A Broad Reference

I was shopping in the Little Saigon section of Fruitvale on International Blvd (in the 'hood) when I came across a very interesting looking pan. Cast iron with spherical indentations. I didn't know what it was for, but my mind went immediately to Yorkshire pudding and fried eggs. It was only $12, so I bought a pan and for that price Gwynie bought one too. But after a couple of failed attempts at eggs, they were consigned to the cupboard.

Fast forward a couple of years, in Taiwan, Takoyaki is a popular Japanese street snack- fried balls made with a wet batter, chopped squid, pickled ginger and green onion. Covered by a generous hand with sauce/mayonaise and shaved fish flakes etc. They are a little crisp on the outside with a soft almost souffle like center and tasty nuggets of chewy squid. These are a fun finger food, to eat them you have to stab them with medium/small bamboo skewers.

It's pretty exciting to watch the vendors make them too. Of course they make it look super easy. All you need is the right pan, a couple of long skewers, and years of practice...

Here's a video I found that demonstrates the technique.

Then I found a recipe online and thought I would give it a try.
http://japanesefood.about.com/od/seafoodfish/r/takoyaki.htm
Ingredients
Batter:
1 2/3 Cup flour
2 1/2 Cup dashi soup
2 eggs
1/2 lb. boiled octopus (yaki), cut into bite-size pieces
1/4 Cup chopped green onion (negi)
1/4 Cup dried red shrimp (sakura ebi)
1/4 Cup chopped pickled red ginger (benishoga)

Toppings:
katsuobushi (dried bonito flakes)
aonori (green seaweed powder)
takoyaki sauce
mayonnaise

Preparation

Mix flour, dashi soup, and eggs in a bowl to make batter. Heat takoyaki grill pan in oven or stove top. Brush oil inside cups of pan. On stove top, pour batter into the rounds, you don't need to be too careful about spilling since that will get pulled in during the cooking process. Each cup gets a sprinkle of octopus, red ginger, and green onion. As batter cooks, use 2 skewers to rotate 90o bringing the bottom edge up and allowing batter to fill cup, forming hollow sides. Keep rotating, tucking in rough edges, until you have successfully formed a closed ball. Keep turning, till takoyaki become rounded and evenly brown, remove them from the pan and place in a plate. Put sauce and mayonnaise on takoyaki and sprinkle bonito flakes/aonori on the top.

Cooking time: 10-20 minutes

Servings: 50-60 pieces (4-5 persons)

other things I can use this pan for:

Fried eggs (in Taiwan they cook quail eggs into little balls and serve them on skewers)
Abelskivers (Stuffed with Jam or cheese & prosciutto)
Donut holes
Yorkshire pudding
Popovers
Khanom Krok (Thai sweet coconut pudding)

Any other ideas?

Posted by Misty at 07:30 PM | Permalink

Every year we get together with our friend Wendy to make cookies. Wendy is a very good baker and she makes brilliant cookies. One of Gwynie's favorites is the Molasses spice cookie from Wendy's Magnolia Bakery recipe book. It's a rich deep flavor, not too sweet with a sharp almost gingery quality, despite there being no ginger. Super easy, they take almost no time at all to whip up AND because it makes a great soft chewy cookie, you can bake these in the toaster oven without a drop in quality.

Magnolia Bakery iced molasses cookies

Ingredients:

2 Cups flour sifted
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbs all spice
1 tsp cinnamon
3/4 Cup or 1 1/2 sticks butter
3/4 Cup sugar
1 large egg
1/4 Cup molasses

Directions:
Pre heat oven 350 degrees.

Combine sifted flour with other dry ingredients, sifting again, set aside.
In food processor, cream butter and sugar until smooth.
Add egg and mix well.
Beat in molasses.
Add dry ingredients all at once, and pulse to mix ~10 seconds. (For a sturdier snap you can go longer to activate the gluten, but watch out for your teeth!). The debate whether to chill the dough or not...
warm dough spreads quickly during cooking resulting in a flatter slightly more crisp effect. Chilled dough holds the mounded shape and makes for a lighter more fluffy center.

