Rosh Hashana Challah

We noticed we didn't have even ONE challah recipe up.  If you leave out the raisins (and just braid it like normal) this is practically the same as my father's recipe for the best challah ever, I think.

Ingredients

• 1c warm water
• 2.25tsp yeast
• 1tsp sugar
• 3 egg yolks
• 1 egg white
• 3tbsp oil
• 1/3c honey
• 4 to 4.5c flour
• 1.5tsp salt
• about 1/2c raisins, plumped in boiling water
• poppy seeds

In a mixing bowl (or, in our case, in the bowl of your kitchenaid) add the water, yeast, and sugar and stir.  Let that sit for 10 minutes or so to proof and make sure the yeast isn't dead.  Now add the yolks, oil, honey, and salt and about 2c of flour.  Using the dough hook (or your hands or whatever) mix to combine, then add flour by the half cup until the dough pulls away from the sides after kneading for a few minutes.  We wound up using about 4c of flour total.  You'll have to scrape the sides of the bowl down with a spatula a few times.

Now set the dough aside to rise in a warm and humid environment until doubled, about 2 hours.  Make sure you give it the full rise.  When it's done, either braid as usual or, for Rosh Hashana, divide the dough in half.  Working with one half at a time, roll the dough out (on a well floured surface) into a long strip - about 24" long by 6-8" wide.  Lay half the raisins along the middle of the strip.  Working on a long side of the strip, roll the dough up into a single long snake with the raisins trapped in the middle.  Pinch the ends of the dough shut and fold the long strip into a U shape, then twist the two dangling arms together.  It will look kind of like a cruller, I guess?  Do the same with the other piece of dough and the rest of the raisins.  Now place the two twists in a pie pan.  You want to arrange them like two interlocking C's - the idea is to have the bulky fold in the center and the tails twisting around in the same direction.  Like a yin-yang, if that makes more sense.

Set the dough back in a humid environment to rise for another hour.  Just before the hour is up, preheat the oven to 350.  Mix the egg white with some water (about 1:1) and whisk together.  When the hour is up and the oven preheated, brush the challah with the egg wash and sprinkle liberally with poppy seeds.  Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes until it's done (and sounds slightly hollow when tapped, etc).

Thoughts: the dough was very easy to work with.  Despite using the kitchenaid and kneading the hell out of the dough, the gluten really relaxed.  I think this may have to do with two things: 1) we mixed all the wet ingredients before adding the flour.  This meant that the fat was allowed to coat the flour particles when it was mixed together, so less gluten was allowed to develop.  2) we let it rise for a full 2 hours rather than just an hour or whatever, so that probably helped.  Arranging the dough was actually pretty easy.  The final texture was perfectly cakey, and the flavor was fantastic.  This was wildly successful.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Baked Doughnuts

Cribbed from 101 Recipes Blog, but don't let that fool you.  As doughnuts, these were terrible.

Ingredients

• 1 1/3c warm milk
• 2.25tsp yeast
• 2tbsp butter
• 2/3c sugar
• 2 eggs
• 4.5c flour
• 1tsp salt
• nutmeg

In bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, nutmeg, sugar, and yeast.  Add the eggs, melted butter, and some of the milk without stirring.  Begin to bring the dough together, stirring, adding more milk as needed to get a soft dough.  You want it to be just a little more hydrated than you'd think - it's easier to add more flour later than to add more liquid if you didn't start with enough, in my experience.  Knead the dough for 5 minutes or so.

Cover the dough and let it rise for an hour.  Preheat oven to 475.  Turn the dough out onto a floured surface, punch down, and roll out to about 1/2" thick.  With a doughnut cutter, cut out doughnuts and place them on baking sheets.  Or cut out circles with a cookie cutter and punch a hole in them with your fingers.  But once you're done, cover and let rise for 45 minutes to an hour.

When they're done, toss the doughnuts into the oven for 8-10 minutes.  Take them out when they're a little underdone?

Thoughts: These were just like bread.  There wasn't any cakeyness, and I guess that's to be expected from a recipe that is basically a bread dough.  These did not make good doughnuts at all, though they made excellent bread pudding later.

