Tonight I took first place in a cookie baking competition with these cookies and I've had requests for this recipe in the past. I was mostly winging it with this batch but these are the ingredients I used. I think I can still make it better but that's for a later update. After all, the judges said that the second place winner would have tied for first if not for my cookie's originality. Need to widen that gap a bit. Haha!
Cream together.
1 cup of butter
1.5 cups of white sugar
.5 cup of packed brown sugar
1 cup of smooth peanut butter
1 tablespoon of vanilla extract
Mix together
2.75 cups of all purposed flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1.5 teaspoon baking soda
Combine both parts and roll into one inch diameter balls. Carefully press them into flat disks on a cookie sheet. Place a small ball of marshmallow fluff on top of the disk, cover with another disk of dough and seal the edges carefully.
Bake at 350 until just starting to visibly brown on the bottom.
This makes for a nice, mellow peanut butter cookie with a chewy, sweet, almost taffy like center. Next time I am going to try this recipe with an egg added to the dough for a little extra chewy goodness. There is always room for improvement.
If you make these please let me know how they come out and how you think they might be improved.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Monday, September 12, 2011
Spicy Mango Chicken Curry
Many of the meals that I truly enjoy I can't share with those I love for the sad fact that I love HEAT. I'm not so silly as to sacrifice flavor for burn but the scoville unit and I are well acquainted. There is something truly satisfying to me about eating a spoonfull that coats the tongue in rich flavor and pain. After I started preparations for this dish I realized that this was one meal created almost entirely from things that the people I like to eat with won't eat.
Mango
Curry
Habanero
Honey
Coconut Milk
Kefir Cheese
The habanero alone might be enough to kill a few of my friends but the rest of that list has a big red X through it as well.
This is why a chef must ask questions and pay attention. Just because I like bold, intense and... well... painful food does not mean that my guest will too. It is not only the burden of the eater to expand their own tastes but the cook must be conscious of their needs as well and push them just a little further.
Now that I'm done ranting, I'll get to the meat of the article.
This is a simple dish to make and can have countless variations. Curry is one of the most versatile dishes in the culinary world and that is part of why I love it. Curries can be everything from sweet and subtle to creamy and infernal. I was going for a bit of a sweet inferno and I believe I hit it dead on.
First I took one whole, orange habanero and diced it up, seeds and all. this went into a sauce pan with some fresh, roughly chopped mango. I let this cook down just a bit until some of the mango started to soften. I then added 1tsp of yellow curry powder, 1/4tsp of cumin, a generous portion of fresh ground black pepper, 1 tsp of balsamic vinegar and a dash of powdered ginger. I cooked this slowly while stirring to just get the flavors mixed together a bit but not too much as to mash the mango. I then added approximately 2tbsp of honey and mixed it all together with some chopped meat from a roasted chicken I made recently.
While that cooked on low heat I started my rice. Just some long grain rice but with some of the water replaced by coconut milk. Probably about 1/8th of the liquid was coconut milk. This lends a subtle sweetness and another layer of flavor that compliments the fruit notes of the curry. The usual ratio of 1 part rice to 1.5 parts liquid still applies.
This dish is topped with a rounded teaspoon of kefir cheese to cut the burn just a little. You can incorporate the dairy into the curry to reduce the burn over all but I like to have the option to really feel the punch of the habenaro when I want to.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
A Sourdough I am Happy With
I have baked many loaves of bread that you will never see. I've eaten them all to remind myself of what not to do the next time. They are not horrible but they aren't perfect. I strive for excellence in all regards and I'm happy to say that I have finally nailed down my technique for a sourdough that I'm pleased with. Why settle for anything less than something you can be proud of?
The way I made this sourdough is not one I could find anyone else utilizing. Because I like my sourdough to actually taste sour this bread was a three day process for me. I started with about 2 cups of my cultured wild starter in a large bowl and I added enough water and flour to double it. This sat and fermented for around 6 hours at which point I added enough flour to make the mixture into a runny dough. Very sticky and far too loose to work with. I used a butter knife to mix the dough and encourage gluten formation. I did this every few hours until my day was over and then the dough sat over night. In the morning I added a little more flour and continued the process. I did this until I had a dough that was the consistency I wanted. Tacky and somewhat wet dough that would stick to my hands if left to do so but could be worked if I moved quickly. This dough went into my cast iron Dutch oven to rise for a full 24 hours.
