How to make a PB sandwich

I love this!!

The elusive apple cake

When we were in southern France we had what might have been the greatest meal of our lives. We ordered a cassoulet (partly because it was the only thing on a very long menu that we remotely understood, not speaking a bit of French ourselves and also because cassoulet seemed quintessentially french), wine, and a cheese plate.

When we were finished with our meal the chef/owner came out and asked us how everything was ( thankfully she spoke English). After giving much praise and sounding like the stupid Americans that we are, we asked her for a dessert recommendation and she asked "well what did you have for dinner?" ahhhh what a watershed foody moment, asking what we ate for dinner to pair a dessert-I think G. shed a tear! Anyways after describing our meal she recommended (without hesitation) an apple cake. It was such an amazing dessert and I wish I'd taken a photo. Ever since then I've wanted to recreate it, but haven't really know what recipe to use.

When we got the most recent version of the Canal House cookbook and I saw the apple cake recipe in the back I thought this might be it. Honestly, Canal House describes the cake as Italian not French. But I figured, hey, the countries are geographically close, and surely delicious cake recipes cross borders.

I found some apples at the farmer's market this past Wednesday (who knew they started growing now?!?) and so this seemed the perfect opportunity to try the recipe.

The recipe is simple. It calls for butter, sugar, milk, an egg, vanilla extract, flour, baking powder, and a pinch of salt. You make the cake batter, place in a springform pan, and then carefully arrange apple slices in the batter.

This recipe was good, but not great. I want to try again with different apples (maybe Golden Delicious, which the Canal house recommends), and with smaller slices.

I've also been searching the web and seeing all sorts of different takes on similar cakes:

here, here,  and here, for example.

So many possibilities....so little time.

Nana taco

Today we ate at nana taco in Durham. It was awesome!!

Guess what's going on in the food epidemic kitchen these days

Bread. Lots of bread baking. I'm a little obsessed. I love the idea of creating something so delicious out of just flour, water, salt, and maybe some yeast. I stay up late reading this blog. And watching instructional videos on how to shape loaves of bread. And reading messages on the fresh loaf bread forum- Bread bakers are so nice!

So...outcomes:

 The bread I've been baking the most is the Tartine country loaf. This has been very much a success! The recipe and instructions are given on Martha Stewart's website. Pictured below is the whole wheat variety.

I have also been trying to make baguettes. These are not going quite as well. Somehow my baguette attempts always seem to end in an over-proofed disaster, which makes me grumpy.
First I tried to make baguettes using the recipe in the Tartine bread book. That was a COMPLETE disaster. I was very sad. Luckily, we were taking care of my sister-in-law's dog at the time, who managed to eat 1.5 of the baguette disasters that I baked. 
She's so cute I had to forgive her (see below):

Next I tried using this recipe. The latter mentioned formula was developed by Anis Bouabsa, who was recently named the baker of the best baguette in Paris. My first attempt using his formula was only half of a disaster. The baguettes still didn't shape properly. And I was still grumpy afterwards. Oh well.  
We still managed to make some delicious meatball subs with the bread (sorry, we ate the sandwiches before I could take a picture!). 

I want to try again. I am determined.

In other news, I'm obsessed with iced coffee. I have been using the Japanese iced coffee "on the rocks" method. 

I love this. It's so simple. I grind up 1/3 cup of coffee beans, place them in a filter, place the filter over a mason jar filled with a couple cubes of ice, and then pour approximately 1 cup of boiling water through the filter on top of the ice. It's so delicious. And I love being able to use a mason jar. It's super convenient. You can screw the lid on and you're set to travel.

Which reminds me: G. bought me a "cuppow." It's awesome. It's a drinking lid that you place on a mason jar.  It essentially turns a mason jar into a sippy cup!  Next I'm going to buy the straw-friendly version.

Alright, it's 11:30 and I am supposed to wake up early tomorrow. So that's all for now.

the imposter

Someone told me that she hates it when bloggers sign in after a long hiatus and write something like "it's been so long since I blogged and here are my excuses" (or maybe it was someone else expressed that sentiment to her, and she subsequently told me this)... but whatever. it doesn't matter. Just very momentarily I'm disregarding any feelings of resentment such people might feel towards me. Because yeah, it's been a really long time since I posted anything on this little blog. And yes, I've been really busy and blahblahblah. But I think that the reasons that I haven't posted on this blog in so long have more to do with an identity crisis of sorts.

