everything is better with chocolate

Daring Baker's August Challenge: Dobos Torte

2009-08-29T07:06:00.005-04:00

The August 2009 Daring Bakers' 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 Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

I had some trouble with this one- the caramel layer didn't work out for me at all, so instead I sprinkled almonds on top (much preferred, and more readily available than hazelnuts).
I doubled the recipe and made a rectangular torte for a pot luck at work.
Everyone loved it, and it was so fun to make- this is something I want to try again, perhaps next time I'll have a successful caramel layer.
I can't wait to see next month's challenge!

Mochi filled with red bean paste.. possibly the most satisfying food I have ever eaten

2009-08-11T20:28:00.003-04:00

One of my favorite things about going to visit my mother in law out in L.A. is the food. Not only is she a fabulous cook, but she regularly visits the variety of Asian markets that all seem to be just a short drive from her apartment.
We were there visiting her last month, she suggested we stop at the Japanese market nearby to pick up some food for lunch. I love to try new food, even if I don't know exactly what it is- and this market gave me ample opportunity. There were huge coolers stocked with fresh sushi and rice balls, plus various other fresh meals. There was a decent section of fresh produce, as well as rows of prepackaged crunchy snacks.
Best of all, there was a cooler with freshly made desserts- cakes, pastry, little balls of multi-colored goo that I couldn't identify. So, wanting to try something new, and being attracted to anything rainbow, I chose the goo.
The outer powder and dough is pleasantly sticky and chewy. The inside is pasty, sweet, red and d.e.l.i.c.i.o.u.s. I immediately ate all four [large] dough balls, pausing only briefly to say things like 'best food ever' and 'so amazing'..etc. When they were gone, I had a stomachache, but I didn't care.
Since the closest (and only) Asian market back home is tiny, with a very limited fresh selection, I knew there would be no more mochi cakes for me... unless I learned how to make them. So I googled and researched, and what I came up with is below.
I'm actually pleasantly surprised at how well they came out, as well as how easy they were to make.
All ingredients can be found at Asian markets (even the little one near here)- as well as online, but be careful of high shipping costs.

Makes 8 small cakes
Ingredients
3/4 C Mochi flour
3/4 C water
1/2 C confectioner's sugar

a few drops of food coloring (this is totally optional, and you only need a drop or two- I chose blue, and they are BLUE)
about 1/2 C sweetened red bean paste (comes in a can- I froze the extra, I think it should hold up for a couple of weeks)
about 1/4 C cornstarch

Mix Mochi, water, sugar and food coloring in a microwave safe bowl until a sticky dough forms. If the dough forms a ball and completely pulls away from the bowl, add more water. It should be very sticky.

Put in the microwave for 2-3 mins. When you take it out, it should have formed a soft dough.
Set the dough aside to cool, open the can of beans, and dust the surface with cornstarch.

Pinch off a piece of the dough, coat with cornstarch and roll, roll, roll, until it's nice and flat. Place 1/2 T red bean paste in the middle and pinch the sides together around it.

Repeat until you're out of dough. The cakes can be stored, wrapped individually, in the fridge for a couple of days (if they last that long!)

Sushi, again?

2009-08-07T19:13:00.003-04:00

So my husband and I are both super competitive people. Sometimes I think we probably make other people uncomfortable- for instance, we're never on the same team when we play anything from trivial pursuit to basketball. We're too interested in beating each other and gloating about it. We love to challenge each other- except in a few cases, where we accept the other's expertise and trust their choices without question. For instance, he's in charge of our retirement accounts and when to upgrade computers. I never question bother with question his choices when it comes to those two things. I am in charge of .... everything else. And everything certainly includes whatever happens in the kitchen.
When he made sushi a few weeks ago, I knew I'd have to try it for myself.
So tonight, I did just that. I stuck with california rolls (along with variations)- mainly because I really didn't feel like getting too intense about things. It's been really hot out, I didn't feel like cooking beyond steaming the rice.
Through doing this, I discovered that making sushi is really SUPER easy. Like easier than ordering it.
Even with just the most basic of kitchen skills, you can do everything from steaming the rice to eating it within an hour. You don't even need fancy equipment!
At home california roll

Ingredients:
1.5 cups short grain rice (we use kokuho rose- now stocked at your neighborhood grocery store!) + water for cooking
3 T Aji-mirin seasoned rice vinegar- there are various types, this must be the type with sugar and salt- it is sold at whole foods-- Alternatively, 1/6 C rice vinegar, 1.5 T sugar, 1 T salt

