Original Food Dude

The art of cooking. The science of food.

Author: dangenho@gmail.com (page 1 of 4)

Pumpkin Tres Leches

November 2, 2018 / / Comments Off on Pumpkin Tres Leches

 

Let’s make this one go viral folks, pumpkin tres leches is one of the best things to ever grace my kitchen counter.

Inspiration

Tres Leches is one of my all-time favorite desserts.   I love the taste, the texture, and I love the Al Pastor tacos and Naranja Jarritos that precede it.  Throw in your favorite Novella and you have yourself an authentic Mexican Restaurant experience.  It is made by baking a sponge cake then soaking it is a mixture of cream, evaporated milk, and sweetened condensed milk, how can you go wrong with that.

In fact, when I did my oral presentation of my dissertation in graduate school I brought a tres leches can for the examiners to eat while I presented to them.  Easiest questions I’ve ever had..

Whole cardamon ready to be roasted and ground.

In the US we love our Mexican food.  Its been years now since salsa has become the top condiment in the US replacing ketchup.  Good call people.   I particularly love Mexican food, in almost all of its variations.  I say almost all because I still struggle with Mole, it made me really sick once and I still haven’t forgiven it.

My love for Mexican food (at the expense of my waistline) comes from a lot of things in my life but primarily it comes from my high school days in South Texas.  I lived about an hour and a half north of the Mexican border during school and would go to a bunk house on the ranch in the summer that was maybe 30 minutes north of the border.  We had all the Mexican food you could want.

One of my favorite things was a Tex-Mex dish they call carne guisada.  It is basically the Mexican flavored version of beef stew, but with fresh tortillas and a guacamole salad, it is amazing.  It literally means cooked meat.  But with the cumin, chilis, and garlic it turns in to a magic meal.

My adventures in Mexican food didn’t end with South Texas.  I then served a two-year mission in the desert of Southern California, speaking only Spanish.  During that two years, I gained a great appreciation for the Latin cultures.  I got to know and love people from Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Guatemala, Columbia, Peru, Bolivia, and El Salvador.  I got to try different foods from chicharrones to lengua, menudo to mole, and completos to empanadas.

Out of all of my experience came a truly deep respect and love for the flavors that Mexican and many other Latin foods provide to us.  Honestly, what would I eat for my quick meal if it wasn’t for tacos, and my boys sure love their quesadillas (but who doesn’t)?

 

Que Pasa Calabasa…

My dad’s favorite Spanish phrase is “¿Que pasa calabasa? Nada nada límonada”.  It means “What’s up pumpkin? Nothing nothing lemonade.”  Makes no sense in English but seems super funny in Spanish.

If you look at the squash group of plants, pumpkins included, they are a New World crop.  There weren’t squash in Europe until the Americas were settled.

Pumpkin is what makes fall so amazing.  It spices up our Thanksgivings, makes amazing cookies, bread, soups, vinegar, and even creme brulee (coming I promise).  Apparently, there is even a Great Pumpkin that does some awesome things according to Linus.

 

Each year, the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch...

 

How to..

Start with a diet Dr. Pepper.  That is the first step to any meal that takes some work in preparation.  After all, you are only as good as your motivation.

Ok, now seriously.  Start by preheating your oven to 325º F.

Cream eggs and sugar together in a mixer.  This step is super important because you are creating a sponge cake that will be “open” to absorb the three milks of tres leches.  The creaming incorporates air into your batter creating a fluffier texture.  A word of caution though, over creaming can cause separation so there is a happy medium.  A few minutes in a mixer is great.

Mix flour, spices, and baking powder in a separate bowl.

Add the pumpkin, vanilla to the sugar mix.  Beat together.

In small doses add the dry ingredients (flour, etc.) to the wet (eggs, etc.).  Mix it in just until combined.

Place your batter in a 9×9  pregreased pan.

Bake for 30 min.  Or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted in the center.

While it’s baking combine the cream, evaporated milk, and sweetened condensed milk.  Whisk together.

Cool cake until it’s easily touchable, then pierce it with a  fork.  That’s it take out all your frustration on that cake.

Pour the milk mixture over the cake and cover and refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight if possible.

Serve however you like, but I like whipped cream and cinnamon on top.

If you want to celebrate the fall in a novel way throw this amazing pumpkin tres leches in your list of fall dishes.  Your family will thank you for it.

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Pumpkin Tres Leches

Yum yum, pumpkin, fall, drooollll...

Ingredients

  • 2 2/3 cup flour
  • 3 tsp spice mix 2 parts cinnamon, 1 part cardamon, 1 part allspice, 1 part nutmeg
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 4 whole eggs
  • 1 1/4 cup sugar
  • 2/3 cup pumpkin puree
  • 1 1/2 tsp vanilla

 

 

Homemade Vinegar

October 25, 2018 / / Comments Off on Homemade Vinegar

Few things are cooler than making your own homemade vinegar.  If that isn’t the nerdiest foodie statement ever I don’t know what is, but it’s true.

Origins

What would a post about vinegar be without a little history?

Vinegar comes from two Latin words.  Vinum meaning wine and acer meaning sour.  That’s all it really was.  Wine would be made from various grapes and other fruits and if exposed to air it would sour and turn to sour wine or vinegar.

Vinegar like many of our modern cultured foods was most likely an accident.  A delicious and healthy accident.

Date (the fruit, not what you should be doing weekly with your spouse) vinegar is supposedly the oldest recorded vinegar, the Babylonian empire wrote about it some 3000 years ago.

Sciency Stuff

So vinegar really is one of the coolest products because it can only be made with two types of microorganisms present.  A lot of our foods use the power of microorganisms to be produced: bacteria in yogurt and cheese, yeast in bread and alcohol, mold in cheese, some fungus we just eat and they aren’t so micro-y (not a word).

