Cheese Stuffed Romanian Flat Bread チーズ入りのルーマニアのパン

Although we have an “excess” of baked goods due to my wife’s baking binge (all hardships should be so easy), she saw an interesting recipe for “Cheese stuffed Romanian flat bread” on Washington Post and declared that she had to make it. Of course, nothing goes without a hitch. The recipe calls for cooking the bread in a cast iron skillet. We know we have a small and large cast-iron skillet plus a cast iron grill. We used to keep them in the drawer under the stove but since that is prime space and we were not using them much, we got organized and moved them somewhere else. For the life of us, we could not remember where “somewhere else” was and after extensive looking could not find them. Like pancakes, my wife made the dough and formed it,  I cooked the bread using a small non-stick frying pan instead of cast iron pan.

The bread looks a bit overdone but it tasted ok with a toasty flavor, crispy crust and the soft cheesy center. Despite some difficulties, I have to say this was a sucess.

As usual, my wife deviated from the original recipe.

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups (313 grams) all-purpose flour, plus more as needed
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 1/4 teaspoons (7 grams) quick-acting or instant dry yeast
1 pinch fine salt
6 tablespoons sunflower oil or other neutral oil
1/3 + 1/2 cup milk

Filling
6 oz. Ricotta cheese (this is what my wife used)
3 Tbs. Honey
1/8 Tsp. Cayenne pepper
1/4 Tsp. Salt
6 ounces farmers cheese or cottage cheese (if using cottage cheese hang shortly in a cheese cloth to drain excess liquid).

Optional:
Honey, for drizzling
Flaky sea salt, for sprinkling (optional)

Directions:
Put the flour, yeast, salt, sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer with a dough hook. Add the oil to the milk and stir into the dry ingredients. If the mixture seems dry, add cool water, 1 teaspoon at a time; if it seems tacky, add a little more flour. Knead the dough until soft and smooth, about 10 minutes. (Cover the bowl with a clean, damp cloth and let the dough rise at room temperature for 1 hour, or until almost doubled in size. (Alternatively, cover and refrigerate the dough overnight.)

Lightly flour the work surface and turn the dough out onto it. Divide the dough into 6 equal pieces. Working with one piece at a time, roll the dough into a 10- to 12-inch-wide circle. Crumble or spread a sixth of the cheese, about 1 ounce (28 grams), in the center, leaving a 5-inch border around the cheese. Fold the sides of the round into the center in 7 to 8 folds, overlapping them slightly. The dough should cover the cheese. Then press the filled circle of dough with your hands or use a rolling pin to gently press the bread closed. Repeat with the remaining dough and cheese.

In a large, cast-iron skillet (or if you can’t find it any non-stick frying pan will do) over medium heat, heat 1 tablespoon of the oil until it shimmers. Swirl the pan so the oil coats the bottom and place one of the dough rounds in the pan. Fry until golden brown on the bottom, 2 to 4 minutes, then flip and cook until golden brown on the other side, another 2 to 4 minutes, adjusting the heat as needed. Transfer to a plate and cook the remaining dough rounds, adding more oil as needed.

Serve warm, with honey and flaky salt, if desired.

 

In the picture it looks like these became a bit “high-done” but they were nicely crunchy and had a toasty flavor. The mildly sweet and creamy ricotta cheese filling was lovely with the finely textured bread. These opened all kinds of possibilities for potential variations…think ham and cheese.

Cookie and Cream Crumb Muffin

This is another muffin made from the chocolate cookie crumbs from the chocolate covered cookies rediscovered in the pantry.

The recipe came from “Dough-eyed” website.

Ingredients: (makes 12 muffins)

For the muffins:
2 cups AP flour
2/3 cup sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2/3 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup melted butter
1/4 cup sour cream
2 eggs
3/4 cup roughly crushed Oreos (we used our crushed chocolate covered cookies)
1/2 cup chocolate chunks (we didn’t have any so we did not include them) 

For the crumb:
1/2 cup shortening, room temp.
1 tbs. honey
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup regular sugar
2/3 cup flour
1/4 tsp. salt

(Recipe called for an additional 1/2 cup of crushed cookies. Since we didn’t have any left we did not include this.)

