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For some reason, I’ve apparently had a need for sweet bread-type things this past week. Last Wednesday, I made some sweet Indian roti, I mixed them up again on Friday, and today I cooked Portuguese sweet muffins. At this point, though, I can say that I am quite thoroughly breaded out. Oi. However, I did reach this point of sweet bread saturation quite deliciously, as you’ll see.

Happy little sugar-laminated breads

The roti is really nice to quickly satiate a sweet bread craving attack. Flour, salt, water, and sugar is all you need along with a little bit of time to mix the first three into a dough, roll them, sprinkle with the sugar, fold up, and roll out again before pan-grilling. They come out chewy and light, with fabulous layers of gooey sugar. For variation on Friday, I added a tiny bit of sugar to the flour and salt for the dough along with some oil before the water. The oil makes for a more tender bread that is easier to flatten. However, for some reason the sugar-laminating doesn’t work quite as well. Some seems to get…absorbed by the bread and it starts to brown before all of the sugar gets a chance to become melty. I think I like them without the oil better, though maybe if I’m particularly wanting a tender bread, I’d go with the oil.

As for other tender breads, today’s Portuguese sweet muffins were a fantastically fun and delectable adventure! I’ve had a packet of yeast lying around since I bought one from my sister over a week ago, and I just couldn’t decide what to make with it. Today, it came to me in a sudden craving for the Portuguese sweet muffins my dad used to regularly buy from Trader Joe’s (a natural foods supermarket chain). After searching high and low–or really, just a few minutes at AllRecipes.com–I came upon this recipe that, aside from a lack of lemon, looked like it would at least come pretty close.

No Portuguese were harmed in the making of this muffin

It surpassed Trader Joe’s by galaxies. While I would appreciate the addition of some lemon in these muffins, it certainly isn’t necessary. I can’t imagine it being removed from the Trader Joe’s version because it needs the freshness of the flavor to make up for the lack of freshness in the muffin. Seriously, now that I’ve gotten very confident in my bread-making ability with these muffins, I will never, ever buy packaged breads again. I so rarely get cravings for bread that it’ll be worth the time to spend baking my own. I get cravings for cakes and pastries much too often to completely exclude packaged stuff, though, as much as I prefer homemade. ;x

Soft and moist inside, firm and dry outside–perfect!

Being moist by nature, these muffins wind up with a completely different texture when packaged. The muffin becomes uniformly moist with tougher tops and bottoms in a package, whereas the fresh ones I made had a more extreme, pleasant contrast between the doughy, soft interiors and firm, dry tops and bottoms. Toasting is absolutely necessary for the Trader Joe’s muffins because the chewiness of the exteriors is just unpalatable right out of the bag, but I wound up eating my muffin sans toasting today. I think it could very well be enjoyed toasted, and at the same time, it isn’t a detriment to devour it as-is.

There’s nothing like sweet breads topped with maple syrup

I didn’t quite consume it “as-is,” though. ;) After tasting a small piece to see how it was plain, I had the sudden idea to top it with a little maple syrup and a pat of butter instead of my usual toasted-and-buttered treatment for the Trader Joe’s sub-pars. This concoction thus satisfied not only my desire for a sweet bread but also pancakes. While Portuguese sweet muffins are certainly not like a pancake, I almost exclusively have maple syrup on only either French toast or pancakes, so the association between “syrup” and “pancakes” is very strong in my mind. I’d never consider dressing a Trader Joe’s sad-excuse-for-a-muffin in this manner, though. I think I’ll stick to having those toasted-and-buttered.

So the moral of the story for all my bread-making recently is that if bread is on my mind, it’s time to whip out some mixing bowls, flour the table (the only flat surface large enough for kneading here–unfortunately), and heat up the stove or oven. Store-bought goods just aren’t worth it.

2 Comments Categories: Breads · Breakfast Foods · Food Musings · Indian · Photos · Portuguese · Recipes · Side Dishes

I had requested to do Thanksgiving dinner this year about a month ago. Starting after we returned from the diner on Wednesday night, I undertook making a complete meal from start to finish. On the menu was pumpkin bread for daytime nibbling, turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed sweet potatoes, mashed cauliflower, green beans, stuffing, and pumpkin pie. With an incredibly brief break for sleep in the wee hours of the morning, I was in the kitchen from about 10pm Wednesday until 4:20pm on Thanksgiving Day. I tend to do things a little on the slow side when it a) involves an unfamiliar recipe and b) involves any sort of cutting–my knife skills, while safe, are certainly not yet very efficient.

My preparation got underway with setting up the turkey to brine for several hours. I cooked up a nice brine in a huge stockpot, let it cool, put in the fresh turkey, and let it soak up all the flavors and get succulently moist. Once that was resting out in the garage, I put together the cranberry sauce because it had to chill overnight. After that was done cooking and set aside in the fridge to cool, it was time to prepare the crust for the pumpkin pie. That came together pretty quickly (as is necessary with pastry crusts), and next up was to bake some pumpkin bread for everyone to munch on for breakfast and throughout the day on Thursday while waiting for dinner.

