Beef Stroganoff

Growing up, everyone has certain food or dishes that become staples in the family menu and get passed on from generation to generation.  In the Schuler household we had several. Rice Ole, Creamed Chipped Beef on Toast, Turkey Casserole with Cranberry Pinwheels and of course, the creamy, beefy, noodle-y masterpiece, Beef Stroganoff.  The version that we enjoyed in our family consisted of hamburger, onion, mushrooms and sour cream cooked up and served over buttered noodles.  When I first saw "Stroganoff" on the list, I was excited, but this version is bit different than the one I grew up on, substituting matchstick potatoes for noodles, beef tenderloin for hamburger and without mushrooms.

The ingredients for this version of the recipe are:

4 tbsp. unsalted butter
2 tbsp. flour
1 tsp. dry mustard
1 cup beef stock
1/4 cup sour cream
1 small yellow onion, thinly sliced
11/2 lb beef tenderloin, cut into 3" x 1" x 1/2" slices
Kosher Salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
Canola oil, for frying
4 russet potatoes, peeled and sliced into 1/8" matchsticks
2 tbsp. finely chopped parsley.

As with many recipes, in order to get the dish done properly, you have to be able to multitask efficiently.  You must create a roux and the sauce; peel, slice and fry the potatoes, cook the beef and onions and then bring everything together.  Usually not a big issue for me, but through in taking notes and pictures...and we have a party! 

First on the agenda was to peel, slice chop the potatoes into matchstick potatoes.  After chopping them, I put them between paper towels to draw out a bit of the excess moisture.  A trick to crispy matchstick fries is to make sure they are as dry as possible, and placing them into oil that is properly heated.  I poured the oil to a depth of about 1 1/2" in a dutch over and heated to 375 degrees.  Working in batches I fried the potatoes up until they were golden and crisp (about 5 minutes).  It took me a batch or two to figure the right amount of potatoes to put in at once (about a cup and a half) as when you put too many into the oil at once, they drop the temperature of the oil down faster than the burner can heat it, not only slowing down cooking, but slowing the frying process, resulting in a greasy fry.  When the potatoes were done cooking I removed them with a metal slotted spoon and placed them on paper towels to drain, then sprinkled them with kosher salt.

While the potatoes were frying up, I took 1/2 of the butter and melted it in a saucepan and added the flour and dry mustard, cooking for about two minutes.  If you like a nutty flavor to your sauces, continue cooking the roux (flour and butter mixture) for another 30 seconds to a minute and it will start to brown a bit.  I then added the chicken stock slowly, whisking constantly.  I brought that (basically chicken gravy) to a boil and cooked until it thickened a bit, and mixed in the sour cream.  Once the sour cream was fully incorporated, I took it off the heat and set it aside.

With the sauce under control, I sliced the onions and sauteed them in the remaining butter  until soft and a bit caramelized (about 6 minutes).  With the onions underway, I sliced the beef and placed it in the pan, cooking until the bits were cooked to about medium.  When you make stroganoff with hamburger, you have to cook it completely, but with the beef, I figured that it would continue cooking in the sauce for a bit and I wanted to make sure that it was cooked enough to eliminate the blood that may still be in the meat, but keep it from overcooking in the sauce and make it tough and stringy.

When the meat was cooked, I emptied the saucepan into the skillet and brought it back up just below a boil.  I plated the dish by placing the beef and sauce mixture on the plate, setting a handful of potatoes on top of it and then sprinkling with parsley.

I had the same problem with this stroganoff that I had with the version that my mother made, I couldn't get enough!  The meat turned out just right, tender and moist.  The sauce had that fantastic sour cream tang, but deeper flavors thanks to the onion and dry mustard.  The potatoes were OK, but in a next round, I would slice the matchsticks smaller.  Mine ended up being more like fries than matchsticks (see pic above).  I still prefer noodles though.  I did miss the mushrooms, which would be easy enough to add into the recipe.

Credit: Todd Coleman

My dining companions (Kim and my sister Brooke) were big fans of the meal.  Enough that we had no leftovers.  They enjoyed the flavor and Kim was especially happy to not have to pick out mushrooms from her dinner.

