À Table!

A belated 4th

2011-07-09T17:25:00.001-04:00

Happy belated 4th of July!

I meant to post this recipe last weekend, but I decided to take a mini "staycation" at my family's home in suburbs for the weekend and didn't have my laptop with me. Like every 4th of July, it's tradition in our family to make a patriotic dessert. It's usually a flag cake, but this year I decided to try something a little different. I was looking through recipes and found one for red white and blue layered jello. While you can't really go wrong with jello I thought I would make my dessert a bit more interesting, if not refined, and try a patriotic panna cotta instead. I initially wanted these ready to take to my friend Beth's bbq but as usual, I underestimated the amount of time it would take me to execute my great plan. I served them for dessert the next day at home. Sorry Beth.

A few things I learned while making this recipe:

Raspberry seeds are difficult to take out of the tiny holes of a strainer.

Pureed blueberries do not make a blue puree. In fact, they make a lavendar colored one. Thanks to food coloring this is not a problem.

Gelatin layers don't always solidify in the fridge at the same speed. Patience should be a required ingredient in this recipe.

Imperfect layers of panna cotta taste just as good as perfectly poured ones. phew.

When trying a new recipe I should always leave myself a few extra hours, just in case it turns out to be more complicated than expected. I never remember to do this. I think a timeline would serve me well in the future. Write out, step by step, what I need to do and how long I think it will take me. This recipe was a sort of exception because I did not have an actual set of instructions, I just had a list of ingredients. I normally use a recipe I've found on a blog or in a cookbook. This time I used a recipe I got from the pastry chef at work. I went to her asking for a recipe for panna cotta. Who better to ask than an Italian pastry chef I thought.

Me - "This is my plan [insert explanation of tri-color panna cotta here] for this weekend. Do you have a recipe I could use?"
Pastry chef - "OK! Yes!" She takes a piece of paper and proceeds to write down a list of ingredients and hands it to me.
Me- "Umm. Thanks, but this is just a list of ingredients, not an actual recipe. What do I do with these?"
Pastry chef - " Ah! Ok!" [ insert explanation of what to do with said ingredients].

After I repeated these instructions back to her a few times to make sure nothing was lost in translation, I left the pastry station, gelatin sheets and foil cups in hand, full of inspiration and with high hopes for my dessert.

Patriotic Panna Cotta

Ingredient for basic panna cotta:

(makes about 20 foil cups - restaurant quantities!)

1 quart of heavy cream

160 g sugar

6 sheets of gelatin

Directions:

Make your fruit purees for the colored layers:

I used 2 little plastic boxes of raspberries and one slightly larger one of blueberries. Not very precise, I realize that. I think it ends up being a pint of both berries. You can use strawberries for the red too if you want. Puree the fruit in a small food processor and set aside. I did the extra step of straining out the seeds of the raspberries and most of the skin from the blueberries to make the panna cotta smoother. I don't think it's required but it definitely makes for a smoother, silkier dessert.

To make the panna cotta base:

Pour the heavy cream into a medium sauce pan over medium heat. Add the sugar. How much you ask? 160g please. I meant to measure it out and then convert it into cups for those who don't have a scale but forgot. My apologies. Not only does the chef work, apparently, purely from memory when it comes to recipes, but she also works in grams. Ah Europe. Thankfully my mother gave me an old scale she had.

Heat the cream until the sugar dissolves and reaches a simmer. While it is heating up, "dissolve" the gelatin sheets, one by one, in a bowl of cold water and add them to the hot cream mixture. I was instructed, several times, to put the gelatin sheets in the bowl of water one by one. I didn't ask what would happen if I put them all in at once but it sounded like a bad idea, so I would recommend against it. I assume the worse that could happen is you end up with one giant ball of gelatin. While it doesn't sound too ominous we'll steer away from it just to be safe.

A few dry gelatin sheets. They almost look like stain glass windows.

What happens to the gelatin sheet after a couple minutes in a bowl of water.

This is where the recipe gets a little more complicated. You now have the sweetened cream with dissolved gelatin sheets, hot, on your stove. I added a little vanilla, about a teaspoon, to add extra flavor. You now want to divide the mixture into 3 bowls so that you can add your fruit puree to two of the bowls to create the different colors. Pour the fruit purees into their respective bowls, leaving one plain for the white layer. I added a little bit of red food coloring to the raspberry cream mixture to make it more red than pink and a fair amount of blue food coloring to the blueberry cream mixture. I kept my fingers crossed that it wouldn't turn people's tongues blue.

Interesting note: You'll need to add an extra gelatin sheet to each bowl that has fruit puree. You are, in fact, adding more "liquid" to the bowl and therefore diluting the amount of gelatin to cream mixture. You want to keep the consistency of the layers the same so you need to add gelatin. I added an extra sheet to the raspberry and blueberry bowls. Depending on how much puree you use, this could change.

Put your foil cups on a baking sheet so you can easily put them in and take them out of the refrigerator. Pour in your first color about a third of the way up the little foil cup. For my patriotic theme it happens to be the raspberry aka red.

Refrigerate the first layer until it solidifies enough that you can pour the second layer on top without it mixing. This took longer than the 20 or so minutes I thought it would. Some of my panna cottas were a little marbleized. (Apparently these colors do run.) Repeat this step until you have the red, white, and blue cream mixtures layered in the foil cups.

I usually take pictures for almost every step of the recipe. This time I didn't for a good reason. My kitchen was a mess. This recipe pretty much turned my little kitchen into a red white and blue picasso painting, or was it more like a Miro? I'm not sure. There was raspberry and blueberry puree pretty much everywhere. Not very photogenic. Needless to say I couldn't manage keeping the panna cotta, that had taken on a life of it's own, in check and take pictures of the steps at the same time. I'm sorry!

Based on the feedback from those who tasted it, it was a success! The raspberry was my favorite layer. It was incredibly flavorful. I might make a mango and raspberry one next. I have a feeling the two flavors would work really well together. Was this time consuming, like most of my recipes tend to be? Yes. Was it worth it? Absolutely. I think I've graduated from making a flag cake out of a box and have discovered a new way to celebrate our independence! This is not to say that there won't be more flag cakes in my future, but they might have a little company next Fourth of July.

Bon appetit!

Even though this one had a "tie-dyed" look, it was pretty tasty.

Frustrations and Tea Cakes

2011-06-15T21:50:00.002-04:00

I really wanted to call this post frustrations and fruitcakes because it sounded better,

but it would have been false advertising, plus fruitcake are both unpopular and out of season.

While reading my friend's blog this morning I realized that bad days are universal. No matter what you do for a living, you are bound to have one of those days that just levels you. You get to work ready to take on whatever you are supposed to face that day and then you are steered into one too many wrong directions and you realize that you would have been better off sleeping through till the next day. Monday was one of those days for me. One aggravating situation after another turned the day into my own personal version of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. By 6:00 PM I was out the door, looking forward to a run to blow off some steam. I was exhausted but figured that my day would probably benefit more from a run than an evening on my couch with my TV and Campari and soda, so off I went. The weather was perfect and my run took me on a short tour around the monuments.

I am lucky live in a city where a short run means being able to take see such fabulous views.

As I turned onto P street I slowed down and did something I swore I would never do. I walked into Whole Foods covered in a post run sweat. I can't tell you how many times I've been waiting in line at Whole Foods and someone has stood behind me to check out smelling like the workout they just had. This is probably because there is an absurd number of yoga studios and gyms within a 2 block radius of the store, but still. Do you really not have time to shower before you shop for your dinner? Embarrassed that I used to judge the person I had just become, I walked into the store to find something to cook.

A friend who tasted my mango sorbet suggested I try to make a pina colada version. I picked up some pineapple and coconut milk and decided to give it a try. After looking up a few recipes I decided to combine one from Holy Cannoli and one from a random Google search. While the recipe mash up wasn't a great success, the work frustration that the run didn't get rid of was quickly squashed by chopping and pureeing an entire pineapple. While the mixture that was to become a sorbet failure was chilling in the refrigerator, I decided to bake a cake.

Like I said, I had a really bad day and had to work it off.

A while ago I had the idea of making a poundcake and infusing it with Earl Grey tea scented simple syrup. What better time than that night to try it?

Early Grey Pound Cake

Adapted from a recipe found on Piece of Cake

Ingredients:

3 cups cake flour, spooned and leveled ( I used regular flour)
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
3 cups sugar
6 eggs
1 cup sour cream (I used 2% milk because that's all I had in the fridge)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Directions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt and set aside. In a mixer blend the butter and sugar until completely incorporated. Slowly add the eggs, one at a time. Add the milk and vanilla to the mixer until completely blended. Add half the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients until well mixed in, and then add the other half. Pour into 2 buttered and floured loaf pans and bake for about 90 minutes.

It's a pretty standard pound cake recipe. What makes this cake a little different and a lot tastier is the early grey simple syrup.

I love tea. I drink a lot of it during the winter. Less so once it warms up. My sister introduced me to a tea shop in Pike Place Market in Seattle where she lives and I bought a few different kinds just to try. My friend gave me some pretty intense Earl Grey tea not long ago so I used it for this recipe. Along with tea, I also bought little bags at Market Spice to make my own tea bags. They are perfect if you have loose tea and just want to make a little bit of tea.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup of confectioner's sugar

1/4 cup water

2 tbs of earl grey tea leaves.

Directions:

Put the sugar and water in a sauce pan and stir over medium heat until the sugar has completely dissolved. Place the earl grey teabag in the syrup and let it steep over low heat for as long as you feel necessary.

I left mine in for a good half hour because I wanted it to be as flavorful as possible. I ended up adding a little water because the syrup became too thick.

It should turn brown, like tea does.

This is where experimenting doesn't always work. I poured my early grey syrup onto the two cakes right after they were removed from the oven.

I poked a few holes in the cakes and then poured it right on. Looking back I would have waited about 20 minutes for the cakes to cool, removed them from the pans and then poured the syrup on them. The syrup make the cakes stick to the bottom and the sides a bit which made it harder to remove them from the pans. Live and learn. If you aren't too concerned about esthetics, the cakes were great.

The syrup seeped into the cake and livened up the otherwise banal pound cake with the unmistakable floral tones of Earl Grey tea. The sweet glaze finish wasn't bad either.

Yum.

De Retour with Mango Sorbet

2011-06-05T14:02:00.001-04:00

Where did the last five months go? I can't believe the last time I sat down to write was back in January when I was in Seattle visiting my sister, brother in law and new baby niece! She is now five months old and winter has turned into summer (almost). I feel as if years of events and experiences have been squeezed into these past few months. Distractions have kept me from doing what I like doing the most - cooking. Maybe it was the stress of long days at work, or personal distractions that ended up being just that, nothing but distractions. My desire to cook had all but disappeared for a while. I used to cook to relieve stress. I used to put aside the things that were bothering me that day and concentrate on chopping, stirring, grating, and reducing. For some reason none of those things appealed to me for a while. I'm not completely sure why I took a break from the kitchen, but I'm glad I'm back.

I don't know a lot about tropical fruit and when they are in season as you can find most of them year round in the grocery store. I was craving mango salsa and shrimp for dinner this week (post to come about that soon) so I walked to Whole Foods and found small little yellow mangos that were so ripe to the touch they were impossible to resist. These champagne mangos are much smaller than the ones with the red-ish yellow skin you are used to seeing. After a successful mango and shrimp feast I was hooked on my new super sweet mango discovery and I went back for more this weekend. But what to do with 6 small mangos? Make sorbet!

I've tried to make sorbet before and have been disappointed with the outcome. I've made some pretty tasty ice cream but I have yet to make sorbet I am proud of. The black currant sorbet I made was a bit grainy and the prosecco sorbet I made didn't freeze correctly (too much prosecco... can you blame me?) A while back I was "tasting" the lemon sorbet we were serving for one of my events at work and chatting with the pastry chef. I asked her what made this sorbet so much creamier than what I have made in the past. It almost tasted like sherbet. She assured me there was no dairy in it, just egg whites! Raw egg whites in fact. While the fruit puree is freezing in the ice cream maker, you add the whites of one egg. This gives the sorbet a much smoother, creamier consistency. Who knew? Once you get over your fears of salmonella, it makes sense. I decided to put the tip to the test.

If you look online for a sorbet recipe you will find a variation of the same recipe over and over again. Take fruit, puree it, add water, sugar and a little bit of alcohol (so it doesn't freeze into a fruit brick when you put it in the freezer) and that's you're done. I decided to go with a David Lebovitz recipe and put my own twist on it. His recipes are pretty fail proof.

Mango Sorbet

adapted from a recipe by David Lebovitz

2 large, ripe mangos (I used 6 champagne mangos) 2/3 cup sugar ( I used a 1/4 cup agave syrup instead) 2/3 cup water 4 teaspoons fresh squeezed lime juice ( I used a half a lime) 1 tablespoon dark rum, plus more to taste (I used homemade limoncello I made a few years ago) pinch of salt ( I forgot this. Oops! It tasted just fine though)

1 egg white

Take the meat off the mangos by slicing down each side, following the pit with your knife. Squeeze the rest of the meat off the pit with your fingers to make sure not to waste anything. Puree the fruit in a blender along with the water, sugar/agave syrup, lime juice and limoncello. I used limoncello just because I thought the citrus would go well with the mango and I'm not a huge fan of rum. I completely forgot about the pinch of salt. I'm sure it gives that final sweet/salty balance that all cooking/baking needs. I think the sorbet tastes just fine without it but I will include it next time.

Once all your ingredients are pureed together, chill it for about an hour (I chilled mine overnight) and then freeze it in your ice cream maker for about 20 minutes or until it looks like a slushy. Add the whites of one egg at the very end of the freezing process. It gives the puree a silky taste and a pretty sheen. A great addition to the recipe!

Don't you love my old food processor? It makes about as much noise as a margarita machine. My neighbors must have thought I was having one heck of a party yesterday.

After it is finished freezing in the machine, put the mixture in a container and let it finish freezing in the freezer. I had to steal a taste before it was finished.

Delicious, creamy, fruity and cold. I wouldn't call it perfection but it's pretty good! I had some leftover papaya so I tried the same process with it too. Instead of limoncello I used some of my homemade lemon verbena vodka. The papaya had less flavor than the mango did but the lemon verbena vodka added a delicious herbal dimension to the cool treat.

Having been back in the kitchen and experienced what I used to enjoy so much, I know I will be back again soon.

A bientot.

A twist on the classic oatmeal chocolate chip cookie

2011-01-21T15:28:00.001-05:00

- " Where is the monkfish lady?" the fishmonger yelled out into the crowd. I braved the over the top personalities of the guys who sell fish at the Pike Place Market, held up my hand so they could see me, and went up to get my fish.

A mandatory part of my visits to Seattle is a trip to the Market. My sister and I usually just walk around and people watch but this time I actually needed to make a few purchases. I get a little intimidated by the larger than life personalities of the men in orange suits and flying fish but I needed fish for a provencal stew recipe I wanted to make so I went up and asked them if they had any. Success!

For me, trips to Seattle always reinforce the idea of "you are what you eat". There is a prominent culture of eating locally, organically and wisely in this northwest state. From restaurants that boast about the farms that supply their vegetables to the local cheese shop, I've found that Seattlites are very proud of what they eat. On this recent trip to I went to a lecture by Michael Pollan. Ever since I read The Omnivore's Dilemma about 6 years ago I have been his number one fan (along with all the others, I assume, who were as inspired and motivated by the book as me). This time, he spoke about the importance of remembering to eat food, as opposed to eating " edible food like substances". One should eat balanced, real, unprocessed food. Once you have abandoned the packed and processed food look alikes, stop obsessing about the fat content of the individually packaged yogurt you just bought. Eat the whole fat one! That "light and fluffy" yogurt isn't as good for you as you might think. Trying to remove potentially harmful items (fat) and replacing them with equally unhealthy products (sugar) seems silly.

