Sweetly Tart

I've Moved!

2010-03-27T17:30:00.000-07:00

I've moved to a Wordpress site and I'd LOVE it if you'd visit me there...

sweetlytart.wordpress.com

If you follow my blog, please don't forget to update your links page!

I'll be waiting...

:)

Spring Cleaning

2010-03-25T07:39:00.000-07:00

Like most people, I cook by season. Winter sees me baking bread and braising meats, making long simmered soups and stews. Dishes that have my oven and stove top working for hours at a time, warming the house and filling it with the scents of yeast, of beef, of slow cooked chicken bones, onions and spices.

When spring makes it's painstakingly slow way to my corner of the woods in upstate New York, I want to throw open the windows and rejoice. Never mind that it's still cold and muddy. I want to push the stale winter air out and hear the song birds sing to find their loves. I want to scrub, clean and reorganize. I want to move the beds and vacuum up months of dust bunnies. Don't judge- you know you have them too. But most of all I want to cleanse myself from the inside out. I want to rid myself of the sugar, flour and butter that has composed far too much of my diet through the winter.

Spring greens will be coming to the market very soon but for now there is that most hardy of greens, the green that I once harvested from my backyard garden in late November...there is kale. I didn't grow up eating kale. I only discovered kale a few years ago. I don't remember if I saw it in the store and impulsively decided to buy it, or if I read a great recipe for it in a Deborah Madison cookbook, or if perhaps I saw it highlighted as an ingredient in one of my monthly food magazines. It no longer matters how I discovered it, it only matters that I love it. Kale has completely replaced spinach as my cooked green of choice. There are so many ways to cook it, so many recipes to add it to but my most favorite way to enjoy kale is sauteed with sundried tomatoes and garlic. The saltiness of the tomatoes and the sweet, nuttiness of the garlic are the perfect foils to this slightly bitter green.

Sauteed Kale

-One bunch of kale, washed and leaves pulled from the tough stems
-6-8 sundried tomatoes in oil, roughly chopped
-6 cloves of garlic, smashed and then sliced
-salt and red pepper flakes
-grated Parmesan (optional)
-lemon (optional)

Heat a large saute pan over medium heat with just enough oil to lightly coat the bottom. When the pan is hot, toss in the garlic and saute for a minute, watching closely so the garlic does not burn. Add the sundied tomatoes and the red pepper flakes. Add the kale and toss a couple of tablespoons of water over it and cover with a tight fitting lid. Steam the kale for two or three minutes. Remove the lid, sprinkle with coarse salt and use tongs to toss everything together.

Plate the kale with a lemon slice and top with freshly grated Parmesan.

Meatballs!

2010-03-22T09:44:00.000-07:00

I think every home cook probably has their own recipe for spaghetti and meatballs. It's one of the first things I learned to cook and over the years I have tried so many recipes. I've fried meatballs, baked meatballs but my hands down favorite way to make meatballs is to cook them in the sauce. Meatballs cooked in the sauce lend a wonderfully rich and meaty flavor to the sauce they are cooked in and retain their tenderness in a way that fried meatballs never seem to.

When I am making meatballs and sauce I like to mix the meatball mixture, form them into balls and then refrigerate the meatballs while I make the sauce. When you let the meatballs chill in the fridge, they are less likely to fall apart when you drop them into the sauce and stir them around. I love meatballs because they are wonderfully adaptable. The meatballs I made last night were a basic, simple meatball that turns out flavorful, moist and fluffy. I like my meatballs on the light and small side, large meatballs seem like meat bombs to me.

Meatballs

-2 pounds ground beef (or meatball mix or a combination of beef, veal and pork)
-one small onion, pulsed finely in the food processor (or finely chopped by hand)
-2 pieces of bread, torn and soaked in 1 cup of milk. (I soaked my bread in the milk and then processed it in the food processor because I used homemade bread and the crust was a little thick)
-fresh or dried thyme (I used 5 or 6 sprigs of fresh from my thyme plant)
-1 cup grated parmesan
-1 beaten egg
-salt and pepper

In a large bowl, mix together ground meat, onion, bread and milk mash, thyme, parmesan, beaten egg and salt and pepper. Form into 2 inch meatballs and set the meatballs on a cookie sheet. Refrigerate the meatballs while you begin the sauce.

Tomato Sauce

-Olive oil
-1 large onion, diced
-3 carrots, grated with a box grater or food processor
-10 cloves of garlic, finely diced
-pat of butter
-4 28 oz. crushed tomatoes
-2 bay leaves
-palm full of red pepper flakes
-TBS oregano
-salt and pepper

In a large pot, heat olive oil over medium high heat until fragrant.
Add onions, carrots and garlic and lower heat to medium. Cook the onion/carrot/garlic mixture until all vegetables are completely softened. Watch carefully so the vegetables don't caramelize, the goal is to make them completely soft so they will blend into the sauce, it should take around 15 minutes.

When the vegetables are softened, add a pat of butter and then add the four cans of crushed tomatoes, red pepper flakes, oregano, bay leaves and salt and pepper. Bring the sauce almost to a boil. You don't want the bottom to scorch, but the sauce needs to be hot enough to cook the meatballs. Start adding the meatballs to the sauce. I add a few at a time and give them a chance to firm up a bit before adding more. You have to be careful when stirring the sauce once you start adding the meatballs so they don't fall apart. Getting all the meatballs into the sauce should take around 10 minutes.

Once all the meatballs are in the sauce I partially cover the pot with a lid with a spoon stuck in it and lower the heat to medium low. I let the meatballs simmer in the sauce for about an hour but 30 minutes is sufficient.

We ate our meatballs over penne with a sprinkling or parmesan on top. Everybody had seconds and some of us spooned more sauce over our pasta half way through. I won't say it's the best meatballs and red sauce ever but it's our favorite and we will be enjoying leftovers tonight. And when there is more sauce but not enough meatballs for everyone, I use a potato masher to work the meatballs into the sauce and we enjoy it as meat sauce.

Let Them Eat Cake!

2010-03-17T05:38:00.000-07:00

This past week has been an eventful one in my house. My daughter turned sixteen on Saturday and my son turned nine on Sunday! Yes, that means that my children are seven years and one day apart. I almost wish they were born on the same day so we could just have one joint cake but knowing my children, that wouldn't work out anyway as they have very different tastes. This year my son had a sleepover for his birthday so that meant another cake. Yes, between Friday and Sunday we made and ate three cakes. Oh my.

For Friday's sleepover I thought cupcakes would be just perfect so we decided on chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting. And may I recommend, if you are going to be eating cake for three days straight, do not choose a cake recipe that makes thirty-six cupcakes. Luckily, we found people willing to take some of the cakes off our hands. I have to tell you this cupcake recipe that I found makes one of the best chocolate cakes I have every eaten. The cakes were light and moist and stayed tender for three days. I almost wish they went staler sooner so I wouldn't have been still eating them three days after the party.

The cake recipe I used came from http://www.injennieskitchen.com/2010/02/devils-food-cupcakes-chocolate-ganache-frosting.html
and I can't recommend it enough. It was so good. The frosting recipe I used was my own. Basically a stick of butter, cup full of peanut butter, couple of cups of powdered sugar and then enough half and half to give it a super creamy and fluffy consistency. I think I ended up using about a quarter of a cup. The frosting was perfect. Creamy, light and very peanut buttery.

My daughter requested Boston Cream Cupcakes from Cook's Illustrated's Family Baking Book. They are a family favorite and I've made them many times.

Really, how could you could you go wrong with a tender, buttery cupcake that gets hollowed out (the absolute best method for filled cupcakes) and stuffed with vanilla bean flecked pastry cream? And then to gild the lily, they are topped with silky bittersweet chocolate ganache.

I could have taken a spoon and eaten that pastry cream like pudding.

By the time Sunday afternoon rolled around I was getting tired of cake. And tired period, for that matter. That was a lot of activity for one weekend. Still, there was a sweet boy's birthday to celebrate so I valiantly pressed on. The third and final cake was the one I was the most excited about. I always ask my kids what they want and I always hope that at least one of them will tell me to make what ever I want. I got lucky this year. The final birthday cake was an experiment all the way. I used a white cake recipe as a template and turned it into a coconut cake by replacing the milk with coconut milk and the vanilla extract with coconut flavoring. And I got to try out my new cake leveler which cuts perfectly even cake layers. I'm not a fan of uni-taskers but I have had to piece together many a cake that I tried to cut myself.

The cake was filled with a passionfruit curd which was also an experiment. I had bought six passionfruits not realizing how little juice they release. Six passionfruits gave me one quarter cup of juice.

After running around madly trying to find more passionfruits, I had to substitute passionfruit juice for the other quarter cup. I couldn't find straight passionfruit juice or passionfruit juice that didn't have HFCS so I bought one that was a mixture of pear and passionfruit but luckily the juice just tasted of passionfruit.

The curd recipe was my own. I used seven egg yolks, two whole eggs, half a cup of passionfruit puree, half a stick of butter and one and one half cups of sugar. I added two tablespoons of cornstarch to the mixture because I wanted to make sure the final curd would be stiff enough to work in a three layer cake. I mixed everything together and cooked it over medium high heat until it thickened. When I tasted it I felt that the sugar dulled the tartness of the passionfruit so I ended up squeezing the juice of one large lemon into the curd. Then it was perfect.

