Sorry for the lack of updates. Life has taken hold, and I’m working on freelance food articles. There’s a lot of posts in development here. When I get a moment, I’ll talk about the famous Chez Panisse gingersnaps, NYC Chocolate Show, French Culinary Institute grapefruit dessert demo and how to get a crispy pizza crust without a stone. Until then, here’s an all-natural chocolate-hazelnut spread recipe (a la Nutella) that I developed a while ago.

Also, I’m getting on my soapbox, but this Rolling Stone article about pork is why I’ve severely limited my consumption of animal products. Smithfield Foods, the nation’s biggest pork producer, generates more poop than all of Manhattan. Not only is it bad for the environment, but people who live nearby have to breathe it in. The poop that is collected is mixed with stillborns and antibiotic syringes. Even if you love bacon, please be aware of where it comes from. Boycott Smithfield! Write a hate letter!

Pop quiz: what does Cinco de Mayo have to do with the French? First, it marks the Mexican victory over the French troops in the Battle of Puebla. (If you thought it was Mexican independence day, you were wrong.)

Second, and more relevant to this blog, Cinco de Mayo marks the day to eat a French-inspired dessert. Perhaps Mexico’s most famous pastry is the churro, a deep-fried, cinnamon-dusted dough. It is not a Mexican doughnut. It is an unfilled Mexican cream puff.

Doughnuts traditionally fall into two schools: yeast-raised (ie Krispy Kreme) or cake batter (ie Dunkin Donuts, which gets its leavening by baking powder or soda). Churros contain neither yeast nor baking powder/soda. Instead, they are leavened by eggs, and the dough is cooked on the stovetop before it’s shaped. Heating the liquid with the flour tricks the dough into abosorbing more moisture, and it makes it more gelatinous. This method is the same as the French dough, pate a choux. Pate a choux makes cream puffs and eclairs, but if it’s deep fried and unfilled, it makes churros.

Deep frying gets a bad rap because the food is “boiled” in fat. However, if the oil is at the correct temperature, it will not penetrate the food. Besides health reasons, frying seems dangerous, with the potential of splattered hot grease and exploding food. Just use some common sense, and it won’t be any scarier than a pot of boiling water. Don’t go “bombs away!” when dropping the food in. Plop it in gently and away from you. The oil won’t bite. I promise.

Churros
Sources: Recipe Gullet, Bon Appetit and Mexico One Plate at a Time by Rick Bayless

Dough:
1 c milk
1/4 c (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
1/2 tsp salt
1 T sugar
1 c all-purpose flour
2 eggs

Coating:
1/2 c sugar
1/2 T cinnamon

Canola oil for frying, about 3 cups

Bring first 4 ingredients to boil in heavy medium saucepan, stirring until sugar dissolves and butter melts. Reduce heat to medium-low. Add flour; stir vigorously with wooden spoon until shiny dough mass forms, about 1 minute. Transfer to large bowl; cool 5 minutes. Using electric mixer, beat in eggs, 1 at a time; continue beating until smooth, shiny, sticky paste forms. (Can be made 2 hours ahead. Cover and let stand at room temperature.)

Heat oil to a depth of at least 2 inches in a heavy large skillet over medium heat to 350°F (the oil will shimmer on the surface and give off that characteristic hot oil aroma). Working in batches, spoon batter into pastry bag fitted with large star tip. Pipe batter into hot oil in 3 1/2- to 4-inch-long ribbons (use knife if necessary to cut batter at end of star tip) and allow batter to slide into oil.

To test the oil temperature, cook one churro, turning occasionally, until it is deep golden brown, about 2 to 3 minutes. Remove it to drain on paper towels and let it cool a minute, then break it open to check for doneness-it should be just a little soft inside, but not too doughy. Too low an oil temperature, and the churros will “boil” in the oil, absorbing grease but bursting apart before they’re brown; too high a temperature, and they’ll brown quickly but not cook enough.

Fry the rest of the churros, about 3 at a time. Transfer to paper towels and cool 5 minutes, then toss in cinnamon sugar while still warm. Best when eaten quickly. Makes about 12-16 churros.

