I Love Bread Pudding

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The original recipe for Bread Pudding can be found on a web page called MomsWhoThink.com at http://www.momswhothink.com/easy-recipes/bread-pudding-recipe.html (Which is funny because I'm a Dad and the blog is Idiotdadcooks)

Simply put, I love Bread Pudding. It's a dessert that fits almost any occasion and any entree`. It can be dressed up or dressed down, simple or complex. Really I can't think of a setting that bread pudding would be an inappropriate dessert to serve. In the pantheon of sweets, bread pudding is most definitely in my top 3.

You'll love this recipe because truly it's a budget friendly dessert that packs a sophisticated wallop when it's finished. When I was considering what to make this week I was trying to think of a dessert that would mostly incorporate what I already had in the pantry (again, no budget) and used many ingredients we have used together on this blog. It turned out I already had every ingredient required save two, the french bread and half N half. Six bucks and a trip to the grocery store later I was ready to rock.

I have to say I've had some pretty rave reviews about this bread pudding so far. I myself and a conniseur of sorts concerning bread pudding, and I must admit (even though I made it myself) this is among the best I've had.

For this recipe you'll need:

For the Bread Pudding
2 cups Half N Half (hnh)
1/4 cup butter
2/3 cup brown sugar "packed" (light or dark depends on your tongue)
3 large eggs (size Large eggs are standard size for baking)
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups of bread (french bread is what I used) torn up in to little pieces
1/2 cup raisins

For the Sauce
1 cup Half N Half
2 tablespoons butter
1/3 cup granulated (regular) sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon flour
dash of salt

Set your oven to 350 before you do anything else. You want to make sure it's good and ready for this so the pudding will cook properly.

A lot of bread pudding recipe's will require you to let your bread go stale. This makes sense because the invention of bread pudding was a means to figure out how to utilize stale bread. This recipe thankfully does not require that step, and can be made in a pinch.

Start off by taking a 1.5 quart casserole dish and lube it well with butter. Simply cut a stick in half and rub the interior of the dish well until you've evenly coated the inside. After you've done that tear apart your bread until you have 3 cups worth. You're going to want the pieces to be relatively small, though size variation is expected. Place the torn up bread pieces evenly in the dish, and set it aside. Now we need to concentrate on making the custard for our pudding.

To make the custard you're going to want a non stick sauce pan (my preference), and a whisk or large spoon. Poor your half N half in to the sauce pan, and set your heat to medium. Let the half N half come up to a boil, and add your butter, stirring relatively constantly until the butter is melted. Take the half N half/butter combo off the burner and set aside.

*A Side Note: Dairy on heat tends to be somewhat volatile. It will bubble up quick and over flow if not attended. Don't ignore dairy on heat. Thank you.

Next you're going to combine in a "mixer safe" bowl the eggs, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, and brown sugar. Take your hand mixer and mix for about one minute. Make sure you start slowly with a few pulses, you don't want to wear the mixture.

This is where you have to wait for your hnh/butter combo to cool down to a lukewarm state. Realize the eggs will turn in to scrambled eggs if your not careful, so make sure you can completely comfortably touch the hnf/butter mixture before you add it to the bowl.

Once you can comfortably touch your hnh/butter mixture start your hand mixer again. While mixing start to drizzle the hnh/butter mixture to the bowl. Keep doing this until both mixes are completely combined. Once this is done simply pour this mixture over the bread. Add your raisins to the top, and with a large spoon gently mix the bread, custard, and raisins. Make sure all the bread has absorbed a good amount of the custard mixture, and put it in the oven (please make sure your rack is dead center of your oven). Bake for 50 minutes, and prepare to fend off small children, animals, and spouses. The smell will take over the house, and you will love it.

The video this week is a tad long, but will show you the general assembly of the custard and the combining of it with the bread.

While your bread pudding is cooking, go ahead an wash the sauce pan you used for the hnh/butter mix because you'll need it for the icing like glaze we will be making next.

I would hold off on starting this glaze until about 10 minutes before you are due to take the pudding out of the oven. This stuff is fantastic but will set up quickly, and you'll want the liquid factor to be in full play when you pour it over your pudding. Actually, you may even want to wait to start the glaze after you take the pudding out, it depends on how well you multitask.

This glaze is actually pretty easy to make, but does ABSOLUTELY  REQUIRE YOUR ATTENTION THROUGH THE ENTIRE PROCESS! Simply put all the ingredients listed above in the the sauce pan, turn your heat on to medium. (*Note: for those concerned with a loose term like "dash of salt" just shake a normal salt shaker about two times over your glaze, that will suffice) With a whisk simply stir, and keep stirring the entire time it's on the heat. When it starts to boil regardless of your stirring set a timer for 4 minutes. Continue to stir until the timer goes off. Turn off your heat at this point, and let the glaze rest for about 2 minutes. After the rest time, simply take the entire sauce pan over to your bread pudding and evenly distribute the glaze over the entire dish.

