Peanut butter caramel popcorn

Several years ago, before I got into making ice cream every couple of weeks, I used to make a lot of caramel corn. I'm talking about the good stuff that they sell for five bucks a handful in tourist traps, except better because I made it with plenty of real butter and without ridiculous novelty flavors for the rubes. It was praised by the editors of Food and Wine magazine. OK, one ex-editor, but still, he knew what he was talking about. It's also kind of a pain in the butt so I made this recipe instead.

Still, I've got a bit of expertise to bring to bear so I think my few tweaks managed to improve it.

Ingredients
enough popcorn kernels to make six to seven cups of popped popcorn. That's 1/4 to 1/2 cup depending on the variety and how fresh they are
1 cup roasted peanuts
Vegetable oil
2 large pinches salt
1/2 cup strongly flavored dark honey, like, say, avocado honey
1/3 cup not-quite-white sugar, demerara or the like
1/2 cup natural unsweetened peanut butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
4 or 5 shots of vinegar-based but fruity hot sauce, Tabasco's not really the best choice, but it'll do.

Prepare your largest mixing bowl. Heat a large heavy pan over medium heat and film the bottom with vegetable oil. Add a few kernels of the popcorn, then put a lid on the pan. Leave a small crack for steam to escape. When the popcorn starts popping, add the rest and shake vigorously to make sure the kernels pop evenly. When the popping slows, take the pan off the heat.

Pour the popcorn into the bowl to cool, being careful to leave any unpopped kernels in the pan. Coated with peanut butter caramel, the unpopped kernels are a serious tooth hazard.

Mix the honey, a pinch of salt and sugar in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Turn heat to low and let simmer for three minutes, then remove from the heat and add the peanut butter. Stir vigorously until all the peanut butter is melted, then mix in the vanilla and hot sauce.

Immediately pour the peanut butter caramel over the popcorn and stir with a long-handled wooden spoon until it's all coated. Once it's mixed, check for seasoning. Let cool a few minutes before moving it to a serving bowl. Let cool a bit longer before actually serving as it's better when it's congealed a little. The texture is better refrigerator, but the flavor is better at room temperature. You'll have to judge the best balance yourself.


My popcorn popped up rather less voluminously than I wanted so I ended up with a rather thick coat of goop around the kernels. That's a bit of a novelty for me as I'm using to thin coats of caramel that I can bake into crispness. That's not really an option with a peanut butter based sauce. This is more in the soft chewy rice crispy treat neighborhood. Not a bad thing if that's what you're aiming at.

The dark honey and hot sauce give a couple dimensions of full flavor missing from the original recipe which is not necessarily a good thing if you're just looking for simple honey peanut butter which I admit can be quite nice. Here the light peanut butter flavor fades into a rich honey with a few bitter notes rounding it out and leaves a lingering burn. Well, I like it.

I'll have to make my proper caramel corn recipe some time and post it up. Maybe I'll try a new variation with the bottle of agave nectar I bought. It's got to be useful for something.

Nutella pumpernickel ice cream

I've been thinking about mixing bread, cake or pastry of some sort into ice cream for a little while now. In particular, I knew pumpernickel goes well with chocolate so I've had that on my to do list. I had an inkling that the texture there wouldn't be the greatest so I've been holding off. But now that I've got a quarter loaf of pumpernickel going stale in my kitchen there's never been a better time. I thought it would just be chocolate ice cream with chunks of bread, but I recently came across some thoughts on the matter by Michael Laiskonis, executive pastry chef at Le Bernardin, in his blog. I was researching browned butter ice cream which I've been seeing pop up in cooking competitions recently. (There are stability issues, but I've got a bag of xantham gum so I may give it a shot.) He talked about making ice cream flavored with french toast and Twinkies and said the trick was soaking the baked goods in the milk and cream and then blending it all together. It seemed worth a shot with pumpernickel too.


I used 1 1/2 cups milk and 1 1/2 cups heavy cream and soaked maybe 2 cups of pumpernickel bread cut up in cubes overnight. The bread was a bit stale and pretty hearty to start with so it held together pretty well. If it hadn't, I had considered just mashing up the bread by hand, but instead into the food processor it went.




