This week is rice pudding, one of my all-time favorite desserts. I can't believe I used to groan whenever my mom made it when I was growing up. I was missing out. It has since become a Christmas Eve traditional dessert in our family. One bowl gets an almond in it, and that person gets to open a gift. Now that there are a few kids around the table, somehow the almonds end up in their bowls.

Rice

Clockwise from top:
wild, Arborio, Basmati, converted, sushi, white
These are all the bags of rice I had in my cupboard. I usually use Basmati, wild or converted (which means partially cooked) as a side dish and always converted for the rice pudding recipe I usually use. I have sushi rice (also called Japanese rice) on hand for the very rare time I try to make sushi at home.

Since I had all these bags on hand, I thought I'd make four batches of rice pudding using Arborio, Basmati, converted, and sushi rice.

Here are my surprising results:
1. My favorite was the Basmati, but it had a more grown-up appeal. It had a herbal flavor, and I'd love to try it with lavender someday.
2. Sushi rice was my next favorite. It has a subtle flavor that picks up the sweetness of the pudding nicely.
3. Arborio, like the Sushi rice, was nice but not flavorful enough.
4. I didn't like the converted version. It was too bland. Too much like a side dish of rice.

Recipe: Arborio Rice Pudding

Ingredients:

1½ or 3 ounces bittersweet chocolate

Are you ready for the weekend? I am. These are a great way to start a Saturday morning, after a cuppa latté. The crunch from the pecans and cornmeal make these pancakes extra tasty. Top with the best maple syrup you can find, and you're all set for a great brunch.

I've only recently become a fan of pancakes. Up until recently, I always thought they were doughy on the inside and tough on the outside. That was before I learned there were other settings on the burner besides Max. Now, I cook them slowly and patiently making sure the insides cook to the perfect consistency. I also only like pancakes with lots of flavor, not the basic buttermilk version. Pumpkin, gingerbread, and these pecan pancakes are my favorite. I'm a picky pancake eater, and I'm not ashamed to admit it!

You could use different nuts and substitute whole wheat flour for the all-purpose.

Recipe: Pecan Pancakes

Makes: 9 4-inch pancakes

Ingredients:

This is what gets me out of bed: the anticipation of a tall non-fat latté to warm and wake me up. Slowly sipping my coffee while reading email or the newspaper is a decadent way to start my day. 

I have always sprinkled cinnamon sugar on top (and I can't understand why coffee bars don't have cinnamon sugar as one of their options). When Mary Lou mentioned this recipe on Twitter, I knew I would have to make a large supply.

Recipe: Toast Dope

From eGullet as recommended by @mlbatt on Twitter

Ingredients:

This next class is all about grilling and browning. And again it's another steak (entrecôte is traditionally a rib steak) that's smothered in onions, à la Lyonnaise. One dictionary said that Lyonnaise means "cooked with onions". And this recipe has lots of onions. Eight of them for a full recipe. Some are used with the potatoes as a side dish and the rest are used on the steak.

Boiling and frying the potatoes
First I boiled some potatoes in their jackets (skins). After they were almost done, I took them out and let them cool before peeling them. (I cooked all but one potato too long so the next stage of finishing them was tricky.)

Then, I cut the almost-cooked potatoes into slices and fried them in a bit of butter and oil. In a separate frying pan, I fried one of the onions in butter and oil. Finally, at the end, I tossed the onions and potatoes together.

Here's a video showing how to make lyonnaise potatoes. Grilling the meat
Grilling doesn't use much oil, just enough to keep everything from sticking to the pan or grill. Grilling is high, fast heat and barbecuing is low, slow heat. Watch this video.

Grilling is another dry heat cooking method where the heat source is below the meat being cooked. You can use gas or charcoal grills, or even a George Forman grill. I scraped the ice off the barbecue cover and used the barbecue to grill the meat on a medium-high heat.

However, before I did that, I seared the steaks in a frying pan on the stove so that I would have some tasty bits (fond) to add flavor to the Lyonnaise part of this recipe ‑ the caramelized onions.
Here is some information to determine when a steak is done. After the steaks were finished cooking, I removed them to a warming plate.

Caramelizing the onions
This is the best part. The smell of onions cooking on the stove is a crowd-favorite. After searing the steak, I added the onions with more butter and cooked them until they were golden. Then, I seasoned them with salt and pepper and added the rest of the ingredients (wine, vinegar, and the stock) and cooked this until all the liquid had evaporated and the onions had absorbed this entire rich flavor.

Here's a video showing how to caramelize onions.

Recipe: Entrecôte Lyonnaise (Steak, Lyonnaise style)

The ingredients shown in the photo are for a half recipe (serves 3).

