01.30.08
Posted in Dinner, Lunch, Soups, Veggies at 9:26 am by julie
Sunchokes, also known as Jerusalem artichokes, are neither related to Jerusalem or artichokes. Actually, they are in the sunflower family; the misnomer arose from the Italian word for sunflower, girasole, which apparently sounded a bit like Jerusalem to untrained ears. What we now refer to as a sunchoke is a starchy tuber that is edible both raw and cooked, and looks inside like a crisp, pearly potato. Their exterior is rather ugly, very knobbly and can drive you nuts if you find it necessary to peel them; since the skins are thin and nutritious, I generally just scrub them and trim off the offending bits.
Although sunchokes can be eaten raw in salads for a rather bland crunch along the lines of water chestnut or jicama, we prefer them cooked; they make an excellent secret ingredient in mashed potatoes, for instance, and have a lovely mildly nutty and sweet flavor. For dinner on Monday night, I decided to use them in a simple pureed soup, which also gave me the opportunity to break in my pretty new blender
. To give it my own twist, I garnished the soup with smoky bacon bits and a tangle of sauteed radicchio, which provided a needed bitter counterpoint to the slightly sweet sunchokes. It looks a bit like cement, but it was delicious and fairly healthy to boot: sunchokes are good sources of potassium and iron, and radicchio is full of antioxidants and folate, all of which are especially good for me during pregnancy.
Sunchoke Bisque with Bacon and Radicchio
2 T butter
1 small yellow onion, diced
2 lb scrubbed, trimmed and diced sunchokes
1 quart chicken stock
3 T whipping cream
Salt and white pepper, to taste
2 slices smoked bacon, chopped
1 small head radicchio, rinsed, dried, and thinly sliced crosswise
Melt the butter in a soup pot over medium heat. Add the onions with a pinch of salt and cook until translucent but not brown. Add the sunchokes and chicken stock and simmer until the sunchokes are tender when pierced with a fork, about 20 minutes. Remove from heat.
Using a blender or immersion blender, blend the sunchoke and onion mixture with the cream until very smooth. Season to taste with salt and white pepper. Return soup to stove on low, just to keep warm; do not allow the soup to boil.
For garnish: Cook bacon in a 10-inch skillet over medium high heat; drain on paper towels and remove all but a tablespoon or so of drippings. Add radicchio, season with salt and pepper, and cook until tender, about 5 minutes.
Place soup in warmed bowls; deposit a small tangle of radicchio in the center of each bowl and sprinkle with bacon. Serve with rolls or slices of bread. Serves about 4.
Source: Adapted from Project Foodie
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01.29.08
Posted in Cuisines, Dinner, Fish, Italian, Seafood, Soups at 9:42 am by julie
As alluded to in a previous post, I had a big (over 2 pounds) packet of fresh Pacific cod fillets to work with last week. I had been hoping for salmon, but we’re salmon snobs, and only the pink farmed stuff was available; needless to say, I adjusted my plans. Cod isn’t my favorite, but this was firm, versatile fish and we got two excellent meals from it, so I guess there will be more cod in my future.
The first recipe, Baked Fish and Potatoes with Rosemary and Garlic, was from Marcella Says…, reprinted on Epicurious here. Since Marcella has never yet steered me wrong, I felt pretty confident about this one, and sure enough, it was delicious: simply roasted potatoes and crumb-topped fish all scented with fresh rosemary. I used fingerling potatoes and added in some carrots (for color, I will readily admit!), and topped the fish with fresh-frozen breadcrumbs rather than fine, dry ones. The fillets were too long for the baking dish I used, and a bit unevenly shaped, so I trimmed them to fit, and saved the excess fish (around 3/4 lb) for another meal.
That would be cod chowder with saffron and more fingerling potatoes. Despite the fact that I had to use Better Than Bouillion Clam Base in place of bottled clam juice, this soup came out nicely, very warming. I adapted it a bit from an Epicurious recipe, of which numerous reviewers claimed blandness; I consequently did a lot of tasting and adjusting, and ended up with a subtle, almost buttery broth that served the cod and potatoes well. Since my husband always wants some sort of bread to dip in his soup, I made some very quick garlic toast, and that provided an extra hit of flavor.
