I went to a cooking demo a few weeks back and finally had a chance to try some of the recipes the chef gave us. The chicken souvlaki didn't come out exactly how I expected, so that might take some tweaking, but this white bean spread recipe is DELICIOUS. It's similar to hummus, but better. Great on pita bread, or as a dip, or with falafel, or on crackers, or chips or on a spoon in your mouth…
1 -16 ounce can of white cannellini beans
3 Tablespoons of Olive Oil
2 cloves of garlic, minced (only use one clove if you don't like strong garlic flavor… Just use two)
1 Tsp fresh rosemary, finely chopped
1/4 Tsp of dry Oregano - The chef said 1/8 of a Tsp, but I don't own a 1/8 teaspoon
1 teaspoon fresh dill, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
Combine all ingredients in a food processor (or blender if you don't have a food processor, and if you don't have a blender… mortar and pestle??…) Combine until smooth. I had to add a little more olive oil in the blender in order for it to catch the blade, but in the food processor you should be fine. Spread that shit on everything.
Thursday, February 13, 2014
KitchenAid: 2, Nicole: 2
After two disasters with the KitchenAid (the second was god awful soft pretzels I tried to make), I decided that it was probably me and not the machine. I took a short hiatus and then gave it another try. I steered clear of bread this time, although there's an article in Cooks Illustrated this month about how using hot water to dissolve yeast can actually kill it, which may have been my problem. Anyways - this time I wanted to try a dessert. It was my sister's birthday on Tuesday and strawberries have been bomb lately so I found this recipe for Strawberry Shortcake on allrecipes.com and it didn't disappoint. The cake was a cross between pound cake and a biscuit. So good.
2 tablespoons white sugar for strawberries
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup white sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup shortening (don't judge :)
1 egg
2/3 cup milk
2 cups whipped heavy cream
Slice the strawberries and toss them with 2 tablespoons white sugar.
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). Grease and flour one 8 inch round cake pan.
In a medium bowl (I used the KitchAid for this) combine the flour, baking powder, 2 tablespoons white sugar and the salt. Cut in the shortening until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add the beaten egg and milk. Stir until just combined. *The dough was really sticky when I added the milk and eggs, so I added a little more milk - probably another 1/3 cup
Spread the batter into the prepared pan. Bake at 425 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool partially in pan on wire rack.
For the whipped cream I used the KitchenAid again but you could use a hand mixer too - combine 2 cups of heavy cream with 3/4 cup of powered sugar and 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract. Beat on high until thick consistency so it's easy to spread.
Slice cooled cake in half, making two layers. (this was a little messy - if i had one of those long cake knives it would have been better) Place half of the strawberries and half of the whipped cream on bottom layer and top with the other layer. Top with remaining whipped cream and strawberries.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ERICA!
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). Grease and flour one 8 inch round cake pan.
In a medium bowl (I used the KitchAid for this) combine the flour, baking powder, 2 tablespoons white sugar and the salt. Cut in the shortening until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add the beaten egg and milk. Stir until just combined. *The dough was really sticky when I added the milk and eggs, so I added a little more milk - probably another 1/3 cup
Spread the batter into the prepared pan. Bake at 425 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool partially in pan on wire rack.
For the whipped cream I used the KitchenAid again but you could use a hand mixer too - combine 2 cups of heavy cream with 3/4 cup of powered sugar and 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract. Beat on high until thick consistency so it's easy to spread.
Slice cooled cake in half, making two layers. (this was a little messy - if i had one of those long cake knives it would have been better) Place half of the strawberries and half of the whipped cream on bottom layer and top with the other layer. Top with remaining whipped cream and strawberries.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ERICA!
Thursday, January 2, 2014
KitchenAid: 1, Nicole: 0
My second post and I'm already writing about a cooking Fail.
I've only started to attempt bread making in the past year and it's been a roller coaster of emotions. A good friend and expert bread baker taught me how to make an "easy" and delicious Focaccia last winter, and the first time I made it, it came out great! The second time, not so much. And ever since, it's been a 50/50 chance with all breads that I've tried to bake. Bread is so god damn finicky! There's so much stirring and kneading and rising and waiting and rising again and waiting that needs to happen and happen right, and if you're having an impatient-check-on-the-dough-every-3minutes-to-see-if-it-rose-yet -kind of day, then it's not even worth trying. My cranberry bread was perfect, my Easter breads were like dense bricks, and my first Italian bread suffered a similar fate.
I thought my beautiful new KitchenAid mixer would change things - revolutionize bread making- but I guess it wasn't as simple as I thought.
I wanted to make a crusty Italian bread to go with my lentils yesterday so I grabbed this recipe off of Cooklikeyourgrandmother.com. The instructions were for kneading by hand, but I figured the dough hook on the mixer does everything, right? So I threw everything in the bowl and set it on 2 for about ten minutes. Seemed like a descent amount of time. The dough was sticky and stretchy just like the good Focaccia I made once so I figured this was good to go. Threw it in an oiled bowl to rise covered in a warm oven. 2 hours later, it kinda rose… I guess. It definitely got bigger, but then when I touched it it kind of shrunk (TWSS). I tried to roll it out like the instructions said but it was so… floppy? I cut it into pieces and let it rise another 50 minutes. At this point the dough had become like a soft, floppy balloon and basically fell apart when I went to transfer it to the oven - See weird twisted loaf on the left. At this point I started to lose hope. They baked for about a half hour and as you can see, the end results resembled flat, hard paddles. They were definitely crusty - and the piece that I could manage to chew tasted pretty good, but overall, fail. I'm not really sure what to do with them… breadcrumbs? weapons? maybe I can clean the foot of snow off of my car with them tomorrow since I'm not sure where my scraper is…
There will be a part 2 to this. I'm not giving up. I need to consult the bread baking kitchen aid expert and then I'll try again.
