Jenn Cuisine » Daring Kitchen

Daring Cooks go Nuts! Grilled Kabobs with Cashew Butter Sauce

Jenn — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 21:21:26 +0000

I should title this post, “the cursed food processors,” but then you wouldn’t get to know what I was making! This month’s Daring Cook’s challenge was to make a nut butter and use it in a dish. Well, nut butters mean one needs a food processor. I thought this would be a great challenge to do at home in the US visiting my parents (if I’m visiting can I still call it home?), because I knew that they would enjoy the flavors I was thinking of for this month’s dish.

Well, I get there and find that my parents’ puppy had decided that the cord of the food processor looked appetizing, and bit the cord right off of the machine! It’s quite hard to run a food processor if you have no way of plugging it into anything. Ok, so no homemade nut butters this time. Instead, I went to my nearest health store corporate giant and picked up some cashew butter. Why cashews? Well, everyone in my family loves them, and peanut butter is boring

This week I had thought about making my own cashew butter now that I am back en Suisse, but again with the cursed food processors! There was a mighty wind event the other day, and silly us left our windows open in our apt. all day. We’d gotten into the habit of this because it’s been so freaking hot lately – and trust me, you learn a totally different definition of hot when there is no A/C to be found, especially when your office faces the afternoon sun. I melt into a sweaty sticky puddle on a regular basis. It wasn’t until we left work that I thought things could be a problem. After all, tree branches don’t normally float. We got home to find so much stuff all over the floor of our apt., including the food processor!! The lid is cracked and in pieces. gahhhhh! Well, there goes making any nut butters this month. At least the wind kept our stuff inside the apt., I half expected to find our life’s belongings strewn out all over the street below.

So jarred cashew butter it is for this month. I’m ok with this, it was organic and quite tasty. As long as your’e also ok with my store-bought nut butter, onto the challenge!

The July 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Margie of More Please and Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make their own nut butter from scratch, and use the nut butter in a recipe. Their sources include Better with Nut Butter by Cooking Light Magazine, Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, and Food Network online.

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Smoked Salmon Pâté

Jenn — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 21:44:32 +0000

I don’t usually write about my failures in the kitchen – after all, who wants to try a recipe that didn’t work? However, at the risk of sounding cliché, I’m learning the slow lesson that life is not always about the end result, but about the process that one went through to get there.

Our hostesses this month, Evelyne of Cheap Ethnic Eatz, and Valerie of a The Chocolate Bunny, chose delicious pate with freshly baked bread as their June Daring Cook’s challenge! They’ve provided us with 4 different pate recipes to choose from and are allowing us to go wild with our homemade bread choice.

Daring Cooks always post on the 14th of the month, but I made this attempt over two weeks ago. So it appears a little out of order if you remember it was just last week that I had a miraculous find of guar gum in a natural foods store. This attempt happened before I had guar gum and before I found gluten free bread mix. We were charged with making baguettes, and after finding an awesome gluten free baguette recipe to try, learned that it would not happen without xanthan or guar gum. So, I took one of my sandwich bread recipes, and made a go without any binding agents by adding in some extra eggs and playing with the ratio of flours a bit. I have also since learned from one of my favorite gluten free chemists that gelatin or agar agar should never be used in baking, because they turn the products too brittle. I guess when making pitas or pizza dough it hasn’t been a problem for me because they are pretty flat to begin with, but for a crusty bread, brittle is definitely not a quality I’m looking for.

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Daring Cooks do Enchiladas – Thai Enchiladas

Jenn — Thu, 13 May 2010 22:00:17 +0000

This month was an especially fun challenge to make – enchiladas! My mom always made the best enchiladas when I was younger, and it was one of a number of dishes called “California style” – though I’m not quite sure what that means in terms of enchiladas. We would have enough to feed an army – not that any of us minded, my mom’s enchiladas were one of those dishes that you looked forward to eating leftovers every night that week for dinner.

Until this Daring Cooks challenge came around I am ashamed to say I had never actually made them before, only been merely someone who enjoyed their cheesy gooey flavorful wonderfulness – ha, surely more than one past English teacher of mine would cringe at that particular selection of adjectives, but I think that description is actually pretty accurate. I usually pride myself on having some ability to articulate, but then there are just those times that call for half made-up words like wonderfulness. Enchiladas embrace the concept of “wonderfulness” completely. Even my spellchecker must realize that about enchiladas because it has no problem with my description

I think they seem intimidating to many to prepare but in principle they are really rather simple. Their only issue is that they have several parts – roast the chiles, make the sauce, cook the meat, fry the tortillas, fill them, and bake. But no one part is particularly difficult or time consuming – unless of course you have my kitchen, which involves about an 8″ x 10″ sized counter-space, two tiny burners and a toaster oven. Preparing these enchiladas took me the better part of 4 hrs, and I only got about 4 servings out of them because I had to make such small portions given the space I had. I just can’t fit a larger dish in that toaster oven no matter how much I want to.

