samosas for Todd April 29, 2008

No picture of this as I haven’t had the opportunity to do the frozen versus fresh trial I wanted to as ‘plain yoghurt’ means ‘vanilla-flavoured yoghurt’ in the minds and hearts of my yoghurt buyers. I shall post my recipe for the wonderful nibblies things anyway.

The dough recipe I use comes out of a cookbook called Peterborough Peoples’ Potluck Picks. This amazingly alliterative oeuvre was purchased through a local fundraiser for Canadian Crossroads International back in 1993 and contains simply the tastiest & most forgiving, recipe for samosa dough ever.

What you need for the dough:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp. salt

2 tbsp. butter, margarine or ghee

3/4 cup plain (not vanilla) yoghurt (I prefer balkan style for this but anything from fat-free to homemade will work)

Lightly mix the flour and salt in a large bowl then cut in the butter/margarine with a fork or a pastry cutter until the mixture looks all coarse like breadcrumbs. Stir in the yoghurt then mix it all together with your hands. Dough hooks and other gadgets really don’t work well with this dough as part of the pliability of it leans on body heat – avoiding getting your hands dirty will not result in a good dough. You don’t need to knead it, just mix with the hands forming it into a ball as you go. Once that’s done you can set it in the fridge while preparing the samosa guts.

What you need for the innards:

1/2 cup of chopped onion – I like sweet & nutty flavour of vidalias for samosas

3 cloves chopped garlic

3 large potatoes diced – I prefer reds as they wash up quickly and the skins can be left on but usually use 4-5 of these as they don’t really come in large size russets (which is an effective alternative) or other white-skinned varieties do around here

1 cup of fresh or frozen peas – alternatively, that frozen vegie mix comprised of carrots, peas, corn & beans works really well too and allows me to get samosas past people who say they don’t like peas

2 tbsp. margarine, butter or ghee

juice of 2 limes

salt to taste

spices (I’ll get into that in a bit)

Heat a skillet over medium-high heat then melt the butter/margarine/ghee in it. Add the onions, garlic, potatoes and salt and allow everything to brown just a bit. Once slightly browned, reduce the heat to low-medium and continue to cook until the potatoes are fork tender (about ten minutes.) Up the heat to high, add the salt and peas and cook over high heat for another 2-3 minutes. Then it’s time to remove the filling from the heat source and talk about spices.

As you’ve probably been able to deduce, samomas are pretty versatile creatures. As such, there are infinite possibilities for dealing with their spiciness. One could create their own amalgam of spices, toss in a pre-made garam masala or curry paste or keep them minimal and somewhat pirogie-like. If I’m feeling lazy I’ll toss in 1 tbsp of Sybil’s Jerk Seasoning or her Kick Ass Curry Paste (I’m sorry for those of you who don’t live in the area and don’t have access to her wonderfully spicey bounty of deliciousness) but I almost never use a pre-fab curry powder. So when I’m feeling less lazy I mix up a concoction of equal parts cumin, coriander, allspice, nutmeg, tumeric & ground chilies…which I often have on hand as I also almost always make up too much of this concoction. This can all be ground together in a coffee grinder, small food processor or with a mortar & pestle.  The important part is to season your filling to taste and mix it well.  After that’s done the lime juice can be added and mixed in as well.

The filling should be allowed to chill at least an hour or two before using it with the dough otherwise it could make the samosas fall apart.  When you’re ready to fill them, get out the ball of dough and divide it in half, then divide those in half again and so on until you’ve got 32 little balls.  Then just roll those little balls out into circles as thinly as you can, add about 2 tbsp of filling, fold the dough over the filling and press the dough edges together with a fork.  I always need to experiment with the first couple I make.  The beauty of this dough is that it’s very stretchy, the downside to that is that I end up overestimating it’s stretchiness.  I’m an overstuffer.  Some people are understuffers, and the downside to that is you end up with really doughy samosas.

