Stuffed!

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!

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

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

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!

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

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

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.