Cooking Sunday: White Chocolate Blondies

This recipe originally came from a Revision3 podcast (now sadly cancelled) called Food Mob. It was an interesting show, with very cool recipes, but it had a flaw. The chef, Niall, would be cooking on the fly, and was a bit haphazard with measurements. Often what he would use would differ from the show notes on the website. The show notes themselves would often omit necessary steps and ingredients, or worse, list an ingredient, then never mention it in the instructions. As a result, to get a working recipe, you had to watch the show repeatedly, take notes, compare to the recipe in the show notes, and work out something yourself through trial and error.

This can be frustrating.

But here's one I've adapted from Niall's version and made multiple times. Fair warning, this is a very rich desert. Goes great for bake sales, but if you ate a whole batch to yourself, you might explode. And we wouldn't want that.

White Chocolate Blondies

THIS IS WHAT TO DO:

• Preheat your oven to 200 degrees.
• Take your butter out of the fridge. It'll be hard as a rock, so you can do this ages before, or, if you're stupid like me, you can put it into a ziploc bag, wrapper and all, and dip that bag into some hot water until it softens. Alternatively, you can put a baking tray with an inch of boiling water on the counter and rest the base of your metal mixing bowl in that. Did I mention you'll need a big metal bowl? You'll need a big metal bowl.
• take your big metal bowl (see? Told you.) and dump in your brown sugar. When your butter is soft enough (and you'd better hope it is), put it in with the brown sugar.
• Now comes the hard part. Get a wooden spoon or flat spatula, and mix the butter and sugar together, creaming them. It'll take some muscle. Don't use a whisk. Don't use an electric mixer. Both will just make a big mess and you'll spend half your time trying to pick the mixture out of the mixing-device-beater-tool-tong-thing. Think of this as character building, and reminisce about the last RPG character you made and how awesome they were until the game got boring.
• Now once your mixture is well blended and there are no lumps of butter in it, it should look like this:

• Add your flour, baking powder, salt, and baking soda to the wet mix, get your spatula, and mix it all together again. It'll separate out into little globs, but keep mixing. It'll get smooth again.
• Break the egg into the bowl and mix again. You arm might be tired at this point. Switch arms. Seriously, you could hurt yourself.
• Once you've mixed the egg in, spread a handful of walnuts onto a chopping board. Oh, crap, did i forget to put walnuts on the list? You need walnuts. Write that down. So. the walnuts. Spread 'em out like this:

• (the picture is actually two handfuls) Run your knife through them, chopping into little bits. You could use a food processor or a mortar and pestle. Listen to your heart. Pour your chopped-up walnuts into the mixture and stir them in again. You thought you were done with the stirring? No, no, is no done.
• Get your vanilla pod.

• Slice the pod lengthwise and use your knife to scrape out the speckly stuff inside. Into the bowl with it. Stir thoroughly, making sure all the speckles are spread around.
• Measure out your chocolate chips. I use white chips, but really, you can use whatever you like. Into the mix with them and stir for the last time, I promise. The mix should be really thick by this point to where you can stand the spoon up in the bowl with no trouble, to whimsical effect:

Or you could fantasize about the world's unhealthiest lollipop:

Ahem. Anyhow.

• Get your pan, and lay down some baking paper. Scoop your mixture onto it, and flatten it down to about 4cm thick. Make sure there's baking paper between the mix and the pan, otherwise it'll stick.


• Into the oven with it. 20 minutes. Open the oven door, and poke a skewer into the middle. If it comes out wet, give it another 5 minutes.
• Take the tray out of the oven and let it sit for a few minutes, to let it settle back down (I didn't know what the opposite verb for "rise" was). It ought to look like this:

• As soon as you can, use the paper to lift the whole thing out of the pan and set it on a cutting board or tray. Peel the paper edges away and let it breathe:

• As soon as you can (again), chop the whole thing into squares and carefully lift them off the baking paper onto some paper towel (if you do this too soon, they'll fall apart. Judge it). The reason for the rush it that the blondies will leak butter as they cool. The last thing you want is that butter sitting on the paper and making the bottom of your squares soggy. You may need to move them carefully onto new paper towels a couple of times. Once they've settled, you're done! You can dust 'em with icing sugar, but really, they're fine on their own. See?

