Friday Fuck Up: The Carbonara Scramble | Endless Simmer

My boyfriend couldn’t have been happier. I brought pig into the house. Thinly sliced, smoked pig. Bacon. Bacon. Bacon.

The oven was home to our first usage—bacon baked quickly and at a high temperature for an evenly cooked crisp. We bit at the bacon in between bites of eggs and toast. A simple introduction.

We thought we’d keep it easy. Let bacon flavor an angel hair carbonara.

I looked up a few recipes on Epicurious and understood, well, thought I understood, the gist of a carbonara.

Cook bacon. Remove bacon. Cook onion in its grease. Boil Pasta. Combine parm and egg in separate bowl. Combine hot pasta, onion, bacon and parm-egg mixture. Toss. Creamy deliciousness.

Of course, it wasn’t that simple. My carbonara got fucked.

I followed directions at the beginning, but along with the (red) onion I added diced (purple and red) peppers and garlic. Things were going well. The whole wheat angel hair cooked quickly, but in enough time for me to stir together 2 eggs, parm cheese and ricotta. I borrowed a tip fromanother recipeto let the eggs warm by placing them whole (in shells) in warm water. I have no idea if this contributed to the over all problem, but this must have brought additional heat to the equation.

Everything is set. I checked back to thedirections. And misread them causing fatal damage to the dish.

When the pasta finished cooking, I scooped it right into the onion mixture, which is on low heat. I mixed the pasta around, added arugula, parsley and the cooked bacon and then poured the parm-egg mixture on top of the pasta on the HOT pan.

>>>>ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR <<<<

This right here is what fucked up the dish. The residual heat from the pasta is supposed to melt the eggs. Direct heat to the eggs scrambles them instead. So there it is. (See picture above for clumps of egg.)

A dish oft messed up, as confirmed by ES SeniorItalianCorrespondenttvff. Usually I can’t identify what went wrong, particularly with baking, but this mistake is evident.

I am however, up for hearing fixes. Can I just simply take the pasta to the“cold” bowl of the parm-egg and everything will work out okay?

We have 12 more slices of bacon.

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Oyster and Banana Runts Ravioli? | Endless Simmer

One of my favorite dinner games is opening the refrigerator and playingChopped. Hey, I can pretend. I just love to play with food combinations. Of course, most of them usually taste damn yummy (to me…ahem). But every once in a while one of my bright ideas will be absolutely disgusting and inedible.  Enter bologna, cream cheese, and pickle rolls. Sautéed Brussels sprouts topped with a sunny side up egg and sriracha. Bisquick + milk + bowl + microwave + grape jam + syrup + butter.  A coffee mug + chocolate cake mix + peanut butter + whipping cream. Tortilla + Kraft singles + cucumbers + barbecue sauce. Soup is one of my favorite things to make, especially in the fall and winter. And following recipes, like a lot of things in my life, is just not acceptable. Why not put the cornbread IN the chili? How about jalapeño poppers in potato soup? (Turns out it doesn’t work too well.) Who would make a chocolate chip cookie stew? Um, yeah. It is a wondrous feat of nature that I don’t weigh 500 lbs.

This got me thinking— which food combination might be the most amazingly disgusting on the planet? I have a few below that would be excitingly terrible, and I would like to know yours, oh fearless ESers. C’mon, give me something really gross. If you’ve made it, great. If you’ve only dreamed of making it, it still counts. Here are mine:

• Roasted Garlic Peach Crumble
• Mint and Orange Egg Casserole
• Cheese Whiz Lime Sorbet
• Ground Beef and Mint Chip Ice Cream
• Strawberry Peanut Butter Daquiri
• Big Red Gum Guacamole
• Black Licorice Linguini with Ketchup Mushroom Ragu
• Nutella Pickle Relish
• Oyster and Banana Runts Ravioli
• Broccoli Sea Urchin Maple Scones
• Grapefruit Junior Mints Protein Shake with Mustard Cottage Cheese Whipped Topping
• Durian Fruit and Shallot Smoothie (if you haven’t trieddurian fruit, please go buy one immediately)

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Gridiron Grub: Bye Week | Endless Simmer

Some of you may be familiar with the concept of a bye week in sports. During the season teams get a week or two without a game scheduled torelaxand recoup. Practices are minimal and they get to spend time at home. This week is the first bye week in the NFL and it coincides with one year ofwedded blissfor Wifey and I.

Wifey is well aware of my sports addiction and was even okay when we scheduled our wedding so that it would not conflict with any major PSU games. Because of her patience with me in this, and many other matters, we had some quality time planned this weekend.  I also thought it would be a great opportunity for me to slack off and have my own bye week by opening up Gridiron Grub to all the ES readers.

Here at ES, we do love our pizza and have talked about itmany,many,many,manytimes, but it is a classic football party food so next week it is my turn to try a riff on it.

This week however, we want to hear from you.What are your favorite pizza combos/recipes?

Share a description, recipe or photo in the comments and we will choose our favorite to be featured in next week’s post alongside my celery root puree and white clam/bacon pizzas, and of course, to“bask in the people’s ovation and fame forever.”

