Now Bring Us Some Figgy Pudding

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.