3 sheets of nori (seaweed)
1 avocado
1 garlic clove
pinch red pepper powder
1/2 cucumber
2-3 imitation crab sticks

Method:
1. Cook rice according to package directions- a rice cooker makes things super easy, and costs about 10 dollars at target. Just add rice and water, push the button and you're on to bigger and better things!
2. Such as slicing veggies- For my CA rolls, I smooshed the avocado with garlic and red pepper, and sliced the cuke and crab pretty thin.
3. When rice is cooked, mix in a bowl with the aji-mirin until coated. Let sit for 5-10 mins.
4. If you have a bamboo roller, cover it with saran wrap. If not, just use the wrap.
5. Place a piece of nori on the wrap. Spread 1/3 of the rice over the nori, so you can *almost* see through the rice. This is a tough part, because it seems like there isn't enough rice, but this is one of those times where a little goes a long way. Cover the entire piece of seaweed except for about 1/2 inch at the end away from you.
6. Add your fillings about 1/2 inch in from where you will start rolling.
I added black sesame seeds for a bit of extra crunch and flavor.
7. Using the wrap/roller, quickly roll up the sushi, taking care not to move the wrap out of the way as you roll. When you are done, wet the end of the nori to make it stick.

8. Using a wet, sharp knife, slice the roll into 1/2 inch thick pieces.

This should be served with tamari (or soy sauce) and wasabi.
After eating a couple pieces of mine, I've declared this a draw between me and my husband- his sweet potato roll is better than this CA roll, but I make it so much faster than he does!

Sushi and birthdays

2009-08-03T20:04:00.007-04:00

It was my birthday two weeks ago, and to celebrate the occasion, my fabulous husband made me some sushi. (The real way with the 3 hour rice process and everything!)
He used shrimp, cucumber, avocado, lobster, and my absolute favorite, sweet potato.

He did something to the sweet potato that involved brown sugar and spices. Definitely the best sweet potato/yam roll I have ever had, including expensive stuff in fancy restaurants.
I'm tagging it as thanksgiving as a reminder to myself that when the big T day rolls around, these sweet potato rolls are replacing squash soup as our appetizer.

Husband can take credit for all the pictures of too. Am I the luckiest girl ever?

Welcome back!

2009-07-15T17:05:00.005-04:00

It's been a while since I've posted and some very important and fabulous things have happened since then!
First, we got a new camera! I know next to nothing about photography, but the pics we took with the old one were generally pretty shitty. It was good enough for general touristy stuff, but definitely not for capturing texture and color in food (as evidenced below)- so from here on out, there's no excuse. The pictures should all be gorgeous!
Secondly, Anthony and I spent some time visiting his mom in L.A., and then some time hiking and camping in Yosemite. Yosemite was so, so gorgeous, and gave us an opportunity to use the fabulous new camera. I still wanted to take pictures of food, though.
Toast and mushrooms on the campfire, early in the morning:

Mushrooms:

Eggs on our little portable burner:

Toast definitely tastes better when cooked with real fire.

I actually planned on documenting a whole day's worth of camping food. After this hearty breakfast, we hiked about 15 miles. After that we decided instead of camping, we should drive 3 hours to a hotel and order Domino's. We did make s'mores in the microwave, though.

June 09 Daring Bakers: Bakewell Tart... er... pudding

2009-06-28T20:05:00.004-04:00

The June Daring Bakers' 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.

I don't know what makes a tart versus what makes a pudding but this rocked. I made mine with lingonberries, as it was for a brunch and I felt that made it kind of breakfasty. I love the combination of tart/bitter with almond flavor.

This was my first month participating in daring bakers, and I did really enjoy it. Thanks Jasmine and Annemarie!

Dinner party!

2009-06-08T20:39:00.010-04:00

Saturday night we had my husband's two sisters and one of their boyfriends (got that?) over for dinner.

On the menu was fresh, homemade focaccia:

Tomato Parmesan

Garlic and rosemary

Salad with mango, pepper and goat cheese (+ local mesclun!),

There was also risotto and some awesome lemon-dill salmon, made by my fabulous husband, but I don't have pictures of that. No pics of husband either, sorry ladies.

More importantly, dessert!

Strawberry tart, made with local strawberries and my mom's pastry cream recipe. I made this at the request of younger sister in law, who is visiting from sunny northern california. The cream is a little runny, but the taste is totally worth it (plus it's SO easy). This was my first time making a tart. I served it with homemade (whipping cream, cocoa powder, sugar, mix until peaky) chocolate whipped cream. As you can see above, I had a bit of trouble with the dough pulling away from the edges of the pan even though I did a blind bake and used dried beans as weights. There's definitely a learning curve for pastry dough, so I'm working on it. I'll just have to keep practicing!

