Pork and Turkey Chili

Posted on January 24, 2012 by

White meat and the other white meat! Together in chili form! But it’s not a white chili. And to be honest, the seasonings and other assorted contents of the chili make it tough for me to determine which meat I’m eating at any given second. So that’s a plus if you’re trying to convince someone to eat chili that isn’t made with beef. They won’t complain eating this!

Actually, the seasoning: it’s really deep and rich and interesting, sweeter than most chilis but in a really warm, savoury way, so it’s not, for instance, inappropriate to put cheese on top of it. Which I realize isn’t a problem for some people. My dad, for instance, is of the “apple pie without the cheese is like a hug without a squeeze” school, which doesn’t make ANY sense to me but he does lots of things that I can’t fathom, so I suppose this is just par for the course. So in his case, a sweeter chili – like, for instance, the brisket chili, which I felt was too cinnamony for cheese – well, for dad, I imagine that wouldn’t be a problem. It is for me. Then again, I don’t like cheesecake or cannoli or any other sweet cheese product, so… there you go. ANYWAY, my point is that this rode the balance pretty well, and wound up with an interesting flavour combination that I enjoyed.

The recipe comes from Allison Eats, whence I halved it, not just because holy pants, this was a pretty full pot and I don’t know if I’d be able to fit the whole recipe without having to sully Matt’s humongous beer brewing pot – more of a cauldron, really, it’s 5 gallons – and anyway I don’t want to ruin it by getting food flavours in there. But I also halved it because I had half an onion banging around the fridge and it was time. Also, I used a chipotle instead of a jalapeno, as always, and I decided to give a try to using balsamic vinegar instead of apple cider vinegar. Worked well, if you want my opinion. Balsamic vinegar in chili? Why not? Other changes… I replaced going halfsies on chicken stock and water for the liquid and just used all stock, in the interest of using up the whole can of stock, and I didn’t have any unsweetened chocolate hanging around so I just chucked in some chocolate chips. And the original amount of salt seemed out of hand, so I assumed it must have been a tbsp-for-tsp typo and proceeded accordingly.

Pork and Turkey Chili

Ingredients
2 tbsp olive oil
1 lb ground turkey
1 lb ground pork
1/2 an onion, diced
1 green pepper (or another colour bell pepper, whatever suits you), diced
1/2 a chipotle pepper, seeded and minced (you could almost certainly use more, this isn’t spicy at all)
1 14-oz can pinto beans, drained and rinsed
1 8-oz can tomato sauce
3 tbsp tomato paste
1 can (2 cups) chicken broth
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
small handful of chocolate chips, unsweetened if you have ‘em, semi-sweet is fine if you don’t
1/2 a bay leaf
2 tbsp chili powder
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cayenne… did I forget this? I might have. I honestly don’t remember putting it in. No wonder I didn’t find it particularly spicy
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
1/8 tsp allspice
1/8 tsp cloves
1 clove garlic, minced
your chili garnishes of choice

Method
In a small bowl, mix together the garlic and all the spices.
In your big soup pot, heat the oil over medium heat.
Add the onion and saute for 8 minutes or until soft.
Add in the meat, breaking it up into manageable chunks, and cook until browned.
Stir in the spices, stock, tomato sauce, tomato paste, beans, bell pepper, and vinegar – in other words, everything but the chocolate.
Bring to a boil.
Stir in the chocolate until it’s melted.
Reduce the heat and simmer, cover, for 2 hours or so – you should probably stir it more than once during that time or you may find that the liquid has all boiled off and things are starting to stick. If you do see the liquid disappearing too much for your taste, add water.
Serve with whatever garnishes you like with your chili!

I recently found out that Matt is not as vehemently against bell peppers when they’re cooked into something, like chili. Expect a lot more chili out of me!

Posted in food, meals, soup/stew | 2 Comments

Chocolate Chip Scones

Posted on January 20, 2012 by

We’ve been having a bit of a tough time at work for some reason – it’s sort of like a bunch of problems are all happening at once, so we’re a bit swamped, and my team and one other team are bearing the brunt of it. So I decided that what we needed, you know, other than bug fixes and more hours in the day, was baked goods. Hence these scones.

I was worried, by the way, baking them. The dough wasn’t dough as much as batter when it was time to put them in the oven, and I didn’t know if they were just going to be terrible or what, but apparently they turned out ok and even cured one colleague’s nervous tic he’d developed from talking to impatient and cranky people. Well, that was self-reported, but why would he lie?