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Time for Some Foodie Halloween Costumes | Endless Simmer

What are all you ESers dressing as for Halloween this year? Need some inspiration? Check out our compilations of the very best in food halloween costumes.

top 10 cute food halloween costumes

top 10 weird food halloween costumes

top 10 sexy food halloween costumes

top 10 food pun halloween costumes

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Groupon Madness | Endless Simmer

Hey ESers— the friendly folks at Groupon are still throwing their hard-earned money at ya’ll.

This week, another Endless Simmer reader will be chosen to win $20 in free groupon bucks, which gets you a free meal or drink at a groupon establishment of your choice (this week’s options will includeHabana Roomin NYC andSweely Estate Wineryfor you DC drinkers).

All you have to do to enter isfollow ES on twittterand RT any of our tweets giving you a headsup about this week’s groupon deals (hint:like thisone!)

PS– Congrats to last week’s winners,GoGastronomyandASH811.

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Bunny Bourguignon | Endless Simmer

When it comes to ingredients, I like them fresh and ready to use. For a while now I’ve been wanting to cook rabbit, and after tasting Birch& Barley’s rabbit gnocchi, I knew it was time I tried to cook the hoppy little guy.

Finding rabbit isn’t easy. It’s not just something you can pick up at Safeway or Whole Foods. Instead, I turned to one of DC’s many weekday farmers’ markets. I took a late lunch one Thursday afternoon and headed out to theWhite House Farmers Marketwhere I found Garden Path Farmand their one ”rabbit” left.

This is where it gets interesting.

At a little over 2 pounds, I assumed the vacuum packed rabbit was meat, just meat, and I could cube and make a tastyBunny Bourguignon.How was I wrong!

Continue reading to see what happened, but be warned, the following photos are not for the squeamish.

As I pulled out the rabbit from the fridge I paused. I could feel bone, not just any bone, but a body. The rabbit was whole, carcass, whole. Mortified.

That’s right folks, that right there was what I had to cook with. I was frantically searching online for instructions on how to go about cutting this up. My savior came in the form ofHank Shaw’s Hunter Angler Gardner Cookwebsite and his how-to guide about cutting up a rabbit. Hank, I owe you a cocktail.

It took me about an hour to get the rabbit to that third picture above, which doesn’t even include the 15 minutes it took to get over the shock of having to cut it up. And my very meat eating boyfriend, well, he had to leave the room.

I didn’t get as much meat from the rabbit as I had hoped but I did get enough to make the dish I had intended: bourguignon. I didn’t play with the recipe, per my usual attempts in the kitchen because, frankly, I felt I had already done enough by tackling a whole rabbit. Instead, I used a simple recipe fromAntony Worrall Thompson.

If you’ve never had rabbit before, you need not be afraid. The meat is a little tougher than chicken, but not like typical red meat (which when tender can sometimes be a little stringy). I marinated the rabbit meat in the bourguignon sauce for a while so it was a little sweeter than I suspect it would be otherwise, but not in a bad way.

Anyway, be brave out there. And as Elma Fudd would say,“Kill the Wabbit.”

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Top Chef Just Desserts Exit Interview: Episode 4 | Endless Simmer

I’m still recovering from this week’s episode, so much drama and bitterness amongst the chef’testant’s. I just love it. The elimination challenge this week required the chefs to make a show piece based on theLucent Dossier Experience–this felt a lot more like a poor man’s Food Network Challenge. But it did the trick and certainly created more drama in the stew room.

Keep reading to check out who walked, literally…

Malika requested to be eliminated at judges table.

ES: Any regrets?
Malika: No, not at all. I felt good at that moment when I made my decision. I have to say in between when the show was taped until last night I went back and forth a little bit and wondered how it will actually play out, with the actual show and reactions. I was very happy, and everything was very true to what it really was.

How did the other chef’testant’s react to your decision?
They were really shocked. I think it was something that really blew everyone out of their seats. Nobody expcted that I would do anything like that or thought that I would do that. Or anyone, ever, on Top Chef.

Do you have anything to say to those aspiring to be on the show, perhaps a lost opportunity?
I don’t see it that way—for me I don’t see it as something negative, giving up. I think I really took advantage of the opportunity I had to go on the show. My decision to leave was as important to me as it was to any fellow contestant who wanted to make it to the very end and become Top Chef.

I don’t think you ever really know what you’re getting into until you actually go on the show. You can only imagine what it feels like to compete like that on national television, with cameras on you 24 hours a day. It’s stressful, it has its moments, but it’s also very positive. An amazing experience to learn a lot about yourself as a person, not just the way you cook but who you really are.

What was the best part of Top Chef: Just Desserts for you?
To have that experience of working with my fellow chef’testant’s, eleven of the most talented pastry chefs in the country. To work side by side with people of that caliber, something I don’t think I’ll ever be able to experience again.

How did Seth’s unexpected departure effect the group?
It was very much like what you saw on the show, it was really true to what happened. It was a sigh of relief. With the tension and the stress of the competition, everyone was there to cook. They thought Seth was very distracting from the focus of the competition.

What are you doing now?
I launched my own website, ByMDesserts. I do very high-end gourmet cookies and custom dessert for-order. Since the show it’s been very hectic.

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