01.24.10
Posted in Beef, Breakfast, Cookies & Candies, Dessert, Dinner, Meats, Persnickety Bits, Pies & Tarts, Poultry, Quick Breads, Sides, Veggies at 7:34 pm by julie
It’s been a few months since I’ve managed to post anything on the blog. I wish I could use the busy holiday season as my excuse, but that really isn’t the case. In truth, I’ve been faithfully cataloging our meals by date, complete with edited photos and recipe notations. However, when it comes time to write up a finished post, I stall out trying to find some way around the admission that most of the food I cook these days is purely utilitarian. I cook largely from the pantry because getting to the grocery store is often problematic, and my pantry is stripped to the basics for financial reasons, so most of the time I feel like the little Dutch boy, constantly plugging the gaps in my recipes with substitutes. I’m also trying to cook for, and around, a 22-month old who is simultaneously going through a picky phase and cutting his 2-year molars. I like to say that cooking is the only hobby I can make time for these days, but it’s not true if I define the hobby aspect as pushing my boundaries with new ingredients and techniques. It’s all I can do to get a coherent meal on the table these days, and writing it in black and white on the blog just drives that point home.
I know I’m not the only one out there whose financial and family responsibilities sometimes overshadow the fun parts of cooking, so I’ll try to get past my writer’s block and get back to the posts. They may not always be exciting or challenging, but hopefully they may help some people who are in a similar predicament. I’ll start by filling in a few of the gaps since the holiday season.
We didn’t cook Thanksgiving dinner on Thanksgiving this year. We were invited up to eat with my husband’s relatives, and shared a great day with them. Nolan ate heartily and had a fantastic time sharing toys and kisses with everyone there. I brought along a batch of whole wheat-walnut butterhorns, a loaf of pumpkin bread with a banana cream swirl (leftover cannoli filling, actually), and two pies, white chocolate pecan and cinnamon crumble apple. We came home with just some the desserts leftover, and the refrigerator almost seemed haunted by a lack of turkey and sides; the extra pie disappeared far too quickly for our health.
About a week later, I gave into my itch and made a mini-Thanksgiving dinner centered around a roasted chicken. I used some pre-mixed turkey brine to flavor the chicken, but miscalculated the percentages, because the chicken came out extremely salty, so much so that the gravy I made from the drippings was nearly inedible. At least it was just a 4-lb chicken, and the sides helped balance out some of the overseasoning: steamed broccoli, apple and onion cornbread stuffing, mashed potatoes, pureed sweet potatoes with sherry and fried onions, and yeasted pan rolls left over from a previous meal. We didn’t much care for the stuffing, which was a little dry and gritty for our tastes, but I may not have added enough liquid. I liked the sweet potatoes quite a bit because they walked that line of sweet and savory; Jeremy thought they were good, but left off the fried onions. For dessert, I made a caramelized walnut tart that was very tasty and roundly appreciated. I should note that all of these items were made from the freezer and pantry.
The week before Christmas, Jeremy came home from Costco with an 11-lb turkey. I admit that my heart fell when I saw it, because we had talked about doing some sort of beef roast for Christmas dinner, and I thought he was changing the menu without a consult. As it turns out, there was just such a good deal on turkeys that he couldn’t pass it up: something like $10 for a turkey that size. This time I avoided the brining, and rubbed my turkey with miso butter; I also baked a loaf of bread in advance so we would be able to have our standard slow cooker stuffing, and tried out a carrot souffle since we were out of yams. The turkey made for great leftovers and stock, but was generally forgettable. The carrot souffle was interesting and worth making again with a few tweaks. I didn’t have sharp cheddar so I just used medium, which costs less. Although I minced the onion as finely as possible, we found their texture to be unpalatable in the otherwise smooth souffle, since they are added raw after the carrots are pureed, and didn’t cook through in the oven; next time I would either grate the onion on a microplane, saute it minced, or possibly cook it along with the carrot. It would definitely be a good change of pace for us from time to time, though, since I always seem to be working my way through a big bag of organic carrots from Costco.
I wasn’t able to make my Daring gingerbread house in December because I ran out of most of my baking spices (cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and vanilla), and needed to save what little I did have on hand for edible baked goods, like molasses spice cookies. The latter were addictive, made from my last little bit of freshly ground whole spices, plus organic molasses and demerara sugar. I also made my personal favorite, pecan snowballs, and tried out some cinnamon-kissed chocolate oatmeal cookies from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking.