Directions:

For the muffins: 
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and line a 12 -cup muffin pan with liners of choice. Set aside.
In a large bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Set aside. In a small bowl, whisk together the milk, vanilla extract, egg, melted butter, and sour cream until combined.
Pour the wet mixture into the dry mixture. Add in the crushed cookies (and chocolate chunks if using them) and stir the whole mixture together with a spatula until there are no dry pockets.
Scoop the batter evenly into your prepared tin, filling each cup about 3/4 full.

For the topping :
In a medium bowl, using your hands mix the shortening, honey, brown sugar, turbinado sugar, flour, salt and (additional crushed cookies if using them).
Evenly and generously cover each tin of muffin batter with the topping. Bake muffins for 18-20 minutes, or until just golden. A cake tester should come out clean.

These muffins were amazing and very good. The topping formed a nice crunchy crust that tasted of toasted butter and honey. The muffin was fairly firm but nicely moist. Interestingly, it tasted distinctly like the cookies we had used. In fact it tasted like the cookies in fluffy format. The chocolate flavor really came through and was very pleasant. Never would have imagined something like this. We probably prefer this rendition of crushed cookie muffins more than the cookie butter crumb version.

Cookie Butter Crumb Muffin クッキーバターマフィン

This is a continuation of my wife’s saga about finding old forgotten chocolate covered cookies in the pantry and making muffins from them. She found this recipe on the Internet. Since this recipe calls for “cookie butter”, which she did not have, she started the whole saga by making cookie butter and then proceeded to make this interesting (in a good way) muffin. 

The recipe comes from “Bake or Break”

Ingredients:
FOR THE CRUMB TOPPING:
1/2 cup (60g) all-purpose flour
1/4 cup (50g) firmly packed light brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
pinch of salt
3 tablespoons (42g) unsalted butter, cold and cut into 1/2-inch cubes

FOR THE MUFFINS:
1 3/4 cups (210g) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup (57g) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup (100g) firmly packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup (140g) cookie butter* (such as Biscoff or Trader Joe's Speculoos Cookie Butter)
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup milk

*My wife made “cookie butter” from the chocolate cookies.

Directions:
TO MAKE THE CRUMB TOPPING:
Combine the flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt in a medium bowl.
Add the butter, and mix with your fingers until the mixture forms crumbs. Set aside.

TO MAKE THE MUFFINS: Preheat oven to 375°F. Line or grease a 12-cup standard muffin pan.
Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
Using an electric mixer on medium speed, beat the butter, brown sugar, and cookie butter until thoroughly combined.
Add the egg and vanilla, and mix well. Add the milk and mix well.
Add the milk mixture to the flour mixture and mix until fully blended.
Scoop the batter into the muffin tins using a 3 tablespoon scoop (I used the second largest ice cream scoop).
Distribute the crumb topping over the muffin batter.
Bake 20 to 25 minute, or until the muffins are lightly browned and a tester inserted into the center comes out clean.Cool the muffins in the pan for 10 minutes. Then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.

I’m not sure what we expected from these muffins but they were quite good. The topping formed a crunchy crust and the muffins were very tender in texture and pleasantly sweet. Interestingly, the cookie flavor was completely nonexistent. If you were not told, you would never guess cookies were involved in the muffin. I may have detected a slight hint of chocolate but the predominant flavor was cinnamon. Amazing!

Home-made Cookie Butter クッキーバター

Some time ago, we were into chocolate covered cookies; first from GODIVA and then we found a much cheaper alternative made by a German company called Bahlsen (#1, in the composite below). But over time both these kinds of cookies were sort of forgotten and migrated to the very back of the pantry. Recently, my wife found a tin of Godiva with some chocolate cookies remaining and few boxes of Bahlsen’s. We tasted them and, surprisingly, both tasted perfectly OK despite their age. My wife remembered that some time ago while leafing through the La Brea Bakery pastry cookbook there was a reference to using stale brownies, chocolate Madeleines or chocolate cake scraps and grinding them into crumbs to use as the filling in Bobka pastries such as Russian coffee cake or chocolate armadillos. She thought, ‘why not use these cookies the same way for muffins or other baked goods’.  So she started looking on the internet for recipes using cookie crumbs in muffins. She found several. Most of them used Oreo cookies but she thought, ‘substituting chocolate covered cookies should work too.’ Then she saw that the recipe she wanted to use called for “Cookie butter”. Well she didn’t have cookie butter and thought her project was “dead-in-the-water”. Then she found a recipe on line for home-made cookie butter and she was “back-in-business”.  But, before she could make the muffin she had to make the cookie butter. Since this was a work in progress we did not take a picture of the final product but the one below is very close. Cookie butters appear to be made from different kinds of cookies such as sugar cookie, peanut butter cookie, or Oreo cookie . Since this was made from chocolate covered cookies, this must be  “chocolate cookie butter”. 

