Sautéed shrimp with lime and smoked chipotle sauce

This is the second time I've made this dish, and it tastes pretty good. The portions of spices are whatever you feel comfortable eating. :)

Ingredients

juice of 1/2 lime
1 tsp smoked chipotle sauce
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1-2 tsp peeled ginger, thinly sliced
1/4 tsp sugar
2 tbsp olive oil, for frying
1/2 lb raw shrimp, cleaned (with shells on)

1. In a small bowl, combine lime juice, smoked chipotle sauce, and sugar. Set aside.
2. Heat oil in a skillet, add garlic and ginger. Stir until the garlic is lightly browned.
3. Add shrimp and sauté until shrimp curls and turns a light orange color, or well, that color shrimp turns when it is cooked
4. Add lime juice mix and stir around until the shrimp is coated.
5. Remove from heat and serve.

Looks a lot like this.. (click for pic)

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.

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.

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.