{daring cooks: pierogi}

The August 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by LizG of Bits n’ Bites and Anula of Anula’s Kitchen. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make pierogi from scratch and an optional challenge to provide one filling that best represents their locale.

One of my good friends has been raving about how awesome pierogi are ever since I met her and introduced her to climbing. It seemed like after each climb night she said she was going home to eat pierogi. She was astonished that I had never heard of them or had them before and stated that she had to make them for me. Sadly, I moved before we could set that up so, you can imagine how happy and excited I was to see this months challenge. Finally, I'd get to have pierogi! (kface I've been dying to tell you that it was this months challenge!)

So, what is a pierogi? It is basically a dumpling filled with deliciousness. For the challenge, we had to make the dough and filling from scratch. Pierogi can be either savory or sweet so I chose to lean more to the savory side of things for John's sake. LizG provided a few recipes but said that we should adjust our fillings to include something that represented where we are from. So, my fillings ended up being: twice baked potato, chicken basil pesto and sweet potato. I did manage to sneak in a little sweetness on the last one, but still served it as part of our dinner, not dessert. After all, sweet potato soufflé is usually served as one of the many sides my family consumes during the holidays, even though its sweet enough to be a dessert. I chose these because here in North Carolina, sweet potatoes are a big agriculture product, chicken (which is usually fried in the south) is loved down here, and well, potatoes are just good.

I made a few adjustments to the recipes provided based on what I had on hand and what I could get locally. For the dough, all-purpose is called for but I got away with using whole wheat pastry flour and it came out just fine. I did a double batch of the dough recipe since I wanted to try several different fillings and still had filling left over! Thankfully, this dish is easily frozen and we now have a few bags of pierogi awaiting a night I don't feel like cooking.

In filling them, I found that the potato versions were very easy to do. The chicken version however liked to poke through the dough and cause problems so just a note if you choose to make these with some sort of solid filling. I'd just roll your dough a little thicker to protect it.

Since the recipe made so many, it took a while to fill them all up. I ended up filling what we were eating that night and cooking those first. While they were boiling, I worked on filling the rest. It takes a little time, but for the amount you get, its worth it.

I tried to keep all of the varieties separate from each other so I'd know what I was serving, but after the boiling step they got all mixed together. After boiling them I popped them in a little olive oil and sauteed them up to brown them a bit. This also warmed the ones that had boiled first. I had no sour cream or any idea of what kind of sauce to put them in so we enjoyed these plain. They were delicious! It was kind of like a treasure hunt since we didn't know what we were going to be biting into. John's favorites ended up being the twice baked potato and chicken basil pesto versions. I loved them all.

See more pics and the recipe after the jump. See what other Daring Cooks did here.

{daring bakers: swiss swirl ice cream cake}

The July 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Sunita of Sunita’s world – life and food. Sunita challenged everyone to make an ice-cream filled Swiss roll that’s then used to make a bombe with hot fudge. Her recipe is based on an ice cream cake recipe from Taste of Home.

Upon first sight of this months swiss swirl ice cream cake challenge, my thoughts were as follows: I get to make ice cream!!! Wait. I have to make swiss rolls as well? Like those little debbie ones I loved as a kid? And then combine it all?! Okay, a kid HAD to have made this up and then an adult just made it pretty...who else would have come up with combining swiss rolls and ice cream but a kid?

So, yes, that was my thought process pretty much exactly. I was very excited to get started so I began brainstorming my dream combinations of ice cream flavors. Strawberry + lemon, blueberry + lemon, mint + chocolate, mint chocolate + coffee, mint + chocolate cinnamon, chocolate coffee + mint...the list went on. I have determined that I will make all of these flavors at some point or another. For this challenge though, I chose to do a chocolate espresso + mint ice cream along with a mint cream filled swiss roll.

It was quickly evident that I would not be able to make this dessert with entirely locally sourced ingredients so, I did the best I could and at least used my own fresh mint from my container garden. My other challenge was that I am a bit lactose intolerant which is very sad as I LOVE ice cream. I do sometimes indulge in the occasional ben & jerry's just to ya know, "test" my stomach out. I savor every single bite and then about 5 minutes later, immediately regret my decision. Thankfully, a friend of mine has the book The Vegan Scoup on her iPad and was able to send me over a few of the recipes I needed to make my concoction. Let me tell you, ice cream is incredible simple to make without an ice cream maker! You just need to have an entire day that you will be home so you can babysit it. Totally worth it in my opinion.

