Bacon Jam

I was kinda stucked...

One of my ideas about the blog was to be ready way ahead. But I was kinda stuck.I had no idea what to do for today's post... So I dicided to go look for inspirations in a  great place to find anything these days: Pinterest! Did you know Mad Scientist Cookbook had a Pinterest Board? We do!

I go to Pinterest to find basically anything! Organizing tips, DIY beauty recipes, low carb meal ideas... All of this!

I went to look for some ideas on my pinterests of yummy foods. And found something I was looking for trying it for a long time!

You know how jam is amazing! It's gooey and soft and have little chewy bits, right?

And Bacon? What can I say about bacon! It's a food group by it's own!

And what would you say if I casually said... Bacon Jam!!

Bacon Jam

Materials

• 300 g bacon
• 2 yellow onions
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup strong coffee
• pepper
• salt

Method

Fry the bacon in a non sticky pan. Until the fat is getting crispy, but there's yet some chewy parts. 

Remove the bacon from the pan and leave at least two tablespoons of fat on it.

Add the roughly chopped onions and stir for at leat 10 minutes. The onion will be soft, chewy and smell wonderful!

Reduce the fire to low and add the brown sugar. The onion will start to release water and caramelize. Stir ocasionaly for 20 minutes.

Add the bacon and the coffe. Stir every 5 minutes until the jam is... well jam like! Season with salt and pepper. 

You can keep it in your fridge, but let it set to room temperature before eating. 

Empanadas Argentinas

So, you guys may not know, but me and husband are going to Argentina! We'll be there overt the first week of march! 9 days of travel! I could not be more excited!

Husband travels a lot because of work, but we don't get to travel a lot togethr, and this is gonna be our first trip together thie year! So, Yey!!

I was thinking, what better way to celebrate this trip than cooking argentinian food!

And what better than Empanadas! Although I have to admit that the first time I had Empanadas were in Chile, I've never been in Argentina before. In Chile they had a type of savory pastry. Filled with seared meat, saute onions, green olives and hard boiled eggs. They were called Empanada de Pino. Delicious! Everything was an excuse to have Empanadas, and I decided to bake them home for this Argentine Special!

Boy, if I knew it would be that easy, and that tasty, I would be doing this ages ago!

Meat Argentine Empanadas

Materials

Dough

2 1/2 cups flour
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup warm water
1 teaspoon salt

Filling

350g meat chopped in bits
1/2 shalot
1/2 yellow onion
2 garlic cloves
3 tablespoons of butter
spicy paprika
pepper
salt
4 tablespoons chive
50 g green olive
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons flour
2 eggs
1 egg yolk


Methods

• Mix the flour, salt  and butter untill well incorporated. Add the water and mix well until a smooth dough. Cover with plastic and let it rest while you prepare the filling
• Boil water to hard boil the eggs
• Chop the garlic, shalots and onion. Saute in butter untill brown and soft.
• Stir in the meat and fry well until brown. Season with pepper, salt and paprika
• Add the chopped chives and green olives and mix.
• Add the water and flour and mix until start geting thick
• Slice the hard boiled eggs and and roughly smash it with a fork.
• Open the dough in a floured surface. Cut in circles of 10 cm of diameter. You gonna get around 10 of them.
• You can put up to 1 1/2 spoons of the meat filling and top with 1 spoon of eggs.
• Wet the edges of the circles and close. Spread egg yolk on top of it and bake at 180ºC until golden brown.

Experimental observations

You can also make Empanadas filled with cheese. But this meat one is classic, and that's what I was going for.

You want to really fiil the pastry, tastes really rich and meaty like this!

If you have some leftover of the filling, save it to make a sandwich! Or eat straight from the pan... Like I, not proudly, did.

Cream cheese and bacon stuffed mushrooms

I was in the mood to make some side dish. And something I don't usually cook much. I remembered the last time I was in the market and saw some very pretty mushrooms and suddenly I got this urge for stuffed mushrooms!

I made some to eat with  the buttermilk chicken of last post. I wanted something smooth and silky but with a twist.

What's better for a twist than bacon and Gochujang? I particularly love bacon and mushrooms, any kind! Better with shimeji but any kind of mushroom is fine, this is just one of the many things I want to do with mushrooms and bacon.

What's up Doc? #2

Hello Kids! How are we today?

I'm sorry I missed the last post. So much going on right now, and had to stop for a while to think about the blog. 

I had the post, I had the pictures... I just couldn't bring myself to post without thinking it through. 

Well, this blog is something I've been gladly working on and proudly watching it as it grows. But I wanted more... More of it growing, more of you guys reading, more, more and more! And I had the passion for it:

 I just couldn't keep going without a plan. That's what I've been thinking about these passing days. Now I'm a man with plan! Except that I'm not man... But you got the idea.

It all started with the possibility to write for a big blog! A already stablished site, with thousands of readers, a great exposition of my content... But since I had to write for them a number of times a week, I would eventually sacrifice the quality and constancy of my blog posts. So I had a big decision to make: And I chose my own blog!

I chose this little space, just starting out there, with a lot to change yet... But my space! My little corner of the internet where I tell what's what. Building my own readers base, my own content, that's what I want!

So I chose you guys! The few reader, the few comments, but the lots of love! Must be some sort of single child freudian thing, but I just could not bring my self to lose the love of my readers in a sea of other writers.

And this came with the decision of investing more and more on the blog! On the backstage and on what you guys see! And maybe even show a little bit about the backstage to you!

I hope you all enjoy the on coming changes and we can all grow together!

Korean BBQ

Cooking for someone is a leap of faith.

When somebody tries your food, is a commitment bigger than telling someone to make a comment on something you wrote or drawn. Because, first of all, the person must trust you are not gonna poison them. And than, to make a judgment, the person must eat what you made! Taste it, put it in their mouth and swollow it! How big of a trust is that!? What if doesn't taste good? What if it is in fact, poisoned? What if it is poisoned on purpose?!

But what if is good? If it's good, the one that tasted it now owns you respect! And might be in fact willing to listen to what you have to say because, nobody can cook this good without something in their head!

Crunchy Cheesy Chicken Bits

This thing of going back to gym is hard!

Everything in my body hurts, except my hair! And when I get back home, all I want is a bath and my bed.

So I was looking for something I could prep ahead and just bake on the way back home. I remember the other day I was looking over some recipes I would like to try. And I remember myself wondering what was this wonder of buttermilk... We don't have buttermilk in Brazil. But aparently it's something amazing all around the globe! So let's give it a try.

Since we don't have it, I had to make it. And make buttermilk is really simple. It's so all over the internet, you have actively try not to learn it! And will be very hard! 1 cup of milk and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice or white vinager and let it sit for 10 minutes.

So, what to do with this? I decided to try with chicken. People say that buttermilk bathed chicken it's so moist and delicious I had to try

.

So How about a Cheesy Chunchy Chicken Bits?

Naan

This weekend was very busy!

We went: on a hunt for my fighting gloves, to see a music video on the making, walk on the beach at night to celebrate the first time the temperature droped to 23ºC in ages, to my family for lunch. In the mean time, I had absolutely no time to cook at all!

Lots and lots of beautiful pictures were taken during this time! My favorite was the one I took of the view of the beach on Arpoador stone. Me and husband should definetly go there more times...