A happy loaf of pumpkin bread

There was a recipe in my brand-new The Baking Handbook by Martha Stewart that looked fantastic, so I passed on baking my mom’s traditional recipe, which she does every year at both Thanksgiving and Christmas. Clearly, Martha knows what she’s doing and sometimes it’s definitely worth it to fix something that isn’t broken. While my mom’s bread hasn’t been labelled as “bad” in my book, it’s totally been knocked way down on the list in the face of this new recipe.

I simply had to try a piece as soon as it was cool enough!

Thanks to Martha, I’ve discovered the wondrousness and glory of a super-moist, super-tender, not-overly-sweet, very-pumpkiny-and-flavorful pumpkin bread. And I never considered my mom’s recipe terribly unhealthy until now–the Baking Handbook recipe uses one-sixth of the oil my mom’s does, and yet it’s still a bazillion times more moist. I’m going to attribute it to the buttermilk, because the red velvet caked I baked back in September had the same kind of moistness and also called for buttermilk. I have now decided that buttermilk is a Kitchen Essential and Makes Everything Better. Seriously, I think I’m going to be very critical of any cake-like recipe that doesn’t call for it from now on, and I’m going to continue experimenting with using it elsewhere (I’d tried it with oatmeal, and dude, does it make the best oatmeal EVER).

Consumption of that slice took place, the turkey was turned in the brine, and then I settled in to get some much-needed sleep for a couple of hours. After waking up a bit earlier than I had planned due to other people starting to make noise through the house, I got the turkey out of the brine and set up in the roasting pan to go in the oven later and put together the pie so it would be done and cooling all day and the oven could be devoted to the turkey.

While the pie was baking, I cut up the bread for the stuffing. I have to say, it’’s really ridiculous how difficult sourdough bread is to cut. Jesus. It took me an hour to cut it into pieces, and most of that time was spent just cutting the slices because it required so much effort! I actually had to take breaks to rest a couple of times!! While I loved the taste of the sourdough for stuffing, I don’t think I’ll be putting myself through all of that again. ;P The pie was done baking by the time the bread had succumbed to my will and sharp tool of doom, so I set that out to cool and toasted the bread cubes. Those were set aside until it was time to put the stuffing together, and I got to work chopping the aromatic veggies to stuff the turkey.

The turkey was stuffed and prepped for the oven and began cooking just about noon, right on time, woo! I set to work chopping up the seemingly massive amount of onions and celery and carrot for the stuffing, and then I started putting that together. I couldn’t help tasting after I browned the sausage, hee. Italian turkey sausage has been added near the top of the “Animal Proteins I Like” list. ;x Yum! :yum: The mountain of veggies were cooked down and stirred into the bread cubes, and that was set aside until the turkey came out of the oven and it could get finished.

Once I’d readied the stuffing, I took a brief sit-down break and then got working on the other side dishes. First was the green beans with pan-roasted red onions and balsamic glaze, then I cooked and mashed the sweet potatoes for the brûléed mashed sweet potatoes, and last was the beginnings of the prep work for my mashed cauliflower. All of the sides came together just in time for the turkey to come out at 3:30pm. It was set aside to rest while I gave the stuffing it’s final prep of pouring broth over it, putting it in some pans, and baking for 20 minutes. Around four, I started making the gravy, and by 4:30 we were sitting down to eat. Of course, not until I’d taken photos of everything…

All of the food set out to be served

Mmm…crisp grean beans and sweet red onion

Fruity, meaty, flavorful stuffing

Oh, the caramelized brown sugary goodness…

Smooth, creamy mashed cauliflower

That turkey tasted just as good as it looked!

Perfectly sweet-tart cranberry sauce

Everyone was getting impatient while I photographed everything. ;) As soon as I was done, my dad set to work carving the turkey, and soon we were all sitting around the table with our respective plates of food, ready to give thanks and dig in!

Waiting for everyone to be ready was torture!

I got compliments throughout the meal on how good everything was. My dad said that it was absolutely the best turkey he’d had in his life, and considering how many turkeys he’s had to compare it to–and the fact that it was the first turkey I ever cooked–I’m quite proud of myself for it. :) :) It was a very delicious turkey: incredibly moist but not undercooked, very flavorful, and gorgeously browned on the outside. As for the side dishes, the green beans were perfectly crisp-tender and very well complimented by the sweet red onions and light balsamic-brown sugar glaze; we polished off an entire dish of the stuffing during dinner and very little was left by the time I came back to school last night–we usually have apples in it, but I definitely like the pear so much better, and I already raved about that Italian sausage; my dad said that the mashed cauliflower really could almost pass for mashed potatoes, and it came out really good with chicken bouillon and a little milk and butter; the mashed sweet potatoes were definitely a welcome variation from the dessert-like sweet potato casserole we’ve always had; and the cranberry sauce was fantastic, garnering much approval from my grandma–and everyone else. ;D

