This Week in My Kitchen

This blog started with tons of bento, but with remote work and then retirement, it's become largely about cooking at home.

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I posted this recipe a while back, but just as a reminder, my biscuit recipe is really good.

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I'm pretty good on not rolling or pleating another dumpling for a few weeks. Or months.

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Dumpling night part 3: Pelmeni dough fall in the middle of this trio of dumplings from Eastern Europe/Caucasus (Pierogi are Polish, Khinkali are Georgian, Pelmeni are Russian-Siberian). The dough is leaner than Pierogi dough (no egg or sour cream) but not as hard as Khinkali (which is nothing but flour, salt and just enough water to bring the dough together). Pelmeni dough adds enough oil to enable the dough to be rolled thinner. The Siberian version might have things such as bear meat - this version has mushrooms. I used a simple filling of chopped mushrooms (cremini with some dried porcini and shiitake) and onion, all sauteed. I've added pine nuts previously; I don't think it adds enough to the dish to warrant it. I did add a little grated parmesan - I would do that or a bit of nutritional yeast, just enough to add a salty kick. The dough behaves enough that the kids could help again. They did the first roll, I finished it off, cut and shaped. These get served much like pierogi (boil, serve with sour cream and butter).

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Dumpling night part 2:

Khinkali have a very low hydration dough, similar to Japanese noodles. The reason for this stiff, low moisture, high protein, low fat dough is to create a strong watertight casing for a loose, wet meat filling. Like Chinese soup dumplings, you add liquid to ground meat to create "soup" - I stole the Chinese technique of using jellied pork stock (The Georgians usually use water).

The dough is a pain to knead, but the recommendations to do low hydration doughs, such as noodles, in a food processor, works. A stand mixer doesn't fully incorporate the liquid without you stopping the machine and scraping and kneading the bowl. A dough mixer does a bit better, but a food processor (with the dough hook, not the metal one) does it best: run the water in a thin stream through the feed tube while pulsing. I may try this approach for another low hydration dough: bagels.

This dough takes too much elbow grease for the kids so their mother and I sat at the dining room table and made them - she got each dough ball into a thin disc, I got them thin to the right diameter and shaped.

The last time I made these a friend who had eaten these in Georgia told me the way they ate them, which is easier than the Chinese way of balancing in your ladle and poking a hole in them with a chopstick. These dumplings are sturdy enough to hold by the topknot upside-down, bite a delicate hole in the bottom rim and suck out the soup.

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Dumpling night. This one was special because I got to sit two of the boys down and let them help. I'm glad I pre-made all components - it meant the kitchen was free for their father while we sat at the dining room table and made pirogies. Doughs, particularly for pasta/dumplings have three important variables: protein content, fat content and liquid content (hydration). Each of the three dumpling doughs I made was different because of these. Pirogies are a great beginner dumpling. The dough has a high fat content (with an egg and sour cream enriching it) and is almost as easy to work as Playdough, so both the 9 and 11 year-old could sit opposite me and make a few. I brought with me some small rolling pins and a cutter so they could help, and we soon had a platter of dumplings boiled. None of them split into "angels" (I did do the gay uncle thing of quickly checking and resealing their loose spots as they went on the platter). They were a huge hit, even though I forgot we could also saute them - boiled were still delicious.

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I'm visiting good friends and their children this holiday weekend, so I did Gay-uncle baking and cooking.

The "challah" is actually brioche, using Alex (French Cooking Guy's) recipe, which manages to make as rich a result with half the eggs and butter of other recipes. Watching the Great Canadian Baking Show do the brioche à tête as a technical challenge reminded me of how to make the dough the most successful way: incorporate less flour than you might instinctively.