Drop by rounded scoops on to parchment lined cookie sheet leaving 1-inch for expansion
Bake for 10-12 minutes.
Cool cookies on sheet for 1 minute then remove to rack to completely cool. Cookies are tender and soft (if you want a crisper cookie, you can extend the baking time by 2 minutes- be careful not to burn them!) When cooled spread a thin layer of icing on each cookie with a small knife or spatula. Let icing set before stacking cookies or they will stick together. Makes 3-4 dozen cookies

Posted by Misty at 08:18 PM | Permalink

I recently had a chance to stay a couple of days with some dear friends Dale and Doreen down in Monterey. They get a farm box every week stuffed to the brim and were struggling to finish before the next box arrived. Luckily they have a male monitor lizard (Daphne) which they feed leafy greens so he helped to cut down on leftovers. While I was there, one of the best dinners was a stew which they jokingly referred to as "Daphne stew". I took copious notes as Dale prepped. The meat was tender, the sauce juicy tomato-based, chock full of veggies. Lest you think we were eating the family pet, Doreen explained that they decided to use stuff from the box in every dish. It was working great, they had delicious stews and they started including more and more veg in the recipe. Dale and Doreen laughed as they told me- one day they ran out of veg and decided to use Daphne's portion of the box, wow adding the leafy greens to the stew added a whole other dimension of texture and flavor. Served over rice- perfection!

This week Morgan and Julie kindly gave me a box of their Riverdog Farm share- Rapini, cauliflower, carrots, turnips, bok choy, apples, persimmons. Daphne stew seemed a fitting way to cook these fantastic fresh veggies. I like to think of it as: Meat, onion, garlic, green veg, root veg, leafy greens, moisture, flavor & tomato paste. But if you need a more structured recipe...

Ingredients

1 lb Korean style short ribs
salt & pepper
1 onion chopped
2 celery stalks chopped
6 cloves cured garlic

1 bunch baby turnips
4 carrots chopped
4 Cups stock/water
1/2 Cup sake/wine
thyme
bay leaves
1 Tbs soup chi

4 oz tomato paste
4 Cups Rapini chopped
1 Tbs fish sauce (to taste)
1 Tbs vinegar (optional)
Instructions

In a dutch oven, sear the meat on all sides.
Add onion, celery & garlic, cook till glassy.
Add root vegetables cut into 2 inch chunks.
Add liquid to cover meat.
Place spices etc in a "Disposable Tea Filter" and submerge on the side.
Cover with lid and place in oven at 350oF.
Allow to cook at least 2 hours.
Remove from oven and mix in tomato paste and leafy greens.
Return to oven uncovered for 30 minutes. Adjust taste with fish sauce. If garlic was not cured in vinegar, finish dish with a splash of vinegar.

Serve over rice. Enjoy!

Posted by Misty at 09:38 AM | Permalink

2nd try on left, 3rd try on right (secret ingredients work!)

Here are my latest efforts in baking- Chocolate wafer cookies. The story starts with the fact that I'm in the process of making a base for a chocolate torte/cheesecake, which requires dark black brown chocolate cookies broken into crumbs. (Think oreos without the filling) My friend Doreen points out the ubiquitously available (at least in the USA) Nabisco "Famous" (brand) chocolate wafers are what I'm really trying to emulate. But my allergies of course make these verboten since they contain some sulfites, and based on the fact that I get hives- contain food dyes as well. Here's a picture for calibration purposes. Notice that they also cost a whopping $4.79! Price alone is an incentive to make my own...

