Cooking with Kyle: Episode 3

This time we have a double meal special. I will be showing one meal I made for breakfast and one for dinner. Let's start in chronological order.

Breakfast

As usual we begin with a shot of our ingredients.

A proper breakfast is composed at least partly of eggs, and somewhere between partly and completely bacon.

Starting from the left we have the remains of my baguette seen in Episode 1. These posts are more spread out than the actual time between cooking, so that hunk of bread is not completely stale I promise. The bacon is cut in half because... that's the way I found it. It ended up being a good size for my purposes.

I really just like cutting holes in bread.

I scrambled the egg up with a fork. Some may tell you to add milk, I will tell you it doesn't matter. I then sliced up my bread and hollowed out the slices with a knife. Honestly those two should have been done in the reverse order. I had some notion that hollowing the bread first would make the rings squish up when I cut them, but I could have easily unsquished them.

This photo shows that I am, in fact, not a chef.

I placed my bread slices in a good-sized buttered pan. I then put a half slice of bacon inside each bread hole (I had cooked the bacon in another pan) and followed up with scooping egg into each hole. This was the most difficult part of the procedure, because a.) egg is a stubborn... liquid?... and doesn't like to come up in a spoon and b.) most of the egg spilled through the bottom of the bread. I had to scramble another two eggs to fill all the holes. As you may be able to guess, this was far more than one person can eat.

I scraped the extra egg into the trash, 'cause I'm a privileged little shit.

And here is the final product, alongside chocolate milk: the ale of little boys. I put some salt on top and it was quite good. Cooking eggs in a regular piece of bread is better though. There is less spillage, one slice = one egg, and you can leave the yoke intact so you can crack it when eating and get the goopy good stuff all over your plate. (And let someone else do the dishes.) The advantage to this method is the pieces can be picked up by hand and are two-bites size.

Dinner

INGREDIENTS.

White stuff, white stuff, egg (Also white).

From left to right: flour, milk, one egg. The milk and flour are unmeasured, they aren't going into a pot or anything, so it isn't important to take measurements. Although I did have quite a bit excess flour in the end. Same with milk, but you need enough milk to balance the egg. I don't have a photo of the egg mixed with the milk, but that is what you do. It is better to whisk the egg in the bowl and then add the milk.

Did you think my only two ingredients were milk, egg and flour?

Here are the main ingredients. As you can see I used plain Panko bread crumbs, the style and brand are up to the individual but I like Panko. Mixed in are 3 pinches each of salt, pepper, and thyme (pronounced "time"). Different people like different spices, and I mean to experiment myself in the future, but S&P with some thyme is the way I learned it. To the right we have chicken thighs. I meant to grab boneless breast, but my freezer is a conglomerate of different chicken parts that all look the same to me.

It always puts me off how clearly you can see the meat past the crumbs.

The photo above was taken after skipping a few steps. While I was setting up all my prep work, I set the pan to high heat with about 1/3 cup of olive oil (I didn't measure) and two tablespoons of butter. Canola oil and vegetable work just as well as olive, canola being the healthiest. The chicken itself you cover in the ingredients set up earlier, in the order I presented them: flour, egg/milk mixture, and then bread crumbs. Then I dropped my chicken in the pan (lightly, mind you) and lowered the temperature. You want the temperature low to give the chicken time to cook through without overcooking the outside. I didn't time the cooking at all, it's safe to leave on for quite awhile (especially with bones). 

Bread crumbs make everything looks so good.

After, waiting, flipping, and waiting again, my chicken was done. There are only two shone because the others went to my parents. I checked their done-ness by cutting them open, looking for running blood. I didn't make any sides, but the chicken was quite good. You might not think something this tasty was so simple to make, the only difficulty being the knowledge of ingredients.

With that we are finished. What would I do differently next time? For the breakfast: more ingredients. Add anything you think is good in an omelette. I'd like to try salsa next time, it is strangely quite good with egg. The chicken was fine, I would just toy with spices. Hope you enjoyed this episode, I'll try to make one more episode before I leave for school.

