Being Geek Chic is a blog about one woman navigating the male-dominated industries of production and tech. It's written by Elizabeth Giorgi, Founder, CEO and Director of Mighteor - one of the world's first internet video production companies. Learn more about Mighteor here.
To celebrate the premiere of the third season of Downton Abbey in the U.S., I thought we’d celebrate with some beef pasties, which are classy enough for the “upstairs” crowd and delicious to those “downstairs” as well.
This recipe is adapted from one in the “unofficial” Downton Abbey Cookbook.
I’m not usually a fan of these kinds of cookbooks, but this one is kind of fun because it combines both recipes for food that has been featured on the show and recipes that might have been served both “upstairs” and “downstairs” in the times of Downton.
Classic Cornish Pasties were a simple recipe to make to eat Sunday while I watched the first episode of the new series. Here’s the recipe, with my notes and tweaks.
RECIPE: (adapted from The Unofficial Downton Abbey Cookbook
)
Filling:
*Note: the original recipe didn’t make clear whether or not to put the beef in cooked or uncooked. In general, I’m not a fan of making handpies or dumplings with raw meat fillings. I took a small eye round roast, tenderized it, and braised it gently for about 2 hours.
1. Whisk together salt and flour, then cut butter and lard into the flour until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. A pastry blender is nice for this, but you can use your fingers if needed.
2. In a separate small bowl, whisk together egg yolk and water. Mix into the flour until a dough begins to form. Knead gently until the dough is smooth and fully combined.
3. Shape the dough into a wide disc and wrap in plastic. Refrigerate for 30 minutes or more.
4. While the dough is chilling, preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Dice the onion, potatoes and beef. Combine in a large mixing bowl and season with salt and pepper. If the beef is still warm from cooking, you may want to put into the fridge for a bit to help it cool down.
5. Remove the dough from the refrigerator and split into 6 equal pieces. Roll out on a nonstick surface to until 6-inches across. Flour the surface and pin if needed.
6. Whisk together remaining egg and milk in a small bowl.
7. Place a rounded ¼ measuring cup of filling in the center of each pastry piece, then brush the edges with the egg wash. Fold each pasty over and press the edges to seal. You may need to shift some of the filling to make the half-moon shape.
8. Place each pasty on a parchment lined baking sheet. Brush with the rest of the egg wash and cut 3 tiny slits into the top of each. You can crimp the edges of the pasty for a little style.
9. Bake for 17 minutes at 400 degrees, then lower the temperature to 350 and bake an additional 18 minutes. Cool slightly before serving.
Additional note: this recipe makes enough filling to potentially make about 10 pasties. You can multiply the pastry recipe by 1.5 to create an equal amount of pastry dough, or, as I did, freeze the filling until next time.
Emma Carew Grovum is a data journalist working at the Chronicle of Philanthropy in Washington, D.C. She previously worked as the Digital Editor for The Cooking Club of America and blogs at kitchendreamer.blogspot.com Emma loves Star Wars, pandas and all things Joss Whedon. Find her on twitter at @emmacarew.
Planning on falling down a rabbit hole any time soon? Invited to a very merry unbirthday party with your craziest friends? We’ve got a dish for you.
When Lewis Carroll’s heroine first falls down the rabbit hole, she encounters a table with a cake that says, “eat me” and a bottle that says, “drink me.” Unfortunately for Alice, at the time of her education, they appeared to have skipped over the lesson on eating and drinking unfamiliar items (no Mr. Yuck stickers to guide the way), so she imbibes in both, leading to her body shrinking, then growing.
These Eat Me cakes won’t make you grow taller (though, eat enough of them, and I’m sure we can help you grow wider), they’re a fun and delicious way to practice your frosting skills.
EAT ME TEA CAKES
Ingredients:
Special equipment: biscuit cutters of varying sizes, sheet cake pan, pastry bags, 2 or more decorative tips
1. Prepare a full sheet pan with butter and flour. Preheat oven according to cake mix directions.
2. Follow the directions on the cake mix. Before the final minute or so of mixing the batter, add the vanilla extract and citrus zest.
3. Spread the batter into the prepared sheet cake pan and bake for 24 to 26 minutes until a fork or toothpick comes out clean.