The truth is, I always felt like a bit of an imposter in writing this blog. I billed it as a food blog and mainly posted  recipes that I've tried. In reality there are millions-- maybe even billions?--of food blogs on the web. Most of them are really good. I love visiting them, I get fabulous tips and ideas and inspiration from them. And on top of that there are all of the professional webpages out there that are dedicated to food writing/instruction (see marthastewart.com for example), and the magazines devoted to the topic, not to mention all of the beautiful and shiny and insightful (and well tested) cookbooks that are published each year. The world of food writing and blogging is (over)-saturated--saturated by the writings and creations of people who are much more skilled  and creative than I am in the kitchen. So anyways, this realization left me a bit embarrassed to post anything up here. I'd post recipes that I was excited about, but why do that when there is so much  of this information out there in such better form than I could ever hope to present it? And so, tail between legs, I left the blog.

Sometimes though the weblink to this site pops up in my browser when I start to type in something else that starts with the letters "www.foo" and I'm reminded of this project that I abandoned. And I feel a bit sad. And I've been reading recently about how important it is to write, and how it helps you to deal with the world that you are experiencing. And so, I'm revisiting the blogging experience. This post might represent the beginning of an evolved blog. We shall see.

For now, I'll just post some links to some food blogs, and then some links to some other sites, beyond the world of food, that I love.

First the food blogs:

www.smittenkitchen.com -this is probably my all time favorite food blog. Her recipes are manageable and delicious.
www.davidlebovitz.com-because who doesn't love a former chez panisse pastry chef who has uprooted himself and moved to Paris? He has great dessert (chocolate) recipes.
www.chocolateandzucchini.com-Written by an adorable french woman. Her recipes are often creative, healthy, and inspiring.
www.simplyrecipes.com-The name of this blog doesn't lie. I go here for basic ideas/instructions. For example, I learned how to boil an egg on her blog.

Now for some other sites that are inspiring me as of recently:
www.brainpickings.org - Great culture stories.  Easily digestible ideas and information. I love this part of the site's mission statement:
"Because creativity, after all, is a combinatorial force. It’s our ability to tap into the mental pool of resources — ideas, insights, knowledge, inspiration — that we’ve accumulated over the years just by being present and alive and awake to the world, and to combine them in extraordinary new ways. In order for us to truly create and contribute to the world, we have to be able to connect countless dots, to cross-pollinate ideas from a wealth of disciplines, to combine and recombine these ideas and build new ideas — like LEGOs. The more of these building blocks we have, and the more diverse their shapes and colors, the more interesting our creations will become"

http://mrbellersneighborhood.com/
I just discovered this site. Submitted stories about New York City. I love this story about the chocolate egg cream: http://mrbellersneighborhood.com/2012/03/i-love-you-u-bet
[and by the way, if you haven't ever had a chocolate egg cream, well, you must make yourself one!]

http://www.thedaysofyore.com/
Features interviews with artists,  writers, etc. about how they ended up where they did.
Interesting and inspiring.

And with that, I'm signing off. Until next time, whenever and whatever that might be!

The great bagel search

When I was in high school I took one of those silly class trips to Costa Rica. Oh you know what I'm talking about: one of those trips that companies market to parents and teachers as great learning experiences for the young Spanish language student, but are in fact tidy commercial packages that involve schlepping said students from tourist trap to tourist trap, putting them up in 2 and a half star hotels designed for such tourists, and feeding them (awful) American friendly food. While the country was absolutely beautiful, I didn't learn a lick of Spanish and worst of all, the food was atrocious.

In fact, what I remember most from the trip is the day that my friends and I took a long walk down the road from our hotel and discovered a little cafe-again, obviously targeted towards the American tourist-and to our delight found that the restaurant served bagels. After having eaten horrible Costa-merican food (eg. lasagna layered with cheese and papaya sauce) for several days, we were delighted. The bagels were still awful but I guess the big ball of dough with a hole in its center was enough to please us at the time.

