Anna+Food

Moo Shuing the Pork

2011-10-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

The October Daring Cooks' Challenge was hosted by Shelley of C Mom Cook and her sister, Ruth, of The Crafts of Mommyhood. They challenged us to bring
a taste of the East into our home kitchens by making our own Moo Shu, including thin pancakes, stir fry and sauce.

I make moo shu pork regularly because I really like the flavors in the stir fry along with the hoisin sauce. I usually buy wontons rather than make them myself, but decided to get with the spirit of the challenge and roll out my own pancakes.

The dough is pretty straightforward: flour and boiling water plus a little oil. After the dough rests for a while, it is rolled out into pancakes about 6-8" which are cooked in a frying pan until brown spots appear.


Dough while it rests.

After 30 minutes of resting, the dough is kneaded until smooth and then divided and rolled into sausage shapes. The "sausage" is cut into equal pieces, which are rolled into a ball and then flattened and rolled into 6-8" thin circles.

The pancakes are fried until brown spots appear and then set aside and kept covered until needed.


Kneaded dough, ready for shaping.

Cut and ready to roll!

The stir fry is pork (I used tenderloin), shredded Napa cabbage, scallions, mushrooms (I used fresh because I found some lovely chanterelles in the market to mix with the other fresh mushrooms), egg and bamboo shoots, mixed with soy, a little sesame oil and rice wine. I left the bamboo shoots out - not a fan - but used the other ingredients. The stir fry takes only minutes, which is why it is important to do the more labor-intensive pancakes first.

Stirring the fry

Pancakes, sauce and stir-fry pork and veggies

The one part of this challenge I was not able to complete was the hoisin sauce. Bob cannot eat peanuts, so the peanut butter base was out. I had no black bean paste, so I used the hoisin I had in the pantry. It looks as if, with the proper ingredients, the sauce would be pretty easy to pull together. Maybe next time.

We finished nearly everything and, of course, the stir fry can be eaten alone or thrown into an omelet or on top of rice, so leftovers are welcome. This was a pretty tasty challenge!

Stock Tales and a Cheesy Ending

2011-09-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

Peta, of the blog Peta Eats, was our lovely hostess for the Daring Cook's September 2011 challenge, "Stock to Soup to Consomme'." We were taught the meaning among the three dishes, how make a crystal clear consomme' if we so chose to do so, and encouraged to share our own delicious soup recipes!

I was challenged - by time, by decisions about what to make, by not understanding what was required by the challenge (despite repeated readings), and by ending up missing a requirement. Other than that, everything went really well.

Making chicken stock is something I do regularly, although not often enough. I love the rich chicken flavor from homemade stock, something that simply is not available from commercial products. I do use boxed chicken stock sometimes because I don't always have homemade - I make a lot of soup! I find the brands which limit the ingredients to real food rather than a myriad of chemicals taste okay. Not as good as homemade, but still usable, especially if the soup has lots of other flavors.

I have used a variety of techniques in making stock: buying wings, backs, necks and using those; using the bones from roasted chicken if I have enough; using a whole chicken, removing the meat when it is done and returning the bones to the pot. They take varying amounts of time, but they all work. It can be a long process if you really want to reduce the stock to intensify the flavor. The stock I used for this challenge was one made from a whole bird.


Chicken stock made from whole chicken.

The soup I chose was a cheese soup. Many cheese soups are very thick and I sometimes feel as if I'm eating fondue with a spoon - not that there is anything wrong with that! Normally, however, I want a soup that has texture but is not so thick it is almost hard to get out of the bowl. This soup is perfect in that respect. It is rich, but has a thinner soup texture.

The basic ingredients

All the veggies diced. The potatoes were cut in larger pieces.

The ingredients are pretty straightforward: mirepoix, russet potato, cheese, chicken stock, milk, Tabasco, and Worcestershire. The carrots, onion and celery are sauteed in unsalted butter. Flour is added and cooked for a couple minutes before adding the stock one cup at a time. The potato is added - I keep the pieces a bit big so the potato doesn't dissolve in the soup - and then the soup is simmered until the potato has softened. At this stage, you can puree the soup for a smooth texture; however, I never do because I prefer having the veggies identifiable and a little crunchy. At the end, when the potatoes are done, the milk, grated white cheddar, and seasonings are added and stirred until the cheese is melted - it doesn't take long. If I had been organized, I would have supplemented the soup with some kind of crusty bread or rolls, but life sometimes gets in the way.


The finished product!

And then there was this little distraction, as if my wandering mind wasn't enough.


The sunset while I was preparing the soup.

Time for a Rant

2011-09-07T20:22:00.000-07:00

No pictures, no challenge - just me berating myself for making a mistake I should know not to make.

There are blogs galore with original recipes or at least, recipes that have been tweaked in some way so the blogger can claim they are original. Some of these are tremendous and I have had a lot of success with many. Usually, if the author is someone with some credibility - a lot of experience, some time in the public eye, maybe restaurant experience or a cookbook under her/his belt - you can assume that the recipes have been checked, double-checked and tested thoroughly. Sites like Food52 are an excellent example of this.

HOWEVER, there are also some sites where people contribute their "original" recipes and fail to read what they have written or modified to see if it makes sense. I once reviewed a cookbook written by a small restaurant owner which was really a lesson in how not to write a cookbook. Instructions which made no sense, ingredients listed in apparently random order, rather than in the order in which they are used, references to optional steps which don't show up until well past the "optional" time... . It goes on and on.

Tonight I made a version of General Tso's chicken. Now, I have lots of Asian cookbooks, so why I relied on an amateur recipe, I don't know. The picture looked good and the ingredients looked appropriate. It was only as I really started preparing it that I realized all the things that were missing.

For example: "Prep your chicken" - That's it. Prep it how? Cut it in a specific way or to a specific size? Not mentioned. So I assumed (which you should never have to do) that it meant cutting the boneless, skinless pieces into even bite-sized portions.

"Stir together until a thick slurry forms. It will look gummy but smooth." I do not think trying to make a thick slurry with over 1/4 cup corn starch and 1 tablespoon soy and 1 tsp sesame oil and an egg white would ever work. I ended up with something more like a ball of clay than a slurry (maybe our definition of slurry isn't the same?). I added about another tablespoon of liquid and then I had a slurry with which I could coat my chicken.

"Heat oil until it shimmers." I hate this! What is the optimal temp? Why not use a thermometer to monitor when the correct heat is reached? Oh, and don't use canola oil for high temp cooking - it tastes funky. Peanut oil is excellent and corn oil works.

"Cook chicken for 4 minutes." Well, if we knew what size the chicken pieces were supposed to be and what temp the oil was supposed to be, perhaps this would be helpful.

"Transfer chicken to paper towel lined plate." One plate? So we are putting just cooked chicken on top of earlier batches once the plate is full? Really?

"Stir into sauce." I forgot to mention the sauce. This is General Tso's chicken, right? Hot and spicy? So why would you add only 1 teaspoon of chili-garlic sauce, the only source of heat, to a mixture of over a cup of liquid? That will not register with anyone's taste buds. I know not everyone wants tons of heat (I do), but why not write a range - 1 tsp for mildly spicy and upwards for more? I added probably at least a tablespoon.

Now - having said all this, Bob still liked the chicken but he pretty much likes anything with lots of heat. And the chicken was fine, although it was totally flavorless until the sauce was added. I think it should have been salted and peppered before "slurried" to be sure there was some flavor.

Will I make this again? Maybe some variation of it. It made a mess, of course, with the frying (even using a spatter guard) and the cornstarch (which always ends up all over the place. Lots of bowls and utensils which could have probably been streamlined.

So once again, I promise myself to do the recipe analysis BEFORE I start cooking and figure out if correcting the errors is worth the effort.

Stay tuned for this month's Daring Cook, to be posted on September 14, assuming I get it done!

A Return to Daring Cooks with Appam and Prawn Curry

2011-08-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

I'm finally cooking again after a several month hiatus. We put our house on the market the end of February and I had to limit what I did in the kitchen so when the prospective buyers wanted to see the house with 15 minutes notice (it happened!), I wasn't in the middle of a project. So I suspended my Daring Cook efforts and, of course, missed out on lots of yummy projects.

Fortunately, the house sold in a couple months (yea!) and we found a new house right away. Still couldn't cook because we had to pack and organize closing dates and loans and all the rest. And then we moved in and I had to unpack and organize and bring some order to chaos (movers have very unusual ideas about what to pack together). That took much longer than expected, but now, just over 2 months after we walked through the door, I'm ready to cook again.

Mary, who write the delicious bog, Mary Mary Culinary, was our August Daring Cooks' host. Mary chose to show us how delicious South Indian cuisine is! She challenged us to make Appam and another South Indian/Sri Lankan dish to go with the warm flat bread.

The required recipe was for appam, a rice-based flat bread. Appam is quite a process - not difficult (although I did not have perfect results) but quite time-consuming. First the rice soaks for 3 hours. Then the rice is drained and put in a blender with proofed yeast and a small amount of cooked rice. This is blended until it is a batter and placed in a bowl, covered, and left to rise and ferment for 8-12 hours. Finally, coconut milk is added to the batter and it is fried in a crepe-like manner. Other than the coconut milk, there is not a lot of flavor in these flat breads, which makes them ideal for sopping up the curry sauce from the main course.

The appam batter

There were problems. The time involved in allowing everything to soak and proof for the allotted time meant the project had to be spread over a few days. I'm not sure if the refrigerator time affected the outcome, but it could have. I also think I didn't adequately blend the rice - it looked as if it had been thoroughly pulverized but when I actually made the flat bread, it seemed kind of crunchy and textured. The batter should probably have been thinned periodically as I used it, because the batter at the bottom of the bowl was way too thick and I had to add some water to thin it out.


Mise en place for prawn curry

Making the curry

The prawn curry, on the other hand, was really good. I couldn't use the recipe provided because I couldn't find curry leaves in any form - fresh, frozen or dried. Curry leaves are not the same flavor as curry powders and I could have used an alternative such as kaffir lime leaves, but I ended up creating my own curry base using onions, garlic, ginger, madras curry powder, black pepper and red pepper flakes, plus coconut milk. It turned out really tasty - probably in no way authentic, but quite good to eat.

Prawns cooking in curry sauce

The appam served their purpose in scooping up the sauce and the prawns were succulent and not overcooked. The recipe which was provided suggested cooking the prawns until they were done and then adding more coconut milk and bringing it to a boil. It makes no sense to me to cook a protein to "doneness" and then boil it 5 more minutes, so I added the final coconut milk before the prawns were done. That worked splendidly.

A plate full of goodness!

It was great to stretch myself a bit. Everything was supposed to be served "immediately" but no way that could happen, so I made the curry, kept it warm and then served it along with a couple appam to Bob while I went back and made more for myself. It wasn't immediate, but it was still a good temperature and Bob lets everything cool to room temperature anyway. (Note: This is a pet peeve of mine - I want hot food hot and cold food cold. Watching someone let good, hot food cool off makes me NUTS!!)

Now I can't wait to see what September brings!

One Bite Munchies, Container and All

2011-04-14T00:05:00.000-07:00

Renata of Testado, Provado & Aprovado! was our Daring Cooks' April 2011 hostes. Renata challenged us to think "outside the plate" and create our own edible containers! Prizes are being awarded to the most creative edible container and filling, so vote on your favorite from April 17th to May 16th at http://thedaringkitchen.com!

It is so wonderful to be posting something after all this time! Our house is for sale, so I have to limit my cooking to quick and easy. If I get a call saying someone wants to see the house in 30 minutes, I cannot be in the middle of prepping an elaborate meal or baking some complicated bread or dessert. Meals have been old standbys that I can pull together quickly and without a lot of mess.

This challenge was very quick, so fit into my "don't make a big mess" criterion very well. I decided to use kataifi, which is shredded phyllo dough, to make little appetizer nests. The kataifi is prepped in a way similar to phyllo sheets: use some melted butter or oil to lightly coat, keep unused portions covered so they don't dry out, and cook until golden. I formed the shreds into little nests which I placed in mini-muffin tins. I baked them for about 10 minutes and when they were cool, I filled them with a variety of toppings.


Right out of the oven

The forming and baking took no more than 15-20 minutes. I had lots of phyllo left over but it can be refrigerated or refrozen, so I can try other fillings another time.


One bite treats!

I filled the little nests with salmon mousse, hummus with a Kalamata olive garnish and mini-caprese salads - mozzarella, tomato and basil. They were so good, all of them, but I liked the salad and mousse the best. They truly were one bite - we just popped the crispy (and somewhat fragile) bites in and savored them.

I loved this challenge because it is something I might not have thought of or tried on my own and it is also something I will use again. Twenty minutes is not much time to invest in creating a dozen appetizers and since the phyllo can be held for a while, you could easily make larger quantities and just fill them at the last minute. I thought of many other bites that might be good: mini-bastillas, mini-eggs benedict (quail eggs would work for that, if I could get them!), guacamole, even chicken or shrimp salad. What fun to try them all!

Feeling a Little Noodle-y and Crunchy

2011-02-14T00:10:00.000-08:00

The February 2011 Daring Cooks' challenge was hosted by Lisa of Blueberry Girl. She challenged Daring Cooks to make Hiyashi soba and tempura. She has various sources for her challenge including japanesefood.about.com, pinkbites.com, and itsybitsyfoodies.com.

Two dishes! Both new to me, although I've certainly made noodles and fried things before. To say I was challenged is an understatement. I did do the noodles early, since they are served cold, but the tempura had to wait for Bob's arrival so it would be fresh and hot. And in a lot of ways, this challenge was just what Daring Cooks expect - lots of room for variations and some technique changes.

The directions for cooking the soba seemed a little odd to me, so after reading other posts on the Daring Cook site, I decided to ignore them and just follow the directions on the noodle package. Unlike many people who found their noodles congealing into a gooey mass, my noodles were just the right texture and stayed totally separate. One for me.

Soba noodles with veggies and sauce

There are many options for sauces and condiments for this cold noodle salad. I chose the spicy sauce (although perhaps "spicy" is a relative term, since this sauce did not seem all that spicy). If I were to do a spicy sauce of my own creation, I would add ginger, red pepper flakes and other flavors to heighten the heat. The little bit of dry mustard didn't really reach the level of spicy I like. For condiments, I used bok choy, daikon, and red radishes. I could have added chicken or ham or strips of omelet, but with the tempura on the menu, it didn't seem necessary. The cold noodle salad was fine, but not as flavorful as I would have chosen.

The tempura was another case of changing the process. I made the tempura batter as described, I prepared the veggies as described (including parboiling the sweet potatoes using Kenji's (Serious Eats Food Lab writer) method of adding a little vinegar to the water), and I kept all cold until the oil was ready. The time involved in heating oil is always more lengthy that I expect and requires a lot of attention to be sure the right temp is reached but not exceeded by too much (remembering that adding the food will bring the temp down).

The recipe said to use 320 degree oil for the veggies and 340 for the prawns. I thought that sounded way too low for the veggies, so again, drawing on the expertise of Kenji, I used his recommended temp for making potato chips and heated the oil to 350. The recipe had little information on how long various veggies would take to cook, so it was a bit of a guessing game. I think everything turned out pretty well - the sweet potatoes were awesome - but a little more guidance would have helped. And the prawns were supposed to cook at 340, but 360 worked better, so that's what I did. Again, a little shortage of instruction on how to determine doneness, but I tried to estimate and it seemed to work - all the prawns were devoured.

Prawn, sweet potato, carrot and mushroom tempura

I love tempura, but I think I would do a little more exploring of other recipes before tackling this again. It was messy (as is virtually any deep-frying on the stove), time-consuming, and the result, while largely good, was not spectacular. I think the batter for the tempura would be one thing to explore. I know some batters use seltzer or club soda - this one used baking powder. Be interesting to see the difference.

And honestly, by the time I was done cooking for the pictures and my husband, I was not too interested in going on. Maybe sort of like Thanksgiving: Spend a week getting ready and the actual meal seems far less appealing.

Cooking from the Pantry

2011-01-13T12:31:00.000-08:00

I read a challenge somewhere - can't remember - to cook from your pantry for a week. Since I was going through post-holiday doldrums and cooking overload, this sounded pretty appealing to me. No grocery shopping, just use what you have.

