hairyshoefairy

When we lived in CA we went had some fun dinners with Moco and Janesaw.  One time while we were making dinner Janesaw set out some edamame for us to snack on.  I’d never even seen it before let alone tried it.  Janesaw told me how to eat it and a few days later I picked some up at the store.  Then next time my mom came to visit us I pulled some out and got her hooked on it, too.

I’ve always bought it frozen because I’ve never seen it in the produce department but I’d occasionally wondered if I could hunt some fresh edamame down and see if there’s much of a difference.  Last week I went to a local farm stand and to my surprise they had fresh soybeans!  I was so excited I picked some right up.  They weren’t really any different from the kind I buy in the freezer section but it was still kind of fun to find it locally grown.

It’s such a yummy snack.  For those who have never tried it you can find it in any grocery store.  You can put the beans in salads and other things but I like them alone as a snack.  I heat the pods up in some boiling water, drain them, and sprinkle them with salt.  Eating them is kind of fun.  Hold one end of a pod and put the rest of it in your mouth.  Use your teeth to scoot the beans out of the pod and into your mouth.  They break out of the pod without much effort.  The salt stuck to the pod gets in your mouth as you pop out the soybean so it ends up perfectly seasoned.  Discard the pod when it’s empty.  Yum!  I usually eat a whole bowl by myself.

I’ve professed my love of pesto here before and despite ODD’s hatred of anything basil-related both my children love it, too.  Since good fresh basil can be hard to come by in Utah grocery stores I planted some this year to see if I could kick my brown thumb and actually make it grow.  To my great surprise I didn’t kill it and have quite a bit to use.  As the leaves have grown big I’ve picked them off the plant and made them into pesto.

I didn’t know what pesto was until I’d been married a couple of years.  I never had it growing up but I saw or heard about it someplace - probably The Food Network - and decided to give it a try.  Since it’s come to my attention not everyone knows what pesto is or how to make it I’ve made up a little tutorial for you to follow.

A few notes: I prefer a more oily pesto.  The kind you can buy in a jar at the store is usually more thick and basil-y.  All measurements in this recipe are approximate.  I don’t think I’ve ever made it exactly the same twice in a row and that’s okay.  This is cooking; not baking.  Measurements don’t have to be precise.  I just put in the amounts that look good to me so these measurements are rough guesses.  Consider this a jumping off point and make adjustments until it’s the way you want it.  Also, as opposed to regular pestos I don’t put parm in the sauce itself because I feel like it gets lost in all the other flavors and is a waste of a yummy but kind of expensive cheese.  Instead I wait until the pasta is plated, then I grate it over the individual servings.

Pesto

• Basil - if I buy it at a store I use all the leaves from one bunch but from my garden I use anywhere from 8-15 leaves.
• 2-3 Tbsp. Pine nuts, toasted - you can do this in a frying pan on the stove in just a few minutes.
• Garlic - I use a full small clove or cut a larger one down.  Remember it won’t be cooked so it will be strong.
• 3/4 C. Extra virgin olive oil - since it won’t be cooked you want the fruitiness of the extra virgin oil.  Regular or light olive oil just isn’t the same.
• Salt and pepper
• Parmesean
• Pasta - I prefer farfalle (bowtie) and use a full pound for the amount of sauce this recipe makes

Throw the cleaned basil leaves, pine nuts, garlic, and salt and pepper into the bowl of a food processor.

Blitz it all up until everything’s about the same size.

Add the olive oil and blitz some more.  You should add the oil while it’s running but my little processor doesn’t make that easy so I just add it all at once and it isn’t the end of the world.

Pour over hot pasta and toss.  When your ready to serve grate some parm over the top.  If your children are anything like mine they’ll scarf it down.  Peanut usually has two or three little bowls full before she’s done.

Last fall I saw in Jessica’s photostream that she had bottled some pesto sauce.  I looked around online to see if I could find some directions on how to do it myself but all I could find was info saying not to can it because of botulism.  So I emailed Jessica and asked how she’d done it.  She told me she hadn’t actually canned it but put it in jars and kept it in her freezer.  So now that I have a freezer of my own I used all the basil I’ve grown and made quite a few batches, threw it in bottles, and put them in my freezer to use for later.  My plants are now about ready to go to seed but I think I can get a couple more batches out before it isn’t good anymore.

As a little sidenote: When my basil first started coming up I was surprised by the way it looked.  I knew basil leaves didn’t look like this and wondered if I’d planted the wrong thing or was just growing weeds or something.  As it turns out, the first leaves that pop up don’t look anything like the real leaves that come later and the same thing happened with all the other herbs I’ve planted this year.

First leaves.

Real basil leaves.

I went through that entire bottle of my fresh pressed limeade with mint all by myself  in only one day so, naturally, I had to make more.  While I was at it I pulled out an extra lime, a lemon, and an orange, and made another citrus drink I love.  It’s a recipe Kermit gave me a few years back.  I was going to just link to the recipe on her blog but neither of us can find it in her archives there so she’s letting me share it here.  I’ve changed it a little to fit my 1 liter bottle.  For a 2 liter/2 quart pitcher just double it.

Fozzie’s Citrus Drink for a 1 liter bottle

• juice of 1 lime
• juice of 1 lemon
• juice of 1 orange
• sugar to taste - I go for about 3/4 C. for a 1 liter bottle
• water - enough to fill the rest of the bottle

Combine all  ingredients in bottle and shake until sugar dissolves.  Serve chilled.

And I figured since I’m sharing recipes I may as well put the recipe for my limeade up here as well.

