You remember those guys… Rob and Fab.

I’m at a loss for a fun story to go along with this recipe. Here’s the dull reality: cherries were on sale at my Rock and Roll Ralphs and I bought way more than I’ll ever be able to nibble away before they go bad. I went looking for a recipe, found the only one that interested me at Smitten Kitchen, made it while burning What’s My Line? episodes off my DVR, had a bourbon and went to bed.

Not much to really sink your teeth into, is there?

Would it help if I mentioned the mystery celebrity guests on WML? were Robert Wagner and Anna Maria Alberghetti? Anyone else remember Anna’s delightful Good Seasons salad dressing tv commercials from the 1970s? Anyone?

Didn’t think so.

Perhaps the most exciting part of this entry is that I’m actually listening to Milli Vanilli. Probably shouldn’t have led with my best. But I can still manage to tie it all together becasue I have found a mystery link that connects the disgraced foot-stomping braid-heads to the sweet, lovely, industrious cherry itself.

But you’ll have to read the rest of the entry to learn it.

Cherry Butter Bars

Crust

• 7 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
• 1/3 cup sugar
• ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup plus I tbsp all purpose flour
• Pinch of salt

Fillling

• ½ cup sugar
• 2 large eggs
• Pinch of salt
• ¼ cup all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, diced
• 1 pound sweet cherries (30-35)

CRUST:  Preheat over to 375 Fahrenheit.  Mix the melted butter, sugar and vanilla, using a fork or rubber spatula.  Add in the flour and the salt  and stir. 

Ball the dough together and then place in a well-greased 8×8 square baking pan.  Smitten recommends lining with parchment paper, but both stores I stopped at were out, so I greased the bottom and the sides well with butter.  We’ll see how it plays out.

Press the dough evenly against the bottom of the pan. Is it strange that I find this part most enjoyable? Is it the feel of the soft dough against my fingertips, or the that it’s so easy to do?

Bake the crust until a lovely golden brown hue begins to appear. Smitten recommended 18 minutes, and that’s just what it took. Pull out and cool. Keep the over on. There’s more fun to come!

FILLING:   Use a handy cherry pitter to snap the pits right out of those babies.  Wonder if this $13 gadget is good for anything else.

Cook the butter in a heavy saucepan until brown (about 5 minutes),  Stir often to prevent burning.  Pout it into a glass measuring cup and allow to cool.

Whisk together the sugar, both eggs, and salt in a bowl.  Add flour and vanilla and whisk until smooth.  Gradually whisk in the melted butter and continue to whisk until well-blended.

Arrange cherries on top of the cooled crust and pour the butter mixture evenly over them. 

Bake for about forty minutes, but keep an eye on them.  To test, just insert a toothpick into the center.  When it comes out clean, remove them from the oven.  Let bars cool completely and cut.  Gently saw through any cherries that are on the cutting line.

As for the Mill Vanilli connection to cherries… here we go. 

Milli Vanilli scored all three of their #1 U.S. singles in 1989, but it wasn’t long after their first hit Baby Don’t Forget My Number hit number one that the rumors about their lip-synching began.  Nevertheless, Rob and Fab went on to win the 1989 Grammy Award for Best New Artist.  When it was later confirmed that neither had sung a single word, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences announced they would revoke the award.  Contrite Rob and Fab suggested the trophy be given to the actual singers of the songs, but The Los Angeles Times urged the Academy to conduct a re-vote, allowing one of the other nominees in the category to be awarded the Grammy.  And who were those other nominees, you may ask? None other than The Indigo Girls, Tone Loc, Soul II Soul and… wait for it…. Neneh Cherry!

Ultimately, no Grammy for Best new Artist was awarded that year. 

Neneh Cherry had two smash albums.

Rob and Fab devolved into punch lines, then trivia answers, and finally, obscurity.

And I grew up to be a bourbon-drinking, What’s My Line watching, Rock and Roll Ralphs cruising freak who makes bad-ass cherry butter bars and can sing every tv theme song from the 1980s, and that’s without the need to lip-sync.

