Chocolate cheesecake (p. 745) and Crumb crust (p. 667)

I read Josh a long list of cakes he could choose from for his birthday cake and he choose Chocolate cheesecake (p. 745). I wasn't particularly excited about this choice since I'm not a big chocolate fan, but it wasn't my birthday. I love cheesecake, though, and my previous TJOC cheesecake attempt had turned out perfectly.

TJOC says to make a Crumb crust (p. 667) using chocolate wafer cookies. I imagine that chocolate wafer cookies are like Nilla wafers but are chocolate instead of vanilla. I couldn't find those anywhere. I decided that instead of scouring Fort Collins for the correct cookies I would just make the crust using Nilla wafers.

I smashed the Nilla wafers in to crumbs using a rolling pin, which worked really well. It was actually rather fun to smash the wafers.



I write out a list of what I am making to keep myself on task when I have big cooking days. If you decide to lay your notebook on the stovetop, make sure you don't accidentally turn on the wrong burner, charring the notebook. Whoops! I'm lucky it didn't start on fire.



Finally, I had my cup and a half of cookie crumbs:



I mixed the cookie crumbs, sugar, and melted cooled butter.



The mixture was very crumbly and difficult to convince to stick in the pan. I also couldn't figure out if I was supposed to just line the bottom of the pan or the bottom and sides. I decided to line half the sides (an odd choice, I realize). I figured that would at least let us know which was correct.



I baked the crust for a few minutes:



So, crust finished, time for the cheesecake.

I beat a few packages of cream cheese until smooth:



I added sugar and vanilla to the cream cheese, beat until soft and creamy, and then added three eggs, beating after each addition. It's really important not to overbeat at any stage because beating causes air to be incorporated in to the batter, which can cause the finished cheesecake to crack.



Two cups of sour cream and some unsweetened cocoa powder were then mixed in to the cream cheese mixture:



I stirred semisweet chocolate (it seemed to me that bittersweet would make the cake way too bitter) with boiling water until the chocolate was melted and smooth. This took a surprisingly long time.



The chocolate was added to the cream cheese mixture and beat until blended. The whole concoction was poured into the crust:




The cake cooked for about 45 minutes. I let it sit in the oven with the door propped open (much easier if you have a gas stove than an electric stove) for another hour.



The cake was cooled on the counter and then refrigerated for a day:



The cake was truly beautiful. And it was chocolatey. In fact, it was CHOCOLATEY. If you love intense chocolate flavor, this is the cheesecake for you (meaning, it was not the cheesecake for me). I'm actually really glad I made the wrong crust because I think it would have been over the top with the correct chocolate one. It also had a strong sour cream bite to it, which I thought was odd. I think I would have liked more cream cheese and less sour cream in the cake. Even so, it's always rewarding to see such a beautiful cheesecake. And, no, I still don't know what I was supposed to do with the crust.

Random facts:

• Cheesecakes are considered a custard (On Food and Cooking, p. 97).

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Herb or roasted garlic muffins (p. 635)

Those of you who like reading about my cooking mishaps, this is a post for you!

I knew that we needed some sort of bread because Josh is a carbophile and it was his birthday meal. I've often eyed the Herb or roasted garlic muffins (p. 635), even going so far as the roast the garlic and forget what I meant to use it for a couple times. I like savory muffins much more than sweet muffins. I honestly think that Red Lobster's cheddar muffins are one of the most delicious things in chain restaurants today (although I unfortunately don't like most of the other offerings at RL).

In one bowl I mixed flour, baking powder, and salt. In the other I mixed eggs, cream, and melted butter:



I combined the two and folded in a head of roasted garlic (peeled and mashed) and some lemon zest:



It's imperative not to overmix when you are making muffins or they will get tough.

I spooned the batter into the muffin pans and popped them in the oven. At this point I noticed a problem.

I had forgot to add the 2/3 cup of sugar.

That's a lot of sugar to forget. It seems like that could be the difference between success and failure for a recipe. I had thought the batter seemed too dry, which is why I was re-reading the recipe. The sugar being left out wouldn't make the mixture seem dry but certainly could be a problem.

