10.27.09
Posted in Chocolate, Cookies & Candies, Cuisines, Dessert, Foodblog Events, French, Nuts, Grains & Legumes at 12:58 pm by julie
The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe. I knew it was coming, sooner or later, and I’ve always been nervous about baking macarons, with very good reason. I made a batch of pistachio macarons once, before I really knew what they were; Nigella Lawson’s description was irresistible, but they came out sticky, lumpy, and so sweet that my husband wouldn’t eat more than one bite. I could barely remove them from the sheet pan. I’ve never tasted a real macaron, or even seen one outside of photographs, so I’d like to think that had some effect on the outcome.
My food, savory and sweet, has come a long way in the four or five years since that incident, in part thanks to taking part in 23 Daring Bakers challenges now. But when it comes to macarons, apparently I’m still at square one.
I decided to try my hand at chocolate macarons, mostly to divert my husband from eating all the Halloween candy before the trick-or-treaters get a shot at it, and my post is a little late because I was holding out to get parchment, almond meal and powdered sugar at the grocery store. When I finally got there on Tuesday, however, they didn’t have almond meal in stock and I totally spaced out the powdered sugar, so I ended up having to make both in the food processor anyhow. Superfine sugar, cocoa, and almonds all went in, and a fine brown powder came out. I sieved it to remove the larger bits of almond and lighten the texture before folding into my egg whites.
I made the cocoa-almond meringues in Baking: From My Home to Yours a month or two back, and they had a similar ingredient list and process, although they aren’t neatly piped. My meringues looked like airy rocks and had a large air pocket between the crisp shell and chewy base.
The macaron batter seemed to deflate even more than that meringue batter did, which didn’t seem like a good sign. Still, I carefully piped out row after row of neat little rounds… which promptly spread to twice their size and threatened to merge into sloppy amoeboid shapes. Not a good sign.
I baked them off anyway according to the recipe, and they set up into bumpy brown pancakes: no frilly foot, no dome, no nothing. Clearly something went awry. Was it my ingredients? My folding technique? The fact that I flavored them with chocolate? I’ll only know with further experimentation and lots more practice.
Anyhow, I filled my little bellyflop cookies with a simple ganache of 3 oz Valrhona chocolate and 1/3 C heavy cream, and gave some to my taste testers. Nolan instantly recognized them as chocolate and ate a whole cookie without sharing with his dad. He usually crams food into his mouth whole, but these had just the right tender texture for him to practice taking big-boy bites. And my husband has been mostly distracted from the Halloween candy. So even if I can’t call these cookies macarons, I’d still call them a big success. Thanks so much to Ami S. for choosing this very challenging challenge, and check out the infinite variety of real macarons baked up by our Daring Bakers at the blogroll.
I am a member of the Theta Class of Daring Bakers, inducted in July 2007. Below is a list of previous challenges:
Strawberry Mirror Cake – July 2007
Milk Chocolate and Caramel Tart – August 2007
Cinnamon Rolls and Sticky Buns – September 2007
Bostini Cream Pies – October 2007
Tender Potato Bread – November 2007
Traditional Buche de Noel – December 2007
Lemon Meringue Pie – January 2008
French Bread – February 2008
Perfect Party Cake – March 2008
Opéra Cake – May 2008
Danish Braid – June 2008
Filbert Gateau – July 2008
Chocolate Éclairs – August 2008
Lavash Crackers and Dip – September 2008
French Yule Log – December 2008
Tuiles – January 2009
Chocolate Valentino and Ice Cream – February 2009
Lasagne of Emilia-Romana – March 2009
Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake – April 2009
Apple Strudel – May 2009
Bakewell Tart and Homemade Jam – June 2009
Chocolate Marshmallow Cookies – July 2009
Dobos Torte – August 2009
Vols-au-Vent – September 2009
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10.03.09
Posted in Cuisines, Dinner, Italian, Nuts, Grains & Legumes, Pastas, Soups at 8:30 pm by julie
One of my first memories of going to the farmer’s market in Salem was finding a booth with a bucket of the gorgeous red-streaked cranberry beans above. I’d never seen anything quite like them, and I couldn’t resist bringing home a big bagful to play with—in fact, they were one of the very first foods I felt compelled to photograph. I used Marcella Hazan’s recipe for pasta e fagioli with homemade noodles, and ended up with a pot of deliciously savory soup, full of creamy, tender beans that lost all of that interesting coloration as they cooked. They had a better texture, hands-down, than any canned or dried bean I’ve ever eaten.
Ever since that meal, I’ve kept my eyes open for shelling beans whenever I go to the market. I’ve had good luck finding peas and favas in the spring, but late summer shell beans are a scarcity here for some reason. Four years later, I finally got my hands on some more fresh beans, not cranberry this time, but something the vendor called rattlesnake or dragon’s tongue beans. I raced back home and shelled them, to discover that they look an awful lot like purple pinto beans. Knowing that most of that color would soon vanish, I nevertheless whipped up a pot of pasta e fagioli. Here’s hoping it won’t be another four years before I get to make it again.
