h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ah - a recipe

A87800394

Custard creams continue to elude me though.

Thoughts about making the filling more "industrial" and less home-made and buttery and more suitable to dunk in :

Use more sugar, less butter. Use carob flour, or some cornflour boiled in milk (this should harden up a bit when it cools). A lot of experimenting required here!

Not sure if carob is the word in English. It is used as a cocoa substitute, but I am pretty sure it's a thickener as well.

Found in wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceratonia_siliqua

Carob is definitely a word in English, and I've used carob myself in the past.

It looks like the two dough recipes are almost identical in terms of the proportions of the ingredients. It's more difficult to judge the proportions of the filling, but I don't think a butter-based cream would be the proprietary choice. Fondant gives much more control over the final consistency because it can be precisely cooked to the desired thickness. It's mostly sugar and glucose syrup, with added flavouring and colouring, so manufacturers would like its cheapness. But for home production it could be gussied up a bit with some extra ingredients

Yes, the bourbon creams definitely need more work. They're completely soft now, but still delicious.

I shall take Alton Brown's advice, as given in Three Chips for Sister Sarah, which you can no longer watch on YouTube without coughing up some wedge, but here's the transcript http://www.goodeatsfanpage.com/Season3/Cookie/CookieTranscript.htm

Thin and crispy. That's what I'm after.

Refried beans.

I must admit that until I moved here I had no idea such a thing existed, but I took to them like a duck to water. And I've finally had a crack at making them. Came out pretty good, I think. I went with black beans rather than pinto beans, just because that's what I had in the cupboard, and I'm very pleased with the result. I'll try pintos next time.

It helped that I had a load of bacon dripping, as well as lard, in the fridge, and the recipe called for either one. I used a bit of both

Question
Surely Lard = Pork fat = Bacon Dripping? or is the difference extra salt from the bacon?

Lard is rendered from the fat in the carcass rather from any meat that's been cured or processed, so it should be mostly free of taste and neutral, which you definitely can't say about bacon drippings

I've a feeling the expensive lard I mentioned a few weeks ago, the $18-a-jar lard, actually said beef tallow on the label, so strictly speaking it wasn't really lard, but their uses in cooking are the same.

And where's the difference between tallow and suet? (The German for suet is talg, which would imply that they are the same....

Suet is raw but tallow is rendered, and it's not always made purely from suet but also from fat cut from other parts of the animal, I think.

Alton Brown's split pea burgers
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/split-pea-burgers-recipe/index.html

Ingredients
1 tablespoon olive oil, plus 1 to 2 additional tablespoons for sauteeing
½ chopped onion
½ chopped bell pepper
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 teaspoons minced garlic
4 oz mushrooms, sliced
3 cups vegetable broth
1 cup dry split peas, picked and rinsed
½ cup dry brown rice
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground cumin
¾ cup plain dry bread crumbs, plus ¼ cup for coating

Method
Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a large (4 to 6-quart) saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion and bell pepper along with a generous pinch of salt. Sweat for 5 minutes or until the onions are soft. Add the garlic and mushrooms and continue to cook for another 4 minutes.

Add the broth, peas, rice, coriander and cumin. Increase the heat to high and bring to a boil. Decrease heat to low, cover and cook at a simmer for 1 hour or until the rice and peas are tender.

Remove from the heat and gently pour the mixture into the bowl of a food processor and process until just combined. Do not puree. Pour this mixture into a bowl and stir in the 3/4 cup of bread crumbs. Season, to taste, with salt and freshly ground pepper. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Shape the mixture into patties and dredge on each side in the remaining 1/4 cup of bread crumbs. Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a medium saute pan over medium heat. Add 2 burgers at a time and saute until brown on each side, approximately 3 to 4 minutes per side. To grill, cook on high for 3 to 4 minutes per side as well. Serve immediately.


I'm not sure about the need for such a large saucepan though. My stockpot happens to be 6 quarts and the recipe was dwarfed in it. They are quite delicious though And very handy for taking to work when you have a long day ahead of you. They also go very well with refried beans I'm sure they'd make a very good breakfast too. Well, almost anything will, really.

There's a little of the chocolate butter filling from the bourbon biscuits left over which has been in the fridge since I made them. I thought I'd put it in a small jar and freeze it... whereupon I remembered there's still a slightly bigger jar of the sweet potato pie filling from last November F50359?thread=8251735&skip=180&show=20#p110899217 also in the freezer. I've also got a few pieces of leftover frozen pastry...

I think I see a small chocolate-flavoured sweet potato pie in my near future

And when I say near future, I mean today

When four recipes become one

Brown Butter Cake
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2015/01/brown-butter-cake-insane-brown-butter-frosting-recipe.html

I saw this recipe and thought to myself that looks very much like a cake made with beurre noisette, which in fact it is, although they never actually use the term in the recipe. I wonder why.

Any road up. It's the only cake I've ever made that has sunk. Not a great deal, but noticeably. I cooked it until the skewer came out clean, as one does with most cakes, but when I took out of the tin it felt too soft, not as set and as rigid as most cakes. It might be my cake tin - I'd forgotten that I had to throw out the smallest of my loaf tins last week because it was going rusty inside, and the next size up was a tad too big.

I get no "intense brown butter flavour", but it's quite tasty. It could benefit from some fruit, sultanas I reckon, and I will make it again. I left off the frosting. Never been too keen on frosting, unless it's the icing on a Christmas cake.

I took the trouble to make a note of the weights of the ingredients. Measuring things by volume just isn't accurate enough for baking. I used the same weight of sugar as the butter. That's the usual rule when creaming butter and sugar together, I think. Interesting technique to add half the flour, then the milk, then the rest of the flour though... I wonder what that's all about?

I've just reduced three bottles of cider down to less than a quarter pint of the most intensely flavoured syrup.

What on earth should I do with it?

The last time I reduced three bottles of cider I used my throat

Might it be good on ice cream?

F S

I swear to Bob I didn't know about this beforehand and was simply doing my weekly trawl of the Serious Eats website this morning
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2013/10/gluten-free-apple-cider-bread-recipe.html

Refried beans update.

It looks like the best flavour comes from a mixture of three parts pinto beans to one part black beans.

You might try the purple and white anasazi beans sometime.

Usually available in health food stores.

The finest tasting beans in a chili I've ever tried.

Pavlova.

I think the best I can say is simply that the meringue failed to keep its structural integrity, and just move on

Still tasted pretty good though, as did the zabaglione that resulted in me having a spare six egg whites and wondering what to do with them

Cool odd Guy twisting
"Add some powdered sugar. Stirr them white, put fluffs in the oven for a few minutes at 80C some 140F? "