Feeding Friendship: Vanilla!

I chose the key ingredient this time around, but I didn't have something seasonal in mind this time so I chose something sort of all-purpose that skews towards dessert: vanilla. I have a personal battle with vanilla extract because I can never find any that pleases me as much as some cheap mexican vanilla Mom and I bought on a cruise to Mexico in some run-of-the-mill drug store. I wish I had a gallon of the stuff, because even the fancy imported Madagascar kind can't match it for depth of flavor. Alas.

A few weeks ago, my college BFF Amanda came to town with her boyfriend, Brandon, and it happened to be the weekend of both of their birthdays. I just couldn't let that slide without making something, and Amanda has a deep and abiding love of strawberry nutella crepes born out our late-night trips to Cappy's in San Antonio. I had seen a "Milles Crepes Cake" (that translates to 1,000 crepes, but you only need 20) for sale on the Gilt Taste website, and though I didn't want to pay $75 for one, I did want to eat one. So I tracked down a recipe on the Cream Puffs in Venice blog (love that name, btw) that she had adapted, tested, and liked better than a Martha Stewart version. This cake features crepes layered with a vanilla pastry cream, which I found to be both tasty and easy to make, so I made a mental note to use that part of the recipe in the future for other things. Anyway, I made the cake and it went over very well with Amanda and Brandon. I fully intended to at least post a photo of it here, but it slumped over a bit, becoming somewhat un-photogenic, and then frankly we ate it too fast. So, long story short, I re-used the vanilla pastry cream from that recipe as filling for...Vanilla Cream Puffs.

This recipe is stupid-easy, but it does involve a lot of eggs (not egg beaters, sorry) so stock up! Start off by bringing your 2 cups of whole or 2% milk to a boil in a small sauce pan. Then stir 1 Tbl (or a little more, live a little!) and let it cool in the pan for around 10 minutes.

Next, prepare an ice bath with one large-ish bowl full of water and ice and a smaller empty bowl for the finished cream that fits in the larger bowl of ice water. Also get out a candy or meat thermometer to use later and cut 3.5 Tablespoons of butter to have ready for later. Set your bowls aside. While your milk is cooling off, crack 6 eggs and put the yolks in a medium sauce pan with 1/3 cup of sifted corn starch and 1/2 cup white sugar.

Whisk these all together until they're evenly mixed. When your milk has set for 10 minutes, gradually whisk it into the egg mixture over medium heat. You'll continue whisking this mixture for around 2 minutes, and it wil become extremely obvious when you are done. I was kind of amazed by the rapidity of the transformation in the ingredients that takes place at this stage of making the cream, so I decided to video it for you! Hopefully you'll find it a fraction as interesting as I did. 

So I'd been whisking a very soupy mixture for probably a minute and a half at this point (which I have spared you) and then bam! it just thickens up in seconds and it's ready to go.  It looks really yellow in my extreme closeup in the video, but it's more or less cream-colored even though it does get a little more yellow as it thickens. The next bit is the one ticklish part. Take your big glob of cream and push it through a fine-meshed sieve (I used a fine mesh metal colander the first time and it worked) with a spatula or spootula (best word ever) into the smaller bowl you set out earlier. Your whisk will not push anything anywhere. Once it's all through, stick the smaller bowl in the ice water bath and measure the temperature of the cream. If it's still hotter than 140 degrees, then stir the cream with your spatula until it cools to below 140. 

When you hit about 140, add 3.5 Tablespoons of butter and stir until it is incorporated. You're done with the filling! Take it out of the water bath and let it sit on your counter until it comes to room temperature. Depending upon whether you intend to fill your puffs right away, you can cover and refrigerate the cream, even overnight. 

Next comes the bready, puff portion of the project. Take a deep breath, this is easier than it looks. I looked at the various cream puff recipes on AllRecipes, and though the filling varied widely (vanilla pudding, really?), the puffs were mostly the same. I ended up using this recipe. So, add 1 stick of butter to 1 cup of water and bring it to a boil. Slowly add 1 cup of all-purpose flour and 1/4 tsp salt. Stir until the mixture forms a ball. 

Next I used my fabulous new stand mixer (an anniversary gift from my parents) with the paddle attachment to beat in 4 eggs one at a time. George and I call it the "kitchen Porsche." You can also use a wooden spoon or a hand mixer. 

