I bought a really cheap notebook a few months back with the intention of filling it with recipes to pass down to future generations of Holleks (so... weird). So far, I have two recipes listed because I want to make certain that I have optimized the recipe. I think I may have found the third entry.
My friend/officemate Irina got me Baked by Matt Lewis. I can appreciate now why it's such a highly rated book. The pictures are beautiful and the recipes are awesome. I had an incredible urge to bake something awhile back and so I pulled out a recipe from the book for raspberry breakfast bars. We didn't have any raspberries, so I made it with strawberries and I think they make it even better (then again, I have a huge preference for strawberries).
Strawberry breakfast bars (adapted from Baked)
1 1/4c oats
1 1/2c brown sugar, packed
1 c flour
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
dash cloves
dash allspice
3/4 c butter (or 1 1/2 sticks)
1 lb strawberries, sliced
1/4 c brown sugar, packed
2 tbs flour
1 tbs lemon zest
1/4 c lemon juice
Preheat oven to 350. Butter a 9x13 pan, covering the sides and bottom. Process the flour, oats, brown sugar, salt, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, baking soda, baking powder until well mixed. Cut in the butter and process until it resembles gravel-y pieces. Reserve 1c of this mix. Take the remainder and press into into a layer in the bottom of the pan. Bake for 15ish minutes until it's golden. While the crust is baking, combine the strawberries, brown sugar, flour, lemon zest, and lemon juice. Make sure that the strawberries are evenly coated and evenly layer over the cooked crust. Take the remaining crumb mixture and evenly distribute and put back in the oven for 35ish minutes.
06 April 2009
05 April 2009
If I had taken the time to fill out a bracket...
...I would have won any office pool hands down.
GO Green!
Will post something real later... probably related to strawberries and breakfast pastries.
GO Green!
Will post something real later... probably related to strawberries and breakfast pastries.
04 April 2009
Walnut Dessert Mess
We went to see Master Pancake Theater last night. It's basically Mystery Science Theater 3000, but live. The current movie is the first Lord of the Rings and it was amusing. There were a lot of gay jokes, followed by sex jokes, followed by pop culture-y things so much of it was lost on me, but overall, it was a good time. Surprisingly, the best part was the beer. Alamo Drafthouse, being much more than just a theater, has an extensive beer list and among those offered was Magic Hat #9, my most favorite apricot fruit beer. The last time that I looked for it in Texas, I was told that Magic Hat didn't sell any of its beers in Texas, so it was an exciting and tasty find.
The movie didn't start until 11, so we didn't get back until around 1:30, which meant that I had ample time to play on the internets and look for things to cook. After looking through tastespotting, I found a recipe for pistachio brigadeiro, which looked delicious. I'm still not completely sure what a brigadeiro is, but I think it's a Brazilian chocolate truffle and the use of it in those pistachios is loose; however, the recipe calls for nuts, sweetened condensed milk and butter. If you combine those and it's not delicious then you're doing something way wrong.
We had a can of sweetened condensed milk lying around that I had purchased with the intent of making caramel. I had read somewhere that if you just boil the entire can for a few hours, the insides would just turn to caramel. It sounded wonderful, but Colby didn't want to deal with explaining to the landlord why we set off a bomb made of metal and caramel in our apartment, so that idea was quickly nixed. Nevertheless, the sweetened condensed milk was sitting around begging to be used and the pistachio brigadeiro was the perfect choice.
Given the recent pistachio scare, we didn't have any on hand, but we did have some walnuts that we impulsively bought from costco (then again, which purchases from costco *aren't* impulsive?). It turns out that it takes awhile to use up three pounds of walnuts, so they've been slowly used and living in my freezer for awhile.
Walnut dessert mess
3.5 oz by weight walnuts, unroasted, unsalted
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 tbs butter + more for coating
1/2 tsp fleur de sel sea salt
Grease a shallow dish (i used a pie pan) with butter. Process walnuts until they're ~.5 mm (or sort of look like lumpy wet sand). Over low heat, combine walnuts sweetened condensed milk, butter, and fleur de sel. It's important to use a salt that works well with sweets because it's not going to taste good with iodized table salt. Also, the next time I do this, I'm going to use 1/4 tsp of fleur de sel instead. heat until the mixture thickens a bunch. pour into the greased dish and let cool.
