Fun times with Kaila and Benson

This past week, Benson (my boyfriend, visiting from California for a wedding) and I went up to Waltham for a couple days to visit a friend from undergrad, Kaila. I lived with her for two years while I was at Brandeis University, in a house with 5 girls total, including us. And I miss her cooking, she's a great cook. All three of us, in fact, quite enjoy cooking and eating well, so we made a very nice feast on Tuesday night. Again, a good way to bond and chat with people, with a delicious result. First, the main course.

My co-chefs, Benson and Kaila

Chicken Cordon Bleu, as found on that very useful site, allrecipes.
6 chicken breasts
6 slices of sliced cheese
6 slices of ham
3 tbs of flour
1 tsp paprika
a handful of breadcrumbs (not in the recipe, but we added it anyway)
3 tbs butter
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup white wine
1 or 2 bouillon cubes
1 tbs cornstarch
1 cup whipping cream

We altered this recipe a bit, namely in our cooking method and the addition of breadcrumbs, but I think it turned out really nicely (we also halved it). Mix the flour and paprika (and we added some breadcrumbs), which will make up the crust of your chicken. Pound out the chicken breasts flat. Lay the cheese and the ham up in a roll, securing with toothpicks. Then roll in the egg, and bread with the crumb mixture. Next, pan fry the chicken packets in butter until they're nicely browned, and bake at 350F for 20-30 minutes, until fully cooked.

Meanwhile, for the sauce, mix the cornstarch and cream in a small bowl, and add to the skillet with the wine and a bouillon cube. Stir constantly until the cube dissolves (as cream can be finicky), and taste to see if you want a stronger chicken flavor - if so, add another bouillon cube. You want to cook this on medium-low heat until it has thickened into a nice saucy consistency. Then, when both sauce and chicken are complete, serve: pour the sauce over the chicken (or allow each person to do that on their own). Watch out for the toothpicks! It might be a good idea to remove those before serving to guests, or at very least warn them!

As sides, we also made Mashed Potatoes and Pan Roasted Parsnips. The potatoes were from scratch, and pretty straightforward (peel, cube, and boil potatoes; mash with butter, milk, salt and pepper until the right consistency and seasoning is reached! Add a bit of garlic for fun.) Similarly, the parsnips were another simple and delicious vegetable. If you haven't tried parsnips, they're really simple and easy to make. They look like giant albino carrots, and have a wonderful nuttiness to them. Here, we just peeled them and sliced them thin, and cooked them with a bit of butter, salt and pepper. Couldn't be more simple, couldn't be more delicious. An interesting and tasty vegetable! We also made Gruyere Cheese Gougeres (aka, cheese puffs), a recipe from the French Laundry Cookbook, but I think I'll save those for another post. They're a bit complicated, and French Laundry deserves it's own place to shine, really, it's a great book.


Finally, for dessert, we made:

Apples Pielettes (Cup-pies!)
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
3 TBS salted butter
1/4 cup apple juice
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 tsp apple pie spice - aka some cinnamon, and a pinch each of cloves and allspice, with, in our case, a bit of nutmeg as well. Kaila cooking ALWAYS involves nutmeg!
1 tbs cornstarch
8 soft caramel candies
3 baking apples, pealed, cored, and chopped into 1/2 inch pieces

Crust:
2 11-oz boxes of pie crust mix
1/2 cup water
1 egg, beaten

Anyways, you want to put the sugar, butter, apple juice, cream, spices, cornstarch and caramel in a pot on medium heat, so that everything melts all together, stirring constantly. Then add in the apples, and bring to a boil. Simmer for 8-10 minutes - you want the apples to still hold the shape, but the sauce to be thick and syrupy. Then remove from heat and set aside. This is delicious, and if you have leftovers, you can do what we did and make french toast the following morning and have this as the topping!

A dough blender

Heat the oven to 425F, then make up the pie crust. We actually used Kaila's pie crust recipe instead of the box kind: 3 cups flour, 1 tsp salt, and 1 cup crisco, and a bit of water to keep it sticking together, all smashed together with a dough blender (NOT electronic, though it sounds that way!). Usually, I admit, when I make pies or quiche I use the pillsbury frozen ready made pie crust doughs - the crust isn't pre-baked, it's still dough form so you can shape it a bit, and you can bake it exactly as required by the recipe, and that's just fine. They're pretty tasty. But I have been thinking I want to try my hand at making actual crust, especially as it's fairly straightforwards. If you have your own recipe for crust, you want enough for a two crust pie. So just make that up, and divide in half. Take one half, then roll it out to 1/4 to 1/8 thickness.  Using a 4 inch cookie cutter (or the rim of a 13-oz coffee can), cut out 6 circles which you put in the bottom of a cupcake pan as the bottom of the cup-pies, then cut out 6 smaller 2 3/4  circles (with a glass rim, perhaps), which you'll use as the top. Then repeat this with the OTHER half of the dough, for an even dozen.

