Full disclosure:  the following recipe includes a cake mix.  Whew.  I feel better getting that off my chest up front.

Any cook faces the need to balance time investment with quality.  This calculation isn’t foreign to professional chefs, who have dozens of tricks and shortcuts at hand every night to expedite restaurant service.  After all, when you have a team of prep cooks, making demi-glace from scratch becomes quite a bit easier!

For the home cook, though, striking that balance can be trickier.  I have yet to make fresh pasta at home, for example, because it just doesn’t seem to be worth the effort.  Have you seen Alton Brown’s homemade ravioli episode?!  It is NOT a quick technique compared to, say, buying frozen ravioli and tossing them into salted water for a few minutes.  (Our Italian readers should feel free to flay me in the comments for that…)

And that’s not the only example – I love making my own pizza dough when I have the time, but the 2-hour rise really throws a wrench into my dinner’s timing.  I also enjoy making roasted broccoli for a dinner party – it doesn’t get much simpler than olive oil, salt, pepper, and a broiler – but it’s quite a bit messier than simply steaming a crown or two for a few minutes, and there are always times when my desire to avoid a messy kitchen will win out.

I was perusing some recipes from my sister’s kitchen recently and it struck me:  I’m sure we all have a few family recipes that crop up again and again at the dinner table because they’re just so darn easy.  One set of family friends I have, for example, made spaghetti and meat sauce every Monday night for dinner.  It was a wonderful family ritual – the sauce came together quickly, boiling pasta is a snap, and then you just have to warm up some bread (sourdough rounds were a favorite in that house).  Needless to say, it was also a cheap way to feed three growing children, and in fact, the kids’ friends would often stop by for spaghetti even when the kids were all off at college! It was that popular!  To this day, making spaghetti with a red sauce brings me back to innumerable evenings over there, finishing homework and waiting for dinner.

This recipe is an example of that kind of nostalgic, quick and easy cooking for me.  It’s a dessert that pulls together easily – about 30 minutes of work for a whole pan of chocolate squares – and always makes a splash.  Sure, it’s not quite as classy as you’ll get out at a restaurant, but I’ve never failed to impress with it.  It’s an incredibly rich kind of turtle brownie, so make sure your tasters know what they’re getting in to up front.  I prefer these without nuts, but it wouldn’t hurt to top with pecans or walnuts before baking if you’re so inclined.  The recipe itself is the height of simplicity – 5 ingredients and a 9×13 pan, and you’ll be the toast of your coworkers (or you’ll be cursed by anyone on a diet…) Either way, they’ll be talking about you!

I also strongly suggest cutting these small and sharing widely.  Seriously, there’s a stick of butter in here, and while your inner Paula Deen will love it, the sugar crash can be brutal if you have too many.  I swear, though – totally worth it.

Caramel Layer Chocolate Squares (or Turtle Brownies Without Nuts, but this is a family site)

Ingredients

1 box devil’s food cake mix

2/3 cup evaporated milk, divided

1/2 cup butter, melted

14 oz package caramels (the ones that come individually wrapped)

12 oz chocolate chips

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Unwrap all of the caramels and place in a saucepan over low heat with 1/3 cup of the evaporated milk.  Stir until melted and smooth, then set aside.

Combine cake mix, 1/3 cup evaporated milk, and the melted butter.  Mix until uniform.  Divide the resulting dough into two parts and set one of them aside.  Press the remaining half of the dough out into a 9 x 13 pan using a spatula.  You’ll have to spread the dough fairly thin to cover the whole pan, but don’t worry – it will rise nicely as it cooks.  Also, don’t worry about greasing the pan – there’s enough butter in here to keep things non-stick.  Bake for 6 minutes, then remove from the oven.

Sprinkle the chocolate chips evenly over the cooked crust.  Pour the caramel mixture over the chocolate chips, again, as evenly as possible.  Then drop crumbled pieces of the remaining dough over the caramel.  Try for even distribution, though it’s not necessary to fully cover the caramel.  They’ll look quite nice with spots peeking through.