I was reminded of this story today. This morning I took a little spill off of my bike, and as I sat feeling sorry for myself I began to develop cravings for a bagel--a bagel and cream cheese are my comfort food. But alas, to my knowledge, there is not a good bagel option in the triangle area. And so I've decided: I'm making it my personal goal to find a descent Piedmont, NC bagel. I know, we don't have the NYC water, but whatever, despite this fact it seems like it should be possible to bake a descent bagel.

Anyone have suggestions for places to try?

Pear galette and most amazingly flaky crust ever

See that photo? Know what those are? Those are victory hands. Because I did it-finally! I made a super-flaky crust (for a gallette-but i think it could be used for a pie or tart crust too).

Ever since I started making pies, 3 or so years ago, I've wanted to make a super flaky crust. And generally my crusts are okay, but they could be better. Usually they're just a little on the soggy side, or they're just not flaky enough.

Well I was looking through the Tartine Bakery Cookbook (the original not the new one) and I noticed their Fruit Galette recipe. They describe the crust for this galette as similar to a "rough puff pastry"-same ingredients as those in their flaky pie crust dough, but different method: more complicated. FOr quite some time, I was intimidated by this concept of a "more difficult/complicated" method. Finally, though, after one too many trips to Durham NC's Scratch Bakery--where one can find what are perhaps some of the best pies/tarts/pastries in the world--  I decided it was time I aimed for "more" in my pastry crusts; thus I broke down and tried this recipe.

And turns out the method was really not so bad. It involves rolling, layer by layer, cold hunks of butter into flour. The process was a bit messy but really not too bad and actually quite a lot of fun. And the result was just so rewarding.

And so I won't delay this any longer. Here and now, I give you the recipe for pastry crust that will change your life-or at least boost your self-esteem.

Adapted from the Tartine Bakery cookbook (the original), by Elisabeth M. Pruett and Chad Robertson (page 71).

For the dough:  (this makes enough dough for 2 large galettes, or 12 small galettes)

INGREDIENTS:
Very cold unsalted butter,-2 cups or 1 pound/455 g
Water -1 cup or 8 oz/250 ml
Salt - 1.5 tsp or 7 ml
*All purpose flour- 2 1/3 cups or 12 oz/340 g
*Pastry flour - 2 2/3 cups or 12 oz/340 g
(I suggest adding a tablespoon or so of sugar to this-not what the authors suggest but I thought a bit of sweetness in the dough might be nice) 

SPECIAL EQUIPMENT:
Rolling pin
Bench scraper
Cookie sheet

 *(NOTE: the authors say that a mix of all purpose and pastry flour is ideal. I didn't have pastry at the time and did without. The recipe came out just fine,a lthough next time I'll probably aim to go with the all purpose/pastry mix).

1. Cut the butter into 1-inch cubes and put into freezer.
2. Mix water with salt, and place in freezer.
3. Chill butter and water/salt mixtures for about 10 minutes.

4. Measure flour onto your work surface It's not necessary to mix the flours at this point, because they will get mixed as the dough is made.

5. Spread flour into a rectangle about 1/3 inch deep.
6. Scatter butter cubes on top of the flour. Toss some flour on the butter so that your rolling pin doesn't stick.

7. Start to roll butter into flour. When the butter begins to flatten into long and thin pieces, use a bench scraper to scoop up sides of the rectangle so that it's the size that you started with.

8. Repeat rolling and scraping 3-4 times .

9. Make a well in the center of the flour/butter mixture and pour all of your water/salt mixture into the center (this was a bit messy-next time I will incorporate the water slightly more gradually).
Using the bench scraper, scoop the sides of the dough onto the center, cutting the water into the dough.

10. Keep scraping and cutting until the dough is a shaggy mass, and then shape it into a rectangle that measures about 10 x 14 inches. Now, lightly dust the top of the rectangle with flour

11. Roll out the rectangle until it's twice as wide again and then scrape the top, bottom, and sides together until it is back to the original size.  Reroll, and repeat 3 or 4 times until you have smooth and cohesive dough (I think I ended up rerolling quite a few more times-I didn't get a "smooth" and "cohesive" dough after 4 rerolls).

