Category: Cooking

It’s what’s for dinner.

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What Does Risk Look Like?

What the H….amantaschen is that!?

It’s a risk that epitomizes the type of risks my wife and I face each day through our son. He has severe food allergies. No nuts. No wheat. No chicken eggs. No chicken meat. No dairy. No shellfish. No sorghum, quinoa, corn, tomatoes, strawberries… there are also some restrictions with red dye and sugar (though he can have that every once in a while). We keep an epipen handy and have our own nebulizer.

With great restrictions comes risk. It’s not “necessity” alone that mothers invention. It’s the necessity with restrictions that force us to be take risks – to be inventive. It’s what created the electric shaver and the sewing machine.

How do you create a special treat that someone with so many restrictions can have? You have to get creative, and sometimes a little rushed assumption helps the process along.

“Do we have any egg replacer?” I asked my wife. “No. But I have a recipe that uses gelatin.” Her fingers scampered across her iPhone. “I just sent it to you in an email.”

I looked over the recipe. There were some brand-names mentioned. I remember us having unflavored gelatin at one time… but we were out. Tonight is the only time I have to bake the Hamantaschen cookies before Purim. I scampered through all our pantries. We had a box of strawberry gelatin … naturally flavored. Does natural strawberry flavor have the same effect on my son as an actual strawberry? Better not risk it. I grabbed a box of artificially flavored cherry jello and started working the recipe my wife gave.

Looking at the “Immaculate” brand Gluten Free Sugar Cookie Mix directions: 1 stick (1/2 cup) of softened butter – my son can’t have that. I need to replace the butter. Last time I did a one-to-one replacement with coconut oil. That ended up bad. All the cookies were greasy. Lesson learned. I’ll use half the amount of coconut oil instead. But what do I replace the remaining missing butter with? Maybe more egg replacer… more jello. The idea is for the dough to spread and set. That’s what drop cookies do… Oh! I need to shape these… no problem, I’ll just add a little less moisture so that I can roll it out … or so I thought.

While mixing up the measured amount of cherry gelatin with lemon juice and hot water I realized it didn’t look right. It isn’t setting like an egg replacer should… but I didn’t have time, and I was determined to make a cookie that he could have.

I jumped to adding the strongly scented cherry gelatin mixture and coconut oil into the cookie mix. After thoroughly mixing it together, it was obvious that I needed more moisture. After carefully adding just a little more hot water it looked like a drop dough recipe. You can’t fold the dough into the traditional “hat” shapes. My heart sank a little. I felt like I was failing. In a sense, I was. This step in the process was nothing like I wanted. I let the dough sit in the bowl while I thought up a plan.

One of my daughters walked into the kitchen and squealed with delight when she saw it! “It’s pink!” she paused. “It’s so pink!“

She’s right. I have tried all sorts of food coloring before and I never saw cookie dough this brightly colored before. Maybe gelatin is a better coloring agent because of how the dye is captured in its crystals.

They’re going to be drop-dough cookies. I told her. How do I make them round and fold them into the hats? (For those unfamiliar with Hamantaschen cookies, they are traditionally made by folding a round-cut rolled-out sugar cookie dough into the shape of a three-cornered hat.)

A thought came to mind … maybe the solution to my problem exists in the culmination of my cookie dough failure itself! With all that gelatin, it can set in a more pliable manner … if I pull them out of the oven at just the right time, the cookies will be malleable enough to fold without breaking.

I scooped up little balls of the cookie dough and placed them on the silpat and into the oven. I watched a timer carefully when baking them. At three minutes, they had spread out into circles … good. At five minutes, they were too soft to move with a spatula. At eight minutes… I gave them a try. I took the sheet out of the oven and to my amazement, it was like shaping hot, soft play-dough!

I quickly shaped all the cookies on the sheet – small batches of 10 cookies at a time – then put the sheets back in the oven for another 5 minutes. They came out looking like very pink Hamantaschen!

I’ve tried all sorts of food coloring in dough the past, and it has always ended up yellowing or browning around the edges. These cookies were perfectly, consistently pink.

On the second batch, I tried to fold them at 6 minutes. The two that I tried were too soft and didn’t hold their shape. At 8 minutes exactly, the cookies were foldable. Those two ended up looking like a tesseract of sorts when I refolded them. Fun!

After the third batch of cookies, I was out of dough. I surveyed the concoction I made. It was a failure with not having egg replacer mix that brought me to using an egg replacer recipe. It was a failure of not seeing the canister of unflavored brand-name gelatin (that my wife had written into the recipe) that brought me to using cherry flavored jello. It was my using of that jello to replace half the butter that caused the batter to not be rollable. It was the failure of it not being rollable that led me to sit and think creatively. I wouldn’t be surprised if the time I spent thinking up a solution out of this mess gave the batter time to “rise” and form properly within the bowl.

Eventually, all these failures created something never tried before. 3 tablespoons of cherry jello, 1 1/2 tablespoons of lemon juice, 1/4 cup of coconut oil, a bit of hot water and 15 ounces of cookie mix … left for a moment to rise and set in an oven for 8 minutes, then folded, then baked for another 5 minutes … served with a drizzle of home-made chocolate sauce (chocolate covered cherry cookies, anyone?) … produced brightly colored, perfectly chewy, sweet & tasty, child-glee inducing success!

When in the midst of risk, and when things get riskier. Sometimes it pays to not give up – to stick with it to the end. There are times to know when to quit. That’s my weak leadership skill that I’m working on… but my strength is that I don’t give up, and that … more often than not … produces … victory!

