Hungry Hurkon

It's a favorite treat out in certain restaurants and such, but you can make your own at home! Really!

The only not-so-common ingredient is tapioca pearls, which I found at Obo's in Eastland Plaza but you can probably get at any Asian grocery store. It cost about two bucks for a bag filled with a whole lot of tapioca pearls.

The basic concept: Boil the tapioca pearls per the instructions on the bag. Dump in a glass. Pour iced tea over it. The end.

Here's a more specific recipe that my family seemed to like last night:

Jasmine Bubble Tea
1)Prepare tapioca pearls following the instructions on the bag. When finished, mix a bit of sugar with them.
2)Boil some very, very strong jasmine tea. If you're making it for four people, use about a 1/4 cup of those pearls. Use your judgment otherwise. Add a lot of sugar (between 3-6 tablespoons).
3)Add enough milk to the tea so it turns a nice, pale tan color. It should be about 1:1 milk to tea.
4)Cool the tea and serve in a glass over tapioca pearls.

I've never heard of bubble tea served hot, and if you're impatient like me, put a lot of ice in a strainer and strain the tea through that until it's cool enough for you.

Holiday family gatherings are always a fine time to do some drinking. And the Sauer family, a bunch of good German-Americans, is quite fond of its beers and liquors.

My grandfather had this traditional alcohol-delivery vehicle that he made every Christmas, which he called whiskey sours, but they really aren't actual whiskey sours. Thus, I have dubbed them Whiskey Sauers.


Basically, it's a blended lemonade drink that will get you buzzed!

I've tried to make it before just by guessing, and though it always tasted good, it never turned out quite the way I remembered it.

However, this Christmas it became my responsibility to take care of the whiskey-sauer mixing, and I actually asked my uncle for the recipe. The missing factor: honey!

So here's how you make a 'real' Whiskey Sauer:

Put in a blender:
1 Can Frozen lemonade concentrate
3/4 of the lemonade can of whiskey (or more, if you actually want strong drinks)
Roughly 1/4 c honey

Fill the blender with as much ice as you can muster.

Blend 'til there's no tomorrow.

Pour into glasses and try to survive your family gathering.

I love chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. For the uninitiated, they are smoked jalapeños in a spicy sauce. Delicious! I'd put them in everything if my family weren't so spice-adverse.

They come in cans of like, a billion, and you generally only need one or two for a recipe, so you can freeze the rest and save them for a later dish.

Chopped chipotle makes an excellent addition to sour cream as a topping for tacos.

Here's a simple idea to try with a barbecue or chili dish:

Chipoltle Cheddar Cornbread

Use your favorite cornbread recipe. The one on the back of the cornmeal box is also pretty good.

Prepare as directed, but add about a 1 C shredded cheddar cheese and 1-2 minced chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, depending on the level of spice you want.

Via tinydundie42, two delicious mixed drinks!

These aren't very alcoholic, so they would be great for chatting on the veranda, but not so much for drinking the image of the guy relieving himself on Noyes out of your head.

Coconut Mojitos



4-5 fresh mint leaves
1 lime circle

Put in bottom of glass. Crush to release flavor

Add:
~1 shot coconut rum
6-8 oz. sprite

NOM NOM NOM

Mint Juleps are very similar, except they use bourbon instead of rum. Lack of Southern heritage be damned, I will try making them someday soon!

Sparkletini Sangria Blancas
I've seen sangria made in other ways, but this is by far the girliest (in a good way)!

~2 oz. raspberry sparkletini
~2 oz. white wine
~4 oz. pineapple/orange juice
2 marischino cherries
a few drops of the cherry juice

Part II: Rum balls should be up later today when I get the time.

By request:

The recipe for the delicious Chewy Coconut Macaroons I made yesterday. It's reaaaaaaaaaally easy.

But take the recipe seriously when it says to use parchment paper. That dough is extremely sticky and there's no way the cookies would come off a regular pan. Parchment paper is pretty much the greatest thing ever for making cookies and cakes, so please consider keeping it around all of the time. Not only does food not stick to it, but this keeps food from spreading as much so the cookies are nice and pretty. And clean-up is easier.