Usually about once a week - often on Mondays - I make lentil soup or some other dish that can be constructed from ingredients I always have on hand. The lentil soup recipe is basic - lentils, canned tomatoes, carrots, onions, couple dried herbs and stock. If there is a melty cheese in the house, that is the garnish. Simple, tasty, and especially appealing in the winter. But a whole week of pantry cooking? Could I do that?

Well, yes I could when motivated by a distinct aversion to going grocery shopping or doing anything labor-intensive. It would mean a largely meatless week because I rarely have frozen meat in the house, but nothing wrong with that!

We had ham and beans and dumplings one night, made with the ham bone I had saved from the holiday ham (see Annasrecipes.blogspot.com for Winter Solstice Ham). I soaked the white beans overnight and cooked them with the ham bone, some scraps of ham, onion, and carrot. The dumplings were the shortcut version - I just used Bisquick (I know, I know, but it's fast and easy).

Other nights we had black beans, brown rice, salsa and cheddar casserole; veggie omelets; black bean enchiladas. I have lots of Rancho Gordo beans, which are incredible - fresh and interesting varieties - so beans are always an option. And I read that cooking beans with salt makes them much more tender. I tried it and I agree, although there are two camps in this debate - some are completely opposed to salting the water. Passions run high in cooking!

Now I'm back to my regular "plan the week's menus, make the grocery list and shop" routine, which works well most of the time. But every once in a while, a meat-light week using what you have on hand is a great way to make room for even more good stuff in the pantry!

Poaching Needs Coaching

2010-12-14T00:10:00.000-08:00

Jenn and Jill have challenged the Daring Cooks to learn to perfect the technique of poaching an egg. They chose Eggs Benedict recipe from Alton Brown, Oeufs en Meurette from Cooking with Wine by Anne Willan, and Homemade Sundried Tomato and Pine Nut Seitan Sausages (poached) courtesy of Trudy of Veggie num num.

Let me state at the beginning that I knew this would be a challenge for me. Not only have I never poached an egg, I've never eaten a poached egg, let alone Eggs Benedict. I think it stems from a childhood disgust of all things runny when eggs were involved. My eggs were scrambled until dry or fried with the yolks broken - no oozy stuff for me! Okay, so that was quite a while ago and I am only gradually moving towards more flexibility.

The challenges continued. I decided to make the Eggs Benedict on Wednesday morning - the Wednesday before Thanksgiving when I should have been making soup. But hey, I bought special eggs for this and if I waited, they would be stale and I'd have to get new fresh eggs. And the recipe provided suggested it took only 20 minutes to pull the whole thing together. Well, maybe. Maybe if you had perfect luck and mastered the technique the first time.

The hollandaise actually looked pretty good: silky, lush. The instruction was to keep it in a thermos or carafe or warm bowl while preparing the poached egg. I cleverly put it in a low (very low) oven to keep it warm. Probably mistake number 1.

The first egg I poached sat on the bottom of the pan, so I assume the "gentle simmer" was a little too gentle. I would have used it but when attempting to remove it from the pan, I broke the yolk. Start over. Meanwhile, I had put the muffin in the toaster and the ham in the frying pan and they were ready. Acckkk!!

Reheated water with small amount of vinegar. Had a more bubbly surface this time and put the egg in - not gently enough, but I'm not up to refinements at this point. It seemed to be doing the right thing and when the egg white was firm, I removed it with a slotted spoon - no breakage this time. I had put my muffin and my ham on a plate, so I gently laid the egg on top. With a little rearrangement of the trailing ends of white, it didn't look too bad! Then I went to get my warm hollandaise with which to crown my creation. Curdle. I guess my plan to keep it warm was a bit of overkill - plus, of course, it was in the oven for much longer than I had anticipated, more like 10 minutes than 3. I added a little more butter to loosen it up (I am sure there is a way to redeem hollandaise but I didn't have time to investigate), sort of poured it on. It actually didn't look too bad - from a distance. So quick with the camera!

Okay. Forget the camera. The batteries are dead and I don't know where the extras are and Bob isn't home. Meanwhile my creation, such as it is, will soon be inedible in addition to being only passably pretty. I give up. The one redeeming factor - it tasted fine. The hollandaise was clearly not the right texture but the flavor was good. The egg was cooked right, with lots of warm yolk to sauce up the ham and muffin.

I may do this again under less stressful conditions and using the lessons I learned from this morning. Then again, I may not.....

Now on to Thanksgiving soup!

I'm On a Roll

2010-12-03T22:46:00.000-08:00

Let me just say this: I have a small amount of bravery in me, at least when it comes to food. After all, I ate a scorpion! And I made and ate a poached egg - my first ever (I have residual issues from my childhood - no runny part of any egg was permitted). And now, I deliberately ordered and ate not one, but TWO raw oysters. And I even chewed them! Now, I admit, I asked for the smallest oysters they (Jake's Crawfish in Portland, OR) had - kumamotos. They were really small and probably didn't need any chewing but I was advised to really taste them, not swallow them whole. So, I squeezed on a little lemon, and took a big slurp (well, OK, a little slurp), chewed and swallowed. And they were good - smooth, briny, sweet with just a little tang from the lemon. Bob ate six much larger oysters, but I thought I made serious strides in the exploration of new (to me) foods.

So cheers to me!

Adventures in Eating

2010-11-14T16:47:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I posted anything because I haven't done much cooking over the past month. I have done some eating, however, so I want to share that with you.

We spent two weeks in China in October and it was an experience unlike any other. Not only is China a beautiful country (and we have 3000 pictures to prove it), the people are incredibly friendly. We were often approached by people who wanted to have their pictures taken with us - they love Westerners, I guess. The places we visited were all different but had some things in common: good food, beauty, cultural and historic sites, and crazy traffic! We also discovered that, while tea is offered at meals, the beverage of choice seems to be beer at both lunch and dinner. And no napkins. And no ice. I asked one of the guides about the ice thing and he told me cold was bad for the stomach. Hmmm. Finding ice got to be a bit of a scavenger hunt. In Hong Kong, we went to a 7-11 so I could get a drink from a drink dispenser and have ice. In Beijing, I asked our hostess at the hotel buffet if I could have some ice and she brought a whole glass - bliss! In Guilin, the breakfast buffet had a little ice bucket by the OJ. And in Shanghai, I requested ice at an Indian restaurant and the waiter brought an ice bucket and carefully added one cube at a time to my glass until I told him to stop. Oh, and Bob found a Starbucks which was willing to put ice in my iced tea! He's a hero.

So here are some shots:

In Hong Kong, I missed out on a seafood dinner, but Bob brought the best back to the hotel. This small lobster-like crustacean was superb!

These prawns were also on the seafood dinner menu and he saved some for me. Excellent and so fresh.

This is a picture of jasmine. The tea comes in a tightly rolled ball, which, when soaked in hot water, actually blooms. We went to a tea house outside the grounds of the Summer Palace in Beijing and a lovely young woman went through an elaborate tea preparation and tasting ceremony. I left with 6 different teas and a special clay teapot. Some of the best tea I've ever had - fragrant, nuanced flavors, totally different from Lipton's!

One night we were taken to a restaurant which specializes in Peking duck. The drive late at night past the Olympic buildings in Beijing and ending at an outdoor mall which could have been transplanted from any upscale community in America was a little surreal. This restaurant, which is clearly on the tourist route, is huge and has a multi-item menu featuring virtually every part of the duck. This particular dish was garnished with crispy scorpions! And would you believe it - not a scorpion was left uneaten by our table of adventurous gourmands. They were crispy but had no particular flavor. I would have eaten more.

A slightly better shot of the actual little critter.

And evidence that I ate it!

Sometimes there were creative garnishes on the dishes - this is a lovely little swan made from a carrot.

In Guilin, we ordered (despite the server's concern) a beef dish with very spicy peppers. Bob scarfed it down!

In the old town outside Guilin, these eggs were cooking in ash in the market area. Didn't try one, but this is a traditional way of cooking eggs in this area.

The best dish of the trip - river crabs in ginger and scallion sauce. Absolutely incredible!

Breakfast in the Western style hotels in which we stayed followed a pattern: European breakfast food (salami, cheese, croissants, yogurt), American food (eggs to order, bacon, sausage, sometimes pancakes or waffles), Japanese (miso soup, vegetables, rice), and Chinese (congee, wonton soup with veggies, dim sum). These little dumplings were served at the Swissotel in Beijing - some of the most creative we saw and all very tasty - if you could bear to eat a panda!

This was a little penguin, I think.

As I mentioned above, getting ice was an endeavor. Here is my glass of ice water - protected until every cube was gone!

Stuffed!

2010-10-14T00:15:00.000-07:00

Our October 2010 hostess, Lori of Lori's Lipsmacking Goodness, has challenged the Daring Cooks to stuff grape leaves. Lori chose a recipe from Aromas of Aleppo and a recipe from The New Book of Middle Eastern Food.

I have stuffed cabbage leaves and they were excellent, if I do say so myself. However, they were also labor-intensive and, as I recall, took most of the day to make. Between blanching and prepping the cabbage, making the filling, making the tomato sauce and cooking them, it was a considerable effort. Bob really like them, so maybe I'll do them again some day.

This project was considerably easier and faster. In the first place, grape leaves come in jars, pretty much read to use. The toughest part of the grape leave preparation was getting them out of the jar! They are rolled up and really packed in. I used one "roll" of leaves, soaking them in boiling water first and then again in cold water, to remove the brine in which they are packed. Then it is just a matter of unrolling them carefully and separating them. There are different sizes, but that doesn't really seem to matter. The larger leaves are a bit easier to stuff, but even the smaller leaves work fine.

The choice of stuffing was up to us, other than using rice. The short grain rice is soaked in water for 30 minutes to soften it slightly and then mixed with the other ingredients - in my case, sausage, mushrooms, pistachios and Vermont cheddar. The leaves are rolled around a couple teaspoons of filling and placed in an oiled saucepan. They are then covered 3/4 of the way with a mixture of lemon juice, salt and water, weighted down in the pan, which is covered, and braised for an hour in the oven. I also stuffed extra mushrooms in amongst the grape leaves and actually wish I had used more - they were really good!

This is how they looked in the pan. Not exactly things of beauty, but definitely grape-y.

After I cooked them, I took them out to test them. The filling was quite good, but the grape leaves were a mixed bag. Some parts were tender but they were really salty. I think the soaking process didn't remove all the salt or perhaps the salt content in the sausage combined with the additional salt in the cooking liquid was just a bit too much. If I were to do this again, I'd leave out the cooking liquid salt and just use the water and lemon juice.

Bob got some of these in his lunch the next day after they had been refrigerated overnight. Very portable!

If I were to do them again, I think I'd try some fruit variation - maybe dried figs with pine nuts or pistachios, spiced with cinnamon or allspice. I think this is the kind of challenge for which it is fun to dream up different stuffings, paying less attention to the traditional fillings and trying things that sound appealing to you. The best part of Daring Cooks is the freedom to be creative, not just follow the recipe as written, but use it as a starting point for doing something you think sounds good. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but it is all educational!

Apple Butter plus Cheddar Gougere = Pie in a Bite!

2010-09-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

The September 2010 Daring Cooks' challenge was hosted by John of Eat4Fun. John chose to challenge the Daring Cooks to learn about food preservation, mainly in the form of canning and freezing. He challenged everyone to make a recipe and preserve it. John's source for food preservation information was from The National Center for Home Food Preservation.

This challenge was more about learning a process than producing a specific product. There was an extensive tutorial on preserving - both canning and freezing. Coming from a long line of food preservers, you would think I would be really comfortable with all this, but I have never been a jelly/jam maker and it has never even occurred to me to "put up" fruits and vegetables. I've seen it done but I've never done it on my own. My daughter, Elisabeth, probably knows more about this than I do!

Nonetheless, I followed John's suggestion and made apple butter and chose freezing as the preservation method since it requires substantially less equipment and time. The butter came together really quickly and easily and I was ready for the preserving piece of the challenge in no time.

We are not big users of jellies or jams or spreads in this house. I use them as ingredients in recipes sometimes, but never on toast. Nick loves his Grandma's Oregon grape jelly, but he's the only one who uses jelly as a spread. However - I had a thought about how to use the apple butter.

I eat apples raw and in salads and in ... pie! Could I find a way to make a pie-like product with the apple butter? My thought was to make gougeres with cheddar cheese in them, bake them and then fill them with the apple butter. An experiment in an alternate pie universe, perhaps.

And with little effort - pie in a bite! The gougeres have grated cheddar added before cooking. After they puffed up, I filled them with the apple butter by just inserting a very small spoon into the center of the gougere and adding the apple butter. Topped with some whipped cream and a little mint sprig, we have a bite-sized dessert which, if not exactly a pie, comes close.

I found it best to use a somewhat milder cheddar since a very sharp cheese takes over the flavor of the gougere and doesn't complement the apple butter as much. These are best hot, right out of the oven, but the pastry can be cooled and refrigerated or frozen and then heated up at a later point. I think I would add the apple butter before reheating to be sure everything was piping hot when served.

Fun little experiment.

The Big 6-0 and a Special Birthday Treat

2010-09-13T13:10:00.000-07:00

Ron turns 60 today, but we celebrated yesterday with a dinner. I thought a recap of the meal would be fun, especially since there were some special treats involved.

I forgot to take a picture of the pre-dinner nibbles and they disappeared before I remembered, but they were, for the most part, purchased treats. There were Organic Blue Star Farms Stone Ground Wheat Crackers (made in Kent), Boat Street Pickled Figs (from the Boat Street restaurant in Seattle - really good!), and Dinah's Cheese.

This cheese was wonderful! Soft, buttery, and golden - and made on our very own Vashon Island, so local as well. A totally locavore appetizer without even trying.

The special treat was something I made. Let's see if you can figure it out.

Know what these are? How about a bigger picture?

Does that help? How about this?

Yep! Gummy bears. Now, what happens to gummy bears when they "marinate" in vodka for a few days?

They get bigger!

Inflated with vodka!

But not only that. They become lethal - a child's candy transformed into a portable adult cocktail. They are also very easy to eat. We didn't indulge enough to know if one can become tipsy from these little nibbles, but we laughed a lot!

The real dinner followed: A green salad (very local lettuce, from Bob's garden) with peaches and candied almonds in a peach viniagrette, tomatoes stuffed with robiola and gorgonzola cheese, risotto, and Alaskan king salmon. Thanks to Emma, I managed to deal with the salad and salmon while she was tending the risotto. It is wonderful having a God-daughter who is bright, entertaining, cute and an extremely capable sous chef.

Peaches and candied almonds in Bob's homegrown lettuce.

Robiola and gorgonzola stuffed tomatoes

Emma's risotto

Roasted Alaska King Salmon

When dinner was done, it was time for the official birthday dessert. Cake is not a big dessert favorite for some of the guests, so we had an alternative: A chocolate-mint Bailey's cream pie, based on a 1975 New York Times recipe. The chocolate-mint Bailey's was combined with cognac and mixed with a mousse-y filling in a chocolate cookie crust. What was I thinking? Start with vodka-infused gummy bears and end with Bailey's and cognac cream pie? Did we have a designated driver?????

Boozy cream pie with 6 candles (because 60 candles would have been a fire hazard).

The birthday boy and his birthday pie!

While I love cooking these birthday dinners because I get to try new things with a receptive audience, the best part is an evening with some of my very favorite people. And Sarah, if you are reading this, I had a great meal planned for your birthday so we will have to do it next year!

Ooops! Almost forgot - no picture but the pie was accompanied by a freshly- made strawberry-tequila (or was it rum?) sorbet, kindly whipped by Bob to add to the overall alcohol level of the day. (NOTE: Dr. Bob is in charge of ice cream/sorbet production (and he has extraordinary talents in that category) and coffee roasting/grinding/making (scientifically approached, as you would expect) and hashbrown cooking (his skills far excel mine). All other food production on his part is incidental and not necessarily enthusiastic.)

A Reconstructed Classic Summer Meal

2010-08-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

The August 2010 Daring Cooks' Challenge was hosted by LizG of Bits n' Bites and Anula of Anula's Kitchen. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make pierogi from scratch and an optional challenge to provide one filling that best represents their locale.

What meals do you think of when its 80+ degrees outside and summer has finally popped out? Hamburgers? Barbequed chicken? Hot dogs? Pierogi?

