Cornbread for T-day Stuffing

This cornbread recipe comes from Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for More Food ("Cornbread No Chaser") and has been only just slightly tweaked. I lowered the required heat, muckied about with the ingredients and order of operations.

What better way to stuff a bird than to use a somewhat, but not really traditionally bread for stuffing? For this year's Straggler's Thanksgiving hosted by my more adventurous cooking sibling, we used cornbread as the bread base for stuffing the bird. Here is the recipe for it the cornbread. I suppose it could be eaten as is.

Crumbled bits of cornbread for turkey stuffing

Ingredients

1 1/2 c. cornmeal, medium grind (stoneground)
1 1/4 c. whole organic milk, heated to a simmer
1 c. unbleached wheat flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp coarse salt (because it was what was on hand at the time)
1/2 c. extra virgin olive oil
2 large eggs
1/4 c. fresh or frozen cooked corn kernels, thawed and drained (optional)
1 tbsp unsalted butter

One 10" cast iron skillet

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F and leave skillet in oven while mixing the cornbread.

1. In a small saucepan, heat milk until almost boiling. Remove from heat and stir in cornmeal. It's not all that important to let it sit in the milk for Alton's recommended 15 minutes since the cornbread isn't the final product output.

2. In a large bowl, combine flour, salt, and baking powder.

3. In a smaller bowl, beat together oil and eggs.

4. Add the smaller bowl to the larger bowl and add the cornmeal/milk mixture. Mix until well combined. It won't be smooth nor runny and you'll have to spread it around in the skillet before it bakes.

5. Remove skillet from oven (with oven mitts!) and melt 1 tbsp butter in the skillet.

6. Empty cornmeal mixture into skillet and spread around with a spatula until the surface looks nearly even. Neatness does not count since you'll be crumbling this later after it cools.

7. Bake for 25 minutes, or until top is lightly golden brown.

Try to not eat this before it's made into stuffing or you'll have to make more cornbread. I made two batches of this for a 15# turkey.

Pumpkin Cranberry Biscotti

This isn't the cookie-like Americanized textured biscotti that Trader Joes has; this "cookie" is rather hard and is best dipping it with hot tea or coffee. It's a pretty simple recipe with simple ingredients and simple steps. It's certainly different than the super sweet treats that are typically made for T-day weekend.


Ingredients

3 c. unbleached wheat flour
1 c. brown sugar, packed
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp sea salt
2 tsp pumpkin pie spice (see below)
1/2 c. cooked pumpkin, fresh or canned
2 eggs
1 tbsp vanilla
1/2 c. dried sweetened cranberries
1/4 c. raw pumpkin seeds
1 tbsp butter, melted (optional)

Pumpkin Pie Spice

Lots of websites and cookbooks give different ratios for this spice blend. This blend works for pies and cookies.

1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground ginger

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

1. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, brown sugar, baking powder, salt, and spices.

2. In a smaller bowl, whisk together pumpkin, eggs, vanilla, and melted butter.

3. Add in pumpkin seeds and cranberries. Mix together wet with dry ingredients until well combined.

4. Take a large glob of dough and shape it into a log. Flatten it on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet and repeat with remaining dough. The "logs" should be about 3-4" wide (this will become the length of the finished cookie) and no longer than 12" long (so all the dough will fit on one baking sheet). 

Unbaked "logs" of biscotti

The dough logs should not be touching each other as the baking powder will cause the biscotti to rise slightly. Bake for 25 minutes and remove when logs are slightly browned on top.

Slice logs diagonally (?) using a very sharp knife or serrated knife, the latter will cause tears in the dough if you rush cutting these.

5. Place slices cut-side down onto the same parchment-lined baking sheet and bake 12-15 minutes or until dry. Can let cool in oven on the baking sheet or removed to cool on a wire rack.

Biscotti ready for second baking session

White Chocolate Chip Macadamia Nut Cookies

I'm not terribly fond of nuts in my cookies, nor of white chocolate. This particular cookie is a friend's favorite and I made it for him. I had a pretty good idea what the ingredients tasted like, but never actually had eaten the cookie before. So yes, this is another one of those recipes made with some degree of success without much tasting context. It's basically a sugar cookie with nuts and white chocolate mixed in, what could possibly go wrong?

