Slow cookery and baking

I hesitated to post because I have yet to photodocument myself cooking anything tasty, interesting, or needing of pictures. However, this blog has fallen into a bout of after-lunch lethargy, so I decided that standards are now low enough to admit my food pictures.

I made some onion soup the other day. It wasn't a terribly complicated recipe. Actually, it was outright easy. But I wasn't terribly hungry at the time and hence decided to fully tease out the process of cooking down the onions. The cookbook said to give it 30-40 minutes. I think I maybe let mine go for an hour or two.


This had the effect of heightening my anticipation (smell of cooking onions) as well as fully wringing out the flavor of the otherwise unpleasant fruit (yes, onions are a fruit. go look it up).


I also made some banana bread. It was supposed to be a great recipe. I had made it for my roommate and his girlfriend a couple weeks earlier and they'd raved about it. Once again, setting out in great anticipation, I whipped it up a couple afternoons ago. As I took this picture, I was actually thinking about writing up the blog post, wondering how to communicate that I'd just made the world's best banana bread without coming across as too arrogant. Well, it turns out it wasn't necessary to solve that little conundrum. The bread was on the dry side (perhaps overcooked), lacking sweetness (despite 3/4 cup of sugar!), a little too homogeneous (I guess I like my banana bread a little chunky) with no overall remarkability. So, here's the picture, but I won't post the recipe:


Also, I admit that onions are not a fruit. But at least I got you to go to Wikipedia and thereby learn that onions are "one of the oldest vegetables known to humankind."

And Now for Something Completely Different

A nickel to anyone who knows where this post title comes from. But I don't mean it only as a riddle. I present for you all something not butchered, baked, nor candlestickmade. A long time ago (back before the long winter nights came and sucked all the warmth from the world), I put away several jars of dilly beans. I'd always meant to throw a photo or two up on Barnhart Central. But now that we have the Barnhart Cooking Show online, this seems like the best place to do it.

And for the record, I opened the first jar just a moment ago, and the dilly beans are great. Maybe a touch too salty, but very crisp with a pungent dill bouquet and earthy, jalapeño undertones.

I'm actually kind of sad about these apple dumplings, because I ate so much for dinner that I don't think I'll be able to enjoy these tonight. A picture might be worth a thousand words, but I still can't taste it unless I actually put it in my mouth.

Happy 2009 to everyone, and Happy Birthday to only Ben. :)

Herbed Fougasse

I don't even know how to pronounce that second word, but I definitely know how to eat it. This was my first attempt at "fancy" bread (anything more complicated than a loaf of white bread in my mind) and I was very happy that it turned out similar to the picture in my book. We took it to Andy's mom's tonight for our Christmas celebration.