Ok so recipes.
First, pastry crust:

* 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
* 1 tablespoon sugar
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1/2 cup unsalted butter, cut up
* 1 large egg yolk
* 2 to 3 tablespoons water
* 1 t vanilla extract

- Combine first 3 ingredients in a large bowl. Cut in butter with a pastry blender until mixture resembles bread crumbs.

- Stir together egg yolks and vanilla in a small bowl. Add egg yolk mixture to flour mixture, stirring with a fork. Add water until dough starts to form into a sticky ball. Form into a disk, wrap in plastic. Chill at least 30 minutes.

- Once chilled, roll out dough and stretch into your tart pan. Put it in the freezer for 10/15 mins and preheat the oven to 400. (I bought a tart pan just for this dessert- Salvation Army, 1.79!)

-Prick the crust with fork tines and cover tightly with foil. Add uncooked beans or rice to the top of the foil and bake for 15 mins.

-Remove weight and foil. Brush the crust with egg white and place back into the oven for 5 mins or until golden brown. Cool to room temperature.

Meanwhile, (super easy) pastry cream:

3 egg yolks
1 T cornstarch
1/3 C sugar
2.5 cups milk
1 t vanilla

-Mix yolks with cornstarch and blend well. Add to saucepan with all other ingredients and cook over medium/low heat, stirring frequently, until thickened. Place in fridge to cool.

When you're about ready to serve, assemble the tart. You could use a variety of berries, or other fruit. I liked strawberry because it's in season and so simple.

Lemon Ricotta deliciousness

2009-05-05T20:10:00.006-04:00

I woke up this morning dreaming about light, fluffy, lemony glazed cookies. I had to have some, and so I spent most of my work day perusing recipes and other blogs (I promise I'll work extra hard tomorrow to make up for it!!). I saw that Maggie had made madeleines last night, and I was jealous. They sounded soo good, but not exactly what I wanted, and also I don't have a madeleine tin. (Mentally added to wishlist, check!)
Then I saw the perfect recipe on food network's site. Oh my goodness.

These are SO amazing. They're exactly what I wanted- light and fluffy and lemony. The glaze is sweet, but not overly so, it just adds that little something. I meant to take more pictures, but I was too busy eating them all.
So, recipe, right- here's mine with the changes I made. If you want to use the food network version, see link above.

(I halved most of it- which is a good, good thing, since there are only two of us and one of us doesn't want to even TRY these delicious little treats.
Don't worry mom, I saved you some.

Cookies:

* 1 1/4 C whole wheat pastry flour (I ran out of all purpose feeding my brand new king arthur sourdough starter- more on that in a future post)
* 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1/2 stick butter, softened
* 1 cup turbinado sugar (just what I had)
* 1 eggs
* 1 cup fat free ricotta cheese (again, it's just what I had)
* 3 tablespoons lemon juice (I accidentally didn't halve this- and I'm really glad I didn't- the lemon flavor was nice and pronounced)
* 1 lemon, zested

Glaze: (Ok here I went really off what the food network had- I wanted something with a bit more body, plus I had used my only lemon on the cookie part, so no more zest)

* 3/4 C powdered sugar
* 2ish T lemon juice
* 1ish T butter, soft (I just grabbed a smallish piece from the box, it might have been a bit more than that)
* Splash of milk

Just mix all of the above together to make the glaze, then set it aside and wait patiently.

Method was pretty much the same as food network, my notes are in italics.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

In a medium bowl combine the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

In the large bowl combine the butter and the sugar. Using an electric mixer beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, beating until incorporated. Add the ricotta cheese, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Beat to combine. Stir in the dry ingredients. Taste dough to check for deliciousness. You may have to repeat 2-3 times to be sure that it is quite delicious. Salmonella be damned.

Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Spoon the dough (about 2 tablespoons for each cookie) onto the baking sheets. Bake for 15 minutes, until slightly golden at the edges. I did one baking sheet and one sheet of parchment on my pizza stone. Pizza stone ones rose a bit more and were a bit more crispy on the bottom- I liked both versions equally. Maybe I need to go eat some more to decide which was more perfect. Remove from the oven and let the cookies rest on the baking sheet for 20 minutes. Seriously, if there is a person in this world that can wait 20 minutes for fresh out of the oven cookies to cool before eating them, I don't ever want to meet that person. My directions would say: Remove from the oven. Burn fingers trying to remove cookie from tray. Get spatula, place cookie on plate. Pinch off tiny piece, eat. Decide they have cooled enough. Spread glaze, and devour the rest of the cookie. Repeat.

