The Weekly Delicious

Pumpkin Ricotta Crepes

2011-10-18T21:27:00.007-04:00

Sometimes, I have flashes of inspiration. Sometimes, I also have a container of canned pumpkin and a container of ricotta that simultaneously need using up before they expire in my fridge. What to do? Pumpkin-ricotta...something. Pasta? Already done that. Erm. Dessert? Yes. Yes indeedy.

My French-Canadian heritage came to the rescue with the idea for crepes with a sweet pumpkin-ricotta filling. Now we're talking.

There does not seem to be a recipe out there for pumpkin-ricotta crepes, so I made my own. Rest assured, they are scrumptious. I'm a veteran crepe-maker by now. I can whittle down the recipe to a single serving, too, so I don't spend ages making a full batch and getting hungrier as I watch the stovetop. But I'll scale up the measurements a little for those of you who plan on sharing.

Pumpkin-Ricotta Crepes

serves 4-6, depending on how many crepes you can eat

Ingredients for the Crepes:

1/2 cup flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

4 shakes cinnamon

4 shakes cinnamon sugar

1.5 tablespoons butter, melted

1 egg

1/2 cup milk (or more as needed)

Ingredients for the filling:

1/2 cup canned pumpkin

1/2 cup ricotta (I used part-skim)

1 tablespoon powdered sugar

4 shakes cinnamon

Pumpkin butter (optional)

Directions:

To make the crepes, mix the flour, salt, and cinnamon, then add the egg, melted butter, and milk, and stir to combine. Add additional milk if necessary until batter reaches desired consistency. Batter should be thin and even with no lumps.

Heat a nonstick pan on low heat with a little butter, oil, or cooking spray applied in a thin even coat over the surface of the pan. For each crepe, pour a little batter into pan and tilt to coat the bottom of the pan. Flip to cook both sides-- crepe may just start to curl up on the edges when ready to be flipped. As each crepe is ready, remove to a large plate.

Meanwhile, prepare the filling. Mix the pumpkin, ricotta, sugar, and cinnamon together until well-combined. Taste filling, if desired, to adjust sugar or cinnamon as necessary.

When crepes are done, first spread one side of each crepe with pumpkin butter, if desired. Then, place a generous dollop of filling along the center of the crepe. Roll crepe gently, enjoy, and have a fork at the ready to catch up any filling that oozes out onto your plate as you eat.

Thanksgiving Roundup

2010-12-02T17:07:00.003-05:00

We've been too many weeks without delicious. Or at least delicious that we've bothered to document.

So I propose a Thanksgiving round-up of extra-delicious holiday fare!

I'll start with two recipes of mostly-my-own-devising.

I outdid myself this Thanksgiving. Okay, so I've still never made an entire Thanksgiving dinner myself, but I'm getting there. And that turkey would have been less tasty if I hadn't pointed out that herbs and spices are good things to use on it. Herbs, spices, and butter. Lots of butter. (According to my sources, it doesn't actually soak into the flesh that much, so fear not. Though what are you doing being shy about butter on Thanksgiving anyway.)

Delicious number 1:

I love stuffing. My family does not. This was a problem for many years. It was hard enough to talk them into putting stuffing on the table at all, let alone taking the time and effort to make it from anything but Stovetop. (Or Trader Joe's, also made on the stovetop.)

This year I took matters into my own hands. I made cornbread stuffing from scratch. I contemplated using Trader Joe's cornbread mix, which is delicious beyond all reason and frankly better than most from-scratch cornbreads I've had, but I decided from scratch meant from scratch, the whole hog (so to speak).

Also, making your own stuffing means you are free to leave those icky celery bits out. Um. Unless you actually like celery. I sure don't.

I pretty much threw stuff in as suited me. I had the kielbasa and the cornbread, but when I was mixing it together I realized it was basically crumbly cornbread with teeny bits of sausage and onion thrown in, and it didn't yet feel like its own dish. So I chopped up an apple and threw that in at the very last minute.

Results were stupendous. My stuffing-hating family demolished it. My dreams of leftovers were dashed. Next time I'm gonna need a bigger pan.

Michelle's Magical Cornbread Stuffing

serves one if you really love stuffing. If you only moderately love it, serves about 6.

(adapted from...I don't even remember where. Eating Well?)

The first step in making cornbread stuffing is to make the cornbread. Ideally, you want to do this a day in advance.

For the cornbread:

1 1/4 cup stone-ground cornmeal

3/4 cup flour

3 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/4 cup buttermilk (or about 1 tablespoon lemon juice or white vinegar plus enough milk to fill a measuring cup to 1 1/4 cups)

2 tablespoons butter, melted

1 large egg

3/4 to 1 cup corn kernels, fresh or frozen

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease an 8-inch square pan.

Sift together the flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, and salt.

In a separate bowl, mix the egg, the melted butter, and the buttermilk. Fold in the dry ingredients a little at a time. Add the corn kernels and stir to combine. Do not overmix. Pour batter into the prepared pan and bake 25 to 30 minutes.

For the stuffing:

1 pan prepared cornbread, cubed

6 to 8 oz turkey kielbasa (though chicken and apple sausage would work really well here as well)

2 small onions, finely chopped

1/4 teaspoon salt

Pepper

1/2 teaspoon sage

1/2 teaspoon rosemary

1 2/3 cup chicken broth (more or less as needed)

1 apple, diced (skin on is fine)

Grease a 9 x 13 baking pan. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.

Slice the kielbasa or sausage and brown in a skillet together with the onion. You don't need to add oil here. The fat from the sausage is enough. Cook until onion is soft and golden, about 10 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and add the salt, pepper, and herbs. Add in the cornbread and apple and toss. Pour 1 cup of broth over the mixture, and add additional broth as necessary until mixture is sufficiently moistened.

Cover pan with foil and bake 25 minutes. Hide the pan from your friends and loved ones and eat it by yourself.

Delicious number 2:

Next up: mashed sweet potatoes! Mashed sweet potatoes have totally taken over regular mashed potatoes in our house. I have some regrets about this, much as I love sweet potatoes. Sometimes, you just need regular potatoes. I don't understand what we're supposed to do with all that gravy without delicious starchy buttery potatoes to pour it over. Still, mashed sweet potatoes are a food of the gods.

I looked everywhere for a good recipe for mashed sweet potatoes, but none of the recipes I saw seemed right. They all called for butter and cream or milk, and lots of sugar. This seems ridiculous to me. Sweet potatoes are indeed sweet. Sweet enough on their own, and heavenly enough without the need to add butter. And yet I didn't quite want to serve them plain. Maybe a smidge of sweetener, not a lot, something that would add a special flavor. Like...maple syrup? Yes please. But not much else. I wanted the sweet-potatoeyness to shine through.

So I made up my own damn recipe.

Michelle's Maple Mashed Sweet Potatoes

serves very few, if you like sweet potatoes...but we'll say 6

6 medium sweet potatoes, scrubbed

1/4 cup maple syrup (approximately)

1/4 cup milk (approximately)

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Prick sweet potatoes with a fork and roast in the oven for about an hour, until tender.

Peel the skins (they should come right off, but try not to burn your fingers. Or be sensible and let them cool first). Toss flesh into a pot and mash. Add the maple syrup and milk, but don't go overboard. You want just a hint of maple here, and just enough milk to help thin the mixture out and give it a good consistency. Add the cinnamon. Maybe a pinch of salt, too, if you're feeling adventurous.

Serve. If you have the willpower, save some and make sweet potato biscuits with the leftovers. (Make biscuits, but only use 2 tablespoons of butter and sub the rest for 3/4 cup mashed sweet potato. Bake.)

The Perfect Fresh Tomato Sandwich

2010-08-31T18:16:00.008-04:00

I always crave tomatoes when late August and early September rolls around. That's when the tomatoes in my mom's garden are at their peak. Every year, for as long as I can remember, her tomato vines take over our fence in the summer in a riot of exuberant green tendrils. The tomatoes line up on our kitchen counter, one by one, in ever-increasing numbers until it seems impossible that one family of four could ever finish them all.

Unless they love tomatoes as much as my mom does.

That yearly tomato crop has made a life-long tomato snob out of me, I'm afraid. I don't like to eat tomatoes out of season, and I hardly ever reach for them at the store. Before I even knew the meaning of "fresh," "local," or "in season," I knew the taste of a grocery store tomato never compared to what we had at home in August. The pinkish, almost dry store-bought tomatoes fell so far short they were hardly worth touching.

My mom seems to love tomatoes, plain, fresh, and whole, more than any other food. I've seen her eat them raw like an apple, sitting at the counter with a tomato in one hand and a shaker of salt in the other. Sure, you can use fresh tomatoes for your sauces, your pasta dishes, your chicken shawarmas, but in my opinion, the freshest tomatoes are best enjoyed simply, uncooked, and with minimal additions.

Even in salads or on top of burgers I've had a life-long habit of picking the tomato out and enjoying it separately, unmarred by the intrusion of too many other flavors.

My absolute favorite use for fresh tomatoes-- and a dish I only ever seem to crave this time of year-- is a tomato sandwich. This is how my family has always gotten through our bounty of tomatoes.

I've described this sandwich to all my friends and acquaintances, and everyone seems perplexed by it, as if this tradition barely exists outside our family. I know we aren't the only ones to make tomato sandwiches this way, but this wonderful minimalist recipe ought to be better-known.

My mouth has been watering for a fresh tomato sandwich all month. Now, as we know, I'm a big fan of getting my food as discounted as possible. But that isn't the way to go for this sandwich. Now that I don't live at home and have no tomato plants of my own, I headed to the farmer's market for a pound of fresh, ripe heirloom tomatoes. I suggest you do the same.

All this sandwich takes is one juicy tomato, fresh from your garden or the local farmer's market, neatly sliced with a sharp knife...

Then add 2 slices of toasted bread, and a little mayonnaise. (Trust me on the mayonnaise. I'm an avowed mayo-hater, and this is one of my two exceptions.)

You'll probably want three or four tomato slices per sandwich, depending on the size of your bread slices and how thickly you sliced the tomatoes. I recommend not trying to cut this in half or you'll have tomatoes falling out all over the place. Eat immediately, and lap up any stray juices and seeds from the plate when you're done.

For extra deliciousness, eat the rest of the tomato slices too. A sliced tomato doesn't keep long, so you might as well.

Fresh Tomato Sandwiches

Ingredients

2 slices hearty whole-wheat bread

1 tomato, fresh from your garden or the local farmer's market, sliced lengthwise

1 tbsp mayonnaise

Directions

1. Toast the bread in a toaster or toaster oven. Lightly toasted is best. You want it to be just a little bit crisp, but retaining a little flexibility for easier chewing.

2. Slice the tomato lengthwise. Try to slice evenly.

3. When bread is toasted, spread the mayonnaise over once slice of bread. Get a thick, even coat. You might want to use a little more mayonnaise than you think you need. It's there to absorb some of your tomato juices and turn the sandwich into a delicious pink mess of...um...deliciousness.

4. Lay the tomato slices on top of the mayonnaise layer, and top with the remaining slice of bread.

Boozy Sauteed Chicken

2010-08-19T22:05:00.006-04:00

Roommates, roommates, roommates. Can't live with them, can't live...well, you could live without them, but you might not be able to pay your share of the rent anymore. Drat.

I love my roommates, as it happens-- all four of them, five if we count the kitten-- but once in a while I could wish for my own kitchen. My plans to make a delicious boozy chicken, perhaps with a side of the daringly high-fat French-Canadian classic, poutine, were halted last night by one of my will-remain-nameless-roommates' sporadic cook-fests that produces wild amounts of food and a porportionate amount of mess. The kitchen was a war zone, strew with abandoned eggplant slices, bell pepper cores, onion skins, and encrusted pans, colanders, knives...oh, and beer cans. There wasn't a scrap of counter space left for me.

Feelings were mended by said roommate offering me a scoop of pasta and a slice of feta and sundried tomato flatbread that was as big as my head. But damn, was I still itching to make that chicken.

And even though the kitchen is still a war zone, with one small length of counter cleared in the interval, I made my chicken tonight anyway. And it was delicious. And I even cleaned up after myself when I was done.