With all those cookies in the house, we forsook a fancy dessert to go with our Christmas dinner, which was made all the more festive by my parents’ arrival at the airport at 4pm on the very day. I had anticipated making as much of the meal in advance as possible, and splurging on a beef tenderloin roast that would take less than an hour to cook, but the cost of a standing rib roast was so much more reasonable that I adjusted the plan. The roast was dry-brined overnight in the fridge, and removed to room temperature as we walked out the door for the airport. Upon returning, we opened presents and nibbled on stuffed mushrooms and fresh bread with white bean hummus until the roast and fixings were ready. I went with a porcini jus, sweet potato puree with goat cheese and truffle oil, mustard roasted potatoes, and the cream braised Brussels sprouts that I’ve made for my folks before. The roast beef came out delicious and perfectly cooked, the Brussels sprouts vanished in a flash, the roasted potatoes were adequate, and Jeremy thought the goat cheese masked the flavor of the sweet potatoes (which may have been why I thought they were pretty good).
The leftover prime rib made for excellent sandwiches in the days after Christmas, but the most interesting meal we had was not one I cooked. My father was kind enough to share his new speciality with us: ebelskivers. He’s made many varieties of these tiny round pancakes, both sweet and savory, usually with a dollop of filling hidden inside like a treasure. This time, he filled the ebelskivers with a cinnamon apple filling, and topped them off with powdered sugar. They made perfect, tender little bites, and we all loved them, so much so that I really wish I had an ebelskiver pan now.
That pretty much brings things up to speed. Since Nolan started cutting his 2-year molars just after New Years, he’s barely been eating at all. Suggestions on how to fatten up a scrawny toddler greatly appreciated!
Permalink
09.28.09
Posted in Bread, Breakfast, Cuisines, Eggs, Foodblog Events, French at 12:01 am by julie
The September 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.
This post will have to be short and sweet. The challenge was essentially to make a classic puff pastry dough, bake it off into charming, flaky little cups, and then fill them with whatever our hearts desired, sweet or savory. I wasn’t too concerned about this particular challenge, having already participated in the Danish braid challenge back in June 2008, which used a slightly different method to create a laminated yeast dough. The biggest difference seemed to be that the danish dough called for beating the butter before spreading it onto the dough, while this recipe called for beating four sticks of cold butter into a uniform block. Although smacking butter with my rolling pin elicited grins from my toddler and helped me work out a little aggression, in the end it was the most difficult step in making the puff pastry dough. I got my butter block encased in dough and went through the various rolling, folding, and chilling phases, and before I knew it, I had a block of homemade puff pastry ready to shape and bake. The dough did tear and dry out a little in the process, but I forged ahead.
I used two biscuit cutters to shape my vols-au-vent. They were a little too close together in size and their edges weren’t as sharp as I would have liked, but beggars can’t be choosers, and they did the trick nonetheless. I used just a third of my dough, and produced enough shapes for 5 vols-au-vent and their little caps. One had to be Frankensteined together from the scraps, so it came out pretty flat and on the ugly side, but I gave that one to the baby, and he didn’t seem to care. 
All told they puffed up alright as they baked (I think they just about tripled in height), but seemed to lose a lot of butter in the process, and I think my dull cutters crimped their edges a bit.
I gave Jeremy a choice of fillings between chicken dijon stew and a riff off of eggs florentine, and he immediately chose the latter—possibly because I just made chicken pot pies last week (post to come, hopefully). So I made a simple mornay sauce of gruyere and parmesan, sauteed some onions and spinach, and scrambled a few eggs. My vols-au-vent were on the small side so they couldn’t hold much filling, but two of them were nevertheless plenty for dinner, and very tasty. I’ve still got two-thirds of my puff pastry dough in the fridge, and, thanks to my fellow Daring Bakers, infinite possibilities of what to use it for. A sweet variation is definitely in our future. Thanks so much to Steph for choosing the challenge, and please check out all the daring pastries at the Daring Bakers 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
Tuiles – January 2009
Chocolate Valentino and Ice Cream – February 2009
Lasagne of Emilia-Romana – March 2009
Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake – April 2009
Apple Strudel – May 2009
Bakewell Tart and Homemade Jam – June 2009
Chocolate Marshmallow Cookies – July 2009
Dobos Torte – August 2009
Permalink
04.15.09
Posted in Baby Food, Breakfast, Dinner at 10:05 am by julie
I’ve got a few good pancake recipes to work with now: praline ricotta, sweet potato, banana with hazelnut mascarpone cream, to name a few. They taste great, but those recipes all require special ingredients or extra steps, and sometimes I just want to get the food on the table without the fuss. Here are my two basic pancake recipes for those occasions.
