Cherry brown butter bars

I made these:
http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2009/06/cherry-brown-butter-bars-new-video-project/

OMG.

I think I cooked them for 35 minutes (after assembling), which was fine. I used 36 cherries, which seemed like a good amount. Not sure how many pounds it was, but I pitted 2.5-3 cups total and didn't use anywhere near all of them.

Done again, I might bake the base for slightly less time (15 minutes?) but it was fine as-is.

I don't think I modified the recipe at all.

Almond cake!

Last night I made this:
http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2010/06/almond-cake-recipe/

I made it in a 8.5x8.5 square pan. I'm convinced it would have been nicer in a round pan, but ya do what ya have to, right? I don't have a round pan right now.

Wouldn't this have been prettier if it were round?

It was good, but unfortunately I used salted butter instead of unsalted by accident, and I think the salt overwhelmed the almond taste a little bit. It wasn't bad, but almond's a delicate flavor and doesn't stand up to salt the way that chocolate or caramel does. I bet it'll be fabulous with the correct butter. And it's definitely a bit better after it's had some time to sit - it gets moister and the flavor matures somehow.

So I'll have to try again.

Also, n.b., Bob the food processor, whose work bowl is only about 7 cups or so, was a tight fit for this cake. I had to dump the batter into a separate bowl before adding the flour. Not surprising, really--poor Bob has always been on the small side, as much good food as I pour into him.


Text of recipe reproduced after the jump in case it ever goes away (because you bet I want to make this again):

French Yogurt Cake

Making this French yogurt cake:
http://orangette.blogspot.com/2004/08/slow-roasting.html

Omitting lemons, adding a splash of almond extract for flavoring, baking in an 8x8 nonstick square pan sprayed with PAM. I'm not sure that the almond flavor pairs well with tanginess of yogurt, but we'll see. I used full-fat yogurt because that's what I had. I am confident that it will be cake, regardless, and cake is good.

Verdict: my housemates loved it. See above re: cake is good, etc. I don't think the tanginess of the yogurt was an issue. However, I prefer to add almond flavor to things that have more substance. Like, say, some ground almonds. 

Adventures with Steak

I'm still relatively (~2009) new to eating red meat, and because I try to only buy decently-sourced stuff, most of the meat I've eaten since then has been in the form of hamburgers. (Ground beef is the only grass-fed my budget allows, generally.) I've been trying to branch out a bit, though, and for me that will probably mean some inexpensive cuts of  "level 4" beef from Whole Foods.

Today I bought two relatively thin (1cm?) pieces of "outside bottom round steak" which I understand can be kind of tough. I trimmed some of the (fat? gristle? can't quite tell), stabbed both sides of it with a fork many many times, and dumped it into a mixture of balsamic vinegar, canola oil, chopped garlic, ground pepper, and some fancy whole-grain mustard that was in our fridge. It wasn't that much liquid--I didn't want to waste a bunch of balsamic vinegar. Honestly, I'm never sure what to use to make up volume in marinades. Oil? Water? Neither of these really makes sense, and I don't want to use gallons of balsamic vinegar or whatnot. Anyway. I am going to let it sit in that perhaps overnight, turning it at least once, and then cook it on top of the stove in a cast iron skillet.

In other meat news, ground turkey is gross, chili made from ground turkey is gross, and it is especially so when your source of ground turkey is a defrosted Trader Joe's turkey burger.  I rarely make something I can't bear to eat, but this fit into that category - and it was definitely the turkey, not the rest of the chili. I wish I hadn't wasted the onions, beans, and tomatoes on it, because those alone could have actually been tasty.

VERDICT: it wasn't actually that great--it felt a little tough and the balsamic flavor was too strong--it's a nice flavor but I want to taste meat.. For the second piece, I pierced it more times with a fork, seasoned only with salt and pepper, didn't marinate at all, and didn't cook for as long. It was better.

Blueberry yogurt muffins (whole wheat)

I made these using white whole wheat flour and a smidge more than 1/2 cup white (refined) flour. Pans greased with real butter because I still need to buy baking spray for my new house. I don't think the oven was at the full 375 when I put them in, and it may have gone up to 400 mid-baking, because my oven has been a bit weird lately.

And, we shall see...

Vegetarian chili!

I made a big pot of vegetarian chili for my anti-Superbowl party (beer, classic snacks, the company of friends, but no annoying game to sit through)yesterday and I'm really happy with how it came out. I think part of the trick is that I didn't really add any water--all the liquid came from the tomato products and maybe a tad from not-perfectly-drained reconstituted TVP.  I was especially happy that it was flavorful enough since the TVP was totally unseasoned. (You can buy beef or chicken flavored TVP and I think I've used that in the past.)

To the best of my memory, this is what I did (in a humongous 11-qt stockpot, which was useful because it's thick and can kind of splash if it bubbles when it's cooking--but this doesn't make anywhere close to 11 quarts of chili, as eyeballing the recipe should reveal):

-2 onions, chopped relatively fine, sauteed in a healthy (haha) amount of oil with some (1 TBS each?) cumin and chili powder (mine was labelled "mild". Can't remember where I got it.)

Added after a while:
-2 smallish red peppers, diced relatively fine (more so than the onions)
-3 cloves of garlic, minced
-about 1-1.5 (dry) cups of unflavored TVP, the sort with a texture approximating ground beef/turkey, reconstituted with boiling water (but I mostly tried to squeeze the water out again before adding to the pot)
-1 jalapeno pepper, diced (including seeds)

I stirred that around for awhile, then added:
-3 (small-14-16oz) cans of fire-roasted diced tomatoes, 1 of which was pulverized in the food processor)
-about the equivalent of 1 more can of not-fire-roasted tomatoes, also pulverized
-about 1/4 cup (maybe less? maybe 2 TBS?) of cocoa powder
-a bunch more cumin, a bunch more chili powder, some dried oregano (ground between my palms, which I believe makes it more potent somehow), a bunch of paprika, maybe 1/4-1/2 tsp of liquid smoke
-2 cans of low-sodium dark red kidney beans (drained)
-2 cans of low-sodium pinto beans (drained)
-3 more cloves of garlic, minced

 I let it cook on a pretty low flame for a good long while. It needed a little bit of salt.

Dukkah

On Saturday I tasted dukkah (brand: "Alexandra's", imported into the US from NZ, oddly) on bread (dip bread in olive oil, dip in dukkah, eat) and it was very tasty. I want to try to make some myself. The kind I ate and liked had hazelnuts, sesame seeds, coriander seeds (oh so different from fresh coriander--AKA cilantro!) and cumin.