New & Notable Chocolate

'Eat food. Not too much. Mostly chocolate.'
--Debbie Moose



Each holiday season there are new chocolates and I am first in line to try as many as I can. This year there were so many I packed them all up and took them to Thanksgiving dinner to let my friends and family try them too. Here are the highlights:

I adore Kika's Treats. Kika is one of the most successful graduates of the La Cocina incubator program in San Francisco. Her caramelized graham crackers dipped in chocolate are unique and a wonderful melange of buttery toffee and rich chocolate. But her latest confection is equally compelling.


Luscious caramels dipped in dark chocolate with a pinch of sea salt and a surprising twist. They are lightened up with the addition of puffed brown rice that gives them the perfect crunch. A 9-piece assortment is just $16 (and the box is absolutely adorable)

Another local favorite confectioner, Michael Recchiuti is also known for his terrific caramel truffles which are so dark he calls them 'burnt.' No gooey treat, his version is intense.


Adding to the line up of chocolate confections are bars, made from Valrhona chocolate. While I liked the classic all chocolate bars in bittersweet, semisweet and dark milk for their purity of flavor, I really fell for his bars with crunchy and chewy additions. My favorites were the sesame nougatine bar and the orchard bar. The orchard bar has a bewitching mix of currants, mulberries and toasted almonds. It's like the grown up version of the Nestle chunky bar. The sesame bar also has crispness to it and a lovely nougat flavor. Recchuiti is masterful at toasting and roasting nuts to bring out their best flavor and texture so it's no surprise that all his bars with nuts were good. At only $6 a bar, they are a very affordable indulgence.


Chocolates with liqueur are always a holiday favorite. The most recent addition is a truffle made with the Italian liqueur Frangelico. Frangelico is a beguiling hazelnut liqueur that also includes hints of cocoa, vanilla and berries. It's complex but mellow and pairs wonderfully with chocolate. Marie Belle is making exquisitely beautiful chocolate tiles with a Frangelico truffle ganache. They are not boozy, but rich, creamy and subtle. If you like Frangelico, you will love them. They are available in boxes, starting at $15 for 4.

DO NOT REPRINT WITHOUT PERMISSION! ©2011 Cooking with Amy. All rights reserved. This material may NOT be published, rewritten or redistributed without permission. If you are reading this post somewhere other than Cooking with Amy, the Oyster Local blog or Gather.com, then the site where you found this post is illegally publishing copyrighted material.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/sBff/~3/X40p1VlzfqA/our-afundforjennie-auction-closes-with.html

They say every man has his price, but not every man gets to see that exact value calculated in public on a blog. The market has spoken, and apparently I'm worth exactly $550. Hey, at least that's more than I was appraised for by that carnival gypsy. Take that, Madame Corsi!

Thank you to everyone who bid, and also to those of you who made individual donations to #AFundForJennie at Bloggers Without Borders! Stay tuned as we'll identify the winner, and make plans for the shoot soon. Thank you all!

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/sBff/~3/fIDBEVNhKs0/root-vegetable-gratin-notes-from.html

[I hope you enjoyed our first and last Dostoevsky reference] Whenever I see those big piles of rutabagas at the market, I always think to myself, "who the heck is eating all these root vegetables?" 

I understand that there've been times when we literally had no choice – it was either gnaw on a parsnip or perish, but nowadays with so many other delicious choices, why would anyone eat root vegetables on purpose? Has anyone ever stumbled out of a smoky dorm room late at night, in search of a big plate of steamed turnips? Probably not. 

So, while you'll never catch me boiling up a batch of these fugly roots to enjoy their intoxicating sulphurous savoriness, I have been known to tolerate them in the occasional gratin.

Of course, I cheated and added some potatoes to mellow things out, but still, all kidding aside, this is a very delicious and enjoyable way to eat them, and would make a fantastic side dish for the holidays. And yes, I do know that potatoes are tubers and not roots, so save your emails. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

1 turnip

1 rutabaga

1 small celery root

2 yukon gold potatotes

1 parsnip

* root vegetable sizes and shapes vary, but bottom line, you'll need enough to fill a 9 x 13-inch casserole dish up 3/4 of the way

salt to taste (be sure to generously salt the boiling water!)

2 tsp olive oil

2 tbsp butter

3 cloves minced garlic

1 cup cream

pinch of nutmeg

pinch of cayenne

1 tbsp fresh picked thyme leaves

1 1/4 cup chicken broth

1/4 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese, divided

Cleaning up spilled oils

Dropping a glass bottle of oil can be quite messy to clean. Most of us usually wipe it off with a cloth, and wash with water and detergent, but still, the grease is always there.