You can find the recipe for Entrecôte Lyonnaise (Steak, Lyonnaise style) in the book Le Cordon Bleu at Home (affiliate link). To see how the rest of the Whisk Wednesdays group fared with their recipe, click here (or check out the sidebar) and then click on each blogger!

Tasting Notes
I loved the side dish of potatoes and onions, and I loved the caramelized onions on top of the steak. I'm picky about beef. If it's not tenderloin, I don't tend to like it. Next time, I'll buy a better cut of steak, but this is an easy and delicious meal with the right cut of beef. Next Week (November 19)
• Gratin Dauphinois (Potato Gratin with Garlic and Cream) page 498

. . . . . . . . . .

Running total: $849.06 + $22.57 (steak) + $1.49 (potatoes) + $2.67 (onions) = $875.79

Butter used so far: 8 pounds, 11 tablespoons

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kugelhupf, gugelhupf, kugelhoph, kougelhupf, cougloff, kougloff
Kugelhopf is a German, Austrian, Swiss and Alsatian term for coffee cake with yeast. Kugel means "ball" or "globe", but this cake usually has a hole in it. More doughnut-like, if you ask me.

I made this type of cake earlier this year, but it was called Tarte au sucre. I had nothing but trouble with this cake then, but Dorie's version came together easily. Having the right recipe and set of instructions is all you need.

Yeast breads and coffee cakes evolved from early honey cakes. According to Food Timeline, around the 17th century in Northern/Central Europe, eating sweet cakes with coffee became more common. There is even an Alsatian legend that the magi left the Kugelhopf in Alsace on their way to Bethlehem. To celebrate this legend, 

A Kugelhopf mold, traditionally made of oven-proof earthenware, has a central cylinder that helps cook the inside of the cake more quickly. To make Kugelhopf, I used my sit-in-the-corner-and-gather-dust individual bundt pans. It was great to have an opportunity to use this pan again.

Recipe: Kugelhopf

You can find the recipe for Kugelhopf in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours (affiliate link)
by Dorie Greenspan or here. To see how the rest of the TWD group fared with this week's recipe, click here and then click on each blogger! Thanks to Yolanda from The All-Purpose Girl who chose the recipe for this week.

Tasting Notes
This is a great breakfast or afternoon treat since it's not too sweet and lingers more on the bread side than the cake side. And although it's not hard to make, it does require some babysitting (and it's best to have a stand mixer to knead the butter into the dough). According to this New York Times article, you can even make a savory version with smoky bacon and crunchy walnuts. I think I'll give that a try next time I make this.

Recipe for Next Week (November 18)
Arborio Rice Pudding on pages 412 and 413 chosen by Isabelle from Les gourmandises d’Isa.

There are so many tomato soup recipes out there, but this is my favorite because every time I've made it for people, they have always requested the recipe. It's a crowd-pleaser, can be made ahead and is festive for the holiday season.

It also contains a secret ingredient: allspice. Allspice is the dried fruit of the Pimenta dioica plant, but it has the flavors of some other spices: cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves.

You can make this soup now, put it in canning jars, and freeze it. Once it's frozen, remove it from the jar and freeze in a freezer bag. This way you can use the canning jar for other uses.

Serve with baked Parmesan Crisps, Cheddar Shortbread or Goldfish! You can serve the soup in antique tea cups at Christmas or shot glasses for a cocktail party.

Recipe: Cream of Tomato Soup

8-10 servings

from The New Basics Cookbook by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins

Ingredients:

When I was visiting my parents this past summer, my mom gave me some hand-written recipes from my grandmother to keep. For me, "hand-me-down" recipes are the best kind of gift to receive. They have been carefully written down, marked up with notes, splattered with butter, and are torn and brown at the edges. It makes me wonder what hand-me-down recipes I'll be leaving my kids since most of my recipes will be typed up in a blog. Does it have the same personality? Should it?

This is one of the handwritten recipes I found in the pile: Rickety Uncles. It was one of my favorite treats growing up. When visiting my aunt as a child, I would often hope that she had these on the table for our traditional gather-around-the-table-and eat-and-catch-up time after our two-hour car ride to her house.

Rickety Uncles. It's such an unusual name. I found another similar recipe in my grandmother's notebook, but it's called Oatmeal Squares, which doesn't have the same charm. After a bit of digging, one source said it was published in the Milwaukee Journal in Wisconsin around the mid 1950's. I'm not sure this is true. I always thought they were named after my cousin "Rick"!

Although I love these bars plain, I thought I'd improve them slightly by icing the bars with some warm Nutella and flaked hazelnuts. Wow!

Recipe: Rickety Uncles with Warm Nutella™ and Flaked Hazelnuts

Makes: 1 8x8 pan

Ingredients:

For the month of November, I'm filling my freezer with all sorts of savory and sweet treats in preparation for the holiday season. Earlier this week, I made some Cheddar Shortbread. Today, I made a shrimp appetizer. Although Halloween just ended a few days ago, I've seen Christmas lights decorating a house and heard Christmas music at the grocery store. I'm not ready for the onslaught of it all. Today, was a beautiful Spring-like day in Ottawa, and I don’t want to even think about Christmas. But, here's something that is delicious any time of year.

