Beat the eggs in a large mixing bowl. Add the breadcrumbs and parmesan cheese and allow them to soak for about 5 minutes.
Stem the mushrooms leaving the caps intact and ready to be filled like cups. Gently twisting the stem may be the best way to accomplish this.
Place the mushroom stems together with the onion, garlic, and celery in a food processor and chop finely. Dice the bacon by hand, especially if you are using uncooked bacon as this is harder to work with in a food processor. Combine the vegetable mixture with the breadcrumb mixture, adding the diced bacon as well as parsley, black pepper, and salt. Pour most of the oil into the bowl and mix to combine thoroughly.
With the remaining oil, grease the baking tray so that the mushrooms do not stick.
Place the mushroom caps upside down on the baking tray. Fill them generously with the mixture as shown in the photo below.
Bake in the overn for 50 minutes, until they are slightly brown.
These are based on a recipe which won first
place in the Indianapolis Star cookie contest, with some improvements I made, especially
to the filling. Some people might prefer to call these "Christmas Crescents," but I see no point in calling them that, since the truth is that they are good all year round! Call them whatever you like, and make them whenever you feel like it!
Makes 40
4 cups of flour (500 g)
1 cup (2 sticks, or 250 g) of butter at room temperature
2 packages active dry yeast (20 g)
2 tablespoons of sugar
1 teaspoon of salt
half cup of milk
2 eggs
Powdered sugar (approx. 1 cup)
For filling: one small jar( 300-400 g ) of apricot jam mixed with 4
ounces ( 100 g) of ground walnuts.
Pour the milk in a microwave safe bowl and heat it for 30-50
sec. The temperature should be around 100° F (37° C). If you do not have a
thermometer, you can stick your finger in it - don't worry, all chefs do that! It should be warm, not hot. If it is hot, then just let it cool down. Add the yeast and a tablespoon from the
flour and stir it. Let it stay in a warm place around half an hour or until it
looks frothy. Add the rest of the flour, eggs, salt, and sugar. Stir it and add
the butter. Now you need to knead it for at least 5 minutes. I use a stand mixer (if you don't already have one, these are well worth the investment). Let it sit in a warm place for at least half an hour. It
should double in size. Divide the dough into 5 even balls. Roll each ball on a hard
surface (you can put a little flour on the work surface to keep it from
sticking) into a 12 inch (30 cm) circle. Cut circle into 8 wedges. Place half a
teaspoon of filling in the center of each wedge and then spread it. Starting
from the widest point, roll each wedge to form a crescent (slightly curving the
sides). Bake at 350° F (180° C ) for 20-25 minutes or until light brown on the bottom.
Let the cookies cool and then roll them in powdered sugar.
Very few people in the United States are familiar with quince. Some have heard of it, but few have seen one and even fewer have tasted it. In my native country of Romania, however, quince trees are very common, especially in the south of the country, and the fruit is a staple of our diet. The fruit feels rather like a hard apple, but with a hint of fuzz on it almost (but not quite) like that of a peach. The taste is slightly like pineapple, and if you eat the fruit straight off the tree it might be too tart for your taste. But it is a fruit which, if you stew it, has a flavor that is simply exquisite. And so even if you have tasted a quince, but never tasted quince pudding, you should still give this recipe a try. I would be very surprised if you don't fall in love with its distinctive and delicious flavor.
As long as you actually have quinces (you can buy them seasonally in supermarkets like Meijer and sometimes even Wal-Mart), making quince pudding is fairly straightforward. You will need:
500g quince (or 1 lb) cut in cubes
100g sugar (or 4-5 oz)
1 cup water
1/2 cup milk
2 tablespoons cornstarch
100g butter (or 4-5 oz)
Vanilla essence (a few drops)
After cutting the quince into cubes, use a food processor for just a few seconds to turn it into smaller chunks and pieces. Chop it, but do not turn it into a pulp. This can be done by hand if you wish.
Pour the chopped/diced quince into a saucepan or pot. Add the cup of water and boil it for 10 minutes until the fruit softens. Then add the sugar and boil for a further 2 minutes. Then add the butter, cut into cubes, and stir continually for another minute until the butter is melted.