The recipe is from Skinnytaste, which means it’s totally good for you, even if I didn’t do half AP flour and half whole wheat, because I was fresh out of whole wheat. I feel that was made up for by my forgetting to do the sugar-and-egg-white glaze. I also don’t think they suffered for it either way. So this is not only good for your soul, it’s good for your body. I mean, my body runs on scones… doesn’t yours?

Chocolate Chip Scones

Ingredients
3/4 cup buttermilk, or regular milk with 3/4 tbsp lemon juice stirred in and left to sit for 5 minutes
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp vanilla
1 egg
2 cups flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbsp (I only had 2 1/2 and it was fine) butter, cubed and stuck in the freezer until you need it
3/4 cup chocolate chips

Method
Preheat oven to 375.
Mix together the buttermilk (or “buttermilk”), egg, sugar, and vanilla with a fork in a bowl.
In a larger bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.
Cut in the butter with a pastry cutter until it’s like coarse sand. Everyone always says “or use 2 knives,” but I’ve tried that and it sucks. Don’t bother with the 2 knives. A pastry cutter is a sound investment if you want to make pie dough or anything flaky ever, considering that you can get one for under $10.
Stir in the chocolate chips.
Mix in the liquid, just until combined.
With floured hands, knead the dough briefly – the original recipe says to knead it 4 times, so I guess that means 4 squeezes, not 4 incidences of kneading. I’m not entirely sure what this is going to do for it, and if I make it again, I’ll try it without kneading, just to see.
Turn it out onto a lined baking sheet and pat into a disc about 9″ in diameter, or, you know, something like that. I mainly go by the length of my hand being 6″, and so I tried to overshoot it by an appropriate amount. Who knows.
Use a sharp knife to cut the disc into 8 wedges, then separate them using the back of the knife. The dough was prettttty wet at this point, but don’t be discouraged. Just make your misshapen little scones and think happy thoughts.
Bake for 15 – 20 minutes or until just beginning to go golden brown.

I’m usually a savory-scone type of person, but this could convince me.

Posted in dessert, food | 3 Comments

MassBytes.com!

Posted on January 19, 2012 by

I’ve joined the ranks of bloggers at MassBytes.com! MassBytes is a site run by Sarah Sparks, who, despite her irrational hate for peanut butter, is actually a lovely person, and she decided to turn her affinity for food and the internet and all the wide variety of people she knows into this site. It’s a bunch of musicians, photographers, activists, and assorted what-not (I fall under what-not) who are bound together by two things: we all live right around here in Massachusetts, and we all love food. Some of us love cooking it, most of us love eating it, there’s even a wine guy to save us all from looking like imbeciles at parties… what more do you need?

So all this is by way of saying you should go over there and check it out. What I’m doing there right now is posting a link to my latest post here, and elaborating on some ideas that it brought up for me while I was writing it. That outlook may change in the future, but one thing I’m fairly sure I won’t be doing is posting a recipe solely over there. So don’t worry, that stuff will stay at least here, if not in both places.

MASSBYTES: EAT IT WITH YOUR FACE. Like my new slogan? I just came up with it.

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Budget Pesto Tortellini

Posted on January 17, 2012 by

While I have always been about doing things a little more on the budget side, just on principle, I’m not a “budget blog.” I don’t put up the prices of stuff I’m using, I don’t tell you what to buy – I probably buy the cheap stuff, but that’s because I personally am a bit of a grocery store tightwad, but if you like to splash out a bit more, why wouldn’t you? – and I don’t usually try to make more-affordable “knockoff” versions of other recipes. And that’s not what this was – the original recipe (found on Bake-Aholic) uses just the same ingredients. I’m not budg-ifying anything here other than using less of them since I halved the thing. But consider for a moment. Regular pesto uses basil and pinenuts. This one uses, instead, parsley and walnuts. Pinenuts, in case you haven’t been to the store lately, are pricey as hell! Walnuts, less so. Likewise basil vs. parsley. So this is essentially a way to get your pesto on for less.

It’s not exactly the same as regular pesto, flavour-wise, but it’s similar. While the flavour punch from the basil isn’t there, you make it up with the walnuts, which – am I the only one that gets a little bit of a burn on my tongue from walnuts? Not in a bad way, in a spice way. Also, I used the biggest clove of garlic in the world, apparently – and it was twins, there was an extra one inside the skin, so it was mega-garlicky. That, and there’s pepper, and the pasta water and the little pat of butter makes it creamy. It’s got bite and it complements the mildness of the tortellini.

