The Cookbook Junkies

Do you ever get on a kick of sorts? You are reminded of a flavor that you love and then you saturate your cooking with the ingredient.  Reminiscent of pumpkin flavors in the Fall – the pinterest and food blogs explode with all things pumpkin…my cooking has exploded with star anise.  I love the flavor of the star shaped pods and there is something satisfying seeing them in my completed dish.

Last Friday we had this great Steak Sambal Goreng at an Asian Fusion restaurant.   I wanted to try to recreate the dish at home – so on Tuesday I took a stab at it – but with pork…and it was pretty darn close…well except for the fact that it was pig instead of cow. 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. 

Arrange two pounds of wings on a sheet pan and season with salt and pepper.  (I save the tips of the tips of the wings in a plastic bag in the freezer for stock making time).  Sprinkle 10 to 12 star anise pods over the wings.  Bake for about 15 minutes and then remove from oven and flip the wings over.  I then re-season with salt and pepper and place back into the oven for an additional 15 minutes. 

1/4 cup of honey
1/4 cup of favorite barbecue sauce

Combine the above ingredients – and using a pastry brush – coat the wings liberally with the sauce.  Place back into the oven for 10 minutes.   Remove, flip the wings over and repeat with the sauce on the opposite side – return to oven for 10 more minutes.  After that final ten minutes, turn the broiler on and allow the wings to crisp up for three to five minutes (check them carefully). 

I hope you try one of these dishes.  My family enjoyed them!

Jenny

Edit:  I have to laugh – I just bought a pound of star anise from Nuts.com and guess what ad is on my side bar.  A small spice sized bottle was 7.99 at the grocery and a pound was 9.99 at Nuts.com.

I hesitated picking out Meat and Potatoes by Rahm Fama.  Meat and potatoes  – I’m so pass meat and potato recipes or so I thought.  I thought they would be simplistic  – well I was wrong.   Titles can be deceiving.  This book’s title should be Meat, Potatoes and Beyond.

When I opened the book to the first recipe combination that included kimchi, I was happy!  Meat and Potatoes includes recipes for smoked paprika parsnip fries, “mushroom” (shaped) potatoes chimichurri, pastrami flank steak, braised short ribs with ginger port risotto, cambozola barley risotto, sesame brown rice cakes, curry pear slaw, white pepper-crusted rack of lamb with creamy truffle pistachio potatoes and dozens of more great twists on meat and potatoes.  There is even a chapter on game as well. 

Tonight I made the pistachio crusted pork Milanese and again I was impressed.  The chops were incredibly flavorful and moist.  So easy and delicious with perfect instructions.  I also made the coconut risotto – really unique and tasty.   Try as I might – I can’t get a decent photo of risotto…coupled with dark skies and rain — this is what you get…

Not pretty but fantastic!

This past weekend I had a peanut satay chicken with a pickled cucumber and red onion condiment on the side and it was fantastic – I think the banh mi pork with peanut butter and cucumber salad will be made very soon from this book as well as the waffle fried chicken with maple bacon collards.  On Andrew’s birthday I  made waffle battered chicken tenders and they were fantastic – I am anxious to try Fama’s recipe.  I am looking forward to making a great deal of Fama’s recipes.

I am happy I chose this book from Blogging for Books.  I will be using it a great deal to up my meat and potatoes game.

Another Saturday night and I just got a new cookbook or three or four…

I have been fortunate enough to review some great cookbooks — the latest books I will be discussing in this post. 

Let’s start with appetizers….Bacon and Rosemary Gugelhupf from Das Cookbook by Hans Rockenwagner which will be released in October by Prospect Park Books.  Hans combines German Cooking with California Style.

I made the bacon and rosemary gugelhupf for a cheese tray to be served as an appetizer.  It was really delicious and full of flavor.  The gugelhupf is the bundt like bread/cake in the photo above.  As Hans suggests, I served it with crème fraiche and chives.  Everyone enjoyed it and asked to take some home.  I’m checking with the publisher to see if I may share the recipe.  I will edit this post next week if that is permitted.

