Back in High School Again

December 14, 2009

I’ve been bobbing around the blog world for almost a year, and sometimes, I feel like I’m back in high school again.

Don’t get me wrong—I adore the blog world, I really do. I think we have a fantastic community, and even my parents were astonished by the “warm, kind, and loving” people here after reading some of your comments. But…there are still many aspects of the blogosphere that reminds me of high school.

First, we have that Great “Popular Group” Divide. Some blogs are just more popular than others, for whatever reason. It might be their fancy pictures. It might be their fancy writing. It might be their gregarious and charismatic ways. Or it might simply be the reason that they’ve been around longer, thus building a more loyal readership.

Another aspect that reminds me of high school: labels. I don’t know why, but we humans have the tendency to stick labels on anyone and anything. In high school, we labeled each other as “Nerds” and “Marching Band geeks” and “Punks”, blah blah blah. As a blogger, I know and experience the tendency to want to label myself and others. Some of us have the label of a “healthy living blogger”, some are “vegan” or “raw”, some as “restaurant reviewers”, some as “bakers”, some as “mothers”, some as “weight loss”, others as “ED-recoverers”, and so on and so forth.

Yet another high school stigma in the blog world is trends. Come on, we all know what they are, and have fallen victims to it. For whatever ridiculous reason, we feel the need to also fall in love with whatever the popular bloggers are loving: oats-in-a-jar, yogurt “mess”, Green Monsters, chia seeds, Larabars, yahdee yahdee yah. Whatever’s “in” right now, we want to try it, we almost feel pressured to love it as well, despite the fact that we probably would never even have considered eating it otherwise.

I’m not necessarily saying it’s a bad thing. But I wonder…will we ever be rid of high school? Seems like it’s following me wherever I go, even to the Internet.

That said, I’ll go ahead and list a few of my personal opinions that may sound blasphemous in the blog world (the Health Living section anyway):

I hate Larabars. And most bars, in general.

The idea of Green Monsters and chia seeds makes me go: Sick

I don’t buy organic stuff, not even for dairy products. I buy my eggs and milk in a generic bulk store (Not because I don’t care for the environment…I just can’t afford it!)

I’ve stopped buying Greek yogurt…and I don’t miss it at all.

I’m not sure I like peanut butter that much anymore.

I do not like hummus.

I do not care for canned pumpkin.

I stay away from health food restaurants if possible.

I like McDonald’s. And most fast food chains in general.

I love hotdogs. Oh, my sweet neon-pink processed mystery meat shaped like…Uh, anyway, I like it. A lot.

So there.

Anyway. I’ve been watching a lot of Anthony Bourdain’s foodie escapades in No Reservations, and it made me think that part of being a foodie should be that excitement of trying something completely new. Something you never thought you would try or make. After all, the realm of food is vast and adventurous, and limiting your eats to within the fads of the blog world is just so…limiting and boring?

That’s why I immediately agreed to try out Pepperidge Farms’ Puff Pastry as part of the Foodbuzz Tastemaker Program. This is a new adventure for me, because in truth, I don’t really like puff pastry. I’m just not a pastry person. The texture of flaky, crispy dough is just not as appealing to me as a dense, chewy bread. But, in the interest of broadening my foodie horizons, I decided to give it a try.

Note: For this post’s pictures, please excuse the glarish tone of my pictures…I made it in the evening, and the color quality is just horrible.

Everybody, say hello to Mr. Puff Pastry (or is that Mrs?):
Here’s how it looks inside the box:
Two rectangular sheets of fresh pastry dough. I left it out to thaw while I prepared my ingredients:
Potatoes and sweet potatoes. Now, those are pretty predictable.

Same with apples and onions:
But the new ingredient I incorporated was beef Mexican chorizo and heavy cream:
With kale, because you can never go wrong with some greens in there.

Now, I’ve never cooked with chorizo before, nor with heavy cream, unless you count baking desserts that I never ate a long time ago. So this was a new thing for me. Ooh, exciting!

Here’s the recipe:

Sweet & Spicy Puff Pastry Ball with Chorizo, Apples & Potatoes

3 medium Yukon potatoes
1 medium sweet potato
1 package beef Mexican chorizo
3 cloves garlic
1 medium onion, diced
1 green apple, diced
1 big bunch kale, chopped
1 ha
ndful raisins
heavy cream
1 sheet puff pastry

Chop up both potatoes, and roast in 350 degree oven for about 20-30 minutes until cooked through:
Next, heat up a skillet and dump all the chorizo into it:
Ok. Here’s my first mistake: I think I might have bought a cheap-ass chorizo, because this was 60% grease and 30% meat and 10% “bonus” substance. Honestly. It was disgustingly greasy, and I had to drain most of that grease out.

Moving on. Dump in onions, garlic, and apples. Cook for a few minutes.
Add in the potatoes, mix and cook for 2 minutes or so:
Then dump in the kale:
And then the raisins:
And then pour about 1/4 cup heavy cream in there:
Let the whole thing cook until the kale is wilted and the mixture has absorbed all the flavor of the chorizo.

Next, take a sheet of the puff pastry and mold it into a small bowl:
Spoon in the chorizo filling, and seal it shut, trimming off the extra dough.

Flip the bowl over to release the ball:
Then slit the middle. Brush some extra heavy cream on the dough.
Bake in oven.

Here’s my mistake #2: I baked at about 350 degree temperature, only to find that the dough was not rising. Holy crap. I frantically rushed online to check, and found out that puff pastry only rises at a temperature around 400 degrees. Thankfully, I raised the temperature early enough for the puff pastry to bake perfectly.

Here’s the baby:
I have no idea why I slit a hole in the middle. It just seemed to make sense. But it looks kind of like an asshole. A very big asshole. Damn it.
Ah, well. It’s the taste that counts.
And it was mighty tasty. Although I forgot the cheese. I was meaning to add some Cabot Cheese in there, but I totally forgot. Mistake #3.
But that’s okay. It actually didn’t really need the cheese, because with the spicy chorizo and the sweetness of the sweet potatoes, apples, and raisins, the flavors worked really well. Cheese might have been an overkill.
It doesn’t look that great, I admit. Kale loses its green quality when cooked in the red grease of chorizo.
Unfortunately, my eyes were bigger than my stomach, because try as I might, I almost couldn’t finish this in one sitting. Almost, save for a tiny bite:
As you can probably guess, I did not use all my chorizo filling for this pastry. I decided to turn it into soup. I dumped everything into a pot with some chicken broth:
Poured in more of the heavy cream:
Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble…
The result was a really interesting, thick stew:
By interesting I mean yummy, of course.
Leftover fillings are best turned into a rich, satisfying stew.
Phew! That was quite an interesting adventure. Honestly, I was afraid of making a big fat inedible mess, but they both turned out delicious! And it was great fun!

And how do I find time to do this while I’m in the middle of final exams, I don’t know…But I have just two more left until everything is over!! I cannot wait, wait, wait!

Question of the day: Let’s be frank…anything “blasphemous” in the blog world that you want to confess out loud here? I won’t tell!

'cuz burping and slurping is mandatory and polite when it comes to good eats

Back in High School Again

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