Chanukah! (German/Jewish Food)

So, the inspiration for tonight's meal was potato latkes. There have been all sorts of articles about cooking for Chanukah lately, which makes me hanker for latkes. Cory and I ate a really good version at a restaurant in Bend, Oregon, called the Jackalope Grill, when we went there last year. There, they served potato latkes with Jaegerschnitzel (pork schnitzel with mushroom sauce) and braised cabbage. We decided to try to recreate this dish, since we enjoyed it so much. Now, we realize that we are serving pork with a creamy mushroom sauce, which makes this part of the menu decidedly non-Jewish. We enjoyed the restaurant dish so much that we wanted to figure it out, so we are doing it anyway. You could substitute beef if you wanted (a la chicken-fried-steak) and do a mushroom gravy, if you would rather. For an appetizer, we made challah and served it with several different spreads.




Challah:

Proofing the yeast

Mixing the eggs and sugar

Kneading in the mixer and resting the dough

Shaping the dough

Egg Wash

The finished product

Applesauce:

Apples!

Apples, while cooking and once mashed

Braised Cabbage:

The ingredients, before and after

Braising the cabbage; the finished version (such a pretty color!)

Latkes:



Jaegerschnitzel:

Pork Tenderloin, thinly sliced

Breading the pork, with egg wash and seasoned flour

Frying the meat

Crispy, golden pork

The Recipes:

I like a sweeter version of challah (but not too sweet) - this is based off of a recipe that I found on epicurious. The olive oil was a substitution due to the fact that my vegetable oil was earmarked for frying the latkes, but it worked really well and I'd make it this way again.

Challah

1/2 cup plus 2/3 cup warm water (105°F. to 115°F)
2 tablespoons dry yeast
1 tablespoons plus 1 cup sugar
5 large eggs
3/4 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
7 1/2 cups (about) all-purpose flour
1 large egg yolk
1 tablespoon water

Combine 1/2 cup warm water, yeast and 1 tablespoon sugar in large glass measuring cup and stir until yeast dissolves. Let yeast mixture stand at room temperature until foamy, about 10 minutes.

In large bowl of heavy-duty mixer fitted with whisk attachment, beat 5 eggs until blended. Add oil, salt and 1 cup sugar and beat until pale yellow and slightly thickened, about 4 minutes. Beat in 2/3 cup warm water. Add yeast mixture and beat until blended. Remove whisk and fit mixer with dough hook. Add enough flour 1 cup at a time to form smooth dough, beating well after each addition. Beat on medium speed(#4 on Kitchenaid mixer) until smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes, adding flour by tablespoonfuls if sticky.

Lightly oil large bowl. Add dough, turning to coat with oil. Cover with plastic wrap, then with clean kitchen towel. Let dough rise in warm draft-free area until doubled in volume, about 1 hour.

Punch down dough. Cover with plastic and clean kitchen towel and let rise 30 minutes (At this point I put it in the fridge overnight and pulled it out when I came home from work. It rose fine in the fridge).

Grease 2 large baking sheets. Turn out dough onto lightly floured surface. Divide dough into 2 equal portions. Divide each portion into 3 equal pieces. Roll each piece into 9-inch-long rope. Braid 3 ropes together; pinch ends together to seal. Repeat with remaining dough pieces, forming 2 braids. Place each braid on baking sheet. Cover with towel . Let rise in warm area until almost doubled, about 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 400°F. Whisk yolk with 1 tablespoon water to blend. Brush dough with egg mixture. Bake 10 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 350°F. Bake until bread is golden brown and sounds hollow when tapped on bottom, about 35 minutes (Cover loosely with foil if it is browning too quickly). Transfer loaves to rack and cool completely. (Can be prepared 1 day ahead. Wrap tightly in plastic and store at room temperature.)

Garlic-Herb Butter:

1/2 stick (4 T) salted butter, softened
1/2 tsp fresh thyme, minced
1/2 tsp fresh dill, minced
1/4 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp garlic powder

Mix all ingredients together in small container and serve. You could also add whatever other herbs you have growing in your yard or that sound good when you are at the store.

