Tamales

Ok, we're late, but we're ok with that due to a fun vacation!

Ok, we're excited about this challenge but not in the same way that we expect everyone else is.  Again, we are excited. 

We almost blew this one off (remember the first line of this post?) but decided not to because for the first time ever we have a reason to buy us up some tomatillos.  One of our more frequented non-mega-mart (yes, we're quoting Alton again) stores nearby seems to always have them (and always have people fussing over them - but never us) but we've had no idea what to do with them, mostly because we don't know what to expect from them taste wise.  We're about to change all that!

Green Chile Chicken Tamales

Rounding up everything was easy enough.  As expected the store we knew to have the tomatillos also had everything else we needed (even lard, but we chose to go with the shortening because some of those numbers on the back of the can were, frankly, just a little frightening) and quite easily locatable.

Fortunately we read through the directions one more time in the morning and caught the bit about soaking the husks for at least 3 hours because our plan to start at about 6 for dinner would have meant we were very hungry by the time we got through all 24 steps...

Off to the store relatively early and a dash back into the kitchen for a pot of water before heading out to work out in anticipation of eating a lot of tamales later in the day.

Filling

Seeing we needed chicken stock in both parts of this process we got a hold of a whole chicken and boiled him (or her?) up and with the skills we learned way back when we made some Consommé to also save us a few bucks at the grocery store.

Did you know that when you peel a tomatillo that under that very dry looking exterior they're kind of sticky, almost icky?  We didn't, but now we know why rinsing them is included in the directions...  They broiled up nicely, just as expected.

Out comes the food processor, in go the tomatillos and any juices that escaped during the broiling.  We're supposed to give them 5 minutes to cool before hitting the go button which is more than enough time to chop up the garlic and chilies (we dialed back from Serrano to Jalapeno - because one of us is a baby when it comes to hot) and get them in too.

They whiz up just fine and into the pan for some reducing.  Then thinned out again with the chicken stock (that is still warm, btw) and back on the heat for some more reducing.  Eventually it looks as described and the chicken and cilantro join in and then it gets to hang around waiting for the dough to come together.

Result

Sort of looked like the pictures provided, but a good bit more green.  We liked the taste, but having never had tomatillos before (that we know of, to be fair...) we weren't exactly sure what we were aiming for.  We're hoping we like the taste because of the tomatillos which would mean we could get brave and try use them in other dishes sometime soon.

We kind of think it would make a fun sandwich.

Dough

More electric mixing devices needed... 

Out comes the stand mixer, on goes the paddle.  In goes the shortening, switch goes to on.

In goes the masa and the more that goes in, the more it looks like the mixture you would put on the top of your apple crumble, but we'd read ahead so we weren't worried.

Slowly added in the stock and with about a quarter cup left we poked it and mushed it in our hands and decided we had the right texture - after turning the mixer off first, of course.

Result

We thought we had the right texture and there's nothing to taste so we continued on our way.

Hindsight suggests that we should have used all of the recommended amount of stock.  Oh well...

Combining

It goes together easily enough but it took us a couple each to get the feel for how much dough to spread out, how far to spread it out and then how much filling to plonk on top.  We got there, but we may have been using too much dough all the way through because we didn't get the 24 suggested in the recipe.  We did have filling left over, so now we get to find out if it works as a sandwich filling...

The wrapping was surprisingly easy and we really weren't convinced we'd be able to tie them up nicely with the strips of husk we'd made.  Good thing we didn't bet because we would have lost our cash on that one.

Into the pot, all standing up nicely, heat on, walk away and go find some wine to join them for dinner.  We ended up giving them an extra 10 minutes so as to get the described ease of pulling away the husk.

Result

Although some variation in size, once standing up in the pot they mostly looked like the picture provided, and it didn't take us all that long to get them all put together - phew, we were getting hungry.

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

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Conclusion

We made Tamales!  No doubt, we got a dish we're happy with.  Someone who grew up eating and making them may have rolled their eyes a little and may have 'complained' about the texture of the dough, but we certainly think they wouldn't go hungry with our attempt.

Not sure what the official tamale eating rules are, but we kind of think a sauce would have helped (and we note from the postings made on time that some people did serve with a sauce) but we accept that we may have that feeling due to our dough being just a little bit too un-moist - next time we'll use all the stock.

We're thinking these might be fun to bring out for friends as an appetizer one day, but we'll probably have to practice one more time before that.  We certainly have enough masa left over to give us a shot at improving...

As tradition now dictates, we reached into our Wine Cellar to find a beverage to aid in the eating part of the challenge.  This time we came out with a Parés Baltà "Ros de Pacs", a Spanish Organic Rose.  Other than a tasting note suggestion that it goes well with Chicken we just thought a lighter red would be our best bet.  A great wine all on it's own, and certainly did no harm to our Tamales.  Although, we suspect our clever wine guy could come up with a technically better match.

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

Maranda of Jolts & Jollies was our January 2012 Daring Cooks hostess with the mostess! Maranda challenged us to make traditional Mexican Tamales as our first challenge of the year!

Comments pre Blog Platform Change

Shelley C responded:
I am so glad that it all worked out so well, and that you were able to get all of the ingredients so darn easily! Sounds like this was a pretty successful challenge for you guys. Great job!

Steamed Char Sui Bao

We have the opportunity to use our Bamboo Steamer?  Cool!

With no ingredients to cause us stress from an eating point of view, the only decision for us was whether to bake or to steam.  It's good to see the steamer on the stove, so steaming it was...

Rounding up the ingredients was a mostly non-event as almost everything we needed already has a place jammedstored nicely in the fridge or in the cupboard.  The couple of things we didn't have we elected to follow the substitution guidelines or guess our own substitution mostly because our jammednicely arranged shelves really don't need another couple of bottles of fun stuff only missing a tablespoon or two.

