craveytrain

This is just a simple Key Lime Pie recipe. I actually use some store bought stuff here (such as the pie crust, whipped cream and not necessarily squeezing the key limes yourself). Your perogative, but honestly, I don’t think it’s worth the effort.

Note, this leaves the pie pan not very full, so I filled up the rest pan with whipped cream. I will be readdressing this recipe to see if I can fix the quantites to fill up the pie pan more. However, I wanted to post what is tested to taste good. When I try the revision, I will post those results.

• Prep: 5 mins
• Cook: 15 mins
• Servings: 8

Ingredients

• 1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
• 3 egg yolks
• .25 cup key lime juice
• 1 (9-inch) graham cracker pie crust
• Whipped cream (Cool Whip or the likes)

Prep

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.

In a mixer, blend the milk and egg yolks at low speed until smooth. Add the key lime juice and finish blending.

Pour the mixture into the pie crust. Spread it around to even it out.

Cooking

Cook for 15 minutes in the oven. Once the pie has semi-setup (it will congeal when it cools), take it out and let it cool for 15 minutes or so before covering and putting in fridge.

Let sit in fridge for at least 1 hour.

Serving

Lather a thick layer of whipped cream on top of the pie after it has cooled.

Cut pie into 8 wedges (start by cutting the pie in half, then cut perpendicular to the first cut, finally, split the quarters). Serve ‘em up.

At the request of a friend, I thought I would publish my recipe for jello shots. It’s nothing special, the difference is in the details.

Ingredients

1 small pkg. Jell-O brand instant gelatin (any flavor, not sugar free)
1 cup boiling water
1 cup chilled citrus vodka
18-24 1oz cups

Actions

It’s just about as simple as it sounds. Wisk the jello and the boiling water for 2 mins or so, making sure to not leave any sediment. Stir in the chilled vodka and start dishing into serving cups. I get the little 1oz plastic cups from the local party store. It will fill 18-24 1oz cups, depending on how full you fill them. Place the cups on a sheet or pan of some sort and put into the fridge.

These should chill for 2-4 hours in the fridge. For less time to “solidify”, use less boiling water and chilled vodka. Do not drop below 3/4 cup of each.

Tips & Tricks

• Vodka doesn’t freeze at typical freezer temperatures, so keep the vodka in the freezer. Let sit in freezer at least an hour or 2 before making the shots.
• In drinks of this nature, it is not necessary to get good vodka, as there are strong flavors to overpower it. I usually get Gordon’s for this in the cheap plastic bottle. Be sure to get citrus. Berry flavors do not mix as well with an array of flavors and does not mask the cheap vodka as well. This is one of the very few instances I will advise getting cheap liquor (or cheap anything for that matter, I’m a bit of a brand whore).
• In order to keep the sides of the little cups from getting sticky, rather than scoop the cups into the liquid gelatin, set them out on a tray/cookie sheet and use a turkey baster to fill the cups.
• Consider buying throw away foil pans to stack to carry these in. No one wants to wash pans at a party or bring back sticky pans in your car.
• Cut out the front of the jello boxes and place them on top of the shots that they represent. This helps identify which flavors are which (instead of by color). The party guests usually get a kick out of this.
• Unless you are a closet sorority girl wanna-be, you will only be making these for parties, so in large quantities. This means several batches (my last session I used 7 packages of jello). Put a big pot of boiling water on the stove, use a separate mixing bowl to mix the gelatin mixture. This way between different flavored batches you only have to clean 1 bowl (and your wisk).

French toast is one of those things that everyone has a recipe for, but few make them truly good. So I thought I would offer up what in my humble opinion is the best french toast recipe. This my first recipe post, so I thought I would start simple. I am still playing with the format.

