One of my favorite food bloggers is Carol Blymire, author of the blogs The French Laundry at Home and Alinea at Home. Her concept is that she takes a high-end cookbook, follows each recipe and blogs her results; errors, mishaps and all. That combined with her wit and sense of humor makes for a very interesting read.

I’ve been inspired by her and I’m considering writing a similar blog, so this past weekend I decided to take some practice photos while making pound cake. This is a much simpler recipe than most of the ones that Carol makes, but it served as good practice. Any suggestions of which cookbook I should cook through? Leave them in comments.

The ingredients for pound cake: a pound of butter, a pound of eggs, a pound of flour, and a pound of sugar (are you noticing a theme here?), Grand Marnier, nutmeg, and salt.

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My mise en place; all the ingredients are measured and the eggs are separated.

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You begin by creaming the softened butter with the whisk attachment. The key to this recipe is keeping everything “fluffy.”

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After adding the sugar, keep whisking in order to keep everything light.

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Add the egg yolks two-at-a-time.

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Slowly add the 1/4 cup of Grand Marnier followed by the salt and nutmeg.

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Add the flour in thirds and transfer the batter to another bowl. At this point, the mixture should look a lot like mashed potatoes.

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After cleaning the mixing bowl, add the egg whites in preparation for whipping.

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Whip the egg whites to firm peaks, but not so much that they dry out.

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Fold the egg whites into the batter in order to keep it light. The egg whites are your leavening.

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Evenly portion the batter between two loaf pans which were prepared with butter and then lined with parchment paper.

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Smooth the top of the batter so it fills each loaf pan.

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Ready to bake.

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After baking for 70-80 minutes at 325F, the top should be split and a tester should come out clean.

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After cooling for 10 minutes in the loaf pans, remove and let cool fully on a cooling rack.

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After a little whipped cream, raspberries, and powdered sugar, it’s ready to eat!

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As I make bacon (at 11:45 PM), I can’t help but think about how useless those “bacon weight” things are. You know, the things that look like clothing irons from the 1800’s that you place on top of bacon while it’s cooking so it stays flat.

The thing I love most about bacon is it’s interesting texture when it curls and wrinkles. Some parts are cooked more than others, so you get a plethora of textures; crunchy, chewy, or somewhere in between.

I have to get back to the frying pan before it all burns. I’m then going to sit down and watch tonight’s episode of No Reservations.

Unexpectedly today, one of the most awesome books ever showed up unannounced on my doorstep. Sent to me by my brother, whom I don’t speak to that often (not because of a family dispute or anything, we just don’t talk that often). It’s unlike him to send random gifts, so I thought it was very cool.

Anyway back to the awesomeness that is this book:

Charcuterie (Pronounced: shahr-koo-tuh-REE and also shahr-KOO-tuh-ree)

This is a book on how to make pork products like cured meats and sausage. Mmmm. Sausage. Some of the recipes take hours, even days to prepare; and…if you do them wrong…you can get botulism. You cannot deny how cool that is. There’s even a chapter that explains the difference between good white mold and bad green mold.

This is so exciting! Maybe I’ll read it to my kids as a bedtime story.

I wonder what I should make first?

Update: My brother informed me that the co-author (the one whose name I didn’t recognize) is the Chef/Owner of Five Lakes Grill in my hometown of Milford, Michigan. That building was occupied by a department store while I was growing up.

I just racked my batch of Maduro Nut Brown Ale into the secondary fermenter, a 5 gallon glass carboy, and it looks and smells amazing. If it tastes half as good as it smells it will be great. Just another few weeks…

Last night, John and I made a second go of making Bandersnatch Milk Stout (a recipe from the now defunct brew pub here in Tempe). Everything went well. I even put in the proper amount of Lactose, unlike last time. We racked it into the glass fermenter (also known as a carboy) and I used a blow-off tube as an airlock instead of the more widely used plastic airlock. A blow-off tube is just a plastic tube inserted into a rubber stopper and the other end submerged into a sanitary liquid so keep bacteria from getting into your fermenting beer while allowing the release of the CO² generated by the yeast. Here are some pics:

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