Rice Krispies Treat S'mores

Who doesn't get excited for Rice Krispies Treats when they are put out at a barbecue or other get together?  It's a classic that reminds many of us (myself included) of our childhoods.  In my humble opinion there is just something so wonderful about grabbing a Rice Krispies square, pulling it apart, and seeing these strings of gooey marshmallow and crisped rice form.  Your head dives in, mouth first, to make sure none of it falls on the ground.  When it does fall, don't lie to me that there isn't that 2 second pause where you look at it and think "if I grab it right now, it'll be just fine."  We do have the "five second rule" for a reason folks.

The s'more is another childhood staple that I cannot get enough of.  Any time there is an open flame I start thinking about perfectly roasted marshmallows, slowly melting chocolate, all sitting on top of a crisp graham cracker.  Evenings sitting around the backyard fire pit are not properly capped if we do not walk away needing to rinse sticky s'mores bits from around our mouths.  Right after college a friend and I moved into a townhouse with a balcony.  Of course we trotted out and got ourselves a small barbecue.  With the barbecue came the desire for s'mores and so I sacrificed old metal coat hangers to a very worthy cause.  We would not be denied our gooey marshmallow chocolaty goodness.

Now what would you say to putting those two things together?  Don't worry, I can hear you all saying "yes, yes please!"  I had been seeing versions of Rice Krispies Treats S'mores on Pinterest and while I was certainly intrigued with the idea of them, I was not sold on how others were putting them together.  Most versions used treats dipped in a fluff or marshmallow frosting then dipped in chocolate.  Graham cracker crumbs would be sprinkled on top for affect.  I'd also seen graham cracker bits and chocolate chips mixed into the standard treats' recipe.  I wanted something that not only looked like a s'more but also included the standard treat and didn't include the cop out of using fluff or frosting (yes, my foodie obnoxiousness is showing, but every girl needs to have her standards and my line in the sand gets drawn here!) 

What follows is my answer to the "not quite there yet" versions of Rice Krispies Treats S'mores floating around the internet.  I followed Alton Brown's recipe for homemade marshmallow.  I swear, making your own marshmallow is not difficult, it just requires a healthy dose of patience....and a candy thermometer.

For the Marshmallow:

Ingredients:

Vegetable spray          
3 envelopes unflavored gelatin
1 cup ice cold water          
12 ounces granulated sugar
1 cup light corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup confectioners' sugar
1/4 cup corn starch

Directions:

Spray a 9x13 inch glass baking dish with oil. Mix the confectioners’ sugar and corn starch together. Use mixture to coat pan, putting excess back in the bowl and reserving for later.

Pour a 1/2 cup of cold water into the bowl of an electric mixer and add gelatin.  Give it a quick mix to prevent globs of semi-wet gelatin from sticking to the bowl.  Let this sit while you do the next step.

Put granulated sugar, corn syrup, salt, and remaining water into a medium saucepan. Cover and cook over medium high heat for 4 minutes.  Uncover, clip candy thermometer to edge and continue to cook until mixture registers 240 degree.  The mixture will have begun to boil during the initial 4 minutes.  It will be cloudy at first but becomes noticeably clearer at minute 6 or so.  You should see a full rolling boil by minute 9 and after around 16 total minutes you should be hitting 240 degrees.

Once the mixtures comes to temperature, remove from heat immediately.  

Attach whisk, and with mixer on low speed, slowly pour hot syrup down the side of the bowl into gelatin mixture.  Once all the syrup is added, raise speed to high; beat until mixture is very stiff, about 12 minutes. During the final minute, beat in vanilla.  Do not worry if the mixture does not smell all that great during the whisking process because it won't.  It'll get a little better once the vanilla is added and it does not affect the taste.

Pour into prepared dish, and smooth with an oiled spatula. Sprinkle the top with some of the corn starch and sugar mixture.  Allow the marshmallow to sit, uncovered, for at least 4 hours.

For the Rice Krispies Treat S'mores:

Ingredients:

5 cups Rice Krispies

1/2 batch liquid marshmallow

1 marshmallow, fully set, 9x13 in size

1 1/2 bags chocolate chips

7 graham crackers

Directions:

Transfer your whole 9x13 inch marshmallow to a tupperware container so that you can use the same baking dish to make Rice Krispies treats by the standard recipe on the box.  My reasoning for this is so that your two main layers are the exact same size. (Of course you are going to find out in a second that it was all for naught.)  I made a second batch of homemade marshmallow for the Krispies treats, the only change was I beat the marshmallow for just 10 minutes and immediately combined it with the Rice Krispies.

Once the Rice Krispies treats were formed in the pan, flip them over - you want to be working with the flatter more even side.

In a microwave safe dish, melt approximately a half bag of chocolate chips.  Brush the top of the Krispies treats with the chocolate.

