dirtychai

The February 2011 Daring Cooks’ challenge was hosted by Lisa of Blueberry Girl. She challenged Daring Cooks to make Hiyashi Soba and Tempura. She has various sources for her challenge including japanesefood.about.com, pinkbites.com, and itsybitsyfoodies.com

This month I made cold Soba salad with two dipping sauces, topped with a mushroom I've never had, I'm not sure of the name of them. I also topped it with grated diakon, and cucumbers. I love soba so this was a great salad and something I would make in the summer.



The second part of the challenge was to make tempura, I'm not the biggest fan of fried food because its not the healthiest but this batter was very light.
I used sweet potatoes, taro root, green beans, shiitake mushroom and regular mushrooms.They turned out good but it seem like there was a enough flavor, maybe I should have added some seasoning to the flour cornstarch mixture.




All fried up

Our January 2011 Challenge comes from Jenni of The Gingered Whisk and Lisa from Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. They have challenged the Daring Cooks to learn how to make a confit and use it within the traditional French dish of Cassoulet. They have chosen a traditional recipe from Anthony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlman.

Ok well I am very late in posting this. This is my first cousoulet and of course it was delish because cassoulet's are . They are so good I would rather have someone else make it for me because it's a lot of work. There are many steps and I didn't even confit my own duck. I searched hi and low for duck legs and found out you can only purchase them if you buy a whole duck or if you order them online. I decided the cost was already rising, so I thought well I will confit chicken legs. I went out and bought a few legs opened the pack to begin the process and got a weird smell. Yep bad chicken, I've never purchased or smelled bad chicken but once you smell it is undeniable. At this point it's been a lot of searching and looking so finally decided to purchase the duck already confited. Now on to the cassoulet.

I started off with making the onion pork fat, and pork paste. I cooked it down and put in the blender.





Pork Belly cooked with bouquet grani

Let the layering begin

bacon

Beans

Sausage_ I used smoke because we don't have Toulouse where I live and I would of had to order it or make it.


They layering continued all the way to the top with duck confit added near the top. It was cooked slowing the first night and then cooked again the second night. The too looks a little dark and I took some of the pieces off because I don't like anything cooked too dark. My dad ate a few bits of the dark said it tasted good didn't taste burnt. SO the crust did look a little too dark but apparently was actually ok.




This is a great winter stew and it had great flavor. Here is a plate of cassoulet with duck confit in all it glory. YUM!!!!!

Wow 2011!

The holidays are great for spending time with your family and friends and best of all, enjoying all the goodies. Yum!

It's traditional for my family to have a Christmas Eve celebration rather than a traditional Christmas dinner. My mom usually makes varies appetizers, a ham with rolls and Italian cookies and desserts. Usually I bring one or two things but this year it was just the three of us, so I ended up making most of the items and my mom and dad prepared veggies with fondue, a beef tenderloin and rice balls order from the Brooklyn pork store.

The fondue, veggies and bread cubes were good, I love fresh veggies and who doesn't love tasty melting cheese. The rice balls were ok, they weren't great.

Now for all the goodies I made: Kale Chips with Sea Salt, Mushrooms in puff pastry, Asian chicken wings, Kick'n Shrimp, and Mini Bahn Mi's


The chicken wings were marinated for a day and then cooked with an apricot glaze and topped with green onions and sesame seeds.



Mini Banh mi's were made with a French baguette, topped with a mixture of sriracha and mayo,pork tenderloin,carrots, daikon, green onions, cilantro and jalapeno. A great variety of texture with exotic deliciousness.



Kale baked with olive oil and sea salt. This chips have a great little crunch with a nice hint of salt and olive oil. Salty, and Crunchy, you can't just eat one.




Two mixtures, one with mixture of wild mushrooms and herb boursin cheese.The other mixture was made with thyme, garlic, Parmesan cheese, shallots and wild mushrooms. Both mixtures were put on puff pastry and folded in to a triangle.




Let me first start by saying, I'm really not a fan of seafood but on an occasion I find shrimp cooked a certain way that I can eat. This was my attempt to recreate a sweet spicy shrimp I had at a restaurant. First, I took cleaned shrimp and dipped them in beaten eggs and then in a flour and corn starch mixture. Second, I lightly fried the shrimp in oil. Next, once cooked I took the shrimp out and placed them on paper towels to get some of the oil off.

While I lightly fried the shrimp, I made a sweet and spicy glaze. I put about half of a cup of honey, and one or two tablespoons of habernaro peppery jelly in a sauce pan and melted the two over low heat. Once melted I took the pan off the heat and added just a little mayo, because I needed to cut the heat a little. I put the shrimp in a bowl and poured enough of the glaze to coat the shrimp and the lightly tossed the shrimp. As you can see in the picture, they were a hit. I forgot to take a picture of the shrimp and had to snag one before they were all gone.

Overall everything was great.

Well my challenge this month was to make a crostata but I made one and added a couple twists.

The 2010 November Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Simona of briciole. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ to make pasta frolla for a crostata. She used her own experience as a source, as well as information from Pellegrino Artusi’s Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well.

First thing I made was the dough and I used the recipe provided by Simona, it was an Italian sweet crust.




and then I made cardamon pastry cream.



I decided I wanted to incorporate some citrus so I made a blood orange coulis of sorts and made a pistachio brittle to top it off.



Completed Crosata

All dressed up and tasty.





