Camouflage Chocolate Fudge Brownies

It’s clearly not social distancing without desserts so I decided to take my day off yesterday and bake these really cool looking camouflage brownies from Bon Appetite. This is actually a Basically recipe which makes me more excited. I love simple recipes. They give me confidence.

These camouflage brownies should really be called cheesecake brownies because the lighter parts of the brownie aren’t actually brownie batter at all, they’re cheesecake.

The recipe calls for a cheesecake batter that gets divided into two, one regular and one with cocoa powder to give it that chocolate cheesecake flavor. Then a brownie batter is made separately.

Ingredients wise, there’s a short list; but this recipe calls for a double boiler situation to melt the cream cheese and the butter for each batter while then being able to mix the other ingredients for everything to come together.

My problem with this recipe was an issue of consistency. My cheesecake batter got too warm and was pretty runny while my brownie batter seized up and wasn’t as loose and runny as in the online instructions. In the end, the brownies still came out great but the top wasn’t as pretty as in the original recipe. Flavor over appearance. It’s worth another shot and I can see these being a real hit with people, but only if you like cheesecake and brownies.

Sour Cream and Onion Biscuits

Everyone is baking bread. It’s the cool thing to do because what else are you doing right now.. but bread is just a little too advanced for me and while I may get to that point, we don’t really NEED bread so that time will come. Instead, I’ve decided to try to make Bon Appetit’s Sour cream and onion biscuits which I saw on instagram (and possibly twitter too).

This recipe is from basically so it’s SUPER simple and easy. There are 9 ingredients and it doesn’t require any eggs or proofing time. Just make the dough and bake. Easy. I was a little nervous because the dough started off pretty scraggly and didn’t come together the same way different doughs might but Basically has great videos that help you know what to do step by step so I just trusted the process and did what the instructions said. I popped the biscuits in the oven and baked for 20mins. The whole time they were baking, the kitchen smelled great. I was super pumped for them to come out and they got really nice and golden. They did look a little lighter than I was expected and I got a little nervous about the amount of rise they got (or lack of rise really).

I let them cool for a little out of the oven and split one open and it was really nice how the layers came apart fluffed up. I did take a smaller one and it was baked really well but I’m still a little nervous for the larger biscuits that were a little more centered in the dough rectangle. The green onions inside kept the biscuit a little wetter than I wanted but everything was still baked through in the middle. It was warm and soft on the inside but crisp on the outside. I’ll eat another one for breakfast and see how they held up. Maybe I’ll adjust the oven temp to bake them a little lower and slower to ensure the middles are done next time but these are a must bake again. I love them so much and I’m super pumped with how easy they were to make.

Seared Mushrooms with Creamy Polenta

Times are tough and getting creative is key. This whole coronavirus is setting in and it’s harder to go to Wegmans in the next town (which is bigger and more likely to have the virus spread) so finding ingredients here in Cortland is trickier but Carla Lalli Music is pretty inspiring with her seared mushrooms with creamy polenta. I love mushrooms now, something I avoided like the plague as a child, and I’ve had polenta once before at a restaurant to try it out. I wasn’t terribly impressed with polenta due to the texture and subtle flavor but I figured now is the time to try it again when I have a hand in seasoning and flavoring it. I bought a fancy mushroom blend at the store with shiitake, crimini, and oyster mushrooms and a premade polenta that came in a roll. Not what I was expecting with the polenta experience but after visiting 4 stores I was just happy to find the missing piece of my dish before my mushrooms went bad sitting in my fridge. The packaging for the polenta suggested cutting it into rounds and frying it or even microwaving it but I knew I wanted something creamy and cooked it down with some butter/cream and seasoned with salt and pepper to taste. I followed Carla’s video to crisp up my mushrooms and topped them on the polenta and I was super happy.

I’m still not a huge fan of polenta and would still rather have a mashed potato base but it was balanced well by the mushrooms and this mix made breakfast for me for three days so I’m super pumped about that. Cost-effective and tasty. I’ll take it. Polenta still won’t be a pantry must for me but I’m more willing to try it going out to see how other people cook it and hopefully find a version I’m more fond of.

