Another daring bakers challenge completed! Yay!
The July Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.

This is the second daring bakers challenge I have completed. I wasn't able to do the Mallow cookies. I wanted to, but I don't eat gelatin and I was looking for a marshmallow recipe that didn't have gelatin when time ran away from me. It's got a funny way of doing that this summer. I hope to be better, but so far it looks like the only updating I've been managing on my blog is the daring challenges! I do have pictures to upload of my regular eats, but that's just not going to happen tonight.

Onto my Milan cookies!
Sigh. I meant to make these for company, but ran out of time. A couple days after company left I busied myself in the kitchen and made the cookie part of this recipe. I only burned one batch ;) I covered them and wasn't able to get to the chocoalte filling until the next day. And the next day I got a phone call inviting my family over for a pool playdate! Yikes! I didn't want to shop up empty handed, and I did have these cookies... So I whipped up the filling. Unfortunately I didn't wait for the chocolate to thicken all that much. It was either that, or the humidity that led to the cookie being more pliable than crunchy. There was a little crunch, but I would have liked more. And because I was in such a rush to get these out to our playdate, the pictures were hurried. I feel like the photo doesn't do much justice, and reminds me more of fingerling potatoes than of cookies! But it was a fun challenge and the adults of the playdate enjoyed the cookies very much. The children of the playdate, not so much. But considering my picky offspring were in the lot, I don't rely much on their critique ;)

Oh dear, yes, I am very far behind. I need to post my very first daring cooks challenge, and there after I will update the meals I've had since my last post. So much to do ;) But first things first. This month's challenge was certainly that for me! It was a dish from Grant Achatz, from the Alinea cookbook; Skate, traditional flavors powdered. As most of you know, I am not much of a molecular cook, and after wanting to opt out several times, I finally talked myself into making this dish. I mostly wanted to pass on the challenge because of the many steps that included many things I either did not have or could not locate. I am pretty sure I passed my dehydrator on a while back. My chinois might have gone that way, or it just was lost in the shuffler, er, move almost six years ago. In any case, I have yet to find my chinois. So, I was left to dehydrate my many ingredients in my itty bitty, not-made-for-cooking microwave. The dehydrating times all needed to be lengthened, and I accidentally burned my lemon rind on the first go round. That nearly brought me to tears as I was on edge to start with- powders? But I had more lemon, so I continued on- a little more carefully. I did manage to singe a little bit of the next round of lemon, also. Parts of it, anyway, and parts were still not dry. Ah, I pressed on.
The capers? Ah, the capers were a mess for me. I dried and dried and dried, and I thought the capers were all dried out, but nope. My powder seemed damp and clumpy after a go-round in a coffee mill. So, here you have my pwderes, plated. I think that since my "powders" were rather clumpy, I should have not attempted the swirl pattern ;)

But there you have it. My dehydrated banana (thankfully purchased!) and cream powder, my lemon zest poached in simple syrup "powder", my super yummy capers in the middle, even if they weren't powdery, they were still very good. The red is the red onion powder, and finally the parsley and cilantro powder.

I ended up using talapia instead of skate for a couple different reasons. It cooked up beautifully in the Burre Blanc, as did the green beans. I wasn't all that concerned about the banana taste from the "banana bed" under the green beans and fish. I thought the tastes would be fine together- tropical, really, and they were great. I tried some of the banana, fish and green beans without the powders, then with the powder. It was excellent. I was really surprised on how much flavor impact the powders gave to the dish. They're just a small component, yet "POW" they really just hit you with so many different levels of flavor.


So, all in all I am glad I made this dish. It really pressed me out of my comfort zone. It was my first cooking challenge with the group and it really did push me to try some new things. I did like the taste a lot, but given that I didn't have many of the tools needed, I don't think I'd try this one again. Maybe I'd give it another go if the dehydrator and chinois turn up ;)