You'll take this recipe and drop tablespoon-sized dollops onto cookie sheets. The recipe says ungreased sheets, but one of mine stuck and the other didn't, so it your sheets are kind of dry & sticky, you may want to Pam them. I generally tried to make mine round, but they don't need to be too perfectly shaped. Then you pop them in the oven for 20-25 minutes (slightly less on convection setting) until they puff and are ever so slightly browned on top. They also need to be dry in the middle- not still sticky or doughy. 

This goes in ...

and these come out! 

Isn't chemistry wonderful? I just find it amazing that this sticky dough turns into these light, buttery puffs when you add heat and time. Anyway. Wait for them to cool. Next comes what I thought was the only tricky part. Take a sharp knife and cut the top 1/2 or 1/3 of the puff off. I started leaving a small connector "hinge" of puff so that the tops wouldn't fall off when I transported them. The puffs are delicate and a little hard to cut without mushing, so be careful. I took to sticking the knife all the way through it and cutting from the middle out to achieve a better cut and more leverage. Once the puffs were cut open, I spooned the filling in according to how much I felt each puff could handle and then I put on the "lid." 

adding the filling

a finished puff!

I was taking these into work, so I didn't worry about the presentation too much. I think next time I will drizzle a little melted chocolate on top and dust a little powdered suger to finish off the presentation. They turned out both pretty and tasty, earning good reviews from all my coworkers. I think you get a big wow factor on these without too much complicated cooking, and they were a great showcase for the vanilla filling. 

happy cream puffs in a brownie pan, ready to head to the office

Feeding Friendship: Balsamic Vinegar

This week's ingredient was chosen by Veronica to help her mom, Nancy, with a balsamic vinegar quandary.  Nancy had been given a gift basket with several flavors of balsamic vinegar and had no idea what to cook with them. Ellie called dibs on the strawberry flavor, so the next most intriguing possibility to me was the dark sweet cherry. Full disclosure here: I have never cooked with balsamic before, but I have seen it used constantly by Top Chef contestants on TV, usually accompanied by the word "reduction." But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night....ok, no I didn't.

So, being a Top Chef fan I decided to go an unexpected route and suggest pairing this type of balsamic with something savory instead of sweet: beef! Scouring my available recipe resources, I settled on one from AllRecipes.com (my go-to online recipe site where you can save recipes in an online "recipe box") called Cherry Balsamic Short Ribs. Now, due to grocery store constraints and other life factors (apparently one should not shop at the end of Labor Day weekend since the store is kind of tapped out), my recipe turned into what I will call Cherry Balsamic Braised Beef. Here I substituted what my store calls "stew beef" for short ribs, because they were completely out and I figured that cooking the meat for over 3 hours would offset any toughness that comes from using a cheaper cut of beef.

I started out by slicing and dicing everything I would need to get my mise en place, well, in place. Look, Mom, colored vegetables!

I sliced up most of a large Vidalia onion, two carrots and two celery ribs. I would also have added a fennel bulb here, but they came in packs of 3 at the store and I didn't want to deal with trying to use up 2 more alien-looking bulbs. Next, I turned the oven to 350 while I took my next steps. I took the beef and seasoned it with sea salt and fresh cracked pepper, then browned it in my Dutch oven in two batches, draining the grease in between. Now I had a plate of mostly browned bite-sized pieces of beef, which I set aside for the moment. 

In lieu of adding more olive oil, I left the beef drippings in the pot for flavor and cooked the onion, celery, and carrot in that instead for several minutes until the onion got translucent. Next, I added some shamefully cheap Burgundy wine (I looked for better and could find no other Burgundys) and let it reduce by half. I'm certain that any full-bodied red wine would do fine, but the recipe said Burgundy, so I obliged. Per the directions I added some fresh rosemary from my garden (yay!), dried thyme (I was out of fresh), and the demi-glaze.

Oh, the demi-glaze. This is a gelatinous sauce base that took me about 4 grocery stores to find, and even then Balducci's (local fancy-pants gourmet market) didn't carry beef for some reason, so I chose lamb over chicken or seafood. I thought about making my own, but that entails hours of reducing stock and making an entire French sauce, so that went out the window.

After a good stir, chicken stock and cherry cola (!) went into the pot with the 1/3 cup of balsamic.

