Ninja-bread cookies

Tags

baking, biscuits, Conservation of Ninjutsu, cookie decorating, cookies, ninjabread cookies, ninjas, recipes, tropes

I made some ninja-bread cookies for my friend’s birthday.

Awesome?  Y/N (Please circle one)

The cookie base is a standard chocolate roll out dough.  The frosting is royal frosting, as in my earlier post.

Before baking

After baking

Outlined

Flooding…

Abstract expression of the Conservation of Ninjutsu. (And/or beating up a pile of slightly over baked cookies.)

Only a ninja can sneak up on another ninja!! 

This is what the cookie cutters look like. “Cut out for action!”

Cookies baking

Tags

bake at 350, baking, cookies, decorating, design, Ukrainian, wedding favours, weddings

I am not a baking blogger (even though I love reading them!).  Nonetheless, I do A LOT of baking.  I love making, from scratch, things that you would only think to buy in stores.  Homemade Tim-Tams, homemade Nutella, homemade donuts, homemade five-layer German cakes, homemade Pavlovas.  I don’t like to eat these things myself (I don’t really like sweet things), but my friends and family seem to appreciate my efforts.

I bring all this up because my sister asked me to make the wedding favours for her wedding this past weekend.  She had 150 guests, and she wanted each one to go home with a hand-decorated, homemade sugar cookie.  No worries, I said!  I’m on it.

For inspiration, I went to Bake at 350, which is an awesome (and very stylish) professional baking blog.

I used her recipe for Vanilla Almond Sugar Cookies, but I modified it slightly, which is to say, I did not use almond extract, and I do not have vanilla beans to store in my sugar.  For the icing, I used her royal icing recipe.

For the design, my sister requested that half the cookie be decorated as the American flag, and half the Ukrainian flag (she is American and her husband Ukrainian).  I think it is a bit tacky, but I do not choose the design!

If you’re interested in replicating this kind of decorated cookie, I recommend her tutorials.  I am not anywhere near as good as the author of that blog, but these were a big hit nonetheless!  Even the hotel staff at the reception loved them.

I made seven practice batches over the summer (and my lab devoured them cheerfully).

This is a practice batch.  Cookies baked, outlined.

Mistake cookies like the one to the right were “discarded” (i.e. devoured by a volunteer)

Once the outline dries you flood it with your colours. Here, you can see the work in progress. I’ve filled in the Ukrainian flag and started on the American flag (which is much more finicky, I must say.)

I put in all of the “stars” (candy beads) individually with forceps, so it is a good thing I have all that practice using them under a microscope! The stripes are a white background with red stripes piped over.

To make the 150 cookies, I made three batches of 50 (I just doubled the recipe above) the week before the wedding.  Each batch of 50 took me about 6 hours (I had to cook and decorate through the night to complete the last batch).

I packed each cookie in a poly bag and tied it with ribbon (who knew ribbon was so expensive?!).  Then I froze the cookies until I was ready to fly out.  Each of my parents and myself carried a box with 50 cookies onto the plane (the airport security loved them).

At the hotel, we took them to the front desk so that everyone could receive their cookie when they checked into the hotel.

Success!

With my sister’s tiara.

Berry confusing

Tags

berry, blueberries, botanical terms, food, fruits, huckleberries, nature, wild forage

Did you know that almost nothing we refer to as a “berry” is actually a berry in the botanical sense?

Botanically speaking, a berry is derived from a single ovary.  That means that compound fruits like strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, mulberries, hackberries, dewberries, wineberries, or bayberries are not really berries, but an eggplant is real berry!  Wrap your head around that one!

The berries we refer to that are berries (although in technical terms “false berries” because of their inferior ovaries) are mostly confined to the Ericaceous genus Vaccinium; you may be more familiar with the common names of blueberries, cranberries, and huckleberries.

In the Appalachian region of the northeastern United States, low bush and high bush blueberries are relatively common along ridgelines, where the soil is acidic.  For example, I found a bunch on my hike the other day.

Low bush blueberries are already ripe in my region! It is early for them.

Low bush blueberries are smaller, but still well worth your while.  The high bush blueberries are larger, but less common, and they ripen later in the summer.

Nope, not ready yet.