The muffins had only been in the oven for a minute or two so I took them back out, dumped them all back in to the bowl, and added the sugar and vanilla:



I mixed them again. I wasn't optimistic about how the muffins were going to turn out--this was a lot of dough abuse. In my defense, I was making a cake, muffins, ham, glaze, carrot puree, and salad dressing, so there was a lot going on.

I spooned them back in to the muffin trays and cooked them for about 17 minutes:



Perfection. Perfect outside and inside:



Believe it or not, they actually turned out quite good, which I would never have expected. They were still light and flaky (probably not quite as light and flaky as they would have been but very acceptable). They weren't particularly sweet and I think it would have been a disaster without the sugar. The roasted garlic was a nice undertone and they were terrific with the ham (although I think they would be even better with a pork roast). Next time I make them, I might add a little cheese.

I think this is a testament to why you should try to save screwups instead of just throwing them away. Sometimes you can rescue a mistake.

Random info:

• Muffins stale quickly because the small amount of fat can't protect the starch (On Food and Cooking, p. 554). This is probably why if you add the higher amount of fat that TJOC calls for (a stick of butter rather than a half stick) and a higher fat milk product (cream rather than milk) the muffins last for much longer.

Bday1: Japanese steakhouse ginger dressing (p. 575), Carrot puree (p. 266), and Mustard glaze (p. 583)

I decided to make a big meal for Josh's birthday, so there will be three posts in total.

When planning the meal, Josh and I both love ham, so that was an easy choice for the protein. It also seemed like a nice salad and some sort of vegetable, some sort of carbohydrate, and a cake would be a great idea.

I have been incredibly intrigued by Japanese steakhouse ginger dressing (p. 575) in TJOC for a long time. I love Japanese steakhouses. I've eaten at at least a dozen of them, in both Japan and the US (oddly different and the same). My favorite American teppenyaki joints are Ohana Steakhouse in Des Moines (I LOVE their scallop sauce) and Sapporo Steakhouse in Daytona Beach, Florida. I've eaten at those two many, many, many times and they never disappoint.

I combined celery, carrots, peanut oil, rice wine vinegar, ginger, onion, sugar, soy sauce, catsup, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and hot pepper sauce in my beautiful Vita-Mix blender:



Final product:



On some lettuce:



This dressing was EXACTLY like the ginger dressing at most of the Japanese steakhouses that I've been to in the US. In fact, it was a dead ringer. The dressing was good--it had a light kick due to the ginger and hot pepper sauce but was fairly sweet with a nice peanuty undertone. Plus, even with the giant list of ingredients, it was super simple. Throw everything in to a blender or food processor and finished.

I had high hopes for Carrot puree (p. 266) because a carrot/mashed potato mix sounded absolutely amazing. I love carrots. I love potatoes. What could be better?

I placed a half pound of sliced potatoes in water and boiled them for about five minutes:



I added sliced carrots and cooked until the vegetables were tender. The potato/carrot mixture was then drained, returned to the pan, and mashed. I added heavy cream, salt, butter, and pepper:



Absolutely delicious. The mash was creamy and smooth. The carrots elevated the dish from simple mashed potatoes and the cream made it seem slightly decadent. I loved the carrot puree and will absolutely make it again. It was also amazing leftover.

I decided to make a Mustard glaze (p. 583) for the spiral sliced ham I was making. I mixed brown sugar, mustard, and honey:



Slathered it on the ham:



This glaze was probably my favorite so far. The sweet mustard flavor complimented the ham perfectly. I saved the glaze as a dipping sauce and it was great for days. I also really like easy glazes and this one was incredibly simple and made with stuff I already had on hand.

Random fact:

• Robert Timothy French started work for a spice merchant at 21. When he was 60, French bought a flour mill and bakery with his son, starting the RT French Company, where they sold spices, including powdered mustard with turmeric. They introduced their French's cream salad mustard in 1904 (The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, p. 398)

Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (p. 768)

I have a never-ending love for oatmeal cookies. When I was a child, my mother and I used to make them constantly. In fact, in Campfire in elementary school we were supposed to write down all the ingredients and steps of a recipe from memory, and then compare it to the real recipe. Everyone's recipes were extremely wrong--except mine. I forgot baking soda and my temperature was slightly off. That's how often we made them.

