The "Soda" Means Baking Soda... Who Knew?

My reasoning for making soda bread was twofold! Reason 1: I'd been wanting to for a while. Reason 2: I had actually made some previously at my family's house but unfortunate events meant I didn't really get to eat it. And by unfortunate events I mean that... um... the dog stole the entire loaf off the counter after everyone went to bed and hid it deep inside the couch, along with several other loaves of bread, where it remained until the couch was disposed of recently. Lessons learned: don't leave bread on the counter at that house; the dog has some kind of weird bread fetish.

Anyway, now that story time is over, I'll tell you all about making soda bread! I once again used an existing recipe as a jumping off point, and that can be found here. I didn't really mess with it much, seeing as baking is much more like a chemistry experiment than regular cooking; if you get the proportions wrong you end up making mustard gas or something... ok... you won't make mustard gas, I made that up, but you will make a mess and you will end up with a disaster.

So let's get to it, shall we? Firstly, I shall list the ingredients for you. They are as follows:

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter (1/4 cup)
• 2 tablespoons caraway seeds, optional
• 1 cup raisins
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup (approx.) of bourbon (or any other harder booze)

They look like this:

And eventually end up being extremely delicious.

So, let's begin! First thing you want to do is take the flour, sugar, baking powder, soda, and salt and stir them all together. I guess you can sift them if you're fancy. But you have to ask yourself: Are you truly that fancy? Truly? Stirring with a fork or a whisk does the same thing anyway.

Next, you take the butter out of the refrigerator (yes, you want it cold), cut it up into small pieces, and work it into the dry ingredients until it's a crumbly mess that just barely holds together if you pick it up and squeeze it. You can use a couple of forks, or even a pastry cutter if you want to make yourself feel important, but really the best tools for this each have five fingers attached to them. That's right, use your hands, and don't worry if they end up looking like they should be on the business end of a proton pack, a little hot water will make you look less ghostly.

Now, here's where the fun starts. The recipe I was following says to add the caraway seeds and raisins now. But you know what? I just don't think plain raisins are awesome enough. It's time to awesome them up. So here's what you do: take your cup of raisins (plus a little more, you're going to want to eat some in a minute or two) and toss them in a small saucepan with just enough bourbon (or rum, or whiskey, or brandy, or whatever) to cover them. Put 'em over low or medium-low heat and let 'em soak up that boozey goodness for a few minutes. Drain those raisins. You can keep the raisin-infused booze if you want but let me warn you: holy f*%$ is that some strong hooch!

Now add the raisins and caraway seeds to the flour and butter mixture. Stir those suckers in. In a separate bowl whisk the buttermilk and egg together, then add that mixture to the one with the alcoholic raisins in it. Mix it all up! You can use a spoon but, honestly, I just use one to start. As long as you don't mind your hands getting bread cancer they're still the best tool you've got. And if you don't know what I mean by bread cancer, you will if you try it.

And as an added bonus, you can eat the bread cancer! You know you dun good if you could just eat all the dough and not even bother to bake it. And yes, there is raw egg in there. Yes, it is technically a salmonella risk and blah blah blah food safety blah blah blah. But you know what? I've been eating extra cookie dough and cake and pie batter with raw egg in it my whole life. Never made me sick. So either I'm Superman or it's not really that scary.

Now that I'm done ranting, the dough should look like this:

Sorry, I don't have any pictures of my bread cancer hands. The bread cancer makes it difficult to touch things without making a mess...

Anyway, now you flour a surface (I just used the baking sheet I was going to use in the oven) and knead the dough a few times, then make it into a round loaf, like this:

Slash an X (or cross, if you want, or addition symbol if you're math-y) in the top of the loaf and toss it in a 400 degree Fahrenheit oven for 15 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350 and bake for another 30-35 minutes (the recipe says 15-20 but remember: we added more moisture by re-hydrating the raisins in bourbon).

When it comes out, let it sit for 5-10 minutes, then cut into it and enjoy! Kinda like this:

Just like that, actually. Well... you might want to put some butter on the slice first... And be a little careful, for some reason I ended up with a few of the raisins on the outside basically turning to carbon.

I wasn't entirely happy with the raisin concentration though... I think next time I'll add at least 50% more...

Anyway, enjoy ladies and gentlemen! And always remember: if you're cooking, you're doing science, and since cooking is fun, science must be too! Or something like that...

Somebody wants to get... Fancy.

Fancy Mac & Cheese!

"How does one make something like mac & cheese fancy?" I hear you cry. Well, people of the Internet, I'm here to show you.

