{Recipe}: Baked Apples

It has been apple season in Virginia for the past few months. A great date trip is to go to pick-your-own orchards and fill up your bags. My problems is, I don't know when to stop. I always come away with 20 - 30 lbs of apples.

A very unflattering picture of the Mr. and me on our date.

My favorites are Braeburn and Fuji.

The Mr. and I took a trip to Carter Mountain Orchard the last Saturday of September (I know, I know so long ago). We bought Fuji and Jonagold apples.

View from Carter Mountain

I love apples in any kind of baked good, but I thought I would leave them to be the star player in a dish all their own: Baked Apples.

I found a recipe on Pinterest for baked apples, but I added twice as many apples as it called for so it wouldn't be too sweet.

6 fuji apples, peeled and thinly sliced (this is how many I used)
2 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp cornstarch
juice of half a lemon
3 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons butter

To peel the apples easily I use an apple peeler.
I then cut them into wedges approximately the same size. If you have more than 6 apples, you can use more. There is plenty of sauce to go around!

Once all of the apples were cut, I put them into a bowl and added cinnamon, cornstarch, lemon, and brown sugar. Sometimes I don't measure and I just dump approximate amounts in and it works just fine. (I think nutmeg would be a nice touch to this recipe too.)

Dump the apples into an appropriately sized casserole dish. Put butter slices on top.

Bake on 400 degrees F for 25 - 30 min. The apples should be tender but not mushy.

They didn't last long!!

I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we did!
I can imagine putting these warm apples atop some vanilla ice cream... mmmm!

The Science Behind: Cinnamon

Cinnamon is a spice that is from the inner bark of trees of the genus Cinnamomum. Cinnamomum verum is "true" cinnamon but other varieties are usually used in cinnamon found in most retail stores. It is mainly cultivated in Asian countries. I went to the spice diva and smelled all the varieties of cinnamon she had for sale. The cinnamon from Vietnam was amazing! It. Smells. So. Good! I kid you not. If you have a bulk spice store, check it out!

The smell and taste is from a chemical found in the spice: cinnamaldehyde. It is an aromatic molecule (chemically aromatic as well as aroma aromatic).

Cinnamon is used all around the word in many different types of dishes. It is mainly used in desserts, but in the Middle East they will often pair it with chicken or lamb.

There are some health benefits associated with cinnamon, although there are more studies that need to be performed to back this up. It has been shown to help regulate blood sugar and so it is useful for those with Type II Diabetes. By eating 1/2 tsp. a day, it could help lower LDL cholesterol (bad cholesterol). There are many other suggested health benefits:

http://www.healthdiaries.com/eatthis/10-health-benefits-of-cinnamon.html
http://diabetes.webmd.com/cinnamon-and-benefits-for-diabetes
http://nccam.nih.gov/health/cinnamon

Even if cinnamon doesn't have these health benefits, it tastes so good, why not add it to your food just in case?? I do!

{Recipe Review}: Sichuan Stir-Fried Pork in Garlic Sauce

This post has been a long, long time coming!

I have professed before about my love affair with Cook's Illustrated magazine, and this recipe comes straight from the March/April 2012 edition.

If I had to pick a meal, that I cook, that I enjoy and look forward to the most, it would have to be this one! It is an extremely involved recipe with lots of steps, but they make it sooo worth it.

Recipe

Sliced Shiitake Mushrooms

Sauce
1/2 c. chicken broth
2 Tbsp. sugar
2 Tbsp. soy sauce
4 tsp. Chinese black vinegar
1 Tbsp. toasted sesame oil
1 Tbsp. Chinese rice wine or dry sherry
2 tsp. ketchup
2 tsp. fish sauce
2 tsp. cornstarch

Sliced Celery

Pork
12 ounces boneless country-style pork ribs, trimmed
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 c. cold water
2 tsp. Chinese rice wine or dry sherry
2 tsp. cornstarch

