Revisiting Turkey and Farewell Brunch

A big bowl of spanikopita filling.

Kai with cornstarch, at the controls on the yogurt chicken.

Samuel giving me a sweet baby smile.

The lovely southern-style spread at Bill and Kaye's for Kai's farewell brunch.

Boiled, not fried

You know how all those cracker and snack labels now make a point of saying the product is "baked, not fried"? If not, just ignore my post title.

I remember once getting into an argument with someone about bagels. I had heard they were boiled before being baked and so I said so. The other person--whom I'm not naming because I truly can't remember who it was--insisted I was crazy for thinking bagels were boiled instead of baked.

Anyhow. They are boiled. And then baked. And I made two batches in the last couple of days!

My dear friend, Kai, is moving to Turkey in a couple of months. For her going-away brunch, I wanted to make something that I'm assuming she won't find in Urgup or whatever little place she and her family of 6 endeavor to go. Also, Kai, is one of those special people for whom it's not unusual to drop in on and find a homemade crusty loaf of French bread sitting plateless on her kitchen table next to a vase of fresh flowers or a blooming dogwood branch. That's Kai.

So, I was inspired to take a turn kneading the dough to honor her... and so I could enjoy some hot chewy-chocolatey goodness myself.

 To make these bagels, I followed a recipe in my beloved Mennonite cookbook that isn't sold anywhere I could find online, and therefore, cannot be linked :(. The recipe calls for:

3 cups flour
1 T yeast
2 T sugar
1 cup warm water
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
Any toppings or mix-ins desired

Proof the yeast in the water with the sugar. Once it's frothy, add the dry ingredients and mix well. Then knead on floured surface for 10 minutes. Let the dough rise for 40 minutes. Then, divide into 8 balls, poke holes with your finger and twirl them on the counter to enlarge the hole. Let the bagels rise for another 20 minutes while getting a big pot of boiling water going and your oven heated to 400 degrees. Boil in batches of 2 or 3 for a "couple of minutes," flipping once. Transfer boiled bagels to a greased cookie sheet and back for 15 minutes until golden.

 The first time I tried this, I pretty much followed the recipe. I added cranberries to four bagels and mini chocolate chips to the other four. They turned out a little lighter and fluffier than most bagels, probably because I made them on a nice warm, dry, draftless day. Yeast; you know how moody those little critters can be. It's like they have Seasonal Affective Disorder. I liked the results, but I found that much of my mix-ins popped off in the water while boiling. So the second time I made the bagels, I made some changes:

First, I skipped the cranberries, and just went for the chocolate, which I mixed in before letting the dough rise the first time. Next, I made 16 bagels instead of 8. Also, the weather wasn't as nice. In fact, the weather was everything it shouldn't be when you do yeast baking: Windy, wet and overcast. I tried to warm up my kitchen by turning on the oven early, but the bagels just didn't rise as much as the previous batch. Another change I made was that I dipped the boiled bagels in cornmeal before putting them on my cookie sheet, because even though the first sheet was generously greased, the bagels were cemented on there! The mini bagels were chewier and had a more marbled chocolate effect because some of the chips melted as I kneaded the dough. They were also quite a bit uglier because they lacked the smooth surface of their predecessors. I think when I make them again for Saturday's brunch, I'll still stick with mini bagels, but I will let them rise longer after the bagels are formed. Also, I think I'll sprinkle the cookie sheet with the corn meal, as it really helped with the sticking.

Homemade focaccia

I got this recipe out of my 3 and 4 ingredient cookbook. Just want to post the photo now that the boys are sleeping. Will put up the instructions later.

Another cyberfridge cleanout...

Baozi. I promised I'd write the recipe last time I posted about these, but I never did. I'm gonna have to make another empty promise...
EDIT 5/7/10: OK,I actually found my chicken-scratch recipe for the baozi dough:

3 cups flour
2 tsp sugar
2 tsp yeast (or one packet)
1 cup warm water, give or take a teaspoon
1 Tbs vegetable oil
1 large egg

To make dough:
Combine flour, pinch of salt in a bowl. Make a well in the flour and pour in oil and beaten egg. Proof yeast with sugar in water. Once it's foamy, pour into the well and stir, gradually incorporating flour into liquid in the well.

Knead into a soft, but not terribly sticky, dough. If it's stiff, add a few drops of water at a time until it's soft. If it's sticky, add a tsp flour at a time until it's not.

Let it rise in a bowl, covered with platic wrap and placed in a warm, dry, draft-free spot. (I put mine on top of the stove.)

After an hour, punch down the dough. Let it rise again until it's double the original size.

