Reciprocity for recipients of RECIPES

[girl]

Quick question: Normally when I make dark chocolate truffles, I use Chambord, but I don't actually have any Chambord in the house. They'd be good with whiskey, right?

Why not!  I usually use Grand Marnier (or Triple Sec if I'm doing it "budget-style"), but I made my last batch with Irish Cream. For the most part, it seems like dark chocolate is a strong enough flavor that it's hard to go wrong when mixing it with alcohols.

I caved and bought a small bottle of Chambord, but since I managed to find chocolate in two 1/2 lb blocks, I'm gonna divide the recipe in half and try half with whiskey. I think they'll be good. Jameson should have a mild enough flavor to blend with the chocolate. The other thought I had was to use a nice chocolate stout, but I'm not sure you can substitute beer for liquor.

[milesofsparks]

tonight I made halibut tacos

cut fish into strips

marinade in cumin/lime/oil/salty goodness

Bake

put in taco shell with cheese and spinach. 

consume.


I was also feeling like a nice little housewife today so I baked us up a Pecan Pie from scratch.  My mom has a pecan tree and she gave me a big bag of em, so I spent about a half hour shelling the little bastards. 

Corn syrup+butter+vanilla extract+eggs

I used a cooking light recipe which involved oatmeal!

can I come over for dinner?  pretty please?

also--gregnog--didja get my email?  you can borrow the ice cream maker and the ice cream cook book anytime, but it's the kind that requires bags of ice and rock salt, though it is electric.  call me if you want it.

in re salt--just two different brands of fleur de sel.  I also have Maldon sea salt which I highly recommend.  and altantic grey salt, which is related.  also hawaiian red salt.  and some others I'm forgetting.  

I'm gonna get veganomicon yet, but I will before the week is out, which will hopefully lead to much cooking.

[Greg Nog]

I also have Maldon sea salt which I highly recommend.

I ended up buying that one!  It seemed to be the same idea as the French fleur de sel, bu with the added bonus of being harvested from more Northerly climes.  Thanks for the ice-cream-maker offer also, but I think I'm pretty much in for the night, now.  If I try to make the ice cream this evening, I'll probably do so by Ye Olde Coffeee Can method.

And update on the cheese: it's good, but the taste is disappointingly mild in comparison to its smell.  Still, not too bad.  I bet it'd be great in a grilled cheese sandwich alongside roasted garlic.

[Bernard]

Have you ever tried Ye Olde Liquide Nitrogene method?

[heather marie]

I'm gonna get veganomicon yet, but I will before the week is out, which will hopefully lead to much cooking.

oh man, i don't have it (yet) but i've looked at a million flickr pictures featuring recipes from it and they look SO. GODDAMN. GOOD. i'll have to get it soon!

[alex]

I realise most of you measure your ingredients quite differently, so I don't know how much use this is going to be for anyone, but at the very least putting it here will make sure I have access to the recipe when I visit edison next week and bake this again. It's a very chocolatety kind of chocolate kind, with a consistency not totally unlike brownies. I believe my mother made up the recipe (on paper, not by trying it out) out of a combination of different recipes/reminiscences of previous similar cakes last week when I asked her for a recipe for a cake for my friend Stephan's birthday, who only likes cakes if they're made of chocolate and devoid of cream.

Anyways:

400g chocolate (somewhere around 50-60% cocoa works best)
70g flour
5 eggs, seperated
130g sugar
100g grinded nuts
150g butter, cut into pieces
cinnamon, vanilla sugar, rum
butter and breadcrumbs (or flour) for the form; a little bit of lemon juice for whisking the eggwhites

melt chocolate (bain-marie style), put it into a bowl, add in the pieces of butter. Then add sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, rum and eggyolks, mix. Add flour and nuts, a little bit more carefully. Finally, whisk the eggwhites (with a bit of lemon juice) until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

Then, umm, bake. Not too much, because it's actually quite tasty if it's still a bit soft inside.