You should now have a nice neat rectangle that measures about 10 x 14 inches.

12. Transfer the dough to a large baking sheet, cover with plastic wrap, and chill well, about 1 hr (I actually extended the chilling to about...um...7 days. Turned out just fine).

13. When you're ready to roll out the dough, divide it into 2 equal portions if you're making large galettes or into 12 equal portions if you're making small galettes. Roll out into circles and transfer to a baking sheet (the authors have amazing instructions for rolling out into a circle. im not going to type all of that out, but you should buy the book. it's an awesome book anyways).

Chill the circles until they are firm.

**************************


I made a pear galette with this dough.

For the filling:
4 bosch pears,
1/4 spiced rum
sugar to taste
2 tablespoons ginger

PREHEAT OVEN to 375 degrees.

Peel and cut pears, length wise.
Place in a sauce pan over medium heat, add the spice rum, sugar and ginger, stir and cook down the pears, for about 10 minutes.

1. Place the pear filling in the center of the dough circle: leave about a 2 inch border for a large galette and about a 1 inch border for the smaller galettes.

2. Fold in sides of circles to cover the fruit-make sure not to leave any spaces from which fruit might leak out.
3. Chill until firm (I managed to skip this chilling step).

4. Brush sides of the galette with milk (or an egg wash as the authors recommend). Sprinkle with granulated sugar, and then bake!

5. Serve with vanilla ice cream.

6. Throw up your triumphant hands to celebrate your success baking a flaky dough!

A very belated happy pie day

I am kicking myself for having recently been such a bad food blogger. My excuse, sad as it might be, is that I recently purchased Lightroom (Adobe's photo editing software). This was supposed to be the amazing software that is also user-friendly. Well, perhaps it is wonderful and does transform and restore one's otherwise mediocre photos into halfway decent pieces, but it's also a hell of a lot more challenging to use that I had hoped or anticipated. Meanwhile, I have tons of food photos on my camera that I now feel are un-blog-worthy in their unedited state. And so they've been sitting untouched,  unblogged, unviewed, and utterly unloved. Until now.

Finally, I am breaking down; I haven't had the time to go through the lightroom tutorials, and the program is far from being point and clicky easy, and so I'm posting the raw photos in all their unedited glory--dark, overexposed, blurry, uncropped, etc. Forgive me.

And forgive me again-I can't even begin to recount everything that we've cooked in the past month and a half or so.

However, one of the highlights-no question-was Pie Day.

Oh yes indeed, the American Pie Council declared January 23 National Pie Day:

"National Pie Day? Well, why not? Pies have always been a sweet treat to warm the cold winter days and with the holiday celebrations a fading memory, this is a great way to warm up a January cold snap"

See here for more information: http://www.chiff.com/a/american-pie-day.htm

On the website the pie council offers many suggestions for ways to celebrate this holiday. For example:
1.) Eat pie
2.) Bake pie
3.) Share pie
4.) Teach pie making
5.) Hold a pie night...

...

Hmmm hold a pie night. What a good idea. 


You may or may not be aware of my minor obsession with pie baking. Given this, I of course had to celebrate the holiday in some way or another. I invited a few friends from my graduate program over for a pie potluck (after all there is no better way by which to drown one's graduate school misery than by baking and subsequently eating one-- or several --pies). I made a pie-music play list to go with the pie eating. Among the tunes on the list were: Custard Pie (Led Zeppelin), Pumpkin Pie (Joe Thompson), Country Pie (Bob Dylan), Bake That Chicken Pie (Uncle Dave Macon), Honey Pie (the Beatles), and everyone's favorite, Making Pies (Pattie Griffin). We baked, and then we listened to the pie inspired music while we ate. Oh yeah, and we drank lots of coffee (goes well with pie + we're sleep-deprived). We also drank some yummy ginger liquor-to counteract the coffee effects.

 

And oh, it was wonderful. We ended up with five pies at the event:  Key lime, lemon custard, pumpkin, apple cream with meringue topping, and tomato and cheese. I prepared the latter two pies, and so these are the ones for which I can provide recipes. I give the recipe for the tomato corn pie below; I am saving the recipe for the apple cream pie for another post!

