Tea Time!

I had my friend Joa over for tea today. Joa used to work with me, but she left to go have an adorable baby. Luna is so cute. She’s 7 months old, crawling all around, pulling herself up (and falling right back down again). We had a delightful time.

I made banana bread and some tea sandwiches. The plums on the outside tree are about a week away from full ripeness. I made a sandwich with some cream cheese and the closest to ripeness plum I could find, sliced thin and sprinkled with sugar. For a more savory sandwich, I buttered some bread and put slices of cheddar cheese with some Branston Pickle.

Look at this hella fancy spread.

Salt: Critical Mass

I think I’ve finally hit the edge of what is too much salt in my snickerdoodles. I made a batch on Saturday. I doubled the salt (1 teaspoon table salt), added a dash of kosher salt to the cinnamon-sugar mix, sprinkled the baking sheet with kosher salt, and finally put a few crystals on top of each sphere. I’m not even sure these are cookies anymore. They’re totally my division when it comes to sweets, but I think they won’t be finding many champions in the general populace. I’ve also added an additional step to my baking of them. When rotating the baking sheets, make sure to whack the bottom of the sheet on the open oven door. This makes them collapse more quickly. Salty and crispy. I like to call them “cookie chips” in the same tone that the ad announcer says “coooooooooookie crisp.”

In other news, man is it a pain to remove infinite scrolling from one’s blog. =/

Bavarian Pretzel Rolls

1 Tbsp active dry yeast
1 1/2 cups warm water
2 tsp honey
4 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp table salt
4 Tbsp butter, melted
2 quarts water
1/2 cup baking soda
salt (Pretzel or Kosher salt for sprinkling)

In a mixer bowl, add yeast and 1 1/2 cups warm water and let stand for about 5 minutes until it foams and smells yeasty.

Add honey, flour, salt, and melted butter. Mix with the dough hook until it forms a dough ball, about a couple minutes.

Cover and let rise about 1 hour. Punch down and turn ball out onto a lightly floured counter.

Roll dough into a “rope” and cut into the approximate sizes you want your rolls—about 12-16 rolls. Shape into rolls.

Put the rolls on 2 parchment lined cookie sheet or two. Cover and let rise another 30 minutes.

Heat oven to 425 (use the convection setting if you’ve got it) and set 2 quarts of water to boiling.

When water is boiling, slowly (carefully!) pour baking soda into the water.

2 or 3 at a time (don’t crowd the pot), poach the rolls in the baking soda bath. About 30 seconds in the water, then remove with a slotted spoon or spider. Place back on cookie sheets.

Sprinkle with pretzel or kosher salt while still damp. Score tops with an X. (As you’ll see below, this really only attempts to persuade the pretzels—they basically expand whichever way they want to.)

Bake at 425 for 15-20 minutes. Rotate cookie sheets top to bottom and back to front halfway through baking.

Kimchi Hot Dogs

I went to a housewarming party this weekend held by my friends Sylvie and Chris. They made a lot of great food—cheesesteaks, short rib sliders, Brussels sprouts—but the absolute best thing I ate was kimchi hot dogs. There’s not really a strict recipe for this, but it’s along the lines of:

soft hot dog rolls
hot dogs (preferably Nathan’s)
kimchi, chopped
green onions, chopped
bacon, chopped and cooked
mayonnaise (Kewpie)
sriracha

Mix the mayo and sriracha together. I don’t have proportions, just taste as you go until you have something spicy and smooth and delicious. Grill the hot dogs, do not toast the rolls. Top the dogs with everything and cram it in your mouth.

Chickpea Stew

(adapted from Bon Appetit)

2 Tbsp olive oil, divided
1.5 cups shredded poultry (BA sears + poaches + shreds 2 skinless, boneless chicken thighs)
1/4 cup chopped onion
1 garlic clove, minced
1 Tbsp ground cumin
1 Tbsp tomato paste
1/4 to 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1 bay leaves
1 15 oz. can chickpeas, rinsed, drained
1/4 cup chopped drained roasted red peppers from a jar
2 tablespoons (or more) fresh lemon juice
Pinch paprika
Pinch ground chipotle pepper
Salt and pepper, to taste
(BA serves over bread cubes [1/2 c per bowl] and with chopped parsley)

Heat 1 Tbsp oil in a 2 or 3-qt. pot over medium-high heat. Add the onion and cook until soft. Turn heat down to low and add the garlic, stirring for 30-60 seconds or until fragrant. Add the cumin, red pepper flakes, and tomato paste; stir until a smooth paste forms, about 1 minute. Add 2 cups water, a bay leaf, and the shredded poultry to the pot. Raise the heat to high and bring to a boil, then lower to a simmer for 20 minutes.

