Adventures in Doughnutland.
Martin, Melissa M.: Mosquito Supper Club: Cajun Recipes from a Disappearing Bayou
Lee, Lara: Coconut & Sambal: Recipes from my Indonesian Kitchen
Chauhan, Maneet: Chaat: Recipes from the Kitchens, Markets, and Railways of India: A Cookbook
McDermott, Kate: Pie Camp: The Skills You Need to Make Any Pie You Want
Lee, Lara: Coconut & Sambal: Recipes from my Indonesian Kitchen
Kimber, Edd: One Tin Bakes: Sweet and simple traybakes, pies, bars and buns
Clark, Letitia: Bitter Honey: Recipes and Stories from Sardinia
McDowell, Erin Jeanne: The Book on Pie: Everything You Need to Know to Bake Perfect Pies
Michael Solomonov: Federal Donuts: The (Partially) True Spectacular Story
Chris Cosentino: Offal Good: Cooking from the Heart, with Guts
Deb Perelman: Smitten Kitchen Every Day: Triumphant and Unfussy New Favorites
Samin Nosrat: Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking
Michelle Tam: Ready or Not!: 150+ Make-Ahead, Make-Over, and Make-Now Recipes by Nom Nom Paleo
Lee Brian Schrager: America's Best Breakfasts: Favorite Local Recipes from Coast to Coast
Jacqueline An: An: To Eat: Recipes and Stories from a Vietnamese Family Kitchen
Carolyn Phillips: All Under Heaven: Recipes from the 35 Cuisines of China
Alexandra Stratou: Cooking with Loula: Greek Recipes from My Family to Yours
Meathead Goldwyn: Meathead: The Science of Great Barbecue and Grilling
« October 2012 | Main | December 2012 »
We are on a whole wheat kick again. Pasta is the current flavor vehicle. We used the machine to run a variety of shapes. The macaroni extruded more like Kraft's than the elbow we expected. The campanelle were beautiful. They resembled tete de moine and chanterelle mushrooms. The canestri shape and ridging are bold. With the platform in place now we need to work on the sauces.
#122 Macaroni
#252 Campanelle
#99 Canestri
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We asked the butcher for a couple of blade steaks. These are cut from the first cut off of the pork shoulder. They contain a variety of muscle groups that surround the shoulder blade. We seasoned them with salt and let them sit overnight on a rack. The following day we braised them with carrots, onions, celery, radishes, red wine and apple cider. The gentle heat and long time allowed the connective tissue to break down. The steaks were spoon tender and the vegetables sponges for the sauce. I see a tremendous future for these braised blades in our world. Now we need to explore this cut and preparation in other animals.
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It started again with the tastiest beet ever. We wanted to slice it very thin, like shaved ham. We vacuum sealed it and put it in the freezer. When it was rock solid we cut open the bag and started shaving. The result is these gorgeous beet petals with the texture and appearance of air dried ham. The process is not a short one. But neither is curing a ham. So why should we be afraid of taking the time to do it with vegetables? We shouldn't.
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It's that time of year again. TIme to shop sales and make lists and decide who you love enough to part with some of that hard earned cash. Here are a few good ideas for the cooks in your life.
The Thermapen is on sale from ThermoWorks right now for $89 and it is a major splurge. It's also a practical gift. It takes accurate temperatures faster than any thermometer out there making it perfect for all of your cooking and baking projects. We keep ours right beside the stove and hardly a day goes by when it doesn't see some sort of action. We love it even more than our laser thermometer. You can also buy it via Amazon if you hate filling out new forms online.
Everyone should have a good kitchen scale. This one by My Weigh costs under $40 and will work well for most home cooks. For cooks who like to work with hydrocolloids and other small quantity ingredients you can add a jewelers scale from American Weigh for under $10. These are the two scales we use in our kitchen and we would be lost without them.
