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Bacon Doughnuts with Maple Glaze – Vote For Hope

bacon doughnuts with maple glaze

I cannot be clear enough about this…if you love doughnuts and if you love bacon then you must make these bacon maple doughnuts…they are infinitely superior to plain doughnuts, more addicting than crack muffins, and fraking tasty with a hot cup of coffee…really they’re enormously excellent!

These babies are super simple to make; dice up a quarter pound of the best bacon you can find and cook it until crispy, let it cool a bit then work it into the doughnut dough, roll the critters and fry them up all according to the directions for the plain doughnuts. Top them with a glaze made from powdered sugar and real maple syrup. WoooHooo…trust me on this, you do not want to miss out on this tasty, porcine treat.

Take some time to plan your day on Tuesday, November 4th. If you haven’t voted already then you may want to head to your polling place early on Tuesday, maybe bring a book, a snack, digital music, water…whatever you need to make the wait in line easier to handle. Voting is just like a bacon doughnut…it’s something you don’t want to pass up. So plan ahead people, make arrangements, and vote.

October 30, 2008 | Filed Under bacon, baking, breakfast, doughnuts, food, food porn, recipe | 18 Comments 

Biscuits and gravy – weekend warrior breakfast

homemade biscuits with sausage gravy

I know you’re out there, we all are, either raking leaves, mowing grass, clearing out dryer ducts, washing windows or perhaps biking, running, climbing, or paddling. It’s a beautiful fall day in Wisconsin and no matter what it is we’re doing it’s almost guanteed that we’ll be overdoing something…after all there are only a few weekends left of good outdoor weather…unless of course you enjoy snow, slush, and ice. So before you head out to do battle pause for a moment and prepare this fabulous breakfast; it’s hearty, warming, filling, and it’ll stick with you for 6 to 8 hours.

Start by mixing up a batch of my biscuits, cut them out cylinder style and bake them up. While the biscuits bake you should brown a 1/2 pound of breakfast sausage. Remove the sausage from the pan by scooping it out with a spoon. Now add 4 tablespoons of flour to the pan and cook the flour with drippings and goobs from the sausage for 2 or three minutes. Because most pork isn’t very fatty these days you’ll have to stir more when you add the milk but the end product is much less fattening than you might think. Now add some milk and start stirring with a whisk, dislodging the brown bits from the bottom of the skillet and working out the lumps. As soon as it becomes too thick to be edible you should add more milk…but just add a 1/2 cup or so at a time, stirring constantly, until you get the consistency that you like. Season with tabasco, salt, and black pepper. Add the sausage to the gravy and let it cook on medium low for about 5 minutes. Place your biscuit in a shallow bowl and add the gravy.

Sure you won’t want to eat this every morning but on ady like today it is sure to give you the fuel to go, go, go. Have fun.

October 25, 2008 | Filed Under baking, breakfast, food, food porn, recipe | 7 Comments 

Kushari – because carbs are good too

Kushari

Special times we are living in folks…but you know how it is and I’m sure you don’t want to hear me moaning about intolerance, ignorance, greed, and injustice. 13 days until the election and I’ve voted, have you?

This morning’s car conversation consisted of a debate regarding who would reign supreme in a battle royale involving a giant squid, a communist whale, and Woody Allen. The consensus was that Mr. Allen would form an alliance with the communist whale and soundly defeat the giant squid. This conversation brought to you by Alex and Dexter Balchen…they approved this message.

I watched Anthony Bourdain in Egypt and it seemed pretty clear that he didn’t not enjoy Egypt. I did enjoy the Kushari joint and I thought it was a wild take on a Cleveland-style chili. It’s been a carb fest around here this week because when you need warmth and comfort you can always get satisfaction from a steaming bowl of macaroni and cheese, or kushari.

Kushari

Kushari is basamati rice and brown lentils, pasta, chickpeas, a tomato sauce, and fried onions. It sounds strange, looks even stranger, but tastes really good. This is a dish that could have saved me from bowls of ramen noodles while in college. It’s simple to make, requires very little cooking skill, has great flavor, and an awesome nutritional profile. The cumin and garlic in the sauce makes it spicy but not too spicy and I recommend a stiff dose of either sriracha sauce or tabasco on top…but that’s just me.

Kushari
(printer-friendly recipe)

1 cup basmati rice, rinsed and steamed
1 cup brown lentils, rinsed and cooked until tender
1 cup pasta, cooked and rinsed
1 can chickpeas
1 28 oz. can of crushed tomatoes
3 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon cumin
4 onions, peeled and sliced
canola oil
salt

Heat a heavy skillet over medium to medium-high heat. Once it’s hot add 2 tablespoons canola oil and dump the sliced onions into the pan. Lightly salt the onions and allow them to brown before stirring. You want the onions to be a sweet, almost crunchy brown fried onion when they’re done.

Combine the steamed rice and the cooked lentils in a large bowl. Stir and fluff unti the lentils are evenly distributed.

Heat the chickpeas either in the microwave or in a small saucepan on a burner.

Throw the garlic cloves, tomatoes, and cumin into a blender and process until smooth. Transfer to a sauce pan and cook over medium heat until heated through.

Note, to cook the lentils put them in a pan with water covering them and bring them to a boil and then lower the heat to a simmer or a low boil. Check often to make sure there is enough water in the pan. They’re done when they are tender to the bite.

Once the pasta is cooked, drained, and rinsed you can assemble a bowl of kashari. It’s a big scoop of the rice and lentil mix, a small scoop of pasta, a smaller scoop of chickpeas, a dose of sauce, and a pile of fried onions. That’s it. Make it once, love it forever.

October 22, 2008 | Filed Under beans, food, pasta, pizza, noodles, spicy, vegetable | 13 Comments 

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