Also, happy Pi day :)



Don't know if I'm going to have time to bake a pie in the near future, but I really want to try this pie sometime. Mmm...cheese and apples....

Also, has anybody ever had peanut butter pie? It looks delicious but of course I can't make it here.

I've been deprived of my kitchen for a while, so obviously I haven't been able to update this blog very much. But I thought I'd share with you a feature that I've been getting enjoyment out of. The AV Club, The Onion's Arts section, runs regular "Taste Tests" of really bizarre products.

Like this week's A&W and Sunkist 'Floats', for those of us too lazy to scoop ice cream ourselves.



I applaud their stomachs of steel.

Check them out here. The "Cheeseburger in a can" test is particularly spectacular. *shudders*

You probably haven't done much contemplation of fortune cookies, but I'm sure you're aware they're not authentically Chinese. Personally, I had assumed they were American in some way, but had never really given it much thought.
In fact, a grad student at Kanagawa University has found compelling evidence that they're from Japan.
Here's a fascinating (at least to me) article about her findings in the New York Times:
Solving a Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside a Cookie

I created a Facebook photo album of some cakes I've made.

You can check it out here (even if you don't have Facebook):

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2029829&l=391ec&id=8403057

DUDE


One Holiday Cookie Recipe, 25 Ways

Does anyone know where to get nonpareils that look like pearls? Because SO MUCH WANT.

I made this recipe up myself! (Well, sort of...) It was a big hit at the clinic dessert party. Yum. This is a good, festive holiday cake.



Chocolate Peppermint Cake

Here's what I mean when I say I "sort of" invented this recipe. I borrowed the body of the cake from this Cooking Light recipe and the icing is my own variation on white butter icing from my decrepit copy of Betty Crocker's New Good and Easy Cookbook.
But the combination and the presentation? That's all mine, baby.


Cake:
Cooking spray
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups boiling water
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
6 tablespoons butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour (7 1/2 ounces)
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350°.

To prepare cake, coat bottoms of 2 (8-inch) round cake pans with cooking spray (do not coat sides of pans); line bottoms with wax paper. Coat wax paper with cooking spray; dust with 1 tablespoon flour.

Combine boiling water and cocoa, stirring well with a whisk. Cool completely.

Place granulated sugar, 6 tablespoons butter, and vanilla in a large bowl; beat with a mixer at medium speed until well blended (about 5 minutes). Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Lightly spoon 1 2/3 cups flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine 1 2/3 cups flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt, stirring well with a whisk. Add flour mixture and cocoa mixture alternately to sugar mixture, beginning and ending with flour mixture.

Pour batter into prepared pans; sharply tap pans once on counter to remove air bubbles. Bake at 350° for 30 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pans 10 minutes on a wire rack; remove from pans. Cool completely on wire rack.

Frosting:
1/3 cup soft buter
3 cups sifted powdered sugar
2-3 tablespoons milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
2 teaspoons peppermint extract, or to taste

Blend butter and sugar thoroughly. Stir in milk, vanilla and peppermint until smooth.

Presentation:
Ice the cake (I should hope you'd know how to do this on your own :p).

For the topping I used:
a handful of "Andes peppermint crunch baking chips" (I bought these on a whim one time and my mother laughed. But really, they're great, because they give a nice peppermint flavor but they're soft!)
dark chocolate shaved with a carrot peeler (if you know how to do chocolate curls, that would be even better.)

Spiced Cider is like, really easy, and it's yummy. There is no reason not to attempt it!

Here is what I put in when I made it the other day. It was very nice.

Liberal sprinkles of:
-cardamom
-ground cinnamon
-orange peel (from the jar, but I bet it would be nice if you added fresh grated orange rind too)
-whole cloves
Also,
-a cinnamon stick

Just pour some cider in a saucepan, add the spices and heat over medium-low for 20 minutes or until it's as spiced and hot as you would like. **Make sure you don't boil it. If you're serving other people and feeling particularly considerate, you can fish out the cloves and the cinnamon stick. Otherwise, if you're like me, just tell the people you're serving they shouldn't eat the cloves.

