Grandma's Kitchen Table

Flavors: Carrots - Herbed Carrot Cloverleaf Yeast Rolls

      The fifth week's featured seasonal ingredient for the Flavors challenge is Carrots. 

      Carrots are popular fare here at the house, we serve them just about any way that you can think of, savory and sweet.  Since this challenge is all about "the learning" for me, I decided I wanted to try something that I had not tried with carrots before and landed on figuring out a carrot bread/roll recipe as my guys are awfully fond of homemade bread/rolls. 

      I read the carrot section of the book and decided I would go with a savory bread rather than a sweet one as I had made carrot muffins before so that sort of covered the sweet and didn't seem "new and different" enough.  Since Thanksgiving is coming up in a couple of weeks, I decided I was going to make a roll that would go well with our Thanksgiving meal, one that would appeal to the younger kids and adults alike (I made cloverleaf shaped rolls as it has been my experience that kids will eat any roll shaped like a cloverleaf so they can pull apart the little sections and eat them one by one), and one that would incorporate flavors to make it seem that one was eating an actual carrot side dish, not just a bread roll.  (This is way more than I have ever thought about a recipe in my entire life.) 

      Some of our favorite flavors with carrots are dill, thyme, and parsley, so I figured I would toss all these in the bread dough, add some scallions to give it a bit of oniony goodness (because I am always about the oniony goodness and fortunately so is my family), and I thought about celery seed but decided against it in the end as I wanted the carrot flavor to come through if possible.
      The dough is silky smooth and a joy to work with and knead.  I fell in love with the color and the little bits of herbs that show so nicely in the dough.
      Voila...herbed carrot rolls that taste like carrots and herbs, just lovely...and even lovelier with a dab of butter on them as you would perhaps serve with your carrots as a side dish. 

      Not only did they taste like carrots as I wanted them to, they are very pretty in color.  These are definitely going on the Thanksgiving table this year.

      Before this challenge, I might have eventually thought to put carrots in a bread, but I am not certain that I would have thought to coordinate the herbs that are paired with the carrots to come up with something like this recipe.  Oh, this if fun..and delicious! 

      They have some wonderful carrot recipes this week on the Flavors blog, go check it out.  The Flavors challenge is based on the book The Flavor Bible by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenberg.  Every week for a year the seven group members will each create a recipe using the featured ingredient and match it with the flavors that enhance it best by consulting those pages in the book.  They have invited others to join along in the cooking and posting, posting a chart detailing the featured seasonal ingredient for each week, so if you'd like to pop in now and again and try your hand at it, just make your recipe, post it, and link the post in the comments section (click here) that week.  While you are there you can check out the seven recipes submitted that week by the group members. 

Herbed Carrot Cloverleaf Yeast Rolls
Makes 12 Cloverleaf Rolls

Carrot preparation:  Steam (to retain flavor and color) 1/2 pound of fresh carrots (peeled/trimmed/cut into thick coins) until easily pieced with tip of a knife.
Puree the carrots in a food processor until smooth.  Cool to room temperature before using.

Bread/Roll Dough:

1/4 ounce active dry yeast (i.e., one .25 ounce package)
1/2 cup warm milk (110-115 degrees F)
1/6 cup unsalted BUTTER, softened
1/8 cup SUGAR
1/2 cup pureed steamed CARROT
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon freshly chopped dill
2 sprigs of thyme leaves (removed from the stem)
2 full scallions, green and white parts) thinly sliced
2 Tablespoons of chopped fresh PARSLEY
3 cups of all-purpose flour
a little cream to brush on the tops before baking

Measure the yeast into the warm milk and let sit for 5 minutes.
Into a large mixing bowl add the yeast/milk mixture, butter, sugar, carrot puree, egg, salt, dill, thyme, scallions, parsley and flour.
Stir with a large spatula or spoon to mix it all into a soft dough that adheres into a rough ball of dough.
Turn this onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic (perhaps 5-7 minutes).
Place the dough ball into a medium bowl that has been lightly oiled with olive oil, turn the dough so that the top is also oiled. 
Cover with a tea towel and let rise until it has doubled (about an hour).
When the dough has risen, divide it into 12 equal pieces (about 2-1/8 ounces each).  Divide each of those pieces into three pieces each.
Make the cloverleaf rolls by rolling the little three pieces of dough into balls and placing the three balls into the cavity of a previously buttered muffin tin.
Cover and let rise until they rise nicely over the pan top (about 30 minutes).
Brush the tops with a little cream.
Bake in a 350 degree oven for 20-25 minutes, until they are nicely colored.
Remove from the pan and cool on a rack.