The huckleberries are close relatives of blueberries.  They are darker, with larger, crunchier seeds, and a slightly sweeter flavour.  But what am I telling you this for?!  Surely, you’ve enjoyed huckleberries before!

Huckleberry fine

All of these species have an inferior ovary, which means that the flower is above where the fruit ends up being.  So those little protruding “spikes” on the end of a blueberry are the remnants of the sepals of the flower.

So what’s a “true berry”?  Well, aside from eggplant, you have tomatoes, grapes, avocados, and pumpkins, most of which you wouldn’t normally consider a “berry”.  How berry confusing!

Botanical details aside, Vaccinium species are delicious and you should go and see if there are some ripe near you!

 

Wild forage: who said there’s no such thing as free lunch?

Tags

apples, asparagus, blueberries, Chestnuts, food, lamb's quarters, sumac, wild forage

It may not surprise you to learn that a certain percentage of my diet comes from wild forage foods.  Wild forage is a way to add delicious variety to my life and save a bit of my skimpy budget.

At some points in my life (i.e. between employment), wild forage foods have been the primary component of my diet: breakfasts of wild asparagus, wood sorrel, and lamb’s quarters, lunches of wild cherries, dinners of feral apples, chestnuts, and hen of the woods mushrooms.

Not that I recommend this strategy for any starving grad student…you have to be comfortable identifying the plants that you eat, and careful in cleaning them in case they have been sprayed with something awful.  You should never eat a mushroom unless you are 100% confident in its identity.  My mom had a friend who died of a misidentified mushroom.

Nonetheless, I have a few old stand-bys that I return to year after year, that I would feel comfortable recommending to anyone.

(NB:  I’m most experienced at foraging in eastern North America.  I have experience in other countries, but am less comfortable providing recommendations.)

Sorted by time of year.

Morels probably come out earliest.  They are pretty unmistakable mushies.  See my post here for a recipe and a terrible pun.

One of the earliest and best wild forage foods is Wild Asparagus.  Wild asparagus is the same species as the cultivated kind, but it has escaped and gone feral!  Learn to recognize the fringy adult plant in the fall and you will surely have fresh asparagus for breakfast in early spring.

A fresh young sprig of wild asparagus (Asparagus officionalis).

My best friend diving for asparagus. Get it!

A drawing I did a loooonnnnggg time ago of asparagus, useful because of the adult form.

There are a few weedy species that are around all year that are always good to eat, but are not very substantial.  There is the tart, lemony Yellow Wood Sorrel:

Yellow Wood Sorrel (Oxalis stricta)

And there is the velvety smooth Lamb’s Quarters, which tastes rather like spinach.  It has a silvery sheen to it.

Adult Lamb’s Quarters (not as good to eat at this age)

I actually kind of like this drawing, even though it is old.

I think all of the Rubus species are good to eat; they have fruits available at different times of year.  First, there are black raspberries, then raspberries, blackberries, Japanese Wineberries, and Dewberries.  Yum!

As we get later in the summer, the shimmery leaves of the Autumn olive attract my attention.  From the berries, you can make a pretty yummy jam or fruit leather.

Then, of course there are blueberries.  There are two wild species here: high bush and low bush blueberry, which taste similar.  (Huckleberries are very similar and also good to eat!)  The high bush blueberries are bigger, though.

They flower early in summer, and fruit in autumn.

Then there are Staghorn Sumac berries, from which you can make a delightful tea that tastes just like cranberry juice.

And soon thereafter, the wild Black Cherries:

The Chinese chestnuts produce abundant food, but you have to fight the squirrels for the nuts.

And finally, the wild apples of old orchards (my favourite!).  Even if you have to fight the horses for them.  I like to climb into the top of the tree to grab the ones the horses can’t reach.

Explore at your own risk!  The rewards can be great, but make sure you know the species you are eating.

Morel-ly ambiguous

Tags

Appalachia, cemetery, edible mushroom, food, hiking, man my puns are great, morals, Morchella esculenta, morels, mushrooms, nature, Puns, recipes, wild forage

Once upon a time, I was hiking with a couple of friends through an old hemlock forest in the Appalachian mountains.  Appalachia used to be a lot less forested than its current state, and it is riddled with old homesteads, so much so that you can be 20 kilometers from civilization and stumble across a patch of tulips.  After spending a few minutes scratching your head, you will spot the remains of a stone foundation, perhaps an old hearth, and you will realise that, at one time, this was someone’s farm.