The cake was iced with a seven minute meringue frosting which I made on a rainy day so there were some setting issues with it. It was a bit runny but I solved that by storing the cake in the refrigerator until serving time.

It was a successful and delicious birthday experiment.

These are a few of my favorite things...the ingredient edition.

2010-03-11T05:10:00.000-08:00

Pantry staples can make or break a quick dinner. I firmly believe in having a well stocked pantry so that in the likely event I am a couple of days behind in my grocery shopping or one of the kids games runs late, I know that I can throw together a quick and reasonably healthy dinner in the time it takes someone else to order take out. For the record, there is no possibility of ordering in where I live. It's a twenty five minute drive to the nearest supermarket and unlike the contestants on Top Chef, I have little desire to throw together a meal from my local quick stop convenience store.

For me, having these pantry staples on hand is reassuring. It feels like security to me. And having a well stocked pantry is a way to avoid over processed junk food. These are my favorite pantry staples...what are yours?

Eggs. Is there any more versatile ingredient than the humble egg? At their most basic we like them over easy on buttered wheat toast. Scrambled with cheese or herbs. Frittatas with leftover vegetables. Whipped for fluffy pancakes. And when I can convince or persuade her my daughter makes fabulous Mexican omelets stuffed with black beans and cheese, topped with salsa and plain greek yogurt (way healthier than sour cream.) And I've never met a dish I didn't like just that much more with a softly fried egg on top. Leftover spaghetti mixed with a little marinara and topped with a fried egg? Heaven.

Without olive oil there would be no Aglio e Olio and that would be a travesty. There is no greater comfort food for me that a steaming plate of pasta slicked with garlicky olive oil and red pepper flakes with a fluffy mound of grated Parmesan on top. And all sauteed or roasted vegetables begin with a coating of olive oil. I couldn't cook
without it.

I couldn't mention Aglio e Olio without talking about pasta. Since we don't eat meat every day, we eat a lot of pasta. I try to only eat whole grain pasta. There are few dishes that can't be made with whole grain pasta. Aglio e Olio is not at all harmed by the use of whole grain versus a more traditional semolina pasta. The only dish I can think of where I would hesitate to use whole grain pasta is probably lemon cream pasta which has such a light flavor I think it would be overwhelmed by the whole wheat. For everything else there is wheat pasta.

And speaking of lemon cream pasta...lemons. I always have lemons in the house. I make lemonade for the kids once or twice a week and homemade iced tea needs a squirt of lemon for acidity. Kale and spinach love being drizzled with lemon after cooking. And a secret...lemons make your skin glow. Sometimes after I squeeze the juice out of a lemon half I rub the lemon all over my face and let it sit for a few minutes. Rinse it off and voila!- rosy, freshly exfoliated skin.

Onions and garlic. How anyone can cook without them is beyond me. Mujadarra would not be mujadarra without onions. Slowly caramelized onions are absolutely delicious in quesadillas. Or scrambled eggs. The French call the trinity of onions, carrots and celery Mirepoix. I forget how to cook when there are no onions in the house. Luckily, it's a rare occasion that there are no onions in the house.

Aborio rice. I mainly use it to make my mushroom risotto which my family loves. Since I always have mushrooms in the crisper drawer, we never more than thirty minutes away from mushroom risotto. Unless we run out of white wine and are not lucky enough to have a bottle of champagne on hand...Aborio rice also makes the creamiest rice pudding.

My life changed when I learned to jam. Those jars of sweetly tart fruit pull me through the winter with the promise of what's to come and the memory of summers past. We can hardly bring ourselves to use maple syrup anymore, so delicious is a thick smear of jam atop a light as air ricotta pancake. And the ubiquitous peanut butter sandwich would be forlorn without it.

It seems silly to call vanilla a pantry staple. Except it's not. I bake a lot and the best thing I ever did was order whole, plump Madagascar vanilla beans online to make my own vanilla extract. Now when a recipe calls for a whole vanilla bean I can pull one out of my extract. And the beans can be dried and added to sugar to make vanilla sugar. You can top off your extract with more vodka and keep it going for years. I haven't topped mine off yet as I made a lot. The batch I'm using now was started over a year ago and it smells incredible. Better even that the expensive (ridiculously so) vanilla sold in gourmet markets. I have experiments planned for bourbon and scotch vanilla.

If we are talking about things that are convenient to have on hand, we must mention frozen veggies. They are essential to a well stocked pantry. I also like to freeze bacon and sausages. They defrost in no time and I usually cook the sausages frozen and they turn our fine. Bacon is great to have in the freezer in case a recipe calls for a bit of it. You can even substitute it for pancetta, in a pinch. I also keep frozen purees on hand. Here I have pumpkin and sweet potato. They might become pies or muffins, perhaps even a pumpkin risotto. And cookie dough. Most cookie doughs freeze well and I love having extra on hand for those times when you absolutely have to have something sweet.

Not photographed but essential in my house are also flour tortillas, canned refried beans (we found a brand without lard and with just 4 very recognizable ingredients), sundried tomatoes in oil, canned beans (black, cannellini, and kidney) and Annie's macaroni and cheese.

What pantry items are must haves in your house?

So you think you can bake?

2010-03-04T04:51:00.000-08:00

Why yes, I kind of do think that I can bake. I'm no Nick Malgieri or Dorie Greenspan. (Know them? You should. I love them.) But I can and do put together desserts and baked goods that while they are not about to rival the pastries at The Chocolate Mill in Glens Falls or Mrs. London's in Saratoga they certainly surpass those on offer in the supermarket bakery departments in my local Price Chopper and Hannaford.

But for the longest time while I confidently made all manner of pies, cakes, cookies, scones and biscuits I had a fear. Of yeast. Bread just seemed like something other people made. Grandmothers with wisdom and experience, hands strong and rough from years of shaping their daily bread. There seemed too much mystery in the alchemy of flour, yeast, salt and water. And then I read an article in the NY Times that...well, I want to say changed my life but that sounds a little dramatic, no? I read an article that opened my eyes to how easy bread making could be. Jim Laheys' No-Knead Bread. You must be familiar with it? I think everyone is by this time.

It's three ingredients, flour, yeast and salt that when combined with what almost seems like too much water form a very slack dough that's not kneaded but left to rise unattended at room temperature for at least twelve hours, but preferably eighteen. The dough is then quickly shaped and left to rise again for two more hours. It's baked in a very hot oven in a heavy, covered dish. Le Creuset or something similar works well for the baking. When the bread is done baking you are left with a crisp loaf with an airy interior full of holes. It's very much like the pricey artisan breads you see in better bakeries for too much money.

Then for Christmas I was given a copy of the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. The premise of this bread recipe is similar to the No-Knead bread but differs in that you mix a large batch of dough, again not kneading it, let it rise at room temperature until it doubles and then begins to fall and then you refrigerate the dough until you're ready to use it. When you're ready to use it you pull off a hunk of dough, flour and shape it and let it rise at room temperature for an hour or so. You bake the loaf on a baking stone without a cover, with a pan in the oven that you throw a cup of water into to create steam which helps the bread rise quickly. In the end you have a quite yummy loaf of crusty bread which my family loves.

Now that I have mastered both bread baking techniques (and moved on to cinnamon buns- yum!) I'm not sure which one I prefer. The Jim Lahey loaf seemed to have a thinner, more crackly crust than the Artisan in Five loaf. They both have great interiors but the Jim Lahey seemed to have a lighter crumb, which I enjoyed just a little bit more. I'm thinking I may need to do some comparison baking. Strictly measured ingredients, side by side taste testing. For now I will continue to enjoy my Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day loaves because the dough is already in the fridge but I think I see a bake off in my future. Do you bake bread?

Pavlova, sweet Pavlova

2010-03-02T07:02:00.000-08:00

I love saying that. I love eating it even more. How could you not love a dessert that is so easy to make and tastes like a sweet cloud. And fittingly enough, it's named after a ballerina. It's the perfect thing to make if you have a surplus of egg whites. And if you don't have a surplus of egg whites, make it anyway and use the yolks to make a curd or Creme Anglaise to serve with it.

For those not familiar with them, a Pavlova is basically a large (although, you can make individual ones) baked meringue that is wonderfully crisp on the outside and soft and marshmallow like on the inside. They are traditionally served with whipped cream spread on top and then the whipped cream is topped with fruit. It works best with fruit that's on the tart side as the meringue is sweet and the whipped cream rich. Good lord, I'm close to making another right now with all this seductive meringue talk...

Pavlova

Heat oven to 250 degrees and line a large cookie sheet with parchment

4 large egg whites, at room temperature
1 cup superfine sugar (easy enough if you blitz one cup regular sugar in a food processor for a minute)
1 TSP white vinegar (I've used apple cider in a pinch)
1 TSP cornstarch

In the bowl of a standing mixer, beat the egg whites on medium to soft peaks. (Confession: against all wisdom, I made this on a rainy day- a huge no no for meringue. I threw in a pinch of cream of tartar to my egg whites for extra insurance.)

Soft Peaks

With the mixer running on medium, gradually add the sugar, a spoonful at a time and continue whipping until the egg whites hold stiff peaks.

