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A New Love: Jacques Pépin's Fast Food
Talking Him Into It - Feeding The Guy
Another Change, and Two Summer Shortcakes
The First No-Cook Pasta Sauce of the Season
Christopher Kimball's Best Chocolate Chip Cookies
Weekend Cookbook Challenge: Christopher Kimball's Fudgy Brownies
I have a new love in my life. I stumble home from work at 9:30pm with no time to cook, hoping I still have a container of buffalo milk yogurt in the back of the fridge, fall on the couch, and watch Jaques Pépin cook. Everything he makes looks incredibly delicious, and I find myself thinking, "Why didn't I realize how much I want to eat mussels and saffron over pasta? Ooo, those strawberries are exactly what I want - nothing in the world could possibly be as good as they would be."
Of course, half the charm is Jacques himself, talking to me about just how to dunk my baguette into the watery, saffrony sauce, saying adorable things like, "I wouldn't want to put more wine into this, but I will add a little 'château sink'," in that lovely, soft French accent. Yes, I am head-over-heels for a man old enough to be my grandfather. Fortunately, so is The Guy, so we collapse together and plan the dinners we will make someday, when we have time to reacquaint ourselves with our kitchen. I've even started to talk him into getting me the book for my birthday (he thinks he should just get me the dvd set so I can drool over it night after night).
The show has a funny website, here, but it doesn't nearly do justice to the genius that is this particular PBS jewel. So if you can't find time to cook, look up your local PBS schedules and feed on the master and his food.
Posted by georgia at 10:27 PM | Comments (2) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Given my totally crazy schedule and the hideous heat wave we suffered through a couple weeks ago, it should come as no surprise to anyone that I've been playing around with more no-cook pasta sauces. At first I thought I'd just stick to my regular tomatoes/onions/basil/mozzarella staple (above), but then one day when I went to the Co-op on my way home from work, I couldn't find any mozzarella. I sat in front of the cheese shelves for a few minutes, momentarily stymied. What would I use instead? I scanned the rows of tallegio, parmigiano-reggiano, and morbier, but in the end I wimped out and bought goat-cheese; it would be different, but there would be no surprises. I also bought some picholine olives to add to the mix.
I took everything home and made the sauce as usual, but when I opened the fridge to grab the olives I saw a bag of peaches that looked so good I just had to grab one. After confirming with The Guy that, no, he didn't want any peach in his pasta, I cut half of one into small pieces and added it to the sauce before pouring everything over pasta and crumbling the goat cheese on top.
How was it? It was fantastic! Something about the combination of the peach, the mild goat cheese, and the basil is pure summer.
I also tried another recipe that tastes like summer from the NY Times food section's new column about eating from the Greenmarket. I couldn't really remember exactly what the recipe consisted of, and the recipe was no longer on line, here is what I used:
Note: This recipe is amazing if you have really good, fragrant tomatoes and young, sweet corn, but wasn't nearly as memorable the second time I made it, with slightly "off" ingredients, it lost the wow-factor.
1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved, mixed with olive oil and salt, and roasted in the oven for about 30 mins. 2 large fresh tomatoes (the kind that smell really good), cut into small chunks. 3 ears sweet corn kernels, cut off the cob (yes, raw). A few scallions, sliced lengthwise and finely chopped. A handful of fresh basil, sliced. Fresh mozzarella, cut into cubes.
Toss everything with warm pasta, olive oil, salt and pepper.
Posted by georgia at 11:07 PM | Comments (3) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
When I first met The Guy he didn't eat anything green. No, actually that's not fair of me, he did eat one kind of vegetable: haricot verts. Yes, that's right, the very expensive, very thin cousin of the green beans that most of us eat. He gushed about the wonderful qualities of his haricot verts every time I mentioned the need to add veggies to our meals until, one day, he got a job and started buying his own groceries. Then those little haricot verts started to look, well, a little less appetizing, even at Fairway prices. So we switched to green beans.
It took me almost a full year to get The Guy to try salads. It was like pulling teeth. "Please?" I'd ask, every time I bought a head of lettuce that I knew I couldn't finish before it went bad; "Maybe next time," he'd say. But to my great surprise, when he finally did try salad he loved it (only the way I make it, but that's a good thing). We had the same battle over greens like spinach and Chinese watercress with the same results - once he finally tried it he fell in love. And over time he started to trust me to feed him greens (and sushi and shellfish) that he would like. By the time we'd worked our way up to artichokes he didn't even take any cajoling - he just bit right in.
But then, last week, he balked at a food choice: sandwiches for dinner. With the temperatures in triple digits I didn't feel like turning on the oven or boiling water, so, after a little inspiration from a beautiful picture of a BLT from one of the recent issues of Bon Appétit, I suggested that we try BLTs for dinner. "For dinner?" he asked, with a look on his face that reminded me very suddenly of the look he used to have when I mentioned spinach. I tried to tell him how lovely the sandwich would be. "But we wouldn't have to cook much at all and we can add cheese and have a lovely sandwich with cheese and tomatoes and bacon." "Bacon?" he asked, a new look beginning to dawn on his face, "crunchy, fatty yummy bacon?" I paused a minute to consider if this was, in fact, what I wanted to talk exercise-challenged hubby into, but I had just begun to win the argument and I wasn't going to back down, so we had lovely sandwiches with crunchy, fatty bacon (and good tomatoes, good lettuce, whole-wheat challah and melted raclette).
And did he like it? Of course he did. He loved it. We even had it the next night. And we're going to have it again tomorrow night.
Posted by georgia at 08:42 PM | Comments (3) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
For the second time in two weeks I'm going to make a change to what I do on the blog. Last week I joined the editorial staff at Saveur, so to keep up with the blog while my life gets totally hectic (and not use any ideas that I might decide I want to use for work), I'm going to be changing the focus a little and writing more about my attempts to handle the stresses of cooking, keeping up the apartment and (occasionally) being a decent hostess while handling a job that will often keep me busy not just all day but all evening too.
But this doesn't mean I'm going to stop cooking! So for the first installment of the "new" blog entrees, a few notes about what I learned over the past couple weeks about making shortcakes. I tried two of the shortcake recipes from last month's magazines: the Two-Berry Shortcakes from Gourmet (in the picture) and the Peach and Blackberry Shortcakes with Blackberry Cream from Bon Appétit. The two recipes were very different - the first was billed as a "quick" recipe and was by far the faster of the two. The biscuits were easy to make and plop down on to the pan, whereas the biscuits for the second recipe required me to roll out a very sticky dough and cut out rounds. The extra work created a different kind of biscuit, nice and crunchy on the top in a way that reminded me of the top of a very good muffin, but, frankly wasn't so good that I'd do the extra work again. The second recipe also included a very time consuming blackberry cream (blackberries pureed with sugar and pushed through a sieve then whipped with cream) which, again, created a wonderful result, but was a little too much work to think about doing again. Next time maybe I can find some blackberry syrup, liqueur or jelly (or just stick with Gourmet's version and change the fruit).
Posted by georgia at 10:46 PM | Comments (5) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
So finally, at the very end of June, I gave up my healthy summer eating habits and let myself indulge in a couple of the desserts from Living and Bon Appétit. After flipping through the June issues, I was drawn to two desserts: Bon Appétit's Grilled Brown-Sugar Peaches with White Chocolate and Living's Peach-Raspberry Clafouti.
I started with the Grilled Brown-Sugar Peaches, a quick and easy dessert that was a snap to make after dinner one night. The combination of the white sugar, the cinnamon, and the pistachios was unexpected and interesting, and even though many of the ingredients are inherently sweet, they went very well with the early-summer peach, balancing their slightly tart flavor.
The clafouti was more of a production, with the extra step of poaching the peaches, but the only real difficult part was getting the peaches to break into halves and pitting them. Surprisingly, the harder peaches were easier to work with, because they broke from the pit whole instead of smushing, but it still involved using my thumb as a wedge to get the first half separated and then a nice sharp knife to cut the pit out of the second half. The final dessert wasn't as pretty as the pictures in the magazine, but it was absolutely delicious. It was eggy and infused with vanilla and had the most wonderful texture. The peaches, infused with the vanilla and the flavor of white wine, were fantastic, and I liked the whole thing so much that I ended up eating half of it within a few hours of taking it out of the oven. The poaches peaches on their own would make a great dessert too.
Both recipes are going to get a lot of use in my kitchen and both give me great ways to use all those early summer peaches that aren't quite sweet enough to be enjoyed on their own.
Posted by georgia at 11:35 PM | Comments (3) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
It's not quite the season for tomatoes yet, and there are no fragrant heirloom varieties available at the Greenmarket, but with the weather as warm as it is, I just couldn't wait any longer and went ahead and made no-cook pasta sauce anyway. I used the most summery-looking tomatoes I could find and dressed them up with more garlic and basil than usual and even added some finely mince thyme to make up for the lack of flavor in the tomatoes themselves. A little olive oil and some salt and pepper, and summer had arrived on my dining table.
In past years I haven't been particularly creative with my no-cook pasta sauces; they're always just a mix of tomatoes, aromatics and herbs left to swap juices for a few minutes while the water boils and the pasta cooks. (When I first started making them, four years ago, I followed the directions of a PBS cooking show and let them marinate for hours, but once I found the courage to deviate from these instructions - or maybe just got lazy - I found that they can be made right before dinner, making them simple as well as yummy.) I've never branched into all the summer flavors that could make a good no-cook sauce; in fact, I don't even make pesto. But this summer I'm feeling a little more extravagant. I think that anything that would make a good cold soup would probably also make a good cold pasta sauce, so over the next few weeks I'm hoping to try using strawberries, cantaloupe, mint, and anything else I can get my hands on as a base. It might not always turn out perfect, but I'm excited because no matter what happens it will be fast, it will be easy and, most importantly, it will taste like summer.
Posted by georgia at 11:28 PM | Comments (2) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
The other day I woke up with the urge to bake; it may have had something to do with the freelance writing piece I was avoiding, or maybe it was because The Guy was home for the day too and he loves cookies. Whatever it was, I had a strong urge to make chocolate chip cookies. After the wonderful success with Christopher Kimball's fudgy brownies I knew I would have to try his classic chocolate chip cookies. I was thrilled to find that this recipe, like the other one, didn't require an electric mixer or any ingredients I didn't already have (we had some Crisco in the cabinet from a while back; we don't use it often, but it stays good for a very long time, so it's good to have). Kimball's notes about the process of creating these cookies mention wanting cookies that puffed up and stayed moist inside while getting crunchy around the edges, and that's exactly what these did. He also wanted a cookie that wasn't so sweet that it sent you running for a cup of milk. For my taste they were still very sweet and went very well with a cold glass of milk, but then that's what a chocolate chip cookie is supposed to taste like.
The Best Chocolate Chip Cookie
1/4 cup Crisco
8 tbsp unsalted butter, softened but still firm
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 large egg white
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups plus 2 tbsp all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
10 ounces chocolate chips
1. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Beat the Crisco and butter in a medium bowl with a wooden spoon until pretty smooth but with a few harder pieces (about 1 minute). Add the sugars and stir until well blended. Add the egg, egg white, and vanilla and beat until smooth. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Add to the batter and mix together until smooth. Add the chips and fold in.
2. Line a large cookie sheet with parchment paper. For large cookies, place heaping tablespoons of dough on the paper with 1.5 inches between the outer edges of the balls of dough. Shape the dough quickly with your hand so that each spoonful is compact and not too spread out.
3. Bake for about 12 minutes, or until tops are lightly browned. Rotate pan front to back halfway through baking; do not overcook.
4. Slide parchment paper onto wire racks to cool. Repeat as needed with fresh sheets of parchment paper.
(Note: don't overcook, or they'll be hard as rocks.)
Posted by georgia at 03:22 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
This week we went a little grilled chicken crazy. Maybe it was the long solstice days or our weekend at Cape Cod; or maybe it was just that chicken is easy to make. We tried two grilled chicken recipes on our grill pan, one from Gourmet and one from Living. Both were good and tasted like summer and both were pretty easy to make. The Chipotle-Lime Grilled Chicken from Gourmet was great - the marinade was simple to make and the chicken really took on the flavors of the chipotle Tabasco and the lime juice. I made the mistake of pouring some of the marinade on the rice I made with it (the marinade is much too strong on its own), but the chicken itself was wonderful (The Guy especially liked it). We also made the Lemon-Thyme Chicken Paillards from Living. I was excited because it has specific instructions for using a grill pan instead of a barbeque, which I thought might make the whole process easier. The chicken took the light flavors of the lemon and thyme it was marinated in, but when we followed the instructions the chicken didn't cook all the way through, even though the pieces were very thin. We were able to get the pieces to cook all the way through after putting them back on the pan for a while, but by then then were fairly dry. I'm sure that by adjusting the cooking time we could get it right and it would be very good. So, which will we be most likely to use again? Well, the chipotle-lime chicken only marinated for fifteen minutes and the lemon-thyme chicken had to marinate for at least two hours...so what do you think?
Chipotle-Lime Grilled Chicken
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
1/4 cup olive oil
2.5 tbsp chipotle Tabasco
3/4 tsp salt
6 large skinless boneless chicken thighs
2 tsp mild honey
1. Prepare grill for cooking over direct heat with medium-hot charcoal
2. While coals are lighting, stir together lime juice, oil, Tabasco, and salt in a liquid-measuring cup. Put chicken in a large sealable bag and add 1/3 cup marinade (reserve remainder in cup). Seal bag, forcing out excess air, adn marinate chicken at room temperature, about 15 minutes. Stir honey into remaining marinade until dissolved to make sauce.
