So THAT’S Why You Are Supposed To Be Careful Mixing Hot Liquids In A Blender

So, as I continue to plod my way through my very own Julie and Julia and Kristi cooking project, I settled on the next recipe from Mastering The Art of French Cooking – Potato and Leek Soup.  After the adventure that was Coq Au Vin, I decided to try something a little easier.  This recipe had all of about 5 ingredients, potatoes, leeks, water, salt, and cream – therefore, it had to be easy.

And it was.  Except for one little detail.  You see, I guess they didn’t have blenders back in the 1950s, because Julia instructed me to simply use a fork to mash the tender vegetables together after they hung out in a pot of simmering water for what seemed like eternity to hungry old me.  If that didn’t work, I could, as a last resort, rely on a food mill.  Well, I’m not entirely sure what a food mill is, and after half-halfheartedly chasing the leeks and potatoes around the giant stew pot with a tiny fork for a while, I decided that blenders hadn’t been invented during Julia’s time, and pulled out the trusty blender.

As I plugged everything in and poured as much of the pot into the blender as it could possibly contain, I vaguely recalled warnings from a previous corn chowder recipe regarding the risks of steam when blending hot liquids.  Being entirely to lazy to actually find any sort of instructions, I decide that I needed to allow some of the steam to release by not securely fastening the lid onto the blender and allowed the lid to crack open at the side.  Then I turned it on.

Potatoes and leeks exploded out of the top of the blender over my entire kitchen.  While my naturally good-natured husband laughed at the predicament, I immediately began yelling that the soup was RUINING MY COOKBOOK!!  I frantically blotted the cookbook, while Blake doubled over and laughter and the dogs began enjoying the people-food heaven they had found themselves thrust into – licking everything in sight.

I eventually laughed as well, and Blake and I poured the remaining soup back into the stew pot.  Deciding that the mistake was leaving the blender’s top cracked open, we re-poured the liquid into the blender and this time, securely fastened the top in place.  We went as far as to hold the top down.  Once again, I turned the blender on.

AND AGAIN MOLTEN HOT POTATOES AND LEEKS AND WATER EXPLODED ACROSS MY KITCHEN.

This time I was also able to see the hilarity in the situation (especially now that my cookbook was safely drying in the living room).  The dogs resumed licking the floor, and Blake and I resumed laughing hysterically.  I came to the conclusion that I should probably look up instructions on the blending of hot liquids in a blender.

After a short internet search, I discovered that you are supposed to puree hot soups in the kitchen in small batches with a slight crack in the seal in the top as to allow the steam to escape and the liquid to expand.  Information in hand, we careful tried a fourth of a cup worth of soup to see if we would once again find ourselves covered in onion-y soup.

And no soup coat!  We succeeded!  Tiny cup by tiny cup, we pureed the mixture.

We ended up with some delicious soup and gigantic mess (later cleaned by Blake, what a guy.)

Adventures in Coq Au Vin

I finished Julie and Julia around Christmas-time last year and was immediately jealous that I hadn’t first thought of the idea of cooking every recipe in Mastering The Art of French Cooking in one year.  That sort of challenge has “Kristi” written all over it.  But, unfortunately, around the time Julie Powell was cooking her way through that extensive cookbook, I was taking Algebra and worrying about which pair of pajama pants I was going to wear to school tomorrow (I have always been stylish).  However, after receiving the cookbook as a Christmas present, I came up with my own mini-Kristi and Julie and Julia project.  Instead of cooking all the recipes in one year, I would simply cook a meal from the book every Sunday.  That was four weeks ago.  It has happened exactly once.  Those recipes are HARD!  There are so many steps!!  SO MUCH BUTTER!  (yum)

For my first recipe, I went with coq au vin.  There was no reason for this, except for the fact that I love The Melting Pot and one of their cooking styles is coq au vin.  And I like it.

Now, the first challenge with using a cookbook from the 1950’s is deciphering the ingredients.  Luckily, my dad is old and therefore was able to tell me that a “frying chicken” is a real option from the butcher section of a good grocery store.  I was planning on buying a bunch of various chicken parts and hoping that would suffice.

So, I went to Central Market, and approximately one million dollars later came back with all necessary ingredients.  Including this!

Blake posed these. Obviously.

