Dulce de Leche

I love dulce de leche. Love, love, love it. I have ever since I had it at Marini's Empanada House in Houston's Montrose back in the '70's. Which was, by the way, a horrifying neighborhood to be in as a young gay teen. The clones were out in force and, because they were the only gays you ever saw or heard of, the inescapable conclusion was, "Oh my god, I'm going to have to be like that when I grow up." Ahem. Anyway, those empanadas were worth it.

Teen trauma aside, here's the recipe, which I received from a secret agent raised in Argentina (no lie!):

DULCE DE LECHE

1 can sweetened condensed milk

Place in stock pot, cover with water and boil for 5 hours. Periodically add water to keep the level above the top of the can. Remove can from water (with tongs, of course) and let cool. Open can and stir to get a smooth, creamy consistency.

That's it. Essentially, boil the can for 5 hours. It seems that the can acts as a double boiler, carmelizing the milk and sugar without burning. I mentioned this method once to a friend who was a pastry chef and she had never heard of it. In her kitchens, they would use a real double boiler and have to stir it all day in the kitchen.

Even better - because the can is sealed airtight, you can put it on the shelf. I make it 4 cans at a time and save the ones I don't need for a recipe right away. Also, if you're really craving something sweet, you can eat it with a spoon.

I made this because a) I just received a new deep stock pot from my dad and stepmother for my birthday (the deeper pot means I don't have to check the water level as often) and b) I'm going to need it for the most awesome cake ever.

Poached Chicken Redux

This isn't so much a Do Over, as I thought this went well the first time, but I definitely learned something last night.

Due to some household stuff last night, I decided to put off the low(er)-fat Indian Spinach Experiment until tonight. In the interest of putting together something simple, I decided to poach some chicken to toss with some Trader Joe's Potato Parmesan Gnocchi.

I was dealing with the insanely thick (and inconsistent) Jewel chicken breasts and I wanted to avoid the underdone ones I had last time. I used the flat side of the meat mallet to get a uniform thickness of about 3/4 inches. Yet, all of them came out underdone. Fortunately, I checked them before I shredded them. I hadn't tossed the water yet and was able to reheat it to a boil to finish them. But they suffered for it a little. The breasts were not as tender and smooth as before.

Here's an excerpt from that recipe, specifically regarding the chicken:

1. Place the chicken, oil and the juice of one of the lemons in a bowl; cover. Set aside to marinate at least 1 hour.
2. Heat salted water to a boil in a large skillet; add the chicken breasts with the marinade. Lower heat to a simmer; poach chicken until cooked through, about 10 minutes. Drain the chicken; transfer to plate.

So, that part about lowering the heat to a simmer is apparently very important. I turned the flame to Low, but I'm pretty sure there wasn't a real simmer going.

I'm also thinking that the marinade is a factor. For time, I skipped that. Given the underdone-ness and the slightly off texture, I'm guessing two things are at work: 1) I understand that an acid marinade actually cooks the meat a bit. So by skipping the marinade, I may have accidently reduced the cooking time. 2) I lost the tenderizing aspect of the marinade as well.

Chemical Burns - Ouch.

I went down to Fort Worth this past weekend, so I accrued no kitchen time. I tried to make up for it last night by making the Bengali Red Lentil Dal, which would also use some of the tomatoes and onions from the knife skills practice last week.

The only thing I really had to chop were the serranos. I think I've come to see the light on one thing I disregarded in the Knife Skills class. There, we learned to chop small peppers by quartering them and then slicing out the seeds and membranes. My method has always been to tear those parts out with my fingers, to make sure the peppers are really clean. Well, when doing six of them, versus the usual one or two, that's a lot of spice. My fingers are still burning. Ow, ow, ow. Thank God I was careful not to touch my eyes.

I'll be slicing those puppies from now on.

Also, as tasty as that recipe is, this time around I noticed that there is a LOT of ghee/oil in it. 6 tablespoons. I have to figure out a way to reduce that. Since I have about 2 or 3 pounds of those lentils left, I guess I'll have many opportunities. Tonight I'm going to try to make the saag paneer less oily, for the same reason.

Reheating Sauces

Yesterday, my sister found this blog in the course of an email search. I hadn't been promoting this other than a recent addition to my email footer. Also, Johanna over at the very interesting and highly recommended Comics Worth Reading linked to me once after I asked her a question about the Amazon Associates program. So, I was curious to know who was looking at this, as I had previously assumed I had an audience of, maybe, 3. Not that it should affect what I'm doing, which is to motivate myself and document progress. Anyway, I installed a hit counter (Blogpatrol), which also includes some reporting on how people got to the site. One feature is that they tell you the search criteria used to get here if someone used Google.

Whew. What's my point, other than to freak you out about Big Brother?

Someone yesterday got here with the phrase "reheating bernaise sauce." So this reminded me of something I hadn't shared yet. 1 1/2 weeks ago, I had my at-home success with hollandaise sauce, for which I closed the report with "Eggs Benedict tomorrow!" That Sunday, I went ahead with that plan and put the sauce in the microwave. Guess what? Yeah, I'm sure everyone else in the world knows, but it almost immediately broke. The sad thing is that I tried for 30 seconds (on the default setting of High) first and it seemed okay. But rather than stirring what I had at that state, I popped it in for 30 seconds more. That's what did it.

