Daring Cooks July Challenge: Homemade Pasta

Steph from Stephfood was our Daring Cooks' July hostess.  Steph challenged us to make homemade noodles without the help of a motorized pasta machine.  She provided us with recipes for Spätzle and Fresh Egg Pasta as well as a few delicious sauces to pair our noodles with!


We love making pasta! We have so many pasta attachments for our stand mixer, none of which we could use for this months challenge.  Despite our usual reliance on machines, however, we had so previous experience with handmade pasta.  On our honeymoon in Italy last May we took a cooking class, and we got to make homemade handmade pappardelle pasta with a delicious vegetarian ragu.  So, we could think of no better dish to create than one of our favorite dishes from our honeymoon.  For us, this month's challenge was less about being innovative with our flavors, and much more about looking back into our "flavor memories" and remembering the great time that we had together.  That was, until we thought of something else to do with homemade pasta.  But first our homemade pappardelle.


Our camera is still broken, but it would not matter anyways because my computer is causing problems problems with loading pictures, so I will describe as best as I can.  


Our pasta making experience in New York was much more difficult than our Italy experience.  I think that was due most to space.  None of our counters are stationary and the wheels on our kitchen carts do not lock properly, so it was rather hard to roll out the pasta than it was on the large counter that we had in Italy.  Our pasta one ended up slightly thicker than we remembered, so overall it was a good recreation.  The sauce was great then and great now.  It is so simple, except for the time it takes to make consistent knife cuts.  But this sauce taught us and continues to teach us that often less is better.  With just a few ingredients and proper cooking we were able to make a sauce with such deep flavor, and a sauce that we look forward to recreating over and over again.  


But then, as I mentioned before, our creative sides came out, and for this I really wish that we had pictures.  While this dish stretches the definition of pasta, it was definitely handmade.  On the most recent season of Top Chef, Top Chef All-Stars, Chef Richard Blais created a "pasta" dish with sweet potato noodles.  His dish was so convincing that one judge thought that he had made noodles on the beech.  While our dish was probably not as convincing, it was definitely delicious.  Getting the sweet potato so thin was a chore.  We ended up par cooking them, letting them cool and then cutting them.  (Although we should have just gotten a vegetable sheeter).  For this dish we really wanted to sweet potato to shine.  We made a very light sauce, more like a cinnamon vinaigrette, that accented the sweet potato perfectly.  Without a vegetable sheeter this dish was a lot of work, and will not become a weekly classic without one.  That being said, once a vegetable sheeter is purchased, we will definitely be making sweet potato "pasta" again. 



Looking forward to more challenges,


Traci and Justin 

Daring Bakers May Challenge: Marquise on Meringue

We have a reason for being late this month.  Yesterday we celebrated our first wedding anniversary and wanted to celebrate with a nice chocolate dessert, and the Marquise was the perfect fit. 


The May 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Emma ofCookCraftGrow and Jenny of Purple House Dirt. They chose to challenge everyone to make a Chocolate Marquise. The inspiration for this 
recipe comes from a dessert they prepared at a restaurant in Seattle.


Being only two of use we decided that we did not need more than the quarter recipe (except for the caramel recipe which we had a great idea for).  We chose the flavors raspberry and cinnamon to go with the chocolate.  We stayed pretty true to the given recipe but added cinnamon to both the chocolate base and the meringue.  Our meringue stayed very creamy, and for the weather that we are having in New York, was kind of heavy.  It tasted great with a nice cinnamon flavor, but was more for a cold weather day and not for our apartment that was (and still is) running in the upper 80s.  The cinnamon chocolate marquise was a nice cool addition.  It had a more subtle cinnamon flavor, but it did not need any more.  The marquise and the meringue worked very nicely together.  

Our favorite part, by far, was the caramel.  Right away we came up with the idea to use our favorite "alcohol."  There are quotation marks because neither of us are very fond of the taste of any form of alcohol (there are some wines that are exceptions).  But the biggest exception is a Raspberry Lambic that tastes like fizzy raspberry, not beer.  We added the Lambic instead of water while the sugar was burning, and with the cream when the caramel was ready.  It was really neat to see the brown of the caramel overtake the red of the Lambic as the sugar burned, and then have the red tint come back as the cream was added.  This was probably the best thing that we made in a while.  At first the raspberry flavor was more of a secondary note to the caramel.  Then, as it cooled, the raspberry slowly came more into the forefront.  We are so glad that we made the full recipe so that we can now add it to ice cream every night.


