Three Free Thursday Part III: Brown Butter Cocoa Walnut Brownies

Happy Three Free Thursday, Blog Readers!   To recap the process, on the first Thursday, I select three free recipes from sources on Twitter.  On the following Thursday, I report back via blog entry the full results of my adventures in the kitchen and let you know if you should try these recipes at home. Enjoy!

Recipe: Brown Butter Cocoa Walnut Brownies

Source: @bonappetitmag http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/2011/02/cocoa_brownies_with_browned_butter_and_walnuts

What was Betty Crocker thinking when she started making boxed brownie mixes??? Betty brought us her infamous cookbook (aptly titled "Betty Crocker's Cookbook") and followed it up with box after box of blasphemous 'baking mixes'.  Everything from cakes to cupcakes to brownies to cookies and then eventually into the frosting market. But why? Brownie recipes are simple things - eggs, cocoa, sugar, flour, butter, vanilla, salt, etc.  I will agree that some homemade brownies lack the gooey, chocoloate fudge intensity of their boxed brethren.  This recipe demolishes that concern - you can make homemade brownies so fudge-like and delicious that your friends and co-workers will insist they came out of a box. 



 Findings:


This Brown Butter Cocoa Walnut Brownies recipe is sensational.  Clearly written and well detailed as are most Bon Appetit recipes. The final product is intensely rich flavor from the browned butter and hot melted sugar and cocoa.  The only problem with this recipe - it doesn't make more brownies! I suggest making multiple batches of these brownies.  You won't have a problem finding a home for them - my co-workers finished a batch in under 15 minutes... at 10 a.m. ;-) As an engineer, I work on a team of fifteen men and myself - they have no shame when it comes to inhaling baked goods. 

 

Tips:

Luscious batter!

• Be careful not to overcook.  The easiest way to destroy a great brownie recipe is to set your oven timer for 25 minutes and walk out of the kitchen.  Turn the pan halfway through baking time to ensure consist heat and test brownies with a toothpick at the 15 or 20 minute mark.  Best way to know when to toothpick test - the first appearance of surface cracking and color change.
• Never ever buy boxed brownie mix ever again. Seriously, pinkie swear!

Rating: 5 out of 5   

Thanks for reading Part III of this week's Three Free Thursday! Feel free to send in recipe suggestions for Three Free Thursday on Twitter to @RecipEngineer or by e-mail RecipEngineer@gmail.com

Three Free Thursday Part II: Pasta with Butternut Squash and Sage

Happy Three Free Thursday, Blog Readers!   To recap the process, on the first Thursday, I select three free recipes from sources on Twitter.  On the following Thursday, I report back via blog entry the full results of my adventures in the kitchen and let you know if you should try these recipes at home. Enjoy!

Recipe: Pasta w/ Butternut Squash & Sage

Source: @TestKitchen

Link: http://www.cooksillustrated.com/recipes/detail.asp?docid=18099&Extcode=L1BN3CA00

It is bright, blue-skied afternoon as I prepare to cook up some new hearty pasta dishes featuring savory cheeses and winter vegetables. Despite local retail stores being stocked full of early spring/summer inventory like light pastel-colored cotton cardigans and even short shorts (gasp!), it is still winter in New England. While I may desire a brightly-colored trench coat, I still need that boring old wool coat.  It's still brutal out there and there are ten calendar days left until spring truly begins,  so let's send out the final winter root vegetables and hearty comfort foods out with a bang.  This Three Free Thursday, I'm making two pasta dishes - @TestKitchen Pasta w/ Butternut Squash & Sage and @Real_Simple Cheesy Baked Pasta with Spinach and Artichokes.

Findings:

This Pasta with Butternut Squash and Sage  recipe is delicious and so rich in flavor that you don't need a big serving to feel satisfied. Sage is one of my favorite herbs - delicate, velvety leaves, but rich flavor and alluring aroma.This is a very fragrant dish that will infuse your kitchen with aromas so intoxicating that your neighbors are likely going to invite themselves over for dinner. 

Fresh sage leaves...velvety texture
with an intense fragrance.

You will need to adjust this recipe to obtain the required 2 Tbsp of bacon fat required to carmalize the butternut squash. Either double the amount of bacon (8 slices) or add 1 Tbsp of olive oil the pan prior to adding squash.  I believe you can never have too much bacon, but you be the judge.  Also a warning about cooking time - be careful that squash is completely tender before removing from heat.  In my experience, the recipe's timing suggestion was insufficient to produce consistent tenderness in the squash. Serve with nice dry white wine, a green salad and a crusty bread. 

