Project 18: You cannot touch the MANGO! - Mango/Strawberry Freezer Jam

I've never made jam before.  I like jam.  Two problems with a common solution!

Actually, I don't eat a lot of jam.  If I'm going to eat a peanut butter sandwich, I usually choose creamed honey to go on it.  However, last year a friend of mine who wins lots of awards at county fairs for her jam making skills hooked me up with a variety pack of home-made jams.  I realized then that it was store-bought jam that was really inferior to honey, and that there might be a place in my heart for good jam.

So I've been planning on trying my hand at some jam making.  It just so happened that my wife was planning on doing the same thing as a fun activity for the little blonde one, so, again, two problems with one solution!

Kendra had decided on making mango jam.  This surprised me since we've never bought mangos before in our lives.  But I was game, so we set some time aside and I started cutting them up.

Cutting mangos up sucks.  They have a big teardrop shaped pit in the middle, but it's not like a peach pit, where you can tear it out at some point.  You have to carefully cut all the way around the mango pit instead.  Bleah. It's also HUGE.  After peeling and pitting, I was surprised how little mango there was in our mangos.  Also, they were kind of weird mangos.  They weren't green and round, they were kind of yellow and pear shaped.

Once the mangos were cut up, my daughter went to town pounding them with a potato masher.  It's so great to watch her get interested in cooking and helping out!

This is not fancy cooked jam.  This is freezer jam, and it's made with a box of pectin, and basically from the box instructions.  However, jam is a somewhat tricky thing because of how pectin interacts with fruits, etc.  You need the amounts to be close to what the instructions ask for or else your jam won't set, for example.

After we mushed all the mangos we found that we didn't really have as much as the recipe required, so my wife suggested that we make up the difference with strawberries.  That actually sounded pretty good, so we got some out and started mashing them, too!

Then we added the sugar, lemon juice, and pectin,mixed it up, and let it sit for a while to make sure they incorporated properly.

Since it was freezer jam, that was about it.  We put it in Tupperware and some went in the fridge and the rest into the freezer!

Results:  Good!  It's got a very nice balance of flavors with mango and strawberry.  I can recommend it if you like those flavors at all.  I'd eat more of it, but, as you'll see in the next post, my jam adventures continued quickly!

Project 17: Another smooshed sandwich!

I actually did this project back in May, but didn't get around to posting it.  Shame on me!

The concept was pretty simple; repeat the experiment I had already done, but with a twist.  A couple of weeks after I did my shooter, a friend of mine had entirely independently made a shooter sandwich and posted about it, but he made it with breakfast food.  Since I love breakfast meats and eggs, I decided to riff on his design and see if it might turn out better than the steak one.

I started, as before, with a nice loaf of bread.  I got it at a little bakery in Seattle, and it was delicious!  I hollowed it out and put in a thick layer of thick cut pepper bacon.  I *accidently* made too much bacon, so I had to eat the extra.  Woe is me!

The next layer was scrambled eggs.  I cooked them with some cheddar cheese for extra goodness and they came out very well.  The black bits are from cooking them in some of the bacon fat.

My friend was a little fancier with his eggs and went with what was basically a spinach and gruyere cheese omelet. That sounds tasty, but I honestly don't think that kind of delicate taste is going to stand up very well to pepper bacon and the next ingredient.

Sausage!  This is just plain old crumbled pork sausage.  YUM! (a bit blurry, though.)

Then it was time to cap it, wrap it, and crush it!  The final result was:

Results - Great!  Much better than the steak.  It was basically a real foody version of a standard breakfast sandwich.  All the flavors worked well together, and the tasty bread was a hit!  If only I can get my bread to come out like that...  I liked having both the sausage and the bacon in this.  They have different flavors that obviously go well together.  The cheese in the eggs came through, as well.

I will definitely consider making more of these for special occasions; maybe for camping or a road trip!

Back in the Saddle!

Hello, all!

It's been a busy couple of months for cooking.  I've been just generally really busy and haven't had the time or energy to devote to my lofty goal of a new recipe every week.  This makes me sad, but it is what it is.

However, I will still be cooking and posting what I get up to here!  In fact, I have a bit of a backlog already, so let's get to it!

Project 16: You say Potato... Latke!

Welcome back!  Given that I'm behind my "recipe a week" schedule, I'm changing the format to be by "project."  I'm still committed to doing at least 52 new recipes this year, but this month is CRAZY, and the crazy might continue, so I'll fit them in when I can.

That said, let's talk about spuds!  I'm a big fan.  I just can't get enough of any relation to deadly nightshade!  They are especially delicious fried!  In that spirit I decided to try to make potato pancakes.  I've tried before with mashed potatoes with bad results.  I may try that again at some point, but in the spirit of trying new things I started doing research on various types of potato pancakes, and came across latkes.  I found a recipe that seemed simple and delicious, and it was off to the store!  (I also picked up some stuff for a couple other projects... stay tuned!)

Potatos, onions, and some sour cream.  No problem!

Following the recipe, I grated the potatoes and put them in water.  Then drained them and mixed in the onion.  Next was the towel!

