Puffed Wheat Squares

It had been too long, so we made these this week - just in time for Thanksgiving and the pre-Christmas lack of baked goods (ha ha).

I owe this recipe to The Casual Baker, who notes (rightly, in my experience) that these squares are a rural prairie food known only to us Canadians. Good for us, but let's share. I might say the same of poutine, tourtière, butter tarts and Nanaimo bars. . .

Puffed Wheat Squares

1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup corn syrup
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 tablespoons cocoa
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
6 cups puffed wheat

Measure out puffed wheat in a heatproof bowl. Lightly grease a 9-inch square baking pan. Set both aside.

Combine butter, corn syrup, brown sugar, cocoa and salt in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat. Stir constantly with a wooden spoon for 2 minutes before removing from heat. Add vanilla and stir briefly to combine.

Pour the hot mixture over the puffed wheat and quickly stir to coat evenly. Pour the coated cereal into the greased baking pan and use a damp spoon or hands to press the mixture evenly into the pan.

Cool and slice.

Candied Orange Peel

J.G. gave Baby D a very special Christmas gift last year: homemade pan forte. I'll post the complete recipe, but for now just wanted to note that I suspect one of the reasons his pan forte was so delicious was because of the homemade candied orange peel (totally unrelated to those little plastic bins full of little plastic-y tasting orange coloured bits) he used to make it.

In the hopes of replicating his gift (this year and for all years to come!) we are making our own candied orange peel. The recipe is simple, but man, this stuff is GOOD!

So, from Bon Appetit (12/08):

It takes a day or two for the peel to dry, so plan ahead

Yield: Makes about 2 cups 2 large oranges, 1/4 inch of top and bottom cut off 4 cups sugar, divided 3 cups water Cut peel on each orange into 4 vertical segments. Remove each segment (including white pith) in 1 piece. Cut into 1/4-inch-wide strips. Cook in large pot of boiling water 15 minutes; drain, rinse, and drain again. Bring 3 cups sugar and 3 cups water to boil in medium saucepan over medium heat, stirring to dissolve sugar. Add peel. Return to boil. Reduce heat; simmer until peel is very soft, about 45 minutes. Drain. Toss peel and 1 cup sugar on rimmed baking sheet, separating strips. Lift peel from sugar; transfer to sheet of foil. Let stand until coating is dry, 1 to 2 days. DO AHEAD: Wrap and freeze up to 2 months.

YUM!!!

Rabbit

Several months ago, fresh rabbit meat arrived in town. I am ashamed to admit that we've only made rabbit stew once, but it was delicious, and even the small one loved it.

I don't have an exact recipe, but basically we browned a few slices of bacon in a pan and removed them. Then we jointed our rabbit into 8 pieces, dredged it in flour, salt and pepper, and then browned it in bacon fat. We removed it from the pan and added a large onion, diced, and six cloves of garlic (whole). We sprinkled them with some flour, added a few tbsp. of doppio concentrato, some generous glops of wine, put the rabbit and diced bacon back in, sprinkled the whole thing with some thyme and then sat it on a low-heat burner for a long, long time.

The meat fell off the bone; we almost fell off our chairs with fullness.

Very much worth trying again.