Fresh from my replicator

Star Trek has always been a continuous and subtle presence in my life.
I wouldn't miss a single episode when I was a child, I was fascinated by Mr. Spock's logic, and tried ever since to be as logic and rational as he was.
Sometimes it works.
Of course the side effect is that my mood wrecks havoc in the other 23 hours of the day, but hey, I'm only human!

When I got to work in Pharmacy retail, my boss' husband had his own "ship", he organized themed meetings, had a newsletter about the group activities, produced some merchandise.
I never ranked higher than Ensign, and it all ended on some question about Wesley Crusher's IQ.



When the guy-that-would-become-my-husband asked me out formally for the first time, it was to go to a Convention of Star Trek. We never got there, and to this day I don't know if there actually was such a Convention that day.
It wasn't until six months later that we actually got together, but I remember quite a few long phone calls that summer, late at night, right after reruns of Deep Space 9, my favourite of all series, while he's totally faithful to the Next Generation.
Today is our 12th anniversary, which brought me to this nostalgic-futuristic post.

The first time we went to Vegas, we spent a full afternoon at the ST Experience that was at the LVHilton. In the gift shop I found this:



Guess what, I bought it.

It's not an easy book to consult.
It has a section for every series, and then the chapters are about the members of the crew of that series, the recipes organized with the only criteria of being the favourite of some character.
You don't want to look for "a dessert" or "an appetizer", there. You will look for Mr. Tuvok's favourite dishes. Or someone else's.
And the only pictures are shots taken on the set, so you don't even have that visual help; quite a challenge for my TIMOC #4

I went to the Deep Space 9 section, looking for my favourite character's dishes. Comes out that Jadzia Dax and I don't share the same taste at the table (or about men, as it is).
So I picked an Icoberry Torte, Captain Sisko's favourite dessert at Quark's.
Icoberries are not easily found on Earth, but we're allowed to substitute raspberries for them.

1 cup/100gr ground almonds
1/2 whole wheat breadcrumbs (I used white)
6 eggs
1 cup light brown sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon lemon extract
1/2 teaspoon orange extract
1 cup raspberry preserve
confectioners' sugar



Beat the yolks with sugar, add the cinnamon, the lemon and orange extract, then the dry ingredients, then delicately incorporate the whipped egg whites.
Bake at 350F/180C for 45 minutes.
When it is cooled, spread it with raspberry preserve (well, I had some!) and then sprinkle with confectioners' sugar.
You can add whipped cream, too.



There is also an Icoberry Drink, consisting of icoberry sauce in apple juice; I still had some raspberry pulp frozen in iced cubes, it was a no brainer.





Do you feel 24th century-ish, yet?

TIMOC #3: Savory Apple Crepes

(to know what TIMOC means, read here)


Third book from the right on my top shelf, is this book that Costco was giving away to every customer one Saturday morning, a couple of years ago.
It may break the pattern of International and travel books, but in a sort of way it doesn't: the nearest Costco is about a thousand miles from here, so what was once a regular place of shopping for us, sounds now quite exotic! ;-)

Of course I didn't do my shopping there for the recipe I'm about to show: Savory Apple Crepes.
It is in the Breakfast section, but we had the crepes for a light lunch.

The recipe called for ready made crepes, but it takes 20 minutes to make them, so I always prefer to cook them from scratch.



My recipe (don't ask me where I got it, can't remember at all) asks for 1.5 tbsp of butter, melted, 3 eggs, 2 cups of flour, 2 cups of milk and a pinch of salt.



As for the filling, it's
4 tbsp butter,
2 tbsp shallots (I used green onion),
4 apples (I chose Granny Smith), peeled and diced,
1/3 golden raisins
(in a)
1/4 cup white wine,
2 tsp flour,
1 tsp curry powder,
1/3 whipping cream,
some slices of manchego cheese (I used local cheese, manchego is impossible to find here).

Melt the butter in a skillet, add the ingredients one at a time in the given order (hold the cheese).
10 minutes is all you need to have the apples cooked at the right point in a creamy sauce.



Place the filling on a crepes, and put the cheese on top, it will melt deliciously once you roll the crepe.



Voilà!

TIMOC #2: Salzburger Bierfleisch

Got myself my own acronym, ha!
For the second instalment of Traveling In My Own Cookbooks we make a trip to Austria.
If you have read me before it will not sound new.
Yes, I bought the book during my recent trip to Salzburg, and I don't know exactly why I put it up there on the top shelf, so that it became the second book to be examined.
If you consider that during last week I was reading a biography of Mozart's, you will see how Austria is not letting me go.
Think of it as making the best of my trip, it's like it lasted a little more.

Anyway, Salzburger Bierfliesch is meat cooked in a beer sauce.

Main ingredient of course is meat, of tender beef, 600gr, about 1lb 5oz.

Then starting from the top, clockwise:

100gr/3oz onion
150gr/5oz smoked pancetta
1 slice rye bread
40gr/2tbsp flour
250ml/1cup dark beer
2 slices speck
20gr/1tbsp tomato paste
4tbsp pickled onions
80gr/3oz strutto
750ml/3cups beef broth (not portrayed)

Now, as for strutto: I find that the English word is "lard", only it's not the same as solid lard, the one you can slice.
You put that solid lard in a pan, heat it and you will see that it releases fat. That liquid fat, taken, filtered and cooled is strutto. Most of the time it's substituted with butter, but of course it's not exactly the same.
I must say that the concept of strutto makes me and my arteries a little uncomfortable and that this was the first time I talked myself into using it, for the sake of discovery and of some kind of return to the roots.
I understand the sense it makes in a recipe, yet it's really a concentrate of pure fat, they're making sure not a single molecule of water, not a single fiber is left in.

