Fried Pickles with tangy ranch dipping sauce

Food porn at it's finest....

I still can't get over how delicious these are.. Adapted from Copykat recipes

Ingredients:
-1 jar dill pickle chips
-2 cups whole wheat flour
-1 cup all purpose flour
-2 teaspoons salt
-1 teaspoon paprika
-dash of cayenne pepper
-2 cups buttermilk
- 8 cups Vegetable oil for frying

For dipping sauce
-Louisiana Hot Sauce
-Ranch dressing 

Directions:

-Heat 8 cups of vegetable oil into a large pot

-Drain dill pickles in a colander and then place into a medium sized bowl with the 2 cups of buttermilk. 

-Place flours, salt, paprika, and cayenne pepper into a bowl and mix well

-Place half of the mixture into a plastic bag, and other half into another plastic bag

-Use slotted spoon and place half of the buttermilk coated pickles into bag containing the flour mixture. -Shake off excess flour, and place battered pickles into hot grease (Be careful not to place too many pickles into the hot grease or the pickles will be soggy). 

-Fry pickle slices until golden brown. 

-Place on plate covered with a paper towel

-Continue with other half of pickle mixture. 

For dipping sauce:

-Combine equal parts ranch dressing and Louisiana Hot Sauce

Pretzel Fried Chicken (Honey mustard pretzel chicken)

I have perfected honey mustard pretzel chicken.

Uhhh.. yummmm!

 

This is super easy to make.. and the ingredients will last you forever!

Ingredients:

-5 pieces Fryer chicken (I just used chicken tenders and it came out just as good.  You can see that I have 5 pieces above.
-A mallet or something to flatten the chicken (I used a mug)
-Plastic wrap or something to put the chicken between while flattening
-1/2 lb pretzel meal (just ground pretzels, I like to crush them to a meal-like consistency but also leave some bigger pieces. I used multigrain pretzels, I think they taste the best with this dish).
-Salt
-Pepper
-Vegetable oil (only if frying, if baking, exclude this ingredient)
Equal Parts (to coat/ hold pretzels to chicken and for dipping sauce):
-Yellow Mustard (I used Frenches)
-Coarse whole grain mustard
-Dijon Mustard
-Honey
-Mayonnaise

Directions:

-If baking, preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
-If frying (like I did..oooh I'm bad!), pour vegetable oil into a skillet
-Combine equal parts (I used 2 tbsp of each to coat chicken and for sauce) preferably in a shallow bowl.  Yellow mustard , coarse grain mustard, dijon mustard, honey, and mayonnaise.  Taste and add to your own preference (Like a TRUE chef ;P)
- Add dash of salt and pepper to mixture.
-Place chicken tenders between plastic wrap or anything else to keep them protected.
-Use mallet or flattening devise to pound chicken breasts until they are 1/2 inch thick.
-Create assembly like with chicken breasts, honey mustard mixture, and crushed pretzel meal.
-Use fork or tongs to dip chicken tenders in pretzel meal
-Then dip chicken tenders in honey mustard mixture
-Then dip tenders in pretzel meal.
-If baking: Place tenders on greased baking sheet for 15 minutes, turning halfway to brown both sides.
-If frying: heat the skillet with vegetable oil.  Place bread crumb in pan. If it browns within 1 minute, the skillet is ready for the chicken.
-Fry chicken for 5 minutes, then turn over to fry for another 5 minutes.
-Serve with extra honey mustard dipping sauce.

Obsessed with cooking (ice cream sandwiches, scotch eggs, and fried oreos)

I've decided to stop going out to eat in favor of learning how to cook all of the foods that I love, and and I am broke and hopefully I will save some money.. so onto the recipes!

All of these dishes are actually inspired by items that I ate off of menus at different restaurants... A few weeks ago I went with some friends to a place called Piper's Pub in South Side.  I never thought that I would be a fan of Scottish cuisine but everything was delicious! For dessert we had a shortbread ice cream sandwich.  I automatically tried to make something similar the next day... The result is below: 

Ooey Gooey Ice Cream Sandwiches

These are actually NOTHING  like the ice cream sandwiches that we had at Piper's Pub.. I got a little bit carried away and basically created my own.. but they are still delicious in their own way:

-Keebler Fudge Stripes Original Cookies

-Any kind of ice cream that you want (I used cookies and cream)

-Hot fudge sauce

-Natural salted peanut butter

1) Place two cookies fudge stripe side down on a plate

2) Put the hot fudge sauce (while room temperature or cold), on the up side of the cookie, and the natural peanut butter on the other side of the other cookie.