I like to get at least one other person in on the rolling and stuffing part of the samosa-making process.  This allows me to get them cooking as we go which prevents them from sitting and sweating on a surface which doesn’t allow them to breathe and making them more breakable.  That generally plays out as me being in charge of the hot oil for deep frying, 1 kid rolling and 1 kid stuffing.  If I don’t have an extra set of hands around to help me out I can get around the sweat issue by preheating the oven to 425 degrees, moving the stuffed samosas directly to a lightly greased baking sheet then moving the full-of-stuffed-samosas baking sheets directly to the oven to cook for about 5 minutes (just long enough to dry the dough, but not to brown it) then moving the samosas onto cooling racks.  The advantage of going that route rather than directly to deep fry is that they’re easier to store as they can be tossed into freezer bags and then into the freezer then brought out and deep fried at a later date.  One could also finish them in the oven and bypass deep frying altogether, but let’s face it, part of the appeal is the crispy, goldenness of these tasty treats.

So there you go.  It’s not a complicated process but it definitely can be a long one.  I like to justify it by making a double or triple batch so there are some to enjoy immediately and others to be put away for entertaining later.

crepes April 13, 2008

Someone suggested having a crepe-themed wine (or ‘let’s eat ’til we burst’) night with our regular motley crew and Friday that plan finally came together. They’re really not the mystery one might have you believe them to be and they make for a nice, decadent, incredibly versatile treat once every 5 years or so. You may as well try to make them.

What you need for savoury crepes:

2 large eggs
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup water
1 cup flour
1/4 cup melted butter
1/2teaspoon salt
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

What you need for dessert crepes:

2 large eggs
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup water 1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup melted butter
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons of amaretto

Butter or cooking spray (which I don’t normally endorse the use of but I’ve score a lifetime supply of it and need to use it for something) for greasing the pan(s).

In the bowl of a large (10-12 cup) food processor mix together all of the ingredients (except the butter or cooking spray for the pan) and pulse together 10 times for 2 seconds each. If you feel the need for more batter just double the batches but mix them separately for a smoother batter. That’s it, that’s all. Well, until you’re ready to cook them and you won’t be for a good hour or so as it’s best to refrigerate the batter for at least an hour to quell the bubbles which cause crepe breakage during and after cooking. I also like to allow the batter to sit at room temperature for a good 15 minutes before cooking as it helps the butter get back in with the rest of the batter family after it’s resolidification time in the frigo.

As far as cooking crepes goes I tend to prefer a heavy bottomed skillet over the thin, low lipped crepe pans. the reason for this is that I can get a good flip out of a larger pan and can control the heat in them better. The good flip means less handling which means less breakage which makes for happy crepes. The temperature control means less burning which means I can have two pans on the go at once without compromising the integrity of the crepes. So 2 heavy skillets over medium high heat with a wee bit of butter rubbed on them or cooking spray sprayed in them for lube will get you going – just remember to start them one at a time and if you don’t feel like doing two at a time, don’t.

It always takes me at least three crepes to gage how much batter to use when experimenting with new equipment (and I was as I wasn’t at home.) I eyeball how much goes in; I start with about a quarter of a cup of batter in the pan and swirl it around until the bottom is lightly coated in batter. If my crepe is not translucent enough to see the bottom of the pan I know I’ve got too much batter. If there are holes through the crepe I know I’ve got too little. I adjust accordingly either way with subsequent crepes until I get it right.

Crepes can be filled with just about anything. Friday night we had each guest bring a selection of fillings for both sweet and savoury crepes so our selection consisted of roasted chicken breasts, asparagus, sauteed mushrooms and spinach, cheese curds, old cheddar cheese, butter chicken sauce, mushroom wine sauce, bechamel, prosciutto, tomato butter, shrimp & potatoes. For the dessert crepes (sorry;no pictures of those – I blame the wine) we saw amaretto cream cheese whipped cream, amaretto stewed fruits (do you sense a theme here?) raspberry compote, fresh strawberries and blackberries, and probably a bunch of other stuff I can’t remember. It was all wonderfully yummy and incredibly filling but kept up with the wine nicely.

serious comfort foods March 3, 2008

Ace Bakery’s white baguette, double creme brie & ginger marmalade = heaven.