Another recipe in the books, and again, a recipe that I will make in some form again in future.  Next on the list - my first ever attempt at Indian Cuisine - Saag Paneer.  Should be interesting!

8 down, 93 to go.

Ful Medames

And now for the easiest recipe of the 101 Recipe Challenge thus far, Ful Medames.  The introduction to the recipe lists the dish as the national dish of Egypt and a delicacy usually eaten for breakfast.  I'm a big fan of many types of beans, so I was looking forward to this recipe (with the exception of the hard boiled eggs).

The recipe consists of canned fava beans, lemon juice, garlic, olive oil, cumin, cayenne pepper, salt, black pepper; with chopped parsley and hard boiled eggs for garnish.  I drained and rinsed the beans and placed them in a 2 quart saucepan and covered them with water by 1" and boiled over medium high heat for 8 minutes.

I drained the beans again and combined with the liquids and spices in a bowl.

Using my wooden spoon, I mixed the ingredients, taking care to begin mashing the beans lightly while stirring them.  To plate, I placed the bean mixture on a plate, drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled the dish with minced parsley and surrounded with egg wedges.

Credit: Todd Coleman

While I didn't have the Ful for breakfast, after one taste I can understand why it is beloved by many in the Middle East.  I am not a big fan of hard boiled eggs, so I started by tasting the beans straight.  There haven't been many things I've eaten that have had a flavor that evolves through the mouthful as this does.  Before the spoonful even fully hits your mouth, the smell of the beans and cumin start the process, then you first taste the savory beans.  Next you catch a bit of the olive oil, but more importantly the acidity of the lemon juice.  Finally, the black pepper and cayenne give you a good kick, not enough to distract, but you still feel it.  The mouth feel of the Ful was fantastic.  The velvety mashed beans studded with some whole beans, drizzled with olive oil...it was fantastic.  I did try a few bites with the egg and didn't mind it...which is probably the best thing I could ever say about a hard boiled egg.

My wife Kim enjoys cumin as much as I enjoy hard boiled eggs, and to her credit she tried the Ful Medames.  She didn't mind the texture but the cumin was just too overpowering.  My sister had joined us for dinner (Ful for an appetizer, Beef Stroganoff - which will be my next post -for the entree) and enjoyed the beans.  Between the two of us, I believe we cleaned the plate.

All in all, will be making this again for sure.  It's quick, easy and tasty - some of my favorite qualities in a meal.

7 down, 94 to go.

Chicken with Forty Cloves of Garlic

Next up, Recipe # 32 in Saveur Magazine's 101 Classic Recipes, Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic.  I've seen variations of this recipe in several cookbooks (like these versions from the Gourmet Cookbook and Allrecipes.com) but have stayed away because I thought that the garlic would have been so overpowering that it would render the meal inedible.  In a small way, this recipe exemplifies one of the main reasons that I undertook this challenge, to expand my horizons and put me outside of my culinary comfort zone.

The ingredients for the recipe are olive oil; a whole chicken cut up into 8 pieces; salt and pepper to taste, dry vermouth, tarragon and of course - 40 cloves of garlic.  I first used my semi-fabulous butchering skills to split up the chicken into its various parts.

One of my college roommates that was a butcher's assistant taught me how to split a chicken and it is a skill that has served me well (you can find online instructions here).  In most cases, I prefer to buy whole chickens and cut them up for recipes.  If nothing else - it saves me a little on my grocery bill (usually whole chickens cost a bit less than prepared chickens; a whole lot less than boneless, skinless chicken breasts) and I usually toss the remaining carcass into the freezer to use in making chicken stock when I have the opportunity.  Nothing is better than chicken soup in the middle of December made from scratch.  After splitting the chicken, I applied an ample dose of kosher salt and ground black pepper on both sides.

I warmed up the olive oil in my dutch oven over medium high heat and once it was up to temperature I  added the chicken and browned for approximately 15 minutes, turning once.  As well I began pre-heating the oven at 350 degrees.

