08.16.08
Posted in Breakfast at 6:14 pm by julie
What you see here may not look like much, but it is the best waffle I’ve ever made, pitiful home waffle iron be damned. I’ve been trying waffle recipes for years trying to find a gold-standard recipe, one that makes perfect waffles every time: light and sweet, but still crisp, and sturdy enough not to tear coming off the iron or during the application of butter. You can see a few of my attempts here, here, and here, but I have tried several others over the past year that didn’t make the blog: to name a few, the Old Fashioned Buttermilk Waffles from the Macrina Bakery Cookbook
(rejected almost out of hand by Jeremy because they contained both semolina flour and cornmeal, and I wasn’t impressed by the texture or flavor either), the Teff Waffles from The Splendid Grain (alright, but didn’t live up to the effusive praise in the cookbook’s description), and the Banana-Cinnamon Waffles from Cooking Light May 2005 (these we’ve made several times when I have extra bananas, but they don’t have that classic waffle flavor).
Well, my waffle quest comes to an end here. Carrie Levin’s Belgian waffles are everything I want in a waffle, and I’ve already made them twice this month, so I know the first batch wasn’t a fluke. But then, Carrie grew up in Belgium, and her restaurant, Good Enough to Eat, was Jeremy’s favorite breakfast place in NYC, so I guess she knows her waffles. Of course, this won’t stop me from trying out new waffle recipes whenever they pique my interest, but it’s still good to have a reliable one to turn to. 
Belgian Waffles
1 1/2 C AP flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp plus 2 T sugar
1 1/2 C milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 egg yolks
3 egg whites
6 T butter, melted
Mix together the flour, salt, baking powder and 2 tsp of sugar in a large bowl. In another bowl, beat together the milk, vanilla and egg yolks, then pour the liquid over the dry ingredients and stir together with a fork until just blended. Cut in the melted butter.
Preheat the waffle iron. Meanwhile, in a third bowl, whisk together the egg whites with the 2 T of sugar until they form soft peaks. Stir a heaping tablespoon of these through the batter with a fork to lighten it, then dump all of the rest onto the batter and use a spatula and a figure-8 motion to fold them in gently. Try to mix the whites in thoroughly without deflating the batter. Now make waffles as you normally would in your iron. (I use canola oil spray on the hot iron and scoop out the batter in heaping half-cup portions, which fits my iron just about right without much spillage.) Carrie recommends serving with powdered sugar, fresh berries and a dollop of creme fraiche; they’re also good with butter and real maple syrup. This recipe makes about 6 waffles in my iron, and you can freeze leftovers to reheat in your toaster.
Source: The Good Enough to Eat Breakfast Cookbook, by Carrie Levin (p. 58-59).
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07.17.08
Posted in Breakfast, Dinner, Eggs, Fish, Leftovers, Seafood, Sides at 6:07 pm by julie
So it’s salmon season in the Pacific Northwest, and we are starting to see whole wild salmons appearing in the supermarket. Last week when we were at the grocery store, I talked Jeremy out of getting one, just for sheer size. But a few days later, he made a trip to Costco, and somehow a 3.5lb wild sockeye (sans head) jumped into the car and followed him home.
I roasted it pretty simply seasoned in a foil pouch, on a bed of parsley and dill and stuffed with dill, lemon, and spring onions. I also poured in some clam juice and fresh lemon juice, then sealed it all up and cooked it at 375F for about 40 minutes. It came out flaky and very flavorful, with that firm meaty flesh you just don’t get from farmed Atlantic salmon. Jeremy performed filleting duties while I made my favorite quick sauce for fish, based on this recipe: green onion sliced thin and sauteed until tender in a tablespoon of butter, then simmered in white wine until it has nearly boiled off.
To go with the fish, I made lemon-scallion rice in the rice cooker, according to Simply Ming: Just add a few sliced scallions and some fresh lemon juice and zest to your rice and water before starting the cooker, and hit Start. I think the lemon juice gave the rice an extra-sticky texture, but it had good flavor, and married nicely with the lemony fish.
Needless to say, we had leftover salmon coming out our ears. I’ve already done salmon croquettes, and it is definitely too warm right now for chowder. So I found a few new recipes to add to my arsenal, a simple salmon frittata with corn, peppers and Gruyere, and a dilly salmon-potato hash with shiitake mushrooms.
For the frittata, I used the general recipe here, using frozen corn and diced frozen peppers, and subbing scallions for onions and of course leftover salmon for canned. It was very tasty, but I think if I make it again with salmon, I’ll use lots of red peppers and forget the corn.
The hash worked out nicely because I just happened to have a small bag of shiitakes that needed to be eaten before they dried out. I didn’t have any sour cream, though, so I took the chance and used some Greek yogurt instead. We couldn’t tell the difference. Nolan woke up just as I was finishing it, so the pic was taken one-handed, and I forgot I had meant to top the hash with some fried or poached eggs, but it stood alone just fine.
