Experiments with Food
Jan. 31st, 2010 09:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oakenguyExperiment 1: My wife got a food dehydrator. It's a necessary component of her plan to get healthier by eating as much raw, vegan, gluten-free food as possible. I wish her luck. For me, this new purchase means one thing only: JERKY.
Right now my first attempt, some bulgogi beef from Trader Joes, is in hour 5 of its 8-15 hour cycle (the recipe book times are pretty vague, I've noticed). After that, I've got some chicken soaking up a nice souvlaki marinade for experiment 1a. Once I see how that goes, it's salmon time. And then, meat on STICKS. Oh yes.
Experiment 2: Last week I wanted to make a dessert for a friend who was having a birthday. I'd managed to obtain the fact that he liked cream cheese frosting, no problem there, but what to put it on? And then I remembered two important facts.
Fact the First: I'd just encountered a recipe for a Southern dessert called a Coca-Cola cake;
Fact the Second: My friend, like myself and perhaps another .01% of the world's population, loves a soda called Moxie. (For the uninitiated, Moxie is like a cross between Doctor Pepper, root beer, and cough syrup. With a teeny-tiny bit of birch bark and anise mixed in. Not many sodas have layers of aftertastes like Moxie does; to my knowledge nothing else has afterSMELLS.)
So, thought I, could I replace the coca-cola in the cake recipe with Moxie? Yes, yes I could. It was a Learning Experience.
To my surprise, the Moxie was by no means the challenging part of the recipe. In fact, (future Iron Chef contestants may want to jot this down) if you stir Moxie and butter together and let it boil, it REALLY dilutes the Moxie flavor.
No no, the real challenge was that the recipe called for mini-marshmallows in the batter. (I checked two other recipes and they all agreed; it's not coca-cola cake without mini-marshmallows). The recipe had warned me to expect a thin batter; what it hadn't prepared me for was that mini-marshmallows FLOAT on the top of the batter. Float and then eventually melt and spread in the oven, but not evenly, making the toothpick test almost impossible because your results will vary wildly depending on whether you're poking a marshmallow or dry area.
Plus, when you take it out of the oven it looks like this:
Honestly, I've never been so happy to frost a cake.
And yet, I was pretty pleased with the end result--it had a density like fudge and a little bit of a kick like gingerbread. It makes me ponder how other sodas would work. And that makes me remember the diner up in Harvard Square with 19 varieties of root beer. Hmm. Hmmmmmm.
Right now my first attempt, some bulgogi beef from Trader Joes, is in hour 5 of its 8-15 hour cycle (the recipe book times are pretty vague, I've noticed). After that, I've got some chicken soaking up a nice souvlaki marinade for experiment 1a. Once I see how that goes, it's salmon time. And then, meat on STICKS. Oh yes.
Experiment 2: Last week I wanted to make a dessert for a friend who was having a birthday. I'd managed to obtain the fact that he liked cream cheese frosting, no problem there, but what to put it on? And then I remembered two important facts.
Fact the First: I'd just encountered a recipe for a Southern dessert called a Coca-Cola cake;
Fact the Second: My friend, like myself and perhaps another .01% of the world's population, loves a soda called Moxie. (For the uninitiated, Moxie is like a cross between Doctor Pepper, root beer, and cough syrup. With a teeny-tiny bit of birch bark and anise mixed in. Not many sodas have layers of aftertastes like Moxie does; to my knowledge nothing else has afterSMELLS.)
So, thought I, could I replace the coca-cola in the cake recipe with Moxie? Yes, yes I could. It was a Learning Experience.
To my surprise, the Moxie was by no means the challenging part of the recipe. In fact, (future Iron Chef contestants may want to jot this down) if you stir Moxie and butter together and let it boil, it REALLY dilutes the Moxie flavor.
No no, the real challenge was that the recipe called for mini-marshmallows in the batter. (I checked two other recipes and they all agreed; it's not coca-cola cake without mini-marshmallows). The recipe had warned me to expect a thin batter; what it hadn't prepared me for was that mini-marshmallows FLOAT on the top of the batter. Float and then eventually melt and spread in the oven, but not evenly, making the toothpick test almost impossible because your results will vary wildly depending on whether you're poking a marshmallow or dry area.
Plus, when you take it out of the oven it looks like this:
Honestly, I've never been so happy to frost a cake.
And yet, I was pretty pleased with the end result--it had a density like fudge and a little bit of a kick like gingerbread. It makes me ponder how other sodas would work. And that makes me remember the diner up in Harvard Square with 19 varieties of root beer. Hmm. Hmmmmmm.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-02-01 02:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-01 08:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-01 02:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-01 08:24 pm (UTC)Also, unrelated (heh) note: we should probably put our heads together and figure out when/how our characters bumped into each other and what they think of each other.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-01 09:28 pm (UTC)jerky -
teriyaki sauce + sliced thin garlick cloves (many) +ginger powder
freeze the meat slightly, slicy very thinly put in zip lock bag with above marinade for 24 horus in fridge
put on dehydrator for 24 hours or so. put hte garlick too the dehydrated garlick chips are awesome
no subject
Date: 2010-02-02 02:05 am (UTC)And YUM.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-02 05:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-01 04:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-01 04:46 am (UTC)Mmm...want to try this.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-01 07:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-01 01:22 pm (UTC)Second, I feel a great need to tell you how ungodly jealous I am that you've been to a place with 19 varieties of root beer. I would weep sweet tears of joy to be in that place.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-01 08:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-01 02:30 pm (UTC)Also, Moxie was once described to me by a friend as "bitter old man soda." After sampling it myself, I am curious as to whether the "bitter" referred to the soda or to the old man, or possibly both.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-01 08:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-01 03:50 pm (UTC)Though I have to confess, I once tried a swig of Moxie and had to spit it out. :-)
no subject
Date: 2010-02-01 03:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-01 05:29 pm (UTC)Just out of curiousity, where does one find moxie to try? And which diner is it in Harvard Square? And what's bulgogi beef?
no subject
Date: 2010-02-01 08:19 pm (UTC)I don't know what deal with the devil the moxie company made, but Star Market still carries it.
The diner is called "Leo's Place"--it's up the street from the Curious George childrens bookstore, and is a nice place to go if you feel like a $2.85 hot dog and sitting on a stool that spins.
Bulgogi beef is sort of like beef teriyaki, only it's Korean and is usually very thin shavings of meat instead of the big ol' Hunks On a Stick. This makes it very easy to cook as jerky!
no subject
Date: 2010-02-03 05:01 pm (UTC)(Do I count in the .01% if I drink Diet Moxie?)
no subject
Date: 2010-02-03 07:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-03 07:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-01 07:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-01 08:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-01 10:08 pm (UTC)That is...Awesome.
glad it came out better than it looked!
no subject
Date: 2010-02-02 02:07 am (UTC)I *like* the orange soda/white cake batter idea, too! For some reason, I immediately want to put it on a stick!
no subject
Date: 2010-02-03 05:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-03 07:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-03 05:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-03 07:14 pm (UTC)