Pasta e Fagioli
1/4 C extra-virgin olive oil
2 T chopped onion
3 T chopped carrot
3 T chopped celery
3 or 4 pork ribs, OR a ham bone with some lean meat attached,
OR 2 little pork chops (OR 1/3 lb ground pork)
2/3 C canned imported Italian plum tomatoes, cut up, with their juice,
OR fresh tomatoes, if ripe and firm, peeled and cut up
2 lb fresh cranberry beans, unshelled weight, OR 1 C dried cranberry
or red kidney beans, soaked and cooked as described below*,
OR 3 C canned cranberry or red kidney beans, drained
3 C (or more if needed) beef stock OR 1 cup canned beef broth diluted with 2 C water
Salt
Black pepper, ground fresh from the mill
Either maltagliati pasta, homemade, OR 1/2 pound small, tubular macaroni
1 T butter
2 T freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
*To cook dried beans: Put the beans in a bowl and add enough water to cover by at least 3 inches. Put the bowl in some out-of-the-way corner of your kitchen and leave it there overnight. When the beans have finished soaking, drain them, rinse them in fresh cold water, and put them in a pot that will accommodate the beans and enough water to cover them by at least 3 inches. Put a lid on the pot and turn on the heat to medium. When the water comes to a boil, adjust the heat so that it simmers steadily, but gently. Cook the beans until tender, but not mushy, about 45 minutes to 1 hour. Add salt only when the beans are almost completely tender so that their skin does not dry and crack while cooking. Taste them periodically so you’ll know when they are done. Keep the beans in the liquid that you cooked them in until you are ready to use them. If necessary, they can be prepared a day or two ahead of time and stored, always in their liquid.
For the soup: Put the olive oil and chopped onion in a soup pot and turn on the heat to medium. Cook the onion, stirring it, until it becomes colored a pale gold. Add the carrot and celery, stir once or twice to coat them well, then add the pork. Cook for about 10 minutes, turn the meat and the vegetables over from time to time with a wooden spoon. Add the cut-up tomatoes and their juice, adjust the heat so that the juice simmers very gently, and cook for 10 minutes.
If using fresh beans: Shell them, rinse them in cold water, and put them in the soup pot. Stir 2 or 3 times to coat them well, then add the broth/stock. Cover the pot, adjust the heat so that the broth bubbles at a steady, but gentle boil, and cook for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until the beans are fully tender.
If using cooked dried beans or canned: Extend the cooking time for the tomatoes in Step 3 to 20 minutes. Add the drained cooked or canned beans, stirring them thoroughly to coat them well. Cook for 5 minutes, then add the broth/stock, cover the pot, and bring the broth/stock to a gentle boil.
Scoop up about 1/2 cup of the beans and mash them through a food mill back into the pot. Add salt, a few grindings of black pepper, and stir thoroughly. Check the soup for density: It should be liquid enough to cook the pasta in. If necessary, add more broth, or, if you are using diluted canned broth, more water. When the soup has come to a steady, moderate boil, add the pasta. If you are using homemade pasta, taste for doneness after 1 minute. If you are using macaroni pasta, it will take several minutes longer, but stop the cooking when the pasta is tender, but still firm to the bite. Before turning off the heat, swirl in 1 tablespoon of butter and the grated cheese.
Pour the soup into a large serving bowl or into individual plates, and allow to settle for 10 minutes before serving. It tastes best when eaten warm, rather than piping hot.
Variation with Rice: The same soup is delicious with rice. Substitute 1 cup of rice, preferably Italian Arborio rice, for the pasta. Follow all other steps as given above.
Source: Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking
, by Marcella Hazan.
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06.08.09
Posted in Cuisines, Dinner, Lamb, Leftovers, Meats, Nuts, Grains & Legumes, Pastas, Sides at 12:59 am by julie
It’s been almost two months since I last posted a lamb recipe, so you know I’ve got some waiting in the wings. Sometimes I think Jeremy can’t walk past the boneless legs of lamb at Costco without picking one up, but I get really tired of braising or roasting them after a while. This time I split my leg in half and grilled it over two nights—part butterflied, and part chunked up for kebabs.
For the butterflied portion, I went with a hoisin marinade. The ingredients all scream Asian, but as one reviewer pointed out, the end result is a flavor that could be nudged in a variety of directions. I went slightly Mediterranean with the addition of a little dried rosemary, and served it with a baked potato and Mark Bittman’s sauteed mushrooms. Yes, you heard that right—I sliced up some mushrooms and sauteed them with a little garlic and white wine, no attempts to cut them into tiny bits or mask their flavor with cream. I don’t think I will ever agree that the smell of cooking mushrooms is second only to bacon; on the contrary, the smell alone is almost enough to make me change my mind about making them. However, I am proud to say that I ate some of the finished product without making horrible faces, even though room temperature mushrooms are really not appealing to me.
