About the cooking blog...

We enjoy a good meal. 99 out of 100 times, this good meal takes place in our kitchen. We don't eat out very often, and when we do, we're rarely "wow-ed" by the food we get. The following are recipes that have passed through our kitchen. They're not always winners, but we'll tell you if they're not, and what should be changed to make them better. Enjoy!

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Citrus Meringue Pie

I call this Citrus Meringue Pie, because you can really make it with any citrusy fruit medley. Today I used grapefruit and oranges, because that’s what my grandmother sent us for Christmas. But I’ve done it with oranges, lemons and limes. Probably even pineapple mixed in would work for a Five Alive pie. You could even make a purple one with blood oranges.

It’s good to get the ingredients all ready to start, because the pie comes at you kind of fast.

You’ll need:

  • 2 teaspoons of zest (do this first before you juice)
  • 1 1/2 cups of juice (fresh is best, but whatever’s on hand)
  • 1/4 cup water (pour in with juice)
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1/3 cup corn starch
  • pinch of salt (all dry ingredients above can go in together)
  • 4 eggs separated (most difficult part of this easy pie)
  • 1/2 stick of butter cut in tablespoons
  • 1 9inch pie crust (I use premade, although Aaron says that is cheating… whatever. It’s not like he offered to make me homemade pie crust!)

By the way, this recipe is adapted from this one: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Orange-Meringue-Pie-3/Detail.aspx

So to start, zest your fruit. Then juice your fruit.

 

Try to get the seeds out. If you fail, tell everyone it’s for “authenticity.”

Next, prep and bake your pie crust. You’ll need to cover it with foil and wait it down with pie weights of dried beans. I didn’t have any of those things so I used spoons. Bake for 10 mins.

Note, spoons are not ideal, as every time I’ve made this I have broken the pie crust, but that doesn’t really matter. The pie is still delicious!

While the crust bakes, go ahead and prep your dry ingredients (sugar, corn starch and salt) and liquids (you should have 1 and 1/2 cups juice plus an extra 1/4 cup water). I used one grape fruit, one orange, and topped off the rest with lemon juice. I always add at least 1/4 cup lemon juice for the tang!

Then, separate your eggs.

The crust should be mostly cooked by now. Pull it out, take off the weights and CAREFULLY remove the foil. (This is where I always am not careful enough. Then back 5 to 7 more mins. until golden brown.

You can see a little of my crust is falling off, but no matter, we are going to cover it all with MERINGUE and no one will notice.

While the pie crust is browning, cut up some of your fruit sectionals. (I usually go with the oranges – unless you want some real zing!)

Top those lovely wholesome things with your 1/2 stick of butter. They will be folded in together later.

Ok. Now quick, pull out the pie crust before it burns. Then in a small sauce pan, stir together the dry ingredients until mixed.

Next add the juice and stir. Turn the burner on medium high heat. The magic is about to begin.

Whisk in your egg yolks that you separated. Reserve the whites.

Then continue to stir until the mixture thickens. When it thickens, you will know, because it really thickens… think gel.

From

to

Remove from heat and fold in the zest, sections of fruit and butter.

Once the butter is melted and everything is incorporated, Pour/scrape into pie crust.

Smooth it all down with your spoon. Then let it cool to room temp. Meanwhile you can tackle the pile of dishes in the sink… or just watch TV.

Now comes the super fun part. First, preheat the oven to 350. Then, take those egg white you reserved from earlier and pour them into a mixing bowl. Then whip them, whip them good, while slowly adding a 1/2 cup of sugar and 1/4 teaspoon of cream of tarter.

Here is the process:

Here is the result:

Spread on your pie.

Then take a spoon and make those nice peaks all over it.

Bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes until golden brown.

So good. I love this pie because it’s the perfect antidote for the winter blahs. It has the tart of the citrus with the nice sweet of the meringue. Also making the filling when the corn starch sets up is really fun, and turning egg white into meringue is like magic! 

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Cinnamon Raisin Bagels!

This was an interesting project…. we’ve made all sorts of breads and desserts… but never bagels before…. this gave our mixer a workout.. to the point where the auto-shutoff feature kicked in… so, if you don’t have a professional grade mixer, you might need to do some kneading by hand on this one….I looked into tons of different bagel recipes… but this is the one I ended up using: http://annies-eats.net/2009/06/11/cinnamon-raisin-bagels/

You have to start this recipe off by making the “sponge” … this consists of : 1 TSP of Yeast, 4 Cups Bread flour, and 2-1/2 cups of 90-100 degree water.

 

You’ll beat the above ingredients together until they make a pancake looking batter.. Once you have the batter made, you cover the bowl with some plastic wrap and let it sit in a warm place for about 2 hours.

Since the kitchen timer we have only does 1 hour at a time, I just grab a Sharpie and write the time it will be done resting on the plastic wrap.