In the meantime I just can't wait until the next pie day. I've heard of people celebrating pie on March 14 (3.14=pi, get it?) Ohhh the possibilities.

 I have previously referred to the tomato and cheese pie recipe. However, last time I made this pie, I tried to make the recipe "healthier" (always a bad idea) by creating a butterless, whole wheat crust and using ricotta cheese instead of cheddar cheese and mayonnaise. Well this time I did not hold back. And good lord was result a good one.

I found the recipe for tomato and corn pie here, on the smitten kitchen blog--the recipe she adapted came from Gourmet Magazine.

Basically, first you make a biscuit-type crust, using 2 cups of flour, 1 tablespoon baking powder, and 3/4 tablespoon of salt-whisk those together, then blend in 3/4 cup of cold butter using a food processor/pastry blender/your fingers until the mixture resembles coarse corn meal. Then you add in some milk (3/4 cup, whole milk preferred but use what you have on hand) until you get a nice dough that you can form into a ball. Divide the dough into 2 parts, then roll out one part and place as the bottom crust into a pie dish. Place the second part of dough into the fridge until you're ready to use it.

Even though this is not recommended in the recipe, I prebaked the pie crust for about 15 minutes (place a sheet of buttered aluminum foil on the bottom crust, place some pie weights or dry beans on top of that, and bake for about 15 minutes at 400 degrees).

Then, construct the pie: layer tomatoes (I used one and a half 28 oz. cans of whole plum tomatoes, which I drained very well), grated cheese (7 oz.), herbs (1 tablespoon of chives and 1 tablespoon of basil, chopped), pepper, corn (1.5 cups-i used frozen corn), and a mayonaise (1/3 cup) and lemon juice (2 tablespoons) mixture, then roll our your second half of dough and place on top of your layered pie. Brush the crust with milk to create a nice brown color after baking.

Bake the pie for 30-35 minutes in the oven, at 400 degrees.

Again, you can find the recipe on the smitten kitchen blog. I honestly think that this pie is probably hard to mess up. I substituted canned tomatoes for fresh ones, and frozen corn for fresh corn. The pie was still delicious. I recommend straining the tomatoes in order to avoid a puddle at the bottom of your pie.

Happy new year fruit salad

Every January 1 we eat a home-cooked brunch. This year we had lots of friends over and prepared all sorts of delights: pancakes, cheese grits, frittata, biscotti... It was fun and delicious-the perfect start to 2011. One of my personal favorite things that we made this year was a fruit salad that consisted of stewed dried fruits and pears. It was delicious-we ate it on top of our pancakes, but I imagine that it would be great on top of ice cream, alone with a bit of whipped cream, or even straight out of a jar.

This recipe is an adaptation/combination of the winter fruit salad on the smitten kitchen blog, a fruit compote that my mom makes, and poached pears. This time I used the spices that were suggested in the winter fruit salad recipe (star anise and vanilla bean) but I imagine that there are many others that would be delicious in addition to these or in combination with them (cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg...)

Happy new year stewed fruit salad

Ingredients

8 cups of water
4 star anise
6-8 large pears, cut into quarters (I used a combination of Bartlett and Bosch)
1 vanilla bean, split down the center lengthwise
About 20 dried apricots, cut in half

About 10 figs cut in quarters
About 10 prunes cut in half
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 cups of granulated sugar


To make the salad

(best prepared the day or night before you intend to eat the salad so that the fruit have time to stew and then cool in the fridge)

1.) Combine the water, sugar, star anise, vanilla bean, and lemon juice in a sauce pan. Bring the mixture to a boil on the stove top, and allow all of the sugar to dissolve, stirring occasionally.

2.) Once the sugar is dissolved, turn the heat off and add the dried fruits and pears to the mixture and transfer to a slow cooker. Slow cook the fruits for 2-3 hours.

(If you don't have a slow cooker, you can simply slow cook the fruits/sugar water mixture at a very low temperature in a sauce pan on the stove top--put a lid on top of the pan).

3.) Once the pears are soft but not falling apart, transfer the mixture to a jar or bowl, and once cool enough, place in the refrigerator to cool. The next morning, enjoy your fruit salad on top of pancakes, ice cream, or on their own.