Also, original recipe says to put them in a decorative container. Mine are currently in some old grocery store gladware- but it doesn't matter, those things will be lucky if they survive the night.

Supper Club (Don't forget your lactaid!)

2009-05-04T20:38:00.008-04:00

Last Friday night my three favorite foodies and I had our April edition of supper club -yes, it was May 1st, we're procrastinators. The theme was 'Don't forget your lactaid!' which meant lots and lots of cheese. Also ice cream. Maggie (of 12blueberries) brought homemade bread AND homemade beer. She inspired me, so Anthony and I made our first solo homebrew this weekend, but that's another story for another time.
So for supper club.. I had appetizer and I just really couldn't narrow it down. I thought about baked cheese, spread cheese, broiled cheese, aged cheese, sprinkled cheese... and I started to feel like the shrimp guy in Forrest Gump. So I obsessively searched other blogs for ideas. Then I saw this: Figs with Ricotta and Pistachios. There were only two problems- too much like dessert for an appetizer, and of course fresh figs are not in season. And who has time for all that reconstituting when supper club is tomorrow? Not I. So a new idea was born- I give you:

Baked Stuffed Plums!

I thought they were awesome, and also super easy. Really low fat too, for those WWs among us, they're two points for each serving.

Following recipe serves four, two halves each:

4 firm plums
1/4 cup light ricotta
2 T white wine
zest and juice from 1/2 a lemon
few shakes of oregano
salt and pepper to taste
2 oz shredded mozzarella
2 T chopped pistachios

Halve plums, remove pits.
Put plums cut side up in a glass baking dish (I used an 8x8 and they were cozy). Splash a bit of water in the dish and throw the whole thing in the microwave for 5-6 mins.
Meanwhile, mix ricotta, wine, zest, juice, oregano, salt and pepper.
When the plums are come out, they should be a bit mushy in the center- mush them a bit with a fork and spoon the ricotta into each. Back in the micro for 2-3 mins. When you take them out there will be a bit of purpley plum syrup in the bottom of the dish.
Top with the mozz and put the whole thing under the broiler until the mozz starts to get brown and bubbly. Feel free to drizzle that syrup over the tops of the plums, and serve with pistachios.

2009-04-28T20:46:00.001-04:00

Well everything certainly is better with chocolate. I've decided I spend too much time reading about what everyone else is doing in their kitchens, so I might as well share what I'm doing in mine!!
My family, friends, coworkers and people I meet in line at the grocery store will be happy too- maybe if I type out all my baking experiments, I'll be able to have conversations about other stuff.
Last night, I made chocolate chip cookies using a recipe I adapted from Vegan with a Vengance by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. They are so, so dense and fudgy and sweet. Almost too sweet, if such a thing is possible. I don't have a pic, since I wasn't thinking of blogging and we turned them into sundaes and ate them already, but in the spirit of starting off sweet, I'll post the recipe anyway. (This is my version, not Isa's, though I certainly thank her for the original)

1/4 cup salted butter
1/6 cup applesauce
1/2 cup turbinado sugar
1/2 T blackstrap molasses
1 t vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 t salt
1/2 t soda
2 milk chocolate hershey bars, broken up (I was out of chocolate chips!! Heresy!)

Preheat to 350.
In a pan on med heat, melt the butter. Once the butter starts to get a bit frothy, stir in applesauce, sugar, molasses and vanilla. Stir a bit until sugar is fairly dissolved. Remove from heat and set aside. Sift together flour, soda and salt.
Walk away for 10 or 15 minutes. Have some tea, check cnn for swine flu updates, etc.
Back to kitchen, and butter mixture should have cooled a bit. Stir it slowly into the flour mixture, alternating a bit of butter mix and the chocolate from 1 of the hershey bars. This will cause that bar to get melty. Once that is well mixed, chill it for a few minutes, just long enough so that the other chocolate won't instamelt when added. When it's chilled (I'd say fridge for like 10 mins)- add the rest of the chocolate. Drop by tablespoon onto greased pans. Bake for 8-10 mins.
It sounds time consuming, but it was so worth it. Definitely wasn't super chocolatey, but was very sweet and satisfying.