Savory cheesecake

Recently we were given a Ziploc bag stuffed full of fresh bay leaves; another volunteer at an event we were helping with apparently has a tree in his yard.  We use dried bay leaves in sauces and (when we used to make them) stews, but we'd never used fresh before.  I immediately set about finding recipes to use our bay leaves.

From the trove of recipes I've amassed, I found two cheesecake recipes that would use bay leaves: a savory and a sweet.  Both came from a book that translated Ancient Greek and Roman recipes and adapted them for modern kitchens; incidentally and appropriately enough for April 21, these recipes both came from one of the Ancient Rome chapters.  We tried the savory cheesecake first.

The ingredients for the recipe are:

1 lb. feta cheese
4 oz. all purpose flour
1 egg
2-3 bay leaves [I used way more since we have so many.]

I bought feta crumbles as that was cheaper than buying a larger brick than we would have needed.  However, I found that this led to a very dry dough; the dough would have vastly benefited from the extra moisture that the brine would have provided.  I blame Whole Foods for only having two feta choices!  Maybe I'm just nostalgic for the extensive dairy cases at Michigan grocery stores.

We had only 12 ounces of feta (again, I was too cheap to buy more), so we used 3 ounces of flour.  Obviously we still had to use a whole egg, but I hoped that this would partially make up for the complete lack of brine in the feta.

Other than the low moisture, the dough came together fairly easily; it was almost like making a cheese gnocchi dough.  As instructed by the recipe, I put the bay leaves under the cheesecake/cheesedisk before placing it on the baking sheet, then put a heavy-ish Pyrex dish on top to weight everything down.

The cheesecake/cheesedisk was probably 6"-7" in diameter.  The recipe said to score before baking (like making scones), which I guess was helpful when I went to cut slices.  More like a guideline to follow than any physical assistance with getting the pieces apart.

The recipe said to bake for 40-45 minutes, but I baked for something like 35 minutes and thought that too long.  As it was, the outside edge of the cheesedisk was already brown and, as we would discover, rather tough.  For the thin cheesedisk that we made, I'd probably bake for 25-30 minutes.

The bay leaves came out looking basically like the dried bay leaves you can get at the store.

The final product was interesting, to say the least, especially the flavour.  At first bite there was a subtle non-feta taste from the bay leaves; then the full salty feta taste would overwhelm one's taste buds.  The texture of the non-brown sections was nicely smooth when the cheesecake was warm from the oven, but after a couple days in the fridge, it's gotten progressively tougher, and the bay leaf flavour has sort of dissipated.

Complete delicious dinner.  We didn't put salt in the eggs this time, but the cheesecake wedge definitely made up for that.  The rice helped too.

Would I make this again?  Maybe.  It would make a good appetizer, though I'd want to get a higher quality feta that didn't have such a straight-up salty taste.  We have plenty of bay leaves left to use!

The Classical Cookbook (1996); Andrew Dalby and Sally Grainger; p. 93-94

Writeup background noise: well, when I drafted the post originally, it was the 2nd period of the Wings-Lightning game.  Thankfully for me, I decided that the 3rd period was a fine time for a nap.

(Not Key) Lime Pie

I remembered, on the 14th, that it was Pi Day, so of course I had nothing prepared, no fruits in the apartment, and only 2 eggs.  Flipping through Joy of Cooking suggested a Key lime pie, and we thought that instead of using sweetened condensed milk, we could use a can of sweetened condensed coconut milk that I'd picked up in an impulse buy, since coconut and lime tend to go together well.

Purchased at our local grocery store, Don Quijote, which is, in fact, Japanese-owned.