Living in my parents’ house I probably could have cut at least 30% of the time out, and made a good 20 servings. Ah, the joys of apartment living….one day, hopefully sooner than later, I dream of having a kitchen with a real oven, 4 full burners, and an actual counter instead of trying to slice veggies on my cutting board placed on a rolly cart that moves causing me to slip and slice part of my finger off. Did I mention that yet? I have a sizable dent in my index finger now. Safety note to self – don’t do your cutting on a rolly cart. And thank goodness for Neosporin. My husband then continued the chopping on the rolly cart. He didn’t injure himself

Ok, onto the food! Truth be told, when it came time to actually make the enchiladas, I really wasn’t feeling like eating Mexican at all, nor anything cheesy. I still roasted a bunch of chiles, but instead blended them with some homemade Thai green curry paste and made a Thai version instead. Chicken was marinated and then sautéed in roasted chiles/green curry, and a sauce was made with the rest of the chiles, curry paste, and coconut milk.

My husband quickly fried corn tortillas that we got from our favorite gluten-free shop while I then raced to fill them with the chicken, some greens, bamboo shoots and sauce before they cooled so much that they risked cracking. I LOVE the flavor of corn tortillas, but they are hard to bend once they are fried. I elected to do the filling of the enchiladas because I am more heat tolerant than my husband, so I could arrange them and fill and roll them while they were still hot enough to manipulate, literally right out of the frying pan. I squished as many as I could all in a row in our little baking dish, topped with more sauce, and baked for about 30 minutes until everything melded together and the aromas of the chiles and fresh lemongrass permeated our entire apartment.

I didn’t use a timer, I just waited until it smelled right. That’s often how I cook. It’s almost an instinctual feeling, like a sixth sense sometimes. I just let them be in the oven and then a while later said to myself, “Hmm, they smell like they’re ready to eat.” Turns out I was right, they were ready. So there you have it. Thai enchiladas, gluten and dairy free. And they were full of wonderfullness

Blog Checking Lines: Our hosts this month, Barbara of Barbara Bakes and Bunnee of Anna+Foodhave chosen a delicious Stacked Green Chile & Grilled Chicken Enchilada recipe in celebration of Cinco de Mayo! The recipe, featuring a homemade enchilada sauce was found onwww.finecooking.com and written by Robb Walsh.

Also linked to – Slightly Indulgent Tuesdays and Gluten Free Wednesdays

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Daring Cooks #11 – Chocolate Risotto with Poached Pears and Pistachio Cream

Jenn — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 23:00:51 +0000

I was so excited when it was announced that this month’s challenge was risotto! I guess it wasn’t really that much of a challenge for me because I make risotto a lot, but I decided to make it interesting by doing something I’ve never done before – a sweet dessert risotto. Fortunately risotto is naturally gluten free, so there were no modifications that had to be made on that end. Because one of the requirements for the risotto was to make our own stock in which we cooked the risotto, I decided to poach some pears and use a mixture of poaching syrup and milk as my “stock”. The risotto did not end up too sweet – I only used a cup of reduced poaching liquid because I did not want it sickly sweet – I also added on top some homemade pistachio cream. Yes, this portion serving was huge (I halved it in the recipe)! We split it for dinner, haha.

The mix ended up working out really well. I knew pears and chocolate went together well, and I knew that pistachios and chocolate went together well, but I had never had all three in the same dish before. I think the only thing that would have really improved upon this would have been to make the poaching syrup with honey rather than plain sugar – but maybe that would be introducing too many flavors into the dish, I’m not sure. This current result was quite tasty – I loved the contrast of the rich dark chocolate risotto with the light sweetness of the pears and the pistachio cream. It was a contrast not just in flavor but also texture, which made for a really great overall impression on the tongue.

