Livin' the kosher dream
Yes, I am aware Chanukka is over, but you know what? I decided to turn over a new leaf, and get started on next year. You know me, my motto is you can never be too prepared.
Anyway, back to real life; Sufganiyot, for the un-initiated, are jelly doughnuts, but they really apply to any sort of stuffed doughnuts, like caramel, chocolate, or whatever.
To make the dough, I saw an interesting recipe in the “The Joy of Cooking,” which essentially utilizes the creaming method for this yeasted dough. The reason why I find it interesting is when making any yeasted dough, we take advantage of gas by-products from the yeast to get trapped in a gluten network, which then when baked will expand. When making cookies however, you want some lift, but not too much, and that’s where the creaming method comes in. When you take soft butter and cream it together with sugar, what you’re doing is punching thousands of tiny little holes into the dough, which then expands also, and makes the cookie fluffy. The recipe I used for the sufganiyot, starts by creaming butter and sugar, and then adding some yeast, and some more flour, and allowing it to rise. So by doing the whole creaming thing first, it incorporates all of those air bubbles, which then can add to an even fluffier end result…Well I thought it was cool.
I allowed them to rise overnight in the fridge, which helps develop flavor, without causing them to rise too much (which is a thing), and then the next day, I punched the dough down, and allowed it to rise again.
When ready to roll, I decided to follow the instructions in the book, and rolled it thinner than normal (1/4 of an inch, as opposed to 1/2”), cut out rounds, placed the jelly filling inside, brushed egg white around, and topped each round with another round. I made some with jelly, some with homemade caramel sauce, and some with chocolate.
To fry, I brought the oil up to 350 degrees, which if you don’t have a thermometer, or if your thermometer sucks like mine, you can test it with a kernel of popcorn, and when it pops, you’re good to go.
Let them rest on a cooling rack, and when ready dust the hell out of them with confectionary sugar.
I did the same thing for the caramel, I placed a dollop of the caramel on one of the rounds, and topped with another
Now for the chocolate, I tried making a ganache, and doing the same thing, but it didn’t work out as I expected, so I tried stuffing them the classical approach, by injecting the chocolate inside. Well that was quite the disaster. I mean it somewhat worked out, but it made a mess, and then the chocolate pretty much oozed out, as you can see.
All in all, the dough came out really good. But I didn’t like the laying the two pieces on top of each other. A bunch of them opened up when frying. I would rather stuff them afterwards, the only problem is getting something to make that task easier. (I’ve used a piping bag with metal tip, and a plastic syringe, both didn’t do such a good job).
Well I hope you had a good Chanukka, and that you gained at least 5 pounds strictly from oil, however if you didn’t you can always make a batch of these.
adapted from Joy of Cooking (pg – 810)
Guess what folks? It’s Chanukka, and you know what that means?
Fried stuff with cheese.
(Friends anyone?)
This post was supposed to be part of the Chanukka Blogger party going on, but as usual I didn’t have my act together to submit my post on time. If you want to get in on the party, head on over to overtimecook.com, and there should be a list of links of all the people participating. Stay tuned for some real chanukka posting coming soon to this here blog (hint – it rhymes with shmufganiyot…I can’t say anymore)
So yeah, everyone remembers the fried part of that, but people tend to forget that eating dairy is also a tradition (because Yehudis served dairy and wine to the opposing general, and when it caused him to fall asleep she killed him, saving the town). In fact some people think that the original latke, isn’t potato, but rather a cheese latke. So being Chanukka, I thought to myself – which one of the many posts that I have archived away, can I use for Chanukka, and somehow make a decent enough excuse as to why it somehow applies to Chanukka. Know what I mean?
Anyway, I made these a few weeks ago, and while they’re not really the purdiest things, they were pretty freaking good, ifidosaysomyself. Gnocchi is normally cooked potatoes, flour, eggs, which get boiled up, and then tossed in whatever sauce you serve it with. Along with the flour, it relies on the starch in the potatoes to make a solid structure, but you can use any vegetable with a fair amount of starch. In this case we used both potato and this variety of winter squash (I think it’s delicata) that I picked up at this farm’s stand near me.
To cook them, I placed them both in a closed ziploc bag with a little bit of water, and microwaved on high until done (like 10 minutes or so).