Note: The morning on which we ate our fruit salad we reduced some of the liquid from the fruit salad in a sauce pan on the stove top until it became a thick syrup. We used this as a delicious spicey syrup for our pancakes, in addition to the fruit. YUM!

Crack pie

Photo by Benji Shirley

We had some friends over for a pre-thanksgiving dinner (we had to stretch our stomachs in preparation for the real day after all).  I was excited to bake the pie to complete the meal and had planned to make a salted chocolate ganache tart, the recipe for which I'd seen in Real Simple. 

I had gone so far as to buy all the ingredients for the tart and was literally about to begin to prepare it when I found myself skimming the archives of Bon Appetit Magazine online. I stopped skimming and started reading when I saw the words "Crack pie." This pie recipe was created by the pastry chef from Momofuku's Milk Bar in NYC.  The reviews were complete raves and let's just say that that apparently, this "Crack" pie was granted its name for a reason.  Anyways, long story short, I just couldn't resist trying out the recipe.

The filling for the pie is essentially a chess pie (which means that it contains every bad-for-you ingredient imaginable...heavy cream, egg yolks, butter, sugar...) And the crust--I love this--is made from crumbled oatmeal cookie that you pre-bake.

The pie was amazing and rich. It has that wonderful buttery sweet flavor of a sugar cookie, while maintaining a delicious soft, almost custard-like texture in the filling. The oatmeal crust has an almost nutty butter flavor and provides a nice textural contrast for the filling.

Overall the recipe was simple, although I had a little bit of trouble getting the crust to smush together into the pie dish. It worked out eventually, although as you can see from the picture it didn't necessarily fill my deep pie dish.

I'm definitely going to keep this recipe filed away although it is so decadent that I will reserve it for the most special of occasions.

Crack Pie
Recipe from Momofuku, published by Bon Appetit. This recipe can also be found here, at the LA Times, but it's important to note that the LA times recipe makes 2 pies. The recipe I've listed below is based on the one published by Bon Appetit and makes one 9 inch pie.


Ingredients:

For the oat cookie crust:
-9 tablespoons of unsalted butter at room temperature
-5 1/2 tablespoons of brown sugar
-2 tablespoons of granulated sugar
-1 large egg
-3/4 plus 2 tablespoons of old-fashioned oats
-1/2 cup all purpose flour
-1/8 teaspoon baking powder
-1/8 teaspoon baking soda
-1/4 teaspoon of salt

For the filling:
-3/4 cup sugar
-1/2 cup packed brown sugar
-1 tablespoon of nonfat dry milk powder
-1/4 teaspoon salt
-1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled
-6 1/2 tablespoons heavy whipping cream
-4 large egg yolks
-1 teaspoon vanilla extract
-Powdered sugar for dusting pie before serving (I skipped this because I forgot!)

Preparation:

First prepare the oat cookie crust:

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 13x9x2-inch metal baking pan with parchment paper or a sil pad. If not using sil pad, then oil the baking pan.

Combine 6 tablespoons butter, 4 tablespoons brown sugar, and 2 tablespoons sugar in medium bowl. Using electric mixer, beat mixture until light and fluffy, occasionally scraping down sides of bowl, about 2 minutes.

Add egg; beat until pale and fluffy.

Add oats, flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and beat until well blended.

Turn oat mixture out onto prepared baking pan; press out evenly to edges of pan.

Bake until light golden on top, 17 to 18 minutes. Transfer baking pan to rack and cool cookie completely.

In a food processor, pulse to crumble the oat cookie; add 3 tablespoons butter and 1 1/2 tablespoons brown sugar. Pulse further until butter and sugar are well distributed.

The mixture should be moist enough to stick together.

Transfer cookie crust mixture to 9-inch-diameter glass pie dish. Using fingers, press mixture evenly onto bottom and up sides of pie dish. Place pie dish with crust on rimmed baking sheet.

Now prepare the filling: 

Position the rack in the center of your oven and preheat the oven to 350 F.

Whisk together both sugars, milk powder, and salt in medium bowl.

Add the melted butter and whisk until it is blended.

Add the cream, then egg yolks, and vanilla and whisk until well blended.