But the real point is that the lamb was delicious, and I will definitely keep this marinade in my arsenal; I suspect it would also be delicious on beef or pork. We did have some leftover, so I sliced it thin and served it over Asian garlic noodles (read: Jaden’s garlic-scallion noodles made with carrots, mushrooms, onions, peas, and a sprinkle of sesame seeds).
Grilled Hoisin-Marinated Butterflied Leg of Lamb
1/3 C hoisin sauce
3 T rice vinegar (not seasoned)
2 T soy sauce
2 T minced garlic
1/4 C minced scallions
1 T honey
1/2 tsp salt
a 2 to 2 1/2 pound piece of boneless leg of lamb, trimmed and butterflied
In a bowl whisk together hoisin sauce, vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, minces scallion, honey, and salt. Trim as much remaining fat as possible from lamb and in a shallow dish large enough to hold lamb flat spread marinade over both sides of it. Marinate lamb, covered and chilled, at least 4 hours or overnight.
Prepare grill. Bring lamb to room temperature and grill on an oiled rack set 5 to 6 inches over glowing coals 12 to 15 minutes on each side, or until meat thermometer registers 140°F. for medium-rare meat. (Alternatively, lamb may be broiled under preheated broiler about 4 inches from heat for approximately the same time on each side as for grilling.) Transfer lamb to a cutting board and let stand 20 minutes before carving. Holding a sharp knife at a 45° angle, cut lamb across grain into thin slices.
Source: Epicurious.
I still had half a leg of lamb in the fridge waiting to be used, so I decided to make that into kebabs. Ever since I first tasted the lamb brochettes at Marrakesh in Portland (which may, incidentally, have been my very first taste of lamb), I’ve been trying to duplicate that flavor at home, and I think I am getting closer. The meat was marinated in a simple spice blend, and threaded onto skewers with chunks of zucchini that I tossed with olive oil, lemon pepper and garlic. These went on the grill while I made pistachio-date couscous to serve under it.
Moroccan Lamb Kebabs with Zucchini and Pistachio-Date Couscous
2 lb piece of boneless leg of lamb, well-trimmed and cut into 1″ cubes
2 T ground cinnamon
2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground sweet paprika
1 T dried lemon zest
Kosher salt and pepper
Olive oil
1 large zucchini, cut into 1″ cubes
Lemon pepper
Garlic powder
1 C couscous
1 1/2 C chicken broth
1/2 C pistachios, shelled, roasted and coarsely chopped
1/2 C dates, chopped
For the lamb: Mix together the cinnamon, ginger, cumin, coriander, paprika and lemon zest with about 1/4 C olive oil in a large ziploc bag, add the lamb and toss to coat. Press out all the excess air and marinate in the refrigerator for 4 hours or up to overnight. Remove from the fridge before cooking to allow meat to come up to room temperature.
For the zucchini: When you remove the lamb from the fridge to come up to temperature, cut the zucchini into chunks; toss with olive oil to coat, and season to taste with lemon pepper, garlic powder and salt.
Thread alternating chunks of lamb and zucchini onto your skewers while your grill heats up (I use an electric tabletop grill). Grill the skewers, turning as necessary, until they are nicely charred on all sides; the zucchini should be tender, and the lamb should be about medium rare.
Meanwhile, bring the chicken stock to boiling in a medium saucepan; remove from the heat and stir in the couscous (if your dates are particularly dry, you can add them now as well). Allow to sit covered off the heat for about 5 minutes, until the liquid is absorbed. Fluff with a fork and stir in the pistachios and a drizzle of olive oil.
Source: Adapted from The Barbeque Hut and Everyday with Rachel Ray.
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04.07.09
Posted in Appetizers, Baby Food, Bread, Cake, Chocolate, Dessert, Dips & Spreads, Nuts, Grains & Legumes at 6:41 pm by julie
Amazing as it may seem (well, to me at least), our little boy turned one year old near the end of March. My mom flew out for the celebration, which was a small family affair combining Nolan’s birthday party with his dedication. I was mostly busy straightening up the house for company, but I made several savory hors d’oeuvres for our guests to snack on.
This is my homemade grissini with whipped spinach and chickpea hummus. The grissini was a recipe from the King Arthur cookbook, and made enough breadsticks for a week’s worth of snacking. I seasoned them variously with za’atar, smoked paprika, sesame seeds, and Parmesan cheese, and Nolan loved them, with or without a dip in the hummus. I also stuffed some split baby bell peppers with a mixture of feta and ricotta, but those were all eaten up before I remembered to get a photo.
Of course, the highlight of Nolan’s birthday party had to be his cake. Knowing that Nolan is already a big chocolate fan but not wanting the mess of chocolate frosting, I went with the devil’s food white-out cake in Baking: From My Home to Yours. It made the perfect baby birthday cake: moist and chocolatey, but not too big or fussy, and with that crumb coat, it just begged to be eaten with chubby little fingers.