Tip:  Many people dislike handling fresh butternut squash because of its tough peel and hand-staining flesh and seeds. Instead of substituting frozen squash, which can be watery and flavorless, use this technique to easily work with fresh butternut squash. First, cut off the top and bottom of the squash to create flat surfaces.  Stand squash up on a wooden cutting board and place palm atop the squash pressing it gently into the cutting board. Use a very sharp vegetable peeler and peel skin off in a downward motion away from you.  Using a paring knife, remove any leftover skin from the base of the squash that you missed.  Cut squash in half, scoop out seeds using a large spoon and then proceed to cut the butternut squash into 1/2-inch pieces using a large knife. See how easy that can be?

Sidebar: While sauteing the sage and bacon (see delicious photo above), the smell of cooking bacon made me crave breakfast food.  Something inside me kept screaming SAGE & BACON OMELET... so I think Sunday breakfast could be interesting this week - stay tuned!

Tips:

• To make this a vegetarian recipe, eliminate bacon and cook sage leaves in olive oil for 1-2 minutes to infuse flavor of sage into the cooking oil.
• Penne/ziti are boring! Mix it up with farfalle ("bowties") or campanelle (“bells”). Try using wheat or whole grain pastas to enhance the nutty flavor.  This dish would also go famously atop a bed of cheese tortellini.
Go for it - add a little extra Parmesan cheese and bacon to make the dish more savory.  There's loads of time until bathing suit season truly begins...
• Don't forget to toast the almonds. It's the little things in this recipe that add tremendous flavor and make this dish memorable.

Rating: 5 out of 5 

Thanks for reading Part III of this week's Three Free Thursday! Feel free to send in recipe suggestions for Three Free Thursday on Twitter to @RecipEngineer or by e-mail RecipEngineer@gmail.com

Three Free Thursday Part III: Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

Happy Three Free Thursday, Blog Readers!   To recap the process, on the first Thursday, I select three free recipes from sources on Twitter.  On the following Thursday, I report back via blog entry the full results of my adventures in the kitchen and let you know if you should try these recipes at home. Enjoy!

Recipe: Double Chocolate Chip Cookies
Source: @Real_Simple
Link:http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/browse-all-recipes/double-chocolate-chip-cookies-10000001046904/index.html

The best way to describe these Double Chocolate Chip Cookies is to say that they are "the cookies".  These are "the cookies" for when you finally realize that "he's just not that into you".  These are "the cookies" for when your lifelong rival gets married/promoted/pregnant before you. These are "the cookies" for a hot Friday night of Lifetime television movies and sweatpants.  Oh yeah, and I guess boyfriends, best friends and co-workers would like these cookies too (if there were any left to share).

I randomly ended up testing this recipe late on a rainy Friday night when friends and I had finally admitted to ourselves that we were not venturing out in the storm to seek Boston nightlife. Instead, I pulled out my mixing bowl and whipped up these treats as we snarkly discussed former classmates and planned a friend's imaginary wedding - good times.  This Double Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe is simple (nice work @Real_Simple), but delicious.  The cookies were quickly and neatly in the oven in mere minutes and engulfed my cozy apartment with warm melting chocolate aromas. I'd say the worst part of this recipe was waiting for the cookies to completely cool... but who would ever do something insane like that?

*** Apologies for the blurry photo - these cookies were disappearing too quickly to get good photo quality.  Think of it as live action shot of deliciousness flying off the plate and into my friends' mouths.

Findings:

This Double Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe is sensational. The real question regarding this recipe is... why would anyone ever stop at "double chocolate chips" when there are so many other scrumptious chips available to the modern baker? This recipe calls only for semisweet chocolate chips and milk chocolate chips.  Two very fine options in baking chips, but certainly not the far limits of the baking chip galaxy. Toss in some white chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, dark chocolate chips, bittersweet chocolate chips, peanut butter chips or even novelty chips like rainbow chips to take these cookies to another level of decadence.

