Bean Sprout Adventures

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These also didn’t get made for Thanksgiving, but previous batches have been delicious!

• 1 1/2 lb sweet potatoes
• 1/2 cup rice flour
• Cornstarch, other refined starch, or flour

Boil or steam sweet potatoes. Mash well. Add rice flour. Form mixture into balls (~4 cm in diameter). Coat in cornstarch and deep fry until browned.

Tips

• I like putting the sweet potato through a mesh strainer to remove large skin pieces and fibrous sections.
• You may be able to use refined starches in place of the rice flour, though the rice flour gives a particularly nice bounce/chew, mochi-like.
• These are good as dessert or as a savory side dish!

My family’s recipe, I think from my dad’s side. We didn’t end up making it for our main meal, but maybe tomorrow!

• 8 slices bread, cubed
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup finely diced celery
• 1/4 cup finely diced onion
• 1 apple, cubed
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 1/2 tsp poultry seasoning (combination of sage, thyme, marjoram, rosemary, and nutmeg)
• Approximately 1/2 cup milk
• (Optional) 3-4 boiled or roasted chestnuts, chopped

Mix; should have a pasty consistency. Don’t add so much liquid that it pools at the bottom. Stuff into your poultry or bake alone in a dish. If cooking alone, bake ~40 min at 350°F; if cooking inside a bird, cook until the bird is done.

Tips

• Add other veggies or nuts for more texture
• Add more eggs and milk (or cream) to make a savory bread pudding.

• 6 to 8 larger Baby Bella mushrooms (may use extras for extra stuffing)
• Olive oil or other liquid fat
• Butter
• Salt and pepper
• Bread crumbs
• Onion
• One salty cheese, such as parmesan, and a melting cheese, such as Colby or cheddar
• 1 egg

Remove the mushroom stem (reserve). Grease the mushrooms all over and turn them upside down ready to be stuffed.

Chop the mushroom stems (plus extra full or partial mushrooms, if you want) and the onion. Cook in butter until tender. Season with salt and pepper. Add bread crumbs, Parmesan, and the egg. For decorative bread pieces, you can add some additional small dry bread cubes after mixing in the egg. Stuff the mushrooms and top with slices of the non-parmesan cheese. 

Bake for at least 30 min at 350-375°F in a closed container (casserole dish with lid or aluminum foil). May remove the top near the end to encourage browning.

My first time making blintzes!

Base recipe is from Joy of Cooking, with modifications and recommendations from my mom.

The outside crepe (makes 12)

• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup milk
• 3 eggs
• 2 Tbsp butter
• 2 tsp sugar

Warm together butter and milk. Add flour, and then eggs. Let batter stand for 30 min.

Pour 3 Tbsp batter into a lightly buttered, large, nonstick/well-seasoned pan, lifting the pan and tilting until batter forms an even layer. Cook until top is dry and set, and bottom is lightly browned.

Be careful to avoid forming holes, which will cause problems with leaky filling.

Cheese filling (for 8 blintzes)

• 10 oz ricotta or other crumbly, moist fresh cheese (e.g. cottage cheese – drained, queso fresco, farmer’s cheese)
• 2 oz cream cheese
• 1 egg
• 1 Tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• Zest from half an orange
• 1/2 cup raisins or currants

Blend; thicker is better so feel free to strain the ricotta, add more cream cheese, or omit the egg white if needed.

Fill blintzes from uncooked side of crepes, folding into a rectangular shape. Cook on both sides in oiled pan until browned. Eat with sour cream.

Blueberry filling (for 6 blintzes)

• 2 cup blueberries (fresh or frozen)
  
• Juice and zest from half a lemon
• 2 Tbsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

Cook everything together until very thick. Fill blintzes as directed above.

Here’s the recipe (makes 4 pretzels):

• 240g (1 cup) milk
• 3g (1 tsp) yeast
• 32g (1/6 cup) sugar
• 28g (2T) butter
• 6g (1 tsp) salt
• 370g flour

Heat the milk, butter, and sugar in the microwave until warm (~1.5 min), and mix until butter is melted and sugar is dissolved. Let it cool to 95F (important so that the yeast doesn’t die), then add the yeast. Mix the dry ingredients and then add the wet ingredients. Knead. Let the dough rise for an hour. Divide the dough into four. Roll each into a rope about ~36in long (this was really hard) and attempt to make it into a pretzel.

Boil 4.5 cups (1080g) of water and add 60g (1/4 cup) of baking soda. Boil each pretzel for 20 seconds. Sprinkle pretzels with coarse salt.

Bake for 8 min at 450F.

If you do this, hopefully your pretzels will turn out better than ours. We skipped the baking soda bath (and instead just brushed baking soda water on them) and it didn’t turn out quite right. I think it’s probably important. Good luck.

We tried making silken tofu, essentially a fresh, high-moisture cheese (think fresh mozzarella or ricotta) where you use soy milk instead of dairy milk. The coagulant is gypsum (calcium sulfate)  – flavorless and a good source of calcium.

J ate it anyway.