A Daring Kitchen with David & Stacy

Cooking "En Papillote"

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 06:27:00 +0000

We had a look at the suggested recipes and decided we could do two and make up a pretty good meal. Asparagus to start, Scallops to finish. Even for two recipes, not much of a shopping list, and although our preferred Scallop place is not our preferred everything else place we just went for one stop shopping - also it was too crazy hot for leaving groceries in the car while making other stops.

We didn't have, and continue to forget to purchase, some butchers' twine so we used the traditional wrapping method for each recipe - didn't realize it was an arts & crafts project when we made this decision...

Slow Roasted Asparagus

Is it bad that it took us longer to cut the paper into the recommended heart shape than it did to trim the asparagus, chop the mushrooms and pile everything up? Possibly the easiest recipe to follow, ever? If we had have needed a pot the recipe would have just said 'everybody in the pot'...

The wrapping bit progressed as advertised, but we did draw on a bit of knowledge from seeing various TV chefs doing this. Pretty sure we would have succeeded anyway because it was so simple.

Into the oven for a bit longer than we would have liked (and knew in advance because our print of the recipe was with a bit lacking due to a depleted black cartridge), and back to the TV. We did come back a bit early so we could start the next course and hopefully have that one coming out of the oven about the same time we finished eating this one.

Result

Tasty, perhaps a little salty from the Prosciutto, but not unpleasant too salty. Asparagus cooked up just right. Perhaps we needed a bit more tarragon or even a small squeeze of lime from the next dish once out of the oven, but all was consumed as is. Some nice juices collected in the bottom, but not really sure what to do with them as we didn't bring any sopping materials.

Tarragon Lime Bay Scallops over Angel Hair Pasta

We didn't do much pre-reading of this recipe because the printing was even worse than the first, but good enough to get the ingredients. So we almost missed the bit about pre-cooking the pasta and totally missed the bit about sauteing the scallops until we had a nice (red) reprint of the recipe.

Once everything is cooked, into the paper and wrap using the previously successful method (including the arts & crafts project of cutting the hearts).

Result

Tasty. But... we don't understand the purpose of the parchment and back into the oven. Yes it finished the last bit of cooking of the pasta and scallops, but by this time everything has spent time together getting tossed around in a bowl. A little more cooking before joining in the bowl would have given the same result, perhaps?

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

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Conclusion

Grabbed up a bottle of bubbles we had tucked away and it had a nice acidity we thought worked out with both dishes. Actually, we would have been happy had the bottle been twice as big and we could continue after the food part of the meal was done - oh well...

We did have a nice dinner, and it was easy to put together and easy to eat so we're pretty sure we got the results we should have so that's a good thing. Ultimately, nothing complicated here but nothing Eureka about it either so we probably won't do it again unless we are given a recipe that is screaming "make me, even though I'm a parcel".

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

Our July 2012 Daring Cooks’ host was Sarah from All Our Fingers in the Pie! Sarah challenges us to learn a new cooking technique called “Cooking En Papillote” which is French and translates to “cooking in parchment”.

Cannelloni

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Sun, 10 Jun 2012 16:01:00 +0000

We've made our own pasta in the past (say that 72 times quickly...) with pretty good results, mostly for ravioli if that's relevant, so we had no reservations lining up for this challenge. We certainly thought it worth while to get a slightly different pasta recipe under our belts if nothing else, but as always expect more tidbits will join our kitchen knowledge from the overall experience.

Off to the store for a very easy gathering process - everything in one place, no decisions to be made other than trying to figure out what tomato puree really meant when no cans in the store (or other stores we found out on later normal weekly grocery runs) are labeled as such. We're pretty sure the ones called tomato sauce are a match.

Cannelloni di Carne

Egg Pasta

Not exactly sure what we did here, but we ended up making two batches because we only got 5 sheets out of the first batch and 6 from the second. The first batch was very wet and needed extra flour to make it look like what we've seen before on our previous pasta making exploits.

Hindsight strongly suggests that we probably got the flour measuring incorrect first time around (but the security camera failed and we can't roll back the tape...) because even with the extra flour we had just a small batch. It did roll out nicely - apart from the bit where we misfed it through the roller... But that was easily and quickly mended

The second time around the dough appeared to come together as expected - woo hoo. But, it actually was a little dry causing troubles getting it rolled out. It did eventually end up looking mostly like the first batch of sheets, but there may have been some cursing by one of the parties involved.

Béchamel Sauce

Actually no shopping required for this part - just open the pantry and reach in...

We've made various versions of this over the years with varying degrees of ~~failure~~success. This one came together as advertised. And, not a lump to be seen. The hot milk must be the secret? We'll dig this recipe out next time and ignore any others provided...

Meat Filling

Nothing complicated. Open the wine and pour a couple of glasses for the chefs - we felt like drinking a Riesling during the cooking process, so Riesling helped us out in the cooking part too.

Follow the directions.

The only small (ok, medium) boo boo we made, and we didn't know we'd made until the assembly part of the process was that we used all the béchamel sauce here and didn't save any. When measured out it was so close to the amount asked (assuming that you use the correct measuring cup - it seems we used our 2 cup measure thinking it was 1 cup which is a bit of an odd thing to do and a lot silly...), we just used the left over bit in the pot figuring it could do no harm. It didn't, but technically it ended up in the wrong place. Oh well...

Good thing our 2 batches of pasta ended up with more sheets than the recipe called for. This created a lot of filling (and we don't think it was all because of the béchamel), so much that we had left overs for lunch the next day (sans pasta).

Tomato Sauce

So easy, you get to make it at the same time as the Meat Filling...

Bring it all together...

We were perhaps a bit more cautious than we needed to be, only putting two sheets of pasta into the water at a time. As there was no great rush, apparently, to get everything assembled, arranged, covered and in the oven this seemed the right thing to do. Not a single sheet was damaged...

We did, however, not even go close to putting 1/8 of the mixture per sheet. Even if we had have gone 1/11 to match our number of sheets we would've ended up more pizza like as there was no chance they would ever close up. As it turns out, we probably could have made another of our 5 / 6 piece batch of pasta and still had left overs (again, we're not completely blaming the béchamel incident of '12).

They rolled up nicely enough (with the 'correct' amount of filling), stuck together nicely enough to get them into the dish (with the tomato sauce already on the bottom) and as luck would have it, the perfect width to go from edge to edge. It could be argued we squeezed one too many into the dish, but the volume of arguing would vary as to whether it was just you eating on the couch, or having friends at the dining table.

Cover them up with the last of the tomato sauce ~~and the last of the béchamel sauce~~ and into the oven. Back to the front of the TV, open our official dinner wine, and wait patiently. We actually hate our broiler, so just left them in the oven a few extra minutes but seeing we didn't have the white sauce to brown up we doubt any harm was done.

Result

The decision to squeeze in that last one made it a little hard to get them out as there was some over / under squishing that had occurred and bound a couple together in ways not intended by their makers. No harm done to taste, nor pre-serving presentation but a little bit mixed up coming out of the pan.

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

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Conclusion

The whole process took a bit longer than expected, but the result was worth the effort. Not a put together after work type meal for us, but one we could do again on the weekend and one we could certainly serve up for friends (with less squeezing in of the last one...)

We reached in to our cellar and grabbed up a bottle of something Italian. Although not specifically recommended to pair with a Pasta Dish, Grimaldi Barbera D'Alba was the winner. And a fine winner it was..

Yummy (and easier to get out of the pan) leftovers too! Not hard to argue the filling was a good leftover, but the whole package a much better one.

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

Manu from Manu’s Menu was our Daring Cooks lovely June hostess and has challenged us to make traditional Italian cannelloni from scratch! We were taught how to make the pasta, filling, and sauces shared with us from her own and her family’s treasured recipes!

Messieurs-Dames: Boeuf Bourguignon!

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Mon, 14 May 2012 19:35:00 +0000

Julia would not be proud (well perhaps she would of the effort, but certainly not the result), let's explain why...

We actually were quite pleased to see this come up. Just about every food show you could ever hope to watch / read / participate in will at some time (if they haven't already) whip up a batch of Boeuf based on the 'classic' Julia Child recipe so it seemed logical that we should add it to our one day list.

Shopping was a breeze with all but the wine from one store. Leaving shopping to the morning of the big day we were unable to locate a Burgundy in either of the two closest options we had so we thought a Pinot Noir out of California would be a fair swap. We were going to grab up 2 bottles, one for cooking, one for dining but seeing we couldn't find one we went to our 'Cellar' for the dining part, staying in France with a Côtes du Rhône.

Boeuf Bourguignon

OK, off we go... Boil the bacon (officially simmer, but...) which is something new to us. Done, but not exactly sure why. We went with removing some of the fat, but didn't see all that much left behind. No harm done, we did as asked.

The next few steps are about getting the beef browned off. Nothing complicated, and with a bit of team work it all went pretty quickly. Then in go the vegetables, that was easy. Get the meat back in and sprinkle with flour. OK, the goal was not to sprinkle, but we got the flour incorporated with everything looking as we expected.

We just want the record to show that we noted the 30ml variance in our bottle of wine v the amount required by the recipe and yes, we did drink the variance. We appreciate this thoughtful planning by the recipe builder, but we had to go a bit less in the pot because working as a team we ~~needed~~wanted 30ml each - actually it's never hard to go way past 30ml. We're just say'n...

With glass in hand, a whole bunch of other stuff goes in the pot and this is where things probably started to go wrong. First we used all the beef stock, not realizing we needed some a few steps (and a couple of hours) later to keep the onions (did you know it feels like it takes 20 to 25 minutes to peel each pearl type onion? - pesky things. But they were worth the effort!) company, but this boo-boo may have made things less bad in the end. It's kind of fun to tip a whole(ish) bottle of wine into a pot and after a firm stir our pot looked more or less the same as the picture provided. Great. Lid on, oven, here we come...

Obviously, it's us doing the cooking so fingers should be pointed our way, but we're pointing a finger back at the recipe for not giving us a temperature to reduce the oven to. Our choice of temperature only avoided a complete inedible result because we went with the lesser option of 3 hours (we started a bit late and knew we'd be hungry...) rather than the 4 and used up all the beef stock as noted above. After an hour the house really started to smell nice and we didn't even think twice about what was going on, even when we returned to the kitchen to do the onions (we used Vegetable Stock in lieu of Beef thanks to the Pantry) and mushrooms - both of which we were very pleased with how they turned out. So, with the chirping of the timer our excitement to finish the dish didn't last long. Our juice was all but gone, things were sticking to the pot on all sides and not just the bottom, and there was a crustiness to almost everything that was probably only minutes away from being classified as burnt.

It still smelled great, so we added in the mushrooms and onions - keep going, or order out - gave it a stir in which just about every piece of meat broke up as we 'released' it from the grip of the pot. As we were pulling out the bay leaf, we also did a quick hunt for the bacon rinds and removed them too, even though the recipe was silent on what to do with them. We think removing was better?

We were now done, as we had no juice to worry about skimming for unwanted fat. At least we got to eat (and drink!) a little sooner...

Result

Clearly a pot of well done meat not cooked to its proper best. As the juice departed, more and more of the meat would have been left high and dry and therefore roasting, rather than braising. We're pretty sure this was the reason for a good deal of stringiness.

We got great flavors, we think, but nothing we'd be all that excited about serving up to friends. Our wine selection worked out just fine with what we ended up with, but probably would have been better with a better final result.

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

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Conclusion

Tasty, no doubt. Ugly, even less doubt. Missing the sauce, completely. Oh well...

We'd give it another go, perhaps doing the whole thing on the stove where we're more inclined to peek in at what's going on rather than being surprised at the end. We're glad and sad we opened up our bottle from Côtes du Rhône as we really enjoyed the wine, but know we didn't pair it up with something to get the best out of it.

Sorry Julia!

Oh, and it didn't re-heat for lunch very well at all. Which of course is almost certainly a byproduct of all noted above.

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

Our May 2012 Daring Cooks’ hostess was Fabi of fabsfood. Fabi challenged us to make Boeuf Bourguignon, a classic French stew originating from the Burgundy region of France.

Brave the Braise

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 17:29:00 +0000

It's been awhile since an involved multi day challenge has come up (although technically there's been a more recent one)... This is what we got when we chose to go with the Pork Belly option, although we were very close to going Short Ribs - maybe some other time...

We were excited to make time over Saturday so we could enjoy this for our Dinner on Sunday. Fortunately, most of the time on Saturday is making use of the 6 hour down time. From the recipe provided...

you can do plenty of other things in these 6 hours! Enjoy!

Turns out that in 6 hours you can make tasty but ultimately unsuccessful mashed potatoes, yummy rabbit sausage, yummy pheasant sausage (both picked up from our Pork Belly 'dude' on a whim), a generous side of caramelized onions and get through a couple of bottles of wine...

Braised Pork Belly with Caramel Miso Sauce

We thought we knew where to get everything, and didn't foresee any difficulties. We were a bit lackadaisical in our preparations only picking up the Day 1 ingredients on Day 1 and everything else on Day 2. Seems like a fair plan, right? Drat, it wasn't...

Day 1

Off to the store to get the Pork Belly and another store because somehow we ran out of OJ. No fear of being able to locate the Belly at our friendly Butcher not too far away. Didn't know they only carry them frozen...

Do the math and figure out we've got about an hour and a half to get it thawed so we can get it out of the oven and cooled at least mostly before heading off to bed at a sensible hour. We have a handy dandy defrosting plate (no idea what it's official name is, what it's made of, nor how it works - but it does) and cool water so we set to work. As it turns out, an hour and a half was a little more time than we needed.

We made the 'Daring' leap that we weren't toasting and grinding spices just to make the kitchen smell nice (it did, btw) so we added them to the salt rubbing step kind of like a sparse dry rub. Any objections?

Pork in the pot, everything else in on top. Cover and into Oven.

No touching, no peeking during the 6 hours. A little bit of gentle poking once out on the counter before putting it in the fridge as we departed for bed.

Day 2

Bit of a sleep in, work out to get the day started. Then go pick up the other items needed to finish everything off come dinner time. Drat. Our top 3 favorite local stores don't carry any form of Miso. Really? Maaaannn... Oh well. Off to google to find a suitable alternative of the variety made from things already lying around the house. Not sure where we found it, exactly, but we went with some Tahini and an increase of Soy. Any objections?

Making Caramel Sauce (no saying Carmel here, there's another 'a' in there, always - got it!) was something new and surprisingly easy, although a little frightening as things start to happen, but it all went as described.

Cutting up the Belly into pieces was easy enough. The hard part was removing all the non-Belly bits and pieces that were stuck to the top of it. Not evil hard, just hard because we didn't plan for it...

The Caramel - not Miso Sauce came together easily enough, although we barely had the required amount of braising liquid to add in. Maybe that's why it says cover with foil and not the lid like we used?

Belly pieces into the sauce, cook for perhaps a little too long, but definitely using the wrong technique, to bring it all together. Out on to a plate and enjoy.

Result

We were expecting a slightly more smelly kitchen and living room during our 6 hours of entertaining ourselves. Probably nothing to get excited about at all until past half way when the kitchen started to 'improve', but it was only during the last hour we got something over by the TV. Oh well...

It was really tasty. As noted, we didn't do the saucing part correctly. We just sort of cooked them up like a 'normal' piece of meat in the sauce. Oops! We mostly rendered out the fat, but stopped as soon as we realized what we were doing. Further review of the pictures provided the clue as to having the pieces spend most of their time fat side up. Lesson learned!

But, it was still really tasty!

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

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Conclusion

Worth the effort, even if we didn't quite execute the last step correctly! There's no doubt we'll do this again, probably even for friends, but we'd have to try at least once more by ourselves again to get the hang of that last step.

Anticipating a rich dish, we reached far back into our cellar and pulled out a Grenache. We think it worked out really well, especially as the wine was a little bit softer than what we thought it might be.

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

ps. There's a moderately strong chance that we'll go hunt down Rhulman's book - although, for the record we don't really like him when he's on a show as a judge because he seems to look for what's wrong before enjoying what's great in a dish. Maybe the book can change that impression?

The March, 2012 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Carol, a/k/a Poisonive – and she challenged us all to learn the art of Braising! Carol focused on Michael Ruhlman’s technique and shared with us some of his expertise from his book “Ruhlman’s Twenty”.

Responses pre Blog Platform Change

andy responded:
Great job, and good improve on not having Miso!

Shelley C responded:
Sounds like this one wound up a little more daring than you'd expected, but that it all came out delicious is the most important thing. Interesting substitution for the miso, but it sounds really tasty. Great job!

Carol responded:
Well done on the challenge - and you rose to the challenge with your subsittution - loved your blog. I am so glad you enjoyed the challenge!

Flipping Frying Patties!!!

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 18:29:00 +0000

We're not scared of making burgers / patties / fritters. It's just that historically, we haven't done them very well - more from an appearance stance than taste, fortunately. Armed with the exceptionally long list of tips and tricks (that appeared to make complete sense) our confidence level was raised.