Pour filling into crust.

Bake pie 30 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 325 F. Continue to bake pie until filling is brown in spots and set around edges but center still moves a bit when the dish is shaken, about 20 minutes.

Cool pie 2 hours in pie dish on rack. Chill uncovered overnight.

Note: I made this a day in advance and it was nicely set and chilled. If you think of it, sprinkle powdered sugar on the pie before serving although its certainly not required!

Kale chips

I thought about titling this post "How to make your green vegetables taste like junk food" because really, that is what this is all about.

I must admit that until recently, the autumn kale and greens season was not very exciting to me vegetable-wise. In fact, it was a sad time because it represented the loss of tomatoes, summer squash, basil, and all of those other wondrous flavors of the summer.

But then along came this recipe which was, in and of itself, a game changer. This method of seasoning veggies with olive oil, salt and pepper and baking is just simply amazing. The veggies become crispy and crunchy--like potato chips! They're so tasty that you don't want to stop eating them, and you just might fight with your husband over who gets the last chip.

My only regret is not having learned about this idea earlier on in life. And I don't know--a nutritionist might tell me that this method of preparing greens actually extracts all of the vitamins that exist in the veggies before baking. But I'm quite content living in the bliss of my ignorance.

Kale* Chips, adapted from the Smitten Kitchen blog


Ingredients:
1 bunch of kale (I like dinosaur kale)
Salt
Pepper
Olive oil

To prepare:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Rinse the Kale, dry, and then chop coarsely & remove stems
3. Spread kale on a cookie sheet for baking (I put mine on a sil pad. If you don't have one of these you might want to use parchment paper, or to oil the pan before placing vegetables)

4. Sprinkle olive oil, salt, and pepper on the kale and mix until the seasonings are well distributed.
5. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until the kale looks crisp and delicious.

*Note: I tried using swiss chard once and this did not turn out well. The swiss chard did not become crispy and crunchy. Rather it remained a soggy limp mess. It was a huge disappointment. Perhaps spinach would work... I can't say for sure. I'd be interested to try. I'm also interested to try this recipe using other vegetables, such as carrots. I'm interested to hear about other people's experiences using this idea but with different veggies.

Plum & pear pie without a soggy bottom

This was another winner and believe me the photo does not do the pie justice in terms of its deliciousness. Plus it doesn't reveal the relative simplicity of this pie recipe--but that's where I come in. The recipe for the crust (which goes only on top of the fruit-this is a bottomless pie!) calls for an egg, room temperature butter, and a great deal more sugar than that which you would typically use. As a result it doesn't boast the flakey texture of most pie crusts, but I really didn't miss it. I don't think anyone who tried this pie did either because it disappeared quickly! AND, the fact that I didn't have to worry about keeping the butter cold made it a dream to whip together (this one really is 'easy as pie' to make). My only regret was not having had ice or whipped cream to go along with the pie, but hey there's always next time.

I found this recipe on the smitten kitchen blog but the recipe was originally written by Nigel Slater. He explains that his idea for this pie was born out of the perpetual problem of juicy fruit in pies creating a soggy bottom. Here, the recipe avoids soggy bottoms by  eliminating the base pastry completely. He compensates for the lack of pastry down below by creating an extra thick pastry on top.

One final note: I substituted pears for apples in my pie. My sister in law suggested this, having tried the recipe herself and I have to say that I loved the texture of the pears along side the plums. Plus, I'm a total sucker for pears in pies in general. Having said that I do imagine that apples would taste really good in here too.

Plum and pear pie without a soggy bottom
Adapted from recipe by Nigel Slater

For the top of the pie (the crust):


100 g of butter
100 g of sugar
one egg 
175 g of  flour (I used pastry flour), 
1/2 tsp of baking powder
a pinch of salt for flavor
milk for brushing the crust before baking


For the filling:
about 8-10 plums 
2 pears (or apples)
2-3 tbsp  of sugar
ground cinnamon,

Use a standing mixer to combine the butter and sugar until they become creamy in texture.

Beat the egg then mix in with butter and sugar. Now add the flour, salt, and baking powder. Roll dough into a ball and then place on a floured work surface. Knead for a minute or two until smooth and soft. Wrap in plastic wrap or stick in an air-tight container and refrigerate for 20-30 minutes.