Oh, when I say "mix", I mean this piece of equipment, for which I can't find the English term:

(Schneebesen in German, for those keeping track. Yes, that means "snowbrush" literally, because if you whisk an egg white until it's stiff, the result is referred to as Schnee or Eischnee (eggsnow) in German. Although personally, I prefer the use of electricity when whisking eggwhites.)

[YojimboMonkey]

whisk

It's a noun in addition to being a verb

(by which I mean that's what I usually call that piece of equipment, a whisk.  or a wire whisk.)

[alex]

Thanks, Jim! I thought maybe whisker, but when I used the google image search to test my hypothesis, all I got was pictures of cats and this:



"Whisk" somehow didn't occur to me. Of course, keep in mind that I had to look up "bowl" when I wrote that post...

[das kranke Tier]

Well that right there should be reward enough for looking it up!

[coldforge]

well, while we're on the english help tip, i would be remiss not to note that the past participle of 'grind' is 'ground'. ablaut!

[Greg Nog]

Which is why it's grammatically correct to say, "Pook had been listening to ground core."

[Greg Nog]

Also, that cake looks like it would go marvellously well with the salted caramel ice cream.  Maybe I'll make both at once!

Last night, I made a chocolate-chip cookie that was as big as a pizza.  I was gonna post a picture, but I didn't want jeb to get jealous.

[Gracelette]

I realise most of you measure your ingredients quite differently

Not me! Cos me? I think volume is a crazy way to measure easily compressed ingredients like flour. Indeed, after last week's disastrous shortbread attempt, I have decided to boycott any recipes that use volume to measure things whose volume varies so widely.

It's a very chocolatety kind of chocolate kind, with a consistency not totally unlike brownies.

I hope to make this at the weekend, assuming I get round to making rum truffles thanks to this thread because apparently I am just that suggestible (thank you girl and Greg Nog!).
 

[alex]

Yep, I actually figured you'd be most likely to be making use of the recipe, Grace. Certainly do report back if you try it!

And Zach (honest) thanks for the grammar lesson. And thanks to Greg for the demonstrative example of an application.

[milesofsparks]

Not me! Cos me? I think volume is a crazy way to measure easily compressed ingredients like flour. Indeed, after last week's disastrous shortbread attempt, I have decided to boycott any recipes that use volume to measure things whose volume varies so widely.

which is why old style recipies make you sift the flour.  I just flooof it up in the bag with a spoon then measure carefully whithout squishing it, cleanly cutting across the top with a knife.  makes it pretty precise, though of course I only bother for things like bread where it might make a big difference.
 
edited to fix my idiocy

[Greg Nog]

Hey, do you have any rough suggestions for temperatures or cooking times?  The "cook it a little bit" is vague enough to make me worried I could fuck it up fairly easily.

[alex]

Well, the problem is that the oven I tried it in is a bit fucked up in its temperature measuring (it gets too hot too easily), but somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes at around 160°C should probably be fine on most ovens. If the dough comes off at the edge of the form a bit, that's a good sign that it's done.

What I did was almost burn it during the first 10 minutes, then turn it off for a few minutes, turn it on again at low temperature for another few minutes, and it still turned out great, so I imagine it's fairly difficult to fuck up.

[Greg Nog]

Well, all right!  I look forward to trying this!

[Andrew_TSKS]

Which is why it's grammatically correct to say, "Pook had been listening to ground core."

now i'm trying to figure out what "ground core" would sound like.

i'm pretty sure i'd like it.

[milesofsparks]

I just brought Veganomicon home from the bookstore.  just browsing through it on the subway made me love it.  I can already tell my other 50 cookbooks are gonna be hella jealous.

EDIT:  also just added her blog to my aggregator.

[milesofsparks]

also, farm sanctuary is having an online auction and, if you're feeling flush, you could bid on having Chandra Moskowitz cook dinner at your house.  sometimes I wish I were rich.

[jebreject]

greg give me your cookie it are belong to me

[El_Josharino]

I made a great big raspberry cheesecake today. I think it's pretty tasty.

[FreddyKnuckles]

dude I'll mail you a pie if you mail me a pie

[YojimboMonkey]

I want some cookies.  Will trade beer or mead.