Mirtoga (Turkish-style Scrambled Eggs), for Fattening Up Babies

While I once again faced the new year with a few more pounds than I would like, GoatSpawn has been put on a diet that most of us would envy. It includes:

• Eggs and butter every day
• Spoonfuls of olive oil mixed into her food
• As much whole milk as she will drink
• Full fat Greek yogurt

Basically, she has to fatten up. 

So, when I came across a recipe for mirtoga, Turkish-style scrambled eggs, in an old issue of Saveur that called for an entire stick of butter per two eggs, I thought, well, it can't come any more calorie-packed than that.

Mirtoga is just scrambled eggs cooked in a roux, instead of in a bit of oil or butter.  You melt a stick of butter over medium heat, add half a cup of flour, and stir until the flour is incorporated and browned.  Add two well-whisked eggs to the pan, and then ... well, you scramble them until done. 

But when it came to it, Foodgoat objected to using an entire stick of butter, when it was entirely possible that GoatSpawn wouldn't even eat it, and since I'm allergic to eggs, that would leave him to eat something that was made with 800 calories of butter.  So we made the mirtoga with half a stick of butter and a quarter cup of flour to make the roux with two eggs.  Even then, it seemed like a lot of butter - especially since he usually makes scrambled eggs with just a squirt of olive oil. 

In any case, the mirtoga was a rich, toasty, heavy breakfast, perfect for babies who need to get fatter.

WWBFD (What Would Brett Favre Do?) and Crock Pot Dulce de Leche

We have made easy and muy delicioso dulce de leche in the crock pot before, using a can of sweetened condensed milk. But could I also use the crock pot to make dulce de leche from scratch? Would that not be better and tastier?

Following Lora Brody's recipe in Slow Cooker Cooking, I put 3 cups of whole milk, a split vanilla bean, 1 2/3 cup of sugar, 1/4 cup water and a pinch of baking soda in the crock pot, left the lid off, set it on high, and went on my merry way.

For several hours, it just looked like this: hot, spiced milk.

And then 5 hours in ... voila! Caramel color! Thickened caramelliness!

But, the recipe dictated several more hours - 4 more hours, for a total of 9 hours in the crock pot.

And this is where I was faced with my Brett Favre moment.

Do I stop here, turn off the crock pot and take what looks to be a good batch, a successful batch, and call it a day?

Or do I keep going? Do I let it caramelize even more, reaching possibly even greater heights of glory? And risk going too long, ending a long, sweet run with the bitter taste of failure?

I took the way of Favre: I waffled about it forever, and finally decided to keep it in a little longer. The recipe, I figured, couldn't be that off. My crock pot, I thought, can't be that hot.

But while Brett Favre is currently generating talk of a possible MVP, my dulce de leche just generated talk of being my LFF - Latest Food Fail.

Because the next time I checked the dulce de leche, less than an hour later, it looked like this:

Burnt.

Not super-caramelly and slightly burnt, which might be good, but kind of curdled and a little too burnt.

Adding the additional cup of milk as directed by the recipe made it seem less burnt. It tasted okay, but it still had that bitter edge, and it wasn't quite the creaminess and sticky goodness I had hoped for, once had, and lost.

Which goes to show you that I am no Brett Favre, and that you should watch the food, not the clock, and not the recipe.

Polvoron, the Recipe

I have making a lot of polvoron lately, and it's because of GoatSpawn's sleep.

GoatSpawn is a wonderful eater but impossible to put to sleep, so anything I do in the evenings has to be quiet and easily interrupted since inevitably one of us will say, "Is that her?" and it always is.

Then, my mom left a book of Filipino lullabies here, and when I glanced at the title, I had to really think a while before I remembered thatt "Antukin" means "sleep". Yikes! I need me something Filipino, stat!

And so ... polvoron.

I've posted about how to make it before, but then I realized I didn't include the actual recipe, probably because I do keep changing the ingredient ratios every time I make it, to suit my whims. Being a simple recipe with no baking, polvoron is very amenable to adjustment. But my basic recipe is thus:

Polvoron

2 1/2 cups flour
1 cup powdered milk
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter or margarine

1. Toast the flour, stirring frequently, over medium heat until light brown. There's no exact stopping point - just when it seems toasted. If it start to smoke, you're burning it, so turn down the heat.
   