I did a little investigating and found a recipe for the chocolate thin mint girl scout cookie @Baking Bites. These sounded like just the ticket. All I'd have to do was omit the mint and dipping chocolate and I was golden! After an afternoon of happy baking and tempting smells. OMG I must have done something wrong. I think it was the volume of milk that went into the dough and the subsequent mixing then activated the gluten... they were tough as rocks! haha the taste was ok, but my jaw! They were also a great brown color, but not that deep devilishly black brown that I wanted. I think the trick to getting them really DARK is Dutch-Processed cocoa powder (Alkalized Unsweetened Cocoa Powder). Again I returned to the internet for more recipes to test.

So far I think that this recipe from smitten kitchen looks to be the right one. I followed the directions exactly with no deviating from the recipe, and the happy result was a delicate chocolate wafer, crunchingly satisfying with a great crumb. Just about perfect in all respects except the depth of dark in the chocolate color and taste. I really wanted it to be dark black!

On my third try, I used the more expensive Valrhona cocoa that Deb suggested (in her pictures the wafers are pretty dark) and it works a charm. I also swapped out some of the butter with semi-sweet chocolate to boost flavor. The last thing that really amped up the flavor, added depth of color and nice texture was replacing some ground black sesame instead of the flour. (I get it at my local Asian grocery store) Wow! So intensely black chocolatey with an elusive nutty crunch.

1 Cup flour
1/2 Cup black sesame flour
1/2 Cup unsweetened dark cocoa powder
1 Cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 stick unsalted butter, room temp
4 oz semi-sweet chocolate coarsely chopped
3 Tbs whole milk
1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Combine the dry ingredients: flour, sesame, cocoa, sugar, salt, and baking soda in the food processor and pulse several times to mix. Coarsely cut the butter and chocolate into small chunks and add them. Pulse several times till the mixture forms pea sized sandy grains. Mix milk and vanilla and add gradually while whizzing until the mixture starts to clump and form a rough dough. Use wax paper or clingfilm to form into a log about 1 3/4 inches in diameter OR line a small loaf pan with wax paper and pack the dough in to form a rectangle. Cover with clingfilm, wax paper or foil and refrigerate until firm, at least one hour. (This dough also freezes very well).

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line the baking sheets with parchment paper. Slice the dough thinly about 1/8-inch and place them at least 1 inch apart on the sheets. Bake, rotating the sheets from top to bottom and back to front at about 5-6 minutes, for a total of 10 to 12 minutes (watch the baking time carefully-if you can smell them, they're very close to being done). The cookies will spread and puff, sliced too thin you might get little air bubbles that break, giving the cookie a more lacy texture.

Cool the cookies by sliding the parchment onto rack, they crisp up as they cool... about 2 minutes. The flavor changes significantly between warm (nutty) and cool (CHOCOlatey); An interesting taste test to try- ok I admit I couldn't really wait for them to cool! You can store these cookies for up to two weeks (but I bet they won't last this long) or frozen up to two months. (IMHO it's better to freeze the dough and bake fresh, unless you like the girl scout thin mint cookies frozen). They are very delicate, you can add a bit of structural integrity by covering the base with (maybe mint?) chocolate...

Note: These cookies should be crisp once they cool. If they are still soft, return them to the oven to bake a little longer, then cool again. You'll soon figure out the time that works for your oven and the thickness that you slice the dough.

Happy Baking!

Other fun uses for these cookies:

home-made ice cream sandwiches- Soften ice cream and coat underside of cookie. Top with another cookie. Success can be deadly

The icebox cake pic on the Famous wafer packet is inspiring and super easy- Since I can control the size of the cookie, I made panels 8x4-inches. Whip cream and place in a lined loaf pan. Insert cookies into the cream, placing them them vertically to form a log. Top with more cream if necessary and cover. Store in fridge overnite. Cookies will soften. The vertical placement allows you to slice across the grain (perpendicular to the cookies) to expose the contrasting black and white layers. (Horizontal layers will cause cream to squish out when pressure is applied). You can freeze the log for a firmer result. Whipped cream extravaganza.