What I Got (continued)

WATCHING Forgot to mention a few more podcasts. Despite my dislike of their myriad of convention shows, iFanboy is still going strong since leaving Revision3. Their shows on Frank Miller and Starman have been my favourites lately. LifeHacker is one I've been trialing, and is nothing but good so far. It's basically tips on how to streamline and nerd up your life and work, such as making a cord-free office, making an emergency lamp out of a tuna can, or a laptop bag out of your hoodie. PennPoint is handy because when I watch it minimised, it's like listening to a radio show hosted by Penn Jillette. One of the few podcasts where video ain't necessary, which is good when your battery is low, or you have Twittering to do.

APP-ING I've been leaning away from iPhone games lately, using my phone much more for media and web-based stuff, though one has grabbed my attention: ShapeShift may look like a Bejewelled clone, and maybe it is, but it's highly addictive. My only gripe is that it's not timed, but turn-based, and you don't get any bombs (the only things that'll stop a game) until at least 8-10 minutes of gameplay. So until that point there is absolutely no challenge. It's also a battery-suck. I've also been playing a bit of Fruit Ninja, since they updated and added Arcade mode, which really changes up the action, adding power-ups and rewarding you for creativity. I've long been a user of Words With Friends, sometimes running as many as 20 games at a time. This has become its downfall, though, as the sheer number of games combined with an instant rematch after each win or loss has rendered the joy of winning obsolete. As it doesn't matter, then my motivation for playing is lost. I've branched out into its cousin, Hangin' With Friends, but it's not grabbing me as much. The random nature of Hangman means you either get the word straight away or you have no idea and flail about getting things wrong. I therefore don't feel accomplished when I get something, I just feel lucky. Social-media-wise, SoundTracking has been my latest download. It's free, and it is to music what Instagram is to photos. You can have to grab what's playing around you (handy in bars or music shops) or grab what's on your iPhone and post it with a comment. The big honking downside? Nobody's using it. At least, no one that I know. That means the service only exists to post songs to Facebook, Twitter, etc. Without the rich community that Instagram has, I don't think it'll stick with me long. Speaking of Instagram, it's become one of my primary ways of interacting with my social networks. You guys think I tweet a lot? My Instagram feed is 2-3 times as full. However, my love of skylines and clouds has gotten me tons of likes from people I don't know, but annoys the crap of people I actually know. So swings and roundabouts. Speaking of Apps, I still can't find a good blogging app for iPhone that'll let me post photos to Blogger the way I normally do, and it shits me.

READING I've been digging through the pile of books I've had since Christmas and cleared a few off my list. I finally took the plunge and read The Gunslinger by Stephen King. Despite high hopes, I did not like it. I found the language too florid and the characters inscrutable, taking actions I did not understand and they did not explain. I was waiting for the actions to make sense, but no one gave any explanation for what they were doing apart from it's "what I must do." Great. Thanks. One I had no preface to was iBoy by Kevin Brooks. It's a kid from the housing projects outside of London who has an iPhone hit his head from a high height and gets superpowers. Yep. Initially it's just an internal processor and all the knowledge of the InterWebz, but then it extends to a personal forcefield, electrical powers, telekenesis and, well, whatever the plot demands from the scene. No upper limit or explanation is given for these powers, and he essentially runs around beating up gang members until the finale, which by that point I did not care about. It was not a good book. The third volume of Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis, and the series is starting to bug me. It tends to alternate between wonderful, funny and interesting stories, and then perhaps one issue in three will be terrible. It's inconsistant stuff like that that I want to push through to get to the good stuff. Example? A sentient police dog that Spider castrated during a riot seeks revenge upon him. It's exactly as bad as it sounds. But the rest is so good! Argh. However, I am tempted to try the Spider Jerusalem Experiment. For one day, from early morning to late at night, to watch television. To do nothing but watch free-to-air television. Take it all in. I think it'll either result in some amazingly interesting blogness or my brains running out of my ears. I have 8 or so issues of The Word sitting waiting to be perused. i should really do something about that.