As this challenge had so many components (the ice cream (two versions!), swiss rolls, hot fudge sauce and then assembly which had several steps of letting it freeze for hours) I had to break it down into a several day process so that my brain wouldn't explode. I started with the chocolate espresso ice cream to make sure it would work. It did. I enjoyed a bowl that evening. The following day I made the mint ice cream. Delicious. The green leaves even turned the ice cream a light mint color! I then took a day of rest to build my courage to create the swiss roll as I'd heard too many horror stories with it not working from other daring bakers.

Took another day to build more courage.

Finally got the courage to try it on the 5th day and was very hopeful. I'd read all sorts of tips from others and felt I was ready to face the challenge. Everything mixed nicely and remained fluffy. It baked beautifully. It even came off of the parchment paper without too much trouble. I was feeling very happy and wondered what all the fuss had been about. I rolled it up nicely in my towel and left it to cool for the two hours recommended. A few minutes before it was ready to be filled I made my mint cream filling and then sat down to do my unrolling. It went okay as I unrolled but I noticed it cracking a bit. I figured it was okay and kept on going. Added the mint filling and began to roll it back up without the towel this time and well...DISASTER. A thin amount stuck to the towel and did not come up which caused the cake to crack even worse. Lets just say at this point, the day before our challenge is due, I just gave up and kept on rolling it. Somehow I got it wrapped in plastic and placed in the freezer hoping it would take some shape and allow me to cut it. Thankfully it did and I was able to slice it up nicely and begin assembling the masterpiece.

The assembly process was fairly easy, it just took forever for each layer to freeze. I must say that the end result was absolutely worth the long drawn out saga. The flavors combined delightfully in my mouth and I think I could eat this every day. In the end, I don't know if I'd ever make this entire thing again. I will definitely be making more ice creams, but just not sure about doing the whole thing all over again. Thank you Sunita for an awesome challenge! It was perfect for this ridiculous summer heat we've been having.

Visit the Daring Kitchen for the original recipes and see what others created. Check out more pics and my recipes below the jump!

{daring cooks: nut butter}

The July 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Margie of More Please and Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make their own nut butter from scratch, and use the nut butter in a recipe. Their sources include Better with Nut Butter by Cooking Light Magazine, Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, and Food Network online.

I was really looking forward to this months challenge of making a nut butter and then using it in an entree So was John. He was ready for a daring cooks challenge that was super savory and this one was it. The challengers gave us several recipe options to use our nut butters in. The nut butters could be made of peanuts, cashews, almonds or whatever nut we wanted. I had just made some peanut butter and as peanuts are easy to get locally, I went with that for my nut butter. You can check out my previous post on making peanut butter here. For my entree, I chose to go with the Asian Noodle Salad with Peanut Dressing recipe. Let me tell you, I could eat that dressing by the spoonful! It was absolutely one of the best things I've ever tasted and paired with the rest of the ingredients, it was wonderful. I highly recommend making this sauce and just spooning it over everything you eat. The recipe made more dressing than was necessary for the dish but it refrigerates well and can be used in a variety of other dishes.

In order to make this dish entirely local, I switched up some of the ingredients to make my own version. I loved how easy it was to make it from all local and fresh ingredients...it really added to the scrumptiousness of it all. The sauce would not have been easy to make using all local ingredients except that I already had the soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar and ground ginger on hand.

Since beginning our locavore challenge, we have run out of noodles so, for the first time in my life, I made from scratch pasta!  I was super excited to give this a try and found a simple recipe over at the Food Network website. It required a good bit of kneading with gave my forearms a workout. I'm sad to say they were even sore the following day! I am so happy I'm climbing again now that we've moved one mile from the climbing gym. I will no longer be shamed by making pasta again. Anyway, I have no pasta roller so this stuff had to be rolled out with my awesome long rolling pin. I think it needed to be a little thinner but my arms were done. The pasta on its own was pretty delicious and a lot of fun to make. I did a half recipe of the pasta since that was all the flour I had left. It made plenty to serve us four times.