Our notes:

• Not wanting to put the effort into a regular pie crust, Key lime's graham cracker crust was appealing.  Instead of regular graham crackers, I used some "Star Wars" graham snacks, as those were the only graham crackers at the store that didn't use shortening or artificial flavor (and were also a reasonable price).  When I made the crust, I did not add any additional sugar, thinking that the cookies were sweet enough.  However, I think the crust could have benefited from the crunchiness and the extra bit of sweetness that the sugar would have contributed.
• Also, it would have been best if we could have let the pie crust cool before filling it.  Because I wanted to minimize the amount of time the oven was on, I baked the crust, then worked on the filling as it was baking and then a bit more after it came out of the oven.  The resulting crust was a bit soggy.  Perhaps next time I'll make a frozen (not Key) lime pie so that the oven only needs to be on for the crust.
• The recipe called for a 15-oz. can of condensed milk.  As the photo above indicates, the condensed coconut milk was only 11.25 oz., which I lowered even more by pouring off some of the oil that had separated out.  I thought I'd make up for it using some leftover regular coconut milk from a different recipe.  Unfortunately, this may have made the resulting custard a bit too soft.
• The recipe called for ½ cup of lime juice; for us, this was 4 limes.
• We should have only had to bake the pie for 15-17 minutes, but we probably ended up baking it for about 25 minutes as it didn't seem set.  I suspect the extra liquid from the coconut milk threw off the baking time.
• The unbaked filling tasted great: both lime and coconut flavors were obvious.  Unfortunately, the coconut flavor baked out of the finished pie, and the lime flavor was not so pronounced.  Yet another reason for making a frozen (not Key) lime pie, but substituting coconut milks for the regular evaporated and sweetened condensed milks.

Using the pi dish for Pi Day!

Overall, this was a tasty pie, though with a few additional changes it could have been even better.  Clearly, our next project should be a frozen coconut-lime pie!  I'll need to get more Star Wars grahams before then.

Joy of Cooking (2006), p. 667-668 (crust), and 688 (pie)

Leftover Poke Breakfast

Note:  for those who do not know, poke, pronounced poh-kay, is cubed seafood, usually raw yellowfin tuna (ahi), salmon, or cooked octopus (tako) that is mixed with seasonings, sauces, and/or toppings like chopped onion or seaweed.  Poke in Hawaiian simply means "to slice or cut".

Recently Caroline's cousins Vi and Val were visiting the Big Island with their families, so we popped over for a couple of days.  After Val and her husband Rob picked us up from the airport, Rob offered to make us some quick breakfast with some leftover poke.  He had picked up this easy recipe when buying some poke (which he does every day when he visits the islands) and asked what to do with any leftovers.  He was told to cook in a frying pan for breakfast his leftover poke, leftover rice, and some eggs.  The combination was brilliant.

Shortly afterwards, we were in need of a quick dinner because I had an early hockey game, and so Caroline picked up some poke.  She intentionally got more than we needed, so the next morning we made the dish.  It took all of 5 minutes to cook in the pan, and all I did was toss in the poke and rice, then crack the eggs over the mixture.  While it was cooking, I was mixing the eggs in to make them scrambled.  Even though this is so simple, it is tasty as you mix the eggs and rice with the fish, and the spices and flavorings of the poke mean that you don't need to add anything more.

Close-up of final product.  The ahi did not get over cooked, helping the fantastic taste.

New Year dumplings: A pictorial

I just discovered a neat new cookbook that focuses on dumplings (mostly Chinese and Japanese, but there are a few other flavor profiles in there as well).  We figured we might as well try some of the recipes now while we have easy access to practically any Chinese or Japanese cooking ingredient; plus, each recipe makes more than one meal's worth of dumplings, so we thought it'd be an economical choice as well.  Chinese New Year provided the perfect opportunity to test the book's pork and shrimp dumplings.

We made our dumplings the day before New Year, and got 39 versus the recipe's yield of 45.  Perhaps we put too much filling in each one?  So far we haven't had any problems with broken wrappers or anything.  These are ready to be frozen, then put into a plastic bag to be cooked as needed.  Easy!

These cook pretty quickly with an almost set-it-and-forget-it method.  We are still working out just how long to cook our dumplings though, since we tend to cook fewer at a time than the cookbook author does.  He's usually hosting dumpling parties.  We are lame and thus do not tend to host dumpling parties.

I made a dipping sauce out of hoisin sauce and soy sauce (about a 2:1 ratio), along with a dash of rice wine vinegar.  Kind of a Chinese barbecue sauce of sorts.

The fillings weren't dense, dry, or falling apart.  I might add some cilantro leaves next time for flavor and color contrast, but that's another recipe!

