Tag: My Fine Fellow

Chili and Cinnamon Infused Chocolate Bonbons with Horchata Caramel Filling

Posted February 15, 2024 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

Time to wrap up my first menu of the year with a dessert I’ve been looking forward to for months: chili-cinnamon chocolate bonbons with horchata caramel filling, inspired by MY FINE FELLOW! When I first read the book, the descriptions of elegant gourmet food floored me, and this was one of my favorites. The idea of chili-cinnamon chocolate sounds amazing all on its own, but throw in caramel flavored with horchata and you’ve got something downright decadent.

To make these bonbons, I added ground cinnamon and chili powder in a pot with some chocolate and melted it down, letting the chili and cinnamon infuse into the chocolate. I used this chocolate to line some candy molds (I decided to use a crown mold since, in the story, these are made for the Royal Culinary Exhibition). For the filling, I started with an horchata recipe I found on AllRecipes and subbed out the milk for heavy cream (this helps cut down on the water being added to the caramel later, which helps control consistency). I caramelized some sugar in a pan, then added in some butter, a bit of the horchata cream, and a touch of chili powder.

These. Bonbons. Are. INREDIBLE! I can’t get enough of them. The chili lends a savory warmth that is accentuated by the horchata, and it helps cut the intense sweetness of the caramel. Interestingly, the individual flavors of the chili, cinnamon, and horchata aren’t easy to isolate. Instead, they come together to make a new, warm, rich flavor, which is balanced by just a touch of bitterness from the chocolate. My four-year-old tried one, and when I asked her if she liked it, she sighed and pretended to faint on the floor. I’d say that’s high praise!

Queso Fresco Strawberries: Homemade Queso Fresco Colored with Powdered Beets, Studded with Black Sesame Seeds, and Topped with Basil

Posted February 1, 2024 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

It isn’t often that I make a recipe and say, “That was fun! I’ll probably never make it again.” 😆 This is one of those rare recipes: fun, whimsical, easy, and pretty tasty . . . but also a little too “out there” for regular use. I had a feeling that might be the case when I decided to make it for my current blog menu, but I was so intrigued when I read its description in the book MY FINE FELLOW, I couldn’t help but make it!

In MY FINE FELLOW, main character Elijah enters the Royal Culinary Exhibition and makes this recipe as one of his competition dishes. It’s not really meant to be something you’d make at home. Instead, it’s supposed to showcase Elijah’s gourmet cooking skills. The book describes these cheese bites as homemade queso fresco colored with beet powder and dotted with nigella seeds, each with a strawberry stem on top.

I had a LOT of fun puzzling out how to bring a dish like this to life! First, I dried my own beets in my dehydrator and ground them down to a powder. Then I mixed them in with queso fresco I made using a recipe from Goodie Godmother. Rather than dotting the outside with nigella seeds, I decided to use black sesame, which I already had on hand and looks similar. Since strawberries aren’t in season, I topped the finished cheese bites with basil leaves instead of strawberry stems. The final flavor combo was a bit different from the story but still really delicious. I was pleasantly surprised that you could really taste the beets!

While I probably won’t be making beet-dyed, sesame-studded queso fresco strawberries again soon, I DO intend to use the methods I learned again in the future. The basic queso fresco recipe will become part of my regular cheesemaking at home, and I’m looking forward to experimenting with more powdered fruits and vegetables as natural dyes and flavor enhancers.

I’ve been having so much fun learning knew recipes and techniques as I make this menu. It’s been such a refreshing challenge. I can’t wait to see where it takes me next!

Helena’s Jägerschnitzel

Posted January 18, 2024 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

Today we’re continuing our international menu of dishes inspired by MY FINE FELLOW with Helena’s jägerschnitzel recipe!

In the beginning of the book, Helena asks Penelope to taste test three different versions of jägerschnitzel to guess which is the most authentic. One version uses venison, the second uses boar, and the third (the authentic one) uses pork. Every version sounded delicious, but since things like venison and boar are harder to source, I decided to make the authentic version as the entrée for my MY FINE FELLOW menu.

I don’t have a go-to recipe for jägerschnitzel (especially not one I would consider super authentic), so I went internet hunting. I really like this recipe from All Tastes German because it uses all the ingredients referenced in Helena’s recipe (including the red wine), and the post offers lots of details about the dish’s background and regional variations.

The final dish turned out AMAZING. I was actually a little nervous, since I’d never eaten jägerschnitzel before and the recipe calls for coating the pork cutlet in a mustard/paprika mix before breading it (mustard and I have a tenuous relationship). After the schnitzel and mushroom sauce were plated, I took a small taste just to make sure the recipe turned out . . . then plopped myself down at the table and ate a whole serving! The fried pork and mushroom sauce complement each other so well—a savory, salty, satisfying combo—and I was pleasantly surprised by the mustard. It’s not super strong, instead lending a subtle complexity to the pork. It wound up being my favorite part of the whole dish!

I will DEFINITELY be making this again soon! 🙂

Faraway Pasties: Elijah’s Empanadas

Posted January 4, 2024 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 3 Comments

Welcome to a new year! May your 2024 be filled with joy, adventure, and (of course) lots of delicious food—just like the inspiration for today’s menu, a delightful book I read last year called MY FINE FELLOW.

MY FINE FELLOW is a gender-swapped version of MY FAIR LADY with a few other notable changes. In this version, instead of a phonetics professor passing off a flower seller as a fine lady at a ball, a young pair of gentlewoman chefs hope to pass off a talented street food vendor as a gentleman chef. Naturally, the book is full of delicious food, and since the main characters come from a mix of cultural heritages, many of the dishes come from around the world. Reading about so many creative dishes ignited my imagination, and I relished the idea of starting the new year with a challenging menu. So here we go!

Today I’m making one of the book’s most iconic recipes: Faraway Pasties. These are Elijah’s signature dish, which catch the attention of Helena and Penelope, setting off a chain of events that lead to Elijah competing in the Royal Culinary Exhibition. Throughout Penelope’s first conversation with Elijah, we get little bits of info about the pasties—enough for us to know that Elijah’s Faraway Pasties are fried Salvadoran empanadas with paprika mixed into the masa dough and filled with beef, potato, and oregano. They sounded SO good, so I knew they had to be the first dish in this menu.

I’m very new to making empanadas, so for today’s post I combined recipes from Jonathan Melendez and Hank Shaw, making a few tweaks for the sake of accuracy to the story. Oh man did they turn out good! They were a huge hit with my kids. My son loved the crisp fried masa dough exterior, and my daughter especially enjoyed the savory, beefy filling. They ate a half batch in one sitting!

I can just imagine how satisfying one of these empanadas would be on a cold, rainy night at the Convent Garden Market, just like when Penelope eats them at the beginning of the story!