3. Grill chicken (discarding marindade in bag) on lightly oiled grill rack, covered only if using gas grill, turning chicken over occasionally and moving it to avoid flareups if necessary, until just cooked through, 8 to 10 minutes.
4. Brush both sides of chicken with some of reserved sauce, then continue to grill, turning over once, until lightly borwned, about 1 minute more. Serve chicken drizzled with remaining sauce.
Posted by georgia at 11:32 PM | Comments (2) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
When Sara and Alicat at The Weekend Cookbook Challenge announced that June's challenge was picnic food, my mind immediately went to desserts. I love to bring desserts to parties because The Guy and I never finish them unless we have some help, and I find that fewer people remember dessert at a picnic, so my contribution is always appreciated (the same goes for interesting drinks, like mint lemonade). And what better dessert for a picnic than brownies? They're transportable, they're classic, and, gosh darnit, people like them. After flipping through a few cookbooks, I decided on the Chewy, Fudgy Brownies from The Dessert Bible by Christopher Kimball for two reasons: One, in the four years we've owned this book, I've never used it (The Guy bought it), and two, it was the easiest recipe I found and I had all the ingredients on hand.
Christopher Kimball himself acknowledges that he prefers lighter brownies, but I love the fudgy ones, so I was excited about this recipe. It was a snap to make (no mixers, stand or hand-held), and almost nothing that could go wrong. The chocolate and butter melted quickly, the ingredients came together smoothly (no beating, folding or worrying involved), and looked shiny and gooey as it glopped into the pan - this is a batter that would be made by Willy Wonka, not Jacques Torres. The only problems I found were that when I went to cut them, two hours after taking them out of the oven, they were so sticky inside that they stuck to the knife and broke apart, and that the foil I had lined the pan with (per the instructions) was imbedded inside the brownies in some places. I let them sit a couple more hours and they became more managable (Kimball notes that these are especially good the day after you make them), and for the sake of simplicity I simply cut off the parts that seemed to have aluminum in them.
Chewy, Fudgy Brownies
4 oz unsweetened chocolate
10 tbsp. unsalted butter
3 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 and 3/4 cups granulated sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 and 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup walnuts, in pieces (optional - I didn't use them)
1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line an 8 X 8- inch baking pan with foil or parchment paper, or grease the pan with butter.
2. Melt the chocolate and butter in a microwave oven at 50 percent power for 2 minutes, or melt in a saucepan over very low heat. Whisk the eggs and vanilla together in a medium bowl. Add the melted chocolate mixture and whisk to combine (mixture with thicken considerably). Add all other ingredients and mix together with a rubber spatula or wooden spoon. The batter will be very thick and somewhat greasy-looking.
3. Scrape batter into baking pan (the batter will hang together like bread dough) and press into place with a large rubber spatula. Bake about 50 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean when inserted into center. For chewier brownies, bake an additional 5 to 10 minutes. Let cool at least 2 hours in pan before removing, cutting and serving. (The brownies will continue cooking and become chewier as they cool.)
Posted by georgia at 03:42 PM | Comments (6) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
It started as a corn and marscapone ravioli we devoured at Al Di La, then turned into a lasagna we served to 100 people. When we wanted it for dinner without all the to do, we turned it into a linguine dish, and this weekend, when we wanted to serve it at a potluck, we turned it into a macaroni and cheese casserole. For each preparation we change the recipe a little bit - for the lasagna we use marscapone, the way the ravioli was made, for the linguine we throw the vegetables into a more traditional cream sauce with butter, cream and cheese, and for the macaroni I opted for the cheese we use for the cream sauce, a little creme fraiche, and a touch of cream, mixed it all together and baked it in a casserole dish. It was great, just like all the other combinations of these ingredients. Now if only I can find a few dozen more combinations like this...
Posted by georgia at 11:24 PM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Last week I pulled out the May issue of Everyday Food and tried all three of the recipes I had wanted to try: the Roasted Chicken with Ginger, Chile and Lime; the Gingered Sugar Snaps; and the pistachio crusted Chocolate-Covered Strawberries. I made the chicken without the pickled jalapeños, but it was almost surprisingly good anyway - the ginger and lime add a wonderful pungent flavor to the meat. The only problem was that almost all the spice was confined to the breasts, where it was easy to spread them under the skin. This left the other parts of the chicken with a lot less flavor. Next time I'll try to get every part of the chicken covered in the spices. The sugar snaps, on the other hand, were a disappointment. The flavor was nice, but even with the strings removed, the snaps remained really fibrous and hard to eat. I much prefer them raw and crunchy to warm and stringy, though if one cut them into smaller pieces and cooked them in the liquid longer, it might break down the fibers. The strawberries were perfect - The Guy likened them to nut-crusted ice cream bars, which was a pretty apt description, and noticed that they'd be really good with almonds. I think they might taste even better with almonds, but they wouldn't be nearly as pretty. My favorite thing about the strawberries was that after leaving them in the fridge for only 15 minutes, as per the instructions, they came out firm but not too hard, so the chocolate didn't crack apart and fall off as we ate them and we were able to enjoy chocolate with each bite of strawberry.
Posted by georgia at 11:35 PM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
A few days ago The Guy and I had a birthday party to go to, and since I have less money than time right now, I thougth I'd make some cookies as gifts (after all, who doesn't like cookies?) The birthday party was for our friend Emily, and I wanted to make sure to give her cookies that were a little retro and a little cute and a little classic, just like she is. This gave me the perfect opportunity to play around with some of my favorite cookies and give them a fun twist. I started by making classic peanut butter cookies, which are nice and retro, then dipped them in melted chocolate to make them a little more grownup. I also made snickerdoodles, which were The Guy's childhood favorites. I thought about using cookie cutters to give them fun shapes, but that would have wasted good dough, so I used the cookie cutter in a different way - by dipping them in colored icing (a watery mix of powdered sugar, water and food-coloring) I made cute heart shapes on the tops of the cookies, which were a hit with everyone.
Posted by georgia at 03:30 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Standing in line at Whole Foods is torture. While you wait for the line to move imperceptibly forward you are treated to an array of dozens of kinds of flavored iced tea. Teany, Honest Tea, so many wonderful teas. But I'm not about to lose my place in line (or spend $4) just because pomegranate white tea is calling me. Instead I resolve to reward myself for my restraint by making my own flavored iced teas at home. Following the instructions from a number of sources (my new favorite tea book among them) I brew a cup of white tea with two bags of tea (steeping only 60 seconds, as instructed by the tin of Republic of Tea Pineapple Guava White Tea), sweeten it with only about a teaspoon of sugar so it won't be as sickly sweet as the store-bought alternatives, and pour it over a large glass full of ice cubes. Once the ice cubes start to melt and the liquid cools, I add a couple more ice cubes and drop in some strips of lemon zest for flavor (fresh mint or a couple fresh cranberries would be great too).
If the tea isn't quite sweet enough for you, just mix equal parts sugar and hot water to make a little simple syrup to stir in, or add a couple drops of pomegranate juice for sweetness, flavor and color.
Posted by georgia at 12:33 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Looking for something new (and quick) to do with chicken, I tried the Sticky Sesame Chicken Wings from Gourmet. They were nice and easy to make (The Guy was nice enough to use his butchering skills to trim the wings into "wingettes") and had a nice flavor to them. I think if I had marinated them longer than the recipe called for they would have been better, but I'd make them again the same way (though maybe not with organic chicken - it was just a little too fatty).
Posted by georgia at 11:42 PM | Comments (2) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
There are many reasons to love Chinatown (litchis by the pound, bubble milk tea, and ma po dou fu being just some of the many), but every time I stand in the sauces aisle at Kam Man grocery store I fall for it all over again. Why on earth would I be paying upwards of $5 for a bottle of soy sauce when I can get twice as much for half the price? And good sesame oil (the kind with actual flavor) for the same? So head to your local Asian market (and while you're there, don't forget the litchis).
Posted by georgia at 10:25 PM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
I don't believe that the lack of a grill (or a yard to put it in for that matter) is reason to deprive myself of yummy recipes. So I tried the chimichurri recipe (parsley, shallots, lemon juice, etc.) from the Gaucho Grill article in Gourmet on a regular piece of pan-seared steak. And I'm glad I did - it was wonderful! It was flavorful and summery, good on the roasted potatoes, and a great change for a warm day. All it needed was a glass of that lemonade from last week.
Posted by georgia at 09:13 PM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Risotto al Limone, Limoncello, Lemon Custard - so many yummy recipes, all requiring lemon zest. Lots of it. So what do you do with the rest of the lemon once you've denuded it of all its lovely zest? I was asking myself this exact question last week after the lemon risotto. I thought about making Ceasar salad dressing to dip artichokes into or doing a recipe search with the words "lemon juice" or just making Living's cornish game hens again, despite the mediocre results the first time. Then it hit me - I could make lemonade. Why had it taken me this long to think of it? Was my childhood so far gone that I'd completely forgotten the sunny wonderfulness of lemon, sugar and water? I grabbed my forlorn zestless lemons and made myself a cup - and since I was using leftovers, I added a small handful of the mint that was leftover from the Pea Ravioli with Mint.
This beautiful glass of lemonade was made with the juice of three small organic lemons, just under three teaspoons sugar, three ice cubes, and about a cup of water. If adding mint, muddle it with a spoon for the best flavor. And don't forget, although a denuded lemon might get hard and look funny, it will still be fresh for days if kept in the fridge.
Posted by georgia at 10:05 PM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
After a couple weeks of a kitchen slump (quesadillas and cereal) I finally broke out the new magazines and my knives.
The first thing on the menu was the Gratinéed Gnocchi with Spinach and Ricotta from Gourmet's Ten Minute Mains. As you can see, it was gorgeous, and we couldn't wait to dig into it. Unfortunately, the taste didn't quite live up to the visual aspect of the dish. It was fine, and the gnocchi (frozen, not dried, because that's what the co-op has) was lovely, but the whole thing lacked spice. I'm not a steamed spinach lover, so that might be the problem, but it would have benefited from some garlic and parmesan (and will next time I make it).
The next dish on the menu this week was the Risotto al Limone from Saveur. I'd been drooling over the picture for weeks, and I was happy with the way it turned out when I made it. Lemony but mild enough not to offend the non-lemon lovers of us (ie The Guy), it was a lovely starter. My only concern is that even after adding an additional scoop of water while cooking, the risotto was almost too al dente. I did halve the recipe, adding the water in 1/2 cup increments instead of full cups, so that may have changed things, but I'd still suggest testing the risotto before you move on to the cream part of the recipe.
Lastly, I pulled a couple of recipes from Living's What's for Dinner section: the Easy Pea Ravioli with Mint and Cornish Game Hens with Lemon and Herbs. The ravioli was an interesting process and kind of sloppy to make (toward the end I resorted to making "pea dumplings" with the wonton wrappers because it was just easier). Since I don't have round cookie cutters I cut them into squares which worked just fine. The end result tasted good, but once I added a little grated lemon zest and parmesan on top of them. For the Cornish Game Hens I substituted a chicken and turned the heat down to 400 degrees. The result was nice, but not as good as some of the other recipes I've tried recently.
Next week? Maybe some desserts...
Posted by georgia at 11:27 PM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Another weekend, another adventure with my new favorite book, Susan Hermann Loomis' On Rue Tatin. My friend Lily, who is equally enamored of the book, agreed to join me in a night of French food and film, and we cooked for a bunch of friends, making recipes exclusively from the book. The Apples Stuffed with Goat Cheese and Leeks were as much of a hit as the first time I made them, the Apple Roquefort, and Walnut Salad was lovely, the Braised Chicken in White Wine and Mustard was a huge success, and the Tiny Baked Potatoes with Cream were fantastic (when the store was out of chives, Lily opted for dill, and the result was wonderful). But the real treat of the night, at least in my mind, was Mamy Jacqueline's Chocolate Cake. I worried about the texture when I was making it, since the dense mix of chocolate, sugar, egg yolks and flour didn't seem like the ideal texture to fold into whipped egg whites, and I worried when I poured the batter into the pan and it seemed to barely cover the bottom (and I was even using a 9" pan instead of 9.5"). But when the cake was served, all my fears were put to rest. The cake was a lovely, thin treat of dense chocolate that was homey and sophisticated all at once, and as soon as people had finished their first slices they immediately asked if they could have more. This cake is going to take a place of honor in my repetoire as the adult's answer to the chocolate layer cakes of our youths - when I have kids it will not be something I make for their birthdays, but it is definitely something I will make for mine.
Mamy Jacqueline's Chocolate Cake
3/4 cup cake flour
Sea salt
7 ounces bitter chocolate (like Lindt 70%)
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
4 large eggs, separated
Confectioners' sugar
1. Butter and flour a 9.5 inch rounk cake pan. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
2. Sift the flour and a generous pinch of salt onto a piece of parchment paper.
3. Melt the chocolate in the top of a double broiler over medium-high heat. Transfer the chocolate to a medium-size bowl and whisk in the butter until the mixture is smooth. Vigorously whisk in all but 1 tablespoon of the sugar, then add the egg yolks and whisk until the mixture is smooth. Using a wooden spoon, stir in the flour mixture 1 tablespoon at a time until well combined.