Stiff (ish) Peaks (I told you it was a rainy day)

Sprinkle the vinegar and cornstarch over the mixture and fold in with a rubber spatula. Spread the egg whites into a circle on your prepared pan, keeping the center sort of concave to make it easier to top. Some recipes will tell you to trace a circle on to your parchment with a pencil and use it for a template. You are more than welcome to do so but it's not my style. It's all about the rustic here.

And here's where I'm going to ask you to pretend yet again. I ran out of parchment and had to use foil. I don't recommend it. Use parchment...it slides right off parchment. There may have been some cursing and picking involved in removing it from the foil.

Bake the pavlova for an hour and fifteen minutes and then shut the oven off, prop the door open with a wooden spoon and let it cool inside the oven for 1-2 hours more. After it's cool it will look like this. Don't be worried if it's cracked a bit. That just adds to it's rustic charm.

I served our pavlova with very lightly sweetened, softly whipped cream and pineapple sauce. To make the pineapple sauce, I added to the food processor a half of a fresh, roughly chopped pineapple, 1/3 cup sugar and the juice of one lime. Puree until smooth. You can cook it down to thicken it up but it was cold and rainy and I desperately wanted the bright, sunny taste of fresh pineapple to lift me out of my winter induced doldrums.

Fleur de Sel Caramels

2010-02-25T07:49:00.000-08:00

Is there any better combination than sweet and salty? Before I even understood anything about complimentary flavors and tastes I knew that movie theater popcorn must be eaten with a tall, icy sweet Coca Cola. The oily, (well, we know it should be buttery but we are talking about mainstream movie theater popcorn here so let's face it, it's butter flavored oil) salty crunch of the popcorn just went so well with sips of the syrupy sweet Coca Cola. I couldn't explain it but I knew it was right. Ever since those first movie theater visits I have been hooked on salty and sweet.

Nothing brings those two tastes more into harmony with each other than salted caramels made with Fleur de Sel. Except for chocolate, chocolate is lovely with salt. The next time you are baking a tray of brownies, go ahead and throw in an extra pinch of salt. It enhances the chocolate...you'll thank me. But as I often do, I digress. This is about caramels. Rich, buttery, milky sweet caramels touched with a kiss of salt. Heaven. And so easy to make. Do you make candy? I grew up eating homemade candy, my Nana made wonderful caramels. Not frequently but when she did decide to make some, I would stuff my pockets and chubby cheeks with as many as I could get my hands on.

We had a snow day yesterday, we got well over a foot of snow! I happened to have some leftover heavy cream in the fridge from another cooking endeavor and while thumbing through my cooking binder, I came across my recipe for Fleur de Sel Caramels. I know you are not supposed to make candy on a rainy day, the humidity makes it hard to set up but I wasn't sure if that meant snow also. Luckily I am cool with winging it (and possibly failing) and it turned out wonderfully.

~Fleur de Sel Caramels~

1 cup heavy cream
5 TBSP unsalted butter, cut into pieces (I used salted)
1-2 TSP fleur de sel (mine had rather large grains so I used the 2 TSP)
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup light corn syrup (I've read that you could use honey in it's place)
1/4 cup water

Line an 8" pan with foil and butter or spray the foil with cooking spray. I buttered mine because I firmly believe in gilding the lily.

Bring the cream, butter and salt just to a boil and set aside. I use cream from the Battenkill Valley Creamery. It's so thick that simply combined with the butter and salt and boiled, it looked like a thick sauce. How beautiful is that?

In a separate pan, combine the sugar, corn syrup and water, stirring to dissolve. Set over medium high heat and bring to a boil without stirring. For extra insurance, I like to wipe down the sides of the pan with a pastry brush dipped in water. Like so.

Swirl the pan every so often until the sugar turns golden. Like so. At this stage, be careful. It's a mere matter of seconds from golden to burnt. I know this too well.

When your sugar is golden brown, add the cream mixture. Stand back, pour carefully and make sure you've used a big enough pot as the mixture will violently boil and expand. Stir with a long handled spoon and clip a candy thermometer to the side of the pan. Lower the heat to medium and simmer, stirring frequently until the mixture reaches 248 degrees.

Pour the caramel into your prepared pan and cool at least two hours before cutting.

When you are ready to cut the caramels, lift them out of the pan, peel off the foil and set them down on a cutting board. I like to spray my very sharp knife with cooking spray so I get clean cuts. I'm sure some people might get a ruler out at this point to ensure even pieces, but I am a big fan of eyeballing. I'm not aiming for perfection here, rustic will do.

Now to store these you have to wrap them. I know, how tedious. But if you try to store them loose in a jar or container, they will stick together. Heed my warning...learn from my mistakes. :)
I used to cut aluminum foil or waxed paper into small squares and wrap the candy that way but last Christmas I treated myself to precut foil wrappers from Amazon.com and I will never cut waxed paper again.

Now...ahem. There's a step missing here. This is real life and in my real life I forget things or get distracted. A lot. At some point after I poured the candy into the pan, after it's cooled a bit but before it's set, I should have sprinkled fleur de sel on top of the caramel. It's lovely, the crunchy grains of salt on top of the silky sweet caramel. It's a small touch that brings the caramels over the top. And I forgot it. Never mind, they are still wonderful and I still made them all by myself.

Roasted Tomato Soup

2010-02-18T09:13:00.000-08:00

Just the thing for a blustery, snowy day, roasted tomato soup fills the house with the most intoxicating smells. And the best part is how easy it is to make. I used a recipe adapted from Cook's Illustrated.

Roasted Tomato Soup

1 28 ounce can whole, peeled tomatoes
1 TBS dark brown sugar
5 or 6 shallots, finely diced
2 TBS butter
2 TBS olive oil
1 TBS tomato paste
1 cup chicken or vegetable stock
1/4 cup sherry
1/4 cup heavy cream or half and half

Set your oven to 450 degrees.

Set a strainer over a bowl and pop open the tomatoes with your fingers and pull out as many seeds as you can. Don't worry if you miss a few. Let all the tomato juices strain into the bowl and set aside for later.

Spread the tomatoes out on a lined cookie sheet. I used two pieces of foil on a large cookie sheet. I don't recommend this as the juices got in the seam of the foil and made the foil stick to my cookie sheet. I wasn't happy. Next time I think I would use one sheet of parchment paper or I might just oil my cookie sheet and watch the tomatoes carefully. Sprinkle the tomatoes with the brown sugar and roast for 20-30 minutes or until most of the liquid they exude is gone.

Roasted tomatoes. I refrained from sticking a fork in there and eating my fill. I loved roasted tomatoes.

Heat a pot with the olive oil and butter in it. Add the finely chopped shallots and saute over medium low heat. You don't want to caramelize them, so watch carefully. Full disclosure: I burned the shallots. Oh, the shame...I forgot what I was doing and got distracted. So at the last minute I wiped out the pan and quickly chopped one small onion and sauteed it in fresh butter and olive oil.

When the shallots (onions) are translucent and just starting to color, add the tablespoon of tomato paste and mix it in with the onions. Add the reserved tomato juice and the caramelized tomatoes and raise the heat to bring to a boil. Add the chicken stock. As soon as it comes to a boil, lower the heat back to medium and let the soup cook for ten minutes. Add the sherry.

Now, you can either blend it in a blender or food processor in two batches or use an immersion blender to make the soup smooth and creamy. Once the soup is blended, put it back on the heat and add the cream or half and half.

Serve with olive oil drizzled on the top. I just had some at lunch and it's even better the next day. The next time I make it I think I will infuse some basil into it.

Do you have a green thumb?

2010-02-16T11:31:00.000-08:00

I don't. But for the last few years I've had a garden. The first two years I had one, I didn't do any planting myself. A kind neighbor who is a master gardener/farmer took pity on me and planted an abundance of vegetables and herbs in two raised beds that I had built in my back yard. They flourished, despite the fact that I pretty much had no clue how to care for them and weeded and watered them rather sporadically. Last year I moved, so sadly, no more raised beds. We tried a container garden and had mixed results. Most of our containers weren't deep enough but we did well with green beans, grape tomatoes and green peppers, we even managed to get a few baby eggplants. But one thing that absolutely flourishes in containers is herbs. And herbs are fantastic because when summertime is over you can bring them in the house and have fresh herbs all winter long.

This beauty is lemon thyme. We've survived together for three years now.

This is rosemary...note the snow falling in the background. So beautiful. I love this rosemary plant so much. I knew someone who had one in her kitchen that was like a little tree. That's what I am aiming for. I may need to stake this one as it's a little tippy.

More thyme and more snow. I love thyme, it's a versatile herb. Nice with pork, chicken, in beef stew, in stuffing, in minestrone and bean soups...

Flat leaf parsley that I picked up on a trip to Maine at the Portland Farmer's Market. I love Portland, Maine- a foodie paradise. And home to Rabelais, a book store entirely devoted to food books! Can you imagine? I could have stayed there all day...

Curly parsley. I don't care for it that much. It's a texture thing.

But Rosabelle loves it!

So do you have a green thumb? Are you thinking about gardening? I know I am.