Well, my friends and I stumbled upon an ancient graveyard that day, one with head and foot stones so worn by time that only a few were legible.  The dates were from the 1800′s, which may not seem a lot to those of you in older countries, but is certainly respectable for the US.

As we meandered through the cemetery in respectful silence, I came across a large patch of the most coveted edible mushroom in the eastern United States: the morel.  Morels are a popular forage food here, and are rumored to be the most delicious wild mushroom (except for the truffle, of course, but you need a pig to find those).

“Oh, oh my,” I said, in some distress, “Do you think that I should collect these?”

My friends were concerned, mainly because the patch was right over the grave of a Revolutionary War soldier, “I don’t know…isn’t that kind of cannibalism?” they queried.

With a twinkle in my eye, I responded, “No, you’re right.  I wouldn’t want you to think that I was morel-ly questionable.”

“No, no…we wouldn’t question your morals, it’s just that–”

“No!  Guys. Morel-ly questionable?  Come on.”

…

“Face it, I’m hilarious.”

…

Well, guess what?  I just found another big old patch of morels.  Happily, they were on the edge of a babbling brook instead of in a cemetery this time, so they are edible!  Exhausted by the “im-morel-ity” of the campaign season in the US, I was happy to focus on a different sort of morel.

What's this? Aha, I see you there, you sneaky bugger! Morel (Morchella esculenta)

I rinse them but some people would call me heretical. Aren't they prettier than a truffle?

Sliced and extracted any arthropod friends.

Lightly sauteed in just the smallest amount of olive oil and a bare dusting of salt. Nothing else is needed!

I use them to make delicious omelettes, but there are many things you can do!  Check out this website for lots of morel advice: thegreatmorel.com.

PS.  Please do not eat wild mushrooms unless you are 100% confident as to their identity, or you know someone who can confidently ID them and you trust them with your life.  Morels are among the safest wild mushrooms, but please be careful!

South Indian Dosas

Tags

dosa, egg dosa, fenugreek seeds, food, indian food, recipe, south indian cooking, vegetarian

I have a most excellent flatmate who is from southern India, specifically Bangalore.  I love learning about her culture, listening to her stories, and spying on her cooking.  She is a genius with spices, including some that I have never heard of, which is significant given my penchant for a heavy hand with the spice jar.

Asfoetida? photo courtesy of Wikipedia because I was too lazy to photograph our spice counter

Under her tutelage, for example, I have learned to make perfect puris, and am very proud of the achievement.  The fact that she liked them was important because she is very picky about her food.  Maybe really great chefs tend to be.

Last week, we decided to prepare some dosas from scratch.  Dosas are rice and lentil pancakes, and can have different types of filling, from potatoes to eggs.  We made egg dosas.

The first step is to soak the rice and lentils overnight.  We soaked Urad lentils with fenugreek seeds and long grain rice.

Soaking lentils

The next night, we blended the rice and lentils with the water they had been soaked in until they were a very very fine, smooth texture.

My lovely flatmate checking the consistency of the batter. Please ignore the mess in the kitchen, ours is a very full house!

After the batter is the perfect consistency, you must stir it with your hands, and then ferment it for 24 hours.  The purpose of the fermentation is to add flavour, although it also helps to recruit bacteria to break down the undigestible carbohydrates in the uncooked lentils and rice (yay mutualisms!).

We kept the fermenting batter in a warm oven overnight.

It was overflowing its container the next day, which is a good sign of a healthy fermentation process.

When the batter is ready, you pour about a quarter cup onto a hot, oiled pan, and spread it around with the back of a spoon.  Immediately sprinkle it with black pepper (to taste) and crack an egg over, it.  Break the yolk and spread it around the top of the dosa batter.

We also put lightly sauteed red onions in our batter because I like onions.

When it is golden brown flip it over to cook the other side.  If you flip it too early and it is pale, she will make fun of you because you are also pale.  Apparently, flipping a dosa more than once is cheating.

Pale dosas for pale people

My flatmate is very focused on perfection.  She is bound and determined to prove to her mother that she can cook just as well.  She is never satisfied with our chapatis (not perfectly even thickness throughout!), and was upset when her dosa was not perfectly round.