Parsley and Walnut Pesto Tortellini

Ingredients
1/2 cup walnuts
1/3 cup, or so, flat-leaf parsley leaves
1 clove garlic (or 2…), smashed
1 1/2 tbsp parmesan, plus more to garnish
1/4 tsp salt
a few good cranks of pepper
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 lb cheese tortellini – I used frozen, but fresh is fine, you just cook it according to the package directions no matter what
1/2 tbsp butter

Method
Put the tortellini on to cook according to package directions.
While it cooks, throw the parsley, garlic, salt, parmesan, and pepper into a food processor and process it to a paste.
Drizzle in the olive oil while continuing to run the processor. Add more if it’s still too thick, but I got by pretty well with the 2 tbsp.
When the pasta is ready, reserve 1/4 cup of the pasta water and drain the rest.
Stir the pesto, half of the reserved pasta water, and the butter through the still-hot pasta – if it’s too dry, you’ve got more pasta water, but I didn’t need more than half of it.
Serve with more parmesan.

Mine’s so green! I like it.

Posted in food, meals, pasta | 3 Comments

Chicken Alphabet Soup

Posted on January 10, 2012 by

It’s been a long time since I’ve had alphabet soup, so I had forgotten that it’s usually just vegetables (well, and alphabet pasta), until Matt reminded me that this was unusual in that it had chicken in it. I thought it was unusual in that it had numbers in it as well as letters. Apparently Prince brand alphabet pasta – the only kind I could find – has a pretty broad definition of “alphabet.” To be honest, I was a little surprised I found alphabet pasta at all.

Neither of us has a cold or anything, so this isn’t being used for its curative powers, and we both already know how to spell, so I’m not really sure why I made it. Why not?

The recipe comes from PBS, actually. So this means that people of a certain political bent hate it, and that it’s supported by Viewers Like You (and if you don’t read that in a Lamb Chop voice, I don’t really know what to do with you).

Chicken Alphabet Soup

Ingredients
2 tbsp butter
1/2 an onion, diced
1 stalk celery, diced
1 carrot, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/2 lb chicken breast, diced
4 cups chicken stock
1 bay leaf
1/3 cup alphabet pasta

Method
In a soup pot over medium heat, melt the butter.
Saute the onion, garlic, carrot, and celery for 5 minutes.
Add in the chicken and saute it for another 5 minutes or until white on all sides.
Pour in the broth and the bay leaf. I mean, don’t pour the bay leaf. That’s what “doing it wrong” looks like.
Bring to a boil.
Add the pasta and cook for 7 – 8 minutes.
Taste and add salt and pepper as needed.
Discard the bay leaf before serving.

I wanted to get a word in my spoon, but that demanded a level of patience and intensity that I just didn’t have.

Posted in food, meals, soup/stew | 1 Comment

Slow-Cooker Asian Pork Tacos

Posted on January 4, 2012 by

There’s only one problem with slow-cookers, but it’s a big one: you have to spend all afternoon smelling the delicious food and watching it bubble away and cook itself and you can’t touch it for another 6 hours. This is no exception. It starts smelling just ridiculous but you can’t eat it because you’ll get that pork disease that I always think is schistosomiasis but it isn’t. So if you make this, I know it’s hard, but leave it alone until it’s done. Don’t get pork disease.

The recipe came from Better Recipes, where it won an award. Understandably so! The pork is great, and really, what isn’t better in a taco? I’m not as sold on the slaw that goes with it, but partly, I’m sure, that’s due to my having to substitute coriander for cilantro, because I can’t abide chopping the stuff due to how it murders me in the sinuses. So it was maybe a little questionable from the get-go in terms of me liking it – even if everything worked out, it would still have that flavour going on in there. But it does add a crunch and a brightness to overcome the sweetness of the hoisin-y sauce the pork simmered in. That sauce, by the way, is just out of hand delicious. I had extra when I was putting away the leftovers, too much to put with the pork without making it soup, and I was putting off and putting off throwing away the excess, sneaking a spoonful here and there under the guise of testing whether it had cooled down yet.

I halved it and it JUST fit in my slow-cooker. Also, my supermarket didn’t have any pork tenderloin that wasn’t pre-seasoned For Your Convenience, which, thanks for assuming what I wanted to do with it, Stop & Shop. So I used pork chops on the bone instead. I don’t know that either of those cuts of meat are slow-cooker dreams since they don’t start out that tough. But it certainly doesn’t ruin them (shh, if you’re a pro and you know that it does, don’t spoil it for me). I upped the vinegar a little to cut through the stickiness of the hoisin sauce, which can sometimes be a little too cloying for me. And the coriander/cilantro substitute thing, of course.

