Moving Day

I finally set up my permanent home, please update your links/feeds and point them to http://www.diningwithjulia.com/. Have a great sunday.

 

Pumpkin Gelato

I prefer gelato over ice cream. In the summer time in Switzerland, little gelato places are all over the place. I miss them. I do remember having ice cream when I was a child and as an occassional indulgence I do enjoy it. But if I had to choose, I’d go with gelato.

A few years ago,  I found an ice-cream machine at the godwill for a $3.00 and decided to get it. It works great and I’ve been making various frozen treats since then. In the summer time, Mango sorbetto is my favorite. The other day, I decided to make some pumpkin gelato. It turned out great, like a frozen pumpking pie. And it’s low-fat too boot.

• 1 3/4 cup milk
• 2 T cornstarch
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 can pumpkin
• 1 t powdered ginger
• 1 t cinnamon
• 1/2 t nutmeg
• 1/8 t cloves
• 1/4 t salt

Heat 1.5 cup of the milk with the sugar, pumpkin and the spices. Mix the cornstarch with the remaing milk. When the milk comes to a boil, add the cornstarch slurry. Bring back to a boil and turn of the heat. Cool down the mixture, either overnight in the fridge or in an ice bath. You want the mixture to have a temperature of 40 degrees (Fahrenheit). This step is important, otherwise your gelato will not freeze properly. Churn the mixture in your icecream maker for about 20 minutes. Enjoy.

 

Beef and Squash Red Curry

I decided the other day that I should use my pressure cooker more often. Having gotten an excellent deal on some tri-tip beef, I decided to make a beef and squash red curry in the pressure cooker. The result is excellent and it was done in a jiffy.

Here is the recipe.

Ingredients:

• 2-3 lbs tri-tip beef or other stew meat
• 1 can coconut milk
• 3T Red curry paste
• 4T Fish Sauce
• 3-4 Kaffir Lime Leaves or zest of 1 or 2 limes
• 1 Acorn Squash, cut into small pieces (cut the squash into slices along the “valley”, then use a peeler to peel it)
• 1 T sugar
• 1 red Bell pepper
• 2 cups basil/Thai basil

Method:

• Cut the beef into small, bite size pieces.
• Put into the pressure cooker and add 1.5 cups of water.
• If you are using tri-tip cook for 8 minutes, if you are using another cut of meat look up the proper cooking times. You want to fully cook the meat at this point.
• Turn of heat and use the natural method to release the steam.
• Remove the meat from the pot and discard the remaining water.
• Heat 1/2 can of coconut milk in the pressure cooker.
• Stir in 3 T red curry paste and 4 T fish sauce.
• Add the meat back into the pot and stir to coat the meat.
• Add 1 cup water, 1/4 can of coconut milk, kaffir lime leaves or lime zest and the cut-up pumpkin
• Pressure cook 3 minutes.
• Turn off heat and use the quick release method to release the pressure.
• Add 1 T sugar, the bell pepper and 2 cups basil leaves.
• Stir in the remaining 1/4 can coconut milk.

Serve with jasmin rice and a squeeze of lime.

Beef Red Curry

 

Yogurt

I made yogurt today. Actually, I started yesterday, but it did not finish until today. It’s great. I’m turning into greek yogurt as I’m writing this. I don’t think I’ll ever by yogurt again. Here in Tulsa I can get rBHG free milk at Braum’s and this way I can be sure to have the same for my yogurt. And it CHEAP, and even cheaper when comparing against store bought greek yogurt.

Here’s my result. I use the crockpot instructions from the crockpot lady, but may try other ways in the future.

yogurt

Have you ever made yogurt? How did it turn out? If you stopped making your own, why did you stop?

 

More Rye

I finally finished the Rye bread I made several weeks ago. That is one thing I love about rye bread. Stored in a bag in the fridge it will keep a long time. I knew I would have to bake more soon, so I readied the starter. Today I use the last of the bread for some french toast. Here is todays bread, it is awesome.

Rye Bread

My recipe was loosely based on the 40% Rye I use for the previous loaf. Here are my details:

• 180 g Medium Rye
• 10 g Starter
• Warm Water

• Combine the flour, starter and enough warmish water to make a thick batter, like a pancake batter
• Let rise overnight

• 275 g AP Flour
• 1/2 t yeast
• 1 t salt
• Warm Water

• Add flour, yeast, salt and water to the rye sour from the night before to create a medium dough
• Rest 45 min
• Stretch and fold
• Repeat rest, stretch and fold for 4 or 5 stretch and folds until you have a silky smooth dough
• Shape the loaf
• Preheat the oven
• Let rise 60 minutes
• Bake at 425 for 15 minutes, reduce to 400 and bake until internal temp is 205.