Salmon Hash
6 T olive oil
1 medium onion, peeled and finely chopped
2 C shiitake mushrooms, stems removed and quartered
1 tsp garlic, one clove peeled and finely chopped
3 C potatoes, cooked and peeled
1-1/4 lb salmon, cooked or smoked, skinned, boned and flaked
1/2 C Greek yogurt, full-fat
1 T lemon juice
2 T fresh dill, chopped
Sea salt to taste
Freshly ground pepper to taste
Place 1/2 of the oil in a heavy skillet over high heat, and when hot, add the onion and saute until slightly crunchy, 3 to 5 minutes. Add the mushroom, and cook until just wilted, about 2 minutes. Add the garlic and saute for 1 minute. Remove to a mixing bowl and set aside.
In the same skillet, add the remaining oil, bring to medium heat, and add the potatoes. Cook until the edges are just crisp, about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and mix with the reserved onions, and add salmon, yogurt, lemon juice, and dill. Season to taste with the salt and pepper, and mix well, but do not pack the mixture.
Return the mixture to a skillet, and cook over medium heat, tossing to prevent the hash from sticking. Remove to a warm plate, and serve. Garnish the hash with anything you like best, from sour cream to poached eggs.
Source: Adapted from The Buffet Book, by Carole Peck (available online here)
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06.29.08
Posted in Bread, Breakfast, Dessert, Dinner, Foodblog Events, Fruits at 10:45 am by julie
I was excited when I found out that this month’s Daring Bakers challenge would be Danish braids, but the time commitment of making laminated dough must have been more intimidating than I was willing to admit, because I procrastinated until almost the last moment to make it. Finally, impending hot weather made me spring into action this past Thursday.
I took advantage of Nolan’s early afternoon nap to make the dough, or detrempe, using clementine zest and juice, vanilla paste, and ground cardamom from an elderly bottle that I know I should replace. The dough was not kind to my stand mixer, and kept trying to escape out the top of the bowl, so I had to babysit it. It came out rather firm and very slightly tacky, and went in the fridge while I made the butter block, or beurrage.
Then I remembered that my stand mixer bowl always screws itself up tight when I make dough, so much that I can’t actually unscrew it myself. Jeremy was still at work, so I ended up having to wash out the bowl while it was still attached to the mixer. Bah. I left everything for half an hour to go pump and feed the little guy (who, I have to brag, was having an incredibly cheerful day, probably to make up for the post-vaccination shriekfest of the evening before).
The actual lamination process took much less dedicated time than I had expected: four turns half an hour apart, each requiring no more than about 5 minutes at once. Piece of cake… or Danish, as the case may be!
The next day, around the same time of afternoon, I sauteed up some Fuji apples and pondered my other filling options while making the braid. This process was pretty straightforward, and I took other Daring Bakers’ advice to make sure that my cut slices were long enough to completely cover the filling and anchor with a little pressure on the opposite side.
Two hours and an egg wash later, my braid went in the oven, only slightly enlarged from its original state. I baked for 5 minutes at 400F as the recipe called for, then turned down the temp to 350F and left it in for just another 5 minutes, after which it was nicely browned. Once it had cooled a bit, we ate slices with vanilla ice cream and a drizzle of the syrup from the sauteed apples.
The leftovers were polished off for breakfast yesterday morning, graced with a drizzle of simple powdered sugar icing. I was pleased to note that the bread softened up a bit to that ideal Danish texture after its overnight rest.
Fortified with apple Danish, I settled on using the remainder of the dough on smaller pastries with a variety of shapes and fillings. This was really fun to play with, and I didn’t even have the energy to get as creative as many of my fellow Daring Bakers did. I made 3 small Danishes with dollops of leftover grape pie filling I pulled out of the freezer, and a few mini chocolate croissants. I also made two types of bear claws. The first four had the traditional cinnamon-almond filling, made with homemade almond paste; for the rest, I added some golden raisins and my leftover sauteed apples, finely chopped, to the almond filling at Jeremy’s request. I got everything made up, egg washed and proofing in my 85F-degree house (it was 100F outside at this point), and we tried vainly to cool down with scoops of ice cream; I topped Jeremy’s scoop with the last few spoonfuls of apple-almond-raisin filling, and he was in heaven.
I couldn’t be happier with the way this dough turned out, especially after being so intimidated at the prospect. I envisioned butter squishing out the sides like toothpaste, but it was actually very easy to work with. It might have been a different story if I had attempted to laminate it in yesterday’s heat, though; as it was, I was very careful to roll out the portions for my small pastries in two batches to keep it from melting. The baked pastries were light and flaky with clearly discernible layers; the flavor was predominantly of orange, which I blame solely on my old bottle of cardamom (Penzeys, here I come!). The dough was so fun to shape, and made me feel almost like a professional baker. I definitely hope to make it again and play with flavors, shapes and fillings, now that I know it isn’t nearly as hard to make as it appears to be. Plus, those bear claws were awesome!