I was surprised at how well the towel technique worked.  It didn't just remove the water the potatoes were soaking in, it also make the potatoes dryer in general, so they fried better.

I mixed in the single egg.  I read a few other recipes that required more eggs but they almost all had comments about how "eggy" they ended up being.  As it turned out, one egg was plenty.  The latkes held together well.

The recipe calls for using "two tablespoons" of the mixture, but I guesstimated.  I used a large spoon and heaped it on.  I dumped it into the skillet which contained about 1/4 cup of olive oil.  That was about the perfect amount for two latkes to cook easily.  I could have fit more, but I wanted to make sure they were separated.  Over the course of cooking them all I added about another full 3/8 cup of oil.  After dumping I pressed them down into more of a cake, but not too thin.  You want them to have enough of a "weave"to help it all hold together.

I cooked them over medium heat after first taking the pan up to medium high.  Cooking for about 5 minutes browned one side, after which I flipped them and cooked the other side for about the same amount of time.  That was about perfect for this size.  Then I took them out and set them on paper towels to dry.

This one was the first.  Later ones were a little more cooked and crispy, but this gives a good idea of what they are like.

Results: Delicious!  A+++ Will make again!

Plain, they are pretty much hash browns (which I love) but only the crispiest parts of the hash browns (which I love.)  They have a nice onion flavor which you can sometimes get in good hashbrown places (which I love.)  The olive oil also gives them a slightly different flavor, which I liked.

I also tried them with the traditional topping of sour cream.  It tasted a lot like a good potato chip with some French onion dip.  In other word, delicious!

I did not go so far as to try them with applesauce (another traditional topping,) but that was largely because I was enjoying them the other ways so much, and because I didn't have any.

I was very sorely tempted to try them with ketchup and hot sauce, though.  Maybe next time.

I will be making these again, for sure, soon.

There's been a delay!

Hello!  As you may have noticed (or not,) I didn't post a recipe from last week.  That's because my life got turned up to 11 recently.  I'm crazy busy with work, family, and other things.  I hate that excuse.  Cooking doesn't really take that long, but research, shopping, and cooking sometimes does.

Rest assured that I will do everything I can to catch up!  (Although this is Easter Weekend, so who knows what I'll get to.)

Week 15: Harry's Weekend Treat: Butterbeer Cupcakes

I seem to be on a roll with the desserts lately and this week was no exception.  However, I decided I needed to step up my game a notch or two, so instead of simply mixing some ingredients, I went all out with trying my hand at the delicate art of cupcake making!

Not that difficult you say?  How about a cupcake with homemade buttercream frosting?!  Still not enough?  How about home made ganache as well?  Injected into the cupcake!?  Now how much would you pay?

Not only all of that, but it's even themed!  It's based on the butterbeer that they serve at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando, Florida.  I've never been, but I'm a huge Harry Potter fan, so cupcakes based on a fictional drink that they serve at a theme park has to be good!

I saw this recipe on boingboing.net or maybe neatorama.  It sounded tasty and I liked the idea of injecting butterscotch into the heart of the cupcake for a bit of extra kick.  Plus, I want to practice my icing skills.  Win-win!

All of the ingredients were easy to find in the local store, so it was just a matter of making it!

It seemed like the biggest time sink would be waiting for the ganache to cool, so I started with that.  It's dead simple.  Pour a bag of butterscotch chips into a double boiler with a cup of heavy cream and heat it and stir until it's all mixed together.  My only recommendation might be to cut back on the cream or use more chips because my sauce came out very thin.  The blogger said it would, but even thinner than I thought it should.  I had some issues later because of it.

Then, while that was cooling I started making the cupcake batter (after turning on the oven to pre-heat.)  I mixed the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt with some help from an adorable little blonde girl.  Making fluffy butter by beating it rapidly is always fun.  Then adding the two sugars, followed by the eggs is old hat by now.

Butter flavoring is a bit of a surprise.  I didn't even know they made such a thing.  I must try it on popcorn later.

The recipe calls for "alternating" the buttermilk, cream soda, and flour mixture.  I'm not at all sure what that means so I faked it.  I cut both of the wet ingredients into two parts and then added them in turn with flour in between each.  It seemed to work fine.

Once it was all together, I spooned it into paper cupcake cups and put it in the 350 degree oven.

It filled about 14 regular cupcake cups and 4 mini-cupcake cups.  I baked it for 15 minutes and checked, but it wasn't quite ready.  It took about 18 minutes total in my oven.

While they were baking I made the frosting.  Yum!  Butter, butterscotch, vanilla, butter flavoring, and almost a pound of powdered sugar.  I say again, Yum!  I didn't end up using a full pound of powdered sugar.  I was probably about a cup short of that when the frosting looked and tasted right to me.  I had my wife try it and she said "It tastes like canned frosting."  I may have said something unkind at that point.  I don't really recall.  In any case, I disagree.  It did kind of remind me of canned frosting right after I made it, but after it had sat a little while it actually got much better.  Maybe it needed to rest like a steak.