Separately in another dish, mix the milk and cornstarch. Pour this over the quince mixture in the saucepan and boil for another 2 minutes or until it thickens. Remove from the heat and add the few drops of vanilla, mixing it evenly into the pudding.
Allow the pudding to cool, but (although it is good even when served cold) it is best served warm, ideally with some fresh cream (whipped) on top. This recipe makes about 4 generous portions, and can be refrigerated and reheated the next day.
Sarmale is the Romanian word for stuffed cabbage, and it is considered our "national dish" more than anything else is. Even though people all over the world take meat and rice and wrap a cabbage or vine leaf around it, the Romanians have cultivated this recipe into an art form, and the results are really special. The version here aims to be both healthier and simpler than other versions that you will typically eat in Romania (and find explained in cookbooks and online tutorials), containing less saturated fat and leaner meat than most Romanian cooks tend to use. I prefer to buy my own pork meat and mince it myself at home, so that I know how much fat is in it, and can buy a leaner cut of meat to mince.
In the winter we use pickled cabbage, but in the summer we use green cabbage, and the latter is what I'll be using here.
Choose a cabbage with loose outer leaves, because you will need to be able to detach each of them individually without tearing the leaf itself. For this recipe you need 10-15 leaves. If you happen to have several cabbages of this sort, you might just use the outer leaves from several cabbages for the sarmale. The inside of the cabbage can then be shredded for use later in this recipe, or used for a different recipe like coleslaw.
Place a large pot with water on your stovetop and bring it to a boil with the lid on. Place two or three leaves at a time into the boiling water for about 10-20 seconds each, until the leaves are softened slightly, to make them more flexible and easier to roll. After you have done this with all of them, allow them to cool before continuing.
A tightly-wound cabbage is much harder to use because leaves tend to tear. But if that is all you have to work with, you can proceed in the following manner. Place the whole cabbage in boiling water. Remove it every 15 seconds or so (using protective gloves so you don't burn yourself) and cut or tear off the outer leaves which have been loosened through boiling. Repeat this process until you have enough leaves.
Ingredients for the filling mixture:
1 lb (1/2 kg) minced pork
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1/2 green bell pepper, diced
1/2 onion, diced
2 tbsp rice or 1 cup boiled rice
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp dry dill
1/2 tsp thyme
Optional: 1 tsp paprika
You will also need cabbage (obviously) from the beginning of the process. Later in the process, you will need the following additional ingredients (listed separately from the filling mixture above to avoid confusion):
4-5 oz tomato paste or 2 cups of diced tomatoes
2 bay leaves
A dash of thyme
1/2 cup vegetable oil
salt
Optional: crushed red pepper
Reminder: these do not go into the filling mixture!
Mix the ingredients for the filling mixture together in a large bowl.
Then proceed to take cabbage leaves one at a time. Place a spoonful of the filling mixture on a leaf and roll it up tightly, as shown in the videos below.
Repeat until you run out of filling and leaves. This quantity of ingredients should produce about 20 sarmale.
Stack the sarmale inside a slow cooker for the best results. (You can also cook them in a pressure cooker or even an ordinary pot. But the procedures in those cases are very different and not those described here.) Add water to cover all but the top layer of sarmale, plus 1/2 cup oil, the 2 bay leaves, a dash of thyme, salt, and crushed red pepper if you want them a bit spicier.
Set the slow cooker on high until it starts boiling, then turn it down to low and leave for 4 hours.
After 3 hours, remove the lid and add the tomato paste (or tomatoes). It should be spread evenly across the top, without stirring or disturbing the sarmale that are already in the slow cooker. The best way to do this with tomato paste is to spoon out a little of the liquid from the slow cooker into a small bowl and mix it together with the tomato paste. The result can then easily be poured back into the slow cooker. Replace the lid and turn up the temperature to bring the contents back to a boil, and then turn it down again.
When they are ready, they can be served with sour cream on top and bread or mamaliga (polenta).
