Kitchen Chick

Lemon Pudding & Blueberry Preserves

Back at the beginning of February, I announced that I would spend the month making  puddings. All told, I made seven different kinds of pudding. Two chocolate, two butterscotch, one banana, paczki bread pudding, and one lemon pudding later I can say that I've learned a lot about pudding.

Number one on that list is when your pudding is coming to a boil and you're stirring like mad as it begins to thicken, do not leave the pudding to take a phone call! Fortunately, I did not do this to my lemon pudding.

This lovely lemon pudding uses finely grated zest to give it an extra lemony kick. The pudding is strained before serving to remove the zest, or at least most of it. We didn't mind the few tiny bits that got through, but if you want a perfectly smooth pudding then use a fine strainer and don't push or scrap the pudding through the strainer. Or consider using large peels of zest that you can easily remove before serving.

Lemon and blueberry go so well together that I decided to serve my pudding with blueberry-lime preserved that I canned this past summer, but you can serve it plain or with some whipped cream because whipped cream makes everything better. :-)  (I'm sure there's a dessert out there that isn't made better with whipped cream, but none are coming to mind at the moment.)

My Favorite Lemon Pudding
from Luscious Lemon Desserts by Lori Longbotham

3/4 C sugar
1/4 C cornstarch
2.5 C milk
3 egg yolks, lightly beaten
2 Tbs grated lemon zest
pinch of salt (up to 1/8th tsp?)
1/2 C freshly squeeze lemon juice (I didn't get quite enough out of my lemon, so I topped it off with some lemon concentrate.)
2 Tbs butter (the recipe says unsalted though I used salted and it was fine)

Whisk sugar and cornstarch together in saucepan. Add milk and whisk until smooth. Add egg yolks, zest, and salt and cook, stirring frequently, over medium heat. When the pudding is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon (we're not talking super thick, just a nice layer that sticks to the spoon), remove from heat.

Stir in lemon juice and butter. Pour through strainer into serving bowl. If desired, spoon into four individual serving dishes. Let cool to room temperature then cover loosely and chill for at least 2 hours or up t 3 days until set.

Serve chilled.

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.

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.

Thanksgiving Favorites: Cranberry Pie

The settlers at Plymouth Rock are said to have enjoyed cranberries at their first Thanksgiving. I can hardly imagine a Thanksgiving dinner without at least one cranberry dish. But as nice as cranberry jelly is, and as much as I like a good crunchy cranberry-orange relish, my favorite way to eat cranberries has to be Elizabeth Ryan's cranberry pie.

I first wrote about this pie back in 2004. Five years later, and it is now a staple at our Thanksgiving dinner. I love it so much that I wanted to share it with everyone again. It's a definite win for anyone who loves tart-sweet combinations. I often make this pie without nuts so that nut-allergic friends can also enjoy it. 

The cranberry is a native North American fruit. It grows in bogs and marshes, or can be cultivated in sandy beds, which are usually flooded in the Fall to make it easy to harvest the fruit. I always picture my cranberries this way — floating serenely with millions of their comrades in a flooded field, then corralled by guys in waders to a conveyor belt and onward to be bagged and delivered to grocery stores; however, according to Wikipedia, only the 5-10% of the crop that is dry-harvested are unbruised enough to be sold as the fresh berries we see in the supermarkets this time of year.

Wisconsin and Massachusetts are the largest cranberry producers, but Michigan's Department of Agriculture is looking to boost local cranberry production. For my Ann Arbor readers looking to "keep it local," I found Michigan-grown cranberries at the Whole Foods on Eisenhower.

Making the filling for this pie is actually quite simple. Chop cranberries in a food processor, mix with raisins, orange juice, some zest, and butter. Blend sugar with some flour. Layer some of the sugar-flour mix in your pie crust, put in the cranberry mix, and top with the remaining sugar-flour mix. For the actual amounts, check out the full recipe.

Maple Bacon Apple Galette

You'd think, looking back at my blog posts over the past few months, that I've been more of a restaurant chick than a kitchen chick. You wouldn't be far from wrong (and I've got some great restaurant stuff coming!), but I've been busy in the kitchen, too.

After learning basic hot water bath canning this summer, I've had fun making sour cherries preserve, blueberry-lime jam, and grapefruit marmalade. Of course, Fall is apple season, and I currently have a big bag of tart apples sitting in my kitchen that I'll be turning into some kind apple preserve. However, that's not the only thing I've been doing with apples. I've become uncommonly fond of galettes. Rhubarb makes a fabulous galette, and so do apples, too! In fact, apples and bacon make for an uncommonly delicious galette!

