Friday, April 27, 2012

Yorkshire Pudding


In March, we were asked to review a cookbook and the title really caught Meredith's attention. The Muffin Tin Cookbook, by Brette Sember (Amazon link for our readers from the USA), published by Adams Media is a straight-to-business cookbook. If you're looking for great ideas about how to make single-serving food using muffin tins, this is the book for you.

There are 200 recipes to choose from covering breakfast, appetizers, lunch or dinner and (of course) dessert. Each recipe contains nutritional information for each serving and tidbits of information about the ingredients, context for the author or history of the dish it's based on.

Browsing through, we saw interesting things like buffalo chicken bites, salmon noodle bake, Chinese pork buns, coffee cake, mushroom tarts, and even fish tacos. There aren't many photos, however, I think a book with photos of 200 muffins might be a little much, and it's really more the experience of the flavours that you'd be concentrating on when you read through the recipes.

Meredith's first attempt was going to be Yorkshire pudding. Not a pudding in the American context, but more of a baked batter (but not quite a bread), it's standard fare in England.

We found that the puddings took about five minutes longer to get golden and puffy, however, it could've been that our oven hadn't heated properly. However, we were very pleased with the final result. nice and puffy and not too dry. We enjoyed them with our St. Patrick's Day dinner that I wrote about a couple weeks ago.

It's definitely a recipe that we'll be using again.



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Yorkshire Pudding
We found that the puddings took about five minutes longer to get golden and puffy, however, it could've been that our oven hadn't heated properly. However, we were very pleased with the final result. nice and puffy and not too dry. Recipe from The Muffin Tin Cookbook, by Brette Sember.
Ingredients
  • 5 tsp vegetable oil
  • 1 cup flour
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 cup milk (the original called for skim milk)
  • 2 eggs
Instructions
1. Preheat oven to 425-degrees.2. Using a regular muffin tin, place 1/2 tsp vegetable oil in each of 10 cups. Place in preheating oven.3. In a bowl, mix the rest of the ingredients. The batter will be lumpy.4. Divide among the 10 cups.5. Bake for 10-12 minutes until golden and puffed.
Details
Prep time: Cook time: Total time: Yield: 10 puddings


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Monday, April 16, 2012

Secret Recipe Club: Haymishe Bagels


It's time for the April edition of Secret Recipe Club, and this month I was assigned Laura Rees of This is How We Eat. Laura started to blog as a way to keep a journal of recipes she enjoyed and recipes that she created.

We chose to make her bagels because we've never made bagels before. I've always been intimidated by the idea, but I think it's because it's baking, and I'm not a big fan of that. Aside from part of forming the bagels and the boiling (a stove-top activity), I hid in the basement and made myself scarce for most of the process.

Of course, there's a cost to that as well. Meredith kinda went rogue and ended up using whole wheat flour instead of white flour. On top of that, we used regular yeast instead of quick-rise (that was my fault, I bought the wrong one because as I've mentioned, I'm not a baker), and we used honey instead of sugar to sweeten the water for boiling.


But there's more. We were so impressed with how the whole-wheat bagels turned out, we decided to make a second batch using white flour as well (pictured at the top of the post).

Haymishe Bagels

1 package yeast
1/4 cup warm water
1 tsp sugar
7 cups flour (white or whole wheat)
1 tbsp salt
2 tbsp sugar
2 1/4 cups warm water
1 tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup honey
1 egg, beaten (for the egg wash, right before baking)
  1. Combine yeast with 1/4 cup warm water and 1 tsp sugar, mix and let sit for 10 minutes.
  2. Whisk together flour salt and sugar in a large mixing bowl.
  3. Using a stand-mixer with the dough hook running on low, slowly add the yeast, water and oil.
  4. Continue mixing until the dough is stretchy - about 10 minutes.
  5. Rub dough with some olive oil and place in a bowl. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and a towel and let dough rise for an hour.
  6. After the dough has risen, line two or three baking sheets with parchment paper.
  7. Punch the dough down and divide it into four equal parts. Divide each quarter into four equal parts again.
  8. Roll each piece into a ball and punch a hole through with your thumb. Gently tease the opening and make it bigger until it's around 2-3 inches in diameter [Dan: Meredith's words, not mine!]. Place all bagels onto a sheet, cover them, and let them rise for an additional 20 minutes.
  9. While the bagels rise, preheat the oven to 450-degrees (using the convection setting if available) and fill a large pot with water and the 1/4 cup honey and bring it to a boil.
  10. After the bagels rise, boil them in batches, for a little over one minute (flipping them over after the first 30 seconds) and place them back on the baking sheets.
  11. Brush the bagels with the egg wash and top them with poppy seeds or sesame seeds.
  12. Bake bagels for 15-20 minutes or until golden, rotating the bagels between top- and bottom-shelf halfway through.
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Friday, April 13, 2012

Colcannon (potatoes, cabbage, leeks and kale)


Another St. Patrick's Day has passed and this year I tried another new recipe.

St. Patrick's Day is special for us because it was my late brother-in-law's birthday. He passed away from a skiing accident a week before he turned 15. We always have a nice meal with friends and family and toast Jeremy on St. Patrick's Day. He would've been 35 this year. Our son Jeremy is named after him.

This year, dinner was Irish onion soup, corned beef, Yorkshire pudding and colcannon. Colcannon is a mashed-potato dish with cabbage, leeks and (sometimes) kale. I thought the leeks was also a neat nod to Meredith's grandmother who was born in Wales. I've never actually cooked with kale, so I thought it would be an interesting adventure.

