Tag: egg

After looking online and not finding a chicken and dumplings recipe I liked, I tried this:

1. Saute an almost-mirepoix of shallots, celery, and carrots in olive oil; add three cubed chicken thighs and chicken stock.

2. Mix 1 1/4 cup flour with 1 tsp salt, 1 tbsp baking powder, and one egg; slowly add milk until it becomes a dough and loses its stickiness.

3. Season your chicken with pepper, tarragon, onion powder, garlic powder, soy sauce, and worcestershire. Add one can cream of celery soup and a bay leaf.

4. Add the dough in teaspoonfuls; cover. After five minutes, remove cover and flip.

Simple, no? This turned out really, really awesome.

Of course, I decided to make Chicken Katsu, because it's delicious and wonderful. It all starts with chicken thighs, which I cut into manageable chunks and egg-battered with flour and panko. A few minutes in the deep fryer, and they came out delicious.

Actual people who have lived in Hawaii tell me it's not the chicken, but the sauce that makes things work. The recipe I was using has a pretty complicated sauce, and of course I added random amounts of everything instead of paying attention and got something a little too clovey.

Why did I use a recipe and not invent something myself? This time, it was because I have absolutely no clue about what the Hawaiians eat. But make the chicken part. It's fantastic. Next time, I'm eating it with barbecue sauce.

The main reason I'm posting is for the next person that searches google to try to find tvorog in Las Vegas. I searched for "Russian Market Vegas" and "Russian Market Las Vegas" and found nothing useful. Google's lies cost me $10 in wrong purchases and probably $20 more in gas. Hopefully Supercook can give me something to do with greek yogurt and bulgarian white cheese.

They don't have a web site, but their address is:
Jones Market & Deli aka Eastern European Market aka
3389 S Jones Blvd (Jones and Desert Inn, behind Winchell's)
Las Vegas, NV 89146
The girls that work there are all like hot spies.

Back to Russian night..
I made a Honey "Mousse" and Zapekanka iz Tvorog (Tangy Baked Lemon Pudding). The honey mouse was crap, so I won't even talk about it. I think maybe I needed to know something about making mousse to make it work. I blame the recipe. In fact, the recipe and the person that wrote it can assossee mayee yaitsa.

Everything everyone made was good except my honey crap. Of course mine was crap. That's right, laugh. Smekh smekhom, a pizda kverkhu mekhom, suka. Yup, fur.

Lisa's Borscht was especially surprising, because it wasn't the most disgusting thing I've ever had like I expected it to be. The kid seemed to love it.

Enough to mix with oatmeal:



My Zapekanka iz Tvorog was really good. I'm not sure if the consistency was how it should be, but it was damn tasty...
300g tvorog
Juice of 1 lemon
Zest of 1 lemon
2 eggs
1/2 cup sugar

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Separate the egg yolks from the whites, and beat the whites until fluffy. Blend in the tvorog , lemon zest and juice, and sugar to taste.
Pour the mixture into a small- medium sized greased ceramic baking dish.
Bake for 20 minutes.

Serve drizzled with a sauce made from the juice of one orange and a teaspoon or two of honey, warmed together.

Here's how it looked:

The Queen of Tarts is always acting all high and mighty, baking bread and cookies and I think probably even people every night. She'll casually pull out some flour and other stuff, get a bowl or something, and in twenty minutes she'll be yanking a tray of golden brown tastiness out of the oven. Her demeanor seems to say, what, bread? Oh look, here it is. Easiest thing in the world.

So, for Russian night, I decided to make a mushroom pastry. I'd show her. I'd whip up a huge plate of tasty mushroom foods and then I'd be the one who shrugs modestly. Oh yeah, those pastries? Totally easy.

I started the night before with:

• 3 cups flour
• 1 cup sour cream
• 2 sticks of butter

The recipe I was following told me to cut the whole thing together with a wide knife. Not knowing what the heck it was talking about, I got a butter knife and cut the mixture together while watching Bob the Builder. By the end of it, my shoulders were totally and completely sore.

The next day, I sauteed:

• 1 lb minced mushrooms
• 1 minced large onion

I added some pepper and tarragon during the cooking process, then set it aside to cool down while I pulled out the dough.

Of course, the dough didn't look right. It kept falling apart. It was impossible to roll. So I got out the pastry knife (yeah, I didn't know we had one the night before) and cut in an additional half stick of softened butter. The dough formed a nifty ball immediately. Victory for me.

I started rolling the dough out, but it was pretty sticky, and it kept tearing in places. In fact, it took me an hour to roll out, but I learned one vital fact you'll need if you ever work with dough: flour is your friend. If your dough even begins to give you lip, cover it (and your rolling surface) with flour. You cannot have enough flour on hand. It's mathematically impossible.

Once I had the dough rolled out to about a quarter inch, I cut it into squares. I mixed a cup of grated parmesan into the mushroom mixture, put teaspoonfuls of it into the squares, and folded them diagonally. After all the little triangley things were made, they were brushed with egg yolk, sprinkled with caraway seeds, and put into a 350-degree oven for twenty minutes.

