Food Odyssey: Fall/Winter 2021 – 2022

Well, it has been quite a while since I have posted something on the blog. Things have been busy while wrapping up my PhD program. I still have no idea where I am headed next, but praise God because it is in His hands! I know there has been a lot of things happening in the world. We have now transitioned from COVID-19 being the end of the world to the Ukraine-Russia conflict leading to WWIII being the end of the world. Let me just throw out a reminder to guard your heart during this time. Things are not always what they seem. Here is a familiar scripture for you:

“For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”

2 Timothy 1:7

If you are battling a spirit of fear and uncertainty in this hour, speak this over your life daily. Declare it out loud. Cast fear out of your life because it is not of God. God is absolutely good and He wins every battle. No matter the circumstances, you, as a believer, have nothing to fear. And I am not saying that because I am expecting us to all get raptured out of here and leave it all behind. Whether our time on earth is long or short, God has promised He would never fail us or forsake us (Deuteronomy 31:6). Let us take comfort in these words from our Father in heaven:

“Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.”

Isaiah 41:10

I just wanted to remind you that we serve such a good God. The news and fearmongering doesn’t even phase me anymore because I know my Father in heaven. I wasn’t expecting to write this in a food blog post, but I felt the need to do it. So there ya go.

In the midst of preliminary exams, presentations, writing my dissertation, research and classes, I have still made time to try new recipes. I think the line up today will mostly give you fall vibes, but that’s ok. Fall is my favorite season. I tried to make the most of it by going to a local apple orchard for the first time since I was in elementary school and buying a bunch of apples, apple products and pumpkin. I peeled so many apples in the fall that I had blisters on my hands. Worth it!

Let’s talk breakfast. The best kind of breakfast is one filled with carbs. The scale may disagree, but for a moment, your soul will rejoice. Since everything in fall now centers around pumpkin spice, I had to try these pumpkin spice bagels from the Seasons and Suppers blog.

My pumpkin spice bagels look terrible. Jennifer’s bagels look amazing on the blog. I had a hard time not deflating mine when I put them in the boiling baking soda bath. I also used a simple homemade pumpkin puree for the dough, which I believe has a higher water content, so that may have affected the dough properties and diluted the pumpkin flavor a bit. If I were to do it over again, I would cook off some of the water in my pumpkin puree before adding it. On top, there is a brown sugar topping which is very tricky to navigate. You want to make sure it doesn’t burn (happened with my first batch) because burnt sugar on the bagel is horrible. I had to adjust the position of the baking sheet in oven and watch closely to prevent other batches of bagels from being coated in burnt sugar. Other than all the mistakes I made with these bagels, I think they were pretty good. I bought some brown sugar cinnamon cream cheese to serve these with and it tasted like your basic pumpkin spice fall excursion in a bagel. Even if you can’t really taste a strong pumpkin flavor, you still get notes of the cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger.

Sticking with carbs for breakfast, we can never go wrong with a good danish pastry. I follow Laura in the Kitchen, so when she came out with a recipe for an apple butter cheese danish, you know I was on it. I had just bought some bomb apple butter from the apple orchard too, so it was perfect timing.

Just as the recipe suggests, there is a cream cheese mixture and apple butter in this pastry. It’s super simple because you can use store-bought puff pastry, so you don’t even have to think about lamination. The only thing that was difficult was determining how much filling was too much and properly sealing them. Most of mine came out looking like a mess. The filling spilled out and the egg wash did not hold the corners together. I am sure, if you wanted, you could pick a different shape for these and have success. Also, if I were to make these again, I think I would add a little more vanilla and maybe some lemon zest (or orange) to make the cream cheese filling pop a little more. Otherwise, this recipe is a simple and delicious way to use up your apple butter.

We are still on the carbs for breakfast theme my friends. Out of the recipes I have shown you so far, this one is the real MVP: baked apple cider donuts from the Cooking with Cocktail Rings food blog.

I made these donuts three times in the fall because people loved them so much. They are surprisingly fluffy and moist on the inside with the crunchy sugar texture on the outside. I think the most time consuming thing about this recipe is reducing the apple cider on the stovetop and letting it cool, but even that doesn’t take too long. They are super simple to just throw together and share with everyone. One thing I would like to try with this recipe is using more than 1 cup of apple cider and reducing that down to half a cup to try to concentrate more of that apple cider flavor. As good as these are, I think I would enjoy a little more apple flavor. Since I was mostly making these for other people, I decided not to tinker with the recipe too much since it is fantastic as is.

Alright, we are finally starting to deviate from breakfast and getting into pies…unless you like pie for breakfast. Listen, no one here is judging you. I think you it is essential that you have at least one good slice of apple pie in the fall/winter seasons with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream. It is heaven. Other than my obsession with almond creams and pastes, apple desserts are my favorite. This apple pie recipe from the cookbook You Wanna Piece of Me? by Jenell Parsons did the trick.

So I have probably tried a good 3-4 apple pie recipes from scratch. This one is my favorite so far. The crust was flaky, buttery and golden. I think finding a decent pie crust recipe isn’t too hard these days. The real key here is filling. In this recipe, she has you use two different variety of apples, Granny Smith and Gala, and has you slice them into 1/8 inch thick slices (use mandoline slicer). The apple do not have to be cooked before being added to the pie crust. This recipe has a good apple filling to crust ratio, the filling was not too watery and not too sweet, and the apples still had a little crunch too them. Divine. This fall, I also tried the dulce de leche apple pie from the Magnolia Table cookbook which uses five whole pounds of apples in one pie. She cooks the apples down before adding it to the crust, but I think it was little excessive for me. Still have the callouses on my hand from peeling and cutting all those apples. Needless to say, I choose Jenell’s recipe. Sorry Joanna…I still love you.

