21 January 2008
foodblog: almost-flourless chocolate cake
ok, the recipe. i got it from a wonderful blog, Orangette
, which has re-inspired my recently-flagging desire to cook and learn and cook more. so all credit is to her and those she credits, but here is the pared-down just-recipe text:
gateau fondant au chocolat, or almost-flourless chocolate cake
ingredients
7 oz good dark chocolate (i used 3 oz 100% and 4 oz 60% of ghirardelli baking chocolate; it isn't valrhona, but it's not hershey's either)
7 oz. good butter (this means european/high-fat, and unsalted; i used plugra, others in this category are lurpak or i guess president)
1+1/3 cup white sugar
5 large eggs
1 tablespoon flour (can substitute good cocoa powder to make it gluten-free and to add depth to the chocolate flavor)
pre-prep
this is seriously the most complicated part of this recipe, i.e. everything else is a snap. you need an 8-inch round cake pan (usually this kind of pan has a straight vertical edge, not sloped like a pie crust) and parchment paper. the parchment will keep the cake from sticking to the bottom of the pan and allow it to slide out in one piece.
preheat the oven to 375 F. butter the pan. trace a pan-sized circle in the parchment with a knife, and put this circle of parchment in the bottom of the pan. then butter that paper circle, too.
prep-per-se
cut the butter into cubes and chop the chocolate small. melt them together in a bowl -- you can be fancy and do it in a double boiler on low heat, or not and do it in the microwave. either way, just make sure to stir frequently and don't burn it. add in the sugar, then the eggs one by one, then the flour, stirring well after each addition.
cookery
pour into the pan, bake at 375 degrees for 25 minutes or just a little less. take it out when the cake is barely jiggly, if at all, when you give it a shake. sit the whole thing on a rack and cool 10 minutes.
post-prep
this is the second-most complicated part. put a large piece of foil across the top of the pan; then put an upside-down plate on top of that. hold pan and plate snugly together and flip the whole thing, so that the cake plops (gently) out of the pan and is sitting upside-down on the now foil-lined plate. peel off the parchment paper if it's stuck; then take a second plate and do the flipping thing over again, except this time without the foil and be careful not to smush the cake between the two plates (can use a finger between them to make some space).
serve
orangette says to wait til it's cool or preferably til the next day, since age actually improves it; she even made them for her own wedding reception a week in advance, keeping them wrapped in the freezer til the day. anyway i and others have been nibbling at this since it came out of the oven until almost a week later, and it's been great at every stage.
it's good alone with a glass of milk, or with a dollop of heavy cream that's been whipped up with a small amount of sugar. barely sweet, mind. and though you can use a plain old fork for the entire recipe, don't bother trying it for the whipped cream. a whisk might work if you have patience, but since i expect my accompaniments to come together as easily as my main dish did, i would only bother if i had an electric beater.
, which has re-inspired my recently-flagging desire to cook and learn and cook more. so all credit is to her and those she credits, but here is the pared-down just-recipe text:gateau fondant au chocolat, or almost-flourless chocolate cake
ingredients
7 oz good dark chocolate (i used 3 oz 100% and 4 oz 60% of ghirardelli baking chocolate; it isn't valrhona, but it's not hershey's either)
7 oz. good butter (this means european/high-fat, and unsalted; i used plugra, others in this category are lurpak or i guess president)
1+1/3 cup white sugar
5 large eggs
1 tablespoon flour (can substitute good cocoa powder to make it gluten-free and to add depth to the chocolate flavor)
pre-prep
this is seriously the most complicated part of this recipe, i.e. everything else is a snap. you need an 8-inch round cake pan (usually this kind of pan has a straight vertical edge, not sloped like a pie crust) and parchment paper. the parchment will keep the cake from sticking to the bottom of the pan and allow it to slide out in one piece.
preheat the oven to 375 F. butter the pan. trace a pan-sized circle in the parchment with a knife, and put this circle of parchment in the bottom of the pan. then butter that paper circle, too.
prep-per-se
cut the butter into cubes and chop the chocolate small. melt them together in a bowl -- you can be fancy and do it in a double boiler on low heat, or not and do it in the microwave. either way, just make sure to stir frequently and don't burn it. add in the sugar, then the eggs one by one, then the flour, stirring well after each addition.
cookery
pour into the pan, bake at 375 degrees for 25 minutes or just a little less. take it out when the cake is barely jiggly, if at all, when you give it a shake. sit the whole thing on a rack and cool 10 minutes.
post-prep
this is the second-most complicated part. put a large piece of foil across the top of the pan; then put an upside-down plate on top of that. hold pan and plate snugly together and flip the whole thing, so that the cake plops (gently) out of the pan and is sitting upside-down on the now foil-lined plate. peel off the parchment paper if it's stuck; then take a second plate and do the flipping thing over again, except this time without the foil and be careful not to smush the cake between the two plates (can use a finger between them to make some space).
