01.31.09
Posted in American, Bread, Cuisines, Dinner, Italian at 5:29 pm by julie
To save some money, we haven’t really eaten out for the past few months. That included ordering pizza, but last week we really had a hankering for one, so I decided to take a stab at making it myself. This was a Daring Bakers challenge a few months back, but I wasn’t able to complete it at the time. The DBers chose Peter Reinhart’s Pizza Napoletana, which requires an overnight rise that I didn’t plan ahead for, so I tried out another crust: Mitch’s Basic Pizza Dough. It formed quickly in my food processor and made enough dough for two medium pizzas with thin crusts, just the right size for our pizza stone.
For the first pizza, I sauteed onions and peppers, and pre-cooked a few slices of bacon. I just used a jar of marinara sauce instead of making it fresh, and cut slices of mozzarella. It went in the oven for 10 minutes at 500F. The finished pizza was completely overflowing with cheese (it made a lovely burned mess in the oven), and tasted really flat to me—pardon the pun! The dough was bland, the sauce was a little watery, and the whole pizza lacked seasoning. At least it was edible, and my husband certainly didn’t complain.
The second pizza was much more successful, although it had an unpromising start: In a fit of temporary insanity, I just wrapped the leftover hunk of dough in Saran wrap and stuck it in the fridge for the next night. Of course, it proofed more in the refrigerator, busted out of the wrapper, and half of it was covered in a dried-out skin when I went back for it. I was able to salvage a useable chunk, however, and it rolled out just fine. I was more sparing with the cheese this time, and topped the pizza with a mixture of sauteed onions and (reconstituted) dried wild mushrooms, feta cheese (which is incidentally one of my all-time favorite pizza toppings), and dried basil. I seasoned every element this time, and it was much more to my taste, though Jeremy thought it was on the salty side.
We will definitely be experimenting with pizza-making again in the near future… I still have to try my hand at that Reinhart recipe!
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01.29.09
Posted in Chocolate, Cookies & Candies, Dessert, Foodblog Events, Ice Cream at 6:16 pm by julie
This month’s challenge is brought to us by Karen of Baking Soda and Zorra of 1x umruehren bitte aka Kochtopf. They have chosen Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux’s Finest Desserts. And thank goodness they chose something so light and versatile, because I wasn’t able to try my hand at one of the recipes until this morning!
Payday isn’t until tomorrow, so the cupboards are looking a little bare. Part of this Daring Bakers assignment was to pair our tuiles with something light: a dip, a mousse, a sorbet, something fruity, you get the idea. I had the ingredients to make a chocolate-coconut sorbet from The Perfect Scoop
, so I decided to pair that with a simple vanilla tuile. I was able to mix up the sorbet base before Nolan woke up this morning, but he’s been getting up earlier and earlier these days (a bit sad for me, as I was able to get so much done in the mornings when he slept until noon), so he got to supervise the tuile construction from his high chair. I cooked up the egg yolks leftover from making the batter, and they kept him busy while I worked.
The pizza dough I made the other night had screwed my Kitchenaid mixing bowl too firmly into the base for me to remove myself (this always seems to happen when I knead dough in it), so I took a chance and whipped up the tuile batter in my food processor instead, making sure to pulse as little as possible to avoid overbeating it.
I first made a single test-tuile by simply smearing some batter on my silpat with a spoon, trying to keep it thin and even, and pulling it out of the oven when the edges were just starting to brown. I shaped it over my rolling pin for simplicity’s sake, and although it came out a little spongy, eventually it did harden into a little cookie-taco thing. I would definitely recommend doing test-rounds, because the recipe was not very specific about how thick the batter should be, and with such delicate wafers, the difference between a soft cookie and a burned one could be a matter of seconds since every oven bakes in its own time.
While the cookie sheet cooled down, I decided to make a quick stencil for my next batch of tuiles, realizing how much easier that would make spreading the batter thinly and uniformly. I didn’t really have time to get creative with the shaping, since Nolan’s interest in the egg yolks was flagging, so I cut out long strips to shape into curls, and a wider rectangle to make cigars. I would have loved to make ice cream cones for the sorbet, but lacking any sort of cone shaper, that will have to wait for another time, maybe this summer. For the stencils, I just cut my shapes out of a piece of cardboard salvaged from a Costco-sized box of Mini-Wheats, slightly more sturdy than your average cereal box, but still less than a millimeter thick. The batter spread easily over it with my new off-set spatula.
I curled the strips around #13 straight knitting needles to make my corkscrews. It took a few rounds to get the right balance of baking time (6 minutes in my oven was ideal for the stenciled shapes) and shaping speed. I think I burned a few of my fingers a little in the process—those cookies are HOT while they are malleable!—but eventually I got a few decent curls, and I even played around with decorating my batter as the recipe suggested.
This photo shows my learning curve. I had definitely improved by the time I ran out of batter, but I could really use more practice. I can understand how people could really get into the creative aspect of making tuiles: they are incredibly fun and versatile, with thousands of options for shapes and flavors and whimsical decorations. Having made these, I now want to try making Parmesan salad cups and almond-butterscotch lace ice cream cups and fortune cookies and tuile flowers and butterflies and all number of things.
I had to photograph the sorbet fresh from the churn so it started melting really quickly, and I wasn’t able to get a very good photo of it. I’ll have to try again once it’s ripened in the freezer for a bit. It tasted great with the tuiles, however; they made delicious little scoops that tasted just like fortune cookies. I was surprised at the rather small yield of the batch, and under my present circumstances, it did seem like kind of a lot of work for the outcome, since they require rapt and immediate attention that doesn’t combine well with the demands of a 10-month old. But it was still fun to try, and whetted my appetite to play with tuiles again in the future.
