Khinkali, a Georgian meat pastry
My small town certainly has a lot of ethnic grocery stores within walking distance. I found a fairly larger grocery store right up the next block last weekend. The store carries the same assortment of packaged spices, like ground sumac and seven-spice blend, as the Burbank shop I buy my spices from. One of the freezer aisle items were packages of khinkali. It looked like it was worth a try.
As it turns out, the Russian/Georgian pastry was much saltier than expected. The filling was tough, but edible. I don't think any amount of boiling or steaming could make tender. It closely resembles the Chinese xiaolóngbao, but by appearances only. Unless I can get my hands on a sampling of freshly-made khinkalis, I think I'll have to stay away from this freezer item.
I did find a recipe, but I don't have any mindshare on what a good khinkali tastes like.
Dark chocolate chunk cookies
This recipe isn't my own, but it is very good. I've used all types of dark chocolate in this recipe and sometimes I add chunks of milk chocolate into it. You could always just use a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips but what's the fun in that? I prefer hacking apart the Ghirardelli chocolate wedges with a hammer and chisel. It's very relaxing. If I wanted the chunks to look pretty, I'd use a santoku.
Anyhow, the original recipe. And, have I ever mentioned how wrong it is to put nuts into desserts, especially cookies? If I wanted texture, I'd add more chocolate.. Here's my version, and a pic of the 5/17/07 batch:
Ingredients
1 c. unsalted butter, softened but not melted
1 c. light brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 c. unbleached cane sugar
1 egg
Blend these together until creamy in bowl #1.
1 1/2 c. unbleached white flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 c. cocoa powder
Sift these together in bowl #2 before blending them with bowl #1. Don't over mix. Blend until just combined.
Refrigerate the cookie dough for 1+ hours, or overnight.
Preheat yer oven to 350 degrees. Bake as usual.
Anyhow, the original recipe. And, have I ever mentioned how wrong it is to put nuts into desserts, especially cookies? If I wanted texture, I'd add more chocolate.. Here's my version, and a pic of the 5/17/07 batch:
Ingredients
1 c. unsalted butter, softened but not melted
1 c. light brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 c. unbleached cane sugar
1 egg
Blend these together until creamy in bowl #1.
1 1/2 c. unbleached white flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 c. cocoa powder
Sift these together in bowl #2 before blending them with bowl #1. Don't over mix. Blend until just combined.
Refrigerate the cookie dough for 1+ hours, or overnight.
Preheat yer oven to 350 degrees. Bake as usual.
Dark chocolate pistachio bark
So, last night I tried the JoC recipe for making dark chocolate truffles. Except, here's the thing. The book told me to chill the ganache for 3-4 hours then use a melon baller or pastry bag to pipe out the truffles. Uhh. After an hour in my fridge the ganache was rock hard and I couldn't even spoon it out.
Ingredients:
8 oz dark chocolate, chopped
1/2 c. heavy cream
1/4 c. - 1/2 c. lightly toasted pistachios, whole or chopped
JoC ganache directions:
1. In a small saucepan, scald the cream.
2. Put the chopped choclate in a heatproof bowl. Pour the cream onto the chocolate and stir until the chocolate has melted (glossy and shiny) and the cream is entirely encorporated.
3. Let cool to room temperature, then cover with plastic wrap.
I'd say that if you're going to make truffles, don't refrigerate the ganache. But, you won't be able to make truffles while the ganache is still liquidy. Yeah, I suppose I could always read what other people have done when making this confection but what'd be the point of experimenting? The universe would be a really boring place if everything came pre-explained.
Let's say that you managed to not follow the JoC instuctions through the refrigeration stage and you have a bowl of warm ganache.
Chocolate bark directions:
Line a baking sheet with parchment (or silpat, if you prefer) and pour the ganache onto the parchment. If you don't have an off-set spatula, use the back of a spoon to smooth out the surface so that the chocolate is evenly distributed.
