Month: February 2012

Mardi Gras Traditions

- Elspeth Leave a comment

No need for Captain obvious statements: I’m aware that Mardi Gras was actually a week ago! But let’s forget the date details and move on to the tastiness.

This is a King Cake, the most marvelous of treats. It’s a Mardi Gras tradition to place a small plastic baby inside the baked cake and whoever gets the baby in their piece has to throw the party next year. Hooray!
Every year I attempt to make the perfect King Cake and I have failed for many years. The trouble is that this cake is not really a cake. It’s more of a bready magical pastry and yeast is such a tricksy beast to deal with sometimes.

Yesterday, that streak ended with a fabulous recipe I found on Allrecipes.com.

If you’re looking for a pretty, doughy, cinnamony-sweet treat that is easy breezy, keep reading…

You will need…
For the cake:
1 cup milk
1/4 cup butter
2 (.25 ounce) packages active dry yeast
2/3 cup warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
1/2 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
dash freshly grated nutmeg
5 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Filling:

1 cup packed brown sugar
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
2/3 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup melted butter

Frosting:
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
1 tablespoon water

Scald (bring to a near-boil) the milk in a heavy-bottomed saucepan.
Add the butter and stir until melted; set aside.
In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast and 1 T of the sugar in the warm water. Allow this to proof for about 10 minutes, until it froths and is creamy. If it doesn’t get to this stage, your yeast is probably past its prime and needing to be tossed in ze garbage.
Add the cooled milk mixture to the yeast/water/sugar. Whisk in the eggs, remaining sugar, nutmeg, and salt.
Add the flour 1 cup at a time until the dough comes together.
Knead with the dough hook (or by hand {hahahahha poor fools}) for 8-10 minutes, until the dough is sticky and pulls away from the side of the bowl.
Oil a large bowl, place the dough inside, and cover with plastic wrap.
And let rise for 2 hours in a warm spot, until it doubles in size.
While that baby is ruminating on it’s next move, prepare the filling by simply mixing everything together in a bowl.
Punch the dough down and divide into 4 equal parts (2 per cake).
Roll each out to about 6×16″ rectangles.
Evenly sprinkle the filling down the middle:
and brush one of the long edges with some beaten egg white. Roll the long edge up tightly like a jelly roll and press/seal the edge along the egg white. This will help keep it together while baking.
Pinch together the ends and twist the two rolls together, bringing it together at the end to form a ring.
Repeat with the remaining dough.
Preheat your oven to 375 and allow the formed cakes to rise until your oven is ready, at least 20 minutes. Pop them in the oven for 25-30 minutes, or until just brown. They will over cook easily, so make sure to watch them carefully.
Mmmm bready pastry cakey delight.
If the filling does ooze out of the pastry during baking, just grab a spatula and smear it inside the crevices. It’s all going to be covered in frosting and you don’t want to let that goodness to go to waste, so smear away!
Allow the cakes to cool and then frost with the sugar/water mess. Sprinkle with the traditional Mardi Gras colors (purple, green, yellow) and BAM! You just made yourself some culture.
You. Are. Welcome.
NOMMYNOMNOM

Bring in the pig!

- Elspeth 2 Comments

My sister asked me for some easy dinner recipes and I’m going to attempt to accommodate her here. She’s a big fan of meat (when presented with a tofu curry, she asked repeatedly why there was no form of the good stuff located on her plate) and alcohol (who doesn’t like Sunday Funday?), so here is my marriage of the two.

Shallot Risotto with Sausage in a Beer-Mustard sauce. And some green stuff for color.


Bomb-diggity.

Here’s what you might be ruminating on: what the heck is beer-mustard sauce? Is that good or terrible? Let me tell you, friends: it is wonderful. And so flipping-flanging easy, you’ll soon feel like a truly legitimate German who has been slinging homemade sausages since the ripe age of 3.

You will need:
Risotto:
2 T olive oil
1 c short-grain rice
1 shallot
1/3 c white wine
4 c chicken stock

Sausage:
1 lb sausage (I went would go for something that is not too far in any direction; ie, not spicy, sweet, etc. Just sausage.) removed from casing
1 beer (I only had Tecate, which turned out well. I would go for something that isn’t an IPA and pairs well with the mustard)

Totally not German at all, but who cares? Beer is good, beer is great, I want beer on my plate.
1 heaping tablespoon Mendocino mustard, or a sweet-and-hot brand of your choosing

Spinach and/or arugula, or a green of your choosing (kale would go nicely)

Start with the rice, since that will take the longest.

