Baklava!

Over the weekend, I consummated and gave birth to a gorgeous and wonderful thing. Together, it was nurtured and drawn out, slowly. It was a slow process. Sometimes, it hurt. Sometimes, we cried. But together, Erik and I created something so incredible, so delicious and brought magic into this world.

That magic was baklava.

So, baklava is this great Turkish dessert with nuts, honey syrup, and phyllo dough. It's layered with a ton of butter and cinnamon, and then baked in the oven, covered in syrup, and then 'frigerated and devoured quickly. It looks daunting. It is simple. We felt so accomplished, though, when it was done, and the result was incredible.

And here it is. Make it. Don't share it. Eat it in the confines of your own home with a good Sauternes and rejoice.

Ingredients (serves 2)
8 oz. phyllo dough
1 jar of almond butter, unsalted creamy
1 cup of butter
cinnamon, to taste
1 cup of water
1 cup of sugar
1/2 cup of honey

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and butter up a 9 x 9 pan. The recipe called for a 9 x 13 pan, but we didn't have one, and it made our baklava have a crispier crust because we had to double up on it. So it's good!
2. Starting with two sheets of the phyllo dough, fold in half and place in the bottom of the pan. It's important to keep the dough that you're not using moist so that it doesn't crack and dry out.
3. Melt the butter and sprinkle cinnamon into it, and with a pastry or clean paintbrush, spread it onto the phyllo dough layer. Repeat until you have eight pieces, and then spread a layer of almond butter on. Originally, this calls for chopped nuts, but the almond butter is much more moist and is better than anything we could come up with.
4. Layer the dough in sheets of two, nut butter, butter, dough, nut butter, butter, and repeat until the pan is full, like a lasagna, and layer the dough as a final layer, brush with butter and cinnamon, and cut into triangles or diamonds.
5. Pop into the oven for 12-20 minutes, or until golden brown and crispy on top. While this is baking, on the stove, combine the last three ingredients- water, honey, and sugar. Bring to a boil and then reduce and let simmer on the stove until sugar is dissolved and syrup is thickened.
6. As soon as baklava is out, smell it. It will smell amazing. After you're out of the amazing coma, pour the syrup out of the pan all over the baklava and don't stop until it's submerged and floating in it. Pop in the fridge until cool and translucent on the bottom and sticky and amazing.
7. Stick your face in it.

This will drive you insane. We ate this for days. This food is the most romantic, the most obscene, the most loving, cruel, delightful, wonderful, teasing, crazy dessert ever.

Baklava.

Do it now.

Foodette

Kettle Chips Fully Loaded Baked Potato

Kettle Brand came out with a new flavor of potato chip this year, that, oddly enough, I had a small part in helping create. It's a small world. So when I saw them in the stores with Erik, it was necessary that we try them. I do believe there's also a sample bag coming to me as thanks for helping create, too.

So these chips boast a plethora of flavors, with chives, cheddar cheese, garlic, sour cream, and bacon flavor, and they really do taste like potato skins. The best part is that the flavor really works with the potato, because the entire idea works around the fact that the base itself is a potato, so the idea translated well to a portable snack. The amount of seasoning varied from chip to chip, and I preferred it when there was more sour cream flavoring, but overall, they are really excellent.

Another point to note on is that the chips are extremely crunchy and carry a fantastically earthy and buttery potato flavor that doesn't get lost amidst the flavoring. The crunch is incredible, and many of the chips are large and unbroken in the bag. Any criticisms is that each bag, a paltry 5 oz, was $3 at our local grocery. Eeeek! Still, this is a huge winner from Kettle Brand.

Oh, and apparently Photo Booth takes photos backwards. Boo.

Trident Splash Orange Swirl

I can never pass up a new gum flavor, and this one spoke to me in particular. Who doesn't love an orange Creamsicle? Of course, that's a trademark, so Trident has called their gum Orange Swirl. It's been around for several months, but I only noticed it recently.

I'm not sure I love the "splash" type of gum. A liquid center is great in a fruit snack (like Gushers, my favorite brown bag lunch dessert), since it's just going to be swallowed soon anyhow. But with gum, it seems like a gimmick. Typically, the liquid gives a burst of flavor at the beginning, but it just doesn't last. Orange Swirl was no different.


