Lemony Meringues!!

So, since I was working Monday (egg day at the Spoon!!), I got to take home a pint of delicious eggwhites! One of the easiest, most versatile things you can make with these is meringue. It's one of the most basic French dessert techniques. Today, I decided to try making lemon meringues, chock-o-block full of lemon zest. I pretty much just built off the Jaques Pépin recipe:


1/2 (give or take) cup egg whites (4-ish whites)
1 cup sugar
zest of four lemons

1. Beat whites until they begin to hold their shape
2. Beat in 1/2 cup sugar, continuing to beat until shiny and stiff
3. Fold in the sugar and lemon zest, a bit at a time
4. Pipe or spoon onto parchment-lined baking sheets
5. Bake at 200°F for 2.5 hours

These came out quite well, I think. They're crisp and crunchy, and plenty sweet, with a definite citrus flavour. They retained the yellow colour imparted by the lemon zest, although they did caramelise a little bit. I'm very happy with these, although I think they could suffer a pinch of salt to balance the sugar, and maybe a drip or two of lemon juice to give them just a little more tartness. Experiments for next time!

Yaye boi! Culinary Adventures on my Three Month Anniversary

Ah, I've been a very bad blogger. Maybe I need to be spanked... So, I totally didn't write about the week-long adventure of Matchstick in NJ...But I'll try my best to write about some of our adventures in the near future...sometime before I go back to UMass. Anyway:
I went up to RI for two and a bit days to see Matchstick for our 3 month anniversary. So exciting!! This is a first for both of us, having an actual long-term relationship. So that was awesome. On top of that, we got to do some awesome cooking! Yaye!

The first thing we did when I arrived was go to the grocery store and buy things for cooking. Haha aah, we're such food geeks! What did we get? How did we use it? That comes soon! But first, let's talk about absinthe. Absinthe, La Fée Verte, is a liquor made from great wormwood, fennel, hyssop, and several other herbs. It is rather high proof (45%-75% alcohol by volume), and is unique in its drinking ritual--it is diluted in an equal volume of water before being consumed. Three varieties of absinthe exist. Blanche, also known as La Bleu, is clear, having been distilled and then bottled. Verte, the famously green absinthe, owes its colour to a second infusion of herbs. Absenta, a Spanish variant of absinthe, has a slightly different and sweeter flavour, owing to a difference in the herbs used. "Hausgemacht" is a term which refers to home-made, or "microbrewed" absinthe. "Czech absinthe," "Bohemian absinthe," and "absinth" all refer to the same thing--and that thing is emphatically not absinthe. It is, to put it politely, wormwood bitters. What I prefer to call it, well...let's not go there haha.
Anyway, I got the chance to taste a Swiss blanche absinthe. While the full absinthe ritual wasn't performed (sugar is placed in a slotted spoon over the glass of absinthe, and water is poured over the sugar, sweetening and diluting the absinthe--don't burn the sugar!!), it was still a very cool experience. It was fun to watch the louche develop when the water was added. The flavour of absinthe is largely liquorice, but it's slightly bitter, owing to the wormwood. Actually, I suppose it would best be described as having a flavour of liquorice with a slightly disturbing note. Still, very good.

The following afternoon, we made a deliciously evil confection, called brickle. It's deliciously evil because it is essentially crispy crackers embedded in butterscotch and chocolate! And it's so very simple to make!

1 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
saltines to line a baking sheet (about 40, the written form of the recipe says)
1 "large bag" chocolate chips (actually, however much you need to completely cover the pan of brickle)

1. Line a baking pan with foil, remembering to crimp the edges. Line the bottom of the prepared pan with saltines
2. Heat the butter and brown sugar on the stove. When the butter has melted, whisk vigorously to combine
3. Allow the butter and sugar mixture (butterscotch!!) to simmer for three minutes
   
4. Pour the butterscotch over the saltines and spread it evenly
5. Bake at 400°F for 5 minutes
6. Pour chocolate chips over brickle, and as they melt spread them evenly over the surface
7. Refrigerate for 2 hours, then break into pieces. Generally, the brickle will cleave most cleanly along the edges of the crackers

This is a delicious and simple sweet. Anyone with two neurons to rub together can make it. Despite this, there's also room for more advanced techniques to be used. I'd like to play around with the butterscotch a bit, and I'd like to see if I can temper the chocolate so the brickle won't melt so quickly in my hand.

