An Ode to the Pickle

Dear friends and fellow food-lovers,

What is up with this trend towards canning and pickling at home? Is this an actual trend? Bon Appetit would have me believe so, but they also seem to want me to buy some very expensive and likely unnecessary cookware, so who knows...maybe they have shares in pickling apparatuses? (apparati?)

Anyway, I have to admit I'm a complete sucker and am dying to can or pickle at home. I have no idea why. I don't even really like pickles that much. But all these people (none of whom I know; in fact, I don't know anyone who pickles. Or cans. Then again, most people I know are university students, and it isn't even a given that they have kitchens. Or know what to do with them) seem to be canning and pickling madly all summer, all kinds of fresh produce; I always imagine that if I lived somewhere in the South (this is where I imagine all the picklers live, when I imagine it), amid all the bounty of the summer season, I would have all kinds of time to pickle and can, wearing my glamorous sun-hat and drinking mint juleps like a lady should. However, I live in downtown Toronto, where even though we get great produce, I am a little embarrassed to say I almost never go to local farmers' markets or try to track down the freshest this or esoteric that. I am pretty happy going to the local Sobey's with the occasional foray into Pusateri's, usually when someone else is paying.  Everyone can make something great with just-picked tomatoes or still-squirming shrimp.  And of course your home-canned peaches will likely taste better when you whip them out in December than the frozen ones I will use. But the fact that I can make great pan-fried chicken with supermarket, unknown origin chicken, and make my pasta with tomato sauce taste authentically Italian even though I didn't use San Marzano sun-ripened tomatoes or whatever is a source of pride.

I still want to pickle, though.  Just to try.  Who knows, maybe it will be great and it will become my new career.  Maybe just a small pickle? A mini-pickle, if you will...

So moving on from the pickle...to the detriment of my wallet, I've been going out and about eating all over Toronto this summer! Below are some of my favorite selections:

Jerk chicken, Pride Festival.  Street food at its finest

The tiny (yet amazingly delicious) olive oil cake at L'Unita. This was for Summerlicious so I suspect the actual portion is a little bit bigger, but this is officially my pick for best restaurant this year. So, so good.  Great ambiance, not too expensive, great service...on Av & Dav.  GO!

Well, maybe not the best picture.  But...ramen! Ramen is so big now...but besides that, its delicious. And cheap. And filling. And...well I just love it. This is from Kenzo Ramen on Bloor, but I like Ajisen Ramen in Chinatown better...Spadina and Dundas for enquiring minds.

Ah donuts. Homemade at Delux, Cuban restaurant on Ossington (btw, before I went here I had never been to Ossington and wow I 100% want to move there. So many amazing looking places to eat & shop. Supercute!). This place is supposed to have one of the best brunches in the city, but be warned, they only do brunch on Sundays, so don't go on a Saturday like us (although their sandwiches were still pretty tasty...)

That's all from me today, folks...if I ever make it to this fried chicken place I will post pictures of that and my own (healthier) version. But that's coming next!

Stay delicious...!

Food Porn

The name says it all. Pictures of the latest and greatest:

Chicken and sausage gumbo, the quick and dirty way (if simmering it for about an hour and a half can be considered quick); either way, it was amazing. See Emeril for more details.

How I like my chili: with sour cream, cheese, guac and corn bread.  Although I have realized that I don't actually like corn bread, so I should have photoshopped that out of this picture...but most people like it so I've left it there to tempt you :)

A throwback to a previous post: Bobby's peanut butter caramel cupcake brownies.  With chocolate chips.  They are currently sitting all warm and gooey right next to me and I'm being so good, avoiding temptation [how long can that last...]

The butter from the Fat Duck when I went this past October. The butter!

Vegetarian heaven: barley risotto with butternut squash, kale and pine nuts, and roasted eggplant with chimichurri and goat cheese. Kind of epic, if I do say so myself.

The squid salad from one of my most favorite restaurants, Cafe Nervosa in Toronto. Nothing here is bad, just a whoooole lotta good.

