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The weekend after I moved into my MASSIVE apartment in Chicago, Lollapalooza came to town. A weekend of lewdness and drunkenness and bawdy lascivious women and I decide to leave for the weekend. NICE HUH? Who makes these plans for me?!? I had this massive kitchen in which to cook and create... and here I was leaving.

Yes, YOU DO remember what my kitchen looked like right?

Seriously - it is THAT small. That is a real penny. Was my change from laundry. The laundry room is bigger then my kitchen.

Actually it is bigger then my apartment. But I still lurve it.

I decided after I got back from my weekend (which, I may add contained some debauchery, some bread, a few beers... did I mention debauchery?) that I wasn't going to let such a small kitchen scare me into a life of carry out. I could still cook and boil and maybe even saute' in my lil kitchen. Ooh and maybe even bake! Oh yea, this winter mah teeny little apartment is so going to smell like fresh baked bread and cookies and cupcakes all season long and it is so going to RULE! (But it won't ever smell like cranberry walnut bread. I'm just saying...)

However tonight, I craved a nice & healthy light dinner for myself. Something tasty and satisfying, and not to heavy. So over carryout from Jimmy Johns - I retro-fitted my lil kitchen, and chopped my way into Tabouleh heaven.

In case you were wondering, tabouleh is a bulgur and parsley salad, that is not only yummy, but rather healthy as well. It fills you up and is chock full of fiber and antioxidents - it was just what I needed after the two beers I enjoyed with my #12 unwich.

Here are your required ingredients:

2 bunches of fresh parsley (1 1/2 cup chopped, with stems discarded)
(Traditionally curly parsley is used here, however I prefer flat leaf Italian.)
2 tablespoons of fresh mint, chopped
1 medium onion, finely chopped
4 medium tomatoes, diced
1/3 cup bulgur
3 - 4 tablespoons lemon juice
3 - 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 t salt (to taste)
1/2 t pepper (to taste)
dash of cayenne (again... TO TASTE)
optional - left over cucumber (diced) from last nights peanut butter and cucumber pop tart swammich. (I so ROCK the eating for one adventure!)

First - soak the bulgur in cold water for 1 hour.

Drink a beer or 5 while waiting... then,

Chop the parsley:

(I propped my cutting board over my mini-stove top to make room for all the ingredients. It didn't quite work.)

Then chop the mint, the tomatoes, the onion, and you get where I am going here right? It is tabouleh - not bioengineering.

Toss all the chopped goodies with the drained bulgur. Top with the olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste. Then add the cayenne and stir to incorporate. You can serve it immediately with pita or leaves of romaine, but I like to chill it for at least an hour. Mmm yum!

My kitchen is Tabouleh friendly! Yay! Next up little kitchen - chateaubriond. Chateaubreoind? Chateaubriand!! Ah screw it. Chocolate Chip Cookies!...

Be afraid.

Did you miss me?

Wait... who am I even talking too?

Me: Hello?

Mr. Echo: Hello hello hello hello hellooooooooo...

Just as I suspected. Ghost town.

Not that I can blame you. I have been - well rather gone. Tho you should know I had good reason to be gone. Big changes happened for this bodacious girl - that even the MOST BODACIOUS of girls needs time to adjust to.

The most important being I am A CHICAGOAN again!!! insert applause

Second most important is I got my appetite back! insert more applause. It was getting almost impossible to write about ice water and potato chips. I mean there are only so many combo platters one can make with that. (13. There are 13 combo's you can make and no I am not going to reveal them.) The biggest bonus? I took applications for a baking buddy to help me back on the BBA track. The right candidate had a functioning Kitchen Aid, an amazing King Arthur flour supply, and a nice ass. Hey, a girl has to have her priorities.

Needless to say with the creation of this:

We are officially caught up. Ta da!

More news on the Chicago front. My blog features, layout, postings, etc... going to change. Things are different now, and not everything is relevant. Like grilling bread in the hot Arizona desert. Or What the hell am I going to do with all these damn lemons? No. They just don't work anymore. Look more for "Holy CRAP it's cold here in December!" and "How the hell does Heather cook anything in THIS???"

This. Is. My. Kitchen.

It has no dishwasher... Oh positive thoughts of joy and joyness...

