Baking: Week 4 - Filling - Scones

Week: 4
Theme: Filling
Dish: Scones

This was a failed attempt. I had originally wanted to make clotted cream for my filling, but it's quite labor intensive. Then I thought I would just fall back on whipped cream, but then I realized that my cream had gone bad -- it was chunky! :( So I just filled it with jam.

Here's the recipe from Jamie Oliver's Jaime's Food Revolution:

Ingredients:

• 1 cup mixture of raisins and/or dried cherries (I used raisins)
• Orange juice for soaking
• 4 cups of self-rising flour, plus a little for dusting
• I made my own rising flour with this mixture: 1 cup flour, 1 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 cup butter
• 2 large eggs
• 1/3 cup milk
• Jam
• 2/3 clotted cream or heavy cream, whipped (failed on my part. :( )

Steps

To Make the Dough

• Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
• Soak the cherries and raisins in a little bowl with just enough orange juice to cover them
• While they're soaking, you can either pulse the flour, baking powder, and butter in a food processor just until the mixture starts to look like breadcrumbs, or you can blend them together by hand.
• Transfer to a mixing bowl and make a well in the middle
• In another bowl, beat the eggs and milk with a fork
• Drain your cherries and raisins in a strainer and add them to the beaten eggs and milk with a good pinch of salt
• Then pour your beaten eggs.milk, cherrie and raisin into the well in the flour mixture and stir well, adding a splash more milk of necessary, until you have a soft dry dough
• If your dough feels a little dry and doesn't come together, add an extra splash of milk

To Make the Scones

• Dust a clean work surface and your rolling pin with flour
• Roll out the dough until it's 3/4 in thick
• Using a 2 1/2 in round biscuit cutter or the rim of a glass, cut out 10 circles from the dough and place these on a non-stick cookie sheet
• You may have to roll your dough out again in order to get all 10 rounds out of it, but try not to knead it too much
• Dip a pastry brush into some milk and brush the top of each scone
• Bake in a preheated oven for 12 to 15 minutes, until risin and brown
• Take them out of the oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool

To Serve the Scones

• Cut each scone in half across the middle
• Spoon a dollop of jam on the bottom half of each one followed by a dollop of clotted or whipped cream and put the tops back on
• Don't forget the tea!

I didn't have a food processor so I just broke things up with a wooden spoon and when I realized things weren't working out with the spoon I just broke up the big pieces of butter with my hands.

I didn't get a picture of me mixing the flour, but I found that mixing it a bit with a spoon and then following it up with mixing by hand the most useful method. Also try to get a huge mixing bowl. Mine was way too small and it made mixing a real pain. 

After I pulled it out, I realized that I should have added a bit more milk. My dough didn't have a smooth texture and was prone to crumble. Next time I will definitely mix in more milk. I think I also had a bit too much dough because I didn't account of the extra amount of baking powder and salt when I made my self-rising flour.

My glass ended up being a bit too big and my 10th scone had to be smaller and formed by hand. I put it on parchment paper to keep clean up easy.

I didn't have a pastry brush, hence the messy milk splatter. Time to put it on my to buy list.

I ended up cooking these longer than 15 minutes because they didn't seem brown enough.

Of course, who eats scones without some tea? I made some English Breakfast. :)

In the end, the scones came out crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. It's a bit crumbly, but very good. I've only had scones like once so it's hard for me to say if this was a tasty scone, but it's certainly a tasty something!

I don't know if the jam counts as a filling since I didn't make the jam, but I really tried to make the clotted cream. Sometimes you just have to deal with what you have.

Cooking: Week 4 - Pan Fry - Panfried Pork Shoulder Steaks

Week: 4
Theme: Pan fry
Dish: Panfried pork shoulder steaks

We really like panfrying. I bought Ofer a cast iron skillet as a belated Christmas present and we knew we wanted to break it in with this challenge. Whenever we have a good piece of meat, we try to minimize what spices we use. For this, we only used a generous helping of salt and pepper. And the basically cooked it on each side till it was done. We check the temperature using a meat thermometer before serving.