On that note, adding something healthy to a food can never hurt. The other day, I saw my brother in law go to the kitchen and start to take out flour and other ingredients. I never knew he baked so I went over to check out what he was making. Cookies! Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies actually. I looked at the recipe and it was a little more complex than I expected. These had flaxseed meal and brewer's yeast in them. Curious, I googled both ingredients. While I'm still a bit unsure what the brewer's yeast does, the flaxseed meal is a great nutritious addition to the standby recipe. Flaxseeds are high in B vitamins, magnesium, and manganese and very rich in Omega 3 fatty acids. I knew some of this, but what I did not know is that flaxseeds need to be ground down to a powder in order for these nutrients to be absorbed. If you eat the seeds whole, the nutrients leave your body the same way the seeds do! The cookies came out of the oven proved that healthy is... tasty! They tasted like great oatmeal chocolate cookies with slightly more depth of flavor. If I can eat an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie and help fight against cancer, inflammation and diabetes then OK! I am not sure where he found the recipe so I will call them Andy's healthier oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

Andy's Healthier Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Source unknown. Try finding it on epicurious.com

Ingredients:

1 cup of butter (unsalted and at room temperature)

1 cup of brown sugar - packed

1 cup of sugar

2 tbs of flaxseed meal

4 tbs of water

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups of flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

3 cups thick cut oats

1 cup chocolate chips ( I was later told by my bother in law and his cousin that one should always double the amount of chocolate chips in a recipe. Clearly)

2 Tbs Brewers Yeast

Directions:

Preheat your coven to 375. Mix the flaxseed meal and the water and let it stand for a 3-5 minutes. The meal will become almost gelatinous when all the water has soaked in. Cream the butter and sugar and then add the eggs.

Stir the flaxseed meal into the butter mixture and add the vanilla. Beat until well blended. Sift the dry ingredients together, except the oats and chocolate chips.

The recipe calls for adding the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. This goes against everything I've been taught about baking, so I added the dry ingredients to the wet ones. Stir in the oats and then the chocolate chips. Cover the cookie sheet with parchment paper and drop dough about the size of a tablespoon onto the paper. Bake for about 8-12 minutes or until lightly golden brown. These cookies were great when my brother in law made them, and were yummy when I made them. Twice in a row can't be wrong! Give them a try! You'll feel less guilty about eating a cookie now that you know they are good for you.

(Extra points for the person who can tell me what these cookies are actually good for. They have a "special" side effect )

No-Knead Bread. The Project

2011-01-17T20:17:00.001-05:00

Baking bread is in my blood, or at least it is in my family. My earliest memories of my Grandfather were coming down the steps in his house in Montreal to the smell of yeast. The house would be warm due to the oven that had been on keeping the rising dough warm and the yeast in it happy. My grandfather and sister, the early risers in the family, would have been already up for hours, making the sponge, adding flour to make it into dough, and then putting it in a bowl, on top of the oven to let it rise. My grandfather would put the bowl under a paper bag, to create a warm, yeast friend microclimate. They must have felt right at home it because his bread turned out every time. Rye bread, whole wheat loafs, baguettes, you name it, he could probably make it. While my youthful palate didn't quite appreciate the flavor of rye bread, I did love the days he would make baguette.

After recently reconnecting with an old friend who has taken up bread making, I decided to give the whole experience another try. If you recall, I tried to make bread last winter, during the blizzard that hit D.C. While it tasted just fine I was disappointed with how it came out. I didn't think it rose enough and it was a little dense for my taste. I was discouraged after devoting so much time to one recipe that I put my professional baking aspirations aside. There is something to be said about being able to make your own bread- a certain connection to your past that you can to reconnect with. I suppose going to the store and buying bread is more convenient now. Practice makes perfect so I am refueling my mission to make good, moist bread, if anything but to carry on a family tradition. Thoroughly impressed that my friend had mastered the technique must have stirred my competitive spirit and I decided I would give his recipe a try. Turns out it is a recipe for no-knead bread. No muscles needed for this kind. Time, and lots of it, you do need though.

The basic concept is the following. Take flour, a little bit of yeast, water and salt, mix it together and let it do what it would do naturally. Rise. The bread requires less yeast because it will multiply for hours and hours (12-18 hours to be exact) instead of just 2-3. Once dough is bubbly, place it on a towel and let it rise a little bit more. Put it in the oven and it's done. It sounded almost too easy so I had to try. Twice. My first attempt was in my Dupont Circle apartment. The bread tasted fine but I thought I should try again. The second try was in my sister's Capitol Hill apartment in Seattle. Outcome: tasty!

My friend sent me the original recipe that he found in the New York Times in 2006 by Jim Lahey.

Jim Lahey's No -Knead Bread

as published in the New York Times on November 8, 2006

and as found in My Bread -The Revolutionary no-wor, no-knead method by Jim Lahey with Rick Flaste

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting ¼ teaspoon instant yeast 1¼ teaspoons salt Cornmeal ( I used semolina flour)

1 5/8 cups water

(NOTE: Who calls for 5/8 cups of water? I think it would be less confusing to the mathematically challenged to say 1/2 cup and then more if needed)

Directions:

In a large bowl combine the flour, yeast, salt and water. Stir it well until it is all incorporated. Cover the bowl in plastic wrap and let it sit in a warm place for 12-18 hours. You'll know the dough is ready (when the yeast has played around, flirted, and reproduced). The dough will be bubbly and darker.

First try- Dupont Circle

Second try - Seattle

When the dough looks right, or you have gone to sleep, woken up, ran a few errands and finally have come back to check on your dough, lay out a clean dish towel and sprinkle the cornmeal (white flour, whole wheat flour, semolina flour) on the towel. Gently take the dough out of the bowl and shape it into a ball. The dough will be surprisingly sticky. It's loose and sticky and I found was very hard to actually shape into a ball. I passed it from hand to hand, each time extracting the free hand as if it had been covered in Nickelodeon slime. After deciding if you can ever get this blob was to resemble a ball, put it seam down onto the floured cloth.

Sprinkle it with more semolina flour and cover it with a second clean towel. Let it rise for about another 2 hours until it doubles in size. My dough never doubled. I was counting the squares on the tea towel and it only increased about 2 more squares.

30 minutes before the bread is done, preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Put a heavy cast iron pot in your oven. Le Creuset pots are perfect for this I have found. When you are done waiting around for your dough to rise and want to get on with your day (yes, that's right), carefully take the now very hot pot out of the open, take the lid off and carefully "plop" the dough into the pot, seam side up. This seam will create a beautifully delicious crack on the top crust of your bread. Put the lid back on and put it back in the oven for 30 minutes. When the time is up, take the lid off the pot and put it back in the oven for 15-30 minutes. I found that you definitely need the full 30 minutes.

When it's done, take it out of the pot with a spatula. Be sure not to crack or break the crust because the bread is still baking with steam inside. Let it cool for about an hour before you can eat it.

First try - Dupont Circle

Second try - Seattle

The second try was definitely more of a success than the first. I think this is partly because I turned the heat in my apartment way down in DC. I can't sleep with heat blowing in my face all night and since the dough rose overnight in my 62 degree kitchen for the first attempt, I don't think the yeast was quite as happy as it could have been. The second attempt was in a baby-friendly apartment, that was kept quite a bit warmer than mine was. The bubbles in the bread were larger. Note to self- overheat at night for the sake of your bread. The crust the second time around was also a lot better. The inside was light and fluffy and almost had a tangy taste to it. The crust was deliciously crunchy. The bottom was nice and dark and almost stuck to my teeth when I bit down into it. I love this kind of bread. I have the best memories of sitting in various cafes, eating moist bread that has crust that sticks to your molars.

I consider this bread a success! It tastes a lot better than anything I can buy at my local Safeway and is a lot cheaper than anything I can find at Whole Foods, if you don't count man hours. I will continue this bread project, hoping to perfect the recipe above and tweaking it slightly.

...and who doesn't like a "tartine" on homemade bread in the morning?

A baby shower and Hickory Farms Feast

2010-12-18T09:49:00.001-05:00

Not long ago, I came home from a very long day and found 2 boxes in front of my door. Not expecting anything I was really excited! I opened them to find 2 boxes FULL of Hickory Farms crackers, cheeses, mustards and different kinds of sausage. What fun! I had completely forgotten that I had signed up to be part of the FoodBuzz Tastermaker program. You get to sign up and test out products from different food related companies.

The boxes were so FULL and I knew there was no way I could eat that much cheese. I was in need of a party- a party with lots of people who liked cheese. I tried to get together with some of my girlfriends but work and life got so busy this season that plans fell through. Thankfully, I had another party I could bring them to. A baby shower! My sister and brother in law are having a baby! They live in Seattle, pretty far from Washington, D.C., but I was able to skip out of town during the busy holiday season last weekend for her shower.

As I suppose is expected for Seattle in December, it rained pretty much the entire weekend. It rained a relatively hard, warm rain called "the pineapple express". I thought that was just the name of a movie but as it turns out it is also what a storm coming from Hawaii is called.

What do two sisters do when it's raining? Bake! We make gingerbread "little boy and little girls" and my grandfather's famous cheeseballs. I usually publish all my recipes but my grandfather's cheeseball recipe has to stay in the family. I'm sure if you search cheeseball you can find a recipe that is pretty close to what we used. Cheese (sharp cheddar preferably), flour, mustard powder and butter. That's it! Shred it, mix it and chill it. Just like cookie dough.

The Hickory Farm cheese grated nicely and definitely made great cheeseballs!

Check out the savory spread we had! Homemade cheeeseball, gingerbread boys and girls. Humus, olives, carrot sticks, Hickory Farms summer beef and turkey sausage, cranberry and regular mustard, AMAZING northwest salmon that my brother in law's mother brought.. and other goodies!

Look at the adorable cucakes my brother in law's mother made! She even brought the great cupcake stands!

(tag cute monkey flower arrangement in the background)

Despite the rain we all had a great time! It's hard to go wrong with cupcakes, cheeseballs and humus.

The holiday parties are wrapping up at the restaurant which now gives me time to think about parties at my house! I hope everyone is having a great holiday season!

Plum Brandy Finale- bottling!

2010-12-04T12:33:00.001-05:00

Three months really do fly by!

When I started my plum brandy project back in September, winter, the holidays and cold weather were all just a foggy memory left over from last year. For some reason it's hard to remember what wool sweaters and gloves feel like when there is a seemingly perpetual mugginess in the air. With work and life at full speed, the September heat and humidity quickly turned into a December chill. While I was surviving the October event rush at the restaurant, my plums were gently befriending the brandy they were swimming in. While we celebrated Thanksgiving and watching the leaves turn colors, the cinnamon stick and vanilla bean were enveloping the fruity flavors with a warm spicy tone. Now that country has begun its unusually long holiday celebration, it's time to bottle and taste what has been working away all these months.

After gently rocking the large jar back and forth one more time to make sure all the flavors were evenly distributed before they are poured into their own individual bottles, take a ladle and gently remove the swollen plums and put them in a separate bowl. I am freezing mine to make "brandied plum sorbet or ice cream! The cinnamon stick has opened up and looks more like the bark that it really is than a dried spice. The vanilla pod, completely saturated with juice and brandy oozes out its precious seeds. I took it and put it in a jar with sugar to make vanilla brandy sugar. I just couldn't bring myself to throw away the pod. The fruit, stick and pod look pretty, glistening with all the sugars that have been marinating for several months.

I bought small bottles online, washed them out and then poured boiling water into them to make sure to kill anything that might have called them home in the store. This isn't the boiling that is necessary to can or jar but I the alcohol in the bottles will kill anything else.

Don't these bottles all lined up remind you of the Jean Paul Gaultier ad for his cologne Maybe it's just me.

source: http://www.ioffer.com/si/fragrances

Strain the brandy to remove any bits of plum that might be floating around.

The mixture won' t be completely clear unless you use cheesecloth (which I do not have) but that's ok. It will taste the same.

Pour the mixture into the bottles that have dried and cooled off by now, label them, and you are done! Unless you plan to spend MANY nights watching movies and drinking brandy, these dark red bottles can makes great gifts for your family and friends

Spiced winter brandy for the cold months to come.

Plum brandy update and poached pears

2010-10-17T15:30:00.002-04:00

The long days at work are far from over which leaves very little time for baking and cooking. Thankfully I have a recipe working away even while I'm not at home. My plum brandy is happily marinating away in the corner of my dining room, getting sweeter and fruitier every day. I opened up the jar the other day to taste my progress and, what a difference! The almost harsh brandy taste is almost completely gone. It now tastes like delicious, sweet, spicy, smooth, and fruity brandy. All that after only a few weeks! I can only imagine what this will taste like in December (by which time I'm sure I'll have decided I have waited long enough and will want a real taste). Some of the plums have kind of lost their color which can only mean that they are not only graciously giving their flavor to the brandy but also donated their beautiful purple color.

Along with my other farmers' market purchases I also bought pears. If you give me an apple and a pear I will usually reach for the apple. For some reason the crispy crunch you get from an apple is simply more satisfying to me than the grainy nature of a pear. One way I do like pears though, and I feel almost silly saying this, is poached in wine. After all, who wouldn't agree with me on that one? I was watching a show called French Food at Home about a woman who "quit the corporate life and moved to Paris to learn how to cook" (how lovely...) and watched her make an incredibly simple poached pear recipe that I just had to try. This recipe takes a while but couldn't be easier. Not only its flavors completely embody fall and makes you look like an accomplished cook, it fill your house or apartment with an amazing mulled wine smell.

Poached Pears in Wine

from French Food at Home on Cooking Channel

Ingredients:

(4) Bosc pears

(1) bottle of red wine

1/2 cup of honey

Directions:

Pick 4 pears (or like in my case 3) that are relatively firm. You don't want them falling apart while cooking in the wine. Peel them but keep the stems on.
Pour the bottle of red wine you have selected into an oven proof baking dish that has a cover on it. Le Creuset pots are perfect for this. Turn the heat of your stove onto medium and mix in the honey and let it melt into the wine. I used less than 1/2 a cup, more like 1/4 cup. I don't love really sweet desserts and figured the pears would have plenty of sugar. (NOTE: here you could add spices like cinnamon sticks, or star anise, a vanilla bean maybe?) Add your peeled pears. The wine should only cover them about half way. That's OK. You will turn them every hour or so, so they absorb the wine equally and evenly.

Turn the heat up until the wine starts to boil.

Put the pot, with the lid/cover on, into your oven, set at 250 degrees. The temperature is very low but you will be cooking the pears for anywhere from 3-5 hours so you don't want it too hot.
I cooked mine for 3 hours, turning the pears every hour. By the time they were done their naked white bodies had turned a beautiful burgundy red.
Remove the pears and put the pot of wine back on the stove. Turn the heat up to high and let the mixture boil until it had reduced by more than half. It should be a dark red syrup when you are done.
Drizzle it over the pears and enjoy.

The sweet syrupy wine is just so incredibly good. I have some leftover and I am trying to figure out what else I could drizzle it on because throwing it away seems like a shame. Any ideas?

Farmers' Market and Comfort Food

2010-10-10T18:47:00.002-04:00

I am in serious need of comfort food. October is one of the busiest months for me at the restaurant. Everyone who was away for the summer, relaxing on their decks or patios with friends, are now booking dinner at the restaurant. Companies that had vacated DC for the summer are back at work and throwing cocktail parties and business dinners. It's as if Washingtonians feel bad for deserted us during July and August and feel like they need to make it up to us. Great for business but utterly exhausting. After an unavoidably hard week I needed comfort food and fast - something warm and satisfying. -something that reflects the season. I headed out to the farmers' market to get inspired.

Grape kiwis? Never heard of them. They kind of smelled like kiwis. So cute! You apparently eat them whole, no peeling necessary.

I buy my eggs from this woman every Sunday. I'm not sure if I can really taste the difference between these and the ones you would get at the store but appart from it being more fun I just like thinking that my eggs came from happy chickens on her farm. She reuses the egg cartons too.

Twin Springs is my go-to fruits and vegetable stand. I used to go to their Bethesda location on Saturdays when I lived there. I feel a sense of loyalty to them and their prices are very reasonable.

I guess other people like them too!

It's dahlia season!

How beautiful are these variegated beans and eggplant

I didn't know you could grow ginger this far north. I assumed it was a tropical plant. Wrong again!

OK these aren't from the farmers' market. They were hanging off the plant growing in front of my building but it was so colorful I thought I'd take a picture! When did we decide that fall colors were represented by fall foliage? The farmers market is bursting with pinks and purples and bright greens!

I ended up coming home with butternut squash, a LOT of apples, a few pairs, apple cider and some brussels sprouts. Now what to make.....?

When it comes to comfort I think is stews and soups. Since it was in the 70s this week (the last warm spell of the year I'm sure) I wasn't quite ready for a stew so I went with soup. Butternut squash and apples are a pretty classic combination for soup. I've been craving pizza from Delancey ever since I had it Seattle this summer. The owner of the restaurant started out writing a food blog so I thought I'd check it out for a recipe. Success!