Overall I like the concept of this dessert I made but I found that I needed to incorporate the flavors a little more. The lemon flavor in the crust was not strong enough, I did not have enough cardamon in the pastry cream because I was concerned of making an over powering pastry cream. IN addition the blood orange was not prominent enough. If I make this again I would incorporate cardamon and ground pistachio into the crust and make a blood orange pastry cream with candied blood oranges on top.

Dave and Linda from Monkeyshines in the Kitchen chose Soufflés as our November 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge! Dave and Linda provided two of their own delicious recipes plus a sinfully decadent chocolate soufflé recipe adapted from Gordon Ramsay’s recipe found at the BBC Good Food website.

Well this is my first souffle ever in two ways, 1st of all I've never eat a souffle before and second I have never made one. I decided to make a sweet souffle and a savory one.

For the sweet I made a chocolate souffle with a peanut butter center. I found both recipes from Epicurus. The chocolate souffle I substituted the whiskey for Cream DE Cocoa which added a richness to the flavor. The peanut butter flavor was made from a vanilla cream recipe.

Chocolate mixture


Whipped Eggs whites








Finished Chocolate Souffle




I also made a Sweet Potato Souffle with bacon foam and bourbon pecans





Here is the baked souffle fresh out of the oven. It didn't raise as high as I would have liked but it did rise.

The flavor was great and the bacon foam and pecans added great flavor and texture

Our October 2010 hostess, Lori of Lori’s Lipsmacking Goodness, has challenged The Daring Cooks to stuff grape leaves. Lori chose a recipe from Aromas of Aleppo and a recipe from The New Book of Middle Eastern Food.

Let me start by saying, I love stuffed grape leaves. I usually purchase the meatless ones and they are one of my favorite things to eat. With that said mine didn't really meet my expectations but I know what I can do to make them better next time

I decided to make three types of stuffed grapeleaves- (Loved the flavor)
Ground chicken with Israeli couscous, seasoned with a Kofta mix .

Second type was ground chicken with rice. parsley, onion, lemon, and a few other spices(.Needed a little more flavor.)


The third was the traditional rice stuffed leaves but I used brown rice instead of white rice.( they had to cook a very long time and in some the leaves not all the rice was cooked completely).

Ok what I learned was not to stuff them so much or wrap them so tight, also be sure to use white rice and more lemon. I will try again and hopefully they will be great instead of good.
I also made white bean hummus, tabbouleh, Shawarma Chicken, and added it to made grape leaves, some type of middle eastern cucumbers and feta ( mezze) . Delicious

AS you can see I received lot's of chocolate and let me tell you the chocolate in Norway is much better than the chocolate here. It seems to be smoother, velvety.











The potato chips were great they were rectangular, very fresh and I love the salt and pepper.
Smash reminds me of chocolate covered bugles but again their chocolate is better. The peanut butter reminds me of our fresh peanut butter, less salty. Great mix of flavored Wasa crackers. Love emmm.
My favorite chocolate was the very dark chocolate, also the one with marzipan inside and the one with ginger, surprisingly the ginger was not too strong.

Also I really like the yogurt covered nuts, I think they were hazelnut, those were delicious. My box also came with a great e-mail listing all the items with a description. Everything arrived in one piece with one chocolate item that came open and spread it's love on the other packages :-). That's pretty good with the long distance the box had to go. Thanks again!!!

The September 2010 Daring Cooks’ challenge was hosted by John of Eat4Fun. John chose to challenge The Daring Cooks to learn about food preservation, mainly in the form of canning and freezing. He challenged everyone to make a recipe and preserve it. John’s source for food preservation information was from The National Center for Home Food Preservation.

For this months challenge I decided to make Tomato jam, I have canned before and made same so this time I wanted to make a type I've never made. It's pretty tasty but it only made 2 small jars. I was thinking about also making Kaya, coconut jam but it has cooked eggs in it and I don't think you can can eggs.

Well I decided I wanted to try making French Macarons. They are a little time consuming but I think they came out like they  were supposed to .
Well maybe almost like they are supposed to be. They have a foot, it's small but it's still there. I did have most of them stick to the parchment paper but they didn't stick to the Silpat I used.

I would say the batter was a little loose, they weren't flat but they weren't as high as I would have liked. I'm pretty sure part of the problem was the humidity. I live in Florida and I was very hot and humid yesterday so I am pretty sure that didn't help.

I also found them to be very Sweet, a bit too sweet for me. I am thinking about trying a few more times to see if I can masters the art of macarons.  Anyone have any tips                     
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Hello everyone

Spring and summer are my favorite times of the year. The fresh produce, the blooming flowers and the great weather. The summer is hot because I live in Florida but I deal with it. So I have spent the summer trying to only cook fresh produce and I have tried to get locally grown produce. In the spring the farmers opened the strawberry fields to the public to pick for a donation so I was able to get tons of strawberries and then at the beginning of the summer tomatoes but now not much because it's too hot.




Ok so I grilled out, I made grilled asparagus, Grilled Chipotle glazed chicken and pineapple and a tomato salad. I added ginger to the tomato salad because I cam across a recipe that added it. Well my neighbor loved it but it was not for me, I didn't not like the flavors of ginger and tomato. Everything else was delicious.



We had Panna Cotta with a blueberry pomegranate sauce topped with raspberries. Yes, the sauce looks messy on the plate but I couldn't resist, it was so good I had to put extra on the plate. This was one of the best desserts I've had, I loved it and will make it again.
YUM!!!!!!
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