Das Cookbook is a beautiful book.  My German cookbooks are lacking in number – so I was thrilled to see Das as a Fall release.  There is a pretzel section which gives detailed instruction in pretzel making and forming.  Other recipes that caught my attention were a whole grain sunflower rye, buchteln which is an Austrian pull apart roll filled with jam, California hash with carrots, sunchokes and kale, pretzel knodel, apple walnut strudel, schnitzel, macaroni and cheese soufflé, spatzle, short rib goulash, Korean flank steak with daikon kimchee and German potato salad, an orzo “risotto” and potato almond croquettes.  There is a lovely chapter on Holiday baking as well as a chapter on desserts – the dark chocolate hazelnut cake and Hans’ version of cheesecake looked lovely. Hans’ finishes off with a pantry section covering basics. 

Das Cookbook is a beautiful book that has a little something for everyone.  Please check it out.

Prospect Park Books has allowed me to share the recipe for the gugelhupf — here it is:

1 cup of whole milk, lukewarm

Combine warm (but not hot) milk and yeast in a small dish.  Set aside for five minutes until it begins to bubble.

In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, combine butter, sugar, 2 ½ cups of flour, baking powder, and salt.  Cover stand mixer with a kitchen towel and mix on low speed for 30 seconds.  Add remaining 2 ½ cups flour, cover, and continue to mix until flour is flecked with butter like pie crust, about 30 more seconds.   Add yeast-milk mixture and mix again, scraping down paddle if needed.  Add 3 eggs, mix until incorporated, and add remaining 3 eggs.  Mix well, scraping down paddle and sides of bowl.  Dough will be very sticky.  Cover with a kitchen towel and set aside to rest in a warm spot for 20 minutes.

Butter your hands generously, add bacon and rosemary to dough, and mix well to incorporate.  (if not using bacon and rosemary, fold dough up on itself 2 or 3 times with buttered hands or a rubber spatula)  Transfer dough to a large, lightly buttered bowl, cover with a kitchen towel, and set aside to rise in a warm spot for 1 hour. (Note:  it will not double).

Generously butter a large 9 or 10 inch gugelhupf or bundt pan with butter.  With lighty floured hands, punch down dough, remove from bowl, and gently stretch around bottom of gugelhupf pan.  Loosely pinch edges together.  Cover tightly with plastic wrap, refrigerate, and let rise for 12 hours or overnight.  Dough should rise more than halfway up sides of pan. 

Preheat oven 350 and place rack in middle of oven.  Place cold gugelhupf in oven and bake until top is light golden brown and cake tester comes out clean, about 40 to 45 minutes (a smaller pan may take a few minutes longer), rotting pan front to back halfway through.  Cool 10 minutes on a wire rack, then invert onto rack to cool completely.  Serve with crème fraiche livened up with some chopped chives, if desired.

My next recipe came from Food and Life by Joël Robuchon which is coming out on September 30th.  This book encourages the celebration of food as an integral part of happiness. Joël Robuchon is world famous  chef who offers gourmet recipes while Dr. Nadia Volf provides detailed explanations of the nutritional virtues of foods —and their effects on our well-being.

1 onion, chopped

sauce before it finishes cooking, and serve when the eggs are done. 

This book is  gorgeous which is typical for books from Assouline.  It is perfect for the novice or the gourmet.  Recipes range from pasta dough and brownie cake all the way to celery salad with prawns, pear and raisin clafoutis, poached seabass with leek and cilantro, mushroom broth with scallop and ginger.  This book will be well used as a cookbook and reference guide in my kitchen.

We finish off with dessert from Extreme Brownies by Connie Weis.

Extreme Brownies will be released September 9th by Andrews McMeel Publishing. I am known in my circles (small as they are) as the brownie queen, the cheesecake queen and the macaroni and cheese queen. Extreme Brownies has recipes for Kitty Kat Krunch Brownies, Crunchy Candied Pecan Brownies, Mega Mallo Coconut Brownies, Peanut Butter Buttercream Brownies, Raspberry Rapture, Coo Coo for Coconut Marshmallow Brownies, Snickering Brownies which I made on Saturday for company — oh my word – delicious. Then there is a blondie section – Caramel Crispie Blondies, Roasted Apple Walnut Blondies and the White Chocolate Raspberry Blondies look incredible. 

There are photos of each creation and they are gorgeous. I love when someone can introduce new brownie and blondie recipes that I haven’t seen before – AND look like an elegant dessert to boot.

When I brought the tray of these brownies out, there were oohs and aahs.  Well, there were oohs and aahs when I brought anything out because all of these recipes are show stopping delicious.

My friends and I call October — Cookbooktober — it’s our Christmas.  So many great releases! Please check out these titles — you’ll be happy you did.