4. Allow cake to cool completely in the pan, then use the biscuit cutters to create a variety of sized mini cakes.
5. While the cake is cooling, beat butter in a stand mixer with the whisk attachment for 6 to 8 minutes, until butter is fluffy. Add the powdered sugar cup by cup until buttercream reaches desired consistency.
6. Split the frosting in half, then split one of the halves into two bowls. Stir a couple of drops of food coloring in to each bowl, then transfer to pastry bags fitted with small, decorative tips.
7. Optional: Cover a few of the mini cakes with jam or caramel filling, then top with a second cake layer of the same size. If you are going to make double-tiered cakes with jam, place them on a separate plate and freeze for 20-30 minutes until jam is firm.
8. Frost only the tops of each cake with the white buttercream. Pipe a decorative trim around the edges with the colored frosting. Use the gel pen to write “Eat Me” on a variety of the larger sized cakes.
9. Arrange your assortment of cakes on a platter or cake stand and keep an eye out for running white rabbits.
Emma Carew Grovum is a data journalist working at the Chronicle of Philanthropy in Washington, D.C. She previously worked as the Digital Editor for The Cooking Club of America and blogs at kitchendreamer.blogspot.com Emma loves Star Wars, pandas and all things Joss Whedon. Find her on twitter at @emmacarew.
Are you traveling this holiday season? Take a cue from The Lord of the Rings and make these lovely lembas. The magical bread baked in the elfen hearths of Middle Earth, were meant to sustain elves, hobbits and men for long journeys.
Just in time for the first Hobbit film coming to theaters, now you can bake lembas in your own kitchen.
If you want to go all out, snag a package of frozen banana leaves at the grocery store, defrost and dry them, and wrap around your lembas to keep them fresh for the midnight showing. (In other words… Maybe don’t wrap them in any old leaves… I’m not sure we have the same vegetation on normal earth as it does on Middle Earth.)
Enjoy!
For this lembas recipe, you need:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
Line a jelly roll pan or half-sheet pan with parchment paper and spray with butter spray.
Whisk together flour, 2 TBS sugar, baking powder, salt and one teaspoon of lemon zest and one teaspoon of orange zest. Cut butter into the flour until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. (You can do this in a food processor to save time)
Whisk together 1 egg, ½ cup half and half and yogurt.
Mix wet into dry slowly until a sticky dough forms. You may not need all of the wet ingredient mixture.
Press dough onto prepared sheet and form into a large rectangle, slightly less than an inch thick.
Whisk together remaining egg and milk, then brush pastries with egg wash.
Crumble sugar and citrus zest between your fingers until fully combined. Sprinkle over dough.
Run a knife through the dough to cut into 8 equally-sized rectangles.
Bake for 16 minutes at 400 degrees.
Cool completely before serving.
Emma Carew Grovum is a data journalist working at the Chronicle of Philanthropy in Washington, D.C. She previously worked as the Digital Editor for The Cooking Club of America and blogs at kitchendreamer.blogspot.com Emma loves Star Wars, pandas and all things Joss Whedon. Find her on twitter at @emmacarew.
Firefly’s Our Mrs. Reynolds tells an age-old love story: boy meets girl, they’re drunk, they inadvertently perform the local marriage rituals, the town elder gives the girl to the boy as payment for his debts, and the girl, in an attempt to prove her worth on the spaceship, whips up a hot meal thus impressing the boy’s shipmates.
Apparently, life on a spaceship, rattling around the fringe of the universe 500 years in the future does leave much in the way of high-end culinary opportunities. When Captain Mal Reynolds tucks into his hot plate of dinner prepared by his newly accidental wife, Saffron, shipmate Wash swoons over the prospect of “fresh bao.”
You’ve probably seen fluffy, steamed char siu bao on dim sum carts. This recipe makes about 40 dumplings, which may seem like a ton, but invite your best spaceship-mates over for a dumpling-making party and freeze the leftovers.
First: make your bao dough. You want a fluffy white bread bun that is going to stay soft when you steam it. This recipe is loosely adapted from Momofuku’s famous pork bun recipe.
You need:
Mix yeast, sugar and water in stand mixer bowl and allow to rest for 10-15 minutes. If the mixture doesn’t froth and expand, your yeast has gone bad and needs to be replaced.
