The Perfect Cup of Tea

My pregnancy cravings thus far can be summed up this way: fried eggs and perfect black tea.  I have become sort of obsessed with "the perfect method" of making both, and Daniel has been nice enough to allow me to make the egg every morning so that the yolks are exactly the right amount of runny.  The tea, however, is usually a team effort in the mornings.  Because there are a lot of steps.   

Perfect black tea begins with just that: the tea!

English Breakfast from Teavana is very good and is relatively inexpensive (about $6 for 3 oz).  I've tried several other brands of English Breakfast (and Irish Breakfast) that are also good, but this Chinese Breakfast Tea (from Whole Foods) is the best I've found.

Sad that it's a whopping $11 for 2.8 oz.  But when compared side-by-side with other breakfast blends, it tastes the best.

Water for perfect breakfast tea should be about 212 degrees F, or just after it comes to a boil. 

My favorite Christmas gift this year (or was it a birthday gift?  When the two are so close together, I can't remember):  the Teavana Perfect TeaMaker.  A genius invention, this plastic (BPA-free) 16 oz container allows the loose leaf tea to float freely and expand in the water.

Then when you place the teamaker over a mug, the middle part of the bottom of it automatically opens, allowing the tea to flow out. 
I prefer German Rock Sugar (also from Teavana) to use as a sweetener for the tea, but we ran out this week, so that's Turbinado pictured above.  The nice thing about Turbinado is that you can find it at the regular grocery store.

 Anyways, most people recommend a rounded teaspoon of black tea for every 8 oz of black tea, but I like mine a little stronger.  So we use 3 teaspoons of black tea for this 16 oz teamaker. And a rounded teaspoon of German Rock sugar or Turbinado sugar.  Then the boiling water gets poured over both.

 And you let it steep about 3 minutes.  I always set the timer so I don't forget and let it get bitter.  I think you could actually let it steep 4-5 minutes, but I stay safe with 3 minutes.

When the 3 minutes are up, you just put the teamaker over a mug (or pitcher in our case).  We put the cream (yes, cream--not half and half or milk) in the pitcher first, so that the tea mixes with the cream when you empty the teamaker, and there's no need for stirring.

Down, down it goes until it's all drained. And then from the pitcher we sometimes strain it again (The Republic of Tea, for example, makes an English Breakfast with pieces too small to be filtered well, so double-straining is necessary with that brand of tea).

And voila!  Perfect tea (from my perspective, at least).  In 2 weeks my life will slow down considerably, so please come by for tea after that.  And I will share the magic of perfect tea with you.

Valentine's Day Churros

This year we took a tip from chef Nigella Lawson.  Instead of going out for Valentine's Day, we stayed in and made churros!  I love churros.  My first experience with them was in Mexico City.  They are essentially long skinny stick-shaped donuts with cinnamon and sugar all over them, and you dip them in yummy sauces like caramel or chocolate.


Chef Nigella Lawson was interviewed on NPR and shared this recipe for her churros (made short and stubby, instead of long and skinny) and chocolate dipping sauce.

And they. were. awesome.  Kudos to Daniel for doing all the leg work and making most of them.  I really just helped a little and took all these photos.



Nigella's recipe is an adaptation from Thomasina Miers' churros recipe found in Mexican Food Made Simple.  



I copy-pasted the recipe for your perusing pleasure, below:

For the churros:
1/4 cup superfine sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup freshly boiled water
approx. 2 cups corn (or vegetable) oil, for deep-frying


For the thick chocolate sauce:
4 ounces good-quality bittersweet chocolate (or 1/2 cup chips)
1 ounce milk chocolate (or 2 tablespoons chips)
1 tablespoon golden syrup (such as Lyle's), or corn syrup
2/3 cup heavy cream

Mix the sugar and cinnamon for the churros in a gallon-sized plastic bag.  This is for coating the cooked churros later.

Melt all the chocolate sauce ingredients in a heavy-based saucepan, really gently, and once the chocolate starts to melt, stir everything together, take off the heat and leave in a warm place.

To make the churros, put the flour into a bowl and stir in the baking powder, then beat in the olive oil and 1 cup freshly boiled water from a kettle. Keep mixing until you have a warm, sticky dough, and leave to rest for about 10 minutes, or for as long as it takes for the corn (or vegetable) oil to heat up.

Heat the oil for frying in a smallish saucepan; it should come about a third of the way up the sides of the pan. When you think it's hot enough, toss in a cube of bread, and if it sizzles and browns in about 30 seconds, the oil's hot enough; or if you're using an electric deep-fat fryer or otherwise have the means to check the temperature, it should be at 325 degrees F. Keep a watchful eye on your hot oil pan at all times.


When you are ready, load up a piping bag with a large star-shaped piping tip and fill with the churros dough. Squeeze short lengths (approx. 1 1/2–2 inches) of dough into the hot oil, snipping them off with a pair of scissors as you go. I love the squishy feel of this.

Cook about three or four at a time and, once they turn a rich golden brown, fish them out of the oil with a perforated spoon or spatula, or with tongs, onto a cookie sheet lined with some paper towels. To keep the cooked churros warm while you fry the remaining dough, transfer them, after blotting with paper towels, to a parchment paper–lined lipped baking sheet and hold in a low oven (175 degrees F).

Even if you let them sit out of the oven, they do need 5–10 minutes to rest before you eat them, to allow them to set inside.

Toss all the hot churros into the sugar and cinnamon and shake them about to get a good covering, just before serving.

Once you have finished making the churros, pour the chocolate sauce into individual containers (to avoid the double-dipping dilemma) and dip'n'dunk away.

Recipe from Nigella Kitchen by Nigella Lawson.

Exhausted but feeling good, we have returned from registering!  We didn't see any bedding sets we loved at Bye Bye Baby--and there were about 4 to choose from at Target--so instead we have turned to Bye Bye Baby online.

 

We have narrowed the bedding down to these three choices, and we'll design the rest of the nursery around them.

What order would you rank these three?  (Call them A, B, and C if you'd like).  Leave a comment or email me :).

It's a girl!

We had a special "gender reveal" dinner last night with just the parents--Daniel's and mine--and what a nice evening!  

I was able to take a 1/2 day off from work to get the house prepared, and we had a feast of pancetta braised chicken, rice, salad, green beans, and homemade fudgie brownies with coconut ice cream for dessert!

After dinner we opened our very first "gender-specific" birthday gift--pink swaddling sleepers.  Hopefully baby-girl-pruessner will like being swaddled.  I think I will be a good swaddler.   

Are these profile pictures getting annoying?  I can't help myself.  I don't want to take a front-facing photo anymore, b/c it's the most unflattering possible angle.  Full-front photos make what should be a cute "baby bump" look like the result of eating too many donuts.

Anyways, last week was weird.  Three days of ice and, and Friday dumped about 5 inches of snow over everything.  There was no stopping us though.  Daniel and I still made the trip down to Beaumont to visit Joe and Sarah--and we were glad we did. 

Wish I'd taken more pictures now.  This is of Sarah, Evelyn, Daniel and me.  Evelyn is a sweetheart who always has us over for coffee/tea whenever we come to Beaumont. We got to see other friends as well--but like I said... I should have taken more pictures! This is the only one from the whole weekend.
We are both glad to know that baby will be a girl.  In fact, we both thought she was a girl.  But I am anxious for the coming months, when I can focus more on preparations for her than I've recently been able.  When people ask me how the "nursery" is coming along, I'm embarrassed to acknowledge that so far it's more a junk room than a nursery.  But in the coming months... it'll come together.  I'm sure of it.