I took a trip to the local restaurant supply store, Hockenbergs this week and I picked up a digital thermometer. It’s has a very slim tip to be able to take the temperature of meat while it is cooking. I expect that it will help me not getting chicken and pork to dry completely out while cooking.
The reviews aren’t great on amazon, but the complaints mostly seem to be centered around the thermometer not being completely waterproof. I used it two days ago when I was making the custard for a batch of Guinness Milk-Chocolate ice cream from Perfect Scoop.
Archive for the ‘Books’ Category
Taylor Waterproof Digital Thermometer 9847FDA
Friday, August 14th, 2009Jiao Zi – Pot-stickers from Seventh Daughter
Sunday, August 2nd, 2009I’m currently reading Seventh Daughter and after finishing the first chapter I had a craving to get some dumplings. I decided to whip up a batch for lunch yesterday. The book even recommended to just buy pot sticker wrappers, so I went to our local Cub and got some ground pork and pot sticker wrappers. I already had the remaining ingredients except for green onions which I decided to sub some regular chopped onion for.
- 1 lb ground pork
- 2 large handfuls shredded cabbage
- 1 small onion finely chopped
- 1 tsp minced ginger (I freeze mine and use a micro plane grater to grate as much as I need)
- 1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
- 1 tablespoon sesame oil
I mixed up the meat in a bowl and filled the pot-sticker wrappers with about a tablespoon of meat each. I used a little egg-wash to make the wrapper stick better together and then attempted to braid the sides with pretty decent results. Heat a non-stick skillet and spray the pan with oil. Add the pot-stickers and cook for 2-3 minutes or until the pot-stickers have some color underneath them. Add enough water to the pan to cover about 1/3 of the way up on the dumplings and let the pot-stickers steam under a lid until the water has evaporated and the pot-stickers are cooked all the way through. The pot-stickers turned out very good, although a little salty. So I would leave half a teaspoon of salt out next time. Serve with a soy/rice vinegar/chili oil dipping sauce.
Malay Style Chicken Satay Marinade
Friday, May 22nd, 2009Probably one of my favorite recipes taken directly from a book is the Chicken Satay recipe in Cradle of Flavor: Home Cooking from the Spice Islands of Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia by James Oseland. I’ve adapted the recipe to use weight instead of the relatively low-key “piece of” measurements in the recipe. Of course the measurements really depends on the potency of the individual ingredients, but I think it’s alittle more accurate way to get to a consistent result. The original recipe calls for ground turmeric, but I was able to get some fresh turmeric from Dragon Star market in St. Paul.
- 1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
- 1 tbsp whole coriander seed
- 1 tbsp whole fennel seed
Use a mortar and pestle to pound this into a fine powder.
- 1 oz fresh galangal sliced
- 2 oz fresh ginger sliced
- 2 oz shallots (little less than original recipe calls for)
- 3 cleaned and chopped stalks of lemongrass (hard outer leaves removed and top half cut off)
- 3 cloves of garlic sliced
- .5 oz of fresh turmeric
- 3 oz palm sugar – finely sliced
- Peanut oil
Put the spice powder into a food processor and add the sliced galangal, ginger, garlic, lemongrass, shallots, and turmeric. Grind for a minute, then scrape down sides and grind for another minute. Scrape down sides again and add 2 tbsp peanut oil and grind for another minute. Now add the palm sugar and scrape down again before letting the mixture grind a final time. Adjust the oil to make the consistency right – it shouldn’t be liquid and it shouldn’t be too thick either.
The marinade is plenty to marinate over 3 lbs of chicken thighs (no breasts please – for both flavor and juicyness). The diced chicken thighs marinate anywhere from an hour to 4 hours. It freezes really well too – so I made a triple batch today. It is fairly labor intensive to do the marinade with slicing and cleaning of the ingredients – took me about 2 hours from start to finish. No pictures for now as I’m not actually making the satay until tomorrow.
Artisan Breads in Five Minutes a Day – Master Recipe
Thursday, February 5th, 2009
Last week Duncan was asking me where to buy a good baking stone and commercial food-grade containers so he could get started making some breads out of “Artisan Breads in Five Minutes a Day”. This reminded me that I had the same book and really hadn’t tried any of the recipes in the book. While we do have Superior Products locally, I by far prefer going to Hockenbergs to browse the isles upon isles of food related paraphernalia.
I’ve had quite a few baking stones over the last 7 or so years I’ve been here. Most of them have cracked way too quickly. The last one I got about 4 years ago from Hockenbergs, and it’s still going strong despite the abuse I put it through. It’s been in the 550F degree oven for hours and the 600F+ grill without cracking. That’s with water, pizza sauce, and more getting dropped on it in my quest to make great pizza and bread. It’s thick and sturdy, which you would expect of a pricier baking stone. I also have a fairly large stock of various sized food-grade containers. I found one that fit perfect for the first recipe in the book – a 5 quart square lidded bucket.
The recipe is straight forward, but I instantly questioned the amount of salt and yeast when I saw the recipe. While I like my breads less saltier, and usually err on the side of caution this recipe called for a full 1 1/2 tbsp of salt.
- 3 cups of warm water
- 1 1/2 tbsp kosher salt
- 1 1/2 tbsp dried yeast
- 6 1/2 cups of unsifted flour
I decided to go with the amount of salt anyway, to see where the recipe would go. The recipe just calls for mixing the ingredients together and letting it sit for 2 hours before putting it in the fridge for 2-14 days. Much like Bittman’s No-Knead bread that has been blogged to death. I’ve tried that recipe a few times before, but never really cared for the texture of the final bread even though the taste was good. I let the dough rise for the length the recipe called for and put it in the fridge until I was ready to make a loaf a few days later. Upon mixing it together I thought it was very dry, but at least that subsided after the initial rise.
The day of baking I removed half of the dough and let it come to room temperature, before shaping it and turning the oven on to 450F. I put a pan in the oven and put some warm water in it to generate steam in order to get a good oven spring. 
It was pretty well done after about 30 minutes. To my surprise the oven spring was very good for the bread. I haven’t had this good of an oven spring since I was experimenting with some sour dough breads a few years back. As you can see from the picture to the right the interior is very nice and airy.
Besides having way too much salt, this bread was very tasty. Crunchy and chewy exterior with soft light interior. The other thing that impressed me was the piece of bread that was left over the next day was still as soft as the day before. Exterior was still chewy and the interior was not dry at all.
As I’m writing this I’m eating the bread that came out of the second half of the bread. After 4 days in the fridge the bread is pretty sour without being sour dough. I actually prefered the flavor of it after just 2 days in the fridge. Without cleaning the cointainer I’ve started a new batch already, where I cut the salt down to 1 tbsp. Hopefully this will turn out much more like I want, and I’ll make sure to bake all of it after two days instead.