Cookies!

It's been far too long since I've baked a batch of cookies (and there's no complaints about the wine accompaniment, either!).

Waffles!

My first meal back stateside.... Can't wait to eat!

Beet Soup with Cilantro Pesto

Now that the weather is finally starting to turn to fall (although I am still sleeping with my windows wide open), I've been making a lot of soup. My Facebook friends have probably noticed that I've been making a lot of orange soup, which is due to my copious use of yellow lentils, carrots, and pumpkin. Tonight, however, I made a beet soup that turned out absolutely smashingly. I don't really have an exact recipe for it per se, but here's what I did:

3 beets, boiled and deskinned
1 carrot, boiled
1 potato, boiled
1 onion, carmelized

I threw the above cooked veggies into a food processor, blended the heck out of them (with some water to help the process along), and poured the whole thing into a sauce pan. I added water to make it more soup-like and less baby food-like and started heating the soup gently. After the concoction was bubbling, I turned off the heat and blended in a teaspoon of miso paste that had been dissolved in a quarter cup of hot water. I then put this whole thing into a bowl and added in a generous dollop of cilantro pesto (to make this, put a generous bunch of clean, fresh cilantro into a food processor, add in a handful of sliced almonds, a 1/4 head of garlic, a bit of olive oil and process). I pulled a chunk of brown bread out of the fridge and voila, dinner!

The result? D-e-l-i-c-i-o-u-s (and then some!).

Benefits of Ukrainian Sushi

Because I spent a fair amount of time looking at sushi menus while I was in Kiev, I now know that лосось means 'salmon' in Russian (and Ukrainian). I've been on the lookout for canned salmon, especially since I can no longer find canned tuna in Kutaisi, and I discovered that the little market across the street from me sells it. Now, not only is that shop my go-to place for water and toilet paper, but I can buy my canned salmon there, too. Huzzah!

Cooking K

Potato + red pesto + onion + carrot + radish + flat leaf parsley = one great meal. 

Still-warm applesauce + kefir + cinnamon = gooooooood morning!

I'm on a cooking kick. After last winter's paucity of fruit & veg (aside from the ever ubiquitous onion, potato, and beet...and there were oranges and kiwis available, too), I've decided to fill my freezer with fruit and veggie goodness to help me get through the winter doldrums. So far, I've got cauliflower, persimmons, and pomegranates in the freezer. I have peaches sitting on the dining room table waiting to be blanched, peeled, & sliced, and I'm boiling a head-sized kabocha-looking pumpkin I bought at the market this morning (for a mere 1.50 lari, which amounts to an even more mere 90 cents). This morning I made applesauce, some of which will be frozen into individual-sized portions (I'm so glad my mom sent over ziploc baggies). My freezer is small, so I'm not sure just how much frozen goodness I'll be able to cram in to it, but at least I won't feel like I have nothing to eat come the middle of February.

Almond Cardamom Rolls = Success!

ready to go in the oven

proof of aggressive baking

The rolls turned out quite well. My oven seems to bake a bit aggressively (I definitely need to pay attention to browning on the top and on the bottom), but nothing that can't be worked with.  I think that if I did these in the future, I would add orange zest to the filling. Alternatively, I could also do an orange-flavored frosting of sorts, but I don't particularly like rolls that are too sweet or overly sticky. All-in-all, for a first try, two thumbs up!

Recipe is here.

Baking K

Thanks to a lovely care package last week from my mom, my kitchen is now nicely equipped for baking. Good thing, too, because this afternoon I knew I'd have a hankering for cinnamon rolls in the morning.  They're in the oven now (because I figured it wasn't necessary to wait until morning to eat one) and the smell is divine. I adapted a recipe I found online to make it more friendly for my Georgian kitchen, but I can't remember the website. Here's what I came up with:

Mash's Cardamom Almond Rolls

Ingredients

3/4 C milk
1/4 C butter (I completely guestimated on this and visualized the volume of 1/2 a stick of butter)
3 1/4 C flour (the stuff I bought was white and powdery fine)
2 T yeast
1/4 C sugar
1/2 t salt (I used a large pinch)
1/4 C water
1 egg
1/2 C sugar
1/2 ground almonds
1/2 C butter softened (another exercise in imagining the size of a stick of butter)
cardamom
pumpkin pie spice (because I just happened to throw that in my suitcase at the last minute)