None of the recipes seemed complicated nor time consuming so we thought we'd give two of them a go. Not wanting to stress ourselves out, nor risk the possibility of two failures in one evening, we decided to make one on consecutive Fridays as our lazy end of week stay in before heading out to misbehave on Saturday.

Zucchini, Prosciutto & Cheese Fritters

Ok... What does 'strong bitty cheese' mean? Seriously, what does it mean? Seriously!

We didn't bother with google and went with the sharpest cheddar we could find (based on the label...) because that sounded strong without being blue. Other than that, there was nothing complicated in rounding up the ingredients from our normal every day grocery store, but at assembly time we realized we'd used one ingredient in the previous night's dinner. We therefore, substituted spring onions for normal every day onion. Yes, we could have gone out on a one item shopping spree (and be back before the zucchini had finished dripping), but we already had our pajamas on...

Grating, salting and waiting for zucchini to drip. Check.
Frying of Prosciutto. Check, but hard from 2 fronts. 1. Never crisped it up before, just eaten it as it comes. This didn't feel right. 2. We ate some of it before it made it to the pan...
Squeezing of zucchini. Check.
Panic over missing ingredient. Decide pajamas are comfy. Find boring onion. Check.
Everything in the bowl together, mix. Check.
Break out the skillet, oil and heat. Check.
Dispense mixture, cook, flip carefully, cook. Check.
Consume. Check!

Result

Pretty good. We kind of thought they would benefit from a sauce, but didn't have to have one. One of us tried them with a sweet marmalade type sauce (pre-made, tucked away in the fridge, sorry) which worked but didn't make them any better. The other with a chipotle mustard (found right next to the previously mentioned sauce, sorry) and was arguably a mistake as the feeling was that they were better au naturel.

As already noted, there were many tips provided. This one...

The secret is to wait for the the patty to naturally release itself from the pan surface then flip it over once.

...is the one we wish we'd actually heeded a long time ago and all being well, we'll never forget that it served us well on this occasion.

An 'interesting' bottle of Chardonnay joined in the party...

Basic Canned Fish and Rice Patties

We were given the authority to choose our own fish - well, own fish that comes in a can. We went with sardines...

We missed the part about needing rice, even as we prepared the very easy to round everything up shopping list. Therefore, we didn't have the opportunity to use the recommended day old rice. Also as we put our shopping list together we skipped the breadcrumbs as we have a panko or 'make our own' policy when they are required. We were pretty certain panko wouldn't be successful binders.

It's these two 'occurrences' that perhaps were the cause of our struggle to get good patties... Good looking that is, because there's no doubt they tasted mighty fine.

Everything in bowl, well most things in the bowl while we waited for the rice to finish cooling, but eventually everything in the bowl. Hands are good mixers so our designated get your hands sticky participant (the other delineated job was flipper, in case you care) mixed away. We thought we got it to the right consistency based on the ball test by adding a few extra breadcrumbs, as suggested.

Then we formed them into patty shapes by using a ring mold, but here's where things went a little down hill. We (ok, just the sticky fingers person...) struggled to keep the patty in a patty looking shape while applying the breadcrumbs. We ultimately got there, but it was harder than we think it should have been. We also managed to break a couple transferring from the counter to the skillet and a couple more during the flipping process (not because they didn't release - we learned that lesson well!).

Result

Not pretty, not destroyed, but at least as many two and three piece patties as the preferred one piecers. But really tasty, a little crunch from the coating and little bit sweet from all the good things in the mix.

We're accepting the 'fresh' rice combined with slightly chunkier (and less stale?) breadcrumbs lead to our downfall. Oh well...

The fish and the rice and the spinach and all the other fun things made us feel ok going sauce-less this time especially since everything in our fridge probably wouldn't have been an appropriate pairing.

We had the urge for bubbles with dinner so we grabbed up a Cava we've had lurking for a bit too long. We enjoyed the wine and it certainly wasn't a bad match with the dish.

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

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Conclusion

We had two satisfying meals!

Neither was hard to make. Neither was time consuming. Neither needed fancy equipment. Neither needed far flung shopping trips. All in all, a relaxing challenge!

We could see ourselves doing the fish ones again just for an easy evening in by ourselves (in case we break them again we'd not share with friends just yet) but we probably wouldn't do the zucchini ones as a dinner. We could, however, see them making a pretty good component for a Brunch when we've got friends over so we are actually going to keep both recipes safe.

Oh, and for the record, we didn't pick these two recipes because they were listed first in the challenge, just a happy co-incidence after we carefully considered all options presented.

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

ps. If you like you're wine, with or without your dinner, you might like to follow along with us (or play by yourself) as we document a project we've recently started. We're trying to get a hold of wines made from 100 different grapes. As with the Daring Kitchen, it's mostly about getting out there and trying something new and as we're relatively early in the countdown, both the Chardonnay, and the Cava contributed for us.

The Daring Cooks’ February 2012 challenge was hosted by Audax & Lis and they chose to present Patties for their ease of construction, ingredients and deliciousness! We were given several recipes, and learned the different types of binders and cooking methods to produce our own tasty patties!

Comments pre Blog Platform Change

Shelley C responded:
Great choices, and delicious sounding meals! It's always nice when the challenges offer a bit of leeway and come together efficiently and deliciously! :)
Great job.

Susie Bee on Maui responded:
Glad they were tasty!

Audax Artifex responded:
I'm so glad that you liked the notes and information that went with the challenge. Always a joy to read the challenge results on your blog for some reason I can really "see" your efforts and the way you describe the recipes is endearing and charming. Yes the canned fish and rice patties are my favourite and the sardine version is extra special. A great success! Cheers from Audax in Sydney Australia.

Tamales

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 18:29:00 +0000

Ok, we're late, but we're ok with that due to a fun vacation!

Ok, we're excited about this challenge but not in the same way that we expect everyone else is. Again, we are excited.

We almost blew this one off (remember the first line of this post?) but decided not to because for the first time ever we have a reason to buy us up some tomatillos. One of our more frequented non-mega-mart (yes, we're quoting Alton again) stores nearby seems to always have them (and always have people fussing over them - but never us) but we've had no idea what to do with them, mostly because we don't know what to expect from them taste wise. We're about to change all that!

Green Chile Chicken Tamales

Rounding up everything was easy enough. As expected the store we knew to have the tomatillos also had everything else we needed (even lard, but we chose to go with the shortening because some of those numbers on the back of the can were, frankly, just a little frightening) and quite easily locatable.

Fortunately we read through the directions one more time in the morning and caught the bit about soaking the husks for at least 3 hours because our plan to start at about 6 for dinner would have meant we were very hungry by the time we got through all 24 steps...

Off to the store relatively early and a dash back into the kitchen for a pot of water before heading out to work out in anticipation of eating a lot of tamales later in the day.

Filling

Seeing we needed chicken stock in both parts of this process we got a hold of a whole chicken and boiled him (or her?) up and with the skills we learned way back when we made some Consommé to also save us a few bucks at the grocery store.

Did you know that when you peel a tomatillo that under that very dry looking exterior they're kind of sticky, almost icky? We didn't, but now we know why rinsing them is included in the directions... They broiled up nicely, just as expected.

Out comes the food processor, in go the tomatillos and any juices that escaped during the broiling. We're supposed to give them 5 minutes to cool before hitting the go button which is more than enough time to chop up the garlic and chilies (we dialed back from Serrano to Jalapeno - because one of us is a baby when it comes to hot) and get them in too.

They whiz up just fine and into the pan for some reducing. Then thinned out again with the chicken stock (that is still warm, btw) and back on the heat for some more reducing. Eventually it looks as described and the chicken and cilantro join in and then it gets to hang around waiting for the dough to come together.

Result

Sort of looked like the pictures provided, but a good bit more green. We liked the taste, but having never had tomatillos before (that we know of, to be fair...) we weren't exactly sure what we were aiming for. We're hoping we like the taste because of the tomatillos which would mean we could get brave and try use them in other dishes sometime soon.

We kind of think it would make a fun sandwich.

Dough

More electric mixing devices needed...

Out comes the stand mixer, on goes the paddle. In goes the shortening, switch goes to on.

In goes the masa and the more that goes in, the more it looks like the mixture you would put on the top of your apple crumble, but we'd read ahead so we weren't worried.

Slowly added in the stock and with about a quarter cup left we poked it and mushed it in our hands and decided we had the right texture - after turning the mixer off first, of course.

Result

We thought we had the right texture and there's nothing to taste so we continued on our way.

Hindsight suggests that we should have used all of the recommended amount of stock. Oh well...

Combining

It goes together easily enough but it took us a couple each to get the feel for how much dough to spread out, how far to spread it out and then how much filling to plonk on top. We got there, but we may have been using too much dough all the way through because we didn't get the 24 suggested in the recipe. We did have filling left over, so now we get to find out if it works as a sandwich filling...

The wrapping was surprisingly easy and we really weren't convinced we'd be able to tie them up nicely with the strips of husk we'd made. Good thing we didn't bet because we would have lost our cash on that one.

Into the pot, all standing up nicely, heat on, walk away and go find some wine to join them for dinner. We ended up giving them an extra 10 minutes so as to get the described ease of pulling away the husk.

Result

Although some variation in size, once standing up in the pot they mostly looked like the picture provided, and it didn't take us all that long to get them all put together - phew, we were getting hungry.

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

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Conclusion

We made Tamales! No doubt, we got a dish we're happy with. Someone who grew up eating and making them may have rolled their eyes a little and may have 'complained' about the texture of the dough, but we certainly think they wouldn't go hungry with our attempt.

Not sure what the official tamale eating rules are, but we kind of think a sauce would have helped (and we note from the postings made on time that some people did serve with a sauce) but we accept that we may have that feeling due to our dough being just a little bit too un-moist - next time we'll use all the stock.

We're thinking these might be fun to bring out for friends as an appetizer one day, but we'll probably have to practice one more time before that. We certainly have enough masa left over to give us a shot at improving...

As tradition now dictates, we reached into our Wine Cellar to find a beverage to aid in the eating part of the challenge. This time we came out with a Parés Baltà "Ros de Pacs", a Spanish Organic Rose. Other than a tasting note suggestion that it goes well with Chicken we just thought a lighter red would be our best bet. A great wine all on it's own, and certainly did no harm to our Tamales. Although, we suspect our clever wine guy could come up with a technically better match.

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

Maranda of Jolts & Jollies was our January 2012 Daring Cooks hostess with the mostess! Maranda challenged us to make traditional Mexican Tamales as our first challenge of the year!

Comments pre Blog Platform Change

Shelley C responded:
I am so glad that it all worked out so well, and that you were able to get all of the ingredients so darn easily! Sounds like this was a pretty successful challenge for you guys. Great job!

Steamed Char Sui Bao

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 18:29:00 +0000

We have the opportunity to use our Bamboo Steamer? Cool!

With no ingredients to cause us stress from an eating point of view, the only decision for us was whether to bake or to steam. It's good to see the steamer on the stove, so steaming it was...

Rounding up the ingredients was a mostly non-event as almost everything we needed already has a place jammedstored nicely in the fridge or in the cupboard. The couple of things we didn't have we elected to follow the substitution guidelines or guess our own substitution mostly because our jammednicely arranged shelves really don't need another couple of bottles of fun stuff only missing a tablespoon or two.

Pork

Day 1

Our pork supplier did a grand job cleaning up our tenderloins as there was hardly anything that needed cleaning up. In fact it took longer for the marinade person to put that together than for the other to clean up the tenderloins and cut into the suggested sizes.

For the marinade we substituted:

the light soy with dark soy - not even sure we knew there were two types until now...
the maltose with honey
the shaoxing cooking wine with sherry - we weren't sure if it was a white or a red and sherry is sort of kind of in the middle in a generous sort of substitution way ...
five spice with asian spice blend - actually, we're kind of surprised and / or embarrassed that we don't have any...

And then we got everyone in the pool. Mixed a bit, saved a bit and coated the [easily] prepared pork. Into the fridge, and back to the TV (and then bed and then a day of chores) to allow time to do its thing.

Day 2 - Part 1

We went with the sear then oven method for cooking. A little confusion in that the bake only time suggested was shorter than for our chosen option. Ultimately we went a little bit longer than the recommended 15 minutes, but we think that has a lot to do with the many times the oven door was opened while we basted - this strongly suggests that the bake only method would need at least this long too, but we didn't experiment.

We also saved a little less than suggested of the marinade for basting as we were a bit nervous therre wasn't enough in the bowl to do the marinating. Turns out we had just the right amount for basting so we lucked into a win win there.

Result

A little bit of char on the outside from the pan and lots of sticky goodness only adding to that from the basting. We have no doubt it looks the way it should!

Chopping it up for the next step was a challenge. Not because it's hard to chop, but it's hard not to get too carried away with the sampling! It's tasty!

Day 2 - Part 2

Once we 'suffered' through the chopping of the Pork Loin part everything else was straightforward enough. We perhaps could argue no substitutions were made for this part, but remember that whole dark v light soy thing?

It didn't thicken as quickly as suggested. Rather than trying to add in more cornflour and therefore double the opportunity for lumps we simmered a bit longer using evaporation to help out here. Drat! Looks like we did have a substitution of a sort...

Result

Tasty! Yeah, we had more than a quick taste and we know this is still not supposed to be the eating part of the day... Rich, but not crazy rich. Definitely moorish.

Bun

Hmmmm... What does scald milk mean? Google was only moderately helpful because it seems they don't really know the answer either with many variations / interpretations / directions to get the job done. We went with heat over medium heat until just about boiling and used the visual cue of a few bubbles around the side.

After adding some treats into the milk (for the record, the oil does not look good sitting on top during this cooling) we didn't have to sit around waiting for luke-warm to appear because we were actually doing this concurrently with the pork. The yeast did it's magic and then it was time to get the elbow grease out and knead away - we tagged out a couple of times along the way.

Timing was on our side for a change. The dough was easily twice it's size in just over an hour so we were able to get going on the assembly way earlier than expected. YAY!

Dividing and rolling and spooning all went well (although we had 2 'buns' with no filling - probably related to the over sampling of earlier in the evening). The sealing up, not so much. We found the only way we could keep them together was with a bit of water along the joins. No big deal, but we weren't prepared for this eventuality causing us at least a minute - probably more like a minute and a half - of panic.

The extra bit of raising didn't go so well. We completely skipped over it. We're blaming the tastiness of the filling and the need to get this done as quickly as possible combined with the panic of the sealing up issues. Sorry about that. Oh well...

The steaming went fine in terms of timing and extraction, but some of them had parts that looked a little translucent almost and not the even white color and texture we were expecting. Is that because we didn't give them that extra bit of rising?

Result

The translucent parts only affected the prettiness factor because we think they still tasted great. We were kind of bummed we only had one layer in our steamer and therefore were forced into 2 courses rather than all at once. But we got through that distress thanks to the help of our TV and a bottle of wine...

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

CLICK

Conclusion

It was tasty and filling and easy to round up the ingredients and not hard to put them all together. Not as pretty as we would have liked (but that's probably our fault), and therefore not something we could 'risk' serving up to friends (unless it could be proved that our skipping of the extra bit of raising was the cause). But the pork when it still looked like a loin could easily be incorporated into a have friends over for dinner arrangement.

Our Wine Club suggested that a Bourdeaux type blend out of Mankas Vineyards, called 'Amelie' would work with BBQ pork so out it came. Our opinion is that no harm was done to the pork by the wine and vice versa, but no great improvements either - but that's just our opinion.

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

Our Daring Cooks’ December 2012 hostess is Sara from Belly Rumbles! Sara chose awesome Char Sui Bao as our challenge, where we made the buns, Char Sui, and filling from scratch – delicious!

Comments pre Blog Platform Change

Andy responded:
I always love your posts! They are so much fun to read. I too had the same question about "scald". And I steamed the first buns without letting them rise a second time, and I got to tell you, the extra rising really does help with the way the look in the end.
Great job!

Shelley C responded:
As always, great post! Yeah, the sampling portion of the process can easily go overboard with a recipe like this, because that filling was just so tasty and easy to eat!! Sounds like everything went really well, even with the minor panic in there, and that you had a delicious dinner!! Great job :)

Brian responded:
What a great post! I'm glad that everything worked out well.

Cher responded:
Fun post - glad you survived your adventure!

Cooking with Tea!

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 18:29:00 +0000

Ok, we do have some tea in the pantry. Not much, and it only comes out on those runny nose days, and only for one of us... So, seeing the title of this month's challenge didn't get us bouncing around the house, but as promised, we're giving everything a try.

We'll eat tofu if it's part of the makeup of a dish, but not if it's the feature - it's not the worst thing ever invented, but there's something about the texture that doesn't work for us. And the eggs looked fun in an Easter sort of way, but doesn't really translate into a dinner that we can open up a bottle of wine with. We were therefore sort of pushed into the Beef option, which is totally fine - we do eat beef...

