#ate-bit

I don’t have a lot to say about this recipe, just to say nothing makes you feel more accomplished than making your own bread AND butter. It’s a lot of work and patience, but the pay off is pretty damn sweet (bread, butter, and buttermilk for future pancakes, maybe?!).

I’m not a huge fan of chunks of stuff in my bread, so I used ground, toasted walnuts to make this soft, sweet, heavenly-smelling bread. Texture probably isn’t so much a huge deal, but definitely toast your walnuts if you want the most flavor.

This is just a modified Hokkaido milk roll recipe. The tangzhong starter pretty much guarantees you a soft, airy texture. Plus, it’s a fun technique to add to your skill book.

Ingredients

Walnut bread (Adapted from King Arthur Flour)

Starter

14g bread flour

43g water

43g milk

Bread

348g bread flour

50g sugar

1 tsp salt

1 tbl instant yeast (if you use instant, you don’t need to proof it)

113g scalded (& slightly cooled milk)

2 eggs

57g melted butter

156g finely ground, toasted walnuts

egg wash: 1 egg yolk + 1 tbl milk or heavy cream

Fermented butter

4 cups heavy cream

1/3 c whole milk plain yogurt

salt

Directions

Walnut bread

*This recipe makes 1 big loaf or 2 little loaves.

To make the starter, place the 14g flour, 43g water, and 43g milk in a saucepan and heat while whisking until thick. Remove from heat and cool.

Mix together the dry ingredients. Add the tangzhong starter, eggs, melted butter, and milk. Using a dough hook and stand mixer, mix for ~10 ish minutes. The dough will still be pretty sticky. 

Smooth the dough into a ball and place in a buttered glass/metal bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let the dough rise in a warm spot for ~1-2 hrs until doubled in bulk.

After the initial rise, gently smoosh the dough down into a rectangle (it shouldn’t be so sticky anymore) and fold into thirds, letter style. Place in a buttered loaf pan, seam side down. Cover with plastic wrap and let the dough rise for another hour or so.

Preheat oven to 375F.

Just before baking, brush the egg wash on the top of the loaf.

(I had my oven racks placed in the top and bottom third of my oven). Bake the bread on the lower third rack of the oven for ~30 mins until the top is dark golden brown and a thermometer reads 190F in the center of the loaf.

Let the loaf cool in the pan for ~20 mins and remove. Let cool on a rack. 

To slice, turn the loaf upside down and cut from the bottom to the top to avoid smooshing the loaf.

Fermented butter

*This recipe takes 12-60 hrs to make butter, so plan accordingly.

In a large jar, place the cream and yogurt. Stir to combine. 

Cover the jar with a clean dish towel and secure with a rubber band. Place the jar in a warmish spot (70-80F) for at least 12 hrs until the mixture has thickened like sour cream or yogurt. This can take up to 60 hrs (Mine took ~40 hrs). It won’t smell bad or anything, at least it shouldn’t.

Once the mixture is thickened, place in the fridge until it reaches 60F.

Place a large bowl or pitcher of ice water in your fridge. You’re gonna need it.

Put the mixture in a bowl and mix (with a stand mixer...otherwise it gets messy with buttermilk sloshing around) on high for ~10 mins. (I covered my stand mixer with plastic wrap to ward off the splashing buttermilk.)

After about 10 mins, you should see the clumps of butter hanging out in the buttermilk/covering the whisk. Strain the mixture into a mesh sieve lined with cheesecloth over a bowl to catch the butter milk. Save the buttermilk for something!

Squeeze as much buttermilk as you can out of the butter. Once you’ve done that, place the butter into a clean bowl and pour some ice water over it. The water will become cloudy due to the residual buttermilk. You want to get rid of all the buttermilk or else the butter will go rancid.

Knead the butter in the ice water and discard the water when it becomes cloudy. Repeat until the water is clear.

Once the water is clear, knead some salt into your butter.

This is really more of a technique than a recipe I guess, but I found it here!

Maple syrup has a nice, smoky taste to it, and I didn’t want to shell out a ton of money for a small bag of it. I used 16 fl oz of syrup (2 cups), and got about a pound of sugar. A quart of real maple syrup cost me about 17 dollars.              ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Ingredients

2 cups of Maple syrup (I used Grade A dark maple syrup from Trader Joe’s)

Equipment: thermometer, stand mixer

Directions

Put the maple syrup in a large pot. It’s going to boil up pretty high, so you need a deep, wide one.

Heat the maple syrup until it hits about 125C (I only used this temperature because I know the BP of water in Celsius off the top of my head). You apparently want the temperature to hit 25-58C higher than the boiling point of water in Celsius, or 45-50F higher than the BP of water in Fahrenheit.