Can't wait for our next challenge!


Justin and Traci  

Daring Cooks May Challenge: Gumbo

So sorry that we are so late this month.  We were travelling abroad during posting time, and did not bring a computer with us while we were away, but we did manage to find time before we left to make gumbo.  


 Our May hostess, Denise, of There’s a Newf in My Soup!, challenged The Daring Cooks to make Gumbo! She provided us with all the recipes we’d need, from creole spices, homemade stock, and Louisiana white rice, to Drew’s Chicken & Smoked Sausage Gumbo and Seafood Gumbo from My New Orleans: The Cookbook, by John Besh.


I'll start out by saying that gumbo was not our favorite.  We did not dislike it, but it was also not something that we will likely be returning to in the near future.  Keeping kosher required us to leave out or replace so much of what gives gumbo its traditional flavor.  And with so many substitutions, I cannot imagine that the flavor of our gumbo was anywhere near the flavor of a traditional gumbo.  So, while acknowledging that what we made would not be considered gumbo by many, the flavors that did come across were not our favorite.  


We made a chicken gumbo and found kosher sausage to add as well.  The sausage was bland and did not add anything interesting to the overall dish, and we did not have time to debone the chicken, so it was kind of awkward to eat the gumbo while working around the bones.


There are some positive notes with the veggies.  Neither of us had ever had okra before, and we both enjoyed our first okra experiences.  We added sweet potatoes to our gumbo, and since we really love sweet potatoes, we thought that they were a great, albeit untraditional, addition.


So overall, we successfully made gumbo, but did not succeed in making something that we greatly enjoyed.  

Daring Bakers April Challenge: Maple Mousse in Edible Bowls

The April 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Evelyne of the blog Cheap Ethnic Eatz. Evelyne chose to challenge everyone to make a maple mousse in an edible container. Prizes are being awarded to the most creative edible container and filling, so vote on your favorite from April 27th to May 27th at http://thedaringkitchen.com!

Once again another fun challenge, this time, however, we had some success and some failure.  We set out to make edible chocolate bowls to hold our maple mousse.  I guess the tempering temperatures for the chocolate that we used are different than the temperatures I am used to, or possibly more likely, the chocolate that I had on hand was not tempering chocolate.  So...I went through the motions of tempering, but the chocolate did not contract.  So our chocolate bowls are stuck in our cereal bowls.  Lesson learned: make sure that the chocolate you buy is tempering chocolate.

The mousse was a great success.  We took a trip to Vermont this past August (highly recommend a trip for everyone, cant wait until we get to go back) and apart from a lot of cheese we also brought back a lot maple syrup.  This was a perfect chance to break it out and what a treat.  There was one problem.  We have to use a kosher gelatin, and while the company claims that you can make a 1:1 substitution between its product and non-kosher gelatin.  Well, thats just not true.  The kosher gelatin is much stronger than its non-kosher counterpart.  It made the mousse's texture somewhere between mousse and jello, but it still tasted really good.  

We also planned to make maple leaf meringue decorations, but ran out of time, so we are just left with a really yummy maple mousse, chips of hard chocolate to mix in, and homemade gianduja to top it off.  Will post pictures when the camera has battery again.

Sorry that we are a day late, we had a really busy month with Passover.  Looking forward to next month!

Daring Cooks April Challenge: Edible Food Bowls

Renata of Testado, Provado & Aprovado! was our Daring Cooks’ April 2011 hostess. Renata challenged us to think “outside the plate” and create our own edible containers! Prizes are being awarded to the most creative edible container and filling, so vote on your favorite from April 17th to May 16th at http://thedaringkitchen.com!

So much fun! No idea why we had not done this before.  Right when we read this challenge we knew exactly what we wanted to do.  Parmesan bowls.  First the problems, and there were not many.  One, not enough cheese, or alternatively, too small of a pan.  We made the bowls on the stove so and the biggest saute pan that we could use only has an 8-9 inch base.  The bowl that we used to form the bowl over had too large of a base for such a small diameter of cheese, so the bowls were not very deep.  As it was our first time making Parmesan bowls I think we felt that it would be harder than it was, so did not want to go too big.  Next time we will make them on the silpat in the oven so that we could have bigger bowls.  But they were super easy and super fun, and will definitely be made again.

For our filling we decided that we had not made homemade pasta in a long time.  We used the wonderful kitchenaid pasta extruder to make bucatini.  This step was also really easy, and we have decided to use this toy more often.  We made a simple roasted garlic tomato sauce and topped it with crumbles from the extra Parmesan bowl that we made.  Dinner was great, and lots of fun.