While there are plenty of bacon-apple pie recipes out there, I didn't find any bacon-apple galette recipes so I came up with my own.

Kitchen Chick's Bacon Apple Galette

Dough
(from Chez Panisse Fruit , but you can use any galette dough recipe)
Makes enough for two galettes

2 C flour
1 Tbs sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
12 Tbs butter, chopped in small pieces and chilled (tip: put in freezer to re-chill after chopping)
7 Tbs ice-cold water, more or less as needed.

Filling
(Double for two galettes)

1/3 C sugar
2 very large or 3 to 4 medium to small apples, peeled and sliced 1/4 inch thick. I like to use tart apples.
4 slices thick-sliced smoked bacon. (I used apple-wood smoked bacon from Sparrow in Kerrytown)
2 to 3 Tbs maple syrup
1 Tbs bacon fat or butter, your choice. Bacon fat will add more bacon flavor, but if you think it will be too much bacon-y goodness, opt for the butter or don't use any extra fat.

(You can do all of the dough using your hands, but I like to cut the butter in with a food processor.)

In food processor, put dry ingredients for dough. Pulse a bit to blend. Add butter and pulse a few times. Butter should still have some good pea-sized chunks. Remove to a bowl or floured work surface. Drizzle ice water over dough in small amounts and mix the dough and press it together until you can form a loose ball. Divide in half, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate at least half and hour.

Chop your bacon into small pieces (1/4 to 1/2 inch?) and cook until fairly crispy, but don't let it get dry and hard with all fat cooked out of it. Lift bacon out of the fat and drain. A non-stick pan is helpful for this next step: put the cooked bacon and maple syrup in a small pan and cook over medium-ish heat. The maple syrup should start to simmer. The longer you cook the maple syrup, the more it will caramelize. If you want more maple flavor, then don't cook it too long. If you prefer more carmel, then let it caramelize a bit more.

If you're good at monitoring the cooking bacon while chopping, you can peel and chop your apples between the bacon steps.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough into about a 12-13 inch circle. Brush off excess flour and transfer to a parchment-lined (or Silpat-lined) baking sheet. 

Arrange apple slices on the dough. (I usually pile them on for a casual look, but you can get fancy and arrange them neatly in a spiraling circle.) Leave a one inch margin along the outside edge. Top with sugar. Top with your chopped maple-bacon (if the bacon has cooled too much and solidified, you can gently reheat it in its pan). Fold the edges over the galette. If you want the extra fat (yeah! extra fat!), brush your butter or bacon fat over the top, brushing some over the dough as well.

Bake your galette for 35-45 minutes. If necessary for even browning, rotate after 20 minutes or so. Crust should be golden brown and flaky and apples soft. Cool on rack and serve.

Goes great with vanilla ice cream, but is awesome on its own.

Gâteau à l'orange (Tunisian olive oil orange cake)

I first learned about cakes that use olive oil instead of butter when I saw an orange cake recipe sample in a catalog promoting this book, and I gave it a try and found it quite tasty. So I was delighted to see an olive oil orange cake as one of the demo items at the recent Zingerman's Tunisian Cooking Demo class. I was intrigued to note that the recipe I tried long ago was attributed to a "Madame Mahjoub", and Onsa Mahjoub was sharing her recipes for the demo class. Are they same Mahjoub? Or perhaps related? The recipes, while very similar, have just enough differences (such as almond extract in the other one) to cause me to wonder if they are by the same person (though, of course, people vary their recipes over time). Or did Nancy Jenkins, author of Essential Mediterranean, adapt the recipe when she wrote it up? All very intriguing. Perhaps one of my readers will know.

Anyway, this is the recipe as we tried it in class, and it was quite delicious, with hints of bitter orange cutting the sweetness. By itself, some tasters felt that it needed a glaze, but I personally think that if you serve this with sweetened mint tea (North African style!) it doesn't need a thing.

Tunisian Gâteau à l'orange
Onsa Mahjoub of Moulins Mahjoub

Zingerman's testing notes: this may need a pinch of salt and perhaps less baking powder, but you can't really tell until you've tried it with salt.

Kitchen Chick's notes: after measuring out the baking powder, I removed about a half teaspoon and put in a half teaspoon of salt. I didn't research proportions of salt or baking powder for cakes. It worked fine for me. Amounts are in metric, so you will need a scale that has a metric setting.

