Wontons

This is my fifty-second post for A Year From Scratch. We're going to keep on with the site, just at a slower pace. This is one a few recipes that's been on the list of projects since the very beginning, but that we just hadn't gotten too. Pity. It was pretty easy.

Ingredients!

This is going to make a pretty simple dough. Mix everything in a bowl until it comes together, turn out on a floured surface and knead until the dough is smooth. About 3 minutes. Let the dough rest while you mix the filling.

The filling is pork, garlic, chives, salt, pepper and sesame oil (it adds a little spice). I'm not listing values here, or in the ingredients section because I just eyeballed it.

Chop all of that finely, and mix it with ground pork.

 You can also beat in an egg. It will help it stay together, and add a little flavor.

Halve the dough, and roll it out.

Once it's rolled out, cut the dough into squares.

It's important that they be square. Some of these weren't, and I couldn't fold them properly.

As you can see. These take some practice and finesse. All of these came out fine, in the end, but I wouldn't want to serve them at a party without more practice. Ideally, you want to fold the wonton in half diagonally, so it makes a triangle. Then fold the two side points together so the wonton is hugging itself.

Drop the wontons in hot oil, a steamer, or boiling water or broth.

When they're done, serve them with your favorite soup, noodles, or salad.

Ingredients:

1 egg

2 cups (250 grams) all purpose flour

1/3 cup (75 grams) water

1/2 tsp (a pinch) salt

Ground pork

pepper

Sesame Oil

Chives

Garlic

Ginger

Procedure:

1. Mix the flour, egg, salt, and water together in a bowl

2. Stir until everything comes together

3. Turn out on to a floured surface and knead until smooth

4. Let sit for 10 minutes

5. Halve and roll out the dough.

6. Cut it into squares, and fill with your favorite filling.

7. Fold the wonton diagonally, and pinch together. You may need to use egg wash.

8. Fold the two side points around the filling. 

9. Steam, fry, or boil until done.

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.

Sweetened Condensed Milk

Sweetened condensed milk is a dangerous thing. Open a can and have a spoon handy, and you have a snack for the rest of the day. It's full of milk flavor, plenty sweet, and just plain tasty. It can also be used for non-snacking purposes, if you're into that sort of thing.

It's pretty simple to make your own sweetened condensed milk, and I used the recipe from Almost Bourdain as my base. My only real change, aside from being a bit loose with the measurements, was to use some of my stash of dried whole milk instead of dried skim milk.

Using the dried whole milk may not have been the best idea, but it's what I had, and that's kind of the point of making sweetened condensed milk; like brown sugar, you're probably not going to do much better than what you get from the store. Well, unless you're trying something special, but more on that in a bit. Sweetened condensed milk is going to store just about as long as powdered milk will, so chances are that, if you're making it, it's because you have one ingredient and not the other.

Now, if you're fancy, you could try some tricks with the sweetened condensed milk. To continue the brown butter kick I've been on since Ideas in Food started posting crazy things to do with brown butter, it occurs to me that the milk solids in the sweetened condensed milk could be browned before combining with the sugar. This is different from Dulce de Leche, I believe, because you wouldn't get any caramelization with the sugar.

In any case, making sweetened condensed milk is awfully simple.

Measure out your butter, water, and sugar:

Melt on your fancy new gas range (or whatever; I understand if you didn't just buy a new home mostly because it has gas):

Take the mixture off the heat. Measure out some milk solids:

Mix in 4 batches:

Until it's all smooth:

Or, in my case, until it was fully combined but a bit grainy. I tried adding some water to smooth it out. It helped some, but not enough. It was not creamy smooth as sweetened condensed milk should be. Probably using the whole milk powder didn't do me any favors here.

Even with the graininess, it was plenty tasty. It had the milky, sweet flavor. But better than from a can? Not really. Handy if you're in the right bind, and maybe more awesome if you brown the milk solids in the butter before adding the sugar and water, but that's an experiment for another day.

