The path to Pastrami is through Corned Beef

I've been craving pastrami lately. You know, the good pastrami. The kind that's thick sliced and cooked for 12 days and makes the air smell like meat and melts in your mouth.  I was at the grocery store today when i had this epiphany: 'Hey wait a minute, I know how to make things(sometimes)!' So i grabbed a brisket. You ever just grab a brisket?

I didn't get any spices though. You know why? cause i live with Nanc. Nanc who has every spice known to man, without a second thought. Spices, flours, weird molecular gastronomy things like xylitol and agar agar and lorazepam (Okay, maybe not the last one). You name it, she'll pull it out of some nook or cranny you didn't even no existed. There's no real food in the house mind you, but boy does she not disappoint on the spice front.

She even had three things of dill weed! I don't know what you need dill weed for but apparently three jars worth of things. The only thing she didn't have was pink salt and i was like, "Wait a minute! i have pink salt from when i made bacon 7 years ago!" So i went down to the basement and found it right where i left it. You may be wondering why it's in the basement.

Notice that doesn't say pink salt. I didn't. I just was so excited I threw 5 teaspoons into a gallon of water and failed at being too proud at myself. It was only just now when i went back in time to see when exactly i made bacon that it occured to me that doesn't say pink salt. It's perfectly clear in this picture:

Dry Cure Rub: Kosher Salt/Sugar/Curing Salt

But it does contain pink salt or curing salt or prague powder or whatever you want to call it as long as it's not Dry Cure Rub. So i think we'll be fine. The Brine is basically 2 cups of salt anyway, so what's a little more salt? And sugar? Who doesn't like sugar? Oh, this is the recipe I used by the way, incase you're so inclined. 

So I made the spice and you actually make enough spice for two batches of corned beef because obviously you're going to do this all the time. I ended up using all our coriander so i just put the extra in that bottle and labeled it in my best handwriting. 

I was going to just throw the whole thing in because when am I going to do this again? But then i thought maybe one day Nanc will decide to make a corned beef, then look into her spice cabinet and say, "Look, my youngest daughter has contributed to my swaray soiree of spices at last! I'm so proud!" But probably she'll see it tomorrow and be like, "What the hell is this shit? Where's the coriander and what happened to all the salt? Oh we still have dill weed, phew."And then 7 years from now when i write my next blog i'll decide to make pickles and be like, "I have pickling spice!" and just throw it in then realize as i'm blogging that it was actually corned beef pickling spice which is not the same thing at all, then i'll shrug and say, "Eh, it'll probably turn out okay."

At this point you may be thinking, "Hey, hold up a sec! I thought you were making pastrami, but that clearly says corned beef. What's up with that?" Unless you read the title where it was heavily implied. Pastrami is in fact, dolled up corned beef (Though pastrami can also be made from the 'naval end' which is right next to the brisket and supposed to be better. Whatever.). Crazy right? You just rub some more seasoning into it, then smoke it (or oven it as will be the case in this scenario) and it's a whole different ballgame.

This is what corned beef pickling spice and salt and water look like when their being heated up.

So now this has to cool to below room temperature so it doesn't cook the brisket. I put it on the back porch because it's snowing so i feel like that's below room temperature.

So now we just wait. Speaking of waiting I was sitting in traffic yesterday morning and I say this gem:

Definitely where i'm sending my kids. Kidding! I don't have any kids. So now the brine is cool enough to add the brisket too. 

So we just put it in the fridge and leave it there forever. Tune in next time (maybe) for when a corned beef evolves into a pastrami. 

Not a Volcano Cake

I'm in California visiting DPL and I was like, "I"m gonna cook a ton!" and then I cooked, like, once. Well, and a half, but I kind of want to forget the half part. So today Princess is coming over and yesterday when i was being overly ambitious I was like:

Then I woke up today and was like, "I don't want to do that shit."

*Side note: did  you know you can't take screen shots of netflix? It's just a black picture where the video is but still shows the controls. I literally had to take a picture of my ipad with my phone which is definitely probably illegal.

Anyway, I was like, "Well we have to do something." So I searched the kitchen and found this:

And was like, "Sweet! I'll make a bunch of different color cupcakes and ice them with different color frosting. Perf! The dye colors are green, yellow, blue, red, and purple:

Clearly you can see two things from this picture. I had peanut butter toast for breakfast and that is not fucking purple. What a disappointment! But also I made way more of the right blue (Cerulean?) then any of the other colors so I was like, "I'll try to make purple with the leftover!" Also this reminds me of the scene in Hook where Peter Pan gets full off make believe food because he uses his imagination. Totally legitimate food source, you are the Pan.

I mixed some red into the blue and was like, "Actually this is kind of pretty, I wonder if this will work in the cupcakes!" Spoiler Alert: It doesn't.

I spilled a little of the Cyan? into the Yellow mini cupcake when I attempted my 'Swirl Maneuver.' And I was like, "Should I try to scoop it out?" And, lets be honest, I would probably just make more of a mess. So anyway:

Tada! Turns out the cupcakes really where purple. Who knew? The red, yellow, and Celeste? are the best ones (personal preference, of course). I think if I were even to do this again I would just use those, but I wouldn't ever do this again, so really the point is moot. While they were cooking I remembered that DPL had three bananas that were browning:

And asked me to make something with them, and I was like, "Shit." So I came up with the brilliant idea of filling the cupcakes. So I looked up a banana filling but it sounded dumb, also apparently most people use plain filling to fill banana cake mix, because they have foresight which I don't. So Then I made a regular filling with cream cheese, butter, a shit-ton of powdered sugar, and milk. Then I added two bananas and regretted it. So i tried to thicken it with some flour and that failed, so i read up on fillings with bananas and heard a little something about gelatin, which I'll pick up with Princess when she finally decides to wake up and get her ass over here. Anyway this looks like someone vomited up porridge:

But everything is gonna be okay. Except when I try to remove the cupcakes from their shells. 