Honey Mustard Butter:

1/2 stick (4 T) salted butter, softened
2 tsp whole-grain mustard
1/2 tsp honey
1/4 tsp pepper

Mix all ingredients together in small container and serve.

Cranberry-Orange-Pistachio Cream Cheese Spread:

4 oz cream cheese, softened
2 Tbsp dried cranberries, chopped
2 tsp shelled pistachios, chopped
2 tsp orange juice
¼ tsp sugar

Mix all ingredients together in small container and serve.

Jaegerschnitzel:

For meat:
1 lb. pork tenderloin, sliced 1/2 inch thick and pounded to 1/4 inch thick
1 Cup Flour
2 Eggs
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper

For Sauce:
1 lb. mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
1 shallot, minced
2 T butter
1 T flour
1 1/2 Cups beef broth
2 T heavy cream
1/4 tsp salt (more or less, depending on the saltiness of the broth)
1/2 tsp pepper

Beat eggs and set aside. Mix together flour, salt, and pepper. Dredge meat in egg wash and then in flour to coat well. Set aside for 10-15 minutes to rest. Heat oil in pan and fry meat until it is golden brown and crisp.

To make the sauce, melt butter in a skillet. Add mushrooms and shallot and saute until tender. Add flour and cook for two minutes. Slowly whisk in broth and heat to a boil. Reduce heat to simmer and stir in cream, pepper, and salt to taste.

You could garnish this with Italian (flat) parsley (I meant to and forgot about it).

Latkes:

2 very large potatoes (or 4 medium)
1 onion
1/4 c flour
1 egg
1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp pepper

Shred the potatoes and onions in the food processor. Stir in salt. Drain potatoes in colander over bowl for about 20 minutes. Transfer potatoes to a new bowl. Stir in egg, flour, pepper. Heat oil in deep frying pan until it reaches temperature. Make latkes using about 1/4 cup potato mixture. Turn into pan, press down to make 1/2 inch thick. Fry about 3 minutes per side. As they finish, transfer to rack set over baking sheet to drain. Serve hot.


Braised Cabbage: This is based off of a Julia Child recipe from Julia's Kitchen Wisdom.

1 small head red cabbage, thinly sliced (about 4 cups)
1 granny smith apple, chopped
1 onion, thinly sliced
2 Tbsp red wine vinegar
1 tsp Sugar
1/2 cup water
pinch salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper

Fry onions in cast iron dutch oven until golden. Add remaining ingredients, stirring to mix. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, for about 1/2 hour or until cabbage is tender. Taste and adjust vinegar/sugar/salt as needed.


Applesauce

3 pippin or granny smith apples
2 fuji apples (or whatever other sweet apples you have on hand)
2 Tbsp sugar
1/2 Cup water
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice (more or less to taste)

Peel, core, and chop up apples. Add to saucepan with sugar and water. Bring to a boil; then reduce heat and simmer, covered, until apples are tender, stirring occasionally with a spoon to break up apples. Mash apples with a spoon or potato masher. Add cinnamon. Taste, then add lemon juice as needed to brighten flavor.

"Fancy" Mexican Food Tonight

Liz and I are going to cook what some consider Mexico's national dish, chiles en nogada, which is a stuffed pepper dish. It has the colors of the Mexican Flag - chiles for green, cream sauce for white, and pomegranate seeds for red.

We're also having a grilled vegetable quesadilla for an appetizer, a spicy corn soup and a salad with red onion, orange, and goat cheese, and for dessert... well that's a surprise (meaning it's experimental and might not work at all!)

The main course:

Chiles En Nogada:

Cubing, stewing, and shredding the pork for the stuffing:







Preparing the fruit and nuts and cooking the filling for the chilies:



The ingredients for the walnut sauce and pomegranates for topping:



Roasting the poblano peppers:



The Finished Product:



Main course and salad served:




Orange and Red Onion Salad with Goat cheese, Pecans and Cranberries:





Soup and Appetizer which were served before the main course:

Spicy Sweet Corn and Poblano Soup:

Cooking the onions and jalapenos, roasting the corn, and finally the finished product after pureeing everything, seasoning, and adding chicken stock and cream:






Soup served:



Vegetable Quesadillas:

Grilling the vegetables and preparing the quesadillas:




Quesadillas served:



Appetizer and soup course served:



And finally the dessert:

Making chocolate ganache:




The completed dessert after frying up some flour tortillas and sprinkling them with cinnamon and sugar and serving with fruit and vanilla ice cream:






Elvis waiting and then looking guilty:




The Ratings (As decided by Liz and Cory who rate things pretty tough)

Chiles en Nogada: 9 (Lots of work but well worth it, making pork this way is always fantastic, and the walnut sauce is good enough to eat by the spoonful itself)

Salad: 9 (Great salad, pretty and delicious)

Spicy Corn Soup: 8 (Quite good, much better the second day. It had an intense roasted corn flavor, but needed a little something. Possibly add some extra cilantro to brighten it and only roast half the corn)

Quesadillas: (7, good but nothing fancy, nice contrast to creamy soup)

Dessert: (7, chocolate sauce great with addition of cinnamon; cinnamon tortilla crisps need some thought and work to get right. Ice Cream and fresh fruit were nice with the chocolate sauce.)



The Recipes (as written by Liz):

The original recipe for the Chiles en Nogada came from Rick Bayless' website:

Recipes from Chef Rick Bayless - Rick Bayless | Frontera

The ingredient list that we used:

Walnuts for the sauce
2 cups (7 ounces) walnut halves and pieces, you’ll need 36 (about 1 pound) very fresh walnuts in their shells

Chiles and Pork-and-Fruit Stuffing
1 pound boneless pork shoulder, cut into 2-inch cubes
2 large garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
1 small white onion, diced
8 very large (about 2 pounds) fresh poblano chiles, roasted, peeled, and deveined
3 1/2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 generous tablespoons raisins
2 generous tablespoons dried mango
2 generous tablespoons dried cherries
1 small pear, peeled, cored and cut into 1/4-inch dice
2 small Jonathan or McIntosh applea, peeled, cored and cut into 1/4-inch dice
2 medium fresh peaches (or extra pears or apples), peeled, pitted and cut into 1/4-inch dice
1 ripe, medium-small tomato, seeded and roughly chopped
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
Salt, about 1 generous teaspoon
1/3 cup (about 1 3/4 ounces) silvered blanched almonds\

Walnut Sauce
1 to 1 1/2 cups milk
1 slice firm white bread, crusts removed
1 tablespoon sugar
Salt, about 1/2 generous teaspoon
1 teaspoon dry sherry
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, preferable freshly ground Mexican canela
1/2 cup Mexican crema

Garnish
1 pomegranate

We made a few changes from the original due to ingredient availability. For example, I left out the plantains, since the store didn't have any and Cory doesn't really care for them (too much like bananas). I added dried cherries because I use them in my picadillo empanada filling and like how they taste.

Directions

1. Cook and shred the meat. Place the pork in a medium saucepan, cover with heavily salted water, add the garlic and half of the onion. Bring to a gentle boil over medium heat, skim off any grayish foam that rises to the surface, partially cover and simmer over medium-low until the meat is thoroughly tender, about 1 1/2 hours.

If time permits, let the meat cool in the broth, then remove it with tongs or a slotted spoon and shred it between you fingers or with two forks held back to back. (There will be about 2 cups of meat). Reserve the broth.

2. Before you start cooking the stuffing, complete all the initial peeling, coring, chopping and so forth of the stuffing ingredients.

Heat 1 1/2 tablespoons of the oil in a very large (12 inch) skillet over medium-high. When quite hot, add the remaining half of the onion and shredded pork in a thin layer and cook, stirring frequently, until the mixture is lightly browned, 8 to 10 minutes. Drain off any excess fat.

Stir in the dried and fresh fruit, the tomato, herbs and cinnamon. Measure in 1/4 cup of the reserved broth, mix well, reduce the heat to medium-low, cover the skillet and simmer until the apple and pear are tender (but not mushy) and the flavors are blended, about 10 minutes. Season with salt, usually a generous teaspoon.

While the meat mixture is simmering, heat the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil in a medium-small skillet over medium heat. Add the almonds and fry, stirring nearly constantly, until they are a deep golden color, about 3 minutes; remove and cool. Add to the meat mixture. Remove the filling from the heat and let cool uncovered.

