Burn special nightly

The recipe that got me on a burn-inducing frittata kick was from the lovely Joy the Baker and this recipe and needing to use up some DAMN tasty chips.

The chips being Siete Grain Free Tortilla Chips. Especially being in the lime flavor. A lovely publicist sent them for me to try and I was terrifically pleased.

Holy heck they are made with cassava flour. I’ve no experience to judge cassava. But I liked it in this application. And avocado oil? I hate avocado but these flippin’ WORK. They work especially well in eggs.
Now as to the danger.

Frying pans that are safe to put in your oven are trouble. 

You think “oh this handle is harmless,” and sure, it is when you are using the pan on top of the stove. But not when out of the oven. 

Ugh burns. I went on a kick of making this frittata and although I got hep enough to not straight up grab the handle straight from the oven I kept bumping into the skillet. Burned myself around 8 times in a month I think. I should be more careful cooking.

But I should also keep making this frittata because it is stinkin’ delicious.

Frittata Chilaquiles Don’t Get Burned Extravaganza based on this recipe by Joy the Baker

• Olive oil
• Salsa: 1-ish cups pending thickness of salsa and your own taste buds, I never measured
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 chili powder (I used the cheap ol’ grocery brand)
• 1 dash crushed red pepper
• 1-2 oz lime tortilla chips 
• Sea salt
• Freaky ground black pepper
• 4 eggs
• Dash almond milk
• 2 oz sharp cheddar

Heat oil in 8 inch skillet. Add salsa and allow to cook until dry-ish. Heat oven to 375 F. Stir spices into the salsa and cook a little but more.Whisk milk, taters and salt n pepper in a separate bowl. Take the skillet off the heat (turn that burner off) and layer in chips. Add the egg mixture. Sprinkle with cheese. Bake 15-25 minutes yeaaaa! Be careful.

Spinach and Artichoke Dip on bread. Dip in bowl. Dip da dip dip dippity do

Ohhhh my goodness. I am finally done with the season of Girls on GIRLS. Although we will be rolling out cocktail-making segments soon.
And in between doing a bunch of live shows that ran the gamut from improv to sketch to contortion for comedy, I decided to pull out some of the posts I had had in my drafts for a while. This is one of them. A recipe I’ve enjoyed enough to make more than once. That’s a big compliment from me because having to vet new cookbooks leaves little time for old favorites. The genius work of Joy the Baker keeps me coming back.

Here’s the deal:
I LOVE a sandwich. I cannot dislike anything involving ample carbohydrates.

Here’s the other deal with a sandwich though:
I only love it if I can eat it on a plate with a knife and fork so I can deconstruct and reconstruct as I like. Here, a bite of the whole sandwich, there, a forkful of filling. Then a leftover bit of bread from where I swiped the filling. That I may butter.

The third and final deal with a sandwich is that I rarely actually eat things that are supposed to be served on carbs ON the said carbs. I devour bowls of spicy salsa with a spoon pretty much daily. It is not so different from gazpacho right? Then I butter the chips.
And I rarely eat the cheese on cheese plates atop the slices of baguette that come with it. I nibble each bit of fromage individually. The better to really taste the cheese, my dear. Then I butter the baguette.

So I made this dip and enjoyed deconstructing a sandwich made with it, and still had leftover dip to gobble from a bowl. And at some point I ran out of bread but I always keep back-up butter.

Take home lesson from this blog post is this: ALWAYS HAVE BACKUP BUTTER.

Spicy Spinach and Artichoke Dip/Spread adapted from this recipe by Joy the Baker
Olive oil spray
1/2 tsp. chopped garlic
A few handfuls if baby spinach
2 pieces of whole wheat bread
1 Tbsp. cream cheese
2 oz. Swiss cheese, shredded
3/4 c. Chopped artichoke hearts
Pinch of fleur de sel
1 heaping Tbsp. Cottage cheese, mashed with a fork until relatively smooth
1 1/2 tsp. Sriracha
Butter
Spray a pan with the oil and sauté the garlic a bit then add the spinach, an cook just until wilted. Take off heat. Spread the bread slices with the cream cheese. Stir together the spinach mixture, Swiss cheese, artichoke hearts, fleur de sel, cottage cheese, and Sriracha. Heap as much as you want on top of cream cheese on one piece of bread, (save the rest for another sandwich, or if you are like me, eating out of a bowl) and top with other slice of bread, cream cheese side down. Spread outside of sandwich with butter and cook Ina skillet on each side until browned to your liking. Because it is all about you.

