Kitchen Conundrum

Hamantashen Recipe

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20110316-SCAN0006Hamantashen is a triangular butter cookie usually filled with jam, fruits or poppy seeds. They are traditionally eaten by Jews on the holiday of Purim which is occuring this weekend.  The shape of the cookies is representive of the tri-corner hat worn by the evil Haman, the villain of the story of Purim. It’s considered a mitzvah, or a good deed, to give ready to eat foods to your friends and neighbors on Purim and Hamantashen are the star treats in every basket.

Growing up, my mother would have to make at least two batches in the days leading up Purim so there would be enough left over to give out to friends and relatives because we would usually eat them all as they came out of the oven.  Later, as my Grandmother got older, my mother would make a double or triple batch of dough and we would all go to my Grandmother’s apartment in Manhattan and make them together.  There we would be, four generations, rolling them out on her dinning room table and baking them with her. I know that it was a very special time for her to be there with her children, her grandchildren and her great-grandchildren. The cookies were secondary.

After she passed away a few years ago at age 99, the one thing we asked for specifically were her rolling pins. They were very well worn and stained from many years of use. Even though we have other, newer ones, I always seem to pick up one of hers when I need to roll dough, especially the Hamantashen dough that we always made with her, so in a very special way, we know she is still here with us when we make these every year.

 

Ingredients

1 stick butter or margarine, softened

1 cup sugar

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1 tbs lemon juice

1 tbs honey

3 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 pinch salt

Filling Options

In my family, we prefer to fill with jellies such as strawberry, raspberry or apricot. We also use chocolate chips, a favorite with Renee and the kids.  Traditionally though you will see Hamentashen filled with prune butter or a poppy seed filling (called Mohn).

Method

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F.

In the bowl of your mixer, combine the butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, lemon juice and honey. Blend until smooth with the paddle.

Add the baking powder and the salt. Slowly add the flour.  Mix until it is just incorporated. If the dough is too sticky you can add a bit more flour as needed. It should have a smooth dough consistency. Roll into a large ball and wrap in plastic and place in the refrigerator for a half hour to rest.

Flour a countertop or work surface well. Using ¼ of the dough at a time, roll out to a ¼ inch thickness.  With a cookie cutter or a juice glass cut out circles, remove the extra dough and return it to the bowl.

Place about ½ tsp of the filling of your choice in the center of the circle. Pinch two sides together to form two corners and pinch the top together to form the tri-corner “hat”.

Place them on a baking sheet lined with parchment or a silpat mat and bake for 10 -12 minutes until the bottoms are golden brown. Remove to a baking rack to cool completely. The jelly gets incredibly hot, so be careful if you can’t resist eating them right away!

Enjoy!

 

Creamsicle Pudding Recipe

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This recipe was originally supposed to be submitted to the Food52 pudding contest, but today, while I was making the Candied Orange Peel, I realized that 12am on 2/25 actually meant last night and not tonight. So here I am, a day late, having missed the contest completely. Oh well!  I will learn to tell time eventually. I am still enjoying this creamy, very sunny pudding that is reminiscent of the long, hot summer days. I have to credit Ari for coming up with the idea for the Creamsicles. They are his favorite treat at the beach, being the perfect combination of vanilla and orange, creamy, cool and refreshing. Sand optional.

We have oranges on the mind and there has been a lot of discussion between us about Orange Julius’ lately too. (Remember those?) We have been snacking on orange citrus fruits of all varieties this entire month. They’ve been incredibly sweet, juicy and really, just beautiful to look at right now versus all the grey we have been seeing lately. It’s a glimpse of summer in hopes that it comes soon.

The idea of a Creamsicle is a vanilla center surrounded by orange. But we have reversed it and layered the orange pudding between two layers of vanilla pudding and topped it with fresh whipped cream and slices of candied orange peels. The candied orange peel recipe has been adapted from Jacques Torres, Dessert Circus.

 

Candied Orange Peel

This recipe takes about three hours to prepare, so plan accordingly.

Ingredients

2 Navel Oranges or other thick skinned citrus (grapefruit, lemons, limes)

1 cup Sugar

Water

Method

Using a sharp knife or a citrus stripper cut strips from the orange’s peel about ¼ inch wide. Try to make them the same lengths if possible and leave some of the white membrane on the peels but no fruit.

In a small saucepan, add enough water to cover the peels by about 1 inch. Place over high heat and let the water come to a boil. Once boiling, remove from heat and drain the water. Return the peels to the saucepan and add enough fresh water to cover the peels by about 1 inch. Boil again. Repeat this process four times.

