Joye Cooks

Potato-Bell Pepper Frittata

2009-01-12T22:45:00.000-08:00

'Frittata' is one of those words that's just a ton of fun to say. Frittata fri-tta-ta frittata. Anyway. From a busy cook's point of view, they're also easy to prepare and relatively fast. This makes the trusty frittata my go-to for situations where I'm cooking for people who aren't me, but I really don't have time for a huge fuss.

There are probably a million variations on this recipe, but this particular incarnation takes its cues from the fact that potatoes are maybe my single favorite food in the world. I love them in all their conventional guises, and quite a few rather unconventional ones. For example, I go nuts for calzones and pizzas with potatoes on them, which is actually where the inspiration for putting them in a frittata came from. I had my first potato calzone from a delivery place called DP Dough, which probably saved my life on a few occasions in college where I studied right through several mealtimes in a row and needed to find a place that delivered at three in the morning. And lo! there it was. Wonderful potato calzones to the rescue. With that kind of introduction to potatoes in strange places, I proceeded over the years to add them to everything from tortelini to tacos, often with delightful results. This is one such recipe.

Potato-Bell Pepper Frittata

1 lb russet potatoes, peeled and chopped into 1/2 inch cubes
2 red or orange bell peppers, julienned
2 cups onion, diced
1 tbsp dill
1 tbsp thyme
3 whole eggs
5 egg whites
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
(Optional) 1 1/2 cups cheddar cheese to top
(Optional) Salsa to garnish

In a medium skillet, add a dash of olive oil and the potatoes. Saute for 10 minutes over medium heat then add the onions and the bell peppers. Continue to saute until the onions are translucent and the peppers have intensified slightly in color.

In a large bowl, beat both whole eggs and egg whites together until fluffy. Add the dill, thyme, salt and pepper and beat again. Pour the egg mixture into the skillet with the potatoes and onions. Cook 5-7 minutes over medium-high heat. The goal is to cook the eggs through, so that the inversion step will be possible. If the frittata is not at least lightly cooked through (no runny whites on top), the next step will be nothing but a mess.

To flip the frittata, turn it out onto a plate, then slide it back into the skillet for another 5 minutes or so to finish it. This is the point that you would add the cheese in a layer on top to melt, if that's your thing. Serve with salsa for dipping. Frittatas actually are pretty good cold or reheated, so they'll keep for a few days in the fridge if needed.

Servings: 4-6

Black Forest Drink

2009-01-12T22:26:00.000-08:00

This was created in a fit of experimentation back in my early college days, and likely bears no resemblance to whatever actual bartenders might call a 'black forest'. I certainly like it, though.

Black Forest

1 12 oz Coca-Cola
3 tbsp of the juice found in a jar of maraschino cherries (actual grenadine works just fine here too, but cherry juice has the advantage of automatically coming with a garnish for the drink)
3 oz Kahlua
2 oz vodka
2-3 Maraschino cherries from jar as garnish

In a large glass, layer vodka, cherry juice, kahlua and Coke, in that order. Stir briefly, drop in a few cherries, and serve.

Servings: 1

Bacon and Egg Pastries

2009-01-12T21:47:00.000-08:00

One of the most popular trends I noticed while browsing cookbooks for ideas over the holidays was the use of muffin tins to craft individual servings. This isn't a new idea per se, but I saw it far more commonly than in the past. This was one of my favorites of the individual-serving recipes. It's surprisingly easy to make, and the final product gets a touch of cuteness from the idea of miniature tarts.

If you're into gilding the lily, you can use pie crust stamps to add leaves or whatnot as decoration, which will make these really look like something that might have come from a professional bakery. Just use the stamps to make shapes out of the dough left over from shaping the pastry crusts, and bake these extras for the last 10 or so minutes of the pastries' baking time. The decorations then get added to the tops of the finished pastries as soon as they come out of the oven. If you're really, really into going overboard, the bacon in this recipe can be switched for crabmeat (only use fresh, the fake stuff would be gross) for that uber-sophisticated touch.

Bacon and Egg Pastries

1 recipe Simple Pie Crust
6 slices bacon, cooked
6 large eggs
3 tsp dijon or whole grain mustard
3 tsp fresh basil, chopped
(Optional) 1 cup Cheddar Cheese, grated
Salt
Pepper

Begin by preheating the oven to 350F.

Using an upended bowl as a guide, cut out six circles of pie dough about five inches in diameter each. Spray a muffin tin thoroughly with non-stick spray, and line the cups with dough. Remember, the pie dough will shrink as it bakes, so be sure not to get it too thin, and to leave enough around the edges so the pastries won't end up short.

Spoon 1/2 tsp of mustard into each pastry, and crumble one slice of bacon into each. Break an egg into a separate cup and add the yolk to one of the pastries. Spoon in enough of the white to fill the pastry 2/3 full, and repeat until all the pastries have been filled. Sprinkle 1/2 tsp of basil on top of each pastry, and season all of them with salt and pepper. Brush edges of each crust with left-over egg white. Finish by sprinkling cheddar on top if desired.

Bake at 350F for 20-25 minutes. Allow pastries to rest for 2-3 minutes after removal from oven before carefully removing them from the muffin tin to serve.

Servings: 6

Huevos Rancheros

2009-01-12T21:03:00.000-08:00

My take on a Tex-Mex tradition. This version is designed for brunch, specifically, thus the sausage-and-eggs combo, which I'm pretty sure isn't in the normal version. I don't really care if I'm mucking about with the usual way of doing things, though; this one tasted great, and that's what I cared about!

Huevos Rancheros

4 large corn tortillas (or alternately, 1 large bag tortilla chips)
8 eggs
1/3 cup cream
2 tbsp chopped dill
1 lb loose turkey sausage
1 1/2 cups pepperjack cheese, grated
2 tomatoes, cubed
1 can black beans
(Optional) Jalepeno pepper slices
1 recipe of Salsamole
Sour cream
Olive oil
Butter
Salt
Pepper

Crack the eggs into a bowl and whisk in the cream and the dill until reasonably homogenous. Add salt and pepper to taste. Scramble the cream-and-egg mixture over medium heat until the eggs are light and fluffy. Remove from heat and store someplace warm for a moment.

Warm the beans in a simmering pot. While the beans heat up, add a dash of olive oil to a saucepan and cook the sausage over medium-high heat. Salt and pepper the sausage appropriately. Drain the beans.

Assemble the huevos rancheros immediately prior to serving. In a large saucepan, melt a pat of butter over medium-high until faintly browned, then toss in a tortilla on top and shift the pan from side to side a few times to encourage the butter to brown as much of the tortilla bottom as possible. Once the tortilla has had a moment to toast, add about 1/4 of the eggs, sausage, tomatoes, and beans on top. Cook for 3-4 minutes just until the whole thing is warmed through, then slide the huevos out of the saucepan and onto an oven-proof plate with one smooth motion. If you do this correctly, the toppings should barely even be disturbed. Top the whole thing off with a generous handful of cheese, a drizzle of salsamole, and a few of the jalepeno slices if you like those. Place under a broiler in an open oven, and broil until cheese is melted and slightly toasted. Serve immediately, with sour cream and extra salsamole on the side.

Servings: 4-6

Salsamole

2009-01-12T20:41:00.000-08:00

Salsamole is a recipe that's a little like salsa and a little like guacamole, thus the name. To it's credit, when I served it over huevos rancheros at a brunch this December, a person who normally dislikes cilantro loved it, even though it contains lots, and a person who hates guacamole but likes salsa loved it too, despite the high avacado content. So I consider this a pretty good little recipe for crowd pleasing, even in crowds that might have reservations about traditional Tex-Mex ingredients.

You need not wait for an excuse to go all out with huevos, though. This sauce goes great on chips for watching football or whatnot.

Salsamole
Adapted from Bon Appetit

8 oz tomatillos, husked and rinsed
3 tbsp cilantro
1 avacado, peeled and pitted
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 tbsp lime juice
2 tsp ancho chile powder
3 large garlic cloves, chopped
1 tsp cumin
Salt
Pepper

Boil the tomatillos for 20 minutes or until soft. In a blender, add all ingredients except salt and pepper and pulse until the mixture is roughly pureed. Taste, and adjust seasonings accordingly. Serve while still hot, or refrigerate until needed (if making in advance) and rewarm in microwave or toaster just before serving.

Servings: 6-8

Rocks

2009-01-12T20:18:00.000-08:00

This is the time of year wherein I try to catch up on all the recipes I didn't get posted over Christmas. So first up is a recipe for what is essentially a sweet party mix, like Chex mix but better because everything is better with chocolate.

I think I got this recipe from my mother, who in turn got it from a Sunday School lesson if I remember correctly.

Rocks

2 cups chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups dry roasted peanuts
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 12.3 oz box Crispix cereal
Confectioners sugar

Melt the chocolate in a large bowl in the microwave on high for one minute. Stir well and heat for an additional 30 seconds if necessary, or until all the chocolate is melted. Stir until smooth. Add the peanut butter and stir until completely incorporated.

Add the peanuts and cereal to the chocolate mix and stir until the pieces are thoroughly coated (I find a wooden spoon works well here).

Put the confectioners sugar in a Ziploc bag. Add a third of the chocolate-coated cereal mix, close the bag tightly and shake until the mix is completely coated in sugar. Repeat for the other thirds of the mix. Give it a few minutes to cool and solidify before serving, and store in an airtight container. Keeps for up to a week.

Servings: lots. I have no idea how many servings this makes, really. At least 15, though.

Sweet Potato Fries

2008-12-27T16:40:00.000-08:00

Way simple, but also very good.

Sweet Potato Fries

2 large sweet potatoes
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 tbsp salt
1/2 tbsp nutmeg
1/2 tbsp paprika

Preheat your oven to 425F.

Wash and slice the potatoes into fries, about 1/2 inch on each side. Mix all ingredients together in a gallon plastic bag, tossing well to coat the potatoes.

Cover a baking sheet with tin foil (you may need two sheets depending on the size of the potatoes). Spread the fries on the baking sheet in a single layer. Cook for 30 minutes, turning every 10 min so they brown evenly. Serve immediately.

Servings: 4

Gobs

2008-12-13T21:29:00.001-08:00

Gobs are a chocolate cookie that my grandmother usually makes and freezes around Christmas time. They're one of my favorite cookies in the whole world: a thin white layer of crispy, sugary icing sandwiched between two soft chocolate cookies. Sometimes I eat them layer by layer: gnawing the cookies off until only the layer of icing remains. Sometimes I just eat them like a normal person. when I'm really feeling decadent, I dip them in hot cocoa. Any way I've tasted them, they're reliably fantastic, and sure to please family members of all ages.

The other amazing property of these cookies is that they freeze amazingly well, and can be kept for several months that way. Give them fifteen minutes or so to unfreeze, and you can have amazing chocolaty goodness for quite a while. We usually eat them all before the freezing time is a consideration, though! I've never seen a batch last for longer than a week. Usually if we're freezing them, we've made two or three batches at a time. Their name is appropriate because once you've tasted one, you just want gobs and gobs!

Gobs

2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup butter, melted
2 eggs, beaten
4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa (regular, not dutch process)
2 tsp salt
1 cup soured milk (Yes, you read that right. Leave a cup of regular milk out at room temperature for an hour or so.)
2 tsp baking soda
Vanilla icing (you can use store-bought, but I prefer to make my own with a simple vanilla icing recipe)

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Combine the sugar, butter, and beaten eggs in a large mixing bowl and mix thoroughly. Stir the flour, cocoa, and salt together in a smaller bowl, then add the dry ingredients to the wet ones in the large bowl, alternating with the sour milk. Add the baking soda to the dough, then mix until everything is combined.

Drop spoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet (try to get them all a similar size, since you'll be making sandwiches) and bake for 10 minutes. Cool on a wire rack, then form sandwiches by spreading a thin layer of icing between two cookies.

Martha Washingtons

2008-12-13T19:08:00.000-08:00

After a banner month of October I was a BAD food blogger. I posted nothing in November. I am ashamed.

But in December, I will redeem myself. This is the first of several posts worth of Christmas traditions. For many families, Christmas food means fruit cakes. For mine, it mean cookies and candies galore. Chocolate sandwich cookies, date-nut cookies, peppermint cookies shaped like swirls and candy canes, sugar cookies powdered snowy white. Candies covered in chocolate, candies covered in chocolate and powdered suger, truffles, nut brittles. Christmas around here means a veritable landslide of sugar.

These little candies are one of our most treasured traditions. On the outside, they look like glossy chocolate bon-bons, about the size and shape of truffles. On the inside, they're velvetty nougat, chock full of pecans. Absolutely delicious, from my family to yours.

Martha Washington Candy

2 boxes confectioners sugar
1 stick butter
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 cups chopped pecans
1 package (1/2 lb) bitter chocolate squares
1 block paraffin
toothpicks

Cream the sugar, butter, condensed milk, and vanilla together in a mixer. Add the nuts, and let that get mixed until homogenous. Roll the nougat mixture into balls the size of walnuts (or a little smaller). Use extra powdered sugar to dip your hands in so that it doesn't stick to your palms as you roll.

Melt the chocolate and paraffin together in a double boiler over low heat, stirring to mix. Dip the nougat balls into this mixture, one at a time, by sticking a toothpick in the top of the ball and swirling it around in the chocolate. Deposit the coated balls on a sheet of waxed paper to cool and harden, and refrigerate after they've set for an hour or so. These stay fresh for several weeks in a fridge, so make them ahead of time to eat throughout the holiday.

Servings: 75-100 pieces of candy

Pumpkin Cheesecake

2008-10-30T13:39:00.000-07:00

I am a cheesecake fiend. I love it dearly, in (almost) all its varieties. I will eat cheesecake for breakfast, mid-morning snack, lunch, twosies, afternoon tea, dinner, and as a midnight snack.

Strangely, for someone so obsessed with cheesecake, I'd never tried to make my own until a few days ago. This one was made for a party, and it disappeared so quickly that I was reminded once again of the singular magic of a well-made cheesecake: it vanishes like no other dessert you'll ever meet.

Anyway, I think that for a first effort at cheesecake, this was a more than respectable effort. I'll probably come back to it at Thanksgiving, for an alternative to (or, ooh, alongside) pumpkin pie.

Pumpkin Cheesecake

For the crust:

3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs, crushed
3/4 cup ginger snap crumbs, crushed
5 tbsp butter, melted

For the filling:

1 cup sugar
3 (8 oz) packages of softened cream cheese (Avoid the low fat stuff. It's cheesecake; it's a dessert. You're eating it for the taste, not for the low calorie count. So ditch the diet and get the stuff that tastes good)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp whiskey or bourbon
1 cup canned pumpkin (NOT sweetened, NOT spiced, just regular pumpkin with no additives)
3 eggs
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp ground ginger

Begin by preheating the oven to 350F.

Make the crust by combining the graham cracker and ginger snap crumbs with the melted butter in a medium bowl. Stir them until they're all coated with the butter, in crumbly little bits. Locate the springform pan or pie dish that you're using to bake the cheesecake in. The springform is optimal in theory, but I don't own one, so I used a deep pie dish, which turned out fine. Press the crumbs evenly into your dish. They shouldn't reach all the way up the sides, this is to be expected. Aim for a crust that ends 2/3 of the way up the sides of your dish. Bake the crust in the oven for 5 minutes, then remove it and set aside until the filling is ready.

In a large mixing bowl combine the cream cheese, sugar, vanilla, and whiskey, and beat them with an electric mixer until smooth. Add the pumpkin, the eggs, and all the spices, and continue beating. This is the important part: turn the mixer up to its second or third highest setting, the one for cake icing or some similarly thick substance. Let it run on this high setting for 2 full minutes. Why? Because this inflates the eggs and will make your cheesecake light and fluffy. Once you've properly mixed your filling, pour it immediately into the pan with the crust and get the whole thing into the oven as quickly and gently as possible (you don't want to agitate out the air bubbles).

Bake for 60-70 minutes. The key to proper cheesecake is to reove it from the oven BEFORE the center is completely set. There should still be a reasonable jiggle to the middle of the cheesecake when you remove it from the oven, though the sides should be set. This is key to the texture. Let your cheesecake sit out to cool to room temperature, then refridgerate it for at least 4 hours before serving. Overnight is best, but if you're like me you don't plan that far ahead.

Serve alone, or use a pint of fresh whipping cream and some sugar to make homemade whipped cream to put on top. Don't bother with the storebought stuff (the texture is all wrong, and the taste always seemed faintly chemical to me), but if you're willing to put in three minutes of elbow grease, the silky-heavy texture of the homemade stuff is a good complement to the cheesecake.

Servings: 8-10

Cabbage Soup

2008-10-27T21:01:00.000-07:00

I'm catching up on stuff I've made over the past week or so, hence the number of recipe posts tonight.

I still have half a pot of this soup in the fridge, because it makes a big pot of soup. And I used to hate cabbage, so you'd think I wouldn't be too thrilled at the idea of a giant pot of cabbage soup in my fridge. But I couldn't be happier. I think cabbage soup has had a rough time of it. Some evil diet company seized on the idea way back when, and ever since people have associated it with self-torture, when in reality it's anything but. Cabbage soup originally started out as a way to make the tough cabbage stems into something tender and wonderful, and it still suits that purpose remarkably well.

In a way, this is one of my 'trash' soups: made of a little of this and a little of that, just whatever I had lying around in the fridge when I went to make soup. But in other ways, it's a very converted effort at a particular purpose. Because I don't ordinarily have cabbage sitting around my my fridge (remember how I said I hated it?). I had to buy cabbage especially for this soup, and I was glad I did. It's a very green soup, very fresh, and perfect for fall. It's warm and comforting, without being heavy or tough to digest. Best of all, it turned cabbage from something slimy and gross into something delicate and sweet, something that practically melts on your tongue and dances beautifully with the peppery undertone in the broth here. I love cabbage like this, and that's something I never thought I'd say.

Cabbage Soup

1 medium or large napa cabbage, washed
4 medium sized leeks, washed
1 bunch celery
1 large sweet onion (Videlia or mayan sweet)
1 1/2 tbsp unsalted butter
80 oz chicken stock or chicken broth
1 1/2 tbsp Better Than Boullion
Pepper
Salt

Begin by chopping the onion and adding it to a very large soup pot, along with the butter. Turn the pot on over medium heat, and let the butter melt and begin to caramelize the onion. While this is happening, chop your leeks. When the onion achieves a light brown color and smells sweet and tender, add the leeks and stir to coat them in the butter. Let the leeks soften and wilt while you chop the celery. Add the celery one stem at a time as you get it chopped, and let it be softening as you go.

Once the celery is all chopped and has had a chance to soften just a little with the other veggies, add your broth or stock to the pot. Chop your cabbage into quarters, then chop each quarter into thin ribbons and add these to the soup. Finish by adding the Better Than Boullion, and a generous dash of pepper. Tasting the soup is the best guide to how much pepper, but I tend to go heavy on this, because the pepper amps up the vegetable-y flavours in the soup and adds pizzazz. Bring the whole pot to a boil (it's probably a very full pot after all this, so keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't bubble over), then cover it, turn it down to a simmer, and let it cook for a hour or so. Once the cabbage is melting-soft and the flavours have had a chance to meld and get to know each other, dish it out into serving bowls and eat.

Servings: 10-12, maybe more

Hash Browns

2008-10-27T20:37:00.000-07:00

I had these for supper tonight.

Sometimes I just want starch. I posted my easy potato chip recipe when I was on one of these starch binges, and now I'm posting one of my other favorite things to do to an innocent potato. I just can't leave well enough alone.

The thing about hash browns is that they're addictive. They're also kind of ubiquitous: appropriate for breakfast, lunch, supper, or a midnight snack. They go well with cheese, sour cream, even yogurt. Sometime I'll crack an egg on top of them as they finish cooking, to better imitate the throw-it-all-together-and-fry aesthetic of the greasy spoon diners of my youth. Because that's what hash browns are, at their heart: they're a throwback to the days when I was very little, and my dad would take me to breakfast bars run by ancient old short-order cooks who knew all the customers' names by heart, and who knew what you were ordering before you'd sat down at your regular stool. They remind me of giant flat-top griddles with a coffee-pot that lived on one corner of them, a row of hamburger molds across the back for shaping the fried eggs, and a trough across the front for all the scraps and scrapings, so someone could take them home to their pigs at the end of the morning shift.

Hash browns are meant to be greasy, crispy, and satisfying, and these are. Almost. I generally try not to murder my arteries, so I cut out most of the grease by using non-stick pans. They aren't made on a flat-top griddle, because all I've got it my home stove, but they are crispy and satisfying. I'm no ancient short-order cook, so I haven't quite mastered the authentic je ne sais quoi that comes with wielding a spatula for fifty years in front of one of those griddles. But they're still damn good, and they're fast comfort food for me.

Hash Browns

1 russett potato
1/2 tsp olive oil
Cheddar cheese
Salt
Pepper
Optional: Eggs for frying

Use the food processor to grate the potato. Take the potato-bits, and press them between two layers of paper towels to dry them out a bit. If your towels are soaked and the potato still seems really wet, you may want to repeat this process a few times.

Once you've dried your potato appropriately, set a large saute pan over a burner on medium high. Add the potato gratings in piles (I usually do four or five medium-sized piles per potato). Depending on the size of your pan, you may not be able to do the whole thing at once: the goal is to keep the piles pretty well separate from each other, so that they don't steam each other as they cook. Use a spatula to smoosh the piles flat, into hash brown shaped pancakes. Salt these to taste. Let them cook for about two minutes, then add the olive oil and swirl the pan to get it under all the hash browns. Let the hash browns continue to cook, smushing them to the pan occasionally to help them sear, until the pan-side of the hash browns is a deep golden color. By this time you should be able to flip them without them falling apart, so flip them each, and cook the other side in the same manner until it too is deep crispy brown.

Remove the hash browns to a plate, and grate cheddar cheese on top of them to finish them off.

Alternate way to finish off hash browns: once you've completely crisped both sides of your hash brown, crack an egg over the top of it and fry the egg on and into the hash brown. You get an egg that's really satisfyingly crunchy, and if you add cheese on top of the egg, it's kind of the perfect breakfast all in one little pile.

Servings: 1-2, depending mostly on the size of your potato

Honey Oatmeal Bread

2008-10-27T20:18:00.000-07:00

Okay, before you do anything else, go check your yeast. Because if you, like me, tend to neglect the use-by date on yeast packages, you, like me, may get burned with flat bread. It turns out the two-year-old yeast doesn't rise, not at all. And so the first time I made this bread, it turned out to be, well, a brick.

But the second time (this time with fresh yeast) turned out very well indeed. And so here's the recipe. It produces a light, very-faintly-sweet loaf, with a crunchy crust and gorgeous soft crumb. Plus, like all homemade breads, it smells divine while it's cooking. That might be my favorite part of breadmaking: the smell. Sure, it takes a little elbow-grease for the kneading, but when your house smells like bread for the next three days, you tend to forget the effort involved. Just remember to check on the yeast before you start.

Honey Oatmeal Bread

2 cups boiling water
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup honey
2 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons salt
1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast (I used the extra-active variety. If you use regular, double all the rising times I give here.)
4 cups bread flour plus extra for kneading

In a large mixing bowl, combine boiling water, oats, honey, butter and salt. Let stand for 15-20 minutes, then add the extra-active yeast. Add 2 cups of flour; mix well. Stir in the remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time, beating well after each addition. When the dough has pulled together, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 20 minutes. If you're like me, the dough may still be sticky at the beginning of this kneading process. Just keep adding flour as you knead until it stops sticking to everything that touches it, and achieves a proper bread-dough texture. It'll get there eventually. My loaves took anywhere from an additional 1/2 cup of flour to 1 1/2 cups.

