Nurturing my inner... eye of the beholder

Not every weekend can be a hotbed of creative brilliance in my home.  (Who can take that kind of pressure!)  Yesterday I bought some fun imported snacks, so to balance my unique treats outflow of cash, I decided not to spend any money today.  Instead, I would go "shopping" without leaving my condo - in my freezer, fridge and pantry.  I was determined to make something out of already purchased items.  And that, I found out after my perusing the frozen tundra of the ice box and the long forgotten outer reaches of the cabinets, added up to chili.  But a tweaked version of my original that I posted last October.  Slightly off recipe because I didn't have kidney beans, so I used giant white beans.  No green pepper, but I had an orange one.  Out of green chillies, yet a fresh jalapeno had been sitting around getting lonely.  So I threw it all together in the crock pot and set the dial for about six hours total time.

I can't very well blog about a dish I already made.  So I poked around the freezer a little longer and found a bit of bacon and some shredded cheddar.  I decided I would make biscuits!  After all, they are the perfect complement for chili.

Bacon Cheddar Biscuits

2 cups flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 stick of butter
1 cup of finely shredded cheddar cheese
3 strips of bacon, diced, cooked and drained
1 cup of buttermilk (I used the powdered stuff)

Why would you buy biscuits in a can when it's SO super easy to make them from scratch?  Make these and you too will be saying the same thing!

When I bring a package of bacon home, I immediately divide it into three slice portions, wrap them in foil, put them in a plastic bag and freeze them.  That way, I can take out just what I need per recipe.

One package, premeasured by me.

Bacon is easier to cut when it's frozen.  So instead of defrosting it, I took it right out of the freezer and diced it.  It made for nice clean cuts.

I didn't want large pieces in my biscuits.

Into a saute pan on medium I tossed them in and cooked them until they were slightly brown, carefully making sure they didn't get too crispy or burnt.  I was going for more of a meaty flavor in the biscuits than a burned bacon taste that might be okay if I was eating it straight up next to eggs.

The lower heat setting helps it to cook and
stay just a little chewy.

There was one thing I knew I had to have at home in order to make tasty biscuits though and that was buttermilk.  It's not always easy to find at the store, so I bought powdered buttermilk in the baking section.  It lasts a lot longer than the liquid version, which is good for someone like me who doesn't always go through supplies that quickly.

It's really handy to have it in your fridge.
Good for pancakes or fried chicken.
(So I hear.)

Four tablespoons of buttermilk powder plus one cup of water equals one cup of regular buttermilk.  It's brilliant, I tell you!

It looks a lot like flour, but slightly yellow.

Into the bowl went all the dry ingredients - flour, baking powder, salt and buttermilk powder.

Varying shades of ecru and white.

And this is the key to flaky biscuits - cold butter.  It will get trapped in the dough and as it melts, create pockets.  I took the butter out of the fridge at the last minute, sliced it into some pieces and then cut it into the dry ingredients with a pastry cutter.  For around $5.00, a pastry cutter may be one of the best tools you ever buy.  (And it beats having to cut butter into flour with two knives.  Trust me, I've done it.  Spend the five bucks!)

When it becomes the texture of sand, or
looks like little pebbles, then you've got the
right consistency.

Last items I added once that crumbly mix of flour and butter was ready, was the cheese, cooked bacon and water.

That's the flavor boost right there!

When you're making these yourself, and I know you will, you'll want to follow these instructions.  Mix the whole lot of it together with your hands.  But don't over mix it.  You'll want the butter to stay cold and not be melted by your body heat.  It will be a soft, slightly sticky dough.

It looked good, so I hoped it would taste
as good. (This is what happens when an
amateur makes up her own recipes.)

I did half think of rolling it out and cutting the biscuits with a cutter, but then I thought I'd rather have hand-dropped, more rugged looking biscuits.  So I divided my dough in half, then half again and each quarter I broke into three pieces.  That way I had exactly twelve from the batch.

I dropped each small ball of dough on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and made them roundish.  Leaving plenty of space in between for them to expand as they baked.  Then I stood back and delighted in their abnormalities.  A good day's work.

They sort of remind me of the ones you get
at that well known seafood chain restaurant
that I will refrain from mentioning by name.

Into a 400 degree oven for 23-25 minutes or until slightly browned and cooked all the way through.  Giving me ample time for the commentary I'm sure you've grown to expect by now.