First up is a recipe from the King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion; yes, the same book I was complaining about just the other day. But my gripe is with the inconsistency of the recipes: some need much more baking time, some need adjustments to their ingredients, and some are perfect just as they are. This pancake recipe is the very first one in the book, and it’s a keeper, especially if you have a stand mixer. It makes gorgeous, fluffy pancakes with the most basic pantry ingredients. One day I’ll remember to put some malted milk powder in the cart and try that version.
The Simple But Perfect Pancake
2 large eggs
1 1/4 C milk
2 tsp vanilla
3 T butter, melted
1 1/2 C all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
2 T sugar or 1/4 cup malted milk powder (for diner-style pancakes)
Beat the eggs, milk, and vanilla until light and foamy, about 3 minutes at high speed of a stand or hand mixer. Stir in butter.
Whisk the dry ingredients together, and gently but quickly stir into the egg and milk mixture. Let the batter relax while the griddle is heating (or overnight in refrigerator). The batter will thicken slightly while resting.
Grease and preheat griddle. Drop ¼ cupfuls of batter on the lightly greased griddle, and cook on one side until bubbles begin to form and break (this is the time to add anything like berries, chocolate chips, etc), then turn the pancakes and cook the other side until brown (turning only once).
Source: The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion.
My other pancake recipe is a more recent addition to the hit parade, even though I first tried it out several years ago. It comes from the Good Enough to Eat Cookbook, so of course I made a batch almost as soon as we came back from New York—with limited success. They really just didn’t taste anything like the ones at the actual restaurant, which was a big disappointment for us. A few months ago, however, I got tired of making the perfect pancakes above, and decided to take another stab at the 4-grain pancakes. This time I subbed buckwheat flour in for the cornmeal, knowing Jeremy’s aversion to the latter. Well, I can’t say that they taste like the ones in New York City, but the buckwheat made a huge difference in taste for us, and the fact that they are multi-grain gives us one more excuse to eat breakfast for dinner. We usually have some extras to keep in the fridge, and Nolan likes them smeared with peanut butter and jelly.
Good Enough to Eat 4-Grain Pancakes
1 1/2 C AP flour
2 heaping T old-fashioned oats
2 heaping T toasted wheat germ
2 T buckwheat flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
2 large eggs
1 1/2 C buttermilk or soured milk (or 3/4 C each milk and plain yogurt)
1/4 C whole milk
4 T melted butter
Mix together the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Measure out the milk and buttermilk in a large measuring cup, add the eggs and whisk thoroughly. Quickly stir the liquids into the dry ingredients, then the melted butter, stirring just until combined. Allow the batter to rest while you heat up the griddle, slice fruit, chop nuts, start some bacon cooking, etc. I use a quarter-cup scoop for our pancakes and sometimes press thin slices of apple or banana into the batter on the griddle. This time I used bananas and added some walnuts too.
Source: The Good Enough to Eat Breakfast Cookbook.
Permalink
04.13.09
Posted in Baby Food, Breakfast, Dinner, Lamb, Meats, Quick Breads, Sides, Veggies at 7:46 pm by julie
I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter yesterday. Ours was pretty low-key, since the little man is not yet of an age to appreciate Easter egg hunts and jelly beans. Instead, I kept busy cooking while Jeremy watched a baseball game with Nolan.
First things first: I wanted to make some sort of Easter bread this year, but I decided to go the easy route and make a quick muffin version of hot cross buns rather than the yeasted sort. I chose the recipe from the King Arthur Flour Cookbook, and afterwards noticed that their website shows a different recipe for hot cross muffins that actually does incorporate yeast. It would be interesting to try that out sometime to compare and contrast. In any case, I made a few adjustments to the recipe I used, substituting blood orange juice for rum and dried cranberries and cherries in place of the more traditional golden raisins and candied citron; I also added about a tablespoon of blood orange zest to the batter, and used the juice instead of milk in my glaze, which gave it a lovely pink color. The muffins came out alright: Jeremy and Nolan seemed to think they were pretty good, but I found them to be kind of dense and dull, never mind my distaste for dried fruit in baked goods. I noticed the same quality in the doughnut muffins I made from the same cookbook, and after a number of other mixed results, this is definitely not my go-to baking book, much as I would like it to be.
