Dulce de Leche

I'm completely serious when I say that one of my bigger regrets in life is that I didn't come around on dulce de leche sooner. I don't know if this says more about how wonderful my life has been, how well I can let things go, or how really really amazing dulce de leche is. Maybe its all three?

I grew up in a fairly hispanic part of the United States. I grocery shopped at little corner tiendas, buying peppers I couldn't find at the chain down the road or home made tortillas. There's even an adorable little abuela who sells tamales on my road once a month. I've had every opportunity to befriend dulce de leche, but I somehow got it in my head that I didn't like it. I didn't know what I was missing.

There's no epiphany to this story, no one event that changed the course of my dulce de leche loving life. But now that I've come around I crave the stuff. So far, none of the store brands have come close to the rich caramel creaminess I've had before, so I started looking for recipes to make at home. There are plenty out there, but I'm more than a little apprehensive about boiling a canned good on my stove for hours. I found a great recipe from David Lebovitz that calls for baking, rather than exploding simmering, the sweetened condensed milk.



Dulce de Leche

Adapted from here


1 14oz can Sweetened Condensed Milk


Preheat the oven to 400 F

Pour the sweetened condensed milk into a shallow baking dish. Stir in a few shakes of sea salt.

Set the dish in a larger pan and pour water into the larger pan until it reaches halfway to the top. Cover the smaller dish with aluminum foil. Bake for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, or until browned and caramelized.

Remove from oven and let cool. Store in the refrigerator until use.

Almond Joy Cookies

I'm not one to mess around with a good thing. And as far as I can tell, chocolate chip cookies are about as close to perfect as can be. So when I came across yet another recipe that meddled with the CCC I almost rolled my eyes and moved on. Almost. This time, I'm sure glad I didn't.

These cookies take the chocolate chip cookie to a whole new level by adding in almonds and coconut. The resulting cookie is chunky, chock full 'o stuff, and absolutely delicious. I used dark chocolate chips in this batch and they really did taste like Almond Joy bars. Yum.


Almond Joy Cookies

Adapted from here


1/2 cup softened butter
1/2 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups of dark chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups of flaked unsweetened coconut
1 cup chopped almond

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

In your stand mixer, combine the butter, sugars, and vanilla until smooth. One at a time, beat in the eggs.

In another bowl, mix the flour, baking soda and salt. Slowly add the dry ingredients to the until well blended. Stir in the chocolate chips, coconut and almonds.

Let dough cool in the fridge. When ready, drop by the spoonful onto a prepared cookie sheets. Bake for 8-10 minutes or until lightly browned. Allow to cool on the pan before moving them to a wire rack.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

A girl I work with has recently dealt with some pretty scary medical issues. She underwent a small (but pretty scary) surgery to remove a cancerous lesion on her thyroid. Although the surgery is fairly easy, as far as surgeries go, it does have some pretty strict limitations on post-surgical activities. Because the thyroid is located on the neck, my coworker had very clear instructions to not talk for an entire week after her surgery. Imagine, a week without speaking.

Since she would be home from work for a week by herself, I put together a post-surgery survivial kit. I let her borrow some books and movies, bought as many crossword books and sudoku puzzles as I could get my hands on, and other stuff to keep her hands and mind occupied for that week. Oh, and I also baked her cookies.

My coworker has some pretty strange tastes. Ok, not strange, just night and day to what I like. First off, she doesn't like chocolate. Or apples. I don't know what to do with someone like that :) But I had to think outside my normal baking comfort zone, which is to pack as much chocolate into as little square footage as possible. I settled on classic oatmeal raisin cookies because they seemed like a safe bet - no chocolate in sight.

I found my recipe here, which is quickly turning into my go-to for anything I bake. These cookies are everything that Deb promises: thick, chewy, and perfect in texture. Yum.


Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

1/2 cup butter, softened

2/3 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups rolled oats
3/4 cup raisins

Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, egg and vanilla until smooth. In a separate bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt together. Stir this into the butter/sugar mixture. Stir in the oats and raisins.