Anyway, if you are still reading (insert cricket sound here) - watch for new fodder. More mid west gardening folly's, farmer's market pillages, keeping up and kicking back with the BBA and my oh so lucky assistant baker, and every other food related thing I can attend, enjoy, pursue, cook, create, dish out, raise or grow. And more... much much more...big changes. HUGEEEE! (No I don't know what yet... I have been drinking and it is 11:20 at night. Cut a girl a break huh?)

Okay. Thank you for indulging me and hopefully sticking around these past 45 days while I gallivanted across country to my new home.

You, my fellow readers reader, rock.

Yesterday I casually tweeted that I was making butter for the next bread in the Bread Bakers Apprentice Challenge - the brioche. I received a flurry of responses.

"Making butter like shaking the hell out of cream?"

"Making your own butter - how decadent".

"Do you have a butter mill?"

Ha ha no, I do not have a butter mill. I didn't grow up on a farm. One day years and years ago when I was a child, my dad was making fresh whipped cream for pumpkin pie. I asked him, how do you make cool whip from milk. He laughed and said "First off, this is cream you silly child and second, not only can you make the best and freshest whipped cream ever from it, you can also make butter." It was like he told me I could take over the world...

With the right butter, you can.

First we start with the right heavy cream. The best possible cream to use is non-ultra pasteurized, high butterfat content (36-40%), organic, and from pastured cows. Just pure cream.

Mmm cream...

For sake of this recipe we are starting with 2 cups cold cream. This will yield 1 cup of butter and 1 cup of buttermilk.



We are also using the ever faithful Kitchen Aid with whisk attachment.

Pour cream into your bowl and turn on your KA. A nice slow speed is good here, say a 2.



First the cream with thicken slightly. See how it coats the whisk?



Then it will become whipped cream...Or if you aren't paying attention like I was, broken whipped cream...



But it's OK! We're not making whipped cream. Our goal is butter. Put down the sugar and Kahlua and pay attention. Turn off your KA to avoid injury and scrape down the sides of the bowl.



Turn that Kitchen Aid back on and watch the magick happen...

Whoop there is is!



Now, let the buttermilk drain from the butter. And please for all that is sacred in this world. DO NOT just throw away the buttermilk. Make pancakes! Make biscuits! Chicken! Drink it! It's amazing...

Almost done, we still need to rinse the butter to remove any trace of buttermilk. I do a simple cold water bath while squeezing the butter. It will start out like this:



And when it is thoroughly rinsed, should look like this:



At this point you can wrap it in cheese cloth and squeeze out the excess water, or just allow it to strain off. I do the latter.

Now is the time you can add herbs or salt or sugar or honey or whatever to flavor your butter. I leave it as is mostly. But then again I make butter weekly... However, I do have a ton of different butter recipes to share. Soon. Or if you are DYING for one now, email or tweet me and I will set you up. I have so many yummmmy recipes...

Ahem, to finish. I take the butter and press it into a jar.



Press it down real good so that you push out any air pockets between the butter pieces or at the bottom of the jar. Top with cold water.



Store in the refrigerator for up to one week. Every time you need butter, simply pour off the water, take what you need and top with fresh, cold water before covering and returning to the refrigerator. This has the same effect as a butter bell.

That's it. Yep! It is THAT easy. You can even get some cool silicone ice trays and use them as individual butter molds. Wow your friends! Impress your family! Confuse your enemies!

With home made butter - you can take over the world.

Lousy? Hardly. Mmm bagels.

As you may have already read, my bagels were put on hold due to a little binge drinking friendly gathering. The rest of the BBA is already going into brioche week... or wait is it casatiello? Whatever, I am still slaving over bagels. But oh - they are my absolute favorite. So far. So much bread so little time. How can something that tastes so damn good be so bad for your belly. Who cares. I look forward to every little bit of it.

I, however, unlike most of my Bread Bakers Apprentice Challenge friends have learned to bake for 2. I halve most recipes. If I made 24 bagels I would try and eat each and every one. It would be ugly. Very very ugly. I cut the recipe right in half and lo and behold - I didn't have to hand knead. Hint Hint to my single bakers out there.

I baked a inept baker's dozen. (11 bagels) And I couldn't decide what kind to make so I made a slew of different ones. 2 sesame, 2 super seeded, 2 plain, 2 cinnamon sugared, 2 mozzarella and sun dried tomato, and one cheddar jalapeno for my baker friend in Indiana... but I ate it before I could send it. I think they may have over proofed or were to smart to retard in the fridge or something happened because once done, they were the size of my hand. I have big hands...