For dinner, you know we had to have lamb. I’ve been braising most of our legs these past few months, so I mixed it up this time and did a roast. We get the boneless ones from Costco, so I smeared the inside with rosemary and garlic mixed with a little olive oil, tied it up, and slathered the outside with a mixture of softened butter (3 T), Dijon mustard (1 T), and rosemary (1 T); then it went in the oven at 450F for almost an hour and a half. Seems like our poor little oven always takes longer cooking big cuts of meat than the resources suggest. While it rested, I made a quick jus by deglazing the de-fatted pan drippings with white wine and a bit more Dijon, and threw on some potato pancakes to go with the meat. The idea was that the shredded potatoes were reminiscent of nests (or Easter grass, or whatever), in an abstract sort of way, at least. To save myself some dishewashing from another side dish, I sliced up and blanched a fistful of asparagus spears, chilled them in an ice bath, and mixed them into my potatoes. It worked out well, and the asparagus got nicely caramelized where it touched the cast iron. Next time, my only adjustment will be to slice the asparagus on a steeper bias, because the little chunks I cut sometimes escaped while shaping and flipping the pancakes. Nolan liked the lamb and loved the potato pancakes, last night and maybe even more today, as leftovers.
Potato-Asparagus Pancakes
2 eggs, beaten
4 medium russet potatoes (about 8 ounces each), peeled and shredded using the largest holes of a hand grater (yikes—or in the food processor!)
1/4 C all-purpose flour
1/4 C grated onion (pop it in the food processor with the potatoes)
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
about 8-10 spears of asparagus, woody ends snapped off and cut on the bias about 1/2″ wide
1/4 C olive oil
Boil a small pot of salted water and cook the asparagus just until they are tender when stabbed with a fork, 2-3 minutes. Remove to an ice bath, chill, and drain.
Combine the eggs, flour, salt, and pepper, stirring to blend. Squeeze out as much liquid as you can from the potatoes and onions. (You can just use your hands, or, as I do, load some shredded potato into your ricer with the smallest holes and squeeze. Once you’re done, you can poke at the potato starch that settles at the bottom of the liquid–entertaining!) Add the potatoes and cooled asparagus to the egg mixture, mixing well; hands work well here.
In a large cast-iron skillet, heat some of the oil over medium-high heat. Spoon the batter by quarter-cupfuls onto the hot skillet, flattening them with the back of the spoon. Fry until the bottom of the pancakes are nicely browned – between 3 and 5 minutes; flip the pancakes and cook for about 3 minutes longer. Repeat for the remaining pancakes, adding oil to the skillet as needed.
Drain on paper towels, salt while hot, and serve immediately.
Source: Adapted from Bette’s Oceanview Diner.
Permalink
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.
Permalink
08.16.08
Posted in Breakfast at 6:14 pm by julie
What you see here may not look like much, but it is the best waffle I’ve ever made, pitiful home waffle iron be damned. I’ve been trying waffle recipes for years trying to find a gold-standard recipe, one that makes perfect waffles every time: light and sweet, but still crisp, and sturdy enough not to tear coming off the iron or during the application of butter. You can see a few of my attempts here, here, and here, but I have tried several others over the past year that didn’t make the blog: to name a few, the Old Fashioned Buttermilk Waffles from the Macrina Bakery Cookbook (rejected almost out of hand by Jeremy because they contained both semolina flour and cornmeal, and I wasn’t impressed by the texture or flavor either), the Teff Waffles from The Splendid Grain (alright, but didn’t live up to the effusive praise in the cookbook’s description), and the Banana-Cinnamon Waffles from Cooking Light May 2005 (these we’ve made several times when I have extra bananas, but they don’t have that classic waffle flavor).
Well, my waffle quest comes to an end here. Carrie Levin’s Belgian waffles are everything I want in a waffle, and I’ve already made them twice this month, so I know the first batch wasn’t a fluke. But then, Carrie grew up in Belgium, and her restaurant, Good Enough to Eat, was Jeremy’s favorite breakfast place in NYC, so I guess she knows her waffles. Of course, this won’t stop me from trying out new waffle recipes whenever they pique my interest, but it’s still good to have a reliable one to turn to.
Belgian Waffles
1 1/2 C AP flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp plus 2 T sugar
1 1/2 C milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 egg yolks
3 egg whites
6 T butter, melted
Mix together the flour, salt, baking powder and 2 tsp of sugar in a large bowl. In another bowl, beat together the milk, vanilla and egg yolks, then pour the liquid over the dry ingredients and stir together with a fork until just blended. Cut in the melted butter.
