Tag: butter

Categories
Cakes The Book

202. Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting p.726


The recipe courtesy of The Ulterior Epicure

Sometimes the stars just don’t align, and the baking Gods abandon you for a day. I’ve learned a lot about cooking and baking through this project, and I’ve gotten to a point where I rarely make the boneheaded mistakes that plagued my early experiments, but there’s always room to regress. Today’s flub up was ignoring the instruction to “butter and flour cake pans, knocking out excess flour”. Every single baked good in the book calls for this step, and it’s become such a familiar phrase that I think I literally didn’t see it when reading the recipe. Sure something felt wrong while I poured the cake batter into the pans, but I was working on three other things at the time and didn’t give it much thought. The finished product suffered as a result, but I’m going to rate it anyway.

This is a pretty straightforward cake, but it does have quite a few ingredients. Beyond the basic cake stuff (flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt, vegetable oil, eggs, sugar) the cake mixes in a healthy dose of grated carrot, cinnamon, crushed pineapple, sweetened flaked coconut, walnuts, and raisins. The raisins were optional, and I opted against. The cakes are split into two 9 inch round cake pans and banked for ~40 minutes. Once cooled they’re stacked and frosted with whipped cream cheese, butter, vanilla, and icing sugar.

The Good: The cake tasted great. It had excellent carrot flavour and the cream cheese frosting wasn’t too sweet or too heavy, and set the cake off nicely. I like walnuts in a carrot cake, and this one was no exception. The frosting had a great texture, going on easily, and holding its shape quite well, as you’ll read below the underlying cake had some serious structural issues, but if I had to try to ice something with the texture of a jello salad again, this would be a pretty good frosting option.

The Bad: My main issues with the cake were with the enormous almost goupy crumb of the cake, and its total lack of structural integrity. The recipe describes it as an unusually moist cake, but I think my mishaps turned a moist cake into a barely solid cake. Without the butter and flour in the pans, the cakes stuck. The first cake I tried to unmould fell to pieces, with the baked-on bits staying firmly in the pan, and most of the extremely moist and soft innards flying through the cooling rack I was trying to unmould onto. I tried to free up the bottoms, but the cake was just tearing while it was still warm. Instead of cooling the cakes on racks, I left them in their pans, and was able to get an offset spatula in to free them up once they’d cooled. This probably means that the cakes steamed as they cooled, instead of crisping up on the outside. I can’t know how the cooling in the pan affected the texture of the cake, or how the rough extraction from their pans affected the overall integrity of the cake. As it was, the cake was nearly impossible to cut, it was as malleable as an angel food cake, and the slices crumbled as I tried to serve them. Even chilled the next day getting a piece out as a whole was a challenge. The soft and goopy frosting added more to the structural integrity than the cake itself. The pineapple was added to this dish to make it extra moist, and it did its job. At least with my mixed up cooking instructions that extra moisture probably made a bad situation worse. More importantly, it didn’t taste all that good. I don’t think carrot and pineapple are a natural pairing, and I just found it out of place.

The Verdict: A lot of what went wrong with this cake was totally my fault, but things like the over-large crumb, and not so nice addition of pineapple were certainly problems with the recipe. Looking beyond the serious textural issues, the cake did taste very good. It wasn’t my absolute favorite carrot cake, but it did a good job of delivering carrot flavour in a cream cheese icing package. I suspect that baking this in a 13×9 pan instead of trying to make it a layered cake would make the textural issues much less important, and it would be just as delicious. The cake that I produced was not fit to serve to guests, and the cake I made is the cake I have to rate, but I think I’m going to give this recipe another chance in the next couple of months, and I might decide to revise the rating upwards then.

Categories
Fruit Desserts The Book

197. Balsamic-Roasted Pears with Pepper and Honey p.809


The recipe

This is how dessert should be, simple, elegant, and not too heavy. I’m rarely in the mood for a slice of cake right after dinner, and the yen for creamy or frozen treats is even more infrequent. However, a cheese plate is always a welcome addition to a meal. I associate this kind of dessert with Italy, almost every menu has some combination of pear and cheese, and honey is a common touch. One handwritten menu I saw there advertised the Cheese and Fear plate, I was hoping for a high concept dessert, but it was just a typo. 

