Digital Thinkbox

The other day my friend Zap asked me if I wanted to do a The Bread Baker’s Apprentice
“challenge” with him. I had just purchased the book myself so I figured this would be excellent motivation to try it out. This challenge has us baking one bread per week (or so), until we’ve baked EVERY SINGLE recipe in the book. Whew. I picked challah bread this week to start things off.

I won’t repeat the recipe since it is in the book, but it is pretty basic. Flour, sugar, yeast, oil, water, eggs. Four eggs to be exact. Well two eggs and two egg yokes. Oh and save the whites for later when you brush the bread down.

The dough after mixing waiting for the first rise:

After the first rise. The dough really took off. Very puffy.

After braiding. This thing is HUGE. I could have made two 3 braid loaves from this.

I cut the final proof time short because of how active the yeast was. Only about 30 minutes instead of the 60-75 minutes recommended.

Out of the oven and on the rack!

Nice color, although you can see the over spring was excessive. The whiter parts are where the egg mixture didn’t get because the loaf wasn’t this big before baking.

Nice bubbles. Crumb could be a little deeper.

This bread came out big, as I expected. The yeast was over active for some reason. Maybe I used too much? Not sure. However the bread smelled and looked great. It was REALLY light and fluffy. Almost too light as it was hard to cut after it cooked. The texture was super fluffy too. Unfortunatly the flavor was a little lacking. It was, quite honestly…boring. I had just purchased some local Food Co-Op challah bread the day before, and other than the texture, it is much tastier. It wasn’t that this bread was bad, far from it. Its just that it was serious lacking in any flavor.

It is possible the over active yeast had something to do with that, I’m sure it contributed to the texture being light and fluffy. I’ve never had a dough puff up like this. All but one of the rise steps were for the full time. Only the final proof step I cut short. This is a new type of yeast that I’ve not used much of before so maybe that was it. It also baked up quickly.

Still this was a fun project. I’ve never braided bread before and it was a nice learning experience to figure out how to bread the bread. I may try this again some day and see if I can get a bread that is a full flavored as the bread I get at the Food Co-Op.

From a recipe published in Cook’s Illustrated: American Classics which I got at my local news stand. If you haven’t looked at Cook’s Illustrate or its sister publication; Cook’s Country, I recommend that you do. They are quality publications with a lot of the why rather than just random recipes.

I’ve been wanting to do a Sherbet after the success of my chocolate “the bomb” sorbet. I’ve tweaked the recipe slightly, but what you see here is largely what was published.

I’m using fresh squeezed orange juice here, which I recommend. You will get the strongest, freshest orange flavor this way. If you can find fresh squeezed, unpasteurized at the store, go for it. Pasteurized orange juice will work, but will likely not taste as fresh. Stay away from concentrate, it is cooked to hell and back and won’t make your desert taste very good.

1 Tbsp grated orange zest. About 1-2 oranges.
1 cup (7oz) of sugar
1/8 tsp salt (kosher)
2 cups of fresh orange juice
3 tablespoons juice from 1-2 lemons
“caviar” from 2 vanilla beans (can substitute extract too)
2 teaspoons vodka (can use Triple Sec too)
2/3 cup heavy cream

1. Put zest, sugar, vanilla, and salt in a food processor blender. Process until damp using the pulse setting.
2. With the machine running, slowly add orange juice and lemon juice. Process until sugar is dissolved.
3. Strain mixture through a nonreactive, fine metal strainer (cheese cloth might work too), into a medium bowl. Stir in vodka or Triple Sec. Cover with plastic wrap and stash in your freezer until the mixture reaches 40 degrees. DO NOT FREEZE THE MIXTURE! Ice bath could work here too.
4. When mixture is cold, whip the cream in your mixer or by hand until soft peaks form.
5. Continue whisking (slowly if doing with a mixer), and slowly add the juice mixture in a steady stream. It helps to pour against the side of the bowl so you don’t get splashing,
6. Immediately start your ice cream machine and add the juice/cream mixture to the canister; churn until sherbet has a soft server consistency. About 25 to 30 minutes depending on your unit
7. Remove from the caniser and transfer to storage container(s). Press plastic wrap against the surface of the sherbet to force out the air. Freeze for at least 3 hours. Overnight is better.
8. With the plastic wrap on top, the sherbet will remain good frozen for up to a week…if it lasts that long, which it won’t.

Yeah this stuff is tasty. A little creamier than a sorbet. Only thing I noticed is it melts fast. A tablespoon of fruit preserves in place of an equal amount of sugar might provide some emulsifiers (in the form of pectin). But heck I ate it so fast, it didn’t have time to melt that much.

I was really pleased with the orange flavor too. The vanilla wasn’t noticeable, but seemed to add some more complex flavors. I think extract would work better in this case because the mixture doesn’t really sit and have time to absorb the vanilla. The mixture doesn’t cook either so not as much change to extract the vanilla from the bean.

Orange Sherbet. Woops!

Sorry. I wanted to get a picture before I ate it…I failed.