(Oh, and the post’s title? Whenever I see cod in the store, I start thinking about Peter Pan and Captain Hook. Can’t help it!)
Cod Chowder with Saffron and Fingerling Potatoes
2 thick-cut slices applewood bacon, diced
1 1/2 cups chopped leeks (or 2 large leeks), white and pale green parts only
3 C clam juice
1 lb fingerling or baby Dutch yellow potatoes, cut crosswise into 1/4-inch-thick rounds
1/2 C celery, diced (2 short stalks)
1/2 C water
1/2 tsp saffron threads, crumbled
2 bay leaves
1/2 C milk
1/2 C creme fraiche
1/4 tsp smoked Spanish paprika
Freshly ground pepper, to taste
3/4 lb cod fillets, cut into 1″ chunks
Cook bacon in heavy large pot over medium heat until crisp. Using slotted spoon, transfer to paper towels to drain. Add leeks to same pot. Sprinkle with salt, stir, and cook until leeks are very tender, stirring frequently, about 4 minutes. Add clam juice, potatoes, 1/2 cup water, saffron, and bay. Bring to boil; reduce heat to medium and cover. Simmer until potatoes are just tender, stirring occasionally, about 7 minutes. (Mine simmered slowly over low heat for quite a while longer due to a phone call.)
Stir in milk, creme fraiche, and paprika. Stir in cod chunks; cover and cook until cod is opaque in center, about 10 minutes. Return reserved bacon to the pot; season chowder to taste with salt and pepper. Serve with rolls or garlic toast for dipping.
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01.28.08
Posted in Dessert, Foodblog Events, Fruits, Pies & Tarts at 10:33 am by julie
It’s the end of the month, so here comes the January Daring Bakers challenge: a classic Lemon Meringue Pie. This was definitely a new one for me, in part because Jeremy and I would ordinarily choose whipped cream over meringue any day of the week and twice on Sunday. I also have to admit I’m not big on lemon desserts in general. But even with two strikes against it, I was not about to let this month’s challenge make me admit defeat…just procrastinate until the last possible moment.
The crust was straightforward since I used my Cuisinart, though I had to add a little additional ice water before it would form a ball. I decided not to make one large pie because it is just the two of us, and this isn’t the sort of dessert that will keep in the fridge. Instead, I rolled out half the dough to make two freeform tartlets and 6 small rounds for parfaits or stacks; the other half of the dough was cut into slightly larger rounds and tucked into the 9 cups of my silicone muffin pan.
Into the oven they all went, and came out nicely golden and crisp and rather shrunken. The muffin-cup tarts fared the worst in the latter department, but I didn’t worry about it too much. At the time I was more concerned about the fact that my camera battery had just died and it was getting along in the evening. We frantically tracked down the charger and watched part of a movie while the battery juiced up again, and finally, at about 9:45pm, I got started on the curd and meringue. I juggled both at once to save some time, and it ended up working out well, though rather hard on the nerves.
Since the curd recipe first called for boiling some water, I separated my eggs and used the pot as a bain marie to warm the egg whites to room temperature. By the time I got the meringue set up and whipping, the curd was ready for sugar and cornstarch, and I just turned off the stand mixer when I noticed the meringue getting to soft peak stage. Meanwhile, the curd thickened up beautifully, and stayed reasonably thick even after I added all that lemon juice, which had been of concern. I used the juice of about three Meyer lemons, gleaned with help of my freshly-acquired—and already dearly loved—wooden citrus reamer. (Meyers are more fragrant and less tart than your standard lemon, which suits our tastes to a tee. It was lucky this is the time of year for them.) My only adjustment to the meringue was to use superfine sugar instead of granuated sugar, just because.
The muffin tartlets each got less than two tablespoons of curd followed by a dollop of meringue. I piled curd in the center of my freeform tartlets, then started getting paranoid that the action of spreading meringue over it would push the curd over the edges and make a horrible sticky, weepy mess. To avert that from happening I barricaded the curd with a ring of meringue around the edges of the crust before covering the middle. That worked well, and would have been easier if I had bothered to pipe the meringue with my pastry bag. Being nearly 11pm and already past my bedtime, I just used a spoon. My meringue sculpting skills could definitely use more practice, but I was running out of energy quickly, so we made do with some rather conservative spikes and swirls. (If you need pretty, go back and look at my yule log from last month’s challenge. I was happy with how that one came out.)