Wait - pierogi? These dumplings which are the found in Eastern Europe and Russia, among other places, are generally filled with hearty ingredients - potatoes, sauerkraut, sometimes cottage cheese. Lots of variations and lots of local variations in both the dumpling dough and the fillings. This is not what comes to mind when I'm thinking of a simple summer meal filled with tradition; however, my roots are more German and Scandinavian than Eastern European, so maybe that explains it.

A friend I used to work with has a holiday party every year, just after Christmas. While the timing has never worked out for me to go, I know she makes 1000 pierogis for this event. Patty has very strong ties to her Polish heritage, unlike many of us who may remember the traditional foods of our childhood but no longer regularly turn out krumkake or rullepolse or lutefisk(!). Now that I have tackled pierogi on my own, I have nothing but admiration for anyone who can do 1000. I managed a couple dozen before I was too tired to roll dough. I had lots of filling left over, despite cutting the recipes down considerably and I could have made more and frozen them, but I didn't. I'm no Patty Wagner!

I decided to skip the local option, which would probably have been salmon in combination with something, since I've done salmon variations on other Daring Cook themes. Instead, I re-imagined hot dogs and potato salad and made bratwurst/sauerkraut pierogi and potato pierogi. The bratwurst was cooked in advance, sauteed onions added, along with sauerkraut and all was cooked a little longer in a small amount of chicken broth and then cooled. The potatoes were also cooked and then riced and mixed with sauteed onions, butter (lots of butter) and milk. Really, they were more mashed potatoes than potato salad, but the pairing was there.

The pierogi are assembled and then boiled in salted water until done - about 8-10 minutes. When served with a traditional hot dog topping of mustard and a traditional potato topping of sour cream, they were a great alternative to a dog in a bun and potato salad.

This was a fun challenge, although I think we would have really loved eating the little dumplings on a cold rainy day in the winter. So hearty and warming! The potato pierogi were especially good - buttery and rich, like decadent mashed potatoes in a little slipcover - I'd do these again, maybe as a side dish with a roast - in the winter!

Cooking and Reviewing - I'm Published!

2010-08-01T16:27:00.000-07:00

When Ivonne from the Daring Kitchen asked me if I wanted to do a cookbook review, I jumped on it. What could be better than cooking and then writing about it? My two favorite things to do - cook and write - well, okay, maybe eating figures in there, too.

The review is here: http://thedaringkitchen.com/cookbook/thai-cooking-sufis-kitchen

The cookbook Ivonne sent me was a Thai cookbook written by the owner of a Thai restaurant in Richland, Washington, Thai Cooking in a Sufi's Kitchen. Richland is on the eastern side of Washington, the hot/cold side, not the rainy side, which is where I live. Apparently this restaurant has a solid following because there are many references in the cookbook to customers and their favorite dishes.

It's an interesting process to use a cookbook for more than just the preparation of a dish. I was very conscious of ingredients, instructions for preparing the dish as well as the final outcome. Usually the first time I try a recipe, I follow it pretty closely, but if I like it well enough to try again, I make some modifications. I might change ingredients or spices or increase the heat level (we like hot!). I might note any modifications to cooking instructions (how long to cook and at what temp). When doing these recipes, I admit I made some changes during the first iteration, but I noted them in my review.

Writing a cookbook and developing recipes is an art and a science. Certainly the recipe should sound appealing and the ingredients should be flavors that work well together or present a variation which is intriguing; however, the technical details are also important: measurements, order of assembly, cooking times, serving ideas. Some of the recipes in this cookbook had instructions which I found puzzling, along the lines of "cook until the chicken is done and then add these additional seasonings or ingredients and cook some more." Well, if the chicken is done, why would you want to cook it longer? So I made modifications at times, something anyone who read through the recipe first and had any experience cooking would probably also have done.

I hope to do more testing and more reviewing. It is a good way to test your ability to analyze what works and what doesn't in a recipe, a skill than can be used in all your cooking.

The Birthday Boy and the Protracted Celebration

2010-07-18T17:16:00.000-07:00

For the first time, Nick was not with any of his family on his birthday. Last year, I spent it with him in Boston, taking him and several friends out for dinner. This year he was on his own apart from birthday wishes via mail and e-mail and phone.

To make up for that, when he came home last week for a few days, I did a lot of cooking with him in mind. His plane was scheduled to land about midnight on Wednesday. It turned into Thursday before it actually arrived, but no matter. When we got home, I welcomed him with cookies and cow - chocolate chunk cookies and a big glass of milk.

Thursday morning when he finally got up, he had freshly baked cinnamon rolls, which I had made on Wednesday and put in the refrigerator overnight to rise. They were gooey with walnut caramel and he managed to eat a couple while adjusting to the time zone. That night was his official birthday dinner: ribs (which of course take a long time - overnight brine, one rub and then 2 hours of roasting, another rub and a 30 minute trip to the grill). I cut up watermelon and cantaloupe, had corn on the cob and topped it off with cherry pie, which I made on Thursday before I started the ribs.

I also made pizza dough on Thursday, which I divided into 4 separate balls and refrigerated overnight. But before our pizza dinner, Nick had his "special request" breakfast: over-easy fried egg sandwich on buttered toast with tomato and cheddar, accompanied by a fruit salad (watermelon, cantaloupe, blueberries, raspberries, pineapple and orange - all fresh, all tasty!).

Pizzas were made to order. I assembled a variety of toppings: figs, goat cheese, prosciutto, salami, fresh basil, fresh mozzarella, parmesan, Kalamata olives, tomatoes, sausage. We don't usually use sauce on our pizzas, since we all like a lavish pour of olive oil instead. Bob likes figs, goat cheese and prosciutto, with maybe a few olives. Nick likes fresh tomatoes, basil, olives and prosciutto, but also had a second pizza which was split into the garden-side (all veg and cheese) and the main course side (some Salumi Salami and a little sausage with cheese and other additions). The pizzas take only minutes to cook in a hot oven on a pizza stone (I actually make them on parchment paper, slide the paper and the pizza on the stone - easy-peasy and no sticking or mess to clean up). These are definitely not kitchen-sink pizzas - just a few select ingredients placed sparingly around the dough.

Last night we had pasta using a recipe I had found recently - it was OK, but not memorable. Tonight Nick is attending a wedding, so no dinner needed for him. I did make him the traditional Dutch baby for "brunch" this afternoon when he finally woke up.

Tomorrow night he heads back to Boston, but will be here for chicken enchiladas before I take him to the airport. It's been a fun several days - he is so appreciative of the meals I make for him. He'll get to take some cookies and cinnamon rolls with him, if he has room in his bag. And then it is back to what passes for normal around here.

A Little Nutty

2010-07-14T00:22:00.000-07:00

The July 2010 Daring Cooks' Challenge was hosted by Margie of More Please and Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make their own nut butter from scratch, and use the nut butter in a recipe. Their sources include Better with Nut Butter and by Cooking Light Magazine, Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, and Food Network online.

The requirement was to use the nut butter in a savory dish - not sweet. Bob suggested a Northwest theme when I said I was thinking about doing something with fish - hazelnuts and salmon. I had been thinking pistachios with salmon because I thought the colors would be striking, but I decided his idea was just fine.

Finding hazelnuts or filberts was a bit of a challenge in itself, as was preparing them for the butter-making process. My local store had nothing, but my favorite store, where I also bought my salmon, had a good supply. Making the butter takes only minutes, but with hazelnuts, some skin removal is suggested. I roasted the hazelnuts for 5 minutes and then rubbed them vigorously in a dishtowel. That worked for some, but others were very stubborn. After trying several other techniques, I gave up. Some of the nuts had skins on when they went into the food processor. It really didn't seem to affect the color or flavor too much.

The nuts were pretty dry, so I added a small amount of hazelnut oil (who knows why I bought that at some point in the past, but I was glad to have it). The consistency, after a few minutes of pulsing, was like a natural peanut butter. Soft, not stiff, and a dark tan color.

I sliced the salmon into narrow pieces, about 6 ounces each. I salted and peppered them, put some nut butter across the top and wrapped them in two layers of phyllo which had been buttered and decorated with parsely sprigs. NOTE: I used Safeway brand phyllo and once again, I found the product inferior to the national brand I sometimes buy. The phyllo was very sticky in places and already split when I unwrapped it. Go with the national brand (which, of course, Safeway doesn't carry). Phyllo is tricky enough without trying to cope with basic product flaws.

After doing a light egg wash, I baked the salmon wraps for about 15 minutes in a hot oven. I also made stuffed mushrooms - sauteed onions, mushrooms stems, panko, parsley, some of the nut butter, and seasonings, drizzled with olive oil. These baked for about 5 minutes, so easy to coordinate with the salmon. A few steamed local green beans and dinner is on the table!

Bob decided his idea wasn't so great after all. Now one must remember that Bob likes spicy food - this was not spicy despite the addition of some pepper to the dish. He found the hazelnuts too sweet. Not a fan. I, on the other hand, could taste the nutty flavor and thought it did complement the salmon. I also liked the stuffed mushrooms, although I think a saute of sliced mushrooms with all the same ingredients would also have tasted good and might have worked really well if stuffed into the phyllo with the salmon. Maybe a roulade? Something to think about for next time.

And the First-Born Turns 29

2010-06-28T22:50:00.000-07:00

My darling daughter turned 29 today, which may or may not be a problem for her, but is a little freaky for me! I offered to cook a birthday dinner over the weekend and she (as usual) requested paella.

Paella is a good dish when you are having a group of people with different food preferences eat with you. While I'm sure it is not the traditional approach, I group the seafood in one area so those who would rather not eat prawns or clams can avoid them. I usually have chicken throughout the dish and I keep the chorizo large enough to identify so those who aren't fans of spicy sausage can avoid that. I really don't mind people picking and choosing - after all, I want them to be happy!

Along with the paella I had a couple fruit dishes: ribbons of cantaloupe with crispy prosciutto and watermelon with a lime dressing.

And for dessert, peaches with vanilla ice cream, a bourbon caramel sauce and spiced pecans. No picture because Bob was too busy eating to point and click!

Leftovers flew out the door and everyone went home with some extra treats for later. We didn't sing or blow out candles, but it was still a happy birthday celebrated by Sean, Grandma, Bob and me - and of course, the birthday girl, Elisabeth!

Crustacean Cornucopia

2010-06-27T20:36:00.000-07:00

Since I'm not doing the Daring Baker's challenge this month, I thought I would write about some of the other cooking I did instead.

*********SEAFOOD ALERT!!**************
Warning: If descriptions and pictures of little crustaceans are more than you can handle - scroll quickly!

On Thursday, while preparing for dinner, I got a call from Bob saying he was bringing home some crawfish - live crawfish! Whoa! This meant springing into immediate action: checking internet for live crawfish recipes, finding the SwampFire Seafood Boil that I knew I had because I'm an impulse shopper with no self-control, and finding another pot in which to cook the little beasties. Since I was already planning to have prawns for dinner and couldn't delay that since they were ready to cook and all the prep had been done, I had two large pots on the cooktop heating up to receive the bounty headed in their direction.

My plan for dinner was a new recipe from the New York Times. The Yucatan Shrimp recipe is from a restaurant in the Sanibel/Captiva Islands off the west coast of Florida. The restaurant, Doc Ford's, is owned by a writer of detective stories (I have one of his books waiting at the library), and the description of this recipe and its popularity intrigued me. While they use Gulf shrimp, I'm not sure how viable an option this will be in the future. In any event, I used other shrimp and it seemed to work. The sauce is a butter, garlic, lime, and sambal oelek (Indonesian hot chile sauce) mixture, and a little jalapeno pepper and cilantro are tossed in at the end.

INSERT PERSONAL OPINION HERE: I added the cilantro because Bob likes it. I do not understand why anyone likes cilantro - it smells awful and tastes like soap. I know there is a physiological reason some people dislike cilantro and whatever it is, I've got it. I picked all mine off.

The whole dish is extremely easy to pull together but messy to eat, since the shrimp are cooked with the shell on. Spicy, limy, buttery - yum! I threw together a mango and pineapple salad with a little more lime juice and some mint to counteract the heat of the shrimp.

This clearly would have been a good meal by itself, but I still had the crawfish to cook. I had heard about SwampFire seafood boil and promptly ordered some because I "had" to have it. If I had a plan, I don't remember what it was, but as it turns out, it was the right thing to have sitting on the pantry shelf.

A true crawfish boil uses potatoes and onions and spicy sausage (andouille, perhaps), a lot of lemons and the crawfish. Not only did I not have potatoes or andouille, I had no room in my pot for them. Instead, I added several lemon halves to the seafood boil, and heated it up. When the crawfish arrived, they did not need purging - they were very clean - so we just rinsed them off, Bob gloved up and transferred them to the boiling mixture. About 6-7 minutes later, I turned off the heat and let them soak up the spicy mixture for a while.

Another little aside: Bob doesn't like to work for food. When we have Dungeness crab, I spend time cracking and extracting the crab meat so he can just eat it without having to waste his time dealing with the shell. Dungeness crab is a piece of cake compared to other crustaceans. The meat is easy to remove, comes in pretty large pieces and it doesn't take too long to have enough crab to feed a couple people. Crawfish, on the other hand, are a lot more work. There is very little meat - just the tail of the critter - and it isn't easy to get to it. The head, which you twist off, can (and should) be sucked, but the tail has to be broken open. It takes a long time to get any amount of crawfish into your belly. And I don't do crawfish for Bob -he has to do his own.

This was a messy, multiple-napkin meal and we didn't even start eating until after 8 PM. There were leftovers since 2 pounds of shrimp and 75 crawfish are way more than two people can eat. And there were lots of shells to dispose of and pots to empty. But it was well worth the effort and last minute frenzy for this meal. And I got leftovers for lunch!

Pate' Party

2010-06-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

Our hostesses this month, Evelyne of Cheap Ethnic Eatz, and Valerie of The Chocolate Bunny, chose delicious pate' with freshly baked bread as their June challenge! They've provided us with 4 different pate recipes to choose from and are allowing us to go wild with our homemade bread choice.

Imagine - the French countryside - Provence, maybe - all lavender and sunflowers and breezes. Old stone houses, quaint villages and wonderful shops with glorious food. Now imagine the Pacific Northwest in the pouring rain - endless, pouring rain. Where would you rather be?

No choice at all for me - home is home and I like the rain, even in June. However, the food of the French can be very enticing and this month's challenge let me bring a little of that to my table. A little pate', cornichons, chicken liver mousse and homemade baguette - maybe even a bottle of rose' - practically like being in some small bistro in an ancient village without the airfare or jet lag.

I love pate' and have several recipes set aside to try at some point, so this was a fun challenge. I had to tweak the hostesses' recipes a bit because I had to delay doing this challenge until nearly the last minute and didn't have time to check a variety of stores for some of the ingredients that weren't available at my usual grocery store. I decided on the pork pate' but also added some some strips of ham, which I did not process with the rest of the mixture, to give the pate' a more rustic feel. It was porky and salty and had a great texture. Perfect with the cornichons.

I also made a chicken liver mousse, which is not really a pate' but seemed to me to be in the same general family. It was a pretty simple recipe. I thought the end product was a bit underseasoned by itself, but it is served with a shallot jam which was rich and dense with flavor (shallots, balsamic vinegar and brown sugar), so the combination worked well.

The baguette recipe I used was from Ashley Rodriguez's blog, Not Without Salt, and is one of those supersimple breads in which all the ingredients are mixed together, kneaded lightly and then put in the refrigerator overnight. I removed enough dough the next day to make one loaf and will be able to have freshly baked bread for a couple more days from the remaining dough. It was crusty and tasty, but not as chewy as I would have liked. I'll have to figure out why and see if I can fix that for the remaining dough.

Ta-da! The pate', with bread and cornichons, and the mousse, with shallot jam.

There's some good eats there! Or perhaps I should say c'est magnifique! (Please - anyone who actually speaks French, excuse my errors since mine is limited to reading menus!)

Croquembouche Maybe

2010-05-27T00:27:00.000-07:00

The May 2010 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Cat of Little Miss Cupcake. Cat challenged everyone to make a piece montee, or croquembouche, based on recipes from Peter Kump's Baking School in Manhattan and Nick Malgieri.

Okay, May was a challenging month in many respects. In addition to being a co-host for the May Daring Cooks challenge (an exciting but time-consuming endeavor), I fell (sigh) and badly sprained my right hand. This was a serious limitation for the month - very hard to do anything, from typing to stirring. My resident sous chef was called on daily to open cans, slice vegetables and lift things. I was pretty useless. Needless to say, the thought of trying to produce this impressive French pastry was a bit overwhelming. But - optimism triumphed and I plunged in.