Butternut Squash and Apple Soup

adapted from Orangette

Ingredients:

¼ cup olive oil ( I used just a couple tablespoons)

1 2-lb butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into 2-inch pieces (about 4 cups)
2 flavorful apples, preferably Gala, peeled, cored, and cut into 2-inch pieces (about 2 cups)- ( used 3 apples. They just looked so good.)
1 large onion, peeled and coarsely chopped (about 1 cup) ( I'm sure she was calling for a white onion but I used a red onion for its sweetness and color)
¾ tsp curry powder ( I didn't have curry powder so I used some cumin and paprika instead)
¾ tsp ground mace ( I used nutmeg which is pretty close)
½ tsp ground cardamom
1 cup good-quality apple cider (I had some from the farmers' market)
1 quart chicken stock (vegetable works fine as well) ( I used vegetable bouillon cubes. I know I should have my own stock... if I just had the time to make it)

I wanted to add a little spice so a I added a few pinches of Espelette pepper. It's a mild chili pepper flake cultivated in France. It adds just enough spice to give the soup a little kick without making it really spicy.

Directions:

Peel and cut the butternut squash and apples (that I both bought at the farmers' market! Market use #1!!) into cubes and add them to a large pot along with the onion. "Saute" them, more like steam them, until the onion starts to turn translucent. Add the spices, the cider (that I bought at the market! Use #2!!!) and the vegetable stock and cook away, about 40 minutes, until the squash is nice and tender. Honestly that's about it. That's what's great about soups. Once you do all the chopping it's really up to the pot and heat to do their job and meld all the ingredients.

Carefully ladle the cooked vegetables and broth into a food processor or blender and pulse it until it becomes smooth. Remember to do this in small batches because hot liquids will create pressure in the blender and rise to the top quickly.

When you are ready to eat it you could put a little dollop of creme fraiche or fromage blanc in the middle or eat it as it is. Yum.

Food, for me, can really wipe away whatever it was that I was thinking about or worrying about. The act of chopping and cutting and measuring and stirring relaxes me and eating the final product is so satisfying. This easy soup was just what I needed after my long week. One day off and on to the next one!

***

Last Sunday I tried to make chocolate caramels from a cookbook my Italian chef friends gave me...and failed miserably. It was probably because the instructions were in Italian. I can understand a good 50% of what I hear and read but 50% just doesn't cut it when it comes to baking and confectionaries. Out of failure comes success though. I had a lot of leftover cream so I made butter!

I started out by shaking the cream in an empty 1/2 gallon milk jug. By the time it got to whipped cream consistency it really got too hard for me to shake. I must be seriously lacking in upper body muscle. I transferred my whipped cream to the mixer and let it finish the job.

Butter in my butter bell for my morning toast this week

Autumn Plums

2010-09-26T17:34:00.001-04:00

Summer is unfortunately over. It's a fact. It has only been over for 4 days, but to me, it ended the day I came back from vacation about two weeks ago. As much as I love the cooler fall days, it's always hard to say goodbye to warm nights- the perfect excuse to go out for drinks and sit outside, farmers markets FULL of fruits and vegetables, and my favorite "it's a Friday in August so I'm leaving work early" excuse. Fall means back to school, back to work and the start of the root vegetable season at the farmers' market. Before all brightly colored fruits hibernate for the winter, fall gives us a few last bursts of color, like the pomegranate, the plum and figs (OK I know some figs are black but there are some pretty lime green ones too!)

I've discovered a new interest in cocktails. I never really enjoyed sweet cocktails like the Cosmopolitan but I thought those sugary/sour/fruity drinks were my only option if I wanted something other than a beer or a glass of wine while sitting at a bar. This isn't the first time that it turns out that's I'm wrong.. Over the summer I found several bars, in DC and other cities, that are "re-creating" the cocktail, using creative new combinations of flavors and ingredients. Fruits, herbs, bitters, infusions- the possibilities are endless. I've made Limoncello before and I just infused vodka with lemon verbena but those both have vodka. I wanted to try a new liquor. To go along with my "fall" mood, I thought I would try a recipe for plum brandy my sister found for me in the New York Times. She sent me two recipes: "Brandied Plums with Cinnamon and Vanilla" and "Pomegranate Gin Preserve". Brandied plums it is! The pomegranates will have to wait.

Brandied Plums with Cinnamon and Vanilla

Adapted from The New York Times - published on September 21, 2010

Ingredients:

2 lb of plums

1/2 cup sugar

1 liter of brandy

one cinnamon stick

1 vanilla bean, halved lengthwise

Directions:

This really could not be easier. I changed the original proportions a little but nothing really changed all that much. The recipe is put together in under 10 minutes and then you just have to wait.

Wash the plums and prick them all over with the tip of a sharp knife. Put them in a large jar (the kind with a top that clamps shut). I used 3 liter jar and it was not full.

Pour the sugar over the plums and then add the brandy. Plop in the cinnamon stick and the vanilla bean and voila!

Let the jar sit in a cool dark place (not the fridge) for at least 6 weeks, and up to 3-4 months. Gently "shake" the jar from time to time, by turning the jar over. Who knows. This is an experiment. The ingredients sound like they would go together and it if works, I'll have a delicious drink to sip when it's cold this winter (or give away as Christmas gifts because let's be honest, that's a lot of brandy). I'll keep you updated on the brandy's status!

***

I had some plums leftover so I thought I would make a cake. Last week I made a delicious peach upside down cake with the last of my summer peaches. I've learned that most stone fruit desserts work with just about any type of stone fruit (or any sort of fruit in general really because a tart tatin is the apple version of this cake.)

Plum and Rum Raisin Upside Down Cake

Adapted from the Honey Peach Upside Down Cake from Hotpolkadot

Ingredients:

About 8-10 plums depending on the kind you use and how big they are- quartered

1/4 cup of maple syrup

1/4 cup of golden raisins soaked in about 1/4 cup of rum - drained.

1 cup of flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup unsalted butter - room temperature

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup honey

2 eggs

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 350. Butter a 9 inch round cake pan (sides and bottom). Cup out a round piece of parchment paper and put it on the buttered bottom of the pan. Butter the parchment round. (I know it sounds like a lot of butter but this is an upside down cake. You really don't want it to stick when it comes time to flip).

Pour the maple syrup on top of the buttered parchment paper. The original recipe called for honey but I thought the deeper flavor of maple syrup would taste really nice with plums. Take your plum quarters and arrange them, cut side down, in a nice circular pattern. Take your rum raisin and sprinkle them evenly over the plums. Set this aside and now. It's time to work on the cake batter.

In a small bowl, mix together your dry ingredients (flour, salt and baking powder).

In your mixer's bowl, cream the butter and sugar together. Add the honey and then the eggs. I added a little nutmeg because I think nutmeg tastes like fall. You can omit it, of course, or add your spice of choice.

Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and you're done! The batter will not soupy. In fact, you probably won't be able to pour it out of the bowl. Use a spatula to scoup and plop it into the pan (kind of like mashed potatoes). Don't be afraid to use your fingers to gently convince the batter to fill in the little holes between the plums. Work the batter into the pan and put it in the middle of the oven.

The recipe calls for baking the cake for 30-35 minutes. Both times I made this it took me more like 40-43. See what works for you.

When the cake is done (clean toothpick test), let it cool until you can pick up the pan with your fingers without burning them (idiot test). Put a large plate over the pan and quickly flip it and put the plate down on the table. If all the buttering did its job the cake should easily slip out of the pan. If the parchment paper came out of the pan with the cake, just carefully peel it off.

Serve it warm or refrigerate it for the next day.

Happy fall.

A cool summer drink and a weekend in NY

2010-08-16T22:34:00.001-04:00

Three years after making Limoncello as Christmas gifts I have decided to give infused liquors another try. The family lemon verbena plants are growing out of control this summer and I was trying to figure out what I could make with the sweet and lemony smelling leaves. If vodka infused with lemons makes a good drink vodka infused with lemon verbena should too right? Only one way to find out! After consulting with my friend at the restaurant about proportions, I set off last week to buy some vodka! The guy at the store was skeptical when I brought several liters of vodka to the counter but he wished me luck and I was on my way to making lemon verbena vodka!

Lemon Verbena Vodka

Ingredients:

4 cups of lemon verbena leaves (taken off their stems and washed)

2 liters of good vodka (I used grey goose but I’m sure anything not in a plastic handle would do just fine!)

Directions:

Put the lemon verbena leaves in a 2-3 liter jar. Pour in vodka and stir! Complicated right? Let “steep” for as long as you want. I thought it would take a lot longer for the verbena leaves to infuse the vodka but after two days the vodka smelled like lemon and looked as green as grass -nothing like the limoncello I made that needed to sit for at least a month to fully infuse. I’m sure I could have let it steep for a few more days but the leaves were starting to turn light yellow which to me meant their had given all they could. Time to take the leaves out! I mixed the infusion with soda water and ice and it made the perfect summer drink. Cool and refreshing and satisfyingly home made.

***

I took a last minute trip this past weekend and escaped to Brooklyn for a great weekend of family, food and cocktails! We had a fantastic dinner at James and fun cocktails at the Clover Club. I don’t have any recipe posts but I have a little photographic tour of the details I saw around Brooklyn instead.

Brooklyn Botanical Gardens A little friend hanging out in the herb garden at the BBG My aunt’s kitchen

A Peachy Summer Weekend

2010-08-01T14:15:00.001-04:00

Growing up, summer days meant going to camp. We would bring our own brown bag lunches and toss them in a big rubber bin along with all the other lunches, hoping the bag on top of yours wouldn’t leak and rip your lunch bag. I can still picture all of us sitting outside on the designated “lunch hill” eating our sandwiches and drinking the box of “fruit punch” provided by the camp. While other kids ate their Twinkies and cupcakes, I usually sank my teeth into a sweet juicy summer peach. I distinctly remember always having sticky fingers after lunch. Juice would dribble from the peach down my chin and onto my hands. Ah, summer.

While I no longer have the luxury of going to summer camp, thankfully peaches are still part of my summer! My eyes tend to be bigger than the number of recipes I have when I am at the farmers’ market. I bought a LOT of peaches. Thankfully they keep pretty well if you put them in the refrigerator. I put some away and kept a few out and went on a peach recipe hunt. After looking at recipes for cobblers, tarts, pies, and a cakes I figured peach ice cream would be the best way to honor the summer staple.

Ice cream recipes, as I learned when I made my favorite, mint chocolate chip, are VERY simple. Häagen-Dazs isn’t kidding with it’s new ad campaign highlight how pure and simple the product it. It’s not just Häagen-Dazs but all ice cream really. All the recipes I looked at had the same cream/milk/egg combination. The only thing that really changed was the sweet component. I decided to go with honey.

In the spirit of intellectual honesty, I read the following blogs as inspiration and basic ratios. www.eatatblurp.com, www.peterandrewryan.com, www.dessertfirst.typepad.com.

Summer Peach Ice Cream

Ingredients:

4 large ripe peaches for the puree and 1 for to put in the ice cream later

1/8 of a cup of honey (the recipes I read called for a 1/4 cup. I thought this would make the ice cream too sweet. Depending on the ripeness of the peaches you can decide for yourself. I went for less. I also don’t like my desserts to be too too sweet. I get honey from a family friend and try and use my local honey as much as I can!)

1 cup of whole milk

1 cup of heavy cream

3 large egg yolks

1/2 cup sugar

2 tsp vanilla (I used the 2 tsps and I also split a vanilla bean in half, used the seeds and simmered the bean in the milk/cream pan for added flavor. )

Directions:

Peach Puree: Peel and cut up the 4 peaches and simmer them in a saucepan with the honey until the peaches become very soft and are cooked through (about 15 minutes). Let the mixture cool a bit and then puree it in a food processor until it looks smooth. Easy! (Note: you could probably do this with just about any fruit. You could make a berry puree, a plum puree…. experiment!)

Custard for the ice cream: Pour milk and cream into a saucepan and bring to a boil. Meanwhile, separate your eggs and mix the sugar with the egg yolks with a whisk until they are a light yellow color. When the milk and cream are nice and hot, take about a 1/4 cup and pour it slowly into the yolks, whisking all the while, to temper the eggs. Make sure not to curdle them! Now that the eggs have warmed up a bit, slowly pour the rest of the milk mixture into the eggs in a slow trickle.

Split your vanilla beans and scrape the seeds out. Instead of throwing away the vanilla pod you can either put it in a sugar canister and make vanilla sugar, or do what I did and just add it to the custard to give it even more vanilla flavor. I had been saving my vanilla beans for something special. My brother in law got them for me during a trip to Madagascar. Peach ice cream sounds special enough to me!

Pour the egg, milk and peach puree and cream mixture back into your saucepan and stir on medium heat until it thickens into a nice custard that covers your spoon. Add the vanilla extract, vanilla seeds and plop in the vanilla pod to infuse the mixture.

Refrigerate the custard for a few hours or over night to completely chill it.

The next day: (Don’t you hate it when you start making a recipe without reading the whole way though and you get to the part that says “the next day” and kick yourself?…. It happens to me… a lot.)

Take the chilled custard out of the refrigerator. Dice the remaining peach into small cubes. Pour the custard into the ice cream maker. When it is about the consistency of frozen yogurt, add the peaches.

Put it back in the freezer for a few hours for the whole thing to firm up and enjoy!

This ice cream has such an intense peach flavor. I couldn’t have been more pleased with it. Delicious.

A sweet 4th of July

2010-07-04T15:45:00.001-04:00

The 4th of July isn’t necessarily a holiday surrounded by a lot of culinary traditions. Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter all have their culinary musts: turkey, goose, lamb, pumpkin pie, Christmas cookies, eggs. The 4th of July has barbeques I suppose, but no real “must haves”…except for a long standing tradition in my family: the flag cake. I’m not sure when we started baking the Flag Cake or how the idea came about but it’s just not the 4th of July without it for me.

I am proud to be an American but my patriotic flair is limited. You will not find me wearing a flag pin, or with a flag sticker on my car. I don’t usually sing the national anthem at ball games (I’ll stand up for it though!!), I won’t get into heated discussions about patriotism and usually try and avoid dressing in red white and blue. My patriotism for the year comes out on the 4th of July. I wear a flag in my ponytail, go down and watch the fireworks on the National Mall and will not miss making my Flag Cake.

This year I was getting worried that I would not have an excuse(other than the obvious holiday reason) to make my flag cake. I didn’t want to have to eat an entire cake by myself… thankfully my friend Beth threw a barbeque and saved me from a sugar overdose. Perfect excuse to bring out the sugar and food coloring and pretend I am a kid again.

Chocolate cake and white icing is pretty typical, but this usual, everyday sort of cake, is transformed when it meets blue and red colored sugar. It goes from a boxed cake to, in my opinion, the highest level of patriotism! Several versions have been tested: red and blue icing on icing white, blueberries and sliced strawberries on white icing (the fruit ended up releasing juice on the white frosting so that didn’t work.. our colors don’t run!.. I had to say it.. sorry). The traditional, tried and true method of coloring sugar with food coloring still seems to work the best.

I usually bake from scratch but the point of this cake is not to spend hours sifting flour and measuring cocoa powder. It’s to play and decorate. We have always used a boxed cake mix and there is no shame in that. The traditional Flag Cake frosting is made with butter, confectioner’s sugar and milk. While it’s delicious, it’s a little too sweet for my taste. I asked the pastry chef at the restaurant I work at to give me some frosting tips. Working at an Italian restaurant she suggested Mascarpone! Easy, not necessarily healthier, but a little less sweet.

4th of July Flag Cake

1 box of chocolate cake mix (it’s ok I promise)

white sugar – divide the sugar in two bowls and add red food coloring to one bowl and blue to the other and mix it until the colors is as deep as you want it.

Mascarpone icing:

(2) 4oz tubs of mascarpone cheese

heavy cream – Use as much as you like. I got a little box and poured some into the mascarpone until I thought it was the right spreading consistency

confectioner’s sugar – I ended up using a little less than a 1/4 cup. It all depends on how sweet you want your frosting. The most sugar you put in the more cream you will need because the sugar really makes the mascarpone stiffen up.