I of course enjoyed my favorite of the group, the sesame bagel, with some chive and onion cream cheese. The best thing about these bagels other then the taste was the texture. Because I am sure I did something wrong, I do not know if this was the desired effect, but the crusty outside was just that, chewy and crusty, especially after I toasted that big ole' bagel and sent myself into carb paradise mere minutes after they came out of the oven.

I do wish I took photos while I was doing the sponge and the kneading and the shaping and the retarding (which wasn't overnight... shhhh) and the boiling and the baking. But the chances of an ever so slightly hung over under the weather baker's apprentice wielding her camera while the Kitchen Aid whirled and flour kinda exploded out of the bowl and she ended up looking like she was being prepped to be dipped in beer batter - not so good. Not. So. Good. But they look good don't they? They don't look like the bagels of an abusive alcoholic mother.



I think not.

If you my readers reader would like to join me on this baking adventure, pick up The Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge by Peter Reinhart and get baking. Be prepared to wear more flour then you use...

Hello Tuesday.

You snuck up on me and I don’t quite appreciate it. Seems like just yesterday I was fixing my first bagel sponge. Minding my own business. Working and cooking. How I like to spend my day. Then Saturday came around and with her came Tequila Rose and my bagel sponge grew 10 times the size and started crawling across the counter top and damn I need to grill some brats for the Brat Showdown! Oh mah GAH who can eat a BRAT now? Maybe if the world would stop spinning so fast…

So while all my partners in brat crime followed the rules and posted on MONDAY (some even stretched and posted at like 10 pm on Monday… you know who you are… ) I was just DINING on my brats Monday by the time most were in bed. And mmm were they good.

When I first signed up for this brat showdown my mind started to race. How can I use brats in an original way? Something different. Special. Never done before.

Ooh! Now THIS has never been done before!
 
I’m sorry, but for those not in the know - I am a Chicago girl. One of my rights of passage other then a Maxwell Street Polish or an Italian Beef Sammich’ is a good ole beer brat, grilled to perfection. If I had some Gonella bread I would have been in heaven.

But I don’t because they don’t deliver to Arizona which annoys the crap out of me.

So instead of a bun, I made the next best thing. Potato and scallion pancakes. I went total Bavarian! You there - hand me my lederhosen and let’s forget about the tomatoes and duck confit! Scrap the idea of goat cheese and truffles. Someone pass me the horseradish!

Will admit, when I first proclaimed my menu for dinner it was welcomed with mixed emotions. And questions about what kind of syrup to use… Oh my food lovin’ head…

After the first bite however. All were hooked.


Simple and tasty.

Ingredients:

For the brats:
Package of brats.
One white onion sliced
Two bottles of beer.

Put brats in pan.

Top with onions

Pour in one bottle of beer.

Simmer till cooked, about 15 minutes. Remove from heat and pan.


For the Potato Pancakes:
2 large russet potatoes, peeled and grated coarsely.
3-4 scallions, trimmed and cut into quarters.
1 1/2 T flour
1 egg
1 t lemon juice
1 t parsley
Salt and pepper to taste

While the brats are simmering, crack open that other beer and coarsly grate those potatoes. Let them drain on a paper towel in a colander.

Add them to your food processor with the remaining ingredients and pulse a few times until the mixture is smooth and the scallions chopped.

Heat some oil in a skillet and pour out some of the potato batter onto it into little pancakes. Cook till browned, then flip. Come on now it’s not like you don’t know how to make pancakes - you can do that right? If you seem perplexed, have another beer.

While you are browning the pancakes - grill these brats so that the skin is nice and crispy.

Serve and eat quickly before anyone wants seconds.

You CAN remove the brats from the pan and add some butter to the onions and cook down and add some salt and pepper and serve with the brats which is a side of heaven, but because I was grating potatoes they reduced to onion charcoal. ICK.

Be sure to check out the rest of the brat lovin’ fools here! Be sure to tell them you think HEATHER won… heh heh.

Eric @ Eric Rivera Cooks
Paula @ Bell’ alimento
Jeff @ Culinary Disaster
Kristy @ The Wicked Noodle