Croquembouche is a tower of cream puffs held together with caramel and embellished with caramel or other decorations. Cream puffs - that means piping, right? My favorite activity and I'm so GOOD at it. Actually, I did all right. The weakness in my right hand had abated enough to pipe the puffs and it is amazing how a finger dipped in hot water can repair the occasional flawed puff. I did okay with this part. Yea!

That was day one. Carefully sealing my pate choux (or puffs) away in an airtight contained, I headed for day two with the plan to make the pastry cream. I can do this - no new techniques, have successfully tempered eggs and made custards - no problem! Well, no problem except that batch one turned into a lovely rich, creamy, sweet scrambled egg dish. What was it I said about knowing how to temper eggs? Maybe the milk mixture was not quite hot enough. Try again. Fail again. What's the deal? I know how to do this!!

Now, out of ingredients, I have to regroup. I give up for the day and find a different recipe. David Lebovitz, an American who lives in Paris and does all things dessert with incredible results, has just released a compilation of his favorite and most popular dessert recipes, Ready for Dessert. I find his version of pastry cream, which uses flour instead of cornstarch and takes a slightly different approach to assembling the whole product. New supply of eggs and milk, new recipe - let's try again. And...perfection! A smooth, not too sweet pastry cream. Beautiful texture, delicate flavor - ready to go. I cover and cool it in the refrigerator.

Day four should have been assembly day, but we were out of town, so on to day five. The pastry cream is fine, the caramel is good to go. Unfortunately, the puffs have not held up too well and I'm not prepared to do them again. They are soft instead of crispy and well past their prime. I soldier on. My plan is to stack them in a modified cone with the caramel, decorate with edible flowers and top with a candle (in honor of Bob's birthday which is now over but it is the thought that counts). I manage to create a sort-of tower, shove in the flowers, put the candle on top and rush to take photos. Battery in the camera is dead. Quick search for new battery. Meanwhile, puffs are rebelling and seeking lower ground. Repair. Photo quickly. Total collapse.

Okay - what did I learn? Making pate choux or puffs is not a problem. Making pastry cream with the right recipe is not a problem. Probably better to make the pastry cream first, let it chill overnight and then make the puffs and fill them. The caramel is quick. Honestly - I might do the components again but I would never try to stack them. A bowl with a couple of cream puffs topped with chocolate or caramel makes more sense for us. Even if I had been much more successful with the outcome, I would rather focus on the food than the appearance. I know the "eat with our eyes" adage, but I think a lovely plate with a trio of cream puffs would be more appealing than a tippy tower.

Challenging, yes, but probably more for the construction than for the components. I abandoned the puff and just ate the pastry cream, which was nummers treats!

A Challenging Cinco de Mayo

2010-05-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

Our hosts this month, Barbara of Barbara Bakes and Bunnee of Anna+Food have chosen a delicious Stacked Green Chile & Grilled Chicken Enchilada recipe in celebration of Cinco de Mayo! The recipe, featuring a homemade enchilada sauce was found on www.finecooking.com and written by Robb Walsh.

The May Daring Cooks challenge was very special since Barbara and I hosted the challenge. This was quite the undertaking. We agreed to do at the end of last year and started working on it January, exchanging information and drafts via e-mail. Since our challenge ran from April 17 to May 14 and included May 5, Cinco de Mayo, we decided to do a Mexican dish. As it turned out, this was a very popular choice!

Our recipe was stacked chicken enchiladas with a green chile sauce. Above is the photo of the raw ingredients. The little green things with papery husks are tomatillos, an ingredient which is frequently used in Mexican cooking but which is not universally available around the world, as we found out.

Challenges have to be something that stretches the Daring Cooks. We required a homemade sauce. If the ingredients or flavors for the green tomatillo and chile sauce were not available or not something the cook thought would work, any other sauce was an option. People did red sauces, moles, cremas, and some very innovative things with local ingredients (North African sauce, anyone?). While we suggested stacked enchiladas with corn tortillas, people were free to roll their enchiladas or use flour tortillas or even some other substitute if tortillas or the ingredients for making them were not available. We suggested using grilled chicken, but there were beef, black bean and a wide array of other fillings used. And we used Monterey Jack, but there were lots of other cheeses, including Mexican cheeses, that people added to their enchiladas. Recipes are supposed to include variations for vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free cooking. This recipe was really ideal for all that. Corn tortillas for those avoiding gluten; vegetarian fillings for those avoiding meat; cheese optional for the vegans - worked out really well.

The creativity of the cooks was absolutely amazing. And the pictures! As I took my turn commenting on and complimenting those Daring Cooks who posted their results, I was drooling continuously. So many intriguing combinations, interesting marinades and solutions to problems finding ingredients - truly inspirational.

This was my final product and it was just as good as the first time I made this recipe years ago. I added some chipotle Tabasco sauce to the chicken, along with salt, pepper and some cumin, making the heat in the dish slightly more pronounced. The roasted chiles and tomatillos make a really succulent and spicy sauce. Below is a picture I "borrowed" from Barbara of the chiles as they went from raw to roasted. Mine looked pretty much the same, but her picture was better (thanks, Barbara).

From the comments we received, I think the Daring Cooks really enjoyed this challenge. For many of them, it was an introduction to Mexican cooking; for others, it was a chance to try something new. And, as might be expected, there were also a few mentions of margaritas on the menus!

My very special thanks to Barbara, without whom I could not have done this. She not only has an incredible blog to showcase her creative culinary endeavors, she is a master of the world of blog technicalities and dealt with the links, the pictures and the formatting. Plus her pictures were really good and she has an eye for detail. I think we were a good team and I'm very proud of our efforts.

Steamy Pudding

2010-04-27T04:17:00.000-07:00

The April 2010 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Esther of The Lilac Kitchen. She challenged everyone to make a traditional British pudding using, if possible, a very traditional British ingredient: suet.

No suet around here and I looked. I ended up using Crisco, so what I made is not the traditional British pudding but perhaps a facsimile. I've never had a steamed pudding which means I don't really know how close I got. I was not extremely enthusiastic about this. While Esther said we could make something savory, like steak and kidney pudding, that didn't really sound too appealing either. Because we are not big dessert eaters and because this was not something I could ship off to the starving students in Boston or the "I'll eat anything chocolate" friend in the neighboring city, I wanted to make something more manageable for the two of us. Rather than make one 4 cup steamed pudding, I decided to make smaller versions and choose a different filling for each.

The filling is the main ingredient (fruit, chocolate, etc.), combined with sugar and butter. All is put into a bowl which has been lined with a suet pastry - or in my case, a Crisco pastry - and then topped with more pastry. The result is covered in foil, sealed up with a string and steamed for whatever period of time seems to work. I did mine for 4 1/2 hours to be sure the crust was golden and the interior all melty.

The pastry was quite fragile. It rolled out pretty well but fell apart when I lined the ramekins. I ended up just pressing the crust into place, which probably contributed to its failure to come out in one piece. Frustration number one.

I used a bamboo steamer I usually use for potstickers and dumplings. It worked pretty well, although I had to watch the water level closely. Subsequently, I read some finished challenge posts on the Daring Kitchen website and realized I could have used a slow cooker, which would have been so much easier and I could have done all four of the puddings at once. Maybe next time, if there is a next time. Frustration number two - spent all day steaming puddings that could have been done all at one time using the slow cooker.

The flavors I chose were lemon (using a whole lemon), chocolate, cherry and mango. And the results? The lemon I liked, but probably no one else would because it was really pretty tart. The recipe said to use a whole lemon, pierced through the skin with a skewer. Maybe a Meyer lemon would have been a better choice, but I didn't have a Meyer lemon. The seeds in the lemon were annoying to deal with when eating it, but it did transform into a lovely lemony sauce which went well with the pastry - even if the whole thing was ugly to look at since it did not pop out but had to be scraped out in pieces.

The chocolate (I used bittersweet) was not quite as successful or interesting. Both the mango (Bob's favorite) and the cherry (which I really liked) were much better. The fruit was soft and succulent, the butter/sugar melted together to form a caramelly sauce around the fruit and the pastry added some texture. So to sum up: looked horrible, tasted OK to pretty good. Would I do it again? Not without reading a lot more about technique and maybe tasting one done properly. Trip to England is essential, obviously.

A Fine Kettle of Stew

2010-04-14T08:08:00.000-07:00

The 2010 April Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Wolf of Wolf's Den. She chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make Brunswick Stew. Wolf chose recipes for her challenge from The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook by Matt Lee and Ted Lee, and from the Callaway, Virginia Ruritan Club.

I used the Lee brothers' recipe, with some modifications. The base of this stew is an extremely chicken-y stock which really surpassed every other chicken stock I've ever made. Basically, the recipe calls for chicken stock in which is cooked another chicken, and the resulting broth is so rich and so good. The stew itself called for rabbit and chicken, but other meats can be used. The premier Australian Daring Cook used alligator (!) in his. I'm not that daring, so I just used chicken and I really don't think it needed other meats. The stew also has corn, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes and onion. And, since the chicken meat is cooked in the stock before all those veggies are added, there were also serrano chiles, celery, bay and bacon flavoring the broth. All those items are discarded, the chicken is pulled from the bone and shredded, the veggies are added and all is cooked for a long time until the flavors blend. Add a little lemon juice and red wine vinegar for tartness and a little Tabasco for heat and there you have it! Perfect warm meal for a blustery April day.

April 1 - A Day of Firsts

2010-04-01T20:28:00.000-07:00

I did a few things for the first time today and decided I should document them. Of course, I took no pictures - so much for planning ahead.

Today is Holy Thursday, the feast of the Last Supper. While I have no Jewish background, I've been interested in Jewish cooking and foods for a while. I decided I would do a mini-Seder to commemorate the Last Supper, which was probably a Passover meal.

Since my kitchen could not possibly be called kosher, this was not a kosher meal by any means, but there was a traditional element. I made matzo ball soup, which I have never eaten, but wanted to try. I found a recipe (good time of year for that - they are all over the place), made my matzo balls, which were floaters, not sinkers, for those of you who understand the difference, and made my chicken stock from my non-kosher chicken. Lots of chicken stock left over which I will use in an upcoming project.

I also poached a truly wonderful piece of fresh Alaskan king salmon. Maybe not gefilte fish, but tasty none the less. Since it was only Bob and me, I didn't do all the other dishes I could have. I'm working up to the full meal gradually. Maybe next year will include kugel and brisket, but tonight's dinner was much simpler.

My other foray into new territory was making butter. Nick, my formerly carnivorous son, and his roommates are trying to move towards being vegan - no animal products at all (no meat, no fish, no dairy, no cheese, no eggs) - which is very challenging for a mom who likes to send treats to Boston. My approach, which I have labeled "vegan-lite" is to encourage them to use some of those products if they are raised/produced in a humane, organic, sustainable way. To provide an example of how to do this, I made cookies which had one egg from a local farm which treats its chickens right and butter WHICH I MADE from cream from a Washington dairy farm which grows its own feed for the cows, assuring they get non-genetically modified food.

Now I suppose most of us at one time or another have forgotten the cream we were whipping, which then went past a fluffy whip cream to a lumpy concoction. Well, if you keep going and take a couple other steps, like draining the butter milk, rinsing the butter in cold water and kneading it, and then draining again, you get butter! It worked pretty well, although I was feeling my way. I found an excellent website which provided pictures of what would happen at each step. The site is called Cooking for Engineers, so it is very specific and detailed.

I used 4 ounces of my hand-crafted butter for the cookies and plan to use some for breakfast tomorrow. I don't know that this will become a habit, but for this project, it was just what I wanted.

The cookies go in the mail tomorrow - we will see if the vegans eat them or give them away!

Spiral of Citrus

2010-03-27T00:01:00.000-07:00

Another dessert takes center stage at Daring Baker's. The 2010 March Daring Baker's challenge was hosted by Jennifer of Chocolate Shavings. She chose Orange Tian as the challenge for this month, a dessert based on a recipe from Alain Ducasse's Cooking School in Paris.

The tian is a layered dessert: a crispy crust (pate sablee), a layer of homemade orange marmalade spread over the crust, a whipped cream firmed up with some gelatine and flavored with a little of the orange marmalade, and finally, a layer of citrus sections - all topped with an orange caramel drizzle. The basic recipe called for oranges as the citrus; however, we were free to try other things. I used Meyer lemons, oranges, blood oranges, tangerines, limes and kumquats.

I had a few issues. It is tough to write a recipe which covers all the ground and anticipates questions. I did the caramel twice. Dry sugar caramel presents challenges for me - I never get it right. So I tried again, after checking "Caramel," my favorite caramel reference cookbook, and added some of the orange juice to the sugar at the beginning, along with a drop of corn syrup, which helps with the caramelization. That seemed to work, although when I added the rest of the orange juice, it seemed like way too much. While it did cook down and become more syrupy, it wasn't as thick as I would have preferred.

When I made the pate sablee, I cut out a piece that should have been the size of the mold I was using to construct the dessert. It may have spread a little or I misjudged somehow, but it was slightly too big, so it had cracks - but that's our little secret because the pate was on the bottom and not visible!

And unmolding a dessert, even a frozen dessert, is always a little scary. I really wanted this to look pretty, so I held my breath the whole time. That works, doesn't it? What also works, although this was a bit accidental, is that I used a springform pan for my mold. After I ran a knife around the tian, I carefully opened the springform and took it off before turning my tian right side up. Perfect!

Here is a slice of the tian with the whipped cream and orange marmalade filling. This dessert was a bit fragile. It was fine when it was frozen, but as it warmed up, the pastry softened a bit and the juices started dripping out of the citrus. Best kept refrigerated until consumed - and best eaten quickly, which was not a problem!

Risotto Splendido!

2010-03-14T06:47:00.000-07:00

I love risotto. Traditional risotto with lots of parmesan is fine with me, but there are lots of opportunities to vary the recipe with different stocks, wines, and condimenti, or additional ingredients.

The 2010 March Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Eleanor of Melbournefoodgeek and Jess of Jessthebaker. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make risotto. The various components of their challenge recipe are based on input from the Australian Masterchef cookbook and the cookbook Moorish by Greg Malouf.

We were required to make the stock and risotto base (wine, rice oil, butter and cheese) but could choose any variation we wanted for the actual risotto.

I chose a salmon risotto. Theoretically, I should have made a fish stock, but I'm not a big fish stock fan. I recently made a hot and sour Thai prawn soup which used prawn shells in the stock. That worked pretty well, giving a seafood flavor without overwhelming anything. I didn't use Asian spices, since there was nothing remotely Asian about this dish, but the technique of adding the prawn shells and then straining them out creates a stock that works pretty well.

Fortunately, I was able to use fresh wild Alaskan king salmon, which is rich, flavorful and fatty. I cut the salmon into very small, almost slivery pieces. I also used chopped watercress to add some green to the dish. The rest of the condimenti included lemon juice and half and half - but no cheese, since cheese and fish do NOT go together in Italian cooking.

This photo is of my risotto cooking in my terra cotta Italian risotto pan!!

Risotto is really very straightforward, but does require constant attention. Lots of stirring, slow addition of 1/2 cups of stock, and patience until the rice absorbs enough of the stock to be tender but not gummy. At the very end, I added the slivers of salmon, the watercress, the lemon juice and the cream, stirred with some enthusiasm and by the time I took the picture, the salmon was cooked perfectly and the watercress had softened. This was really, really good and I will definitely make this variation again.

I don't usually post the actual recipe, but in case you are interested:

2 T butter
1 T olive oil
Finely minced onion (I used about 1/2 cup)
4-6 cups stock (fish, prawn (which I prefer), or chicken) - heat to simmer
1/2 cup white wine (I used an Oregon Pinot Grigio)
1 1/2 cups carnaroli rice (could use arborio or vialone nano)
6 ounces salmon, cut into very small flakey pieces without skin or small bones(!)
1 cup chopped watercress
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 cup half-and-half

Melt the butter with oil. Add onion and cook until the onion is tender but not brown. Add rice and stir well until coated with butter/oil. Add wine and stir until absorbed. Add 1/2 cup simmering stock and stir until nearly absorbed. Continue adding stock 1/2 cup at a time until the rice is tender but still has shape. This will take approximately 20 minutes but taste - don't watch the clock! When the rice is tender, add salmon, watercress, lemon juice and cream and stir vigorously. The salmon should cook in the heat of the risotto because it has been cut into such slender pieces. Add salt to taste (depends on how salty your stock was) and serve immediately! Buon Appetito!

