Chocolate Diablo Cookies

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from Tacofino in Canada

Now this is my kind of cookie!  Chocolate, cocoa, ginger, cayenne, a touch of cinnamon and sugar, a dash of mischievousness topped with flakey salt.  This is definitely not a batch you plow through mindlessly while watching your favorite program and suddenly realize you’ve eaten your weight in an innocent looking snack.  These cookies have serious character.  They’re not too sweet, they definitely have some heat and a lovely crunchy outside with a fudgey like center.  These little beauties demand respect!  Be sure to have your favorite chilly beverage accompaniment at the ready – you’ll need it.

makes 12 big cookies or many smaller ones

Dry ingredients:

1 ½ cups of all purpose flour

1 cup cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon of ground cayenne pepper

1 cup chocolate chips

Wet ingredients:

1 cup light brown sugar

1 cup white sugar

½ cup canola oil

2 eggs

3 tablespoons fresh squeezed ginger juice or freshly grated ginger root, peeled

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Directions

Preheat oven to 375°F

Sift all the dry ingredients into a large bowl and add the chocolate chips mixing until well incorporated.

In another bowl whisk all the wet ingredients until very well combined.

Add the wet ingredients into the dry ingredient bowl and mix thoroughly.

Spray a cookie sheet with non-stick spray.  Press balls of dough mixture onto the cookie sheet until each is about ½ inch thick.  I used walnut sized pieces and flattened them, but the original recipe uses fist size balls.  Sprinkle with white sugar and rock salt or a finishing salt – I used Maldon’s.  Bake for approximately 11 minutes or until the cookies just begin to crack at the edges or feel slightly firm on the outside  (it’s unlikely that a toothpick would pull cleanly from these as they have a soft center).  Cool on a rack for a few minutes if you can manage the restraint.  Worth every bloomin’ calorie! 

Knife and Fork Burger

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I was inspired recently by a blogger whose blog is called No Recipes today. “ My philosophy on cooking is that it’s 50% technique, 40% inspiration and 10% ingredients”, a quote from No Recipe’s blog master, Marc Matsumoto.  I haven’t actually had an opportunity to make any of Marc’s dishes, but in a way that is the point. His philosophy is one that I’ve been trying to grapple with more and more over the years.  Personally a surprisingly difficult process.  I’m a little addicted to cookbooks and I more often than not follow recipes and remain extremely envious of those creative and brave people like Marc who just ‘do’.  Well, today I decided to make lunch without thinking.  It worked for me, maybe this recipe won’t sit well with everybody, but darn it, I thought it was good.  My main ingredient was ground beef (86%) that was about to get funky, and I was really hungry so I didn’t want to spend much time in the kitchen reinventing the wheel; burger time.  I had mushrooms and chevre that needed using and spinach in the garden – although I would have preferred arugula.  I had also given the chickens the last of the hamburger buns, so the only thing bread-y left was english muffin.  My Knife and Fork Burger is born.

Serves 1

¼ pound of ground beef

½ cup rough chopped mushrooms

1 cup rough chopped fresh spinach or arugula

2 tablespoons plain chevre

1 half of an english muffin

1 tablespoon softened butter, devided

1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil, devided

Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

Preheat a well seasoned cast iron skillet over medium high heat.  Form a patty with the ground beef and salt and (lots of) pepper both sides.  Toast the english muffin.  Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil and butter in the pan.  Once the butter is melted add your patty and cover with a lid (preferably glass).  Once browned, flip and brown the other side.  Cook the patty until desired doneness.  Remove the patty and cover loosely with foil.  Add the chopped mushrooms to the pan, you may need to reduce the heat a bit.  Once the mushrooms are browned, add the spinach or arugula until wilted.  Add salt and pepper and the remaining butter.  Lightly butter the toasted muffin and top loosely with spinach and mushrooms.  Sprinkle the chevre on the mushroom mixture and top with the cooked patty.  Drizzle remaining olive oil over the burger.

Getting in Touch with Your ‘Inner Chicken’

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eggs-press yourself

Who wouldn’t like a little fun in their lunchbox?  Or bento box?  These cute egg molds are from Japan made by Kotobuki I purchased through Amazon.  There aren’t any instructions that come with the molds and the packaging is in Japanese so I had to do a little research.  Once you’ve boiled your eggs, you peel them under cold water right away and gently squish them into each shape, snapping it shut.  You can then place them in cold water that has been colored with food dye giving the egg a kind of tie-dye effect.  This might be a little creepy for little ones.

groovy!

I used green because that’s all I had.  It looks a bit like mold, I think.  Next time maybe I’ll go for purple or another color that is more appeeeeeling – get it?  Ok, painful I know.  I’ll get a vote on this very important topic when the grand kids arrive.

Calendula Officinalis Martini-us Deliciousness

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medicinal...