Thanks so much to Kelly of Sass & Veracity, and Ben of What’s Cookin’? for choosing this recipe, which came from Sherry Yard’s The Secrets of Baking Be sure to check out all of the gorgeous, creative Danishes at the Daring Bakers blogroll here.
Bearclaw Almond Filling
1/4 C butter
1/3 C firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 C almond paste (I used homemade; see below)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp grated lemon zest
Melt and simmer for about 2 minutes the butter and brown sugar. Remove from heat and stir in the remaining ingredients. Cool slightly before using.
Almond Paste
8 oz whole blanched almonds
8 oz powdered sugar
1 egg white
1/8 tsp almond extract
Combine almonds and sugar in a food processor and pulse until finely ground. Add egg white and extract and continue to pulse until mixture comes together as a thick smooth dough. Unblanched almonds can be used, but will affect the color of the paste. Makes about 2 cups.
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02.27.08
Posted in Breakfast, Cookies & Candies, Dessert, Dinner, Eggs, Lunch at 11:02 am by julie
For some reason I always have a really hard time wrapping my head around what to make with flavored chicken sausage. From time to time we pick up a package of chicken-apple or tomato-basil, and I scratch my head trying to come up with something more interesting than grilling them and sticking them in buns. Such was the case with the spinach-feta sausages we got earlier in the week, but I was able to put at least a few of them to good use in an easy crustless quiche.
The recipe hails from Baking Bites, and I chose it because it calls for similar flavorings and also because crusted quiches are my nemesis. I keep thinking the idea of eggs and cheese and pie crust together sounds great, because I love all of them, but whenever I eat it, I am bitterly disappointed by the sog-factor. Homemade pie crust is just enough work that, for the most part, I don’t consider quiche worth the risk unless it is crustless. (The single exception to that, so far, was the leek and bacon tart from All About Braising. That was deliciously sog-free, and I’d make it again in a heartbeat, presuming I had the braised leeks.)
Every so often I make a crustless broccoli quiche with feta and cottage cheese (and will post my cobbled-together recipe next time I do so). This recipe involves more flour—I used my faithful white whole wheat—and a looser batter than I am used to, but it baked up perfectly. I used a big handful of thawed and drained spinach from the freezer because it was all I had available, and similarly had to forego the sprinkle of feta on top, much to my dismay. The sausage that started it all was uncased, sliced, and sauteed briefly with the onion and spinach mixture.
The quiche gave me a new problem, however: I had an extra egg white in the fridge, though for the life of me I can’t recall now why that would be, so I used it up in the quiche and consequently ended up with an extra egg yolk that I wasn’t about to waste. I took the opportunity as a challenge to test out another chocolate chip cookie recipe that required an extra yolk: Robyn Lee’s Killer Big Fat Chewy Chocolate Chip Breakfast Cookies, as posted on Serious Eats.
The best thing about this recipe was clearly the size of the cookies. It calls for quarter-cup scoops of dough, about twice as much as I typically use for home-baked cookies. It also makes about the most iconic looking chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever produced: perfectly round, thick, golden, and studded with big bittersweet chocolate chips (see photographic evidence). In case you’re wondering, I baked on my Silpat for exactly 23 minutes as specified, and got exactly 16 cookies out of the batch with a spoonful leftover for the baker’s treat.
Warm from the oven, these cookies tasted as good as they looked: crisp on the outside and around the edges, with a soft chewy center. Unfortunately, once they had cooled, they hardened up a bit much for my personal tastes, and required consumption with a glass of milk for dunking. That certainly didn’t stop us from polishing them off within a few days, of course!
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02.11.08
Posted in Bread, Breakfast, Foodblog Events at 3:05 pm by julie
Even though, for all these years, I have apparently been oblivious to the famous “Time to make the doughnuts” commercial campaign, when I heard about Helene’s and Peabody’s similarly-named challenge, I wasn’t about to pass up an opportunity to try my hand at doughnut-making again. The only question was what sort of doughnut to make. We didn’t eat many Dunkin’ Donuts when I was growing up, but I still have a few fond doughnut memories. The first one that sprang to mind was eating plain cake doughnuts with hot chocolate on top of Pike’s Peak, but unless we drove up to Mount Hood to eat them, I just don’t think it would be the same. I decided to go with a childhood favorite from the grocery store: chocolate long johns.