Cooking But Not Telling

2010-03-09T22:43:00.001-08:00

I have been doing a lot of cooking lately - mostly new things - but in my hurry to get dinner on the table, I haven't taken pictures or made notes. I can tell you what I made because I am anal and have lists of every dinner I have cooked for the past several years - don't ask me why. Each week, I plan the dinners, make the grocery list and locate the recipes I need. Sometimes things change if I run short of time or what seemed like a good idea on Sunday is simply out of the question on Thursday, but in general, I know what is planned and I do it. This is so different from when the kids were little and I worked. Every night I came home and just stared in the refrigerator, willing an inspiration to spring out at me. If I had done this kind of planning then, my life would have been so much simpler and we would have eaten so much better.

This week we had lasagna with Caesar salad and chocolate caramel mousse on Sunday. Turned out it was an Oscar meal because I had forgotten about the Oscars when I asked Sarah and Ron to join us (it was going to be a very BIG lasagna). I used a lasagna recipe by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt who writes for "Serious Eats," one of my favorite food blogs. He suggested making the ricotta but I was able to find a whole milk ricotta with no weird stuff in it, so I used that. The Caesar salad has a dressing I do routinely, which includes anchovies, lemon juice, an egg yolk, lots of Parmesan, garlic, Dijon, Worchestershire and Tabasco, blended with a good Italian extra virgin olive oil. I have no patience with bland Caesar salad dressings - they need that zing! And the mousse is so simple - Fran's caramel sauce with some Fran's chocolate sauce blended in, a little Amaretto and a cup of whipping cream whipped to stiff peaks and folded in. Takes all of 10 minutes and tastes so good!

Monday I made hot and sour soup and some really tasty little pork/shrimp meatballs which were eaten with a spicy dipping sauce and daikon and carrots, wrapped in lettuce. Very good. The soup was OK but I think it could use some tweaking. The meatballs will be done again.

Tonight we had salmon glazed with pomegranate molasses. The salmon was seared in a frying pan until quite brown on one side, flipped, brushed with the molasses, and put in the 400 degree oven for about 5 minutes. It was perfectly done and had a really appealing flavor. I made a butter lettuce, bacon, and tomato salad with homemade croutons and buttermilk dressing. This salad is also good with avocado and really makes a meal in itself when the avocado is added. Hmmm. Could probably throw chicken or salmon into the salad and have a one dish meal. Have to think about that...

Bob is gone most of the rest of this week, so the eating will be less interesting. I tend to make something I like when he's gone and then just eat it until I finish it. Not sure what I will do this week, but it will be something simple. I have several books to read and I've been trying to get 10,000 steps a day in, so the non-cooking time will be used in other ways.

Next post will be the March Daring Cooks challenge later this week. It was a success, so stay tuned!

Tiramisu Treats

2010-02-21T21:09:00.000-08:00

The February 2010 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home and Baking Obsession.

This was a multi-step challenge which included making our own marscapone, pastry cream, zabaglione, and ladyfingers. The marscapone was easy to make and so rich and smooth - I loved it just by itself! The pastry cream, zabaglione, marscapone and sweetened whipped cream were combined for the filling for the tiramisu. So, several different processes, all of which required rich ingredients and time for chilling. The ladyfingers required piping and we know piping is not my forte. Fortunately, the cooked ladyfingers weren't quite as lumpy and uneven looking as the raw version. No pictures - too embarrassing.

The ladyfingers are dipped quickly in sweetened coffee. I did this really fast because I didn't want them to be soggy and I also didn't want a really strong coffee flavor. I've had tiramisu in which the predominant flavor was coffee and I didn't find it too appealing. The ladyfingers were laid in the dish, covered with some of the tiramisu mixture, then more ladyfingers and more creamy yumminess and then a final layer of each. The whole creation then went back into the refrigerator to chill.

When I served it, the creamy part was much softer than I expected. I decided freezing it would have produced a better product, at least as far as presentation goes. The tiramisu was dusted with cocoa powder and served with tart cherries. It disappeared quickly into Bob's tummy! The coffee flavor was not pronounced and the tart cherries were a nice counterpoint to the rest of the dish.

I froze the remaining tiramisu overnight and tried again. This time, the result was much more satisfactory! The layers are obvious, the custardy filling is firm and there is a shape. I put mini-chocolate chips on top, instead of cocoa powder, and used pomegranate seeds for a little extra tartness and crunch. I think this was a much better approach than letting it firm up (or not) in the refrigerator.

Probably not a dessert I would make often - so many steps and so much time in-between steps - but I did love the marscapone and would definitely make my own in the future. I cannot buy marscapone at my closest grocery store on any reliable basis, so it is good to know there is an alternative to driving 20-25 miles round trip to Metropolitan Market.

Superfood Sunday

2010-02-15T22:51:00.000-08:00

We had a little impromptu gathering for Superbowl Sunday. While I didn't consciously plan it, I was struck by the ethnic diversity of the menu as well as the variety of foods which would meet specific diets. First - the ethnic part:

NY Strip Steak Sandwiches with Blue Cheese Sauce - OK, more traditional American than specific ethnic, but probably also the most Superbowl-appropriate food.

Vietnamese Sticky Chicken with Daikon and Carrot Pickle - A little southeastern Asian flavor - fish sauce, lime, garlic, rice vinegar, sesame oil - all flavors associated with Asia.

Duck Fried Rice - Another Asian recipe, only with a French twist. I used duck confit with the otherwise traditional fried rice. The confit is easy, since it is already cooked, and moist and tasty - a nice change from a porkier portein.

Pita and hummus, with olives and tomatoes - And a contribution from the Mideast. Yummy, garlicky hummus and pita - better than chips and salsa!

Dessert - Back to America - Baby Ruth cookies (a recipe from the olden days) and Fudge Foggies, a fudge-brownie hybrid I've been making for decades. A pound of bittersweet chocolate makes anything taste good.

And now the dietary choices:

Steak sandwich - omnivores
Sticky chicken - gluten-free
Daikon and carrot pickle - gluten-free and vegan
Duck fried rice - gluten-free
Hummus - gluten-free, vegan
Pita - vegan
Cookies - High fat, full of gluten, chocolate, nuts, butter - sorry - fits no diet known to man other than total self-indulgence

And there were leftovers, so the feast went on for a couple more days. And I shared - sent fudge foggies and Baby Ruth cookies to Nick in Boston and to a friend in Seattle. I even have a couple foggies left for us.

Puffy Pita and Yummy Hummus

2010-02-14T00:01:00.000-08:00

Superbowl Sunday! The perfect occasion for some dip and dippers - somewhat non-traditional, perhaps, but very tasty.

The 2010 February Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Michele of Veggie Num Nums. Michele chose to challenge everyone to make mezze based on various recipes from Claudia Roden, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Dugid.

The mandatory recipes were the pita and hummus, which is what I did. Since these two items were part of my Superbowl menu, there were other items on the table, too.

I used some whole wheat flour in the pita, to make it more appealing to my husband, who is a whole grain devotee. The recipe was very easy, although I think I may have added too little flour in the basic recipe. I remedied that by kneading in a lot more as I prepared the dough for baking.

Here they are in the oven in all their puffy glory. Using a pizza stone ensured the temps were hot and constant. The actual baking took only minutes and was quite rewarding as they often not only puffed, but kept that puff even after leaving their hot incubator.

It was a generous recipe and I had plenty for the Superbowl, sent some to Nick in Boston and froze even more. Maybe not a lifetime supply, but surely enough for several little noshes.

The hummus was even simpler - chick peas, garlic, lemon, salt, tahini thrown into the food processor and whizzed up. I roasted the garlic before using because I wanted a smoother garlic flavor. The texture and consistency was perfect, with very little tweaking - just some of the chickpea liquid added to smooth things out. I did not add any additional flavors. While Bob, my husband, frequently buys flavored hummus (olive, roasted tomato, roasted pepper), I'm a purist and really enjoy the basic recipe the most. Really, this hummus is so appealing, it's all I could do to keep from just dipping my finger into it and eating it right out of the dish.

The final setting - fresh tomatoes, olives, hummus and pita - along with other Superbowl treats. But frankly, this is one special occasion dish which should be part of the menu for virtually any meal. Loved it!

Sassy Soup

2010-01-27T20:20:00.001-08:00

This soup was a recipe I would have skipped right past some years ago. Loaded with vegetables, including some less common like tomatillos, and garnished with meatballs, it would have seemed too spicy, too tomato-ey, too weird. But lo! I now eat lots of things that would have evoked a shudder or a shrug in the olden days.

The veggies: onions, carrots, celery, garlic, tomatillos, eight serrano and jalapeno chiles, tomatoes in puree

The broth: dry white wine and chicken stock (hand-did, thank you very much!)

The spices: cumin, coriander, hot chile powder

The meatballs: chicken and pork

The finishing touch: lime juice, rice wine vinegar, lots of Tabasco, salt and pepper

Very spicy, very tasty. The meatballs were supposed to be all chicken but I supplemented with pork and think that probably improved the flavor. Everything is better with pork, right?

I have four pints to freeze for future meals. After all, winter isn't over yet and this is definitely a way to warm up! And Bob loves hot-flavored food, even if he lets his food temperature cool off way more than he should.

Inaugural Adventure

2010-01-27T01:00:00.000-08:00

This wasn't a significant inauguration, like becoming president, but it was my introduction to gluten-free baking.

The January 2010 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Lauren of Celiac Teen. Lauren chose Gluten-Free Graham Wafers and Nanaimo Bars as the challenge for the month. The sources she based her recipe on are 101 Cookbooks and www.nanaimo.ca (http://www.nanaimo.ca).

I feel a bond with Lauren, who always comments on my blog entries. I've never met her, but she appears to be an amazing young woman who is dealing successfully with celiac disease. This is my first foray into gluten-free baking and it was an adventure! While there are many more options for people avoiding gluten than there used to be, finding the alternative flours and grains can be challenging. And since some people with celiac or gluten tolerance issues can endure really crippling pain with only the littlest bit of gluten, cross-contamination is also an issue. My Nanaimo Bars were not destined to be eaten by anyone with dietary issues, so that wasn't a big concern for me, but if I were baking for someone who was seriously affected, I would be extra-scrupulous about using any bowl, utensil or product that could have been in contact with regular flour.

I made the graham crackers, which were not things of beauty. The first batch I made were seriously disfigured, due to the very soft dough. Since I was going to be turning them into crumbs, this wasn't a big issue. Subsequent batches, to which I added much more rice flour as I was rolling them out, turned out a little more presentable. They still look nothing like Nabisco honey graham crackers, but they were good with a little peanut butter!

The Nanaimo bars are very rich. The bottom crust is the graham crackers combined with butter, sugar, cocoa, an egg, and almonds and coconut. The middle layer is a sweet custardy-frosting filling made with butter, cream, custard powder, and lots of powdered sugar. And the top layer is semi-sweet chocolate with butter. There may be no wheat flour but there is lots of chocolate, butter and sugar in these little dessert bars.

The bars have interesting contrasts of textures: the crunchy base, the silky center and the smooth, less sweet chocolate topping.

I live in the Pacific Northwest and there are Nanaimo bars in many bakeries around here, just as there are in British Columbia, home to Nanaimo. These are a once-in-a-while indulgence, not for mindless nibbling. And with the Olympics coming up, what better way to celebrate Canada than with a Canadian dessert!

Satay, Satay, So Good to Me

2010-01-14T01:00:00.000-08:00

A little play on the Mamas and the Papas there. Sorry - couldn't resist.

The January 2010 DC challenge was hosted by Cuppy (http://the daringkitchen.com/users/cuppy) of Cuppylicious (http://recipes.cuppylicious.net) and she chose a delicious Thai-inspired recipe for Pork Satay from the book 1000 Recipes by Martha Day.

I love Thai food, especially the tart and hot flavors. This pork satay is pretty straightforward. Cut the pork into strips, marinate for several hours, grill and chow down! I modified the marinade a bit (as the host indicated we could) by adding some fish sauce, which I always think of as essential in Thai cooking, and some chiles to heat it up a bit. I would have also used lime rather than the lemon the marinade called for because I think of lime when I think Thai, but my limes were a little tired. Darn that Costco for not having them the last time Bob stopped!

The dipping sauce I used was a mango-citrus sauce, which played off the Thai flavors nicely. We often use peanut sauce for Thai, but this was a little lighter.

Traditionally, I think satays are on skewers and the host suggested that but allowed us to skip them if we wanted. I personally think skewers are a nuisance, both to cook with and to eat from, so I just grilled the strips on a stovetop grill pan and called it good.

A little char on the pork. It took maybe 5-10 minutes tops to cook these. I think I would use pork tenderloin if I were to do it again - less fat than shoulder and much easier to cut into strips without having to trim. I would also skip the tumeric which adds little but color and I don't think the satay needs the yellow.

The final plate! Notice the healthy assortment of veggies accompanying the satay. This is part of our 2010 resolution to eat "meat-light" and increase the vegetable and salad part of our plate. Did you know some nutritionists suggest your shopping cart at the grocery store should be 50% fruit and vegetables? Something to strive for. I would have loved to have some rice with this, but another part of our resolution is "starch-light," so rice is a special treat, even if it is brown.

And so another year of Daring begins!

Geodesic Gingerbread

2009-12-26T15:13:00.000-08:00

The December 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers' everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandanavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.

As I have said before, I like to cook and sometimes I like to bake, but my strength is not with the artistic skills necessary for things like beautifully decorated cakes and cookies. And that goes double for gingerbread houses! On top of my reluctance to do a project like this was the additional problem of still-recovering hands (which made rolling dough difficult), the tail end of a flu/cold which really sapped my energy and a very sore ankle which affected my ability to stand for any length of time. Woe is I!

After feeling sorry for myself and posting a note on Daring Bakers that I probably would not be able to participate, my darling daughter, Elisabeth, came to the rescue. She devoted a whole day to assembling a gingerbread house - not just any house, but a geodesic dome, which took architectural skills, physics knowledge, incredible patience, and enough good humor to survive and overcome all the problems and obstacles. And the icing on the cake (literally) was that she and her boyfriend, Sean, spent Christmas afternoon decorating the creation, complete with satellite dish, outhouse, Christmas lights around the front door, decorated trees, fences, snowmen and other little details.

The template for the dome was basically a triangle, but Elisabeth also made some trees, so she made a template for 3-D trees, as well.

Here are some of the many, many (50-60) triangles she needed to make the dome.

The dome was a challenge because it could not have any permanent internal supports. She tried several differents methods of construction: just building it with skewers to support the dome - FAIL; building inside a bowl, with the plan being to "unmold" it when it was solid - FAIL; and, the final solution, build it over an upside down bowl and let it get really, really hard before removing the bowl.

Once the structure was done, we set it aside for several days, made sure we had lots of candy to decorate, and waited for Christmas for the final stage.

This is it! The details are hard to see because there is so much going on, but there are some snowmen in plain sight, a tree with a star in the background, and lots of candy embellishments. My favorite additions were the little string of lights around the front door and the satellite dish on the roof. Both were made from Tootsie Roll miniatures, as was this little creature: Doofus, Elisabeth's cat, ready to pounce.

And here are the artists, celebrating their success. Note the particularly cute adornment on Elisabeth's head - a gift from Santa. A little hard to see, but goes well with her HO, HO, HO t-shirt.

So my Christmas blessing this year was clearly Elisabeth and Sean helping me take on a challenge that threatened to overwhelm me. It was probably more fun watching them than doing it myself. Family can be really great, can't it?

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year's to all!

Feeling a Little Crusty

2009-12-14T07:30:00.000-08:00

After all that turkey, what better dinner to enjoy than salmon? And thanks to the December Daring Cook challenge, that's just what we had.

The 2009 Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Simone of Junglefrog Cooking (http://junglefrog-cooking.com/). Simone chose Salmon en Croute (or alternative recipes for Beef Wellington or Vegetable en Croute) from Good Food Online (http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/).

I haven't been cooking much for the past month. We were gone half of November and then I had my little mishap and had to have help even to get Thanksgiving dinner on the table, so our day-t0-day meals have been purchased or defrosted rather than prepared with fresh ingredients. It was a relief to really cook again.