Let the bread cool before you dig in. I know it is hard to resist the smell of freshly baked bread, but rye breads are better the next day.

Of course, I could not wait and I ate a few pieces in the evening with just a little butter. This bread is great.

How did you arrive at your favorite bread recipe?

 

Meat Cooked with Cardamom

I love Indian Food. I love the complexity of flavors, I like the layering of spices and I love that it almost always goes well with Rice. After bread, rice is my favorite starch, actually, they may be tied.

In the summer, I don’t cook as much Indian. Cooking and eating stews in the warmer days just doesn’t seem right. But it doesn’t stop me from eating at the Indian Palace.

Today, I made elaichi gosht, meat cooked with cardamon. I used beef, as I did not have lamb on hand. The recipe is from 50 great curries of india. This book is my favorite Indian cookbook. There are pictures for every recipe, which is what I love. Some of the directions are a bit odd, but with some experience, any cook can recreate good curries. It does help to have access to authentic ingredients, but even those can be ordered on the internet these days.

I won’t post the recipe, as I followed the directions in the book and simply used beef instead of lamb. I served it with rice, chapati (store bought), and a cucumber raita.

Elaichi Gosht, rice, chapati and raita

It was a good day.

How do you satisfy your Indian food craving when it strickes?

 

Pad Thai

Last night Ryan and I had some friends over for dinner. I had decided that Pad Thai would make an enjoyable meal. I had used this recipe on other occasions with great results, so it was a no-brainer for tonight. We all agreed that today’s result was excellent. Here is a picture of my plate.

Pad Thai

 

Stir-fried shrimps with instant noodles

Since finishing my dissertation, I haven’t done much cooking. As you can see, I’ve done some backing, put not much cooking. I have cooked dinner, but nothing special or exciting. Yesterday for lunch, I decided to make a quick stir-fry and found the following at Chez Pim: Stir Fry with Shrimps and Instant noodles. It turned out great.

Here’s a picture of my lunch. Very fast, very easy recipe.

Stir-fry

 

Kisir and Keftedes

I have several friends from Turkey and when I lived in Missouri I was introduced to Kisir. Usually, one of those friends would bring a bowl of Kisir to any get-togethers we had. For those of you who don’t know what Kisir is, it’s a bulgur salad. I used to describe it as a spicy version of Tabouleh, but once I learned more about both of those salads, I realized that they are not that similar. Generally, I prefer Kisir over Tabouleh,  Ryan sees it the other way around.

Here’s a picture of the Kisir I made.

Kisir

Here’s “my” recipe. I emaild my friend Tulin for hers and as it is with all good cooks and recipes, she didn’t have any exact measurments, but rather only the ingredients she puts into it. I will describe my process for this Kisir. Compared to the once I’ve had, I really enjoyed my own.

• 1 cup Bulgur
• 3 T olive oil
• 1 T tomato paste
• 2 T mint
• 1 T spicy chili sauce
• 3 green onion, finely chopped
• 1 tomato
• 1 cucumber, small

• 1 cup Bulgur, cover with boiling water and cover to soften
• Cool the Bulgur and stir in 3 T olive oil
• Stir 2 T tomato paste into the bulgur
• Stir 1 T spicy chili sauce into the kisir
• Add 3 finely chopped green onion
• Add the tomato and cucumber and stir into the Kisir

Since the Kisir is a middle eastern disk, I decided to make some greek meatballs to go with it.  The Greek word for meatballs is Keftedes. I don’t have a good picture, nor will I include the recipe, as I followed the recipe from “The Foods of Greece” by Aglaia Kremezi.

 

Guten Morgen

It’s Sunday and that means liesurely breakfast and enjoying the day. In Germany, we enjoy eating a variety of broetchen, little breads, for weekend breakfast. Here in Tulsa, I have to make my own broetchen and so I only make one kind each weekend. Today I made these broetchen.

Broetchen

It’s a very simple recipe. I make the dough the night before and only bake the broetchen the next morning.

• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 Tsp yeast
• 1 7/8 cup AP flour

• combine the buttermilk, salt and yeast
• add the flour and combine into a slightly sticky dough
• rest the dough for 20 minutes
• 1 or 2 stretch and folds, if necessary adding some extra flour
• rest for 45 minutes
• another stretch and fold
• the dough should now feel silky smooth
• at this point you can either put the dough in the fridge or form the broetchen and then refrigerate
• The next morning, remove the dough
• shape the broetchen and let them rest for 15 minutes while preheating
• and bake at 400 for 15 minutes

Enjoy. Ryan and I enjoyed these broetchen and we will surely have them again. The reason they bake up so nicely is the large amount of yeast in the recipe. You could simply make the dough, knead a little and refrigerate, however, i think that flavor is improved by spending the extra time on the stretch and folds.

Let me know how yours worked out.