This is the case with almost all bread doughs: don't work in a lot of flour at the outset to make the dough manageable. If you keep kneading and scraping with a bench scraper the gluten you form by kneading will firm up the dough enough to handle. Using a dough mixer, the brioche started with something closer to a batter that I knew wouldn't turn into a dough, so I added flour bit by bit until I saw the dough not fully form into a ball and clean the bowl, but just start to coalesce. I let the machine knead a bit longer, then scraped down the bowl. When the scrapings would easily release from the side and bottom of the bowl, and the dough was slightly moist to the touch but not sticking to my hands, that was the point to stop adding flour. Another note to myself - if you braid from one side to the other, the braid looks like an arrow, starting this and winding up thin. Braid from the middle out to both sides.

The sealed plastic bags are fixings for dumplings. Trying to transport dumplings, at least uncooked ones, has been a nightmare in the past - they stick together no matter the precautions. So the dough for pelmeni, pierogi and khinkali are all in plastic bags, and the fillings are vacuum sealed. The kids will get to help make them (the pierogies have the most enriched and forgiving dough, they'll do those).

For later on when they understand cooking and dough a little better, these are interesting to compare because they use three very different dough that teach a lot about how it behaves: Khinkali have a very hard, lean dough practically like that for udon, to make sure they support the soupy meat filling. Pelmeni use a dough that's a little more enriched, with some oil, so they are a bit more tender. Pierogi dough is enriched and very easy to work, but is rolled thicker.

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I was going to make an Indian appropriation of a Chinese method of cooking cauliflower, "Gobi Manchurian," until I was reading through the recipe and thinking "this is pretty much General Tso's Cauliflower" - an American appropriation.

No matter who stole it, I can report it's delicious, in fact better than General Tso's tofu. Main differences between the two were that I dry-seasoned the cauliflower (salt, pepper, garlic and onion powder & aleppo pepper) instead of marinating it, threw some toasted sesame seeds into a batter that was mostly corn starch and some wheat flour for browning. I made my usual General Tso's sauce without altering it.

Of course the results tasted good. Let's be honest. You could deep fry a turd and chances are it would taste pretty good.

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You wouldn't think of "homey" and "decadent" as words describing the same object, but with all the silky cream in it, I think both fit a potato gratin. This one was a little off the classic, it has a thin layer of leftover pork tenderloin and one of white cheddar interleaved. Also, if you're making gratin for one, there's no need to pull out a mandoline for slicing, a sharp knife won't take long at all. This was delicious, but next time I'll do a thinner top coat of cheese, not a duvet's worth like a lasagna. You want to see the pretty shingling of the sliced potatoes.

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Best excuse ever in a recipe video: "I don't do measurements, like I told you I just let Jesus lead the way." Think of all the possible uses.

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I'm always tweaking recipes I like, even ones I've gotten "right."

I finally bought vital wheat gluten, often recommended for chewy breads and bagels, too see if it indeed made better bagels.

It does. I've made really good bagels for years without it, so don't let the absence of it stop you from trying, but it *does* make bagels better; more chewy with a crisper crust.

You use as much as needed to bump the gluten content up to about 14.5%. It's math, but don't fret - there's an online calculator. The amount is somewhere in the vicinity of 15g (a tablespoon) per batch, so if you're only using it for bread, don't bother buying Amazon's 4 lb bag. A pound will do.

I had also been curious about a baking steel versus a stone. Then I realized, why not try pressing the cast iron grill you almost never use on the stove into service?

Results - the grill does perform like a steel, with a lot more heat conductivity. I needed to drop the cooking time a minute or two.

I'm planning to make a pizza for lunch this week to see how that works.

