Kitchen Witchery - And Other Nonsense

A cooking record, proto-menu, and catchall for the stuff that falls out of my food-addled brain.

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Torte report

Hi, it's Nettle, here for a guest appearance! This weekend, I decided to make a flourless chocolate torte. Since wheat flour and I aren't friends, it makes sense to learn to make a cake-like dessert that doesn't scream "special diet food!" I started here: http://www.joyofbaking.com/ChocolateAlmondTorte.html , with a promising-looking recipe, but of course I'm not actually capable of following a recipe. I use recipes as general inspirational guide but for some reason I can't actually do as I'm told. Here's what I actually did:

2 eggs, separated

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup hazelnut meal

1/2 cup chocolate chips

5 tbsps butter

A few big scoops of mascarpone (this is optional)

Melt butter and chocolate together in a double boiler. Beat 1/4 cup sugar into egg yolks and add almond meal and melted chocolate and butter. Set aside. In another bowl, whip the other 1/4 sugar with egg whites until stiff peaks form. Fold egg whites into batter mixture. Pour into pie pan. Dab with mascarpone and swirl in using a sharp knife.

Bake at 350 for 40 minutes. Cool before serving.

I used hazelnuts instead of almonds because I found that I had just enough hazelnuts on hand for this, and it seemed like a good opportunity to use them up. They have a stronger flavor than almonds - I think this would work just fine with almonds as well, though the taste would be different of course. It reminds me of a Nutella brownie, both in flavor and texture. As usual with nut meal baked goods, it lacks some of the structural integrity you'd get with a grain-based flour and has a slightly mealy texture, but it still holds together well enough to slice and lift out of the pan in neat triangles. It might be better done in a cake or tart pan, but all I had available was a pie plate.

Next time I'm going to try more chocolate - I feel like the hazelnut flavor is a little overwhelming to the chocolate, which is a surprise. I thought it would be the other way around. I think more chocolate would also make it a little denser and gooier, which would be a good thing. The mascarpone was a nice touch but not at all necessary. and it really cries out for some whipped cream or vanilla ice cream on top. So, a mostly successful experiment! If anyone else tries this or some variation on it, please let me know what you did and how it came out.


Friday, February 26, 2010




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Buck's Fizz


Adapted from The Essential Cocktail by Dale DeGroff

Serious Eats, adapted from The Essential Cocktail by Dale DeGroff

By: Paul Clarke

Ingredients:


  • 2 ounces fresh-squeezed orange juice

  • Splash of gin

  • Splash of Cherry Heering

  • 3 ounces chilled Champagne


Directions:


  1. Combine orange juice, gin and Cherry Heering in a mixing glass, fill with ice and stir to chill.

  2. Strain into a champagne flute and top with chilled Champagne.

  3. Garnish with a spiral-cut piece of orange peel.


Thursday, February 25, 2010

testing NoshBot :)




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Avgolemono


Lemon-chicken-rice soup that is thickened and made creamy with beaten egg. I wasn't sure I'd like this, but it turns out that it's one of those recipes that is really quick, delicious, and often requested.

This is probably going to be a frustrating recipe for people who like precision, because there are many different variables you can use. I suspect you can cook, if you're reading cooking blogs for fun. ^_^ I trust you to modify the heck out of this to suit your needs.

I've linked to the recipe I learned when I first discovered avgolemono existed. I have modified it for my own purposes for when I didn't have all the things that were called for.

epicurious

By: azzurri

Ingredients:


  • 1 whole fryer chicken, cut up into pieces

  • -or-

  • 3 chicken breasts

  • -or-

  • 8 bone-in chicken thighs

  • the juice of 3 lemons

  • 3 eggs

  • 2 cups of rice

  • 1 to 1 1/2 quarts of chicken broth

  • 1 tsp salt

  • water


Equipment:


  • spider or slotted spoon

  • large pot/dutch oven with lid

  • measuring cups

  • knife

  • cutting board

  • landing space for chicken to cool/sit after cutting

  • ladle

  • whisk

  • bowl to temper in


Directions:


  1. Remove the skin and excess fat from your chicken bits, and place them in the bottom of your large pot.

  2. Add water until the chicken is covered by at least an inch to an inch and a half of water

  3. Add the salt, and set the pot over high heat until it comes to a boil. When boiling, reduce the heat to a simmer and let cook for 40 minutes. Cover, and skim occasionally.

  4. Using the slotted spoon or the spider, remove the chicken to cool, and put the 2 cups of rice in the water. You may need to add more liquid at this time, I would use the chicken broth, perhaps a cup or two.

  5. Check the liquid level on the rice occasionally - you may need to add more broth depending on the rice you use, the humidity of the day, the price of tea in Asia.

  6. When the rice is cooked to your liking (I like mine almost over-done) start disassembling your chicken into bite-sized pieces.

