V60 Coffee

There are some people that drink coffee and there are some people that don’t. Then there is another group that love coffee. Well, Dani and I drink it and have a small love affair with it too. I could go into all the reasons why you should register a Starbucks gift card and how their marketing works so well, but that is not for here. And I want to talk about coffee here, not the fancy espresso drinks they are so well known for.

A few months ago Dani took me on the Intelligentsia coffee roasting tour and arranged for a private home brewing class for my birthday. We learned about and compared two different pour-over methods and as well proper french press brewing techniques. There are clear differences between the methods, but we enjoyed the cleaner flavors you get from a pour-over. So here’s how you can do a proper pour-over at home too.

We use a Hario V60, so you’ll need one of those or a similar product, a carafe for the brewed coffee to go into, a digital scale, coffee grinder, a filter, whole coffee beans, and water.

Instructions

Step 1: Heat your water. You’ll need more than what you plan to brew, so start with approximately 24 oz for now.

Step 2: Place the V60 with filter over the carafe.

Step 3: Now with the semi-heated water slowly pour water through the filter. This is done to wet the filter and clean out the filter of any loose paper fibers.

Step 4: Empty the extra water out of the carafe. This would not be fun if it was left in.

Step 5: Measure out 32 grams of your unground coffee beans. Then grind it in a coffee grinder to about the size of coarse sand.

Step 6:
Dump these grounds into the V60. Give it a little shake to level out the grounds. The grounds should be loosely packed.

Step 7:
At this point you may need to reheat the water. You want it hot, say just over 200 °F.

Step 8:
Now we start pouring the water over the grounds. Use a thin stream and focus the stream in small circular motion in the center of the grounds. This should all be done on the scale because you are going to add the first 75-100 grams in about 45 sec. Stop once you hit the first target weight and let the grounds bloom.

Step 9:
Once done blooming, you can add the remaining water until the total water added is around 520 grams. Again the stream should be thin and focus toward the center in a small circular motion.

Tips and Tricks

• If the coffee is too over extracted (which to me tastes too bitter) try a courser grind.
• If the coffee has no flavor (too weak) try a finer grind.
• You can also try different water to bean mass ratios. But I’d try to stay close to what we did here.
• Try all kinds of beans and make sure they are not too old (more then a few weeks). In fact the older the beans get you notice how the flavors change.
• Happy brewing!

Strawberry Short Cake Gelato

We are back to making Ice Cream/Gelato. Makes sense, it’s hot out and we need something to cool off with.

Ingredients

3 cups 2% milk (just what we had on hand, skim has worked well in the past)
¼ cup sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
½ lb of strawberries
Couple spoon fulls of strawberry jam
Spong cake

Notes

We used the same base recipe for this that we always do. Since it has been a while I’ll recap how it goes down. Start by bringing 2 ¾ cups milk to a boil. The remaining ¼ cup of milk, cornstarch, and sugar can be whipped in a separate bowl. When the milk reaches a boil add in the other milk mixture and whip it all together in the pot. At this point you can also add in the vanilla extract, mixing everything thing until it is fully disolved. This mixture is then taken off the heat, covered, and put in the fridge to cool for at least an hour and a half.


Once cooled, the milk mixture is put in the ice cream maker. Then the macerated strawberries and microwaved jam are mixed in. Also, we added in three miniature spong cakes- cubed.

Results

This was by far our best non-chocolate ice cream to date. We probably could have used a little more of the strawberry jam and maybe slightly more vanilla. Using the vanilla helps to add some of the creamy mouth feel that you can sometimes lose when using a low fat content milk. Overall it was success and is a good treat at the end of a long day in the heat.

Forks: 4.72/5

Welcome Back: On to Year 2

It has been just over a year since we started blogging our cooking and baking adventures, so welcome back as we get back into sharing our creations with you. Since we last posted, we have moved out to the western Chicago suburbs. I started working as an NVH engineer for an automotive supplier and Dani just started her first class of Graduate School at Northern Illinois University studying nutrition. We’re still learning our way around and miss some of our favorite spots in Kalamazoo. As we explore Chicago-land we’ll fill you in on some of our good finds.

So here’s to our slightly less tiny kitchen and more cooking together!

Cooking is Just Physics – Freakonomics Podcast

I held off on posting this so we could space out some of our posts a bit. Either way, if you know me well, you know I’m a bit of a geek and listen to a bunch of podcasts. None of them are strictly food related, but this last couple of Freakonomics podcasts were all about food. It’s a two parter and links are below to each episode.

• Waiter, There’s a Physicist in My Soup! (Part 1)
• Waiter, There’s a Physicist in My Soup! (Part 2)

They present a debate between the “molecular gastronomy” movement and traditional cooking practices. I’ve learned a little about “molecular gastronomy” from Dani and there was a chef on Top Chef a few seasons ago that used some of the techniques. As Nathan Myhrvold, one of the interviewees puts it, any way you cut it even just applying heat you’re still doing physics.

Sharing a French Press

As Dani mentioned in the biscotti post, we have been heading to Starbucks to share a french press of coffee every Sunday for the past couple of weeks. It’s been a nice way to spend our time together and try some new coffee. The baristas will usually open a bag of beans so we can try a different roast each time.

It makes about 2 cups of coffee for each of us and is a relatively good deal at $3.50. Last weekend we brought along some of the biscotti that we baked and they were very tasty together. If you have some time to sit at a store, I’d highly recommend getting a french press to share with someone.