Directions

1.  Heat the milk in a saucepan (or, in my case, a small frying pan) until it's steaming and hot. Remove from heat and plop in the 1/4 C butter and stir until butter is melted.
2.  In a large bowl, combine 2 1/4 C flour, yeast, sugar, and salt. Add water, egg, and milk/butter. Mix well. Add the remaining flour 1/4 C at a time, mixing well after each addition. When the dough pulls together, turn it onto a floured surface and knead the entire length of "Winds of Change" (I was listening to the radio) or until smooth.
3.  Cover the dough and let it rest for 15 minutes.
4.  Mix together the 1/2 C butter, the ground almonds, a semi-generous shake of cardamom (it depends on how fresh your cardamom is....this stuff can be overpowering), and a few generous shakes of pumpkin pie spice.
5.  Roll out the dough. I rolled it until it was the length of my forearm and about 2/3 as tall.
6.  Spread the butter/sugar/almond/spice mixture onto the dough and roll it up along the long side. Cut into 10 pieces and put in a pan (I used an 8X8).
7. Bake at 375F/190C for 20 minutes.

I'll let you know how they turn out (and try to take a photo or two before I eat them all)! I'm thinking I should have added orange zest to the buttery spice mixture, but I don't have any oranges at the moment.

Christmas Beeramisu

Mash's Christmas Beeramisu. Yum.

For Christmas dinner, I was tasked with making tiramisu. Although I'd never made tiramisu before, I'm not one to cook-by-the-book and I opted to do something a little different. I perused a few recipes online (check this entry for my list of inspirations) and cobbled together a recipe for my own version of a Christmas Beeramisu.


The Ingredients


1 C chocolate stout (I used Nøgne Ø's Sweet Horizon)
2 airliners of Amaretto (you know, those small bottles they give you on airplanes)
1/4 C honey
1 C heavy whipping cream
16 oz mascarpone cheese
1/4 C sugar
1 package of vanilla Stella D'Oro Margherite Cookies
about 24 gingersnaps


Directions


Combine the chocolate stout, Amaretto, and honey in a small pan and boil for about 10 minutes (or until the mixture is reduced by half). Pour liquid into a bowl to cool.


Beat the heavy whipping cream into stiff peaks. In a separate bowl, mix together the cheese and the sugar. Fold the whipped cream into the cheese.


In a large baking dish (I think I used a 9x13"), line the bottom with Margherite cookies that have been soaked in the cooled beer/liquor mix. Cover the cookies with approximately half the cheese/whipped cream mixture. Place a layer of gingersnaps that have been soaked in the beer/liquor mix on top, and spread the rest of the cheese/whipped cream mixture on top of that.


Put in the fridge overnight. Before serving, dust with cocoa powder.


Notes


I really wish I could have found the chocolate Margherite cookies. I think those would have been great to use.


When it came time to make the second cookie layer, I ran out of cookies and had to run to the store for more. The store didn't have any Margherites (or lady fingers of any kind), so I went with gingersnaps, which turned out really well.


Next time, instead of using the Amaretto and a $12.50 bottle of beer, I think I'll try the Deschutes Brewery "The Abyss" instead. The Trader Joe's Vintage Ale would also probably be a really good choice for this.


The dessert was a total crowd pleaser.

Beeramisu, Mash Style

This year's Christmas dinner has a strict Italian theme and I've been tasked with making tiramisu, something I've never, ever made. Undaunted, I figure I can take this into one of two directions. I can try making a Christmas-encapsulating tiramisu, which I would interpret as something woodsy and piney, or I can go the beer route. I'm thinking that a piney woodsy tiramisu might be a turn off (or at least just plain weird for the non-adventurous eaters at the table), so I'm going to give beeramisu a try. I haven't quite decided exactly how I'm going to put together the final product, but I'm looking at these recipes for inspiration:

Jason McCullar's Chocolate-Stout Tiramisu Recipe
Heavenly Eggless Tiramisu
Beeramisu (aka Tiramisu for the Boys)

Some time next week I'll post my recipe along with photos and reaction from the Christmas table peanut gallery.

UPDATE: Click over to here for my recipe & notes.

Fresh From the Oven

I just pulled the pie from the oven and it smells divine! (Click here for the recipe.)