At this point, you could form them into cute little balls and serve them on tiny wooden spoons with ribbons, but I don't have those so my dessert thingy is still sitting in the pie plate. Colby just took some and ate it from a bowl. We have no pretensions in this housepartment. ;)
The movie didn't start until 11, so we didn't get back until around 1:30, which meant that I had ample time to play on the internets and look for things to cook. After looking through tastespotting, I found a recipe for pistachio brigadeiro, which looked delicious. I'm still not completely sure what a brigadeiro is, but I think it's a Brazilian chocolate truffle and the use of it in those pistachios is loose; however, the recipe calls for nuts, sweetened condensed milk and butter. If you combine those and it's not delicious then you're doing something way wrong.
We had a can of sweetened condensed milk lying around that I had purchased with the intent of making caramel. I had read somewhere that if you just boil the entire can for a few hours, the insides would just turn to caramel. It sounded wonderful, but Colby didn't want to deal with explaining to the landlord why we set off a bomb made of metal and caramel in our apartment, so that idea was quickly nixed. Nevertheless, the sweetened condensed milk was sitting around begging to be used and the pistachio brigadeiro was the perfect choice.
Given the recent pistachio scare, we didn't have any on hand, but we did have some walnuts that we impulsively bought from costco (then again, which purchases from costco *aren't* impulsive?). It turns out that it takes awhile to use up three pounds of walnuts, so they've been slowly used and living in my freezer for awhile.
Walnut dessert mess
3.5 oz by weight walnuts, unroasted, unsalted
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 tbs butter + more for coating
1/2 tsp fleur de sel sea salt
Grease a shallow dish (i used a pie pan) with butter. Process walnuts until they're ~.5 mm (or sort of look like lumpy wet sand). Over low heat, combine walnuts sweetened condensed milk, butter, and fleur de sel. It's important to use a salt that works well with sweets because it's not going to taste good with iodized table salt. Also, the next time I do this, I'm going to use 1/4 tsp of fleur de sel instead. heat until the mixture thickens a bunch. pour into the greased dish and let cool.
At this point, you could form them into cute little balls and serve them on tiny wooden spoons with ribbons, but I don't have those so my dessert thingy is still sitting in the pie plate. Colby just took some and ate it from a bowl. We have no pretensions in this housepartment. ;)
03 April 2009
Martha's Miso Soup
For my birthday this year, I received a bunch of cookbooks, but the most exciting one was Martha Stewart's Cooking School, not only for the food pornaliciousness, but also for the instructions from the domestic diva herself! I have, for the most part, been a self-taught cook, using the internet and books that I've purchased from the internet to try to figure it out. It works okay, but it has resulted in a somewhat lopsided resume, if you will. Enter Martha into my life. I haven't worked through too many of the lessons, but I have started on stocks. There's that vegetable stock that's still sitting in my freezer and there was dashi, a traditional Japanese fish and seaweed based stock, which is the base for miso soup.
More specifically, dashi is made from kombu, an edible kelp in the family of brown algae, and katsuobushi, the Japanese name for dried and smoked skipjack tuna. Katsuobushi is often referred to as bonito or bonito flakes and is rather pungent hence the lack of packing of the flakes.
Dashi
6 c cold water
3 6 in strips kombu
2 c bonito flakes, (not packed)
bring the water and the kombu to nearly a boil and then remove the kombu and take the pot off the heat. add the bonito flakes and allow them to steep until they settle on the bottom (this takes ~3-5 minutes). Strain. Ta da! you have dashi.
It's really that simple, although I had nothing good to use to strain it, so I ended up pouring it through coffee filters... which I'm never ever doing again because that was a royal pain in the behind. Next time I'm getting a fine mesh strainer.
Miso soup follows naturally from the dashi.
3.5 c + .5 c dashi
.25 c white miso paste
handful of wakame
heat the dashi in a saucepan and in a separate bowl, mix the half c of dashi with the miso paste until it's liquidy... add miso+dashi mixture to the saucepan and add in the reconstituted wakame (which is another type of edible seaweed). I suppose you could add in tofu and green onions, but i didn't have any on hand.