  7. Put the eggs into the tempering bowl and whisk vigorously. When it looks fairly homogeneous and is starting the get some bubbles in it, add the lemon juice and whisk vigorously again.

  8. Using your ladle, slowly drizzle the hot chicken/rice broth into the egg mixture, whisking the whole time. Add two more ladles

  9. Add your bite sized chicken pieces, taste for seasoning and serve


Monday, November 17, 2008

Don't look at me!

Go look at this instead!

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

tagged, eh?

I haven't done much cooking the last couple of months, not the inspired kind, at least. It seems that sculpting and inspired cooking drain the same brain battery, and after I've finished a head, hands, and feet, I really don't care what we eat and could be perfectly happy with chex mix. :p

So, good news, sculpting going well, bad news, nothing to really write about on the food front. I'm already kinda sorta planning menus for the NewYearStravaGanzaWeen that involve no wheat, no dairy, and no fatty or excessively spicy foods that don't keep me in the kitchen all day, but other than that, nothing really going. (Braised short ribs with mashed potatoes and celeriac, a bitter green salad a la Anne Burrell, so far.)

So Nettle tagged me with the "Six Random Things" meme, and hers were terribly interesting. I'm looking forward to Maebius' also. It was neat to go back and read Mahud's six things, too, even though I don't know the fellow. :) I have a problem in that I don't know 6 people well enough to tag them, unfortunately. Nettle and Maebius are the two bloggers I would call upon, so... that's kind of out. I'll do the bits I can, though.

The Six Random Things meme
  1. Link to the person who tagged you.
  2. Post the rules on your blog.
  3. Write six random things about yourself.
  4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
  5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
  6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.
1. I like hands. I think you can read a lot about a person in their hands, and I don't mean palm reading. People don't think about their hands, except when they don't know what to do with them, so it's fun to see the mood of the person inside, behind the social masks.

2. I'm mostly a genuinely happy person. When you get down to it, life is hard, but good. I love my husband, my son, my friends, and they love me back. It really bugs some of the people around me, so I try and keep it in check, but I'm optimistic about the way things are going. Every bad thing is a lesson or a test to help us get better and grow and learn more... even if it isn't. The way I think of it, you can either get angry and bitter about it, or you can learn and grow from it. I like option 2. :)

3. I have 3 cats and 1 dog. The rule of how not to have more cats (for us) is you can have as many cats in the house as there are laps. After that, you stop having the ability to properly care for the animals, and it's not fair to them or you. It's the only thing that saves me from having a menagerie of epic proportions. The only possible exception is that if you live alone. Then you can have 2 cats, so they don't get bored and into mischief during the day.

4. I really REALLY love video games. As far as media goes, books are first, but video games are a crazy close second, followed by podcasts/blogs, radio, and tv. I've been playing Fallout 3 for the last.. week? 2 weeks? and it's honestly phenomenal. I like games that have a pervasive story, and Bethesda Studios are great for that. It's like *being* inside a book. For a while, I'm a ranger in a post-apocalyptic alternate reality whose problems are simple and only have 2 or 3 solutions. What I like about this game so far is that how you choose your solutions changes the story. I'm actively avoiding the ending, because I don't want it to end. :p

5. (I'm stealing this one.) My surname is Irish, and means "the small fierce ones". So my full name means "the noble, bright, small, fierce one." Heh. It always sounds ever so much better that way. Rarrr.

6. I think Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me is probably the funniest show evar. Period. End of story. I love it. I hate riding in the car, and I reward myself by saving up the wait waits and putting them on my iPod to play for the ride. I can get through 3 on the way to my mom's, and 2 and a half on the way to my mother-in-law's, and 5 on the way north.

PS - random bonus fact? Horror movies still give me nightmares for weeks. I never grew out of that.

I wish Meme had a blog so I could hear his... Hey, Meme, answer with your random things in the comments!

Thursday, July 10, 2008

*coughcoughHAAAACKcough*

Summertime cold... I'm not cooking because everything is snot flavored anyway right now. I can not recommend it as a flavor sensation.

Back soon.

Sunday, July 06, 2008

Meatstravaganza, day three

This is the last or second-to-last post of this round of the Meatstravaganza. Here's where we get to the actual cookery part.

Here's my grill/smoker combination. I really like it a whole lot because it's got that little smoker box on the side that looks like a mini-grill, and can be used as one if you need the real estate. There are lots of other smokers/smoking rigs out there, including some spiffy home made ones. They might have very different settings/controls/variables than mine, so your mileage may vary.

This post is going to be a little disorganized, and I might try to summarize it all in the final post in a more polished form, so bear with me. I'm going to lay out my rough method for you, tell you what tools I find absolutely necessary, and show you the pictures along the way.


