pappas rellenas

sunday afternoon (at "italian time"-- which is NOT the actual, politically-correct terminology the mimer uses-- 1pm) we enjoyed an ironic native feast for columbus day. it was meant to be a peruvian feast, but apparently pappas rellenas is cuban and mexican tres leches cake was irresistible, but it was still ironic, damnit!


i remember eating something very like pappas rellenas the first time i went to a peruvian restaurant. i don't recall it being deep fried (nor were these, and that was a mistake) or spicy, but i was probably ten and it wasn't beef heart or raw fish, so i counted it a success.



ingredients:

• 8 large potatoes
• 1/2 finely chopped onion
• 1 finely chopped green bell pepper
• 3 cloves minced garlic
• 1 pound lean ground beef
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp pepper
• 4 tsp tomato paste (half a can?)
• 1 tbs vinegar
• 4 beaten eggs
• bread crumbs
• flour
  

prep:

• mince & chop

actual cooking:

• boil potatoes
• mash with 1/2 tsp salt (no fat or liquid) and allow to cool
• in a large frying pan, saute onions & green pepper until limpish
• add garlic, beef, remaining salt, pepper, cumin, tomato paste & vinegar
• cook until meat is done
• allow to cool
• okay, now, take a handful of potato and split it in half (i went slightly smaller than a tennis ball cause i don't have all day)
• flatten each half
• cup the palm of your non-dominant hand and lay one disc of potato in it
• add a spoonful of meat
• put the other disc on top and press into a ball
• repeat until the potatoes are gone (you might have leftover meat-- i did)
• roll each ball in flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs-- at this point, you might enjoy enlisting the help of any uncles you have laying around while you move on to... another meal entirely (thanks, joe!)
• chill for a couple hours
• deep fry until golden or bake (sprayed with oil) at about 350* for a half hour or so

perfect bownies with a side of my words

mimi gave me a brownie pan that has a removable bottom AND a grid that settles into your batter and bakes up 12 perfectly-shaped, pre-cut brownies.

i'm not gonna lie to you, interwebs, i made fun of her. i poked fun of my grandmother. i did it. because everybody likes the middle pieces best! and i have a knife! and geez, they're only brownies!

but, interwebs, i am contrite. take a good hard look at that brownie (on a pedestal, just where it belongs) and tell me it isn't worth the multi-step process. have you ever seen such a beauty??

ingredients:

• 4 ounces unsweetened, semisweet or bittersweet chocolate (that's 2/3 cups chips)
• 1 1/2 sticks of butter
• 2 cups sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup flour

prep:

• spray all the parts of your gorgeous new chicago metallic brownie pan with oil/baking spray
• preheat oven to 350*

actual cooking:

• nuke butter and chocolate for 2 minutes until butter is melted
• stir until chocolate is melted

• add sugar & combine

• add eggs & vanilla
• combine

• add flour
• combine

• assemble pan with bottom

• pour in batter
• tap it gently on the counter

• lower in the grid

• bake for 35 minutes
• cool briefly in the pan
• remove grid gently
• transfer pan bottom to a wire rack to cool completely

thank you, thank you, thank you, mimi!

madeleines

last weekend my uncle jim gave me a madeleine pan. the week before, the miminator gave me a miniture madeleine pan. there's something about me that just insists that you give me the baking tools you don't use anymore. it's how i've become the proud owner of lots and lots of neat things, like antique lab & bunny cake molds, a few extra muffin tins and a checkerboard cake kit.

j is fond of madeleines. "fond" might be a staggering understatement. j left for a new job in another city this morning. yesterday, i made 8 dozen 3" madeleines and two dozen minis. i filled a 2.5 gallon bag with the full-sized cakelettes (the minis require more discipline than i generally exercise) and this morning he drove away with it half full. fond. in order to make so damn many, i had to quadruple the recipe-- i think i need to buy another madeleine pan.

ingredients:

• 2 cups unsalted butter, melted
• 4 cups flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 12 eggs
• 2 2/3 cups sugar
• 4 tsp vanilla

prep:

• melt the butter
• preheat to 375*

actual cooking:

• combine flour, baking powder & salt
• beat eggs & sugar at medium-high until tripled in volume (eh, 6-7 minutes)
• sift a 1/2 cup or so of the flour mix over the eggs and fold it in
• gently, slowly fold in the rest of the flour mix
• add about 1/4 cup of the egg/flour mix to the cooled melted butter & whisk
• gently fold the butter mixture into the rest of the batter
• chill for an hour
• grease your mold (i used baking spray)

• drop rounded tablespoons of batter into the mold (i piped mine in, as i do with anything that doesn't all go in one pan)
  

• bake for 11-12 minutes
• drop pan from a couple inches onto your counter to loosen madeleines
• cool un-scalloped side down on a rack
• present the little darlings elegantly on a tray or impressively in a giant zippy bag
  

best of luck, j.