4. In a large bowl whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt until they are foamy and begin to thicken. Add the remaining tablespoon of sugar and continue whisking until they form soft peaks. Fold the egg whites into the chocolate mixture, then turn it into the prepared baking pan and bake in the center of the oven until the cake springs back, 20 to 25 minutes.
5. Remove the cake from the oven and let it cool to lukewarm in the pan, then turn it out onto a rack to cool thoroughly. To serve, sprinkle it with confectioners' sugar.
6 to 8 servings
Posted by georgia at 11:06 PM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
The egg board likes to say that eggs are the perfect food, but I think quiche has them beat. Filled with protein, vegetables, and a few carbs, it's everything you need all wrapped up in an impressive package. So why don't we make them more often? Probably the crust. No one wants to spend the time making a crust from scratch, and store-bought crusts are not known for their taste and texture. So what's a rushed cook to do? Boil a potato, of course.
A few slices of boiled potato make a wonderful, fast crust that makes quiche-making a breeze. Just cut a soft potato in thin rounds, lie them in the bottom of a pan, smush them a little with a spoon to fill in the gaps, and pour the filling on top. What could be better than that? Well, maybe the fact that it allows you to make a kosher for Passover quiche.
We made a leek and brie quiche this weekend, with a very simple spur-of-the-moment recipe:
Leek and Brie Quiche with Potato Crust
3-4 potatoes
3 leeks (white and light-green parts only) rinsed, halved lengthwise and cut in 1/2 to 3/4 inch slices
Most of a wedge of brie, cut in small pieces (about 5/6th)
6 eggs
1 tablespoon butter
1. Clean potatoes and boil until fork goes all the way through.
2. Sautée leeks until whites turn translucent, about 6 minutes.
3. Slice potatoes (about 1/2 inch) and line bottom of 8"x8" baking pan with them. Smush potatoes with spoon to even out and fill in gaps.
4. Beat eggs in medium bowl and mix in brie and leeks.
5. Pour filling into pan and bake at 350 degrees until center is cooked 30-40 minutes (the center will rise slightly when done).
6. Serve with salad of mesclun and red wine vinaigrette.
Posted by georgia at 10:20 PM | Comments (4) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Cape Cod can be short of a few things in the off-season, but it's definitely not short on kitchen supplies. Though I've been in The Cook Shop in Brewster before, I get excited every time I go in about just how many things they have crammed into their adorable shop. From ladles of every shape and size to a beautiful array of pastry tips to everything Oxo to a rainbow of colored sugars, they have everything you can imagine for your cooking adventures. Is there a cooking school somewhere in Brewster that I don't know about? They also have a wonderful collection of interesting foods like dozens of exotic mustards, jams, salsas, chocolate sauces, teas and exotic candies, most in flavors you've never even considered. I grabbed some tangerine oil to try in chocolate truffles, and it was hard not to get about 20 other things I was drooling over. How they manage to get so many things into such a small space (and where the locals are hiding all the cakes and candy they're making with them) is a mystery, but one I'll happily ignore if it means I can keep going back there every year.
Posted by georgia at 08:04 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
This week started with the very simple Rigatoni with Tomato Sauce and Ricotta from Gourmet, moved to the bright Spring Vegetable Fricassee with Saffron Cream from Bon Appétit and then finished with a grand finale of Spring Greens with Orange-Fennel Vinaigrette and Dark Chocolate Torte with Spiked Blackberry Coulis from Bon Appétit's Passover feature.
The rigatoni was lovely and easy to make, with simple clear flavors that were just as wonderful cold for lunch as they had been the night before for dinner. The sauce, a combination of good (canned) tomatoes and fresh basil was simplicity itself to make, the dollop of ricotta on the side contrasted nicely with the tang of the tomatoes, and the pecorino grated over everything added the only depth the dish needed.
The vegetables in saffron cream were not nearly as simple either in method or taste, but they were lovely and a nice variation on our usual salads and braised leeks. The sauce soaked into rice nicely and the whole dish added flavor to the simple chicken I served it with. The only thing that would keep me from making it again is the simple fact that I don't really see the point to covering vegetables with tons of cream - it seems to defeat the purpose of eating the vegetables. If I did make it, however, I would leave out the peas. There's just something about peas that brings a dish down to the level of little kid food.
The real hit of the week, however, were the Passover dishes I made with my hostess Barbara. For second Seder we made the Spring Greens with Orange-Fennel Vinaigrette, in which I omitted the fennel (The Guy doesn't like it) and substituted a little lemon zest and some dried cranberries, which don't taste anything like fennel but pack the same kind of punch in a salad. We agreed at the end of the night that we liked it better this way - fennel would have been one taste too many (especially alongside brisket, turkey, kugel, matzoh, geffilte fish and melon). And for the end of the meal we made the chocolate tort I had been drooling over since the magazine first arrived at my door. The cake was surprisingly easy to make (just melt chocolate, whip eggs, and fold them together), and had the most wonderful fudgy texture that somehow wasn't too dense. The coulis (blackberry with allspice, bay leaf, cloves, wine, and cognac) was a wonderful complement to the chocolate, and added a great flavor to the chocolate glaze. A fantastic way to end the night (now I just need to find the alka-seltzer in Barbara's medicine cabinet....)
Posted by georgia at 11:03 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Rob Manuel at B3TA has come up with a wonderful thing: the technique for a perfect poached egg. For those of us who don't own a Williams-Sonoma poached egg pan, tossing raw eggs into boiling water usually produces a stringy, watery mess, but Manuel found that if you wrap the egg in cling-wrap, it produces a lovely sphere of an egg that cooks perfectly. To achieve this wonderous egg, line a cup with cling-wrap, crack the egg into the cup, and tie the wrap closed above the egg (leaving as little air as possible).
Drop the whole package into boiling water and poach for approx. 4 minutes, then remove and untie it, and unwrap the egg onto a plate (or a salad made of leftover dandelion greens, soft Danish blue cheese, and warm shallot and balsamic dressing).
Posted by georgia at 09:11 PM | Comments (3) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
I was very excited when I saw the recipes grouped under the heading "Spring Chickens" in Bon Appétit, especially the Mustard-Roasted Chicken with Warm Frisée Salad with Fingerlings and Bacon, because I have three nearly full bottles of different kinds of Dijon mustard in my fridge that I only use for salad dressings. I rushed out and bought the rest of the ingredients I needed, and only after realized that the recipe required me to marinate the chicken "at least 4 hours or overnight." I was so annoyed, because I'm really not exactly someone who preps dinner the night before, but I didn't want to waste any of the ingredients, so I did it anyway. The next night I made the rest of the dish while roasting the chicken, and sat down to a wonderful dinner. The mustard had given the chicken's skin a strong, rich flavor that blended perfectly with the warm friseée dandelion, potato and bacon salad and the balsamic vinegar dressing (which I subbed in for Sherry vinegar). While I'm not thrilled about the idea of prepping dinner the night before again, and I don't really like putting bacon in my salads, this is a meal that I can't wait to have again. It was even good cold for lunch the next day when the greens had wilted from sitting in the dressing over night. Really, surprisingly good.
Posted by georgia at 09:06 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Since we've got such great Spring artichokes coming into markets, I'm inspired to use my favorite artichoke recipe, which my mom adapted from a restaurant we used to love. Simply steam the (cleaned) artichokes 30- 40 minutes, depending on the size, then, holding them with tongs, cut them in half lengthwise and coat the cut sides with a mixture of olive oil, minced garlic, and salt and pepper. Grill them on both sides until they start to get golden-brown ridges (I use a grill pan), and serve them with melted butter, garlic aioli, or, better yet, my favorite Caesar dressing. Enjoy.
Posted by georgia at 10:43 PM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
So there wasn't tons going on in my kitchen this week, but I did try the Pappa al Pomodoro (Bread and Tomato Soup) from Saveur's Florentine Trattoria story. It took a little longer to make than I would have liked, with the leek-cooking and the simmering and the soaking, but there was plenty of time while it was cooking to work on the rest of the meal and get started on clean-up, so it actually worked out very well. I had a problem with my leeks cooking faster than the recipe anticipated (and turning a little too brown on the edges), but I think that's probably the fault of my dinky little stove (it doesn't have the most responsive dials). I was also surprised by just how difficult it is to whisk together a big pot of soup and soft bread - I really need to work on my arm strength if I'm going to do this kind of thing on a regular basis.
The finished soup was lovely, but had a much milder flavor than most of the soups we usually eat, and neither I nor The Guy was thrilled with it. The next day, however, our friend Anna discovered that it was really good cold, and I played with grating parmesan into it, which made the soup a little more flavorful.
With the soup, I tried the Leek and Brie Bruschetta from Everyday Food, since I already had lots of bread and leeks on hand. It was very easy to make, though I did have the same problem with the leeks that I had making the soup, and tasted just as good as expected. We didn't have as much leeks as the recipe called for, so their flavor wasn't as strong, and the tomatoes had not even begun to brown by the time the cheese had melted, but it was the highlight of the meal none-the-less and something that I will make again soon (maybe even this weekend).
Posted by georgia at 10:39 AM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
I was on the receiving end of some good tips from Tod Coleman, the new Food Editor at Saveur, formerly of Everyday Food, and I thought I'd pass them along:
I did not know this before, but apparently when your favorite Italian restaurant makes lasagna, they do not cook the noodles; they just put them in with the sauce and filling and stick the whole thing in the fridge, and by the time they're ready to cook it at night the noodles are soft. While I'm not usually in the habit of making dinner in the morning, I'll definitely keep this in mind for the next time I have a potluck to go to or a weekend party to cook for.
Tod, however, suggested another, faster way of cutting down on the hassle of making lasagna: while they were preparing for last month's issue of Everyday Food, he tried to take this principle and apply it in a smaller time frame. What they found (and included in the issue) was that if you just lay the noodles in very hot tap water while you prepare the rest of the filling, you can avoid the process of boiling water and having noodles stick to each other. I didn't try the lasagna in that issue, but I'll definitely try this technique.
Thanks, Tod.
Posted by georgia at 09:09 AM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Oooooooo... Check out this post from 101 Cookbooks today on Justin Spring's The Itty Bitty Kitchen Handbook. I cannot wait to get my hands on a copy. Until then I'll have to make do with the website, which offers tantalizing pictures and tips, and 101 Cookbook's review, which has nice long quotations from the book.
Posted by georgia at 06:40 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
To return to the topic that occupied us a couple weeks ago (and continues to occupy most of us every night when we stand in our kitchens): Cooking for two is a continuing battle, but this half-sized casserole dish is my secret weapon. Instead of wasting food on a family size portion that we can never get through, I make a small tray of lasagna, enchiladas or chicken. It makes about four servings, which leaves us with just enough leftovers for lunch the next day. Now if only if cupcake tins (and cupcake recipes) came in twos.
Posted by georgia at 10:20 PM | Comments (4) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Maybe it's the time of year, but I still haven't been bowled over by any of the recipes I've tried from this month's magazines (the Irish stuff from Saveur being the obvious exception). This week's recipes were all right, but not anything that I'd rush to make again. We started with the Fettuccine with Sausage and Kale from Gourmet's "Quick" section, which was very good for a few bites, and pretty easy to make, but not all that special (if you want to try it, remember that it's better with lots of extra pecorino - the three flavors go very well together). We also made the buttered polenta from Gourmet, which had a wonderful texture and was soothing to cook, but was not better than the creamy polenta made with a little milk that we had a couple weeks ago. I had also hoped to make the Maple Sugar Ragamuffins or the Maple Sugar Tartlet, which both looked promising, but the Pear and Dried-Cherry Custard Crisp from Bon Appétit was easier to add to the cooking schedule (and simpler to prepare), so I went with that instead. Unfortunately it was not as good as I had hoped after seeing the picture they had of it. The flavors didn't blend together successfully, and although the picture made it look like the fruit would be accompanied by a lovely smothering of custard, but there wasn't even enough to keep the fruit moist. Very unfortunate, especially since the custard itself, when you could get a bite, was wonderful, as was the crisp on top. Next time I'll use it with a different fruit and a larger ratio of the custard.
Posted by georgia at 11:43 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Last week I received this email from Jenny A: "I love to make Potato/cheese/broccoli/ham soup, but when I make it I make a ton! What is the safest way to can it, so I can have it when I want it?"
Though I'm not exactly a canning expert, I'm really interested in this question because it touches on the storage issues mentioned here a couple weeks ago, and on the themes in the NY Times article this week about the health department cracking down on sous vide cooking (not that we're trying anything that complicated in any of our kitchens). So, Jenny, to answer your question:
Canning requires a balance of acid and/or sugars that home cooks can easily achieve with jams or pickles. The sugars in pomagranate jelly and the vinegar in pickled green tomatoes keep the foods from going bad for a few months because they create extreme environments that are inhospitable to bacteria. Soups, on the other hand, and most of the foods we make at home, are going to be full of bacteria, and much more difficult to store and much less stable. This is why all the soups you find on market shelves have preservatives. There are some sites that give advice on canning soup, like this one, but they require a pressure cooker, and I can imagine that not all your results will be spectacular. The recipes also seem to require a certain balance of solids to liquids, so you'd have to modify your recipe.