This chicken is incredibly easy to make and infinitely adaptable. Chicken and a few glugs of dry white wine are all you need to produce tender, savory meat that will leave you licking your fingers for every last scrap of sauce.

Boozy Sauteed Chicken

recipe adapted from food loves writing

Serves one, but easy to scale up.

Ingredients:
1/2 chicken breast, flattened a little or cut into tenders
1 clove garlic, minced
a few glugs dry white wine, such as Sauvignon Blanc
salt and pepper to taste
1 tsp olive oil

Directions:
Heat the olive oil in a small nonstick skillet. When hot, add in the chicken and garlic. Cook chicken on medium heat, 2-3 minutes, until browned on both sides.

Add just enough wine to cover the bottom of the pan. Chicken will sizzle beautifully. Add salt and pepper and mix into wine-sauce.

Continue cooking and turning chicken to cook on all sides, about 8-10 minutes. Press down on chicken gently to ensure even cooking. Check thoroughly for pinkness while cooking. Add more wine as necessary, scraping up any burned bits from the bottom of the pan. The chicken will brown and the smell of the wine will waft upwards to tantalize you while you stir.

When chicken is cooked all the way through, remove from heat and serve with a side of vegetables and perhaps a slice or two of baguette. Not to mention the rest of that wine.

Last-Minute Vegan Fruit Tart

2010-08-16T12:49:00.005-04:00

Ever wandered, drooling, past a bakery window and wished that you could have a tart of your very own? A tart to cherish, to love, to pile high with freshly sliced fruit? Well, now you can!

As is often the case, I volunteered to provide dessert for a social occasion without actually knowing what I’d make. Or if I had the necessary ingredients. Or even the time. This tart is the result of an hour of frantic online recipe browsing, leafing through cookbooks, and running around Harris Teeter like a madwoman, and another hour of stirring, accidentally powdering all nearby surfaces with confectioners’ sugar, slicing fruit quickly rather than safely, and pouring hot jam. But it’s worth it for all the envious looks you’ll receive from your roommate, passers-by on the street, and even the normally surly DC bus driver who isn’t supposed to let you on with open dishes of food but makes an exception because it looks so scrumptious. Most of this recipe is taken from Colleen Patrick-Goudreau’s The Joy of Vegan Baking.

Last Minute Vegan Fruit Tart

SHORTBREAD CRUST:

1/2 cup (112g) non-hydrogenated, nondairy butter, at room temperature
1/4 cup (25g) confectioners’ sugar
1 cup (125g) all-purpose flour
4 tbsp ice water

Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C). Lightly grease the pie pan with canola oil or nondairy butter. I used this 9″ tart pan, but any similarly sized pie dish or square casserole dish will do. Use tartlet pans or even a muffin pan if you want to make cute little tartlets.

In a medium-sized bowl, cream the butter and confectioners’ sugar until light and fluffy. (If you have an electric mixer, use it. If not, a spoon, employed vigorously for several minutes, is also sufficient. My mixture was creamy–rather than fluffy–and still turned out fine.)

Add the flour a third at a time and beat until the dough just comes together. If your dough, like mine, doesn’t just “come together”, stir in ice water one tablespoon at a time until the dough begins to form a loose ball. It’s okay if it’s still a little crumbly.

Press the mixture into the bottom of your prepared pan and bake for about 20 minutes, or until lightly browned. Bake time will vary depending on your oven. Mine took about 35 minutes, so start out with 20 and check every 5-10 minutes after that. Remove from the oven and place somewhere to cool.

–

PASTRY CREAM (CUSTARD):

1/3 cup (65g) granulated sugar
2 tbsp (16g) all-purpose flour
4 tbsp (32g) cornstarch
1/4 cup (60mL) water
1 1/3 cups (315mL) nondairy milk (I used rice milk, but soy milk is obviously fine, too)
2 tsp vanilla or lemon extract (I used vanilla)

In a medium-sized bowl, beat together the sugar, flour, cornstarch, and water on high speed until creamy, about 2 minutes. (Again, I just used a fork for about 4 minutes, adding the ingredients one at a time.) Set aside.

In a saucepan, bring the milk to a simmer. Pour about 1/3 cup (80mL) of the hot milk into the sugar mixture and stir to thoroughly combine. This doesn’t have to be precise; just make sure the sugar mixture is a little liquid-y. Pour this sugar-milk mixture back into the saucepan with the rest of the milk. Return to the stove and heat over medium-low heat, whisking constantly. This is important! Don’t stop whisking for anything, not even zombies or kittens! It will begin to thicken immediately. (They’re not kidding. It only takes about a minute or two, if that, for the cream to thicken sufficiently.)

Scrape the bottom and sides of the pan as you whisk. Cook until it begins to bubble, then whisk as vigorously as you can for 30 seconds, and remove from heat. (Mine never bubbled. If yours doesn’t either, just remove from heat when it seems about as thick as your average chocolate pudding.) Stir in the vanilla/lemon extract.

If your pie crust is baked and ready, go ahead and pour the cream into the crust, smoothing it flat with a rubber spatula or large spoon. It doesn’t have to be perfect, since the fruit will be covering it anyway. If your crust isn’t ready yet, you can store the pastry cream (covered) in the fridge for up to 3 days.

–

TOPPING:

3-4 tbsp (80g) jelly, jam or preserves (I used apricot jam. Peach is also good.)
2 1/2 cups fruit, sliced (I used about 1 1/2 cups of strawberries, 1 kiwi, 7 blackberries, and a handful of blueberries)

Arrange your sliced fruit on top of the tart. Even if you’re the worst pastry decorator in the history of the world, there’s no way this will look anything but delicious.

Heat the jelly in a small saucepan, whisking constantly. Once it’s hot, strain into a small bowl, mug, or measuring cup, leaving behind seeds or anything else solid. It should be liquid enough to pour. If it’s too thick, just reheat with a little water added.

Using a pastry brush (or a small spoon, in a pinch), brush the heated jelly over the top of the fruit. Everything should be covered with a thickish layer, but not overwhelmed. It should look moist, shiny, and wonderful. NOTE: it may be difficult to stop yourself from devouring the tart right then and there. (Another argument for tartlets.)

Serves 8, supposedly. It served three of us, with about 1/6 left over.

For an equally delicious, non-vegan version of this recipe, simply use real butter and milk.

Cross-posted at www.serenae.com.

Farmer's Market Cantaloupe Sorbet

2010-08-10T20:19:00.005-04:00

At the beginning of last week, I found myself with half of a delicious cantaloupe. Now, that may not seem like much of a problem to you. Eating cantaloupe is a pretty enjoyable activity, after all. But it just so happens that there's one thing even better than than fresh cantaloupe on a sweltering summer day: icy cantaloupe sorbet!

When I scoured the internet for recipes, my limitations became immediately apparent. No ice cream maker, no corn syrup, not even an electric OR hand mixer. I mixed and matched, mostly following this recipe. So here it is,

Nearly-Unaided-by-Newfangled-Machinery Farmer's Market Cantaloupe Sorbet

INGREDIENTS:

1/4 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cantaloupe, in 1-1.5 inch pieces (watermelon or honeydew can be easily substituted)
1-2 tbsp lemon or lime juice

Combine sugar and water in medium saucepan. Stir over medium heat until sugar dissolves. Bring to boil. Transfer to a deepish (at least 2 inches) casserole dish and chill until cold, about 2 hours. (I used a tupperware container with a lid and stuck it in the freezer for a half hour.)

MEANWHILE, puree cantaloupe in blender until smooth. This takes about 10 seconds, then another 10 to make sure it's actually smooth and get over your disbelief that yes, it really was that easy. Stir in the lemon/lime juice. (I squeezed half a lemon into the mixture, but you may want to add more if your cantaloupe is especially sweet. I also read a few recipes that called for a splash of vodka or gin, for texture rather than flavor.)

Pour into the sugar syrup in dish/container and stir until well blended. Freeze until almost firm, stirring every half hour or so, at least 3 hours or overnight (if you freeze it overnight, it will become a SOLID frozen block and will need to set it out on the counter to soften again).

Transfer cantaloupe mixture to large bowl. Using electric mixer a fork, beat until fluffy. If you go with the fork method it's going to be a little lumpy, so don't FREAK OUT. Get it as fluffy as you can, but don't worry if it's not perfect. This sorbet is delicious in any shape. Return to freezer and freeze until firm (do not stir), at least 3 hours or overnight. Cover and keep frozen. Again, if you've used a fork rather than an electric mixer, you'll want to give it a chance to thaw a little before serving, unless you enjoy chipping away at rock-hard sorbet.

Serves 6 / 1 ravenous person with a sweet tooth / 1 normal person for a week / a gaggle of sticky-faced children

Cross-posted at www.serenae.com.

Sanity Preserving Roasted Garbanzo Beans

2010-06-06T21:23:00.002-04:00

I can sometimes get myself in over my head when I think, "Oh, I can do that, no problem!" Sometimes I even have a healthy amount of doubt, outweighed by an unhealthy amount of optimism and think, "It'll be a good experience!"

For my food writing class, we were given a choice for our last assignment. We could either do a formal research paper, or we could undertake a serious food challenge. Since I didn't want to do anything stupid like eat a mountain of pancakes or suffer through scotch bonnet fritters, I went for altering my diet for a week. The biggest change I could think of for someone like me who can go accidentally vegetarian for days or live off of carbs indefinitely would be to take up Phase 1 of the South Beach Diet. Just a week so I could write about it, nothing more.

Well, I was right. I could do it, and it was a good experience. It reminded me that I had some bad dietary habits and helped me break them. But it also reminded me that if I'm not completely satisfied at meals, I need to snack between them unless I wanted to drive myself crazy. I'm not too much of a raw veggie person, so I finally got to try out a recipe I'd been wanting to try for roasted garbanzo beans.

Trust me, if you're picking up Phase 1, or even just trying to snack healthier, you'll be thankful for these sanity preserving roasted garbanzo beans.

Ingredients:

1 can of garbanzo beans (chickpeas)
2 Tbsp olive oil (approximately)
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1/8 tsp garlic powder
1/8 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground ginger
1/4 to 1/2 tsp kosher salt (to taste)

Procedure:

1. Preheat your oven to 350°F. Line a baking sheet (preferably with a rim) with parchment paper or aluminum foil for easy cleanup.

2. Drain and rinse the garbanzo beans. Use a salad spinner or pat dry with paper towels to ensure the beans are completely dry.

3. In a medium sized bowl, add the beans, oil, and all spices except the salt. Toss together. Don't be afraid to use your hands, a little olive oil is good for them anyway.

4. Spread in a single layer on the covered baking sheet. Sprinkle with the salt to taste, more if you like a salty snack, less if you're not a fan.

5. Bake for approximately 50 minutes. Your oven and bean-doneness-preferences may vary. I like mine slightly dried and crispy on the outside, but still with some moisture on the inside.

That's it. There's no excuse to go hungry on a diet when a snack like this is so easy to make. I know it helped me last as long as I did so I could get my story.

Hint: Vary the spice blend. Like spicier? Make a purely pepper blend. Italian snacks in mind? Try an Italian blend and top it with some tasty parmesan cheese (low fat if you're Phase 1ing it). Really, the flavors you can use on these are only limited by your spice cabinet.

Hint: Double the recipe if you're satisfied with your spice blend. No use waiting around for your next snack fix when you can just as easily make twice as much.

Hint: These can (and at least a few should be) eaten fresh out of the oven, at room temperature, or even cold. I kept some on the counter and some in the fridge, both in air tight containers. Keep them in the containers when not fresh out of the oven or being eaten, otherwise they'll go kind of soft. Still tasty, just soft.

Hint: Put these on things. I was eating a ton of salad that week and was thankful for the kick of flavor these provided in my lunch. But these go amazingly in just about anything regular garbanzo beans go in, whether you're on a diet or not.

Boyfriend-worthy First Date Chocolate Cake

2010-05-30T22:33:00.003-04:00

When a fellow Weekly Delicious blogger posted a Girlfriend Cake, I thought to myself, what about those of us who don't care for girlfriends? Think of the boyfriends, won't somebody please think of the boyfriends?!