*Note: Below there is a picture of a spoon coated in the glaze with a wipe mark on it. To test your glaze to see if it's the right thickness you can dip a spoon's backside (yes a clean one) in to the glaze, and take your finger and wipe a strip off. The glaze should basically stay still, as seen below.

Below you'll see a few pictures of the finished product, in the casserole dish and plated.

This bread pudding is AMAZING. Not too sweet, certainly far from bland, not soupy, yet certainly a bread pudding. This is a wonderful, cheap, simple, yet sophisticated tasting dish. You'll love it, as will anyone you allow to touch this (and yes, you'll be tempted not to share). This certainly is a favorite of mine, and my family as well. Eat well everyone!

P.S.
This is fantastic reheated. Cut off the offending portion you wish to consume, put it on a small plate and microwave on high for 1 minute. The glaze will remelt, and the pudding will now lose much moisture at all.

Baked Fish and Chips Gubna?

The original recipe for Baked Fish & Chips I used can be found on Food Network's page at http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/baked-fish-and-chips-recipe/index.html Courtesy of Food Network Magazine.

OK so thus far on Idiotdad we've covered a wide spectrum of items. From Frite's to Gumbo to Carrot Cake. This week I wanted to concentrate on reusing some ingredients I had used on the blog before, and stay on the healthier side. It's fun to cook with tons of butter and sugar and Frank's Red Hot sauce and things, but like everyone else I do need to concentrate on keeping things lighter these days. The blog is called Idiotdad not Fatdaddy. Thus we stayed on the lighter side by doing a Baked Fish and Chips recipe I found on Foodnetwork.com. This recipe uses the Frites I posted before, as well as many other ingredients we've used in the past. I also liked the idea of this recipe because it's an entire meal, not just one dish.

A note or two before we begin. We will be working with fish today. Fish while healthy, has crazy potential for food born illness. Please Please PLEASE wash your hands often when handling raw fish, and please make sure you cook it thoroughly. Bake times swing wildly from oven to oven, I will give you the times and temps I used but keep your own oven in mind.

For this recipe you'll need:

Frites:
3 Medium Sized Russet Potatoes
1/4 Cup Olive Oil
Pinch of Cayenne
(if you are offended by cayenne you could substitute Old Bay Seasoning, Garlic Powder, Onion Powder, or any other flavored savory powder your heart desires)
Kosher Salt

Fish:
Olive Oil Cooking Spray
2 3/4 cups of Rice Krispies
Kosher Salt and Fresh Ground Black Pepper
3 large egg whites
1 1/2 lbs. boneless skinless Cod (any white firm fish will do though)
Tartar sauce

Before you do anything set your oven to 475, line your frite pan with foil and put it in the oven. Also make sure your racks are on the top, and bottom rungs in your oven. Proceed with making your frites.

We've already covered how to make frites in the past. Click here <http://idiotdadcooks.blogspot.com/2012/02/easy-oven-frites.html> for in depth instructions on how to make them. I will say this time we are using less olive oil, and we are actually whisking in a pinch or dash of cayenne to the oil before coating the frites. DO NOT BE SCARED OF CAYENNE! It's very tasty and will NOT burn you if used in moderation and evenly distributed. Below are some pics of the frite making process used for this dish today.

Feel free to pop these in the oven while you work on your fish. 15 minutes on the top rack, rotate, and another 15 minutes after that. Make sure you salt your frites after you take them out of the oven, your final product should look like this.

While your frites are in the oven line another baking sheet with tin foil, and put two wire racks on it. Spray liberally with Olive Oil Spray (Pam makes a great version of this) and set that to the side.

We now are going to learn how to do what's called a dredge. Measure out your Rice Krispies in to a bowl, and crush them. Crush them well, and actually make them more fine then what is pictured ahead. I learned this too late in to the process, a finer crush will coat the fish better than what you'll see. Salt and Pepper this mixture to your liking, and mix thoroughly. In a different bowl, separate 3 eggs and keep the whites in the bowl, you can discard the yolks we will not need them for this recipe. Put a dash of salt in the whites, and whisk until frothy. Set the two bowls aside. For those who do not know how to separate eggs, you're in luck, that this week's video!

Now you can set up your cut board and cut your fish in to roughly 4"x2" portions. Once you've cut them to size dip the fish in the egg solution, then put it in to the breading bowl. Coat the fish in the Rice Krispies well, and put it on the wire rack. I would like to point out, you really should use a two handed approach to the dredge process. One hand picks up the cod, puts in the egg, and rolls it around and puts it in the breading mix. The other rolls and coats the cod in the breading, and transfers it to the wire racks. This will help reduce "club hand". Repeat this until all your fish is well coated, and on the wire racks.

