Even The Best Cooks Have Bad Days!

 I bought a quart of buttermilk to brine some Fried Chicken Tenders.  Not wanting anything to waste, I decided Buttermilk Pound Cake be the perfect recipe to use up that leftover buttermilk.  As you'll see from the recipe post, I was cooking merrily along, got my beautiful pound cake batter into my pan and put it in the oven.  I was using a very old "tube" or "angel food" pan.  I was even thinking to myself that I would talk about that pan in my blog.  How it isn't the prettiest pan I own, it doesn't make a fancy looking cake.  I was going to argue that pan, ugly as it is, was one of my favorite pans to use.  "Old Faithful" you might call it.  I never have to worry about a cake sticking to that pan, or whether it has baked evenly.  I whipped out at least a dozen Merlot Cakes for Christmas gifts with that sucker.  They all came out perfect.  Yes.  That's it, I'll tell all of you how great that pan is. 

And then I smelled something.  And it smelled a little bit burnt.  The cake had only been in the oven for about 10 minutes.  The baking time was over an hour.  I knew my cake was not burning.  My oven was clean, so no yucky bits were burning on the bottom.  Or were they?  I opened the oven door, just in time to see the cake patter dripping, NO POURING, out of the bottom of the pan and baking in blobs all over the bottom of my oven.  I removed the pan from the oven, and quickly poured the batter into a new pan.  Then I turned the oven off and waited for it to cool.  Now my house no longer had the delicious smell of baking cake.  It had that not so delicious smell of burnt crap on the bottom of the oven.  Thank goodness I use a silicone oven liner.  I pulled it out, scraped the cake off and replaced it.  (I might add that cake that was baked on looked pretty good, so I think we have a winner here!)  The remaining batter went back in the oven in a new pan.  I'm thinking it may not be as perfect as the original might have been, but the crisis was averted for the most part. 

In the end, the finished cake tasted delicious.  There wasn't much batter so it wasn't very tall, but it had the density that you look for in a pound cake.  Would I enter it in the State Fair?  No Way.  But I have no problem serving it to my family.  Or my friends for that matter.  I'll be having a slice myself, with a big Diet Coke just as soon as I get off of the computer.  And so what if it didn't come out in Blue Ribbon Form?  If it still tastes good, whipped cream or a good raspberry sauce can mask lots of mistakes.  I'm telling you this story because even good cooks have bad days!  Don't be intimidated.  No matter your level of cooking expertise, we all have occasional blunders in the kitchen. 

Make the best of it if you can. If you can't?  Give the bad cake to the dog, and eat a Ding Dong instead.

Buttermilk Pound Cake

I bought a quart of buttermilk to brine some chicken tenders in.  And had quite a bit leftover.  Mostly I use it when I make cornbread.  It's not something I keep on hand all of the time.  My Mom always kept buttermilk.   She made the famous Texas Sheet Cake at least a couple of times a month.  She didn't have to worry about her buttermilk wasting though.  My Dad actually liked buttermilk.  He would put saltine crackers in it or cornbread.  Ewww!  No thank you, I won't be trying that with my leftover buttermilk.  Buttermilk Pound Cake sounded like a way better option than drinking the stuff.  Now you may remember from a previous post, this is the famous cake that leaked all over my oven.  (Even The Best Cooks Have Bad Days...) The tragedy had nothing to do with the cake or the recipe itself.  My poor old pan, who is no longer referred to as "Old Faithful" because he let me down.  (Notice how I subliminally chose a Masculine pronoun to describe something that let me down?  Hmm...wonder what Oprah would say about that one.) Anyway, HE has been retired and I will be replacing him with a shiny new HER this week.  Regardless of the kitchen crisis, the remaining cake turned out beautifully.  It was moist and dense and very tasty.  Now that you know even The Devilish Dish isn't perfect, I encourage all of you to give this recipe a try.  Even if you bake half a cake in a different pan halfway through baking, you still get a great result.

The Buttermilk Pound Cake Line-Up

Cream together butter and sugar.

Dissolve baking soda in buttermilk.

Combine baking powder with flour.

Add eggs to creamed mixture, 1 at a time.

Alternate adding flour and
buttermilk to creamed mixture.

Beginning and ending with flour.

Stir in vanilla and lemon extract
if you are using it.

Place batter in a greased pan. 
This pan is "dead to me"

Look what it did to my oven!

New pan to the rescue...
I managed to save the remaining batter!

It baked up beautifully. 
It just wasn't very tall because
there wasn't much batter left. 
Most of it met the bottom of the oven.

Golden and Buttery!

Perfect texture!  See? 
A delicious result amid a crisis!

Buttermilk Pound Cake

2 cups sugar
1 cup unsalted butter
4 eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup buttermilk
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon lemon extract, optional

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.  Grease a loaf or tube pan and set aside.  In a mixing bowl, cream together sugar and butter.  Add eggs 1 at a time.  Dissolve baking soda in buttermilk.  Add baking powder to flour.  Alternate adding flour and buttermilk to creamed mixture, beginning and ending with flour.  Add vanilla and lemon extract.  Bake for about 1 hour and 25 minutes.

Prep Time:  Approximately 10 minutes     Cook Time:  Approximately 1 hour 25 minutes

Angry Chicken: It will make you happy!