To get the original recipe and other options we had, check out The Daring Kitchen.

See my version of the recipe after the jump

{vegetable + meatball soup}

This is my second attempt at a vegetable soup and I think I finally got it right. This soup was absolutely delicious and I think one of the best things I've ever made. Since I had ground beef I decided to add a few meatballs to the mix but you could easily leave them out and sub a vegetable stock for the chicken stock to make this vegan. You could really put any veggies you have on hand into this and it will come out good.

Recipe and pics after the jump

{local pops}

Summer is here and with that comes the lovely days of 90 and 100º weather. Blech. Thankfully, I found some recipes out there to make fruit popsicles that are both healthy and refreshing. I was inspired by these delicious looking treats and decided to use the raspberries and blueberries I'd picked up at the market to try my own version. You could make these without adding any sweetener but I had some local honey on hand and decided to add in just enough to take out the bite...especially with the raspberries. I highly recommend using molds that have no funky shapes or dips like I did with my raspberry molds...it made it terribly difficult to get out of the glass after it had frozen. My favorite was the blueberry version...perfectly refreshing and scrumptious. The raspberry version ended up not having quite enough honey in it so it had a little bit of a bite. If you make these, just taste them once its all mixed up before putting into the molds to make sure the sweetness factor is to your liking. As we are moving south this week, these will definitely become a staple in our freezer to help us survive the hot summer months.

Recipe and pics after the jump

{june daring bakers: blueberry pavlovas}

The June 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Dawn of Doable and Delicious. Dawn challenged the Daring Bakers’ to make Chocolate Pavlovas and Chocolate Mascarpone Mousse. The challenge recipe is based on a recipe from the book Chocolate Epiphany by Francois Payard

This months challenge was to make chocolate pavlovas and chocolate mascarpone mousse. As I am trying to make each challenge using as local of ingredients as possible, I am happy to say that I only had to go out and buy the heavy cream and mascarpone cheese. Granted, we did make mascarpone cheese in the Tiramisu daring bakers challenge back in February, but I really didn't want to go through the trouble and end up with butter again so I bought it instead. I discovered that yes indeed, I had made it incorrectly during that challenge...oh well. So, getting back to this challenge, at the market last Saturday I discovered that blueberries had come into season. I was so excited that I bought several pints...these have to be the best blueberries I've ever eaten in my life. For the challenge I decided to use them to make a blueberry meringue, blueberry mouse and the mascarpone cream drizzle.

I decided to do a half recipe since it was going to only be John and I eating this. Sadly, we still had too much. My changes to the original recipe were basically doing a straight substitute of the chocolate for the blueberries. To prepare them, I simply pureed them in my tiny food processor so that they would mix well with all of the other ingredients. The nice thing about this dessert was that it was fairly easy to make and put together. The longest portion was waiting on the merengues to cook but let me tell you, crispy blueberry merengues absolutely melt in your mouth. It was like cotton candy in crunch form. I would have been fine just making and eating those! The mouse was also pretty delicious and the blueberys flavor came through nicely. It all combined to make an absolute delight in the mouth. John, who doesn't usually enjoy sugary sweets, LOVED these.

Check out the pics and recipe after the jump

{potato, squash and goat cheese gratin}

As more items are becoming available at our local farmers market, I'm having to stretch my imagination further to figure out what to make with it all. Its not that there are no recipes out there, on the contrary, there are too many and I can't choose. The other issue I've been having is in trying to stretch our meat supply since it tends to be the more expensive portion of our weekly food budget. I've been able to successfully make a couple vegetarian dishes a week that John approves of and fills us up adequately. However, since we are not vegetarians and I've never done much vegetarian cooking, I'm having a difficult time knowing where to look and knowing if the dish will be filling enough. Thankfully, the other day as I was surfing around on The Kitchen, I found this delicious looking vegetarian dish using ingredients I had picked up from the market. I decided to add some onions into the mix and only used about one third of the cheese it called for since I was saving the rest for the summer pizza. Served with a salad, the meal ended up being quite filling and we were able to get 3 servings out of it. It would work great as a side dish as well, but we were both pleased with it as the main course. I would add all of the cheese it calls for though as it will only make it taste better.

Recipe and pics after the jump