Directions:

Put both tubs of mascarpone cheese into your mixer. Mix on medium speed for a few minutes just to have it be creamy. Add a little bit of heavy cream (about 2 tbs) and see how smooth it gets. Add some confectioner’s sugar to taste. Beat it on medium high for about a minute just to incorporate everything well. I added a little rum at the end, about a tablespoon, just for extra flavor but it’s not necessary if you want to keep the cake PG.

There! You’re done! It’s time to ice!

Spread the icing over the cake and you are ready to decorate! I cut out stripes of parchment paper to cover the parts the cake I wanted to keep “white”. I first thought I was going to make the flag with the correct number of stripes but then decided against that. It’s been done in the past but I decided to go “modern” this time.

Decorate and enjoy!!

* * *

Apparently making a flag cake wasn’t enough for me this year. I was reading tastespotting the other day and saw a post for cute little patriotic strawberries and just had to make them. They are so easy and the cuteness factor is pretty much off the charts.

4th of July Chocolate Covered Strawberries

What you will need:

Strawberries – washed and dried off

White chocolate chips

Blue sugar

Directions:

Put the white chocolate chips into a bowl and heat them up in the microwave at 10 second intervals, stirring each time they come out. It took me about 40 seconds to have melted chocolate. I first tried to do it over the stove and the chocolate seized up right away. I then tried to put it in the microwave.. it worked. I added a little rum to it and it seized up again. On my third try I just tried the microwave and no rum this time (put the booze down!) and it worked. I’ve worked with dark chocolate and have been pretty successful with it but white chocolate is clearly a whole different beast. So… long story short, melt the white chocolate chips and don’t add anything fancy to it and it will work just fine.

Dip the clean, dry strawberries about 3/4 of the way into the chocolate and then dip the tip in to blue sugar. Done! Cute little patriotic strawberries. Put them in the refrigerator to harder up and share them with friends.

Happy 4th of July everyone!

A special “shout out” to my mother and father who are spending the 4th in France and my sister and brother in law who are spending it in South Africa. A little bit of USA while you are traveling!

Mushroom and Leek Quiche

2010-06-19T12:22:00.001-04:00

I’m trying to expand my “quick dinner” repertoire. This doesn’t have to mean quick to fix (even though it is in this case) but something that can either be easily re-heated or eaten cold/at room temperature. I grew up loving quiche. Quiche Lorraine, spinach quiche, leek quiche, mushroom quiche, broccoli quiche… I love them all. They are a great way to eat your vegetables! Quiche is not only very simple to make but no matter what you put in it you get a healthy meal that you can eat for lunch, or dinner (or cold breakfast as was the case this morning). I remember quiche being the go-to dinner during a busy week growing up. I knew this week would be the same for me so I planned ahead! I wanted to make an asparagus quiche but Whole Foods was surprisingly out of asparagus. I know the season is over at the farmer’s market but I figured the store would have some. Maybe WF is more “seasonal” than I thought! After listening to the produce guy profusely apologize for the lack of asparagus and promise me he would have some tomorrow, I found some mushrooms and leeks and went with those instead.

Quiche aux Poireaux et Champignons

Adapted from Julia Child’s “quiche aux oignons” from Mastering the Art of French Cooking-Volume One

Ingredients:

1 pie crust (I used a whole wheat one but it tasted a little funny so I would recommend whatever you usually use)

2 medium sized leeks

1/2 tbs of flour

little knob of butter

2 tbs of olive oil

About 2 cups of roughly chopped crimini mushrooms

3 eggs (the recipe called for 2 eggs or 3 yolks so I just put in all three eggs. I’m guessing this made my quiche firmer than had I just used 2. It worked…I liked it… so I’m going to go with it)

2/3 cup of heavy cream

1 tsp salt

black pepper to taste

1/2 cup of grated Swiss cheese (I used ementhal)

Directions:

Pre-bake your pie crust: Set oven to 400 degrees. Take your pie shell and prick the bottom all over with a knife, cover it with aluminum foil and fill it with either little pastry peas or if you don’t have any like me, use dried beans. I used lentils. The beans/ pastry peas weigh down the shell to make sure it doesn’t bubble up while baking. Bake the pie shell with the beans for 10 minutes at 400 degrees. Take the pie shell out and reduce the oven to 375 degrees.

Prep your vegetables: Wash and roughly chop your mushrooms. Slice your leeks in half and run them under water to make sure all the sand and dirt trapped between the leaves are gone. Slice the leeks into thin half moons. The larger the half moons are the longer the leeks will take to cook down so use your judgment!

Put half of your butter in a sauté pan with some olive oil so the butter doesn't burn, and sauté them until they have released some of their liquid and are slightly brown. Remove from the pan and set aside.

Put the rest of the butter and a little more olive oil into the pan and add the leeks. They will take longer to cook. Let them kind of sweat in the pan until they soften up considerably and you don’t think you’ll bite into a piece of raw “onion”. They will cook a little more when you are baking the quiche but you want them to be mostly cooked now. Add the cooked mushrooms and let them get to know each other. Add a little salt and a pepper to taste. Sprinkle the flour and mix it al together. Take off the burner and let them cool off a little (you’ll be adding this to the egg/cream mixture and you don’t want to scramble the egg).

In a bowl mix the 3 eggs and the cream together. Add your leek and mushroom mixture to the eggs along with 2/3 of the grated cheese. Mix well.Don’t you just love the color of these eggs? I finally broke down and bought eggs at the farmer’s market instead of a the store… They taste great and are just so pretty!

Remove the beans and foil from your pre-baked pie crust (I’m assuming this is an obviously step but you never know) and then pour your mixture into the pie shell. I kept my pie shell on a cookie sheet just to make it easier to take it in and out of the oven. Cover the quiche with the extra cheese and pop it in the oven for 30 minutes at 375 degrees. When it is done the cheesy top should be lightly browned. The quiche will look slightly puffy when you first take it out. The eggs will deflate a little bit as it cools. That’s fine, in fact that’s normal.

I eat quiche cold, warm, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It’s such a versatile receptacle for all sorts of delicious ingredients. You can make a ham and cheese one, one with all sorts of green vegetables if you don’t think you are eating enough “vitamin green”, you could make it “Mediterranean” with olives, peppers, tomatoes and Feta, or go Scandinavian and use smoked salmon and dill. There are so many combinations it’s pretty hard to get tired of quiches. The cream and eggs give you protein even if you only put vegetables in it so you are covered in terms of nutrition. Explore and enjoy!

Thanks for the pretty peonies Alex!

Leek and mushroom quiche served with sautéed sugar snap peas and fleur de sel. Paired with the always necessary glass of Sauvignon Blanc.

POLL: How many people noticed that I first posted this with “leak” quiche in the title. My proofreader-grandmother would NOT be impressed.

Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp

2010-05-28T21:04:00.001-04:00

It’s strawberry season! If you have ever gone to the grocery store looking for strawberries and been sorely disappointed with the total lack of flavor the little red berries have given you you clearly didn’t go in the spring. First, stop shopping for strawberries in the fall or winter. Second, stop shopping for them in a grocery store. Wait until spring and go to a farmers’ market. These otherwise relatively expensive little berries are cheap and SO sweet this time of year. The season is short so go now! Buy them, eat them, enjoy them, freeze them for later, OD on them.. whatever you do, eat them now. Strawberries are pretty much perfect this this time of year.

There is a small farmers’ market at Rose Park on P Street on Wednesdays that runs May through October. It’s on my walk home from work and I stopped by this week to see what they had. After resisting the urge to buy an entire herb garden worth of plants (my apartment balcony seriously lacks gardening space) I bought strawberries and rhubarb from one of the stands and walked the rest of the way home with tall rhubarb stalks peaking out of my bag.

I found a recipe for a Rhubarb Crisp published in the New York Times and figured it wouldn’t hurt, and would actually probably greatly enhance, the recipe if I added strawberries!

Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp

adapted from the recipe published in the New York Times on May 14, 2010

Ingredients:

6 tbs cold butter, cut into small pieces

2 1/2 lbs of rhubarb, trimmed, tough strings removed and cut into 1 1/2 inch pieces (I had no clue how much rhubarb this was so I just bought 5 stalks. It all depends on what you want your rhubarb to strawberry ratio to be of course)

1 quart of strawberries washed, little leafy heads cut off ,“cored” and halved

1/4 cup white sugar

1 tbs orange zest

1tsp orange juice

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup all purpose flour

1/2 tsp cinnamon ( I used cardamom and used a lot less…just a sprinkle because I feel like it’s a much more powerful spice than cinnamon)

pinch of salt

1/2 cup rolled oats

1/2 cup pecans (I used walnuts, mostly because that’s what I had on had but I also just prefer walnuts if a recipe calls for nuts. Maybe that’s why I had them in the first place!)

Directions:

Heat your oven to 375 degrees. Grease an 8 or 9 inch baking dish (or whatever you have really. I’m sure you could use a large pie dish if you wanted to) with butter. Toss the rhubarb and strawberries with the white sugar, orange zest and juice and spread into the baking dish.

Put the cut up pieces of butter, brown sugar, flour, cardamom, and salt into a separate bowl. The recipe calls for pulsing all these ingredients in a food processor until the mixture forms pea size balls. I just used my fingers to mix it all together. It was satisfying and worked just as well. Working with your hands gives you an excuse to lick your fingers anyway. Add the oats and walnuts and combine!

Crumble the mixture over the fruit and pop in the oven until the top starts to brown…about 45 minutes.

As it turns out crisps are not the most attractive dessert. Despite how tart yet sweet it tasted my dessert was not photogenic. Poor thing. Don’t let the pictures deceive you, this stuff was good! The cooked fruit with the crunch of the walnuts and the sweet topping was a great combination. I wonder if it would be good over vanilla ice cream or pound cake. Since I made an entire cake pan worth I guess I’ll have plenty of occasions to try.

Happy strawberry season!

This recipe is dedicated to my awesome aunt in Brooklyn who I failed to mention in my last post. It’s because of her that I have an ice cream machine!

Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream – a preview of summer

2010-05-04T23:02:00.001-04:00

It almost feels like summer and what better way to usher in warm weather and long nights than ice cream! Mint chocolate chip has always been my favorite flavor. What’s not to love about green colored ice cream with chocolate in it?! I’ll admit rainbow sherbet was a close second but mint chocolate chip was always my go-to kind. While I’ve moved away from the green colored brands I still like the more natural looking scoops.

I made it to the end of the Ad Hoc at Home cookbook and found TK’s dessert section. It was almost like fate. Right next to the cherry ice cream recipe that will probably go untouched was one for mint chocolate chip! Perfect! Unlike the other Thomas Keller recipes this one was relatively simple!

Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

as found in Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc at Home

Ingredients:

2 cups whole milk

2 cups heavy cream

1/2 cups loosely packed mint leaves

1 1/3 cups granulated sugar

10 large egg yolks

3 ounces 55% chocolate chips

Eggs, Cream, sugar, mint, chocolate. It couldn’t be more simple!

Directions:

Separate the yolks from the white. Ready.. go!

Going…

… gone!

Pour the milk and cream into a saucepan and add the mint (picked from the stem and washed…. mine was really sandy!) Turn the heat up to medium until it reaches a simmer, then turn the heat off and let the mint “steep” for about 20 minutes to transfer all the minty goodness from the leaves to the milk and cream. I found local milk and cream at my Whole Foods so I am going to call this “slow” ice cream. The creamery sells non-homogenized dairy products. Other than promoting laziness I’m not really sure why milk and cream are homogenized to be honest. Nothing wrong with a little shaking before drinking!

Strain the leaves out of the liquid, add 2/3 of a cup of sugar and bring to a simmer over medium heat to dissolve said sugar.

While the sugar is dissolving whisk the remaining sugar into the egg yolks until the whisk leave a faint trail.

Slowly, add the hot milk/cream mixture to the yolks a 1/2 cup of at a time, making sure not to curdle the eggs. Strain the mixture back into the pan. (Prepare an ice bath and set it aside for later).

Put your saucepan over medium heat and stir it constantly to make a custard. Make sure to scrape the sides and bottom so it doesn’t get lumpy or gummy. Stir until the mixture thickens enough to coat your wooden spoon. When it gets to this point take it off the heat, strain it into a bowl and put the bowl into the ice bath to stop the cooking process. Leave the custard in the ice bath, stirring once and a while, until it cools off.

Put it in the refrigerator for a few hours or overnight.

I left mine in overnight (cooking it hard work!!)

The following day, pour the mixture into your ice cream machine and “follow the manufacturer's instructions”. When the mixture is the consistency of frozen yogurt add the chocolate pieces, let it churn a little longer, and then put it in Tupperware to freeze and then eat!!

I added a few pieces of chocolate on top! Can’t hurt.

Here’s to warmer weather, longer nights and a glimpse of the summer to come!

Thomas Keller’s Spring Vegetable Garbure

2010-04-25T20:50:00.001-04:00

For those of you (including me before I read the recipe) who don’t know what a Vegetable Garbure is, it’s basically a vegetable soup full of big chunks of vegetables and beans.

I’ve been working long hours at the restaurant and by the time I get home I’m rarely in the mood to cook so I thought I would make something easy and nutritious that I can reheat and eat this week. I went back to the Ad Hoc cookbook to see what Thomas Keller had for me. I found his spring vegetable soup and thought it would be the perfect light dinner for the week!

I am starting to understand what makes a recipe a “Thomas Keller recipe”.

1.) Take simple, delicious ingredients

2.) Cook each ingredient a different way before putting them all in the same pot

3.) Create recipe that seems to be unnecessarily time consuming but is so good that people can’t help but to give it a try. *sigh*

That being said, I see why he takes the time to do each extra step, but when it takes me 2.5 hours to make a vegetable soup I start to wonder if the end result is worth the tired feet. Good thing this is food for a week!

I dedicate this post to my foodie aunt up in Boston. I tweaked this recipe and made it completely vegetarian!

Thomas Keller’s Spring Vegetable Garbure

Adapted from the Ad Hoc at Home cookbook

Ingredients:

3 tbs canola oil

2 cups thinly sliced carrots

2 cups of coarsely chopped leaks

2 cups of coarsely chopped onions

salt and pepper

(he uses pig skin to sweat the vegetables… I’ll explain later. I used parchment paper for SEVERAL reasons)

3 yellow potatoes

3 red potatoes

1 bouquet garnis with a bay lead and thyme

2 cups of oblique cut carrots (to be used a bit later in the recipe)

8 ounces of asparagus – I estimated about 6 spears

8 cups of vegetable broth (Thomas Keller calls for chicken stock but to keep this purely vegetarian I went with vegetable broth. I’m ashamed to admit that I used cubes instead of stock in a box but since I don’t have a car, carrying bouillon cubes home was a LOT easier than carriying 4 boxes of vegetable broth home.)

1lb fava beans ( I eat enough fava beans at work so I used habichuelas instead. Completely different bean but same protein. It’s fine!)

1 cup sliced green beans

1 cup of peas

1 small head of Savoy cabbage

2 cups of cooked garbanzo beans (you can use cannelini or white beans here too)

Red wine vinegar (he doesn’t say how much to use to I gave the almost finished soup a nice little drizzle and that’s it)

flat leaf parsley.

Directions:

Sweat the thinly sliced carrots, onions and leaks in a large pot. Cover the pot with parchment paper to keep most of the steam in to help the vegetables along.

TK’s version of the parchment lid is a lot fancier than mine. It’s circular and looks pretty enough to be a doily. Mine is a little rough around the edges but serves its purpose. He doesn’t even use a parchment paper lid in his recipe though. He uses pig skin from the butcher to give the broth flavor and a little fat. I’m pretty sure that the Whole Foods near me doesn’t always have pig skin on hand… so I went with the paper. Pig skin? Really?

When the vegetables are slightly cooked and a little glossy looking add the vegetable stock and let the vegetables simmer for about 20 minutes.

While the vegetables are cooking, peel your potatoes and cut them first length wise and then in half to make medium size pieces.

These two potatoes have different color skins but look pretty similar once they are peeled. Ah the lessons you can learn about judging a potato by it’s cover. ok.. I might be getting a little too philosophic here with my spuds…on with the recipe. Put the potatoes in a pot with the “bouquet garnis” and salt. Cover the potatoes in cold water and boil them for about 10 minutes. When they are done, put them out on a cookie sheet to cool.

Once the vegetables are done cooking in the broth, strain the broth and discard the vegetables. (I kept my mushy cooked veggies. I tasted them and they tasted amazing so I think I’ll stir them into rice for dinner later in the week! I just couldn’t throw away all that flavor.)