The recipe is from  the “Beautiful Mess” website with some modifications. (As always)

Ingredients:
2 cups cookie crumbs (we used a chocolate covered cookie from Bhalsen called “Afrika”) (#1)
½ stick butter
½ cup condensed milk sweetened
¼ cup milk evaporated
water as needed

Directions:
Place the cookies in a Ziploc bag, seal, and crush them using a meat pounder. (#2) (We found the food processor couldn’t handle the cookies whole…it’s demonstration of displeasure with the situation was quite impressive!) Place the crumbled cookies into the food processor and pulse until it forms a very fine powder (#3).
In a small saucepan, heat the butter over low heat until melted, and then stir in the sweetened condensed milk and evaporated milk until it’s all melted together (#4).
Starting with 1/2 cup of the liquid, pour it into your cookie crumbs and mix together with a spoon.
Keep adding small amounts of the liquid until the cookie butter is just wet enough to stay together (the first picture).

(The below are direct quote from the original recipe)
“Once your cookie butter is blended, allow it to cool in the fridge for an hour or two. If you want to, you can actually stop at this point, and it will taste delicious. But if you want to make the cookie butter smoother and easier to dip things in, then remove the cookie butter from the fridge and stir very small amounts of water (start with 1/8 teaspoon) into the dough. At first it will look like the water is separating from the dough, but just keep stirring and mashing. You should start to notice that the cookie butter loosens up a bit as you stir in more water. Keep adding and stirring until you get to a consistency you like and refrigerate the mixture again.  Store your cookie butter in the fridge and it should be good for at least a week or two.”




In any case, we have not used the cookie butter as a spread yet but it tasted rather good. We found out that our regular grocery store carries “Lotus Biscoff” cookie butter. We ordered it and will compare it with the one my wife just made. 

This just in: The“Lotus Biscoff” cookie butter arrived and we tasted it. As you can see in the picture above that it looks like peanut butter but tastes like….wait for it….a butter cookie!!

Four Salad Lunch 4種類サラダランチ

I made 4 different salads (not all on the same day) and had the 4 salads for lunch with a cold asparagus soup. We also had a small piece of “Not no-knead bread made with dried fruit”. We feel good about the fact that all salads, soup and bread were home-made. In the center of the four salads, I served snap peas which were blanched and then soaked in Japanese salt broth.

The picture below shows Israeli couscous with artichoke hearts and garbanzo beans with a nice lemony and dill dressing.

The pic below shows a celery, mushroom, and navy bean salad with feta cheese. The mushrooms make the salad. They gave an almost meaty texture and flavor.

The next is a curry flavored sous vide chicken salad. Since we had a nice ripe Champagne mango, I added small cubes of mango which went very well with this salad.

I made this udon noodle salad since I had left-over cooked udon noodles.  The dressing is sesame-flavored. I do make several versions of the sesame dressing (for example, using Japanese “nerigoma” ねりごま sesame paste or peanut butter) but this time I used Tahini with dry roasted white sesame seeds which I ground in a Japanese “suribachi” すり鉢 mortar. Other seasonings included soy sauce, sugar, and rice vinegar.

This was a surprisingly filling lunch. Beans, udon noodles, and couscous all contribute to this and, at the same time, we enjoyed so many different flavors and textures. We just have to make sure we finish all these salads before they go bad.

Lamb Tenderloin for Easter 子羊のテンダーローイン

Tenderloin of lamb is not a usual cut but we got several of them from D’Artagnan. We decided to try it for Easter dinner. I did not follow any recipes. I made a pan-sauce with red wine and balsamic vinegar.