3)Put ice cream on one of the cookies

4)Pick the other cookie up and put it ice cream side down on top of the peanut butter/hot fudge.

5) Squish them together (but not too hard)!

6)Put them in the freezer to chill or eat them right away!

I can't believe I just gave six step instructions on how to make an ice cream sandwich... this is why I decided not to be a teacher!

The first (and BEST) thing that we had to eat at Piper's Pub was their SCOTCH EGGS.  I had never even heard of these before.  But after eating them, I kept craving them for days on end.  I finally decided to venture out of my cooking comfort zone and work with eggs, which opened the door to a whole new world of cooking options!  Hard boiled eggs, deviled eggs, poached eggs, over easy, over hard... so many possibilities.  Anyway, onto the actual recipe!

Scotch Eggs!

 
-Six hard boiled eggs

-1 lb pork sausage meat (I think I used Jimmy Deans sausage with sage)

-2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

-1 tablespoon all-purpose flour (plus more for dusting)

-1/8 teaspoon salt (or more)

-1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper (depending on how much you like pepper)

-1 egg, beaten

-2/3 cup dry bread crumbs (I used panko)

-Various other seasonings for the bread crumbs (I used garlic powder, paprika, Parmesan cheese, and some parsley) season to taste.

-Canola/vegetable oil for deep frying.
-Hot sauce, mustard, or any other condiments to eat with the scotch eggs (hot sauce is my favorite).

1) Hard boil the eggs... after much effort, on my third try I was able to cook the eggs perfectly without those ugly greenish/brown rims around the yolk (however, even if you DO see rims, the eggs are still edible and still taste good, they are just overcooked):
-cover eggs in cold (or room temperature) water in a sauce pan that is just big enough to hold all of them without touching.
-Turn the burner up to high heat
-start a whirl pool with your spoon and make the eggs spin.  This will help the yolks to set.
-After the water has been at a rolling boil for 1 minute, turn off the burner and remove the sauce pan (with the eggs and water still inside) to a burner that has not been heated up.
-cover the pan with the water and eggs still inside and let sit for 12 minutes.
-when the 12 minutes are up, drain the eggs and crack them slightly, then immediately put them in cold water and into the freezer (some people put them into an ice bath, but it works just fine if you put them in the freezer).  Slightly cracking the eggs beforehand keeps them from cooking any longer because the cold water gets underneath the shell (no yucky green color!)
-Check on the eggs after 5 minutes, if they have completely cooled down, then you can drain them again and put them in the refrigerator.  Refrigerate for at least 2 hours before serving.
-The eggs will stay fresh for up to 2 weeks IF you leave the peels on.
-Run eggs under water to make the peeling process easier.


Prepare to assemble the eggs:
-Prepare the breadcrumb mixture in a bowl by mixing the breadcrumbs with whatever spices you enjoy.  I used garlic powder, paprika, salt, pepper, Parmesan cheese, and parsley. 
-In a separate bowl, combine the sausage meat and Worcestershire sauce
-In another bowl, combine the flour, salt, and pepper
-Mix the flour mixture into the sausage mixture.  I also added some garlic powder and more sage.
-Prepare one additional bowl with a beaten egg
-Peel the hard boiled eggs if you haven't already (run under warm water to make peeling easier).

 Finally, the fun part!
-Roll the peeled eggs in the flour.  This will help the sausage mixture stick.
-Begin to roll the sausage around the eggs.  You can use a little bit or a lot! Just make sure that the eggs are completed coated.
- Next, dip the sausage coated eggs into the beaten egg mixture.  Shake off any additional egg mixture.
- Roll the eggs in the breadcrumb mixture until fully coated.
- Put Canola or vegetable oil into a skillet/frying pan/sauce pan, and turn on the burner to medium/ high heat (or 375 degrees)
-Test the heat by throwing a breadcrumb in.  If it browns after a minute, you're in business.
-Put the eggs in and turn after 2 1/2-3 minutes.
-Check on one egg to see if it is cooked by cutting through the egg.
-If it isn't, you can finish it off in the oven for 5-10 minutes at 400 degrees.  My eggs were perfectly fried so I did not have to bake them.