At this point I started on the rest of the vegetables. Cut the tips off the green beans and cut them into thirds. Snap the asparagus ends off and cut them into 1 inch pieces and cut the cabbage into 6 wedges.

Thomas Keller says to take the oblique-cut carrots and simmer them in water along with another bouquet garnis and some honey. I ran out of pots so I just simmered them with the other vegetables when they were cooking and fished them out. Not the easiest thing to do but I cut out one of the steps. To add the sweetness I’m sure the honey would have brought to the carrots I drizzled a little on them once they were done cooking (not even a tablespoon).

In another pot (who has that many pots?!! I used the one that I boiled the potatoes in), bring water and 2 teaspoons of salt to a boil and blanch your asparagus, green beans, peas and cabbage. Transfer them immediately to a ice bath to stop the cooking process. This makes sure that they stay really green!

Pretty swimming veggies! It almost looks like a fish tank.

Once all the vegetables are blanched put them back in the vegetable broth infused with all the flavor and nutrients from the carrots, onions and leeks. Add the potatoes and your two types of beans and drizzle with a little red wine vinegar. Boil for a few minutes and you’re done! (finally.)

Finish the soup with some fresh parsley and it’s time to eat!

After sitting down and eating my lovely bowl of Spring Vegetable Garbure I understood why TK asked me to follow so many steps. The potatoes, boiled with the bay leaf and thyme, had SO much flavor. I think I’ll put thyme in my water when boiling potatoes from now on. The vegetables, thanks to the blanching and the quick dip in the ice bath, were green, crisp and delicious. The potatoes were perfectly cooked. The broth itself was great. I sometimes think that vegetable broth lacks some depth of flavor. By cooking vegetables in vegetable broth it basically doubled the flavor. Time consuming but genius.

The soup was fresh, satisfying and painted the perfect picture of a light spring dinner.

Success.

Checking in…

2010-04-04T22:21:00.001-04:00

It took my sister writing me an email asking me if I was really so busy at work that I didn’t have time to post on this blog to remind me that it had been a while since my last entry. I’m sorry!

It’s spring in Washington, D.C. which means the start of the events season. D.C. and its party planners are coming out of hibernation and that equals busy days and late nights for me. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been cooking but I have to admit I’ve tried a few recipes that haven’t really turned out the way I wanted them to. It’s important to admit defeat but there is no need to post said defeats.

Between events and simple dinners I’ve taken up running again! I had previously hurt my knee but our February snow gave me the perfect excuse to sit back and relax and give myself time to get better for Spring! I signed up for the Cherry Blossom 10 miler a while back and I was determined to get back into shape in time to run it. It is only a week away! While I don’t have any recipes for you this time, I do have a few pictures I’ve taken while running these past few weeks. Thanks to my iPhone that I always have with me for phone/googlemaps/camera purposes I can documents my runs!

Running has given me the opportunity to explore parts of the city I would rarely typically go to, mainly around the monuments. Despite the large numbers of tourists (we love you all, don’t get me wrong!) in town this week for the Cherry Blossom Festival I took a run around the monuments to see the trees in bloom. I had never been around the monuments at dusk before. Beautiful!

To switch it up I ran around Roosevelt Island on Saturday. I have to say it’s been nice rediscovering my city. I promise to get back to cooking and baking soon.

Happy Spring everyone!

Grandma’s Raisin Bran Muffins

2010-03-14T21:09:00.001-04:00

The exact origins of this recipe is a mystery to me. My grandmother has been making these raisin bran muffins for as long as I can remember, so to me, they are Grandma’s muffins. Now, if you work for Kellogg or if this recipe happens to belong to you.. thank you for lending it to my grandmother for all these years.

Now that she no longer makes them on her own I have decided to make sure my grandmother and grandfather can still have their raisin bran muffins on occasion for breakfast and am now making them myself.

These muffins are sweet enough to be a mid afternoon snack if you are scared away by the 1 1/2 cups of sugar!

Grandma’s Raisin Bran Muffins

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups flour

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 1/2 tsp baking soda (yes, baking soda not baking powder)

1 tsp. salt

3 cups raisin bran cereal

2 cups buttermilk (I used a cup of 2% milk and a cup of plain yogurt, works just as well!)

1/2 cup vegetable oil (Once again you can probably substitute the oil with apple sauce but since these muffins were for my grandparents I thought I would skip “exotic” substitutions and stick to the recipe.

2 large eggs

Directions:

The recipe makes 18 muffins (which freeze well)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Line muffin cups with liners.

Stir flour, sugar, baking soda and salt in large bowl. Mix in the raisin bran cereal. Whisk buttermilk, oil and eggs in bowl to blend. Mix wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Like any other muffin recipe, do not over mix. Just walk away..even if you feel the urge to give it one more stir.

The muffins will look a little pale but don’t worry, they will come out a lovely, honey gold color.

Spoon 1/3 cup batter into each muffin cup. *guest appearance - the awesome Pike’s Place Market mug I bought in Seattle when I went to visit my sister!*

Bake about 20 minutes.

I wonder if this recipe would work with other types of cereal. I’m sure it would work with corn flakes and dried apricots or cut up apples, might be worth a try!

Thanks Grandma!

Really Moist and Chewy Granola Bars

2010-03-08T09:00:00.000-05:00

When you think of granola you usually think hard and dry. Well, it’s a new world out there because I have found a recipe for a moist, slightly sweet, chewy, delicious granola bar. This recipe can be as nutty or fruity as you like, depending on your taste or your mood and can be “store bought” sweet or less so if you want to pretend to be a little more healthy.

Apples and granola bars are a staple for me –the perfect mid-day snack! They are full of healthy ingredients but taste like a treat! Since they tend to be surprisingly expensive for what they are, I thought I would try and make my own. Turns out they are so easy to make I might never buy another box again! This recipe is so versatile I can change the nuts and fruits and make a new kind of bar each and every time.

Delicious!

Really Moist and Chewy Granola Bars

Adapted from King Arthur Flour

Ingredients:

1 2/3 cups quick rolled oats

1/2 cup granulated sugar (You can use up to 3/4 cup if you want it to be sweeter- I didn’t in this recipe)

1/3 cup of oat flour (I put oats in a coffee grinder and made my own flour. For just a 1/3 of a cup I’m not sure why you would want to buy a whole new kind of flour)

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp cinnamon

3 cups of dried fruits/nuts (this is where you can get creative. For this recipe I used roasted almonds, walnuts, dried apricots, dried cranberries and golden raisins)

1/3 cup of almond butter (you can also use peanut butter but I’m sure the taste of the granola bars would change A LOT if you did – I used almond butter)

1 tsp vanilla extract

6 tbs of melted butter

1/4 cup honey

2 tbs light corn syrup (I wasn’t crazy about using corn syrup. I’m sure there is a more organic/natural sweetener I can use. Maybe just more honey?)

1 tbs water

Directions:

These might just be the easiest baking directions.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9x13 pan. Cover the pan with parchment paper making sure to cut it too long so it hangs off the sides. Grease the parchment paper too.

Mix together the dry ingredients, nuts and fruits

Mix together the wet ingredients

Mix dry and wet ingredients together

Pat beautiful and colorful mixture into the pan

Doesn’t that just look delicious?

Bake for about 30-40 minutes. Mine definitely took 40. They are going to look like they aren’t done – a little like seriously under baked oatmeal cookies that melted into one big cookie- but do not fear. They are done! Take them out of the oven and put the pan on a cooling rack for 15 minutes. Since the parchment paper is sticking out on the sides you can easily pick up the large “bar” and let it finish cooling out of the pan.

Once they are cool use a serrated knife or a chef’s knife to cut them into the sizes you want!

Wrap them individually in plastic wrap or put them in tupperware. After my caramel experiment I wasn’t really ready to individually wrap anything, so tupperware it was!

Granola and orange juice for a quick breakfast!

Mushroom Adventures – One month

2010-03-06T11:12:00.001-05:00

To those of you who were on the edge of their seats just WAITING to see what was going to happen with my mushrooms- I’m sorry I haven't posted in a while! Work was a little more intense then usual this week, but I’m back!

Just because I wasn’t filling you all in on my little mushroom-adventures doesn’t mean they haven’t been growing! As of today I have enough portabella and white button mushrooms to make a great mushroom risotto or sauté some with vegetables. I can’t wait. (This time, if you don’t hear from me in over a week you should get concerned.. maybe the mushrooms weren’t edible afterall…..ugh)

I’m calling this “crop#1”

The box says they are supposed to keep coming back for a couple months. I already see little baby white button mushrooms so I believe them!

Mushroom recipe suggestions welcome! I have a feeling I’ll need some inspiration. I’ll make your recipe and post it on the blog!

Today is the first almost-warm-giving-you-the-feeling-that-spring-might-actually-come-one-day Saturday in D.C. so I’m signing off for the day to go out and enjoy it!

Today: Spending the day with my friend Beth and then going out to my friend Joe’s new Italian restaurant in Leesburg, VA Palio of Leesburg!

Mushroom Adventures : They are growing!

2010-02-24T20:29:00.001-05:00

It’s working!! This simple box of soil and “mold” is doing what it promised to do: grow mushrooms!

I did my part. I religiously came home from work and misted this mysterious box of soil, not really sure if this was just a well thought out plan to scam people into buying boxes of dirt or if something would actually come of it. I came home tonight, picked up my mister bottle and found MUSHROOMS GROWING!!!

Very exciting. While there are only a couple, little tiny mushrooms, they are proof that good things, bigger mushrooms and delicious mushroom recipes to are come.

Keep growing little ones!

Simple French Bread

2010-02-20T13:07:00.001-05:00

When I say “simple” French bread you have to understand that bread is not hard, per se, to make. Continuing along the easy-but-time-consuming road I’ve been cooking along lately, bread is easy, but takes a good day to make. Cold grey Saturdays in February are pretty much perfect for this.

My grandfather used to make bread on a regular basis. Not being a morning person, I never understood why he wanted to get up at 5:30 AM to start making bread. I get it now. It’s fun and so rewarding. (Not to mention the warm yeasty smell makes your house/apartment smell cozy and delicious.) While I did not get up before dawn to start this bread it did take me most of the day.

I had researched for a few days reading multiple food blogs and cookbooks trying to find a relatively easy bread recipe to try. No sense in picking a complicated recipe with a high risk of failure. I really want to get into bread making so I needed this to be a positive experience. After much clicking and page turning I decided on a recipe from Thibeault’s Table. The quote on his blog says “recipes are meant to be shared” so I figured he wouldn’t mind, and would actually be flattered, if I used his recipe. Only after I started the bread did I realize it was a Julia Child recipe he had used. I clearly know how to recognize quality!

Here it goes!

French Bread

As found on Thibeault’s Table – Adapted from Julia Child’s recipe

Ingredient:

1 package dry active yeast
3 1/2 cups unbleached flour
2 1/4 tsp salt
1 1/3 cups cold water plus 1/3 or so additional water (in case you need it… I didn’t)

What I liked about this recipe is that I could use a food processor to initially mix the ingredients. I don’t have a standing mixer so it facilitated things a bit.

Directions:

Put the flour, yeast and salt into your food processor and pulse it until it looks combined. (Make sure to put the lid on or flour will go everywhere. Trust me.)

Through the hole at the top of your lid add the 1 1/3 cups of water and mix until it forms a ball. This happens relatively quickly. Mix for about 60 seconds and then let the ball rest for about 5 minutes in the mixer’s bowl.

Turn the mixer back on and let the ball rotate around your machine about 30 times. I realized this was hard to count so I just let it got for a couple minutes and then turned the machine off.

Let the dough rest for about 2 minutes (or about as long as you can stand it) and then take it out of the mixer bowl and knead it “vigorously”. I can just see Julia Child saying this.

This dough will not be sticky. It should have a nice elasticity to it. If this is the case when you are trying, well done! I at least, was excited.

1st rise:

Place the dough in a clean, un-oiled bowl (some recipes call for oiling a bowl but this one doesn’t) and cover it with plastic wrap.

Let it rise for about 40-60 minutes at around 75 degrees. You know the dough has risen enough with it is about twice its original size. My grandfather used to place his dough on top of the stove. He would turn on the oven so the stove would stay nice and warm. Worked for him so I gave it a try.

Deflating: (this sounded fun to me)

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and pat it out into a 14 inch rectangle. Take one long side and fold it into the middle. Take the other long side and fold it onto the first side to make 3 layers of dough. Repeat this process a few times. This apparently re-distributes the yeast.

2nd rise:

Return the dough to your bowl, smooth side down, and let it rise another hour to 2 hours until it has rise 2-3 times its original size. This step took much longer than 2 hours for me. More like 3.5 hours. I’m sure it will be different each time you make it. Patience. It’s worth it.

At this point in the recipe is where I want to disagree Thibeault or gasp Julia Child. The recipe calls for taking the dough out of the bowl and shaping it into two rectangles. I followed the recipe, which gave me two smaller loafs of bread, but I question if this is really necessary. What if I just want one large loaf? Next time I might skip the “cutting” step and just shape the bread.

Shaping and last rising:

Cut the dough in half. Cover one half with a towel while you work with the other half. Just like the previous step, pat the dough into a 14 inch rectangle. Fold your rectangle in half lengthwise. Seal the edges firmly with the palm of your hand. Repeat with the second half.

Cover both little loaves with a towel and let it rise until it doubles in size, again. What did I tell you about this being a time consuming project?

I can’t say my little loafs look all that glamorous but they ended up looking “rustic” and when it comes to bread that is just fine!

While these little ones are rising for the last time, place a baking stone, or cookie sheet in my case, in the oven and pre-heat it to 450 degrees.

Slash 3 long cuts into your bread and place them in the oven. You are almost done!!

Bake for about 30 minutes or until the internal temperature is 200 degrees and your bread is golden brown. FINISHED!

This bread was great as a snack with butter and honey, or with the fool proof Nutella or for breakfast as toast! I have to say it was really fun to take my very own bread out of the refrigerator for breakfast every morning. (Yes, don’t forget to refrigerate this bread. This is not bread from the store that can sit out because it is full of preservatives. This is home made, preservative free, delicious bread. Please refrigerate or it will get moldy.)

Man-Catcher Brownies

2010-02-14T17:25:00.002-05:00

I was sitting at my desk telling my co-worker how much I was craving brownies and she mentioned having made a brownie recipe she found in the Washington Post a few years ago.
_“You should make them!” she said. “Put them outside your door and see what you catch”.
Why not give it a try! In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, here are my “man-catcher” brownies.

Man-Catcher Brownies

Originally found in the Washington Post on February 7, 2007

Ingredients:

12 ounces (3 sticks) of butter – I never said this was a low-fat recipe!

2 cups of cocoa powder, sifted

6 large eggs

2 cups sugar

2 cups packed light brown suger ( I used dark brown sugar)

2 tbs vanilla extra

1 tps salt

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9-by-13-inch pan with parchment paper and butter the bottom of the pan/parchment paper. (I wouldn't skip this step. I have a feeling my brownies would not have come out of the pan otherwise.)
Melt your butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Remove from the heat and add the cocoa powder and stir it until it becomes a beautiful dark chocolate sauce. Let it cool a bit. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, then add the sugars and vanilla extract. Add your butter/chocolate mixture, then fold in the flour and salt until just combined.
Spread the batter evenly in the pan, making sure the corners are filled. This is a THICK batter (no kidding.. with all those eggs and butter!) Really work it into those corners!

Bake for 40 to 45 minutes. Do the old toothpick test just to make sure they are done.
Not sure if they will catch any men but these sure are some serious brownies!

Happy Valentine’s Day !

Mushroom adventures begin!

2010-02-11T21:05:00.000-05:00

My mushroom adventures have begun! I’m a few days late posting this because I’ve been distracted by the ridiculous winter weather we’ve been having these past few days.

I waited until February 7th to open my mushroom box, as instructed. I’ll update all you readers (or my family and few friends who actually read this) and let you know how this “adventure” goes!

Box of moldy soil: Yes

Bag of more soil: Yes

Instructions to turn box and bag into mushrooms: Yes!

Here we go!

Take the bag of soil and pour water into it. Mix it up and pour it over the moldy soil.

I look a little confused. We’ll see if this actually works!

Next: gently pat the wet soil down and “scrape” the top to create little microclimates for the mushrooms to grown in.

