People's Pops

I just stumbled across a delightful looking new cookbook for the summer, called People's Pops.  The people behind the trendy (ok, honestly I have never been and can in no way vouch for its trendiness but I for sure want to check it out the next time I am in New York) popsicle stand of the same name are releasing a book in June with recipes for gems such as peach and bourbon popsicles.  I may need a copy.  I dare you to check out their website  or their blog and not want to try some of their creations.  You can pre-order from Powell's. (P.S. People's Pops have no idea I even exist, this is not a sponsored post, but if they want to throw a book my way I would be game...  Just kidding.  Sort of...)

Dutch Crunch Bread

This weekend I stumbled upon a picture of a sandwich on a delicious dutch crunch roll, which naturally I decided looked pretty darn fabulous and that I needed one of my own asap.  And naturally, the only place I have ever seen dutch crunch rolls is California (for those of you who don't have family in California to introduce to you to the wonders of dutch crunch, it is a crunchy, crackly topping on white bread and it is delicious).  And no, I don't live in California, in case you didn't know, I live 3,000 miles away from California, but that was not going to stop me, o no.  I researched and found a crazy informative blog about the crackle topping here, which it turns out is actually made from rice flour/sugar/yeast/water paste slathered on regular white bread before baking.  Easy right?  That blog mentioned the recipe being from Rose Levy Beranbaum's book The Bread Bible so I promptly went to the library and picked it up, and didn't find anything about dutch crunch in there, which I now realize is because she calls it tiger bread.  Anyways, I used her soft white bread recipe, which is a bit more involved than some bread recipes, but has great flavor, you could use whatever recipe you want and top it with the very first rice flour paste recipe from this blog, which you should probably cut in half because it makes a massive amount (and as I discovered baking the leftover paste on a cookie sheet does NOT make a delicious crunchy snack but rather makes a strangely textured blob).

Start out with your favorite bread dough, whatever you like to use for sammies, I have only seen it with white bread but you could use wheat if that is what floats your boat.  This is the Basic Soft White Sandwich Loaf and I would give you the recipe except it is a full 5 pages in The Bread Bible.  So I won't.

Timing wise, you want to form your rolls so that they can start in on their final rise while you mix the crunch topping and let that sit for its 15 minutes to meld.

The crunch mix is odd, I ended up adding more rice flour to get it to the stiff royal icing consistency called for, I don't really know how much, I sort of got frustrated and dumped a bunch in and that ended up being the right amount, magic.

This is another strange part, these snowballs are the rolls after I slathered the crunch goop on them with my fingers, make sure to cover the whole roll with a relatively thick coat, if it's too thin it won't crackle properly and it won't crackle much at all if it's too thick.  It is messy.  Just a warning.

Bake them up and enjoy.  If you need any clarification regarding the crunch topping check out this blog ( I know, I know, this is the third time I have linked to it, but really, it is quite useful)

Dutch Crunch Topping (this is the halved version, should make enough for about a dozen rolls/ one standard batch of bread dough, if there is such a thing)
1 Tbs yeast
1/2 cup warm water
1 Tbs sugar
1 Tbs veggie oil
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup rice flour

Mix all the ingredients together, adding more water or rice flour as needed to make it the consistency of a stiff royal icing.
Let sit 15 min.
Slather a good coat on your rolls or bread and bake according to the bread instructions.

Red Shrimp and Mango Curry

I love curry.  A lot.  I could probably eat a different type of curry every week for quite some time without getting tired of it.  Lemongrass has a delicious masaman curry and the yellow curry simmer sauce from Trader Joe's is quite tasty as well, but after seeing several recipes in various cookbooks by Nigella Lawson (love her, even more than I love curry) I decided to try my hand at making some on my own, after all if Nigella can do it so can I.  She claims it is quite simple to make, and it is, provided you find the butternut squash, sweet potato and mango already peeled and cubed, it really is.  If not, be prepared to add on a bit of time consuming prep work.  I did not find the prepackaged stuff, and as such peeled and cubed it the night before to save time.  In other news, I realized that I have never dealt with a whole mango before and doing so is not what one would call one of my innate skills.  I am too timid to wield a sharp knife while dealing with something so slippery.  Here is the link to the recipe.

It really is a simple recipe, the hardest part is the slicing and dicing.  You start out by sauteing some green onions and the curry paste.  Then pour in the broth, coconut milk (the whole can) and fish sauce (don't worry if you don't have fish sauce, just make sure to add a little extra salt).  Toss in the sweet potatoes and squash and simmer until they are cooked through (it always takes longer than 15 min. for me).

When the squash is done stir in the shrimp and continue cooking until the shrimp is cooked through.  Add the mango and a splash of lime juice right before you take it off the heat.  Serve it over rice, topped with cilantro.  This is a Nigella Lawson recipe, you can find it here.

Infused Vodka Update #2

I know you have all been waiting on the edges of your seats to hear how the rest of the infused vodka turned out, and I finally got around to taking some pictures of the results so here you go.  I do believe the pomegranate is my favorite of the three combinations (the other two being cranberry and a cran/pom combo in case you forgot, I know it's been awhile).  In general I would say that all three are not as strongly flavored as I expected them to be, but are still quite tasty nonetheless.  I have been drinking them with soda water, which makes for a beautifully rosy cocktail that is refreshing and light.  I think if you added a splash of Pom or cranberry juice it would bump up the flavor nicely, although I still need to experiment a bit more with various cocktail combinations.  All in all they are more subtly flavored than the flavored vodka you can buy but with none of the chemically, fake taste which is a major plus, for me at least.

