Ghoulish Goodies: Marshmallow Ghosts

I love making homemade marshmallows. For one thing, they're fabulous. If you've only ever tried the store-bought kind, make these just once so you can taste the difference. Like night and day. For another thing, they're a great example of kitchen alchemy, and since I'm a tiny bit of a closet science nerd, I love me some kitchen alchemy.

Yummy!

It's hard to believe that this awful-looking, brownish, liquid mass is going to turn into glorious, fluffy, white marshmallows.

Getting there...

You refuse to believe it, even as you watch the beater spin, and then all of a sudden--BOOM! You've got marshmallow fluff! And after a couple of hours of setting, you've got the best damn accompaniment to hot chocolate, chocolate fondue, or s'mores you've ever tried. So, so worth it.

Hey! Look at that!

So, it's nearly Halloween, and one of my friends sent a picture of a fabulous little cake adorned with piped marshmallow ghosts. She suggested I try these out for our little office Halloween party and, of course, I rose to the challenge. And quite a challenge it was: I didn't beat the marshmallow quite long enough, so the first couple of ghosties collapsed into Hershey kiss-shaped puddles. The middle batch were great, but by the time I piped the last few, the marshmallow had set too much and they came out less like fluffy ghosts and more like, well, dog poo, if we're being honest. Those I just cut up into little discs for tossing in cocoa, but the others got some faces painted on and are ready for their close-up at the office tomorrow.

Coming soon to a party near yoooooooou!

Marshmallow Ghosts*

1 packet gelatine
1/3 cup cold water
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup water
Black gel food colouring

1. Dissolve the gelatine in 1/3 cup water in the bowl of a stand mixer. Let sit for at least 5 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, combine the sugar and remaining water in a saucepan. Bring to a boil and boil until the sugar dissolves and the mixture reaches a temperature of 240 degrees F on a candy thermometer.

3. Fit the mixer with a whisk and start it up to get the gelatine moving. While the mixer is going, carefully pour the hot sugar syrup into the bowl. Raise the mixer speed to high and let it go for 8-10 minutes, until the mixture turns white and fluffy and holds soft peaks.

4. Spoon the mixture into a pastry bag fitted with a large, round tip. Working quickly, pipe out little ghosts (don't get too ambitious--if they're too tall, they'll topple right over). I found that piping a good, fat, solid base before gradually moving upwards helped.

5. Let the ghosties dry for at least 2 hours, or overnight. Once set, paint little faces on using the food colouring and a small paintbrush used only for food.

Cyclops is Husby's favourite

*Warning: This is not for the faint of heart or the compulsively neat. Marshmallows are messy, and you do run the risk of being burned with hot sugar if you're not careful. The first bit can be tackled with plenty of hot water, the second with plenty of cold.

Recipe source: http://lollyssweettreats.com/

Eat a Gray, Save a Red

Eastern gray squirrels are obnoxious little bastards.

It's bad enough that they go after all your birdseed and lawn seed and whatever else they can get their greedy little paws on, but while they're helping themselves to all the food, they're actually killing off a lot of native squirrel populations, like the British red squirrel. They're like locusts, and they don't even belong in this country, they're native to the northeastern United States, so they're essentially wiping out their hosts, and that's just poor etiquette.

In an attempt to curb this ecological curb-stomping, the powers that be have set out to encourage us to eat more squirrel over here. Celebrity chefs have chowed down on the little buggers on their TV shows, and they've started showing up in farmers' markets (including ours, in Stockbridge). Perhaps ironically, food that would be considered backwoods redneck dinner by most people in the U.S. is total yuppie food over here.

And it's delicious.

The wild game and fish stall at the market first had squirrel a few weeks back, and I decided to look into some recipes and get it when it showed up again. This past Thursday, it was back, so I picked one up for 3.95, figuring that if I screwed this up, I'd only have lost 4 pounds. I did not screw it up, happily. Since it's a pretty lean meat (as you would expect) I thought it would be good for stewing, served up with some nice crusty multigrain bread from the baker at the market. Yesterday turned out to be cold and rainy, so I pulled out my squirrel, picked up a couple of extra ingredients and started experimenting. Here's what I came up with.

Mediterranean Squirrel Stew
Serves 2

1 gray squirrel, jointed
Flour
1/2 yellow onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
A few T stock (whatever you have on hand), white wine, or water
1 carrot, peeled and diced
1 rib celery, diced
1 bay leaf
1 14-oz can diced tomatoes with juice (or whole peeled tomatoes, crushed up with your hands)
1 tsp dried oregano or 1T fresh, chopped
1 small, whole hot pepper, like a fingerling
1 potato, sliced fairly thinly
10-20 pitted green olives (optional)

Warm some olive or flavored rapeseed oil (I used the Supernature jalapeno flavor) in a skillet over medium heat. While it's warming, mix some salt and pepper with about 1/4 cup of flour and dredge the squirrel pieces in it, shaking off any excess.

Add the onion and garlic to the pan and saute just until they begin to color. Remove to a soup pot, crock pot, or large saucepan. Add more oil to the pan and brown the squirrel pieces on all sides. Add them to the pot with the onion and deglaze the pan with stock, wine, or water, scraping up any brown bits. Add that to the pot with the squirrel.

Add all remaining ingredients except for the potato and olives. If you're using a pot on the stove, bring the mixture to a boil, cover, lower the heat, and simmer for about an hour to an hour and a half, until the meat's done and coming off the bone easily. If you're using a slow cooker, put all the ingredients in the cooker and cook on high for 4-5 hours or low for 6-8.

Remove the meat and the hot pepper from the stew and set aside to cool a bit. When it's handleable, pull the meat from the bones, taking care to check that any small bits of bone have been removed (squirrel has a lot of little bone bits, so be careful). Return the meat to the pot with the remaining ingredients. Set the hot pepper on a cutting board, cut off the stem end, and run the blunt edge of a kitchen knife up the length of the pepper to squeeze out the seeds and guts. Return these to the pot (Note: if you don't like your food spicy, leave this step out) and discard the pepper skin.

Add the potatoes and olives to the pot, cover, and return to medium heat. Cook until the potatoes are done, about 10-20 minutes, depending on how thick they are. If the stew's rather watery, uncover and cook down for a few minutes over medium heat. Test for seasoning and adjust as necessary (I found I didn't even need to add salt, thanks to the olives). Serve with thick slices of toasted bread for sopping up juices.

Cliche though it sounds, I found that squirrel tastes a lot like chicken, but sweeter. It's quite a lovely meat that could be adapted to just about any chicken recipe, or you could just mess around and make up your own, like I did. If you're in the States, it might be hard to come across squirrel, unless you or someone you know is a really good hunter, but if you have the chance, give it a try, you might be surprised by how much you like it!