Sunday, April 12, 2009

Part Deux: Back with a vengeance... Weekend Recipe(s) - 4/12/09 (and 4/13/09)

Ok. Back from work, and writing up my second recipe for the weekend. With this one, I should be back on track with one per weekend. This, like I said in my last posting, is one of my own recipes. I used the quickbread recipe as a base, with a little modification. Then I added a pretty basic glaze, and made it my own. I call it the Lemon-Honey Top Quickbread:



Lemon-Honey Top Quickbread
Makes: 1 large pan-sized flatbread
Time: 5-15 minutes prep, up to 40 minutes baking

This recipe would make a good morning pastry. It's not too sweet, and plenty filling

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup warm milk
.33 cup neutral oil (vegetable/grapeseed/canola)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

Topping:
3 parts lemon juice
2 parts honey
1-2 parts granulated sugar

Preheat the oven to 375*F. Mix dry bread ingredients in a non-reactive mixing bowl. Pour in the oil and mix. Create a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in the warm milk. Mix well (adding flour if necessary) to form a non-sticky but still elastic dough. Lightly grease a 9x13 standard baking sheet and press dough into rectangle. Allow shrinkage, flip the dough over and repress. Heat the honey and lemon juice in a microwave safe container until it is no longer viscous. Stir in sugar until it is dissolved. Heat once more in the microwave to return to a non viscous state. Using a basting brush, spread a layer of the topping on the dough. Bake the dough for 40 minutes, rebasting every 7 to 10 minutes. Remove from oven, cut into squares and serve. May be served hot, warm, or chilled.


Here is the result I got. It's a very dense biscuit-like pastry that's not at all too sweet (you know how some of those "breakfast" things can be like desserts). When it first comes out of the oven, the crust is still soft in the middle, but the bottom is stiff enough for each square to be able to take some sort of additional spread (maybe some cottage cheese, or a fruit flavored cream cheese, or even just plain cream cheese). Once chilled, the crust becomes more compact and flakey, but still extremely tasty. Here are some of the pictures I took after baking this:

This is trying to show how the glaze pools near the edge where the crust dips a little bit. If you choose to roll out the dough with a pin, then the glaze should spread evenly, but you won't get these tasty little wells of goodness.
Here's a picture that I think really shows the beautiful coloring that this dish takes on. The crust gets a really nice golden brown coloring, and the glaze tints it with yellow. You can see in the piece near the bottom that there can be some discoloration due to the sugar, but I think that was because my oven wasn't heated uniformly.
In all, it's just an awesome dish. The color of it is nice, the taste is great for breakfast (or anytime really), the texture is complementary of the taste, and the ease with which you can make this dish makes it accessible to just about everyone. I think this could also be a gread base recipe to build on.
Anyway, so there are the recipes. It took me three days to get through those two posts. That's what I get for starting them pretty much immediately after getting home from a 7 hour shift running food (at 12am or thereabouts no less). It's interesting though; I have absolutely no idea how large my readership is. I know of a few people (my parents for instance, Hi Mom and Dad!), but even then, I'm not sure how often they check it, and I certainly don't know anyone who has tried one of my recipes. I hope someone has at least been inspired to cook more, because everything is better when it's homemade. Well... unless you absolutely have no idea what you're doing and screw it up (that just reminds me of the first time my brothers and I made an omlet at home; we mistook teaspoon for tablespoon in regards to the salt content, and since we were tripling the recipe, we put in 3 tablespoons of it...). Regardless, you will never learn unless you make mistakes. A lot can happen when you say "Hey, so that doesn't work. What can we do instead?" The possibilities are endless. Some side notes:
1) Flippin hilarious how you can hear the cans of beer being opened during Linecook415's podcasts. I think that's funnier than the toilet flushes myself. Next podcast, I'm going to keep a tally.
2) Work is awesome. Plain and simple, it's exciting and super awesome for someone like me who loves food. I just can't wait to get into the kitchen part of it.
3) In addition to the blog, I'm thinking of starting a website geared towards students who appreciate good food in Los Angeles (and whichever city I end up in after college) as well as aspiring chefs and foodies in general. I'm thinking forums, restaurant reviews (both myself in my free time, and from newspapers and such), recipes, basic technique lessons, and interviews with chefs, servers, managers, and owners if I can swing it.
4) I still lament that USC has no cooking classes. We have at least three types of dance classes, lots of PE classes, and countless other Fine Arts classes. So adding to the "list" (you know, the list of stuff to do before you die), "Start an School of Culinary Arts and Restaurant and Hotel Industry at USC." All it takes is some rich donar to agree to put their name on a building. To see what else is on my list, you'll have to ask me yourself.
5) If you are a reader, please respond with your thoughts. I'm interested in knowing what people think about things. Even if you just say, "I like puppies," I'd be completely down for doing a post on the variety of recipes one can use puppies and other domestic animals in... A joke, people. Maybe in bad taste, but that was a joke...
Anyway, I think I've found my "signing off" phrase. Inspired of course from Linecook's podcast, but not nearly as clever (or vulgar).
Happiness begins in the kitchen. Be bold!
Cheers,
-Peter

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