Summer brings memories of circus, fairs, carnivals, street festivals, fleas, farmers markets and the foods that go along with them.

I’m talking Corn Dogs, Fried Dough (Fry Bread), and the sweet & salty Kettle Corn that you thought you could only have on a hot summer afternoon, while standing in line for the Tilt-A-Whirl!

Kettle Corn, made on a large-scale for the fairs & festivals, usually involves a dedicated machine, with big copper pots.  However, Kettle Corn is really easy to make at home.  The trick is to constantly shake the pot.  Constantly.  And remove the pot when the kernels are popping every 2-3 seconds, and then keep shaking.

It does take a bit of practice to get this right — the sugar can burn too easily, if the heat is too high.  Make sure you are on a medium setting, and use an old pot – one that has seen  better times.  Burned sugar happens and it is a pain to clean.

I hope you enjoy this as much as we always have :)

Homemade Kettle Corn

1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup popcorn kernels
1/2 teaspoon salt (or to taste)

Heat the vegetable oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Once the oil is hot, stir in the sugar and popcorn. Cover and shake the pot.

Keep shaking the pot during the entire cooking process, to help keep the sugar from burning.

When the popping slows to every 2-3 seconds, remove the pot from the heat, and continue to shake until the popping has stopped. This will really keep the sugar from burning.

Pour the popcorn into a large bowl, salt to taste, and stir to break up any clumps, and allow to cool.

Once cool, store in ziplock bags…if you have any left ;)

Enjoy!

Variations:

• Use brown sugar, for a “caramel corn” taste
• Add in a teaspoon of cinnamon
• Add in 2 teaspoons maple flavoring, and 1/3 cup of walnuts
• Add in two tablespoons of your favorite hot sauce.  After you’ve poured out the popcorn, sprinkle with Cayenne Pepper

Butter Toffee Caramel Corn

2 cups brown sugar
1 cup butter
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1 teaspoon extract – vanilla, maple, almond — your choice
1/4 teaspoon cream of tarter
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
16 cups popcorn (popped!!)
salt to taste
3 cups nuts (mixed, cashews, pecans, or whatever you like)

Heat the oven to 300F.

Pop the popcorn.  I usually need to do two batches.  You can use microwave popcorn, but get unflavored, unbuttered and as “all natural” as you can.  Newmans Own is a good choice, as well as Orville Redenbacher’s “Natural”.

Line a baking sheet with parchment, and then pour the popcorn evenly over the sheet.  Sprinkle the nuts over the popcorn and set the baking sheet aside.

In a saucepan, mix the brown sugar, butter and corn syrup.  You can use light or dark corn syrup, but I prefer the light.  Heat to boiling, and then boil for 5 minutes.  Stir constantly.

Remove the pan from the heat and add in the cream of tarter and baking soda, stiring constantly.  This is going to foam up, just keep mixing it.  Stir in the flavoring.

Pour the mixture over the popcorn and mix well, coating each piece.  This gets messy!  If you have one of those gigantic mixing bowls that people like my Mother always seem to have, you can mix the popcorn in that, and then transfer it to the baking sheet.

Place the baking sheet in the oven and bake for 20-30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes.

Remove from the oven and allow this to cool, and then break apart.  Once it is totally cool, store in a tightly sealed container or a ziplock bag.

The Fun Of Cooking, from Beer or Wine

7 09 2008

Michelle:

When my mother was around 9, her own mother died. Being the girl of the family, with her father and brother as the males (and it being 1957, to boot), she was left to the cooking and cleaning.  She learned to cook a few good dishes, and, when she had visits with her Grandmother (rarely, as they lived about 700 miles apart), she was taught a bit more. Instead of being happy about cooking, she learned to hate it.

So, when I was old enough to have an interest in cooking, she let me make cookies, cakes, pies, breads and such.  But she didn’t teach me how to cook meals.  She didn’t want me burdened with having to cook.  About the only thing I did learn, other than how to bake (because that was a fun thing to do, according to her), was to prep vegetables and make popcorn.

Lets just put it this way – I could peel a potato really well, prep vegetables so that they look amazing, and I was an expert in the art of popcorn making.  When I first moved to New York, not knowing how to cook anything, I lived on popcorn and Dr. Pepper for about a year.  I still love popcorn, and can’t live without my Dr. Pepper ;)

I remember very clearly, one of my roommates in tears over my preparation of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.  I didn’t realize the water had to be boiling /before/ you put the macaroni in the water.  I ended up with a gluey mess that really wasn’t edible for most people, but being so hungry that I ate it anyway.  Anna, the roommate I mentioned above, taught me some of the basics – that you need to boil water before the macaroni is put in, that letting an egg sit in the pot full of warm water for about 10 minutes before you actually cook it, bringing the egg and the water to the same temperature, kept the egg from splitting and cracking when it was boiled.