I understand that kale can sometimes be bitter, however, I was hoping that cooking it really well in butter with salt and pepper would fix that, and it did.

From all of the recipes that I looked at to cobble this together, one in particular caught my attention in the method department so I borrowed from it. Just because of the quantities of vegetables, I split the frying into two batches, one for the kale, and one for the cabbage. I think it would've been messier if everything was in the pan at once.

The final result turned out great. I attribute the results to the butter, not-too-high fry temperature and the good company.



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Colcannon (potatoes, cabbage, leeks and kale)
This colcannon recipe is a combination of a few different recipes and methods that I read about.
Ingredients
  • 8 small-medium potatoes, washed and quartered
  • 1 bunch (3-4) leeks
  • 1+1+1 tbsp (or more) butter
  • 1 cup kale, vein removed and chopped
  • to taste salt and pepper
  • 2 tbsp water
  • 1/4 cabbage (small), chopped
  • 1/4 cup milk or cream
  • 1 green onion, chopped
  • 1/4 tsp dried dill
Instructions
1. Boil potatoes for 30 minutes and set aside.2. Discard most of the leek greens and slice leeks into 1/4-inch crescents.3. In a deep pan, Heat one tbsp butter medium-low add half of the leeks. Saute until leeks are soft.4. Add kale and 1 tbsp butter and saute for another minute.5. Add salt, pepper and 2 tbsp water, cover and reduce heat to low.6. Cook for 15 minutes, stirring once, until kale is soft.7. Set leek and kale mixture aside in a separate bowl. Return pat to medium-low heat, add butter and remaining leeks to the pan.8. Saute leeks for one minute and add cabbage. Saute cabbage and leeks for five minutes.9. Add salt and pepper, lower heat and let simmer for 10-15 minutes (turning cabbage once) until cabbage is soft and slightly browned (add water if necessary).10. Mash potatoes and add milk or cream.11. Gently fold in leek and kale mixture, then fold in leek and cabbage mixture.12. Garnish with green onion and dill before serving.
Details
Prep time: Cook time: Total time: Yield: 8 servings

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Friday, April 6, 2012

Cornie's Home Made Chicken


The story of Cornie's is an old one for us. On our first cruise, Meredith and I ended up hanging around a beach in St. Maarten for much of the day sitting in beach loungers, reading, drinking beer and eating chicken.

Cornie's was a little shack with a patio near where we rented our loungers and beach umbrella. The initial attraction was the two-for-$3 bottles of beer, but lunch was a pleasant surprise.


At the counter, there was a large pot of chicken slowly cooking on a burner. We were told it'd be ready by lunch time and lunch was great. There was something in it that reminded me of my grandmother's Saturday afternoon chicken dish, and I liked how it tasted - so I asked for the recipe. I didn't get much out of it aside from some ingredients (no quantities) and a general order of what to add when scratched on a piece of paper.

Knowing that I'd eventually lose that paper (and I did - I have no idea where it went), I typed out the instructions and emailed it to myself. Once a year or so I'd look at it and say to myself "I should really give this a try soon." It wasn't until this March that when deciding what to make for supper, I gave Meredith the option of me giving Cornie's chicken dish a try (as an experiment), or another of my standards.

Meredith chose Cornie's chicken and when I left work that day, I picked up the ingredients and got to work. I think the real trick to this is to let it cook for a long time, to let the flavours blend, the chicken fall to pieces, and the sauce to thicken. I don't claim to have nailed the quantities of ingredients on the first try, but it's good enough and tasted great. I've been avoiding excess amounts of sodium so I used no-salt canned tomatoes, low-sodium soy sauce and low-sodium ketchup. Either way, with those products as part of the process, there's likely no need to add any extra salt.

Our friend who joined us for dinner that day pointed out that the recipe was a variation of a frickazee.

Meredith thought that there was a little too much lime in the mix, so I'll actually discard the lime after the marinating next time, instead of letting the lime pieces cook in the stew (I've reflected that in the instructions as well).



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Cornie's Home Made Chicken
This chicken recipe is from a small eatery in St. Maarten.
Ingredients
  • 1 kilo chicken legs or thighs
  • 1 lime, quartered
  • 1 tbsp vinegar
  • 1 cup ketchup
  • 1 tbsp soy sauce
  • 1 tsp onion powder
  • 1 tsp garlic powder
  • 3 tbsp canola oil
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 2 celery ribs, chopped
  • 1 tbsp garlic, minced
  • 1 can tomatoes, diced
  • 3 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
Instructions
1. Place the chicken in a large ziplock bag and squeeze juice from lime quarters into bag. Add squeezed lime and vinegar, close and shake bag to coat chicken.2. In a small bowl, whisk together the ketchup, soy sauce, onion powder and garlic powder, and add to the bag of chicken, shaking to coat evenly. Refrigerate for at least an hour, or overnight if possible.3. In a dutch oven, heat oil on medium.4. Add onions and celery and fry for 3-5 minutes.5. Add garlic and fry for another minute.6. Add tomatoes, potatoes and chicken (discard the lime pieces) and bring to a boil.7. Reduce to medium-low and let simmer for at least 60 minutes, stirring occasionally. Sauce should be thick and chicken should be falling off the bone when done.
Note: always check the label for gluten-free labelling on prepared sauces (e.g., ketchup and soy sauce).
Details
Prep time: Cook time: Total time: Yield: 4-5 servings


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