The best way that I can think of to store soup, and the one recommended by almost all the websites I've read, is to do it the old-fashioned way and freeze it. I would recommend freezing it in single serving containers so that you can thaw only the amount you want to eat (it's not safe to reheat and freeze food a second time) and keeping it in small batches also helps it cook faster, which better prevents bacteria growth (the health department requires restaurants to store things in small batches for this reason). If you're worried about freezer burn, smooth some plastic wrap over the top of the soup, and don't forget, liquid expands when you freeze it, so don't fill your containers all the way or freeze soups in glass containers.
Posted by georgia at 11:34 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
March may come in like a lion and go out like a lamb (and this week's weather certainly did), but this week's cooking came in with a whimper and went out with a bang. It started with the Chocolate Pecan Pie Bars from Everyday Food, which looked amazing in the magazine, but just didn't wow the mouth the way they wowed the eyes. Maybe if I made them with walnuts they might actually taste like something. Fortunately my experiments with the Irish food from Saveur went much better. I made the Colcannon (mashed potatoes with cabbage and leafy greens), which I served with some garlicky roast chicken, and we finished the meal with the Tipsy Puddings from the same issue. Though not for the faint of heart or the under-aged palate, they were really lovely, and a perfect end to the meal. And the following day the Colcannon leftovers turned into a really nice lunch of colcannon cakes, following the method in the Kitchen section of the magazine. Definitely recipes I'll use again.
Posted by georgia at 09:54 PM | Comments (2) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
What on earth is this? Why have you never seen one before? Why is there a Junior Achievement sticker on it? And how is it that Georgia can always open those jars so much faster than you can?
Welcome to the Jar Opener. All during my childhood I pulled it out of the kitchen drawer and used it anytime I needed to open something. At friends' houses I'd have to bang the jar lid against the counter or run it under hot water, but at my house it was as simple as opening a piece of tupperware. The only problem with the jar opener was that it was the only one of it's kind - at least the only one we could get our hands on. My grandmother also had one (she had given my mother the second one she had), but no one else we knew had one, and it they weren't available for sale anywhere. Apparently whatever company had made them had stopped or gone out of business. We combed garage sales and second-hand stores but to no avail. I eventually inherited the jar opener that belonged to my grandmother, but there aren't enough to share with my siblings, and I live in fear of the day that I lose it. Various companies make different kinds of jar openers, like this one and this one, but they're all complicated and bulky with multiple parts or electrical mechanisms. None of them have the simplicity and convenience of this little doodad, and I'll bet none of them work as well either. So if you see one of these lying around, grab it (and if you find out why there's a Junior Achievement sticker on it, let me know)!
Posted by georgia at 07:11 PM | Comments (2) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
This week was not a big cooking week (it was more of the going to Chinatown or ordering take-out kind of a week), but when I finally slowed down a little I did try the Edamame Corn Chowder from Everyday Food. Since the Park Slope Food Co-op doesn't exactly carry creamed corn, I had to improvise with frozen. I also added cream instead of half-and-half (partly to compensate for the corn issue and partly because we never have half-and-half but we use cream for baking and sauces) and Fines Herbes with salt and ground pepper instead of Italian seasoning, because why overcrowd an already crowded spice drawer? The soup was good, but not as good as it probably would have been with the softer creamed corn. Of course, the best idea might be to just use a good corn chowder recipe that I know I like and add the edamame in before it's done (though probably less than the 2 cups in this recipe). I would let it cook a little longer than it did in this recipe too, since the texture just wasn't as soft as I would like, and I would add the bacon back in a few minutes before it was done so that the flavors could all mix.
So that would be my ideal version of this soup, but it's a good idea in whatever form you decide to make it.
Posted by georgia at 10:19 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
What's spoom? acerola? macédoine? And why are they on your menu? Enter The Food Lover's Companion, the little bible for foodies everywhere. With just a flick of the wrist (and a page), all your food questions can be answered. Of course, let's be realistic; how many times a year do you actually go to restaurants with ingredients you can't identify? Once? Less? And when you do, do you really want to be pulling out a book of definitions? Most of us won't even commit this faux pas in foreign countries where we don't speak the language. Well don't worry, you don't have to buy the book and schlep it around to get this fantastic resource; Epicurious.com has it online! So now when faced with the prospect of a challenging menu, you can just look it up ahead of time and query the words that give you a hard time. Or you can just order the thing that looks best, eat the food on your plate like a good foodie, and look up anything you really liked and want to know about when you get home.
Posted by georgia at 11:32 PM | Comments (2) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Well, since I've already started in on the March reviews, I should probably finish up the Feb reviews. This week I finally got to the Feb copy of Living, though not to the lovely craft projects that I wanted to do. I'll hang on to the issue for those and for all the great desserts that I didn't get to try.
This week I started with the Quick Chicken Cacciatore from What's for Dinner, and served it with polenta. Unfortunately my local stores don't carry instant polenta, so I had to make it the hard way (taking notes from the March issue of Gourmet), but I did add some milk and butter and parmesan to the recipe, to mimic Martha's version. The meal was very good, especially the polenta with the sauce from the chicken on it. The chicken was nice, and an interesting variation from my usual recipes, but nothing to write home about (Mom, I guess that means you should stop reading now), and for something that calls itself "quick", it takes an awfully long time.
I also made the Little Lemon Soufflés, which looked like one of the quicker, cuter desserts in the issue. It was quick, and kind of fun to make, but as you can see from the pictures, they weren't exactly cute. The soufflés rose in funny directions and the lemons (Meyer lemons, as per the recipe) turned a very dark gold as they cooked. Looking at the picture in the magazine, I assume that the stylist had the kitchen bake a few dozen of these just to get the three they showed us, then did lots of color correction to get them as cute as they look.
Despite their ugliness they were lovely to eat, though, and The Guy especially liked them. Maybe next time I try them I'll make them in real ramekins, so it will be easier to salvage their appearences when they go lopsided.
Posted by georgia at 10:21 PM | Comments (2) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
This was another Bon Appétit week, though with new job stuff taking up more time than I had anticipated it was not a big cooking week. I started with the White Chocolate Cupcakes with Candied Kumquats (if you're snowed in on a Sunday afternoon, why not bake?) and then made the Roasted Red Pepper Soup with Orange Cream (yay for my hand blender - see the soup picture here). Unfortunately these, like the other recipes I tried this week, were not as good as I expected them to be. The cupcakes were trying to be too many things at once (white chocolate, coconut milk and candied kumquats all together) and didn't live up to the hype. The coconut totally disappeared into the other flavors, and the cupcakes themselves didn't have the moist texture I was hoping for. Fortunately the wonderful icing and the candied kumquats almost totally made up for it. While I might not use the whole recipe again, I'll definitely use these two components. I especially love the kumquats - I've always loved them, just popped into my mouth as a little wake-up - and now I actually have something to do with them.
The soup had some of the same problems, but it somehow lacked the depth I was expecting. Though it had the zing of orange zest worked into the cream and the freshness of basil, the basic soup was kind of flat (and tasted entirely too much of jarred red peppers - though I don't know why that surprised me).
So what's going on? Have I lost my ability to pick recipes? I guess all I can do to find out is the same thing I always do after a bad week in the kitchen - just keep cooking.
Posted by georgia at 10:58 PM | Comments (2) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
So it may be a little early to be doing next month's Weekend Cookbook Challenge, but events have conspired to put recipes relating to the theme in my path, so here it is, my take on the theme of Foods in Shades of Orange. Many months ago I was given a copy of the beautiful cookbook The Tra Vigne Cookbook: Seasons in the California Wine Country, but I had yet to crack it until last night, when I finally opened it to make the Roasted Beet, Onion and Orange Salad (I had some oranges that I was afraid would go bad and some hazelnuts left over from a baking project, so the recipe looked perfect). I was planning on eating it with some kind of roasted chicken or turkey or something, but I didn't really like the idea of waiting for meat to cook for an hour.
So yesterday when I came across a recipe for Venetian Pumpkin Risotto in the cookbook The Jewish Kitchen (which I've been going through for a work-related project), I thought I had found the perfect solution. My dinner was fairly quick and painless to make, and consisted of both a dish made with oranges and a dish with a nice orange color (aren't the pictures pretty?), but unfortunately, neither recipe really worked out for me. For some reason the salad was not nearly as good on my tongue as it was in my mind, and though The Guy loved the risotto, I found it drier than I like, and the butternut squash didn't retain much flavor in the finished dish. These problems are probably both my fault, since I'm sure the salad is excellent at the Tra Vigne restaurant, and I didn't use the specific type of rice called for in the risotto recipe (I used plain arborio, the book calls for something more specific) and therefor had to add more stock than I should have. Overall it wasn't a bad meal, but I don't think it's a good sign when you don't want to eat the leftovers for lunch.
Posted by georgia at 12:57 PM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
To survive the normal New Yorker's tiny little kitchen, you need a library of basic cooking tools and only these basic cooking tools. You have to be able to do anything you would do in a normal-sized kitchen, but you can't have all the gadgets other cooks use to do these things - if you did, you yourself would never be able to get into the kitchen to use them. Thus far I have happily relied on my smaller-than-normal Mini Cuisinart, my half size casserole dish my hand-mixer (I was offered a stand mixer, but where would I put it?) and now, thanks to a generous box of gifts from Ginger Howard, I finally have the hand-held blender that rounds out the collection.
I love my blender, because, like the perfect New York tool, it does all the things that a big standing blender does, but it slips nicely between my mini Cuisinart and my baby coffee blender, taking up less room than a large water glass. And for my needs the hand-held blender is even better than a regular blender, because while I don't make lots of smoothies, I do like to blend soup. For a long, long time I avoided all soup recipes that required blending, resorting to the ordeal that is blending soup in batches in a Cuisinart only when absolutely giddy about the wonderfulness of a recipe, but now I can cook with abandon, sticking my lovely little blending wand into pots of soup with abandon.
So thank you, Ginger, for completing my library of kitchen tools. The photo above is for you.
Posted by georgia at 08:32 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Now that my January/February Cook's Illustrated has finally arrived (bizarely, a couple weeks after my March copy), I'm going to backtrack and take a look at it. And since Bon Appétit send their issues out a full month early, I'm going to look at the March issue and catch up with that too.
Cook's Illustrated
Like:
Skillet Chicken Pot Pie - The Guy loves chicken pot pie, and if this is really an easier way to make it, I can't wait! How to cook rice and grains is great to know, the coaching on how different sized pieces of butter affects the flakiness of crusts is fascinating, and a piece about perfecting chocolate mouse is, of course, right up my ally.
Don't Like:
Despite my sometimes obsession with fast, I'm not really one for pesizzled bacon, and I'm definitely not a refried beans person.
Yum:
Pot pie anyone? Maybe with a side of biscuits and a little chocolate mousse for dessert?
Bon Appétit
Like:
More biscuits, and these are supposed to be great; the "Naturalist" chopsticks in Starters are beautiful; Party Improv actually looks kind of inspiring; the article on parsnips is great, because I never know what to do with them and I'd like to try; most of the things in Bon Vivant are beautiful, especially the bowl, the earthenware pottery, and the chocolate-covered crispy rice; and the article on Oregon truffles is fascinating.
Don't Like:
The idea of an article on mozzarella recipes looked good, but the recipes are dissapointing, and the article on bringing steakhouse recipes home left me cold for some reason
Yum:
Cornmeal and cheddar biscuits, arugula salad and oranges slices with Grand Marnier for dessert, Parsnip and Hazelnut Gratin with Bacon, Sautéed Chichen with Parsnip, Apple and Sherry Pan Sauce, Pear and Dried-Cherry Custard Crisp, Upside-Down Butterscotch Apple Sour Cream Cake, and Linguine Avgolemono with Artichoke Hearts and Green Beans.
As for the recipe testing, this week I managed to eschew the many sugary desserts littering the pages of my magazines and stick to the entrees and vegetables (the only upside to my fight with a head-cold). This week was a Bon Appétit week with recipes from both issues. Our favorites were the Green-Onion Risotto and the Thyme-Roasted Carrots from Feb, which we ate together. The risotto was lovely. The unexpected, bright flavor of the orange zest and the fresh green onion added a lovely conterpoint to the rich, comfort-food flavor of the rice. The carrots were also wonderful. Rediculously easy to make, they were mellow enough that the flavor of the thyme really shined through even though it wasn't as visible as I had expected. I accidentally let some of them char a little on the edges, but the flavor actually added to the dish's wonderful taste and drew focus to the carrots' carmelized sugars. Both recipes left us wanting seconds, and I would readily make both for guests.
The Sautéed Chichen with Parsnip, Apple and Sherry Pan Sauce, from the March issue, was not as much of a success. The chicken was fine, and the dish was very edible, but if this was the only way to cook parsnips I would never buy them again. Fine for one night, but no something I'll ever make again.
Posted by georgia at 09:42 PM | Comments (2) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Have you ever wanted to move to France? Buy an old house with hundreds of years of history and painstakingly restore it? Negotiate the unique cultural challenges of a small city in a new country? Or just spend all your time researching and cooking French recipes?
Well cookbook author Susan Loomis has done it all, and in 2001 she wrote a book that allowed us all to experience it with her. Her joyous, engaging account of starting a life in Normandy with her husband and her young son is a delightful read and a great introduction to French culture. It is also a wonderful introduction to French cooking with descriptions and histories of the dishes she includes after each chapter. The recipes are easy to follow and seem less daunting than most French cooking (due, no doubt, to the explanations and stories that go with them) and delicious. We tried the Apples Stuffed with Goat Cheese and Leeks and the Pear and Honey Clafoutis, both of which were wonderful. Can't wait to try some more.
