Carrot cupcakes

Here's the continuation of what I did with carrot pulp. I made carrot cupcakes. I would have to say, I really liked the cupcakes more than the cookies. With or without the frosting, these cupcakes are tasty. Also from King Arthur Flour.

Recipe:
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
¼ cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon ground ginger
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup golden raisins (optional)
1/3 cup diced walnuts (optional)
2 large eggs
3/4 cup water
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 cup grated carrots, lightly packed; about 2 medium-large carrots

1. Add all of the wet ingredients in a mixing bowl--the eggs, water, and oil--and mix by hand or with an electric mixer on medium. By the way, if you want to frost your cupcakes, take out your cream cheese and butter to let them reach room temperature. It helps to break them into smaller pieces.

2. Add all of the other ingredients, minus the carrots. Mix until combined.

3. Stir in the carrots.

4. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

5. Line your cupcake tins with paper and fill the papers, leaving 1/2 inch room at the top for expansion. (That makes me think about Starbucks...would you like room?).

6. Bake for about 12-14 minutes. To test if the cupcakes are done, insert a toothpick, knife, or fork. If it comes out clean, the cupcakes are done.

7. Take the tins out of the oven. Turn the cupcakes on their sides to let steam escape, or else the bottoms can become soggy. Let them completely cool to room temperature before frosting.


Cream cheese frosting: this made too much frosting for me, because I like my cupcakes with only a little frosting. I would say cut this by 1/3 or 1/2 and you'll be good.

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
one 8-ounce package cream cheese
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 1/2 to 3 1/2 cups powdered sugar (aka Confectioner's sugar), sifted.
milk or cream to adjust consistency of frosting, if necessary

1. Using an electric mixer, beat the butter and cream cheese (make sure they are room temperature) on high until mixed. Add the salt and vanilla.

2. Add 2 1/2 cups powdered sugar in small batches. Beat on low at first, otherwise the sugar will go flying. Increase the speed to high until well mixed. Add more sugar if you want the frosting to be thicker/sweeter.

3. Frost your cupcakes.

Delicious!

Carrot Cookies

So one of the doctors whom I work with recently received a juicer as a gift from a patient. I wish I got gifts that expensive! Anyway, he went and bought lots of fruits and vegetables to make juice out of, including carrots. When I was using the juicer, I was sad about all of the carrot pulp that I was throwing away. The next day at work when I make more juice, I decided to take the carrot pulp home. I made carrot cookies and carrot cupcakes (see other post) with them. Since the juice was already extracted from the carrots, I added a few splashes of milk to make sure it didn't turn out dry.

This recipe is from King Arthur Flour (yes, I use this website a lot), which they call Take-10 Super Cookies.

Recipe:

1/2 cup toasted nuts
1/3 cup canola oil
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 large egg
2 tablespoons (1 1/2 ounces) boiled cider (for great flavor; substitute maple syrup or dark corn syrup, if desired)
1 cup shredded fresh carrots
1/2 cup dried cranberries, packed
1/2 cup semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips
1 cup King Arthur White Whole Wheat Flour, organic preferred
1 1/2 cups quick rolled oats

1. Chop your nuts and toast in a pan on a stove on medium heat for about 3 minutes. You could also toast in an oven or toaster oven, but I have a tendency to forget about them and end up burning the food.

2. Mix oil, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, spices, salt, vanilla, syrup, and egg by hand or with an electric mixer on medium or high until smooth.

3. Mix in the carrots, cranberries, chips, and nuts until combined. Then the flour and beat on low until mixed.

4. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Grease 2 cookie sheets or line with parchment paper (I used a silicon baking sheet).

5. Add in the oats and stir until mixed.

6. Drop the 1-tablespoon sized balls of dough onto the pans. It should make about 30 cookies. I made 12 huge cookies instead. If you make larger-sized cookies, make sure to press them until the dough is even. These cookies don't spread out much in the oven, so you can space them pretty close together, like an inch apart.

7. Bake for about 12-15 minutes. They will be soft, so let them cool completely on the pans before moving them.


They were pretty healthy, minus the amount of sugar in them. The cranberries became slightly juicy, which contrasted nicely with the toasted nuts. I didn't use quick rolled oats....I tried using steel cut oats. The result: the oats were not cooked all the way. All in all, a pretty good cookie.

Stewed Sausages

So this week has been a great week for quick easy meals! Here is number two from the last week after the salmon was made. It was great and super easy to make, the hardest part is really just chopping up the veggies. Here is how it goes:

Ingredients:

4 large Italian Sausages (about 1 lb total)

2 tablespoons of olive oil

3 large bell peppers of any color

1 onion (white or red)

2 jalapeños

Oregano, Parsley, Thyme, Salt and Pepper for seasoning

1 cup dry red wine

1 tablespoon of butter

1/2 bag of Trader Joe's Israeli couscous

1 1/2 cup of chicken broth

3 tablespoons of butter

Start by putting your sausages on a skillet to cook while you chop your veggies. You will just let them go getting nice and charred on all sides.