By the way, I’m a big Starbucks fan. Their loyalty program (Starbucks Card) is a simple way to earn free coffee and has a nice game play aspect to it as you earn stars. My photo of a favorite mug was featured in a fan blog not to long ago too (mine is mug number 3 in the post).

New City, New Tiny Kitchen

We are getting back on track with our posts…we promise. A few things have changed: I’ve moved into a new, tiny kitchen. I started my first professional engineering job in Chicagoland and moved into a new apartment less than a month ago. Very little cooking has gone on here, but in time, we shall be cooking away.

We’ve just begun to explore the new city and see what restaurants and shopping markets are good. I’m personally excited to have a Trader Joe’s close by. In fact being in the vicinity of a Trader Joe’s was a key factor in my job search. There is also a Whole Foods close by. The Whole foods will probably turn into a good weekend activity for Dani and I. She loves to walk the aisles of fancy grocery stores and read the labels while I find the good samples. You may think that a Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods are no big deal, but after living in West Michigan with neither, it is a very big deal!

This probably won’t be the last move in the calendar year. Once Dani hears back from the Dietetic Internship programs there will be another move. I’m currently about 40 min west of downtown Chicago, very close to Naperville. So maybe we’ll move closer to the city and find another tiny kitchen.

How To Work In a Small Kitchen

I saw a great link on a favorit blog of mine this week, Apartment Therapy. The post first caught my eye because it has the same ice cream makers in it that we use. But once I actually read on, it gives some good tips on how to use a small space well.

• Small Space Lessons From A (Tiny) Professional Kitchen
  It’s not just about how much space you have to work in, but how you use it. Try to keep things simple and clutter free.

Popcorn on the Stove

Popcorn can be a great snack, but that microwaved stuff is often too greasy and does not compare to the real kind. Probably the best way to make it at home is an air popper. But in a tiny kitchen that’s not always an available option. So, we went old school with a little help from the new school.

Ingredients

Popcorn
Canola Oil

Notes

There are a lot of ways to make popcorn and hands down using an air popper is probably the most healthy, no oil required. It also pops nearly all of the kernels. This sign of efficiency is one of the best aspects to look for when popping popcorn. On a side note, microwaved popcorn has one of the worst relative efficiencies compared to other methods and sends it to the bottom of the popcorn popping options.

With no air popper at our disposal, we looked up how to pop it on the stove on youtube. Turns out it is pretty simple to make on the stove. Just pour about a tablespoon of oil and a dash of salt in the bottom of a large deep pot. Heat it on medium high, throw just a few kernels, cover the pot, and let them heat up and pop.

Once they have popped, the oil is ready. Depending on the size of your pot you can add anywhere between 1/3 to a 1/2 a cup of kernels. These will pop pretty quickly. Once they start popping, listen for when they start to slow down, maybe half the speed. Lift the pot off the stovetop and shake it around a little. They’ll start to pop again and this will prevent the popcorn from burning.

Not every kernel will pop, but keeping the pot just above the burner and giving it that little shake as the popping slows down really helps to finalize the last few that are going to pop without burning the rest of the batch. When you think you’ve got them as far as they’ll go, remove the pot from the burner and remove the top. If you leave the top on you may get some condensation that will drip on the popcorn.

Results

This is a great alternative when you don’t have an air popper on hand. You do have to keep an active eye on the process to avoid burning the batch though. We first tried using olive oil instead of canola oil, but that did not work. The olive oil seemed to burn the popcorn much more easily. Despite this, the burnt bits had some good olive oil flavor to them.

Forks: 4.7/5

Peanut Butter Crispy Bars

Dani and I spend a lot of time in Trader Joes. She came into town (Detroit) this weekend and we have been there two of the three days this weekend. We also thought it might be nice to bake something sweet. Yet, my tiny kitchen at home is on its way out. The stove in my family home is not reliable enough to bake in and is most likely older than me. It’s the final major appliance to go and my parents are starting the process to revamp our kitchen.

So a no bake solution we thought of was rice krispy treats. From previous trips to Trader Joes we knew they don’t carry marshmallows. But when you pick up a box of their Crispy Rice cereal we learned they have come up with a solution for this: agave syrup, peanut butter, and brown sugar! No joke, they have a recipe on the box that we followed.

Ingredients

1 cup brown sugar
1 cup agave syrup
1 cup peanut butter
7 cups crisp rice cereal
optional: chocolate chips or other chocolate candy pieces. (we used chocolate covered sunflower seeds)

Notes

This one was fun to do. To start, in a large sauce pan on the stove top, heat and stir the brown sugar and blue agave syrup together, hot enough so the brown sugar dissolves and just before boiling. Then mix in the peanut butter. Now it starts to smell good.

Once this is all mixed well, add in the crisp rice cereal. It’s a large volume, so plan ahead and use the biggest sauce pan you’ve got. After mixing in the crisp rice cereal, you can add what ever small treat you’d like. We used chocolate chips and some chocolate covered sunflower seeds. This all then gets pressed into a 13 x 9 inch greased pan and left to cool in the fridge.

Results

These are good. Very sweet and hard to put down. Dani says they may even be too sweet, but I like them. They don’t hold quite as well as regular rice krispy treats, but they hold together well enough. I even like the chocolate covered sunflower seeds, and I rarely will eat a seed or nut.

Forks: 4.23/5

Update

Everyone always says they are sorry for not posting in a while. But hey, we get busy. Dani has been busy preparing her applications for dietetic internships and I just turned in my thesis manuscript to my advisor committee before I defend in just two weeks.

So, thanks for sticking with us this far. We have not stopped cooking and we have a few items in the can that we are currently writing and will post soon.