Maine Bicentennial, A Cookbook, and Me

 Yia-Yia Stella travelled here from Kotronos, Greece. Her family settled in Massachusetts, and she eventually moved to Biddeford, Maine. I love the picture of her, and it appears she is frying something, maybe this very recipe? When I think of "fried dough" my mind naturally wanders to the summer fairs, where I get my annual treat of fried dough, the size of a plate, slathered in melted butter and sprinkled with confectioner's sugar. This fried dough is similar, but the recipe suggests twisting the dough into a cruller or wreath shape before frying. So I decided to try making a "cruller." I loved crullers when I was a kid...nowadays they have lost that fascinating name and are called "sticks." Wish we could go back to "cruller." This dough is not a sweet dough, so you definitely want to butter it up and sugar it up. You can also dip it in melted chocolate sweetened with sugar (maybe with a dash of almond flavoring). Or dip it in maple syrup. ...

 I've heard of cooking many foods with beer, but donuts? A new experience. The recipe calls for melted chocolate chips, as well as cocoa powder. So I used my fav chocolate chips, Ghirardelli semi-sweet. And my fav cocoa powder, Lake Champlain Chocolates of Burlington, Vermont. I know there are some great stouts by local Maine microbreweries (Lake St. George of Liberty comes to mind...their Oatmeal Stout is very fine), but I had Guinness Extra Stout on hand so used that. These donuts are not too sweet, with only 2/3 cup sugar per batch of 2 dozen donuts. You can add a glaze if you like, to add sweetness, but I like them just the way they are.  You need to allow time for the dough to chill before cutting, since it is a very moist dough and must be cut chilled, so the dough doesn't stick to the cutter.  The recipe cautions against overcooking, due to the darkness of the donut dough.  This is the perfect donut to treat yourself to on a cold Maine winter morning, with a c...

 I'm still getting my donut feet under me, so to speak. I am not as fluent in working with the dough and the hot oil as I'd like to be. There is a certain ease that comes, I'm sure, with experience--rolling out a dough not too sticky but not overly floured; dropping the dough into the hot oil without a splash; timing the flip of the donut so that it doesn't overcook on one side. I'll get there, but I'm not sure I reached the pinnacle of expertise with the batch I made today. I have a ways to go before I make the Perfect Donut. They turned out tasty, but just a tad too crispy, I think. Of course, it would help if I didn't have an ancient fryer. It does not have any temp gauge on it, so I can't regulate the heat. And were I to try the stovetop, the nature of a glass-topped electric oven is that the heating elements cycle on and off, so it is very hard to keep a consistent heat. (If I went on about this in my blog about Hester's Donuts, forgive me. Noth...

On a Saturday morning, what food would you love to wake up to? Oh so many good choices out there, but doughnuts were a fav for my dad. He never made them, but he sure could find the shops that specialized in them! So I was certain that my second recipe needed to be doughnuts, in memory of my dad. He liked them plain or raised glazed. We own a small fryer and mostly use it for tempura. I carefully poured in the canola oil to the fill line and plugged it in. We don't own a doughnut cutter, so I found an old metal fluted-at-the-edge round Christmas cookie cutter, for the doughnuts, and a tiny red plastic cutter for the holes.  I liked the process of setting up the dough the night before, and tucking it into the fridge for a night's "rest." First thing in the morning, I cut out about 20 doughnuts (by the time they were fried and set to cool, I'm afraid we lost a few to "taste-testing"). I can just hear Dad now, marveling about all those years when he drove o...