Along with the bread and dairy went 1/4 cup Nutella, 1/4 cup cream cheese (which cuts the bright flavor of the Nutella and gives it a bit more of a cheesecake sort of flavor, particularly when it's been around a little while and has started getting a little tangy.), 2 Tablespoons Dutch process cocoa, 3/4 cup sugar, a dash of salt and 1/4 teaspoon vanilla.




Once it was done I decided the pumpernickel flavor was getting a little lost so I crumbled the slice I had left and added it to the mix before chilling it overnight.




The next day the mix had thickened up quite a bit and the crumbs had fallen apart a little. It also wasn't quite as flavorful as I had hoped so I mixed in a bit more sugar and cocoa (included in the amounts I mentioned) before putting it into the churn. It froze up quickly--too quickly, really--as I ended up with thick layers of unaerated ice cream stuck to the side and bottom of the bucket that I had to chisel off and mix in frequently. Next time I have a mix that looks likely to do that I should let it and the bucket sit out on the counter for ten minutes before starting. Remind me of that, would you? Thanks.

The mix thickened up nearly to the point of stopping the motor, which no ice cream had managed with my relatively powerful Cuisinart churn before. When I noticed I added another big dollop of Nutella and a teaspoon of caraway seeds. I tried to turn the churn back on to mix them through, but the static friction was too much and it wouldn't get started. So I dished it out and mixed it by hand. I think I managed to distribute them nicely enough.

The final result is a bit of a mixed bag. First, the flavors of both the Nutella and the bread are muted at freezing temperatures so it's a very mild ice cream unless you let it sit out until it's almost melted. But if you do, that pleasant pairing is there just the way I was hoping. The texture is quite unusual and I'm not sure I entirely like it. Crumbling that last bit of bread in resulted in fully distributed crumbs like a mouthful of cake a la mode. I could have given it another few minutes in the food processor but I don't think smooth and/or creamy was really an option. A finer grain would have just made the mix even more closely resemble concrete. On the other hand, the Nutella swirl and sprinkling of caraway seeds create pleasant bursts of flavor--rather unexpectedly in the later case. I think there are some real possibilities in using seeds in ice cream: anise and sesame are two strong candidates for livening up fruit-flavored sherbets I think. Overall, this was an interesting experiment with some strong points. I could see making other ventures in this general area.

Beef Stroganoff

The pumpernickel bread I baked recently isn't the most versatile type of bread out there so I did a bit of research for what goes well with it. There's smoked fish and cream cheese so I had a bit of that. There's Nutella. (Actually, the combination of a sale on Nutella and poor impulse control was the initial prompt to choosing that sort of bread to make in the first place.) It sounds a bit odd, but when you remember that there's cocoa in the pumpernickel recipe it does make sense. There will developments on that combination later--predictable ones if you've been reading for a while--but you know from the subject line that the immediate topic is beef stroganoff.

There's a surprising amount of variation in recipes out there. For one thing, I didn't know that mushrooms are recent addition. I cobbled together my own version out of three recipes that had appealing elements. (Cream of mushroom soup was right out.) I liked 2/1 beef to mushroom ratio and the seasoning in the recipe from Simply Recipes. Cook Like Your Grandmother had an interesting marination technique. And Dave Campbell, chairman of the Culinary Arts Department at SUNY Cobleskill added some intriguing French elements. Here's my composite recipe:

Ingredients:
4 Tablespoons butter
1 pound tenderloin, cut into thin strips
1/3 cup thinly sliced shallots
1/2 pound not-quite-so-thickly sliced cremini mushrooms
1 cup sour cream
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 small handful cornichons, roughly chopped
1/2 teaspoon dried tarragon
salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste

0. Take everything out of the refrigerator so it'll be at room temperature when you need it.

1. Layer beef and shallots on a relatively deep plate or shallow bowl (so as not to spill any released juices) salting as you go. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit on the counter for an hour.