Salade Frisee at Le Select Bistro, Toronto, otherwise known as salade Lyonnais.  Which is where I'm going next week. I will be partaking.

Bone marrow, Montreal: good, but only in small quantities.  Too much and you can feel all that delicious fat coating your arteries...

Calzone. Made by me.  I totally think this shot is Bon Appetit- cover worthy. I don't even remember what's in them (made them this summer at home, as observed by the lovely ambient light) but they were really really good.  And I used dough I bought from the pizza place down the street. So couldn't be easier really, just make a filling and voila!

End on a sweet note: watermelon and mint granita.  Whir them up in blender, pour in pan, put pan in freezer, scrape after hour 1 and hour 2 = granita.  Beauty.

That's all for today; got a new Bon Appetit though (and the Ottolenghi cookbook, oh my!) so hopefully some new dishes to try...in the meanwhile, stay delicious! ;)

I want a little sugar in my bowl

Hello all bloggerites! Today's post will be all about comfort foods, as lately I've been in need of some comfort.  There has been a veritable explosion of comfort food-cooking, which in and of itself is comforting. Plus, these foods are always excellent for those cold, damp English winters (such as the one I have the pleasure of experiencing).  Of course, it also helps if you have comforting conversation (such as I had tonight with my darling roommate Amanda), but this is not a requirement to enjoy the true pleasures of familiar, yummy food; if I was Nigella I would also wax poetical about the life-affirming and happiness-inducing properties of such foods, but I'm sure you know about that already. (.....)

My first foray into the land of comfort was...bibimbap! Man, I love this stuff.  And NOT only because I am addicted to a certain Korean soap opera (thanks, Andrea).  Let me explain: bibimbap is a traditional Korean dish, usually made in a hot stone pot which is filled with rice and different veggies and meat and then when brought to the table a raw egg is cracked on top and cooked through the heat of the bowl.  Chilli sauce is added to taste and mixed through.  The only problem with bibimbap, though, is that really, you have to cook each vegetable separately.  Now if you are living on your own or have a North American-sized kitchen (or a North American-number of pots) then this is no problem for you: have all your ingredients cut up and ready to go and you can just quickly throw them in different pans and be done in half the time.  If, however, you are, perchance, a university student living in college accommodation and have only one pot and one pan to your name, perhaps this is not the recipe for you.  I mean, I managed to do it (and it was delicious!) but it did take...okay, a few hours.  Potentially not a quick weeknight meal! I trolled the web for several recipes, and this is what I ended up making:

1) Sesame bean sprouts (throw in boiling water for ~5 min, then stir in some chopped green onion, sesame oil and sesame seeds)
2) Stirfried spinach (wilt with a bit of water in a hot pan with some crushed garlic; stir through some sesame oil/seeds and salt)
3) Stirfried mushrooms (as per usual, little bit of oil, hot pan, salt and pepper, ~10 min)
4) Stirfried carrot (I also did some red pepper, since I like bell peppers; just chop into thin matchstick-esque pieces, stirfry in some sesame oil in a hot pan briefly, till not super crunchy, salt and pepper)
5) Beef (this one was a bit of a doozy, mostly because the ventilation system in our kitchen is, oh that's right, totally useless! Borrowing a recipe I found from http://rasamalaysia.com/bibimbap-recipe/2/ -->where I got most of the tips for the various vegetables I included, I marinated sliced pieces of beef in some soy sauce, fish sauce, brown sugar, sesame oil, garlic, and ginger for about the length of time it took me to do all of these previous steps; I then stirfried it in a super hot pan until it was cooked through, so about 5-7 min; I put all of the sauce in after about 5 min so that it reduced a bit)
6) Rice. I am horrible at making rice, absolutely the worst; I either totally underestimate how much water to put in it, realize too late and add too much to the already mostly-cooked rice and it becomes this weird sort of mushy rice situation, or don't realize at all and scorch the pot. So, I was explaining this to my friend Chen and he produced his magic rice cooker, which, actually, is magic. Buy one. Immediately. Or find Chen and borrow his.  Pretty much after the rice was made (I used brown rice to make it healthier!) I cracked some eggs in a pan, stirred them around a little and then added the rice and stirfried them all together.  There is probably some secret to making great egg-fried rice, which this was not, but it was passable.  I will have to get more tips from Chen.

