Every year my dad gets a box of these apples as a holiday gift.
Too bad the rest of my family tends to think of them as some sort of punishment. Why is that? Because what are we supposed to do with 50lbs of red golden delicious apples? They look really pretty, but they are not the best tasting thing you've ever had.
So, on the morning of the 25th, my mom was deciding what desserts she was going to make (yes, that's desserts, plural), and my dad said, "Why don't you make something with apples." We had tried to make apple pie with these bad boys one year, and the result was less than satisfying. But, I remembered that SK has an entire section of her blog dedicated to apples, so I figured I could find something useful there.
In the end, I settled on Deb's mom's apple cake. She is right. This cake is very moist and incredibly tasty. I dare say this is the best thing we've ever done with our annual inundation of apples.
Why then, did mine turn out to be more of a bread pudding (hence the casserole-like pan)? Well, there are many possibilities. Here are the two most probable. First of all, I used 6 apples like the recipe called for (heck, what else are we going to do with them) even though these apples weigh about a pound each. The result was a greatly extended cooking time.
Second, and I only realized this after I went back to the SK website to make this post, I mistakenly tried to flip the cake out of the tube pan instead of serving it upside down like the picture shows. The result? Well, the cake fell apart at the middle apple layer. And because I couldn't very well fix this problem with frosting, I decided to put the cake in a different container. At the time, I decided I would only repeat this recipe in a container like this to begin with. But now that I see that I was never supposed to flip it out of the pan to begin with, I think the tube pan method will produce a very manageable, delicious, and pretty cake.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Apple...Bread Pudding?
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
A Nice Thing to Have Around
A couple days after Thanksgiving, I made these buttermilk biscuits because I didn't want to waste the leftover buttermilk. I ate one at the time and put the rest in the freezer. Since then, I've been eating them for dinner with eggs and cheese. I wouldn't call them the best biscuits ever, but I will say that the idea of having them in my freezer made me really happy. So, with this as the starting point, I would like to solicit ideas from you and yours on how to make the best biscuit.
The problem with these? They were good but they sort of tasted like pancakes in biscuit form. I guess more salt, less sugar (though I only used 1 tablespoon to begin with) is a starting point, but i am sure someone can give me the key to a homemade egg 'n cheese sandwich.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
S'more Bites Are My Winner
Look at those. Just look. Don't they look delicious? Aren't they pretty? And let's pretend you were a judge in a cookie contest. Wouldn't you vote for these amazing treats? Of course you would. You appreciate homemade marshmallows and graham crackers. Unfortunately, you were not the judges in my unsuccessful bid to win my office's first annual cookie contest. In retrospect, this choice may not have been the most appropriate for the audience, but that's okay because I loved them. And that's what matters. But next time, I will save my confections for a more appreciative audience.
Do you want to know how to do this? Fortunately, it's not that hard.
Ingredients:
- For the marshmallows, look here.
- For the graham crackers go here.
- One bag of good quality milk chocolate chips (11.5 oz?). I used Ghirardelli
- One big bar of bittersweet chocolate. Again, I used Girardelli.
A few notes on the ingredients:
In a recent trip to Penzey's HEB convinced me to buy double strength vanilla extract. The bottle says to use half the amount the recipe calls for or, for special baked goods, use what the recipe calls for. I decided to use the full amount from the original recipe in the marshmallows, and it was amazing. It's definitely worth the extra flavor there, but not in the graham crackers.
And as for the graham crackers, I had a mild disaster. I could not find any graham flour at 3 grocery stores in Chicago. I had to make one batch with graham flour and one without. This process actually taught me an important lesson - regular flour is superior for the limited purpose of making these s'more bites. Why? They cooked a little more solidly and generated many fewer crumbs, which made for better cutting. I'd still prefer graham flour for the graham crackers standing alone.
Finally, don't skip the bittersweet chocolate. You need it to cool down the chocolate when you temper it (more on that later).
Instructions:
1. Spray 13 x 9 pan with cooking oil. Line the pan with parchment paper. Spray the paper, paying particular attention to the sides.
2. Follow the graham cracker recipe to make the graham cracker dough. Instead of making them into round cookies, take about 2/3 of the dough and roll it out in the bottom of the 13 x 9 pan. You can't really use a rolling pin to roll out dough inside a pan, so I used a glass, and it worked great. You could even use your hands if you have to. Bake the graham cracker layer at 350 for about 12-14 minutes. Make the remaining dough into graham crackers that you can eat for instant gratification.