This challenge was surprisingly easy. The pastry is an all-butter short pastry, which is rich and meltingly good. The salmon I used was Alaskan coho. While the original challenge called for a watercress, argula and spinach topping for the salmon, I changed that because Bob's kidneys don't like spinach and I don't like watching Bob writhe in pain!

I used mushrooms, toasted hazelnuts and marscapone. I sauteed the mushrooms in butter and olive oil, cooked off all the liquid, added some sherry, salt and lots of black pepper. I toasted the chopped hazelnuts in a dry saute pan and then mixed the nuts and the mushrooms together with the marscapone. A little thyme, a little more pepper and we were good to go! I spread the mushroom mixture over the top of the salmon filet, wrapped the whole thing in pastry and baked it for about 30 minutes.

The flavors all worked really well together. The buttery pastry was balanced by the meaty mushroom/nut mixture and the salmon worked well with everything. We ate well that night!

Try to Remember....November

2009-12-02T18:02:00.000-08:00

A whole month just flew by with very little cooking by yours truly. Bob and I spent 10 days sailing down the Danube being fed by professional chefs and the most work I did was to pour my Sprite in my glass as I rested in the lounge each afternoon, writing in the travel journal and recording our adventures. The food on the boat was splendid and since we walked many, many steps each day, didn't feel too indulgent. I skipped most of the wine (so virtuous!), but did have a beer or two on dry land.

I planned to do the Daring Baker challenge, cannoli, when I got home but managed to fall and sprain both hands/wrists, especially the left, which meant I could do virtually nothing. Missing out on the cannoli was bad enough, but I was also too impaired to do much Thanksgiving prep work, which was a major concern. Fortunately, not only did Elisabeth come down to take me to the doctor, she came early on Wednesday and worked like a little demon all afternoon and evening, doing all the prep work and even making some of the final dishes. And then on Thursday, the Morris-Briehl's came early and Sarah and my God-daughter Emma pitched in and everything was good! Bob handled the bird duties (both the whole roasted bird and the deep-fried breast), Elisabeth and Emma decorated the table, my mother took on ironing the table cloths and setting the table and I did nothing much but pretend to be in charge.

Two new dishes this year that were particularly special to me: An apple tart which Emma and Elisabeth made on Thursday afternoon and cranberry sorbet which Bob made on the weekend. Both were delicious and added a special dimension to our meal, which included my mother's blackberry pie (always delicious) and Sarah's pumpkin (good for dessert and breakfast, too).

My hands are healing and I'm doing a little cooking now. If all goes well, I'll have something to post for the December Daring Cooks Challenge and the December Daring Bakers Challenge. Something to look forward to!

A Trio of Sushi

2009-11-14T00:30:00.000-08:00

The November 2009 Daring Cooks challenge was brought to you by Audax of Audax Artifex and Rose of The Bite Me Kitchen. They chose sushi as the challenge.

And a challenge it was! I am not very talented in the "make things look cute" skills. I think I did all right on this one, but it looked a lot easier on the YouTube demonstration videos!

We were challenged to make three kinds of sushi: nigiri, spiral rolls, and dragon rolls. Sushi, as many of you may know, refers to the vinegared rice, not to raw fish. In fact, raw fish was not a component of any of my efforts and is not a requirement for sushi. The rice, as the central component, took the most time. The process includes rinsing the rice repeatedly, draining it for 30 minutes, soaking it in water and dashi konbu for 30 minutes, cooking it with sake for 15 minutes, steaming it for 15 minutes, carefully transferring it to a non-reactive container, sprinkling it with rice vinegar/sugar/salt mixture, gently breaking it up and turning it with a fan going to cool it, distribute the vinegar, and make it shiny. This all took a lot of time, so when I was done, I covered it with a damp cloth and took a break.

The first version I made was the spiral roll and I think it was the most successful from an aesthetic point of view. The nori (seaweed sheet) is covered in rice (gently, always gently), six indentations are made and filled with colorful and complementary ingredients. I used green bean, zucchini, roasted red pepper, pickled carrot, chanterelle mushroom and bay shrimp. The roll is then rolled (duh) and cut into slices. The end product is a spiral dotted with the various ingredients.

Cute, right? A little tough to distinguish what the "dots" are, but they are colorful.

I then made the dragon roll, which was a bit more challenging. This roll is also nori covered with rice, but it is flipped over so the rice is on the outside. Inside, I made a row of smoked salmon and right next to it, a row of avocado. This was tightly rolled using the sushi mat. The top was garnished with black roe and covered with thinly sliced avocado. Theoretically, when imaginatively garnished, this looks like a dragon (or caterpillar) with "fire" (or "legs"). Mine looked like a lot of avocado with blobs of sriracha and pickled ginger, but at least I managed to include all the components.

Finally, the nigiri are shaped by hand into a chubby cylinder and then topped with whatever. I used smoked salmon on a couple and seaweed salad on a couple. According to the challengers, this is the most common type of sushi served in sushi bars, but I will have to take their word for it. I thought it was the least interesting of the three, but that could be because I was pretty well sushi-ed-out by this point. The rice is shaped by hand, a little wasabi or other paste is put on the top in a thin line, and then the toppings placed on top of that. That's all I did, although there are additional garnishes and versions, like using the nori to tie the ingredients on or putting a band of nori around the rice to hold less solid ingredients on. I probably should have used both these techniques, but I was ready to be DONE!

This was Bob's dinner. It worked out pretty well because I knew he was going to be late and his arrival was unpredictable, so the sushi was all ready and waiting for him. He didn't manage to finish everything, but he made a pretty good dent.

Now, of course, I have the sushi mat, a large supply of roe, lots of nori and other equipment and ingredients so theoretically, I could do this on a regular basis. This seems a bit unlikely to me, but who knows?

Peachy Keen

2009-10-27T21:54:00.000-07:00

The 2009 October Daring Bakers' challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming's The Last Course: The Desserts of the Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

Macarons are a French cookie which are enjoying some popularity. They are beautiful to look at and come in a variety of flavors and colors, limited only by the imagination of the baker. We were to make the basic macaron, color and flavor it as we wished and then make a filling - again, our choice.

One of the reasons I joined Daring Bakers was to push myself to try new things. I don't do much baking, largely because my two-person household doesn't need any temptations around, but also because I love to cook, but my baking talent is pretty limited. This challenge pushed me a little.

The macarons are basically an egg white, sugar and almond flour batter which is piped into little circles. Since it is pretty much a blank canvas, adding color and flavor is the fun part. I had already decided I was going to use peach in my filling, so I decided to use a little orange powdered food coloring to bring some peachiness to the cookie. I also consulted a wonderful book, The Flavor Bible, for ideas for flavoring the cookie with something that would enhance the peach. I'd thought about some ginger, since ginger and peach are a good pairing, but I'm not a huge ginger fan. I then thought about grilled peaches, seasoned with black pepper. The Flavor Bible confirmed that black pepper is a pairing that works, so that was my choice.

I knew I wanted a subtle color, so I only added a small amount of the food coloring. The pepper was tougher. I had read that about a teaspoon of flavor, whether spices, herbs, lemon zest or whatever, was about right. I was a little reluctant to add that much freshly ground black pepper - it is pretty potent! I think I ended up with about 1/2 teaspoon, which was probably not enough to make a significant contribution.

The filling was a modification of a cream cheese buttercream I found on Tartelette's blog. In addition to the meringue, huge amounts of butter and cream cheese, I folded in some organic peach preserves. They added not only a wonderful flavor, but also a little color to coordinate with my cookies.

I think these cookies were largely successful, although I've not had an "official" version, so I'm just guessing. I found the basic cookie way too sweet for my taste, but the cream cheese peach filling balanced that out. I don't know that I would make these again unless I needed something pretty for a party. The process was a bit time-consuming for the number of cookies I made and the cookies themselves are extremely fragile.

I gave most of these away because they need to be eaten quickly. So another learning experience! Once again, Daring Bakers achieves its aim in pushing me to the new frontiers.

Fi, Fie, Pho!

2009-10-14T13:05:00.000-07:00

The October 2009 Daring Cooks' challenge was brought to us by Jaden of the blog Steamy Kitchen. The recipes are from her new cookbook, The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook.

I have read about the glories of pho (actually pronounced "fuh") on various food sites for a long, ong time. But, as is often the case, I've never gone to one of the many pho restaurants in the area to try it, so this challenge was a welcome one.

Pho is a clear broth, usually beef, but sometimes chicken, as in this case, augmented with noodles, meat, and various condiments. Making the broth is time-consuming but not difficult - just like making chicken stock. Instead of standard chicken stock veggies, however, there are Asian flavors: ginger, star anise, coriander, clove, fish sauce, and cilantro.

The spices - coriander seeds, star anise, and cloves - are toasted in a fry pan for extra flavor. The ginger and onion are charred under the broiler and then peeled and cut up. A whole chicken is cut up, the breast meat separated from the rest of the chicken, and the rest of the bird cut into 3" pieces. The chicken is quickly parboiled to remove impurities. The pieces plus the breast are then simmered in fresh cold water for about 90 minutes with all the spices. The breast meat is removed after about 15 minutes and shredded for serving. Once the broth is done, it is strained, all the solids are removed and the broth is kept warm.

The rice noodles are prepared, along with such condiments as bean sprouts, fresh cilantro, thinly sliced red onion (I soaked the onion in cold water to remove some of the sharpness), lime, Sriracha, hoisin, and sliced chili peppers (from our garden!). I also sauteed some chanterelle mushrooms, which is not at all traditional but turned out to be a good addition.

Bowls are filled with noodles, the shredded chicken breast is added, and the broth used to fill the bowls. Condiments are added to taste.

This was a very subtly flavored broth which enhanced the noodles and the chicken. The condiments added additional flavors and colors.

But wait! There is more. That was not all of the feast that night. I also made what I have always called hum bao, which are Chinese buns made with a yeast dough and stuffed with char siu pork. They are steamed about 12-15 minutes and arrive on the plate plump, soft and flavorful.

The bun itself is neutral and thus a perfect vehicle for the tasty pork. The pork is basically Chinese-style barbequed pork with a sauce of sugar, salt, pepper, soy, oyster sauce and water. It is mixed with scallions and rice wine in a skillet and then slightly thickened with cornstarch. This recipe is from Asian Dumplings by Andrea Nguyen, a fantastic book filled with information about Asian ingredients, including the author's favorite brands, techniques and equipment. I could cook my way through this book and eat nothing else!

And then, the final touch. With help from Bob, who is more comfortable with the deep fryer than I, we assembled dessert wontons. The wrappers were filled with various combinations of chocolate, caramel, peanuts, strawberries (more garden goodies!), and peach. I devised a Snickers-bar wonton - chocolate, caramel and a few roasted peanuts, deep-fried and dusted with powdered sugar. It was intense! The chocolate and strawberry combos were also excellent. We experimented with different shapes and had a good time creating our little treats.

Many thanks to Sarah and Ron, my favorite guinea pigs, who are always willing to come try my experiments. They were enthusiastic contributors to the wonton dessert project. Even though there is always pizza in the freezer, it's still risky business!

Puff and Magic Mushrooms

2009-09-26T23:32:00.000-07:00

Sounds a little psychedelic, doesn't it? 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.

Puff pastry is nothing more than layers and layers of butter between flour. If done properly, when it bakes, it puffs up and becomes a flaky, buttery treat. Vols-au-vent are layered pastries. The bottom layer is just a round cut from the pastry after it has been rolled quite thin. Then another doughnut-shaped round is cut to stack on top. When baked, these pieces adhere to form a little dish to hold whatever treats are added.

I decided to fill mine with sauteed mushrooms. My photography leaves something to be desired, but the vol-au-vent did puff up beautifully and made a great container for my mushrooms, garnished with a freshly harvested tomato and a little parsley, both grown in Bob's organic garden. These little puffs were small, only a couple inches in diameter, so they were perfect appetizers for dinner the night I made them. Or...they would have been perfect appetizers had there been any left by the time Bob got home. Really, they were only a couple bites a piece and they were so appealing and after all that rolling and folding and rolling some more... well, I deserved a little treat - or two - or however many there were.

The good thing is that I froze two thirds of the pastry for future use. These are so versatile - savory things like salads and roast veggies work just as well as sweet fillings such as custards or fruits. And what about seafood? So many possibilities! That's probably why I haven't yet done anything yet. Too hard to make a decision. But one night Bob will come home to a buttery, flaky treat filled with succulent bites of something. Worth waiting for, I think.

Thank the Computer Gods for Google!

2009-09-26T15:15:00.000-07:00

I'm doing a lot of cooking this weekend - more to follow - but my brain was not in gear when I made my shopping lists. Since I was missing what appeared to be significant, exotic ingredients but didn't feel like changing from my tattered sweats to go searching for them, I started googling to see if I could find substitutes. What a miracle Google is! I found suggestions for substitutes for everything from shrimp paste to lemongrass to tamarind paste - and I have all the substitute ingredients, so I'm good to go.

Soup of My Dreams

2009-09-18T13:29:00.001-07:00

I love French onion soup. The rich broth, the crouton soaking up the rich broth, the gooey melted cheese - wonderful!

It is not, however, easy to find a really good onion soup. Even in Paris, where you would expect every bistro to have a tasty version of this iconic dish, the quality ranges from tasteless to acceptable. The best I ever had was a restaurant in Seattle. It's all a little fuzzy now, because this was in the '70's, but I remember this small restaurant downtown which had a soup that was the right blend of hearty broth, silky onions and lots of cheese.

I have tried several recipes for the soup, some of which have disappointed me in one way or another, but I keep looking. This week, I tried the recipe from Thomas Keller's "Bouchon." A bit intimidating, it calls for homemade beef stock made from roasted beef bones, onions cooked slowly for 5 hours until deeply caramelized and then the stock and onions combined for another hour to reduce and deepen the soup. I admit that the idea of making my own beef stock put me off a bit, so I found an organic beef broth that had nothing unpronounceable in it and used that instead. I did caramelize the onions for hours, stirring every 15 minutes until they reached this point:

They were practically melted after 6 hours of cooking. I used a diffuser, which allowed me to keep a pretty constant low simmer without having to readjust the temperature on the cooktop. I started with 8 pounds of onions, which took me about 45 minutes, including tear breaks, to slice (I wish my knife skills were better!). They filled to overflowing a 5-6 quart pan, so there were a lot of onions to cook down. I used a mix of yellow and sweet onions, which seemed to work pretty well.

When the onions were done, I added the beef broth and some seasonings and simmered that for another couple hours. The recipe said one hour to reduce by 1/3, but it took longer than that, maybe because I kept the temperature pretty low. The result? Not bad at all. The onions were silk, the broth was deeply flavorful. With a toasted crouton and some Emmenthaler cheese melted over the top, I had something was pretty darn close to my memory and quite a bit better than most of the onion soups I've had in recent years. Time and patience paid off. Next time, maybe I'll do the stock as well!

Pie Pops

2009-09-14T13:25:00.001-07:00

One of the websites I visit regularly is Serious Eats, which has interesting articles and pictures from the world of food. It also has a variety of forums for discussing cooking, restaurants, food trivia, and other food-related topics. I once posted a query on cooking a whole pig after Nick's attempt at this project, which had assorted problems. I got great responses, including one from the North Carolina Pork Association, with detailed instructions on how to go about this and even a recipe for sauce.

Several weeks ago, Serious Eats posted pictures of pie pops. These are two-bite pies, on lollipop sticks, filled with whatever pie filling you choose. I tracked back to the website of Luxirare, the person who made these little treats, and found a fascinating tale. This woman is based in Zimbabwe, according to her post. She focuses on food and clothing and is really a designer of both. The little pie pops didn't really have a recipe, but she had such amazing response to the posting she pulled together a list of hints and suggestions for making them which, along with her detailed photographs, resulted in a pretty good approach.

I made strawberry, blackberry and apple fillings for my pops (color-coded with different sugars). At her recommendation, I used pie crusts from the refrigerator section of my local Safeway, rolled quite a bit thinner. I pre-cooked the fillings, adding little more than sugar and other seasonings, along with a little cornstarch for the berries. The pops are not easy to make because finding the right ratio of filling to dough is a bit of a challenge. You want enough filling to give some fruity flavor but not so much your top dough piece is torn or overstretched. I spent an afternoon pulling these together and while they are not as incredibly beautiful as Luxirare's, some of them were pretty good.