Look at the texture of that beef! YUM

Okay. You see what I mean about not being the quickest recipe in the book.  However, I promise you that it is delicious; everything is great eaten on its own but even better mixed together (with lots of sriracha or, even better, legit Korean chilli bean paste!).  I recommend you set aside a few hours on the weekend, with a friend (or significant other/hanger on, as distinguished by Rebecca) who can keep you company, and just power through.  Because you're making so many separate components it's easy to make a lot so best to share anyway :) Plus, I bet you it would go really well with some beer...Kiran, anyone?

So that was my comfort food, LAST week.  THIS week I made both chili and gumbo; the chili was good, with my/Nigella's secret weapon, but let me tell you, the gumbo was out of this world.  I can't reveal the recipe since I would have to kill you (and also because people are willing to pay me to make it for them, so I can't just give them the recipe!) but...seriously.  Get out there and gumbo yourself.  Dayum.

And on that hearty note, I bid you, winter-weary and hungry friends, adieu.  Stay delicious ;)

I love ready-to-go food. Wait. WAIT! I am definitely not referring to those items in the aisle right before the check-out where you can just pull off the wrapper and eat (sausage roll, anyone?). Instead I am talking about going to the grocery store and buying a jar of roasted bell peppers, because let's face it, who has time to roast their own bell peppers. Or has a grill (excluding all those people from North America, where everyone has a grill; in fact, at home we have 3, including my grill pan).  I am feeling especially partial to these conveniently packaged, ready-to-cook ingredients, as I am conveying this post to you in the brief time I have in between coming home from the grocery store after being in the lab all day (note: being in the lab all day does not equate to being productive in the lab all day) and going out for Chinese to celebrate the New Year. And let's face it, I will then make my way to the pub. It is Monday after all, need to do something to combat those Monday blues!

Anyway, back to my story. So at the grocery store today, I decided that the fastest and easiest thing I can make for lunches later during the week would be pasta, so off I went to find some things to put in this pasta. Not only did I find the usual sundried tomatoes and artichokes packed in oil, but also the aforementioned red bell peppers, zucchinis, and eggplants! I find this amazing. And kind of exciting, because I am easily excited by these sorts of things. Really, to make this pasta (that I bet you will be GREAT) all I have to do is boil the water and open some jars. And throw some cheese in, obviously. To quote Ina, how easy is that?! I have several friends (one in particular comes to mind) who absolutely refuse to pay extra for ready-to-cook ingredients (you know, the broccoli that's already chopped for you or the ready-washed bags of spinach). But really, sometimes they're worth the extra 50p or pound that you'll have to pay. My time is precious! Sometimes that extra 15 minutes chopping and washing ingredients is time I won't have to shave my legs later. 

As you may have gathered, I have been struggling these past few days with my time management. Not only is it difficult, but so far has proven impossible to spend a legitimate number of hours in the lab per day, be social with friends, participate in extracurriculars, go to the gym, and still find time to cook every day. And sleep. And have that all important "me" time. This doesn't even include those things that always come up, like having to go to the post office or the drug store. Hopefully over the next few days I will find a way to integrate all of these things...not now though, since Maxie is here and I must entertain him before we go eat all this Chinese. Shall post pictures of epic pasta later! Stay delicious folks!

New Year's Resolution: eat more weird stuff

Hello fellow foodies! I hope you enjoyed the holidays and ate as MUCH Christmas and holiday food as possible. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures whatsoever of all the great things I ate in India but I was trying to be legit like a local, can't be whippin' out my Canon at every photo op...