Stir-Fry

Sliced Peppers

4 garlic cloves, minced
2 scallions, white parts minced, green parts sliced thin
2 Tbsp. Asian broad-bean chili paste
4 Tbsp. vegetable oil (I use peanut oil)
6 ounces shiitake mushrooms, stemmed and sliced thin
2 celery ribs, cut on bias into 1/4 inch slices (I keep them in 2-inch pieces)




1. Sauce: Whisk all ingredients together; set aside

 
2. Pork: Cut pork into 2-inch lengths, then cut each length into 1/4-inch matchsticks. Combine pork with baking soda and water in a bowl. Let sit at room temperature for 15 min. (no longer!)

3. Rinse pork in cold water, drain well, and pat dry with paper towels. In order to do this efficiently, I wash the pork in a colander and on a clean counter, I lay out lots of layers of paper towels. I then lay all the pork out on the paper towels and take more paper towels on top and press them dry. Pretty wasteful of trees, but it is the easiest - believe me!

Whisk rice wine an cornstarch in a bowl and toss with pork to coat.

4. Stir-Fry: Combine garlic, scallion whites, and chili paste in a bowl.

5. Heat 1 Tbsp. of oil in a skillet over high heat until just smoking. Add mushrooms and cook until tender, 2-4 minutes. Add celery and continue to cook until celery is crisp-tender, 2-4 minutes. Transfer vegetables to separate bowl.

Cooked veggies!

6. Add remaining 3 Tbsp. of oil to empty skillet on med-low heat. Add garlic mixture and cook, stirring frequently, until fragrant, about 30 sec. Transfer 1 Tbsp. to a bowl for later. Add pork to skillet and cook, stirring frequently, until no longer pink, 3-5 min. Whisk sauce mixture to recombine and add to skillet. Increase heat to high and cook, stirring constantly, until sauce thickens and the pork is cooked through, 1-2 minutes.

Once the sauce has thickened.

Return vegetables to skillet and toss to combine. Transfer to serving platter and garnish with green scallions and reserved garlic mixture.

Phew... That was a lot!

Hints: Before you start cooking, prepare all parts. You will be too busy to cut veggies, dry meat, mix up the sauce while having stir all the time.

I couldn't find the black vinegar in a grocery store but I did find it in an asian food mart. I couldn't find broad-bean chili paste so I just got chili paste from the asian section in Harris Teeter. I don't know the difference. I have made this recipe with both dry sherry and sweet rice wine and I can't tell the difference. Since this recipe is so involved, I usually triple it. It also helps by giving me left overs since the Mister eats soooo much! I have also gotten in the habit of adding green peppers. I think that many more types of vegetables would be a nice addition.


The Science Behind: Baking soda and Meat

Meat is made of proteins which is made of a series of amino acids. Sometimes, protein can be difficult to breakdown through quick cooking making the meat tough and fiberous. The denaturing of proteins can be accomplished physically through heating the meat or chemically by using ingredients that will perform or initiate a chemical reaction.

Since we don't want to use a pressure cooker or spend hours hovering over a stove to make dinner, we can employ baking soda to do to the job for us. The chemical name for baking soda is sodium bicarbonate. This is an alkaline material, for us scientists... a base. Proteins rely heavily on the pH to initiate certain processes such as folding and cleavages. Meat has proteins called calpains. Calpains cleave other proteins and are important in normal cell behavior. The activity of calpain can be initiated at high pH.

By soaking the meat in a base, baking soda, the calpain proteins begin to breakdown other fibrous proteins, therefore, tenderizing the meat. This looser protein structure holds on to water better and will allow the meat to be juicy and tender with minimal cooking.

{Recipe} Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

I love to bake, but my favorite desserts to bake are cookies. I don't really know why, but they are always my go-to item. There are a few cookies I don't like: white choc. macadmaia nut, peanut butter, and oatmeal raisin.

However, an old lab partner was celebrating a birthday and he had been so good with a lab report that I thought I'd reward him with his favorite cookie: oatmeal raisin. *Cue cringe...