3. While the graham crackers layer is in the oven, make the marshmallows. Pour the marshmallow mix directly on top of the graham crackers and it let sit until the marshmallows are firm (at least 4 hours, I let it sit overnight). Sprinkle the top of the marshmallow with the potato starch/powder sugar mixture before you remove the layers from the pan.
4. Flip the marshmallow/graham combo onto a cookie sheet to remove from the pan. Remove the parchment paper. Flip again onto a cutting board. This second flip is important. I tried cutting these marshmallow-side down and the crumbs from the graham crackers stick to the marshmallows, which looks ugly.
5. Cut the m/g combo into 1 x 1 squares. A large serrated knife works best for this, and you will need to clean it off pretty regularly to keep graham cracker crumbs from sticking to it.
6. Dip the marshmallow portion of the m/g combo into the potato starch/powder sugar mix you made in step 4. Shake off the excess. Try not to get the mixture on the graham crackers. It doesn't do any harm, but it makes them less cute.
7. Prepare the chocolate. After some research and a couple failed tests, I decided the best method was to temper the chocolate. I read some instructions on how to do this online, and found myself pretty confused. I think the basic idea is to get the chocolate just hot enough to melt, and then to cool it down before you begin dipping. How do you do this? There is some complicated version that requires fast hands and a marble slab. Instead of that, I melted the milk chocolate in a double boiler and then added cold bittersweet chocolate to the melted chocolate to cool it off. This seemed to work out fine. Once your chocolate is ready (apparently 88 degrees is the temperature you want...), dip the bites and set them on a plate to cool.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Onion Tart
For an appetizer on Thanksgiving, we had this delicious onion tart. I think many of the diners found this to be the best part of the meal, which is sort of funny because it's the tart that almost wasn't. I asked my parents if we needed an appetizer several days before the meal. They both replied that they thought we'd have plenty of food. And then, a few days later, my dad called to ask what my "plan" was for a starter on Thanksgiving, leaving no indication that we'd had the previous conversation. Thanks to Deb, I had this recipe in my back pocket and wanted to give it a try.
We made the onion mixture the night before. We had more than we needed so my dad put the leftovers in the gravy. Then we made the dough as part of our baking morning. I tried to put this tray in my refrigerator, but it didn't fit so we covered it in foil and put it on the balcony until we were ready for it to go in the oven.
Sorry about these lack luster photos. This dish went from this:
to this:
in about 30 seconds (minus, of course, the baking).
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Pasta Salad w Chicken/Spinach/Peppers
As i said below (if you read bottom up), i made two things tonight, here's the second. much more chopping involved. nothing like a pasta salad for a potluck.
The recipe is from about.com, it came out pretty decent i think. I followed it fairly loosely, don't think it really matters in pasta salad and i definitely went a little lighter on the Mayo.
* 8 ounces fusilli or rotini pasta
* 1 cup coarsely chopped spinach
* 1/2 red bell pepper, diced
* 1/4 cup diced onion
* 1 medium clove garlic, finely minced
* 2 to 3 cups coarsely chopped chicken (i boiled it)
* 1 to 1 1/2 cups mayonnaise
* 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
* 2 tablespoons lemon juice
* 1 teaspoon Dijon or a favorite gourmet mustard
* 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
* 1/2 teaspoon dried leaf basil
* salt, to taste
Cook pasta following package directions; drain and rinse well.
Toss cooled pasta with the spinach, red bell pepper, onion, garlic, and chicken.
Combine 1 cup of the mayonnaise with wine vinegar, lemon juice, mustard, pepper, and basil. Toss with the pasta mixture. Add more mayonnaise, if needed. Taste and add salt, if desired. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours before serving time for best flavor.
and since i'm proud of all my chopping, here it is:
Chicken wrapped in bacon
Well, tonight in anticipation of two more upcoming potlucks i went all out and made two dishes this evening. this one was pretty darn simple but it was also pretty good. how bad can anything be that has brie and bacon as part of the ingredients.
The real reason why i made this was that i bought a meat mallet at Ikea and really wanted to pound some chicken. Anyways here's the super complicated ingredient list:
Pound chicken to 1/4" thickness. Put brie in middle, put spinach in middle, fold over twice to keep Brie in the middle. Wrap in bacon, use toothpicks to secure if you wish.