The two magic micros for vinegar production are yeast and acetobacter.

Now yeasts are actually classified as a fungus, they like to take sugars and simple carbohydrates and digest them.  As a byproduct of their digestion, they produce ethanol (alcohol) and carbon dioxide (this is why yeast makes bread rise).  This process of fermentation is anaerobic (done in the absence of oxygen).

When you make alcohol you are relying on yeast to take the sugars in your mixture and convert them to alcohol and carbon dioxide.  That is why some wines are sparkling (the carbon dioxide is trapped) others are made with a one-way valve system that allows the carbon dioxide to escape.

Check out that carbon dioxide escaping.

When you are producing alcohols it is important to start with a known sugar concentration (known as Brix), because it is the sugar concentration (and yeast activity) that ultimately controls the alcohol concentration.  For every 0.5 oz of sugar per quart of liquid, you can produce about 1% alcohol.  That means your typical 80 proof Rum (40% alcohol) needed about 20 oz of sugar per quart or about 2.8 cups of sugar per quart.

However, I’m not a vintner, but am interested in the alcohol only to take it to the next step, vinegar.  This is where acetobacter come in, these little buggers take the alcohols, that the yeast produced, and metabolize them into acetic acid (the acid in vinegar).  These guys are aerobic (like Richard Simmons, don’t you feel like a pony), although some work has shown recently that acetobacter can survive anaerobic conditions, which is bad news for the dudes in Napa Valley, generally acetobacter need oxygen.

Thus in vinegar production, you produce alcohol with yeast without oxygen and acetic acid with acetobacter with oxygen. Complicated right?

The ratios I mentioned earlier are important even with the acetobacter.  In order to be vinegar legally, there should be 4% acetic acid, to be safe 5%.  The good news is acetobacter is very efficient at converting ethanol alcohol to acetobacter, up to 130% yields.  Practically it would be between 100 and 120%.

That means your 80 proof bottle of rum would theoretically yield a whopping 48% acetic acid vinegar, which would be far far far too strong.  So we dilute the alcohol before vinegar production to keep it in the 5-7% range (wine is about 11 or 12% alcohol).

Man, I love this stuff, it is just so cool how it works.

Fruit Scrap

You can make homemade vinegar in a myriad of ways, but today I’m going to talk about the simplest one, fruit scrap vinegar.  (Imagine if I misplaced the s and it said fruits crap vinegar, no one would use that).

I love fruit scrap vinegar because I can make it out of so many things.  To date, I’ve made Apple, Pear, Peach, Blackberry, Raspberry, and even Pumpkin vinegar (cause I’m awesome like that).  The process is simple the results are cool and it is a great teaching tool for demonstrating fermentation principles to your little ones.

This kind of vinegar doesn’t rely on the natural sugars in the fruit but we add sugar and water to ensure that alcohol can be produced.  Natural yeast in the air cause the fermentation to begin and often the environmental acetobacter (meaning I don’t know where they come from) will convert the alcohol to acetic acid.  I typically add some acetobacter to ensure it happens and speed it up.

How To

You will need 4 things to make your vinegar.

First, fruit scraps.  This is the apple cores and peels from applesauce, the peach peels from peach pie,  whole berries, or a diced baked sweet pie pumpkin for pumpkin vinegar.

The second thing you need is a large non-metallic vessel.  I like to use glass or earthenware, but plastic works well too.  You will need a way to cover the vessel with a  cloth.  1/2 gallon mason jars work great.

Thirdly, you need water and sugar.  I mix 1 cup of sugar to one quart of water at the most.  Under ideal circumstances that would give me 14% alcohol, but I know my circumstances at home will be less than ideal so it will most likely be substantially less.  Don’t mix less than 1/2 a cup for really not sweet fruit as it can result is a super weak vinegar that is no good and unsafe.

Fourth you need time (not thyme).  This is a fermentation process and it will take some time to produce, but it is well worth it.

Step one.   Place all your fruit scraps in a suitable container (again not metal as it reacts with the acetic acid).  I like to fill the container about two-thirds full with scraps, don’t pack them, just fill loosely.

Pour in the water/sugar mix, make sure the fruit is completely covered.

Cover the container with a cotton cloth (painters rags work great).  The cloth serves three purposes: 1. It keeps fruit flies out of your vinegar 2.  Allows the carbon dioxide escape when you are fermenting 3.  It allows oxygen in when you are converting alcohol to acetic acid.

Secure the cloth with twine or bungee.

Place mixture in a warm area of the house.  Furnace room or utility closets work great.

Check daily, push the fruit down under the liquid as needed.

This is apple vinegar, there is blackberry behind it.

You will start to see bubbles and foam forming in the liquid, this is the carbon dioxide trying to escape.  After about a week to a week and a half, you will smell the alcohol.

Drain all the liquid off and discard the solids.  I feed my solids to my chickens, they love it, I guess they are drunken chickens.

Place the liquid back in the jar.  I add a couple of tablespoons of Braggs vinegar (because it has live acetobacter) here.  You don’t have to add the vinegar, but sometimes there isn’t enough environmentally and I don’t like to go through all the work for it to fail.

Re-cover the container with the cloth.

Store in a warm room and stir a couple of times a week to get more oxygen in the vinegar.  You will begin to see a layer of goo form on top.   This is known as the mother of vinegar and is where the acetobacter is heavily concentrated.  This may take about one to two more weeks.

Mother forming on top.

The vinegar is ready when you can smell the vinegar and the mother is really prevalent.   You can put it in mason jars with tight lids to keep it for about a year.