I next used a plastic condiment bottle as suggested in the recipe to inject some extra butterscotch into the heart of the cupcakes.  This is one of the places that I think showed that my ganache was too thin.  It worked perfectly fine, but in the end the liquid just got absorbed by the cupcake.  I was expecting more of a little butterscotch syrup ball in the middle and was somewhat disappointed. I may try it next time with more of a syrup.

I used a strange little device that looked like an accordion to frost these.  It worked well, but only held enough frosting for two cakes at a time and was a pain to reload.  Next time I'll use a bag.  They look funny but I got some good icing practice in.

Then I put some more of the ganache on top as a decoration.  Here is where the thinness really hurt.  I made pretty spirals and shapes that dissolved into puddles almost instantly.  Thicker would have been better.

Result:  YUM!  The cake part came out good, but the frosting is amazing!  Possibly because of the combination of cake and frosting, but amazing in any case.  The ganache in the middle doesn't add much in my opinion. I definitely think it's a nice change from chocolate or vanilla cupcakes and will probably make them again for a party or something.  I recommend them highly!

Week 14: Double Stuff Stuffed Cookies

I'm behind on the blogging, but up to date on the cooking.  Although, really, this latest entry is hardly much of that.  When I decided to do it, I thought it might be more challenging or come out a lot different.  But this is going to be a short one!

In any case, the project this week was a double stuff Oreo inside a chocolate chip cookie.  That's the place I first saw them, but if you Google it you will find them everywhere.  It certainly sounded like something that might be interesting to do.  I've made odd things like deep fried McDonald's cheeseburgers (tasty) which come out quite unlike you would expect, and I was hoping that there would be some of that magic cooking effect here.

So I got all the stuff to make chocolate chip cookies and I got some double stuff Oreos.  Everyone knows how to make the cookie dough, I'm sure.

The only bit that is even slightly interesting is wrapping up the Oreo in dough.  The first batch I used too much dough and the cookies spread like crazy.  For the second I used just barely enough to coat the Oreo and they came out much more compact.

Results:  Interesting.  I like them, but I'm not sure I like them more than the individual components.  The tastes do blend together well, but almost too well.  You almost have to think about it to notice it's not just a chocolate chip cookie, but if you do think about it, the flavor is more complex.

OK, enough of this easy stuff.  I'm going to have to get more creative this week.

Week 13: Meat! - Shooter Sandwich

The internet is a great font of ideas.  Most of them are rubbish, but sometimes a gem comes through.  I was surfing one of my favorite sites and came across the recipe for a sandwich that sounded crazy and delicious; the Shooter.

Not only did the site have directions for how to make it, but it had beautiful step by step pictures as well.  How could I go wrong?

As usual I went overboard to get the best ingredients I could.  If I'm going to make it, I'm going to make it the best I can.  That way if it's fantastic I can try pulling back a bit and seeing if it's still good, and if I don't like it then there's a good chance that it wont get better with worse ingredients and I can leave it be.

I went to the butcher at the Pike Place Market and got two lovely rib eye steaks.  They looked so good I almost felt bad that I was going to put them in a sandwich... almost.  While I was there I got some shallots and mushrooms at one of the vegetable stands.  I opted to stick to the recipe and use standard white mushrooms rather than branch out for more flavorful brands.  I figured the meat didn't need any competition.

I made my own bread to start with. I'm starting to dial in on the proper way to make it.  I've been trying to nail down their "scoop and sweep" method for measuring flour, but my dough always ends up too thick, so I know it's not working well.  I need to figure out the proper weight of flour (ala Alton.)  You can't go much wrong measuring by weight. This time, though, it worked pretty well.  My bread did not end up as dense as it often is.  Besides, you have to scoop it out!  The biggest problem is that the bread wasn't big enough.  Next time I'd do it a bit bigger.

I cooked the shallots and mushrooms with three cloves of garlic in about 2 TBS of butter.  I cooked them until there wasn't much extra liquid left in the pan, but not until they were sticking to it.  It takes a while, so patience is key.

Then I cooked the steaks.  Normally I use a combination stovetop/oven method to cook steaks, but here I wasn't going to be as picky.  The recipe just calls for stovetop, so I did that.

The picture doesn't do much justice to the process, but the next one is great.  Once the steaks were done, I put one of them in the hollowed out bread, straight from the pan.

I spooned on the mushrooms and shallots.

Added THE SECOND STEAK!  Sorry... any recipe with TWO steaks gets me a bit excited.  I put creamy horseradish sauce on and some brown mustard in the top. It didn't fit very well, so I had to trim a few pieces off. I disposed of them properly.

Then I sealed the whole thing up in wax paper and aluminum foil.

I put it in the cupboard and put a breadboard, several heavy glass pans, and two sacks of flower on top of it as a press.  Then I left it over night.  This is the part of the recipe that somewhat worries me.  Leaving cooked meat out over night seems dangerous to someone brought up to fear germs.  Still, it was wrapped up in three layers of wax paper and two of foil, so probably no harm.

The next day I pulled it out and cut it up.

