White Chocolate Dulce De Leche Fudge

One of my favorite food blogs, Room for Dessert, is written in Hebrew (occasionally also in English).

Yesterday, she posted a lovely fudge recipe that I just had to try (cjr loves white chocolate, and, according to my wordle, so do I!).

I'll take the liberty of translating the recipe here.

You'll need some Dulce De Leche. There are a few options here 1. Buy some yourself. 2. Make some yourself (not so hard).

If you're going for option 2 you have yet a few more options. You can go with the microwave version which works well but you really have to monitor it constantly as mine boiled over several times, or, the oven version which was much less fuss (even if it took a longer time in the end).

Or something totally nontraditional, go with Alton Brown's version (no condensed milk necessary!)

Once you've got that down, the rest is easy!

Ingredients:
500 grams white chocolate
150 grams (1/2 cup) dulce de leche
80 mL (1/3 cup) milk
100 g (1 cup) chopped pecans (or walnuts/whatever nut you like)

1. Over a double boiler (or a metal bowl placed over a pot of simmering water) melt the white chocolate, stirring constantly making sure not to burn.
2. When melted, add the dulce de leche and the milk, stir with a wisk trying your best to minimize the formation of air bubbles.
3. Remove from double boiler and fold in the pecans.
4. Pour out onto a parchment lined 9x9 baking dish (smaller = better, you can always use a loaf pan and just cut smaller pieces later). The thing you want to avoid is something with a lot of surface area -- fudge will be too thin.
5. Allow to cool overnight in refridgerator (or for 2 hours in the freezer).
6. Cut/serve as you see fit.

EDIT: for the extremely time crunched/lazy I bet a nickel you can make this in your microwave in one bowl (assuming you have the dulce de leche prepared). Melt the chocolate in the microwave on low power (carefully! slowly! mix after every 30 seconds and the large chunks will dissapear) add the milk and dulce de leche when melted and whisk. Fold in pecans. Proceed from step 4.

Food / Travel Dispatches

JDC and I are about halfway through our several-week trip to New York, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Paris. Due to the frustration at not getting many good food recommendations in Berlin, I have decided to document what we've learned for the good of future epicurious / vegetarian travelers who will be visiting the lovely city.

In addition to that, I also have to document:

-Many falafel shops in several cities
-Anticipated chocolate/candy-shopping in Paris
-An absinthe shop
-General mediocrity yet cheapness of food in Berlin

Anyway, for now, my quick comment this morning: despite having no expectations whatsoever, my supermarket eggs (organic) that I picked up in Berlin were amazing. They had the brightest orange yolk I've ever seen. In the US I usually buy Judy's Organic Eggs, which have a very nice yolk. But these organic Berlin eggs (not even from the farmer's market!) beat Judy's hands-down.

Fresh Fava Beans!

We found some great fresh fava Beans still in their pods so I decided to bring some home. I have this simple fresh fava bean salad recipe (which according to my Israeli cookbook comes from Egypt).

You have to shuck the beans (remove the pod) before weighing for the recipe. Also, make sure not to overcook the beans, they don't do well overcooked. The weight for the beans is after shucking. You'll need 3-4 lbs of unshucked beans to get it right. Or, you can just just halve the recipe since it makes enough for 4-6 people.

Also, one more note, if you're going to prepare this ahead, I'd hold off on adding the garlic until just before serving. Garlic likes to take over things in a really bad way. It is good, however, to let the fava beans soak in the rest of the mixture/marinate until it's time to serve.

Ingredients
1 lb shucked fava beans
3-4 sprigs of cilantro or parsley, minced
1-2 cloves of minced garlic
Juice of one lemon
1 tablespoon olive oil
Salt, Pepper to taste.

1. Place the fava beans in a pot with enough water to cover (wider pots are better) and a pinch of salt. Cook over medium heat until tender -- about 15-20 minutes.

2. In the meantime, prepare the dressing by mixing the parsley/cilantro with the lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper, and garlic (if serving immedietly).

3. When finished, drain the beans. If you prefer to serve cold, you can rinse them with cold water.

4. Mix the beans with the dressing and serve. You can serve either hot or cold. My favorite application is add to some greens with tomato and cucumber and use the fava beans and fava bean dressing as a 'salad dressing'. Mmmm

S'mores Brownies

I saw the post for S'mores brownies on Joy the Baker's blog which inspired me to make my own version of the brownies, inspired by her post (and my recent acquisition of vegan marshmallows).

