Whole Foods Friday: Chocolate Pudding

In summer, I make a lot of ice cream. In winter, I still like creamy desserts, but ice cream seems too chilly. Pudding is perfect. It's still a cool finish to the meal, but it's not as cold as ice cream.

When I was a kid, the only pudding I knew about was packaged instant pudding. My mom was a good cook, but she wasn't much into making desserts. Actually desserts weren't a regular part of meals at all. On special occasions there might be a cake or pie. Sometimes she would buy brownies or a pound cake. And once in a while she's buy the instant pudding mix.

Home made pudding is so much better.This pudding is rich and creamy. The egg yolks make it a lot like a custard rather than a pudding thickened with just cornstarch. But it's just as simple to make. The hard part is waiting for the pudding to cool before eating it.

The key to making a good chocolate pudding is using good chocolate  And that means choosing a chocolate that you like. In this case, I used a 62% bar from Scharffen Berger. The bar was exactly 9.7 ounces for the full bar, but you don't have to be that exact if you're using other chocolate. Anything between 9 and 10 ounces will be just fine.

This pudding is not as dark-colored as some I've made, but the flavor isn't shy.

Chocolate Pudding

1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 quart milk
3 egg yolks
9-10 ounces chocolate, chopped

Combine the sugar, cornstarch, and salt in a pan. Whisk to combine and break up any lumps. Add the milk slowly, stirring as you add it to keep lumps from forming. Add the eggs and whisk to break them up.

Heat the mixture on medium heat, stirring until the mixture bubbles and thickens. When you see the first blurping big bubbles, turn the heat off and add all the chocolate  Stir until the chocolate all melts.

Strain the mixture through a fine strainer into a storage container. Cover the top of the pudding with plastic wrap, directly on top of the pudding to keep a skin from forming on top of the pudding as it cools. Refrigerate the pudding until it is well chilled.

Whisk or stir the pudding before serving to smooth it out.

For more information about Whole Foods Friday, see the tab at the top.

Whole Foods Friday: Flanken Ribs

Flanken-style short ribs are cut across the grain into relatively thin strips. Because of the way they're sliced, they are tender enough to be grilled quickly, and that's a pretty common way they're cooked.

But that doesn't mean you can't braise them. The result of braising is melt-in-your-mouth slices of beef that you can cut with a fork.

Meanwhile the sauce will be rich, meaty, and flavorful.

Braised Flanken-Style Beef Ribs

1 pound flanken-style ribs
1 14.5 ounce can crushed tomatoes
1 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1-inch piece of fresh ginger, grated
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground pepper
1 onion, diced
Water, as needed

Heat an oven-safe heavy bottomed-pan on medium-high heat. A cast iron Dutch oven is perfect. Brown the ribs on both sides. Add the onions and cook, stirring as needed, until the onions have softened a bit. Add the rest of the ingredients, along with about a can of water.

Cover the pot an cook on the stovetop on very low heat, or in the oven at 325 degrees, until the meat is very tender, about 3 hours. If you're cooking on the stove top, stir it occasionally to keep it from sticking and burning. Add water, as needed, if the sauce seems too be getting too thick.

If there's a lot of visible fat, skim it off before serving.

Serve hot with mashed potatoes or noodles.

For something different, I served this with a mashed combination of potatoes and celery root. If you haven't tried it celery root, give it a chance. Cook the celery root separately from the potatoes, since they will cook at a different rate. Then, mash then together.

For more information about Whole Foods Friday, see the tab at the top.

Revising Recipes: Jambalaya

When I have a new cookbook, I like to make at least one recipe as it is written. That gives me a good idea of whether I'll like the rest of the recipes in the book.

That was my plan when I got a review copy of Good Bite Weeknight Meals: Delicious Made Easy, edited by Sepideh Saremi. The book is a compilation of recipes from different food bloggers, with a wide range of cuisines, techniques, and ingredients, and it took some browsing before I settled on a recipe. But right off the bat, I decided that I would make just one little change. I knew it wouldn't affect the results.

