KitchenKatalog: Blog 147

I made Millionaire's Shortbread (also simply known as caramel shortbread). I had seen this somewhere and decided it was a combination of two of my favorite sweets! It's basically shortbread topped with caramel and chocolate.

I decided on the NY Times (LOCAL) recipe since it actually gave temperatures¹ for the caramel. I followed the recipe with only two changes:

Otherwise I followed the recipe. The only note is that I had to bake it for much longer. I think it is because of the glass pan (it was the closest in area to an 8'x8' pan). I eventually did about 50 minutes with the last 15 or so at a higher temperature.

I also think the caramel making got ahead of me. As seen in one of the pictures below, there are some burned bits. I should have mixed all ingredients and then heated while stirring. I do not think it made too much of a difference though.

I also had to kind of rush it. I cooled it with a fan until I could put the whole thing in the fridge. Even then, I had to just take the edges to serve/bring (meeting friends at a brewery). The middle chocolate was still melted.

Candy making at altitude is actually a very easy adjustment. Since candy making is all about the amount of sugar and water, and since that ratio is exactly defined by the boiling point of water, you can just shift all candy temperatures by the shift in boiling point of water. ↩

Lemon-Garlic Shrimp and Bok Choy

For our four year (10 including dating) anniversary, we had an easy-but-nice meal. We didn't have a ton of time because of the baby but we were able to still make something nice.

I made lemon garlic shrimp and sautéed mini bok choy. For the bok choy, I used the pan from the shrimp and use about 1/2 Tbsp of butter. I added a bit of crushed red pepper and salt along with chopped up mini bok choys (from Trader Joes). That all worked pretty well. We also served it with some leftover sourdough from Thanksgiving 2018.

Meredith made dessert as noted in its own post. They were very cute and also very good!

Rosemary Blackberry Truffles

Meredith had leftover cake and icing from Mini Cakes so I made cake ball truffles. I didn't actually use that recipe at all since Meredith had everything I needed. I really kind of winged it. I broke up the cake and started mixing it with the icing (just going by feel for how much icing). I then had the epiphany of using the mixer for this and it was much easier (though it also melted the very butter heavy icing a bit). We also added some dollops of blackberry jam to the mix!

I used our cookie scoop (~~not sure of the exact size~~ 2oz) which made it much easier, though a little large for my taste.

The next day I melted (real) white chocolate with a tiny bit of vegetable oil to thin (we don't have any more coconut oil). Some got coated better than others but I think it was, on the whole, pretty good. I drizzled some melted dark chocolate over them.

With the leftover chocolate, I went on a pantry raid to see what to coat and decided to find all of Meredith's Oreo stash. So I coated them (though they are a bit broken up)

Mini Cakes

While the cake recipe Meredith used from My Name is Yeh was a normal cake, she got the idea for the mini cakes from her blog as well. She cooked it in a sheet pan (see the notes for timing).

The tall one is actually six (!!!) layers because each of the three tiers is two layers.

You could really taste the rosemary! And the cakes themselves were really tasty (though a tad dry). Also, the leftover cake and icing went to making cake truffles

Seared Salmon and Soup

Seared Salmon made with quick-defrosted salmon and reheated soup from Thanksgiving 2018. I used the sous vide on the salmon with water at 80° to quickly defrost while keeping it moving.

Japanese Curry

I made Japanese Curry which we haven't done in some time. I was in The Bay Area for work and ventured into an Asian (Chinese?) supermarket. There I found some curry brands I've heard of but haven't tried (honestly, I am not sure if we have them locally in ABQ. I should look)

Using diced potatoes saved a lot of time simmering to make sure they were soft. As did microwaving the chopped carrots.

I added the tofu and potatoes right before adding the curry blocks. I also added some togarashi to the veggies

We had some frozen rice from Donburi but not very much so I mixed it with some dried pasta (what we had open in the pantry). I also used 2 cups of the pasta water (along with 1 cup of fresh water) as the water for the curry blocks. I thought that was a good way to get the extra starch for it all (plus flavor)

I liked it. It's been a while since we've had curry so it is hard for me to compare to other curry blocks. I do with they were all spicier! But we should keep this meal in mind. It wasn't too hard to make. And I liked using canned potatoes! That was a nice time saver.

Taco Stew

I made taco stew. There were a few slight modifications. I used tomatoes that also had green chile in them. And addicting to the pepper-addition theme, I added a poblano and a red bell pepper.

Cava Bowls

We've had "Cava-Style" bowls a for a few dinners. Meredith prepped ingredients (as before).

We used leftover falafel one night. On the others we use Halloumi (which was technically expired but was fine)