Apparently, long johns are a regional thing—who knew? I can find unfilled chocolate bars and cream-filled round doughnuts, but the filling is always too much like pudding or custard. The filled bars I grew up with are non-existent in Oregon, though, and have consequently been added to my “unavailable cravings” list, along with funnel cakes and chicken nuggets from Chick-Fil-A. So, for this event, I decided to try my hand at Alton Brown’s yeasted doughnuts and make a few into long johns for my own personal gratification. (Jeremy doesn’t understand the attraction of long johns or funnel cakes, so the latter will have to get their own post as soon as I make acquaintance with a funnel of my very own.)
This was my first experience with making yeasted doughnuts, but the dough was easy to make and very cooperative. I started early enough the day I made them that we even ended up eating breakfast several hours before lunchtime, which may be a first for homemade yeasted breakfast foods in our house. I’m still having some issues with getting my frying temperature right to avoid greasiness, but I think that will continue to plague me until I break down and at least buy a deep fry thermometer, or even an honest-to-goodness fryer. Because there are only two of us, I cut the recipe in half, and still got 10 round doughnuts, 3 bars, and a few doughnut holes from the batch. Everything got dipped in the chocolate glaze, which was absolutely luscious stuff: thick and shiny and well-behaved.
For my three long johns, I picked out a filling recipe that sounded very much along the lines of what I remembered from childhood: nothing remotely dairy about it, just sugar and fat made up into a fluffy sort of frosting (mmm, I can’t imagine why Jeremy wouldn’t want one!). I do think I was in the right vein, but the particular recipe I tried ended up staying gritty even after 15 minutes in the stand mixer, so it wasn’t quite right. Still, it was close enough to tide me over until the next time we go back to Colorado for a visit, and now I can let myself periodically buy the yummy fresh doughnuts from King Donuts—just a few blocks from our house—without resentment or regret at their decided lack of long johns. (Oh, and just for the record… I’ve never eaten a Krispy Kreme doughnut, and I’m kind of proud of it, too!)
Yeasted Doughnuts
3/4 C milk
1 1/4 oz vegetable shortening
1 package instant yeast
3 T C warm water (95 to 105 degrees F)
1 egg, beaten
2 T sugar
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground nutmeg
12 ounces AP flour, plus more for dusting surface
Peanut or vegetable oil, for frying
Place the milk in a medium saucepan and heat over medium heat just until warm enough to melt the shortening. Place the shortening in a bowl and pour warmed milk over. Set aside.
In a small bowl, sprinkle the yeast over the warm water and let dissolve for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, pour the yeast mixture into the large bowl of a stand mixer and add the milk and shortening mixture, first making sure the milk and shortening mixture has cooled to lukewarm. Add the eggs, sugar, salt, nutmeg, and half of the flour. Using the paddle attachment, combine the ingredients on low speed until flour is incorporated and then turn the speed up to medium and beat until well combined. Add the remaining flour, combining on low speed at first, and then increase the speed to medium and beat well. Change to the dough hook attachment of the mixer and beat on medium speed until the dough pulls away from the bowl and becomes smooth, approximately 3 to 4 minutes. Transfer to a well-oiled bowl, cover, and let rise for 1 hour or until doubled in size.
On a well-floured surface, roll out dough to 3/8-inch thick. Cut out dough using a 2 1/2-inch doughnut cutter or pastry ring and using a 7/8-inch ring for the center hole (I used a biscuit cutter and an apple corer to make my doughnuts). Set on floured baking sheet, cover lightly with a tea towel, and let rise for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oil in a deep fryer or Dutch oven to 365 degrees F. Gently place the doughnuts into the oil, 3 to 4 at a time. Cook for 1 minute per side. Transfer to a cooling rack placed in baking pan. Allow to cool for 15 to 20 minutes prior to glazing, if desired.
If you plan to fill your doughnuts, cut the dough into either rectangles or non-perforated circles before frying. When cool, use a sharp knife to cut a pocket inside each doughnut, angling it as you cut so that the opening is smaller than the pocket itself (like stuffing chicken breasts or pork chops). Make your desired filling and pipe it into the pockets, making sure to use enough filling to entirely fill the pocket.
Source: Adapted from Good Eats, with Alton Brown.
Chocolate Doughnut Glaze
1/4 C unsalted butter
2 T whole milk, warmed
1 1/2 tsp light corn syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1 C confectioners’ sugar, sifted
Combine butter, milk, corn syrup, and vanilla in medium saucepan and heat over medium heat until butter is melted. Decrease the heat to low, add the chocolate, and whisk until melted. Turn off heat, add the powdered sugar, and whisk until smooth. Place the mixture over a bowl of warm water and dip the doughnuts immediately. Allow glaze to set for 30 minutes before serving.
Source: Adapted from Good Eats, with Alton Brown.
Creme Filling
1/2 C shortening (I used Spectrum)
1/2 C confectioners’ sugar
1/2 C white sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Using an electric mixer, whip shortening in a medium bowl with confectioners’ sugar and white sugar until creamy and no longer gritty, 5 to 10 minutes.