The syrup will jump up in temperature really fast until it hits about 105C; from that point on, the temperature will slowly climb up to 125C. That’s when you want to take the syrup off the heat and pour it into the bowl of a stand mixer.

Beat the syrup until it becomes granular and solid. Steam will come off of the mixture abruptly, but it’s nothing to be worried about. 

Once you don’t see any more steam, you can turn off the mixer and pour the sugar out onto a piece of parchment to cool/dry. You might have to chip sugar out of the bowl with a metal spoon.

To make the sugar more homogeneous, you can buzz it in a food processor, but I found that I still had little gravel-like chunks. I used my mortar and pestle to finely ground the sugar and passed it through a mesh sieve to get a nice powder. 

I recently started playing Earthbound; I don’t have many games for my WiiU, and it was only ten bucks in the Nintendo eshop. It’s a strange, fun game with dialogue that makes me chuckle, so I can see why it has a cult following.

This game also has some interesting foods as health recovery items. When I read the description of bean croquettes, I immediately thought of falafel. Then, I was mad craving some frickin falafel.

I’ve tried to make falafel in the past, but it was an utter failure. The mixture fell apart as soon as I started frying it. Too much liquid! I found, from Tori Avey’s awesome recipe, that the secret is to use dried chickpeas by soaking them overnight (instead of using canned).

I suspect the game is describing a mixture of traditional chickpea falafel and Japanese potato croquettes. You have no freaking idea how much I wanted falafel, so I chose to stick to the traditional by using Tori Avey’s recipe, where you don’t deal with breading your bean croquettes. I suppose if you want to be more game-authentic, you could use canned chick peas, mash them, bread and fry the mixture? If it works out, I’d love to know. 

Sidenote: I also had not seen the illustration of the bean croquette before, so I was picturing patty-shaped croquettes. Apparently, they’re more log-shaped, which you could probably pull off with this mixture!

Ingredients (adapted from Tori Avey)

2 cups dried chickpeas, soaked in water overnight

4 cloves of garlic, peeled

Spice mixture: 1.5 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp black pepper, 2 tsp cumin, 1 tsp ground coriander, 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (you could probably get away with leaving out the cayenne and coriander if you don’t have any, but the cumin is a must)

1.5 tbs flour (you might need to add more if your mixture doesn’t want to hold together)

A handful of fresh parsley

Half of a medium yellow onion

Vegetable oil (enough to cover ~1 inch depth in a skillet)

Directions

In a food processor, pulse your chickpeas until they have the texture of fine gravel (?). You don’t want to see big chunks, but you don’t want a paste. (I have a small food processor, so I had to do this in batches, and I chose to pulse everything separately). Empty them out of the food processor and put them in a big bowl.

Roughly chop the onion and add it to the food processor along with the parsley and garlic. Pulse until finely chopped and there aren’t any big chunks. Empty them into the bowl with the chickpeas.

Sprinkle the spice mixture and the flour over the chickpea mixture and stir until combined. Tori Avey recommends refrigerating the mixture for 1-2 hours, but I refrigerated mine for about 30 mins, and it worked out well.

Heat the oil to medium-high in a skillet. 

Meanwhile, form your desired shape (log, patty, ball, whatever). The mixture will feel like it will crumble easily, but just be gentle and set your formed “croquettes” on a piece of parchment paper or something until your oil is hot enough to fry the “croquettes.” (iPhone pictures, yaaaay)

Once you fry the croquettes/falafel, they will hold their shape, but it you notice that your croquettes/falafel are falling apart once frying, you can either a) repulse in a food processor until finer, b) add a bit more flour/egg. I didn’t have to do either of these, but if you’re afraid, test-fry one before you fry a whole bunch.

Fry the croquettes/falafel until golden brown on both sides. (Turn down your heat if they start turning black; I use an electric stove and kept the heat at ~6-7 the whole time).

Remove the croquettes/falafel from the pan and let them dry on a rack/paper towels. 

Cucumber-Dill Sauce

If you want an accompaniment/dipping sauce, the game suggestion is olive oil, but I like a bastardization of tzatziki sauce!

Ingredients

1 English cucumber, on the smaller end of size

8 oz Greek yogurt

1/2 tsp salt

zest of a lemon

juice of half a lemon

a handful of dill, chopped fine

Directions

Chop up the English cucumber in a food processor, or grate it by hand. Place the cucumber in a paper towel-lined colander and press down so the liquid gets squeezed out. You want the cucumber to be very dry before adding it to the yogurt.

Zest the lemon, add to the yogurt along with the cucumbers, chopped up dill, and salt. Squeeze half of the lemon into the mixture. Stir to combine.

I came home with a shopping bag full of Meyer lemons from my grandmother’s tree after the holidays, and they’ve been sitting on my counter ever since. 

Wat do. 