The real test was putting the meringue-crowned tartlets back in the oven. Previous Daring Bakers reported bouts of runny curd and weeping meringue, so I made sure my curd was still hot when I applied the meringue. My real fear was that my oven—which tends to run cold, and never works properly for items that require broiling—would take too long to undercook the meringue and ruin the texture of the curd. I left them for 5 minutes and peeked through the door, still expecting to see stark white foam, but instead, the meringue was already so toasty brown that the peaks were about to start burning. At least that means it was cooked, right?
I gave the tartlets a scant 20 minutes on a cooling rack and served them up, still slightly warm in the center. As you can see from the above photo, there was no weeping or running to be found. The curd stayed nicely set, and the crust was crisp and flaky. The Meyer lemon flavor was not overpoweringly strong, and the meringue actually reminded me of nothing so much as toasted marshmallows. It was a far cry from the tasteless foam I’ve had to scrape off restaurant pies in the past; Jeremy agreed and even went so far as to say that he liked the extra “caramelization” on top.
I have quite a bit of curd leftover, some of which will be used for lemon parfait thingies; I have no doubt we’ll find a good use for the rest. The muffin tartlets have been stashed in the freezer for single-serving desserts this week. I checked on them this morning and discovered that while the crust and curd have frozen, the meringue is still sticky and soft—was that supposed to happen, because of the sugar content or something? Strange and fascinating.
Update 1/29/08: As the above photo shows, they thawed out perfectly after an hour or two of sitting at room temperature. Just as good as fresh tarts. The meringue never did solidify in the freezer, though.
So this was another Daring Baker dessert that surprised us in a good way, allowing me not only to try out some new baking techniques, but push my personal envelope flavor- and texture-wise. We have Jen at The Canadian Baker to thank for choosing this month’s challenge recipe, which can be found here. Be sure to visit the Daring Bakers blogroll to see everyone else’s creations!
Update 2/12/08: I just thought I’d add that I found what I personally considered to be an almost more satisfactory parfait topper than whipped cream: nonfat vanilla yogurt and toasted coconut. With the leftover lemon curd, you could hardly make an easier dessert, and not (quite) so heavy on the hips. When I ran out of curd, I seriously considered making more just to eat it with my yogurt.
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01.27.08
Posted in Breakfast, Quick Breads at 11:09 am by julie
As I write this, it is actually snowing here, not a common occurrence in Salem. I tried to obtain photographic evidence, but it eluded me. Even though it’s highly unlikely that any of it will stick on the ground, the mere sight of snowflakes drifting down is the perfect occasion to bake another batch of streusel-topped muffins, don’t you agree? Then again, what isn’t a good time for streusel?
I had some extremely ripe bananas just screaming to be made into banana bread, and had schemed to sneak a chocolate-marbled loaf under Jeremy’s radar. But in the end, I decided that I didn’t want to wait over an hour for it to come out of the oven, so banana muffins it is. Starting from a heavily-reviewed recipe on AllRecipes, I tweaked it a bit to our tastes. These have just enough nuts and spices to enhance the banana flavor, and the moist texture of the muffin is nicely counterpointed by those crunchy streusel caps. The perfect accompaniment for morning snow showers… which already seem to have ended. Darn it!
Banana Crumb Muffins
1 C AP flour
1/2 C white whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 ripe bananas, mashed
3/4 C white sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/3 C butter, melted
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground allspice
1/2 C chopped walnuts
1/3 C packed brown sugar
2 T AP flour
1 T oat bran
1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
1 1/2 T butter
Preheat oven to 375F. Lightly grease or paper 12 muffin cups, or use a silicone muffin pan.
In a large bowl, mix together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, allspice and walnuts. In another bowl, beat together bananas, sugar, egg, melted butter and vanilla. Stir the banana mixture into the flour mixture just until moistened. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups.
In a small bowl, mix together brown sugar, flour, cinnamon and oat bran. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Sprinkle topping over muffins.