So I went home and tried to find a recipe that would be moist ('tis difficult with oatmeal based cookies) and started baking. The recipe I chose was A W F U L! I refused to take them in due to embarrassment! My roommate at the time had a solution. His mom had a recipe that he claimed was great. I had him call and get it (around 10 or 11 PM) and I got to baking again.

These were the compete opposite of the first batch. Moist and so flavorful!
*Score one for the recipe box

geez, I need to learn how to photograph food!

I present to you, the greatest oatmeal raisin cookie recipe:

1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. packed brown sugar
1/4 c. butter (softened)
1/4 c. shortening (I use butter again, softened)
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1 egg
1 1/2 c. oats
1 c. flour
1 c. raisins

preheat oven to 375 degrees

Mix all but oats, flour, and raisins.

Add in remaining items and stir until just combined.

Bake ~10 min








Enjoy!

Fall

Fall is a great time here in Virginia. The leaves are changing and it is spectacularly beautiful!! Plus, the weather recently has been magical. It isn't normally this nice. For some reason we were blasted this summer with high heat, but are being rewarded thus far.

Woodstock Court House - the oldest court house in Virginia still in use

This past weekend, the Mr. and I were busy! We picked apples at Carter Mountain Orchard - Jonagolds and Fujis. It was really busy since it was the first weekend Fuji apples were available. We had a lot of fun and picked almost 24 lbs. of apples.

WHAT am I going to do with all those apples???

Y'all, I have plans... I'll post some recipes for apple dishes.

Baked Apples

We checked out our local grocier: C'ville Market 

C'ville Market has inexpensive fruits and veggies that are often produced by local farmers. You can also get coffee, wine, cheese, meat, etc.  We love going here for our vegetables! We picked up a whole bunch of root vegetables and some squash. I roasted an entire roasting pan FULL of these veggies. It should last us the entire week (I hope!).

Ben butterflied 2 chickens and rubbed them down with some Tex-Mex dry rub I made. He grilled them for a few hours yesterday. Paired with the roasted vegetables, it made for a great Sunday dinner. I wish I had pictures! We'll surely do it again and I'll make a post about how to properly grill chicken.

For the final cooking/baking adventure this weekend, my labmate Alex requested Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting. I usually come through on birthday requests:

Pumpkin Cupcakes with Vanilla Cream Cheese frosting

For these, so far the verdict is YUM!

That was my weekend in food. How about yours? Eat anything interesting or great??

{Recipe} Pioneer Woman's Spicy Lemon Garlic Shrimp

Yummy shrimp and brussels sprouts

After a busy Sunday, the Mr. and I needed something for dinner. I ventured to the seafood counter at Harris Teeter too scope out the shrimp selection. I got some large wild caught white shrimp with their tails, legs, and shells on. At $9.95/lb, it was a pretty good buy.

For those of you who know me, it may have come as a surprise to find out I was cooking seafood for dinner. I have never liked most seafood except about 3 shrimp at a time and the occasional King crap legs dipped in melted butter. But after having some great shrimp scampi prepared by a friend's mom, I discovered I like shrimp. I like them when not over done and when NOT covered in Old Bay Seasoning. While growing up, my parents would butcher shrimp. Boil them to death and then drown them in a seasoning that they put on all seafood. Yuck!

For my birthday, a friend gave me Pioneer Woman's cookbook and in it is a recipe for Spicy Lemon Garlic Shrimp. I gave it a try and it is so easy and yummy!!

Recipe
1 c. butter, cold (2 sticks)
4 cloves garlic, peeled
1/4 c. parsley
juice of 2 lemons
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
2 lbs. raw shrimp, devined with shelled on

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

Put all ingredients except the shrimp in a food processor and process until well combined.

Place your shrimp on a baking sheet with edges (jelly roll pan) in a single layer. Drop the butter mixture on top of the shrimp.

Place butter on top of the shrimp

Bake in the oven for 20 min. Cool slightly and serve.