These are good with or without butter.  The carrot flavor actually intensifies when the roll is at room temperature rather than piping hot.  Either way, they are delicious.

Note:  Ingredients in CAPITAL BOLD letters are strongest choices; ingredients in bold are good choices; ingredients underlined are desirable choices.

Flavors: Duck - Duck Breast with Wilted Spinach, Mushrooms, and Fig Gastrique

      The fourth week's featured seasonal ingredient for the Flavors challenge was Duck.  We don't really eat duck here, I'm not sure why, I guess it just never seemed mainstream enough for me to include it in the menu planning.  I have made duck exactly one time in my entire life.  When we were doing the Le Cordon Bleu at Home book in Whisk Wednesdays, we needed to make a duck, so I made a duck.  It was very good and we all enjoyed it.  That was a couple of years ago and duck hasn't graced our dining table since. 

      When I decided I was going to get involved with this Flavors group, I decided I was going to try to make all of the ingredients on the schedule and learn from doing it all in new ways, so to the store I went in search of duck...well, at least duck breast anyway as that is what I decided I was going to make.  (Easily found at my favorite store, a good sign for future duck undertakings.) 

      I searched through all my cookbooks (easy to do when you subscribe to Eat Your Books which has them all indexed for your according to ingredients) for duck breast preparation recipes and found several that used the exact same method, so I decided that would be the one I used, safety in numbers and all. 

      I had already decided that I was going to serve it on a bed of barely wilted spinach with some sauteed mushrooms on the side.  I had also decided I wanted to make something with figs because I had some lovely fresh figs and found several recipes for a fig gastrique (a kind of fig jam is my best description of that) and decided that I would make that using the Flavors book and its list of compatible ingredients with duck.  All this came together in surprisingly short order. 

      Okay, I know you are all looking at the photo and saying that duck is supposed to be bloody rare in the middle and I set out to do it that way, but when I pulled it from the oven and let it rest, and cut into it, it made me a little queasy and I knew I wouldn't eat it that way, so back into the oven it went for another few minutes so it came out just moist and pink and that made me a lot happier.  It was really good that way, so I'm thinking duck at our house is going to be cooked this way from now on...or at least until I can get the courage up to eat it bloody rare. 

      The fig gastrique with the duck was excellent, a sort of sweet and sour taste to compliment the duck, definitely thinking of other uses for that soon.  Definitely visiting duck breast again soon as well.  They have some wonderful duck recipes in the Flavors blog, go check it out. 

      The Flavors challenge is based on the book The Flavor Bible by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenberg.  Every week for a year the seven group members will each create a recipe using the featured ingredient and match it with the flavors that enhance it best by consulting those pages in the book.  They have invited others to join along in the cooking and posting, posting a chart detailing the featured seasonal ingredient for each week, so if you'd like to pop in now and again and try your hand at it, just make your recipe, post it, and link the post in the comments section (click here) that week.  While you are there you can check out the seven recipes submitted that week by the group members. 