Our current coffee of choice comes from Blue Bottle Coffee. You can order real pounds of freshly roasted coffee, Cascara Tea, various accessories and an autographed copy of their very cool book, The Blue Bottle Craft of Coffee: Growing, Roasting, and Drinking, with Recipes to send to someone you love. Last we ordered the code: FREESHIPLOYAL got you free standard shipping in their online store and there's plenty of time before Christmas to get something for the coffee lover in your life.
Of course a bottle of Blis barrel aged fish sauce will make any cook warm right up to you. We also love Steve's maple syrups and sherry vinegar.
And finally, for the sweet tooth on your list there is Monastery Candy. They make some of the very best chewy caramels, plain and chocolate coated, that we've ever had. Paired with a small jar of crunchy sea salt (which is good for everything), their caramels are close to perfection and reasonably priced too.
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Vanilla bean cookies in abundance. We are layering, alternating, building and balancing.
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We pressure cooked the beets for 45 minutes. Then we peeled them and dehydrated them for 12 hours. We put the semi-dried beets into a zip top bag while they were still warm to steam and rehydrate the beets exterior. We roughly cut up the concentrated beets and dressed them with pistachio oil and smoked Maldon salt. We added a few drops of concentrated minus 8 vinegar to complete the plate.
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It is not about gluten or not. We are chasing delicious. The obstacle is making the same thing that we have always had without the traditional structure. The limitation provides the creative framework. We use our Batch 2 Gluten Free Flour Blend and Aki's pie crust recipe. The results produce copybook pie. They just happen to be gluten free.
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The idea was such a no brainer it took a lot of work to come up with. We were looking to add a gluten free stuffing to our Thanksgiving spread. Cornbread would have worked. Gluten free no-knead brioche was a strong contender. The lack of satisfying Chinese food nearby guided my thoughts to fried rice. And rice stuffing is not too non-traditional. If we combined the two we would be onto something. Today we cooked a variety of rices and quinoa. Tomorrow we fry it.
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We were at Mitsuwa market and came across a unique cut of meat. It was pork jowl with a uniform thickness. I looked closer at the packaging and read bonded pork jowl. Of course, Activa at work. I bought several pieces and stored them in the freezer. I wanted to something with these perfectly shaped jowls. I just did not know what. Finally it hit me. They would make wonderful guanciale. We blended a Japanese curry powder with salt and dusted the jowls. We put a piece of rosemary on both sides of the jowls. Then we vacuum sealed the meat. The waiting begins.
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(picture from Amazon.com)
...Wayne Harley Brachmann? He wrote one of my favorite dessert books ever, Retro Desserts. If you ever come across it in a used book store snap it up. Tonight we're enjoying chocolate silk pie with Butterfingers folded into the filling and freshly whipped cream alongside. Amaya helped make it and it is delicious. I've yet to try a recipe that didn't work and that's about the best thing you can ask for from any cookbook, sweet or savory.
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We smoke fats. Usually they are unrendered so we can use them in multiple applications. With beef fat we smoke it, render it with onions and vadouvan, then turn the cracklings into an intense beef broth. We took a similar approach with chicken fat. Except we used the schmaltz and the rendered fat in the Challah. We deglazed the pot from rendering the fat to make a quick broth for the liquid component of the bread. This is a solid argument for the addage Fat is Flavor. Especially when you smoke it.
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We rescued this fork from an antique store in Buckingham. It was a real find. The fork is hefty with a beautiful worn wooden handle. It is a tool meant to be used in the kitchen. It extends our reach on the grill. Its rounded tines hook bones and let us get underneath ingredients. The temptation with these sharp tips is to pierce the meat. This action is detrimental. Why use a meat fork? Habit. Beauty. Style. Tradition. Feel. A connection to our past. It may not be "right" tool for the job. It is for the experience.
