Favorite Products: OXO Food Mill

One of my favorite pieces of equipment in my home-kitchen is this little number. I got it just before going to a culinary competition in high school in order to make mashed potatoes. How did that turn out? Got first place at the first level and third in the second level. Compliments on the potatoes.

I have only had a chance to use this with potatoes, but can I just say that they yield just an awesome freaking product its ridiculous. I use the finest grate to mash up boiled potatoes, then add cream (or milk) and butter and plenty of salt and pepper and voila! Best whipped potatoes you'll ever have. Simple, delicious, and made possibly by this.

Legs fold out to do this! And more!

I've used a lot of commercial food mills and this one destroys those in ease of putting it together and use. It's easy to take apart and clean as well. It is a bit pricy, at $49.99 but, for food mills, it is actually relatively cheap. I love it. And, if you buy it from Bed Bath and Beyond like I did, you can easily get it for 20% off with one of their handy-dandy coupons which I use so often! I bought it nearly three years ago and its still nearly brand new. It's fabulous-o!

If you're looking to buy a food mill, this is the one, trust me.

Fruit Consomme

Strawberry consomme at Per Se...not my picture.

If you know what a consomme is you're in luck. If not, well: it's a flavorful broth that is crystal clear thanks to the addition of egg whites that "clarify" the stock (the eggs come out along with all impurities).

While I was on my externship for school (location will remain unknown for fear of the night terrors returning) and my friend was on her's, she told me of consommes made from peaches, blackberries, strawberries, etc. Intrigued, I asked her how she did it. Turns out it's not a true consomme, but instead a purely crystal clear liquid that is a byproduct from macerated or gently, slowly cooked fruit. When I asked her about how she did she claimed she used a double boiler, putting fruit, and sugar or flavorings, in a metal bowl covered in plastic wrap on top and boiled for 1 hr, then removed and let stand (granted this last step she left out the first two times, the first time I tried on extern in front of the only Chef I've looked up to, scorched a pot and foggy liquid - never listen to your Baker friends!). Needless to say...her recipe was a bit off (though she swears by it), but eventually I got it down.

I realized that the appropriate way to do it is putting a pot of water on the stove, and simmer it, DO NOT let it boil. Place a metal bowl on top with the fruit inside (I added a liberal amount of sugar as well) covered tightly with plastic wrap. Double-boiler (and by that I mean SIMMERing water) for an hour to an hour and a half. The idea here is to make the berries (I used raspberries, washed, whole) sweat, not cook and boil. Once its sweated and a lot of liquid has seeped out remove it from the stove and let it sit for 30-45 minutes. Strain, gently, in a fine-sieve into a bowl.

Downward view into glass, iPhone underneath.

I still have a huge fascination with these awesome things. I haven't found a real use for them besides a sauce, but even then its much too thin for that. It's a beautiful liquid. A pint of raspberries yielded only about 1/4 C of liquid, but its really cool and very full of flavor. What can I say? These have kinda become a fetish of mine. Love them. If I had a stove of my own I'd be doing every weekend just for shits and giggles.

Apparently you can also make these simply by sprinkling sliced berries and fruits (pears, peaches, apples, plums) with sugar and letting them sit in a bowl in the refrigerator for several hours and you simply remove the berries and there's your liquid. The fruit is more palatable this way, certainly, but to me this is the cheating way...but that's just because I spent too much time perfecting the on-the-stove method.

By putting enough sugar with the berries you could essentially make a...fruit-flavored simple syrup that would be super intense. Just screams being poured into cocktails, ice teas, etc (none of those I drink...but it sounds good, right?).

Cooking with Soda!

Soda? Pop? Coke? Soda-Pop? Whatever the hell you call it (but I'd go with soda), I love cooking with it! The best, and I'd say nearly only way, to use them is to first reduce them into a slight syrup. With this you can add it to sauces, cakes, cookies, etc. However there is a catch. Sodas that use high-fructose corn syrup, when reduced, take almost...chemically, are much thicker, and taste more bland than all-sugar counter parts. The problem with this becomes finding these 'Throwback" sodas. Dr. Pepper is still produced in Dublin, Texas, Mountain Dew has recently come on the market, and the famous Mexican Coca-Cola can be found in most Mexican specialty stores but can also pop up in many places. There's many other varieties out there, like Fanta, Sprite, Pepsi, etc.

