Recipe Review: Barefoot Contessa's Eli's Asian Salmon

I have wanted to try Ina Garten's salmon recipe for some time now. I tried it last night with a little asian pilaf and baby bok choy. Overall, it was a bit disappointing. There was just too much topping, and it was way too salty (excess soy sauce) and too sour (too much lemon juice). However, the pilaf and baby bok choy (which I oven braised in the sauce with the fish) were delicious.

Asian Brown Rice Pilaf

2 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup water
1 porcini mushroom bouillon (imported from italy)
1 Tbsp. teriyaki sauce
1 cup brown rice medley (a Trader Joe's mixture of brown, black and red medium grain rice)
1 Tbsp. ground ginger
2 scallions, sliced thin on an angle
1/2 cup toasted almonds

Bring chicken stock, water and teriyaki to a boil with mushroom bouillon. Stir in rice and ginger and return to a boil. Reduce heat to low and cook, covered, until rice is tender, about 35 minutes. Stir in scallions and almonds.

Recipe Review: Chocolate Peanut Squares

i've loved Nigella Lawson for a long time, but for some reason, I never bought any of her cookbooks. This past weekend I decided it was long overdue and headed down to Barnes and Noble (with my nifty teacher discount card). I decided on Forever Summer since it had some fantastic pictures and lots of fresh simple recipes.

This particular recipe caught my eye because it didn't seem to be too summery, but rather fit for the wintry mix outside. Plus I was on a chocolate peanut kick. And so the saga began...


First the shortbread. I augmented this with a little vanilla and coconut, which I think helps any dessert.

Ingredients:
2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup softened unsalted butter
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 cup sweetened shredded coconut

Throw it all together in the food processor and buzz away until it looks mealy and starts to clump up. Press into an 8 x 8 pyrex dish and stab at it freely with a fork. Bake at 325 for 5 minutes, then 300 for 45 minutes.

Now came the frustrating part. The peanut caramel. I'm convinced this was supposed to be a chewy gooey center of goodness. That's not exactly how it worked out. Here's the story.

Nigella includes a recipe that uses condensed milk and she cooks it in the microwave. I have an unexplainable aversion to cooking (not just reheating) in the microwave. I can only guess it's the ingrained response my mother trained into me at a young age that microwaves cause cancer. So, I decided it would probably be just as good cooked over medium low heat in a saucepan, whisking constantly.

WRONG! My first sign that something had gone wrong were miniscule black specks throughout the creamy mixture. Then, in an instant it went from one creamy pool to a hideous suspension of curds in liquid butter. It was beyond help, and thus its fate - the drain.

Aaaahhhhh - curdled goo and no more condensed milk to start over with! But I can't let this sweet stuff beat me. i can cook up just about anything - I've got to be able to handle this.

So I start looking for something similar. I find a recipe in the Gourmet cookbook for cranberry pecan bars. The berries and nuts are suspended in a caramel. I think, "This isn't so bad after all - i knew there was a better way," and start feeling smug.

So I combine (in my freshly cleaned pot)
2 sticks unsalted butter (wow that's a lot!)
1 2/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup corn syrup
1/2 tsp salt

I should've known when I saw the ingredients that this was not a gooey caramel, since it lacked the heavy cream, but I pressed on obliviously, stirring occasionally over medium height until the thermometer said 245.

Now - the thermometer said 245 but I don't believe it. That means it should have been somewhere between soft ball and hard ball stage but it looked suspiciously close to hard crack.

After adding peanuts and spreading it out onto the shortbread and letting it cool, I discovered I had a caramel texture in between toffee and peanut brittle. Not what I was going for, but still decidedly tasty. Oh well.



To top it off, 9.25 oz of luscious Scharffen Burger bittersweet chocolate, melted and poured down over the candy. Unfortunately this did not stay attached to the caramel, but it was a nice contrast to cut through the sweetness.

The Verdict: The finished product was quite different than the original vision. This was a prime example of how I always want to mess with recipes too much. Since I din not actually follow the recipe, I can't really say either way. The jury's still out...

Recipe Review: Pecan Toffee Coffee Cake

One of my absolute favorite cookbooks is In the Sweet Kitchen by Regan Daley. (That's saying a lot if you've seen my collection, which is currently staging a coup on my dining room.) It was an IACP Cookbook of the year for good reason. The first half of the book is dedicated to a discussion of equipment and ingredients, including an extensive chart of substitutions. Many of my friends' and family's favorite baked goods are versions of those found in this book - including "apple lumpy" and caramel pecan shortbread sandwiches.


Experiences:
So, I woke up yesterday morning at 10 ( I had been feeling like I was teetering on the brink of an impending cold), and I wanted something in the line of sweet, carb-saturated decadence. I was debating upon crepes, lemony pancakes, belgian waffles, but the thought of standing for close to an hour on my hideously hard, frigid, tiled kitchen floor, incessantly ladling and flipping was not appealing to me. So I reached for Regan Daley and her Pecan Toffee Coffee Cake.


Since i cannot ever seem to either have all the ingredients listed in a recipe nor trust the recipe writer, I made some changes. I had to use yogurt in place of the sour cream, and I added some almond extract to the batter (almond extract and/or ameretto = sultry sexy food).

One of my biggest mistakes in substitution was trying to use a 9 inch square pyrex dish instead of a bundt pan. I realized after layering the batter and filling in the pan that if it rose I would have a molten smoking pecan toffee oven floor on my hands. In an attempt to save my breakfast I scooped some out into a shallow divided pyrex dish. Surprisingly, that portion turned out the best. In lieu of that observation, I recommend that you do use the suggested bundt pan in order to get the correct ratio of crispy edge to soft insides. I also recommend after layering you mix in the filling ever so gently. The pyrex coffee cake was much more dense because it took much longer to cook, which resulted in tough edges.


Nonetheless, the result was an almondy cake with a tender crumb and crispy edges. Doubtless I do need to follow directions, but I have to say it was still pretty delicious. The espresso/cocoa powder blend in her filling is a touch of pure genius.

Because I'm afraid this really would border on copyright infringement with my two tiny alterations, I'm not going to post this particular recipe. But I'd be glad to lend you the book or copy the recipe if you like.


Verdict:

This is what I will go to in the future on the (admittedly very few) occasions when I'm craving a good coffee cake. I would however, prefer to cook in in one of those "all edges" brownie pans and top with a nice streusel.