Fill each of the up pie crusts with the filling, and put the tiny circles on top, pinching all around the rim to seal them - make sure they're sealed tight! then slice a few slivers through the pie crust tops so they can vent (in decorative patterns, preferably!). Brush all over with egg so the crusts are a nice golden brown. Bake for 15 minutes until nice and brown, then remove from the oven. You can remove these from the muffin tin after perhaps about 10 minutes of letting them cool. And then, delicious pie-letts!

Pumpkin Pie-lettes

We liked these so much, the next day we did the whole thing again, only with pumpkin pie filling, instead. Note that if you take a random pie filling recipe, you'll end up with extra filling, so we had to take some dough and make one extra big pie-lette (not shown).

Anyway, Benson and I had a wonderful time visiting Kaila. We didn't JUST cook, naturally, we also walked around Waltham, which is really nice to do, since I DID live there for 4 years; we went to see Wreck-it-Ralph (a lot of fun, worth seeing); we watched some Arrested Development (Kaila hadn't seen it, though Benson and I had); and generally had a nice time. Benson left to go back to California, and I stayed an extra couple of days. And cooked some more, but thats another blog post!

Dinner is served!!!

Hurricanes, Hotdogs, and Pie (oh my!)

You might think that me leaving New York for a week has apparently reaped some unexpected benifits - namely, missing the worst of Hurricane Sandy. New York was, after all, hit much harder than Baltimore. However, my apartment in NYC did not have any outages or flooding, whereas my parents' home in Baltimore did not quite escape unscathed. We have two separate power lines connected to the house, apparently, and ONE of them was hit. Which means that most of the upstairs is without power. The downstairs is almost entirely unaffected - save for the odd outlet. It's pretty easy to work around, honestly - my father was able to simply use an extension cord so that the fridge and stove were powered by a different, working outlet. No flooding at all, and the hot water is running just fine. However, we have no heat. It is not overly chilly for this time of year, but it does feel a bit.. brisk, especially at night and first thing in the morning. But it's easy enough to bundle up in an extra sweater and sleep in a sleeping bag, so I'd rather have hot water than heat in this situation. Plus, lack of heat means that we've had the excuse to use our fireplace, all day! Which resulted in last night's dinner: hotdogs and s'mores, roasted over the fire, of course! So all's well that ends well.

For that good charcoal flavor

The perfect crispy brown roast.

In other cozy, stuck-in-the-house-all-day news, it also seemed appropriate to carve the pumpkin. In the past, I've done my fair share of elaborate pumpkins, but sometimes a more "classic" design is appreciated. So I went with a tried and true design - the one people think of when people think of jack'o'lanterns: triangles everywhere!

Boo!

Not only is it simpler to do this style of pumpkin, but it tends to last better. If you do elaborate carvings with fine details, those details start to curl within a day or so. This design is not going to fade until the pumpkin itself starts to rot. I just did a few marks for guidance (trying to maintain symmetry), then once I cut the basic shapes out, trimmed away a bit of the pumpkin flesh from the inside so that, when lit, the design showed clearly. I think it turned out rather well! Not going to win pumpkin of the year award, but nice.



Besides pumpkins, my family's other Halloween tradition is a wonderful "Halloween Pie" - aka, a delicious French apple tart, which I baked this afternoon.

French Apple Tart
1 sheet frozen puff pastry (defrosted)
3 or 4 large apples, peeled
2 tbs melted butter
2 tbs confectioners' sugar
2 tbs apple jelly

Preheat the oven to 400F. Roll the pastry out with a rolling pin, 11x7 goes to 12x18 inches, flouring the pastry so it doesn't stick to the pan or the rolling pin. Prick a 1-inch border around the crust, and prick all over in the center of the pastry. Now, I always make a picture with my fork prickings, since after all, there's no need to be BORING. This will soon be covered with apples, ne'er to be seen again. If you've ever eaten this pie, I guarentee you I made a picture under it that you never knew about. I've done everything from pictures of my house, to neutron stars with high energy jets, to an attempt at Van Gogh's "Starry Night." This time, you can see my attempt at reproducing the pumpkin I carved earlier.

Now, you'll want to remove the core and seeds of the apple with a melon scoop (or spoon), and thinly slice the apples into pretty crescent shapes. If you happen to have an apple peeler/core-er, you're in luck, and this step becomes much easier: just insert and twist. But there IS something to be said for the old fashioned method, trying to get the apple peel in one long curl. If nothing else, it's a challenge!

Now simply lay out your apples in a lovely and decorative pattern - unlike your fork pattern, this one will be seen - and brush the whole thing generously with butter. Sprinkle confectioners sugar over that, and bake for 20-25 minutes, until the apples are tender and the pastry is puffed and golden. Let the tart cool, then melt the jelly in a saucepan over low heat. This makes a lovely glaze which you can brush over the entire tart, which adds some nice extra apple flavor and makes it look even prettier.

For best results, be sure to chant: "Halloween Pie, Halloween Pie, if I don't get some, I think I'm gonna die!"

The only day each year I can go out as a fairy princess  and no one will think it overly odd... 