Also start your couscous, by following the instructions on the bag or putting the chicken broth and butter in a pot to boil.

Once you have your veggies all diced you will soft them in a skillet. To dice the veggies refer to Tammy's picture in a previous post on how to dice an onion. For bell peppers just slice them in half, and remove the inner core. Then slice some long strips of bell pepper length wise, take a handful of bell pepper strips and slice them horizontally in about 1/2 inch intervals. You can just slice the jalapeño horizontally. Add your oil to the skillet and heat, then add your veggies. It will look like this:

Your sausages should look like this when they are done.

Here is your butter and chicken broth.

Your veggies will take about 15 minutes to soften, which is perfect because uncooked sausages take about 15-20 minutes to cook and become stewed. When your veggies are done they will look like this. While your veggies are stewing you should also have a boiling pot of chicken broth. Add your couscous to the pot and let it cook for about 10 minutes.

Then add your red wine and let it cook for about 2 minutes with the sausages, then add the butter and cook until melted.

Put everything together and eat!

YUM!

Ragu

So I was watching TV and I saw a recipe for ragu. I've never made ragu before, but it looked interesting and look good on TV. This recipe is complicated and long, which is why I wanted to try it out. In the end, I thought it tasted good but was not worth the effort, haha.

Ragu: serves 10-12
From foodnetwork.com

6 ounces bacon, cut into 1-inch pieces (About 5 strips)
2 onions, finely chopped
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
3 whole cloves
1 whole star anise
3 stalks celery, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 cloves garlic, sliced
8 ounces ground beef
8 ounces ground pork
1 1/4 cups white wine
3/4 cup evaporated milk (not to be confused with condensed milk, the sweet stuff)
3 cups beef broth
1 ounce dried mushroom, chopped
56 ounces diced tomatoes
1 tablespoon oregano
2 teaspoons dried basil
2 teaspoons dried majoram
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon ketchup
1 teaspoon Worchestershire sauces
1 1/3 cups parmesean cheese


1. Cook the bacon on medium low in a big pot. Remove the bacon from the pot and add the onions, salt and pepper. Cook until the onions are carmelized, about 30 minutes. Place the anise and cloves in a spice ball, cheesecloth, or cotton sachet, and add to the pot.


2. Add the celery and garlic, and cook until the celery is soft, about 20 minutes. Remove the spices.



3. Meanwhile, brown the meat in a separate pan. Cook the meat in batches otherwise your meat might get soggy. Drain as much of the oil as you can, and add the meat to the big pot. Add 1/2 cup white wine to the pan you cooked the meat in and scrape any brown bits off. Add the wine/scrapings into the pot.

4. Add 1/2 cup white wine, the chopped mushroom, evaporated milk, and beef broth. Reduce the heat to low and let it simmer for a total of three hours.


So, at this point, something happened to my sauce. It seems like the evaporated milk curdled, because I saw white flecks in there. Other people who have tried out this recipe said the same thing. So in the end the sauce didn't look appetizing but it tasted okay.

5. While the big pot is simmering, heat oil in the other pan you were using or a medium pot. Add in the sliced garlic and cook for a few seconds. Add the canned chopped tomatoes and spices. Let the water cook off of the tomatoes, about 30 minutes.

6. Add 1/4 cup white wine, the tomato paste, ketchup, and Worchestershire sauce. Cook the tomatoes for an additional 25 minutes to caramelize the sugars. Stir occasionally. Then add the tomatoes to the big pot.


Serve with bread or spaghetti!

Another cake

So my mom's birthday was on 4/20 (she's 51 now). We celebrated her birthday the weekend before the actual day because my sisters were in town. I decided to try making the Asian Fruit Basket Cake again. I used a different cake recipe from http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/golden-layer-cakebr-recipe. I think I overbaked it a little bit, because the cake was a little dry. It tasted really good the next day though!

My mom always lets my cousins blow out the candles. It's hilarious to watch my youngest cousin Dylan because he sways side to side when people sing the Happy Birthday song.


Lots of layers... I got help from Lionel and my sisters with decorating. I baked the cake in two round pans. Lionel sliced the cakes into two layers each. The strawberries in the filling are chopped into small cubes and mixed with whipped cream. Then we just built the cake, frosted the outside with more whipped cream, and topped with strawberries.

Salmon teriyaki

Salmon Teriyaki has and will probably always be one of my favorite things that my mom cooks. This has always been for as long as I can remember one of those iconic Sunday night dinners at home where my mom magically whips the sauce together hours before dinner and lets the salmon steak sit for a couple hours before my dad pops them on the grill. Then she will microwave the rest of the marinade to have as a sauce (mostly because she's got sides cooking on every burner of the stove). My dad and I inevitably end up licking our plates with my mom yelling at one of us. Now my brother eats it too, thankfully. When he was younger this was the recipe that fooled him into thinking we were eating steak, something he had just learned to like. We all heavily insisted that he was wrong but he threw a fit until he got to have some. Immediately his face was all askew in disgust and that was the end of salmon and steak for him for a long long time. I don't marinate my salmon as long as my mom does, nor am I quite content with my sauce, but in the end it is still finger-licking good. I will continue to work on it over the months, but at least I know that I can easily have a little piece of home any night of the week, which is quite a relief when work still gives me it own wonderful sort of knot in my stomach. I didn't even have any ginger tonight or a grill and this dish still turned out amazing.