I loved all of the room for creativity with this challenge – I think it is so neat when we are all given one technique and then just told to run with it and put our own personal twist on a dish. It’s so exciting to see how unique everyone’s creations really are! I would definitely make this dessert again, though probably in a smaller amount – I made way too much. When something is this tasty I don’t really mind though – but risotto, poached pears and pistachio cream is not something one can easily bring into work and give to your coworkers – it’s not like trying to transport muffins haha. So smaller batches are definitely better when it comes to risotto. I’ll let you decide accordingly how much you think you should make – but this dessert would definitely impress if you have company over!(...)
Read the rest of Daring Cooks #11 – Chocolate Risotto with Poached Pears and Pistachio Cream (354 words)

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White Bean and Tuna Dip

Jenn — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 09:58:02 +0000

Hummus isn’t the only bean dip out there. And while I love hummus, tahini is expensive and can be hard to find. I made this white bean and tuna dip to go with our “mezze” for this month’s Daring Kitchen challenge. I originally decided to create a white bean dip because I couldn’t find tahini at all (I have a couple candidates for shops now to look), but in the end I liked this a whole lot better than hummus anyways. This dip was incredibly inexpensive and quick to make – I definitely will be making this again, as I imagine it will be especially suitable for making pita bread sandwiches The flavor of the cannellini beans is much more mild than that of chickpeas, which I think lends them to combining with a greater diversity of flavors and tastes. And the tuna is not as overpowering as one might originally think. I am sure when I say tuna dip that you conjure in your mind some mayonnaise & tuna fish concoction that announces itself with its very powerful aroma to the entire world around you the instant you even think about taking it out for lunch, eliciting evil glares from your coworkers for stinking up the office. This dip is not like that. I think a better description for the tuna would be well-balanced. I wouldn’t say subtle, because one does not have to search for the flavor, but I will say well-balanced. Maybe the white beans help to mellow everything out. Either way, the entire blend is quite addicting – we had a bowl out for lunch with our pita bread, and over the next few hours the contents slowly disappeared. Suffice to say we didn’t need dinner that night

Ingredients:
4 cups white cannellini beans, canned (drained and rinsed) or already cooked
juice of 1/2 lemon
Extra virgin olive oil as needed (I didn’t need much, 1/2 c or so)
1/4 cup chopped sundried tomatoes (packed in olive oil)
1/2 cup canned tuna (200g)
your favorite italian herb blend
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
1. Add beans and lemon juice to a food processor, and pulse until all smooth and homogenized. If too thick, slowly pour in olive oil until the consistency is that of a scoopable dip.
2. Transfer dip from processor to a mixing bowl, and stir in sundried tomatoes, tuna, herbs, salt and pepper. Serve and enjoy!

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The Daring Cooks do Mezze – Pita Bread!

Jenn — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 23:03:01 +0000

What a challenge this month, and doubly so for me as I am still trying to get settled and find my way around! I had to do something completely different for the pita bread because of the gluten free (GF) thing. In bread, gluten manages to pull off several little miracles that one never notices until challenged to do without. Gluten holds bread together and when the yeast do their thing to leven the dough, the gluten keeps the air in the bread allowing it to develop crumb and puff so beautifully. Unfortunately, it’s not so simple as just substituting in one thing for flour, and quickly becomes a very complex process. Welcome to the world of gluten free recipe design!

So, following posted directions isn’t exactly an option when baking GF bread. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the chemistry of GF ingredients and how to create a method to alter recipes to work and still be gluten free friendly. I’ve developed an ever evolving set a guidelines that I use for adopting recipes, maybe they will help – I don’t claim to be an expert, but these are my current thought processes -