Slow-Cooker Asian Pork Tacos

Ingredients

for the pork
1 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup hoisin sauce
1/4 cup rice vinegar
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp cornstarch
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 tbsp ginger (about a 1.5″ piece… hey, that’s handy – 1″ per tbsp), minced
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1 1/4 lb pork of some sort, I used bone-in pork chops

for the slaw
1 bag broccoli slaw (or less; I have tons left over)
1/3 cup orange juice
1/6 cup, whatever that is, olive oil
2 tbsp coriander

Method

for the pork
Whisk together everything from the pork ingredients list except for the pork itself (obviously) in your slow cooker.
Pop the pork in, making sure that sauce gets on all of all of it.
Cook on low for 6 hours.
Take the pork out and shred it with two forks.
Spoon sauce over it before serving.

for the slaw
Whisk together the orange juice, olive oil, and coriander until emulsified.
Toss the broccoli slaw through it until everything is well coated.

Serve the pork and slaw on warmed tortillas.

So this was supposed to be General-”Tso”‘s-flavoured pork. “Tso” is in quotes because everywhere you go that has this invention, it’s got a slightly different name. The first place I encountered it was in Montreal, where it was General Tao; I’ve seen it here as General Gao depending on where you go – either way, it’s the same sticky, sweet, dayglo-orange nuggets of deep-fried chicken (I’ve only seen it commercially as chicken, anyway). This… was not that. I’m pretty much happy about that; I was never so in love with General whoever and his chicken. Also, I suspect it’s made-up-Chinese – like, here, North Americans, this fits your definition of “Chinese food,” it’s got an exotic-but-still-pronounceable name – boom. Done. I’ve heard rumours that it actually does refer to something that exists in China, but the way it comes out here just seems… I don’t know. Like something you wouldn’t find somewhere else. I’m glad this came out differently.

Posted in food, meals | 2 Comments

Sesame Garlic Noodles

Posted on December 31, 2011 by

Last night, two of the other guys in the band came over and we sort of did a pre-New-Years’ thing, hanging out, laughing, and drinking perhaps too much, into late in the night. I threw together these noodles so that there would be something to eat other than “barley sandwiches.” I was worried that plain noodles – and especially the thin rice noodles I used – wouldn’t be enough for growing boys, but I figured they could always order some food if they were still hungry. Turned out I didn’t need to worry. We even had leftovers, and it wasn’t because anyone stinted themselves from eating.

The recipe comes from Tide and Thyme, and I doubled it and made a couple changes, mostly out of necessity. The one change I made deliberately was using thin rice noodles rather than spaghetti. The other changes were in amounts of things, because it turned out I didn’t have as much of everything as I thought I did, but it turned out pretty good, so I was pretty happy about it. Oh, and I only had regular sesame seeds, not black ones, so I lost the visual contrast there. But I kept the flavour, so I was happy. I didn’t double the peanut butter, though, because Matt doesn’t like peanut sauce, so I didn’t want it to be too noticeable. It was not noticeable at all, so I think I should at least have increased it a little bit.

Sesame Garlic Noodles

Ingredients
10 oz rice noodles
1/2 cup soy sauce
2 tbsp sugar
5 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup rice vinegar
1/3 cup sesame oil
2 tsp hot sauce
2 tsp, or more, peanut butter
1/3 cup canola oil
2 tsp sesame seeds
1 bunch green onions, sliced

Method
Cook the noodles according to package directions. Use a big pot, it turns into a LOT of noodles
In a big bowl, whisk together the soy sauce, sugar, vinegar, oils, hot sauce, and peanut butter.
When the noodles are ready, add them to the sauce bowl and toss to combine well.
Sprinkle the green onions and sesame seeds overtop.
Cover with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for at least an hour to let the flavours meld.

I actually ran out of soy sauce and had to make up the last little bit with teriyaki sauce, which is sweeter, so that’s why I didn’t double the sugar when I doubled the other stuff – if you use straight soy sauce, taste the sauce to determine whether you need more sugar or not. I suspect not, but your taste may be different from mine.

Posted in food, meals, pasta | Leave a comment

Milky Way Brownies

Posted on December 30, 2011 by

No no. These aren’t brownies that taste like Milky Way bars. They are brownies with melted-down Milky Way bars in them. Somehow the fact that they’re melted down rather than just chopped up and stirred in makes it more serious. Like, these brownies do not play around when it comes to having chocolate bars in them. I don’t know why that is, but it’s true, isn’t it? Think about it.

