Chocolate Mint Squares, Anyone?

Lovely quick recipe for a hot summer's day, unless you don't feel like turning on your oven.

Since I don't remember exactly where I got this recipe from, I'll try not to be too specific. The general idea:

For the brownie layer:
Any brownie recipe will do, if baked in an 8-9 inch square baking dish. I recommend Brownies Cockaigne from the Joy of Cooking because they're delicious.

First, line the the greased pan with aluminum foil, with about two inches of overhang. Then add batter, bake, and leave them to cool completely IN THE PAN.

For the mint layer:

This is a simple cake frosting with peppermint extract added. It takes about

2 tbsp butter, softened
1 cup confectioner's sugar
2 (or more) tbsp heavy cream
1/2 tsp peppermint extract

Mix these together with a hand or stand mixer until smooth and spreadable.

Since you've let the brownie layer cool in the pan, you should be able to lift the entire layer out using the tin foil. If it crumbles or sags in the middle, leave it a little bit longer. Putting it in the fridge will help. If it doesn't, your brownies weren't done. Sorry.

Anyhoo, flatten the edges of the foil and spread the icing evenly over the brownie layer. Let the icing layer set in the fridge while you melt:

1 oz unsweetened chocolate
1 tbsp butter

in the microwave, or on the stovetop, however. Once it has melted, pour it over the chilled icing. Rock the brownies back and forth until the chocolate covers as much as possible, then GENTLY fill the rest in with light painting strokes using a small spatula.

Put the whole thing back into the fridge for at least 30 minutes. Then your slab is ready to cut into squares! Hooray!


These freeze well and are useful for potlucks.

ओह हेल्लो

Ahem. Caroline here. The silent contributor and mysterious Quinn Street Attic resident whose name does not appear on the banner. Not even in small print or in a parentheses or anything!

Anyway, Subway in Ireland has nachos. And there's one attached to the building I live in. Yes. So I haven't been cooking for pretty much the entire summer. Actually, that's mostly because I'm quite far from any decent supermarket and the ones that are easily accessible have a very poor selection of vegetables.

This post isn't completely pointless and does serve a bit of a purpose, however. I'm posting this here to say that because of that fact, I've really been missing cooking. And since I'll be getting back to Canada with a few weeks to play with before school starts, I would gladly accept a challenge from either of you (or any of the readers) that I would document and post here.

My only rule is that it has to include sausages, since seeing Sophia's torte thingy. Mmm sausages. Okay, that's a lie. You can challenge me with with whatever you like and then cook me sausages as a belated birthday present. That sounds fair.

Kiekenpastey: I'm never making this again.

Sitting in Victoria on a sunny day with a reclining ocean-view deck chair is not optimal for relating unpleasant cooking experiences. Okay, only comparatively unpleasant: The stress level of this dish is minimal, but the recipe clearly dates from times when aristocrats hired cooks who, you know, had nothing else to do in a day.

Today, if it's made at all, this pie is made at Easter, presumably because one has more time one one's hands, and many more mouths to feed with a single meal.

For the crust:

3 ¼ cups bread flour (this is a bread crust, not a pastry crust)

1 packet of yeast (The recipe calls for rapid-rise yeast, but more on this later)

2/3 cup lukewarm water

½ tsp sugar

1 egg, lightly beaten

¼ butter, softened (plus extra for greasing)

For the Filling:

800g chicken (the recipe calls for a whole chicken, but being lazy, I just bought chicken breast. Expensive, I know)

1 tbsp lemon juice

¼ cup butter

150g ground veal

pinch of freshly grated nutmeg (I don’t know anybody not Dutch who has a nutmeg grater... or maybe it’s just not something people talk about. I’m sure pre-ground nutmeg would be fine)

300g pork sausage

150g oyster mushrooms, diced

8 canned artichoke bottoms, drained (I’d never bought artichoke bottoms, and now even canned artichoke hearts are difficult to find. You’ll have to try Pete’s in Halifax or Vincenzo’s in Kitchener-Waterloo)

4 tbsp breadcrumbs

5 small eggs (I did not use small eggs)

4 tbsp chopped celery leaves (I used something else I found in the garden. I don’t remember what it was)

2 green onions, finely chopped

milk for glazing

salt and ground black pepper

For the sauce (which I don’t recommend; it just made the pie soggy, but I’ll include it in case you DO make the pie and turns out inexplicably dry):

1 cup whipping cream

1 tbsp corn starch

2 tbsp chives, chopped.