Replace the glutenicious flour with GF flours. As a principle I avoid premade flour mixes. What is great for one baked good is often not great for another. I actually get better results starting from scratch than using a store-bought mix.
1. First choose a starch to flour ratio. Depending on what I am making, this ranges from 1:2 to 1:5 starch:flour. Starches help thicken foods. They are also great for thickening sauces if you want to keep them clear, like a pie filling. For this bread, I chose to go with a lesser amount of starch. For a pasta, I would typically choose a higher amount, but keep in mind most starches are very soluble in water.
2. Pick your starch. According to Cook’s Thesaurus there are definite differences in their properties and suggested uses, and several tips for choosing the correct starch for your needs. Some people like to use a combination. Honestly when it comes to GF baking, between amaranth powder, cornstarch, tapioca, and potato starch, I haven’t noticed a huge difference in my practical experience.
3. Choose at least three GF flours for the flour component of your recipe. This will change depending on what you are trying to make, taste, etc. Amy of Simply Sugar and Gluten Free has an excellent series of posts about gluten free flour densities and suggestions for each. Make sure to mix all of your dry ingredients together well before adding wet ingredients. For these pitas, I chose amaranth, buckwheat, rice, and almond meal (much coarser than almond flour).
  - If making pasta or anything that is going into boiling water, be light on the rice flour. My experience is that it turns everything an icky grey and falls apart easily. I have no idea how people make Thai rice noodles. It is cheaper and worth my sanity just to buy rice noodles than to make them. Just be light on the rice flour anyways. Too much = not awesome dry and crumbly results.
  - In general, bean flours have a very strong taste, so make sure no more than 1/2 of your flour choice is from bean flours unless that is part of a traditional recipe (like in some Indian cuisine).
  - Look at the texture of your flours – if some aren’t very finely ground, you will want to add some finer softer flours with them. This characteristic often depends on the particular brand of flour used, so kinda has to be determined on a “case by case” basis.
Choose your gluten substitute or combination of substitutes.
1. Strong gelling agents – gelatin, or agar agar for the vegetarians and vegans, may have some promise. These are two ingredients I can readily get, and I am interested in playing with them more. Fruit pectin would also fall in this category. Apples are a great source of pectin, and I wonder how adding things like applesauce could affect the stabilization of GF baked goods too.
2. Gums – xanthan gum, guar gum, etc. I separated these from the list above because they are often used together and have similar effects on food. They are common food stabilizers, and can help serve to “glue” your dough/batter together. Don’t assume these will perfectly replace gluten, as they were not developed solely to be a gluten substitute. Xanthan and guar gum combined together have a synergistic “thickening” effect.
3. Eggs – eggs are great for acting as glue, and in fact are a component of many types of breads already. You may want to increase your egg amount in a recipe, or add one if none are called for. Though be careful, eggs count into your liquid ingredients, so by adding eggs you start changing some very particular ratios in your baked goods and may need to compensate accordingly.
Think about your leavening agents. In a fit of desperation you may just add a bunch of leavening agents together to hope that SOMETHING works to make you dough rise. I have done this. It didn’t work. Your leavening agent probably isn’t going to deviate too far from the original “glutenicious” recipe.
However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t help the “fluff” factor. If I use eggs, I often separate and beat the egg whites. I add the yolks with the rest of my wet ingredients, but then at the end I will fold in my foamy egg whites gently. Egg whites are often used to give a lighter airy feel to baked goods (think angel food cake!).
Adjust your other ingredients.
1. Some GF ingredients absorb water differently, or you may have already altered your ratio depending on if you changed the egg amount or not. If your dry ingredients are too hygroscopic – meaning they absorbed too much liquid and your ball of dough/batter is too dry, then you need to add some liquid to it. This may mean more water, milk, etc., or sometimes I like to replace granulated sugar with honey, maple syrup, molasses, or a juice.
2. If your batter ends up being too wet/sticky (keep in mind most gluten free doughs are stickier than their glutenicious counterparts even when at correct liquid/dry ratios), the easiest thing to do is be conservative with your liquid addition at the onset. Don’t just dump it all into your dry ingredients, but be cautious and see how the liquid is absorbed as you go. It’s generally easier to add more liquid to dough/batter than the other way around.
3. You may even want to play with the fats in your recipes. Butter and canola oil do very different things to the consistency of dough/batter for example. I have less experience in this area, but it’s another thing to think about.
4. Dry milk powder is another ingredient to consider for helping with texture /moisture of baked goods. I’ve only used it once, but those results were quite tasty.
Don’t overwork your dough. Kneading is essential to developing gluten in dough. But guess what? We don’t have any! Work dough enough to bring it together, but don’t overdo it. If you knead GF dough to death, you destroy any chance of air pockets that were going to be there. And then you will get a giant rock or cracker rather than something tasty.
Let your gluten free dough rest. I have NO idea why this is useful. It is pretty much already included in the “proofing” steps of making breads, but I find this also helpful with pasta dough, pizza dough, and pastries/pie crusts. Dough with high butter content (cookies, pie crust) tends to be easier to manipulate when colder, and with GF goods this tends to make a significant impact on the ease of working with the dough. If you are rolling dough out don’t work directly on the surface. Use silicone mat on bottom, plastic wrap on top. This keeps it from ripping apart when you transfer too.

Ok if you got through all that, congratulations!!!

This is by no means an exhaustive list. But this is all of what runs through my head every time I try to adapt a recipe to be gluten free. Also check out Shauna of Gluten Free Girl’s latest post on GF baking tips and the Daring Kitchen article posted by Natalie of Gluten a Go Go. Is this guide useful to you? Do you have anything else to add about adapting gluten free recipes?

So now you know a bit about why I chose the ingredients that I did for this pita bread. I have made gluten free pita bread before, and it was tasty, but it was not as soft than I would have liked. Using the guidelines above (I am a scientist, I need rules to follow) I altered my previous recipe a bit, and I must say this product is much better than my first go at it a few months ago. While it didn’t make pockets, it had a good flavor, the buckwheat wasn’t too strong, and it wasn’t grainy at all. The amaranth taste did come through a bit, and I liked it – a similar taste to quinoa I think, slightly nutty. We used the pita bread to make sandwiches. Sandwiches with tapenade, salami, spinach, and cheese. And it was one of the most satisfying lunches we have had in a while.