To bake this bread I started with the oven cold and placed the Dutch oven inside with the cover on. I used low heat (around 275F) for a long time and checked it every 20 minutes or so until the bread pulled itself from the walls of the Dutch oven. Taking the lid off I baked the bread until it started to turn golden brown and then turned the loaf out onto the rack of the oven and shut the heat off. I let the bread and oven cool until they were just warm and then I enjoyed my delicious and flavorful homemade sourdough.
It doesn't look half bad either.
Monday, March 7, 2011
How Did I Manage That?: A Sourdough Update.
As some of you will remember I cultured a sourdough starter some time ago. Since then, I have been keeping it active and baking with it on a regular basis to the tune of once a week. I have been producing some wonderful bread and my starter is surprisingly strong and robust.
It's just not very sour.
As anyone who has brewed beer can tell you, a large part of the brewing battle is sanitation. It does not take much for a beer to become home to the acid producing bacteria and turn into something you did not want and many won't drink. The antiseptic properties of hops help to keep these beasties at bay but in low hopped brews it is much more likely that they will take hold if your sanitation is not complete. In brews made without the use of hops it's almost impossible to stop them from taking roost unless another edible antiseptic is used.
With all of that in mind, how did I leave a starter medium exposed to the air for weeks and wind up with little or no acid producing beasties? I now have a very large culture of a strong, fairly cleanly fermenting and robust wild yeast. I have done lots of research and the most common answer I have found is that I am not giving the microbes enough time to work. Many assume the sourness of sourdough comes from the starter and do not let the beasties work on the freshly added flour for long enough. The last 4 batches I have made have had full 24 hour long proof/rise times. Before that I was working on 12 hours and some the earliest batches were 10 hours. The guides I have seen suggest a max of 20 hours. I'm pretty sure I've been giving the little guys enough time.
All in all I don't think I can be too displeased. I have a fairly constant supply of tasty bread, everyone who has tasted it has been quite happy and I always enjoy feeding others good food. I may try to make another starter once the weather warms up a bit and see if that helps me wrangle different beasties. I also may intentionally inoculate this starter with active cultures from other sources. Either way I will update with any news.
I'm also hoping to start a food and cooking group here in Salem before I head of to California. I'll have some more updates once that gets off the ground.
It's just not very sour.
As anyone who has brewed beer can tell you, a large part of the brewing battle is sanitation. It does not take much for a beer to become home to the acid producing bacteria and turn into something you did not want and many won't drink. The antiseptic properties of hops help to keep these beasties at bay but in low hopped brews it is much more likely that they will take hold if your sanitation is not complete. In brews made without the use of hops it's almost impossible to stop them from taking roost unless another edible antiseptic is used.
With all of that in mind, how did I leave a starter medium exposed to the air for weeks and wind up with little or no acid producing beasties? I now have a very large culture of a strong, fairly cleanly fermenting and robust wild yeast. I have done lots of research and the most common answer I have found is that I am not giving the microbes enough time to work. Many assume the sourness of sourdough comes from the starter and do not let the beasties work on the freshly added flour for long enough. The last 4 batches I have made have had full 24 hour long proof/rise times. Before that I was working on 12 hours and some the earliest batches were 10 hours. The guides I have seen suggest a max of 20 hours. I'm pretty sure I've been giving the little guys enough time.
All in all I don't think I can be too displeased. I have a fairly constant supply of tasty bread, everyone who has tasted it has been quite happy and I always enjoy feeding others good food. I may try to make another starter once the weather warms up a bit and see if that helps me wrangle different beasties. I also may intentionally inoculate this starter with active cultures from other sources. Either way I will update with any news.
I'm also hoping to start a food and cooking group here in Salem before I head of to California. I'll have some more updates once that gets off the ground.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
The Right Whey and The Wrong Whey
Cheese makers of the world, I tip my hat to you.