I was optimistic about Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (p. 768) because although I know that dried fruit is delicious in oatmeal cookies, Josh disagrees. My previous TJOC oatmeal cookies had been pretty good, although I like my oatmeal cookies cakey rather than crisp, so they weren't ideal.

The recipe was essentially the same as the one linked above except it had no cinnamon or nutmeg (hooray! I don't like cinnamon!) and used chocolate chips instead of raisins:



They were flat but not as flat as the original oatmeal cookies.



They were good! They also stayed soft, which was nice. I still think they needed nuts to be truly tasty but I deferred to Josh's hatred of nuts in cookies because I knew I wouldn't eat them all.

So what do you think? What do you like in your oatmeal cookies? Raisins, nuts, chocolate chips, other?

Random facts:

• Oatmeal is common in Scottish cooking because oats were far more suited to the wet growing season in Scotland than corn or wheat (Wikipedia). Haggis, anyone?
• Oats can be eaten cooked or raw (Wikipedia). I guess I knew this but I never thought about it. I eat raw oats in granola or on bread relatively often.
• There is no actual Quaker connection for Quaker Oats. The original marketers at QO thought the image of a Quaker man holding a scroll that read "pure" represented "integrity, quality, and honesty" (Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink (p. 487).

Beef Stroganoff (p. 476)

I've been putting off making Beef stroganoff (p. 476) because if I have a nice steak, I want to eat it as a steak, not as stroganoff. I've had a lot of mediocre stroganoffs in my life and I'm pretty sure I've never had a particularly good version of it. I happened to get a great steak on clearance and I decided to make a half recipe of the stroganoff so I could knock it off the list.

I sliced the steak into thin strips, seasoned them, and browned the meat in a little olive oil:



Watch it closely--thin strips of meat brown REALLY quickly. I removed the meat to a plate:



I melted butter in the pan and added a chopped onion. Once the onions were softened, I added sliced mushrooms:



I added two cups of beef stock, a little bit of Cognac (too good of Cognac for this dish, all I had was Courvoisier) and simmered it for about ten minutes. I finally added sour cream, Dijon mustard, and a little more salt and pepper.



I added the meat back in and cooked the whole concoction until it was heated through:



I didn't have any egg noodles for some reason, so my beef stroganoff sat on top of elbow macaroni.

I don't know how I felt about this dish. I didn't love it. It was okay, sort of boring. I thought the sauce needed to be a lot thicker. The beef was extremely delicious and tender. It heated up extremely well.

Random facts:

• Beef stroganoff became popular in the 1940's, partially due to it's ability to be kept in a chafing dish (which was a newly popular invention), (Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, p. 292)
• The first major wave of Russian immigrants to the US followed the Russian Revolution in 1917. These were mostly Russian aristocracy and they brought stroganoff and blini with them (Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, p. 511)

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GIVEAWAY! CSN Gift Code

CSN has given my followers the opportunity to win a $35.00 gift code! I'm so excited to have a contest to offer my loyal (and new!) readers! CSN is an amazing network of 200+ stores in which you find everything from gorgeous modern bedding to cookware and bakeware, all with one checkout. Who wouldn't want $35 they can spend on essentially anything? Everything on the website is unconditionally guaranteed.

Particularly awesome stuff I spotted this time:

I love these sheets SO MUCH. I think it has to do with my love of peacocks (my family raised them):


I love prep bowls. They are incredibly important when you cook something where you have to move fast (candy, stir-fry, etc.). And I love Le Creuset.



Spice mills. I love fresh ground spices. You will love them too if you have a spice mill!






Mandatory entry: Tell me what you would buy with the $35 gift code if you won!

Extra entries for:
+1 Following TJOTJOC publicly through Google Friend Connect
+1 Following @tjotjoc on Twitter
+1 "Liking" The Joy of the Joy of Cooking on Facebook

Rules:
1. Fill out the form above.
2. Must be 13 years old or older.
3. Contest will end February 15th at midnight. Winner will be chosen through a random number generator.
4. Winner will have 48 hours to respond to my email. If they don't respond, a new winner is chosen.