LISTENING I've found a cheap CD shop (10 CDs for $50) near my work, so I've resupplied my musicness. Here's a list because I couldn't be bothered keeping up the format of my own blog entry:

• Pulp - Hits (I don't know why I keep buying Pulp albums. I think I need to admit that I like the idea of pulp more than I like the actual music.)
• Two Door Cinema Club - Tourist History (discovered this through Soundtracking, fun electro-indie pop stuff. Highly catchy)
• Grinderman 2 (Grind Harder? Electric Boogaloo? More strange and interesting stuff from Nick Cave and the Dirty Three. However, like with the first album, I'm only keeping about half of it in my rotation.)
• Cold War Kids - Robbers & Cowards (Indie. But not hipsterish. I like it. Next question.)
• Muse - Absolution (More epic soundscapes. Sounds great through big headphones. May lead to slight air guitar)
• Kaiser Chiefs - Yours Truly Angry Mob (cementing the fact that yes, I really like the Kaiser Chiefs. They are fun and I like them.)
• Siouxsie - Mantaray (I've had three tracks (Into A Swan, Loveless & Drone Zone) from this album forever. I think I got the best tracks, as the rest of the album isn't all that.)
• She Wants Revenge - This Is Forever (more of the same from the Joy-Division-sounding darkwave-post-punk-electro duo. This is not a bad thing. This is a good thing.)
• The Puppini Sisters - The Rise & Fall of Ruby Woo/Betcha Bottom Dollar (Andrew-sisters-1940s-style-close-harmony-singing mixing covers of Beyonce and the Bangles with old school swing hits. Addictive and wonderful.)
• The Bravery - The Sun And The Moon Complete (What's this? a two-disc set with the same songs on each? It's the original garage-sounding 2007 album on Disc-1, and the same songs redone and re-recorded with a more electronic synthy twist on Disc 2)
• The Pipettes - We Are The Pipettes (60s Girl Group tribute act. Pure summer pop goodness. Check out Pull Shapes, as mentioned in Jamie McKelvie's Phonogram: The Singles Club)
• ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - So Divided (these guys continue to impress me, though seemingly no two of their songs are remotely the same in tone or genre. Lush and layered sounds that sound fantabulous through headphones or good speakers)
• Beastie Boys - Hot Sauce Committee Part 2 (have only listened to a bit of this but it seems like a return to form)

There! That'll do it. That should give you something to do for a bit.

Organ Size

I understand this lighter is meant to be bawdy and ribald. I understand this. But it is fundamentally incorrect, even within the confines of its own joke logic.

The idea behind this comment is as follows:

The skin is the largest organ in the body. This is fact. The assertion the joke makes is that the gonads of the lewd-lighter-holder are in fact larger than the entirety of a normal human’s skin, usurping the claim of Largest Organ Evah.

HOWEVER.

If the fanciful-lighter-holder truly had a set of gonads that large, said brobdingnagian gonads would be covered with skin. Thus adding to the skin’s overall area to the point where the skin is STILL the largest organ on the capricious-lighter-holder’s body.

Unless:

a) The quirky-lighter-holder’s brobdingnagian gonads are in fact skinless, and thus would be prone to infection, rupture and, well, falling out... OR

b) The humorous-lighter-holder’s brobdingnagian gonads contain within them yet another skin-equivalent in mass through density (potentially due to being made of some sort of organic metal).

In either case, it would be a serious medical condition and should not be the subject of a whimsical cigarette lighter boast.

I’m Lucas, and Things Like That Shit Me.

What I Got (Watching)

New look blog! Or at least, until I decide to change it again. The background seems to be the hardest thing to decide on. So expect further changes, as I am indecisive.

I've had all these posts rushing around in my head, so I'm going to try and combine them into a rapid-fire short-form-list of what I've been watching/reading/listening/Apping.

Is Apping a word? It is now.

Warning. Excessive linking ahead.

