Donuts - With Yeast, Without Holes

Mmmm, donuts. They're delicious, they're available on every street corner in Massachusetts, and they're actually not tough to make.

This dough is in some ways very similar to other doughs we've made in the past year. In other ways, it's very different. It is a yeast dough, with the main components being water, yeast, and flour. But we've also got a lot of fat, some egg, and the dough is fried, instead of being baked.

Being by putting your yeast in warm water. Then melt your some shortening. It's pretty easy to do this in in the milk you'll be using later. It won't mix with the milk, but it will make it easier to pour into the dough.

Once it's melted, let it cool off a little, so as not to kill the yeast. Pour the milk-shortening into the yeast and water, in the bowl of a stand mixer. Add in 1/2 of the flour, an egg, sugar, salt, and nutmeg. Beat until everything is well combined. Add the rest of the flour and keep on beating. Once it starts to thicken, switch to the dough hook and knead until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl. It will be a soft dough.

Cover the dough, and let it double in size.

Turn out the dough on a floured surface, roll it out and cut out the donuts.

Feel free to make center holes. I didn't have a cookie cutter that was small enough.

Fry the donuts, a couple at a time, a minute per side.

Move the donuts to a drying rack to drain off any excess oil, and top with a little powdered sugar.

Ingredients:

3/4 cup milk

1/6 cup vegetable shortening

1 package instant yeast

1 egg, beaten

1/3 cup warm water

1/4 c sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg

12 ounces AP flour

Frying oil

Procedure:

1. Let the yeast dissolve in the warm water

2. Melt the shortening in the milk, then let cool.

3. Mix everything but half the flour in a stand mixer, and beat until well mixed.

4. Add the other half of the flour and mix well again.

5. Switch to the dough hook and knead until the dough pulls away from the side of the bowl.

6. Transfer to an oiled bowl, cover, and let double in size.

7. Roll out the dough and cut your donuts out.

8. Fry in 360F oil for 1 minute on each size.

9. Drain of oil and cover with confectioner's sugar, or glaze.

Tater Tots - A Recipe for Success

The last time I tried to do tater tots, I blew it. Not a few weeks after I posted my failed recipe, Kenji Lopez-Alt posted his guide to making tater tots. It is from that guide that I draw this successful recipe.

Peel a couple of pounds of potatoes.

Chop the potatoes into medium sized chunks, and rinse to get rid of the extra starch.

Fry up these for about 4 minutes, or until they just get golden.

Throw the fried potatoes into a food processor to get a very fine chop. 

Add a little sugar, corn starch, salt, pepper, and seasonings of your choice (maybe even bacon), and toss.

Form into tots using your hands, and fry for another 4 minutes. Behold the glory.

Ingredients:

2 pounds of potatoes, russet or other good frying potatoes

1 tablespoon of corn starch

1/2 tsp sugar

salt and pepper, to taste

Procedure:

1. Peel and chop the potatoes into large chunks

2. Fry the potatoes for about 4 minutes, or until they're just golden

3. Throw the potatoes in a food processor batches. Chopping finely.

4. Season with salt, pepper, and add corn starch as a binder.

5. Form the potatoes into tots.

6. Fry for another 4 minutes, or until golden and crispy.

Dry Rub Ribs

One of the least appreciated ways to prepare rubs is the dry rub. You treat the ribs with a dry mixture of spices and seasoning, and cook, adding sauce, if any, later. Another great thing about dry rubs is that there's no one right way to make it.

In this mixture we've got salt, pepper, chili powder, cumin, and garlic powder. Paprika and mustard powder are also very common ingredients in a dry rub.

I mixed up the spices and seasonings, and added brown sugar and espresso salt. The brown sugar is normal in dry rubs, the espresso salt was to give some added depth.

Apply the dry rub to ribs or spare ribs, and cook via your favorite method. Due to a stunning lack of both spare time and slow cooker, I threw it in the oven for about 90 minutes at 300 F.

