It’s important to note here that we deviated from the traditional Thai recipe and methodology. This is a kid-friendly recipe, which dramatically cuts down on the “hot” and ramps up the peanut. Kids have so many more tastebuds than adults that they taste things more dramatically. Also, traditionally, the chicken is skewered and grilled, with the sauce served on the side, whereas I pan sauteed everything in one pan. We served it on a bed of jasmine rice, which complimented it very nicely.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound skinless, boneless chicken (we used breasts, traditional recipe uses thigh)
• 1/2 tsp hot chili powder (more or less to taste)
• 1/2 tsp brown sugar
• 1 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 1 tbsp veggie oil
• 1 sweet onion (we used purple)
• 1 clove garlic
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 4 tbsp extra crunchy peanut butter
• pinch of salt
• 1 tsp cumin (ground)
• 1 tsp coriander (ground)
• 5 tbsp water
• (fresh lemongrass if you’ve got it…but don’t kill yourself trying to find it if you don’t live near an Asian market.)

Directions:

(If making rice; start it first, it’ll take longer than the rest of the prep.)

Dice your onions, and garlic, then cut your chicken into 1 or 2″ cubes.  (For sanitary reasons, do the chicken last.)

Heat your oil (I used olive) and sweat the onions and garlic.  (Don’t get them brown (caramelized), just soften them up. Remove them with a slotted spoon, and toss in your chicken to brown, stirring as needed to keep them from sticking or burning.

While the chicken is cooking, combine everything else and wisk until smooth.

When the chicken is fully cooked, reduce heat to a simmer.  Add onion mix back to the pan.  Pour on the sauce, heat until bubbly and slightly reduced.

Serve, and sprinkle with chopped fresh lemongrass (if available).

Voilà, you are done! Easy Americanized Chicken Satay.

Witches Finger Cookie Recipe

Yield: 5 dozen

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup Butter, softened
• 1 Egg
• 1 tsp Almond extract
• 1 tsp Vanilla extract
• 2 2/3 cups Flour
• 1 tsp Salt
• 3/4 cup whole Almonds, blanched
• 2 squares of melting chocolate, or chocolate bark

Combine the sugar, egg, butter, almond extract, and vanilla in a bowl. Mix in the flour, and salt. Cover and refrigerate the dough for about 30 minutes, or until it’s firm.

When you’re ready to shape the cookies, only take out a small portion of the dough at a time. Shape the cookies into fingers by rolling and working with your hands. Score the top of the cookie with a knife or spatula to make it look like the wrinkles in your knuckle. Press an imprint into the tip of the cookie with your finger to make a spot for the almond finger nail. Press an almond into the tip of each finger to look like a fingernail.

Placed on a cooking sheet lightly coated with no-stick cooking spray and bake at 325` for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the cookies are a very light golden brown. Let the cookies cool on a drying rack.

Use melting chocolate to go around the outside of the almond nail, giving a ghoulish appearance. Just melt the chocolate, put it in an icing piping bag, and cut a very small hole in the tip. Then pipe around the nail.

If you use red melting chocolate the look will be even more dramatic, you can also make small drops of chocolate blood, or chocolate cuts on the cookies if you really want to gross out your guests.

Image via stock.xpert, recipe from Linette, recorded here because stuff on the intarwebs tends to go poof in the night, and I didn’t want to lose this recipe.  It’s great fun.

So, in prep for Halloween, I’ve been trying to figure out how to make the little figures that are going to go with the haunted house cake I’m going to bake.

I could use fondant, but it dries really hard, and it doesn’t taste all that great…where as chocolate…well, everything tastes better with chocolate.

I know how to make modeling chocolate with real chocolate, but I was wondering if it was possible to make it with the candy melt disks. Mostly because I have a ton of them, and they come in a wide variety of colors, so that’s a step already eliminated. As it turns out; it works pretty well.

Modeling Chocolate from Candy Melts:

• 7 ounces (200 grams) Candy Melts
• 3 tablespoons light corn syrup

1. Melt the candy in a large pyrex measuring cup in the microwave, 1 minute /half power, then 2 more bursts of 30 secs at half power, stirring at the end of each heating cycle.
2. Grease your measuring spoon with veggie oil or shortening, so the corn syrup will easily slide off.
3. Stir the candy until smooth and lump free, then add the corn syrup. The candy will start to seize almost instantly, but keep stirring until you’ve incorporated all the syrup. You’ll end up with a big blob of warm candy. It’ll have the texture of a tootsie roll. (Well, a warm tootsie roll.)
4. Put your blob in a freezer safe resealable bag and pop it in the fridge. Once your dough is cold, you can take it out, cut off a piece that you want to work with, and knead it until it’s a workable mass.

