North Again – the Tradition Continues

[Kerry Beal]

For work today - a Kuchen. Big honking raisins, some apricot preserves between the two layers and a rather disappointing crumb on the top. I should have worked in some more butter so the crumb was bigger.

Still working on the filling for the snobinette cups for the Luxury Chocolate show - this is a ganache made with Cacao Barry Mexique and margarita flavours. It's a bit in your face - I need to see if it balances out when it's in a cup topped with some milk chocolate. All I've got up here to work with is limade concentrate in a can but that seems to replace the lime puree reasonably well.

[Kerry Beal]

Cheesy goodness - toasted cheddar cheese bread, topped with Anna's homemade feta to which I have added some dill, parsley, chives, garlic and black pepper. I might be a tad garlicy offensive to some this morning!

[SylviaLovegren]

Cheesy goodness - toasted cheddar cheese bread, topped with Anna's homemade feta to which I have added some dill, parsley, chives, garlic and black pepper. I might be a tad garlicy offensive to some this morning!

Now that is my kind of breakfast.

[Anna N]

Today seemed like a good day to determine what needed to be used up. There were leftover leeks, a potato, carrots that would soon be over the hill and a half bottle of expensive carrot juice.

The leeks and potato became soup making use of some MCAH vegetable stock supplemented by a cup or so of MCAH chicken stock.

Kerry just had time for a bowl of leek and potato soup before rushing back to work.

The carrots and carrot juice became more MCAH caramelized carrot soup. Must say that the more often you make it the less daunting it becomes. It is soup weather so I am sure it will be eaten.

Kerry dropped into the grocery store at lunch time and procured some chicken thighs and 3+ lbs of pork belly.

The chicken thighs are destined to become tonight's dinner as part of Roast Chicken with Caramelized Shallots from David Lebovitz' blog and will use up a bunch of shallots I brought with me.

The pork belly will become Pork Adobo from MCAH tomorrow.

[dhardy123]

The pork belly will become Pork Adobo from MCAH tomorrow.

Anna

here is a suggestion from Johnny Zhu regarding the Pork Adobo from MCAH:

http://egullet.org/p1894146

[rotuts]

am I looking forward to your take on the P.A from MC@H.

I havent made it to the Chinese grocery yet to get the belly, but thats the first Id like to make.

if it works out, Ill try to make one with orange peel and chinese hot peppers.

Good Luck!

Edited October 23, 2012 by rotuts (log)

[Anna N]

The pork belly will become Pork Adobo from MCAH tomorrow.

Anna

here is a suggestion from Johnny Zhu regarding the Pork Adobo from MCAH:

http://egullet.org/p1894146

I am, of course, closely following that topic but thanks for the heads up. I would surely have missed that useful observation.

[Anna N]

Tonight's drink, made and photographed by Kerry:

Don't give up the ship.

[Kerry Beal]

Thank you to FrogPrincesse for the drink suggestion.

Working on the filling for the chocolates - I made the margarita filling - enrobed in milk chocolate. Anna seems to think I'm a slob for some strange reason.

See the frog mold there - it is now filled with Miso Butter filling. I took some of the leftover miso butter from dinner, added it to some milk chocolate and used it for a filling. Very tasty with milk chocolate.

[Kerry Beal]

Miso Frogs were very tasty - chocolatey salty goodness.

We are getting closer with the rotovap - right now I need a couple of pieces of tubing of the right size. Got to figure out where I'm going to find those around here. I know I've got some chest tube tubing in the ER but I think it's a bit small, and not the slightest bit flexible which makes it hard to jam onto a piece of glass.

[Beth Wilson]

Ok, the Rotovap looks very interesting, and I am wondering, what does it do? What is the plan for it this trip?

The Wahl Water guys on the Island might have some flexible tubing for you, they installed the reverse osmosis system at the Chocolate Works. I think they are located in Tekuhmah.

Can't wait to see what you guys cook up next :-)

[Kerry Beal]

Thanks for the heads up on the Wahl Water guys - I may find myself forced to give them a call.

It's a still basically - but it distills under vacuum and with a heat source under the charge. The vacuum allows you to distill at much lower temperatures than a traditional still. The roto part of it turns the charge in the heat source so that more surface area is available for evaporation.

The plan this trip is just to try it out and get it up and running. I brought some dried violet flowers along and might try a hydrodistillation of the essential oil from them. We, of course, would not use it to distill alcohol because that is illegal.

[Beth Wilson]

Flower hydrodistillation sounds interesting. Will it take essences from other things like vanilla bean or ginger? Would it make a highly concentrated flavour then?