2. Remove from heat and let cool.
3. Add the milk and sugar.
4. Melt the butter or margarine, and mix it in slowly, to avoid big clumps. You want the consistency and texture of damp sand.
5. Form cakes by packing the mixture very, very firmly with the back of spoon (I broke a wooden spoon doing this) into a shaper. A polvoron mold is best, because you can press it out easily, but a small scoop, a measuring spoon, or candy molds also work. And taste it! Especially before you form too many cakes. If it doesn't taste how you want it to taste, you can always mash it back up and add more of whatever ingredient it needs.
6. Put them in the fridge or the freezer for at least 20 minutes or until the polvoron is firmer. This hardens the butter to make it easier to wrap.
7. Wrap with tissue or wax paper. Store in the fridge, especially if you used butter, so that they keep their shape.

Enjoy!

There's Always Next Year (Or The Year After That) ... And Until Then, There's Cupcakes

Time for another round of baking therapy! Another Cleveland sports team underachieves ... and unlike the Cavs, it's not a so-close-you-could-taste-it underachieves, it's a great big couldn't-taste-it-if-it-was-served-in-front-of-you-with-a-spoon underachieves. Not are the Indians way, way out of playoff contention, they're in full blown rebuilding mode, complete with trading away ... well, everyone that mattered.

The dismal state of things truly hit home for me when I watched the funny (and wistful) Major League for the first time the other night. "Watch, GoatSpawn, this may be the only time you see a Cleveland sports team go to the playoffs, " Foodgoat said, "It's what you call 'fiction'."

After my baking therapy project for the Cavs' season, someone suggested that it wasn't cake they needed to handle the trauma of Cleveland sports losses, it was whiskey. But why not have both?

To assuage the pain of Cleveland Indians season (and next, this re-building mode will probably last a while), I made chocolate whiskey cupcakes.

Chocolate Whiskey Cupcakes

1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter
3/4 cup unsweetened (not Dutch process) cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups strong brewed coffee (I used the dark roast from Phoenix for extra flavor)
1/2 cup whiskey
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1. Preheat over to 325°F.
2. Heat the coffee, butter, and cocoa powder in a heavy medium saucepan over low heat until the butter is melted, whisking occasionally.
3. Add the sugars and whisk until dissolved. Remove from the heat, transfer the mixture to a large bowl, add the whiskey, and let cool.

1. Meanwhile, whisk the flour, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. In a separate, small bowl, whisk the eggs and vanilla. Slowly whisk the eggs into the chocolate mixture until combined. Add the flour mixture and whisk until smooth. The batter will be pretty thin.
2. Pour the batter into a cupcake pan (or Reynolds Fun Shapes, which made heart-shaped cupcakes) and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out mostly clean, about 15 to 18 minutes.

You can frost them of course, but rather than run the risk of the ugliest cupcakes in the world, I just dusted them with powdered sugar just before serving. Easier, neater, prettier, and dare I say, tastier.

They turned out infinitely better than the chocolate sourdough cake ... light and fluffy (I learned my lesson regarding types of cocoa powder), not too sweet, moist, and a hint of whiskey.

Cleveland sports may not be improving, but my baking abilities are. And if the first Browns preseason game is any indication, I may be whipping up pies and custards and cookies by the end of the season.

Bacon & Cheese-Integrated Burgers

Foodgoat recently came home from work with an urgent mission: a co-worker had reported to him that he had seen, and tasted, a new, and yes, extraordinary, burger.

A burger with bacon and cheese, not on top, but ...ground up into the burger.

Burger innovations cannot wait! Foodgoat came home and fired up the grill as soon as he could.

Bacon & Cheese-Integrated Burgers

The ingredients:

1 lb. ground beef
1/2 lb.bacon, chopped
1/3 lb. cheddar cheese, chopped
1 egg
handful of breadcrumbs
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tsp paprika
salt + pepper + Worcestershire sauce to taste
(makes 4 burgers)

Mix all ingredients with your hands.

Shape into four balls.

Smooosh into patties.

Put on the grill, along with some sliced onions. Beware! The raw bacon in the burgers drips fat right onto the hot coals, creating bursts of hot flame.

Throw some more cheese on! And if you're Foodgoat, you toast the bun. If you're Ladygoat, you like your buns soft.

Yum yum! A success. As expected, the bacon-cheese-grilled-meat combo was not only fun to make, but delicious. Bacon and cheese within the burger, though, turns out to be more subtle - you don't get the concentrated mouthful of bacon or cheese. What you don't get is the contrast between juicy burger, melty cheese, and crisp bacon. It's much more integrated taste and texture. Good, but kind of the same all the way through - none of the interplay between the various elements. So there is something to be said for having the bacon and cheese separate and on top.