Chill the dough for a bit in the fridge for a few hours, overnight if you can.
The cookies should be two inches apart on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake them for 10 to 12 minutes, taking them out when golden at the edges but still a little undercooked-looking on top. Let them sit on the hot baking sheet for five minutes before transferring them to a rack to cool.

Madeira-ish Chicken

I have a problem.

I spend a good amount of my free time searching for new recipes. I read blogs, cookbooks, and magazines. I try to recreate dishes I've had at friends houses and restaurants. And I just don't think I'm capable of following a recipe.

No matter how yummy a dish looks, or how foolproof the recipe, I want to change it. I want to play around with the spices, omit ingredients, made additions. No matter if I'm cooking dinner or - gasp! - baking a cake I just can't help but mess around with it. But maybe that's the beautiful thing about cooking - that anyone can take any recipe and make it their own. What's a recipe, anyway, besides an idea with some instructions?

This recipe was the second in my dutch oven. Can you tell I love my dutch oven? I really do. I love that I can saute the chicken, then the onions, then make the sauce, then put it all together. Then put it in all the oven. Beautiful. The only one more excited than me is my resident dishwasher.


Madeira-ish Chicken


Adapted from here, adapted from Williams-Sonoma

6 chicken thighs, fat cut off
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
3 Tbs. olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
1 lb. sliced carrots
1/2 cup white wine
1 1/2 Tbs. Worcestershire sauce
1 1/2 Tbs. chopped fresh thyme

Season the chicken generously on both sides with salt and pepper. In a dutch oven, heat the olive oil on med-high heat and brown the chicken on both sides. Transfer the chicken to a plate and set aside.

Add the onion into the pan juices and saute until barely softened, about 3 minutes. Add the carrots and saute until soft, about 5 minutes. Stir in the wine and Worcestershire sauce.

Return the chicken to the pan, nestle it in between the mushrooms and onions, cover and braise on medium-low heat until cooked through, 20 minutes. Once the chicken is done, put the pan into a pre-heated oven, uncovered, and broil for 5 minutes to re-crisp the skin. Adjust the seasoning in the sauce, stir in chopped thyme and serve.

Strawberry Frozen Yogurt

I recently came into possesion of an ice cream maker, and I'm pretty sure its going to change my life. My manager at work used to work in the food service industry, doing baking and catering and the like. Since then she has been diagnosed with some pretty severe food allergies and had to give up wheat, eggs, dairy... pretty much all the things she used to cook with.

While unfortunate for her, I've certainly benefitted from her bad luck. She has been going through her kitchen and garage, cleaning out her old supplies, and donating to my, "I'm teaching myself how to cook" charity. So far I've gotten cookie cutters, pie weights, silicone baking cups, thermometers, cooling racks, and now, an ice cream maker. Its an older model but I can tell you one thing - it still works.

I've had this bad boy for about a week and I've been using it a LOT; pretty much every time that bowl is frozen I'm taking it out to whip something up. I've made strawberry granita, which didn't come out very well, chocolate ice cream, and my favorite so far: strawberry frozen yogurt.

The Mister and I picked up a huge crate of strawberries at Costco on Saturday. Random tangent: I LOVE California produce. That night we were sitting at home, recharging after a day of house shopping (and gearing up for more on Sunday) and were trying to decide what to eat for dinner when we realized that dessert would be much better. We had an unopened plain yogurt in the fridge and thus, strawberry froyo was born.

We love chains like Pinkberry, so we decided to go easy on the sugar to keep things nice and tart. We wanted chunks of strawberries so we didn't puree the mixture, and cooked the strawberries in phases so that some broke down completely and some stayed in larger bits. This was delicious that night, but even better the next day after a chance to solidify in the freezer.

I have a feeling this ice cream maker is going to be very, very well used.


Strawberry Frozen Yogurt Recipe


Adapted from here

3 cups sliced fresh strawberries
3 Tbsp lemon juice
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup whole milk
1 1/2 cups full fat yogurt (if use low or non fat, then add 2 Tbsp cream)


Place half the strawberries, lemon juice, salt, and sugar in a medium saucepan. Heat on medium heat, stirring, until the sugar has completely dissolved. Add the rest of the strawberries and continue to stir. Use a potato masher to mash up the strawberries as the mixture is heating. As soon as all of the sugar has completely dissolved, remove from heat and let sit for 10 minutes.