2. Melt 3 Tablespoons of butter in a large cast iron pan on medium heat. Scrape off the shallots into a bowl. Turn heat up to just below high and brown beef in batches. The meat should be sufficiently salty already but check. Add pepper to the bowl of cooked meat.





3. Reduce heat to medium high and add shallots. Cook shallots until they're nicely browned, about four minutes. Add to bowl of meat.





4. Melt another Tablespoon of butter in the pan. Add mushrooms after the butter stops bubbling but before it starts to brown. It's not a very long window of time. Toss mushrooms immediately to coat, but then only stir occasionally as the mushrooms cook down. Cook for four to six minutes until mushrooms are cooked down but not shriveled up. At some point add tarragon and nutmeg.

5. Remove from heat (or turn heat to low if your pan isn't cast iron), let cool slightly and add sour cream and mustard. Mix thoroughly. Stir in cornichons, beef and shallots. Test for seasoning and adjust.

6. Serve garnished with a bit more tarragon (fresh if you've got it) over egg noodles and/or with pumpernickel bread.


Before I get to how it turned out, a note about the beef. I had every intention of talking about how the much-cheaper-than-tenderloin flank steak is perfectly fine for this sort of quick browning application, but when I got to Fresh Market I found that grass-fed tenderloin was on sale for less than flank steak. The butcher was even willing to cut it up so I didn't have to buy the whole 6-pound loin (although I think that's just because nobody in the meat department could find out the actual price for smaller pieces after I had been promised such a thing was possible). But since it was only $8/pound I bought fully half of it even though I rarely eat beef and when I do I it's cheap tough stew meat. I hope months in the freezer won't do it too much harm as I think it's going to take a long time for me to use it up.

Right, how did the stroganoff turn out? Pretty darn well, I'd say. The marination let the shallots and beef meld flavors and the mushrooms and sour cream absorbed flavors from both from bits left in the pan so the dish was well unified. Of the additions, the tarragon and the mustard give a little sweetness and vinegary zing that nicely round out the other elements of the dish. The cornichons and nutmeg I could lose. And the dish does indeed work nicely with the pumpernickel. The dense chewy bread is a pleasant textural addition and the subtle sweetness pairs well with the creamy meatiness of the dish so success all the way around.

The Ramble

Today I went to the 68th annual Ramble garden festival at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden. It wasn't too terribly different from the Mango Festival I attended there a while back. More arts and crafts and general ecological do-gooders and a wider variety in the plants for sale. Mostly the same food vendors though, which means I got to try some of the stuff I missed last time when I went to the Mango Brunch instead.


Here's some very nice Peruvian ceviche I had.


I'm of the entirely unsupported opinion that the best ceviche is sold at room temperature out of stalls without proper kitchens. It just stands to reason.


I picked up a bottle of Peruvian hot sauce while I was there, too. Ceviche is easy to make at home but you need the right condiments.

I also got a bottle of jerk sauce from another vendor. The bottle I picked up last time was disappointingly thin and chunky so it was hard to cook with. I hoping this will work a bit better.

I also got a couple new plants for the herb garden: sage and culantro. I haven't really cooked with sage, but I keep hearing good things about sage-butter sauces that I'd like to try. The culanto has the same flavor as cilantro, but, I'm told, is much easier to grow. It certainly looked far healthier than the cilantro the herb stall had on sale.

And I helped out at the Slow Foods stand, talking up the local chapter, handing out brochures and selling totebags. If any of you aren't familiar with Slow Foods, it's all about connecting farm to table and food to community, promoting heritage ingredients and techniques and the idea that food, both the production and the eating, is something important that should be approached thoughtfully. The totebags are attractive, roomy, and exceptionally sturdy with their extra thick canvas and double-stitched straps. I should have got a picture.

