Lentil "Chili"

We decided to give a new recipe a try today: Lentil Chili. We mostly followed this recipe, but we used a large can of diced tomatoes, rather than cutting up whole tomatoes. We added three cups of broth and the juice from the tomatoes and it was definitely not enough.

We cooked it in the Instant Pot for at least three hours and the lentils were very slightly undercooked, I believe because there was not enough moisture remaining in the pot. It did taste reasonably good and was filling, but it was not the most attractive meal. I think we'll actually use the rest of it as burrito fillings.

If we make this again, I would definitely add at least four cups of broth, perhaps more.

Failed attempt 1 at Peach Nirvana

I am working on developing a recipe for "Peach Nirvana" as a sort of cobbler for a science fiction story my wife and I are writing. Long story. At least so far, but we aren't done writing it yet. The cook in the story makes a cobbler for the crew that is a hit.

My first attempt was to adapt the Lemon Wedges over Shortbread recipe with the peach syrup and peaches in place of the lemon juice and zest. I cut the sugar in half since there is a lot of sweetness in the syrup and peaches and none of the sour of the lemon to contend with.

Little known fact, peaches are bigger and juicier than shavings of lemon zest. Word.

FAIL

But there were some lessons learned.

Never give up. Never surrender. 

Lemon wedges on shortbread

Wanted to bring a little something to a party and realized I hadn't had lemon squares in a long while. Dug around for a recipe, and didn't see anything familiar, so I decided to try the one from The New Best Recipe Cookbook.

It was quite rich but very flavorful with good balance between the filling and the crust.

Site assembled brick oven

Wouldn't camping with a thousand of your closest friends be more fun with an on-site assembled oven? Of course it would, as I found out last weekend.

The design is based off directions for a backyard pizza oven found on You Tube, with added angle iron structure for more stability. Wonderboard is placed on saw horses for the base. Then one layer of 12 fire bricks make up the bed of the oven. Then courses of ordinary red clay bricks, not cement brick , are built up with angle irons to hold everything in place.

Courses across the top are supported by angle irons. Extra pieces of wonderboard serve as wind screens, a top, and a door.

Fruit juice gelatin from scratch

There's always room for jello, or in this case, fruit juice gelatin.

Bloom  2 packets of gelatin (I use Knox) in 1/2 cup cold water.
Heat 3-4 cups juice to near boiling.
Add bloomed gelatin and 1-2 Tbs lemon juice.
Cool to near room temperature (could put over ice or cool water to speed it along).
Add fruit.
Refrigerate until set.

I use 3 cups of juice for a firm gelatin. More juice would result in a softer set.

Caramel Popcorn

One more go at caramel popcorn. This time I stayed pretty close to the original recipe, except for adding slivered almonds to the caramel right before the pour. No chocolate. No bacon. Just wanted to get a simple baseline.

Things to try

Time to start a new list of things to try:

• Home made food colors (with some recipes from here)
• Cheese snack crackers

Pancakes from scratch

I was in a "no recipe" mood this morning, and my wonderful wife asked for pancakes. (Go ahead, twist my arm.... OK, you can stop now. You had me at "pancakes").

Today I wanted to go with something a little eggier and to experiment with whipping the egg whites.

Chocolate chip cookie FAIL

I am perhaps overly enamored by caramelization.

It just seems so magical. So why not caramelize sugar every time you use it? What could happen?

I'll tell you what could happen, you could pre-ruin your cookies. That's what could happen.

Pancakes with almond meal

I like incorporating a lot of almond meal in my cooking. I have tried waffles with almond meal in place of flour and they didn't hold together very well.

This time thought I'd try pancakes with half the flour replaced with almond meal. This worked well in terms of texture, browning, and flavor. The one problem was that they were quite tricky to flip without them tearing and breaking up.

They browned up nicely.

To top them, I mixed up some butter, maple syrup, and a little pomegranate syrup. This tasted nice, but I needed to warm the butter a little to get it to blend better.

Next time: I wonder if I made the batter a little thinner if that would make them easier or harder to flip. I think part of the problem was that the inside was staying too tender to hold together.  It also seemed to work a little better to make three smaller cakes rather than one large one at a time. 

Hedgehogs

We had a potluck SCA event today. I wasn't sure what to bring, so I went with an old stand-by: hedgehogs!

Little pork sausage meatballs decorated with toasted sugared slivered almonds (for spines) and dried currants (for eyes).

I like them with currants much better than when I made this before with raisins cut in half (if I recall correctly). They were the perfect size and nice and firm and none of them popped out during the baking process.

Caramel Bacon Popcorn -- Second attempt

My second attempt at caramel bacon popcorn went better than the first. I again worked from the Grandma Paula caramel corn recipe. Except I cut the caramel sauce in half since I didn't think I was making enough popcorn. (In retrospect, I found this to be in error). 

Lamb chops

I wasn't sure how to cook lamb chops, so I thought I would treat them with my favorite (well, only) recipe for pork chops.