It's not often that I get so frustrated with a project that I step away from it and take a breather but my attempts at making mozzarella have been less than fruitful. 4 batches of grainy ricotta like curd later and I learned the difference between pasteurized and ultra-pasteurized and what it means to cheese making. On the 5th batch is when I learned how important it is to use the proper amount of citric acid and to have a controlled source.
Perhaps I should explain a little.
Cheese making is, in theory, pretty simple. A combination of acid, rennet, heat and time are utilized to make the proteins in milk form curd. Curd is coagulated milk protein (casein) that has been separated from the whey protein. Gross as that may sound, curd is fresh tasting, smooth and plenty edible. Great with fruit, preserves and sourdough. Ricotta cheese is less of a cheese and more of a loose curd made with just acid. To turn curd into mozzarella all you have to do is cook it slowly and knead it until it becomes stretch and pliable. Mozzarella, The delicious cheese many of use love and pay large amounts of money for. To turn curd into other kinds of cheese is going to take a whole series of posts to explain.
When done properly, the whole process should take about an hour to an hour and a half and result in a great final product. "Should" is the operative word there. If you want to take up cheese making you need to follow the directions very carefully. Use the amount of acid suggested, make sure to get low heat pasteurized milk (raw if you can manage it) and do your research. Why do I keep mentioning pasteurization? Remember those proteins I was talking about earlier? Well, high heat pasteurization denatures whey proteins and makes it almost impossible for the curd to set properly. If you use ultra-pasteurized milk you will end up with a decent ricotta that you wasted rennet in but if you try and cook the curd it will turn into an awful, grainy and rubbery mess.
For the most part I used to think "milk is milk". As true as that may be for cereal it's far less true for cheese.
If you are interested in cheese I suggest following this link to a great starter recipe for mozzarella. New England Cheese Making supply Company is a great site full of recipes and information including a guide to finding "good milk" or milk that will work for cheese making.
Look for updates with embedded fanfare when I finally pull this one off.
It's not often that I get so frustrated with a project that I step away from it and take a breather but my attempts at making mozzarella have been less than fruitful. 4 batches of grainy ricotta like curd later and I learned the difference between pasteurized and ultra-pasteurized and what it means to cheese making. On the 5th batch is when I learned how important it is to use the proper amount of citric acid and to have a controlled source.
Perhaps I should explain a little.
Cheese making is, in theory, pretty simple. A combination of acid, rennet, heat and time are utilized to make the proteins in milk form curd. Curd is coagulated milk protein (casein) that has been separated from the whey protein. Gross as that may sound, curd is fresh tasting, smooth and plenty edible. Great with fruit, preserves and sourdough. Ricotta cheese is less of a cheese and more of a loose curd made with just acid. To turn curd into mozzarella all you have to do is cook it slowly and knead it until it becomes stretch and pliable. Mozzarella, The delicious cheese many of use love and pay large amounts of money for. To turn curd into other kinds of cheese is going to take a whole series of posts to explain.
When done properly, the whole process should take about an hour to an hour and a half and result in a great final product. "Should" is the operative word there. If you want to take up cheese making you need to follow the directions very carefully. Use the amount of acid suggested, make sure to get low heat pasteurized milk (raw if you can manage it) and do your research. Why do I keep mentioning pasteurization? Remember those proteins I was talking about earlier? Well, high heat pasteurization denatures whey proteins and makes it almost impossible for the curd to set properly. If you use ultra-pasteurized milk you will end up with a decent ricotta that you wasted rennet in but if you try and cook the curd it will turn into an awful, grainy and rubbery mess.
For the most part I used to think "milk is milk". As true as that may be for cereal it's far less true for cheese.
If you are interested in cheese I suggest following this link to a great starter recipe for mozzarella. New England Cheese Making supply Company is a great site full of recipes and information including a guide to finding "good milk" or milk that will work for cheese making.
Look for updates with embedded fanfare when I finally pull this one off.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
American Wheat Beer Update and Saison Yeast Apfel Wine
It's been a while since I have updated because my computer decided to shuffle off its mortal coil in the form of a defective GPU. I am in the process of getting my computer replaced and in the mean time I am borrowing a laptop from the girlfriend. I am trying not to take it away from her too often as she has uses for it that are actually important. But really, what's more important than beer and food?