(and thanks for taking care of him, uncles jim & frank!)

(and for the madeleine pan! i hope there were some left after he was alone in a car with them for 5 hours.)

canadian bacon & carmelized onion fritatta

(how fantastic is the evening light in my kitchen? love.)

mimi bought me a cast-iron skillet so i don't have to flip my fritattas anymore-- now i can just shove them under the broiler for a couple minutes to finish cooking the top. there's so much you can do with a cast-iron skillet, it's amazing. cornbread is traditionally made in one and it's great for a cobbler or one-pot meal, too. it's a huge pain in the ass to clean, though. scour with coarse salt? no soap? ugh. fortunately, we're accustomed to washing dishes without soap since something, something, blah, blah, blah no soap in the beer glasses!

okaaaay. recipe.

ingredients:

• several slices of canadian bacon (or ham, whatever you keep around)
• 6-8 small red potatoes
• 1/2 an onion
• 4-5 eggs
• canola oil
• sea salt & ground pepper

prep:

• slice canadian bacon & onion into matchsticks
• slice potatoes
• beat eggs

actual cooking:

• put a generous splash of oil in the skillet
• add potatoes
• cover and allow to cook until slightly browned
• add onions
• allow to brown slightly
• add candian bacon
• salt & pepper to taste

• add eggs

• reduce heat, cover
• cook until set
• put under the broiler for 5 minutes (or so) to finish the top

serves two or three, can be doubled or more, but you might have to cook the potatoes in batches.

fritatta is the dish that turned bill to eggs. it was his idea to add the onions, here, and he was totally right. fritatta is making, um, a comback, i guess because it's so "recession-friendly." it's been in all the magazines lately being all hip and new. which it's totally not. but it's still good.

strawberries 'n cream, pretzel-crusted double-cake with chocolate ganache

until i met bill, i'd never heard of strawberry cake. the first time i made him a birthday cake, i asked what kinds he'd like. obviously, he answered that his grandmother used to make strawberry cake and he'd like that. (no pressure, though, right?)

i scoured the internet (okay, i googled) to no avail. when i happened to discover artificial strawberry flavor in the spice section of the grocery store, i felt like the luckiest person EVER, and made a strawberry-flavored white cake.

shortly thereafter, mimi told me to add a packet of strawberry jell-o to my cake batter and then my mother-in-law informed me that her step-mother's strawberry cake was a CAKE MIX. i know, right? i felt like a fool.

after two birthdays and four strawberry cakes, bill was ready to move on to better and more complicated cakes. enter the strawberries 'n 'cream, pretzel-crusted double-cake with chocolate ganache.

for this cake i used this cheesecake recipe, omitting the topping and replacing the graham cracker crumbs with crushed pretzels. in between layers i used strawberry jam, though really you don't NEED to fill this cake. the top layer was a strawberry blitz-cake from the joy of cooking, you could use whatever cake recipe you like with a generous splash of strawberry flavoring. the frosting was this chocolate ganache recipe (maybe doubled?). and the decorations were, obviously, mini pretzels and fresh strawberries.

duck a la' half-ass

"i think," i said, possibly before i even really had the thought, "i'll make a duck for christmas!" and then... it was. that was sometime in mid-november. i ignored the plan for about a month and then decided it was time to purchase the duck. (duck? is expensive. wow. the little 6-pound bugger i bought ran me $18! and you gotta figure, with a duck, about two and a half pounds of that was fat the just dripped off. but i digress.) so, i went to the "real" supermarket-- which is less intimidating than a butcher or a farmer's market where i might see feathers or something-- and snagged a frozen duckling.

all eating ducks are apparently ducklings. i discovered that in my internet research after the joy of cooking offered options for trussing and de-boning "the bird." also? they're mostly farm-raised, to the extent that you could call a thing that lived on average eight weeks having been raised. because they're mostly farm-raised, they're mostly not super fatty like wild duck, if you buy them frozen in the supermarket, at least. because they're not super-fatty, you do not have to prick the skin, no matter what your grandmother insists.