Chicken pieces artfully positioned on the cutting board, I began with the healthiest part of the recipe – cooking bacon in butter.  Being a Martha Stewart fan, while also finding myself diametrically opposed to her particular brand of perfection in just about any way possible, I followed her sage advice of setting out all my ingredients before I began and read through the recipe multiple times.  Here is my ingredient arrangement:

This is as neat as humanly possible (for me)

See how much I am concentrating!!

This recipe has a bunch of steps.  Many of which I forgot even though I read through the recipe like 10 times before I started.  Cooking mushrooms was one of these missed steps.  I also managed to do things like, add the bacon to the mushrooms only to find myself frantically scooping the bacon back out of the mushrooms one second later.  It was a very typical Kristi cooking experience, with messes everywhere, and ingredients forgotten or burned, or cooked in the wrong order – but this recipe was fail-proof!  It was amazing!

Approximately 4 hours later, Blake and I found ourselves inhaling about 1 cup of bacon fat, a full pound of butter, a bottle of cooked wine, and an entire chicken.  It was delicious!!

This tasted way more delicious than it looks!

I find pictures of food to look gross – but let’s just say that with all that bacon fat and butter, it would be pretty hard for it not to be completely delicious.  AND IT WAS!

I Love Cake

Due to the proximity of my soul-draining cubicle to all the manager’s offices, I am often privy to conversation carried out (loudly) on speaker phone all around me.  Being insanely nosy, I typically tune into a number of different phone calls throughout the day.  Most of the time they are boring and annoying, but sometimes!  I find out all sorts of good office gossip/private information.  I rationalize myself by figuring that if the conversations really WERE private, they would actually shut their office door (a feature not offered to us cubicle dwellers) and/or actually pick up their phone receiver.  A lot of the time, the phone conversations taking place around me are between my (all male) managers and their children (of various ages).  These are my favorites due to the hilarious nature of children, and remind me of the many phone calls I used to make to my dad back in the day.  Today, after listening to one of my managers argue with his seven-year-old son about the possible whereabouts of his mother (Dad – “Where is your mom?”  Son – “She’s not home.”  Dad – “Did you EVEN look for her!”  Son “…No…Oh, here she is!”), I was reminded of a specific conversation between my dad’s assistant (known as a secretary back then) and myself.

It was my mom’s birthday.  I guess I was about 6-8 years old.  Being the perfect daughter that I am (and was), I for some unknown reason thought to call my dad and tell him to bring a cake home for mom’s birthday (actually, the reason is known – I wanted cake.)  However, when I dialed my dad’s office number, his secretary informed me that he was busy in meetings.  Being oh-so-mature, I left a message for my dad to purchase a cake on his way home for work and hung up the phone.  I sat there for a second and began to worry about exactly what kind of cake my dad was going to bring home.  Those of you who know me, know that I take cake VERY seriously.  I once threw a mini-tantrum at work when someone chose CARROT CAKE for cake-day (RIP.  Thanks, Recession.  Thanks a lot.) instead of the Kristi Suggested (and way more delicious) strawberry cake.  What if my dad brought home carrot cake or some other below average cake flavor?  What if he brought home WHITE SHEET CAKE!?  That’s the WORST flavor of cake ever created!!

So, I planned what I believed was the fail-safe solution.  I picked up the phone and called my dad’s secretary back.  I let her know that I needed to add something to my dad’s message.  After waiting for her to get the sheet ready, I added, “Also, Mom told me that she really wants chocolate cake with chocolate icing and neopolitan ice cream.”  Unfortunately, the scheming of a 6-year old is never quite as sneaky as the kid thinks it is.  Shirley (dad’s secretary) immediately called me out on my plan, “Kristi,” she asked me (patronizingly, although I didn’t know that word at the time), “Does your mom want chocolate cake or do you?”  Immediately embarrassed, I responded with a quick, “Yes!  That’s her favorite!  She loves chocolate!”  and hung up the phone without one more word.  I spent all day worried that my selfishness would be revealed and my dad would bring home a disgusting cake flavor.  BUT!  He brought home chocolate cake!  He even brought home the most delicious ice cream flavor, neopolitan!  However….I was never able to look Shirley in the eyes again.

A small trade-off.

