Centrifuge in the kitchen? Two words: Pea butter

Just when you though cooking was a finished art...out comes a cookbook that changes everything...for $625 (ouch!).  

Nathan Myhrvold has spent his Microsoft money working on a cookbook for "Modernist Cuisine", cooking using chemicals, strange machines like centrifuges to spin ingredients into their separate parts, and so on.  

We have GOT to get our mitts on some pea butter...

Link

Image: a bagel shot and pea butter, photographed by Paul Adams for Popular Science.

Time to eat

Make the Christmas Eve Cake

Well let's get going, just because it has been flooding and their are people you are only vaguely related to sleeping on your couch, this is no time to slack off playing Xbox. For those of you on the late schedule you can do this anytime in the next week. Everyone else this weekend is cake time.

You will need:

A butter golden cake mix, you can usually find it from the folks that bring us Moist Deluxe (get three boxes but more on that later). A box of cook and serve vanilla pudding, 4 eggs and a good vegetable oil. If you choose you may also want cranberries (dried), coconut, and nuts of your choice. I usually make one with only cranberry, the next one with cranberries and nuts and the third one with all that and coconut as well.

About the fruit. If you have been following along you should have enough fruit for three cakes. One for you to eat tomorrow, one for you to eat the next day and then one more for snacking. You know. Later. Or you can share them with, people.

Set the old flame box to 300

Prepare a bundt pan by buttering it VERY well and then flour it.

In a big mixing bowl dump the cake mix and the pudding mix. Add the four eggs and the 2/3 cup of oil. Mix that just enough to blend it all together. Mix in any of the nuts, cranberries and or coconut. Use a strainer to drain the syrup off of about a cup and a half of the fruit, GENTLY fold the fruit into the cake batter. Pour all of that into the bundt pan, turning if need be to distribute it around the pan.

Put the cake in the oven, bake for ever, actually it is about 55 to 65 minutes, it will get a tawny golden brown on top and will set. If it is all gooshy mid-way in the ring give it another 5 minutes.

Save the syrup in the freezer, it is great on ice cream and lends a nice fruitiness to next years cake.

Just Say No to Fruitcake

How to turn a Tenderloin into Filet Minon steaks!

Christmas Eve Cake - Last Addition

So since tryptophan didn't make you nappish, and isn't to blame for your couchpotato stance. Get up. Go to the store. Buy the big can or jar of pineapple chunks, in juice if you please. Better grab a bag of sugar while you are there. Tell the cashier that you are making a fruit bomb (its kinda true).

Get out the big jar with the fruit and sugar syrup with the apricots and peaches floating in it. Give the mix a good stir.

Now, add approximately 2 to 3 cups of sugar, the whole thing of pineapple chunks along with the juice. See our artsy photographs.



Stir it all up again and loosely cover and back to the fridge it goes. Now you really need to be stirring this every day. And stop eating all the fruit, its like you are a kid, for Hestia's sake.

Now you have 25 days to get ready to bake the best Christmas cake ever. We will give you a shopping list in about a week for the final preparations.

 

Dilbert wears gloves while cutting Jalapenos. Must read LOL.

Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) on cutting Jalapeno peppers:

"A few minutes passed, and I felt a tingle in my left hand - the one that directly handled the peppers. The tingle turned into a warm sensation, and the warmth turned into...well, this will take some explaining.

Imagine turning a broom upside down, so the pointy bristles are facing up. You take your hand, palm facing down, and bounce it on the pointy bristles. Can you imagine how uncomfortable that feels on your hand? Okay, good.

Now imagine that a giant troll sees you playing with the broom. He snatches it out of your hand, chews the handle into a point and shoves it so far up your ass that you can taste it. Then he uses you like a huge flyswatter to kill a nest of porcupines that are living in his salt mine. My hand hurt like that."

Story here

Study finds sight of meat makes men less aggresive!

Beware the vegetarians!

Source

EGG NOG Time

We noted today that in our local food market and money exchange that the counters in the cold storage have once again been graced by little cartons of Egg Nog. This is always a sign of good cooking, fat duds in red and private moments under the mistletoe. All good things in our book. Well. We really just like to laugh at the dudes in red.

So get out there and buy up the first consignment of winter packaged up in little waxed cardboard boxes. If you happen to see egg nog in a glass jar, buy two. Just don't look at the price. Trust us.

And don't forget the fresh nutmeg.

Melting Chocolate

We are chocolate snobs. Deal with it. What we didn't know was that we could be chocolate MELTING snobs as well. Check this beauty out on page 13 of La Cucina Italiana, the November issue or here at Peyrano's site. Sadly we may have to make do with this 

Vintage Pyrex 

or whichever one of these we can manage to win the auction on. 

Enjoy