The soup turned out really well and the entire process was well worth it. I now have some leftover dashi, however. Though, I plan to use it as part of a dipping sauce for tempura vegetables... more on that when it happens. :)
More specifically, dashi is made from kombu, an edible kelp in the family of brown algae, and katsuobushi, the Japanese name for dried and smoked skipjack tuna. Katsuobushi is often referred to as bonito or bonito flakes and is rather pungent hence the lack of packing of the flakes.
Dashi
6 c cold water
3 6 in strips kombu
2 c bonito flakes, (not packed)
bring the water and the kombu to nearly a boil and then remove the kombu and take the pot off the heat. add the bonito flakes and allow them to steep until they settle on the bottom (this takes ~3-5 minutes). Strain. Ta da! you have dashi.
It's really that simple, although I had nothing good to use to strain it, so I ended up pouring it through coffee filters... which I'm never ever doing again because that was a royal pain in the behind. Next time I'm getting a fine mesh strainer.
Miso soup follows naturally from the dashi.
3.5 c + .5 c dashi
.25 c white miso paste
handful of wakame
heat the dashi in a saucepan and in a separate bowl, mix the half c of dashi with the miso paste until it's liquidy... add miso+dashi mixture to the saucepan and add in the reconstituted wakame (which is another type of edible seaweed). I suppose you could add in tofu and green onions, but i didn't have any on hand.
The soup turned out really well and the entire process was well worth it. I now have some leftover dashi, however. Though, I plan to use it as part of a dipping sauce for tempura vegetables... more on that when it happens. :)
02 April 2009
Meyer Lemon Ice Cream
Meyer lemons were featured prominently at Whole Foods earlier last week and they were screaming my name. It was a rather odd occurrence, being screamed at by fruit, but they spoke to me and I listened. I picked up about six of them with the intention of busting out my brand new ice cream maker attachment for the stand mixer that we got as a wedding present from Dave for the first time.
It was a bit of an ordeal because the bowl was never cold enough because my freezer is awful, but zesting all the lemons was fun. The problem with my freezer is that its temperature is controlled by the refrigerator and the fridge is basically a crappy freezer. Aside from dealing with the ice cream not setting, it was pretty easy when all was said and done. The most difficult part was actually cleaning up my kitchen in the first place, but it was definitely worth it. I won't bother posting the recipe, as I took it from The Chocolate Gourmand, but here are a few pictures of the process.
Four bucks worth of lemons, defeated.
Making a simple syrup out of lemons and sugar. That alone was tasty enough to just eat, but I restrained myself. :)
And here's the KASM in action.
It was a bit of an ordeal because the bowl was never cold enough because my freezer is awful, but zesting all the lemons was fun. The problem with my freezer is that its temperature is controlled by the refrigerator and the fridge is basically a crappy freezer. Aside from dealing with the ice cream not setting, it was pretty easy when all was said and done. The most difficult part was actually cleaning up my kitchen in the first place, but it was definitely worth it. I won't bother posting the recipe, as I took it from The Chocolate Gourmand, but here are a few pictures of the process.
Four bucks worth of lemons, defeated.
Making a simple syrup out of lemons and sugar. That alone was tasty enough to just eat, but I restrained myself. :)
And here's the KASM in action.
01 April 2009
Take 2: NaBloPoMo Day One
I'm doing NaBloPoMo for April... and hopefully I will continue to do this until the end of April. The theme for this month is growing up, which is something that I have contemplated heavily in the past year. Since May, I've graduated from college, moved across the country, started graduate school, and gotten married. The newness of all of these (except for the married part) has basically worn off to the point of dealing with the fact that there's really no going back and that's a scary proposition... so join me this month as I blog through the realities of being old and, of course, cooking.
05 March 2009
Salt Manifesto
I'm back... for a moment, mostly because I've been stewing about it ever since I posted this on facebook earlier today. What is *this* exactly? Some company in Tennessee is selling Christian salt as an alternative to kosher salt. I didn't mean to start a religious discussion, but I think I did and I'd like to clarify my position. I don't blame the whole of Christianity for this product, but the other sectors of my life tend to not come out with such exploitative products.
