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.

The Daring Kitchen - Baklava

Blog-checking lines: Erica of Erica’s Edibles was our host for the Daring Baker’s June challenge. Erica challenged us to be truly DARING by making homemade phyllo dough and then to use that homemade dough to make Baklava.


Unfortunately, I am posting this a few days late due to work and school conflicts with our cooking.  This is actually our first "official" challenge and "The Boy" and I were both somewhat intimidated by the thought of hand making phyllo.  As it turned out it was not that difficult to do and was a lot of fun to make.  Not sure I was that happy with the results but this was the first time with the dough.  So with any further ado, on with the photos.

We cut the dough into 16 roughly equal parts before rolling them out.

Rolling out the dough very thin took some practice and I think that we could get it thinner next time.  It was very stretchy and seem to work well stretching it by hand.

Butter, walnuts and spices sprinkled on the rough cut dough.  I used a sheet of printer paper as a basic template.

Coiled Baklava.

Soaking in honey and sugar syrup.

Daring Kitchen - Gumbo (unofficial)

So "The Boy" and I have signed up for The Daring Kitchen for baking and cooking.  We are now officially signed up but was not for the June cooking challenge but we did it anyway to see how it would come out.  So enjoy unofficially.

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.


We decided to try seafood gumbo and making our own shrimp stock.  Making the stock was probably my favorite part of this endeavor, because it made our house smell amazing for about three days afterwards.  The homemade cajun spice was out of sight and we will be using it for many things in the future.  Below is the prep work for the stock including peeling and devining shrimp (not that much fun btw).

The stock was a lot of fun to make and like I said above, you should have smelled this.  It doesn't look very appetizing but the finished product was worth the effort.  The only issue I had was finding shrimp with the heads still attached.  Next time I will just drive down to the coast and pick some fresh ones up.

Getting the rue down had me worried so I kind of cheated.  Alton Brown showed a method of doing the rue in the oven over time and the risk of burning it is significantly reduced.  I did this and it came out a perfect "brick" color but I forgot to take a picture.  After adding all of the ingredients into the pot it was just a matter of cooking.

We served with a slice of french bread.  What is not pictured is the mini shrimp po boys that were made with the extra shrimp we had.  Fried them up in a nice flour and cajun spice coating with some homemade cocktail sauce using fresh horseradish.  So without any further commentary - the finished product.

Being a bum

Haven't cooked anything more than a bowl of cereal in the last two weeks.  The Boy and I have plenty of ideas but not much gumption to get anything done.  The Boy has become really good at making tacos, which is a "throw down" meal for us when we want something fast.  We don't make it complicated, so meat (farm raised and grass fed) cooked with homemade chili powder, organic taco shells (we still have not got around to making our own) and a really good cheese.  I personally like Manchego in my tacos.  Somehow, he has got the baking of the taco shells down perfectly and they are always light and crunchy.  I like to add this really great sauce that you can get in every market in Costa Rica.  I am down to my last bottle, so if you are going let me know.

Anyway, we will get out of the no-cooking funk soon.  Plus we have a Daring Cooks challenge that needs to be done before the middle of the month.

Small Plates --Breakfast

The Boy and I have been talking a lot about making a small plates dinner and decided to start with a breakfast themed dinner.  We were hoping to try something simple - Melons, Vegetable Frittata, Chicken and Waffles, Biscuits and Sausage Gravy, finalized by Bacon Ice Cream and French Toast.
Come to find out, making that many different things is not that simple, but not terrible.  We did as much as possible prior to having to having to start all the important things.  See pictures below:

 Some lessons learned:

• Even though I had reduced the portions, it was still to much food.
• As much preparation prior to the main cooking is very important.
• Stay calm and methodical, it gets hectic.