Twistie « Manolo's Food Blog

June 25, 2011

Mmm… Brownies

Filed under: Chocolate — Twistie @ 8:30 am

Delicious, delicious brownies…

Whoops! Not that kind of Brownie!

I’m talking about the delicious, fudgey treats that I spent most of yesterday baking.

Moist, melt-in-your-mouth, bittersweet chocolate brownies.

One thing that interests me about brownies is how versatile they are. Â You can go old school classic with bittersweet chocolate and nuts like these:

The recipe (and more luscious, porny pics) can be found at Baked Bree.com. The ones I made were actually fairly similar, but sans nuts. They’re being offered in exchange for donations at the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life in my hometown this weekend. I love the idea of using chocolate to fight cancer.

Anyway.

As I was saying before I so rudely interrupted myself, brownies can be done in dozens – nay, scores! – of different ways. You can use milk chocolate instead of dark, add pecans or walnuts, make them fudgier or cakier, make them more like cheesecake in texture and then stud them with Snickers bars, use white chocolate alone or in tandem with milk or bittersweet chocolate, frost them and decorate with sprinkles:

like these ones from She Knows, or even completely ditch chocolate completely and make them with apples!

Me? I’ll stick to bittersweet chocolate, and I’m easygoing as to the nut question. I like nuts in my brownies, but I’ll be perfectly content to eat one without the contrasting flavor and texture of nuts. I prefer them without icing, but have been quite cheerful to eat them with, when there has been no other option.

The one thing I’m fairly adamant about is the fact that I am not ready to try cheese and potato brownies. Just… no.

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June 24, 2011

As “Thousands” Jeer

Filed under: Television — Twistie @ 8:30 am

Sooo… Master Chef. Anybody out there watch the US version? I have to admit I haven’t. I haven’t seen the UK version, either. Just one of those things I haven’t gotten around to doing.

Still, a lot of people did tune in on monday night to hear Gordon Ramsay unleash his typical tirades of vitriol at unwitting contestants like this:

Ah yes, I can hear it now:

You stupid @#$@%ing @#%@er, get the @$&^&% out of my &(^$#* kitchen! *%%%^ me!

What? I’ve seen enough episodes of Kitchen Nightmares to have sussed out his entire vocabulary, and about 85% of it is in that one sentence. Maybe that’s why I don’t try Master Chef. No matter how talented the guy is, or how much he knows, he spends so much time screaming at people that they’re idiots, quickly followed by whines of “I’m just being ^$*%E$ing honest with you” when anyone gets up enough backbone to object to being treated so @$@^%ily, that I can’t really stand him.

Hence my not watching Master Chef. And hence my missing what one eagle-eyed viewer has brought to the attention of the media world:

I know it’s difficult to see at this size, but if you look carefully, you’ll see circles drawn over the picture, two each in red, yellow, and blue. The matching circles (well, and ovals, because a couple of them are more that shape) represent places where the film editing wizards have doubled the images of contestants to make the crowd look bigger than it actually was.

Seriously? You guys needed to do that?

No, I don’t hold Gordon personally responsible for this. I doubt he broke into the editing suite in the middle of the night to confuse and mislead America as to the popularity of his new-to-the-USA show. And it really doesn’t strike me as terribly important in the grand scheme of things. Certainly it’s no comparison to starving children or e coli breakouts.

So what is it? A reminder that even reality television isn’t very real. An amusing bit of trivia. Maybe even a way to fill space on a few blogs across the web.

Who knows? Maybe Gordon Ramsay’s television persona isn’t who he really is, either. Maybe there’s a kinder, gentler Gordon who knows how to moderate his tone and treat people with civility. Perhaps in real life – as opposed to reality shows – he’s as gentle as that lamb draped around his neck:

… but I wouldn’t count on it.

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June 23, 2011

Substitution

Filed under: Uncategorized — Twistie @ 9:29 am

Hey, everybody!

Our beloved raincoaster is taking a little vacation for a few more days. In the meantime, so as not to leave her loving minions hanging, I’ll be filling in. So fire up your stoves, pour yourselves a drink that makes you happy, and get ready for some good home cooking.

Speaking of substitutions, we’ve all made some while cooking. You know how it is. You get a yen for a particular food, get started cooking, and discover you’re out of an important ingredient for the dish.

I was about twelve when my mother taught me to make risotto. A couple weeks later, she had a meeting that ran over dinnertime and left me in charge of feeding the family. She told me to make risotto. No problemo, I assured her! My first attempt had been quite successful.

The one problem was that when it came time to get cooking, I ran into a slight hitch: I couldn’t find the rice for love nor money. To this day I have no clue where Mom had hidden the white and starchy, but it was not appearing to my wondering eyes.

I began to resemble this:

far more than I would have liked.

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