I sort of did a reverse searing. After cooking it in the toaster oven, I seared it with sprigs of fresh rosemary which I kept in the frying pan during the searing and while I made a red wine sauce.

As sides, we served pencil asparagus and shiitake mushroom stir fry  (left) and Israeli couscous salad with marinated artichoke hearts (right). To mop up the sauce, we also served a slice of  (mini) baguette I baked.

I have never cook lamb tenderloins before. I decided to cook two of them in the toaster oven at 350F for 10 minutes and then reverse seared them in a pan with rosemary. It sort of worked but the lamb was a bit overcooked. The entire dinner was really good and for the occasion, we opened a bottle of 2014 Insignia from Joseph Phelps. Despite some age on the bottle, it was really fresh with a nice fruit flavor. It was a perfect wine for this dinner.

Ingredients (makes about 4 servings)
x2 Lamb tenderloins thawed, salted and kept in the refrigerator for 6 hours uncovered (to dry them a bit)
2 springs of fresh rosemary
2 tbs olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

for the pan sauce
1/4 cup red wine (Not Insignia; a much more reasonably priced CA wine I already had open)
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
2 tbs of cold butter, cut into thin pats
Salt and pepper

Directions:
I seasoned the lamb with pepper (no salt; it was already salted). I roasted it at 350F in the toaster oven on convection mode for 10 minutes.
I then pan-seared it with olive oil and the rosemary for 1 minute on each side.
I set aside the lamb covered loosely with an aluminum foil, leaving the rosemary in the pan.
(I was aiming for an internal temperature of 130-135F for the lamb to be medium rare but in the end, the temperature went over)
I added the red wine and balsamic vinegar to the pan and reduced it to the point that it was just coating the bottom of the pan.
I added several pats of cold butter one by one until it reached a saucy consistency.
I seasoned with salt and pepper

I sliced the lamb tenderloin and spooned on the wine sauce then topped the dish with the rosemary sprig.

The couscous salad, asparagus with mushroom and baguette all worked well together with the lamb.  Of course, the wine made this dinner a bit special.

Israeli (Pearl) Couscous Salad イスラエルクスクスサラダ

The other day, we were taking inventory of our pantry and found boxes of couscous (classic and Israeli or pearled) as well as tabouleh all of which were way pass their BUB (best-used-by) date. We sniffed and did not detect any rancid oil odor so we cooked the classic couscous and the tabouleh. But once they were cooked, it was clear that in these cases the BUB date had some meaning—they tasted terrible. So we discarded those boxes and bought new ones. We decided to go ahead and try cooking the Israeli couscous* and it turned out to be OK. So we decided to use it to make a salad. We looked up recipes on the web and essentailly combined two recipes omitting some of the ingredients called for in the recipe while adding others not mentioned.

*Digression alert: While we were looking up recipes, we found that Israeli or pearl couscous was invented by an Israeli company as a substitute for rice in 1959 since there was a rice shortage at that time.In any case, the end result was a quite nice filling salad. The vinaigrette had a nice lemony flavor with dill which made this salad very refreshing.

Ingredietns:

For Couscous
1 1/2 cup (250gram or 8oz) Israel couscous
1 garlic clove, minced (I used three)
1/2 small onion, finely mince (I used one small onion)
2 tbs olive oil
1 1/2 chicken broth (I used our ususal low sodium Swanson)
1 cup water (we did not add the water. The couscous was fully cooked and the liquid was completely absorbed but although it was not scorched, the couscous stuck to the bottom of the pan. So next time we will try it with the additional water.)

For the salad
5 Campari tomatoes, skinned and cut into quarters
2 tbs dill, finely chopped
6 marinated artichoke hearts, cut into half length wise
1 can (15.5 oz) garbanzo beans, drained and skin removed (optional, but my wife insist on removing the skin)

Other items could be olives, cucumber and other greens.

For dressing
Zest and juice from one lemon
1 tsp dijon mustard
1 tsp honey
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions: {For couscous)
Add the oil in a pan, sauté the onion and garlic for 3-4 minutes, add the couscous and sauté another minute
Add the chicken broth and simmer for 10 minutes
Fluff it up with a fork and let it cool to the room temperature

Mix all the ingredients and the dressing.

Although we forgot to add one cup of water, the couscous was nicely cooked without. The lemony dressing really worked.