There's another way to clean the oil slicked floor.
1. Sprinkle a generous amount of flour over the area and wait for the flour to absorb the oil.
2. If there are any glass bits, use brush, if not, a paper towel will do the work. Move the flour around the area to make sure that all the oil has been absorbed.
3. Sweep with a broom and dustpan.
4. Use a window cleaner to wipe away the last traces of oil and flour. 

Chef Osama  

Similar Posts:    

 

Storing Fruits and Vegetables in the Fridge

Simple ways to cook dry beans  

10 Random Cooking Tips and Tricks  

How To Choose Extra Virgin Olive Oil  

Tips on Keeping Food Fresh  

How To Find Halal Food Products

Save and share Cleaning up spilled oils

Want to share these cleaning tips with your family and friends? Click the button below to send them an email or save this to your favorite social network.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/sBff/~3/yxzIPOxVwOg/spatchcocked-spatchcock.html

"Spatchcock" refers to the method of cutting open a whole chicken, so that it sits flat in a pan, or on a grill. However, it wasn't always the highly amusing verb it is today. 

Originally, it was a highly amusing noun used to describe a small, young chicken. Since these tender birds were usually butterflied to cook faster and more evenly over the coals, "spatchcock" became the culinary term for this technique. So, if you use a small, young chicken like I did, then you're actually spatchcocking a spatchcock, which is about the most entertaining answer ever to the question, "What are you doing for dinner?"

Above and beyond how fun it is to use in casual conversation, the technique really does work beautifully for grilling a whole chicken. Once you remove the backbone, and set free the sternum from its covering of cartilage, you'll have a bird that will cook quicker and more evenly. It also looks pretty damn cool.

If you don't own a sturdy pair of kitchen shears, then I hope this video inspires you to go out and get this must-have piece of equipment. They make this technique incredibly fast and easy, and you can also use them to completely section a whole chicken into serving pieces, as we showed in this video demo.

Anyway, I hope you pick up some spatchcock soon, and give this whole spatchcocking thing a try. I'll be showing a recipe I did using this technique in a future video, so stay tuned for that, and as always, enjoy!

Green Chile Cheeseburger

I have always liked hamburgers. But when I was pregnant, I LOVED them. I ate them nearly every week, more often if possible. We mostly made our own at home, but we did eat them out occasionally - a few times at Red Robin (teriyaki burger with pineapple), if I was lucky enough to get my prenatal appointment scheduled just before lunch. I was not above fast food burgers either, and may have waddled over to McDonalds (more than once) on my lunch break for a hamburger (regular burger, extra ketchup). At home my favorite was a burger cooked on the barbecue with barbecue sauce and topped with cheese and relish. I never got very fancy, because spending time on fancy burgers meant it took longer before I could start eating.

We haven't had burgers very often lately, and I'm not sure why. It seems I am always looking for fast and easy and cheap and healthy meals, and I guess I forgot that a burger can fit that bill. Hey, 3 out of 4 ain't bad.

We were talking about burgers a few weeks ago and this recipe popped into my head - Robert Olguin's Buckhorn Burger recipe from Bobby Flay's Throwdown cookbook.

A green chile cheeseburger sounds like a lot of work, but this one really isn't. Cook your burger, and while it's cooking, heat a small pan, with a touch of oil, and add some diced red onion. Let that cook for a couple of minutes, then divide into piles (1 pile for each burger you are cooking). Top each pile with some cheese and let it sit over low heat to melt the cheese and soften the onions. In another pan mix some diced green chiles (we used canned) and some granulated garlic and warm through. Spoon the chiles on to the onion and cheese piles. Put your burgers on the buns, top the patty's with the onion/cheese/chile piles, and garnish with lettuce, tomato, pickles and mustard.

Yum, yum.

Baby Shower Desserts Part 3 - Mini Cupcakes

For this baby girl baby shower, I made mini chocolate and vanilla cupcakes with blackberry cassis buttercream, decorated with royal icing booties.  If you plan to decorate with booties, you'll need to make them at least 3 days ahead, as they need to dry and harden completely before using them.

To make royal icing booties, start with royal icing mix (from Michael's or a cake decorating store), or make your own using pasteurized egg whites.