Ingredients:

1 lb salmon fillet (or salmon steaks)

1/3 c. soy sauce

2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar

2 1/2 tablespoons cider vinegar

2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon minced ginger

1 teaspoon minced garlic

Serve with rice and veggies (that is the simplest, naturally in my mental image of home we always have much more extravagant sides).

Take all of the ingredients except the salmon, and mix them together in a small sauce pan over medium heat. Cook until the sugar dissolves stirring occasionally. Then let the mixture bubble until it is reduced to about a half of a cup. Now I know Lien, you are probably thinking "How in the world do I know what half a cup looks like." So really you just want to let it cook long enough so it your sauce is starting, I repeat, STARTING to get thicker and more like a syrup. You want it to be like this so you know all the flavors have mingled together. Turn off the heat and let this cool until it gets down to room temperature again. You can do that by either sticking the pot in a bowl with ice, sticking it in the fridge, or just letting it cool down. It kind of depends on what kind of a rush you are in. The ice will work the fastest. Once it is cooled pour it over your salmon and make sure it coats all the sides of the fish. Let it stand at room temperature for at least 15 minutes. I did it for about 30-40 minutes tonight and that was great.

Then put about 1 tablespoon of oil in a skillet and let it heat up over medium high heat. You want the oil to start to shimmer. Put your salmon in the pan. Reserve the marinade in the dish you had the salmon in for later. Let the fish cook for 2 and 1/2 minutes on each side. This should be just perfect, but you can check your salmon by cutting it where it is the thickest. If that part of the salmon is just barely translucent or opaque still, then the rest of your salmon should be perfect, so start taking it off with the thinest piece first.

Pour off the oil into a glass jar for proper disposal. Oil should never go down the drain. Then put the marinade in the pan and let it heat up. You will want to reduce it again, so it gets to be more the consistency of maple syrup. Like this all the garlic and ginger pieces will get nice and caramelized and the sauce will be perfect for pouring over your salmon.

Once your sauce is to a consistency of your liking, drizzle it over the salmon steaks. Then enjoy!

Pita, chicken and yogurt dip

I made this chicken before, when I tried making Chicken Tikka Masala. This time, I decided to cook the chicken and put it in a pita sandwich.

Yogurt-marinated chicken:
refer to Chicken Tikka Masala recipe.

The chicken, marinated overnight

Sliced up after cooking in the oven

I decided to make a yogurt dip for my sandwich.
Yogurt dip:
1 cup plain yogurt
1 small clove garlic, minced
1/4 onion, sliced thinly
1/2 small cucumber, cut in bite-sized pieces
salt and pepper

1. First, you have to drain the whey off of the yogurt to make it thicker. To make life easier, you could also buy Greek-style yogurt, and skip this step. I took a wire strainer and put it on top of a large bowl or pot. Then, I lined the strainer with a sheet of paper towel. Then, I put the yogurt in the strainer for about 3 hours.

2. After your yogurt has been strained, put the yogurt in a small bowl. Add the rest of the ingredients and let it sit in the fridge for at least a day to let the flavors mix.



And here's how to make pita bread! I took this recipe out of a book called The Bread Bible by Beranbaum. I made a double batch.

Pita Bread: makes 8 6-inch pitas

3 cups + scant 1/4 cup unbleached, all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons instant yeast
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/4 cup water at room temperature

1. Combine all of the ingredients together in a large mixing bowl. With the stand mixer, mix on low for about 20 seconds, until the dough is moistened. Raise the speed to medium and knead for about 10 minutes. Alternatively, you can knead it by hand. The dough should clean the bowl, be soft and smooth, and just a little sticky to the touch.

Here's about how stretchy your dough should be.

2. Coat a large bowl in oil to keep the dough from sticking. Place the dough in the bowl and cover. Let the dough rise until it has doubled (about 1-2 hours on a hot day) or you can leave it overnight.

3. Next, you shape the dough. Make sure to cover the cutting board and your hands with oil, or else the dough will stick. Cut the dough into eight pieces. Roll each piece into a ball.

4. Press the balls flat with your hand. Let the dough rest for 20 minutes. This will make it easier to roll the dough out later. If you try to roll the dough now, the gluten will make it spring back into the original shape.


5. Use a rolling pin to shape each piece of dough to 1/4 inch thick. Make sure to use lots of flour to coat the board, the dough, and the rolling pin.


6. You can cook the dough on the stove. I used two frying pans to speed up my cooking time. Put a little bit of oil in your pan and heat on medium-high heat. Place one pita bread in the pan and cook for 20 seconds, then flip over. Continue to cook for about a minute, or until the dough balloons.