Duck Breast
Serves 1

Buy 1 half of one duck breast, wash and pat dry
Score the duck fat portion of the breast to make the fat drain away easier
SALT and PEPPER both sides of the breast

Put 1 teaspoon of CANOLA OIL into an oven-proof skillet, heat on high setting on stovetop
Just before the oil gets to the smoking point, add the duck breast, skin side down

Let cook for 4 minutes, do not disturb it while cooking
After 4 minutes, turn the duck breast over and sear on fatty side for 1 additional minute
After that minute, place duck breast in the oven in the same skillet (wipe out pan if there is a lot of additional grease before doing so)

Bake in the oven for 6-10 minutes (depends on size of duck breast), check internal temperature, should be 128 degrees, if not, bake additional time to get to 128 degrees
Remove duck from pan and place on a plate, covering it with foil to let it rest for 10 minutes before slicing

Fig Gastrique
1/3 cup cider VINEGAR

1/4 cup SUGAR
1.5 ounces Grand Marnier
1 small SHALLOT finely diced
1 small sprig of thyme
5-6 small ripe mission figs, diced, stems removed
SALT and PEPPER
1/4 teaspoon ground GINGER

Heat the sugar in a heavy bottom saucepan until it dissolves and turns a deep golden color
Carefully add in the vinegar and alcohol (it will sputter so don't have face too near the pot)
Add the diced shallot, diced figs, thyme sprig, salt, pepper, and ginger.
Stir and cook until reduced until thick syrupy consistency.

The duck and fig gastrique were served with MUSHROOMS and wilted spinach.

Note:  Ingredients in CAPITAL BOLD letters are strongest choices; ingredients in bold are good choices; ingredients underlined are desirable choices.

Flavors: Mushrooms - Enoki Salad, Enoki Soup, Enoki Summer Rolls, Enoki Pancakes

      The third week's featured seasonal ingredient for the Flavors challenge was Mushrooms.  We love mushrooms here and I cook with them often.  I first developed my love of mushrooms growing up in northeast Iowa where we had "mushroom hunting season" in the early spring and we would all go in search of the best morels we could find.  We would bring them home, soak them to relieve them of their little buggies, and then saute them in farm-fresh butter and eat them right out of the pan, they didn't need a single other thing.  From there, the experimentation continued over the years with different mushrooms, and when I saw this challenge, I knew that I wanted to use it to explore a mushroom that would be new to me, that I had never really had time to learn about, use, enjoy, etc. 

      I settled on the enoki mushroom, as although I had eaten it once or twice, it wasn't something I reached for regularly, or even really knew how to cook.  Turns out that enoki mushrooms are best enjoyed with minimal cooking as they are tender and flavorful just as they are.  I mostly associate this type of mushroom with Japanese cuisine, something else I have yet to explore more deeply, and I have a bento box, so I decided early on that I was going to make several recipes using the enoki mushroom, enough to fill up the bento box compartments, i.e. four. 

      The four compartments (in photo above) contain a greens salad, a mushroom soup, a summer roll, and enoki pancakes (sort of like a little mushroom omelet actually). 

      The enoki mushrooms have a deep flavor, which surprised me as I thought they would be light on mushroom taste, but no, they have a very deep mushroom taste, much like a heartier mushroom.  They easily standout nicely when combined with other ingredients, clearly a mushroom taste in each of the dishes I made...and that was a wonderful thing indeed. 

      I found the packages of enokis at the Asian market and they were inexpensive, 2 packages for $1.00.  I used a package and three quarters total in these four recipes, the rest I sort of nibbled on as I was cooking.  Oh, and the cute factor in these is just so fun...sometimes I am all about the cute and fun in food, this is one of those times.  I will be continuing my use of these little guys from here on out, and that mushroom soup is going to be something I throw together often for winter lunches. Sources say that these mushrooms are a good source of antioxidants and protein 5. 

      The Flavors challenge is based on the book The Flavor Bible by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenberg.  Every week for a year the seven group members will each create a recipe using the featured ingredient and match it with the flavors that enhance it best by consulting those pages in the book.  They have invited others to join along in the cooking and posting, posting a chart detailing the featured seasonal ingredient for each week, so if you'd like to pop in now and again and try your hand at it, just make your recipe, post it, and link the post in the comments section (click here) that week.  While you are there you can check out the seven recipes submitted that week by the group members. 

