That dip is dillicious!

Remember that mayo we made yesterday? Remember how I said it was essential? Yeah-it's an essential part of making this unbelievably delicious buttermilk...dill...sauce...thing. 

Look, I didn't have enough time to come up with a good name for it while I was shoving it in my face, okay? And trust me, you aren't going to much care once you've done the same, either. 

That awesome dill stuff

1 cup mayo

1/4 cup buttermilk

A good handful of fresh dill

A good handful of fresh chives

Fresh black pepper

Ground sea salt

2 or 3 cloves garlic (I recommend 2. 3 is pretty much my limit with this recipe since it's so powerful and you lose a bit of the dill if you use too much.)

Chop up your fresh herbs, and squeeze your garlic through a garlic press. Throw them in the bowl. Whisk in the mayo until its like the most herb-packed mayo ever. Then add the buttermilk. Add a good amount of salt and pepper until you particularly think it tastes delicious b

Bam. Dill stuff. 

So far, I've gotten great enjoyment out of using it as both a dip, and a reeeeeeeally awesome dressing for salads! 

Try to resist just guzzling it like a super weird beverage. 

<3 Kat. 

Mayo makes my arm hurt.

1,056 calories.

No, that's not how many calories you'd gain from eating a bowl of mayonnaise, it's how many you'd burn from MAKING one. It's a bastard of a thing to whisk up, but well worth just how much it's going to make you want to throw it against the wall and never talk to it again. 

Homemade mayo is one of those things that, in the end, is as essential as someone who loves you. Sure, you'll want to scream at it from time to time due to all the pain it puts you through, but in the end it's irreplaceable and appears out of nowhere to help make your life better. Kind of makes sense for Mother's Day in a weird, wobbly sort of way. 

Once you make your own, you'll never want to go back to buying the weird, mysterious chemical goop that passes for mayo on store shelves. 

Here's what you'll need to demystify mayo:

One egg yolk

Juice of one lemon

One cup of oil (dealer's choice.)

One teaspoon ground mustard

Light sprinkle of salt

Medium bowl

Whisk

Dispenser bottle (optional)

Pretty much, just remember this recipe by the fact that it is all ones. One yolk, one cup, one lemon, one teaspoon. Super simple. 

The first step to making mayo is about the only easy one to it. Put your egg, lemon juice, mustard, and salt in the bowl. 

Whisk them together until it's all foamy. Don't worry-the foam is how you know everything's properly integrated. 

If you have a dispenser bottle (and I really recommend that you use one), load up your cup of oil into that dream machine and get ready for the long battle ahead of you. 

This part is important.

Before you get all gung ho and start pouring that oil in there, you MUST know the basics of making a successful emulsion. 

The MOST important thing is start with one drop. One single drop. Why? Think of it like that one person you know that had to slowly wear on you. If they'd spent all day every day with you since the moment you met them, you'd probably just go right ahead and knock out all their teeth sometime around the third or fourth hour of them pronouncing your name wrong and rubbing the snot from their nose all over your newly upholstered furniture. But if they'd taken the time to introduce themselves slowly before asking you to let them move in, you wouldn't suddenly be looking for someone to front the bail incurred by your unexpected assault charges. 

You really need to romance the mayo. 

So, like I said...one single drop. And then a single drop more. And a single drop more. All the while, whisking like crazy and praying to the mighty mayo lord that all your efforts won't be in vain. 

Somewhere around the 30th drop, the foam will almost completely disappear. 

Around the 60th drop of oil, the foam should all be completely gone, and you should start to notice a slight glossiness every time you add a new drop. 

Right about the time you've gotten so tired and so pissed of and your arm is in so much pain that you no longer want to be attached to it...something interesting starts to happen. ...it starts to work! Despite all logic, adding a liquid to another liquid has suddenly started to thicken, and become closer to a solid!  

And it's about time, too, because this is the "throw the bowl against the wall" portion of the program I was talking about earlier. Good news! You are no longer restricted to single dots at a time! You may now incorporate two or three dots at a time!

And once it just very nearly starts to be able to make extremely soft peaks on it's own? You can very nearly add the oil in a light stream! Keep going! You're almost there!