Notes/tips:
If you’re inexperienced with frying, be sure to do a test churro. Otherwise, you may find out too late that the entire batch is either raw inside or overcooked.

You can safely re-use the oil after you let it cool, strain it through a cheesecloth (to get rid of burnt food particles) and refrigerate (oil doesn’t like heat or light). Keep in mind that every time you re-use oil, the smoke point goes down as much as 10 F. For example, canola oil has a smoke point of 400 F. Heat it any more, and it breaks down and becomes hazardous to your health. Canola oil that’s used a second time can safely be heated to 390 F. If your oil turns dark or smells funny, it’s bad.

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We now interrupt your regularly scheduled programming with the Seven Meme, which Kelli of Love’s Cool asked me to complete. No food post today–just some idiosyncracies about me.

Seven Things To Do Before I Die:

1. Visit Paris again.
2. Go on a road trip, visiting every state in the continental U.S.
3. Get married.
4. Meet the “First Lady of Chocolate,” Alice Medrich.
5. Learn how to cook good Chinese food.
6. Go on another mission (goodwill) trip.
7. Learn the rules of French pronunciation, so I can discuss desserts intelligently. I know you generally drop every last syllable, except __________ but not _________.
8. (sorry, couldn’t narrow it down) See my favorite actor, Ralph Fiennes, perform live on stage.

Seven Things I Cannot Do:

1. Work with chocolate without staining my fingers, clothes or face brown.
2. Whistle.
3. Enjoy alcoholic beverages. Every time I try, I contort my face as if I’m going to be sick because of the taste. I like cooking with alcohol, though.
4. Live without the Internet.
5. Be in a career that I’m not passionate about.
6. Go through life without friends or family.
7. Roll my “r”s.

Seven Things That Attract Me to Blogging:

1. Meeting a bunch of cool people in real life, such as at the Amateur Gourmet’s second birthday party, Newsroom lunch with Nic (of The Baking Sheet), Clotilde’s (of Chocolate & Zucchini) NYC bloggers meetup, NYC bloggers potluck, and a dessert trade with Kelli of (Love’s Cool).
2. Imparting knowledge to others.
3. “Chatting” with people via comments.
4. Learning about innovative restaurants, recipes and ingredients without the media hype.
5. Improving the detail I pay attention to food.
6. The freedom in writing about whatever I want.
7. Telling people about my blog is a great conversation starter.

Seven Things I Say Most Often:

1. Oh!
2. Yeah.
3. Um.
4. Hmm.
5. Oh my gosh.
6. Well…
7. No way.

Seven Books I Love:

1. Huck Finn – Mark Twain
2. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
3. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
4. Chocolate and the Art of Low-Fat Desserts – Alice Medrich
5. The Bible
6. October Sky – Homer Hickam
7. anything by C.S. Lewis

Seven Movies/DVDs That I Watch Over and Over Again:

1. Gattaca
2. Back to the Future trilogy
3. Indiana Jones trilogy
4. Lord of the Rings trilogy
5. Pirates of the Caribbean
6. The Rainmaker
7. Pretty Woman

Seven Bloggers I Want To Join In Too:

1. The Baking Sheet
2. Foodite
3. Words to Eat By
4. Bite by Byte (aka Slice, a Hamburger Today)
5. The Amateur Gourmet
6. The Traveler’s Lunchbox
7. The Wednesday Chef

This post is an entry for the “Comfort Me” contest, hosted by Moira at Who Wants Seconds? Check out her site to read about other people’s favorite comfort foods!

For some reason, food made by grandmothers tastes better than anything else. Maybe it’s because grandmothers had years of experience in the kitchen. Or maybe, in my case, it’s because my grandmother raised me.

For the first four years of my life, my family lived in my grandmother’s home, so she cooked for all of us. My grandmother sold that house years ago, but I still remember her egg rolls, mini guavas in the backyard, and her carrot cake.

Since I’m a dessert person, the thing I miss most is the cake. It was dense, had blackened walnuts,was perfectly sweet, and was fragrantly (but not overly) spicy. It was the standard by which I compared all other carrot cakes. I’ve never had another carrot cake that matched hers.