Divide the dough in half, then each half into half... etc. until you've got 16 balls of dough.

Starting with one dough ball, press or roll the ball into a flattened circle, about 1/4-inch thick. Scoop one tablespoon of filling into the center and then pinch the edges together to close, giving it a little twist to seal. Place bun seam-side down in a steamer basket and steam for 10 to 15 minutes.

As for the filling, I'm afraid I usually just wing it.
So, try using the following ingredients to taste:
1 lb ground turkey, crumbled and cooked with
chopped sauteed cabbage
shredded sauteed carrot
chopped sauteed onion
a few splashe soy sauce
a few drops vinegar
generous amount of garlic/garlic powder
pinch cinnamon or five spice
a couple spoonfuls sugar
a few shakes salt
pepper
a dusting of cayenne or chili powder

You'll probably have filling left over. So, you'll just have to make some more buns!

Veggie Quiche Muffins. It's pastry made from scratch, filled with veggies, cheese and eggs. I made these for Joe to take to work, as I've been on a campaign to actually feed him.
On the opening day of the downtown farmers market, I bought some beautiful barrel-shaped radishes... from which I made baked radish chips that got eaten so fast that I don't have any photos. :-(
Morroccan Carrot soup... so delicious I was calling it a carroty butter cookie in a bowl. I ate it for breakfast it was so good. From Bon Apetit, which is just barely growing on me. I'm going to post the recipe as soon as I post the baozi recipe, if you know what I mean.
Finally, something I didn't cook: Tried some new specials at Da Vinci's while my mom was visiting. The foreground has lobster ravioli with sage and butter sauce. I love sage with pasta.

Anyone still out there?

I don't really deserve to have any followers at this point since I've not been posting for the last few weeks. We have been eating... and I have been cooking. Just not a lot of things that I've been proud of lately. Tonight we had a clean out the kitchen soup and some yogurt bread along with some perfumey-sweet cantaloupe.
The soup:
1 lb chicken thighs, baked and cubed
1 can Italian style tomatoes
1 can sweet corn, juice included
1 can garbanzos, drained
1 sweet potato, peeled and cubed
1/2 cup mixed veggies from previous meal
water, garlic powder, oregano, canola oil to taste

The bread:
1 cup yogurt mixed with 1/4 cup oil
2 1/2 cups flour
1 cup oats
2 tsp sugar
4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 beaten egg for brushing top

Mix dry, then form a well for wet ingredients and blend until evenly moistened. Knead for 8 minutes on a floured work surface.

Bake at 375 degrees for 40 minutes in a nonstick or greased loaf pan.

Baozi from scratch

My college roommate and good friend, Pamela, introduced me to baozi during one of the weekends when I went home with her (which was most weekends). We'd usually leave late on Friday night after the Christian fellowship we attended on CWRU's campus. Once we arrived at her Westlake home, we'd bypass the upstairs, "American kitchen" and head down to the basement "Chinese kitchen" for a second dinner.

Now I'm half Chinese-- but before undergrad, my main experience with Chinese food was Chicago's chinatowns and my Cantonese grandma's cooking-- the key gastronomic memories being various stir fried dishes, Cantonese bbq ribs (the most ginormous barbarian-sized ribs you've ever seen, crusted in a magenta sauce), fried smelt caught by my dad and uncles from Lake Michigan (we'd eat the whole fish, bones and all), and copious amounts of steamed white rice washed down with some off-brand of orange-aide or pop. Yes, I'm from the Midwest and we say "pop." But I've really gotten off topic.

Pamela is also half Chinese, but her relatives are from Taichung, Taiwan. Her mom, Vicki, is an excellent and inventive cook and there was always several dishes waiting in that basement kitchen. Maybe there'd be beef curry with potatoes and carrots, stew with tea eggs, marinated firm tofu or spicy squid. But one of my all-time favorites were the steamed, meat and veggie-filled buns or baozi.

Years later, when Joe and I moved to Taiwan, we had a dumpling and baozi shop below our apartment, but I never thought they were as good as the buns we ate in the Poland's basement kitchen. The last time I had Vicki's baozi was in August 2001, when I got married-- in the Poland's backyard. I don't know how many she made, but I seem to recall big bowls filled with them. I guess my mind was on a few other things, so the details are foggy :-)

I had a hankering for them again the last couple weeks. So I decided to make some.
Joe's telling me to go to bed (I haven't been sleeping much lately because of Stephen's new and very bad wake-every-hour-after-1-a.m. habit. So I'm gonna post the picture now and post the recipe tomorrow.