Amerasian-ish Noodles

2010-02-12T07:07:00.000-08:00

I make no claims to knowing how to cook Asian food, whether Chinese, Japanese or Thai. My knowledge of those cuisines is rudimentary at best. I love garlic chicken from Thai restaurants but most American style Chinese food leaves me cold. I don't eat seafood and I don't like heavy, sweet, cornstarch based sauces. That being said, I do love noodles. And there are a ton of good noodle dishes in Asian cuisine. I'm partial to vegetable yaki soba but having absolutely no idea what's in it and if it's even an authentic dish, I decided to make a noodle dish inspired by but actually nothing like it.

I bring you Amerasian-ish Noodles...

If you have soba noodles on hand- yay for you but I like whole wheat capellini. I have a thing for capellini. And you'll need sriracha for the sauce but the chili garlic sauce is optional.

I like a high ratio of veggies to pasta, roughly 50/50. What's wonderful about this meal is it's open to adaption. Use whatever you like. In the spring, I love this with tons of garlic scapes. I've used bok choy in place of the cabbage...it's wonderfully open to interpretation. This time I used one bunch of chopped broccolini, 4 or 5 carrots sliced on the bias, a couple of handfuls of snow peas, a sliced red pepper, 3 sliced stalks of celery, a small head of thinly sliced savoy cabbage and a tablespoon or so of chopped fresh ginger.

The sauce for the noodles is a half cup of soy sauce, a quarter cup of dark brown sugar, a tablespoon sriracha, a tablespoon garlic chili sauce, some red pepper flakes and about a tablespoon of sesame oil. If you're not a fan of heat, you may want to start out with smaller amounts of the sriracha and the chili sauce. Stir together and set aside.

Heat a large saute pan and add a tablespoon or so of olive oil. When it's good and hot add the ginger and saute for a minute or two. I added the broccolini and carrots first because they take the most time. I pop a lid on them for a minute or so to help them cook faster.

Once they give a little but are still crisp, I add the celery and red pepper. Give those a minute or two and then add the snow peas. Season everything with salt. The pasta cooks in no time and as soon as the pasta is done I drain it and spread the shredded cabbage in the pot. I toss the hot pasta right on top of it and let it sit for a minute to wilt slightly. I top the pasta with the vegetables and then I pour on my sauce. Toss it all together and check for seasonings. Maybe it needs a little more soy sauce, maybe a drizzle of sesame oil. It's delicious topped with a thinly sliced bunch of scallions but I didn't have any so I did without. It was still delicious.

It does seem like we eat a lot of pasta, doesn't it? I used to be a vegetarian and I never feel right or want to eat meat every day. Not to mention, if I was eating meat every day, it would be expensive and I would feel guilty if I wasn't eating hormone/antibiotic free...So we eat pasta but I try to only make whole grain pasta and I balance it with tons of vegetables. It works for us and even my Vermont raised, game eating partner doesn't mind.

The risotto that almost wasn't...

2010-02-04T08:01:00.000-08:00

Recently my beloved teenager requested mushroom risotto for dinner. Feeling confident that I could throw that together in no time and that I had most of the ingredients already on hand, I grabbed a couple packs of mushrooms from the supermarket and headed home to peruse risotto recipes on the internet. Because no matter how well I already know how to make something, no cooking endeavor is complete until I have researched it to death. And then, more likely than not, proceeded to do it my way.

Mushroom risotto, while a little bit fussy, is easy to make. As long as you get everything that's going to go into your risotto prepared beforehand, you will be free to sip wine and listen to music while you idly stir your creation. You may even have time to switch the laundry, wash dishes and catch up on your twitter feed...although such extreme multitasking is not for the weak.

This risotto almost did not come to be our dinner because I realized as I was setting out to make it that I did not have dry white wine on hand. I was even out of trusty old vermouth (an excellent thing to keep in the fridge for just such an occasion) Reliant as I am on the internet, I asked my social media networking sites what to do. I did have a bottle of dry champagne on hand...and thus, a recipe was born- Mushroom Champagne Risotto!

Let's make it together, shall we?...

We'll need mushrooms, one container should do; and please do not be one of those silly people who cling blindly to the belief that mushrooms should not be washed. They should. They will be all right. Although, if you truly believe your fungus tastes better dirty, who am I to stop you from getting E-coli? Ahem.

Remove stems, slice and set aside.

We will also need onions, 2 small or one large. Finely diced.

And stock, 5 or 6 cups. I use chicken stock and in that I rehydrate some dried porcini mushrooms. You need to get it hot and then keep it at a simmer because you'll want it to be hot as you add it to the risotto.

In a saucepan, melt a bit of butter in some olive oil. About 1 TBS each. Add in half your onions and saute until translucent. Then add your mushrooms. Saute until golden brown and season with salt and pepper. When your mushrooms are at the lovely golden shade you prefer, remove them from the heat and set them aside for later.

Now to a fresh saute pan add a tiny bit of olive oil and saute the rest of your onions. You're not looking for these to caramelize, you just want them to turn translucent. When they are ready, melt a couple of tablespoons of butter and add two cups of aborio rice. You can find it in either the rice section or the Italian section of most supermarkets. Saute your rice for a couple of minutes until all of the grains are coated with butter.

And now we add one cup of dry white wine. I can say that dry champagne works beautifully, but white wine is traditional. Stir it into the rice until it's completely absorbed.

Now it's time to add the stock. One cup at a time. You can either strain out the mushrooms and chop them or you can do like I did and hack at them with kitchen shears right in the risotto pot as you add your stock.

And stir! Just kidding with the exclamation point there, it's nothing to be fanatical about. Basically you want to stir the stock into the rice because this releases the starch in the rice and is what gives the risotto it's creamy consistency. But don't get crazy about it. You can sip your wine (or champagne), change Pandora and then get right back to stirring.

You've stirred enough when the liquid is absorbed and the risotto starts to leave a starchy looking trail, like so

At that point, go ahead and add your next cup of stock. Keep repeating the same steps until all the stock has been used. Make sure you are tasting along the way. The point is not for a mushy rice dish. Proper risotto should be like correctly made pasta, slightly toothsome but not hard. You may find you don't need all the stock. I did use the full 5 cups.

Once the risotto has absorbed all the stock and is the right consistency, sprinkle on about a half cup finely grated Parmesan.

And stir.

And then add your reserved mushroom mixture.

And stir.

And taste. Mmmm, isn't that good? And not nearly as difficult as you thought. And so wonderfully variable. It's time to eat. We served our risotto with a simply dressed spinach salad with goat cheese and chopped pecans. And champagne...cold, bubbly champagne. So lovely.

Our Favorite Cookie

2010-01-28T03:19:00.001-08:00

Everyone who loves to bake has a favorite recipe or two. And I have seen countless lists and blogs of the best chocolate chip cookies or cookie recipe ever. I'm not going to claim that these chocolate chip cookies are the best recipe or the best ever but what I can tell you is they are my family's favorite cookie and even I, who don't care for chocolate chip cookies all that much, love them.

These cookies are based on a Cook's Illustrated recipe from one of my favorite baking books of all time, Baking Illustrated. A book that could only be more fabulous if, as it's title implies, it was actually illustrated with full color photographs for each recipe. Nothing sells me on a book more than food porn. Although, I daresay, this book stands alone on the merits of it's tried and true recipes.

Our cookies are not a traditional chocolate chip cookie but we are not exactly a traditional family so they're perfect for us.

Our Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies

No, I do not put beer in my cookies, that green bottle in the back is homemade vanilla extract.

Heat oven to 325 and line 2 large cookie sheets with parchment or silpat

- 2 cups White Whole Wheat Flour (King Arthur makes the best one)
- 1/2 tsp. Baking Soda
- 1 tsp. Sea Salt
- 1 and 1/2 sticks of Butter that has been melted and cooled for at least 10 minutes
- 1 and 1/2 cup Dark or Light Brown Sugar
- 1 Egg plus 1 Egg yolk
- 2 tsp. Vanilla Extract
- 1 cup loosely measured (don't pack it down) Sweetened Flaked Coconut
- 1/2 cup Toffee Bits (I like Heath brand, you can also chop 2-3 Heath or Skor bars)
- 1/2 to 1 cup Dark Chocolate Chips or chopped Dark Chocolate

In a small bowl, whisk the first three ingredients and set aside.
In the bowl of a standing mixer (or with a hand mixer or even with your hand) add your sugar and melted butter and cream for two or three minutes.
Beat in your egg and egg yolk and the vanilla extract until well combined.
Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add your dry ingredients. Beat for no more than a few seconds, just to combine.
Add the coconut, toffee chips, and dark chocolate and mix by hand until evenly distributed but do not over mix.
Let cookies rest in the fridge for 15 to 30 minutes.

Drop cookies by tablespoonfuls onto your carefully prepared cookies sheets. Here's where we will use our imaginations to pretend that I did not forget to line my cookie sheets.

Bake for 12-15 minutes. We like ours perfectly balanced between moist centers and crispy edges so I eyeball it. Eyeballing is an art, you know. :)

These never last very long but I am willing to bet the dough balls freeze well. Just portion the cookie dough out onto a cookie sheet and stick the whole sheet in the freezer until firm. Pop the dough off and into a plastic baggie or container and bake off a few at a time. I'm going to have to try that one day...