Beef Braised in Rooibos Tea with Sweet Potatoes

Our confidence in locating the correctly named tea was low, having never heard of this variety before. We were half prepared to hunt for it, and half prepared to do some research to figure out what we could find easily and would also be an acceptable trade off. Phew, didn't need either of our half preparations... As it turned out, it was easy to find in our normal everyday boring store - and all wrapped up in handy dandy bags.

Everything else was easy enough to round up as part of our normally scheduled grocery collection trip.

Nothing complicated here...

A little bit of chopping to get everything started.
A little bit of searing to get things started.
A little bit of stirring to keep things going.
A little bit of brewing to keep things going.
A little bit of improvisation because knowing we have something in the pantry is not the same as knowing we have enough of that something in the pantry (we had to go half red wine vinegar and half white wine vinegar).
A good bit of sitting around (with a glass of wine) letting a gentle fire do it's work.
A little bit of late additions to make things better.
A little bit more sitting around (with a glass of wine).

All the while, we got to enjoy our wine, the smells and watching the Chicago Chefs rock on Top Chef!

Result

It worked - we don't think our vinegar tribulations had any overly adverse effects. It looked good. It tasted nice. The kitchen and living room smelled like we'd been cooking something yummy.

The sauce didn't really thicken up and there was a lot of it left over once we'd enjoyed our meal (and the left overs the next day).

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

CLICK

Conclusion

We opened up our bottle of Terredora Di Paolo Aglianico which wasn't a bad pairing, but with the heavy tannins perhaps would be better in a couple of years.

It was a tasty dinner that was not hard to prepare (actually mostly takes care of itself), but we're not really sure what the tea brought to the party as we couldn't find the flavors that we found when drinking it for breakfast (and in our opinion didn't taste anything different to any other sort of tea we might have for breakfast). We did get the honey and cinnamon and ginger and orange (kind of surprised us considering how little we put in) and enjoyed the combination.

We'd cook it up for friends and not be embarrassed, that's for sure, but we wouldn't be making a big deal about how we used tea to make it.

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

Sarah from Simply Cooked was our November Daring Cooks’ hostess and she challenged us to create something truly unique in both taste and technique! We learned how to cook using tea with recipes from Tea Cookbook by Tonia George and The New Tea Book by Sara Perry.

Comments pre Blog Platform Change

Lyuba responded:
Great job! Glad you enjoyed this new experience. My kitchen smelled great, but my hubby liked the stew a little more the I did. I thought its was great, but did wish that I would have cut down on ginger!

Come see me at http://www.willcookforsmiles.com/

Moo Shu

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 17:27:00 +0000

It's possible we've had Moo Shu somewhere sometime without knowing it, but we certainly haven't made any for ourselves - although we've made pork stir fry type things (but not the pancakes) that sort of fall into the ball park of what was called for this month.

Schedule wise it fit into a moderately lazy weekend evening, which was nice. And we were pretty certain we could round up all the ingredients at any one of a couple of our local stores. As it turned out we couldn't find one ingredient, but fortunately there was an option provided so we opted out of the panic drive to somewhere not so handy.

Hoisin Sauce

Let the record show that we did not reach for the jar we have tucked away in the fridge!

Let the record show that it's a very straightforward recipe to understand and execute. Everyone in the pool, mix.

The instructions are right, it does look like it's not going to work for a good while, but eventually comes together looking mostly like what we thought we would get.

This is where our missing ingredient came into play. We really wanted to do the Bean Paste rather than Peanut Butter as it's something that has never made it passed our front door before, but alas we couldn't locate it in the two stores we tried. We opted for the Peanut Butter and although happy with what we got we're curious as to how it would have differed given a more successful shopping trek.

Result

Let the record show that we did reach for the jar tucked in the fridge - for comparison purposes only!

Pretty close! Ours was:

much thinner, but actually thickened up just a little by the time we got to dine on it and quite a bit overnight when we accidentally left it out.
a bit lighter in color, and didn't change after being left out...
less sweet
more nutty (damn you failed shopping trek!)

We liked dipping into it. We're going with success.

Thin Pancakes

Seems easy enough - kinda like bread, kinda like pizza dough, kinda like pancakes. We can do them all. Also, kinda hot, so be careful when you do the adding water part!

We needed more water (of the boiling variety) than advertised, probably closer to two cups when all was said and done. After that it kneaded up nicely and was quite happy to sit in the bowl while we started on the chopping for the Pork part of the adventure.

The dividing up in similar sized balls is a clever procedure - cut in 3, roll in to a 'snake', cut in half a few times to get 8 very similarly sized ball type shapes.

Turn them into better looking balls, smush a bit on the counter and roll out pretty thin. Not hard work, but not quick work!

Throw them at a pan (not too hot, not too cold) - we used our skillet and were able to have two going at once. We thought we had the temperature pretty much right, but based on the final texture we probably couldn't dispute it was a little warm.

Result

Lots of laundry. We had things covered with wet dish towels all over the place...

Did look a bit like the pictures, but we don't think they were as floppy. They did fold up okish around the goodies, but there was cracking towards the edges.

Wouldn't serve them for breakfast ;p, but worked out pretty good as the food delivery device (we're probably (mis?)quoting Alton there...). But, not a lot of motivation to go through the process again...

Moo Shu Pork

We figured the pork as the star, so it wouldn't be such a big drama if we selected a different type of mushroom - especially since we'd never even heard of dried wood ears let alone seen them in any store we've ever visited. We did stay with dried and found a 1oz pack of mixed dried wild mushrooms - wild / wood, close enough, right? Even if someone can declare categorically that the wood ears bring something extra special to the party, we're ok with what we chose and therefore ended up with.

Apart from that, nothing else to cause consternation over as we rounded up the ingredients. Nothing too complicated about cutting everything up, but we think the 'matchstick-sized threads' was not the best analogy to use. If we lined everything up in order of closeness to matchstick-sized threads we'd start with pretty close, and end up small, but no matchstick - that would be bamboo shoots, cabbage, pork...

Cook the eggs first, cook up everything else, add most of the sauce, re-add the eggs, add everything else, stirring all the while. We don't have a wok (we felt a wok would have given the best authentic results...), but a wok like pan so this went quickly and easily. The cabbage cooks down a lot so the overflowing pan quickly becomes 'do we have enough food?' The smells hit the kitchen but it's over quite quickly so no house enveloping aromas.

Result

Tasty! Looked exactly like the picture. We've cooked up similar looking things and served them over rice and we have no doubt this would have worked out fine that way too had our pancakes totally failed - they didn't.

The Coming Together...

We took everything over to the couch, got TiVo wound up, cracked open our wine, and began the customized, individualized construction. It was easy, but would have been a little bit easier if our pancakes were a little bit floppier.

Select the best looking pancake.
Select a good smear of Hoison and place it through the middle of the pancake.
Select a good scoop of Moo Shu and place over Hoison
Attempt to fold per instructions.
Remove some Moo Shu thinking the volume is the problem.
Attempt to fold per instructions.
Return previously removed Moo Shu now knowing the folding is operator error (and a little not floppy enough pancakes).
Fold more like a taco than per instructions.
Eat
Smile and ooh and ahh because it's really tasty.
Go back to 1, but skip 4-7 each subsequent time through.

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

CLICK

Conclusion

A fun evening's work. It took about the same amount of time as suggested in the recipe so we ate at a sensible time - that hasn't always been the case with our challenges. It was tasty and filling and generated just the right amount of food so as not to have left overs nor lead us toward over indulging.

We opened up a bottle of something something (2009 Château Michel de Vert Lussac Saint-Emilion) with the very scientific reasoning that nothing we had left in the cellar vaguely suggested Moo Shu, we had a slight hankering for something red, our tasting notes suggested pork as a match, and we were thirsty. It's a nice balanced wine which worked out just fine with this dish, but we could see it working with just about anything the Daring Kitchen threw our way.

We're ok eating things with our fingers, so don't mind getting a few drips of something over our hands - we definitely got a few drops, but nothing to run screaming to a sink over. We accept that folding per instructions would have minimized, if not eliminated, the amount of dripping - oh well.

This was not too hard too make, not too hard eat and definitely was an enjoyable meal to be filled up with!

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

The October Daring Cooks' Challenge was hosted by Shelley of C Mom Cook and her sister Ruth of The Crafts of Mommyhood. They challenged us to bring a taste of the East into our home kitchens by making our own Moo Shu, including thin pancakes, stir fry and sauce.

Comments pre Blog Platform Change

Shelley C responded:
Woo hoo! Seriously love reading your guys' write ups, and reading this one made me smile - it sounds like everything went really, really well, and I am so glad that you guys enjoyed it! If you have a hankering, I'd recommend giving one of the other pancake rolling methods a whirl, but seriously, awesome, awesome job. I definitely find Moo-Shu-ing to be a fun, social dinner type thing, not just regular meal prep, and it sounds like it was very fun for you guys. Thanks so much for cooking with us!!

Sawsan@chef in disguise responded:
I love reading your posts and this one was no exception :)
Glad you enjoyed the challenge and it was a success by most counts

Stock to Soup to Consommé

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 17:27:00 +0000

Crap! So close. We eventually got to what we could argue was a perfect consommé... for about an hour... and sadly the consumption part of the challenge was not included in that hour. Oh well, let us explain.

There was never any doubt we'd try a consommé using the egg raft technique, so we picked the chicken and wonton option and added in the brioche. We had different things going at different times over 3 days over 2 weekends and mostly when they were supposed to be going. We managed to get all 3 components right and pretty good, just not all at the same time, nor the appropriate time... Oh well...

We struggled interpreting a couple of the recipes. We mostly made decisions that worked, but not all, and had to call upon YouTube to help us out - more on that in a moment.

In order of our perceived level of success

Herb and Garlic Brioche

Day 2

We've made a couple of breads along the way (and our own pizza dough) so we're not scared of getting out the yeast and spreading flour over half the kitchen. Different technique, so we attempted to follow the rules closely...

We weren't quite sure what to do with the butter, so we just melted it with the milk as it was warmed, so the result that we ended up more with a cake batter type arrangement than dough could rest fairly on our shoulders for doing that wrong. We added in about another half cup of flour (in tablespoon increments) until it mostly looked like dough, albeit the floppiest dough we've ever worked with. We actually put the garlic in with the milk too.

We set it aside to proof and it did a good job of that, easily doubling in size. It was still a bit floppy but as we spread it out on the counter, punching out the air, it firmed up enough for us to be confident in getting it rolled up.

We probably used more fresh herbs than advertised so as to get the sort of coverage in the picture provided, but we don't think that caused us any problems. The roll was uneventful and the transfer to the baking tray for it's second proof a little eventful (still a bit floppy...) but no harm done.

Definite 2^nd proofing success! In to the oven for the prescribed time. Definite bread type aromas keeping us amused from about the half way point.

Out of the oven, cool only marginally and eat all on it's own - keep reading to find out why.

Day 3

Reheat the leftovers in a stink'n hot oven for a relatively short time. Enjoy the exposed, now toasty end, more than the other parts with our consommé.

Result

Awesome! Possibly the most successful and tasty bread we've had the pleasure of messing up our kitchen with.

Due to technical difficulties, we didn't have a consommé to share it with. We actually just ate it straight up. We briefly considered adding butter, but the warm steamy herby feel and aromas convinced us otherwise. Seriously, this was our dinner, combined with the Best Frozen Custard in the land as an appetizer. Yep, things didn't go to plan...

For us it was far far better straight out of the oven than reheated and although we didn't actually get to dip it in anything this way we don't think it is really a good dipping type bread. We got this impression just eating it, and only confirmed this to ourselves when we actually got to dip it in something.

We would have no hesitation having a loaf of this handy (and fresh out of the oven) to start a meal with friends, but would serve up something different if we had a soup course.

Chicken Wontons

We've made dumpling type devices before so weren't too worried about this part of the process.

Day 3

Didn't do anything on Day 2 due to the technical difficulties you'll learn about real soon..

Easy enough to chop the chicken in the food-processor. Couldn't think of a reason not to add the sherry, soy and pepper at the same time. Adding the green stuff (in a bowl, not the processor) took longer to chop than stir...

Couldn't be easier to scoop and seal them up. We made them in little parcel shapes, rather than pot-stickers so for the cooking part we didn't really see a way to flip them over and make sure everything was cooked nicely on the inside - can't be having partially cooked chicken. We went with the fry to get a crust on the bottom then added some water (watch out for some angry sizzling), covered them and steamed for a couple of minutes to make sure all was good.

Result

Pretty good. We could do them again, that's for sure. Might try a different shape next time and be able to flip them instead of steaming, but we weren't unhappy with having them steamed.

A great match with the consommé. We both felt obliged to dip the ones on the side before consumption.

Had enough left over that they served as a pretty good emergency dinner for one. Didn't have any more consommé so just used a simple dipping sauce.

Golden Chicken Consommé

Day 1

Making of the Stock was fine. We've made vegetable stock many times, but that's more to use up vegetables that are fast approaching a too late date with no readily available option to use them. It was kind of fun to head off out to buy stuff just for a stock. It's possibly the first time we've actually bought a whole chicken that wasn't already roasted up for us....

Brown off the chicken type stuff, little bit of sweating of the veg and then everything in the pot, water in, turn on the fire, wait patiently.

We did do some skimming along the way, but really didn't get all that much stuff that needed to be removed.

Cool, and then in to the freezer to keep safe until next weekend for the 'real' part of this challenge.

The pleasant side effect is that we ended up with a really nicely cooked whole chicken. It was really juicy. We turned it into sandwiches and also added it to a scheduled salad that was originally chicken-less. Win!

Day 2

We were very excited to give this a go! But, had a bit of trouble figuring out exactly what the recipe was asking of us. We made our best guesses...

First, with the plan to do Consommé do we skip Step 2 (make the soup)? We went with no because Step 3 talked about adding cooked meat to the egg whites and the only meat cooking part was in the soup making Step. So, the soup part went splendidly. Again, we kept an eye out for skimming requirements but didn't really find anything.

Now, things started to go poorly. Probably based on our previous decision to do the Soup stage... The egg white, ice, cooked meat thing didn't make a lot of sense to us, but we tried it. We couldn't see any sensible way to separate the chicken from the vegetables and such so we just left it all together. Whisk eggs, ice, cooked stuff, back in simmering pot, stir - but only for 3 long seconds and walk away.

Fail!

We never got a raft, everything just sank mostly to the bottom and stayed there - and we're not supposed to stir anymore so we couldn't encourage it back up other than by staring at it. We let it go for 30 minutes before giving up. Basically, we just made a form of egg drop soup... There was much un-rejoicing! No tears, though! We pulled out all the lumpy bits and were pretty much back where we started with the stock apart from having a more chickeny constitution and also all the fun additives that joined the party... Onward, to the fridge...

Abort any plans for making the Wontons, calculate there's just enough time to eat dessert before the bread comes out of the oven and go watch TV with a tub of Frozen Custard.

Day 3

Google is your friend! We found a couple of recipes that talked about doing the raft thing a bit differently and were just about to pick one to attempt to rescue our project when we stumbled on a YouTube video of someone making a consommé which we didn't particularly find useful, but that caused us to move our search from Google to YouTube. We ended up with this one from Chef Sanecki - thanks chef!

Back to the store for more raft building items...

So, it didn't come with a recipe which led to us making our best guess (common theme for this challenge...) on quantities. We guessed wrong. Well, actually, we pretty much guessed right, but didn't factor in that he had a much bigger pot of stock than us. Oh well, again.

So we followed his guidelines of starting with everything cold and uncooked, getting everyone in the pool, stirring constantly, heating slowly until just over 130°, now walk away and don't touch. Almost straight away we got things forming at the top and shortly afterwards we got little pockets of bubbles coming up. Nervous at first, after about 20 minutes we mostly were happy to let it be for the recommended 90 minutes.

Perhaps at the 60 minute mark we decided we needed to poke a couple of holes in the raft as the bubbling had pretty much stopped. Even without poking it was obvious that something good was happening underneath based on what we could see overflowing the edges. Woo Hoo! This is when we realized something went wrong with our raft building quantities. Due to the effort required for hole poking it was apparent that our raft went almost all the way to the bottom of the pot.

No Soup for you! Please, not again?

Not so quick! We let it go the full 90 minutes and started the extraction process. Slow and fiddly and many coffee filters were required due to the raft breaking up a bit as we battled it for the very clear liquid that could be coaxed out of the pot.

After we decided to let it go the last 30 minutes we got to work on the Wontons because we needed to eat something somehow someway...

It took awhile to do the filtering, but we ended up with a pot of very consommé looking consommé. And there was much rejoicing and excitement throughout the trashed kitchen! It took so long to filter that we had cold consommé only to play with. No big deal, we have fire, right.

