As I mentioned before, we have moved into a wonderful new home. And the most important, exciting part of this move has been the addition of a real kitchen to our lives! Needless to say, we have been enjoying all sorts of new dishes as of late. I'll show you all just a few...
Alright, the first is this -wonderful- pumpkin spice muffin.
I got the recipe from
here, but, as always, I made a few changes of my own. She calls for using pumpkin pie spice, which I refuse to buy. Seriously, why buy such a specific spice instead of making it yourself with all the components? So, instead, I just used cinnamon, ground cloves, ginger, nutmeg, and allspice. I also like anything pumpkin-y to be very 'spicy', so I added significantly more spices than were originally called for. The lovely crusty, sugared top was even better when I added some ground cloves to the mix - mmmm!
Now, while making your own pumpkin pie spice and adding more spice than is called for helps out, neither of these things help as much as my last addition:
Chocolate chips.
Yep, that's right folks. Just pour 'em on in until you think there will be enough chocolate per bite for your own taste-buds. These were delicious little suckers. I probably made six or seven dozen of them between making some for us, taking some to the neighbor's house for dinner, delivering them to a 'barracks bash' for the marines in Mr. A's unit, and taking them to a church get together.
You'll also notice the -fabulous- muffin tin and lid that they're in. Seriously - on of the most useful things that we put on our registry. The top fits over both muffin tins and a 9x13 baking pan, so you can bake or cook whatever you'd like in it, then transport it easily without fear of spillage. It's glorious. The baking pan has some fun extra features that I love, too! It has markings so you know when you've filled it up 1/4, 1/2, or 3/4 of the way full, and it has marks every inch along the edges so you can cut nice, even pieces of whatever you're serving up! Love it. Oddly enough, the top does not fit over the cookie sheet that comes with the four-piece set. However, the cookie sheet is also awesome because it has little circles to show you where to place a dozen cookies on the cookie sheet. No more guess work about how far apart to place your cookies :D Anyhow,
here's the link to buy it at Macy's - enjoy!
Alright, moving on to our next exciting venture: bread.
Well, let's make that a little less specific. Any kind of dough that uses yeast.
Now, ever since we got a lovely kitchenaid to work with, I've been itching to try to make some sort of dough with it. First, I tried to make wheat bread.
Failure. Huge failure. Failure like... I could have used this bread as a doorstop type of failure.
Somehow I managed to work the dough so much that it never rose. I swear, it tasted exceedingly like unleavened bread (I should know what that tastes like, we use it for communion at church). The picture is of me checking and hoping beyond hope that it had risen even a little, let alone doubled in size as the recipe said it should.
After discussing it with some faithful friends from church, I decided I would try making pizza with the wheat flour instead. This was a MUCH more successful venture! Isn't it pretty?
I do believe I will use a different recipe for the pizza dough in the future, though, just because needing several hours of prep time between mixing, kneading, and letting the dough rise seems a bit like overkill to me. We chose to make pizza with lots of vegetables (hey, you still need four servings a day, even if you're getting it with pizza) and sausage. I also attempted to make a stuffed crust, which turned out remarkably well given that I didn't even attempt to look up a recipe for it!
To make the stuffed crust, I just mixed shredded mozzarella with cream cheese, put it along the edge of the dough, then rolled the dough over it, pressing it firmly over the cheese mixture to make sure the dough actually attaches to itself and doesn't let the cheese oooooooooze out when it's baked.
My last yeasty bread type project was to make homemade cinnamon rolls. They were incredibly delicious (I got the recipe from the Cook's magazine 'Best of' cookbook, which is awesome), but as they needed a total of about 4 hours to prepare, I don't believe I will making them very often.
I also recently got to take a cooking class on base to learn how to make yakisoba (fried 'soba', which is a type of noodle) and gyoza (otherwise known as 'dumplings'). I've gotten to make both of these several times since the class, always resulting in delicious food.
Here's how to make the gyoza (it comes first since it's the appetizer ^_^ ):
Ingredients:
-1/2 lb ground pork (200g)
-Chinese cabbage (once it's boiled down you need about the same amount as the pork, which is actually almost a full head of cabbage)
-1/2 tsp salt (or so)
-Sesame oil
-Nira minced (this is kind of like a green onion, a little stronger flavor, though. It looks like a really long green onion with flat leaves, and you probably have to purchase it at an asian market)
-1 1/2 Tbs crushed/minced garlic
-Gyoza wrappers (these are round pieces of dough that you buy in a package of about 30 - again, you'll probably have to go to an asian market to find these, but almost no one makes their own from what I understand)
-Soy sauce
-Ginger (if desired)
Directions:
Boil the dark green parts of the cabbage leaves for a few minutes, squeeze out the water, and mince.