serve
orangette says to wait til it's cool or preferably til the next day, since age actually improves it; she even made them for her own wedding reception a week in advance, keeping them wrapped in the freezer til the day. anyway i and others have been nibbling at this since it came out of the oven until almost a week later, and it's been great at every stage.
it's good alone with a glass of milk, or with a dollop of heavy cream that's been whipped up with a small amount of sugar. barely sweet, mind. and though you can use a plain old fork for the entire recipe, don't bother trying it for the whipped cream. a whisk might work if you have patience, but since i expect my accompaniments to come together as easily as my main dish did, i would only bother if i had an electric beater.
Labels: copy/pasting, foodblog
05 January 2008
24 hours of excess, and finally foodblog 3: cider-braised pork and leeks, or "new year's braise"
new year's eve turned out fun. i went with my boyfriend and our friend melissa to an acquaintance's party, which was very civilized (we played set!), then metroed over to the fancy bar where our roommate jake works, just in time to grab more champagne, count down, and toast the new year. no, really: hustling down the block from the station we passed one bar whose door guy was shouting "three minutes til midnight! come on in!", and indeed, it was 11:58 when we made it to our bar stools.
we spent a good few hours at the bar post-midnight. the drinks were high-end and free, and they definitely caught up to me after i'd finished downing them. eventually we tried to go home but this involved a long wait in the cold, waving at cabs as they zipped past us. so we ducked in next door at a 24 hour wings-n-other-food place and got our new year's black eyed peas. then started walking home, and a few blocks in finally caught a cab. before bed we stayed up a while with jake's new lady-friend. i like her a lot, and she likes cheese a lot which makes me like her even more -- but she tried to share her fancy cheeses with us and i had to give mine back. i felt like a fraud but it just wasn't settling right after the booze. funny that the peas went down fine, though.
so yes, all in all a decent evening, complete with a pre-midnight voicemail from a friend in india, which was really nice. but i'm finally getting to the important part of this post: new year's day dinner. after christmas jake showed up with two pieces of cast iron cookware, a dutch oven and a skillet. you need two hands to pick these things up. we were both excited. so on the 30th we decided to try out his dutch oven with a technique neither of us is that familiar with: braising.
braising involves simmering something in a small amount of liquid until it's tender and fragrant. you can do it with lots of things, including fish or vegetables, on the stove or in the oven or both. dutch ovens are heavy, relatively wide pots, good for braising large pieces of meat because they hold in heat evenly and have fitted lids that prevent the steam from escaping and drying out the meat, while cast iron is good for oven use because no amount of kitchen-level heat is going to damage that shit. and a fatty, tough piece of meat is best: hours of low heat melt the fat into the meat and will break down the connective tissues. jake likes pork, and i like leeks, and we thought apple cider would go well with pork; and that's how you start building a recipe. so we decided on pork shoulder, which was cheap, too -- we went to the store on the 31st and got 8 pounds for 8 dollars, albeit bone-in. anyway, it turned out delicious and very pat-on-the-back-worthy. in case anyone's interested, here's my free-form "recipe" for how we made it:
we spent a good few hours at the bar post-midnight. the drinks were high-end and free, and they definitely caught up to me after i'd finished downing them. eventually we tried to go home but this involved a long wait in the cold, waving at cabs as they zipped past us. so we ducked in next door at a 24 hour wings-n-other-food place and got our new year's black eyed peas. then started walking home, and a few blocks in finally caught a cab. before bed we stayed up a while with jake's new lady-friend. i like her a lot, and she likes cheese a lot which makes me like her even more -- but she tried to share her fancy cheeses with us and i had to give mine back. i felt like a fraud but it just wasn't settling right after the booze. funny that the peas went down fine, though.
so yes, all in all a decent evening, complete with a pre-midnight voicemail from a friend in india, which was really nice. but i'm finally getting to the important part of this post: new year's day dinner. after christmas jake showed up with two pieces of cast iron cookware, a dutch oven and a skillet. you need two hands to pick these things up. we were both excited. so on the 30th we decided to try out his dutch oven with a technique neither of us is that familiar with: braising.