In order to stay with the “mezze” feel, we did have several small things plated out – homemade tapenade, homemade tuna & white bean dip, figs, and apples (tapenade and white bean dip posts coming soon!). Yeah, not really traditional. I would have made hummus, honest, but for the life of me I cannot find tahini or even plain sesame seeds to make my own. So instead, I made a fantastic white bean dip. In fact, I like I liked it better than traditional hummus. So in the end the whole meal worked out just fine, and it was even in “mezze” style – well the part after we devoured our sandwiches and then just voraciously ripped off pita and scooped up dip

Adapted from my adaption from Gluten Free Gobsmacked – hmm how many adaptions until a recipe becomes my own?

Ingredients:
2 tsp. yeast
1/2 c. warm water + plus about a tbs. more
2 tbsp. sugar
1 egg
2/3 c. amaranth (or quinoa) flour
1/3 c. buckwheat flour
1/3 c. rice flour
1/3 c. potato starch
1 tsp. gelatin
½ cup almond meal
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. olive oil

Directions:
1. Dissolve sugar in 1/2 c. warm water, and add yeast. Cover and set aside until foamy and doubled in size.
2. Meanwhile, mix together the rest of the dry ingredients in a large bowl.
3. In a small bowl, beat an egg with a fork until homogenized
4. Once yeast has activated, add the yeast and egg to the dry ingredients, pour in the olive oil, and mix thoroughly (I just used my hands).? If necessary, add in a little more warm water. It will be a sticky mess:

5. Let dough proof for an hour, covered with a damp towel in a warm area.
6. Next, shape your pitas. I used this recipe to make four pitas about 6″ in diameter. Break the dough apart into quarters and place ball of dough on a floured surface. With your hands, shape a pita about 1/4″ thick. Don’t make them too thin, they aren’t going to rise much when baked anyways.

7. Once all your pitas are made (ideally transferred to sheets of parchment paper), let them rise about 40 min. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 250C (about 475F). Mind you I did this in a toaster oven. I have no idea its temperature accuracy yet.
8. Bake each batch for 7-8 minutes or until golden brown, and then devour while still hot. Just be careful not to burn yourself! But really these are best eaten hot.

Blog checking lines: The 2010 February Daring COOKs challenge was hosted by Micheleof Veggie Num Nums. Michele chose to challenge everyone to make mezze based on various recipes from Claudia Roden, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Dugid.

Also submitted to – What can I eat that’s gluten free?

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DC #8 – “En Croute” Two Ways

Jenn — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 02:54:55 +0000

The 2009 Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Simone of Junglefrog Cooking. Simone chose Salmon en Croute (or alternative recipes for Beef Wellington or Vegetable en Croute) from Good Food Online.

Now this month was a serious challenge!! I had to do it twice to get something even remotely similar to the original intent, and even then it wasn’t perfect. The first en croute dish I made was beef wellington, and the 2nd attempt was a pastry-wrapped fish entree using sole (see pic above). En croute (OHN-CROOT) is a French term that pretty much means “something wrapped in pastry dough”. One of the great advantages of doing an en croute style entree is that the pastry helps to seal in the moisture and keep whatever you are roasting from drying out. On the surface, this was a fairly simple challenge – make a shortcrust pastry or get some puff pastry, wrap your entree, and bake it. Simple enough, until you remember that I need to accommodate my gluten free husband.

The first thing I did was to make a Beef Wellington (Gordon Ramsay Style). Even though the roast itself was superb, so many things went wrong with this from the start, it was just really depressing.

1. The butcher at the store totally mutilated my tenderloin roast when he cut it, which I didn’t realize til I got home and saw that my 1.5 lb. roast was in 3 separate pieces. I told him it was for a roast too. Who roasts their meat in little pieces? Uggh.

2. The guy at the deli counter sliced the prosciutto too thin and I couldn’t check til I got home – all the slices had holes in them (another thing I couldn’t see til I got home), so they didn’t lay nicely wrapped around the roast either, which probably didn’t help because the mushroom/mustardness wouldn’t stay in. I tried to fix this by using a lot more. Mmmm prosciutto.