Broil for 7 minutes, turn broil for 7 more minutes. take it out, let it cool a few minutes, enjoy!
and here it is raw:
Monday, December 7, 2009
You're So Damn Hot
A few months ago CH and I went to our new favorite southside restaurant and ordered a spit-fire-hot garlic soup. The soup was so spicy that they served it with a beer to help you cope. And, the chef even came over to warn us not to drink all the beer because we’d need it for the soup (we were sitting at “the kitchen table”). After the initial shock, the soup was delicious. It made your mouth burn, but the heat said “give me more” and not “kill me now.”
And then, at the beginning of soup season, CH decided to make this garlic soup. It was good, but it’s nothing like the fiery version we’d had. So, the next time we were at the restaurant, we asked about what they did with the soup. We wanted to know if the peppers were roasted, seeded, etc. The chef explained how to do it. And then he gave us these:
...along with a warning to handle them with care.
Having never received ingredients from a restaurant before, we decided to give it a whirl. If I do say so myself, I think we did a decent job of replicating the soup. In terms of special equipment, this soup may not need goggles, but rubber gloves would probably come in handy.
As for the recipe – We followed Smitten Kitchen’s recipe except we got rid of the thyme. We roasted two habaneros at the same time as the garlic, but in a different container. Once they were roasted, we took out the seeds and took off the stems. We thought about taking off the skin, but it was too much work, so we just put them in the pot with everything else and blended them all together with CH’s handy immersion blender.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Thanksgiving: The Main Event
Of course, Thanksgiving involved turkey. I got a fresh turkey because I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of thawing it.
Turns out, I should have also thought about the hassle of brining. I believe some of you know the story of my first brining attempt with my dad. He had spent hours the day before making the brine (it has to be cold before you put the turkey in it, so you have to do it in advance), but when we tried to move the bag with gallons of liquid and a 25 pound turkey out of the sink it was too heavy and we spilled all the brine everywhere.
Well, there was no way I was going to let that happen to me. I knew I had to add the brine to the turkey while it was in the fridge because it would be too hard to move it after the fact. That did solve one problem, but it meant I had to add the brine one glass at a time. Things were going well until the end when the bag started to get full. I couldn’t fill the glass and hold up all the sides of the bag. Despite my best efforts, I still spilled brine everywhere. It was in the vegetable drawer. It was all over the floor. And even a week later, the light in my refrigerator still delays in coming on because the button is sticky from residual brine I can’t seem to get off. It was a disgusting mess, but fortunately I didn’t waste too much and the turkey turned out quite delicious.
Also, You see how that bag says “gourmet made simple.” That is a lie. Brine bags, which are glorified ziplock bags, are anything but simple.
Oh, do you actually want the recipe? Hmm. My dad did most of the work, so what follows is my best guess.
The brine recipe came from here. My dad rinced off the brine and cooked the bird. Basically, he patted the brine off, and seasoned it with a bunch of spices and some butter. He cooked it breast side down for an hour, then flipped it for the remaining time, covering the top with foil so it wouldn't burn. He stuffed it with vegetables, which we then ate.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Thanksgiving Desserts
The dessert menu for Thanksgiving included SK's silky pumpkin pie and a luscious looking ginger pear cake. Both were topped with homemade whipped cream.
As someone who spends more time baking than cooking, I definitely contemplated these two additions to the Thanksgiving table more than any of the other components. It's sort of a shame though - by the time dessert comes everyone is so full nothing tastes that great.
And, for a dinner party of seven people, it was sort of ridiculous to make two desserts. It proved even more ridiculous the recipe for pumpkin pie I followed yielded nearly two pies. So now, I have a pumpkin pie in the freezer. We'll see if it lasts. The reason for the two desserts? My family never has pumpkin pie and I'm still not really convinced I like it. That said, it's certainly a classic of the day and was voted as "non-optional" by at least two of my guests. Which brings me to another Thanksgiving lesson: don't take requests. Your guests will eat what you serve, and like it.
Anyway, here are the recipes and my comments.