I didn't expect to like this as much as I did. It kind of felt like I was eating a steak with a different flavor profile. It was really satisfying eating it with a fork and knife. They were really cheap too, only a couple of bucks each. Very good.

We also made a homemade tomato sauce. It was a pretty simple recipe. We just eye balled the amount of ingredients.

We used:

• 1 onion
• 1 head of garlic
• A few handfuls of mushrooms
• 2 spicy peppers
• 2 cans of whole tomatoes
• 1 can of tomato sauce
• 1 small can of tomato paste
• A few stalks of celery
• A bunch of parsley
• Two bay leaves
• A bunch of basil
• Some smoked cayenne
• Salt and pepper

We just browned the onions and then added the other veggies. Then we just dumped everything else in. We took out the basil and bay leaves in the end and just left the sauce chunky.

We missed week 3.

So early in the game and we already missed a week. Last week we were really not too motivated with the themes: soups and white chocolate. Don't get me wrong, I love soups, but we just didn't have a good idea as to what kind of soup we wanted. Also, our pantry was kind of barebones last week and we were lazy about buying new groceries.

We don't make soups very often so we didn't really know what kind of soup we would want. Also Ofer doesn't like white chocolate and didn't seem very excited to eat any of my possible white chocolate creations.

Eventually, we would like to make a soup and maybe we'll post it up here when that happens.

Baking: Week 2 - Miniature - Irish Creme Liquor Balls

Mmm, balls.

Week: 2
Theme: Miniatures
Dish: Irish Creme Liquor Balls

Hi again! I have to admit, I feel like we cheated this week. After last week, we had a ton of brownies left over and because we don't have friends (FOREVER ALONE TOGETHER) we weren't able to finish them all. So I decided to repurpose the brownies into Chef John's Rum Ball recipe!

We looked at our sizable college stash of booze, but we realized that we didn't have enough rum to do this recipe, so we opened up our new bottle of Bailey's Irish Creme (Costco sized!) and went to work.

I may or may not have added more alcohol than what was needed. :)

We didn't follow the recipe very exactly, but it was a fun template to follow. I added about 6 brownies into the mix and mixed in a couple of swigs of Baileys till it looked like paste. Then, I used a tablespoon measuring spoon and scooped out the contents, using a chopstick to help maneuver it out. It smelled nice and alcoholic! I ended up scooping them beforehand and placing it in the freezer, but I wonder if I could just place the whole thing in...

 I didn't have good dark chocolate like he had suggested so I went back to the Costco sized bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips. I swear I'll start buying the good stuff once I finish this bag! I feel like learning how to melt the chocolate via the steaming method was my real learning point of this week. I've never been able to successfully do it -- well, I've done it twice -- so having it work is quite nice.

My kitchen seems inadequately equipped because I couldn't find a heat-resistant (i.e. not plastic) bowl that would fit over a pot without it touching the bottom so I had to fashion one out of a deep metal bowl and a stock pot. Thank god that it was just wide enough to fit.

Here are the rolled balls. I took them out a little early and rolled them and it looked like I smeared poop all over my hands.

Our chocolate didn't melt as nicely as Chef John's. It was thicker and didn't coat the balls as nice, but it was still really tasty and I had a hard time forcing myself not to stick my face into the concoction. Because the consistency of my chocolate was thicker, our balls didn't come out nice a smooth. But, it's okay, I want to say that it has character.

In the end, the ball was actually more mushy than I would have expected. I may have been heavy handed with the alcohol. But they were still quite tasty! You feel the kick after you finish it and after a few, it's gets nice. :)

Cooking: Week 2 - Chinese - Chinese Steamed Trout

Week: 2
Theme: Chinese
Dish: Chinese Steamed Trout

Hi everyone! This week's theme is Chinese. I'm Chinese so this theme has a special place in my heart. I had a lot of ideas on what I should make, wontons, congee, spare ribs, but I decided to go with something that I always crave when I go back to my mom's house: steamed fish. I think steaming gets a lot of flack in the US because people think it doesn't add any flavor, but Chinese people take steaming to a whole new level.

