Bacon, Beer and Cheese Soup with Chicken

That's right. Bacon. Beer. Cheese. Chicken. What more do you want? I found this recipe on a website called slowroasteditalian and it sounded so good I had to try it. I have to say that I was not disappointed, although I did make some changes to the original recipe.

Ingredients: Bacon, onion, chicken, butter, flour, worcestershire sauce, beer, chicken broth, half & half cream, cayenne, paprika, salt and pepper. I also made a last minute addition of cream cheese

Rendering the bacon

Cooking the chicken

Making the roux

Bringing beer, stock and half & half to a simmer

Adding the cheese

Finished soup

I really enjoyed this soup, as did my brother who also tried some. It was extremely rich and creamy and although I thought the flavour of the beer I used was a bit too strong, it added a nice yeasty flavour that complimented the cheese. Definitely needed some home made pretzel bread sticks or something but I was short on time. Next time I would probably use a milder tasting beer as well. It was an extremely simple recipe with only a few ingredients, but I can't seem to resist when I hear beer, bacon and chicken in the same sentence. The recipe is as follows:

6 slices bacon (I used about 10 because I kept eating it)

1 pound boneless skinless chicken breast

1/4 cup flour

1/4 butter

2 teaspoons garlic powder (I replaced this with fresh garlic)

2 teaspoons cayenne (I reduced to 1/4 teaspoon)

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon pepper

1 teaspoon paprika

1 cup beer

1 cup chicken broth

2 cups half & half

1 teaspoon worcestershire

8 ounces grated cheddar cheese

(I added about 1/4 cream cheese at the end)

Chives (I used green onion)

Directions: 

Render bacon in a pot, drain and reserve. Cook chicken, onions and garlic in bacon grease,  drain and reserve. Make roux in same pot, and add beer slowly while mixing well. Add stock while mixing and bring to a boil.  Reduce to a simmer for a few minutes and add half & half. Bring back up to a simmer and add cheese and seasoning. Simmer until ready to serve and garnish with chives/green onions. 

Random Pics

Random pictures of food I've made or eaten over the past few months.

Thanksgiving stuff

Pastrami, corned beef, cheese and mustard on an Italian roll
No pesky vegetables getting in the way

Apple turnovers made from leftover puff pastry from baking class

Raspberry sauce - combined with chocolate sauce as
 filling for the rugelach pastries pictured below 

Rugelach I made for my multicultural nutrition assignment
Unfortunately I got caught up watching the Raptors game
and the majority of them got burnt to crisps

Pickling and Fermentation

ICICLE PICKLES!!!

As I mentioned in the video, I had these pickles when I was younger, and so they were perfect to make for this assignment. These first few pictures show the ingredients and equipment I used for this project. I used a big ceramic pickle crock that my parents got 20+ years ago...and it still has the original lid and everything. Icicle pickles are somewhat similar to bread and butter pickles, but they also contain cassia buds, which give them their own distinct taste.

These were the ingredients I used to make my own pickling spice.
I may have bought a bit more than I needed..but oh well. Pickles for days!!

This is the pickling crock. The first thing I was told when I got it
from my dad was "DO NOT DROP IT."  What else is new...

Cucumbers. Before I ruined their day.

Completed pickling spice.

Cucumbers. Before the addition of water and pickling salt.

Overall, the process took 11 days to complete. Day one I cut the cucumbers and poured in enough water (with pickling salt dissolved in it) to cover the cucumbers. Next I placed a plate and a pot on top to keep them submerged. Day two, three and four all I had to do was stir them around then place the plate and pot back on top. On day five, I drained the water/pickling salt solution, and covered the cucumbers with clear boiling water, then re-covered them. Day six was an important step. I had to drain them once again, and dissolve alum powder in boiling water, then pour over the cucumbers and cover. I believe the alum helps to make the pickles crunchy. Day seven was the day I started the syrup. I drained the crock, and dissolved sugar in vinegar. This is also where I added the pickling spice, allspice, celery seeds, and cassia buds. The syrup was heated to the boiling point and poured over the cucumbers. For the eighth, ninth and tenth days, I had to do the same thing. Drain the syrup into a pot and bring it to a boil, add additional sugar, then pour it back over the cucumbers--pickles I should say, since they were now infused with the flavour of the sugar, vinegar and spices.

The three most important ingredients for icicle pickles.
(Besides cucumbers of course)

Alum powder being added to water.

Pickling salt-water solution

Pickling syrup. Sugar, vinegar, spices.

Day eleven was the moment of truth. I put the pickles in jars, took some pictures and had my first taste. Then I had my second, third and fourth tastes and each one was as crunchy and delicious as the last. I was extremely happy with how they turned out, and it was easy enough to spend 10 minutes each day making them. Below I have provided the recipe I used (although I used half of everything since it makes a LOT of pickles).

6 quarts of cucumbers (I measured them out in a 3 quart box as shown in the picture above).

2 cups pickling salt

1 tablespoon alum powder

2.5 quarts (about 1150 mL) white vinegar

14 cups of sugar

1 tablespoon whole allspice

1 tablespoon whole cassia buds

1 tablespoon celery seeds

(Recipe didn't call for it but I added 1/2 tablespoon of pickling spice).

ICICLE PICKLES:

Cut cucumbers, cover with brine made of about 4.5 L of boiling water and 2 cups pickling salt. Let stand 4 days, stirring every day.

5th day: Drain and cover with boiling water.

6th day: Drain and dissolve 1 tbsp alum into water, pour over and let stand.

7th day: Drain and make syrup of 1150 mL vinegar, 8 cups sugar, 1 tbsp allspice, 1 tbsp cassia buds and 1 tbsp celery seeds. Heat to boiling and pour over.