Add the rest of the ingredients and attach the dough hook. Turn the mixer on low and mix until all of the ingredients have come together in a soft dough. Allow the stand mixer to knead for 8-10 minutes.
Place your dough in a lightly oiled bowl and cover. Set in a warm place for an hour and allow to rise. When dough has doubled in size, punch down and allow to rise a second time for 20 to 30 minutes.
BBQ Pork Recipe
NOTE: Pork butt (also called picnic pork or pork shoulder) works best for this, but pork belly is also a good substitute.
Ingredients:
Mix garlic, five-spice powder and brown sugar together with a fork until fully combined. Pour in the liquid ingredients and whisk together. Stir in the pork and mix gently until coated. Allow to marinate at least 30 minutes but up to 12 hours.
Drain from marinade, then cook for 5-8 minutes over high heat in a cast iron skillet or a wok.
Set filling aside to cool.
Fill a stock pot with water and set to boil. Add a steamer insert or set a bamboo steamer on top when the water starts to boil.
When dough has risen the second time, pinch off a golf ball-size lump of dough, then pinch and flatten until it’s roughly the size of your palm. Be careful not to stretch the center of your wrapper too thinly, or the pork will poke through it.
Spoon 1 teaspoon of the pork filling into the center of your dumpling, then pull the edges of the dumpling wrapper up. Pinch the edges of the dumpling together like a small purse. If you like, you can make five pleats like a star.
Steam the dumplings in batches, set about 1 inch apart in the steamer basket. Allow them to cook 12 to 15 minutes.
Serve immediately with hoisin sauce or soy sauce.
Emma Carew Grovum is a data journalist working at the Chronicle of Philanthropy in Washington, D.C. She previously worked as the Digital Editor for The Cooking Club of America and blogs at kitchendreamer.blogspot.com Emma loves Star Wars, pandas and all things Joss Whedon. Find her on twitter at @emmacarew.
“The Firewhisky seared Harry’s throat. It seemed to burn feeling back into him, dispelling the numbness and sense of unreality, firing him with something that was like courage.” – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by JK Rowling
By now, almost everyone in America has gotten their hands on a frothy mug of the more popular Harry Potter beverage: sweet and creamy butter beer. Whether you’ve been to the theme park at Universal and waited in line at the little red butterbeer trolley or mixed up your own concoction at home, the sweet, butterscotchy flavor was well described in the books and easy enough to get your hands on in the Muggle realm.
Firewhisky, on the other hand, is mentioned far less frequently throughout the books, probably owing to Harry being too young to consume it for most of the series. One of Ron Weasley’s brothers passes out glasses to the group to toast a fallen friend during the 7th book.
I imagined firewhisky as something you would drink quickly in a shot glass, or else sip slowly when diluted with a mixer. This recipe tries to balance a sweet but spicy flavor infusion, built from cinnamon sticks, peppercorns and chili flakes.
This infusion gets better the longer you let it sit, but can be consumed in as little as 2-3 days if you’re in a rush. Use any whiskey you like, I grabbed a bottle of Evan Williams for this batch. If you aren’t a regular whiskey drinker, be sure to taste a little before you mix it all together so you know what your starting point tasted like.
Special Equipment:
Ingredients:
Combine all ingredients in your bottle or pitcher and swirl to combine. Leave in a cool, dry place out of direct sunlight for at least two days. Swirl the bottle or stir the ingredients at least once a day.
After 2-3 days, strain a small amount of the whiskey for tasting. If you want a stronger infusion, keep going for up to a week.
Serve neat when courage is needed and to toast great warriors, mentors and friends. Firewhisky also mixes well with apple cider, ginger ale and cream soda, for those seeking a little less “fire."
** you can also substitute 3 TBS high quality vanilla extract, just stir it in after you’ve infused the other ingredients
Emma Carew Grovum is a data journalist working at the Chronicle of Philanthropy in Washington, D.C. She previously worked as the Digital Editor for The Cooking Club of America and blogs at kitchendreamer.blogspot.com Emma loves Star Wars, pandas and all things Joss Whedon. Find her on twitter at @emmacarew.
