Super simple chocolate mousse

I remember vividly the first time I made chocolate mousse. The recipe involved making chocolate custard and then folding whipped cream into it. The preparation was lengthy as it required making and cooling the custard, then folding in the cream, and cooling it all again. Too long. Too complex, hence I always go for a simpler version.

This recipe uses tempered chocolate, and some rum-flavored whipped cream. Tempering the chocolate may be the most challenging job, but even that is done in under 10 minutes.

Ingredients:

• dark chocolate, 72% is good, about 3 to 4 oz
• approximately 3/4 cup heavy cream
• approximately 1-2 TBS rum
• 1 TBS sugar. Coconut sugar works nicely.

Procedure:

Heat about 1/2 inch water in a medium-size pan, maintain the heat at medium. Improvise a bain-marie by putting a metal bowl on top of the pan, so that the bowl is heated by the steam of the water. Add 3/4 of the chocolate to the bowl, stir with heat-proof spatula until the chocolate is melted.

To temper chocolate, take the bowl off the pan, add the remaining chocolate, and keep stirring an scraping until the chocolate cools to about the body temperature or a bit higher. This takes a few minutes. The bowl will originally be hot, so use an oven mit or a protective glove.

In a separate bowl add the sugar, rum, and the cream Whip the cream to a soft peak. Then fold in the tempered chocolate. Mix gently until the chocolate and the cream are incorporated.

At this point you can put the mousse into serving glasses and cool it in a fridge. On the other side of the spectrum, one can always eat the mousse right away.

Ground beef with padron peppers

I love cooking with padron peppers - they are just spicy enough to flavor the dishes nicely, and they are not so spicy to call for removing the seeds. This makes using them a very simple proposition! In this dish, the peppers elevate the flavor of simple ground beef to levels I have experienced rarely. Marjoram and lemon juice round up the dish nicely. The key to the dish is to tear the ground beef into a skillet. This results in nice bite-size pieces, and eliminates the arduous task of "crumbling" a block of ground beef while it is being cooked.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb lean ground beef. I used 85% grass fed beef.
• 1 onion, chopped finely
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 cups of so chopped padron peppers, stems removed
• 1 cup chicken stock, definitely use low-sodium variety
• 1 TBS dry marjoram
• juice of half a lemon
• salt, pepper to taste
• 2 TBS oil

Procedure:

Heat oil in a skillet. Add the onion, a pinch of salt, a few grinds of black papper, and sautee until the onions soften and are translucent. Tear the ground beef into the skillet - aim for about 1/2 inch size pieces. Season with salt an pepper. Brown the beef on a medium high heat, stirring frequently enough that the meat does not burn. Some fat will render from the meat. Turn the heat off and use a paper towel to absorb the excess fat. This will make the final dish much lighter as it removes heaviness of the beef fat.

Turn the heat back on, add padron peppers and sautee briefly to warm up the peppers. Add garlic, and within a minute add the chicken stock. Rub in the marjoram, and stir. Simmer until the stock boils away.

Turn off the heat and stir in the lemon juice. 

Savory corn and ricotta pancakes

Savory pancakes are a nice twist to the more traditional sweet version. Though, the sweetness of corn can turn these pancakes into a sweet version - omit parmesan cheese and salt, and add a tablespoon of sugar.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 TBS baking powder
• 1/4 cup grated parmesan
• a pinch of salt
• kernels cur from 1 ear of corn, fresh

• 3 eggs
• 3/4 cup buttermilk, or a mix of milk and yogurt
• 1/2 cup ricotta
• oil or butter for pan frying

Procedure:

Mix dry ingredients in a bowl. In a bigger bowl whisk the wet ingredients. Whisk in the dry ingredients. Fry pancakes on a skilled on a medium-high heat using 1/4 cup of batter per pancake. Turn the pancakes after 2-3 minutes and cook on the other side for the same amount of time.

Serve with a dollop of ricotta along with some vegetables: Sauteed zucchini and tofu work great, or garlicky chard is also a good choice. Of course you can go for bacon as well.

Miso braised fennel

We love eating fennel raw in a salad. When it is sliced finely with a mandoline, the flavor becomes milder, and the crunchiness makes it a spectacular salad ingredient. Braising fennel bulbs transforms them into sweet tenderness that is hard to pass by. Here is a simple way to try this goodness...

Ingredients:

• fennel bulbs, cut into 2 inch pieces, e.g. in quarters
• 1TBS or so miso paste
• chicken stock
• oil for high-heat cooking, e.g. avocado or corn

Procedure:

Heat oil in a pan. Brown fennel pieces. Add chicken stock half way up the fennel pieces. Add miso paste - 1 TBS is a good start. Cover, simmer slowly for about 30 minutes. Turn the fennel every 10 minutes or so. Add more chicken stock if too much liquid evaporates. The fennel is cooked when one can pierce is easily with a fork.