Again with the turkey leftovers December 29, 2007

Ok…so we have lots of leftover turkey. Luckily I also have many ways of dealing with it.

We’ve already discussed dealing with a savoury pie to help us sort out roast beef leftovers, now we’ll do it with turkey. The method is very much the same, but the ingredients are switched up a bit.

What you need:

1 pkg. deep dish pie crusts

1/2 of a cooking onion (I actually used a red onion because I actually enjoy the flavour of red onion cooked…damn the naysayers, dammit)

1 tbsp butter or margarine

1.5 cups of cubed, cooked turkey meat

1 cup of turkey gravy

1/2 cup of dry white wine

1/4 cup of milk

2 cups of frozen mixed vegetables

Salt and pepper to taste

If frozen, take the crusts out of the freezer to come to room temperature as the rest of the preparation goes on.

Chop the onion into palatable bits – far be it for me to say what that means to most people but I tend to chop mine fairly thinly as I’ve a couple of folks around here who don’t enjoy chunks of onions in their goodies. I, on the other hand, quite like the chunks…so giv’er and do what ye will.

Add the butter or margarine to a medium sauce pan heated over medium heat. Once that has melted add the chopped onion. Sautee until translucent. While that’s going on the turkey meat can be cubed (if this hasn’t been done already) and added to one of the pie shells. Top that with the frozen vegetables and season with salt and pepper to taste. Let that sit while the base it cooking.

This is a good time to preheat the oven. The pie wants to start at 375 degrees.

Once the onions are translucent deglaze (ok, I have to admit that I did not know what the term was for that particular manoeuvre until just this year…I’ve been doing it since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, but the fact that there was a word for it escaped me completely…meh) the pot with about half of the wine. Add the gravy and stir vigorously (I love that word) until combined. Once combined add the mild and the rest of the wine and stir vigorously again.

Pour the base mixture over the vegies and meat already in the pie shell. Top the lot of it with the second pie shell, pressing the edge into that of the bottom shell to make a relatively firm seal around the edges. Cut slits into the top to allow steam to escape. Pop it into the oven at 375 for about 15 minutes. After 15 minutes crank the heat to 425 for another 10-15 minutes for optimum browning and pastry flaking.

mmmMMMmmm…savoury pies rock my world.

more turkey leftovers December 27, 2007

Once again I’m presented with the unique and wonderful challenge of coming up with creative ways to dispense of leftover holiday fowl. And because we all need more rich food after indulging and imbibing to the point of busting, I felt a spicey, cheesey sandwich with sweet potato fries was in order.

What you need for two sandwiches:

1 cup turkey meat (dark or white…whichever your preference. I like to use a combination of both)

1 small red onion sliced in rings

1 tbsp. jerk sauce (I really like Walkerswood jerk seasoning because it doesn’t just taste like hot. It tastes like hot and lime and onions and all of the other good things which go into a great seasoning. Try it. You’ll like it too.)

6 slices of double creme brie

1 roma tomato, thinly sliced

4 slices multi-grain bread

1 tbsp butter or margarine

mayonnaise for spreading

salt and pepper to taste

Start by lubing a warm, cast iron skillet over medium heat with a wee bit of butter or margarine. Add the jerk seasoning and use a wooden spoon or spatula to coat the pan in it. Toss in the turkey pieces and roll them around the pan to pick up the jerk sauce, breaking it up as you go for more jerkey coverage. Move the turkey to a plate, crank the burner to medium-high heat and add the onions. Stir fry the onions for about 1-2 minutes then move them to the turkey plate.

At this point you can choose to toast the breads in a toaster or grill them in the skillet with another wee bit of butter or margarine. I opted for the latter this time around.

Once the bread is nicely toasted using either method, spread some mayo on the bottom pieces of each sandwich. Divide the turkey equally between both, then the onions, then the brie, then the tomato. Season with salt and pepper before topping with the remaining toasts.

Thinly sliced peppers in any colour, kosher pickles and lettuce all make wonderful additions to this sandwich. One can get as creative with it as one likes.

