Food You!

Well, I didn't set the house on fire, but I did see smoke billowing from the oven and had to open the front door in sub-zero temperatures!  It was exciting, and the cookies were salvageable, which is what really matters.

So before I tell you the tale of the disastrous cookies, take a gander at the lovely side-board I got from a creepy guy with two grungy Chihuahua's in East Jesus Nowheresville Massachusetts.

It's lovely and for $70 was a steal.  The cabinet on the left side was locked and the guy who sold it to me said the key was lost years ago.  Well my dad, because he's awesome, went and had a skeleton key made for it which WORKED and we were amazed to find the cabinet full of all this:


I am sad to report that all the liquid based things here were long since gone.  I opened a few to make sure, but considering we found it with a stash of birthday cards all from 2004, it was pretty obvious that they were no good.  However the dry stuff was still good (see that clip on the silver bag?) and I've had quite a few nice cups of chai.  The seasoning is for spreads and dips, so may be used this summer.  I'll try to salvage the bottles for my home-made gifts, however the jars were full of stuff so solid and... wrongly colored, I just tossed them all out as is.

Now on to the cookies!

Lemon Curd Cookies

Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups unsalted butter
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
zest of 2 lemons
2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
Lemon curd (you will need less than a full jar)
Confectioner's sugar (optional)



In a large bowl, using an electric mixer on high speed, cream the butter until fluffy and pale. Add the sugar in 3 additions, beating on low for 2 minutes after each addition. Beat the egg yolk, vanilla, and zest into the butter mixture until well blended.




Sift the flour and salt together onto a sheet of waxed paper. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix on low speed or stir with a wooden spoon just until blended.




Scrape the dough out onto a work surface and divide into 4 equal portions. Shape into disks, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for at least 2 hours (I just stuck them in the freezer for 15 minutes).


Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.  Remove cat from parchment paper and shoo cat from room.  Remove cat from parchment paper.  Scream in frustration and lock cat out of the room.


Remove dough from refrigerator and let stand at room temperature for 15 minutes. Roll dough to 1/8-1/4 inch thickness. Using round cookie cutters (I used a small one of about 2 inches - don't forget the cookies grow when baked) cut out dough and place on cookie sheets. Drop as large of a blob of lemon curd as you can while still being able to cover the bottom cookie with a top cookie, on 1/2 of the cookies. Cover the lemon curd and bottom cookies with the remaining cookies and press to seal. You will have to stretch the top cookie a little bit, just make sure there is a good seal.  Refrigerate unbaked cookies for 5 minutes.


If you look closely, you can see the lemon curd I used (home-made) was too runny.  If I had used more solid curd, the HORRIBLE BURNING would not have happened.  Actually, I microwaved the leftover curd for a minute and that made it the perfect consistency.  Smelled a bit funny, but yeah, it was delicious on mini croissants.


Bake for about 10 minutes or until the edges are just beginning to turn brown.  Dust with confectioner's sugar.

BROWN, YOU SAY!?  Oh yeah, they browned all right.  I didn't use the confectioner's sugar at the end.  I mean, how do you dress up that horror?  I broke the burnt parts off every single cookie and you know what?  They tasted damn good.  I enjoyed them, my fiancé pretended to enjoy them, and my co-workers enjoyed them.


I plan on making them again, only without the fire part.  Fire bad.

Meet our newest family member, Stephen Fry:

He's awesome and fun and only six months old.  On Wednesday he'll be getting the snip, but lets not tell him that.

He does have a habit of getting all up in my business, though.  It's a little frustrating when I'm trying to cook.


But I have trouble staying angry for too long.


In our next installment, you will see Fry help me cook lemon curd short bread cookies.  What you wont see is me constantly tossing him off the table/counters/stove/etc.  He gets everywhere!

1. Cook cream in top of double boiler over simmering water until reduced by about half. It should be the consistency of butter, with a golden "crust" on the top.
2. Transfer, including crust, to bowl. Cover and let stand 2 hours, then refrigerate at least 12 hours.
3. Stir crust into cream before serving. Keep unused portions refrigerated, tightly covered, for up to 4 days. 

I didn't announce any holiday, but I was way too busy with celebration stuff lately to blog.  Right before Christmas I got a job, so weekdays have been crazier.  And then we went away to New Hampshire for New Years and are still recovering.  But there is a lull in the crazy, long enough hopefully for a post!

DELICIOUS MERINGUES!

I dont' have the recipe at the moment, but will hopefully have the prescence of mind to add it later.  So have some pictures!

They came out flatter than I'd hoped, but very dry and fluffy and AMAZING.  Along with the chocolate, I added mint extract, and that really made the difference.  And this was a good way to use up some not so great nestle's chocolate chips I'd gotten before christmas.  From now on it's only the good stuff, though.

I need to make more cookies.

Today has starred family food.  My fiance's parents cooked up a huge lunch for us complete with a turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans and more!  I brought a loaf of Irish soda bread to have with the food, though I wont include it here since it came in a bag and all I did was mix it with water.  Tasty, but not necessarily appropriate for this space.