As you know, I brewed an American wheat beer just about two weeks ago. It has been slowly fermenting in my pantry closet, which stays in the low 50s this time of year, and it was ready to bottle on the 1st of the month. This was a fairly simple process that I will go over in more detail at a later date. Hopefully with some decent quality pictures. The beer was a very light golden color with a nice flavor of wheat and malt in the small sample that I tasted. I am not commenting on the flavor too much because carbonation can really highlight certain notes and can change how you experience the brew. I am going with natural re-fermentation in the bottle for carbonation as I always do when I bottle and I have to wait at least another week before I get to try this one in it's final form.
The second part of this post is in regards to an apfel wine I brewed before I even started this blog. A little background on this one. I have been in love with saison style beers for a long time. Sometimes known as "farmhouse ales" these are beers that are common to the areas in Belgium and France that border each other. I got interested in these when I started exploring my culinary heritage. France makes some wonderful beers but it is not one of the more well known or well respected beer producing countries. Saisons are distinctly French and Belgian so it made sense to try my hand at brewing one. It was great. I loved the character that the saison strain of yeast gave the brew so I cultured it and have been using it since. Most recently I used it in a mead and an apfel wine.
I am sipping on the last bottle of the apfel wine right now and I am really enjoying it. Very light golden color. Similar to a very light apple juice. The nose is fruity and smells distinctly of apple and spice. There is a little bit of a yeasty smell but it's light and subtle. The carbonation adds an effervescence and gives this drink a very light body. While it may be very bubbly there is no head to speak of. A layer of white foam formed when first poured but it vanished before the last drops had even left the bottle. This is all pretty standard for a cider or and apfel wine. It's just fermented fruit juice.
The flavor is dry and mildly tannic but it does not dry the mouth out. Sour but balanced with a distinct spice note that is likely from the yeast. Saison yeasts are known and prized for lending this kind of spice flavor to the brews fermented with them. It's part of why I am such a fan.
As you know, I brewed an American wheat beer just about two weeks ago. It has been slowly fermenting in my pantry closet, which stays in the low 50s this time of year, and it was ready to bottle on the 1st of the month. This was a fairly simple process that I will go over in more detail at a later date. Hopefully with some decent quality pictures. The beer was a very light golden color with a nice flavor of wheat and malt in the small sample that I tasted. I am not commenting on the flavor too much because carbonation can really highlight certain notes and can change how you experience the brew. I am going with natural re-fermentation in the bottle for carbonation as I always do when I bottle and I have to wait at least another week before I get to try this one in it's final form.
The second part of this post is in regards to an apfel wine I brewed before I even started this blog. A little background on this one. I have been in love with saison style beers for a long time. Sometimes known as "farmhouse ales" these are beers that are common to the areas in Belgium and France that border each other. I got interested in these when I started exploring my culinary heritage. France makes some wonderful beers but it is not one of the more well known or well respected beer producing countries. Saisons are distinctly French and Belgian so it made sense to try my hand at brewing one. It was great. I loved the character that the saison strain of yeast gave the brew so I cultured it and have been using it since. Most recently I used it in a mead and an apfel wine.
I am sipping on the last bottle of the apfel wine right now and I am really enjoying it. Very light golden color. Similar to a very light apple juice. The nose is fruity and smells distinctly of apple and spice. There is a little bit of a yeasty smell but it's light and subtle. The carbonation adds an effervescence and gives this drink a very light body. While it may be very bubbly there is no head to speak of. A layer of white foam formed when first poured but it vanished before the last drops had even left the bottle. This is all pretty standard for a cider or and apfel wine. It's just fermented fruit juice.
The flavor is dry and mildly tannic but it does not dry the mouth out. Sour but balanced with a distinct spice note that is likely from the yeast. Saison yeasts are known and prized for lending this kind of spice flavor to the brews fermented with them. It's part of why I am such a fan.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
American Wheat Beer and General Updates
Today has been a productive day for me.
