Holla' for Challah

We've been wanting to try making this for a while now - and we finally got to it!  We used the recipe from our copy of Joy of Cooking (pp 600-601).  Everything went pretty well, so just a few notes:

Notes:

• We ended up with extra flour in the mixing bowl, though we suspect that was due to the dryness of the air (it is Michigan in the winter-time).
• We only baked it for 20 minutes instead of the 30-35 called for - but it was already browned quite nicely (as you can see in the picture), and had a hollow sound when thumped.
• The three ropes in the braid stayed pretty much separate through baking, so we are considering next time reducing or omitting the flour on the ropes that was called for in the recipe.

This recipe does take a decent amount of time as you have let it rise several times, but it is worth it.  See for yourself:

Just before baking - the braid came out quite well - except for the pinching together at the final end.  My bad...

Out of the oven - with a nice crust and delicious inside!

A nice view of the crumb inside.

Verdict - definitely make again!

Glazed lemon cookies

A while back (as in, before the holiday season), I was on a big cookie kick.  When I realized I couldn't go to Dom's department's holiday party, I still wanted to make some treats to send with him, so I chose a glazed lemon cookie recipe from Real Simple.  These turned out pretty well, to say the least.

My notes:

• While gathering all the ingredients together, I realized that the only lemon flavour came from the glaze; there was neither lemon juice nor zest in the dough itself.  I ended up using the zest of one lemon and the juice of about 1/2 a lemon in the dough, added with the egg yolks, salt, and vanilla.  A bit of raw dough was nicely flavoured before baking, but if anything, I should have use more juice or zest to get a stronger flavour in the baked cookies.
• The extra lemon juice helped pull the dough together; perhaps because our apartment is frightfully dry, the dough was really crumbly after adding the flour.  Adding enough lemon juice helped smooth everything out and imparted some lemon flavour to the dough itself.
• The recipe claims to produce 48 cookies.  I don't know if I did something wrong or what, but I came out with 32 cookies (two sheets of 18).  It's not even like I made them gigantic--they came out to a perfect two-bite cookie.  So I'm not sure what that was about, but it didn't seem to be any kind of a problem.
• Each sheet of 18 got about 13 minutes in the oven--neither brown nor very underbaked, but perfect for us.
• I drizzled the glaze over the cookies rather than dipping the cookies in the glaze.  This had the double effect of using less sugar (probably about half of what the recipe called for, but I just added sugar to the lemon juice until I got glaze, so I have no idea how much I actually used) and making the cookies look all fancy.
• From a subsequent trial of the cookies in which I didn't add any lemon zest to the glaze for aesthetic reasons, I found that the lemon flavour in the glaze was not as strong.  So next time I make these, I'd sacrifice the aesthetics of a totally smooth glaze for the stronger flavour provided by the zest.

I have extremely high standards when it comes to my own baking.  Usually I pronounce what I create as "all right", but I almost always have a "but..." to go along with it.  Not so with these.  As soon as I bit into one of these I knew this was a recipe to keep (with all the modifications, of course).  A bright, clean, intense lemon flavour, not too sweet, not too dry, not under- or over-baked, and just enough cookie to get a good taste without having too much cookie.  What else do you need?

Delicious.

I may have taken one already...

Irish Stew

This is a hearty stew for the coldest of winter days on the Emerald Isle (or in the Mitten).  This is another recipe from our favorite Joy of Cooking (pp. 496).  This is a lamb stew, and we were able to pick up some lamb chops at our local Kroger to throw in.  The result was very tasty.

Notes:

• Quantity - the recipe called for 3 pounds of stew lamb.  As Kroger did not have stew lamb, we picked up a couple of packages (~ 2 lbs total) of some bone-in lamb chops, which seemed to work quite well.  We didn't really scale back the amount of vegetables, but that can't hurt, right?
• Liquid - the recipe said to use either chicken stock, dark stout, or water.  We opted for about half-and-half chicken stock and stout (Murphy's Stout - 'twas a bit less expensive than Guinness but still tasty - just not if you ask Caroline ;-) ).  This seemed to work out well, and helped it taste close to the Irish Stew at Conor O'Neill's (on Main St. in AA).
• Thickening potatoes - we sliced up some potatoes that were supposed to disintegrate and thicken the stew, but this didn't work.  In discussing why it didn't work, we came up with the theory.  The time we've had potatoes thicken a stew we cooked it on the stove - this recipe had us cook the stew for an hour and a half in a Dutch oven in the oven.  Perhaps the stew needs to cook harder for this to work, or else you have to slice the potatoes really thin.

Pictures!

Before going in the oven.

Ready for consumption (the carrots are added after an hour in the oven).

Verdict - a very tasty dish that makes good left overs and should be made to warm body and soul!

Braised chicken with nuts and dates

Whenever Caroline reads a book about some type of food, she usually wants to make something with it. So recently, she read this book about dates, and thus wanted to buy some at the store. A couple of days later, we weren't sure of what to make, and then remembered that we had chicken and we had dates, so we had a recipe to try.

Notes:

• The recipe called for ground walnuts, but we didn't use any. Still seemed to taste just fine.
• The recipe also called for crushed coriander seeds. As we didn't have any of these, we just threw a bit of cilantro in. This tasted just fine to us, so no need to use a plant's seeds when you have it's leaves! (Not actually going to claim this as a general rule...)
• This was a pretty easy recipe - didn't take long to make and didn't require much prep work.

Verdict: Would definitely make again. This is a very tasty dish that is also easy. Bonus!

It may look a little monochromatic, but it was certainly tasty. -CPYP

Dates: A global history, p. 118 (Nawal Nasrallah; 2011; London: Reaktion Books)

Focaccia

We saw this recipe, surprisingly, in a French cookbook in the "Foreign Breads" section.  It sounded so good we made the easy decision to try it out.  We also had fun using the new kitchen scale we bought to measure out ingredients in metric units (and by weight instead of volume for solids).  The ingredients are pretty easy, as with most breads:  flour, water, yeast, salt, and olive oil.  There is a note below about the one less common ingredient (rosemary).

The bread turned out to very tasty, and as we were going over to my parents' house, we decided to bring one loaf over there for everyone to try.  It was well received - such that my dad was "OK" if we left what remained there.  For all the deliciousness, we do have a few notes:

• Dough consistency - I swear I followed the recipe to the 't', but the dough came out very wet.  I was supposed to "punch down" the dough and roll it out, but that wasn't happening.  Next time, I think I will add the water more slowly so that I can get the right consistency from the dough.
• Fresh rosemary to top - we did not have any, but our dried rosemary tasted just fine.  I'm sure the fresh herbs would be better, but it still is good with dried.
• There were a few steps to this, and so there was work to do over the several hours it takes to make.  You have some decently long breaks, but just be prepared to spend some time on it.

Conclusion - definitely a recipe to make again!

Photos!

Loaf number 1 out of the oven.

Loaf number 2 out of the oven.  We started with baking both at the same time with this one on the bottom rack, and then moved it up when the first loaf came out of the oven.

Loaf number 2 during slicing - this turned out to be a nice texture.

Le Cordon Bleu's Pâtisserie & baking foundations: classic recipes (2012), p. 322-323