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This recipe evolved from David Lebovitz's ginger cake, a recipe that I found way back in the day in his first book, Room For Dessert. It appears again in his most recent book, Ready For Dessert, which is much easier to get your hands on, in case you don't have one or all of his books like we do. Anyway the fresh ginger cake has been a favorite for years. I never messed with it because it was so good. But the other night we needed something for show and tell (the letter of the week was G) and I didn't quite have all of the ingredients and I needed to make the cake recipe kid-friendly so Amaya could help make it. After all it can't be for show and tell unless she has a hand in it. So we made some changes and added a ginger ale glaze because she and Alex love frosting of any kind. The new version of the cake is pretty amazing, good enough to rival the original. I still encourage you to buy at least one of his books if you don't have them because nobody does dessert like David Lebovitz. In spite of a house full of cookies and pie this cake disappeared at record speed.
Glazed Ginger Cake
85 grams / 3 ounces peeled and sliced fresh ginger
200 grams / 1 cup sugar
4.5 grams/ 3/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
0.5 grams / ¼ teaspoon ground ginger
2 grams / 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
0.5 grams / ¼ teaspoon ground mace
225 grams / 1 cup water
10 grams / 2 teaspoons baking soda
340 grams / 1 cup molasses
2 eggs
225 grams / 8 ounces melted butter
375 grams / 2 ½ cups all purpose flour
Glaze:
450 grams / 2 cups powdered sugar
1.5 grams/ 1/4 teaspooon salt
55 grams/ ¼ cup spicy ginger ale
Preheat oven to 350°F/ 175°C
Butter a 10-inch 2-piece Angel Food cake pan and place on a baking sheet lined with a silicone mat covered with a sheet of parchment paper.
Put the fresh ginger, sugar,salt, ground ginger, cinnamon, and mace in a food processor and pulse until the fresh ginger has been ground into the sugar. Put 1 cup of water in a large measuring cup and microwave for 1 minute. Add the baking soda and stir to dissolve. Add the molasses and stir well to blend. Set aside. Add the eggs to the food processor one at a time, pulsing to blend. Turn the processor on and stream in the melted butter. Stop the food processor and add all of the flour, pulsing to blend. Turn the food processor back on and stream in the water/molasses mixture, stopping the machine as soon as it has been absorbed. The batter will be thin. Pour the batter into the prepared cake pan and bake for about 1 hour and 10 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean or the internal temperature of the cake reaches between 190-195°F / 88-90°C. Let the cake cool completely and remove from the pan.
Put the powdered sugar and salt into a large measuring cup and slowly whisk in the ginger ale until the glaze is smooth and pourable. Drizzle the glaze over the top of the cake. Let it rest, uncovered, for at least 2 hours so the glaze can set.
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Not exactly. These are green onion crepes we used to make semi traditional manicotti. The transition from one culture to another is easy. The vibrant color and intense flavor of these crepes would work wonderfully in a Chinese application. I wonder about XO tomato sauce. Instead of ricotta we could use smoked tofu. And what if we paired them with Peking Duck. And at that point we flip the coin again. Duck bolognese. Cucumber ricotta. Hoisin sauce...
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We started with Korean rice cakes. We smoked them. We marinated them with lime juice, fish sauce, gochujang, and scallions. After our deep frying disaster we wisely took these to the grill. We went from grill to marinade several times. These were delicious. They triggered the idea of pairing them with salsify prepared exactly the same. The combination of the two will become an extraordinary dish. Now we need to make them.
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We developed this recipe for a demonstration we did at our local Williams Sonoma. The seasoned stuffing mix adds the flavor to the noodles. The semolina adds the structure. The addition of the baking soda adds resiliency. We served them with thanksgiving sauce: ground turkey, gravy, dried cranberries, mushrooms, onions, canned tomatoes and apple wine.
Stuffing Malloredus
265 grams semolina flour
170 grams instant stuffing
3 grams baking soda
210 grams warm water or turkey stock
Put the semolina, stuffing and baking soda into a bowl of a food processor and pulse to grind the stuffing. Pour the warm water into the machine and pulse to combine into a coarse dough. Put the dough onto a cutting board. Bring the dough together and knead it until is is silky and smooth. Vacuum seal the dough to fully hydrate the semolina and stuffing. Roll the dough like cavatelli (malloreddus) with a machine or by hand using a gnocchi board.
