Homemade Pasta

 

Approximately two years ago, my sister and I attempted to make Mario Batali's basic pasta dough from his cookbook Molto Italiano. It was an egg-based dough, and it unfortunately didn't work out for us. We had a hard time rolling the dough out, and it dried out on us so that we really had to cook it a lot longer than we did in reality. We didn't realize this, though, and it ended up being chewy, unpleasant, and undercooked. 

Luckily for us, we've learned a lot more about cooking since then, and I had the confidence to tackle making pasta dough again today, this time somewhat successfully (with a few tiny, but not disastrous, flaws).  This time I chose to make a eggless pasta dough from the Italian Food Forever website, mostly because it gives instructions for rolling the dough out by hand rather than with a pasta machine (which I don't have), but also because the ingredient list is so basic with just flour, salt, and water, and no eggs. 

I began this dough by  mixing the flour, salt, and water on the counter top until it could form a ball. The recipe itself doesn't give exact amounts, but I ended up using two cups of flour per batch (I made three batches), a pinch of salt, and for the water, I just gradually added it to the flour until it could form a ball. 

Once the balls of dough were formed, I wrapped them in plastic wrap and let them rest for a few hours. This way they didn't dry out during the resting time, but the gluten relaxed enough that it was easy to roll the dough out when the time came. The recipe specifies you only need to let the dough rest for 20 minutes, but I wanted to make the dough ahead of time so that I wouldn't have so much to do around dinner time. It really didn't hurt the dough to let it sit longer.

Probably the biggest challenge, and one that wasn't easy for me to recognize until the pasta was cooked, was just how difficult it's to roll the dough out to a desirable thinness. Having not kept in mind that pasta expands when it's boiled, I didn't roll the noodles out thin enough, so I found my noodles were a bit thick once they were cooked. Next time I need to roll the dough out more thinly.

My Kitties

 

 

Cream Cheese Ice Cream

Upon reading recently about the possibilities of making frozen desserts like ice cream, gelato, sorbet, and sherbet at home without an ice cream maker this week, I decided that I had to give it a try myself. I've never made ice cream before, which is mostly because I thought it would be too difficult to achieve an appealing product at home, but also because I don't have an ice cream machine. Nonetheless, ice cream was being made a long time before ice cream makers existed, so I soon realized the possibilities of making this dessert by hand.

I quickly googled some ice cream recipes, got an idea of what basic ingredients are needed to make an ice cream, and checked what I had in my fridge. Although ice cream commonly has a custard base apparently, the most basic recipes have only whipping cream, milk, sugar, salt, and possibly some lemon juice. I knew that I had some whipping cream in the fridge that was going unused, I had milk, and of course some kind of sugar and salt. I also noticed that I had a block of cream cheese in the fridge as well, because I had bought extra when Jennifer and I made our cream cheese icing for the red velvet cupcakes. With these ingredients in mind, I found a recipe online for cream cheese ice cream: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Cream-Cheese-Ice-Cream-107998. 

The steps for mixing up the ice cream mixture were the easiest part of the recipe. I simply mixed together softened cream cheese, milk, lemon juice, salt, and sugar with a hand mixer, and then I mixed the whipping cream in. Instead of using white sugar as the recipe calls for (because I didn't have enough on hand), however, I ended up using one 1/4 cup of brown sugar, and because I was concerned about the ice cream becoming brown, I used two 1/4 cups of icing sugar as well. I suppose I could have also used something like honey as a sweetener in the ice cream.

Focaccia

 Today I made focaccia, as it's a bread I've been wanting to make for awhile. When I was in Montreal, I ate what I think was focaccia at the restaurant Venti Osteria, and that's what really got me interested in making this spongy and soft Italian bread. 

I didn't have a recipe in any of my cookbooks, so I searched online for a focaccia recipe and came across quite a lovely website that showcases recipes for Italian food, including a thorough blog post all about making focaccia step by step. You can find it here if you're interested in making focaccia yourself: http://www.italianfoodforever.com/2011/09/how-to-make-focaccia-step-by-step/. 