This article is from the “Raw Talk on Failure” series.

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Jelly-making in the Rockies

High altitude is great for crisp dry air, beautiful winter snow and alpine flowers. It is not good for baking, candy making or jelly making. I nearly fumbled the jelly this year by trying to follow the recipe. I don’t see any high-altitude directions, so assumed there weren’t any major differences. How wrong I was!

Trying to get the pectin, fruit juice and sugar to set at 220 Fahrenheit is next to impossible. Why? Water at this altitude boils at 200 degrees, not 212. By the time you reach 220 degrees you’ve well over burned your jelly or candy. That means the jelly-set temperature is closer to 207 degrees, adjusted for percentage – not geometric difference. For those higher in altitude than the mile-high city, I suggest you start testing your jelly around 206 degrees on a frozen saucer(freeze a few saucers for multiple tests).

Barometric pressure also plays a factor. It changes widely and quickly in the mountains and can really mess up your candies and jellies if not watched after.

A candy maker told me that in this area you have to watch the weather for a solid clear sky and check for storm patterns when making your candies or they won’t come out.

Chocolate and fudge is a little more forgiving. Still, I’ve even had some crystallized fudge from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory before so even well seasoned candy makers can have their off-days.

So how did the black raspberry — red currant jelly come out? Much of the water boiled out leaving a very thick, very hard set, very strong jelly. Not burned, thank goodness, but it almost did.

It’s as black and dense as midnight though clear as a jewel and spreads on a deep, rich, royal purple. It would probably do better spooned out and diluted to be served as a syrup because of its intense raspberry flavor, but still goes well with the hearty flavor of hearty-grained or strong buttermilk breads. It probably wouldn’t do well on water crackers.

I had another interesting and fun basic geometric math problem to solve while making the jelly. The recipe calls for 2.25 cups of sugar for every 2.5 cups of juice after straining. All the juice had been strained in the pot it would be made in and I didn’t want to make a mess of the dark juice. I remembered that you could convert metric volume into liters – that, after all, is the definition of a liter. Liters could be converted into cups, which could then be multiplied by the ratio of sugar to juice for the correct amount of sugar without ever needing to pour the juice out of the pot.

The diameter of the pot is 24cm. The depth of the juice was 2.6cm. ( pi*(24/2)^2 ) * 2.6 is roughly 1176.212 milliliters or 1.176212 liters. There are 4.22675282 cups in a liter. That ends up being roughly 5 cups of juice, which means 4.5 cups of sugar was needed. It was a perfect example of my math teacher saying “You may want to do this someday…” becoming true.

Fantastic jelly, geeky math fun, and a story to tell. What more could you want to do with your evening … other than sharing a piece of jelly emblazoned toast with your inspiring wife?

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Organic Pick-Your-Own Farms

A large windmill spun overhead as we pulled in past the gate. Parking our van we quickly spied over the metal bar fence. Picnic tables adorned the lawn to the side of a large red barn. Nestled on the barn’s porch were white rocking chairs and a table with a box of freshly pulled garlic stalks resting in it.

Paula took some of the family to ask about the process at this farm. I followed up with some equipment and water.

“There’s a ‘train’ that picks up here and takes us to the berries.”, she said.

We didn’t wait long when a green John Deer tractor pulled up with a large red and white bench seat wagon rolling behind. The driver showed us where to pick the red currents and where to pick the black raspberries then slowed to a stop to let us out.

We spent some time picking currents. After pulling together two pints worth, we began picking the raspberries. The combination of mid-90 degree heat and thorny bushes was difficult for the children to bear so they headed back to the barn for shade when the next ‘train’ came by. “Get the black ones!” cried out the driver over the tractor engine. I nodded as she pointed in an area “These are more ripe here!” she called out again.

I continued to pick berries for some time longer before heading back to the barn area myself. My girls picked flowers and dug up carrots during that time. Once we were all together again we drank water and sat on the shaded porch in rocking chairs. Then Claudia came by.

Claudia and Tim are the owners of Berry Patch Farm. Her tan face and energetic smile display a level of passion she has for her farm. She kindly answered questions Paula had about organic farming. She mentioned that the Colorado State University was invaluable as a resource – that the university even takes classes to her farm to study organic farming techniques in practice. She talked some about the expenses related to this type of farming, but also related the benefits to it.

A few minutes later we were joined by Tim. He waved to us as he stepped off the tractor. A few minutes later he was showing the children a medium sized rock that had been split by lightning.

When I asked if I could get a picture of him and his wife together he asked if I were from the media. “No”, I replied, “but it might end up on my blog, though nobody really reads it.” He and Claudia looked at each other and chuckled.

“A few weeks ago we were visited by some Microsoft bloggers. They called ahead and made arrangements then took some nice pictures, too.” He was talking about the Eco-Trippers who were making a journey from San Francisco to D.C. for the “Live Earth” concert and stopped by on the way.

We perused the barn some more. They have a variety of fresh vegetables of course, but they also have honey, eggs and some great tasting almost-natural candy. It isn’t quite completely natural since it uses non-organic corn syrup amongst some other purist taboo ingredients. One of the girls and I went out and picked some fresh basil then checked out.

That night we had a fantastic Margaretta pizza with the basil. As for the currents and raspberries, I plan to make some fantastic jelly with them. The rest of the family can hardly wait.