1 lb small organic juice oranges (get organic because you're going to use the peel)
4 eggs
400 grams sugar (500 if you like it sweeter — I used 450)
500 grams pastry flour (or all purpose flour)
200 ml extra virgin olive oil (or you can use 250, which is just over 1 cup)
20 grams baking powder
sesame seeds

Heat oven to 140 or 160 degrees Celsius (160 C = 320 F). Oil a 11x15 inch (or 12 x 15 inch) baking pan. (Or equivalent in multiple smaller cake pans.)

Wash oranges. Cut stem and blossom ends off of oranges and discard. Cut in half and remove seeds. Chop into large pieces then puree in food processor to a pulp or in food mill.

In a mixing bowl, beat eggs and sugar until frothy. Sift the flour into the mixture. Add baking powder and olive oil. Stir to combine. Add oranges and stir to combine. Pour into baking pan(s). Sprinkle top with sesame seeds.  Bake until top is nicely browned and cake springs back when poked gently with finger tip (about 1 hour — less if you're using smaller pans, so be sure to check them).

Galette of Rhubarb

I have these incredibly fond memories of cutting rhubarb from my grandmother's neighbor's plants (I was allowed) and chewing on the oh-so-tart stalks. I bought a few rhubarb plants over the years, but they were never quite the same. One, a 100% green variety, bolts almost as soon as the first leaf unfurls. The other has these tiny short little stalks. Definitely not the rhubarb of my memories. So I was delighted when a few years back a friend offered me some field rhubarb plants from her garden (thanks, S!).  She needed to get rid of them, and I was happy to give them a home.

Since rhubarb doesn't like to be transplanted, I was very nice to it and left it to grow unmolested so it could establish itself. This year I deemed it ready to pick. Strawberries and rhubarb are the classic pairing that everyone knows about, but in Michigan, rhubarb is ready well before strawberry season. I wanted to find a simple recipe that used only rhubarb, but oddly so many of my cookbooks don't feature rhubarb-only dessert recipes. (I did find one, and you'll be seeing the results of that soon.) Fortunately, my friend D came to the rescue and sent me this recipe from The New Basics Cookbook by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins (of Silver Palate fame ).

If you haven't cooked with rhubarb before, please note the leaves and roots are poisonous. Only the stalks are edible.

Galette of Rhubarb
adapted with slight changes from The New Basics Cookbook

Pastry
1 1/4 C unbleached all-purpose flour
1 Tbs granulated sugar
1/4 tsp salt
6 tsp unsalted butter (aka 3 oz), cold, cut into pieces (I've used salted butter and it was fine)
1 tsp finely grated orange zest
2 Tbs ice water

Filling
5 Tbs confectioner's sugar
2 1/2 C rhubarb stalk chunks (1-inch)
slivered orange zest (I used Penzeys grated orange, soaked in water, but slivered zest will be prettier)

Rosso and Lukins have you combine the dry ingredients and then use a pastry blender, knives, or your fingers to cut in the butter and orange zest. I am far too lazy for that. I put the dry ingredients into my food processor with the cutting blade, pulse to mix, then add the butter and pulse some more until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Then I slowly add the ice water and pulse so that it begins to come together. I do the final kneading by hand — just enough to bring it together into a dough and pat into a flattened disk. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

I like to let the chilled dough warm up just a touch to make it easier to roll out. Roll into about a 11 inch wide circle. I found this dough to be stiff and prone to tearing. (Maybe because I use a food processor? Or maybe that's just the way it is?)

Transfer to a lined baking sheet. Mark off a 9 inch wide circle in the center. (A 9 inch round cake pan makes a great stencil.) Sprinkle 3 tablespoons of the confectioner's sugar. Cover with the rhubarb. Sprinkle with the remaining 2 tablespoons of confectioner's sugar and top with the zest. Fold the dough edges over the rhubarb. You should have a nice open area in the center.

Bake until crust is golden and the filling bubbles. Approximately 40 minutes.

Cool slightly before serving.

Kitchen Chick's notes: The first time I made this I didn't have an orange (or any citrus fruit) on hand, but I keep a jar of Penzeys grated orange peel in the refrigerator. I soaked the peel in a bit of water to rehydrate it before using it. The second time I used grapefruit zest as the top garnish, and the Penzeys orange peel in the dough. The grapefruit zest worked wonderfully.

Tomorrow is Paczki Day!

I've been in the clueless department this month, so in case any of you have been as crazy-busy to notice what time of year it is, I offer this Public Service Announcement:

Tomorrow is Fat Tuesday, which means it's Paczki Day!

I'll be picking up mine tomorrow from Copernicus, which brings theirs in from Canada. If you're ordering 3 dozen or more, you can call them at 734-222-9633 and they'll have them packed up and ready to go; otherwise, just show up at 617 S. Main St., Ann Arbor.