While it seems like a lot of work to boil and drain four times, it really goes fast and is very important as the process removes the bitterness from the peels.

After the fourth boil and drain, return the peels to the pan and add enough water again to cover by at least 1 inch. Add the sugar and stir to mix.  Reduce the heat to low.  Simmer for 2 hours then remove from heat and let cool.

You will now have a thick syrup filled with translucent, tender peels..

You may now keep them in the syrup and store them in the refrigerator in an airtight container for up to three weeks.

When you are ready to use them, they can be served either in the syrup or drained of the syrup and rolled in granulated sugar to coat them. You can use them as garnish either in strips or cut into small pieces. Once they have been rolled in sugar, they can be kept in an airtight container at room temperature for up to three days.

Creamsicle Pudding

For the Vanilla Pudding:

Ingredients

2 tbs sugar

1 tbs cornstarch

1/8 tsp salt

1 cup milk

1 egg yolk, slightly beaten, in a bowl set aside

1 ½ tsp butter

1 vanilla bean

Method

In a small saucepan, combine the sugar, cornstarch and salt. Gradually stir in the milk.

Cook, constantly stirring over medium high heat until thickened and bubbly.  Reduce the heat and cook another 3 minutes. Remove from heat.

Temper the egg yolk by adding a little of the hot milk into the  bowl with the egg yolk, stirring constantly so as not to cook the yolk. Pour the yolk and milk mixture back into the pan and return to medium heat and bring to a gentle boil. Reduce the heat to low and add in the butter and the vanilla bean and it’s seeds. Continue stirring and remove from the heat.

Cool for 10 minutes and spoon into your dessert dishes about 1/3 the way up for three layers. Cover the saucepan with the remaining pudding as well as the dessert dishes and refrigerate for one hour.

Meanwhile, prepare the orange pudding.

For the Orange Pudding:

Ingredients

2 tbs sugar

1 tbs cornstarch

1/8 tsp salt

3/4 cup milk

1 egg yolk, slightly beaten, in a bowl set aside

1 ½ tsp butter

¼ orange juice concentrate, defrosted

Method

In a small saucepan, combine the sugar, cornstarch and salt. Gradually stir in the milk.

Cook, constantly stirring over medium high heat until thickened and bubbly.  Reduce the heat and cook another 3 minutes. Remove from heat.

Temper the egg yolk by adding a little of the hot milk into the  bowl with the egg yolk, stirring constantly so as not to cook the yolk. Pour the yolk and milk mixture back into the pan and return to medium heat and bring to a gentle boil. Reduce the heat to low and add in the butter and the orange juice concentrate. Continue stirring and remove from the heat.

Cool for 10 minutes and spoon (or use a piping bag) into your dessert dishes that already have one vanilla layer. Cover the saucepan with the remaining orange pudding (you won’t need this but save it to eat alone!) as well as the dessert dishes and refrigerate for another hour.

When the orange layer is set, you can use the remaining vanilla pudding to spoon (or pipe with a pastry bag) on top of the orange layer.

To serve, top with fresh whipped cream and diced candied orange peels. You can use either the sugared or non sugared peels.

 

Enjoy!

 

 


Renee & Ari 

Kitchen Conundrum

Passion Fruit Souffle with Caramelized Pear-Passion Fruit Sauce Recipe

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For Valentine’s Day, I wanted to make a chocolate soufflé. For me, it’s the pièce de résistance of desserts. Soufflés are temperamental by nature. Any speck of dust or yolk in the whites will render them useless. If you over fold the yolks into the whites they will lose all of their air and subsequently, the soufflé’s height. And don’t even think to open the oven door and peek inside while it’s baking. A cool draft or slammed door will surely deflate it before it’s time.

In spite of all that could possibly go wrong, I wanted to attempt to make a soufflé anyways. So when I told Ari yesterday morning about my plans, he said, “That’s great, but how about a Passion Fruit Soufflé instead of chocolate? Something more interesting”.  More intersting?  Than chocolate?  Well, I swooned! Brilliant! I simply love passion fruit. My favorite bon bon made by Jacques Torres is his passion fruit flavored Hearts of Passion.  It’s a wonderful, refreshing flavor inside a delicate shell of dark chocolate. So I agreed, “Yes, a passion fruit soufflé it is!”  But alas, there will be no chocolate with this one.