Mist the soil daily to keep it moist.

All I have to do is wait now! Updates to come once a week.

Light Winter Dinner

2010-02-10T17:04:00.000-05:00

When you think snowy winter night you usually think of pasta dishes or risotto, roasted vegetables or soup. The last thing I wanted for dinner last night was a heavy meal. I had leftover kale from the kale chips Anne and I made for the SuperBowl. I haven’t been grocery shopping in a while due to the massive amounts of snow DC has gotten in the last week. I do have the basics though: Eggs and onions!

Poached Eggs over Kale

Ingredients:

One small bunch of Kale (I used 3 large leaves)

Half a small onion, chopped finely

Eggs (I used two because I was hungry!)

1/4 cup of chicken broth (optional but it adds flavor)

Directions:

Wash the kale and tear it up a little bit (the leaves are pretty big). Chop up your onion and sauté it in a little olive oil. Once the onions are almost translucent add the kale and the chicken broth and cover to let the leaves steam. This won’t take very long, about 5 minutes. Check the pan occasionally to make sure all the chicken broth hasn’t evaporated or the kale and onions will burn! The kale will turn a beautiful deep green and the onions will caramelize a bit.

Meanwhile, heat up water to a simmer in another sauté pan. Crack your egg (or eggs) on a plate making sure you keep the yolk whole. Carefully slide the eggs into the water and turn up the heat so you have a slow boil. Poach your eggs for a few minutes, until the white is no longer liquid and the top of the yolk is slightly white, but not cooked through.

Transfer the kale and onions to a plate and then carefully take your poached eggs out of the water with a slotted spoon and place over the greens.

Break open the eggs and let the yolk ooze out. Delicious! Enjoy!

I made this dinner two nights in a row. It’s so flavorful and delicious and you can make it in 10 minutes! If you want a little extra something you can grate a little parmesan cheese on top. Yum!

Poached eggs and a wine. Perfect light dinner before “blizzard 2010 – round 2”

Snowmageddon, the aftermath: Brunch and a walk in the snow.

2010-02-09T22:49:00.002-05:00

I woke up on Sunday to bright blue sky and a beautiful post-blizzard day and a phone call from my friend Anne who wanted to know if I wanted to go out for brunch. Of course!
I had been wanting to try a new restaurant on 14th street for a while and luckily they also serve brunch. Perfect!
Snow boots? Check! Big puffy snow jacket? Check! Masa 14? Check!
Masa 14 just opened up a few months ago to great reviews (at least from a few of my friends). It’s a low key latin/asian fusion restaurant with modern decor and the longest bar I’ve ever seen!
I was really in the mood for fresh flavors and my wish was their command. The plates are small and they recommend ordering a few dishes per person. We ordered 5 and shared them!
First on deck: 2 different kinds of flatbreads. One with avocado, peppers and mushrooms, the other with Serrano ham, cantaloupe and truffle oil. Both delicious!
The pepper and avocado flatbread had slices of fresh hot pepper on them. I usually don’t order spicy food but this was a wonderful combination of smoothness from the avocado and freshness from the hot peppers that it worked really well.
The ham, melon and arugula flatbread was a fun take on the familiar “melon and prosciutto” dish.
Next was a seaweed and jicama salad.
We then had our own “entrees”. I had a poached egg over brioche with spinach, peppers and a hollandaise sauce. By the time I got to this dish I wasn’t as hungry and I probably should have been. Oh brunch… eyes were bigger than the stomach once again!

After an amazing (and very filling brunch) we both thought a serious walk downtown to see the snow was in order.
Enjoy the “day after the snow” pictures!

Someone had some fun!

Photo-op with the White House snow family and Anne!

It’s snowing again tonight. They are predicting close to 10 inches. I guess this snow isn’t going anywhere anytime soon!

Thomas Keller’s “Grapefruit” Cake

2010-02-07T23:01:00.001-05:00

What does one do with 6 oranges, naked, just sitting there in bowl after I peeled them for candied orange rind?? Find a recipe that uses the flesh of an orange! I wasn’t looking very long before I found a recipe for a citrus cake. My mother gave me Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc at Home cookbook a few weeks ago so I went to that book first. What luck… he has a grapefruit cake recipe. What uses grapefruit can use orange I’m sure. Problem solved!

I made a cake similar to this one a while ago but this recipe is slightly different and it’s a Thomas Keller recipe so it pretty much has to be good right?

“Grapefruit Cake”

Adapted from Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc at Home

Ingredients:

For the cake:

2 cups of all purpose flower

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 2/3 cup of granulated sugar

2 large eggs

1 cup whole milk

3/4 cups of canola oil (I used equal amounts of apple sauce. Apple sauce is healthier and keeps the cake just as moist. Upgrade!)

1tbls grapefruit zest (I actually used grapefruit and not orange here. I’m sure you could completely substitute all things grapefruit in this recipe with orange but I thought I would mix the two and call the cake “citrus”.)

1 tsp vanilla paste ( I just used vanilla extract. Sorry TK I didn’t make your vanilla paste ahead of time)

For the “grapefruit” aka orange syrup:

1 cup strained fresh pink grapefruit juice (or orange juice in my case)

2/3 cup granulated sugar

“Grapefruit” Icing:

I used clementines here. Might as well through another citrus fruit into the mix!

3/4 cup powdered sugar

1 tbs plus 1tsp fresh pink grapefruit juice (or clementine juice in my case)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. The recipe calls for one 10x4 inch loaf pan but I had regular, small, loaf pans so I used two of them. Spray you pans with oil or butter them up!

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together and set aside.

In another bowl combine the sugar and eggs in a mixing bowl with an electric mixer. Mix for about 3 minutes or until the mixtures is thick enough to leave a trail behind the mixing “wisks”.

Next, beat in the milk, the oil (or the applesauce in my case), grapefruit zest and the vanilla. Once all wet ingredients are well incorporated slowly add the dry ingredients that you mixed together in the first bowl.

Pour the mixture into both loaf pans. Keller says to score the top of the batter with a knife and make a 3/4 inch “slice” into the batter to give the cakes a nice little crack on the top once it has baked. I did this and didn’t really see what he was talking about but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give it a try! Score away.

Bake the cakes for an hour or until your toothpick comes out clean.

…meanwhile…

While you cakes are baking make the citrus syrup to pour on top of the cake once it comes out of the oven.

Combine the citrus juice and sugar in a saucepan and cook over medium heat just until the sugar has dissolved.

As soon as you take the cakes out of the oven take a long skewer (or the candy thermometer like I did.. it was the only long, clean “stick” I could find – chopsticks would work well too) and poke the cakes with 3/4 inch deep holes. These will help the syrup that you are gently pouring over the cakes seep in. Let the cakes cool for about 15 minutes then remove them from the pan. Pour the icing over the cakes and you’re finished!

***

As a kid my mom would fix my sister and me pound cake with yogurt as a snack after we came home from school. This is sort like pound cake, so why not try it with yogurt?!

Citrus/yogurt sandwich! Amazing.

Candied Orange Peel

2010-02-07T10:56:00.001-05:00

I know this is usually a Christmas tradition, at least in Europe, but I figured it's still citrus season so I can make them.

Chocolate and Orange is a classic combination but I'll be honest and say it hasn't always been one of my favorites. I found this recipe on yujai.blogspot.com and it looked so fresh and delicious that I had to try it. There is something very appealing about the thought of my apartment filled with the smell of citrus peel cooking away on the stove.

"candied" anything sounds like it would be complicated to make. As it turns out complicated is the wrong word, "time consuming" is more like it (this seems to be a trend lately with the dishes I choose to make).

Chocolate Covered Candied Orange Peel

adapted from Yujai's recipe

Ingredients:

6 Navel Oranges (this makes a LOT of orange peel. Looking back I would have used half this number)

4 cups of sugar (don't forget to reduce the amount of sugar and water based on the number of oranges you use)

1 1/2 cups of water

All parts of this recipe are time consuming, I'm warning you.

First, peel the oranges by cutting 1/4 slices into the fruit, cutting the orange peel into quarters. (set the flesh of the orange aside for use in another recipe. I made a citrus cake!) Cut the quarters of orange peel into small 1/4 inch strips.

Put the peel in a large pot and cover it with cold water. Bring the water to a boil, let it cook for a couple minutes and then strain the water out and do it all over again, twice. I'm going to have to do a little research but I'm thinking this removes impurities and wax that might have been on the rind. You really do see a lot of cloudy water go down the drain.

Strain the now soft and a bit translucent peel into a bowl and set aside for a minute.

Mix the sugar and water together over medium heat and let the mixture cook. The recipe calls for 8-9 minutes or when your candy thermometer reaches 230 degrees. I found that it took more like 15 minutes. I'm sure it all depends on the stove you have.

Add the peel and lower the heat to a simmer. Let the pot cook for 45 minutes (I left them on for an hour because I got caught up on the phone with my sister! No harm done).

Cover the underneath of a cooling rack with foil to catch sugar drips and gently lay the strips on the rack to cool and dry. They will still be pretty hot. You have been warned!

Let the strips dry for 2-3 days. You can either be finished now, and pack them into a container on wax paper to prevent them from sticking, or you can cover them in chocolate!

To cover in chocolate:

Melt chocolate, dip, set to dry again. Easy!

Snowpocalypse 2010 in pictures

2010-02-06T16:31:00.001-05:00

****Blizzard!****

I woke up to A LOT of snow this morning! After having some tea and watching the mandatory around the clock local weather coverage for a good two hours I thought it might be fun to venture out. I live close enough to the White House.. why not go out and take a look!

Enjoy the snow pictures!

16th street

I made it back to Dupont! A little cold and very wet but it was worth it!

Blizzard of '10 and my mushroom adventure begins!

2010-02-05T22:59:00.000-05:00

Well it's snowing again! This is more snow than the DC area has seen in a LONG time. While they are calling for close to 30 inches by the end of the day tomorrow we are still at about 4 inches right now. None the less... it's all very exciting. The snow has quietly turned the city's volume down to a hush and softened all its edges. Beautiful.

About a week ago I ordered a "grown your own mushroom kit" in the mail on a whim. I've always wanted to go mushroom hunting and while this is the wrong season and I live in completely the wrong area of the world to do so I thought this could be a close second!

After spending a long day at the restaurant today I finally got home around 10:30 PM to find a box at my door!

So fun!

The top of the box says I can't open it until Sunday. I wonder what's going on in that box!?

I'll periodically update you on the "mushroom adventure status". Hopefully I will have button and portabella mushrooms to eat soon!

5 inches deep in snow and I'm signing off. We'll see how much snow I wake up to.

Easy Chicken Masala and revisiting my knife skills

2010-01-31T20:49:00.000-05:00

I suppose I have to thank Bon Appetit Magazine for my weekend of cooking. A recipe from a while back for yesterday's soup and a DELICIOUS recipe for Chicken Masala from the most recent issue.

I love Indian food but have always been reluctant to try and cook it myself for one reason: so many ingredients! I got Padma Lakshmi's Tangy Tart Hot and Sweet cookbook a few years ago but have yet to make anything out of it because most of the dishes call for at least 10 ingredients, most of them spices I don't own. I'm slowly building up my Indian spice repertoire. Until then, I am relying on spice packets from Whole Foods! Thankfully that's exactly what the Bon Appetit recipe called for.

Two years ago I took a knife skills class at L'Academie de Cuisine in Bethesda, MD . I had so much fun, even though I came home with a blister on my right index finger from all the chopping! In the class they gave us a few chickens to cut up and de-bone. Usually when I buy whole chickens it's to roast them. This recipe was a fun excuse to try and cut one up again!

Easy Chicken Masala
as found in Bon Appetit's February 2010 issue

1 cup plain whole-milk yogurt
1/4 cup coarsely chopped cilantro (I left this out... sorry Cilantro lovers)
3 tbs extra virgin olive oil
1 tbs garam masala ( I used a ready mixed bag I bought at Whole Foods but you can also mix your own with the appropriate spices too!)
2 tsp salt
1 large garlic clove ( I used two small ones)
1 4-4 1/2 lb whole chicken (I could only find a 7 lb one so that's what I used)

Directions:
Cut up the whole chicken into 8 pieces.

Next, mix the yogurt, olive oil, garam masala, salt and garlic in a glass baking dish.

Add the chicken. Cover it in plastic wrap and refrigerate it at least 2 hours and up until 1 day.

Preheat over to 400 degrees and roast chicken for 45-50 minutes. I checked mine after 45 minutes and it was almost done... 50 minutes is a good happy medium I think.

This recipe could not have been easier to make. The yogurt made the chicken so moist and the garam marsala gave it such amazing flavor. Roasting turned the marinade into a caramelized crust. Yum!! This is a must try recipe!

Enjoy!

A bright soup on a snowy Saturday

2010-01-30T20:59:00.002-05:00

It's another snowy Saturday in D.C. I've been so busy working late at work, I promised myself I would cook this weekend to make sure I had something yummy to come home to for dinner next week. Soup is an easy answer. I can keep some in the fridge and then freeze some for later!

My little Dupont Circle goddess looks like she is wearing a snow shawl, doesn't she?

I never noticed how strong her arms were!

My mom found a recipe in one of her Bon Appetit magazines about a year ago for an amazing carrot ginger soup. On such a grey, snowy day I thought something bright, orange and a little spicy would be perfect.

Ginger Carrot Soup
Addapted from Bon Appetit Magazine

2tbs of salted butter
1/4 cup of olive oil (I used a little less)
1.5 lbs of carrots (It's about a bag and a half of those bags of carrots from the store)
4.5 cups of vegetable stock (I used 4 cups because that's all I had!)
1 large onion
1/4 tsp nutmeg
2 tbs of grated fresh ginger (I only used about 1 tbs)

Directions:

Peel and chop the carrots into small circles. Put them in a large pan along with the chopped up onion, butter, ginger and olive oil. Over medium heat, saute them together for about 10 minutes or until the onions and carrots start to soften.

Add the vegetable stock and nutmeg and turn up the heat a little bit (not too too much!) Let it simmer for about 20 minutes or until the carrots are soft.

Once it has finished cooking, transfer it carefully, in stages, into a food processor and blend it until creamy.

Who said you need fancy appliances to cook well? I like to call mine "vintage".

It belonged to my grandmother.

Serve in a heated bowl to make sure the soup doesn't cool off before it reaches the table. You can add a little bit of creme fraiche or sour cream in the middle to make it just that much more delicious. I clearly went that route!

...and then there was none.

You say Car'mel I say CarAmel.

2010-01-21T22:55:00.002-05:00

Tomatoes....Tomaaaatoes.. .how ever you say it, caramel is delicious.

Last weekend was my first full weekend off in a while. Two full days without going to work... what to do?! Make caramels clearly.

A recipe from Vanilla and Lace (http://vanillaandlace.blogspot.com/) was recommended to me so I thought I would give it a try. I LOVE chocolate/caramels with fleur de sel and I bought a candy thermometer a while back and never had the chance to use it. This was the perfect opportunity!

I figured making candy would be rather complicated. I'm not very good at measuring out ingredients ahead of time but this time I thought I would give it a try. First step.. get everything out.

This was not a quick little recipe. I dedicated my morning to it but it definitely took more time than I thought. All worth it of course!

Here it goes!

(recipe originally found here: http://vanillaandlace.blogspot.com/2009/12/fleur-de-sel-or-not-caramels.html)

Ingredients:
2 cups granulated sugar
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup light corn syrup
1/2 teaspoons salt
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon fleur de sel
(simple ingredients turn into a delicious treat!)

Line a cake pan with parchement paper (cut it to size) and butter it. Buttering is important. You want the cooled caramel to come off the paper easily. The recipe called for a 9x9 pan. I used a small rectangular cake pan and it worked just fine.

In a saucepan combine the sugar, salt (not the sea salt) corn syrup and cream.

Stir constantly and bring to a boil.

Reduce the heat and stir for 5 minutes. Cut up the butter into little chunks and slowly add them to the sugar mixture, letting each one melt before adding the next.

The recipe told me to clip on my candy thermometer ... "finally!!!"
Allow the mixture to boil until it reaches 250 degrees. I thought this would happen pretty quickly. Wrong. The recipe told me it would take 20-40 minutes... I thought It would happen faster. VERY WRONG. I started stirring the mixture occasionally, as instructed, at a medium low heat watching the thermometer.

I have a while to go apparently. Stir....stir.....stir...

bubbles! It must be getting hotter.

