November Daring Cooks Challenge: Rise and Shine! Cheddar, Bacon and Scallion Souffle

Dave and Linda from Monkeyshines in the Kitchen chose Soufflés as our November 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge! Dave and Linda provided two of their own delicious recipes plus a sinfully decadent chocolate soufflé recipe adapted from Gordon Ramsay’s recipe found at the BBC Good Food website.

Our hosts were generous enough to let us go rogue and pick our own recipes as well as long as we made a real souffle and not some cheap knockoff.  I knew I wanted to do a savory souffle first (although the chocolate souffle sounded to die for), so I hunted around.  I also knew that I had one big souffle dish and not quite as many ramekins as most of the recipes called for.  So I went to Epicurious and Gourmet Magazine and tried the Cheddar, Bacon and Scallion Souffle.  It was as good as it sounds. 

I understand completely why souffles are a natural choice for a Daring Cooks challenge.  There is a lot of mystery around souffles.  It's mostly nonsense.  I'm not saying that souffles are easy.  They are certainly not. But they only involve the mastery of some basic skills that you should have in the kitchen anyway.  

First, carefully read the recipe before you begin.  The timing of a souffle is somewhat delicate, since you're dealing with heat and eggs and cheese.  This recipe lent itself perfectly to pretending you are a TV chef and filling up your little bowls of ingredients and getting your mise en place together before you do anything.  Then, proceed to master skill number two.

Almost final souffle batter ready for egg whites. Second, at least the first time through, follow the recipe exactly.  I think you can get spontaneous with a souffle once you understand the way it works.  A good abstract thinker might even be able to look at ten recipes and come up with one independently.  I'd recommend, however, taking a good basic recipe and working it through before playing with it.  There are souffle-sasters and following a recipe to the letter will help the first one be a confidence booster instead of a story to tell at the dinner party where you end up ordering pizza.

Mysterious stiff egg white peaks.The third and final skill that I think you need for a souffle is a little bit subtle since most recipes seem to assume this knowledge.  You must know how to very carefully separate eggs.  For any dish where you need to get your egg whites into stiff peaks (and since much of the drama of a souffle comes from that airy light rise), it is crucial that there are no yolks in your egg whites.  The separated yolks can have a bit of white in them if things get messy, but no yolks in the eggs at all. The contamination can ruin the whole adventure.

Fold, baby, fold. (Note: don't fold with a whisk!)I'm happy to say that, having already gotten wind of the egg white secret, I worked my patience and skills and ended up with a delicious savory souffle! I felt very American using what also amount to fantastic cornbread ingredients in a souffle, but it fit the ingredients we had available and sounded like something I could my husband excited about.  Now that he's had one, I have all kinds of other ideas and will get cracking on a sweet version as well.  

Souffles are also a great way to feature local and organic dairy products! I used New York Cheddar, Ronnybrook Farms Creamline whole milk, Vermont farm fresh eggs and Amish butter.    I had hoped to use the last of our garden scallions, but I couldn't get as much as I needed from our remaining harvest.  The dairy products were great, though, and made the dish! 

Cheddar, Bacon and Scallion Souffle (from Epicurious)

1/2 cup finely chopped scallion

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

6 slices of lean bacon, cooked, drained, reserving 2 tablespoons of the fat, and crumbled

1/3 cup all-purpose flour

1 1/3 cups milk

cayenne to taste

1 1/2 cups coarsely grated Cheddar (about 6 ounces)

4 large eggs, separated

1. In a small heavy saucepan cook the scallion in the butter and the reserved bacon fat over moderately low heat, stirring, until the scallion is softened, stir in the flour, and cook the roux stirring, for 3 minutes.
2. Add the milk in a stream, whisking, and boil the mixture, whisking, for 2 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and whisk in the cayenne, the Cheddar, and salt and pepper to taste, whisking until the cheese is melted.
3. Add the egg yolks, 1 at a time, whisking well after each addition, and whisk in the bacon.
4. In a bowl with an electric mixer beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt until they hold stiff peaks, whisk about one fourth of them into the cheese mixture, and fold in the remaining whites gently but thoroughly.
5. Pour the mixture into a buttered 1 1/2-quart soufflé dish and bake the soufflé in the middle of a preheated 375°F. oven for 30 to 40 minutes, or until it is puffed and golden. Serve the soufflé immediately.

Read More http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Cheddar-Bacon-and-Scallion-Souffle-12789#ixzz15Gdnh7pr

Clean Eating Whole Wheat Bread

Have I mentioned it's hot? It's really too hot to bake.  But it's also too hot to cook.  And it's a whole lot easier to have a quick sandwich for lunch or dinner than to deal with even the lightest of chopping or boiling or stir-frying.  So, because it's also too hot to even go grocery shopping, I decided that baking in the air conditioning using the convection oven to minimize heat made the most sense.  I think I chose correctly.

I've shied away from breads that required kneading and have become a bit of a one-trick pony with my no-knead bread.  I came across a recipe at a clean eating blog that I enjoy, Clean Eating Machine. With a short list of ingredients, the title of clean eating and a not-so-lengthy amount of rising time, this seemed like the one to try.

A loaf before baking - on it's last rise.A couple of thoughts:

• The original recipe calls for a small bowl.  You're adding 3 cups of flour and 1 3/4 cups of water to this bowl and letting it double in size.  Use a large bowl. 
• The dough is very sticky.  There wasn't a lot of discussion about flouring your kneading surface or adding extra flour.  I did a less robust kneading job in the bowl (again, large is very good here) to minimize mess and avoid adding more flour. 
• If you do use a mini-oven like my toaster/convection oven, a traditional loaf pan is a little large, so the top browns more than it should.  A small price to pay for fresh bread in this ungodly heat. 