Apples Stuffed with Goat Cheese and Leeks
4 large apples, cored, one strip of skin removed from the circumference of each apple
1 cup white wine such as Sauvignon Blanc
1 dried, imported bay leaf
Fine sea salt
2 tablespoons butter
2 large leeks, white part only, well-rinsed, and diced
2 tablespoons bottled water
7 ounces goat cheese
2 tablespoons crème fraîche or heavy cream
Freshly ground black pepper
Flat-leaf parsley for garnish
1. Preheat the oven to 400 Fº.
2. Place the apples in a baking dish and pour the wine around them. Add the bay leaf to the wine. Lightly salt the interior of the apple.
3. Place 1 tablespoon of the butter and the leeks in a large, heavy saucepan adn cook, stirring and shaking the pan, until the leeks begin to turn transparent. Add 1 tablespoon of the water, stir, and cover the pan. Continue cooking until the leeks are tender, about 10 minutes, adding additional water if necessary to prevent the leeks from sticking to the pan.
4. When the leeks are cooked, transfer them to a mixing bowl. Add the goat cheese and crème fraîche and stir until all the ingredients are thoroughly mixed. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
5. Gently stuff each apple with an equal amount of the goat cheese and leek mixture, pressing it into the cavity and mounding it on top. Top each apple with one fourth of the remaining tablespoon of butter.
6. Bake in the center of the oven until the apples are tender and the goat cheese is dark golden on top, about 45 minutes. Remove from the oven and transfer one apple to each of four warmed plates. Garnish the plate with sweet cicely or the parsley and serve immediately.
4 SERVINGS
Posted by georgia at 05:34 PM | Comments (2) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
It's always nice to have an excuse for an unusual cooking project. Especially if the cooking project is dumplings. There's something extremely meditative about sitting with a bowl of filling and a stack of dumpling wrappers and just focusing on the repetition and simplicity of the process. So with the excuse of Chinese New Year, the traditional holiday for making dumplings (well, one of the many), I spent a nice hour making my favorite dumplings over the weekend. For anyone interested in trying their hand at it, the recipe (a version from my college Chinese teacher, Li Duan Duan) is below, and here's a set of step by step photos (just click the picture). For an alternate version, David Lebovitz also posted a sui mai recipe recently.
Chicken and Jicama Dumplings
1 pint "chicken paste" (available in Chinese butchers' - you can also mince chicken breasts yourself)
3-4 Shitake mushrooms (if making your own chicken paste, add a couple extra)
3 scallions (green parts only)
1 cup jicama
1 tablespoon sugar (approx.)
1 and 1/2 - 2 cups olive oil
1/4 cup soy sauce
salt
2 packages round dumpling wrappers
click the picture for step by step images!
1. Mince all the vegetables (you can pulse them in the Cuisinart). Mix them and the sugar, oil, and soy sauce with the chicken. Salt to taste. (Test flavor of filling by dropping a small spoonful into boiling water for a couple minutes.)
2. Set table with a small bowl of water, a few paper towels, filling and wrappers.
3. To bao jiaozi ("wrap dumplings"), place a wrapper in your palm and wet edges with water. Dry fingers and place a very small ammount of filling in the center of the wrapper (the smaller the ammount, the easier to work with). Fold the wrapper in half and pinch securely. Make small folds in the front side of the wrapper, folding them toward the center and pinching them securely. Work from the center to the end, finishing one side before you start the other.
4. To cook the dumplings, drop 10-20 in a pot of boiling water (ammount varies depending on size of the pot). Stir to make sure they're not sticking to the bottom. When all the dumplings have floated to the top and the water is boiling again, add 1 or so of cold water. When the water returns to a boil a second time the dumplings are done.
5. Remove with a slotted spoon and serve with a sauce of equal parts soy sauce and rice vinegar with a little sesame oil. Add ginger or garlic to taste.
Posted by georgia at 10:57 PM | Comments (3) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Just learning to cook? Need a little help with the directions? Not sure what something should look like when it's done? Thanks to Cooking For Engineers you don't have to guess anymore. This site, pointed out to me by Mitch, a computer science professor, follows the cooking adventures of its writer, documenting each step in each recipe with Cook's Illustrated-like photos that show you exactly how each thing is supposed to be done (like the one above illustrating how to zest an orange). What a great resource!
Posted by georgia at 11:16 PM | Comments (2) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
This week was not a banner week for cooking and new recipes, but I did get to a couple of the recipes from this month's magazines. Since I have a new bottle of truffle oil in my cabinet (does anyone else's mom use gourmet food as stocking stuffers?) I tried the Tagliatelle with Mushrooms, Peas, and Truffle Oil from the R.S.V.P. section of Bon Appétit. The recipe was originally from North, in Scottsdale, AZ, and hailed as a rich vegetarian alternative. The dish, as you can see, was beautiful, and pretty yummy too, especially with some extra truffle oil on it and really good Parmigiano-Reggiano. The only disappointment was that the dish smelled better when it was cooking than it tasted when it was finished - a cruel twist of fate. The Guy liked it better than I did since he hadn't spent the evening smelling the wonderful aromas of sautéing mushrooms. I served it with a salad of Boston lettuce drenched in the French Vinaigrette from the back page of Gourmet. It was a nice salad dressing, but a little blander than I usually like, so I might have to change it up if I use the recipe again.
I should disclose that I used fresh fettuccine instead of tagliatelle (the recipe allows for this alternative), a slightly fruity white wine, and regular garden peas instead of petite peas. I also left out the parsley since I didn't want to have the rest of it sitting around going bad in the fridge.
The other recipe I tried was the German Apple Pancakes from Gourmet, originally from a 1952. Unfortunately the recipe was not at all what I was hoping for. The recipe is fairly difficult, requiring a lot of slicing to get the apple "matchsticks", and then cooking each pancake separately, keeping each one warm in the oven. Sadly, the work is not worth it. The apple flavor is not strong, and the combination of the apples and the lemon juice taste almost like onions. In the end, it doesn't really taste like either breakfast or dessert. I didn't finish my helping, and The Guy only did after drowning his in maple syrup. So sad - but at least I have my old recipe, which is much easier and totally yummy.
Next week, Butterscotch Chiffon Pie, Green Tea Cheesecake, and hopefully, a lot more.
Tagliatelle with Mushrooms, Peas, and Truffle Oil
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 pound assorted wild mushrooms (such as oyster, crimini, and stemmed shiitake), sliced [I used shitake, crimini, and hedgehog mushrooms]
3/4 cup dry white wine
1 9-ounce package fresh tagliatelle or fettuccine
1 3/4 cups frozen petite peas, thawed
1/4 cup thinly sliced fresh basil
2 tablespoons chopped fresh Italian parsley
1 teaspoon white or black truffle oil [I added more before I served it]
1/2 cup (about) vegetable broth
2 cups shaved Parmesan cheese
Melt butter with oil in heavy large skillet over medium-high heat. Add garlic; stir 30 seconds. Add mushrooms and sauté until brown and juices evaporate, about 8 minutes. Add wine and boil 1 minute. (Sauce can be prepared 2 hours ahead. Let stand at room temperature. Rewarm before continuing.)
Cook pasta in large pot of boiling salted water until tender but still firm to bite, stirring occasionally. Drain.
Add peas to sauce and stir over medium-high heat to warm through. Stir in basil, parsley, adn truffle oil. Add pasta to sauce; toss to coat. Add enough vegetable broth to pasta to moisten. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Transfer to bowls. Top with Parmesan and serve.
Posted by georgia at 12:03 AM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Jennifer at The Kitchen Review pointed us to this page at Consumer Reports that outlines which fruits and vegetables hold pesticides on their skin after washing and which don't. This is great information for those of us who prefer to eat organic but have to stick to a budget.
Posted by georgia at 05:18 PM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Last night we had a little impromptu dinner with an old friend who has recently become single. Since most of us are just getting over bad winter colds (and one has just started trying to get over a broken heart), I thought it was the perfect day to embrace this month's Weekend Cookbook Challenge theme of comfort food. A few years ago, when I first fell in love with Jamie Oliver, aka The Naked Chef, and his tv show, I watched him make "Chicken with Milk", a dish that looked so ridiculously easy to make and so amazingly yummy that I still remember it four years later. While looking through my cookbooks last week to find winter comfort food for the challenge, I came across a beautiful picture of a chicken with strips of lemon peel on it, nestled in a deep pot. The picture looked so good, and Oliver had made it look so easy, I just had to see what it tasted like. After browning the chicken I threw it in the oven with a couple cups of milk, the zest of two lemons, a handful of sage leaves, some garlic, and a cinnamon stick, and let it cook, following the instructions to "baste when you remember". While it was cooking, I boiled some potatoes and mashed them with sautéed shallots and basil. The meal took almost no active time, I got to visit with our heartachy friend while the bird and the potatoes cooked, and when everything was ready I just tore the meat off the bird, piled it on the potatoes, and threw some salad dressing on a handful of lettuce for each of us.
And how was it? Was it really as good as it was easy? No ladies and gentlemen, it wasn't - it was even better. The chicken was so moist and the sauce was so flavorful that I would have been willing to do much more work for the same results (haha, I win this round, kitchen gods).
So now, as bad as the weather is, I'm kind of glad there's still lots of winter left - I'm looking forward to making this dish again.
Posted by georgia at 10:30 PM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Your chicken recipe calls for a tablespoon of fresh rosemary, your roasted tomatoes require a teaspoon of thyme, and you want to add chives to your mashed potatoes. By the end of the weekend, you have handfuls of fresh herbs sitting in a cup of water, and there isn't a recipe in the world that will use all of them up. Don't despair, there are lots of great things you can do with your leftover herbs. Use a small handful of sage to add flavor to a cup of green tea, blend some chives and thyme into butter or goat cheese with a Cuisinart and serve it with a baguette, leave sprigs of rosemary in a bottle of vodka for unusual martinis, or, if all that weekend cooking has worn you out, just drop a sachet of all your leftover aromatics into a bath.
Posted by georgia at 11:56 PM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
While making the Crumble Pomme Mangue from Chocolate & Zucchini, I remembered the wonderful trick a friends taught me in college for cutting and eating magoes. While she was studying in Taiwan she learned that instead of just peeling the skin off a mango and trying to eat keep your hands on a football of slimy sweetness, it's much easier to leave the skin on and use it to hold the flesh. Simply cut the sides off the mango as close to the pit as possible (this obviously works best if you cut the wider of the two sides, along the flat sides of the pit), then score the flesh into squares, being sure not to pierce the flesh (if you cut with a butter knife and keep your hand under the skin, this should be easy). Then simply turn the piece inside out to reveal a porcupine of fresh mango cubes, ready to be cut or bitten off the skin. The remaining thin pieces of mango still attached to the pit can be similarly dealt with (like the extra piece on top of the large piece in the photo).
The crumble itself was lovely and, best of all, so low on sugar that I didn't feel the least bit guilty polishing off the leftovers for breakfast the next day.
Posted by georgia at 11:55 PM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
My attempt to try the Cranberry and Vanilla-Bean Mimosas from Bon Appétit last week reminded me of one of the most painful and most important lessons of cooking: things go wrong. Even the best laid plans don't always work out when you get into the kitchen and start messing around with knives and heat and perishable ingredients.
In this case it was the vanilla bean my mom had in her cupboard that proved fatal; though it was sealed up well in its plastic case it had dried out and the paste had hardened into little bits of black vanillaness that did not dissolve in the drinks, clinging instead to the edges of the glasses and imparting almost none of their flavor to the drinks. My mom insisted that she could smell the vanilla, but most of us gave up on the drinks after a couple sips and opted for a glass of wine instead. Which of course is the solution to the problem of things going wrong in the kitchen - you figure out an alternative and move on.
Posted by georgia at 11:28 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
If you're heading into the kitchen to make latkes this Hannukah, beware: the process of grating potatoes and cooking them in small batches in hot oil is not the no-fuss kind of cooking we usually prefer to do. So why do we do it every year? Because the resulting bites of oil and potatoes, piled high with sour cream and apple sauce, are one of the best holiday foods around. While there's no way to avoid the time intensive process of frying the latkes (after all, frying them in oil is what makes them symbolic of Hannukah), there are some things you can do to make the process a little easier.
1. Instead of spending an hour struggling with a box grater and cutting yourself trying to grate the last little piece of each potato, shred your potatoes with the grating attachment of your food processor. It works just as well in a fraction of the time.
2. Before grating the potatoes, line a large bowl with a kitchen towel, and put the grated potatoes in the towel. Then, use the towel to squeeze as much moisture as possible out of the potatoes before mixing in the flour and eggs.
3. When forming the latkes in your hands, squish them together as much as you can before putting them in the hot oil, then let them sit for a few seconds before using the spatula to flatten them. This will help them stay together and keep them from breaking into smaller, more easily burned bits.
Last weekend we tried the Apple-Potato Latkes with Apple Salsa from Bon Appétit along with our regular latkes, and they turned out wonderfully. Of course, the only person who could really taste the difference between the latkes with apples and the regular latkes was my sister, the apple lover, but we liked them anyway. The apples salsa was a good recipe, adding a little bit of interest to latkes and giving a little reminder of holidays to come in the new year with its haroset-like taste. And while it did not have the same comfort food feeling that the warm applesauce did, it disappeared off the table pretty quickly.
