Steamy Pudding

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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.