Royal Icing
3 large pasteurized egg whites
3-3/4 cups sifted powdered sugar + 1/4 cup, divided
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon flavoring of choice (vanilla, etc)

Reserve 1/4 cup sugar and mix together all other ingredients. Beat for 7-10 minutes until the icing holds a strong peak. Add more powdered sugar if necessary. Beat in color of choice ( I use a toothpick to add color so I have control and don't add too much). Keep the frosting covered with a damp cloth to keep it from drying out.

Prepare a pastry bag with a coupler and a #12 round tip (the coupler allows you to change tips without emptying the bag).



 If you want to, you can mark a piece of partchment paper with rounds so that you have a bit of guidance in how big to make the bookies. Always mark on one side, turn the paper over and then pipe on the backside so that you don't contaminate the frosting with the marker. Hold the bag at a 45-degree angle and pipe from the toe towards the heel, releasing the pressure as you get to the heel.



For the heel you can either hold the bag straight up-and-down- or you can angle the bag slightly towards the toe and then pipe upwards. Dip a dowel in powdered sugar and then press into the top of the bootie. Don't worry about excess powdered sugar - when the booties are dry you can brush away the excess with a small paint brush (food-safe).


Switch to a #2 tip and pipe 'lace' at the top of the bootie (you'll have to experiment with this to see what looks good - I sort of made loops while raising the tip up). These booties are quite small, so it is hard to add a bow to the front. Instead, I made laces at the front of the bootie using the #2 tip. I used the same color, but you could do contrasting color if you like.


Don't put the booties on the cupcakes until just before serving, as the royal icing could get soft when exposed to the buttercream. These cupcakes are very small, so you might want to just use one on each (the opening photo has chocolate cupcakes with 2 booties and the vanilla with just one, for comparison).

For the Cupcakes
Before offering the recipes, I wanted to tell you about the new muffin pan that I just bought at Sur La Table. It makes 24 mini-muffins, but the best part is that the cups are shallower and wider than regular mini-muffin tins. The result is that the paper liners go in easier with no pleating and they come out of the pan much easier too. 

Old style pan on left

For chocolatete cupcakes, use the recipe for Filled Chocolate Cupcakes Revised (but don't fill them).

I'd never actually made vanilla cupcakes, always opting for chocolate, but I had a baby shower to do and the mom-to-be didn't like chocolate, so it provided a good opportunity for me to work on my vanilla baking.  I started with my all around sheetcake recipe from my book, cutting it down to the appropriate size, but the results were not really what I wanted - they were too sweet, two vanilla tasting and the texture wasn't quite right for a piece of cake that gets eaten out of hand.  Fortunately, the fix was easy and I didn't have to rebake them more than once.  I simply cut down on the sugar and vanilla and added more milk.

 Vanilla Cupcakes
187 grams all-purpose flour -- measured by fluffing, scooping and leveling
1 -1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

5 ounces unsalted butter
1 cups sugar
1 -1 /2 teaspoon vanilla
2 large eggs

1 tablespoon oil
3/4 cup whole milk

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. with a rack in the lower third of the oven (use a hotter oven if you want cupcakes that crest higher). Place baking cups in each muffin space.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.

Place the butter and sugar into a large mixer bowl, and beat for a full 5-7 minutes until fluffy. Beat in the vanilla. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, beating for 30 seconds after each addition. Scrape down the bowl and then beat for a minute to blend everything. Beat in the oil.

By hand, stir in 1/3 of the flour mixture into the batter. Stir in 1/2 of the milk. Repeat until all of the flour and milk has been added. The batter will be very thick, as you'll see in the photo.

Spoon a heaping teaspoonful of batter into each mini-cup or a heaping tablespoon full into each full-size muffin cup.  The cups should be about 3/4 full.

Bake for 8-12 minutes for minis (6-8 if using a hotter oven), 15-18 for full size cupcakes - until a tester inserted into the middle of the cake comes out absolutely clean.  Let the cupcakes cool for a few minutes and then take them out of the pan and set on a cooling rack until completely cool.  Rinse the hot pan in warm water and then cool water.  Repeat the process with the remaining batter. 

You can see that the muffins didn't crest very much, despite the fact that the cups were well-filled.  If you bake them in a hotter oven, they should crest more.  Try 375 degrees - but just watch carefully that they don't overcook.  Makes about 36 mini muffins.  I didn't make larger muffins, but I'm guessing that it would bake 12-15 of the larger muffins.