Oh, the Joy…

…of browned butter chocolate chip cookies.

They are grand. They are the creation of a blogger far more successful than I, Joy the Baker.

I feel like I have been hovering around a lot of success recently. It’s pretty neat. My fwife’s husband Eric Lundgren’s book, The Facades just came out and is getting a lot of attention. Rightfully so, I started reading it and am thrilled to find out that he is an amazing writer. Joel won the pie contest. A friend got a kick-ass new agent and manager. Another friend got a pilot. I’m also enjoying the recently published second cookbook by Greg Henry of Sippity Sup. I know we just met the once, Greg, but can I call you at least a blogger chum?

All these things happening around me.

It makes me happy. I have felt oddly calm recently. I can’t help but feeling like my time will come. Or should I say I will bring it to me?

The thing is, it occurred to me that I do not want to be the person who knows a lot of people. I would like to be A Person To Know. Not so much for my ego but because I love what I do and would like to do it better and more. I want to make my parents proud. And a little for the ego. I’ll be honest.

I feel like I make progress. I chip away, and year by year my auditions get to be of a higher caliber. I finally booked a national commercial this summer. Once in a blue moon I get paid to write. And so on. But I have soooooo much more to accomplish. Sometimes I feel like I have reasons beyond my control for why it takes so long.

It is all well and good to have legit excuses, but that does not change the fact that I am where I am, and I want to be better.

I don’t know why I am rambling like this and where I am going with it.

I should eat a cookie.

By the way, go on and get Joy’s cookbook. She deserves her success.

Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies from Joy the Baker’s eponymous cookbook
1 cup + 1 Tbsp. butter
1 cup sugar
1 tsp. molasses
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg + 1 egg yolk
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
2 1/4 cups flour
Put 9 tablespoons of butter in a medium saucepan and heat over medium. It will sizzle and burble as it melts but fret not. Just swirl the pan periodically. Keep a close watch and as soon as it gets a nice caramel color take off the heat and pour into a bowl so it stops cooking. Those little bubbly browned bits on the bottom of the pan are delicious, be sure to scrape them out too. Let cool a bit.
In another bowl cream the other 8 Tbsp. of butter with the white sugar. Beat in vanilla and molasses. Beat in browned butter and brown sugar, then the egg and yolk. In another bowl whisk the flour, salt, and baking soda and then stir into rest, bit by bit. Then add in chocolate chips. Cover with plastic then out in the fridge about 30 or more minutes.
Preheat oven to 375. Grease a cookie sheet (I like to use the leftover butter on the wrapper of the butter I used). Make balls of dough and put on the sheet. You’ll probably need a couple sheets but I recommend baking them one at a time. Cook about 6 minutes, then rotate sheet front to back. Cook about another five, then check regularly until the are nicely browned but still soft. Cool five minutes on the heet before trying to remove them to rack to cool more. Or if hot chocolate is your thing (I only like it cold. Yeah, I know.) dig in.

Third Annual Pumpkin Week in Spring Day Five: Black and White Pumpkin Cookies

It ain’t a good meal if there isn’t dessert at some point. Seriously. I HAVE to have dessert every day. Just like I have to have a bedtime snack. I need a bedtime snack. I’ve practically broken up with a guy because he never had food at home. Sometimes I like my bedtime snack to be followed by it’s own special dessert. Considered breaking up with someone over that too.

Get yer mind out of the gutter Cliffy!

I am en route soon to do my second show with my improv group, Commonwealth at the Neon Venus Theatre, so I best be getting out of the gutter and into the game.

Then when the night is over I shall have rum, and maybe, just maybe, a cookie.

Incidentally, these cookies are not really black and white. They are black and beige (from the cinnamon) and orange. The world ain’t just black and white and has much more than just variants on the color grey.

Crud, I was headed back into the gutter there.