Oh, and as of yesterday… I am the proud papa of a shiny lemon zester.

I hope I stay in the gadget phase for a long, long time. Nothing’s making me happier these days than the cacophony of steel, plastic and wire that plays anytime I give my utensil drawer a nice firm pull.

Yes, I worried that I wouldn’t be able to learn how to zest a lemon, but just like blanching onions , it’s far simpler than it sounds. Why don’t recipes just instruct you to “gently grate the yellow part off your lemon by rubbing it against the zester and rotating the lemon as you go”?  Wouldn’t that just make life easier for everyone?

I would have made these fantastic lemon bars a lot sooner if I’d just known that zesting was as simple as all that.  The only thing you have to concern yourself with is making sure you don’t zest the white pith just underneath the peel, which is intensely bitter.  A little in the mix won’t hurt anything, but your zesting should be light and quick.  Don’t overdo it. Better to have more lemons than you need and apply even less pressure to make sure you get it right then to wind up with bitter lemon bars and a “ZEST FAILURE” stamp across your forhead.

Lemon Bars
from Smitten Kitchen

Crust:

1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 cups flour
1/8 teaspoon kosher salt

Lemon Layer:

6 extra-large eggs, room temperature
2 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2 tablespoons grated lemon zest (4 lemons gave me more than enough, but have a few extras on hand)
1 cup lemon juice
1 cup flour
And don’t forget confectioners’ sugar (for us amateurs, that’s powdered sugar– there’s no difference), for dusting

For the crust, cream the butter and sugar until light in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (I did it by hand because a mixer is one gadget that hasn’t found its way into my kitchen…yet!).

Grease a 9 by 13 by 2-inch baking sheet.

Combine the flour and salt and, with the mixer on low, add to the butter until just mixed. Dump the dough onto a well-floured board and gather into a ball. Flatten the dough with floured hands and press it into the greased baking sheet, building up a 1/2-inch edge on all sides. Chill.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (I don’t understand why pre-heating is always listed first, so I move it.  My oven takes about two minutes to heat up, and making the crust took about five times that long!)

Bake the crust for 15 to 20 minutes, until very lightly browned. Let cool, but leave the oven on.  There’s more to come!

For the lemon layer, whisk together the eggs, sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, and flour.

Pour over the crust and bake for 30 to 35 minutes, but keep an eye on it.

Once the topping sets, Smitten recommends just another few minutes of baking time, and that worked for me. In fact, I could have pulled it out a few minutes earlier and avoided the overly-browned edges.

Once cooled, dust with the confectioners’ (powdered) sugar. I don’t have a sifter so I took a heaping tablespoon full and gently tapped away at it with my finger. Worked perfectly!

You will not be able to stop eating these bars, so give half away immediately!

ADDITIONAL NOTE 1/12/10 – 2:23pm: The following was sent to me a few minutes ago, by my friend Laura, referenced in the post above:

January 12 at 2:23pm
I see a sign in your current post that you are beginning to venture out of your gadget phase. Someone deep in the grip of said phase would have obtained a sifter (either by buying one yourself or by making enough noise about it to friends and coworkers that they buy you one just to make you stop) before making the recipe. Your comment that a spoon worked just fine is how all nongadgeteers cope daily in the kitchen without dedicated tools for each task. I love watching your kitchen development and am very proud of you.

Thanks Laura!

As of last night, I am no longer the Last American Crock Pot Virgin!

After months enduring slings and barbs from my co-workers for spending as much time as I do in the kitchen without a crock, I finally lucked out and scored myself one for Christmas, courtesy of my mom and dad.

It’s little.  It’s like a “Bachelor Crock Pot,” or perhaps a “Baby’s First Crock Pot,” or a “Vern Troyer Crock Pot.”  I didn’t actually think there were crock pots this little, but now that I have mine, I see them in this little Hobbit-size nearly everywhere I go!