WATCHING With my longer commute, I've finally been delving into things I've had on the HDD for months, including Transformers Animated, Justice League, Teen Titans, and Transformers Prime. All are highly recommended, for different moods. T:A is arc-based, like Justice League, so it's great to watch the stories unfold when you can watch 3 or 4 episodes in a row. TT is much MUCH more episodic and far less serious (they even have a special Japanese version of the awesome PuffyAmiYumi theme song as a signal that it'll be a silly show). Transformers Prime is as if Beast Wars, War For Cybertron, and the Transformers film series had a crazy LAN Party/threesome which made beautiful shiny robotic baby, and then had it raised with the G1 series as a nanny, which is a strange image and I want you all to forget it. Thing is, I know the first half-season of ALL these shows are not the best. Persevere. They will Grow The Beard. Promise. Also, seeing all these awesome shows has made one I previously loved look a bit shallow. Batman Beyond was always my favourite of the DCAU, and compared to Justice League, frankly most of it seems a bit shallow (but I could listen to the theme song all day long). Oh, and the first season of Batman: The Animated Series sucked. Like a lot. At home, since we've run out of Castle, Modern Family, & Community (which we still love), and Big Bang Theory, Chuck and 30 Rock (which we're starting to wane on, due to Flanderization and Seasonal Rot), we've been looking into movies. The arrival of Netflix Instant streaming into our house caused an evening of Emma/How To Marry A Millionaire (which showcased examples of Politeness Judo & Ship-To-Ship Combat in the former and MegaNekko in the latter). It's also caused me to find the Astonishing X-Men Motion Comic. It's also caused an overabundance of choice, which has led to occasional BSOD moments when deciding what to watch. Happily, there's always Firefly. My podcast watching has slowed ever since I took a few weeks off watching Podcasts while trying to sort out my music library. Then they piled up and suddenly I have 14 episodes of FrameRate, 10 of NSFW, 42 of the Totally Rad Show and 17 Diggnations. Funnily enough, I was about to keep up with Destructoid, Appjudgment, Death Battle, and Bytejacker due to their shorter run times. Though Bytejacker is now on hiatus, which makes me sad.

Oh, crap, that took 34 minutes to write. I might need to pick this "What I Got" thing up later, as I must get ready for work.

My Game of Thrones Review.

Filmed early in the morning at Parramatta station. I say "awesome" a lot.

Huge Huge Huge Reductions! Never Pay Full Price Again!

Belonging

Nearby my new office, amid the office buildings and shopping centres, there is a tiny corner. See? Here it is on Google Maps.

View Larger Map
Yeah, it’s there, but you can’t see it. That’s because this place was willed into existence.

That little laneway corner thing? Someone nailed a roof on it, stacked some kitchen counters and cabinets and a few camp stove burners, then started piling things up, stacking things around, and making coffee.

This is Circa.

As anyone who follows me on “the Instagrams” knows, I have been sneaking many a photo of this place. That’s because there is so much to see in this small space. There are old timey bicycles nailed to the walls, there is a hatrack with a top hat, a flat cap, and whatever the hell the owners and baristas wore to work that day. There are wine crates full of books about anything from graffiti (I had a leaf through Banksy’s Wall & Peace) to ballet & photography. There is an inlaid mother-of-pearl backgammon set. There is a record player and a stack of 45s. The cakes they made in-house that day sit in a kitchen cupboard on the wall. The menu is written on butcher’s paper & stuck on the wall.

The three guys who run the place are hard at work, but are constantly talking with customers both regular & drop-in. Though the walls are concrete, they’ve built windows and painted them with seaside vistas. The music playing is a far cry from Cafe Del Mar or any Chillout mix. It’s James Brown, Ray Charles, soul and funk from the 70s, and even some US. It comes either from some of their records, or it’s one of the guys’ iPhones plugged into a dock by the door. The music is usually good enough that I take off my headphones when I enter, which is unprecedented.

Today, I sat at the back of the place and had my coffee & listened to the owner chat with a woman who had come in. She mentioned that she had brought them more books (including some comics from the 90s), and that she was happy to print them up some cards to give to people. This woman was not affiliated with the cafe, she was just a regular. She then started talking about which pork roast was best, then segues into how, “Yes, Lisa, it’s a wonderful, MAGICAL animal.”

Hearing it, it made me want to be a regular too. More so than at any other cafe I’ve been to.

Meet the Meat.

*Warning: This post not for the squeamish or puritan vegetable folk*

I was just intimidated by a piece of meat. Tonight, I'm making Aussie Berko. At Marrickville, I asked the butcher for 4 pieces of beef Osso Bucco (the shin piece). Those 4 pieces came to a kilo and a half due to two of them being enormous. As part of the recipe, I have to brown the pieces in the casserole dish before it goes in the oven. These two pieces are so big, I have to brown the meat in two batches. I then take the meat out to rest while the veggies cook. As it was resting, I glanced over at the topmost and biggest piece. And it grossed me out.