Ingredients

• 1 slice of texas toast (or 2 slices of regular bread)
• 1 egg (room temperature preferred)
• 1 oz of milk
• .5 oz of orange juice
• .5 tsp of vanilla
• ground cinnamon
• chopped fresh fruit (optional)
• dab of butter

Cooking

A note about the bread. Stale is better. We are not talking moldy. But stale bread makes better toast in general. These quantities are intentionally broken down to the lowest common denominator. They can easily be multiplied by any factor needed.

Heat non-stick skillet with butter in it to medium-low temperature.

Beat egg thoroughly. It helps if it has been sitting at room temperature, but not necessary. Add to egg the milk, oj, and vanilla. This is best done on a plate with walls, but a bowl will suffice. Your mixture should not be too thick. Many people’s batter is too eggy. This makes for a very heavy, dense french toast that makes my girlfriend nauseous. She doesn’t do egg, but loves french toast. So she was actually the perfect critic for this dish.

Place a slice of the bread in the batter and push it to the bottom to allow it sop up as much batter as possible. Then flip it and hold it down for a few seconds. Pick it up with the spatula and sprinkle the top of the battered toast with cinnamon. Flip into pan so that cinnamon side is down. Sprinkle the now exposed side with cinnamon.

Cook for 2 mins and then flip. It should look somewhat toasted, but not terribly brown.

After 2 mins more, take out and plate. Rinse and repeat with another slice. Top off with chopped fresh fruit. If your fruit isn’t quite ripe, put it in a bowl already chopped up and mix it with a tbsp of sugar. This will help sweeten it and take some of the tartness away from it.

Finally, cover in syrup. You may be saying, that’s a lot of syrup. Yes, yes it is. That’s what makes it good. Sure, you could put confectioner’s sugar on it, but the maple flavor is so much better especially with the citrus, berry, vanilla and cinnamon flavors. Very in the season.

That’s it, and don’t knock the plates. They are… well… they were clean.

Well, I’m annoucing a rededicated section: food. I do a fair deal of cooking, some of it is pretty original or at least done differently than others would. Notice I didn’t say better, just different. Since food is one of my passions, I thought it would be fitting to share it on the blog. Not all that I have is that original. Some of it is just the way I like doing things. Either way, this is my blog, so I will subject you to my whims. Did I mention power is probably my favorite passion?

Allow me to explain how I came to this. I read a lot of food blogs. Well, like a dozen. People give recipes, reviews and relay other things cooking (and not). Strangly enough, it was this post about kitchens that gave me the motivation to start blogging about my own adventures in cooking. I saw a lot of people post pictures of their kitchens and it hit me. These people who’s blogs I read daily, they are just like me. Most of them have no formal culinary training and many of them work out of less ideal kitchens than my own. That’s not to say I am in the same category as these people, because, let’s be honest, I’m not going to be making The Swift-Tuttle Dark Chocolate Espresso Berry Comet Truffle any time soon. However, these bloggers are mere mortals, not those people on food tv who have unlimited budgets and means with which to create. I can be one of former people (and maybe eventually one of the latter).

I haven’t made up my mind exactly what all I am going to be putting on the web about my cooking. A lot of trial and error. A lot of error. So, so much horrible error. Oh the humanity of the error. But once in a blue moon, I hit something right. I will try to share the errors with you as much as my pride will let me, but hopefully I will not lose steam to at least get my hits up here.

If there is any site that has had the biggest impact on my cooking in the last year or so, it would have to be Cooking For Engineers. The author of that blog and I are very similarly minded it seems. His recipe grid is the most logical method I have seen to represent recipes.

I hadn’t made it in years. In fact, aside from me, I think only 2 other people have ever eaten my grilled bananas. Since I have lived in apartment complexes for so long, it is just not something I have had the opportunity to make. However, I invaded a friend’s grill (the same one the picky eaters post was about) to make them, and I think they turned out pretty well.