Nolan had never eaten sweets more than a pinch at a time, so we weren’t sure how he would react to a whole slice of cake. But he dove right in without the slightest hesitation and proceeded to eat the entire thing. He didn’t even make all that big a mess, considering. My husband also posted a little video of Nolan chowing down on our main website if anyone is interested.
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01.27.09
Posted in Breakfast, Nuts, Grains & Legumes, Quick Breads, Veggies at 11:29 am by julie
I know I haven’t been posting on the blog much. My cooking has been less than inspiring lately, because I have no time to devote to it or money to spend on interesting ingredients, cookbooks, and equipment. If I’m lucky enough to get Nolan’s cooperation in the vicinity of dinnertime, I yank open the fridge and just cook the first thing that pops into my head and doesn’t need advance prep. Pitiful, I know, but it’s not much fun browsing the web and my cookbooks for meal planning with a squirmy 10-month old clamoring for my attention. This mom stuff is hard! At least I have a good little eater: Nolan has been off the pureed food for a while now, and even though he doesn’t feed himself, he wants to eat whatever we do. Chicken pad see euw is a favorite.
Since I haven’t made many meals worth sharing lately, I’m diving back in my stash of notes and photos for something I baked way back in September: zucchini muffins adapted from The Good Enough to Eat Breakfast Cookbook
. I’ve attempted to make her zucchini-prune bread every summer since Jeremy bought me the book in New York, round about 2005, with only marginal success: While the loaves always taste fantastic, they have always had varying degrees of liquid centers or dried out edges. The problem seemed to be twofold. First, the combination of oven temperature and loaf pan was clearly not appropriate, and my experiments with adjusting temperature and baking time were not successful. More alarming was the fact that the recipe called for 3/4 C (about 12 oz) grated young zucchini. Every single time I have ever weighed my shredded zucchini, 3/4 C amounts to nothing remotely close to 12 oz, no matter how firmly I pack it in. Since I was already having moisture issues, I mostly stuck with a heaping 3/4 C measurement and put away the scale. But my big experiment this year was to retire the loaf pan as well and make muffins, and I finally got a product I loved, and that’s saying a lot from someone who has turned her nose up at zucchini bread all her life (green flecks, eek!). They are moist and spicy, with gooey bits of prune and the crunch of walnuts—and no taste of vegetables, for those picky eaters out there. A sprinkle of demerara sugar on top would add some sparkle. Nolan was still just eating mashed avocados and bananas when I baked these, but he’ll love them if I ever have time to make them again.
Z-P Muffins
1 C coarsely grated young zucchini (unpeeled; do not grate seeded cores)
1/3 C prunes, pitted and slivered
1/3 C walnuts, toasted and chopped (or substitute raw sunflower seeds, as per the original recipe)
3/4 C plus 1 T AP flour
3/4 C plus 1 T whole wheat flour
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 C sugar
6 T softened butter
1/3 C walnut oil (or canola oil)
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
Grease or line your muffin pan (or use a silicone one), and preheat the oven to 325F.
Combine the grated zucchini with the slivered prunes and walnuts. In another bowl, combine the dry ingredients: flours, spices, salt and soda.
In a third bowl, cream together the sugar and butter in a food processor until pale, then gradually add the oil. Stop the machine and scrape down the sides. (Do this each time you run the processor.) Add the eggs and vanilla, and beat in. Next, add the dry ingredients and pulse only long enough to blend. Do not leave it running! Turn the batter out onto the zucchini mixture, and incorporate it all together with the spatula. Scoop into muffin cups and bake at 325F for 30 minutes, or until they spring back when pressed gently with your finger. Cream cheese would be a lovely accompaniment, but I eat them plain.
Source: Adapted from The Good Enough to Eat Breakfast Cookbook, by Carrie Levin (p. 81-82).
Update 5/25/09: I made these muffins with some scraps leftover from making zucchini-wrapped halibut; I just threw the less-than-perfect strips of zucchini into the food processor and chopped them finely, then put them in my sieve over a bowl to drain off some of their excess moisture. Nolan finally got to try these muffins, and he really liked them a lot.
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08.23.08
Posted in Dinner, Lamb, Meats, Nuts, Grains & Legumes, Sides, Veggies at 11:57 am by julie
I haven’t had much inclination to cook anything interesting for a while—or the energy to write about it when some free time presents itself. We’re trying to transition Nolan from co-sleeping in our bedroom to sleeping in his very own crib in his very own room. That has been upsetting everyone’s sleep patterns, so I feel zombie-fied half the day, and am getting behind even in finishing off posts that were already photographed and half-written. I’m tired of seeing them in the Draft queue, though, so that’s my goal for the week.
To start things off, here is a quick recipe for lamb chops. I chose it to use up the last of my apricot preserves from last month’s filbert gateau, but it was so easy and flavorful that I think I’m going to go buy more preserves, especially since I have an inkling that the glaze would also beautifully suit pork chops or even a larger loin roast or leg of lamb. Heck, even using chicken might work. I served these chops with Jaden’s saffron rice and some green beans on a day that topped 101F degrees, and it didn’t even overheat the kitchen too much.