Source: Adapted from AllRecipes.
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01.27.08
Posted in Breakfast, Quick Breads at 11:09 am by julie
As I write this, it is actually snowing here, not a common occurrence in Salem. I tried to obtain photographic evidence, but it eluded me. Even though it’s highly unlikely that any of it will stick on the ground, the mere sight of snowflakes drifting down is the perfect occasion to bake another batch of streusel-topped muffins, don’t you agree? Then again, what isn’t a good time for streusel?
I had some extremely ripe bananas just screaming to be made into banana bread, and had schemed to sneak a chocolate-marbled loaf under Jeremy’s radar. But in the end, I decided that I didn’t want to wait over an hour for it to come out of the oven, so banana muffins it is. Starting from a heavily-reviewed recipe on AllRecipes, I tweaked it a bit to our tastes. These have just enough nuts and spices to enhance the banana flavor, and the moist texture of the muffin is nicely counterpointed by those crunchy streusel caps. The perfect accompaniment for morning snow showers… which already seem to have ended. Darn it!
Banana Crumb Muffins
1 C AP flour
1/2 C white whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 ripe bananas, mashed
3/4 C white sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/3 C butter, melted
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground allspice
1/2 C chopped walnuts
1/3 C packed brown sugar
2 T AP flour
1 T oat bran
1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
1 1/2 T butter
Preheat oven to 375F. Lightly grease or paper 12 muffin cups, or use a silicone muffin pan.
In a large bowl, mix together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, allspice and walnuts. In another bowl, beat together bananas, sugar, egg, melted butter and vanilla. Stir the banana mixture into the flour mixture just until moistened. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups.
In a small bowl, mix together brown sugar, flour, cinnamon and oat bran. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Sprinkle topping over muffins.
Bake in preheated oven for 18 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into center of a muffin comes out clean.
Source: Adapted from AllRecipes
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01.20.08
Posted in Beef, Breakfast, Cookies & Candies, Cuisines, Dessert, Dinner, Italian, Meats, Pastas, Spanish, Veggies at 7:18 pm by admin
I haven’t posted anything new on the blog in the last week or so because I’ve been holding off to give you something that wasn’t brown or white. So yeah… I really tried, but that is apparently beyond my ability at the moment. To wit:
Exhibit A: Homemade Fettuccine Alfredo
This is one of my gold-standard pasta dishes to order at restaurants, but for one reason or another (read: obscene amounts of butter and cream), I’ve never made it at home before. Well, it sounded really good, and I had cream to use up. I used Marcella’s recipes for both the egg pasta and the alfredo sauce, and it was a surprisingly quick-fix dinner, even with making fresh pasta. Two very white thumbs up.
Exhibit B: Penne with Braised Cauliflower and Capers
I approached this meal by digging into the vegetable drawer to avoid the brown and white. What did I come up with? Cauliflower, of course: I made the pasta variation of Molly Stevens’ Braised Cauliflower with Capers and Toasted Bread Crumbs from All About Braising (the original recipe can be found online here). Do capers count as greens? I didn’t think so either. This was pretty tasty fresh from the stove, but made surprisingly delicious—and white—leftovers.
Exhibit C: Spanish Daube
I thought for sure that this entry, despite the predominance of browned beef, would be my key to returning to the world of color, with all those pretty green peas and roasted red peppers. And so it would, if the recipe (from the January 2008 Cooking Light) had been remotely worth sharing. Jeremy bravely ate a bowlful, but I found it pretty inedible. It may not have been entirely the recipe’s fault, though: my cut of organic beef was horribly butchered with the grain, riddled with fat and gristle, and rubbery as all-get-out, even after several hours of braising. Very disappointing, but I had plenty of leftover rice to make more vegetable fried rice with.
Exhibit D: Allspice Crumb Flop
This was absolutely delicious. I made a variation of my weekend standard cinnamon flop, substituting brown sugar for the white and adding a bit of allspice to the batter. Then I packed the top with the leftover allspice crumb topping from the previous weekend’s muffins, and baked for half an hour as usual. It came out extra-moist and flavorful and beige. Almost makes me want to keep a container of crumb topping on hand in the fridge at all times.
Exhibit E: Oatmeal Cinnamon Chip Cookies
Since we ran out of our gianduja gelato, it was time to make a fresh dessert, and I ended up deciding on a batch of oatmeal cookies. We are, I’m ashamed to admit, currently out of chocolate chips, so I went with cinnamon chips. Actually, I ended up just making the recipe off the back of the cinnamon chip package (sans raisins), and these little brown cookies really hit the spot.
