The Daring Cooks make noodles. By hand, of course!

This month, Steph of Stephfood challenged us to make noodles or gnocchi or spätzle,  but without the use of motorized machines. I rarely make fresh pasta, so this was a nice incentive to do so. In fact, it reminded me that I could shop after work and have fresh pasta on the table in time for dinner, with not too much effort and not too many dirty dishes. That's just what I did one afternoon: I picked up basil, eggs and I looked for my favourite brand of ricotta but couldn't find it. In a fit of pique, I bought a large carton of milk and decided to make my own. 

The dried pasta

I made the pasta dough, set it aside, then made the ricotta and left it to drain. I rolled the pasta very thinly and cut it with the wavy cutter, then I hung it on my laundry rack to dry a bit. I shaved some asparagus into thin ribbons and tossed it in with the cooking pasta for a minute. I topped it with a few scoops of the very creamy ricotta and some basil oil, made by pureeing blanched basil and olive oil. I can assure you that it was delicious, but you may be wondering why there is no asparagus in the picture above. Well, just as I was plating the pasta, a thunderstorm rolled through and turned a bright early evening into a pitch dark night. The storm was over in 30 minutes or so, but that was too long to leave me with a plate of hot pasta. So, you get the next day version, with the pasta I dried thoroughly and no asparagus. It was really tasty too. So tasty that I had it for breakfast in the midst of frantically packing for 2 months away for work.

Just this week I decided to make the spätzle recipe that was also included in the challenge. I kept it simple and tossed it in lots of chopped parsley and topped it with onion bread crumbs and sage crisped in brown butter. I served it atop roasted green beans and green garlic and it was such a simple and satisfying meal. It was also nice that I could easily make it in a borrowed kitchen. 

Thanks for a great challenge Steph! I can't wait for the next one. Oh, wait--I'm hosting it! What will it be?? 

Find the full challenge PDF here, including recipes. I used this recipe for the ricotta (with ½ cup cream).

Blog-checking lines: Steph from Stephfood was our Daring Cooks' July hostess.  Steph challenged us to make homemade noodles without the help of a motorized pasta machine.  She provided us with recipes for Spätzle and Fresh Egg Pasta as well as a few delicious sauces to pair our noodles with!

The Daring Cooks Make Potato Salad. Really.

I couldn't believe it when I read the challenge for this month: potato salad, and healthy too! I don't have a problem with healthy, and actually get very excited about produce (in the words of a friend), but I don't eat potatoes more than a few times a year, and that includes fries. However, I have a lot of experience with them, as it seemed like we had them every night for dinner when I was a child. I pushed them around a lot, not caring for the texture. Now, I eat potatoes to be polite, such as when I am a dinner guest. The taste is fine, but it's that slightly grainy texture that gets me every time. Anyway, I'm sure if you have read this far that you actually like potatoes, so let's get past my potato inhibitions, shall we?

I didn't want to miss this month's challenge, as I had missed last month's (too greasy/meaty). So, I put my thinking cap on and tried to figure out when I did like potatoes and how I could incorporate those flavours into a potato salad. I like spicy curries with potato, as well as thinly sliced potatoes on pizza, and poutine, but that was the end of my list. I didn't see how I could put gravy and cheese curds on cold potatoes and make it work, so the poutine salad was out. Potato salad on a crust? Nope. Spicy? Yes, please. Rather than curry, I went with some Mexican ingredients to make a chipotle potato salad. It was good, but very spicy, as I doubled the chipotles from what you can see in the recipe below. As for healthy, I used half buttermilk and half mayonnaise to make a creamy dressing. Oh, and the most exciting part for me was that I liked it! I actually took the leftovers for lunch 2 days in a row. This is pretty earth-shattering, people. I think it was because I used tiny new potatoes and they were creamy, not grainy at all. So, Spud, you're okay. See you at Thanksgiving. Now to love eggplant...