I've made this appetizer using both chicken and shrimp, but my favorite is with shrimp. The shrimp hold the complex flavor medley together more easily. The flavors are diverse, but delicious together: coconut milk, curry paste, garlic, ginger, fish sauce, and cilantro.

Ingredients
Coconut milk is made like tea where finely grated coconut meat is steeped in hot water and then strained. I've always purchased canned coconut milk, but after watching a video and seeing how easy it is to open a coconut, I'm going to try making my own soon.

Red curry paste is a blend of many ingredients, but I did find a recipe at Taste Buddies. I may have to try making my own version too.

Garlic is a common onion grown here in Ontario, so I have a supply from a friend who grows it. As for ginger, I like to buy fresh rhizomes, peel the skin with the tip of a spoon, cut it into chunks, and store it in the freezer. Then, I use a microplane to grate off what I need.

Fish sauce is juice from fermented fish. Smells terrible, but is "essential for Thai cooking" (according to my bottle)! I took a Thai cooking class last year, and one person taking the class was always watching the Fish sauce bottle making sure the instructor didn't add too much because he had to watch his salt intake. Fish sauce is all salt or 72% in my bottle. That's a lot of salt. And it's extracted from anchovies. {Maybe I could add a dash of this sauce to my next Caesar salad?!} Cilantro, or coriander as it's called when it's dried, is either loved or hated. There is even an anti-cilantro community out there. It has a very distinctive taste that I personally love.

All these flavors form a marinade that deliciously bathes the shrimp. You can freeze the shrimp after marinating them overnight. Then, when you want to cook the shrimp, just thaw them overnight in the refrigerator and grill or broil.

Recipe: Thai Curry Shrimp Satay

Makes: 8 servings as an appetizer or 1 907 gram bag of shrimp

Ingredients:

One of my favorite meals that I order when I eat out is on the menu this week: peppercorn steak. At restaurants, however, I usually find the black peppercorns too spicy and overpowering. This recipe calls for green peppercorns, or poivre vert, which are also from the unripe berries of the pepper plant but have a milder taste than their black counterpart. I used the dried version of these green peppercorns, and I won't be going back to black ones again when making pepper steak at home.

I used to cook everything in a non-stick, Teflon-coated frying pan. As well, I used only the Max setting on my stove burners. You can bet I had a lot of burnt bits and smokiness to deal with. Now I know how to make a mean pepper steak that's not burnt or flavorless.

Flavor Base # 1: Create the fond by searing the steak
Pan frying uses a lot less oil and some butter for flavor, and is also considered a dry heat cooking method. After sprinkling the salt and crushed green peppercorns on the steaks, I seared them in a hot pan with oil and butter. When you sear the steak, the outside is caramelized and browned [not burnt], and a crust forms on the meat. This is called the Maillard reaction, which adds flavor to the dish.

As well, after browning, fond (means "base" in French) is stuck to the bottom of the pan. It's these bits that flavor the pan sauce. [You can't use a non-stick frying pan for this!]

Here is some information to determine when a steak is done. After the steaks were finished cooking, I removed them to a warming plate.

Flavor Base # 2: Flambé with Cognac
Then, I poured off any fat, added the Cognac and then quickly lit it. According to Wikipedia, "igniting a sauce with alcohol in the pan changes the chemistry of the food and adds another level of flavor."

Flavor Base # 3: Deglaze the pan with veal stock and cream
Finally, I returned the steaks to the pan and then added Thomas Keller's veal stock, which I had stored in the freezer, and some cream to deglaze the pan. Deglazing simply means lifting up the residue stuck to the bottom of the pan, and it's the secret to a good pan sauce. As well, a good veal stock is key, and what better veal stock to use than Thomas Keller's! It's worth the time and effort. I then reduced this sauce for a bit and seasoned it with salt and pepper.

Recipe: Pavés de Rumsteak au Poivre Vert (Sirloin Steaks with Green Peppercorns)

You can find the recipe for Pavés de Rumsteak au Poivre Vert (Sirloin Steaks with Green Peppercorns) in the book Le Cordon Bleu at Home (affiliate link) or here. To see how the rest of the Whisk Wednesdays group fared with their recipe, click here (or check out the sidebar) and then click on each blogger!


Tasting Notes
This was the most delicious peppercorn sauce I've ever tasted. It was complex tasting, but not peppery. Plus, it's not hard to make (especially if you have some good veal stock in your freezer).

Next Week (November 12)
• Entrecôte Lyonnaise (Steak, Lyonnaise style) pages 158-159 and grilling/browning

. . . . . . . . . .