That evening we made tacos for his family, and dinner was quite a nice affair. I've never made taco filling from scratch before, so this was a neat experiment that turned out well! This recipe is a bit (i.e., very) vague, but a lot of this is based on personal tastes.

• Brown 1.5 lb ground beef in a pan
• Drain the beef, and set it aside. In the same pan, heat some oil and sauté a clove (or two) of garlic and some (I used one, but at least two are needed) fresh sliced jalapeños. Add a teaspoon or two of coriander and sauté until the garlic begins to caramelise
• Add the beef, then season with cumin, paprika, cilantro, dried chili pepper, salt, black pepper. Continue to sauté
  
• After the beef has become fragrant, add some water to the pan as if you were deglazing the pan. Allow the beef to absorb the water. Repeat this process as you cook the beef and adjust the spices (I actually borrowed this method from the recipe for aloo gobi, in which you add larger amounts of water as you cook the vegetables to make the sauce)
  
• Add some finely chopped onion and cook until it is tender, continuing with the water treatment
• When the seasoning is satisfactory, remove the filling from the heat and portion it into hard taco shells (16 at most)
• Top with slices of cheese (we used American, but cheddar or pepperjack would do wonderfully)
• Heat in a 325°F oven until the cheese is melted
• Serve hot with chopped tomatoes, shredded lettuce, sour cream, salsa, etc.
  

I think the tacos turned out pretty well, and I was proud that I didn't use any spice mixes. I do need to stop being afraid of overspicing things, though. I definitely needed to "kick it up a notch!" More pepper and onion, and more paprika. Maybe the cumin could be turned up a bit, too, since it's so important in Mexican cooking.

The following day was our anniversary. That was fun! In the midst of our busy day (haha), we made blueberry spice muffins. I love blueberries, and I don't get them often because I can't have them in the house--my mother is allergic. So this was a special treat. I was tempted to eat the whole pint of blueberries myself without bothering with the muffins... But geekiness prevailed, and we whipped up a batch of delicious muffins based on the Joy of Cooking method.

2 cups flour
1/3 cup sugar
3/4 tsp salt
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp allspice
2 eggs, beaten
4 tbsp melted butter
3/4 cup milk
1 cup lightly floured blueberries

1. Combine all the dry ingredients
2. Whisk the butter into the eggs, being sure not to accidentally cook the eggs with overhot butter
3. Mix the mixture into the dry ingredients with the milk. Don't over mix
4. Mix (the Joy says "fold," but I think that's excessive) in the blueberries
5. Portion into muffin tins, filling 1/3 to 1/2 of the way
6. Bake at 425°F for 15-20 minutes

Aaaah, I loved these muffins sooo much! They were great as snacks, dessert, and breakfast! The berries cooked very nicely and were a bit like a jam filling. I may play with the spices a little, but I think this is overall a very good recipe. Matchstick had never had real blueberry muffins, so this was a great treat for him as well. However, he didn't like the the way the muffins rose, and thinks that the added spices kept them from rising properly. Maybe?

That evening we made ourselves a very nice romantic dinner. We had steak with red wine sauce, sautéed zuccini and squash, and garlic bread. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and I enjoyed teaching Matchstick some more basics. Sautéing and deglazing are so common that it's almost impossible to cook without them. He's learning a lot! Fast study, my boy.

Steak with wine sauce is a very easy recipe, and is also very easy to expand upon. It encompasses two basic elements of stovetop cooking, pan frying and deglazing.

Steak
2 cloves garlic, sliced
Coarse sea salt
Freshly cracked or ground pepper
Red wine (we used Yellowtail Cabernet Sauvignon)
A little butter

1. Prepare the steak by rinsing it and patting it dry
2. Sprinkle sea salt and pepper over one side of the steak, and press it in with your hands
3. In a large pan or skillet, heat the butter so that it covers the entire bottom
4. Add the garlic and sauté it until it begins to caramelise
5. Put the steak on top of the garlic, seasoned side down. (At this point, I like to think of something my father's priest from Rochester said--"What sells the steak is the sizzle." You want a good, hearty sizzle when you cook beef this way, or it won't sear properly and your sauce will be weak.) Season the exposed side of the steak using the same method as above
6. Cook until seared on one side, then flip and sear the other side
7. Cook until 140°F to 145°F at the thickest point
8. Remove the steak to the cutting board and let it rest (this is important when you cook meat! Always let it rest before you carve it)
9. Allow any remaining liquid in the pan to simmer down until the pan is nearly dry (at this point you can butter the pan and sauté any ingredients you'd like to add to the sauce--more garlic, mushrooms, etc.)
   
