Sour Cream-Blueberry Crumb Cake

Since it's just me here, I tend not to make cakes or other big desserts for myself. I feel silly making a big cake that I don't even eat 1/4 of before it starts going stale. However, every once in a while, I get an urge to bake something sweet, like this evening after Battlestar Galactica. My main restriction: I only had one egg on hand.

As a member of one of those mail-order book clubs for cookbooks, I got an unexpected copy of The Cake Book by Tish Boyle last month after forgetting to decline it as a featured selection. I decided to keep it, since I have plenty of bread-baking books, but no cake-baking ones.

So, I opened it up this evening, hoping to find a low-on-eggs recipe. The one I settled on was a Sour Cream-Blueberry Crumb Cake, which called for two eggs. However, since it calls for a 9"x9" square pan, I theorized that maybe I could halve the recipe and bake it in a 9"x5" loaf pan. I'd be able to make do with the one egg I had, and end up with a nice half-size cake better suited to just me. The results?


A moist, tender cake, with a slight tanginess from the sour cream, punctuated with fruity bursts of flavor from the blueberries. The crumb topping is crunchy and buttery... in short, I'm very happy with it.

Since this recipe was straight out of a book with no variations from me, I don't think I can legitimately post it. However, I can pass along the tip of the day: if you have a recipe for a cake for a 9"x9" pan, you should be able to halve it and bake it in a 9"x5" pan with no ill effects (although I wouldn't try it with a yeast-based cake). It's a nice size for a small gathering of 2 or 4 people.

There are many other cake recipes in this book that I would love to try out, either just on myself or on unsuspecting coworkers (the Library of Congress has the full recipe list available here). The recipes here aren't exactly low-maintenance, but if they come out as well as this one did, I'm willing to put in a little extra work.

Technorati tags: Baking, cake, cooking, crumb cake

Green Jalapeno Sambal

I nabbed a copy of Simply Ming by Ming Tsai from the library, and I'm loving just reading through it. It's organized differently than most cookbooks I've seen. Instead of a chapter of appetizers, a chapter of soups, etc, Ming gives 32 master recipes for different sauces, rubs, salsas, and oils, and then gives about 3 recipes using each master recipe as an ingredient. For example, there's a master recipe for Roasted Pepper-Lemongrass Sambal, and then that sambal is used in a Grilled Portobello Sandwich, Braised Chicken with Mushrooms, and Orzo with Sausage. I love the way it's organized, since you can pick out recipes based on flavors. If you want something fiery hot, you can pick one of the Traditional Spicy Sambal recipes; for something with lots of herb flavor, there are recipes using a Five-Herb Vinaigrette. The master recipes are great ways to make weeknight meals, because they are all designed to be storable. You can easily keep a master sauce or spice rub on hand and add it to a quick meal at the last minute.

I was inspired to give the Traditional Spicy Sambal a whirl, since the given recipe has a pretty lethal amount of jalapeño peppers and Thai chiles. I'm not a chilehead, but reasonably spicy food makes me happy. I planned to use the sambal in Ming's Crazy Chicken-Rice Noodle Stir-Fry. However, my local supermarket didn't have any red jalapeños, and also didn't have Thai chiles. Recipe adaptation time! They did have green jalapeños, so I grabbed a half-pound of those. I decided to just leave out the Thai chiles (since, quite honestly, it's plenty hot as is).

I have dealt with jalapeño peppers before, and have never needed to wear gloves. Of course, that was with one pepper, maybe two. Apparently, chopping up a half-pound of the things is not quite the same. As I started peeling the garlic, I noticed a slight tingling in the fingertips on my pepper-holding hand. Within a couple of minutes, this had progressed to unbelievable burning pain. This kicked off a desperate search to find something to neutralize the capsaicin and pepper oils... taking a double dose of both allergy medicine and Aleve and soaking my fingers in cold milk has just about gotten rid of the pain. So, even if you don't have a reaction when cutting up one or two jalapeños, WEAR RUBBER GLOVES if you're going to be working with a large volume of them. I have a pretty high tolerance for pain, and trust me, you don't want to learn this one the hard way.

If there's an easy way to peel an entire head of garlic, I don't know what it is. I smashed the cloves with the flat side of a knife, removed the peels, and then used my food processor to mince the cloves.