Spray cooking spray over a large bowl, place the dough in the bowl and cover it with a damp towel. Let the dough rise in a warm place until doubled in volume. I used my oven for this purpose: use turn it on to as low as it will go, and turn it off again once it hits 150F or so. It will cool down a little, and this will give you a warm dark place for your dough to do its rising in peace. My dough took about 40 minutes for this first rise.

Deflate the dough and turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. Use your kitchen shears to cut the dough into two equal pieces and form loaves. Place the loaves into two lightly greased 9x5 inch loaf pans. Cover them with your damp towel, stick them back in your warm place, and let rise again until they once more double in volume. Mine took 20 minutes this second time. Toward the end of this rising, go ahead and preheat oven to 375F. Obviously, you have to remove the loaves from the oven if you were using it as a rising spot to do the preheating. It won't hurt them at all, just leave them covered with the towel until you're ready to cook them.

Once they've risen, bake the bread at 375F for about 25-30 minutes or until the top is golden brown and the bottom of the loaf sounds hollow when tapped. Remove loaves from pans and sit them on a wire rack to cool before attempting to cut them. I know they smell tempting when they're hot, but they're rather fragile before they cool, and you risk squishing them if you try to cut them too early, so resist for another 15 minutes or so to give them a chance to firm up a little first.

Servings: 2 loaves, or about 20 slices

Potato Chips

2008-10-14T12:30:00.000-07:00

I try to eat healthy, while refusing to sacrifice anything in the area of taste. I am generally very good at finding ways to cut excess fat, sugar, etc out of recipes, and I've trained my taste buds so that I no longer eat ice cream very often, since it now tastes too sweet to me.

Still, in spite of my best intentions, sometimes I just crave potato chips. As in, 'can't do without' cravings. Previously, I would ignore these cravings as best I could, or try to satisfy them with carrots, which, while crunchy, somehow lack that satisfyingly starchy element one gets exclusively from potatoes. What's a health-conscious cook to do?

Make her own, of course! I stumbled on a recipe from fat free vegan kitchen for fast, easy microwave potato chips, which involve no oil whatsoever, and I now reproduce it here in its entirety, along with some tips that I've picked up for better chips.

Potato Chips

1 russet potato (This method might also work with sweet potatoes and other root starches, like rutabagas or turnips, but I haven't tried it yet.)
Salt

The key to making your own potato chips is that miracle of kitchen inventions, the mandoline. Seriously, if you don't have one, get one. In this case, set your mandoline to its thinnest setting and slice your potato with it. If you use the second-thinnest setting, you will end up with very, very thick potato chips, which some people like (myself included), but which take forever to cook.

On your microwave's glass turntable, lay down a piece of parchment and fold the corners under so that the table can still turn. Arrange your potato chips in a single layer on the parchment. You may need to do these in batches; I usually do. Salt the potato chips very lightly. A little salt goes a long way, here. Once this is done, microwave your chips for 5 minutes, keeping an eye on them as you do. When you start to see brown spots in the centers of most of the chips, stop the microwave for one full minute. If you're making thick chips, the brown spots can take longer to appear, up to 8 or 9 minutes. Just be patient. After the minute of resting has elapsed, restart the microwave and nuke the chips for a further 2 minutes, or until all of them appear nicely browned but not burned.

Servings: 2, but I usually eat them all myself.

Yam Biscuits

2008-10-10T17:15:00.001-07:00

These are light and fluffy and just the faintest hint of sweet: perfect for making biscuit sandwiches with some of the fresh roasted chicken from yesterday. Supper today was two chicken biscuits and some green beans: simple, but really good.

I think a good biscuit recipe or two is something every cook worth their salt should have under their belt, so here's one of my favorites.

Yam Biscuits
Adapted from Orangette

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 Tbs light-brown sugar
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
6 Tbs chilled unsalted butter
3/4 cup chilled sweet potato puree (Read: peeled, boiled, and pureed sweet potatoes. To avoid all the hassle, buy a tin of yams in the tinned foods section of your grocery store.)
1/3 cup buttermilk

In a large bowl, Start by whisking all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl: 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, 2 Tbs light-brown sugar, 2 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp salt, and 1/2 tsp baking soda. Using a pastry cutter, cut in 6 Tbs chilled unsalted butter, until the whole mixture resembles coarse meal, with some pea-size lumps of butter remaining. In a small bowl, use the pastry cutter again to pulverize your yams into puree, then stir in the 1/3 cup buttermilk. Stir the wet ingredients quickly into the dry ingredients until combined (do not overmix). I usually do this mixing with my hands, which will get dough all over them, but which I find is gentler than electric mixers for this.

Set the oven to preheat to 425F, then turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface, and knead very gently until dough comes together. A few remaining lumps are okay, but you shouldn't see individual chunks of butter or anything. If the dough is too sticky, work in more flour, until it achieves the proper consistency. Needing to add flour is common: the dough is right when it doesn't stick to your fingers anymore. It's too wet if you're still having sticking problems. Shape the dough into a circle, and pat it to an even 1-inch thickness. With a biscuit cutter, cut out biscuits as close together as possible. Arrange the biscuits on a baking sheet sprayed with non-stick baking spray (the kind that has flour in it). Once you've gotten as many biscuits out of the circle as you can, gather up the scraps and repeat the process to cut out more biscuits until you've used all the dough. I usually just give up and roll the last few into little balls then press them flat to save time.

Bake the biscuits for 20 minutes or until they turn golden. I usually turn the pan around once during the cooking time; it's not necessary but it's a nice touch. If in doubt about the biscuits' doneness, test one by opening it with a fork and examining the center. It should be moist but not doughy. If the biscuit isn't done, just stick it back together and put it in to bake for another few minutes.

Servings: 12 large biscuits, or 20 small ones

Not a recipe

2008-10-10T11:43:00.000-07:00

And then there were three.

Roast Chicken

2008-10-09T09:11:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, I dared myself to eat for $15 a week. I wasn't entirely sure when I decided to try it that it could be done, but it turns out that it's not so hard. The secret? Roast chicken.

A small whole chicken (3-4 pounds, a fryer hen) is ridiculously economical meat. I can get them at my local store for about $4.50. Roasted, they're enough to feed me dinner for three or four days, and they produce really useful byproducts: namely chicken stock and leftover bits of meat that I use for chicken salads. I've already given my chicken noodle soup recipe, and I'm somewhat shocked that I didn't give my roast recipe at that time, but since today I roasted a hen and it turned out beautifully, it's clearly time to remedy that oversight.

A good roast chicken is lovely to behold. Golden brown and juicy, I've always thought it's an almost formal-looking dish: a Thanksgiving turkey in miniature. Roasted properly, it's also lovely to taste, with a perfect moist-but-not-too-moist texture and a delicately herb infused flavour that I find difficult to achieve by any other method. Combine these succulent selling points with the fact that a single roast chicken easily can be stretched into meals for a week (two or three nights of plain chicken and some veggies, two or three nights of chicken noodle soup, two or three nights of hot chicken salad), it's a bird that more cooks should learn to lean on.

This method for roasting was cobbled together from various sources, most memorably the Zuni Cafe Cookbook's famous bird, and Barbara Kafka's Julia Child Cookbook Award-winning method.

Roast Chicken

1 whole chicken (3-4 lbs is perfect, but up to 6 lbs is fine)
Salt (1 tbsp per 4 lbs of bird)
Baking soda (use the same amount of baking soda as you do salt, so if you've got a 4 lb bird, use 1 tbsp of each)
1/2 cup fresh rosemary
1/2 cup fresh thyme

Begin the day before you plan to actually cook the bird. Extract the giblets and neck from the body of the bird (save these in a pot nearby and use them to make stock), and rinse the whole thing thoroughly. Using paper towels, dry the chicken completely both inside and out. Use your fingers to loosen the skin over the breast and thighs. Mix the salt and baking soda together, and rub the mixture evenly over the bird. Sit the salted-and-sodaed bird on a rack and put it back in the fridge to wait until the next day. I know that a lot of cooks aren't big on prep that needs to take place the day before, but let me tell you, this is worth it. It's essential. The salt soaks into the bird and gives it amazing flavour, and the baking soda dries out the skin so you get the coveted crisp, crackly skin that cookbook covers envy. Plus it cuts way down on the prep time for the day you cook the bird.

Once you've refrigerated your chicken, it's time to make stock. Fill a soup pot with water and toss in the giblets and neck. Add a handfull of baby carrots, some of the tough stems of brocolli, the dark green tops of leeks that you never use, etc. Boil this for a few hours, then strain it through cheesecloth and skim the fat off the top. Save the fat as seasoning if you like, but certainly save the stock. You can use it with leftover bits of the chicken meat to make soup.

The next day, begin by preheating your oven to 450F. Remove chicken and rack from the fridge, and turn the chicken over so that the breast is pointed down towards the rack. Using a sharp knife, cut a few slits across the bottom of the chicken (the side currently facing up). This will allow the fat to drain off more effectively, and will help you achieve the perfect skin. Stuff your herbs into the cavity of the upside down chicken, then place chicken and rack in a roasting pan, and stick it in the oven for 25 minutes. Remove it from the oven, and use two spatulas to turn it over so that the breast faces the top. I advise spatulas in lieu of tongs, because tongs have the anoying tendency to rip the skin, which is not the desired result. Spatulas are gentler. Once you've flipped your bird so that the breast side is facing up, sprinkle pepper on top and replace the ckicken in the oven for another 25 minutes, or until the chicken reaches an internal temperature of 140F. Raise the oven temperature to 500F, and cook for another 15 minutes, or until the internal temperature hits 165F. Remove the bird from the oven, and allow it to cool for 10 minutes before cutting it so that the juices get a chance to redistribute themselves.

A note about cooking at 500F: this temperature is high enough to burn all the dripped bits out of the bottom of your oven. As such, you may want to run your stove-top fan, and keep an eye on the bird to see if you need to open a window, because it may smoke a little. i've never yet had a bird catch fire, so I'm convinced this method is very safe, but because you're essentially cleaning the bottom of your oven by doing this, you may get smoke from some of the drips heating up.

Servings: 6-8, plus stock.

Southern Egg Rolls with Peach-Red Pepper Chutney

2008-10-03T19:25:00.000-07:00

A few months back, my parents went on vacation to Charleston, South Carolina and ate at a restaurant there called Magnolias, which is famous for its 'Southern Fusion' cuisine: southern-style takes on dishes from all over the world. Dad came back raving about the appetizer he'd had, a southern-style egg roll with a peach chutney on top. The idea sounded intriguing: substitute collard greens for the cabbage in an egg roll, and use Southern staple meats (chicken, ham, tasso). The chutney sounded amazing, and the ingredients in the egg roll didn't sound difficult. But I'm not one for frying, so I forgot about the egg rolls for a while.

Fast forward to three weeks ago. I was browsing through the cookbooks at my local Books-a-million. I'd been captivated by the plating in a cookbook by Morimoto (yes, the Iron Chef), and I still want to try the recipe for vegan mac-and-cheese in a Moosewood cookbook. But while browsing the regional cuisines shelf, I noticed that Magnolias had put out a cookbook, and lo and behold, there in a place of honor was the recipe for the egg rolls. "Well, that looks easy," I thought. "It's all ingredients I should be able to find around here, and none of the techniques look tough." But I still wasn't a fan of frying. So the egg rolls kind of percolated in the back of my mind for a few weeks, and today when I went grocery shopping, I swore to try them before the season for peaches went out. The key to my change of heart was a blog recipe I found for baked egg rolls, a genius invention that eliminated all the downsides I had been worrying about with this recipe.

They were amazing. They're very very good, a combination of chewy and crisp, earthy and light, with a dash of sweetness from the chutney holding everything together and making it sing. Seriously, don't make this without the chutney. It is the je ne sais quoi that makes this recipe work. I'll be making these again and again, not just for dad, but because I think I'm in love too.

Southern Egg Rolls with Peach-Red Pepper Chutney

Egg Rolls:

1/2 minced large vidalia onion
2-3 cloves minced garlic
1/2 lb chicken breast, cut into thin strips
1 lb kale or collard greens, uncooked (I use kale, but I'll try collards next time, because I think their stronger flavour will pair well with the chutney)
10 egg roll wrappers
1 tbsp cornstarch
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper

Begin by preheating the oven to 425F.

Wash the greens thoroughly, and wilt them in a saucepan over medium-high heat with a teeny dash of olive oil, just enough to keep them from sticking to the pan. When they're wilted, slide them out of the pan and onto a cutting board, then chop them into thin, short ribbons. Once they've been chopped, slide them onto folded paper towels, place another folded paper towel on top, and press as much moisture as you can out of the greens. Then transfer them to a colander and use your paper towels to mash them against the sides of the colander, to get even more moisture out. Leave them in the colander to drain while you finish the rest of the filling preparations. Sprinkle some salt over the draining greens to help them remove water, and to season them.

Mince the onion and slide it into the saucepan to saute over medium-high heat. When the onion is just beginning to brown, add the garlic and cook until the onion has caramelized. Reserve the onion and garlic in a medium-sized bowl, and use the same saucepan to cook the chicken, again, using only a teeny dash of olive oil to keep it from sticking. When the chicken is done all the way through and slightly browned, slide it out of the pan and onto the cutting board, where you can chop it into bite-sized strips. Add it to the onion and garlic, then dump in the greens. Use your hands to mix these ingredients thoroughly.

At this point, all the egg roll fillings are finished and you're ready to roll your wrappers. Do not begin rolling, however, until you've started your chutney over heat. Go chop all the stuff for that, then come back to this. Ready? Good.

Set a paper towel over your cutting board to help keep it dry. In a small dish, mix the tbsp of cornstarch with an equal amount of water, and stir until it has no lumps. Place an egg roll wrapper on the towel with one corner facing down, so that it looks like a diamond instead of a square. Brush the edges with the cornstarch mixture, to help them stick. Using a 1/4 cup measuring cup, scoop out a heaping 1/4 cup of filling and place it in the middle of the diamond. Arrange the filling into a thick horizontal line between the right and left corner of the diamond. Fold the bottom corner of the diamond upwards, to form a sort of pouch over the filling. Fold the right and left corners each a small way in, just enough to cover the filling (so that the roll takes on a long, thinnish shape). Finish by rolling the egg roll towards the top. Repeat until you've use all your filling (I usually get between seven and ten egg rolls out of this, depending on how much greens I'm using).

Take a baking sheet, and spray it with non-stick spray. Place the egg rolls evenly on the sheet, seam side down, and then spray the tops with the non-stick spray. Bake for 6-7 minutes on one side, then turn them over, spray the other side with cooking spray, and bake for 6-7 more minutes to finish. Serve while hot, with chutney on the side for dipping.

Because they're baked instead of fried, these tend to reheat pretty well in a toaster oven for lunch the next day, if you manage to have leftovers.

Servings: 2-3 if you use them as a meal like I do and everyone eats several, or 8-10 if you use them as appetizers and everyone eats only one.

Peach-Red Pepper Chutney

1 large, or two small peaches, peeled and minced (If you're using frozen peaches, go for about 1 1/2 cups)
1/2 vidalia onion, minced
1/2 red bell pepper, minced
1 tbsp fresh ginger, grated
Slightly less than 1/4 cup light brown sugar (I use a 1/4 cup measuring cup, but don't quite fill it all the way)
Slightly less than 1/4 cup regular sugar
2 tbsp cider vinegar

Add all ingredients together in a saucepan over medium heat and stir until they're mixed. Turn the heat down to medium-low (on my stove, this is a very thin boil) and cook for 20-30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the chutney thickens and achieves a syrupy consistency. While it's cooking, go roll your egg rolls and let those cook. At first, the chutney will get more liquidy instead of less, since the sugar will encourage the peaches to release their juices, but eventually it will thicken back up. Use it immediately, or cool it to room temperature and refrigerate. It should keep 2-3 weeks in the fridge.

Note: If you're using fresh peaches, go for slightly underripe ones. The ones your grocery store sells are probably perfect. If you use fully ripe ones, they'll lose their consistency during cooking and get mushy.

Servings: see above, with the egg rolls.

Lemon Dill Tilapia

2008-09-26T14:15:00.000-07:00

After a productive August, September has been so drab. The two recipes I've given are good, but it's only two. Sigh. Perhaps I shouldn't set my goals so high. When you're like me and eat leftovers for literally a week after you cook, seven recipes in a month is an accomplishment.

Anyway, here's a recipe I tried recently and liked. The best thing about this is that while it tastes good and is remarkably forgiving (I left it in the oven for seven minutes longer than it should be, oops!), it only takes about three minutes to make. If you're slow about chopping things. The toughest part about this is remembering to set the fish out to thaw beforehand. Also, conveniently, this recipe doesn't produce enough leftovers to last for weeks. I'll only be eating it for a few days, and it's good enough that leftovers won't be a chore at all.

The actual fish is very good. I don't poach things often, but this is poached in dill-infused lemon juice and parchment, and the texture is wonderful. The flavour is very lemony, but while it's strong, I didn't find it overwhelming. In fact, I liked it more than usual, because I'm not a big fan of 'fishy' tasting fish. I like my fish delicate and sweet, or steaky, like young flounder for the former or salmon for the latter. Tilapia is just not my favorite fish, even if it's cheap. This recipe doesn't talk down to the tilapia, but it also doesn't let the tilapia run away with the show.

Lemon-dill Tilapia

1 1/2 lemons, sliced
2 tilapia fillets (To buy fresh tilapia, look for fillets that are reddish, not brownish. Brownish means old.)
10 -15 baby carrots, chopped into little circles
2 tbsp fresh dill
1 tbsp paprika
1 tbsp unsalted butter
Salt
Pepper

Thaw the fish first, if frozen. Preheat the oven to 375F.

Cut parchment paper into two 13x9 rectangles. Don't worry about the dimensions much, you just need enough to be able to wrap a fillet in each. Place three lemon slices in the center of each rectangle, and sit a fillet on top of them. Sprinkle salt and pepper over each fillet. Add the remaining lemon slices to the top of each fillet, and sprinkle both fillets evenly with carrots, dill, and paprika. Top each fillet with 1/2 tbsp butter. Fold the parchment over the fish, and tuck the ends of each parchment packet under to keep it closed. Sit both parchment packets on a baking sheet to eliminate any mess in the oven.

Bake at 375F for 20 - 25 minutes or until the fish is done. The timing on this is really forgiving, you won't get overdone fish even if you leave it in for a half hour. Serve immediately.

Servings: 2-3

Ithaca Potato-Cheese Soup

2008-09-17T10:18:00.001-07:00

After August was a productive month, September has been sadly the opposite. It's mostly the fault of a huge batch of Mexican Minestrone I made fairly early in the month. I didn't like it enough to post here, but there was so much of it that I haven't cooked anything much since, because I had to eat the leftovers. I hate it when that happens: a recipe turns out to produce more than you think it will, but doesn't taste as good as you'd hoped, so that you're stuck eating the sub-par remains for longer than you'd like. Anyway, it's gone now, and to celebrate (because I deserved a reward after all that), I made this soup instead. I can't really believe I hadn't put it on here yet; it's one of my fall staples (I guess I haven't been writing this for a year yet, so maybe I'm just coming around to my fall recipes).

I lived in Ithaca, NY for years, a town best known to many culinary afficiandoes as the home of the Moosewood Restaurant, perhaps the most famous exclusively vegetarian restaurant in the world. I ate at the Moosewood on a semi-regular basis, and loved it: the fun, unpretentious atmosphere; the generally knowledgeable and always friendly waitstaff; and most of all, the appreciation for genuinely delicious vegetarian cooking. The Moosewood always cooked balls-to-the-wall, with no apologies for their vegetarian ethos and no sacrifices on the flavour end for health.

Naturally (much like the Zuni cafe), I felt compelled to attempt to replicate some of their recipes for myself. Luckily (again, like Zuni), the Moosewood publishes a Beard-winning cookbook to help me. The funny thing was, as I began to look over their recipes, I saw places where some of my favorites could be streamlined: butter cut out and portioning easily extended with no cuts in the flavour or quality of the recipe. So naturally, I fiddled. You saw that coming, didn't you?

This is the result, a guiltless take on the Moosewood's Potato-Cheese soup par excellence. I've managed to cut the calories nearly in half, with the help of non-stick cookware and cornstarch, so that this version has fewer calories than, say, a Lean Pocket, and tastes about a million times better. Like the Moosewood's famous incarnation of its predecessor, it's still decadently creamy, and it still practically melts in your mouth. Much like the Root Soup that was one of my very first recipes on this blog, this soup takes advantage of the fact that boiled starches puree into something altogether blissful: velvetty smooth and full of deep, earthy flavour. Then, this soup goes one further and adds cheese to the mix, one of my favorite foods! When I was a kid, I would insist on Mother re-crisping my potato skins and adding cheddar to the top of them, just because those two tastes were clearly meant to go together. This soup is a very grown-up, very good-for-you spin on the exact same concept. I always feel like I'm getting away with something when I eat it. Or maybe I'm getting away to somewhere. It takes me back to fall days in Ithaca, when the gorges roared outside my open window and the leaves melted into a riot of colors. Those were laughing days, joyful days, some of the best days of my life. This is a soup that tastes like that.

Ithaca Potato-Cheese Soup

1 tbsp unsalted butter
2 cups onions, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
2 russet potatoes, skin on, chopped into 1 inch cubes (Or, and this is even better, you can substitute 1 1/4 lb fingerling potatoes instead. If you can get them fresh, just out of the ground, or especially if you grow your own, the flavour is AMAZING)
1 carrot, chopped
4 cups water or vegetable stock (go with the stock if you can. It adds a little je ne sais quoi)
1 tsp dill (or more, to taste)
1 1/2 cups skim milk
4 ounces of light cream cheese
1 cup sharp or extra-sharp cheddar cheese, grated (Find the best quality cheese that you can. You want a ton of flavour from it, since the stronger its personality, the more you'll feel it in the soup. I generally go for a local, farm-aged cheese here that far outstrips the generic supermarket brands. Trust me, it's worth the extra money)
Salt
Pepper
Optional: 1 tsp ancho chile powder, or more to taste

In a large non-stick soup pot, sauté the onions and garlic in the butter over medium-high heat until the onions are translucent. You may not even need the full tablespoon of butter: I usually use only the bare minimum here, to keep things from drying out too much. Add the potatoes and carrots, then the stock or water and dill and simmer for 20 minutes, or until the potatoes are soft all the way through. Test one with a fork to make sure.

Puree the vegetables with the cream cheese and milk in a food processor. Work slowly, and only fill the food processor 1/3 full each time (hot foods can explode out it if you fill it too full!). Return the soup to the soup pot after it's been pureed. Taste the soup, and season appropriately with salt and pepper. If you're feeling adventurous, add a dash of ancho chile pepper (I use 1 tsp, then taste it and add more as needed) for a piquant Southwestern spin on this soup. Stir in the cheddar cheese and reheat gently, stirring until the cheddar is melted and incorporated smoothly into the soup.

Serve immediately, and garnish each cup or bowl with chopped fresh parsley or chives if you're serving guests.

Servings: 6-8

Sour Cream Pound Cake

2008-09-03T13:26:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I baked, but my grandmother's (dad's side) birthday was a few days ago, so I made her a pound cake to take to the party. I don't know if it's only the South where birthdays are always potluck, but that's how I grew up. The cake received rave reviews, so I thought I'd post it here. This is pretty much an heirloom recipe, passed down from my mother's mother to her, and then from her to me. Believe it or not, it's one of the few I didn't mess with (that much) when I made it. It's like the Old Faithful of cakes, not too fancy, but extremely dependable. It's also made of stuff I've usually got lying around, so if I need to make a cake and don't want to make a grocery trip, this is one I come back to.

This is one you should feel free to mess with, by adding stuff like raspberries or blueberries to the batter, or even chocolate chips (yum!). Just toss in whatever floats your boat right before you fold in the eggs, and fold them in together.

