New Packaging

My new packaging will be made of corn and will decompose within a few weeks within land fields. Less waste is always good. Here's a glimpse of the finished product

My New Lab

Yup, my new cooking laboratory with all of the bells and whistles. I usually spend most of my nights and mornings here making food for you

Convection versus Conventional

If I were to say that the past few days have been busy, that would be an understatement. And since I've been busy I managed to squeeze in my weekly testing in the kitchen.

So, I decided to bake my turkey in a Convection oven instead of a conventional oven. For those of you who are not familiar with a convection oven. Here's a brief description.
Convection ovens circulate heated air using a fan. The fan motor is in a separate enclosure, to protect it from overheating and melting any plastic components including wire insulation. Food warms faster in a convection oven, because the moving air strips away the thin layer of air which otherwise would surround and insulate the food.

I heard all of these great things about the convection oven so I put it to the test. First of all (from my experience) if your roasting a turkey using a convection oven you need to loosely cover your turkey with aluminum foil or a top with a vent. Although I heard multiple comments suggesting that you do not need to cover a turkey cooking in a convection oven because you need the heated air to circulate evenly over the bird I decided to go against it. What about basting? Well it is “suggested” that you don't need to baste a turkey using a convection oven because the skin acts as a shield and traps the turkeys natural juices inside. Which is true. Another thing that is true is that your turkey skin will be turned into a leathery chewy mess. Your dog or kitty cat will love this, but I'm not so sure if your guest will find it appealing. So do what I do, give it to your in-laws (kidding). I decided to lightly wrap my turkey with aluminum foil in order to let the air circulate evenly around the turkey, but of course I ran into a problem. After lightly covering the turkey I opened up the oven door and noticed that my aluminum foil was being blown around everywhere. Didn't realize how powerful the convection oven fan was. So I secured the aluminum foil around the turkey.

My turkey did cook much faster, but since I didn't baste and cover it, the aroma from the spices, just wasn't there and the skin was tough. The inside was a bit juicy though. Overall I'm going to continue to use a conventional oven to bake turkeys. I strongly believe its still all about the bird that you use. In my opinion free range and hormone free just tends to be more juicier and flavorful. Its an ethical thing as well.

Horray!!

I got all of my licenses and passed inspections. All 50 of 'em (just kidding). In order for me to sell food to other stores I had to get an inspection from the Illinois Department of Health as well as the the Chicago Department of Health. Both went smoothly. But I decided to take a picture of all of the licenses and certificates needed (just in case you don't believe me ;-) Whats really incredible is that all my documents (inspection docs) aren't included in this photograph. I guess I need a wider lens for that ;-)

Cooking with Commandaria

Lately I’ve been determined to come up with a gourmet snack that can be eaten in cafes. After a few failed attempts of popping light fluffy popcorn with my old faithful pot, I decided to go out and buy a new one. Unfortunately, this was on the same day I had to study for my sanitation test, make a meal for my nephew and so on. I decided to stop at a boutique neighborhood liquor store named “Lush”. At first, I was determined on purchasing one of my favorite rums to cook with, and then I stumbled across a dessert wine that in my opinion has a sweet deep rich almost smoky flavor.



From what I was told Commandaria St. Barnabas is an amber-colored dessert wine made from the indigenous Mavro and Xynistery varieties of red grapes. It is supposedly the world's oldest named wine still in production. And it is beautiful to cook with. I love the hints of smokiness and oak tones that it has.



I figured it would compliment the caramel I was making perfectly. After two attempts of making vanilla apple caramel, I started to get it down. Fortunately, I have a thermometer that reads up to 250 degrees fahrenheit (which happens to be the hardball cooking stage, which makes caramel firm) Any thing around 300 to 310 would make nothing more than candy for lollipops. In order to ensure that my caramel was thick I cooked it longer than usual and carefully watched the temperature.



As far as ingredients went I used organic expelled apple juice, boiled it down until it was syrupy, added brown sugar, corn syrup (I’ll use an alternative next time) butter and Bourbon Madagascar vanilla. I added a bit of organic powered milk to give it a bit of creaminess. I added about two tablespoons of the Commandaria wine during the last stage.

UPDATE

I replaced corn syrup with Organic Brown rice syrup, which tastes great!





I added pecans and heated for good measure and rotated the popcorn for a half an hour

Spicy Vegetarian Jerk Chicken sandwich with Mango Garlic Aoli spread, smoked Gouda & Crispy lettuce with Crispy fried Tempura onions made with Guiness

Here's something that you can do. Make a meatless vegetarian dish and tell the person that your making it for that your dish has loads of meat in it. After they try it, they'll probably mutter things like “I didn’t know vegetarian dishes could taste this good” And “wow, I’ve never tasted anything like this” blah blah blah. I happen to be a meat eater and I contest that most places are made for people who eat meat. Most restaurants who do carry vegetarian dishes limit them to lettuce, a few tomatoes and maybe a veggie burger. Its pretty much one level below the kiddie meal (which usually consist of chicken nuggets shaped like dinosaurs, french fries and a hot dog) which is totally uncreative. What I've found is that the restaurants that specialize in Gluten free, Vegan or vegetarian dishes cost more than your average restaurant (do to inventory prices and the fact that they know “you need them”)

I decided to make something that I would eat. After wet rubbing my meatless chicken strips with a very spicy jerk sauce. I let the meat marinate for a day. Since meatless chicken breast is usually skinless, I added olive oil to it to help give it depth an a bit more flavor. I even added some smoke flavor to the jerk marinade. The chicken strips were extremely spicy so I whipped up some Mango aoli using Mango Puree, garlic and real mayonnaise (no not Hellman's) I should have real crushed mangos as well but I was too tired to run to the store. I melted the smoked gouda over the chicken breast strips. The Semi sweet cool tasting mango aioli worked well with the hot jerk flavor. I was tempted to add onions to this batch by creating a tempura batter made with Guinness beer which adds a great crunch. It worked out well and will probably be a creation that I will keep. I still had to stay up until 1 a.m. studying.

Downtime

Ok, I finally caught up with my friend Elandra and we did our usual venting along with trying out different snacks, coffee, etc. This is what I usually do during my downtime when I’ve scraped up enough change. We stopped at Molly’s Cupcakes on Clark and I had a cookee monster (which is becoming my usually) . Its a beautifully stuffed cupcake filled with chocolate cream and topped with vanilla cream.





A portion of Molly’s cupcake profits are donated to schools in the community, so it’s a good excuse to eat something sweet. I’ve been going to them for a few years and their product has been consistently good. One of the few places that specializes in stuffed cupcakes. They also have a great baker. Oh on another note it was extremely cold outside that day.




Checkout Elandra’s face after trying out the Cheesecake Cupcake