Tag: homemade

Categories
Recipes

chicken pot pie

The chicken pot pie of my childhood was made by Marie Callender’s. It was a personal pot pie, and it baked in the oven for what seemed like an eternity. My favorite part was the crust coated in that creamy pot pie sauce. Well, this chicken pot pie a thousand times better, though it’s a time commitment. Between making the pie crust, roasting chicken, blanching vegetables, making a bechamel, you’re in it for the long haul. But it’s worth it.

I’d recommend making chicken pot pie when you have left over meat from roasting a chicken and chicken enchiladas or chicken soup don’t sound appealing. I’d also recommend it for a crowd – a single slice will fill you up. You could very easily make this ahead of time, freeze it and bake it straight from the freezer, adding 20 – 30 minutes of additional bake time.

03-30-13-6

Chicken Pot Pie, adapted from Ad Hoc at Home
Pie Crust
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons kosher salt
2 1/2 sticks unsalted butter
about 5 tablespoons ice water

Filling
1 cup red skinned potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1 cup carrots, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch pieces
12 pearl onions, peeled
1 cup celery, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
3 bay leaves
3 thyme sprigs
1/2 tablespoon peppercorns
1/2 cup peas
2 cups cooked chicken, cut into 1/2 inch pieces

Bechamel
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
3 cups milk
1 teaspoon kosher salt
black pepper
1 tablespoon parsley
1/2 teaspoon fresh thyme
pinch of cayenne

Make the pie crust the night before. In a food processor, combine flour and salt. Remove the butter from the fridge and cut into 1 inch cubes. Add them to the flour mixture. Process until the butter chunks are about the size of peas. Add the water and pulse a few times to combine. Divide into two equal balls, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate.

03-30-13-1

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Remove the dough from the fridge and let it warm just slightly. Roll out the dough and place one piece in a 9 inch pie pan. Cut around the edges and put it back in the fridge. Roll out the second piece of dough into a 12 inch round. Place on a baking sheet and put it back in the fridge.

03-30-13-2

Bring a pot of water to boil. Add the bay leaves, thyme and pepper corns. Salt the water until it tastes like sea water. Blanche the potatoes, carrots and onions for 8 minutes. Add the celery and cook for another two. Strain the vegetables from water, pour them onto a sheet pan and discard the spices.

In a medium pan over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the flour and whisk for 2 to 3 minutes, until the mixture is light brown. Whisk in the milk. Let the sauce come to a boil to thicken, stirring often. Remove from the heat. Add the salt, pepper, thyme, parsley and cayenne. Make sure you’re happy with the seasoning.

03-30-13-3

Remove the bottom crust from the fridge. Scatter the blanched vegetables, frozen peas and chicken in the pie shell. Pour the bechamel over the pie. Beat an egg in a small bowl. Moisten the rim of the shell with some of the egg. Top it with the other crust. Pinch around the edges and cut off the excess. Brush the top with the egg. Cut a small vent in the top crust to allow steam to escape.

03-30-13-4

Bake on the lower rack of 375 degree oven until the crust is golden brown, 45 minutes to 1 hour. Remove the pie and let rest for 10 minutes. Cut into wedges and serve warm.

03-30-13-5

-Emily

Categories
Recipes

four-hour baguette

You may be familiar with my sourdough bread adventure—a rustic country bread that in the end took over a year to perfect and became my Sunday obsession for months. Well, my experience with this bread was the exact opposite. I found the recipe, gathered ingredients, made the dough, baked and ate, all in about four hours. It was refreshing.

These french baguettes are very different from my sourdough. Where baguettes are light and delicate, my bread is dense and toothy. This baguette recipe is quick—thanks to commercial yeast—uses all purpose flour and doesn’t require any special equipment, which makes it pretty ideal for most home cooks. On top of that, your house will smell amazing while the loaves are baking. This recipe makes three 14″ long baguettes, which you’ll easily eat all of.