The premise is pretty simple, bananas with a glaze cooked on the grill served in a bowl of ice cream. For this particular time, I used Amy’s Mexican Vanilla. Now I love that flavor, but honestly, I think it was overpowering. That vanilla is so strong it will take over a dish. It is not a good compliment ice cream. I should have used the old stand-by Blue Bell. However, it still wasn’t bad.

The only real prep work is making the glaze. It is made up of molasses, light brown sugar, key lime juice, butter and dark rum. So the obvious question is “how much of each”. In my opinion, cooking in different styles is more than what type of method you use or what ingredients you use. It’s about getting in the right frame of mind for the type of food. For me, grilling, BBQing, things cooked outside over fire and coals are not meant to be exacting. You shouldn’t be measuring out with precision how much pepper goes into the rub. You put about “that much” in. “That much” varies by mood, cooking conditions, and often in outdoor cooking, intoxication. In short, “to taste”.

Molasses is the basis of the glaze. It is your stock. I am not schooled on the different types, so I just get molasses. Light brown sugar is preferred over dark merely because of the flavors in the molasses and rum, the light brown sugar provides some sweetness without the richness. Imperial has granulated light brown sugar now, which I highly recommend. While at the store, the little lady recommended it to me and she couldn’t have been more right. Anyone that has fought with an old box of brown sugar will understand. The only issue is the sugar needs to be heated more to break down. Since we are cooking this on the stove, that’s fine. Key lime juice tartens up the flavor. Citrus in general helps the glaze permeate the flesh of the fruit. You could use just reggae lime juice, but I feel that key lime is almost always better than reggae lime when available. Butter adds a buttery flavor to the glaze (go figure) and in conjuction to the rum gives a slightly crispy texture to the outside of the banana. This gives it a nice break from the smooth ice cream. Simply put these items in a sauce pan over medium heat and make sure everything is liquid, and it’s ready to go. When the time comes, use a brush to apply it to the fruit.

Slicing the bananas is simple and quick. Chop the ends off and slice the banana in half length-wise leaving the peel on. Be sure to cut it on the curved sides so you are left with 2 identical halves. We also made grilled pineapple (with limited success, imho). Slicing the pineapple was…. interesting. I had read a recipe that described how it should be cut, and I think we got it (gf did most of the work on this one), for the most part. It’s easiest to slice the bark (is it bark?) off the sides first, using the leaves as a handle. Then cut off the bottom and top. You are left with a barrell shaped slimy (excuse me, I mean juicy) yellow mass. Slice it in half lengthwise, and cut those halves into half again, lengthwise. Ok, one more time. That should leave you with 8 semi-identical wedges. Now, you want to cut the core out of them, probably an inch or so, you should be able to tell the difference, in firmness if not color.

Heat the grill up to a low medium or so. Put the banana slices on the grill peel side up. Also, as is true with all elongated items on a grill, place them either diagonally or perpendicular to the grill bars. If not, using tongs can be “interesting” when it comes to taking cooked bananas off the grill (I lost one in the grill before I realized I was doing it wrong). If you put the glaze on now, it will be burnt by the time you take it off, so fight the urge to do so. I speak from experience here. Put the pineapple wedges on the grill, and brush the glaze over the top of them. Shut the lid (or sit and watch, whatever) for a couple minutes. You want there to be browned grill marks on the fruit. Then flip the fruit over (peel side down) and brush the glaze on. Flip the pineapple wedges and apply glaze to that side as well. Shut the lid and cook for 3-5 mins, until the peels start to pull away from the bananas. Put a second coat of the glaze on the fruit and cook a couple minutes longer. The pineapple is ready when tender. The bananas are done when the peel is pretty much mostly black and some of them are crispy and has pulled away from the fruit along the sides. You want to actually cook the banana.

Take them off the grill, take them off the peel and serve in a bowl of ice cream. The recipe isn’t perfect, but they are pretty tasty, I promise. I am considering putting some cinnamon in the glaze. Maybe some cloves. Gotta wait till another grilling time to try out my new ideas…