I’ve been experimenting with my edible flowers in our garden.  So far they’ve been regularly a part of our salads and an occasional garnish for cream based pastas, but tonight I thought my martini needed a little summer flare.  My standard martini mixture is as follows:

99% vodka (we use Kettle One)

1% vermouth (Dolin is the best)

equals 100% deliciousness

Pour the above into a shaker full of ice and shake gently so as not to break up too much ice and dilute the beverage.  Stream into your favorite vessel and add a sprinkle of edible flowers such as calendula/marigold, johny jump-ups, pyrethrum, bachelor buttons, lavender, lawn daisy, roses and pansies to name a few.  Many of the flowers are said to have medicinal properties so, in a way, a martini is a health drink.  Cheers to that.

 A terrific resource for herbs and flowers ♣

Graduation Day…

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Cockadoodle Hallelujah!

It’s Graduation Day here on Pole’ Pole’ Farm.  After much desensitization therapy, chicken peer pressure, food lures and finally a swift kick in the butt (kidding), Captain has made his way outside conquering is agoraphobia!  Cockadoodle Doo indeed!!

Not only has Captain strutted his stuff outside, he is now rubbing feathers with Lady in an attempt to make more obnoxious little Captains.  With his new found skills in the pleasure department as well as becoming the king of his domain, you can imagine his feeling of self importance.  Being an urban girl in my previous life, I truly thought roosters crowed at sunrise to greet the day and then crowed at sunset to wish everyone goodnight – how romantic, right.  Sadly not the case in the real world of roosterdom.  Captain crows often throughout the day.  It’s really quite annoying.  And if you remember his doodle is Happy Birrrrrrrthdayyyyy.  I can’t even bare hearing Happy Birthday more than once in a restaurant let alone all day long.  I may have plans for Captain Jack Sparrow that may include spices….

cockadoodle this!

Seriously, we are proud of little Jack and look forward to seeing if he and Lady manage to raise any chicks of their own.  We’ll keep ya posted.  Until then…Happy Birrrrrthdayyyyyyy

Reverse Psychology?

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chicken little...

I feel we have failed miserably as chicken parents.  Our attempts to coax Captain Jack from the coop using peer pressure worked about as well as Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” campaign.  Now when Lady goes outside Captain crows relentlessly trying to convince Lady she’s just made the worst mistake of her life, I mean really, what IS she thinking going out there.  The other chicks in the coop have decided to follow Captain’s lead; he is the man of the house after all.   So that leaves us now with one well adjusted hen and about 16 agoraphobic knuckleheads.  Not only has Captain persuaded the others to go to the dark side, he has developed a seriously aggressive attitude toward me (maybe he read my last post…and some chicken recipes).  Not so long ago this handsome, albeit demented, beast used to eat grain from my open hand and now I’m getting full on rooster attacks.  How embarrassing is it to fight off a tiny 2 pound chicken?  Very.  Fortunately he hasn’t grown spurs yet.  I think I may stay on the cooking side of this development and leave the farming and animal husbandry to Steve.  I don’t have the patience to psychoanalyze something I can eat.

 

brave little Lady Luck

 

 

WANTED: Chicken Therapist

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It's a Big World Out There...

 This is Captain Jack Sparrow…one of 2 chicks that miraculously survived our original 42 bird delivery some months back- a long and rather sad story.  Isn’t he a beauty!?  He’s starting to act like a grown-up rooster, strutting and ruffling his hackles BUT that’s were the tough-guy stuff ends.

We have 15 acres for Captain Jack to strut his stuff on; he could have been kiiiiiinnng of aaaaalllllll  Pole’ Pole’ faaaaaaarrrrrrrrmmmmmm (echo, echo).  I say could have been cuz he aint.  When we tried luring Captain out of the coop with feed, he mysteriously spooked himself into hysteria and is now, get this, agoraphobic!!  Even Captain’s girlfriend Lady enjoys the cool breezes and freshly cut grasses that are here in abundance, saying to Jack, “come check out the delightful dirt pile over here!”  No amount of persuasion has worked.  It’s been weeks and no sign of improvement, in fact just the opposite has happened…..not only is Jack agoraphobic he may suffer from a mild case of Tourette syndrome.  His repetitive cockadoodle directly translates to Happy BIRTHdayyyyyyyy!!!  Over and over and over and over again…very loudly.  Tempting to demote Jack from Captain to common seaman and toss him in the pot.  This would be a lot cheaper than bringing in a chicken therapist!  

Our recent tact has been good ol’ fashion peer pressure.  We have introduced several new chicks into the coop and come tomorrow we will open the coop doors.  With any luck, the new group of 15 chicks will show Jack that the world doesn’t have to be a big scary place and worms are a wonderfully delicious food group (kinda like foie gras).  Until then, cross fingers.  We’ll report back!