3. I had originally toyed with the idea of just using the gluten free pie crust dough that I know works, but one reader had commented about avoiding soy flour and so I changed the ingredients. I used a mixture of millet, white rice and tapioca with butter and a bit of water, and the result was disastrous. The dough would not lift and mold well, so I more or less had to sculpt it onto the roast. It also didn’t stay together at all, as you can see by the texture and where it broke apart:

As you can see I skipped the crepe step, mainly because the recipe on Good Food didn’t use a crepe and I forgot to get the ingredients for it, so I thought I could get away with it. I don’t think it would’ve helped my failed pastry dough though. Whether it stuck to the roast or not, the pastry was still a total failure. Butter was also oozing out everywhere and dripping all over the oven making a smoky mess. This was probably the red flag telling me that this pastry was all wrong before it was done, but I can be oblivious sometimes…So after spending a good $45 on this meal for about 6 servings of food, I was pretty disappointed in myself that I totally ruined it. My mom couldn’t eat the pastry anyways because she is diabetic, so we all just ripped off the pastry and ate the roast.

As for the roast itself, it was DELICIOUS!! I LOVED the added flavor the prosciutto, mushrooms and mustard added. And considering that each beef wellington was a totally different size/shape because of the butcher’s crappy skills, I’m pretty proud of myself for estimating the correct time for each one to come out with a nice pink in the middle after letting it rest for about 10 min.

Forgive the pics of the beef wellington, I was in a rush and had crappy incandescent AND fluorescent mixed lighting….That whole post I just did before on taking your time? Yeah totally did not have that type of opportunity here. Not with a very hungry family waiting to enjoy delicious tenderloin roast! At this point I was just really depressed about how the pastry came out. Julia Child says you should never apologize for your food, but I couldn’t help but feel terrible for ruining this. I refuse to buy the store-bought puff pastry stuff, there has to be a way to make it from scratch. I guess that will teach me to experiment on a nice meal…..

But it did not keep me from giving up! This past weekend, I tried again with not perfect, but much improved results – to save money I used only ingredients I had around the house, and so did a rendition of the salmon en croute recipe rather than the beef wellington, using filet of sole that I had in the freezer, and an orange and parsley buttered “pesto” of sorts. Sole is a nice lighter fish with a very mild taste, which is more agreeable than salmon for the members of my family anyways. The new and revised dough still had a few issues but it was lighter and flakier, and did not slide off of the entree. Yay! Ha at this point, I’ll take it. Everyone loved the fish, and thought it was delicious. I am a big fan of citrus with seafood, and combining it with the brightly flavored parsley worked really well.

Developing a gluten free recipe when you have very little starting guidelines as to how to adapt it for the gluten free diet is really tough. I applaud all of you who can create your own gluten free recipes, I really do. Y’all deserve a crazy amount of respect for coming up with a gluten free recipe that even remotely resembles the original.

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Daring Cook’s Challenge #7 – Sushi

Jenn — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 04:00:12 +0000

Mmm one of my favorite foods! The November 2009 Daring Cooks challenge was brought to you by Audax of Audax Artifex and Rose of The Bite Me Kitchen. They chose sushi as the challenge. I was so excited when sushi was picked for this month’s Daring Cook’s challenge, even though I waited until last week to make it. I have made sushi before, but desperately needed some practice working on my sushi rolling skills!

There were 4 parts to this challenge (full details can be seen on Audax’s post):
1. Correctly make the sushi rice
2. Make a dragon roll
3. Make a nigiri roll
4. Make a decorative or spiral roll.

Contrary to popular opinion, sushi does not mean raw fish. Sushi actually refers to the vinegared rice that is used. Raw fish on its own is called sashimi, and raw fish on rice is one way to make sushi. I chose to use a short grain brown rice for all of my sushi. I had a sushi party with my sister and some friends last weekend and made the daring cook’s sushi challenge for it. It’s great when you can share food and fun times with others – everyone had a blast!

Let’s start with my favorite part of any meal, the dessert lol. The sushi roll you see above is my “dessert spiral roll”, consisting of lychee, mango and pomegranate. I love lychees. My first experience with them was in Chinatown in Washington D.C. a few years ago. I just love their fresh cool flavor, kind of like a flowery grape sort of taste is the best I can come up with to articulate their flavor. I loved the combination of fruits, and any excuse to use pomegranate now that it’s in season is totally valid, but unfortunately they were so wet that the roll did not hold together well (the photo above is actually of half the roll, before attempting to cut the rest of the slices). So instead, we ended up eating the rice and fruit anyways, which Audax (the Daring Cook’s co-host this month) informed me is called chirashi, or scattered, sushi. My sister had never eaten a lychee before and was a bit tentative due to their odd squishy texture (which makes them great for making creepy eyeballs for Halloween), but once she did get up the nerve to try it agreed that she liked the flavor. So if you have never had a lychee before, be brave! It’s delicious and you will wonder how you’ve ever managed to live without enjoying this succulent fruit!