Ah, sweet relief. When you hear that final, gasping wheeze of the bottle as it releases that last little ounce of that gorram oil...you're finally finished! Wipe the river of sweat from your brow and put this stuff to use!

Now of course, if you're a smart person and have $8, you'll save yourself all the misery and pain and just buy a basic electric hand mixer from your local big box store. But come on...how much more impressive is it to say you whisked up this mayo by hand?

See you tomorrow, you beefcake you. 

<3 Kat. 

Pizza Friday!

My parents are terrible cooks. I mean seriously, senselessly terrible cooks. My mother created a terrifying meatloaf that may have been an original argument towards my vegetarianism, and my father lives almost entirely off of frozen chicken nuggets and disgusting hamburgers.

 I probably never would have tasted worthwhile food had it not been for my ex-almost-step-mother, who twice a week would make pasta sauce from scratch-the leftovers of which we would always use on scratch-made pizza every single Friday. She introduced me to the idea that all things worth having can be made yourself, and that fear is something never to be felt in the kitchen. I hope some day, if I ever end up growing up, I'm at least half as awesome as her. 

Even though our families eventually parted ways, mine never stopped making Friday night pizza. It's so ingrained in my being that I instinctively crave pizza on Fridays even if I forget what day it is. 

Today is Thursday. Sure, that means this is a day early, but it gives you plenty of time to prep. 

This is what tradition is made of:

2 c. Flour

2/3 c. Water

1 1/4 tsp active dry yeast

3 TBSP sugar

3 TBSP whatever oil you've got

1/2 tsp salt

Toppings:

Whatever the heck you want. 

(But I suggest basics like sauce, mozzarella, Parmesan, mushrooms, salt and pepper, dried oregano, a swirl of olive oil, and some crushed garlic.)

If you're using a bread machine, put everything in the bowl in the order it tells you to. Let it mix and rise, and skip the extra instructions that are about to be followed by those not lucky enough to have found one for $3 at a yard sale. 

If you're still waiting for the one you ordered off of Amazon to arrive, you're going to need to start with the yeast. 

Dump the yeast and sugar into the water, which you're going to want to make sure is warm. Mix it around and let it sit until it's all foamy while you combine the other ingredients in a massive bowl. When you're good and ready, put in the yeast sludge and mix it real well until it looks like...well...dough. You may need to lightly sprinkle on more flour, but be careful because if you add too much the final product will be tough and unsatisfying. 

You're going to knead the ever loving fuck out of the dough once it's combined and then cover it with a warm, wet cloth for about an hour and a half. 

Welcome back to the rest of the class!  Once your dough is good and risen, sprinkle your board lightly with flour and dump the dough on top. Then sprinkle the top of the dough with a wee bit more flour, separate it in half, and form the two blobs into balls. 

Grab a rolling pin and flatten a blob out into whatever thickness and shape you'd like. You're going to want to rub some flour onto the rolling pin, by the way. 

This is the part where everyone I ever teach to make pizza seems to become unsure of themselves. Honestly folks, there's not much to mess up here. It's already dough, all you need to do is flatten it enough to get the toppings you want onto it. And it's not like it matters if its a weird oval rather than a perfect circle if it tastes awesome. 

The best advice I can give is push the rolling pin into the center of the dough and roll from the center, outwards-constantly rotating as well as flipping the dough until you've decided you're finished with it. 

Preheat your oven to 400°F and slap your rolled-out dough onto a lightly floured tray, pan, or pizza stone before following the next step or you'll bugger up the whole operation. 

Put the toppings on in whatever order you want. I usually do mine upside down since sliding-off cheese is super lame. I'll usually put down the garlic, oil, "toppings", mozzarella, sauce blobs, dried spices, and shredded Parmesan in that order...but I highly recommend you do whatever you'd like in whatever order suits you. 

Bake at 400° for 17 minutes, or until the house smells unbearably of pizza and it looks as browned as you prefer it. 

DO NOT EAT THE PIZZA WHILE IT IS STILL LAVA. I know this last and final step is basically impossible to do, but trust me...if you succeed in this your enjoyment of the pie will be significantly increased as you'll not have burnt off all your taste buds and actually be able to sense the flavor of more than just the initial bite. 