(20 minutes later) The needle hasn't moved that much.

I keep stirring....and turn up the heat a little

Another 20 minutes and I'm almost to the red! I finally feel like I'm making candy! By this time I'm past the 40 minutes the recipe said this would take.. so I turn up the heat and watch it a little more carefully. I tasted the sugar on the spoon I was using and it tasted like caramel...must be a good sign.

In the red... thicker bubbles. On the right track...but not there yet!

I was so excited to finally reach 250 degrees that I forgot to take a picture. An hour later, at 250 I see beautiful thick bubbles .

When the sugar mixture reaches 250 take it off the heat immediately and stir in the vanilla.

Pour it carefully into your pan. Make sure not to scrape the sides of the pan. If you do you'll scrape sugar crystals into the caramel and you don't want that! Keep it smooth...leave the sides alone. If you feel like you are wasting some, don't. You'll have more caramel then you know what to do with. Trust me.

Let it cool for about an hour until you can touch it. (This is where the buttered parchment paper comes in handy. I'm not sure it would have come out of the pan without it!)

I turned the caramel out onto a cutting board and went at it with my kitchen knife. Oil your knife because this stuff is STICKY!!

Prepare a plate with fleur de sel.

I cut mine into long strips and then into squares. Press each little square into the salt. Work quickly because it cools pretty fast, making it harder to cut and harder to press into the salt.

Only after I got half way through cutting the caramel strips into squares did I realize that making candy also means making candy WRAPPERS. *sigh*

-[STOP all candy cutting and find plastic wrap. Cut said plastic wrap into as many pieces of caramel you think you are making, and then cut double that number]

After cursing the number of caramels you have to wrap ........ you can enjoy them :)

This recipe was a lesson in patience but it was well worth it! The caramels were delicious and it was fun watching the sugar start off as a solid, quickly turn into a liquid and the slowly thicken into thick thick bubbles. I'll definitely make candy again! Recipe suggestions welcome!

Friends... get ready for some candy in the mail!

Queen for a day?

2010-01-10T14:11:00.000-05:00

... and eat cake too!

In true French tradition I decided to make a Galette des Rois for Epiphany. I am not much of a baker and even less when it comes to recipes involving puff pastry but when I decided that there was nothing wrong with using pre-made frozen puff pastry (thank you Pepperidge Farm) I thought I would give it a try. Growing up, going to a French school, I used to eat a Galette des Rois, king's cake, every year for Epiphany. Whoever makes the cake hides a little "fève", a little plastic baby, or a coin, or a bean in the cake. Whoever gets the feve in their slice of cake can be Queen or King for the day. Fun! I didn't have a miniature plastic baby so I used a bean. Less chance of choking if swallowed :)

I have the luck of working in a restaurant with a very talented pastry chef so on Wednesday I asked her for a few tips! She took out her sharpe pen and started to explain!

Clearly restaurant quantities of almond cream totally unnecessary. Good thing she was nice enough to do the math for me and re-size it to individual cake measurements!

I'm very visual. While I didn't ask her for pictures they were appreciated! The recipe calls for mixing almond cream and pastry cream together. She just happened to have pastry cream left over from some desserts she was making that day and gave me some. No sense making tons of pastry cream if I only need a little!

The recipe I ended up using was a combination of the one from Baking with Dorie (thanks!) and my tips and tricks the pastry chef gave me.

(http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2008/01/baking-with-dorie-galette-des-rois-recipe.html)

Ingredients

14 ounces all-butter puff pastry, homemade or store bought, chilled and ready to roll
3/4 cup almond cream
1/4 cup pastry cream
1 tablespoon dark rum
1 large egg

Pastry cream recipe from Baking with Dorie:
- makes about 2 cups -

Ingredients

2 cups whole milk
1 plump, moist vanilla been, split and scraped
6 large egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup cornstarch, sifted
3 1/2 tablespoons (1 3/4 ounces) unsalted butter, softened and cut into 3 pats

Procedure

1. Bring the milk and vanilla bean (pulp and pod) to a boil in a small saucepan over medium heat. Cover the pan, turn off the heat, and allow the milk to infuse for at least 10 minutes or for up to 1 hour.
2. If the milk has cooled, it will need to be reheated now.
3. Whisk the yolks, sugar, and cornstarch together in a heavy-bottomed medium saucepan. Whisking constantly, drizzle one-quarter of the hot milk over the yolks. When the yolks are warm, whisk the remainder of the milk into the yolks in a steadier stream; remove and discard the pod (or save it to make vanilla sugar).
4. Put the pan over medium heat and, whisking vigorously, bring the mixture to the boil. Keep at the boil—still whisking energetically—for 1 to 2 minutes before pulling the pan from the heat and pressing the cream through a sieve into the small bowl. Let the cream sit for 5 minutes, then whisk in the butter. Cover the cream with a piece of plastic wrap—press the wrap against the cream—and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled. You can speed up the chill by putting the bowl in a larger bowl filled with ice cubes and cold water. (Keeping: Covered tightly with plastic wrap, pastry cream can be refrigerated for 2 days. To smooth the chilled cream, whisk it for a few seconds.)

Almond Cream recipe from my friend the Pastry Chef:

2 sticks of butter - at room temperature
1 cup of sugar
2 cups of almond flour (I put raw sliced almonds in my coffee grinder)
1 1/2 tbs of flour
5 eggs

Directions:
Take puff pastry out of the freezer a good 40 minutes before you want to start making the cake. It takes a while to defrost.

Cream butter and sugar until light
Beat in the eggs 1 by 1
Beat in almond flour and flour

At this point you add the pastry cream to the almond cream.
NOTE: I apparently mixed the two together a little too vigorously because there was air in my cake and it left a little cave between the two layers of puff pastry. It fell once I cut it but mixing it lightly instead of using all your force, which is what I must have done, might work better.
Add the rum!

Take one sheet of puff pastry, lay it out on a well floured board or counter and roll it out a little, depending on how big you want your cake to be. I only rolled it out a few more inches.

Take the lid of a large saucepan and make a round imprint in the dough. Brush eggwash around the circle. This will help the top layer of puff pastry stick to the bottom one when it's time to put it on.

Put your almond cream/pastry cream combination in the middle of the circle and spread it out a little until it is about an inch away from the circle.

Add your bean! Put it towards the edge of the dough so its harder to see when you cut into the cake.

Roll out the second sheet of puff pastry and gently place it on top of the cream, making sure that you smooth out any air pockets.

Score the top of the puff pastry with a knife, lightly, if you want a design on the top and then brush it with eggwash.

NOTE: don't forget to cut the puff pastry into a circle shape! I scored the cake, brushed it with eggwash and put it in the oven forgetting to cut it into a circle. 10 minutes into baking I panicked and remembered what I had done. Luckily I could still take it out and cut off the excess puff pastry. It worked... but I still felt stupid.

Cook the pastry according to the baking directions on the box of puff pastry you used. Mine said 40 minutes at 400. I think I could have probably baked it at 375.

joyeuse fete des rois!

Who said you can't have cake for breakfast?

Cookies in the Mail

2010-01-04T22:09:00.002-05:00

... because I love mail.

....even when it is just e-mail. For a few years now I've signed up for the 12 days of cookies on the Food Network website. Every holiday season the Food Network sends me a new cookie recipe for 12 days before Christmas "reinvented" or "touched up" by one of the Food Network celebrity chefs. While most of them are usually cookies that I would not make or have made before, this year Ina Garten (I love the Barefoot Contessa) sent out Rugelach! I've always loved them and have never thought to make then until now!

Here are what Ina's cookies looked like in the email I got:
(photo thanks to the Food Network
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/rugelach-recipe4/index.html?nl=FN_Cookie13_2009_6)

Let's see if mine turn out the same.

Ingredients

8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature (Yeah.... I was surprised there was cream cheese in them too!)
1/2-pound unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/4 cup granulated sugar, plus 9 tablespoons
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling
1/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3/4 cup raisins
1 cup finely chopped walnuts
1/2 cup apricot preserves, pureed in a food processor
1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon milk, for egg wash

Directions

Add the cheese and butter to the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and beat until light.

( I used a wooden spoon...seriously. This stuff is so soft my grandmother could stir it)

Add 1/4 cup granulated sugar, the salt, and vanilla. Add the flour and mix until just combined. Dump the dough out onto a well-floured board and roll it into a ball.

NOTE: my dough was REALLY wet. I don't know if I did something wrong or if this is how it was supposed to be. Just in case yours turns out this way..no need to panic...the cookies will turn out just fine :)

Cut the ball in quarters, wrap each piece in plastic, and refrigerate for 1 hour.

To make the filling, combine 6 tablespoons of granulated sugar, the brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, the raisins, and walnuts.

On a well-floured board, (they aren't kidding here. This dough is STICKY. I rolled it out several times only to realize there was NO WAY it was coming off the counter. FLOUR FLOUR FLOUR) roll each ball of dough into a 9-inch circle. Spread the dough with 2 tablespoons apricot preserves and sprinkle with 1/2 cup of the filling. Press the filling lightly into the dough. Cut the circles into 12 equal wedges-cutting the whole circle in quarters, then each quarter into thirds.

sticky!

Starting with the wide edge, roll up each wedge. Arrange the cookies, points tucked under, on a baking sheet(s) lined with parchment paper. Chill for 30 minutes.(Chilling will help take the sticky off and make them easier to handle)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Brush each cookie with the egg wash. Combine 3 tablespoons granulated sugar and 1 teaspoon cinnamon and sprinkle on the cookies. Bake until lightly browned, about 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from the oven to a wire rack and let cool. Arrange on a large platter and serve.

Rolling them as it turns out was pretty hard. It was very sticky and the raisin and walnut filling would fall out sometimes. Next time I might chop everything up more finely.
I wouldn't call my cookies pretty but they tasted great :)

Bon Appetit!

Christmas revisited

2010-01-04T21:39:00.001-05:00

......don't blink or you'll miss it.

Christmas came and went so fast! I spent most of the time relaxing and spending time with my family...I suppose that is what the holidays are for. I meant to write about my new Christmas tradition (as of 2 years ago), a while ago but am only getting around to it now.

Stollen! The "other" Christmas bread. I have already covered fruitcakes on this blog...because what are the holidays without a little fruitcake so I thought I would write about the fruitcake's prettier, healthier more popular older sister, Stollen. Stollen is the made-for-breakfast, not-that-sweet, more-like-bread-than-cake holiday fruit alternative. My grandfather used to bake bread and made stollen every Christmas. I haven't yet mastered his other breads but I am getting close to perfecting the stolen!

I found a recipe in the big yellow Gourmet cookbook and have used it ever since.

Ingredients

For Dried fruit mix (can be made up to 4 hours ahead)

1/4 cup glaceed cherries, halved ( I used 1/4 cup of golden raisins instead)

12 cup diced mixed glaceed fruits (oil knife when cutting fruit) ( I used dried apricots)

1/2 cup raisins

1/2 cup currants (dried!)

3 tablespoons dark rum

For Sponge
1 (1/4 oz) package (2 1/2 teaspoons) active dry yeast
1/4 teaspoon granulated sugar

3/4 cup warm mile 9105-115 degrees)
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

For Dough

2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 stick (8 oz) unsalted butter, melted and cooled, plus 2 tablespoons melted butter

2 large eggs, slightly beaten

1/3 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup sliced almonds ( I left these out...but feel free to add them in!)

For Brushing and Glaze

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

2 tablespoons confections sugar

Make the Fruit mix

Stir together all ingredients in a small bowl. Let stand at room temperature, stirring occasionally for at least 2 hours.

Make The Sponge

Stir together yeast, sugar, and warm milk in bowl until yeast is dissolved. Let stand until foamy, about 5 minutes. (if mixture does not foam, discard and start over with new yeast.)

"happy yeast!"

Make the Dough:

Add flour, 8 tablespoons melted butter, eggs, and sugar to sponge and beat at medium speed with paddle attachment until incorporated. Switch to dough hook, add almonds and dried fruit mixture, and beat at medium speed until dough is smooth and pullling away from sides of bowl, about 5 minutes. Beat for 5 minutes more (it will be a little sticky).

Put dough in a lightly oiled large bowl and turn to coat with oil. Covert tightly with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm draft-free place until doubled in bulk, about 1 1/2 hours.

Punch down dough, turn out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead briefly. Roll out dough, turn with an unfloured rolling pin into an oval about 12 inches long and 7 inches wide (1 inch thick).

Brush top of dough with remaining melted butter. Fold dough lengthwise in half so that bottom half extends about 1 inch beyond top half, and press folded edge lightly together with fingertips.

Generously butter a baking sheet. Arrange stollen diagonally on it. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm draft-free place until doubled in bulk, about 1 12/ hours.

Glaze and Bake Stollen

Put in a rack in middle of oven and preheat oven to 350F.

Brush stollen with melted butter. bake until loaf is deep golden and bottom sounds hollow when tapped, 40-50 minutes.

Voila!

Perfect Christmas morning breakfast.

Snow day #2 - baking

2009-12-20T14:40:00.000-05:00

....let the baking begin!

I woke up this morning to bright sun reflecting off of yesterday's snow. Beautiful. On the off chance that the farmer's market was open this morning I ventured out to see what the snow had done to the city.

This usually busy street was almost deserted this morning. The whole neighborhood was quiet, except for the sound of a few snow shovels working away.

Those who actually went out last night seemed to have a good time in the snow :)

The farmers' market was closed (no big surprise) but at least it got me out!

I started to make dough for cookies yesterday and after the snow, the stew and the dough making I just didn't have the patience or energy to actually make the cookies. Guess what I'm doing today!?

Sugar cookies

as found in an issue of Gourmet Magazine, 2005

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups of all purpose flour

3/4 tsp salt

1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter, softened

3/4 cup sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

Whisk together flour and salt in a small bowl.
Beat together butter and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high until pale and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. Reduce speed to low and add flour mixture, mixing until just combined.

Divide the dough into 2 balls and refrigerate at least 2 hours (I left mine in the fridge overnight)

You can decorate your cookies however you like. I decided to paint them in colored egg wash. If you choose to do this you have to do it BEFORE you bake the cookies. Eggwash: I used 2 eggs and a splash of water and divided them into a muffin tin (why not!) and added food coloring.

Now it's time to cut out the cookies!

The recipe recommends you cook them for 10-12 minutes. My cookies were definitely not done after 12. I left them in for 15-17 minutes depending on how thick I rolled them out. This is a basic sugar cookie recipe. You could add flavoring to the dough or decorate the cookies with colored sugar, royal icing, raisins.. whatever you want! I didn't think this recipe made enough cookies (not sure why I thought I needed more than the cookies below, but.. in case you are making these as gifts, I would double the recipe.

......Snowed in!

2009-12-19T19:48:00.002-05:00

.....Perfect opportunity to relax, cook, bake, and make TWO trips to the grocery store.

There was a threat of snow and having lived in D.C. for most of my life I know that either it won't snow at all or the city will be buried. Surprisingly we actually got snow...lots of it....over a foot of it actually!

I was supposed to run with my running group this morning at 8:00 AM. That was canceled. I get to sleep in! I was then supposed to work a lunch party at the restaurant. That was canceled. I get to relax and have a leisurely breakfast and cook a stew for dinner! I've been wanting to make a stew for a while for several reasons. First, I love stews. For some reason slow cooked meat, vegetable, wine, onions and time just meld together and create something amazing. Second, it's the perfect dish for my lifestyle right now. I need something that will keep longer than a day or two, that will get better with time and that I can easily re-heat when I come home late from events. Stew it is!

To find a receipe I went back to my fool proof chef. Jamie Oliver. He is one of my first favorite "celebrity" chef. His recipes are fairly simple, straight forward, classic and delicious.

Jool's Favorite Beef Stew

from

Jamie's Dinners

the essential family cookbook

Ingredients

olive oil

butter

1 onion - chopped

a handful of sage leaves

1 3/4 lbs stewing steak or beek skirt (I used chuck) cut into 2 inch cubes

flour to dust cover the meat in

2 parsnips, peeled and quartered

4 carrots, peeled and halved

1/2 a butternut squash, de-seeded, and roughly diced

some small potatoes (I left these out)

2 tbl of tomato puree

1/2 a bottle of red wine

1 1/4 cup beef broth

Preheat the over to 300 degrees. Melt the butter and olive oil in your pan then add the onions and sage leaves and let them cook for a bit. While this is cooking, salt and pepper your beef cubes and lightly cover them in flour (this will thicken the sauce).