Black and White Pumpkin Cookies adapted oh so slightly from the Joy the Baker Cookbook by Joy Wilson
Cookies:
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup applesauce
1 15 oz. can of pumpkin
1 tsp. vanilla
White Frosting:
2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1 Tbsp. light corn syrup
1 tsp. vanilla extract
Up to 1 tsp. water
Chocolate Frosting:
2 oz. (about 6 Tbsp.) oz. bittersweet chocolate chips (I used Ghiradelli)
1 heaping Tbsp. butter
Pinch salt
1 Tbsp. light corn syrup
FOR COOKIES:
Heat the oven to 325 F, line a baking sheet or two with nonstick foil.
Sift flours, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. In another bowl whisk your eggs and sugar. Put some muscle into it, you want it to get jut slightly lighter in hue. Then whisk in pumpkin, applesauce and vanilla. Fold in the flour mixture until totally incorporated. Dollop by heating tablespoons onto the sheet and spread to a 2-inch circle. Bake, start checking around ten minutes doing the clean toothpick test. When you stick it in the middle and it comes out clean, take them out if the oven and put pan on a wire rack for ten minutes, then grab a spatula and move cookies to the wire rack to cool.
FOR GLAZES:
Whisk powdered sugar, corn syrup, vanilla and cinnamon, adding water drop by drop if necessary until it is spreadable.
Melt the chocolate and butter. I put my chocolate in the microwave for 2 minutes at 50 percent power, then add butter and stir. Continue to zap at 50% for shorter periods of time, stirring when you stop, until it is melted. Add the salt and corn syrup.
Turn the cookies over so you are putting the frosting on the flat side. Spread on, half and half, then give them some time for the frosting to get firm. Teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony. Then eat.

Boyfriends and bran

Surely if I had one he’d desire his lady to have good digestion. Enough to make her bran muffins.

And he did. Well, my cookbook lovah Mark Bittman at least made a bran muffin recipe. When he was writing his cookbook. I need higher standards.

In the meantime I’m still seeing that classy lady, my career. Sexy wench just gave me the gift of turning a short I’m set to act in into a feature so I supposed I should reward her.

I made not one but two renditions of bran muffins. Because ladies are all about their muffins.

One version with the egg separated, for the fluffy factor, one with whole eggs. Generally girls like to keep their eggs intact but I preferred the muffin with the separated.

Then I went girly and consulted my new Joy the Baker Cookbook and made a pretty pb and j milkshake:

As you can see I tried to make it pretty by layering in a wine glass but there was a huge amount so in the end my hot career and I just cozied up and ate this super-thick shake out of a bowl:

These are the exciting things you can do in a long-term relationship, people. I love my career, I do I do. To us I say I do.

Make your own love muffins.
That’s all!

Bran Muffins(reduced and adapted from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian)

2 Tbsp. applesauce
1/2 c. Flour
1/2 c. Wheat bran
1 Tbsp. honey or more maple syrup
1 Tbsp. maple syrup
1/4 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 egg, separated or not
1/2 c. Almond milk
Heat ya’ oven up to 400. Hot! You and your oven. Spray 5 muffin cups with a lady-named nonstick spray or one of her cheaper knock-offs.
Mix dry stuff. Beat wet stuff. If you separated your eggs only add the yolk. Add wet to dry. Stir in until all is moistened. Don’t overdo this. Lumps are fine n dandy. If you separated your egg, you must now beat the white until stiff, but not dry peaks form. Fold in. Spoon into cups. If you have empty ones put some agua in them. Bake 20-ish minutes. Do the toothpick test.
Present them to yo lovah fo evah.

Not a winner but lost nothing

I entered the kcrw(Los Angeles’ NPR station) pie contest. With my pie. The pie.

There were 285 entries this year and I think most were in the fruit pie category. Next year maybe I’ll enter the art-based category.

Everyone made one pie for the public, whom we served ourselves, and one for the judges.

I got to taste the fare of the people I was serving next to: a caramelized onion and Roquefort tart(need that recipe), a cherry pie with a chocolate crust(adore the concept but the crust was sort of like mediocre chocolate cake, not crust, a sweet and sour cherry pie(solid), and a shoo-fly pie that was not like the types I’d seen recipes for. It seemed more like a pecan pie without pecans but better texture. I’m getting her recipe. I’ll blog that shit up, yo.

I met Joy the Baker! She was one of the judges. Super nice, super humble that Joy.

But I did not win. I am not sure how the judges narrowed down the hundreds of pies but they did and I was not one of the chosen ones, which is too bad because I always have said I make the best pie.

After it all, when we contestants went to collect the pies we’d sent to the judges, we tasted more of each other’s wares but by that time I’d been in the sun and heat for two hours, and eaten nothing but sugar and coffee and nothing I tasted stood out. And I just was feeling loser-ish.

But.

At the end of the day. I
got home, tired and sweaty and started eating the remains of my pie and had a revelation:
Hot DAMN. I make amazing pie.

Possibly the best.

Try it, you might like it

Ever had a Black Russian? If you are a new vegan who misses White Russians, this one is for you seeing as Barnivore says Kahlua and certain brands of vodka are totally vegan.

