Starting my own starter, Day 1

Posted on October 7, 2011 by Trista

A few days ago, I ran across this and immediately became captivated by the bagels on the cover. I wanted them now. Not tonight, not tomorrow, but now. Unfortunately, Scratch Baking Co. is in Maine, and I am in Idaho. So I did the next best thing and ordered the publication and teased Bryan about the delicious bagels I was going to make and not share with him.

He didn’t think that was nearly as funny as I did.

When I received the publication and read the actual bagel recipe, I realized that it calls for a sourdough starter which I do not have, nor could I find one nearby that somebody would sell me. I thought about putting up a Craigslist posting, but can you imagine the kind of responses I’d get?

Over the past few years, I’ve thought about starting my own sourdough starter, but it just seemed like so much work. You had to mix flour and water together and then let it sit, then add more flour and water and let it sit some more. Geez, that makes me tired just thinking about it. And then there were all the things I would make with my super duper sourdough starter. I certainly didn’t want to eat all those breads and pancakes and things, and it is so much work giving them to other people to eat. I haven’t even turned on my oven and I’m already exhausted.

Well, to make a long story short, I’ve started my own starter. Twice, actually. After doing some reading and internet research, I settled on Peter Reinhart’s seed starter from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. I mixed rye flour with water, blessed it, left it on the counter covered with plastic wrap and went to bed.

Then next morning, I decided to do a little more research and came across a two-year-old posting talking about all the problems people have had with this seed starter. It gets a little technical, but I think it boils down to the fact that the rye/water mixture is not acidic enough for the good kind of yeast, so not-so-good bacteria take over and make it smell like puke for a few days. In the end, the yeast will triumph and all will be well. The solution, according to this thread, is to use pineapple juice instead of water. Because the pineapple juice is acidic, it creates a better environment for the yeasty guys than for the bacteria.

Not really having a clue as to what I’m doing but knowing I don’t like the smell of puke, I decided to throw out my first starter and start again. This time, I made two starters by mixing two tablespoons of rye flour with two tablespoons of unsweetened pineapple juice for each starter. My plan is to make a whole wheat starter and a white flour starter. What can I say? I go both ways.

In addition to using that posting as a guide, I’m also using this post. Between the two, I think I can get this figured out. And hopefully, in a few weeks, I’ll finally be able to satisfy my bagel cravings. Thanks a lot Scratch Baking Co. I hope you are happy!

Here's the two starters on day 1. Not much to look at.

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Queen City Cayenne Ice Cream

Posted on October 6, 2011 by Trista

Currently cooking out of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home by Jeni Britton Bauer

Here’s another variation on chocolate ice cream; a twist on Mexican chocolate with cinnamon and a dash of cayenne pepper (the ice cream is named after Cincinnati, The Queen City, and how they like to put a hint of chocolate, cinnamon and cayenne in their chili). You don’t really taste the cayenne, instead you get a sort of tingle in the back of your throat. You do, however, taste the cinnamon and chocolate, and it is good. Don’t like the cayenne idea? Leave it out, and you’ll still have some really great ice cream.

This recipe starts off by making a chocolate paste of cocoa powder, bittersweet chocolate, water and sugar. This gets whisked into the cream cheese and set aside. The rest of the recipe is the same as the other ice creams. A cornstarch slurry is whisked into a boiling mixture of milk, sugar, cream and corn syrup. This then gets whisked into the chocolate/cream cheese mixture. Finally, the cinnamon and cayenne is stirred in. Chill and churn the base, and you’ll be ready to chow down.

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Beef Stroganoff

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Trista

Currently cooking out of Slow Cooker Revolution by America’s Test Kitchen

If I spy a beef stroganoff recipe in a slow cooker cookbook, there’s a good chance I’m going to try it. I have a thing about beef stroganoff; I love it and have been looking for The Best recipe for years. Somehow, this recipe in this cookbook slipped below my radar. Until now. And I can confidently say, that while I don’t think this is The Best recipe, it is pretty good.