Now, I used regular aged balsamic, but I think that the cherry flavored kind would be a nice addition to the recipe. Next, I added the beef back in and tossed in 10 oz package of thawed frozen cherries and a few fresh cherries too.

In retrospect, I realize that I added too much cherry Coke to the sauce- a can instead of just a cup. I was rushing because I wanted to get this all in the oven before leaving for an appointment so it would cook while I was gone, and we all know that haste makes waste. So, oblivious to the dangers ahead, I placed the pot in the oven, set the timer for 3.5 hours, and went on my merry way.

When I re-entered the house, I knew immediately that something wasn't right. I checked the pot, but could see nothing obviously burning to explain the smell. When the time was up, this is what I pulled from the oven:

Boooo. My theory is that the extra soda made the overall liquid level too high, as well as adding too much fizz to the pot. Therefore, the top part burned while the bottom portions under the liquid were spared. Still hoping to save the dish, I strained out the liquid from the sauce through my (spanking new) mesh sieve. At this point I tried some beef to make sure it wasn't all a lost cause, and it tasted alright. I put the solids in one container and the liquid in another and called it a night. [I'll also put in a plug for Le Creuset pots here, because this nightmare cleaned up super easily due to the coating they put on their cast-iron pots. Amazing, and worth the cost and the heft for cooking.]

The next day, I followed the directions from the recipe to make the sauce, but it was really salty and basically tasted burnt. Alas. I made some brown minute rice and ate the beef and vegetable mixture alone over it. 

Though the beef survived and was relatively tasty, I'll need to make some gravy or something to put on the leftovers to make up for the sauce. The burning incident stripped the dish of its nice sweet cherry flavor that other cooks raved about online, which is disappointing, but I still think it would pair well with the cherry balsamic. So, if you try this dish, make sure your pot is big enough, check your liquid measurements twice, and check in on the braising process a little more often than I did, and you should be fine. 

In other beef and cherry news, I think that the balsamic marinade from this month's Real Simple magazine could be used with the cherry balsamic vinegar to a similar, tasty effect on grilled steak. Here is the link if you want to try out a recipe I haven't screwed up. 

Distracted by Shiny Objects

There are a few projects kicking around that I have long been meaning to take care of, and this is one of them. About a year ago (!) I was traveling and bought 3 strands of red coral beads that I intended to turn into a multi-strand necklace. I've been wanting a coral red necklace for a while to wear with my more neutral office clothes. Mom bought me a chunky single-strand one for Christmas a couple of years ago and I do wear it, but I wanted something multi-strand, which is rather expensive in that red coral look that I want. Therefore, I thought that DIY was a good option. Recently, I also purchased some strands of stick pearls at The Big Flea (a giant twice yearly flea market at the Dulles Expo center) and I wanted to do something multi-strand with them as well.

While I was shopping at JoAnn's recently for sewing supplies I realized there was a ton of beading stuff there too, so I armed myself with clasps, crimp beads, and stringing wire. I started out with the red beds. There were two different sizes and I had enough of the smaller beads to do a whole strand, but not enough of the larger, so I settled on a shorter strand of the small size and a longer strand alternating the larger and smaller beads.

Mom and I used to make necklaces and other beading projects together when I was younger, but that was probably in the mid nineties (yikes). So I turned to YouTube for some tutorials for multi-strand necklaces. While none of them really addressed exactly what I wanted, I got enough ideas to get started. I began by putting one crimp bead and one necklace bead on a strand of wire. I didn't cut the wire to length yet, I just worked with it on the spool. Next, I took my lobster claw clasp and put the end of the wire through it, leaving about an inch tail. I then worked the tail down through the bead and through the crimp bead. Here it is with the pearls I used later.

Next you pull the tail as taut as you can and then crimp the crimp bead with either pinch-nosed pliers or a bead crimper until the wires don't move anymore. With the end secure, you're almost ready to start beading (aka the fun part). At this point, I measured from the end of the first bead making a necklace of 16 inches and left an additional 2 inches of wire for the fastening process at the end, since you can always snip it shorter when the time comes. So I cut the wire off at a total of 18 inches. For the red necklace I did the strand with the small beads first , but I don't really think it matters which strand goes first. I also recommend you do this at night, in the worst light you can find, with no hard surface to work on...oh, wait, no, that's just what I did. Once you're done stringing, you just carry out the first fastening steps again by looping the wire through the fastener loop and then putting it back through one bead and the crimp bead. Here it is with the pearls again:

It's a little more difficult the second time with the other end of the wire occupied by all the beads, but it's still not too bad. After crimping the crimp bead down, you can either snip off the remaining wire or tuck it into the neighboring beads. Your first strand is now done! You can just repeat these steps to attach the second strand to the fasteners. Just be sure to attach the second strand both on the outside or both on the inside of the other strands. I made my second strand 2 inches longer than the first one and it seems to have worked out well. Here is the finished red necklace.

