I’m Back!

The September 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.

It feels as though I have been gone forever (two weeks in internet terms can be an eternity).

Unfortunately for me my old computer, which had been my reliable workhorse for the past 6 years, decided to finally take a break. Worse yet, it decided to take a permanent break by means of a (insert exploitative here) failed hard drive motor.
While I usually am pretty religious about backing up my data to an external hard drive, you pretty much have to be in this business, and I unfortunately had not done it in the two weeks before the day it decided to quit. This was made even more painful an event as I had literally just finished all of the posts I had planned on doing for the next 2 weeks! Including the one you are going to see today…

This meant that I had to re-do everything from scratch. So while I was in the process of re-doing everything I wanted to make some changes that I had been putting off for some time now. I felt I had a little more time to do something special so I hope you enjoy!

Vols au Vent is French for “windblown” and is used to describe the lightness of a small hollow pastry. They are typically round (which as you can see is only limited by your imagination) with an opening cut out of the top which can accommodate various fillings. While these fillings are typically savory; I felt as though something sweet could be just as satisfying.

The goal of this month’s Daring Bakers challenge was to get everyone to make a puff pastry from scratch. I must admit that I was one of those who would typically pick up my pastry from the grocery store in an effort to save time figuring it couldn’t be all that much different in flavor.

I stand corrected. Maybe it’s because the dough hasn’t been frozen, perhaps it’s because the quality of ingredients are better, or it could just be that with the amount of time it takes to make a puff pastry you just think it tastes sooo much better!

While I like to post recipes that are relatively quick and easy to make this one definitely does not qualify as quick. However, if you have an entire afternoon to devote to this I think it’s a great idea to give it a try. Making your own puff pastry is a good learning experience when it comes to working with dough because it can be so finicky.

For this challenge I filled my Vols au Vent with a little left over Pumpkin Spice Mousse that I had made earlier in the week for dessert. The pumpkin spice mousse is quick and easy and has a light fluffy texture to it which I thought worked perfectly with the soft flaky texture of the puff pastry. This is a fun little project and can be a cute presentation for your next fall party!

Michel Richard’s Puff Pastry Dough
From: Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan
Yield: 2-1/2 pounds dough

Steph’s note: This recipe makes more than you will need for the quantity of vols-au-vent stated above. While I encourage you to make the full recipe of puff pastry, as extra dough freezes well, you can halve it successfully if you’d rather not have much leftover.

Ingredients:
2-1/2 cups (12.2 oz/ 354 g) unbleached all-purpose flour
1-1/4 cups (5.0 oz/ 142 g) cake flour
1 tbsp. salt (you can cut this by half for a less salty dough or for sweet preparations)
1-1/4 cups (10 fl oz/ 300 ml) ice water
1 pound (16 oz/ 454 g) very cold unsalted butter
plus extra flour for dusting work surface

Mixing the Dough:

Check the capacity of your food processor before you start. If it cannot hold the full quantity of ingredients, make the dough into two batches and combine them.
Put the all-purpose flour, cake flour, and salt in the work bowl of a food processor fitted with a metal blade and pulse a couple of times just to mix. Add the water all at once, pulsing until the dough forms a ball on the blade. The dough will be very moist and pliable and will hold together when squeezed between your fingers. (Actually, it will feel like Play-Doh.)
Remove the dough from the machine, form it into a ball, with a small sharp knife, slash the top in a tic-tac-toe pattern. Wrap the dough in a damp towel and refrigerate for about 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, place the butter between 2 sheets of plastic wrap and beat it with a rolling pin until it flattens into a square that’s about 1″ thick. Take care that the butter remains cool and firm: if it has softened or become oily, chill it before continuing.