The dish is simple to prepare. You roast pears in a buttered dish for 20 minutes, then pour balsamic over-top and roast for 5 minutes more. Plate the pears, drizzle them with the juices in the pan, and serve with slices of Manchego. Drizzle the plate with honey, and a few grinds of pepper, then serve. 

The Good: With hardly any effort you can create a satisfying end to a big meal. It can pretty well all be done ahead, just pop the pears in the oven while you’re clearing the dishes, and they’ll be ready once everyone’s finished up their glass of wine. The presentation is really simple, but it looks great. Pears have a great affinity for cheeses, and the balsamic glaze makes the whole interaction more appealing. The few grinds of pepper emphasize the sweet-savoury interplay of the dish. 

The Bad: For my money, this dish could have moved a little more to the savoury side. I found the total effect of the roasted pears + balsamic + honey to be pushing the balance too far to the sweet. A more assertively flavoured cheese, or a more acidic balsamic might have brought things into balance. Also, some nuts would have been a very nice addition to the plate. Roasting pears is a delicate affair. I like them roasted so that they loose their gritty-grainy texture, but I don’t want them to turn to mush. Mine ended up a little too firm, half an hour in the oven might have served them better.

The Verdict: Overall I was quite happy with this dish, and I’ll certainly make variations on it again. I think disliking sweet desserts is largely my own personal issue, so it may not turn others off this dish at all. Even with a little more sugar than I would have liked it was an excellent way to finish our dinner.

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

195. Pan-Seared Filet Mignon with Merlot Sauce p.428

Here’s the recipe for the Merlot sauce part of this dish,

This is the second time I’ve made this dish. The first was almost two years ago, when I made it for my dining companion’s birthday dinner. Part of her birthday present was that the steak would be just for her, not for The Project too. That meant I could just cook and serve without the awkward photo session in the kitchen that dishes for The Project require, and I didn’t have to be taking mental notes for a future blog post (but of course I couldn’t help myself). That first time this steak was absolutely fantastic, and I was looking forward to making it again to count it towards The Project.

In this dish filet-mignon is browned in a skillet, then finished in the oven, and served topped with a red wine sauce. The Merlot sauce starts by making a caramel, then dissolving vinegar in the boiling sugar. In another pan onions are softened in butter, and wine, veal stock or demi glace, are added and simmered. The mixture is seasoned, and the solids are strained out. The liquid is added to the caramel, and heated until it’s dissolved. The steaks are served drizzled with the sauce.

The Good: It’s filet mignon with a buttery wine and veal demi-glace sauce, it’s fantastic, if you have any love in your heart for red meat, you will like this dish. The caramel is the surprising part of the sauce, adding sweetness, but also a depth which compliments the browned meat. Filet mignon is all about the so-tender-it-shouldn’t-be-possible texture, and a rich sauce really enhances that. Since it’s a lean cut of meat, the buttery sauce doesn’t put it over the top. Demi-glace is a wonderful wonderful thing, everything it touches just gets better, enhancing flavours, smoothing textures, and bringing the whole sauce together.

The Bad: While the dish was delicious, the technique could have been improved. The steaks are seared in the pan, then roasted to finish cooking through. This builds up a good deal of delicious, wonderful, splendid, magical fond on the bottom of the pan. These browned bits are usually deglazed and used as part of a pan sauce, but this recipe commits the nearly unforgivable sin of just throwing all that goodness out. It also doesn’t ask for any juices that run from the steaks as they rest to be poured into the sauce. That’s just silly. By skipping these steps the sauce can be completely made in advance, which is convenient, but you end up throwing away what could have been the most flavorful part of the dish.

I made a mistake with these steaks and trusted my meat thermometer over my eyes and finger test. I was paranoid about over cooking the steaks (filet mignon overcooks quickly), so I took them out sooner than I should and counted on carryover to finish the job. I radically miscalculated and ended up serving them quite rare. I take my steak rare, and it was a little underdone for me, my dining companion prefers the medium side of medium rare, and it was just not going to happen for her. We were already sitting, and she didn’t want to wait to put it back in the oven, so she nuked it instead. A little part of me dies every time that happens, but it’s a good incentive to get the steaks right the first time.

