Lemon pie

This version of lemon pie uses the lemon curd filling for beignets made earlier. Regular milk and regular sugar are used instead of any kind of specialized condensed milk that comes with sugar in it. 

A crust is provided made of animal crackers instead of Graham crackers. You know what? These animal crackers are delicious. I bought a huge bag of them and couldn't keep off them. When it came around to making a pie crust there wasn't enough animal crackers left so I had to substitute with a few Graham crackers. Once you get going on the animal crackers at first you might wonder what attraction they had for you as a tot, as you bite off the camel's head it occurs to you the crackers are not all that sweet. You ponder further while nibbling away at the camel's feet that there is a predominate taste of vanilla. And now sucking the guts out of a camel's torso you realize the crackers can be adjusted with sugar and with cinnamon and possibly even cocoa, but certainly not with vanilla. 

This is the smallest spring form pan available in the world of ordinarily sized things. I am sure you can find smaller spring form pans in the world of novelty sized things, but those are absurd! 

For this small amount of pie crust and imagining Graham crackers as we go ...

Cracker crust:

*  1 cup dry crackers like Graham or animal crackers.

*  1/4 cup melted butter

*  2 tablespoons sugar

*  1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

*  1/2 teaspoon powdered ginger

Bake 8 minutes or so. This is 10 minutes at 400℉/205℃ convection. 

So what do you do when Life hands you a lemon? 

After careful consideration and mindful of one's manners, one may ask, 

"Life, would you be so kind as to hand me a few eggs as well? And so generous as to hand me two cups of milk? And we can use half a cup of sugar. And if it is not asking too much, Life, I'll have a whisk too and sturdy sauce pot with a handle, and a stove of some sort" 

Lemon custard:

*  two cups milk

*  two rounded tablespoons corn starch

*  1/2 cup sugar of any type you like

*  2 egg yolks

*  2 teaspoons vanilla extract

*  pinch of salt

*  all the finely grated zest of one whole lemon

*  all the juice of one whole lemon

Whisk while heating to the boil. At the boiling point the corn starch takes over and the mixture thickens immediately and a bit surprisingly, by then the egg yolk is certainly fully cooked. Taste and adjust accordingly.

Whipped cream:

*  2 cups heavy cream

*  1/2 cup confectioner's sugar

*  1 teaspoon vanilla

Whisk until stiff peaks form.

Mango, vanilla ice cream

Well have you ever heard of oatmeal that is toasted then used as a topping instead of being boiled? I do not know what came upon me but suddenly it seemed like a good idea, especially if it is mixed with something unexpected like cayenne powder or chile flakes. The pecans are superfluous, there is a three pound bag of them sitting there. 

The oatmeal is toasted in a small pan until it turns color then the pecans are added to the same pan. The pecans begin to smoke much faster than the oatmeal. Cayenne and a little sea salt added to finish. 

The fresh mango is acidified with fresh lime juice. 

ARTS !

Mango arts. These things are fun. They each have a large pit positioned in the center that is shaped like a disc. The disc runs in agreement to an apparent seam discernible by regarding the stem as a bellybutton. 

Almost all these fruits are helped with lime, but you know what? I debated here internally with myself it seems because the image of aged balsamic kept appearing over and over but not at the critical moment of getting out a lime. Plus, I have a new lime squeezer which is turning out to be too small. 

*  rolled oats

*  broken pecans

*  cayenne powder

*  sea salt

Ordinarily I would make my own ice cream but right now I do not feel like it. The components of the ice cream maker must all be pre-frozen to hasten the process of churning the flavored cream mixture. The freezer is full so there isn't enough room for all of that. When I looked in the store for the type of ice cream that I wanted I was surprised that the simplest flavors are the more difficult to locate. 

Here is something unrelated to food. 

I've been working on a pop-up card, here and there off and on, for a week. I produced four versions of the same idea. Each version has its problems, has its faults, each is salvageable and serviceable, and each contributed to understanding a mechanism and its limitations. I suppose I could take pictures of those three trials, I still have them under a chair. They do something very interesting when the standing up grid inside the card is trimmed because it is too big to fit when the card is closed, even though the paper grid inside is gobbling up the maximum amount of available background pages that are oriented so that the grid fits best. 

Here is a page that describes the pop-up card. 

I feel a little bad because time ran out for this project. I have ideas to fill out the background and to build out the edges by adding content directly to the outer edges of the grid, hedges, gates, flowerbeds, characters. 

Kinder Überraschung

Chocolate wot I ate but did not make.  

