Day after Thanksgiving

Honestly I enjoyed making that last blog so much that I want to keep going! 

So here is what happened since the last blog: I did NOT use that bread. Only because it was hard like a brick, only itty bitty holes. I think I must have not let it rise long enough? I dunno, it wasn't good, so I pitched it and bought some sandwich rolls from Kroger. I will try again but not just now. 

 Because of the bread, I didn't use the garlic aoli yet. The plan is to just use regular bread today and make the sandwich. More on that later. Tomato soup and chili - so I am going to have to put them in smaller containers and freeze some because apparently, I don't tend to eat the same things often. And then there is leftovers from really good meals like Thanksgiving turkey dinner and such. Plus there is going out with my family to restaurants which I love to do. 

I'd like to talk about the beer butt chicken. The recipe was really invented for the summer, to use with a grill. I figured but so what, I can make it in the oven, right? Well, kinda. It did brown standing up on a beer can, and it did make the chicken moist, I guess, unless if it was going to be that way anyway because I temped it just right. But on the grill, the beer dissapated, at least as much as I remember. And expecting some kind of chicken fond, or stock from the BBC, I put down some carrots and tomatoes to soak up the flavor. So the carrots dried out, shriveled, and some burned, and what little I got from the chicken juices also burned. I tried reconstituting the dried up looking carrots in the beer that stayed in the can once I removed the chicken from it. (I used a complex form of chicken tai chi with tongs and oven mitts) and dumped the beer into the pan with carrots and tomatoes and cooked. I tasted it and decided it was garbage, then threw it all away. But the chicken was good. I made mac and cheese penne pasta, calling that part good. 

Oh but the bagel french toast! I loved it so much I've made it 4 times, I kid you not. 

Okay so here's the method: You take your bagel (remember I had cinnamon bagels) and they are already cut in half through the side, right? So I cut the halves in half the same direction so I ended up with what resembled bagel thins, if you've ever seen those. 

Then I mixed up one egg with maybe 1/4 cup milk, using a fork. I dipped the bagel slices into the egg and fried in oil. I've used both olive oil and this veg oil that I get that has no seed oil in it. (Tryin'a be healthy here). Both will burn if you walk away. DON"T WALK AWAY!

I wanted to fancy it up and I love berries, but you can not get good fresh berries this time of year, so I grabbed a bag of frozen berry mix. I put maybe 1/2 cup of frozen berries in a bowl, topped it off with sugar, and tossed it in the microwave for one minute. Once it cooked, I smooshed it up with a fork and voila, it became a sauce. Easy!

                                             

I poured that sauce over the french toast and then grabbed some real maple syrup, poured a cap full over the fruit sauce and breakfast was served. 

You really should try this. Even if you burn it a little. 

If you don't know this, I also bake for others. I've got a whole company called Vicky's Cakes LLC. (Shameless plug!) but I only say that to explain why I made this next thing: Russian Baklava. 

I have a regular customer/fellow student/friend who has a bookclub and he gets sweets from me every month, but lately we have tied them back to the books they are reading. So this last book was set in Russia. I found this Russian Baklava that I had never heard of but sounded interesting. 

Basically if you've made Middle Eastern/Turkish/Greek baklava before, it's a tedious process of using phyllo dough (like a thousand sheets) and basting each one with this butter and putting in a layer of nuts (pistachios typically but can be cashew or walnut - there are like 48 kinds) and you bake it then cut into diamonds. Somewhere in there you pour a honey soak over that if I recall. It's messy but really good. 

Thiis recipe differs a lot: 

You make a dough with sour cream and egg yolk, and roll that out onto a tray to cool. Then you use the egg white to make a meringue, folding in some pulverized walnuts.

You quarter then roll out the dough and lay it in a 9x13 baking dish lined with parchment, striated with this meringue mixture so it resembles a torte or a dessert lasagna. You wash the top with the last yolk and place some pretty walnut halves, then score the top layer. 

Baking it makes it puffy and yellow. But never fear, we are not done!

You then score it down to the last layer but don't score the last one. You're supposed to then melt butter, pour that on, then melt honey and pour that on. But I turned it into one step and melted the honey butter together and poured it on. 

Then you bake it once again until the color turns to an appetizing shiney brown.

Because I short sheeted the top layer some of the mergingue oozed out but we ate it, so no harm done. 

I cut up the pieces and sold the best ones. Then I shared it with a few friends and family. I actually still have some left after all that. 

I would probably not make this all the time but it was an adventure!

I'm off to plan my next - what do I call them, experiments?

Thanks for reading and I hope you got to eat some great food this week!

Vicky