Hey there, dumpling!: 100 recipes for dumplings, buns, noodles, and other Asian treats (2015), p. 41
Writeup background music: Dido, No angel (1999)

Chocolate chip cookies featuring a secret ingredient

The secret ingredient?  Avocado!

No, I am not going vegan.  What happened was that about a week ago, we were given a bag of avocados from our landlady--from the tree in her yard.  There had to have been seven or eight avocados in the bag, and while we gleefully put avocado chunks on our salads each night, we had to do something fast when a few of them ripened at the same time.  And while avocados have a bunch of health benefits, it's probably not so healthy to eat multiple of them in a single day.  So thanks to the little something called the Information Superhighway, we found a recipe for chocolate chip cookies that both used avocado and was not vegan.

As you probably already know by now, I took some liberties with the recipe.

• Cut down on the sugar: instead of ½ c. white sugar and 1 c. brown, I used ¼ c. white and probably about ¾ c. brown.  Seemed to taste just fine.
• Just the all-purpose flour, please: the recipe called for a combination of all-purpose and white whole wheat flour.  There was even a special note for those who might want to omit all of that evil all-purpose flour and just go with white whole wheat; however, there was no corresponding note for those who might want to go all-out unhealthy and omit the white whole wheat flour.  I used 2¼ c. all-purpose flour.  The cookies were just fine.  Rebellious baking!
• Whole eggs: the recipe called for 2 egg yolks, omitting the whites.  No explanation is ever given in the recipe for this decision.  Is it to do with the texture?  Do egg whites not play well with avocados?  Will the combination of egg whites and avocados somehow cause a rift to open in spacetime?  I used 2 whole eggs with seemingly no adverse effects on either the final product or the local universe.  Rebellious baking!
• Baking time: the recipe called for 14-16 minutes; I took the cookies out at 13 minutes, but that's just my preference for how "golden brown" the cookies were at that point.
• Recipe methodology and writing style: these left a bit to be desired.
• First of all, prep time is listed as "n/a".  I suppose for some, gathering ingredients or mixing cookie dough might take the proverbial "no time at all", but for most of us non-professional bakers* those steps are gonna take some time.
• Both the "total time" and the "cook time" listed are 25 minutes.  Does not compute.
• Also, the recipe apparently makes 48 cookies (I got about 35 out of it), with a 14-to-16-minute baking time, and a cook time (for 2 sheets) of 25 minutes.  I'm skeptical that the home baker has access to a large enough oven to accommodate a sheet pan that can hold 24 cookies spaced 2" apart.
• The ingredients are not listed in the order that they are used in the recipe.  This is a pet peeve of mine with regards to recipes.
• The fact that there's that note suggesting that the home baker could omit the all purpose flour, without a corresponding note regarding white whole wheat flour: it's mildly amusing at this point more than anything.  Eyeroll, more than resigned sigh.
• There is a note regarding the amount of avocado used vs. the amount of avocado in, well, one avocado: "Baking is an exact science. [...] Be sure to measure."  The only thing that I can say right now is that this very recipe has inspired me to create a new label for this blog called "inexact kine baking" and apply it to this and past posts where I modify baking recipes without poor results.

It looks like normal cookie dough.  With perhaps a few flecks of green since I probably didn't mix the butter and avocado together for quite long enough.

Verdict: The cookies turned out pretty good (I heard they were popular when Dom took them to work today) and the recipe is probably fine, though if we ever find ourselves with a bumper crop of avocados again I'd want to try something different.  The avocado lent a bit of additional flavor to the cookies, but nothing overpowering: it's not like you're tasting guacamole in a chocolate chip cookie**, more like a faintly nutty richness.  All told, I'd rather have my salad with mounds of avocado cubes on top followed by a dessert of all-butter chocolate chip cookies. 

Finished cookies.  I say, parchment paper has been fantastic in my baking experience: no more using the butter-an-aluminium-foil-lined-cookie-sheet trick, which I always seemed to have problems with.

*Especially those of us who, like me, are recently, again non-professional bakers.

**ew.  Even I have my limits.

Writeup background noise: the soundtrack for The Lego Movie (2014).  Everything Is Awesome!!!...right?