Lasagna in Bianco

2010-01-25T06:01:00.000-08:00

I don't know about you but for me, the best way to show me you love me is to cook for me. I love being cooked for but since I also love to cook and I am home, it falls that I am usually the one doing the cooking. Which is fine. Although, I do like to remember back when A. was a-courting me...he quickly figured out the way to my heart was through my taste buds and there were many meals where I got to sit and read a book or a magazine while he rushed around the kitchen trying to impress me. And sometimes he did. The first time I recall being really impressed with something he made was when he made lasagna. It was a fennel and mushroom lasagna from Epicurious and to this day, it's his go to meal when he has to cook.

Around Christmas time we were planning on bringing food to his parent's house for dinner and we decided that A. would make his lasagna and I would make a white lasagna. Lasagna in Bianco. I did some research and found a good recipe to use as a template but last night when I made it again I veered from my first attempt and decided to wing it. As so often happens, I had things in the fridge I wanted to use up so I made it work. And I'm so glad I did because it turned out perfectly.

Now lasagna takes a little bit of work but nothing that can't be handled by breaking it down into steps. Steps make everything easier. Baby steps. As in life. As in lasagna.

Step One. What are you going to put in your lasagna? I had some broccolini that was starting to look a little worse for the wear, some carrots I had just picked up from the farmer's market and a basket of mushrooms that needed to be eaten soon. I got to work prepping my veggies. First I sauteed 4 to 6 thinly sliced carrots in a bit of butter and olive oil. I popped a lid on them for a few minutes to let them steam and then I finished them off just until they started to get some brown spots. Set them in a bowl and pop the pan back on the heat, swirl in a bit more olive oil and then I tossed in my chopped broccolini which I had parboiled for a minute or two. I seasoned the broccolini (3 bunches) with minced garlic (6 cloves) and salt and red pepper flakes. I just sauteed the broccolini until it picked up the flavors of the garlic and red pepper flakes. Set the broccolini aside in another bowl and wipe out the skillet with a paper towel. Throw in a small chunk of butter and then add the sliced mushrooms. Sautee the mushrooms until golden and set them aside with the other vegetables.

Step two. Make your bechamel. This is your white sauce. Now this is the sauce that is going to flavor your lasagna noodles so you want to infuse some flavor into it. There is nothing worse than a bland and pasty bechamel. Start by measuring out 3-4 cups of whole milk or a combination of heavy cream and skim milk, half and half and 2% whatever you have on hand, short of straight skim milk should work. Nothing leaner than 2% though. Put the milk in a saucepan (I used one cup heavy cream and 3 cups skim milk because that's what I had in the house.) Bonus points if your cream is from here.

Battenkill Valley Creamery. I live down the hill from them...well, down the hill and over the mountain but really, right around the corner.

Put your cream into a saucepan and warm it up. I like to add some flattened cloves of garlic. Flatten with the side of a knife so the flavor is exuded into the milk and they're easy to fish out later. I also added a Parmesan rind to mine. Always save your Parmesan rinds they add fantastic flavor and umami to all sorts of things. If you don't save them, don't tell me- it will break my heart.

I like to give my milk a while to simmer to get the most flavor out of my garlic and Parmesan rind. I usually let it simmer for a half an hour or so. Just be careful milk has a tendency to boil over and make a huge mess. Low heat, low heat.

Once I feel that I have enough flavor infused into my milk, I start the bechamel. In another saucepan I melt a half stick of butter. When it starts to foam, toss in 1/4 cup of white flour and whisk like mad. This is not the time to check your email. You whisk, whisk, whisk until the raw flour smell starts to fade and the flour starts to color. As soon as that happens, start adding your milk. I like to add mine a little at a time and just whisk like crazy because I find the final product is smoother. Once all your milk is incorporated, taste it. Add salt. Taste it again. If you really want to round out the flavors and add a little something special, grate some fresh nutmeg on top. I don't know why, but most white sauces and cheese sauces benefit from a grating of nutmeg. Try it.

Step three. Make your ricotta filling. Not much to this. I used 3 cups of ricotta and two large eggs. Whisk until smooth.

Step four. Assemble your lasagna. In the bottom of a 9x13 pan, add a ladle full of bechamel, three lasagna noodles (I'm partial to Barilla No Cook Noodles), spoon on some ricotta and sprinkle with your vegetables. I did broccolini topped with carrots and then mushrooms. Drizzle the veggies with more bechamel and then add more noodles, more ricotta, more veggies, more bechamel...

and so on until you reach as many layers as you'd like. I had 4 layers. Spoon the rest of the bechamel over the top and cover with foil. Bake at 375 degrees for 40-50 minutes. And the most important step of all? Let your lasagna rest. Do not even think about cutting into it until it's rested at least 15 but preferably 20 minutes. I'm so impatient that I had to take a shower while mine was resting because I didn't trust myself.

Do you enjoy having someone make a meal for you?

More than the sum of it's parts...

2010-01-21T09:23:00.000-08:00

Sometimes a delicious dinner comes from exhaustively researching a recipe, sometimes it's a family favorite, tried and true. And sometimes you open the refrigerator and find a head of cauliflower just slightly past it's prime and not much else. You know everyone loves roasted cauliflower but you can't just have that for dinner (unless you are alone and then anything goes...) now there are children and a hard working man to feed and they require something a little heartier. There's pasta. Everyone loves pasta.

You set a pot of water on to boil, generously salted like the sea.

Get the oven going. I like 450 degrees for roasting.

You chop that head of cauliflower in to bite sized chunks. If you are like me and are unable to buy one of anything, you chop the one head of cauliflower and then you chop half of another head. I like a roughly equal ratio of pasta to vegetables. Makes me feel virtuous.

Drizzle on some good olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt and lots of freshly ground pepper. Pop it in the oven and let it go until it looks like...

This. Never mind that I used a tad bit too much olive oil. I spaced out while I was pouring. It will be okay, after all, it's all the moisture this pasta will get. All it needs, really.

Drain the pasta and toss it with the cauliflower and olive oil. I served ours with chopped, fresh mozzarella but it's absolutely delicious without it. It's amazing what can become of three ingredients and necessity.

Don't be fooled by the palette of beige and white, I assure you the sweet, almost nutty roasted cauliflower and the slightly grainy taste of the whole grain pasta are perfectly enhanced by a nicely fruity olive oil and creamy mozzarella. It's one of our favorite pasta dishes now.

What do you like to make when the cupboards are just this close to being bare?

Turning fantasies into realities or How I Taught Myself to Make Pupusas

2010-01-18T05:49:00.000-08:00

Last summer on a visit to NYC (why do so many of my food memories originate there?) I was strolling the flea market in DUMBO when I smelled something delicious. Up ahead was a food booth with a long, long line. Wondering what people were waiting for in the hot summer sun, I ventured forth and saw it was a pupusa stand. What are pupusas, I thought to myself? They looked like some kind of corn pancake and appeared to be stuffed. Not wasting any more time I made a quick decision that that was where we were getting our lunch and I joined the line like a good little sheep.

And boy was I glad I did. We all tried various fillings, I believe there was pork and beans and cheese and we ate them standing on the street using a ledge to balance our drinks. I almost got back on line for seconds but we had a busy, food filled itinerary and there was still Almondine and Jacques Torres to be visited.

With all the wonderful things we saw and ate on that trip the one that stood out and the one we all thought of as our best or one of our best was those pupusas. At home I researched them on the internet and saw that they were a Salvadoran staple. At the end of that same summer we decided to take a spur of the moment trip to Old Orchard Beach Maine and imagine my delight when researching restaurants on the morning of the trip I kept reading about this little Salvadoran hole in the wall in Portland (a foodie wonderland if ever there was one.)

We managed to have a lunch there and of course we ordered pupusas. Unfortunately, they weren't as good as the ones we ate in Brooklyn and they left me longing for those we ate that hot summer day standing in the street.

For some reason it never occurred to me to make pupusas myself. I thought about them. I even found a recipe in the Rancho Gordo cookbook. But then for Christmas I was given an electric griddle and in thinking of what I could make on it besides pancakes, pupusas came to mind. The first time I made them I used the Rancho Gordo recipe as a template and made refried beans to stuff the pupusas with and curtido which is kind of a mayonnaise free cole slaw that's traditionally served atop the pupusas. They were good but not the bursting with filling goodness that I had eaten in Brooklyn. And they were kind of hard to form. Heading to the internet I found this http://www.videojug.com/webvideo/how-to-make-pupusas and I started to see where I went wrong. There are tons of videos on how to make pupusas. I watched them and got a better idea of how to make pupusas like those I ate in Brooklyn. It was all in the technique and my second batch was a winner.

Pupusa Dough

2 cups Masa Harina
generous pinch of salt
1 to 1 1/2 cup water.

Mix together masa harina and salt and drizzle the water over the top.
Stir or mix with your hands (my choice as it's easier to get a feel for the right consistency) basically, you want a dough that will hold up to being flattened out and stuffed. Not too moist and not too dry.

Filling

Refried Beans and Monterey Jack

Curtido (my adaption)

Half a head of cabbage, thinly sliced
3 Carrots grated by hand or in a food processor
One onion, thinly sliced (I left it out as I don't do raw onion)
1/2 cup white vinegar
1/2 cup water
generous pinch of red pepper flakes
tsp oregano
generous pinch or two of salt
TBS grainy mustard

Toss together the cabbage, carrots and onion.
Mix the vinegar, water, red pepper flakes, oregano, salt and mustard.
Toss with the vegetables and refrigerate for at least two hours to allow the flavors to meld.