Blackberry Buttercream
Blackberry Buttercream is more on the more purple side of pink, which worked for me, since the colors of the event were pink and purple.  Blackberries are so much easier to sieve than  raspberries, that I was thrilled that the color would work for this party.  I opted to do my Easy Meringue Buttercream rather than Simple Buttercream (uses Marshallow Fluff instead of egg whites) because I wasn't sure if the simple version would handle all of the blackberry puree, but you might want to give it a try, since it is so much easier to make ( see Filled Chocolate Cupcakes Revised), and since this version had problems with the puree as well (details follow). 

10-12 ounces frozen blackberries, defrosted as per below instructions
2-4 tablespoons cassis liqueur, optional
180 grams (6 large) pasteurized egg whites (I used Organic Valley egg whites - in a carton)
2 tablespoons water
 1-1/2 cups superfine sugar (or you can buzz regular sugar in a coffee grinder)
4 sticks (21 ounces)  unsalted butter
1/2  teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup blackberry puree (see below)
1/2 cup powdered sugar

For the blackberry puree:
Defrost the frozen blackberries, retaining all of the juice.  Boil the juice until it is reduced by half (you can add some cassis liqueur to this, before or after boiling, depending on whether you want to get rid of the alcohol or not). Run the blackberries through a food mill and add this puree to the reduced juice. Sieve the mixture through a medium strainer to get rid of all seeds (blackberry seeds are pretty large, so a medium strainer works).  You should have about 1/2 cup blackberry puree. Do not add it to the buttercream until it is at room temperature.

For the buttercream:
Remove the butter from the refrigerator and cut it into tablespoon-size lumps so it can soften while you prepare the eggs.

Boil 2 inches of water in a pot into which your metal mixer bowl will fit. Place the egg whites into the clean, grease-free mixer bowl. Whisk in the water and sugar.



Place the bowl over the simmering water, and whisk –stir constantly until the mixture reaches 120-130 degrees, about 1-3 minutes (very warm to the touch, if you don't have a instant-read thermometer). The mixture will be very warm, and the sugar granules should have dissolved. Remove the bowl from over the water. If you see any un-dissolved sugar crystals in the bowl, wipe these off with a paper towel.

Beat the egg white mixture , increasing the speed to medium-high to high speed , as quickly as possible without having the egg whites splash out of the bowl. Beat until the mixture looks like thick shaving cream, and the egg whites and bowl are cool - about 20 minutes.


 This is easiest done with a standing mixer using a balloon whisk. To hasten the process, wet a towel and place a few cupfuls of ice chips into it. Wrap it up and place this under the bowl so that it in constant contact with the bowl.

By now the butter should be at cool room temperature. If you press down on it with your thumb, it should yield readily, but should not be soft and melty. If too soft, refrigerate it just for a few minutes to firm it back up. Place the butter into a large mixing bowl, and beat until creamy. On low, beat in 1/3 of the whites. Repeat with the remaining whites, 2 more times. When all of the whites have been added, increase the beater speed to medium-high, and beat until the mixture curdles,



and then smoothes out into thick and creamy frosting, about 10-15 minutes.



Beat in the blackberry puree, about 2 tablespoons at a time, beating after each addition until the buttercream is smooth again.  Beat in the powdered sugar, 1/4 cup at a time.  Adjust the flavor/sweetness by adding more cassis liqueur or more powdered sugar, to taste. Normally, buttercream can be frozen, but with this frosting, freezing created lots of problems.

For starters, I tried to beat it before it had come to room temperature (a definite no-no with all egg-based buttercreams).  Here's what happened:

Now, this has happened before, and when I let the mixture come to room temperature it beat up nicely, but this time that didn't happen.  In fact, as it got warmer, it got worse and worse:

It was the day before the shower and I had just spent 12 hours decorating cookies, so needless to say I was in no mood to remake the buttercream.  I'm guessing this happened because of the large amount of liquid I had added to the buttercream (1/2 cup of blackberry puree plus some cassis liqueur).  There was one last fix that had worked in the past.  I softened 1 stick (4 ounces) unsalted butter to cool room temperature.  I spooned the buttercream back into the mixer bowl and beat in 1/2 cup powdered sugar.  With the mixer on medium speed, I added the butter 1 tablespoon at a time, and lo and behold!  The buttercream re-formed.

So, keep this in mind if you plan to make the buttercream ahead, or if you have trouble with another buttercream you have made.

The only thing left to do, is to pipe the buttercream onto the cupcakes.  Refrigerate until 2-3 hours before serving , placing the booties on the cupcakes when you take them out of the refrigerator and the frosting has started to soften.