8th day: Drain syrup into pot, heat to boiling and add 2 additional cups of sugar. Add to cucumbers.

9th day: Same as day 8. Drain, boil, add 2 cups sugar. Pour over cucumbers.

10th day: Same as day 9.

11th day: Heat syrup, pour over cucumbers. Seal in jars. ENJOY!!

Fruit Hunter!

Ajax has been pretty rainy and overcast lately, so when I saw the sun shining on Thursday, I decided to take a walk to the local Sobey's to see if they had anything interesting.

 

 

I looked around for a bit, and the only fruit I could find that I had never had was granadilla. I did a quick google search to learn a bit about it, and found that it looked similar to a dragonfruit or pomegranate on the inside (large seeds surrounded by pockets of fruit). Remembering my dragonfruit smoothie failure, I decided to try and find something at a different store. I still bought the granadilla though, just to give it a chance.

 

Next, I went to a local market called EZ Fresh. It has a lot of Asian foods, and there was a great many ingredients I had never heard of or tasted before. This is the main reason I decided to check it out. As soon as I walked to the produce section, I could smell a strong, pineapple-like, tropical sort of scent, and pinpointed it as coming from a huge weird looking...thing (at the time I didn't know what I was looking at). It turned out to be a jackfruit, and they were really big so I just bought a portion that had already been cut.

 

Jackfruits (Artocarpus heterophyllus), grow on trees in tropical lowlands, and they can reach a massive size, up to 80 pounds in weight. They are a major part of agriculture in India, as they have been for centuries, while in other areas, such as parts of Brazil, it is considered an invasive species. It is also the national fruit of Bangladesh.

 

The main reason I chose this fruit was the smell. It has a very strong tropical smell that reminds me of pineapple. The outside is kind of rough, and the inside is very fibrous, with pockets of fruit separated by the fibers. Each pocket has a large seed in the middle, which you can apparently roast and eat as a snack (I have yet to try this). The flavor reminds me of pineapple mixed with mango and apple, but the texture is more like that of a cantaloupe or honeydew melon. I'm not sure how juicy they are supposed to be, because this one wasn't very, but it was delicious all the same. I can still smell the scent on my hands as I type this half an hour later.

 

In my opinion, no cooking was needed, since it was so tasty to begin with, but there is a dish called Ginataang Langka that is made from unripened jackfruit cooked in coconut milk. It consists of the fruit, stewed in coconut milk with onion, garlic, shrimp paste, and long chili peppers, as well as meat (quite often pork). I'm not sure about cooking the ripened fruit, although I'm sure it would work as well on the grill as pineapple, and as I mentioned before, the seeds can also be cooked and eaten. We've all heard the saying "don't judge a book by its cover," well the same can be said for fruit. The jackfruit looks pretty ugly and unappetizing at first glance, but all it takes is one whiff to know its going to be delicious.

 

 

Work Cited:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackfruit

Sensory Evaluation

Over the next few months I'm going to try as many new foods as I can and record them in this blog. I decided to start off with something I was pretty sure I would enjoy, so I chose a fruit. Sweet pitaya, to be exact, or as it is better known (at least by me), Dragon fruit. I had never heard the name sweet pitaya before, but learned a decent amount about the fruit on the internet before eating it.

 

I also didn't realize how many different varieties there were. I've only ever seen the red-skinned, white-fleshed kind, Hylocereus undatus, which is the most common type. But the two I purchased at Sobey's (for a whopping $3.50 each) were the red-fleshed type, Hylocereus costaricensis. It's pretty amazing that we live in a time where we can get any type of fruit from any part of the planet regardless of what season it is just by driving 5 minutes to the store. At the same time its a slightly sobering thought if you consider how much fossil fuel gets burned during shipping. More energy wasted than the caloric content of the food can even provide. Just another reason to buy local!

 

Honestly, I don't think it was worth the price. Sure it looked nice, with its red leathery skin and some leaves sort of like flower petals, and when I cut it in half it was quite juicy too, but my excitement was short lived. It did taste good, it just didn't really taste like much of anything. I ate a couple pieces and it might be a stretch, but I would have to say it reminded me of a cross between a kiwi (because of the seeds and a slight tartness in the beginning), and a watermelon (because of the watery-sweetness). I also thought I was picking up a slight aftertaste of some sort of red berry. The seeds were kind of off-putting since they were much larger than kiwi seeds so I decided to blend it up with some apple cider and strain the seeds. Bad idea. For some reason it became this weird goopy substance that reminded me of egg whites and I couldn't even get it to go through the strainer. I decided to just drink it as it was, but the texture made me gag so I poured it out. I will have to research a recipe containing Dragon fruit to use up the second one I bought. I don't see myself buying them again however.

Cook's Biography

Hi there, my name is Rick and this is my cook's biography. I want to be a chef because food makes people happy. If you're feeling down after a crappy day, sit back with your favourite comfort food and I guarantee you'll feel better.
I'm not currently working in the industry, and working at Wendy's when I was 16 was the closest I came to having any professional experience.
My personal philosophy on cooking is to season food well and cook it properly. I really enjoy making slow-cooked foods, and I'd love to get a smoker to have a continuous supply of smoked meats and cheeses on hand.
I hope to learn and develop many different skills and techniques through this program that I can use as a foot in the door to the culinary industry, and then use hard work and perseverance to climb the ladder and one day achieve my goal of owning my own business.

I don't really have a current picture of myself I wanted to use but I had this picture on my phone of some Big Mac sliders I made one time. Found a recipe online for the sauce and had to try it out. Tasted better than McDonalds.