The last bits of summer

Joe and I rarely get to eat together because of Stephen's penchant for not sleeping. But we did get this meal in: Pizza with the last of the garden basil, parsley and tomatoes. Though the weather is still warm here in Kentucky, most all of my plants are dead... haven't had a whole lot of time to tend to them :-( Also had a nice salad with romaine, mushrooms and roasted red bell pepper with balsamic vinaigrette.
And a few bites of fall... Joe got me a pumpkin bagel from the Einsteins on post. I LOVE Einsteins Bagels. This is donut country, but bagels were a big deal when I was in college and I definitely prefer them to their fluffier counterparts. I used to stop at the Einsteins on Case's campus just before church on Sundays to get a hot blueberry bagel. The blueberries actually taste like blueberries, not just flecks of bluish mystery substance like the bagels you get in the grocery store. Anyhow, I'm glad Fort Campbell has a bagel shop.

Individual chocolate banana bread puddings

I was feeling frugal and decided to make a bread pudding to get rid of some old dinner rolls and a spotty banana before we go on our trip this weekend.
This is a Rachel Ray recipe that I didn't follow very well:

12 slices of white bread, toasted (I used the dinner rolls and two whole wheat white heels)
3 bananas (I used one fresh, 2 frozen)
1 T butter
2 T brown sugar
1 cup milk (I used half soy, half joe's milk that's about to expire)
2 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
10 oz chocolate bar, broken (I used cocoa powder, and what few chocolate chips were left in the bag)

Caramelize butter and sugar, add bananas. Whip eggs, milk, vanilla. Toss bread with mixture. Let set 10 minutes. Add banana mixture. Add chocolate.

Scoop into muffin cups, bake for 25 minutes at 350.

They came out a little firm... I would have cooked them slightly less or added more liquid for a gooey-er texture.

New restaurant, new car, new news

Last weekend Joe and I drove up to Effingham, IL, to meet my parents for lunch at Firefly restaurants. I had the massaman curry noodle bowl, which was big enough to provide two meals of leftovers. We also gobbled up a "hummus snack" appetizer... the pita was warm and tender, the veggies fresh, the hummus thick and homemade, and the tiziki and swedish mustard were really nice touches. We all really liked the Swedish mustard with the hummus. Sorry, no photos of that, we ate it too fast.

The reason we met up with my folks was to get our new car... a 30th birthday present from my very generous parents. Having a second car has already been a great blessing because even though we work at the same place, it always seems we need to go in two different directions.

One of the places we took the car to was the doctor to get my first ultrasound. So ...the first Parrino baby is a boy!
Here's some interesting grainy photos. A little scary, but I like the open mouth picture (already waiting for his first real taste of something) and his little foot.


Oh, and of course we brought back lots of goodies from the chicago burbs. This is a cinnamon loaf from Jarosh's bakery.

Cinnamon success

I had a craving for cinnamon rolls... so I made some. Based on an Allrecipes.com recipe.

2 1/2 cups flour
1 pkg yeast
3/4 cup warm water
1/4 cup sugar (brown probably would have been better)
3/4 tsp salt
1 room temp egg
cinnamon, sugar, butter for filling

Dissolve yeast in water for 10 minutes. Add yeast to sugar, salt, egg and 1 cup flour. stir until blended, then add the rest of the flour, 1/2 cup at a time. Once it's mixed, knead the dough for 8 minutes on a lightly floured surface. Let it rest 10 minutes, covered with a damp towel. Butter an 8 X 8 pan. Roll out the dough into a large rectangle about 1/4 inch thick. Rub on the butter. Shake on the cinnamon, and sugar until it is well coated, then roll it up along the longer edge. Cut into 12 pieces... or 13 like me and cram them into the greased pan.

Let them rise 45 minutes, covered, in the oven or another warm draftless place.

Then bake uncovered for 15-20 minutes at 350.

I think I over cooked mine slightly.

Schlabach's Bakery

Life Lesson

Something I've learned from my dear parents, Brad and Mamie Tilsch: Travelling means finding the best food an area has to offer and buying lots of it.

Yesterday morning (after our YMCA workout, of course) Mom, Dad and I drove out to Schlabach's Bakery in Guthrie, Ky.; a Mennonite store offering amazing pecan rolls and other delightful ways to counteract a morning YMCA workout.

Which angel food cake did we buy for my dad's birthday? They had plain, lemon, strawberry and chocolate chip.

