UnRecipe: Say "I Love You, Sugar Coma" with Cookie Butter

Let's face it, if it wasn't so close to Valentine's Day, I'd be calling this post, Breaking Cookie Butter Bad, or maybe Diabetes, the Gift That Keeps on Giving. One of the food fads that rode the coattails of the holidays was the entity known as Cookie Butter, aka Biscoff, aka Speculoos. It's like Billy the Kid, it had so many aliases, and just as notorious. You're either reading this with a look of bewilderment or shaking your head with glazed-over eyes, thinking back on your last sweet fix when you passed out with the Cookie Butter cradled in your huddled grasp. I say, embrace the madness. Ride the snake. Make Cookie Butter Bars for Valentine's Day and never look at the world the same again. Because it's so sweet, you'll probably go cross-eyed.

Happy Valentine's Day - I got you diabetes - Photo by Wasabi Prime

UnRecipe/OMG a Recipe: Meat + Potatoes 4EVER

Despite the holiday being "so last week ago," you're probably sick to death of all the ooey-gooey annoying-ness that is Valentine's Day, even more annoying since the blasted month has an extra day! Curse you, Leap Year... and you're little dog too! But I have to say the best couple ever, more heart-worthy than Romeo + Juliet, Caesar + Cleopatra, Julia + Paul, even Brad + Angelina, is Meat + Potatoes. Why? Because you can celebrate their divine pairing even when it's not the most loving/annoying time of the year. No fat baby cherubs with bows n' arrows required.

When Potato Met Pork... a love story - Photo by Wasabi Prime

To be honest, we've been enjoying the joy of meat and potatoes all month, indulging in thick protein-y wedges of meat with starchy, creamy spud goodness. And real potatoes, not the sweet potatoes or yams we usually get, as they tend to be more healthy and less starchy. February has been our month to indulge, enjoying sweets given by friends or ones that came fresh-baked from our oven. It's hard not to give in to food cravings during the month that's all about eating rich treats, and watching the Food Network when they spend a whole day showing the 1001 ways you can eat chocolate certainly doesn't help. We were the very happy recipient of some Jonboy caramels, which are an absolute favorite -- they're handmade in Seattle, available throughout the city and as far as Oregon, produced in small batches and they come with a freshness date. A little box of those, plus some sweet Valentine cards from friends -- how can you not fall in love with Love? Or junk food, for that matter? 

Sweet Overload!! Valentine goodness everywhere - Photos by Wasabi Prime

And of course, once the sweet tooth gets going, everything just goes sideways, so I made some peanut butter cookies with peanut and bacon brittle I had sitting in the pantry. It's what any sane person would do, right? I originally bought the smoky bacon peanut brittle from Foodzie, and I noticed the freshness date wasn't looking so fresh, so instead of just sitting on the couch and snarfing it down in an act of Old Yeller food mercy, I thought putting it in cookies would be a better way to enjoy them in a slightly more civilized and prolonged manner. Woe to my rapidly widening thighs that I made this right before Valentine's Day, as we were already awash in sweets, ready to have more with our respective gifts to one another, and I still had other dessert plans, incuding an Epic Carrot Cake which is so epic, I'm saving it for another post (stay tuned...). Le Sigh. St. Valentine needs to change his moniker to be the Patron Saint of Muffin Tops, or very possibly Tooth Decay.

PB and B cookies - peanut butter and bacon brittle cookies! - Photo by Wasabi Prime 

For several meals, including Valentine's Day, I was trying out some recipes from John Howie's new cookbook, "Passion and Palate: Recipes for a Generous Table," a new book that came out late last year and gaining momentum in the rrrrowrrr-worthy Year of the Dragon. Aside from the fact he includes a recipe from one of my favorite things at his restaurant, the ahi-topped deviled eggs, it's a book to take note of in the fact that it's part of the growing trend of independent publishing. It's a real honest-to-goodness book, not an eBook -- you can flip through the pages and drool over the food photos like any of your other favorite cookbooks. It's a really lovely collection of recipes, very high production quality and the photos are beautiful -- it's part of the new wave of self-publishing that's kicking the reputation of indie books looking too homemade, right to the curb. If you live in the Washington area, you can get a peek at the book in John Howie's restaurants, available for purchase there, or online.

