped half of my mixture with some toasted coconut.
A serrated knife does an excellent job cutting the marshmallows, once they have set up. You will have to wash the knife off fairly often while cutting.
Now, onto the hot chocolate:
When my kids were little the only way I could get them to go outside to play in the winter was to bribe them with hot chocolate when they came back in.
They would indulge me and play for about 20 minutes and then come inside on the pretext of having to go to the bathroom. After helping them struggle out of their snowsuits we were all sweating and no one was anxious for the dance that required getting back into all those layers. And then it was time for hot chocolate.
I will admit that I resorted to a packaged hot chocolate mix. Truthfully, the kids didn’t even like the hot chocolate either. It was really all about the marshmallows. They would scarf down the marshmallows I let them heap in the hot chocolate and I would end up pouring the hot chocolate down the drain.
At the time, it never occurred to me that you could make your own hot chocolate mix. But you can, and it’s spectacular! This recipe, from the folks at Cook’s Illustrated, makes enough powdered mix for about 20 cups of hot chocolate. It can be stored in the cupboard for about three months, so when the craving for a cup hits you, simply stir 1/3 cup of the mix into some hot milk!
The uniqueness of this mix is that it contains two kinds of chocolate. The first, of course, is cocoa powder. There are two types of cocoa powder, natural and dutched, (also known as Dutch processed). For this recipe you want to seek out the Dutch processed kind. Camino makes an excellent dutched process cocoa powder that is available in the organic section of the supermarket.
Dutched cocoa powder has gone through an alkalizing process, which gives it a darker color and makes it less acidic. The result is a richer, more intense chocolate flavor and a nice deep chocolate color. You will sometimes see Dutched cocoa powder called for in recipes for beverages or desserts that aren’t baked since the flavor is less bitter than regular cocoa powder.
The mix also contains white chocolate, which gives the final drink a soft creamy texture.
The final ingredients in the mix include skim milk powder, which adds a sweet dairy flavour, confectioners’ sugar, which dissolves more easily than regular granulated sugar and cornstarch, which is added to the powdered sugar to help thicken the cocoa. All the ingredients get pulverized in the food processor.
I love a good kitchen hack, and when it’s suggested by none other than Alton Brown, I can’t resist.