Little did I realize when I said that, passion fruits are not only not in season, they are considered so exotic that finding even frozen pulp would prove next to impossible. I went to two major supermarkets, called two more, including a local “Fruit” store and was nearly on the verge of using a bottled passion fruit flavored beverage when by sheer luck, I happened upon frozen pulp in my local Spanish deli when I went in to look for conchas and Mexican Japones peanuts. Thank goodness for Goya!

So without the conchas and peanuts (I didn’t find either), I headed home with my pulp.  Triumph!

The recipe I choose to use is by Daniel Boulud, famed chef and restaurateur (Daniel). It first appeared in Daniel’s Dish Entertaining at Home with a Four Star Chef, by Daniel Boulud.

I was genuinely surprised at the ease of this recipe. And even more surprised and delighted by the delicate passion fruit flavor and more so when it’s combined with the caramelized pears.  It’s quite simply, delectable!  Although anything by Chef Daniel is bound to be amazing and the only surprise should have been that it actually worked for me! The sauce would also be excellent over ice cream.

The thing about soufflés is that they fall. There is no getting around that. It’s just a fact of life. So in order to photograph one at full height takes some gentle ballet leaps and a turn or two through the kitchen, down the hall and over cords and wires setting it down gently on the spot you’ve already set up in your studio (or, in our case, the dining room table). Timing is essential because you only have a few minutes before they are deflated fully. One trick we used to get photos of these soufflés was to stagger the baking time for them.  We just baked them two at a time, so we would have a rotation of soufflés, fresh from the oven, to photograph.  Ari kept bringing them to the spot and removing the deflated ones while I snapped away.

They say that natural day light is the best light for food photography. We know this to be true.  In Mexico, all of our pictures were beautiful. But, back here in NY, we are severely lacking in good natural day light this winter (grey and greyer), and since most of our cooking these days happens after 10pm (by the light of the moon), we finally bought ourselves a light kit.  It’s the Lowell Ego 2 Light kit. It comes with two tabletop lights, a reflector and a sweep with large sheets of construction paper that you can clip to it to use for a background. These are the first pictures we’ve taken with them.  What do you think?

 

Ingredients

For the sauce:

1 tbs unsalted butter

½ cup sugar

2 ripe pears, peeled, cored and diced into small pieces

¼ cup passion fruit puree

For the soufflé:

4 large eggs, separated, at room temperature

¼ cup passion fruit puree

¼ cup plus 1 tbs sugar, plus some for preparing the ramekins

½ tsp cream of tarter

Confectioner’s sugar, for dusting

To make the sauce:

Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium high heat. Add the sugar, a few tablespoons at a time, mixing well after each addition until it melts. Continue to cook until the sugar syrup turns a light golden brown.

Add the pears and continue cooking and stirring until the pears are tender and nicely caramelized. About 10 minutes.

Stir in the passion fruit puree and cook a minute or two more, until heated through. Remove from heat and keep warm while preparing the soufflés.

To make the soufflés:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F and place the rack in the center.

Generously butter the insides of 6 4oz or 4 6oz ramekins. Dust the insides and rims with sugar, making certain they are thoroughly coated. Tap the excess sugar off and place on an awaiting baking sheet.  The easiest way to sugar the sides is to place the ramekin in a large bowl and pour some sugar into the ramekin and swirl it around. After coating, use the bowl to catch any remaining sugar. You can then pour this remaining sugar into the next ramekin and repeat until they are all coated. Discard the remaining sugar.

In a large bowl, whisk together the 4 egg yolks with the passion fruit puree until well blended. Set aside.

In the bowl of your mixer, add the egg whites and beat on medium low speed until foamy.

Increase the speed to medium high and add the cream of tartar and then gradually add the sugar, beating until the whites form glossy medium stiff peaks.

Using a large rubber spatula and a light touch, gently fold the meringue into the yolk mixture in three additions. Continue to gently fold until there are no streaks left.

Using a large spoon, fill each ramekin with the batter to the rim, scraping off any excess leaving a flat top.

Run your thumb and forefinger just around the rim to create a tiny moat and to remove any excess butter and sugar.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, being sure not to open the oven door until the full 15 minutes are up. You can then peek inside to see if they are golden brown and have risen. When fully cooked, the tops will be firm but the center will be slightly jiggly.

Meanwhile, transfer the sauce to a bowl.

When the soufflés are finished, gently remove from the oven and dust the tops with the Confectioner’s sugar.  Serve immediately with the pear passion fruit sauce.

 

Enjoy!