Let me know if you come up with any other good spice ideas. I bet lemon zest might be nice, and I'm curious about allspice.

Whoever came up with the expression "easy as pie" was an idiot. Pie is not easy. It is f-ing hard, at least if you're trying to make good one. A tasty pie is all about the crust, and that is truly an art form that is hard to master. That is probably why you don't care for pie very much. Very few people can make a crust that doesn't taste like leather or gravel, and most store-bought pies are just frightening. A well-made pie is a beautiful, beautiful thing, so obviously I have a strong interest in figuring out how to make them on my own. My grandmother's pies are great, and my mom has picked up the skill from her. Out of my family, the most logical choice to carry on the pie-baking tradition is me, but I'm telling you, this takes a lot of practice.
The basic concept isn't hard at all:
For each crust, take a cup of flour. Combine it with a 1/2 t salt. Then take 1/3 cup Crisco (yes, Crisco is disgusting, but it works better than butter. It's flakier or something.) and cut it into the flour with a pastry cutter until you get globs the size of peas. Then add about 1/4 cup water or however much is required to make the pea-glob mixture into dough. (This will vary depending on the moisture in the air.) Then, roll it out and put it in a pie dish. Then put the filling in. Then bake.
The end.
Oh wait...you do that and your crust turns out not flaky and tender, but rather like a chewy graham cracker. Eeeww... Well, the first problem you may have had is that you overworked the dough. You need to touch it as little as humanly possible. DO NOT OVERWORK THE DOUGH. Secondly, you may have added too much water. How much is too much? Well, it shouldn't be sticky, I know that much. Also, maybe the kitchen gremlins just hate you.
I made a pecan (must be pronounced pee-CAN, not pee-CAHN) pie the other day, and while the filling was delicious, the crust was a little off. It was sort of tough. I'm not entirely sure where I went wrong, but my mother suggested that adding a tablespoon or so more of Crisco could help fix the problem.
It is my goal to make a delicious pumpkin pie by Thanksgiving. I will keep you updated if I make any progress.

You too can make these delicious beauties!

I don't want to oversell these, but they do have many things going for them, in addition to tasting good. They're fast, require few materials, can be made in one bowl, and are pretty versatile. Also, if you had to entertain children, I'd imagine letting them cut out shapes and decorate them would be fun. I sure liked it when I was a kid, and it's definitely still fun to decorate now that I'm 20.

This recipe comes from my mom's recipe box, which probably means it comes from my grandmother, which probably means it comes from Betty Crocker or someplace. Yes, we're real traditional that way.

Sugar Cookies

Set oven to 400.

Sift together:
2 1/4 C flour
1/2 t soda
1 t baking powder
1/2 t salt

Add:
1/2 shortening or butter (if I were you, I'd go with the butter)
1 c sugar
2 eggs
1 T milk
1 t vanilla extract or 1/2 t nutmeg (you know you'd prefer the vanilla)

Chill for 2 hours. Roll out on a floured surface. You want to get the dough fairly thin - it shouldn't be any thicker than a cracker, but if it's translucent, it's too thin and will burn. (Also, it's easier if you don't roll the whole thing out at once, but do it in chunks.) Cut with cookie cutters (it works better if you rub the edges in flour before cutting). Sprinkle with colored sugar, sprinkles, etc. Alternatively, bake plain and put icing on them. This is highly recommended.

Bake for about 5 minutes on the top rack of the oven. WATCH THEM. They will burn quickly if you are not paying attention.

Makes about a billion cookies (okay, 4 dozen), but they'll go faster than you'd expect.

