Andrew Siwko’s Blog #2

This Easter we made pierogi again with good success.  The recipe follows:

• 2 cups flour
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt (maybe more)
• 1/3 cup lukewarm water

Combine eggs, salt, water then add flour.  Kneed until dough is firm and well mixed.  Cover with bowl or plastic for an hour.

Roll out dough on lightly floured surface.  Our first batch made a circle about 24 inches across.  The thickness matters in the final product.  Think about the thickness of lasagna noodles as a rough guide.

Boil

• 4 or 5 potates
• with a little salt

drain and add

• cheese
• white pepper

mash up potatoes and cheese and pepper.  Have a taste to make sure this is right.  Last year we used cheddar and mozzarella.  This year we used a sharper cheddar and jack.  Both are good.  Choose the cheese for the taste.

As the potatoes cool, cut out the pierogi dough.  I used a 3.5 inch glass this year with good results.

In each pierogi round, place a spot of the potato filling, moisten the edge, fold and seal.  Try not to squeeze out filling, but avoid leaving air inside.

Boil the pierogi for 4-5 minutes and let dry on a cooling rack.

Pierogi can be bagged and stored in the fridge or freezer.  They can be eaten immediately or even cold.  I prefer to fry them in butter before serving.  This can be done immediately after the boil or days later out of the fridge.

Note on ingredients:

My flour is organic hard white wheat which I grind, so it’s whole wheat.

Bacon’s Spirits in Hudson, MA.

Always very helpful, especially around Dad’s birthday.

http://www.baconspirits.com/

They’ve had the Balvenie 12 year Doublewood at a very reasonable price every time I’ve needed a bottle.

Highly recommended.

stir in bowl #1

• 1 cup flour
• 3/4 cup corn meal
• 1 Tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp
  salt
• 2Tbsp sugar

whisk in bowl #2,

• 1 cup milk
• 1 egg

2 Tbsp butter in cast iron skillet (melting in oven)

Stir bowl #1 and bowl #2 together, swirl in half the hot butter

put into cast iron and cook 15-20 minutes.

Lent is a few days away and I haven’t made ice cream in a while. Naomi picked up some extra cream yesterday.

1 1/2 cups milk
3/4 cup sugar (Rapadura or Sucanat)
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 egg yolks
2 Tbsp vanilla
2 cups heavy (whipping) cream

Put the cream in the freezer now and you’ll get a better chill.  Make sure you don’t freeze it too much or it won’t come out of the bottle.

Scald the milk. If you’ve got a candy thermometer or even a grill thermometer, take the milk up slowly to about 140 degrees F.  You may see small bubbles around the edge of the pot.

Add the sugar and salt and stir until dissovled.

Beat the egg yolks and pour the milk over them.  Do it slowly so as not to cook the egg yolks.

Beat all this together pretty well then  put it into a double boiler and cook until it thickens.  Stir frequently and watch the sides unless you like lumpy ice cream.

Stir in the vanilla.

For better results, chill this mixture in the fridge (or carefully in the freezer).

Get the ice cream churn ready to go.

Fold in the cream with a spatula.

Churn the ice cream.  This takes about 25 minutes in mine.  When things start to firm up, you can add chocolate chips, fruit, whatever you please.  I find it helps to freeze these ingredients first also.

This dessert may remind you of the traditional French Pots de creme. The mixture is very liquid when just made, but it becomes firm after chilling several hours or overnight in the refrigerator.

1/2 pint well-chilled heavy cream
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
2 eggs
6 ounces semisweet chocolate bits (Nestle morsels work nicely)
1/2 teaspoon instant coffee
Pinch of salt
2 tablespoons Grand Mariner (or 1 teaspoon orange extract and 1 tablespoon brandy) (OR use rum, the orange gives it a Tootsie Roll taste)

With metal blade in place, pour chilled cream into bowl of food processor. Process until thickened, about 35 seconds. While holding blade down with spatula, empty cream into a bowl and set aside. Do not wash bowl.

Heat sugar and wlater in a saucepan until sugar dissolves and mixture comes to a boil. Using metal blade again, add eggs, chocolate bits, coffee and salt to work bowl. Process several seconds. With machine running, pour syrup carefully through feed tube and process until smooth, about 20 seconds. Add Grand Marnier and process 20 seconds more.

Place whipped cream on chocolate mixture. Pulse processor on and off until cream disappears. Transfer mixture to individual dessert cups or to a serving bowl. Decorate with additional whipped cream before serving, if desired.

Makes 6 servings.

cover pound of bacon in molasses
half cup sugar + half cup kosher salt (or quarter regular)
cover bacon sugar & salt mixture
put meat in ziplock bag
pour in remaining mix
press into meat
close bag
put bag in fridge
5-7 days, rinse and use as bacon (slice on demand, freeze, etc)

Heat until bubbles form:

1/2 cup milk

remove from heat, add

1/3 cup Rapadura (sugar)
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup butter

stir until melted, cool to lukewarm.

Sprinkle

2 packets active dry yeast

over

1/2 cup warm water (105-115 degrees F)

in a bowl.  A pinch of sugar may help the yeast grow.  In a mixer bowl, put the milk mixture, the yeast mixture and

4 egg yolks
2 cups of whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 tablespoons rum

Mix for 2 minutes until smooth then add up to

2 cups of whole wheat flour

until dough comes clean off the side of the mixing bowl.  Let rise at 85 degrees F for 1 hour until doubled in size.  Pound/kneed 10 times (until smooth) on a lightly floured surface.  Roll to 1/4 inch thick.  Cut out 3 inch rounds.  Divide the rounds into two sets.  Put

1/2 teaspoon jam (jelly, etc)

in the center of one half of the rounds.  Brush the edges of the other rounds with

egg whites

press the rounds together to seal the jam in with the egg whites.  Cover the panczki and let rise to double the size (45 minutes).