Overall, dinner was an absolute success, and I’ve already been named Christmas Dinner Chef this year. :) Considering it’s only a month away, I can’t believe I already have to keep it in mind to plan the meal! I’ve become quite settled on doing a standing rib roast for the main dish. A bit more complicated to get right than a turkey, I think, but I have confidence my dad will be raving about it just as much as yesterday’s turkey. ;)

The crust was the best part

My mom, grandma, and myself cleaned up once everyone was done eating, and then we had dessert. To be honest, I don’t think I’ll use the same recipe for pumpkin pie again. While it had great texture, it wasn’t sweet enough. The crust was fantastic, though. The pecans were great, nuts make everything better. ;D My mom had also picked up a peach-praline pie from Stop and Shop, and that was quite good. It made up for the lack of sweetness in the pumpkin pie tenfold, heh. There was also some ice cream to have with the pie–Häagen-Dazs Light Dulce de Leche and Rum Raisin. Ohhh, boy. :D

We all rolled away from the table after that meal. And no one was averse to having leftovers the next day, either, it was all so good. :)

3 Comments Categories: Breads · Desserts · Main Meals · Photos · Side Dishes · Thanksgiving 2005 · Vegetables

This morning I’d settled on making rice pudding using arborio rice for lunch, but come the end of my morning class, I decided something more savory and lunch-like was a better idea. Rather than attempting to transform my remaining arborio into a sugar-laden confection, I went for my take on fusion cuisine: teriyaki risotto. To be perfectly honest, I can think of no better food combination than Japanese and Italian, and this risotto totally proved me right.

A lovely little Asian soup bowl brimming with risotto

Normally risotto is made with some kind of broth or wine or combination of the two as the liquid, but I decided to use teriyaki sauce diluted in water instead. Sautée the rice in some unsalted butter until it’s clear except for the little center pearl of white, and then begin the tedious process of gradually adding the simmering liquid until you get that delectable creamy-saucy texture that defines a perfect risotto. Once all the liquid was added and absorbed, I stirred in some heated mixed baby string beans and carrots, a little extra teriyaki sauce, and a light drizzle of sesame oil. Sprinkle with a bit of salt, and voilà! a fantastic lunch for two (my sister shared it with me, and confirmed the risotto was “OMG SO GOOD” ;)).

Mmm…morsels of creamy ricy veggie goodness…

Unfortunately my camera is being highly uncooperative lately and refuses to take anything but blurry photos of my food. :P Hopefully it’ll shape up over the course of tonight and tomorrow so I can legibly photo-document what should be a fabulous Thanksgiving dinner prepared by yours truly! I’m the chef for this year’s family feast for the first time, and I hope to create the best ever meal we’ve had for the holiday. :D

On another food-related note for the day, one of my Chinese suitemates has a bowl full of tapioca in the fridge, and every time I’ve gone in it to get something the past few days, it’s made me crave bubble tea. Naturally, this necessitated a stop at the Kelly Tea and Coffee House on the way back to my room from my last class today. ;) Looking over their menu of bubble tea flavors for the day–strawberry, sweet tea, and taro–I was immediately drawn to that last flavor scrawled in lavender marker on the menu board. Through my recent research of Asian desserts I’d come across the mention of taro several times, and it definitely piqued my curiosity, what with the enthusiasm people so frequently possessed when talking about it.

Happy beads of tapioca swimming in sweet, delicious taro-ness!

After a very short mental debate between strawberry and taro, I chose to go with the unusually-purple drink over the cotton-candy-pink option. I most definitely was not regretting that choice after the first sip, and I subsequently added “something made with real taro” to my mental list of Unusual Foods to Try. ;D I’m definitely a fan of bubble tea–the novelty of slippery beads of tapioca mixed in with sips of a sweet, fruity- or tea-flavored beverage is just too much! Yum! :yum

And now I need to get more of this darned art history paper written and plan out the timing for all the things I’m cooking for Thanksgiving dinner. I’m determined for it to be a blazing success! Well, hopefully not blazing in the LITERAL sense… :?

3 Comments Categories: Beverages · Fusion Cuisine · Italian · Japanese · Main Meals · Photos · Rice · Side Dishes · Vegetables

To see me eat this dish, you’d think I had ants in my pants. I was excited for HOURS after I first made it–seriously, I told everyone I ran into about it!–and now that I’ve perfected it with a second attempt, I’m making the recipe public. :) It took me forever to figure out what I could possibly do with rooibos tea for this month’s TeaChef, and using it in place of broth when making mashed cauliflower just randomly came to mind during some of my brainstorming.

Personally, I find it so flavorful and the texture so delightful that I can eat it by itself, but it would make a great substitute for mashed potatoes or go beautifully with roast poultry. Yum! :yum:

(A photo of the prep and a recipe can be found on the second page.)

0 Comments Categories: Photos · Recipes · Side Dishes · TeaChef · Vegetables