I am very proud of myself for making perfectly hard boiled eggs and learning how to fly without a deep fryer!

And lastly... Fried Oreos!

These are super easy to make! I don't have a deep fryer and just made them using vegetable oil in a skillet...

-1/2 cup Bisquick
-1/2 cup milk
-9 oreos, or 18 mini oreos
-Canola or vegetable oil for frying

1) Put vegetable oil in the skillet and turn it up to high
2)Whisk together Bisquick and  milk
3) Coat Oreos with the mixture
4)When the oil begins to bubble lighty, drop the oreos in
5) Check on the oreos periodically, and turn once, after the bottoms are the color of funnel cake

Yummy! Just make sure to eat them while they are still hot! They are not very good at room temperature...


Well that's all for now... I have all kinds of food plans for this weekend!

What I have been up to lately and Red Lobster Cheddar Biscuits

I haven't really told anyone about this blog yet so I guess I should...

I've had an eventful past few weeks, once I have an actual camera I will make much more of an effort to take pictures.  Until then, you will have to let my eloquent literary tour de force tell the story for you ;P

I went to New York with my parents and cousin who was visiting from Kansas.  We went to the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, and Times Square.  I have to admit, I love doing those so called touristy things, even though I've done them all a few times before.  As we were leaving, we decided to go to a random brewery AKA beer and fried food overload, I have no regrets in saying that it was absolutely amazing!

Fried pickles

Cheese fries

and we finished it off with some apricot wheat beer.. a perfect beginner and chaser to all of the fried food!

The next weekend, I went to Pittsburgh to visit friends, register for classes, figure out my field placement (another word for internship), and see my new apartment.  For those of you who don't know, I am moving to Pittsburgh to attend the University of Pittsburgh for my MSW in less than a month! I am very excited. 

My friend showed me around and we actually went to the gym (even though what we ate afterwards was completely counterproductive)! It has a cinema room that shows movies as you work out.  It is pretty awesome.  We also went to this really cool bar named Haufenbraus (I think that's how you spell it) and got some amazing beer and german food:

Potato Pancakes with applesauce and sour cream.

beer cheese blend dipping sauce (the best) I can't remember what the other dipping sauces were.  They were all for...

This HUGE soft pretzel, so good!

We also went to the melting pot.  I wish I could live there.

Wisconsin cheese fondue <3

 
Moving on, I registered for classes the next day and was very productive despite the total food hangover.  I have an amazing class schedule with all of my first choice classes and no classes on Thursday or Friday.  I'm doing my placement at Fresenius Dialysis Center.  My apartment is also really nice, I can't wait to post pictures after I have it all set up.

Last weekend I relaxed, went to a pool party, started reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett, and made these Red Lobster inspired cheddar biscuits:

The recipe is super easy, and the biscuits taste EXACTLY like the ones from Red Lobster! all you need is:

1 small bag of the bisquick cheddar biscuit mix
1/2 cup water
3/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese (if you're not a big cheese fan, put in less)
1/2 stick of butter
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of garlic powder
dried parsley or basil to sprinkle on the top

Preheat oven to 400 degrees farenheight
Line a tray with parchment paper or else they will stick!
Combine biscuit mix, water, and cheese.  Add a little bit more water if it is still dry.
Put biscuits in oven for 5 minutes
As you're waiting for the biscuits to bake, add butter, salt, and garlic powder to a sauce pan.  Melt and stir until combined.
After the biscuits have been in the oven for 5 minutes, take them out of the oven and spoon the melted butter/garlic/salt mixture over each one.  If you have a pastry brush, brush the mixture over the biscuit.
Sprinkle dried parsley or basil over the biscuits.
Put in the oven for at least 5 more minutes and continue to check on them until they are lightly browned.

Makes 6 large biscuits.