I've used soda reductions to flavor cakes, but the Dr. Pepper one I made tasted like sweet cherry not so much Dr. Pepper. Not that it was bad, just not Dr. Peppery. I also love using soda reductions as an ingredient in other sauces, especially sweet berry coulis for desserts.

Wylie Dufresne made this...thing with a Dr. Pepper reduction sauce.

One of the more ingenious ways I've seen them used, but never done myself, is as an ingredient in braises. Combine Coca-Cola with stock, and maybe some wine, and braise away the meat. The soda should add a nice sweetness that is otherwise unreachable in most braises.

I gave up soda recently in hopes of losing weight, gaining whiter teeth, and saving money. But cooking is another thing entirely. Eating my alcohol. Eating my soda. It's how I do.

Wines, Wines, Wines!

At the school's culinary arts program we are required to take a 3-week crash course in wines just before we go into what is called "Restaurant Row", or the collection of 12-week classes where students work in the restaurants on campus both as servers and cooks. When I got back from Christmas break, which was a joyous 9 days long, I was thrown into this course which is said to be the hardest class the school offers. First impression was that its not that hard...but whatever, that's not what this is about.

I don't drink, ever. Never have, still don't plan on it. In class we are required to spit the wines tasted but when some does slip down my throat it burns me like even bourbon would an alcoholic. All except for two.

Average 8-wine tasting at school. See that delicious one on the right? It's a white Muscat called Electra.

I have fell in love with two wines: Rieslings and sweet dessert wines (as of right now, white and black Muscats...I could drink bottles full). I have only had a chance to taste Rieslings once or twice, but Muscats three times now.

Rieslings are fantastic little acidic liquids of goodness. People say they taste all sorts of flowers and fruits, but I just taste a soft appley taste that cleans out my mouth and is completely refreshing. I know, I know, what riesling did I try you ask? Well I am speaking specifically about my favorite Riesling, Dr Loosen's from Mosel, Germany 2009. Have I tried others? Well no...but technically all Rieslings should have the same basic qualities just varying in flavors.

Dessert wines I have fallen in love with (except Ports, wtf is up with those alcoholic bitter bitches?). Muscats are to die for, and when given the opportunity to drink wines in class one day when paired with cheeses and chocolate, this is the only one that I happily drank. It's sweetness is so awesome, it smells sweet and whenever I tried it with the chocolate, it brought out the fruitiness of the wine that was awesome! By far my favorite so far has been Elysium, Quady, Madera, California 2007. First muscat I tasted and its actually a red dessert wine.

Here it is...mmm.

Now I know I've just ranted about 2 wines here...because they are the only ones I've enjoyed tasting. I love using wines in cooking, but school prevents that on my own time because I am currently underage, but wine transfers flavors of a dish. One of my favorites is to do a Coq au Vin, chicken braised in wine and stock, with a nice red wine (I believe I use Cabernets...but its been a wine).

We've talked about bridging wines (pairing a dish with the wine used in the dish), complementing, contrasting, etc. Without tasting it much myself there's not a lot I can say for that...maybe some day.

As of now, hand me Muscat or maybe even the famed Icewine and I'm a happy underage drunk...but only in class...where its legal...

Daniel meets the Habanero

My name is Wha? My name is Wha?

Spicy should be a flavor. I'm just saying. The whole trigeminal nerve thing is just weird and not right to me, but what do I know? I just cook. I love spicy foods: hot cheetos are to die for and are my go-to junk food (but why do they not exist in New York?), spicy Mexican food, Thai food, buffalo wings, love it. It was the first time I noticed that "pairings" were important in food. For example, sodas+spicy foods make the spicy worse...I still always eat spicy food with sodas, but its pretty much good. Ranch, sour cream, etc help cool things the fuck down. Do I resort to these? Nope. But I noticed it, and that's what matters in the long run.

So I made Poblano rellenos, poblano peppers stuffed with quinoa, black beans, cheeses (where the problem begins), nicely seasoned onions, all kinds of good stuff. The month before I went on my school's required Externship I made this dish for my mom and used Pepperjack cheese as well as some others. This time my brother had bought some habanero cheese and left a lot left, so I decided to use it. Y'know, use what you have? I added maybe 2 tablespoons to about 2.5 cups of filling...I tried it and all was well.

When we began eating this delicious dish that I LOVE, my mom made a heat comment but I brushed it off...actually, I grunted and pushed the sour cream towards her, never letting my eyes leave the TV. As we ate and ate, I felt the same nose running, sweat-inducing trigeminal nerve searing pain my mother was experiencing. I downed my soda and began dipping every bite in a dollop of sour cream, thinned with heavy cream - more dairy, damn it! I scraped my plate quickly and grabbed a bottle of water.

