Whole Wheat Bread - Take 2

 

You might recall my post from about 2 weeks ago and my lackluster attempt at making whole wheat bread. I did my second attempt tonight and it definitely yielded much better results. All I did was tweak the proofing times. I let the dough go for 1 1/2 hours on each proof, which allowed it to rise nicely as you can see on the picture. Glad to say it turned out delicious.

#bread #bakingbread #breadmaking #homemade #homemadebread

Honey Dijon Brussel Sprouts

As I mentioned in my previous post, I bought a bunch of vegetables when I went food shopping this week. Among those were a beautiful stalk loaded with Brussel sprouts. My challenge was trying to find a recipe that would help me do justice to them. So of course I did a search, which yielded the usual ones. Some called to sautee them in garlic, others said add bacon. I had already tried that so it was only when I checked Instagram that I came across a recipe for coating the sprouts in a honey dijon concoction. 

If you have read this blog before, you know by now that I am not one to follow recipes exactly as noted (unless it is for baking and even then I figure out a way to differ). Here is the link to the original recipe  

Here is my list of ingredients and cooking instructions

1 lb Brussel sprouts (cleaned and cut in half)

1 1/2 Tbsp olive oil

1 1/2 Tbsp honey

1 Tbsp coarse dijon mustard

1/4 tsp garlic powder

Salt and pepper to taste

Fill a medium sauce pot with water and add saltto lightly season. Put your sprouts in and heat up until simmering. Cook your sprouts until tender.

While your sprouts are cooking, in a large bowl, mix the olive oil, honey, dijon mustard and garlic powder, until all ingredients are completely incorporated. 

Drain your cooked sprouts and then toss them in the honey dijon mixture, until evenly coated.

As an additional step, I put my sprouts into a baking dish and put them in my air fryer for about 10 minutes to give them a little crisp finish and intensify the mustard flavor. 

It turned out pretty well. 

The Lonely Girl's Cream of Asparagus Soup

 

Since cold weather has actually started in earnest in the Northeast US, I figured it would be a good time to make one of those soups that makes you feel warm and good all over. When I went food shopping this week, Trader Joe's had these beautiful bunches of asparagus. I couldn't resist getting them because I wanted some veggies, and since my daughter is with her dad this week, I could get something other than broccoli. The problem is that even for me the bunch I got was a lot more than I could eat in one week without all the other veggies I got going bad. The answer was to make something that I could have already prepared and that coukd keep for longer than a few days in the fridge. Creamed soup to the rescue!

Here is the list of ingredients and cooking instructions.

2-3 Tbsp olive oil

2 Tbsp ground ginger

2 garlic cloves - minced

1/2 large russet potatoe - diced

1/2 medium white onion - diced

1/2 lb asparagus stalks

2 Tbsp flour

2 Tbsp butter

3 cups chicken or other kind of stock

1/2 cup milk

1/4 tsp dried thyme

Salt and pepper as preferred

In a medium sauce pot heat 2 Tbsp of olive oil and toss in your diced potatoe and onion and sautee until the onions get nice and translucent.

In a pan heat up 1 Tbsp of olive oil and drop in your ginger and garlic. Sutee until the garlic starts getting fragrant, then add in your asparagus and toss in the oil, ginger and garlic medley unitl the asparagus get nice and deep green. Remove and cut up unto small pieces. Add to the onions and potatoes in the pot. 

Add in the stock and heat to a simmer. Cook for about 10-15 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool slightly. Put the contents of your pot in a blender and add the milk. Blend until completely smooth.

In your now empty pot, melt the butter and mix in your flour with a wisk to create a roux base. Slowly add in the contents of your blender making sure you wisk as you add it in to break up any lumps forming in your roux base. Once all the contents of the blender have been incorporated add salt and pepper to taste, and heat until it simmers. 

Serve as a side, or serve a full bowl with a side of rice and enjoy the creamy goodness.

#wintersoup #heartysoup #coldweatherfood #comfortfood

Sunday Baking - My Return to Blogging

 I hope there are still some of you following me out there. I have been away for a while because there were major changes in my life, which took a toll on me. It took me meeting a wonderful person who is just as in love with food and cooking as I once was, to get me inspired to want to do this again. So this post goes out to Luca. Thank you for sharing your love of cooking with me. 

Today's post is about my first attempt at making whole wheat bread. The recipe is from one of my Pinterest pins from "The Woks of Life" here is the link to the recipe 

https://thewoksoflife.com/perfect-whole-wheat-bread/

And here is the step by step pictorial of the process and my results

The wheat flour and yeast mixture.

The ball of dough after adding white flour.

Getting ready for the 1st proof.

It has risen!

Putting the dough into the 

loaf pans for the 2nd proof.

They didn't rise as much :(

The final product.

It was not a complete disaster, but I wish I had gotten a bit more rise out of the second proof. Maybe a longer proofing time might have helped. I will try again in about a week and will let you know how that goes. 

Brussel Sprout & Shallot Flatbread

This is a very simple one but very delicious if you are into brussel sprouts. I had bought more of those than I really needed for a recipe and found myself at a loss for ideas of what to do with them until I realized that I could make a flatbread with the pizza dough recipe I had found in the blog Kayotic Kitchen. I had some shallots and Parmesan cheese which I thought would compliment the sprouts nicely so I set about the task of putting these ingredients together.

Brussel Sprout & Shallot Flat Bread
1 TBSP Olive oil
20 Brussel sprouts cut in half (about 3/4lb)
2 medium shallots
1 Cup shredded Parmesan cheese
 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. In a skillet pan saute the sprouts and the shallots together until the shallots get nice and soft and aromatic. Set them aside and roll out your dough onto a baking sheet, making sure to poke holes into it with a fork so to prevent it from rising when it is baked. Coat the dough with some olive oil, then put the sprout and shallots on it spreading them evenly throughout the surface of the dough. Sprinkle the parmesan cheese evenly over the vegetables and dough. Place the whole darn thing in the oven until the dough starts to turn nice an golden at the edges and the cheese has melted (approximately 20- 25 minutes). Enjoy and accompany with your favorite wine.

Talde - Bucket List Check

Once again my cohorts J & J invited me to go out and check off another one of my bucket list restaurants. Talde is one of three restaurants owned by Dale Talde of Bravo's "Top Chef" fame, which is where I first became familiar with him. Although the restaurant is relatively close to where I live, it took the invitation from my cohorts to actually get my ass out the door tempted by the promise of Kung Pao Chicken Wings and Waffles (part of their weekend brunch menu) which had been calling my name for too many months until finally I succumbed.

This place definitely lived up to the hype. I recommend getting there as early as possible which we did (and I was grateful for since the place started getting packed not too long after we were seated). Well of course I started out with something wonderful to drink with booze in it, because let's face it, a brunch without a little booze and good conversation is just breakfast. I had the Very Excellent Bellini, which was very excellent indeed, packed with all sorts of nice tropical fruit goodness, and prosecco adding even more wonderful notes to it. Then J & J and I proceeded to try to make decisions about what to have. We knew for sure that we wanted to get the Kung Pao Chicken Wings and Waffles with the coconut brown butter syrup. We also decided to get the Pretzel Pork and Chive Dumplings, the Sausage, Egg & Cheese Fired Rice and the Corn Pancakes. To say we had plenty to eat would be an understatement. The chicken wings were the right kind of spicy and flavorful and definitely packed with all the good Asian inspired flavor you would expect. The coconut brown butter syrup is something I wish they would bottle but perhaps it is best that they don't because it would become my number one abused substance. The fried rice was a great twist on an old time favorite. The dumplings were great because of the crispy dough layer, and packed full of flavor. The corn pancakes were perhaps the more understated of all the things we ordered but we made generous use of the coconut syrup with these as well which helped to kick them up a notch.

 The Menu

 The Dumplings

 Kung Pao Chicken WIngs and Waffles... 

and coconut brown butter syrup...droool!

 My partners in crime

 Sausage, Egg and Cheese Fried Rice

 The Very Excellent Bellini

 Half way through eating our feast.

 

I definitely am glad I got to check this one off my list and hope to come back to it again soon. If you are planning on coming to NYC on a food pilgrimage, this restaurant should definitely be on your itinerary.

Ippudo - Bucket List Check

Happy 2015!!! Although the year got started with a few sad events in the midst, I did manage to end 2014 on a high note with my little munchkin. OK so it was not a blow out party, but it was  wonderful because it was calm which is exactly what this girl needed after the hectic year 2014 turned out to be.

Right before the year ended I did manage to check another name from off from my restaurant bucket list. Thanks to my friends J and J (Names are withheld to protect the innocent) who are two of my five partners in crime when it comes to these sort of endeavors, we managed to get into Ippudo after a one and a half hour wait. Ippudo was part of a list of noodle restaurants around the city that were noted in Tasting Table's Ten Great Bowls of Ramen We Are Craving Right Now List (although one of my favorites Nauruto Ramen was not part of the list much to my dismay). This place was well worth the wait especially because December 30th turned out to be one of the chilliest days we've had so far this winter, so a hot bowl of ramen was just the thing to chase the chill away. For an appetizer we had the Hirata buns, which are about as wonderful as Baohaus' Chairman Bao (but not quite enough to make me want to stop my illicit love affair with this little bundle of deliciousness). For our main course us ladies went with the Akamaru Modern while our other cohort went up a notch ordering the Akamaru Chasu (which is the Akamaru Modern with extra pork chasu). All I have to say is that this was probably one of the most wonderful and satisfying experiences I have had eating ramen. Now I am looking forward to checking out the rest of the other places on that list and hope that they are all as wonderful as Ippudo was. Here are some pictures I managed to take.

 Bowls adorn the entry to our noodle heaven

 My partners in crime

 Hirata buns

 Hirata bun food porn

 Akamaru Chasu

Akamaru Modern