Shrimp just out of the oven

Enjoy!

Why I like this recipe - It is fast. It is easy. It is delicious! Need I say more?

The recipe calls for shrimp with shells on. I have found that I lose much of the seasoning when peeling the shrimp to eat. Next time, I will remove the shells of a few of the shrimp and see if it makes a difference in the way the it cooks and tastes.

Wild versus Farm-raised Shrimp:

 There are many reasons why choosing to eat wild-caught shrimp (or any seafood for that matter) is best. We can consider the ecological, economical, and health problems associated with farming shrimp. 

Demand for shrimp in the U.S. has grown dramatically in the last half of the 20th Century causing domestic production to not be sufficient. Because of this, 90% of the shrimp sold in the U.S. is from foreign import. The country who imports the most, is Thailand. Thailand, and other countries, saw their opportunity and began farming shrimp. Asian and Latin American shrimp farming is mainly performed in areas that used to be mangroves.

Mangrove forests line coastal areas and are great for the environment by providing food and shelter to many types of fish and sea-life. Their roots are very large, long, and intricately woven together which helps protect the coastal land from erosion. When these plants are removed to make way for shrimp farms, all of these benefits are also taken away. Because these forests are great homes for fish, many coastal communities would fish and make a living from the mangroves. Fishing communities are being destroyed because fisherman can't make a living.

As far as the health effects of farm raised fish, the consumer is effected as well as local wildlife. Shrimp farms use a lot of pesticides, antibiotics, and artificial feed. These pollutants end up in the shrimp you eat as well as get released into local water systems. Once released, these pollutants can harm local wildlife and the people who drink the water.

These are just a few of the problems associated with farming shrimp. You can read in more detail online. There are so many sources of information out there. Luckily, it is now required to label the shrimp as to how they were produced. It is still your choice whether or not to buy farmed or wild-caught shrimp, but I know what I'll be purchasing!

 

Sources:

http://www.pccnaturalmarkets.com/sc/0808/sc0808-shrimp.html

collier.ifas.ufl.edu/SeaGrant/pubs/Shrimp%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf

http://www.healthdiaries.com/eatthis/wild-american-shrimp-vs-farmed-shrimp.html

{Recipe} Black Bottom Cupcakes

from How About Orange because she takes better photos than me!

I am not a fan of cake or cupcakes, mainly because they tend to be dry and inedible without icing (which I really don't like). BUT, these cupcakes are amazing! I found this recipe on Pinterest here. I am a lover of cream cheese and I thought I'd give these a try.

I have had black bottom cupcakes from bakeries and sandwich shops, but they were sometimes dry. I hate the feeling of having to immediately get a glass of water to "wash" down what was supposed to be scrumptiously delicious!

These cupcakes are NOT dry. They have a special ingredient that helps keep them moist and fluffy (vinegar). Plus, they are so easy and fast to prepare.

I know this type of recipe does not follow my goal of guiding you to prepare things you have produced yourself, but this was a request by a lab mate, and I usually follow through. At least this is a recipe that is easy for a beginner to feel comfortable doing. Don't buy cupcakes from the store, make them yourself! You will save a lot of money and feel great about your accomplishment.

Recipe (from How About Orange): Black Bottom Cupcakes

Filling
1 package (8 oz.) cream cheese, softened
1/3 c. sugar
1 egg
1/8 tsp. salt
1 c. chocolate chips (I use semi-sweet)
1 c. peanut butter chips (or more chocolate chips)

Cupcakes
1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1 c. sugar
1/4 c. baking cocoa
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 c. water
1/3 c. veg. oil (I use light olive oil)
1 Tbsp. white vinegar
1 tsp. vanilla

In a bowl, beat the cream cheese until smooth.

Add sugar, egg, and salt. Mix well. Fold in chips. Set aside.

For cupcakes, combine dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Add water, oil, vinegar, and vanilla. Mix well. The batter will be foamy (this is good!).

