Crème Brûlée

Crème brûlée is so dank. Crème brûlée makes you feel like you're in a restaurant. Crème brûlée has a lot of accent marks. And it's surprisingly easy to make. But let's be real, you do need a blow torch to do it. And I probably would've never made it had I not received one as a Christmas present. I just used the recipe that came with the thing, which also conveniently with 4 ramekins. At the same time, it's a delicate process. If you've seen a lot of Food Network, you've seen Bobby Flay rant about how you can't get ANY water in the rami kens... which is pretty hard considering they're in a WATER BATH! This recipe I followed the recipe exactly too (kind of), since baking is actually a science and I thought I would waste a lot of sugar and eggs otherwise.

Yeah, you want that.

How to make Crème brûlée:

• 1 cup Heavy Cream
• 1 cup Milk
• 1/4 Vanilla Bean (or, lets be real, 1 tsp Vanilla Extract)
• 3 Egg Yolks
• 1 Whole Egg
• 1/4 Cup Sugar
• Brown Sugar

1- Combine heavy cream, milk, and vanilla bean. Heat to boil. Remove from heat and steep 10 minutes with bean- or just let sit for 10 minutes without it. Careful here, because milk gets big when it boils. In other news, the stovetop now smells like glorious sweet vanilla.
2- With a mixer, combine the eggs and sugar. Add the milk mixture in a steady stream. Strain the mixture through a fine strainer and skim the foam. I'm not sure I did this, but I also had no bean.
3- Divide into 4 small ramekins set in a baking dish. At this point, I found it odd that I had way more of the mixture leftover and they gave me the recipe and 4 ramekins? So I used some little other little tiny bowls and they worked too.
4- Water Bath Time- Pour hot water around the ramekins until it comes about half-way up the sides. God speed on this one. Carrying this to the oven is a doozy... Bobby Flay would start yelling. Really, don't get water in the ramekins!
5- Bake on 325 degrees for about 25-30 minutes, until just set. They should tremble slightly.
6- Cover the tops with brown sugar. I also used white sugar in addition to the brown. A trick I learned on the interwebs: Pour a mound of sugar on top (more than you need) and tilt the ramekin until the whole surface has been covered. Dump the excess onto the next ramekin's top.
7-Caramalize with the blow torch!!!
You can save these for later by chilling them before torching. Bring to room temp before you want to eat, then torch em.

Some things you will need...

Action shot! That's a good lookin mixer!

 

Water bath

Add brown sugar... before I knew the fancy technique for the sugar.

Sugar-coated now.

Great gift. Sorry for the terrible nails.

Action shot! Again.

Finished product.

Yum. After I eat one... I want another one. So creamy... so sugary.

I made like 6 of these and just had them in the fridge for weeknight dinners. Fancy up anything. Hell, have one for lunch too if you want! Soo good.

Chicken Gloria

Chicken Gloria has obviously become really popular on Pinterest. It kept popping up in the Food & Drink category, and the picture looked really delicious so I visited this blog multiple times, mainly because my iPad ONE kept shutting down my Pinterest app... incredibly annoying. It was really simple and obviously I didn't have all of the ingredients exactly, so substitute I did. I swear I rarely have everything that a recipe calls for, but this still tasted very good. I didn't take step-by-step pictures this time, but I did think these pics of what I would call a casserole turned out relatively pretty. I served it over brown rice and garnished with parsley. Since cream of mushroom soup is only 90 calories a serving and I used chicken breast tenderloins and skim milk, it really wasn't too terrible for you. Charlie loved the Chicken Gloria, but I'm starting to think maybe he's not a good scale for judging the quality of my food, because he literally likes and eats everything.

Big pan of awesome. I love really hot, wet foods. Sounds weird, but true.

 

A bird's eye view of my plate.

So I totally recommend following the instructions for Chicken Gloria from this blog, since she totally created this recipe. But if you want to see the types of substitutions I made, here is my recipe... which worked out lovely:

Chicken Gloria

• Chicken breast tenderloins
• Flour (season it)
• Olive oil and Butter (enough to brown chicken and cook mushrooms)
• 8 oz. container of Mushrooms (I used Baby Bellas)
• 1/2 cup Marsala wine (had this leftover forever; any fortified wine would work)
• Can Cream of Mushroom Soup
• 1/2 cup milk
• Shredded mozzarella
• Parsley
• Salt and Pepper (duh)

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Dredge seasoned chicken breasts in flour and brown in a combination of oil and butter. They don't need to be cooked through because you're gonna put them in a small casserole dish next.  Remove chicken from pan (obviously).

Add butter to pan and brown chopped mushrooms. They should be golden when you add the Marsala. Reduce for a minute and then add the cream of mushroom and the milk. Mix until blended. Taste and season if needed.

Pour sauce over the chicken breasts in the pan you plan to bake in. Seal with tin foil and bake for 30 minutes.

Uncover the chicken, sprinkle a good amount of cheese on top of each chicken breast and cook uncovered until melted and browned. It will look like it's ready to be eaten... I may have even thrown on the broiler (but do not forget it! I almost did).

Add parsley to make pretty and serve over rice. Or egg noodles... they'd probably be good too. Hell, maybe even whole wheat penne.

Profile picture of my meal

See... almost burned the top. Almost!

Delicious and Beautiful. Especially with that parsley.

Turkey Sliders

Many things have happened since I last posted. As you can see, the name of the blog has changed. Maybe it's because... I PASSED THE BAR! I've been sworn in and now I'm a real attorney, admitted to practice law in North Carolina. More on that later. I also went to Thailand after taking the Bar exam. There was some serious food and some serious eating done there. More on that later too. I've got some catching up to do on some things I previously cooked [and some unloading of my iPhone photos]. These turkey burger sliders are from Bon Appetit, see the recipe here. They've got onions and spinach inside them and I put them on Hawaiian rolls, so they were really tasty. Also, you can eat about 3 and experiment with different toppings depending on what you have. These turkey sliders were great with pesto, tomatoes, more onions, brie, mozzarella, cheddar, and of course mustard and ketchup. I'm sad that we ate so many before taking pictures of all the possible toppings.

Charlie got really creative with the brie. And how appetizing does that melted cheese look? Wow.

I followed that Bon Appetit recipe pretty much exactly. No scallions, so I just used regular onion. Below you will see photos of most of the steps. Again, we ate a few before I took the pics.

Combine chopped spinach, onions, garlic, and cumin in a medium bowl; season with salt and pepper. I used the mini food processor on the spinach, onions, and garlic, obviously...

 

Blend all that.

Mix in the ground turkey. Only until blended. Who wants to touch raw turkey more than they have to anyway?

Form 1/2" patties. Mine were about 4-5" in diameter. It's really hard to keep them thin, but they'll plump up in the pan. Also, I made mine about 2 hours ahead of time and refrigerated them to let them get a little firmer.

Cooked up! Really juicy, as you can see from my really clean plate...

My combination of toppings. Mozzarella, tomatoes, onions, pesto, and a little ketchup on the side.

I was impressed by these and so was Charlie. They feel relatively healthy with all that spinach, using lean ground turkey and all. The addition of the Hawaiian rolls and the fact that we ate nearly all of them probably decreases the healthy factor. Those turkey sliders that were leftover did make for a good lunch later on that week though. I believe I'll recommend this recipe.