Preheat the waffle iron. Meanwhile, in a third bowl, whisk together the egg whites with the 2 T of sugar until they form soft peaks. Stir a heaping tablespoon of these through the batter with a fork to lighten it, then dump all of the rest onto the batter and use a spatula and a figure-8 motion to fold them in gently. Try to mix the whites in thoroughly without deflating the batter. Now make waffles as you normally would in your iron. (I use canola oil spray on the hot iron and scoop out the batter in heaping half-cup portions, which fits my iron just about right without much spillage.) Carrie recommends serving with powdered sugar, fresh berries and a dollop of creme fraiche; they’re also good with butter and real maple syrup. This recipe makes about 6 waffles in my iron, and you can freeze leftovers to reheat in your toaster.
Source: The Good Enough to Eat Breakfast Cookbook, by Carrie Levin (p. 58-59).
Permalink
07.17.08
Posted in Breakfast, Dinner, Eggs, Fish, Leftovers, Seafood, Sides at 6:07 pm by julie
So it’s salmon season in the Pacific Northwest, and we are starting to see whole wild salmons appearing in the supermarket. Last week when we were at the grocery store, I talked Jeremy out of getting one, just for sheer size. But a few days later, he made a trip to Costco, and somehow a 3.5lb wild sockeye (sans head) jumped into the car and followed him home.
I roasted it pretty simply seasoned in a foil pouch, on a bed of parsley and dill and stuffed with dill, lemon, and spring onions. I also poured in some clam juice and fresh lemon juice, then sealed it all up and cooked it at 375F for about 40 minutes. It came out flaky and very flavorful, with that firm meaty flesh you just don’t get from farmed Atlantic salmon. Jeremy performed filleting duties while I made my favorite quick sauce for fish, based on this recipe: green onion sliced thin and sauteed until tender in a tablespoon of butter, then simmered in white wine until it has nearly boiled off.
To go with the fish, I made lemon-scallion rice in the rice cooker, according to Simply Ming: Just add a few sliced scallions and some fresh lemon juice and zest to your rice and water before starting the cooker, and hit Start. I think the lemon juice gave the rice an extra-sticky texture, but it had good flavor, and married nicely with the lemony fish.
Needless to say, we had leftover salmon coming out our ears. I’ve already done salmon croquettes, and it is definitely too warm right now for chowder. So I found a few new recipes to add to my arsenal, a simple salmon frittata with corn, peppers and Gruyere, and a dilly salmon-potato hash with shiitake mushrooms.
For the frittata, I used the general recipe here, using frozen corn and diced frozen peppers, and subbing scallions for onions and of course leftover salmon for canned. It was very tasty, but I think if I make it again with salmon, I’ll use lots of red peppers and forget the corn.
The hash worked out nicely because I just happened to have a small bag of shiitakes that needed to be eaten before they dried out. I didn’t have any sour cream, though, so I took the chance and used some Greek yogurt instead. We couldn’t tell the difference. Nolan woke up just as I was finishing it, so the pic was taken one-handed, and I forgot I had meant to top the hash with some fried or poached eggs, but it stood alone just fine.
Salmon Hash
6 T olive oil
1 medium onion, peeled and finely chopped
2 C shiitake mushrooms, stems removed and quartered
1 tsp garlic, one clove peeled and finely chopped
3 C potatoes, cooked and peeled
1-1/4 lb salmon, cooked or smoked, skinned, boned and flaked
1/2 C Greek yogurt, full-fat
1 T lemon juice
2 T fresh dill, chopped
Sea salt to taste
Freshly ground pepper to taste
Place 1/2 of the oil in a heavy skillet over high heat, and when hot, add the onion and saute until slightly crunchy, 3 to 5 minutes. Add the mushroom, and cook until just wilted, about 2 minutes. Add the garlic and saute for 1 minute. Remove to a mixing bowl and set aside.
In the same skillet, add the remaining oil, bring to medium heat, and add the potatoes. Cook until the edges are just crisp, about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and mix with the reserved onions, and add salmon, yogurt, lemon juice, and dill. Season to taste with the salt and pepper, and mix well, but do not pack the mixture.
Return the mixture to a skillet, and cook over medium heat, tossing to prevent the hash from sticking. Remove to a warm plate, and serve. Garnish the hash with anything you like best, from sour cream to poached eggs.