First a note on the marshmallows.. I don't eat the regular type because of the Gelatin but I found this great supplier of vegan ones that taste just like the real thing. The size is a bit strange (about 2x the size of mini marshmallows or about half the size of the big kind) but cut in half they work perfectly in this recipe (I just used some kitchen sheers). If you want to get some go here. Note, they don't often have a good supply so DO sign up for the alert when it becomes available and buy them as soon as you hear from them. You'll need about 1.25 bags for this recipe. (12 oz).

Basically, all this recipe is: Graham Cracker Crust + Brownie (with 6 oz folded in mini marshmallows) + 6 oz mini-marshmallow topping. Really, you can use an crust/brownie recipe that you like here. It really doesn't matter. You could even use a prepared pie crust and/or boxed brownie mix and it would still be delicious!

Graham Cracker Crust (a la Mark Bittman).
3 cups of graham cracker crumbs (think bread crumbs). I used Trader Joe's Cat Cookies so any cookie will work here.
8 tablespoons (one stick) melted butter.
72 grams brown sugar. (6 tablespoons).
pinch of salt.
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice or cinnamon (optional)

Brownies (again, a la Mark Bittman, but use whatever recipe you like here)
6 ounces unsweetened chocolate
16 tablespoons (2 stick) salted or unsalted butter
2 cup sugar
4 eggs, beaten
1 cup all-purpose flour
Pinch salt if you use unsalted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract, optional
6 oz mini marshmallows (or large marshmallows cut into mini marshmallow size - vegan dandies cut in half)

Topping
6 oz mini marshmallows (or large marshmallows cut into mini marshmallow size - vegan dandies cut in half)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Line a glass baking dish (13x9 in my case, half the recipe if you're using a pie plate -- I bet this would make a great brownie pie!) with Aluminum foil.

3. Next, prepare the crust. In a food processor or blender, process the crumbs and add the sugar, salt, and optional spices. Next, add the butter and process until full combined. Press the mixture into your glass dish evenly coating the bottom. Bake for about 15 minutes until the crust sets up.

4. In the meantime, begin making the brownies. Melt the chocolate and butter in a small saucepan over LOW HEAT just until melted. Add the sugar and mix well. Add the vanilla and then add the eggs one at a time. Next, add the salt to the flour then add the flour mixture to the brownie batter and combine until no remnants of flour are visible. Fold in 6 oz of the marshmallows. Once crust has set, pour mixture on top of the crust and bake for 30-40 minutes until the brownies have set and firm even through the middle. Make sure they are done, my brownies were removed a bit early and were a bit 'runny' in the middle because of it.

5. Once the brownies are done, sprinkle the remaining marshmallows on top and broil for about a minute until just browned. Note that it may seem that the marshmallows don't fully cover the top of the brownies, but they will expand and collapse onto the brownies so it will be pretty good coverage in the end.

6. Remove from oven, allow to cool completely, and cut into small squares and serve.

I made a wordle!

Passover Recipe Round Up

Here are some good passover recipes, two that I'm tried and one that I'd like to try.

First, here's the one that I'd like to try:

Chow's Passover Orange & Strawberry Angel Food Cake.

And here's one I've tried that's worked GREAT:

David Lebovitz's Caramelized Matzo Crunch With Chocolate

A few words on that last one, to make a standard cookie sheet's worth:
I would use 1.5-2x the brown sugar, butter, and chocolate (no more than 1.5 times on the chocolate).
You can also get away with about 1.5x more nuts. I used pecans/walnuts (chopped, dry toasted) and they were delightful.
Don't skip on the sea salt, if you don't have any you can substitute Kosher salt.

And here's one from my Israeli Cookbook "Israeli Flavors" by Pascale Perez-Rubin (translated from Hebrew):

Moroccan Charoset
300 grams 'pureed/finely chopped' dates
6 tablespoons water
1/2-3/4 cup sweet red wine (I used Manischewitz)
1/2 cup ground walnuts
1/2 cup ground almonds
10 ground chestnuts (roasted, pre-roasted/packaged is obviously fine).
1/2 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1/2 tablespoon ground cloves

1. Cook the dates, water, and wine on low heat and mix until a uniform consistency is reached no big dates chunks).
2. Remove from heat, mix in the remaining ingredients until a uniform consistency is reached.

Makes enough for at least 8-10 people. (Possibly more).