There’s a note under the ingredients that says morels are more authentic than oyster mushrooms, but the most I’ve heard about morels is that they’re only available for a short time during the year, so I doubt many stores would bother with them. I wouldn’t bother either.

First we make the dough! Sift the flour, if you wish, and make a well in the center. Add the yeast and water, and stir gently until incorporated. Leave it to rise for fifteen minutes. The issue I had here was that the only yeast I had was breadmaker yeast. It said it was interchangeable with regular yeast, but wasn’t rapid-rise, I guess. The only issue was that the dough didn’t rise during this stage at all. So... if it doesn’t rise during the fifteen minutes, don’t worry about it. If it does... then good for you, you’re better than I am.

After fifteen minutes, add the egg and butter and knead! I chopped the butter into cubes even though it’s softened, because I couldn’t imagine trying to knead half a stick of butter into wet flour with my hands. Transfer the whole thing to a floured surface and continue to knead until the dough is smooth and elastic. I wish I’d timed how long this took, but we’ll just say it was longer than I thought it would be. But it DOES happen. Form the whole thing into a ball and place it in a clean bowl. Cover it with a dampened dish towel and leave to rise at room temperature for 1 ½ hours.

Here’s another warning for this recipe: it uses a LOT of dishes. This is good practice for the clean-as-you-go style of cooking. If you don’t cook that way, you’ll need to start.

Anyhoodle, it is now time for the hard part. If you use a whole chicken, cut it into eighths. Otherwise, simply divide it into manageable, cookable pieces. Rub them with the lemon juice, salt, and pepper. In a large flame-proof casserole dish (or a dutch oven, like I used), melt the butter over high heat. Add the chicken and cook until browned, about ten minutes. Transfer the chicken to (yet another) plate and take the casserole off the heat.

Mixed the veal with nutmeg and whatever seasonings you want, and form into six little meatballs. return the casserole to the heat* and add the meatballs and sausage. Cook at a high heat, turning frequently, for about ten minutes, until browned. Return the chicken to the casserole. Cover and simmer for 25 minutes.

*let me be the first to point out that one could simply form the meatballs earlier, and do all the cooking at once.

Remove the meat. Here the book says to reduce the cooking liquid until it sizzles. I didn’t know what that meant, really... so I reduced it until... well... until I saw fit. SO helpful, I know. Add the mushrooms and cook for 4-5 minutes. Remove them from the casserole using a slotted spoon. Discard the fat. You’re very welcome, your kitchen now smells delicious!

Cut the chicken meat from the bones, if there are any, and dice neatly. Slice the sausage thickly. Pat the artichoke bottoms dry and stuff with the mushrooms.

Your dough should now appear to be turning into some sort of lagoon resident-type monster under its dish towel.

Preheat the oven to 400˚F. Grease a 10 inch springform pan. I love springform pans. They’re the best. Cut off one third of the dough and knead on a floured surface, if you have any surface left with all those dirty dishes. Form into a ball and return to the bowl. knead the larger piece and form it into a ball as well.

Roll the large dough into about 14 inch round. Gently line the springform pan with the round. Roll the smaller bowl into a 10-inch round and cut out six hearts with, what else, a heart-shaped cookie cutter. Does everybody have these? I went through my mother’s cupboards and found about six different sizes of heart, among other novelty shapes. Sugar cookies this year are going to be FUN.

spread the breadcrumbs over the bottom of the pie crust and evenly distribute the artichoke bottoms on top of the crumb bed. Spoon the cut meat over and around the artichokes.

There are supposed to be more of these, but you get the idea.

With a spoon, or whatever, make five evenly spaced impressions in the top of the mixture. Into each, break an egg!

Sprinkle everything with the spring onions, celery, and seasoning. Pour in the cream.

Cover the pie and press the edges together, cutting off any “surplus.” brush the pie with milk, arrange the heart cut-outs to your liking, and brush with milk again.

Let bake for 1 hour. Halfway through baking, sprinkle the pie with water and cover it lightly with baking parchment.

For the sauce (sigh), heat the cream in a small pan. Mix the cornstarch with 2 tbsp water to a paste in (yet another) small bowl, and stir into the cream. Season to taste and stir in the chives. Pour into a sauce boat.

By now, it's likely late at night. You might want to stick this in the fridge and eat it for breakfast. I recommend reheating it in the oven though, because after a while the cream tends to make the bread crumbs quite soggy. And my last warning: make sure there are others willing to help you eat this; it's hefty.