After his parents, we moved on to my family and had an enormous dinner with a pot roast, squash, asparagus, broccoli, wild rice and more.  I honestly can't remember it all, though we came home with plenty of left-overs.  After about 30 minutes of groaning on the couch, we moved on to the sweet stuff.  To complement our cookies, fudge and some carrot cake, my sister and I had some Marsala wine.  Nothing better than a sweet wine.  Here are some pictures she took of the foods:

I'm not entirely sure what everything is, however the light brown balls are snickerdoodles and the large squares are caramel chocolate cake thingies.  Oh, and there is some peppermint fudge stuff.  The darker brown balls are some sort of truffle and the other cookies have m&ms in them.

Naturally we've eaten ourselves silly and have no plans on cooking today or tomorrow.  However my parents gave us quite the foodie gift:


Isn't it beautiful?



Now back to enjoying a glass of Three Philosophers and the Victorian episode of the Supersizers.  Rad.

I used to be a vegetarian, throughout most of college actually.  Somehow my fiance managed to turn me back onto delicious dead things.  So that is why I bring to you these delicious meats.  Puff pastry meat gifts.

Meat Gifts
Ingredients:
-one frozen roll of breakfast sausage
-box of frozen puff pastry (or make your own, whatever floats your boat)
-small onion
-two cloves garlic
-1t paprika
-pinch of your favorite spices, I used herbes de provence
-one egg

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 425
2. Roughly slice onion (I used a small mandolin) and chop or press garlic.  Combine in a bowl with sausage and spices, however be sure to remove any casing from the meat.  Mine didn't have casing so you may not need to worry about that.



3. Mix!  Use your hands, or if the sausage hasn't thawed all the way like mine hadn't, use a meat pounder!  Pound that meat!



4. Take the puff pastry and, if not flat flatten it.  If it is flat, and once it is flat, cut into roughly 5x5 squares.


5. Take about two to three tablespoons worth of the meat mix (or more if you're daring) and place in the middle of each square.  Fold the pastry to have a small opening at the top but none at the sides.
6.  Open up your egg and mix everything up a bit.  Brush the eggy goodness onto your happy little meat gifts.  Give leftover egg to the dog.



7. Cover baking sheet with foil and place your meaty gifts on it.  Bake for 12-15 minutes or until the desired golden brown-ness has been reached.


And they'r ready to eat!  They are very crispy and flaky at this point, but also very hot.  They can be reheated later on in the microwave but lose all that crispiness and the pastry takes on a little bit of a rubbery feeling.

Yummy!

So I decided not to go the molasses route because I couldn't find a recipe that didn't call for 10+ things we didn't already have.  For the toffee, all I needed was some heavy cream.  Excellent!

Ingredients:
8T unsalted butter (1 stick)
1.5 cups granulated sugar
1 packed cup dark brown sugar (oh yeah)
.75 cup plus 2T heavy cream
1t pure vanilla extract (may want to add some almond or cinnamon too, but use very sparingly)

Directions:
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
Combine butter, sugars and cream in a saucepan over medium-low heat.  Stir ocassionaly until sugar is completely dissolved.


Continue cooking without stirring.  Keep heat medium-low until mixture reaches 295-300 degrees.  My electric stove made this difficult so adjust heat if needed.  The color should be a rich, dark brown.


Do you like my thermometer?  I got it at Target for about $5!  I do have a much nicer one on my wedding registry, but this was the right price at the right time.

Remove the pan from the heat and quickly stir in any extracts.  Immediately pour onto the prepared baking sheet and spread candy evenly (do this quickly, it's already cooling!).


Mmm... candy goo.  I had fun licking the pot!


When cool, break the candy into shards using whatever violence you prefer.  I used my fists!


This will be a busy weekend - Saturday is a going away party in the morning and a Christmas party at night, and then Sunday is a family Christmas gift giving thingy and also a lot of snow.

Yesterday I did something that I don't think I ever want to attempt again.  Yesterday I hard boiled quail eggs - 18 quail eggs.  I thought to myself: hey, this can't be more difficult than a regular chicken egg, right?  Right?

Turns out it's a bit more labor intensive than I expected.

Ingredients:
1 cup vinegar
1 cup water
18 quail eggs

Step one:  soak quail eggs in warm water to warm and clean them.  Keep in mind, these are very delicate so don't just dump them in a bowl, ok?


Step three: once boiling, time it for five minutes.  This is a good time to make some instant soup to maybe add the eggs to.


Step five: allow the eggs to cool.  For this I dumped the hot water out and stuck the eggs into a cold water bath.  Do whatever you prefer, just be fore-warned the vinegar causes the brown bits on the eggs to flake off.  Things are about to get messy.


Now just dry the eggy wonders on some paper towels and store them for a few days (they wont last long) in a sealed container in the fridge.  If you can't wait, feel free to grab some, grind some salt onto them, and go to town!


These eggs are so time-consuming to peel but they do seem more eggy than the chicken's eggs we get at the supermarket.  Worth it?  Sort of.  Will I do it again?  Perhaps in a month or so.

I made them yesterday and all 18 of them are now gone.  How sad I am.