Ah, crap! While we were frying up our first batch of Wontons we let the consommé heat all the way up to a boil. Don't do that! It went cloudy at first, but it turned into a sort of suspended sediment. No one anywhere we looked earlier in the day suggested this could happen. We briefly considered filtering again, but we were hungry and the Wontons were ready and the leftover bread warmed again.

We soldiered on, but does anyone know what happened there?

Result

It was tasty, absolutely! Perhaps the double stock creation process we used helped? But it didn't look very consomméy at the eating part of the process. The Wontons were great in it!

A lot of work that got us nowhere, but eventually we ended up with a two-partnight dinner.

There was some left over but it went to the great drain in the sink due to it having a disproportionate amount of the crud we created during the accidental boiling part - we tried really hard not to get it in our bowls for the dinner part of the event.

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

CLICK

Conclusion

We did it, but we failed too - more than once...

It would take a very extra super duper special event for us to try a Consommé again, and even then we'd almost certainly skip it. A well executed bowl would look awesome served up to guests, but the specific needs of the cooking process and our level of skill in understanding exactly what is happening makes it just to risky. We would cry if we tried again and didn't end up with a great bowl.

The Wontons and Bread on the other hand, do have a place in the lets-impress-the-guests file and we look forward to the opportunity to unleash these dishes upon others.

As always, we dug into the Cellar for a wine to share our project with. Not surprisingly, nothing was suggested as a match for consommé. We settled on something we've never seen before because it was suggested as a match for chicken dishes. It had a little sweetness to it that we though offset nicely what was going on in the consommé.

We lived, we learned, we trashed the kitchen (2.5 times!), we ate something we'd never made ourselves before. The point of being Daring, right? The next time Consommé appears on a menu we'll endeavor to grab up a bowl in appreciation of what the chef had to go through to get it to us!

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

Peta, of the blog Peta Eats, was our lovely hostess for the Daring Cook’s September 2011 challenge, “Stock to Soup to Consommé”. We were taught the meaning between the three dishes, how to make a crystal clear Consommé if we so chose to do so, and encouraged to share our own delicious soup recipes!

Comments pre Blog Platform Change

Audax Artifex responded:
WOW your postings are always so much fun to read. Great that you got the bread and the wontons sorted out from the challenge they sound so delicious. Sorry to hear that the clarified cosumme went cloudy when boiled (I have never heard of this happening). But at least it tasted wondereful. Cheers from Audax in Sydney Australia.

Ruth H. responded:
I kind of want to see your raft that ate the consomme pot...! I am quite impressed with your perseverence, and I am glad there were some successes inthere for you! I ws not brave enough to try making consomme in the first place, so I am even more impressed with your dilligence in trying twice!!

Jo Ann responded:
I love your descriptive post - you get an A++ for effort for sure. You were more patient than most. We have all been in your shoes (I should write a book of kitchen disasters). But in the end, you got a delicious meal -that's what counts!

Makey-Cakey responded:
Top marks for perseverence! Your description of the wonton making makes them sound easier than I thought - thinking I might brave trying them!

Shelley C responded:
Man, you guys are nothing if not persistent!! I love reading about your adventures, and totally applaud your efforts. Your bread sounds wonderful, and the consommme sounds... well... amusing :) Really great job!

Heather responded:
Oh my gosh, you guys are hilarious!!! I love the description of your culinary adventure. And it was smart to take days to do it. Mine took 6 hours on a Sunday afternoon!

Jo responded:
That was quite the adventure/ordeal! The bread sounds just divine, I love herby yeasty baked goodness, I'm sorry the consomme part didn't work out too well for you!

sawsan@chef in disguise responded:
I loved reading your post..hats off to you for all the attempts and not giving up..it sounds like it was quite an adventure :)

andy responded:
Fabulous post! I too found some of the instructions odd and I went back and forth a few times with Do I do step 2 or go to Step 3?

Well done for soldering on!

Oggi responded:
You two crack me up! This is the most fun DC I've read so far and I was grinning while reading. I can't wait for your next adventure.in the kitchen.:)

Peta responded:
sorry you had trouble with the recipes. I am not a wine buff, so I can't recomend a wine to go with it.
I just fry the wontons in deep oil and as long as they are golden they are always cooked through when I make the little ones.
your raft should only be about an inch or so thick.
I find if I don't get a recipe the first time making it again is the key to success.

Appam and Curry

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 17:27:00 +0000

It's been a couple of challenges since we've had to really plan our attack out (shopping as well as timing) and get started the day (or many days) before the scheduled eating of the result. Probably could have squeezed it in a day, but we used the night time too.

Thanks for giving us a lot to pick from! We almost went with the whole fish, but we like lamb...

Appam

Nothing complicated rounding up the ingredients, all coming from our regulation everyday store or our pantry. We did learn that Coconut Water comes in a soda can, though; and the one we were presented with had small chunks of coconut floating around.

Day 1, just before bed time get the rice a soaking. The hardest part of this is actually not getting up off the couch and going straight to bed...

Day 2, just before leaving for work, get the coconut water, yeast and sugar playing together. Load up the food processor with the soaked rice and wait a few minutes for the yeast to wake up. Everyone in the processor and grind up that rice. Almost finished, add in the cooked rice (which for the record is very hard to cook if you have no need for a normal batch that you can just rob from!), and grind a bit more. Set it aside, cover and go to work.

Day 2, just after getting home and feeding the cats, do nothing. Well, until the Curry is ready because the recipe says cook and eat, not cook and keep to the side.

Day 2, just as the Curry is almost done, add in the coconut milk, whip it all up and have a go at cooking them up. Small amount in the pan, swirl quickly, cover. That's easy enough, right? And we would tend to agree. But we could not get them out of the pan and we certainly didn't get any curled up edges.

It seems we're experts at having them stick to the pan and when we finally got smartlucky enough to not have them completely stick to the pan we could do nothing but get them stuck to the spatula (a non-stick one at that!). We did eventually get them on the plate, but they were more pile-like than pancake-like.

For the record, we tried a normal pan, lightly oiled; beat up non-stick, lightly oiled; fairly new non-stick, lightly oiled; non-stick skillet, lightly oiled; fairly new non-stick, moderately oiled (don't do that, nothing good comes of it!) and even the pan we would call our best produced some stickage with the others varying degrees of disaster. There's clearly something we're missing, or did wrong with the batter. Anyone?

Result

We sucked at this! Our first batch was probably nice calling it a disaster (for reasons not needing to be discussed here we started on one day but had to abort until a couple of days later, way past the recommended batter storing time). Our second batch, much less disaster-like, but did not look a whole lot like the final result pictures provided. Oh well.

However, we think they tasted ok and we think the texture worked ok with the Curry. We'll have to go out and eat some 'real' ones some day soon at least for comparison, but more for tips on making the pesky little things...

Sri Lankan Lamb Curry

A previous challenge got us the knowledge of where to find the lamb so that was easy (if you don't count getting a little bit lost on the drive over). Fresh Curry Leafs and Whole Spices needed a bit more consideration, but ultimately was not a problem. We headed over to a neighborhood where we thought we'd have the best chance for success and one shop later, we now have a new shop on our go-to list and a bag with all the goodies we need.

Once the ingredients are in hand it really is nothing more than a come home after work and 'whip' it up type dish. Phew! Because we did come home after work and 'whip' it up.

The nice men at the store had cut the lamb up mostly in the size we were after so that was a very easy Step 1.

Step 2 was no harder, but we were a bit puzzled by the amount of Cardamom used. After opening up 2 pods and extracting the seeds it didn't seem like there were enough of them, especially compared to how much of the others were used. We don't have a reference point so we just went with our pinch of seeds. The whole batch toasts up nicely, 'stink' up the kitchen just wonderfully and with just a little bit of coaxing all fit in the grinder. Grinding only improves the 'stink'!

We didn't do Part 2 of Step 3 correctly, or in fact, at all. We read the ingredient list, saw Tamarind, thought "cool, it's already in the fridge" and therefore didn't add it to the shopping list. What we didn't pick up on until we were in our not-going-out-again-tonight clothes was that the recipe called for Tamarind pulp and we are the proud owners of Tamarind paste. No idea how the two equate so when we got to the tamarind liquid part we just added a tablespoon of paste to the water. Not sure how it affected the final taste, but comparing it to the pictures provided our final effort was much much darker, which was a bit of a shame because it was an awesome color when the Tumeric first went in.

Other than that, getting everyone else to the party was uneventful. We didn't get the smells coming out of the pot as strongly as we expected, but we're kind of thinking that's due partly (mostly?) to the Tamarind incident of '11. Well, actually there was a close call towards the end... We were mere minutes away from reducing it down too far and into that not-fun-for-the-dishwasher stuck to the pan stage.

Result

Yummy! We really liked it. We're not sure how it would compare to the others out there, but we're happy with what we got. The lamb was tender, the sauce was rich without being too rich and there was no chance of there being leftovers for lunch the next day.

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

CLICK

Conclusion

It's unlikely we'll have a go at the Appams again (unless we get some tips / tricks that come with a guarantee of success), but there's no reason to think we wouldn't consider the Curry again, especially seeing how many new spices we now have in the pantry (well, technically stuck to the fridge...). Our friends would appreciate our effort, we're sure, if we served them up, but we're not going to just yet...

We probably need to give the Curry another go and do the Tamarind parts correctly, but maybe we won't because there's no reason to think we can't just be happy with our 'interpretation'...

We cracked open a bottle of Corets de Cima "Chaminé" which wouldn't have been our fist choice had we not enjoyed our first and second choice at some earlier time - solely based on the tasting notes provided. It was new to us and a relatively new grape so it was fun to have open. We don't think it aided our enjoyment of the Curry, but it sure didn't hurt it either.

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

Mary, who writes the delicious blog, Mary Mary Culinary was our August Daring Cooks’ host. Mary chose to show us how delicious South Indian cuisine is! She challenged us to make Appam and another South Indian/Sri Lankan dish to go with the warm flat bread.

Comments pre Blog Platform Change

Stephanie responded:
Hmm... well, these are my tips from dosas and appam:

1) start with rice flour. food processors may not get it fine enough but blenders probably will.

2) make sure you have a HOT pan before you add batter

3) swirl, don't tilt. Sadly, I figured that out on the second to last one so most of mine were slightly weird shapes.

4) if they break, you either have a batter that is too thick or you tried to flip it too early.

They're quite yummy though, and if you start with rice flour, not quite so involved.

Makey-Cakey responded:
My Appam were definitely pile like rather than pancake like too! Well done for persevering - I eventually gave in and added a tablespoon of flour, which helped quite a lot! - but was technically cheating!

andy responded:
I'm sorry that you had such a hard time! My second go, after having the batter in the fridge 2 days, stuck too. Very frustrating!

anja janssen responded:
What a great story, it gave me a smile. My first appams were a real mess, because I forgot the lid. Later it went better. But I'm curious how the official appams taste.

Mary Dolan responded:
Sorry to hear that you had trouble with the appams, but thanks for participating. I didn't have any troubles with them sticking, but I used a new non-stick pan, lightly oiled. It may have been the heat--I had to do a lot of fiddling to get that right. I think tamarind paste/pulp goes by different names. I used the stuff in a solid block, but have no idea if I got it right either. As long as it tasted good. Cheers!

My Noodle Hands

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 17:26:00 +0000

We've made our own pasta a couple of times, usually for some sort of ravioli type device, so in the vain of being daring we decided to give the Spätzle a go. Definitely eaten it before, but never thought about the behind the scenes part of it until now - not even a little. Now we have...

We normally just work from exactly what is presented. However, we found a recipe as part of the comments to the challenge which we thought would suit our current eating / cooking arrangements - we're currently training for a race and the closer we get to race day the longer the workouts are getting, so in an attempt to reduce kitchen stress after getting home late, we're eating the same for lunch as we are for dinner and this recipe seemed more like a meal than a side compared to the traditional one offered.

German Spätzle

We went with the sundried tomato, leek, bacon and gruyere receipe.

Certainly easy enough to round up the ingredients. Actually, if we stayed with the recipe offered as part of the challenge introduction we wouldn't have even needed to go to the store (yes, we had some buttermilk in the freezer - for pancake emergencies, of course), so yes, easy to round up the ingredients.

Not knowing what optional herbs and spices our little guys would benefit from we just went with what was suggested. And when given the option to use buttermilk we always try to as we like the sort of gentle zing it brings to the party.

Adding the flour is no drama. The batter / dough (anyone? batter or dough?) certainly stiffens up quite quickly, and does get hard to stir. It did end up quite smooth without too much huff'n and puff'n.

A small technical bit of trickery... When it gets to the forming part of the process the directions say use a tablespoon. OK, tablespoon is located. It only took us one to figure out something was up, because half a tablespoon is a pretty big Spätzle. We continued along with out tablespoons but barely filled them at all. When all was said and done we went back and took a peek at the pictures provided - it looks like a teaspoon to us. No harm done, although if we'd never seen a Spätzle before we may have ended up with the worlds biggest ones...

The recipe we went with called for cooking the Spätzle up as normal, but then shocking it in ice water so as to have ready to fry up with the rest of the fun ingredients. We created our own small problem in that we had completely raided our ice supply so as to get our chosen wine ready for consumption. Although nothing to cry about, we had to sacrifice a few degrees of wine chilliness for the good of the little guys...

Not sure if it was operator error or just the nature of the 'beast' but we could not get the guys to brown up in the pan. Well, actually we could, but the second they did it stuck to the pan and separated away from the piece the next time we even thought about stirring. Oh well, not a deal breaker, just perplexing a little.

Result

Awesome!

Didn't look even a little bit like the Spätzle we've had in restaurants as a side to something. We also ended up with bigger pieces than we've seen before, but the texture was pretty much spot on what we expected.

The dish was a great combination of ingredients - someone was very clever to figure them out! We almost certainly will have a go at using them in a normal everyday pasta dish sometime soonish.

Not surprisingly, our Wine Club had not provided us with a wine that is a known Spätzle match. We themed on location, so grabbed up an Austrian (something that's name and type of grape is forgotten until we get through the trash and find the bottle later today...) Grüner Veltliner as our best 'match'. That we'd never seen this grape before we had no idea what to expect. The wine was a pleasant surprise and worked out just fine with the dish, but it might have been the richness of the sun dried tomatoes that helped more than the actual Spätzle.

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

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Conclusion

Fun, not hard, tasty and certainly something we could bring out for friends. Although we ate it as a meal (twice) we would tend toward serving it as a side, perhaps with something like a lamb dish.

Makes ugly, but tasty left overs, which tends to suggest it's really a prepare and eat right now type of dish but in our case it may have been more the Gruyere's fault and less the Spätzle's.

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

ps. you might want to wash your mixing bowl the second you finish forming your little guys. We're just say'n...

Steph, from Stephfood was our Daring Cooks' July hostess. Steph challenged us to make homemade noodles without the help of a motorized pasta machine. She provided us with recipes for Spätzle and Fresh Egg Pasta as well as a few delicious sauces to pair our noodles with!

Comments pre Blog Platform Change

Melanie responded:
Your spaetzle sounds tasty! And I do what to know what wine you ended up serving with it!

Jo responded:
The spatzle sound delish, but I am an inquiring mind as well, what was the wine? Hope you can find the bottle!

andy responded:
sundried tomato, leek, bacon and gruyere - what a great combo of flavours! I'll have to try this one.

Ruth H. responded:
I agree that spaetzle might not be the prettiest dish around, but it certainly is yummy! I am glad you found a recipe that worked for you, and I hope your training is going well!

blepharisma responded:
Hahaha... I laughed at the P.S. Yup, a very sticky and gross mess to clean spätzle - yum, yum, yum! I'm glad you enjoyed the challenge - thanks for sharing!

Mary responded:
That sounds like a great combination of flavours, whether the first time around or left over. I used a slotted spoon and forced the batter (I'm going with that, as it wasn't that thick) through it, for small, squiggly spaetzle. Yum and good luck with the race preparation!

David responded:
Hi guys, thanks for dropping buy. Regarding the wine, we found the bottle and updated the post to provide a link back to the Wine Club article. It was a Grüner Veltliner - a definite mouthful to say, but a really enjoyable mouthful to drink. Specifically, it was 2010 Weingut Stadt Krems but we have no idea how hard it might be to find as we got it through out Club.

Healthy Potato Salads from Around the World!

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 17:26:00 +0000

It feels like only yesterday that we were cranky about the challenge being turned into a popularity contest and here we are again, and this time with sponsors...

It feels like a challenge designed to be a competition has to be easier. How much variation and competition winningness can be found in the great challenging and daring challenges like Gumbo and Cassoulet? Oh well...

On the plus side, this was an easy challenge and we didn't have to set aside a day (or weeks) and in fact went to the stores after work to round everything up (as well as the groceries for the rest of the week), whip it up, and eat dinner at the same time we eat just about every other night after work.

It's not like we've not made a Potato Salad of some sort before, so it was the German one that caught our eye because the dressing was more sauce like than dressing like and it sounded like we could serve it hot as a main rather than as a side - we didn't feel we had any potato salad side worthy events coming up.