Traditionally, you take the cooked potato, and pass it through a ricer, but since I don’t own one, a neat trick is to pass it through a sieve, and that way you get the texture we want for gnocchi. I then combined it with flour, eggs, and salt. Whenever I make gnocchi, I don’t really measure out the flour and eggs, I just add it until it’s the right consistency I’m after. Remember that last time we made gnocchi? You don’t? Well refresh that memory of yours by clicking here.
All right, so on to the next part, the browned butter and sage.
Sage and browned butter are a very classical pairing, and if you’ve never tried it, try it, and you’ll understand. They are just made for each other (kind of like lime and coconut, youknowwhatimsaying?). Now, it’s not just butter, it’s browned butter. Butter is made up of milk solids and water, and when you melt butter, and it starts to sizzle? Well that’s the water evaporating out. Once the sizzling is over, the milk solids have time to develop flavor, and by browning, that’s exactly what they’re doing. So you take some butter, and heat it up until it sizzles, and then I like to lower the heat so you don’t wind up burning it, and let it brown away. Once browned, I add the chopped sage, let it cook just a little, and then add the cooked gnocchi to the sautee pan.
Top the whole thing with some parmesan (need I say freshly grated?), and toasted pine nuts, and thank me after.
Ok, so I know what you’re thinking. What does this whole shooting match have to do with Chanukka? Well it’s kind of fried, and it’s got dairy in it, so bingo-bango, you got yourself a new Chanukka tradition.
So you want to be a food blogger on this the biggest food day in `Merica, but you’re not sure where to start? Well fear not, because I have the perfect guide for you.
1) Tell people they’ve been cooking their turkeys wrong, and tell them you have a new and improved method - You see every year you somehow manage to screw up your turkey, wanna know why? It’s because you didn’t roast the bird upside down, place an ice pack on top of the breast before raosting, place aluminum foil on top of the breast, cook it in parts, Spatchcock (gigidy) your turkey. That’s the only way to ensure your turkey will come out moist and delicious…this year at least.
My prediction for next year? Deep Fried Turkey! Youtube “deep fried turkey” just to see how easy and simple it is!
2) Make everything “traditional but with a twist of modern” - pumpkin pie is so boring, solution? Delicata squash pie, now there’s an improvement.
Green beans have you down? How about okra!
Mashed potatoes making you frown? Well turn that frown upside down, with mashed celery root!
Can’t stand that poor excuse you call cranberry sauce? Why not try making it fresh instead of plopping it out of a can!
3) Come up with a wine list - This is a little tricky, because some people aren’t that “into” wines, but it doesn’t matter! You can still impress them. All you have to do is say how “_______” (insert name of wine) is the wine that pairs the best with turkey, not even a question. And it helps if it’s somewhat of an odd sounding wine. Beujolais is perfect. But it doesn’t have to be odd, it can be somewhat retro, like rose. What you don’t want to do is say something that’s too well known, like a merlot, or cabernet sauvignon. As long as it’s somewhat less than ordinary, it will work.
Prediction for next year – Moscato!
4) Tell everyone how much you’re making, and then tell everyone to “relax” - one of the best parts about being a blogger is you can lie to everyone, and no one will know! If you can come up with a few recipes that have an ingredient list longer than Anna Karenina that would be ideal, but obviously the more the merrier. And if you can throw in a few things that need specific instructions where to get it (kind of like what Bon Appetit does) that’s even better. Sassafaras root? Hazelnut Oil? Tamarind? Black truffles? Great! But to really top it all off, you have to make everyone feel like it’s super easy, and you have your life in order, and everything is ready to go, and you’re just busy feeding the horses in your stable.
On that note – Happy Thanksgiving! I’m all done cooking for the 17 people we’re having, and I’m going to go take a leisurely walk to my stables to feed my horses.
Enjoy!
All right, so this month’s kosher connection’s theme is stuffing, and I was trying to figure out what to do with that, figuring I can’t just make stuffing, because everyone’s going to be doing that, and I have to be different. But then I thought, wait, probably everyone’s thinking that, so no one will make it. And then I thought, wait, maybe everyone’s thinking that! Ok I really didn’t take it that far, so yeah, I made actual stuffing. Stuffing, which by the way, might be the most non-photogenic food out there, is a pretty cool thing.