Were they good? Yeah. They were good. They were pretty darn good. But I couldn't shrug and be all modest, because my shoulders might have fallen off.

For this EU Night Russian Stuffed Eggs caught my eye as they are a twist from the common Deviled Egg, which is one of my favorite appetizers.

The recipe is easy to follow and the ingredients are all quite common. My only suggestion would be to chop the onion super fine, maybe even in a food processor or Magic Bullet. I hand chopped mine and they were a bit chunky.

Thanks to chef2mom and her professional chef skills I learned the proper way to Quenelle the egg mixture and place it in the egg. You could also use a small melon baller to fill the eggs.

This recipe was interesting as it has a mayo and sour cream sauce to go with it. I ate the eggs with and without the sauce and the sauce definitely adds to the whole flavor.

Another amazing EU Night down. Hawaiian Night will be coming next month. So, stay tuned!

I don't know why nobody ever told me that Alfredo sauce was easy to make, but I've wasted far too much of my life buying the glass jars of commercially made pasta sauce when a great alfredo is almost as easy.

Just last week, we were running a little short in the food department, so it came time to try and scrounge what we could out of what was sitting around in the house. To that end, I collected the following ingredients:

• 2 cans evaporated milk (heavy cream would be better...)
• 1/8 lb. Parmigiano-Reggiano, shredded
• Lots of black pepper
• 1 stick butter
• Garlic salt
• 1 bag egg noodles

I melted the butter while the pasta started boiling. Once completely melted, I added the milk and whisked it all together, then whisked in the pepper and garlic salt. After the egg noodles were done, I drained them thoroughly, put them in the milk mixture, and began to fold in the cheese.

That's it. The best recipes are disgustingly simple. Although, after I ate the noodles, I felt like my heart was going to explode. This is some heavy stuff, friends. Don't get addicted.

Here we go! For this EU night, I decided on making Cheesesteaks. Alas, they weren't traditional, in the fact that they weren't made with Cheez Whiz (Seriously. Apparently, a hot dog vendor in Philidelphia invented cheesesteaks when he got bored with his regular faire). This is the recipe. alas. it is not exact. Why? Well because its up to you the amount of ingredients you want on the thing. Not me.

Also, note that the cut of beef required (suggested) for these is a mysterious cut known to few as "Eye of Round" Roast. In my earlier, uncertain years, I worked at a Smiths Food and Drug in the Meat department. I know quite a bit of beef from my Father and Grandfather as well, but I had never heard of this cut. I dont know why. Ask your butcher, or use a Rib-Eye steak or comparable marbled cut of beef. You can't tell the difference. Except in price, maybe, the Eye of Round is very cheap, $11 for 2.5 lbs or so. (Note: 2.5 lbs is enough to make 10 sandwiches, and thats just meat and cheese.)

2lb.      Eye of Round roast, 
          or comparable portion of 
          meat to stick in sandwiches.

8-10      Dutch style sandwich rolls (very flaky crust).

16-20     Slices of provolone cheese

?         Frenched onions, chopped bell peppers, mushrooms
          sweet cherry peppers, anything you want on there.

1         Spray bottle or mustard bottle filled with        
          clean water.

1         Bottle of Steak/Grill seasoning (optional)

Start by putting the roast, or other meat in the freezer for an hour or two. You want it frozen, but still pliable. Rock hard would be bad, and hard to cut. While its freezing, cut the vegetables, watch TV, do something.

Frozen enough? ok, get a serrated blade, yes, the type you cut bread with. What you're looking for here is to shave very thin slices of beef off of the roast. Since the beef is frozen, it should be easier to cut without tearing. After you've sliced all of the beef very thin, set it aside in a bowl. I would suggest you get a two burner cast iron griddle for this, they're good for pancakes, eggs, pretty much anything, but great for this. Lay it across one front burner and one back burner, and turn the heat on the front burner to high, and the back burner to low.

Throw a cup or so of your veggies on the front part of the griddle, and saute until desired done-ness. While this is cooking, preheat the oven to 175 degrees. If the vegetables begin to stick to the griddle, hit them with a squirt of water from the mustard bottle, it will prevent them from sticking. Once they're cooked to your liking, move them to the back of the griddle. Throw a cup of the sliced beef on there, and cook to desired doneness and again, hit with a squirt of water if it starts to stick. Once this is cooked to your liking, combine the cooked vegetables and the beef together and cook for a minute or two, blasting with water when you need to. With the spatula, form the mixture into an oval shape, and then put two slices of provolone on the oval, almost covering the meat but try to keep it off of the grill. Hit the top of the cheese with two or three squirts of water, and the steam from this will melt the cheese very very quickly.

Get one of your sandwich rolls, and cut lengthwise along one side, in the typical hot dog bun fashion. Lay the bun open side down onto the meat, and then slide the spatula underneath the entire mass. In one motion, flip the whole mess over, and you should have a Philly Cheesesteak! Yay!

I know it seems like quite a bit of work, but they are mighty tasty.

I was seriously in need of some sour cream yesterday, so I browsed the internet for a couple beef stroganoff recipes and generated something that turned out to be pretty darn fantastic.

