Conner's Blog

So to sate your hunger for more Conner generated content, here’s a couple of photos of a pizza I made yesterday.

Spinach, onions, garlic, rainbow chard, mushrooms, homemade ricotta, and mozzarella cheese. It was pretty good, though the chard didn’t cook as well as I thought it would. Also, I discovered The Wedge carries their own pizza sauce, which is better than the canned stuff I had been buying, so that was a win.

I promise I’ll start writing again someday soon, I’m just really busy at work and bouncing around outside of work like a ball of flubber

As usual, I spent my weekend eating and drinking more that I should have. Friday night I went to Barrio and had a pretty good dinner, nothing that totally blew me away, but dang good food. Saturday, I tried Black Sheep pizza for the first time. I was really excited to try finally try their pizza.  I recommend a stop there if you are in the neighborhood, or even if you are not.

That evening, my friend Nicky hosted a sushi making dinner. We were taught by her friend Peter how to put together the rolls and then to roll them. We had some tuna, salmon, and sea bass.  All were really tasty and the rolls were excellent.

My friend Neely who broke her wrist a short time ago even managed to roll some sushi with one hand.

Sunday, I went to brunch at Red Stag Supper Club. I’ve gone there a few times for dinner, but this was the first time I had their brunch. It was excellent. I ordered one of their daily specials which was a crab cake, served with eggs and greens. It was fantastic. Unfortunately, I left my camera in my car and didn’t get a picture of it.

Finally, on Sunday night, Nicky once again hosted a dinner party, this time with our friend Erica. They made some amazing Asian dishes.

We were served bacon wrapped dates.

Spring rolls served with a lemongrass peanut sauce. Yumm

This soup was incredible, the broth may have been some of the best I have ever tried, and the salmon was to die for. We were served creme brulee for dessert, but I was too excited to eat it to take a photo of it.

Overall, it was a fantastic weekend of eating, I’ll hopefully be posting some photos of the Art Sled Rally and the Art Shanties later this week.

It’s been a while since I made a pizza at home. In fact, it’s been so long that I had to lookup the dough recipe. Tonight, I remedied this and whipped up a tasty pie. I made a change to my dough and used stone ground flour. It added a bit of depth to the crust and I think I’ll use it again.

I topped this pizza with an onion, garlic, salt, pepper, and Italian seasoning blend, a bunch of mushrooms, pineapple, and some whole milk mozzarella. I baked it and once done topped it with spinach. I wasn’t overly happy with how the spinach cooked up, but it was still better than baking the spinach on the pizza.

Looking at the photo it’s obvious I’m still getting used to my new lens.

What would be a good sauce for sweet potato fries? I’ve yet to find one that pairs “just right” with it. I know the answer won’t be Chipotle mayo . . . by emilysaysso

Definitely not chipotle mayo, and not chipotle ketchup either. Smokiness does nothing to enhance the fry.

The problem with this question is that sweet potato fries vary in quality so much. If you get a good batch, the sweetness comes through, but usually you get the fries that have been frozen and they lack a lot of that sweetness.

But that’s beside the point, we need a sauce that compliments the texture, the sweetness of the potato, and the saltiness (since anyone who doesn’t salt sweet potato fries is crazy). Ketchup doesn’t work because it’s already sweet, it works great for potato fries, but isn’t quite right for sweet potato fries. I think you need a savory sauce. Aioli has been done and it’s a just not right either.

Here is my idea, combine the tartness of the tomato from ketchup with the savory of an aioli. I think a sauce using sun dried tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, lemon, and cracked pepper. Blend that together and you might have something. It’ll be the consistency of a pesto so you may need to add it to mayonnaise to make it work.

Of course I could be completely nuts and it could be awful.

Let me start off by saying that I hate the concept of dieting. Diets can be good for some people, but usually only work for as long as they are on them. What you need to sustain your weight is a lifestyle change, and those are hard.

What does that have to do with me? Well I was doing really well at this time last year. I was the skinniest I had been since high school, felt great, was starting to move down to pants sizes I barely remembered. Then I moved into Minneapolis, my social life expanded, and I fell right off the exercise bandwagon. I didn’t notice it at first since I wasn’t weighing myself and I thought all the walking I was doing would keep the weight off. I was wrong.

This weekend I got on the scale for the first time in quite some time, and I was appalled. I weigh almost 20 pounds more than I did when I first moved to Minneapolis. Now, part of the problem is going out way to much, part is portion control, and a good part is a lack of exercise. These are all things I am aware of and can fix if I put my mind to it.

