Yeah, it is kind of confusing that he names all of his books the same thing. The one you linked is the one I was referring to - I don't have a copy of Chocolates and Confections @ Home or Chocolates and Confections, just Formula, Theory & Technique. I presume the others are good but the professional book is where it's at.
OK, last candy post for a few weeks. One last holiday item for the Thanksgiving trip: peanut brittle. It's delicious. It ended up thicker than the thin store-bought stuff since I didn't have a larger pan, but it's not too rigid so it still breaks easily and is delicious in the mouth. Will be slightly more careful about vigorous mixing of the baking soda less time to hopefully get less bubbles, but hey.
Shiny! :D I improvised some sort of cranberry-orange galette thing tonight that I'll bake for tomorrow. Here's hoping the pate brisee cooperates. >.>
Cranberry-orange sauce, sun-dried tomato dip, and red pepper-cheddar dip. Here's hoping someone eats them. :)
Oven-roasted herbed turkey tenderloin, cornbread-sage-sausage stuffing with roasted garlic, and sweet potato fries with a cranberry-ginger dipping sauce. Thanksgiving ACCOMPLISHED!
Finally got the turkey on the smoker. Unfortunately, neither of my remote thermometers are working so I'll be going old-school and using a digital one :)
No pictures, but apart from a jammy mess in the bottom of the oven, dessert seems to be a success. I hope. :) Also, typed up the recipe for my sister and noticed in last night's portion: "Put fruit and pastry in fridge to chill overnight. If fridge smells like salami, remove salami before chilling fruit." If I ever start writing a cookbook, someone slap a restraining order on me, please.
So my pearl onion experiment turned into broccoli and pearl onions in a cheese sauce casserole that looks acceptable.
Thanksgiving was a great success. Highlights: - smoked maple glazed ham - smoked herb crusted turkey - candied bacon - tres leches cake - pumpkin roulade. Overall we exceeded last year's great success and raised the bar for next year. Next: Christmas.
OK now that I'm at a PC and not on my iPhone, here is the full menu: Appetizers: - Herbed and spiced bar nuts - Hush puppies - Flatbread w/ hummus - Candied bacon Entrees: - 22lb Herb crusted roasted turkey - 9lb herb crusted smoked turkey breast - 9lb maple glazed smoked ham Sides - Stuffing - Sausage stuffing - Garlic mashed potatoes - Horseradish mashed potatoes - Sweet bourbon mash - Sweet potato casserole - Green bean casserole - Creamed spinach - Mac & Cheese - Salad - Various vegetarian stuff a few people brought Desserts - Pumpkin Roulade - Tres Leches Cake - Apple Pie - Pumpkin Pie - Lemon Fromage - Cheesecake Overall we had a ridiculous amount of food, ate like kings, drank like fish. Yesterday I spent about five hours baking, my cousin spent about five hours doing prep cooking. Today we were cooking for about eight hours before dinner went on. Overall it was a great success. We're going to adjust the menu a bit next time (half the mac and cheese, half the potatoes and then add some dishes), but overall this was our best Thanksgiving yet!
Thanksgiving seems to be the experimental try-outs for what we're going to cook for Christmas. This year I tried puffed butternut squash. Steamed squash, throw it in the food processor with 2 tbsp. butter, 1/8 of a cup of brown sugar (adjust as necessary for the size of the squash, but this was a small one for the two of us), some salt, pepper, and two eggs. Blend. Take the mixture, put it in an oven-safe bowl, sprinkle some brown sugar over the top, and bake for about 20 minutes. It puffs up a little because of the eggs and has a nicer texture than just plain mashed squash.
Jeff, sounds delicious ! So far I have only been a traditional thanksgiving dinner twice in my life (sadly not this year). So, since all of you guys made me hungry I just went out and bought a turkey. There will be guests on Wednesday. No, it is only a meager 16 lbs.
We had 23 people. Naturally we had an immense amount of leftovers, but that's almost the point: send everyone home with a platter for the next day!
My peanut butter pie turned out great, particularly since I had immediately frozen it. I took it out before we headed to our destination, and by the time dinner was over, it was perfectly thawed and delicious. Now, I have to think/plan for Christmas, which I am cooking. I know the main protein will be Ham, so I'll be making cornbread stuffing, and I was thinking maybe scalloped potatoes instead of mashed, since no gravy. I'll have to ponder the rest!
I made Tuxedo Pie for dessert yesterday and of course it's for breakfast today too. It's super easy and looks really cool with the layers. Basically people will think you did a lot more work than you did: 1 jello chocolate pudding mix 1 jello vanilla pudding mix (I like french vanilla) 3 tubs of cool whip 2 graham cracker crusts 2 cups of milk Makes 2 pies! Mix 1 cup of milk with each of the pudding mixes in separate bowls and use a whisk to mix em up for like 2 minutes. Add 1 tub of cool whip to each bowl and mix together--this takes longer than you'd think. Basically it makes the chocolate one a really light, chocolate mousse color and the vanilla a much lighter yellow. Put half the chocolate mix into each of the graham cracker crusts and spread evenly, then put half the vanilla mix on top of each of those and spread evenly. Then take your final tub of cool whip and put half on each pie, spreading around for the final layer. Put in the fridge for a couple of hours so it sets up--I usually leave it over night. If you're feeling super savvy, you can garnish with chocolate dipped cookies but I never go that far. Here's what it looks like:
So I had a thought ... Instead of peanut butter in the peanut butter pie ..... almond or cashew butter ..... O.o
Tonight I used this method to cook a couple of NY strips, and they were as good as any steaks I've ever had. Wow. This might be my new favorite method for cooking steaks. Just a little salt and pepper (and some garlic powder on mine). I then got in the mood to make a pecan pie, since I missed out on doing it at my folks' house for T'giving. It's cooling now. I just use the recipe on the Karo bottle.
