Pancakes

One Sunday morning, I woke up before my brothers (no surprise), decided to make pancakes (semi-surprise), and decided to let my brothers have some (surprise)! They both ate massive bowls of cereal (with peanut butter!) AND three pancakes each.

Pancakes (from The Best Recipe)
Makes about eight 3-inch pancakes

Ingredients:


1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole-wheat flour
2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup buttermilk (substitute 3/4 cups room-temperature normal milk and 1 tablespoon white vinegar or lemon juice if you don't have buttermilk. Let it stand for 5 minutes.)
1/4 cup milk (plus extra if batter is too thick)
1 large egg, separated
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
Vegetable oil for brushing griddle
Blueberries, chocolate chips, coconut, or any topping of choice (optional)

Instructions:


Whisk dry ingredients together in a medium bowl.

Riveting.

Pour buttermilk and milk into a 2-cup measuring cup. Whisk egg white into milk mixture.

Mix yolk and butter together, then dump into milk.

Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients all at once and mix until just combined.

Heat griddle or skillet over medium-high heat. Brush with oil.

When water dripped onto griddle sizzles, pour slightly less than 1/4 cup of batter onto griddle.

Don't crowd the pancakes; they will spread. When pancake tops start to bubble, drop toppings on pancake.

Flip and cook until bottom has browned, 1-2 minutes.

The two burners we use are different sizes, so they cook unevenly sometimes. Hmph.

Flip onto plate or platter. Serve or place in 200-degree oven to keep warm.

One is blueberry, the other is chocolate-coconut.

These are fantastic pancakes. Once you've had these, you will never go back to Bisquick. I'm serious. These are so delicious, especially with fresh blueberries or chocolate chips, that you'll want breakfast for every meal. Amazing with maple syrup, they are also good with butter. Real maple syrup is the best. I lived on Hungry Jack for a long time and am only just now adjusting to real syrup. Do yourself a favor and use the real stuff. It's more expensive but you need less because it's so naturally sweet.
They are very fluffy, but if you want them even fluffier, The Best Recipe recommends beating the egg white into stiff peaks and folding it into the finished batter. I recommend always doubling pancake recipes; what doesn't get eaten can be easily frozen and toasted for a quick breakfast.
Unfortunately, with two teenage brothers, there are never any leftovers.

Nutella

Nutella is the best thing since sliced bread. Nutella on sliced bread is indescribable.
Unfortunately, the store-bought kind is less than 13% nuts. I don't mean to bash Nutella, but really, Ferrero? It's supposed to be a hazelnut spread. The first two ingredients are sugar and palm oil.
But it's just. So. Good.
I resolved to find a recipe for homemade Nutella. The moment I got my hands on some hazelnuts and almonds, I began.

Nutella (from worldplates.wordpress.com)
Makes about 10 ounces, which isn't as much as you might think.

Ingredients:


3/4 cups whole raw hazelnuts
1/2 cup whole raw almonds
1/3 cup powdered sugar

How can something so delicious have so few ingredients?

2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
Vegetable oil, chocolate milk, or Aunt Mona's Fudge Sauce

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Spread hazelnuts on one side of a baking pan and almonds on the other.

Toast for 12-15 minutes; until the hazelnut skins are almost black and you can smell the nuts. Stir nuts several times during toasting, keeping separate.

Allow nuts to cool on baking pan.

Sandwich hazelnuts in a clean dishtowel and rub off skins.

Remove as many remaining skins as you can with you fingers. Some skins will be embedded on the nut, and that's fine. Just be sure to get the majority.

Process nuts in a food processor until they turn into a nut butter. They go from a fine meal to the butter stage very quickly, so be sure to watch them.

The nuts can touch now.

Add sugar, cocoa powder, and vanilla and whirl until combined.

If mixture forms a ball around the blade or seems otherwise too thick, add a little of your liquid of choice. (Use chocolate milk or fudge sauce for a more chocolately spread; use oil for a more nutty spread.) Don't thin it up too much, though.

Store in fridge for up to 2 months.


This spread is addicting. I've put it on graham crackers, bread, and I may have dipped a spoon in there once or twice. Don't judge me.

How can you resist something so delicious-looking?

It tastes like hazelnuts with a hint (well, more than a hint) of chocolate. I used oil, but it would be more chocolaty with chocolate milk or fudge sauce. I didn't think of using the chocolate milk/sauce until after I made it. My brain can be annoying like that.
By my calculations, this spread is 80% nuts. 60% of the spread is hazelnuts alone. Take THAT, Ferrero! The texture is a little grainy because the food processor couldn't quite break down the nuts completely, but I'm sure that if you run it for a bit it would be smoother. Despite that, everyone in my family loved my homemade Nutella. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before my brothers start putting it into their cereal instead of peanut butter...

P.S. My mom and I just got a new ice cream maker. And my brother is getting his wisdom teeth out soon... That means LOTS of ice cream! Yay!

Chicken Marbella

I was at my grandparent's house last week and my aunt and I were trying to think of something to cook for my cousin's birthday. She pulled out her go-to dish, chicken marbella. Having never heard of it, I was slightly terrified when I looked at the recipe, which includes prunes, olives and capers. At least it doesn't have anchovies, I thought.
I was also unable to pronounce it correctly. (It's pronounced mar-bay-ya, not mar-bell-a, as I thought it was.) Though I was skeptical, everyone assured me that it was amazing and we had to make it.
So I did.

Chicken Marbella (Adapted from The Silver Palate Cookbook):
Serves 10-12


Ingredients:


12 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 medium head of garlic or 2 small heads, pureed
1/3 cup dried oregano
coarse salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1/2 cup plus 1/3 cup red wine vinegar

1 cup olive oil, divided
1-1/2 cup pitted prunes
2/3 cup pitted Spanish green olives, drained
1 3.5 oz jar capers with juice
6-8 bay leaves
1-1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup white wine
1/4 cup Italian parsley or fresh cilantro, finely chopped


Instructions:


In large bowl or roasting pan, combine garlic, oregano, pepper and coarse salt to taste, 1/2 cup vinegar, 1/2 cup olive oil, prunes, olives, capers with juice, and bay leaves.

Mix until combined. Add chicken breasts and coat with marinade.

Cover and let marinate in fridge for at least 6 hours; preferably overnight. Turn chicken over and re-coat halfway through marinating.

Coolest. Fridge. EVER.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Arrange chicken in a single layer in one or two large baking pans. Sprinkle with brown sugar and pour white wine around chicken.

Bake for at least 20 minutes, until inside of chicken is cooked. Baste every 15 minutes.

(We had oven problems, so I don't have an exact figure on the baking time. Ours took an hour, but the breasts were still partially frozen and the oven was being opened every few minutes. My aunt said that it should have taken around 20 minutes.)
With a slotted spoon, transfer chicken, prunes, olives, and capers to serving platter. Pour several spoonfuls of marinade on top and pour remaining pan juices into a sauceboat. Sprinkle chicken generously with parsley or cilantro. Serve.

To serve cold, allow to cool to room temperature in roasting pan, then transfer to a serving platter and serve.



Well, my relatives were right. This was great! The chicken was moist and perfectly cooked, despite our oven "issues", and tasted great. It had a slightly sweet outer crust with a nice tang from the vinegar. The prunes were really good after soaking in the pan juices, although I've never liked olives before and I still didn't like them then. It was really easy to prepare the marinade. My only issue is that we had so much trouble cooking it, which was really my fault. I recommend serving this with rice or really good bread, as we did.
Question of the Day: Who the heck thought of marinating chicken with prunes, olives, and capers? And why?