While I was at the stand we had a cooking demonstration by Begonia Tuya, owner and chef of Xixon cafe. I've mentioned occasionally before that that's my favorite place for tapas and Spanish ingredients but I didn't know that they were associated with Slow Foods at all. [I met Ms. Tuya a couple weeks ago when I was the first person to show up for the lunch seating. She talked me through the specials board. I've been slowly improving my Spanish vocabulary by ordering untranslated dishes there and seeing what shows up, but I appreciated the accelerated course.] She made gazpacho, which I would have gotten a picture of but I didn't get a good vantage point for the demo and was busy helping distributing the results. The recipe was quite straightforward--a good choice for a general public demo--and made use of ingredients that are grown locally, although I don't know if those were actually local cucumbers and tomatoes she use. Still, it was a good slow food-friendly choice. Lots of little garnishes in each shooter glass gussied it up nicely. I expected to like the fried serano ham bits best on general principles, but the little cubes of pepper actually did the most to elevate the soup.

Oh, nearly forgot, I also got a coconut. Free, of course. Coconut trees grow like weeds around here. Look at that pile.

What you pay for is for someone to open it up for you, but I want to try it myself. I've read up on the technique but the instructions usually say that you're going to screw up the first few. And that's with the proper tools; I haven't got a machete so I'm going to use my Chinese chef's cleaver. Watch for this exciting event a bit later.

Yeah, I know I didn't look at the art or the antiques or the gardening stuff so I missed out on most of what the Ramble is about. I assume so, anyway; I didn't do any research on the history of the thing.

I guess that's all I've got to say. It's still going on tomorrow (if you're reading this on Saturday). Worth a look-see if you're local.

Pumpernickel bread

Something a little different this week--more different than I expected, really. There's a fair range in pumpernickel recipes on-line. I think that's part due to the variation between bakers you usually find and part due to variation across Europe. Most agree that the central components that make bread pumpernickel are molasses, cocoa and caraway seed which, frankly, seems just a wierd as the white-chocolate and salmon recipe I made a few days ago but it's been around long enough to become traditional so nobody argues with it.

The recipe I settled on is German and has an interesting technique. First you make a batter and then add extra flour to turn it into a dough. I really don't see what's to be gained by it, but I'm willing to try it to find out.

To start, here's the basic recipe. It's for two loaves but I halved it to make just one fairly small one.

2 packages active dry yeast
1/4 C. unsweetened cocoa
2 T. sugar
1 T. caraway seed
1 1/2 t. salt
3 C. rye flour
2 C. water
1/4 C. molasses
1/4 C. butter
3 C. sifted all-purpose flour
Shortening (or Pam spray)

In large bowl, stir together yeast, cocoa, sugar, caraway seed, salt and 2 cups rye flour; set aside.

In 2 quart saucepan over low heat, heat water, molasses and butter until very warm.

Using mixer at low speed, gradually beat molasses mixture into yeast mixture until well blended. Increase speed to medium; beat 2 minutes. Add remaining 1 cup rye flour. Increase speed to high; beat 2 more minutes.

Stir in enough all-purpose flour to make a soft dough. Turn out dough onto lightly floured surface. Knead until smooth and elastic about 5 minutes.

Place into greased large bowl, turning over dough so that top is greased. Cover with towel and let rise in warm place until almost doubled, about 45 minutes to an hour.

Punch down dough. Divide in half. Cover and let rest 5 minutes.

Shape each half into a round loaf. Place 4 inches apart on greased large baking sheet.

Cover and let rise until almost doubled, 45 minutes to an hour.

Diagonally slash each loaf, crosswise, 3 times.

Bake in 375°F oven for 20 minutes. Cover loosely with foil; bake 15 minutes more or until loaves sound hollow when tapped.

Immediately remove from baking sheet. Brush tops of hot loaves with shortening. Cool on racks.

Yield: Makes 2 loaves
---
Following the instructions left me with a rather dense stiff dough so I added a bit more water and gave it ten minutes to absorb before kneading.

Usually I let the machine knead for ten minutes, but I've begun to suspect I've been overkneading and the tight gluten strands are keeping my doughs from forming the large irregular holes that I've been trying for. I don't actually want that in a pumpernickel, but overkneading is overkneading so I left it at five minutes. Anyway, it had started climbing the dough hook at that point so it was probably time to quit.