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I eat a lot of pie. Normally it is cold. Occasionally the pie is room temperature. I don't even consider hot pie straight from the oven. The pie has not had time to come together. Juices haven't thickened. Custards haven't set. The pie is not unified. I don't think of reheating pie. Once it is baked and cooled the pie is done. Aki took some of her Great Pie and put it on sizzle pan and into the toaster oven. After a cycle the pie was crisp on the outside. The filling was warm and not hot. Ideal eating temperature. The crust buttery crisp. Perfect eating texture. The butter in the crust sizzled and blended with the raw sugar sprinkled on top. This was great stuff. Our toaster is now a Pie Warmer.
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Two videos in one week? Yup. They are totally different and this one I found via Chuck Wendig's website. It's about creativity and we're always looking for a little more of that around here. Less than five minutes of your time for a little bit of light-hearted yet serious inspiration.
Where would your keys take you?
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I cleared a hurdle today. I've been fighting with the a/v receiver for our surround sound since we installed it more than 3 years ago. I had the cable and the blue ray hooked in but try as I might I couldn't get the apple tv integrated into the system. Periodically I would get frustrated and try again using an hdmi cable, I tried several different ones, but it just wouldn't work. Finally this time I stopped trying to do it the way it was supposed to work and thought about different approaches. I left the apple tv connected directly to my tv with the hdmi and simply added an optical cable line to connect it to the receiver through the line provided for a cd player. It worked like a charm and left me mentally kicking myself, wondering why it took me so long. Then I shook it off and decided to enjoy the fact that it works now. It's too easy to beat myself up for not being fast enough or smart enough instead of appreciating the fact that I finally got it done (yay!)
When this happens in the kitchen it feels more like a victory because I tend to enjoy the entire process of development. Pie is a great example of this. I make a mean pie. It's always a work in progress. I have definite feelings about crust and filling and I unequivocally believe that the worst sin in pie making is under cooking. That said I've certainly been guilty of it myself more than a time or two. This past week I made the great pie. It was a mutsu apple pie with apple cider caramel and a heavy sprinkling of raw sugar. It was loved by all who tasted it. Now it is but a memory. Who knows when the next great pie will come along. It doesn't even matter. I enjoy the process of tinkering and refining in the kitchen. It's what makes me good at my job. Now if I can just apply that mentality to the rest of my life I'll be the most productive and positive person on the planet.
Years Past
November 8, 2009 (triple crust pie)
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We started with the fondue recipe from our book. We used onion soup as the liquid for melting the cheese. We still used sodium citrate. Once the fondue was made we poured it into a baking pan to chill. When it was solid we cut it into sticks. Then we floured, egged and crumbed (seasoned with toasted caraway) the fondue, twice. We refrigerated the coated cheese sticks overnight to let the breading hydrate. Then we froze them. We fried the frozen fondue for 3 minutes. Then we put the sticks on a rack in a 200°F oven to heat all the way through. They were deliciously dangerous.
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Embrace conflict as a collaborative tool. You learn more from exploring a difference of opinion than you do from listening to someone who is afraid to disagree with you.
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Not every upgrade needs truffles. It just happens that ours currently do.
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I eat a lot of ice cream. I like to combine peanut butter cup and mint oreo cookie. It makes no sense to me. Why would these seemingly different flavors go well together? And it is beyond going well. These flavors make each other better. I spent a lot of time thinking about this today. I was eating ice cream. When I separated the element of ice cream from the ingredients the connection made more sense. Peanuts and mint are not strange plate fellows. They are instrumental supporting characters in Thai cooking. If we look further at nuts and herbs pesto jumps to the front of the line. So pine nut cup ice cream with basil oreo ice cream is not a stretch. It just sounds different.
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We heat up a blend of hoisin sauce, beer and butter. Then we slide cocktail franks into the bath and let them poach for an hour. The dogs tenderize. They take on the texture of braised meat with a casing. We griddle the hot dog bun in butter and add 4 franks. We top them with cucumber kimchi. And then we crush them.
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