The original recipe called for 1/2 C of apricot preserves, but I had just over 1/4 C in the jar and wasn’t about to go buy more. The finished chops were certainly sweet and fruity enough, so I would caution against using the full 1/2 C unless you really love apricots. I’m not huge on the whole meat-fruit pairing, and I thought my version was just about right. I also cooked the lamb in a large cast-iron skillet. Because I was concerned about the apricot glaze burning and ruining the pan’s seasoning, I warmed it in the microwave separately and brushed it on both sides of the chops after they were done cooking—then promptly got paranoid about having undercooked the chops and put them right back in the hot skillet (with the burner off) for another minute or two. The skillet survived to fry another day. 
Apricot Lamb Chops
1/4 C apricot preserves
2 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp bottled minced garlic
1 tsp low-sodium soy sauce
1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp black pepper
8 (4-ounce) lamb loin chops, trimmed
Combine first 5 ingredients in a small bowl; set aside. Combine salt, cinnamon, and pepper, and sprinkle over both sides of lamb. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray. Add lamb to pan; cook 5 minutes on each side or until desired degree of doneness. Remove skillet from heat; add apricot mixture, turning lamb to coat. Place 2 chops on each of 4 dinner plates; spoon remaining apricot mixture evenly over chops.
Source: Slightly adapted from Cooking Light
Zesty White Wine Green Beans
I just use this recipe as a guideline. I generally use frozen green beans for this because I have stopped buying canned ones; I thaw them in some hot water first. For two servings, I use closer to 1/3 C of wine, and I let it reduce almost entirely.
2 T olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
salt and ground black pepper to taste
2 (14.5 ounce) cans French-style green beans, drained
1 C white wine
Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat; brown the garlic in the oil; season with salt and pepper. Add the green beans and toss to coat. Pour the white wine over the green beans; simmer until the wine reduces in volume by half, stirring occasionally, about 15 minutes.
Source: Allrecipes.
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08.10.08
Posted in Dinner, Lunch, Nuts, Grains & Legumes, Soups at 10:35 pm by julie
I swear I’m not crazy. Last week, when we had unseasonal temperatures in the 60’s and overcast skies, this lentil soup was just the ticket. More recently, with temperatures back in the mid-90’s, I’m overheating just thinking about soup. So this post will be brief.
I was mostly looking for something I could make from pantry staples to use up some freshly made chicken stock. Jeremy picked lentils out of the options I ticked off, and I wanted to track down something a bit out of the ordinary. The soup itself is pretty basic: the smoked paprika and even the carrots were additions of mine. The thing that makes it special is the walnut cream garnish, which adds depth and richness. The walnut cream is also very similar to the salsa di noci we like on rotini, and I used some of the extra for just that the next day.
Lentil Soup With Pounded Walnuts and Cream
2 C brown lentils
2 to 4 T butter
1 onion, finely diced
2 carrots, cut into small dice
1 bay leaf
1 tsp smoked paprika
6 C vegetable or chicken stock (or water)
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 large garlic cloves, pan-roasted*
2/3 C lightly toasted walnuts
½ C ricotta
2 T heavy cream
Flax oil for garnish, optional
Soak the lentils in water for 2 hours, then drain.
Melt the butter in a large pot over low heat. Add the onion, carrot, and bay leaf. Sauté over medium-high heat until onion is translucent and carrots are tender, about 5 minutes. Add lentils, stock, smoked paprika and 1 teaspoon salt. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat. Simmer, covered, until lentils are soft, about 30 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.
Using a food processor, grind together the garlic with the walnuts and a large pinch of salt. Add the cream and ricotta, and process until a smooth paste is formed.
To serve, ladle the soup into bowls and top each with a large spoonful of walnut cream, a sprinkle of smoked paprika and, if desired, a drizzle of flax oil. Serves 4 to 6.
Source: Adapted from New York Times; originally from “Vegetable Soups,” by Deborah Madison.
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08.04.08
Posted in Dairy, Dessert, Foodblog Events, Nuts, Grains & Legumes at 5:53 pm by julie
The first week of August is World Breastfeeding Week, an event designed, as the name implies, to promote breastfeeding on a global scale. As you may have noticed from my previous posts, breastfeeding is a big part of my life right now, even though I have to come at it a little sideways. Nolan has had latching issues from Day One, so I’ve been exclusively pumping for him since Day Two. It is a huge time investment—I just did some quick math, and estimate that I’ve spent at least 360 hours attached to that pump since Nolan’s birth 19 weeks ago (that is a conservative estimate, based on 8 20-minute sessions per day… it sometimes takes 30 minutes per session, and I pumped 9-10 times per day the first month or two, while establishing my supply). With all that effort, I produce just barely enough for Nolan on a daily basis, with perhaps a few ounces to store in the freezer against future need. But it is such a worthwhile investment, and I consider myself incredibly lucky to have both the supply and the time to pump for my son.