Four-Hour Baguette, from Saveur May 2012 Issue
1 1/2 cups tap water, heated to 115 degrees
1 t active dry yeast
3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 t kosher salt
canola oil, for greasing the bowl
1/2 cup ice cubes, for making steam in the oven for a good crust

In a large bowl, whisk together the water and yeast. Let sit until foamy. Add the flour, stirring with a fork or your hands, until a dough forms. Let the dough rest 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes, sprinkle in the salt and knead it in. Transfer the dough to a lightly floured work surface and knead for about 10 minutes, until the dough is smooth and elastic. Transfer the dough to a lightly greased bowl and cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Don’t forget to grease the bowl, this is a very sticky dough. Place in a cold oven to rise. Let dough sit for 45 minutes, until doubled in size.

Transfer the dough to a lightly floured work surface and shape it into a 8″ x 6″ rectangle. Fold the long sides into the middle and then fold the short side into the center. Return the dough seam side down to the greased bowl. Cover and let rise again in the cold oven for an hour.

After an hour, remove the dough from the oven. Place a cast-iron skillet in the bottom rack. Position another rack above the skillet and place a baking stone on that rack. Heat the oven to 475 degrees.

Transfer dough to a lightly floured work surface. Divide into three equal pieces and shape each into a 14″ long rope (the length of a standard baking sheet). Flour a sheet of parchment paper and place it on a baking sheet. Place the dough ropes on the sheet evenly spaced apart. Lift the paper between the ropes to form pleats so they don’t stick together as they rise. Place two kitchen towels on each long side of the baguettes to support the loaves as they rise. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let double in size, about 50 minutes.

By this time your oven will be hot. Uncover the loaves, remove the towels and flatten the paper to space out the loaves. Use a razor blade to score the loaves with several long diagonal cuts. Carefully, with the loaves still on the parchment paper, slide them onto the hot baking stone. Place the ice cubes in the skillet and close the oven door. The ice will create steam which helps form a nice crust on the bread. Bake the baguettes 25 – 30 minutes, until browned.

Cool on a rack or enjoy straight out of the oven with some salted butter. Jordan and I ate an entire loaf just standing at the kitchen counter, they go down that easy.

These baguettes were delicious don’t get me wrong, but the flavor wasn’t very complex. Next time I’m going to try adding a bit of sugar to the yeast and water and try for a slightly sweeter baguette.

-Emily

Categories
Recipes

in the name of all things pancetta

Goodness me, we’ve reached a whole new level of pork devotion and oh it is glorious. During the past month, we’ve been busy—busy curing our own pork! Inspired by our friend Jessi and in collaboration with our supper club (food nerdom complete), we made pancetta. Pancetta is basically the Italian version of unsmoked bacon—pork belly that has been seasoned, rolled into a log and hung for a few weeks to cure. It’s typically cut into thin slices or small cubes then sautéed and added to pasta or vegetable dishes.

Because it takes about three weeks total to prepare, pancetta is certainly a commitment—of both time and closet space. But it is worth it, especially if you have a few friends to split the resulting 8 pounds of pancetta with.

Home-cured pancetta is complex. It is herby and slightly sweet, porky but also a little beefy. We were surprised by how many different flavors the pork belly acquired during the three-week curing process.

We followed the recipe from Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn. You can also find a step by step guide of the recipe complete with videos from Chow. Because their instructions are so thorough, I am going to skip the detail and just go with a photo overview of the process.

First you rub the slab of pork belly with herbs (rosemary, thyme, juniper berries), pepper, sugar and salt.

Make sure you really massage those seasonings into the belly.

Then wrap the pork belly in large plastic bags and put it in your fridge under a heavy pot or pan. Refrigerate it for a week, flipping it once a day.

After a week of refrigeration, take the pork belly out and wash of the seasonings. Pat it dry and sprinkle a bunch of cracked peppercorns on the inside. Roll it up nice and tight and truss those puppies.

Hang in a cool, dark place with some air circulation (and out of puppy’s reach) for two weeks. Ours replaced our jackets in the hall closet. Oh it just made us smile when we opened the door to grab our shoes and saw two gigantic logs of pork hanging there.