There you have it, your own wonderful vinegar that you can make right at home.  The beauty of this is you can let your creativity really run with this and make almost any fruit you want and even combine flavor or add additives (I had cinnamon sticks in my apple vinegar).  Enjoy.

 

 

 

Riomaggorie view from Lexie's favorite meal

The flavor or the experience.

October 23, 2018 / / Comments Off on The flavor or the experience.

Riomaggorie view from Lexie’s favorite meal

What is more important in a meal, the flavor or the experience?

 

We eat first with our eyes…

Thus said Apicius.  How true it is.

What is your favorite cooking blog?  Besides the Original Food Dude, of course.  Mine is Sally’s Baking Addiction.  Check out the picture of the blueberry scone and tell me you don’t immediately want one.   Why?  Because our eyes are one of our first assets to experience flavor.

I just did a quick recap of my posts.  The post I think has the best pictures has over 100 Pins.  My next best post is about 20.  In our world of quick sensory activation, the first picture you see on a post sells you on it.  So if you are reading this I was successful with my picture, haha I win.

 

Ear, nose, and throat are next…

Along with our visual perception of a meal, the sounds around us, the smells, the conversation, even our mood all play a huge role in our perception of flavor.

If you have 17 minutes I recommend listening to Dr. Charles Spence discuss this.

During his discussion, he mentions the  Provençal Rosé Paradox.  It goes something like this, on vacation in Greece you have a glass of wine, you love it.  So you buy a bottle take it home and guess what it doesn’t taste the same.  It’s not the flight, or time, or temperature.  It’s the atmosphere.

5 years ago my wife and I were on vacation in Riomaggiore Italy.  We had just taken a train from La Spezia to the first of the towns of Cinque Terre.  It was about 1 pm when we got off the train.  We walked for about another hour enjoying the views of the Mediterranean Sea (actually the Tyrrhenian Sea).  The sun was shining, the air was warm and clear as we walked into a little restaurant.  I don’t even know the name of it.  I ordered Pesto Gnocchi, Lexie ordered a Shellfish Pasta.  She swears to this day that is the best meal she’s ever had in a restaurant.

Do you see what’s happened there?  The sights, the sounds, the smells, the company (wink wink) all played rather nicely to make Lexie’s brain swim with excitement, creating an eating experience unlike any other.

Think about this, do crepes taste better under the Eifel Tower, does an Al Pastor taco taste better in a mercado in Monterrey, does a bratwurst in Frankfurt taste best, is lobster in Maine really better than any other?  The answer I can tell you to all of these is yes, but not just because of the quality but because of the place.

One quick and very important caveat to all this, an Oscar Meyer Weiner never tastes like Filet Mignon, even if you served it with bacon at St Elmo’s in Indianapolis (my perfect meal place).  The surroundings of a meal make a good meal great, make a good experience unforgettable.

 

The best trout Lexie’s ever eaten. Helps that we were camping at 10,000 ft and she was hungry…

 

The Food Dude’s Role

So what?  Go to a fancy nice place have a fancy nice meal create a fancy nice memory.  Right?

Sure, or create an explosive sensory experience right in your own home.  See, that’s where I come in.

My goal is to educate you and let you educate me too,  about food.  How it’s made, principles of cooking, and the science of what is going on.  Then when your house smells of chicken coconut korma or torta caprese and you plate it in a visually stunning way, set a nice table and play soothing music (I like Andrea Bocelli when I eat) you set the atmosphere for an amazing gastronomical experience.

So please remember that it’s not the flavor or the experience, it is the flavor AND the experience.

 

 

 

Tomato Bisque

October 19, 2018 / / Comments Off on Tomato Bisque

Nothing warms your insides on a chilling fall evening like a warm tomato bisque (only to be pronounced ta-ma-toe, like a Brit, it just sounds better).

Bisque, Chowder, Soup, Stew, Chili, etc.

So my wife and I had a discussion about how different liquid based (not sure what to call them) are classified.  I’m a firm believer in loose classifications of all things, in that a tomato is a vegetable I don’t care what the Botanists say (technically so is pumpkin pie right.).  Really I can’t stand hard and fast rules that dictate so directly what something is called, but here are some quick categorical points for separating these kinds of dishes into like groups.

  • Soups
    • Clear
      • Consommé
      • Broths
    • Thick
      • Puree
      • Velouté
        • Thickened with a blond roux
      • Cream
        • Thickened with bechamel
      • Chowder
        • Shellfish based
      • Bisque
        • Thickened with cream
    • Cold Soups
  • Stews
    • Cooked by “stewing” just enough liquid to cover food, examples (jambalaya, beef stew, curries, etc)

I’m really not sure if my recipe constitutes a bisque, but I can’t think of a better name for it.

Tomatoes

We planted six tomato plants this year, fortunately, I didn’t have Peter Rabbit in a tree next door to rob my garden, but we did have to keep the chickens out.

Six tomatoes may sound like a lot, but we use tomatoes quite a bit and only get them for a short time so I like to have a lot.  The first year Lexie and I were married I planted a huge garden.  We had something like 20 tomato plants, we couldn’t give them away quick enough so now I’m limited to six.

One of my very favorite tomatoes is a little cherry tomato called a Sun Sugar.  They are super sweet, in fact, I love to just pick them and eat them, so they rarely make it inside.

The night before our first frost of the season I went and picked all of our tomatoes off the bushes.  The green ones got placed in buckets with an apple every few layers and covered.  The apples produce ethylene gas, which helps green tomatoes ripen.

The ripe tomatoes I made into a great big belly warming pot of tomato bisque.

Bisque

The best thing about this recipe is how stinking simple it really is.

Start with tomatoes.