A partial invention of my own, based on the recipe on the package of Maifun rice sticks. I put Chinese in quotes because, let's be honest, this salad is about as Chinese as I am. It follows the philosophy Betty Crocker and her ilk invented in the 1950s : if you prepare something pretty standard, but add a few flavors to make it "exotic", people will like it better. And frankly, that still holds up fairly well today, at least in my own cooking. That's definitely what I'm employing here: what would be a basic salad with chicken in it, becomes "Chinese" with the addition of sesame oil and assorted other ingredients. And in testimony to the effectiveness of this method, when I serve this salad, there are no leftovers.

"Chinese" Chicken Salad

(I've only made this with chicken before, but I'm pretty sure "Chinese [Insert other protein source here] Salad" would be tasty as well. I'd try extra-firm tofu, beans, tempeh, etc.)

-Maifun Rice Sticks or something comprable (they're in an orange bag in the international section of the grocery store)
-Lettuce
-Carrots
-Leeks (really - you could try green and/or red onions if you're feeling too lazy to wash the leeks, but trust me, they're good raw)
-Cooked Chicken/other protein (this is a great way to reuse leftovers, but you can always cook something if you don't have leftovers to use)
-Sesame Oil
-Rice Vinegar
-Ginger
-Coriander (and/or fresh cilantro, if you're feeling bold)
-salt and pepper, of course

You could also throw in:
-Snow peas/ sugar snap peas
-Bean sprouts
-Bamboo shoots
-Water chestnuts
-Anything else you can think of

1)Cook your chicken/other protein, if you haven't done so already. Salt and pepper it to taste. Shred it/cut it up into bite-sized pieces, and set aside.
2)Heat about an inch or two of oil (canola/olive or whatever - you will need a lot, so use something cheap) in a pan, per the directions on the package of the rice sticks, in preparation for frying them. They're really not kidding when they say to get the oil up to 375-400 degrees for this. I use a candy thermometer to be sure, but if you don't have one, the oil should be hot enough after about 10 minutes on medium heat. Do the next steps while you're waiting for the oil to heat up.
3)Clean and chop your vegetables however you like them best. Put 'em in a big serving bowl and toss your chicken (or whatever) in.
4)Add about 1/2 cup rice vinegar and 3 or so tablespoons of sesame oil. Toss the salad. Try a bit of lettuce and make sure that you can actually taste the flavors of what you've just added, and then add more if it's not to your liking. Then add the powdered ginger, coriander, salt and pepper. Sprinkle liberally, and adjust to taste.
5)Here's the part I like best - frying the noodles. If your oil is the proper temperature, this will be nearly instantaneous. Break off a very small chunk of noodles and plop them in the oil. There will be a lot of popping, and the noodles will puff up to be white and crunchy. Fish them out and put them on a paper towel. Repeat until you think you've got enough to add to your salad. Make sure you soak some of the the oil off; otherwise, these things will be greasy and disgusting.
6) Toss the noodles into the salad. Serve immediately, or else they will get soggy.
7) Eat. For heaven's sake, don't use chopsticks. It will end in tears.

Welcome to Hungry Hurkon, my spot for discussing one of my all-time favorite activities: eating. Well, I like making food too. Especially baking things.

Here is my philosophy that I will be employing in this journal. Obesity is bad, right, and we certainly have our fair share of it here in the United States. I don't think that's because we like food too much. It's actually because we don't like it enough.

The food that makes you gain weight the most? The fast food? The candy bars? That stuff tastes like shit, so you have to gobble it down not to notice. If you take your time eating, and really appreciate what's going in your mouth, you're probably going to eat slightly better and slightly less. Not that sometimes a good cake made with a stick of butter and a pound of sugar won't just hit the spot.

Mmm...cake.

So basically, I will be sharing recipes (mine and ones I've come across), tips and tricks, discoveries, and maybe even a restaurant review, if I ever get the chance to go to something new worth mentioning. And I hope that you'll share your stuff too - I am by no means an expert, and perhaps together we can collective come to understand this art that is eating...um, I mean, cooking.

Things I'm intending to write about in the near future (this is more for me, so I don't forget):
-crepes (only with the little hat on the e)
-"chinese" chicken salad
-orgasm-inducing (no really!) pumpkin cookies
-sugar cookies
-pies, and the challenges therein
-thai food?