The recipes are available at our hosts’ websites, and be sure to check out the wild creativity of all the other Daring Bakers at our blogroll!
I am a member of the Theta Class of Daring Bakers, inducted in July 2007. Below is a list of previous challenges:
Strawberry Mirror Cake – July 2007
Milk Chocolate and Caramel Tart – August 2007
Cinnamon Rolls and Sticky Buns – September 2007
Bostini Cream Pies – October 2007
Tender Potato Bread – November 2007
Traditional Buche de Noel – December 2007
Lemon Meringue Pie – January 2008
French Bread – February 2008
Perfect Party Cake – March 2008
Opéra Cake – May 2008
Danish Braid – June 2008
Filbert Gateau – July 2008
Chocolate Éclairs – August 2008
Lavash Crackers and Dip – September 2008
French Yule Log – December 2008
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01.27.09
Posted in Breakfast, Nuts, Grains & Legumes, Quick Breads, Veggies at 11:29 am by julie
I know I haven’t been posting on the blog much. My cooking has been less than inspiring lately, because I have no time to devote to it or money to spend on interesting ingredients, cookbooks, and equipment. If I’m lucky enough to get Nolan’s cooperation in the vicinity of dinnertime, I yank open the fridge and just cook the first thing that pops into my head and doesn’t need advance prep. Pitiful, I know, but it’s not much fun browsing the web and my cookbooks for meal planning with a squirmy 10-month old clamoring for my attention. This mom stuff is hard! At least I have a good little eater: Nolan has been off the pureed food for a while now, and even though he doesn’t feed himself, he wants to eat whatever we do. Chicken pad see euw is a favorite.
Since I haven’t made many meals worth sharing lately, I’m diving back in my stash of notes and photos for something I baked way back in September: zucchini muffins adapted from The Good Enough to Eat Breakfast Cookbook. I’ve attempted to make her zucchini-prune bread every summer since Jeremy bought me the book in New York, round about 2005, with only marginal success: While the loaves always taste fantastic, they have always had varying degrees of liquid centers or dried out edges. The problem seemed to be twofold. First, the combination of oven temperature and loaf pan was clearly not appropriate, and my experiments with adjusting temperature and baking time were not successful. More alarming was the fact that the recipe called for 3/4 C (about 12 oz) grated young zucchini. Every single time I have ever weighed my shredded zucchini, 3/4 C amounts to nothing remotely close to 12 oz, no matter how firmly I pack it in. Since I was already having moisture issues, I mostly stuck with a heaping 3/4 C measurement and put away the scale. But my big experiment this year was to retire the loaf pan as well and make muffins, and I finally got a product I loved, and that’s saying a lot from someone who has turned her nose up at zucchini bread all her life (green flecks, eek!). They are moist and spicy, with gooey bits of prune and the crunch of walnuts—and no taste of vegetables, for those picky eaters out there. A sprinkle of demerara sugar on top would add some sparkle. Nolan was still just eating mashed avocados and bananas when I baked these, but he’ll love them if I ever have time to make them again.
Z-P Muffins
1 C coarsely grated young zucchini (unpeeled; do not grate seeded cores)
1/3 C prunes, pitted and slivered
1/3 C walnuts, toasted and chopped (or substitute raw sunflower seeds, as per the original recipe)
3/4 C plus 1 T AP flour
3/4 C plus 1 T whole wheat flour
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 C sugar
6 T softened butter
1/3 C walnut oil (or canola oil)
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
Grease or line your muffin pan (or use a silicone one), and preheat the oven to 325F.
Combine the grated zucchini with the slivered prunes and walnuts. In another bowl, combine the dry ingredients: flours, spices, salt and soda.
In a third bowl, cream together the sugar and butter in a food processor until pale, then gradually add the oil. Stop the machine and scrape down the sides. (Do this each time you run the processor.) Add the eggs and vanilla, and beat in. Next, add the dry ingredients and pulse only long enough to blend. Do not leave it running! Turn the batter out onto the zucchini mixture, and incorporate it all together with the spatula. Scoop into muffin cups and bake at 325F for 30 minutes, or until they spring back when pressed gently with your finger. Cream cheese would be a lovely accompaniment, but I eat them plain.
Source: Adapted from The Good Enough to Eat Breakfast Cookbook, by Carrie Levin (p. 81-82).
Update 5/25/09: I made these muffins with some scraps leftover from making zucchini-wrapped halibut; I just threw the less-than-perfect strips of zucchini into the food processor and chopped them finely, then put them in my sieve over a bowl to drain off some of their excess moisture. Nolan finally got to try these muffins, and he really liked them a lot.
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01.01.09
Posted in Cake, Chocolate, Cookies & Candies, Cuisines, Dessert, Foodblog Events, French at 12:01 pm by julie
The cake was a big hit at the party. I sliced it almost straight from the freezer, and it could have benefitted from a few more minutes of thawing. A large sharp knife for better leverage, warmed with hot water, helped make the slicing easier. Everyone seemed to like how it tasted too, but it’s hard to go wrong with so much cream, sugar and chocolate! I was pleased to note that the finished cake wasn’t overwhelmingly sweet. The milk chocolate mousse was pretty darn sweet on its own and in the little parfaits I made up with the leftover cake scraps and coconut crisp. But in its frozen state, surrounded with dark chocolate icing and ganache, it all seemed pretty well balanced.
As I mentioned above, I had leftovers of many of the elements. I made four little mousse parfaits, and the next day I used my leftover ganache to make truffles, rolled in coconut crisp crumbs.
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