Put about 4 lbs of tomatoes in a pot (I used more as I was cooking for storing).

Add one small sweet whole onion.

I literally pulled these out cleaned them and threw them in whole.

Add 2 carrots and a few celery stalks (this is one of those feelings recipes, you add what you feel like).

Then throw in a few sprigs of thyme, rosemary, and basil.

Add a can of chicken broth and an equal amount of water.

Top it off with a few cloves of garlic, salt, and pepper.

Boil until everything is soft, carrots are the big one to soften here.

Then blend in your blender in batches.

Pour the blended soup through a fine mesh colander to get the extra solids out.  (Or if you like a rustic feel just leave them it.)

Not pretty I know but it does make good chicken feed.

Your soup should look something like this by now.

Return it to the stove and add a cup of cream.

Let it simmer for a bit then serve.  I like to add a dollop of ricotta cheese in the center.

This soup also would be a good one to freeze to reheat on a cold January evening, you know to prevent scurvy.

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Tomato Bisque

A warm fall favorite and a perfect use for those last tomatoes of the season. 

Servings 6

Ingredients

  • 4 lbs Tomatoes
  • 2 whole Carrots
  • 2 spears Celery
  • 1 can Chicken Broth
  • 2 sprigs Thyme
  • 2 sprigs Rosemary
  • 2 sprigs Basil
  • 2 cloves Garlic
  • 1 whole Onion (quartered)
  • 1 tsp Black Pepper
  • 2 tsp Salt
  • 2 cups water
  • 1 cup cream

Instructions

  1. Add all ingredients except cream to a stockpot and boil until vegetables are soft. 

  2. Blend until smooth in a blender.

  3. Strain through a colander.

  4. Return to pot and add cream, simmer for 5 min.

  5. Serve warm with ricotta.

Autumn Alfredo, A Homemade Fall Pasta

October 12, 2018 / / Comments Off on Autumn Alfredo, A Homemade Fall Pasta

This delicious Autumn Alfredo is the perfect pasta for colored leaves and pumpkin patches.  It’s bound to put you in the mood for fall.

A Teaching Moment

My older two boys love books, they are particularly fond of an Usborne book about food.  I’m so proud.

The book is actually called My First Reference Book About Food. If that isn’t a great title I don’t know what is.  In the book, there is a page dedicated to pasta, and Phelps (my oldest) was especially excited about the pasta roller.  He loves gadgets and gizmos (in fact he has 20 thingamicbobs).

How could I turn down the opportunity to teach my foodie doodies about food?  So we made pasta.

Here is what I love about homemade pasta

  1.  You can add other things to the pasta (I often add some basil or thyme).
  2. It doesn’t have to be perfect (I believe the term is rustic)
  3. It is quite entertaining

Here is what I hate about homemade pasta

  1.  I eat it all and feel fat

That’s it.  Darn my genetics.

What to make?

So on a chilly October day what do you eat with your fresh pasta?

Not a tomato sauce, pesto is to Springy (made up word), and olive oil too simple.  How about a little something from the garden?  We did just empty it and fill last years bed with tulips for my wife’s cut flower farm (like 1000 of them are going in).   Delicata squash sauce it is then.

Now if you haven’t had a Delicata then let’s talk about them really quick, but first a funny story, well two.  Rex, my second, looooovvvveeees delicata squash.  He was the culprit for picking every squash before the frost because he wanted some “candeeee squash”.   He would eat a whole one by himself with a little butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon (I guess a lot of things get really good if you add those three to them).

The second story is that we didn’t plant a delicata squash this year, we actually planted a spaghetti squash, but unbeknownst to us our local greenhouse mislabeled some squash and we ended up with a nice healthy delicata plant.  No complaints here.

Delicata is Italian for delicate.  The squash lives up to its name.   The skin is edible (in fact delicatas are in the same species as our summer squash are).  They also have a very smooth and creamy flesh that is almost buttery.  They truly are a delicacy. (See what I did there).

Fresh Pasta

We start with my trusty Kitchen Aid (Dolores is her name, that way I can sing this song when I’m cleaning).

Add the flour, salt, and eggs to the mixer with the dough hook on.

Mix until the egg is completely blended in.  If your dough starts to lump together, then great.

If not add a few tablespoons of water to get it to stick together.  Knead it, knead it good.  This is where the Dolores is worth her weight in gold, kneading gets old.  Needs to be smooth and slightly sticky, but not sticky icky.   Separate the dough into small manageable pieces.

Roll through the pasta roller on the thickest setting, you may want to fold it over itself and do it a couple times until it comes through smooth.

Progressively step down until you get the dough as thin as you want (chef’s choice).

Then roll it through the cutter attachment.  Let it sit hanging open to the air so it will dry out.

Boil in water with a touch of salt for 8-10 mins.

….and viola.

Sauce

Roast two delicata squash (sliced in half).

Pro tip-use a grapefruit spoon (the kind with the serrated edges) to scrape the seeds and strings from your squash it’s super fast.

I know you can eat the skins, but I just use the flesh on this.

Add the butter, squash, basil, cinnamon, cream, salt, pepper, and white wine all to a saute pan.

Stir until smooth (you may need to add some milk depending on how thick you want your sauce).  Cook for 10 min.  Once cooked add some mozzarella.  Stir until melted.

Serve over homemade noodles.

The perfect Autumn Alfredo.

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Autumn Alfredo

A warm and friendly pasta for the fall air.  Be sure and share with friends and family to get you all in the mood for autumn.