Results:  Honestly, I wasn't that impressed.  Each of the parts tasted great on their own, but they just didn't come together for me.  It could easily be a problem with the ratios of bread to steak to filling, and I might try again with more steak per bite and more horseradish.  It might have been the bread, too.  The middle pieces I pulled out were tasty enough, but I don't think my oven was cooking hot enough and I'm not sure this was the perfect bread for this sandwich.  I may just get a loaf of good bread from a good bakery if I try again.

Overall I'm left with a feeling like I should have just eaten the steaks with the mushrooms and shallots on the side and bread with butter instead of going to all this trouble.

Oh, well.. they can't all work out perfectly. :)

Week 12: Naan Better! - Naan Bread

This week is a quick one.  I just got back from vacation and didn't have my usual time to research and shop.  However, I've had an desire since I made Butter Chicken to make some Naan Bread to go with it.  We already had dinner plans for the evening, however, so I wouldn't be making the chicken, just the bread.

For my research this time, I turned to my trusty Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day book, which just happens to have a recipe!  Really, though, it has more of a "method."  Traditional Naan is cooked on the inside of a tandoori oven, which i don't happen to own.  Artisan Bread, however, suggests using a cast iron skillet.  I've needed a new one of those for a while, so I didn't mind buying one!

The recipe starts by using one of their standard doughs.  I approve of this since it makes a ton of dough and I can go through the whole week baking loaves, whether or not this works out.  It might be better to find a specific dough recipe, but this will work for an experiment like this.

The only ingredient I didn't have was ghee.  It's a clarified butter used in Indian Cooking.  In fact, it was recommended for Butter Chicken, but I didn't manage to find any.  This time, though, I found some at the local Indian grocery.  It wasn't in the dairy section.  It was on a shelf.  Apparently clarified butter doesn't need refrigeration.  

I used the standard "boule" recipe from the book.

3 cups warm water

1.5 TBS yeast

1.5 TBS Kosher salt

6.5 cups flour

Mix it and let it sit for two hours.  Then tear off a chunk.

I rolled it out to about 1/8th inch thick and set the cast iron skillet on the stove on high.

I added the ghee to the pan, spread it out, and then tossed in the dough.  I turned the stove down to medium, and covered it to keep the steam and heat in and let it cook for about 3 minutes before flipping it.

Then I cooked it on the other side until the edges were all done.  It was about another 3.5 minutes.

Tada!

It sure looks like naan!

Results:  Mediocre.  Don't get me wrong, the bread was tasty, but I wouldn't call it "naan."  It was more like an unsweetened pancake, or something.  There were hints of the correct flavor and texture, but not enough.

I think the big problem was probably the dough.  It's bread dough and so I got bread with some ghee flavoring.  I need to track down an actual naan recipe and see if there is a difference.  It might also have been a bit thick, but not by much.

On the plus side I now have enough dough for several good loaves!

Week 11: Candyland 2: The Revenge - Popcorn Cake!

It's been a busy week, sandwiched between two trips out of town, so I decided to do something fun and new if not terribly ambitious.  While wandering through the interwebs I happened upon the perfect thing, a Popcorn Cake!

Honestly, I'm not sure what to say about the process.  I used Pop Secret Butter popcorn and got a great yield from the two bags.  I noticed while making it that it says right on the bag "Do not use the 'popcorn' button on your microwave."  I was amused, but followed the advice and it worked perfectly.  No more "popcorn" button for me!

I added the M&Ms and pretzel sticks.

I melted the butter, added in the marshmallows and cooked it until it was one delicious mass.

I mixed it all together.  You really have to make sure you get it mixed well.  Pockets of molten marshmallow like to hide on the bottom.

I didn't use a bunt cake pan since I don't have one and didn't want to buy one just for this.  I just spread it out like rice crispy treats, and left it to cool.

Verdict:  Delicious, of course.  It was like a giant popcorn ball!  I liked the addition of chocolate and pretzels as well.  It gives it a good variety of flavors and textures, especially because the popcorn tends to soften.  The M&Ms are little bursts of surprise flavor as you chew.

If I ever do it again I'll use a different kind of popcorn, though.  This one was fine, but I'd prefer it to be even saltier to contrast with the sweet more.  Maybe I'll use leftover popcorn from the movie theater!

Week 10: Candyland - Caramels

It's a busy time for me, so I'm sitting back a bit and trying some of the "easier" recipes I've been wanting to do.  With that in mind my latest creation was making caramels from scratch.  I love caramels, even cheap ones, but I especially love buttery, expensive caramels.  They really aren't that difficult to make yourself, but they do have a couple of pitfalls to watch out for.

I didn't have to do much research because I'd already seen a recipe for caramels on a food blog I like to follow; Not So Humble Pie.  A Seattle based mom who makes food so delicious looking and decadent, it's like food porn.  You should go check it out.  There's always something good.

In any case, she made caramels from scratch and gave very precise instructions including how to avoid common problems.  Her recipe is fairly simple, but time consuming.

First up, was getting a new thermometer.  I have a candy thermometer, but it's old and I'm not sure how good it really is, so I decided to upgrade to a fancier one.  I bought one at Sur Le Table at Pike Place.  It's horrible.  I mean, it works, but not very well.  You have to try to get as much of the stem in whatever you want to measure as you can to get an accurate reading, which means holding it in your hand at an angle and waiting for it to climb to the correct temperature.  Bleah.  I'll have to investigate some others for next time.