I didn’t take any pictures because a. I was lazy, b. it looked pretty brown and boring and c. I was lazy.

You start off by sauteing white mushrooms until they give up all their liquid and start browning. The mushrooms get transferred to the slow cooker, and onions, tomato paste, garlic, dried porcini mushrooms and thyme take a turn in the saute pan. Once everything is soft and starting to turn brown, you whisk in some flour, then chicken broth. This mixture gets moved to the slow cooker where it and the mushrooms are joined by wine, soy sauce, bay leaves and chunks of beef. Everything cooks, on low, for 9 to 11 hours, or until the beef is tender. Right before serving, sour cream and Dijon mustard are stirred into the slow cooker (and dill, if you have it, which I didn’t).

I really liked this dish. The beef was tender and flavorful, and the addition of the sour cream and mustard gave the stroganoff a bright flavor that wasn’t dulled by hours of cooking. I served this over spaghetti (because I didn’t have egg noodles, and all I’ve heard from Bryan since then is that stroganoff has to have egg noodles. Bah!), rice and rotelli pasta. They were all good, despite Bryan’s grumblings. I especially liked the stroganoff over rice since the stroganoff is a little liquidy and the rice soaked all that up.

The only change I would make is to increase the amount of mushrooms in the recipe. It calls for 1 1/2 pounds, and I think I’d go with two pounds. The mushrooms kind of disappeared.

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What’s cooking in my kitchen

Posted on September 29, 2011 by Trista

Here’s what I’ve been cooking and we’ve been eating over the past few weeks.

Key Lime Pears from Michael Recchiuti’s cookbook Chocolate Obsession. I’ve been making these for Christmas for the past few years, and it’s my go-to recipe when I have an excess of pears. My friend Missy gifted me with a box (a BIG box) of the fruit last week, and I’ve been struggling to use them all before they go bad. I’ve lost count of how many batches of these key lime pears I’ve made, but we keep eating them faster than I can make them. You take green, very firm pears and slice them thinly, then soak the pear slices in a key lime sugar syrup. The pear slices are then baked (I use a rack set over a cookie sheet, but Recchiuti just lays them on a silpat-covered cookie sheet) until crisp. Recchiuti dips them in chocolate, but I prefer them plain. I think the chocolate overwhelms the pear/key lime flavor.

Pear Bread from Bake or Break. When the pears got too ripe for key lime pears, I decided to give pear bread a try. This is like zucchini bread, except with pears. There are lots of pear bread recipes floating around, and the only reason I picked this one was because I had all the ingredients on hand. I made a few changes. First I substituted brown sugar for half of the sugar, and I added about 1/2 teaspoon of freshly ground nutmeg. Finally, I left out the nuts because I didn’t have any. I ended up with two loaves of fragrant, sweet, dense quick bread. I didn’t really taste pears, unfortunately. I’m going to keep playing with this recipe, especially as my pears continue to ripen.

Corn with Tons of Herbs from Dana Treat. One night I was looking for a side dish to serve with dinner, and I remembered reading about this dish. Corn sauteed with butter, shallots and a ton of herbs, basil and cilantro in my case. Use the best corn you can and fresh herbs only, please. I liked the basil here, but not the cilantro. Thyme would be lovely as would dill.

Cherry Tomato Orzo Salad from Simply Recipes. We’ve been living off of this salad for the past few months, and every time I make it, I make it a little bit different. I’ve moved away from orzo and now use macaroni pasta; its a little more substantial. I also like this with parmesan instead of feta, and I don’t limit myself to just cucumbers and green onions. Any veggies I have languishing in the fridge tend to make their way into this salad. I especially like bell peppers, frozen peas and avocados.

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Bangkok Peanut Ice Cream

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Trista

Currently cooking out of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home by Jeni Britton Bauer

This is one of the strangest peanut butter ice creams I’ve ever tasted. And I don’t mean that at all negatively. This ice cream has a lot going on, other than peanut butter. For example, there is the coconut milk and the toasted coconut. And let’s not forget about the cayenne pepper and the honey. See? Strange.