Anna, that cheese looks yummy! Is there a favourite book or site you are using for your technique? I have always wanted to make my own cheeses and feta would be nice to know how to do. Someday, I am going to make my own too!

[Tri2Cook]

We, of course, would not use it to distill alcohol because that is illegal.

Perish the thought!

[Anna N]

Flower hydrodistillation sounds interesting. Will it take essences from other things like vanilla bean or ginger? Would it make a highly concentrated flavour then?

Anna, that cheese looks yummy! Is there a favourite book or site you are using for your technique? I have always wanted to make my own cheeses and feta would be nice to know how to do. Someday, I am going to make my own too!

Beth, I use Home Cheese Making by Ricki Carroll and Artisan Cheese Making at Home by Ed Anderson & Mary Karlin. The feta was from the Anderson book.

[Kerry Beal]

You can distill all sorts of things to make essential oils - the one I've purchased that I've never been happy with is ginger - and I'll bet doing it myself won't make a difference. I suspect there are compounds in ginger that distill and compounds that are left behind in the aqueous phase - and the ones that distill don't taste very good without the other ones.

[ElsieD]

A bit late to be asking this, but Anna, why were you disappointed in the pizza dough? Was it the dough itself or the thickness of the dough as used in the pizza? I am slowly getting my ingredients together to start cooking from MC@H and that dough is on my to try list.

[Anna N]

Last night's dinner was quite satisfactory:

Roasted chicken with caramelized shallots and bok choy. The bok choy was done in a bowl in the m/w covered in plastic wrap - in other words not in a plastic bag as before. It is dressed with miso butter.

Today I began the pork adobo from MCAH. While the grated onion and crushed garlic sweated in the open pressure cooker, I tackled the mise en place:

And here is the result of step one:

It is being cooled in a sinkful of water and then I will bung it into the fridge to give the flavours a chance to become acquainted.

(I was grating the onions by hand, a miserable task sure to need boxes and boxes of bandaids, when Kerry suggested the FP with the grating blade! Brilliant.)

Kerry, who is currently slaving in emerg, has made up the MCAH noodle dough which she will put through the pasta machine and I will make up a sauce so we can have Khai Soy tonight.

Edited to try to fix an issue with images. Succeeded in losing one!

Edited October 24, 2012 by Anna N (log)

[Anna N]

A bit late to be asking this, but Anna, why were you disappointed in the pizza dough? Was it the dough itself or the thickness of the dough as used in the pizza? I am slowly getting my ingredients together to start cooking from MC@H and that dough is on my to try list.

It was actually Kerry who expressed disappointment with the dough so I will let her answer.

[rotuts]

thanks for so many pics ( so far )

[Kerry Beal]

A bit late to be asking this, but Anna, why were you disappointed in the pizza dough? Was it the dough itself or the thickness of the dough as used in the pizza? I am slowly getting my ingredients together to start cooking from MC@H and that dough is on my to try list.

It was actually Kerry who expressed disappointment with the dough so I will let her answer.

I found it a bit tough. I think if it was made cracker thin and cured for a couple of days that it would make an excellent thin pizza crust - but done as thick as we did - it was disappointingly hard on the teeth.

[Anna N]

Tonight Kerry rolled, cut and cooked the egg noodles from MCAH and we both decided they were a resounding success:

The dough was easy to work with and the noodles toothsome without being in the least bit tough.

We had them with some khai soi sauce which was like 5-alarm chili and we may live to regret it:

It was so hot coming in one fears what will happen going out!

The flat bread that Kerry hoped to make from the Neapolitan pizza dough was decidely less successful. We tried it with zatar and with sesame seeds but in the end we did the kind thing and buried in the trash.

No drink for Kerry as she is on call but I am working on my second negroni.

[Kerry Beal]

So this morning - decided to follow FrogPrincesse's suggestion of Croquant cookies - looked up the recipe and found a variation that someone had done with chocolate. Had a couple of egg whites that had been tucked in the freezer and brought those out to thaw yesterday. I remember thinking when I put the egg whites in the container with the others - I wonder if that really is egg whites or is it lemon juice. Anyway - it was lemon juice. So my egg whites weren't to usable.

Separated two eggs for their whites - replaced the flour by weight with cocoa - wrong! Added two more egg whites, some toasted hazelnuts and almonds . Made for some pretty hardy little croquants. But one of the nurses thought they were the best thing since sliced bread. Everybody else enjoyed the tea cake with rum that Anna had made the other day.

So now I have 4 yolks in the fridge - so I'm making a Crostada using the 4 yolks in place of one whole egg and one yolk.

[Kerry Beal]

The Crostada hot out of the oven.

[Beth Wilson]

I love the look of that pie......makes me want one