Amadeus makes their own fabulous paczki, but it may be too late to order from them. They haven't been answering their phone all day today. (They're probaby crazy-busy making those paczki!) 

Finally, some people are partial to Dom Bakeries.

Support a local business and make your co-workers happy, too: buy some paczki tomorrow!

Caramel Nut Tart

I had never made a tart before.  Something about them always intimidated me, and for the longest time I couldn't figure out why. I had conquered pie crusts, so a tart crust shouldn't be that much different. Then I finally realized: tarts seemed ridiculously hard because I lacked a tart pan.

It's a belief of mine that if you have the right equipment or ingredients on hand, then cooking (or baking) is easy. Lack of a crucial ingredient or equipment, and suddenly a recipe becomes that much more difficult. A dinner that should take just 30 minutes to cook can —  if you need to make extra trips to the store for those missing items — be so impractical as to be impossible at that time. So planning is everything.

Not that I plan or anything. When I saw this caramel-rich tart featured in the March 2009 edition of Bon Appétit, it reminded me of a "musician's tart" but without the fruit. We were getting together with some friends for an evening of food, conversation, and piano music on their newly restored 1876 Steinway grand (I'm soooo envious!), and I decided it was the perfect dessert for the night.

Which meant it was time to buy that tart pan and make my first tart.

Of course, I decided this the night before I needed to make the tart. The next day, I took a lunchtime trip to Macy's (it's close to my work) for a tart pan, but couldn't find one. So I went further into the mall to Williams & Sonoma, but they only had square ones. They had been out of round ones for months and didn't know when they would have more. The recipe specified a round pan. I was in a rush and not up to converting the area of the square one to see if it'd be equal to the round one that I wanted. That afternoon I called Baker's Nook in Saline, but learned that they closed at 5pm and there was no way I'd be able to make it there in time. Finally, at the end of the day, I remembered that Ace Hardware has an excellent kitchen department. They were a bit out of my way, so I called first. Yes, they had tart pans. Many tart pans. In many sizes. And they were open late enough for me. Whew! Disaster averted. (Which is to say: I didn't have to search for a different recipe.  Or square the circle.)

Let that be a lesson to me! Plan further in advance!

And I am glad that disaster was averted, otherwise I would not have discovered this delicious dessert. The orange juice and zest gives this caramel a great citrus flavor that goes fabulously with the nuts. With all those nuts (and the vitamin C from the citrus!) you can pretend it's almost good for you. 

(recipe in extended post, or at above Bon Appétit website)

Blackberry Clafoutis

A local grocery store had a huge sale on blackberries and I loaded up. Small cartons that probably sold for around $4 each were flying out the door at an amazing $1 each. (And I helped a few more fly out the door, along with some blueberries that were on sale, too.)

I've been meaning to try this cherry clafoutis recipe for a while, though I never seem to think of it when I have cherries on hand. Also, pitting cherries is not a lot of fun. Blackberries were an obvious substitute, and better yet I didn't have to pit them. And to make it just perfect, I happen to have a bottle of blackberry brandy on  hand. Mmmmmm... 

It's fast and easy to make. So easy that I made a second one today with a mix of blackberries and blueberries for breakfast.

Blackberry Clafoutis
adapted from "Black Cherry Clafoutis" in One-Pot & Clay Pot Cookbook

butter, for greasing
2-4 cups of blackberries (adjust amount as needed), washed
1/4 C all-purpose flour
1/2 C confectioner's sugar (icing sugar) - plus extra for dusting, which I forgot
4 eggs, beaten
1 C milk (whole/full cream milk preferred)
2 Tbs blackberry brandy (or other appropriately flavored liquor such as kirsch, cherry liqueur, raspberry)
vanilla ice cream to serve

Heat oven to 350 F. Grease baking dish with butter. The original recipe calls for a 5 cup (1.2 liter) baking dish. I used this rather large Emile Henry 13 inch oval dish, which is wider and more shallow than I think the recipe calls for but worked fine. Scatter berries in baking dish. (The original recipe calls for only 2 cups of fruit, but that didn't seem like enough for my wide dish so I used around 3 cups.)

Sift or whisk flour and sugar together. Gradually whisk in the eggs. Add the milk and whisk until smooth. Stir in the liqueur. Pour over the berries. Redistribute berries if needed so they are evenly spread out in the pan.

Back for about 40 minutes, until golden brown and the egg mixture is set. Test with a knife if you're not sure. Knife blade should come out clean.

Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

This also works well — Joe thinks it's even better — with blueberries!