Daring Cooks Challenge: Pate and Freshly Baked Bread

Our hostesses this month, Evelyne of Cheap Ethnic Eatz, and Valerie of a The Chocolate Bunny, chose delicious pate with freshly baked bread as their June Daring Cook’s challenge! They’ve provided us with 4 different pate recipes to choose from and are allowing us to go wild with our homemade bread choice.

When I first saw this month's challenge, I wasn't quite sure what to think. When I think of pate, I think of liver, and that is not very appetizing to me. I think about my grandfather ordering steaming plates of liver and onions and happy hour at my other grandparent's club where the star dish was chopped liver. Needless to say, I was very happy to see the vegetarian choice on the recipe list! I have also been trying to bake more breads at home and this was a perfect opportunity to try out a new recipe.

I used this recipe for the pate: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Tricolor-Vegetable-Pate-2538 and this recipe for the baguette http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/baguettes-recipe
(great step by step guide here). I started both recipes on Saturday afternoon and finished them up on Sunday. Right now I'm enjoying the results while I flip between the Tony's, the Celtics, and blogging.

I assembled all the ingredients for each layer, prepped my new red loaf pan, and got to work. For the bean layer I opted for fresh oregano. Oregano is not really one of my favorite flavors and I especially do not like dried oregano. I also mashed and blended by hand - in the past when I've used the food processor the mixture has become too liquidy.

Not too much too report on the red pepper layer - just dump and pulse! For the pesto, it was also pretty straightforward. I toasted the pine nuts in the toaster on the light toast setting. All the ingredients went into the quickly washed food processor and pulsed and processed until I had a pesto.

As a creative touch, I decided to put a lemon slice and some oregano leaves in the bottom of the loaf pan for decoration. After making sure the layers were even and the loaf was tightly wrapped with plastic wrap, the loaf went into the refrigerator to chill overnight. Twenty-four hours of chilling later and 30 minutes in the freezer later, the loaf was ready to unmold. Now on to the baguette before I finish the story of the pate.

I started the baguette before working on the pate. Mixing up the starter was easy - though it did call for one of the only kitchen utensils I don't have (1/16 teaspoon measuring spoon). I whisked together the yeast, water, and flour and left it on the counter to work its magic while I headed out to a sorority alumni event.

When I woke up this morning I was happy to see that my starter looked like the starter in the King Arthur Flour baking blog. After a quick breakfast with farm fresh eggs from Smith's Country Cheese and uber wheat toast from B&R Artisan Breads, I started on the next steps for the baguettes.

I dumped the starter, salt, and flour into my trusty red KitchenAid mixer bowl and whisked the yeast and water in the empty starter bowl. Then it was all in to the mixer for 5 minutes of kneading.

Now the waiting. I planned to be home all day so I could check on my dough almost hourly. Here's a few looks at the bread during the 5ish hour rising process. Having no AC and warmish day was helpful to the dough during the process. After rising, gently deflating, rising, gently deflating, dividing, flattening, folding, and more rising the baguettes were ready for the oven!

I followed the tip to spritz the dough with warm water to create a crispy crackly crust. After 25 minutes the baguettes were golden brown, crispy and maybe just a little too dark on the bottom (almost, but not quite burned).

Now the fun part - putting it all together! I took the loaf out of the freezer and decided on using my cake stand for a dramatic presentation. I sliced up one of the baguettes and flipped the pate. Success! It stood up on the plate (don't mind my off-center decoration)!

Now for the review.... The flavors are great. Although as I sit here snacking, it does taste much better at room temperature (as opposed to ice cold right out of the mold). I also thought that the bean layer was way too big relative to the other two layers. I think next time I would put a smaller layer of beans on the top, then the pepper and pesto, and beans on the bottom. That would also give it a more stable base.

The baguettes are fabulous! We have already polished off one of the three and the others aren't going to be around for long. Even though it was a 24+ hour recipe, it was worth it! Thanks to the Daring Kitchen ladies for picking such a fun challenge!

Daring Cooks May Challenge: Stacked Green Chile & Grilled Chicken Enchilada Bake

The hubby and I had just tried a new (and very delicious) locally owned Mexican restaurant over the weekend. I’m excited to have a source for great margaritas in the suburbs. Check out Viva Mexican Grill in Wayland if you are in the neighborhood. I enjoyed a delectable flank steak accompanied by a chicken enchilada with green chili sauce. The hubby had enchiladas with a trio of three different moles. When I came home to check out the May challenge, I was delighted that it gave me a chance to try making the enchiladas at home!

Our hosts this month, Barbara of Barbara Bakes and Bunnee of Anna+Foodhave chosen a delicious Stacked Green Chile & Grilled Chicken Enchilada recipe in celebration of Cinco de Mayo! The recipe, featuring a homemade enchilada sauce was found on www.finecooking.com and written by Robb Walsh.

I have been enjoying learning more about Mexican cuisine and cooking at home. I used the recipes provided in the challenge and made a tasty mess out of my kitchen!

When I went to buy the ingredients, my store only had four Anaheim chiles in stock (who knew they were so popular!). I evaluated the other options and decided to use poblano peppers for the other half of the chiles called for in the sauce. I picked up the rest of the ingredients that I didn’t have at home – tomatillos, onions, and 6-inch corn tortillas. Luckily I had frozen some of the homemade chicken stock from the risotto challenge, and I was able to use it for the sauce!