The ice cream starts out by boiling milk, cream, unsweetened coconut milk, sugar, corn syrup and honey. Then you add the cornstarch slurry and boil until the mixture is slightly thickened. Finally, you whisk in natural-style peanut butter, cream cheese, unsweetened, toasted coconut and a bit of cayenne pepper. The mixture is chilled, then churned.

The ice cream is very, very thick, almost chewy. It isn’t overwhelmingly peanut buttery, but strikes a nice balance between the peanut butter and the coconut flavors. The shreds of toasted coconut mean this isn’t the smoothest ice cream I’ve tried, but I liked the texture. I used a medium shredded coconut, and I think it was the perfect size. Large coconut flakes would be too intrusive. The recipe calls for 1/8 teaspoon of cayenne pepper; I used a couple of sprinkles. Other than a very slight tickle at the back of your throat, you’d never guess that this ice cream had cayenne pepper in it. Next time, I’ll up the cayenne to about 1/16 of a teaspoon because I think the coldness dulls the pepper. Don’t like cayenne pepper? Leave it out.

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The Milkiest Chocolate Ice Cream in the World

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Trista

Currently cooking out of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home by Jeni Britton Bauer

This ice cream is like eating frozen chocolate pudding. How can that be bad?

Ms. Bauer is making a liar out of me. First it was the salty caramel ice cream that was one of the best ice creams I’ve ever made or eaten. Then the darkest chocolate ice cream in the world took that title. Now I have to consider that this ice cream is perhaps the best ice cream I’ve ever made or eaten. And I don’t even really like milk chocolate. What’s next? The whitest chocolate ice cream in the world? Actually, if it comes out of this book, I might consider trying it.

This recipe is a bit of a departure. There’s no cream cheese in this recipe; evaporated milk provides the proteins and body. And did you know that evaporated milk (not sweetened, condensed milk – you don’t want to mix those two up) mixed with chocolate is divine? This ice cream is smooth and pleasingly chocolatey. It is sweeter than the other chocolate ice cream I’ve made, like a kid’s version of chocolate versus an adult’s. It makes you smile when you eat it.

Once again, the ice cream starts out by boiling the liquids (milk, cream, evaporated milk, sugar and corn syrup) then adding cocoa powder and a cornstarch slurry. Once the mixture has thickened, you whisk in some chopped bittersweet chocolate, chill and churn. And if you can keep from eating half of the ice cream while it churns, you are a better woman than I am.

Two notes. First, if you have the book, there is a typo in the ingredient list. You need 1 1/4 cups of heavy cream, not 1/4 cup. Also, there’s a good chance that you’ll end up with little lumps of cocoa powder in the ice cream, despite whisking like a maniac. You can use a blender to smooth them out (I’d probably blend the mixture after it cools and before churning) if you are looking for a perfectly smooth texture. You could also try sifting the cocoa powder first.

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Lemon & Blueberry Frozen Yogurt

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Trista

Currently cooking out of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home by Jeni Britton Bauer

In the past six months or so, we’ve had several of those serve-yourself frozen yogurt and toppings places open up in our town, and Bryan and I have become regular customers. It’s become our reward for working out at the gym. We run for an hour on the treadmill, then we eat pizza and frozen yogurt.

Quit judging me.

So you see, we are quite the connoisseurs when it comes to frozen yogurt (and packing as much frozen yogurt into a cup and still leaving room for toppings, but I digress). And this frozen yogurt is some of the best I’ve had. It’s creamy with a huge lemony punch. At first I wasn’t sure I’d like the blueberry swirl, but once the frozen yogurt set up in the freezer, it came together really well. My only complaint, and it is a small one, is that I left my blueberry sauce chunky, and those chunks froze into little pellets. But the flavor! Oh my. Just thinking about how it made my mouth pucker makes me want to run into the kitchen and make some more.