That was 5 hrs ago from writing this. My fingers are burning like they do after you burn yourself on molten stock (see recent blog entry) that...after-burn. My lips are numb even with the chap stick (which I will now burn with my newly purchased blow-torch, unless I want it to burn me later), and as I showered my face and body began taking on the burning sensation my hands feel as the capsaicin burned my body.

I've always hated the little bastards because I thought the flavor would be too intense and its more of a "Ooo look I added a whole, unchopped, unpierced habanero to my barbeque sauce." Yeah nice job douchebag, so you mean you added pesticides to it? How's that taste? Now I know its just painful and stupid...I'll stick to the disgusting pickled jalapenos in my mom's 'fridge before returning to this shit. The small bit that was left ended up in the garbage before I even baked the things off...good thing...

Triple Chocolate Cake, V.1.0

So after I posted the blog last night about needing to go run out and grab eggs...I didn't. My friend brought me eggs this morning and I remade it in no time flat, came out better this time I think.

When I went to Culinary school my mom never asked me to make anything in particular until my second year when I returned for Christmas, when she had a long list of things she had seen or eaten that she wanted me to recreate.

Among these was a chocolate cake with "that delicious chocolate ganache frosting." Luckily, at the school I go to we have a small 3-week crash course in Baking and Pastry techniques at the beginning of sophomore year. I pulled out my recipe for a simple genoise, French sponge cake, and began the break down from there.

I wouldn't just do a cake with chocolate ganache, bit boring to me (though my baking skills have suffered recently). Chocolate genoise soaked in Kahlua simple syrup, layered with chocolate Italian buttercream and then, and only then, covered in chocolate ganache. Sounds like a better idea to me…and who doesn't love a bit of Kahlua and Chocolate? Chef Carla Hall, from Top Chef and now The Chew fame, says she prefers to eat her alcohol, I agree.

So I started the cake portion and kahlua syrup on Monday and refrigerated it, thinking I would make the rest of its components Tuesday. Woke up Tuesday and got the recipe for buttercream and realized eggs had mysteriously left the house again. So I threw the cake in the freezer. Wednesday came around and I was determined to make it. So I pulled the cake from the freezer and set it on the counter. 14 hrs later, no eggs and I put the cake in the refrigerator. Thursday morning the cake was hard, dense, and disgusting...so once I got eggs from my hand-dandy BFFL I remade the cake, this time it came out much better. The syrup was still good, albeit weaker than I may have liked.

My friend and I busted out the buttercream in no time and I had assembled the four layer cake and gotten the ganache together. Would've liked the ganache to be a bit thicker, which I remedied in the recipes below. My mom tasted it and like the good mother she is looked at the cake, then back at me, smacked her lips obnoxiously and said "It's not very sweet". And then like the good friend I have is, mimicked saying, "No...it needs...some raspberry jam or something!". Four days of hard work and my selfish family and friends have nothing good to say. Contrarily, I enjoyed the cake for someone who's not a big chocolate fan and my mother later ate a small piece after our delicious Papa John's, a piece served underneath a scoop of ice cream which she claimed added needed sweetness. Go figure. Why am I spending $120k on my education?

This picture makes this cake look beautiful, I just wanna say.

Recipes after the break

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Ever had one of those weeks where you have too much to do and so little time?

On returning home I had plans to do a lot...a lot of different cooking. Including a variety of Asian dim sum dumplings to do and freeze for my mom's later use. Raviolis, cake, dinner every night, homework (hardest class at school is in 6 days, eeeek), scholarships, organization, going through junk in room, hanging out with old friends, shopping, breaking down Christmas decorations, and various other things to do to help my mom out around her house. Needless to say, I have 4 full days left and I think a lot of that will not be happening.

Homework is ALMOST done, thank god. Gonna be late night tonight trying to read another chapter and write notes, I think. Meeting up with my old culinary arts teacher for lunch tomorrow and watching a movie with my friend, which I may pawn off in favor of remaking the cake-cake part again (as I made it 3 days ago thinking I'd do it soon but time lost me again).

Need less time wasting and more time doing! Like getting my ass off this pitiful little blog and reading...or going through my room...or hell, running to Wal-Mart to buy more eggs and make that damned cake tonight!