Broccoli Bolognese

It’s Coronavirus 2020! Social distancing is coming in hot which only means one thing, I’m going to be home all day cooking because what else is there to do!? I mean.. groceries are semi-limited and going outside as little as possible is the goal so there’s only SO much I can cook and eat because let’s face it, I don’t eat tons, especially since I’m stuck inside and I’m not out running around burning off all this energy. It does feel nice to buckle down and get through some of these recipes though so here we go.

Basically I’m running through the Bon Appetit list that I have saved up on youtube and I haven’t yet made my grocery store run this week so I managed to figure out that I have all the ingredients I need for a nice Broccoli Bolognese!

Molly Baz and Adam Rapoport come together in the test kitchen to make this broccoli bolognese which Adam says is just because the word bolognese sounds nice so that’s what we’re calling this. So this is chill.

I checked the recipe and it’s super simple which I love about a lot of Molly’s recipes. They do use Italian sausage for this but I happened to have some bacon already cooked up so I made a quick substitute for that and called it even. I also already had some broccoli cooked so that was one less step I had to do but blanching broccoli is simple so it wasn’t a huge jump in the recipe.

Molly and Adam cook the broccoli, then cool the garlic which they remove to then cook the sausage. Since I already had my bacon and broccoli cooked, this is where I jumped in. I boiled my pasta and while that was going I heated the broccoli and sausage up with some of the pasta water and let it simmer. I actually don’t have a potato masher so I end up using spoons or forks hoping foods soften enough for me to mash them this way but I honestly could’ve used the masher for more efficiency. And of course, bacon isn’t going to mash but that’s alright, no harm done to this crispy flat guys. Once the pasta was ready I moved it over to the ‘sauce’ and added butter and a tiny bit of pasta water as needed to finish cooking.

I stirred in some parm at the end and called it a day. This was super easy and I’m glad I could make it with leftovers and ingredients I had on hand. It came out great and tasted pretty good. Would for sure make again and while I agree that I don’t know that it’s a ‘bolognese’ it’s a really nice and easy dish so I’m in.

Spicy Mushroom Larb

This week from Bon Appetit I’ve decided to try Andy Baraghani’s mushroom larb recipe (with some adjustments). Larb is not the type of asian food I grew up with but I have had it at restaurants as a traditional ground meat dish with lettuce or rice noodles. I remember my aunt called it ‘ants on a raft’ which was so odd to me but it makes sense really. I’m not a huge fan of Andy’s videos but he makes great recipes and dishes that I’m truly interested in so it’s worth watching. It’s also a "feel good food plan” recipe so it’s relatively healthy and easy to make so I thought I would give it a shot.

In this recipe, Andy uses shiitake which are kinda pricey so I went with a cheaper baby bella. I missed the scallions in the recipe so I ended up not adding that and I also skipped the chile because I forgot to grab something but compensated by adding a chile powder. Not the same at all but it gave my dish a little kick and I got the spirit of the dish so that’s good enough for me.

This dish is honestly super easy to make, I prepped the mushrooms, shallot, and garlic and got to cooking. The recipe notes to not touch the pan for 5mins to let the mushrooms get really crisp and while I let the mushrooms go closer to 7mins, my pan was quite small for the amount and I didn’t quite get the crispness that I was looking for. The mushrooms did deflate and get very nicely brown but just not that crisp.I added the shallot and garlic and cooked it until they were soft and smelled really good and then I tossed with the fish sauce, peanuts, chile powder, and salt to taste. Now, Andy adds the scallions, not the shallot into the pan to cook off but I’m not a fan of raw shallot so I’m glad I made that decision. It would’ve been nice for a little green to have the scallion and maybe some mint like they say in the recipe but I’m not a huge fan of mint so I didn’t miss it that much. I’ve been scarred by too much raw mint and thai basil as a child I don’t feel that need for it that much in my cooking now. Maybe I’ll outgrow that because the flex of green really do brighten the dish up.

Overall, I loved the smell and taste of this mushroom larb. The fish sauce brought me back and made me quite happy in my apartment. Honestly, i was missing the texture of the meat a little more since the mushroom didn’t quite get crisp. I suppose I could do a smaller cut next time and work in a bigger pan to crisp it up. Or I could just buy some ground meat. It was a simple dish to make and super easy to eat as well. Wrapping the larb in lettuce reminded me of being home and all the wraps in Vietnamese food so that was really really nice. Would make again, maybe more traditionally with meat. Good flavors and simple.