Sour Cream Pound Cake

1 cup unsalted butter, softened
3 cups sugar
6 eggs, separated
1/4 tsp baking soda
3 cup sifted flour (yes, the sifted part is important)
1 cup sour cream
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Optional: 2 or 3 tsp lemon extract
Optional: Zest of 1 lemon

Preheat oven to 300F.

Cream the softened butter and the sugar together in a large bowl (the large bowl is important). Add the egg yolks one at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl as the mixer runs to make sure the yolks get evenly distributed. Add the flour and sour cream alternately to the creamed mixture (1/3 flour, 1/2 sour cream, 1/3 flour, 1/2 sour cream, remainder of flour). Add the vanilla extract, and if you're making a lemon pound cake, add the lemon stuff here too. If you're making lemon, be sure to taste it after you've beat in the extract and zest. You may want to add more extract to taste, depending on how strong you like your cake. Remove the large mixing bowl from the mixer.

Using a medium mixing bowl, beat the egg whites until they form stiff peaks. The stiffer the better, in this case, you want them to stay fluffy even after they're folded into the rest of the batter. When you've got peaks, fold the egg whites into the other batter using very gentle motions. Only fold enough to incorporate the whites, don't over-mix this. You want as much air in here still as possible.

Gently pour the mixture into a greased and floured tube pan, and bake at 300F for 1 1/2 hrs. Once the oven is closed, leave it that way, and if possible leave the kitchen. Pound cakes have a reputation for falling, and this one won't if it's not mistreated, but it's best to minimize large vibrations around it anyway, because that gets you the fluffiest possible cake. So no kids running through, no shouting, and no opening the oven door. When it's finished, it should have a nice brown crust on top. Remove the cake from the oven, and let it stand for 15 minutes before running a knife gently around the edge of the pan, then inverting it onto a wire cooling rack. This cake has nice longevity; the longer it's kept the moister it gets, so don't be afraid of making it a few days beforehand. Just stick it in the fridge, and it'll be fine. I usually serve it with handmade whipped cream, and some sort of berries (strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, whatever's in season).

Servings: 10-12, more if you eat small slices

Cashew Chicken Curry

2008-08-29T20:56:00.000-07:00

Wow, August has been a productive month for me. Maybe I'm making up for all the recipes I didn't post over the rest of the summer. No doubt I'll slack off again soon, as school has begun. But for today, here's a new one that I think I'll be returning to frequently.

I love curries. There's a Thai place about fifteen minutes away that makes an excellent chicken curry, and I've always liked their stuff. Unfortunately, my own attempts at curry had never quite seemed right. Until I (on my current low-cal kick) stumbled across a WeightWatchers recipe that promised to taste great, and seemed pretty healthy to boot. Me being me, I took it and twisted it, adding my own stuff and changing proportions.

It was fabulous. This was curry the way I liked it, and now I can make it at home in large quantities. Because this recipe certainly makes a very large quantity! I'll be eating curry for supper for the rest of the week, but I don't mind. It has a whole lot of my favorite stuff in it (Cashews! I love cashews!), and it's just the right amount of heat with an underlying hint of sweetness. I'm betting this one goes into regular rotation on my menu.

This recipe could very easily be made vegetarian by just leaving out the chicken. It has enough veggies in it that it will still seem chunky and full. You could also substitute tofu cubes for the chicken. This is an especially good recipe for tofu, since the tofu absorbs the curry flavour deliciously during the recipe's simmering time. I've made it both ways, and it's good any way you choose.

Cashew Chicken Curry

2 tbsp unsalted butter
1 large sweet onion, diced
1 thumb fresh ginger, peeled and minced
2 large cloves garlic, minced (or three smaller cloves)
1-3 tbsp red curry paste
1 tsp cumin
1 lb chicken tenders, cut into bite sized pieces (chicken breasts work too, whatever you've got on hand)
28 oz can diced tomatoes, undrained
1 lb baby carrots, chopped
8 oz baby bella mushrooms, torn into chunks
1 tbsp fresh oregano
2 tbsp fresh thyme
1 tbsp fresh rosemary
1/4 cup very finely chopped cashews (think dust), plus extra cashews for sprinkling over the top
1 cup nonfat vanilla yogurt
1 can coconut milk (14 oz)
1/2 lb frozen peas
Salt
Pepper

In a large soup pot or dutch oven, melt 1 tbsp of butter over medium-high heat. Add the onions, garlic, and ginger, and saute until the onions are translucent but haven't yet begun to brown. Add the chicken, and keep a close eye on your pot (especially if you're using a soup pot instead of a dutch oven) to make sure that nothing sticks. Add the other tbsp of butter if necessary to prevent stickage. Stirring frequently, let the chicken pieces cook all the way through. Add the tomatoes, the carrots, and the mushrooms. Stir to make sure everything gets mixed together, and bring to a simmer. Add in the curry paste, the cumin, the oregano, the thyme, and the rosemary. Stir until the curry paste has completely dissolved in the liquids from the tomatoes. Taste it, then add salt and pepper as necessary.

A word on the curry paste: I personally used three very heaping teaspoons, and the resulting curry was only barely spicy. My roommate, who is sensitive to hot foods and dislikes them, pronounced it perfect. The key when first adding the curry is to remember that you will later be adding the coconut milk and the yogurt, both of which will cut down the spicy flavor, and you will be serving over rice, which will also mitigate the spicyness. So to get appropriately spicy curry, you actually need to make it hotter than you think you will enjoy at this step. It'll tone down later, trust me. But add more curry (at least a heaping teaspoon more, and even more than that if you really like things hot) than you think you need here, or you'll end up surprised by the mildness at the end. Do not be shy.

Bring the whole thing to a boil, then turn the heat down, cover the pot and let the mixture simmer for 25-30 min. It can go as long as 45 min if you get caught up doing something else, this simmering is not exact science. When you're ready, remove the cover and dump in the frozen peas, then turn the heat back up under the pot to bring it to a simmer again. Add the cashews, the yogurt, and the can of coconut milk, then stir. If you like your curry a little thicker, you can let it reduce for a few minutes, stirring slowly, but I usually just eat mine as is. Serve over rice, topped generously with cashew halves for crunch.

Servings: 8-10. This makes a pretty large pot. Curries are really good for leftovers, though, since the flavors blend and actually improve over time. You might like it better the second day than the first!

Hot Roasted Red Pepper Hummus

2008-08-27T17:37:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, there was a running contest in our house: the kid who could find the hottest hot sauce and bring a sample of it home for my father would win $5. Your hot sauce would be diligently compared to the previous reigning winner, and it quickly became very difficult to find a sauce that would make the grade. My father loved spicy foods. (For the record, the current winner is a "psycho" grade sauce from a restaurant in Orlando, Florida. We brought it home in a styrofoam cup, but almost immediately had to transfer it to a plastic bottle because the sauce ate through the cup.)

I personally never caught the hot foods bug, though. To this day, while I love my curries well enough, I've never gone in for the burn-your-mouth southwestern style of cooking. Mexico can keep its chipotles and habaneros, I certainly don't like them.

But today I decided to try a recipe that promised to jazz up hummus, and I like hummus enough that I was willing to be jazzed. Even if it involved peppers. To make it even more promising, the hummus in question would let me make use of the red and yellow bell peppers that my tiny kitchen garden has just started to produce. I was sold. Bring on the hummus.

And it turns out, I like it! So here's the recipe, one of the rare and elusive hot food recipes from Joye.

Hot Roasted Red Pepper Hummus

1 can chickpeas (15 oz), drained
2 red bell peppers (I use peppers from my garden, so I use 4 very small peppers)
1 tsp chipotle in adobo (more if you like it really spicy, leave it out if you hate heat in your food)
3 cloves garlic, chopped into chunks
2 tbsp parsley
1 tbsp oregano
1 tbsp basil
1 tsp paprika
¼ medium onion, rough chopped
2 tsp cumin
3 tbsp lemon juice
Nonstick grilling spray (olive oil spray also works)
(Optional) 1 cup shredded parmesan, loosely packed
Pepper
Salt

Remove the seeds from the bell peppers. Spray a nonstick pan with grilling spray and sit it over medium-high heat. Lay the bell peppers in the pan skin-side-down, and roast them until the skin develops black spots. While the peppers are roasting, chop the onion and garlic. When the peppers are done, chop them into chunks to make it easier on your food processor. Add all the ingredients except the salt and pepper (and the cheese, if you're using it) to the food processor, and process until smooth. Taste and season (warning: season carefully, because a little salt goes a long way in hummus. Be conservative about your salt additions). If you need more moisture, add water, or if you like your hummus a little smoother, add a hint of olive oil to smooth it out. This is the point to dump in the cheese if that's your thing. Process again to mix in the new additions, taste, and serve. It’s good warm, room temp, or cool. I serve with carrots or snow peas for dipping, but toasted pita triangles are good too.

Servings: 10-15. This makes a LOT more than you’d think it does. One can of chickpeas goes a long way.

Baba Ghanouj

2008-08-27T17:29:00.000-07:00

I’ve been on a dip streak lately, so one I’m posting a recipe for baba ghanouj (that spelling… every person I meet spells this dip differently!) that I adapted from a college friend of mine. She was in the hospitality school at our university to become a chef, and our dorm served as her willing guinea pigs. This is a version of her recipe, cut back a little on the lemon juice and with the addition of the mint. What can I say, I like mint. I also like almonds, so even though it’s probably heresy to any actual middle eastern person, I sometimes chop those and add them too. Added bonus: this dip is both absurdly low-cal, and vegan. I've been trying to eat less meat lately (meat is expensive!), so a veggie-only dip is good for me.

Baba Ghanouj

1 eggplant
3 cloves garlic
1/8 cup lemon juice (Give or take. I usually just fill a ¼ cup measure about half full, so it’s never exact.)
1 heaping tbsp tahini
1 tsp ground cumin
(Optional) ½ tsp fresh mint (my plant is peppermint, so I use that, but it doesn’t matter)
(Optional) ¼ cup finely chopped almonds (the “finely” here is important. Your food processor will NOT appreciate large pieces of almonds.)
Salt
Pepper

Preheat the oven to 430F and slice the eggplant into ½ inch thick slices. Spray a baking tray with nonstick grilling spray (the grilling spray takes more heat; normal nonstick spray will burn) and arrange the eggplant in a single layer on the tray. For extra reassurance, you can spray both sides of each eggplant slice with the grilling spray too. Bake the eggplant for 30-40 minutes or until the middle of all the slices have sunk down and turned softly brown. Remove the eggplant from the oven and use a paring knife to peel each slice. Chop the garlic into chunks. Dump the slices into a food processor and add the lemon juice, tahini, cumin, salt, pepper, and any other additives you may like to the processor as well. Process until smooth (this may take a while, especially for the eggplant seeds), scraping down the sides of the processor once or twice to make sure that all the bits get chopped up. Serve chilled or room temperature, with veggies or toasted pita slices. I like carrots and sweet peas for dipping, but supposedly broccoli, cauliflower, and celery are good too.

Servings: 8-10

Gourmet Green Bean Casserole

2008-08-21T14:32:00.001-07:00

When I was a kid, all my mother's relatives would come over to my house a week before Christmas. My grandma and grandpa, and the aunt after whom I was named would move in for a week and a half. We kids would give up our beds and move to sleeping bags or an air mattress, and would watch with barely-concealed glee as the piles of presents under the tree grew larger. Christmas day meant opening presents, and after all the presents were opened, it meant about eight straight hours of cooking. My mother, aunt, and grandmother would take over our kitchen and cook like they were feeding armies, gossiping all the while.

You see, the women in my family are a long line of culinary tradition. My mother was a home economics teacher when she was younger, and she learned food science as a part of her degree. My aunt was a chef in her youth, and my grandmother catered weddings before my mother was born, and still manages a weekly Sunday night supper for her church. I actually get it from both sides: my father's mother ran a pastry shop and catering business for years. So I guess it wasn't a surprise when I turned out to have a passion for good food.

But back to Christmas dinner. We had the same thing every year: turkey roasted to a gorgeous golden-brown, my grandmother's addictive secret dressing (I've got the recipe written down somewhere, I'll have to remember to put it in this blog the next time I make it), white gravy for the dressing, sweet potato casserole with brown sugar and nuts, red salad with fruit and jello, green beans with almonds, and two pies for dessert: pumpkin for most of us, and pecan for my aunt, who hated pumpkin.

It was the height of a traditional dinner, but there was one thing that our family never made: green bean casserole. The canned ingredients and gooey texture were anathema to these three cooks, so our green beans were always prepared simply, mixed in with some sliced almonds for texture. As a child, I think I was sixteen, and spending Thanksgiving with a boyfriend's family, before I ever tasted the bastion of holiday dinners that is the green bean casserole.

Now, my boyfriend's mother was not a cook, but she tried valiantly on holidays. Still, the meal was not memorable, and for several years, I forgot about the green bean casserole. Imagine my surprise when it turned up as a dish in our dorm's communal Thanksgiving dinner when I got to college. My dorm friends had to explain to me that green bean casserole was a perennial Thanksgiving dish, answering my questions of "But why?" with the indefeatable "Because."

And so I began to consider green bean casserole. It seemed like an obvious candidate for dressing up, much like the "Take ordinary, typically bad food and make something special" challenges on Top Chef. The idea was good: beans and onions, with some mushrooms and a little crunch. I remained unsatisfied with my makeover efforts, though, until I discovered a recipe online for a take on green bean casserole that looked like it had possibilities. Still, I wouldn't be me if I didn't love to fiddle with peoples' perfectly good recipes, so I altered it a little, tossed in some cheese on a whim, cut the chopping time by using frozen beans, that sort of thing. And here it is, the green bean casserole that's fancy enough for me to make on Christmas.

Gourmet Green Bean Casserole

1 1/2 lbs green beans, frozen
3 cloves garlic
1/2 lb (8 oz) baby bella mushrooms (shitake work also)
1 SMALL pinch ancho chile powder
3/4 cup chicken stock (broth works also)
2 tbsp flour
1 tbsp dry sherry or white wine
1/2 cup whipping cream
1/4 cup Jarlsberg cheese, finely grated (gruyere works also)
1 1/2 slices whole wheat bread
1/2 can french fried onions
1 tbsp margerine or butter substitute
Salt
Pepper

Preheat oven to 400F.

Begin by boiling a pot of water with 1 tbsp salt in it. I know, it seems like a lot, but it's right, trust me. The beans don't absorb much, so don't be shy. Add the frozen beans when the water boils, then bring the pot back to a boil and let the beans cook for 5-10 minutes until they're tender but not wilting. Drain in a colander and run cool water over them to stop the cooking process, then let them sit while you finish the rest of the recipe.

Wash your mushrooms and tear them into pieces (tearing gives a nice textural contrast to the machine-sliced 'shrooms in canned casseroles). Throw them in a pan with a teeny dash of olive oil, and let them saute over medium-high heat while you dice your garlic. Add the garlic to the pan when you get done with it, along with a little salt, some pepper, and the pinch of chile powder.

While the mushrooms are cooking, whisk the flour into your chicken stock, making sure there are no lumps. When the mushrooms are golden brown and beginning to render their juices, add the stock to the pan along with the sherry or wine. Turn the heat on the burner down to medium and stir until the sauce thickens (this should happen pretty quickly, so keep an eye on it). When it's thick, add the cream and the Jarlsberg to the pan and stir to mix. Stir occasionally until this mixture thickens.

When you've got a nice thick cream sauce, add the beans into the pan and mix the whole thing together. Sit the pan off the heat for a moment while you make the topping.

To make the topping, pulse the bread and the margerine together in a food processor until it turns into moist little crumbs. Dump these out into a bowl, and add the fried onions to them, then use your hands to mix the onions and bread crumbs together.

To assemble the whole casserole, get a medium-large casserole dish and pour in the bean-mushroom mixture from the pan, spreading it into an even layer. Sprinkle the breadcrumb-onion mix on evenly top. Bake at 400F for 15 minutes. Keep an eye on this, and take the casserole out when the topping turns a deep golden brown, but before it burns. Serve immediately.

Servings: 8-10.

Chicken noodle soup

2008-08-19T09:38:00.000-07:00

I had roasted a chicken, and had plenty of left-over chicken bits that I needed to do something with. To be precise, I had half a breast, a thigh, a wing, and a leg. The obvious solution was to make chicken soup.

This is best if you think a little bit ahead of time when you're prepping your chicken. If you're sectioning the chicken (I always do a ten-piece section, but to each his own), take the backbone and giblets and boil them in a large pot of water with some veggie bits (save the ends of your leeks, maybe toss in some baby carrots, whatever you've got and don't really need) and spices for a couple of hours to make stock. That will save you money, since you won't have to buy stock, and it'll taste better anyway. If you aren't sectioning your chicken, just use boxed stock.

What type of noodles you use is also up to you. I used the 'dumpling' noodles that come in large bags, since they were on sale. But any type of pasta is good, so just throw in whatever you've got on hand.

Chicken Noodle Soup

1/2 medium sweet onion (or 1/4 large onion), diced
1 1/2 tbsp unsalted butter
1 leek
15-30 baby carrots, sliced into little circles
Chicken, torn into bit-sized chunks (I never measure how much chicken I use, since it's mainly determined by how much I've got left over. It doesn't really matter, just use what you've got)
Stock (Again, I never measure this, since it's mainly determined by whether I made stock when I sectioned the chicken. Just have enough to fill the pot to a comfortable level.)
1 cube beef boullion
1 cube chicken boullion
Fresh thyme and oregano, wrapped together into a little sachet
Noodles

Begin by melting the butter over medium heat in a large soup pot. When it's melted, add the onion, and let the onion soften for 5 minutes or so. While the onion is cooking, slice the leek by cutting off the end and the dark leaves, then slicing it length-wise once and into 1/4 inch thick semicircles. When the onion has turned translucent and is right on the edge starting to caramelize, add the leek and stir until the leek has softened up.

When the onion and leek are done, add your stock to the pot and dump in your chicken and carrots. Add your spice sachet (I sometimes just use a twist-tie to make a little bundle, if I'm out of cheesecloth) and the two boullion cubes. The boullion is in fact optional, but I find it gives a little more dimension to the stock.

Bring the pot to a boil, and then cover it and reduce the heat on the burner to low to let it simmer for 30-45 minutes. More time won't hurt it, but I wouldn't try to do this any quicker. The soup tastes better when it has time for its flavors to meld.

Ten minutes before you intend to serve it, boil the pasta in salted water. It's important that you only add the noodles to the soup right before you serve it, otherwise they get soggy and lose their texture. If you intend to keep the soup for several days and serve leftovers, just keep the noodles in a separate container of their own, and pick out a handful to add to your bowls just before you rewarm the soup. Remove and discard the herb sachet, then serve with crusty bread.

Servings: Variable, depending on how much of the chicken, stock, and noodles you use. I usually do large batches that are about 12 servings, but it could easily be cut to 4 or 6.

Low-cal Spaghetti Bolognese

2008-08-19T09:03:00.000-07:00

I've been cutting back on calories lately, which has affected my cooking output. I've been making a lot of ultra low-cal food in fairly large batches, which means I don't get to try new things as often as I might like.

Part of eating low-cal, for me at least, has been finding ways to adapt my kitchen staples to my desire to eat healthier. This recipe is good example. It was actually born out of thrift rather than a need to cut calories. I was shopping for the stuff to make spaghetti sauce, since I was having my nephews over and I know spaghetti is something they'll eat (they're very picky). Ground beef has been getting so expensive lately, though, and on that day it was over $3.50 for the low-fat kind, for less than a pound of meat! Ridiculous. I noticed, though, that the ground turkey was $2.75 for a pound and a quarter, and I remembered those fabulous turkey meatballs I discovered a few months ago. Clearly the gods intended for me to use ground turkey instead of ground beef.

Thus this recipe, which combines some stuff I had laying around in my pantry and fridge with the turkey to produce a spaghetti sauce that would make my mother proud. It doesn't give up an ounce of taste to my usual spaghetti recipe, but it gives up about 300 calories. And that's enough for a guiltless cookie after dinner! Practical cooking at its best.

Low-cal Spaghetti Bolognese

1.25 lbs ground turkey
1/2 medium sweet onion (or 1/4 of a large one), diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 15 oz can stewed tomatoes
1 small can tomato paste
Chicken stock (or veggie, or even beef, whichever floats your boat)
7-8ish mushrooms, sliced
2 stalks fresh oregano, chopped
1 stalk fresh rosemary, chopped
Pepper

I do this whole recipe in an electric frying pan, and it turns out to be the only thing I have to wash. You could probably do it in a large saucepan over a stovetop just as easily though. Just make sure the saucepan has a lid or something to cover it, so that it doesn't lose too much moisture while it simmers.

Start by dumping the ground turkey into the frying pan, and turning it on to 300F. Let the turkey get a pretty decent start on cooking, and use a spatula to stir it around and break it up into bite-sized chunks as it cooks. You can dice your onion and mince your garlic while this is going on, just keep an eye on the turkey as you do to make sure it doesn't stick to the pan. When the turkey starts to render what little fat it contains, dump in your diced onions and garlic. Stir the onions and the meat around while the meat finishes cooking and the onion softens to translucent. It should smell really good.

When the meat is done all the way through and the onion is translucent, dump in the whole can of stewed tomatoes, juices and all. Use your spatula to chop the tomatoes up into smallish pieces (they come whole in the can, and you want them to be bite-sized). Don't trash the can that the tomatoes came in, instead fill it half up with whatever stock you're using and add that to the mix. Next dump in the can of tomato paste, and stir the whole thing around for a few minutes. The tomato paste should initially be very thick in an otherwise watery mixture, but as you stir, it should combine more thoroughly to form a still-slightly-watery mixture. Cover this, turn the pan down to a simmer, and let it sit for a minute while you wash and slice your mushrooms, and chop your spices. Just dump those into the pan as soon as you get them done, so the mushrooms can begin to soften and the spices can start to assimilate more harmoniously into the mix. Stir everything once more to make sure the spices are evenly distributed.

Taste the mixture when you've added everything, and season with pepper as appropriate. It shouldn't need salt (at least, I don't think it does), which keeps it fairly low-sodium as well. Re-cover your pan and let it simmer for between 30 and 45 minutes. Towards the end of the simmering period, dump some pasta into a pot of salted boiling water so you'll have something to put the sauce on. Ten minutes before you intend to eat it, check the sauce. It should have thickened up, but if it's still a little watery you can leave the lid off the pan for the last ten minutes of simmering, which should bring the texture up to par.

Serve hot on top of pasta. Whole wheat pasta goes especially well with this, since it continues the healthy theme and tastes better than refined-flour pasta anyway.

Servings: 6-8, or as many as 10 if you're me and don't eat much per serving.

Meat and Mushrooms

2008-08-03T22:00:00.000-07:00

This is a good way to dress up cheap meat cuts. It's another of those recipes that came together when I discovered a few ingredients in my kitchen, and needed a way to use them. In this case, I had a package of cube steak in my freezer, and some mushrooms in the crisper that needed to be eaten before too many more days passed. Sounded like the perfect start to a meal. Add pasta, onion, garlic, some herbs, and a nice sauce, and viola, supper.

This doesn't take as long as I thought it might, so it's not bad for weeknights, but it's nice enough that I would serve it to company without blinking twice. It's also pretty forgiving: you could probably use just about any cut of beef and it would work fine. I would recommend hamburger steaks if that's what you've got on hand, or you could dress it up by using one of the nicer cuts. I bet you could even use NY strips and melt some provolone over the top for a neat date night meal that wouldn't require much stress.

