2010 November | Guilty Kitchen

Wordless Wednesday

Tree Roots

Mmmmm…..Monkey Butt

Back to Basics: Culinary Fundamentals (Butter)

Today on Guilty Kitchen, is the start of a new series that I like to call: Culinary Fundamentals. It’s going to be a back to basics approach to food, kind of like my way of showing you that anyone can cook from scratch. Really from scratch, like butter and mayonnaise and bread. Those kinds of things.

It hit me a couple of days ago, when we were in the back lot of forest behind our house foraging for mushrooms, that everyone should know the basics. Some people have never made salad dressing from scratch, or tomato sauce or even bread! This may not be shocking to you, as you may be one of those people, but to me everyone should know how to do them. In my mind, it is absolutely necessary for people to possess these skills. Why? Because everyone should know how to make their food from scratch, it’s just that simple. It’s such an easy skill to cook, and something everyone must do. We shouldn’t have to rely on the commercial brands to do it for us.

Anyone who’s ever compared the taste of homemade to commercial, can say with confidence which is better. I’m sure there are big brand versions of some things that poeple prefer, but that might only be because they’ve never attempted to make it themselves.

Take today’s first lesson, butter. A simple recipe: cream, salt if desired. That’s it. Most commercial butter contains one more ingredient, colour. It is added to make the butter have a yellow cast to it, resembling the natural hue of grass fed cattle’s pure milky goodness. Natural butter can be anywhere from off white to very yellow, depending on the time of year and the cow’s diet. But the stuff you buy in the store is dyed to make it look more natural…a bit of an oxymoron if you ask me.

Tasting fresh, homemade butter is better. It just is. You made it (in a very short period of time, no less) and you can taste the difference in the finished product.

So I hope the lessons that I will be sharing every Monday will be of value to you, my readers. I hope I change a few minds.

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Pumpkin Carrot Bread

I’ve told you how I feel about Halloween before, it’s not my favourite holiday.

But I have a confession to make about this particular Halloween. I bought a pumpkin to carve….and then it sat on a bookshelf until yesterday. Totally uncarved. It never got to scare little kids with an awesome ghoul-y face carved into it’s flesh, nor did it light up our stairwell for the kiddies to see. Also, the our own kids never got a chance to help me cut a face into a gourd. Sad isn’t it?

But then I thought about all the awesome pumpkin food I’ve been cooking up lately, and it got my creative juices flowing.

What’s hearty, satisfying and easy to make while the wee one naps?

Quick Bread. Of course!

The only trouble with making up recipes is sometimes they turn out slightly different than you had in mind. In this case, the recipe made a HUGE loaf of bread (but without leaking over the loaf pan….whew) and took a little longer than expected to cook. But according to some friends of mine on Twitter, 90 minutes is not too long to wait for perfection. Ha! Thank you Twitterverse.

So when making this recipe, remember this: It’s very easy and quick once you have everything ready to go, especially if you are making the pumpkin purée from scratch. So get your mise en place ready first! Then sit back and take a 90 minute breather as your house fills up with the scent of all things autumn.

For those not in the know, here’s a quick tutorial on how to make pumpkin purée from scratch, whether you have an itty bitty pumpkin or a gargantuan one. Just don’t be using an already carved Jack O’Lantern that’s been sitting out for two weeks. That is for the compost.

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Wordless Wednesday

This being the first time I’m doing this, it’s not actually going to be word free…but stick with me. I am going to make this a weekly ritual on Guilty Kitchen. Just a picture or two (or three) to keep things moving and give you glimpses into our everyday lives. Not that you didn’t get enough of that already, but I’m sure you’ll love it.