Note: I slightly alerted this recipe for two reasons. First, I omitted one of the two parsnips because the grocery store only had one. I guess "snow storm" means "go buy all the parsnips". I figured this wouldn't change the recipe too much. Second, I had a strawberry blonde moment and bought an acorn squash instead of a butternut squash. I only realized my mistake when I got home when it was too late. I just went with it. While it tasted just fine the acorn squash completely disintegrated in the stew and turned into mush. The stew tasted GREAT but it didn't look all that pretty. Next time I'll try it with butternut squash.

Oops.

Once the meat is floured go ahead and put it in the pot, along with all the chopped up vegetables, the 1/2 bottle of wine, tomato puree (I used tomato paste), beef brother and a little salt and pepper. Bring it to a boil, cover it

Jamie recommends you cook the stew in the oven for 3-4 hours depending on the size of the chunks of meat and how fresh the meat is. I cooked it for 2 and a half and I think it was too long. I wanted there to be more liquid in the stew but most of it was gone by the time I took it out of the oven. To fix it i added a little more beef broth and it helped. Just take a peek once and a while and check on your stew.

[Insert text message from the restaurant Maite D'. My dinner event was canceled. Horray!] Time to make dough for cookies!

On deck:

Basic sugar cookies to be turned into christmas cookies

and

Ina Garten's Rugelach

Identity Crisis

2009-12-14T22:12:00.000-05:00

...What's in a name?

While my love for all things Thomas Keller has not changed, the time I have to work through his complicated recipes has. I have not given up on working through the Bouchon cookbook but it has proved to be more time consuming than I originally thought. I will keep on picking away at all the delicious bistro recipes but this blog will concentrate more on the tangents I am taking along the way than actually cooking my way through his cookbook. Sooo.... I need a new blog name!

Thoughts? Ideas? I need help!

....who you calling a fruitcake?

2009-12-14T22:06:00.002-05:00

... I woulnd't call this a fruit cake.

I'd call it, tradition, spice, breakfast, dessert, a snack, an excuse to bake with your family, a reason to remember loved ones...

It wouldn't be Christmas without Grandmaman's fruit cake. When I was young I would make them for my teachers now I make them for parties and friends. It's just not the holidays without fruit cake for dessert as a post holiday dinner snack with tea. While I'm keeping the recipe a family secret... here are the steps:)

Grandmaman's Fruit Cake

Ginger

Cloves

Cinnamon

Allspice

Nutmeg

1 stick of butter

(I know you are always supposed to bake with unsalted butter but we've always used salted so that's what I'm sticking with)

2 eggs

Flour

Sugar

Baking powder

Glaceed fruits

(These are optional. I don't personally like them but what's a "fruit cake" without fruit? A spice cake! That's the way I like them.... all spice..no fruit.

Mix the flour, baking powder, spices and sugar together. They spices look so pretty!

Add the butter and eggs and glaceed fruits. My mother and I made 7 cakes! 4 with fruits and 3 without. :) Now the fun part starts. You COULD use a spoon to mix everything together but we use our hands! Who needs a spoon when you have two hands. Ready...set...squish between your fingers!

At first it feels cold because of the eggs, then it feels greasy because of the butter, then you start to feel the velvety softness of the flour and the graininess of the sugar. As they mix together they lose their individual textures and turn into a sticky blob of delicious dough.

Finger licking allowed. In fact, finger licking almost mandatory at this point.

The dough should mix into a moist but not sticky dough that you can pat into a ball. Butter and flour a loaf pan and pat the dough into the pan, making sure all the corners of filled in. I brushed egg wash on the top of the "spices only" cakes. It added a little shine to them. These cakes bake at a low heat (below 300 degrees) for over an hour, leaving your house/apartment, studio smelling of sugar and spice and everything nice!

***

On another note, my father has recently convinced me to sign up for my second half marathon. (I ran my first this past November with my dad. He was nice enough to be my pacer.. see picture!) Thinking I needed a motivator to keep me running through the winter I signed up for The National Half Marathon is on March 20th.

http://www.nationalmarathon.com/

I have3 months to show myself I can beat my first half marathon time and still find time to COOK! Training alone as it turns out is pretty hard so I've signed up to run with a training group at a local running store.

Tomorrow is my first "track practice" at 6:50 AM. Not only do I not yet consider myself a true "runner" but I am definitely not a morning person yet... Time for bed!

A special thanks to my iPhone for taking pretty good pictures for this blog while I was waiting for a new memory card for my camera.

The Threat of Gray

2009-12-10T22:53:00.000-05:00

"....If it is gray the next morning you know you did it wrong..."

...is what the pastry chef at my restaurant told me when I asked her how to cover my truffles in chocolate. "Well you have to temper the chocolate. If it is gray the next morning when you look at them you know you did it wrong. The chocolate didn't temper." You don't just dunk them in chocolate and have them come out shiny and pretty???? Guess it's not as easy as I thought. I suppose that's why there are professionals :)

Melt 2/3 of your chocolate until it is reaches about 90 degrees. Add the last 1/3 of your chocolate bar and stir it. It shouldn't completely melt. It should melt just enough for the sugar crystals in the melted chocolate to mimic the sugar crystals in the cooler chocolate. Once you think you've done this correctly (uummmm....ok) it's time to dip your little truffles in!

I got down and dirty and used my fingers. Spoons are acceptable too I suppose but the way I see it, if you are going to play with chocolate you might as well get your fingers dirty.

I dipped, got dirty, put them back on the tray and back in the freezer. Now all I have to do it wait.

Fingers crossed!

Chocolate is better than mushrooms when it comes to truffles

2009-12-07T22:42:00.002-05:00

...I'm sorry but it's true. For me, chocolate truffles beat out the real truffles 100-none. I know all about how truffles are a prized mushroom and one should relish the smell one of one when it shaved on pasta or risotto or used in sauces. I, personally, do not like them. I am far from a picky eater but the earthy smell of truffles gets to me. Granted that might be because truffle oil and and the restaurant I work at are synonymous. Does the smell of truffles make me think of work? Probably.

Try them! Tell me what you think! Black or white they have a particular taste.. to each his/her own!

To celebrate truffle season (white ones are in season right now.. as well as black ones) I thought I would make chocolate ones! Stand aside earthy smell... hello chocolate heaven!

My mother and I have made truffles for years around the holidays. They are relatively simple to make..but boy are they messy!

Ingredients:

12 oz of semi sweet chocolate

(I used Ghirardelli but any kind of good chocolate will do)

1 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream

Heat cream in a sauce pan until very hot. Break up the chocolate and put into a bowl.

Pour hot cream over the chocolate and stir until the chocolate is completely melted and the mixture is smooth. Refrigerate until firm.

Once the chocolate isn't too soupy anymore (but not hard to the point where you can't take out a firm spoonful), take the mixture out of the fridge. I took mine out this morning before work..when it was pretty hard, hoping that it would be the perfect consistency when I got home from work. Wrong. It was too mushy. After I took a little scoop off the top for a "post long hard day at work" snack I took pastry bag and piped little balls of chocolate ganache onto a cold cookie sheet and put them in the freezer. I'm hoping I can then roll the balls in my hands to smooth them out.

(Note to self... must learn to use the pastry bag better. By the end of this operation my hands were covered in chocolate!!)

Tomorrow: Smoothing out the little chocolate truffles and coating them in a chocolate shell!

(Hand and truffle image thanks to: http://www.mycological.com/products/index.03.html)

Pfeffernusse success

2009-12-06T22:11:00.000-05:00

Just like they were store bought...but better!

Every Christmas my family and I buy Pfeffernusse Cookies. This spicy German Christmas cookie is a little soft and chewy in the center, harder on the outside and covered in powdered sugar. What's not to love?! I had my doubts about tackling the Pfeffernusse but I figured I'd give it a try. It is like a glorified ginger/molasses cookie covered in sugar. Amazing.

This recipe makes a lot of cookies..which is perfect for gift giving!

Ingredients:

1/2 cup molasses

1/4 cup honey

1/2 unsalted butter (the recipe I used called for 1/4 cup shortening and a 1/4 cup margarine. I am trying to stay away from margarine as much as a can after reading that it isn't as good for you as people claim. I also don't usually keep shortening around so a stick of good old fashion butter seemed to be a good substitute. I'm sure German ladies used butter back in the day anyway)

Melt the molasses, honey and butter together in a saucepan.. stirring to make sure everything is well incorporated and set aside to cool off.

2 eggs

Add the eggs to the mixture and mix

4 cups of all purpose flour

3/4 cups white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 1/2 tsp ground cardamom

1 tsp ground nutmeg

(You can use a whole nut on a microplaner...which is what I usually do when a recipe calls for nutmeg but I find that when it comes to baking I need too much to spend time grating it so I use the powdered kind. )

1 tsp ground clove

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground anise seed

(the recipe calls for 2 tsp of anise extract. Instead of buying a bottle of extract I would probably never use again I just ground up anise seeds and added it like the rest of the spices. Worked just fine!)

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp ground pepper

1/2 tsp salt

Combine all the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl. Add the molasses mixture and incorporate well. This should form a nice ball of dough (mine was a little sticky). Cover it in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours. A chef friend of mine told me the longer the cookie dough rests in the fridge the moister the cookies will be. Good thing I had to go to work..... 5 hours later I was ready to bake the cookies!

Preheat over to 325

Use a melon baller ( I used my teaspoon measuring spoon) to scoop out small balls of the dough. Roll them around in your hands to make them nice and round and put them on your cookie sheet ( I really recommend using a silicone pad on you baking sheet. Once you go silicone you never go back!)

Space the balls about an inch appart and bake them in a 325 degree oven for 10- 15 minutes. I found 15 minutes to be perfect for my dough.

powdered sugar

(the recipe called for 1 cup but I'm pretty sure I used way more.

Most of it ended up on my shirt or on the floor though..oops.)

When the cookies come out transfer them to a plate or cutting board and cover in them in powdered sugar. It makes a mess but the cookies taste so good!

Enjoy!

The recipe I used and switched around a bit can be found here: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/pfeffernusse-cookies/detail.aspx)

Almost a year later... I'm back!

2009-12-05T10:58:00.001-05:00

Hello again.

A new large amount of work and shockingly long hours at the restaurant put this blog on the back burner for almost a year now. Chances are no one noticed... but in case you did.. sorry! Since my last post I have moved out of my townhouse and into my own place, discovered a love for plants, red curry, and that one should not be afraid of whole milk, bacon or fat (in moderation of course).

My friend Anne started a food nutrition blog not long ago and she urged me to start mine up again... :)

Today is the first snow of the season..fitting because of my last post.
Saturday morning.... the morning after a long 13 hour day at the restaurant...first snow.... that means time for yummy breakfast!

Working so much hasn't given me a lot of time to go grocery shopping.

Current Refrigerator items:
Milk
Eggs
Butter
Gatorade (for running! Oh yes.. I've also become an amateur runner)
Apple waiting to be made into apple sauce
Old bread
Parmesan cheese

What can a girl make with all this?? FRENCH TOAST!

My sister told me she made French Toast not long ago and so I give her credit for this great idea.

Ingredients:
Day old bread (or older like in my case..more like weeks old but it's ok!)
2 eggs
milk
cinnamon (if desired)

Crack the eggs into a shallow dish and whisk them. Add milk. I'm sure you are supposed to measure the milk out but I just added some until it was a nice yellow-y milk-y color. Add the cinnamon to taste.

Plunge slices of slightly stale bread into the mixture and let it sit until it has soaked up as much of the egg/milk as it can. I would flip the bread once to make sure both sides are nice and covered.

Move slices of bread into a greased fry-pan and let them toast until both sides are golden brown. Top off with maple syrup and enjoy!

(pictures to come.. my camera is being finicky. )

Next.....Holiday cookies!
In order to battle the stress of working holiday events I am going to bake holiday cookies!

Cookies to try:
* Thomas Keller's Holiday Sugar Cookies
* Pfeffernusse Cookies (a family favorite!)

First real snow of the season! That calls for soup.

2009-01-27T21:46:00.000-05:00

SNOW!

I woke up this morning to snow falling! Most of the east coast has gotten some sort of snow over the past month and D.C. finally got a taste!

I took a picture when I walked outside to get the paper, and another one when I got home from work. So pretty! All I hear now is freezing rain. It was nice while it lasted.

The first snow of the season clearly calls for soup! What better than TK's seasonally appropriate butternut squash soup. I have a feeling I might be slightly changing some of Bouchon's recipes not out of laziness or level of difficulty but purely on time constraint. Getting home from work at 7:00 does not leave a lot of time to cook. In my defense, I only usually skip the extra little finishing steps. The core of the recipes stay the same. For example, TK's soup calls for finishing with brown butter, nutmeg and creme fraiche. While I'm sure it would be delicious, plain soup hit the spot tonight:)

While the squash cooked...I practiced my chopping skills!

Things always take longer than you think they will.
While the squash cooked...and cooked...and cooked... I cooked, sweat, and simmered the onion, carrots, shallots, and garlic. Let's not forget the bouquet garni! At least it made my apartment smell good! Time for some wine.

After adding the roasted squash, pureeing it.. .it's time to taste!

Yum!

All gone!

Recipe:

my version of Thomas Keller's Butternut Squash Soup (omitting the brown butter, sage and nutmeg creme fraiche)

One butternut squash
2 tbs canola oil
salt and pepper
2 sage springs
1 cup thinly sliced leeks
1/2 cup thinly sliced carrots
1/2 cup thinly sliced shallots
1/2 cup thinly sliced onions
6 garlic cloves
2 tbs honey
6 cups of vegetable stock
bouquet garni (I used parsley, rosemary and sage)

Cut the squash in half, take out the seeds (you can save them and roast them later for a yummy snack). Salt and pepper the squash, rub it with canola oil and stuff a sage stem. Turn them cut side down onto a roasting pan or cookie sheet and bake it at 350 degrees about about an hour (mine too a lot longer, it all depends on the size of the squash).

While the squash is roasting, sautee the onion, carrots, shallots and leeks in a pan. Add the garlic, salt and pepper and sautee on low until soft. Add the vegetable stock, bouquet garni and simmer. Add the roasted squash and simmer for 20-30 minutes to really incorporate all the flavors.

Puree until smooth and eat!

Enjoy!

Empanada night: In honor of my recently booked trip to Argentina

2009-01-26T20:54:00.000-05:00

Hooray! I am going to Argentina in March! I have made it my mission to plan fun and exciting things to do for the rest of winter. My first trip is to see my sister in Seattle!!!!! Four day weekend full of sisterly fun, restaurant, hopefully a fish market and most probably a little spa-like Seattle mist... here I come!! Seattle and my sister are my plan to get through February.
What am I doing in March you ask? Argentina! 7 days of meat, wine, and friends! In honor of my trip to Buenos Aires I thought it would be appropriate to make empanadas. What could be better than a little pocket full of goodness? This is not my first attempt and it will not be my last. I have yet to master actually closing the pouches, but practice makes perfect right?

I've made all different kinds, usually with whatever kind of ground meat I bought at the farmers' market that weekend. Pork, bison... all usually involve eggs and olives, sometimes potatoes. I thought I would go vegetarian this time.

Recipe:

3 small potatoes, cubed and boiled
2 shallots sauteed (I was lazy and didn't add these but they definitely would have added extra flavor)
3/4 cup peas
2 hard boiled eggs (chopped)
1/4 tsp curry powder
sald and pepper to taste
1 egg and water for an egg wash to make them nice and brown and shiny

Fill each empanada shell with a little more than a tablespoon of filling. Put the filling on one half of the shell. Brush a little water on the edges of the bottom half and fold the top half over. Once all the shells have been filled and folded brush each one with the egg wash. This will ensure the empanadas brown nicely and come out a little shiny.

Bake them for 30 minutes at 400 degrees and they are ready to eat! Enjoy!

It sounds like a fairly simple recipe and it is! Feel free to add whatever you want. My Argentine friend gave me a more authentic recipe. You can find it below:

Paula's empanada recipe:

- chop onion and sautee
- add ground beef to the onion and cook
- add salt and pepper
- boil an egg and then chop it into little pieces and add to the meat
- chop a few olives and add to the meat (they add a great salty taste!!!)

(quantities are up to you, depending on how many shells you have to fill... )