The gum started with a liquid burst of tart orange, and then the cool and creamy flavors started to emerge. It wasn't a minty gum by any means, but there was a little bit of a cooling sensation. Within 30 seconds, it tasted like a watered down Creamsicle.

The initial juicy orange flavor was gone within a minute, but it still had some weak notes after 5 minutes. Throughout the chew, the texture of the gum was softer than I prefer. After 20 minutes, there was still a faint orange flavor, but I spit it out anyhow. I had no trouble finishing the pack, and while it wasn't a great breath freshener, it was a decent gum.

B

Read more reviews of this gum at Candy Addict and Gum Alert.

Trident website

Glee Gum

Molly from Verve, Inc. sent me all sorts of flavors of Glee Gum, which I chomped on all throughout my first semester. The flavors were all really ingenius and tasty, and the gum is all natural.
I tried the cinnamon and mint varieties first, and while they were strong and natural-tasting, so I got a nice burst of mint, I did notice that the gum tended to lose its flavor easily. A remediable issue, because all I had to do was pop another piece! The tangerine and berry flavors followed a similar suit, though they had more of a sugary flavor to them, and a weaker fruit taste. The gum had a great and crispy shell around it and a nice chew, too. I didn't find that the gum, unlike other gum, was sticky or too chewy or made my jaw pop.

If I had a favorite gum out of the Glee line, though, it would have to be the Wee Glee. These were adorable pieces of baby gum in all different flavors, much like Chiclets. It had four flavors in the box, which fit easily in my leather jacket's pocket, and each flavor was tasty separate, or mixed together. The only one that didn't really agree with me was the triple berry flavor, which I found to be a little too artificial tasting, despite not actually being artificial. I loved the banana, though. I'd have an entire Foodette Glee gum made of just banana if I could.

Overall, if you're a fan of the show Glee, if you're still using terms like "glee," in a Glee club, a fan of natural gum, or if you go bananas for delicious treats, try this. This gum was fun and tasty and a sweet kick-back to retro stylings.

Glico Almond Pocky

It's been a couple weeks since I've done a Japanese snack review, and even long since I've done a Pocky review, so I must be due. There was a lack of matcha sweets at the Japanese import grocer, so I branched out a bit and bought Almond Pocky.

Almond Crush Pocky, which is coated with crushed almonds (how fitting), has been around for years, but I had never seen regular almond Pocky before. Usually, my favorite kinds of Pocky are the ones with lots of chocolate and toppings (like decoration or mousse), but these are the standard, thin coating.


When I opened the bag, the scent reminded me of coffee. It didn't taste anything like coffee, though. The sticks were mildly sweet and had a slightly nutty flavor. The coating reminded me of peanut butter white chocolate in both taste and texture, but it wasn't overly sweet at all and went very well with the biscuit.

Before I realized it, I had eaten half of the pack. It was so addictive! I briefly thought I'd like a stronger almond taste with more of the cherry-like notes, but then the package was gone and I decided I liked them just the way they were. The sweetness was just right, and the creamy chocolate blended so well with the crunchy stick. Unfortunately, they were a limited release and are no longer listed on Glico's website. I wish I had bought more!

A

Glico website

Apple and Squash Risotto

A local chef ranted on their blog about not liking to accommodate special requests, but will do so...with some bitching. Oh, boy, did this chef bitch. About vegans, in particular.

What really got me was the example the chef used as an absurd vegan request — risotto.Sure, risotto tastes great made with butter, cream, and Parmesan cheese (probably tastes great with sausage, too), but when did risotto become a dish about dairy products? Not all risottos are made with cheese and cream; most seafood risottos aren't. And, not all risottos are made with butter; olive oil is often used.

Risotto is a dish with arborio rice, an Italian short grain rice, as it's star, not dairy. Creaminess comes, first and foremost, from slowly cooking the rice in small amounts of water or broth so as to coax out the rice's own starch.