Ultimately, these were made in honor of Ron for his birthday. Below is a not-very-good picture of Ron with his blackberry pie pop, complete with candle, which is barely discernible.

Much better than cake!

Birthday Bastilla

2009-09-13T23:51:00.000-07:00

Over 30 years ago, I had friends living in the Bay Area. On one of my visits, we went to Mamounia, a Moroccan restaurant, for dinner. I still remember that meal: Green Hungarian wine, couscous in a tangine, mint tea, and, best of all, bastilla. One especially fun thing was our tour of the kitchen after dinner. When the waiter brought the couscous, he lifted the lid of the tangine dramatically and I said, "Voila!" He immediately assumed I knew French and was quite excited. Since voila is about the sum of all my French, I hated to disappoint, but the connection had been made and he ushered us into the kitchen later in the evening. There, the chef was creating the bastilla, making the phyllo, as I recall, by cooking a very thin batter on a pan and pulling it off with his bare fingers.

Needless to say, when I decided to attempt bastilla myself, I passed on the homemade pastry and used frozen phyllo instead. Bastilla is a pie-like dish made with chicken, eggs, almonds, onions, parsley and cinnamon, sugar and other spices. The pie is topped with powdered sugar and cinnamon, giving it a sweet crust. At Mamounia, we ate it with our hands, but tonight we used more traditional implements.

The occasion was our dear friend Ron's birthday. Ron, his wife Sarah and Emma, their daughter and our goddaughter, were good enough to let us host the birthday dinner, giving me the perfect reason to make something different. Plus, they are really good about being guinea pigs!

The menu:

Pre-dinner noshes of hummus, pita, and halloumi, a sheep and goat milk cheese from Cyprus, made to be grilled before eating. Halloumi is quite salty, so the pita is a good counterpoint.

Tomato, avocado and mango salad with spicy seasoning, courtesy of Sarah. Are those colors glorious or what! Just makes you want to start eating RIGHT NOW.

Bastilla, based on a recipe from Sunset magazine, circa 1984. I've had this recipe carefully saved for 25 years and this is the first time I've tried it. Well, the only excuse is that it needed to be made for just the right occasion and this is the first time Ron has celebrated his 59th birthday.

Pie pops were the "birthday cake" for Ron. This little dessert deserves a little more discussion, so watch for another post, probably tomorrow, about their origin.

Happy Birthday, Ron!

Fluffy and Puffy

2009-09-06T19:02:00.001-07:00

I'm on a roll! Tonight is Sunday, the eve of Labor Day and a windier, rainy-er day there couldn't be. We had our "fun" outing - a trip to Costco - and came home so Bob could continue building tables for the greenhouse. He has done a beautiful job and we will be blessed with wonderful plants thriving throughout the winter, along with seedlings and other little treats.

For such a wet and windy day, a comfort food dinner was perfect. I braved the rain and harvested some tomatoes for our salad and I made this ham and cheese souffle. I used the same recipe I have used for decades, from James Beard's American Cookery. This souffle recipe has NEVER failed me - it always looks glorious when it comes out of the oven and tastes even better. I add a bit more cheese and ham than the recipe calls for, but I want to make this a hearty, stand-alone meal for us, not a "ladies-who-lunch" mini-meal.

Souffles may sound scary but I have never had a flat one. Just be careful with the eggs whites, folding them gently, and you will have a puffy treat to warm you on a chilly, rainy day.

Tartly Tomato

2009-09-05T21:08:00.000-07:00

This is one of my favorite appetizers - a tomato tart. I wish I could say I used tomatoes from our garden but, while we have had a pretty successful year, there have never been enough of the little fellas to do a tart this size.

The base of the tart is several layers of phyllo, brushed with butter and sprinkled with parmesan. The top layer has very thinly sliced onions, mozzarella and then the paper-thin slices of tomatoes. A little salt, a little pepper and some fresh thyme and you are good to go! It bakes until the phyllo is crispy and emerges in all its succulent beauty.

I made this one for a potluck picnic and discovered it is much better just out of the oven, while it is still crisp. When it is packed up to travel, the crust becomes a little too moist. That didn't stop people from eating it - I made two and there were no leftovers!

Torte-lini (A Mini Dobos Torte)

2009-08-27T09:34:00.000-07:00

The August 2009 Daring Baker's challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers' cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Class Caffes of Vienna, Budapest and Prague.

The traditional Dobos Torte is seven layers of sponge cake filled with chocolate buttercream and topped with a decorative layer of caramel topped sponge. I decided to make a few smaller cakes rather than one large one because there is no way we would ever eat a whole big cake. Somehow, four little cakes seemed more manageable.

Good thing I made that decision because it allowed me to practice until I got it right - or at least as right I was going to be able to manage!

I made very thin sponge circles, cooked on a Silpat, for the layers. I used a cookie cutter on the circles to assure a uniform size. The chocolate buttercream was just standard issue - followed the recipe they gave us. The problem was the weather. Despite my lovely air-conditioning, it was warm in the kitchen and the buttercream quickly became too soft when it sat out. Finding the optimal temperature was tough: soft enough to spread without tearing the delicate sponge cake yet firm enough not to melt.

I also learned that the Food Network, despite its detractors, does provide useful information. I've watched all those cake challenges and I know that real bakers use an internal support system when building layered cakes. As I struggled to keep my first mini-Dobos upright while adding layers, I realized I needed some way to keep the layers even. So, mini number 2 had a skewer inserted in the center of the layers. This made it immensely easier to frost the sides and top without having the thing turn into the Leaning Tower of Dobos.

The other struggle I had was the caramel topping. The original recipe calls for the caramel to be poured on the top of one layer, which is then cut into pie-shaped slices and made into kind of a whirl-i-gig topping by supporting the wedges with either a hazelnut or some piped buttercream. This seemed too complex for my little cakes, so I decided to do some fancy caramel swirls or ribbons or whatever to top the little darlings. Nice plan and they always make it seem so simple. Believe me, making caramel into lovely shapes requires skill and probably hours of practice. Caramel is HOT when it is poured. Letting it cool a little is essential (one large blister established it had not cooled enough); letting it cool too long results in brittle rather than pliable caramel. Suffice it to say, timing is critical. I did manage some swirly things and some thin strands and other shapes. Not what I was going for but I recognize my limitations. I like to think of the decorative topping of my Dobos Torte-lini (I made that up) as abstract. Perhaps it is symbolic of the merger of the traditional dessert with a modern variation. Or maybe it is just weird.

The torte was very rich. It did taste good, but small bites were more than adequate. Once again, we tasted but did not indulge. I saved the pretty one for Nick and he had about two bites before he was sated. For some reason, my sweet tooth has pretty much disappeared. I'm hoping Daring Bakers will choose some challenges that are not so desserty - maybe croissants or an interesting ethnic bread.

I'm unable to do the Daring Cooks challenge this month, but if I make anything interesting, I'll post. Otherwise the next Daring Baker challenge will pop up on September 27. And by the way, if you want to see what a serious pastry chef can do, check out http://www.mytartelette.com. This woman's work - both pastry and photography - is incredible. Her variation on the Dobos challenge is absolutely gorgeous and creative.

The Remains of the Day

2009-08-26T20:19:00.001-07:00

Nick has been home from Boston for a brief summer vacation before starting back to dental school in a few days. He was a busy person - very active social life - so I saw him mainly for meals. We have a ritual when he is home: He gets to choose the dinners he wants from his favorites. We had the welcome home New York strip steak with baked onion rings and salad (his dad actually grilled the steaks, so this was an easy one for me); the Caesar salad with grilled chicken; the dinner with friends which included a variety of dishes plus a homemade rustic peach tart (rustic because the crust, while delicious, was incredibly hard to work with so there were lots of patches); homemade pizza with a dough I had frozen some time ago - excellent result when cooking on the pizza stone in the oven; jerk chicken with papaya and pineapple salsa; and tonight, ribs with a fruit barbecue sauce, corn fritters (from Michael Ruhlman's book, Ratio) and watermelon.

The picture is the remains of that meal - not much left! The ribs were so tender they literally fell off the bone. I use a recipe that calls for brining them overnight, then marinating them in a mustard/spice rub for an hour or two, then slow cooking wrapped in foil with a little pineapple juice to steam (in the oven), then another brown sugar/spice rub and finished off on the grill. I find doing the major part of the cooking in the oven makes for a more predictable timeline and better control (for me) of temperature, so I modified this recipe to include the oven time vs. additional time on the grill.

Nick leaves tomorrow, but I'll probably start thinking about the Christmas vacation dinners the next day!

Not Paella - But the Pan Works

2009-08-14T12:20:00.000-07:00

Olga from Las Cosas de Olga chose the August Daring Cooks Challenge. This dish, rice with mushrooms, cuttlefish and artichokes, is a Jose' Andres recipe. Andres is a Spanish chef who lives in Washington, D.C. and owns several restaurants there. I've seen him on TV - quite a character!

Since I make paella regularly, the basic approach to this dish was familiar. A critical part of the dish is the sofregit, a sauce of olive oil, tomatoes, garlic, onion and mushrooms. The condiment is an allioli, which is a Spanish version of aioli - a garlic and olive oil emulsion.

The sofregit cooks for a long time, until the tomatoes are broken down and everything is soft. It is added to the cooked cuttlefish (I used calamari), artichokes and mushrooms, which are sauteed in olive oil. White wine is added and then the rice, water, and saffron. It cooks until the rice is done and is served with the allioli.

This dish was okay, but I have to say I prefer my paella. I think using water (I could have used fish stock, but didn't have any) meant a loss of a layer of flavor. And while the calamari were fine and were something I could conceivably use in paella, I didn't think they added enough to flavors - compared to prawns, clams, chicken and chorizo. I also struggled with the allioli. The directions were a little vague - 4 garlic cloves, salt, some drops of lemon juice and then olive oil "until you have the consistency of thick mayonnaise." This was all done by hand, with the mortar and pestle the primary tool for smashing the garlic to paste and incorporating the olive oil "drop by drop." While some people on the Daring Cooks forum reported great success with this labor-intensive approach, some of us had less luck. I should have used the food processor. As it was, I referred to Michael Ruhlman's "Ratio" to get an approximation of how much olive oil I would need since the recipe was not at all specific.

While it is interesting to explore other Spanish foods, I'm going to stick to my standard paella, which I think is more flavorful and more versatile. With family and friends with various eating taboos (no seafood, prawns but not clams, no meat, nothing spicy), a good paella with prawns, chicken, chorizo, clams, lots of veggies has options for everyone - and the rice is especially appealing.

S'Mores Translated

2009-07-27T11:56:00.000-07:00

The July Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth (http://sweetendingz.blogspot.com/). She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network (http://www.foodnetwork.com/).

I squeezed this challenge in between trips. I also wanted a relatively cool day to bake, since neither marshmallow nor chocolate seemed to call for the kind of hot days we have been having lately. This is the Pacific Northwest - where's the rain????

The cookies were okay, but I don't think I would make them again. The cookie part didn't have a lot of flavor - should have amped them up a bit. The marshmallow actually turned out pretty well. I had a lot of reservations about making them because I had to use a similar process to make a meringue for an earlier challenge and it did not go well. This time, everything worked out pretty well. The marshmallows are made by combining water, sugar and corn syrup to a soft ball stage, adding softened gelatin and pouring the resulting mixture into softly whipped egg whites and then continuing to whip them to hard peak stage. I added the vanilla and the resulting product was pretty marshmallow-y!

The recipe said we would have 2 dozen cookies - wrong! More like 6 dozen. The cookies were small. I used a pastry tip to cut out the circles to about one to one and a half inches since I didn't have a cookie cutter that size. After the cookies baked, I piped the marshmallow on them. I have lots of piping tips, but no pastry bag, so I used the ziploc method. Worked fine, mostly. Below is an example of a good piping job!

Lest you be overwhelmed by my piping skills, let me show you another sample - the alien version.

Okay - not classic, but a certain extraterrestrial flair, don't you think?

The final product would have been lovely gilded with gold leaf, but that's another thing I don't have in my otherwise relatively well-supplied kitchen. I did add some sugar sprinkles to some of the cookies, which was kind of cute but added nothing to the flavor. The chocolate was simply semi-sweet chips melted with some canola oil. I hand-dipped these suckers - all six dozen of them. My fraternal grandmother had a job as a candy-dipper in the first half of the 20th century. I'm sure she would have been better at this than I, but I managed. Pretty boring after the first couple dozen. The result:

My mother liked these, my husband sneaked a few but for the most part, they were not good enough to put in my favorite cookie recipe collection. Well, okay, I don't really have a favorite cookie recipe collection, but if I did, these wouldn't make it. If I had had time, I could have played a bit - maybe add a peanut butter or jelly layer between cookie and marshmallow, maybe add some extra flavor to the cookie layer, whatever. But didn't happen and not going to happen.

Racing in New Hampshire

2009-07-18T09:45:00.001-07:00

I spent a week in New England this month, mostly in far northern New Hampshire. Nick and three of his friends were doing an adventure race and I went along for the ride. We had some luck in intercepting the team at various checkpoints, so I did get some pictures.

The food, however, was not as memorable as the rest of the trip. I only ate in three different restaurants (we were in the middle of nowhere, so there were not a lot of choices). I swear, the only vegetable known to northern New Hampshire is the french fry - or its close relative, the sweet potato fry. I had a lobster roll (pretty good) with french fries, fish and chips (also pretty good), chicken pot pie (not great, but it did have carrots and peas) and french fries, tuna melt (yummy) with french fries, cheeseburger and french fries (11 PM, we were starved and this was a $2 burger cooked by volunteers at one of the checkpoints of the race and probably the only food available at that hour), a grilled cheese sandwich and fries. The only meal without fries was breakfast and I probably could have ordered them then, too. Salads were pretty much non-existent and the one I did order was not very good - lots of onion but not much else. When we returned to Boston, I started my week of being a vegetarian - salads, salads and more salads!

The Balsams Grand Resort

Apart from the food, the trip was wonderful. New Hampshire is gorgeous, with lots of green, lots of rivers, and dramatic notches (what we might call mountain passes). While the mountains are not the height of the Cascades or Olympics, they are dramatic nonetheless. Since this area is sparsely populated, there is lots of open space and there are parks everywhere. The resort we stayed in is on the national historic register and is truly a grand old resort, one you can imagine wealthy East Coast people coming for a summer vacation. Dress for dinner (we skipped that part), gracious living, service that was impeccable, tennis, golf (with suitable dress required), pool, lake with watercraft, trails for hiking and mountain biking. The dining room had room for 550 diners, there was a ballroom, a theater, the polling place for the Dixville Notch precinct (which opens at midnight on the day of the presidential elections and reports the first returns - 16 voters in 2008), sun rooms, billiards room, and probably more that I missed. Amazing place. The nearest towns are 10 miles to the west (Colebrook) and 10 miles to east (Errol) and neither one is even large enough to warrant an entry in the Triple A travel guide.

The people doing these adventure races are all so friendly, it is just fun to be in the vicinity. The mother of one of Nick's teammates and I spent Friday afternoon and Saturday driving around looking for them and every time we stopped at a checkpoint to see if they had checked in, the race people recognized us and knew our team. If they do another race, I'll be there!

Fish and ..... Bananas?

2009-07-14T12:32:00.001-07:00

This challenge came from Sketchy, who chose a recipe from the Alinea cookbook - Skate with Traditional Flavors Powdered. This was a really busy month for me and I cannot say I was enthusiastic about doing this recipe. Lots of time-consuming steps (not technically difficult, just lots of time) and I wasn't sure I would find the couple days I would need to complete all the prep. Despite misgivings, I decided to give it a try.

Skate is a little manta-ray like fish, which, in addition to being hard to find, is on the Monterey Bay Aquarium's "avoid" list. Besides that, the fish guy at Metropolitan Market seemed to think it would take lots of time to prep - lots of cartilage. So, I substituted Alaskan cod, which seemed to work just fine.

I also followed the recipe in the Alinea cookbook rather than using the changes Sketchy suggested. It was fewer ingredients and fewer steps, which worked better with my schedule.

First up, the powders. I dried capers and parsley in the toaster oven - about three hours for the capers and an hour for the parsley - then ground them in my spice grinder. I poached lemon rind in simple syrup (three times) and then dried it in the toaster oven for about three hours and then ground it. I also ground dried banana chips. I baked dried milk on a Silpat for several minutes until it was brown and then combined it with the banana chip powder.