Since I couldn’t think of a video game dish that features lemons (and a lot of them), I decided to make candied lemons for future use. Also, I decided to make “side quests,” or little recipes or skills that don’t necessarily pertain to one video game in particular, but are useful. 

Recipe notes

Meyer lemons are sweeter than conventional lemons, and also smell wonderfully floral and sweet IMO. Most candied lemon recipes call for a blanching stage to get rid of the bitterness, but I found that I didn’t need to blanch these lemons. 

 If you’re concerned with any bitter taste when using Meyer lemons, or if you’re using regular lemons, blanch the lemon slices for about a minute in boiling water, then shock them in an ice bath before simmering in the syrup.

I used a 1:1:1 ratio of lemons, sugar, and water, so scale up or down as necessary.

Ingredients

500 g washed, thinly-sliced Meyer lemons (idk, I had a lot of lemons...)

500 g sugar

500 g water

Directions

In a pot large enough to accommodate the ingredients, add the sugar and the water. Heat the sugar/water until the sugar completely dissolves. You don’t want the heat the syrup past a simmer. 

Once the syrup begins to simmer, add the Meyer lemon slices. 

Simmer the lemon slices in the syrup for about 2 hours, or until the slices look transparent/glassy

Turn off the heat and let the mixture cool.

Remove the lemon slices and place on a wire rack to drain/dry over 24 hours. The slices will still be slightly sticky. I had a lot of candied lemon slices, so I placed some in a glass jar and poured the syrup over the top for later use. You can keep them refrigerated for quite a while!

How to use them!

Add a slice to hot/iced tea!

Garnish cakes or tarts or ice cream or yogurt!

Garnish savory dishes! When I lived in northern Virginia, one of my favorite restaurants (Founding Farmers) garnished their green beans with a candied lemon slice!

Eat it!

I hadn’t planned on making another FFXIV recipe for my next post, but I had a pack of chicken I needed to use soon. I also received a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking for Christmas, so naturally, I had to attempt a fricassee.

A few notes about this recipe:

Much to my chagrin, this recipe included mushrooms. I freaking hate ‘em. I think mushrooms look cool, and I believe in their ability to evoke “earthy” flavors, but I can’t get over the texture. I thought this recipe would change my mind, so I included the mushrooms. 

Dhalmels are like a weird cross between a giraffe (?), a camel (??), and a dinosaur (???), but I figured chicken would suffice. After the chicken was done, I removed it, let it cool, and picked the meat off of the bones/gave it a rough chop. Voilà, chopped dhalmel meat!

Traditional fricassees call for the use of a thickener composed of egg yolks and cream. Since the game recipe uses sour cream, I left out the egg and cream completely. In fact, I didn’t use sour cream. Sour cream tends to curdle in hot dishes where crème fraîche does not. 

My fricassee was a bit loose at the end of cooking, but I rather liked it that way. If you want a thicker fricassee sauce, reduce the sauce for longer.

Not recipe-related, but I ran out of daylight, so my final photo looks bleh.

Ingredients (adapted from Mastering the Art of French Cooking & Martha Stewart)

3-4 lbs of bone-in cut-up chicken (or chicken thighs or breasts or whatever you want to use, really)

Salt & pepper

Neutral-flavored oil

2 tbs butter

4 small-ish carrots, peeled and diced

2 stalks of celery, diced

1 medium yellow onion, diced

8 crimini mushrooms, quartered

2 tbs flour

2/3 c. dry vermouth (or don’t if you can’t/don’t want it)

4 cups (1 carton) low-sodium chicken stock

A few sprigs of parsley

1 bay leaf

~4 oz crème fraîche

Directions

Salt and pepper your chicken. Heat some oil in a large pot/Dutch oven/what have you and add the butter. If your butter starts turning dark brown, lower your heat. In batches (to avoid crowding the pan), add the chicken, skin-side down. Let the chicken brown for ~5-6 min on one side, flip and brown the other side for another 5 min. The chicken won’t be done at this point, but that’s ok. Take the chicken out and set aside on a plate.

In the same pot, add the carrots, celery, and onion. Sautée for about 5-7 minutes, scraping up the browned bits on the bottom of the pot until the vegetables start to release their moisture/become soft.

Add the mushrooms and continue cooking for another 5 minutes.

Add the flour, stir to let the flour absorb the liquids, and cook for about a minute.

Add the dry vermouth and cook until the sauce looks thickened and there are no lumps. Add the chicken stock, the chicken pieces, and any juice from the chicken. Top with the bay leaf and the parsley sprigs. 

Bring the stew to a boil for a few minutes, then turn the heat down and let the stew simmer for 40 minutes (or until the chicken is done). I left the lid slightly off of the pot during the simmering.

Once the chicken is done, remove it and let it cool until you can handle it.

