It's alive!

Well well well, it turns out that I am indeed still alive and kicking.

It's been almost 6 months since my last post, which was in fact the introduction to my awesome kitchen.
So why haven't I made any posts since then?

It's simple. I haven't been cooking or baking. :(

Well, obviously I've cooked and baked in the last 6 months, but nothing new. Nothing worth writing about.
This, in essence, is the problem with my food palette. I work late, come home, don't much feel inclined to any experimentation, cook something ridiculous like instant pasta or a burger, and then put my feet up to relax. This problem is then compounded further by the fact that for the past several years my routine has been extremely unpredictable, so even if I wanted to prepare something ahead of time, there has always been at least a 50% chance of me not getting to do anything with it, and having to throw it away.

This constant monotony of instant pasta, instant burgers, instant pizza and just instant junk-food in general can get... boring, to say the least, so I want to try to change things up a bit, but honestly it's not easy to find the enthusiasm for cooking when I get home.

As of last week I have started evening classes that have a very set schedule and end at 7:30-9:30 in the evening (dependent on days of the week), which means that I can actually do some planning around them, so now I'm on a mission:
I want to find dishes that taste good (or at the very least good enough), are extremely simple to create, require as little effort as possible to make and clean up after, are rather high in energy and fat content (to keep my spirits up and body working), keep for a decent amount of time in the fridge before making (I prefer to shop in the weekends), keep well as leftovers if made in such quantities, and most importantly... are neither instant pasta or hamburgers ;)

I know this is asking rather a lot of the world, but hopefully I can build myself a catalog of dishes that can enrich the lives of myself and all the other singles out there looking for a simple meal.

Until then, it's just me and the same old tired instant goodness.

The kitchen - A place of construction (and destruction)

It will not surprise anyone that knows me when I say that I love to eat.

"Well yeah.. doesn't everybody?"

No.. not really. Some people just 'do it'. I love it :)

It's not that I'm a foodie or anything (a term I have just recently learned existed), but I love both making food and eating it.
I am also lazy!
So even though I love to cook, I usually can't be bothered. Mostly, though, it's because I live alone and honestly it's just not any fun cooking for one. That's when I resort to 10 minute pasta meals and burgers and simple and easy stuff like that. Not exactly the best for you, but it's loaded with energy at least and makes me happy :)

When I moved out from my parents' home, I bought an apartment that had a pretty decent kitchen, but I hadn't really discovered cooking so it was mostly wasted. Since I moved out here to Reykjavik I've lived in quite a few places that had inadequate kitchens, and my latest abode is no exception.

Alas, one does what one can with what one has at hand.

Before truly starting the blog, I wanted to share with you my vast and incredible kitchen. Here it is, in it's entirety :)

As you can see, I live in a tiny basement studio and there's absolutely no room for anything at all.

I did buy the fan over the stove, which gained me a shelf for my spices, but it sucks having the spices up there gathering fat... so they need to be cleaned quite regularly.

The stove is about as old as I am, but it does it's job flawlessly. The oven, too, is still working as it should, so I can't complain there. My freezer is about the size of a glove-compartment, which doesn't exactly help with the storage of leftovers and supplies. Then I have a total of two drawers, both tripple-stacked, and four small cupboards to store everything in.

It's tiny, it's hot, it's crusted with decades of dirt which won't come off, and I hate it.

But it's home, so what can you do? :D

Chocolate Covered Corn Flakes

Chocolate-covered Corn Flakes

I will freely admit that I have, as they say, a bit of a sweet tooth. In fact, I have a mouthful of teeth and as my dentist can verify, they are quite a lot more than just "a bit" sweet. I'll grant you that this DOES have some influence on my overall girth, but I have been somewhat blessed in that despite my excessive consumption of unhealthy and fattening and tasty and gorgeous, I am still only slightly over weight.