Disaster Index: 5/10

Cream of Red Bell Pepper Soup

Maybe we can get back into the swing of things here.

Ingredients

• 2.5 lbs red bell peppers
• 2tbsp shallot or red onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1tsp dried thyme
• 3c chicken stock
• 1/2c half and half
• 1tsp red wine vinegar
• 1tsp balsamic vinegar
• 1/8tsp cayenne
• Parmesan, salt, pepper to serve

Over a gas stove (or under a broiler), char the skin off of the red bell peppers until they're really blackened.  Put them in a paper bag as you finish them and close the paper bag - let them sit in the humid environment for about 10 minutes to sweat.  Then take them out and rinse them in the sink under cool water - the skin should come off pretty easily.  Use a butter knife to scrape off any extra that doesn't just flake off.

In a pot, add the shallot and onion and saute in olive oil until the onion is translucent.  Add the garlic and thyme and sautee another 30 seconds, then add the peppers and the chicken stock.  Bring to a boil and reduce to simmer for 20 minutes.  Then blend everything together until smooth (we used an immersion blender).

Return the soup to the heat and add the half-and-half, vinegar, and cayenne.  Add salt and pepper to taste and serve with parmesan.

Thoughts: We didn't have the recipe for red pepper soup we ate at Sally's because we forgot it.  So we did this, and it was actually pretty good.  We both liked it, though there wasn't as much going on here in terms of different textures and flavors - it was a little one note.  But it was a good note.  I can see making this again, particularly because it's so easy.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Cranberry Curd Bars with Shortbread Crust

OH BOY IT'S BEEN FOREVER SINCE WE'VE DONE ANYTHING. HERE'S SOME CURD FOR YOU.

Ingredients

For the crust: Use the crust from the blueberry-cranberry bars recipe, but with 1.5 sticks of butter, not 2.
For the curd:

• 12 oz fresh or frozen cranberries (one standard bag)
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 cup white sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 4 egg yolks
• 2 tbsp lemon juice (or 2 tsp of the stuff in the little lemon-shaped squeeze bottle -- that shit's powerful)
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup softened butter, cut into tablespoons

Line a glass baking pan with parchment paper. Make the shortbread crust, bake it in a 375 oven for 30 minutes. Remove from oven.
In the meantime, make the curd.
Place cranberries and 1/2 cup water in a small/medium saucepan and boil for five minutes, until the cranberries lyse and get mushy. Stir occasionally.
Pour them through a fine mesh sieve and press the puree through the sieve with a spatula. This might take a while. Don't be daunted, and be sure to get all the puree you can.
Allow puree to cool. Throw away the skins. You will not need them.
To the cool-ish puree, add the sugar, eggs, yolks, salt, and lemon juice. Stir completely. You might want to use a whisk.
Make a double-boiler and whisk the curd furiously until it thickens (it'll already be pretty thick, but it needs to thicken more) and gets lighter in color. It should read 150 on your candy thermometer. 10-12 minutes.
Remove from heat and stir in all the butter all at once. Because you've used a double-boiler and hence haven't scrambled the eggs, you won't need to strain the curd again.
Pour it into the shortbread crust that's waiting.
Bake at 350 for something like 15 minutes, or until the curd is mostly set but jiggles SLIGHTLY in the center.
Refrigerate before serving. Nom nom.

Thoughts: The original recipe calls for a different sort of crust -- one that has walnuts in it. Since neither Dan nor I like walnuts, we decided to use a similar (we thought) sort of crust that we've used in cobbler-type bars, etc. The flavor of the crust was really good, but I personally thought it was a little too tough -- it didn't taste at all like it does when it's beneath cranberry-blueberry bars. Maybe the curd did something to it, or we baked it for too long before putting the curd on top. Maybe reduce baking time to 20 rather than 30 minutes? But the flavor was really good. The curd was also good -- you have to be sure to keep it refrigerated, or else it will sort of melt. Not too tart, but tart enough? We would probably have used a little more lemon.

Disaster Index: 1.5/10 (Dan says 1, I say 2)

Bread Pudding

I know that I had a french toast recipe, but this is slightly different.