Incorporating the Butter:

Unwrap the dough and place it on a work surface dusted with all-purpose flour (A cool piece of marble is the ideal surface for puff pastry) with your rolling pin (preferably a French rolling pin without handles), press on the dough to flatten it and then roll it into a 10″ square. Keep the top and bottom of the dough well floured to prevent sticking and lift the dough and move it around frequently. Starting from the center of the square, roll out over each corner to create a thick center pad with “ears,” or flaps.
Place the cold butter in the middle of the dough and fold the ears over the butter, stretching them as needed so that they overlap slightly and encase the butter completely. (If you have to stretch the dough, stretch it from all over; don’t just pull the ends) you should now have a package that is 8″ square.
To make great puff pastry, it is important to keep the dough cold at all times. There are specified times for chilling the dough, but if your room is warm, or you work slowly, or you find that for no particular reason the butter starts to ooze out of the pastry, cover the dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate it . You can stop at any point in the process and continue at your convenience or when the dough is properly chilled.

Making the Turns:

Gently but firmly press the rolling pin against the top and bottom edges of the square (this will help keep it square). Then, keeping the work surface and the top of the dough well floured to prevent sticking, roll the dough into a rectangle that is three times as long as the square you started with, about 24″ (don’t worry about the width of the rectangle: if you get the 24″, everything else will work itself out.) With this first roll, it is particularly important that the butter be rolled evenly along the length and width of the rectangle; check when you start rolling that the butter is moving along well, and roll a bit harder or more evenly, if necessary, to get a smooth, even dough-butter sandwich (use your arm-strength!).
With a pastry brush, brush off the excess flour from the top of the dough, and fold the rectangle up from the bottom and down from the top in thirds, like a business letter, brushing off the excess flour. You have completed one turn.
Rotate the dough so that the closed fold is to your left, like the spine of a book. Repeat the rolling and folding process, rolling the dough to a length of 24″ and then folding it in thirds. This is the second turn.

Chilling the Dough:

If the dough is still cool and no butter is oozing out, you can give the dough another two turns now. If the condition of the dough is iffy, wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for at least 30 minutes. Each time you refrigerate the dough, mark the number of turns you’ve completed by indenting the dough with your fingertips. It is best to refrigerate the dough for 30 to 60 minutes between each set of two turns.
The total number of turns needed is six. If you prefer, you can give the dough just four turns now, chill it overnight, and do the last two turns the next day. Puff pastry is extremely flexible in this regard. However, no matter how you arrange your schedule, you should plan to chill the dough for at least an hour before cutting or shaping it.

Steph’s extra tips:

-While this is not included in the original recipe we are using (and I did not do this in my own trials), many puff pastry recipes use a teaspoon or two of white vinegar or lemon juice, added to the ice water, in the détrempe dough. This adds acidity, which relaxes the gluten in the dough by breaking down the proteins, making rolling easier. You are welcome to try this if you wish.
-Keep things cool by using the refrigerator as your friend! If you see any butter starting to leak through the dough during the turning process, rub a little flour on the exposed dough and chill straight away. Although you should certainly chill the dough for 30 to 60 minutes between each set of two turns, if you feel the dough getting to soft or hard to work with at any point, pop in the fridge for a rest.
-Not to sound contradictory, but if you chill your paton longer than the recommended time between turns, the butter can firm up too much. If this seems to be the case, I advise letting it sit at room temperature for 5-10 minutes to give it a chance to soften before proceeding to roll. You don’t want the hard butter to separate into chuncks or break through the dough…you want it to roll evenly, in a continuous layer.
-Roll the puff pastry gently but firmly, and don’t roll your pin over the edges, which will prevent them from rising properly. Don’t roll your puff thinner than about about 1/8 to 1/4-inch (3-6 mm) thick, or you will not get the rise you are looking for.
-Try to keep “neat” edges and corners during the rolling and turning process, so the layers are properly aligned. Give the edges of the paton a scooch with your rolling pin or a bench scraper to keep straight edges and 90-degree corners.
-Brush off excess flour before turning dough and after rolling.
-Make clean cuts. Don’t drag your knife through the puff or twist your cutters too much, which can inhibit rise.
-When egg washing puff pastry, try not to let extra egg wash drip down the cut edges, which can also inhibit rise.
-Extra puff pastry dough freezes beautifully. It’s best to roll it into a sheet about 1/8 to 1/4-inch thick (similar to store-bought puff) and freeze firm on a lined baking sheet. Then you can easily wrap the sheet in plastic, then foil (and if you have a sealable plastic bag big enough, place the wrapped dough inside) and return to the freezer for up to a few months. Defrost in the refrigerator when ready to use.
-You can also freeze well-wrapped, unbaked cut and shaped puff pastry (i.e., unbaked vols-au-vent shells). Bake from frozen, without thawing first.
-Homemade puff pastry is precious stuff, so save any clean scraps. Stack or overlap them, rather than balling them up, to help keep the integrity of the layers. Then give them a singe “turn” and gently re-roll. Scrap puff can be used for applications where a super-high rise is not necessary (such as palmiers, cheese straws, napoleons, or even the bottom bases for your vols-au-vent).