What’s even more amazing is that she probably concocted the recipe herself. Up until recently, ovens were not common in Chinese homes. Most pastries were steamed, resulting in a fluffy, spongy texture. Rich desserts, like pound cakes and devil’s food cakes, are unheard of in China.

So my grandmother’s dense carrot cake is an anomaly. How or why she made it remains a mystery. Although carrot cakes hit the American mainstream in the 1960s, my grandmother could not have gotten the recipe from a book or on TV. She doesn’t know English. I think she made her first carrot cake by playing around with ingredients here and there. That’s impressive, considering that baking requires exact proportions of flour, liquid, levening, fat, acid, and sweetener.

The last (and probably final) time I had her carrot cake was about five years ago, on my birthday. She made the cake in a bundt pan, like she always did, without frosting. Since then, her health and memory have declined. She no longer cooks today.

Dare I ask her for the recipe? Will she remember it? Or should I let the cake remain a fond memory?

My tastes have changed in the last couple of years. If I were to have her cake again, I’d probably think it was too oily. But at that moment, five years ago, it was perfect. I’d like to remember it that way.

While procrastinating working at Court TV (hey, it’s my job to track Colorado news!), I discovered how to eat a $25 meal and pay just $5! What a deal!

According to Denver’s ABC News, Restaurant.com sells lots of $25 gift certificates for $10. Before you check out, enter a coupon code from Naughtycodes.com or Edealinfo.com for an extra 50% off. So, you pay just $5 for a $25 gift certificate!

The fine print: Restaurant.com offers a limited selection, and some of the coupons expire at the end of the month.

If you’re feeling really entrepreneurial, you can resell the gift certificates on Ebay and earn some extra cash.

As a demonstration on how to be the most popular person in the office, a co-worker brought in homemade rice pudding today. We showered him with praise, of course. There was creamy pudding, soft rice and just a bit of tartness. It was even better than Alice Medrich?s (my favorite cookbook author) recipe for rice pudding.

But the cooler thing was that it brought people together. Unexpected conversations and smiles abounded as we crammed into pudding man’s office. My friend Jimmy agrees that food is a great conversation starter. For a while, I’ve thought about displaying homemade treats in my cubicle. I love baking, but I can never finish my creations by myself. (Well, I can if I cram half of it in the freezer and subsequently grow tired of eating the same thing.) What better way to bring joy back into the work place and perhaps strike up deep conversations?

After complaining last week about the unreliable recipes in Vegetarian Times, I actually went back to the magazine for another recipe: Black-eyed pea spring rolls. I guess I’m on a bean roll since participating in last week’s bean-themed Is My Blog Burning. The idea of bean filling sounded really good, and I’d be using up tons of leftovers. I had year-old frozen peas (which was in one chunk, studded with ice crystals), six-month-old frozen dumpling skins, an x-month old (I can’t remember the exact age) carrot, and of course lots of dried black-eyed peas.

Since I didn’t want to do any deep-frying, I make black-eyed pea dumplings instead.

The filling was basically mashed beans, carrots, peas and some spices. It was really tasty on its own. I would have been happy eating it as is.

I put a rounded teaspoon in each skin.

I dipped my index finger in water and lined the outer centimeter of the skin with the liquid. Then I folded the skin in half, put in a crease…

…and finished creasing till everything was shut. It’s important to pinch the edges again and make sure there are no holes, or else the dumpling will explode during cooking.

The finished platter. Actually, I ran out of skins and still had half the filling left.

I dropped a couple dumplings in boiling water and cooked till they floated to the top (it was almost instantaneous, since these were fresh).

The interior was a bit dry, since the recipe said to pre-cook the filling until “it dries.” If any of you make this recipe, I recommend cooking the filling until it resembles mashed potatoes. The filling should definitely be creamy, not dry like mine.

While the filling was delicious, it was actually too strong for the delicately flavored dumpling skin. It would probably be good in an egg roll, since the skin is heartier.

