Various Cheese Knishes: Due to scheduling of life n' shiz, today was my last chance to experiment with some knish making. Desert-centric cheese knishes tend to be an afterthought, so there is two good things -- no one expects much, and the definition of what a sweet cheese knish must be isn't as codified as the savory potato.
I was not that thrilled with the apple-cheese knishes from last week, so for inspiration (and to dispose of 12+ lbs of CSA apples) over the weekend, I baked off 5 apple pies & crumbles. The essence of the pie is the flavorful liquid of the fruit that cooks out and becomes a thick, gelatinous sweet jam-like substance. How that happens is simple -- the fruit is tossed in flour, sugar and a little salt, and between the gluten of the flour and the pectin of the fruit, when the juices cook out it becomes that wonderful goo. I don't want to make pocket pies, but I want some of the wonderful goo in my fruit-cheese knishes.
So I scavenged around the kitchen and got myself a line up o' fruit: for the fresh team, we had banana, apple and pear, for the frozen team, blueberries, cherries & mangoes. I did up a mise-bowl of equal parts flour, sugar and a little salt, and dredged the fruit handful by handful before inserting them into the open mouths of plain and chocolate knishes. Everything except bananas I paired with the plain sweet cheese, threw the bananas in the chocolate.
I tweaked the recipes as I went, the main change was doubling the sugar in the plain cheese, as it just wasn't sweet enough before. This made the batter noticeably looser, which reminded me of what I was taught in c-school: sugar is always considered a wet ingredient, not a dry. Now I appreciate that more -- it dissolves or gets slushy in the presence of wet, adding to wet's mass.
Upon baking, it came clear that for the wetter fruit (everything but the banana), the fruit sweated enough to make a slight to large amount of gooey goodness on top of the cheese layer. As for the banana layer, the jury is still out, it may need some more thought.
Another thought is that the chocolate-hazelnut is not hazelnutty enough. I'm depending on nutella, but amping it with dutch cocoa powder. I may go full on cocoa powder and hazelnut butter for production....
Butternut Squash soup: I got some butternut squash, leeks and fresh apples from the CSA, so a quick blender soup seemed to make sense. The B-nut-S soup I made last week kinda rocked my world, so I had high hopes for this one, but it came out strictly...bleah. I did lots different with this one, and the end product couldn't be more different. Sauteed the chopped leeks in olive oil, put in a half head of minced garlic at the end of saute, then deglazed with some white wine I had in the fridge. Boiled up the processed squash with 2 apples instead of 2 sweet potatoes. Blended it all together, finished it with what I had on hand -- sour cream instead of plain ol' cream. Seasoned with salt and...fneh. The wine, the tart apples and the sour cream all added to a sligthly vinegary overtone, which made the garlic pop, but it was....vinegary. On the other hand, if I served this soup at a high-falutin' pretentious over-priced restaurant, people would probably think it was very sophisticated n' refined. Fneh.
AM SNACK: 7:30am, iced green tea
BREAKFAST: 9:30am, pumpernickel bagel with creamcheese and smoke white fish, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Bought some kippered white fish form WF on a grocery run this morning. Reminded me a bit of when I lived in England -- salty, tough, and not very good.
LUNCH: 1pm, 5 falafel balls with hummus, pickle pint of grenadine soda, pear & apple knish, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Was gonna also have salad, but smelly funky and the cuces went icy.
DINNER: 6:45pm, breaded shrimp, large green salad, butternut squash soup, 2 chocolate knishes, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5
EVENING SNACK: 9pm, kraft dinner, mini waffles, peanuts & chocolate chips, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
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