Pork

Day 1

Our pork supplier did a grand job cleaning up our tenderloins as there was hardly anything that needed cleaning up. In fact it took longer for the marinade person to put that together than for the other to clean up the tenderloins and cut into the suggested sizes.

For the marinade we substituted:

• the light soy with dark soy - not even sure we knew there were two types until now...
• the maltose with honey
• the shaoxing cooking wine with sherry - we weren't sure if it was a white or a red and sherry is sort of kind of in the middle in a generous sort of substitution way ...
• five spice with asian spice blend - actually, we're kind of surprised and / or embarrassed that we don't have any...

And then we got everyone in the pool.  Mixed a bit, saved a bit and coated the [easily] prepared pork.  Into the fridge, and back to the TV (and then bed and then a day of chores) to allow time to do its thing.

Day 2 - Part 1

We went with the sear then oven method for cooking.  A little confusion in that the bake only time suggested was shorter than for our chosen option.  Ultimately we went a little bit longer than the recommended 15 minutes, but we think that has a lot to do with the many times the oven door was opened while we basted - this strongly suggests that the bake only method would need at least this long too, but we didn't experiment.

We also saved a little less than suggested of the marinade for basting as we were a bit nervous therre wasn't enough in the bowl to do the marinating.  Turns out we had just the right amount for basting so we lucked into a win win there.

Result

A little bit of char on the outside from the pan and lots of sticky goodness only adding to that from the basting.  We have no doubt it looks the way it should!

Chopping it up for the next step was a challenge.  Not because it's hard to chop, but it's hard not to get too carried away with the sampling!  It's tasty!

Day 2 - Part 2

Once we 'suffered' through the chopping of the Pork Loin part everything else was straightforward enough.  We perhaps could argue no substitutions were made for this part, but remember that whole dark v light soy thing?

It didn't thicken as quickly as suggested.  Rather than trying to add in more cornflour and therefore double the opportunity for lumps we simmered a bit longer using evaporation to help out here.  Drat!  Looks like we did have a substitution of a sort...

Result

Tasty!  Yeah, we had more than a quick taste and we know this is still not supposed to be the eating part of the day...  Rich, but not crazy rich.  Definitely moorish. 

Bun

Hmmmm...  What does scald milk mean?  Google was only moderately helpful because it seems they don't really know the answer either with many variations / interpretations / directions to get the job done.  We went with heat over medium heat until just about boiling and used the visual cue of a few bubbles around the side.

After adding some treats into the milk (for the record, the oil does not look good sitting on top during this cooling) we didn't have to sit around waiting for luke-warm to appear because we were actually doing this concurrently with the pork.  The yeast did it's magic and then it was time to get the elbow grease out and knead away - we tagged out a couple of times along the way.

Timing was on our side for a change.  The dough was easily twice it's size in just over an hour so we were able to get going on the assembly way earlier than expected.  YAY!

Dividing and rolling and spooning all went well (although we had 2 'buns' with no filling - probably related to the over sampling of earlier in the evening).  The sealing up, not so much.  We found the only way we could keep them together was with a bit of water along the joins.  No big deal, but we weren't prepared for this eventuality causing us at least a minute - probably more like a minute and a half - of panic.

The extra bit of raising didn't go so well.  We completely skipped over it.  We're blaming the tastiness of the filling and the need to get this done as quickly as possible combined with the panic of the sealing up issues.  Sorry about that.  Oh well...

The steaming went fine in terms of timing and extraction, but some of them had parts that looked a little translucent almost and not the even white color and texture we were expecting.  Is that because we didn't give them that extra bit of rising?

Result

The translucent parts only affected the prettiness factor because we think they still tasted great.  We were kind of bummed we only had one layer in our steamer and therefore were forced into 2 courses rather than all at once.  But we got through that distress thanks to the help of our TV and a bottle of wine...

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

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Conclusion

It was tasty and filling and easy to round up the ingredients and not hard to put them all together.  Not as pretty as we would have liked (but that's probably our fault), and therefore not something we could 'risk' serving up to friends (unless it could be proved that our skipping of the extra bit of raising was the cause).  But the pork when it still looked like a loin could easily be incorporated into a have friends over for dinner arrangement.

Our Wine Club suggested that a Bourdeaux type blend out of Mankas Vineyards, called 'Amelie' would work with BBQ pork so out it came.  Our opinion is that no harm was done to the pork by the wine and vice versa, but no great improvements either - but that's just our opinion.

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

Our Daring Cooks’ December 2012 hostess is Sara from Belly Rumbles! Sara chose awesome Char Sui Bao as our challenge, where we made the buns, Char Sui, and filling from scratch – delicious!

Comments pre Blog Platform Change

Andy responded:
I always love your posts! They are so much fun to read. I too had the same question about "scald". And I steamed the first buns without letting them rise a second time, and I got to tell you, the extra rising really does help with the way the look in the end.
Great job!

Shelley C responded:
As always, great post! Yeah, the sampling portion of the process can easily go overboard with a recipe like this, because that filling was just so tasty and easy to eat!! Sounds like everything went really well, even with the minor panic in there, and that you had a delicious dinner!! Great job :)

Brian responded:
What a great post! I'm glad that everything worked out well.

Cher responded:
Fun post - glad you survived your adventure!

Cooking with Tea!

Ok, we do have some tea in the pantry. Not much, and it only comes out on those runny nose days, and only for one of us... So, seeing the title of this month's challenge didn't get us bouncing around the house, but as promised, we're giving everything a try.