Add chickpeas to pot; bring to a simmer and cook for 5 minutes. Shred chicken; add to stew. Add red peppers. Stir in remaining tablespoon of oil and 2 tablespoons of lemon juice. Add salt and pepper to taste, as well as a pinch of paprika and chipotle pepper. Simmer until stew is the thickness you want. (BA says 1 minute, but I simmered it for like 20 minutes. Then again, they suggest serving it over cubes of bread, which would soak up a lot of the extra liquid.) Taste again before serving, add more salt or lemon juice if needed.

(I used shredded turkey, in case you were curious.)

Braisin’ Turkey

Last month, I opened up a bottle of red wine only to find out that it had gone all corked and musty. I didn’t want it to go to waste, so I did a few searches to see if it could still be useful. After an attempt to “un-cork” the wine with plastic wrap didn’t really work, I decided to follow a suggestion of turning it into a marinade. I emptied the wine into a pot and reduced it with about a cup of sugar and three or four whole rosemary sprigs. I cooled it, popped it in a ziploc, and stuck it in the freezer. I think I ended up with about a cup and a half in the end. There it sat in the freezer for several weeks, awaiting beef or lamb or some other sort of meat that I never buy.

On Wednesday, I decided to take advantage of some of the rather ridiculous Thanksgiving sales and buy a gigantic 20-pound turkey for $10. Although it was far too big to fit in my tiny oven, I figured I could dissect it and fit the parts in that way. Thursday was Thanksgiving, of course—I went to my parents’ house and ate their amazingly good pesto-stuffed turkey thighs while my bird slowly defrosted in the fridge. On Friday (while it continued to slowly slowly defrost), I read a Cook’s Illustrated method for braised turkey and thought, “Oh, what a decent idea!” It’s been a while since I braised, which seems like rather a shame given my wonderful internet moniker.

So come Saturday morning the bird was defrosted (well, mostly—there was some blood slush still left in the cavity). With no small effort on my part (meaning christ I was sore today from wrestling with it), I was able to remove the leg quarters and breast and jam them into my (meant for no more than probably a 5 pound stewing hen) roasting pan. I didn’t really follow the CI recipe at all. Basically just the cooking temperatures and times. I didn’t brine, I used my red wine reduction instead of white, and since I abhor gravy, I disregarded the vegetables they wanted you to roast alongside the bird. There was no space left in the pan, anyway. One misstep and I would have had burns from boiling hot liquid spilling over the side of the pan.

The wings, neck, back, and innards went into the stock pot along with some chicken bones I’d been saving. A problem I find often when making chicken stock is that afterward you are left with spongy and tasteless meat. But the turkey left behind after making turkey stock still tasted quite a bit like turkey. So I removed the bones and other stock detritus as best I could and reserved the turkey meat for future use in salads or soups. It’s already nicely shredded and everything. Waste nothing!

Hasselback Potatoes

Potatoes
Garlic cloves, sliced very thin
Butter
Olive oil
Salt and pepper, to taste

Heat oven to 425.

Scrub potatoes. Make a series of parallel cuts in the potato that nearly go through, every 4mm or so. Shove a sliver of garlic in each cut. Smear some butter over top of the potato. Drizzle olive oil on top. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake for 50-75 minutes or until cooked through (internal temp 210 F, according to Wikipedia).


This was after 45 minutes. It was not done yet.

Oatmeal Cherry Cookies

2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup dried cherries (or raisins)
1 stick butter
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar, packed
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp each: cardamom, nutmeg, allspice, cloves, ginger
3/4 cups AP flour

Heat oven to 350.

Toast the oats in a pan over medium heat. Set aside to cool. Chop up the raisins or cherries (optional, I just sometimes like to have smaller bits of fruit throughout a cookie).

Cream the butter and sugars together. Add the egg and vanilla and mix to combine. Add the salt, baking soda, spices, and flour. Mix to combine. Stir in by hand the cooled oats and fruit.

Drop rounded teaspoonfuls of dough onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake at 350 for 8 minutes, rotating halfway through.

Makes about this many.

Kimchi Fried Rice

On Labor Day, I went over to SK’s house for some all-American Korean food. She made (and attempted to teach me how to make) kimchi fried rice. I gave it a try tonight. Of course, my “recipe” consists of a list of components and nothing else, like I would remember exactly how much of everything and what order things went in. I muddled through well enough, although there is WAY too much spam. I think I’ll give it another try before writing the recipe out for the blog.