I've done that before, specifically with an oil that was supposed to have a really high smoke point. Filled my kitchen and much of my house with a thin haze of smoke anyway. Did you manage to avoid that?
That's how I've been doing all my steaks ever since watching that episode of Good Eats. Never had a problem with smoke. Of course I also have good ventilation right above my stove (well, everyone has here). He does go into some detail on picking the right oil.
So I made this for my Thanksgiving meal and it was fantastic. I had it with rice instead of spuds - and your suggestion of adding the mushrooms was a really good one. Leftovers for like 4 or 5 days!
Holiday Baking Extravaganza: Part 1 is in the books! Red Velvet Cookies and Cranberry Crispies for my dad and in-laws, respectively are now chilling out in the freezer.
So I had a false alert last week that I would need to bring a mince pie to Thanksgiving. (The mince pie was supplied by someone else.) This means I am left with mince pie filling (jarred) and a pie crust (Pillsbury refrigerated). Now, I don't actually like mince pie. It has too high of a mince-to-pastry ratio for my taste -- mince is a bit strong flavored for me to want a whole mouthful. I'm thinking of using those ingredients to make something else. Would they be good for, say, rugelah (sp?) or strudel?
Mince filling is great for rugelach. I've often used it with my go-to cooking "cheat mode" of Pillsbury cinnamon rolls, unrolled and spread with the filling, then folded and baked.
I always thought a mince pie was some kind of meat pie so I was pretty disappointed when someone gave me a slice this Thanksgiving.
\o/ I made it again over the weekend when some friends were coming down. They loved it. I bought over a kilo and a half of meat for it, thinking that would do for seven people. Two people cancelled at the last minute but I thought I'd just eat the rest as leftovers. After dinner there was enough stew left for one person to have one smallish meal after it. A good sign I think. :)
Pie crust is kind of standard. What I do is take a small package of cinnamon roll dough, divide it in half, and then mush it all together and roll it out into a rectangle about 1/4" thick. Divide it in thirds lengthways, and spread the filling over the middle third. On the outer thirds, cut diagonally from about a half-inch from the filling to the outside making diagonal "strips". Then, weave the strips left-right-left-right over the middle third, stretching and tucking the ends under, and then throw it in the oven. Technically I think that makes it a kind of strudel, but with a cinnamon roll texture.
If you need a way to use up a pie crust, you can make cinnamon chips: roll out the pie crust a little, cut into wedges, sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar, and bake until crunchy. Good for dipping into jam or fruit salad.
I've just ordered some of the ingredients to make my Christmas hampers for this year. This weekend I will hopefully be attempting to make banana and chocolate jam and plum and ginger jam. I already have chilli jam and gooseberry and elderflower jam to go in. I like this home-cooked gifts thing and my family seems to appreciate it too!
So, dinner guests yesterday. I prepared the turkey that I bought on an BF-induced whim, or more precisely a turkey leg and a breast, both sous-vide. Leg was bagged with a bit of butter, some garlic, salt and pepper and kept for 12h at 80C, the leg with salt and pepper at 60C for 10h. Both were roasted under a grill for 10 min after drying them and spreading some olive oil on top. As sides there were mashed potatoes and brussel sprouts, both as simple as possible. For the sauce I blanched some onion, added red wine and reduced by half, added a liter of turkey stock and reduced to a third or so. Simmered some thyme and rosemary in it, added some starch and finished with salt and pepper. Some baguette to go with it, and a plum-almond tarte for dessert. Worked out pretty well, even if I say so myself. Even better, one of the two guests brought a few bottle of really nice scotch to go with the tarte. Life was very good for a few hours.
As much as I love cooking, I don't have the patience at this moment to read all 15 pages of this thread. Wanted to ask you guys though, have recipies for people with food allergies or a subsequent discussion already taken place here? If not, I was thinking of starting a topic after a conversation in another thread a couple days ago.
Not a general discussion, but the folks in this thread could probably answer any specific questions. What kind of allergy are we talking? I might be able to link you to a blog or two.
Actually, a derail in a another read got a bunch of people talking about macaroons. I meaned that they're usually gluten free and safe for people who can't eat gluten. Someone thanked me for pointing that out an dimplied they couldn't find good desert recipies that were gluten free. I thought it might be fun to start a thread here specifically for sharing recipies safe for certain allergies, and maybe discussing what kinds of food allergies people have and what to avoid, etc. But if it was already being covered in here, I wasn't sure if I should post it. It'd be nice if you could visit after I create the thread and post the blogs though, they might really help someone.
Absolutely! Gluten Free Girl and the Chef should be a good start, there. I was linked there from Smitten Kitchen, and not only are the recipes awesome, so is the writing. :)