The rest of my uncooked dumplings were individually frozen (so they wouldn’t stick together), then bagged for a quick weekday meal. Whenever I come home from work, sticking something in the microwave is all I have energy for. Boiling a pot of water shouldn’t be much more difficult than punching numbers on a microwave keypad.

The recipe:

Black-Eyed Pea Spring Rolls
adapted from Vegetarian Times, Feb. 2005

Photo: Vegetarian Times

Serves 8
Note to vegans: Most egg roll wrappers are made with cornstarch, flour and water, but some contain eggs. Check labels.

1 large carrot, peeled and diced
2 Tbs. canola oil plus about 4 cups for deep-frying
1/2 cup minced onion
2 Tbs. minced fresh ginger
2 serrano chiles, seeded and minced (about 1 Tbs.) (Sriracha hot sauce also works)
3 cups cooked black-eyed peas, drained and mashed
1 cup frozen green peas
Salt to taste
1 Tbs. garam masala or curry powder
1 tsp. ground coriander
3 Tbs. lemon juice (Important: this brightens up the flavors)
1/2 tsp. cayenne, or to taste
16 egg roll wrappers
1 Tbs. cornstarch mixed with 2 Tbs. water

1. If using dried beans, note that 1 cup dried beans=3 1/2 cups cooked. Sort through the peas and pick out tiny stones and stray seeds. This is best done by spreading them on a table with a pot in your lap and pulling the good peas into the pot. To soak dried black-eyed peas, rinse them, and place them in a pot. Add enough water to cover them plus at least 4 inches more. Add 1/4 tsp. baking soda to the water, and stir. (This pulls out the sugars that cause gas in the intestines.) Let them sit overnight. Rinse thoroughly. The beans will cook perfectly in fewer than 90 minutes. Add salt after cooking.
2. Put carrots in 3 cups boiling water, and cook about 15 minutes, or until very tender. Or, steam for about 15 minutes. Drain, and set aside.
3. Heat 2 Tbs. oil in 2-qt. saucepan over medium heat. Add onion, ginger and serrano chiles, and saute about 2 minutes, until soft and fragrant.
4. Add mashed black-eyed peas, and cook mixture about 10 minutes, or until the consistency is like mashed potatoes. Add water if necessary. Add green peas, carrots, salt, garam masala, coriander, lemon juice and cayenne. Mix, and set aside.
5. Place egg roll wrapper on counter with one corner pointing toward you. Shape 1/4 cup mixture into 3-inch-long log, and place it on wrapper, parallel to edge of counter and far enough above closest corner to be within edges of wrapper. Fold corner over filling, fold sides over tightly and roll tightly to far corner. Moisten corner with cornstarch mixture to help keep roll closed. Repeat with remaining wrappers and filling. Set aside, or cook immediately.
6. Heat 2 inches oil in skillet over medium heat. Fry 3 or 4 rolls at a time about 5 minutes, until crisp and golden. Keep hot in 250F oven. Serve immediately.

PER SERVING; 340 CAL; 13G PROT; 7G TOTAL FAT (0.5G SAT. FAT); 57G CARB; 5MG CHOL; 390MG SOD; 7G FIBER; 4G SUGARS

Some ideas for leftover filling:

• Eat it just as it is. It’s like hearty mashed potatoes.
• Use as a sandwich or pita filling.
• Make patties: Shape the filling. Dip it in flour(seasoned with salt and pepper) and shake off the excess. Dip it in beaten egg and let the excess drip off. It’s important to get rid of the excess so the crust sticks. Dip the patty in breadcrumbs (preferably panko, seasoned with salt and pepper). Then pan fry. (Fill a pan with 1/2″ oil for a classic crispy crust. Or barely coat the pan with oil if you’re eating light.) To get a good crust, don’t touch the patties for the first couple of minutes. This technique also works really well for polenta (what I had when I boiled down Vegetarian Times‘ goopy corn mush). Panko-crusted polenta is wonderfully crispy on the outside and creamy on the inside. Actually, I might try this method for Chinese turnip cakes, savory rice cakes (nien gow), sweet red bean rice cakes, or mochi.