The Daring Kitchen -- Appam and Curry (sort of)

Mary, who writes the delicious blog, Mary Mary Culinary was our August Daring Cooks’ host. Mary chose to show us how delicious South Indian cuisine is! She challenged us to make Appam and another South Indian/Sri Lankan dish to go with the warm flat bread.


The Boy and I are late on this one because I have been traveling for work all summer and am having a hard time keeping up.  The Boy actually did the Appam and I made a spicy roasted green "hatch" chili, corn, red bell pepper and pork rib (leftovers) hash to go with it.  The hash was basically just putting stuff together that we had around the kitchen but it turn out pretty good.  It was spicy, nice to get some hot hatch chilis for a change.

I was a little dubious on the Appam and the first few were complete failures to cook, but after some adjustments to pan temperature and batter amounts, they started coming out okay.  It took some time before I could really get into the flavor of the Appam but The Boy liked them right off.  I found if I got them a little toasty, they tasted better to me.

Plating this time was not fantastic, but I was really impressed by The Boys presentation.  We are starting to both plate and in the future you will see both plates.  Feel free to comment on which one you think is better. I am not going so which is which, so if you do comment just indicate which color plate you like. So on with the plates.

First Monthly "Yet to be Named" Wine Club

After much discussion at work on how much some of us like wine, we decided to start having wine club.  The first one was at our house so The Boy and I decided to make some snacks.  Unfortunately, we did not get pictures of the mousse and seared ahi tuna but did get some of the homemade truffles, fresh sourdough bread and cheese and meat plate.  Enjoy.

P.S. -- The wine was good too.

Daring Kitchen -- Fresh Fraisiers

Jana of Cherry Tea Cakes was our July Daring Bakers’ host and she challenges us to make Fresh Frasiers inspired by recipes written by Elisabeth M. Prueitt and Chad Robertson in the beautiful cookbook Tartine.

The Boy and I parted from the published recipe and did something that I googled and thought might be relatively easy, boy was I wrong.  The cake part was an interesting combination of sugar, eggs and flour.  First you heat the eggs and sugar over a double boiler and than whip the heck out of it using our trusty stand mixer.  Was looking for ribbons here and got to that point about eight minutes into whipping.  Was kind of worried about the mixer, it is starting to make strange noises.  The next part, I have decided is more of a skill.  You must fold in the flour, gently, quickly and without deflating the egg whip.  This was not easy and had to do it twice, which worked out okay since we used both in the cake.

The Boy made the cream which had its own challenges.  We did not use gelatin but used cornstarch instead.  It seized up faster than expected but we added some vanilla and all was right with the world.  It tasted fine and piped really well.

Decorating was the easiest part and I was proud of the finished product.  However, I am cutting out the carbs and The Boy doesn't like strawberries, so we gave it to the grandparents who seemed to like it.