Source: Adapted from The Buffet Book, by Carole Peck (available online here)
Permalink
06.29.08
Posted in Bread, Breakfast, Dessert, Dinner, Foodblog Events, Fruits at 10:45 am by julie
I was excited when I found out that this month’s Daring Bakers challenge would be Danish braids, but the time commitment of making laminated dough must have been more intimidating than I was willing to admit, because I procrastinated until almost the last moment to make it. Finally, impending hot weather made me spring into action this past Thursday.
I took advantage of Nolan’s early afternoon nap to make the dough, or detrempe, using clementine zest and juice, vanilla paste, and ground cardamom from an elderly bottle that I know I should replace. The dough was not kind to my stand mixer, and kept trying to escape out the top of the bowl, so I had to babysit it. It came out rather firm and very slightly tacky, and went in the fridge while I made the butter block, or beurrage.
Then I remembered that my stand mixer bowl always screws itself up tight when I make dough, so much that I can’t actually unscrew it myself. Jeremy was still at work, so I ended up having to wash out the bowl while it was still attached to the mixer. Bah. I left everything for half an hour to go pump and feed the little guy (who, I have to brag, was having an incredibly cheerful day, probably to make up for the post-vaccination shriekfest of the evening before).
The actual lamination process took much less dedicated time than I had expected: four turns half an hour apart, each requiring no more than about 5 minutes at once. Piece of cake… or Danish, as the case may be!
The next day, around the same time of afternoon, I sauteed up some Fuji apples and pondered my other filling options while making the braid. This process was pretty straightforward, and I took other Daring Bakers’ advice to make sure that my cut slices were long enough to completely cover the filling and anchor with a little pressure on the opposite side.
Two hours and an egg wash later, my braid went in the oven, only slightly enlarged from its original state. I baked for 5 minutes at 400F as the recipe called for, then turned down the temp to 350F and left it in for just another 5 minutes, after which it was nicely browned. Once it had cooled a bit, we ate slices with vanilla ice cream and a drizzle of the syrup from the sauteed apples.
The leftovers were polished off for breakfast yesterday morning, graced with a drizzle of simple powdered sugar icing. I was pleased to note that the bread softened up a bit to that ideal Danish texture after its overnight rest.
Fortified with apple Danish, I settled on using the remainder of the dough on smaller pastries with a variety of shapes and fillings. This was really fun to play with, and I didn’t even have the energy to get as creative as many of my fellow Daring Bakers did. I made 3 small Danishes with dollops of leftover grape pie filling I pulled out of the freezer, and a few mini chocolate croissants. I also made two types of bear claws. The first four had the traditional cinnamon-almond filling, made with homemade almond paste; for the rest, I added some golden raisins and my leftover sauteed apples, finely chopped, to the almond filling at Jeremy’s request. I got everything made up, egg washed and proofing in my 85F-degree house (it was 100F outside at this point), and we tried vainly to cool down with scoops of ice cream; I topped Jeremy’s scoop with the last few spoonfuls of apple-almond-raisin filling, and he was in heaven.
I couldn’t be happier with the way this dough turned out, especially after being so intimidated at the prospect. I envisioned butter squishing out the sides like toothpaste, but it was actually very easy to work with. It might have been a different story if I had attempted to laminate it in yesterday’s heat, though; as it was, I was very careful to roll out the portions for my small pastries in two batches to keep it from melting. The baked pastries were light and flaky with clearly discernible layers; the flavor was predominantly of orange, which I blame solely on my old bottle of cardamom (Penzeys, here I come!). The dough was so fun to shape, and made me feel almost like a professional baker. I definitely hope to make it again and play with flavors, shapes and fillings, now that I know it isn’t nearly as hard to make as it appears to be. Plus, those bear claws were awesome!
Thanks so much to Kelly of Sass & Veracity, and Ben of What’s Cookin’? for choosing this recipe, which came from Sherry Yard’s The Secrets of Baking Be sure to check out all of the gorgeous, creative Danishes at the Daring Bakers blogroll here.
Bearclaw Almond Filling
1/4 C butter
1/3 C firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 C almond paste (I used homemade; see below)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp grated lemon zest
Melt and simmer for about 2 minutes the butter and brown sugar. Remove from heat and stir in the remaining ingredients. Cool slightly before using.