If you make Jenell’s pie recipe, you’ll have a decent amount of pie crust leftover. Should you throw it away? Absolutely not! Freeze it and, when you’re ready, make this baklava crostata from the Eating Out Loud cookbook by Eden Grinshpan.

I think I share at least one of her recipes from this cookbook in every Food Odyssey post and I’m ok with that. I don’t think I’ve tried a recipe from it yet that I did not like. She has a pie crust recipe for you in the book, but I just used my leftover pie crust from the apple pie recipe. The filling, like traditional baklava, is mostly nuts. She has an option to choose either walnuts or pistachios, but since I had both, I used an equal proportion of both. The pistachios smelled wonderful in this dessert by the way. She also uses a combination of warm spices including cinnamon, cloves and cardamom and lightens it up with some lemon zest and lemon simple syrup. You can serve it with some whipped cream or my friend even went with some ice cream. I recommend this one to you.

Still have some leftover pie crusts? A simple solution is to make a hand pie.

I’ll make this one brief because it’s nothing novel. You can go to your local supermarket, grab your favorite pie filling and make these little hand pies. I went with a cherry filling. I rolled out the extra pie dough, cut it into squares (two equal sized squares per hand pie), sealed the edges with egg wash and a fork, brushed the top with egg wash, cut three little slashes on top to create a vent, sprinkled some coarse sugar on top and baked them at 375 F for about 20-25 min. Easy peasy and, honestly, delicious.

Alright, the time is here. You knew it was coming. We need to include an almond dessert. This time, I tried marzipan filled rugelach from the Wild Wild Whisk food blog.

If you have never had rugelach, it consists of a dough made of cream cheese and butter, and then the filling is highly customizable. I think one of the more traditional fillings is sugar, nuts, raisins and cinnamon. This one was filled with a simple homemade marzipan filling. I would say that this recipe is nothing dazzling. If you’re in the mood for a cookie that is not too sweet and a little on the bland side, then this would be the one for you. I don’t even say that as a harsh criticism. These were nice to just eat once in a while and they freeze beautifully. If I were to change something about this recipe, it would be the filling. The almond filling that I love the most is from the Laura in the Kitchen almond croissant recipe. I would maybe swap that filling in for this recipe to give it a little more oomph. I think some of you may like this recipe, especially if you are an almond fan. You may end up making some adjustments of your own. Why not? These cookies are highly customizable. One of my favorite rugelach recipes is from the Modern Jewish Baker cookbook by Shannon Sarna. It has a peach jam and almond filling with white chocolate drizzled on top. So good!

Speaking of cookies, I have another great way for you to use up your apple butter. Try these spiced apple butter cookies from Cookies: The New Classics by Jesse Szewczyk.

I was just looking for apple butter recipes and happened upon this in my cookbook collection (which is growing out of control). I made them thinking not much of it, but ending up liking them a lot more than I anticipated. Warm spices (cinnamon, ginger, allspice), lots of butter and a nice amount of apple flavor from the apple butter. Such a nice cookie for the fall, especially if you have kids. I don’t have kids, but I’m a child at heart, so that’s my excuse. The texture is nice too. The sugar outside the cookie creates a nice crunchy exterior and the inside is soft and a little dense. That’s one for you Jesse. We’ll see if the other cookie recipes live up to the quality of this one.

Ok, we have two more recipes to discuss. Let’s talk Asian recipes. I have a lot of friends from China and after talking to them about the food from their hometowns and trying some traditional Chinese food, I have become intrigued. I decided to start trying some Chinese baked goods. This time around, I made Chinese pineapple buns from Mooncakes and Milk Bread by Kristina Cho.

I feel like these are the Asian version of conchas, but maybe just a tad sweeter and a little more buttery. These buns do not contain pineapple, but rather the cracked topping is where it gets it’s name. These buns consist of a milk bread base and the topping is mostly flour, butter, sugar and egg. You roll the runs into their shape and then you cover it with the topping. You can make the pineapple pattern before you put the topping on the dough if you would like. I let my Chinese friends taste it and they approved overall, but noted some of the differences from the ones they had back home. One of my friends said that the ones she used to have were usually filled with jam. To be honest, that sounds amazing. Heck, these are so neutral in taste, I bet you could fill these with just about anything. Another friend said that the ones she had in her hometown were sweeter. I liked this recipe and would make it again. Of course, I will have to experiment with fillings.

Last, but not least, is the ultimate corn dog experience of your life. “Corn dog?! Dude, I thought you said Asian recipes.” I certainly did, my friends. Here we have the Korean-style corn dog. There are different versions of this, but I chose the gamja-hotdog (감자핫도그) from Maangchi’s blog.

This corn dog has everything you need. It’s big, crispy, savory, sweet (if you want it to be), delicious and a deep fried adventure for your taste buds. In this version, you cover the hotdog with a yeasted dough/batter, cover the dough/batter with blanched diced potatoes and then cover all of that with panko breadcrumbs. Into the hot oil it goes and it comes out golden and glistening. After it cools down just enough for you to handle, you roll the whole thing in sugar. “Sugar?!” Yes, sugar. Don’t be afraid, my friends. Just embrace it. It doesn’t sound right, but it is good. I have now had two people that were hesitant roll their Korean-style corn dogs in sugar and they loved it. Sometimes, you just gotta do it.

Alrighty people, that’s all I have for you today. I hope this Food Odyssey left you with some inspiration to try new things in your kitchen. Feel free to share what you love to cook when the weather starts getting colder. I will leave you with a picture of my bestie, Hunter, for you to look at as you make your way down to the comment section. PEACE and God bless!