German Potato Salad

We've had challenges before rounding up ingredients, but not this one. We could have found everything easily in our normal everyday store, but actually went to two because we think we've found a new little market that does great fruit & veg at really quite good prices.

A little bit of guessing. Recipe just says potatoes (we went with red skinned, medium sized) and vinegar (we've never had plain ol' vinegar in the pantry so went with half apple cider and half white vinegar because we didn't have enough of either and together we ended up with just a smidge under the required amount). No guessing on the bacon because we were given the choice of bacon bacon or turkey bacon. We don't mind bacon bacon, but don't need it in / on / around everything as just about every tv chef / judge / face is sprouting these days. Therefore, turkey bacon was the winner.

We also changed the recipe and left the skins on. Partly (ok, mostly) because we didn't feel like peeling potatoes that really don't need to be peeled, but also because the red skin just makes everything look a bit more interesting.

The sauce comes together sort of in an ugly way, but when it's ready for the Potatoes all is well, and once they and the Bacon join in, all is very well. The kitchen certainly changes complexion when the first wafts of boiling sauce sends the vinegar aroma(s) your way.

Result

Tasty! Served well as dinner on it's own, and as a bonus also served equally as well as lunch the next day.

The 'sauce' was consistent with the ingredients in it. It was tangy, yet sweet, a little bit of crunch and coated everything nicely.

Tradition now sort of dictates we grab something out of our Wine Club 'Cellar' but alas, none of our Tasting Notes suggested a pairing with Potato Salad. We took a chance on a 2008 Capestrano Passerina Marche and we think we lucked out. The acidity of the wine played nicely with the tangyness of the sauce. And, even if it wasn't a great match (it was!) hey, we still got to have a glass or 3 on a school night...

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

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Conclusion

A tasty result and a pretty good option next time we have to show up at a BBQ with a side, or have a hankering for a home cooked meal based on potatoes.

Nothing complicated. Thanks for the easy challenge, especially after the huffing and puffing of the Gumbo. That being said, we really get much more excited by the challenges that really force us to be Daring, even if it takes hours / days of shopping / preping / stirring and sitting around enjoying the smells from the kitchen.

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

Jami Sorrento was our June Daring Cooks hostess and she chose to challenge us to celebrate the humble spud by making a delicious and healthy potato salad. The Daring Cooks Potato Salad Challenge was sponsored by the nice people at the United States Potato Board, who awarded prizes to the top 3 most creative and healthy potato salads. A medium-size (5.3 ounce) potato has 110 calories, no fat, no cholesterol, no sodium and includes nearly half your daily value of vitamin C and has more potassium than a banana!

Gumbo - let the good times roll!

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Sat, 14 May 2011 17:24:00 +0000

Ahh, no competition to get upset about, just the thought of a wonderfully gumbo'd up kitchen...

YES! The good times rolled! Oh, are we allowed to start with the Conclusion?

Although not quite the same scope in terms of days to make as our Cassoulet from a few months back it certainly was in terms of how full our pot became, how many dishes it took to make and how many left overs we got to enjoy.

Chicken & Smoked Sausage Gumbo

Technically, we should change the name of this dish because in our haste to round up the sausage and duck fat from the place we were certain would have them we make a boo-boo. We didn't read properly and didn't notice the error until we were well into the do-all-your-chopping-before-starting-the-roux-or-you'll-have-the-plague-come-down-upon-you stage. Oh well, we are only a little bummed and totally ok with the result. We missed the part about the 2 pounds of sausage being smoked and just grabbed up some normal everyday ready for the grill fun sausages.

Rewind...

Chicken & Mostly Un-Smoked Sausage Gumbo

All the other shopping was easy. We thought our 'wrong' sausage store would be our best bet for finding Filé powder, but as it turned out it wasn't and we actually found it in our normal everyday store. We haven't really learned how to cut up a whole chicken properly so decided to get a tray of legs and a tray of thighs (which turned out to be 10 pieces) which then meant we didn't have any bits and pieces for making up the stock. It seems less silly to use boxed stock than to get a chicken just to turn it into stock - we will keep the recipe safe and sound and apply it to our left over turkey come Thanksgiving and Christmas. We still had to use a third store to find Okra but we found it very easily in the fresh section.

We are already in possession of the spices required for the Basic Creole Spices so while one of us started the do-all-your-chopping-before-starting-the-roux-or-you'll-have-the-plague-come-down-upon-you the other took on the delicate task of measuring and mixing. One of us thought this a less fair dispersing of duties so the spice creator also got to cut up the sausages (this is when the boo-boo dawned on us) after the seasoning was completed.

It's fun to watch the roux develop, but it's not fun to stand over the pot whisking away for about 20 minutes, plus another 10 once the onions join in. We make risotto from time to time and spend almost twice as long at the pot stirring away, but this was so much heavier on the wrists - even as we tag teamed it. Ok, enough whining... but next time we'll give Alton's technique a go - we had seen that episode, but thought for the challenge we should put in the elbow (and wrist) grease. Oh, and it's fun to get the smell of the duck fat while your arms contemplate falling off.

Time for the chicken. Perhaps our pot was a too small, but we could barely get all the pieces in and with the roux being very 'friendly' towards the chicken we struggled to get the chicken into place to get it browned. We let it go the suggested 10 minutes, but it was more not brown than brown. We figured there would be no problem getting it cooked considering the time still to go.

Time for the do-all-your-chopping-before-starting-the-roux-or-you'll-have-the-plague-come-down-upon-you to join in the fun. Then the stock. Now we know out pot was not big enough as we couldn't get the advertised amount in. Probably about 75% made it in. Oh well. At this stage we kind of thought we had a gumbo looking think on it's way. Set the timer for 45 minutes and come visit every now and again for skimming and stirring.

The kitchen had really started to smell nice but unlike when we did the Cassoulet we didn't get the effect through the whole house. Oh well. We added in the last of the goodies and set the timer for another 45 minutes (which was conveniently about the time we needed for the rice). We returned for more skimming (we skimmed a lot more this go around) and stirring. As noted before, one of us is a bit of a baby when it comes to the hot / spicy end of the scale. We went easy on the Tabasco and our smoked sausages were labled mild.

We have a bunch of different rices in the pantry, but no long-grain white. We selected some Basmati and cooked it per instructions on the box but with the Louisiana recipe. We know it didn't quite look the same as tradition suggests, but we're ok with making this substitution. And next time we use it we'll probably use this recipe even for a non-gumbo application.

Result

Yum! Some would argue ours didn't have enough 'kick', but quite enough for the less hardy of us. Some might also argue that Basmati Rice is not the way to go, but we think it did it's job admirably.

We think it looked the way it should, it certainly was rich and hearty and tasty. Yum! The sauce had thickened up nicely and it was very very easy to go back for seconds.

We're not exactly sure what the Filé brought to the party? Sprinkling to taste is a tough instruction when you don't know what the taste is... We'll add it to the Spice Rack on the fridge and we'll pay a bit more attention when scouring our food magazines for a way to use it and maybe learn enough to understand when we could add it to something else.

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

CLICK

Conclusion

YES! The good times rolled! This is another one pot dish that could easily be brought out to impress friends!

We've gotten into the habit of searching our Wine Club collection for something that is suggested to match up with whatever this month's challenge is and we've had no reason to disagree with the suggestions. This month our only Gumbo suggestion had been enjoyed previously as part of an earlier challenge, so we picked the one which suggested pairing with Cajun dishes. It worked GREAT, and our left overs just weren't quite the same without it.

If you have leftovers (as most of us probably did!) don't just leave it in the pot, jam it in the fridge and bring it out for reheating. We got a really good burn on the bottom that took about as much elbow grease as the roux. We're pretty certain it all developed during the reheat and fortunately didn't notice anything bad because of it.

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

Our May hostess, Denise, of There’s a Newf in My Soup!, challenged The Daring Cooks to make Gumbo! She provided us with all the recipes we’d need, from creole spices, homemade stock, and Louisiana white rice, to Drew’s Chicken & Smoked Sausage Gumbo and Seafood Gumbo from My New Orleans: The Cookbook, by John Besh.

Comments pre Blog Platform Change

andy responded:
Great post! Thanks for sharing.

blepharisma responded:
Good job! Sounds like your boo-boo wasn't too bad, after all... I think there is some flexibility in the ingredients (although I know many of us were just trying to get everything right, according to the base recipe).

Ruth H. responded:
What a complete write-up this was...! Fun to read, and kind of made me want to be in the kitchen with you...! I am glad that the gumbo was a success, and that you got to enjoy the process, sore wrists and elbows and all! Thanks for sharing your fun and creativity!

Faith responded:
I had the same problems with my pot and it was the biggest I had!!! I kept thinking to hell with it!!! That chicken will cook in the pot!!!
Well done and Im glad you enjoyed the challenge!

Audax Artifex responded:
WOW another successful challenge it sounds like you both had a great time with this gumbo. Glad to hear that the mild sausage worked out so well in the end. And yes the leftovers are marvellous reheated. Fabulous work.

Cheers from Audax in Sydney Australia.

Claire responded:
Great job on your gumbo, it sounds delicious! :)

Edible Containers (savory)

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 17:24:00 +0000

Ok, so our hearts weren't in this one at all. Happily, we can report that our knives and pots & pans and oven and dishwasher were.

We signed up (almost a year now) to learn about and try new things in the kitchen - to be daring! - which we feel we've done quite well at in-an-overall-big-picture sort of way.

We did not sign up to try to win popularity contests.

We did not sign up to show off our pretty pictures (which for the record, we stopped even trying very early on because, well, they just weren't very pretty...). We did not sign up to invent or interpret the dishes presented as part of the challenge.

We just wanted to try something new and be guided along the way. But we are exceptionally grateful to those who do take (and show) great pictures and those who interpret and invent the dishes because we've certainly learned some new and fun stuff from reading about (and seeing) what other members get up to as part of each challenge - a wonderful bonus to our choice to being daring.

We promised ourselves we'd be daring and if we got past our first two challenges (we did, quite easily, safely and well in case you were wondering) there'd be no reason to skip anything that came our way. So, here we are...

Hopefully next month will get back to 'normal'?

Pumpkin Bowl filled with Creamy Shrimp (Bisque?)

We had some friends coming over for dinner during the challenge and we had been unable to lock in a menu. We really like the family style approach to dining (at home and out and about - which occasionally gets our Server a bit wound up) and a pumpkin full of goodness shouts nothing but family style.

Catch is, we failed miserably at the Pumpkin Bowl part of the challenge.

The things that went wrong...

We couldn't find one big Pumpkin but found some good looking smaller ones which we thought would do the job as individual bowls rather than a serving bowl.
We couldn't get them to cook. The recipe said 25 minutes x 2. We had smaller 'dudes' and although we classified them as cooked at about the 1 hour 40 minute mark it definitely wasn't 'puree like'.
Our designated carver could not get the good bits out without completely (and yes, completely is the correct word) destroying the shells. Not even close!
And not related to our pumpkin issues, but we grabbed up headless shrimp so the stock we came up with probably was missing a little something something due to it just being born of the shells.

We did not, however, fail at the Soup making part of the challenge.

The things that went right...

No blood drawn whilst chopping onions, garlic and tomatoes.
The shrimp 'veins' came out nice and easy.
The kitchen smelled nice.
The soup turned into soup.

Result

If you take out the Pumpkin Bowl part of the equation it worked out just fine (which sadly, was the main part of this challenge). One of us really liked it, the other went with a good-but-we've-made-better-soups feeling. Our friends liked it and their 2 year old was happy to play with it.

And, who was the clever person who figured out adding cream cheese to a soup is a good thing? Cudos to them! It turned out to be quite thick, which we could have thinned down easily enough but we chose not to and it had a really nice feel as well as taste to it.

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

CLICK

Conclusion

We were a bit cranky starting off, but glad we gave it a whirl. On the plus side, we didn't get more cranky when it became obvious we weren't going to end up with a Pumpkin Bowl.

We certainly didn't get anything photo worthy (not that we probably would even if we made the best pumpkin bowl ever...) but we got something tasty that was new and fun and enjoyed by us and our friends (and even a small bowl of leftovers for lunch during the week).

We can follow a recipe, but it seems we we're not very good at the 'precision' parts required when dealing with a gourd type device. Oh well.

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

Renata of Testado, Provado & Aprovado! was our Daring Cooks’ April 2011 hostess. Renata challenged us to think “outside the plate” and create our own edible containers! Prizes are being awarded to the most creative edible container and filling, so vote on your favorite from April 17th to May 16th at http://thedaringkitchen.com!

Comments pre Blog Platform Change

Audax Artifex responded:
Please don't post photos I really like how you don't yes I wasn't too impressed with a competition since I don't think the point of the forums is about that it is sharing and doing a common recipe and learning like you said I'm sure this is a one time blimp in the scheme of things. Sorry to hear the pumpkin container didn't work out so well but at least the soup was good. Great work thank you for joining in this month's challenge.

Cheers from Audax in Sydney Australia.

Shelley C responded:
While I loved this challenge due to the creativity, I completely understand your reasons for not being enthusiastic, and I do agree very much with some... it is frustrating for to "enter a contest" that you (I!) know you (I!) have no chance of actually winning... and knowing up front which people have the greatest chance of doing so... I am glad that you participated in the challenge, anyway, because, after all, it's still a challenge and you still got to try something you'd never tried before!! And, hey - a bunch of things went right (no blood! woohoo!),so it's all good. :)

SeattleDee responded:
I'm chuckling at your comments and nodding in agreement... EXCEPT I loved this challenge and didn't enjoy the previous two. Go figure! The opportunity to try new things unites the DC community, and it's a treat to compare experiences via blog posts. Forget about photo contests, your word pictures are pure delight.

Lisa responded:
Wow..I forgot we were entered in a contest for these lol Well..ike Shelly said, most of us don't expect to win, and frankly, like you, I do these challenges out of pure enjoyment. I don't have natural light, so I can't take photos like other bloggers, but I do the best with what I have, and if photo buffs don't like it..oh well!

That said, LOVE the idea of a pumpkin bowl for soup, and I adore the choice of (is it a soup?) creamy shrimp! I may not be able to see it, but the mind is the best 'photo viewer' out there :)

Mary responded:
I know exactly what you mean about the popularity contest.
:(
I liked the idea of the containers, but felt like it encouraged people to come up with something with real bells and whistles, rather than just good-tasting food. Your pumpkin soup sounds divine, though, and I'll have to try cream cheese next time I have a soup that needs a bit of creaminess.

Renata responded:
I'm sorry to know that you didn't enjoy the challenge so much, and that the pumpkin bowl didn't work for you, but I'm glad to know that you successfully adapted the shrimp cream into a creamy soup, and that everything went well.. no blood... lol
Thanks for participating even if it wasn't a very exciting idea for you :)

¡Me Encanta Perú! - Ceviche and Papas Rellenas

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 17:24:00 +0000

So, just like in the previous challenge we needed to grab our thermometer and common sense for a part of this challenge.

Two things that we've never made before, but one we have eaten.

Cheviche de Pescado

We normally get a little upset when we're trying something new and then given options "firm white fish (scallops or other seafood may be substituted)" - if it's new, we really like all the coaching we can get and next time we might mix it up a little. But having had a couple of variations in the past we sucked it up and hit the local store (actually, 2 of the same brand because the first didn't have our preferred Sea Bass) that has helped us out with great seafood before. We ended up with Sea Bass, Scallops (Bay and Sea) and Squid.

We must have had double extra quadruple juicy limes - we got more than a cup from just 6. Then it was easy enough to get the Seafood into bite size pieces, chop up the Onion, Cilantro and Pepper (we went mild and easy because one of us cries like a baby if it gets too hot) and get it all into the pool.

Again, another choice for beginners... 'Cook' for 10 minutes, or 24 hours? Hmm... We certainly weren't going to wait 24 hours - we were hungry. We ended up splitting everything into 2 batches. The first we did for 10 minutes, the second for an hour. We certainly could see the extra 'cooking' in the second batch but we don't think it needed it. We didn't detect any difference in the flavors from the Lime mixture between the 2 batches. It's good to know we can aim for quick, but have a good bit of wiggle room if we get distracted and still end up with the same dish we were aiming for.

We opened a J. Christopher Sauvignon Blanc and we think it paired up ok. We probably didn't need the side of Sweet Potato and Corn but enjoyed them. They certainly provided some color to the plate. Perhaps the contrast of cold and hot 'confused' us a little? Not the worst things we could match up with our Ceviche by any way you keep score, and really, we don't have any suggestions for anything more appropriate.

Result

We couldn't see any glaring difference to any Ceviche we've been served before - that's a good thing indeed, and we're very pleased with our results!

The Sea Bass was the star, it 'cooked' up just right. We didn't notice any difference between the Bay and Sea Scallops so next time we'll just get the Bay because then we don't need to do any cutting up (and they're a little bit cheaper...). The Squid was different. At first not so good different because it was a lot firmer than the Bass and Scallops, but when we thought about it a bit harder we actually decided we liked the contrast in texture. So, in the end, good different.