braising involves simmering something in a small amount of liquid until it's tender and fragrant. you can do it with lots of things, including fish or vegetables, on the stove or in the oven or both. dutch ovens are heavy, relatively wide pots, good for braising large pieces of meat because they hold in heat evenly and have fitted lids that prevent the steam from escaping and drying out the meat, while cast iron is good for oven use because no amount of kitchen-level heat is going to damage that shit. and a fatty, tough piece of meat is best: hours of low heat melt the fat into the meat and will break down the connective tissues. jake likes pork, and i like leeks, and we thought apple cider would go well with pork; and that's how you start building a recipe. so we decided on pork shoulder, which was cheap, too -- we went to the store on the 31st and got 8 pounds for 8 dollars, albeit bone-in. anyway, it turned out delicious and very pat-on-the-back-worthy. in case anyone's interested, here's my free-form "recipe" for how we made it:
prep: buy a large cut of pork, like pork shoulder or butt -- ours was 8 pounds of shoulder with a big bone in the middle. discard the gross packaging, rinse that pig in cold water, put it on a cutting board or big tray, pat it dry with a paper towel, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. note how one side of your pork shoulder is covered in skin and you can make out the pig's wrinkled armpit; contemplate tickling it. say a prayer for the late julia child, who on pbs once heaved a whole pig upside-down onto her counter and declared "i believe we ought to know where our food comes from". ahem. also turn two carrots into small dice, two leeks into half-rounds (rinse well after chopping!), 3 cloves of garlic into a rough mince, and one stalk from a fennel bulb into small bits too. set all these veggies aside.
macabre: with a sharp knife and a fair bit of pressure, score the skin and fat in a cross-hatch pattern. then cut slits in the muscle, slice 2-4 more cloves of garlic, and push a piece of garlic into each slit.
brown: now over medium-high heat, warm up a couple tablespoons of vegetable oil, like canola or safflower, in the dutch oven -- don't use olive oil, it'll burn, even our "extra light" olive oil specially for cooking made a lot of smoke. ease the meat into the pot and brown it for about 15 minutes, turning it every few minutes so each side gets a turn in contact with the bottom of the pot. then move the meat to a plate.
sautee: turn the burner down to medium-low. toss in the aromatics -- the carrot and fennel and leeks and garlic -- that you chopped up earlier. stir and cook down for maybe 10 minutes; everything should get soft and/or translucent, golden is ok, but avoid crispy.
liquids: pour a couple bottles of hard cider (we used woodchuck "dark & dry", it was fine, i bet granny smith would've been good too) over the softened veggies -- it'll sizzle for a minute -- then raise the heat to bring everything to a boil. once that happens you can turn it back down to a simmer until you have half the liquid you started out with. then add some chicken stock (ours was homemade and frozen by yours truly several months ago) and two bay leaves. bay leaves add a nice warm flavor AND reduce the scummy stuff that floats up when you cook meat in liquid. season to taste -- we favored fresh-ground white pepper and i'm not sure what else.
oven: when the broth tastes right, put the pork back into the pot. the liquid only needs to go halfway up the meat, so if you have too much, remove some and save it for later. move the whole thing to the oven with the lid on. cook for an hour at 350. then take the lid off, baste the meat by spooning the juices over the top, and put the lid back on. turn the heat down to 275 and leave it to cook another 2-3 hours. over this time the meat will get soft and falling-apart.
more veggies: 30 minutes before you're ready to pull it out of the oven, slice the bulb of the fennel into big pieces, brown them a little in butter on medium-low, and throw them into the pot with 6 whole peeled carrots. now prepare 2-3 whole leeks: cut off all but two inches of the green leaves, slice down the middle til you're an inch from the base, fan out the layers and rinse all the grit out from between them, then push it all back together and slice off the bottom quarter-inch, including the root. throw those in with maybe 15 minutes to go (we put ours in at the same time as the carrots and fennel and they got mushy).
finish line: check to make sure everything is tender enough, and if so pull it out and turn off the oven. have your awesome roommate roast potatoes with herbs, sautee brussels sprouts with shallots and bacon, and pot together a bbq-style sauce out of pureed cooking juices and molasses and brown sugar. put out the two potholders he sets on fire. sit down to dinner with several friends. be proud of yourself.
Labels: foodblog
20 October 2006
foodblog 2: butternut-lemongrass soup!
ok also last week, i purchased a butternut squash. now, i've done a lot of things with acorn squash, i guess because they're of a manageable size compared to butternut squashes. people say they're interchangeable in recipes, and that's mostly true, but they do each have their own taste, and i usually prefer butternut. anyway, i happened to find a smallish butternut and so i bought it on impulse. butternut squash makes one of the tastiest soups ever. before last night i'd had it two or three different ways, and all were good; the one i made last night was yet another distinct soup, and i thought it was pretty delicious. in the past i've had it spiced with nutmeg or sprinkled with pistachios, heavy on cream or heavy on butter or swirled with sour cream. i decided that since i already knew the basics of making squash soups -- twice before: one cost patrick a sliver of thumb skin, and the other got tossed out on account of an unpleasant amount of nutmeg -- i would try to make something a little different from all of these. the upside from the failed too-much-nutmeg experience was that i learned to properly roast a squash to get the best flavor from it; unfortunately, most recipes just say to boil the squash straight off -- which means you have to cut it up, and slicing through the tough raw skin is where you might injure yourself -- or (eek) to microwave it, 'nuff said. anyway, i roasted it in the oven til it came out smelling caramelized. the cool thing is that when it was raw, it smelled just like a melon. i suppose they're all in the same family, squashes and melons, but it was still surprising how light and fruity this
one was. so imagine that, then mellowed out by the deep warm smell of browning sugar.