The only difficult item in the recipe was the heavy cream.  You can get it at any grocery, but not if you want the really heartstoppingly bad for you variety she suggests.  And even that wasn't too bad since there's a dairy outlet in Pike Place.  They had several brands to choose from with ~40% fat content.  I went with the cheapest, and it worked great.

I decided since this was my first batch, I wasn't going to make salted caramels.  I wanted to see what they are like on their own, first.

I did exactly as the recipe said.  I mixed the sugar, karo (prevents sugar from recrystallizing,) salt, and half of the cream.  I brought it to a boil, stirring constantly, and it did take a while.  About 10 minutes as I recall.

I didn't really let the boil get going and that might have been a mistake.  Everything turned out in the end, but it took a lot longer than is should of.  Every time I added some of the cold cream the temperature dropped below boiling and so I had to wait until it climbed back up again.  So it was; pour, wait, pour, wait.  Eventually it got it all in and the mix didn't seem the worse for dancing on the edge of boiling the whole time.

The butter went in well, but took some stirring to incorporate properly. Then I let the whole thing boil.  This is where the new thermometer really blew.  I'd check the temp every five minutes or so, and it would take at least two more minutes to get a good reading.  In the end I really had to go with my gut.  You can kind of tell by watching when it's getting close because it starts looking a lot like caramel.  It took about 45 minutes for me, but my old stove was dying on me, so who knows how long a real stove would take.  I would trust her recipe.

I ended up using an 8 by 13 pan instead of 9 by 9.  So the caramels are slightly thinner, but that's fine.  I didn't coat the entire bottom with paper and didn't do a very thorough job buttering the paper.  Those were both mistakes and unless you like eating paper or scraping caramel out of a pan, learn from them.

Result: AMAZING.  These little balls of joy are so good.  Rich, buttery, but with a really great caramel taste. They are like candy crack to me.  I want to eat them all.  I scraped the cooking pan clean (not when I poured) and chewed off the leavings on the spatula.  I will definitely be making these again, much to my waistline's chagrin.

Week 9: Let's Get This Pizza Party Started!

After creating my tomato sauce last week, I was somewhat disheartened about making pizza.  Plus there are the issues with my oven.  We bought a replacement oven that was supposed to be delivered on Thursday, but now looks like it will be delivered next Saturday.  Go Best Buy!  (on the plus side they knocked a bunch off the price for our "inconvenience."

In any case, I was going to make caramels this weekend, since the oven is down.  However we've discovered a work around.  We can still use the broiler, even if the normal heating element is dead. It heats the oven perfectly, so long as we put something between it and the food to prevent direct heat.  TA-DA!  Problem solved.  And since I still have my sauce and a batch of bread dough in the fridge, making the pizza after all seemed reasonable.

The dough I'm using is the Olive dough from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.  If you don't own this book and have any interest in baking bread, go get it now!  It's amazing.  Really.  It's so much easier to make bread this way.  No kneading, little proofing, it stores in the fridge for a week.  I can't sing enough praises for it.  You basically make a batch and then whenever you feel like it, you cut some off and bake it.  And it's delicious, light, fluffy... yum!

I made the batch when I made the sauce last week but I haven't gotten to use any of it because of the oven.  With our work-around, though, I figured it would be fine.

There really wasn't much to it.

I prepped my ingredients first since one key to pizza is to bring it all together as quickly as possible.  You don't want the dough sitting around while you're shredding cheese.  The cheese was whole milk mozzarella from a cheese shop at the Pike Place Market.  They also sold pepperoni there for some reason, but it looked good and so that's what I used.  It was a quality sausage and had to be peeled first.  Then I cut as thin of a set of slices as I could.

I got out the dough and rolled it flat to about 1/8 inch.  It was pretty easy to work with, especially coming from the fridge.  My daughter loved helping me roll it out, too, so bonus points there!

I spread my sauce out over the middle.  I used a pretty thin layer, but made sure it covered everything to within about an inch from the edge.

Then a thick layer of cheese, topped by a grid of pepperoni.  It was pretty awesome looking.

Now I ran into a problem, though.  I don't have a pizza peel.  I did all the work on the bread board, and transferring it to the oven was interesting. In the oven I used a set of uncoated terra cotta floor tiles I picked up for just such an occasion at Home Depot.  Transferring a large flat pizza from a breadboard to the grid of 6 tiles was challenging, but I got it done without too much warping.

I cooked it for 8 minutes before checking on it to make sure it was cooking evenly, which it was.  I left it in for another couple minutes then slid it out onto a cookie sheet to cool (so the cheese could set.)

Here's the final result:

And it tasted DELICIOUS!  I was shocked at how good it is, especially considering all the obstacles I had to overcome to make it.  The sauce, week old dough, the oven of doom, no peel...  It's a wonder this ever happened.

The sauce was a pleasant surprise.  It may have gotten a little better over the the week in the fridge, but really I think that even though I don't think it's awesome, it suits the pizza very well.  What flavor it does have is complimentary to the other ingredients.