It’ll be really hard when you first take it out of the fridge. If you have time to let it warm up a bit, it will be easier to work. You can mold it like it were fondant or marzipan. Here’s some pictures at google on the groovy stuff people are doing with modeling chocolate. Wrapped well, you can store this stuff in the fridge for darn near forever.

If you’d rather use real chocolate; here are the ratios for doing that: (keep in mind that for melting chocolate, you may have better results using a double boiler, bain marie, or chocolate pot…although I’ve done it successfully in the microwave; the idea of nuking chocolate tends to make chocolatiers get the vapors.)

Dark Chocolate Modeling Paste:
7 ounces (200 grams) bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1/4 cup (60 ml) light corn syrup

Semi-Sweet Chocolate Modeling Paste:
7 ounces (200 grams) semi-sweet chocolate, chopped
3 1/2 – 4 tablespoons light corn syrup

White Chocolate Modeling Paste:
7 ounces (200 grams) white chocolate, chopped
1 1/2 – 2 tablespoons light corn syrup

Milk Chocolate Modeling Paste:
7 ounces (200 grams) Milk Chocolate
2 1/2 – 3 tablespoons light corn syrup.

I think I’m going to try Montrachet/basil tarts with fresh figs and zucchini pasta with broiled tomatoes from the garden.  I was going to make a zucchini tart, but I think it’s just too busy to put all that stuff in the little teeny tart cups I’m going to make.

I’m going to use phyllo dough; each sheet cut into 6, then layered in three sheets in muffin tins as the base for the tarts, rather than pie crust.  Phyllo has such a nice texture, that I think it will add something to the recipe.

Update:  Phyllo dough…it’s such a pain in the ass once you try cutting it.  It really is.  It’s fine for stuff like baklava or spanakopita, where you’re using big pieces, but good god, what a pain when you’re trying to do little bits.  For me; way more work than it’s worth.

Next time, I’ll just whip out a quick pie crust recipe. Pie crusts are simple, quick and painless, and everyone loves a good flaky pie crust.  The tort recipe I tried was good, but more quiche than tort.  So, the drawing board on these recipes remains open.

Carrot Bread

This experiment turned out so well!

Ingredients:

• 2.25 tsp dry yeast (1 cake yeast)
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 3.5 cups bread flour (500 grams)
• .5 pound grated carrots (250 grams)
• 1 tablespoon melted butter (cooled to room temp)

Directions:

Sprinkle the yeast, then the sugar into .5 cup of water and let proof for 10 minutes.  Stir to dissolve.

Mix the flour and the salt in a large bowl.  Make a well in the center and pour in the dissolved yeast, then add carrots, then add butter.  Mix in the flour from the sides of the well.

Add water, as needed to form a moist (sticky) dough.

Turn dough out onto a lightly floured work surface.  Flour your hands, and knead for 10 minutes.  This dough is super sticky, and you may need to add a tablespoon of flour now and then to hands and surface, but try to not add very much, to avoid a dense bread. The dough will still be sticky at the end of your kneading time…that’s ok.

Put the dough in a lightly buttered/greased bowl and cover with a linen towel.  Let it rise until doubled in size…about 1.5 hours.  Punch down, and let rest for 5-10 minutes.

Shape the dough into a round loaf and place on either a floured baking tray or a parchment lined baking tray.  Cover with a linen towel and let proof until doubled in size…about 45 minutes.

It should look like this:

Carrot bread dough - 2nd rise

Bake in a preheated 400 degree oven (200 degree C).  Steam is optional, but I think it made the crust nicer.  You can add steam either by adding icecubes in a baking pan below the bread, or do what I do, which is to spritz the oven (careful to avoid electrical elements) right after I put the bread in.

Bread should be golden and hollow sounding when tapped underneath.

Cool on an elevated wire rack.

Enjoy!

So, I’ve been working on some new recipes, trying to find the perfect thing for dessert for a big party.  Something that goes with the Sumatra Caviar.  However, the cookies, while wonderful, aren’t the texture I needed.  That said, these are some pretty amazing cookies, so I thought I’d share the recipe.

Ingredients and Preparation instructions behind the cut.