Steak and Mushrooms

1/2 lb pasta (it doesn't really matter what pasta you use here. I used vermicelli, but to each her own)
3 tbsp olive oil
1 lb cube steak (Or whatever beef cut you've got on hand. This would probably even work with chicken.)
1/2 vidalia onion
3 cloves garlic
1/2 lb (8 oz) mushrooms
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 1/2 tsp worchestershire sauce
1/2 cup beef stock plus 1 tbsp beef stock, separate
1 tsp cornstarch
Optional: fresh-cut rosemary and thyme
Salt
Pepper

Begin boiling water for the pasta. When the water boils, add a dash of salt and the pasta to it. Keep and eye on this while you're doing the other things, and drain the pasta when it's cooked to al dente.

Start by cooking the meat as appropriate for whatever cut you're using. Salt and pepper the meat on both sides. Pour in 1 1/2 tbsp olive oil, and lay your cube steaks in a pan over medium-high heat. Turn after 3-4 minutes, and cook the other side until they're done. If you're not using cube steaks, cook whatever meat you're using until it's appropriately done. Remove the meat from the pan to a plate, and let it sit for a while to absorb its own juices.

While the meat is cooking, dice the onion and mince the garlic. Wash the mushrooms, and slice them into 1/4 inch thick slices. When the meat has been removed from the pan, add the onion and garlic, and cook until the onion is lightly browned. If you need more olive oil to keep the onion from sticking, add more, but be sparing. You probably won't need the whole 3 tbsp I've allotted. You may need to turn the heat down a little to keep things from cooking too quickly here, you want this to go slowly enough that the mushrooms will have time to saute before the onions caramelize to a pulp.

When the onion is slightly browned and the garlic has begun to turn translucent, add the mushrooms and let the whole thing cook for a while. When the mushrooms have sauted themselves soft, add the balsamic vinegar and let that cook for a minute or so to get the strong vinegary taste out. Then add the worchestershire sauce, and 1/2 cup of the beef stock. Stir, and let the whole thing simmer. If you're using the rosemary and thyme, chop those finely and add them now. Add the meat back into the pan with the sauce, as well as any juices that might have seeped out as the meat was settling, so that the meat can start to absorb some of the flavour of the sauce.

In a separate cup, mix the remaining tbsp of beef stock and the tsp of corstarch together, then add those to the pan with the mushroom mixture. Let the sauce simmer for another 3 minutes or so, to mix everything together and give the starch a chance to thicken it a little. Taste it, and add salt and pepper as appropriate. Serve over the pasta.

Servings: 4-6

Grandma's Teacakes

2008-07-11T19:11:00.000-07:00

When I first started this blog, a few months ago, one of the first recipes was my Grandmother's take on Carrot Cake. Well, this recipe is from my other grandmother, the one on my dad's side.

When she was much, much younger, my dad's mother actually ran a bakery out of her home. She catered events in the small town they lived in, and people would come by their house to buy all sorts of baked goods. The front door on the house actually opened into the kitchen, so the front of the house doubled as her storefront.

By the time I was born, Grandma was far too old to still be baking, but people still talked about her legendary potato salads and pound cakes. My father's favorite recipe was her teacakes, a cookie that was very soft, almost pillowy, and only barely sweet. The recipe to these cookies had been lost, and when I was young my mother tried all sorts of recipes to try and approximate the storied teacakes, but none measured up to what my father remembered. They were all too crunchy, or too sweet, or doughy instead of soft.

It wasn't until we cleaned out her old house after my Grandfather's (her husband's) death that we found the recipe. It was on a card, tucked away on a high shelf under an unused flour container. My mother made the recipe to try it, and it turns out these cookies deserved every bit of their reputation for being addictive. The barely-sweet nature encourages you to eat lots of them because hey, it can't be that much sugar, right? And truth be told, I've never felt guilty about gobbling these. I keep some frozen for when I get cravings, or when my nightly tea just won't be complete without a little something special. I think that in a lot of ways, I like these better than chocolate, and that's saying something!

Grandma's Teacakes

1 1/2 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
1 large egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp lemon
1/3 cup buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Whisk the dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking soda) together and set that bowl aside. Using a mixer and a large mixing bowl, cream the butter. Add the sugar, and beat that in until the mixture forms pale yellow, curd-like lumps and you can no longer see free standing sugar in the bottom of the bowl. Add the egg, and beat that in. Add the vanilla and the lemon juice, and beat some more. Add about 1/3 of the flour, and mix until that's incorporated. Add half the buttermilk, and beat that in. Add the second 1/3 of the flour, and beat. Add the rest of the buttermilk, beat, then add the rest of the flour and mix the whole thing for a minute or so to make sure it's creamy. At this point, the batter should be pale, smooth, and fairly soft.

Cover a baking sheet with parchment, and use a tbsp to drop cookies onto the sheet, about 2-3 inches apart (these will spread quite a bit). I can usually fit 12 cookies onto a standard size baking sheet, in four rows of three. Bake for 11-15 minutes, until the bottom edge of the cookie has just begun to turn brown. Do not be tempted to leave these in until the tops of the cookies brown. The tops should be very pale, and the bottom edge of the cookies should have just a very fine rim of brown. When this happens, remove the cookie sheet from the oven and let it sit for two minutes, then remove the cookies to a cooling rack to finish their cooling process. Repeat the cooking process with another cookie sheet, until you've used up all the batter (this recipe usually is perfect for two sheets with me).

These cookies are best eaten almost as soon as they're out of the oven, when they're warm and pillow-soft and amazing. They stay amazing for one day, and are perfectly fine the day after, but too much longer and they start to lose their delightfully soft texture. So if you don't plan to eat them pretty quickly, just stick them in the freezer. They never take long to thaw (five minutes, less if you've got a toaster oven), so that way you can have them whenever you want.

Servings: 20 - 25 cookies. It usually makes exactly 24 for me.

Artichoke Pasta Florentine

2008-07-11T18:56:00.000-07:00

Florentine. Doesn't it sound sophisticated? As though maybe it's the sort of pasta one would eat in cathedrals, while making erudite comments about frescoes. It doesn't sound at all like a dish that you could throw together in fifteen minutes on a weeknight, when you've only got half an hour to eat in between a job and a class.

This is about as simple as it gets, but it will fill you up, it's ridiculously cheap, and it's fast. In short, this is the kind of dinner that you eat when fancy roasts have come and gone, when soups and braises are too time-consuming, and when all you need is food that isn't going to demand any thought. Plus, it tastes good, and is reasonably healthy. I say it's a win all around.

Artichoke Pasta Florentine

1/4 lb short-cut pasta (I like penne rigate)
1/8 lb spinach (my grocery sells 1/4 bags, so I just use half a bag)
1 can of tinned artichoke hearts, drained (get the kind tinned in water if you can, I find they saute better)
1 tbsp unsalted butter
Salt
Parmesan (I like shaved, but if grated is all you can get, go for that)

Begin by bringing a pot of water to a boil. Add the pasta and salt the water, then let it boil for 10 minutes or so.

While your water is boiling, chop your artichoke hearts into quarters or eights. In a large saucepan, melt the butter over medium-high heat and drop in the artichokes. Cook them for 5-7 minutes, until they acquire a lovely golden-brown sear on their bottom side (you can turn them if they sear too quickly. Both sides seared tastes better anyway, so go for it). They should smell really good during this process, all buttery and rich. When the artichokes are lovely and golden, dump in the spinach and remove the saucepan from the heat. The pasta should be about done by this point, so drain the pasta while the spinach wilts. Dump the pasta into the saucepan and stir everything together to mix it thoroughly. Sprinkle the whole thing generously with shaved parmesan (seriously, be generous with the cheese!). Stir again, to let the cheese get mixed in and melted around the pasta. Serve immediately, while the cheese is still stringy.

Servings: 4-6

Rutabaga-Leek Soup

2008-07-11T18:32:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since I posted a soup recipe, and if I recall correctly, the last time I extolled the virtues of unappreciated root vegetables. This is another one of those soups. The flavour is buttery and smooth, sort of like a good veggie stock's grown up cousin, but a bowl won't leave you feeling like there's a stone in your stomach.

You see, it's ninety-five degrees where I live now, and I am not in the mood for some wintery soup. So this one is lighter, and takes advantage of the snappy flavour of fresh leeks to add a bit of a twist. It's comfort food for when comfort food needs a lighter edge, like those days when you just feel the need to do something good for your body. I'm really kind of in love.

(Bonus! With food prices so ridiculous these days, underappreciated veggies tend to be cheap, because groceries want to get rid of them. So it's also cost-effective!)

(Extra-Bonus! It only uses one pot total, so the clean up takes about two minutes, and less if you've got a dishwasher!)

Rutabaga-Leek Soup

1 rutabaga, peeled (I find a vegetable peeler works best for this, but some people use paring knives)
1/2 small onion, or 1/4 medium one
3 large leeks, or 4 medium ones
3 tbsp unsalted butter
1 1/2 qts chicken stock
1 beef bouillon cube
1 can black beans, drained (I like Bush's)
6 stalks fresh thyme
2 stalks fresh oregano
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper

Begin by cutting your rutabaga into 1 inch cubes. These are supposed to be kind of rustic, so don't waste time with perfect knife work. Dump the rutabaga into a soup pot (which should be very large) about 1/3 full of boiling water, and add a small palmful of salt. Reduce the heat until the rutabaga is just barely boiling (on my stove this is medium-high), and cook for 10-15 minutes, or until the rutabaga is soft. When it's finished, drain it and let it sit until you need it.

While the rutabaga is boiling, chop your onion, then chop your leeks. Begin by cutting off the dark green leaves, and the very tip of the white end (the bit with the tentacle-ish roots). Wash your leeks thoroughly (this is very important, as leeks can contain dirt, and that's gross), then cut them in half lengthwise. Chop both halves into 1/4 inch thick semi-circles.

When the rutabaga is finished boiling and has been drained, rinse out the soup pot and return it to the burner. Lower the heat to medium and melt the butter, then drop in the onions. When the onions are soft and translucent, add the leeks and stir to coat them in butter. If you end up with too many leeks to coat sufficiently in butter, add a dash of olive oil to make sure they don't wind up sticking to the pot. Cook the leeks, stirring often, until they've softened and gone limp.

Add your chicken stock to the soup pot on top of the leeks. Dump in the rutabaga and stir, then dump in the drained beans and stir some more. Your soup should be substantial, but not overcrowded. You can add more stock if necessary; this is kind of an eyeball-it judgment. Add your herbs by just dropping in the whole stalk. You get the best flavour this way, and you can fish out the stalks before you serve it. Bring the whole thing to a boil again, then reduce the heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes. Taste, and adjust seasonings before you serve.

Servings: 8-12

Hopskip

2008-06-20T08:42:00.000-07:00

This drink is a tribute to my Cornell days, and comes with a long and storied tradition. It was developed in Risley, the Cornell performing arts dorm and my residence for all four years on campus, as a way of making extremely cheap alcohol taste palatable. It soon migrated to Cornell's Debate Team via Cornell Debate alum (and minor CDA legend) Emmanuel Schanzer, where it has gained a reputation across the Ivy League as the absolute best way to get completely sloshed on a budget. Such is its magic that even experienced drinkers will have problems knowing how much is too much. It tastes innocently like lemonade, and it packs the kind of punch that leaves unsuspecting debaters waking up in foriegn locations and searching vainly for their pants.

I stumbled across a recipe for it a few days ago, while sorting through a few of my school things. I was tourney director for the Cornell Debate Tournament for two years while I was on the team, and one of the duties involved was planning the party. Apparently I wrote down the hopskip recipe at some point for that, perhaps to remind myself to get supplies. Anyway, here's a remnant of my college days. I preserve it mostly for nostalgia's sake, as god only knows when I'll next be called upon to provide drinks for two hundred plus people. It's suitable for service at most parties, but should not be served without some sort of warning to guests, as most people drink themselves stupid the first time they encounter it. (I told you, it was invented to disguise the taste of bad booze. It does this, admirably. Perhaps too admirably as people don't realize how much they've actually consumed.)

Hopskip

1.75 liters vodka (this must be the absolute cheapest you can find. If you're paying $10 for two liters, it's too expensive)
6 cans lite beer
4 liters sprite or your local generic equivalent. Being Cornell, we used Wegmans' generic: W-up (pronounced "wup").
1/3 bottle lime juice (eyeball it)
2 cans frozen concentrated pink lemonade

Find a large container and mix ingredients thoroughly. At Risley, there is an official 35-gallon tub that acts as the hopskip vessel (to be absolutely true to Risley tradition, someone's arm was the stirrer in lieu of spoon, but this is not strictly necessary). For Cornell Debate events, it is frequently served out of a trashcan, although a new bag (or two or three) is strongly recommended for this method of service. This basic recipe makes about eight liters, but can readily be doubled, trebled, or quadrupled to fit a given crowd size.

Servings: How much a single recipe serves has always been a matter of debate, and attempts at scientific tests have yielded different results based on the respective participants' alcohol tolerances. Nonetheless, eight people is a conservative estimate (and those eight people will be really drunk), while fifteen or twenty is a more likely number.

Turkey Meatballs

2008-06-20T08:28:00.000-07:00

Holy crap, these are good! I'd never tried cooking with ground turkey before, but when I noticed at my grocery that it's both cheaper and healthier than ground beef, I thought I'd give it a go. Orangette provided a recipe for me to riff on, and I was ready to cook.

And oh man, these are fabulous. Even my red-meat-and-potatoes parents loved these. They're fast, easy, and delicious. What more could I ask of a first experiment with turkey? I think I'll be using it more often.

Turkey Meatballs

1 lb ground turkey meat
1 medium onion, diced
2 eggs
2 tbsp fresh basil, shredded
1/2 cup toasted pine nuts
1/2 cup golden raisins
1/2 cup plain fine bread crumbs
1/2 tsp salt
Pepper
Cumin (a few shakes. I probably used 1/2 tsp, all told)
Olive oil

Mix everything except the olive oil together in a large bowl. Use your hands and get it all gooey, but try to avoid overmixing, since that just makes the turkey tougher. Make little balls about an inch wide (lean towards the smaller here; larger take too long to cook and the bottoms might get burnt) out of the mix. Heat a thin film of olive oil to just over medium heat, and saute your meatballs in batches so they don't get too crowded (too close together and they steam instead of sauteing, which ruins the consistency). Turn them as they color on the bottom so that all sides get evenly cooked. When they're done (check one with a fork if in doubt), drain them on a plate with a paper towel to catch any excess oil.

Cure for a Sore Throat

2008-06-14T09:05:00.000-07:00

For the last week, I have been sick, sick, sick, and miserable. My throat sometimes feels so large I swear it's about to crawl out of my body and go find adventures of its own. During one of these occasions, I turned to the internet for sore throat remedies, and discovered that everything that helps a sore throat apparently tastes awful. When I couldn't sleep for a second night for coughing, I resolved to try a few of them anyway, using ingredients I had lying around in my kitchen. So, after a few days of trial and error, here is my recipe for a sore throat remedy that works wonders for me. I'm posting it here so that I don't forget it, and should I (god forbid) ever get this bad again, I can make more.

Sore Throat Remedy

2 1/2 tbsp white vinegar
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp chili powder
Salt
Water
Yogurt

Mix together the vinegar, lemon juice, chili powder, and a few shakes worth of salt in a microwaveable measuring cup. Add about a cup of water, and whisk it all together. Microwave for 20 seconds and whisk again, to get all the chili powder to go into solution. Microwave for another 30 seconds or so, and test with your finger to see if it's warm, but not so warm it might burn your tongue. If it needs a few more seconds in the microwave, go ahead.

Hold your nose, take a sip, and gargle. It doesn't taste as vile as you might think, and once you gargle with about two sips of it you'll fall in love, because it makes your throat feel about 80% better almost immediately. Keep gargling sips until your throat no longer feels like a survivor of trench warfare. Finally, eat a few bites of yogurt slowly to nullify the taste. The yogurt completely cuts the chili and vinegar taste out of your mouth, so there's no bad aftertaste, just a better throat.

Repeat every two hours or so, or as often as you need to.

Fancy Strawberries

2008-05-25T21:59:00.000-07:00

I should have posted this weeks ago. This is the dessert that I did for Mother's Day, and I was pleased with how it came out. It's not complicated, but it tastes good and I like simplicity when it come to my desserts. The lemon and mint infusion in the syrup gives this a hint of sophistication, and the handmade whipped cream is a nice homey touch. Overall, it's something that can be made ahead of time and stuck in the fridge until you need it, at which point it's impressive. My kind of dessert.

Fancy Strawberries

1 lb fresh strawberries
1 1/4 cup sugar
Zest from 1 lemon
Zest from 1 small lime
4 fresh mint leaves (No, extract won't do. It's got to be fresh mint on this one, but pretty much any kind of mint will work.)
1 1/2 cup heavy whipped cream

Start by making a simple syrup: combine 1 cup of the sugar and 1 cup of water in a saucepan over medium-high heat, and stir it until all the sugar has gone into solution. Turn the heat down to medium, then add the zest from both the lemon and the lime, and the mint leaves. Let these infuse for 5 minutes or so, and then run the whole thing through a strainer covered with cheese cloth to get out the mint leaves and zest scraps. The syrup should be clear (DO NOT let it caramelize. If it caramelizes, you've got your heat way too high), and you should taste both the citrus and the mint if you sample it.

Wash your strawberries, and slice them horizontally into 1/4 inch circles, discarding the leafy tops. Dump your sliced strawberries into your syrup, and sit it in the fridge to chill out until you are ready to serve it.

When you're ready to serve, add the remaining 1/4 cup sugar to the 1 and 1/2 cups heavy cream in a large mixing bowl. Taste this mixture. It should taste pleasantly sweet, like cool whip in liquid form, except better. If you like your whipped cream sweeter, add more sugar. This is a to-taste thing, there's no science to making whipped cream. When the mix of cream and sugar tastes right to you, use a whip to beat it into fluffy peaks. This should take about 3-5 minutes of rapid whipping. It's really not that difficult, I'm not sure why so many people seem intimidated of making their own whipped cream.

Serve the strawberries by spooning them into bowls, and drizzling syrup over them. Spoon some whipped cream on top, and drizzle a little syrup over that too. Serve immediately.

Servings: I have no idea. 8-10, probably.

Shrimp, Squash, and Asparagus Linguine

2008-05-25T21:33:00.000-07:00

This is a quick dish that I made last week when I was at a loss for dinner ideas. It turned out really good, so I thought I'd jot it down for future reference.

Now, I don't usually cook with shrimp. Especially recently, when all food seems expensive, but meats and particularly seafood seem very expensive. But for this one I forgive myself. A pound of cooked medium cocktail shrimp was $13, but that will stretch for at least three meals, and I comfort myself with the knowledge that this will give me something a little special in my repertoire for the next few weeks at less than $4.50 a meal, which seems more reasonable.

This recipe was also a good excuse for me to use a new birthday present: a mandoline. This is basically an inclined plane with a blade embedded in it, which you can adjust to make various thicknesses of slice. You just slide your veggie (or item-to-be-sliced) across it, and it very quickly renders thin, perfectly uniform slices. I love it. It's no substitute for real skill with a knife, of course, but in cases where you need things thin and fast, it's perfect.

This pasta was very good, by the way. I'm a big linguine fan, I like it better than spaghetti, and this is a simple way to really let the fresh summer vegetables that are just coming into season shine. Despite the presence of the shrimp, it's the asparagus and squash that really make this dish, and a simple cream sauce sets them all off perfectly. This tastes like something you'd pay a good bit for at a restaurant, but it comes together in about 20 minutes, and the hardest thing about it is making sure the pasta is al dente. Perfect for those nights when you want to cook, but don't need a huge production in the kitchen.

Shrimp, Squash, and Asparagus Linguine

1/3 lb linguine (whole grain is good if you can find it)
1 tbsp olive oil
1 scallion
1/2 bunch slender green asparagus, washed with tough ends snapped off
2 medium squash, washed
2 cloves garlic
1/3 lb shrimp (I used 1/3 of a frozen bag of already-cooked, but you could use fresh if you wanted)
3/4 cup heavy cream
2 tbsp chopped chives
Salt
Pepper

Start by putting water on to boil for the pasta. Toss a palmful of salt in there with it to season the pasta, and add noodles when it starts to boil.

While your pasta is doing you thing, slice the veggies. I used my new mandoline on the squash, which made the slicing fun and novel, but a knife would be fine. Just go for thin slices. Slice the asparagus into bite-sized pieces. If you're using frozen shrimp, run water over them for a few minutes to defrost them, and remove the tails. Dice the garlic finely. Slice the scallion thinly.

In a large saute pan, pour in the olive oil and add the squash. Add salt and pepper to taste. Let the squash cook over medium-high heat for 3 or 4 minutes, then add the garlic and scallion. Let that cook another 2 or three minutes, until the scallion is starting to turn translucent. The squash should be starting to get soft by this point. Add a little more olive oil if you need to so that nothing sticks. Add the shrimp and asparagus. Let that cook for another 2-3 minutes. The asparagus should be just starting to get bright green and a little softer, and the shrimp should be heated through.

By this point, the pasta should be done. Dump 1/2 cup or so of the pasta water into the saute pan with your veggies and shrimp, then drain the rest of the pasta and add it to the saute pan while it's still hot. Add the cream and the chives. Stir it all around a little, and reduce the heat to medium-low. Let it simmer, stirring so that the cream doesn't stick, until the sauce thickens up appropriately. If you want to speed that process along, add a few pinches of cornstarch to the sauce, and stir vigorously to incorporate it. When it's been simmering for about 5 minutes, you should see the sauce really start to stick to the pasta, and it's done. Taste it, then add salt and pepper to season to taste. Remove from heat, and serve immediately.

Servings: 4

Not a recipe

2008-05-15T12:38:00.000-07:00

This isn't cooking-related, but I had to post it.

Today, the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality. Barring an improbable Constitutional amendment in November, California is now the second state in the union that allows gay marriage with full and equal rights.

There's an old adage that as California goes, so goes the nation. God willing, it's true.

Quiche

2008-05-10T17:27:00.001-07:00

Quiches are something of a signature dish for me; I serve them often to guests, and they're a go-to when I need something upscale but not too fancy. Frankly, I'm surprised it's taken me this long to post the quiche recipe I use. It's cobbled together from half a dozen sources, some of which I've forgotten by now, but it turns out a lovely golden creation, tender and beautifully seasoned, never overwhelmingly 'egg-y' (as so many quiche recipes are), but beautifully balanced to play host to any number of ingredients. I choose my quiche ingredients based on the season, primarily: kale and red onion in the winter, red bell pepper and shitake mushrooms in the spring, sundried tomatoes and basil in the summer. I've tried pumpkin quiches with great success for fall, and I'm a little anxious to repeat that one when the weather turns nippy again.

The perfect quiche is light and fluffy, with a flaky crust and (for me) generous amounts of cheese. It won't do your waistline any favours, but boy howdy will it make your tastebuds stand up and dance. I'm transcribing my basic quiche recipe here. To this basic template, ingredients of your choice can then be added, from ham or sausage to shaved truffles, if that's your thing. The usual formula for whatever ingredients I'm adding is to saute them until properly softened, but in the case of sundried tomatoes I simply soak them for a while to get them to plump up just a little, and in the case of pumpkin I pureed it. Use your common sense and creativity.

Another important thing to mention is that this recipe is designed for a deep-dish quiche. I use a deep pie dish when I make my crust, and that gives me enough room to just barely manage to fit all the filling in. A shallower dish would still make a good quiche, but you'd have some egg mix left over, and you'd miss out on the unique texture the custard in the quiche takes on when you get it to a certain thickness.