On to important things, like me and my mood moody mood moods these days.

I should not complain. Really. In general I’m a spoiled rotten girl living the dream in sunny LA.

But for various reasons I’ve been particularly down this week.

What to do when one’s soul is dark?

Besides blasting Nine Inch Nails?
That’s a given.

And besides glaring while pouting like I’m doing for this pic:

I call this Glouting. It’s the goth cousin of smize-ing.

You make an equally dark adult beverage, that’s what.
And if the Joy the Baker Podcast is to be believed we should drink said cocktail in the shower.

Hopefully not at the same time as using baking soda to wash one’s hair. That could get dicey.

Extra credit from the dark underlords of gothness for using skull and crossbone ice cubes.

What do you eat or drink when bummed out?
Black Russian(from The Bar Book by Mittie Hellmich)
1 1/2 oz. vodka
3/4 oz. Kahlua
Lemon twist
Shake ingredients vigorously with ice. Strain into ice filled glass. Twist lemon peel over the top and drop in.
Pump up the NIN and relish the gloom.

Menage a deux

RED AND WHITE FOOD FOR THE REDBIRDS: GO CARDINALS!!!

I was a bit puzzled why this was “boulangerie” fare. A boulangerie is a French bakery. Then I read my darling Mark Bittman’s blurb for this dish where he says it was traditionally cooked in a baker’s oven for hours. So I guess that’s the connection. Now that today’s lesson in French food words is done we can get on with it. Mais oui. Damn I want a croissant now. Avec beurre. Beurre makes everything better. Stop rambling Ellen. Okay.
French cooking can be remarkably downhome. Downright hippie. A glass of green tea with some of my SSSS ginger water would go well with this. Or some French wine. Take your pick. Eat this and you’ll be ready to go do things like wash your hair with baking soda. Which I do periodically and it rocks. Thanks for that hippie tip, Joy the Baker.
I played around a bit with this one…and it turned out well. I used red beans instead of white(Bittman says its ok, I did not peel my potatoes, and I reduced the recipe to serve deux and baked it in two individual pie plates instead of making a big casserole.
Of course, if you bake in disposable aluminum bakers you realize you cannot reheat these suckers in the microwave. But all can be unloaded onto a plate then zapped:

Now, time to menage a deux. It’s sexy to have a menage of two when it’s dinner.
Boulangerie Bean and Potatoes for deux(adapted from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman, cookbook love o my life):
1 cup of cooked red beans
1/4 + 1/4 tsp. dried thyme
3 small Yukon Gold potatoes, scrubbed and thinly sliced
1/3 cup water
salt
freshly ground black pepper
2 tsp. butter
Preheat oven to 325. Put divide beans between two small bakers. Stir in 1/8 a tsp. of thyme into each, then salt and pepper to taste. A goute as the French say. Layer taters over. Pour the H2O over. Dot with butter, sprinkle with remaining thyme, and some more salt and pepper. Cover with foil and cook for 45 minutes. Uncover and cook 45 more or until the potatoes are looking a bit brown.
Go wash hair with baking soda while its cooking. Your locks will be sqeaky clean.
AND GO CARDS!!!

Got any random beauty tips? What’s your favorite French food?

Happy happy, Joy joy: Cookie dough!

Two of the best words one can say: Cookie. Dough. I grew up in a family of cookie dough makers. You will note, we were dough makers, not cookie bakers. We would just make a bowl of dough and kept it in the fridge. Only silly mortals defile the dough by placing it in the hellish gates of the oven. The recipe for these Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies came from one of one of my favorite blogs, Joy the Baker. The conceit is that you make cookie dough balls in advance, freeze them, then bake later. If I had my druthers I would never bake this. But come Friday I’ve a buddhist BBQ to go to and I promised dessert so eventually I will make these into cookies. Let me clarify that it is a BBQ attended by mostly by buddhists, we will not be putting buddhists on the barbie.
I altered the recipe just a tad to make sure that the dough would be safe to eat raw. I hope it makes it to Friday.
Whole Wheat Chocolate Cookie Dough(adapted from Joy the Baker)
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
10 Tbsp. white flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup stevia or splenda for baking
1/4 cup pasteurized eggs
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 cup chocolate chips(I used Ghiradelli bittersweet)
Cream butter and sugars. Blend in eggs and vanilla, stir in dry ingredients and lastly chocolate chips. Bake or not, your choice, but make the right one.