Posted by georgia at 09:35 PM | Comments (4) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
The best recipes are the ones that you get from your family, the ones that are handed down through generations and are still culturally viable and yummy for generations. When you make these recipes they remind you of your family history and the relatives you miss, and when you adapt the recipe to your own tastes, adding or substituting flavors, you contribute your own chapter to the family history.
In our family, this dish is the Christmas Salad. Begun by my great-great grandmother, this recipe has evolved through the generations, each cook making a version that fits her environment and taste buds. The first Christmas salad was made of slices of grapefruit and avocado, artfully arranged in a flower pattern, on top of a bed of lettuce (I have no idea what kind). Her daughter, my great-grandmother, and her daughter, my great-aunt, all stuck relatively close the original salad, to the great dismay of my second cousins, who couldn't stand the sight of the bitter grapefruit and unfamiliar avocado on their plates every Christmas. My grandmother inherited the Christmas salad recipe from her mother-in-law when she married, and made the first substantial change to it, substituting slivers of tangerine for the grapefruit. When my mother moved from the Midwest to the sunny beaches of Southern California, she brought the idea of the salad with her, but altered it further, replacing the traditional citrus with slices of hachiya persimmons (the soft ones) and adding long, thin slivers of green onions and a sprinkling of pomegranate seeds.
I first began contributing to the traditional family salad when I was in college, bringing fuyu persimmons from NYC's Chinatown to substitute in for the slimy hachiyas that some members of our family didn't like, and then, a couple years later, introducing everyone to the wonderful crunch of endive, which my mother and I added to the traditional flower pattern of the salad. A couple years later we experimented with adding crumbles of gorgonzola to the mix, giving a little pungent, salty flavor to the mix of fruits and vegetables.
These days our salad bears very little resemblance to the pinwheel of grapefruit and avocado that my great-great grandmother first served, but every year when we make it we think of all the women who came before us and tell the story of the salad and its history to any guests who haven't heard it before.
Posted by georgia at 11:00 AM | Comments (2) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
This week in a flurry of Christmas excitement I tried two new recipes from this month's Bon Appétit: the Gingerbread Truffles and the Pistachio, Raspberry and White Chocolate Biscotti. Both recipes were fantastic. The biscotti were much easier to make than most of the cookies I've made recently because they don't involve beating butter and sugar together until fluffy. Instead, you just beat sugar, eggs, oil and extract together until just blended, then add the dry ingredients. The only part of this recipe that was slightly harder than I had expected was mixing in the nuts, berries and chocolate pieces, since the batter was pretty thick and sticky (you'll notice that the dried raspberries in my picture, which are pretty delicate, did not stay together in nice pieces the way they did for the magazine stylists). Otherwise, they turned out great, except for the fact that I somehow managed to make them a little more short and squat than your usual biscotti, but that's just my bad eye, not a problem with the recipe. The Gingerbread Truffles recipe was just as easy and the truffles have a wonderful gingerbread flavor. They're also denser than some other recipes I've used in the past, making it easier to dip them in chocolate. I will definitely use both recipes again - now if I can only keep from eating all of them myself.
Posted by georgia at 12:50 AM | Comments (2) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Cooking in a small apartment kitchen presents many challenges - no counter space, overflowing cabinets, and the cheapest fridge and oven your landlord could find, to name just a few. Baking in a small kitchen presents even more problems. Rolling pins get lost in the depths of closets, extracts hide under bags of rice that are themselves hiding behind cans of tomatoes, bags of flour, and boxes of pasta, all of which are packed in so tightly that if you remove one item all the others come tumbling out of the cabinet as well. And worst of all, the whole tiny space gets so hot that dough turns to mush the second you try to roll it out.
Fortunately there are solutions to at least two of these problems. To give yourself the same advantage cooks with marble countertops have, just stick your cutting board into the freezer for the hour that you're chilling the dough and watch gleefully as your duckie-shaped cookies come off the counter without melting or loosing a foot. And to roll out dough without the aid of the long-lost rolling pin, use any smooth cylindrical item you have on hand; a clean glass works just fine, and a chilled bottle of Chardonnay is even better (like a nice heavy marble rolling pin).
If you run out of sugar or flour at the 11th hour there's not much you can do to salvage dessert, but an inadequate kitchen should never keep an intrepid cook from serving cookies and homemade pie on Christmas Eve.
Posted by georgia at 11:03 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Every Christmas cooks get out lots of cookie recipes - old family favorites, new confections from food magazines, gingerbread men, Mexican wedding cookies, sour cream cookies filled with jam, chocolate cookies filled with peppermint cream, and hundreds more. But the one kind of cookie that almost all cooks make at Christmas is the sugar cookie, those flat, un-spectacular cookies that we cut into shapes and decorate with colored icing. Hundreds of sites and cookbooks offer recipes for these little bits of holiday tradition, so the question is, which one is the best? Which recipe will give you cookies that will look good and also taste like something you wouldn't be embarrassed to serve guests.
This year Gourmet published a recipe for sugar cookies, so I decided to test it against the recipe from The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook that my mom uses every year. The cookies from the Gourmet recipe (the hands and feet in the picture) required less time to bake and turned out a nice light gold, and they had a nice sweet taste, but they were so hard to bite into that for a second I was thought I might hurt my mouth. Maybe a good cookie to hang on a tree as an ornament, but not one to serve to guests as dessert. The Martha Stewart recipe (the geese and duckie cookies) had a little less sugar, more butter, and more flour, with the additions of baking soda and a little liquer for flavor. They take a little longer to cook (they're 1/4 inch thick instead of 1/8 inch), and star to burn to a dark brown around the edges before the middles are done, but they have a light, flaky texture and a great taste.
Somewhere there must be a recipe out there that tastes good and looks great - until then, I think I'm going with taste this year.
Posted by georgia at 11:13 PM | Comments (3) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
For most cooks, most of cooking consists of following recipes. Cookbooks, cooking magazines, and sites like Epicurious.com inspire home chefs, teach them to make new dishes, and introduce them to new cuisines. But as any good chef knows, the mark of a really good, confident cook is the ability to create dishes using instinct, experience, and imagination, not recipes.
Pam Anderson, author of How To Cook Without A Book: Recipes and Techniques Every Cook Should Know By Heart, astutely bases a cookbook on this premise. In a book geared toward novice cooks, Anderson gives a lengthy cooking class that covers everything from soups and salads to ravioli, pad thai and desserts. She picks a type of food and shows cooks how to embellish a basic recipe to create endless spinn-off dishes.
For instance, in the chapter "Simple Tomato Sauce, Scores of Possibilities" she starts with a Simple Tomato Sauce, then lists multiple variations, basing each variation on the "master recipe"; for instance for Tomato-Basil Cream Sauce she lists a handful of new ingredients and instructs the cook: "Follow the Simple Tomato Sauce Recipe, adding cream and basil to the fully cooked sauce. Continue to simmer until heated through, 1 to 2 minutes longer." This same technique is used to teach the reader to make sauces with artichokes and olive, mussels and garlic, and many more. For "Weeknight Stir-Fries" she uses the (longish) rhyme "With onion, garlic and ginger, stir-fry a pound each of vegetables and meat, Then stir in a flavoring sauce for a meal satisfying and complete" as the base for everything from Stir-Fried Chicken with Snow Peas and Water Chestnuts to Stir-Fried Tofu with Haricots Verts and Eggplant, and Sweet-and-Sour Pork with Peppers and Pineapple.
The idea is obviously that once a cook works his or her way through a few of these variations, he or she will understand the basic principals behind the dish and be able to create new recipes. Not a bad way to learn to cook, huh? And maybe a great Christmas or Hanukah gift for the college student or budding chef in your family.
Posted by georgia at 11:36 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
I think the real key to a memorable Thanksgiving lies in the successful combining of old favorites and new interesting dishes. Tonight's Pre-Thanksgiving Feast (or "Friend Thanksgiving" as our hosts, Dora and Diane, called it) was a perfect example of this. We had wonderful traditional dishes - the turkey, formerly known as Malcolm, and the mashed potatoes and the gravy and apple pie - and also managed to pull together some more unusual side dishes that captured the essence of Thanksgiving while adding something new to the table. Diane brilliantly added a pile of perfectly round, glistening baked apples to the table that had such a Thanksgiving feel to them that I was surprised more people haven't thought of making them, and I brought a Pumpkin-Chocolate Tart that I found in the November 2003 issue of Living, which managed to keep the traditional pumpkin dessert taste even though the bittersweet chocolate crust kept it from tasting as sweetly cloying as some pumpkin pies.
To make the apples, Diane simply stuffed them with dried cranberries, brown sugar, and butter and baked them in muffin tins with a little water beneath each apple to steam them. The Pumpkin-Chocolate Tart recipe isn't on the Living website for some reason, but it's too good not to share, so here it is:
(ps - I just use a regular hand mixer)
Chocolate Crust
(makes 1 ten-inch tart shell)
1 cup flour, plus more for work surface
1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 large egg
4 ounces best-quality semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
1. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine flour, sugar, cocoa, salt, cinnamon, and cloves. Add butter; mix on low speed until butter is the size of small peas, about 5 minutes. Add egg; mix until ingredients come together to form a dough.
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. On a lightly floured work surface, roll out dough to just thicker than 1/8 inch. Brush off excess flour; transfer dough to a 10-inch tart pan with a removable bottom. Press dough into bottom and up sides of pan; trim excess flush with edge. Lightly prick bottom of dough all over with a fork. Chill until firm, about 30 minutes.
3. Bake shell until firm, about 15 minutes. Immediately spinkle chocolate over bottom of shell; smooth with spatula.
Pumpkin-Chocolate Tart
1 can (15 ounces) pumpkin puree
3/4 cup firmly packed light-brown sugar
8 ounces creme fraiche
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
Chocolate Crust (recipe above)
2 ounces best-quality semisweet chocolate
1. Preheat Oven to 350 degrees. In a medium bowl, whisk together pumpkin puree, brown sugar, creme fraiche, eggs, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, salt, and cloves until smooth. Pass mixture through a fine sieve set over a clean bowl; discard solids. Pour filling into prepared crust.
2. Bake until filling is set, about 40 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack, and let cool for at least 30 minutes.
3. Set a heatproof bowl, or the top of a double boiler, over a pan of barely simmering water. Melt chocolate in bowl, stirring occasionally; remove from heat. Dip a spoon in melted chocolate, then drizzle chocolate over tart, forming decorative stripes. Refrigerate until well set, at least 1 hour and up to 1 day.
Posted by georgia at 10:34 PM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
This week I decided to try some of the recipes from this month's Gourmet in preparation for Thanksgiving. (A couple years ago I learned the hard way that if I want to serve something to my friends and family I should give it a trial run first.) Since cranberry sauce has never been my favorite part of Thanksgiving, I decided to look for an interesting alternative, and I tried two: Quick Cranberry Trifles (from the Contents page) and Persimmon Cranberry Sauce (from "A New Tradition"). Both recipes were amazing.
The cranberry trifle was spectacularly different from the holiday desserts I'm used to; the cranberries gave the dish a wonderful tang that, along with the seductive notes from the Sherry, made this a very sophisticated, very grown-up dessert. The combination of the ice cream and heavy cream for the custard also added a delicate depth to the dish. I made one to eat right away, instead of chilling it, and although the flavors had not mixed and the cake didn't blend with the other ingredients as well as it did in the chilled ones, it was still a wonderful dessert. My only caveat with this recipe is that despite it's name, this dessert is not "quick". Yes, it doesn't take long to assemble, but to make it right you do have to chill it for eight hours (and I'm not really the kind of person who thinks about the night's dessert directly after doing the breakfast dishes). That said, I can't wait to make this again - no matter what time of day I have to start it.
The Persimmon Cranberry Sauce was equally good and, to me, just as surprising, because I'd never had a cranberry sauce that overshadowed the other food on my plate. Yes, the poultry and mashed potatoes and vegetables I ate it with were good - very, very good in fact - but the sauce was so amazing that I couldn't stop eating it. I piled giant clumps of it on my meat, mixed it into my potatoes, and even used it as a topping for my salad. And the best part (okay, the flavor was the best part, but this was good too) is that it's ridiculously easy to make and takes less than fifteen minutes.
Wow - thank you Ruth Reichl and all the folks at Gourmet; I would never have known how much I loved cranberries without your guidance.
Posted by georgia at 11:47 PM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
They say men need to have one signature dish that they can cook for women they're interested in. I honestly don't remember if Josh cooked at all for me when we first started going out (I was the one who did all the cooking in our college suite; a few days after we met - months before we started dating - I made a German Apple Pancake that prompted him to blurt out "will you marry me?" More about that recipe later.) But by the end of our first year together he had started to develop not just one, but a handful of dishes that have kept me very happy for the last five years. One of our favorites - and the least time and energy consuming - is a basic broiled steak that he makes with garlic and shallots.