What do you MEAN the Store is out of Garlic?!

Grocery shopping is about to get infinitely more frustrating as apparently Loblaws workers are going on strike for "an extended period of time." No matter: they consistently have absolutely nothing I need. They stopped selling canned artichoke hearts for Pete's sake!

Which brings me to today's challenge: Chicken Pie! This is all I'll be doing today, aside from some online window-shopping and that rockabilly dance night for one.

Sounds like the life, huh? Unfortunately, this recipe is VERY involved. It's not my usual chicken-and-mushroom-in-a-cream-sauce pie, this is traditional Kiekenpastey.

Now here's the weird thing about dutch recipes: the description begins by saying that this was "traditionally a sweet pie containing ginger, cinnamon, saffron and plenty of sugar."

Now that's fine. But where, along the way, did chicken find its way in? A clue: "Later, the ingredients included cocks' combs, sweetbreads and chestnuts in an open pastry case."

I can't wrap my head around how THAT must have happened...

Anyhow, the recipe has thankfully been updated to be, well, less gross. The filling consists not only of chicken, but also pork sausage and ground veal. So we've got our barnyard animals covered.

But guess what else! It's also got mushroom-stuffed artichoke bottoms! And homemade bread dough for the crust instead of pastry!

You can see now why I need a whole day to do this. Especially since I couldn't find artichoke bottoms for the life of me.

The picture in the book has cute little heart cutouts in the top. If my version has the same, we'll know I somehow had fun in the process.

A Celebration of All Kinds!

I thought that I'd honor Sophia's birthday with a cake. She may not have been here to share it with the rest of us but I knew she would have liked it a lot. I chose the Little Black Dress Chocolate Cake that she proposed for me to make. I chose to make it on a day on which I could celebrate it with all of my relatives and incidentally the closest holiday turned out to be Father's Day. So Sophia, though you may never get the chance to be a father one day, this cake is for you!



This was attempt number one. I had my 2 year old niece as a helper and by doing so I promptly forgot to add in the whipped eggs to the batter until I had tranferred it to the cake pan. That's just one of the many mishaps in the process of making the first cake. Needless to say it collapsed. The cake itself was dense like a brownie and I opted out a full cup of sugar to give it a bittersweet chocolate flavor.
















Day 2
I've been swimming in ganache so I decided to try again on the cake.


The second attempt was done in the proper fashion. I opted out only 1/2 a cup of sugar, when I whipped it in with the butter.






This cake was apparently a bit sweeter than the first but much lighter and fluffier. I'd call this cake a torte myself as it is rich, thick and one piece certainly suffices.







Day 3
Still trying to keep my up above all that ganache.Observe the extra ganache in the bowl.




Solution? Chocolate truffles as suggested by the original recipe. She made the suggestion almost as an afterthought as if making truffles were the most obvious and easiest solution to leftover ganache. I began to research. I found a fairly simplified version for making chocolate truffles here and than I began to get creative. I was inspired by a local chocolatier in Portland, Maine, Sweet Marguerites that have created chocolates with innovative ingredients such as bacon and lambic beer. I began to rummage in the beer fridge and found the perfect ingredient, a beautiful bottle of Unibroue's quelchose. I began to dream about a quelchose ganache dipped in dark chocolate and covered in walnut crumbs.

Then I stumbled upon this site that inspired me to continue to try other cooking with beer. http://www.beercook.com/articles/beerchoc.htm

Alas, for the time being I stuck with making the original truffle recipe that I found. I coated the ganache dipped in dark chocolate with cocoa powder and crushed hazelnuts. Result? Decadent.



Perhaps it all started yesterday when I was dropping off leftover cake at my brother's house where I began flipping through my sister in law's cooking with beer book, but I think this could lead to a whole new territory for me to explore while Sophie dabbles with Dutch traditions.

A Herring in Thy Gullet

A few things I've learned about Dutch cooking:

1) It's weird.
2) Every meal is supposedly a delicious balance between meat, potatoes, and vegetables. Vegetarian alternatives will be offered where available. I hope you like asparagus soup.
3) The Dutch REALLY like baking. They also stick almonds in wherever they possibly can.
4) A lot of traditional Dutch cooking was kept secret until after the wars due to Calvinist influence. Before the 1950's it was a "secret cuisine" and is only recorded in handwritten notebooks, which are now very valuable.