The most common questions I get for my own recipes start with "Can I ..." and it's always about changing something in the recipe. People ask about substituting ingredients or using different equipment. There are many things you can change in a recipe that won’t affect it drastically. Some changes work, while other can be a disaster.

Knowing how to adapt recipes can make using any cookbook much easier. How many recipes have you looked at in a cookbook where you happen to have everything on hand? Not often, probably. There's always some ingredient that's out of season or hard to find - or maybe something that you happen to dislike. Or maybe a recipe calls for a specific pan or kitchen appliance that you don't have.

You don't have to throw the recipe out if you know how to make changes. For this recipe, I decided to cook on the stove top instead of in a slow cooker. That's a pretty easy change to make.

The recipe I chose was Slow Cooker Jambalaya by Jaden Hair from the blog Steamy Kitchen, and all was going well until I started assembling ingredients. I thought I had the required smoked sausage on hand, but I didn't. So that made another change necessary.

Besides the smoked sausage, the recipe calls for 1 pound of chicken and 1/2 pound of shrimp. I had just purchased the chicken and I had 1 1/2 pounds, so I decided to use all of it. And I used a full pound of shrimp. I figured those two changes would make up for the missing sausage.

My one last change was technique. When I added the chicken stock to the pot, I could see that it was a lot soupier than I wanted it to be. I wanted a thicker sauce. So, instead of cooking with the lid on, I let it simmer with the lid off until it reached a consistency that I liked.

Just a few small changes. But in the end, I'm sure the flavor was close to the original. When you make it, you can stick to the original recipe, make the same changes I did, or do something entirely different. Use more chicken and eliminate the shrimp, for example.

Recipes aren't like laws. They're more like guidelines. If you know what can be changed, you can move things around within those guidelines and have some fun - and make food exactly the way you like it.

Slow Cooker Jambalaya
Adapted from Good Bite Weeknight Meals
Recipe by Jaden Hair from Steamy Kitchen

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 pound boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into 1-inch pieces (I used 1 1/2 pounds)
1 pound smoked sausage, cut into 1-inch thick pieces (I eliminated this)
1 teaspoon kosher or sea salt, plus additional for seasoning
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus additional for seasoning
2 celery stalks, diced
1 bell pepper, stemmed, seeded, and diced
1 small onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 quart chicken or vegetable broth (I suggest adding less, to taste)
1 14.5-ounce can crushed tomatoes
2 teaspoons Cajun seasoning
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon Tabasco or hot sauce, to taste
1/2 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined (I used 1 pound)
3 cups hot cooked rice or 1 large baguette

Heat the oil in a large sauté pan over medium-high heat. Add the chicken and sausage, season to taste with salt and black pepper, and cook, stirring once, until browned, about 8 minutes. Transfer the chicken to a slow cooker, reserving the oil in the pan. (I did this cooking in the same dutch oven I finished cooking the dish in. At this point I removed the chicken temporarily)

Add the celery, bell pepper, onion, and garlic to the pan and cook over medium heat, stirring, until the vegetables are softened and fragrant, about 2 minutes.

Transfer the vegetables to the slow cooker. (Or, if you're using a dutch oven on the stove to cook this, return the chicken to the dutch oven.) Add the broth, crushed tomatoes, Cajun seasoning, paprika, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon black pepper, and Tabasco sauce. (I suggest adding the broth last, and adding only as much as you need. The full quart made this very soupy.) Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours, or on high for 4-6 hours. (I cooked mine on the stove, uncovered, until it enough liquid evaporated for my preference, then continued cooking on low, covered. Total time was about 3 hours)

Once the jambalaya is cooked, turn off the slow cooker and skim away any extra oil on the surface. (Since I didn't include the sausage, there was very little fat on mine.) Add the shrimp and stir until pink. The residual heat will suffice to cook the shrimp. If desired, add more salt, black pepper, and Tabasco sauce. Serve the jambalaya over hot cooked rice or with bread.