Salad
1 pound tiny new potatoes
12 small radishes, sliced
2 small or one large poblano peppers, roasted, peeled seeded and diced
½ red onion, finely chopped
¼ cup chopped fresh cilantro

1. Place potatoes in a pot of cold water with a generous amount of salt. Bring to the boil and cook for about 10 minutes, until tender. Drain and cool. Halve potatoes and place in a large bowl.
2. Add remaining ingredients and about ½ cup of dressing and toss well. Serve.

Chipotle Ranch Dressing

½ cup buttermilk

½ cup mayonnaise

1 chipotle chile in adobo and a teaspoon of the sauce

1 tablespoon fresh lime juice

1 small clove garlic, mashed with a pinch of salt

¼ chopped cilantro

1. Combine everything but cilantro in a blender and puree until smooth. Add cilantro. Will keep for a few days in the refrigerator.

Blog-checking lines:Jami Sorrento was our June Daring Cooks hostess and she chose to challenge us to celebrate the humble spud by making a delicious and healthy potato salad. The Daring Cooks Potato Salad Challenge was sponsored by the nice people at the United States Potato Board, who awarded prizes to the top 3 most creative and healthy potato salads. A medium-size (5.3 ounce) potato has 110 calories, no fat, no cholesterol, no sodium and includes nearly half your daily value of vitamin C and has more potassium than a banana!

The Daring Cooks make edible containers!

This month's challenge was a fun one, and I was only sorry that I could not create more dishes for it. I found out about a month-long business trip just after the challenge was announced, and I only managed 2 dishes in between frantic bouts of packing, tidying, baking, oh, and working too! Our host for the month was the lovely Renata, of Testado, Provado e Aprovado. She is one of the sweetest people on the Daring Kitchen forums and always has nice things to say to everyone. Not to mention the fact that she's incredibly talented and creative and blogs in English and Portuguese. I'm tired just thinking about it.

We were challenged to make savoury edible containers and fillings of our choice. The possibilities are endless, and if you check out the Daring Kitchen page, you'll see a selection of amazing dishes. What you can see above are eggs baked in tomatoes. They are delicious and perfect at any time of the day. As you can see, I like my yolks runny, but what you can't see is that I dropped one of the tomatoes upside-down while trying to maneuver it from baking dish to plate. It's a good thing my clumsiness didn't affect the taste.

The next dish is one that made leftovers seem new and exciting. I had some shrimp cooked in a tomatillo sauce with spinach and fresh cheese left over from a dinner. I cut cylinders of polenta, grilled them and filled them with the shrimp mixture. Wonderful. I haven't got the recipe with me, but it was based on a Rick Bayless one. 

While I didn't go wild with creativity on this challenge, I really enjoyed it and I will be making some more edible containers as soon as I get back home at the end of the month. For now I'll just have to enjoy the best Toronto has to offer, as I am without a kitchen this month. Thanks Renata for a fabulous challenge!

Check out the full challenge PDF and get inspired!

Blog-checking lines: Renata of Testado, Provado & Aprovado! was our Daring Cooks’ April 2011 hostess. Renata challenged us to think “outside the plate” and create our own edible containers! Prizes are being awarded to the most creative edible container and filling, so vote on your favorite from April 17th to May 16th at http://thedaringkitchen.com!

The Daring Cooks make hiyashi soba and tempura!

I love the days when the Daring Kitchen challenges are revealed to members. If I am home, I check frequently, waiting for the challenge to appear. So, last month, when I checked on the challenge for February, I had to laugh. It was for hiyashi soba, which is a cold buckwheat noodle dish from Japan, accompanied by tempura. What did I find so funny? Just that it was -30℃/-22℉ that day! I could not imagine making any kind of salad, so I put off the challenge. Fast forward to February 11th, and I realized I only had a few more days. Now, putting things off till the last minute is much more my style, so I was ready to go. First off, the soba noodles:

Now, not only was I pondering the challenge for 3 weeks, but I also had to wait for my sister-in-law to bring me my pasta machine. Of course I planned to make my own soba! I enjoy making pasta, though I rarely do so, and I wanted to try my hand at an eggless noodle made with gluten-free buckwheat flour. I also like making things much more difficult than they need to be. The dough was like an unforgiving block of rapidly drying cement, and it kept crumbling as I tried to knead and roll it. Finally, I had to add more water and knead it for about 10 minutes to try to activate the gluten in the small amount of all-purpose flour. When I couldn't take it any longer, I started thinning the sheets in the pasta machine and cutting it into noodles. Some sheets worked, and others crumbled to bits as they were going through the machine. What you can see above is what I got from 1¼ cups of flour. What you see below are the defective noodles. They were falling out of the pasta cutter like this. I dried them and will use them in soup one of these days.