Green Jalapeño Sambal
makes about 1/2 cup

1/2 pound green jalapeño peppers, stems removed, and roughly chopped
1 head garlic, minced
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 cup rice wine vinegar
1/4 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt

In a medium saucepan over low heat, cook the jalapeños and garlic in the vegetable oil, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 15 minutes. Add the rice wine vinegar and continue cooking until the liquid has reduced by half, about 15 minutes.

Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the sugar and salt. Allow to cool to room temperature. Transfer the mixture to a food processor and pulse to desired consistency. The sambal will keep in a tightly sealed jar in the refrigerator for 1 month.

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With the sambal finished, I could go ahead and use it in a dish -- namely, Ming's chicken and rice noodle stir-fry. The dish consists of ground chicken, sliced shallots, scallions, basil, and rice noodles tossed in a sauce made of sambal, lime juice, fish sauce, and sugar. I'm allergic to seafood and I don't know if fish sauce would cause me problems, so I left it out and just had a lime juice/sugar/sambal sauce. I also used ground turkey instead of chicken, because the supermarket didn't have any ground chicken.



Technorati tags: Cooking, food, jalapeno peppers, recipes, sambal

Tangy chicken "stew" with couscous

Most stews are heavy and hearty, and that's why this is "stew" in quotation marks. It's considerably lighter, with a thinner sauce than most stews have. I didn't want to make a full-on stew, but since the weather is getting cooler, I wanted something with a little more substance than my usual summer meals. The vinegar and lemon juice give the broth a nice tart and tangy flavor. Couscous tends to soak up liquids like a sponge, which is why it's the starch of choice here; the sauce gets absorbed into the couscous, giving the tiny pasta lots of flavor. However, I have met people who don't like couscous (namely my mother), so rice would work as well.

Tangy chicken "stew" with couscous
serves 4

For the couscous:
1 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 cup uncooked couscous

Bring the chicken broth to a boil. Add the couscous, cover, and remove from heat. Set aside while making the rest of the dish.


For the stew:
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
6 boneless skinless chicken thighs, cut into large bite-size pieces
2 teaspoons kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)
2 carrots, peeled and sliced into 1/4" rounds
1 red onion, roughly chopped
2 cups chicken broth
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar or red wine vinegar
Zest of 1 lemon
Juice of 1/2 lemon

Heat the oil in a Dutch oven or deep skillet. Add the chicken, and sprinkle with salt, pepper, cumin, and paprika. Allow chicken to brown on all sides, about 5 minutes total. Add the carrots and onion and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes. Add chicken broth, vinegar, lemon zest, and lemon juice and bring to a boil. Lower the heat to a simmer, cover, and cook for 8 minutes.

Fluff up the couscous with a fork. Serve the chicken mixture in bowls over the couscous.

Technorati tags: chicken, cooking, food, recipes

Sourdough

To make sourdough bread, you need two things: a healthy and active starter, and some patience.

Wild yeast takes longer to get its job done than commercial yeast. I can turn out a loaf of country white bread in about 6 hours, and that includes making a sponge and letting the dough rise twice. A bare-bones bread recipe with no sponge and only one rise takes me 3-4 hours. Sourdough? Anywhere from 30-48 hours. Starting on a loaf of sourdough means knowing that you'll be getting the end result some time the next day.

The first phase involves expanding your starter. This wakes up your yeast and multiplies it to quantities that will be able to leaven a loaf of bread. Start with two tablespoons of stiff starter, and feed it with about 1/3 cup of bread flour and 2 tablespoons of water. Let it double, then toss half of it, and feed the rest with 2/3 cup of bread flour and 3 1/2 tablespoons of water. Let it double again.


This is my starter expanding. The bubbles all around the sides are a good sign. This stage can take up to 16 hours, unless you have whatever weirdo mutant strain of yeast that I have in my apartment, which gets the job done in less than 4 hours.

So, now there's an expanded starter, and now you can actually start making your dough. Take 2/3 cup of the expanded starter, add 1 1/4 cups of bread flour, 2/3 cup of warm water, and a teaspoon of salt. Knead for 5 minutes, let rest for 20 minutes, then knead again for 5-10 minutes.