Now it’s time to turn the “sponge” into dough. You’re going to add another 1/2 TSP of yeast, 3 Cups of flour, 1 TBSP Ground Roasted Saigon Cinnamon, 5 TBSP Sugar, 2-3/4 TSP Salt, and 1 TBSP Honey…

 

Get all of that mixed up… and you have to take a look at the consistency of your dough… My dough was looking a little dry… so, even though the recipe called for another 3/4 Cup of flour at this point… I left it out for now…

After you’ve got your dough pretty well mixed, hit the pause button on the mixer and measure out 2 cups of loose raisins…

Toss the raisins in a strainer, and rinse them well… you want to wash off the excess sugar on the skin of the raisins… and of course in doing so, they’re going to hold onto a bit of moisture from washing.. so if your dough is dry.. the little bit of water on the raisins will make it just fine… if your dough was a bit wet already… you’ll have to add some flour to get it back where it should be…Mix the raisins in, and knead the dough by machine for about 6 minutes, or by hand for 10… Then, break the dough into a bunch of bagel sized chunks, depending on the size of the bagels you want..

Work the dough balls until they’re nice and smooth, and make the hole in the center by pressing your thumbs through the center as you work the dough around in a circle.. the alternate method of doing this is to roll each ball out into a log, then turn the log into a circle by sticking the 2 ends together…but.. it’s just easier to push your thumbs through the center and work it into a nice circle.

Once you have the bagels shaped, put the on a greased and floured baking sheet and put them in a warm spot for about 40 minutes to an hour… then, they all go into the fridge overnight.

In the morning, get a pot of water boiling with 1 TBSP of Baking Soda in it.. and preheat the oven to 500 degrees…

Once the water is boiling, pull the bagels out of the fridge and put as many in the boiling water as will fit at once… I could only fit 2 at a time… but, I made some pretty big bagels…

You’ll boil the bagels on each side for about a minute and a half – two minutes… depending on how thick of a skin you like on your bagels….

Then, place the boiled bagels back onto a greased baking sheet.

The baking part s pretty cut and dry… put them in the oven at 500 degrees for 5 minutes on the middle rack, rotate the baking sheet 180 degrees after 4 minutes, drop the temperature to 450, and cook for another 5 minutes… You want the bagels browned, but they don’t have to be completely done… you can always finish them off in the toaster…  but, they should make a hollow **thump** sound when you rap on them with your finger / toothpick should come out clean, etc.

After coming out of the oven, let the bagels relax on a cooling rack for at least 10 minutes before slicing them open…. then… slice them, pop them in the toaster… put some butter on them and enjoy.

This recipe made about 9 bagels for me.. but.. as I said.. I made BIG bagels…

Cooking times will vary depending on the size of your bagels, so adjust as needed… if you make mini bagels, 10 minutes in the oven will give you nice cinnamon raisin hockey pucks… if for some unknown reason, you make bagels bigger than I did… 10 minutes will give you uncooked doughy centers… so… adjust as needed.

I like this recipe… I did about 1 minute on each side when boiling them… I think that was a little too short… I think next time, I’ll take it up to 2 minutes on each side… and I might make them a bit smaller so I can get a dozen bagels out of a batch.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Honey-mustard curry chicken

Yeah… two curry dishes for me in less than a 1 year period… I’ve officially doubled my quota. But.. this chicken is actually pretty dang good, doesn’t take long to make, and it’s versatile….

First thing, preheat the oven to 350… then trim 4 chicken breasts, and cut them into 3/4” – 1” slices…Put the slices into a shallow pan and start on the sauce.

The sauce is super easy as well…

6 TBSP of butter (3/4 of a stick or so…)

1/2 Cup of Honey…

1/4 cup of mustard…. note.. for this batch, I used “special” mustard… so, there are only a few people I know that can make this recipe with the same mustard… for everyone else, use 1/8 cup brown mustard, 1/8 cup yellow mustard… or… you can mix and match according to what you have and what you like… I was thinking of using part brown mustard, part Dijon…

Finally, add 1 TSP Curry powder and 1 TSP salt…. I went a bit light on the salt, and we tossed in 1/2 TSP of Cayenne pepper to give it a little kick..

Toss everything in a small saucepan… and it looks…

well… it looks disgusting… but, after things melt and distribute a little more evenly….

and it starts to look more appetizing….

Now, the oven is preheated.. the sauce is made… the chicken is trimmed and chunked….  pour the sauce over the chicken and toss it in the oven.

Now, depending on how accurate your oven is… and the size of your chicken chunks… cooking times will vary…I checked the chicken at about 18 minutes, and it was juicy and mostly done… so, it came out of the oven, the oven went to broil, and it went back in for about 2-3 minutes to get the top of the chicken a little crispy and bake the sauce on.

Voila. It’s really that simple…. sauce takes maybe 5 minutes… trimming and cutting the chicken up takes 5 minutes… during that 10 minutes, the oven is pre-heating… then about 20-25 minutes total cook time…. so… we can almost call this a half hour meal.

We served the chicken with some white rice and Virginia made kale with carrots, onions and bacon..

For dessert, we cut up some of the brioche from earlier this week and topped it with some apple butter that my sister made….

I’ve got another project in the works as well… it’s in the fridge right now.. but I’ll be putting the finishing touches on it tomorrow… so, expect another update soon…