Showing posts with label ginger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ginger. Show all posts

Thursday, May 21, 2015

Culture Confusion Rocky Road Bundt #BundtBakers

This Bundt is a riot of cultural influences and flavors and colors that somehow come together to create one of the richest Bundts I’ve ever baked: Turkish delight, dried apricots, syrupy stem ginger, pistachios, dried cranberries and date molasses, in a Jamaican ginger batter, finished off with a decorative flourish of American marshmallow fluff.
This is the TCK or third culture kid of cakes, feeling the pull of the Far East, Middle East, Jamaica by way of the British Isles and the United States as well. This month our Bundt Baker host, Laura of Baking in Pyjamas, challenged us to bake a Bundt with the flavors and ingredients of Rocky Road. For those unfamiliar, rocky road is an unbaked confection that usually contains nuts, fruit, chocolate and marshmallows, sometimes cookies, but a little research soon revealed that the combinations depend greatly on where one lives.  I was intrigued by a recipe on Taste.com.au for a Turkish Delight Rocky Road and decided to use those basic ingredients, but baked in cake batter. (And substituting a North American ingredient, cranberries, for the glacé cherries because glacé cherries? Just no.)

Ah, but which cake batter? Sure, I could have done a plain cake but if you’ve been reading along here a while you know that I don’t often take the easy way out. I like a challenge. So I started looking for a cake recipe with Turkish delight and came across this moist and beautiful ginger loaf baked with fond memories of her English childhood, from my fellow UAE blogger, Sally of My Custard Pie. Now Sally’s ginger cake was already loaded with flavor and the only thing Turkish delight about it ended up being a gorgeous pink rose flavored icing. But I could already taste all of my added flavors baked in that fabulous batter. It’s a gift.

To finish it off Rocky Road style, I piped on some marshmallow fluff. Only after it was baked did I realize that, with so much going on, I forgot chocolate. Sorry, Laura!


Ingredients
For the cake batter:
1/2 cup or 90g dried apricots
1 cup or 150g unsalted pistachios, divided
1/2 cup or 85g dried cranberries
 3 1/2 oz or 100g Turkish Delight
1 knob of stem ginger
2 cups or 250g flour plus a little extra for flouring Bundt pan
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon ground (powdered) ginger
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/2 cup, firmly packed, or 100g brown sugar
1/2 cup or 113g unsalted butter
1/2 cup or 120ml golden syrup
1/3 cup or 80ml date molasses (Normal molasses can be substituted.)
1 generous tablespoon syrup from jar of stem ginger
1 large egg
2/3 cup or 155 ml milk

To decorate:
1/2 cup marshmallow creme or fluff or use a thick glaze of your choosing
Cranberries and pistachios, amounts as per the instructions below

Method
Finely chop about one quarter of your pistachios in a food processor. You are looking for a lot of pistachios dust, very fine crumbs and some small pieces.



Roughly chop the rest of your pistachios with a knife and set aside about one quarter of them to decorate the Bundt after baking.

Cut your cranberries, apricots and Turkish delight into small pieces.  Using scissors is easier than the knife. Mince your stem ginger.  Set aside about one quarter of the cranberry pieces for decorating the cake after baking.


Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and liberally butter and lightly flour your 10-cup Bundt pan. In case you are curious, mine is the Nordic Ware Fleur de Lis.  <affiliate link

Now sprinkle the finely chopped pistachios around the side and middle of the Bundt pan. The bigger pieces will not stick and will fall into the deep grooves of the pan. This is a good thing.



Sift the flour for the cake into a large mixing bowl and add in the baking powder, ginger, baking soda and salt. Mix well.

Add the cut apricots, Turkish delight and the bigger pile of cranberries to the flour mixture and use your hands to make sure they are all well coated and not sticking together.



In a large saucepan, gently warm the golden syrup, date molasses and the ginger syrup with the brown sugar and butter till the butter is just melted and the sugar has dissolved. Set aside.



Measure your milk into a measuring jug, add in the egg and whisk well with a fork.

Pour your barely warm molasses mixture into the flour bowl then add the milk with egg and the minced stem ginger. Mix lightly.



Fold in the larger pile of chopped pistachios.



Pour the batter into your prepared Bundt pan.



Bake on the middle shelf in your preheated oven for 40-45 minutes or until a wooden skewer comes out clean. The cake should be pulling away from the sides slightly.



Allow to cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then use your wooden skewer to loosen any bits of cake adhering to the sides or middle of the Bundt pan, before turning the cake out.



Allow to cool completely before decorating.

To decorate, put your marshmallow fluff in a piping bag and follow the contours of your cake. My initial plan was for fuller coverage but the diamonds that appeared on top because of the pistachios were too cool to hide, so I ended up not using all the marshmallow fluff. If you have a traditional Bundt pan, just pipe that sticky stuff all over.