PUMPKIN MOUSSE
Recipe courtesy Dave Lieberman

Ingredients

1 (15-ounce) can pumpkin
3 cups heavy cream
3/4 cup superfine sugar
1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Ginger snaps, for garnish

Directions

Combine pumpkin, 1 cup cream, sugar and spice in a medium saucepan. Simmer over medium heat for 5 minutes. Cool fully.

Whip remaining heavy cream and vanilla to soft peaks and fold into cooled pumpkin mixture. Pour into a serving dish and crumble the ginger snaps over top before serving.

As some of you have been wondering it has been some time since my last post. While I try to keep this site updated 2 or 3 times a week unfortunately my computers hard drive decided it was high time to quit.

While this has not kept me out of the kitchen, it has however, set me back a couple of weeks as I have now lost all of the pictures and posts that I had prepared in advance for the next two weeks. So please bare with me as I try to bring my computer back to life and re-bake all of the delicious things I had made for my posts already…. See there are silver linings to all clouds after all~!

This would be an excellent time to add my RSS feed or Subscribe to recieve updates via email so you can be alerted as soon as I have had the chance to get something up!

Each year KRLD is responsible for bringing together some of Dallas’ most exclusive restaurants in an effort to provide a chance for you to get a great meal while helping to raise funds for the North Texas Food Bank. Not only is this a great cause; it’s also a great opportunity for the diner as the pricing is fixed at $35 for a 3 and sometimes 4 course meal (which in most cases is well below what a typical meal will cost at these establishments). So imagine what this type of event does for a food loving citizen of Dallas such as myself!

When I got this year’s list restaurants participating in the KRLD restaurant week I couldn’t wait to hit a couple of Dallas’ crème de la crème restaurants! As I ran through the list like a little kid opening his Christmas present early I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw Al Biernat’s at the top of the list!

Al Biernat’s (for those of you who don’t live in Dallas) has become one of Dallas’ seen and be seen restaurants. With Dallas celebrities ranging from Aikman to Dirk and many other VIP’s Al Biernat’s has become known as a hot spot in this city. Their menu also reflects their rise to stardom as well with entrees alone ranging from $24 – $47.

I quickly made reservations for my wife and I and counted down the days with a large X on my calendar every day in anticipation of our special event.

When we arrived at Al Biernat’s I was already under the impression that we had possibly come on a bad night. The place was packed (the line for the valet was about 10 cars deep). While this could be seen as an indication that this place really lives up to the hype it could also mean that it wouldn’t be the quite and intimate dinner my wife and I were expecting.

Upon entering Al Biernat’s we were immediately greeted by a sports bar. Two large TV’s are posted on each side of a bar that was packed with people waiting for their tables. I must admit I was a little put off by how loud it was. Even after being seated you knew whenever Oklahoma scored a touchdown as the place erupted with cheers and sneers.