This recipe is probably one of the fastest and most straightforward bread recipes that I can think of. The bread dough is very basic, with only flour, salt, water, yeast, and olive oil to make up the bread. Everything gets mixed in one bowl, and your rising time is more like a total 2 hours rather than  the 9-12 hours that it takes to make French bread or ciabatta. 

What initially struck me about this recipe was the amount of olive oil that goes in it. You have to include 2-3 tablespoons in the dough itself, then another two tablespoons into the bowl that the dough rises in. Then you pour more olive oil onto the dough to get into the little holes that get pressed into the dough with your fingertips. It maybe doesn't sound like a lot, but it looked like it was a lot. Don't be alarmed like I was though, if you do try the recipe; just follow what the recipe says. The olive oil soaks down into the bread and creates a lovely crispy crust, but a soft, spongy texture that you want in your focaccia bread.

Red Velvet Cupcakes

On Friday evening, my sister decided to make red velvet cupcakes, and yesterday we both made the cream cheese frosting and decorated the cupcakes. We topped them with cinnamon hearts since it's almost Valentine's Day.

I decided I'm going to let Jennifer have the fun of posting all the details about making these cupcakes, so you can check out her post here: http://jennyraggedrobin.blogspot.com/2012/02/red-velvet-cupcakes-with-cream-cheese.html.

Sweet Potato Fries

  

It seems to me that sweet potato fries are becoming a culinary trend. So many people enjoy them, and they are becoming increasingly more available in restaurants and in the frozen food section of grocery stores. Nonetheless, I hadn't actually tried sweet potato fries until this last fall. This was probably mostly due to the fact that I haven't enjoyed sweet potatoes in the past. When I did get to taste sweet potato fries, however, I found that they're really delicious and a nice change from your regular potato French fries. 

So, when I was grocery shopping with my mom this week, I requested that we buy some sweet potatoes so that I could make some homemade fries myself. I've made regular fries by frying potatoes in the deep fryer, so I basically knew the process, but I decided that I wanted to follow Michael Smith's sweet potato fries recipe.Truly, sweet potato fries are incredibly easy to make at home, and even if you don't have a deep fryer, you can still make them in a pot on the stove.

I began by peeling the sweet potatoes and cutting them into sticks, just like you would with a regular potato. I ended up cutting three potatoes, which fed four people comfortably, and we have a bit leftover too. 

Next, I  began heating the vegetable oil in the deep fryer. 

While the oil was heating, I mixed up the spice mixture. This included sea salt, cinnamon, chili powder, and brown sugar.  

Bread Pudding

  

After making French bread earlier in the week, I realized that it wasn't possible for us to finish all of it before it wouldn't be worth eating, so I decided to make bread pudding. I used a bread pudding recipe from the Earth to Table cookbook for inspiration, but I didn't have all of the ingredients that the recipe called for. This meant that I had to come up with a recipe of my own that uses ingredients I had on hand. Here's the recipe. 

Ingredients 

8 cups of French bread (you can, of course, use whatever bread you want)

1/4 cup dried cranberries

1/4 cup raisins

1/4 cup walnuts

2 apples, cubed (I used Royal Gala)

3 eggs

1/2 cup sugar

1-1/2 cups whipping cream

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 cup maple syrup or to taste

Begin the recipe by preheating your oven to 350 F. 

Next, cut the French bread in to cubes. Measure the bread cubes as you go, and evenly distribute the bread in an oven dish. 

Put the dried cranberries and raisins into a bowl and pour hot water over them. Leave them a few minutes to soften. Once they're soft, drain them, and sprinkle them evenly over top of the bread cubes. 

Chop the walnuts and cube the apples, and sprinkle them over the bread as well. I used royal gala apples because that's what we had, and they worked well because they keep their shape and texture when they bake in the oven. I'm sure any other apples would be fine though.

To begin working on the egg mixture, combine the eggs and sugar in a bowl and whisk them together. Add the whipping cream, nutmeg, cinnamon, and vanilla extract to the eggs and sugar and whisk them. It'll look and spell a little bit like eggnog at this point. Once combined, pour the egg mixture over the bread. Make sure that the bread is evenly covered.