The noodles were very fragile, both when fresh and dried. However, once they were cooked, I was able to rinse and agitate them in cold water and they did not break. I won't be making them again, though,  as I now think packaged soba noodles are worth looking for and worth every penny! For the 'salad', I steamed some soybean sprouts and snow peas. I also made paper-thin Japanese omelets and cut them into strips. This was probably my favourite part of the challenge, as I love anything to do with eggs. I served it with a spicy soy-based dipping sauce. All recipes can be found in the challenge PDF, at the end of the post.

Now, the tempura. I again used the challenge recipe for the batter, but it didn't stick that well to all the vegetables. It worked best on the shrimp, which were fried at 170℃/340℉, while the vegetables were fried at 160℃/320℉. If I ever make tempura again, I'll use the higher temperature for everything. Why 'if ever'? Well, because it was good enough that I ate too much and I feel a bit icky right now. And my place smells like a chip wagon. Luckily it's not too far below zero, so the windows are open!

L to R: shrimp, onion, sweet potato, snow peas, lotus root

It's funny, but I worked in Japan for about 6 months, and when I found out I had got the job, one of the things I was least excited about was the food. Japanese food just seemed so mild-mannered compared to the strong, spicy flavours I prefer. I had to eat my words when I was there, because in 6 months I didn't have a bad meal, and I was so impressed with the impeccable presentation and clean flavours. Oh, and the cakes! I really need to cook more Japanese food! Thanks so much to Lisa of Blueberry Girl for the challenge. Check out the Daring Kitchen homepage for a slideshow of the most beautiful soba and tempura you'll see outside of Japan.

Complete challenge PDF, with all recipes and links.

Blog-checking lines: The February 2011 Daring Cooks’ challenge was hosted by Lisa of Blueberry Girl. She challenged Daring Cooks to make Hiyashi Soba and Tempura. She has various sources for her challenge including japanesefood.about.com, pinkbites.com, and itsybitsyfoodies.com

The Daring Cooks make a casserole?

Don't worry: it's not tuna noodle with potato chips on top! It's cassoulet: a classic French stew of white beans, sausage, confit duck and pork. Topped with seasoned breadcrumbs and baked, it's warm and comforting, and a bit stodgy too. Perfect for January! Jenni, of The Gingered Whisk and Lisa, of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives really challenged us this month, to make a confit, and even our own sausage! Normally I love doing stuff like that, even if I don't eat a lot of meat. That's what dinner parties are for, right? This month, because I still felt full a week after the holidays, I decided to make a vegetarian version. I started with this recipe, but made quite a few changes. First off, I skipped the carrots, as I don't find they roast all that well. I couldn't find celery root, so I used fennel instead. I love fennel--it's a winter staple around here. I used cherry tomatoes instead of canned and added a bit of tomato paste to the broth. I roasted all the vegetables, including a red onion. For the topping, I used fresh bread crumbs, parsley and the shallot confit I made. They were the best breadcrumbs ever, even before baking. I served the cassoulet with more shallot confit and some chimichurri sauce, to brighten up the long-cooked flavours. I must say, it worked a treat and I went back for seconds. Now, to eat the other 6 portions...

Complete challenge PDF here, with pictures, recipes and links. I have not included recipes, as I don't often measure when I'm cooking. Instead, I just use recipes as a guide. Try it!
Blog Checking Lines: Our January 2011 Challenge comes from Jenni of The Gingered Whisk and Lisa from Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. They have challenged the Daring Cooks to learn how to make a confit and use it within the traditional French dish of Cassoulet. They have chosen a traditional recipe from Anthony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlman.

The Daring Cooks make soufflé!

