Posts tagged tasty

“I want you smothered, want you covered, like my Waffle House hash browns.”

The Waffle House All-Star is a beautiful, 3-billion-calorie breakfast composed of the classic Waho waffle, hashbrowns or grits, buttered toast, eggs your way, and bacon or sausage (omitted here because…ew meat). I present my modified version:

Copy-Cat Waffles (served with real maple syrup and real butter)
Hashbrowns
Cheese Grits
Eggs, sunny-side up
Fresh-squeezed OJ
Coffee

Waffle House sets a pretty high waffle bar, and while these waffles don’t quite clear it, they’re the closest I’ve tasted.

Waffle House Waffle—adapted from food.com

• 1 1/2 cups flour (I use KA Gluten-Free)
• 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 egg
• 2 tsp stevia
• 2-3 tbs malt
• 4 tbs butter (try making your own)
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1/4 cup butter milk (try making your own)

1. Mix dry ingredients.
2. Cream butter with stevia and malt powde. Add egg. Add rest of dairy. Combine with dry mix.
3. Waffle iron it up.
4. Serve with copious amount of butter and syrup*

Grits

• 2 cups water
• 1/2 cup grits
• Generous handful of cheese (cheddar works well, but almost any soft cheese you have on hand besides something funky like bleu, brie should be good), chopped/shredded
• salt and pepper to taste

1. Boil water with a pinch of salt. Stir in grits. Continue to simmer for about 15 minutes or until grits are desired texture. Add more water if need be.
2. Turn off heat and add in cheese, stirring to melt. Season to taste. Eat.

*and with Hash Browns, Eggs with TONS of pepper, Fresh OJ, Coffee and a Juke Box that is 30% waffle house original singles, 50% Rihanna, and 20% bad amazing 90s hits.

Will post in full later. For now, some sucrose porn:

I made these for the Donna Hay Styling & Photography Challenge (DHSPC) run by JungleFrog.

The April/May challenge was either salted rump steak or these roasted potatoes. If you’ve noticed, I don’t really do meat, so I went with the potatoes.

And they were phenomenal. The cooking method, which called for boiling the potatoes before roasting them, had me wary since I’m not a fan of the nutrients lost through boiling. But, I tried making this recipe again without boiling and the texture was nowhere near as good. As written, the original recipe produces that perfect crispy outside and soft inside.

In the original recipe, you roast the potatoes with just salt and oil and then dip them in the sauce after. I would suggest drizzling some of that delicious chimmichurri sauce on the potatoes before roasting.

When I saw the original photo, I was like holy crap, we already have those glasses, score. The original also features a gorgeous rusted milk carrier. I scoured the thrift stores for something similar, but couldn’t find anything so I had to do the shoot sans that prop. I also forgot to grab rocket greens from the market so I used spinach & basil instead.

I took like 30,000 shots trying to get the lighting to match up with the original photo, only to realize in editing that my angle was off for 29,999 of those shots. Gah. I remembered to sprinkle some sea salt like in the original photo halfway through the shoot, but those shots were some of the 29,999.

The original photo (on the right) is by Ben Dearnley

As I was editing my photos with the original pulled up in a split screen, my boyfriend comes over and, pointing to the original, goes “yeah that one looks much better, go with that one.” :(

Roasted Potatoes with Chimichurri Sauce—Modified from Donna Hay

• 1.5 kg starchy potatoes (I don’t have a kitchen scale, so I just used 3 medium potatoes) chopped. (Leave the skins on for more nutrients)
• 1 tbs oregano
• 1/3 cup flat leaf parsley, chopped (omitted here because I hate parsley)
• 1 tbs rosemary, chopped (omitted here because I didn’t have any on hand)
• 1 tbs chipotle chili powder (or smoked paprika and chili flakes)
• 2 cloves garlic, pressed
• 3 tbs red wine vinegar (white vinegar was used here)
• 3 tbs olive oil
• Salt and pepper to taste

1. Boil potatoes in salted water for about 10 minutes or until potatoes are just tender. Drain off the water and put back on the stove to dry off any remaining water for a minute or so.
2. Put potatoes in a baking dish and drizzle some of the sauce over them before popping into a preheated 425 degree oven.
3. Roast for 40-45 minutes or until crispy and golden. (I turned my potatoes once somewhere toward the end of that time).
4. Serve with more chimichurri sauce and some greens.
5. Eat.

Like an idiot, I didn’t really measure anything, so these are guesstimates of the mods I made. The sauce seems pretty flexible, so you can probably mess the ingredients and amounts to suit our pantry and palette.

Okay, only 4 more days. We can do this.

Tomato Soup—classic, simple, delicious.
All the best photographers catch themselves in spoon reflections. Look it up.

Throughout this soup series, I’ve tried to stay somewhat true to the original recipe. That did not happen here. I love Ina Garten and I’m positive that her soup was phenomenal—but I was in the mood for a simple soup with just a few fresh ingredients. Sorry Ina, it’s nothing personally (you’re still Contessa over my heart). I like quickly cooking things on a high heat rather than slowly cooking over a long period of time. I think that flavors are heightened without being turned into a slow-cooked, bland, nutrient-reduced mush. I call it blitzcooking. Okay, no I don’t really. But it sounds cool, right?   

Simple Tomato Soup
Serves 4ish

• Olive oil
• 6-8 Ripe Roma Tomatoes or 3-4 of a larger variety
• 4 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
• Half a large bunch of fresh basil leaves (roughly maybe a cup, it’s kind of hard to over-basil.)
• 1 cup Tomato paste + 1 cup water (or equivalent tomato sauce)
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Optional: A tbs or so of any hard cheese and/or heavy cream to make a creamier soup and/or sun-dried tomatoes.

1. Roughly chop the tomatoes and then cook them in a well-oiled skillet on high heat. Let them sizzle for a few minutes, occasionally stirring. Add the garlic and turn off the heat (the garlic will cook a little from the remaining heat).
2. Toss all of the ingredients in a blender and process until smooth. Add more liquid and season if need be.
3. Add any of the optional ingredients that you want—they’ll all be tasty.
4. Garnish with a splash of cream or fresh basil.
5. Eat.