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I had a little package of wings in the freezer from breaking down two chickens a while back. I saw them the other day and was planning to just oven roast them with barbecue sauce, but it dawned on me that I had never tried to make Korean fried chicken. Now I have. I used elements of both Maangchi's recipe and Cook's Illustrated's. CI is usually pretty odd with Asian recipes; they don't do authenticity and they substitute ingredients that you can get without much trouble in NYC. But they used gochujang in their sauce, Maangchi used non-specific dried chilis and I was guessing they were milder than what I have given the amount she used (if I had to go with what I can get, I think I'd try guajillos). Maangchi used a dry coat of potato starch, Dan Souza and CI used a loose batter of mostly flour with some cornstarch. I did a dry coat, mostly potato starch with a large spoonful of flour added, as Dan said, to promote browning. I actually will try a batter next time - a dry coat is really crisp, but feels slightly different (and yes, drier) than a batter. Or maybe do what CI suggests for Japanese karaage - dry starch coat after wet marinade, leave in fridge a full hour to hydrate (I did 5-10 minutes). I've done that and it works beautifully with karaage. Sauce - I eyeballed the proportions, and it was OK, but the main thing I need to tweak is let's face it, the sauce for Korean fried chicken, no matter how unhealthy this sounds, is a soy-flavored sugar syrup, not sweet soy sauce. You want the taste, you got to use the corn syrup and sugar, and lots. And serve it with pickles or something vinegary. Think of them like edible Windex.

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A really good trick from a recent issue of Cook's Country: Make gnocchi with instant mashed potato flakes. It's easy and good (you can't tell that it's instant flakes once it's made into dough), but you have to find the line in the amount of moisture added between a workable dough and a stodgy one when it's boiled. The little wooden gadget is a gnocchi board, which gives the gnocchi characteristic ridges. I boiled them, and once drained, placed the cooked gnocchi in a gratin, topped them with marinara, ricotta, mozzarella and grana padano.

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I had leftover raita (spiced yogurt mixed with vegetables) as well as cilantro/coconut chutney from another Indian meal and used the rest of it to make dahi toast for breakfast – an Indian spin on grilled cheese. The fried curry leaves and mustard seed (a tadka) on top, and the suggestion to mix with ketchup are Priya Krishna’s spin from her videos.

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As annoying as I can find Martha Stewart, I love her "All American Meatloaf" recipe, particularly the ketchup/brown sugar glaze with sauteed onions.

Since I'm cooking for one, I divide the recipe into eight ounce portions, freeze three portions and use one to make a small loaf that makes two servings: a meal, and a sandwich for later.

I've served this much as I would Swedish meatballs - they are cousins. I made those last week and had some cucumber pickle left over. A bit of that gravy made the base of this one, but I also added in the ketchup-brown sugar left over after glazing. I served with spinach. I'm going to have to buy more lingonberries; I love the little suckers.

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The holidays were mothballed again, but I did cook to keep myself amused. Chicken and biscuits, with the biscuits on one side a touch crispy (whoops). This one takes time, but most of it passive - the chicken gets stored, the stock simmers, then cools on the first day, then make the rest the next. I haven't made this with a fowl instead of a chicken in a while, but they're easy to get in my local markets so I grabbed one. Experimenting, I used my Instant Pot, which shaved lots of time off (40 minutes + pressurizing vs. three hours) but makes a cloudier broth. Also, because I cook the chicken and pick the meat off, then return the carcass to pot to make the broth, it might be done more simply on the stove. In the morning I stirred up a levain to make sourdough biscuits for the top. Since developing that recipe I'll never do quick biscuits again if I can avoid it - the taste and rise is so much better. You have to know you want biscuits at least six hours in advance, but at that point you just stir starter, flour and water or milk (I lean towards water which makes a more delicate biscuit) together and leave it out somewhere warm. Once you have the chicken, broth and biscuit dough, assembly is not hard. Simmer a sliced onion in fat, add in the mushrooms (I've usually pre-sauteed them, they keep longer when cooked). I add a 1/4 tsp turmeric for color and a subtle woody flavor. Sprinkle flour on top (1:1 with fat), cook until flour isn't raw (2-3 minutes). While whisking, add a mix of broth, milk and cream to your liking. I find about 2/3 stock, a good amount of cream and the rest milk added at various points to adjust consistency works. Once the sauce is made, the onions and mushrooms are already in, add chunks of carrot, potato and celery with leaves, and the chicken meat. Season (salt, pepper, fresh nutmeg, I usually add Aleppo pepper and a hit of Maggi or Worcestershire). Add chopped parsley and peas last. Make the sourdough biscuit recipe (I posted it a few weeks back) with some chopped parsley added when you mix the biscuits - I also use a mix of chicken fat and butter or margarine. I often use margarine when I bake. A good margarine has a lighter rise than butter. I set the biscuit dough up in the fridge to chill the fat while the stew simmered; I was going to transfer it to a casserole, but realized the Dutch Oven would do nicely. I made little biscuit rivets by hand and floated them on the top, and baked at a high-ish temperature (400F, which may be why they crisped!). It was delicious - and a trick for any leftovers - to place in a container, lift the biscuits off, put the filling in your container, and replace the biscuits on top. Do the same if you transfer it to a new dish to reheat. It will stay quite neat.