Almond Paste
8 oz whole blanched almonds
8 oz powdered sugar
1 egg white
1/8 tsp almond extract
Combine almonds and sugar in a food processor and pulse until finely ground. Add egg white and extract and continue to pulse until mixture comes together as a thick smooth dough. Unblanched almonds can be used, but will affect the color of the paste. Makes about 2 cups.
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
Permalink
02.27.08
Posted in Breakfast, Cookies & Candies, Dessert, Dinner, Eggs, Lunch at 11:02 am by julie
For some reason I always have a really hard time wrapping my head around what to make with flavored chicken sausage. From time to time we pick up a package of chicken-apple or tomato-basil, and I scratch my head trying to come up with something more interesting than grilling them and sticking them in buns. Such was the case with the spinach-feta sausages we got earlier in the week, but I was able to put at least a few of them to good use in an easy crustless quiche.
The recipe hails from Baking Bites, and I chose it because it calls for similar flavorings and also because crusted quiches are my nemesis. I keep thinking the idea of eggs and cheese and pie crust together sounds great, because I love all of them, but whenever I eat it, I am bitterly disappointed by the sog-factor. Homemade pie crust is just enough work that, for the most part, I don’t consider quiche worth the risk unless it is crustless. (The single exception to that, so far, was the leek and bacon tart from All About Braising. That was deliciously sog-free, and I’d make it again in a heartbeat, presuming I had the braised leeks.)
Every so often I make a crustless broccoli quiche with feta and cottage cheese (and will post my cobbled-together recipe next time I do so). This recipe involves more flour—I used my faithful white whole wheat—and a looser batter than I am used to, but it baked up perfectly. I used a big handful of thawed and drained spinach from the freezer because it was all I had available, and similarly had to forego the sprinkle of feta on top, much to my dismay. The sausage that started it all was uncased, sliced, and sauteed briefly with the onion and spinach mixture.
The quiche gave me a new problem, however: I had an extra egg white in the fridge, though for the life of me I can’t recall now why that would be, so I used it up in the quiche and consequently ended up with an extra egg yolk that I wasn’t about to waste. I took the opportunity as a challenge to test out another chocolate chip cookie recipe that required an extra yolk: Robyn Lee’s Killer Big Fat Chewy Chocolate Chip Breakfast Cookies, as posted on Serious Eats.
The best thing about this recipe was clearly the size of the cookies. It calls for quarter-cup scoops of dough, about twice as much as I typically use for home-baked cookies. It also makes about the most iconic looking chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever produced: perfectly round, thick, golden, and studded with big bittersweet chocolate chips (see photographic evidence). In case you’re wondering, I baked on my Silpat for exactly 23 minutes as specified, and got exactly 16 cookies out of the batch with a spoonful leftover for the baker’s treat.
Warm from the oven, these cookies tasted as good as they looked: crisp on the outside and around the edges, with a soft chewy center. Unfortunately, once they had cooled, they hardened up a bit much for my personal tastes, and required consumption with a glass of milk for dunking. That certainly didn’t stop us from polishing them off within a few days, of course!
Permalink
02.11.08
Posted in Bread, Breakfast, Foodblog Events at 3:05 pm by julie
Even though, for all these years, I have apparently been oblivious to the famous “Time to make the doughnuts” commercial campaign, when I heard about Helene’s and Peabody’s similarly-named challenge, I wasn’t about to pass up an opportunity to try my hand at doughnut-making again. The only question was what sort of doughnut to make. We didn’t eat many Dunkin’ Donuts when I was growing up, but I still have a few fond doughnut memories. The first one that sprang to mind was eating plain cake doughnuts with hot chocolate on top of Pike’s Peak, but unless we drove up to Mount Hood to eat them, I just don’t think it would be the same. I decided to go with a childhood favorite from the grocery store: chocolate long johns.
Apparently, long johns are a regional thing—who knew? I can find unfilled chocolate bars and cream-filled round doughnuts, but the filling is always too much like pudding or custard. The filled bars I grew up with are non-existent in Oregon, though, and have consequently been added to my “unavailable cravings” list, along with funnel cakes and chicken nuggets from Chick-Fil-A. So, for this event, I decided to try my hand at Alton Brown’s yeasted doughnuts and make a few into long johns for my own personal gratification. (Jeremy doesn’t understand the attraction of long johns or funnel cakes, so the latter will have to get their own post as soon as I make acquaintance with a funnel of my very own.)