Ginger Pear Upside Down Cake:
I got this recipe from Macrina Bakery after stumbling on it on the Seattlest website. I followed it pretty much to the letter. I even emailed the bakery because the baking time seemed to be ridiculously long for a cake in my view. It was a tiny bit long, but not by much. Overall, I really liked this cake, but it doesn't taste much like ginger. In fact the ginger flavor is barely noticeable. That said, it's still really tasty. If I make it again, I might try to add some candied ginger on top, incorporate ginger powder, or something like that.
If you attempt this recipe, here are some important tips. First, make sure you put it on a cookie sheet, and if you're smart line that sheet. The bottom of the spring form pan is filled with a sugary liquid that will ooze out a little. Second, make sure your pears are very ripe but not over ripe. Third, I think it tastes best warm. It was not warm on thanksgiving when I served it, but I have been eating it periodically over the past few days, and I've liked it microwaved for about 30 seconds and topped with whipped cream.
Silky Smooth Pumpkin Pie:
I got this recipe from SK, and tried to follow it to the the letter. I used this pie crust on her suggestion, without the shortening (though it appears she has since changed to a different pie crust). Since I don't think I've had pumpkin pie since I was 12, I'm not sure how it compares to other recipes. But one of my guests, who is not easily pleased, proclaimed "this is excellent pumpkin pie," so I guess that counts as a success. For me, I might add in some of the traditional pumpkin pie spices that were absent from Deb's version. However, I will say that the straining was definitely worth it. My biggest gripe with pumpkin pie has always been that was dense and grainy. This pie lives up to its silky smooth title.
Whipped Cream:
I usually think whipped cream is a waste of calories, but I have to admit that when it's homemade and fresh, I really like it. All I did was put it in the mixer with the wisk beater. I added sugar and about a teaspoon of vanilla and kept the mixer going until it was stiff.
Thanksgiving Debrief
I am happy to report that I survived my first Thanksgiving as hostess, and I even enjoyed the non-stop cooking. The process was certainly made more enjoyable and feasible by the presence of my parents, both of whom are more talented in the kitchen than I. The food was delicious, and the company quite pleasant. And while I am not going to jump at the opportunity to host again next year, there is no small amount of joy in putting together a whole meal like this.
In addition to posting the recipes and my comments about them, I feel like I should share a few of the lessons I learned, for the inevitable day when you too have to host Thanksgiving dinner. Here’s the menu. I will post the recipes separately and link back as I go.
Cranberry Sauce
Parmesan Bread
Mashed Potatoes
Sweet Potatoes
Stuffing with Sausage and Mushrooms
Green Beans
Roasted Carrots
Cider Brined Free Range Turkey with Gravy
~ Dessert ~
Pumpkin Pie
Ginger Pear Upside Down Cake
Fresh Whipped Cream
And keep reading for a few lessons learned:
1. Make sure you have the equipment you need. I realized (fortunately in advance) that I did not have many things you might want/need to make this meal. Some non-obvious (to me at least) things you will need: (1) a meat thermometer (you may remember what happened to mine), (2) pie weights or some alternative, (3) a big ass fork to pick up and rotate the turkey while it is still cooking, (4) obscene amounts of tupperware for all of the leftovers.
2. Plan out the timing. This is the first time in awhile where I cooked a meal of this size in a house with only one oven (I know, I’m a spoiled brat), so that means you have to think about what you can do in advance and how you will position your oven racks. Here was my advance game plan: I made the cranberry sauce, the slushy, and the brine for the turkey on Monday. On Tuesday, I put the turkey in the brine and made the pie crust. On Wednesday afternoon I made the dough for the bread, made the onion topping for the tart, peeled the carrots, grated the cheese for the onion tart and bread, and trimmed the green beans.
3. Don’t overcook your turkey. This is clearly obvious, but thanks to my dad, I learned a bunch of ways to achieve this important goal. First, cook the turkey upside down for the first hour. This keeps all of the juices from running out of the white meet. Second, don’t stuff your turkey with stuffing. It sucks up the moisture from the bird. Instead, put your carrots, along with an apple and an onion inside the bird.
4. Try not to think about the butter content of the meal. It’s obscene and gross. Just try not to think about it.
5. Print out your recipes. My mom and I were working on the two desserts at the same time and tabbing back and forth on my computer between the two recipes. When she asked me “how much brown sugar in the pumpkin pie” and my answer was “zero brown sugar,” I accepted the perils of this plan. Especially if you’re going to have multiple cooks, printouts are a good way to avoid catastrophe.