Fortunately, I had lots of willing taste testers or I would have eaten the full batch of cookies myself.  Taste testers described these cookies as "orgasmic", "the best thing that happened to me this winter" and a other few unmentionable raves and noises as they inhaled the full batch of "Triple" Chocolate Chip cookies containing semisweet/milk/white chocolate chips in under 30 minutes.

Tips:

• Go wild! Add lots of different chocolates! Experiment with various mixes of semisweet chocolate chips, milk chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, dark chocolate chips, bittersweet chocolate chips, peanut butter chips or even novelty chips like rainbow chips.
• Make a double batch - your friends will thank you and describe you to everyone they meet on the streets of Boston as the best baker ever! Seriously, your friends will purchase MBTA ads to share their appreciation of your baking skills with their fellow passengers on the Red Line. (For my readers outside of Beantown, this is a good thing... well except for the riding the subway part... just kidding... mostly). 

Rating: 5 out of 5  

Thanks for reading Part III of this week's Three Free Thursday! Feel free to send in recipe suggestions for Three Free Thursday on Twitter to @RecipEngineer or by e-mail RecipEngineer@gmail.com

Three Free Thursday Part I: 30-Minute Meatloaf

Happy Three Free Thursday, Blog Readers! This is the second entry of my new biweekly "Three Free Thursday" blog entries.  To recap the process, on the first Thursday, I select three free recipes from sources on Twitter.  On the following Thursday, I report back via blog entry the full results of my adventures in the kitchen and let you know if you should try these recipes at home. Enjoy!

Recipe: 30-Minute Meatloaf
Source: @TestKitchen
Link: http://www.cookscountry.com/recipe.asp?recipeids=3658&bdc=43896

I hate meatloaf. Wow - it feels really good to get that off my chest after decades of suppressing my disgust towards these dry bricks of ground meat masquerading themselves as comfort food.   A meatloaf is either a perfect Stepford-like square loaf that cuts in solid, tasteless slices or an uneven humped hot mess with bits of aluminum foil clinging to its burnt bottom bits. And a meatloaf doesn't last just one meal.  Meatloaf lives on for days as hot, dry leftovers and disgustingly solid cold sandwiches.  Meatloaf may be the worst thing that ever happened to sliced bread. I hate meatloaf.

So why make meatloaf for Three Free Thursday?  First, I aspire for Three Free Thursday blog entries to shake all of us (myself included) out of our usual cooking and eating ruts. Also, I trust @TestKitchen and appreciate their thorough means and methods of recipe testing and recipe writing.  Mainly, it was the challenge of "30-Minute Meatloaf".  I have a love/hate relationship with simplified recipes.  Simplified recipes tend to over-simplify by severely limiting ingredients and minimizing important cooking steps. I personally love dicing and peeling vegetables, using fresh herbs and slowly roasting meats. 

Armed with a hatred of meatloaf and wariness of simplified recipes, I put this recipe to the test.  After a full day of work, followed by an hour of GroupPower gym lifting class, I arrived at my kitchen counter with tired, achy muscles and a cranky attitude. The perfect remedy for my maladies - crushing Saltines.  While others might efficiently pulse the crackers in a food processor, I prefer to crush the Saltines by hand.  The best therapy is watching weak crackers cower in a little, clear sandwich bag while I repeatedly pound them into crumbs.

Findings:

The 30-Minute Meatloaf was the perfect weeknight comfort food.  Every step of the recipe looks and smells delicious.  The meatloaf mix included the usual suspects - fragrant fresh parsley and savory Worcestershire sauce - but utilize garlic and onion powders to speed up the prep work. You honestly won't notice the lack of onions or minced garlic at all.  The recipe produces four hearty meal servings, which is perfect so that you aren't saddled with tons of leftovers.  Great "prep ahead" instructions in the recipe suggest completing the recipe up to forming the loaves and then wrapping up the loaves tightly in plastic wrap. Refrigerate overnight and then thaw for 20 minutes before adding to the skillet.

Added bonus, I completed the recipe in just over 30 minutes (and that includes a "few" wine and Tweet breaks).  Serve with mashed sweet potatoes & steamed green vegetable for a  tasty, nutrient-rich meal. Turns out, I'm a "30-Minute Meatloaf" believer! Thanks @TestKitchen.