Pie for breakfast December 22, 2007

Had an early morning out of town visitor roll in today and so needed something quick and tasty and with some semblance of nutritional value to serve for breakfast. Of course pie was the first thing to come to mind. That’s just the way I roll.

What you need:

2 deep dish pie shells

2 eggs

1 400g tub of ricotta cheese

1 600g bag of frozen mixed (or not…I like mixed) berries

1/4 cup of sugar

Angostura bitters

2 pinches of salt

2 pinches of nutmeg

2 tbsp margarine or butter

freshly ground black pepper

Get the pastries out of the freezer and set them on a baking dish or an actual pie plate so they come to room temperature. In a bowl whisk the eggs until frothy. To those add one pinch of salt, one pinch of nutmeg, 6 dashes of bitters and give the lot a good whisking again. Stir in the cheese until combined.

Toss the berries, the sugar, the other pinches, about 6 more dashes of bitters and a few good grinds of black pepper (I really like to taste the pepper in it so I gave mine 30 good grinds) in a bowl together. Move this mixture to the bottom pie shell. Dot the top of the berry mixture with butter or margarine then spread the egg/cheese blend over the top. Top with the second pie shell (don’t forget to pierce the top to let steam out) and bake in a 425 degree oven for 30 minutes.

I don’t want to share December 21, 2007

Mushrooms, cheese, seafood and anything which comes even vaguely hors d’oeuvre-shaped (not necessarily in that order) are my favourite foodstuffs ever, so when asked to bring the pre-meal nibblies for our family Christmas do I gladly accepted and (rather masochistically) began to devise recipes comprised of all my favourites for savoury stuffs to give me a break from all of the sweets baking I’ve been doing…because, you know, I don’t have nearly enough things going on to occupy my time.

Thanks to the miracles which are Tenderflake and Presidents Choice frozen pastries and a little help from the fella, I was able to get these crabesque quiches & multi-mushroom turnovers pretty quickly.

The quiches – what you need:

24 frozen tart shells (frozen ones usually come in twelves)

1 large minced red onion (you can use a regular cooking onion but I really enjoy the sweetness a red onion imparts to complement the crab)

1.5 cups of imitation crab meat or 2 cans of the real stuff

1 cup grated provolone cheese

7 eggs

1/2 cup buttermilk

1 tsp salt

2 tsp ground pepper

a pinch of nutmeg

a bunch of cilantro

Before doing anything else, get the pastries out of the freezer and set them out on baking sheets so they’ll come to room temperature as you work. Preheat the oven to 425. To each shell add a teaspoon of onion then divide the crab then the cheese up evenly between them. Top each one with 2-3 cilantro leaves. In a large bowl whisk the remaining ingredients together and divide the mixture evenly between the 24 quiches. Toss the lot of them into the cooker.

If you’re planning to freeze these (as I was) then they only need to cook for about 10 minutes or until the egg has set. To reheat simply pull them out of the freezer about an hour before they need to be served and toss them back into the oven preheated to 425 for about 7 minutes. If you intend to eat them right away they’ll need about 17-20 minutes of cook time off the hop.

Turnovers – what you need:

2 pkgs puff pastry

1 large minced red onion (or possibly the rest of the one from the quiches)

2 cups chopped mushrooms (I get these handy packages of mixed mushrooms which include portabello, shiitake and oyster at the grocer’s)

1 cup grated stinky cheese (I used emmenthaler I had leftover from a fondue at the weekend but other good choices would be old cheddar, edam, guyere & romano)

Preheat oven to 425. Puff pastry generally comes in packages of 2 pastries each – we’ll want to roll each of those out into 10″ x 10″ish squares then cut each square into 9 smaller squares. To each smaller square add 1 tsp onion then divide the cheese and mushrooms up among the 36 squares, fold them into triangles and press down the egdes. Toss’em on a baking sheet or stone and then into the oven for about 10 minutes or until they start to brown (if freezing) or 15-20 minutes if cooking through and eating immediately. Again, these will require about 1 hour of standing time out of the freezer and another 7 minutes in the oven at 425 to reheat.