Fresh Pressed Limeade with Mint for a 1 liter bottle

• juice of 5 limes
• simple syrup to taste - I make a 1:1 water:sugar ratio and heat until all the sugar dissolves and it begins to bubble a little.
• bruised/torn fresh mint leaves - I use 6-8 depending on size
• water - enough to fill the rest of the bottle

Pour all ingredients into bottle and shake to combine.  Serve chilled.

So refreshing on a hot summer day.

I planned on having eggs for dinner sometime this week and decided tonight would be it.  Thinking about it throughout the day I thought maybe instead of the regular “good stuff” scrambles I usually do I’d try my hand at poached eggs.

Growing up my family had poached eggs quite often.  We had an insert for one of our pans with the removable little cups that hold the eggs.  I didn’t even know you could poach an egg without one of those special pans until I worked at a bed and breakfast and my friend and coworker made a poached egg for a guest with nothing more than a pan of lightly boiling water.  I haven’t had the special egg cups since I got married so I’ve always waited for poached eggs until I visited my parents and could use theirs.  Today I decided I’d give the boiling water version a try.

It was not as easy as it looks.

In the end I figured it out a bit but that was after 5 other misshapen, half missing eggs made it out of the pan.  I’m still not great at it but I’m willing to try it again.

At first I thought I’d just do poached eggs on toast like I grew up with but then it occurred to me to make it into a twist on eggs Benedict instead.  I didn’t have any English muffins and wanted something more than plain old toast so I threw together some biscuits.  While they were baking I cooked some regular bacon since I didn’t have any Canadian bacon and whipped up some hollandaise sauce because, you know, with the eighteen pounds of butter in the Kouing Aman I made this week I really needed a little more.  For something different I sliced up some avocado to go on top.  Such a good dinner but really, it’s probably a good thing we don’t have it very often.  It’s so worth it when we do, though.

Every other week my grandpa, great aunt, some aunts and uncles, and sometimes cousins get together for a standing Family Lunch appointment.  We take turns choosing where to eat - usually downtown since my uncle works downtown and has a limited time for lunch.  A few weeks ago it was my turn and I chose Les Madeleines so I could try their specialty.

For those who don’t know, Les Madeleines is a bakery.  I’d been there before and enjoyed their cupcakes and short breads but I hadn’t tried what they’re known for.  They have all sorts of delicious pastries as well as sandwiches available for breakfast and lunch and for Family Lunch I ordered a delicious caprese sandwich but what I really wanted was the dessert.  All the pastries I’ve had there have been awesome but the pastry they are most well-known for is called Kouing Aman.

Oh. Wow.

My mom told me when I posted this I should add a pronunciation guide so here it is.  Kouing Aman is also sometimes spelled Kouign Amann but is pronounced the same either way.  The first word sounds like a mix of “queen,” the name “Quinn,” and “cooing.”  The second word sounds like “ah-mon”.

It’s flaky, almost like a croissant, but has the addition of caramelized sugar that puts it over the top.  I’ve never seen it anywhere else and it’s on the pricy side but it’s so worth it.  Les Madeleines is closed for a few weeks this summer but are still selling their Kouing Aman at a farmer’s market on Saturday mornings if you’re interested.  I decided in their absence, however, to try making some Kouing Aman of my own.

I looked around for a recipe online and didn’t find much so after reading most of them through I settled on trying this one from Recipezaar even though nobody else had posted about actually trying it yet.

It took a little work to find some fresh yeast which is more of a European thing than an American thing, but I finally found some at a bakery in Taylorsville that would sell me some.  Fresh yeast is not the same as dry active yeast.  It comes in a block or cake and works pretty quickly.  It also goes bad quickly which is why it’s not really big in American stores.

I made my dough and let it raise, then chilled it.

I pounded my butter flat.  I wish I’d been able to find one of the big blocks instead of having the use the kind that comes in 4 sticks.  It would have made this job easier.

Then, like with croissants, I encased the butter in the dough and rolled it out folded it over several times, chilling in between turns.

Here’s where the big difference between regular puff pastry and Kouing Aman comes in and it’s the reason you can’t really short cut it with store-bought puff pastry; the last two turns don’t use flour as the duster.  Instead the dough and butter is sprinkled with sugar so it gets worked into all the layers and later, when it gets baked the sugar all caramelizes inside and out and dies and you are left in heaven.

Can you see all the yummy layers of dough and butter?  That’s what makes it so flaky once it’s baked.

The place I took a detour from the recipe was where it wanted me to use little pastry rings on a parchment lined baking sheet and I didn’t have any so I used muffin tins.  It worked fine for the most part but had a harder time baking evenly with that much pastry inside the tin.  Were I to do it again I’d probably just buckle down and buy a few little rings to make the baking part easier.  Also then it wouldn’t have splurped out all over my oven and burned to the bottom.  Live and learn.

In the end, though, TA DA!  Homemade Kouing Aman!  No, she’s not as pretty or evenly browned as Les Madeleines’ version (what can I say, I’m not a pastry chef) but she still tastes sticky and caramel-y and I’m pretty sure I’m gaining weight by the hour just by having all that deliciousness in my house.

While preparing to make this I talked to ODD about it a lot.  After a while he asked if it was really a big deal or something.  Yeah, it kind of is.  I had to basically set aside most of a day to work on it because of all the raising, chilling, and rolling, not to mention mess-making.  Doing it once was a lot of fun but it was so much work I’m not likely to do it again and am more than willing to pay Les Madeleines to make them for me.