After slicing a half-pound sirloin steak into small strips, I dredged them in flour, garlic salt, and pepper, then sauteed them in butter along with a quarter onion (diced). I added a couple dashes of Worcestershire and soy sauce (that combo is my secret weapon for meat dishes). After the onion was transparent, I added some sliced mushrooms, a shot of apple cognac (any brandy would be fine), and half a can of chicken broth. Once the whole mixture thickened, I added half a cup of sour cream, reduced the heat to medium, and let the sauce thicken.

Over buttered egg noodles, this one was pretty fantastic. There was just a hint of the apple flavor from the cognac. If I do this again, I will wait to add the steak until after the onions are done; it certainly wasn't overcooked, but I would have liked it to be a little less cooked anyways.

I would love to tell you all what I ate at Kobe, but I really have no idea. Now you may be thinking of course you have no idea it has been almost a month since you ate there. Well, that really has nothing to do with it. I didn't remember what I ate when I left there either.

Here is the problem. Once the fish is cut and put on to a piece of rolled up rice, it all looks the same to me; except for Tai which looks extremely different from the tuna.

So all I know is that I ate a lot of raw fish. Included in that line up was at least 4 pieces of Tai (Red Snapper), some Toro (Fatty Tuna), probably some Maguro (Tuna) and Albacore (White Fish), and one order of Hotategai (Scallops wrapped in Nori). I also had some Philadelphia and Cucumber Rolls and an order of Tomago (Egg Nigiri).

As you can see I ate a lot. I could have sat there longer and eaten more, but that would get mighty expensive.

After we left Kobe we went to the Orange Pearl Yogurt Store where I got a Strawberry Mango Smoothie. That helped to finish filling me up.

I have to say that Kobe is where I first fell in love with Tai. I had liked sushi before the Tai, but I did not yet have a love for it. Then I decided to order Tai. It came out looking different from the other fish. It is white with a slight red color to one side of it. And a slice of lemon tops it. Tai has a sweetness to it that is remarkable. If you aren't sure about sushi or have not yet fallen in love with it I must suggest trying Tai. It may convert you for life (I'm talking to you too Mrs. Savory!).

Kobe I love you and your Tai! I'll be back soon.

Please save your family from store bought refrigerated sugar cookie dough. These cookies turn hard as a rock within minutes of making them and they have no real flavor at all. Treat your family to some wonderful homemade sugar cookies and frosting. They will thank you for it.

The recipe I am going to share with you has been in my family for over 20 years. My aunt Kathy received the recipe from a co-worker. Kathy then gave the recipe to my mom. It has since become a tradition that each year at Easter and Christmas my mom makes 6 double batches of cookies. We spend many hours baking and frosting, but it is always a lot of fun and wouldn't be the same without them.

I had never made these cookies on my own, but this past week that all changed. LittleRoq had a Christmas party to go to and I volunteered to make the sugar cookies (so as to save the children from the horrible store bought ones!). LittleRoq joined in on the cutting out of the shapes. And then he frosted the cookies reserved for our house while I frosted the ones for the party. It was really neat to make a recipe with my son that I have been making at my mom's side for many years.

Over the years we have learned a few things about making sugar cookies.

• First: Make way more cookies than you think you will need because no one can get enough of these.
• Second: If you are going to ship them, use small shapes rather than large ones because the small ones are more likely to survive the trip intact.
• Third: Do not roll the dough into large balls and then refrigerate. This creates a lot of hard work for you later on. The best thing to do is separate the dough and flatten it into a few small slabs, wrap in plastic wrap and then refrigerate. This makes rolling the dough out much easier.
• Fourth: Use powdered sugar rather than flour to dust your rolling surface so as to not add too much flour taste to the cookies.

For many cookie pointers read the transcript of the Good Eats episode The Cookie Clause. Alton Brown has many great tips on cookie making in that episode. It is where I learned about the slabs of dough. Can you believe we never thought of that?

And FINALLY the recipe:

Kathleen's (Mary's) Sugar Cookies

1 1/2 c sifted powder sugar
1 c butter softened
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
2 1/2 c flour, sifted
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cream of tartar

Cream the sugar and butter. Mix in the egg, vanilla, and almond extract. Blend dry ingredients, stir into butter mixture. Refrigerate at least 3 hours.

Heat oven to 375 degrees.

Roll out dough a little at a time (if it gets too warm it gets sticky) to about 1/4 inch thick. Use cookie cutters to cut out.
Bake on un-greased baking sheets for 8 minutes or until lightly golden. Cool on wire racks. Frost with butter cream frosting.

Butter Cream Frosting

1 lb Powder Sugar (4 cups)
1/4 c milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 c butter softened
Food coloring

In a bowl combine sugar, milk, vanilla and butter. If a little thick add milk a few drops at a time until thin enough to frost with. Divide into bowls and mix in the food coloring.

Frost the cookies. Allow frosting to harden on the cookies then store in air-tight containers. (Place a piece of bread in with the cookies to keep them soft. When the piece becomes hard and dried out replace it with a fresh piece.)