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Baking skills are social skills!

I had planned to make calzones (Italian hand pies made with pizza dough) on New Year's Day. I made the dough two days before and left it to proof in the fridge (pizza dough loves long, cold fermentation).

Once I had the dough, the rest was a kind of provident disposal process: This leftover ricotta, that leftover spinach, these remnants of grated cheeses, those leftover mushrooms and a package of ham bits (sung to "partriiiiidge in a pair tree").

I put the ricotta and spinach in strainers - I saved the exuded liquid because I've discovered new doughs love that stuff in the levain. The grated cheese got picked through and combined, the ham and mushroom got chopped in smaller pieces, the spinach got chopped and mixed with the ricotta, adding salt, pepper, Aleppo pepper and a few scrapes of nutmeg, because dairy loves nutmeg like carrots love ginger.

In the interim I started up a simple marinara for dipping (canned tomatoes and one leftover fresh chopped plum tomato simmered in a bit of olive oil with garlic, tomato paste, Calabrian chili peppers for a little kick and herbs)

Each dough bit was about 190 g, on a lightly floured surface (the dough is moist), I patted and rolled it to about the size of a medium plate (8-9"). On one half, lay down melty cheese, then ham and mushroom, ricotta/spinach, then more melty cheese.

Fold over and close up (I did it with the same edging as I'd use for empanadas)

At this point my upstairs neighbor texted - I had asked him if he wanted a black and white cookie, now I offered a calzone as well. He was with his girlfriend, so it became a feast and ego boost - she is on a keto diet, but my baking (particularly pretzels) is her cheat.

Though Chef John at Food Wishes specified an egg wash, that doesn't square with anything I've seen in a pizzeria, so I snipped three vents with kitchen shears, brushing the calzone with olive oil and dusted with a last leftover bit of grana padano cheese.

I put these plump babies on parchment to control spills (and it made them a LOT easier to transfer). Baking was less time than I thought, (about 20 minutes at 450 F until the crust browned and I saw the filling bubble through the vents) I let them cool for at least 45 minutes to set the filling, and then rewarmed then in a low oven before serving.

I thought some of the cheese (particularly the last of the Cotija) was a tiny bit funky in the filling, but my friends loved it. The dipping sauce was perfect with it.

So my baking turned into a nice little New Year's Day party.

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Couldn't resist on a quiet New Year's Eve trying something I've always wanted to make, Black and White cookies. Though I am no pastry chef (give me bread any day) most New Yorkers should feel immediately nostalgic.

Results: Taste 9 Looks 5.

Next go round:

These spread a ton. Space better on the cookie sheet. Also, though I used an ice cream scoop, I didn't manage a round cookie. Work on that.

These are also fragile. They need about a minute longer than you think and 2-3 minutes cooling still on the sheet to set up and finish cooking.

Both icings need to be the same glaze consistency. I made vanilla glaze and chocolate frosting (and you know when you KNOW it's not right and you still do it?)

But they are absolutely easy enough to try again and were not an all-day project.

Recipe used (I made a half-batch) - https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1020254-perfect-black-and-white-cookies