 Place the previously made marshmallow on top.  Press down a bit to make sure they stick together.  It was at this point I faced the awkward predicament of having a layer bar the same height as my dish with two layers still to go.  This would not have been a real problem if I was only going to brush on the next layer of chocolate and then add the graham crackers.  However, this did not jive with my vision.  I wanted a distinct and thick layer of chocolate like you would have if you had placed a marshmallow on top of a Hershey Bar segment for your s'more.  What is a girl to do?  Well, this girl grabbed her chef's knife and did some trimming.  Now my half completed layer bar fit snugly into the tupperware with enough height left to prevent any chocolate related spillage. 



Melt a whole bag of chocolate chips and pour into the center of the marshmallow.  Using a spatula, spread all the way to the edges.  No need to be too dainty with the spreading though.  It is the ooey gooey nature of the s'more that holds a lot of its appeal.

While the chocolate is still soft, place the graham crackers on top.  I broke all the crackers into their individual quarters in the hopes that it would help with cutting them later.  The lines basically acted as guides and allowed for a cleaner look to the finished product.  That is the theory anyway, the execution is a bit more "ish."

 Let the treats sit in fridge until the chocolate hardens.  I let the treats sit in the fridge overnight but you probably only need a couple of hours.  To cut them, make sure you have a really big and sharp knife.

 I promise these will be the hit of the party!

Chicken Paprikas with Galushka Dumplings

The list of countries that I wish to visit one day is so ridiculously long that I cannot justify even the idea of visiting the same place twice.  That being said, my favorite vacation was to Budapest and I would visit it again in a heartbeat.  The city was absolutely amazing.  One week was no where near enough time to see and do everything.  I brought back several souvenirs, one of which I busted out recently.  Can you guess what it was?  I bet you can!

Gundel's Hungarian Cookbook has been sitting among all my other rarely used cookbooks and it was time to rectify that massive culinary injustice.  I chose to make a traditional Hungarian comfort food, chicken paprikas with galushka dumplings.  Of course, after reading through the recipe, I realized it's like going with an old family recipe.  Not everything is entirely spelled out like it would be on the Food Network website, instead you have "cook as if you were making porkolt but you should do this to A instead and add X instead of Y at the end.  Enjoy!"  Really??  However, this book is in its 29th edition, has been around since 1934, and was even translated into Japanese, so who am I to argue?

One last note before I jump into the show and tell portion of this week's main event...I went traditional with this traditional recipe.  I did not try and cut calories so I did use lard for frying up the onions and dumplings.  This is by no means an endorsement of using lard, you might actually get a richer flavor if you went the butter or olive oil route. Me?  I simply chose not to argue with an 80 year old cookbook and decided I could play around once I did it the "right" way.  Plus, I've never cooked with lard before so I could not resist the temptation.

Chicken Paprikas

Ingredients:

7 Tbsp. lard

1/2 c. onions - chopped

2 1/2 tsp. paprika

4 1/2 lbs. chicken - cubed

1 c. green pepper - chopped

1 medium tomato - diced

1/4 c. flour

1 1/4 c. sour cream

Directions:

In a large saute pan, melt lard over medium high heat.  Saute onions until they brown to a light yellow color, approximately 10 minutes. 

Reduce heat and add paprika, stir then add the chicken.  Once the meat begins to brown on all sides, add the green peppers and tomatoes.  Cook the chicken for about a total of 30 minutes.  You want the cubes cooked through and tender.  They should fall apart with just a press of a fork.

Once the chicken is cooked through, add the flour and sour cream.

This amazing pan of tasty Hungarian comfort food should be served over galushka dumplings.

Galushka Dumplings

Ingredients:

4 1/2 c. flour

1 lg egg

1 c. ice cold water (approximate, use more or less as necessary)

6 Tbsp lard

Directions:

Sift the flour into a large bowl.  Make a hollow in the center, cracking the egg into it.  Add water a little bit at a time as you mix ingredients together until it forms a semi-soft dough.  It should easily come off a wooden spoon.

At this point, bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil.  While you wait you can make the dumplings.  If you have a spatzel press this should go fairly quickly. Place small amounts into press, press out spatzel.  If you are like me and do not have a spatzel press you will do this the hard way.  Roll out small amounts of dough into long thin pieces resembling skinny bread sticks.  Cut into small pieces.  Boil in small batches, they will be ready to remove once they float to the top of the water.  If you so choose, melt lard in a pan and give the dumplings a quick fry.

In the picture above you will notice glistening bits of moisture on my stove.  Here is my PSA for the day...lard gets REALLLLLLLY hot and will not smoke the way butter or oil will.  This means you might not realize how hot the lard is until you put in some galushka dumplings and you end up with a volcanic eruption of lard out of the pot.  If I only had a video camera going at that precise moment...oh my.

Thankfully, volcanic eruptions do not affect taste and so no matter what it took to get there, you will have an amazing meal in front of you, perfect for a cold day.