We'll eat tofu if it's part of the makeup of a dish, but not if it's the feature - it's not the worst thing ever invented, but there's something about the texture that doesn't work for us.  And the eggs looked fun in an Easter sort of way, but doesn't really translate into a dinner that we can open up a bottle of wine with.  We were therefore sort of pushed into the Beef option, which is totally fine - we do eat beef... 

Beef Braised in Rooibos Tea with Sweet Potatoes

Our confidence in locating the correctly named tea was low, having never heard of this variety before.  We were half prepared to hunt for it, and half prepared to do some research to figure out what we could find easily and would also be an acceptable trade off.  Phew, didn't need either of our half preparations...  As it turned out, it was easy to find in our normal everyday boring store - and all wrapped up in handy dandy bags.

Everything else was easy enough to round up as part of our normally scheduled grocery collection trip.

Nothing complicated here... 

• A little bit of chopping to get everything started. 
• A little bit of searing to get things started. 
• A little bit of stirring to keep things going. 
• A little bit of brewing to keep things going. 
• A little bit of improvisation because knowing we have something in the pantry is not the same as knowing we have enough of that something in the pantry (we had to go half red wine vinegar and half white wine vinegar). 
• A good bit of sitting around (with a glass of wine) letting a gentle fire do it's work. 
• A little bit of late additions to make things better. 
• A little bit more sitting around (with a glass of wine).

All the while, we got to enjoy our wine, the smells and watching the Chicago Chefs rock on Top Chef!

Result

It worked - we don't think our vinegar tribulations had any overly adverse effects.  It looked good.  It tasted nice. The kitchen and living room smelled like we'd been cooking something yummy.

The sauce didn't really thicken up and there was a lot of it left over once we'd enjoyed our meal (and the left overs the next day). 

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

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Conclusion

We opened up our bottle of Terredora Di Paolo Aglianico which wasn't a bad pairing, but with the heavy tannins perhaps would be better in a couple of years.

It was a tasty dinner that was not hard to prepare (actually mostly takes care of itself), but we're not really sure what the tea brought to the party as we couldn't find the flavors that we found when drinking it for breakfast (and in our opinion didn't taste anything different to any other sort of tea we might have for breakfast). We did get the honey and cinnamon and ginger and orange (kind of surprised us considering how little we put in) and enjoyed the combination.

We'd cook it up for friends and not be embarrassed, that's for sure, but we wouldn't be making a big deal about how we used tea to make it.

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

Sarah from Simply Cooked was our November Daring Cooks’ hostess and she challenged us to create something truly unique in both taste and technique! We learned how to cook using tea with recipes from Tea Cookbook by Tonia George and The New Tea Book by Sara Perry.

Comments pre Blog Platform Change

Lyuba responded:
Great job! Glad you enjoyed this new experience. My kitchen smelled great, but my hubby liked the stew a little more the I did. I thought its was great, but did wish that I would have cut down on ginger!

Come see me at http://www.willcookforsmiles.com/

Moo Shu

It's possible we've had Moo Shu somewhere sometime without knowing it, but we certainly haven't made any for ourselves - although we've made pork stir fry type things (but not the pancakes) that sort of fall into the ball park of what was called for this month.

Schedule wise it fit into a moderately lazy weekend evening, which was nice.  And we were pretty certain we could round up all the ingredients at any one of a couple of our local stores.  As it turned out we couldn't find one ingredient, but fortunately there was an option provided so we opted out of the panic drive to somewhere not so handy.

Hoisin Sauce

Let the record show that we did not reach for the jar we have tucked away in the fridge!

Let the record show that it's a very straightforward recipe to understand and execute. Everyone in the pool, mix.

The instructions are right, it does look like it's not going to work for a good while, but eventually comes together looking mostly like what we thought we would get.

This is where our missing ingredient came into play.  We really wanted to do the Bean Paste rather than Peanut Butter as it's something that has never made it passed our front door before, but alas we couldn't locate it in the two stores we tried.  We opted for the Peanut Butter and although happy with what we got we're curious as to how it would have differed given a more successful shopping trek.

Result

Let the record show that we did reach for the jar tucked in the fridge - for comparison purposes only!

Pretty close!  Ours was:

• much thinner, but actually thickened up just a little by the time we got to dine on it and quite a bit overnight when we accidentally left it out.  
• a bit lighter in color, and didn't change after being left out...
• less sweet
• more nutty (damn you failed shopping trek!)

We liked dipping into it.  We're going with success.

Thin Pancakes

Seems easy enough - kinda like bread, kinda like pizza dough, kinda like pancakes.  We can do them all.  Also, kinda hot, so be careful when you do the adding water part!

We needed more water (of the boiling variety) than advertised, probably closer to two cups when all was said and done.  After that it kneaded up nicely and was quite happy to sit in the bowl while we started on the chopping for the Pork part of the adventure.

The dividing up in similar sized balls is a clever procedure - cut in 3, roll in to a 'snake', cut in half a few times to get 8 very similarly sized ball type shapes.

Turn them into better looking balls, smush a bit on the counter and roll out pretty thin.  Not hard work, but not quick work!

Throw them at a pan (not too hot, not too cold) - we used our skillet and were able to have two going at once.  We thought we had the temperature pretty much right, but based on the final texture we probably couldn't dispute it was a little warm.

Result

Lots of laundry.  We had things covered with wet dish towels all over the place...

Did look a bit like the pictures, but we don't think they were as floppy.  They did fold up okish around the goodies, but there was cracking towards the edges.

Wouldn't serve them for breakfast ;p, but worked out pretty good as the food delivery device (we're probably (mis?)quoting Alton there...).  But, not a lot of motivation to go through the process again...

Moo Shu Pork

We figured the pork as the star, so it wouldn't be such a big drama if we selected a different type of mushroom - especially since we'd never even heard of dried wood ears let alone seen them in any store we've ever visited.  We did stay with dried and found a 1oz pack of mixed dried wild mushrooms - wild / wood, close enough, right?  Even if someone can declare categorically that the wood ears bring something extra special to the party, we're ok with what we chose and therefore ended up with.