 

While the chicken cooked, I took the opportunity to peel the forty cloves of garlic.  The recipe notes that you can use as many one hundred cloves when cooking, but I barely got forty peeled in the time it took the chicken to brown.  In retrospect, pre-peeled garlic would have been key and much more time efficient.

And of course, much easier to clean up after cooking!

After the chicken had finished, I placed it in a casserole dish and set aside and tossed the garlic into the dutch oven to cook for 6 minutes, stirring often, until they too began to brown.

Once the garlic was browned and I had successfully tested the vermouth (martini anyone?), I added a half cup to the garlic and reduced it, scraping the bottom of the pan well as it reduced.  After two minutes I added the chicken stock and brought it to a boil.

 

 After the fragrant brew came to a boil, I transferred a quarter of the cloves to the casserole dish and used my potato masher to mash the remaining cloves into a pulpy mix, which I then poured over the chicken and placed in the oven for 20 minutes.

After the chicken was fully cooked, I followed a "bonus" step in the recipe and cooked the garlic a bit longer, then took a whisk to it to make a pan sauce.  The whisk didn't break the garlic down as much as I would have liked (maybe if I had cooked the garlic longer, it would have had the desired effect) so I used an immersion blender on the sauce until it was an outstanding emulsion of garlic and chicken juices. Below is a picture of one of my standard sauce tests - a roll or slice of bread dipped in the sauce to test it for seasoning and flavor.  I could simply use a spoon, but what fun is that.

As I noted, going into the recipe, I had a concern that the garlic would be too much and overpower the dish.  I did not need to worry.  I'm not sure if it was cooking the garlic in vermouth that mellowed out the flavor a bit or if any dish can only attain a certain level of "garlicky", no matter how much garlic you put into it.  The chicken was moist and had a great flavor, especially when additional sauce was spooned over it and sprinkled with tarragon.

Credit: Penny De Los Santos

My dining companion loved the chicken (breast) and thought that the flavor was intense, but enjoyable.  I had a wing and thigh and agreed that though it was intense (I think that we cleared the vampires from our neighborhood for good), the chicken had a great texture and earthy, almost root vegetable (parsnip, carrot) undertones in its flavor.  When I make this recipe again, in addition to using peeled garlic, I will also brown both the chicken and the garlic for quite a bit longer.  The wing I had, while cooked, was missing the slight crunch that it should have had and I believe that if I cooked the garlic longer in the first stage, it would have brought a deeper flavor to the dish and broken down more readily in the sauce when it was whisked.

Another one in the win column and and easy recipe that could be made on any given Sunday afternoon when I'm in the mood for some garlicky goodness.

Next on the list - Ful Medames (Stewed Fava Beans).

6 down, 95 to go. 

Senate Bean Soup

Next up in the 101 Recipe Challenge - Senate Bean Soup.  According to the entry in the October issue of Saveur Magazine, this recipe for Senate Bean Soup is similar to the version carried on the menus of many restaurants in the area of Washington D.C. near the U.S. Senate in the early 20th Century.

The soup consists of 7 ingredients (Navy Beans, onion, unsalted butter, a smoked ham hock, water, salt and black pepper).  Preparing the recipe takes a bit of foresight as the beans must soak overnight in water. 

Once thoroughly soaked, I gave the beans a good draining and tossed them into my dutch oven with 8 cups of water and a smoked ham hock.  Most  home cooks north of the Mason Dixon line don't have a ton of opportunity to use the lesser known bits of the pig, the ham hock being one of them.  The "hock" of a ham is part of the hind leg of a pig, usually the section between the joint and the foot.  It usually is full of fun stuff like ligaments, bone and a really thick skin.  Almost always smoked, cured or smoked and cured, it is used in soups, stews and other braised foods to impart a smoky, salty flavor to the dish.  I have used ham hocks in other recipes (Collard Greens, Kale stew, Baked Beans) and they almost always must be cooked for a long period of time to break down the tough tissues inside of hock.

The recipe called for one ham hock, but the ones I had seemed small so I tossed in two.  I brought them to a boil and simmered for an hour.  Towards the tail end of the hour, I finely chopped an onion and sauteed in butter until soft, then added it into the soup.

