Crows in the Kitchen

Hello from India!   Appologies to my fellow crows and readers for not having have written already!  India is beautiful, hot, crowded, dusty.  The air smells like cows and curry and the traffic is the worst I have seen anywhere in the world.  But what is most important here is, as always, the food.

Eating Indian food 3 meals a day, every day is proving to be somewhat less difficult than I predicted although by no means ideal.  I think I would honestly be perfectly happy if I could just have a good ol’ breakfast of yogurt and granola.  But, all together, it’s delicious.  So many spicy curries, chewy breads and fried tid bits that I feel stuffed to the gills all the time.   And it doesn’t help that a full meal with all the trimmings at a nice restaurant costs about $5.00.  Plus, given that this is a predominately Hindu country, a huge portion of the population is vegetarian, and all restaurants advertise themselves as being “veg” or “veg and non veg.”  Makes it easy for a veggie crow!

Miss you all!  More to come!

Here is a picture from Billy's phone of my sticky buns!

Yeastfest 3000 is still underway and my most recent accomplishment came yesterday when I successfully created a recipe for Pumpkin Sticky Buns. Although the pumpkin flavor was not as noticeable as I would have liked, the color was there, and I’ve begun brainstorming ways to incorporate more pumpkin into the recipe. I won’t be making them for some time though- I don’t want sticky buns to become my regular Saturday night dinner as they were this weekend. 3 sticky buns into the night I had to cut myself off, and force feed them to my guests.

The Recipe

3/4 c pumpkin puree

zest of 1 orange

4 cups plus unbleached flour

salt

2 large brown eggs

4 T  melted butter + 6 T butter melted + 4 T butter

1/2 c sugar

1/4 c brown sugar, plus

1 t yeast

1/2 c warm water

cinnamon and other spices to taste

Method: Proof the yeast in warm water + 1 T agave nectar or sugar (I don’t always do this but, it better safe than totally disappointed 2 hours later if you’ve never worked with yeast before).  Blend pumpkin with the water & yeast. Mix in sugar, eggs, butter, salt. Mix in 4 cups of flour. Pour the remainder of the flour on a clean surface.

Dump the pumpkin mixture onto the pile of flour, and begin kneading. You will need to add anywhere from 1/.2 cup- 1.5 cups more flour to the dough. It should still be sticky, but not overwhelmingly so at finish. Knead for 5 minutes.  Form a ball and place in a buttered bowl. Cover, and let rise to aprox. double in size 1-2 hours.

Punch down, form into a ball again, and roll out on a heavily floured surface into a large rectangle. It should be fairly thin, but not tooooo thin. This dough is going to be rolled into a log to form the buns, so picture what type of sticky bun you like, and backtrack from there. You could make big or small buns at this point. Entirely personal preference. Experiment.

Brush your rectangle with butter, heavily. Spread cinnamon over the butter, heavily. You could add chocolate chips, or raisins, or nuts here too.  Sprinkle chunks of brown sugar over the butter and cinnamon. Add more butter for good luck, if anywhere looks dry.  Roll the rectangle along the longer side, into a tight roll. Cut into 12 evenly portioned sections.

Melt butter, brown sugar, and a little water and perhaps some fruity liquor or vanilla extract on the stove top. Pour into whatever dish you will be cooking your buns in. Place the 12 buns in the dish (I had to use two) with a good amount of space between them. Let rise 20 minutes. Heat oven to 350. Cook until golden brown. Remove from oven and invert them over onto a cookie sheet, or another dish. You can eat like this, or make a secondary glaze to serve over-top. Voila!

I finally bit the bullet and bought a large jar of yeast. On tonights agenda : bagels.

After a solid hour of research learning what exactly makes a bagel, a bagel I decided I would follow this recipe, with a few adjustments outlined below. It turns out that the only substantial difference between a loaf of bread, and a bagel is that you boil the bagels before you bake them. You boil them! I thought that was crazy.

Interesting facts:

• I used sesame seeds, garlic, and parmesean cheese as toppings
• the sesame seeds actually lifted the bagels off of the baking sheet (I coated both sides), and prevents burning! The garlic and parm cheese bagels were a little too burnt on the bottom side, but the sesame seed bagels were perfect.
• I didn’t have parchment, so the non sesame bagels stuck to the baking sheet. Totally lame. I recommend parchment, or perhaps a lightly greased sheet
• I took the bagels out of the boiling water and immediately plopped them into a pile-o-sesame seeds. The non seeded bagels went right on the sheet. Perhaps that was my downfall.

• Next time I make these, I will try to incorporate olive oil, perhaps olives, and other things that normally are toppings, into the dough itself.

The final conclusion: delicious. Certainly not the Real NY bagel the recipe claims it to be, but still yummy. They were a little stiff, and the outer shell was too thick- I like me a shiny, crispy outer shell with warm fluffy inside. These were more of a thick crunchy shell with warm fluffy insides.  In time, if I can tweek the recipe and find a store to buy myself a nice 25 or 50 lb bag of flour, these would actually be cheaper to make than buying bagels. Delicious, and cheap. What more could a crow want?