Let the dough rise for an hour, and punch it down. Repeat. Then let the dough rise until doubled.


Ok, now the dough is risen. However, it's very moist and very soft, and if you threw it in the oven right now, you'd end up with a big flat pancake...


...so the next step involves putting the dough into a towel-lined colander and letting it rise until it's doubled. This pulls moisture out of the dough, creating a skin that will hold the dough together when you bake it. (It also makes a spiffy design on the crust.)

After 25 minutes of baking...




Crusty outside, chewy inside, with a nice tangy flavor. Not bad for a day and a half, especially considering that you don't have to do anything with the dough for most of that time. I should definitely do this more often than once every 5 months.

Technorati tags: Baking, bread, cooking, sourdough

Grissini

There's a bit of a chill in the air today. After an incredibly hot summer, this is good news... but it's even better news for those of us who enjoy baking. Now, I like cooking and putting together meals, certainly. However, my true kitchen love is baking, especially bread baking. Cakes and cookies are all well and good, but there's something about getting my hands into a ball of dough that I find incredibly satisfying. No, no stand mixer here, just me and my skinny arms. :)

First off, anticipating the cooler weather that's coming, I got out my sourdough starter and fed it. It seems to have made it through the summer hibernation just fine, so there will definitely be some sourdough products making an appearance. The process for making sourdough breads isn't much different than the one for making cultivated yeast breads... it just takes much, much longer. They're worth it, though.

I also needed some baking instant gratification, so I made a batch of grissini (thin, crunchy breadsticks). I flavor mine with parmesan cheese, garlic powder, and cayenne pepper. They come out crispy, perfect for snacking. Personally, I like the kick from the cayenne pepper, but it can certainly be left out.



Grissini
Makes about 50 breadsticks

1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/4 cup warm water (about 100 degrees)

2 cups bread flour
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon minced herbs (basil, parsley, rosemary, thyme, and/or sage would work nicely)
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)
3/4 cup warm water (about 100 degrees)
Cornmeal for dusting

Bloom the yeast: Combine the yeast, sugar, and 1/4 cup warm water in a small bowl. Allow to sit for 5-10 minutes. If your yeast is alive and kicking, a foamy layer will develop. If this doesn't happen, try again.

Mix and knead the dough: Meanwhile, combine the bread flour, whole wheat flour, salt, pepper, garlic powder, Parmesan cheese, minced herbs, and cayenne pepper in a large mixing bowl. Whisk to evenly distribute the ingredients. Add the yeast mixture and 3/4 cup warm water to the flour mixture. Stir until the dough comes together and begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl. Turn the dough out on to a floured surface and knead lightly until it is smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes.

Allow the dough to rise: Lightly coat the inside of a large bowl (1-qt or larger) with olive oil. Transfer the dough to the bowl, turning to coat with oil. Push the dough down to create a flat surface, and make note of where double the current dough height is with a rubber band or piece of tape. Cover the bowl with a lid or plastic wrap, and allow to rise at room temperature for one hour. Gently deflate the dough, then re-cover and allow to rise for another hour. Deflate the dough again, and let it rise for one hour or until doubled the initial volume.

Prepare the oven and baking sheet(s): Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Position an oven rack on the second slot up from the bottom. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Shape the dough and bake: Lightly dust your work surface with cornmeal. Cut the dough into quarters. While working with one piece of dough, cover and refrigerate the other pieces. Form one dough quarter into a ball and flatten it gently. Dust the top with more cornmeal. Roll out the dough to 1/8" thick, and then cut into 1/2" wide ribbons with a knife or pizza cutter. Give each ribbon a few twists before setting on the baking sheet. Brush each breadstick with olive oil and sprinkle lightly with cornmeal. Bake for 14-18 minutes or until golden. Repeat with remaining dough. If you have multiple baking sheets, you can, of course, work with two or more dough batches at once.

Finishing: Allow the breadsticks to cool. They will still be slightly soft and chewy at this stage, and you can leave them this way if desired. If you want them completely crunchy, return them to the oven at the lowest possible temperature setting (pilot light, if you have that option) for about an hour or until totally crisp.

Technorati tags: baking, breadsticks, recipes, yeast breads