The dough performed as advertised.  My biggest concern was that usually when dough is in the fridge for a week, you're tearing hunks off to make bread during that time so the top is always fresh, but this dough had simply sat there.  Well, I tore off the top layer and used what was underneath and it was perfect.  It was thick and chewy, but in a good way.  Not like over-kneaded bread, just like pizza.

The work-around for the stove worked perfectly.  There was a slight bit of scorching of some cheese, but that's all.  The stones did their part as well.

Other than the corned beef, this is probably my greatest victory, especially with the obstacles.  They just make it taste even sweeter.  I can't wait to try again with a sauce I'm happier with.  That will just make it even better.

Hmm... I should probably still do those caramels.  The 40% milkfat cream I bought won't last forever...

Week 8: Possible Fail! Tomato Sauce

My plan was to make a pizza from scratch using homemade sauce, homemade crust, and quality ingredients.  That is unlikely to get completed in a timely fashion, as I'll explain in a bit, but I'm holding the fallback position of homemade tomato sauce for week 8, although that's not going well, either.

My research uncovered a plethora of homemade pizza sauces, each slightly different from the others.  Some use fresh tomatoes, others prefer canned, or for the really simple ones, tomato sauce.

Being an ambitious type, I searched for ones with fresh tomatoes.  I like to do things right!  I found one that I liked, except that it didn't contain all the spices I wanted, so I decided to add them!  Here is the one I ended up with:

10 roma tomatoes
1 large onion
2 T Olive oil
2 T butter
2 small carrots
5 cloves garlic
1/4 c fresh basil
1/8 c fresh oregano
1/4 tsp italian seasoning
1/4 tsp celery salt
1/4 cup red wine
2 T tomato paste

I chose romas because they generally have a good flavor and are more likely to be fresher than others in the middle of winter.  At least that was my theory.  I picked up 5 or so at the Pike Place Market, figuring those would be the freshest, but had to get 5 more at the grocery store to round out the recipe when I decided not to halve it as I'd originally planned.

I blanched the tomatoes to get the skins off and then squeezed out all the seeds.  I then pureed 8 of them and chopped the other two up roughly.  This was per the instructions on the recipe I was following.  In hindsight, since my final goal was pizza sauce, I should have just pureed them all, but it's not a huge difference.

I cooked the onion, carrot and garlic in the olive oil and butter for about 5 minutes to soften them.  Then I added the tomatoes and everything else except the paste.  The original recipe called for two celery stalks to cook in the sauce and get removed at the end, but I substituted a bit of celery salt instead.

I brought it to a boil and then reduced it to low, covered it, and let it simmer for 2 hours, stirring occasionally.  One thing I noticed was that it was not the brilliant red I usually associate with tomato sauce.  It was kind of orange, but the romas had looked fairly pale (although I grabbed the reddest I could find) so I didn't think too much of it.

After two hours I put in the tomato paste and set it to simmer for another 2 hours.  It cooked down fairly well, although it sort of ended up looking like a stew more than a sauce.  Once it was done, I let it cool and tossed it in the food processor to puree it smooth.

So here's the first part of the possible fail.  I'm not sure I like how it came out at all.  It doesn't taste disgusting, but it's not what I was hoping for, either.  It's kind of bland, and the flavors that are in it don't taste right.  I believe my problem is the tomatoes, which is of course the majority of the sauce.  It's the middle of winter, and the tomatoes are clearly from hothouses and from storage, so they don't have the flavor of summer tomatoes at all.  Honestly, canned sauce is probably better than what I made.

So, I'm not really sure what to do.  My plan was for pizza, and maybe this sauce will be just fine, but I was hoping for so much more.

Now we come to the second possible fail; my oven.  It has been slowly dying for a very long time.  It's temperatures are so far off I have to use a separate thermometer to check when it gets to the right one.  Half the burners don't work.  But today the oven decided to stop working.  I was still able to make the sauce just fine, but I obviously can't make a pizza until I get a new stove.  We'll go shopping tomorrow, but we'll have to wait for a new one to get delivered and such before I can do any baking.

I may try the sauce on pasta.  If so, I'll report back, but I don't have high hopes.

I'll definitely try again in the summer with good tomatoes, or possibly try one of the recipes that use canned tomatoes so I can still get on with a pizza.

Week 7: Working My Tamales Off

For those who may have wondered why I posted about purchasing lard and what purpose I intended with it, ponder no farther, for it was to make TAMALES!  I've always wondered how to create those little corny pockets of meaty goodness, and what better time than Week 7 to try my hand at them.  How much work could they possibly be?

It turns out the answer is "A LOT."   Now, they weren't "corned beef" difficult, or anything, but there's a lot of assembly line work as well as two cooking process and ingredient preparation.  On the plus side, you can make a ton of them and freeze them or bring them to a party, or what have you.

I had no idea how they were actually made other than that you wrapped them in corn husks at some point in the process. My first step, as always, was the research.  Google turned up a lot of recipes and I browsed them quickly for general information, such as the fact that you steam them!  I also quickly found that Alton Brown has made them, and looked up his recipe.  It looked pretty good, except for a few small things.