I realize that breastfeeding may not be an option for every family, but it is so incredibly beneficial for both mother and baby that it is certainly worth attempting, even for a short period of time. I am bound and determined to at least reach 6 months, and a year or more if possible.
In case you were wondering what set off this little discourse on my foodblog, you can thank Linda at Make Life Sweeter! for hosting an event called Got Milk? in honor of World Breastfeeding Week, for which this post is my entry. Anyway, off the soap box and on with the food.
I had some praline paste leftover from the filbert gateau even after whipping up a batch of praline ricotta pancakes. It didn’t amount to much, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw it out, so I used it to flavor some vanilla pudding instead. I adapted a recipe from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours, using 1% milk rather than whole milk. It worked out alright, but I imagine the texture would be a bit creamer and less gloppy with a higher fat content. I’m not convinced that her method of using the food processor to make the pudding was worth the extra dishes, however; the stove-top tempering method has always worked just fine for me.
Praline Pudding
2 1/4 C 1% or whole milk
6 T sugar
3 T cornstarch
1/4 tsp salt
3 egg yolks
2 T butter, room temperature
2 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 C praline paste/powder
Bring 2 cups of milk and 3 T sugar to a boil in a medium saucepan. Meanwhile, in a blender or food processor, blend remaining 3 T sugar and egg yolks for 1 minute. Add remaining 1/4 cup milk and pulse just to mix. Then add cornstarch and salt and pulse a few more times.
With the machine still running, very slowly add hot milk mixture. Process for a few seconds more, then pour everything back into the saucepan. Whisk without stopping over medium heat until the pudding thickens and some bubbles pop on the surface. Do not let it boil completely, so if it hasn’t thickened yet, turn down the heat. Scrape the pudding back into the machine (avoiding any scorched spots) and pulse a few more times. Add butter, vanilla, and 3 T praline paste, and pulse until evenly blended.
Pour the pudding evenly into 6 4-oz ramekins or cups. Press a piece of plastic wrap over each surface. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours. Serve with a sprinkle of praline powder or some caramelized nuts.
Source: Adapted from Baking: From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan (p. 384).
Praline Paste
1 C (4 ½ oz.) hazelnuts, toasted/skinless
2/3 C sugar
Line a jelly roll pan with a silpat, or lightly buttered parchment.
Put the sugar in a heavy 10-inch skillet. Heat on low flame for about 10-20 min until the sugar melts around the edges. Do not stir the sugar. Swirl the pan if necessary to prevent the melted sugar from burning. Brush the sides of the pan with water to remove sugar crystals. If the sugar in the center does not melt, stir briefly. When the sugar is completely melted and caramel in color, remove from heat. Stir in the nuts with a wooden spoon and separate the clusters. Return to low heat and stir to coat the nuts on all sides. Cook until the mixture starts to bubble. Remember – this is an extremely hot mixture. Then onto the parchment lined sheet and spread as evenly as possible. As it cools, it will harden into brittle. Break the candied nuts into pieces and place them in the food processor. Pulse into a medium-fine crunch or process until the brittle turns into a powder. To make paste, process for several more minutes. Store in an airtight container and store in a cook dry place. Do not refrigerate.
Source: Great Cakes by Carol Walter
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07.30.08
Posted in Cake, Chocolate, Dessert, Foodblog Events, Nuts, Grains & Legumes at 12:07 am by julie
I love being a Daring Baker. Every month I get to try out a new recipe, often one I would never have chosen myself—either because it has an intimidating number of steps, or requires a technical skill I haven’t yet mastered, or perhaps because it involves texture and flavor combinations I wouldn’t seek out. These past few months since my son was born, I have particularly looked forward to my Daring Bakers challenges because they are one of the few things I still make time to do for myself (even if everyone I know benefits from the finished products also). That also means that part of the monthly challenge becomes simply finding that time, around the needs of a 4-month old baby.
This month’s challenge was a filbert gateau with praline buttercream, from Great Cakes by Carol Walter, a gorgeous ganache-glazed hazelnut confection with ribbons of satiny buttercream. I decided right away that I wanted to make it to share with my in-laws, who were coming to visit us (but mostly Nolan) around the middle of the month. Their methods of event planning always keep us on our toes, and we didn’t know exactly when they would be arriving until the day before their flight, so I couldn’t start prepping the cake in advance. Luckily, they took a detour to visit more family in Coeur d’Alene, so I had a chance to go out and find hazelnuts, and then make the cake in an evening marathon with just the finishing touches to take care of the next morning.