The recipe called to cook until the beans were soft (about an hour) and I simmered the beans to the point where they would squish a bit when I squeezed them.  I then pulled the hocks out (I don't think I ever thought I would use the word hock so much at one time), and let them cool a bit.  I pulled the skin off and set to pull as much meat as possible off the bone.  I'm glad that I put two into the stew because the actual meat was pretty scarce.  As you can see from the image below, the majority of each piece was bone and skin.  During my research several sites said that you could substitute 4 ounces of salt pork or thick cut bacon for a ham hock in a recipe.  I think I was able to pull about 4 ounce combined off of the two that I had cooked.

I then took my potato masher and mashed the beans a bit until it had a "thick, creamy texture" as described in the original recipe.  I folded in the ham, grabbed a piping hot bowl, ground on some salt and pepper and was ready for lunch.

Senate Bean Soup - Schuler Version

Senate Bean Soup - Saveur Version

The first taste seemed a bit bland, so I doubled up on the salt and pepper.  The consistency was good, but the beans didn't seem to be cooked completely.  It could be that I personally like beans that are really soft (think Bush's baked) and these were a bit more like al dente pasta.  There was a smokey flavor to the soup, but it could have been heavier.  I thought about hitting the dutch oven with my stick blender for a minute and trying to puree the beans a bit more, but wanted to stay as true to the recipe as possible.  The recipe description noted that it started in the early 20th century, and I could have definitely seen this as being eaten during that time.

I think that there would be a few things that I would have done different if I were to cook this again.  First I would soak the beans twice as long and probably cook them twice as long as well.  If I used a ham hock again, I would score the skin, letting out more of the flavor, and hopefully breaking the cartilage and connective tissue down a bit more.  But I think I would rather cook up a half a pound of thick sliced bacon or browned salt pork, then add 3/4 of it to the beans as they cooked, and the remainder after the beans were mashed.

Notes from my #1 taste tester - "The beans are a bit too tough, but with the flavor of the ham, it reminds me of  the baked potato soup from Bennigan's" (where I worked for a few years).

While Elvis Presley's Pound Cake will become at least an annual part of my repertoire, I'm not sure that Senate Bean Soup will be showing up again anytime in the near future.

5 down, 96 to go!

Elvis Presley's Pound Cake

This blog post for certain has to be dedicated to my family.  My stepfather and sister are huge Elvis Presley fans.  They may not be the biggest fans in the world, but they are most certainly the biggest ones that I know.  I am a casual fan of his music, and was forced to watch his movies at a young age (there is only so much Blue Hawaii that someone can take), but I can safely say that I am more of a fan of his taste in food than I am anything else.  There are a bunch of "Elvis" Cookbooks including "Are You Hungry Tonight?" and "All Cooked Up: Recipes and Memories from Elvis' Friends and Family" and I'm sure they include recipes like "Hunka Hunka Burning Chili" and "Ain't Nothin' but a Hot Dogs", but supposedly one of his favorite sweet treats was this Pound Cake recipe from his child hood friend Janelle McComb.

The recipe itself (as found in the October '12 Saveur Magazine - click here for the recipe on Saveur.com) is simple (7 ingredients - unsalted butter, cake flour, sugar, vanilla, kosher salt, eggs and heavy cream) and even I had no issues producing a two fantastic pound cake loaves.  That may sound a little self deprecating, but I have issues baking.  I'll expound on that in a future post.

I gathered the ingredients - letting the eggs, butter and cream come up to room temperature (having learned my lesson from my Spaghetti Carbonara experience) on the counter.  I greased two loaf pans with unsalted butter and sprinkled them with cake flour, setting them aside for later.

Another best practice that I'm trying to adopt from other experiences in the 101 Recipe Challenge is to use the exact ingredients listed on the recipe.  In my initial recipe, Kibbeh, I used regular grind bulgur instead of fine grind and it affected the final dish.  The Elvis Presley Pound Cake recipe called for cake flour which I had never heard of.  I figured that it was to flour what confectioner's sugar was to table sugar.  Come to find out,  that couldn't be farther from the truth.  Cake Flour is a low protein flour, usually around 8%, made from a softer winter wheat.  Because of its low protein composition, when it is used in a recipe, less gluten forms in the dough or batter, creating a smooth texture with a finer crumb than recipes using all purpose flour.