This is a chocolate cake with a history. A few months ago, when trying to woo my boy just after his birthday and on our first date, I made a cake. You may be thinking, "Who the hell brings a cake to a first date?" Well, that's just me. As it turned out, it was damn lucky I brought a cake, since we were confined to a cafe for several hours due to the Snowmageddon and got to munch on it for a while.

Unconventional? Yes. But this cake has a 100% success rate for securing a boyfriend, and has been refined over repeated batches, so don't argue with it.

Ingredients:

For the cake:

4 ounces of unsweetened baker's chocolate
1/2 cup water
1 and 3/4 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup unsalted butter (warmed to room temperature) cut into pieces
2/3 cup milk (whole is best)
3 large eggs
1 and 3/4 cups sugar
1 chocolate pudding cup
1 tsp vanilla extract

For the frosting:

1 and 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream
1/3 cup of light corn syrup
1/4 cup unsalted butter
About 1 pound dark chocolate (your favorite chocolate will work just fine too, and chocolate chips are very easy)

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter two, 9 inch cake pans and line the bottom with parchment paper. Lightly dust the parchment paper and sides of the pan with flour. Easy tip: Obey Alton Brown for easily cutting a piece of parchment paper for your pan.

2. In a double boiler (i.e. glass bowl on top of a pot filled with water over heat), melt the unsweetened chocolate with the water and stir until smooth. Remove from heat and stir periodically while you do the other steps.

3. In a medium sized bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda, and salt.

4. Mix in the butter a few pieces at a time. If you have an electric mixer, now would be the time to use it. Next best thing I've used has been a pastry cutter. You can get away with a spoon or a rubber scraper it you're thorough enough, or a whisk if it's sturdy enough.

5. Gradually introduce the sugar. Once that's in, add eggs one at a time, followed by the vanilla, then the chocolate mixture you had in the double boiler.

6. Mix in 1/3 of the flour, followed by half of the milk. Mix completely. Then another 1/3 of the flour, followed by the second half of the milk as well as the pudding cup. Mix completely again, then add in the remaining flour and, you guessed it, mix completely once more.

7. Divide the cake batter between the two cake pans and place in the oven. Bake for approximately 35 minutes, or until the cakes begin to pull away from the sides of the pan and a toothpick comes out clean.

8. Let cakes cool for at least 10 minutes. Gently cut the risen dome of one of the cakes to make sure you have a level surface to place the second cake on. By "cut," I actually mean saw off with a serrated knife, otherwise you'll squish or crumble the cake. If you don't want crumbs in your frosting, you can try and gently turn the cake upside-down and gently let the crumbs fall out. GENTLY. Continue to let the cakes cool.

9. In a small pot, combine the butter, cream, and corn syrup and whisk together over medium heat until the contents come to a light simmer.

10. Add in the chocolate and stir together until smooth.

11. Shift the mixture to a large, shallow bowl. Place in the freezer for 15 minutes, then whisk. Back in the freezer for 15 minutes and whisk again. Fifteen more minutes in the freezer and whisk again. Each time the frosting should get lighter and thicker (such as the texture of frosting should be). Depending on how cold your freezer was or how warm the mixture when you first put it in, you may need another freezer/whisk cycle.

12. Take about 1/3 of the frosting and spread over the top of the cake you leveled, making an even layer on the inside. Top with the other cake, then frost the outside evenly.

If nothing else, you'll never go back to store-bought frosting again. And if this cake is a complete success, you'll have a very successful first date.

Girlfriend-worthy Birthday Cake with Strawberries and Cream

2010-05-24T13:32:00.004-04:00

What better time to showcase your culinary abilities than an extra-special occasion like a loved one's birthday?

This past month I celebrated my girlfriend's birthday with her for the very first time. Obviously, this was my chance to show off. But I was nervous. I'm a perfectionist when it comes to these things. Everything had to be just right. The girlfriend is a rather fantastic cook herself (her strawberry shortcakes with fresh whipped cream played a key role in the winning of my affections). And she had requested something vague yet specific: a cake that was dense, rather than light and airy, and one that would have whipped cream and strawberries on top.

No problem, I told her, and went off to Google any number of variations on "dense cake recipe," followed by browsing all my favorite food blogs for trusted cake recipes, followed by browsing articles on food science to determine what made cakes dense so I could ensure I got the proper result.

It was a tricky process. Most cakes garnished with cream and fruit were very light and very airy, like angel food cake, or close to it. Chocolate cake recipes were often dense, but definitely not what she had asked for.

Finally I found the one. The recipe fit the requirements but also intrigued me: it called for no butter or shortening at all, yet it promised to produce a moist and tender and cakey cake. The secret is in the heavy cream: the fat of the cream replaces the fat of the butter that most cakes rely on for texture and flavor.

This cake came out exactly right. It was everything I had hoped for and more-- and the ingredients and instructions were refreshingly straightforward.

The cream in the cake also makes it an ideal base for topping with whipped cream and strawberries. The girlfriend and I slathered the whipped cream all over it to beautiful effect, and we savored the moist, rich results (no pictures were taken before we devoured it).

Girlfriend-worthy Cream Cake
via Food Loves Writing

Ingredients:
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 F. Butter and flour two 8-inch round cake pans.

In a large bowl, beat eggs until thick and bright yellow; then add sugar and vanilla and mix to combine.

In a separate bowl, sift together the dry ingredients. Beat alternately with the cream into the egg mixture, a little at a time. Batter will be very thick.

Spread batter into the two cake pans. Bake in preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Loosen cakes by running a spatula or butter knife around the edges of the pans, tap the pans sharply once, and let cool.

Whipped cream and strawberries:
3 cups whipped cream
1 tsp almond extract (optional)
2 T white sugar
strawberries, or other berries or fruit, sliced, at room temperature

Do not make the whipped cream until just before the cakes are done and cooled completely. Otherwise, your whipped cream will turn right back into cream. (Stick the cakes in the fridge for a while if you're impatient or short on time.) While the cakes are baking, put a metal mixing bowl in the fridge or freezer to chill it. The cream will whip faster that way.

Set out some strawberries (or other berries if you so desire) so they'll be at room temperature and more flavorful. Biting into cold strawberries is less fun for everyone.

When ready to make the whipped cream, pour heavy cream (we used a pint and a half, or 3 cups, but we like whipped cream in copious amounts) and extract into the pre-chilled bowl and beat with electric mixer. (Whipping cream by hand is possible, but not advisable unless you really like taking half an hour to make it.) When cream thickens, add some white sugar (2 to 3 tablespoons) and continue to beat at high speed until thick and whippy. (You'll know.) Take the cakes, invert them, and frost/assemble the layers, arranging the strawberries on top of the whipped cream.

(I've seen complicated instructions on how to trim layer cakes so they have a straight edge, but here you really don't need to bother. The whipped cream will fill out any uneven parts very nicely.)

Campus-Friendly Charoset (Alchohol Removed)

2010-04-13T16:29:00.000-04:00

I'm not Jewish. Not in the least. So, what's a boy like me doing, making charoset?

I may not be Jewish, but I've been compared to a Jewish mother, fixing enough food to feed three families and trying to make sure everyone eats. For my film club, we were screening The Secrets (Ha-Sodot), so in order to have an appropriate snack, I decided to prepare some traditional Jewish food. As if I planned it this way, the movie fell during the week of Passover, so I figured something from the seder meal would be best. Lo and behold, charoset made the list.

But, problem! I can't serve anything with alcohol in it to an on campus club. So, this recipe calls for an alcohol-removed solution that ends up tasting fantastic. I don't even really like either apples or walnuts and I couldn't get enough of this.

NOTE: This may or may not be strictly kosher. I wasn't up to buying a Jewish wine, but I do end up boiling it. Depending on which set of rules are used, boiling the wine may make it acceptable, it may not be enough. When in doubt, alter the recipe to suit your needs.

Ingredients:

5 Fuji, Gala, or similarly tasting apples
1 1/4 cups of finely chopped walnut pieces
2 cups of port wine (or your choice of more kosher wines)
2 teaspoons cinnamon
5 teaspoons sugar
Optional: lemon or lime juice

Procedure:

1. Put your wine in a small pot and bring up to a boil, letting it reduce by half (about 1 cup remaining).

2. Peel your apples. To keep them from browning, place the peeled apples in a bowl of water containing about a teaspoon of lemon or lime juice.

3.a. If you are working with a mandolin slicer: With a sharp knife, slice bands about a quarter of an inch thick all around the apple, not cutting all the way to the core. You should be making the cuts perpendicular to the core, so that it looks like a stack of apple slices held together by the core that you didn't cut through. With that done to all the apples, attach your thinnest julienning attachment onto the mandolin, and adjust the blade height to about a millimeter thick. Slice through all your apples, avoiding the core. Run a large chef's knife through the apple piles if you desire a finer cut. Remember to return each batch of cut apples to the lemon/lime water to keep them from browning up.

3.b. If you are working with a food processor: Core your apples and slice them to the size appropriate to fit in your machine. Pulse the apples until they resemble a minced texture, but don't make them into apple sauce.

3.c. If you don't have any fancy kitchen equipment: Find a friend. Block the door. Tell them they're helping you mince apples. Wait for them to stop trying to run away, then prepare to buckle down and mince all the apples as small as you can manage. About 1 millimeter all around should be small enough.

4. Pat down the cut apples with a paper towel to remove excess moisture. If you have a salad spinner, that'll also work.

5. Combine cut apples, walnuts, reduced wine, cinnamon, and sugar, adjusting the sugar and spice as you see fit.

And there you have it. Great by itself, on matzo, or on your choice of non-Passover foods. This recipe is actually surprisingly easy to do for such a delicious outcome. Well, I have a mandolin slicer, so if you're slicing by hand you might not agree with me on the "easy" part, but it's hard not to consider this tasty.

Side effect: Any space you cook or serve this in while it's still fresh will smell amazing.

Brown Sugar Carrot-Zucchini Bread

2010-04-06T10:39:00.003-04:00

A fellow member of The Weekly Delicious, the wonderful Anna, shared a recipe with me recently that I had to try. It came from here at Food People Want originally, but merits its own post here due to my seeming inability to follow any recipe without making modifications. Hey, I have my preferences, and my spare ingredients that need using up.

The original recipe was for a carrot bread (okay, essentially carrot cake in a loaf pan without the frosting) with a little fresh ginger, lots of brown sugar, and orange zest. Mmm, tasty. But I didn't have quite enough carrots on hand, and I had some zucchini that needed using up, so I shredded in about half a medium zucchini along with the two carrots I had in the fridge. And I left out the white sugar, because I just won't use white if I can get away with using brown instead. And I subbed in some whole wheat flour because my mom does that for her fabulous-beyond-all-reason carrot cake, so I figured it couldn't hurt. And last, I used half applesauce, half oil instead of oil alone because I had just about a fourth of a cup of applesauce left in my fridge, and I was starting to worry I wouldn't use the rest before it went bad.

The recipe was a definite success. I brought it to my girlfriend's house hoping to impress her with my culinary prowess, and I think I did. We sliced it up for breakfast and it was lovely. We were especially impressed by how well it held together.

Make sure to include the orange zest, by the way. I could really taste it in each bite and it was...well, zesty.

Brown Sugar Carrot-Zucchini Bread
INGREDIENTS:

* 1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
* 1/2 cup whole-wheat flour
* 1 teaspoon cinnamon
* 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
* 3/4 teaspoons baking soda
* 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 2 large eggs
* 3/4 cups packed brown sugar
* 1/4 cup canola oil
* 1/4 cup applesauce, unsweetened
* 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
* 1/2 teaspoon grated fresh ginger (I used bottled minced ginger)
* Grated zest of 1/2 orange
* 1 heaping cup shredded carrots and/or zucchini (this was two medium carrots and half a zucchini for me)

METHOD:

1. Preheat the oven to 350°. Coat one 8 by 4" loaf pan with cooking spray or oil.
2. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, cardamom and salt.
3. In a large bowl, beat the eggs with the brown sugar . Add the oil SLOWLY in a thin stream, beating constantly, until the batter has doubled in volume and oil is well-incorporated. Beat in the applesauce, vanilla, orange zest and ginger. Fold in the shredded carrots and zucchini. Beat in the dry ingredients in 3 batches, mixing well between additions.
4. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake in the middle of the oven for 50 minutes to 1 hour, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Makes 1 8 by 4" loaf

Espresso Brownies

2010-02-19T14:33:00.001-05:00

Let me just start this by saying first and foremost that I consider myself a cook, not a baker. The irony in that is that lately I've been baking about as much as I've been cooking. Blue Velvet cupcakes for a movie showing for the film club I run, chocolate cake for a date, and now espresso brownies to satisfy a craving.