Anyway, in honour of the recent turning of the calendar, I would like to share my thoughts on resolutions, in particular New Year's Resolutions:

I generally don't believe in them. I mean, choosing a day in the middle of the winter to start a cleanse? This is when you should be eating warming, comforting foods, not munching on celery! Bananas. However, I can see how choosing the 1st of January to make some lasting changes in your life may be a convenient thing; for example, writing more frequent blog posts! Ahem. If you are one of those people who makes tons of new resolutions every January, then good for you for wanting to make positive changes in your life. I will be checking in with you in four months to see how it's all going. Everyone else, I think we should eat more pie.

Ah, on to the 'meat' of the post! (do you see what I did there? Food blog...'meat'...sigh.) I recently had the opportunity to go to St John's restaurant in London, in Smithfield. Very different experience from three weeks previous, when I went to Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck, but more on that later (or not; let me sum it up: the setting was lovely, amazing service, but...I was disappointed! I know. Shameful. But really Heston, why are you still making the same food as 8 years ago, when you described it all on that program I watched on the Food Network? I realize that all your ideas are still pretty inventive, such as the cocktail poached in carbon dioxide and the hot and cold tea, but...we want more!! Conclusion: If you have the money to spare, and it is pretty pricey, I would definitely recommend you go; otherwise, don't lose too much sleep over it. Definitely have a look at the menu though; the dishes DO sound very cool, just seem to lose a teeny bit in translation...anyway, back to St John!).

I managed to buy the St John's cookbook, which let me tell you is a fascinating read.  For those of you who don't know (which included me until the restaurant popped up in a Timeout London search and I recognized the name from an article in Bon Appetit, my mother ship), Fergus Henderson, the chef/owner at St John, is widely acknowledged to have started the nose-to-tail movement, aka using the whole animal, not just the usual good bits. He is quite well-known, particularly because of his roasted bone marrow dish, which Anthony Bourdain (American chef/food writer/travel writer/has a show about food and travel) has stated would be his death-row meal. Obviously I had to try it and yes it is delicious. Although, maybe it's just me, but I just cannot eat that much fat in one go! It was a bit too rich for me...but still great. Other things on the menu included a snail and chorizo stew, tripe, and a pig's ear salad (which I ADORED; crispy pig's ear is truly a great thing). My parents did not seem too enamoured of the place but put on a good game face for me. Anyway, back to the book. This was so inspiring to read - the different things he combines are things I would never have thought of. However, this is not a regular everyday cookbook: I am certainly not going to go to my butcher (not that I have a butcher) and ask for a whole pig's head, with the skull in, thanks very much. To be completely honest, I don't even know if I can say that I would taste all the recipes (stuffed lamb's hearts? I don't know...), much less cook all of them. Or cook any of them, for that matter! I think this one may be beyond my skill set. But something to aspire to...one day, the time will come when I am able to cook and eat a whole pig's head, but that time is not now. Perhaps my New Year's resolution should be to eat more adventurous things. Kind of like in Julie/Julia, but with kidneys and stuff. It would certainly make for an interesting photo op, no? Something to think about at least...in the meantime, stay delicious!

Oh the places you'll go!

I've been neglectful of my blogging duties these last few weeks so get ready for a doozy...!

I’ve been lucky enough these past few months to travel to some truly great food cities.  Paris, Madrid, Rome and Naples comprised the European leg of my food odyssey.  In these cities it’s easy to get lost and find amazing food around every corner; however, we found a few gems that are truly out of this world. Unfortunately I only remember the names of some of them (I know, what kind of food blogger am I? My only excuse was that I was a novice and hadn’t clued in to the fact that remembering where I eat is a crucial part of telling people about it) but I will try to describe the other places so you can find them too!