Once I got home and got organized, I fired up the burners under my cast iron grill pan to start roasting and grilling. I underestimated the time I needed to char those chiles and peppers on the grill pan. It probably would have been more efficient to pop them under the broiler, but I had committed myself to using the grill pan. After scraping, scraping, saying a few choice words, and scraping some more, I finally got the skins off the chiles and peppers. While I scraped, I also cooked/roasted the tomatillos on the grill pan.

Once those were pureed in the food processor and the chiles were chopped, everything went into the pot for the sauce. Instead of the oregano called for in the recipe, I substituted the epazote I recently purchased (see the KC Culinary post). It has a more lemony scent than regular oregano. At this point, the hubby was getting a little antsy so I put him to work grating some Monterey jack cheese for the dish. I grilled the chicken on the grill pan and prepared the tortillas for assembly.

After what seemed like hours (and much longer than expected), it was time to assemble. I used my 9x13 glass baking dish so I could see the layers. Into the oven it went and dinner was finally served. We love cilantro at our house, so we generously garnished before serving.

This was just as good (and more gratifying) than the enchilada I had at the restaurant. Next time I’d like to make it a little spicier, use all Anaheims chiles, and maybe use a traditional Mexican cheese.

For the enchilada recipe:
http://www.finecooking.com/recipes/stacked-chicken-green-chile-enchiladas.aspx?nterms=50242,52390

Green Chili Sauce recipe:
http://www.finecooking.com/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=74368

Daring Cooks: Risotto Challenge

The 2010 March Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Eleanor of MelbournefoodGeek and Jess of Jessthebaker. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make risotto. The various components of their challenge recipe are based on input from the Australian Master Chef cookbook and the cookbook Moorish by Greg Malouf.

You can call me crazy, but I’ve added another thing to my ever-growing list of activities. Last month I joined the Daring Kitchen – a few of my blogger friends are members – as a way to challenge myself to try new recipes and techniques that I might overlook. Too my delight, my first official challenge is something that has been on my foodie to-do-list for quite some time. I present….RISOTTO!

Within the last few months, I’ve devoured some deliciously creamy and wonderful risottos at a few Boston area restaurants (and some arancini too). I was always wary of making it at home because I thought it was quite labor intensive and difficult. With this challenge I had no excuse not to try making risotto myself. The challenge called for two things: homemade stock and risotto using the stock. I knew I had a busy week, so I made the stock a few days ahead of the risotto.

I found a few chicken stock recipes online and one in my trusty Joy of Cooking book. I cooked, simmered, and strained my way to a flavorful homemade stock.

For the risotto I decided to branch out from the recipes given and find an ‘easy’ one to attempt. My first stop was my Google Reader blogs and I came up with a winning recipe in a post on We Are Not Martha. They posted a step-by-step account of a mushroom risotto recipe from http://foodiereflections.com/ that looked easy enough to execute.

I made a few tweaks of my own to the recipe. Being the only wine drinker in my house, I don’t always have a big selection on hand. When I went to the wine collection for a dry white, the only white to be found was a not so dry Riesling. I chose to use a semi-dry red wine that I had picked up in my home state (Missouri) during my last visit home. I was also having a stressful week, so I opted to mince all the mushrooms, onions, and garlic by hand to decompress (the recipe called for the food processor).

I used a large, wide bottomed Le Creuset Dutch oven and a wooden spoon for stirring (it seemed traditional!). While I did have to stay in the kitchen to stir for the whole time, I watched TV and cleaned up my mess while I cooked.

The result was an unbelievably smooth, rich, mushroomy dinner. I only wish that I had made a triple batch because there wasn’t much leftover for lunch the next day. I’m looking forward to adding risotto to my regular dinner rotation (so is the hubby). Here’s the recipe and the result! Looking forward to the next challenge!

Mushroom Risotto
Adapted from Foodie Reflections

Makes 4 side dish servings (Very true – I wish I had tripled the recipe!)
1 1/4 cups mushrooms, cleaned and divided
2 1/2 cups chicken stock
2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 onion, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup Arborio rice
2/3 cup dry wine (red or white)
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 – 1 teaspoon fresh thyme, minced (plus a few springs for garnish)
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, divided
Salt and pepper to taste

Finely chop 3/4 cup of the mushrooms (or puree in the food processor until finely chopped)
Thinly slice the remaining 1/2 cup mushrooms and set aside for later
Heat the stock in a pot over medium heat. Once it reaches a simmer decrease the heat to low and cover to hold warm
In a large wide pan (I used my giant Le Creuset Dutch oven), heat the olive oil over medium heat
Add the minced onions and cook, stirring until the onions become soft and translucent, about 5 minutes
Stir in the minced garlic and cook for 30 seconds, then add the mushrooms. Cook for 2 minutes, stirring often, then mix in the Arborio rice and cook for 1 minute.
Pour in the wine and stir until the wine has been absorbed by the rice.
Add one ladle of broth, about 1/2 cup, and stir every 30 seconds to 1 minute until all the broth has been absorbed
Continue this process until all the broth has been absorbed and a grain of rice pressed between two fingers separates into three pieces (for me, about a half an hour)
Stir in the Parmesan cheese, thyme and 1/2 tablespoon butter
Season to taste with salt and pepper

In a small-medium skillet melt the remaining 1/2 tablespoon butter over medium-high heat
Add the mushrooms and sauté until the edges become lightly browned
Season with a pinch of salt and pepper
To serve, spoon the risotto in a large serving bowl or onto individual plates
Garnish with the sautéed mushrooms and a few thyme sprigs

Summary for risotto:
Prep Time: 15-20 minutes
Cook Time: 45 minutes, approximately
Large wide pan, skillet, stock pan, cutting board and knife (food processor), measuring cups, ladle, spoon, serving utensils and dishes