Servings 6
Author dangenho@gmail.com

Ingredients

Pasta

  • 2 cup flour
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 2 whole eggs
  • 4 tbsp water (as needed)

Alfredo Sauce

  • 2 whole delicata squash
  • 1 tbsp butter
  • 1/2 cup white wine
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp black pepper
  • 2 tbsp basil
  • 1 tbsp cinnamon
  • 1 cup cream
  • 1/2 cup mozzarella

Instructions

Pasta

  1. Mix flour, salt, and eggs until combined.  

  2. Add water until the dough sticks together.

  3. Knead until smooth.

  4. Run through the pasta roller.

  5. Cut in pasta cutter.

  6. Let pasta dry out.

  7. Boil in water with a pinch of salt for 8-10 min

Alfredo Sauce

  1. Roast squash at 450 until soft (you can also microwave for 4 min).

  2. Scoop flesh into saute pan, add butter, cream, basil, wine, cinnamon, salt, and pepper.

  3. Cook on medium heat for 10 min.

  4. Add mozzarella.  

  5. Serve over fresh pasta.

 

 

 

 

Amazing Homemade Applesauce

October 10, 2018 / / 3 Comments

 

Amazing homemade applesauce oh my…

Background

Growing up in Florida definitely had its perks.  We had 300 days of swimming weather, all the citrus I could eat in the winter, beaches, etc.  The one thing we didn’t have was really great produce (besides citrus and tomatoes).  Try buying a really good apple and you would be out of luck.  I even thought I hated cherries because all I had ever had was those little maraschino cherries.  I mean… who hates cherries?  What was wrong with me?

Then in 2005, I moved out to Utah (from south Texas) for school, and I began to discover the wonderful world of stone and pom fruits.   The first time I bit into an Early Elberta peach and all the juice ran down my face and the sweet peachy flavor triggered all my taste buds, I think I even saw new colors.  Then the next spring a guy offered me some bing cherries, I turned them down stating “I don’t like cherries” (see above).  He forced me to eat one, then immediately regretted his decision as I ate half the bag (I’m a good friend like that).

My Wife Teaches Me…

Then when I got married my wife started talking about Jonathan Apples.  Remember an apple to me was an unripened Granny Smith that dries your mouth out or a mushy Red Delicious that is pretty much inedible.  There was a whole world of apple varieties I had never even heard off.  Jonathans, Jonagolds, Calville Blanc, Pineapple, Cox Orange Pippin, the list goes on.  I thought there were only a handful of varieties, like the one we saw in the stores in the south.

Lexie (my wife) and I decided to can applesauce one of the first years we were married.  Her mom had done it when she was a girl, and she raved over it.  We went to our favorite fruit stand and bought a bushel of Jonathan apples, which Lexie said are the best (I tend to agree).  We went home where we boiled and sauced and canned all of them.  It made about 14 quarts, that didn’t last near as long as we thought.  We did it again the next year with a bit more and have done it periodically since in the fall of the year.

Apples

Now I am by no means an expert when it comes to apple varieties, I generally rely on my friend at Fonnesbecks Greenhouse, Barry has introduced me to more apple varieties than anyone I know.  He has a tree there that produces a cotton candy apple, not my favorite but still pretty neat.

 

We use Jonathans almost exclusively right now for two reasons: first, they are my wife’s childhood apple.  They bring so many memories back to her and we all know how powerful food is to create memories.  The second reason and even more important is that I can find them in mass quantities in the fall.   Simple as that, I have to use what I can get right now.  Fortunately for me, they are delicious with just the right amount of tart to sweet to make almost any apple dish amazing.

Side note, when my Cox Orange Pippin, Calville Blanc, and Honeycrisp trees are mature I’m sure I’ll use those too, along with my Jonathan trees.

Then this year a miracle happened.  Our wonderful neighbors across the street told us to come pick their very old Jonathan apple tree clean because it was just going to go to waste.  They couldn’t eat them all and they don’t really can food, so we hit the jackpot.  My wife went over and picked around 2 bushels one day.  Then she went back and picked another 4 bushels.  She then sent me over to climb the tree to pick the rest, I got another 2 bushels from the top branches.  All in all we picked 2 or so bushels of apples off that tree.  That is about 420lbs of apples, we were in hog heaven.

This is like 1/8th of the apples we picked… ahhh what was I thinking.

So what do you do with 8 bushels of delicious Jonathan apples?  Well you can eat them (although if you ate 8 bushels you might explode).  We settled on four things, all of which I’ll put on the blog in the coming week.  First we made applesauce, then we made apple pie filling, we dehydrated a bunch,  and finally, I made apple vinegar (that stuff is amazing).

Applesauce

So how do we make this amazing applesauce?

First, we get a bunch of apples.

Check.

Then you want to cut them in half or quarters, at least the bigger ones.

Put all of your apple slices in the biggest darn pot you have, I use a 36 qt stock pot which yields about 11 quarts of applesauce.  Be sure and fill about halfway up with water first.

Be sure and add a pile of cinnamon sticks.  Nutmeg, cardamon, star anise are also great.

Boil the apples.  Be sure and breath deeply as they boil the smell is awesome.

Keep boiling until the skins start to separate from the flesh of the apples.

Now time to play some Seinfeld sausage music.

Its pretty much the same process as Kramer and Newmans sausage making.

Now the easiest way to sauce the apples is with a Victorio Food Strainer, but any food strainer will work.  I even think Kitchen Aid has one that attaches to the stand mixer.

Here is my set up.

 

I use a full pan for the sauce and a half pan for the pulp.

Once you are set up and apples boiled simply scoop up apples and put them through the strainer.  You spin the handle (great job for an energetic child, that’s what my 4-year-old does).  Out will come delicious and beautiful applesauce.

If you notice the pink color of the applesauce, its because I cook the apples with the skin on.  This provides the full apple flavor and the beautiful color in the applesauce.  Be sure and sauce the apples when they are still hot it is easier and they can way better.