When figuring out exactly what you're craving, realize that sitting in the best coffee spot in the state might bias your tastebuds. You and your friends may have the conversation I had:

"Coffee cake."

"Mocha chip cookies."

"Espresso brownies."

"Latte flavored bacon."

"Wait wait wait, what was that second to last one? We should probably do that."

Ingredients:

2 heaping cups of dark chocolate chips (about 12-13 ounces)
8 Tablespoons unsalted butter
3 Tablespoons finely ground coffee (Espresso grounds if you have them)
3/4 cup all purpose flour
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
1/3 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Procedure:

.5. Preheat oven to 350°F and get out some cupcake papers. (You can use an 8x8 pan if you really want.)

1. Set up a double boiler. If you don't have a formal one, put a small pot of water on to boil and place a larger glass or metal bowl on top so that you can fill it (think upside down hat). In the double boiler, melt the chocolate and butter. Stir until well mixed. This step can be done while doing the next step, so get good at multitasking.

2. In a medium sized bowl, combine the sugar, ground coffee, and eggs. Mix them until it starts to thicken up and turn a lighter color, forming ribbons from the whisk when you pull it up. If you're like me and don't have a high speed mixer, this will be a pain. Just keep stirring vigorously and you'll get it. If you do have a high speed mixer, lucky you, just let it run for a minute or two.

3. When satisfied with your mixings, stir in the chocolate from step #1.

4. Sift/slowly pour in a tiny bit at a time your flour, salt, and baking powder. Mix until they're combined, but don't overmix.

5. Pour the batter into the cupcake papers about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way up.

6. Place in the oven, checking after 15 minutes. I'm not going to give you a time set in stone, since everyone's ovens run differently. If it takes longer, just keep testing with a toothpick or sharp knife every few minutes. You'll want your testing tool to come out clean, if it isn't, back in the oven.

Notes:

1. I'm sorry, but I don't have a cooking time for if you were to attempt these in a traditional brownie pan. Try it for yourself and figure out which time works best for you and your oven.

2. You don't have to use star shaped cupcake molds. But I like them.

3. Alter them as you want. Chocolate chips, nuts, frosting, whatever you like.

4. Ideal serving accompaniments: A cup of coffee and a scoop of coffee ice cream.

Fennel and Onion Soup

2010-02-12T13:31:00.004-05:00

I confess that every now and then I feel the need to completely make something up and try it out on my friends. More often than not, this happens when I'm trapped inside and running out of ingredients (like this week's meatball, onion, corn, and mashed potato pie. It turned out well, but not so much that I'll embarrass myself by posting it here.) I was grocery shopping with some friends a while back, and the fennel just jumped out at me as something I really wanted to cook again.

I've made a soup with fennel in it before, sure, but it was almost an afterthought in that case. I could barely taste it. If I was going to do another soup with fennel in it, fennel would be the star. People would ea and realize this what fennel actually tastes like.

So I figured out things I would want in a soup, relying heavily on what I hoped would be fairly good instincts from when I made french onion soup before. I have to say that it was an surprisingly good, after some on-the-fly improvisations.

Ingredients:

2 large, sweet onions
2 fennel bulbs
8 ounces of sliced baby bella mushrooms
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 stick (1/2 cup) butter
12 ounces of fresh baby spinach
1 cup of shredded or crumbled sharp white cheddar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon of fine ground herbes de provence
About 1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
8 to 10 cups water (or stock)

Procedure:

1. Cut onions and fennel (just use the bulb, no need to mess with the stalks here) into half-moon slivers as thin as you can manage. If you have particularly thick fennel, now would be when you break out the mandolin slicer if you have one. Basically, the thinner your cuts, the softer and easier this will all cook down into the soup. No one wants to bite into a huge chunk of crunchy fennel in their soup.

2. In a large, wide pot, melt the butter over medium high heat. Nonstick is your friend here, but if you have wine on hand and want to deglaze the pan later, be my guest.

3. When the butter is melted, put in your onions, fennel, salt, and pepper. Stir regularly or as needed to prevent burning. Let them get caramelized to a medium brown. You'll be waiting around for at least 45 minutes to an hour, so find a chair or something.

4. When the onions and fennel are appropriately brown, add the garlic, mushrooms, and herbes de provence. Stir frequently until mushrooms have browned as well.

5. Add water to the pot and stir thoroughly, making sure to scrape the bottom and mix well. If you want even more flavor, feel free to use stock. Use less water for fewer servings with more veggies, more water for more servings with more broth.

6. When the soup has come back up to a simmer, add ginger to taste. You may use more than I suggested, maybe less. It's all about giving that last bit of balance and fullness to the soup, so you know how much you want. Just keep adding, mixing, tasting, and repeating as needed.

7. When the soup has achieved a zen state of balance, add the spinach. It will reduce in a split second. Cook this for only a minute or two, you want the spinach to remain fresh and green tasting.

8. Ladle into bowls and finish with a sprinkling of the white cheddar.

Notes:

1. Your soup may be a different color and have different sized pieces of fennel/onion than mine. I was running out of time for this preparation and had to rush.

2. Adjust water as needed. Make as much or as little as needed. This batch fed five people two servings with a few meals worth of leftovers.

3. If you have wine on hand, deglaze the pan before adding the water. Enough white wine to coat the bottom of the pot should do it, and will do wonders for the soup.

4. This soup has a surprising flavor. It can have quite a kick to it between the pepper, ginger, and licorice-y fennel.

5. Bread goes really well with this soup, as pictured. Spring for a baugette, you won't regret it.

6. Don't be afraid to mess with things in this. Add meat. Add other veggies. Use different herbs. Serve it in a bread bowl. Just have fun with it.

Now Bring Us Some Figgy Pudding

2010-01-09T15:46:00.007-05:00

This post is a little overdue.

During the holiday season I tend to become sentimental and nostalgic, craving those old-timey white Christmases of yore. I like to read Dickens and picture roast goose, roasted chestnuts, sugar plums and of course, figgy pudding.

I'm all about bringing back old traditions of Christmases long ago. Why make a figgy pudding? Why NOT?

I made this recipe twice: once for a pre-Christmas party, once for New Year's Day. Let me tell you, there is no better way to impress your guests than to set a figgy pudding alight and watch it blaze with purple-blue flames.

This recipe has been modified and adapted to suit my sensibilities, tastes, and inclinations against absurdly time-consuming processes such as steaming. This recipe is for a baked pudding, though if you have the time and patience to steam it, be my guest.

Old and New Figgy Pudding
* 1/2 cup butter, softened
* 1 egg, beaten
* 1/2 cup molasses
* 1/2 cup honey or maple syrup
* ½ tsp lemon or orange peel, grated (although if you can get candied orange peel, that would be even better)
* 2 cups mixed chopped dried fruit, including figs (other suggestions include dates, apricots, plums, and raisins)
* 1 cup buttermilk
* 1 tsp brandy, plus more for dousing
* 1 tsp salt
* 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
* 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
* 1/2 tsp baking soda
* 2 tsp baking powder
* 2½ cups all-purpose flour

In a large bowl, cream the butter.
Add the egg, molasses and honey. Beat thoroughly.
Now, add dried fruit, lemon peel, brandy, and buttermilk. Blend for one minute.
In a separate bowl, mix the dry ingredients together, then stir them into the wet ingredients. Blend thoroughly.

Pour batter into a large greased souffle dish. I would give more specific measurements, but I did this on the fly in unfamiliar kitchens both times, and just made my best guess at what would hold the batter. Err on the side of large for your baking dish. This pudding rises high.

Bake at 325 F for about one hour. Make sure it is baked all the way through. Don't just assume. You'll be sorry.

When ready to serve, douse it in brandy and set it on fire. For a more dramatic effect, turn out the lights beforehand. Don't worry about the flames; they should burn themselves out, but do have a lid on hand just in case. Enjoy, and bask in the awe of all your party guests.

Spice Cabinet

2010-01-03T16:48:00.002-05:00

I've had a half dozen potential post ideas to make, but then I realize that fiarly often when I cook, I don't use exact enough measurements to allow these things to be recreated without me hovering over anyone trying to cook and tell them how much of this to put in and how long to cook that. And if I were to do all that for anyone making these recipes, it would be creepily invasive and too much of a demand on my time. So, to stall for another week, I'll talk about my go-to things in my spice cabinet.

I'm beyond lucky to have a new tea and spice store move in downtown in my university town. I could spend so much money in that place. But, since I am a college student and trying to be thrifty, I'm not about to go all out for my spices. I am, however, willing to seek quality spices for a good value if I know I'm going to be using them a lot. So, here's what gets used most in my kitchen:

1. Kosher Salt: Salt gets used in everything. Really. Just try and go into any functional kitchen and see if you can't find a pinch of salt. I use kosher salt for most of my cooking because I like the heft of it, for lack of a better word. I still have regular table salt for baking, brines, and table seasoning.

2. Coarse Black Pepper: Along with salt, pepper is one of those ubiquitous kitchen things that gets tossed in whenever you're seasoning something. It's good for just about anything that needs a bit of a bite, and has a home alongside the salt shaker on the table.

3. Garlic Powder: When you just need a hit of garlic flavor and don't want to bust out a clove and chop, just use a sprinkle.

4. Onion Powder: The same concept as garlic powder, this can add just the hint of onion to sauces, rubs, and savory sautés.

5. Bay Leaf: I used to not see the importance of this little leaf, I mean, what good is a something that you have to take out before you eat? But for broths and sauces, I haven't found a better way of adding a unique and earthy note of flavor that many people won't be able to place. If it's in something traditional, like a macaroni and cheese, people will wonder what your secret is for why yours is so deliciously different.

6. Allspice: This is another thing I didn't quite understand until a little while ago, but now this little berry is something I love to use with any meat and a variety of soups and sauces to give them a bit of a flavor kick. It's something like a cross between a peppercorn and a clove in flavor, and very versatile. I first used it in my Smoked Pork, Buccaneer Style from last year, and it's another one of those things that will give a mystery flavor to whatever you add it to.

7. Basil: This isn't just for Italian food any more. Branch out with some basil eggs for breakfast, or apply this herb to your Indian or Thai cooking. It's a distinctive herb, but try experimenting with it in unlikely places where you need another hit of flavor.

8. Poultry Seasoning: This is a bit of a cop out, since I also use thyme and rosemary fairly often by themselves, but this mix of several different traditionally savory herbs gets placed in a ton of my soups, gravies, sauces, meat seasonings, and a surprisingly large number pies and casseroles. I bet you haven't had a Thanksgiving dinner without at least a bit of poultry seasoning.

9. Cayenne Pepper: There's a ton of options for adding some heat to whatever you cook, but whenever I need to put some fire in my dish, I turn to cayenne pepper. Whether I'm working with a curry, chili, or cheese sauce, I love using this pepper. I have a really strong cayenne pepper, but even with regular cayenne pepper, be careful when handling it and keep it away from your eyes. Really, do be careful with it.

10. Cinnamon: I had to debate whether to put this one here or my honorable mention, but I think cinnamon deserves it. No, it's not just paired with sugar and sweet treats (though that's a good thing to do with it too). Cinnamon also thrives in a savory role, like when used in a rub with beef or in a slightly spicy sauce. Even in a traditionally sweet role, like a crust, cinnamon can complement a savory pie. When I ate at the oldest restaurant in Quebec, their meat pie had cinnamon in the crust that accented the filling so well you couldn't imagine it any other way.