Bake in preheated oven for 18 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into center of a muffin comes out clean.
Source: Adapted from AllRecipes
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01.26.08
Posted in Cuisines, Dinner, Italian, Nuts, Grains & Legumes, Pastas at 11:26 pm by julie
Well, it’s a start… a little red and green to go with all that white. This is a shortcut, Americanized version of a pasta recipe Ivonne did full justice to last week on her blog, Cream Puffs in Venice. Hers centers around dried beans, lovingly soaked overnight and simmered for hours until tender. I used canned organic beans for speed, applewood smoked bacon for convenience, and threw in a handful of baby spinach at the end just for the heck of it. It was delicious, and I can only imagine how much better it would have been, particularly texture-wise, had I followed the recipe as written!
Pasta with Red Bean Sauce
1 14-oz can red kidney beans (low sodium please)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup olive oil
2 thick slices applewood bacon, finely diced
1 small yellow onion, chopped finely
1 celery stalk, chopped finely
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 lb rotini (or the pasta of your choice)
A handful or two of baby spinach
A few tablespoons Parmigiano Reggiano for grating
Set a large pot of water to boil for your pasta. While you wait for the water to boil, prepare the rest of the sauce by cooking the bacon in a large, wide saute pan over medium heat. Once the bacon is nearly done, add the onion and celery, stirring often. Continue cooking until the bacon is browned and the onion and celery have softened; add the garlic in the last few minutes. This should take between 15 and 20 minutes.
Drain and rinse the beans and add them to the bacon mixture; mash everything up a bit with a potato masher or the back of your spoon. Add the salt and pepper to taste. Cook for several minutes to heat through, then turn the heat off while you cook your pasta.
When the water for the pasta has boiled, cook the pasta according to the package directions. Once the pasta is cooked, drain it—but reserve about a cup of pasta water before doing so—and add the pasta to the bean and bacon mixture, along with the baby spinach. Turn the heat on low as you gently combine the pasta with the sauce. If it appears dry, and it well may, add pasta water a bit at a time until it comes to a good consistency, neither dry nor watery. By this time, the spinach should have just wilted from the heat. Top with grated Parmigiano Reggiano and serve immediately.
Source: Fagioli: The Bean Cuisine of Italy by Judith Barrett; adapted via Ivonne of Cream Puffs in Venice.
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01.20.08
Posted in Beef, Breakfast, Cookies & Candies, Cuisines, Dessert, Dinner, Italian, Meats, Pastas, Spanish, Veggies at 7:18 pm by admin
I haven’t posted anything new on the blog in the last week or so because I’ve been holding off to give you something that wasn’t brown or white. So yeah… I really tried, but that is apparently beyond my ability at the moment. To wit:
Exhibit A: Homemade Fettuccine Alfredo
This is one of my gold-standard pasta dishes to order at restaurants, but for one reason or another (read: obscene amounts of butter and cream), I’ve never made it at home before. Well, it sounded really good, and I had cream to use up. I used Marcella’s recipes for both the egg pasta and the alfredo sauce, and it was a surprisingly quick-fix dinner, even with making fresh pasta. Two very white thumbs up.
Exhibit B: Penne with Braised Cauliflower and Capers
I approached this meal by digging into the vegetable drawer to avoid the brown and white. What did I come up with? Cauliflower, of course: I made the pasta variation of Molly Stevens’ Braised Cauliflower with Capers and Toasted Bread Crumbs from All About Braising (the original recipe can be found online here). Do capers count as greens? I didn’t think so either. This was pretty tasty fresh from the stove, but made surprisingly delicious—and white—leftovers.
Exhibit C: Spanish Daube
I thought for sure that this entry, despite the predominance of browned beef, would be my key to returning to the world of color, with all those pretty green peas and roasted red peppers. And so it would, if the recipe (from the January 2008 Cooking Light) had been remotely worth sharing. Jeremy bravely ate a bowlful, but I found it pretty inedible. It may not have been entirely the recipe’s fault, though: my cut of organic beef was horribly butchered with the grain, riddled with fat and gristle, and rubbery as all-get-out, even after several hours of braising. Very disappointing, but I had plenty of leftover rice to make more vegetable fried rice with.