Quiche

1 Simple Pie Crust, set and cooled to room temperature
Filling Ingredients, cooked until ready (i.e.: if you want your quiche to be a mushroom and onion quiche, you would need to saute the mushrooms and onions. For ham, you'd need to cook the ham)
5 eggs
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup milk
2 tsp salt
Pepper to taste (a little less than 1/4 tsp is generally what I use)
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp pure vanilla extract
Approx. 2 cups coarse grated cheese, loosely packed

Note on cheeses: This is a really forgiving recipe, so I generally just grate up whatever cheeses I have sitting around. It's a catch-all for those little end-pieces of cheese that I never seem to find a use for anywhere else. That said, I do have a few recommendations. By far my favorite cheese combination (and the one I use if I'm serving guests) is equal parts sharp cheddar, Jarlsberg, and 3-year Gouda. This mix is a great balance of creamy, smooth-melting, and slightly stronger flavours. Gruyere, or any other similarly-melting cheese is a perfectly acceptable substitute for Jarlsberg; I use the latter because it's cheaper where I live (Gruyere is ridiculously expensive here). I think Dubliner or one of the other hard Irish cheeses would be fabulous too. Just about the only cheeses I'd caution against would be American (duh) and any of the really soft cheeses (save your brie to spread on crostada). I've heard good things about Roquefort and blue, though.

Preheat the oven to 325F.

Begin by scalding the cream and milk. Heat them in a pot over medium heat until a thin film forms on top of the mixture, then remove them and let them sit for 10 or so minutes to cool (if they're too warm they'll cook the eggs when you try to mix them).

In a large mixing bowl, combine the eggs, milk mix, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and vanilla. Whisk as quickly as you can for three minutes. The goal here is to produce a fluffy quiche by incorporating as much air into the egg mix as possible. Let the egg mix rest for a few minutes, and saute your filling. When the filling is finished with its saute, collect the egg mix, the pie-dish with the crust, the cheese, and the filling in one location.

Assemble your quiche. Sprinkle about half the cheese evenly over the bottom of the crust. Top this with about half your filling ingredients. Whisk the egg mixture vigorously for another two minutes or so, then pour in enough of the egg mixture fill the crust half-way. Sprinkle most of the remaining cheese in another layer, followed by all the remaining filling ingredients. Pour on enough egg mixture to completely fill the crust. You may not use all the egg mixture, but get as much of it in as you can. Sprinkle the remaining cheese on top of the whole thing.

Carefully put your quiche in the oven, on a rack in the center. I recommend sitting it in a roasting pan or the like in case you accidentally overflow it, so that you won't get your oven dirty. Bake the quiche for 7 minutes. The fillings and egg mixture should settle and deflate a little, so pull it out and fill it back up to the top with any of the remaining egg mixture. Again, you may not use all of it, depending on things like the thickness of your crust and the depth of your pie-dish. Slide the filled quiche back into the oven, and cook for another 1 hr and 15 minutes. The quiche is finished when the top is an even, deep golden color, and the center is set relatively firmly (it should only jiggle a very little when you wiggle the dish).

When the quiche is finished, remove it from the oven and sit it on a cooling rack for 15 or 20 minutes. It will deflate a little, this is to be expected. Serve warm, or (if you're making this in advance) refrigerate and serve chilled later.

My Favorite Filling Ingredients, and how to prepare them:

- Shitake mushrooms (approx 10 large mushrooms) and red bell pepper (1 pepper): Wash the mushrooms and remove the woody stems. Slice the mushrooms into 1/4 inch strips. Remove the seeds from the bell pepper, and slice it into quarters lengthwise. Slice each of the quarters into 1/4 inch thick strips, then cut these long strips into more bite-sized pieces (aim for the pepper pieces to be the same size as the mushroom strips). Saute the mushrooms in 3 tbsp olive oil for 5 minutes (or until soft), then add the peppers and saute for another 3 minutes.

Servings: 8-10

Simple Pie Crust

2008-05-10T13:09:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite parts of summer is the fruit. I love fresh peaches, strawberries, blackberries. And with fresh fruit, comes fruit pies.

I find that a lot of people are intimidated by pie crusts, which always strikes me as funny. A good pie crust is no more difficult to make than a simple cookie recipe, and the buttery, flaky crust is what makes or breaks a pie for me. No store-bought cardboard-tasting crusts here, thanks, I'll make my own.

This is the recipe that my mother has used for years for pie crusts. It's remarkably easy, and I think it originally came from a Southern Living cookbook. It makes a single crust (just the bottom layer). If you want a double crusted pie (bottom and top) just double the recipe. Below the pie recipe, I've included the directions for setting a pie crust, which is the most important part of pie making that most people don't do. It involves crisping the outside of the pie crust, so that when you fill the pie with a liquid and bake it, the crust stays crisp instead of absorbing so much liquid that it turns to mush. More pie-makers than you would believe allow their crusts to turn all mushy because they neglect to set the pie properly, but it always tastes much nicer when the crust is still crisp, even on the bottom.

Simple Pie Crust

1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup shortening (you can substitute unsalted butter here, but I find that shortening makes a more flaky crust)
4 or 5 tbsp water

Stir together the flour and salt, mixing them thoroughly. Add the shortening, and cut it into the flour until the shortening is in pieces the size of small peas. Add the water one tbsp at a time, tossing the dough and mixing after each addition. After the fourth or fifth tbsp, the dough should suddenly assume the consistency of proper pie-crust, almost as if my magic. Stop adding water immediately; the goal is a dough that is moist and very faintly sticky, but never wet. Form your dough into a ball. It should stick to itself easily, but shouldn't stick to your hands if you've got the consistency right.

Flour a large flat surface lightly, and flour a rolling pin. Roll out the dough into a round sheet, about 1/8 - 1/4 inch thick. When the dough is properly thin, grab your pie dish. Fold the dough in half, the into quarters and lift it into the pie dish. Unfold it, and press it into the corners of the dish. There should be some crust that hangs over the edges. Trim this crust off with a paring knife, and use the resulting scraps to patch any holes, cracks, or thin areas of the crust. If you want to be artistic, you can flute your crust by pressing the edges between your fingers and repeating as you move around the pie-dish.

Set the crust by lightly beating one egg white with a tsp of cold water, then brushing this mixture over your crust. Poke holes all across the bottom of the crust, then refrigerate it for 30 minutes. These two steps will keep your crust flat while you bake it by preventing airpockets and hot-spots. Bake the crust for 5 minutes at 450F, then allow it to cool to room temperature before adding whatever liquid filling you've got in mind.

Very Important Note: Your pie crust will shrink as it sets or bakes. This means that when you trim the crust, you should not trim it too close to the pie-dish, or you will end up with a crust that is shorter than your dish. When in doubt err on the side of too long when it comes to trimming pies.

Parmesan-Crusted Salmon Ceasar Salad

2008-05-08T07:06:00.000-07:00

Boy, I wrote that title and thought, 'Wow, it makes this salad sound fancy!' And to some degree, it is. This is a classy dish that just screams summer to me. Fresh, crunchy lettuce, plump little tomatoes, a tangy twist on classic Caesar dressing, and salmon pieces wrapped in a delicate Parmesan-breadcrumb crust make this a light, healthy meal that leaves you full but not stuffed. I don't think I've ever eaten a restaurant salad that left me with the same feeling of full flavour, but healthy calorie-count.

I'm not usually a salad person, but I had some lettuce languishing in my fridge after making burgers and gougeres, so one day when I needed something clean and light I thought I'd try to gussy it up into something that even my non-salad-eating self would like. Most of my original recipes happen this way, I think: I'll look into the fridge and think "Oh, that needs to be used before it goes bad. What sort of thing could I do with it that doesn't require a trip to the grocery store?" Laziness and thrift are the mothers of my culinary invention.

This particular gem was inspired by the lettuce I needed to use, and the fact that I'd frozen a salmon steak earlier in the month, so I had some salmon on hand. I'd thought about using chicken originally (and you could probably substitute chicken for salmon here and still have a great salad), but I didn't have any chicken on hand. It was late in the week, and I needed to get to the grocery. So salmon it was, and I think it ended up being a fortuitous choice. Chicken, while a nice all-purpose meat, can't rival salmon for both clean, healthy flavor and a certain classiness that salmon conveys. Salmon has long been my go-to meat when I need to feel like I'm being good, when I feel like I've eaten to much fried or cream-heavy stuff for a few days. Salmon is a palate cleanser, and pairing it with the refreshing salad makes for a really healthy, sort of Zen meal.

I will definitely make this one again, and I foresee it becoming a staple in my summer repertoire. As long as there are fresh veggies and swimsuit figures to consider, this salad is a great way for me to feel like I'm doing something good for myself, as well as good for my tastebuds!

Parmesan-Crusted Salmon Caesar Salad

For the dressing:
1/2 tbsp red wine vinegar
A scant 1/2 cup olive oil
About 1/2 - 1 tbsp finely chopped cooked salmon (I just microwave a small chunk off the salmon I'm about to cook anyway, then mince it with a sharp knife)
3 loves garlic, very finely chopped
1 egg
1 1/2 tbsp lemon juice
1 1/2 cups lightly packed Parmesan or Parmegiano-Reggiano, finely grated
Salt
Pepper

For the salmon nuggets:
1 lb salmon fillet (salmon steaks don't work so well for this, and fillets are cheaper anyway)
1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan
1/2 cup plain or Italian fine, dry breadcrumbs
1/4 cup fresh parsley, finely chopped
2 eggs
3 tbsp olive or vegetable oil
Salt
Pepper

For the salad (use your favorites here, obviously, but here's what I used):
Romaine lettuce
15 cherry tomatoes, halved
15 baby carrots, sliced into small circles
2 eggs, boiled and sliced into quarters
1 cucumber, sliced into circles

Begin by making the dressing. Combine the vinegar, oil, minced salmon, a pinch of salt, and a sprinkling of pepper in a small mixing bowl and whisk thoroughly. Add the egg and a few sprinkles of the cheese, whisk those in, and taste it. Add more salt or pepper as necessary. Add the lemon juice, and whisk that in. Taste it again, first by itself, then on a piece of your lettuce. Adjust the dressing to suit the taste of the lettuce -- if the lettuce is very sweet, it may be fine as is, but if the lettuce is a little old or minerally, you may want to add more lemon juice to pull out brightness, more garlic to spike up the fresh flavour a little if the lettuce is bland, or a pinch of sugar to mitigate the acid in the dressing if the lettuce runs toward the minerally. I usually just go with whatever my instinct is, and use a combination of the above techniques to achieve a balanced taste. The key is to add things slowly, so that you don't ruin the dressing. When in doubt, spoon a small amount into another cup, adjust that and taste it until you've got it right, then adjust the rest when you know what needs to be done. When you've got the dressing to your taste, whisk it once more for good measure and stick it in the fridge to chill out while you do the rest of the salad.

Next, make the salmon nuggets. Use a very sharp knife to remove the skin from your salmon fillet. Next, salt and pepper the fillet on both sides, then cut it into nugget-sized chunks. 1 - 1 1/2 inch squares is usually what I go for. In a small mixing bowl, mix together the Parmesan, breadcrumbs, parsley, 1/2 tsp pepper, and 3/4 tsp salt. Stir this until completely combined. In a separate bowl, beat the egg lightly.

Heat the olive oil in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Dredge the salmon chunks in the egg, then coat them in the breadcrumb mixture. Set them in the pan to cook, turning them occasionally so that all side of the breadcrumbs get browned. Cook until salmon is done through (about 2 minutes per side, in my experience), then remove the chunks to a paper towel and allow them to drain. Not all of the chunks will fit in the saucepan at once (you don't want them to crowd each other overmuch, it will interfere with their browning process), so you'll probably have to do these in a few batches. When the salmon nuggets are finished, they can be put in an oven or toaster on 200F to keep warm while you prep the rest of the salad.

The final step is salad preparation. Assemble your lettuce into the bowl, and retrieve your dressing from the fridge. Drizzle the dressing very lightly over the lettuce, then toss to ensure that all lettuce pieces are covered in a thin film of dressing. Dust the whole thing with the remaining cheese (remember how you only used a few sprinkles earlier?), coating each piece of lettuce in a 'dust' of grated cheese. Add whatever other salad toppings you're using (tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, croutons, etc), and pour any remaining cheese over the top. Place the salmon nuggets on top of the salad, and serve the remaining dressing alongside for people to spoon over the salad as they please.

Servings: 2-3, depending mostly on how much salmon everyone like to eat

Pepperjack Gougeres, BLT Style

2008-05-06T18:40:00.000-07:00

Man, has it ever been a long time since I posted here! I'm not dead (yet), I'm just busy. And for me, busy usually means resorting to cold cuts and apples for all sorts of meals. Yesterday, I ate an apple for breakfast, a turkey sandwich for lunch, and an apple and a turkey sandwich for dinner. You've no idea how much it pains me to admit that. I hate feeling uncreative.

The good news is, last weekend I managed to find time to test a new recipe, and it turned out splendidly. It's my take on Judy Rodgers's (of Zuni fame) recipe for gougeres. What, you ask, are gougeres? They're little cheesy puff pastries, like what might happen if you took a cheese biscuit and inflated it. They're also bite-sized, which was a nice change of pace for me. I love making whole meals out of appetizers. I always find myself tempted to eat too many if the appetizer is good, so turning them into a whole meal lets me combine this tendency with my love of interactive food. Appetizers are sort of interactive, right? You can eat them with your fingers, at least.

Anyway, where normal people would eat one or two gougeres for an appetizer, I eat seven or eight for a meal. And they're fabulous done this way: cheesy little puffs stuffed with the makings of a BLT, my all-time favorite sandwich. I took Judy's excellent recipe and toyed with it (as I'm wont to do), adding a Southern twist by incorporating pepperjack cheese into the puffs. You could probably also add pimentos, and do a riff on pimento cheese with these, which I think would be both clever and tasty. Maybe I'll try that next time I get a hankering for mini-sandwiches. You could also fiddle with the stuffings for these, and turn them into just about anything you need. Ham and scrambled eggs could be added for a breakfast sandwich (Yum! They're really good this way), or fill them with whatever you've got in your pantry. I just love BLTs, and these make a great little conduit for that passion.

Pepperjack Gougeres, BLT style

For the gougere batter:

1/2 cup water
1/2 cup chicken broth (I know I always say use stock, but I used broth here, because this should really only be a hint of flavor, not a whole shebang)
3 tbsp unsalted butter (use the European kind if you can get it)
1 tsp salt
1 cup all-purpose flour
4 large eggs
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 cup Gruyere, grated
1/2 cup pepperjack cheese, grated

To stuff the gougeres:

10-12 slices bacon
8 or so leaves Romaine lettuce, washed and de-stemmed
1 pint cherry tomatoes

Preheat the oven to 400F.

In a large saucepan, bring the water, butter, and salt to a simmer over medium heat. Pour in the flour (yes, all at once) and stir with a wooden spoon or a very stiff spatula until the batter pulls away from the edges of the pan. Reduce the heat to medium-low, and let the batter cook for a few minutes, until it seems almost stiff and fairly shiny.

When it reaches the shiny stage, remove it from the heat and add an egg. Stir vigorously with the spoon or spatula until the egg is incorporated. At first, the egg will not seem to incorporate at all, but gradually, with lots of stirring, it can be coaxed into the batter to mix in completely. Have patience, and a strong stirring arm. It takes me five minutes or so of stirring to incorporate the egg. The batter will at first seem like slabs of slippery paste, but should eventually return to the sticky point once it's absorbed the egg.

Repeat this process for the other two eggs, stirring until each is completely mixed in before adding the next one. It's okay if the batter cools quite a bit during this process. Once you're done adding the eggs, season with pepper, then add all the cheese. Fold the cheese into the mix. Some of it should melt, but it's okay if you have pieces that don't. That makes it even better.

Using a large spoon, dollop the batter onto a parchment-lined baking sheet, about 1 tbsp per gougere. They should come out looking like little mounds. These don't have to be perfect, pointy bits that stick off will just add a hint of crunch to them.

Bake your gougeres until they are golden-brown and and firm. In my oven, this took 30 minutes, but set your oven's timer for 20 and check them often after that so that they don't overcook. To check if they're done, remove a single gougere from the parchment and pry it open. The inside strands of dough should be tender and moist, but not mushy. If it's underdone, just stick it back together, put it back on the parchment, and bake for a few more minutes.

While the gougeres are cooking, get out a pan and your bacon. Cut the bacon strips in half, one 1/2 strip per gougere. When I'm making these to eat, I sually don't cook all the bacon at once. I only cook enough for the gougeres I'll eat at that meal, and leave the rest for when I eat the others later. Bacon always tastes best when cooked fresh. Cook the bacon in the pan over medium-high heat until crispy, turning once or twice to crisp all sides. Drain the bacon pieces on a paper towel.

Tear the lettuce into manageable pieces, about the same size as a cooked 1/2 slice of bacon. You'll want about two pieces of lettuce per gougere. Slice the cherry tomatoes in half. You'll want 3 tomato halves per gougere.

To serve the gougeres, split them down the middle with a fork. Pack in a slice of bacon, two slices of lettuce, and three tomato halves, then close the top back down on the little sandwich. These are best when warm, so you can eat them fresh from the oven, or if you're eating them later, microwave a few for 30 seconds or so to warm them back up. As I said before, I recommend cooking the bacon fresh just before you eat the gougeres, so that it tastes best.

Servings: 20-25 gougeres

Tomato-Egg Florentine Casserole

2008-04-20T11:54:00.000-07:00

This is a pretty simple dish that tastes like comfort food to me, and uses stuff I almost always have on hand. The recipe is a liberal adaptation of one I got from Orangette here, and which she credits as her take on a recipe published in the Splendid Table Weeknight Kitchen. The Splendid Table recipe, in turn, was adapted from a recipe by the great Jacques Pepin in his home cook's staple, Jacques Pepin Fast Food My Way. So this little dish took a convoluted route to my table. It's sort of like playing Six Degrees to Kevin Bacon with food. I'd like to see the original Pepin recipe now, since I'm betting my version in no way resembles his with this many sources between us.

Strange pedigree aside, the dish tastes good, and that's what's important, right? It works in a 'great tastes that go together great' kind of way. The classic Florentine combination of pasta, tomato, and spinach gets a pick-me-up from the flavour of egg and a crust of Gruyere. I haven't tried it this way yet, but I'd bet you could throw some gently sauted artichoke hearts in here too and it would be delicious. It's a forgiving kind of dish like that. Or, if you don't have the spinach, leave that out and it still works. That's how comfort food goes: it's for those days when the last thing you need is something going wrong in the kitchen.

Tomato-Egg Florentine Casserole

5 large eggs
2 handfuls (1-1 1/2 cups) short-cut pasta. I like rotini, but it doesn't really matter as long as you're not using spaghetti or something long like that.
1 tbsp olive oil
2 medium yellow onions, roughly diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
3/4 tsp dried thyme (don't get the fresh stuff, the spice-rack version works great)
1 14 oz can whole tomatoes, undrained
1/8 lb spinach (or half of the 1/4 bags my grocery carries)
1 cup grated gruyere
Salt
Pepper

Begin by putting the raw eggs in a pot, running enough water in the pot to cover them, then sitting them over medium-high heat until the water boils. When it boils, set a timer for 9 minutes, then remove the pot from the heat and carefully drain the hot water out. Run cold water over the eggs, drain that, run more cold water over the eggs, and throw in a handful of ice chips to cool the water further. Let the eggs sit there and cool while you work on the rest of the recipe.

While the eggs are coming to a boil, put another pot on to boil with water for the pasta. Salt the water, and when it boils (this should be approximately the same time as the eggs coming to boil) add the pasta. Cook the pasta for about five minutes, then drain it. You want the pasta slightly underdone, since it will absorb some juice when you bake the whole casserole.

While the pasta and eggs are cooking, set the oven to preheat to 400F.

Add the onions and olive oil to a large sauce pan, and cook over medium heat until the onions turn soft and translucent. Add the garlic and let that saute for about two minutes (I usually take the eggs and pasta off during this stage), then add the tomatoes and their juices. Use the side of your spatula or a wooden spoon to break apart the tomatoes into manageable pieces, and simmer the tomato-onion mixture for another two minutes. Add the thyme, and taste the mixture. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Bring the whole tomato mixture to a boil, then remove it from the heat. Gently fold in the spinach (you may need to do this in handfuls since the spinach takes up a lot of space before it wilts.

Now it's time to assemble the casserole. You should have the tomato-onion-spinach mixture, the cooled eggs, and the drained pasta. Grab the dish that you'll be using to bake the casserole. I use a souffle dish with tall sides, but a shorter and wider square casserole dish would probably work just as well. Slice the eggs into quarter wedges, and place them in the bottom of the dish. Pour the pasta into the same pan as the tomato-spinach mixture, and stir briefly to mix that all up. Pour the tomato-spinach-pasta mix over the eggs. On top of everything, sprinkle your cheese. I like to be generous with the cheese, and usually use more than the cup I've called for here.

Once the casserole is assembled, stick it in the oven and bake for 15 minutes. Next, crack the oven door and turn on the broiler on high for 4 minutes, to put a nice crust on the cheese. Serve immediately.

Servings: 6-8

Steamed Artichokes in Lemon Butter Sauce

2008-04-18T15:28:00.000-07:00

I'm almost embarrassed to be posting this recipe, since it's not really even a recipe. It's just directions about how to cook an artichoke, which until recently I'd never done. But the last few weeks, I've been eating artichokes pretty frequently. They're just coming into season now: round and green and prickly. A single artichoke is more than enough for a meal for me, and it makes me feel like I'm being healthy (even though it's probably enough butter to negate any healthiness the artichoke may bring). They're also fun. I will always like veggies that I can eat with my fingers and not feel like I'm being uncouth. They're interactive food, and they're easier to interact with than, say, shrimp or oysters. All the fun, none of the hassle.

Steamed Artichokes in Lemon Butter Sauce

1 artichoke (pick your artichokes by how heavy they are, with tightly knit leaves)
2 tbsp butter
4 tbsp lemon or lime juice
1/2 cup white wine (just eyeball it)
Salt
Pepper

Steam the artichoke by cutting off the stem close as close to the artichoke as possible. Next, cut off the tip of the artichoke; the bits that are nothing but prickly and are at the end opposite the stem. This may be difficult; I usually use a serrated knife, and even then I may require kitchen shears to get the last few stubborn leaves off. A chef's knife (even a very sharp chef's knife) really doesn't cuts it when it comes to artichoke tips. Anyway, saw that off.

Boil a couple inches of water in a pot, and set a vegetable steamer on top of it. If you don't have a vegetable steamer (as I didn't for a long time), use an aluminum pie plate, turned upside down to sit in the water, and with lots of holes poked in the bottom to let the steam through. Set the artichoke tip-side down in the steamer, cover it, and let it steam over a low boil for 40 minutes or so. I wouldn't go over that, because over-steaming leaches out the flavours.

Towards the end of the steaming process, simmer the wine in a small saucepan, over medium heat, and melt the butter into it. Stir in the lemon juice, and let the whole thing simmer for a minute or so. Taste it, then add salt and pepper to taste. Mine always needs quite a bit of salt. I add a little more than I think it needs and it turns out perfect, because artichokes taste really good with salt.

Serve without utensils, and pull the artichoke leaves one by one off the artichoke. Dip them in the sauce, and eat the meat off the underside of the leaves. When you get to the heart, cut out the feathery bits to leave only the base of the heart. That too can be eaten with the sauce.

Servings: 1

(Also? 20th recipe, whoo!)

Potato-Pear Salad with Rosemary Vinaigrette Dressing

2008-04-17T19:11:00.000-07:00

This recipe was designed to be served alongside pork tenderloin with pear glaze, and I'm pretty proud of it. It was a riff on something I saw on Top Chef, and it came out spectacularly well. The salad is a perfect combination of textures and flavours, and the dressing ties all of it together harmoniously, as well as going beautifully with the pork. I suppose I should expect it from a good chef, but this really is a beautifully balanced meal. I've been to fairly expensive restaurants that didn't show this much cohesiveness of flavour across a plate.