Ingredients

1 c. unsalted butter, melted (2 sticks)
1 c. unbleached granulated sugar
1 c. brown sugar, packed
2 eggs, room temperature
1-2 tsp vanilla extract

3 c. unbleached white flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

2 c. white chocolate chips
1 1/2 c. Macadamia nuts, coarsely chopped

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

1. If you are making this batch in winter, you might find that waiting for the butter to soften is an exercise in Zen cooking; you could melt the butter in a small saucepan and let the butter cool to room temperature before mixing it with the sugar. Cream butter and sugars together in a mixing bowl.

2. Add an egg, one at a time, and beat well. Add vanilla extract and beat again until well combined.

3. In a separate bowl, add flour, salt, and baking soda. Stir to combine.

4. Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and stir until the flour is incorporated. Add white chocolate chips and nuts to mixture and mix until ingredients are evenly distributed.

5. Drop by rounded teaspoons onto a parchment-lined baking sheet.

6. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until edges are lightly browned.

7. Cool on a wire rack before gifting or serving.

Kitchen Note: Crackers

This post is part of a series of cracker recipes gone horribly wrong. I've been trying to replicate a style of flatbread crackers that Trader Joe's carries, the multi-seed flatbread crackers, which are very tasty and get eaten too quickly. The ingredients are pretty simple, just flour, water, and salt. Since all my cracker endeavors had been turning out inedible, I thought I'd try this particular recipe which is known to be hardly edible. The flour-water ratio in it is 2:1, unlike matzo dough that is 3:1 and prepared in 18 minutes or less.



2 c. unbleached white flour

1 c. water (with 1-2 tsp salt added to the water)

1. Mix the flour with the salted water until the flour just comes together. You might not even need the entire cup of water.



2. Knead it into a random shape and roll it out to 1/2" thick on parchment paper.



3. Cut into squares, rectangles, dodecahedrons or whatever shape you prefer your crackers to be in. You could probably use cookie cutters too.

4. Use fork tines to prick holes (but don't pierce the dough) across all the crackers. This is to keep the dough from rising.



5. Transfer the parchment paper (with the crackers on top) to a baking sheet.

6. Bake for 40 minutes or until the tops/edges are golden brown. Let cool in oven. The drier the cracker, the more cracker-like it will be.

 

In retrospect, using a pasta machine or rolling the crackers out to a much thinner thickness would be better. Once these crackers really dry out, they are brick-like hard. This is probably why matzo crackers are rolled out to a 1/8" to 1/4" thickness.

Hearty Tomato Bean Soup

This recipe is not that bad now that tomato sauce has been added to it. The tomato adds another layer of depth to this dish and helps to balance out the flavors. This recipe was formerly known as the baked beans recipe on this blog and revised the directions to include crockpot instructions.
Ingredients

1 c. white beans, soaked overnight and drained
1/4 c. red azuki beans
1/3 c. green mung beans
1/4 c. brown basmati rice
2 bacon slices, diced
3 tbsp honey
4 tsp dry mustard
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
2 cloves garlic, minced
15 oz organic tomato sauce
1 qt low sodium chicken broth
1 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp ground thyme
salt (optional)

Directions

1. In a bowl large enough to accommodate the beans, cover beans with enough water so that there is about 1/2" of water above the beans. Let soak for a few hours or overnight. Drain beans and add to a crockpot.

2. In a small skillet, cook diced bacon until browned and add bacon to crockpot.

3. Add honey, dry mustard, salt (optional), pepper, oregano, thyme and garlic.

4. Add chicken broth. Soup can be thinned out with water if necessary.

5. Depending on what meal of the day this is for, set crockpot on high-6hrs or low-8hrs. The beans should be fork-tender in a couple hours.

6. Blend cooked ingredients together in a blender or with an immersion blender.

Serves many.

Kitchen Note: Chocolate

Chocolate, as we know it today, is being faced by two equally disturbing debates. The first, like crude oil, is the rise in the price of raw cacao because one man is bidding up commodity futures of chocolate. So far he owns more than $1 billion worth of cocoa futures on the open market with the intent on dominating the market.. as in hoarding all the future supply.


