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French Toast Is Better Than Our Toast

French Toast. Is there anything better? Top 5 breakfast foods at least. But of course, normal French Toast just won't do. That's why the dish this week is Baked Chocolate and Banana French Toast.

My mouth has been watering since I found this recipe.

So I'm actually at a friends house today and thought I'd make breakfast for everybody. This is a pretty easy recipe that doesn't require much and is pretty easy to make!

Just like regular French Toast you have to mix up some eggs and milk and whisk them up. Then I added some cinnamon, just for a bit more flavour.

Then make a whole bunch of banana and Nutella sandwiches. Try not to be deterred and end up just eating these sandwiches. The end result will be much better.

Assemble the sandwiches, dunk them in the egg mixture and lay them on a cookie sheet and pop them into the oven!

Turn them once halfway through, and after about 20 minutes you have your Banana and Nutella French Toast. Cut it in half and serve it up!

My normally overly-noisy friends were relatively quiet while we ate, so I'd say overall it was a success.

The Why And The How

So for this post I thought I'd take a break from cooking something, and just explain a little more about how this blog came to be.

In the last few years, I've become pretty much obsessed withThe Food Network shows. From Chopped, to You Gotta Eat Here, and most recently Cutthroat Kitchen. But before I became a fan of the ridiculous looking Guy Fieri, I was already a huge Gordon Ramsay fan.

It's difficult to own a television and be up to date with current trends, and not know who Gordon Ramsay is. He's that usually-angry, always-British chef who had about half of the shows on the Food Network at one point. Before all these new fangled cooking shows came along, Ramsay was already cooking with a fiery passion for food. He was the first chef who made me think I'd really enjoy cooking.

A few years later and he we are. I'm given a blog assignment for class, and told to write about something I enjoy and am passionate about. So I thought, what a great way to show that Ramsay has inspired me to learn how to cook well and enjoy doing so. So thanks Ramsay, and my professor for finally making me blog.

It's been a blast so far.

Not Your Grandmother's Bean Salad

Truth be told, I'm heading to a Toronto Raptors game tonight. So I thought, what's a nice delicious appetizer that's quick to make, and that'll hold me over until I'm ready for greasy stadium food. The answer was apparently Green Bean Salad with a mustard dressing.

Let's start basketball. I mean cooking. My mind is clearly elsewhere. 

Toast up some sliced almonds in a pan. They'll lend a nice flavour to the dish.

Take some beans, cut the heads and the tails off of them. This is a solo-salad, so I just used a handful. Get rid of any little ugly stupid beans that don't meet your standards. 

Boil some water and throw in your beans. Boil the beans for about a minute and thirty seconds to two minutes. Just long enough so they aren't raw anymore, but they still have a nice crunch to them. Then run them under some cold water to refresh them.

Then put the beans in a bowl and throw in the almonds. Then in a tiny bowl I mix up some of the garlic after I mash it, Add in some Dijon mustard and honey. It looks a whole lot like a baby's food. Might as well mix it with a baby's spoon! 

Then boom, dish it up and eat it up. Oh no it's terrible! Just kidding, it's great.

Good news! I'm going to double down this week! Come back tomorrow for another post!

I'm Apes For Crepes

Valentine’s Day tomorrow. So in the spirit, I thought I’d make a sweet dessert, perfect for after your romantic (or lonely) dinner.

I love crepes, and I've never actually made them before. So let’s do it. The dish this week is Crepes Suzette.

Start with the crepes themselves. Mix up all the ingredients in a bowl like flour, butter, eggs and milk. That's your batter. 

Pour that into the pan. First time around the pan was too hot and burnt the batter, so I had failed before I even began. 1-0 Crepes. Second time around went better though, and I spread the batter out to be a thin layer over the whole pan. Flip it when it starts to brown, and when the other side is done, you have a crepe. Or as your more uncultured friends may call it, 'a thin pancake?'

I set the crepes aside. I throw some sugar into the pan to start caramelizing it. Add in some Grand Marnier, courtesy of Mom's limited liquor collection. The standard procedure for adding alcohol in a recipe is: one for the recipe, then one for me.

Naturally I added a bit too much alcohol, but it just needed a little more sugar to even that out.

Cut up some oranges, then pour the syrup over the oranges.

Finally, roll up the crepes and pour the oranges over top. Done! Take that Crepes Suzette.

Also, thanks to all those who applied for the clean up/eating the food after job. I'll consider all applicants. Maybe we could set up a guest blog one time. Keep 'em coming. Cheers.

I'll Stir, You Fry

First post, so I thought I'd stick with something relatively simple. A traditional chicken and vegetable stir-fry, with ricotta stuffed zucchini rolls for an app.

Right off the bat the zucchini rolls give me some real trouble, which was not a warm welcome to my blogging career. Too thick, too thin. I basically wasted a whole zucchini trying to get it right. But by zucchini number two, I got enough sufficient strips to make a few rolls. I lay the strips in some oil and balsamic vinegar, spoon some ricotta cheese into them and roll them up. Done.

Now the recipe for the stir-fry calls for oyster sauce. Not being a big fan of seafood, oyster sauce doesn't really sound like it'd be up my alley. Like, what's in this stuff? Is there actually oysters in it? Hmm, "oyster extract" they say.. But hey, Gordon Ramsay uses it, and I don' think that he would lead me astray.

Cut up all my vegetables. Change cutting boards a few times for no reason at all.

Next I throw them all into the pan, which was supposed to be a wok. I don't have a wok and figured it wouldn't really matter. I was wrong. Many vegetables were lost over the side that day. After the veggies I throw in my chicken. A ton of it, because I love chicken. Then some egg noodles. Mix it all up and add in some soy sauce and that darn oyster sauce.

Plate up both dishes and they're ready to eat! And they look not too bad.

Now Hiring! Somebody to come and clean up my kitchen after I cook. Will pay you in whatever food I just made. Position has just opened up as mom and dad have quit.

So that was a few hours of my life well spent. Definitely worth it as the finished dishes were delicious. Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it. If technology hasn't failed by next week, come back again for a new dish. 

Welcome To My Blog

My name’s Ethan and this is my blog, Ethan and Gordon. Just like Ontario, it’s yours to discover.

This blog is inspired by the movie Julie and Julia, where an amateur cook named Julie, takes on the frustrating task of perfectly recreating a legendary chef’s own recipes. For my celebrity counterpart, I have chosen Gordon Ramsay. *You may remember him from such favourites as: Hell’s Kitchen, MasterChef, and Kitchen Nightmares.

*Best if read in Troy McClure voice

Each week I’ll be channeling my inner Ramsay and cooking up a new challenging dish. I’ll be narrating the situation as it happens and seasoning it with some pictures along the way.

I've actually always wanted to have my own comedy-cooking show, where I do a mediocre job of cooking and an above-average job of making the audience laugh. With this newfangled technology called the Internet taking off as it is, a blog is a perfect pseudo for that show.

So Come Dine with Me Canada (is that a copyright?) or anywhere else in the world you’re reading from. Let’s have some fun and maybe even learn something new. Each week I’ll post the recipe I cook so you can give them a try for yourself if you’d like. I look forward to cooking for you all, and I hope you keep coming back for seconds.

Now let’s cook.