The cooking liquid should turn into a fairly thick sauce by the time fennel is cooked. If it is too runny, take the cooked fennel out and boil some of the liquid off.

Serve with the sauce in which the fennel was cooked.

Paprika chicken stew

My mom's goto dish. The amount of cream used is something I still dream about. No way I could eat it that way any more, and my mom also mended her ways and reduced the amount of fatty goodness. One does need to use some good full-fat sour cream though to balance the flavors.

This is best eaten with bread dumplings, nothing, I mean absolutely nothing beats the combination.
Other options are crusty bread, mashed potatoes, spaetzle, pasta, even rice.

Just the chicken!

This is a great way to prepare chicken to be used with other dishes. Even the much lighter version of the paprika sauce is pretty heavy, so you may not want to always make it. Simply let the chicken cool, and then pull the meat off the bones in nice chunks. Here is how one can use it with spinach sauce and mashed potatoes.

Chicken drumsticks that I like to use in this recipe have a wonderful property that it is really hard to dry them out. When you remove the skin, the drumsticks become fairly lean as there are no pockets of fat that I always find in thighs. Chicken breasts are simply too lean for this preparation - lately I have only been making them sous vide to avoid drying them out.

Ingredients

• Chicken pieces - I like using drumsticks with skin removed. Quantity - you need to be able to have them in one layer in your pan.
• 1/2 onion, finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 2 TBS butter or oil. Coconut oil works very well.
• 1/3 cup paprika, or adjust as you wish
• 1 TBS ancho chili, optional
• 2 TBS tomato paste (approx)
• 1 TBS or more dry marjoram, optional
• low sodium chicken broth, enough to cover the chicken half way
• 1/3 to 1/2 cup full fat sour cream. Sorry, no-fat cream will yield a miserable result.
• 1-2 TBS of flour

Preparation

Select a wide preferably shallow pan for which you have a lid. In the pan, on a medium heat, saute onions until they become translucent. Then add garlic, and saute until you it starts to release fragrances. Add paprika, stir and cook for a minute of two. Make sure the heat is not too high so that the paprika does not burn. The flavor of paprika changes substantially to the better when you fry it for a bit.

Arrange chicken in one layer in the pan and season each piece with salt. Add enough chicken broth to cover the chicken half way up, or a bit more. Also add rubbed marjoram and tomato paste. Cover and simmer until the chicken is cooked, turning the chicken every 10 minutes or so. After about 30 minutes the chicken should be cooked.

Take the chicken pieces out and collect them in a bowl. Pour the braising liquid into a gravy separator and wait until the fat collects at the top. 

Carefully pour the liquid from the gravy separator in a fresh pan, leaving the fat behind. Add flour, about 1TBS per cup of liquid, or less if you want a runnier sauce. Add sour cream. Mix everything with an immersion blender - this is a sure way to avoid flour clumps, and also a sure way to get rid of any onion piece that was not caught by the gravy separator.

Alternatively, mix flour, sour cream, and some cold water to make a slurry.

Bring the liquid to a boil on a medium-high heat while whisking slowly and continuously, preferably with a flat whisk. Cook for a couple of minutes so that the gravy thickens. Return the chicken to the pan, heat it up and serve a piece of chicken on top of some gravy. 

Quick rhubarb sauce

Rhubarb!!!! Kind of hard to get in the Bay area, and also kind of pricey for funny looking stalks few people know how to use. No idea why. Milk Pail has it when it is in season, which is the case now. I was going to make some rhubarb crisp, and I ended up using some rhubarb to make a quick sauce to go with the trusty ricotta sourdough almond pancakes.

The good thing about rhubarb is that it is so tart, and one can use that to balance out the flavor of the dish. For example, plain apple compote tastes, well, somewhat plain. Add some rhubarb, balance out the sweetness, and the whole dish goes from plain to ballistic.

That was lots of rhubarb sauce, a bit less may be more reasonable

Ingredients:

• 1 TBS butter or coconut oil
• 1/2 cup sugar; use a bit less or more, to taste
• 2 cups of thinly sliced rhubarb, about two stalks
• a dash of freshly ground nutmeg
• rind of one lemon or orange, or a few drops of orange flavoring

Preparation:

In a pan dissolve sugar in the butter over medium heat. Add rhubarb slices.  Initially some caramel may form, but it will dissolve as the cooking goes on. Stir occasionally until the rhubarb is almost cooked. Add the nutmeg and citrus rind, stir well and cook for another minute or so until rhubarb is cooked.

Eat with pancakes, as a jam on bread an butter, use as crepe filling, ...