Caramel and Chocolate Peanut Brittle Bars with Fleur de Sel

As the lack of updates may have made clear, the end of the semester has shown its ugly head. Writing, reading, presenting and lecturing has been as draining and time consuming as it has been rewarding. With PhD schools on the mind, a research trip to Europe which has yet to be planned, (but is less than three weeks away!?) time for anything else has been sparse indeed. Excuses aside though, spring appears to have finally sprung (fingers crossed!) and this needs to be celebrated! Now how do we celebrate spring? Well we do it by eating decadent delights (duh)! Why might you ask? Well first of all, for everyone weight conscious, we all know that as summer approaches we begin obsessing a bit more about our looks, the infamous concept of the "beach body" emerges on our radar and makes most people (though they may loathe to admit it) shift uncomfortably in their skins.  Early Spring is the last part of the year where the idea of even wearing a bathing suit seems like a vague and remote speck on the horizon. On a less superficial note though? This recipe is heavy on the caramel and caramel, done right, means slaving over a hot stove, not exactly ideal for summer. In a badly influenced budget apartment in winter/late spring however? Heat is ALWAYS appreciated.

Oh...reading this, were you looking for a reason to make these? Really? Seriously now? You need me to provide a reason for you to make salted caramel squares with chocolate? Are you unwell? Ill? Broken? No? Then spoon to hand folks, get that oven fired up and lets get to work!

P.s. Apologies for the lack of step by step pictures this time, this was rush job! The recipe is rather straightforward though! The caramel is the only complicated part and David Lebowitz has a wonderful illustrated recipe for caramel on his website here which inspired my caramel!
should you want to take a look at it
Preheat Oven to 350

Ingredients:

For The crust:

3/4 cup butter (melted)

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1 cup wholewheat flour

1 cup oats

2 tsp baking soda

Pour melted butter in, bake 10 min

For the Caramel:

1/4 c. butter

1/2c. cream 15%

1 c sugar

1tsp vanilla extract

For the topping:

1/2c. semi-sweet of dark chocolate chunks (I used chips but only because I was strapped for time, chunks are mucho sexier)

 1/2c. Salted peanuts

A few generous pinches of fleur de sel

1) Melt butter, assemble dry ingredients for crust, once the butter is melted combine it all

2) Form crust in an 8x8 pan, bake at 350 for 10 minutes

3) While the crust is baking, measure out your toppings and set aside 

4) Pour the sugar and vanilla extract for the caramel into a pan or pot, make sure that your receptacle is quite large as the caramel will foam later on. Cook on medium heat, cooking constantly until fully melted.

5) While the sugar is melting down, heat the butter and cream on low heat until well-warmed and butter is melted, turn on heat, set by until ready.

6) Remove crust from oven, once the sugar on the stove has turned a nice deep brown, add the cream/butter mixture while mixing, if you have someone around, don't hesitate to have them pour the cream mixture in while you stir as you need to stir fast

7) Once the mixture has formed a smooth caramel, pour immediately onto the finished crust. 

8)While the caramel is still liquidy, pour chocolate and peanuts evenly over the surface and dust with fleur de sel, let cool until set (or eat it all gooey and liquidy, it'll be gross looking but oh so delicious!).

Rosemary Lemon Chicken with Roasted Garlic Coulis

Crazy blizzard means a hot meal, or at least that's how I decide when to cook a roast! While at the moment, it's lamb that's on the menu for supper, no photos have been taken, no recipes have been written and I have no idea what it will taste like, it's experimental. So for lamb, looks like you'll just have to wait! Now now, I'm not going to leave you with a lamb shaped void in your soul, I'll just have to placate you with a recipe for the lovely roast chicken I made during our last snow storm! Ok, ok I know, chicken ain't no lamb. Even more than that, I know that a lot of people aren't too keen on roast chicken, I can assure you that I wasn't for the longest time! I used to think of roast chicken as bland, mostly dry and cardboard-like, served with a greasy, tasteless gravy, next to some less than appetizing potatoes, hardly something that evoked anything nearing culinary fantasy and certainly not something that got the saliva flowing. What changed? I had the chance of partaking in a few chicken dinners where lo' and behold, I realized that chicken didn't have to be dry, even moreso, they could taste...good or even...great!