Last night I was bored, which is how about half of my cooking adventures start, so I decided I'd make homemade baked mac & cheese. I used the recipe for Fancy Mac & Cheese that can be found here as a jumping off point and, combining it with a recipe for mac & cheese of my own that I've been tinkering with since 8th grade (that was 1998 for anyone who cares), I came up with my own take on Fancy Mac & Cheese. I already had most of the stuff I needed lying around but you might just have to go to the market. You'll need:

2 medium sweet onions
1/2 lb bacon (that's about half a standard package)
3 T butter
1/4 c flour
~2 c milk
salt
pepper
~1/2 t ground mustard
~1/4 t hot pepper
~1/2 lb cheddar, shredded (for the love of all that's good, don't get pre-shredded)
~1/4 c Parmesan cheese
1 lb (dry) pasta of your choice (I just used whatever I had on hand...)
seasoned breadcrumbs
a little extra Parmesan

First thing's first, start a big pot of water boiling for the pasta. Don't forget to salt the water; it won't boil any faster but it will make the pasta taste 100% better. Whenever the water boils in here just toss the pasta in and set a timer. There's very little going on here that you can't leave for 3 seconds to drain some pasta.

Cut the onions in half, peel off the skin, and chop into half-moon shaped slices, like this:

Feel free to chop them up finer if you want, the form factor isn't terribly important here. I know, onions make your eyes burn, the fumes actually react with the saline in your eyes to produce a very weak acid. Completely harmless, otherwise professional chefs would all be blind, but uncomfortable nonetheless. My favorite solution: lab goggles!

You can either cut up the bacon first, then throw it in a frying pan over medium heat, like so:

Or you can cook up the bacon in strip form and break it up later. It really just comes down to which is easier for you. I'm used to doing it this way from making scrambled eggs with bacon in them so this is how I do.

Once the bacon is all cooked up and crispy kill the heat and remove it from the pan but leave the grease in there. Your bacon should look about like this:

Resist the urge to eat it as is, it'll make the mac so much better if there's more of it left.

But remember that grease we left in the pan? Set aside about 2 T of it for later and then put the pan back on medium heat and... toss in the onions! Cook 'em down until they're soft and golden brown, a bit past this stage:

If in doubt, taste a piece, it should be rather sweet and a bit caramelized. By the way, tasting food while you're cooking it: great way to make sure you don't serve something awful.

Once the onions are done, remove them from the pan. You can store them with the bacon for now, they'll just be going to the same happy place later.

Then, in a pretty sizable saucepan, melt the 3 T of butter with the 2 T of bacon grease you reserved earlier. Once it's all melted, add the 1/4 c of flour and let that cook for a bit. It'll be a pale yellowish color when it starts its journey and once it's a little darker, like a golden color, you'll know it's ready. For those of you who are more timer-minded, that's maybe 3 or 4 minutes. I didn't time myself so it could be a little longer or a little shorter but that'll be a good estimate.

Just so you know, if something goes wrong with the sauce it will be painfully obvious. I've had cheese sauces curdle before for various reasons (wrong fat to flour ratios, cooking it too hot, adding cheese way too fast, etc.) and it ends up looking like a really nasty version of cottage cheese with really small curds. Believe me, if it goes wrong, you'll know it.

Once your roux is ready (yes, you just made a roux), add the milk to it slowly while stirring (preferably whisking... with a whisk). Once you don't see any bits of roux floating around you're good to add the spices. Don't go overboard on the salt, the bacon added some for you, and add more pepper than you think you need to. My word is not law on the proportions, by the way, I highly encourage you to experiment with which spices and how much of them you add until you get something you like. The sauce will now look something like this:

Let it simmer for a while so the roux can do its magic and thicken the sauce.

Once it thickens enough (it would be nice if it would coat the back of a spoon) you can consider adding the cheese:

I know, there's bacon and onions in the frame too, we'll be using those in a few minutes. As far as cheeses go, I personally like cheddar a lot and the Parmesan was just the only other cheese I had around. Try different combinations. Being an experimentalist in the kitchen won't kill you unless you do something really terrible.

Add the cheese slowly, stirring constantly. Let each bit you add melt before you add the next. Once all your cheese is incorporated, kill the heat and let your sauce sit for a moment. Remember that pasta you started way back at the beginning and drained at some point? It's time to do something with it.

Dump your pasta into a large casserole dish and spread it into an even layer. It's ok if some of it is sticking together a bit, the sauce will help with that. Once your pasta is mostly evenly distributed, pour on the sauce and stir in the bacon and onions. It should look something like this:

Now it's ready for some breadcrumbs!

Take your seasoned breadcrumbs and sprinkle them liberally over the top of the dish (I had seasoned panko lying around and it turned out wonderfully but don't go on an extra special market run for panko as long as you have regular seasoned breadcrumbs). Then take the extra Parmesan and do the same. You definitely want more breadcrumbs than Parmesan but the balance is really up to you. It'll look something like this:

Now all you have to do is toss the whole shebang into a 350 degree Fahrenheit oven for around 25 minutes (that's about 177 degrees Celsius and about 450 Kelvin, in case anyone was wondering). The exact timing will depend on the geometry of your casserole dish but it'll be ready when the topping starts to brown a little and you can hear it bubbling. When you take it out of the oven, it'll look something like this:

Looks delicious, right?

Well, it looks just as wonderful dished up:

And then you stop taking pictures because, honestly, you'll be too busy eating.

This is really one of the ultimate comfort foods and it's not all that difficult to make to boot! Make it on a cold rainy night. Make it for a holiday. Make it for your friends and family. Make it just because you can! And remember, enjoy yourself, cooking is fun!