Exhibit F: Marion Cunningham’s Yeasted Waffles
This brings us just about back to the present. I first read about this recipe on Wednesday Chef, and have been meaning to try it since seeing it again in The Cake Bible last month. It requires advance preparation, which I kept forgetting to do, but I remembered last night, so we had waffles for breakfast this morning. Besides being yet another brown meal, they didn’t work so well with our waffle iron. I think it was because the batter was so thin that it didn’t provide good contact between the top and bottom plates of the iron. The one I ate was nicely browned on the outside, yet seemed half-cooked in the middle. I’m holding out hope that that little flub will make the leftovers good toaster waffles when reheated from the freezer.
Update 1/21/08: They were indeed tastier waffles when reheated on the defrost setting of our pretty new toaster. They cooked through and crisped up perfectly, and filled the kitchen with a very yeasty smell—almost enough to be offputting to my sensitive schnozz, actually. They’re still not worth making again just to become toaster waffles, however.
Exhibit G: Saffron Fettuccine with Scallops and Leek Sauce
So this is the closest I’ve come to color lately: Homemade saffron pasta with seared scallops and leek sauce. The scallops were previously frozen, and they were so full of water that they spattered oil all over the kitchen before transforming into rubber erasers. The pasta and sauce, however, were delicious, and made a perfectly satisfying meal sans shellfish. Since it came out with an overwhelmingly pallid appearance despite the saffron (I didn’t have quite enough on hand for the saturated yellow effect), however, it didn’t quite break us out of the brown and white funk.
On the menu tonight? Some lovely white baked cod and white fingerling potatoes with rosemary and garlic. I need help.
Saffron Fettuccine
1 tsp saffron threads, firmly packed
1 1/2 tsp hot water
1/2 C unbleached flour
1/2 C white whole wheat flour
2 large eggs
In a small bowl, combine the saffron and the water and let stand 10 minutes. Place the flours in the bowl of a stand mixer with a pinch of salt. Beat the saffron water together with the eggs, and pour over the flour; use the paddle attachment of the stand mixer to beat this mixture until it forms a firm, cohesive ball of dough. It should not be sticky; if it is, add a tablespoon or two of flour at a time until it achieves the proper consistency. Divide into 4 parts and run through a pasta roller to desired thinness, then cut either by hand or with a pasta cutter. Cook for about a minute in boiling salted water, drain and serve tossed with leek sauce, below, and garlic bread.
Source: Adapted from Astray Recipes
Lele Rivolta’s Leek Sauce (Il Sugo di Porri della Lele)
3 large leeks
1 T vegetable oil
2 T butter
3 large whole garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
Fine sea salt
1/2 C creme fraice
Black pepper, freshly ground
1 recipe of fresh saffron pasta (about 3/4 lb)
Freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, if desired
Cut away the root end and the dark green tops of each leek. Dice or julienne the leeks, and rinse well in a colander; shake off the excess water, but do not dry off the leeks.
Pour the oil into a 10- to 12-inch skillet, add the butter and the garlic cloves, and turn on the heat to medium. Cook the garlic briefly, stirring it, and when it becomes colored a very pale blond, remove it from the pan. (If you like, reserve the garlic, smush and finely mince it, and stir it into softened butter to make some yummy garlic bread.) Add the sliced leeks to the pan, sprinkling them with salt. Cook the leeks, stirring them from time to time, until they become very soft, almost creamy in consistency. If you find that at some point there is insufficient liquid to continue the cooking and the leeks are not quite done yet, add 3 or 4 tablespoons of water.
When the leeks are completely soft, raise the heat to high, and continue cooking them until the become colored a pale nut color, turning them over from time to time. Reduce heat to low, and sprinkle with generous grindings of pepper to counterbalance their potentially cloying sweetness. Add the creme fraiche and melt it into the leeks to form a light sauce.
As soon as the pasta is done to a firm, al dente consistency, drain it and toss it immediately with the sauce. Add a generous amount of freshly grated Parmesan, toss thoroughly five or six times, and serve at once.
Source: Adapted from Marcella Says…, by Marcella Hazan, 2004 (pp. 172-173)
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01.07.08
Posted in Breakfast, Quick Breads at 12:23 pm by julie
I thankfully don’t recall too many of my elementary school lunches. They were frequently a traumatic experience for picky eaters like myself, whether I purchased a hot lunch in the cafeteria or brought one from home (my mom pretty well gave up at some point and started sending me with just a baggie of carrot sticks because I’d bring everything else back untouched). I do remember liking the school’s tacos for some reason, but more than that, the cowboy coffee cake that came with it as a sort of dessert. It was a simple, fluffy beige cake with a crumb topping, cut in squares and smelling sweetly of cinnamon and spices. The fact that it was more like breakfast food than lunch food didn’t hurt.