After prepping the pans and starting up the oven (350 degrees...of course) I pulled out another of my beloved kitchen tools, my Kitchenmaid Stand Mixer.  To quote Ferris Beuller "So Choice.  If you have the means, I highly recommend that you pick one up."  Honestly, I love that thing and don't use it nearly as much as I should.  I put the softened butter, sugar and salt in the bowl and beat at 1/2 speed for six minutes, until the mixture was pale and fluffy.  I then added the eggs one at a time, beating well and scraping down the sides of the bowl between each. 

I then added the flour and cream, alternating between the flour and cream, making sure to begin and end with the flour as the recipe called for.  I believe I added a cup of flour and 1/2 a cup of the cream at a time.  I then followed the direction to increase the speed to high and beat until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes.

The batter was unbelievably light and fluffy.  Between beating each egg into the batter individually, then beating it for a full 5 minutes on high with heavy cream in the batter, it had become the consistency of slightly loose whipped cream.  The taste was heavenly, almost like a vanilla mousse and it melted on my tongue.  If the final product was half as good as the batter, I was in for a treat.  As it was my family fell all over themselves to be the first to get a lick off of the rubber spatula and whisk attachment for the mixer.

You may ask...why the sieve?  The recipe called for the cake flour to be sifted and I do not have a sifter (uni-tasker), so I used my hand sieve to sift the flour when adding it to the batter.  Then I divided the batter between the two loaf pans and smoothed the tops with a rubber spatula. 

The loaf pans went into the oven for about an hour and 15 minutes, until a toothpick was inserted and came out with a little crumb sticking to it.  The recipe called for letting the loaves cool, in pan, for 30 minutes, then cooling them completely until slicing.  Well, I can assure you that that did not happen.  They sat in pan for 30 minutes and cooled for about 5 after I took them out of the pan, but that was all I could take.  I cut a few slices and though the smell had been great in the kitchen while it had been baking, the smell was 100x better after it was sliced.  A thick, sweet smell with traces of vanilla and warm butter that made me a happy man.
 

Elvis Presley's Pound Cake - Schuler Version

Elvis Presley's Pound Cake - Saveur Example Photo

 The cake was very dense, but not heavy, with a very fine crumb.  The texture was very smooth and even the crust seemed to melt in my mouth.  To be sure, the cake was sweet, but not overpoweringly so.  You taste the vanilla almost as an undertone, but it is distinct.  I will make this recipe again, but using a higher quality vanilla as opposed to the private label Aldi's version.  I think the flavor profile would change and you would get a much more complex flavor from a better vanilla. Sometimes when you have pound cake, you need to have some sort of accompaniment (fruit, ice cream, rum, etc) because the cake itself isn't remarkable.  My friends, this pound cake has entered my system unadulterated every time that I've eaten it.  It is so tasty that anything with it, I believe, would be distracting.

I will be making this recipe again....and again and again.  I think that it might actually become my go to dessert, or possibly SPOILER ALERT FOR MY FAMILY AND FRIENDS the bulk "Christmas Gift" that I make for everyone this year.  But don't call me cheap until you try it.

4 down, 97 to go!

Spaghetti Carbonara

I had the day off earlier this week and decided to knock two recipes off the list at once, wanting to create two classic comfort food items - Spaghetti Carbonara and Elvis Presley's Pound Cake (post on the pound cake coming up in the next few days).

I've made Pasta Carbonara in the past using a few different recipes and I figured this wouldn't be much different than those experiences.  I unfortunately was mistaken.

The recipe calls for E.V.O.O., garlic cloves, pancetta, white wine, spaghetti, finely grated Parmesan, finely grated pecorino Roman, finely chopped parsley, eggs, salt and pepper.