This cake is chock full of hazelnuts. They are grown in Oregon, but it’s the wrong season for them, so they were a little hard to track down. Bulk bins are my friend. The first order of business was to get them skinned and toasted. I had quite enough of hazelnut skin stabbing under my fingernails when I made that sublime gianduja gelato a few months ago, so I tried a different method this time: blanching them in baking soda water, supposedly a foolproof technique. I don’t know if my hazelnuts were just being unusually stubborn, but I blanched them twice, attacked them with my vegetable scrubber (it will never be the same!) and still ended up spending about an hour scraping skin off each nut with my fingernails. It may not have been literally painful, but the clean-up afterwards was a real bear. I officially hate skinning hazelnuts.
The cake batter came together with Nolan’s assistance. In other words, once I got the toasted nuts out of the oven, I wore him in a sling while I worked. He did great most of the time, watching everything very intently, but started getting warm and cranky right about the time I was folding the sifted nut meal into the aerated batter. I ended up popping them in the oven at top speed, and after a bottle of milk, Nolan spent the rest of the evening napping like a little angel.
A few notes about the cake layers: The recipe requires you to sift the mixture of nut meal, cake flour and cornstarch through a mesh strainer to catch any stray chunks of hazelnut. By the time I was done sifting, I had about half a cup of coarse meal resembling sand caught in the strainer. Rather than let it go to waste, I incorporated it into my praline.
Also, the recipe calls for a 10″ cake split into three layers. That prospect was pretty scary, and I didn’t own a 10″ pan, but I honestly intended to purchase one and go through with it. I ran out of time to get to the kitchen store, however, so in the end I split the batter between two 9″ pans, and cut each of those in half for a total of 4 layers. As per the instructions, I just greased and floured my pans, and my cakes both wanted to stick on the bottoms. I know a few people had related incidents that led to huge holes in their cakes; one of mine nearly broke when it released at a bad moment, but I got away with just a minor crack. Parchment-lining the cake pans might be wise for this recipe.
Once Nolan was ensconced in the bedroom for the night, it was safe to proceed with the more dangerous element of this cake—the praline. This recipe uses the dry method to make caramel, which no longer worries me thanks to the milk chocolate-caramel tart from last August.
I popped the resulting hazelnut brittle in the fridge to chill while working on the buttercream. This particular Swiss buttercream comes together in the opposite manner of the one we used for our yule logs: the meringue is prepared first, and while the butter creams, you fling sticky dollops of meringue into it until—if all goes to plan—you end up with glorious, smooth, light buttercream. While I was still beating the meringue, the praline had hardened and was sent into the food processor for several minutes, until it had been ground into a paste with a packable consistency akin to brown sugar. Incidentally, this praline recipe makes more paste than you will need for the gateau; I highly recommend using some of the leftovers in these ricotta pancakes. Yum!
Here is where I’m not sure if my technique was off or if the recipe is flawed. As smooth as my praline paste appeared to be, when stirred into the buttercream, it tended to form little clumps. No amount of whipping improved the graininess, but since my buttercream didn’t break, I was still reasonably satisfied. The slight praline crunch did give it a certain charm, and the flavor was magnificent.
Before collapsing into bed at 1:30am, I managed to slice and assemble my layers. I used a vanilla-scented soaking syrup and remembered to add whipped cream on top of the buttercream layers, little difference though it would turn out to make. The assembled layers set up in the refrigerator overnight, and the next morning, after breakfast with my in-laws, I trimmed the edges of the cake as best I could and glazed it with apricot preserves to seal in the crumbs.
Next came the ganache. I used Scharffenberger 70% because I had it on hand, supplemented with less than an ounce of bittersweet Ghirardelli chips. I still don’t have an offset spatula (something else I had intended to get at the kitchen store), so I used a chef’s knife to smooth the top of the cake and a small spreader for the sides. I didn’t quite achieve a mirror finish, but it was still glossy and luscious, and many willing fingers assisted with the clean-up of the ganache that dripped under the cake.
I had some reserved buttercream to use for decorating my cake. Remembering how uncooperative buttercream can be when cold, I made sure to give it plenty of time to come back toward room temperature before attempting to pipe it. While I waited, I decided to make some caramelized hazelnuts for garnish. All I did was caramelize some sugar, skewer the hazelnuts with toothpicks (not on their seam), twirl them quickly through the caramel, and then stab the toothpick into the bottom of my mesh strainer. I kept the strainer on top of a deep bowl to catch the drips, and that was that. Not quite as fun, but nearly as effective as Tartelette’s apple-on-the-dishwasher trick in its own way, I’d like to think.
The scariest part of this cake was easily the piping. I’ve never piped frosting in my life, although I bought a basic set of tips back in December. I picked out the leaf tip from the batch and dove in, buttercream still on the solid side. That changed quickly as it started melting from the heat of my hands and squishing out the top of the bag. Turns out my leaf tip is a pretty small one, and the chunks of praline paste kept clogging it up, leading to some seriously thick and thin sections as the frosting backed up and then splooshed out all at once. If I had been smart, I would have reserved some unflavored buttercream for decorating before adding the praline paste. Ah well! In any event, I clearly need MUCH more practice with piping, and probably some different tips. Maybe I should go buy a can of frosting just to practice with… Anyway, it could have been worse, and the caramelized hazelnuts were a nice touch, I thought.