A fun variation adds raspberry deliciousness to chocolatey goodness. I served this as one of my Thanksgiving desserts. It was so successful that Stephen asked for another one for his birthday. Since I was out of raspberries, I made it with cranberries. I only used 1/3 Cup of sugar in order to accentuate the tartness of the berries. This time I made a couple of smaller logs and individual ramekins. Haha I couldn't wait- It's pretty fantastic freshly crunchy... http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Pop-Art-Raspberry-Icebox-Cake-238747

Don't take my word for it. There are a ton of recipes out there. I may check these others out for completeness, but truthfully why mess with success?

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/cooking-live/crisp-chocolate-wafers-recipe/index.html

http://www.joyofbaking.com/ChocolateWafers.html

Posted by Misty at 06:46 PM | Permalink

Top: "bran" & "Steel cut"
Bottom: "Quick" & "Old fashioned"

Last year Gwynie was advised to bring down her blood pressure- no salt, no caffeine, no wine. By adding oats as a breakfast option, she finds she doesn't need to be as stringent with denial. I'm not sure why oats are such a miracle drug, but they sure do taste good! In the interest of warm breakfasts that meet the hi fiber (5-9 fruits/veg) requirement, I'm cooking up a pot of steel cut oats for the week. Easiest breakfast ever! After spending my early childhood in Scotland, and the last year experimenting with different ways of cooking oats/grains, I feel like a connoisseur of oats. We always called it "porridge" in Scotland, which reinforces the feeling that I'm visiting the Three Bears.

"The stirring is done with a straight wooden spoon /stick without a moulded or flat end and known is Scotland as a 'Spurtle' or 'Theevil'. Porridge should always be spoken of as 'they' and old custom states that it should be eaten standing up. A bone spoon should always be used for eating porridge. " http://www.goldenspurtle.com/

After standing in the supermarket aisle last nite discussing the merits of various types, I realized that even Gwynie and I need to define the oats we like and when we use them. Almost everything you ever wanted to know about oats can be found on the web. Any inaccuracies can be attributed to my vague interpretation of those sources. Typically we have 3-4 kinds of oats on hand

Oat bran is the separated outer hull from the inner oat groat, and as you can see cut into a fine (insoluble fiber) powder. I use this in my smoothies and granola. Generally pretty easy to find in the cereal section. The whole oat berries (aka groats) must be stabilized by steam. During this process the groat can be cut into smaller chunks aka "steel cut" and/or rolled flat. As you can see there are significant physical differences between the various types. Here Steel cut has smallish but 3 dimensional pieces where as the rolled oats are uniformly thin. Quick & Old fashioned refers to the flake size of the rolled oats- "Old fashioned" are larger in diameter (and chewier when cooked) than the "minute" oats but still flat. We normally use steel cut oats in our porridge. I like the 3D mouth feel, sort of like a natural "bobba" (tapioca pearl). I use "Quick" oats when baking (for the nutty flavor & crisp snap) and "Old fashioned" when making granola (they are not really interchangeable)

You can find "steel cut oats" at Trader Joe's and other supermarkets. Cook in water (Oats:Water ratio is 1:4) at a rolling boil for 30-45 minutes depending on mouth feel. Optional salt can be added but we omit this. After initial prep time, made up in advance and stored in fridge- you can reconstitute with 1/3 Cup boiling water or heat in the microwave. It's delicious sweet or savory.

Gwynie always wants a recipe, and maybe you do too.
This makes enough for a week (6 servings)

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups steel-cut oats
6 cups water

Directions

1. In a heavy saucepan, heat water to a roiling boil, add oats and stir.
2. Reduce the heat to medium and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the oatmeal is cooked but still a little bit chewy, about 30 minutes. Texture is creamy from the soluble starch released during cooking (like risotto). Spoon the oatmeal into bowls.

Sweet
Serve with milk or yogurt.
Top with nuts/dried fruit and brown sugar to taste.

Savory
Add 1/2 cup of soy milk or stock, and tofu. Flavor with 1/4 tsp dashi or furikake or green onion. If you're feeling decadent, you can add a poached egg.

Posted by Misty at 11:36 AM | Permalink