May the Fourth Be with You

Happy Star Wars Day!!  I didn't know that it was Star Wars Day until I saw all the greetings flying around Facebook this morning, but I knew I had to find someway to use these adorable cookie cutters I got for Christmas.

I just made cookies last night (more on that soon) or else I would have made some of these super cute chocolate shortbread cookies.  Instead, I cut out some slices of bread and painted them with food color to make croutons to add a little crunch to the mushroom-quinoa bake I made for dinner.  Yoda was my favorite.  Look how cute he was perched on top of my salad.

p.s. What do you think of my new header and layout?

April Baking Challenge: Cinnamon Rolls

They're part of a complete breakfast.

Long, complicated recipes resulting in me finding flour behind my ears days later.  That was the sort of thing I was thinking when I came up with the idea of a monthly baking challenge.  Perfectly chewy bagels, impossibly light macrons, an intricate gingerbread house, these are all things that are coming over the next few year.  But first, cinnamon rolls.

On the rare occasion that I buy a cinnamon roll, it is almost always tough and dry when I want them to be tender, moist, and just the right balance between sweet and spicy.  Recipes abound on the internet and most are reasonably simple if you if you are comfortable making a basic enriched dough.  But this one from not so humble pie spoke to me.  Perhaps that it comes from the kitchen of a biological anthropologist.  Is it the slight condescension of only making dough by hand (I used the dough hook on my mixer - don't tell!).  Or maybe, probably, it was the cream cheese frosting.

Why have I been tolerating cinnamon rolls topped with an insipid glaze all of these years? The cream cheese frosting, lightened (in texture, not calories) by whipped cream is really what makes these rolls.  The contrast between the sweetness of the rolls and the tanginess of the cheese is perfect. I made a half recipe of the rolls and a 1/3 recipe of the frosting.  It was just right.  Someone in the comments said she served them with the frosting on the side - don't do that.

The rolls were perfectly tender the first morning with a cup of coffee and a big bowl of fruit to break up the decadence of the roll.  The next morning I microwaved them for about 20 seconds covered in a slightly damp paper towel before adding a dollop of frosting.  The texture is a a slight bit tougher, but I was surprised at how well they held up...and that we didn't polish them all off the first day.

Fruit makes the whole meal healthy ;)

Foto Friday

Saturday April 23: Crocheted Parking Meter Cozy at the Farmer's Market

Sunday April 24: Hoppy Easter

Monday April 25: Working from Home

Tuesday April 26: Chocolate Cinnamon Beer Bread

Wednesday April 27: Car Battery Chemistry

Thursday April 28: Artichoke

Friday April 29: Good Looking Out, Yesterday Ellen.

April Book Report: The Wordy Shipmates

Reading is Always Better with a Feline Companion

Before becoming aware of her books, I came across Sarah Vowell and her distinctive, slightly nasal voice on This American Life. I picked up her book The Wordy Shipmates for $4 and took it with me to the meetings. In it, Vowell takes a wide-ranging, not entirely comprehensive view on the Puritans.

Depending on the cocktail parties you attend, you might find some fun facts to bring up in conversation (I foisted these on people during gelato). For example, the Puritans and Pilgrims (of Mayflower fame) were of different Protestant ideologies and while they were  hard working, clean living folk, they believed there was nothing one could do on earth that made any difference as to your ultimate salvation.  Perhaps most interesting, considering they left England because they refused to conform to the Church of England, they valued virtually nothing in civil life more than subjugating ones opinions and behaviors to the will of the group.  This inevitably resulted in the casting out of heretics who believed in things like free speech and equality for women  (see: the founding of Rhode Island) .

These historical tidbits alternate with personal reflections and pop-cultural references that trace the influence of Pastor John Winthrop's "City on a Hill" sermon down through Reagan and Abu Gharib (the book was published in 2008).  Vowell concludes, "From New England's Puritans we inherited the idea that America is blessed and ordained by God above all nations, but lost the fear of [His] wrath and retribution."  This is not, by any means a book that bashes America or religion, but one that acknowledges that modern Americans, like the Puritans before us, don't always live up to the hype of being a "shining city on a hill."

Those (like me) with an interest in history, but little patience for dry recitation, will enjoy this book.  It is a quick read and reminds me of the spirit of the Stuff You Missed in History Class Podcast, which I also highly recommend.

Banh Mi, Banh You

My grapefruit jam adventure left me with 8 empty canning jars and the options for filling them in late March were limited.  However, the farmer's market had plenty of carrots and daikon radishes so I opted for some Vietnamese Pickled Carrots and Radishes (called do chua) to make banh mi.

Making the pickle was a lot easier and quicker than the jam without the slow process of cooking down the juice and making sure it gels.  With my pickle knowhow, I'm looking forward to some triple dill, extra garlic pickles in the summer.  For now, however, we have these crunchy, sweet-tart matchsticks just begging to be made into banh mi.  There are myriad toppings for banh mi, but I knew I wanted to go with pork.  Failing to find any at the farmers market, I picked up a lean pork loin, sliced it ever to thinly, and cooked it up in a black pepper marinade.  I cannot recommend this marinade enough.  The fish sauce gives a complexity to the pork that had us picking at the leftovers all night.

I layered the pork on baguettes with sriracha mayo, cilantro, onions, cucumber, a splash of soy sauce and - of course - the pickled veggies!  This combination highlights the perfectly balanced flavors I think of when I think of great southeast Asian cooking -crunchy cucumber, rich salty pork, sweet carrots, pungent daikon and onion, spicy sriracha, and creamy mayo.  Overall, I was really happy with the resulting sandwich.  There are  few things I will remember for next time.  The baguette I picked up at the farmer's market was really chewy, which is usually wonderful, but in this case let to occasional structural failures as the sandwich fillings slipped out the back.

With three jars of pickled veggies left, we needed to be eating them on something other than banh mi. So they also topped tacos made with leftover sweet and spicy pork shoulder and avocado.  An unusual, but quite tasty, combo.