Enoki Greens Salad
Serves 2

Lettuce greens of your choice
1/2 carrot, grated (half a normal size carrot)
1 sliced scallion, green and white part
1/4 cucumber, grated

Dressing
1 Tablespoon chopped parsley
1/2 Tablespoon soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon rice vinegar
1/4 teaspoon vegetable OIL
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Place all dressing ingredients into a small jar and shake 

Enoki Mushroom Soup
Makes about 12 ounces of soup

1 Tablespoon finely chopped onion
1/2 Tablespoon BUTTER
1 sprig of fresh thyme
1/4 of a bay leaf
1/4 teaspoon of SALT
1/8 teaspoon freshly grated PEPPER
1/4 teaspoon hot paprika
1 ounce of dry white WINE
6 ounces of chicken stock
1 Tablespoon flour
1 handful of Enoki mushrooms, base cut off, removed, and thrown away.
1/2 cup milk
1 Tablespoon of sherry
PARSLEY for garnish

Saute onion in butter until soft and slightly brown.
Add in the thyme, bay leaf, salt, paprika, wine, and 4 ounces of the chicken broth.
Cover and simmer for 15 minutes.
Remove the bay leaf.  Add flour to reserved chicken stock and whisk before adding to the soup pot.
Stir in the milk and sherry. 
Add the enoki mushrooms.
Simmer a few minutes.  Do not boil.  Serve warm.

Enoki Summer Rolls

Rice paper wrappers, softened
Enoki Mushrooms
Carrot sticks, sliced thin, about 3" lengths
Scallion sliced thin lengthwise in 3" lengths
Cucumber, peeled, sliced thin in 3" lengths
Shrimp, cooked, sliced in half lengthwise, 3 medium-small per roll

Assemble these summer rolls as you would any other summer rolls, using the ingredients in amounts you enjoy.

Dipping Sauce for Summer Rolls

2 Tablespoons soy sauce
2 Tablespoons dry sherry
1 teaspoon Chinese mustard

Enoki Pancakes
Makes about 4 small pancakes

1 egg
1/4 of an onion, finely diced
4 stalks of garlic chives, finely snipped
1/3 small carrot
SALT and PEPPER
1 Tablespoon white flour
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 handful of Enoki mushrooms, separated from base, base thrown away

Beat egg and sesame oil together.
Mix egg mixture into the vegetables.
Toss mushrooms with flour and add to egg/vegetable mix.
Preheat pan with a small amount of BUTTER.
Scoop a bit of mixture into the pan and arrange the mushrooms lengthwise (I used small bamboo tongs to do this).
Brown on one side, flip, and brown the other side until pancakes are set.
Serve warm.

Note:  Ingredients in CAPITAL BOLD letters are strongest choices; ingredients in bold are good choices; ingredients underlined are desirable choices.

Flavors: Apples - Apple Celery Soup and Apple Cheddar Herb Bread

      The second week's featured seasonal ingredient for the Flavors challenge is Apples. 

      We have several apple orchards nearby that we frequent in the fall each year, so I was excited about this week's ingredient as I knew I could get lovely fresh apples with no problem at all. 

      I made two recipes as they sort of go together and I had a lot of apples on hand.  The first recipe is Apple Celery Soup, nice and creamy and comforting in the soup sort of way, and it gave me a chance to pair apples and celery in something other than Waldorf Salad.  It's delicious both the first day and the next, the separate flavors of the apples and the celery each still pronounced the second day, and yet each still walking hand in hand in a very tasty manner. 

      The second recipe is Apple Cheddar Herb Bread, a flavorful bread that accompanies the soup I made in a wonderful marrying kind of way.  The bread recipe gave me a chance to throw in some fresh herbs still growing in my pots, i.e. chives and rosemary, as well as some scallions which were a nice accompaniment in the bread with the apples and cheddar cheese.  I made the bread into little mini loaves just for fun...I'm all about the cute on a regular basis.  The recipe makes one loaf or 8 of the little mini loaves.  The flavors of the all the ingredients managed to come through, each one pleasant with the others. 

      Would I make either of the recipes again?  Yes I would, it was a wonderful lunch on a crisp fall day. 