Poke bits of cranberry and pistachio all over the cake until you think there’s enough or you run out. Over the past 20 years I’ve had a couple of good friends who have baked and decorated with me and they will tell you that I often need to be stopped when contemplating the addition of just one more thing. But more is more, I say.



A note on marshmallow fluff: It’s not the best medium to stick stuff to a cake, even a cold cake, because it starts to slide. If you aren’t trying to mimic rocky road ingredients, feel free to substitute your favorite glaze. Perhaps even Sally’s pretty in pink Turkish Delight one or her alternate option, flavored with fresh lemongrass.



Many thanks to Laura from Baking in Pyjamas for this great theme. I know you all are going to enjoy the variety of flavors and cakes we have for you today! Remember, just because it's called Rocky Road, doesn't mean it's all the same inside!


BundtBakers


#BundtBakers is a group of Bundt loving bakers who get together once a month to bake Bundts with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on the BundtBakers home page.


Aaaaand, if you happen to have extra marshmallow fluff and a willing pooch (and by willing I mean he sits patiently waiting for a taste whenever I fill a green piping bag - he knows!) then by all means, give him a mustache and let him lick it off.  Hey, it's his 8th birthday on Saturday. Special treat.

















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Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Séches aux Gingembre #CreativeCookie Exchange

These light cookies are perfect for dunking in a cup of tea or for serving after dinner with a coffee. They are just sweet enough with a little heat from crystallized ginger and a sprinkle of ginger sugar. 

This month’s Creative Cookie Exchange ingredient is ginger so I did something I’ve been wanting to do since a year ago April. I added some crystallized ginger to my friend, Jamie’s traditional French séches recipe, from over at Life’s A Feast and then, for good measure, sprinkled some ginger sugar on top. Divine! Perfect for getting into the Christmas spirit.

If you are ready for some gingerful baking, make sure you scroll on down to the bottom to see what the rest of the Creative Cookie Exchange bakers have for you, along with our fearless leader, Laura from The Spiced Life.

Ingredients
For the cookie dough:
Scant 1 cup sifted flour (sifted before measuring) or 120g plus extra for kneading and rolling
1/4 cup or 50g sugar
25g or a small handful of crystallized ginger pieces
2 3/4 tablespoons or 40g chilled unsalted butter (by which I mean straight from the refrigerator)
Pinch salt
1 large egg yolk
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons or 100ml heavy cream

For the ginger-sugar:
1 teaspoon ground ginger
2 tablespoons sugar

Method
Preheat the oven to 400°F or 200°C.

In a small bowl, mix together your ginger and sugar to make the ginger-sugar. Set aside.

Mince your crystallized ginger with a sharp knife or put it in a food processor to chop it up finely. The ginger gets really sticky when cut so the food processor is easier, if you have one.



Combine your flour and sugar for the dough in a mixing bowl and add in the cold butter, cut into cubes. Use a pastry blender to cut the butter into the flour, working quickly, until you have a sandy texture. You might still see some small bits of butter and that’s fine. That where the flakiness will come from when they bake, kind of like rough puff pastry.



Add the crystallized ginger bits to the flour mixture and use your fingers or the pastry blender to separate the sticky bits from each other and coat them with flour.



Add in the salt and the egg yolk and mix thoroughly with a fork.



Add in the cream and mix until you have a soft dough.



Scrape the dough out onto a clean surface sprinkled with flour and knead it for a few turns, until it is smooth and homogeneous.


Flour your rolling pin and a large piece of baking parchment and place your dough ball in the center with another light sprinkling of flour.



Roll the dough out into a large circle, about a 1/4 inch or 7mm thick.



Slide your parchment with the dough onto a cookie sheet and dust the circle liberally with ginger-sugar.



Gently cut the circle of dough into triangles with a knife.



Sprinkle on any remaining ginger-sugar.

Bake your cookies in your preheated oven for about 10-12 minutes or until puffed and set.



Remove from the oven and allow to cool for just a few minutes. While they are still warm, use your knife to separate the triangles again. Allow to cool completely.



Enjoy!




Bake some ginger cookies and your whole house will smell like Christmas is coming, I promise! I hope this wonderful link list will inspire you.



If you are a blogger and want to join in the fun, contact Laura at thespicedlife AT gmail DOT com and she will get you added to our Facebook group, where we discuss our cookies and share links.

You can also just use us as a great resource for cookie recipes--be sure to check out our Pinterest Board and our monthly posts. You can find all of them here at The Spiced Life. You will be able to find them the first Tuesday after the 15th of each month!



