Braised Venison

The March, 2012 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Carol, a/k/a Poisonive – and she challenged us all to learn the art of Braising! Carol focused on Michael Ruhlman’s technique and shared with us some of his expertise from his book “Ruhlman’s Twenty”.

Braising is a technique in which meat is seared before being simmered.  There are so many great braising recipes out there, it was difficult to choose.  But after some searching, I came across a recipe from ArkansasFoodies for braised venison.  Eager to use some of T’s deer that is overflowing the freezer, we set to work.

Moo-Shu Pork (Pork Laurel)

The October Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Shelley of C Mom Cook and her sister Ruth of The Crafts of Mommyhood. They challenged us to bring a taste of the East into our home kitchens by making our own Moo Shu, including thin pancakes, stir fry and sauce.

According to Shelley, “Moo Shu is a stir fry, containing thinly sliced or shredded vegetables, meat and scrambled egg. It is usually served on flat, thin, steamed pancakes, and is accompanied by a complementary sauce.”

She gave us a fascinating history of the dish, “Moo Shu originates in Northern China. “There are two primary theories as to the origin of the name. Many suggest that the Chinese characters, read as mu xi, refer to a tree that blooms with small, fragrant blossoms. They suggest that the scrambled egg in this dish is reminiscent of these blossoms, and thus a variety of egg dishes are referred to as mu xi. An alternative suggestion uses the Chinese characters reading mu xu, roughly translating to wood whiskers or wood shavings. The dish is thus named, it is said, due to the appearance of the shredded vegetables and meat, resembling wooden whiskers, or wooden shavings that were used as packing materials.”

Pretty cool, yes?

The Moo Shu was very easy to make, chopping all the ingredients took longer than the cooking itself. The cabbage really mellows out during cooking, which makes it a great filler, adding a bit of crunch and texture to the other ingredients. The thin pancakes were a bit more time consuming, but it was fun to try a technique I’ve never used before to make a flat-bread. Hoisin Sauce was a great accompaniment to the dish, with just enough spice and a great nutty flavor.

Appam and Chicken Curry – A South Indian Challenge

This month I was really challenged to step outside of my comfort zone in trying some authentic South Indian Cuisine for the Daring Cooks Challenge. Mary, who writes the delicious blog, Mary Mary Culinary was our August Daring Cooks’ host. Mary chose to show us how delicious South Indian cuisine is! She challenged us to make Appam and another South Indian/Sri Lankan dish to go with the warm flat bread. I decided to make a Chicken Curry from Magpie’s Recipes, but I adapted her recipe to be made in a crock pot.

Appam (which go by many names) are eaten in South India and Sri Lanka, where they are called hoppers. Appam is made from rice, yeast and coconut milk. The well-fermented batter is cooked in a skillet, like making a crepe. The Appam have a thin, lacy, crisp edge and a thicker spongy middle. They are often served in Kerala with a breakfast stew and work well for soaking up curies. They are also naturally vegan and gluten-free.

Both recipes turned out great. The curry was flavorful and paired perfectly with the appam, which turned out like a crepe with the texture of couscous and the mild flavor of coconut milk. Making the curry in the crock pot was a great way to have dinner nearly ready when I came home from work.

Thanks to Mary for a great challenge!

Spätzle (Daring Cooks): A timely Challenge

Well hello there readers. Hopefully you haven’t given up on me in my interim from blogging. The past two months have been crazy with moving (I now have pretty counter tops!) and a three week backpacking trip trough London, northern France, southern Germany and Switzerland. (Stay tuned for more post on food from or inspired by my trip.) But, to start things off is this month’s Daring Cook’s challenge which let me get in touch with the German side of my trip.

Steph from Stephfood was our Daring Cooks July hostess. Steph challenged us to make homemade noodles without the help of a motorized pasta machine. She provided us with recipes for Spätzle and Fresh Egg Pasta as well as a few delicious sauces to pair our noodles with!

Spätzle is, in my opinion, under appreciated in the States. It rarely graces tables and is most often found at over-priced German restaurants as some kind of mystery German food. Even as much as it resembles a ultra-thick egg noodle in taste and consistence, many have never appreciated spätzle’s greatness. I was first introduced to spätzle a few years ago in the boil-from-the-bag variety, but having just enjoyed German love of beer, wurst, and spätzle, I welcomed the challenge to try my hand at making the dish from scratch. It helped that the recipe looked amazingly simple (as opposed to traditional noodles, which the though of making by hand slightly scares me).

I opted to merge Steph’s recipe with one from serioiuseats.com because I wanted to try my hand at the traditional board cut method of making the spätzle. The recipe below is very adaptable: add more liquid if you like softer spatzel, change the herbs/spices as you like. I’m not sure which variation is most authentic. Although, I did read that in Bavaria they use beer instead of milk (or water) as the liquid for the dough.

Yeast-Raised Cornbread Bowl – Daring Cooks

Renata of Testado, Provado &Aprovado! was our Daring Cooks’ April 2011 hostess. Renata challenged us to think “outside the plate” and create our own edible containers! Prizes are being awarded to the most creative edible container and filling, so vote on your favorite from April 17^th to May 16^th at http://thedaringktichen.com!

I was excited for this challenge because bread bowls have been on my “to make” list since January, when part of an over-sized batch of chili went into the freezer for the specific purpose of saving to fill bread bowls.

As I was thinking about this challenge, I wondered, “Would it be possible not to just make a bread bowl for the chili but to create a bowl out of the natural bread-mate for a hearty bowl of chili – cornbread?” What I found out is that you can indeed make yeast-raised cornbread, and I decided to try my hand at transforming a loaf of yeast-raised cornbread into bowls.

I really liked the method Renata gave for making bread bowls, which involved rolling the dough out into 1/2 inch thick circles and then placing the circles to rise and bake over an inverted muffin tin. This version was different than the gutted out crusty roll version that I am used to seeing used as a bread bowl. So, armed with Renita’s methods and a recipe I devised by combining my go-to cornbread recipe (from the trusty Doubleday Cookbook) with a recipe for yeast-raised cornbread I found on 101 cookbooks.com – I embarked on this adventure of firsts.

The cornbread took a bit longer to rise than normal bread, but with the added rising time it was easy to work with and rolled out nicely. I used three different sized bowls, as opposed to the inverted muffin tin, just to experiment with bowl shapes for the final bread bowl. The result was a sturdy bowl of a perfectly grainy and slightly sweet cornbread that held up well when filled with a thick chili and tasted scrumptious. I’m excited to give this yeast-raised cornbread recipe a try in the loaf or dinner roll version (the sample dinner roll I tried out from leftover dough turned out very promising).