Still, it was fun to try. We're always up for burger innovations!

Ugliest Cake in the World

I have been baking up a storm lately - cakes, cookies, cupcakes, muffins, all in the past few days. Since I'm usually only in the kitchen to hand Foodgoat his beer or to look for cheese in the fridge, this sudden outburst of baking can only mean one thing - I must be seriously depressed.

What could I be depressed about? Not GoatSpawn (who's a joy) ... not my job (still have one) ...

Must be the Cavs! A delayed reaction to another Cleveland sports team blowing their chance at the championships. Boo!

So, contemplating at least another year in this God-forsaken sports town, I've taken to baking.

Like Cleveland sports playoff games, the results have not always been so pretty:


This horrifying thing is a sourdough chocolate cake with my first attempt at a homemade frosting, which I was disturbed to find out was just butter and sugar. I feel like I should put a paper bag over it.



The cake itself turned out quite tasty, if a bit dry, with the sourdough flavor not quite as pronounced as you might think. The frosting was sweeeet, literally sweeeet, and so strongly coffee flavored it woke me up.

Not bad, but I like cupcakes better - the frosting/cake ratio there favors the cake and less the frosting. Less is more where frosting is concerned.

And as tasty as it is, it seems not even chocolate cake can relieve CSD (Cleveland sports depression).

Sourdough Chocolate Cake & Coffee Frosting
(from King Arthur Flour)

• 1 cup "fed" sourdough starter
• 1 cup milk (whole milk)
  
• 2 cups flour
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 3/4 cup cocoa
• 1 teaspoon espresso powder
• 2 large eggs

• 3 cups confectioners' sugar
• 3/8 cup butter
• 1/4 cup buttermilk
• 2 teaspoons espresso powder
• 1/2 tablespoon hot water

Cake

• 8 1/2 ounces "fed" sourdough starter
• 8 ounces milk (whole milk or 2% preferred) or evaporated milk
• 8 1/2 ounces King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
• 10 1/2 ounces granulated sugar
• 7 ounces vegetable oil
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 1/4 ounces natural cocoa powder (not Dutch process)
• 1 teaspoon espresso powder, optional
• 2 large eggs

Icing

• 24 ounces confectioners' sugar
• 6 ounces butter
• 4 ounces plain yogurt or buttermilk
• 1 tablespoon + 1 1/2 teaspoons espresso powder
• 1/2 ounce hot water

Drizzle

• 2 ounces semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 ounce milk
• 3/4 ounce corn syrup

1) Combine the "fed" starter, milk, and flour in a large mixing bowl. Cover and let rest at room temperature for 2 to 3 hours.

2) Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a 9" x 13" pan.

3) In a separate bowl, beat together the sugar, oil, vanilla, salt, baking soda, cocoa and espresso powder. The mixture will be grainy.

4) Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

5) Gently combine the chocolate mixture with the starter-flour-milk mixture, stirring till smooth.

6) Pour the batter into pan.

7) Bake the cake for 30 to 40 minutes, until it springs back when lightly pressed in the center, and a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean.

8) Remove the cake from the oven, and set it on a rack to cool while you make the icing.

9) Sift the confectioners' sugar into a large mixing bowl, and set it aside.

10) In a small saucepan set over medium heat, melt the butter and add the buttermilk. Dissolve the espresso powder in the hot water, add to the pan, and bring the mixture just to a boil.

11) Immediately pour the simmering liquid over the confectioners' sugar in the bowl, and beat till smooth.

12) Pour the warm frosting over the cake. Try to be neat. If unsuccessful, eat anyway.

Happy Doughnut Day!

Today is National Doughnut Day!

I thought it was some holiday made up by the giant doughnut corporations, or the Big Doughnut Lobby, but there is actually a nice history behind it.

National Doughnut Day started in 1938 as a fund raiser for the Chicago Salvation Army to help the needy during the Great Depression. It honored the Salvation Army "Lassies" of World War I, who served doughnuts to soldiers behind the front lines in France. The Lassies were female volunteers who made home cooked foods, comfort and support to the homesick troops - the only women outside of military personnel allowed to visit the front lines.

It started in August, 1917, at the battle near Montiers, France. Salvation Army lassies made donuts using left over flour, a wine bottle as a rolling pin, a baking powder tin for a cutter and a tube for making holes (later, a seven-pound shell fitted with a one-pound shell was used to cut out the donut holes). Donuts were fried - seven at a time - in soldier's steel helmets on an 18-inch stove.