Posted by at 3:41:00 AM 1 comments
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Tuesday, November 4, 2014

The Post Bender

The Post Bender is the perfect iced coffee drink for the morning after a night of excess. Fresh ginger is well known for its restorative influence on a queasy stomach and its ability to jumpstart circulation, so including it in a coffee drink for the morning after a night of excess is bound to help. Add a little molasses for a natural sugar boost and some deep, dark porter and you might well be on your way to recovery.



From the stalls of Asia to the street markets of France and the outdoor grills of Portugal and Peru, and just a few places in between, I’ve eaten a lot freshly prepared, deliciously seasoned local food in my life. I’ve spoken before of buying queso de mano from a little guy walking between cars in rush hour traffic in Venezuela and pulling over suddenly to buy curry roti in Trinidad. You can read more about it here, along with a recipe for deep fried bananas. I love street food! I tell you all this by way of introduction to a new cookbook being released this month that celebrates the most mobile of street food with 100 recipes for great dishes from food trucks in the US. It’s called Food Truck Road Trip - A Cookbook and every page, every recipe is a feast for the eyes. It’s going to take me a while but I’d like to try each one!

To research, photograph and write the book, authors Kim Pham, Philip Shen and Terri Phillips packed their bags, loaded up the car and they traveled across the United States to visit the cities and taste the food and hear the stories behind some of the best food trucks around.

But their journey started long before that with a blog called Behind the Food Cart, winner of the Saveur magazine’s Best Culinary Travel Blog in 2013. Their focus has always been the people behind the scenes on the food trucks and each little history and snippet from the cooks and chefs made me think of the recently released movie Chef.  They’d ALL make great movies, from the former attorney who gave up a life of anger and complaints to make gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches to the advertising executive who quit his job to become an executive chef to the plumber who found himself unemployed in the recession and is now serving award winning orange cake from his truck in New York. Seriously. Even without the food, this book is inspirational for the personal stories of dedication, perseverance and love of culture and fine ingredients.

You can buy your own copy of Food Truck Road Trip right now – The recipes are all originals from the actual food truck recipes, not inspired by or adapted from, but shared by the creators for inclusion in the cookbook.

Today I am sharing a cocktail recipe from Hubbub Coffee Company in Philadelphia. Owner Drew Crockett believes that coffee is a way for us to interact with friends and people we have yet to meet and I completely agree with him. I chose this recipe because I love coffee - especially meeting friends to drink it - and I was intrigued by one of its ingredients: porter, a beer with chocolate presence. I did a little research and found one called London Porter here that fit the description perfectly. The recipe is supposed to serve two but I made it in a glass mug and drank the whole thing. Whoops. The leftover syrup keeps nicely in the refrigerator for future drinks.

The Post Bender - from Food Truck Road Trip by Kim Pham, Philip Shen, Terri Phillips. Printed with permission of Page St. Publishing.

Hubbub Coffee Company—Drew Crockett—Philadelphia, Pa

Serves 2  - theoretically :)

Ingredients
For the simple syrup:
1 tablespoon or 22g molasses
1 teaspoon zested ginger (I grated mine on the side with the small holes.)
1 1⁄2 teaspoons (6g) sugar
1⁄4 cup or 60ml water

To assemble:
1⁄2 cup or 118ml freshly brewed coffee, at room temperature
1 (12-oz or 340ml) bottle porter beer (has strong chocolate presence)

Method
To make the simple syrup, combine the molasses, ginger, sugar and water in a small saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat.

Stir to make sure all the ingredients are combined and the sugar is dissolved. Remove from the heat and set aside.

Fill a cocktail shaker halfway with ice. Pour in the coffee.

Then add 2 to 4 tablespoons or 30 to 60ml of the simple syrup and shake vigorously.



Strain into 2 cocktail glasses and top with about 3 ounces (90ml) of porter each.


(I put a little light brown sugar around the rim of my mug and strained all the coffee and two tablespoons of the syrup into it, topping up with about 4 oz or 120ml of porter.)


I’ll definitely be making this one again. Enjoy!










Disclaimer: I received one copy of Food Truck Road Trip - A Cookbook for review purposes. No other compensation was received. This post contains Amazon affiliate links.


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Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Mushroom Ginger Congee #OATrageousOatmeals

A wonderful twist on traditional congee made with oats, mushrooms, ginger and vegetable stock, and a dash of hot spice, this Mushroom Ginger Congee is a bowl of pure comfort when you are feeling down or unwell or cold or hungry. So pretty much any morning around nine or any evening around six o’clock for me. 


Choose wisely but take chances
As I’ve gotten older and wiser, I’ve learned to say no to more things, for instance “volunteer” opportunities that will overextend me or make me feel resentful or used, even if they are for a very good cause. On the other hand, I try to say yes to more things that will push my level of comfort and make me try new experiences. This oatmeal cookbook is one of them.