I brought these in to work this week because it’s a ghost town in there. Everyone’s burning up their vacation days, plus it’s a slow time of the year, so I guess it’s ok that now was when both the other members of my department took off. If they’d both wanted to leave at the same time at a busy time of the year, I’d have had to get my slapping hand out. And then shackle them to their desks. Anyway, every day EXCEPT the day I brought in the brownies, there were only 6 people in the place. For some reason, Thursday was the day everyone decided to come in, so there were, I don’t know, maybe 10 of us there? I suppose that’s for the best, otherwise we would all have gorged on brownies and this way we just all got at least one, and the enterprising among us got another. But I felt that those among us who, like me, had to tough it out and keep the site running shorthanded deserved a little something. And oh, coworkers who read this and weren’t in this week, don’t get all up in arms about it, you know I totally bake things for a full office too. Put your pants back on.

The recipe comes from So Very Blessed, and her brownies were just a wee bit different from mine – she used an 8×8 pan, which I don’t have, so I rolled with my 9×9 (that’s right, I am a baking gangsta), making my brownies less tall than hers. Also, she mentioned chocolate chips in the ingredients, but they never showed up in the instructions, so I don’t have any in mine – not sure if she had any in hers or not. Not that these suffered for it – they are PLENTY chocolatey. And chewy. And I had a little twitch of the hand when I was measuring the salt, so every now and then you’d get a bite that had a little nip of salt in it, which… I get it, salty-sweet people. I see your point now.

Milky Way Brownies

Ingredients
2 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
12 fun-sized Milky Way bars
4 tbsp (1/2 stick) butter
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/4 tsp, but it’s ok if you have a heavy hand, salt

Method
Preheat oven to 300.
In a small pot over medium heat, melt together the Milky Ways and the butter (because that’s what candy bars need, more butter!).
Set the mixture aside to cool while you do the rest.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the eggs.
Mix in the sugar.
Mix in the Milky Way mixture.
In another bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, and cocoa powder.
Stir the flour mixture into the wet ingredients, gradually and until just combined.
Pour batter into a greased 9×9″ pan – in fact, it might even be better to line it, either with parchment or tinfoil, because even sprayed with cooking spray, it was occasionally a challenge to get the brownies out without mangling them.
Bake for 40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

I could definitely detect the influence of the Milky Way bars in the chewiness and a little facet of the flavour that just has to be the nougaty bit because it can’t be anything else. These are interesting, try them!

Posted in dessert, food | 1 Comment

Christmas: Cheddar Onion Cornbread

Posted on December 29, 2011 by

I’ve never made cornbread before. I think this was a success – I mean, anything with cheddar cheese and sauteed onions in it is probably bound to be a winner, but the texture was pretty good and it wasn’t too sweet. I know there are wars over whether cornbread should be sweet or not, but it strikes me that it shouldn’t be. So I guess I’ve picked sides. There’s some sugar in this, and I was worried, but it tastes like all the sweetness is from the onion, which is just right.

The recipe is from Alida’s Kitchen, where she served it with chili, which is extremely appropriate. But there are parts of the country where cornbread goes with any big family meal, right? So I decided that made this ok. No one seemed to mind. I mean, I did tell my cousin-in-law that if he didn’t like it, I hated him and we weren’t friends, but I’m sure that had no bearing on anything.

Cheddar Onion Cornbread

Ingredients
1 tbsp olive oil
1 small-to-medium yellow onion, diced
3/4 cup cornmeal
1 1/4 cup flour
2 tbsp packed brown sugar
2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
1 cup buttermilk (I used the milk-and-vinegar trick since apparently the buttermilk industry is out to get me and won’t make small containers of it – 1 tbsp of vinegar or lemon juice per cup of milk, give it a stir and let it sit for 5 minutes = acceptable buttermilk substitute)
1 egg
1/4 cup canola oil
1 cup grated cheddar cheese

Method
Preheat oven to 400.
Heat the olive oil in a small pan over medium heat.
Saute the onion for about 5 – 7 minutes or until softened.
In a large bowl, whisk together the cornmeal, flour, sugar, and baking powder.
In a smaller bowl, whisk together the egg, canola oil, and buttermilk.
Stir the wet ingredients into the dry, just until combined.
Scoop out 1 tbsp of the onion and 1 tbsp of the cheese and set aside for the topping, and fold the rest into the batter.
Grease or spray a 9×9″ baking pan.
Spread the batter into the pan.
Top evenly with the reserved cheese and onion.
Bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

I realized when writing out the recipe that I forgot a couple things. There had been some pepper in the original recipe’s ingredients, although it never showed up in the instructions. It didn’t show up at all in mine – but it might very well have been a nice addition, so if you decide to make this and pepper crosses your mind, I’m with you. Also, there were supposed to be poppy seeds on top. I didn’t have any poppy seeds. I halfheartedly threw some sesame seeds on top, because why not, but it didn’t really add anything.