In Sauce class a few days later, our hollandaise got cold before our end of class meal and I wanted to avoid the same result. So, I made a warm water bath and very gently whisked the sauce to keep the temperature even. Note that before I possibly ruined my teammate's work, I did run this by the instructor and get the thumb's up. The method worked very well. I need to look up how to save those after they do actually break or to thicken it up if it's too thin; there must be a way. If the yolks curdle, it's hopeless, but afterwards...

So there you go. You implicitly ask and you receive.

Using the Mandoline Slicer

The goal tonight was knife skills practice. I had purchased a mess of potatoes, onions and a few tomatoes to work with. There's a big bag of carrots in the fridge, too, so that will be in a day or two. But, I got distracted by our Oxo Mandoline slicer. Yes, seeing one in use on last week's Top Chef encouraged me.

Ever since we got ours as a wedding present (after coveting the Steele's for months), I have never been able to get very effective use out of ours. It just seemed difficult to use. To be fair, I'd never practiced using it - I just gave it a shot when I was actually preparing a meal. So, there was no room for error or playing around. It probably also wasn't helping that after every attempt, I cleaned it by putting the blade in the dishwasher, dulling it every time.

So, I tried sharpening the primary flat blade on my new whetstone tool by pulling it out and treating it like a knife. That seemed to help a whle lot.

Also, I'd had problems before on the back part of the veggie in question not getting a clean separation at the end. A quick firm stroke with a full follow through really helped that - I started getting clean cuts all the way through.

The texture of tomatoes seemed to require a small twist at the end of the stroke to work through the tougher outer skin. I got a series of perfect hamburger slices, which I then chopped by hand to use in the Red Lentil Dal later this week.

I then washed a 5 lb bag of potates and went to it. These came out very nicely. I went for a thin slice at first, ~1/8". After a few of those, I dialed it down as thin as it could go, which also worked well. Not quite paper thin. I'll use these in a Potates Gorganzola Gratin later, too. Channing usually isn't a fan of potatoes, but tried these at Taste of Heaven last week and liked them. Cheese conquers all, I guess.

I tried julianning and the wavy side of the blade. What I can't figure out is how on earth you get waffle fries out of this thing. I'll have to look that up.

So, I'm feeling a lot more confident with this tool. I've got a LOT of potatoes to eat now, though.

Ginger Honey Cookies

Hmm. These were the cookies I was going to make on Monday night that cut for time. They're from the month's Gourmet (Oct 07), though the recipe isn't posted. I made them tonight because, well, if nothing else, I paid 14 freaking bucks for the crystalized ginger on Monday, so I'll be damned if I let it sit on the shelf. Though I also really like ginger.

They tasted fine, but they were way, way too soft. I'm pretty sure that they weren't cooked long enough, but the instructions say cook for 10-14 minutes (a pretty wide variation, there, in a short time frame) until they are "golden brown." That's great and all, but how on earth can you tell when the batter starts out at pretty much that color? And this isn't a multi-batch recipe like Toll House, where you can adjust after the first sheet - it's all or nothing.

The recipe also says they they should be "pillowy." Mine were anything but. Flat, flat, flat. If I had to guess, it would be that I didn't get enough air into the batter (starting with the butter and brown sugar step).

I can tell that getting the timing of these right will result in a lot of burnt cookies.

So, screw it. No Do Overs on these. Here's the recipe if you want to give it a shot yourself after my glowing endorsement:

GINGER HONEY COOKIES
MAKES 14 COOKIES
ACTIVE TIME: 15 MIN START TO FlNISH: 45 MIN

The crisp edge and pillow-soft, chewy middle of these cookies will be the first things that strike you when you bite into them. But it's the faintly peppery traces of ginger that will make you crave more.

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup finely chopped crystallized ginger
1/4 teaspoon salt /br>1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1 large egg
1/4 cup mild honey

Preheat oven to 350F with racks in upper and lower thirds.

Whisk together flour, baking soda, ginger, and salt in a bowl.

Beat together butter and brown sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy. Beat in egg and honey until combined. Reduce speed to low, then mix in flour mixture.

Drop 14 heaping tablespoons of dough 2 inches apart onto 2 ungreased baking sheets.

Bake, Switching position of sheets halfway through baking, until golden, 10 to 14 minutes total (Cookies will spread flat).

Cool completely on sheets on racks. Cookies keep in an airtight container at room temperature 3 days.

Do Over: Buerre Blanc

It's a week of catch-up in the kitchen and my first order of business was to win my battle with buerre blanc. I tried the exact recipe I had tried the previous night and it came out perfect. Basically, I took the Chopping Block recipe and added the tarragon and lemon from the Trib recipe. As I expected, the heat was the culprit before and by controlling that correctly, I got a smooth, coating consistency. It does take a long, long time to work in the cold butter into the sauce and it does consume your full attention during that time. Definitely not an absolute last minute kind of thing.

The one thing I'll tweak next time is the tarrogon and lemon. While the sauce came out perfect, the flavor wasn't as intense as the night before. I suspect it had something to do with properly reducing the lemon juice. It was still really good, though.

I served it with the left over poached chicken from the night before and some gemelli tossed with white wine and olive oil. The pasta was my first planned use of that "sauce" from the fingerling potatoes and it worked just as I expected.

It was a very light beige plate, though.