We have no idea why we were not brave enough to try a Ceviche before. It was easy and tasty and we've seen it at least a hundred times on Top Chef, Iron Chef and the likes! It will be shown to friends very very soon (technically before you read this article...), proudly and confidently.

Papas Rellenas

This is a dish for an Alton Brown quote 'Your patience will be rewarded!' There's a good bit of waiting around. Mash up some potatoes, let them cool down. Mix up a filling (we went meat), let it cool down. Boil up a couple of eggs, let them cool down. Then you get to put it all together - thanks great pictures! It's hard to imagine what we would have come up with out pictures.

We didn't feel the urge to change anything, although we did go light on the chili (for the same baby you met earlier in this article...). And best of all, we didn't have to make any choices...

Definitely hands on, and messy hands during the putting together part but practice does make perfect because the 2nd one was better looking than the 1st and the 4th much much better.

Remember how we said to bring your thermometer and your common sense? Well, we need to change that to say bring a working thermometer and your common sense. We did two batches and the second browned up a whole lot more a whole lot quicker. We noticed a small gap in the mercury, but didn't really think much of it until we saw the difference in browning. Turns out, big difference. We have no idea what temperature we had the oil bubbling away at, but after all was done we boiled up some water and our (now in the trash) thermometer was convinced that water boils at about 160° (of the F scale!). Oops! Common sense tells us not to leave the room anyway so if something really bad had have happened, we would have been there to see it...

The same bottle of J. Christopher continued to keep us company and perhaps worked a little less well with this dish than the Ceviche , but only just and perhaps only because it had warmed up a little by this time.

Result

They kind of looked lonely on the plate, but it's not like you need any more food. At first thought we kind of feel like it needed a sauce but when we turned our brains fully on we think there's no point as the sauce is already on the inside.

We actually preferred the 'high risk' batch that we cooked up, so next time we'll use the correct temperature oil but leave them in a little longer.

We had more filling that we needed for our potatoes so we saved it and served it up as part of our every-other-week-home-made-nachos. Worked out really quite nicely, although making up a batch of the 'filling' just for our nachos is probably a bit much. If we ever thought to serve up nachos to our friend, perhaps...

We do know why we've never been brave enough to deep fried mashed potatoes - we're just not clever enough to think of something like that on our own. We probably won't serve it up to friends as a complete dish because of the challenges of being sociable and having a pot of oil warming up in a different room but we will absolutely treat ourselves to this again. The filling could turn up for friends, perhaps served with mashed potato rather than in?

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

CLICK

Conclusion

2 Winners! Thanks Kathlyn!

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

Kathlyn of Bake Like a Ninja was our Daring Cooks’ March 2011 hostess. Kathlyn challenges us to make two classic Peruvian dishes: Ceviche de Pescado from “Peruvian Cooking – Basic Recipes” by Annik Franco Barreau. And Papas Rellenas adapted from a home recipe by Kathlyn’s Spanish teacher, Mayra.

Comments pre Blog Platform Change

Lou responded:
Well firstly I am so glad to hear that you like to follow the recipe. When given a new recipe, I, too, want to make it exactly as stated the first time. And usually for these challenges I don't have time to make multiple versions of the challenge. So, I have been feeling that my attempts have all been so very boring. Especially when compared with someone like Audax - ha ha.
Secondly, interested to hear that the sea bass was your favourite. I didn't think there would be anything better than scallops for this recipe so I will need to try it with the sea bass. The ceviche is one I can try lots of versions of quite quickly with it being so quick and easy to prepare.
And whoever of you is the "baby" - I am exactly the same and wish I had gone easier on the chilli!

SaminaCooks responded:
I love your write up. I agree, when I try new foods/recipes, I always follow instructions exactly. (Especially, when I don't know what it will taste like) Once I get a hang of the recipe, I mix it up.

blepharisma responded:
I know what you mean about frying up papas not being a great social activity, hahaha. My kitchen is integrated with my dining and living areas, so the smell alone would be a bit of a turn-off!!

Great job!

Audax Artifex responded:
I love your postings for me a blog with no pictures seems to make my mind create mental images of your results. Wonderful that you liked both images so much. Yes I can understand for a totally new recipe you want definite instructions. Lovely work on this challenge.

Cheers from Audax in Sydney Australia.

Cold Soba Salad & Tempura

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 18:23:00 +0000

So, straight of the bat, we can say that this month's challenge was far less daunting, in terms of kitchen time, waiting around time and shopping time, than last month's! Was it less rewarding? Absolutely not. Was it not quite as successful? Yeah, a little bit.

Soba Salad

Having eaten Soba Noodles a couple of times, but never cooked them ourselves it seemed logical to give this a go.

Nothing complicated here. Perhaps the hardest part is deciding which vegetables (or even which non-vegetables) you want to include in your dish. Seeing we had some seafood for our Tempura we stayed with just vegetables.

We made both sauces and they came together in the time it took to cook the noodles. We couldn't find dashi for the Mentsuyu but seeing a recipe was included to make our own that problem was easily solved.

The cooking of the noodles was something very new. Boil them up, then cool them down a bit, then boil them up again then cool... We wonder who figured out that to be the best way to cook Soba Noodles? It worked because we were very happy with the result and it wouldn't have been hard to just eat the noodles dipped in the sauces and skip the vegetables.

Result

Tasty! We got the texture of the noodles right. The sauces worked well with the noodles and vegetables - we're not sure if that's because we took the noodles to the sauce rather than bringing the sauce to the noodles or just because they are two great sauces.

Tempura

Nothing really complicated here either. Having oil bubbling away (happily?) on your stove might be a little frightening but you really don't need much more than common sense and a thermometer to keep everything (and everyone) safe.

We went with some seafood and some vegetables and it's a good thing that the instructions mentioned blanching the 'tougher' vegetables because we probably wouldn't have thought to do that on our own. A couple of times when we've ordered Tempura there has been a large leaf of some sort included. We thought that might be fun, but as we have no idea what it's called we didn't know what to hunt for. Anybody?

The batter is a simple enough recipe, and it's not too awkward keeping it in a bowl of ice. We thought it looked way thicker than the ones we've seen on Iron Chef but we went with it.

We went with using chop sticks for the coating part and being only comfortable with them and not experts we struggled a little getting everything in the oil in a timely fashion. It did keep our fingers mostly clean though!

It's kind of annoying that you can't really put all that much in the pot at once. It's fine cooking for ourselves in that we didn't mind cooking, eating, cooking, eating... but that doesn't work out quite as well if you are trying to impress your friends (or date?) and we really don't want to be doing that to ourselves all that often.

Result

We weren't enamored with the batter! Everything cooked through properly, everything tasted pretty good, but the batter part just wasn't right. Certainly nowhere near like the treats we just had and have had many times before. We ended up with things more at the Fish & Chips end of the scale than the Tempura end. Oh well!

Our scallops were easily our favorite item with probably the sweet potato second.

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

CLICK

Conclusion

The Soba Noodles was something brand new and we'll probably break it out again during the summer.

We recently had a go at a small batch of tempura shrimp as a filling from some Maki Rolls. Although this effort forced us to think about more interesting things to Tempura we think we got a better result the first time around. Perhaps it was beginner's luck, but we really think it was more to do with the batter. We will try again, but we'll be more focused on the consistency of the batter before we turn to dipping things in it.

We had a filling dinner and wouldn't hesitate to share the Soba Noodles with friends, but the Tempura we need a little bit more practice before serving to anyone but ourselves.

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

The February 2011 Daring Cooks’ challenge was hosted by Lisa of Blueberry Girl. She challenged Daring Cooks to make Hiyashi Soba and Tempura. She has various sources for her challenge including japanesefood.about.com, pinkbites.com, and itsybitsyfoodies.com.

Comments pre Blog Platform Change

Audax Artifex responded:
WOW I always love visiting your blog your words are always so inspiring.

The leaves are called perilla or shiso leaves they are delicious. Sorry to hear about the tempura batter I didn't have a problem maybe try again. Great work on this challenge.

Cheers from Audax in Sydney Australia.

Mary responded:
I wasn't a huge fan of the batter either, and I thought the oil temperature wasn't hot enough. That said, I really enjoyed the soba, though I'll never make the noodles from scratch again! Scallops sound like a wonderful tempura item--wish I had thought of that!
:)

Shelley C responded:
Great job on the challenge! Sorry that you didn't feel the batter worked all that well for you, but it sounds like you did an awesome job. I always enjoy reading your posts - I always feel I get a true sense of what the cooking experience was like!!

Ruth H. responded:
I love the way you presnt your posts - they are both informative and entertaining at the same time! I am sorry the tempura batter wasn't what you had hoped for, but Iam truly impressed with how everything came together for you!

Renata responded:
The big leaf is probably perilla, I used it for my tempura and it was the crunchiest of all, delicious!
Love your idea of scallops for tempura, I wonder how delicious it was!

Hearty Winter Stew - The French Way

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 18:23:00 +0000

How many days does that recipe say? Seriously, how many? We've certainly cooked over many days before, but that's because we have a whole bunch of dishes going on for one special event and not just one dish that needs that many days all to itself. Is it a deal breaker? Absolutely not! Does it test the limit of our advance planning? Yeah, pretty much!

Shortly after learning of this challenge we were out at a local(ish) restaurant where we found their version of this challenge worth an exploration. It was yummy and hearty and yummy! The exploring only strengthed our interest in having a go at this ourselves - far out weighing our scheduling concerns.

Ok, off we go...

Duck Confit

The first step is get the duck turned into duck confit. Nothing complicated about the process. We learned that one of our Moderately Convenient Specialty Grocery stores always has Duck and Duck Fat way back when we did our first challenge so had nothing to be stressed about rounding everything up.

Day 1

Our kind of kitchen day... Locate product in fridge... Unwrap product... Salt product... Cover product... Return product to fridge... Nothing to see here, move along...

Day 2

Back to the fridge... Nothing complicated here. Everything went along as expected, although we gave it a bit more than an hour looking for the ankle skin to have pulled away. You can definitely smell something cooking from about halfway through the process.

Be very careful removing it from the oven - it sloshes. Our small spill hit the open oven door and apart from a little bit of smoke no harm done, but it wouldn't have taken much more of a spill for one, two, three or even four feet to have been complaining quite loudly. Please, be careful.

Once the danger has passed, you get to enjoy the smells (mostly the rosemary) for another couple of hours before back to the fridge it goes. Our place was quite warm this day so a more normal temperatured home might loose the smells sooner.

Result

It looked like the example pictures, both pre cooled and cooled. We enjoyed the cooking smell throughout the house. We did not have to visit the hospital. Success, no doubt. Catch is, we were preparing it as part of something grander so didn't get to taste at this stage. Not the end of the world, but we were curious - hindsight says we should have done an extra leg for the chefs...

Those fancy restaurants sure make it sound a whole lot more complicated than it really is. We're glad we now have this technique in our back pockets!

Cassoulet

Turns out Pork Belly is only occasionally at one of our 'special requirement' food stores and Pork Rind only in a different one and only of the cooked crispy style. A bit harder to round up the ingredients, but on the plus side we ventured to a Meat Market that was on our to-do list (we were told by a friend we should get to it) and as often the case with hindsight, we should have gone much sooner. Perhaps it has even bumped our other stores down a bit on the list the next time we need a non-standard meat product (actually, if it was closer to home we'd probably go for all our meat products). In the 2 day kerfuffle of trying to find the Pork Products we forgot about everything else and needed an emergency run to the store once things had begun - oh well.

Day 1

Actually easier than Day 1 for the Confit and if you're not spanning your project over two weekends like us, could be done concurrently with Day 2 of the Confit.

Beans in (big) bowl... Water in bowl... Nothing to see here, move along...

Day 2

This is where the fun begins. WOW! Did those beans 'grow'. Actually, we thought they grew too much so ended up reducing the amount used by about a third - if we had have used all the beans recommended our pot wouldn't have had much room for anything else.

Due to our shopping deficiencies we didn't have an onion to cut into 4 so we used the last 10 or 12 pearl onions we had left over from something else. It couldn't have hurt the dish, but it sure took a whole lot longer to peel them. We also didn't have any parsley, but seeing we had rosemary left over from the Confit we thought it an inexact, but acceptable switch. But otherwise, it's certainly is easy enough to get everything into the pot and get it bubbling away happily. Were we supposed to remove the Skin (aka Rind) from the Pork Belly? We didn't but kind of feel like we should have now that we've seen the finished product.

We used up at least the two 30 minute blocks suggested to get the beans right but that's ok, because almost the second you get it up to a boil wonderful smells start to fill the kitchen and soon after the rest of the house.

We thought we were clever by multi-tasking so got the sausages going prior to the beans being ready. However, this came to a screeching halt seeing we had to wait for the Pork Rind before doing the onions.

Day 2¼

Only applicable if you had kerfuffling issues... Curse that you have to put your boots back on... Back to the store... Finish off your shopping list... Get the boots off hopefully for the last time...

Day 2½

Now we've got Onions and the Pork Rind is ready... Pork Belly & Pork Rind set aside, Herbs removed and disposed of (a little bit ineloquently because the rosemary leaves came off their stalks), liquid removed and put carefully to the side. Easy & check, check, check.

The Onion / Rind mixture cooks up easily enough and the blender did a smashing job. Ours wasn't quite as dark as the pictures provided but we thought it tasted ok.

To line? Or not to line? That is the question... Our hosts weren't convinced regarding the lining of the pot and kind of left it open for discussion. We had enough Rind (although not one big piece) and figured if it's good enough for Anthony Bourdain, it's certainly good enough for us. We didn't have the pieces to hang over the edge like the pictures but we got a good cover on the bottom and perhaps the bottom 3rd of the sides.

Stacking everything in the pot was easy enough. We perhaps could have gone a little heavier on the Onion / Rind mixture and we're certainly glad we cut back on the beans because there's no way we could have gotten everything in our pot. The recipe says to just barely cover everything with the previously saved cooking liquid and save some for later. We barely covered everything with what we had, so had nothing to save for later. It doesn't seem like we suffered for this 'quirk'.

Yay! There's some more of those wonderful smells coming from oven, through the kitchen and out into the rest of the house!

Other than taking up a good portion of our fridge, we're not really sure why we couldn't just eat it today. Again, if Anthony thinks it's a good idea, so do we...

Day 3

Back into the oven.

This is where we may have gone a little off track. Step 3 of Day 3 of the Recipe talks about breaking the crust. Hmph! We never saw a crust. We also never ran low on the Cooking Liquid so didn't need to go hunting for that reserve we didn't have. We did do all of Day 2 oven cooking with the lid on, so maybe that's where we messed up in terms of getting a crust? We left the lid off for Day 3 hoping to see a crust develop, but alas... We're a little curious as to how this difference may have affected the outcome of the dish.

Best of all, we finally got to eat it! We do believe our patience was rewarded!

Day 6

Enjoy leftovers!

Result

Yummy!

The house smelled wonderful (each time something was bubbling away)! Unctuous seems the right word to use! It doesn't need sides, filling you up just nicely. There's lots going on and together make a great mix but you can still easily find each individual component's character and charm.

We have no idea if the Rind on the bottom of the pot made everything better or not. We're going to believe that it did! But, we didn't have a big slab type piece so during serving we did have to work around it a bit - nothing to stress over, it is what it is. We also picked off the Rind from the Pork Belly during eating because it seemed the right thing to do.

The sauce thickened up some - not too much and not too little we think.

We could have had friends over to share and been proud of our efforts and result. We chose not to in the end, and are glad we didn't because we got to eat it twice - in the same week. Not sure how long the leftovers might be good for, but the 3 days we waited did no harm.

Tip: Don't leave any left over onion / pork rind mixture in your blender / processor over night - yeah, yeah don't leave anything out overnight is a better tip... It sets, kind of like a glue - fortunately closer to the kinder-garden paste end of the scale than the crazy glue end...

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

CLICK

Conclusion

It's a commitment. Not one we're sorry we made, but one we might struggle to make short of the need to impress a whole lot some friends. The Confit on it's own has earned a place in the front of our recipe folder so for that we're thankful although we're not exactly sure how we'll make use of it just yet.

To celebrate the momentous project called Cassoulet we called upon a Companion from the French way of life, our Château Rose Cantegrit. A pretty good pairing overall, which seemed the way it would work out since the Tasting Notes suggested Duck Confit. Even if you don't have something French tucked away in your cellar (or pantry, or box under the stairs) we think it fair to suggest strongly that you find something red and bigger (within your own wine drinking preferences / limits / pleasures, of course) than average to enjoy with your Cassoulet.

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

Our January 2011 Challenge comes from Jenni of The Gingered Whisk and Lisa from Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. They have challenged the Daring Cooks to learn how to make a confit and use it within the traditional French dish of Cassoulet. They have chosen a traditional recipe from Anthony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlman.