The result was still pretty dense but that's probably right for pumpernickel, too. I had reduced the yeast from a full packet since I'm using "highly active" instead of just plain "active", but the first rise was very slow so kneaded in another teaspoon for the second rise. I also added a bit more water as the recipe called for a "soft" dough which it really wasn't. Still, kind of a wierd-looking dough.

The next issue was what to do about the baking. The recipe calls for a short time at a low temperature, but I've been having so much success with the high-temperature dutch oven method I think I'm going to stick with it and see what happens. It involves checking in after a half hour so I should be able to modify it as I go along if necessary.

I checked it after a half hour and the thermometer made a wet squishing noise as it went in so not quite done yet. After twenty more minutes it had started burning on the top but the center was barely above 200 degrees. I gave it another seven minutes, the temperature was above 205 and the aroma had started to get a bit carbony so it was time to take it out.

That's not the prettiest loaf around.



At a closer examination, the exposed grain looks more like cake than bread. I'm rather curious what I'm going to see when I cut it open.

I'm relieved to see that's it's pretty normal inside. A fine tender crust; not chewy at all, as you'd expect from the large percentage of low gluten rye flour and the short knead time. The flavor is quite a respectable pumpernickel: the scent of the caraway drifting over a sweet richness that the cocoa and molasses contribute to without coming quite to the for. My immediate impression is a good quality restaurant dinner roll.

That's after cutting away the unfortunately burnt crust, though. That result explains why most recipes call for using a loaf pan. I wonder if I could heat my dutch oven and then drop a loaf pan into it. I wonder if there would be any point. The purpose of the enclosed baking is primarily to improve the crust so probably not. I'll have to remember that next time I'm making a non-crust-centric loaf.

Coffee-crusted pork chops with white chocolate sauce

Here is the second white-chocolate sauce recipe I promised in my last post. Pork is probably a bit more of an intuitive match with white chocolate than salmon. This recipe also came from Cacaoweb and the sauce is made the same way. I'm curious if you can make a savory white chocolate sauce without a roux. I had a hard time filtering out sweet sauces in my searches so I haven't found any other versions to compare. I'll have to do some more sophisticated searching and see what I can turn up.

But for now, here's the recipe:
Pork Chops with Coffee and White Chocolate Sauce

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients
3 tablespoons butter
3 teaspoons all-purpose flour
1 cup broth [chicken I'm assuming]
2 oz (60 g) white chocolate
------
3 tablespoons butter
4 boneless pork chops [no idea why boneless is specified. Mine had a bit of bone on one side and it worked fine.]
6 tablespoons finely ground coffee for dredging [I used a medium roast]
Salt and pepper

Method
Make first white sauce with white chocolate, then cook the pork chops: [Didn't notice this so I cooked the porkchop simultaneously. Didn't seem to be a problem.]

[0. Never cook a porkchop without brining for a half hour or so to improve flavor and texture.]
1. Melt 3 tablespoons butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. When the butter has melted add the flour and mix well.
2. Add broth, stirring constantly to incorporate and cook the flour.
3. Let the sauce cook on low heat for approximately 15 minutes, stir regularly. [As last time, I found the pan drying out a couple times so I added more broth. I used less this time and ended up with a hollandaise-thick sauce as a result.]
4. Add salt to taste.
5. Take the saucepan off the heat and add white chocolate, stir until melted.
6. Melt 3 tablespoons butter in a nonstick pan over medium heat.
7. Season the pork chops with salt and pepper, then dip them into ground coffee taking time to coat both sides thoroughly.
8. Cook the pork chops until done, about five minutes per side. [I found three minutes per side to be sufficient. Maybe my heat was too high.]
9. Serve with rice, mango chutney, fried plantains and/or bananas and white chocolate sauce.


Now this, I really liked. First off, the smell of the coffee and pork sizzling in the butter was surprisingly appetizing, although I suppose I should have expected it. I've had breakfast before and should know full well coffee, pork, butter and salt go together even without the toast and fried egg.