After two weeks, cut the pancetta down and slice off any little bits of mold. Slice into one-inch thick slices and share with your best foodie friends!

So far we’ve made spaghetti alla carbonara and pasta with vodka sauce. I’m thinking pancetta wrapped asparagus next. Any other ideas for me?

-Emily

Categories
Recipes San Francisco

chocolate pudding

Jordan loves chocolate pudding and so I decided to make some for him for our anniversary last weekend. (Six years!) When we first moved to the city, we feel in love with the chocolate pudding at Tartine Bakery. The texture is amazingly creamy, the flavor intensely chocolatey and it’s topped with unsweetened whipped cream. Perfect—like just about everything else at Tartine!  Turns out, this pudding is quite easy to make and doesn’t take much more effort than the stove top Jello stuff. Try it, and you probably won’t go back.

Chocolate Pudding, from Tartine by Elisabeth M. Prueitt and Chad Robertson
1 3/4 cups whole milk
1/2 cup plus 2 T heavy cream
1/4 cup cornstarch
3/4 cup sugar
3 T cocoa powder
3 eggs
1/4 t salt
2 1/2 oz bittersweet chocolate

Place a fine mesh sieve over a large heat-proof bowl. Combine milk and cream in a saucepan and heat to just under a boil. Meanwhile, in a mixing bowl, whisk together cornstarch, sugar and cocoa powder. In another bowl, whisk together the eggs and salt. Add to the sugar mixture and whisk to combine.

Slowly add half of the hot milk mixture, whisking constantly. Pour the egg mixture back into the saucepan and cook over medium heat stirring constantly. It is really important to watch the mixture closely because it can go from delicious to burnt in a matter of seconds. After 5 or so minutes, once the custard has visibly thickened, pour it through the mesh sieve. Add the chocolate and let it melt. After the chocolate has melted, blend with an immersion blender for a full five minutes. This is what makes the pudding’s texture sublime. Portion the pudding and let it cool. Serve at room temperature (trust me, it is better at room temperature) with a dollop of unsweetened whipped cream.

-Emily

Categories
Recipes

squash ravioli with brown butter sage sauce

There is nothing like crisp fall weather to make making squash ravioli from scratch seem like a better idea, except maybe David Tanis’ book The Heart of the Artichoke. David Tanis was a chef at Chez Panisse and is a beautiful writer. His recipes are simple, but coax the best flavor out of every ingredient he adds. His writing is just as wonderful—simple and heartfelt. This storybook-style cookbook easily convinces you to try every recipe inside. And the photos are just gorgeous. I just read the book cover to cover so be prepared for a string of beautiful David Tanis recipes.

It was a Sunday and Sundays are for cooking adventures here at Chez Jojonoodle. We had a few beautiful squash from our CSA sitting on the table and I had some time to kill before Jordan got home from work. I put on an episode of This American Life and got down to business.

While making ravioli from scratch is time-consuming, you can make this dish from start to finish in about three hours. If you relax and accept that your ravioli are going to look very, very rustic, it will be even easier.

You begin by making the pasta dough. While the dough is resting, you’ll roast the squash. After the squash is roasted and dough rested, you’ll roll out the dough and fill your pasta. Cooking the pasta and making the sauce takes only 10 minutes, which you should do immediately before sitting down to eat.

Squash Ravioli with Brown Butter Sage Sauce, adapted from The Heart of the Artichoke by David Tanis

For the pasta dough
2 cups all-purpose flour
4 egg yolks
pinch of salt
2 T olive oil

For the filling
2 lbs of squash (We used carnival and golden nugget. Butternut would be great)
salt and pepper
2 T olive oil
1/2 cup pecorino, grated
zest of one lemon
1/2 t red pepper flakes
nutmeg, for grating

For the sauce
4 T butter
a small handful of sage leaves
salt and pepper
1 clove garlic, mashed
juice of 1/2 lemon

Preheat an oven to 375 degrees.

