But for all the years I’ve spent hoping that February would just be over faster, that it would just end painlessly, or best yet, that it would be cancelled due to lack of interest, this year was a rarity. Packed with runs, races, birthday parties, and a cake undertaking, not to mention mailing cookies all over creation and accidently getting quite drunk a few times, February flew by! And all of a sudden, on Thursday evening, I realized with a start that February was almost over, and I hadn’t  even THOUGHT about what I was planning to make for Gourmet Unbound!
It appears that Gourmet didn’t much like writing in February, since the majority of the recipes I found on Epicurious appeared to be variations on things I’ve done recently, or involve seafood (which is risky-at-best when purchasing it at my neighborhood grocery store). The one recipe that caught my attention in a big way was a Cheddar Jalapeno Bread from the March 2007 issue. After taking a mental inventory of the contents of my cupboards and fridge, I decided I could throw this together after the USA-Canada Gold Medal hockey game, and have bread for Monday’s dinner.

Turns out, I had far fewer canned pickled jalapenos left than I thought. LUCKILY, I save leftovers of everything , so when I made cranberry-chipotle relish back in November, I saved the last 2 chipotles and their adobo in a tupperware in the fridge. So when I realized I only had 1 pickled jalapeno left, I did what a resourceful cook does, and I diced up 2 chipotles and added them to the dough along with a teaspoon or so of the adobo.
I also used pre-shredded cheese. I hang my head in shame. But it was tasty and easy.
I did my best to follow this recipe exactly, despite all the urges I as a bread baker had to add more flour when I saw how wet the dough was. It’s apparently supposed to be very wet. The bread comes out of the pan after baking with a nice, somewhat airy crumb, no huge air holes but not dense like a brick, either. It’s pleasantly spicy, not overly cheesy, and quite tasty when sliced, broiled and smeared with butter.

Not, ahem, that I’d know anything about that….
In summation, this is a good recipe, although I think that some tinkering could definitely be done with it. I’ll probably mess with it more in later posts, trying to find my own perfect iteration of Cheesy-Jalapeno bread. But for now? This was a great way to end February and say What up to March.

I’ve been looking at this recipe for a while on epicurious.com for leek bread pudding, which sounds super good.  Although the more I thought about it, it felt like it was kind of missing something, and we all know by now that I can’t just leave well enough alone with a recipe, I have to mess with it.  The first thing I decided to do was to take away some of the ridiculous salt they have you put in as well as some of the butter and make up for it by adding a couple slices of diced pancetta (I KNOW, I add bacon to everything, but seriously how is that bad?).   I also traded out the emmentaler for havarti, which was not entirely based on flavor, rather than price.  In small town Ohio, good and affordable cheeses and breads are kind of difficult to find (I was shocked too), so I have to make do with what I can.  I love havarti because its so creamy and delicious, but I think you could substitute for pretty much any cheese that melts smoothly.

I added the pancetta to the sautee pan with the leeks so that they absorbed all the pancetta-y deliciosity.

Make sure you cook the leeks until they are extremely soft.  They should fall apart fairly easily when you press them with a spatula.  Some of them will get a little brown and crispy (same with the pancetta), but the rest should almost melt.  That way they will absorb into the bread with the custard and bring its flavor with it.

I also used a little extra cheese when I was layering, because you really can’t go wrong with cheese.

Luckily for me, this turned out really well and when I pulled it out of the oven I felt like I was on Food Network Challenge transporting my 6 foot tall muppet cake to the table without destroying it, because leave it to me to get through this whole recipe and then drop it on the floor as I lift it the one foot up from the over to the stove top.  Thanks to a steady hand and a prayer to the food gods, I was successful and had this to show for my efforts:

I really wish that I could somehow make your computer screen scratch’n’sniff right now because I was salivating as this cooled just smelling it from the living room.  It turned out beautifully, and it is just what I needed to get my mind back on track.  I’m taking it as a sign that since this recipe went so well, things will start to look up soon