Whisk in the milk and yogurt, until completely incorporated. Place the mixture in the refrigerator and chill for at least an hour until completely cold.

Process the mixture in your ice cream maker 20 to 25 minutes. Eat immediately or keep in freezer until served.

Makes about 1 quart.

Justified

I don't post a lot of dinner recipes here. I'm in a dinner-funk: I haven't tried anything new in a while, and I'm getting bored with the same old, same old. But this article made me feel a bit better about what I do cook: because 90% of the time, it starts with 'saute onions and garlic in olive oil.' Yum.

Chocolate Mascarpone Brownies

The Significant Other (SO) has been away this week, and I have a confession to make: I really, reeeeeally enjoy eating while he isn't around. Its nothing against him; I'm just free to make whatever I want, when I want, how I want. I don't have to worry about making something too fatty (he is an 80's baby. His mother fed him lo-fat and no-fat everything.) or too vegetarian (the man loves his meat.) Also, I get to indulge on desserts :)

These brownies are sinful. They are everything I think a good brownie should be... dense, chocolatey, but not overly sweet. Mmmmm, betcha can' eat just one... I know I can't!

Chocolate Mascarpone Brownies

(From Apartment Therapy via Food Network Canada)

1 cup unsalted butter

3 ounces best-quality semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder (sifted)
1/2 cup mascarpone cheese
3 large eggs, at room-temperature

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt

The original recipe includes a ganache frosting which I skipped, in the interest of being more portable.

Preheat oven to 325F. Grease an 8x8 pan and set aside.

Melt melt butter in microwave in a glass mixing bowl. Stir in chocolate and mix until creamy - I stuck everything back in the microwave for 30 seconds so the chocolate was nice and melty.

Stir the sugar into mixture until combined. Microwave for 30 seconds on high, then stir until shiny.

Mix in marscapone cheese, vanilla, eggs and beat until smooth.

Sift together the flour, salt and cocoa. Stir into chocolate mixture just until combined.

Pour batter into pan and smooth top to ensure even baking. Bake for 40 minutes until tester comes out clean. Cool in the pan on a wire rack.

Cabbage, Carrot, and Jicama Slaw

I'm a particular eater.

I don't like seafood. I don't like mushrooms. Before I moved to California and had real avocado, I didn't like those either. The list goes on. But I'm lucky enough to like a lot of foods. I enjoy eating most fruits and vegetables, most meats, most anything. And as long as its not too gross or strange, I'm comfortable trying new things.

The Mister is not so open minded. While he will try new things, even more so than me, there are a lot of things that he's tried once and has sworn to never eat again. Things like corn chowder, garlic, Indian food, cabbage, and chicken thighs are just not things he will incorporate into his diet. But I don't think he dislikes as much as he thinks he does, and a small part of my meal planning/cooking goes toward preparing the things he won't eat in a way that I think he will like. Sometimes he refuses what I make altogether, but a lot of times he ends up not hating it, if not enjoying it.

This slaw is one of those experiments. He doesn't eat cabbage often and refuses to eat cole slaw at all, but I think that what he really doesn't like is the mayo. I wanted to make a slaw with ingredients I know he likes, with a oil and vinegar based sauce, and see what he thought about it. This one is a little Asian-Mexican fusion, with both cabbage and jicama, and made a little spicy with sriracha. I like it... but we will see what the Mister thinks :)


Cabbage, Carrot, and Jicama Slaw

1/2 head green cabbage
3 carrots
1 medium jicama
1/4 cup white vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tbsp sriracha
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tbps dry cilantro
salt and pepper to taste
handful raisins

Chop cabbage, carrots, and jicama into small strips. Place in large bowl.

Whisk together oil and vinegar. Whisk in seasonings and pour over vegetables, mixing well. Let sit for a few hours to let the flavors mellow and blend.

Add raisins just before serving, if desired.