Place the flour in a large bowl. In a smaller bowl, beat the eggs with the salt. Make a well in the flour and pour in the eggs. Mix well with a spoon. Pour the dough onto a floured counter and knead until smooth. Wrap in plastic wrap and set aside to rest for at least one hour.

Cut the squashes in half and scrape out the seeds. Put them skin side up on a foil-lined baking sheet. Bake for 45 minutes – 1 hour, until fork tender.

Scrape the flesh out of the squash skins and put in a large bowl. Add the olive oil, pecorino, lemon zest and red pepper. Season with salt and pepper. Grate in a bit of nutmeg and stir well. Set aside.

Using your pasta machine, roll out the dough into thin sheets.  To make the process manageable, I cut the dough into eighths and then rolled each of those pieces out and filled them one by one. I recommend that you coat the dough ball with flour to reduce stickiness and roll out the dough until you’ve reached the second to last setting.

Lay this piece of thin dough on a baking sheet and cut into squares—mine were about 4 by 4 inches. Put a dollop of filling in the center of each square. Wet the edges with a little water. Fold one side over the other and press firmly around the edges to make a seal. Set aside on a flour-coated baking sheet. Keep at it until you’ve finished with all of the dough and filling. I made about 40 ravioli.

When you are ready to eat, put two pots of water to boil. Salt them well. Add the ravioli gently and boil for 4 – 6 minutes.

Meanwhile, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the sage and garlic, stirring occasionally as the butter browns. Once the butter has browned, season with salt and pepper and turn of the heat. Add the lemon juice. Spoon the sauce over the raviolis, top with a little parmesan and then enjoy the fruits of your labor!

Categories
Recipes

devil’s food cupcakes with chocolate ganache glaze

Let’s talk about ganache, shall we? Ganache is a wonderfully simple (just three ingredients!) chocolate glaze for cakes, cupcakes and cookies alike. It is really easy to make, and also really easy to screw up. Until very recently, my ganache success rate was 50/50. Not fabulous odds when you’re an emotional cook. Fortunately, I’ve discovered the key to a (so far) fail-proof ganache.

But before we ganache, we need to make something to put that glaze on. This is where the devil’s food cake cupcakes come in. This recipe is from Martha Stewart Cupcakes, and is quite good. This cupcake plus the ganache has an undeniable Hostess Cupcake quality … all that’s missing is the little white swirl and survive-a-nuclear-war-strength preservatives.

Devil’s Food Cupcakes with Chocolate Ganache Glaze, from Martha Stewart Cupcakes
For the cupcakes
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
3/4 cup hot water
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 t baking soda
1 t baking powder
1 1/4 t coarse salt
1 1/2 cups butter
2 1/4 cups sugar
4 eggs, room temperature
1 T plus 1 t vanilla
1 cup sour cream, at room temperature

Preheat an oven to 350 degrees. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Whisk together cocoa powder and water. In another bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

Melt butter and sugar in a saucepan over low heat stirring to combine. Once combined, pour into a mixing bowl. On low speed, beat mixture until it has cooled, 4 – 5 minutes. Add eggs one at a time and mix to combine. Add vanilla and then cocoa mixture. Alternate adding flour mixture and sour cream until just combined. spoon into muffin tins and bake 15 – 20 minutes. Cool and then frost.

For the chocolate ganache glaze
6 oz semi-sweet chocolate (chips or cut into small chunks)
2/3 cup heavy cream
1 T light corn syrup (for shine)

Place chocolate in a small heat-safe bowl. In a small saucepan, heat cream and corn syrup over low heat until just simmering. It is crucial that the cream not get too hot – if the cream is too hot it will burn the chocolate and you’ll get a grainy ganache. If you accidentally forget about your cream while it is heating, take it off the heat and let it cool significantly before you pour over the chocolate.

Pour the hot cream over the chocolate. Let it sit for 5 minutes to melt the chocolate. Using a spatula, gently stir chocolate and cream until smooth and combined. Start at the center of the bowl working your way towards the edge, mixing as you go.  The mixture should be smooth and glossy.

Dip the top of each cooled cupcake into the ganache and set on a rack to firm up slightly before serving.