The second regards the proposed change in the FDA's definition of the identity of milk chocolate. Basically the recipe includes ingredients like sugar, cocoa powder, chocolate liquor, milk, cocoa butter, vanilla, etc. US dominates with the gold standard of chocolate with production, consumers, and distribution. It is why chocolatiers like See's Candies (who uses Guittard) can sell chocolate confections at a premium. But, some greedy, penny pinching bean-to-bar chocolate manufacturers who say they can't compete against Europe's deviation from the gold standard who want to reduce or eliminate the cocoa butter manufacturing requirement and replace it with say.. up to 95% of non-cocoa butter oils. The primary instigator in this lawsuit is Hersheys, who would benefit more hand-over-fist profit if the gold standard of chocolate were say muckied up this with vegetable fats. I wouldn't be surprised if Mars has also lobbied with Hersheys. Though, companies like E. Guittard and Scharffen Berger less likely to stray from how they make chocolate. What is unfortunate about chocolate manufacturing is when a company that started from a family-run business like Scharffen Berger ends up getting bought by a large conglomerate. Lately all the acquisitions in this market have been done by Kraft Foods (acquired Cadbury) and Hersheys (acquired Sharffen Berger, makes the chocolate for Cadbury, also makes the chocolate for Rolo). It's so sad because Sharffen Berger is really, really good eating and baking chocolate. Don't get me started on how inferior the Baker's Square chocolate is.

In comparison, European chocolate manufacturers only allow up to 5% non-cocoa butter fats in their chocolate confections.

Artificial shortages are possible, but an actual crop shortage would be diluted because it isn't just grown in Central and South America, but also in Malaysia and South Africa. The cacao bean harvest in Hawaii is insignifiant, but the climate is right. Then it depends on what people want to eat. Single origin or blended chocolates (E. Guittard uses single origin to make blended chocolates). On the whole, cocoa prices aren't a lot less than what they were at the same time last year, and manufactured chocolate doesn't have a very long shelf life.

Read more?

Cocoa commodity charts

Mystery Ingredient: Moonfish

There are a few peculiar things I like to do when I visit an asian grocery store. Number one is always have a shopping list. This tells you what the pantry is out of and keeps you on track. Because I had been paying more attention to what I bought, I added two new rules to shopping this year. The first is, if the shopping list has been adhered to, a luxury good is allowed. Today's luxury good were persimmons, the crunchy-when-ripe kind. The second is, if feeling adventurous, then choose a mystery ingredient to make a new dish out of. The mystery is the discovery and creativity of how to cook an unknown. This is a great skill in case you were traveling with Jules Verne in 20,000 leagues under the sea or to the center of the earth and had to cook up a dinosaur. It could happen...

I've cooked a few types of fish and they are all the "normal" ones you can get at a regular supermarket: salmon, trout, tilapia, cod, mahi mahi, Chilean sea bass, etc. I saw shad in the freezer aisle at Fubonn today, but if the fishing gods would shine upon my pole one day, I could fish a shad out of the Columbia River. I've never had shad or shad roe, but seeing how it is plentiful in the Pacific NW, I passed this by. Also, for a mystery ingredient, because it is a trial 'n' error process, it's an ingredient that is also inexpensive to procure.

I settled upon something called Moonfish. It is quite small and much smaller than a blue gill. This is definitely not of the Hawaiian variety, and is probably more like some freakish thing a fisherman would haul up in the net with other fish and didn't want to throw it away. And for a mere $2 for 1 lb, there are two of these in the package:

Roasted Duck Wings

When I go to a city park and see ducks quacking happily by a pond or being fed stale bread by little kids, the first thought that comes to mind is not how cute the scene is, but rather how tasty those ducks would be roasted, braised, baked, or as the main ingredient in a soup. Suffice to say I have only hunted ducks at a supermarket's freezer aisle.

This is the third time I've made this particular appetizer. The ingredient ratio is decently palatable and not too salty. After the wings have baked, they can be served warm or chilled. Compared to the rest of the duck parts available at Fubonn, wings are inexpensive and if you hack them at the joints, each wing can be split into 3 sections.

A duck wing, separated

The marinade

4 tsp cooking mirin
3 slices fresh peeled ginger, minced
3 green onions, chopped
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp fish sauce
1/2 tsp five spice powder

1 package of duck wings, about 2 lbs

Duck wings marinating in a ziploc bag

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

1. Separate each wing into three parts by slicing through the tendon and skin at the joints.

2. Place wing parts in a large bowl (or large ziploc bag) and let sit in marinade for at least an hour.

3. Spread wings onto a glass (or ceramic) 9x13 baking pan. I have found that baking these wings on a baking sheet covered with aluminum foil doesn't include easy removal of the wings from the foil. Spread the marinade on top of the wings.

4. Add some water to the baking pan, otherwise the thinnest part of the wings will burn and dry out.

5. Bake for 30 minutes, allow for about 15 minutes on each side. Yes, this means you should probably flip the wings mid-way through.

6. Remove from oven and eat.

Finished duck wings ready to eat