Then again, that first bite is pretty well worth it. 

Enjoy the shit out of this, y'all. 

<3 Kat. 

BANANANANANANANANANANA....bread.

It's kind of perfect that today, the day on which I'd intended to actually publish our first blog post, I was recruited by my lovely friend Marta to make a bazillionty banana bread muffins. She's running a charity 5k to help with an orphanage very close to her heart and was hoping we could bribe people to donate via the power of food.

In my experience, food is the best bribe in the world.

So rather than start you off on the badass journey of making fried pickles entirely from scratch (get pumped for next week!), I'll start this blog off with a journey based on love. Because while Linny and I are sure to rock your faces off on the regular with our culinary genius and complete and total shamelessness, we are both people who live to help those we love. I think it's important for us to start off making a good impression before we throw around enough curse words to make you doubt our sincerity.

Please, consider donating any amount to help my friends Brett and Marta Weber in their fight against world suck.
Donate to Marta
Donate to Brett



Banana Bread

3 c. flour
a couple dashes of salt
1.5 tsp baking powder
1.5 tsp baking soda
2 c. dark brown sugar
1/2 c. coconut oil
2 eggs
1 c. buttermilk (or 1 cup any milk mixed with juice from one lemon for that slight tang.)
6 or so ripe-to-very-ripe bananas

Optional-two dashes of cinnamon and a sparing dash of nutmeg. (I added them to the muffin version I made today and it was pretty freakin' awesome.)

Grab yourself a bigass bowl and two greased loaf pans while you preheat the oven to 300˚F.

Throw your bananas in the bowl and mash them with whatever you happen to have handy (I traditionally use my giraffe whisk because the whisk portion is great for both mashing and mixing, and the giraffe part IS A FREAKIN' GIRAFFE.)

Throw in the rest of the ingredients in whatever order you like. I've literally done it in every single order possible and even though you're supposed to mix the dry goods separate and slowly add them to the wet goods.... I don't bother. My method of cooking is pretty well described as PUT SOME STUFF IN A THING. COOK UNTIL IT'S FOOD. And as you can tell from all those capital letters, it does not involve much delicacy or give a damn at all.

Once the batter is all mixed up, separate it into the two loaf pans. If you're feeling crazy, mix in some chocolate chips and/or walnuts at some point before putting them in the oven. (I usually do it right in the loaf pan, but smart people will do it in the pre-panned batter.)

Cook for about 45 minutes to an hour at 300˚F for two loaves, or about 25-30 minutes at the same temp if you're using muffin pans instead.

Pro tip! If you tap the top of your bananananananess and it springs back up, it's done. If it indents, sticks to your finger, or feels all woobly inside... it's not done. It's also best to cool these on a drying rack, but since I don't own any I sometimes grab the grates from inside my toaster oven and use them.... Or just cool them in the pan. You should NOT cool things in the pan because they'll get soggy on the bottom, but to be fair... Banana bread is a sticky, semi-soggy treat anyway so most people won't notice for the couple of seconds it takes to shove these babies right on in their face.

See you, space cowboy!
<3 Kat.

Fried mother effin' pickles.

I'd heard of fried pickles before, but up until about a month ago I'd never had them, and was pretty sure they sounded weird.

Woah. Just.... Woah. Holy moley, fried pickles are AWESOME. The crunchy breading combined with the warm, acidic pickles dipped liberally in homemade dill and chive dressing? DELICIOUS. I unabashedly ate a huge plate of these suckers instead of dinner, nearly made myself sick in an attempt to eat a whole jar's worth, and still went back the next day for a soggy fried pickle breakfast. Even without their crisp these things are disturbingly delicious, but fresh out of the fryer their flavor is unparalleled.

Here's what you're going to need in order to ensure that what you put in your face this week is better than anything you've ever put in it before:

Fried pickles

A jar of pickles
flour
panko bread crumbs
1.5 c buttermilk
hot sauce
chili powder
salt
frying oil (I'm a fan of canola or corn since they have high smoke points and are cheap.)