I recommend mixing the dressing first in this recipe, as it's something that can be done in advance then stuck in the fridge until it's needed. If you do this, microwave the dressing for 15-30 seconds to warm it a little before pouring it over the meat and salad; you don't want it to cool those down.

Potato-Pear Salad

3 medium russet potatoes, washed and diced into 1/2 inch cubes
1 1/2 red pears (use the other half of the pear you used to make the pear glaze)
1/2 lb green beans, rinsed and snapped into bite-sized pieces
1/2 medium red onion, sliced thinly
4 slices crispy bacon, pan fried then drained
2-3 tbsp olive oil
Salt
Pepper

Preheat the oven to 350F. If you're doing this at the same time as the pork tenderloin, you can put them both in the oven at the same time.

In a large bowl, toss the potatoes with the olive oil, salt and pepper until all cubes are thoroughly coated. Spray a foil-lined baking sheet with non-stick spray, then spread the potatoes onto it in an even single layer. Roast at 350F for 20-25 minutes, or until the largest potato chunks are soft all the way through, and the potatoes have begin to take on a golden crispness.

Towards the end of when the potatoes are roasting, blanch the green beans in salted water for about 5 minutes. The goal is crisp, but not raw. Err on the crisper side here. Drain the pot of beans, and add a handful of ice to the beans, then run water over them. This will shock the beans, which both softens them further and stops them from cooking. Once the beans have cooled, drain the pot again and remove any remaining chunks of ice. Reserve the beans.

While the beans are blanching, get out a small sauce pan, add a splash of olive oil, and saute the onion over medium heat until the white part turns translucent. Don't saute too much, you want to keep the pretty purple color. The goal is just to take a little of the bite out of the flavour here.

Dice the pears into 1/2 inch chucks, about the same size as the potatoes.

When the potatoes are done, taste one for seasoning and add salt if appropriate. They should taste a little like french fries. Dump the still-hot potatoes into a serving bowl, and add the pear, onion, and green beans. Crumble the bacon slices over the other ingredients, and toss the whole thing. Serve immediately, with dressing.

Note: it's important that the salad be the last thing you finish before you plate and serve the meal. If it's allowed to sit for too long, the pear juices will soften the crisp roasted outside of the potatoes, which detracts from the contrasting textures of the salad.

Servings: 6-8

Rosemary Vinaigrette Dressing

1/4 cup red wine vinegar
2 egg yolks
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
About 1/2 cup olive oil
1 tsp soy sauce
2 tsp honey
1 1/2 sprig fresh rosemary, chopped as finely as you can get it. Use a spice grinder, if you've got one.
Salt
Pepper

In a small mixing bowl, whisk together the vinegar, egg yolks, and Dijon until homogeneous. Add olive oil slowly, whisking constantly, until the mixture thickens a little. If in doubt, taste it. (Tasting constantly is good policy throughout making this dressing.)

Add the soy sauce, honey, and rosemary to the mixture, and whisk those in completely. Taste it, then add salt and pepper to season properly.

Refrigerate until needed, and whisk once more before drizzling over salad and meat just to make sure it's mixed.

Servings: I have no idea. It was plenty for 6-8 servings of meat and salad, though.

Pork Tenderloin with Pear Glaze

2008-04-17T19:09:00.000-07:00

This is the first of two recipes that go together. There's pork tenderloins with pear glaze, and the side dish is a potato salad with pears and haricot vert. A splashy little sauce/dressing (which I've included with the salad recipe) ties it all together.

The idea for this dish is a riff on something I saw on Top Chef. Yes, I watch Top Chef. It is my weekly reality-show crack. I always sit there in the comfort of my living room, cat on my lap, popcorn by my side, and think, "Gosh, I could cook better than some of these people." But last week's top chef featured a recipe that was reputedly very good for pork tenderloins on the grill, and I found myself intrigued by the pear in the potato salad that the chef (Stephanie Izard) served alongside. So today I came up with this version, which needs no grill and includes a glaze for the pork loin. I am not a grill person, I loathe grills with a passion (so messy, so much cleanup, so finicky for the proper temperature!), so this is designed to grab the good flavors of the recipe in an oven.

Pork Tenderloin with Pear Glaze

Pork tenderloin:
1 pork tenderloin
1 tbsp olive oil

Pear Glaze:
1/2 red pear, core removed and very thinly sliced (save the other half to use in the salad)
3 cloves garlic, finely diced
1/4 large white onion, finely diced
3 tbsp unsalted butter
1/4 sprig rosemary, chopped very finely (use a spice grinder if you've got one)
Salt
Pepper

For the absolute best flavour, start a day early and salt the tenderloin. 1 tbsp salt for 4 lbs meat is a good rule of thumb. Let the tenderloin sit in the fridge overnight to absorb the salt.

Preheat the oven to 400F.

Rinse the tenderloin and trim off any excess fat. Pour the olive oil into a large saucepan (I use non-stick, it makes things easier) over medium-high heat. Once the oil is heated, drop in the tenderloin and brown it on all sides (less than 2 minutes per side is good). Transfer the browned tenderloin to a foil-lined roasting pan, and let it hang out there for a few minutes.

In the same saucepan that you used to brown the roast (there should still be a little olive oil in the bottom), add the diced onions. Cook over medium heat until the onions are soft and translucent, then add the garlic. Give that 2 or 3 minutes, then add the finely sliced pear, the butter, and the rosemary. Cook all of this together for about five minutes, until the butter is just beginning to brown and the pears are falling apart. Salt it gently (Emphasis on the gently. You don't want this too salty). Pour this glaze over the tenderloin, spreading the pear-onion bits evenly along the top.

Cook the tenderloin for an hour or so, turning every 20 minutes to prevent the top from drying out. The inside should be white and not give off pink juice when poked with a knife. When the tenderloin is finished, slice it into medallions and serve over Potato-Pear salad, covered lightly with the rosemary dressing from that recipe.

Servings: 6-8

Zucchini Bread

2008-04-11T10:50:00.000-07:00

Every summer, I plant a squash plant and a zucchini plant. One of each is plenty since it's just me and the cat at home, and then I have fresh veggies for most of the summer. The problem is that the plants often produce far more than I can reasonably use. My favorite solution to this problem is to grate the unused zucchinis or squash (Squashes? What's the plural of a squash?) in a food processor, then freeze them in 2 cup ziploc bags. This way I can make zucchini bread all winter long.

Recently, I realized that I have a lot of frozen zucchini left in my freezer, so I need to make batches of zucchini bread before the summer comes and I have fresh ones again. This is the recipe I've been using since I was about twelve, and found out what zucchini bread was. It produces a wonderfully moist loaf. I like to eat a slice with a nice cup of hot tea just before bed.

Zucchini Bread

Note: Zucchini turns out to be very wet when you grate it. When frozen, the water often leaches out during thawing, and you end up with a bunch of water and some zucchini matter at the bottom of the bag. It's fine, actually, it doesn't make a difference to the recipe, but I usually discard about half the water in the bag after thawing so that the batter doesn't get too thin. YMMV. With fresh zucchini, you don't need to worry about any of this.

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2 1/4 cups white sugar
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups grated zucchini (Or yellow squash. You can do substitutions within the squash family here)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat the oven to 325F. Spray two 8x4 loaf pans with a non-stick baking spray (the kind that has flour in it as well as non stick spray). If you don't have a non-stick baking spray, use a regular non-stick spray, then flour the sprayed pans.

Mix together the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, mix together the eggs, sugar, oil, and vanilla. Beat these until they're mixed completely, then add them to the dry ingredient mixture and mix all of it until it forms a relatively smooth batter. Add in the zucchini, and stir until it gets incorporated. Add in the walnuts, and stir until those get incorporated evenly. Pour the batter into the loaf pans.

Bake for 45-60 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted into the middle of a loaf comes out clean. For my oven, it takes about 55 minutes. Another test of doneness is how much a loaf falls in the center when you remove it from the oven: it may relax a little, but it shouldn't fall too much. Too much collapsing means it need a few more minutes.

When the loafs are done, remove them from the oven and let them cool for ten or so minutes. Run a knife around the edges to separate the loaf from the pan, then invert them onto a plate and reinvert them onto a cooling rack (this process means you get a loaf sitting right-side up on the rack. You can do it with two cooling racks, if you don't want to dirty a plate). Let the loaf cool for another hour or so before cutting.

These loaves freeze well, and will last almost indefinitely in the freezer.

Servings: 2 loaves

Scalloped Turnips

2008-04-10T15:32:00.001-07:00

Starches are passe in the world of today's health-conscious diet. Most people eschew bread and the humble potato in favor of green veggies, fruits, and lean dairy. And this is as it should be. A girl can eat all the carrots she wants, and generally not gain a pound if she doesn't dip them in anything.

But sometimes, I long for the days before we knew what a calorie was. Back when classic French technique was the only way to go, and butter, cream, and pasta (starch! lovely starch!) were key ingredients in every self-respecting cook's repertoire. Before milk came in lowfat versions, and before margerine and "spreads" made their molecularly altered way into our refrigerators. This is a recipe for those days. It's pretty simple: boil some starches, make a roux, combine, add cheese. Presto! Scalloped potatoes, or turnips, or even pasta, if that's the starch that floats your boat.

I made it today with turnips, because I had one sad, neglected turnip sitting in my crisper waiting to be turned into something good. Turnips aren't what everyone thinks of when they make gratins or scallops, but I like it, because it's just enough of something different to add pizazz to a dish. If you've grown up with a child's aversion to turnips (because someone overboiled them, or didn't season them, or served them plain without any dressing, etc), give this one a try. It's like scalloped potatoes without the boring.

Scalloped Turnips

1 large turnip, or 2 medium ones, peeled
2 tbsp unsalted butter
2 tbsp flour
1 cup milk
Salt
Pepper
1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese (or more, if you like cheese as much as I do)
Optional: 3 slices bacon

Start by slicing the turnips very thinly. Fill a pot with salted water and boil the turnip slices for 15 or 20 minutes, until they're soft. Taste a turnip at this point, I think they're good just like this. But we'll be adding stuff to them. Pour the potatoes into a gratin dish (or a small baking dish).

Preheat the oven to 250F. In a medium saucepan, melt the butter over low heat. Add the flour one tbsp at a time, and whisk into a roux. Add the milk, turn the heat up to medium, and stir until the mixture has thickened into a simple white sauce. On my stove, this takes between 5 and 10 minutes. Taste the sauce, and add salt until it's properly seasoned. Keep a spare hand with the salt, it's easy to go overboard and end up with a salty sauce (ew!).

Pour the finished white sauce over the turnips. Sprinkle the cheese on top, and bake for 10 minutes, or until the cheese is melted and the sauce has distributed itself throughout the dish.

If you're feeling extra industrious (or if you've just got a hankering for bacon), pan fry up some bacon while the dish is in the oven, then crumble it into bits and sprinkle those liberally on top. Yum!

Servings: 2 as a main dish or 4 as a side

Chocolate Truffles

2008-04-03T00:03:00.000-07:00

After posting the cake recipe a few days ago, I thought I'd redeem myself by offering a recipe that is perhaps the polar dessert opposite of a stupidly easy cake. This is a dessert that uses pretty much only ingredients found in nature (no preservatives here, thanks); that takes a long time and much care to properly produce; and that is guaranteed to wow any audience to which you present it.

There's a certain mystique to truffles: Godiva sells them for exorbitant prices, people think of them usually around holidays, and most cooks are intimidated by the idea of trying to make them. There's a reason for that intimidation. These aren't easy, but they go easier if you've got a little knowledge of candy-making, especially chocolate tempering, under your belt already. I've found that the best way to make truffles is with a friend. That way, things go more quickly (an advantage when you're working with ingredients that can melt or deform when they get too cool or too warm), and the whole experience is more fun with two people. Plus, with a friend's help, you won't be tempted to eat all the truffles yourself, which is the biggest problem that I have when I make this recipe!

It's worth it, though, even if you go it alone. These little candies are the very height of decadence: a creamy, melt-on-your-tongue center surrounded by a crisp chocolate shell, and delicately -- but not overwhelmingly -- accented by the flavour of a liqueur. They are candies to be eaten in many bites, savoured for their rarity (how many truffle-makers have you known in your lifetime?) and for the impressive oomph of flavour that they can pack into a tiny, neat package. They are also very pretty, suitable to serve as a centerpiece during a meal and the dessert afterwards, especially if you pair them with pretty red berries and stripe them with white chocolate. In short, these truffles deserve their reputation both for divine taste and difficulty in the kitchen. Try them once, and you'll never go Godiva again, because they make store-bought truffles taste like cardboard in comparison (trust me, I've held taste tests!). These are what you whip up when you're cooking balls-out to impress.

Chocolate Truffles

Note: With any recipe, the quality of ingredients is crucial to the taste of the final product, but that's especially true here. Use only the very best chocolate that you can get your hands on for these. Be willing to spend a few extra dollars to get good chocolate. Ordinary Hershey's chocolate is NOT sufficient. My personal favorite is Scharffen-Berger's Antilles bar, but that particular brand can be hard to come by. Ghirardelli (which is much easier to come by) and Valrona are also very good. One note: I don't recommend Green & Black's, or any of the other organic bars. While they may be expensive, they have a strangely fudgey texture, and they tend to melt oddly. It's more difficult to get them to temper correctly, and they tend to make an uneven ganache, in my experience.

10 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped fine (What particular percentage of chocolate you use is a matter of personal preference. I tend to go for Scharffen-Berger's Antilles bar, which is a 75% blend, or Ghirardelli's 60%.)
8 additional ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped fine (You can use the same, or a different chocolate here)
3 tablespoons unsalted butter (It's very important that the butter be unsalted. In fact, if you can find the unsalted, creamy European-style butter at your grocery, use that.)
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon light corn syrup
2 vanilla beans
1/4 cup brandy or your favourite liqueur (I've used everything from a good port wine to Chambord here. Just go with whatever floats your boat. If you're not into alcohol, leave it out completely, but honestly, it's worth it to add the hint of flavour you get here.)

Start by adding 10 ounces of chocolate and the butter to a microwave-safe mixing bowl. Microwave for 30 seconds on full power. Remove and stir to help redistribute the chocolate, and repeat this process 1 more time. Stir again, and set aside. It's okay if all of the chocolate isn't completely melted, the residual heat in the bowl will help it continue melting for a few minutes afterwards.

Heat the heavy cream and corn syrup together in a small saucepan over medium heat until the mixture simmers (don't boil!). Slice the vanilla beans down the middle with a sharp knife, and scrape out the seeds. Add the seeds and the beans to the cream mixture, and allow these to simmer for 5 minutes, stirring slowly. Remove the pan from the heat, fish out the bean halves, and pour the cream-corn syrup mixture over the melted chocolate and butter. Let this stand for about a minute, then use a rubber or silicone spatula (the idea is something flexible, but with a bit of stiffness to stir the thick chocolate) to stir the mixture in slow circles, until all the chocolate is melted and the whole thing is glossy and very smooth. Add the brandy or liqueur, and stir again (gently!) until the mixture is once more smooth and homogeneous. Congratulations, you've just made a chocolate ganache. Pour the mixture into an 8x8 baking dish and refrigerate for at least an hour. Longer is better with the refrigeration time, as the goal is to have a very, very hard ganache when it's finished chilling.

Once the mixture has been in the fridge a while, remove it and use a melon baller or two spoons to scoop out little balls of chocolate onto a baking sheet lined with parchment or waxed paper. The key to this process is being relatively quick: don't let the ganache get too warm, or you'll have trouble because it tends to stick. I usually dip my melon baller into cocoa powder to keep the balls of ganache from sticking to it, then use my bare hands to shape the scooped balls into spheres. This process gets chocolate all over my hands, but if I'm very quick about the rolling (my hands are on the ganache balls for less than three seconds, usually), it produces a more uniform candy. When the ganache has all been rolled into balls, return the balls to the fridge for another hour or so to get them chilled back up and re-firmed.

After the ganache balls have chilled for an hour or so, place the remaining 8 ounces of chocolate in a double boiler, and bring the water under it to a bare simmer. Lower heat is better in this case, because the goal here is fairly fine temperature control. Position a candy thermometer in the bowl so that the end of the thermometer sits in the middle of the melting chocolate (not against the bowl, which may be hotter than the mixture itself). Stir the chocolate occasionally, and watch the thermometer. Heat until the mixture reaches 88F, then remove it from the double boiler. The actual goal is 90F or 92F, but removing the heat source before it reaches the goal temperature will keep the chocolate from getting too hot. DO NOT allow the chocolate to heat past 94F. If you do, your coating will not have the snap or shine to it that distinguishes a well-made truffle. You may need to adjust your heat occasionally to maintain this optimal 90-92F temperature. Just watch the thermometer carefully, and you should be fine

Remove the ganache balls from the fridge, and stick a toothpick in the top of one. Using the toothpick to hold the truffle, swipe it QUICKLY through the melted chocolate to coat it. The need for speed cannot be over-emphasized: if the truffle remains in the hot melted chocolate too long, the ganache will melt and contaminate your coating chocolate, preventing a smooth, shiny coat for future chocolates. It may also fall off the toothpick, which means that you must use a spoon to retrieve it, and its shape will get mangled. So do this quickly. Once the truffle has been coated, sit it back on a different baking sheet covered with parchment or waxed paper, and after fifteen or so seconds, remove the toothpick, leaving a coated candy with a small hole at the top.

Important notes for the dipping procedure: Observe your ganache balls carefully during this process: if they sit out too long, they will soften to room temperature, and you will have a more difficult time coating them. If your ganache balls seem to be getting too soft, just stick them back in the fridge for a while, then remove them and continue when they've re-firmed. It is advisable not to stick the coated truffles in the fridge for at least an hour, to give them time to set. Cooling them too quickly may shock their chocolate coating, and will make it look less shiny. It won't affect the taste or texture at all, but the appearance won't be as fine. This is a rather delicate process, as the melted chocolate must be monitored to keep it under 94F, the ganache balls must be monitored to keep from getting too warm, and the truffles must be swiped through the coating quickly yet carefully to get complete coverage while preventing them from melting. Nonetheless, a careful baker will find that it goes more smoothly than perhaps this recipe makes it sound. I'm simply warning for all contingencies; not all these situations may present themselves during your truffle-making attempts.

Once the truffles have all been coated, the remainder of the melted chocolate can be discarded. Allow the truffles to sit for an hour or so to set. Afterwards, if you wish to decorate them further, you can melt a little white chocolate and drizzle it over the candies with a spoon to give them white stripes. This technique can also be used to disguise the toothpick holes, if you're fussy. Other options for decoration include sifting cocoa or confectioner's sugar over the truffles immediately after they've been dipped, before the chocolate has a chance to set, or rolling the barely-set truffles in chopped nuts (Although this is a difficult and messy operation, and I don't necessarily recommend it).

Once set, the truffles should be stored in an air-tight container in the refrigerator. They will keep for up to two weeks. To serve, remove them from the fridge half an hour or so before service, to allow them to come to room temperature. The texture is good when they're cold, just out of the fridge, but the taste of the chocolate really displays its many dimensions best at room temperature.

Servings: About 35 truffles.

Stupidly Easy Angel Food Cake

2008-03-31T04:47:00.001-07:00

Writing this blog for the past few weeks has helped me realize that I bake more than I thought I did. Previously, baking was a simple, experimental matter of throwing a few ingredients together and seeing what emerged from the oven, but now I make myself think about quantities in case I enjoy a recipe enough to end up posting it. I almost didn't post this one, partly because it uses two different mixes (Really, there's nothing at all natural in this recipe. It's shameful!) and partly because it's so stupidly easy.

But then I thought to myself, "Self, if you think that you occasionally deserve a break from the hours baking a cake can entail, don't you think others might appreciate the same?" So here's a cake you can throw together in less than five minutes. No kidding. Total prep time should hover somewhere around two minutes, and that's only if you have to go off and search for scissors to open your cake mix. It has exactly two ingredients (and like I said, neither of them is even vaguely found in nature), but if you find out that friends are coming over in a few minutes and somehow simply lack the willpower or supplies to do anything else, this recipe will see you through. It's certainly not culinary school material, but hey, even ambitious cooks sometimes need a guilty secret!

Stupidly Easy Angel Food Cake

1 box angel food cake mix (I like Duncan Hines, but Betty Crocker will do in a pinch)
1 can fruit pie filling (Cherry, peach, blueberry, it doesn't matter. They all work, so pick your favorite. I usually go with blueberry.)

In a 9x13 baking pan, mix together the angel food mix and the pie filling, stirring until they are roughly homogenous (try to get out all the lumps of dry cake mix). Ignore the cake mix box when it tells you that you need things like liquids, all you need is the pie filling. Cook your cake per the box's instructions about time and temperature.

Servings: 15? I don't know, it depends on how big you cut your cake pieces.

See? Wasn't that stupidly easy? I'll have to post something desperately fancy and a little difficult next time to make up for the fact that this is so easy.

Hamentaschen

2008-03-29T17:06:00.000-07:00

My first experience of hamentaschen (say it "HA-men-TA-shen") came courtesy of my friend Nechama. Nechama has blue, pixie-style hair, fifteen piercings at last count, eight tattoos, and travels to India yearly to meet with the gurus of Anusara yoga, which she teaches back here in the States. She is the only woman I know who can honestly say she's been lost in a monsoon in the jungles of India. She is also Jewish, which is how she came to be serving me hamentaschen during a Purim party a few years ago.

Even though I'll always associate hamentaschen with Nechama's stories about her crazy travels, the rest of the world knows this little cookie as a traditional part of one of the most beloved Jewish holidays. Purim is a fabulous holiday, in which Jews are required (required, do you hear?) to eat, drink, and be merry. In fact, according to the Talmud, a person is commanded to drink until he cannot tell the difference between "Blessed be Mordecai" and "Cursed be Haman". My kind of holiday!

The villain of the Purim story is Haman, who was a greedy advisor to an ancient king, and who tried to have all the Jews killed way back when. This cookie takes it's name from the Hebrew for 'Haman's pockets', and supposedly the triangle shape represents Haman's three-cornered advisor hat. Much like greedy Haman in the stories, this cookie gets it's 'pocket' stuffed with something sweet: I prefer apple butter or strawberry preserves, but I've heard of people using anything from fig jellies to cherry pie filling (I think that'd be too sweet, but to each his own). Fun to make and with a fantastic history, hamentaschen are the kind of cookie I like to make year-round. They go great with a cup of hot tea for a late-night snack. I use whole wheat flour, and the dough turns out a little darker than in the photo above, so don't be alarmed if they don't look exactly the same.

Hamentaschen Cookies

2/3 cup butter or margarine, softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1/4 cup orange juice (get the kind with no pulp)
1 cup white flour
1 cup wheat flour (DO NOT substitute white flour! The wheat flour is necessary to achieve the right texture!)
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
A filling of some kind, be it apple butter (my fav) or some sort of jam or jelly

Cream the butter and sugar together using an electric mixer. Add the egg and beat until incorporated. Add the OJ and beat until mixed. At this point, you should have a very soupy butter mixture. Add the flour, 1/2 cup at a time, alternating white and wheat. Mix thoroughly between each. Add the baking powder and cinnamon with the last half cup of flour. The resulting dough should be fairly moist and sticky, and pretty dense. I always have to scrape it out of the beaters on my mixer, it tends to clump inside the beaters since it's so dense. Cover the batter and refrigerate overnight or for at least 4 hours.