Exhibit D: Allspice Crumb Flop
This was absolutely delicious. I made a variation of my weekend standard cinnamon flop, substituting brown sugar for the white and adding a bit of allspice to the batter. Then I packed the top with the leftover allspice crumb topping from the previous weekend’s muffins, and baked for half an hour as usual. It came out extra-moist and flavorful and beige. Almost makes me want to keep a container of crumb topping on hand in the fridge at all times. 
Exhibit E: Oatmeal Cinnamon Chip Cookies
Since we ran out of our gianduja gelato, it was time to make a fresh dessert, and I ended up deciding on a batch of oatmeal cookies. We are, I’m ashamed to admit, currently out of chocolate chips, so I went with cinnamon chips. Actually, I ended up just making the recipe off the back of the cinnamon chip package (sans raisins), and these little brown cookies really hit the spot.
Exhibit F: Marion Cunningham’s Yeasted Waffles
This brings us just about back to the present. I first read about this recipe on Wednesday Chef, and have been meaning to try it since seeing it again in The Cake Bible last month. It requires advance preparation, which I kept forgetting to do, but I remembered last night, so we had waffles for breakfast this morning. Besides being yet another brown meal, they didn’t work so well with our waffle iron. I think it was because the batter was so thin that it didn’t provide good contact between the top and bottom plates of the iron. The one I ate was nicely browned on the outside, yet seemed half-cooked in the middle. I’m holding out hope that that little flub will make the leftovers good toaster waffles when reheated from the freezer.
Update 1/21/08: They were indeed tastier waffles when reheated on the defrost setting of our pretty new toaster. They cooked through and crisped up perfectly, and filled the kitchen with a very yeasty smell—almost enough to be offputting to my sensitive schnozz, actually. They’re still not worth making again just to become toaster waffles, however.
Exhibit G: Saffron Fettuccine with Scallops and Leek Sauce
So this is the closest I’ve come to color lately: Homemade saffron pasta with seared scallops and leek sauce. The scallops were previously frozen, and they were so full of water that they spattered oil all over the kitchen before transforming into rubber erasers. The pasta and sauce, however, were delicious, and made a perfectly satisfying meal sans shellfish. Since it came out with an overwhelmingly pallid appearance despite the saffron (I didn’t have quite enough on hand for the saturated yellow effect), however, it didn’t quite break us out of the brown and white funk.
On the menu tonight? Some lovely white baked cod and white fingerling potatoes with rosemary and garlic. I need help.
Saffron Fettuccine
1 tsp saffron threads, firmly packed
1 1/2 tsp hot water
1/2 C unbleached flour
1/2 C white whole wheat flour
2 large eggs
In a small bowl, combine the saffron and the water and let stand 10 minutes. Place the flours in the bowl of a stand mixer with a pinch of salt. Beat the saffron water together with the eggs, and pour over the flour; use the paddle attachment of the stand mixer to beat this mixture until it forms a firm, cohesive ball of dough. It should not be sticky; if it is, add a tablespoon or two of flour at a time until it achieves the proper consistency. Divide into 4 parts and run through a pasta roller to desired thinness, then cut either by hand or with a pasta cutter. Cook for about a minute in boiling salted water, drain and serve tossed with leek sauce, below, and garlic bread.
Source: Adapted from Astray Recipes
Lele Rivolta’s Leek Sauce (Il Sugo di Porri della Lele)
3 large leeks
1 T vegetable oil
2 T butter
3 large whole garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
Fine sea salt
1/2 C creme fraice
Black pepper, freshly ground
1 recipe of fresh saffron pasta (about 3/4 lb)
Freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, if desired
Cut away the root end and the dark green tops of each leek. Dice or julienne the leeks, and rinse well in a colander; shake off the excess water, but do not dry off the leeks.
Pour the oil into a 10- to 12-inch skillet, add the butter and the garlic cloves, and turn on the heat to medium. Cook the garlic briefly, stirring it, and when it becomes colored a very pale blond, remove it from the pan. (If you like, reserve the garlic, smush and finely mince it, and stir it into softened butter to make some yummy garlic bread.) Add the sliced leeks to the pan, sprinkling them with salt. Cook the leeks, stirring them from time to time, until they become very soft, almost creamy in consistency. If you find that at some point there is insufficient liquid to continue the cooking and the leeks are not quite done yet, add 3 or 4 tablespoons of water.