<pepe le pew> 

It iz zee little boy in heem no? Ee lyks to play zee game of assemblez le petit jouet.

</pepe le pew>

Egg yolk! Hahahahahaha, that kills me. 

Red bean and brown rice

A quarter cup of dry red beans and a quarter cup of brown rice are both milled together in a coffee bean mill along with mixed chile pepper flakes, black peppercorn, whole coriander and cumin seeds, and kosher salt. One cup water is heated in the microwave until boiling. The bean and rice powder whisked into the hot liquid, the mixture microwaved further to boiling. The mixture thickens immediately at boiling. Very little further cooking required to soften the granules, no more than a few minutes at most. 

The gravy here is simple pan gravy with commercial chicken broth and Japanese sake. A vegan sauce can be prepared as easily using vegetative ingredients instead of chicken broth or beef broth. 

Hamburger comparison

This is a comparison between regular hamburger and hamburger that is adulterated with extraneous material, tofu, black bean, and brown rice.

Regular white bread, regular crumb, characterless hamburger buns are prepared the usual way as dinner rolls with commercial yeast and all purpose flour. 

One cup of hot water determined the amounts of everything that followed. Two cups of all purpose flour for a baker's ratio of 100%. Additional flour to 1/4 cup added in increments until a sturdy dough is formed. 2 level teaspoons refined sugar to jumpstart the yeast. 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, generous grind of cracked pepper. 

Only one cup of flour is added for the initial proof along with a minimal amount of sugar. One cup of flour is held in reserve. The loose wet mixture is allowed to proof. The mixture foams and expands impressively. The second half of the flour is added along with the salt and in this case generous grinds of pepper. The additional flour is blended with increments of flour by the tablespoon until a sturdy dough forms in the processor. 

The first proof gave the yeast the best of all possible worlds to go forth and multiply as yeast is wont to carry on, uninhibited by salt, without a care in the world for resource conservation. The second addition of flour increases the food resource for the yeast while simultaneously buffering the yeast action with salt. But by this time the yeast has already multiplied impressively and hardly dissuaded by the salt buffer. The blending of the additional second half of flour amounts to the 'punchdown' deflation signified in common bread recipes. That deflation is intended to produce even crumb with no large internal air holes that are the hallmark of artisan bread. In this case, for this purpose, we do not want that. 

So the flour is doubled to its full amount, and the salt is added. Incidentally, freshly cracked black pepper is added too, but that is unusual for hamburger buns and probably unappreciated by most, especially children, who would generally prefer plain white bread with perfectly even crumb and devoid of character even minimal and soft crust. 

The buns are formed as tiny boules ↓ but they can as easily be rolled by hand into simple balls. 

The boules are proofed for a period, shorter than you might imagine since the initial proof was so much more thorough than the customary proving the yeast is alive. This yeast needs no such proving, I know it is alive, so I proceed with techniques learned from handling sourdough cultures which are less forgiving and involve slurries with baker's percentages of 50% - 60%, that is, slurries with half the final amount of flour. 

They are ready to accept sesame seeds. I learned that egg white is much better to hold onto the seeds. Today I am eggless so the boules were painted with olive oil instead. The olive oil did not help the sesame seeds adhere. They kept coming off in my hands after the buns were baked. 

But they sure are pretty. 

Two ground chuck meat patties are weighed out to 7 oz. each, which is quite large for hamburger patties, half that size is more reasonable. Black beans and brown rice are milled together in a coffee bean mill to a fine powder. The combined powders  are then mixed with approximately 1 oz of firm tofu and then with one of the 7 oz. meat patties. 

ARTS !

The combined meat patty now weighs 9 + 5/8 oz with its additional ingredients of tofu, black bean and rice, so a portion is removed and the combined patty is reduced to 7 oz., producing a third tiny combined meat patty of 2 + 5/8 oz. 

The cheese is Mexican Oaxacan farmer's style cheese, a regional favorite around these parts, and which goes surprisingly well with these hamburgers. 

Conclusion: Straight beef is best. 

Actually, I got mixed up. I thought I was eating the straight beef version when I was actually eating the combined version. It wasn't until I cut the beef version in half that I realized it is much more red inside than the combined version which was cooked throughout. From a carnivorous point of view, the 100% beef version is more satisfying. They are both equally moist, the straight version slightly more flavorful. The combined version is not more interesting. 

Determination: When it comes to hamburgers, just form patties from ground beef and forget about mixing in vegetative ingredients. Have those other things on the side, or on top of the burger if you must, but not on the inside of the beef patties.