Apart from that, nothing else to cause consternation over as we rounded up the ingredients.  Nothing too complicated about cutting everything up, but we think the 'matchstick-sized threads' was not the best analogy to use. If we lined everything up in order of closeness to matchstick-sized threads we'd start with pretty close, and end up small, but no matchstick - that would be bamboo shoots, cabbage, pork...

Cook the eggs first, cook up everything else, add most of the sauce, re-add the eggs, add everything else, stirring all the while.  We don't have a wok (we felt a wok would have given the best authentic results...), but a wok like pan so this went quickly and easily.  The cabbage cooks down a lot so the overflowing pan quickly becomes 'do we have enough food?'  The smells hit the kitchen but it's over quite quickly so no house enveloping aromas.

Result

Tasty!  Looked exactly like the picture.  We've cooked up similar looking things and served them over rice and we have no doubt this would have worked out fine that way too had our pancakes totally failed - they didn't.

The Coming Together...

We took everything over to the couch, got TiVo wound up, cracked open our wine, and began the customized, individualized construction.  It was easy, but would have been a little bit easier if our pancakes were a little bit floppier. 

1. Select the best looking pancake. 
2. Select a good smear of Hoison and place it through the middle of the pancake. 
3. Select a good scoop of Moo Shu and place over Hoison
4. Attempt to fold per instructions.
5. Remove some Moo Shu thinking the volume is the problem.
6. Attempt to fold per instructions.
7. Return previously removed Moo Shu now knowing the folding is operator error (and a little not floppy enough pancakes).
8. Fold more like a taco than per instructions.
9. Eat
10. Smile and ooh and ahh because it's really tasty.
11. Go back to 1, but skip 4-7 each subsequent time through. 

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

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Conclusion

A fun evening's work. It took about the same amount of time as suggested in the recipe so we ate at a sensible time - that hasn't always been the case with our challenges.  It was tasty and filling and generated just the right amount of food so as not to have left overs nor lead us toward over indulging.

We opened up a bottle of something something (2009 Château Michel de Vert Lussac Saint-Emilion) with the very scientific reasoning that nothing we had left in the cellar vaguely suggested Moo Shu, we had a slight hankering for something red, our tasting notes suggested pork as a match, and we were thirsty.  It's a nice balanced wine which worked out just fine with this dish, but we could see it working with just about anything the Daring Kitchen threw our way.

We're ok eating things with our fingers, so don't mind getting a few drips of something over our hands - we definitely got a few drops, but nothing to run screaming to a sink over. We accept that folding per instructions would have minimized, if not eliminated, the amount of dripping - oh well.

This was not too hard too make, not too hard eat and definitely was an enjoyable meal to be filled up with!

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

The October Daring Cooks' Challenge was hosted by Shelley of C Mom Cook and her sister Ruth of The Crafts of Mommyhood. They challenged us to bring a taste of the East into our home kitchens by making our own Moo Shu, including thin pancakes, stir fry and sauce.

Comments pre Blog Platform Change

Shelley C responded:
Woo hoo! Seriously love reading your guys' write ups, and reading this one made me smile - it sounds like everything went really, really well, and I am so glad that you guys enjoyed it! If you have a hankering, I'd recommend giving one of the other pancake rolling methods a whirl, but seriously, awesome, awesome job. I definitely find Moo-Shu-ing to be a fun, social dinner type thing, not just regular meal prep, and it sounds like it was very fun for you guys. Thanks so much for cooking with us!!

Sawsan@chef in disguise responded:
I love reading your posts and this one was no exception :)
Glad you enjoyed the challenge and it was a success by most counts

Stock to Soup to Consommé

Crap!  So close.  We eventually got to what we could argue was a perfect consommé... for about an hour... and sadly the consumption part of the challenge was not included in that hour.  Oh well, let us explain.

There was never any doubt we'd try a consommé using the egg raft technique, so we picked the chicken and wonton option and added in the brioche.  We had different things going at different times over 3 days over 2 weekends and mostly when they were supposed to be going.  We managed to get all 3 components right and pretty good, just not all at the same time, nor the appropriate time... Oh well...

We struggled interpreting a couple of the recipes.  We mostly made decisions that worked, but not all, and had to call upon YouTube to help us out - more on that in a moment.

In order of our perceived level of success

Herb and Garlic Brioche

Day 2

We've made a couple of breads along the way (and our own pizza dough) so we're not scared of getting out the yeast and spreading flour over half the kitchen.  Different technique, so we attempted to follow the rules closely...

We weren't quite sure what to do with the butter, so we just melted it with the milk as it was warmed, so the result that we ended up more with a cake batter type arrangement than dough could rest fairly on our shoulders for doing that wrong.  We added in about another half cup of flour (in tablespoon increments) until it mostly looked like dough, albeit the floppiest dough we've ever worked with.  We actually put the garlic in with the milk too.

We set it aside to proof and it did a good job of that, easily doubling in size.  It was still a bit floppy but as we spread it out on the counter, punching out the air, it firmed up enough for us to be confident in getting it rolled up.

We probably used more fresh herbs than advertised so as to get the sort of coverage in the picture provided, but we don't think that caused us any problems.  The roll was uneventful and the transfer to the baking tray for it's second proof a little eventful (still a bit floppy...) but no harm done.

Definite 2^nd proofing success!  In to the oven for the prescribed time.  Definite bread type aromas keeping us amused from about the half way point.

Out of the oven, cool only marginally and eat all on it's own - keep reading to find out why.