so, this is how i cooked the duck.

ingredients:

• a duck
• oil spray
• salt

prep:

• defrost the duck
• dump the blood, guts, neck and orange sauce packet out of the duck
• (call somebody to brag that you just handled duck guts on freaking christmas!)
• place duck breast-up on a roasting pan
• spritz with oil, sprinkle with salt
• preheat the oven to temperature prescribed on duckling packaging

actual cooking:

• put the duck in the oven
• follow directions on duckling packaging
• cook until duckling reached 180 degrees in the thigh joint
• warm up orange sauce
• move duck to a new plate and cut into edible pieces (note: the wings aren't worth a damn and the legs aren't worth much more. also: the whole damn bird is dark meat.)
• serve with orange sauce (the one that came out of the duck's, ahem, cavity.)

a duck, as a main course, will serve about a person and a half, maybe two. i served duck alongside ham, garlic smashed red potatoes, cornbread stuffing with onions, lima beans, roasted broccoli & cauliflower, brussel sprouts with bacon and rosemary bread.

turkey florentine raviolis

well, after breaking down and admitting that not EVERYTHING i touch turns into culinary gold, it is only appropriate that i should post culinary platinum. turkey florentine raviolis. i whipped up forty good-sized raviolis on sunday-- really, like biggish. maybe 3 inch squares. maybe bigger. or smaller. this is not a geometry blog, okay? you're going to have to settle for "biggish."


for this recipe, you NEED a pasta roller of some kind. i use the attachment for my fucking awesome small appliance of all trades: the standing mixer. maybe YOU can roll them by hand, but i don't have that kind of patience. so.


equipment:

• standing mixer (with flat beater & dough hook)
• pasta roller
• pastry brush

ingredients:

• 3 1/2 cups of flour (plus extra for dusting)
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• about 1/8 cup of water (more or less as needed)
• 6 eggs
• about a pound of ground turkey (i used 1.2 cause that's how much was in the package)
• garlic (fresh or powder)
• basil (fresh or dried)
• fresh parsley, chopped finely (like... 1/4 cup. ish.)
• whatever other spices you like in your pasta
• sea salt
• grated parmesan (or whatever...)
• 1/2-1 cup of finely chopped frozen spinach, cooked
• 1/2-3/4 cup shredded mozzarella
• homemade or jarred red gravy of your choice

prep:

• saute turkey and spices together (this makes your filling harder to work with, but more flavorful. feel free to skip it if you want to sacrifice the awesome deliciousness or if your fine motor skills aren't up to par.)
• make sure your cheeses are shredded and your herbs are chopped

actual cooking:

• combine flour, four eggs, salt & water in mixer (or by hand) with a flat beater at low speed. you've got the right amount of water when a small bit of dough sticks together if pressed. it will look too crumbly if you're not squishing it. that's okay.
• knead with dough hook or by hand until all stuck together (if you're using a dough hook it may need a couple hand squishes)
• cut dough into quarters
• cover 3/4 of dough with damp cloth
• run dough through pasta roller at the lowest setting, fold in half and repeat (3 or 4 times)
• gradually increase the setting until the pasta is as thin as you like (i went with a 4 even though five or six is recommended for raviolis because i didn't want to deal with a very thin dough on my first try)
• when the first piece is done lay it flat, dust it with flour and flip it over to lay flour side down
• do the other 3 pieces, same as the first
• combine one raw egg, cheese, meat and herbs with a bit of sea salt to taste
• score a piece of dough in half (try folding it over vertically to get the center)
• score one side into raviolis (2 rows x however many you can fit)
• brush the scored side with beaten egg
• drop rounded spoonfuls of meat mixture into the center of each square
• fold over the other side VERY GENTLY
• press layers together from the center out (so you don't get air bubbles in your raviolis, which will pop in cooking)
• cut raviolis apart with a ravioli edger, CLEAN pinking shears or a knife
• do the other 3 the same way

the raviolis can either be cooked immediately or frozen in a single layer on a floured baking sheet. one frozen, they can be bagged for later use. this recipe made 40 raviolis for me and 30 were eaten that night. five were lunch the next day, and fiver remain in the freezer for my grandmother-- she likes to taste the wonderful things i make and tell me i'm just like her mother, and to be careful of the evil eye, which can be warded off by making that horn sign with your hands, but it's less conspicuous to tie a red ribbon on your bra. i can't even make this shit up.

serve them with a cheesy or creamy red gravy, salad and bread. and wine. definitely wine.