-Emily

Categories
Queso Chronicles Recipes

homemade creme fraiche

Cream, butter, cheese … oh, how I love them all. Today, let’s talk about creme fraiche, or french mature cream as Julia Child describes it. Creme fraiche is extremely versatile because it doesn’t separate when heated and it has a mild flavor that is still more distinct than heavy cream. Here at Chez Jojonoodle we use it quite often, but creme fraiche can’t always be found and is often expensive because it’s considered a specialty product. Thankfully, Julia Child noticed a similar phenomenon back in the 50s and included a recipe in her cookbook for making creme fraiche at home.  I decided it was time to plunge in.

Now, I’m about to tell you to do the most un-American of things, but stay with me. (After all, Julia Child told me to do it). First, heat some cream to a perfect bacteria-multiplying temperature of 85 degrees. And then let that sit out overnight at room temperature.

Homemade Creme Fraiche, from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking
1 cup heavy cream
1 t buttermilk

In a small saucepan, heat the cream and buttermilk to just under 85 degrees. Pour into a jar and loosely cover. Let sit out at room temperature (75 – 65 degrees) overnight, until thickened. Cover and refrigerate. Use on anything … from soups to crostini,  pizza to desserts. Strawberries and creme fraiche anyone?!?


Just try it … you won’t regret having this stuff on hand (even if it freaks you out to leave dairy at room temperature)!

-Emily

Categories
Recipes

homemade sandwich bread

Jordan was on a bread kick for a while, making all kinds of delicious breads from Rose Levy Beranbaum’s The Bread Bible. Sadly, his bread baking has declined since he is super busy being an awesome student. I decided to pick up the torch when my friend Andrea recommended a fail-proof sandwich bread recipe that she’s been making for the past few weeks. I like fail-proof, especially when there is hours of rising time on the line.

This recipe is from Farmgirl Fare and it details the process and potential pitfalls of bread baking really well. I’d recomend you check out her post if you are new to the homemade bread world.

Farmhouse White, a classic sandwich bread by Farmgirl Fare

4 cups all-purpose flour (I used Whole Foods 365 brand)
1 1/2 T instant yeast (I used Fleischmann’s Active Dry Yeast)
2 T granulated or brown sugar
2 T melted butter
4 cups milk, warmed to 85 degrees
About 6 cups bread flour (I used King Arthur Bread Flour – King Arthur makes quality flours and I recommend them)
1 1/2 T salt

Mix together the all-purpose flour, yeast and sugar in a large bowl. Make a well in the middle of the mixture  and pour in the warm milk and melted butter. Mix well. Continue to stir vigorously slowing adding the bread flour one cup at a time, until you have added 3  – 4 cups and have a sticky, shaggy dough. Cover with a damp tea towel and let rest for 20 minutes.

Walk your whiny dog who can’t understand why you are putzing around in the kitchen when at this hour you should be walking her to the park.

Add the salt and 1 more cup of the bread flour. Stir as best you can. Add a bit more flour if the dough seems too sticky to knead. Turn the dough onto a floured surface and knead with floured hands for 8 – 10 minutes. Your arms will get very tired, but you will find an awesome slapping-dough-into-counter-rhythm that will allow you to confidently turn down the assistance of your much stronger boyfriend.

Place the dough in a clean, oiled bowl and dust the top with flour. Cover with a tea towel and let rise for 60 – 75 minutes in a warm place. I used the oven with pans of boiling water inside technique developed when I made cinnamon rolls and it worked very well.

Grease 3 loaf pans (I used two glass pans and one metal pan without issue). Turn the dough onto a floured counter. Divide into 3 equal balls and pat into loaf-like shapes. Put the dough in the loaf pans and dust with flour. Cover with a tea towel and let them rise for another 40 – 60 minutes. They are ready to go into the oven when you poke a floured finger into the dough and it springs back just a little.

Preheat an oven to 375 degrees. Bake the loaves for 35 minutes until they are golden brown. Remove the loaves from their pans immediately and allow to cool on a rack for 40 minutes. Store at room temperature in a bag or in the freezer wrapped tightly in plastic wrap.