The coffee crust is an earthy counterpoint to the porkchop. It doesn't have near the richness of a brewed cup, of course. It's more like the flavor a chocolate-covered espresso bean, but sweetened by the pork juices instead.

The sauce is quite rich, which is good with the lean pork. The white chocolate is again well incorporated in the flavor of the sauce, only being recognizable in the aftertaste. This time around it has the useful role of subtly marrying with the coffee. It's a combination that works wonderfully, but you can't immediately identify why.

The mango chutney (Chef Allen's Mango Tears which I picked up back at the Mango Festival) adds some brightness to the dish but isn't really necessary. This is genuinely quite good, novel ingredients entirely aside. I could easily see making this again.

Salmon with white chocolate sauce

I wish I could remember why I bought a half-pound chunk of white chocolate. I doesn't seem like something I'd buy without some purpose in mind, but no idea. As long as I've got it, I may as well carve off chunks and make some use of it. I've been noticing savory white chocolate sauces showing up on cooking competition shows for the last year or so and I've been wanting to try it before it gets too passe. I found a couple straightforward recipes on http://www.cacaoweb.net. As you already know from the subject of this post, I'm trying the salmon recipe first. I'll try the other in a day or two.

I'm not making any changes to the Cacaoweb recipes to start other then cutting them down to my single serving to start out. Once I get a feel for the ingredient I'll improvise a little more. Here's the first recipe a few annotations:

Salmon with White Chocolate Sauce
Yield: 1 serving

Ingredients
3/4 tablespoons butter
3/4 teaspoons all-purpose flour
1/4 cup fish broth [I've got some homemade fish stock in the freezer]
1 1/2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice (unsweetened)
1/2 oz (15 g) white chocolate
1/4 tablespoon fresh, green pepper corns (or dried red pepper corns) [I picked red peppercorns out of the peppercorn mixes I have to make up a quarter teaspoon.]
------
1/2 tablespoons butter
1/2 pounds filet of salmon cut into 4-5 oz (120-150 g) portions
Salt and pepper


Method
Make first white sauce with white chocolate, then cook the salmon:

1. Melt 3/4 tablespoons butter in a small saucepan over medium heat.
2. When the butter has melted add the flour and mix well.
3. Add fish broth, stirring constantly to incorporate and cook the flour.
4. Let the sauce cook on low heat for approximately 15 minutes, stir regularly. [I found that the sauce thickened up too much over the fifteen minutes so I added more stock to keep it saucy.]
5. Add lemon juice, white chocolate and pepper corns.
6. Add salt to taste. [There's no 'meanwhile' here so I assume you're supposed to keep the sauce warm for the next ten minutes while you cook the salmon for the chocolate to melt and the flavors meld. My salmon was done in five, but the sauce seems well incorporated.]
7. Melt 1/2 tablespoon butter in a nonstick pan over medium heat.
8. Cook the pieces of salmon for about five minutes per side until it has browned. Add salt and pepper to taste. [I think it works better if you salt and pepper the salmon before adding it to the pan. Also five minutes per side seems like an awful lot.]
9. Serve the salmon with rice, sauce and cooked asparagus or broccoli. [or squash]

So, you want to know, how did it taste?

First off, the combination of white chocolate and lemon is synergistic on its own as I've found earlier when making ice cream, but once you add fish broth you really can't recognize white chocolate in the mix until the lingering finish, and even then you have to be looking for it. The citrus brightness hits first, with a savory unctuousness coming in underneath. There's a definite, but inarticulate, seafood flavor there that pairs well with the salmon. That fades too leaving a sweeter finish with the white chocolate closer to the top. Oh, and the red peppercorns give another off-kilter flavor component somewhere between black and Szechuan peppercorns when you bite into one.

Overall, it's not at all bad, but it's not knocking my socks off either. I'd call it an interesting novelty. But everyone's socks are different so maybe it'll do the trick on yours. I could easily see this as someone's favorite sauce, just not mine. It's easy; try it yourself and see what you think.