This recipe needs a little more advance preparation than most of the other recipes in the book. You start out by draining plain low-fat yogurt for 6-8 hours to thicken it. Could you just use Greek-style yogurt? I don’t know, but Bauer is pretty adamant about using plain, low-fat yogurt in all of her frozen yogurt recipes. While the yogurt is draining, you make a lemon syrup by  boiling lemon juice, lemon zest and sugar. Then you make a blueberry sauce by simmering blueberries and sugar together until the blueberries soften and burst. If you want a smooth sauce, you could puree the blueberries at this point. If you don’t mind some chunks, don’t.

Once the yogurt has drained and the syrups and sauces have cooled and chilled, you are ready to make the frozen yogurt base. The frozen yogurt base is pretty much the same as the ice cream base; milk, cream cheese, cream, corn syrup, sugar and a cornstarch slurry make a thickened liquid which is stirred into the drained yogurt. Then you add the lemon syrup, then chill and churn. As you are scooping the churned frozen yogurt into a container, you layer it with the chilled blueberry sauce. Let the whole thing freeze together, and you’ll find you don’t really need to leave the house to have good frozen yogurt.

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Nectarine Ice Cream

Posted on September 14, 2011 by Trista

Currently cooking out of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home by Jeni Britton Bauer

This is actually about two separate recipes, neither of which are from Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream at Homes. Confused? Let me back up a bit.

Bryan and I have a tradition that every year around Labor Day, we drive 10 hours south to my parent’s house, spend a few days oohing and ahhing over nieces and nephew, baking up a storm and gorging on peaches and nectarines. Then we drive 10 hours back north with several boxes of peaches and nectarines, and I spend the next few days frantically freezing, jamming and baking before the fruit goes bad.

I grew up on Utah’s “Fruitway,” a stretch of the Wasatch Front famed for its roadside fruitstands. Every summer I picked raspberries, peaches, tomatoes and cherries and then helped sell them at one of the fruitstands. I loved having such an abundance of fresh fruit, especially the peaches. As much as I tout my chocolate addiction, peaches are one of my favorite foods. I can, and will, eat them until I get sick. Fortunately, my dad owns several acres of peach and nectarine trees, and he lets me have as many as I want.

This year I came back with five boxes and peaches and one box of nectarines. As of the last count, I’ve made 16 peach/nectarine galettes (a free-form pie) and a couple of peach crumble bars, all of which are frozen, waiting to be baked. I made something like 15 jars of peach freezer jam (runny, of course), and I’ve frozen six one-gallon Ziploc bags full of unsweetened sliced peaches. Finally, we made some peach shrub (remember this post?). We will not run out of peaches this year.

Along with all of that, we’ve been eating fresh peaches and yogurt for breakfast, peaches and nectarines for snacks and sliced peaches for dessert.

Back to the reason for this post. With all these peaches and nectarines, I had to try to adapt one of Bauer’s recipes into a peach and/or nectarine ice cream. The nectarines had to be used first, so nectarine ice cream it was.

I simply took Bauer’s ice cream recipe base and added a nectarine puree (except for a roasted strawberry and buttermilk ice cream, she doesn’t have many fruit ice cream recipes, so I kind of winged it). The ice cream is made the same way as all the other ice creams in the book: you boil milk, cream and sugar, add in a cornstarch slurry, boil, whisk in cream cheese, add nectarine puree, chill and churn.

Frankly, I was disappointed in this ice cream. Although it turned out a beautiful, pale yellow, the nectarine flavor is so washed out and faint, that you can’t really identify it. That glorious, sweet/tart nectarine flavor got lost somewhere. This ice cream froze up harder than the other ones I’ve made from this book. My gut feeling is that the extra water from the nectarines watered down the flavor and made the ice cream freeze harder. I suspect that’s why Bauer roasts her strawberries, to concentrate the flavor and evaporate excess water. If I had any extra nectarines left, I’d give this a try. Unfortunately, they are gone. I plan to make a peach ice cream using some of the peaches I’ve frozen,though, so it will be interesting to see what happens. If I run into the same problem, I’ll consider roasting the peaches first.