      The Flavors challenge is based on the book The Flavor Bible by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenberg.  Every week for a year the seven group members will each create a recipe using the featured ingredient and match it with the flavors that enhance it best by consulting those pages in the book.  They have invited others to join along in the cooking and posting, posting a chart detailing the featured seasonal ingredient for each week, so if you'd like to pop in now and again and try your hand at it, just make your recipe, post it, and link the post in the comments section (click here) that week.  While you are there you can check out the seven recipes submitted that week by the group members. 

Apple Celery Soup
2-4 servings

1 Tablespoon UNSALTED BUTTER
6 celery stalks, with leaves, coarsely chopped
1/2 large onion, coarsely chopped
1 medium sweet APPLE, coarsely chopped
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1/4 teaspoon ginger (bold print)
1 small bay leaf
1 thyme sprig
1 Tablespoon snipped chives
2 cups chicken broth
2 Tablespoons heavy CREAM

Melt butter in medium soup pot over low heat. 
Add in the celery, onion, and apple. 
Season with salt, pepper and ginger.
Cook, stirring occasionally, for 5-10 minutes until soft.
Add the broth and the herbs.
Bring to a boil, lower the heat, add the cream, and simmer 30 minutes.
Remove the bay leaf and what is left of the sprig of thyme.
Blend the soup with an immersion blender (or in a regular blender in batches) until smooth.
Serve warm.

Apple Cheddar Herb Bread
Makes one 8x4.5x2.75" loaf or 8 mini loaves

1-3/4 cups flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
3 large eggs
1/3 cup whole milk
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 cups grated cheddar cheese (bold print)
2 Tablespoons snipped fresh chives
1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh rosemary
4 finely sliced scallions (white and green parts)
1/3 cup toasted chopped WALNUTS
1 large APPLE, peeled and diced

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, rack in the center.
Butter and flour an 8x4.5x2.75" loaf pan or 8 small mini loaf pans.
Whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, and white pepper in a bowl.
In another bowl of medium size, whisk eggs until well blended.  Add in the milk and olive oil.
Pour the wet ingredients over the dry and mix only until just mixed.
Stir in gently the cheese, herbs, scallions, walnuts, and apples.
Spoon into prepared pan and smooth top.
Bake for 40 minutes for the loaf pan; 38 minutes for the mini loaves.
Cool in pan for 5 minutes on baking rack, then turn out of pan to finish cooling right side up.
Serve warm or room temperature.

Note:  Ingredients in CAPITAL BOLD letters are strongest choices; ingredients in bold are good choices; ingredients underlined are desirable choices.

Flavors: Plums - Plum Ice Cream and Plum Cookies

      Yes, I know, I need to simplify somewhere along the line with cooking/baking blog-alongs but I am just not sure where to do that as I enjoy them all and it keeps me from actually having to think of creative meals/menus myself.  I am, however, pretty sure that adding another one is not necessarily simplifying.  Or maybe it is, as somewhere along the line, if I am enjoying this one as much as I think I am going to enjoy this one, another will need to be allocated to a lesser status. 

      That said, a couple will be ending shortly, so welcome, welcome to The Flavors Challenge (see link here).  I first found out about this challenge through a group of bloggers (and primarily Jerry, who I have followed for years as his blog is full of food, travel, fun) who made and blogged all the recipes in Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking cookbook.  They posted daily and followed the book in order of presentation, each member committing for certain recipes for each section.  The book itself does not contain photographs of the completed recipes, so if you ever want to know what a recipe looks like, you should definitely mark this site for future reference as they are ALL there, all the recipes have photos.  What a deal for me when I am cooking from that cookbook. 

      Forgive me, I digress, but in a good way.   The Flavors challenge is based on the book The Flavor Bible by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenberg (click here).  What attracted me to the challenge was that this group is doing something I think will make me a better cook...i.e. they provide the main ingredient, the book provides flavors that go well with it, and you yourself choose what you will do with it each week.  This is something new and different for me as my other blog-alongs are all recipe-based.  The only stipulation is that you use the ingredient, one of the BOLD in CAPITAL letters ingredients, one of the bold print ingredients (not capitalized), and one of the other ingredients listed which do not appear in bold type at all. 