The Verdict: These were delicious steaks, no question, I’d recommend them to anyone. I think there are a few tweaks that should be made, and it’s certainly not an inexpensive way to do dinner, but if you’re looking for an impressive but not overwhelming dish for a special occasion this is a pretty darn good way to go. The final taste is certainly 5 mushroom worthy, but the travesty of the wasted fond means that I can’t give it full marks.

Categories
The Book Vegetables

194. Pommes Anna p.571


The recipe
This is a ridiculously simple dish, but I still managed to mess it up. It should have been the centerpiece of our meal, but thanks to me it was just an exercise in missed potential. There are only two real ingredients, potatoes and butter, seasoned with salt and pepper. You slice the potatoes on a mandolin as thinly as possible, soak the slices in cold water, then pat them dry. The slices are layered in a buttered ovenproof skillet, and the layers are drizzed with  melted butter, and seasoned. Once all the layers are down the potatoes are covered with a buttered foil disk for the first half of baking, and are uncovered for the final half. When they they’re a gorgeous golden brown you take them out, invert the cake onto a serving dish and cut it into wedges.

The Good: I’ve had pommes anna before, and I can assure that they are very very good, anything wth 1 1/2 sticks of butter to 1 1/2 pounds of potatoes will necessarily be decadent. This is one of those dishes that you can’t help but doing a Julia Child impression while assembling. If it’s done right the potatoes are creamy with just the slightest bit of resistance left to them, it’s almost a confit de pommes de terre. All of the exterior surfaces are browned and crisp like the best potato chip you’ve ever had. It’s a truly decadent dish, and you can’t help but smile when you eat it.

The Bad: My pommes anna were nothing like the ideal I just set out. I followed all the steps correctly, right up until the bit where you take them out of the oven once the’re golden and crisp. I forgot about them for another twenty minutes to half an hour, and they had basically devolved into overcooked potato chips. There was enough butter there to keep it from actually burning, it just tasted very very deeply browned. You might say that potato chips made with butter have something going for them, and honestly it wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t at all what the recipe was going for.

A huge part of this was my fault, but I was a little surprised at how thinly layered the potatoes were in the first place. The linked recipe calls for a nine inch pan, but The Book’s version spreads the same amount of potato out in a 10 inch pan. Such a thin layer of potatoes is more susceptible to burning, and even at its intended non-dehydrated thickness there wouldn’t have been enough delicious creamy centre to really satisfy me. Yes, the crunchy exterior is everyone’s favorite part, but it’s only special when it’s in ballance with a fair bit of middle. In future I’d consider going even smaller, think 8 inches, to get a satisfyingly thick stack of potatoes.

The Verdict: It’s hard to rate recipes when they’re my failures and not the book’s. The dish I produced wouldn’t early more than a 2, but I think the recipe as written has the potential for greatness. I’m a vindictive guy, so I’m only going to give them a 3.5, but done right they might be a five.

Categories
The Book Vegetables

193. Beets with Lime Butter p.523


The recipe

This was a very simple, and highly effective preparation for beets. My dining companion is mildly obsessed with beets, and we certainly eat more of them than the average couple. We tend to stick to Ukrainian, or Eastern European preparations, or pair them with goat cheese in salads. This week a friend brought an Egyptian preparation of beets in Mediterranean yogurt to a pot luck which was just delicious. We’d never considered trying this recipe’s method before, but I think we will again. The beets are shredded, simply sautéed in butter with lime zest, then tossed with a little more butter, lime juice, salt, and pepper, and served with chopped scallions.

The Good: This was remarkably simple, and unexpected. Beets don’t make me think of limes. Beets and some type of acid makes perfect sense, but limes have got such a particular tropical floral scent that I’d just never considered them working with beets. In the end the sweetness of the limes and of the beets played very well off each other. There was just enough butter to make this dish cravable, but it remained quite light, and although my picture doesn’t really do it justice it was a very striking dish. I was very pleased that this took all of fifteen minutes to make.