This was my first experience with making yeasted doughnuts, but the dough was easy to make and very cooperative. I started early enough the day I made them that we even ended up eating breakfast several hours before lunchtime, which may be a first for homemade yeasted breakfast foods in our house. I’m still having some issues with getting my frying temperature right to avoid greasiness, but I think that will continue to plague me until I break down and at least buy a deep fry thermometer, or even an honest-to-goodness fryer. Because there are only two of us, I cut the recipe in half, and still got 10 round doughnuts, 3 bars, and a few doughnut holes from the batch. Everything got dipped in the chocolate glaze, which was absolutely luscious stuff: thick and shiny and well-behaved.
For my three long johns, I picked out a filling recipe that sounded very much along the lines of what I remembered from childhood: nothing remotely dairy about it, just sugar and fat made up into a fluffy sort of frosting (mmm, I can’t imagine why Jeremy wouldn’t want one!). I do think I was in the right vein, but the particular recipe I tried ended up staying gritty even after 15 minutes in the stand mixer, so it wasn’t quite right. Still, it was close enough to tide me over until the next time we go back to Colorado for a visit, and now I can let myself periodically buy the yummy fresh doughnuts from King Donuts—just a few blocks from our house—without resentment or regret at their decided lack of long johns. (Oh, and just for the record… I’ve never eaten a Krispy Kreme doughnut, and I’m kind of proud of it, too!)
Yeasted Doughnuts
3/4 C milk
1 1/4 oz vegetable shortening
1 package instant yeast
3 T warm water (95 to 105 degrees F)
1 egg, beaten
2 T sugar
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground nutmeg
12 ounces AP flour, plus more for dusting surface
Peanut or vegetable oil, for frying
Place the milk in a medium saucepan and heat over medium heat just until warm enough to melt the shortening. Place the shortening in a bowl and pour warmed milk over. Set aside.
In a small bowl, sprinkle the yeast over the warm water and let dissolve for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, pour the yeast mixture into the large bowl of a stand mixer and add the milk and shortening mixture, first making sure the milk and shortening mixture has cooled to lukewarm. Add the eggs, sugar, salt, nutmeg, and half of the flour. Using the paddle attachment, combine the ingredients on low speed until flour is incorporated and then turn the speed up to medium and beat until well combined. Add the remaining flour, combining on low speed at first, and then increase the speed to medium and beat well. Change to the dough hook attachment of the mixer and beat on medium speed until the dough pulls away from the bowl and becomes smooth, approximately 3 to 4 minutes. Transfer to a well-oiled bowl, cover, and let rise for 1 hour or until doubled in size.
On a well-floured surface, roll out dough to 3/8-inch thick. Cut out dough using a 2 1/2-inch doughnut cutter or pastry ring and using a 7/8-inch ring for the center hole (I used a biscuit cutter and an apple corer to make my doughnuts). Set on floured baking sheet, cover lightly with a tea towel, and let rise for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oil in a deep fryer or Dutch oven to 365 degrees F. Gently place the doughnuts into the oil, 3 to 4 at a time. Cook for 1 minute per side. Transfer to a cooling rack placed in baking pan. Allow to cool for 15 to 20 minutes prior to glazing, if desired.
If you plan to fill your doughnuts, cut the dough into either rectangles or non-perforated circles before frying. When cool, use a sharp knife to cut a pocket inside each doughnut, angling it as you cut so that the opening is smaller than the pocket itself (like stuffing chicken breasts or pork chops). Make your desired filling and pipe it into the pockets, making sure to use enough filling to entirely fill the pocket.
Source: Adapted from Good Eats, with Alton Brown.
Chocolate Doughnut Glaze
1/4 C unsalted butter
2 T whole milk, warmed
1 1/2 tsp light corn syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1 C confectioners’ sugar, sifted
Combine butter, milk, corn syrup, and vanilla in medium saucepan and heat over medium heat until butter is melted. Decrease the heat to low, add the chocolate, and whisk until melted. Turn off heat, add the powdered sugar, and whisk until smooth. Place the mixture over a bowl of warm water and dip the doughnuts immediately. Allow glaze to set for 30 minutes before serving.
Source: Adapted from Good Eats, with Alton Brown.
Creme Filling
1/2 C shortening (I used Spectrum)
1/2 C confectioners’ sugar
1/2 C white sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Using an electric mixer, whip shortening in a medium bowl with confectioners’ sugar and white sugar until creamy and no longer gritty, 5 to 10 minutes.
Source: Adapted from AllRecipes.
Permalink
« Previous entries Next Page » Next Page »