Valentine's Day, celebrating our love of creamy potato dishes - Photos by Wasabi Prime

The OMG a Recipe part is the fact that I put together meals based on recipes (which I won't list, as I do believe you should support cookbooks, but the recipes are all in there!), but the UnRecipe part is of course that I made some substitutions, so yes, shame on me. I did a variation of John Howie's pork chops and herbed cheese potatoes -- I didn't have a cedar plank to roast the pork, which I know would have made it extra flavorful, so I just seasoned accordingly and fnished it with a Marsala pan sauce. I roasted the potatoes minus the cedar plank, but with the listed seasonings and got some very tender, crispy starch-a-riffic goodness. I realize a signature element (cedar plank) was taken out of the mix, but the resulting dish was no less delicious, which I think is a nod to a cookbook's recipes being flexible and being able to handle swaps and substitutions with ease. I know, Boo to Wasabi for excluding such an important flavor element, but the resulting dish wasn't disappointing, and very doable on a weekday time budget, which this combination was perfect for, with the stove doing some of the work and the oven doing the lion's share.

I used the creamy potato lasagne recipe from Passion and Palate for Valentine's Day, to go with a seared flank steak crusted with blue cheese and breadcrumbs. The flank steak wasn't part of the book, I just wanted something basic so that I could focus on the potatoes. Layers of creamy potatoes with caramelized onions, to go with a meaty steak? That's heaven for Mr. Wasabi, who is a manly-man, and manly-men are fine with a simple meal of meat n' potatoes, so why mess with this logic? I admit, I modified the recipe -- I added crumbled bits of bacon on the finished potato dish. And I went heavy with the onion caramelization, but that's just my preference, as I love that super-sweetness of cooked onions. Regardless of what I pushed/pulled/substituted -- the result was so om-nom-nommy that it put me in a food coma that had me passed out on the couch by 10pm. The wine probably contributed a bit to that, as would a day spent prepping the meal and getting the house Valentine-Ready for when the Mister came home. But hey, it was worth it. Even if Indy felt a little left out of the festivities.

Dueling Valentines - whose is better? Correct - long live the Dark Side - Photos by Wasabi Prime

And yes, that is a bedazzled ultrasuede black heart-shaped box of chocolates with Darth's head on it. Ironically, it was filled with milk chocolates, not dark chocolates (Target, you should have been more clever!). That, some robots with hearts-themed socks and some really geeky Downton Abbey/Supernatural-themed Valentine cards is a recipe for True Freakin' Love. Brock, of course, went the traditional route and got me an amazing, beautiful box of hand-picked chocolates from Fran's. Because chicks dig it the most and he knows it's one of my favorite places to get special sweets. You can decide who wins the Dueling Valentine gift war, but I think it just goes to show that even a silly commercialized holiday can still bring out the best in people and remind you that no matter how weird you are, you know each other's hearts best.

UnRecipe: Shhhh -- Downton's On...

We finally fell down the rabbit-hole a few weeks ago, giving into the social pressure to watch the mega-super-all-the-cool-kids-watch-this-popular British series Downton Abbey. It's basically Upstairs, Downstairs, heavy on the suds and a righteous-sized set dressing/wardrobe budget. It's also addictive like sugar-coated crack with bacon bits on top. This picture is not, in fact, sugar-coated crack with bacon bits, more like a spicy curry squash and peanut soup with fried chickpeas. Why feature it with Downton Abbey? Because it's so dang civilised (notice I use the hoity-toity "s" spelling) and it's quick to make, ready in time to watch the latest episode and slurp the soup without catching a sidelong disapproving stare by Lady Violet.

Lady Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham would not approve of this "exotic" soup - Photo by Wasabi Prime

Give it up for Netflix Streaming, as we spent a weekend watching season one of Downton, almost back to back, which got us primed for PBS Masterpiece's current airing of Season Two, which they've been good about keeping episodes online, FYI. Amazingly, it was Mr. Wasabi who suggested we give it a go. I knew I'd get obsessed with it, so I was putting it off, and it was a pleasant surprise the Mister was keen to watch. I think it was because we rewatched the old Mystery! series, Cadfael, with the I, Claudius-fantastic Derek Jacobi, we're still waiting for season 2 of Sherlock to get its booty shakin' and we were on Brit-withdrawal (Brithdrawal?). It's a twisted, complex path that led us to the sprawling estate of Downton and the Earl of Grantham's melodramatic household, but I'm sure those squirrelly Crawleys wouldn't have it any other way.