He starts with a nice shell steak, trims the excess fat from it, and cuts little holes into the top and bottom and inserts pieces of smashed garlic (smashing it releases the flavor). Then he coats it with olive oil, seasons both sides with salt and pepper, and plops it into a really hot (almost smoking) oven safe pan (to check the temperature, drop a couple drops of water on the pan; they should sizzle and roll around the pan.) He sears both sides of the meat, 30-45 seconds each side (don't move it while it sears), then puts the whole pan into the broiler until it feels just a tiny bit firmer to the touch than it did when it was raw, turning it half-way through (he pokes it with tongs to save burning his fingers - this part of the cooking should take about 3-5 minutes a side). When the meat is done, he takes it out of the pan, puts it on an uncovered plate that can catch the juices, and puts the pan back on the stove over high heat. He then pours a cup or more of some kind of liquid - wine, stock, wine vinegar, or even water - into the pan and scrapes the little bits of meat off the bottom of the pan so they release into the mixture (last week he used a nice Malbec with terrific results). Then he throws a handful of chopped shallots into the sauce and lets the whole thing cook until the sauce becomes syrupy. When the sauce has cooked down, he re-adds the juices that have escaped from the sitting meat, stirs them in, and takes the pan off the heat. If we're not cooking for our kosher-keeping relatives, he'll then "mount" the sauce by tossing in two tablespoons of butter and stirring until they've dissolved. (Obviously this sauce gets poured over the meat, and anything else you want it on, when you serve it.)
If I'm really lucky he'll serve this with roasted potatoes that he makes by cutting red potatoes or fingerlings into smallish wedges (just quartering the smaller varieties), tossing them in olive oil and minced garlic (make sure they're fully coated), arranging them on a baking tray so that the skin sides are down, seasoning them with salt and pepper, and baking them at 425 degrees on the middle rack until they're cooked fully through and nicely brown - about 30 minutes.
I think if more men knew how to make this dish there would be many more happy couples and contented women out there right now.
Posted by georgia at 11:11 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Want to try your hand at canning but don't want to commit to all that equipment? Try putting a cooling rack in the bottom of your largest stockpot and using regular tongs to get the jars in and out of the pot. It will be a little trickier but should work just fine.
Posted by georgia at 11:28 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Now that apple, pear and pomegranate season are in full force and some days are cold enough that you want to stay indoors, it's the perfect time to do some canning. Okay, so canning seems like a very domestic diva kind of activity, but it's actually much easier than most cooking projects: throw fruit, sugar and pectin into a pot, stir for a while, ladle the mixture into jars and boil them for a few minutes. What's easier than that?
Alright, so to do a lot of canning you have to buy a some equipment -- a canning pot or pot insert, the round tongs and magnetic wand, etc -- but once you start making jars of homemade jams and applesauce, the equipment pays for itself. In fact, if you give everyone on your Christmas/Chanukah list a couple jars of homemade preserves this year, you'll end up saving a ton of money (and you'll probably save time too, since everything will be done in just a couple afternoons).
In the past I've made the Chunky Lemon Applesauce from Epicurious (good, but too sweet-tart to eat much of), Persimmon Jam (not as good as I'd hoped, but I think I'll give it another try this year with even riper persimmons), and Pomegranate Jelly (one of my favorites, but hard to make right - I ended up with a couple batches of pomegranate syrup, which were good too). So far, my favorite recipe has been Pear Butter, which I made with red Bartlett Pears (maybe a little too much sugar in the recipe, but really yummy!) This year, in addition to going back to some of my favorites, I think I'm going to try Pumpkin Butter and, if I can find the right roses, Rhubarb, Rose and Strawberry Jam, though missing strawberry season might make that impossible. I also picked up a recipe for Rhubarb-Pear Chutney at the Greenmarket.
So in a few weeks, after a couple weekend afternoons in the kitchen, I expect to have some lovely presents to take to people this Christmas and some yummy applesauce to give to hostesses come Chanukah.
(PS, to make your jams look really professional, check out the custom labels at MyOwnLabels.com)
Posted by georgia at 01:00 AM | Comments (2) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
While I was touring the Grafton Village Cheese Company a few weeks back, I saw this recipe, originally from Saveur, April 2005, framed on the wall. Since I knew I was going to have a lot of cheese on hand and since this recipe looked so good, I copied it down. A few days later, four pounds of cheese still mostly intact in my refrigerator, I pulled out the recipe and gave it a try. It involved many of the steps of the Soupe d'Herbes Potagères, also from Saveur, that I tried to make a few weeks ago without much success, and transferring soup to the Cuisinart to puree is still a pain and makes me wish for a hand blender, but the soup itself proved worth the trouble. It was creamy and satisfying and wonderfully cheesy in a way I didn't know soup could be. Perfect comfort food; I'll definitely make it again.
I couldn't find the recipe online (for some reason some of their recipes are available on their website but others aren't, maybe having to do with who created them), so here are the notes I jotted down standing in the hallway of the Grafton Village Cheese Company, with my notes about my experience cooking it:
Creamy Potato-Cheese Soup
(Adapted from Moosewood Collective's New Recipes from the Moosewood Restaurant)
4 Tablespoons butter
2 Small yellow onions, peeled and chopped
1 Large clove garlic, peeled and minced
2 Russet potatoes, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 Small carrot
3 Cups vegetable stock
2 oz. Cream Cheese
1 1/2 Cups milk
4 oz. Sharp Cheddar (such as Grafton Village Cheese Company 1 year Premium Cheddar, grated (about 1 Cup)
Extra grated cheddar to sprinkle on the top
Salt and pepper
(I halved this recipe when I made it, and since I couldn't find Russet potatoes on my way home I used normal white potatoes. I also used Grafton 2 year-old cheese, because I liked it better and it's almost as sharp. When I made the soup, I found that the extra cheese on the top of the soup was a necessity to give it a nice rich flavor - I used a small handful for each bowl.)
1. Melt butter in a pot over medium heat and add the onions and garlic and cook, stirring often, until soft (8-10 mins.) Add the potatoes and carrots and cook, stirring often, until the potatoes are opaque (6-8 mins.) Add stock and simmer until vegetables are soft (about 30 mins.)
2. Working in batches, puree the vegetables and stock together with the cream cheese and milk in a blender until smooth. Return the soup to the pot and heat over medium-low heat. Whisk in cheddar, stirring until soup is smooth and hot. Season to taste. Serve with more grated cheddar on the side.
Posted by georgia at 12:13 AM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
After you steam or boil your fabulous frozen dumplings, you need a way to serve them. You can just pile them on a plate or in a bowl, or you can add a little extra Asian flavor by picking up a couple traditional bamboo steamers. For around $8, you can scatter them around the table or stack them and keep enough food on the table to last the whole night.
To effectively use the steamers, you have to keep the food from sticking to them. You can line them with wax paper or foil or go an easier, more traditional rout by lining them with cabbage leaves. Just steam or boil the leaves for a few seconds to soften them up and you've got the perfect way to dress up the baskets and make them functional (and if you run out of food, your guests can eat them).
Posted by georgia at 11:57 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
There's nothing more convenient than frozen food (ok, maybe delivery, but we're not made of money). Frozen food is fast, easy to prepare, and always ready, right there in your freezer (unlike that lettuce that you should have thrown out a few days ago). Unfortunately, most frozen food is not as good as freshly prepared meals. No matter how good the commercials say it is, you're not going to run home for that plastic plate in a cardboard box. And you would never feed those frozen dinners to guests.
But there is a wonderful exception to the normal frozen food woes: frozen dumplings (and stuffed buns). These wonderful staples of Chinese cuisine are perfectly built for freezing and taste wonderful no matter how long you leave them living behind the mint-chip and rocky road. Just boil or steam them and you have a wonderful dim sum feast or appetizers for your surprise guests.
You can pick up bags of frozen dumplings in any Asian market (if you're in NYC, Sundou Dumpling House has a large selection), or try the frozen foods section of quality food markets like Trader Joe's.
Posted by georgia at 11:01 PM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
With the more-than-full lives we all lead, getting up on time in the morning is hard. And now that Fall is here and the sun is starting to come up later and later (and the weather is colder and colder) mornings are getting really painful. So if you're stumbling out of bed with just enough time to shower, dress, and chug some coffee, what happens to breakfast?
Breakfast is, as our mothers have repeatedly told us, "the most important meal of the day," but how on earth are you going to make an adequate breakfast when you're a zombie before 9am? Over the early mornings of the last two weeks (ie since my guy started his new, get-up-early-in-the-morning job) I've discovered a wonderful secret to success: making breakfast the night before. Pancake or waffle batter does wonderfully in the fridge overnight, and you can cook it on the skillet or in a pan in the time it takes the coffee in your French press to brew. The baked apples I made a few days ago reheated in the oven perfectly while I was in the shower, and the yogurt cake Clotilde at Chocolate and Zucchini made on Wednesday looks like it would make a fabulous breakfast if you saved some from the night before (I'll be testing this theory later this week).
Ok, so these aren't healthy breakfasts like egg-white omelettes, but at least we're eating something before we run out the door (and we still have time to hit the snooze button one extra time).
Posted by georgia at 12:35 AM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
(In keeping with yesterday's beverage theme: )
Now that cold and flu season has started (most of the people I work with are calling in sick), it's important to remember to stay hydrated. Instead of forcing yourself to chug a large glass of tap water every hour on the hour, make the water irresistible by flavoring it with your favorite fruit. My favorite water in the world is the water at the Ojai Valley Inn spa. They stock the hallways with coolers of ice water flavored with slices of oranges, lemons and cucumbers; it's so yummy you'll swallow it by the gallon and still want more.
Posted by georgia at 11:11 PM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Inspired by my brother Matt's current three month no-alcohol fast (a result of his fairly debauched 24th birthday party), I've been scouting for alternatives to his normal weekend vodka tonics and evening beers. Despite the health benefits he'll feel from cutting out the booze, it's not going to be that easy to keep up for three whole months, especially since he's just starting out in Hollywood where schmoozing and drinking with colleagues is the way one builds a career. Fortunately for Matt (and the rest of us too), there are lots of fun alternatives that will keep him sober and keep his taste buds happy.
So, Matt, here are some ideas:
Sodas are the most obvious choice, and are always good in a pinch, but if you want something with a little more zing, ginger beer is a good alternative, as are specialty sodas like Birch Beer and Cane Cola. Or opt for an interesting juice and keep a six-pack of guava nectar or coconut milk in the fridge. Then there's my favorite: milk teas and coffees from the supermarket in Chinatown or a corner Japanese market. Stock up on a few packs of each, have your friends over to your place on the weekends (obviously BYOB) and the three months will sail by (alright, maybe not quite that easy, but you'll certainly have a more interesting time than if you were just drinking Coke).
Posted by georgia at 02:00 AM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Last year I got to go to Boston to celebrate Rosh Hashanah with friends. As part of our all afternoon cooking marathon, I was asked to make a salad using whatever I could find in the kitchen and the garden. I had fun with the ingredients, and at the end of the evening we dubbed it the Official Rosh Hashanah Salad, and swore to make it again this year. Unfortunately, because of work constraints, I can't make it up to Boston this year. So I thought I'd post the recipe for the salad so everyone can carry on the tradition even if I'm not there.
Ingredients:
Mesclun Salad, or a Mix of Mesclun and Spinach
Two or Three Apples
Handful of Shelled Walnuts
Handful of Dry Cranberries
Olive Oil
Red Wine Vinegar
Clove of Garlic
Fresh Herbs (I used three stalks of chives and some thyme leaves)
Salt
Sugar
Salad Dressing:
Mince garlic and herbs together and put in shaker
Add a pinch each of sugar and salt
Pour in 1:2 parts Vinegar:Oil
Shake (you can add mustard if you want too)
Slice apples into thin pieces and throw in bottom of salad bowl with walnuts and cranberries. Pour salad dressing on top (dressing will keep the apples from turning brown and will soak into the nuts and dried fruit). Add salad mix on top and leave until ready to serve. Just before the meal, toss everything together.
Posted by georgia at 12:51 AM | Comments (2) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Since acorn squash have started showing up at the Green Market, I bought one and decided to try the recipes I've been seeing online. The most common suggestion is to cut the squash in half, seed it, and bake face up with a tablespoon of butter and brown sugar, syrup or honey (some suggest syrup and sugar) about one teaspoon each. Some recipes say to bake for 40 minutes, some say an hour, most agree on 375 degrees. I baked them for about an hour with syrup. They got very soft and dark brown to black on the upper edges. The flavor was very good, but the syrup overtook the flavor of the squash themselves, which had their own lovely sweetness when I could get an unadulterated piece. I'm definitely making them again next week, if not this weekend, but I'm only going to put a small drop of syrup in them so I can get a more balanced flavor.
Posted by georgia at 12:29 AM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
In honor of all the season openers this week, here is a recipe for Desperate Housewives Dip that Lily sent me. This dip is ridiculously good, looks like it took a long time to make (especially if you make it in a nice casserole dish), and takes no time at all; I also love the back-story that Lily sent with it.
Lily says:
This recipe was passed on to me by my college roommate Karen Hennelly (who is definitely a domestic diva and, for as long as I lived with her, was constantly baking pies and cookies and cooking meals to feed 10-12!) This dip is not for the faint-of-heart or for those with high-blood pressure!
Using a circular pie/cassarole dish layer (from bottom to top):
- one package cream cheese (preferably full-fat)
- one can chili (I'm personally a fan of Hormel's turkey chili w/ beans, but for the vegetarian party-guests out there, Annie's spicy black-bean works just fine)
- one block of Monteray jack cheese (grated)
Set oven for 350 degrees and bake approx. 15 minutes (or until the top layer of cheese starts to bubble)
Serve with tortilla chips and cerveza!!!