This, then, allows me to spend my weekends (between cleaning house and whatnot) with my feet up in front of the TV, or in the kitchen making something fun.... to be consumed with feet up in front of the TV ;)

Today was a Sunday, and a typical one in that I was lazy. Where most people hate Mondays, I hate Sundays. Well no... I don't hate them.. they're just boring.
Anyway, as I lay on my couch and watched a movie, I thought that I would really enjoy something sweet and tasty. My cupboard is full of cookies and chocolate biscuits and candies and what have you, but nothing fit the craving I was having. I wanted non-milk chocolate (both for my lactose intolerance, and just for the taste) and all I had were milk chocolate products. I also wanted something quite sweet.

Being lazy didn't exactly inspire me to leave the apartment to buy something tasty, so I figured... "Hey! It's time you learn how to make something new and simple!".

And what could be simpler than this fabulously simple, yet tasty nugget of fun:

The Chocolate Covered Corn Flakes candies.

Ingredients:
There are precisely two ingredients:

• A nice glob of regular, run-o-da-mill, sugary and sweet, Kellogg's® Corn Flakes.
  I measured it for fun and it's about 3.5 cups worth, or about 0.8 liters (It's volume, not weight, that counts, but it's about 130gr. if you want to know).

• 400gr of nice dark (45+%) non-milk chocolate.
  I use the Icelandic Síríus Suðusúkkulaði. It's magnificent.

This yields somewhere around 30 candies (serving for one!), and can be sized up indefinitely ;)

Preparation:

Cut 300gr of the chocolate (or use these tiny chocolate droplets/pellets if you prefer) into small bits and put in a bowl to melt over a pot of hot water.
Once the chocolate reaches 45°C, take the bowl off the pot (be careful.. the escaping steam can burn!) and wipe the bottom dry (any water will ruin the chocolate) before pouring the chocolate into a cold/room temp bowl.. preferably one of metal.
Add a further 100gr of chocolate bits and let the whole thing melt while the mix cools down to 27°C (this takes about an hour in my home, because it's so hot in here :)
Once it reaches 27°C, pour it back into the other bowl, put it back on the pot (I just keep the pot running at lowest possible temp to maintain the water temp) and slowly heat the chocolate back up to 31°C, stirring it regularly.
Finally pour the gorgeous 31°C chocolate over the Corn Flakes and carefully fold the two together without crumbling all the Flakes :)

Sidenote:

Melting and Tempering chocolate can be done in many different ways, and my method is really a 'cheap' way out. It doesn't take too much time and effort, and it at least somewhat tempers the chocolate. I have done this without the tempering, but I find that the resulting chocolate lacks a certain 'crunch' (which I love) and is more messy and melts more easily (which I don't particularly love) so I try to temper it.

Beautifully golden mix. Very difficult not to eat.

Using a small spoon, scoop up the lovely mixture and put appropriate amounts in small cupcake forms. The amount in each form is basically dictated by how big/small you want your candies. Since I like them fairly bite-sized, I use the much smaller forms, or only half-fill standard cupcake forms.
Once that's done, throw the forms in the fridge for about an hour.

Once hardened, the dark chocolate gets... dark.

I prefer to eat them chilled and crunchy, while others might want to serve them at room temperatures. Either way, you're going to be messy and happy!





Enjoy!

Oh, and as a fun fact, here's the recipe's
Nutritional Information:

 

The First Post

Hello there, and welcome to my blog.

Cooking In The Wild, is meant to be a blog about my love of all things regarding eating and drinking and having a good time.

I am in no way a 'food snob'.
I do not dwell on calories, carbs or trans-fats.
I do not put emphasis on things being healthy, or in fact even remotely good for you.
I prefer my meals to be plentiful and tasty, rather than beautiful and tiny.

I guess that makes me somewhat of a low-class gastronome, but I am generally low-class anyway so who cares ;)

The "In The Wild" part refers to my having left the comforts of my mother's cooking, and being a single male with absolutely NO previous experience in home cooking. It basically revolves around me wildly flailing about in ignorance while I attempt to learn on my own what others all seem to know by instinct.

I am cooking in the wild, untamed and unbridled, making mistakes but learning from them and slowly getting better.

Welcome to my journey! It's going to be one tasty ride!