Bedtime for Garbanzos

We stumbled upon this recipe while perusing our way through the Joy of Cooking.  We received the Joy of Cooking as a wedding gift and thought, "Hmm...am I ever going to use this thing?"  Fast forward a couple of years, and the answer is "Yes!"  I wouldn't call it the greatest cookbook in the world, but it does have a nearly encyclopedic selection of standard recipes as well as some eclectic ones that are worth a try.  We discovered this recipe on a weeknight, and we just happened to have all of the required ingredients on hand.  Amazing!  It was really fast and easy to make, so we tried it again on the weekend and had company over. 

This recipe is called "Chicken Tagine," but the recipe doesn't actually call for a tagine (which is a type of pot common in Moroccan cooking).  Something tells me this recipe is not exactly authentic Moroccan, but it is tasty and has a lot of chickpeas (or garbanzos.)  It works out well in a dutch oven, but I can only imagine how much better it would be if made in a tagine!



Chicka Chicka, what? The cinnamon is really good in this.

mis en place, if you please

preparing the chicken: cutting into pieces and removing skin

The gloves aren't necessary, but if you realize you need a
clean hand... you can just pop the glove off.  Seems like otherwise I end up washing my hands like 4 different times cause I keep getting them chickeny.

Browning the chicken



Scraping up all of the brown bits at the bottom. 



The recipe called for water, but we used stock for more flavor.

Hearty, a little spicy, and vaguely soupy.  Great with crusty bread!

Tirami-so Complicated

So this blog has created a culinary feedback loop.  We're consciously feeling the need to be ambitious in our culinary endeavors so that they are more worthy of posting.  We both sense that this will lead to a melt down of the entire project, if left unchecked.  That being said, this weekend's project was tiramisu... from scratch.

Step 1: Making Mascarpone

The inspiration for this dish was a recipe that we read for homemade mascarpone cheese that looked surprisingly simple.  Mascarpone is a mild Italian cheese that is similar, but not quite the same as ricotta.  It's most popular use is definitely for tiramisu.

  This is definitely the first time we've ever made cheese.  While it ultimately was simple, there were a few hang ups.

These are the only two ingredients.   It is crucial to buy pasteurized, but NOT ultra-pasteurized, cream.  For this, we had to visit our local health food grocery store.

 Bringing the cream to 190º, as provided in the recipe, proved to be difficult.  Our glass bowl was so thick, it effectively insulated the cream and kept it from going above 168º.  After a very lengthy and frustrating period of time, we transferred the cream to a pot to heat directly.  That seemed to do the trick, with no adverse effects... that we could tell.

Into the cheesecloth to cool and separate the whey.

Step 2: Making the Ladyfingers

Like I said, this blog seems to cause us to try more and more adventurous steps.  The second main component of tiramisu (which you would typically just buy) is ladyfingers, a type of cookie.  We used the Joy of Cooking recipe for lady fingers.

The ingredients

The cake flour has to be sifted a total of three times. 

Whipping the cream.

Folding the cream and cheese into the yolks.

Piping the cookies onto the sheet.

Visual comparison between store-bought and homemade

Step three: Tiramisuing,

So, we spread this process over three days, which was a plus given the complexity of each step.  We made the mascarpone Friday evening, the ladyfingers Saturday afternoon, and then we finally put the whole thing together Sunday morning.  Here, again, we used a Joy of Cooking recipe, which is not available online.

The whole enchilada. Luckily, we had Marsala on hand from a previous endeavor.

A big old cup of espresso

Grating the chocolate... what a pain.

The egg/sugar mixture must be heated to 160º
Doesn't this set-up look all hi-tech?

Dunk the fingers in the rum/espresso.
That stuff makes a mean drink.

Add layer of mascarpone/egg/marsala mixture

Add layer of grated chocolate.  Then repeat the whole process for another whole layer.

After two layers, dust with cocoa powder and refrigerate!

The cross shot

The finished product.  Tiramisu, by the way, means "pick me up."  As in "pick me up some tiramisu from the store, why don't you, instead of taking 3 days to make it from scratch!"  The homemade mascarpone was easy enough... and probably saved us like $5.  The ladyfingers, while they turned out ok, were not worth the effort.

Fancy Pants Dining: Souffle Madness

On a recent trip to Dallas, I was taken to a Souffle restaurant in Dallas called Rise No 1.  Who knew such things existed.  Its near where Dubya lives, and apparently he and the missus are regulars.

It's a pretty cutesy restaurant on the inside.  Lots of bookshelves and knickknacks.  It also has sort of a faux forest.   

They had a pretty extensive menu of both savory and sweet souffles.  I ordered an escargot souffle, which ended up being a traditional escargot plate, topped with dollops of souffle and garlic butter.  Pretty awesome.  My companion and I then shared an apricot and a gran marnier souffle, but I only took a picture of the apricot one.

Release the Blacken!

We not only make our own tacos, but also our own animated .gif's!  Simmer, my pretties...simmer...

  

Mmmmmm, fish tacos are great, but to make them in the traditional fashion on a weeknight can be a bit cumbersome, what with the dredging and the frying and the what have you.  Overtime, we developed a fish taco recipe that's easy, fast, and tasty.  Instead of frying the fish, we blacken it and then put it in a taco with a semi-traditional fish taco dressing. You'll start to sense a theme here at Chez Venza: we took two previously existing recipes and then put them together.  

We like to keep frozen fish filets, shrimp, and chicken tenderloins on hand basically all the time.  They're relatively healthy (as if that's why we do it), and they all basically defrost fast enough that you only have to put them in the fridge the night before for mid-week dinners.