They made 100 donuts before their tent collapsed in the rainstorm, but it was an immediate success, and before long, 9,000 donuts were being made around the clock ... and the tent became the first 24-hour donut shop.

Soon, Salvation Army lassies were making donuts wherever the war was being fought.

Here is the original recipe, which is admittedly scaled a little large for the typical family:

Famous Salvation Army Doughboy Doughnut

7-1/2 cups sugar
3/4 cup lard
8 eggs
3 large cans evaporated milk
3 large cans water
18 cups flour
18 teaspoons baking powder
7-1/2 teaspoons salt
8 teaspoons nutmeg

Or, you could just go get your free donut at one of the many doughnut stores offering free donuts today.
Cream sugar and lard together, beat eggs, add evaporated milk and water. Add liquid to creamed mixture. Mix flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg in large sieve and sift into other mixture. Add enough flour to make a stiff dough. Roll and cut. Five pounds of lard are required to fry the doughnuts. Yield: approximately 250 doughnuts.

Sourdough Pancakes

Just about the time we ran out of the 25 pounds of flour that we ordered around the holidays (somehow I thought it would last much longer), King Arthur Flour had another free shipping deal and we got to order not only another 25 pounds, but other cooking products to try from one of our favorite stores. So far a big hit has been the Schokinag Extreme Dark Bittersweet Chocolate Chips, which is 75% chocolate liquor.

At first we enjoyed just popping the delicious, deep flavored chocolate chips in our mouth, but then Foodgoat added them to something he's been making Sunday mornings often these days, sourdough pancakes.

Thus was born bittersweet chocolate chip sourdough pancakes, which are really quite delicious. Despite the chocolate chips, it's not a kid's pancake: it wasn't sweet at all, just warm, subtle sourness with intense, rich chocolate. Just a drizzle of maple syrup for a touch of sweetness, although it really didn't need it.

The recipe is a modified version of one in the Good Home cookbook, which lately has been my go-to cookbook for classic recipes.

Sourdough Pancakes

1 large egg, separated
1/2 cup mixture of sour cream and milk (because it's what we had on hand, you can also use evaporated milk only)
1 tablespoon oil
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups sourdough starter
bittersweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat griddle or skillets on medium high.
2. In a small bowl, beat egg white until stiff but not dry.
3. In a large bowl, whisk egg yolk, sour cream/milk, oil, sugar, baking soda, and salt until blended. As quickly as possible mix in the starter with a spoon. Gently fold in the egg white.
4. Grease the griddle, ladle about 1/3 cup of batter for each pancake. Add a couple of chocolate chips. Let cook 2-4 minutes, flip, cook a few more minutes. Keep going! Keep warm and serve immediately.
   

Speaking of Balls

Ever since Foodgoat got a meatball sub at Valentino's and found it DIVINE, his desire for another meatball sub has only grown.

And then one day, it suddenly occurred to him that he could make his own.

Adapting his hamburger recipe, he mixed up beef, pork, eggs, roasted garlic, salt and pepper, bread crumbs, paprika, Worcestershire sauce and parsley, and formed some generously sized balls.

After frying them in olive oil, he then roasted them at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. They went into a pot with marinara sauce for a while. Sub sandwich buns were then loaded with Parmesan cheese and mozzarella cheese, with meatballs and sauce and then wrapped in foil and put in the oven for a while.

It was surprisingly easy to do and came out delicious - even better than Valentino's, if you ask me. Of course, it's not pretty, but often, the best tasting food isn't.

Monkey Balls See, Monkey Ball Do

Last Saturday was GoatSpawn's first snow day, and we were stuck inside the house, surrounded by a foot of snow. It was time for some warm, baking goodness, but our oven stopped working sometime around Thanksgiving, so warm baking goodness would have to come from the bread machine.

I was checking out the King Arthur Flour website for bread machine recipes, when Foodgoat spotted this photo for the Sweet Pull-Apart Bread, and said "We have to make that":
So, inspired by the photo, we embarked on making the sweet pull-apart bread, also known as monkey bread.

First, you use the dough only setting on the machine to make the sweet dough.

Dough
3 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons instant yeast
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1 cup milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

All ingredients go into the machine in the order your machine described. Check the consistency after 10 minutes of kneading to make sure it's smooth and soft and adjust as needed (which you should do anytime you make anything in the bread machine).