Honorable Mention: Nutmeg: Another spice that tends to get type cast in the apple pie role, this too can find a place in your savory dishes. Sneak it into recipes with meats or sauces, though I tend to pair it with mushrooms whenever I cook with them.

An invaluable complement to these spices is a mortar and pestle. This allows me to buy whole spices and grind them up to smaller bits when I need them. It's really beyond helpful, especially when trying to release the flavor from the leafy herbs. If I'm doing anything where herbs/spices need to be ground in the same recipe that requires salt, I use the kosher salt as a sort of abrasive grit to help with grinding the spices in the mortar and pestle.

These are just a few of the things I use, and it's just an indication of what styles of food I cook most often. I also have curry powder, garam masala, cumin, herbes de provence, dill weed, and a slew of other things I use to make more specialty things. But while every spice cabinet is different and can act as a cook's fingerprint, sometimes you just need to know where to start when building up your first set.

Cheesy Broccoli and Rice Casserole

2009-12-15T22:33:00.002-05:00

I believe in the power of the casserole. I actually began to construct an overly elaborate and delicious metaphor relating a casserole to life, but you aren't reading a food blog to hear me go on and on about that. But I will say that I'm on a one man crusade to revive the dying art of the casserole. It is for this reason that I've made a yearly tradition of throwing a dinner potluck called Night of 1000 Casseroles.

Some have called this a hipster party. I can kind of see where they get that from, since we are a large group of college-age people throwing a dinner party around something traditionally uncool and... well, weird. But I will be the first to say that our love for casserole is genuine, so the notes of ridicule and irony traditionally associated with hipster activities aren't even a blip on the radar.

And as I'm on this quest to bring life back into a dying casserole art, I'm not about to introduce something with canned soup mixes or prepackaged fried onion pieces. For this event, I saw a lot of nontraditional casseroles being made, so I decided to put my spin on a more homestyle sort of casserole. So was born the Cheesy Broccoli and Rice Casserole.

Ingredients:

About 3 cups of cooked basmati rice
1/2 cup sliced (or diced) regular white mushrooms
1/2 cup diced onion (yellow, white, or any sweet variety)
1/2 cup vegetable stock (I cook for a lot of vegetarians. Use chicken stock if you want)
1 and 1/2 cups of heavy cream
12 ounces of broccoli, cut to bite sized pieces
4 tablespoons of butter
About 2 cups of a shredded cheddar/jack blend (or just cheeses with a similar bite to them)
About 1 and 1/2 cups of panko bread crumbs (or regular ones, of those are all you have)
2 tablespoons of flour
2 cloves of minced garlic (more if you like garlic, of course)
1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
Salt and pepper

Procedure:

0.5. Cook your rice now. Please. You don't want to be waiting on it while everything else is cooking. Depending on your rice, if you begin this step just before finishing step #1, your rice should be ready just about when you need it.

1. Preheat the oven to 425°F. Coat a 1 and 1/2 quart (or similarly sized dish, go bigger if you have to) casserole/glass baking dish in a layer of the butter you have measured out. Melt the remaining butter in a medium sized pot.

2. When the butter is melted, put the onions in along with a sprinkling of salt and pepper. Sauté the onions until they become translucent (i.e., not opaque and pure white, but not fully brown yet... kinda see-through).

3. When the onions are transparent, add the mushrooms, garlic (if you add them any earlier, they might get overcooked), cayenne pepper, and nutmeg. Stir regularly until the mushrooms give up most of their moisture and turn a medium-dark brown.

4. Add in the flour and coat the veggies. Stir this pasty mess for about 2 minutes to get rid of the taste of raw flour. By the way, you're making a roux right now, it's what will thicken the sauce.

5. After 2 minutes, add the vegetable stock and then the cream to the pot. Stir until the sauce is well mixed and there are no chunks of floury roux floating around (there will with chunks of onion and mushroom left, of course). Bring this up to a simmer. You've just made soup much better than you could get out of a can.

6. When the sauce is simmering, add 1 and 1/2 cups of the cheese. Do this a handful or two at a time to allow the cheese to mix in evenly. Add in the broccoli, cooked rice, and 1 cup of the panko and mix well.

7. Take the mixture and put it in the buttered casserole dish, spreading the top to make an even surface. Sprinkle the remaining cheese evenly on the top, followed by sprinkling the remaining panko in a similar fashion.

8. Place the dish in the oven, uncovered, for about 20 minutes or until the top cheese is melted and the panko is a golden brown. Serve hot.

You'll be surprised with how simple this is to pull off compared to how many remarks of "Mmmmmm!" and "Thish ish sho gooad! [chewing noises]" you'll get. Feel free to make little alterations wherever you see fit. While there is some science to casseroles, much of it is an art that you use your instincts for when you feel confident enough about your culinary abilities. Stay tuned for some more of the top casseroles from Night of 1000 Casseroles.

Crockless French Onion Soup

2009-11-08T18:32:00.003-05:00

It's been a while since I posted a recipe (mainly because I've been experimenting with things that are really hard to write about and recreate, curry among them). Anyway, because I love the film club I'm a president of so much, I decided that for our pot luck screening of La Reine Margot that I would make them french onion soup. This always sound more pretentious than I intend it to be, but I really haven't been able to eat french onion soup since I had soupe à l'oignon in Paris that I place on my list of the top five things I've ever eaten. So I realized that I was going to be disappointed no matter how good my soup ended up, but got over that fact pretty quickly.

Ingredients:

5 onions (Vidalia, mayan sweets, or just regular yellow or white onions)
3 tablespoons of butter (but more doesn't hurt...)
Salt and pepper
At least 2 cups of white wine
3 cups beef broth (can be made from bouillon)
2 cups chicken broth (can also be made from bouillon)
A "bouquet garnis" of 1 tablespoon of herbes de provence and 1 bay leaf (see note)
A baguette
1 cup of gruyere cheese (shredded)

Note: To make this "bouquet," I improvised... well, a lot. I put the herbs in a coffee filter and tied it off with kitchen string. The point is that you don't want little leafy bits floating around in your soup when it's done, so you use this little packet to get the flavors into the soup without having to skim the herbs off the top. I also toyed with the idea of putting them in my tea ball, so you might want to try one of those and just let the bay leaf go free in the soup (that's easy enough to pick out of anything).

Procedure:

1. Cut the tops and bottoms off the onions. With the bottom of the onion on the cutting board and the top facing up, make thin crescents out of the onion by cutting it as you would a pizza. But instead of making only a few "slices of pizza," make as many as you can manage (I averaged about 26 to 34 "slices" depending on how big the onion was. If you still have trouble visualizing what you're cutting, think of a bloomin' onion, but with smaller petals and cut all the way through.

2. Melt the butter in a large pot. When completely melted, add one layer of onion and lightly salt and pepper it. Add another layer of onion and salt and pepper it the same way, continuing until you run out of onion. Let sweat, covered, on medium low heat for 20 minutes without stirring them.

3. Remove lid and stir. Increase heat to medium and stir the onions occasionally until the onions are dark brown (not burnt, mind you, just really caramelized). This will take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour or beyond, depending on your stove, the onions, and the alignment of the planets, so just tend to them every couple of minutes.

3.5. While the onions are cooking, slice your bread into inch thick pieces. Lay those pieces out on a baking sheet and sprinkle with a layer of the gruyere cheese. Set them aside for now.

4. Once satisfied with the color of the onions, add enough white wine to the pot to cover the onions completely. Turn the heat on high and stir constantly until the wine turns syrupy in consistency (3 to 5 minutes, give or take, depending on how much wine you used).

Side note: The alcohol will cook out of this, that's pretty much what you're trying to do with the heat up so high. But as I learned, the alcohol cooking off goes somewhere, making billowing clouds of steam. Inhaling said steam is like breathing in vaporized alcohol. Just letting you benefit from my white wine facial experience a couple days ago.

5. When the wine has cooked down, lower the heat back down to a medium and add the beef and chicken broths, along with the bouquet garni. Once that's brought up to a boil, reduce heat to a simmer. Let simmer for 15 to 20 minutes.

6. Turn your oven's broiler on, and put the sheet with the cheese covered bread underneath the broiler. The bread should only be under there long enough to toast the cheese, so keep an eye on them and remove them before they get burnt, of course.

Serving:

You can probably tell by now, but this recipe has been adapted to suit the general population that doesn't have a set of matching mini crocks for traditional french onion soup. Instead, just take out the bouquet garnis and ladle out individual portions of soup into bowls, then sprinkle with as much of the leftover gruyere cheese as you want. Then plop a piece of the toasted bread (cheese side up) in the bowl and serve.

This version has at least a dozen servings, and can be increased very easily just by adding more onion or more broth. Every component can be stored separately and recombined when ready for any leftovers you might have.

Tips:

Thinner pieces of onion are easier to get on a spoon.
I've had good experiences with the "Better Than Bouillon" brand bouillon paste, but those little cubes work well too. For premade broth, I like cartons better than cans.
Don't stand right over the pan when you add the wine. Really. It will be hard to see during that step anyway, so be prepared.
Don't forget to take out the bouquet garnis.
Deeper bowls work better than shallower bowls when serving.
Your entire living space will smell delicious for a good 24 to 48 hours. Sorry, unintentional side effect.

My film club pot luck contribution was a big success, and resulted in leftovers for quite a while. That was pretty convenient when watching Julie & Julia the day after, craving both french food and blogging about it. So now I've satisfied both parts of that need.

Potage de Légumes on a crisp autumn evening

2009-10-27T16:01:00.005-04:00

It's me again. Grad school has started in full swing and I hardly have time to cook anything without judicious use of my crockpot. I have no end of wonderful slow cooker recipes, but all the same I have come to look forward to nights I don't have class or work as nights I can kick back and get some real cooking done. (I know, I know.)

Last night was one of those nights. I had a little time on my hands, and I made a recipe I've been looking forward to making with great anticipation. This recipe has been crying out to me to try it for years. Almost a decade.

Many years ago, my brother was assigned a project that was ubiquitous to middle school French classes in our county: to cook, from scratch, a French meal for Mother's day. This was his first foray into cooking anything more complicated than toast, and it was quite the evening. I believe he still has the burn marks on his hands. One of the recipes he made I would barely touch-- it looked like applesauce and tasted of nothing much. It was a potage, a traditional, warming French vegetable stew. I did not, at the time, see the point of all those vegetables without any meat for them, and I was wary of the chunky purée my brother had made out of it. I barely ate any of my brother's meal at all-- I proclaimed the steak grey and chewy, the snowy merengue dessert flavorless. My brother can't cook, I told myself haughtily. Our sibling rivalry was still in full swing.

A year later, my mother served up another vegetable stew for dinner. This was rich and nutty and complex. I think I actually closed my eyes in delight when I had my first spoonful.
"What kind of stew is this?" I asked her.
"It's potage de légumes. What your brother made last year."

I could hardly believe her. That soup I still remembered with loathing. This soup was excellent, and the texture was creamy-- perhaps because she knew how to work the blender a little better than my brother had at 13.

The memories of this second rendering of the potage stayed with me. Every so often I would come across the recipe in my mother's personal collection, written out in her neat, even handwriting on a 3 x 5 index card. To make it would be to connect with my roots-- je suis québécoise, and proud-- to connect, too, with the most refined of cooking traditions. I would be just a little closer to mastering the art of French cooking.

But over the years, life got in the way. We always have onions, carrots, and potatoes on hand, but none of the other vegetables the recipe calls for, not without a special trip to the store. Somehow, whenever I thought of making the recipe, there wasn't time to go and buy them. Our lack of turnips kept me stalling.

It happened again when I began living on my own. I go produce-shopping once a week at Haymarket, and so every trip I have to decide what kind and how many fruits and vegetables I can reasonably use within the next week. This tends to leave ingredients more "exotic" to my pantry out cold. Maybe I'll have time to use those turnips next week, I would think to myself.

But at last, I forced myself to acquire the leeks, the parsnips, the turnips-- then go back out and buy onions and potatoes, because I'd used up the last batch. And, when the time was right and my ingredients were assembled, at long last I made my Potage de Légumes. It's a simple yet flavorful recipe, and easy to make so long as you're not afraid of cleaning out your blender afterwards.

