Recipes

Intro to the Challenge!

/ beccalev / Leave a comment

12 MONTHS

12 COOKBOOKS

1 ME

It’s happening! I’m challenging myself to take a year to get back into things that make me happy outside of work, which basically means get back to being super obsessed with food and all things yummy. My resolution this year is twofold: 1) More cooking (I like food lots, so I should get better at making it), and 2) MORE BLOGGING! So, here I am!

I like to have some achievable goals when I start a new project, so I’ve made some rules for the journey to make it easy to track my progress:

  1. New cookbook every month
  2. 10 recipes per cookbook
  3. Blog about it

That’s it! Easy enough, right?

In theory, yes! I am a strong, independent women living in an apartment in NYC with access to groceries at all hours of the day (or at the touch of a button). I have a loving boyfriend who will help keep me honest (and provide feedback/commentary/sous-chef-skills on the recipes). I’ve got a super nice kitchen that I’m finally going to use appropriately (and is basically the reason I live in this apartment). And I have a healthy obsession with cookbooks, all of which I’ve been meaning to make my way through.

So this plan is going to be easy, right? Possibly. I built these rules knowing that I have a habit of over-scheduling myself, which can be problematic from a cooking perspective, but 10 over a month seems very achievable in the abstract. That said… I didn’t end up starting this challenge officially until today, which leaves me off to a rocky start to complete January’s goal. BUT I HAVE FAITH IN ME. I have 16 days left in the month to get 9 more recipes made, and I didn’t make any restrictions on how many recipes I could complete at a time (which is a GREAT loophole).

A quick clarification: This is not a resolution to eat healthy; the goal is to eat homemade. The fact that some of these recipes are healthy ones is a coincidence, but I swear my only goal is DELICIOUS.

First up:

SMALL VICTORIES by Julia Turshen

IMG_2242.jpgI’ve been obsessed with this book for a while, so much so that I bought the cookbook for my mom when it came out! Like me, she has a large collection of cookbooks and very few she truly references over and over. Small Victories has become an exception, with my mom referencing this book over and over again and recommending it to everyone she knows. She tells me about all of these amazing recipes she loves from this book, and I’ve cooked one or two with her myself. As you can see from this photo, I already have a few recipes picked out.

I can’t wait to try some of these out in my own kitchen, and now is my chance to make my mom (and myself) proud. PLUS: what would a cookbook challenge be without my own personal Julia 🙂

How to make the best buttermilk pancakes

/ beccalev / 2 Comments

I have always loved everything about pancakes: from the smell of butter on a griddle, to the fluffy, maple-syrup-covered final product. But I don’t just like any old pancake: I aim for the best. The best pancakes don’t come from a mix, and taking that little extra step of putting all of the ingredients together can make the difference between an OK pancake and a fantastic one. And what can be more fantastic than a perfect buttermilk pancake? Not much, I can tell you that.

I’ve done extensive (and delicious) research on which buttermilk to use for the best buttermilk pancakes and have come to this resounding conclusion: Katie’s Farm Fresh from Maine Real Buttermilk. This buttermilk plus 5 other simple ingredients make an easy, heart-warming breakfast for a treat.

My special trick to making multiple flavors of pancakes is using a ½ cup measure: I fill it about halfway with batter, add the filling to the batter in the cup (such as berries, banana pieces, chocolate chips, etc.), and then pour it onto the griddle. This way, the extras are covered with batter and not just floating on top and I don’t have to make multiple batches of batter!

Making pancakes more often leads to the need for a special type of pan that is necessary to invest in (if you’re going to be invested in these pancakes, which I promise you will be): a griddle pan. This piece of equipment is a flat top griddle that goes across two stovetops and cooks up to 8 mini pancakes at a time! On the other side of the griddle is a grill pan, so it’s dual functioning, I love it!

The pancakes come out fresh and crisp with a soft, fluffy center, and with real maple syrup, they’re truly scrumptious (points if you get the reference).

The recipe is super easy and very low stress, so I can whip these up first thing when I get up and I’m wearing glasses, PJs, and still-sleeping mental state. It always wakes me up on the right side of the bed 🙂

Buttermilk Pancakes (adapted from The Breakfast Book)

3 tbsp butter, melted (cooled a little)

1 cup buttermilk and 1 egg, combined (with whisk)

3/4 cup of flour, 1 tsp baking soda, and 1/2 tsp salt, mixed together

Add the melted butter to the buttermilk-egg mixture while stirring so that the hot butter doesn’t cook the egg.

Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients, and don’t over mix it! You still want the mixture to be a little clumpy. For thinner pancakes, you can mix an extra second or a few extra swipes (and if you’re making them as small as I do, they’ll crisp up a little easier on the edges).

If you want to add some ingredients to it, but not everyone wants flavored pancakes, you can do what I do for my family: using a half cup measure, take about 1/4 cup of batter, pour in a handful of berries (for example), and then pour the new mixture onto the griddle. That way, the berries have a tiny barrier of batter between them and the pan, and they’re more likely to stay in the pancake when you flip them over!

Pour the batter onto the pan and wait to flip them until the edges look less liquidy or the underside (if you take a peak) is browned or crispy on the edges. Try to only flip the pancakes once to keep the pancakes as light and fluffy as possible!