The result was one of the best spare ribs I've ever had. It was bananas.

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons kosher salt

1 tablespoon cumin

1 tablespoon ground pepper

1 tablespoon powdered garlic

1 tablespoon chili powder

1 tablespoon brown sugar

1/2 tablespoon espresso salt

Procedure:

1. Mix all the seasonings and spices, and apply to meat.

2. Cook meat.

Quick Pickled Carrots

Most of what you see in the grocery store that is picked are cucumbers. There is a reason why pickled cucumbers are, in the American vocabulary, simply called "pickles". Still, if you look hard enough, you can find other vegetables that have been pickled, such as cauliflower, peppers, and carrots.

There are a couple of ways of pickling things. The first is a fermented pickle, where you let natural processes and time encourage a complex flavor. The other method is the quick pickle, where you mix all your flavorings together, heat them up, and have your snack ready in just a couple of days. I went for the latter for my first pickling experience.

I made a variation on Alton Brown's Firecrackers, which are spicy, sweet carrots. It turns out that all of my dried peppers on my pepper shelf in the pantry (I am not joking about the dried pepper shelf; it is next to the jam shelf) are relatively mild. Apparently I was out of dried hot peppers. Still, no reason not to continue on.

Start with the carrots, put into jars. The original recipe called for one big jar, but I just had little jars, so little jars it was.

Take your dried pepper or peppers

and if it's too large to put into the jar on its own, cut it up and divvy

Get your spices (mustard seed, crushed red pepper, and onion powder)…

Actually, those aren't red pepper flakes. I had run out of those, too. But I had lots of dried chiles, so I just grabbed some seeds and flakes from those. Crushed red pepper is just the skin and seeds of chiles that have been, yes, crushed. And I already had the skin, so I added some seeds for a little bit of heat.

Combine the salt, sugar, water, vinegar, and spices, and heat to boil for 4 minutes.

Put your canning funnel over the jar

and pour the hot liquid in.

Loosely cover  once it's cooled and let sit for 2-7 days. Ta-Dah!

These were tasty and sweet. All of the ingredients I had lying around, which is the best way when you are canning. Naturally, if you see some lovely full carrots in the grocery store or farmer's market, cut them up into sticks of whatever size you like best and preserve those instead of the lathed carrots.

Naturally, you can vary this recipe, even more than I did. Keep the amount of vinegar, salt, sugar, and water the same, and feel free to sub out the vegetables or especially the herbs and spices. There are recipes for quick pickled vegetables with just salt, but Ruhlman says to use a 3% (by weight) salt-to-water brine for your pickles, and things will be well.

Caesar Salad Dressing

DISCLAIMER: This recipe includes raw egg yolk.

This salad dressing is a huge step up in complication from the vinaigrette. Which doesn't say a lot.

Worcestershire sauce (not pictured) is also typically among the ingredients. It's also typically something in my cabinet. Imagine my surprise. The dressing works perfectly well without it.

Separate an egg yolk and place it in a bowl.

Add 2 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice, 1/2 teaspoon of minced garlic, 1/4 teaspoon of finely chopped anchovies (it's like half an anchovies), a pinch of salt, and a grind or two of fresh pepper.

Whisk that all up, and start to drizzle in a half cup of olive oil. Continue whisking while drizzling the olive oil in, and you'll soon get an emulsion. 

If you need to stop pouring for a second to mix better, feel free. Fold in sever hearty shakes of parmesan cheese and toss with romaine lettuce.

Serve with croutons.

Ingredients:

1 large egg yolk

2 Tablespoons lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon minced garlic

1/2 of one anchovie, finely chopped

a pinch of salt

a couple of grinds of fresh pepper

3 shakes of parmesan cheese

1/2 teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce, if you don't forget it.

Procedure:

1. Mix everything put the olive oil and parmesan cheese.

2. Drizzle in the olive oil while whisking vigorously. 

3. Fold in the parmesan cheese.

4. Toss with the salad.