Next I repeated the process with the stick pearls. They are long and skinny and were much more difficult to work with because of the size of the holes drilled in them. The openings were so small that I had to try multiple beads for the end beads because it was so difficult to get the wire to go through the hole twice. There was definitely a lot more blood, sweat, and tears involved in the second necklace, so if you're considering a project like this, it would behoove you to check out how big the holes are drilled in any given beads you want to use, just to avoid problems down the line. 

I had a few beads left over when I was done, so I went out and grabbed some earring hooks and bead holders. I got two different accent beads to go more with black and more with browns. I had a hard time deciding on beads to go with the pearls, but I ended up with a faceted crystal kind in a color they are calling "smoke" and a bronze freshwater pearl. For this type of earring, you just put the beads on the post and then loop the top of the post around the earring hook with pliers and bend the end around the post. 

Bending the end around itself is not the most fun and easy task, but so long as both sides basically look the same, I don't think it's too worthwhile to stress out about making it look too perfect. Or maybe I've just stopped sweating the small stuff after and earthquake and 2 hurricanes. So here is the set with the crystal beads together with the necklace. Forgive me for omitting my face, but my current case of pink eye does not make it easy to apply makeup or easy to look normal at all really.

And here's a look at the other pair with the brown pearls. I got a lot of, um, help from Watson during these projects, who contributed by chasing the string the beads came on, batting the beads around, attacking the stringing wire, and generally sticking his paws in where they didn't belong. Exhibits A & B as I was trying to photograph these earrings:

Here are what the look like without any feline interference:

Overall this was a fun and not very time-consuming project that netted me 2 necklaces and 2 sets of earrings so far. I may go back and make red earrings if the mood strikes. Next time you can't find jewelry you like in your price range, think about making your own!

Feeding Friendship: Corn Edition

Ellie chose this week's seasonal ingredient: fresh corn. Wegman's has been selling it 5 or 6 for $2, and you can hardly beat that, so I was happy to participate. Now, I'm sure you all know I'm not much of a vegetable fan- getting better, but not there yet- so I thought a long time about what to do with this ingredient. Just nights before our new ingredient was posted, I had grilled some corn for George, so I didn't really want to do the same thing again. Luckily, Real Simple just sent around an email regarding recipes for end of summer ingredients, including corn. I took a look through all their corn salads and salsas until the right dish popped up: Corn Spoon Bread. Leave it to me to turn corn into a carb. To make it, I first went through the adventure of cutting all the corn off of the cobs...also known as the Great Corn Explosion of 2011. Though it got less coverage than the recent earthquake or Hurricane Irene, it had a much larger impact on my kitchen. I got it done using a serrated bread knife until I had 2 cups of corn kernels.

Per the directions, I added the corn to 2 cups of whole milk to the 2 cups of corn and brought it to a boil. In a separate bowl I whisked the remaining 1 cup of milk with 3/4 cup of corn meal, then whisked it into the boiling milk.

I stirred it for 3 minutes as it thickened up quite a bit, then I removed it from the heat and added 2 Tb unsalted butter, 1 Tb fresh thyme, 2 beaten eggs, 1 1/2 tsp salt, and 1/4 tsp black pepper. After a good stir, I poured the mixture into a cast iron skillet that I had treated with Pam. You can make it in a casserole dish too, I just went with the skillet since I make Irish soda bread in it and it seems to go well. Then it went into the oven for around 30 minutes.

The directions say 30, but I cooked it for several minutes longer than that, even in a convection oven. Maybe it's because I used egg beaters and it made it less thick, or you may just need to cook it a little longer than 30 minutes. In the end, the thyme makes a nice balance to the sweetness of the corn kernels, and it's one step away from a vegetable! I served it with some grilled pork chops and a Basque smoked cheese risotto.