Posted By Lindsay on January 23, 2012
Project: use up all the greens continues.
I wasn’t joking when I said we got a ton of greens.
Especially when you consider we made both these and the winter greens beignets the same week.
I’ve never had a authentic steamed bun, so making them from scratch was ambitious to the say the least. But the result was incredibly satisfying, despite the fact that traditional bao (buns) are usually filled with pork. There’s nothing about this mushroom, kale, and bok choy filling that comes up lacking. It has a heartiness and a sweetness that masks any and all of the bitterness that most winter greens tend to harbor.
If you don’t have one of these amazing bamboo steamers, I suggest you make room for one in your kitchen immediately (tip: they make great potato/onion storage when you’re not using them). We should really use ours more. And now that we’ve discovered the miracle that is steamed dough, we just might. Simply place the steamer over a pot of simmering water (or if you have a wok the steamer can be placed down inside of it, as long as it sits above the water and not in it). Fill it with whatever fish, veggies, dumplings, or buns you’d like. It’s a quick and healthy alternative to sauteing or even baking.
And I’m all for healthy.
It means I can eat more cake after dinner. :)
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Posted By Lindsay on January 23, 2012
You can look at this post in one of two ways. Either I’m way late in posting my Christmas cookies, or I’m totally on top of it for Valentine’s day. I’ll let you decide. Because these precious pink and white cookies swing both ways.
The original recipe, discovered via Pinterest, called for rolling the dough into balls and then flattening them with a glass. But after a few less-than-pretty batches, I realized rolling the dough into a log and slicing it was going to produce much more uniform, nicely shaped cookies. And it did.
Just try to ignore the fact that, when sliced, they totally look like salami.
I sent some of these out with our annual christmas cookie shipments, along with (what I called) Jackson Pollock Gingerbread (which really means I didn’t have the patience to deal with royal icing and went freeform instead), as well as some Mexican Chocolate cookies.
These cherry cookies are sweet and buttery, with just a hint of cherry. You can dip or drizzle the white chocolate, but these cookies definitely need the extra adornment to offset the salami-ness. Trust me. No one wants to eat a cookie that looks like lunchmeat.
No matter how cute the packaging might be.
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Posted By Lindsay on January 19, 2012
I kind of shot myself in the foot when I made that incredible Rainbow Cake last year. As my little sister’s birthday approached, I kept thinking, “how on EARTH am I going to top the rainbow cake?” I mean, seriously. The only things that top rainbows are sparkles and unicorns.
Or booze.
And since a unicorn cake is entirely beyond my skill set, I went with the later. And set out to make the booziest, bourbonyest cake I could.
Bourbon buttermilk cake. Bourbon chocolate ganache. Milk chocolate buttercream. And I did not skimp on the bourbon, either. There’s a half a cup in the cake alone. You can literally smell the aroma the second you cut into it.
I’m not sure if it was the bourbon or the buttermilk or the butter, but this cake was so incredibly moist and buttery that the frosting and ganache had trouble sticking to it. Or maybe it was an issue with the frosting itself. I’ll say that’s why there’s not a slice photo here for you to see, but in reality it’s because we devoured that thing before I could find a free moment to snap a shot. You’ll just have to use your imagination.
What really sealed the deal and made this cake *officially* better than last year’s was the experience that went along with it. A day in Kentucky, experiencing a small part of what they call the Bourbon Trail. Even if you’re not a bourbon drinker seeing the process of how it’s made is incredibly intriguing. The science and precision and craft is awe inspiring. And the 10am bourbon tastings that come with the tours? Let’s just say I’m not complaining.
Yup. I think my sister had the best birthday (and best birthday cake) ever. No unicorns necessary.
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Posted By Lindsay on January 16, 2012
Our CSA goes well into the winter, with the last pickup of the season happening right before Christmas. But unlike the variety of the summer produce, winter is a bit more limited. Potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, and greens. Lots and lots of greens. It’s not abnormal to see signs saying take 10 handfuls of kale or 5 lbs of mustard greens in a single week’s share. Not to mention all the arugula, mounts of mizuna, and bok choy the size of my torso (no joke. My exact words to Taylor upon seeing such a monstrosity: “We couldn’t even fit that in our fridge if we tried!”)
It was too much. Even a few handfuls is more than two people can eat in a week. We didn’t even take our full share most of the time and we still had greens coming out of our ears.
And let’s be honest, you can only have kale chips so many times in a week. We needed some new recipes. Creative ways to use the greens that were stuffed into every nook and cranny and drawer in our refrigerator and piled high, frozen in plastic bags in the freezer.
So while flipping through old issues of Bon Appetit, I stumbled across this recipe that I had dog-eared many months back but had never made (New Year’s Resolution: go back through my skyscraper of food magazines and digitally bookmark all the gems I missed the first time around). A gem like this recipe, for garden beignets. And it called for a whopping 12 cups of assorted greens. Score!
A suggestion, as this isn’t exactly a “quick and easy” recipe, is to take advantage of the fact that many of the components can be made ahead of time. Make the batter the night before. Make the filling too, and roll it into balls, then stash it in the fridge overnight. I know the recipe says 8 hours, but we chilled those puppies for 24 and nothing disastrous happened because of it. Frying them is tricky enough, but I’m not one to willingly spend over 3 hours in the kitchen for a single meal. Plan ahead. Believe me. You’ll thank your yester-self.
While we were unable to track down the elusive “vinegar powder” called for in this recipe (although it does sound intriguing and I may have to order some for future use), a simple splash of malt vinegar was a suitable replacement.
Does the sheer volume of greenage offset the fact that these are deep fried? I’ll support that logic.
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