Midnight Snacks

[flip6577]

OOH, lala, pizza's for breakfast!!

Only if its cold out of the fridge and served with a glass of OJ on a napkin

[clothier]

little bowl of oatmeal, with demerara and milk.

what's demerara?

[Mabelline]

Rough sugar.

I agree with mags. Chattering monkey minds. Egads, too good!

[Ovenfrenzy]

I like to raid the fridge for a few bites of whatever leftover meat might be lurking from recent dinners...nice rare cold lamb with some horseradish, or a slice of smoked pork tenderloin smeared with a bit of Nancy's Sweet Hot Mustard!

[Majra]

I pretty much always go for cereal with milk. Just recently I was defending my practice of not eating breakfast to a concerned friend by explaining that I would way rather have my bowl of cereal at midnight than in the morning.

Last night was Puffins with whole milk. Yum.

[Shannon_Elise]

My family knows that I have not been able to sleep when they wake up to baked goods on the table. When I can't sleep, I don't eat, I bake. The other night I was up at midnight, walked out to the kitchen, spied a bowl of lemons and made some decadent lemon bars. On varying occasions I have made Challah, chocolate chip cookies, brownies, crumb cake etc.

Shannon

[Shalmanese]

Well, as I write this, it's 3:45 am and I have an intense urge for steak. I don't know why, I don't really think I need steak, but I know that if I don't get steak before I go to bed then I'll lay awake for at least an hour thinking about it. So what am I doing? I'm not really set up for steak so I wing it as I always do when I get hit by inexplicable midnight cravings. Right now, I have two pieces of mystery meat marinating in a bag. I know they're beef and they're flat but thats about it. If I'm lucky, it'll be rump and therefore edible, oh well, the mystery cravings demand supplication so what can you do? The marinade is again, something very crude, made on the spur of the moment. EVOO, cheap red wine, red wine vinegar, coarse peppercorns and some of my frozen herb mix (blend 4 random fresh herbs + copious amounts of garlic with enough evoo to moisten then freeze. Keeps up to... well, this ones verging on 3 months and still has a lot of kick. Perfect for freshening flavours when you can't be bothered with fresh herbs).

Of course, this isn't the first utterly bizarre midnight craving. There was the choclate biscuit omlette. Don't ask me why, I needed chocolate and I needed eggs. There was my craving for fettucini alfredo... made with fresh fetucini from scratch, started at 2:30 am and eaten at 4am. There was fritattas and foccacias and even deep fried scrambled eggs (don't try this at home unless you like eating what tastes like a sponge full of oil). What are some of your particularly inspired midnight creations?

[Shalmanese]

Well, it's 4:25 am and the steak is made and eaten with a few minor hiccoughs along the way. The first being that I needed to pan-fry the steak and I couldn't really pan fry the steak seeing as doing so would create copious amounts of steak smell that would wake up everyone in the house. Thus is created Steak a la outside.

Heat your heaviest cast iron pan until it starts smoking copiously.

Meanwhile, get a stick butter and take of shavings with a potato peeler. The aim is to make the butter light enough that it will instantly melt in the pan. I tried grating it but it clumped together too much.

Move the steaks outside and get ready to move the pan.

As you move the pan just outside the doorway, throw in the butter and then swirl rapidly before dropping on the steaks.

Allow the residual heat from the pan cook the steaks for 60 seconds on one side and then flip.

Allow to cook 30 seconds more and then bring the pan back inside and on high heat.

Once the heat reaches back into the pan again and the steaks start smoking, the insides should be around medium rare so remove to a elevated serving platter and cover with al-foil while making a pan sauce.

Serve, eat, enjoy then fall into bed exhasted, needing to get up in less than 5 hours :(.

[Chef Shogun]

......heh. Take it, Dente!

[nice_guy1812]

That must be some major craving to actually pull yourself outta bed at that time! I would never get out of bed to get something to eat. I need my sleep!

Lately though I've been getting cravings for that rice that they serve in Greek restaurants with slouvaki. I dunno why, its not even that good.

[Shalmanese]

No, I was still up. Just about to go to bed when the cravings hit.

[NulloModo]

Heh. my bad late night cravings always seem to be for really pungent food... thank goodness there is a diner nearby which can satiate my needs for liver and onions or a greek salad loaded with anchovies.

[snowangel]

Heh. my bad late night cravings always seem to be for really pungent food... thank goodness there is a diner nearby which can satiate my needs for liver and onions or a greek salad loaded with anchovies.

Three nights ago, I got up at 11:00 pm and larbed some leftover rare steak. It was really yummy. The leftovers made a great breakfast.

Two nights ago it was sweet corn. At midnight. Two ears. Delish!

