The Great Elgin Sausage Debate

Something that's kind of important to the local Texas cuisine is barbeque. When making the long trip between Austin and Houston, many travelers stop in Elgin, Texas for hot Elgin sausage. What is Elgin sausage? The website Dallas Food has a lowdown of the regular places. It's a peppery sausage made from mostly beef, including the tripe, made with natural casings.

There's a local sausage rivalry that might rival Pat's and Geno's were it not for the laid-back nature of most Texan road-trippers. Homesick Texan and I are on different sides of the debate. She prefers Southside, whereas I definitely side with Meyer's.

I am in the process of fully appreciating the fact that I can go to any local grocery store and pick up either of these sausages, fresh and pre-cooked.

Mr. O and I celebrated an important anniversary yesterday, and I picked up some Meyer's from the store. Unfortunately, the local grubs don't carry Meyer's BBQ sauce (no big deal for Mr. O. He much prefers Southside on this one, but his favorite sauce by far is Rudy's) but did carry Salt Lick sauce. He loves sweet sauces, whereas I prefer spicy and vinegary ones. Thankfully, we can both agree on Ruby's for regular 'que most of the time. (People really are this dedicated to their barbeque joints, I swear.)



Sliced on fresh rolls, Elgin sausage can't be beat. I am defying the rule which states 'meat must be served with white bread', but I figure since I'm upgrading the rule it's still mostly okay. The sausage has a nice bite to it, and is flavorful (as well as slightly hot).

p.s. I love Cooper's the best. Don't go there expecting Elgin sausage though; that's for Elgin.

blood lust

I love moro (blood) oranges. They're somewhat in season here, and the local crop is very pretty.



I think it might just be the vibrant color. They're a little different from regular oranges in taste--maybe a bit more acidic yet sweeter at the same time. Plus, the stark color contrast between pith and fruit is gorgeous.



I also like cooking with moro oranges... but I can't show the goods quite yet. :-)

Pie Day

I'm heading over to a Pi Day party tonight, and am bringing along a chocolate meringue (my first!)



I had to document the process of meringuing the pie as it was so gorgeous. The only changes I made to the recipe were to add more cornstarch (that baby was going to set if I had to beat it into submission) and to substitute dark chocolate for bittersweet, omitting some of the sugar as a result. The filling is creamy and thick--yum!




Recipe adapted from here.

Chocolate Meringue Pie

Crust:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup solid vegetable shortening
1 tablespoon sugar
7 tablespoons ice cold water

Filling:
3 ounces dark chocolate, chopped plus 2 tb cocoa
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup cornstarch
Pinch salt
3 cups milk
3 eggs, separated
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 tablespoons butter

In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, sugar, and salt. Mix well. Add the shortening and mix until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add the water and let sit 1 minute. Either using a fork or your hands, carefully press the mixture together to form a soft ball. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 30 minutes.

Remove the dough from the refrigerator and place it on a lightly floured surface. Roll out the dough on the floured surface into a circle about 12 inches in diameter and 1/8 of an inch thick. Gently fold the circle of dough in half and then in half again so that you can lift it without tearing it, and unfold into a 9-inch by 2-inch deep-dish pie pan. Crimp the edges and place in the oven. Bake until golden, about 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool completely.

In a saucepan, combine the chocolate, 1 cup sugar, cornstarch and salt. Mix well. Stir in the milk. Place the pan over medium heat and bring the mixture to a gentle boil, stirring occasionally. Cook for 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Beat the egg yolks. Add 1/2 cup of the hot mixture to the egg yolks and mix well. Add the mixture back to the saucepan and continue to cook for 2 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla and butter. Pour the filling into the prepared pie shell and cool completely. Cover with plastic and refrigerate until chilled. Beat the egg whites, on medium speed, until soft peaks form, about 2 minutes. Add the remaining sugar and continue to beat until stiff peaks form. Spread the meringue evenly over the pie. Place in a preheated 350 degree oven, on the top rack and bake until golden brown, about 10 minutes. Remove and cut into individual servings.

Butter Buns

I wonder if other blogger work like I do. I end up taking pictures of things that I made in pieces, so if one part of the 'project' screws up, at least I have something good and tasty to show at the end. Cooking lesson of the night: If you're going to grill hamburgers on a George Foreman, don't try stuffing cheese in the middle. Stuffed burger + added weight = no more stuffing.




But at least the bread came out as expected! La Tartine Gourmande posted a brioche about a year ago that I have fallen for, mainly because the dough calls for not even a whole stick of butter (and two sticks may be too much for me to bear toute seule.



Gorgeous stuff! Head over to her place for the recipe.

Keep rollin' rollin' rollin'...

This morning, I made cinnamon rolls for my colleagues. I have found that baking is a happier alternative to dealing with stress than, say, running naked on a busy street. Not that I've tried that. I did lose my hat in the middle of a rainstorm while running to catch the bus yesterday, and I thank the people who stopped on the local busy road for not running me (nor my hat) over.

Um.

Anyway.