As for the first meal to make in it… that wasn’t a tough call.  I’d just recently enjoyed a fantastic pulled pork sandwich at The Tipsy Pig, a great gastropub up in San Francisco, and it had been flickering around in the back of my mind like a fugitive kite ever since.  Plus, I’m always looking for a reason to use barbecue sauce, and finally and most importantly, my boyfriend wanted it.

I let the pork cook through most of my Saturday afternoon.  The smell that slowly snaked its way through my apartment… well, you can imagine.  Even my twenty pound cat who doesn’t do much of anything other than lie on his back all day was dancing back and forth through the kitchen with his nose twitching and pointing up to the counter.  When MG finally showed up and walked through my door, the first thing he said was, “Hey, it smells like North Carolina in here!”  What kitchen-dabbler could ask for a better compliment than that?

So, thank you to my co-workers in the booth for the bullying, and to my parents for listening to them, and to MG for loving food, and to pork everywhere, and to the pulling of pork, and most importantly to the Naxon Utilities Corporation of Chicago for giving birth to the original slow cooker that would eventually go on to a life of fame and praise.

Pulled Pork Sandwiches

• 1-2 pound pork loin, trimmed of fat
• 1 1/2 cups barbecue sauce, divided
• a medium onion, chopped
• 1/2 bell pepper, chopped
• hamburger buns or the rolls of your choice

Place pork loin in crock pot and top with onion, pepper and barbecue sauce

Cover and cook on LOW for 7-8 hours or on HIGH for 4-5 hours

Shred with a fork, stir and continue to cook for another hour at least

Pile it up on your hamburger bun or roll and have at it!

Click on the below pics for hi-res versions.

Miss Heidi Bohay is the Grand Dutchess of NuWave brand convection ovens, and after a particularly trying week for me at GSN Live, the hostess with the mostess snuck into my office and left me a NuWave as a feel-better present.

I used to be the kind of guy who approached new home electronics and appliances with the motto of “plug in now, read directions later,” most often resulting in tightened firsts, raised blood pressure and a cat being thrown across the room. But I’m working at keeping it at zero these days and attempting to pace myself more in life – cautious, patient and methodical – that’s me 2009! So when MG saw the NuWave box on my kitchen counter and wanted to immediately rip into it, I had to explain to him that it would not be done that way. First, I would lay out all the pieces in an orderly fashion on my bedspread, then I would locate the image of each piece in the operator’s manual, identify it and memorize its name. Then I would read all about how the NuWave has achieved its amazing breakthrough in cooking technology, how to properly clean it, the most effective ways to store it, and browse the entire recipe book, gently folding over the page corners in a “just so” manner to mark meals I might like to try. Every morning in the make-up room, Heidi would ask me “did you use the oven last night?” and I had to tell her “No, the time is not right yet.” Then she would roll her eyes and say, “You’re making this soooo much harder than it is.”

Though I’m neither confident in the kitchen or all that good at operating machinery, my virgin experience with the NuWave oven was an undeniable and succulent success! 11 minutes after turning it on, grilled pepper salmon and sweet corn on the cob was staring up at me and MG screaming “Eat us! Eat us! We’re so good!” Nu Wave clean up is a total snap (just like Heidi says it is in the infommercial), it makes next to no noise, it’s easy to manage, and to my boyfriend’s savory delight, looks like a robot!

Forget the fact that you don’t have to defrost first.  Forget that the everyone on-line says that it’s a snap to clean!  Forget that it will cook my meals up to 50% faster.  Forget that the base also works as a serving tray (something I can always use).  Forget that celebrity pitch-woman Heidi Bohay is just SO DARN CUTE.  All of that should be put aside and forgotten about because when MG saw it and read the box over, all he could say was, “I CAN MAKE BEEF JERKEY WITH IT!”

Well yes, you can dehydrate meats and fruit with the NuWave oven, but it seems to be incredibly versatile – beef, chicken, fish, pizzas, desserts, pancakes, heated dips, calzones.  I can’t wait.

Tonight is pre-determined pasta with garlic sauce and sausage with red wine – last night’s taco success wore me out,  But get ready NuWave.  I’ll be violating you early this week!