Comments pre Blog Platform Change

Barb responded:
This sounds great! I didn't get a lot of a crust either as it cooked, hence my idea to add bread crumb topping for a bit of texture. I love the idea of the wine pairing - all I had on hand was white, which was good but it really did seem to be asking for a red.

Lisa responded:
LOVED reading your write up as always! So glad you guys took part, and most importantly...thrilled that you loved it (even not minding the pork rind..lol). Unctuous is the perfect word to describe the confit and cassoulet, wish I had thought of that.

Audax Artifex responded:
WOW I always love visiting your blog it is always so interesting and unique (no pictures) your writing style really makes the process come to life. Wonderful that you liked it so much and yes confit is a keeper it is simple and produces a stunning result.

Cheers from Audax in Sydney Australia.

Shelley C responded:
I love reading your write ups! I think I like days 2 1/4 and 6 the best on this one. :) Really great job on the challenge - sounds FANTASTIC! :)

Evelyne@CheapEthnicEatz responded:
Poor you for all those extra grocery runs...but worth it in the end. I bet it as great 3 days later as a left over and the wine sounds delish!

blepharisma responded:
You made the process sound like an adventure! hahaha... I think I did the same with the beans - didn't feel like it needed the amount in the recipe, so I used less. I think it was better for it, too. Didn't want all the nice broth to disappear!

Lou responded:
Ha ha - I love the humour in your writing! Well done.

Mary responded:
What an adventure! It all sounds so delicious that I'm convinced I need to do a full-on meaty version. But not today.
:)

Sarah responded:
I feel like I was there with you when you made it...! I bet I would have a 2 3/4 update as well given my track record. Great work! My favorite phrase very well may be "Moderately Convenient Specialty Grocery stores."

Oggi responded:
I love your sense of humor and enjoyed reading your cassoulet adventure.:)

Suz responded:
This was such a great read (as always) and your cassoulet sounds like a real success. Yum!

Monkeyshines responded:
Love the tale of the multi-day cassoulet! It really is worth the time. A great place to experiment - no recipe for cassoulet should be followed exactly either :-)

Pia (Taga_luto) responded:
Hi, David and Stacy! Kudos to your blog style. who needs pictures when we we are living vicariously by reading your blog=;) I too loved, the smell as i was frying the meats and as it was cooking away.

Kitchen Butterfly responded:
I loved the summary of the cassoulet. It was a dish that suprised me to no end. I love ...we didn't have an onion. Glad I have found companions!

Poach to Perfection

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 17:50:00 +0000

Once again, and it's funny more than sad, there are items on the to-do list that at least one of us really don't want anything to do with - that would be the poached eggs. We survived!

We've poached before. Certainly eggs, and on occasion fish. Nothing to be scared of here, right? We thought we'd give all 3 suggestions a go...

Oeufs en Meurette

We saw an Iron Chef battle where eggs were poached in some sort of red wine concoction. We didn't for one second think that it was (or strongly based) on a fairly fancy and traditional dish. Although poached eggs would mostly be thought of as a breakfast item, this dish sounded (and looked based on the pictures provided) to be hearty enough for a Dinner. So dinner it was.

Nothing complicated in what is required from the recipe - if you don't count peeling those pesky pearl onions. Trying to get all the steps to work together in a sensible time line was a bit harder. No disasters by any stretch of the imagination, but the benefit of hindsight would ensure that next time around it would all run a bit smoother.

Can we get an egg to poach? Sure! Can we get the white cooked up nicely and the yolk just the right amount of runny? Sure! Can we get it to look pretty? Absolutely not! Poaching of eggs in our house happens often enough so that we can't call it a foreign process, but it's only ever been for us because they never quite look right. It was hoped that the notes / thoughts / tips / results and general good karma from this month's post would help change that. Alas, these eggs didn't look any better (and perhaps worse) than just about every previous attempt. The red wine poaching did give them a fun color, and experience has taught us not to stress over the appearance so no tossing in the garbage and starting again here.

We like our wine and we're happy cooking with it but it's unlikely we've ever started by emptying a whole bottle (well, whole bottle less the glass for the chef) into the pan to get things started. Now we can cross that off our bucket list...

The reducing part is where we found it a bit hard to get the timing right. Nothing much happens for awhile, but as soon as you get distracted it's like all the reducing happened in those 2 minutes. Also, the pot seemed a little crowded with the veggies added, but it thickened up and strained out just fine. It is definitely a sauce worth the effort - rich, purple, thick, purple, tasty, purple... We almost could have skipped the egg and just had a kind of 'biscuits and gravy' type dish, but it's a good thing we didn't because bringing the runny yolk into the mix made it even better.

It felt kind of odd to cook the eggs up, then have them hanging around on the counter waiting for the sauce to appear. No harm done, just odd having always cooked an egg and sent it straight to the plate and then tummy...

Result

Looked pretty good, but only after the eggs were covered up with the very yummy sauce and tasted oh so good. We'll give a lot of the taste credit to the Pinot Noir used as the base of the sauce, but the crunch of the Toasty Bread helped too.

The decision to go as a Dinner Dish was definitely the right one. It would have been just too much as a breakfast dish, but pretty cool looking if you were brave enough to serve it up for friends as a brunch, perhaps.

Eggs Benedict

Poached Eggs on Bread comes up at home about once a month, but nothing fancy and certainly not turning them into Eggs Benedict. To be honest, if we didn't have to make our own Hollandaise we wouldn't have gone through this until the next time Poached Eggs felt like the right thing for breakfast.

Hollandaise is easy enough to put together, but all the Cooking Shows suggest it's also easy to 'break' if you try to rush it. Therefore, it's a process that involves standing at the counter for awhile, patiently whisking away. It's not hard work, but there was a brief consideration (and internal debate as to whether it would help or hinder) of grabbing our recently purchased stand mixer to help along.

The same Poaching problem as noted above for the Oeufs - correct amount of runny, incorrect amount of prettiness. Again, no do over going on here!

Result

It didn't break! The Sauce that is... Actually, the Eggs didn't break either (well, until cut into...), but even with all the tips, still a moderately ugly (from a visual point of view only) result.

Regardless of looks, it is fun to 'stab' into the egg and let the yolk spread it's goodness all over the place.

The Hollandaise tasted just like all the times we've had some form of Eggs Benedict at a breakfast joint. Is it worth the time it takes to make? Yeah, probably. Do we want to take the time to add this to our Poached Egg breakfast every time? Probably not. If we're really up for a breakfast extravaganza we'll go out and have the professionals take care of us (and maybe cramp up their whisking arm?).

Sundried Tomato & Pine Nut Seitan Sausages

Well, this was something new. Thanks to TV we seen cheese cloth being used many times but never had to add it to our shopping cart before. We actually had no idea which section of the store to find it in - turns out it didn't have a section, just a random hanging aisle addition. And Vital Wheat Gluten? Huh? Thanks to the Amazon link provided the picture gave us the clue of what to look for (and yes, we went to the baking section!). We weren't confident our regular store would have it, but very certain our not-so-regular store would. As it turned out, only one store required.

Easy enough to put together, and pleasant to the nose as the pine nuts toast, the garlic gets crushed and the tomatoes, onion and chili come together.

When it's time to add the flour, it really does feel like you're making a bread. Well, maybe not a bread but it absolutely is a dough.

We didn't have any twine and didn't realize this until we had the 'dough' mixed up and the cheese cloth cut. Our fix was to use thread which ultimately worked, but was very fiddly to get everything tied up nicely. We have no doubt that the correct equipment would have made this part so much easier...

Result

Technically, they tasted pretty good. But, the texture was really hard to get past, quite chewy and almost bubble gum like in the stretchiness. Technically, perhaps what it should be? But just not what we think of when we think of sausage. Perhaps something as simple as not calling them sausages may have been enough for us to be able to enjoy them a bit more?

We're kind of curious as to what we would have gotten had we baked rather than poached? Without any yeast, probably a brick? But something to ponder...

No idea what to do with our left over Vital Wheat Gluten...

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

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Conclusion

Well, perfection is of course subjective, but it's pretty clear we didn't quite get perfect when evaluating the poaching of the eggs. We're happy we actually made our own Hollandaise (although it's going to take a special occasion to get us to make it again) and very excited we got to poach Eggs in Wine.

It's quite possible we got the sausages perfect, but they're not something we'll be lining up to do again - emphasizing that taste wise, no dramas, but the texture didn't do it for us at all.

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

Jenn from Jenn Cuisine and Jill have challenged The Daring Cooks to learn to perfect the technique of poaching an egg. They chose Eggs Benedict recipe from Alton Brown, Oeufs en Meurette from Cooking with Wine by Anne Willan, and Homemade Sundried Tomato & Pine Nut Seitan Sausages (poached) courtesy of Trudy of Veggie num num.

Rise and Shine

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 17:50:00 +0000

An interesting challenge. One of us, just doesn't want anything to do with Soufflé, whether it be sweet, savory or something in between. It's certainly a texture thing in the mouth, but also the appearance doesn't help - all wiggly and squiggly and floppy. We said we'd be Daring and at least give everything ago. So we did.

As this is typed up on November 15 we've only had one attempt and the jury is still out as to whether we get to the second. If we do, it will be done this week, and we'll update this post.

We've mumbled about getting a stand mixer for awhile. This challenge got us to pull that trigger. Thank you for getting this valuable piece of kitchen equipment into our kitchen. Thank you for the lower balance in our Checking Account. Thank you for adding to our already too big 'stack' of kitchen equipment we don't really have a home for.

Chocolate Soufflé

The Instructions are straightforward enough. The Chocolate Custard comes together easily enough with a spoon, a bowl and a small dash of elbow grease. The step where you add in the cocoa looks for a bit like you've done something wrong, but patience and the aforementioned elbow grease sorts that out. Adding in the ganache makes a very rich looking (and hard to keep your fingers out of) custard that we believe looked exactly as it should.

It's a good thing we caved on getting the Stand Mixer, because we definitely would not have been in possession of enough elbow grease to get the egg whites where they need to be. With our machine doing the mixing, no dramas there and we believe (but wouldn't fight to the death over) that we stopped at the right time.

Joining the Custard and Egg Whites may have proved to be our weakest step. Really not sure (and still not) when folding becomes too much volume losing activity. We erred on the side of not enough.

Getting everything into the dishes (easy process to grease) and then into the oven was easy enough. We left the kitchen and put our trust in the timer to minimize any inclination to peek. We didn't.

Looking through the window at the behest of our timer we definitely had rising, but not of the even straight up sides that you would expect to see in a restaurant - but certainly nothing to cry about.

Result

Knowing we probably would only do this once we opted to take the chance and add it into a scheduled fancy dinner. If you discount that part about one of us barely being able to look at the inside, it worked out quite well.

Not quite the rising we hoped for. Perhaps a little undercooked in the middle (knowing that nothing much good can come of returning them to the oven, even before a bite or 3 had been enjoyed we elected to ignore this part), but the sides, top and bottom all had the texture we'd hope to find. Definitely chocolaty and rich to taste. Definitely light and fluffyish in the parts we think were cooked correctly.

Our decision to err on the not quite enough folding step, meant that there were a few good 'chunks' of lonely whites hanging around. Not the end of the world, but obviously not quite technically right.

Next time, the only thing we'd change would be to opt for slightly smaller dishes in the hope that it cooks through and not spoil the good bits that we saw this time.

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

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Conclusion

There's nothing complicated in the method, but it clearly takes a practiced eye (and hand) to interpret the correct amount of 'doneness' at various stages (egg white beating; flavor folding in; cooking) of preparation. An eye it's probably not a bad thing to have tucked away, but without we're only a small step away from tears and nothing to eat.

It's hard to say if / when we'll try again, but one friend has already indicated that they'd be willing to let us try again on them.

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

Dave and Linda from Monkeyshines in the Kitchen chose Soufflés as our November 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge! Dave and Linda provided two of their own delicious recipes plus a sinfully decadent chocolate soufflé recipe adapted from Gordon Ramsay’s recipe found at the BBC Good Food website.

We are on a Roll

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 16:50:00 +0000

Something totally new to us. Even when we've seen them on the menu we've never felt overly interested in giving them a try and certainly no thought to try cook with them. Thank you Daring Kitchen for gently forcing us to give them a go.

For us they're easy enough to find, actually too easy. We assumed they'd be a little difficult to find so we started at our local Market that has helped us out a couple of times with non-standard (We should emphasize non-standard for us!) items more commonly used in International Dishes. Without too much effort we found two different sized jars. When we headed over to the 'regular' Store for everything else we found them again quite easily.

It's a shame the leaves don't keep the vibrant green they have while on the vines.

Grape Leaves Stuffed with Ground Meat and Rice, with Apricot Tamarind Sauce

Step 1 - get the leaves out of the jar. Man do they cram a lot of leaves in on jar? We didn't completely believe the count indicated on the jar and almost got the larger jar - turns out the count is more or less right.

Step 2 - continue getting the leaves out of the jar...

Preparation of the filling is a straightforward enough process - everyone into the pool, basically.

Rolling the leaves is not hard, but it is time consuming when you're inexperienced. We definitely improved as we progressed, but we're both still along way from being expert grape leave rollers. No significant explosions, but a few pine nuts and random pieces of ground meat somehow managed to escape during the cooking part.

We had to trust the recipe's cooking time because we had no idea what visible changes we could expect. As it turned out, nothing really changed. We did get up and do the scooping the liquid over the top part a couple of times but we're not really sure that contributed much, if at all.

Result

We really had no idea what to expect because there's not a lot to taste along the way - some nice smells as the cinnamon and allspice are introduced to everyone else, which only got stronger (pleasantly) through the house as the cooking process progressed.

We have no reason to doubt that the Tamarind Sauce adds to the dish, but on it's own we're not sure what to make of it and have no idea how it might work with anything else we just happen to be making - we'll have to do some research on that front.

It's a tough final product. It tasted fine. Actually, better than fine. But, it took a long time to put together - we started the soaking the rice part just after 6pm and with no goofing around (well, comparatively...) we didn't sit down with our fancy new anniversary silver until 9pm was much closer than 8.

Being our Saturday night dinner we figured we should open a bottle of something. Based on the aromas we searched for red, not too heavy, fruitier more than not. Our Cellar provided us with a Wine Guerilla Zinfandel (2008) which worked out just fine.

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

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Conclusion

We have said that the point of playing this game is to try new stuff, but after our first batch we just didn't think we could eat a version that was cold. If the process was a little quicker, perhaps we'd have given it a whirl?

A combination of the texture of the leaves (just the leaves - we liked the filling so much we used the leftovers in a sandwich the next day) and the color lessened the enjoyment that so many other people seem to get from these dishes.

We're not sorry we tried this but we don't see any use for it in our future. It's a too slow process to be whipping up after work even if we could get past the texture / color thing, and it's not something we'd put at the top of the list of things we might cook for friends.

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

Our October 2010 hostess, Lori of Lori's Lipsmacking Goodness, has challenged The Daring Cooks to stuff grape leaves. Lori chose a recipe from Aromas of Aleppo and a recipe from The New Book of Middle Eastern Food.

Food Preservation -The Apple Butter of Knowledge

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 16:50:00 +0000

Well, we were very close to blowing this challenge off. Very!

We live in a condo with no garden, so don't have anything we get to pick ourselves to consume, let alone have to worry about storing. We live in a condo with not enormous amounts of storage space, so don't go out of our way to prepare things to be stored (whether frozen, canned or otherwise) unless we have leftovers which may end up in the freezer, but usually for just a week or so.

Ultimately, the skills we learn here won't get used again until our living arrangements change. But, we did give it a go, seeing it only cost a few bucks for a couple of jars and a box of gadgets to help with the process. Although, had we not already been in possession of a crazy big soup pot we would not have purchased one for this challenge and therefore would have been stumped...

Apple Butter

The recipe itself is easy enough to follow. We opted for the canning option for storing, seeing we're pretty good at jamming stuff in the freezer already. Using the magnetic lid grabber was fun. We'll have to work on our filling skills. We got the jars nicely filled up with out any fuss, but did a poor job of getting the funnel thing out of the jar without making a mess.

Result

No idea!

We have two jars sitting in the pantry. They appear to be sealed correctly and we followed all the steps as instructed so we believe them to be safe. We'll pop one of the lids in 6 months or so and report back - unless we notice something odd going on inside them before then. Licking the pot gave us something tasty so all being well, we'll have the same tastiness in March.

Although, it was so easy to make that if we really felt we needed some, we'd just make a smaller batch and enjoy it right then and there. We do appreciate that if we had an apple tree going nuts this would limit the need to make so many apple pies.

Bruschetta in a Jar

Again, a simple enough recipe to follow.

Reading through other people's efforts we learned that our steamer basket is a great option to a dish towel in the bottom of our canning pot. Our towel did work for the Apple Butter, but the steamer basket worked much better.

We also did a better job of filling up the jars, so it looks like we did learn from our mistakes.