The Bad: I have nothing bad to say about the final dish. It was simple, satisfying, and very tasty. The only downside to the preparation is that grated beets tend to stain. Beet juice comes off counter and floors nicely, but clothes can be a bit of a problem. I would also recommend using a plastic cutting board. It’s actually a good check to see if your cutting board is getting too old and scarred, the beet juice will rinse right off the surface, but any deep groves will be stained purple.

The Verdict: We’re fond of beets and serve them to all comers at our house. We’ve had several guests who were kind of tentative about beet eating when they arrived, but most of them have become converts. If beets aren’t one of your pantry staples this is a nice introduction. I thought it was a bright, fresh, and wholesome, take on one of our favourite vegetables.

Categories
The Book Vegetables

192. Baked Breaded Acorn Squash p.579


The recipe

Here’s a very simple and quite cool looking preparation for acorn squash. All you do is mix bread crumbs, thyme, salt, and pepper in a bowl. Melt butter in another bowl, and dip slices of acorn squash first into the butter, then coat with the bread crumb mixture. You then bake the squash slices for about 20 minutes.

The Good: I wouldn’t have guessed that acorn squash and thyme had such an affinity for one another, that was a very pleasant surprise indeed. Baked bread crumb toppings are generally good things, and this was no exception.

The Bad: I didn’t have any regular bread crumbs, and decided panko would be an acceptable substitute. I didn’t consider that because panko is so much lighter and has much more surface area than regular dry bread crumbs, it cooked much faster. When the recipes recommended 20 minutes in the over were up my bread crumbs were starting to burn so I had no choice but to pull the squash out. Unfortunately the interiors of the squash were still quite firm. I had to nuke the squash to get it to soften up. The bread crumb topping survived the trip through the microwave better than I would have expected though.

The Verdict: While the panko substitution was my fault, the cooking time for this recipe was too short, and that’s The Book’s fault. The flavours were excellent, and it was a very simple way to make an impressive looking side dish. I’ll certainly be making this again, but I’ll stick a little closer to the instructions next time.

Categories
Poultry The Book

191. Spice-Rubbed Quail p.402


The recipe

I like to think of quail and lobster as perverse challenges on a Japanese game show. They’re complicated and messy to eat, but you’re challenged to do it in your finery with your peers looking on. I can imagine the quiet golf claps from the spectators as you deftly separate the leg joint, and the derision of the judges and jeers from the peanut gallery as you forget your manners and start gnawing on the wings. There are loads of public forums for messy lobster eating, where plastic bibs rule and squirting lobster juice into your dining companions’ hair is considered to be all part of the fun, but very few community organizations seem to throw an annual quail bash, so I prefer to keep small fowl eating confined to my home.

These quail are supposed to be semiboneless, where your butcher has removed all but the wing bones, and the drumstick. I’m sure that would make the eating a lot neater, but it probably costs an arm and a leg, so we ripped our meat off the bone with our teeth thank-you-very-much. The boned out quail are cut in half, rubbed with salt, pepper, cayenne, and allspice, then chilled for a hour, and cooked under the broiler. The quail are served with a gastrique made with chicken stock, lime juice, molasses, scallions, and butter.

The Good: These quail were just delicious. The spice rub did very nice things for them, quail are fairly flavourful birds, so they were able to stand up to the allspice and cayenne. The quick broiling they received was a really nice way to cook them. Unlike chicken you’ve got to cook them as quickly as possible to get the outside nicely crisped before the meat gets overdone, intense direct heat from the broiler seems to be the ideal solution. They’d probably work well quickly grilled over an intense flame.

The Bad: While there was nothing wrong with the gastrique, I thought it was more or less unnecessary. The quail were a complete package on their own, they weren’t begging for an acidic caramel sauce. I tried some of the gastrique with the quail, and it just covered up some of the bird’s deliciousness. Sometimes I think people make gastriques more because they look nice drizzled decoratively on the plate, or painted on with bold brush strokes than any underlying culinary theory. In this case they didn’t do much for the quail, so I’d skip it. However it might depend on what you’re serving it with, a sweet and acidic sauce like this can go a long way towards tying a meal together.