Running total: $829.25 + $15.41 (steaks) + $4.40 (sauce) + veal stock (free in freezer) = $849.06

Butter used so far: 8 pounds, 5 tablespoons

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Rugelach Recipe

Delicious homemade rugelach with apple butter and chocolate filling.

rugalach, rugalah, rugelach, rugelah, ruggalach, ruggelach, rugulah or ruggies
Oh rustic rugelach. It's fun to say (rug-a-la), delicious to eat, but mine weren't so pretty. Look at these dainty pinwheels from Deb at Smitten Kitchen. Or these pretties from Erica's Rugelach & Baking Company. And of course Dorie's look perfect sitting delicately on the plate.

Mine are brimming with filling making the dough work extra hard to wrap around all this goodness. I even watched a video of how to make rugelach from the culinary wizard Martha Stewart and the pros featured on her show before attempting this recipe. In any case, looks don't always account for taste, and these taste great.

Like me, rugelach doesn't know what it wants to be when it grows up, but it has potential. It's destined to be a cookie, but dreams of being a hand pie with the filling hidden behind a curtain of dough, or a rolled and filled cinnamon bun, or better yet a fancy-filled French croissant served at a fine bakery in Paris. I had high hopes for my rugelach, including an origami-styled rugelach or a pinwheel, but my rugelach mojo was off.

Dough
Rugelach is a Jewish treat served at Hanukkah that means "little twists" in Yiddish. The dough contains cream cheese and butter, with some flour to hold them together and touch of salt for flavor. For comparison, I made one batch following Dorie's recipe, and in another I used the same amount of sour cream (4 ounces) in the dough instead of the cream cheese.

Filling
The filling is the fun, flamboyant part. While finding out more about rugelach this week, and saying this name so many times in my head and out loud because it's so much fun to say, I found just as many filling ideas. Although Dorie's sounded full of goodness with chocolate, pecans, currants, and raspberry jam, I thought it would be great to use up some of the apple butter I made last Fall. So, I tried half the dough with an apple butter, raisin, cinnamon-sugar filling and half with Dorie's chocolate version.

Recipe: Rugelach

You can find the recipe for Rugelach in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours (affiliate link) by Dorie Greenspan or here. Dorie also has a blog entry about it. To see how the rest of the TWD group fared with this week's recipe, click here and then click on each blogger! Thanks to Piggy from Piggy’s Cooking Journal who chose the recipe for this week.

Recipe: Apple Butter

Makes: 4-5 cups

Cheddar Shortbread Recipe

Buttery, flaky, and rich, this Cheddar Shortbread is the perfect savory treat for any gathering.

Now that Halloween is over, our neighbors to the south are preparing for Thanksgiving, but the next big holiday in Canada is Christmas. For the month of November, I want to fill my freezer with all sorts of savory and sweet treats in preparation for the holiday season. First up are some appetizers.

I have become addicted to the savory shortbreads made by Sprucewood Brands. They make a Spicy Thai shortbread that is flaky, crispy, spicy and perfect on their own or with a dip. Their Curry, Rosemary and Original versions are delicious too.

I have my own version of this slice-and-bake Cheddar Shortbread that is perfect for an appetizer, a cocktail party, a wine tasting or just to set out with a red pepper or green jalapeño jelly. You could serve some smoked salmon on top or sprinkle some chopped pecans or pistachios on the rounds before baking them. You could even use a different cheese to change it up, such as a blue cheese. As well, you can add the minimum suggested amount of cheese or more for a richer, cheesier taste. This is a very versatile base recipe. The shortbread will spread a bit in the oven, so make sure you chill the dough before baking.

Recipe: Cheddar Shortbread

Makes: about 30 rounds

Ingredients:

Ghost Milkshakes Recipe

Celebrate Halloween with these spooky and delicious Ghost Milkshakes! A simple and fun recipe for kids and adults.

Every year, we make these ghost milkshakes as many times as we can between Canadian Thanksgiving (the second Monday in October) and Halloween. If the kids had their way, they'd have them every day between these two days. This idea is one from the brilliant minds at Martha Stewart, and we've been making them every year since I saw it in their Halloween Holiday magazine. Click here to see how the professional milkshakes look; these are the ones my kids made.

Recipe: Ghost Milkshakes

Ingredients:

For the Ghost Face:
4 tablespoons chocolate chips (we used semi-sweet, but you could use bittersweet or milk chocolate)

For the Milkshake:
2 cups vanilla ice cream (our favorite brand is Häagen-Dazs)
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
Whipped Cream (homemade is our favorite, but we used chocolate whipped cream from a can for this version)

For the Whipped Cream:
1 cup heavy cream
3 tablespoons confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
pinch of cinnamon

Instructions: