fountain of yolk by lainers on Flickr.
Ideas discovered by Avalon, food created and (mostly) written about by Ryan.
• Master List
• Suggestions
Culinary Adventures with Formschlag Jr.
• Master List
• Suggestions
Culinary Adventures with Formschlag Jr.
Turkey, Pesto Aioli, and Blue Cheese Sandwich
Stole this from the deli at my local grocery store, it’s a tasty one! Short and sweet this time, I’ll try to be less verbose.
_____________________________________________________
Turkey, Pesto Aioli, and Blue Cheese Sandwich
Ingredients
Sourdough or Ciabatta Bread
Deli sliced roast turkey
1/2 tbls mayonnaise
1 1/2 tbls basil pesto
Several crumbles of blue cheese
1 small tomato
Method
As I’ve said many times, mayonnaise is an excellent, excellent thing, being an emulsified fat, but most people (Americans especially) heinously, heinously misuse it. It should pretty much always be flavored before being used, in somewhat small amounts, and in this case, you’re gonna be mixing the pesto with it. If you’ll notice, the aioli (ok, not technically an aioli, but whatever) is mostly pesto, with just a bit of mayo to help combine flavors, especially that of the blue cheese.
Spread the aioli on the bread (both sides), layer on some turkey and sliced tomato, and put just a few blue cheese crumbles on. You don’t want much, blue cheese is an intense flavor, and it will easily overpower everything else. You want maybe a teaspoon’s worth of blue cheese on here. Put it together, put it in your sandwich press (or you could grill it in a pan, covered, at low temp on both sides), and enjoy!
Crispy Plantain Shrimp
I’ve done one stab at this before, but sadly I am admitting defeat on trying to emulate our favorite restaurant’s dish. But this one actually turned out pretty well, and since… hey… cooking with plantains is basically a theme here at this point, I figured I’d throw this up here.
___________________________________________________________
Crispy Plantain Shrimp
Ingredients
Green plantain, grated
Rice flour (or use homemade plantain flour for extra credit)
Raw shrimp
1 egg
Garlic and Cilantro Lime Mayo (to serve)
Method
Grate the plantain (about half a plantain will coat 10-15 shrimp) with a box grater, and toss in rice flour to coat. Peel, de-vein, and butterfly your shrimp and dry off with a towel. Beat the egg, and set up your stations. You will need 1 bowl with rice flour with a dash of salt, then the egg, then the shredded plantain coated in rice flour. Heat the oil to 300-350 degrees.
Dredge each shrimp (tail still on, unless you want to use them in a sandwich) in the rice flour first, dunk in the egg, then coat with shredded plantain, packing it on with your hands. Make sure you get inside the butterfly cut on each step. Drop them in the oil until golden brown and crispy outside, drain, and serve with cilantro-lime and/or garlic mayo. Personally, I find the cilantro-lime is best with the shrimp.
Cheese and Spinach Ravioli with Creamy Spinach Alfredo
I am realizing that somehow, some way, I have managed to not put too many Italian recipes up, despite that being the main thing I cook. Most of them just seem too… ordinary to share I suppose, since for me they’re everyday food. But, I love me some alfredo, and while I don’t get a chance to make it as often as I like any more (yaaaaay high cholesterol!) it is still one of my favorite things to cook.
_______________________________________________________________
Cheese and Spinach Ravioli with Creamy Spinach Alfredo
Ingredients
Pasta
1 1/2 -2 cups semolina flour
2 eggs
1/2 tsp salt
Small handful of fresh spinach
Filling
1 cup ricotta cheese
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
1/2 cup boiled spinach, drained
1 egg
Salt, pepper
Sauce
2 tbls flour
2 tbls olive oil
2-3 cups milk
2-3 cloves smashed garlic
1 cup parmesan cheese
Salt
Pepper
1 cup boiled spinach
Method
As with any homemade stuffed pasta, this is somewhat extensive, but not altogether hard.
Step 1: Dough
Mix up the pasta dough. If I’m going to make fresh pasta, I like to put some bonus flavor in, since I have the chance, so take a small handful of fresh spinach leaves, and put them in the food processor for a few seconds, then add the remaining dough ingredients. The dough should come together, and only be a tiny bit tacky, otherwise add a bit more flour.
Take the dough out, knead it a little bit, then let it rest for about 10 minutes while you do something else (ie make the filling). Once it’s rested, grab small, fist sized chunks (should get about 4 of them out of the batch of dough), flatten them, then run them through your pasta maker on the thickest setting. If you don’t have a pasta maker, you can do it with a rolling pin and some parchment paper, but OH MY GOD DOES IT TAKE FOREVER AND I WILL NEVER DO THAT AGAIN. Keep it well dusted with bench flour, and roll it through the widest setting 4-5 times, folding it over in between, until the dough becomes smooth and elastic (basically, you’re doing this instead of kneading it). Roll it out to the 2nd thinnest setting, make sure it’s well floured, and let it rest while you repeat with the other dough.
Step 2: Filling
You can boil the rest of the spinach once you have the dough made, just throw it in boiling water for about 30 seconds (I use the water the pasta will eventually go in), take it out, shock it with some ice, then press as much water out as possible. Take about 1/2 cup-1 cup of it, chop it up, and mix it with the ricotta, 1/2 cup parmesan, egg, salt and pepper.
There’s many ways you can stuff pasta, but the two I usually rely on are 1) using one rolled out pasta to put the filling on, then topping with a slightly larger one, forming the raviolis, and cutting them out or 2) using a fairly symmetrical bit of rolled dough to dab the filling on, then folding it over widthwise. Whatever method you use, make sure you have a bit of a plan ahead of time. The roll that goes on top has to be slightly larger if you do that (it has to cover more area, the bottom is flat but the top bulges), each ravioli needs ~1 cm of dough to seal it outside, you need to make sure the bottom is nicely floured so the ravioli can move after. Use a pizza cutter (less effective at cutting pizza, great for pasta though!), seal them up, and let them sit on a non-stick surface (don’t stack them, whatever you do).
Step 3: Sauce
If you already know how to make a roux, do that with the flour, olive oil, garlic, and milk, then skip this paragraph:
To make a roux, put the olive oil in the pan, add the garlic and cook for a minute or so (you don’t want the garlic to brown). Then, whisk in the flour, and cook it for a minute or so to remove some of the grain/cereal flavor. Add the milk and whisk vigorously to remove all lumps. Continue whisking until the mixture suddenly thickens as the milk just beings to boil (really suddenly, it thicken in a 10 second time period). If you fail to whisk adequately here, including corners, the roux will likely burn on the bottom.
The key to a good alfredo is really consistency. Too thin and it just tastes like gross thick milk. Too thick and it’s glommy and ew. I usually err far on the side of thick, you can thin it easily but making it thicker is hard. So add milk if needed, just remember that while it’s warm it’s far less viscous than it will be when it cools, and adding the cheese will easily double its viscosity. Also remember that after you add milk, you have to let it come back up to a boil, so it fully re-thickens. Once you have the texture right, take it off the heat, add the cheese, salt, pepper, and spinach, and stir until melted and combined.
All that’s left is to boil the pasta (should only take 1-2 minutes as it’s fresh pasta, when it floats up to the top it’s almost done), and serve!
Pomegranate Brownies
Well, after a bit of a hiatus to wrap up the school semester, I have a slew of recipes to write up that I made over the course of the last few weeks. This first one, I… don’t know how I haven’t written it up yet. It’s probably my favorite thing to make for people for no reason, and is an instant friend-winner. Sweetened pomegranate and bitter, dark chocolate are two flavors that have an amazing synergy, and these brownies are an excellent example of that.
Really, the recipe is: Take your favorite brownie recipe and add pomegranate syrup. But if you don’t have a good one, the one below (adapted from my culinary hero, Alton Brown’s, recipe) is one of the richest, most amazing brownie recipes.
_________________________________________________________
Pomegranate Brownies
Ingredients
Brownies -
4 eggs
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
8 oz butter (melted)
1 1/4 cups cocoa powder
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
Pomegranate Syrup-
1 cup pomegranate juice
3/4 cup sugar
Method
Start by making the pomegranate syrup. It’s as simple as putting the juice and sugar in a pan and boiling it. You want to reduce it to a syrup, which should take ~30ish minutes, and it should be the consistency of good maple syrup when it cools. It should be the consistency of warm maple syrup before it cools though >_>
The only note I’ll make on that is: You must buy 100%, unsweetened, unmixed, un-watered down pomegranate juice. Brands like Just Pomegranate or POM Wonderful are what you’re looking for. Not a cocktail, not anything with high fructose corn syrup, grape juice, sugar, or anything else. Just. Pomegranate. Juice. I usually throw the whole jar in (with an according increase in sugar) and make a big batch of the syrup, it keeps for ages.
For the brownies: Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Whisk together the egg and both sugars, then throw everything else but the syrup in, mix together. Minimal mixing is better, while it’s unlikely you’ll get much gluten development with the tiny amount of flour in these, tough brownies aren’t what you want. If you’ll notice, this recipe has a significant amount of cocoa powder in it. That’s how you make brownies, if your recipe calls for chocolate but not cocoa powder, get a new recipe. I like mine a little less sweet, so I reduce the sugar slightly, especially for this dish since you’re going to have some sweetness in the pomegranate syrup, and I like the bitter offset.
Put parchment paper in a 8x8 brownie pan (or butter/flour it), and pour the batter in. Take about 2-3 tablespoons of the pomegranate syrup and drizzle it over the top, then use a butter knife to marble it into the brownie. Don’t drizzle too much in, the brownies will just get soggy, you can (and should) drizzle more on after they’re baked. You could also just bake them, then have it drizzled on top, but I like the flavor throughout.
Bake at 300 for 45 minutes, remove from the pan (hopefully you cut the parchment paper long so you could just pull the brownies out whole) and put on a rack to cool. This prevents getting condensation and sogginess on the bottom. Drizzle some extra syrup on top, and cut into pieces. These things are strong, so I recommend smaller pieces, I do 16 pieces on mine.