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Happy New Yeahs!
I try a lot of new recipes for anything from cookies to pasta and roasts, but I feel like half of the time I spend cooking I'm trying to replicate something my mom or grandmother has been making for the last 25 years or more… and it never comes out the same. No matter how many times they give me the vague, inconsistent description of the recipe ("Aaaayy… I don't know how much salt I use. Enough. that's how much.") - It never comes out the same. BUT, most of the time it does come out different in a good way, so I can't complain. I'm pretty sure it's their way of getting us to come back home regularly, but anyways, my first post is dedicated to my mom - Sherry's New Yeah's Day Lentils.
It's an old school Italian tradition to eat lentils on New Year's day- It's said to bring wealth and good fortune in the New Yeah' (as Rhode Islanders were refer to it). I don't know about wealth, but I can attest to the good fortune, I guess. All I know is that for the last 27 years, I've spent hours every January 1st sifting through pounds of lentils for the mysterious pebbles that could chip someones tooth, supposedly, before the cooking can begin. My sous chef gave them a quick look through today and I trust his pebble locating abilities so I think we're good to go. Here's what we'll need:
1 lb Lentils, thoroughly sifted and rinsed well
About 1 lb Hot Italian Pork Sausage (3 Links)- squeezed out of the casings
The Holy Trinity: Onions, Carrots and Celery
1 medium onion, chopped
2 stalks of celery, chopped
3/4 cup of carrots, chopped - I used baby carrots so I don't remember how many that ended up being
Olive oil
2 Tbsp Tomato paste
3 cloves of garlic, minced
Salt and Pepper, obvi
4 cups of chicken stock
4 cups water
2 sprigs Rosemary (optional)
2 Sprigs Thyme (optional)
2 Bay leafs (optional)
Cook and prep time combined: About an hour
I used my new, handy 5 QT dutch oven for this but Sherry's been using a regular massive soup pot for forever so either will do. Heat up the pot on medium heat with 2-3 Tbsp of olive oil. Once the oil is hot, I add the onions, celery and carrots with a little bit of salt and sautee them for 4-5 minutes. Once they soften up a bit, I add the sausage by squeezing the meat out of the casings like a tube of toothpaste, and then discard the casings. Brown the sausage for about 5 minutes, until no longer pink, breaking up the big chunks with a wooden spoon - so it almost has the texture of ground beef. Then I add the tomato paste and garlic, cooking for another 2 minutes. Then add the chicken stock, water, lentils and herbs (which I put in my new spice ball that my sous chef got me for Christmas so you don't have to fish out leafs and stems after- this thing is awesome: Spice Ball ). I set it on medium high to get the liquid almost boiling and then I put it down to low heat to simmer with the lid cracked for about 35 minutes or until the lentils are tender, but not mooshi. Then season with salt and pepper and hot pepper flakes to taste - I probably use almost a teaspoon of salt. It should have an almost stew consistency.
Serve with some grated Romano cheese and a crusty piece of Italian bread, and bring on the good fortune!
Next up: The first crusty Italian bread recipe that I've tried with the new KitchenAid mixer. The lentils were done 2 hours ago and the bread dough is still rising, so I guess that will be served with the leftovers!
It's an old school Italian tradition to eat lentils on New Year's day- It's said to bring wealth and good fortune in the New Yeah' (as Rhode Islanders were refer to it). I don't know about wealth, but I can attest to the good fortune, I guess. All I know is that for the last 27 years, I've spent hours every January 1st sifting through pounds of lentils for the mysterious pebbles that could chip someones tooth, supposedly, before the cooking can begin. My sous chef gave them a quick look through today and I trust his pebble locating abilities so I think we're good to go. Here's what we'll need:
1 lb Lentils, thoroughly sifted and rinsed well
About 1 lb Hot Italian Pork Sausage (3 Links)- squeezed out of the casings
The Holy Trinity: Onions, Carrots and Celery
1 medium onion, chopped
2 stalks of celery, chopped
3/4 cup of carrots, chopped - I used baby carrots so I don't remember how many that ended up being
Olive oil
2 Tbsp Tomato paste
3 cloves of garlic, minced
Salt and Pepper, obvi
4 cups of chicken stock
4 cups water
2 sprigs Rosemary (optional)
2 Sprigs Thyme (optional)
2 Bay leafs (optional)
Cook and prep time combined: About an hour
I used my new, handy 5 QT dutch oven for this but Sherry's been using a regular massive soup pot for forever so either will do. Heat up the pot on medium heat with 2-3 Tbsp of olive oil. Once the oil is hot, I add the onions, celery and carrots with a little bit of salt and sautee them for 4-5 minutes. Once they soften up a bit, I add the sausage by squeezing the meat out of the casings like a tube of toothpaste, and then discard the casings. Brown the sausage for about 5 minutes, until no longer pink, breaking up the big chunks with a wooden spoon - so it almost has the texture of ground beef. Then I add the tomato paste and garlic, cooking for another 2 minutes. Then add the chicken stock, water, lentils and herbs (which I put in my new spice ball that my sous chef got me for Christmas so you don't have to fish out leafs and stems after- this thing is awesome: Spice Ball ). I set it on medium high to get the liquid almost boiling and then I put it down to low heat to simmer with the lid cracked for about 35 minutes or until the lentils are tender, but not mooshi. Then season with salt and pepper and hot pepper flakes to taste - I probably use almost a teaspoon of salt. It should have an almost stew consistency.
Serve with some grated Romano cheese and a crusty piece of Italian bread, and bring on the good fortune!
Next up: The first crusty Italian bread recipe that I've tried with the new KitchenAid mixer. The lentils were done 2 hours ago and the bread dough is still rising, so I guess that will be served with the leftovers!
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