Now you have a full pan of applesauce and are ready to can it.

I generally get the jars and canning stuff ready while I’m saucing the apples.  That is where a helper comes in quite handy.

Canning Safely

There are three important things to canning successfully

  1. Cleanliness
  2. Time
  3. Temperature

To clean the jars I run them through the sanitary cycle on the dishwasher or scrub them really well with hot soapy water.  Then boil them in a boiling water bath to kill any bacteria.  Also, boil the lids to get them super clean.

So the enemy of any home canner is a nasty wasty little bacteria called Clostridium botulinum.  This little bugger loves anaerobic conditions (like let’s say a sealed mason jar) and non-acidic foods.  They produce a terrible toxin called Botulinum toxin that is extremely dangerous.  These guys are killed by boiling water bath, but their spores are not.  To kill the spores you need to get to 250 degrees F for 3 min.  Boiling water baths can’t do that.  A pressure canner can.

The other way to prevent the spore growth is low pH, below 4.6.  Applesauce is between pH 3.1 and 3.6, so it is acidic enough to prevent C. botulinum spores from growing, but still needs a good boiling to kill the live bacteria.  So you can use a boiling water canner to can applesauce.   I use my pressure canner anyway for two reasons.  First, I don’t want sick family or exploding cans so why not take the extra precautions?  The second and even more important reason is that I can seal 7 jars in 10 mins in the pressure canner or 7 jars in 30 mins in the boiling water bath, so I just get done a lot quicker with the pressure canner.

Back to the process.

Fill your clean mason jars with hot applesauce.  The temperature is important for a number of reasons but mainly you want it to stay hot to keep any bacteria from growing, and second a cold jar placed in hot water will sometimes crack and you will lose your delicious applesauce.

Leave about 1/2 inch of headspace at the top of the jar for expansion of the applesauce.

Wipe the tops of the jar to get any applesauce off the rim, so the lids will seal properly.

Cover with clean lids and put a band on fairly snugly (don’t take out the monkey wrench but don’t just twist lightly).

Place the jars in a boiling water canner or a pressure canner.  Boil for 30 min, if you use a boiling water canner be sure to cover the jars with water.  Or you can pressure can for 10 min.  It is important that you start the time when the water is at a rolling boil or the pressure valve pops up on your canner not once you put the jars in.

When you take them out, place them on a towel to cool at room temperature, you should hear a popping sound as the lids seal and the little “button” pops in.  Check the seal by ensuring that the lid center has popped down.  If it hasn’t refridgerate at eat within a week.

Just like that, you have amazing homemade applesauce that you can store for 12 to 18 months.

 

 

Torta Caprese (Chocolate Almond Cake)

September 25, 2018 / / 6 Comments

Torta caprese – chocolate, almonds, rum, vanilla… are you drooling yet?

 

 

I’ll wipe the drool off my keyboard and keep typing.

How it all began

My wife is a huge fan of desserts, I secretly am too.  Probably not a secret.  A few years ago a close friend was dating a girl who had a lot of allergies.  She and my wife became close friends really quickly, so we had them over for dinner.  One of her worst allergies was gluten.  So I was tasked with a gluten-free dessert that was delicious.  Honestly, that is not always an easy task.

 

I decided on a flourless chocolate cake.  Using almond flour as a replacement for the substance of flour and flavoring with some of my own vanilla (rum-based).  Then I found out that this cake had a name.  It is called Torta Caprese.  It comes from the Isle of Capri in  Italy and is an almond and chocolate cake that typically is flavored with some kind of liqueur.

The Story Continues…

So back to the friend and his girlfriend.  They broke up, and my wife told him ” Don’t bring any more girls around until you are gonna marry them because I’m tired of becoming friends with girls that I won’t get to see again.”  Or so we thought.

 

About six months later we saw her at church in our little community (she lived like 30 min away).  She had married our new neighbor’s son and now comes up and sees my wife all the time.  They are still really close friends.  I like to think it’s because of the Torta Caprese.

 

Maybe if you make it for a new friend you can develop a lifelong friendship, that’s what good food does.

Sciency Stuff

So here is the nerd section, if you are looking to get your chocolate fix quick skip on to the recipe, otherwise, fasten your seat belt I’m about to hit you with some science.

 

In traditional cakes (bread, biscuits, etc.) wheat flour serves one main purpose.  That is to create a structure that will incorporate air and allow the cake to feel fluffier and not so dense.  This is usually accomplished using some sort of leavening agent (yeast, baking soda, baking powder, or even steam sometimes).  The byproduct of the leavening agents is typically carbon dioxide, which is released as a gas into the glutenous structure.  The structure catches the carbon dioxide in small pockets that are surrounded by the gluten proteins that have been interlinked in the batter preparation.  That structure and carbon dioxide is what makes cake fluffy.  Other ingredients can and are added to mess with the structure and reaction.  Moral of the story is gluten (wheat flour) and baking powder make cakes not feel like a brick.

 

There-in lies the problem with flourless cakes.  How can you have a light cake without flour?  In comes the savior in this circumstance, egg whites.  You see the egg whites in and of themselves would do very little to lighten your gluten-free chocolate rock, but when we cheat and incorporate air into them they serve the same purpose as the gluten  & gas duo does in the traditional cake.  Egg white proteins (mainly ovalbumin) when beaten begin to interlink and create pockets where air from the constant beating becomes trapped.  The more you beat the stronger the linkings and the fuller the pockets (up to a point you can ultimately break the entire structure)that’s why you can have soft peaks, firm peaks and even shiny peaks with egg whites.