The potage was everything I remembered and more. A perfect, traditional French dish, wonderful for autumn evenings. I love everything about this dish. Even the color is such a lovely orange. It is treat for the eye as well as the tastebuds. And the empty tummy.

Potage de Légumes Worth Waiting For

2 tablespoons butter
1 medium onion, diced
1 large leek, white part only, sliced
4 cups chicken stock
1 medium potato, peeled and diced
1 medium turnip, peeled and diced
1 large carrot, diced
1 medium parsnip, diced
1/4 tsp thyme
1/4 tsp herbes de provence
Salt to taste

Melt butter in large saucepan. Add onion and leek and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until soft and translucent.

Add potato, turnip, carrots, parsnip, broth, thyme, herbes de provence, and salt. Bring to a boil, then cover, reduce heat, and simmer 20 minutes or until vegetables are tender.

Transfer soup to a blender and purée in batches until smooth. (The best way to do this, if you are unexperienced with puréeing, is to ladle soup out of the pot and into the blender, getting an even ratio of vegetables to broth, and once blended, pour into serving bowls and move on to the next batch. It's not as scary as it sounds-- I puréed mine in two batches.)
If soup is too thick, add a little broth.

Makes six side servings.

Caribbean Stew with Coconut Milk, Kale, and Sweet Potato

2009-08-29T11:03:00.003-04:00

Lately I've been getting into cooking dishes with a Caribbean flair. Boston is home to some excellent Caribbean restaurants, and the ingredients are both easy to find and inexpensive to purchase. I'd been thinking of trying to make something along the lines of callaloo, but I wasn't sure-- I'd looked into several recipes but couldn't find one that felt just right. Ingredients varied widely. Some called for ham or bacon, some called for crab, some called for beef, others called for all three. Some called for sweet potato, some called for squash or pumpkin, others seemed to be just callaloo leaves and broth and spices. Which to choose? Which was the most authentic?

Then I read a friendly little article on Jamaican cooking that assured me it was all right to make substitutions and to use the ingredients that suited me. To make callaloo, in Jamaica or in Trinidad or anywhere it is made, said the article, was to learn how to cook. Experiment, it urged me. Find what works.

Now, that's my kind of recipe.

And here is my very own version. I'm sure it would be excellent with real callaloo, but I already had so much kale that I decided to substitute. (And FYI, kale is considered to be pretty close to the real thing, if you can't get callaloo leaves in your area. Many recipes also suggest spinach.)

Callaloo, Boston-style

3 cups chopped kale, spinach, or collard greens, or callaloo leaves if you have them
1/2 onion, minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups sweet potato, diced
1 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1 teaspoon turmeric
2 teaspoons coriander
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
4 cups vegetable broth
1 can lump crab meat (6 oz)
1 can black-eyed peas
1 can light coconut milk (12 oz, approx.)

Sauté onion and garlic in a little bit of oil in a large pot, about 5 minutes. Add in spices, cook 1 minute longer.

Pour in the broth and sweet potato; bring to a boil and simmer 10 minutes. Add in the greens of your choice; simmer 5 minutes. Stir in coconut milk, crab, and black-eyed peas; simmer 5 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve. Makes 5-6 hearty servings.

This stew is rich and flavorful. It may be the best soup I've made to date-- and I make a lot of soup. I was dubious about using canned crab meat but it tasted fine; I'm not sure the recipe would be the same without it. The ingredients here really come together into something special. (Not to be too modest or anything.)

Potential Teriyaki

2009-08-03T18:33:00.003-04:00

I like recipes that are flexible. Having to follow a recipe exactly without making any changes at all feels confining to me- that's why I don't bake much. Bread dough and I do not get along.

This recipe is heaven if you like improvisation. Just start with these components, and take it in any direction you want. I call it teriyaki, but the ingredients you choose and the ratio of sweet to sour could really make it into anything, like a barbeque sauce.

Sweet
jam, juice, sugar, fresh fruit, honey, ketchup, molasses...

Sour
vinegar, lemon, lime, wine...

Salty
soy sauce, salt, boullion, salted cooking wine, worchestershire sauce...

Aromatic
dried spices, fresh herbs, garlic, zests and peels, sesame seeds, hot sauce, browned onions...

I usually start with equal parts sweet, sour, and soy sauce, then adjust. If you don't have soy, you can use salt instead. One combination I like is pineapple juice concentrate, lime juice, and soy sauce. For aromatics, I add garlic, lime zest, and a huge amount of ginger.

The only rule is that you have to taste it over and over before you get it right.

A Warning

2009-07-21T09:54:00.001-04:00

If you find Nutella in the fridge, and want to soften it, do not put in in the microwave. Although the jar contains no metal, this may make your microwave emit blue flash, a deep booming sound, and a horrific smell.

Theoretically.

Pantry Soup

2009-07-20T09:56:00.001-04:00

I realize that this is not quite in keeping with the “traditional” format of Weekly Delicious, but I feel like it needs to be written down somewhere. We writers of the Weekly Delicious have made quite a lot of soup in our time together, and not just because we enjoy soup (though that’s a fine reason by itself). No, to us, soup becomes that great communal dish that everyone can take part in. Translate that as: It’s quick, easy, cheap, and relatively fast to prepare. I can call up people on campus when I start getting hungry, ask what they have, compare it to what I have, and quickly think of how that can work as a soup. Really, it’s the epitome of poor college student dining, with everyone providing what they can in one big meal. For the sake of using a name everyone can agree on, I’ll call this kind of soup a Pantry Soup.

First off, what is a soup? Put something in broth, and I’ll tend to call it a soup. I count chili, stew, and ramen as soups. Usually for a soup, you have to have some sort of liquid base, usually a broth or cream base, though there are others out there. I’d be willing to bet that the majority of these communal soups you’ll be making with be broth based, so you have a few options here. You can go with bouillon cubes, a bouillon paste such as Better That Bouillon (which… really is), canned or carton stock or broth, or you can make your own broth. I’ll let one of the other contributors post how to make broth/stock, since it really is worth it when you make that from scratch. In any case, the first three options are really easy to keep on hand in your pantry all the time for just such an occasion as emergency soup making.

The majority of soups I make have vegetables in them, because that’s just how I make soup. Carrots, celery, and onion are very traditional additions to soup, along with potato, corn, mushrooms, green beans, and peas. In fact, if you have a veggie, odds are it would go good in soup. It’s a really good way of using up whatever is stuck in your fridge or freezer that you don’t know what to do with. Don’t be afraid to experiment with things that you may not be accustomed to. One of my favorite soup creations this year used fennel bulb (licorice-y taste, consistency similar to an onion) and cost barely anything to make a unique soup that had one of those flavors that made people wonder what it was (or would have, if I didn’t call it Beef and Fennel Soup when giving it to people).

Usually you start the veggies first in the pot so that they’re cooked properly, with longer cooking veggies starting first so that they can cook longer. Soup logic, you see. I’m not going to tell you how to cook them, since it varies depending on the soup you’re making, but in general if you’re making a communal soup, you’ll want your veggies cooked before you put your broth in.

The quality of your vegetables will affect your soup, but don’t worry too much about only getting the freshest of ingredients. If you go to a farmer’s market or the produce section all the time, yeah, you’re probably going to see an incredibly tasty soup as a result from great produce. But frozen veggies are really convenient, easy, and affordable without sacrificing too much in the way of taste and consistency, so they’re always a solid option. I tend not to go with canned vegetables as much, though they are a viable option. Sometimes, as is the case with most of the chili we make, canned goods make up the majority of your spontaneous soup. Canned corn, green chilies, and tomatoes (probably the one thing that I will go for canned 90% of the time, just because it’s exactly what I need and so easy) all play a role.

Speaking of canned goods, it’s a rare thing anymore for me to make a Pantry Soup without beans in it. Black beans, red beans, red beans, white beans, navy beans (every color, really), great northern beans, pinto beans, kidney beans, and my personal favorite: the chickpea (garbanzo bean). It’s less than a dollar for a can, and you can just fill your pantry with them. They act as great filler in lots of soups, and do a good job of being a healthy way of varying the consistency of your soup. Plus, it you’re too… well, cheap to buy meat, it’s a great way to get protein in your meal.

I mentioned meat, and now I guess I have to follow through on it. Generally for my Pantry Soups, I don’t have meat in them. Why? I don’t keep meat around without a purpose. On the rare occasion I actually cook a dish that needs meat at school, I’ll buy it that day with the intent to use it within a few hours. That said, go ahead and use whatever kinds of meat you want to cook. Seriously, if it can fit on a spoon, it’ll go in a soup. However, there are ways you can get around having to keep fresh meat around. Leftovers are a great source of proteins, making any leftover chicken or steak like gold in your soup. You can also buy precooked frozen meat pieces (look near where frozen chicken nuggets would be) to keep in your freezer. One of my favorite quick fixes is using frozen meatballs. Just use them whole or cut them in half and warm them up in the hot broth of your soup, and you’ve got meat that also flavors the soup with whatever spices are already in the meatballs.

Oh yeah, and spices. There is no right or wrong spice for every occasion, with the possible exceptions of salt and pepper. However, there are herbs and spices that go with a lot of soups. I have huge bags of herbes de provence, Italian seasoning, garlic powder, onion powder, and bay leaves that I use all the time in soups. The bay leaf in particular will add an earthiness to your soups that will again make people wonder just what that flavor is. Just make sure to take it out before you serve your soup.

Last, but not least by a long shot, I bring up pasta. When you’ve got a wonderful soup that isn’t really enough food for all the people that just showed up at your apartment, you can add pasta to the equation to make that soup go a long way. When you think pasta, think of what fits well on a spoon. I tend to have an abundance of elbow macaroni and shells thanks to Costco, but any small pasta is great. You can even get nostalgic and add alphabet shapes, or stars, or whatever else you have on hand. To prepare it for your soup, just put it into the boiling broth almost at the end, and then follow the cooking time of you pasta. When time runs out (or slightly before), remove from the heat and you’ve got a meal.

Really, your Pantry Soup is only limited by your imagination. And what you have in your pantry, I suppose. Though that just means you should keep your pantry stocked, doesn’t it? Because when dinner for seven or more can cost less than $10, there’s no excuse to not have a few staple ingredients on hand.

Lazy Grad Student Mock Risotto

2009-07-17T20:46:00.008-04:00

I've been itching to make a risotto for a while now. Why? Because I've never made one. I've never even tasted one. But it sounded so rich and creamy, and I love pasta, and, well, I like a challenge. Making soufflés-- another dish supposed to be the test of one's culinary skills-- turned out to be relatively easy for me. I wanted to take on the risotto, too.

But, having recently struck out on my own, about to start grad school, and being, erm, between jobs, I can't afford most of the key ingredients-- the multiple cups of white wine, the special Arborio rice-- and for that matter, I'm a whole-grains girl. I avoid white rice if I possibly can, especially in my own cooking. I investigated some brown rice risottos, but realized I would need the patience for the extra cooking time a brown rice risotto would require; it takes twice as long as white rice. I do enjoy cooking, but not enough to spend an hour or more stirring a pot constantly.

And that's when I found this recipe off the Paupered Chef blog for "risotto-style pasta". This, I felt, just might work. Whole wheat pasta only takes a few minutes longer to cook than white. The recipe already called for chicken stock rather than white wine (an excellent substitute in most recipes). It wouldn't exactly be a risotto but it would have that same creamy texture. And it would cook in a much more reasonable amount of time.

The original recipe, evidently designed for the food-lover with a steady job, called for "artisanal strozzapreti pasta". Even if I could afford to go out of my way to buy a special pasta for this dish, I wouldn't know strozzapreti pasta from...from...from another fancy kind of not-so-paupered-chef's pasta. The pictures of the cooking process showed flat, long, wide strands of pasta, so I decided the linguine I had in the pantry was a close enough match. Just before cooking, I decided to break up my linguine to ensure that it cooked evenly and to make it a bit more like risotto in appearance and texture.