I guess you should never try to force anything out of it's shell, but, like, really?! It even says don't spray them!

I mean it's probably because I slightly overcooked them, but still! I'm done with you Vibrant Collection. 

But also now what the fuck am I gonna do, cause I can't fill them! And then it erupts with in me, like an eruption, it comes to me. I'll make a Volcano! 

So then princess arrived:

and so did Mongo. Mongo is Harvey's son (like, for serious) so he probably was just upset his mother was unrepresented. Understandable. 

And then we went shopping. I was like, "How are we going to make the frosting brown? " But then thankfully we needed Gelatin which made us go down the baking aisle and we discovered the existence of pre-made CHOCOLATE frosting. Duh. So then we just bought that and a ton of other stuff we no longer had to make, and went with it: 

Then we did our Mexican beer tasting:

Princess here! let's take a break from well thought out rational discussion and go on a rambling journey about beer. i'm gonna be talking about this taste test for a minute while my bff collects her thoughts and starts her outline. so the first struggle with this test we had was how to make it blind? but luckily my friend here had a genius plan: tinfoil! so we started wrapping them, and i had a technique down and told her to quit trying cuz i'm gonna make it perfect. and i did (accurate), except for the fact that they kept trying to unwrap themselves from their cozy little blankies and there was no tape to be found(In, like, the entire fucking house. We did find some really cool markers though.  DPL for Christmas I'm going to buy you an office supply organizer... or better yet: some tape!). but we persevered, and wrote numbers on the aluminum foil and the tops so we could keep going back to test. luckily the tin foil really wanted us to succeed today so we encountered no issues and got to tasting.

The first ones we tasted were all pretty mellow and lightish, imo good for daytime drinking, and then towards the end they got heavier. and all were pretty mediocre really. so we wrote down our thoughts on cute pieces of paper that my buddy here personalized with fantastic custom art <3 there were a couple that i straight up hated, and one that i loved, and a few that were pretty decent if you're into day drinking, which i'm not but sometimes a girl gotta do it ya know.

so for me the winning beer, #6, was the closest to the type of beer i normally drink, which is ipa ofc, how unoriginal :/ but this beer was heavy with a clean finish and no aftertaste, which is easy because i'm super picky about aftertaste. the second beer, #4, i chose because it was bland and had very little aftertaste which is good for daydrinking, which as i said a girl just gotta do sometimes. it reminded me of champagne a bit (disagree). the third and fourth beers tied, #1 & #3, they tasted soooo similar but one was a touch creamier than the other but to my taste had a slight metal aftertaste, like can  (#3). the rest of them i wasn't a huge fan of so i just ranked them until i was left with the worst tasting at the bottom.

and that's the story of my taste test. i think my girl is ready to go on.

So that was very thought out and nuanced. My thoughts were more like, "Is this Tecate? Maybe." It wasn't. So I'm pretty with Princess on the fact that this is good day drinking beer, but not really a beer I would sit down to enjoy. Anyway we differed on most of our thoughts but agreed that Modelo Negro was definitely the best (#6) Princess had #4 second which i had last so agree to disagree. That one is called Moatejo which I'd never heard of before and never care to again. For my 2nd/3rd and Princesses 3rd/4th we both had #1/3 which is Pacifico and Modelo (aka model especial) which I agree with and am not convinced they're not the same beer. I actually couldn't tell you what beer I was drinking when I was drinking it, but i've always said Modelo and Pacifico were the best Mexican beers (*cough Scotty *cough). Anyway I had Corona, Estrella Jalisco, Tecate, and Moatejo as my order for the rest. Princess had Tecate, Estrella, and Corona for hers. Princess actually tasted the Corona and was like, "Eww, this tastes like Corona." Which was accurate. Clearly she just doesn't like Corona.  

So while princess was writing this I was constructing the Volcano, but first I was fighting with banana filling. But apparently gelatin does not a Banana Icing make, so I just randomly dolloped some into the volcano and held it together with a can of cheese whiz (aka Betty Crocker orange icing)

Just ignore the banana splooging out. So at this point princess takes over:

Pipe that shit! 

So good! Magma time: Wait, but first Cocoa Krispie texture:

Now Magma:

Smeared:

Pre-made tubed icing is the best. Here's Princess with the water:

here i am sprinkling like a champ. the water was fun to make, i just squirted it all over the cookie sheet and then smoothed it out with a knife, and sprinkled sugary sparkles all over the edges to make it look like beautiful waves crashing from afarrrr. ahhh i can feel the salty spray from here.

we also made some trees out of twix and apple gummies. we used toothpicks to make them extra secure but gosh they were unwieldy. falling over constantly and getting icing all over them, it was a mess. like seriously chocolate frosting is all over everything, my hands and my face and my shirt and the counters and my bff, you get the point. 

So here's some more magma:

And a perfectly finished Volcano!!

Clearly amazing from all angles. Anyway Scotty brought home some dried ice so here are some totally awesome eruption shots:

 The End.