Daring Cooks: Soba Noodles and Tempura

The February 2011 Daring Cooks’ challenge was hosted by Lisa of Blueberry Girl. She challenged Daring Cooks to make Hiyashi Soba and Tempura. She has various sources for her challenge including japanesefood.about.com, pinkbites.com, and itsybitsyfoodies.com

Happy Valentines Day everybody! I love Valentines Day, although I didn't used to. High school made me a bitter bitter girl, but now that I'm out of there, I've learned to love Feb 14th. I also love any chance I have to sneak around and plan super secret awesome surprises. I came up with some prettttttty awesome stuff today for Dan, but you all will have to wait until tomorrow to find out what it is on the off chance that he checks out this post.

But! That is not what I'm here to talk about today. Today I want to tell you about Daring Cooks! I haven't been able to complete a Daring Cooks challenge for a long time because I'm using a community kitchen. This makes challenging recipes even more challenging due to limited refrigerator space and limited access to a stove/oven. But I was able to complete this months challenge...well sort of.This month's challenge was a cold soba noodle salad and tempura. Today I'll talk mostly about the noodle salad because I didn't try making the Tempura gluten free. I'm going to try that next weekend, so next week I'll put up a post about making gluten free tempura in more detail.

Now here's the thing about this noodle salad. I couldn't find ANY of the ingredients. Which is weird, since I live in Santa Cruz and I would expect there to be a lot of resources available to me as far as food selection. These were the three hardest things to find

1. Soba noodles. How is this so difficult to get?! Soba noodles are buckwheat noodles, meaning that they are naturally gluten free. Well guess what? Apparently noodle companies decided to do away with tradition and bring in the wheat flour. Every soba noodle I found was made with majority wheat flour. Not ok noodle guys. Not ok.

2. Katsuobushi Dashi. Now I looked it up and this is a sauce made of seaweed and bonito flakes. I couldn't find it anywhere! I went to three stores! I even went to New Leaf! (which is like whole foods, but smaller) I told the guy at the register that I couldn't find it and he said that they could put in a special order, but I didn't have that kind of time/money.

3. Mirin. Ok, this was actually not that hard to find. It's just that I'm 20 and can't legally buy it yet.

So I encountered a lot of difficulties with this challenge. What I ended up doing was basically improvising my own cold noodle salad. Here's my recipe:

Natalie's Asian Noodle Salad

1/4 cup soy sauce

2 Tbsp rice vinegar

1 garlic clove, minced

1 tsp ground ginger

3 green onions, sliced

1/2 lb quinoa pasta (preferably you should use buckwheat noodles, but I thought quinoa was an ok replacement)

Combine the soy sauce, rice vinegar, garlic and ginger in a bowl and let sit while making the noodles. Cook pasta according to package directions, then drain and run under cold water until noodles are cool. Sprinkle green onions over pasta. Serve by dipping noodles in sauce, or pour some sauce onto noodles. Make sure it's served cold, it's sooooo delicious cold. I was actually kind of wary with this recipe; I wasn't sure that it was going to work out with that much soy sauce.But oh my gosh. I love soy sauce on pasta and now there's no going back. This is my new go-to quick meal.

Try it out on a hot day sometime!

XOXO

Natalie

Daring Cooks: Poached Eggs

Jenn and Jill have challenged The Daring Cooks to learn to perfect the technique of poaching an egg. They chose Eggs Benedict recipe from Alton Brown, Oeufs en Meurette from Cooking with Wine by Anne Willan, and Homemade Sundried Tomato & Pine Nut Seitan Sausages (poached) courtesy of Trudy of Veggie num num.

Guess who lost track of the days! This post was supposed to be put up two days ago, but silly me, it slipped my mind. Things have been crazy around here and I've been super-duper busy. But that's no excuse! Here's this month's Daring Cooks challenge! This month's challengewas to perfect a poached egg and include it in a dish. I've made poached eggs before, specifically for eggs benedict, so I wanted to do something new with a poached egg. I was curious what a poached egg would taste like on pasta, so I did a little research and decided to make a sort of non-traditional pasta carbonara featuring a poached egg as the topper. I LOVE poached eggs on pasta. I don't think that I can have pasta carbonara any other way now. I've been spoiled by the delicious runny yolk and there's no turning back.

This dish is very rich--this is like your weekly value of carbs, cheese, and butter in one meal. With that in mind, feel free to tone down the butter or cheese, but I believe that if you're going to eat carbonara, you might as well go all out.

Poached Egg Carbonara

adapted from epicurious

6-8 slices of bacon cut into small pieces

1 lb spaghetti

2 Tbsp butter

pepper

1 cup grated parmesan cheese

chopped parsley

poached egg

The first step in making carbonara is to fry up the bacon. I know that bacon is bad for you. I know that it's just chock full of unhealthy fats, but bacon needs love too. Fry and rejoice.