Remove the dough from the fridge and grab the cookie trays you're using. I prefer a non-stick tray for this, since the dough is minimally easier to shape on this tray than on a normal tray. Flour the cookie sheet lightly, but don't skimp here. Again, the flour makes the shaping process easier. I find that flouring everything that's going to touch the dough is very important to making this cookie successfully, because the dough is very sticky, and pulls out of shape very easily if there's not a thin layer of flour to keep it from sticking. Scoop off a two-tablespoon hunk of dough (or a little bigger, you'll get a feel for size as you go), plop it on the cookie sheet, and use your floured fingers to press it into a 1/4 inch thick circle, about three or four inches in diameter. Dollop a generous teaspoon and a half of your filling of choice into the center of the circle. Using a floured silicone spatula, lift the edges of the dough off the tray and fold them towards the center. Do this three time, to form a triangle shape (refer to the picture above for an idea of how this is supposed to go, and what the final product should look like). Pinch the edges of the triangle to make sure that the 'flaps' of dough don't come unfolded during the baking process. Repeat to fill the cookie sheet; I can usually fit 6 cookies on one sheet.

Preheat the oven to 350F. Once the oven is at temperature, bake the cookies for 16-20 minutes. 20 min is perfect in my oven, and the goal is that the cookie should be a light, toasty brown, but the filling should not bubble over. Apple butter tends not to bubble over easily, but preserves are more prone to boiling just before the cookies get done. I've made these enough now that I time the cookies' doneness by the progress of the filling: when the strawberry preserves begin to bubble, but not bubble over, the cookies are done.

Servings: 15-20 cookies, depending on size.

Pot Roast

2008-03-24T15:39:00.001-07:00

Pot roast: how hard can it be? People have been roasting things in pots for millenia, and if some prehistoric cavewoman could master braised mastodon over a fire that she wasn't 100% sure how to restart, then surely I could conquer a chuck roast. Or so I told myself when I purchased my first roast. The sad truth was, that particular roast conquered me. After two hours in the oven, it turned out dry, tough, and tasteless. The Mastodon probably tasted better. Roast:1 Me:0.

Clearly I needed tutelage in the art of the slow-cooked roast. So my second attempt was with the "help" of a Southern Living Cookbook (a Christmas gift from my mom) and a crockpot. I'm sure that the magazine meant well, but the recommended salted water (!) as a braising liquid was both too little and too bland: maybe it tasted better than the mastodon, but it surely wasn't the culinary paradise of tender, succulent meat that the recipe promised. In reality, though perhaps I'd graduated to the bronze age, I was still far from the roast that I wanted. After all, if cavewomen could master this technique, surely a college-educated, brainy feminist could grasp the basics of the braise. Roast: 2 Me:0.

So I set out to expand my braise-iary (I can totally turn that verb into an adjective!) horizons. The Zuni Cafe Cookbook - whose recipe I adapted for polenta fries a few days ago - helped, with extensive advice on braising. I also quizzed my Grandmother's nursing home neighbor, who had been a catering cook and personal chef in her youth. Thus, armed with the advice of elder generations and Beard-winning chefs, I set out once more into the fray. I traded the water (!) for a carefully constructed mixture of reduced wine and beef stock. The generic mirepoix (Can you believed I used a frozen veggie cubes mix? I was so naive!) got swapped out for a chunkier, funkier accompaniment. Instead of serving the over-cooked veggies alongside the roast, I grabbed a strainer and mashed them into submission as a puree to thicken my sauce. Who needs loads of cornstarch when the veggies you already roasted work better? Also, two hours is not nearly long enough to produce a heavenly-tender roast. Girded with the experience of my past mistakes, I set out to better myself. I was going to produce a perfect roast if it killed me, and then I did. My third attempt at braising a roast turned out delicately, fall-apart-on-the-fork tender, and the sauce the accompanied it was thick and luscious with a gorgeous red-brown color from wine and beets. I wallowed. And the leftovers! I swear it was even better the second day, if that's even possible. Roast:2 Me:1. My days in the dark ages of braising were over!

Braised Chuck Roast

Note: I advise tying this roast before anything else. It may not seem to need it when the roast is uncooked, but during the browning process, and especially after the roast is finished braising, it will literally fall apart if it's not secured with some sort of twine. So break out your kite string or your hemp rope, and tie it according to the instructions on the link above for an easier braising experience.

1 750ml bottle of a red wine with some body to it (think Burgundy or Cab Sauv here, nothing too fruity)
1 qt low sodium beef stock
1 large yellow onion
3 small beets (if your grocery doesn't carry small beets, use one large one instead)
15 baby carrots (or two large carrots)
4 lb shoulder chuck roast (Pick a roast with lots of connective tissues, where lots of muscles meet. Your butcher can help.)
1 tsp olive oil
5 garlic cloves, unpeeled
3 bay leaves
Salt
Pepper

Start by salting the meat (1 tbsp salt for every 4 lbs meat). Zuni recommends salting up to 3 days in advance, but I usually forget until the day before. Even so, salting in advance is a great idea, it really does make a flavour difference.

When you're ready to actually start your braise, get out a wide, shallow saucepan and pour in the whole bottle of wine. Sit it over medium high heat and let it reduce until it gets down to about half a cup. I know it sounds like that would take forever, but in reality it only takes about twenty minutes, and you can do other things in the meantime. Set another wide, shallow pan on a different burner, and pour in the quart of beef stock. That one should reduce to about two cups.

While your stock and wine are reducing, tie up the roast. Tying should compact the meat together (so it doesn't fall apart as easily), and bind in any irregular parts so that they'll cook more evenly.

After you tie the roast, chop your veggies. I usually just chop the onions into 1 1/2 inch wedges, and beets into thickish rounds, and the mini carrots in half. If you're using large carrots, chop them into chunks. Since everything is sort of thick and rustic, this shouldn't take long. These veggies don't have to be pretty, so just give them a once-through with a knife to get them into manageable portions.

Next, brown the roast. Pick a skillet not much larger than the roast. Add a very scant tsp of olive oil, and warm briefly over medium heat. Set the roast in the pan, and allow it to brown BUT NOT TO SCORCH. I know scorched bits are tasty when you're eating them on burgers or steaks, but imagine those bits once they've soaked for five hours in liquid. Ew. So the goal is brown, but not scorched. Turn the roast so that all sides and both ends are browned. This doesn't take long, two minutes or so per side is plenty.

By the time the tying, chopping, and browning is done, your liquids should be about reduced, and you are ready to start assembling your braise. Preheat the oven to 325F, and find a covered, oven-safe and flameproof dish that will accommodate your roast with about 2 or 3 inches to spare on all sides. This can be a Dutch oven, a large saute pan with a lid, a casserole dish, whatever floats your boat. Set the browned meat in the pan, then surround it on all sides with the veggies. The vegetables should be very crowded, and pressed right up against the meat. Scatter the bay leaves on top of the vegetables, and sprinkle pepper over the whole thing. Add the reduced wine then the reduced stock, so that the liquid comes to somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 way up the roast. If you don't use all the stock, save the remainder for adding to the gravy, or for another recipe.

Cover the braise and bring it to a simmer on the stove (this cuts down on cooking time by a little). When it's simmering, take it off the stove and place the braising dish in the oven. Helpful hint: you may want to place it on some sort of tray first, then sit tray and dish in the oven, so that if it bubbles over it won't get your oven dirty. After two or so hours, turn the roast over, recover the dish, and sit it back in the oven to continue braising. After another hour, turn again. This help keep the top side of the meat from losing too much liquid and becoming unappetizingly dry. Turn it once more 15 minutes before it's done, so that no side will be too dried out.

Continue cooking for another hour or so, until the roast is fork-tender. The Zuni Cafe Cookbook recommends that one can extend the cooking time by dropping the oven temperature to 275F or even 250F, and cooking for five or six hours instead of four. This will produce an even more succulent roast. I've done this a few times, on Saturdays when I didn't have anything better to do, and it really does work.

When the roast is finished, remove it from the braising dish and let it rest. While it's resting, fish the veggies out of the sauce and into a strainer situated over a medium bowl. Mash them with a wooden spoon until you have a cup or so of veggie puree. Taste the sauce in the braising pan, and add puree to give it a little more body and sweetness. You don't have to use all the puree here although I usually do, this is a personal taste thing. If you've still got some reduced stock left over, pour that in, then use the puree to adjust thickness and taste. Other potential additives to the sauce include balsamic vinegar (just a little), a pinch of sugar (to balance out an acidic sauce), or a tbsp or so of cornstarch (for additional thickness). I usually use the cornstarch, because I like a more substantial gravy-like sauce.

Once you've got the sauce right, carve the roast (this shouldn't be difficult, properly-braised roasts are very very tender). As with all meat, braised roasts should be carved against the grain. Pour the sauce back over, and you're ready to serve.

Here's my little braising secret: this roast improves vastly with age. Let it sit in the refrigerator for a day, and what was merely a good roast will transform itself into something approaching meat-godliness. So if I'm really on the ball, I'll do this braise a day in advance, and instead of carving I'll just refrigerate the whole thing after I get done adjusting the sauce and pouring it back over the roast. On the second day, I'll take it out and rewarm it in a 300F oven for half an hour or so (just enough to let the meat warm through, but not enough to dry it out), then serve. People always seem amazed when they taste it, and with good reason: they've never had a braise this good. The secret's in the extra time, when the roast can reabsorb its juices and add even more flavour to itself.

Servings: 6 to 8, depending on the size of your roast.

Baked Polenta Fries

2008-03-22T10:03:00.000-07:00

Confession time: I hate to fry food. Oil gets everywhere, and usually the fried thing ends up oil-logged and too heavy. I don't do it often enough to get really good at it, and the cleanup makes me miserable. So I fry maybe, maybe once a year.

All of which means that I can't homemake French Fries. But! I was glancing through the Zuni Cafe Cookbook (which is entirely brilliant) yesterday, and saw a mention of oven roasted polenta. Now that's an idea I could get behind, I thought. Zuni does their polenta in triangles, but there was no reason that I couldn't make fries. One catch: Zuni's recipe for polenta takes over an hour (!) to make, then has to cool for three hours before it can be oven-roasted. There was no way I was waiting a whole afternoon for polenta, so I tried a recipe of my own, and it turned out fabulously.

The fries are crunchy and crisp, with hints of cheese, but none of the oily ickiness of frying. They go great with mustard or Ketchup, and I'll try them with a mayo dressing next time I make them. Cleanup was as simple as washing a saucepan and throwing away a piece of parchment. Much better! I think polenta may be the cure for my need for fries without the frying.

Baked Polenta Fries

1 qt chicken stock
2 cups coarse-ground cornmeal (if you live in the South like me, it's called grits, not polenta, but they're the same thing, essentially)
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/3 cup grated cheddar cheese
1 stick unsalted butter
Salt

Bring the stock to a boil in a heavy-ish saucepan over medium-high heat. Once the stock is just barely boiling, turn the heat down to medium-low and pour in the cornmeal in a thin stream (this prevents clumps), stirring constantly. Allow the cornmeal to thicken the liquid, then taste for salt. Adjust seasoning. Cook, stirring constantly, until the polenta starts to pull away from the sides of the pot. This took 15 minutes or so on my stove. You will think that it is done before it reaches this stage, but have patience.

Once the polenta is the proper doneness, drop in the stick of butter and the cheese, and stir until it all gets mixed together. Spray a 9x13 baking pan with nonstick spray, and pour the polenta into the pan. Spread it out and smooth it into a thin-ish sheet, about an inch thick. Put the baking pan into the fridge (or the freezer, if you're impatient like me) to cool down. Don't cover it, it's okay if it dries out a little. Refrigerate for 2-3 hours, or freeze for 45 min-1 hour.

When you're ready to bake it, preheat the oven to 300F. Run a knife around the edge of the baking pan, then invert the polenta out of the pan and onto a large baking sheet covered in parchment. Slice the polenta into 'fries' (I cut mine once in half lengthwise, and then about twelve times widthwise to make 'fries' about 5 inches by 1 inch). Spread the fries out on the baking sheet and brush each lightly with olive oil. Bake for 20 min in the center of the oven, then turn on the broiler and move the fries closer to the broiler surface for another 10-15 min to give them a nice crust. Turn once during this broiling process to get them crispy on all sides. Serve piping hot with condiments for dipping.

Servings: 25 fries, or about 6-8 people.

Vanilla Panna Cotta

2008-03-21T00:15:00.000-07:00

Panna cotta is one of those desserts that I didn't meet until I was in college. The American South, for all its agricultural riches, is shamefully undereducated when it comes to classic cuisine. Mentioning panna cotta to the cooks I grew up with would have provoked raised eyebrows and questions of 'Is is like egg custard?' Egg custard is the only custard-like dessert that rural South Carolina ever met. Egg custard pies, egg custard tarts, and for the really creative cook, egg custard topped with fruit. So I was deprived of the heaven that was panna cotta until I escaped to the Northeast for school.

But once I got there and had a taste, I made up for lost time. I became the Queen of Panna Cotta in my dorm. I made it for all my friends. I played around with flavours: pumpkin panna cotta for fall, pomegranate panna cotta topped with freshly whipped cream, green tea panna cotta topped with delicate slivers of sugared ginger. I would do it in batches and serve individual helpings in shot glasses (because hey, I was in college).

So when I started thinking of a dessert for my family's upcoming Easter lunch, my mind naturally ran towards this lovely, light little finisher. Here's the recipe for the basic vanilla version - though I use real vanilla beans here to dress things up a little. I top it with sugared raspberries, which make a beautiful presentation with the pure white custard. Here's hoping even my Southern relatives will find something to like!

Panna Cotta

1/4 cup water
3 1/2 tsp powdered gelatin
3 1/4 cups heavy or whipping cream
3/4 cup confectioners sugar
2 whole vanilla beans
2 piece lemon rind
Raspberries (The exact amount will depend on how many servings you're making. I usually buy two small cartons worth.)
2 tbsp additional confectioners sugar

Place the water in a small bowl and sprinkle in the powdered gelatin. Stir it, and set it aside to thicken for five or so minutes. While the gelatin is gelling, use a sharp knife to split the vanilla beans in half down the middle and scrape out the seeds. Place both seeds and beans into a medium saucepan with the cream, sugar, and lemon rind. Simmer over medium heat for five or so minutes, stirring gently and making sure that the cream doesn't stick. The goal here is a sort of low, even simmer.

When the cream has thickened a little, add in the gelatin mixture and continue at a medium simmer, stirring constantly, for another three or so minutes. The gelatin should be completely dissolved by this stage.

Strain the cream-gelatin mixture through a very fine mesh, and fish out the lemon rind and vanilla beans. Those can be discarded. Pour the mixture through cheesecloth into panna cotta molds, or if you're like me and too poor or lazy to buy panna cotta molds, into whatever pretty container you intend to serve from. I like shot glasses, but small teacups or martini glasses are also pretty.

Refrigerate your panna cotta. How long the refrigeration needs to last varies depending on the size of the containers you're serving from, but a good rule of thumb is at least four hours. Overnight is okay, and will make your prep time less hectic the next day. So fridge it and forget it for a while.

About an hour before you intend to serve the panna cotta, get out your raspberries and rinse them very gently. Pat them dry, then toss them in the extra confectioners sugar and pop them in the fridge. This will encourage the juices to swell, making them plump and shiny. It will also make them fragile, so be a little careful when handling sugared raspberries.

To serve, grab the panna cotta from the fridge. If you're making them with molds, try dipping the bottom and sides of the molds into a hot water bath for a few seconds to loosen the panna cotta. Run a knife around the edges if necessary (avoid this if possible, it will usually mess up the presentation). Then, tip the panna cotta out of molds and onto the plates on which you will serve. If, like me, you usually serve out of glassware (I've graduated from shot glasses to pretty cut-glass cups), you can skip that step. Either way, top each individual serving with a few sugared raspberries to finish the presentation. A mint leaf is also pretty if you're really feeling snazzy that day.

Servings: Depends on the size of your containers. It makes 30 fl oz, or between fifteen and eighteen shot glasses worth, so take that as you will.

Gnocchi with Creamy Tomato Sauce

2008-03-20T07:19:00.001-07:00

Gnocchi is an odd creature. It never feels like a pasta to me, but it also isn't exactly not-a-pasta either (my double negatives, let me show you them!). If you go online looking for gnocchi recipes, you find a dozen conflicting reports of the One True Gnocchi Way. All of these One True Ways come with dire little warnings about what will happen if you deviate even one step from their secret and sacred teachings. All of which is very confusing to the gnocchi beginner.

So when I decided to make gnocchi, I went at it with a great deal of enthusiasm and not much idea of what I was doing. But hey, people have been successfully making gnocchi for centuries, I figured. It couldn't be that hard. So I cobbled together bits and pieces of half a dozen recipes, and added some twists of my own. Surprise! The result was a whole herd of soft, pillowy little pasta-bits that floated in their boiling water like ducklings. I was terribly pleased with myself. There wasn't a dense or rubbery gnocchi among them.

To top these little pieces of pasta heaven, I had settled on a creamy tomato sauce. A lot of gnocchi gets served with butter sauce (and I bet a light lemon-butter-white wine-parsley sauce would be great here), but I wanted something more substantial. It was winter, and lemon butter seemed awfully summery for such a grey day. So tomatoes it was (I know, they're summery too, but I've always associated jarred tomatoes more with winter than summer). This sauce was just the right thing. I topped the whole deal with a combination of bacon bits and almonds, which turned out to be inspired. Their crunch gave variety to the soft pasta, and the nutty flavour really brought out an earthiness to the potatoes in the gnocchi that I loved. I sort of treasure this recipe now. So here it is, in all it's One True Gnocchi Way glory. Take it, and adapt it as you will to make your own strangely tasty little pasta pillows.

Potato Gnocchi

Note: ALL the quantities here are flexible. I make these by feel and texture, so I'll try to describe that to you so you'll have an idea of the goal. If you're someone who rigidly follows recipes, though, you may have trouble here.

2 1/4 lbs red potatoes (I used Russets, I think, but I'm not sure it matters)
1 egg
Approx. 11 oz Flour (The flour amount will vary with every recipe. Just have a good amount of it on hand.)
Salt
Pepper
Olive Oil

Place the potatoes in a large pot with enough water to cover them. Salt the water fairly generously - the salt will have to work its way through the skins, so don't be shy. Boil for 20 or 30 minutes, until the potatoes are tender. Drain the potatoes.

Peel the warm potatoes with a knife, using a towel to protect your hands from the heat. Mash the hot potatoes as thoroughly as possible. Salt and pepper the mashed potatoes to taste. Crack the egg into a small container, and mix in a little of the hot mashed potatoes. Then pour the egg-potato mixture back into the main batch of potatoes, and mix it in thoroughly before the hot potatoes cook the egg.

Add two large-ish handfuls of flour to the potatoes, and mix until absorbed. Form a dough by turning the potatoes out onto a flat surface and kneading in the remainder of the flour one handful at a time. The goal here is a very very light dough mixture that is pliable and just this side of sticky. The proper dough consistency has been reached when the dough doesn't stick to the surface immediately upon contact, but if allowed to stand unmoving sticks within about two minutes. Err on the side of less flour at first.

When your dough is the proper consistency, flour the surface and slice a fist-sized chunk off the dough. Roll the chunk into a snake about an inch in diameter. Slice into 2 inch long chunks.

Fill a large pot with water, salt the water lightly, and bring to a boil. Add the gnocchi, ten or so at a time. Cook each piece 2-3 minutes, or until it floats. When it floats, it's done. This may be sooner than you think. If your gnocchi dissolves upon contact with the water, more flour is needed, and you may need to knead the dough a little more to develop it. It's not a bad idea to boil a few test pieces to make sure that you've got enough flour before you roll out the remainder of the dough. If your gnocchi holds together well, go ahead and continue the snake-chunk-boil process until all the dough has been used.

When the gnocchi are finished boiling, scoop out them out of the pot with a slotted spoon and into a serving bowl. Drizzle with just a hint of olive oil to prevent sticking, and serve with the sauce of your choice. This recipe makes a lot of pasta at once, so if you're like me you won't be eating all of it in one swoop. That's okay, gnocchi freezes really well. To freeze them, go ahead and boil them as you would normally, but instead of serving, place them on a baking sheet and allow them to cool and dry out. When they're no longer hot, pack them into ziploc bags and stick them in the freezer. To revive them, just pour the frozen gnocchi into a pot of boiling water and wait until they float again, then serve.

Creamy Tomato Sauce and other Gnocchi toppings

14 oz jar of pasta sauce
1/2 cup whipping or heavy cream
1-2 cloves garlic, diced
Salt
Black Pepper
Nutmeg
1/2 tbsp basil (fresh is best, but use dried if you don't have fresh)
Parmesan cheese, grated
Slivered almonds
3 slices bacon, fried crispy and crumbled (DO NOT substitute fake bacon bits here. It is not the same.)

Combine all ingredients except the cheese, almonds, and bacon in a saucepan over low heat. Simmer 45-50 minutes, stirring occasionally. Toast the almonds in a saucepan briefly, until they turn golden (be careful not to burn them). To serve, spoon the sauce over the gnocchi, then sprinkle generously with grated cheese, toasted almonds, and bacon bits.

Grandma's Carrot Cake (w/ Cream Cheese Frosting)

2008-03-19T15:46:00.001-07:00

Some families pass down the secret recipe to a meatsauce. Some jealously hoard their special cookies, or perhaps a recipe for a magic dressing that improves even the lamest salad. In my family, we pass down carrot cake. In fact, even committing this recipe to writing is something of a heresy; my grandmother never wrote it down, and baked from memory each of the hundreds (or thousands) of times she made this cake. My mother used this cake as the recipe for her wedding cake, and even as Grandma baked twenty (!) of the cakes for the reception, she never told my mother what the exact ingredients were.

She passed it to me a few years ago over the telephone. I'd broken up with a boyfriend, and was consoling myself by baking like a madwoman. There's nothing like fresh bread and cookies to ease the pain of men. Anyway, Grandma chose that moment to give me the recipe for her special carrot cake, and I've made it ever since. I've always been a little scared that I'll lose the piece of paper jotted with notes on how to prepare it, though, so now it's going into this blog. I know that nothing on the internet is sacred, but I don't think it matters. Some recipes are special no matter what.

This cake is lighter in texture than any other carrot cake I've tried, and is faintly sweet but not sugary. It's in fact less sweet than I always expect it to be, which is perfect for the cream cheese icing. It's also perfect for letting me delude myself into eating lots of it, because hey, it's got less sugar and carrots! That's almost like it's healthy, right? Right?

Grandma's Carrot Cake

2 cups self-rising flour
2 cups sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 1/4 cup vegetable oil
4 large eggs
3 cups grated carrot
1 cup nuts
1 tsp baking soda

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Mix all the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, baking powder, sugar, salt, cinnamon) together. In a separate large bowl, beat together the eggs and the oil. Add the dry ingredients to the eggs and oil, and stir to mix thoroughly. Add the carrots and the nuts to this mixture, and stir until they're evenly distributed through the batter. Pour the batter evenly between two 9 inch cake pans.

Bake for 25 minutes or until a knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean (in my current oven, I bake it for 35 min at 375F, but then my current oven tends to run cool).

Cream Cheese Frosting

8 ox cream cheese
1 stick margarine (or unsalted butter)
1 box confectioner's sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract

Optional: 1 can coconut OR a handful of nuts

Soften the cream cheese and the margarine to room temperature. Using an electric mixer, beat together the margarine and the cream cheese. Add the confectioner's sugar (may want to turn the mixer down some, so that the sugar doesn't poof everywhere), and beat until the sugar is incorporated completely and the icing is smooth. Add the vanilla, and beat until that's incorporated. If you're adding other ingredients (I like this icing kept simple for this cake, but for other cakes coconut or nuts may feel more appropriate), add them here. Cover and chill the icing if you're not using it immediately.

Root Soup

2008-03-18T03:21:00.000-07:00

Roots. When I was a kid, I wouldn't eat anything that I knew for a fact grew under the ground. That lasted until I was about seven, which was the age that my mother stopped concealing the fact that carrots were roots from me. I loved carrots, and I wasn't willing to give them up for some stand on root-principle. So I adopted the lovely denizens of the underworld into my diet, and I haven't really looked back.