This bread is good. It has a great crumb and a mild taste. It makes great peanut butter sandwiches and awesome grilled cheese sandwiches. It contains just a few normal ingredients, not a ton of weird gums and preservatives like store-bought sandwich breads. Now that I have the classic recipe down, I am excited to try a few variations … maybe adding some whole grain flours or sourdough bread starter.

-Emily

Categories
Recipes

meet kiwi kombucha

Let me introduce you to Kiwi, my first foray into fermenting. Kiwi is my kombucha starter, also know as a mother. I started brewing my first batch of kombucha about 3 weeks ago.

Kombucha is a fermented tea drink that supposedly has significant health benefits because of the live active cultures that it contains. I’d never tried it until my friend Noah introduced me to the beverage about a month ago. Noah is also a home-brewer. While I can’t say much about the health benefits, I can say that I find kombucha pretty tasty. It is bubbly, sour, a little vinegary and very refreshing. And since I am pretty into doing things from scratch, I decided why not brew my own.

The first step was aquiring a mother. My friend Noah said (and I’m paraphrasing here) that hippies all over Berkely just give their mothers away. Logically I turned to Craigslist. I found a girl in my neighborhood who was offering kombucha starters free to a good home. I hopped over to her house with my 1 gallon glass jar (purchased from Sur Le Table for $11 if you’re in the market) and she gave me a mother and about 12 oz of starter liquid from her previous batch.

Note: The kombucha mother is freaky looking creature. It is pinky orange and gelatinous. It is very similar to the washed-up jelly fish that you see when you’re walking on the beach. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

When I got back home, I brewed a large batch of strong tea. The ratio should be about 90% new tea to 10% kombucha starter liquid. To the tea I added 1 cup of white sugar. The kombucha bacteria feed on the sugar during the fermentation proccess. Then I let the tea cool overnight to room temperature.

The next morning I poured this sweetened tea mixture into my glass jar with the kombucha mother and starter liquid inside. Then I covered the jar with cheesecloth – it is important that the mother can breath – and put the jar in my hall closet to let my little bacteria cultures get down to business.

Kiwi had been hanging out in my dark closet for about a two and half weeks. After about one week, the brew started to smell less like tea and more like kombucha. Kiwi also seriously grew inside that jar. She now looks like a membrane tornado! (Wow, that sounds gross. But it is really cool, I swear).

It can take anywhere from 1 week to 3 weeks to brew a batch of kombucha. After about one week, I began dipping a spoon into the brew and tasting. I tried it every 3 days, until it had reached my desired kombucha strength and effervescence. Jordan was scared – the kombucha mother just got freakier looking as it grew – and he finally tried my brew for the first time last night. Once it reached the desired level of fermentyness, I poured most of the kombucha into bottles to refrigerate, leaving enough liquid to start another batch. I think my next batch will be a mixture of green and black tea.

My first experiment with fermentation was a success! Jordan says now it’s his turn to ferment – I think this means home-brewed beer is in our futures.

And a final note: this kombucha is strong in flavor – much stronger than the store-bought varieties. If you like the strong, natural flavor of kombucha, home-brewing is for you! And if you prefer a more mild flavor, cut the kombucha with some juice, soda water or ginger ale.

-Emily

Categories
Recipes

baking therapy: homemade graham crackers

Our good friend Jeff made these homemade graham crackers from Smitten Kitchen and brought them oven for us the other weekend. They were so good that Jordan and I ate the entire bag of them in a few hours. I decided to try to recreate the magic on Sunday.

Sadly, my grahams did not turn out nearly as perfect as Jeff’s. I overcooked one batch and undercooked the other. While the undercooked batch was still tasty, they lacked the satisfying graham cracker crunch we all know and love. Still, I’d recommend the recipe, because when these turn out well they blow store bought graham crackers out of the water!

Visit Deb’s recipe here and follow her advice, since I can’t yet stand behind mine.

Homemade Graham Crackers, in photos

-Emily