anyway, i'm getting a little carried away describing my butternut squash when i want to get to bed. so imagine a light, nearly-fruity version of butternut squash that echoes the melon smell with a little bit of apple, but supports the autumny side of squash with a few robust vegetables (carrot, celery, onion, garlic) and chicken stock. on impulse i threw in some lemongrass to bridge those two sides, and after a little more thought grated in some ginger. is this sounding good to you? i promise, it was good.
after a long simmer, i blendered and salted it. i decided i wanted a smooth soup, so i ran it through a sieve. set it in shallow bowls. topped it with cracked pepper and green onions, just like for a black bean soup. then i decided to try something a little different. i wanted an extra starch for the meal, so i piled a few spoonfuls of soft, short-grained rice into each bowl (i had to be careful not to let the rice fall into the soup and drown, but it helped that it was a bit sticky). and then, instead of sour cream or heavy cream, i pulled out some coconut milk (the unsweetened kind). just a spoonful or two, directly on top of the rice. it was a subtle taste but really pulled the dish together, i think. i am happy i made up a recipe as i went along, found it really simple, didn't have any accidents or emergencies, and pulled off the balance i was hoping to get quite well.
took pictures. the light underneath the microwave was on, it turned out, and i think that's why there's that gleam on the soup. it certainly wasn't congealed like the reflections seem to suggest. anyway, here are two. yay.
one was. so imagine that, then mellowed out by the deep warm smell of browning sugar.
anyway, i'm getting a little carried away describing my butternut squash when i want to get to bed. so imagine a light, nearly-fruity version of butternut squash that echoes the melon smell with a little bit of apple, but supports the autumny side of squash with a few robust vegetables (carrot, celery, onion, garlic) and chicken stock. on impulse i threw in some lemongrass to bridge those two sides, and after a little more thought grated in some ginger. is this sounding good to you? i promise, it was good.
after a long simmer, i blendered and salted it. i decided i wanted a smooth soup, so i ran it through a sieve. set it in shallow bowls. topped it with cracked pepper and green onions, just like for a black bean soup. then i decided to try something a little different. i wanted an extra starch for the meal, so i piled a few spoonfuls of soft, short-grained rice into each bowl (i had to be careful not to let the rice fall into the soup and drown, but it helped that it was a bit sticky). and then, instead of sour cream or heavy cream, i pulled out some coconut milk (the unsweetened kind). just a spoonful or two, directly on top of the rice. it was a subtle taste but really pulled the dish together, i think. i am happy i made up a recipe as i went along, found it really simple, didn't have any accidents or emergencies, and pulled off the balance i was hoping to get quite well.
took pictures. the light underneath the microwave was on, it turned out, and i think that's why there's that gleam on the soup. it certainly wasn't congealed like the reflections seem to suggest. anyway, here are two. yay.
Labels: foodblog
foodblog: pickles!
so last week i made pickles. i used okra and small cucumbers (not the teeny cocktail cornichons, but still smaller than regular ones; maybe from my wrist to my middle knuckle in length). by the way, if you've never had okra pickles, you're missing out. anyway they came out crisp and pretty delicious, but next time i will make them a little saltier. and i think i figured out how to reduce the sliminess the okra naturally have, so that goes in the "success" column. i also came home with $20 worth of spices this weekend, partly because i was excited to try adding things like dill seed and mustard seed to my pickles (and partly because i restocked on aromatics for winter cookie baking, as well as more turmeric so i can try making chicken penang soon-- except i forgot the star anise!). anyway, pickles. i thought the jar was quite pretty after i finished filling it, so i took a few pictures.
well, none of the pictures came out that great. it was evening when i tried, and i had a terrible time getting the light in the kitchen to a) be strong enough that i didn't have to set the shutter speed really low, and yet b) not look horrid and garish. but anyway here's a picture.
well, none of the pictures came out that great. it was evening when i tried, and i had a terrible time getting the light in the kitchen to a) be strong enough that i didn't have to set the shutter speed really low, and yet b) not look horrid and garish. but anyway here's a picture.
Labels: foodblog
