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A Holiday Favorite: Cranberries

A Holiday Favorite: Cranberries

Every month Blue Cayenne features recipes from our archive of more than four hundred recipes. These recipes are our “Oldies But Goodies.”  Today’s Oldie But Goodie recipes are for holiday dishes involving cranberries–one a home-made sauce and the other a squash side dish.  You can…

Giving Thanks for  Carrot, Banana and Cardamom Cake

Giving Thanks for Carrot, Banana and Cardamom Cake

It’s the season for gift giving.  Here’s an idea: Gift a snacking cake.  Your gift will be as unique as it will be delicious. This recipe is adapted from a recipe in Chetna Masan’s great cookbook, The Cardamom Trail. You can find the book at…

Homemade Hamburger Buns and A Really Good Burger

Homemade Hamburger Buns and A Really Good Burger



Lately, I’ve been craving a good burger.

So, I bought a package of Impossible Beef in the deli section of my local Trader Joe’s, gathered all the trimmings, and set about making some fresh hamburger buns rather than those sad buns you see in big bags at the grocery.

I used the Beautiful Burger Bun recipe from King Arthur Baking. You can find the original recipe here..

I adapted the recipe to my kitchen, making the dough through the first rise in my Zogirushi bread machine. You just put the ingredients in the Zogirushi pan (liquids first), select the dough setting (setting 11) and you are off. The machine does the mixing, kneading, and takes the dough through the first rise. I then took the dough out of the machine, shaped the buns, sprinkled a seed mix on top and let the buns do their second rise on my counter. Then I baked the buns for 18 minutes at 375 degrees F. They were/are beautiful.

 

 

I ended up with a really comforting meal. I have buns in the freezer for a burger or sandwich on another day.

Now I’m craving really crispy French fries to complement my next burger. Will a root beer float be next? Whoa!

Butternut Squash Lasagna

Butternut Squash Lasagna

There are lasagnas and then there is this beauty of a lasagna made with butternut squash. This is quite a different take on the usual bechamel rich lasagnas that are commonly served. No bechamel here. Instead, this lasagna is stuffed with thin slices of butternut…

Comfort Food: Vegetable Frittata

Comfort Food: Vegetable Frittata

I needed some comfort food this week and this baked Frittata was perfect. First, it’s beautiful. The appearance of food is important to me. In my kitchen, the colors and textures of food (not to mention the plating)  play an important part in my appreciation…

Ellen’s Pumpernickle Bread

Ellen’s Pumpernickle Bread

Ellen was one of my students at Los Alamitos High School. We reconnected a few years ago through our mutual love of bread baking.

Now I am her student.

Ellen operates a You Tube channel,  Bread Machine and Baking Videos With Ellen Hoffman. Her specialty is bread baking using a bread machine for the mixing and proofing stages of the bread making process. She has more than six thousand subscribers and has posted dozens of videos for everything from Soft White Bread to Bagels  to this wonderful Pumpernickle bread.

Ellen’s videos are smart and funny and her tips and recipes on bread baking are spot on. 

This Pumpernickle loaf is exceptional. It is moist and fragrant and ever-so-flavorful. 

Here is the link to Ellen’s videos and her recipe for this wonderful bread: Ellen’s Pumpernickle.

Here is a link to Ellen’s web page: Ellen’s Bread Machine Recipes.com.

Oldies But Goodies: Asparagus in Puff Pastry

Oldies But Goodies: Asparagus in Puff Pastry

Every month Blue Cayenne features recipes from our archive of more than four hundred recipes. These recipes are our “Oldies But Goodies.” Today’s Oldie But Goodie recipe is for Asparagus In Puff Pastry Here is the link to the recipe: Asparagus In Puff Pastry. You don’t…

Holiday Pumpkin Cravings: Pumpkin Bars

Holiday Pumpkin Cravings: Pumpkin Bars

Whoa! It’s Christmas at my local Costco! I haven’t even embraced the idea of Halloween yet, let alone considered spending $1000 (Yikes!) for an artificial tree. (For that price, maybe the tree comes complete with the presents!)  Pumpkin is beginning to sound good to me, though.…

A Tasty Work In Progress: Konbi Egg Salad Sandwich

A Tasty Work In Progress: Konbi Egg Salad Sandwich

It started with a food picture as so many of my culinary adventures begin. 