Heat 2 inches of oil to 350 degrees F.  Cook 3-4 panczki at a time.  Turn when risen and turn once more (4 minutes total).

Dust with

powdered Rapadura (sugar)

Eat hot or cold.  They’re good for days.  If kept covered the sugar can glaze nicely.

Notes for next time:

1. Putting the panczki at the top of the water heater closet worked well,
2. but cover them with plastic because the top side dried out.
3. Initial doubling time was about 90 minutes
4. The second rise time was 2 hours but 1 hour was spent at the bottom (closer to 75  degrees).
5. The egg white worked well, but the press had to be quite firm to get a good seal.
6. With the oil at 365 degrees at close to 4 minutes, the panczki came out very dark.

2012 Notes:

We made two batches this year with great success.  This year we tried to reproduce my babcia’s filling method.  It was easier and produced superior results.  Here’s the method:

Pinch off a piece of dough.  Form it into a ball.  Push a hole for the filling with your thumb and work the ball into a little cup with a small hole at the top.  Using a syringe (I cut the top off a cod-liver-oil syringe) fill with jam.  Close the hole behind the jam neither letting jam out nor leaving air in.

The other change was to leave the first rise overnight and to do the second rise in a warming drawer at about 100 degrees F.

Watch the flour level carefully.  Our second batch was too wet and made flat panczki.  They were still good but harder to handle and not round.

I’ve been experimenting with tortillas lately.  Here’s the current recipe:

2 cups whole wheat flour
some butter
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder

Mix up in a mixer and add

1/2 cup of warm water with
1 tablespoon oil
1 teaspoon of Rapadura mixed in (this bit’s the latest experiment)

I did cut the water in half since the last time.  I left out the sugar and added oil this time with good results.

Divide into 12 balls.  Press dough in a tortilla press.  I find that oiling the plates before pressing helps.  Oil a wooden pizza board and a wooden roller.  Roll out the pressed dough rounds into 10 to 12 inch tortillas.  Cook on an oiled fajita pan.  The best way to do this is to have the tortilla dough balls ready and to get the children to press the dough and flip the tortilla.  This will free you to concentrate on rolling out the dough.  Work the edges with the roller to get a nice round shape.  Cook untill there are a few broen spots on both sides.  Final cooking can be done when the tortillas are made into burritos or quesadillas.

Last time I divided into rougly 2oz balls and got about 16.  I got smaller tortillas about 8″ in diameter.

Starting point: http://www.recipegal.com/chicken/Chick-Fil-A-Chicken-Sandwich.htm

Made some modifications and got this:

Peanut oil to fill the deep fryer
1 egg
1 cup organic milk
1
cup whole wheat flour
2-1/2 Tablespoons Rapadura sugar
1/2
teaspoon pepper
2 teaspoons salt
2 Skinless, boneless chicken
breasts, halved

Heat the oil to 375F.

Whisk the egg/milk.

In a blender turn the sugar / salt to powder then add the flour and
pepper.

One bowl for egg mix, one bowl for dry mix.

Cut the chicken up into strips and nuggets. Thin strips cook fast and
maximize the batter to chicken ratio.

Soak the chicken in the egg mix. Coat the chicken with the dry mix and
fry. Thin strips will cook easily in 2 minutes.

When the chicken’s cooked mix some of the egg mix with the dry mix.
Slice an onion to get rings. Coat the rings in the batter and fry. The
resulting onion rings remind Naomi of "The Varsity" in Athens, GA.

This recipe has been modified to use less highly processed and organic ingredients.  I get about 100 cookies out of it, but you can make a half batch.

Heat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a mixer cream butter and sugar then add eggs and molasses.

• 1 1/2 cups butter (organic sweet cream)
  
• 2 cups Rapadura
  
• 2 eggs (organic free roaming brown large grade A)
  
• 1/2 cup molasses (unsulphered blackstrap)

I find that putting the eggs in the cup measure and pouring in the molasses helps get all the molasses out of the measure and into the mixer.  Melted butter works very well with the whole wheat flour.

• 4 cups whole wheat flour (organic)
  
• 2 tsps baking soda
  
• 2 tsps cinnamon
  
• 1 tsp white pepper
  
• 4 tsps ground ginger

I measure the flour on the light side with a one cup measuring cup to get a wetter dough for a thinner cookie.

Mix these up in a separate bowl then scoop the mixture into the mixer with the rest of the ingredients.

The dough at this point will be wet and hard to handle.  You can refrigerate it now to get a harder dough.  You’ll get thicker cookies.

If you use the dough right away, the rolling sugar will stick to your hands and make the rolling easier once you get going.

Put some Rapadura in a flat bowl or plate.  For each cookie roll a piece of  dough into a ball and sprinkle with sugar until the whole ball is coated.  Fill up a cookie sheet and

• bake at 350 degrees for 13 minutes

Take them out sooner for a softer cookie.  13 minutes should give a crispy ginger snap once the cookies have cooled.  They’ll come out a bit soft.  It’s hard to tell by color with these as they’re made with molasses and brown flour.

I leave them on the cookie sheet for about 2 minutes then I transfer them to a cooling rack.  I find that alternating two cookie sheets I can make all 100 cookies in about 2 hours (including mixing).