So golly gee, my perceptions changed. Naturally, because I couldn't rely on other people as my only source of tasty chicken, I then spent a while pondering what to do with chicken to make it not ok, not good but even...dare I say it? Great! I hmmmm'd, I hawwww'd, flipped through some recipes and finding nothing satisfactory,decided to hatch up my own (see what I did there? Hatch? Hahahaha-...ok, ok that was bad, I'm tired ok?). Enter my Rosemary Lemon Chicken with Roasted Garlic Coulis, a kind of composite chicken recipe inspired by a multitude of different approaches to cooking our feathery friends (Mind you, I feel that this friendship might be a tad one-sided hmmm?). First up, I figured out a roast chicken recipe but I had a problem, I couldn't just give you a nice tasty chicken with some plain watery/greasy gravy, that's too...well...boring. Also, we had all that lovely lemony rosemary flavour, but what to do with it? The solution came out of the fact that I've been immersed in studying (and studying, and studying) French cooking for my MA and as we all know, the French do love their sauces, so eureka! Roast Garlic+Gravy= Garlic coulis. Anyway, fast forward to actual mealtime where I was almost trembling with anticipation (was it actually gonna be good!? How would people like it?) and the moment of truth came, as testified to by its picked clean carcass, the meal was a success!

In sum, this recipe is dedicated to those who have fed me good chicken (and made me see the light), to those who aren't afraid to experiment, to the chicken we ate (bless its little soul), and of course...to those who even now are looking at this recipe and saying "good chicken eh? No such thing!"...well you know what naysayers? Try me.

Ps. Did I mention that this recipe is a fast and simple? Well it is, there, I said it. Now whatcha waiting for!?


 Rosemary Lemon Chicken with Roasted Garlic Coulis 
 Served on a bed of delicious veg!

Preheat Oven to 450 Fahrenheit

For the bed of veggies:

-1 Bulb of Garlic (Yes, the whole thing and don't worry about peeling it)

-4 small courgettes (zucchini, whatever you want to call it)

-4 small yellow onions (or two big ones)

-3-4 carrots

-whatever miscellaneous veggies you might like(I added radishes for one)

 For the chicken's cavity, you and Mr. Chicken are about to get really intimate, as my new roomie Tyson discovered rather quickly (Hey, someone had to take the photos, also Ty has nice hands as you'll see later):

-1-2 lemons (depending on size)

-2 sprigs rosemary

-2 sprigs oregano

For dusting:

-~2 tsp. paprika

-~1tsp Goya adobo seasoning (found in most South American grocery stores/"ethnic" sections of supermarkets)

-Salt/Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Cleave the bulb of garlic in half horizontally and chop the veggies into bite-sized chunks roughly the same size, strew them in a roasting pan/large dish.

Douse liberally with olive oil (certainly the garlic!)

Grind up pepper and salt, mix  with adobo and paprika. Don't have adobo? Up the salt and throw on some garlic powder, a bit of thyme, maybe some oregano, that'll be good too!

Carefully wash lemons (with soap) and cut in half, puncture the lemon a few times in the side to let the juice out

Pick and clean your fresh herbs (or you know...take them out of their package)

Dump the chicken onto the veg and drizzle some olive oil on top, squeeze a bit of lemon juice over it and dust liberally with your spice/salt/pepper mix

Get intimate with Mr. Chicken (ie stuff the cavity with lemons and herbs, still have space? Throw in some of your onion too)

Kindly introduce Mr. Chicken to your oven

Rescue Mr. Chicken from the oven and take his temperature (if you have a meat thermometer), otherwise an hour to an hour and a half of roasting should do the trick!

Sauce time! Sorry didn't take any photos of the process. Remove the garlic and onions from the bed of veg, cover the chicken temporarily with the lid for a large pot, of if you have one of those butler bells (swanky!) use that.

Squeeze the roasted garlic from the peel, by now it should be approaching caramel brown and should slide right out of the peel. Pour the chicken drippings into a measuring cup and siphon off whatever fat you wish to remove.

Blend the roasted garlic and drippings in a blender, add onions until it reaches your desired consistency (thick, rich, creamy is the aim), taste and season accordingly.

Plate your chicken with a trickle of sauce on it, some veg and preferable some pickled beets and bread "stuffing" (quotation marks because it never made it inside the chicken) and voila! Dinner is served.