I didn't do that step because I happen to like cole slaw when it's freshly prepared before the veggies start to get limp. I did have this the next day though and it was still good with minimal limpness.

Pinch off a handful of dough (golf ball size) and flatten it out in the palm of your hand and kind of curl the edges up into a little cup. (this is where I found the videos really helpful) Stuff a generous amount of filling into the well and top with a large pinch of cheese. Bring the edges up and close over the filling. As best as you can flatten the ball out into a thick pancake while keeping the filling covered. The best advice I read was that it's okay if there are some cracks because those are going to be delicious crispy oozy spots when they are fried up on the griddle.

Heat your griddle or frying pan as you would for pancakes. I coated my griddle in canola spray and set the temperature to 300. Fry each side for 3-4 minutes. Top each pupusa with a spoonful of curtido and then you can spoon on some sour cream (thinned with milk to replicate crema) or salsa. We had ours both ways, one night with curtido and sour cream and one night with curtido and salsa. I preferred the salsa and curtido on mine.

These were really fun to make and after watching the videos I found I had a better grasp of how they should be formed. I think I'm going to be playing with this recipe some more. I'm thinking they will be fabulous stuffed with shredded pork and caramelized onions...

French Intimidation

2010-01-14T17:16:00.000-08:00

AKA How I overcame my fear of making French macarons. I have only had one macaron in my life. It was at Kee's Chocolates in NYC. We were visiting them as a destination on a foodie walking tour and really stopped in for their chocolates, which are wonderful, but when I saw their display of lovely jewel toned macarons, I had to try one. I chose the rosewater lychee macaron and as soon as we were out on the sidewalk I took it out to taste it and it tasted just as good as I thought it would. The crisp shell yielded to reveal a soft and slightly toothsome center with an intriguing bit of lychee buttercream. It was an ethereal treat between the flavors and the light as air texture. It was so good- I immediately became obsessed with macarons. Of course, no longer living in the city I do not have ready access to such delights so I have mostly obsessed from afar. Meaning lots and lots of time on the internet.

I knew I wanted to make some but there is a certain intimidation factor to making your own macarons. And then I found the Mac Tweets blog www.mactweets.blogspot.com which had tons of pictures and links to other macaron makers. I wanted in. I obsessively searched for the perfect recipe. It had to be one that had the ingredients listed in volume as I still have not broken down and purchased a food scale, though one is at the top of my Amazon wish list. And then there was the matter of the almond flour. Do I make my own? Do I search out a source? Order it online? I found some at a pricey health food store in Saratoga- twelve dollars for a small bag!? Ouch. So now I had the ingredients and the equipment, which is nothing special- cookie sheets lined with parchment, something to pipe the macaron batter...I had everything. It was time.

Recipe from A La Cuisine www.alacuisine.org

Macaron Batter

- 1 ¼ cups confectioners sugar
- 1 cup almond flour or finely ground almonds
- ¼ cup plus 2 TBS egg whites at room temperature
- pinch of salt
- ¼ cup granulated sugar

Allow egg whites to thicken by leaving them uncovered at room temperature overnight.

On three pieces of parchment, use a pencil to draw 1-inch circles about 2 inches apart. Flip each sheet over and place each sheet on a baking sheet.

Push almond flour through a sieve, and sift confectioners sugar. Mix the almonds and confectioners sugar in a bowl and set aside.

In a large clean, dry bowl whip egg whites with salt on medium speed until foamy. Increase the speed to high and gradually add granulated sugar. Continue to whip to stiff peaks – the whites should be firm and shiny.

With a flexible spatula, gently fold in the confectioners sugar mixture into the egg whites until completely incorporated. The mixture should be shiny and ‘flow like magma.’ When small peaks dissolve to a flat surface, stop mixing.

Fit a piping bag with a 3/8-inch round tip. Pipe the batter onto the baking sheets, in the previously drawn circles. Tap the underside of the baking sheet to remove air bubbles. Let dry at room temperature for 1 or 2 hours to allow skins to form.

Bake, in a 325F oven for 10 to 11 minutes. Use a wooden spoon to keep the oven door slightly ajar, and rotate the baking sheet after 5 minutes for even baking.

Remove macarons from oven and transfer parchment to a cooling rack. When cool, slide a metal offset spatula or pairing knife underneath the macaron to remove from parchment.

Pair macarons of similar size, and pipe about ½ tsp of the filling onto one of the macarons. Sandwich macarons, and refrigerate to allow flavours to blend together. Bring back to room temperature before serving.

Macaron shells waiting to be slathered with caramel buttercream...

That is not a finger swipe mark in my salted caramel buttercream. Okay, of course it is. Be happy my face print is not in there. It's that good.

I probably should not be left alone with these.

These are a few of my favorite things...

2010-01-11T06:12:00.000-08:00

Everyone has things in their kitchen that they can't live with out. These are the things that make me love being in my kitchen.

I bake a lot so these wide mouth glass jars that each hold 10 pounds of flour or sugar are perfect. I won't tell you how often I refill my sugar jar because it's probably more often than most people have to buy sugar.

Yes, it's just a notebook but it's an indispensable tool for keeping me organized. I keep it on my kitchen counter so I can jot down ingredients or make to do lists as I go and when I leave the house I always take it with me.

My long coveted KitchenAid mixer. I went through FIVE hand mixers in 4 years. I wanted a KitchenAid but I couldn't see committing to spending that much money. I'm frugal. Sort of. But thanks to a deep Black Friday discount, this long coveted mixer is mine. And I love it. Tip: I keep mine on top of a folded up dish towel so when I want to use it I slide it on the counter instead of trying to pick it up, it weighs a lot and it's cumbersome to move.

My food processor. I had one many years ago and I never used it. So I sold it. At a garage sale. For practically nothing. Luckily, the same person who got me the sold food processor took pity on me and several years later got me another one for my birthday. This time I got smart and instead of storing the food processor away in a cabinet I leave it right on my counter. Suddenly I can't live without it. I use it at least twice a week, often more. It's true what they say- location, location, location!

My cookbook collection. Condensed through the years. I try to be very careful with the books I buy now. It's just as easy to get a recipe off the internet and many times I do just that, but there is just no substitute for a wonderfully edited cookbook with photographs. I'm a sucker for photographs. I'm a book lover so I get a little sentimental over my collection, each book is important to me. In the corner is my recipe binder with clippings and some of my most cherished recipes written in long hand. I hope one day someone appreciates that book.

French press = best coffee ever. In my humble opinion, of course. This is a thermal carafe that I agonized over. I could have saved myself a few bucks and purchased a regular French press because the thermal qualities of this one are a joke. Hot coffee for half an hour max. Still, it's wonderful coffee and I can always buy a thermos.

If you are going to go the French press route, you have to have properly ground beans. A burr grinder will be necessary. This one is highly rated and one of the few under a hundred dollars.

I'm not sure what I did in the kitchen before I found Microplanes. The thinner one is perfect for grating nutmeg (you do buy whole nutmeg, don't you? It's nothing like pre ground nutmeg) and zesting citrus. The larger one is my parmesan grater. That's it. I just grate parmesan with is but I use it at least twice a week and no other tool grates parmesan like the microplane. Mmmm, fluffy parmesan clouds.

How about you? What are your indispensable kitchen tools?

Nibbly Bits...

2009-12-31T09:20:00.001-08:00

I'm not one to go out on New Years Eve. (Who am I kidding? I'm not one to go out most times, it's so odd to imagine that there was once a time that I was a bit of a party girl...party girl? Who talks like that? but I digress) And I think New Years Eve is probably one of the worst times to go out. It's cold, people who do not know how to drink are drinking copious amounts with the seemingly single minded purpose of vomiting in the street and then there's the driving...thankssomuch, I think I'll pass.

What I do like to do is rather boring but it's perhaps my most favorite thing to do in the world. Renting movies and eating finger foods washed down with champagne; or realistically sparkling wine as I doubt whatever I end up drinking will come from the region that produces true champagne. I won't even be able to buy it myself as there's a snowstorm raging outside and so I will dispatch the significant other/partner to pick some up on his way home from work. And he doesn't drink. Can't wait to see what I end up drinking this evening. And watching for that matter, our taste in movies is wildly divergent. The last movie he rented was District 9, which from what I gathered involved aliens and many dismembered limbs. The last movie I rented was Every Little Step, a biography of A Chorus Line.

But on to the food, the nibbly bits, as in, a wide variety of savory foods that can be eaten with your hands. I'm aware that nibbly is not a word, well, in my lexicon it is but hors d’oeuvres sounds pretentious and appetizers sounds well, unappetizing and since they are not a pre meal nibble but the actual meal themselves I was forced to invent.