On my way back from an audition I stopped into Milk and Honey in downtown Salem MA to see if they had any rennet. Sadly, the answer was "no". Happily they had a great selection of organic food much of it from the area. They had an interesting selection of cheeses and other tasty things but what really caught my eye was their spices. They have a good selection of good quality spices for very cheap. I picked up an ounce of curry powder and an ounce of Chinese 5 spice for under 2 dollars. I am currently cooking some chicken with the 5 spice, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, brown sugar and garlic. It smells wonderful.
My sourdough is very active and I have been feeding it with white flour for the last two days rather than just the whole wheat flour I had been using previously. I am doing this to diversify what I can use it for. I love whole wheat but it's not ideal for every recipe. A couple days ago I did take half of the starter and make a nice thin crust pizza with fresh tomato, garlic and some of the ricotta I wrote about earlier. Very tasty. The crust came out nicely and had a great flavor that may have been a bit too robust for some but was great for me.
On another note I was welcomed home by a nice big box that included the ingredients needed for my next 5 brewing projects as well as a new brew kettle and some necessities like sanitizer. This was an order from my favorite online brew shop: Brew Masters Warehouse. I jumped right into brewing an American wheat beer that will eventually turn into a raspberry wheat.
This is the first wheat beer that I have brewed and it is also my first beer brewed using the technique known as decoction mashing. This is a technique in which you take a portion of the mash and boil it to make for a more pronounced malt character and increased body in the final beer.
The major part of the mash is currently resting around 154F and there is a small portion in a separate pot bubbling along. The unfermented wort is very tasty and I look forward to what this will turn into. The recipe is simple and is as follows.
1 gallon batch
1 lbs Briess white wheat
11 oz Briess 2 row
2 oz Briess 2 row caramel 10
.1 oz Chinook pellets at 30 minutes
Nottingham Ale Yeast
This is defined as an American wheat because I am using standard ale yeast rather than a traditional strain. It will lack some of the more complex characters that traditional wheat beers are known for but it will be a fine American wheat. Look forward to more updates on this batch and on my next small batch brews. I have ingredients for a graff, a smoked robust porter and an IPA all in 1 gallon sizes.
On my way back from an audition I stopped into Milk and Honey in downtown Salem MA to see if they had any rennet. Sadly, the answer was "no". Happily they had a great selection of organic food much of it from the area. They had an interesting selection of cheeses and other tasty things but what really caught my eye was their spices. They have a good selection of good quality spices for very cheap. I picked up an ounce of curry powder and an ounce of Chinese 5 spice for under 2 dollars. I am currently cooking some chicken with the 5 spice, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, brown sugar and garlic. It smells wonderful.
My sourdough is very active and I have been feeding it with white flour for the last two days rather than just the whole wheat flour I had been using previously. I am doing this to diversify what I can use it for. I love whole wheat but it's not ideal for every recipe. A couple days ago I did take half of the starter and make a nice thin crust pizza with fresh tomato, garlic and some of the ricotta I wrote about earlier. Very tasty. The crust came out nicely and had a great flavor that may have been a bit too robust for some but was great for me.
On another note I was welcomed home by a nice big box that included the ingredients needed for my next 5 brewing projects as well as a new brew kettle and some necessities like sanitizer. This was an order from my favorite online brew shop: Brew Masters Warehouse. I jumped right into brewing an American wheat beer that will eventually turn into a raspberry wheat.
This is the first wheat beer that I have brewed and it is also my first beer brewed using the technique known as decoction mashing. This is a technique in which you take a portion of the mash and boil it to make for a more pronounced malt character and increased body in the final beer.
The major part of the mash is currently resting around 154F and there is a small portion in a separate pot bubbling along. The unfermented wort is very tasty and I look forward to what this will turn into. The recipe is simple and is as follows.
1 gallon batch
1 lbs Briess white wheat
11 oz Briess 2 row
2 oz Briess 2 row caramel 10
.1 oz Chinook pellets at 30 minutes
Nottingham Ale Yeast
This is defined as an American wheat because I am using standard ale yeast rather than a traditional strain. It will lack some of the more complex characters that traditional wheat beers are known for but it will be a fine American wheat. Look forward to more updates on this batch and on my next small batch brews. I have ingredients for a graff, a smoked robust porter and an IPA all in 1 gallon sizes.
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