Ingredients

1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/4 cup butter, softened
2 tablespoons molasses
1 large egg white
1/4 cup granulated sugar

Preparation
Combine first 6 ingredients in a bowl, and stir well. Set aside. Place brown sugar, butter, molasses, and egg white in a standing mixer and process until blended. Add dry ingredients to mixer, a half a cup at a time.  Mix until blended, dough will be stiff. Gently press mixture into a ball; wrap in plastic wrap. Chill 2 hours (or overnight).

Preheat oven to 350°.

Shape dough into 40 (3/4-inch) balls. (Or use a #100 scoop)  Place granulated sugar in a bowl. Dip balls in cold water; shake to remove excess moisture. Roll wet balls in sugar. Place 3 inches apart on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Bake  for 8 -10 minutes. (See note)  Let sit on sheet for 2 minutes, then remove from pan; let cool on a wire rack.

(Note: I have a professional grade convection oven, and these cookies take about 7 minutes in my oven…I’m estimating that it should take no longer than 10 minutes in a conventional oven, but you may want to keep an eye on the first batch and note the time it takes till they are golden brown and puffy.)

So good, so good you see.  They’re cakey and soft and chewy and wonderful.  Yum.

This is a fantastic summer soup. It’s one of the rare soups that good served hot or cold. While cold soups have never made much inroad in American cuisine, it’s a worthwhile experiment during the dog days of summer.

Ingredients and directions behind the cut.

Ingredients

nocoupons

• 4 tablespoons butter
• 2 cups chopped leeks, white and light green parts (2 leeks)
• 1 cup chopped purple onion
• 4 cups vegetable stock, preferably homemade
• 5 cups freshly shelled peas or 2 (10-ounce) packages frozen peas
• 1 cup chopped fresh mint leaves, loosely packed
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup creme fraiche

Directions:

Heat 1/2 the butter in a large saucepan, add the leeks and onion, and cook over medium-low heat for 5 to 10 minutes, until the onion is tender. Add the stock, increase the heat to high, and bring to a boil. Add the peas and cook for 3 to 5 minutes, until the peas are tender. (Frozen peas will take only 3 minutes.) Off the heat, add the mint, salt, and pepper.

Break out your trusty stick blender, and puree your peas into submission.  (You could do it in a blender, but why get it dirty?) Once your emulsion is the texture you desire, fold in the remaining butter.

Dollop in the crème fraîche and taste for seasoning.

Cheesecake with Bing Cherry Sauce

The store had bing cherries on sale, and we brought a couple pounds home, only to find that they needed to be used asap.

So…what better use for cherries than cheesecake! Everyone loves a good cheesecake. Heck, folks love a bad cheesecake, but a good one is even better.

When making cheesecake, I use a 7″ x 4″ inch spring-form pan, because I prefer fluffy tall cheesecake, rather than dense, short cheesecake. But this recipe can be used in a 9″ x 2″ pie pan just as easily.

Preheat oven to 350

Crust:

• 1 1/2 cups graham crackers
• 6 tablespoons melted butter
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract (optional)

Melt butter, stir together with dry ingredients and extract, press into bottom of spring form, or over entire pie shell or cake form if you prefer lots of crust. (I use about half this amount, because I don’t like a lot of crust, just enough to keep the filling from leaking out of the spring-form pan.)

Filling:

• 2 eggs
• 1 lb cream cheese (not the whipped kind), softened
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
• lemon zest to taste

Cream eggs, sugar, salt and vanilla together.  Add cream cheese and beat until smooth.  Set your mixer to medium, and whip the ingredients for 3 minutes.

Baking:

• For the tall spring-form pan, bake for about 40 minutes or until filling is set and a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. For a 9″ pie pan, check at 20 minutes, and then every 5 minutes until set.

• In a springform pan, while the cake is still warm, run a cool, clean knife around the inside perimeter of the pan, so that when the cake cools and contracts, it doesn’t crack.

• Cool to room temp, then refrigerate.

At serving, top with cherry sauce – recipe below: (This is the same method you use to make pie filling, although you need to double or triple the recipe to fill a whole pie shell.)

Cherry Sauce:

• Pit and stem 4 cups of cherries.

In a deep saucepan, combine

• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch or arrowroot
• dash of salt
• 1/3 cup water

Stir in cherries. Cook and stir until thick and bubbly.

Cook and stir for 1-2 minutes more, then remove from heat, cover and let cool without stirring.