I've been watching Kirk Douglas' 1956 movie "Lust for Life," where he brilliantly portrayed mentally tortured painter Vincent van Gogh. Most young actors I see can't compare to the talent of the actors of those days. Watching Mr. Douglas in his prime as a robust, young man, vibrantly play such a talented, yet inwardly tormented artist just gave me pause to really look at what I create and marvel in its imperfection.  Art really is everywhere and beauty is subjective. You may see him as an artist that every person is familiar with because his work is on everything from tote bags to coasters, but no one really recognized, or appreciated, van Gogh's talent within his lifetime.  He tried so hard to explain the passion and emotion he was expressing in his dramatic use of light and thick paint strokes, but his contemporaries just couldn't see what he could see. They focused more on his madness and flighty behavior, than his true ability.

One quote that hit me hard from the movie was when his friend and fellow painter Paul Gauguin critically said to him, "All I see when I look at your paintings is just that you paint too fast." And van Gogh responded quickly and with strong conviction, "You look too fast!!!"



My favorite Van Gogh painting.
"The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum"


Maybe that's our problem. We've gotten to a time when we look too fast. And we bypass too much beauty. I may only be making some simple biscuits today, but I am choosing to look at each one as a thing of beauty. Of lumpy peaks and hollow valleys with endless shadows and interesting forms. Made by my own hands. Today was not a day for boring standardization and uniform monotony. It was one of manual composition and free-flowing expression. In dough.

Now to take my creations out of the oven!

Picture perfect in their imperfection.

They had a delightfully crispy exterior and inside they were light and flaky.  Just as I had hoped.  (Uh, I mean planned for with stunning precision.)

Don't you just love the natural, craggly nooks?

Sure, it may be a little overkill, but to make it extra over the top perfect, I needed just a little pat of butter to melt on my delicious biscuit.

Should I come clean now and tell you I ate
two of them?

Four hours later and it was dinner time according to my stomach, so I spooned out a bowl of chili to eat with my biscuits and left it to continue to simmer for another two hours to thicken up a little bit more.

The biscuit was the star tonight, so
it gets in the forefront of the shot.

Most regular people won't cook a different meal every night for an entire year.  There are plenty of great dishes to repeat or to revisit and change up a little.  What can be new and different though are the side dishes and accompaniments.  Tonight bacon cheddar biscuits, perhaps jalapeño corn bread next time!  Whatever you make, it's never trivial.  That which you create with your hands will always be a work of art.

Nurturing my inner... soothing insides

In the spirit of all things strange, I gave in today and tried a product I have been eyeing for some months.  It's called Alo.  With a line over the o.  (That's how hip people spell things.)  Did it seem odd to me to even consider drinking a plant that is most often associated with topically cooling down sunburned skin?  Why yes it did.  I wondered what it could possibly taste like.  Sunscreen?  Not sure if this was going to be a great idea.  But I happened upon a day I felt particularly brave.  (Or read as bored and in need of something to shake things up.)

The bottle has a really decorative wrapper
with lots of information on it.

Alo comes in several flavors, all of which have a base of aloe vera juice and pulp:

Exposed - Original Aloe Vera
Awaken - wheat grass
Enrich - pomegranate + cranberry
Appeal - pomelo + pink grapefruit + lemon
Enliven - 12 fruits + vegetables
Elated - olive leaf
Allure - mangosteen + mango

I tried the Enrich.  And I put it in a clear glass for you to see the pieces of aloe floating in it.  Very bizarre.

Usually I don't drink things with stuff floating
in it. Then again, I've had bubble tea.

It was ever so slightly viscous, just a little thicker than water.  More like a thin juice.  As it turns out, it was delicious!  Not too sweet.  I loved it!  I drank it ice cold and it was smooth and soothing, just like aloe is on hot, burned skin.  (And likely this was an anti-inflammatory for my insides as well!  Even my spleen felt cool as a cucumber!  No, I'm not serious about that.  Just the power of suggestion.)  As for the little pieces, I easily chewed them up or they went down whole and were not offensive to me in the least.  Now I want to try the other flavors and see if I like them as much.  But I know for sure I found something new I will enjoy drinking on the the super hot summer days that will be here soon enough.

Nurturing my inner... chinese new year

A couple years ago, my coworker invited me to her house for Chinese New Year, complete with traditional Chinese fare.  (Because she's Chinese, so that made sense.)  Poached whole fish (with an eye to look at you and all), hundred year old egg (the yolk was dark green and the albumen was black from the fermenting process, but it wasn't really 100 years old - at least I hope it wasn't!) and homemade pork dumplings.  I ate it all with chopsticks, because I think we should embrace cuisine as it was meant to be eaten in that particular culture.