I put the pasta pot onto boil first - and spoiler alert ...while I prepared the rest of the recipe, I cooked the pasta.  After heating the olive oil, I added the peeled and crushed garlic.  Funny thing about our garlic press, I always think remember seeing it in an exact spot in our kitchen utensil drawer but I can never, ever, seem to find it.  I have actually purchased multiple garlic presses, at different times, then found them intermittently while searching for something else, but can NEVER find one when I need one.  In this case I made due with our potato masher and a plate.

One of the issues I had with the recipe was that it called for me to add the crushed garlic to the oil, cook for a few minutes, then remove.  Removing any small items from hot oil is not a fun, or even safe, task, but removing crushed garlic seems to be near impossible.  In retrospect, it would have probably been just as effective to have sliced the cloves.  Regardless - it got done.

I added the pancetta and fried it until the edges browned...creating a delightful smell that drew my wife into the kitchen a few times.  Once browned I added the white wine and reduced it.  Once it had reduced by about half I pulled it off the burner.

While that bubbled away happily, I combined the cheeses, parsley and egg in a large plastic bowl to prep for the tempering process.  To the gentle readers not used to working with eggs in cooking (other than over easy and poached), they are part of some of the most phenomenally textured dishes when used correctly.  Sauces (Hollandaise for example), soups, ice cream and of course Spaghetti Carbonara owe their silky texture to eggs.  In order to achieve this state however, the egg must be slowly brought up in temperature so that they don't curdle.  It requires a certain amount of patience because if you try to push your temper you will end up with a bowl full of scrambled eggs.  In this recipe, you take a 1/4 cup of the boiling pasta water and slowly drizzle it into the cheese/parsley/egg mixture.  The heat from the water is then supposed to not only melt the cheese, but bring the egg temperature up and slowly thicken them.

While I didn't end up with very salty scrambled eggs, I did have some difficulty.  I believe that there were three things that contributed to the issue:

1. The temperature of the ingredients - This is usually a fairly quick recipe to turn around.  I had pulled the cheeses and eggs out of the refrigerator approximately 15 minutes prior to attempting to temper the eggs.  Obviously this was not long enough.

2.  The cheese I used - This one is my fault and a lesson that I should have learned when I made Kibbeh to kick off this project.  The recipe called for finely grated Parmesan and pecorino Romano cheeses.  The cheeses that I used were shredded and probably not of the highest quality.  Through my experiences in data management I should know - Garbage in, Garbage out.  If you use low quality ingredients, your final product will be low quality.

3.  Big plastic bowl - I'm not sure if this made a large difference in the process, but a warm bowl would have probably helped the mix keep its temperature better.

I slowly drizzled the 1/4 cup of pasta water into the bowl while whisking the mixture.  The ingredients began to break up a bit, but the cheese did not melt in any way.  I did a little temperature check and the mixture was stone cold.  I quickly went through my options for heating the eggs.  No amount of whisking would have brought the eggs up to a higher temp and throwing them into a saucepan and trying to bring them up to temp on a burner greatly increased the likelihood of scrambled eggs.  I could have simply added the hot pasta in hopes that by tossing the hot pasta in the mixture, the cheese would melt and the eggs would coagulate into the silky sauce, but, there would have been just as much of a chance that the noodles would have not brought the temp up enough and I would have the same issue, only with watery, eggy pasta.

Instead I popped the bowl in the microwave for 20 seconds at 50% speed.  When the time was up I removed it, gave it a good whisking, then popped it in the microwave again for another 20 seconds.  I did this about 6 times and ended up with a passable sauce that I then tossed the cooked spaghetti in.  I then added the pancetta mixture, tossed a bit more, then plated the meal, applying some sea salt and an ample dose of fresh black pepper.

 The pasta was not as bad as I thought it would be.  The texture wise it was comparable to my other Carbonara efforts.  The taste seemed a bit off however.  I'm not sure if it was the cheese or the parsley (2 tbsp seemed like a lot) but it seemed to have a very metallic taste.My wife didn't mind it as much, but only gave the recipe a 5 out of 10.  I will say that on day 2 (leftovers), the metallic taste abated a bit and the pasta was more enjoyable.

The experience of this recipe has let me know that I need to do more research prior to attempting the recipes and make sure I have all the correct equipment (or at least a passable substitute) and the exact ingredients in the recipe.  More on that in future posts.

