Creamy Chicken and Dumplings

On day recently as I was cleaning out the mixing bowl from making pizza dough, I mixed some water with the excess flour and decided to try the raw dough that formed.  I enjoyed it so much that I decided to make a dumpling dish without looking at a recipe.  Chicken was the easiest thing to add, and it quickly became a creamy chicken and dumpling thing.  I started by cooking the chicken with some chicken broth.  Then, I added some dumplings made from the following dough  (inspired by pizza dough):

• 1 cup flour
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• olive oil (I didn't measure)
• ~ 1/3 cup of water - I just added water until I had the dough consistency I wanted

Once the dumplings started cooking, Caroline added some cream and sour cream we had in the fridge to complete the dish.

Result:  a pretty tasty dish, though the dumplings were quite dense.  Next time, I might think about making them with milk, or possibly smaller.  I don't know - I still have to think about how to make them less dense.  This is something I'll probably try again, but I won't subject Caroline to my experiments without trying them first myself.

Dumplings just added.

Cooking along with cream added.

Bowl o' food!

Naan

This flat-bread is one of the tastiest parts of Indian cuisine - at least in our opinion.  We got our recipe from Joy of Cooking (p. 608).  Overall the recipe isn't too difficult, if but a bit time consuming (though not nearly as much as the challah).  Note time!

Notes:

• Rising - the constant struggle with our winter baking.  Our apartment just doesn't seem to be warm enough to get dough to rise without warming the liquid first (the recipe called for the yogurt to be room temperature).  However, this did not seem to affect the result much.
• Baking is pretty easy, and quick.  The recipe called for us to preheat our pizza/baking stone for 45 minutes at 475 degrees F (!!!).  We did not do that - we just let the stone preheat with the oven to 475 and then put the rolled out dough on the stone.  The recipe called for 5-6 minutes of baking, and we cut that down to about 4 minutes for the second batch, as the first was quite brown.  Next time we'd consider lowering the temperature to get a less brown and softer bread.

Result:  delicious warm and relatively soft flat-bread.  Would make again!  (I love putting that comment - and it seems to be the theme lately.)

Pictures!

A couple of pieces on the pizza stone.

Completely out of the oven.

You can see a piece taken out - and thus the inside.  It was pretty good, just probably not bake it so much next time.

Mousse au chocolat

Among its many great photos, our fabulous French cookbook has a recipe for chocolate mousse or, as it says, "mousse au chocolat".  It didn't look too difficult, and I even got to try out a new cooking technique.  The results were tasty (chocolate and whipped cream: where could you go wrong?), but the texture was a little airier than I usually associate with chocolate mousse.

Our notes:

• Not owning a double boiler, I used the standard substitute of a small mixing bowl set on top of a saucepan of simmering water.  This was the first time I'd tried using any kind of double boiler technique, and it worked great; the chocolate melted nice and smooth.  In terms of the recipe, I'd melt the butter along with the chocolate next time; adding the butter after taking the melted chocolate off the heat (as the recipe instructed) seemed to lower the chocolate's temperature too quickly.  Next time I'd probably add the butter when the chocolate is almost completely melted but still on the heat.

Worked great.

• The recipe called for the egg whites to be beaten until "firm and glossy".  Unfortunately for me, this led to a much foamier mousse than I'd been expecting (I've never been a big fan of meringue anything), and the overall texture was not that smooth--too much air in the structure.  So next time, I'd probably experiment to see if beating the egg whites to soft peaks would offer a smoother texture to the finished product than stiff peaks.

Almost meringue.

• Despite using bittersweet chocolate (Ghirardelli), the mousse still tasted oversweet.  It seems like the added sugar in the recipe acts partly as a stabilizer, so next time I'll try using something more than 60% cocoa!

Chocolate mousse, before refrigeration.

• The recipe said to transfer the mousse into molds before refrigerating, but I don't think the mousse, prepared as the recipe directs, would be able to set in what I think of as a mold, even if the molds were bigger than the ice cube trays that we tried using.  Perhaps it meant to just divide it into individual serving cups, or perhaps I just didn't make it right!

Festive. Sadly, the mousse as produced by this recipe doesn't hold a shape at all, so we were not able to get Block M servings of chocolate mousse.

• Interestingly, this mousse had a richer taste and smoother texture after a few days in the refrigerator.  I don't know if this is good practice or not, to make something on one day to eat a few days later.

Verdict: a recipe to try again, but with a few modifications, and maybe after trying other chocolate mousse recipes.

Chocolate mousse, after refrigeration. The presentation would probably have been a little better had we owned a pastry bag and related kitchen gear.

Le Cordon Bleu's Pâtisserie & baking foundations: classic recipes (2012), p. 176-177
Writeup background music: Muse, The 2nd Law (2012); we saw them in concert in Detroit this past Saturday and now I can't stop listening to their music.

illy: for moka pots

illy makes a coffee specially ground for use in moka pots.  In short, this is delicious: strong enough to not taste watered down, but not overstrong; very smooth; and finely ground enough for the moka pot.  An excellent standard!

Cake citron (lemon cake)

This came from our awesome new French cookbook.  Originally I'd wanted to make something to take in for work the next day, so I had to find a recipe that wouldn't make us go out and buy anything.  This recipe used standard kitchen supplies along with some lemons, which we seem to have a lot of right now; I think it's because I can never correctly estimate how much lemon juice is in one lemon, so I tend to buy too many at a time.

I didn't end up taking this to work, mostly because I didn't want to have to transport it across icy sidewalks.

Our notes:

• This is basically a pound cake.  That loaf pan was pretty hefty after I put all the batter in!
• The amount of flour should be adjusted for the ambient humidity; 300g of flour is a little too much for a Michigan winter.

The cake before it went into the oven.

• I used the lemon juice option for the glaze: much more flavourful than just water!
• The recipe called for the knife test of doneness; accordingly, I ended up baking this for somewhere between 35 and 40 minutes rather than the 30 listed in the recipe, but I still ended up with an underbaked center (a common problem when I bake cakes in loaf pans).  However, this would lead to some delicious consequences.
• The recipe said to put the glaze on the cake while the cake was still hot, contrary to my normal tendency of waiting until a cake is cool before glazing it.  I was a little skeptical, but I like to follow recipes to the letter the first time I make them, so I duly made the glaze when the cake came out of the oven and glazed it right then.  It seemed that most of the glaze was absorbed into the cake on account of the cake's temperature, rather than staying on the outside which is what happens when I use my usual method.
• Since the center didn't get completely baked, it collapsed a bit, leaving a small hollow between the top of the cake and the center.  I kept pouring glaze through the knife cuts from when I tested the cake; the crumb absorbed all of this glaze, so the center of the cake had an even more pronounced lemon flavour.  This, to be honest, was by far the tastiest part of the cake!

Glazed cake.  Photo credit goes to Dom for this one.

Verdict: a recipe to keep!  Though I might want to get better at baking cakes in loaf pans before I make this for anyone else; I suppose not everyone appreciates underbaked baked goods like we do...

A shot of the crumb just after I had sliced off the end.  By the time we got to the center areas where the glaze had absorbed into the crumb, we were too eager to enjoy the cake to take photos!

Le Cordon Bleu's Pâtisserie & baking foundations: classic recipes (2012), p. 75-76
Writeup background music: Kylie Minogue, Enjoy yourself (1989 U.S. version); thank you, Penn State University, for lending me your copy of the album!