Onto the other part of this post, that nectarine cake up there. I remembered reading about this cake here, but at the time, the nectarines in the store were sad, hard little blobs. Flash forward two years, and I’m sitting on a half of a box of nectarines that are ripening too fast for me to keep up. A little butter and sugar here, with some eggs and flour there, and I had the little black dresses of cakes. It took me all of 10 minutes to make, but tasted great. You can dress this cake up with whipped cream or ice cream, or simply sprinkle powdered sugar on it. It tasted just as good on the second day. If you don’t have nectarines, I think just about any fruit will work, except maybe apples or pears, unless you sliced them very thinly.

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Toasted Coconut Ice Cream

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Trista

 

Currently cooking out of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home by Jeni Britton Bauer

Remember this ice cream from Pure Scoop? Ever since I started make ice creams out of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home, I’ve wanted to try this flavor. Bauer doesn’t include a recipe for coconut ice cream, so I used David Lebovitz’s technique with Bauer’s ice cream base. The result was a huge success.

I started  out by seeping about a cup and a half of toasted coconut in the milk/cream part of Bauer’s recipes. After a couple of hours, I strained the liquid, pressing on the soaked coconut to get as much of the liquid out as possible. Then I followed Bauer’s formula of boiling the milk and cream with sugar, salt and corn syrup, then adding a cornstarch slurry and, finally, whisking in some cream cheese. Chill and churn.

This was so very good. When you first see it, you think its going to be vanilla. Surprise! Instead you get a light coconut flavor accented by just a touch of cream cheese. The texture was perfectly smooth. I loved the ivory color of this ice cream; it seemed very elegant.

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Wrap-up—Slow Cooker Revolution by America’s Test Kitchen

Posted on August 31, 2011 by Trista

Currently cooking out of Slow Cooker Revolution by America’s Test Kitchen

I know some people think the guys at America’s Test Kitchen are kind of anal and uptight, but I like ‘em. When I open one of their cookbooks (or magazines), I know the recipes in there are going to work. Sure, there will probably be some extra steps, but most of the time, the authors explain why those extra steps are necessary and what will happen if you don’t do them. I appreciate all the work that goes into their testing, and I’ve rarely, if ever, been let down.

This book was no exception. Almost all of the recipes that I tested worked, even if I didn’t exactly like the end product. In most cases, it was my tastebuds that were the problem, not the recipe. The writing is always clear and easy to follow, and the book’s layout and organization (by subject such as soups or braises or casseroles) is clean and concise.

The main thing I’m taking away from this book is the fact, that with a little more effort, you can get really good stuff out of a slow cooker, stuff that has texture and a depth of flavor that slow cooker dishes often seem to lack. If you are looking to expand your repertoire of slow-cooker recipes, I highly recommend this book.

Besides some good recipes, Slow Cooker Revolution is full of niftly tips, like the tip for cooking vegetable for a beef stew in a tinfoil packet on top so the vegetable don’t fall apart. My favorite tip, however, is to microwave onions until they soften. I don’t like raw onions, so this is a great idea that I can use in other dishes when there is a danger that the onions might not soften enough.

I will return again and again to this book. I feel like I barely dented the surface.

My favorite dishes were:

Texas Chili – This was thick and meaty, and it just got better with age.

Hearty Beef Stew – I think this is the best beef stew I’ve made, slow cooker or not. Another dish that gets better with age.

Classic Meatloaf - Tender, flavorful and easy. It also reheated well.

Dishes that fell short for me:

Barbecued Beans – These came up short on flavor, but long on tender beans. Most people who tried them liked them well enough. I just wanted more. Of something.

Farmhouse Chicken Corn Chowder – I needed to make a lot of changes to the dish to like it, but again, that was mostly personal preference.

Easy Pesto Meatballs – To me, these had a strange flavor that I didn’t like, possibly the combination of pesto and tomato sauce. Bryan had no problem with them.


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