 

When this protein and air composition is incorporated into a flourless cake it lightens the entire cake by increasing the air to cake ratio in a serving.  The reason we fold beaten egg whites in is simply to protect the structure and not collapse it before we can enjoy it.

 

There you go, nerd stuff done, now on to the post.

 

This cake creates a beautiful crust with a sublimely moist center.  It is definitely a favorite in my household.  Every crumb is cleaned up every time.

 

Recipe

4.5 from 2 votes
Print

Torta Caprese

A moist and decadent chocolate cake that satisfies every sweet tooth, even the gluten free ones.

Course Dessert
Cuisine Italian
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
Total Time 45 minutes
Servings 8
Author dangenho@gmail.com

Ingredients

  • 2.25 cup Almond Flour
  • 1 cup Sugar
  • 1.25 cup Dark Chocolate Chips
  • 10 tbsp Butter
  • 4 Eggs Divided
  • 1 tbsp Vanilla (Real Stuff Only)
  • 2 tbsp Cinnamon (Optional)

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. 

  2. In a double boiler, melt butter and chocolate together.   Remove from heat and cool, then stir in vanilla.

  3. In a separate bowl mix sugar and almond flour together, if you are adding cinnamon mix it in with sugar mix. 

  4. Separate the eggs beat the yolks until smooth and stir them into the chocolate mixture.

  5. Beat the whites until soft peaks form. 

  6. Mix in sugar and almond with chocolate.  Will stay kind of gritty looking because of the almond flour.

  7. Fold in the egg whites, gently. 

  8. Bake for 30 min or until you can stick a toothpick in the center and it comes out clean. 

  9. Serve with fresh whipped cream and fruit, or just dust with powdered sugar. 

Recipe Notes

I use my own vanilla.  I produce it with rum as the alcohol base and use only Tahitian beans.   I hand scrape my vanilla beans for a truly artisan experience and an unmatched flavor profile.  I'll post some more info about it soon. 

 

 

Roast Grouse in a Wine Sauce

September 21, 2018 / / Comments Off on Roast Grouse in a Wine Sauce

I love fall, it is by far my favorite season.  Spring is great, summer is overrated (to crowded for me) and winter gets blah after New Years. But, fall is awesome.  Corn mazes, pumpkins, changing leaves, crisp air, fresh apples, and one of my favorite things; grouse hunting.

About Grouse

The grouse I love to go after where I live are ruffed grouse, they are often called partridge (which is incorrect but the term is still used a lot).  In the springtime here the ruffies drum a deep almost subsonic noise throughout the maple, aspen, and willow.   Many times while I’m hunting morel mushrooms I hear them calling for a mate.  The drumming is hard to describe and even harder to hear on a computer but it is more of a feeling than a noise.  Its one of the most amazing things to me.

 

 

Honestly, unless you have a really good subwoofer you don’t get the full effect but you can see the little bird and get somewhat of an idea of what they look like.

In Idaho we have 5 types of grouse: ruffed grouse, dusky grouse (I hunt those also way up high like at 8000+ ft), sooty grouse (up by Canada), sage grouse, and sharptail grouse.  Of them all, ruffies are the prize to me.  They are the smallest (a little over a pound) but they are what chicken wishes it tasted like.

So back to fall.  The grouse season here is amazing because it puts me in some of the most beautiful places in the world.

Those aren’t burnt carrots, they are purple carrots and are delicious.

 

Plus I usually get to take my favorite people with me too.

 

Because I love going so much I had to figure out a way to make grouse that would take advantage of the natural flavors they have.  After all their diet consists of currants, juniper berries, huckleberries, snowberries, elderberries, and some bugs and seeds.   Not like our grained and quick grown chicken (although I do eat that too, I just prefer grouse).   I have tried to make them several different ways and this is my very favorite so far.

 

Oh and on a side note, after I took my 4 year old up to the beaver dams, he wanted to know all about beaver.  We watched some documentaries on them, those are some awesome little creatures.

 

Recipe

Print

Roast Grouse

A savory combination of gamebird, herbs, and wine for a fantastic fall feast. 

Course Main Course
Cuisine American
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
Total Time 55 minutes
Servings 4
Author dangenho@gmail.com

Ingredients

  • 4 Breast Grouse (chukar, pheasant, or even chicken)
  • 4 Strips Bacon
  • 1 small Sweet Onion
  • 2 cloves Garlic
  • 4 large Carrots diced
  • 2 cups White Wine
  • 2 cups Chicken Broth
  • 2 sprigs Sage
  • 2 sprigs Rosemary
  • 2 sprigs Thyme
  • 2 tea Kosher Salt
  • 1 tea Black Pepper

Instructions

  1. Preheat Oven to 450 F.

  2. In a large skillet cook the bacon strips until they are rendered to a flexible crispy state. They should be cooked but still bendable. 

  3. Remove the bacon and saute the grouse in the bacon grease until they are browned on the outside.  

  4. Wrap each breast with a slice of bacon and place in a roasting pan. 

  5. Add onions, garlic, salt, pepper, and carrots.  

  6. Pour the wine, chicken broth, and bacon grease over top.  

  7. Place the sprigs of herbs on top and roast for 30 min.  

  8. Serve with brown rice, or mashed potatoes for a delicious fall meal. 

Recipe Notes

This recipe can be used with chicken, pheasant, or real partridge. 

Enjoy and then have a nice pumpkin dessert.

Why Does Food Matter?