She also thinks that her mother was indirectly trying to sabotage her attempts because in the recipe her mother wrote, it says to stir with a ladle, when it is actually very important to stir with your hands.

Sneaky.

Anyway, after you have your perfectly round, perfectly golden dosa, you can top it with various types of spicy pickles or chilli sauce.

Well, try to make some dosas!  They are delicious and well worth the effort.

Milk before yoghurt (uncultured)

Tags

chuck norris, culture, homemade, yoghurt, yoghurt cheese

Among my friends, I am (in)famously ignorant of popular culture.  I haven’t owned a television in over a decade and I do not listen to pop music on the radio, nor do I read popular culture magazines.  I somehow missed out on many of the “iconic” movies of our times.  I’m not sure if this is related to my faulty memory or my obsession with the outdoors.  Maybe both.

I like to tell them that I am like milk before yoghurt: uncultured.  No?

Well, I think I’m hilarious.

Anyway, it is very easy to make your own yoghurt.  Have you tried it?  It really is a very worthwhile endeavour.  Here are some of the things I have tried, some of the things that have failed, and some of my tips for making great homemade yoghurt.  It makes you seem a little more cultured. 

What do you need to make yoghurt?  Well, milk!  And maybe a tablespoon of…yoghurt (or yoghurt culture).  This is symbiosis at its finest, my friends.

You can use any kind of milk: whole, skim, or milk from a powder, but I can tell you that the best is whole milk.  Especially whole milk with 1/3 cup of dry milk powder added.

Bring the milk to a boil over medium heat, stirring continuously.  Then take it off the heat and let it cool to about 32 C (~90 F).  At this point, add either your yoghurt or yoghurt culture and mix well.

At this point, you need to incubate the culture at about 32 – 37 C (90 – 100 F) for 10-12 hours.  There are a couple of different ways of going about this.  If your oven has a low/warm setting, you can leave it in there.  (but make sure to put a sign on!)

You can also put it in a slow cooker at a low temperature.

Or you could be creative.  You could put it in a container sealed tightly and sleep with it under the covers (get to know your friendly Lactobacillus delbrueckii ssp. bulgaricus and Streptococcus salivarius ssp. thermophilus bacteria in a more intimate fashion).

If you’re not culturing it overnight, you could put it in ziploc baggies and tape them under your arms and on other various warm places on your body.  Just don’t forget about them and accidentally sit on one, or embrace a family member too tightly.

Orrr…you could go to a second hand shop and pick up one of these 1970′s beauties:

Old school, baby.

What doesn’t work?  Don’t put the culture in when the milk is cold or above 37 C (100 F).  Don’t forget to mix well after adding the culture.

I know modern society (culture!) is fat-phobic, but whole milk is really best.  And get milk from a dairy farm if you can (if you’re really sneaky, try to find some unpasteurized milk).  Unpasteurized cultures work best too.

While you’re waiting for your yoghurt culture, you can culture your brain.  Here is some popular culture that my friends have taught me about.

“The Boss” is a nickname for Bruce Springsteen, who is an American singer.

Chuck Norris is really tough for some reason.  People like to make up jokes about him being impossibly tough.  For example, “Not even Houdini can escape Chuck Norris.”  These are referred to as “the facts”.

Chuck Norris was here? photo courtesy of http://www.7coollist.com/2011/03/top-seven-chuck-norris-facts-and-jokes.html

Charlie Sheen is an American actor who has “Adonis DNA”.  (Adonis is the Greek god of beauty and pleasure.)

Done with culture?  ME TOO.  I have a low tolerance for popular culture.  Back to yoghurt.

I’ve had some problems with my yoghurt being a little runny, but if you’re really keen, you can easily make yoghurt cheese by straining it through a cheese cloth (or a double thickness of coffee filter).   Yoghurt cheese is also called “strained yoghurt”…it is thick and tangy and creamy.

Yoghurt cheese with fruit, courtesy of food.com

This is my kind of culture.

An Indian remedy for a stuffy nose

Tags

congestion, folk remedies, hot toddy

It is well known that noses run in my family.  (hahaha, pun intended! yeah, sorry that’s the best I can do today)

I have been suffering from a bad head cold for the past few days and last night my roommate, who is from Bangalore, India, tried to cure me with a home brewed remedy.