The Verdict: Make the birds, skip the sauce, eat with close friends and loved ones, don’t worry about making a mess.

Categories
Cookies, Bars, and Confections The Book

184. Katharine Hepburn’s Brownies p.688

The recipe

You know who I have an irrational dislike for? Katharine Hepburn. I know she’s one of the best respected and beloved actresses of all time, and the Oscar winningest lady ever, but she just drives me nuts. Admittedly I haven’t seen much of her work, but one film is all it took. In Bringing Up Baby she plays the lighthearted and carefree Susan Vance who drives the films comedy of errors with her impetuous, irresponsible, behaviour that we’re meant to take as cute and endearing. Every line she delivers just gets on my last nerve. Obviously this is some personal damage of mine, as the rest of the world seems to think it’s a pretty good film. Katharine Hepburn is a lot better in her more dramatic roles, but even there her upper class New-England accent chips away at my soul. I’m also a Star Trek fan, and Kate Mulgrew (Captain Janeway) who bears a strong resemblance to Katharine Hepburn, seems to have used Hepburn as the model for her character. Janeway has all the weird vocal ticks, the grandiose delivery of her lines, and the obstinate bullheadedness of so many of Hepburn’s characters. I can’t stand Janeway, and it turns out that she’s just a pale imitation of the grating irritation that Ms. Hepburn could bring to the screen. All that to say, I was predisposed to dislike Katharine Hepburn’s brownies, which are apparently her once-secret family recipe.

The recipe starts by melting together butter with 2 ounces of chocolate in a double boiler, then stirring in sugar, eggs and vanilla. A quarter cup of flour and a bit of salt are then barely mixed in. A cup of chopped walnuts and folded into the batter, and everything goes into 325 oven for about 40 minutes.

This is a very simple brownie recipe, unfortunately I thought they were awful. As the recipe promised the brownies were gooey-soft, which some people are really into, but it’s not my ideal texture. There were way too many nuts, which further weakened the integrity of these very soft brownies. They were hard to pick up without risking catastrophic brownie structural failure. My main complaint was that they hardly tasted like chocolate. 2 ounces was just enough to give the brownies a chocolate appearance, without any chocolate taste at all. Really they just tasted like sugar and walnuts.

Unfortunately the gold standard for judging a brownie recipe is the ubiquitous boxed mix. Those boxed brownies are not bad, but any recipe you’re going to make yourself ought to be able to beat the pants off them. Katharine Hepburn’s brownies have conclusively failed that test. If you’re going to make brownies from The Book I’d suggest the Triple-Chocolate Fudge Brownies on page 689. I’ve made them a bunch of times, but haven’t blogged them because I’ve just replaced the three chocolates the recipe calls for with all semi-sweet. They’re seriously fantastic brownies, and they’d just destroy Katharine Hepburn’s mockery of a brownie in a head to head competition.

Interestingly both Teena and Adam have made these brownies and given them grades of A- and A respectively. There are rave reviews for these things all over the internet, but they’re just not for me. These brownies just give me one more thing to dislike about Katharine Hepburn.

Categories
Grains and Beans The Book

181. Persian Rice with Pistachios and Dill p.258


The recipe

My parents who spent the last two years in India, have become rice snobs. I don’t know much about rice, or think too much about it. To me it’s a side dish, serviceable, and functional, but not really worthy of notice. My parents however are attuned to the subtle differences in texture, flavour, and aroma that distinguish great rice from the mediocre. I used the same basmati I always do for this dish (I bought a big burlap sack long ago, and I’m still working my way through it) but it came out much better than I could possibly have imagined. This rice was shockingly good, good enough to get me to rethink my whole position on rice.

In this dish basmati is rinsed in multiple changes of water, and boiled uncovered for a few minutes. Then things get weird. The rice is strained and allowed to drain while butter is melted in the bottom of the pot. The rice then goes back into the pot with alternating layers of chopped pistachios and fresh dill. You then poke holes in the layers of rice with with the back of a wooden spoon (to let steam move about?), and let it steam covered both with a kitchen towel and a lid for 30-35 minutes over moderately low heat. You then let it stand for a further half-hour, and serve.