I realize there is a bottle of Amaretto right behind the soufflé, but there was no time to move it!

Watching a soufflé rise in the oven is way better than anything you can find on television. I watch what's happening in my oven all the time, but this was the best show I've seen in ages, and I wouldn't mind watching a repeat. In fact, I think there should be a specialty channel: Soufflé TV.

After a few minutes. They started out level with the top of the dish.

This month's challenge comes to us from the lovely Linda and Dave of MonkeyShines in the Kitchen. For my sweet soufflé, I couldn't decide what to make, meaning I left this close to the deadline. I had some lovely homemade applesauce from freshly picked apples, but then I made something else with it. Oops. Passionfruit? A favourite flavour, but I kept forgetting to pick any up. Banana? Possibly. Then I spied the bag of oranges in the back of the fridge. Orange and Amaretto are one of my favourite flavour combinations. I used a simple recipe and added orange zest, along with a couple of tablespoons of Amaretto.

After 10 minutes or so. MonkeyShines described these as rocket ships!

The soufflé mixture was fairly liquid, from the booze, I guess, and I was afraid it would spill over the edge and end up on the bottom of my oven. That didn't happen, and as you can see, they rose rather well. I was actually afraid they were going to propel themselves right out of the dish! I took the one on the right out after about 18 minutes, as I like a creamy centre. I left the other one in the oven while I took pictures, and it was fine--just a bit drier. These tasted wonderful--they were crispy on the edges from the sugar crust, and had a lovely orange flavour. The Amaretto was subtle, but I fixed that:

By scooping out a place for more Amaretto. Mmm. Getting pictures of these was the trickiest part, as they don't last long, and it was a partially cloudy day. The sun was playing cat and mouse, or, more accurately, playing chicken. I need to work on my food styling, but I was satisfied with the taste, and that's what counts for me. But that's not all...

I also made a savoury soufflé, a beet and feta one, soon after the challenge was revealed. It made a nice lunch, but didn't puff as much as I wanted. The texture was creamy, though, and the feta added bursts of flavour. It looked like a big fuschia cauliflower, I think.

Can you see me, reflected in the kettle?

Blog-checking lines: Dave and Linda from Monkeyshines in the Kitchen chose Soufflés as our November 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge! Dave and Linda provided two of their own delicious recipes plus a sinfully decadent chocolate soufflé recipe adapted from Gordon Ramsay’s recipe found at the BBC Good Food website.

Recipes and full challenge PDF after the jump.

Daring Cooks explore the world of pierogi!

This month's challenge was to make pierogi dough and fillings from scratch, using local ingredients when possible. I made 2 savoury varieties and  1 sweet one, though I didn't get any pictures of the sweet one. All in all, I made 72 pierogies, and it took a long time, rolling and cutting, filling and sealing each one by hand. I would much rather fuss over something sweet, though these were delicious.

This picture shows the rolled out dough with its filling of mashed potatoes, cheese curds, sauteed onion, butter, salt and pepper. You can see the cheese curds in the bottom left corner of the first picture. They are bits of fresh cheddar, before pressing, and are fresh, mild, salty and squeaky. When I was a child, they were the ubiquitous road trip snack, and it is all too easy to eat about a pound of them. Look out for them if you have a cheese factory in your area. I garnished the boiled pierogies with lardons of my uncle's smoked bacon and more sauteed onions. The dough I chose, from the Gourmet cookbook (the yellow one), was easy to work with, but the pierogies needed to be boiled for 15 minutes and they were still a bit chewy. 

This is the second savoury filling: ground pork sauteed with onions and mixed with an equal amount of fresh sauerkraut, seasoned with fresh thyme and pepper. There is a local store that makes wonderful barrel sauerkraut, which is so much better than the stuff from a can or jar. After boiling, I turned these in a pan with browned butter and fresh dill.

As a reward for making 71 of these, I made myself a treat: one large pierogi filled with German plum butter (from a can, found at the sauerkraut store) and cardamom. I love plums and cardamom together. After boiling I fried it with some butter and sugar and ate it with a big blob of mascarpone on top. Can you understand why I didn't get any pictures? Here's a gratuitous flower picture from the backyard instead.