September 16, 2018 / / 6 Comments

“Food is essential to life, therefore make it good”  S. Truett Cathy

 

I’m sure if you’ve been to your local Chik-Fil-A lately you’ve seen that quote stenciled on their walls.  It is so true, but why are we so obsessed with food in our society.  Watch twenty minutes of TV and you will no doubt see ads about the latest cereals (to my boys all cereals are cheerios and then they describe the kind of cheerios they want, kind of like in the South you order a coke and then they ask what kind and you say, Dr. Pepper,), some new burger at any of a number of fast food place, even ads for some new limited time …..fest (depending on what they are marketing that day).  We are surrounded by food in this country.

As a young food scientist, I had to travel to New York and Pennsylvania with my boss.  I went before him, so I had to pick him up at the Newark airport.  When he got in the car the first thing he said to me was “We only have one important task on this trip.”  I was stressed about that because we were scheduled to go visit a customer, a vendor and one of our plants all in four days.   He continued “You know those great big New York Pastrami Sandwiches, I’ve never had one, we have to get one.”  I laughed, he didn’t.  That was the legitimate need for that trip.  Side note: we got him his sandwich and it was awesome.

That’s how important food is to us, it trumps work, it trumps play, it even trumps sleep a lot of times.  But why?

My belief is that we value food so much because of the experience it brings for us.  It’s not just about filling our bellies, although good food is amazing.  It’s about what those tastes remind us of.  Think about it.  What triggers a stronger recall than smells and tastes?  If I sat almost any American down to a Turkey dinner, complete with stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy and pumpkin pie they would have flashbacks of Thanksgiving pasts, surrounded by loved ones.  Food triggers our recall more than anything else.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuyUKdJccgM

Now that recall also has negative impacts as well.  Think about our food aversions (not allergies those are different) but foods we just don’t like.

Several years ago I did a lot of reading about the psychology of food aversions, and how typically the foods we claim not to like are because of recall.  Perhaps they remind us of a rough time in life, or we maybe got sick around the time we at that food and blame it.  So I had to test it.  If I get in trouble for this story I’ll know my mother-in-law actually reads my blog, which would a be a tiny triumph in and of itself, right.

She, my mother-in-law, hates I mean loathes bread pudding (weird because I love it, I mean who doesn’t love sweet bread).  I asked her why after talking to her about food aversions being a mental and not a physical thing.  She said it wasn’t mental it was just that she had to eat it so much when her dad got really sick when they were young, apparently he couldn’t chew normal food.   I’ll give you a minute to get your giggles out, I know I had to and still do when I think about it.

Then it got worse…  I decided to play a trick on her.  So, I made homemade chocolate chip pumpkin bread, then made that into bread pudding (I promise to post the recipe really soon so you can have it this fall) I topped that with a butter rum caramel sauce.  It was divine.  I took my creation to her and told her I had invented a new dessert and would she tried it.  She ate half the bowl ravenously and raved over how much she liked it.  Finally, I couldn’t take it any longer and I blurted out “Ha, that’s bread pudding.”  Without missing a beat she spits the bite in her mouth out and said: “I don’t like it”.  The recall is that powerful, something she raved about suddenly was repulsive when in her subconscious it brought back memories of her sick dad.

So what’s the point of this post, I haven’t even written in a long time (forgive me I’ve been building a house).  The point is the experiences we create now with our loved ones around food will provide recall points in the future for ourselves, our children and our other loved ones.  I doubt that my boys will ever eat BBQ without thinking of me (at least I hope not).  I know I can’t eat freshly fried fish (say that five times fast) without smiling about the times I spent fishing with my father, or waffles without thinking about playing Scattergories with my mom.

Life changes, time marches on, the world keeps spinning we know that, but food creates powerful memories of experiences.  My goal with this whole blog is to help empower all people to create experiences that endure in the memories of their families forever.

I’ll leave you with this quote.

“Good food is the foundation of genuine happiness.”   Auguste Escoffier

I’m Sorry

May 2, 2017 / / 1 Comment

I’ll say right now, I’m sorry.  I haven’t posted in a month, ouch that is a long time.  I promise to do better, please forgive me.

There is a reason why I haven’t posted in so long, and it wasn’t any nefarious plan to hold out recipes.  We have had a super crazy month.

Florida

My father hybridizes daylillies, he has something like 30,000 of them.   For the last few years he has spent the winters in Florida and the summers in Utah.  That allows him to get a head start on each year’s new crop.  Every April he drives back with all his seedlings and several plants he’s been working with.  This year he brought back 4000+ seedlings and about 100 potted mature daylillies.    The 36 hr drive is a long drive alone, so my wife and kids and I flew back and drove with him.  It took two full trailers to bring back all his flowers.

So that was one week lost.  No worries though Florida was fun.  We ate BBQ almost the whole way back and I can highly recommend one particular BBQ place.  It is a food truck in Brooksville, FL.  The place is called Barbiecue, they advertise themselves as Florida’s sexiest BBQ.  I’m not sure how sexy BBQ is (my college prof told us that at his age the smell of BBQ is better than perfume).   This place was really awesome though, they had the best green beans I’ve ever eaten, with chunks of brisket in them (oh man I’m drooling just thinking about it).  The ribs were great, but just be sure to get there early or call ahead to be sure you get your food.  Also while you are there go see the mermaids at Weeki Wachee Springs.

House

So once we got home, we worked on our house.

A little about us here.  A little over a year ago we bought a home to remodel.  I took it down carefully to the point that we could rebuild. That was when major foundation issues where discovered (missed by the home inspection company, yay.) and the house was condemned.  This all happened last October, and I spent the wettest winter in 100 years (yay again) rebuilding a home for my family.

Right now we have it framed and water and power run to the house, with plumbing and electric underway.  fingers crossed we will be in this summer.  I spend all my daylight hours possible down there doing some project or another.  So that was the last few weeks.

Well there you have it my excuse for no posts.  I will get back on track now I promise.

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