The problem is that I want to lose those 20 pounds at an accelerated (yet safe) rate. So I’m putting myself on a diet. First of all, I’m going to bring back the no-meat pact that I made in September, only instead of no meat for an entire month, I’m going to stop eating meat during the week.  This means that from noon Sunday (come on, you have to have bacon at brunch), until Friday at dinner time, I will not be eating meat. I’m going to start eating more beans, more dairy, and other alternative protein sources. Secondly, I’m going to avoid eating pasta for the entire month of February (an exception will be made for Mac N Cheese tour). This is going to be one of the toughest challenges for me.  I love spaghetti, ravioli, and every other type of pasta you can think of. It’s my go-to main course and I think that has to change. It just has too many carbs and I tend to eat way to much of it. Hopefully forcing myself to learn to cook alternative dinners will help me expand my cooking horizons and help me cut back on the amount of pasta I cook once February is over.

So I’m technically putting myself on a diet, but I consider it a short term solution with what I hope are long term implications. I think reducing my meat intake to 2-3 days per week will be huge, and of course broadening my cooking horizons will be a fun adventure. I intend on raiding the Minneapolis Central Library for cookbooks this weekend.

Finally, I have joined a gym, and my friend Nicky will be making me go until I start making it a habit. Of course I have been going three times per week without much effort since I joined two weeks ago. I even went to Cycle to the Movies on Saturday and biked for a hour and a half. This is the really important step because I don’t want to have to limit what I eat forever, and I know that once I get myself to where I want to be again, if I keep exercising and eat a reasonable diet I can keep it there.

I’m a bit excited today, I finally got my Christmas present, a new lens. It was delivered to me at work and I spent all afternoon trying to talk myself out of taking the day off and going out and playing. I had willpower and made it through the day. So I got home and what did I do, cooked and took photos of food of course.

I made creamed spinach for the first time, it went pretty well. Not perfectly, I had to improvise a bit at the end to get it to come together, but I’m happy with the results. Taking photos was also a breeze. I love this lens already, it’s a 35mm 1.8 prime and makes taking photos in the lighting of my apartment many times easier.

Recipe*

• Spinach
• Whole Milk
• Flour
• Lemon
• Sour Cream
• Butter
• Olive Oil
• Crushed red pepper
• Cajun seasoning of some sort
• Paprika
• Salt
• Pepper
• Garlic
• Onion

Heat the butter and oil in a frying pan, once hot add the garlic and onion and cook until the onion is translucent. Once ready, start adding the spinach. Cook in the oil until limp and dark green. Transfer to a cutting board and chop coarsly.

In a saucepan add the remaining oil and butter from the frying pain, add milk and then put the spinach in the saucepan. Cook until heated fully. In a seperate bowl add a bit of milk, sour cream, and flour and whisk until smooth. Add that mixture along with a squeeze or two of lemon and stir. Continue cooking until the sauce is thick. Serve as soon as possible.

*Recipe is a bit generous, I kind of suck at measuring so have no idea how much of anything I put into the spinach.

I was inspired today when I came across this site by The Opie which lists the 1,000 beers he drank in 2009. If you know me at all you know I’m a big beer drinker. I love drinking beer, trying new beers, and bathing in beer. Okay that last one is a little creepy and wrong, but still the point is I like a good cold beer after a long days work, or after a lazy morning of watching Youtube videos. So I’m starting my own project and have setup Daytum to keep track of my beer consumption this year. So far I’ve had seven beers this year. If you are interested, you can monitor the decline of my liver here*.

I’m tracking what beers I drink as well so it should be fun to see how many different types of beer I can try this year. I’m kind of excited about this.

*Someday Daytum will allow me to easily embed a panel showing my beer count on my site and not force me to send you elsewhere to see my consumption.

Tonight I attempted something I’ve never made before. Now this normally isn’t a big deal, I’m a big food experimenter and usually new events in the kitchen don’t worry me. This time though I was kind of nervous, I had a few people tell me how difficult it is and after reading a few posts around and about the Internet I wasn’t feeling quite 100% certain.

It turns out it wasn’t as difficult as it sounded. First off, baking your potatoes correctly is an important step. Make sure you pierce them almost all the way through multiple times and bake them at at least 400 degrees. This way you will get drier potatoes which is really important. I baked mine at 425 for about an hour. The came out almost the right texture.

Once you have them out of the oven you should immediately cut them in half and spoon the inner portion of the potato out. Using a ricer or a collander, rice the potatoes into a large bowl. I baked about 12 potatoes and added about 1 1/2 cups of flour to the riced potatoes.  The recipe I was using also called for about a teaspoon of nutmeg.  I didn’t really notice this when I was eating the gnocchi, but it didn’t hurt anything.