We had reservations for 8:30 (thank goodness because I don’t think we would have gotten in otherwise). After a few moments wait we got our table at 8:50 which was no big deal to me. I’m use to restaurant running late with reservations.

As we were whisked through the dining room by our host something immediately occurred to me, the tables were much closer then what we were expecting. When I visited the website I saw a picture of the restaurant that shows some tables evenly distributed throughout the dining room allowing guests to have a quite and intimate dinner.

However, this was not the case, a bunch more tables had been added to the room in a fashion that left guests sitting on top of each other. How close were we? Well let’s just say it reminds me of a touristy Italian restaurant where you can hear the conversations of your neighbors more then the conversation in which you are participating. Don’t believe me? Well our diners to the left were a young couple from SMU on their first date. I could tell the guy was a little nervous as he started each sentence with “So…” Our fellow diners to the right were a couple that had been out on a few dates, the gentleman was a big investor in commodities and had been working some late hours as of lately and was looking forward to a vacation he had coming shortly. Ambiance aside my wife and I were really here for the food.

I was going to post a link to the menu for this article but they unfortunately took it down at the end of the restaurant week. There were quite a few choices to choose from which I liked seeing as how many of the restaurants participating in the KRLD restaurant week had a pretty limited scope.

I decided to go with the Prawns in a cilantro lime and habanero sauce as my appetizer. While the combinations of flavor were pretty good, I liked how the spiciness of the sauce was contrasted by the cooling effects of cilantro and lime, I must confess that I have been to Australia and had jumbo prawns before. These were not jumbo prawns; in fact the size was closer to that of regular shrimp that had been relaxed to appear a little larger then what they really were. I had brought my camera in hopes of capturing pictures of our evening however, the lighting was such that all of them pretty much looked like pictures they were taken at night and pretty much indistinguishable. The dish to me was okay. The flavors were unique yet I was still left craving more as the size was petite. Something that is completely okay in my book as it is an appetizer and is not meant to be extremely filling.

Everywhere I read stated that Al Biernat’s was more then a steakhouse. Seeing as how I have had my fair share of Dallas steakhouses (they are overkill here in Dallas as you can imagine). I chose to go off the beaten trail (as they suggest) and ordered the salmon. What it was topped with I cannot exactly say anymore (as again they took down the menu), which is I guess okay in that what I would say about it is that it wasn’t really anything that stood out as a wow food. It was cooked well but really, how hard is that?

The dessert was the Grand Marnier Crème Brulee. Both my wife and I got this and were equally impressed. It really made up some ground work on the meal. The flavor of the Grand Marnier really stood out and the Brulee was perfectly caramelized.

In all I would say that our experience at Al Biernat’s was a little disappointing, which is hard for me to say seeing as how I like to visit an establishment a couple of times before I really make a decision about it.

For the price I was expecting a little more intimate dining experience with food that really stood out. Maybe it was the fact that we were picking form the KRLD menu, maybe it was just an off night because it was a packed joint however, Al Biernat’s really didn’t stand out as a place that was exemplary of what we had heard before. If you’re a person that is a seen and be seen type of diner then this is definitely the place for you as you will definitely be seen. However, if you’re in the search of great food for the price you might want to keep looking.

The beginning of September means a few things here in Texas.

1. The heat is finally starting to subside.
2. Cold winter months are fast approaching.
3. Cherries are reaching the end of their season.

Because of this I find myself wanting to jar every fruit known to man as I know that the long cold winter months will most likely yield nothing but frozen fruits and sparse vegetables.

A couple of years ago a fried of mine brought over some brandied cherries during the holidays and gave me my first taste of a truly fantastic ice cream topper. While this is not the only thing brandied cherries are good for, it surly is my favorite use of them.

Seeing as how it takes 3 months before the brandied cherries are ready to eat I thought that I would make this a two part series. The first part will be as you can see below the steps involved with jarring your brandied cherries and storing them for a later date. Pretty much the only thing I don’t like about these babies is the fact that they lack the sense of immediate satisfaction due to the 3 month fermenting period….