Anyways, I used Steamy Kitchen's Chinese Steamed Fish recipe. I didn't follow it exactly, but Chinese food is usually made without exact measurements. I also used a steamer that Ofer's sister had given us (thank you Aya!) but we hadn't had a chance to use it. It's perfect because I don't have any pots big enough to steam my fish in.

I also took out the cooking wine part because the steamer wouldn't be able to hold that liquid. I think it turned out fine without it and my mom doesn't use it either.

They smelled heavenly already at this point!

The prep was relatively easy. We bought our trout at Costco and it came in a pack of 4. They had already been cleaned, gutted, and descaled. Luckily, our steamer was able to fit two fish perfectly.

Steaming in action!

At this point, we were super excited.

Fish after the steam bath.

We had to move the fish into a baking dish because we didn't steam it in a pan. I think because of the shape of the baking dish, the soy sauce didn't nicely penetrate the fish as well. Also, I didn't double the sauce recipe, which I should have done since I was making two fish.

Saucy fishes!

Microwaving the sauce was pretty quick and easy. It smelled oh so good!

After the hot oil bath!

In the original recipe, she said that you should able to hear the sizzle on the fish after dumping the oil on it, but I didn't get that. Not sure why. It did sizzle like crazy in the wok though. Maybe I need a different oil (I used canola) or heat it up a bit more.

Sorry for the blurry pic, but you can see how flaky the fish is!

I couldn't resist showing you guys how flaky the fish was. It wasn't dry at all.

We ate it with rice! Naturally.

Verdict: It was really tasty! Pretty close to what my mom does with her fish. We made two fish for two people but one was enough to fill us up. My mom usually cooks one fish for a family of 6, but we have some other dishes along side it. I think one fish is good for just a meal with two if you don't plan on having other meat dishes. I wish we had made a vegetable dish, but I didn't feel like making more food that wouldn't be eaten.

The trout is more firm than some of the other fishes that my mom makes. But I found the meat to still be sweet and flavorful. It's not too "fishy". I really liked this recipe and even though it was my first time make it, it came out really well. I would recommend this to anyone who wants to try it.

Cooking: Week 1 - Eggs - Cooking Breakfast at Midnight

Week: 1

Theme: Eggs

Dish: Breakfast at Midnight

We ended up doing a simple fried egg with some hot links and bread for this challenge due to lack of time. Nothing spectacular, but Ofer did manage to successfully flip three eggs in the pan perfectly!

Baking: Week 1 - Brownies - Simple Brownies

Week: 1
Theme: Brownies
Dish: Simple Brownies

This week has been hectic. We've been off on winter break so we haven't started our baking or cooking challenges. We had planned to come back to Davis yesterday so we would have all day to do our challenges, but it didn't work out so we ended up only having a few hours to get everything done.

This is my second ever batch of homemade brownies. I used the same recipe as the first one. It's really simple and I love how there's not much of a clean up. After I had put the brownies into the oven, Ofer started looking over. He had puppy dog eyes and asked if there was a bowl for him to lick. Then he complained that I left too much batter and that he could have had an extra brownie from it.

Anyways, here's the recipe:

Introduction

Hi everyone!

My name is Teresa and I live with my boyfriend, Ofer. We are about to (attempt to) do the reddit's 52weeksofcooking and 52weeksofbaking. Realistically, we probably won't be able to complete all 52 challenges, but optimistically, we're gonna damn well try to do them all.

Hopefully, we'll gain some knowledge, skills, hopefully not weight, and have fun while doing it!

This blog is going to document our successes and failures and keep us accountable.

- Teresa