3. Stuff the chiles with cooled filling, packing it in well and re-forming them in their original shape. Place on a baking sheet and cover with foil.

4. Within a couple of hours of serving, prepare the sauce. Put the walnuts into the food processor bowl fitted with the chopping blade. Add 1 cup of milk, the bread, sugar, salt, sherry and ground cinnamon. Blend until smooth; if the mixture should clog in the machine or if only the mixture at the bottom is moving through the blades, add more milk a little at a time, until all the mixture is moving through the blades again. Finally add the crema and blend for just a few seconds. Taste for salt and sugar; the sauce should have a slightly sweet edge with just enough salt to bring up the flavor of the walnuts. Set aside at room temperature.

5. Finish the dish. Half an hour before serving, place the chiles in a 250-degree oven to heat through. Break the pomegranate apart, pick out all the seeds and place them in a small dish.

When you are ready to serve, add a little mike or cream to the sauce if it is thicker than a medium-consistency custard sauce. Place 1 or 2 chiles on each warm dinner plate. Spoon the room-temperature sauce over the warm chiles. Sprinkle the sauce with the pomegranate seeds and serve at once.

The instructions given in the original recipe worked well, although I skipped the step of blanching and peeling the walnuts - I just used the shelled ones from Costco. I made some other small revisions to result in the directions given above.

Cory also decided to add the juice of one orange and one lime to the liquid for braising the pork, though for this recipe he said he wouldn't do it again because with everything else in the stuffing you probably couldn't tell.


Corn Soup

This Recipe is one I made by combining elements of several others. The food processor does most of the work.

3 Cups frozen corn, defrosted
1 onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 poblano chile, roasted, peeled, and chopped
1/2 - 1 small jalapeno, chopped
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp ground pepper
2 cans chicken broth
1/2 c cream
1 teaspoon salt, or more to taste
sprigs of cilantro for garnish

Spread the corn on a baking sheet and roast in a 450 degree oven for about 20 minutes, or until beginning to caramelize and "pop". Set aside 1/2 cup kernels for garnish.

Meanwhile, saute onion in 2 T oil until beginning to soften. Add garlic, chiles, and spices and saute until onions are soft and begin to turn golden.

Combine onion mixture and corn and add to food processor fitted with chopping blade. Add 1/2 can broth and begin to run processor. Add additional liquid intermittently until 1 full can has been added. Process until smooth, about 5-7 minutes.

Put mixture back in pan, add in additional can broth, and bring to simmer. Simmer 15 minutes. Add cream, taste and add salt as needed. Garnish and serve, or chill overnight and bring up to simmer when reheating.

Orange, Red Onion, and Goat Cheese Salad

This salad recipe is one I made up and is really good as is, and by changing the fruit and the vinegar you can have lots of good variations - using strawberries and balsamic vinegar, and omitting the onions, is a particularly good variation.

2 oranges, peeled and sectioned ("supremed" - meaning no peel or pith)
1/2 small red onion, sliced
2 oz goat cheese, crumbled
1/4 c pecans
2 T dried cranberries
3 C mixed baby greens including baby spinach

For dressing:
2 T olive oil
1 T red wine vinegar
1/2 tsp sugar, or more to taste
pinch salt
few grinds freshly ground pepper
1 tsp dijon mustard

Arrange fruit, nuts, and cheese on top of greens. Mix all dressing ingredients in shaker cup or whisk together in bowl. Drizzle over salad and serve.


Grilled Vegetable Quesadilla

1 small zucchini, sliced
4 small crimini or button mushrooms
1/4 small onion, chopped
1/2 poblano chile, roasted, peeled, and chopped
1/2 c jack cheese
2 tortillas

Grill vegetables on grill pan with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper. From here, proceed like any other quesadilla, dividing veggies and cheese equally between tortillas, folding in half, and grilling on grill pan.


Hot Fudge Sauce

4 oz Ghirardelli 60% cacao chocolate
2 T butter
1/2 c cream
2 T light corn syrup

Melt chocolate and butter together. Stir in corn syrup. Add cream slowly and stir/whisk until smooth. Add a little ground cinnamon if you like (I do).