After dinner I moved onto the next recipe, Elvis Presley's Pound Cake.  I'll save that post for another day, but foreshadow a bit by letting you know that as wrong as the egg portion of the Spaghetti Carbonara went, the egg portion of the pound cake went oh, oh so right.

3 down, 98 to go!

Peanut Butter Cookies

As I continue to catalog the ingredients for my 101 recipe challenge (see original post), which is taking much, much longer than I originally thought it would, I am trying to continue to make recipes to keep myself on a pace of at least 2 a week to make my deadline of August 3rd.  I will have to make 3 dishes during some weeks, but until I get ahead of myself in preparation, 2 should keep my head above water.

I had originally planned, and purchased ingredients for, Senate Bean Soup but life has gotten in the way a bit and I haven't had the time needed to prepare and enjoy the soup.  Sure, I could have made it at 10:30 at night, but that's not the best time to have dinner.  I had planned to make it over the weekend, but instead I had the opportunity to make a dessert for a football party at a friends house (Go Pack Go).  I chose to make recipe 84 - Peanut Butter Cookies.

This recipe for peanut butter cookies was pretty standard (flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, brown sugar, butter, eggs, peanut butter, vanilla) and it took me about an hour and a half to make a batch.

The recipe first calls for whisking together the flour, baking powder and salt and setting aside.

Next, using an electric beater, I combined the sugars and butter, beating until fluffy (about 3 minutes).  First - 3 minutes seemed like an awful long time, and second, I'm not sure if I would have classified the result I got as "fluffy".  Mine ended up more like the consistency of wet sand.  Honestly, I probably could have made mud pies out of it.  Delicious, buttery mud pies, but mud pies none the less.

 

 I then added the eggs, one at a time, beating thoroughly adding each.  Then the peanut butter and vanilla, beating until they were combined.

Taking a tablespoon, I took the dough and made dough balls that ended up being about 1 1/2" in diameter.  I placed them on the cookie sheet with 2" separating the dough balls and pressed them with a fork making a criss cross pattern.

Off they then went into my semi-faithful oven, preheated to 350 degrees for 12 minutes, with a rotation of the tray halfway through the cook time.  The recipe called for parchment paper, which I did not have, so I cut the bake time by a minute to make sure they didn't get too browned on the bottom.

As the cookies came out of the oven, I couldn't keep them in the kitchen.  As soon as they were even close to cool, my wife and kids started to grab one whenever they walked though and I'm sure that they made a few extra trips.  The cookies were nice and chewy, with a peanut butter flavor that was satisfying, but not overpowering.  The cookies had a little bit of buttery flake on the edges, a little like a pie crust.  The recipe I usually make calls for a dusting of granulated sugar on the dough balls prior to pressing with a fork, so these cookies were slightly less sweet than I would have liked.  Kim (my wife) rated them 7.5 out of 10.  A Hershey's kiss planted in the center of the cookie would have probably landed me a 10 (her all time favorite Christmas cookie is the Peanut Butter kiss).

My Peanut Butter Cookies

Saveur Peanut Butter Cookies

The only issue that I really had with the cookies was in the days after I made the cookies.  They dried out a bit and became really crispy - almost like shortbread cookies.  They didn't taste any worse, but I am more of a fan of chewy cookies than crisp cookies.  It may have been due to not having the parchment paper, or possibly just how these cookies "age".  Maybe they don't usually last that long.

Another idea for these would have been to make a Peanut Butter Cookie Sandwich by slathering on some strawberry preserves and finishing up with a second cookie.  Mmm...will have to try that next time.

I'd love to get your favorite Peanut Butter Cookie trait, story or obsession.  Feel free to post!

I've picked a few recipes and ingredients for the next week - in no particular order: Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic, Senate Bean Soup, Egg Cream Soda, Spaghetti Carbonara and Elvis Presley's Pound Cake.

I will also post some interim items based on the fun things I find during the cataloging process (like the inordinate amount of eggs and onions I will be using) and the planning process.

Two down, ninety-nine to go!