The Daring Kitchen- Scones/Biscuits

Audax Artifex was our January 2012 Daring Bakers’ host. Aud worked tirelessly to master light and fluffy scones (a/k/a biscuits) to help us create delicious and perfect batches in our own kitchens!

Although i cant say my scones were light and fluffy, they certainly were delicious and full of flavor. I used an older recipe given to me by a baking class for butterscotch scones, but since Whole Foods doesn't have butterscotch, i used peanut butter instead. 

Roast Beef Sandwiches

So an impulse buy while walking past the meat counter at my favorite grocery yielded a beautiful two pound eye of round roast all tussed up like a little package. I really did not have much of an idea of what to do with it but quickly decided on a sandwich with some French Country Boule and horseradish mayo. I turned the oven to 500 and while it was heating salt and peppered the roast which browned on all sides prior to going into the oven. The oven was turned to 475 for 14 minutes after which it was turned off. I had a temperature probe in the meat and waited for it to get past 145. At 152 I removed the roast and let it rest for about 10 minutes while I prepared my mayo with fresh grated horseradish. I did not get a picture of the actual sandwich, I was to hungry.


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Location:Asbury St,Houston,United States

Scallops with a friend

While writing the Christmas dinner blog, I found pictures of some scallops I had made with spinach and garlic served over egg noodles. This dinner was with a friend that I knew loved scallops. I personally have and some trepidation about making them and was actually worried about serving them to someone who proclaims, scallops are her favorite dish. As I was shopping for fresh scallops, the fish mongrel was actually cooking some and let me try one, nice and brown outside and beautiful creamy in the middle. We exchanged cooking tips and it home I went. I rinsed my scallops and dried them very well in paper towels. Then using a little fat, cooked them for two minutes each side. My test scallop came out perfect the first time. After, I sautéed some spinach with garlic and served everything with egg noodles.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Asbury St,Houston,United States

Christmas Dinner

I am a little behind on my blogging so I thought I would try and catch up on some of the projects since the last time. For Christmas, I found myself home with out "The Boy" and thought I would do something less traditional and a slab of ribs caught my eye while shopping for ingredients for macaroni and cheese. I used a dry rub of brown sugar, salt, cayenne and other seasonings which I liberally rub on both sides of the slab. I let this sit for a couple of hours while a braising liquid was made from molasses, vinegar and other seasonings. I wrapped the slab in foil and carefully poured the braising liquid into the foil. This packet was placed in a 225 degree oven for about four hours. I wanted some baked beans on used canned because I was lazy. Unfortunate, they were not very good even with jazzing them up with the condensed braising liquid from the ribs. With the ribs being done, I cooked down the liquid to a nice glaze which was brushed onto the ribs. I used a torch to get a nice caramelization of the glaze and this what came like. I a nice bourbon would be the perfect drink for the meal.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Houston

The Daring Kitchen- Sourdough

Our Daring Bakers Host for December 2011 was Jessica of My Recipe Project and she showed us how fun it is to create Sour Dough bread in our own kitchens! She provided us with Sour Dough recipes from Bread Matters by AndrewWhitley as well as delicious recipes to use our Sour Dough bread in from Tonia George’s Things on Toast and Canteen’s Great British Food!

I absolutely love sourdough, so as you might think, i was very excited when i got the challenge to make it. I had a little bit of drama in that my first try at a starter was terrible and as such, made terrible bread, but, i threw it away unceremoniously and started a new starter that only took a day to ferment. This new starter made much better bread, so i kept him.


Sourdough cubed with olive oil and balsamic.

The Daring Kitchen- Sans Rival

Catherine of Munchie Musings was our November Daring Bakers’ host and she challenged us to make a traditional Filipino dessert – the delicious Sans Rival cake! And for those of us who wanted to try an additional Filipino dessert, Catherine also gave us a bonus recipe for Bibingka which comes from her friend Jun of Jun-blog.


I decided to use Catherine's recipe for the heavenly cake as my basis, with a few changes to the cake overall. The actual cake part or meringue was easy to make and bake, but the hard part came when melting the sugar for the buttercream. I messed up once and came close the second time(faulty candy thermometer...).

But in the end it paid off with a truly fantastic cake that my whole family loved, too bad i gave half away to my grandmother.

The Daring Kitchen -- Cooking with Tea

Sarah from Simply Cooked was our November Daring Cooks’ hostess and she challenged us to create something truly unique in both taste and technique! We learned how to cook using tea with recipes from Tea Cookbook by Tonia George and The New Tea Book by Sara Perry.

I decided to search the Internet for other recipes for my project and found where several people use tea for smoking meat. I did a smoked chicken breast using Assam tea, brown sugar and wild rice in a homemade foil stovetop smoker. The breast ended up with a really dark brown outside with a very smoky flavor that was unique. For plating, a light sauce was made using the same tea, raisins and brown sugar.

My pictures will uploaded later. Having technical difficulties.