Posted by georgia at 01:40 AM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Going back to the subject of making really good vegetables:
All cultures have great vegetable recipes (Insalata Caprese, steamed edamame and these wonderful broiled tomatoes from Sept-Quinze in Paris come to mind). But some of the most wonderful and widely appealing vegetables are made in China. The combination of salt and MSG are definitely part of the reason they're so appealing, but even without these additives, the basic principles used by this fast, easy recipe make dark leafy greens taste really good.
Take a very large handful of spinach, baby bok choy, or Chinese watercress and wash well. Slice or mince 2-3 cloves of garlic. Put 2-3 tablespoons olive oil in the bottom of a pan or wok and heat over very high heat. When the oil is hot, put the garlic in and let it cook for a few seconds (until the aroma reaches your nose) then throw the vegetables in and toss in the oil and garlic for a minute, until they're covered and have just started cooking. Add some chicken or vegetable broth (or any liquid -- white wine might work in some cases if you take the pan off the heat first, and even water will do in a pinch, but make sure to add salt and pepper for flavor). There should be just enough liquid to put a small layer on the bottom of the pan. Cover the pan with a lid and let simmer until the vegetables have shrunk and started to wilt, usually 1-2 minutes. (What you're doing here is steaming the vegetables in the broth.) Take off the cover and continue to stir-fry the veggies until you reach the desired level of tenderness (this takes longer for bok choy than spinach). There's a bit of trial and error in this recipe, but like the Caesar salad recipe from last week, even a bad batch still tastes good.
Posted by georgia at 02:20 AM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
I know I shouldn't, but every time I'm at the Greenmarket, I stop and look at the nicely stacked containers of summer berries. But the other day, as I gazed wistfully at perfectly ripe raspberries and blackberries, the man behind the table said three magic words: "Three for seven." Three for seven? I thought about the contents of my wallet, and the fact that I hadn't bought any berries of any kind all summer, and gave in. As I walked toward the market's exit, I thought about the Blackberry Peach Cobbler recipe I'd seen in this month's issue of Gourmet and stopped for some peaches.
Unfortunately, when I got home I realized that I had bought two containers of raspberries and only one of blackberries, so I couldn't make the cobbler quite the way it was intended. But I went ahead anyway, making it a Blackberry-Raspberry-Peach Cobbler, and it was pretty good. The fruit was full of flavor, if a little sweet (maybe less sugar next time), and the topping was soft with crunchy bits on top. Not quite as memorable as the brandied peach parfaits from a month ago, but still summery and good.
Posted by georgia at 01:19 AM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
The other day, I received a question from Jennifer, who has just moved in with her boyfriend, and is having a problem getting him to eat vegetables. He realizes that greens are important for his diet, but he has hated almost every vegetable he's ever met, and has resorted to eating dry salad, without dressing, which he calls "rabbit food".
I don't know why some men in their twenties have such a hard time liking vegetables, but I think I can help. The following recipe for Caesar Salad was given to me by Patsy Hicks, and I've never met anyone who didn't love it.
Mrs. Hick's Caesar Salad
5 cloves garlic (I usually use only 3)
Juice of 2 lemons (squeezed by hand)
Dash of Worcester Sauce
Tsp. of Dijon Mustard
Pinch of Salt
½ - 1 Cup Shredded Parmesan Cheese (enough to fill the bottom of a Cuisinart about an inch)
Olive Oil
Place all ingredients except olive oil in Cuisinart and blend. While blending, add the olive oil (about a cup) in a slow, steady stream, until the mixture is creamy. Pour over Romaine lettuce, and add croutons and additional Parmesan. Serve.
Posted by georgia at 02:51 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
A couple days ago I was talking to a girl at work, and she told me she had made Peanut Butter Cookies over the weekend. Peanut Butter Cookies -- I had totally forgotten about those smushed, sweet, salty morsels of happiness that I loved as a kid. She had too until recently, but she said they were actually good, so earlier this week I pulled up Epicurious.com and got out a jar of smooth Jif. I decided on a recipe for "Old-Fashioned" Peanut Butter Cookies that originally appeared in Bon Appetit in January of 1998, because I already had all the right ingredients. I mixed everything together, rolled it into balls, and smushed them down with the prongs of a fork, just like I did as a kid. And when they came out of the oven, they were just as good as they were when I was a kid. Maybe they weren't quite as peanutty as I had remembered, but they were soft on the inside, crunchy on the edges, sweet, salty and happy making: definitely something to add back into my repertoire.
Posted by georgia at 12:12 AM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
My life, and the life of any busy twenty-something (or thirty-something or forty-something) requires a lot of caffeine. But a normal coffee maker is expensive, and we don't have anywhere to put it (our counter is the size of a postage stamp). Fortunately I found some good, cheap options.
In college I started with a single cup filter cone designed to sit nicely on a coffee cup. It cost around $3 and works great! So for years I bought pre-ground coffee to keep in the fridge, and whenever I needed a little help with an all-nighter I just put a kettle on the stove.
The only problem is that the cone takes a while to make more than one cup of coffee at a time, and now that my guy is just as addicted to coffee as I am, we need a better way to make it. Fortunately, a cousin gave us a beautiful little French Press, which fits nicely in a cupboard and makes great, fast coffee (and only costs around $30). He also gave us a little coffee grinder (also affordable at about $20), so now we have fresh, good coffee every morning. You can probably get any of these at a lot of places, but I have a fondness for Bed, Bath & Beyond (it's like a candy store of towels and storage systems and pepper mills), so those are the links above.
image courtesy bed bath and beyond
Posted by georgia at 01:05 AM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Grilled fruit has been popular for a few years, but without a backyard or a roof-deck, it never occurred to me to make it myself. Fortunately, I was invited to a vegan barbeque this weekend and remembered to bring along some fruit-laden skewers to throw on the grill. Pineapple slices turned out wonderfully, juicy on the inside and caramelized without, and peaches and plums held their own as well, though with less flair. All the fruit was best when the outsides were allowed to char, bringing out the sweetness of their cooked sugars. I was so happy with the warm mouthfuls of fruit that I eventually gave up on the burgers (even once real meat had appeared) and helped myself to a couple extra skewers. Next time I need an easy but impressive dessert (or I just have a sweet tooth) I'll try it again on my grill pan.
Posted by georgia at 12:50 AM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
So I've discovered a great secret: Putting whipped cream on anything turns it into an amazing dessert (girls, stop giggling).
The other night after work I wanted to make a nice dinner but was low on time and energy. So before I started cooking (ie boiling corn and throwing meat on the grill) I cut up some peaches and apricots, put them in a bowl with some sugar, and whipped some heavy cream I had left over from making a cream sauce. (I used a hand mixer to cut down on clean-up, but I usually just throw the cream and some sugar in a blender.) I stuck everything in the fridge, and after dinner I put the fruit in low glasses with a dollop of cream on top.
It was a fabulous (and impressive looking) dessert.
Posted by georgia at 01:24 AM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
A few mornings ago, when I was invited to a pot-luck brunch, I pulled out a recipe for scones that I hadn't used in a couple years. I remembered that I had liked the scones' texture, so I thought I'd put in a little extra energy and make them.
As it turned out, the scones were the easiest thing I've ever baked. After stirring the ingredients together and kneading (no mixer needed), I rolled it out, folding it over a few times to make it airy and light. I chilled it while I popped into the shower, then baked them.
Not only were they were just as soft and tasty as I had remembered, making them was much more fun than most cooking. Kneading the dough felt like the kind of thing I did in kindergarten, and it bounced under my rolling pin as I filled it with layers of air.
A number of people at the brunch asked me how I made them, so here's the recipe:
1 Cup Unsalted Butter
4 Cups Flour (and a little extra for dusting)
½ Cup Sugar
2 Teaspoons Baking Powder
½ Teaspoon Baking Soda
¼ Teaspoon Salt
2 Cups Heavy Cream
1 Cup Dried Cranberries --or- 1½ Tablespoons Cinnamon
1. Mix the dry ingredients together.
2. Smush the chilled butter into the dry ingredients with your fingers (it should be grainy when you're done).
3. Add cream while kneading.
4. Add the cranberries or cinnamon.
5. Roll* the dough into a rectangle about 1 inch thick (if it sticks to the counter or rolling pin, flour the top and bottom of the dough). Fold the dough in thirds, the way you would fold a business letter, and turn 90 degrees.
6. Repeat step 5 four more times.
7. Chill the dough in the refrigerator for about 20 minutes and preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
8. Roll the dough out again and cut it into triangles
9. Bake on a prepared cookie sheet for 15-20 minutes.
Makes 12-16 Scones
*If you don't have a rolling pin, any clean, round jar or bottle will work
This recipe was from a friend's mother's cookbook -- if anyone recognizes it, please let me know so I can attribute it properly.
Posted by georgia at 12:20 AM | Comments (2) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
In the last beautiful warm months of summer I try to cram as much corn into my meals as possible because I know that as soon as it gets cold and the summer vegetables are gone, fresh corn will be the food I miss the most. Now I love corn on the cob, but repeatedly putting it on the dinner menu multiple times a week gets a little boring. So last year around this time I was thrilled to discover the sweet corn and marscapone ravioli at Al Di La in Brooklyn. It was wonderful and sweet and absolutely reeked of summer, so this year, as soon as corn became available, my friends and I started working on variations of this great idea. My mother's friend Kim Schiffer, who owns Fresh Foods Catering in Santa Barbara, CA, made an amazing corn, leek and marscapone lasagna a couple months ago, and last week I made a quick version of it as a sauce for fettuccini. The measurements are imprecise since I usually just keep adding stuff until I think it tastes right, but you'll get the idea:
4 ears of fresh corn
3 leeks
Pasta (fresh pasta is best, but it's a splurge)
1 Tablespoon Olive Oil
Butter (probably 2-3 tablespoons)
Cream (1/4 cup or less)
Grated Parmesan cheese (around 1/3 cup)
Grated Romano cheese (around 1/3 cup)
Salt, pepper, and any fresh herb you want to use
Shuck the corn and boil the water. While the water's boiling, wash the leeks, slice them lengthwise, and slice them thinly widthwise (only the white and light-green parts). Boil the corn for approximately 3 minutes, then remove and use the same water to cook the pasta. (If the pasta is done before the sauce is, which is likely, drain it and toss it with a little olive oil.)
Cut the kernels off the corn, trying not to get any of the cob. Heat 1 tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon olive oil in a pan. Saute the leeks and the corn together until tender (it sometimes helps to put a lid on the pan for a minute to help them soften). Turn the heat low and add a second tablespoon of butter and some of the cream. Stirring constantly, shake in the Romano and Parmesan alternately, and continue to add butter or cream until you get a cream sauce of a consistency and taste you're happy with. Season to taste and pour over the pasta.
Serves 4
Posted by georgia at 01:10 AM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
When you think of eating slices of tomatoes, you probably head out to the store to buy basil. I know I do. But today I had a bunch of thyme sitting in a glass of water next to the heirloom tomatoes I bought from the Greenmarket, so I thought I'd try something different. And it was fantastic! The fresh thyme was the perfect compliment to the warm purple tomato with a little olive oil. From now on basil takes a back seat.
I bet some fresh parmesan shavings would have been good on it too.
Posted by georgia at 02:35 PM | Comments (0) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
Starting a kitchen from scratch is hard. In the days when you cooked in your mom's kitchen you probably never thought about all the time and money that went into building the collection of pots, pans, whisks and spatulas you used. Then one day you decided to make a batch of cookies and found yourself saying, "a cookie sheet costs what?!?"
Don't worry, there is a cheaper way: Restaurant Supply Catalogues.
With just a click on their websites, you can buy pots, pans, cookie sheets and even ovens, grills and booth seating for the same low prices restaurants get. You can also sign up for their catalogues and gush over $25 knives every couple months.
To see for yourself, try www.centralrestaurant.com or www.servu-online.com
Posted by georgia at 01:21 AM | Comments (2) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
People in their twenties complain to me all the time that they don't know how to cook. For anyone who wants to learn to cook but doesn't know how, I have just one piece of advice: Just start (I'd say "Just do It", but Nike'd get me for copyright infringement).
There is no way to learn to cook that doesn't involve trial and error and eating some terrible meals along the way. That said, there are a few things that can help you jump-start your learning.
1. Cooking shows are a great resource. I almost never make any of the dishes I watch celebrity chefs cook, but the shows give me a sense of how things are done (what "stiff peaks" of egg whites do, what a reduced sauce looks like, etc.)
2. Good cookbooks are the meat of learning to cook. A good cookbook not only tells you what to do but also gives good descriptions of the results you should get. I do own some of the classics like The New Basics, but the books that get the most use in my kitchen are the ones that have good, descriptive writing and nice pretty pictures of the food that inspire me and give me an idea of what I'll be eating. I love Jamie Oliver's first book, The Naked Chef, and Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa Parties! because they're fun, inspiring books and the food is also great. The key is finding a book that inspires you and mirrors your taste in food.
3. Cooking with someone who knows what they're doing is probably the best way of starting out in the kitchen. My mother always had me help cut vegetables, stir sauces, and give my opinion when we were deciding if the turkey was done, and it gave me a huge leg up. But some of my best cooking help also came from my best friend who taught me to make tacos and French toast and have fun cooking. So grab any friend who knows how to cook and have fun.
Posted by georgia at 06:00 AM | Comments (1) | permalink | TrackBack | Email this post
