Chocolate Pudding

This week we have a recipe for pudding. We were going to have a recipe for puddin', but our glorious sponsors at Rock 'n' Roll Dino Productions told us no.

Now the easy way to make this thing is to follow Mr. Cosby's advice and buy one of those blue boxes. But that's like cheating, wonderful, glorious cheating.

Here's another way:

1. In a saucepan combine 1/3 cup cocoa powder (unsweetened Dutch Process, San Francisco Ghiardelli yada yada) with 3/4 cup sugar and 2 tablespoons corn starch.

2. Add 2 3/4 cups milk to this and stir.

3. Turn on the heat to medium, and stir frequently.(Burnt chocolate pudding sticks to pans like crazy.)

4. It will get thicker and a little bubbly. Keep going for a minute or two after it starts to thicken up, and then take it off the heat.

5. Meanwhile, beat four egg yolks in a separate bowl. (They're yolks, not whites, do you don't have to worry about stiff peaks or any of that nonsense.)

6. Now, take a cup of the hot milk mixture and SLOWLY pour it into the egg yolks. Stir and pour slowly at the same time. (Most people don't like scrambled eggs in their chocolate pudding.)

7. When the egg mixture is uniform(ish) dump it into the rest of the milk mixture and turn the heat up to medium-high.

8. Keep stirring.

9. Bring it to a gentle boil, then turn the heat down to low.

10. Stir for about 2 minutes, then take it off the heat.

11. Stir in 1 tablespoon of butter and 1/2 a tablespoon of vanilla.

12. When that is incorporated, you can stop stirring.

13. Serve the pudding hot, or cover it with some plastic wrap and toss it in the fridge to chill.

You can be fancy and pour the still hot pudding into individual containers to chill. These include, but are not limited to: ramekins, trifle dishes, cocktail glasses, teacups, bowls with pictures of the Virgin Mary on them,  the glazed skulls of your fallen enemies, small Tupperwares, or DVD cases.

Serve with whipped cream or that other stuff.

Microwave Popcorn

So, I learned from Alton Brown's book, I'm Just Here for the Food, that you can make microwave popcorn from scratch. (Buy the book; it's got magnets!)

It's quick, cheap, and good if you are worried about weird chemicals, salt, fat, or yellow coloring in those microwavable bags.

All you need is popcorn kernels, a brown paper lunch bag, and a stapler.

1. Put 1/2 cup of the kernels in the lunch bag.

2. Fold the end and staple it shut. Use only 2 staples and make sure they are far apart. It the staples are close you might cause a spark and start a fire. Not only is that dangerous, burnt popcorn smells awful.

3. Microwave the bag like you would any other bag of microwave popcorn. Put it in for about 3 minutes, and stop the microwave when there are a few seconds between pops. (The popcorn button on my microwave works fine for even the homemade stuff, so I don't need to listen to it. Just pay attention the first time, at least.)

Now you've got some nice, low calorie popcorn. Feel free to melt some butter to fix that.

Restaurants and movie theaters use something called "popcorn salt". You can pick this up at any number of grocery stores. What it is is a finer grain of salt that better pairs well with delicious greasy things like french fries and buttery popcorn . Kosher and sea salts are bigger, regular old Morton's is normal, and popcorn salt is teeny tiny.

You can get bigger salt and take it to the mortar and pestle to get a substitute for popcorn salt, but popcorn salt isn't particularly expensive.