When my friend Kathy first approached me about reviewing her new cookbook, OATrageous Oatmeals, I thought, “Oatmeal? A book full of oat recipes?” Yeah, I wasn’t sure about that. You see, I am not a breakfast person. By which I mean that I don’t believe in traditional American breakfast food. I’d rather have last night’s leftover lasagna than a piled plate of pancakes with syrup. And for me, oats are breakfast food, except when they are in our family’s favorite chocolate chip cookies.

Savory oatmeal. Who knew? 
But the book blurb promised so much more than breakfast or sweet uses of oatmeal. I was intrigued by the potential of “pepperoni” crumbles made with oats and spices to mimic the texture and flavors of chopped pepperoni and I imagined them sprinkled on a Caprese salad. But the one recipe I most wanted to make was, funnily enough, a breakfast one.

On my maiden voyage to Southeast Asia, when I met my first hotel breakfast buffet in Singapore - oh, they are tables of deliciousness - I fell in love with all the Asian breakfast options, including congee. There it is made with broken rice simmered in savory broth and garnished with soy sauce, chopped chili peppers and spring onions, often crispy fried shallots and occasionally, pork floss. If I could make congee that delicious with oats, it would be a game changer for me and how I usually think of oatmeal.

Kathy’s Mushroom Ginger Congee did not disappoint. Each spoonful was as much a delight to my nose as it was to my mouth. The heady rich vegetable broth, thickened with oats, sent steaming tendrils of ginger and spice through the air in the most warming and delectable of ways. I was so wishing that I had doubled the recipe and I think my husband agreed, as he went back to the pot and poured out the mere dribbles left at the bottom in the hope of just another mouthful or two.

So, I’m here to tell you what Kathy’s been trying to say for ages on her great vegan blog, Healthy Slow Cooking: Oats can be so much more than porridge with a spoon of jam! (Which is, by the way, my younger daughter’s favorite way to eat them. We went through a lot of oats and jam in her childhood!)

Kathy has simple instructions for making your own oat milk – so much better and cheaper than store-bought – along with desserts and smoothies and scones and myriad baked and breakfast ideas. But, for me, it’s the savory recipes that have won my heart. How about a cashew curry savory granola as a snack for your next cocktail party? Yes, please, and can you invite me? Her Indian-Spiced Tomato Soup will be next on our menu, if I don’t make the Chickpea Veggie Soup first. Before you know it, I'll be putting oatmeal in everything. And that's a good thing now!

Update: Made the Chickpea Veggie Soup with permission to share that recipe too. Check it out: https://www.foodlustpeoplelove.com/2015/01/chickpea-veggie-soup.html So good!

Want your own copy of OATrageous Oatmeals? Follow that link to Amazon and buy one! 

Now on to the recipe
Kathy’s headnote says, “Served in a bowl, congee is a thick Asian comfort food that can soothe a sore throat or just make you feel better after a bad day. This recipe makes enough for two but feel free to double or triple if you’re feeding more or want to keep some in the fridge for the duration of your cold. The mushrooms and ginger are great for getting your immune system back on track.” I concur. Especially with the part about doubling or trebling the recipe.

My adaptations
The only change I made was to serve the soup with a garnish of spring onions and season with chopped red chilies soaked in soy sauce, instead of salt and the hot pepper flakes. Oh, and I used portabella mushrooms because I couldn’t find shiitakes.

Recipe © Kathy Hester from OATrageous Oatmeals - Delicious & Surprising Plant-Based Dishes From This Humble, Heart-Healthy Grain, printed here by permission from Page Street Publishing

(Per serving: Calories 140.4, protein 3.9 g, total fat 1.5 g, carbohydrates 29.0 g, sodium 1570 mg, fiber 2.5 g)

Ingredients for 2 servings
3 cups (710 ml) vegetable or vegan chick’n broth
1⁄2 cup (48g) rolled oats
1⁄2 cup (35 g) minced mushrooms (shiitakes are great)
1⁄4 cup (27 g) minced carrot or sweet potato
1 tablespoon (6 g) grated ginger
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1⁄2 teaspoon rice wine vinegar
salt, to taste
hot pepper flakes, to taste

Method
Bring the broth, oats, mushrooms and minced carrot or sweet potato to a boil in a medium pot.



Lower the heat to medium-low and add in the ginger, soy sauce and vinegar.

I put all three together in a small bowl, measured and at the ready, while the congee was cooking.



Cook for 15 to 20 minutes until the oats are cooked and the stew becomes thick.



Before serving, add salt to taste and spice with hot pepper flakes.

My concoction looked more like this.


Enjoy!

Thick and savory and delicious!









Disclosure: I received one copy of OATrageous Oatmeals for review purposes. No other compensation was received. This post contains Amazon affiliate links.







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