  So one fish recipe we tried is one for Blackened Tilapia, though you could probably use any white fish.   Very easy to prepare and make.  Nice and spicy.

After a couple of dinners of this we put it in a tortilla with a traditional fish taco dressing.  I'm having trouble finding the recipe on foodnetwork.com, but its basically sour cream, mayo, cilantro, lime juice and some of Emeril's BAM seasoning.  

The "before" picture

Aye, there's the rub.

As you can see, a very subtle seasoning

       The blackening:  This is done at relatively high heat and results in a fair amount of excess spice burning in the pan.  As you might imagine with a blackened dish, it can be tough to tell when its burning TOO much.  

 Another Chez Venza tradition: when we're making crunchy tacos (which we did recently) we buy this weird broccoli cole slaw to use instead of lettuce.  Lettuce is a pain in the ass on tacos.  This stuff keeps longer and has a better crunch.  For tonight's recipe, we mixed it in with the sauce to make a tangy, spicy slaw.

See?  Slaw!

The "after" picture:  crunchy, creamy and spicy!

We also served it with this delightful salad of arugula topped with green bell peppers, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, croutons, Parmesan and a homemade parsley vinaigrette, but come on... who blogs about salad?  Please.

To Brie or not to Brie? There is no question.

Suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

 Tonight's dinner was inspired by two sources:  the Latasca trailer truck in Austin and the Food Network's latest star, the Sandwich King.  According to the Sandwich King, it's OK to have a sandwich for a meal (though my husband remains skeptical.)  We have plenty of leftover soup, so I was looking for something simple and not too filling to go with it.  A sandwich seemed like a perfect choice! (though it turned out to be plenty filling).

So, the Sandwich King made a panini with fig sauce that sounded really good.  While we weren't really  interested in making that specific sandwich, it reminded us of this other sandwich we had at the Latasca trailer that had ham, fig, and brie.  Mmmmm...it was delicious!  And seriously, how can you pass up the opportunity to eat that much brie at one time?

The process itself was quite simple.  We started with some good ciabatta bread, fig preserves, brie (naturally), black forest ham, and arugula for color and spice.  We used fig preserves, but next time we might try to make our own fig sauce.  Since we short-cutted on the fig sauce, it only took like 15 minutes to whip up dinner.  Just 15 minutes until glorious brie heaven...

The usual suspects



Now bring us some figgy-brie, and bring it right now!



Ham and arugula (have you seen the price of that stuff?)

For the panini part, we used a grill pan (but really any old pan will do).  We brushed the top and bottom of the bread with olive oil, then placed a cast-iron skillet on top to weigh it down (plus an extra jar from the pantry just for kicks).  After a few minutes, flip and repeat.  The oil gets the bread nice and crispy and helps the brie melt in all its deliciousness.

Lone sandwich prepares itself to be grilled...

Homemade panini press

Flip halfway through.  Flip it for real.

Oooey gooey deliciousness

We're choppin' Broccoli

Also, garlic, salt, and pepper

Will we ever run out of barely funny titles for posts?  Who can say.    This is a recipe for cream of broccoli soup.  We had some leftover broccoli, chicken stock, and cream... why not make soup?  Its a decent way to use up ingredients that might otherwise go bad; the soup itself, typically, freezes really well.  So even though you've made a preposterous amount of soup for two people... it just means you get good leftovers in a month or two!  Plus you totally get to bust out homemade fancy soup for guests who are all like, "Wha.....!?"

 

So, we looked around at four or five recipes on the web.  This is something we do a lot.  If you look at enough different recipes for the same dish, you begin to get a feel for what is necessary and what is discretionary.  If we see a recipe that looks suspiciously beginner-level, we like to see if we can find the "authentic version;" chances are that we can add some of those elements to the dish.

 We found two soup recipes online that sounded good and proceeded to take the best parts of each and put them together in my own recipe.  The originals are here and here.

We mostly followed the food network recipe, but we added some technique and ingredients from the epicurious version.

Here it is the new Chez Venza version:

Ingredients

• 4 tablespoons butter.
• 1 1/2 pounds fresh broccoli, florets and stems separated. Stems chopped roughly.
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1 carrot, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/2 tsp dry tarragon
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 4 cups homemade chicken stock
• 1/2 cup cream

Directions

Melt 4 tablespoons butter in heavy medium pot over medium-high heat. Add broccoli stems, onion, carrot, salt and pepper and saute until onion is translucent, about 6 minutes. Add the garlic and tarragon and cook for 1 minute.  Add the flour and cook for 1 minute, until the flour reaches a blonde color. Add the florets.  Add stock and bring to boil.

Simmer uncovered until broccoli is tender, about 15 minutes. Pour in cream. Puree the soup with a blender or food processor. Add salt and pepper, to taste

I liked the idea of carrot in the soup.  Adds body and sweetness.

One recipe made it clear that the stems need to cook longer than the florets.
Broccoli deforestation upsets the Na'vi. 

Mixing and cooking the flour.

Added the florets just before the simmering

Simmer, my pretties!

This blog is giving our processor a workout.

After puree and addition of cream.

 The recipes called for cream, before pureeing.  The problem with that is that if the soup is too thin, which you probably can't tell until you puree it, then you cant really thicken it up by simmering.  Cream doesn't take well to simmering.

Kiss the cheese with the broiler

The cheese was good as a garnish.  Added nice flavor and a messy texture, which is kind of soul-warming.  Both of us were wary of making a straight-up "cheese soup," which always just seemed like a fancy way of saying "queso with broccoli."

We're thinking next time we do this, if we do it again, we'll roast the broccoli first.  Roasted broccoli has become our favorite way to prepare broccoli, and we know the roasting process will add a more intense layer of flavor.