Mix all this up well in your bowl and then turn it out onto a work surface.  By this time they should be cooled down enough to handle. You basically want to knead the dough until everything is smooth and incorporated. I think I kneaded for about 5 minutes or so.  The dough should not be sticky.

To make the gnocchi you want to roll it out into 1/4 inch rolls and then cut the strips into 1/4 inch pieces.  Then you roll them against a fork to put a dimple on one side and tine marks on the other. This is time consuming and got a little frustrating, but it was worth it.

The important part is testing the gnocchi, you want to boil some water and then cook 2-3 pieces at a time to test the consistency.  I had to add a little more flour as they seemed a little too soft initially and you want them to be a bit chewy. This is where you can perfect the texture. You could also add some egg if you want to make it more wheat pasta like.

I cooked my gnocchi two ways. I boiled some of it, it takes about 2-3 minutes and should end up floating. Make sure you salt the water, it makes a big difference in the flavor. I also pan fried some and this was fantastic. Put a little olive oil in a fry pan, heat it over medium high heat and then throw the gnocchi into the oil.  Toss it until it’s browned. These turned out crispy on the outside and soft inside.  Quite tasty.

I served them with butter and a little parmesean and mozzarella cheese.  The boiled version could have used a sauce, but the pan fried were excellent. Even Ninja wanted some, she even put a napkin on to try and convince me to feed her.

Overall I call my first attempt at gnocchi a success.  Now if I can just get the pronunciation right.

I had a great discussion last night with Sarah and Amanda regarding many topics. From politics, and living without a car, to food we had lot of interesting talks. During the course of the discussion, we discussed the word “foodie”, and a person who used the word “eater” to discuss a certain set of people.

The word foodie is coming under fire.  I don’t disagree with these people, but I did use it recently and I defend myself by saying, “What other word should I use.” Then there is “eater,” this was kind of a dumb term because essentially all of us are eaters.

So I decided to define a few terms to use when discussing various forms of pickiness. We need some terms and definitions for talking about this stuff, and if no one else is going to take on the challenge, it may as well be me.

• Food Snob – Someone who turns their nose up at anything not made to their specifications. They wouldn’t dream of touching a sloppy joe, unless it was made with sliced Kobe beef, all organic tomatoes, and simmered for at least 25 hours.
• Picky Eater – Someone who is unwilling to try anything other than what they know, or refuses to eat a certain type of food for reasons other than health/allergies.
• Foodinie – I herby retire the word foodie and replace it with foodinie. These people go out of their way to try new things. They probably have a favorite class of food, such as street food or tapas. Very little is out of bounds. That being said they usually have a certain standard such as no nationwide chains, and may focus on things such as local and sustainable as much as possible.
• Eater – This term is dumb, we are all eaters as described above.
• Foodster – Nothing your mother would cook is good enough. Basic lasagna is boring and is only edible if made with homemade noodles, morels, tempe, and at least 40 types of local cheeses. Different from a foodinie because a foodinie just appreciates good food, whether simple and common or exotic and complex.
• Nosher – This group will eat anything and isn’t concerned with anything other than filling their stomach. They probably appreciate a good meal, but don’t enjoy it much more than they would a microwaved quesadilla.
• Locovore – Eats locally produced food as much as possible.

So what do you think? Any other definitions you would include. Are you satisfied with my definitions?

I made these for work yesterday to compete in a dessert bake off. They are adapted from the Joy of Cooking and turned out wonderfully. The bars themselves are very sweet and the addition of thyme just adds a hint of savory that lingers at the end of each bite.

Preheat oven to 325

Crust

• 2 cups of flour
• 1/2 cup of powdered sugar
• 1 1/2 sticks of cold butter
• Salt

Add the dry ingredients to a bowl and whisk together.  Cut the butter into the mixture and then using your hands combine the ingredients until you have balls about the size of pees.  Put the mixture in a 9×13 cake pan and press dough onto the bottom of the pan and about a 1/2 inch up the sides. Bake at 325 for 35 minutes or until crust is just starting to brown. Remove from oven and let cool on rack.

Filling

• 6 large eggs
• 2 cups of sugar
• juice from 5-6 lemons
• zest of one lemon
• 1/2 cup of flour
• thyme

Combine the eggs and sugar in a mixing bowl. Add the lemon juice and zest and mix well.  Sift flour over the top of mixture and combine.

I added the thyme at this point, I used dried thyme but I would recommend using fresh leaves. I think I put in about a tablespoon or so. I think you could get by with a little less if you used fresh.

Poor the mixture into the crust and then bake at 300 for 35-40 minutes until set. Let the bars cool completely before serving or covering.

If you give these a try let me know how they turned out and what you thought.