While the bacon is cooking, get the pasta water boiling. Add the pasta and keep an eye on it until it's done. When the bacon is done cooking, remove the bacon from the pan and pour out most, but not all, of the grease. Add the butter to the grease and let it blend together in a delicious marriage of flavor. When the pasta is ready, remove about 2 cups of the pasta water, then drain the rest. Put the pasta directly into the pan and add a healthy dose of pepper. Then add the cheese and a bit of the pasta water. Add more water as necessary to form a smooth sauce and prevent the pasta from sticking together. Heat for 2-3 minutes, then add the bacon and sprinkle parsley on top.

Now here's the most important part: poaching an egg. It's actually pretty easy to poach an egg, but it takes a bit of practice if you've never done it before. First get some water boiling and add a couple teaspoons of vinegar to the water. When the water is at a boil, turn the heat down to a simmer. Crack an egg into a small bowl or ramekin, you don't want to crack the eggs directly into the water or chaos will ensue. Stir the simmering water gently to create a little whirlpool. Carefully drop the egg into the spinning water and let it sit for a bit. After it's calmed down and stopped spinning, you can gently use a spoon to unstick it from the bottom. I prefer to make poached eggs in a nonstick pan because it makes this one step easier. It generally takes about 3-4 minutes to cook a poached egg depending on how runny you want it. If you want the yolk fairly solid, it will need to cook for a while longer. When the egg is cooked to your liking, carefully remove it with a slotted spoon. Don't worry if the egg isn't perfect or if the edges are a bit ragged. If it really bothers you, you can cut off the messy edges and make it a perfect circle.

After you've got your eggs all poached up, put one on top of each bowl. This made about 4 servings, so you will most likely need 4 eggs. I like my poached eggs very runny, but my parents like them a little more solid. Cook the eggs to your liking, but I strongly recommend making them runny. The yolk spreading through all the pasta was amazing! It adds so much flavor to the already delicious pasta. Look at that yolk! It's just melting all over the pasta!

Enjoy!

XOXO

Natalie

Daring Cooks: Apple Butter

The September 2010 Daring Cooks’ challenge was hosted by John of Eat4Fun. John chose to challenge The Daring Cooks to learn about food preservation, mainly in the form of canning and freezing. He challenged everyone to make a recipe and preserve it. John’s source for food preservation information was from The National Center for Home Food Preservation.

This month's challenge was Apple Butter in order for all of us to better understand food preservation. To be honest, I'm a little dissapointed because my apple butter didn't come out quite right. It was too chunky to really be called apple butter, but no matter how much I mashed those apples, I still couldn't get it to be like butter. And without an immersion blender, what's a girl to do? So what I have is a cross between apple butter and sauce and is quite tasty. I ate it this morning on a bagel with cream cheese!

The whole process of making apple butter is simple, but time consuming. Basically I peeled and cored 5 lbs of apples, cooked them with a cup of water for about n hour until they were falling apart, added some spices, mashed, and let it go! It ended up being about a 3 hour process, but I think it was worth it. Apple butter freezes very well so this is a great idea if you have an apple tree and need to use up the piles of apples in your backyard.

Sadly, I don't have any pictures of the finished product because my camera/phone died. However, I will be using the apple butter this week to make a tasty pork dish. So look forward to pictures then!

XOXO

Natalie

Daring Cooks: Pierogi

The August 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by LizG of Bits n’ Bites and Anula of Anula’s Kitchen. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make pierogi from scratch and an optional challenge to provide one filling that best represents their locale.

Daring Cooks again! YAY! I love doing these daring cooks challenges, because they are usually just that: a challenge. Super fun! And my family likes it too, cause they get to eat something new and exciting. This month's challenge was pierogi which was perfect because Becky had asked me to make those a couple weeks ago and I never got around to it. I made two kinds: Potato/cheese and Meat/cabbage. I liked both of them, however I felt like the potato cheese one went over better. Although if you don't want to eat just carbs and cheese for dinner, I recommend the meat one. There are a bazillion types of Pierogis, so feel free to experiment with it as well!

Pierogis

From the Daring Cooks

Dough
2 to 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 large egg
1 teaspoon salt
About 1 cup lukewarm water

Potatoes and Cheese

3 big potatoes, cooked & mashed (1 1/2 cup instant or leftover mashed potatoes is fine too)
1 cup cottage cheese, drained
1 onion, diced & sauteed in butter until clear
3 slices of streaky bacon, diced and fried till crispy (you can add more bacon if you like or omit that part completely if you’re vegetarian)
1 egg yolk (from medium egg)
1 tablespoon butter, melted
1/4 teaspoon salt
pinch of pepper to taste

Meat and cabbage
200 g cooked meat (minced or cut very finely)
500 g white cabbage (chopped and simmered in a little bit of water, until soft)
1 onion (diced and fried)
1 whole medium egg1 tablespoon butterdry breadcrumbs (add as much to hold the filling together, about 2 tablespoons)
salt and pepper

To make the dough, combine the flour and salt together in a pie dish. Make a well in the center of the flour and crack the egg into it. Using your hands, or a fork if you don't want to touch the egg, combine the flour and egg together. Then slowly add in the water. The water amount is a guesstimation, you might need more or less. Form the dough into a ball, cover with a towel and let rest for half an hour. To make the Potato/cheese filling, just combine all of the ingredients together! (That's a great idea Daring Cooks had, putting the cooking instructions in the ingredient list! Me likey!) Same goes for the meat/cabbage filling.