First, it is for a large number of tamales (4-5 dozen.)  That's not really a big problem, as I can just halve it.

Second, it's for HOT tamales.  I have no problem with that, but as I've said here before, my wife isn't big on spices.  So I'll have to adjust it.

Last, his is for shredded beef tamales.  In general, I don't like shredded beef.  There is something about the texture I don't care for.  I wanted to make ground beef tamales.

I looked around for ground beef tamale recipes and picked up some good tips, but in general they didn't have good spice profiles.  I really liked all the various spices in Alton's recipe; smoked paprika, garlic powder, cumin. Most of the ones I found on the web didn't go much beyond chili powder.  I also liked Alton's masa recipe.

In the end I went with a Frankenstein creation; mostly Alton's recipe, but with a lot of my own ideas.  I used Alton's masa recipe and his spice list, but with ground beef, which required a lot of different cooking methods.

Here's what my recipe looks like:

• 1 tbs chili powder
• 1 tbs kosher salt
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground cumin seed
• 1 pounds hamburger
• 2 tbs vegetable oil
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced

For the wrappers:

• 2 dozen dried corn husks

For the cornmeal dough:

• 1 pounds masa, approximately 3 cups
• 1 tablespoons kosher salt
• 1/2 tablespoon baking powder
• 4 ounces lard, approximately 1/2 cup
• 2 cups beef broth

Shopping was fun.  There are a number of good Mexican groceries in my area.  I stopped at the one in Pike Place first and bought the husks, masa (limed cornmeal,) and the lard (the glorious lard!) I have never worked with any of these as ingredients before so I was pretty excited; especially for the lard.  There's something naughty about using such a fattening ingredient in these modern "healthy eating" times.  I felt the same way about all the butter and cream in the butter chicken, and now I was buying LARD! I also picked up the smoked paprika and the cumin seeds from Market Spice.

Also on the agenda was buying a new steamer.  I bought one years ago to make rice, but it was pretty cheap and has long needed replacement.  A quick trip to Bed, Bath, and Beyond set me up with a nice 8 quart pot with a steamer inset.  I love buying cooking equipment!

Winco supplied me with everything else I needed, as always.  In fact, it turned out that I could have picked up the masa, husks, and lard there as well.  Good to know the next time I need them!

Early this morning I started with the husks.  I filled a mixing bowl with warm water and put the husks in.  I used a wide one, since the husks are pretty big.  I then put another, smaller mixing bowl on top of them with some water in it to hold them down.  You want them submerged if possible so the whole husk re-hydrates.

Then we took our daughter to see Tangled.  She was fascinated and sat through the whole thing.  That's a pretty good accomplishment for a two year old.  I really liked it, as well.  Disney still hasn't lost a step.

When we got back, I started in on the real work.  Since I was switching from shredded to ground beef, I had greatly reduced my cooking time.  Essentially, my plan was to make a kind of taco meat to fill the tamales with, using a modification of Alton's recipe.  If you compare my recipe above with Alton's you'll see that in general I used about a third of what he did.  That's both because I was only cooking half the amount of meat, and also because I wasn't going to be doing such a long cooking process that needed to penetrate a roast.

I started by cooking the onions and garlic in a bit of vegetable oil, just until they softened.  Then I threw in the pound of ground beef and the spices. I cooked it for about 5-10 minutes; until I was sure it was well cooked, but still moist.

While it was cooking, I started on the masa.  I mixed the masa with the salt and baking powder, and then mixed the lard in with my hands.  It works really well, I must say.  Then I poured in the beef broth.  Alton's recipe calls for using the remaining fluid from boiling the beef, but since I wasn't doing that step I used about a cup of beef broth and a cup of water as a replacement.

Some of the recipes online described the finished dough as being similar to thick mashed potatoes, and so that is what I was going for.  It turned out very close.

Now began the mass production part of the recipe.  You have to roll up the tamales one at a time, and each one takes a bit of time.  It was a learning process, and the last ones I made were far superior to the first ones I made.  Hopefully I can pass this knowledge on to you.

I found a site that had pictures of the entire process.  I followed it precisely, but incorrectly at first.  Looking at the pictures it's hard to get a good sense of scale.  As it turns out, the husks are not uniform in size.  I started with one of the larger ones I had and filled to the same proportions as the ones in the pictures.  Also, my impression in general was that tamales were fairly large, say the size of a fat enchilada.  This had created some confusion in my mind when I read all these recipes that promised 6 dozen tamales.  That seemed like a massive amount of food.

It is also fairly difficult to tell from the pictures how thick of a layer of masa to put on the husk.  I had some measurements from Alton's recipe of using about 2 tablespoons, which helped me to hone in on the proper amount eventually.  However, the first few tamales I made ended up being about twice as big as all the rest of them, and they had pretty think "shells."  They cooked up just fine, though.

So my advice from experience here is to follow the suggested amounts.  Use about 2 tablespoons of dough and about a tablespoon of filling.  Spread it pretty thin, too.  It will fluff up a bit during cooking.  You want to make sure that you can wrap the dough all the way around the filling.  The picture above is the first one I made.  I quickly learned as well to push the dough out all the way to the edge on one side.  It makes rolling it up so much easier.  You want to leave a gap at the bottom, though.