Since this is the grad student version of the recipe, amounts have been reduced to two servings: one for dinner and one for lunch the next day. Feel free to substitute ingredients based on the contents of your pantry: this is the grad student version, after all. I was lucky enough to make a trip to Haymarket before preparing this recipe, but we can't all buy fresh produce in bulk for ridiculously low prices.

Lazy Grad Student Mock Risotto

1/8 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 small onion or 1 small shallot, minced
3-4 baby yukon potatoes, peeled and diced small
1 1/4 cups chicken stock, or more if necessary
4 oz linguine, broken up into small pieces
black pepper, to taste
1/2 small tomato, diced
1 garlic clove, minced
2 branches fresh basil (I couldn't justify buying fresh basil for this one recipe, so I used dried Italian seasoning; however, if you have access to fresh basil I strongly recommend it)
1-2 scallions, trimmed, cut diagonally into 1-inch pieces (optional)
4-5 stalks asparagus, ends removed, cut diagonally into 1-inch pieces
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese

Note: Even mock risotto needs your constant attention, so be sure to prepare all ingredients fully before proceeding to the directions below. Trust me.

Warm stock in saucepan. Meanwhile, heat olive oil and butter in a wide, deep skillet.

When the butter begins to foam, add the potatoes and onions. Sauté until golden.

Add the pasta and toss until it is evenly coated with oil. Add in a little stock, the tomatoes, and the garlic.

Cook and stir constantly over low heat as for a risotto, adding more stock as it evaporates from the skillet, continuing until pasta is fully and evenly cooked. Add scallions after first round of stock; add asparagus near the end-- it only needs a few minutes to cook.

When pasta is al dente, remove from heat and stir in Parmesan cheese and herbs. Top with pepper as desired.

Enjoy your plate of creamy delicious heaven-on-a-plate. It may not have the prestige of being a true risotto, but your tastebuds will not know the difference. And the potatoes-- which I've never seen in a risotto recipe-- add a nice thick richness to the texture.

Apple-Cinnamon-Oatmeal Bread, or, Banana Bread without the Bananas

2009-06-30T22:08:00.003-04:00

Okay, so I'm pretty fond of making quick breads. Extremely fond. I can make real bread, too, but I don't always have the patience or time for it.

I'd been hankering for some time to try making the Chai-Spiced Apple Oatmeal Bread over at Cheap Healthy Good. However, my recent move to Boston means I'm on a tighter budget and no longer have access to my parents' accumulated baking supplies. I gave it a lot of thought, but I just couldn't justify shelling out 10 bucks for a little jar of cardamom that I only wanted for the one recipe. Nor did I feel like buying honey, as I hardly use that outside of baking recipes that specifically call for it either. I decided to start looking elsewhere for my quick-bread fix, for now-- I'm a fan of adapting recipes to ingredients I have on hand, but I'm pretty sure I shouldn't attempt to make chai-spiced bread without chai spices.

This weekend I just happened to spot a quick-breads cookbook for fifty cents at a thrift store. Just what I needed-- there had to be something in there I could make.

Flipping through it, though, I realized that although the book contained lots of lovely recipes that I will be trying for many years to come, they didn't quite have the recipe I was craving right now. I wanted apples. I wanted oatmeal. Maybe a little spice. But I wanted a savory, hearty, grainy kind of bread, one I could have alongside a thick stew-- not a sweet dessert bread like the recipes for cinnamon-raisin bread or blueberry bread. Pumpkin bread or gingerbread seemed a better choice for autumn. Other intriguing recipes contained lots of ingredients I didn't have on hand, and half the point was to make something without going on an epic and expensive shopping expedition. What was I to do?

That's when I flipped back to the recipe for Old-Fashioned Banana Bread. This one I had mentally ruled out right away. I have an intense aversion to bananas; always have, always will. For whatever reason, bananas are a food I just cannot eat in any capacity.

But being an experienced baker, for an amateur, I know that any fruit puree can work as a substitute for oil or shortening in a recipe: in banana bread, mashed bananas are used, but that doesn't mean you couldn't substitute applesauce if you wanted to. Banana bread without the bananas? Oh, this was sounding good.

Using the banana bread recipe as a reference for amounts and baking time, I cobbled this together with my own inventive flair.

Apple-Cinnamon-Oatmeal Bread

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup oat bran
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup buttermilk or buttermilk substitute (1/2 teaspoon lemon juice plus enough milk to fill to 1/2 cup mark; let stand)
1/4 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup rolled or quick oats (not instant)
1 1/2 cup applesauce, unsweetened

Preheat oven to 375 F.

In a small bowl, combine flour, oat bran, baking powder, white sugar, and salt.

In a large bowl, beat eggs until light and frothy; stir in buttermilk, vanilla extract, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Mix well.

Stir in oats until combined, then add the brown sugar. Make sure there are no lumps! Add in flour mixture slowly. Finally, beat in the applesauce.

Pour batter into greased and floured 9.5" loaf pan. Bake in the preheated oven for 50-55 minutes until edges begin to come away from pan and toothpick inserted into center comes out clean. Bread will be very hot and steamy; allow to cool or it may fall apart upon cutting. Close your eyes and enjoy.

Grilled Peaches

2009-06-24T16:41:00.002-04:00

This is the easiest recipe yet on The Weekly Delicious, but the results are just as wonderful as the others.

Perfectly ripe peaches are my favorite food. The texture, and flavor, the beautiful perfume... mmm. Because I love good peaches so much, bad peaches are a huge disappointment. They piss me off irrationally. Instead of warm and juicy and sweet, they are dry and grainy and sour and sad. Bad peaches go straight from unripe to rotten. What a waste of peach potential! However, there is a way to make lying no-good excuses for peaches into something wonderful.

After you are done cooking something delicious on the grill, cut your inferior peaches in half, and cover the cut sides with sugar. Put these skin-side down on the grill. If the grill is still quite hot, put them around the edges, away from the direct heat. You want to cook the peaches through without scorching the skin too badly. Do not flip them. They will bubble so happily, eager to finally live up to their potential. The sugar will melt and macerate the fruit as it cooks, making it even juicier. If you put them on just before you start eating your main course, they'll be ready in time for dessert.

Theoretically, you could eat this with ice cream, but that requires waiting a few seconds more before eating the peaches. Obviously, I have never tried it.

Smoked pork, buccaneer style

2009-06-21T20:44:00.015-04:00

This may be one of the few times you'll ever see just meat here on Weekly Delicious. This is what happens when you're a college student with a limited budget and even more limited means of production. A bit of background:

For my Pirates of the World final project, we could do whatever we wanted so long as we could relate it back to pirates. So I decided to apply what I learned about the history of pirates by producing my take on the smoked meat (boucan) that gave the buccaneers their name (boucanier). The nature of this is really kind of haphazard and inexact in many aspects, since... well, pirates were like that. Feel free to scale up or scale down as you like.

Ingredients:
- About 5 lbs of pork loin
- About 5 - 6 tablespoons of whole allspice
- About 5 - 6 tablespoons of kosher salt (you can use regular salt if you want)

Materials:
- About 6 handfuls of hickory wood chips (or whatever smoking chips you have)
- A grill
- Aluminum foil
- Mortar and pestle
- Meat or probe thermometer

Preparation:
Put your wood chips to soak in water for about an hour. I just used my ever so fancy multipurpose bucket. While the chips are soaking, crush the allspice in the mortar and pestle until it's about look of coarse pepper. Now, why did I make you grind your own allspice when you can just buy preground at the store? 1. It's a different, better flavor and 2. Pirates didn't have preground allspice, silly.

Mix your freshly ground allspice and salt together (you can even give it another smashing with the mortar and pestle, if you want the salt crystals to help you grind up the allspice a bit more) and apply liberally to the pork. Not enough? Just make more, because you want all of the meat completely covered. Made too much? You're not trying hard enough at covering the meat. Let the meat sit in the fridge like that until your wood chips are ready.

Hands on works well.

After an hour, take your wood chips out of the water and put them in the middle of a two large sheets of foil (lay two sheets on top of each other to double them up), leaving plenty of room around the edges. Fold those edges up and towards the middle, while making sure to not seal it up completely. Basically, you're folding this packet up like how an envelope is folded, but instead of closing, you want to leave some space for the smoke to get out of the top. A very flat volcano, if you will.

Light your grill and have it going about as low as you can manage it (I tried for a temperature of about 210° to 220° F). If you're using gas, only light one side of the grill. If you're using charcoal, only put the charcoal on one side. Put your wood chip packet (smoke hole side up) on the flame/coals, under the grill grate.

Cooking:
Take your pork out of the fridge and place your thermometer in the thickest cut you have. Put your meat on the side of the grill that doesn't have the smoke packet under it. You aren't cooking with the direct heat of the coals, you're cooking with the smoke and the ambient heat of the grill.

My smoke packet is in the back, so my meat is in the front.

Close the lid. You're aiming for the pork to be about 170° F. You could probably go a little less if you're impatient or brave, but I'm a bit wary of any meat that's not guaranteed cooked into that safety zone that kills off anything nasty. About half way through the cooking process (170 - your starting temperature, then divide that by 2. That's your halfway cooking temperature point), flip the meat.

Look. Smoke. That's supposed to be there.

I started off a bit colder than I was supposed to (plus it was autumn, so it was colder outside), so I took 4 hours to cook this all the way through. What I ended up doing was checking and recording the temperature of the grill every half hour so I knew how long I had to wait and if I had to make any adjustments. It may seem like forever, and you'll be tortured by the amazing smell, but it's all worth it. When you reach 170° F, remove from the grill and place on a clean platter and allow to sit for at least 10 minutes to keep the juices from running out when you cut the meat.

It's absolutely amazing hot off the smoker, but surprisingly also really good cold from the fridge too (especially if you precut it into snacking sized medallions). It's good reheated, it's good a week or two later too (That's why the pirates smoked the meat, the smoking process, salt, and allspice act as preservatives). It's just good.

Award-Winning Berry Custard Pie

2009-06-10T10:06:00.003-04:00

I have just remembered that I am a contributor on this blog and could, perhaps, contribute something. So here's the recipe I made (and adapted) for Night of 1000 Pies:

Yes, this really is an award-winning pie, though I didn't win the award. This recipe won the Washington Post Magazine's annual pie contest in the category of custard pies. The berries really snazz it up. It's also a great recipe because of its adaptability: you can put in whatever berries you like, and because they're going to be encased in a custard, fresh berries are not essential; frozen will work just as well. Enjoy this pie in the dead of winter if you like.

I made this as a strawberry pie, but like I said, any berries will do, in any combination. Go wild.

The original recipe called for simply a 9" pie crust. Possibly a store-bought one. But as I had long ago discovered the perfect pie crust recipe, I just used that, with one special modification of my own: to enhance the sweetness of the pie and the strawberry flavor, I substituted strawberry cream cheese for half of the butter. This can get a little bit tricky because the cream cheese will be softer than the COLD butter you need to use to make a good pie crust, but in the end, it all worked out beautifully. Just be patient, and keep all the ingredients as cold as you can.

Pie Crust recipe, with modifications:

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup unsalted butter, chilled and diced (if using salted butter, omit the 1/4 tsp salt)
1/4 cup cream cheese, chilled
1/4 cup ice water

In a large bowl, combine flour and salt. Rub in butter and cream cheese until mixture resembles coarse crumbs (I recommend using your hands. It's the only way.) Stir in water, a tablespoon at a time, until mixture forms a ball. (Make sure the water stays COLD.) Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight.
Roll dough out to fit a 9 inch pie plate, adding more flour or ice water as needed. Place crust in pie plate. Press the dough evenly into the bottom and sides of the pie plate.