The cake was delicious, with a definite hazelnut flavor. I personally think that the Scharffenberger chocolate tasted a little too fruity for the hazelnuts; something a little more bitter would be more to my taste, or some Valrhona Noisette Noir Gianduja would fit this cake like a glove. I couldn’t taste the apricot or the whipped cream at all, and I left out the liqueurs called for, but didn’t miss any of those. I also didn’t let the cake sit at room temperature for more than about half an hour after it set, but our house was warm and the buttercream had already started softening in that time, and would have turned to mush if I’d waited longer (plus, we were hungry!).
There have been lots of comparisons by other Daring Bakers between this month’s challenge and April’s Opera Cake, since both included syrup-brushed layers of nut-based genoise and buttercream, with a finishing glaze. Many seem to prefer this cake to the opera cake because it is less sweet, but that never bothered me because of my extreme sweet tooth. I actually loved the mousse element of the opera cake and enjoyed the pina colada flavoring I chose for it, so the two cakes are about on par in my estimation. If this gateau had a more balanced chocolate-hazelnut/gianduja flavor, however, it would win hands down.
Thanks to Chris of Mele Cotte for choosing this interesting and delicious recipe, and be sure to check out all of the hundreds of more professionally decorated gateaux than mine on the Daring Bakers’ blogroll.
I am a member of the Theta Class of Daring Bakers, inducted in July 2007. Below is a list of previous challenges:
Strawberry Mirror Cake – July 2007
Milk Chocolate and Caramel Tart – August 2007
Cinnamon Rolls and Sticky Buns – September 2007
Bostini Cream Pies – October 2007
Tender Potato Bread – November 2007
Traditional Buche de Noel – December 2007
Lemon Meringue Pie – January 2008
French Bread – February 2008
Perfect Party Cake – March 2008
Opéra Cake – May 2008
Danish Braid – June 2008
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07.27.08
Posted in Cuisines, Dinner, Foodblog Events, Italian, Nuts, Grains & Legumes, Pastas at 8:37 am by julie
I was shocked and saddened earlier this week to learn that Sher of What Did You Eat? had passed away. I was a regular reader and admirer of Sher’s blog: she was a regular participant in many foodblogging events, including Daring Bakers, Weekend Herb Blogging, and Presto Pasta Nights, and her recipes were always really tempting. I admired her rescue and rehabilitation of wildlife, and enjoyed reading about the misadventures of her kitties.
The foodblogging community is honoring Sher today, and I decided to post a recipe featuring fava beans in her memory. Sher was a big fava fan, growing, harvesting, and cooking impressive amounts of the beans for the past several years. I went with pasta, but it was two days in the making, because Nolan was cranky from his 4-month vaccinations and didn’t give me much opportunity for cooking—I had just enough time to peel, blanch and shell my big bag of beans one evening before he woke up and spent about three hours fussing. The beans went in the fridge until the next night, when I used them to make a velvety green fava sauce for fettuccine, enriched with a bit of cream and ricotta, and accented with salty crumbles of bacon and feta. I like to think Sher would approve.
In further tribute to Sher, this will be my entry for Presto Pasta Nights #74, hosted this week by its lovely founder, Ruth of Once Upon a Feast.
Fava Fettuccine with Feta and Bacon
2 T extra virgin olive oil
1-1/2 tsp minced garlic
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1 C chicken stock
salt and freshly ground pepper
2 C shelled, blanched and peeled fava beans
1/4 C ricotta
1/3 C heavy cream
3/4 lb dried fettuccine
Feta for garnish
Crumbled bacon for garnish
Heat the olive oil in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat until hot. Add the garlic and saute briefly until light brown. Stir in the oregano, then add the stock. Bring to a boil, season with salt and pepper, and add 1-1/2 cups of the fava beans. Simmer to blend the flavors, about 3 minutes, or until the beans are tender. Meanwhile, boil water for pasta and cook fettuccine according to package directions.
Remove from the heat, add the ricotta and cream, and use a stick blender to puree until smooth. Return the sauce to the pan and add the remaining favas. Warm through and taste for seasoning. Drain pasta, reserving about a cup of pasta water, and toss with the sauce. If necessary, add some pasta water to the sauce to loosen it. Serve topped with feta and crumbled bacon.
3. Meanwhile, bring a large pot of water to a boil and add salt. Add the pasta and cook until al dente, about 12 minutes. Drain, reserving about 1/2 cup of the pasta cooking water. Pour the pasta into a warm serving bowl and add the sauce. Toss well and thin with the pasta water, if necessary, until the sauce is glossy and not sticky. Serve immediately and grate the cheese over the top at the table.
4. Drizzle extra virgin olive oil over the pasta. Just before serving, ladle a little hot pasta water into the bowl for a couple minutes to warm it up. Drain the water before filling the bowl with the pasta.
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