Cream cheese spreads (p. 179)

I've meant to make Cream cheese spreads (p. 179) for a while, to the point in which I've roasted garlic for the recipe and just never finished it (roasted garlic is good in just about everything and I tend to use it up quickly).

I combined cream cheese, heavy cream, roasted garlic, scallions, and chopped black olives:



Mix, mix, mix, mix:



This was a delicious dip! It was just as good as the expensive dips that you may buy at the bagel shop and it was really easy to make at home. You could make countless permutations of this spread, both sweet and savory--a great canvas to express some flavor creativity. I think I might keep a savory option, like this one, and a sweet option (probably honey walnut) on hand, for when I want a quick bagel or toast snack.

Random facts:

• A bagel should be made with white wheat high-gluten flour, boiled in water, and baked. The boiling gives the bagel a hard crust and shine (The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, p. 32)
• "The proximity of Jewish immigrants on New York City's Lower East Side and the Catskills' dairy farmers led to the creation of two very American takes on Old World foods: New York-style cheesecake and bagels "with a schmeer" (a thick slathering of cream cheese)" (The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, p.176)
• Even though cream cheese was invented in New York, it was called "Philadelphia Cream cheese" because Philadelphia was considered to produce the highest quality food at the time (Wikipedia)

Black bean tacos (p. 189)

I decided that Josh and I needed a taco night so I whipped up some TJOC taco meat (delicious and as easy as a spice packet [no exaggeration, super easy]). I thought it would be the perfect time to make Black bean tacos (p. 189) since I love TJOC's refried beans recipe.

I made the refried beans, spread them on a tortilla, sprinkled Monterey Jack cheese on the top, and was finished!:



Super, super easy. You could use canned refried beans if you wanted to speed things up but homemade beans are so, so, so much better. My favorite part of this recipe? I didn't use black beans and, yet, TJOC calls them black bean tacos--the refried beans recipe says pinto or black beans and I like pinto beans much better.

Not much to blog about--the recipe was good but not very excited.

Random facts:

• Wikipedia says that the term "pinto bean"comes from the Spanish frijol pinto which is literally "painted bean". So that means pinto horses are painted horses. Neat!
• Pinto beans are usually used for refried beans in American Tex-Mex food and Northern Mexican food, while black or red beans are common in other parts of Mexico (Wikipedia). Anyone have any experience with this?
• The term "refried beans" is based on a mistranslation. It does not refer to being fried twice (Wikipedia)

Panfried spice-crusted fish fillets (p. 408) and Spicy tartar sauce (p. 581)

Sometimes I have a grand plan for what recipes I'm going to make in a given month. Other times I randomly select recipes. Panfried spice-crusted fish fillets (p. 408) was from the latter category. I had fish, I needed a recipe that would use the fish, and thought that it sounded good.

I mixed flour, water, curry powder (you can use Garam Masala, chili powder, or whatever spice mixture you want, which would drastically change the end result), and salt and pepper:



I cut my fish in half, patted the pieces dry, and sprinkled them with lemon juice:



I dipped the fish in the batter, shook off the excess, and popped them in a pan full of heated canola oil (watch out for splatter!):



After a few minutes on each side, they were done:



It was really good! The curry flavor shone through brightly and it had just the right amount of breading--not so much that you can't taste anything but breading but not so little that there is no point to bothering with the extra steps. This is a perfect recipe for a creative chef because there are so many variations of spice flavoring that you could use. The fish was INCREDIBLY moist. In fact, I like my fish a little dry (I know, I'm strange) and the fish was a little too moist for me, although Josh loved it.

I can't eat fish without a sauce. I love sauces, I love condiments, I thought that Spicy tartar sauce (p. 581) would be a great choice for the fish.

I mixed mayonnaise, parsley, lime juice, pickle relish, Dijon mustard, garlic, hot pepper sauce, and a little salt and pepper:



It was sooooo good. Just amazingly good. It was considerably better than the basic tartar sauce (which was also good). The hot sauce gave it just enough kick (I used garlic Tabasco), the pickle relish gave a crisp sourness, and I love anything with Dijon mustard or garlic. If you like tartar sauce, make this one, you won't be disappointed. Plus, it's incredibly easy and you probably have everything to make it in your fridge.