10. Pour a little more wine than is necessary to cover the bottom into the pan. You should hear a vigourous sizzling and hissing
11. As the wine comes up to the simmer, use a spatula to stir the sauce and get all the yummy brown bits up off the bottom of the pan and dissolved into the sauce
12. Add some butter, and allow the sauce to reduce to concentrate the flavour and thicken it slightly (if you want to thicken it more, I see no reason why you can't use a little roux)
13. Slice the steak, being mindful of the grain (you want the side of the slice you're going to bite to be as close to perpendicular to the grain as possible...sometimes difficult with lower quality cuts)
14. Add the released juices to the sauce
15. Serve hot with warm sauce

This came out pretty well, I think. The steak was a little tough, and I think this is partially because I wasn't careful enough when I cooked it: I'm not used to cooking on a gas range, so I should have been a little more cautious. The flavour, though, was quite good, and the sauce was delicious. I may have needed to let it reduce a little more, but only for thickness. It had good colour and was well balanced. Matchstick had never had a wine sauce over steak before, and said he loved it. "The sauce had a very wine taste to it, which I guess is normal, but it was just something I've never had with steak before. Very good, though."

Sautéing is sort of an all-purpose method of cooking just about anything. It's sort of a more laid-back form of stirfrying.

1 zucchini, in half-moons
1 summer squash, in half-moons
1 clove garlic, sliced
A handful of chopped (mincing is waaay too hard) parsley
Salt to taste
Butter

1. Melt the butter and throw in the garlic. Sauté until it begins to caramelise, then add the parsley, continuing to sauté
   
2. Add the zucchini and squash, and sauté until tender, salting just at the end
3. Serve warm

This went well, nice and buttery. I wish I had remembered to add the vidalia onion we had in the fridge...some fennel would have been nice, too. Anyway, this sort of recipe is easy, delicious, and infinitely extensible! Matchstick doesn't eat nearly as many vegetables as he ought to, but this is one of his favourite ways to cook summer vegetables. He heavily salted his (oops...I forgot the salt while I was cooking!), and said he loved them, with or without the onion.

Garlic bread...ah, garlic bread. So delicious. So buttery. So flavourful. This exemplifies garlic: it is a powerful flavour, but it is by no means unpleasant or overpowering. Garlic is highly versatile, and everyone should love it.

1 loaf Italian bread or baguette
1/2 cup butter, melted
3 cloves garlic, minced or crushed with a garlic press
A handful chopped parsley

1. Slice the bread nearly to the bottom crust, but not quite
2. To the hot butter, add the parsley and garlic. Mix well
3. Pour and brush onto the exposed insides of the bread (Matchstick didn't quite follow this recipe. Instead, he halved the loaf lengthwise before cutting it into individual slices and brushing the butter mixture onto the top of the slices)
4. Bake at 350°F for 2o minutes
5. Serve hot

Aaaah, I loved this so much! It was delicious! And best of all, Matchstick made it all by himself!! I'm proud! I said that this exemplifies garlic. It's true. The flavour was clear and pronounced, but by no means repulsive. It was delicious. It was the sort of garlic dish you could eat and not need a mint afterwards.

With our dinner, we drank some of the wine we used for the steak's sauce, Yellowtail's (yes, an Australian wine. They actually make some excellent wines down under!) Cabernet Sauvignon. It was quite good, I think, accompanying the meal. And, as my high school art teacher, Doc O'Boyle says, "don't use a colour in just one place!" Drinking it in addition to using it in the sauce filled out the meal nicely. The wine itself is not really an exercise in extremes. It is not notably sweet, but neither is it particularly dry. It's not at all oaky, which was good, as Matchstick dislikes that quality, nor is it particularly tannic. It is a little sour, but this balances well with the rest of its attributes. This is a good, and not terribly expensive wine.

I had sooooo much fun on my visit! And the food geekery was awesome. *happy wiggling and squeeing* I can't wait to cook with Matchstick at school--he has a real kitchen!!