Day 3

Reheat the leftovers in a stink'n hot oven for a relatively short time.  Enjoy the exposed, now toasty end, more than the other parts with our consommé.

Result

Awesome!  Possibly the most successful and tasty bread we've had the pleasure of messing up our kitchen with.

Due to technical difficulties, we didn't have a consommé to share it with.  We actually just ate it straight up.  We briefly considered adding butter, but the warm steamy herby feel and aromas convinced us otherwise.  Seriously, this was our dinner, combined with the Best Frozen Custard in the land as an appetizer.  Yep, things didn't go to plan...

For us it was far far better straight out of the oven than reheated and although we didn't actually get to dip it in anything this way we don't think it is really a good dipping type bread.  We got this impression just eating it, and only confirmed this to ourselves when we actually got to dip it in something.

We would have no hesitation having a loaf of this handy (and fresh out of the oven) to start a meal with friends, but would serve up something different if we had a soup course.

Chicken Wontons

We've made dumpling type devices before so weren't too worried about this part of the process.

Day 3

Didn't do anything on Day 2 due to the technical difficulties you'll learn about real soon..

Easy enough to chop the chicken in the food-processor.  Couldn't think of a reason not to add the sherry, soy and pepper at the same time.  Adding the green stuff (in a bowl, not the processor) took longer to chop than stir...

Couldn't be easier to scoop and seal them up.  We made them in little parcel shapes, rather than pot-stickers so for the cooking part we didn't really see a way to flip them over and make sure everything was cooked nicely on the inside - can't be having partially cooked chicken.  We went with the fry to get a crust on the bottom then added some water (watch out for some angry sizzling), covered them and steamed for a couple of minutes to make sure all was good.

Result

Pretty good.  We could do them again, that's for sure.  Might try a different shape next time and be able to flip them instead of steaming, but we weren't unhappy with having them steamed.

A great match with the consommé.  We both felt obliged to dip the ones on the side before consumption.

Had enough left over that they served as a pretty good emergency dinner for one.  Didn't have any more consommé so just used a simple dipping sauce.

Golden Chicken Consommé

Day 1

Making of the Stock was fine.  We've made vegetable stock many times, but that's more to use up vegetables that are fast approaching a too late date with no readily available option to use them.  It was kind of fun to head off out to buy stuff just for a stock.  It's possibly the first time we've actually bought a whole chicken that wasn't already roasted up for us....

Brown off the chicken type stuff, little bit of sweating of the veg and then everything in the pot, water in, turn on the fire, wait patiently. 

We did do some skimming along the way, but really didn't get all that much stuff that needed to be removed.

Cool, and then in to the freezer to keep safe until next weekend for the 'real' part of this challenge.

The pleasant side effect is that we ended up with a really nicely cooked whole chicken.  It was really juicy.  We turned it into sandwiches and also added it to a scheduled salad that was originally chicken-less.  Win!

Day 2

We were very excited to give this a go!  But, had a bit of trouble figuring out exactly what the recipe was asking of us.  We made our best guesses... 

First, with the plan to do Consommé do we skip Step 2 (make the soup)?  We went with no because Step 3 talked about adding cooked meat to the egg whites and the only meat cooking part was in the soup making Step.  So, the soup part went splendidly.  Again, we kept an eye out for skimming requirements but didn't really find anything.

Now, things started to go poorly.  Probably based on our previous decision to do the Soup stage...  The egg white, ice, cooked meat thing didn't make a lot of sense to us, but we tried it.  We couldn't see any sensible way to separate the chicken from the vegetables and such so we just left it all together.  Whisk eggs, ice, cooked stuff, back in simmering pot, stir - but only for 3 long seconds and walk away.

Fail!

We never got a raft, everything just sank mostly to the bottom and stayed there - and we're not supposed to stir anymore so we couldn't encourage it back up other than by staring at it.  We let it go for 30 minutes before giving up.  Basically, we just made a form of egg drop soup...  There was much un-rejoicing!  No tears, though!  We pulled out all the lumpy bits and were pretty much back where we started with the stock apart from having a more chickeny constitution and also all the fun additives that joined the party...  Onward, to the fridge...

Abort any plans for making the Wontons, calculate there's just enough time to eat dessert before the bread comes out of the oven and go watch TV with a tub of Frozen Custard.

Day 3

Google is your friend!  We found a couple of recipes that talked about doing the raft thing a bit differently and were just about to pick one to attempt to rescue our project when we stumbled on a YouTube video of someone making a consommé which we didn't particularly find useful, but that caused us to move our search from Google to YouTube.  We ended up with this one from Chef Sanecki - thanks chef!

Back to the store for more raft building items...

So, it didn't come with a recipe which led to us making our best guess (common theme for this challenge...) on quantities.  We guessed wrong.  Well, actually, we pretty much guessed right, but didn't factor in that he had a much bigger pot of stock than us.  Oh well, again.

So we followed his guidelines of starting with everything cold and uncooked, getting everyone in the pool, stirring constantly, heating slowly until just over 130°, now walk away and don't touch.  Almost straight away we got things forming at the top and shortly afterwards we got little pockets of bubbles coming up.  Nervous at first, after about 20 minutes we mostly were happy to let it be for the recommended 90 minutes.

Perhaps at the 60 minute mark we decided we needed to poke a couple of holes in the raft as the bubbling had pretty much stopped.  Even without poking it was obvious that something good was happening underneath based on what we could see overflowing the edges.  Woo Hoo!  This is when we realized something went wrong with our raft building quantities.  Due to the effort required for hole poking it was apparent that our raft went almost all the way to the bottom of the pot. 

No Soup for you!  Please, not again? 

Not so quick!  We let it go the full 90 minutes and started the extraction process.  Slow and fiddly and many coffee filters were required due to the raft breaking up a bit as we battled it for the very clear liquid that could be coaxed out of the pot.