As I mentioned before, I have an unhealthy obsession with cinnamon. As this week has been less than stellar, I've been baking to cope. However, a break is coming up soon and birthday today and all, so life is much better now that I can take a breath.

My new baby got put to good use in mixing the dough. I cringe at the thought that I would have been kneading it. I still haven't gotten over the first Daring Bakers experiment with French Bread. On the PBS website, there is a video with Julia and Danielle Forrestier. She beats that dough like it just ate her kitten. Throw, whomp. Throw, whomp. I can't whomp. My apartment complex might fall down.

The dough hook did a good job of kneading the dough, but I needed quite a bit of flour before the dough wasn't sticky. It rose within four hours (again, cold apartment) and kept overnight quite well! The end result was a cinnamon roll much like a pastry shop's. The bread was flaky and buttery, and although I didn't have cream cheese a simple butter, powdered sugar and milk frosting did just fine.



Recipe for Alton's Cinnamon Rolls on the Food Network website.

p.s. Alton, I miss you. Please come visit sometime. Unless the gym starts playing Food Network, we may be separated indefinitely. I can only take so much Ty Pennington in one weekend.

Tiny meringues make me warm all over

Happy birthday to me!

Gosh, another year older. What they don't tell you is that after twenty-one, all the rest of the birthdays (at least, for a while) are met with baited breath. Will something break this year? How many more gray hairs will develop under the guise of wisdom?

I have no use of a cake this year. It's too big! I'm also leaving the digs for a while tomorrow, so the cake would have to be consumed all at once or not at all. I'm pretty sure my school friends are either
a) sleeping,
b) geeking out,
c) inebriated.

So that's a no-go for a birthday party. All's good, though. Mr. O surprised me at lunch and we had a nice (quick) time together. But what to do for a celebratory, sugary substitute for the usual cake?

After making all that creme patisserie last week, I had a plethora of egg whites and a plenitude of vanilla beans. And cinnamon. Darn it, I love cinnamon. It's a bit unhealthy, really. If not for cooking for others, I'm pretty sure all my recipes would have a dash of cinnamon in them (most already do).

I made cinnamon-vanilla meringues. Now, understand, my area of the world this week has experienced freak snowstorms and wind that would blow out a thousand birthday cakes. I decided to make the meringues yesterday, which meant that my egg whites (all four? five? of them) mixed for about twenty minutes and never got halfway above the pan. It also took about two hours for them to cook, and even then they were still very soft when touched. In a moment of impatience (I had to get to class, darnit!) I cranked the oven up to 300. Oops. They got a little brown and done, but they tasted fine just the same.

This morning, I made a parfait with some more creme patisserie and frozen cherries for breakfast, mixed with some of the crushed meringues. Yum!




recipe & directions from 101 Cookbooks, with vanilla bean & cinnamon added at the same time as the sugar.

A Sweet Tart

This week was a 'freezer week'. I didn't have time to cook, so since I know these weeks will happen in advance (or months, as in the entire month of April), I eat out of my freezer. Thankfully, this weekend offered a reprise.

I just acquired a nice stash of organic Bourbon vanilla beans from this source. Even for a student, this is a price that can't be beat. To match that, the store had strawberries on sale. Score!

Martha's cookbook recommended a tart crust that came out terribly (I blame it on doing the crust in batches), but future attempts should be better. I panicked. Mr. O was coming over in a few minutes and there was no dessert? I jumped on a puff pastry sheet I had in the freezer and threw it on the hot oven top to defrost. Fifteen minutes later, I threw it haphazardly in the tart pan and off we went.



By the way, no one ever tells you how difficult it is to make a tart look pretty. As someone who is definitely artsy but prefers the terms 'freestyle' and 'rustic' as opposed to 'neat' and 'even' this was a frustrating event. The pastry cream sticks like glue to those strawberries! Once they're down, they're down.



Strawberry tart

1 to 1 1/2 pints strawberries, sliced
puff pastry dough, one sheet defrosted
Creme patisserie (recipe below)

Roll out pastry dough to fit pan, if desired. Poke holes in dough with fork so it won't rise while baking. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes or until sufficiently brown.

Spread creme patisserie and arrange sliced strawberries on top. Add fresh mint, chocolate ganache, or pearl sugar to top for added effect.

Creme patisserie

from The Martha Stewart Cookbook. There are many variations on Martha's site, but this makes one plain cup which I find suitable for the tart.


1 c milk
1/2 vanilla bean (I used whole, with inside scraped into pan)
1/4 c plus 1 tb sugar
3 egg yolks
1 tb flour
1 tb cornstarch
1 tsp unsalted butter


Combine the milk, vanilla bean, and 1/4 cup sugar in saucepan, heat until sugar dissolves. In another bowl, beat egg yolks with sugar until thick. Sprinkle in flour and cornstarch and mix until combined. Add half of the hot milk to eggs and whisk thoroughly until heated. Bring mixture to pan and bring to a boil, whisking away. Remove from heat and pour into a bowl to cool, rubbing the top with butter and then covering with plastic wrap to ensure that a film doesn't form. Cool completely.