It should be mentioned that, the day after I had originally meant to do this post, Jenni Field, the Online Pastry Chef, did this herself. It's as if we have some sort of psychic food link. Spooky!

Mustard

The perfect compliment to Brian's post on ketchup, it's time to tackle mustard. And it's shockingly easy.

The only tricky ingredients are the mustard seeds, they can be hard to find. I've used yellow and brown here, you can use both, or either. You can also class this up by switching out the water (not pictured) with wine, and the vinegar with wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar, maybe even rice vinegar. Note to self: I should try that.

Take 3 tablespoons each of the brown and yellow mustard seeds and mix, and place in a container that can hold at least 2 cups.

Add in a tablespoon of honey, to cut down on the spice, and add 1/3 a cup each of water and vinegar.

Let it slit overnight to loosen up the mustard seeds.

The next morning, throw it all in a blender and pulse until you've hit the consistency you want. I like a few while seeds left in the mustard, but if you don't, pulse away.

Pour into your favorite container, and keep in the fridge. Fair warning: For whatever reason this mustard came out really, really, hot. Please test your mustard before smearing on any meat or bread products.

Ingredients:

3 Tablespoons yellow mustard seeds

3 Tablespoons brown mustard seeds

1 Tablespoon honey

1/3 cup water (or your favorite replacement)

1/3 cup vinegar (of your choosing)

Procedure:

1. Mix everything in a 2 cup container, and hold overnight.

2. Blend until you reach your desired consistency. Store in the refrigerator.

Marshmallows

It's aparently candy thermometer week on A Year From Scratch. We're making marshmallows right now. As a friend of mine said, "Aren't marshmallows, like, made from unicorn horns or something?" Yes. Yes they are.

Also, credit is due to Alton Brown, without whom I would be lost in this exercise.

Begin by placing 1.5 cups of ground unicorn horn powder in a saucepot with one half cup of cool water.

But seriously folks. That's two cups of sugar and 1/2 a cup of cool water.

Empty three packages of unflavored gelatin into a stand mixer's bowl and add another 1/2 cup of water. You can just let this chill out while you prep the sugar.

Add salt, and corn syrup to the sugar water and bring it to a boil and continue to raise the temperature until it reaches 240 degrees. The corn syrup helps keep the sugar from crystalizing. You need a candy thermometer. Also, this is going to take a while. Longer if you're nervous about making molten sugar for the first time.

Once you get past 212F you'll have a rollicking boil going. But you need to cook off all the water, and still raise the temperature a bit. Once it hits 240, take it off the heat.

Start the stand mixer going and pour in the sugar. Up the speed to high, and keep on whipping for 12 minutes or so. It will sound like your mixer it going to explode. It might. Mine didn't, so that's a good sign.

It's going to increase in volume a great deal while it whips.

 While it's whipping, mix 1/4 cup of corn starch and 1/4 cup of confectioner's sugar. Coat the bottom of a 13x9 cooking pan with it to keep the marshmallow from sticking to it.

Pour it out and make it as even as you can.

Now you can wallow in the guilt of having killed a unicorn for your recipe.

Ingredients: 

3 packets unflavored gelatin 

1/2 cup of ice cold water

1.5 cups sugar

1/2 cup of ice cold water

1 cup light corn syrup

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 cup corn starch

1/4 cup confectioner's sugar

Procedure:

1. Bloom the gelatin in 1/2 cup of cold water, in the bowl of a stand mixer.

2. Combine 1/2 cup of cold water, 1.5 cups of sugar, the corn syrup and the salt in a sauce pan and bring it to a boil. Insert the candy thermometer.

3. Bring the sugar solution to 240 degrees fahrenheit. 

4. Turn on the stand mixer and pour in the melted sugar.

5. Whip on high for about 12 minutes.

6. While its whipping mix the confectioner's sugar and corn starch, and coat the bottom of a 13x9" pan with the mixture.

7. Pour out the marshmallow mixture into the pan and let cool. No need to refrigerate.