After we decided to let it go the last 30 minutes we got to work on the Wontons because we needed to eat something somehow someway...

It took awhile to do the filtering, but we ended up with a pot of very consommé looking consommé.  And there was much rejoicing and excitement throughout the trashed kitchen!  It took so long to filter that we had cold consommé only to play with.  No big deal, we have fire, right.

Ah, crap!  While we were frying up our first batch of Wontons we let the consommé heat all the way up to a boil.  Don't do that!  It went cloudy at first, but it turned into a sort of suspended sediment.  No one anywhere we looked earlier in the day suggested this could happen.  We briefly considered filtering again, but we were hungry and the Wontons were ready and the leftover bread warmed again. 

We soldiered on, but does anyone know what happened there?

Result

It was tasty, absolutely!  Perhaps the double stock creation process we used helped?  But it didn't look very consomméy at the eating part of the process.  The Wontons were great in it!

A lot of work that got us nowhere, but eventually we ended up with a two-partnight dinner.

There was some left over but it went to the great drain in the sink due to it having a disproportionate amount of the crud we created during the accidental boiling part - we tried really hard not to get it in our bowls for the dinner part of the event.

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

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Conclusion

We did it, but we failed too - more than once...

It would take a very extra super duper special event for us to try a Consommé again, and even then we'd almost certainly skip it.  A well executed bowl would look awesome served up to guests, but the specific needs of the cooking process and our level of skill in understanding exactly what is happening makes it just to risky.  We would cry if we tried again and didn't end up with a great bowl.

The Wontons and Bread on the other hand, do have a place in the lets-impress-the-guests file and we look forward to the opportunity to unleash these dishes upon others.

As always, we dug into the Cellar for a wine to share our project with.  Not surprisingly, nothing was suggested as a match for consommé.  We settled on something we've never seen before because it was suggested as a match for chicken dishes.  It had a little sweetness to it that we though offset nicely what was going on in the consommé.

We lived, we learned, we trashed the kitchen (2.5 times!), we ate something we'd never made ourselves before.  The point of being Daring, right?  The next time Consommé appears on a menu we'll endeavor to grab up a bowl in appreciation of what the chef had to go through to get it to us!

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

Peta, of the blog Peta Eats, was our lovely hostess for the Daring Cook’s September 2011 challenge, “Stock to Soup to Consommé”. We were taught the meaning between the three dishes, how to make a crystal clear Consommé if we so chose to do so, and encouraged to share our own delicious soup recipes!

Comments pre Blog Platform Change

Audax Artifex responded:
WOW your postings are always so much fun to read. Great that you got the bread and the wontons sorted out from the challenge they sound so delicious. Sorry to hear that the clarified cosumme went cloudy when boiled (I have never heard of this happening). But at least it tasted wondereful. Cheers from Audax in Sydney Australia.

Ruth H. responded:
I kind of want to see your raft that ate the consomme pot...! I am quite impressed with your perseverence, and I am glad there were some successes inthere for you! I ws not brave enough to try making consomme in the first place, so I am even more impressed with your dilligence in trying twice!!

Jo Ann responded:
I love your descriptive post - you get an A++ for effort for sure. You were more patient than most. We have all been in your shoes (I should write a book of kitchen disasters). But in the end, you got a delicious meal -that's what counts!

Makey-Cakey responded:
Top marks for perseverence! Your description of the wonton making makes them sound easier than I thought - thinking I might brave trying them!

Shelley C responded:
Man, you guys are nothing if not persistent!! I love reading about your adventures, and totally applaud your efforts. Your bread sounds wonderful, and the consommme sounds... well... amusing :) Really great job!

Heather responded:
Oh my gosh, you guys are hilarious!!! I love the description of your culinary adventure. And it was smart to take days to do it. Mine took 6 hours on a Sunday afternoon!

Jo responded:
That was quite the adventure/ordeal! The bread sounds just divine, I love herby yeasty baked goodness, I'm sorry the consomme part didn't work out too well for you!

sawsan@chef in disguise responded:
I loved reading your post..hats off to you for all the attempts and not giving up..it sounds like it was quite an adventure :)

andy responded:
Fabulous post! I too found some of the instructions odd and I went back and forth a few times with Do I do step 2 or go to Step 3?

Well done for soldering on!

Oggi responded:
You two crack me up! This is the most fun DC I've read so far and I was grinning while reading. I can't wait for your next adventure.in the kitchen.:)

Peta responded:
sorry you had trouble with the recipes. I am not a wine buff, so I can't recomend a wine to go with it.
I just fry the wontons in deep oil and as long as they are golden they are always cooked through when I make the little ones.
your raft should only be about an inch or so thick.
I find if I don't get a recipe the first time making it again is the key to success.

Appam and Curry

It's been a couple of challenges since we've had to really plan our attack out (shopping as well as timing) and get started the day (or many days) before the scheduled eating of the result.  Probably could have squeezed it in a day, but we used the night time too.

Thanks for giving us a lot to pick from!  We almost went with the whole fish, but we like lamb...

Appam

Nothing complicated rounding up the ingredients, all coming from our regulation everyday store or our pantry.  We did learn that Coconut Water comes in a soda can, though; and the one we were presented with had small chunks of coconut floating around.

Day 1, just before bed time get the rice a soaking.  The hardest part of this is actually not getting up off the couch and going straight to bed...

Day 2, just before leaving for work, get the coconut water, yeast and sugar playing together.  Load up the food processor with the soaked rice and wait a few minutes for the yeast to wake up.  Everyone in the processor and grind up that rice.  Almost finished, add in the cooked rice (which for the record is very hard to cook if you have no need for a normal batch that you can just rob from!), and grind a bit more.  Set it aside, cover and go to work.