In order to really absorb all the drama of this series, you don't want a fussy meal to distract from whatever hour-long intrigue that's afoot, so I suggest a creamy, rich squash and peanut soup. It's quick, delicious and looks all fancy-like if you garnish it up nicely. I admit, it's nice to have some pre-roasted squash that was frozen and set aside for a rainy day, but if you had a can of plain, unsweetened pumpkin, that would work dandy for this. I had a particular hankering for the spice of curry and the sweetness of peanut butter, so I combined the two in this soup. You can use your favorite curry powder or a small spoonful of curry paste to mix in with your squash puree, a heavy shake of chili or cayenne powder for heat, and about a quarter cup of smooth unsweetened peanut butter. Add in enough chicken or vegetable stock to give it the consistency you want in the soup, and if you have a stick blender, run that through as well, to give it a super-creamy consistency. Season to taste -- add salt and pepper accordingly, and if you want to highlight the sweetness, add a little sugar or honey to it.

My favorite soup topping is pan-fried chickpeas. Simple enough to make -- take a can of well-drained chickpeas and toss lightly with canola oil and some of the curry powder before putting them into a pan heated to medium. They'll sizzle and pop a bit, you just want to cook out as much of the liquid but not burn the beans. They'll get seasoned, smoky and lightly crisped, and be a bit lighter with so much of the water cooked out, so they'll top a thick soup rather nicely.

Downton-Harry Potter meme-osity by the Mister... and crispy chickpeas! - Photos by Wasabi Prime

You know something's good if it's worth doing a meme-mashup. Brock kept saying how the actor that plays the infuriatingly berzerker footman, Thomas, looks a lot like a young Voldemort/Tom Riddle from the Harry Potter movies. It's true! Think about it... Maybe it's the soft, eerily calm voice; the lazy, sociopathic stare when he's speaking with the Upstairs folks, or the fact Thomas just reeks of pure scheming eeeeevil. So, the Mister put together this clever meme, since whenever Thomas shows up in a scene, Brock whispers, "horcrux." I laugh, miss half the dialogue in the scene, and we have to rewind it.

But enough fussing!! Downton's starting -- shhhhhh!!

OMG a Recipe: the Fast, the Furious and the Frozen

When the Prime has a food-related bee in her bonnet, she goes Wasabi-Wild. I had made ice cream before, but a somewhat faulty ice cream churner paddle had prevented me from making more homemade delights. Finding out the paddle's defective crack wasn't enough to keep us from making frozen dessert goodness was the green light for my Fast and Furious Ice Cream Madness.

Peanut buttery vegan goodness with critter-friendly ice cream! - Photo by Wasabi Prime

I know making ice cream isn't difficult. It's downright easy, it just requires a bit of time and patience in between steps. But once you get into the groove and get used to the time needed to make frozen delights, it easily becomes an obsession towabds trying new flavorc and combinations every week. It started out with beer ice cream for me. I was developing a beer-flavored ice cream recipe, and I had a basic frozen custard recipe, which consists of: 3 cups half and half or cream, 1 cup of sugar and three eggs. That's pretty much it. Vanilla extract is optional, depending on the flavoring, and the sky's the limit for adding new ingredients to modify it. You have to heat up the custard to about 170 degrees to make sure the eggs are cooked but not scrambled, and you strain the mixture to get rid of any eggy bits, but once you add whatever extra flavoring or fruit of your choice and let it cool, it goes straight into the ice cream maker and then into a container to finish off in the freezer.

Coffee you can eat with a spoon - Photo by Wasabi Prime

I started out with a reduction of a Scotch Ale for the beer ice cream, then made a coffee-flavored ice cream with leftover coffee. I moved into frozen yogurt territory, mixing frozen berries with yogurt and milk -- that actually froze up so hard, the paddle couldn't turn, so it took some elbow grease to scrape it out. An excess of buttermilk and fresh blueberries led me to try a blueberry/buttermilk combination which ended up being like a berry cheesecake ice cream (yes, please!), and I even dared to tread into the vegan domain of soy ice cream for some visiting friends who are lactose intolerant. I was happy to say that the soy milk set up just fine, no weird separations or especially large ice crystals. I made a peanut butter soy ice cream, using the peanut butter as the fat content that the eggs would have normally supplied for the custard. For the base vegan custard, I went with the basic recipe from Post Punk Kitchen. The resulting dessert ended up being a favorite, as scoops of the peanut butter ice cream, drizzled with a bit of chocolate sauce and plain peanuts, with a dash of salt to kick up the savory, was a home-run dessert hit.

Like a berry cheesecake, but frozen - Photo by Wasabi Prime

I'm enjoying how flexible the base recipe is, whether it's dairy or vegan-ized. I'm already thinking of new flavor combinations to try with different ingredients like lavender, ginger, honey, mint, and maybe... just maybe... I'll creep into the realm of savory ice creams. Blame it on Iron Chef, but like I said, when this Wasabi has a bee in her bonnet -- look out!

Weapons of Brain Freeze destruction! - Photos by Wasabi Prime