Still, even if I no longer avoid them like cooties, roots somehow lack the glamour of other vegetables in the crisper. They aren't plump and colorful like the peppers, they don't have the snap and chilly crispness of the greens. They're sort of the lowly peasants of the vegetable world, and this fact is reflected in my grocery store's tendency not to stock them. I've had it out with the produce manager over this on several occasions, but he insists that lowly roots don't sell.

Perhaps more people should be introduced to the possibilities of root soup. This is a very basic vegetable soup, and there are actually two different versions: a chunky version wherein I'm too lazy to get out the blender, and a smooth version for which the blender gets a workout. I like both, although I admit that the smooth and creamy version is unbeatable for those dreary winter nights when you just want to curl up with comfort food and maybe watch chick flicks with the cat. On those nights, you don't need glamour; you're not feeling glamorous yourself. No, that's when you need root soup, which is just as lovely and sweet and velvety as can possibly be imagined. It may not be haute cuisine, but these are roots raised above their station in life, and I can't imagine what I was thinking to ever turn up my nose.

Root Soup

I call it Root Soup because it can be made with a variety of different roots. I've tried turnips, celeriac, parsnips, and rutabagas, and they all work fairly well. Turnip is the root that I can get hold of most easily, but celeriac makes a very pretty, pale green color, so I use it if I'm serving guests. I haven't tried it with beets yet, but I bet the color there would be spectacular, so I may try that soon. Anyway, the type of root doesn't really matter. You'll get different flavours with each root, but the basic recipe works for all of them.

3 smallish leeks, chopped. (Don’t be stingy on the leek)
1 small-medium red or yellow onion, roughly diced
2 Tbsp olive oil, plus a little extra optional for finishing
2 tbsp unsalted butter
1 1/2 stalk celery, coarsely chopped
3 cloves garlic, sliced
1 1/2 lb roots
1 1/2 qt chicken stock (This is highly variable. The amount of liquid is one of those ‘adjust til it feel right’ matters that I do by instinct. Occasionally, if I have to resort to using non-homemade broths, I’ll add bouillon cubes to my store-bought chicken stock. Sometimes I toss in a beef cube in addition to a chicken cube for fun and variety. Don’t add too much [it’ll get too salty, and that’s gross], but feel free to experiment with the stock taste here.)
Salt
Pepper
Heavy cream
Chopped chives for serving, optional
Creme fraiche for serving, optional

Start by locating a largish soup pot. Over medium heat, add the olive oil and the butter, allow the butter to melt slightly, then add the onion, leek, celery and garlic. Saute those together until the leek has softened, and the onion turns translucent. Taste this mixture, and season it with salt and pepper accordingly.

To the sauteing veggie mix, add the root chunks and the stock. Bring the whole pot to a rolling simmer, then reduce the heat to medium-low (or just low, depending on your particular stove), cover the pot, and simmer for three or so hours. The root chucks should mash easily against the edge of the pot under pressure from the back of a spoon. This is one of those 'mix it and forget it recipes. I usually watch a movie or a football game, or go off and do some gardening or something. It's difficult to overcook most roots, and longer simmering time will just let the soup's flavours blend more. When your root is soft, remove from heat.

At this point, you get choices. If you want the chunky, lazy-man's version, you're done. Check it one more time for salt, then it's good to go. But if you don't mind a few minutes more work, you can convert it to the creamy version easily. Just work in batches and run it through a blender. Fill the blender no more than 1/3 full (Hot soups will explode because of steam when you turn the blender on if you're not careful. It's no fun to clean up, so just work a little more slowly and you'll avoid the mess) and puree the soup until smooth. Add another dash or so of olive oil and 1/4-1/2 cup of heavy cream to the finished pureed soup to really give it the incredible texture that I love. Be a little stingy with the oil here (you don't want oil globules floating on the surface, you just want a little flavour), but the cream is hard to get wrong. Taste, and adjust seasoning as necessary. If the soup's cooled in the blending process, reheat it gently before eating.

I listed chives and creme fraiche as serving options. This is a nice enough soup that I don't feel bad serving it to company as an appetizer, and if I do that I'll add a dollop of creme fraiche to each bowl, and top the whole thing with chopped chives for accent.

Servings: It depends largely on the exact amount of root and the exact amount of stock that you use. This is a forgiving recipe about quantities, so sometimes I'll get six servings, and sometimes ten. Meh. It does average to about eight lunch-sized servings, though, and probably twelve appetizer-servings.

Eggs Benny

2008-03-15T13:23:00.000-07:00

Eggs Benny is my hippy-ified take on the classic eggs Benedict. I love the idea of eggs Benedict for a brunch or light lunch, because they're so versatile. Forget sticking to the traditional 'poached egg, ham, English muffin, cheese, Hollandaise' routine, in my kitchen eggs Benedict becomes a great excuse to throw together some of my favorite flavours and experiment! Think poached eggs over a traditional Southern biscuit, with leftover sirloin strips, sauted mushrooms, gruyere, and red-eye gravy instead of Hollandaise. Or, if I'm not feeling the calories that day, the poached egg goes over a light English muffin topped with fruit slices (avocado, apple, or even grape is good), and maybe leftover strips from a rotisserie chicken. For a sauce on those days, I sometimes use a light yogurt dressing with maybe the faintest hint of curry, or even no sauce at all (because a properly poached egg has a yolk that can be a sauce all its own, and who wants to mess with that kind of goodness when you're playing with simple, clean flavours?). So here is a health-conscious version of my favorite egg brunch. This is Benedict being good (very, very good!), both for your waistline and your tastebuds.

Eggs Benny

4 refrigerated biscuits (I use Pillsbury Grands Buttermilk with layers, but whatever cranks your tractor)
4 large eggs
2 tbsp white vinegar
Water
1 ripe avocado, sliced fairly chunky (how to choose an avocado)
1 ripe apple, thinly sliced (I use Fuji usually, but Granny Smith are very pretty too)
1 cup rotisserie chicken, in strips (I usually make this recipe with leftovers, since I rarely eat a whole chicken when I bring one home from the grocery)
1 cup plain yogurt (preferably full-fat, but if you're really thinking light, the skim kind works okay too)
1 tbsp fresh lime juice
1 tsp curry paste (I use Thai red curry, but I bet green would work and be pretty too)
1 1/2 tbsp unsalted sweet butter, melted
Salt
Pepper

Prepare the biscuits according to the package directions. While the biscuits are baking, make the yogurt sauce by combining the butter, yogurt, lime juice, and curry paste in a medium mixing bowl, and whisking until it's all mixed together. The sauce should be fairly thin, to mimic the properties of Hollandaise, but if you want it thicker (as I sometimes do), cut down on the lime juice and leave out the butter altogether. When the sauce is done, set it in the fridge and slice the apples and avocado.

When the biscuits have about five minutes left, fill a saucepan with water and put it on over medium heat to simmer. The goal is to bring the water to a bare boil, then turn the heat down until the temperature is just below a boil, on a high simmer. Add the vinegar to this water. This is the base in which you will poach your eggs.

Crack an egg into a smallish container (I use a 6oz ramekin, but friends use a small glass or a mug). Lower this container into the simmering water, and in one smooth motion, pour the egg into the water. The egg should form filmy trails, and begin to cook. I find that a quicker pour here is better, because my eggs tend to move around less in the water bath with a quicker pour, but this is something that everyone has to feel out for themselves. Repeat this process with the other three eggs, allowing the first egg to settle a bit before adding another one, and disturbing the water as little as possible with the addition of each egg. The eggs should not be touching each other (or they'll cook together), and after the eggs have been placed in the pan, you should attempt to keep the water as still as possible (no stirring, no shaking the pan, etc).

How long you cook your eggs will depend on how firmly you like them poached. 3-4 minutes is sufficient if you like your yolk very runny, but I usually end up poaching mine for more like 7 minutes, so that the yolk still runs a little, but also has some substance to it. Again, experiment around. There's really no 'right' or 'wrong' here. When your eggs have finished poaching, remove them with a slotted spoon. I usually rest my eggs briefly on a paper towel to absorb some of their outside moisture, so that they won't make the biscuit soggy.

While the eggs are poaching, your biscuits have probably finished baking. Remove them from the oven and slice them in half, to make a sandwich-style top half and bottom half. On the bottom half, add a layer of chicken, a layer of avocado, and a layer of apple, distributing these ingredients evenly across your four biscuits. When the eggs finish, top each biscuit-stack with an egg, and pour yogurt sauce over the egg a la Hollandaise with the traditional eggs Benedict. Finish by placing the top half of the biscuit over the whole thing to make a sort of loose egg-apple-avocado-chicken sandwich. If you've got any yogurt sauce left over, you could pour it on top of the 'sandwich', but I usually don't have any left over at this point. Serve immediately, while the egg is still very hot (a cooled poached egg isn't nearly as much fun).

Servings: 4

Winter Greens and Chickpeas

2008-03-14T22:14:00.000-07:00

I grew up in the deepest part of the American South, where greens are a staple. Tobacco isn't the only huge, leafy plant that gets the royal treatment around here: collards and mustard greens grow three feet tall in farmers' backyard gardens or in huge fields for market. The interesting thing about Southern greens, though, is that few Southern cooks know how to prepare them properly. The standard way is to boil them for hours in plain water with a ham hock, which yields a tasteless, textureless mass that ranks slightly below Spam on my list of unappealing foods. Leave it to the South to grow agricultural glory, then squander it on poor preparation.

Luckily for the greens of the world, it does not have to be so. This recipe capitalizes on their earthy, down-home goodness by complementing them with plump, nutty chickpeas and a rich, slightly tangy combo of chicken stock and lemon juice. With all due respect to the Southern cooks I grew up with, this ain't your mama's greens. These are so simply, earthily good that after I perfected the recipe I made six batches over the course of two weeks, because I didn't want to eat anything else for lunch.

I make this recipe using kale, because its mild flavor adapts nicely to the braising process I use here, but you can use any winter green. Chard would be lovely. The stronger flavoured greens (mustard, collard) might need longer cooking times, but I see no reason why they wouldn't be fine. I think that I originally got the idea from Orangette, here, but this version has evolved quite a bit from hers, so I feel no qualms about claiming it for my own.

Winter Greens and Chickpeas

Approx. 1 lb winter greens (Like I said, I use kale here, but others would work. The 1 lb measurement is after the greens have had the tough stems taken out, so you’ll need to buy more than that at the store. I usually get two bunches.)
1 can Bush or Goya chickpeas, drained but not necessarily rinsed (I like the taste of the chickpea-juice, so I don’t rinse them. If it’s not your thing, go ahead and rinse. No big deal either way.)
1 medium-large scallion, thinly sliced
3 smallish leeks, thinly sliced
3 cloves garlic, finely diced
3 tbsp olive oil
1 cup chicken stock
2 tbsp lemon juice
Salt

Prep the greens by rinsing them thoroughly, then cutting the stems out, leaving only the leaves. Discard the stems, and slice the greens into thin ribbons (1/4 in.). Set greens aside. If greens are still wet after this process, that’s fine.

In a very wide sauce pan with a lid, add a generous 1 1/2 tbsp olive oil over medium heat. Add the scallion and leeks, cooking slowly until leeks and scallion have softened and are beginning to turn translucent. Add the garlic, and cook for another minute or so, then dump in the greens, working in batches to wilt the greens down enough until they all fit into the pan. Stir often, and make sure nothing sticks to the pan. Pour the chicken stock and lemon juice over the semi-wilted greens, then cover the pan, lower the heat to medium-low, and cook for fifteen-ish minutes. The goal here is a slow simmer, not a sizzle. The greens will absorb the flavours of the stock and lemon juice, and will release their own bitterness to become tender and earthy. After fifteen minutes or so, remove the lid, salt the mixture to taste, stir, and replace the lid for another five minutes. If it’s getting low on moisture, add a little more chicken stock to make sure that nothing sticks to the pan. If you're using a stronger flavoured green, you might add a little more stock here, and double the cooking time.

After salting the greens, in another medium saucepan, add the remaining olive oil, and the chickpeas. I like to use a saucepan large enough that the chickpeas will fit in a single layer. Cook over medium-high heat until the chickpeas begin to pop. At the first sign of popping, remove from heat and add to the greens mixture, which should be about finished. What you’re essentially doing is frying the chickpeas just a little, so that they’re heated up to go in with the greens. I think it helps them retain more of their own flavour once they get in the green mix.

Serve with rough-grain bread for sopping up juices.

Servings: 4-6

Roasted Apples

2008-03-14T21:59:00.000-07:00

This is such an easy dessert that I almost feel guilty for having to put some sort of recipe down in writing to remember it, but that's how my brain goes: if I don't write it down, it'll be gone in a few days, no matter how much I liked it.

This is a great accompaniment for meals because it basically cooks while you're eating, and it takes pretty much no time to assemble. Plus, it's fairly light, as desserts go, so it won't leave you feeling like you've eaten a stone afterwards. I have a set of special apple-roasting dishes (they look like large ramekins with a ceramic finger sticking up through the center of them for impaling the apple), but this recipe works just as well with a normal baking dish. I've got the portions here set for two people, but as you can see, there are no set 'correct' amounts of fillings, so it's VERY easy to adjust this to four apples, or even more. Just add one apple per person. The cooking time shouldn't change, and there are no 'right amounts' for the fillings; it's pretty much whatever floats your boat.

Roasted Apples

2 Rome apples, or another type of cooking apple
Brown sugar
Cinnamon
Honey
1 tbsp unsalted butter
Whipped cream or ice cream

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Core the apples, but don't peel them. I use a paring knife for this, but my mother (who taught me this recipe) uses a longer boning knife. Either way, this is probably a step that the grownups should do if you're making the recipe with kids.

Place the cored apples into your baking dish of choice. If you don't have apple-baking ramekins, I suggest lining a small baking dish with tinfoil. Ideally, the baking dish should be small enough that the apples just fit; this will keep the juices from burning, and will produce a lovely, super-sweet apple 'soup' at the end. Once you've got your apples arranged, pack brown sugar into the core until 3/4 full (This is why there aren't portions of the sugar listed in the recipe, it's difficult to know how much sugar this requires). On top of the sugar, sprinkle a generous layer of cinnamon, then finish filling the core up with honey. For extra fun, drizzle honey on the outside of the apples too in artistic patterns. Place a 1/2 tbsp butter pat on top of each apple's core-hole.

Place the apples in the oven, and bake for 40-50 min, or until the apples are soft all the way through. I use a cake tester to check done-ness: just poke it through the apples and make sure you don't encounter much resistance. The peels on the apples may have split in the cooking process; that's normal. Serve in bowls, one bowl per apple. Drizzle the juices left over in the dish over the apples, and top with lots of whipped cream (my favorite) or ice cream.

Servings: 2

Twice-Baked Savory Sweet Potatoes

2008-03-14T21:29:00.000-07:00

Savory Sweet potatoes? Isn't that an oxymoron?

Nope! These sweet potatoes aren't your ordinary, marshmallow-infested Thanksgiving fare. These are sweet spuds with a little kick, ready to take their place at the grown-ups' table and laughing at the brown sugar monstrosities that so many people think of when they think sweet potatoes. They take a little time, but they're really very easy. Most of the time is just baking in the oven, and what could be easier than that?

I came up for the idea with these as I do most of my culinary creations: staring vacantly into my pantry and wondering what I was thinking when I bought sweet potatoes on impulse. I practically never eat sweet potatoes, but these were so plump and earthy and tempting that they practically leapt into my grocery basket. So here I was, wondering what the proper treatment might be for sweet potatoes if I wasn't in the mood for something sugary. By coincidence, they were sitting beside my little jar of curry paste in the pantry, and so this inspired combination was born. The curry sets off the sweetness of the potatoes by providing a slight tang, nothing too ostentatious, just enough to make your tastebuds sit up and take notice. It also pulls out the sweetness in the caramelized onions and the buttermilk, which I added because I adore ordinary mashed potatoes with buttermilk. Anyway, this combination is one that I'll be making again, and soon. The next time I get tempted by sweet potatoes that look too good to resist, I'll know exactly how to do them justice.

Twice-Baked Savory Sweet Potatoes

2 large sweet potatoes (orange or yellow works, I've even made it with one of each)
1/4 large yellow onion, finely diced (or 1/2 medium onion, the onions are very large where I live)
1 tsp olive oil
1/4 cup buttermilk
2 tbsp unsalted butter, divided into small cubes
1/4 tsp red curry paste (I use Thai curry, but whatever your favorite is should be fine)
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese, shredded, plus additional cheese to garnish
Salt
Pepper

Preheat the oven to 400F. Wrap the sweet potatoes in tin foil, twisting the ends like candy to make handling easy. When the oven is ready, pop in the sweet potatoes, and leave them there to bake for 1 hr - 1 hr 10 min. Test a potato with a fork to see if they're done: the fork should penetrate to the center of the potato with little or no resistance. Yellow sweet potatoes take longer to get done than orange ones, and will seem more resistant to the fork even when they are done. This is normal.

Towards the end of the potatoes' cooking time, add the olive oil to a skillet over medium heat. Drop in the onion, and caramelize until just barely amber-colored. This is a stage somewhere after 'translucent', and before 'french onion soup brown'. This should take about 10 min. Remove the onions from the heat.

Remove the potatoes from the oven, and unwrap them. Lower the oven temperature to 350F, but keep it going, you'll need it later. Using a very sharp knife, carefully cut the potatoes in half. I say 'carefully', because the goal is to get the potatoes in half while leaving the delicate skins intact. Once the potatoes are halved, scoop out the center of the potatoes into a large mixing bowl, leaving 1/4 in of potato attached to the skins. This should form little potato 'bowls' out of the skins, into which we will eventually be returning the gussied-up innards. Set aside the skins, you'll return to them later.

Add the small cubes of butter to the hot potato guts, and pour in the buttermilk. Stir vigorously, until the potatoes' heat has melted the butter and the mixture is fairly smooth. Add the onion, a dash of salt to taste, and a dash of pepper to taste. Mix these in, then taste the mixture. Adjust seasoning.

Add in the curry paste, and stir until mixed thoroughly. Taste the mixture, and add more curry if desired (truthfully, I probably end up using more like 3/8 or 1/2 tsp here. It's completely a personal preference thing, though). Make sure the curry is mixed evenly; if you're using the paste it can take some hard stirring to get it to mix right. Add in the cheese, and stir until that's mixed completely. The potato should still be hot enough to melt the cheese, but don't worry if it's not. It doesn't matter.

Line a square baking tin with foil. I use one with high sides, because it tends to support the potatoes better. Place the four skins in this baking pan, and scoop the curry mixture back into the skins. You should be able to get it all in, don't be afraid to mound it up a little if needed. On top of the refilled potato halves, sprinkle some more Parmesan and maybe a dash of nutmeg if you're feeling artistic. Place the baking tin in the oven at 350F, and bake for 15-20 min. The Parmesan on top of the potatoes should be melted, and the potatoes should be warm all the way through. Serve!

Servings: 4 as a side dish, perhaps only 2 as a main dish

Better Hamburgers

2008-03-14T21:08:00.001-07:00

There are hamburgers, and then there are better hamburgers. This is my hamburger with a dash of flair. I don't always do it this way. Sometimes I use this recipe, and add cheese to the middle of two thin layers. Sometimes I go mad and use turkey or chicken instead of beef, then add apples or bananas to the result. But this is the burger that I return to, the one I serve to guests (or visiting parents!), the 'home base' of burgers. Ideally, this one starts with me salting the meat a day or so in advance, but I'm lazy. Sometimes that doesn't get done.

Better Hamburger

1 lb ground beef (or use your favorite meat here, I'm not picky)
1/4 yellow onion, finely diced
2 or 3 cloves garlic, finely diced
1 tsp olive oil
1/3 cup bread crumbs (I use panko)
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
Salt
Pepper

Begin by putting the olive oil in a skillet and caramelizing the onion over medium heat. Toward the end of the onion's cooking time, drop in the garlic to caramelize a little as well. While the onion is slowly turning a light amber color, get out the meat and drop it into a large mixing bowl. Add the Worcestershire sauce, a dash of salt, and pepper to taste. mix these in using your hands, smooshing the meat to distribute the sauce evenly. When the onion gets done, add it to the meat mixture. Dump in the bread crumbs, and the egg. Smoosh these into the meat, until the mixture is homogeneous and the meat generally sticks to itself rather than your hands. Separate the meat into four balls.

Spray a medium skillet over medium-high heat with non-stick cooking spray. I use the Pam Grilling variety, since it's made to withstand higher heat. We're using the cooking spray in place of olive oil here, and I use it even though the skillet is non-stick. The idea is just to have a thin layer of grease to start the meat cooking, until it can render enough fat to suitably sear itself. Flatten the meat balls one by one, and drop them into the skillet, arranging them so they are close to each other, but not touching. The key to hamburgers of even thickness is that they start out thinner in the middle than on the edges, so don't be shy with the flattening. Allow the meat to cook for about five minutes without moving, enough so that you can see the brown 'done' portion about a third of the way up the burger. Flip the burgers, and allow them to cook for four or five minutes on the other side. Cooking times may vary with your personal preference; I like my burgers on the more-done side of medium. When the burgers have achieved the proper level of done-ness for your taste (check one using a fork if you're wondering about the state of the middle of the burgers), remove them from the heat, flip them once more, and allow them to rest for a few minutes (go grab your condiments, set the table, whatever. The important point here is to let them reabsorb their juices, which will make them tastier). Serve with your favorite buns, lettuce, tomato, mayo, etc!

Servings: 4

Index of Recipes

2008-03-14T21:00:00.000-07:00

Breakfast and Brunch
Eggs Benny
Quiche
Hash Browns
Huevos Rancheros
Bacon and Egg Pastries
Potato-Bell Pepper Frittata

Soups and Salads
Root Soup
Parmesan-Crusted Salmon Caesar Salad
Rutabaga-Leek Soup
Chicken Noodle Soup
Ithaca Potato-Cheese Soup
Cabbage Soup

Breads and Muffins
Zucchini Bread
Gougeres
Yam Biscuits
Honey Oatmeal Bread

Pasta Dishes
Gnocchi and Creamy Tomato Sauce
Tomato-Egg Florentine Casserole
Shrimp, Squash, and Asparagus Linguine
Artichoke Pasta Florentine
Low-cal Spaghetti Bolognese

Meat
Better Hamburgers
Heavenly Pot Roast
Pork Tenderloin with Pear Glaze
Turkey Meatballs
Meat and Mushrooms
Cashew Chicken Curry
Lemon-Dill Tilapia
Southern Egg Rolls
Roast Chicken

Vegetables
Twice-Baked Savory Sweet Potatoes
Kale and Chickpeas
Scalloped Turnips
Potato-Pear Salad with Rosemary Vinaigrette Dressing
Steamed Artichoke in Lemon-Butter Sauce
Gourmet Green Bean Casserole
Baba Ghanouj
Hot Roasted Red Pepper Hummus
Sweet Potato Fries

Miscellaneous
Baked Polenta Fries
Rosemary Vinaigrette Dressing
Pepperjack Gougeres, BLT Style
Simple Pie Crust
Peach-Red Pepper Chutney
Potato Chips
Salsamole

Desserts
Roasted Apples
Vanilla Panna Cotta
Fancy Strawberries
Pumpkin Cheesecake

Cakes and Cookies
Grandma's Carrot Cake (w/ Cream Cheese Frosting)
Hamentaschen
Stupidly Easy Angel Food Cake
Grandma's Teacakes
Sour Cream Pound Cake
Gobs

Candies
Chocolate Truffles
Martha Washingtons
Rocks

Drinks and Beverages
Hopskip
Black Forest