I have no idea why this recipe is called Angry Chicken.  It didn't make me angry.  It was super juicy and flavorful.  It made me happy!  My guess is it takes its name from "arrabbiata" which is Italian for "angry."  This is all due in part to the addition of red chile flakes.  It's not too spicy, it actually has the perfect amount of kick.  I served it with pasta and a yummy salad, but it would be delicious on a sandwich, in a salad or as an entree with any type of side dish.  Gotta love grilling season!

Don't you just love grilling season?

The Angry Chicken Party

In a large mixing bowl combine mustard, garlic,

Don't forget the cilantro,
red wine vinegar, salt, coriander
and  chili powder.

Don't forget the red chili flakes. 
That's the "angry" part.

Mix in the vegetable oil.

Pour over chicken and marinate 6 hours.

Remove chicken from marinade
and sprinkle with Cajun seasoning.

Grill chicken until cooked through.

Don't forget to occasionally
brush with butter.  Enjoy!

Salad Men Love (And Everybody Else Too!)

I love the name of this recipe.  And it's true.  I made it for my husband and my nephew and it passed the test.  My nephew is a salad junkie, and if he approves then we definitely have a winner.  I think they enjoyed it because it's a very simple salad, with just the addition of green onions, Parmesan cheese, and toasted almonds.  I enjoyed it because the dressing was made ahead and it made a lot.  The first time I tried this recipe, I used one package of mixed butter lettuce greens.  I had enough dressing leftover to make the salad again.  Try it!  Apparently men love it and you will too...

Yum!  A simple green salad...

The Salad Men Love Line-Up

Combine oil and sugar...

Add celery seed.

Don't forget the vinegar!

Add the onion juice and
minced garlic.  Shake well to combine. 
Refrigerate until ready to use.

Meanwhile toast the almonds
until just lightly toasted.
Watch them carefully so they don't burn!

To your salad greens,
add the chopped green onions
and toasted almonds...

Add the Parmesan cheese. 
(I used the whole carton.  What the heck! 
You can never have too much cheese.)

Add dressing and toss everything
well just before serving.

Hot Stuff: The Scoville Scale

We love hot stuff here at The Devilish Dish.  An entire shelf in our pantry is devoted to dried chiles and chile powders.  The shelves on the door of one our refrigerators is full of nothing but bottles of hot sauce.  I think it would be safe to label us Chile Heads.  For those of you that may not think a dream vacation is Hatch, New Mexico, or discussing the merits of spicy chili is pillow talk, I thought I would share some general information on peppers and hot sauces in general. 

The Scoville Scale measures the hotness or piquancy of a chili pepper.  The scale is named after its creator, Wilbur Scoville who developed a test for rating the pungency of chili peppers.  Chili peppers contain capsaicin, which is a chemical compound that stimulates nerve endings in the skin, especially the ones in your mouth!  The number of Scoville heat units indicates the level of capsaicin present in the pepper.  With that in mind, here is a small sampling of heat levels based on the Scoville Scale:

 15,000,000-16,000,000    Pure Capsaicin
     2,000,000-5,300,000    Standard US Grade Pepper Spray
        855,000-1,050,000    Naga Jolokia (Said to be the World's Hottest Pepper)
           350,000-580,000    Red Savina Pepper
           100,000-350,000    Habanero, Scotch Bonnet, Jamaican Hot Pepper
             50,000-100,000    Thai Pepper, Pequin Pepper
               30,000-50,000    Cayenne Pepper, Tabsco Pepper, Chipotle Pepper
               10,000-23,000    Serrano Pepper
                   2,500-8,000    Jalapeno, Guajillo, New Mexican, Anaheim, Hungarian Wax
                         100-500    Pimiento, Pepperoncini Pepper
                     No Heat 0    Bell Pepper

By looking at the scale, if you think those jalapenos on your nachos are hot, then you probably don't want anything to do with the habanero pepper!  We have a framed poster of the Scoville Scale, conveniently hanging by one of our pantries.  Incidentally it's the pantry that contains all of the hot peppers.  Not only is the poster decorative, it makes a great reference guide!

And here's the answer to the (pardon the pun) BURNING QUESTION OF THE DAY:

Q:  What is best to drink to cool the burning sensation of capsaicin?

A:  Milk products cools you off after eating chilies because the casein in the milk is a protein breaks the bond between pain receptors and the capsaicin.

Garlic Steak Sandwiches

This is one of my favorite recipes.  I am always excited when warm weather gets here and the soup pots go away and the grill comes out.  The recipe is simple, with just a few ingredients, but the garlic butter packs a lot of flavor.  And you can't beat the grilled onions.  Try this one for your next cook out!

The Garlic Steak Sandwich Party

Combine butter and garlic to create
the garlic-butter spread.
(This is known as a "compound butter." 
You can do this technique and mix
softened butter with herbs, peppers, citrus zest, etc.
to create flavorful combinations for rolls, fish and more.)

Season steak with salt and pepper.

Spread garlic butter on both sides of steak.

Spread garlic butter on rolls and set aside,
they get grilled last.

Spread garlic butter on onion slices.

Don't forget to season with salt and pepper.

Place onions on grill, and cook
until golden and caramelized.

Place steak on grill. 
Cook until browned and desired doneness.

Yummy yummy grilled onions!

Toast buns on grill. 
(Watch carefully so they don't burn.)

Let steak rest 10 minutes before slicing. 
(This helps it stay juicy.)

Serve steak slices on toasted buns,
topped with grilled onions.