The other two rolls were for the actual dinner, and I had a bit more success with them because they were more traditional as far as sushi goes. Nigiri is a type of sushi where little balls of rice are hand-shaped and then a topping is placed on top of the rice. Given that I don’t really live in a location where I have access to same day catch sushi grade fish from locations outside of the N. Atlantic (where many fisheries are seriously depleted), I opted not to use any raw fish in my sushi selections. I think this went over better with the crowd anyways. So for the nigiri sushi, I chose to use smoked salmon (wild-caught alaskan). I shaped the rice, and then placed on top cream cheese, salmon, and a cucumber slice, all tied together with a strip of nori (seaweed). This was by far the star of the night! Everyone loved the lox nigiri rolls.

My third roll was the dragon roll. For this, one needs to roll an inside out roll and then cover the top with avocado (or seafood) and present it snaking across like a dragon. For this, I marinated some chicken tenderloins using a Korean BBQ marinade recipe (Epicurious) and then just cooked it in a frying pan. Also in my roll went some cucumber, carrot, and pickled daikon. Rolling this wasn’t that hard, it just took some forethought – like remember to cover your sushi mat with some seran wrap so that the rice doesn’t stick and of course don’t overstuff the sushi (a chronic issue I have when making sushi). Once rolled, the outside was sprinkled with sesame seeds and avocado slices went on top.

For dipping, I made a mixture of tamari and sesame oil, and I also brought some sirachia with me. In the end, we all put a dollop of srirachia (hot chili sauce) on our plate like one would ketchup, and just dipped the sushi in the sirachia, haha. Not really traditional, but then neither was my sushi

One tip that I found very useful is this – when cutting the rolls, clean and wipe down your very sharp knife after every slice. If you have a particularly fat sushi roll, it may take 2-3 slicings with the knife before you can cut all the way though. Just be patient and you will have nice clean cuts on each sushi slice.

Wow what a lot of fun “challenge sushi” was! Can’t wait to see what next month’s challenge will be!

What happened to the RSS? Yes, unfortunately we had to switch to partial feeds - but it's just one short click to see the recipe!

DC #6 Bonus Dessert Challenge – Fried Apple Cinnamon Cheesecake Pillows

Jenn — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 04:00:15 +0000

The October 2009 Daring Cooks’ challenge was brought to us by Jaden of the blog Steamy Kitchen. The recipes are from her new cookbook, The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook.

I actually made this challenge before I made the actual October challenge, because I was so excited about making dessert wontons! The original recipe was for deep-fried chocolate wontons from her new book, but upon reading “*Note: This second dessert challenge is about being creative with filling and form. Knock yourselves out!”, I decided to take this advice and run with it, haha. So instead of chocolate, I wanted something that reflected the coming Autumn a bit, and this idea developed into “apple cinnamon cheesecake”. There are two fillings together in this wonton, an apple pie filling of sorts, and a no-bake vanilla and cinnamon cheesecake. In order to be gluten free the wontons were made from rice paper spring roll wrappers. After my last issues w/ gluten free wonton-like recipes, I went ahead and purchased spring roll wrappers. They were much thinner and more uniform than I’d ever be able to do by hand anyways, and there were enough other parts to this dessert it didn’t seem like too much of a cop-out to me. They were then deep-fried in canola oil and immediately doused with cinnamon sugar, and then served topped with a homemade maple & caramel sauce. It seems quite complicated (and it was!), but the end result was perfection.

My husband described them best when he first tasted one – he loved how the tastes came in various stages and levels. First came the cinnamon sugar and caramel from the outside, and the apple, and slowly the creamy cheesecake flavors. They all developed slowly in the mouth and then finally came together at the end. Pretty cool!

If you want to make something that will wow all of those who try it, this is definitely the dessert to make!

Printer Friendly Recipe

Ingredients:
For the apple pie filling:
2 apples, diced
2 tbs. butter, cubed
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
For the cheesecake filling:
8 oz. cream cheese
3/4 cup of sweetened condensed milk
1/4 vanilla bean
pinch cinnamon
For the wontons:
rice paper spring roll wrappers (at least 4″ diameter)
bowl of water
canola oil (for frying)
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup cinnamon
For the caramel sauce:
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup butter, cubed
3 tbs. of sweetened condensed milk
1/4 cup maple syrup