Ingredients

• Dense-ish bread, chopped into 1" cubes (ish).
• Egg Mixture
• 1 egg
• 1/2c milk (I use skim)
• 1tbsp brown sugar
• 1/8 tsp salt
• Vanilla extract
• Cinnamon & nutmeg to taste

Preheat the oven to 300.  Make as many servings of the egg mixture as you need.  So if you are making one serving, it's one egg, 1/2c milk, etc.  If you need two, double that.  Just whisk all the ingredients together.  Then add the bread to the mixture, add cinnamon & nutmeg, and toss to coat everything evenly.  What you want to see is that MOST but not ALL of the egg mixture has soaked into the bread.  

Pour the bread into an appropriately sized (well greased) pan - you want a depth of about 2" of bread.  If you're making single servings, you can use ramekins, too.  I usually add a layer of parchment paper at the bottom so that it doesn't stick.  Anyway, pour everything into the cake pan / ramekins / whatever, and cover with foil.  Bake at 300 for about 20-30 minutes (ramekins get 20 min, larger gets 30), then remove the foil, increase heat to 375, and go for another 10-15 minutes.  Remove from oven and let cool for 5-10 minutes before serving.

Thoughts: I've been making this for a while, but I always forget what temperatures I set the oven at and for how long, so I thought I'd write it down so I can remember.  This works pretty darn well.  Another thing you can do (if you're eating the bread pudding immediately) is chop bananas or some other fruit in with the bread before you cook it.  I'm not 100% sure how this will impact the liquidyness of the bread pudding if you use berries, but I'd imagine it would work pretty well with bananas or apples.  Not sure how well this would work with a really crusty bread like French.  I'd stay away from that - you want something a little denser for this.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Caramelized Pear Cake

Based on a recipe from Epicurious.

Ingredients

• 3 largeish bosc pears, peeled.  One grated, the other two sliced thinly.
• 6tbsp butter
• 3/4 c brown sugar
• 1 1/3c flour
• 2/3 c granulated sugar
• 1 1/2tsp cinnamon
• 1tsp baking soda
• 1/2tsp salt
• 3 eggs
• 1/2c neutral oil
• 1tsp vanilla extract
• zest of one orange

Preheat oven to 350.  In an oven-safe skillet, melt the butter.  When the butter is melted, take it off the heat and add the brown sugar, stirring around.  Then lay the two sliced pears on the skillet in a radial pattern (or however you like).

Meanwhile, combine everything else (including the grated pear) in a separate bowl and stir to combine.  It makes a fairly thick batter.  Pour the batter over the pears in the skillet and throw the whole thing in the oven for 40 minutes.  Take it out when a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Thoughts: Fantastic.  Really good.  And fairly easy, although there were a lot of ingredients.  I would say our one complaint was that it's got so much sugar, although I wouldn't say it's too sweet.  It just makes me feel wrong for eating it.  It's really good, though.  I would definitely make this again exactly the same way.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Muscadine Jam

Wow, we're WAY behind.  We've both been so busy lately.  Hopefully we'll start to catch up soon.

Ingredients

• A quart of muscadine grapes
• about 1-2c sugar
• water

First, separate all of the grape skins from the grapes.  This is actually pretty easy - put a slit down the side and pry the skin off.  It comes away pretty easily.  Chop all the skins and set to simmer in a small sauce pan.  In another small sauce pan, start the insides of the grapes simmering.  If you managed to remove all the seeds already, great, otherwise you'll have to strain them later and it's a PAIN.  Anyway, simmer the insides until they're pretty completely broken down and soft, adding water as needed so they don't stick (same goes for the skins).  Now remove the seeds if you haven't already and cook the skin and the insides together with the sugar for another 5 minutes, or at least until the water is mostly cooked off, then put in a food processor and blend until smooth.  Put in a sterile jar and place directly into the fridge.

Thoughts: Although this grape jam was fantastic, Claire and I agree that the distinct muscadine flavor isn't quite there when you boil them for a while.  That said, it's still delicious jam - very clean flavor, probably because there isn't all that HFCS and so forth.  But it was a little disappointing insofar as it didn't have the muscadine flavor.  Probably wouldn't make it again since it was a lot of trouble.

Disaster Index: 3/10