• Dry the chops, cut the outside band of fat/connective tissue in a couple places (to keep the chops from cupping as they cook).  
• Brush with oil. 
• Dust with roasting salt. 
• Dust one side with a little white sugar (to get some nice browning). 
• Cook the sugared side over medium heat until browned (about 3.5 minutes in this case). 
•  Flip, cover, turn heat to med-low and cook until internal temp is 140. (Just a few more minutes)
•  Put into a 200 degree oven until ready to serve. 
•  Deglaze the pan (I used a little chicken broth which created a nice delicate sauce).

Caramel Popcorn

I like caramel popcorn.
I like making caramel.

Hmm.

Time to make caramel popcorn.

My first attempt was not quite on target, but still tasty. I added bacon and spanish peanuts.

Butterflied chicken broiled and roasted

One more recipe from Cooking for Geeks (p. 206 if you are following along on the Home Edition). The tricky thing when roasting a bird is that there is an inside and an outside. And you'd really like to get a little browning, but not-too-much on the outside and also thoroughly cook the inside, but not-too-much.

This approach changes the topology of the bird so that the outside becomes the top, and the inside becomes the bottom. And you can use different heat and technique on each.

In this case broiling the "top" and then flipping and baking at 350 until done. Flipping turns out to be a little tricky since the skin is apt to come off.

Next Time: As it turned out, I needed some combination of more heat or more time (or to replace my d*&!% probe thermometer that broke). I had assumed that since I had a smallish bird (4 pounds) it would take less or close to the 25 minutes called for. But the meat didn't really get fully cooked. I also managed to broil it a little too long. Checking as it cooks is a good idea. I was just a little too distracted with other things at the time.

So, this is one I want a redo on once I get a new probe thermometer. 

Two tones of caramel sauce

Continuing to work my way through Cooking for Geeks. There are "dry" and "wet" approaches to making caramel. This is a dry approach and I am a fan. 

Assemble the team:

• 1 part sugar,
• 1 part cream.

In this case, 1 cup of each. (Later I add a pinch of salt and 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract).

Start with just the sugar in a cold pan. Put over medium-high heat. DO NOT STIR -- until the edges have started melting. Then stir to blend the melted and unmelted sugars.

Once it is melted through you have a choice:

• Add the cream now
• Let the sugar darken some more

Or, none of the above. Divide into two batches and do both! Whenever you decide, add the cream slowly and stir to incorporate as you go. BE CAREFUL -- THIS STUFF IS HOT and STICKY -- a DANGEROUS combination. Add a pinch of salt and vanilla if you are so inclined (which I am).

Since you get different flavors developed at different temperatures I was aiming for a blended sauce.

What is an experiment without evaluating the results? An accident. So we sampled the light sauce, the dark sauce, and the blended sauce. Sharon liked the light sauce. I liked the blend best. They were all good. There was much more depth to the dark sauce.

Next time: I really like the blended sauce. I think I would divide the sugar and cream into 3/4 cup for the light sauce and 1/3 cup for the darker sauce and cook them in separate pans. I might not go quite as dark on the dark sauce. And I would warm the cream before adding it.

I dividing the blended caramel sauces in two containers so I could heat a small batch to serve without having heat the whole batch.

And for clean up, I just couldn't stand the thought of losing any of that great flavor stuck to the pan. So I deglazed the pans with milk, then drank the warm caramel milk.

Update 2/12/13: I just made this again using two pans and a 2:1 relation of light caramel and medium caramel and it worked out great!

Spinach pecan bacon sautee

Spinach. Pecans. Bacon. Mmm.

Apple Sausage Thick German Pancakes

Yet another variation on the Thick German Pancake this morning.

I had a bag of apples that I got to make a first attempt at Apple Cabbage Stew for the Skyrim party (more on this in a later post). So I got to thinking about making a traditional Apple German Pancake. But then I remembered having some breakfast sausage links in the freezer. And then I remembered how much I like apples and sausage together.

To wit, Apple Sausage Thick German Pancakes!

The 30-minute scrambled egg

In my reading through Cooking for Geeks, I have been inspired to do a lot of experimenting with eggs.

One technique that sounded interesting was for a 30-minute scrambled egg that ends up with the consistency of cream cheese. It took a couple tries to get it since care needs to be taken to keep the pan from going over 160 degrees (when the yolks start to form curds) but if you are much below that temperature it takes forever. So I ended up trying a couple different double boiler systems. Using a regular double boiler was easiest, but trying to clean it after was quite a chore. I like the setup best (pictured) with a small pan in a pan of water with an upside-down plate between.

Next time: In the end, I'm not sure it is worth the work, but I'll keep thinking about where I would use this as an ingredient in something else. Anything I make with cream cheese will be a tempting target.

Gluten Free Pumpkin Pie from Scratch

Well, not really pumpkin. In this case I made a butternut squash pie -- it just doesn't sound right. I wanted to make it gluten free (and I didn't feel like making my usual crust which is a lot more work). I also needed to make a substitution: I had no evaporated milk in the house.