When I picked out the allspice crumb muffins from Dorie for this weekend’s breakfast bread, I had no idea that they would conjure up such a strong memory of that cowboy coffee cake. Fluffy and brown with a sturdy streuseled cap, they were lightly perfumed with pure allspice, one of my favorite baking spices. They lasted us for two breakfasts, and I’m already contemplating making a second batch.
I made some minor tweaks to the recipe on the pretense of health, and they are reflected below. You can probably guess the first one without looking: 50% white whole wheat flour. I reduced the butter in the streusel by 1 tablespoon, and used that Smart Balance Butter Blend in the muffin batter; I also used 1% milk with about a tablespoon of heavy cream in place of whole milk, and 1 extra-large egg plus an egg white instead of two eggs, since I’m once again trying to use up a surplus of whites. (The reason for that surplus to be raved over in tomorrow’s post…). I was a little concerned as I filled the muffin pan that my adjustments would compromise the texture of the muffins, but they were light and fluffy and, well, pretty perfect as far as I’m concerned. Maybe I should make some tacos…
Allspice Crumb Muffins
Streusel:
1/2 C AP flour
1/2 C (packed) brown sugar
1/2 tsp ground allspice
4 T cold unsalted butter, cut into bits
Muffins:
1 C all purpose flour
1 C white whole wheat flour
1/2 C sugar
1 T baking powder
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 C (packed) brown sugar
1 stick (8 T) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 extra-large egg plus 1 extra-large white
3/4 cup 1% milk
1 T heavy cream
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
Center a rack in the oven and preheat to 375F. Butter or paper the 12 molds in a regular sized muffin tin or use your handy-dandy silicone model.
To make the streusel: Put the flour, brown sugar, and allspice in a small bowl and sift them through your fingers to blend. Add the bits of cold butter into the dry ingredients and toss to coat, then use your fingers to work the butter into the dry ingredients until you’ve got irregularly shaped crumbs. Another option would be to use a small food processor or pastry cutter for this. Set aside in the refrigerator. (You can make the crumbs up to 3 days ahead and keep them covered in the fridge; the recipe makes enough for at least two batches of muffins.)
To make the muffins: In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, allspice and salt. Stir in the brown sugar, making certain there are no lumps; pushing it through a mesh strainer worked for me. In a large glass measuring cup or another bowl, whisk the melted butter, eggs, milk and vanilla together until well combined. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and, with a rubber spatula, quickly but gently stir to blend. The batter will and should be lumpy; the important thing is not to overblend. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups, at least 2/3d full. Sprinkle a spoonful or two of streusel over each muffin, then use your fingertips to gently press the crumbs into the batter. (I completely covered my muffin batter with a layer of streusel, and still had a ton leftover.)
Bake for about 20 minutes, or until the tops are golden and a thin knife inserted into the center of the muffins comes out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for 5 minutes before carefully removing each muffin from its mold. The recipe has a yield of 12; I overfilled my pan a bit because it produces smallish muffins, and had enough batter for about 10-11 muffins.
Source: Adapted from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.
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01.01.08
Posted in Breakfast, Quick Breads at 11:26 am by julie
It’s back to work already tomorrow, but it certainly was nice to have a week’s vacation… my next one won’t happen until I go into labor (scary!). I tried to take advantage of the free time by trying out some breakfast recipes, and this one was on the top of the list. They’re the nutmeg doughnut muffins Molly at Orangette wrote about a year or two ago. I thought maybe they’d make a slightly healthier alternative to fried doughnuts, and to that end, I made a few additional adjustments to the ingredients: namely, white whole wheat flour and Smart Balance 50/50 Butter Blend (I know, I know, but I decided to try it out since it was on sale, and it seems to work just fine for recipes that don’t ride on the quality of the butter.) I also used an equivalent amount of Greek yogurt for the buttermilk.
The resulting batter looked suspiciously like Bisquick dough, but I went with it, and 28 minutes later the first batch dropped onto the cooling rack. They smelled good enough to lure Jeremy into the kitchen with a plate before I had a chance to give them a tumble in the powdered sugar. He ate two by the time I got the next batch in the oven and didn’t think they needed sugar-coating at all, so I just dusted two to try for myself, and left the rest nude.
The verdict? Perhaps it was my substitutions, but they definitely felt more like muffin-shaped biscuits than muffin-shaped doughnuts. That wasn’t a bad thing, though: they were subtly spiced and sweetened, with a good mouthfeel. I liked them with the powdered sugar, but the numerous leftovers were delicious without, reheated with just a drizzle of honey.
Nutmeg Doughnut Muffins
2 C unbleached AP flour
1 C white whole wheat flour
2 ½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp baking soda
Scant 1 tsp salt
½ tsp freshly ground nutmeg
¾ C plus 1 Tbs 1/% milk
2 T Greek yogurt
1 ½ sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
¾ C plus 2 T granulated sugar
2 large eggs
For topping:
4-6 T unsalted butter
About 2 cups powdered sugar
Preheat the oven to 350F, and set a rack to the middle position. Get out your trusty silicone muffin pan or spray a standard-size muffin tin with cooking spray.