Cooking with Kyle: Episode 2

For this episode I shied away from healthy things like broccoli. Because for every vitamin and mineral I consume, there must be 100 carbs and protein and mounds of sodium. Let's get underway!

Pork and beef unite after an age of war and hatred.

So here we have our ingredients: Meat, cheese, and Honey BBQ sauce, the three staples of any decent meal. I have already latticed the bacon into a weave, half of which is turkey and half regular. I didn't have enough of either on hand for the weave. Center we have two patties worth of ground beef (which was too much) and right we have some unmeasured amount of shredded mild cheddar. This is the components of a bacon explosion, but I wanted to try assembling the pieces differently this time.

Close-up of the weave. You are supposed to alternate thin and fat sides of bacon, which I don't remember doing.

We only use the finest instruments in Kyle's kitchen.

After letting the weave bake in the oven for 10-ish minutes I pulled it out, put a bowl on it, and sliced out a circle. I'll let you keep guessing where this is going.

The bowl was just a ruse, I actually just cut the shape of a a head and then uncut the details to make a perfect circle.

That isn't tin-foil, it's a pure sheet of silver.

After making the circle I mushed up some tin-foil silver and placed it on the weave. I actually had to compact it more than what is shown.

The reason this is so fuzzy is because I was simultaneously juggling kitchen knives. That were on fire.

I put the bacon back in the oven to finish and then cooked my beef in the meantime. I added the cheese near the end which in hindsight was a mistake. The shredder I had available made very fine slices and the cheddar tends to easily cling it itself, and in the end I got clumps of the stuff instead of an even distribution.

Won't find these at a fine dining restaurant. (Or any self-respecting one)

In the end, I was attempting to make a bacon taco. The weave held it's shape okay, but the edges broke apart a little and the "shell" was way too malleable to be eaten like a taco. I ended up having to go at it with a fork and knife. It was still quite delicious.

So what do we do to make it better next time? Primarily, cook the bacon for quite awhile longer. I didn't want to cook it that long because I didn't want it to become too crispy and lose all its tastiness. But you sort of have to make that sacrifice to actually create a shell. Making the whole weave turkey bacon may remedy the problem, because the turkey is naturally stiffer and more inclined to hold a shape.There are also probably better methods to giving the bacon it's shape. I saw one guy online drape it over a pair of skewers resting atop oven-safe cups. I'd also like to have more toppings, to make it more akin to a taco, and less like a taco-shaped bacon explosion.

This one was for the meat-lovers, and I already have the photos for the next episode, which actually resulted the way I had intended. Stay tuned!

Cooking with Kyle: Episode 1

So a couple days ago I decided to try and get a little creative in the kitchen, which was likely a bad idea because I don't typically cook. Like... at all. But when I got underway I decided to record the process so I could share it with the world, because what else is cooking good for if not being a conceited bastard about it?

All jokes aside let's start on my first dish. This was pretty much inspired by (and more or less stolen) from Panera Bread. I looked up the recipe online and more or less followed it but did a few things on my own. The end result was bread and cheddar broccoli soup.

For my bread I chose a French Baguette. Say what you want of the french, they make some good bread. The typical fashion of Panera is to use bread bowls, but I had my own ideas.

Here the poor bread victim is already hacked into pieces by the cruel... me.

I cut the Baguette in half, only to surmise that even in half it was too long for the knife I was going to use to hollow it out with. (The far left one) So I skimmed a bit more off.

The bane of any respectable toddler: vegetables.

Some of the other "prep work" as they call it in the biz, other than assembling other ingredients I didn't take pictures of because they were boring, involved dicing up the the stuff that would eventually go in the soup. I didn't use any particular method here, I just kind of hacked at the broccoli from four different angles. The recipe called for a half-pound of the green stuff. I used a head of broccoli, which is more or less a half-pound, but even then it seemed a bit much so I tossed some excess into the trash.

