butter makes everything better

I made a half batch of The Pioneer Woman's Cinnamon Rolls yesterday.
Warning: Extremely butterific and sugar stuffed.

Fridged the dough overnight and it was pretty easy to both roll out and roll up.

That's sugar and the start of the cinnamon on top of a layer of butter- softened instead of melted, so I didn't end up with melted butter all over the floor, just flour all over the floor. Totally worth it.

Loosey goosey ends

Type A rolls

Almost a pound of powdered sugar:

The maple/coffee frosting is obviously SUPER DUPER FREAKING sweet,  next time I'd consider serving with milk instead of cider. Or maybe vanilla ice cream.

I believe that I am successfully doing my part to help my pregnant friend's goal of gaining 35 lb- I hope the rest of you are doing some cardio so you don't die from my treats.

Cochon nom nom

Brunch at Cochon

Eggs Cochon- pulled pork, bacon-gruyère biscuit, poached eggs, Mornay sauce, home fries
The poached egg looks pretty spiffy and swirly there.

Berkshire pork belly special- on top of hash browns and brussel sprouts, with a mystery possibly homemade mayo based sauce, or maybe it was a crème fraîche
Ratio of meat to fat 1:4. It's actually fat marbled with meat. The pork belly comes with a fried egg that I asked them to leave out. Although visually it doesn't look like much food, the amount of calories in the pork and the sauce made me full. The potatoes were fantastic and I wish there had been more of them. Also, I generally don't like brussel sprouts, but brussel sprouts doused in pork fat? Delicious.

roasted fresh sardines w/ dill and lemon

Apparently fresh sardines are a ticking time bomb for spoiling rapidly, we were a bit stressed by the whole MUST COOK THESE NOW factor. Mainly they tasted like the dill stuffed in them.

porkalicious v5

Superlazy pork belly
-oven to 425F
- kosher salt and pepper on belly
- score skin with a razor blade
- dribble a little olive oil in roasting pan to coat bottom
- cut a few onions into quarters (smaller if large onions) and put in roasting pan
- (optional- throw on some herbs like rosemary, thyme, sage on there)
- put pork belly in roasting pan on top of the onions
- roast 20 min, 275 deg for another while

korean tacos

I am not a fan of soft tacos when they are the generic perfectly circular kind with that slight granular texture. But you could probably fill cardboard with spicy pork and bulgogi and it would be pretty good. These ones are from Bossam Bar on Jewelry Row.

brown butter cookies

I am too lazy and perfectionistic to make beauuuutiful symmetric oval cookies from a spoon, but even lumpy rounds are delicious when they are brown butter cookies. The blurb talks about the texture changing over time-- they go from sandy shortbread to a borderline creamy melt in your mouth kind of thing over a period of two days. Also- my new plan is to not use my oven when it is >80F b/c it heats up my apartment too much.

mac *cheese

Actually it's rotelle spiral pasta guys and cheese. I like the recipe out of Bittman's How to Cook Everything- the dry mustard adds the right flavour note for me.

And it turns out that the secret to panko? What makes panko those Japanese shardlike crumbs so fantastically crisp and light and amazing and why the crunchy top is like the best part of mac and cheese? PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED FATS, that's what.

Which is why I bought the Shirakiku brand Honey Panko, JAPANESE BREAD CRUMBS; soft finished flakes with honey. It's also "A GOOD BARGAIN." Says so on the package. The plan is to make some crispy crumbed chicken with these someday soon.

welcome back post hibernation

Non happy meat short ribs have gone up to ~$5/lb from $4 last year. There were a bunch of pork shoulder braises. And things like this mushroom risotto. It turns out that risotto is freaking easy to make delicious, especially with large amounts of parmesan reggiano at the end. Also you can be totally lazy and not make your own broth etc.