Pork Wellington

I'm currently visiting my parents (as is my uncle) just in time for the hurricane. And what is the best thing to do on a day when you don't feel like going out? Cook a delicious meal, of course! And best of all, since I'm making food for four, that means I can go all out and make something LARGE.

One of the things I dislike about living by yourself (or with a roommate who doesn't eat with you much), is that when I cook I have to eat everything myself - which means I get all the leftovers. So my options are 1) cooking things that freeze well; 2) cooking only very small batches of things; or 3) get ready to eat that curry all week long. But when I'm at home, I can do things like roast entire chickens or ducks and other large-scale projects, and then I get to cook again the next day, if so I chose, and make something entirely different. So by request of my mother, I repeated a dish today that I last made for my family with the aid of my boyfriend, Benson, that I haven't made since last spring.

Now, in general, I'm not a huge fan of pork as a meal. Bacon, yes. Ribs, delicious. Sausage, the BEST pizza topping. But a pork chop, or roast ham.... meh. However, when we were looking for a fun recipe last spring, Benson thought this recipe looked like it would be awesome. I was not, at first, that enthused by the idea of a pork dish, but I was willing to give it a go. And boy am I glad I did: this dish is fun and straightforward to make, looks beautiful, and tastes absolutely scrumptious.

So I was happy to try making it again: from Alton Brown's Good Eats, a delicious Pork Wellington. That link has a handy video of Alton Brown making and explaining the dish, which is probably a far better explanation than what follows.

1 egg, whisked with about a tbs of water.
a few oz of chopped dried or fresh apple (1 small apple's worth)
1 whole pork tenderloin, ~1lb, but larger is fine as long as you can stretch pastry!
4.5 oz proscuitto
salt, pepper, thyme (preferably freshly chopped)
flour
1 sheet thawed puff pastry
1 tbs mustard
Optional but tasty: sliced mushrooms!

Preheat your oven to 400F. You want the tenderloin in 2 long pieces, and you want to remove the fat, silver skin, and gristly parts before proceeding.

First, roll out your puff pastry to be the length of the tenderloin, and wide enough to wrap around it - about 12x14 inches should be fine. You want this well floured so it doesn't stick to the tin or anything, and if you have parchment paper, you're going to end up baking everything on that in the end, so you can put the pastry on that. You'll want to spread a bit of mustard on a strip down the length of the pastry, so that you will have a nice, but not overwhelming, tangy tast. I used dijon mustard, that worked fine.

Next, in a separate space, layer your proscuitto on some parchment paper (I used wax paper, since we didn't have any parchment - that works fine for this part, too) out to the length of your tenderloin and press down, so it sticks to itself well, then sprinkle that with salt, pepper, and thyme. Place the tenderloins down on this, one on top of the other, with the apples in between. This is also where you want to put any delicious mushrooms you want to add: I used mushrooms the first time, but this time we didn't have any around. Adding them just adds another layer of tastiness to your resulting meal, but they aren't required.

Now, this is the tricky part: ROLL. You'll kind of roll it  up WITH the parchment paper, but you don't want the paper to get caught up in the tenderloin - you just want the proscuitto in a nice tight bundle around the pork. So if you've ever rolled something on a sushi mat, it's kind of like that - roll a bit, shift the paper, roll a bit more, shift the paper a bit more out of the way. Then transfer the whole thing onto the puff pastry, still holding it in the parchment paper to make sure it stays together during the transfer, then removing the paper once it's on the pastry. Now the wrapping is a bit more straightforward - you can just lift up the pastry over the tenderloin, and tuck in the edges. You should use some of the egg mixture to moisten the edges so that the pastry sticks to itself. You want to tuck in the ends, as well, so it's in once nice secure bundle.

Brush the whole thing well with the egg mix, so you get a nice toasty colour at the end and the pastry remains moist, and bake it! For a pound, this will be 30 minutes or so. Mine was actually 2 pounds, but I managed to stretch everything around it just fine, so I didn't really need to double anything, I just added extra apples, and maybe a bit extra proscuitto. You'll want to use a meat thermometer to make sure it's done, however, at least 140F inside temperature. When it's done, rest 10 minutes so the juices don't run. We didn't actually have any parchment paper, so I just baked the thing on the pan straight. So it stuck to the pan a bit. Not a huge deal, it looked gorgeous and would have gotten a bit messed up when we cut it anyway.

Aiming for dinner at 6, I was pleased that I was going to get the food into the oven at 5:30. It was at this point - putting it in the oven - that I discovered that Hurricane Sandy had knocked out some, but not all, of the outlets in our house, including the oven. This resulted in my uncle and my father physically tilting the oven forward so I could grab the cord, and stretching said cord to another, functional outlet. This resulted in a significantly delayed dinner - made longer by the fact that I didn't actually REALIZE that my father had given me a 2 lb tenderloin, when I was looking at a recipe with a cooking time designed for one pound.


However, all's well that ends well! Here is the delicious result:

Absolutely beautiful