Not sure why the chef got all frothy at the mouth about vegan risotto. It's quite simple to make, and make tasty.Apple and Squash Risotto
serves 4-6

4 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion
2 cups arborio rice
apples, peeled, cored and diced (about 1 1/2 cups)
butternut squash, peeled and diced (about 1 1/2 cups)
1/4 teaspoon curry powder
1 cup white wine (vegan wine if this matters to you, or skip if you don't do wine and just add more broth)
4 cups vegetable broth, warmed
salt and pepper, to taste

• Add olive oil to a large pot over medium heat. Add onions, and cook for 4 minutes until translucent.
  
• Add the rice, stirring well, and cook for 2 minutes.
• Add apples, butternut squash, and curry powder to rice. Cook for 4 minutes, stirring often.
• Add wine to the rice, stirring often, and cook until the wine has been completely absorbed by the rice.
• Add 1/2 cup of the vegetable broth, stirring often, until almost all of the liquid has been absorbed by the rice. Repeat this process, adding 1/2 cup of the broth at a time until all of the broth has been used. Add salt and pepper to taste during the cooking process. This process will last for about 20-30 minutes, or until the rice is tender, but al dente. The important thing here is to stay with the rice stirring the entire time.
  
• Risotto is best served immediately after cooking.
  

Chocomize Chocolate Bars

Nick from Chocomize let me pick my own chocolate bars to customize and review, and with all the selections, how could I not? So I designed three of them for your perusal and tasted them all, some with mixed reviews, some with not. And on with the show!
I was allowed three, and all are very hefty bars, I might add. I picked one of each base. My first was a milk chocolate base, and I wanted to create the ultimate, crazy Foodette bar, so I made it with Oreo pieces, peanut butter drops, toffee, bacon bits, and 23 karat gold flakes, for the extra decadence. When you make a bar, you're allowed up to five toppings per bar, and it really doesn't get overwhelming. My bar's toppings were amply spaced out and no one topping was clumped in a specific area. The milk chocolate was great, too. It snapped audibly when I broke the bar in two and had a milky, creamy flavor, with a fantastic taste, like a Cadbury bar.

The toppings were fresh and also good. If I had any complaint about this bar, it was that the toffee element was really lost. I got the peanut butter element just fine. The bacon was chewy and smoky and perfect, and provided a wonderful depth and juxtaposition with the chocolate, and the Oreo was crunchy and gave a different flavor of chocolate and dryness to the bar, and the gold was a great garnish, but I didn't get the toffee's buttery flavor that I was hoping to round it out. It was still great, though!The next bar was a dark chocolate bar base. When I made it, I was trying to think of elements that would compliment the dark chocolate and bring out some of its flavors, so I ended up topping it with hazelnuts, sea salt, poppy seeds, butterscotch, and crunchy almond croquant. Okay, so I'm a little misguided. None of that can be faulted by Chocomize, though, mainly by my own personal whim and pressure at seeing all the goodies to top on my bar! Chocomize's dark chocolate is another good bar, again, a snappy chocolate. It crumbled a little when I bit into it, but the flavor was creamy and smoky and had undertones of licorice in it. It was good, and held up to the toppings well. Some of the hazelnuts fell off of it.

The sea salt was ample on it, almost to a too sharp degree, and the poppy seeds added a nice crunch to the bar. The butterscotch might have been too sweet for my personal tastes, and the almond croquant was a good addition, it made it buttery and nutty and complimented the poppy seeds. The textural component was really interesting, overall.The last bar was, surprisingly, my favorite, because like Gigi from Gigi Reviews, I'm not as abhorrent about white chocolate, but it's really not my first choice. However, in picking ingredients that went well with white chocolate, Middle Eastern toppings, I picked a winner and found a combination that makes even white chocolate haters turn their noses towards this bar. The bar has sesame seeds, coconut flakes, hot curry powder, and crystallized mint leaves on it. The white chocolate itself was creamy and tangy, like a good yogurt, with a milky taste, much like its predecessors to it. I will say, even without the toppings, Chocomize makes a damned good chocolate. In this bar, the sesame seeds and curry were the predominant flavor, followed closely by the mint leaves, which provided a really nice cooling and sugary burst of flavor.

If I could have picked another element to add, it would have been ginger, though that might have conflicted with another hot element. The coconut added more crunch and was a creamy taste and buttery notion to bring to the heat of the curry. This was easily my favorite.