I was thinking, let me take you on a journey…in the vast expanse that is my mind, and go through how I tackle stuff I want to make in the kitchen. You’ll no doubt recall from previous posts, that I’m essentially a 2 year old, and am stubborn. I have to do things my way. Well this is my general thought process when it comes to making stuffing. Enjoy.
In my opinion, the definition of stuffing is a savory bread pudding wherein (yeah, in my mind, I say words like wherein…I’m smart like that) bread pudding = custard + liquid. Ok so first things first. The dried out bread part. The original bread matters, not only for taste, but because what’s in the bread, so you’re going to want good quality bread. To dry it, cut it into cubes, and you can leave it out on the counter, or you can dry it in a 200 degree oven, until it’s, well, dried. (If you really care, according to America’s Test Kitchen, drying in the oven is the best way to do it, because it causes evaporation of the water molecules as opposed to drying on the counter top, which because it takes longer, causes the starch and water to swell, and it’s the starch that hardens, so essentially the water is still left behind, and you want the water out of there, so the dried out bread will then soak up more liquid…)
Now for the custard part. Custard is what you call something that was a liquid, and is now firmer because of eggs. So the proteins that are found in the eggs, set up into a meshwork that holds the liquid in place. Examples of custards are – creme caramels , cheesecake, quiches,. In all these cases, I usually use Ruhlman’s ratio for a free standing custard (as opposed to a non free standing custard, like creme brulee, or creme anglais, or even French style Ice cream) which is 2 parts liquid to 1 part egg. You can use any water based liquid, provided it has minerals dissolved in it (like salt water, milk, stock, etc). Basically, each individual protein is this large glob of a molecule, and it has a bunch of negative parts to it, and since they all have these negative parts, they kind of want to repel from one another, and will bind on itself, and will bind with only a few other proteins. If you add minerals, the positive parts of the mineral will occupy the negative part of the protein, and now they don’t hate each other as much, and can form a stronger bond, which is really important.
Think of how weakly bonded a scrambled egg is. it’s pretty easy to rip it apart. Now imagine this concoction, which is relying on the eggs bonding, but is heavily diluted. Which brings us to the next thing, you need to heat the custard gently to work. Reason being you don’t want to overshoot the setting temperature, because if you do, the proteins will bond to each too much, and now it’s actually squeezing the water out of it. There’s obviously more to discuss, but we’ve got stuffing to make, but one last thing. A lot of custard recipes calls for heating the liquid up, and then tempering the eggs, which can be a pain in the butt. Well truth be told, you only need to heat up the liquid, if you want to dissolve something into it (like heating up a vanilla bean in the milk, if you’re making creme caramel). However, if you’re just using the liquid straight, you don’t need to heat it up. So no need to wrap a towel around your bowl, so you can whisk with one hand, while slowly drizzling in your hot liquid with the other. For this recipe, I didn’t use the 2:1 liquid:eggs ratio, but more like 3:1 liquid:egg ratio. I used vegetable stock as the base, and it was like 900ish grams, and I used 6 eggs, which, since each egg is 50grams, comes out to about 300grams. Whisked it all together, and set it aside.
Then I sauteed onions, mushrooms, celery, and carrots, until softened, about 10 minutes. Added in minced garlic for the last 30 seconds, and then tossed it with my dried out bread. Chopped a whole lot of fresh parsley (which in my family is one of the staples of our stuffing), combined the liquid, mixed until combined, and baked in a 300 degree oven for 40 minutes.
Personally I like my stuffing, more on the fluffy than crunchy, but if you want it crunchy-er, then you can spread it more thinly on a sheet pan, or make stuffins (ie muffins + stuffing), by putting the stuffing in a muffin pan, so you’ll have more crunchy parts.
Also obviously you can stuff the stuffing into a turkey and bake away. Personally, I roast my turkey in parts so I don’t have a turkey cavity to stuff, but what I have done, is bake the stuffing with a few pieces of turkey carcass over top of it, to allow the juices to drip through.
Anyway, I hope I didn’t bore you too much.
Questions? Comments? I don’t care!
I kid!! Post away in the comment section!
this is enough for about 15-20 people