Now for my oven it took about 14 to 18 minutes to cook this fish and get it right. Watch yours closely but do not open the oven too often. The final product should look like what is below. The fish should have some give when you poke it but be relatively firm. Plate the frites and fish together, and dish out the tartar sauce baby!

This is a very nice dinner for any couple or family (fish and chips usually does well with kids). It's light, but it certainly is filling as well. It's also relatively low in fat, and has a lot of good nutritional value. Also it's quick, this whole thing would have taken me a half hour to prep had I not been wrestling around with the camera! All in all this should take about one hour start to finish. Give this try some time, I'm certain you'll enjoy it! Eat well everyone!

Mmmmmm... Wings.

Normally at the top of every blog I would credit any websites or chefs that invented the recipe I used for that day. Today I actually invented the recipe we will be using from my own experience and research over the course of my cooking past time.

I love Buffalo Wings. Period. There are very few entree`s and fewer appetizers I love more than wings. Thin sauced, thick sauced, a lot of sauce, little sauce, it doesn't matter. I love good wings. Today's goal was to try to create a quality wing recipe from my head and experimentation, and I believe I succeeded. This recipe is a very basic wing recipe, that can be either be made straight up or bent to serve your own creativity.

For this recipe you will need:

1/2 cup Frank's Red Hot Sauce
1/4 cup melted butter (salted or unsalted depends on you)
1 tsp. Worcestershire
1/8 tsp. Cayenne
Approx. 3lbs. Chicken Wings

Before we get to the down and dirty I want to address some food safety here. We are using raw chicken. I'm not paranoid but I am intimately aware of the crazy stuff that can come from handling raw chicken. Please pay attention to what you are doing, and touching. Also PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE wash your hands often.

OK the first thing you'll need to do is set your oven to 375. (I realize most wings are fried, but honestly I didn't want the mess and hassle this time around) You'll also want to set up your cut board and get a good knife ready, because you'll likely need to perform some surgery.

The wings I bought came packaged as below. Unlike in your grocers freezer section or how you see wings in restaurants they come as whole wings. This is not really a big deal. You simply take a wing and cut off the "tip" section at the joint. You can discard the tip, we will not be using them. Then I found it easiest to stand up the wing joint down, and cut into the joint attempting to get your knife in between the bones. Once you've got the process down, this will go quickly. Just set them on a plate on the side until you've completed the surgery portion of this dish. I hope the pics down below help, it's difficult taking super helpful pics on your own while working with raw poultry.

Before the next step, please take out your sheet pan and cover it with aluminum foil, then spray it down with Pam. Don't be scared to be liberal with the Pam by the way, chicken stuck to a pan is never fun. Set the pan by your sink.

After you've cut up all your wings, take your plate to the sink and run cold water over them, trying to get a decent rinse on all the pieces. Have a few paper towels handy, and one by one dry off the chicken, after which set them on the pan. Continue this process until you've washed, dried, and placed all your chicken.

Place your wings in the oven and set your timer for 10 minutes. After your timer goes off quickly flip all your wings over, and put them back in the oven for an additional 10 minutes. Now, on the nectar of the gods, BUFFALO SAUCE!

For as good as buffalo sauce is, it's dumb how simple it is make. In a bowl simply mix the all the ingredients listed above. Use a whisk to combine everything, and simply dip a spoon in and taste. If it doesn't taste "deep" enough, use more Worcestershire sauce. If it's not hot enough use more cayenne (CAREFULLY). As mentioned before the recipe I came up with is very basic and can be customized very easily to suit your individual wing craving experience.

Pretty soon your wings should be done baking. They should appear pretty similar to the picture below.

Now the fun part of making wings is "coating" the wings with sauce. This is done with a bowl, preferably metal. Simply put your wings in the bowl, add the sauce, and toss. I included a video of this process to illustrate how it should be done.

Now as I said in the video that CAN be your finished product if you wish. Just please be sure the chicken is cooked thoroughly and you're good to go!

IF you like a more baked in flavor, set your oven to "Broil" and let it heat up for a few minutes. Finish coating all your wings and set them back down on the pan. Once your oven has heated up, put your wings under the broiler, for about 6-8 minutes. Longer if desired. The finished product should look like the picture below. (on a side note: you can also toss them in sauce a second time after you've broiled, which is what I plan on doing the next time I make this recipe)

The smell is fantastic. When I plated as you'll see below I kept some wing sauce for additional dipping, and put some celery and bleu cheese on the dish as well. Believe it or not, that's it. That's all it takes to make wings at home, about 1 hour front to back. They're simple, they're delicious, and best of all they're easy. Eat well everyone!