Dice the meat, cherish it with salt and pepper and put it into the pan where you will have melted your fat (at least, it will be yours soon!)

Cook it one every side, then set the meat apart and in the same pan fry onion and pancetta, both finely diced



Let them take some color, thicken with flour then dilute with beer



Pour the beef broth in, adjust with salt, pepper, and thyme and marjoram if you like, add the meat, cover and let it cook completely (about 15 minutes)

To garnish, stir fry in a little oil the diced bread with shredded speck and pickled onions



You will put this mix on the finished plate.

Talking of "finished plate", I wasn't completely satisfied, I had to make an appropriate side, so I ended cooking two recipes from this book, too.
The choice was quite obliged, I picked the Kartoffelknodel (Potato Dumplings) I was served at Gablerbrau.

500gr/1lb 2 oz potatoes
50gr/2 oz semolina flour
150gr/5 oz flour
2 egg yolks
30gr/1oz butter
salt

Boil and mash the potatoes



Work them with all the ingredients, one at a time, then let it rest.



Form the dumplings and boil them (I'd say 6/7 minutes, the book is not clear with times of cooking).

Put your two pieces of work together, and enjoy your taste of Austria

Traveling in my own cookbooks #1

One of the things I always try to bring back from a trip/journey/vacation is a local cookbook, just because.
This started way back, as soon as I started to travel without my parents, when I still didn't even approach a stove.

I realized years ago that I never get to actually use them, but still that's something I have to bring home with me.
I seldom get to actually open these books other than for looking at the pictures, even if I carefully moved them around Italy and the world everytime I moved. Thing is, most of the time I'm more lured by recipes in magazines, or from some friends, and more recently from the Internet, of course. And also, something always seemed to go wrong; I would blame myself for my inexperience, but that was before discovering the concept of badly written cookbooks.
I thought that just because something was written in a book, it had to be right and thoroughly proved, but I've been questioning this idea for awhile, now.

Well, this is the time, I will pick every cookbook I own, starting from the first on the left at the top shelf, choose a recipe from each and share the outcome.
It's not an original idea, I know, I saw that there was a community with a similar cookbook challenge, but they stopped. So, if you know of some other group bringing on something like this, let me know. Or if you want to join me, you will be more than welcome.

First book is "Cocina Aragonesa": I bought it during a vacation through Spain and Portugal when I was 24. There were 10 of us, friends from University, just driving around from Barcelona to Madrid, to Lisbon, To Algarve and back on the South coast.
Beautiful, I would do that all over tomorrow! Except maybe for the part where I put my life at risk, 2 or 3 times, but I was young and free, and probably that was my wildest holiday.
Anyway, I remember that 4 or 5 of us got together and decided to buy one specific region cookbook each, so we could trade them during the years to follow.
Of course, that never happened.

I would have liked to make something savoury, but everything I set my eyes on had tons of garlic, or was about eels, and I needed a softer start, so I headed to the dessert pages.

The one I picked was called "Yemas de Coco" (Coconut Buds).




Looked pretty simple: make a syrup with one glass (3/4 cup) of water and 1 1/2 cup of sugar (if you're wondering about the quantities in the pictures, I made half batch),



Then add 3 cups of grated coconut,



then leave the mix in the fridge overnight.
The subsequent passage would be to form buds by hand and roll them in melted chocolate.



At this point I thought "Wow, how will this simple mix aggregate? How will I be able to form those little balls that keep together in melted chocolate?"
I wasn't.
The mix didn't hold together.
I tried to wet the mix, I tried to dry the mix, but no.

So, in the end I made layers and refrigerated, and found myself with a home version of a Bounty bar.



Nice, healthy and everything, but still too much fuss for the result.

I probably should have made the buds, frozen them, and then rolled them in the chocolate.

Mmh.

I decided to give the book another try, there and then, and I picked the recipe soon after: "Leche Frita" (Fried Milk)

Put 1 liter/1 quart of milk and a pinch of cinnamon on a stove, and when it starts to boil add 4 tbsp of flour and 4 egg yolks, always beating in the meantime.



Pour in a dish and refrigerate overnight (this overnight refrigeration seems recurring).
The day after you should have this unsweetened pudding



that has to be cut in pieces, rolled in a mix of one yolk and two eggwhites, then in flour, then fried in hot vegetable oil.



At this point, I had the feeling I was in front of a book meant for tourists, printed in a time when cooking wasn't really much of a hobby.
Either that, or I suddenly have an issue with aggregation, because the 4 tbsp of flour were not at all enough to make the pudding dense enough to handle it with ease.
I made it, but another time I will use 4 tbsp of corn starch (the book said I could use corn starch instead of the flour, but only 2 tbsp).
This should also reduce the ratio between fried surface and fresh content.
Dust with sugar and serve.



They were pretty good, actually, it's just a matter of texture, not of taste.


I have a feeling that this project, started just for fun, will help me understand a few things about cookbooks. I'm looking forward to discovering the differences between one book and another, old and new, small and big, with a theme or not.