When the leeks are completely soft, raise the heat to high, and continue cooking them until the become colored a pale nut color, turning them over from time to time. Reduce heat to low, and sprinkle with generous grindings of pepper to counterbalance their potentially cloying sweetness. Add the creme fraiche and melt it into the leeks to form a light sauce.
As soon as the pasta is done to a firm, al dente consistency, drain it and toss it immediately with the sauce. Add a generous amount of freshly grated Parmesan, toss thoroughly five or six times, and serve at once.
Source: Adapted from Marcella Says…, by Marcella Hazan, 2004 (pp. 172-173)
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01.11.08
Posted in American, Beef, Cuisines, Dinner, Meats at 11:52 pm by julie
I’m starting to get sort of anxious about the fact that everything I’ve been writing about lately is either brown or white or both. We really do eat other colors of food, I promise. I made pork-fried rice on Tuesday, and I think it ended up having more vegetables in it than pork or rice, but there wasn’t exactly a recipe associated with that meal, just me chopping stuff and dumping it all in the wok.
I’m afraid today’s post is just more of the same brown and white, but gosh darn it, meatloaf just sounded really good, and I can’t even remember the last time I made it. Actually, I think I partially made it this week in backlash against what I thought was a pretty horrifying recipe for bacon-cheeseburger meatloaf that I watched Paula Deen make recently. To me it felt like one of those trainwrecks you can’t take your eyes off of, but then I saw the Food Network’s Top 100 Recipes list for 2007, and it’s right up there at #7. Go figure.
Meatloaf is one of those things I would never order in a restaurant or experiment with in the kitchen because the texture and seasonings have to be just so—meaning, exactly like the one my mom made when I was growing up. Jeremy seems to like it too (though he thinks the cooked loaf looks like braiiiiins), and leftovers make great meatloaf sandwiches.
My Mom’s Meatloaf
1 lb ground beef (or equal parts ground beef, pork and veal)
1 1/2 slices soft bread, crumbled
1/2 C milk
1 egg
2 T minced onion
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp each pepper, dry mustard, garlic salt and celery salt
1 1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
Preheat oven to 350F. Moisten crumbled bread with the milk, then quickly mix together all ingredients with your hands until homogenous. For tender meatloaf, do not overwork. Shape into a loaf in a shallow baking pan, and spread a thin layer of ketchup over the top, if desired. Bake for 1 hour or until done.
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01.10.08
Posted in Appetizers, Chinese, Cuisines, Dinner, Foodblog Events, Meats, Pastas, Pork and Ham at 5:10 pm by julie
We made a run by LifeSource the other night for some essentials, and I decided, upon seeing the huge organic Napa cabbages, to make pork potstickers for dinner again. We made our way around to the refrigerated cases last, and lo and behold, no wonton wrappers in sight. Turns out they hadn’t been selling, and are no longer kept in stock—good to know, but not much help to a woman with the makings for potstickers already in her shopping cart. When I got home, I sat down and decided to try making the wrappers myself. You can use wonton wrappers as substitutes for fresh pasta in ravioli recipes, so how different could it be from making pasta dough?
Not much! I started with this recipe as my base, but halved it, using an egg white instead of a halved whole egg. My primary concern was producing a dough that wasn’t too sticky, and I ended up having to add quite a bit of flour to get something that didn’t leave residue on my fingers when I gave it a pinch. Next time I will add less water more gradually. The dough ran through my pasta maker up to the finest setting without a hitch, and I made sure to sprinkle the sheets very liberally with bench flour to keep them from sticking to the counter-top and each other. I overlapped them and covered them with a damp towel while making the potsticker filling, and they stayed nice and pliable until I was ready to fold my stickers. I just uncovered a few at a time, as I was ready for them.