[Shalmanese]

My latest creation:

Garlic Candy

1 head of garlic

milk

3 tsp of balsamic vinegar

1 tsp of white sugar

1 knob of butter

pinch of salt

1 large box of breathmints

Can be scaled up as desired.

First, seperate the head of garlic into individual cloves, using only the large/medium sized cloves and remove the hard bottom bit but do not de-skin. Put in a small saucepan and pour enough boiling milk in to cover (boil the milk in the microwave to save time) and simmer the garlic for 3 minutes.

Remove garlic cloves from the milk and discard the milk. De-skin the cloves and cut each in half along the axis(ie: cut the long side) and remove the center heart. The heart also contains some bitterness and is best removed.

Once you have achieved this, set a non-stick pan on the lowest heat setting and have your knob of butter gently bubbling and toss the garlic cloves in with a pinch of salt and allow to brown. You want this to go as slow as possible to obtain the best tasting end result so put it on the lowest heat you can get so it's barely bubbling. Once the under-side is brown, flip and allow the other side to brown.

Meanwhile, dissolve the sugar in the balsamic vinegar. I find it's a lot easier if you heat the vinegar in 10 second intervals in the microwave and then stir until fully dissolved.

This is the crucial bit: Once the garlic is nice and golden brown, pour the balsamic mixture in the pan and swirl around until you have the vinegar and the garlic evenly distributed and no garlic is overlapping. You need to be relatively quick about doing this because very soon, the sugar mixture will get very sticky. Once it becomes sticky, DONT touch the pan. Anything you do will just make the entire mixture roll into a ball. Leave it on the heat until the sugar mixture turns to candy. It's kind of hard to tell this and it involves a certain bit of trial and error but your basically looking for colour and bubbles. The colour should lighten from black to a medium brown and the bubbles should get progressively bigger until they are abut 3 cm across. It's more of an experience thing but it's pretty tolerant to error and if you dont get it hot enough, you get toffee which is still pretty good.

Once it's reached candy stage, turn off the heat and allow to cool to room temperature (If you have so much candy that it covers more than a thin layer of the pan, you might want to empty the pan onto a sheet pan covered in wax paper to cool) and then stick it in the fridge to cool to fridge temp. Once it's cold enough, break it up into individual chunks and then either eat straight or serve atop something else.

[FaustianBargain]

My latest creation:

Garlic Candy SNIP

err..you came up with this in the middle of the night?

sometimes..i crave bad chinese when i wake up...its almost worth considering moving to nyc...

[Shalmanese]

Yes, dont ask me how my mind works. I wanted garlic and I wanted something sweet. refer to chocolate omlette above for further inspiration. The first time I tried it, I just sliced some garlic and candied it but it was far too bitter and far too sweet. Second time, I added the balsamic and cored it but it was still to bitter. Third time, I got something acceptable with the blanching in milk then coring. I haven't tried it again because it runs through garlic so quickly and I need it for other stuff :D. When I can be bothered, I'll go buy 10 heads of garlic and make a big batch keep.

[Susan in FL]

Goodness, are you on Ambien?

I'm not knocking it; I think cravings are a good thing and satisfying them is even better... but it does sound like some of the Ambien stories I've heard about.

[PCL]

Goodness, are you on Ambien?

what is ambien?

[chappie]

Sometimes late at night I like peanut butter with sweet/hot pepper relish and/or sweet pickles. Basically anything pickly and tart on peanut butter.

Also oyster crackers on ice cream.

[Shalmanese]

Nope, 100% natural insomnia.

[Susan in FL]

Nope, 100% natural insomnia.

LOL!

what is ambien?

I didn't know there was anybody who has never heard of Ambien. I guess that says good things about your sleep and the sleep of all your family and friends! It's a very widely used sleep medication. Its popularity began when astronauts used it in space. However, some people I know get up out of bed and fix food and eat it after they have taken it, some having no memory of doing so afterwards.

[Shalmanese]

Also oyster crackers on ice cream.

←

I guess that's better than Oyster Ice-Cream

[jbonne]

What are some of your particularly inspired midnight creations?

it's been a long while, but i used to come home after a night on the town, turn on my VCR (well before Tivo) and watch "Iron Chef" reruns. this was an inspiration, and not always a good one.

among the highlights:

-countless sage-and-saltine frittatas

-pan-fried mango

-impromptu saganaki, complete with an ouzo finish

[NulloModo]

Hmmm, last night one struck, and had to be satiated:

The craving was for oatmeal, it was satisfied with Flax/Bran/Soy Hot Spiced Cereal (that was truly dreadful, but at least texturally correct. I gues I will have to figure out things to add to it, or add it to, to make it palatable).

[TJHarris]

Last night I had deep fried turkey wings with an Asian inspired BBQ sauce. After that I didn't sleep well...go figure.