And, as an update to our previous post.  Here, finally are our attempts at a yeasted coffee cake.  On the left is a sweet potato craisin filling and on the right is a chocolate cinnamon filling.

Daring Bakers March Challenge: Meringue Coffee Cake

The March 2011 Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Ria of Ria’s Collection and Jamie of Life’s a Feast. Ria and Jamie challenged The Daring Bakers to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake.

We have pictures on our camera and will put them up with a follow up post later this week.  We are running out of town today for a family emergency, but I wanted to get something done on posting day.

These were a lot of fun to make.  We made two, one with a cinnamon-sugar and chocolate chip filling and the other with a spiced pumpkin and craisin filling.  They were both really good, but as chocolate lovers/adicts we both enjoyed the chocolate one more.  The dough was nice and soft and the meringue that was on the edges of the slits in the side got nice and brown and added a nice crunch to the cake. 

We did however run into one problem.  We live in a small one bedroom apartment in New York City and have a kitchen that had no counter space until we added some.  But the real problem is our oven.  It is just deep and wide enough to fit a 9x13 pan.  None of our cookie sheets fits, and we have not found one in stores that will.  Added to that you cannot stand directly in front of the oven as there is a wall in the way.  So the filled cakes did not make it to the oven in nice circles, our turned into ovals.  It would have been nice to bake one at a time, but we did not want the dough to over-proof, and we have a smaller than normal fridge, so there was no place to retard the cake while the other was in the oven.  Things got a little messy trying to get them onto a silpat, then sliding the silpat onto a cooling rack, then sliding the silpat off of the cooling rack and onto the oven rack, and then pulling the silpat out of the oven onto the cooling rack (this is out standard procedure for getting anything into or out of the oven that is baked on silpats).  So maybe next time we would only make one. 

But once again we had a lot of fun both making and eating our coffee cakes.

Daring Cooks March Challenge: Papas Rellenas

Kathlyn of Bake Like a Ninja was our Daring Cooks’ March 2011 hostess. Kathlyn challenged us to make two classic Peruvian dishes: Ceviche de Pescado from “Peruvian Cooking – Basic Recipes” by Annik Franco Barreau. And Papas Rellenas adapted from a home recipe by Kathlyn’s Spanish teacher, Mayra.

We were so excited to participate in our fist Daring Cooks Challenge.  After months of seeing the wonderful creations made by the other Daring Cooks members we finally decided that it was time for us to join.  We are both more inclined to choose a new dessert to make, so joining Daring Bakers was not a question, but we decided that we were going to expand our savory recipes, so decided to join Daring Cooks as well.

As this is our first post, I will include just a little about us as a way to introduce ourselves to the Daring Cooks and Bakers community.  We are recently married and live in New York City.  We keep a fully kosher kitchen, so are sometimes creative with our substitutions.  I graduated from the French Culinary Institute's Classic Pastry program in 2009 and am now working on pursuing a Masters in Food Science.  And my wife is in the process of completing her Masters in Elementary Education and Literacy.  But enough about us, now on to the food.

We decided to make two versions of the Papas Rellenas.  One of our versions was very traditional, largely keeping with what was provided in the challenge.  We made a ground beef filling, but instead of using South American spices and flavorings we decided to use the spices and flavorings from one of our favorite cuisines, Moroccan.  We would have both liked a little more salt in the potatoes and a better meat to potato ratio.  Overall, the is version worked really well and turned out a lot like the picture claimed that they would.

Our second version was a little harder to handle.  We have a love for sweet potatoes, so thought that it would be fun to try to see how the recipe would hold up using them as an outside.  For the filling in this one we tried a tofu filling with Asian influences.  Once again we would have hoped for a better filling to potato ratio.  The larger problem here was the sweet potatoes.  With much more liquid it was much harder to make the sweet potatoes into a working dough.  Even with a lot of added flour the dough was still very sticky.  So we tried, and to a certain extent succeeded in filling the sweet potatoes, but there was no chance of coating them.  We spooned them into the oil the best that we could.  Luckily, since the did not enter the oil cleanly the coating was uneven and the thin parts got nice and crispy.  And there is nothing wrong with fried crisp sweet potato!

So overall I would say that this was not our favorite recipe, but we certainly had fun and look forward to many more Daring Cooks challenges.

Justin and Traci