Hemingway's Hamburger

There comes a time in every cook's life where a recipe surfaces that is at once alluring and slightly revolting, for me, this was the case with Hemingway's hamburger recipe. On the one side, who doesn't like a good burger? Although I'm not the world's biggest fan of ground beef, anything with Hemingway's name attached to it is bound to be good. I mean, down to the basics, Hemingway was a man of great appetites! From delicious food to his more famous love of equally delicious alcohol, Hemingway was a first rate gourmet. This is confirmed by Hemingway's grocery orders for his estate in Cuba, part of a recent new discovery released by the Cuban government to the US. His grocery list, which featured lobster bisque, pheasant, sturgeon and guinea hen among other mouthwatering delicacies goes a long way to establishing the writer's food credentials. Snazzy food aside though, what better way to reflect someone's great tastes then a peek at the mundane? Hemingway's penchant for the best is reflected in this not so humble burger, featuring wine, capers and india relish this patty will happily take your tastebuds for a ride!

So ok ok ok all this good stuff, "But Nick! What was that about something revolting!?", well... there is an issue with Hemingway's burger. This recipe, which was researched by author Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan and published by the Paris Review has provided us with a bit of a conundrum. While she has yielded a delicious burger recipe, she also revealed a dirty little secret contained in this otherwise delightful recipe: the presence of MSG in one of the spice mixes. You see, MSG, which straight tastes like some strange pork extract and  delivers a huge punch of savoury/umami goodness, happens to be one of the main ingredients in a discontinued and awkwardly orientalist named spice mix which Hemingway used. Now, in recent years MSG has gotten a pretty horrid rap (as testified to by the countless labels screaming "DOES NOT CONTAIN MSG!" in Asian restaurants and grocery stores all over) but in its defense the stuff is found naturally in such things as soy sauce, generally as a result of fermentation.

So I was faced with a dilemma...make a historically innacurate Hemingway burger with MSG or leave the "evil" powder out? Well my inner historian seems to have won out, so I shamefully ran out and bought some of the little white crystals. It might be weird and nasty stuff but one thing I can say...is that these burgers are an explosion of flavour in your mouth. Maybe next time I'll try without MSG but honestly, I think I might be hooked! Though of course, it helps when the burger is served with homemade buns, pickles and fries!

Credit where credit is due: this recipe was researched by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan and posted for the Paris Review and brought to my attention by ever loveable blogger, scholar and documentarist Thomas Seal.

Ingredients:

Ingredients --
-1 lb.  lean ground beef
-2 cloves, minced garlic
-2 scallions, finely chopped
-1 heaping teaspoon, India relish (I used chopped homemade mustard pickles)
-2 tablespoons, capers (chopped)
-1 heaping teaspoon, Spice Islands sage (I just used whatever sage was available)
-Spice Islands Beau Monde Seasoning -- ½ teaspoon (Not available in Quebec as far as I can see so I had to leave it out until I can get my hands on some!)
-Spice Islands Mei Yen Powder -- ½ teaspoon*
-1 egg, beaten in a cup with a fork
-About one third cup dry red or white wine.
-1 tablespoon cooking oil

Here's the MSG! Lu-Lien Tan inquired over at Spice Island for the recipe of this now discontinued product and it seems to be something around these lines:

Combine

9 parts salt
9 parts sugar
2 parts MSG

Mix 2/3 of a tsp. of this mixture with 1/8 tsp. soy sauce and voila, reconstructed Mei Yen!

As for any burger recipe the approach is pretty simple:

Chop capers, onions, pickles and crush garlic

Beat egg with a fork:

 Combine chopped veg with some of the seasoning

Integrate it into the ground beef evenly (I went to a butcher for mine, it is Hemingway after all, can't just have plain grocery store ground beef!). Should you need filler, oats are always a good choice (not canon, a travesty! I promise I made the recipe without additions the first time!)

Add the egg

 ...and the wine

And fry up! Hemingway liked it done on a pan so go ahead!

Serve with whatever condiments you like, if you have mustard pickles, they are by far the best!

Perhaps another time I'll even add the recipe I use for burger buns! For now, hope some of you are tempted to have a delightful gourmet burger!