I'm not that squeamish, not really. Admittedly, I don't like things that stick to my hands while I cook (like egg or mince or flour or things like that) so I rinse my hands a lot. But this? Okay. I'll try to explain.

Osso Bucco, or shin beef, looks like this. That is fine. But this piece had been badly cut, which meant that in addition to the central bone, there was a second half-piece of bone stuck to the bottom. This second piece was belled outward, so it was most likely fron the end of the bone near the joint. You know what else is near joints? Tendons. Ligaments. Things that look like tubes or straws. So after I'd browned the meat, I took off this second piece of bone and there was a reddish mess of tubes and I nearly gagged.

Yes. I understand meat comes from an animal, an animal that was once alive. I get that, I understand that. For some reason though, that just hit me.

The meat is now in the oven. I shall conquer my moment of fear by consuming it in a delicious tomato-dark beer sauce.

....or I might cut that bit out and leave it on the side of my plate.

On an completely unrelated note, last night, while making Sausage & Zucchini Carbonara (a future Cooking Post), I was zesting a lemon overzealously, and manages to drag the zester across my thumb. Here it is after a day of healing (it bled like a mofo). Today Tanja and I stopped in at Caketown to pick up something, and chatted with the guy who runs the place. As he handed us out purchase, he noticed I had a bandage on my thumb, and showed his own thumb, which had a cut a few days old on it, and said we were in the same boat. "No," I replied. "Lemon zester." He made a face, turned away and threw his hands up all in one motion (which was a thing to behold) and declared "Eyargh! That's why I work with pastry, not with meat! Ugh!"

So I got to feel tough.

Edit: A post-script. The meal turned out to be so bad as to be inedible. The meat was tough, even near the bone, and the broth, which is usually rich and flavourful was bland and tasteless. Clearly, I should have gone with my gut instinct and backed off. So the whole pot (meant to be two nights' dinners) went in the bin. I'm further frustrated because Tanja is always hesitant to have this dish, as stews are not her favourite thing. The first time she had this, she did not like it. The second time she did. This time, I had to convince her to have it for dinner. Which then failed spectacularly. I don't think I'll get to make it a fourth time. [glum]

Trop tarde.

(Written Thursday morning, uploaded Friday night, not posted until Sunday. Work ethic!)

For the want of a look.

So today I bought myself a new 2 terabyte hard drive & some blank DVDs. They were in my satchel, which I could barely close. I went into Kmart, looking for Blutack & raffle tickets, found the Blutack. I was a little worried coming up to the cash register, because if they wanted to check my bag, I'd have to take everything out to get the receipt for the HD & DVDs. So I pay for the Blutack, she asks if I want a bag. I say no, I'll just put it in my bag. I then cram the Blutack into my overloaded bag. Which is clearly full of stuff. I wait a second to see if she's going to ask to check. She thanks me for shopping at Kmart. Okay. I leave. THE GATE BEEPS AS I LEAVE. I stop, turn back, and she waves me on. Incredible. And how can I get away with this amazing implied larceny?

Stealth technology. Camouflage. A cloak that allows me access to the benefit of the doubt and respectability. 

I am, of course, talking about corporate attire. 

It got me out of a train fine last week. I've not had a bag check at JB Hifi. Everyone is polite, and smiles. It's insane.

I mean, sure, I hate bag checks. Hate them so much that I'm tempted to steal something for every time they check my bag unnecessarily. But now I almost want them to. But I want them to for principle. Because that's why they've always said they've checked me before. "Oh, we check everyone." Which is bullshit. The addition of an eyebrow ring, two centimeters of sideburn on each side, and the removal of a collar? I'm criminal.

Of course, the opposite is true too. At one point, Tanja and I were at the Union having dinner, and I engaged the barman in conversation about some of the craft beer he orders. He was older than me, a real rockabilly guy, with tattoo sleeves, long sideburns and slick hair. As the conversation went on, I felt the urge to say something to show that I was cool, that I knew his scene or something. I resisted, thankfully. I hate those "Aw yeah, I used to have hair like that" conversations.

And yes, I'm aware of the hypocrisy of my resisting one group judging me on my (corporate) appearance and encouraging another group relating to me based upon my (non-corporate) appearance. 

I'm not done on this issue, but frankly, I'm confused as to my own message.