On our last night in Paris, we had dinner at this tiny restaurant by the Sacre Coeur; I managed to snag a business card before we left but this is not super helpful, since there is a different name and address on either side of the card.  I am assuming that the same person owns adjacent businesses, but either way, you are looking for Le Potager du Pere Thierry/Le Jardin d’en Face, on Rue des Trois Freres.  As my friend Cecile can attest to, this place was AMAZING.  When we wandered by around 8, the whole place (all 30 chairs of it) was absolutely packed.  And everyone was actually French! Which was kind of remarkable considering the semi-touristy nature of the area we were in (the Moulin Rouge was just around the corner).  So we decided that we absolutely could not eat anywhere but here and had a few drinks down the road to kill time.  After looking at the menu, I knew we had made the right choice.  I had a version of eggs en cocotte with foie gras (a baked egg dish), baked just until set. After it came out of the kitchen, literally every other person in the restaurant ordered it. Cecile had a charcuterie platter as an app, which was massive. It was only 4 or 5 euros and yet there was enough meat on that plate for 4 or 5 people! So far so good. For mains we both had duck: she had sort of a shepard’s pie-esque dish, with some mashed potato on top, and I had a cheesy, duck-y, baked pie-type dish.  This might actually be my most favorite meal – definitely makes the short list. Dessert was pretty good – not as awe-inspiring as the rest but still pretty good. We literally had to roll ourselves out of that place…

Eggs en cocotte with foie gras

Charcuterie

Duck. Look at that cheesy goodness!

Next stop was Madrid.  We only had one day there and so we decided to go to as many tapas places as we could.  We based ourselves around Puerta del Sol and went to a different place for each tapa.  We tried patata bravas at Las Bravas (calle Alvarez Gato 3), which I still dream about; gambas al ajillo at Casa del Abuelo (calle Victoria 12); ham sandwiches at Museo del Jamon (Carrera de San Jeronimo 6); and pulpo a la Gallega at La Oreja de Oro (calle Victoria 9).  Later we had more patatas and finally managed to sneak some vegetables in at La Bardencilla de Santa Ana (also in the same area).  As reported by my travel book, each of these places specialized in the tapa that we tried and I am here to tell you that it is true; if you want to eat any of these things while in Madrid, these are the places to do it at.  I don’t think I was hungry for a week after this!

Gambas; still sizzling!

Pulpo; quite a bit more than we expected...

Tortilla on the left and patatas on the right, covered in the famous brava sauce

After Madrid I found myself in Rome with my cousin. Everywhere here was good eats – I think I had spaghetti carbonara every other day, while my cousin tried the eggplant parmigiana every place she could.  My only recommendations for Rome are: GO IMMEDIATELY.  We stayed by the metro station Re di Roma, and the Re di Roma Pizza place was amazing – so many different kinds and lots of other nibbles as well.

Cheesy eggplant parmigiana, and my spaghetti carbonara in the background

In Naples we stayed at the Palazzo Decumani.  It turned out to be our nicest hotel, for the best price, during our whole trip.  On first look, Naples looks kind of…dirty. There are large piles of garbage every few feet, so it’s hard to not look dirty.  Anyway, once you get past this, there is great food everywhere.  Seriously.  This is the only place on our trip where we went to the same place twice – it was this tiny restaurant right by our hotel that had the fish they cooked for dinner outside so you could pick which kind you wanted! We had very basic dishes, eggplant in a tomato sauce and roasted veggies, but they were sublime.  Across from our hotel and slightly down the street there was this hole-in-the-wall pizzeria (as there are all across Italy) and we had the best pizza of our lives here.  I even have a picture pointing at the menu so I know exactly which one we had (the ortolana, if you're interested)! And a picture of the owner, so if you see this man, you know he’s legit.  Also what made this place great was that there was a photo on the wall of a man who looked EXACTLY LIKE MY DAD.  Crazy.

Amuse bouche at resto; marinated anchovy and artichoke puree.  Heavenly 

Eggplant parm

Fab pizza. This may or may not be the pizza place that Bill Clinton frequented in 1994; aka the best pizza in the world. After intensive googling, I think it's a secondary location of the original that Clinton visited - this guy seems to be present in a lot of pictures at both! The one we went to is called Il Presidente on Via del Grande Archivio 23; and the other one is called Il Pizzaiolo del Presidente, on Via dei Tribunali 120. Go to one...or both!