I got to her house just as she started to make the dumplings with her other friends and she invited me to join right in.  I like that kind of cook!  They had bought premade wrappers and were using their own homemade filling.  I decided to observe them for a bit at first.  I carefully watched how they put a wrapper in their hand, added a teaspoon of the filling and crimped it with artistic flare.  I'm an artist, so I knew I could pick up the technique.  After a couple of dumplings, I really got it down.  They said I was a natural!  I'm not sure about that, but I do think we have an amazing capacity to learn many things if we're willing to be taught and corrected when we're not doing it right.

Chinese New Year is coming up once again, this year it's in early February, and I decided I was going to make my own dumplings.

Pork and Maitake Mushroom Dumplings

1/2 lb ground pork
2 heaping tbsp fresh maitake mushrooms, chopped
1 tsp fresh ginger, rough chopped
1 tsp fresh onion, rough chopped
2 cloves of garlic, rough chopped
1 tsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp sesame oil
1/2 tsp rice wine vinegar
1/2 tsp sugar
1 tsp corn starch
1 egg white, beaten
Dash of salt
2 tsps fresh cilantro

I have a small food process, but it would fit the batch I needed to make.  First I put in the onion, garlic and ginger.

The ginger is key to the familiar flavor you
know and love!

I quickly hit the chop button a few times to mince it up.

Much faster than hand chopping.

I was at Wegmans yesterday, so that's where I did my shopping for the day.  The smallest package I could find was a whole pound, so I took out half for the dumplings and then froze the other half flat to make meatballs another day.

It's good to buy a little extra and plan for a
future meal.

I added that into the processor.

It's a lean meat. I like lean meat. Hope it
makes for a lean me.

It needed a veggie element and I decided mushrooms sounded about right.  They had some maitake mushrooms, also known as Hen of the Woods, and though they were $12.99 a pound fresh, I only needed a small bunch.  So it ended up to be only $1.50 for the bundle.

How fancy is that? Ah nature, you're amazing.

I cut off the base that held all the "petals" together and then gave these a chop.

Really gorgeous design.

Now what would a dumpling be without a few key flavors?  (Well, unflavorful is the answer.  Was that a trick question?)

A little of you and you and you.

While reading up on dumplings, there was an ingredient I didn't know I needed, so I'm glad I noticed before I went to the store.  Corn starch.  I think it acts as a binding agent.

Note to self: Find other recipes to use up
this container of corn starch this year.

Into the processor went the soy sauce, sesame sauce, rice wine vinegar, sugar, starch and salt.  Along with the egg white, which I suppose also acts as yet another binding agent.

Rough chop is fine because the processor
will mince it all up more.

Don't over pulse, just enough to blend it.

If I made a bigger batch, I would have needed
a larger processor.

Lastly, in went some fresh cilantro and mushrooms, another few pulses and done.  You could mix this all with a spoon in a bowl instead, but I wanted a finer texture to my filling, so I chose the processor method.

The green adds dimension to the fleshy color.

Just so you know, I never planned on making the dough for the wrappers from scratch.  Not when premade wrappers can be found so easily.  (Also, seeing as my Chinese friends thought premade ones were acceptable, who was I to not employ this bit of ancient Chinese wisdom.)  They sell them at all kinds of stores, probably not far from the fresh ginger.  (That's where I found them!)  They only had one pack of pot sticker wrappers that day, must be all the other people prepping for Chinese New Year, but they would suit my purposes.  I grabbed them quickly.

A real time saver.

There were about 50 in the package. 

I took out a stack.

An assembly line is the way to go.

I laid out about six wrappers.

I happened to have these small spoons that were my great aunt's.  I just got them from my cousin, who didn't want them anymore, after my last trip to Connecticut.  They were about a half teaspoon size and worked perfectly for the amount of filling I wanted to add to each wrapper.  I used a generous, well-rounded spoonful.

Don't overfill or you won't be able to seal it up.

After the dollop was on the wrapper, I had a small finger bowl with water handy.

This little wooden bowl was perfect for my
dumpling sealing task.

I dabbed a finger into the bowl and then traced it around the edge of half of the wrapper.  Note: The pot sticker wrappers were slightly oval, so I made sure to fold on the long side.