Heat the oil in a large pan over medium-high heat.

Dice your shallot finely and add to the pan when it’s hot.

Saute until translucent, then throw in the rice.

Stir and toast until it browns ever so slightly. This will only take a few minutes and is mostly to coat the rice sufficiently in the fat.

When the rice is nice and oily, add the wine.

Let it cook down a tad, then begin slowly adding the broth and reduce the heat to med-low. You want the rice to be just submerged for the next 20ish minutes, so stir often and keep adding liquid to keep all of the rice covered.

When you’ve got that under control and doing it’s thing, heat a cast iron pan over medium heat. Add the pork (no oil needed, pig is quite fatty) and cook through.

Make sure to mash up the sausage into small bits so it cooks evenly. You could do this with links or slices, but I feel like this gets the most flavor out of every little morsel.

When the pork is nearly done, pour about 3/4 of the beer into the pot. It will froth a bit.

Drink the rest of the can. Or bottle, if you reside in a classier apartment than I do.

Spoon the mustard into the pot and bring to a simmer. Reduce the heat to medium low, allowing it to simmer until the rice is done.

Speaking of rice, are you remembering to stir and add more stock? Don’t mess it up, ok?

When you’ve added all of the stock, taste it to make sure it’s cooked through. If it’s all set, stop adding stock and allow the liquid to cook off a bit. I like mine to still be creamy and pretty saucy, but you can let it cook more if you want it a bit less-wet.

Put your veggie in the bottom of your serving bowl. Spoon the rice on top and add your meat and sauce.

Voila! Tasty magic. The mustard is sweet, the pork is salty, and the beer is…well, it’s beer. It’s just perfect the way it is.

This is a very easy meal to cook up and tastes great the next day (or later that night…ahem…no comment).

Nommy!

Thai Coconut Chicken Soup

- Elspeth Leave a comment

Thai food has always seemed far too complex to attempt, but this recipe is shockingly easy and magically tasty. Probably because the most difficult part of this fantastical assortment of ingredients (the curry paste), is easily purchased in stores. Of course, it’s far more rewarding if you make the paste yourself, but we’re not always going for rewarding.

We’re going for awesome. And by gum, that’s what we’re getting! This is a creamy, coconutty, spicy, super duper comfort food that is a strangely Asian version of chicken noodle soup. It’s a multi-layered series of flavors, which is a fancy way of saying that it will rock your socks in more ways than one.
You can find the original recipe here.
You will need:
2 cans coconut milk (I favor the “lite” versions)
2+ cups chicken broth (I was making my own, so it’s not in the picture)
2 chicken breasts
1 extra large tablespoon curry paste (my favorite is red)
2 T fish sauce
2 limes
2 carrots
1 in ginger root, peeled
3 green onions
1 handful bean sprouts
6 oz rice noodles
1 stalk lemon grass
Scoop a decent blob of the thickened cream off the top of one of the coconut milk cans and put it in a large pot with the paste over medium heat.
The “lite” coconut milk won’t really have this, so just pour some into the pot and go with it. Pretend it’s fattier than it really is, your imagination will do the rest!
While that heats up, slice the chicken very thinly.
Once the mixture in the pot cackles, add the chicken and cook until done.
Meanwhile, shred your carrots, ginger, slice the lemon grass into smaller chunks, and zest the limes.
Add the remaining coconut milk, chicken stock, fish sauce, juice from both limes, and the above items to the pot. Bring to a simmer and allow to cook for 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, heat roughly 4-5 cups of water to a boil. I added some bouillon pouches to add flavor and fun. Add the rice noodles and simmer until soft, about 5 minutes. The original recipe calls for the noodles to be added straight to the soup, but I found when I made this before that they absorbed ALL of the tasty soup liquid. We can’t have a bunch of noodles ruining our soup, so prepping them separately and adding them at the end makes the most sense.
I also threw in some very baby bok choy in the last few minutes, plus the chopped up green onions.
Remove the lemon grass stalks and ladle into bowls. I threw a baguette into the oven to crisp up, which went very well with the broth.
Super noms!