This was a fun challenge, and while I have eaten many pierogies, I had only made them once before. It was a lot of work, but these were so much better than the ones you can buy frozen at the supermarket. Head over to The Daring Kitchen to check out the slideshow of all the other takes on this challenge. 

Oh, and even though I don't love potatoes, they were my favourite, well, after the cardamom-plum one. Maybe wrapping them in dough is the trick. After making the pierogies, I made a kind of shepherd's pie with the leftover fillings. It was delicious!

Blog-checking lines:
The August 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by LizG of Bits n’ Bites and Anula of Anula’s Kitchen. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make pierogi from scratch and an optional challenge to provide one filling that best represents their locale.

PDF of challenge and recipes after the jump!

The Daring Cooks go nuts!

How lame am I? The posting date for this was over 2 weeks ago, and I completely forgot about it. I made this rice noodle salad with a cashew dressing just before leaving for a month-long business trip. I am now on the train on my way home again, finally posting it. It was delicious, and the cashew sauce was the elusive peanut sauce I've been trying to perfect for a while. It was smooth and creamy with a strong hit of garlic and ginger. Also in the salad were poached chicken, red peppers, asparagus, snow peas, carrots and tons of cilantro. maybe something else too, but I can't remember now. There have been an awful lot of good meals in Toronto since I made this. Yum. Maybe I'll make it again now that I've got some free time in my future. Yay me!

Though I've long missed the deadline for this challenge, here are the blog-checking lines:

The July 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Margie of More Please and Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make their own nut butter from scratch, and use the nut butter in a recipe. Their sources include Better with Nut Butter by Cooking Light Magazine, Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, and Food Network online.

UPDATE: Here is the printable PDF of the challenge and a bunch or techniques and recipes.

Daring Cooks make pâté and bread!

This was my second challenge with the Daring Cooks, and it was a great one. I love pâté, but rarely make it. I enjoy making bread too, but again, I don't do it often enough. The components of this challenge were perfect for a picnic, and that's exactly what I did with them. It was a beautiful day for a picnic, and even though we were downtown, we enjoyed watching the wildlife frolic. There were chipmunks and squirrels, of course, but also groundhogs and raccoons, and a visit to the stray cat colony behind Parliament Hill.

The challenge required us to make one of the given pâté recipes, and you can see it in the upper right corner of the picture above. I chose the vegetarian pâté, with a layer of pesto, seasoned white beans, and a roasted red pepper layer. It was delicious, but as you can see the red pepper layer didn't set. The meat pâté is a combination of caribou, pork and veal liver. I ground the meats by hand with my grandmother's grinder, seasoned it with Marsala, and included figs and pistachios. The caribou was some from my uncle's hunting trip, which I had used here earlier. I wrapped the whole thing in bacon and it was delicious. I served it with Dijon mustard, hot red pepper jelly and cedar jelly. This is a product I picked up in Montreal, and it is delicious with cold meats and cheese. It's a lovely pale green colour, and it does taste of cedar. It seemed the appropriate accompaniment, as our hosts for this month both live in Montreal. They were Evelyne of Cheap Ethnic Eatz, and Valérie of The Chocolate Bunny, and they did a fabulous job. Thanks!

Oh, and where's the bread, you wonder? It was still in the oven at this point. I'm not known for being early, and I had woken up that day and decided to complete both my Daring Bakers' and Daring Cooks' challenges. I grabbed it out of the oven about 3 minutes before I left for the picnic (which I had already had to make a bit later). I made the Rustic Potato Bread from Baking with Julia. I don't really like potatoes, but I do like this bread. It's really quick, and it's moist and tender with a fine crumb. In fact, I'm going to have some toast right now with the leftovers.

Blog-checking lines: Our hostesses this month, Evelyne of Cheap Ethnic Eatz, and Valerie of a The Chocolate Bunny, chose delicious pate with freshly baked bread as their June Daring Cook’s challenge! They’ve provided us with 4 different pate recipes to choose from and are allowing us to go wild with our homemade bread choice.

Recipes after the jump!