Directions:
1. Make the cheesecake filling – Soften the cream cheese with a hand mixer, then beat in the sweetened condensed milk. Scrape out vanilla seeds from the bean and add to the mixture, along with cinnamon. Beat until all incorporated, and then set in the fridge for at least 2 hrs.
2. Make the apple pie filling – While that is chilling, make the apple pie filling. Add apples to a small pot, and heat on medium until things start to brown. Stir in the butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon, and cook, stirring every couple of minutes, until the apples are softened. Then keep heating, stirring every few minutes, until most of the liquid is gone.
3. Make the caramel sauce – This recipe is adapted from Chef Ramsay’s recipe that I made a couple weeks ago. Keep the heat on medium low, and melt the sugar in a pot. Once melted, stir frequently and let brown to the color of caramel that you desire. Immediately remove from heat, and whisk in butter until incorporated, then whisk in sweetened condensed milk and maple syrup. Keep whisking until smooth and homogenized. Put back on the heat and let it come to a boil again before setting aside.
4. Assembling the wontons – Take a spring roll wrapper and moisten on both sides by dipping your fingers in water and then manually moistening the wrappers. It may take a few tries to find the right amount of water to use, so that the wrappers are pliable without tearing but not too gummy. I suggest practicing a few times before adding filling. Then spoon in the center the cheesecake filling, and then top with the apple pie filling:

To roll the wrappers, fold opposite sides over to the middle, then fold the perpendicular sides in. You may want to moisten the back just slightly to make sure it is all together. You should have a nice rectangular sized packet filled with apple cinnamon cheesecake goodness, and I laid mine all down folded sides on the bottom:

5. Deep frying – fill a pot with at least 2″ of oil, and use a thermometer attached to your pot to keep track of the temperature. You want the temp to be between 340F and 350F. Deep frying can take a bit of watching, so I did these one at a time. If you are more coordinated and feel you can do more than one at a time, then go for it. While the oil is heating up, mix cinnamon and sugar together in a small bowl. The biggest thing to watch for is to make sure you keep the folded side up while it is frying for the first 30 s. What I found is if the folded side is down, then the steam from the filling will cause huge air pockets to form on the top which will then burst the wontons open causing your delicious filling to splatter everywhere and you to get sprayed with very hot oil. Not a good situation. So I used my slotted spatula to keep it folded side up (very gently!!) until I was sure it wasn’t going to burst open. After about a minute or so, I flipped it over to brown the other side, and then after another minute (or if I noticed the wonton had broken and filling was starting to come out – which is very obvious by all the sudden loud splattering bubbles that occurs), I scooped it out with the slotted spatula and immediately laid it in the cinnamon sugar. Spoon cinnamon sugar over the wontons, and then set aside to cool.
6. To serve - Slice an apple and display on a plate. Arrange 2 – 3 wonton pillows, and drizzle with caramel sauce. Enjoy!

What happened to the RSS? Yes, unfortunately we had to switch to partial feeds - but it's just one short click to see the recipe!

DC#6: Pho Ga – Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup

Jenn — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 03:59:58 +0000

The October 2009 Daring Cooks’ challenge was brought to us by Jaden of the blog Steamy Kitchen. The recipes are from her new cookbook, The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook. I was so excited to hear that Jaden was hosting this month’s challenge, I instantly became a fan of hers after making a fantastic super easy three cheese soufflé a couple weeks ago that came out awesome. She presented to us not one, but two awesome challenges for this month. The first was this one – pho ga, or Vietnamese chicken noodle soup. This was my first venture into Vietnamese cuisine, and I instantly realized how sad a thing it is that I have waited this long to make Vietnamese food.

The recipe for pho ga was pretty straightforward, but a few twists were added for the Daring Cooks’ challenge. Most DC challenges offer a lot of room for freedom and creativity, however this recipe was very specific. Even the spices had to be followed to the letter. The one technique that was absolutely required that was not explicitly a part of this recipe though was toasting the spices. I LOVED the spices in this broth. The star anise, cloves, and coriander, once toasted, offered a fragrant warmth and complexity to the broth in a combination my taste buds had not embraced before. Toasting was actually pretty easy – all that is needed is to heat spices on a hot pan for a few minutes until they brown and become fragrant.

I really think that the key to this broth is the slow simmering of the broth with the chicken, toasted spices, and char-broiled ginger and onion. The combination is just heavenly. A little bit of sugar (or diabetic friendly erythritol) and the broth is perfect. I did make a few changes – I used chicken broth rather than water, subbed the hoisin sauce in order to be gluten free, and also used fennel with the veggies for the soup. I thought the fennel would be a great addition given the licorice flavor that would match the star anise well. I also just added the rice noodles directly to the broth rather than cook them separately, that way they could absorb some of the broth flavors – to be diabetic friendly, my mom just did not eat any of the noodles, which was easy enough to do.

Overall, the dish was a great success!

What happened to the RSS? Yes, unfortunately we had to switch to partial feeds - but it's just one short click to see the recipe!