3rd Candy Review – Some Monstrosity Named “Zit Poppers”

Well, its been a while since the last candy review.  Blake and I have not only been collecting “interesting” looking candies on our own, but have been given different varieties by well-meaning family members and friends.  We have quite the stash of disgusting candies to look forward to trying, but this week we decided to brave the most disgusting of them all.

Everyone, I would like to introduce you to the most counter intuitive candy ever made.  Zit Poppers.

Nothing about this candy makes you want to try it.  The name.  The packaging.  It is all over disgusting.  But Blake and I did.  And here are the results:

Kristi:  First of all.  Let’s talk about how these bad boys look.  Just looking at them made me want to gag.  My brain knows they are made of sugar and therefore it follows that I should love them.  My heart cannot let go of the fact that some genius at Candy Inc. wanted to appeal to 13 year old boys and named them Zit Poppers.  And then designed the candy to look like a giant zit.  White bodied and red at the tip.  That folks, is hard to forget.

Blake: Kristi mentioned the packaging earlier. Apparently the creative geniuses behind this Halloween delight couldn’t decide on the best slogan, so they went with all of them. On the box it has “Plump & Ripe!” “These Are No Simple Pimples!” “AWFULeeeee Zitlicious!” and “Oozy, Sticky, Goo Filled Zit Gummies You Can Burst In Your Mouth!” and claims that it is made by Chef Ghoulicious’ Pantry of Candy. This supposed chef, while probably not up for a James Beard award any time soon, looks more like he was trained by the Garbage Pail Kids as opposed to Le Cordon Bleu. (Yes, that was yet another Garbage Pail Kids reference.) Either way, the candy looks like a sort of half-melted, gummier version of Dots. And I can’t wait.

Kristi: Of course Blake would be excited to try these.  He’s disgusting like that.  My only hope for this candy experiment was that the candies would somehow resemble Gushers, one of the all time best “fruit snacks” on the market.  My brother and I (mainly my brother) would eat cases of these growing up, and so, I am not completely new to the “candy bursting into sugary liquid inside of your mouth” genre.  So, I closed my eyes to ignore the appearance of a gigantic oozy zit and took a bite.

Blake: Man, I could go for some Gushers right now. Fruit AND Candy? Yes please. Anyways. My very first instinct with this candy was to squeeze it in hope that “oozy, sticky, goo” would come shooting out. Well, it got the oozy and sticky part right. It pretty much just squished in my fingers and got my them all sticky. Which is now making it difficult to type. The J key holds on to me after I hit it. Zit-likeness: thumb down. But maybe the taste can redeem it. After all, as the package reminded me, there are no simple pimples.

Kristi:  And, you know what?  It didn’t taste that disgusting.  Granted, it didn’t taste nearly as delicious as a Gusher, but as far as random sugar candies made by stupidly named candy companies?  Well, it was better than most.  The delicious “puss” filling was similar to the “ketchup” from our last candy experiment.  Sugary and sour.  The overall flavor, randomly enough, was that of watermelon.  Someone at Chef Ghoulicious’ Pantry of Candy apparently links zits with watermelon.  And now, so do I.

Blake: Watermelon zits?! What?! I want to try one! And that my friends, is how it spreads. These were pretty great. In fact, I tossed up a white flag to sticky-finger-ness and dove right back in. And they really are exactly like softer, gummier Dots, which I wish was the case for normal Dots. I can’t eat two of those things without having to make an appointment with the dentist to replace a filling. So I was pleasantly surprised by these Zip Poppers, and for what they lack in poppyness they make up for in gummy goodness.

Kristi: While less effusive than Blake, I also must say that these were rather tasty.  I mean, I definitely wouldn’t seek them out, but if I was eating a giant dinner and there was no dessert presented except these and maybe some sub-par dessert options like tiramisu or cannolis, I would go with the zit poppers.  That’s a solid endorsement right there.

Blake: I know, I know, tiramisu is delicious. Kristi is weird. And as for the zit poppers I give them 4 snow cones out of 5. They don’t beat the Pop Rocks candy bar, but crushed the marshmallow hamburger, hands down.

Blake: Apparently that is all. I am supposed to wrap this up and end it. Ummm…… [insert my new catch phrase]…. YOU’VE BEEN WRAPPED!