To top off my food travels this summer, we headed to Jamaica in June for a family reunion – a fam jam, if you will.  If you’ve ever been to all-inclusives in Mexico or Cuba, you know the food is usually pretty crap – well let me tell you, the food at our hotel was so so good. Jerk pork, festival, rice and peas – all good in my book.  We even went to Montego Bay proper and had lunch at Tastee’s, famous for its patties.  On our way back from Dunn’s River Falls, we had lunch at the Ultimate Jerk Center in Ocho Rios – we had everything Jamaican, jerk pork, jerk chicken, fried plantains, festival (fried bread), bammy (cassava), and…French fries.  And don't forget coconut - this was the first time I have tried coconut water and coconut jelly, the insides of young coconut.  So addictive!  Luckily there were plenty of fruit sellers on the road so I (and everyone else) could get our fix.  Even the buffet at the hotel was good (we stayed at the Hilton Rose Hall in Montego Bay).  My book recommended Scotchie’s for its jerk, but to be honest it was pretty disappointing – the jerk at our hotel was much better.  And I’m not even saying this as someone with a Western palate – my Mom and her brothers all grow up in Jamaica so you know they know what they’re talking about.

Jerk chicken and a Red Stripe - does life get much better than this?

Just a typical roadside scene in Jamaica!

Unfortunately, future food adventures abroad may be curtailed due to lack of funds – student life will do that to ya.  However, expect lots of exciting home cookin’ soon…stay delicious! ;)

It's GO time baby

     Well it’s been a long few months of studying for the mcat, writing the mcat, and waiting for results of the mcat.  Very stressful.  Not to say that I didn’t do fun things in the intervening time…Jamaica is beautiful at this time of year.  However, I have been finding it hard to get inspired to get back into the kitchen; I even bought a new cookbook (that I definitely did NOT need) and still no luck. But today I was perusing the latest issue of Bon Appetit  and felt some of that spark return, so in hopes of inspiring myself, I have big plans for tomorrow: watermelon granita, mahi mahi tacos, and maybe a cherry clafouti.  I actually tried to order a spice blend called Corruption today; it’s used to make a BBQ sauce called Sweet Spicy Love (from a place featured on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives: Uncle Lou’s in Memphis).  Who would not want to eat that?? Anyway, of course they don’t deliver to Canada but my goal in the next few days is to somehow figure out what is in this Corruption and make my own version.  Stay tuned for news on my progress!

     In my last post I mentioned I was going to try Bobby Flay’s peanut butter caramel brownies.  Let me tell you, I have never seen anything go so fast in our kitchen; literally, I think they hung around for all of half a day after I baked them.  AMAZING. Instead of doing them as brownies as Bobby did, I made them into cupcakes instead.  Here is the recipe:

Bobby Flay’s Caramel Peanut Butter (Cupcake) Brownies (I know this recipe looks insanely long but it’s not, I swear! And if you read only halfway you’ll get the directions for the caramel peanut butter, which is the most important part anyway)

Ingredients:

Caramel peanut butter:

•                1/2 cup heavy cream

•                1/4 cup sugar

•                1/4 cup water

•                1/2 cup smooth peanut butter

•                1 tbsp corn syrup

•                Pinch of salt

•                1/8 teaspoon vanilla

Brownie/cupcake batter:

•                1 cup butter

•                6 oz unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped

•                2 oz plus 4 oz bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped

•                1 tsp espresso powder

•                4 eggs

•                1 1/2 cups white sugar

•                1/2 cup packed brown sugar

•                2 tsp vanilla

•                1/4 teaspoon salt

•                1 cup flour

Directions: 

1) In one small saucepan, heat the cream until it comes to a simmer.  Do not let it boil!  In another (slightly larger) saucepan, combine the sugar and water over high heat; don’t stir it.  As the sugar melts in the water it will start to caramelize and turn golden brown; if it is caramelizing in patches, swirl the pan so that the color becomes more even.  Once the sugar is an even golden brown color, whisk in the cream.  Be careful when doing this, as sugar burns are NOT fun.  Turn off the heat and add the peanut butter, the corn syrup, the salt, and the vanilla.  Whisk until smooth! Let the caramel-peanut butter stand at room temperature – it will thicken as it cools. 