Next, add your whole or chopped nuts. I used pistachios because I had them on hand and you really don't see chocolate pistachio bark at the store. Just about any type of nut can be used, raw or lightly toasted.
Now you can refrigerate the chocolate bark so that it sets in a few hours. The confection is done once the parchment paper peels off cleanly from the bark. Chop it into squares, trianges, or other shapes, or break it apart roughly.
In the ganache step 1, if you wanted add a unique flavor to the chocolate, you can add spices to this step. Just strain out the hard bits before you add the cream to the chopped chocolate.
Ingredients:
8 oz dark chocolate, chopped
1/2 c. heavy cream
1/4 c. - 1/2 c. lightly toasted pistachios, whole or chopped
JoC ganache directions:
1. In a small saucepan, scald the cream.
2. Put the chopped choclate in a heatproof bowl. Pour the cream onto the chocolate and stir until the chocolate has melted (glossy and shiny) and the cream is entirely encorporated.
3. Let cool to room temperature, then cover with plastic wrap.
I'd say that if you're going to make truffles, don't refrigerate the ganache. But, you won't be able to make truffles while the ganache is still liquidy. Yeah, I suppose I could always read what other people have done when making this confection but what'd be the point of experimenting? The universe would be a really boring place if everything came pre-explained.
Let's say that you managed to not follow the JoC instuctions through the refrigeration stage and you have a bowl of warm ganache.
Chocolate bark directions:
Line a baking sheet with parchment (or silpat, if you prefer) and pour the ganache onto the parchment. If you don't have an off-set spatula, use the back of a spoon to smooth out the surface so that the chocolate is evenly distributed.
Next, add your whole or chopped nuts. I used pistachios because I had them on hand and you really don't see chocolate pistachio bark at the store. Just about any type of nut can be used, raw or lightly toasted.
Now you can refrigerate the chocolate bark so that it sets in a few hours. The confection is done once the parchment paper peels off cleanly from the bark. Chop it into squares, trianges, or other shapes, or break it apart roughly.
In the ganache step 1, if you wanted add a unique flavor to the chocolate, you can add spices to this step. Just strain out the hard bits before you add the cream to the chopped chocolate.
The spice pantry
Because I'm culinarily bored with my own cooking, I've recently acquired the following spices:
garam masala
allspice
a random curry
chipotle chili powder
ground cardamom
I will do something with these soon, maybe torment some hacked apart chicken body parts and appendages.
Spices are pretty cheap if you don't buy them from a national or regional supermarket chain. Depending on where you live, you're much better off buying spices from a local ethnic market. They'll be fresher and less expensive. Ralphs grocery store, for example, sells cardamom powder for $16/spice bottle. It's not really a high traffic spice like cinnamon or allspice. So it's priced so that it never makes it off the shelf, or whatever. At an ethnic market you can find ground cardamom for about $3-4, and the quantity will be more than enough.
If you don't live near a dense ethnic (non-white) area, the next best places to shop for spice are Whole Foods market and Cost Plus World market.
KItchen Notes: Mmm, that sauce packet
I'm pretty close taste-wise to deconstructing the ingredient ratio for Annie Chun's udon soup (sold at Trader Joe's). Ok, so what's in the soup is printed on the container which reads: naturally brewed soy sauce, shitake mushroom, sea vegetable, evaporated cane juice, rice wine, and yeast extract. When you pour it out of its packet, it's a dark liquid with no dangly bits and isn't murky. So, the sea vegetable is probably a standard grade seaweed like kelp or kombu; both of which are common to asian soups.
I suppose I really don't have a reason for doing this other than it's a personal quest this year to make homemade udon noodles and a good soup base to go with it. Sea vegetable and shitake mushroom exists in the Annie Chun recipe as a dashi. The yeast extract won't make it into my soup base recipe since it's pretty much MSG.
