Chicken with 40 cloves of garlic

Garlic was on sale in my store - six or seven whole bulbs for very little. I knew I wanted to make chicken with lots of garlic - there are many different recipes, but this one is based on Ina Garten's, The Barefoot Contessa. It's ridiculously rich, so you want to serve a light starter and a very light dessert, if it's part of a three-course meal. You also don't need a whole lot of carbs with it - I had some roasted artichokes and steamed snow peas, and I ate some crusty bread with the leftovers.

If you think it's hard work to peel garlic - I know I did - blanching them really, really works. It makes it so much easier, and when the garlic is roasted like this, the flavor isn't compromised at all.

The hardest part of this recipe is breaking down the chicken. Sorry, I can't help with that, as I completely suck at it. I need much more practise... or someone else to do it for me. It's good to learn though, as whole chickens are much more economical than buying the individual parts.

Chicken with 40 cloves of garlic

(printable recipe)

1 chicken, cut into 8 pieces
salt pepper
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
3 whole garlics - about 40 cloves
400 ml dry white wine
3 tbsp cognac
2-3 tbsp flour
50-100 ml cream (full-fat)
salt, pepper, sugar

Bring a small pot of water to the boil. Add all the garlic cloves and blanch for one minute. Drain and let them cool - they will now be super easy to peel, which is your next step.

Dry the chicken with paper towels, and season with salt and pepper. Heat butter and oil in a heavy pot, and brown the chicke. Start with the skin-side down, and keep the heat fairly high. When the chicken is nicely browned on both sides, set it aside. You have to work in batches, or the chicken won't brown. When all the chicken pieces are done (and set aside), add the peeled garlic cloves to the pot and fry for about ten minutes on medium high heat. They should be golden, but they can burn easily so watch them!

Add the wine and two tablespoons of the cognac. Bring to a boil, add the chicken and cover with a lid. Lower the heat, and cok on low heat for about 30 minutes. Test to see that the chicken is done, and if it is, remove it to a serving bowl and cover with foil to keep it warm.

Scoop out about 100 ml of sauce and mix with the flour. Add it back to the pot along with the last tablespoon of cognac, and 50 ml of the cream. Bring to a boil and cook for a few minutes. Add more cream if it seems too thick. Season with salt, pepper and a pinch of sugar if the wine you're using is very acidic. Pour the sauce, with all the garlic in it, over the chicken and serve.

Recipe i Swedish:
Kyckling med 40 vitlöksklyftor

Ducobu

Ooh. Ooh. Sorry for the crap photo, but Darling P just came home from a business trip in Belgium bearing gifts! Macarons and chocolates, from Marc Ducobu!

Dinner.

Cat Cakes

Oh, the comedy and the hilarity of cat themed cakes. There's some crazy ones out there! I made this one a while back, Harold the cat...

my little buddy Harold the cat, based on a real cat...

Separated at birth! Or separated by a computer printer!

This little black and white kitty cracks me up so hard... Great cake and great cat...

This is soooo grody too yet fascinating: THE CAT LITTER CAKE. Made from cake, tootsie rolls, crunched up crackery things... ugh so sick. Here is a link to the recipe and how-to. In case you want to gross yourself out super hard by eating "cake" out of a litter box.

Patagonian scallops

My store was all out of fresh scallops when I needed them, so I went over to the deep-freeze and got a packet of Patagonian Scallops just in case. Turned out the next store I went to had regular, fresh scallops, so I stashed these in my freezer for another time.

As you can see, they're absolutely tiny. One packet was 250 g, which was enough for two. They tasted sweet and fresh - and very much like regular scallops. Being frozen, they need to be thawed before you sear them. I did it by placing them on coarse salt, which in hindsight turned out to be pretty stupid. They did thaw nicely, as all the moisture was drawn into the salt, but the salt also stuck to the little rounds, and I ended up having to rinse them. Which obviously made them wet, again. Oh well.

I didn't get a photo of the finished dish, nor did I measure anything, but it was basically a matter of searing the scallops and setting them aside, pouring some marsala and some cream into the saucepan to deglaze it, and then pour this over the scallops. I fried some red onion and some garlic in olive oil, added halved cherry tomatoes, and then tossed this along with the saucy scallops with freshly cooked spaghetti. Pretty yummy!

I think I'll pick up another package when I run across them again - however, they're almost as expensive as fresh scallops, so it's not a very thrifty option. Still, nice to have at hand!