Fill paper-lined muffin cups half-full with batter. Top each with 2 Tbsp. of cream cheese mixture.

Bake at 350 degrees for 25- 30 minutes. Cool 10 minutes and remove from pan. Makes 18.

*To measure the cream cheese mixture I use a small cookie dough scoop. It works great and doesn't create a mess.

The Science Behind: Vinegar in baking

Cake recipes often use baking soda (a base) which helps to make the cake rise. This is often combined with eggs (acidic) and the two will react to make the cake rise and be fluffy. But often these cakes come out dense and heavy. This is not ideal for sheet cake and cupcakes. Instead, reduce the number of eggs in the recipe, and add in a little bit of vinegar.

Source

Vinegar is an acid: acetic acid. When combined with baking soda (bicarbonate) carbon dioxide and water is the byproduct. This is the same reaction that happens in the volcanoes children make for science projects. The moisture will get trapped in the cake and the carbon dioxide (a gas) will rise out of the cake causing the cake to be airy and fluffy. Provided the cake isn't baked too long, it will be very fluffy and moist.

{Restaraunt Review}: The Franklin Fountain

The annual fall national ACS Conference was held in Philadelphia this past year. I am not a city person, but I would go back just for the food! In the Reading Terminal Market there were so many options for a reasonable price. The sandwiches had a pile of meat on them (which you rarely see these days) that was real meat. NOT chewed up meat that was pressed into a form, but REAL whole turkey breast that was hand sliced into a pile of yummy goodness!

My lab mates and I decided to hit the pavement to see the city. We headed to the old city for some ice cream. Mike had seen a Food Network special on Philly and The Franklin Fountain was one of THE places to go. So we shared some sundaes for lunch.

We walked in and were transported back in time to the early 1900s. It was authentic, down to the uniforms the soda jerks were wearing. They serve homemade ice cream, sodas, and baked goods. According to the program Mike saw, we at least needed to try Mount Vesuvius.

My friends and I got the Peach Melba Parfait:

Fresh peach ice cream covered in raspberry puree, diced almonds, and whipped cream

 Mount Vesuvius:

Vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, hot fudge, brownie pieces, and powdered malt

 The Franklin Mint:

Mint chip and vanilla ice cream, marshmallow glaze, chocolate syrup, Creme de Menthe, and whipped cream

My favorite was The Franklin Mint!

You maybe asking why am I focusing on an ice cream shop? What is so special about it, other than the high prices? Well, they make almost everything in house! They make the ice cream from fresh fruit and often it is organic. Their cream is freshly whipped as it is being mounted on the top of the sundaes. The hot fudge and brownies are also prepared by them. This is the ultimate ice cream shop!

Everyone knows that ice cream isn't very good for you, but it IS a necessary experience in life! If you are going to eat it, you should choose to eat quality without any preservatives and artificial flavors or sweeteners. Keeping it simple will allow the natural flavors to shine through and it will be better for you.

If ever in Philly, you should head to The Franklin Fountain and try one of their many sundaes!

The Science Behind: Whipped Cream
To make whipped cream you can use a whisk, mixer, or a fork. I prefer using a whisk on a hand mixer to beat air in faster. A tip I picked up from Alton Brown is to chill the bowl and whisk in the freezer before beating. This will help to stiffen the fats and make it easier for the cream to be whipped. You should beat the cream (heavy or light) until just before peaks begin to form and then add in the sugar and flavoring. If you add them in too early, the whipped cream may not form as easily. Be sure to get all of the sugar dissolved before beating to stiff peaks; otherwise, you will have gritty whipped cream.

The purpose of whipping the cream is to introduce air into the fat of the cream to form what is called a colloid. A colloid is a mixture where one substance is microscopically dispersed amongst another substance. If you continue to beat the cream past the point of stiff peaks, you will start to clump the fat and butter will begin to form.

Because it is a colloid of fat and air, over time the air will escape and the whipped cream will fall. Thus making it necessary to be made as needed, but once it falls the cream can be re-whipped.