Place the butter in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or, alternatively, in a large mixing bowl with electric beaters nearby), and beat on medium speed for a few seconds until soft and creamy. With the motor running, add the sugar in a steady stream. Continue beating, scraping down the sides of the bowl once or twice, until the mixture increases in volume and lightens to pale yellow. This could take a couple of minutes, so in the meantime, combine the flours, baking powder and soda, salt, and nutmeg in a medium bowl; whisk to mix them thoroughly. Now whisk together the milk and yogurt in a measuring cup, and set aside.
When the butter and sugar look light, fluffy, and as creamy as frosting, add the eggs one at a time, beating until they are just combined. With a wooden spoon, mix ¼ of the flour mixture into the butter mixture. Add 1/3 of the milk mixture. Continue to add the dry and wet ingredients alternately, ending with the dries. Mix until the dough is smooth and well combined, but do not overmix.
Divide the batter between the cups of the muffin tin. Bake until the muffins are firm to the touch and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 25-32 minutes.
When the muffins are cool enough to handle, prepare the topping: melt the butter in the microwave or on the stovetop, and pour the powdered sugar into a deep bowl. Using a pastry brush and working one muffin at a time, lightly brush the entire outside of the muffin with butter, and then roll it in the powdered sugar. Shake off any excess, and place the finished muffins on a rack or serving platter to serve.
This batter keeps, covered and chilled, for up to three days, and leftover baked muffins reheat perfectly in the microwave.
Source: Adapted from Orangette.
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12.28.07
Posted in Beef, Breakfast, Dinner, Fish, Meats, Seafood, Sides, Veggies at 1:10 pm by julie
We had a lovely quiet Christmas holiday with my parents this year. Freyja, our persnickety puppy, was just in heaven to have company, and made fast friends with my mom. We also had a 3D/4D ultrasound done on the 22nd so my parents could have their first look at our little gourmet in the making. In the absence of more interesting things to eat, he seemed to spend the entire session nibbling on his hands and feet and umbilical cord; unfortunately, that doesn’t allow the best photo opportunities, but I decided to share one here anyway.
For our meals, braising turned out to be the watchword. I made braised wild monkfish from a Mario Batali recipe on Christmas Eve. My mom isn’t a big fan of fish, but since monkfish is sometimes considered to be “the poor man’s lobster,” I thought that perhaps she wouldn’t object too much. I adapted the recipe slightly and served it over quinoa. Everyone actually did seem to like it—except me. I found the texture difficult to eat, and the flavor not worth the trouble. The one thing I did find really amusing about it was the fact that right after we finished eating, we watched an episode of Planet Earth that we’d never seen before about the “Ocean Deep,” and it featured a live monkfish doing its thing. Not a pretty character, so it’s a good thing we weren’t watching while we ate.
Christmas dinner was braised beef short ribs. I wanted to do osso buco, but Whole Foods was fresh out of veal shanks for the job, so we made a last-minute change of plans. I usually like to make lots of extra short ribs because they reheat so well, but we were barely able to purchase enough for the four of us. Does everyone really cook standing rib roasts for Christmas? They had an awfully large selection of those.
I used my standard short rib recipe, adapted from Suzanne Goin. We got it going in a low oven, and on my birdwatching dad’s suggestion, drove out to Ankeny Wildlife Refuge in what ended up being a mix of rain and SNOW. It didn’t stick, of course, but it still counts as a white Christmas for Oregon in my book! We mostly ended up sitting in the car with binoculars because of the cold and wet and wind, but saw a surprising number of species: Northern pintails, canvasbacks, cormorants, ruddy ducks, Canada geese and mallards, great egrets and a great blue heron, tundra swans, a kestrel, two hovering harriers that caused quite a ruckus among the ducks, and even a bald eagle.
Getting back to the ribs, I served them with mashed potatoes and the cream-braised Brussels sprouts from All About Braising. You can find a version of this recipe at Orangette here. I only had about 3/4 C of cream left and quite possibly more than a pound of sprouts, so I supplemented the braising liquid with some chicken stock, and it did just fine. More than fine, actually, since everyone raved about them. I had noted with surprise my father’s reluctance when I started sorting through the sprouts at Fred Meyer; my mom said they were one of his favorite vegetables, so I thought they were a gimme. Afterwards—while eating the last few sprouts straight from the saute pan as we washed dishes—he explained that he had been worried because Brussels sprouts are so easy to cook into tasteless mush. I’d say the key is to choose nice tight sprouts of the same size, which allows for even cooking. The smaller ones cook faster and are less bitter. Needless to say, this recipe will be going in my permanent rotation.
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