Toasted Coconut Macarons

This is my submission for this month's MacAttack, by the girls over at MacTweets. We were asked to try something new, and well, at least this was indeed new!

I really want to learn how to make a nut-free macaron. That's quite a challenge, since a macaron basically is an almond meringue cookie. I found a recipe that used coconut instead of almonds, which many people with nut allergies can eat, over at Baking Obsession, but as you can see from my photos, it didn't work out all that well.

Let me put it this way: it's an awesome coconut cookie. It's not a macaron. I think part of the problem was the ratio between nuts and sugar - next time, I'll try my regular recipe, just swapping coconut for almonds. And hope for feet - the little ruffled edges that is the mark of a true macaron. These sadly never got any.

I made two delicious fillings - both went beautifully with the toasted coconut: salted caramel and dark chocolate ganache. I have both stashed in my freezer, for lucky guests over the next few weeks...

Coconut Macarons with two fillings

(printable recipe)

Toasted Coconut Macarons:
5 egg whites
3 tbsp sugar
190 g coconut (dried coconut flakes, not the sweetened kind)
225 g confectioner's sugar

Heat the oven to 100°C, and toast your coconut for 5-8 minutes. It should be lightly golden and fragrant. Let it cool completely. Then mix it with half the confectioner's sugar and grind in a food processor for a few minutes. Sift through a fairly fine sieve, and mix whatever didn't go through with the rest of the confectioner's sugar in the food processor for another few minutes. Either sieve it again, or, like me, trust that it's ground fine enough.

Beat the egg whites with the sugar to a stiff, shiny meringue. Add the coconut and carefully stir into a thick, even batter. Pipe round, small cookies onto lined baking sheets. Top with some more coconut if you'd like.

Leave at room temperature for an hour, so that the cookies develop skins. Bake in the oven at 150°C for 15 minutes.

Cool, then fill cookies. Freeze the shells you won't use right away.



Salted Caramel:
235 g sugar
85 g salted butter
125 ml cream (full fat)
pinch of salt (optional)

Measure butter and cream and leave at room temperature for 1-2 hours before starting. Melt the sugar in a heavy pan (preferrably one with a light interior so that you can see what you're doing) and place over medium high heat. When all the sugar is melted and golden brown, add the butter and stir. It will bubble and spit, so be careful. Then add the cream, and stir until smooth. If some of the sugar seizes and crystallizes, just heat it gently again and stir until it's all smooth. Add some more salt if you'd like.

Let it cool to room temperature, then chill. It needs to be completely cold to be thick enough to use for the cookies.

Dark Chocolate Ganache:
80 g dark chocolate, finely choped
50 ml cream (full fat)

Place the chocolate in a small bowl. Heat the cream until boiling. Then pour it over the chocolate and stir until smooth. Chill it in the fridge for a few minutes so that it thickens, then fill the cookies.

Recept på svenska:
Kokoskakor med salt kolafyllning och chokladganache

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

I know I teased you last night by showing a photo of a wonderful cookie - that was actually from my breakfast yesterday. I've been in the mood for chewy chocolate chip cookies for a while, but I only got around to making them yesterday morning. And I don't know why I put it off because it seriously didn't take more than 20 minutes. At the most. It's easy - real easy.

And, obviously, delicious.

Recipe is adapted from Smitten Kitchen, and she uses US measurements so use that one if you're not fond of measuring by weight.

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

(printable recipe)

170 g unsalted butter
300 g flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
210 g brown sugar
100 g sugar
1 egg yolk
1 egg
1 tbsp vanilla extract
170 g dark chocolate chips

Melt the butter. Mix flour with baking soda and salt in a bowl. Stir together both sugars with the melted butter. Beat in the egg, the egg yolk and the vanilla extract, until the mixture turns light and fluffy. Stir in the flour mixture, and finally the chocolate.

Scoop cookies onto a lined baking sheet, and leave plenty of space for them to spread out. (I could fit about 9 per full-size baking sheet.) Bake at 165°C for 10-12 minutes. Adjust if you make very small or very large cookies, but do not overbake them!

If you don't want to bake all the cookies at once, you can freeze scoops of cookie dough individually, and when they're frozen through, just place them in a ziploc bag in the freezer. Get them out as you're ready to bake, and either thaw for a little while or add a few minutes to the baking time.

Recipe in Swedish:
Sega Chocolate Chip Cookies