Mash Apple Pie

I woke up with a hankering for pie, apple pie. So after a bike ride out Red Rock Road late this morning and a stop at Home Depot to buy bulbs, I came home and got to work. I perused a few recipes for inspiration, and here's what I came up with:

Crust
by Pillsbury

Filling
3 pounds of Granny Smith apples
flour
cinnamon
cardamom
large orange
brown sugar

Topping
1/4 C butter
4 oz marzipan
2/3 C flour
salt


The Steps
Follow the directions on the box for the pie crust (in my case, let come to room temp then unroll into the pie plate). Peel, core, and slice apples into 1/4-ish inch slices. Put into a large bowl. Mix the sliced apples together with a few pinches of flour (2-3 T-ish), the zest of a whole orange, the juice of 1/2 that orange, generous sprinkles of cinnamon & cardamom, and a handful of brown sugar. Put the filling in the crust.

For the topping (which is from the Epicurious recipe I base my blueberry pie on), cut the butter & marzipan into chunks and throw it into a food processor with the flour and a pinch of salt. Process & let chill in the fridge. When ready, spread the crumble over the apples already in the pie pan.

Heat the oven to 350 F and bake the whole shebang for about 50 minutes or until the apples are cooked.

This photo is of the pie right before I put it in the oven. It's been in about 15 minutes, and I'm looking forward to tasting how this puppy turns out.

K Makes Cookies in Front of the Brinno TLC

I made two kinds of cookies yesterday for the good folk over in Patagonia's mail order department (oatmeal chocolate chip and super fudgy white chocolate chip cookies....both kinds nearly too delicious to share!). I set up the time lapse camera on some empty boxes stacked on a chair in the living room. Unfortunately, I should have placed the camera further back in the room so I could have captured the area where the oven is in the field of view.

What I really need to do is to figure out how to strap the thing to my body or to a backpack so I can let the camera do its thing while I'm out hiking.

Glorified Tube Steak

I haven't posted anything Japan-related in a while. Well, here's dinner for tonight: a bratwurst I bought at Costco with a bit of Kewpie-brand mustard surrounded by a slice off a baguette from Andersen. It's not the healthiest meal, but it does taste good.

Cookie-Making K

And with the Costco bounty what did I do? I made cookies, of course. I made cookies with the corn flour I brought back from Kosovo. The result? Delicious, chewy, and chocolatey.

Campbell's Cream o' Mushroom Soup

These small red-and-white labelled cans of goodness have made many a great meal for me.

Thanks, Mom!

Here's evidence of care package goodness being put to good (eatin') use.

I Cook...

Therefore, I am...or something like that.

My Morning Fridge

What's in my fridge this morning? Milk, hot sauce, mirin, soy sauce, leftover pasta and chicken, eggs, Kraft parmesan cheese, a huge Kirkland bag of dried blueberries...nothing too exciting. My freezer shows a little promise. I have some chicken thigh bones I'm going to make soup with sometime today. I also have one solitary blob of frozen dough I may use tonight to make accompanying pizza.

PS- This is my contribution to this week's Show Me Japan Vol. 1 Issue 4. Click over to their website to see what others are posting about Japan this week.

Sweet Potato Gnocchi

My first attempt at gnocchi. I did a test batch and the results are promising!

My recipe was simple: 1 boiled sweet potato grated and mashed as good as I could mash it with a fork; about 1/2 of a beaten egg; and 2 handfuls of flour. After mashing the sweet potato, I mixed in the egg and flour (about a handful at a time) until the dough was still tacky but not sticky. Then I rolled out handfuls of the dough into long fingers and cut them into 1/2 inch pieces and pressed each piece into the tines of a fork. Then I boiled up some water and put in a few pieces and cooked them until they floated. So far, so good. I've cut up the whole batch and some went in the fridge for later (I'll cook 'em when I cook up the salmon I'm going to eat for dinner) and some went in the freezer.

I'm already thinking about what I'll do differently the next time I make sweet potato gnocchi, and maybe I'd add some rubbed sage to the mashed potatoes. I'd also be tempted to take these in a sweet direction...maybe adding cinnamon and sugar and tossing them in butter after they've been cooked. (I think tonight I'll toss them in a little bit of olive oil and wasabi.)

I used 101 Cookbooks to inform my gnocchi-making self. :)

Nikujaga, aka, Japanese beef stew

Considering how ridiculously easy it was, I can't believe I've never attempted to make this before. I'm absolutely embarrassed that I don't cook more Japanese-style food at home. My transition begins now.