Chocolate Chip Buttermilk Pancakes

Dry:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3 tbls sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
Wet:
1 1/2 cups buttermilk or clabbered milk
3 tbls butter, melted
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract (I only used 1/4)

chocolate chips, maybe a cup

Whisk the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. In another bowl, combine the wet ingredients. Mix the wet ingredients quickly into the dry ingredients. Don't over beat. Give just enough quick strokes with a whisk to barely moisten the dry ingredients. Ignore small lumps. Preheat a griddle to medium, medium-high. Melt some butter on it and pour light 1/4 cups of the batter on. When bubbles start to form and break put on some chocolate chips then flip. Cook till done. Serve immediately.

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I know I've mentioned before that I love pancakes. But what makes pancakes better? Chocolate, baby. Buttermilk helps too. But chocolate. I could bathe in chocolate chip pancakes. I wouldn't get clean, I suppose, but I would enjoy the hell out of it. Anyway, I believe this recipe is from The Joy of Cooking originally. All I did to it was cut the vanilla in half (I didn't want it to be too strong a flavor) and add the chocolate chips. It's a great recipe. The pancakes are tender, fluffy and very flavorful. They also freeze really well. Just wrap them tightly in some foil once they're fully cooled and toss them in the freezer. Then whenever you want some pancakes pull a couple out, microwave them for maybe twenty seconds or so and there you go. They aren't as good as they are fresh, obviously, but they are better than the boxed ones and the speed can't be beat. So here's how you do it.

First, you want to put your flour, baking soda, baking powder, sugar and salt in a bowl. Whisk it up. Then in a separate bowl put your buttermilk (or clabbered milk), eggs, vanilla and melted butter.More whisking. Now dump the dry stuff into the wet stuff and whisk it just enough to moisten the flour. Little lumps are fine, they will cook out and if you over mix it the pancakes will be tough. And you don't want that. Now just pour some batter onto a preheated griddle. My griddle is pretty small (I think it's ten-twelve inches, but I can't find my tape measure so I don't know for sure) so I use light quarter cups. But if you have a bigger griddle or don't mind making only two pancakes at a time you can use more. Now here is a big pancake trick. You want to let them cook till bubbles start breaking. See this? You want to give it maybe ten more seconds after that point. I had what I thought was a good shot of exactly the time to flip, but it turned out to be blurry. And getting that crappy pic caused me to overcook one of them too. See the sacrifices I make for you guys? Heh. Anyway, when the bubbles start breaking you want to put the chocolate chips on and flip 'em. Then give them another thirty seconds or so (I usually rip a hole in one with a fork to see if they're done) and that's that. Plop them on a plate, cut out a wedge so people can see the chocolate, put some syrup on there and it's breakfast. Or dinner. Or a snack. Or whatever kind of excuse you can make for eating them.

Roasted Red Pepper Tomato Sauce with Italian Sausage

1 large red pepper, roasted
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp dried basil
2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 medium onion
2 14.5 oz cans diced tomatoes
1 tsp red wine vinegar
1 bay leaf
4 Italian sausages (1/2 lb)

Brown and crumble the sausage, remove it to a paper towel lined plate, cover it and put it in the fridge. Remove all but a tbl of the fat from the pan and brown the onions. Add the garlic and saute till aromatic, about 30-40 seconds. Add the bay leaf, basil and oregano and saute for 20 seconds or so. Add the vinegar to deglaze, then add the tomatoes. Dice the pepper and add it in as well. Let simmer for at least an hour or up to 3. If you want it chunky you can hit it with a potato masher a couple times, if you want it smooth hit it with a immersion blender. Add the sausage back in and let it simmer for another half hour or so. Add salt and pepper to taste, serve over pasta.

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This was a request from my girlfriend a couple days ago. It's probably the favorite pasta sauce for both of us. The roasted red peppers add a great sweetness to it and something about Italian sausage and tomato sauce is just awesome. You can use spicy or sweet sausage in this, whatever you enjoy most. I use sweet because my girlfriend doesn't feel it for spicy and she does the grocery shopping. If you want it chunky you don't have to hit it with the blender, we just like tomato sauce smooth. Plus if you leave it chunky you don't have to leave the sausage out till the end, unless you don't want pieces of sausage. Anyway, here is what I did.

First I roasted a pepper. I love roasted peppers, they are just awesome. This one was pretty big. How big? Bigger than a can of tomatoes. I like a lot of pepper flavor in the sauce. If I had only had small ones I would have used two. After roasting, I sliced off the top and bottom, took out the seeds and spread it out for slicing. Of course that's the only thing I got a decent shot of. Then I cut it into chunks and set it aside. Next I browned up the sausage. I had taken these out of the casing to make crumbling easier. Once they were all nicely browned I pulled them out. I put them on a paper towel lined plate to soak up any excess fat (there was more than enough left in the pan, too much would over power the other flavors) then tossed it into the fridge since I didn't want to let it sit out for the whole cooking time.Mmmmm, that's one fondy pot. It's going to make the sauce nice and rich. Browned up the onions, then the garlic. I didn't worry about mincing the garlic too fine since I was going to blend it, but if you are leaving it chunky you might want to make the pieces smaller. Or leave them big, if you like big chunks of garlic. Once the garlic was done I added in the spices and sauteed them for a minute. This helps bring out the oils from them, which brings out the flavor. Then I deglazed with the vinegar, although I didn't get a good picture of it. Red wine would be good too, but I didn't have any. Once I had scraped up the fond I added in the tomatoes. Then the pepper chunks. Then I let it simmer for about an hour, making sure to stir it every once and a while so it didn't burn. I would have done it longer, but I had to be at work in a couple hours. Don't forget to take out the bay leaf! I didn't want it in there when I blended it with the wand mixer. Blending it makes it nice and smooth, helps it cling to pasta. Then the sausage went back in and I let it simmer for another half hour or so to let the flavors mingle. I added a little black pepper, but it didn't need salt since the canned tomatoes I used had plenty in them. And that's it. Some pasta, a little cheese and a goodly amount of sauce and you have a meal. Good stuff folks. A little cream in the sauce would have been good too or some parmesan. Add a little extra richness. Not that it really needs it. Heh.