When you're breading and frying things, the best thing you can do for yourself is set up your station before you even get started.

In a large, deep pan, heat up about 2 inches worth of oil on just below medium heat. You can tell the oil is hot enough if you drip water into it and it crackles, and too hot if the surface starts to sort of ripple and look like... well.... oil. Kind of like the way an oil spot in a parking lot looks with all the waves. Trust me, you'll understand this description if you ever get to see it.

In a large bowl, mix together one part flour to two parts panko bread crumbs. Put this bowl as close to the fry oil as possible.

In the next bowl, beat one whole egg and 1.5 c. of buttermilk with as much hot sauce as you want. I recommend going heavy on the sauce.

Work smarter, not harder and grab a zippy big enough to put all your pickles in with some flour, with room enough to shake 'em like... well, not a polaroid. It doesn't make any sense to shake a polaroid.

In a space that makes sense for immediately depositing something covered in hot oil without letting it drip everywhere, grab a sheet tray and line it with a double layer of paper towels.


Now your station is set up.


Drain your pickles and pat them as dry as you can. You don't really need to try that hard-I certainly didn't.

Put your drained pickles in your zippy followed by enough flour to coat all of them, a good shot of chili powder, and a light pinch of salt. Zip the bag up and shake them like crazy until every single piece is coated.

Grab a strainer if you have one and dump the flour-coated pickles into it over the trash. Again... smarter not harder. Shake off as much of the flour as you can without taking it off the pickles.

Now dump THAT into your buttermilk mixture. You don't need to be elegant about this-I ended up dumping the entire batch in after those first three in the picture because laaaaazzzzyyyyyy.

With one hand, pluck a pickle from the buttermilk and drop it into the panko. Press the panko onto the pickle as firmly as you can to ensure it all remains coated when dropped in the fryer.

Carefully lower the coated pickle into the oil-feel free to use a skimmer or metal spoon if you're worried about getting splashed! 

  

Cook the pickles about 30 or 40 seconds on each side until DEEP golden brown. Trust me on this-the darker ones were the tastier ones. Transfer them to the paper-toweled pan, and try to wait at least a couple of seconds before shoving it in your face.

Repeat as needed, and I recommend serving it with a dill and chive or ranch dip. (Which I already posted the recipe for last week!)

Try not to pickle yourself sick!
<3 Kat.



BONUS! If you hate frying things because it wastes so much oil, or you're not any good at it, or laaaaaazy, you can do the same thing in the oven! Just bread them all, throw them onto a lined sheet tray that's been sprayed with oil, and then spray the whole batch with more oil before throwing them into a 380° oven for about 45 minutes to an hour-just until the crust is crunchy but not so much so that the pickles are dry. 

We be jammin'.

I've got a lot of philosophies about food, one of which is that literally ANYONE can make it. The most important ingredient in any recipe is a heaping helping of confidence and a daring amount of don't give a fuck. For real. Most of my recipes are "Put some stuff into a pot. Heat it up until it's food." I'm never too careful about measuring things out, even if I start off working with a recipe. I always think of recipes as suggestions of things you can do with random ingredients and finished food as a glimpse into the world of what its creator thinks is delicious. The only thing you need to be able to cook well is to be brave enough to find your own path and follow it.

Jam is a good place to start.

There are a billionty zillionty combinations you could create for jam based on flavor combinations you personally dig, and as far as I can tell... It's pretty darn hard to mess up so... Go to town with it!

You could do something like.... Blueberry lime, or peach basil, or apple cranberry jam (although since apples have such a high pectin content, you might not need any of the powdered stuff.)

Since I made some strawberry deliciousness, though, I'll give you the recipe based on what I did.

Strawberry Jam

2 pints fresh strawberries (If they're close to rotting, even better-they'll be extra sweet!)
Pectin
1 c. Sugar



Put your strawberries in a pot and mash them with a potato masher until they're to the chunkiness you prefer. I like a little extra texture in mine so I left 'em nice and hunky.

If you get packaged pectin like I did, literally every single one tells you how much to use for each particular fruit. I am just waaaaay too lazy to wash measuring spoons if I don't have to, so I abandoned the instructions and just sprinkled some on there. I'll estimate that it was about a teaspoon and a half.