      It sounds fun.  It sounds like something that will definitely make my meals and recipes even tastier, something the guys will really appreciate as they love good food.  So without further ado, the first week's featured seasonal ingredient is plums. 

      I wanted to pick something that would really bring out the flavor of the plums as we love plum season with those nice juicy plums easily found in the stores and markets.  I happened to hit a farmer's market for these this week, and they were big (about 4 ounces each, nice and fleshy and juicy, plums are rather sexy, aren't they?).  After some consideration, I decided to make plum ice cream and maybe a plum cookie to go along with it.
From the sliced plums, to the pot of cooked plums...
To the ice cream maker full of churned plum goodness...
To the beauty that the plums imparted to this ice cream...
To the finished presentation, because, let's face it, I live in a household of guys and if you expect them to eat PINK food, it must be accompanied by something a little more masculine, and something cookie never hurts either.
     The plum ice cream features several ingredient add-ins, in small amounts (with the exception of the 2 teaspoons of black pepper), to give just a hint of flavor, but not enough to overpower the flavor of the plums, which I did not want to do, I wanted the plum flavor to really shine. 

      The cookies have a small amount of chocolate in them (guys here think it might not possibly be considered true dessert without some chocolate in the mix somewhere along the line, that's how they roll), but again, Mark says that the chocolate is just sort of there to compliment the plum taste and that the plum flavor is primarily present in the cookie. 

      I made the cookie a sort of cake-cookie so that it would seem that one was eating ice cream and cake, a nice soft cake-like texture.  In the photo you can see the plum bits in the cookie, as you can also see in the ice cream (along with the black pepper bits...don't be afraid of this, it tasted sweet and creamy with just a tiny little kick from the pepper which works so beautifully with the plums). 

Plum Ice Cream
Makes 1 Quart

1 pound of PLUMS (do not peel)
1/3 cup water
2/3 cup SUGAR
1 cup heavy cream
1/8 teaspoon CINNAMON
1/2 teaspoon VANILLA
1/2 teaspoon dark rum
2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper

1)  Slice the plums into 8 wedges, discarding the center pit.  Place into a medium nonreactive saucepan with the water, cover, and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally until tender, about 10-12 minutes. 
2)  Remove from heat and stir in the sugar until it is dissolved. Let cool to room temperature.
3)  After it is cooled, puree in food processor with the remaining ingredients.
4)  Chill thoroughly and freeze in ice cream maker according to manufacturer's directions.

Plum Cookies
Makes 18 Medium-large cookies

1/4 cup softened unsalted butter
3/4 cup SUGAR
1 egg, beaten
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
Pinch of salt
1/4 cup sour cream
1 ounce bittersweet chocolate, melted and cooled
1-1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon CINNAMON
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup cooked pureed PLUMS (skins left on and I left them rather chunky so they would be visible in the cookie)

1)  In mixer beat butter and sugar together until well blended.
2)  Add egg and mix just until blended.
3)  Add baking soda, a pinch of salt, sour cream, chocolate and mix just until blended.
4)  Add flour, cinnamon, pepper and mix just until blended.
5)  Stir in pureed plums until mixed in nicely.
6)  Drop by spoonfuls (I used a 2 oz ice cream scoop) onto a greased and floured cookie sheet (I used Silpat mat on cookie sheet), about 9 per sheet as they spread a little bit while baking.
7)  Bake, one cookie sheet at a time, for 18 minutes at 350 degrees.
8)  Let cool on pan for about 3 minutes and then remove with a sturdy spatula to a cooling rack to finish cooling.

      If you are interested in cooking/baking along with the challenge, the main group consists of only 7 members, each one assigned a certain day to post their creation, the site I linked here explains how to do that, and if you go to this link, you can view the Seasonal List of Featured Ingredients for the entire 52 weeks of the challenge (and no, you do not have to do all of them, as stated on the site, you can just post when the spirit moves you and leave your link).  Here is the main page for the Flavors challenge so you can see and keep current with what is being made each day/week, click here. Would love to see you there...if nothing else, visit the blog for the recipes...at the end of the year you will have at least 365 of them, all new!