The Daring Cooks cooked with me!

Last year, when Lis asked me if I would host a Daring Cooks' challenge, I had a moment of panic. I had no idea what to choose. I said 'yes' of course, then tried to narrow down the options. There were 3 challenges I had in mind, from 3 different continents. I think I chose the most 'daring' one, as I knew the appams would be unfamiliar to most of the members. I also didn't want to choose something that was too familiar, nor something that needed hours on the stove in the hot weather, eliminating my other 2 choices. Now, you may be wondering what appams are at this point. They are a stove-top flatbread made of rice and coconut milk and yeast and salt. That's it. That's all it takes to make a bread that is both thick and spongy and thin and crisp. They are simple and delicious and naturally gluten-free and vegan. The only thing you need is time to ferment the batter. Oh, and some delicious saucy dishes to accompany them! I made about a dozen dishes to prepare for this challenge, but only included some of the recipes and linked to others. By default, I called the accompaniments 'curry', but I think this may have been a turn-off to some Daring Kitchen members. It seemed that lots of people a) don't like 'curry' and b) think of it as a winter dish. What a shame, when there are so many different types and so many fresh flavours to explore!
Let me just show you in pictures what I made, then you can link to the (giant) challenge PDF for full recipes and links.

Cooking the batter in an appachati

In preparing for this challenge, I tried about 6 recipes for appams, using rice, rice flour, cream of wheat, a packaged mix, coconut meat, coconut milk and I don't know how many other variations. In the end, I decided on this recipe from Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen. It was the most reliable and used rice, cooked rice and coconut milk, all easily obtainable ingredients. Thank you Aparna!

You can even make them flower-shaped

To accompany the appams, I made a variety of dishes, some hot, some cold, with meat, fish, and vegetables. Here are some photos. You can find all the recipes in the pdf.

Carrots with Tropical Flavours

Baked Goan Fish with Fresh Green Chile Chutney

Eggplant Curry (see link)

Sri Lankan Beef Curry

Shrimp in Coconut Milk

Thanks so much to Lis and Ivonne and The Daring Kitchen for allowing me to host a challenge! A huge thank you also to those who participated and made some amazing-looking dishes. Be sure to check out the homepage for a slideshow of them. You can find many more photos and all the recipes and techniques here. Hmm, guess I need to include these blog-checking lines:

Blog-checking lines: Mary, who writes the delicious blog, Mary Mary Culinary was our August Daring Cooks’ host. Mary chose to show us how delicious South Indian cuisine is! She challenged us to make Appam and another South Indian/Sri Lankan dish to go with the warm flat bread.

Gingered carrot cookie dough in cream cheese ice cream

This week's recipe was chosen by Natalia of Gatti Fili e Farini. She's got the recipe--go say hello! I had never noticed the recipe in the book, but it sounded intriguing. Even more intriguing, because I was away on a business trip and had to wait awhile before I got home to look at the recipe. I love carrots and coconut in any form, so I knew I was going to love these. I don't like raisins, though, so I left those out, and replaced the pecans with cashews. The only thing I was worried about was the possible homeliness of these cookies. There was no picture, and they didn't sound pretty. I don't know what's wrong with me, but I don't like an ugly cookie. I just have to doctor it up somehow, as I did with the Dulce de leche duos from last year. I thought about a cream cheese filling, but word on the TWD discussion board said they were a bit lumpy for that. So, I thought about making a cream cheese ice cream and putting the crumbled cookies in that. Then I tasted the cookie dough...

Do you ever eat the raw cookie dough? Do you ever like it even more than the baked cookies? Yes and yes for me. I always try everything I bake before I cook it, and I usually prefer it to the baked version. Or maybe it's that I feel slightly nauseous by the time things come out of the oven. I've always been like this, and I can remember eating huge gobs of whatever my mother was making while her back was turned. I don't just mean desserts: bread dough and raw ground beef were things I couldn't keep my grubby little fingers off. I also ate raw potatoes and turnips and bacon out of the package if nobody was looking. Despite my mother's dire warnings, I never got sick. I know some who won't eat batter because of the raw eggs, but salmonella is rarely if ever in the news here. Is it possible to build up a tolerance to it? Living in Japan was fabulous for the abundance of raw food. Sushi, of course, but raw beef dipped in raw egg yolk? I'm there. Chicken sashimi? It was pretty good too. Now that I've grossed you all out, let's talk about these delicious cookies, shall we?

I made this cream cheese ice cream from Epicurious, adding some vanilla. It basically tastes like frozen cream cheese icing, which is a very good thing, I think. I put small blobs of the cookie dough in after I had churned it, meaning after 4 searches of my storage area, and a very long wait till the canister was sufficiently frozen. Then I had to wait again for it to firm up. This is a yummy and easy ice cream, and I think you could taste the carrot and spices, along with the coconut more in the dough than in the baked cookies. YUM!

I did bake some of the dough, and these were very yummy cookies, especially hot out of the oven. I wonder what they'd be like with zucchini, since I am drowning in the stuff. More on that in my next post.