Kitchen Chick

Paczki Bread Pudding

Thanks to Ed Vielmetti for the shout out for Paczki Day. I'm feeling a little bad that I didn't offer up my usual annual Paczki write-up, so instead this year I am offering up my Paczki Bread Pudding recipe.

I did snag some of my own from Copernicus European Market on S. Main, and then found myself with an excess of leftovers. Having declared February to be the Pudding Month, I knew what I had to with them. I read several different bread pudding recipes and then put together my own. I'm pretty pleased with it, and I think this would work well with a variety of different pastries (especially dense ones).

I started with these...

And turned three and a half of my stale paczki (plus some stale Zingerman's challah with chocolate) into this...

Added milk, cream, eggs, and additional flavorings and got this...!

Kitchen Chick's Paczki Bread Pudding
some amounts are approximate

pazcki/challah/other pastries
1/2 C sugar
4 large eggs
1/2 tsp salt
2 C whole milk (adjust for bread amount if necessary)
1 C cream
1.5 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp grated nutmeg
2 - 3 Tbs bourbon or scotch (2 Tbs will create a very subtle flavor)
1.5 Tbs melted butter and optional demerara sugar and sea salt for topping

Ideally these should be "real" paczki with that dense egg dough. I used 3 1/2 paczki (12 oz) and 5 oz of challah with chocolate, but I didn't measure the volume. Perhaps 10 cups? Basically, I used enough paczki and challah to nicely fill a deep 9x9 pan. I sliced my paczki into four slices and then cross cut that once to create fairly large pieces (see photo).

Set aside a small handful of bread pieces. I like to use smaller, crustier ones. They will go on top of the pudding at the end and will help create a nice top.

Whisk eggs and sugar and salt. Add in milk, cream, vanilla, and scotch and whisk to blend. Pour this over the remaining bread. Press and turn the bread gently so it all gets coated and let soak for 20 minutes.

Heat oven to 350 F.

Butter a 9x9 baking pan. Pour soaked bread into the pan. Top with the reserved bread pieces. Press them in a bit to make sure they are part of the pudding. Drizzle/brush the melted butter over the top. Sprinkle with some demerara sugar (1 to 2 Tbs). I also like to add a tiny sprinkle of sea salt over the top (1/4 tsp?).

Bake 45 minutes (plus or minus a bit) until the custard is set but still jiggles in the center.

Variants:
- Try adding some dried cherries at the soaking stage.
- If you don't have challah with chocolate, you can add some chopped dark chocolate stirred at the soaking stage.

Quick Bite Tour: Dim Sum at Asia City

Asia City is the large new Chinese restaurant on Washtenaw next to Hua Xing. We've been watching this massive building go up with some interest, hoping it would be a giant Hong Kong-style place like we've seen in the LA suburbs, fearing it would be Yet Another Nasty Buffet.

Turns out it may be both.

It's got a decent-looking menu, with a lot of genuine Hong Kong dishes on it, as well as the usual Americanized pretenders. It's also got a giant buffet area (it wasn't open when we were there, but the name tags were up, and it definitely looked like the usual stuff, so not very exciting... though they did have an "open kitchen" area where buffet patrons could get things cooked to order, we'll see). We haven't tried either of these.

And it's also got Dim Sum, with service from carts, so it's going directly up against Great Lake (which also has carts on weekends) as well as Lai Lai (which is checklist-only). However, they're set up to do some stuff we previously hadn't seen around here, like frying items tableside directly at the cart.  And they have some new items. We're all for this; if it makes all three places step up their game, that means more and better Dim Sum for us!

What we had was good, but on the expensive side.  We're going to show you some photos now, and circle back with them in a while to actually review them because there's no point in reviewing a restaurant during its first week. You shouldn't hold off on eating there, though:  if you like Chinese food, check it out. Well, the menu and the dim sum anyway.

Egg custard tarts.  We both felt they're the best we've had, possibly ever. Hence they lead off the photo set.

Lobster balls.  Served with a peanut curry sauce (in background), which is a great addition to the local dim sum scene.

Chinese cruller stuffed with shrimp paste, with the same sauce. Asian Legend's version is here.  (Remember to enlarge this photo first.)

Shrimp in rice roll. Generous sauce, but a bit soggy.

Sesame balls.

Pan-fried cakes with shrimp and scallop. Slightly underdone. Other batches we saw were browned better.

Shrimp paste around sugar cane.  Nice addition.  We usually think of this as Vietnamese.

Congee with dried scallops, thousand-year eggs, and who knows what else. Assembled tableside.

More photos in the extended post...

The Month of February is for Pudding...

Chocolate pudding cups topped with whipped cream

I bet you didn't know that. I didn't either because I just made it up!

Pudding is one of those desserts that I never think of making for myself. Probably because pudding evokes memories of "box pudding". (Does anyone remember those "pudding cakes" where you punch holes in a sheet cake and pour liquidy pudding over the top?) But whenever I have a really good one I say to myself, "Self, you should really make some pudding some day."

That "some day" finally arrived. And not just one day, but a whole month of days! I decided to spend a month making puddings (okay, maybe just two a week or so), getting to know this dessert in a much more intimate way (hey, not what you're thinking) than just trying out a recipe, saying "Mmmmm, that was good!", and then moving on to the next thing.

One thing I noticed (so far, with my vast experience of making two puddings): basic creamy smooth pudding-from-scratch is really easy to make, but you do need to plan ahead as you'll need at least several hours of chilling time.  At least based on the recipes I've looked at so far.

Another thing I noticed: making pudding from scratch generates a lot of surplus egg whites. So February is not only the month of pudding, it is inadvertently the month of egg whites, too.

That said, let me get on to the pudding. I've kicked off my "February is Pudding month" with this chocolate pudding recipe from Tyler Florence (click through for recipe), featured on his FoodTV show Tyler's Ultimate.

Tyler uses cocoa powder, which makes this pudding extremely simple. And it cooks up quickly. In fact, the main thing I learned doing this pudding was that it's a very thin line between "just done" and "Oh my gawd, it's starting to separate! Quick, quick! Off the heat!".  Fortunately, it still tasted great, and with whipped cream on top no one could see that the pudding wasn't perfectly smooth and glossy. I think the trick with pudding is that you don't cook it until it is as thick as the finished pudding will be. You cook it a little less, and it will firm up when chilled.