A basic dashi recipe is that you take a dried ingredient and rehydrate it with water, usually by boiling it until the ingredient softens. The reserve liquid is the dashi and is used in soups and sauces.
A lot of meat/vegetable/potsticker dipping sauces will call for a 2:1:1 ratio of soy sauce, vinegar/wine, water.
This might be as easy as:
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp rice wine
1 tbsp dashi.
Adding sugar to a sauce is generally to taste by its maker, so this recipe would probably include no more than 1 tsp of unbleached cane sugar.
This might be as easy as:
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp rice wine
1 tbsp dashi.
Adding sugar to a sauce is generally to taste by its maker, so this recipe would probably include no more than 1 tsp of unbleached cane sugar.
Float me
The original recipe comes from Alton Brown. I didn't have peach preserves so I might just have to make another batch to see what it tastes like. I'd imagine it'd be slightly sweeter. Last weekend it was pretty warm. I think southern California pretty much skipped spring and hopped along into early summer. I thought I'd make a rootbeer float, except I didn't have any ice cream.. ooh, but I did have the ingredients (half and half, heavy cream, sugar, vanilla bean) and an ice cream maker.
It's a rather easy recipe:
2 cups half and half
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup sugar, minus 2 tbsp
1 vanilla bean, halved with seeds scooped out
In a heavy bottomed saucepan, combine all ingredients and cook to simmer (do not boil).
I don't have a cooking thermometer to tell me when the mixture has reached 170 degrees F, so another way to tell that it's done cooking is to see if it coats the back of a spoon like a thick creamed soup. When it does, turn the heat off.
Strain it into a container and refrigerate for at least 10-12 hours. Alton says that the mixture won't set in an ice cream maker, and that part is pretty much true. There aren't any coagulants like cornstarch in the mixture to help it set or thicken. Anyhow.
Once the ice cream gets to the soft serve stage, scoop it all out to a clean container that can hold 1 qt of liquid and freeze it until firm. It seems like a rather long process just to make a rootbeer float, but it's well worth it and very tasty. I'm not sure I would have liked the peach preserves flavor in my rootbeer float.
Hehe. That's an experiment for another day.
It's a rather easy recipe:
2 cups half and half
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup sugar, minus 2 tbsp
1 vanilla bean, halved with seeds scooped out
In a heavy bottomed saucepan, combine all ingredients and cook to simmer (do not boil).
I don't have a cooking thermometer to tell me when the mixture has reached 170 degrees F, so another way to tell that it's done cooking is to see if it coats the back of a spoon like a thick creamed soup. When it does, turn the heat off.
Strain it into a container and refrigerate for at least 10-12 hours. Alton says that the mixture won't set in an ice cream maker, and that part is pretty much true. There aren't any coagulants like cornstarch in the mixture to help it set or thicken. Anyhow.
Once the ice cream gets to the soft serve stage, scoop it all out to a clean container that can hold 1 qt of liquid and freeze it until firm. It seems like a rather long process just to make a rootbeer float, but it's well worth it and very tasty. I'm not sure I would have liked the peach preserves flavor in my rootbeer float.
Hehe. That's an experiment for another day.
A tofu trick
Ever not have deep fried tofu around? Well, here's tofu you can keep in your freezer until it's needed. Buy a "firm" package of tofu, preferably the one that doesn't come in a vacuum seal. Any brand will do. Put it in your freezer until it freezes. Then thaw it out, drain all the water and squeeze out as much water as you can from the tofu without breaking it. Slice the tofu brick into 4 equal portions. Each portion is about a serving for one person. I am usually cooking for one, so put the rest of the portions into a ziplock bag and back into the freezer.
The portion that remains, slice that into smaller pieces. Put those pieces into your soup. This tofu will soak up much of the flavor in your soup and be very tasty.
The portion that remains, slice that into smaller pieces. Put those pieces into your soup. This tofu will soak up much of the flavor in your soup and be very tasty.
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