Day 2, just after getting home and feeding the cats, do nothing.  Well, until the Curry is ready because the recipe says cook and eat, not cook and keep to the side.

Day 2, just as the Curry is almost done, add in the coconut milk, whip it all up and have a go at cooking them up.  Small amount in the pan, swirl quickly, cover.  That's easy enough, right?  And we would tend to agree.  But we could not get them out of the pan and we certainly didn't get any curled up edges.

It seems we're experts at having them stick to the pan and when we finally got smartlucky enough to not have them completely stick to the pan we could do nothing but get them stuck to the spatula (a non-stick one at that!).  We did eventually get them on the plate, but they were more pile-like than pancake-like. 

For the record, we tried a normal pan, lightly oiled; beat up non-stick, lightly oiled; fairly new non-stick, lightly oiled; non-stick skillet, lightly oiled; fairly new non-stick, moderately oiled (don't do that, nothing good comes of it!) and even the pan we would call our best produced some stickage with the others varying degrees of disaster.  There's clearly something we're missing, or did wrong with the batter.  Anyone?

Result

We sucked at this!  Our first batch was probably nice calling it a disaster (for reasons not needing to be discussed here we started on one day but had to abort until a couple of days later, way past the recommended batter storing time).  Our second batch, much less disaster-like, but did not look a whole lot like the final result pictures provided. Oh well.

However, we think they tasted ok and we think the texture worked ok with the Curry.  We'll have to go out and eat some 'real' ones some day soon at least for comparison, but more for tips on making the pesky little things...

Sri Lankan Lamb Curry

A previous challenge got us the knowledge of where to find the lamb so that was easy (if you don't count getting a little bit lost on the drive over).  Fresh Curry Leafs and Whole Spices needed a bit more consideration, but ultimately was not a problem.  We headed over to a neighborhood where we thought we'd have the best chance for success and one shop later, we now have a new shop on our go-to list and a bag with all the goodies we need.

Once the ingredients are in hand it really is nothing more than a come home after work and 'whip' it up type dish.  Phew!  Because we did come home after work and 'whip' it up.

The nice men at the store had cut the lamb up mostly in the size we were after so that was a very easy Step 1. 

Step 2 was no harder, but we were a bit puzzled by the amount of Cardamom used.  After opening up 2 pods and extracting the seeds it didn't seem like there were enough of them, especially compared to how much of the others were used.  We don't have a reference point so we just went with our pinch of seeds.  The whole batch toasts up nicely, 'stink' up the kitchen just wonderfully and with just a little bit of coaxing all fit in the grinder.  Grinding only improves the 'stink'!

We didn't do Part 2 of Step 3 correctly, or in fact, at all.  We read the ingredient list, saw Tamarind, thought "cool, it's already in the fridge" and therefore didn't add it to the shopping list.  What we didn't pick up on until we were in our not-going-out-again-tonight clothes was that the recipe called for Tamarind pulp and we are the proud owners of Tamarind paste.  No idea how the two equate so when we got to the tamarind liquid part we just added a tablespoon of paste to the water.  Not sure how it affected the final taste, but comparing it to the pictures provided our final effort was much much darker, which was a bit of a shame because it was an awesome color when the Tumeric first went in.

Other than that, getting everyone else to the party was uneventful.  We didn't get the smells coming out of the pot as strongly as we expected, but we're kind of thinking that's due partly (mostly?) to the Tamarind incident of '11.  Well, actually there was a close call towards the end...  We were mere minutes away from reducing it down too far and into that not-fun-for-the-dishwasher stuck to the pan stage. 

Result

Yummy!  We really liked it.  We're not sure how it would compare to the others out there, but we're happy with what we got.  The lamb was tender, the sauce was rich without being too rich and there was no chance of there being leftovers for lunch the next day.

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

CLICK

Conclusion

It's unlikely we'll have a go at the Appams again (unless we get some tips / tricks that come with a guarantee of success), but there's no reason to think we wouldn't consider the Curry again, especially seeing how many new spices we now have in the pantry (well, technically stuck to the fridge...).  Our friends would appreciate our effort, we're sure, if we served them up, but we're not going to just yet...

We probably need to give the Curry another go and do the Tamarind parts correctly, but maybe we won't because there's no reason to think we can't just be happy with our 'interpretation'...

We cracked open a bottle of Corets de Cima "Chaminé" which wouldn't have been our fist choice had we not enjoyed our first and second choice at some earlier time - solely based on the tasting notes provided.  It was new to us and a relatively new grape so it was fun to have open.  We don't think it aided our enjoyment of the Curry, but it sure didn't hurt it either.

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

Mary, who writes the delicious blog, Mary Mary Culinary was our August Daring Cooks’ host. Mary chose to show us how delicious South Indian cuisine is! She challenged us to make Appam and another South Indian/Sri Lankan dish to go with the warm flat bread.

Comments pre Blog Platform Change

Stephanie responded:
Hmm... well, these are my tips from dosas and appam:

1) start with rice flour. food processors may not get it fine enough but blenders probably will.

2) make sure you have a HOT pan before you add batter

3) swirl, don't tilt. Sadly, I figured that out on the second to last one so most of mine were slightly weird shapes.

4) if they break, you either have a batter that is too thick or you tried to flip it too early.

They're quite yummy though, and if you start with rice flour, not quite so involved.

Makey-Cakey responded:
My Appam were definitely pile like rather than pancake like too! Well done for persevering - I eventually gave in and added a tablespoon of flour, which helped quite a lot! - but was technically cheating!

andy responded:
I'm sorry that you had such a hard time! My second go, after having the batter in the fridge 2 days, stuck too. Very frustrating!

anja janssen responded:
What a great story, it gave me a smile. My first appams were a real mess, because I forgot the lid. Later it went better. But I'm curious how the official appams taste.