I am not a superstitious person, and I will flatly tell you that I am not miraculously cured, but the infusion was oddly comforting and maybe it will work for you if you have a less intractable nose than mine, which is reminiscent of Cyrano de Bergerac.  Anyway, there is something intriguing about folk medicine.

Here is a rough recipe:

Bring a couple of cups of water to boil, add:

• 1 T whole cloves
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 T whole cardamom pods
• 1 T chopped fresh ginger root
• Dash crushed red pepper flakes

Once the spices are simmering, add a pinch of black peppercorns and a tablespoon of honey.  Strain out the spices and drink hot.  This is fiery and burns your throat, but in a good way.  It has this nice spicy sweet thing going for it, but it is very unusual.

She also advised me to stick my head under a towel about a steaming pot of boiling water, which, although not successful, is an experience you can’t miss.

When I was a child, my father always used to rub Vicks (Vicks Vapo Rub TM) on my chest and under my nose.  I think the smell of menthol will always make me feel five years old.

A Scottish friend recommends instead a Hot Toddy.  Have you heard of this?  It is a mixture of hot water, lemon, honey, and (of course) Scotch.

And then there are herbal teas, which mostly rely on ginger, lemon, and mint (Mentha piperita).

In desperate moments in the past, I have also tried eating raw Habanero and Szechuan chiles.  These work, but only briefly.

So, here is my attempt at a rigorous list of components suggested to help with a stuffy nose, and their actual properties:

• cloves–dried flower buds of the evergreen tree Syzygium aromaticum (native to Indonesia), the active compound is Eugenol, which has antiseptic and anaesthetic properties
• black or red pepper–dried fruit of the vine Piper nigrum (native to India), the active compound (I think) is piperine, an alkaloid that inhibits some enzymes and also induces a sensation of heat
• hot peppers (habaneros etc)–fruits of the genus Capsicum (native to the Americas), the active compound is capsaicin, meant to deter mammalian herbivores (poor, misguided plants), shown to have that same heat sensation and also anaesthetic properties
• cinnamon–bark of trees in the genus Cinnamomum, the active compound is cinnemaldehyde, and it may have an antiviral effect
• cardamom–seed pods of two different genera (Eletteria and Amomum) both native to India, my roommate was using green cardamom (Eletteria cardamomum), here is a pretty extensive list of effects, but nothing persuasive
• lemon–fruit of the evergreen tree Citrus limon (native to Asia), citric acid (low pH) is antibacterial, also limonene (a cyclic terpene) has some medicinal properties
• ginger–rhizome of the plant Zingiber officinale (native to Asia), it is in the same family as cardamom, and the active ingredient is Zingerone (what an awesome name), a crystalline solid that has been shown pretty persuasively to be effective against nausea
• mint–this is a whole family of plants, I am specifically referring to the herb Mentha piperita (peppermint), which is native to Europe but weedy almost everywhere nowadays, the active ingredient is menthol (like Vicks) which causes vasodilation, induces a cooling sensation, and has analgesic properties
• honey–a sweet bee food made from the concentrated nectar of flowers, commercial forms are typically made by honeybees (Apis mellifera) from a variety of flower species, the flower species will influence the chemical composition of the honey, so this is a tricky one to fully describe, the sweetness is just fructose, sucrose, and glucose (not medicinal) but it also somehow has antimicrobial effects, possibly via osmotic regulation
• hot water/steam–water is pretty good for you Idon’tknow
• Scotch? (is this helpful or just a necessity for Scottish folk?)–I suppose I could write a lot here, but in general (and since I’d rather not be yelled at by angry Scottish people for misrepresenting it), Scotch is malted barley aged in oak barrels for at least 3 years, the active ingredient is ethanol, which I was trying to find some health benefits for, but I think mostly it just is a depressant that helps you sleep and maybe suppresses your sensation of pain

So, right.  After a brief review of available resources, none of these list relief of nasal congestion as high on their properties except for perhaps menthol.  A lot of them have side benefits, which if you are suffering from a cold, you might benefit from.  I have to say that none of them have been particularly effective in the long term for me.  Nothing clears my sinuses like a good run, so I think that’s where I’m headed next.

NB: Remember that the dose makes the drug.  Any of these components in large quantities is lethal, even water.