-Mix all the ingredients together. You have to mix it really well. It's kind of like mixing meatloaf ingredients together - the easiest way to do it is to mix with your hands for maybe 3-5 minutes.
-Wrap up 1 to 1 1/2 tsp of the mix in the gyoza wrappers. You do this buy placing a small spoonful of the mixture in the center of the wrapper while the wrapper is cupped in your non-dominant hand. Then you dip your finger in water and lightly wet the edge of the wrapper, all the way around. You then fold the wrapper in half, over the mixture, and make a few creases in it (folding the wrapper back on itself) to make the edge attractive. You've seen what they look like in the restaurants, just try to mimic the styling :)
-Boil some water in a pot.
-Place the gyoza in a frying pan, making the 'bottom' (the opposite side from the crease) flat, and adding a little bit of sesame oil.
-Pour boiling water into the frying pan until the gyoza is about half-way covered.
-Cover and steam for 3 1/2 minutes (or so). The wrappers should be somewhat translucent after this time, but not completely flimsy.
-Drain the water from the pan
-Pour in some sesame oil and fry the flat side until golden brown.
-Flip over and serve with the golden brown 'bottom' face up on the plate.
Make sure to grab some dipping sauce while you're at the store!
Here's how to make yakisoba:
Note - most of this stuff can be bought mostly prepared in an asian market
Ingredients:
-Soba noodles (they're about 1/8" thick, long, and not as curly as ramen, but still a little curly. They usually come pre-cooked in bags in a refrigerated section, often near the produce.
-Vegetables (cabbage, carrots, and bean sprouts are typical)
-Meat (thin-cut pork, beef, chicken and/or shrimp)
-Pepper
-Yakisoba sauce
-Vegetable oil
Directions:
-Heat oil in a wok or skillet
-Add meat and saute until fully cooked
-Add the vegetables and stir fry over high heat. Note: you can also add slices of garlic or other veggies to those listed above
-Add noodles
-Add a dash of pepper, yakisoba sauce, and/or soy sauce
That's it!
This is one of those 'oh gosh, I need dinner to be fully made in the next 20 minutes' kind of meals, as long as you've got the veggies and meat pre-cut.
Here's what it should look like:
Just a note about cooking with chopsticks: cooking chopsticks are huge. Like, 1/3" in diameter and 1 1/2' long, and tied together at the top. They are practically impossible to use. When cooking this dish at home, I think I used tongs or a teak spoon. Maybe I'm just a lame-o American that I'm incapable of using such chopsticks, but hey, I'd rather eat well than try to figure that out.
And last but not least, I attempted to make Mr. A's
favorite dessert: tiramisu.
I don't know if I didn't look right, but I could NOT for the life of me find lady fingers at the commissary. So, I had to improvise. Instead I made pound cake to use as the base :) I was very interested to learn that, contrary to the name and legend, pound cake was never made with a pound of each of the ingredients. Actually, a 'pound' of eggs, sugar, flour, whatever, was not as consistent of a measurement as it is now. You could have a small pound or a large pound. It's similar to how we think of a dozen - you can have a normal dozen or a baker's dozen. Anyhow, just a fun little piece of information there.
I also thought I was going to be feeding this to small children, so rather than using real alcohol, I used imitation rum extract along with Bosnian coffee (I didn't have real espresso on hand, but if you've ever had Bosnian coffee, you'll know that it's just as strong and delicious). I also chose not to use real marscarpone cheese, opting instead for a mix of cream cheese, sour cream, and heavy whipping cream. Unfortunately, Mr. A thought it was whipped cream (which I had given him a taste of earlier) and took a big finger-full of it despite my exclamations that it was indeed not homemade whipped cream. It is always unfortunate to think you're getting one thing but in fact you receive something much less appetizing...
All in all, a wonderful success, as you can see :)
I
mixed recipes from Betty Crocker and from the Cook's magazine 'Best of' cookbook, and used pound cake instead of lady fingers.
All this is in thanks to Jesus who provided so well for us in the home we're in now - we are so thankful for such a wonderful blessing! I hope you feel inspired to do some cooking yourself now!