And since there is that raging snowstorm that I mentioned, I have had to be creative. The original plan called for driving to the Italian import store to pick up the makings of an antipasto tray and Mrs. London's for good bread (really good bread, probably the best in the capital region) and rounding that out with nibbly bits that I would thrown together at home. My options are now whatever can be purchased from Hannaford and I don't quite trust that I'd be able to pull off a good antipasto tray from there. So the revised menu will include Pioneer Woman's bacon wrapped, cream cheese stuffed jalapeno peppers, sweet lord I do love them and some of The Barefoot Contessa's pan fried onion dip, there is no excuse for making onion dip out of a packet of dehydrated onion soup mix, no excuse at all. And we have to have some of these yummy stuffed mushrooms that I found on Epicurious. I am thinking of rounding the whole thing out with some roasted red peppers and fresh mozzarella, maybe some roasted cauliflower so we can get a vegetable in there. Although, roasted cauliflower barely qualifies as a vegetable- it's too good. We eat it as a snack.

Washed down with whatever dubious sparkling wine the partner comes home with and accompanied by whatever silly films are rented, I think we have the makings of a fabulous New Years Eve! Enjoy yours, we will be enjoying ours...Have a fabulous 2010!

Candied Orange Peel

2009-12-21T05:47:00.000-08:00

As much as I enjoyed the last candied peel recipe, I couldn't help but wonder what I could do to make them even better. I thought it would be nice to have the peels less crinkly/curly and more substantial, maybe with more chewiness to them. Back to the internet I went. I came across a woman on egullet (a truly fabulous foodie resource if there ever was one) who seemed to know everything about all manner of candying citrus peels. Her recipe was markedly different than the one I originally followed and was done in the microwave.

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?/topic/89439-candied-citrus-peel-the-topic/

There is a wealth of information in that thread. People were candying kumquats, Buddha's Hand, galangal (the latter two I had to look up) and now I'm cursing myself for not buying that five dollar Buddha's Hand we found at Whole Foods last week! Though it's not like I wouldn't make another two and a half hour trip if I really wanted one. There are a lot of reasons to visit Northampton, MA and if I can score chicken tamales and pork tacos from La Veracruzana, a Buddha's Hand and a trip to Trader Joe's then I'd say it's a trip worth taking. Although, perhaps I should check the weather this time and try to avoid a "wintry mix" forecast.

On to the candy...

I decided to do a small batch since it was my first attempt at this style of candying citrus and I didn't want to waste fruit. All I had in the house at the time were two non organic Cara Cara oranges (I'm trying not to think about the pesticides I have been consuming...) and I washed those as well as possible.

~Cut the top and bottom off your citrus. From here make vertical cuts all along the fruit and then carefully pull the fruit (pith and all) from the flesh. Cut the peel into 1/2 inch slices.

~Placed the orange peel in a microwave safe bowl (I used a 2.5 quart Pyrex) and cover with water. Boil on high for 10 minutes

~Drain the peels and repeat with fresh water.

~Drain the peels and repeat with fresh water.

~Taste. Is the bitterness mostly gone? If not, repeat until the peels are to your liking. I personally feel like it should have a slightly bitter edge. Slightly.

~Drain the peels and mix 1 cup sugar with 1 1/2 to 2 cups water. Boil on high for 3 minutes. Stir to mix.

~Add the orange peels to the simple syrup and microwave 5 minutes. Stir.

~Microwave 5 more minutes. Stir.

~Let the peels cool in the syrup for 30 minutes

~Microwave the peels in the syrup for 5 more minutes. Stir.

~Microwave 5 more minutes. Stir. Taste a piece. The pith should be completely translucent by this time.

~Remove the pieces to a wire rack set over a baking sheet to catch drips.

~Allow the peel to dry until it's only slightly tacky to the touch and then toss a few pieces at a time in sugar.

After it was completely dried and sugared I tasted a piece and found it to be a little too bitter for my tastes. I decided to dip the pieces in chocolate to offset some of the bitterness. I wanted the peels to be completely dry for that step so I left them on a rack on my kitchen counter for 24 hours. At that point I tempered some dark chocolate and dipped one piece at a time, leaving the ends uncovered for easier grabbing. Once the chocolate was set I took another taste and this time I loved it. The chocolate did exactly what I wanted it to, the orange was less bitter tasting and the chocolate added an intriguing dark and slightly smoky quality to the confection. Definitely a candy for grown ups although my teenage brother enjoyed some. I think they would make beautiful gifts for your discerning foodie friends.

Candied Lemon Peel

2009-12-16T17:17:00.000-08:00

What is it about Christmas that makes one think they need to make all manner of candy? I don't know, maybe everyone else is not thinking that, maybe it's just me. This time of year I become obsessed with all things sweet and yummy. And what perfect luck that on a recent trip to Whole Foods (my first, actually) I found some lovely organic, unwaxed lemons. I never seem to find them anywhere. I didn't have anything in mind when I found them, I just knew I would find something to do with them. I thought of limoncello and I still do want to try that one of these days but I wanted something that I could appreciate now and limoncello takes a while.

And that's when I remembered the candied lemon peels. I don't remember where I saw them, I know I've seen them for sale in fancy chocolate places and I had a teeny bit on top of a pastry that I tried recently that totally distracted me and made me wish for more. What better way to showcase organic, unwaxed lemons than by using their peel. There are a bunch of recipes on the net. There's an Epicurious one, a Bon Appetit one, a Martha Stewart one...All the usual suspects had some variation of a similar recipe, some more laborious than others. I used the Epicurious one as a template and took it from there.

They're really simple to make and I think they would make great holiday gifts in little cellophane bags tied with ribbon. They're delicious on their own and would be great chopped up and sprinkled on top of scones or mixed into cookie batter.

~Candied Lemon Peel

6 unwaxed, organic lemons, washed well.
3 cups sugar, plus another 1/2 cup or so for tossing the candied peels.

~Using your sharpest vegetable peeler or a good paring knife carefully remove the peels from the lemons. I used a vegetable peeler because I found mine was super shard and it peeled the peel with hardly any pith. I was less successful with a paring knife.

~In a medium sized sauce pan, bring a quart or so of water to a boil. Drop in the peels and boil for 2 minutes. Drain the peels (and this is where I departed from other recipes, I did not boil my peels more than once because they had almost no pith and were not very bitter, if you are unsure go ahead and taste a piece, if it's bitter, repeat the boiling process with fresh water 2 or 3 more times.) and set aside on a paper towel.

~Bring 3 cups of sugar and 2 cups of water to a boil, whisking to dissolve the sugar. Do not let the syrup change colors, you just want to boil it until the sugar is completely dissolved and the syrup is clear.

~Add your lemon peels and turn the heat to a medium low simmer. Simmer the peels until they turn mostly translucent, this took me about 15 minutes.

~Set out a baking sheet with a rack over it and pour a 1/2 cup or so of sugar into a shallow bowl.

~Using tongs, drop a few pieces of candied peel at a time into the sugar tossing or using a fork to coat.

~Transfer to sugared peels to the rack and allow to dry. Mine were ready in about an hour.

~I stored mine in a pretty glass jar on the counter, some recipes call for refrigeration but I'm thinking that might make them moist. Mine will stay on the counter. I doubt it will be very long.

Now, you will end up with some leftovers. The leftover sugar that I dipped the candied peels in had little bits of broken peel in it so I pulsed it in the food processor. I think it will make a nice topping to sprinkle on baked goods. You'll also have a ton of beautiful lemon colored simple syrup. I'm storing mine in a mason jar in the fridge. I have plans for it that involve alcohol. I think it's going to make a fabulous lemon drop!

Constant cravings...

2009-12-12T14:32:00.000-08:00

It seems like most of the things I end up cooking stem from one craving or another. And loving food as I do, I am almost constantly craving something. The other day I realized I still had a container of herbs left over from Thanksgiving in my refrigerator. Why I had store bought herbs when I had all of those herbs in plant form in my house is another story, but I digress. And why those herbs were still as fresh seeming as the day I bought them is not something I wish to ponder right now.

In the container there were a few sprigs of rosemary. I love rosemary, it's one of my favorite herbs. Rosemary is an herb that doesn't mess around. It's bold, if you use it, there's no disguising it. It's there in the forefront making it's presence known. Which is probably why it pairs so wonderfully with things that are on the bland side. Potatoes, chicken, foccacia, white beans...they all benefit from rosemary's herbal woodiness. As I stood there holding the rosemary, the smell tickling my nose, I thought there must be something else. Something that really let's the rosemary shine.

Just then I remembered that I had occasionally seen recipes for cookies that contained rosemary and brushed them off as being odd. Even too precious. Too food snobby. I went back to doing other things and put the whole thing out of my mind. I played some Scrabble, puttered around the house and all the while kept thinking of cookies with rosemary in them. Soon I was searching the internet for recipes. I found a butter cookie recipe on Martha Stewart that I liked the sound of. And then, as I always do I wondered how it could be improved and my thoughts turned to lemon. Lemon and rosemary are wonderful together. And thus a cookie was born.

I think they would make a fabulous addition to your Christmas (or whatever you celebrate, Festivus?) cookie platter. The cookies are delicious- buttery, lightly sweet with crunchy sugared edges. They taste of lemon with a lingering, pleasant herbal finish. Not overwhelming but you know it's there. To make the cookies I used this recipe http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/rosemary-butter-cookies and made a few changes. I used half soft white wheat flour and half white flour. I added all the zest from one large lemon. I omitted the vanilla and replaced it with an equal amount of lemon oil. And I very generously brushed the outside of the dough log with the egg white and pressed a lot of turbinado sugar into it because I love the contrast of textures.

