Dog Days of Summer

As you all know by now, I have a little beagle named Otto, who I’m head over heels in love with.  I, of course, have no question that he is the cutest little guy on the planet, and like to take every chance I get to spoil him. 

That being said, he’s a bit of a problem child.  He has chronic allergies which means I have to be pretty careful about what he eats.  Being free of common allergens (wheat, corn, eggs, dairy, soy, etc.), these homemade dog biscuits are the perfect treat, not only for Otto, but for any dog. 

Here’s what you’ll need:

• ¼ cup coconut oil
• 1 Tablespoon molasses  
• 1 cup shredded apple
• 1 banana
• 1 cup Brown rice flour
• ½ cup oat flour
• 1 cup Rolled oats

This is really easy to put together, so go ahead and turn your oven to 350° before you begin.  Measure ¼ cup coconut oil, while it’s solid, and set it aside.  If you don’t have coconut oil and really don’t want to go buy some, you could probably substitute apple sauce, or maybe peanut butter.  I will be showing you another fabulous use for coconut oil in the near future, though, so just go buy some.   

Try not to flip it across the countertop and onto the floor like I did.

Peel and grate an apple.

Back to the coconut oil, place the bowl into the microwave for 15 – 30 seconds, until it’s mostly melted. 

Add the molasses.

Stir in the grated apple.   

Peel your banana (slicing is optional) and smash it with a fork. 

Add the banana moosh to the bowl, and stir. 

Add the oats.

Stir until they’re well incorporated. 

Add both flours, don’t worry about sifting or whisking, just dump them on top. 

Then stir them in.  The mixture will look somewhat crumbly. 

If you squeeze it in your hand, though, it should feel like a slightly stiff dough and should hold its shape nicely. 

If that doesn’t happen, add warm water, 1 tablespoon at a time until you get the right consistency.  I didn’t have to add any water to mine.  Press all the crumbles into a log/mound in the bowl. 

Move that to your rolling surface.  I rolled the dough on a sheet of parchment so it wouldn’t stick, but you could do it on a floured surface if you prefer.  Either way, press it into a disc shape. 

Then roll it until it’s about ½ inch thick.

I came across this cute dog bone shaped cookie cutter in a kitchen store awhile back, and picked it up figuring I’d get around to making these eventually.  It’s very little, so that I don’t have to worry too much about calories, but you can make any size and shape you want.  If you have a big dog, make big biscuits.  I made some of mine with a small round cutter, as well, just to mix it up. 

Push firmly, straight down with your cutter.  The cutout will probably stay inside the cutter, making it easy to move it to the baking pan and just gently pop it out. 

These aren’t really going to spread, so don’t worry about leaving a lot of room between them. 

Man, I am good.  Somehow I managed to get exactly the number of cuts out of the dough as it took to fill my pan. 

That’s not garbage, though. 

Scoop it together and press it into a square shape. 

Then roll it to ½ inch again.  The secret to rolling a square is to roll diagonally.  Roll toward each corner, going in a circle until to reach the thickness you want, pressing the edges together if they start to crack.

Then, using a pizza wheel cut it into rectangles.  Wow, I must have been cooking while intoxicated again.  Oh well, Otto doesn’t care one whit what shape they are.  If you want, you can actually cut them all this way, rather than using a cookie cutter.    

Place the pan of cut biscuits into the 350° oven and bake for 35 – 40 minutes.  They should be starting to brown on top.  You’ll also notice that your whole house smells amazing, and no one would ever guess you were baking dog biscuits.  You’re going to wish they were cookies for you by the time they’re done.   

Turn the oven off and prop the door open with something.  Allow the biscuits to cool in the oven for an hour or longer. 

When they’ve cooled completely, place them into an airtight container.  I like to use glass jars for stuff like this. 

Aren’t they just the cutest little things?  On top of that, you know exactly what you’re feeding to your little four legged friend.  They deserve the best, don’t they? 

And what does Otto think of them?  He absolutely loves them!  So much, in fact, that of all the pictures I tried to get of him eating them, this was about the only one that wasn’t a total blur of movement, chomping, licking, and tail wagging. 

What kind of dog do you have and what is his favorite treat? 

*Outtakes  

 

   

he found the pictures!

A couple years ago when I was visiting my sister and some friends in LA, I went to an awesome Mexican restaurant for a late night drunken after the art show dinner and this awesome stuffed poblano pepper covered with some kind of creamy walnut sauce...

When I told the story to Recipe Guy, he immediately knew I was talking about Chiles en Nogada and showed me how to make it. 

Then I got home and somehow managed to lose the picutes I took of the process.

Of course Recipe Guy has now shown me how to do a search by file type that looks everywhere on my computer. (really, it's a small laptop, things shouldn't be hard to find in it)

This post is dedicated to Recipe Guy. He's fucking awesome.

Chiles en Nogada

It looks fancy as all hell, but it's actually pretty easy. It can take a bit of pre-planning if you want to do it old school, but if you make a couple compromises, you could easily do this in about 45 minutes. If you want to impress someone, this is the way to do it.