Next, put the dough onto a flour covered surface and cut it into 32 pieces.

Next, the yummy topping ...

Topping
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, melted
2/3 cup light brown sugar mixed with 1 tablespoon cinnamon

Dip each dough ball into the butter, then roll in the cinnamon sugar mix.

Layer the balls back into the bread machine. Allow them to rise for about an hour, then bake in the bread machine for 65 minutes with the light crust. (I accidentally used the medium crust, and it turned out a bit too dry on the crust.)

Voila! Monkey bread! What you end up with very much like cinnamon rolls - pieces of warm, sweet, a little sticky bread that you just pull off the loaf. It was YUMMY.

Not only that, but we could also talk about monkey balls for days.

Lessons in Chestnuts, Continued

Even though the ratio of good to bad chestnuts following the braising was disappointing, we were still left with a bowl of enough tasty chestnut meat to work with. The next step: grinding up the chestnuts, using a rotary cheese grater, which I thought was a clever use of what I thought was a unitasker tool.

Foodgoat then added rum and sugar, to taste. Foodgoat recommends not too much rum, otherwise it just tastes like rum, but of course, it's hard to hold back where rum is concerned. As Foodgoat discovered this time, when he did in fact just a bit too much rum.

And there you have it! Chestnut rum puree. But wait, something is missing ...



Fresh whipped cream, of course - adding the perfect topping to Foodgoat's favorite dessert.

The verdict - delicious. Not quite as good as his grandmother's torte version, but delicious nonetheless.

Peppercorn - Yes, Peppercorn! - Ice Cream

Foodgoat's first inclination on receiving an ice cream maker is to begin with the basics and make vanill, so as to begin crafting and perfecting one's ice cream technique.

My inclination is to just skip to the weird and bizarre flavors.

And that's why I made a Peppercorn Ice Cream, adapted from a recipe in Chow. I halved the recipe, partly because using 8 egg yolks in any one recipe just seems egregious, partly because I've found that the ice cream maker just works better with smaller quantities, and partly because I figured there wouldn't be a lot of demand for more peppercorn ice cream.

To my surprise, Peppercorn ice cream, even made with black pepper, is not nearly as bad as it sounds. Even though I used more pepper than suggested in the Chow recipe, you don't taste the pepper right away - it was more of building aftertaste than an immediate assault on the tongue. Even then, I didn't find it offensive at all. Someone said it was like the Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans in Harry Potter.

Still, it's not exactly dessert material. One wouldn't sit down with a big bowl of this. However, I could imagine it as a nice accompaniment to something savory. Like a steak.

Peppercorn Ice Cream

• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 cup whole milk
• 3/8 cup granulated sugar
• 1 tablespoon whole black peppercorns, crushed with the bottom of a heavy pan
• 4 egg yolks
  

1. Heat the heavy cream, milk, sugar, and pepper in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Bring mixture to a simmer, stirring occasionally to dissolve the sugar.
2. Remove from heat and let mixture steep for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, place the egg yolks in a medium mixing bowl and beat well with a wire whisk.
3. Return the cream mixture to medium heat and bring to a simmer again. Remove from heat. Temper the hot mixture into the eggs by slowly pouring the cream into them in a thin stream, while constantly whisking the eggs with a whisk.
4. Strain the egg-and-cream mixture through a fine-mesh strainer back into the saucepan. Return it to the stove and cook over medium-low heat, stirring often with a wooden spoon, until the custard base has thickened enough to coat the back of the spoon.
5. Cool the custard overnight, or until it is completely cold.
6. Freeze the custard in an ice cream maker, according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Place in a covered plastic container and store in the freezer overnight.

Idaho? No Udaho!

Real Food, Uncensored & Out of Control!

The Post Foodgoat Never Meant You to See! Hidden in the Blogger drafts since 2000, made when he was first trying to break into the blogging business, now made public!

The Honorable Larry E. Craig, duly elected Senator of Idaho, once submitted the following recipe for Super Tubers (using, of course, the Idaho potato) to the Congress Cooks! website. Since the pizza delivery girl never showed up, Foodgoat whips up a couple of Super Tubers.


After washing and drying a couple of dirty potatos, Foodgoat cored the potato center, end to end, with an apple corer.

A generous rubbing of olive oil, along with nonstop giggling, helped stick a big hot dog all the way into the hole.

After baking in a preheated 325 degree oven for approximately one hour (or until the potato was fork tender), we topped the Tuber turned Super Tuber off with a sprinkling of bacon for good measure.