Tips:

• Take the time to form the loaves well.  You want consistent cooking and good cohesion when handling the loaves.
• Transfer loaves for skillet to broiler plate VERY carefully to avoid breaking up loaves.
• Save the extra glaze for leftovers.  It is delicious - a sweet alternative to boring ketchup.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Thanks for reading Part I of this week's Three Free Thursday! Feel free to send in recipe suggestions for Three Free Thursday on Twitter to @RecipEngineer or by e-mail RecipEngineer@gmail.com

Three Free Thursday Part III: Spicy Meatballs w/ Fragrant Tomato Sauce

Happy Three Free Thursday, Blog Readers! This is the first entry of my new biweekly "Three Free Thursday" blog entries.  On the first Thursday, I will be selecting three free recipes from sources like @RealSimpleFood, @TestKitchen, @WholeFoods, @SeriousEats, @FineCooking and many more recipe outlets on Twitter. Feel free to send in recipe suggestions for Three Free Thursday on Twitter to @RecipEngineer or by e-mail RecipEngineer@gmail.com . On the following Thursday, I'll report back via blog entry the full results of my adventures in the kitchen and let you know if you should try these recipes at home.  Also I'll try to add helpful suggestions of ways to improve the recipes and/or tips to avoid my pitfalls re-creating these recipes.  Here is Part III of the first ever "Three Free Thursday Results" blog entry.  Enjoy!

Recipe: Spicy Meatballs w/ Fragrant Tomato Sauce

Source: @FineCooking

Link: http://www.finecooking.com/recipes/spicy-meatballs-tomato-sauce.aspx

The final Three Free Thursday recipe was predictably made as a last-minute cooking assignment for this blog on a weeknight after a long day of work.  Fortunately, it turned out to be relatively easy recipe for meatballs made in a single skillet for quick cleanup.

The recipe for Savory Meatballs with Fragrant Tomato Sauce reads like a typical chili recipe with cumin, cayenne pepper and cilantro all in the mix. The cilantro, in particular, is a nice deviation from the usual parsley element in traditional meatballs. These meatballs also require no egg to bind them together.  Instead, the recipe uses a paste of bread crumbs and milk to adhere the small meatballs.  Therefore, it is vital to handle these meatballs carefully. A few crumbled meatballs early on cemented the need to avoid jostling them when adding meatballs into the skillet for me.  The meatballs cooked up perfectly as they absorbed the sauce and maintained their moisture.  Many homemade meatballs are over-cooked due to extended bake time in the oven followed by additional stove top re-heating time, but the leftover meatballs re-heated well and the leftover sauce thickened nicely.

Normally, I am a traditionalist when it comes to meatballs.  In my opinion, they belong "on top of spaghetti ... all covered with cheese".  However, I decided to give the recipe's suggestion to serve the meatballs over rice or couscous a fair shot.  I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the meatballs and sauce were perfect over a long-grained brown rice.  The rice soaked up the spicy sauce well and invoked the same comfort food-level of a stuffed pepper dish.

In future iterations of this recipe, I would certainly also experiment with ground turkey, ground chicken and/or the typical meatball mix of ground pork, ground veal and ground beef. I was also struck by the idea of making mini meatloaves from this meatball recipe.  Alas, my procrastination left me with inadequate time to also test a meatloaf recipe for this blog.  Expect future blog updates on this recipe's meatloaf possibilities. 

Findings:

Spicy Meatballs w/ Fragrant Tomato Sauce

The Spicy Meatballs and Fragrant Tomato Sauce was the ideal winter comfort food - perfectly hearty and savory.  Using cumin and cayenne pepper in the meatball recipes gives the dish just enough spice without offending mild taste buds. The Fragrant Tomato Sauce was delicious and truly fragrant, but there wasn't enough sauce to adequate serve with all of the meatballs. Double the sauce recipe and consider adding more chopped onions and/or bell peppers to give the sauce more dimension.


Tips:

• If you do not use fresh bread crumbs to make these meatballs, add an extra tablespoon of milk to soften packaged bread crumbs into the desired paste consistency.
• Double the recipe for the tomato sauce. Remove half of tomato sauce to a saucepan over low heat prior to adding meatballs to the skillet.
• Serve meatballs over rice, couscous or wide egg noodles.
• Freeze meatballs in tomato sauce in air-tight containers for up to three months.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Thanks for reading Part III of this week's Three Free Thursday! Send your recipe suggestions for the next Three Free Thursday by Wednesday, February 2nd.

Follow me on Twitter @RecipEngineer