The dough behaved very well, and definitely felt similar to the commercially-produced wonton wrappers I’ve used in the past. It was a tad softer, but that just facilitated folding and pinching into shape (a good thing since I don’t have a clue what I’m doing in that department!). I made about a dozen at a time, because that is all that would fit in my little nonstick pan. They responded to steaming and panfrying just as they should, with a good chew on top and a crisp brown crust underneath. The amount of dough I made produced almost exactly the right amount of wrappers to use up all the filling, amounting to about 3 dozen potstickers. They were so tasty that Jeremy commented, while tucking away his second helping, that now we won’t have to worry about finding wonton wrappers at the store anymore. I guess that’s true, but it wouldn’t hurt to look—potstickers are fiddly enough as it is, thanks!
This is my somewhat unorthodox entry for Presto Pasta Night #45, hosted by the lovely Ruth.
Wonton Wrappers
1 large egg white
About 1/3 C water
1 C all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
In the bowl of a standing mixer, combine the flour and salt. Add the egg white and mix with the paddle attachment over medium speed, slowly adding water until the dough forms a ball. You may not need all the water. Continue beating the dough with the paddle for several minutes, or remove from the mixer to knead by hand. You want a smooth elastic dough that isn’t sticky, so adjust the flour and/or water content by increments as necessary. Mine was rather more pliable than my usual egg pasta dough. Note: This was not a large amount of dough, so I didn’t bother with my dough hook.
Cut the dough into four equal parts and run through a pasta maker up to the thinnest setting, or roll out by hand using a liberal amount of bench flour. Cut the sheets into roughly 3″ squares, and make sure they are well sprinkled with flour on both sides before stacking or overlapping to prevent them from melding together again. Use immediately or cover for a short while with a damp towel to keep them from drying out. Makes about 3 dozen squares, enough for me to use up nearly all of the spectacularly delicious filling from Shawnda’s recipe, here. Or use in any recipe that calls for wonton wrappers.
Source: Adapted from AllRecipes.
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01.09.08
Posted in Chocolate, Cuisines, Dairy, Dessert, Ice Cream, Italian, Nuts, Grains & Legumes at 11:33 am by julie
I think I was just meant to make gianduja gelato last week. When we ate through that tin roof ice cream so quickly, I had Jeremy take a gander through the book and pick out our next flavor. He couldn’t decide between roasted banana ice cream and gianduja gelato, but I thought the choice had been made for us because I definitely had bananas but only a small stash of hazelnuts. We had a rough day on Thursday, so I decided that some fresh roasted banana ice cream was in order for a pick-me-up. I took the book in the kitchen to start gathering up ingredients, and it fell open right to the gianduja, which has a pretty mouthwatering photo. I ended up digging around in the baking cupboard to find out how many hazelnuts I actually had, just in case; it turned out that I had precisely the 1 1/2 cups needed for the recipe, no more, no less. That sounded like fate to me.
The recipe was one of the more complicated that I’ve made from The Perfect Scoop, but the results are infinitely worthwhile. First you toast, skin, and chop the hazelnuts, then soak them in a mixture of warm milk, cream and sugar for an hour. The nuts are then strained out and squeezed to retain every last drop of hazelnut-infused milk, which is transformed into a custard base on the stove. Finally, you combine it with a mixture of warm cream and melted milk chocolate, chill it with an ice bath and a trip to the fridge (and/or freezer, if you want to expedite the process as I did), and churn it up into hazelnut heaven.
This gelato came out perfectly smooth and creamy, with a pronounced flavor of hazelnuts and just the right amount of subtle support from the milk chocolate. If there were any more—or darker—chocolate, the hazelnuts would have been lost and all that careful steeping pointless. If you wanted to make a plain hazelnut gelato, I think you could leave the chocolate out entirely with no detriments: I found myself scraping dribbles of hazelnut creme anglaise from the cooled saucepan with my finger because it was so delicious. Another option that I believe would work equally well is substituting toasted and ground almonds or pistachios for the hazelnuts, with or without chocolate.
I have to wonder if this should really be called gelato, however. David Lebovitz certainly has more first-hand experience with the stuff than I do, but I’ve always thought that the primary difference between gelato and ice cream was that gelato had less fat and frequently no eggs at all. Fat coats the tongue and can consequently mute flavors over time, and I thought part of the reason that gelato is so intensely flavored is because it is by nature lower in fat, sometimes even using corn starch as a thickener instead. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I was surprised to see a gelato recipe calling for more cream than milk and a custard base involving 5 egg yolks. It’s a minor point, because gelato or ice cream, this gianduja stuff is absolutely heavenly, and I don’t think we’ll be able to resist making it again and again.
