Cooking Debauchery

Caramel Cake with Brown Butter Caramel Frosting

I so suck.  I am so late with this entry.

After four days of cooking I finally managed to sit down and look at the hasty pictures I took and nearly cried.   Almost nothing about this cake turned out at all right for me with the sterling exception of the sugar syrup; which to be perfectly fair turned out not just well, but actually spectacular.

The cake wasn’t bad either.  The frosting….I don’t want to talk about it.

Not that I won’t…in the interest of full disclosure that is.

But I will start with the good parts.

Calzone Chameleon

I knew the dough was gonna be trouble from the moment I read the recipe.  I had trepidations when I read that the dough was to be sticky and the ratio of ingredients.  But I made the dough for the latest DB challenge anyway.

As promised, it stuck to my hands, to the sides of the mixing bowl, to the dough hook, and clung with great fervor to the scale when I tried to weight it.  It clung to the point where even though I had dusted every available surface that the dough could have touched with flour I was still finding bits of it a week later.

Having wrangled it into the fridge, I thought it would get easier.

Lavash and Edamame Pate

*

I have been wanting to join daring bakers for ages.  But I should probably have waited until after my vacation was over.  The first recipe was due right before my vacation started and the second was due shortly after I came back.

This didn’t leave me much time to fix issues and play with the recipe.  I was scared of this with the second recipe because of what happened with the first.  The first was a French eclaire recipe which turned out beautifully but my photo’s failed.  Because I was in a rush I ended up using harsh summer sun that was on the verge of setting which gave everything a ghastly yellow tinge.

So it was with trepidation that I mixed up the first batch of this lavash. I used it as an excuse to try my newly acquired porcini mushroom and herb olive oil which I had picked up in Seattle’s Pike Place Market at the tiny Sotto Voce stall.  It had a heavenly mushroom aroma that I could not wait to taste in something.

I figured bread was as good a place as any to start.

This was done for the Daring Baker's challenge for September!

Pout Puckering Preserves

"My jams never gel."  E complained.   “I followed the recipe exactly and it was STILL runny!”

Her boss added that she had a whole freezer full of fruit jams to be that never quite…well…jammed.

And while I wasn’t the one that gave either of these women their recipes, it occurred to me how obscure the process of making any kind of preserves really is.  What the hell does “cook till its thick” mean?

Thick like what?  Maple syrup?  Molasses?  Motor oil?

What is the proper viscosity of jam?

BBQ Shrimp

It is far different animal to feed eight people instead of our usual three or four.  While I can normally manage just fine to both cook dinner and take pictures… this is assuming of course I have all my little ducks in a row… with eight people baying for food this becomes nearly impossible. 

So while the last six weeks have been a revolving door of culinary bliss, photos never quite seemed to make the list of to-dos. 

The reason for all this activity of course, was a descent but still not long enough visit from my family from the Ukraine.  The same family which I visited last August.  For a whole six weeks, my kitchen was much like I remember it as a child.  Filled with happy people making incredible food.

It was also a fairly interesting cultural exchange.

Szechuan Peppercorn & Kumquat Caramels

I did a baaad bad thing.

Would you believe me if I told you I hadn’t meant to do it?

The whole thing started off as an accident.  I know you won’t believe me.

It started the morning of the party.  Innocently enough really.  With a small pan of freshly picked, home grown kumquats.

That in and of itself was not unusual.  Nor was the fact that I soon found a small army of them following me home in a plastic bag.  I had dallied with one after all, sharply sour and terribly addictive.

But really, it only came together a few nights later.   When the kumquats, having lost their novelty and element of surprise, sat lonely in a plain white bowl.

They called to me.

Browned Butter Chocolate Chip-Cherry Cookies

I am told that there is a theory to food blogging that states in part:  Every food blogger must post a chocolate chip recipe sometime in their blogging career.

It seems to follow along the same mysterious lines as sudden eruptions of similar but not quite identical recipes that use the same ingredients.

And while I am certainly not immune to the later, I thought I was immune to the former.  Chocolate chip cookies are pretty much the antithesis of my cookie preferences.  They are soft, chewy, filled with chocolate, and sweet.  I prefer mine, crisp, buttery, and not too sweet.  Shortbread is my ideal cookie.

But there is a universal American truth.  An undeniable Mom & Apple Pie certainty, that chocolate chip cookies are the only cookies that are guaranteed to always be well received, no matter what the tastes of the persons involved.

It’s the American way.

Kirsten's Trail Mix

OK.   I suppose a note on my long absence is probably in order.  Life has been busy.  Not in a bad way, mind you.  Just busy to where I have not been cooking and taking photos.  It seems like cooking is something you do all the time anyway and taking photos is just a few clicks of a camera.

That is partially true.  You do eat anyway, but sometimes you don’t really cook.  You throw things together because it is easy.  Or you rehash old recipes because it is easier than trying to find the time and energy for trying new things.  That has kinda been my mode of late.  And bad pictures are easy to take.  Good ones… that I am still working on.

For now I will be posting sporadically as life continues to be busy.  I will have relatives that are visiting from out of the country until the end of March so the hit and run style will have to suffice for now. But I do bring an offering:

I call this Kirsten’s Trail Mix for its most ardent fan; the friend who almost cried when she discovered that the last bag of my original mix had been left behind in the repacking of suite cases.

It’s not a recipe so much as a formula and an expression of taste.  I am if nothing, a fanatical devotee of the hazelnut.  I have never encountered a hazelnut preparation I did not like.  And it was hazelnuts that started this idea in the first place.

I am leaving on a jet plane

 

Dear Readers,

 

I have not abandoned this journal. A shift in my job responsibilities has caused me to be very busy. I have also been traveling for work. 

I am sorry I have not been posting. However it is hard for me to cook and photograph during the week so I usually reserve that for weekends. Unfortunately my weekends have been far too occupied. But not in a bad way. 

And now I am going to be traveling back to the place where I was born. In August I will be going back to the

Ukraine

for the first time in 29 years. 

I promise lots of photos and a fresh supply of Russian and Ukrainian recipes.

Thank you for your patience.

 

-Kit

*Photo is not by me.  I found it on photoseek

5 Minute Bean Dip

Every have one of those days where you just run around all day only to realize that you have to go somewhere that night and didn’t prepare a thing?

The other Friday a I was getting ready to leave to go to a friend’s house for the evening, I realized that I had nothing to bring.  And while I stock baked pita chips in the house I didn’t have any dip.

So as I scanned the pantry, tossing my heels aside in the process, it came to me.

All I needed was a can of black beans.