Scotch Eggs

Gail was reading a story that included Scotch eggs and looked up a recipe from allrecipes.com. What could be bad about a recipe that includes deep fried sausage and eggs? This was a quite wonderful, but there were a few things we thought might make it better:

• The Italian sausage we used was not ground finely enough, and had too many gristly chunks. Use as well ground meat as you can find.
• You could use almost any seasoned ground meat for this dish.
• Each piece was a bit large. Cutting the eggs in half, using smaller eggs, or perhaps even quail eggs might help.

Hopwired IPA from 8 Wired Brewery in New Zealand

Gail and I made a lobster dinner tonight with vegetables from the garden including fresh ears of Gail's corn. I had this Hopwired IPA from 8 Wired Brewery in New Zealand with dinner. The beer had a full IPA hops flavor, with just a bit more bitter taste than I prefer. It had a delicious flowery taste with a light perfumed aroma.

Concord Grapes from Our Garden

Such a cute little bunch, I had to share.

A Review of Czech Food From a Vegetarian Viewpoint

Here's a little link love to my daughter's blog. She wrote an article about her initial thoughts on food in Prague. Good thing she has gelato.

Rancatore's Cinnamon Cherry Chip

It was a perfect night to stop for ice cream at Rancatore's. I tried a new flavor, cinnamon cherry chip. It had plenty of large, dark (I'm guessing Moreno) cherry halves, huge chocolate chunks, and a nice balance of cinnamon. As always, the base was creamy and fresh. Yum.

Mum's Very Easy Calzones

My mother-in-law (let's call her Mum) had us over for dinner tonight. She and my brother-in-law (let's call him George) are on a homemade calzone kick. These really were amazing. She made us three: a ham, cheese and pepper calzone, a pepperoni, cheese and spinach calzone, and one she kept calling "the vegetable one." I tried some of each, and was not so excited about "the vegetable one," but was surprised to find it had meatballs, pepperoni, peppers and mushrooms. It really was a cheese-less calzone for a fellow diner who couldn't eat cheese. Why it became "the vegetable one" is still unclear to me.

Here's how Mum made them:

1. Get fresh pizza dough from the grocery store.
2. Grease a cookie sheet with Crisco.
3. Roll out the pizza dough to cover the whole cookie sheet plus a little extra on one side to grab on to.
4. Spread a layer of various fillings across the dough.
5. Roll up the dough on the long side like a jelly roll.
6. Cook at 350 for 45 minutes.

The filling can be anything you like. Mum recommended that you cook the meatballs in advance, and that you cook any ingredients that might juice as they cook, like the mushrooms or spinach.

Mum and George are on a quest for the perfect calzone. When they find it, I hope to report back.

Chocolate Cola Cake

We stopped at a Cracker Barrel on our trip home from New York. Cracker Barrel is always a fun stop, but we didn't have room for the chocolate cola cake on the menu that intrigued us. Gail found a recipe on food.com that she baked for me tonight. The cake was fluffy and light with a subtle cola flavor. The frosting was a good glaze of moist chocolate.

Even though the picture shows cupcakes, we think they would be better in a pan. The cupcakes were just too messy with the glaze. The recipe below is for a 9x13 cake.

We think there is a delicious variant to try by substituting rum for the vanilla in the cake or the glaze.

Chocolate Cola Cake

Cake:
1 c cola
½ c oil
½ c butter
3 T cocoa powder
2 c sugar
2 c flour
½ t salt
2 eggs
½ c buttermilk
1 t baking soda
1 t vanilla

Frosting:
¼ lb butter
3 T cocoa powder
6 T cream or milk
1 t vanilla
½ c chopped pecans
1 lb powdered sugar

Sheet cake pan or 9x13” Pyrex pan

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Grease and flour cake pan.
2. In large saucepan, bring cola, oil, butter and cocoa to boil. Mix sugar, flour and salt; pour in boiling liquid; beat to remove all lumps.
3. Add eggs, buttermilk, soda and vanilla; beat well.
4. Pour into pan; bake 20-25 min.
5. While cake bakes, prepare frosting: In saucepan, combine butter, cocoa and cream; heat until butter melts. Beat in remaining ingredients, and spread on hot cake. Cool and cut.