Potutus December 13, 2007

…or jacket potatoes or stuffed potatoes or twice baked potatoes…regardless of what one might call them they’re really, really good. Today we made the meatatarian variety (though I’ve a few great vegetarian versions up my sleeve we can talk about another time) with twice smoked bacon.

We pick this stuff up at the local farmer’s market and it’s lovely and decadent (despite its appearance) and probably something the devil threw at Dante through his little adventure. But it’s good. Really good. And well worth having to slice it one’s self.

Onto the potatoes!

What you need:

4 large cream flesh potatoes (I prefer russet potatoes, but tonight I used a generic round white because it’s what we had on hand)

1/2 lb. twice smoked bacon

1.5 cups grated marble cheese

5 scallions (green/spring onions) thinly sliced

2 tsp. dried thyme

salt and pepper to taste

The washing and the baking of the potatoes should be the first step. Scrub, scrub. Bake, bake. Rub each one in a little olive oil and salt then toss ‘em in some tin foil, then into the oven for an hour at 375.

Once they’re done take them out of the foil and let them cool enough to be handled. You don’t want to let them cool too much or they won’t want to get intimate with the rest of the ingredients, but don’t burn your fingers, please.

Slice each potato in half lengthwise and scoop out their guts into a bowl. Don’t worry too much about getting everything or leaving too much or too little in the shell. All of the rest of the things added to the guts will more than compensate for technique whilst allowing the final product to look worth eating so just go ahead a scoop while those potatoes are still warm.

Set the remaining skins on a baking sheet. To the bowl of guts add everything else. Stir. Stir some more. If you think you’re done stir again for good measure. Toss the guts back into the potato skins and toss those in the oven at 375 for about 20 minutes or until they’ve got that lovely golden brown hue as in the picture above.

Too few people understand a really good sandwich December 7, 2007

Thursday night meant I was off the hook again! Here’s what my baby made me:

Yup. Philly cheesesteak sandwiches. mmmMMMmmm…comfort food at its best.

Falafel December 3, 2007

I had forgotten how easy these are to throw together for a pantry busting meal…and how wonderfully tasty they are.

What you need:

2 cups garbanzo beans or chick peas (funnily enough the cans I buy come in 190z cans which is roughly over a cup, but roughly under 2 cups, so two of these are required – I use the remainder to make hummus)

1/2 cup packed fresh parsley (today I didn’t have any parsley but wanted something green so I added a tablespoon of dried basil)

4 cloves of garlic

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

1/2 tsp paprika

1/2 tsp turmeric

1 small onion

1/2 cup bread crumbs

1 tbsp sesame seeds

pinch of salt

Peanut oil for frying

8 pitas

A variety of fruits and vegetables to serve on the pitas with the falafel.

Toss everything but the bread crumbs and oil into the food processor. Pulse-blend until you’ve got a paste. Mix in the bread crumbs by continuing to pulse-blend them in. Once they’re all blended put the lot of it in the fridge until it’s time to cook them (the more uniformly cold they are the easier they are to work with so I recommend having them in the fridge for no less than an hour.)

You’ll want to serve the little chick pea patties as immediately as possible after cooking so chop any desired vegies (I recommend baby spinach, tomatoes, peppers and green onions) and get your pitas ready before hand. I like to have some kind of tasty, offensively pungent sauce to serve with them so I usually make that up while the mush is chillin’ too. What I had on hand was half a tub of sour cream – generally a little too rich for my liking so I diluted it with the minced half of a red onion and 3 cloves of garlic. To that I added some dill and a pinch of salt; et voila! Instant offensively pungent saucey stuff!

The cooking method or these is pretty simple; heat 2 inches of peanut oil in a skillet or wok. Roll the chick pea mush into a bunch of looney-sized balls then flatten them to about a 1/2 inch in thickness. Once the oil is HOT (and you can use a little mush to test) gently place the falafel in it (I’ve got a couple of these puppies which help with this as I prefer too keep my fingers well away from hot grease) to cook for about two minutes. If using a wok you’ll probably want to do them in batches of four or five. Upon removing them from the oil place them on a paper towel lined serving dish then toss ‘em on the table as soon as possible.