The Chiles:

• 8 poblano chiles

We were planning on feeding 6, but it's best to do a couple extra in case you mess one up, and because someone always wants seconds.

The Filling (aka Picadillo):

• 1 lb ground pork
• 1 lb ground beef
• 1 onion
• 1 peach
• 2 apples
• 1/2 c currants (or raisins if you prefer, but if you do, you're weird)
• 1/2 c chopped dates
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1/2 tsp allspice
• 1/2 tsp oregano
• 1/2 tsp thyme
• salt

The Sauce:

• 1 c walnuts (plus milk to cover them)
• 4 oz cream cheese
• salt
• 2 c Mexican crema (this is the same as french creme fraiche)

or

• 1 c sour cream
• 1 c milk

To Make it Look Almost as Awesome as Recipe Guy is:

• 1 pomegranate
• cilantro

Old School Steps:

If you want the fast version skip forward to "What you gotta do."

If you want to go all the way and make your own Mexican crema (aka creme fraiche) heat 2 c of heavy whipping cream in the microwave to between 90 and 100 degree F.

Add 2 tbsp buttermilk.

Shake.

Cover and leave on the counter (yes the counter) for 24 hours. You might want to warn your cohabitants what you're doing. People have a tendency to refidgerate dairy products that they find on the counter.

Basically, you're culturing and souring milk here. Which is why you could also use a sour cream and milk combo as a time saving, planning-schmanning alternative.

The next old school thing you can do is roast the walnuts in a 350 degree oven for 10 minutes and then rub their skins off.

Tell me how it goes if you do because there's no way in hell I have the patience to remove skin from walnuts. They come shelled and that's good enough for me.

Since we were planning ahead with the crema, we also planned ahead with the nuts. You can soak the walnuts in milk overnight if you want to, but it's not necessary. If you do though, I totally recommend using the nutty milk in a savoury bread pudding. Best one I ever made was with the walnut milk.

Now that we've got the shortcuts out of the way, we can start cooking.

What you gotta do:

Grill the chiles over a medium high flame until the skin is blistering and blackening.

Dump them into a plastic bag and let them steam for a few minutes.

If you chop the onion, apples, peach, dates, and garlic while they steam, they'll be just cool enough to handle.

After steaming in a bag for a while, the skins will slide right off the chiles.

You'll probably have a few stubborn strips that hang on for dear life. You're free to beat them to death, or let them live, depending on what you have patience for (one guess at how much patience I had for them). Once you've got them all done, just set them aside while you make the filling.

The filling should take no more than 20 minutes if you chopped the fruits and veggies while the chiles were steaming.

In a large pan brown the beef and pork with the onion, and then add the spices

and then add the fruits.

Recipe Guy is fond of his mortar and pestle, and will grind whole spices into powder whenever he gets the chance. I know you're just going to use the pre-ground stuff and that's fine.

Cover the filling, turn the heat down to low, and you're done with it. It will probably need a stir from time to time, but really, that's all it is.

While it hangs out in the pan you can make the sauce.

Spoon the walnuts out of the milk and into the food processor. If yours haven't been soaking, just dump them in.

Add the cream cheese and the crema (or sour cream and milk) and the salt. This really needs salt or it comes off as kinda dessert-y. If you're using sour cream and milk, warm them to room temperature in the microwave, or take them out of the fridge before you start cooking. This sauce doesn't get cooked, but it shouldn't be cold either.

Turn on the food processor.

I find it's impossible to get this perfectly smooth, but once it looks about like this

I'm willing to call it done.

So, there you go. All of your components are ready to go. Well, except the garnish. You need to bust some arils out of the pomegranate.

Do this underwater in a large bowl and the arils will sink while the rest of the pomegranate floats. It also helps prevent pomegranate juice from getting everywhere.

Okay, now we're ready to go.

See, it's really not that bad when you think about it. Each of the components is pretty simple, and doesn't take too long to prepare. I mean, browning the meat probably took more time than everything else combined. If you're really into the planning thing, you could even roast the chiles the day before. They keep quite well in the fridge and will warm them to room temp on the counter while you do everything else.

To stuff the chiles, cut a slit down the side and remove the seeds.

(It goes a little faster if you remove all the seeds and then stuff all the chiles)

Let the chile rest in your palm and the slit will fall open.

Spoon in picadillo until it's nice and stuffed. Then, set it cut side down on a plate.

Don't worry if a few crumbs fall out. You're going to be covering this with sauce anyway. Even torn chiles can make it to the dinner table looking fancy if they're covered with enough sauce.

Spoon the sauce over the poblano

until it has a lovely white blanket covering it.

and then sprinkle with pomegranate arils and cilantro leaves.

Holy hell do they look impressive when they're done.

And if you work it right, you can do this all in less than an hour. If you preplan and do a few things the day before, you could probably even make this on a weeknight. But really, this is way too impressive to waste on a Wednesday.

What simple thing impresses you?