It’s good at room temperature, but it’s even better warm.

Posted in food, side dishes/appetizers | Leave a comment

Christmas: Chocolate Almond Shortbread or something

Posted on December 27, 2011 by

I hear there are rules for what makes shortbread “shortbread.” There are officially correct proportions and whatnot, and if you deviate from those, what you made may be delicious, but it isn’t shortbread. I, however, have no idea what those rules are, so when I call this shortbread, I just mean it is reasonably shortbread-like, it has a shortbready texture, and that to the uninitiated, like me, you could almost certainly pass it off as shortbread without facing much argument. It might be legit. I don’t know. I don’t especially care, otherwise I’d have looked up the proportions by now. You know it’s no longer acceptable to not know something, because of the internet – I mean think about friends in a bar together 20 years ago trying to remember what movies some actor was in; if you didn’t know, you just didn’t know. If you weren’t a pro at some topic, you didn’t have to know everything about it, and that was fine. Now, you’re having that same conversation in a bar with your friends – someone just whips out their phone and IMDBs it. Boom. Everyone’s an expert on everything. And if you’re not, well you’re just lazy. So I guess I’m too lazy to find out about shortbread.

Not too lazy to make it, though! The recipe for this crunchy, crumbly little cookie comes from the excellently-named Phuoc’n Delicious, where she didn’t make any unsubstantiated claims about what kind of cookies they were. Also, her dough logs look all uniform and nice, and mine looked… less so. In fact, not to say it, but don’t spend a lot of time looking at the cylinders of chocolatey, nut-studded dough wrapped up in plastic wrap in your fridge. They suggest something… entirely un-cookie-like. Especially if your logs are a little lumpy or un-uniform. I AM JUST SAYING. Can we move on to the delicious cookie department now?

Chocolate Almond Shortbread

Ingredients
1/3 cup sliced almonds
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened, or in my case kind of melted, oops
1/2 cup icing sugar
pinch of salt
1 egg yolk
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tbsp cocoa powder
white sugar for coating

Method
Preheat oven to 320.
While it’s preheating, toast the almonds for 15 minutes. When they inevitably burn, throw those ones away and put new ones on the still-hot baking sheet but don’t put it in the oven. It’s a workaround but it’s not bad.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter, icing sugar, and salt.
Mix in the egg yolk until well incorporated.
Stir in the flour and cocoa powder.
Fold in the almonds with a spatula.
Remove half of the dough to a sheet of plastic wrap.
Form it into a log and wrap it up. I was told the log should be about 8″ long. I guessed. My logs kind of tapered off trying to reach that length, leading to a few smaller cookies from the ends of them (and to, well, resemblances).
Repeat with the other half of the dough.
Refrigerate your logs for 15 minutes.
When you’re ready to take them out, dust a cutting board with white sugar.
Unwrap your logs onto the sugar and roll them in it to coat the exterior surface.
With a sharp knife and a swift hand, cut each log into 1/2″ slices. Important to note: the almond slices WILL cause your knife to waver if you’re not decisive enough with your cuts, which will lead to misshapen or falling-apart cookies. Also, if the almonds aren’t evenly distributed through your dough, that can also cause cookies to fall apart if there’s too much almond and not enough dough in a particular area to hold it together. Almonds don’t stick to one another, after all. But no worries. If something falls apart, just smoosh it back together.
Put your cookies on a lined baking sheet.
Bake for 20 minutes.
Cool on a wire rack.

These cookies don’t have an overload of chocolatey flavour. There’s only a tablespoon of cocoa powder, after all. Mine are a paler brown than the ones in the original recipe, so maybe hers had a stronger chocolate flavour, but I don’t think mine suffered for it. Not every confection has to blow your mind with its chocolate superpowers. Some can just give you a mellow taste of chocolate in a small-enough-to-have-a-few little bite.

Posted in dessert, food | 3 Comments