Once I got married, I learned a whole new lesson – I knew next to nothing about cooking and my husband expected actual meals, as if by saying “I do” at the alter, it immediately made me a cook.  My whole experience of cooking up until then consisted of using a can opener to “make soup”, pre-packaged “add milk & butter, mix, heat  and stir” meals.  I didn’t know the difference between elbow, lasagna, or ziti pasta.  I didn’t realize that sausage for dinner was not the same thing as breakfast sausage.  And the only way I knew to cook chicken was to bake it with a can of some condensed cream soup.

So I got out the cook books I had received as gifts for my wedding – The Joy Of Cooking (1975 version of the book), and Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook.  I began reading The Joy Of Cooking and, though I really wasn’t interested in some of it (Sweetbreads, for example), it did teach me a lot.  I followed recipes literally and very exactly, with no deviation whatsoever.  I would pick up a cooking magazine, or a new cookbook every once in a while, and make a new recipe, or ask people for theirs.

Once I got familiar with cooking, I was still afraid of it.  It literally made me nervous.  I was always afraid what I cooked would come out terrible and I was unsure of techniques that the cookbooks talked about.  I didn’t understand even the simplest things – braising vs broiling, boiling vs simmering, saute vs frying.

I started to watch cooking shows, most notably, Emeril.  Though I really didn’t care for how he presented his show, I learned so much from him.  Namely.. how *not* to be afraid of cooking.  He made food seem fun.  He, it seemed, would just throw ideas together, and come up with good food.

But by far, the person who taught me to lose my fear of cooking forever was Alton Brown.  I’m one of those people who *need* to know What, Where, When, How and Why for everything, and Alton Brown, on his show “Good Eats” teaches just that.  The show can be silly, is always quirky, but is always full of useful knowledge about the what, where, when, how and why.  I’ve watched him since the very first episode 12 years ago, and always have fun learning new things.  Or just watching his interaction with “Thing” ;)

About the same time I discovered Alton Brown, I also discovered a magazine.  I was always buying cooking magazines, which were filled with hundreds of recipes.  There was usually some theme to the recipes, but these magazines always made me feel as if I was missing something.  One afternoon, I picked up Cooks Illustrated, took it home, and read it cover to cover.  The magazine contains no advertising at all, and usually contains between 10 and 15 recipes.  Not a lot at all.  But what the magazine lacks in quantity of recipes is by far made up for with the quality of the recipes themselves.  A typical recipe is given after a lengthy discussion about how the recipe goes together, how the author of the article made the recipe, what changes were made to it, and why.  And How.

So, between Alton and CI,  I learned cooking terminology, about pots and pans, knives and whisks; how to mix spices and herbs to create amazing flavor, why flavors work, and what flavors don’t, but most importantly I lost my fear of cooking and learned to love it.  And to love to experiment.  I would challenge myself to create new recipes, trying new things, with old things, and seeing what worked, and what didn’t.  I really had a lot of fun, and still do.

I’ve found out, over the years, that cooking is one of the things that makes me who I am.  I love to cook.  I’ve cooked for crowds of 75+, I’ve cooked 7 course fine dining type of meals; I can make fun and interesting amuse bouche; unusual appetizers that people actually beg for more.  But for the most part, I’ve learned to love simple foods, good flavors, create interesting ideas, and I’m never afraid to try something new.

Mexican food has always been a favorite of mine, and I enjoy making that type of food a lot, but I’ve learned to cook everything from Cuban, Brazilian,  Asian — Chinese, Korean, Thai, to Italian, Greek, Portuguese, and of course, a lot of regional American.

I’ve taken a couple of cooking classes, too.  Intro to Basic Cooking — where I learned why Kosher Salt is so much better to cook with, in certain dishes, and how to slice a tomato, and Knife Skills, where learned that a sharp knife won’t cut me and leave a bloody trail across the kitchen.  And Asian Fusion class — which wasn’t really my cup of tea, since the “Fusion” was French, and I’m pretty much a Non-French Food kinda person.

Since my divorce, I’ve cooked less — less people to cook for, but when I do cook, I have a blast doing it.  I have been teaching my son to cook over the last 2 or three years, and last year, I was persuaded by Sander to create a blog for my recipes.  I really enjoy sharing what I have learned, and the recipes I’ve created, or just recipes that I love there.

Madam Benoit says exactly how I feel about cooking:

“I feel a recipe is only a theme, which an intelligent cook can play each time with a variation.”

I guess, in conclusion, cooking, for me, is just a fun expression of myself, in the same way art is.   It can be masterful, or just ordinary, but it is always interesting.