It's quite a job to roll up all the tamales.  I only ended up with about 18 in all, and I can't imaging doing 6 dozen.  Luckily I had some help!

The rolled tamales were placed carefully upright in the colander insert for the pot.  There's a smaller steamer insert, but it's pretty short, so I just kept the water level down and used the pasta insert.

In order to make sure they all stayed upright, I ended up using the extra husks I'd already soaked.  I folded them up and filled the space.

I brought the water to a boil and then turned it down.  Every half hour I checked on them and added some water to the pot.  It took about an hour and a half until I decided they looked done.  I removed on and let it cool for 5 minutes before unwrapping it.  The masa was nice and firm, so I declared the batch done!

Result:  Pretty good.  The texture was perfect.  The meat turned out well. There's plenty of flavor here, but they still seem bland to me for some reason; like something's missing.  I added sour cream and hot sauce to mine and that brought them up quite a bit.  I think, though, that something like enchilada sauce would have been just about perfect.  They also would have gone well with a side of something.  Maybe some beans or cheese.  Here's a gratuitous picture of my daughter enjoying hers, though.

I'm glad I did this, of course, but I don't know if I'll do it again any time soon.  It might be good party food, though, and if I can zero in on some other flavors it would be much improved.  If I do it again, I'll make a sauce and try a different meat.

But it's no butter chicken...

Week 6: Build Me Up, Butter Chicken

As I threatened when I made Chicken Tikka Masala, I decided to try my hand at Butter Chicken.  Fair Warning:  just reading this post may cause you to gain weight.  In fact, just overhearing someone mention it is good for a couple ounces...  My doctor is not going to be pleased.

My research for this dish was very confusing.  It turns out that there are a lot of ways to make butter chicken.  That's somewhat normal for cooking, I guess, but these were very different recipes.  Also, there was some confusion as to what constituted "butter chicken."  Some sites insisted that it and tikka masala were the same thing, for example.  Because of all of this I thought my best plan was to go with a simple version of the dish and then I could use that as a base for experimentation the next time I try it.  I still wanted one that at least claimed to taste like the butter chicken you find at restaurants, since that's the flavor I have so far liked.  I eventually settled on this one.  I mean, if you're going to make butter chicken, you might as do it with an emphasis on "butter," right?

The recipe is fairly simple.  It only calls for two real spices (or spice blends.)  I already had the garam masala from the tikka masala.  I just had to track down the tandoori masala and stop by the grocery, and I was set.  The tandoori masala is a little tricky. The local indian market had many boxes labeled "Tandoori Barbecue Masala" which might be the same thing, but I did find one bottle simply labelled Tandoori Masala.

There's a lot of cooking here, but nothing too complex.  As is my new habit, I did as much of the prep ahead of time as possible.  I diced the onion and fresh garlic, made sure the tomato sauce was open and ready, and defrosted the chicken.  I used about 3 tablespoons of butter in the pan for the onions and garlic and got them going.

While they were cooking I started on the sauce.  Two sticks of butter (minus the 3 tbs for the onions,) one 15oz can of tomato sauce, and 3 cups of whipping cream.  It was just decadent and beautiful to see it all in its fatty glory melting and mixing together.

I didn't use cayenne pepper since I had a bunch of red pepper powder left over from the tikka masala.  I also only put in about 3/4 teaspoon in deference to my wife.  However, the final product had no real bite to it, so I could have gone "full bore" with it and will next time.

I cut up the chicken and tossed it in oil and tandoori masala and put it in the oven to bake for 12 minutes.  I have to admit I was highly dubious about how this was going to turn out.  Normally for a dish like this I would have quickly stir fried them, but I have to admit I was wrong.  The little cubes came out perfect and a nice bright red from the masala.

When I put the chicken in the oven, the onions had just finished.  Caramelized onions smell so good.  And they're so tasty I was hard put to not just eat them right there.  But I kept to it and tossed them in the sauce.  I can't really tell you what the sauce would have tasted like without them, but they did not make it taste onion-y, and I think they added a couple of nice notes of sweetness and a little smoke.

Once the chicken was done, in it went, and I let the whole thing simmer while the rice was cooking.  I got a bit of a late start with the rice, but it didn't upset me too much because more simmering can't be anything but good for a sauce like this.  I made brown basmati rice.  Truth be told I overcooked it a bit trying to get a good dry rice for the dish.  It tasted fine, but was a little crunchy.

How did it turn out?  It's got two sticks of butter and three cups of heavy cream.  It was delicious!

Seriously, though, it was better than I feared it would be.  I intended it as an experiment and a base to build on, but it was really good as is, and not just because it can clog your arteries by smell alone.  My only disappointments were that the masala taste, while evident, was a bit more subtle than I would have liked, and the heat was totally non-existent.  Next time I'll definitely turn up both spices a notch or two.  I'll probably also start to experiment with the butter and heavy cream.  Maybe replace some with yogurt or half and half, and see what that does.  However, it was definitely delicious and I will be working it into the normal food rotation around here very soon.