Mary Dolan responded:
Sorry to hear that you had trouble with the appams, but thanks for participating. I didn't have any troubles with them sticking, but I used a new non-stick pan, lightly oiled. It may have been the heat--I had to do a lot of fiddling to get that right. I think tamarind paste/pulp goes by different names. I used the stuff in a solid block, but have no idea if I got it right either. As long as it tasted good. Cheers!

My Noodle Hands

We've made our own pasta a couple of times, usually for some sort of ravioli type device, so in the vain of being daring we decided to give the Spätzle a go.  Definitely eaten it before, but never thought about the behind the scenes part of it until now - not even a little.  Now we have...

We normally just work from exactly what is presented.  However, we found a recipe as part of the comments to the challenge which we thought would suit our current eating /  cooking arrangements - we're currently training for a race and the closer we get to race day the longer the workouts are getting, so in an attempt to reduce kitchen stress after getting home late, we're eating the same for lunch as we are for dinner and this recipe seemed more like a meal than a side compared to the traditional one offered.

German Spätzle

We went with the sundried tomato, leek, bacon and gruyere receipe.

Certainly easy enough to round up the ingredients.  Actually, if we stayed with the recipe offered as part of the challenge introduction we wouldn't have even needed to go to the store (yes, we had some buttermilk in the freezer - for pancake emergencies, of course), so yes, easy to round up the ingredients.

Not knowing what optional herbs and spices our little guys would benefit from we just went with what was suggested.  And when given the option to use buttermilk we always try to as we like the sort of gentle zing it brings to the party.

Adding the flour is no drama.  The batter / dough (anyone?  batter or dough?) certainly stiffens up quite quickly, and does get hard to stir.  It did end up quite smooth without too much huff'n and puff'n.

A small technical bit of trickery...  When it gets to the forming part of the process the directions say use a tablespoon.  OK, tablespoon is located.  It only took us one to figure out something was up, because half a tablespoon is a pretty big Spätzle.  We continued along with out tablespoons but barely filled them at all.  When all was said and done we went back and took a peek at the pictures provided - it looks like a teaspoon to us.  No harm done, although if we'd never seen a Spätzle before we may have ended up with the worlds biggest ones...

The recipe we went with called for cooking the Spätzle up as normal, but then shocking it in ice water so as to have ready to fry up with the rest of the fun ingredients. We created our own small problem in that we had completely raided our ice supply so as to get our chosen wine ready for consumption.  Although nothing to cry about, we had to sacrifice a few degrees of wine chilliness for the good of the little guys...

Not sure if it was operator error or just the nature of the 'beast' but we could not get the guys to brown up in the pan.  Well, actually we could, but the second they did it stuck to the pan and separated away from the piece the next time we even thought about stirring.  Oh well, not a deal breaker, just perplexing a little.

Result

Awesome! 

Didn't look even a little bit like the Spätzle we've had in restaurants as a side to something.  We also ended up with bigger pieces than we've seen before, but the texture was pretty much spot on what we expected.

The dish was a great combination of ingredients - someone was very clever to figure them out!  We almost certainly will have a go at using them in a normal everyday pasta dish sometime soonish.

Not surprisingly, our Wine Club had not provided us with a wine that is a known Spätzle match.  We themed on location, so grabbed up an Austrian (something that's name and type of grape is forgotten until we get through the trash and find the bottle later today...) Grüner Veltliner as our best 'match'.  That we'd never seen this grape before we had no idea what to expect.  The wine was a pleasant surprise and worked out just fine with the dish, but it might have been the richness of the sun dried tomatoes that helped more than the actual Spätzle.

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

CLICK

Conclusion

Fun, not hard, tasty and certainly something we could bring out for friends.  Although we ate it as a meal (twice) we would tend toward serving it as a side, perhaps with something like a lamb dish.

Makes ugly, but tasty left overs, which tends to suggest it's really a prepare and eat right now type of dish but in our case it may have been more the Gruyere's fault and less the Spätzle's.

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

ps. you might want to wash your mixing bowl the second you finish forming your little guys.  We're just say'n...

Steph, from Stephfood was our Daring Cooks' July hostess. Steph challenged us to make homemade noodles without the help of a motorized pasta machine. She provided us with recipes for Spätzle and Fresh Egg Pasta as well as a few delicious sauces to pair our noodles with!

Comments pre Blog Platform Change

Melanie responded:
Your spaetzle sounds tasty! And I do what to know what wine you ended up serving with it!

Jo responded:
The spatzle sound delish, but I am an inquiring mind as well, what was the wine? Hope you can find the bottle!

andy responded:
sundried tomato, leek, bacon and gruyere - what a great combo of flavours! I'll have to try this one.

Ruth H. responded:
I agree that spaetzle might not be the prettiest dish around, but it certainly is yummy! I am glad you found a recipe that worked for you, and I hope your training is going well!

blepharisma responded:
Hahaha... I laughed at the P.S. Yup, a very sticky and gross mess to clean spätzle - yum, yum, yum! I'm glad you enjoyed the challenge - thanks for sharing!

Mary responded:
That sounds like a great combination of flavours, whether the first time around or left over. I used a slotted spoon and forced the batter (I'm going with that, as it wasn't that thick) through it, for small, squiggly spaetzle. Yum and good luck with the race preparation!

David responded:
Hi guys, thanks for dropping buy. Regarding the wine, we found the bottle and updated the post to provide a link back to the Wine Club article. It was a Grüner Veltliner - a definite mouthful to say, but a really enjoyable mouthful to drink. Specifically, it was 2010 Weingut Stadt Krems but we have no idea how hard it might be to find as we got it through out Club.