Baby it's cold outside...

2009-12-09T15:07:00.000-08:00

There's something about the snow falling and the kids being home from school that makes me feel like I should slap on an apron and get baking...or roasting or braising or simmering or whatever has the oven going good and hot and causes scrumptious smells to waft through the house. It's just what I do. A compulsion if you will.

And nothing says yes, it's cold outside but we are warm and snuggly inside more than pot roast. Pot roast, a quintessentially all American meal. I grew up eating it. My grandfather used to save the ends of the meat for me because they were my favorite. And of course, being the cook, I now claim them for myself. I'm selfish like that. And caramelized bits of meat have long been my downfall. Well, those and gluttonous amounts of pasta.

And nothing is as easy to make and makes the people you love feel loved than a large piece of braised beef. At least in my world that's how I show them I love them. Kind of twisted if you think about it.

~Coffee Braised Pot Roast

1 3-4 pound beef chuck roast, generously salted and peppered on all sides
2 TBS olive oil
2-3 large onions, thinly sliced

1 pkg baby portabella mushrooms, sliced thinly
6 cloves chopped garlic
a few sprigs of fresh thyme
1 cup coffee, leftover from the morning is fine
2 TBS balsamic vinegar
2 TBS cornstarch mixed with 2 TBS cold water

Heat oven to 300 degrees

In a dutch oven or medium soup pot (I used a 7qt Le Creuset) heat the oil over medium heat until shimmering. Add the beef and brown on all sides. Don't be afraid to get it good and caramelized, if your meat is sticking when you try to turn it, let it cook a couple more minutes.

When the meat is browned on all sides, remove it to a platter.

Add the onions to the pan and keeping the heat on med-high, use tongs to toss them around. When they get light golden, add the garlic and thyme and cook a 2-3 more minutes.

Add the coffee and vinegar and scrape up the browned bits for a minute or so.

Add the beef to the pot and top with the thinly sliced mushrooms.

Cover and transfer the pot to the oven.

Braise the beef for 2 1/2 to 3 hours, checking it half way through. At the half way point I flip the meat and spoon some of the liquid over it.

The meat is ready when it's fork tender, transfer it to a cutting board and let it rest while you move the pot back to the stove top. Bring the liquid in the pot to a boil and add the cornstarch and water mixture. Whisk rapidly to avoid lumps.

Slice the meat and you can add it back to the top or serve it topped with the gravy. We eat ours with buttered egg noodles, it's also delicious over mashed potatoes, polenta or rice.

Not a pretty cake...

2009-12-08T10:59:00.000-08:00

I love when you discover a recipe that is so utterly simple, so yummy and so unique. That's what I thought when I was reading this blog http://blog.timesunion.com/desserts/omg-she-said/40/ on the Times Union's website. While I was familiar with Rose Levy Beranbaum, I had never heard of her Whipped Cream Cake. Which is not really hers at all but a recipe she adapted for a Delaware restaurateur. There's very little to it, some cream, flour, eggs, sugar...notice I didn't mention butter? Weird, right? Apparently there is enough fat in the cream to make butter unnecessary. The cake comes out ethereally light and sweet. Not at all like angel food cake but not like pound cake either. I've made it twice now and I find that it's great the first day and good the second but gets a bit dry by the third. Of course, you can make sure it all gets eaten in the first two days but that's a lot of cake. What I did was serve it on the third day with some macerated strawberries and freshly whipped cream. Simply delicious, no matter how you have it.

Quick Comfort

2009-12-06T11:36:00.000-08:00

When I am short on time, feeling blue, needing something healthy, or just plain hungry my favorite thing to eat is perhaps the simplest thing I make, short of scrambling an egg...sauteed frozen spinach. Hardly something that requires much of a recipe or needs to be photographed, spinach; much less the frozen kind; is hardly photogenic but man is it delicious.

It can't be just any frozen spinach. I am partial to Cascadian Farms organic frozen spinach (and I've tried them all). The Cascadian Farms frozen spinach is the best unless you are buying a bunch of spinach from the farmer's market and then there's all that submerging, swishing and draining to be done. I don't have time for that. I'm hungry now. And in less than five minutes I will be eating.

Here's what I do...grab a non stick skillet and start heating it (medium high on my electric stove) swirl in a bit of olive oil (if I was Rachael Ray I'd grin like the Joker, laugh maniacally and cackle "EVOO"...then I'd go count my money while my pretend husband rubs my feet) drop in a thick slice of butter (tablespoon?) and as soon as it's good and hot I dump in my bag of spinach (oh yeah- the whole thing, this makes a meal for one as far as I am concerned). I sprinkle the whole thing with kosher salt and a palm full of red pepper flakes, (I like a kick and I don't find the flakes particularly hot) and then I go at it with my tongs, tossing it around until it's not icy and feels hot. I squeeze a lemon wedge over the top and plate it. Breakfast, lunch, dinner or snack is served.

Maybe I'm weird but when I need comfort the softness of the spinach does the trick and I don't have to feel guilty like when I eat the whole package of ramen or macaroni and cheese.

Pumpkin shortage? Not in my house.

2009-11-24T09:09:00.000-08:00

Apparently there's a canned pumpkin shortage this year

http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/libbys-warns-of-a-canned-pumpkin-shortage/

at least, that's what I've read in the news. I live in farm country and with two farms where I can buy all manner of squash, not to mention the many farmer's markets nearby, I have no idea what they are talking about. I tend to be suspicious about this type of news article anyway. I've seen displays of canned pumpkin in every supermarket I've been in in the last week. I think the people that sell canned pumpkin manufacture this sort of thing to drive sales. But I'm suspicious like that.

Not to worry, in my household I like to be prepared. If the occasion comes up that I need to make ten pumpkin pies at once, I will be ready. As I type, there are six adorable sugar pumpkins roasting in my oven. I don't wait for someone to can it for me and stick a label on it. I make my own. The process is ridiculously simple and if you are one to attempt silly things like side by side comparisons (who does that? that's why I go online...) you will know that the taste of a pie made with pumpkin pureed at home is superior to the same pie made with canned puree. Although, I would be a liar if I said I never buy canned pumpkin, it will do in a pinch.

Now, to make that puree...

You need sugar pumpkins or any other small, sweet pumpkin, I like to get my pumpkins from farms or farmer's markets because they always have a wide variety of heirloom pumpkins such as the Jarrahdale, Cinderella, or Lumina. I often mix more than one variety if I am doing a large batch of puree.

I give my pumpkins a quick wash, pierce them a few times with a sharp paring knife, and place them in a 375 degree oven on a cookie sheet for an hour or so. You want them to be cooked until a knife slides in easily, like a knife through soft butter.

Take the pumpkins out and let them cool until you can tolerate working on them. I'm impatient and I don't mind burning my fingers (well, I do but I can take it) so I rarely wait more than half an hour. An hour is probably ideal. Slice your pumpkin in half and use a spoon to carefully scrape out the seeds and stringy bits. Use the spoon to scrape the flesh out of the skin (at this point the skin often peels right off) and put the pumpkin chunks into a food processor. I would think you can use a hand mixer but the puree will not be as smooth and you want silky smooth puree here.

Blitz the pumpkin in the food processor until perfectly smooth, depending on the moistness of your pumpkin you may need to add a tablespoon of water or so. No worries, you'll be draining the whole mess later. Keep going until you have all of your pumpkins processed. Since it's a pretty messy job, I usually aim to make large amounts at a time. This time I did six pumpkins.

Line a colander with cheese cloth or (my favorite) paper towels and place the colander in a larger bowl. Cover with plastic wrap or another paper towel and leave it in the fridge for a while. I like to leave mine over night.

The next day dump out your water and store via your favorite method. If it will be used reasonably quickly (say, within a week) I would store it in the fridge in an airtight container. I usually pack one cup at a time into ziplock sandwich bags, double the bag, press out the air and smooth flat. Then I lay them all on a cookie sheet in the freezer until frozen at which time you can place them however you wish. My six pumpkins yielded eight cups of puree.

I love pumpkin puree because it's crazy good for you with lots of antioxidants and fiber and it gives tremendous moisture to baked goods. Do not limit yourself to pumpkin pie (although it wouldn't be a bad thing if you did, it's my favorite pie) you can use it in quick bread, muffins, yeasted bread, cookies, soup, risotto, smoothies, pancake and as I found out recently- fudge! Pumpkin fudge is to die for. I made a promise to myself not to make it again, it's that good...and I ate *that* much.

Happy Fall!

The inaugral post

2009-11-24T07:17:00.000-08:00

Dear future (hopeful) readers,

I started this blog because I love to cook, I love to eat, I love to talk about food, and there is only so much food talk the people around me can take.

I will and have driven long distances to eat something delicious. There was the coffee creme brulee that led me to drive 5 hours round trip to fulfill a pregnancy craving only to find that the restaurant had sold out of it. Should have called ahead. The short detour for some fabulous homemade ice cream that took us 2 hours and much cursing at the GPS to reach. The endless vacations and getaways planned with proximity to yummy food in mind.

I live a food centric life and I'd like to share it with you.

~Jennifer