The weirdest tradition, I have to say, is that of eating matjes... That's a whole herring fresh from the catch. It's raw, but at least it's gutted.



My father demonstrates the proper method of eating matjes. Full points for form, but I'm pretty sure that herring's pickled.

And when I said I would be refusing challenges, I would like to clarify that I still plan to meet my own secret challenge of a pie for every season. This gruesome thing is strawberry rhubarb pie... soup.



A fairly simple recipe, just taken from the Joy of Cooking. If that book tells you anything, it's how to make a good pie. I don't even have any tips, other than when it says to use a rubber spatula, USE a rubber spatula. I almost didn't because it sounded absurd, but it was actually very helpful.

I used a recipe that uses both butter and shortening, which makes the crust both delicious and easy to work with. I believe it was "flaky pastry dough," which is not to be confused with "deluxe flaky pastry dough."

'Tis all! I'm off to enjoy a picnic on the lawn at the Grand River Baroque Festival. Check it out for next year.

--Sophia

The Show Must Go On!

This past week I've had a serious setback as I've been quite ill. I've been put on a strict diet by doctor's orders. I was so distraught that I decided to fulfill my foodie needs by cooking. I wasn't able to enjoy personally in the fruits of my labor but those who did take pleasure in the results were aptly satisfied and full.

I indulged in making an old favorite of mine. Classic Argentine pan relleno or stuffed bread. I love how simple and easy this recipe is. Not only does it require a few inexpensive ingredients that any ol' baker will already have stocked in their kitchen, but it also allows you to get creative with the filling.















This time I chose to use a soft, herb cheese, fleur de verte, with which I created a spread with roasted garlic and olive oil.

I then layered jambon de bayonne on top with Spanish black and green olives with chopped dried chilis.











It was a beautiful combination and would have made a great accompainment to a good red wine.

I also tried my hand at a chickenless curry salad using jasmine rice, sliced apples, celery, red onion, sliced almonds, raisins and red seedless grapes. As you can see, I used almonds as I would not be the one consuming this dish.

I began by sweating some chopped red onions in a pot with some olive oil on medium heat. I then proceeded to add the spices in order for the onions and oil to fully absorb and release flavor to the following ingredients. The spices included, garam masala, anise powder, a bit of clove, turmeric, coriander, cayenne, paprika, and cinnamon. Most often garam masala and coriander are the two that I add the most of, but this time, I went a little heavier on the turmeric as well, which was necessary for this recipe. It was safe to go much lighter on the paprika and cayenne as its not a dish meant to be very spicy. I toasted the two cups of rice in with the spices, onions and oil for a couple of minutes or so. At the same time I added in the chopped celery and raisins. I gradually added water to the pot to allow the rice to continue cooking.

I should have gradually added up to about 4 cups of water. The general rule of thumb for rice is two parts water for one part rice. I feared for when the rice began to stick thus I frantically added more and more water. This resulted in a mushy mass of curry rice ball by the end.

As you add water to rice in any recipe prepared in this way, I suggest to continue to augment your spices accordingly. It's very frequent that flavor is lost and diluted when liquid is added so be cautious of this. One such recipe that comes to mind, is the guiso, something like a basic stew. In Argentina, it's common to do make guiso with a base ingredient such as lentils (guiso de lentejas), pasta such as macaroni or tube pasta(guiso de fideos), or rice (guiso de arroz), and a tomato base liquid. It comes in a carton and is known as puree de tomate. Whatever meat of your liking can be thrown in accordingly too, anything from salchichas (small sausages/hot dogs), chorizo (real Spanish sausage) morcilla (blood sausage) , to carne molida (ground meat) o cortada (cuts of meat). Anyhow... hopefully this somewhat unrelated tangent will lead to another upcoming blog post and complete recipe for some other day.

The dish was served chilled with the sliced apples and red grapes mixed in after the rice was taken off the stove. Although the resulting texture of the rice was unsatisfactory but I trusted in the consumer, that the flavors were spot on.
I also accompanied the summer meal with a ratatouille. This time I added banana peppers which I think will become a permanent part of this recipe for me.

So there! I have been chartering culinary territory in my absence of the blog. And just for the record, I've also made the most delicious lamb burgers with jalapenos, fresh basil and mint as well as blue cheese burgers with a spiced bacon. Yum! Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures. You'll have to trust me on this one. I'm sure they will be made again at some point this summer.