Tip: Lightly wet the edge, not too much,
or it won't seal tightly.

I pinched up the short sides and then worked my way around the silouette of the filling, making sure to get rid of any air.  Trapped air can cause dumplings to burst open.

It's craft time!

I pressed the dough all around to make a tight seal.

Looks like a pierogi at this point.

Now to add the dumpling magic design that had been taught to me.  I pinched the top of the dough and made a little pleat.

There is an art to it all.

I continued my pleating down one side and then the other.  If you prefer, you can use a plastic dumpling press, but I'm more of an arts and crafts kind of girl, so I will often choose the manual method over perceived convenience.

There is something to be said for
authenticity. And imperfection.

One after another, dollop, fold, seal, pleat and I quickly had a nice little pile of them.  I put them on a plate and into the fridgerator to keep them cool while I finshed the rest.

Not too shabby bit of work.

I learned the Chinese tradition that they randomly put a peanut in some of the dumplings and it's supposed to be good luck to the person who gets one of them.  (I don't believe in luck, but I also know they added them in enough dumplings that really, every one gets one eventually!)  I didn't have any peanuts, so as a nod to my Italian side, I put a pignoli nut in some.  I didn't want to skip out on their tradition, after all.

That seemed like a clever enough subsitute.

When I was done, I ended up with about 40 dumplings total.

I'm going into business soon.

The next quandry I was in, was how should I cook these?  Since I didn't have a bamboo steamer.  (Which I think I will get one day.)  I tried three ways.

1.) Steamed them in a veggie steamer.  Took 20 minutes.  I brushed the inside of the container with canola oil to prevent sticking and flipped them halfway through.

Steam starts quickly.

Result: Good, but maybe a tiny bit chewy.  Probably not the route I'd go again, but it was convenient.



I tried not to crowd them, so they wouldn't
stick to each other.


The grooves from the container were nice though.  Very uniform.

Looked really nice.

2.) Steamed in a pot with a metal basket.  I brushed the basket with canola oil to prevent sticking.  Placed on the lid and 20 minutes to cook.

Lined up in a row.

Result: Great. The water from the bottom boiled up some into the basket and on to the dumplings, so it kept them moist.

Perfectly steamed.

On the plate, they looked very natural.

Restaurant worthy, I'd say.

3.) Pan fried.  This officially makes this batch pot stickers.  That's what a dumpling is called when it's fried.  I guess because it sticks to the pot.  I added some butter (you can do half oil too) to the pan and only had it on medium so it wouldn't cook too quickly.



Again, no over crowding.


I cooked these for a couple minutes on the first side until brown, then flipped and cooked on the other side until brown.

Okay, so one was a little more than brown,
but I rescued it just in time!

Then I added three or four tablespoons of water (smoke will rise up at first - you've been warned) and they steam uncovered until they finish cooking and the water has evaporated.  Total cook time for pan frying was 10-12 minutes.

Result: The crispy exterior was nice and the rest of it was delightfully chewy like the steamed version.  I liked these a lot too.

I didn't know that pan frying also involved
water being added to keep them moist, but
I learned that online.

The pan fried dumplings presented extremely well on the plate because everyone loves something golden brown.

It's good to have options.

I know you realize I couldn't eat 40 dumplings in a day.  So I packaged the rest by type, labeled and froze them.  Dumplings you buy frozen are cooked and I felt that would be best for storage.  So when I want some, I can just take out a few and then heat them up again in a few minutes.

All dumplings need a good sauce, of course.

Dumpling Dipping Sauce

2 tsp soy sauce
2 tsp Terriyaki sauce
1/2 tsp sesame oil
1/2 tsp rice wine vinegar

All the ingredients went in one bowl and I mixed them up.  I then transfered it equally into two small, delicate, asian, condiment dishes.  So, it makes about two servings good for about four to six dumplings.

A good balance of salty and smokey.

I added a couple of each type of dumpling to my plate to sample some more and make sure I had enough detailed notes.  One has to do good scientific research, after all, no matter what the sacrifice.  (Mmm, chew, chew, chew.)  And I am whole-heartedly dedicated to my work.

Which one to eat first?!?

Ever since that day at my Chinese friend's house, I have thought many times about making my own dumplings.  Too bad it took me two years to get around to it!  But better late... than even later.  And still, just in time for Chinese New Year 2011!  I think next time I will make a vegetarian dumpling.  (And I won't wait another two years to do it!)