OK so I’m at it again. This is my second attempt at Swimming Rama…and this time I had the right ingredients. For this attempt I tried out this recipe. I’ll repeat it here as I changed it slightly.

Chicken
2lbs of Chicken Breast — Cut into strips or thin slabs. You could even do small cubes if you wanted. As long at it isn’t cut into big, thick pieces.
Spinach — The recipe steams a bunch of spinach. I don’t actually like cooked spinach so I used raw. Your choice.
1 fresh red chili pepper — diced or chopped.

1. Boil 6 cups of water
2. Add in the cut chicken
3. Immediatly take the boiling water from the heat and cover
4. Let stand until chicken is no longer pink. You can make the peanut sauce which this happens
5. When ready to combine with the peanut sauce, drain the chicken.

Peanut Sauce

2 tsp of olive oil or the vegetable oil of your choice
1/2 to 1 cup of finely chopped onion
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 cup of peanut butter, creamy or chunky your choice. I used fresh ground.
3 Tbsp of packed brown sugar
2 Tbsp fish sauce
1 tsp paprika
1/4 teaspoon of ground red pepper ( I used red pepper flakes)
1 14oz can of unsweetened coconut milk
1 Tbsp corn starch
1 Tbsp water
2 Tbsp fresh lime juice. I used the juice from 1 small lime

1. Heat the oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and garlic; cook until tender.
2. Reduce the heat to medium or low. Add peanut butter, brown sugar, fish sauce, paprika and red pepper. Stir until smooth.
3. Slowly add the coconut milk until well blended.
4. Stir sauce over heat until bubbling. Reduce heat to low. Combine corn starch and water and stir into sauce. Cook until sauce starts to thicken.
5. Add in lime juice
6. You may now add the chicken into the sauce. Pour over spinach and garnish with some of the fresh red pepper or bell peppers

This was FAR superior to my previous attempt. Not too peanuty, and just the right amount of coconut flavor. Could have been spicier though. Didn’t have much kick. Even with the red chilies and chili flakes. Of course you might get a hot chili so taste the chili BEFORE you add it to the dish. In fact, taste the sauce as you cook it to make sure it is what you want.

This would definitely be good with a side of rice too, but I was hungry and didn’t want to wait for rice to cook. This dish will also be quite good the next day as the flavors have a chance to blend and mellow.

Apologies for the pictures…it is a camera phone. I need to get a digital camera one of these days.

Swimming Rama MKII 1

Swimming Rama MKII 2

After a successful trip to the local Thai place where I had Rama chicken I wanted to recreate this dish. It is a nice Thai peanut sauce over chicken and spinach. This “recipe” is more of a combination of two recipes. One for Satay Chicken from a Cooking Light compilation, and one for Rama chicken off the Internet. Since this is summer, and it is hot here, I opted to cook the chicken on the grill.

Marinate:
1 whole chicken breast (or two halves) cut into strips. I got about 8-10 strips.
1 Tbsp brown sugar. I used dark, light is an option.
2.5 Tbsp of low-sodium soy sauce
2 teaspoons of fresh ginger. I just grated some fresh stuff into the bowl.
1 zest from one lime.
1/4 teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes
2 garlic cloves, chopped or minced.

Combine in a bowl and let the chicken marinate for about 10 minutes. Fire up the grill.

Sauce:
The sauce is where things get interesting. I didn’t like the cooking light sauce, and didn’t have all the ingredients for the other one. So I winged it.
1-3 Tbsp of light brown sugar
1.5 Tbsp of low-sodium soy sauce
Thai fish sauce (a few dashes to taste)
2-4 Tbsp of peanut butter (fresh ground if you can get it)
juice of 1 lime
1 teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes (to taste)
1 garlic clove, minced.
1 5oz can of coconut milk
Heavy Cream

Combine in a sauce pan and cook over medium heat. This is mostly a guide. Start on low side of the ingredients and add to taste and consistency. I didn’t like the low peanut flavor so I added peanut butter until I got the flavor I liked. Towards the end of the cooking I didn’t like the color nor the consistency so I added 1-3 Tbsps of heavy cream. That lightened it up, offset the lime flavors, and thinned out the mixture a bit.

Put the chicken on skewers and grill for about 5 minutes per side on your grill. After they are cooked remove from grill and let the meat stand for a few minutes covered with foil. Plate with a bed of spinach, then the chicken topped with the sauce. Serve with white rice if you wish.

Post-mortem:
Came out pretty good. the chicken had a distinct lime flavor, although I thought the lime juice was too much in the peanut sauce. I’d omit this next time. It could be spicier on the whole. More red pepper flakes, or maybe some red curry sauce. It had just the faintest bite.

Definitely a strong peanut taste, which is what I was shooting for, although the sauce could be thinner. I could probably back off on the peanut butter since after it cooled a bit the peanut taste got much stronger. Needs more coconut milk too.

All in all, a tasty meal. I’d definitely do this again.

Chicken Rama w/Peanut Sauce