Here's how I'm going to have it set up. Fire 1 is going to be larger than Fire 2, because it's going to be in the offset smoker box, and I don't have to worry about it applying direct heat to the rib racks. That's also why Fire 2 is set off on the other side of the grill, as far over as I can manage it. I was finding that without the additional fire, I wasn't able to maintain the 200-225 degree Fahrenheit temperature I was going for. The best way I've found to get smoke is to use a smoke box and place it directly into Fire 1. I've tried using another smoke box (and once just a water bath) in Fire 2, but I found it gave too much smoke and/or unnecessary moisture. The metal rack holding the racks of ribs will be on the grill grates, towards the opening from the smoker box into the main grill.


I need to have everything laid out in a helen-logical pattern. So, Here I have -
  • a kitchen timer, set (for me) to 20 minutes.
  • the soaking wood chips (Weber firespice mesquite wood chips in this case. They seem to almost shred the wood for good water absorption and smoke production.)
  • an extra bag of wood chips. (not pictured here.)
  • a jug of water to soak more wood, and for emergency temperature control.
  • a smoke box
  • 2 chimney starters, in my case one smaller than the other.
  • standard charcoal briquettes, and some canola drizzled newspaper for the chimney starters.
  • source of fire - fireplace matches, lighter, plain old matches
  • a pair of long welding gloves.
  • 2 pairs of tongs
  • some nice fluffy kitchen towels
  • heavy duty aluminum foil
  • hotel/half sheet/cookie sheet pans
  • your braising liquid for the end parts - i used apple juice, plus a good pour of Stubbs original and Stubbs spicy bbq sauce, and some apple cider vinegar, too.
  • eventually, an oven set to 300 degrees.
  • A fire extinguisher.

Here's my matchsafe, jug of water, chips soaking, one of the tongs sets, and the bag of chips for identification.


Here's the smoke box filled with the soaked wood chips. I tend to get a little water in there too, because I'm sloppy, but be careful - you can warp the box. This is the box that goes directly onto Fire 1.




This is the picture of the end of the smoking follies. When I tried to get photos during the cooking, all you saw was smoke and some vaguely metallic outlines. Every 20 minutes, I come out, check the temperature on the box, add coal, dump the used smoke wood into the fire, and add new soaked smoke wood. I have occasionally tossed a small handful of the soaked wood on Fire 2 with an extra briquette, but I can't tell you if it really helped all that much.


Here's part of the smoking process. The ribs are well placed, there's a little fire down to the left, and the bigger fire off to the right. The smoke blows through the hole in the side of the smoker, and wafts over the meat before escaping out through the chimney. You can control heat and smoke somewhat by how open your chinmey is, and the air vents next to the coals.

Right now, this is the color we're going for. This has been in the smoke for about an hour and a half to two hours. Some recipes require they stay in the smoke for 6-8 hours, but probably because I'm not doing something right, when I do that, they turn out more black and crusty on the outside than the beautiful browny succulence you see here. This is when you get your cookie sheets and tin foil at the ready.

  • one cookie sheet out, a rib-rack-enclosing sized piece of tin foil on it.
  • your braising liquid
  • the other cookie sheet, laid slightly off to the side to receive the wrapped ribs.
  • big ass tongs, sturdy ones are best
  • you might need the welding gloves.

My lovely assistant pulling the last rib rack off to the staging area.


There's the bad boy in question. Damn tasty looking, even if I do say so myself! Fold the long sides of the foil up so that they meet in the middle, and roll them down lightly. Roll up the tail end, but open up the other end, and pour in some of your braising liquid. Tilt it back and forth to get good distribution, then seal the open end, and move your rack to the 'done' sheet pan. Lather, rinse, repeat, until you have all your racks swaddled in foil with a glug of the braising liquid.

Move them to a 300 degree fahrenheit oven. Ignore them for at least an hour, then go in, unpeel one end of a rib rack, and use a paper towel to grab a hot bone in the middle of the rack. Wiggle it. Does it pop out of it's socket? they're done, almost overdone. Does it wiggle just a little bit? Done if not real close to done. If the whole chunk of meat wiggles, wrap it back up and ignore it for another hour. By this time, the smells should be making that hard.

When you get the doneness you like, make a V of the foil packets (using your handy welder's gloves) and cut notches in the foil so the juice drains out into a small saucepan. When you've got it from all the rack's you're doing today, set that saucepan to simmer and reduce. It makes a nice glaze for the ribs. Meanwhile, you can start your plating options. Cut them into 2s, 1s, 5s, however you like, pile then back on their tinfoil, and cover with a clean tea towel. When your glaze is done the way you like it, spoon it over the ribs, toss them loosely with your hands, and serve!


This was the only picture I got of the plated ribs because they were instantly devoured when I set them out.

As a serious hobbyist, I think this is the best I've done so far. I'll list the rub, brine, cut of meat, any saucy additions, and any questions you guys might have for me in the next post.

I hope you all sleep well!- I sure as hell will.