2) Preheat the oven to 325.  If you’re making these as brownies, line a 9x13 pan with foil and spray with nonstick spray.  If you’re making cupcakes, make sure to use those muffin tin liners – there is nothing worse than having to scrape muffins or cupcakes out of the tin and coming away with the top and leaving the stump in the pan.  Horrible.

3) In a bain-marie or a bowl set over a pot of simmering water, combine the butter, unsweetened choc, 2 oz of the bittersweet choc and espresso.  The chocolate has the potential to burn so make sure to keep stirring.  Once everything is all smoothed out, let the mixture cool slightly before adding it to the rest of the ingredients.

4) In a large mixing bowl, whisk the eggs, the sugars, the vanilla and the salt.  Add in the choc mixture and whisk until everything is combined.  Beat in the flour in 2 additions (why, I do not know, but Bobby Flay says so!).  Stir in the 4 oz of reserved bittersweet chocolate chunks. 

5) Pour half the batter in the brownie/muffin tin.  If making brownies, put dollops of the caramel mixture over the batter, then pour the other half of the batter on top and swirl with a knife.  If making cupcakes, put about one tablespoon of the caramel mixture on top of the batter (if making large cupcakes; if making small ones, put about one teaspoon) and fill up the molds with the rest of the batter. 

6) Bake until the edges pull away from the pan and the top is set but springs back to the touch.  Honestly, the best gauge for when these (and all other baked goods) are done is your nose: if you can smell it, chances are it’s done.  Bobby says to underbake these a little bit to keep them fudgey, therefore if you do the toothpick test it should come out still a little bit gooey.  For brownies, ETA is 23-25 mins.  For the cupcakes, I started to check them after 15 mins. 

     Alright that is the official version.  Since I am a normal person I didn’t really plan ahead of time to make these and so didn’t have a bunch of ingredients the recipe called for. 

• Instead of the heavy cream, we only had half-and-half, so I used that.  This is one case where I would suggest to use heavy (35%) cream if you have it, since anything with a lower percentage can split, but I was lucky and it didn’t.  I did find however that my caramel-peanut butter mixture was really thin and so I added probably twice the amount of peanut butter the recipe called for, and even after that it was still much thinner than I thought it would be.  I’m not sure if that’s all due to the cream I used, or just the way it’s supposed to be, but it worked fine.  (Sidenote: this recipe for the caramel peanut butter stuff tastes pretty much EXACTLY LIKE A REESE’S PIECES.  Just making that and pouring it over ice cream or a cookie or a spoon would satisfy me.) 
• I also put way more vanilla than it called for, probably about 1-2 tsp, but I really like vanilla so that’s just a personal thing.  
• Instead of espresso powder I used actual espresso and just added a touch more flour.  
• Instead of these different types of chocolate, I think we had milk, unsweetened, and a little bit of dark.  So I just cobbled together some approximation of the amounts specified – I don’t really think it’s a big deal if you use semisweet or milk instead of unsweetened if that’s what you like.  
• Also, I’m not a huge fan of white sugar so I instead used 1 full (packed) cup of brown sugar and only half a cup of white.  Now that I am reading this I’m wondering if I can even call my cupcakes Bobby Flay’s brownies since I totally deviated from his recipe, but it worked for me! Being in the kitchen is so much more fun anyway when you can improvise things to your own taste and are not worried about sticking to some strict guideline. 

Here are some pictures of the finished product:

 I think this was in fact the last cupcake left...

     Instead of trying to sneak another quick recipe in here, I’m going to leave it at that and report back on my watermelon and spice blend shenanigans asap.  To quote my latest celeb crush, stay delicious! ;)