Add the pectin to your pot of smashed berries and stir while cooking over medium/medium high heat.

Once the berries start to boil, let them go to town for a minute or two while, still, stirring like someone will jump out of the closet and steal your pants if you stop.



Add the cup of sugar and.... you guessed it.... stir. Keep stirring. Stir until it's all foamy on the top and it boils despite the stirring.

STOP STIRRING. IT'S JAM!!!

Take it off the heat and wait until it cools before funneling it into jars. I highly recommend dropping a bunch of it on top of some homemade yogurt and delighting in just how unbelievably soft and sweet and flavorful your jam is compared to the questionable stuff you've been buying for years from the store.

By the way, feel free to spice things up a little and throw in some cinnamon and ginger when you're cooking with strawberries. I've got a feeling they'd taste fantastic with this. 

Try not to spend it all in one place. 
<3 Kat.

I do what I want, I do what I want!

As far as I can tell, pickles are a "do whatever the heck you want" kind of food. The basic concept is "Put some stuff into some jars. Then put some stuff into some vinegar. Let the two stuffs do some stuffs together for a while. Stuff them in your stuff-stuffer."

I'm a big fan of foods that don't make me think about them when I make them, which means pickles? Totally down my alley.

Donning my total air of don't give a fuck, I decided to literally just grab the first couple of things I could in the pantry and turn them (and the cucumbers that I admittedly purchased specifically for this purpose) into noms.


Here's what you're gonna need to pickle like a champ:

Some produce (I got 5 pickling cucumbers specifically for this.)
Some vinegar (dealer's choice! I used white because it's cheap and plentiful! And I probably used about 3 cups of it.)
Some vinegar-flavoring stuff! (I used mustard seeds, celery seeds, turmeric, sugar, and chili pepper flakes)
Optional-things it doesn't make sense to boil! (I used dill and garlic.)
Some jars!





Now at this point you may have noticed that this recipe is less like a recipe and more like a note that your crazy aunt may have scrawled on a filthy index card that's been floating around the house for roughly a decade. Well... Welcome to the family, schnookums! These pickles are about doing whatever the crap you want, so grab your lab coat and experiment! Hate sweet pickles? Don't use sugar! Like 'em more than just a touch spicy? Put a chopped up jalapeño in there! Allergic to cucumbers? Do carrots instead! (True story-the Hunky Dreamy is allergic to cucumbers but really digs pickled carrots.)

I believe in you. You can do this.

So once you get your flavors all sorted out, put the 'stuff it doesn't make any sense to boil' like fresh herbs and the produce into your jars. For the love of bob, use something made of glass because... we're about to put some boiling hot vinegar in those suckers. 

  

If you're fancy, you can use a mandolin to make your vegetables all pretty and uniform. If you're ghetto and don't give a butt, do what I do and hack away at them with a lack of regard so well refined that you may even end up having the most ridiculously uneven cut cucumber slices in the universe and totally not be bothered by it. Put those babies in the jars next.

Get yourself a pot that makes sense for the amount of liquid you think it would take to fill the gaps between the stuff you put in the jars just now.

....Pour about as much vinegar as you think you're going to need to fill those gaps into said pot. Then halfway through realize you've judged poorly and add some more like it ain't no thang. You might even decide to add some water because vinegar is super strong and you might be afraid it will melt your tongue off if you look at it the wrong way-don't worry champ, I won't hold you back. Go for it. 

Put whatever flavorful junks you want into that vinegar in whatever proportions you want and boil it all for a minute or two. Then pour it into your jars over all the other stuff. Let it cool on the counter before you put the lids on so it doesn't create condensation and up the risk of going bad. Put the room-temperature jars into the fridge for about a week to let them really get their magic going.

BAM. PICKLES.

And you know what's great about this recipe? You invented it while you were going. AND THERE'S A SECOND PART COMING NEXT WEEK. Just in time for your pickles to be done pickling, methinks.

See you then, you little rapscallions you.
<3 Kat.

P.s. if you decide to use some turmeric, I recommend using close to none-it's super strong and will stain everything you have ever owned simultaneously.