 

Clean Eating Whole Wheat Bread (adapted from Clean Eating Magazine)

• 3 cups white whole wheat flour (whole wheat is also fine)
• 1 3/4 cups water
• 1 package active dry yeast
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp honey

1. Mix flour, water and yeast in a bowl.  Let rise until double in size, about 30 minutes. 
2. Add remaining ingredients and knead well.  (Note: I used the kneading process to incorporate the wet ingredients and then just kept kneading for a bit).  Let rise for 30 minutes. 
3. Knead one more time.  Place in standard loaf pan and let rise until it fills the pan (for me it was more like 15 or 20 minutes, but did I mention that it's hot?). 
4. Bake at 350F for 40 minutes or slightly less in a convection oven (mine was done after 30-35).

A Year (and then some) of Brooklyn Forager

As I have collected more of them, birthdays and anniversaries pass with less and less fuss. One thing, however, doesn't change. The best part about a birthday is cake for breakfast in the days that follow.

The actual first Blog-iversary was a couple of days ago, and though I didn't get the post out in time, I am still enjoying the cake that I made to mark this special day. I whipped up a very interesting and surprisingly special lime yogurt cake with raspberry sauce from smitten kitchen. (This will show up again on our table in many variations.)

The limes are certainly not local (although they may have been organic) and the yogurt was big organic. I like to think I kept it Brooklyn Forager-style by using hand-picked raspberries from Vermont (my in-laws' harvest has been very good to us) in the amazingly bright and tart and tasty sauce. And, of course, the mint garnish is from our own little urban terrace garden.

In the next year of Brooklyn Forager, I hope to take more advantage of our great farmers' markets in Brooklyn, forage in other Brooklyn hotspots, learn a lot more about urban gardening and farming and homesteading, and doing a lot more preserving at home.

Thanks for following along and I look forward to more adventures!

Whole Wheat Banana Muffins

 Another spur-of-the-moment baking experience that yielded great results.  After finishing up the Apple and Carrot Nut Bread, I needed another grab-and-go breakfast item and, as usual, wanted to go about it with little or no additional shopping.  

This recipe fits the bill, especially, because of its flexibility.  I used agave nectar, but that can easily be substituted with an equal amount of honey or maple syrup.  I almost always have a few bananas in the freezer, but you could also use roughly 1 - 1 1/2 cups of another mashed item like pumpkin or sweet potato.  Everything else is pretty much always in my house! 

I have now made these twice and am still enthusiastic about the results.  I've mixed in about 1/2 cup of chopped nuts (whatever you have on hand - for me, it was a mix of walnuts and almonds) on one occasion and then 1 cup of frozen blueberries handpicked in Vermont last season on the second.  Each worked nicely, so I've recommended a "grab bag" of 1/2-3/4 cup mix-ins of your choice.  Leave your variations in the comments if you play with this recipe!

Whole Wheat Banana Muffins

• 1/3 cup organic agave nectar
• 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 3 large ripe bananas (or 1 1/2 cups pumpkin or sweet potato puree)
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 3 tbsp plain whole milk (or lowfat) yogurt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2-3/4 cup mix-ins (nuts, dried fruit, berries - fresh or frozen, grated carrot or zucchini, have fun!)

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Combine all ingredients until well mixed.
3. For 6 large muffins, cook 20 minutes (for 12 regular, cook 10 minutes).  For loaf bread, cook 35-40 minutes.

Apple and Carrot Nut Bread

I rarely plan my baking ahead of time.  I do work muffins or bread or some treat into my weekly meal plans from time to time, but more often than not, things come up and big planned baking projects go by the wayside.  I do manage, however, to find quick and easy recipes that use exactly what I have in my pantry right about when I am getting the urge to bake.  These recipes, as you might imagine, are far more likely to make it into my day.

One such recipe, Apple-n-Carrot Nut Bread, popped up on fellow Brooklynite blog 30 Bucks a Week not too long ago.  Like the original, I happened to have an apple and some carrots in the crisper, begging for some noble use.  I did not have juice on hand, as the recipe requires, but I did have some vanilla soy milk.  I added about 2 tbsp maple syrup as well since I had the last of the bottle to use up and thought it could never hurt.

The modification I made which I might not recommend is using whole wheat flour instead of whole wheat pastry flour.  My bread was very tasty and made for a week of hearty breakfasts, but it was definitely on the heavier, healthier tasting side.  Since I ate mine warmed up with a good dose of honey, it didn't really affect me much, but it's just something to consider. 

I also used 1 cup almond slivers and crushed walnuts because I had those around and I didn't have any dried fruit to throw in there.  This worked out well in my household, but feel free to play around with the nut/fruit add-ins for these.  The recipe is extremely flexible.

Apple and Carrot Nut Bread (adapted from 30 Bucks a Week)

• 2 cups whole wheat pastry flour (all-purpose is fine; regular whole wheat is okay, but heavy)
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• sea salt
• 1 egg
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 3/4 cup juice (apple or orange), milk or soy milk
• 1 grated apple
• 1 grated carrots (or about 6 baby carrots)
• 1/2 cup dried fruit, optional
• 1/2 cup nuts

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Mix together dry ingredients in large bowl.
3. Whisk egg, oil and juice together in seperate bowl.
4. Add wet ingredients to dry and mix until just combined.
5. Fold in grated apple, carrots, nuts and dried fruit.
6. Grease a loaf pan and coat lightly with flour.  Shake out excess.  (I used a silicone loaf pan and didn't need this step)
7. Pour batter into loaf pan and bake for 50-60 minutes, until toothpick in center comes out clean.