Hey ya'll! Happy 2013! I took some time off and out of the kitschen. Now at the end of January, I'm just getting back into the swing of things. Work with me here peeps. I'm a bit rusty. So I'm taking things slowly and keeping it simple. No candy thermometer. No homemade caramel. Just some basics re-worked into new tasty treats.

On direct side effect of me not being in the kitschen is that the cupboards were not fully stocked. I didn't really go grocery shopping for almost the whole month! When I finally got inspired and energized enough to make something I picked out a chickpea recipe I'd been wanting to make for a while. I know I'm usually going on and on about sweet things I like. But seriously folks. When it comes to savory I loves my chickpeas. Mainly, I love hummus. But you know... I had already been eating hummus and veggie like they were a full balanced diet so I needed to switch it up a bit. This dish of braised coconut spinach chickpeas is another treat from the people at the Apartment Therapy family. Although it took me longer to make than the estimated time (I just couldn't get that can of coconut milk open for the life of me.) it was a pretty quick weeknight dinner.

Uhhhh..... I molded my rice and wanted to take a purty picture but I was too hungry. So instead you get to see my last couple of bites.


Getting back in the kitschen felt so good I kept at it. The next day I decided to tackle a dessert. My mother doesn't share my love for decadently sweet desserts. This means that unless I want to eat a whole pan of brownies myself (but really, who doesn't?!) I have to make some compromises when making desserts for the sake of baking. However, she does love pistachios. She really loved the dark chocolate pistachio cookies I made not too long ago. I wanted to do something new though... and I took the half bag of pistachios we had in the kitchen and got to work. I made La Fuji Mama's mini-pies!







To assemble press the dough into your muffin tin. Add a bit of pistachios, a little of the honey mixture, some more nuts, a little more honey and top with the crust floret. Bake for about 20 minutes and you get this:


 

My mom didn't want me to take a "candid" shot of her enjoying her dessert.... but she did agree to hand model the pie for a cross section photo!


I was on a roll! So a couple days later I made it a trilogy. This time I didn't really have a recipe. Only an idea and a few leftovers in the kitchen. Originally I thought I'd be able to stretch the packaged pie crust to make these Indian spiced meat and vegetable pockets... errrr faux samosas (fauxmosas?). Like many good intentions that one lead to Hades. So I HAD to make the dough from scratch. I made a basic pie crust (extra cold butter, flour, salt, and ice cold water) and added a little ground pepper to the mixture. While the dough was chilling in the fridge I peeled and cut two potatoes. As the potatoes boiled I chopped up a shallot I had laying around and some garlic. I sauteed those things in a skillet and put them in a big bowl.

As I moved forward in this multi-tasking process I thought... mom's gonna want some meat. I took a bit of ground turkey and began browning it in the same skillet I'd sauteed the garlic in. By this time the taters were tender so I drained them and added me to the big bowl to cool. Once the turkey was browned and crumbled I drained the grease and seasoned it. I had a bit of left over Masala spice mix from when I made homemade chai last holiday season. I put that on the meat along with a little salt and pepper. I had some left over spinach leaves so I added that to the meat and let them wilt as it cooled.

With all the basics of the fauxmosa filling cooled I began to add it all together. In the big bowl I hard: sauteed garlic and shallot, ground, browned and seasoned turkey and potato cubes.... I then added a little more Masala spice, some EVOO, a little crushed ginger, and a handful of frozen peas. I mixed it all together and let it sit while I rolled out the pie dough. I used circular cookie cutters because it was easy. I spooned a little of the meat mixture into the center of on disc, rubbed a little milk around the edge and sealed another disc ontop. I crimped the edge with a fork and sprinkled come caraway seeds on top. I put the fauxmosas in the over at 350 for 20 minutes.




 FAUXMOSAS

• shallot, chopped
• 2 bulbs garlic, chopped
• handful of spinach leaves
• 2 potatoes, cubed and boiled til fork tender
• 1/2 c frozen peas
• 1 tsp Masala spice mix/curry powder
• 1/2 tsp fresh ginger, grated
• ground turkey, browned and crumbled

You scream... I scream... We ALL scream... for ice cream. Gimme s'mores! (I said that last bit in my my ODB voice). I pulled out my beloved but rarely used ice cream maker recently and did a bit of a mish mash. I had some leftover cooking/baking ingredients that were taking up too much space in the kitschen. So I decided to use them up in an ice cream mash-up.

Because I made those s'more pops for my nephew's birthday I had 3/4 of a bag of marshmallows I was trying to use up and a box of graham cracker crumbs. This easily meant s'more flavored ice cream HAD to be made. Initial research showed that googling "s'more ice cream" lead to a lot of recipes with marshmallow base flavored ice creams. I like marshmallows but not that much. I prefer all ice creams to have a chocolate base! As a result I poked around a bit more and decided to do a chocolate ice cream and then add in the rest of the s'more flavors as mix-ins. The chocolate ice cream recipe I settled on came from this book. The recipe basically calls for making two mixtures and then adding them together.

I tweeked the recipe a little bit because I have a phobia of tempering eggs. So instead I used cornstarch as a thickener. I nixed the eggs and added 3 TBS of cornstarch with a bit of the milk to make a slurry.




Some s'more ice cream recipes just had you chuck in the mini marshmallows but I didn't have mini marshmallows. So I did another google search and found out you could make fluff by melting down marshmallows and adding in a bit of butter (mmm butter) and corn syrup. I know you're thinking "isn't that bad for you?" And to that I reply: It's ice cream! Who cares?!





Seriously folks... the chocolate ice cream was amazing. Such a great chocolate flavor. I will make a plain batch of chocolate ice cream any day with that recipe. So good. I liked the spatula clean and would have liked the urn too but I was afraid my tongue would stick. You can't tell from the picture but during the last 5 min. of churning I crumbled up the graham cracker crust and dropped it in there to mix throughout. While the ice cream finished I loaded up a disposable icing bag (using this method) with my homemade fluff. The final step was to transfer the churned ice cream into a freezer safe container and layering the fluff throughout. I couldn't take pictured during this process because my hands were covered in chocolate and/or fluff.