This procedure builts up a crispy and deeply browned crust on the bottom called the tah-dig. The tah-dig is supposed to form a solid layer on the bottom of the pot, which you’re able to get out whole, and then break up and serve on top of the rice. The tah-dig is the most prized part of this dish, so everyone should be allotted his fair share. My tah-dig didn’t stay together, and it just crumbled in with the rest of the rice, so I mixed it in thouroughly to make sure everyone got some.

This rice is just absolutely amazing. It was perfectly cooked, I worried it would be overdone with such a long cooking time, but each grain was whole, and just slightly toothsome. The pistachio and dill flavours permeated the rice, but it was quite a subtle effect, and a delicious one. The grains in the tah-dig were cooked directly in butter, so they were about as overwhelmingly magnificent as you’d expect, with the very deep nuttiness of both browned butter, and roasted rice. I’m having trouble finding words to express how much I liked this rice, it’s really easy to make, and you owe it to yourself to try it.

I served the rice with a spicy Georgian stew on top, which was a mistake. The stew was excellent, and the flavours were complimentary, but this rice deserves to be eaten on it’s own. I can only imagine how wonderful this rice would be with grilled or poached salmon. This is far and away the best rice I have ever had, and I just can’t wait to make it again. It has absolutely earned its five mushroom rating.

Categories
Soups The Book

178. French Pea Soup – Potage-Saint-Germain p.96


The recipe

I was really excited to try this soup. I went looking for a pea soup recipe in The Book, expecting to find a hearty split pea version with ham hocks, instead I got this spring vegetable centric Potage-Saint-Germain. It wasn’t really what I was looking for that night, and the idea of mint in my soup seemed a bit weird, but one ingredient captured my imagination and I knew I had to do this recipe ASAP. That ingredient was lettuce. I’ve been toying with the idea of cooked lettuce since I saw an early Julia Child episode where she braises whole Romaine heads and serves the flaccid results. It looked terrible but she assured me that it was an excellent treatment for lettuce. As we all know, Julia’s word is law, or at least worthy of a test. I’ve never cooked lettuce in any way before, I guess it’s not that different from cooking bitter greens, bok choy or cabbage, but it seems delightfully sacrilegious and just plain wrong.

To prepare this soup you start by making croûtons with an old baguette, butter and salt in the oven. The soup starts with softening leaks in butter, then adding chicken stock and water. Once it’s boiling you add chopped Bibb lettuce, and frozen peas. As soon as the peas are tender you stir in fresh mint, and purée the soup in the blender (seriously be careful, hot pea soup was used as a viable substitute for napalm in the Nam). The soup is then seasoned with salt and pepper, and served hot topped with croûtons and lightly beaten cream.

The idea with the beaten cream was to make elegant drops, and to run a knife through them to make a stunning pattern. You can see how well that worked out for me. I think my central problem with this soup was that it was served hot. The hot soup melted the slightly whipped cream and sent it running all over the place, and it just tasted weird. Minted things are rarely served piping hot, it’s an odd juxtaposition, mint is the universal symbol of cool and refreshing, but this was a thick, hearty, hot, soup. I tried some the next day at room temperature and I was much happier. The lettuce experiment was a success though, the lettuce along with peas, leaks, and mint were the prominent flavours in the soup, and the lettuce really worked. The Book describes the flavour of the lettuce in this soup as “grassy” and I’m glad they got in a food writing buzz word there, but really it tastes exactly like uncooked lettuce, and in this case that’s a good thing. Again, hot lettuce isn’t really for me, I much preferred that flavour when the soup was cool. I like croûtons in any context, and this was no exception. The soup was thick enough that they floated easily, and didn’t get soggy.

I won’t be rushing to make this soup again, and if I did I certainly wouldn’t serve it warm. The flavours and ideas were pretty good, but the temperature was a big miss, and I wasn’t fond of the drizzled cream on top. I think the ideas behind this soup are solid, and I’m looking forward to playing with different combinations of these ingredients. Pottage-Saint-Germain is a beloved French classic, but I’m not sure it’s for me.