 

It was a New York Times Food piece on Los Angeles’ Konbi Restaurant’s Egg Salad Sandwich–an elegant riff on the 7-Eleven Egg Salad Sando sensation in Japan. 

But…it was hard. Really hard.

Slicing the sandwich to leave the egg halves intact challenged my limited skills. So, I kept trying. What was the downside, I kept asking myself? Eating all those experimental egg salad sandwiches? I could do that. 

While my quest was going on, my good friend Joyce was making a trip to Japan with her daughter, Dina.

Test out those 7-Eleven sandwiches, I told them. They are supposed to be a real treat.

So, test they did–sending me photographs of their sandwich “finds” as they travelled around Japan. Boy, was I envious. There were no sandwiches, though, with that Konbi whole egg magic–just beautiful traditional egg salad sandwiches. 

So, when Joyce returned from her trip, she turned up on my doorstep one day with lunch. There they were, beautifully prepared Konbi sandwiches direct from Joyce’s kitchen using the NYT recipe. We feasted and I pressed Joyce for tips on how to slice the sandwiches to retain their beauty.

Inspired by my friend’s success, I’ve kept going with my Konbi Sandwich efforts using the NYT Konbi Egg Salad Sandwich recipe here.

Here is my sandwich. It is kind of rustic looking in a Picasso-esque way but it is ever so good–test sandwich after test sandwich. 

Guess I’ll just have to keep testing. Poor me. 

Here is the recipe as I prepared it in my kitchen. 

 

Konbi Egg Salad Sandwich

September 29, 2023
Ingredients
  • 1 scallion (thinly sliced)
  • 1 T. Kewpie mayonnaise (plus more to slather on the bread)
  • 1 T. creme fraiche
  • 1 1/2 t. rice wine vinegar
  • 1 1/2 t. dijon mustard (plus more to slather on the bread)
  • Kosher salt to taste
  • 6 large eggs
  • Flaky sea salt
  • 4 slices milk bread or white sandwich bread or brioche (I used Japanese milk bread)
  • Parsley for garnish.
Directions
  • Step 1 Boil eggs. (Boil 2 eggs for 10 minutes until sort of soft-boiled and boil 4 eggs for 14 minutes until hard boiled. ) Remove eggs from boiling water and immerse in an ice bath.
  • Step 2 Meanwhile, combine the scallion, mayonnaise, creme fraiche, rice wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, and kosher salt in a medium bowl to make the dressing. This is actually the quantity of dressing called for in the NYT recipe for 4 sandwiches but I found that the recipe needed a more generous amount of dressing for my sandwiches. You can halve the dressing if you wish.
  • Step 3 Shell the hard boiled eggs once they have cooled and chop them finely. Mix with the dressing. Set aside.
  • Step 4 Shell and slice the soft boiled eggs in half.
  • Step 5 Trim the crusts off your sandwich bread.
  • Step 6 Spread a bit of additional mayonnaise and mustard on the sandwich bread–mustard on one side, mayonnaise on the other. Arrange the sliced soft-boiled eggs down the center of the sandwich bread, yolk side down.The narrower tips of the eggs should point outward toward the crust-side of the bread.
  • Step 7 Spoon the egg salad over the top of the halved eggs. Use your hand to press the top slice of bread down over the egg salad and egg slices to achieve a solid sandwich. Rotate the sandwiches by 90 degrees. Use a serrated knife to slice the sandwiches into thirds. Garnish with chopped parsley.
A Honey of a Honey Cake

A Honey of a Honey Cake

Happy belated new year to those who celebrate. Last week, the Internet was rife with recipes for Honey Cake to celebrate Rosh Hashanha. Some of the postings were ebullient paens to the cake and its spicy flavors. I couldn’t resist and selected a recipe from…