Result

Again, no idea!

We have two more jars almost ready to go into the pantry (they're still in the do not touch stage as this is typed up). Hopefully they're sealed up correctly. We'll aim to open one up around March and report back.

Sticking our fingers in the left over 'sauce' we found it very tart. We're hoping the magic of the canning process and time will settle it down a bit, but look forward to seeing what eventually comes out.

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

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Conclusion

A bit more finicky and less wiggle room in the 'not quite following the directions' area than what we normally work with. A skill it probably doesn't hurt to have, but currently won't be benefiting us much, if at all.

No regrets giving it a go, but as already mentioned, unlikely we'll give it another go until our living arrangements change.

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

The September 2010 Daring Cooks’ challenge was hosted by John from Eat4Fun. John chose to challenge The Daring Cooks to learn about food preservation, mainly in the form of canning and freezing. He challenged everyone to make a recipe and preserve it. John’s source for food preservation information was from The National Center for Home Food Preservation.

The World of Pierogi

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 16:54:00 +0000

So, it turns out that a Pierogi doesn't have to be Potato and Cheese. Who would have thought? Ok, just about everyone in the whole world except us it seems... Sorry!

We've had ok success with our own Raviolis in the past so weren't too daunted by the skills that are needed and the dough at first look seems just like what we used on our Raviolis. We were ready to make non-Potato and Cheese Pierogis...

We thought it would be worth picking up one of those folder gadgets pictured in the instructions because we could probably get away with using it for our occasional bouts of Ravioli creating too. However, couldn't find one for our first attempt. We tried all the kitchen type stores close by. We cast a slightly wider net before starting our second batch but still couldn't find one, so all our Pierogis were of the hand sealed variety.

Dough

We've made pastas and breads so we're quite ok watching the dough go through the various stages of ugliness it takes until it finally looks like dough. We put in a little less than the recommended amount of water with just 2 cups of flour and found it very sticky so by the end we probably had the full 2½ cups suggested.

Result

A nice easy dough to work with and roll out. We just have to work on our consistency of thickness. We found it much harder to roll out a second time after collecting all the off cuts - not super hard, just harder than the first time.

Russian Style Pierogi

The mixture is easy enough to put together. The hardest part was probably deciding how much extra bacon we wanted to go with...

It's suggested to serve them with Creme Fraiche or fried. We actually forgot to pick up some Creme Fraiche so we tried a couple from our first batch just plain and a couple fried. Fried easily one this battle because we used the same pan with the left over drippings from cooking off the bacon. Even without the bacon drippings it probably wasn't fair to compare with out the Creme Fraiche. Because the bacon drippings worked out so well, for our second batch we used some of our left over duck fat from the Paté Challenge.

Not having the folder gadget was not a hindrance at all. A hand fold and crimp with a fork (lightly floured helps) took just a second and worked quite well - only 2 'explosions' of the most minor type out of our complete batch.

Result

Tasty! And filling.

Our first roll out of the dough was almost perfect, apart from a corner where we hadn't floured the bench enough and we lost one to stickiness. Oh well. Our second roll we didn't do quite as well - no sticking, but as we started folding we noticed they were a bit thicker and seeing we'd already cut and 'stuffed' we just left them. It's unlikely we'd have noticed the difference if we didn't know they were different...

We made a lot of stuffing. The one batch of dough turned in to Pierogis was enough of a meal, but we could have easily made 2 batches and probably close to 3 if we were really really hungry. Not a bad thing at all, but we didn't make up more Pierogis, just used it as a special lunch.

If you don't have duck fat, make sure you fry in your left over bacon drippings. The duck fat was better to us, but it was a close vote.

Meat and Cabbage

Seeing that 'meat' leaves things wide open, we went with some ground turkey we had tucked away. The only tweak to the recipe was adding some sage in which we always add in when making turkey burgers. Putting it together was easy enough.

We still had some duck fat left over... We liked the fried ones from our first batch so just went all fried, all the time. We didn't even try look for Creme Fraiche.

Result

Again, too much filling. Tasty, just lots of it. We only lightly cooked off the cabbage so it still had a bit of crunch which we liked.

No dramas rolling out the dough this time. Practice makes perfect?

Soy Bean

One of us really doesn't enjoy beans much at all. 'Tolerate in an emergency' is probably the best description. Even though this wasn't an emergency we're here to try new things so Soy Beans it was.

We weren't really sure what 'minced' beans meant so we tossed them in the mini food processor (you know, the one that you jam your stick blender into), hit go and stopped somewhere around half way to mush. No idea if our interpretation was correct, but even the one of us who'd rather something else could deal with the texture as well as the flavor.

Yep, we still had some duck fat left...

Result

Again, too much filling. But not nearly as much as in our previous two efforts. Surprisingly tasty - quite simple flavors really, but just fine for a meal.

Practice makes perfect? Dough rolling was just fine.

Custom Locale

We didn't make one. We're not particularly inventive and couldn't get past the thought of trying to stuff a Chicago Style Hot Dog or a Deep Dish Pizza (which for the record is collectively the worst pizza every invented!) into a Pierogi. We'll leave the creating to those out there that are creative! We enjoyed what we made and really could only go down hill from there...

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

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Conclusion

It seems that Pierogis are quite filling because the amount of filling we created was mostly based off of portions we would use for a 'normal' meal. With each batch we got a little bit better at filling and sealing them up (remember, couldn't find the handy dandy gadget?).

We ordered in the other night from the local Chinese. Our order included Pot-stickers. We believe that Pierogis (especially when fried) are related to Pot-stickers. We acknowledge the fillings were vastly different, as was the dough, but the texture and goodness was just about equal.

We were just cooking for the two of us and it wasn't painful to put them together. We're just not sure we'd be patient enough to be able to put together a batch big enough for a family or group meal. Although if we didn't fry the cooking part would be much quicker.

One of us went with the Potato as the favorite (hopefully that's not because we thought all Pierogis were potato) with the other first place vote going to the Meat (Turkey). But, we did enjoy all of our 3 batches. We probably won't be rushing to whip up another batch (one day they'll appear on our weekly menu again, we just have no idea when that day might be), but it's definitely good to have a new understanding of what might live inside a Pierogi and how easy they are to make.

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

The August Challenge is brought to you by LizG of Bits n’ Bites and Anula of Anula’s Kitchen. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make Pierogi from scratch and an optional challenge to provide one filling that best represents their locale.

Nut Butters

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 16:19:00 +0000

Picking up the challenge this month was not in the least bit traumatic - especially when compared to last month. Nothing seemed complicated or out of our skill set, and not even out of our comfort zone - and we do own a food processor. But we've never made our own Nut Butter, probably never even considered it. Therefore, we decided to try all the suggested recipes through out the month and see if there's any reason to add Nut Butter to our regularly scheduled programming.

Walnut White Bean Dip with Rosemary & Sage

The first time we've ever turned nuts into 'butter'!

The hardest part was being patient enough waiting for the food processor to do it's magic. As useful and correct as the instructions provided are, it was still unsettling to watch our nuts turn into a crumble and stay that way for what seemed like way too long. But, they eventually stopped being crumbs and turned into the 'butter' we were looking for. If we may quote Alton Brown, "our patience was rewarded" - although tried for just a little while...

Once we got passed the hurdle of understanding how long it takes to turn nuts into 'butter' the rest of the process was very easy. The first pulse of having everything in the bowl together was perhaps a little unsettling, but it all comes together in seconds ready to be sampled. We liked our sample and broke out some salted pita chips and crunchy toast pieces.

Result

We can definitely put this one out for guests. It looked like we expected. It tasted great. although designed as a grazing dish as your guests arrive for dinner, it turned out to be a great appetizer course and very hard to stop eating - we may have eaten too much... Definitely got the rosemary, but the sage was very very subtle - perhaps just need to up the quantity if subtle wasn't the goal?

Chicken with Pecan Cream & Mushrooms

Second time turning nuts into 'butter'...

We were much more comfortable watching our nuts go through the crumb stage. Our patience was again rewarded... Turning the 'butter' into the sauce was a little frightening at first as it thinned down a lot once the water joined in. The shallots made at least one of us cry - but are they ever not worth the tears? The mushrooms sizzled and the sauce thickened up nicely once added to the pan. Put it all together and our one pot dish (you can't count the noodle water pot!) came together nicely and quite quickly.

Result

To be honest not our favorite food color. But we do know that the tastiest stuff doesn't have to be the best colors. This fell into that category nicely, although it was quite rich. Too rich? Probably not, but we had just eaten arguably (well, you wouldn't have to argue very hard...) too much yummy dip... Definitely a dish we could whip up again, but we'd lean towards something a little more pretty when friends are over and keep this for the just got back from a workout evenings.

Asian Noodle Salad with Cashew Dressing

Third time's a charm! We didn't panic at any stage over anything!

There's a lot of goodies to make the Dressing and when all hanging around in the Blender before getting whizzed up it looks kinda bleh. But after a good whizzing it looks and tastes great.

Although we've eaten Rice Noodles before, we've never actually prepared (keeping in mind that prepared means opening the packet and following the directions on the back) our own. Apparently there's a trick we're not yet privy too. We just couldn't get them to separate and although nicely coated in the dressing, the rest of the goodies sort of kind of just hung out in the bottom of the bowl after we attempted to toss it.

Result

A conundrum. We liked this 'sauce' much more than the one above - we thought we got much more of the nuttiness coming through. But, over all we liked the other dish more - probably due to our rice noodles issues. Not the end of the world for us, but not a great way to serve it up to friends. We'll almost certainly try this again, perhaps with 'normal' pasta or even a rice unless we discover the trick to Rice Noodles

Chicken with Curried Tomato Almond Sauce

We don't really do curries. Not because of the flavors, but because of the heat - one of us doesn't do well with the hot spicy things. But, we claimed this as us being daring and blasted away.

The hardest part of this recipe was figuring out which aisle in the store hosts garam masala. Turns out it's the spice section which was the last place we looked, and we almost missed it after staring at the little bottles for about the same length of time it took to round up all the other ingredients...

It's a good thing we did this one last. Of the four 'butters' we whipped up this one took the longest to come together by a long way. We weren't prepared for this length of time, but we had enough confidence to keep on going.

The menu strongly suggested removing the onions from the sauce before finishing it. We like the texture as well as the flavor of our onions and it just seemed like to much work to try get them out - no regrets and probably would always skip this suggestion no matter what we were preparing.

Result

Not hot at all. Something new and different spice wise in the sauce we didn't quite 'understand', but pleasant all the same. We did not get any of the almond flavor come through in the sauce. If some how it's the almonds that helps thicken the sauce that's great and it worked wonderfully, but by having the almond butter as the 'featured' ingredient we expected to at least get a hint of it come through. Not a deal breaker, just unexpected.

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

CLICK

Conclusion

It's kind of sad that we've never thought to make Nut Butters before, especially since we use nuts a bit more than occasionally. They're so easy to make - what were we thinking? Even if we never make one of these specific dishes again (although it's hard to think we won't have a use for the dip) we'll at least have the knowledge of how to make use of a Nut Butter to our benefit.

We're pretty much in consensus that of the 3 dinner dishes the Cashew Dressing was our favorite sauce, but the Curried Dish as a whole was our favorite. All 3 dishes could easily appear on our weekly menu again and all could be shared with friends without reservation.

The dip will reappear and definitely for friends.

All in all some a new skill was tried and enjoyed (and found to be very uncomplicated) and produced dishes that leave plenty of room for us to experiment with in the future.

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

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.

Pâtés and Bread

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 16:19:00 +0000

So, at first picking up the challenge panic of a sort set in. Pâté isn't especially high on our favorite foods list, but we do partake in small quantities from time to time when it comes our way. What we don't do particularly well is handling offal and when the first 2 Pâtés involve liver... Fortunately, when reading through the whole challenge we were quite quite (repeated word on purpose!) relieved to discover we only have to do one. Therefore, we of course had a go at the bread and although relieved that only 1 is required, decided to give 2 Pâtés a go. Starting with the Trout and Shrimp, followed shortly thereafter by the Chicken Liver.

It took us a bit to round up the ingredients, but one reconnaissance trip and 4 small shopping trips later we were able to fill our pantry with everything required. Fortunately the stores we've used before to round up 'odd' items had everything we were looking for, but we're also lucky enough to have a couple more that we heard would probably have what we needed but not used so far had we fallen short. We also now have two nice shiny terrines (though more likely to be used as loaf pans for baking in the future).

Baguette

It kind of felt like flying back to Australia reading the instructions - a 14 hour step. But, away we go... It only took a second to put step one together and then back to the TV we go. 2 hours later as we head off to bed we were a little disheartened in that we could discern no visible change to our little ball of dough. Order was restored upon getting up and finding our little ball of dough was not so little anymore.

Step 2 easy enough. But, for the record, we don't own a stand mixer so we huffed and puffed through the kneading part... Lots of waiting...

Shaping was actually pretty hard, well for us. We got the shape in the right vicinity, but couldn't get them to the recommended 15" length without them turning into un-bread like shapes. Probably closer to 10" and therefore a bit fatter. Perhaps this is related to the hand kneading?

We didn't go for the extra extra crispy so whipped them out as soon as time was up skipping the cooling in the oven option.

Result

Far more tasty than pretty - our first taste was within minutes of getting them out of the oven and was definitely the best bites. We're not embarrassed by our result, and would happily share it with friends - but our loaves would probably be the last ones left in just about any bakery... Although the baking was to complement the Pâtés we could not resist and found the perfect use for our 'special occasion' Olive Oil - a good thing the recipe had us make 3 loaves.

Not a hard project, but this is probably too time committing to want to do this whole process again anytime soon.

Trout and Shrimp Pâté

We admit to picking this one first due to the no-offal-ingredients but the nice bonus was that it was an easy one for us to get our feet wet with. If the shrimp were already shelled and cleaned, and the trout already removed from the skin this would have only taken but a few minutes to get it in the oven.

We don't look for easy recipes specifically, but when they come our way like this one we rejoice just a little. The hardest part was deciding if we'd gotten everything pulsed up to the right consistency. It seems we got it right!

It did shrink down a bit during cooking but that just made it all the easier to get out of the mold. And we're not sure if it was operator error, or just the way it is, but there was a lot of juice in the mold that we really didn't know what to do with other that tip out and discard. But once out of the mold the Pâté sat there nice and comfortable and 'dry'.

Oh, and the flambeing was fun. A tip for first time flambeyers (yeah, probably not a real word even if it's spelled correctly) - the flame will be bigger than expected, but fortunately it's not really that hot and only reaches to the ceiling for a second or two. Actually, the real tip is don't pour your liqueur straight from the bottle because when it goes, it goes fast!

Result

We're batting a thousand so far! Something else we'd be happy sharing with friends. We of course paired it with Baguette #2 (remember the Olive Oil on #1?). It looked mostly like the pictures provided as examples. It tasted like we expected, although we wonder if the chives (or something similar) might be useful on the inside rather than just as a garnish? A risk we'll probably flirt with when we next feel the urge to Pâté...

A perfect recipe for the first time Pâté maker!

Chicken Liver Terrine

A few more steps and a longer time in the oven than the Trout & Shrimp, but nothing overly complicated. Handling the livers being the least favorite part but ultimately not overly traumatic.

Again we struggled with knowing what the correct consistency of the mixture coming out of the Food Processor should be. Hindsight strongly suggests that we didn't go fine enough.

Flambeing wasn't as spectacular as our previous adventure, with almost no flame but we're pretty certain that's because the pan wasn't as hot as it should be - we cooked the shallots & livers over medium but probably should have blasted it for a bit before adding the cognac.

The 2+ hour oven time surprised us a little and turns out is plenty of time for the pork fat to render down. We don't think it was operator error at all this time, and again the liquid we 'created' was discarded. We're not sure how it works, but once the liquid is discarded the terrine pops right out of the mold with no evidence of the liquid ever having been there.

Result

As it was cooking it occurred to us that it smelled like we were cooking a meat loaf. Once getting it out of the pan, it kind of looked like one too. Probably a direct result of us not getting the right consistency during the processing part.

The recipe recommended consuming at room temperature. We couldn't do that so reheated it gently in the microwave. This might be because we couldn't get the meat loaf idea out of our heads? But perhaps had it been processed finer. We don't know. But we did partake with the assistance of Baguette #3.

So, we're not batting a thousand any more. Not a terrible disaster and we were able to eat it and appreciate the flavors, but as it was we wouldn't serve it up to our friends.

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

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Conclusion

All in all a useful learning experience. None of the processes were difficult, we were able to locate all the ingredients, we handled the livers and we ended up with 3 things that although not perfect we could have a try of and appreciate what we were trying to do. It's unlikely we'll be dashing out to try any of these again any time soon but they are definitely not on the 'never do again' list, and most importantly, we were daring for a weekend...

We got a favorite vote for each of the Pâtés, but it was a close vote over the baguette in both cases...

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

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.