Infused Vodka Update

Well dear readers, after 2 weeks I strained the apple cinnamon vodka and brought it to my sister's for a little cocktail party.  We set it out with a pitcher of apple cider and let people spike their own drinks with it and it was quite a hit.  The flavors blended so well that you couldn't even tell there was vodka in the cider even though you poured it in there yourself.  I didn't get to try any of it in tea, but I think that would be quite delicious as well.  All in all, vodka #1 was a success, and I just taste tested #2-4 and they are all quite good.  I believe they could be drunk at any point now, but I am going to let them steep until I need them/save a few bottles to put them in (it is a bit to difficult to pour from quart size mason jars for my level of clumsiness).

Infused Vodka

I began an infusing project today, it's like canning for lazy people, you pop some fruit and sugar and vodka in a mason jar, screw on the top and wait.  According to my research it is not at all as fiddly as real canning where if you do it wrong you can give everyone botulism, The New York Times says "preserving with alcohol is the lowest rung of entry for canning enthusiasts because it's hard to mess up."  And with that kind of endorsement, how can you resist?  I am not entirely sure how long you wait, I am just going to play it by ear and do some periodic taste testing.  In honor of the upcoming holiday season I decided to do a cranberry vodka, a pomegranate vodka and an apple/honey/cinnamon/clove vodka (and then a cranberry and pomegranate combined one because I had leftovers).  The red fruits look lusciously christmasy already, and this is an acceptable pre-Christmas sort of thing, unlike stores that already have their holiday displays up or a certain shopping center that I drove by last night that has a lit up tree out already.  I mean come on, I LOVE Christmas and fully admit that after Thanksgiving dinner until Christmas day the only music I listen to is on my Christmas Carols playlist (there's 301 songs on it, soon to be 313, as soon as I get the She & Him cd....) but you have to show some restraint.    

            

To make the pomegranate vodka, start with a pomegranate (or two).  If you already have a technique for getting the little seeds out then by all means use it, but if you don't I would suggest cutting the fruit in half and then submerging it in water to remove the seeds, otherwise you may end up staining you entire self and kitchen with little splatters of bright red juice.  Then grab your mason jar, or other airtight container and add your pomegranate seeds.  My rule of thumb (which I use very loosely and developed today, so after I see how these turn out I may change it) is this, I have quart jars, I used two cups of fruit, however much sugar struck my fancy and then filled it up with vodka, when I had less fruit I used less vodka.  Anyways, toss in some sugar and then a bit of orange peel, put the lid on your jar and let it sit.  Possibly for several weeks, I will let you know when I figure that bit out.

To make the cranberry vodka, take a bag of cranberries, toss them in a sauce pan, add a bit of water, a generous sprinkle of sugar and boil until the cranberries start to pop, which brings me to the second guideline I developed today, fruit with a tough skin should be helped along, either cut open or cooked, and fruit with a coating should be skinned.  Remove from the heat and pour two cups of the cranberry/sugar water mixture into your jar and top it off with vodka.  I would have added some orange peel to this but my mother isn't such a big fan of the orange-cranberry combination so I left it out, but feel free to add it if you wish.  One bag of cranberries will probably give you a bit more fruit than you need, but my two pomegranates did as well, so I combined the extra in one jar and topped it off with vodka.  

For the apple vodka, because I used a grocery store apple with that lovely waxy coating on it, I peeled it first, but I would imagine that if you had a farm fresh, uncoated apple you could leave the peel on without any problem.  Then, because I have big plans to use this to spike some Good Earth tea, I poured honey in instead of using sugar, as the tea and honey combination is such a lovely one.  Toss in half a cinnamon stick and a whole clove and top with vodka.  I have a feeling this one will not take very long to infuse, considering that there is so much surface area of exposed apple flesh.  For now all of my vodkas are sitting on my bar cart, which considering how cold my house always is, is a cool place, although not very dark.  I imagine that due to my obsessive nature I will shake the jars every day to stir them up and see how it is going and will probably start tasting them in about a week to see how flavorful they are becoming.  When they taste good I will strain them through cheesecloth and pour them back into their mason jars until I can be bothered to find/repurpose suitable bottles.  I will let you know how they turn out.

Blowtorch Smores

I am dipping my toes back into the blogging world with two recent foodie discoveries I made.  First of all, and this one may be a no brainer for you but it was a total aha moment for me, whack a granola bar on the counter a couple of times and you have an instant, already packaged single serving of granola to mix into your yogurt.  I have found the TLC brand of granola bar to lend itself particularly well to being smacked into bits, in fact I feel they are too crumbly if you try to eat them while still in bar form.  Anyways, my second discovery is much more exciting as it involves super easy year round smores.  I just got a blowtorch two days ago for my birthday and of course I immediately started searching my cookbook collection for blowtorchable recipes.  I already had a smores cupcake idea in the works after I tried one this summer (graham cracker crust topped with chocolate cupcake and then toasted marshmallow frosting, it was quite delicious) but I hadn't thought of making a smore itself with the torch, until tonight.  And I must say it worked out quite well.  I used a reese's cup from my Halloween candy stash for the chocolate and split the marshmallow in half so the middle would have more of a chance at melting the middle, which was somewhat effective.  The marshmallow was not as melty as I would have liked, but I think flipping it over and toasting the bottom would have gotten it there, or spreading marshmallow fluff on the graham and then toasting that would have worked, I still need to test that theory.  The reese's cup was a stroke of genius if I do say so myself, I really want to try other candies in my smores now, if I dip into the Halloween stash I can test out almond joys, kit kats, snickers, milky ways and crunch bars too (I'll let you know how it goes).  All in all, in less than sixty seconds I ended up with a fair approximation of one of my favorite summertime treats and I got to play with a blowtorch, so win win.