Food Truck Festival

I decided to get a little crazy over the weekend and attend the 3rd Annual Cape Cod Food Truck Festival, which is one of several festivals put on each summer by Food Truck Festivals of America. If you ever happen to be near one of these festivals, I would certainly recommend going.  There was a spectacular array of foods that could satisfy even the pickiest of eaters.

My friends and I decided to get the lay of the land first, before jumping into our first of several food truck lines that afternoon.  And thankfully, Cape Cod Fairgrounds is large enough that I could convince myself that no amount of fried food would negate the health benefits of all the walking we would do as we went from truck to truck.

After doing a thorough investigation of the day's offerings, our first stop was Moyzilla,

where I treated myself to dumplings and chicken fries.

If I am being entirely honest, the dumplings were amazing and the fries were passable.  The dumpling filling was very flavorful and they were steamed first then given a quick pan fry. Ah-may-zing!  If there were not other trucks catching my eye, there would certainly have been more dumplings being put into my belly!

The next stop was the Chubby Chickpea for some shawarma.  Yea, you read that right...SHAWARMA!  And it did not disappoint.  [As a random side note slash FYI... if you choose to not use the link I provided or it happens to be broken and you go searching "chubby chickpea," I highly suggest adding the qualifier "food truck" in the search bar.  If not, well, I got a warning on my browser that said if I continued with my search, I might get some, let's say... interesting... results.]

Sadly, at this point I was starting to feel full.  Since it was hot out and very little shade to be found, we decided that hydration outweighed the desire to gorge ourselves on food truck fare.  Therefore, it became time to hit one last truck, and obviously we made it a good one.

That's right, you are looking at a whoopie pie from a truck dedicated to the amazingness of whoopie pies!  The Whoo(pie) Wagon had quite the selections of offerings, including the S'mores whoopie pie you see above.  So good!  That was definitely a great way to end my afternoon of gluttony.

Vegetarian Haggis

Well...I think it's safe to say that Italy has been thoroughly covered and will continue to be covered thanks to my [slight] addiction to cheese and carbs.  I have brought us over to Moldova.  I have even done my own twist on a British baker's twist of a Swedish recipe.  Where next?  Scotland and my take on a vegetarian haggis (no groans please).  Why haggis?  Really...because I can.  Plus, a friend spent some time in Scotland and we had enough discussions involving haggis that my interest was peaked.  Once my interest is peaked it is pretty much a guarantee that I will, eventually, get around to making the respective offender.

If I was being true to Scottish traditional food, I would have made haggis.  But since the USDA and several other agencies would have taken great offense to this, vegetarian haggis it had to be.  I did my research and came across a great article in The Guardian that gave a reason behind each of the various substitutions.  I also made additional changes.  The two most significant changes were molasses instead of treacle (you cannot get treacle in the United States, at least not that I've seen) and beer instead of stock.  Why use beer instead of stock?  Well, if you are asking this question sincerely, let me introduce myself.  Plus, when my friend was in the habit of making haggis, her recipe actually called for scotch.  She chose to use a porter instead.  None of the recipes I found used alcohol but I truly saw no reason not to make the substitution.  Since I wanted a vegetarian meal to pass as a meat dish, the heavier flavor of the porter was actually going to be very helpful.

Now, the result will certainly fool no one.  It is vegetarian haggis baked in a tin not the traditional version steamed in a sheep's stomach.  However, what you do get is a very hearty vegetarian meat(less)loaf.  Do not be put off by the smell while it is cooking on the stove, you will be pleased with the end result.

Vegetarian Haggis

Ingredients:

1/4 c. canned red kidney beans - drained, rinsed, mashed
1/4 c. pearl barley
2 Tbsp butter
1 large onion - chopped
1 large carrot - chopped
1/3 c. portobello mushrooms - chopped
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
3/4 c. steel cut oatmeal
3 Tbsp ground peanuts
1½ Tbsp dark molasses
1 c. Porter

Directions:

Boil the barley for about 30 minutes until tender but not completely soft.

Melt half the butter in a saute pan over medium heat and cook the onion until softened, approximately 5 minutes.  Add the carrot and saute, stirring, until both are soft and beginning to brown. Stir in the mushrooms and cook for a couple of minutes to soften, adding the spices after a minute or so.

Add the beans, oatmeal, and ground peanuts.  Stir to coat with butter.  Pour in the porter and molasses. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat and simmer until the mixture is very thick.  Not going to lie to you, this is where things no longer smell very nice.  Do not despair, it will get better.  My porter of choice for this was Samuel Smith Old Brewery Tadcaster The Famous Taddy Porter.  How could I resist a name like that!?

While everything thickens, preheat the oven to 350F.

Stir in the pearl barley and remaining butter, and grease a meatloaf tin. Give the mixture a little taste test.  If you are satisfied then spoon into the tin, cover and bake for 30 minutes.  Remove the foil and bake for another 30. Leave for five minutes, then turn out and serve.

I realize some of us may not have a lot of faith in Scottish cuisine, but I promise, flavorful and hearty is what you get here.