I think that this product comes from a place of ignorance. What exactly *is* kosher salt? Well, kosher salt is actually a misnomer. It should really be called "koshering salt" and, really, any salt can be used as koshering salt because it's purpose is to make meat kosher by drawing blood out from animals because blood is not to be consumed under kosher law. Koshering salt is used for this process because the grain size is bigger and irregular. Chefs use it because it's easier to pinch and it tastes better. If you don't believe me, try it for yourself. Table salt tastes metallic, unsurprisingly, because it has iodine additives. This was added because iodine deficiency can lead to goiter and, according to the World Health Organization it is the leading preventable cause of mental retardation. Nevertheless, table salt is hard to pinch and distribute equally over food and dissolves easily due to its small, uniform grain size.
So back to the story... my first problem with this product is that it's using the label of "Christianity" to sell itself and anyone who finds religion and belief in God to be the most important aspect of their life should be up in arms immediately. This is a very cheap and offensive act of commercialism. Something as sacred as one's religious identity should never be used to sell a product, especially not for any amount of profit. Weren't the Apostles the people who gave up everything they had in order to serve Jesus? I'm pretty sure that this doesn't fit the bill.
My second major problem with it is that it's totally a lack of understanding on the part of the company as to what koshering salt really is. Let's pretend that koshering salt really is an affront to all of Christianity and there needs to be a response. The big shortfall in Christian salt is that it will be a koshering salt as well. Oops!
...which brings me to my biggest problem with the whole deal. Let's un-suspend our disbelief and see this for what it really is: complete and total cultural insensitivity. It's disgusting, actually. Why is it that something not Christian must have some sort of "response" from the Christian community? Should everything that isn't specifically Christian be seen as an attack? This response seems to stem from a lack of understanding (which is easily rectified by about two minutes on google) and a greater intolerance that will most likely never go away. There is absolutely no threat from koshering salt to Christianity and to exploit the word and, really, everything that it stands for in order to combat some made up threat is offensive on so many different levels.
Okay, I'm going to crawl back into my hole now. Aside from being outraged, I've aced an exam, started my research project all over again, and have been on a diet. I'd give diet recipes, but it turns out that the food isn't that great because, well, fat and carbohydrates are tasty.
I think that this product comes from a place of ignorance. What exactly *is* kosher salt? Well, kosher salt is actually a misnomer. It should really be called "koshering salt" and, really, any salt can be used as koshering salt because it's purpose is to make meat kosher by drawing blood out from animals because blood is not to be consumed under kosher law. Koshering salt is used for this process because the grain size is bigger and irregular. Chefs use it because it's easier to pinch and it tastes better. If you don't believe me, try it for yourself. Table salt tastes metallic, unsurprisingly, because it has iodine additives. This was added because iodine deficiency can lead to goiter and, according to the World Health Organization it is the leading preventable cause of mental retardation. Nevertheless, table salt is hard to pinch and distribute equally over food and dissolves easily due to its small, uniform grain size.
So back to the story... my first problem with this product is that it's using the label of "Christianity" to sell itself and anyone who finds religion and belief in God to be the most important aspect of their life should be up in arms immediately. This is a very cheap and offensive act of commercialism. Something as sacred as one's religious identity should never be used to sell a product, especially not for any amount of profit. Weren't the Apostles the people who gave up everything they had in order to serve Jesus? I'm pretty sure that this doesn't fit the bill.
My second major problem with it is that it's totally a lack of understanding on the part of the company as to what koshering salt really is. Let's pretend that koshering salt really is an affront to all of Christianity and there needs to be a response. The big shortfall in Christian salt is that it will be a koshering salt as well. Oops!
...which brings me to my biggest problem with the whole deal. Let's un-suspend our disbelief and see this for what it really is: complete and total cultural insensitivity. It's disgusting, actually. Why is it that something not Christian must have some sort of "response" from the Christian community? Should everything that isn't specifically Christian be seen as an attack? This response seems to stem from a lack of understanding (which is easily rectified by about two minutes on google) and a greater intolerance that will most likely never go away. There is absolutely no threat from koshering salt to Christianity and to exploit the word and, really, everything that it stands for in order to combat some made up threat is offensive on so many different levels.
Okay, I'm going to crawl back into my hole now. Aside from being outraged, I've aced an exam, started my research project all over again, and have been on a diet. I'd give diet recipes, but it turns out that the food isn't that great because, well, fat and carbohydrates are tasty.
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