Bake for 20 additional minutes, then allow to cool completely before cutting into bars.  I do mean completely, by the way – these bars will be almost liquid when they come out of the oven.  Allow at least an hour in a relatively cool kitchen – I usually leave them overnight and put them on a plate for my officemates the next morning.

Enjoy!

-HML

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This week, I had a craving for a good homemade burger.  I’m not hugely picky with my burgers – I’ve tried a couple of the famed gourmet burger joints in the DC area, and they’re generally quite good, but I prefer one I can make up at home, just the way I like it.

But I’m faced with a burger problem:  my apartment complex doesn’t allow residents to have grills.  They’ve got a couple available to all residents by the community room, but I never end up wanting to make the trek over there.  And when the weather’s bad?  Forget it.

Surely, I thought, I’m not condemned to skillet-seared burger patties for all my days?  I like a good skillet-cooked burger, but it’s so messy.  Grease gets everywhere on my stove, and even with my biggest skillet, I only have room for three, maybe four patties at the most.  I suspect many of our readers around DC and the surrounding area are in the same boat – I’m told it’s illegal to put a grill on a balcony in Arlington County, for example – and I figured there had to be a kitchen hack that I could put to good use.  I considered buying Liquid Smoke or trying out a grill pan, but then I came across a suggestion to try roasting.

I was initially skeptical about the technique, as a good burger is usually seared or grilled at high heat to produce a beautifully browned, flavorful crust.  But the high heat means that it’s easy to overcook your burger, leaving you with a dried-out, inedible meat puck.  I’ve been to far too many family functions with those.  And forming them is especially important when grilling – if you don’t put a dimple into the patty, you’ll end up with the dreaded “flying saucer”-shaped burger.  Roasting, though, gets around a couple of those problems.  High-heat roasting still gives you some of that nice browned outside, though obviously not as much as you’d get on the grill.  But the real advantage is that it keeps the burger flavorful and moist.  And best of all, it’s an incredibly easy method.  I put my trusty probe thermometer in the biggest patty and then put my feet up until they hit temperature.

Give this technique a try next time the stove is clean and you don’t want to mess it all up.  I also think this would be a great way to cook for a crowd – 8 burgers could easily fit on a roasting pan, and since they only take 10-12 minutes to cook, you could keep more batches coming to feed a bigger group.  You won’t be stuck outside watching the grill the whole time, and you’ll be better company for it!

Roasted Hamburgers

Inspired by The Amateur Gourmet’s review of Molly Steven’s cookbook, All About Roasting: http://www.amateurgourmet.com/2011/10/oven-roasted-hamburgers.html

2 lbs ground chuck

1 ½ tsp kosher salt, plus more for the roasting pan

½ tsp smoked paprika

½ tsp onion powder

1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

Hamburger buns and your favorite toppings

Preheat the oven to 475 degrees.  Line a roasting pan with a sheet of foil and sprinkle generously with kosher salt to absorb drippings, then set a cooling rack into the pan.

Break the beef up into small chunks in a large mixing bowl.  Add the salt, smoked paprika and onion powder (and feel free to substitute other spices if preferred – seasoned salt or garlic powder would be nice here, too).  Mix gently with your hands and divide into 6 equal portions.  You can use a scale to be exact if you’d like, but I just eyeball it.  Shape into patties (gently; work them too hard and your burgers will toughen up) and lay out on the cooling rack in the roasting pan.  Apply a healthy dollop of Worcestershire sauce to each patty and insert a probe thermometer into one burger.

Roast for 10-12 minutes or until the burger reaches about 135 degrees for medium-rare to medium.  Add your favorite cheese if desired and put back into the oven for a minute or so to melt.  I’m a cheeseburger purist – my burgers come with American, darn it – but you can change it up if you’d like.  Serve on a bun (or not!  We’re still low-carb in my household!) and garnish with pickles, onions, tomatoes, or any other burger topping you’d like.

Enjoy!

-HML

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