 Reduce the stew a bit by boiling for ~5 minutes. Once the stew has reduced, remove the parsley sprigs and the bay leaf. Taste the stew and adjust for salt/pepper. Turn the heat down.

If the chicken is cool enough, remove it from the bone, chop it up a bit, and return it to the pot. If you want to leave the meat on the bone, you can just add it back to the pot. 

Add the crème fraîche while stirring to incorporate it completely into the stew. Simmer for another few minutes, and serve with some crusty bread, rice, or noodles!

For a few weeks, I thought about what food I wanted to make for my first post. I recently moved across the US for my job, and while I waited for my belongings to reach my destination, I figured I should start with something easy. That all went out the window when I saw chestnuts, chestnuts everywhere.

Chestnuts are apparently available fresh in the winter months. The taste and texture reminds me of Korean goguma [sweet potatoes] that my mom used to roast in the winter-ish time. Chestnuts have an interesting, roasty flavor (even if you boil them, IMO)...I think the word “warm” describes their taste pretty well. Anyway, I thought of marron glacé from Final Fantasy XIV.

Marrons glacés are candied chestnuts. The process of making them is pretty laborious, as they’re cooked and cooled in a sugar syrup repeatedly over the course of 4-6-ish days, although I think the hardest part is peeling the damn chestnuts.

Ingredients

2-ish lbs of chestnuts, in the shells (I didn’t weigh the chestnuts, but I believe most recipes call for equal parts sugar, water, and peeled chestnuts)

300g sugar

300g water

~2 tsp vanilla extract (I didn’t measure...)

Peeling chestnuts This is the worst and most tedious part of making marrons glacés. Chestnuts have two shells, the hard outer layer (easier to peel) and the inner skin (tastes terrible and is a bitch to peel). I tested different methods and found that using a microwave to steam a few chestnuts at a time made things a lot easier. Also, skewers work really well to help remove stubborn pieces of the inner skin.

To peel, cut an “X” into each chestnut shell without cutting the actual chestnut. Please be careful! I cut 2 fingers and my thumb, and it sucks. 

I cut X’s into different locations on the chestnut depending on its shape; for completely round chestnuts, I cut the X at the point. For flat chestnuts, I cut the X onto one of the flat sides. And for chestnuts that had a round and a flat side, I tried cutting X’s into the bottom, the flat side, and the top, and found that it doesn’t really matter where you cut it; it was still pretty difficult to get both skins off the chestnut. *shrug*

Once all of your chestnuts have an X in them, pick a few and wrap them in a slightly-more-than-damp cloth or paper towel. Nuke them for about 1 minute or until you hear a hissing noise. That’s the steam escaping from the chestnut! The chestnuts will be hot, but that’s when it’s easiest to get both skins off of the chestnut. I took one chestnut out at a time and kept the others wrapped in the damp cloth.

Try to peel both the inner and outer layers off at the same time. If you’re left with the inner layer, take a wooden skewer and get underneath the layer the best you can and just sort of chip away the skin. You want to preserve the veiny, brain-like look of the chestnuts (nice visual, huh). It is tedious, but if it becomes difficult, pop the chestnut back in the microwave for ~10 seconds or move onto another warm chestnut. You want to try to work fast, but be gentle with the chestnuts to avoid splitting them.

Directions

Once you’ve peeled your chestnuts, weigh them if you want. I got about 25 whole chestnuts and a couple of broken ones, and the amount of syrup I made was sufficient. But, you do want equal parts sugar, water, and chestnuts, so if you have more chestnuts, you probably need to scale up the water and sugar.

In a pot (you want one that’s deep and wide enough to accommodate all of the ingredients), heat 300g of water and 300g of sugar until the sugar dissolves. Add the vanilla extract. Most recipes call for a vanilla bean, but I don’t have any and ~2 teaspoons of vanilla extract worked fine. 

Once the syrup starts boiling slightly, add the chestnuts. Simmer the chestnuts for 5 minutes or so. Turn off the heat and let the chestnuts cool completely. Let the chestnuts sit in the syrup overnight.

The next day, bring the syrup+chestnuts to a simmer for about 4-5 mins. Don’t stir the chestnuts or mess with them; they’ll break! Turn off the heat and let the chestnuts sit in the syrup overnight again.

Repeat this for two more days, for a minimum of 4 days. If you have a lot of syrup left (I didn’t after 4 days), you can drain the syrup or repeat the process until all of the syrup is absorbed. When they’re done, they should have a bit of a glassy/transparent look to them.

When your chestnuts are done, place each one on a cooling rack over a baking tray to drain the excess syrup and let them dry overnight (I put mine in the oven, off, to keep nosy cats away).

The next day, place the chestnuts in paper cups and eat!