The carrots are supposed to be julienned, which is a fancy chef cut, for you uncultured savages. But I was working with baby carrots, and trying to julienne baby carrots is like trying to balance on a wet twig whilst in stilts.  So, I just hacked at them from four different angles. The recipe called for a cup of the orange stuff, but again, cutting baby carrots kind of sucks, so in the end I got maybe close to 3/4 of that before throwing my knife into the wall. (Not really guys calm down.) 

Pictured in the far right is shredded mild cheddar cheese. The recipe called for sharp, but honestly I just bought the stuff that I thought was supposed to go in while I was shopping before looking up the recipe. I also just don't care, and neither should you. Recipe wanted a cup, I went a little over, because I like cheese.

Would you eat this? I wouldn't.

Skip a few steps and we've reached the picture above. This was after throwing in roughly 2 tablespoons of butter and 1/4 a cup of flour in a pot, mixing for 5 minutes, and then putting in a cup of milk. The recipe wanted half-&-half but as usual, I just didn't care. Milk is where it's at. It really doesn't matter. Also you're supposed to put in onions which should have been cooked in another pan. But I didn't have onions, and even if I did, I probably would have left them out to avoid cleaning another pan. Who needs onions anyway?

15 minutes later, my concoction is looking no closer to being edible.

This photos was taken at some point after adding a cup of chicken stock. Chicken stock is a fairly gross substance, both in appearance and in matter of being acquired. It is also the only component making this recipe unfriendly to vegetarians. However it provides the soup with much of it's flavor.

I tried pretty hard to avoid making dirty jokes about this.

While the soup was simmering (and at one point overflowing) I hollowed out my bread. I just sorta stuck my knife in there and wiggled it around until stuff came out. (I said I TRIED). This was easier than I expected, and the piece of bread on the cutting board is not all that I cut out (I ate the rest).

Now we're talking.

After the chicken broth and other stuff had simmered for 20 minutes, I put in the veggies. This photo was taken ANOTHER 20 minutes after that, after the soup cooked on low heat. By this point my stomach was a cavernous maw of  rumbling spite. For spices there is a pinch or three of salt as well as pepper, and some amount of oregano.

I call it gloop-in-a-tube.

And here we have a finished product. The idea was to mimic the typical bread bowl, but instead put it in a roll so that you could hold it and one hand and just take bites off the top like a bread popsicle, getting soup and bread in a harmonious mixture. Unfortunately whenever I took a bite the bread condensed and the soup had nowhere to go but up and out (and onto my pants). So instead I ate it like a push pop, squeezing with my hand to push goop out of the stick and into my mouth (oh god I'm so sorry). And then just I just bit and ripping of the newly empty piece of bread near the top. It worked just as well, creating an easy to eat handheld bread bowl.

The portions I used could easily feed three people, so I had some leftovers. While I was eating my delicious soup and bread combo, the leftover soup had cooled and half-hardened into a pasty substance. Being the quick-thinking culinary deviant that I am, I decided to use it as a spread, and put it on some sliced (un-hollowed)  pieces of my baguette. (Remember that extra piece I cut off in the beginning? I'm actually just a genius at planning ahead).  I ate this just like cheese and crackers, and the soup is just as good after hardening a bit. It definitely tastes better warm though, so if you have leftovers don't be afraid to microwave them the next day.

In the end, this was a huge success, even though really my only original ideas were putting the soup in a baguette instead of a bowl, and on sliced bread. If I would change anything next time it would be to try and keep the walls of the bread a little bit thicker, because the soup-to-bread ratio was a little off. Also I was afraid the thin walls would burst at any moment and thoroughly ruin my day.

And there you have it, I hope you enjoyed my cooking process and was inspired to make this dish yourself. There are probably several recipes online just Google it and pick one you like. (I picked the second link because the e first was a to Panera's catering service.)