When you've got the fillings put together, prepare an assembly line situation. If you can, recruit you're family to help. Roll the dough out thinly and cut out circles using a glass or cookie cutter. The size doesn't really matter, it's mostly just personal preference. Put a small amount of the filling in the center of the circle and close the sides up. Seal them with your fingers, but make sure they are sealed all the way, or else the filling will just fall right out. I went around the edges of the potato cheese ones witha fork so that I would be able to tell them apart. You can also use a pierogi form, but hey, where's the fun in that?

After all the pierogis are constructed it's time to boil them. Bring a deep saucepan or a wide pot of water to a boil and then drop the pierogis into the water in batches. I did about 5 pierogis per batch. When they rise to to the top, set a timer for 5 minutes. When the timer goes off, take them out of the water and let them dry off a bit. When you've boiled all the pierogis you can go ahead and eat them. OR you can go one step further and fry them. (DO IT!) Wait until the pierogis have cooled then fry them on both sides with butter. They should be lightly brown and crispy. Nowwwww you can eat them. Frying them makes them like 10 times better. Not even kidding.

XOXO

Natalie

Curried Chicken

Here is the part two of the Daring cooks challenge. My previous post was the actual challenge item itself: Almond butter. This post is about how to use it. Of course, you could use almond butter any number of ways, but I used one of the Daring Cooks recipes. This is a semi-indian dish in that it has Indian spices and vaguely resembles chicken tikka masala. I really love this dish and I'm debating making this dish again this week. You should all try it!Tomato Chicken Curry

Adapted from Daring Cooks

1 Tbsp olive oil

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts

salt to taste

Spice Blend

1 1/2 Tbsp garam masala seasoning

1 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp black pepper

Sauce

4 Tbsp butter

1 large onion, half chopped, half sliced in thick chunks

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 15 oz can of tomato sauce

1/3 cup almond butter

1/3 cup milk

1/2-3/4 cup water

1 cup frozen peas

Pound the chicken to 1/4 inch thikness so that it will cook faster. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Heat oil in a large skillet and cook chicken, 3-5 minutes on both sides. When the chicken is done cooking, cut it into bite size pieces and set aside.

In a small bowl prepare the spice blend, combine all the seasoning together and mix well.

Melt the butter in a non stick skillet over medium low heat. Add the onion and cook for several minutes. To clarfiy about the onion: The onions are semi optional. The recipe says that the onion should be cut into 4 large chunks and cooked in the butter to infuse the butter with onioney flavor. However, I think that's garbage. I cut up half the onion into large chunks and finely chopped the other half. What can I say, I like onions.

Anyway, after the onion has cooked for a few minutes, add teh spice blend and garlic and cook for a minute or two, stirring constantly. Add the tomato sauce, stir well and bring to a boil.

Once boiling, reduce heat to a simmer and add the water until desired consistencey. Stir in the frozen peas and cut up chicken and remove the large onion chunks. Simmer for a few minutes until the peas and chicken are cooked through. Serve over warm basmati rice.

XOXO

Natalie

Almond Butter- Daring Cooks July Challenge

The July 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Margie of More Please and Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make their own nut butter from scratch, and use the nut butter in a recipe. Their sources include Better with Nut Butter by Cooking Light Magazine, Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, and Food Network online.

So I am officially a Daring Cook! I have participated in my very first Daring Cooks challenge and it was awesome! For those of you not in the know, Daring Cooks is a foodie challenge; every month a new challenge is posted and the participants all create some dish using the challenge item. This month's challenge was "nut butters." (Isn't that just so ironic? My first one is all about nuts.) Luckily for me, I'm not allergic to almonds and so I was still able to participate in this challenge. I made an almond butter then used the almond butter in a curried chicken dish. The recipes were given by Daring Cooks, so they aren't original for anything, but everyone should really try it. This is one of my new favorite chicken dishes and I'm sure it's going to become a weeknight go-to meal.

So for today's post I will explain the process of making a nut butter, then the next post will be about using it in the curried chicken dish. Honestly, it's 12 am and I am just not in the mood for typing.

Nut Butters (Almond Butter)

1 cup almonds

canola/vegetable oil

salt

Grind the almonds in a food processor until they start to form together into a sort of paste. This will go faster if the almonds don't have the skins, but that's kind of a personal preference thing. Then drizzle in the oil until the almond butter reaches the desired consistency and salt to taste. Again with the personal preferences, but you can make it chunky or smooth here. This will give you about 1/2 cup of almond butter, in general the amount of original almonds is divided by two to make the butter.

A potential variation is to roast the almonds. I did this and I thought that the butter had a richer flavor because of it. Roasting the almonds is very easy, so I definitely recommend trying it. Preheat the oven to 350F and lay the almonds out on a baking sheet. Roast in preheated oven for 10 minutes. Let the almonds cool before grinding. Also at this point I took the skins off the almonds. I left a few on for the hell of it, but I tried to get the majority of the skin off.

So there you go! Almond butter!

XOXO

Natalie