I won’t provide the recipe here. You can find it reproduced on Serious Eats. However, to be honest, even if all the other ice cream I’ve been churning out over the last year wasn’t enough to tempt you, this gelato is definitely worth buying the book for, and an ice cream maker too if you don’t have one already. I’m just sayin’.
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01.07.08
Posted in Breakfast, Quick Breads at 12:23 pm by julie
I thankfully don’t recall too many of my elementary school lunches. They were frequently a traumatic experience for picky eaters like myself, whether I purchased a hot lunch in the cafeteria or brought one from home (my mom pretty well gave up at some point and started sending me with just a baggie of carrot sticks because I’d bring everything else back untouched). I do remember liking the school’s tacos for some reason, but more than that, the cowboy coffee cake that came with it as a sort of dessert. It was a simple, fluffy beige cake with a crumb topping, cut in squares and smelling sweetly of cinnamon and spices. The fact that it was more like breakfast food than lunch food didn’t hurt.
When I picked out the allspice crumb muffins from Dorie for this weekend’s breakfast bread, I had no idea that they would conjure up such a strong memory of that cowboy coffee cake. Fluffy and brown with a sturdy streuseled cap, they were lightly perfumed with pure allspice, one of my favorite baking spices. They lasted us for two breakfasts, and I’m already contemplating making a second batch.
I made some minor tweaks to the recipe on the pretense of health, and they are reflected below. You can probably guess the first one without looking: 50% white whole wheat flour. I reduced the butter in the streusel by 1 tablespoon, and used that Smart Balance Butter Blend in the muffin batter; I also used 1% milk with about a tablespoon of heavy cream in place of whole milk, and 1 extra-large egg plus an egg white instead of two eggs, since I’m once again trying to use up a surplus of whites. (The reason for that surplus to be raved over in tomorrow’s post…). I was a little concerned as I filled the muffin pan that my adjustments would compromise the texture of the muffins, but they were light and fluffy and, well, pretty perfect as far as I’m concerned. Maybe I should make some tacos…
Allspice Crumb Muffins
Streusel:
1/2 C AP flour
1/2 C (packed) brown sugar
1/2 tsp ground allspice
4 T cold unsalted butter, cut into bits
Muffins:
1 C all purpose flour
1 C white whole wheat flour
1/2 C sugar
1 T baking powder
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 C (packed) brown sugar
1 stick (8 T) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 extra-large egg plus 1 extra-large white
3/4 cup 1% milk
1 T heavy cream
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
Center a rack in the oven and preheat to 375F. Butter or paper the 12 molds in a regular sized muffin tin or use your handy-dandy silicone model.
To make the streusel: Put the flour, brown sugar, and allspice in a small bowl and sift them through your fingers to blend. Add the bits of cold butter into the dry ingredients and toss to coat, then use your fingers to work the butter into the dry ingredients until you’ve got irregularly shaped crumbs. Another option would be to use a small food processor or pastry cutter for this. Set aside in the refrigerator. (You can make the crumbs up to 3 days ahead and keep them covered in the fridge; the recipe makes enough for at least two batches of muffins.)
To make the muffins: In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, allspice and salt. Stir in the brown sugar, making certain there are no lumps; pushing it through a mesh strainer worked for me. In a large glass measuring cup or another bowl, whisk the melted butter, eggs, milk and vanilla together until well combined. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and, with a rubber spatula, quickly but gently stir to blend. The batter will and should be lumpy; the important thing is not to overblend. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups, at least 2/3d full. Sprinkle a spoonful or two of streusel over each muffin, then use your fingertips to gently press the crumbs into the batter. (I completely covered my muffin batter with a layer of streusel, and still had a ton leftover.)
Bake for about 20 minutes, or until the tops are golden and a thin knife inserted into the center of the muffins comes out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for 5 minutes before carefully removing each muffin from its mold. The recipe has a yield of 12; I overfilled my pan a bit because it produces smallish muffins, and had enough batter for about 10-11 muffins.
Source: Adapted from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.
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