The pie recipe:

12 oz. fresh or frozen berries (I used Nature's Promise organic frozen strawberries. Defrost berries overnight if using frozen.)
4 eggs
3/4 cup whole milk (or, if you're me and don't want to buy whole milk because you'll never drink the rest of it, substitute. I had a can of evaporated fat-free milk sitting in the pantry, so I used that. I wouldn't recommend using plain skim milk, though; I think it would compromise the creamy taste needed here)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
3/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon flour

Position oven rack in middle of oven; preheat to 375 degrees.
Make sure berries are defrosted fully if using frozen. Retain any juices from the berries.
Whisk together the eggs, milk, and vanilla in a medium bowl. Stir in the sugar and flour; combine until smooth.
Arrange the berries in an even layer in the unbaked pie shell. (I cut the strawberries into halves here, also.) Pour in any reserved juices.
Pour the egg-milk mixture over the berries. (Warning: You may have more mixture than will fit into your pie crust. This recipe's ingredient amounts may need some adjustments.)
Bake for about 45 to 50 minutes or until the center of the pie has set.
Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before serving.

Enjoy! I know I did.

Beef Pastie with Caramelized Onions

2009-05-31T19:35:00.003-04:00

Night of 1000 Pies was about a month ago, but we're just now catching up with recipes. Oops? Here's one of mine, the Beef Pastie with Caramelized Onions.

This was originally based on a recipe by the same name in Bon Appetit Magazine. However, in keeping with the theme of Weekly Delicious, there have been some changes. Until my big fancy grocery store moves into town, cheeses are subject to changing. And it's already been established that we've come across the perfect crust recipe, so there were some changes in that way, too. Math was done. It was scary. But you need not be afraid, the work is done for you.

INGREDIENTS:
CRUST:
- 3 cups and 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 and 1/4 cups butter, chilled and diced
- 1/2 cup and 2 tablespoons ice water (approximate)
- 3/4 teaspoon ground allspice
- 1/4 teaspoon ground rosemary
- 1/2 teaspoon ground thyme

FILLING:
- 4 teaspoons olive oil
- 2 large onions, thinly sliced
- 1/2 cup dry white wine
- 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
- 10 oz skirt steak, cut crosswise on diagonal into 1/4-inch-wide strips [fajita cut steak cut into 1/4 inch strips also works great]
- 1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
- 6 oz coarsely crumbled Stilton blue cheese (1 1/3 to 1 1/2 cups) [I used a mix of sharp white cheddar and regular blue cheese]
- 1 large egg white, beaten to blend

PREPARATION:

CRUST (do at least 45 minutes ahead of time):

1. Mix the flour, salt, allspice, rosemary, and thyme together.

2. Incorporate the cold butter into the dry ingredients a handful at a time. A food processor can be used to make the work easy, a pastry cutter is the second best thing, though if you have cold hands that don't mind tedious work, you can just use your hands.
- You want as much flour touching the butter as possible, so you want the butter end up pieces as small as you can manage (If you were to take some of the mix and rub it between your fingers, large chunks of butter shouldn't smear between your fingers)
- Keep any butter you won't be getting to immediately in the fridge or freezer to keep it cold.
- Keep adding butter until you've added all it.
- The finished mix should look mealy, sort of like damp and clumpy breadcrumbs.

3. Add the ice water a tiny bit at a time (a few tablespoons, at most), and completely mix before adding more water
- Only add enough water so that it comes together in ball.

4. Divide the ball into four pieces, and shape those pieces roughly in the shape of a disk. Wrap these disks in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 45 minutes
- Do not just place dough unwrapped in the fridge, it will dry out and become impossible to work with.

FILLING:

1. In a large pan, heat oil over medium heat. When hot, add the onions.

2. Sauté the onions until deep brown, for at least 30 minutes. Yes, it takes that long.

3. Add the wine and thyme and continue to sauté until most of the excess liquid evaporates (about 15 minutes, your time may vary)

4. Allow to cool in a separate container, and try not to pass out from how amazing this smells.

5. In the same pan you cooked your onions in, cook your beef until it's cooked all the way through. Remove and allow to cool.

PUTTING IT TOGETHER:

1. Preheat oven to 400° F.

2. Between two sheets of parchment paper (or with a well floured rolling pin), roll out each disk of dough until it is 9 inches in diameter
- Make sure there are no tears in the dough and that the final shape is a circle. The point of these crusts is to hold in your filling, remember?

3. Place all crusts on a piece of parchment paper
- One big baking sheet? Put them all on there, so long as they aren't on top of each other.
- No parchment paper? Just make sure you can move these without them falling apart in the process. Somehow. Be skilled, I know you have it in you.

4. Put 1/4 of the onion filling on half of each round, leaving about an inch along the side. It should be a delicious half moon of onions. On top of the onions, place 1/4 of the beef on each round, making the same shape. And on top of the beef, place 1/4 of the cheese on each.

5. Brush the border (about an inch) of the crust around the filling with the egg white.

6. Fold over the crust to cover the filling, sealing it into a pouch.

7. Brush the top of each pastie with egg white and make 3 small cuts in the top to vent steam
- No one likes an exploded pastie. At least no one will admit to liking it.

8. Still on parchment paper, move to baking sheets.
- Big sheet? Put them all on, so long as there's an inch or two between them.
- No parchment paper? Move them carefully to baking sheets that have been liberally greased.

9. Bake until golden brown (about 30 minutes), and allow to cool for about 10 minutes.

10. Cut and serve!

VARIATIONS:

1. Feel free to do this without the herbs and spices in the crust.
2. Try it with some of the same cheese sprinkles on the outside
3. You can do like I did the first time and make two pastie volcanoes instead of four pouches. Just use one round like a bottom crust, and divide the filling in two between the bottom crusts. Lay the top crust on and seal as you would the regular pasties (you will have to stretch the top crust a little).

Lonley Island Chocolate Banana Pie

2009-05-13T21:44:00.005-04:00

A bit of a warning before we begin. The Lonely Island Pie is intended to be almost tangy in its bitterness. If you would like to alter the recipe to sweeten it, I would suggest adding either sugar or condensed milk to your melted chocolate before adding that to the bananas. You can also try lightening the chocolate with 2% milk. If you would like to keep the recipe as-is, I would suggest enjoying a slice along with a glass of Merlot, or any similar red wine which goes well alongside bitter, dark chocolate.

Now that we have that out of the way...

Recipe for Lonely Island Pie

--Ingredients

- 1 unbaked pie crust

- 4 ripe bananas

- 4 units of unsweetened baking chocolate (1 oz each)

- 2 separate tablespoons of sugar

- 1 dollop of dark corn syrup

- about 30 Nilla Wafers or so

- 2 tablespoons of almond extract

--Directions

- Peel all four bananas and mash them together well in a large mixing bowl. Melt the chocolate in a double-boiler saucepan and mix in the corn syrup. Immediately upon removing the chocolate from heat, pour it into the bananas and mix thoroughly. Add almond extract to mixture and stir.

- In another mixing bowl, crush the Nilla Wafers to large crumbs and then mix in the first tablespoon of sugar.

- Line the inside of the pie crust with the second tablespoon of sugar and then pour the chocolate-banana mixture into the crust, using a spatula to make the surface even. Top the pie with the crushed cookies. Bake the pie in the oven at 350 degrees for 40 minutes. Cool on rack.

Remember what I said about the wine. Enjoy.

Let's Bake A Pie

2009-05-01T18:55:00.008-04:00

One of the most talked about events on the Weekly Delicious calendar, Night of 1,000 Pies, will be upon us in only a few days! For my part, I had, until last night, never before made a from-scratch pie in my life. After the tuna hot dish that I made for last semester's, Night of 1,000 Casseroles, I didn't want to be one of the people who will show up to next Tuesday's event offering only money for supplies rather than a finished product. As a disclaimer, there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG WITH THOSE PEOPLE. We welcome them with open arms full of pie. I saw this however as a chance to learn a new skill and so decided last night to start looking up online pie recipes and make my first attempt so that I wouldn't end up with only hours to go next week and no idea what I'm doing!

For novices such as myself, I've decided to post here the easy pie-crust recipe which was sent to me by my wonderful friend Michelle. Hopefully this will sway even one person who had not intended to bring something of their own to our little get-together to give it their best shot.

Simple and Deliciously Flaky Pie Crust Recipe

--Ingredients
- 1&1/4 cups of all-purpose flour
- 1/4 teaspoon of salt
- 1/2 cup of butter (half a stick)
- 1/4 cup of chilled water

--Directions
- In a large bowl, combine flour and salt. Cut in butter until mixture resembles course crumbles. Stir in water, a tablespoon at a time, until mixture forms a ball. Chill the ball in plastic wrap in the refrigerator while you prepare the innards of your pie.

- Using a rolling pin, or kneading if one is not available, roll dough out to fit over a 9'' pie plate. Place crust in pie plate and press evenly into the bottom and sides of the plate. Cut off overhanging edges.

...and it's that easy! Now that you have the crust of your pie ready, you can use it for nearly any type of filling that you desire. I myself made a tasty and simple egg custard pie (recipe can be found here: Grandma's Egg Custard Pie).

...but what you make is up to you! For some suggestions, here is a recipe for blackberry pie and one for apple pie which also tells you how to give your pie a really neat lattice top.

Before I finish, here is a list of tips I gathered during my crust-forming experience.

When they tell you to "cut in the butter," they really mean it. Try freezing the stick of butter and then using the finest side of your cheese grater to create a "butter powder" which will be much easier to fold into your flour.
I found that after adding in all of the water called for in the recipe, my mixture was still to dry to stick together and form a ball. What I did was to measure out another 4th of a cup (the smallest measurement that my cup would count) of water and then add half of that, discarding the other half. I then kneaded the mixture into the ball I wanted, making sure to fold the inside of the ball out many times, soaking up all of the extra water.
Not wanting to have my dough tear as I was pressing it into the plate, I accidentally made the crust a bit too thick and thus the sides slightly lower than I wanted. The pie still came out fine, but just a heads up that if you want a thinner crust, you will have to make sure that you work it into the pan thoroughly.
When you are rolling the ball of dough into a flat "circle, " you want to make sure that EVERYTHING has some flour on it so that your dough will stick to nothing but itself. You want flour on your hands, your rolling pin and the surface you are rolling it on. THIS IS IMPORTANT.

Hope that helps. If I think of anything that I missed, I'll edit it in later. Happy baking!

Suzie's Chocolate Cake

2009-05-01T13:59:00.003-04:00

This recipe was devised by my mother, and it was many, many years before she agreed to let me share it. This cake has the most unique chocolate flavor- not just unique for a cake, but different from any confection I have ever tasted.

The cocoa for both the cake and the frosting is bloomed in hot butter, which really helps develop the flavor. The addition of sour cream adds a slightly acidic note. My favorite part might be how my mother cautions against using too much sugar- this keeps the cake dark and intense.

Oh, and when she says heaping tablespoons, she means HEAPING. I've seen her make this cake before, and I'm just proud of her for not breaking down and throwing in the cocoa by handfuls.

In her own words:

Suzie’s Chocolate Cake

350 degree oven / greased and floured 9" X 13" baking pan / 20 – 25 minutes or until done

2 sticks butter
1 cup water
4 HEAPING T. Cocoa (The Cocoa chosen will effect the flavor, of course. Try different kinds to see which you like best.)
2 cups sifted flour
2 cups sugar
1 tsp. soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup sour cream
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla

Combine 1st 3 ingredients in saucepan. Heat to boiling, stirring occasionally.
Remove from heat.
Add flour, sugar and salt.
Beat until well blended.
Add sour cream, soda, egg and vanilla.
Mix well.
Pour into greased and floured 9" X 13" baking pan.
Bang pan on counter to make bubbles in batter rise to the surface and pop for a better texture.

Frosting

Boil together:
1 stick butter
1/2 cup sour cream
4 HEAPING T. cocoa
Stir it to keep it from scorching, but if you cook it a little while until it looks really ugly, the cocoa tastes better.

Pour into mixing bowl and add powdered sugar, mixing well. Only add enough sugar to make it sweet enough to please you. I never use a whole box of sugar. I find that the cocoa flavor is enhanced by holding back a little on the amount of sweetness added.
Add 1 tsp. vanilla, and blend well.

Pour frosting on cake while cake is warm, and then spread it out. I have tried to remove this cake from the pan to treat it like a regular cake, but the icing is hard to handle. I find leaving it in the pan it was baked in makes everything work better.

I also like to toast nuts, pecans, almonds or hazelnuts to sprinkle on top as people desire. I find they add a lovely flavor.