The green beans were sliced into little rounds, about 1/4". They were poached in beurre monte, which is unsalted butter combined with a small amount of simmering water in an emulsion. The entire recipe called for one pound of butter made into beurre monte!! That's a lot of butter! I poached them very briefly.

The cod was cut into slices and poached in the beurre monte until done and then drained.

To compose the plate, I put three fresh banana slices on the plate, topped with the green beans and the fish. I sprinkled some of the banana/milk powder along the edge of the fish. The other three powders (caper, parsley, and lemon) were swirled on the plate. The idea was to take a bite which had all the flavors: banana, beans, fish, and all the powders. I told Bob, my long-suffering guinea pig husband, that if it was ghastly, we would go out! But it wasn't! It was really quite good and Bob even had seconds. No way would I have imagined that banana and green beans went with fish, but it was quite tasty and the powders just enhanced all the flavors. I guess that is why Grant Achatz, chef at Alinea, has such an amazing reputation for putting together unusual textures and flavors. I have to go to Chicago and eat his food!

So a successful challenge despite all my reservations. Probably not a dish I will ever do again, but an eye-opener for sure.

Dinner on the Deck

2009-07-04T11:45:00.001-07:00

With the wonderful weather we have been having, dinner on the deck was an enticing thought. And with friends Harold and Janet Wood visiting from California and Sally Soest willing to make the trek down here from Seattle, the perfect opportunity presented itself.

I found a menu from Sunset magazine which I had saved (I do have a system!) and decided on the Hawaiian-themed meal. Not pictured, because it was largely devoured before the camera came out, is the bowl of Maui sweet onion chips with a sweet onion dip. For the first time, I was truly successful in caramelizing onions - no burning, just beautiful, golden brown, soft, caramelized onions, which were pureed with buttermilk and sour cream into a simple but tasty dip. I think the trick is to slice the onions pole-to-pole rather than crosswise and to cook them at a VERY low temp for a very long time. I ignored the recipe, which said to use medium heat for 20 minutes and put them on a lower setting and did not look at the clock. It was much longer than 20 minutes, but I honestly don't know how much time it took because I decided they would be done when they were done. And who wouldn't enjoy the aroma of sweet onions turning into gooey goodness?

The salad was easy and just right for a warm evening. Slices of avocado (God's gift to us) and papaya on butter lettuce right out of Bob's garden, topped with a Hawaiian vanilla vinaigrette. Just champagne vinegar, olive oil, infused with a Hawaiian vanilla bean. Nummy.

Our dear Sally is not a seafood fan, so this course subbed chicken for the prawns in the original recipe. Worked great! I marinated the chicken in a coconut milk/garlic/ginger/lime mixture, grilled the tenders on the stovetop grill pan, topped with a little lime juice and toasted coconut. The chicken was tender and the coconut added some crunch.

Entree number two was a pork tenderloin/grilled pineapple sandwich on Hawaiian sweet rolls. I actually found these rolls in our local Safeway - totally unexpected - so I didn't have to find a substitute. The pork was brined in a brown sugar/salt/Hawaiian vanilla mixture for several hours. While the recipe called for grilling it, I roasted it inside (I couldn't face dealing with a hot grill in the hot weather - wuss). After about 20-25 minutes, I basted it with the sauce - hoisin, ketchup, ginger, garlic, sesame oil, and soy sauce. I grilled the pineapple slices on the grill pan and basted them with the same char-siu sauce. I cut the rolls on the top and put slices of pork and pineapple in each, topped with a little more sauce. Another success!

I really used Hawaiian vanilla because we had visited the Hawaiian vanilla plantation on the Big Island last year and brought home vanilla and vanilla beans. They use nothing but alcohol and vanilla in their extract, unlike most extracts which add sugar and water. I think the flavor is a bit stronger, but I can't claim to have the world's best palate. I just like the idea of vanilla being purely vanilla - no added sugar.

All these recipes are in the June 2009 issue of Sunset magazine and undoubtedly on their website. None of them was difficult or particularly time-consuming (other than brining/marinating time) and it was a pretty low stress meal to put together.

And the company was even better than the food~truly a wonderful evening of friendship and conversation. Lots to talk about - Sarah Palin's resignation, the woes of school districts around the country, trips and travels. A great way to kick off the July 4th weekend.

Pizza at Home

2009-07-02T21:15:00.001-07:00

A little interim posting. I made pizza dough one weekend, using the dough recipe from Pizzeria Bianco, a legendary pizza place in Phoenix. I'm not sure it is my favorite recipe - I'm still searching for the perfect dough - but the results were good. Here is a picture of the pizza Bob put together:

We put some olive oil on top (no tomato sauce), and garnished with Kalamata olives, artichoke hearts, tomatoes, mushrooms (including some morels), proscuitto, and fresh mozzarella. Very tasty! The crust is a little thicker than I like but the texture was good.

Peach Tart ...er...Pudding

2009-06-26T21:37:00.000-07:00

The June Daring Baker's challenge was hosted by Jasmine of Confessions of a Cardamom Addict and Annemarie of Ambrosia and Nectar. They chose a Traditional (UK) Bakewell Tart...er...pudding that was inspired by a rich baking history dating back to the 1800's in England.

Despite several minor roadblocks - the scale didn't work, so I had to estimate dry ingredients; the shortcrust pastry, which I should have made in the food processor, wasn't as thoroughly blended as it could have been; I had to use tools in the garage to get the jar of peach conserves open - this tart/pudding turned out just fine.

It has three parts: a shortcrust, a jam filling and a frangipane topping. We were allowed to use purchased jam, which is good because I don't make my own preserves. I wish I'd had some of my mother's Oregon grape jam, but my supply was gone, so I used Frog Hollow organic peach conserves instead. The conserves had some organic sugar but were basically just peaches - not too sweet. The frangipane is made with ground almonds, eggs, a little flour, butter and powdered sugar and turns out kind of curdy.

The entire dessert was rich and buttery but not too sweet - good for me, because I'm not a big fan of really sweet desserts. With a few home-grown, freshly picked strawberries for garnish along with sliced almonds, this tart was a fun and different dessert.

Diddle Diddle Dumpling

2009-06-10T16:11:00.000-07:00

What fun! This month's Daring Cook challenge was Chinese dumplings. I make dumplings (potstickers) periodically, but I decided this was my chance to try a version that sounded so good but took a little too much time for a routine dinner.

I made Shanghai soup dumplings. These have the soup inside the dumpling, along with the regular filling. I made chicken broth by simmering chicken backs and necks in water, along with seasonings (green onions, ginger, garlic, soy). When the chicken was falling off the bone (2-3 hours), I strained the soup, returned it to the heat and boiled it until it reduced to about 3 cups. I added seasonings and gelatin, and, using a gravy separator to remove the fat, poured the mixture into a 9x13 glass baking dish, covered it and refrigerated it overnight. The next day I cut the chicken gelatin or aspic into small cubes and blended it with my ground pork/shrimp filling.

Since the challenging part of this challenge was making the dumpling wrappers, I followed the instructions for using the food processor - flour and warm water. Concrete! Not sure what I did wrong. So I switched to the Chinese mother method and hand-mixed the flour and warm water. Much better result. I let the dough sit for quite a while and then began the lengthy and somewhat arduous process of rolling out the little wrappers, filling them and pleating them.

Since the aspic would be melting when the dumplings were steamed, I pleated them into little purses rather than the traditional shape. I found it a little challenging to make sure all the seams were sealed tightly - didn't want to lose any of the broth to leaking. I had way more filling than dough but decided to use commercial wrappers for the leftover filling. NOTE: All pictures are dumplings made with the homemade dough!

I steamed the dumplings for about 10 minutes. Those that didn't leak (some dough stuck to other dumplings and tore) were great - a little burst of chicken-y hotness mingled with the pork/shrimp filling. And even without the soup, the potstickers were pretty tasty.

I also made some other little nibbles: naked shrimp/chive dumplings and ginger chicken and my friend Sarah provided a lovely platter of tomatoes, mango and avocado slices, sprinkled with seasonings. We had sriracha, red pepper flake sauce and mango citrus sauce for dipping. I liked the mango with the dumplings - a nice tangy contrast.

I had enough to freeze some uncooked dumplings for a dinner in the future. I would do this again, although having at least two days to pull it together is probably the best plan. I think I might also chill the soup before it becomes aspic to more thoroughly remove the fat. I got most of it with the gravy separator, but had to gently scrape some off the top of the aspic before I cut it up.

I doubt I will seek a new career as a dumpling maker, but this was a pretty good outcome for this challenge.

PS - After making and not loving the ricotta gnocchi last month, I had a chance to eat them in a real restaurant. We were in Portland, OR for a long weekend and stopped in at a venerable place that has been around for years and gotten excellent ratings. There they were: ricotta gnocchi, served with duck. I ordered, I ate and frankly, they were no more impressive than mine and still not something I was enthusiastic about. Maybe I'm just not a gnocchi person.

Strudeling

2009-05-26T21:39:00.000-07:00

Strudel - Cherry Almond and Salmon Boursin Mushroom

The May Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Linda of make life sweeter! and Courtney of Coco Cooks. They chose Apple Strudel from the recipe book Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafes of Vienna, Budapest and Prague by Rick Rodgers.

I made two strudels. When the dough proved so easy to work with (my biggest concern), I was really encouraged to make both a sweet and a savory strudel.

The first was a sour cherry-almond version. I should have played with the filling a bit more. It was a little too juicy and not quite sweet enough. Oh well, the oven needed cleaning anyway! I still liked the combination of the almonds with the cherries and simply added a bit more sugar to each serving, which really helped.

The second strudel was a salmon-Boursin-mushroom pastry. I used wild Alaska sockeye salmon (cooked), mixed it with Boursin cheese and a little cream until it was a mousse consistency. I sauteed the mushrooms in butter and olive oil, added salt and pepper and some sherry and then chopped the mushrooms. I blended them into the mousse, checked the seasoning and away we went! It turned out just as I wanted and was a good first course for a birthday dinner.

The dough was so easy to work with. I had no problem stretching it to the correct size and it was really transparent. I followed the suggestions of some other Daring Bakers and let it rest overnight before rolling it out. I also let it rest after rolling, before I began stretching it.

I'd do this again with enough incentive!

Never Gnocchi Again!

2009-05-14T15:02:00.000-07:00

First Ever Daring Cooks Challenge - Ricotta Gnocchi

I had a wonderful vacation in Italy in 1999 (so long ago!) which included a week in Tuscany, attending a cooking school. We cooked in the morning, ate the results in the beautiful garden for lunch, did field trips to fascinating places in the afternoon and were provided with splendid dinners in the evening. All the wine you could drink (not much, in my case), Italian food which was fresh and creative - what more could one ask for?

The food we were taught to prepare was, for the most part, mouth-watering and worth the effort we put in. One exception: gnocchi. A lot of effort for a result that was not anywhere near as wonderful as the other meals we made. My friend, Carol, and I agreed: no more gnocchi. Just too much trouble for too little reward. If only I had heeded this decision!

The Zuni Cafe in San Francisco is well-known for the incredible food it serves to people. I have not been there, but have accepted that it is widely respected. I even have the Zuni Cafe cookbook, from which the April Daring Cook challenge was taken. The cookbook describes the ricotta gnocchi as ethereal, or was it ephemeral? Constantly requested, many toothsome variations, depending on season. Just be sure to use fresh ricotta, not that pedestrian supermarket stuff.

Okay, so that meant making my own ricotta because fresh is not readily available. Simple - some whole milk, some cream and some vinegar and then wait. It took some time, but was not difficult and the product seemed pretty good to me - delicate, not a lot of flavor, but creamy. I followed the Zuni recipe for the gnocchi, which is pretty simple. When the dough? batter? whatever failed the cooking test (ie, it dissolved in the hot water), I looked at the proposed remedy - add 1/4 tsp vinegar - and decided there was no way that would work. I resorted to Marcella Hazan's recipe for spinach and ricotta gnocchi, which uses flour, and added a couple handfuls of flour. That seemed to help. The gnocchi at least retained some shape when I formed them, even though they were still pretty sticky. This is the picture of the uncooked gnocchi.

Not things of beauty, but at least a semi-appropriate shape. I refrigerated them for hours, hoping they would become firmer, and then cooked them as instructed in simmering water.

When I tasted them, I was ready to throw them out. Nothing - weird texture, no flavor, totally unappealing. My husband, who must have been very hungry, said they weren't that bad. I added LOTS of proscuitto, parmesan, and peas and we gave it a try. He had seconds, but I think that's because the proscuitto and parmesan were good. I tossed the leftovers and I will make the same resolution: Never gnocchi again!

April Cheesecake

2009-04-27T14:39:00.000-07:00

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

This was a work in progress from the beginning. I have made many, many cheesecakes; however, my standard recipe is very dense with three pounds of cream cheese plus ricotta and sour cream. This recipe is a much lighter cheesecake, with a more liquid batter: only 24 ounces of cream cheese and a cup of cream, plus the usual eggs, sugar, and flavorings.

My original plan was to layer bittersweet chocolate, caramel and raspberry sauces between layers of cheesecake. It soon became apparent that the sauces were much too heavy to rest on top of the cheesecake and would just sink to the bottom. I abandoned that plan and decided to try marbling the flavors into the cheesecake to have a nice swirly inside. No dice. The sauces just worked their way down, partially blending with the cheesecake and partially on the bottom, resting on the crust. The crust was a blend of butter, chocolate wafers and some milk chocolate toffee bits.

The cheesecake turned out well. No cracks, no waterlogged crust (although there was some small amount of condensation between the heavy duty foil and the springform pan). The flavor was also good. The chocolate, caramel and raspberry blended together nicely.

I decorated the cheesecake with some of each of the sauces and some fresh raspberries.

I would still like to try to layer the flavors but I think I will have to use my old standby recipe rather than this more delicate version.

Next up: Daring Cooks ricotta gnocchi - look for a post in mid-May.

Catching Up

2009-04-26T08:11:00.001-07:00

Before I created my own blog, my Daring Baker Challenges were posted on the Daring Baker site. These are the first several challenges I completed.

French Yule Log, above, was several days worth of effort, since each section required layering or freezing or whatever. Some parts of it were challenging and I certainly learned a lot from creating this dessert. However, it was very rich and I probably won't do it again.

In January, we were to make tuiles, a very thin, fragile cookie which is normally molded into cornets or cigar-shapes - or whatever else your imagination can come up with. While most people made dessert tuiles, I chose to do the savory option. This is what I came up with.

The cookies were very fragile and it took several efforts to find a method of molding them into this shape. I think of all the cookies I baked, only these two were presentable. I filled them with red and green apples sauteed in butter and a little Calvados and topped with sour cream and a blueberry. I thought they were really good and now that I know how to do the tuiles, I could see myself doing this again (on a day when I had lots of patience).

In February, we made a flourless chocolate cake, topped with homemade ice cream. The cake was definitely not sweet - I used bittersweet chocolate, a little Grand Marnier and there was no added sugar! However, that was remedied with the ice cream we made - a vanilla custard ice cream with lots of vanilla bean flavor, topped with satsuma wedges poached in butter, caramel and Grand Marnier.

The March challenge was something different - not dessert. We were to make lasagne based on a Splendid Table recipe. Homemade pasta, homemade ragu and bechamel - no gloppy ricotta or mozzarella or tons of veggies. I made a butternut squash pasta, which was a lovely golden color. The ragu was a combination of pork and beef and cooked for hours. It tasted fine, but I think I should have added some red pepper flakes for a somewhat zestier flavor. The bechamel was a standard bechamel. The lasagne was good and I shared with my mother, who enjoyed it and was probably glad it wasn't spicy hot.

This month's (April) challenge will be posted tomorrow.

The Beginning of the Blog

2009-04-02T14:23:00.000-07:00

I love to write but sending emails to friends and the occasional letter to the editor seemed sufficient. No need for a blog. Now, however, as a registered member of Daring Bakers and Daring Cooks, I need a home to describe my baking and cooking adventures - hence, the blog.

The first Daring Baker post will be later this month - April 27 - and, if I can figure out all the technicalities, will include gorgeous photos by Bob (my patient husband) as well as a description of the baking process. In the interim, I might be moved to write about other topics - we'll see.