Flatbreads

Forget the yeast, try an unleavened loaf
Taste Bud Travels
Emily Parrino

(My food column for Wednesday, Sept. 27)
The morning before I was born, my mom kneaded and baked 12 loaves of bread.
As far as I know, she hasn’t made bread from scratch since 1978. Sadly, she also failed to pass on the bread-baking genes to her daughter.
I’ve tried several times to fashion a nice crusty loaf of my favorite comfort food. But in my experience yeast is a finicky organism. It doesn’t like to sit on the shelf for too long. It catches cold if there’s a draft, or languishes if the water is too warm. And if the climate isn’t to its liking, yeast goes on strike, reveling in your misery as would-be dinner rolls take on the consistency of zwieback.
Lately I’ve been experimenting with unleavened flatbreads. Consider them comfort foods beyond the comfort zone of western cooking. And take comfort — these breads need no yeast, just common ingredients.

Cong You Bing (Pronounced tsong-yo-bing)
Translated green onion pancake, cong you bing is a popular savory snack in China and Taiwan. I learned to make them from a roommate when I was an undergrad in Cleveland, Ohio.
There are several variations, such as adding sesame seeds in place of the onions or spreading scrambled egg on one side of the cake before frying. But this is the basic recipe.

Cong You Bing
1 cup flour
1/2 scant cup warm water
4 small green onions, chopped
Salt to taste
Sesame or other vegetable oil

To make the dough, combine flour and water in a mixing bowl. Stir until a soft dough is formed. Add a little flour if the dough is too sticky. Flour your hands and knead the dough until it is smooth and elastic. This may take some elbow grease, but it’s worth it. Divide the dough into four balls and set aside three of them, covered with a wet paper towel.
Roll the ball out with a rolling pin to the thickness of a tortilla. Dab the round with sesame oil and sprinkle green onions and salt on top. Then roll the dough around the toppings into a tube. Roll the tube between your hands, stretching it gently until it becomes a longer rope. If the oinions begin to pop through, you’ve rolled too far.
Next, coil the rope into a cinnamon roll shape, tucking the outer end of the rope under the coil. Dust the dough with a little flour and use a rolling pin to flatten to a pancake about 1/8-inch thick.
Transfer the pancake to a generously oiled frying pan over medium heat. When the cake bubbles and turns golden brown, flip and cook until the other side bubbles.
If you want, you can stack cong you bing and slice them into quarters for easier snacking. I’ve also heard from friends in Taiwan that these flatbreads can sub for pizza crusts in a pinch.

Chapati (Pronounced cha-pa’-tee)
I’ve yet to travel to India, though conversations with Indian friends have placed it high on my wish list. Until then, I can enjoy making and eating chapati — a mainstay of traditional Indian meals. My friend and favorite Indian chef, Alina, taught me how to make them when I was a grad student in Champaign, Ill. She makes chapti and other Indian breads fresh each day.

Plain chapati
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon oil
1/4 cup water
Pinch salt

Stir oil into salt and flour. Add water until a firm dough is formed. Divide the dough into 6 pieces and knead each ball several minutes until it’s smooth and elastic. Roll out one piece as thin as you can.
Heat a frying pan (avoid Teflon if possible) on high heat. Place the chapati in the pan and wait for it to bubble and form brown spots, then flip. As the second side cooks, lightly press the edges with a spatula (or your bare hands if you’re brave like Alina) and rotate the chapati in the pan until it poofs up with steam (similar to a pita bread). You will need to have the pan on high heat for it to puff up.
Chapati are great for scooping up curries or dal — a simple lentil stew.

Emily Parrino is a New Era copy editor. Her column runs once a month.

Powwow

Powwow Pigout
Joe and I split some pumpkin fry bread with honey. I've heard about the nutritional deficit of fry bread... but it was actually less oily than funnel cakes. Plus it was PUMPKIN!

The event was at the Trail of Tears Park, behind the New Era where we work. The annual Powwow is a kind of a native American expo. They have lots of native knick-knacks for sale, lots of incense burning and lots of entertainment.
Matt was covering the event, Joe and I were just there to enjoy.

These men beat drums and sang a haunting, howling song as others danced in the central grassy arena.

Chapatis!

Alina and Lily will appreciate these... Chapati is a traditional unleavened Indian bread that goes well with dips and sauces. I made them tonight for dinner with a packet of "Egg Gravy" that our neighbor gave us. The package says that "egg lovers the world over have given this preparation a nod." Kind of a different dish, but I guess I'll give it a nod too. :-)



My chapati recipe -- roughly:
1 heaping cup flour
1/2 cup hot water
1 T oil
salt, pepper, spice of choice

Kneed the dough... should be soft and elastic, not sticky. Separate into 8 balls, then roll out to tortilla-thinness.
Add a tiny bit of oil to pan, let pan get smoking hot (medium high). Drop one chapati in at a time. When it bubbles, move it about so it bubbles evenly. Then flip before it burns and let it cook on the other side.