Begin your brandied cherries by submerging your mason jars in boiling water for 5 minutes. While normally this process is done primarily to keep the jars from cracking when you add hot ingredients, I do this for these jars as well as you never know who (or more importantly WHAT) might have been in the jar before you got it at the store. Once your jars are ready you can take them out of the pot and set them aside as they don’t have to be hot for this jarring process.

There are two ways of approaching the next step. If you want quick and easy brandied cherries simply de-stem your cherries and place them in the jar until you reach about a ½ inch from the top. If you want (in my opinion) much more flavorful and easier to consumer later cherries; pit your cherries. If you don’t have a cherry pitter, (as I quickly found out I miss placed) you can always use a paper clip by unfolding it into an S shape and using it to dig out the pits. Personally a cherry pitter is a worthwhile invention however, in a pinch the paper clip wasn’t a bad option. A little bit messy, but since when has working with cherries not been messy?

Now it’s time to fill the jars with sugar. Slowly add your sugar until the jar is approximately ¾ full. Make sure to tap the jar a few times to ensure that the sugar fills in any gaps.

Now comes the fun part; adding the liquor. While I know the title of this post says brandied cherries, don’t let this limit your imagination. For this years batch I used brandy for 1/3 of my jars, Kirsch for another 1/3, and Cognac for the remaining third. Another great liquor that came to mind was some aged whiskey, but alas, I had already finished the bottle earlier in the week. Fill your jars just below the rim to allow a about a ¼ inch space of air between it and the lid. It is important to leave this space as it will help you properly form your seal shortly.

Make sure to securely tighten your lids to your jars as close to center as possible to ensure a good seal. Place the jars into a large pot and completely submerge with water. Bring the water to a hard boil for 10 to 13 minutes. Then turn off the heat and allow the jars to sit for an additional 5 minutes to help equalize the pressure in the jars. Remove each jar and let cool.

The next day check your seals. Do this by removing the screw tops carefully and gently pushing down on the center you should feel no give what so ever. If your seal is broken you can stick them in the fridge and do the process over again when you have the chance.

Turn the jars over every hour for 4 hours to allow your sugar and liquor a chance to mix completely for the next day.

Now comes the hard part. Wait (if you can) 3 months before opening your jars….

My friend sent me this link to the recipe he uses to do this however, I feel it’s really lacking in the proper jarring steps so please make sure to follow the instructions above to avoid any possible jarring diseases….

Brandied Cherries
Altered slightly from Ehow.com

Ingredients:

Roughly 3 1/2 pounds black cherries for 12 jars
6 cups sugar
6 cups brandy or other liquor

Directions:

1. Simmer the jars in water for about 15 minutes (Lids and rings can go in, too).
2. While the jars are sterilizing, wash the cherries well and remove the stems completely drain them well.
3. Pit the cherries.
4. Fill clean jars with the cherries, packing tight without squashing them.
5. Pour sugar over the cherries until the sugar is at about the 3/4ths level, shaking the jar as you add the sugar to make sure all air pockets are getting filled.
6. Pour brandy in slowly, swirling it around a bit as you pour so the sugar absorbs as much as possible. Add brandy to within an ¼ inch of the top.
7. Clean the lip of the jar with clean paper toweling and put the rubber lid and ring on the jar, securely.
8. Place in a large pot and submerge in water. Bring the water to a violent boil and boil for 10 – 15 minutes.
9. Remove form heat and let sit for an additional 5 minutes until jars have pressurized.
10. The next day check your seals to ensure proper sealing.
11. Turn the jars upside down, and turn them end to end again every hour for 4 hours. This insures that the brandy and sugar will mix completely.
12. Store in a cool, dry, dark place at least 3 months before using. A basement pantry works well but can be stored in the refrigerator on a low level in back. You can cover the jars with a dark dish towel in the fridge.