Set the oven at 180C. Cut the plums in half and remove pits.

Cut the fruit into large pieces, toss with the sugar and cinnamon and put into a lightly buttered 9 inch pie dish.

Roll out the pastry on a floured board, not paying too much attention to the shape, and then place on top of the fruit filling. It doesn't matter if the crust breaks as you place it on top of the fruit. Also you may want to cut a slit into the pastry to allow release of air during baking. Also, there will likely be an eruption of the juices onto the pastry which is a good thing, not a bad, and just contributes to the overall deliciousness.

Brush the pastry lightly with milk and bake for 40 minutes Dust with  sugar and serve warm with ice or whipped cream and don't count of leftovers.

Food in Jars

I'm very excited about my newest food blog discovery: Food in Jars. Check the site out. Most of her recipes involve canning in one way or another. They are all quite creative and offer great inspiration. This is an especially timely discovery, since we have just started to discuss and plan the crafty holiday gifts that we will prepare this year. If you're a loved one and reading this, I just might have given you a hint regarding what you can expect to receive in December. Just maybe. But you'll have to wait and see to be sure.

Mushroom ragu and a new cookbook!

Wow- I discovered an amazing new series of cookbooks, Canal House Cooking. You can purchase these seasonal publications individually or subscribe to and receive each volume when it comes out. Volume 5 was just released but I bought volume 2--for now (volume 1 is already out of print. Used copies can be bought on amazon-but for a pretty penny. Whereas the books go for 20$ new, these out of print copies are selling for over 100$ !)

But I can understand why people are willing to pay so much to own a complete series, because the cookbooks are just lovely. The photography is amazing, the colors of the books are gorgeous and the publications have a homemade and scrap-booky feel that is just so comforting in our otherwise clean, glossy, and technological world. I find myself wanting to curl up with this cookbook and just flip through the pages, savoring the images and the colors.

Oh yeah, and on top of all that gushing, the recipes are simple and relatively practical, seasonal, and as I found out tonight, they turn out quite delicious.



I cooked up their recipe for Mushroom ragu on polenta. Here is what they say about this dish:

"We love all sorts of mushroom varieties and this stew lends itself to using a mixture of different shapes, textures, and flavors. If you don't have time to make polenta, serve the ragu over thick slices of crusty toast that have been lightly rubbed with a peeled clove of garlic. Set a poached egg on top of each and grate some parmigiano-reggiano or pecorino over the eggs"


Well it was the middle of the week and I didn't have time to make the polenta and so I went the toasted bread route. I hope to try the polenta version soon, but for now, the toasty-bread/eggy/ragu combo was delicious.

Here's the recipe (with a few adaptations):

For the polenta:
1 cup polenta
Salt
2 tablespoons butter

For the Ragu:
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 tablespoons butter
1 coarsely chopped onion
1 clove garlic, minced
2 pounds shitake (or other) mushrooms)
Thyme
2 tablespoons sherry (I used wine and it was fine)
4 whole peeled plum tomatoes from a can
2 cups chicken stock
1/2 bunch parsley leaves, chopped
Salt and pepper

For the polenta, put 5 cups of cold water into a dutch oven. Stir in the polenta and salt to taste. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring often. Reduce heat to medium-low and cook the polenta. Stir occassionally until it's tender (probably will be 45-60 minutes). Stir in more water as needed if it gets too thick before it's finished cooking. Stir in the butter and season with salt. The polenta can sit like this while you make the ragu.

For the ragu, heat the olive oil and 2 tablespoons of the butter together in a large skillet over medium heat until the butter foams. Add the onions and garlic and cook these until they become soft and translucent, 3-5 minutes. Add the mushrooms and cook, stirring occassionally, until they begin to soften, about 3 minutes. Add the thyme and sherry. Add the tomatoes, crushing them with your hand as you drop them into the mushrooms. Then add in the stock, the parsley, and the other 2 tablespoons of butter. Simmer the ragu over medium-low heat until becomes stewy and thick, about 20 minutes. Season with salt and pepper as needed. Spoon the mushroom ragu over the warm polenta, or the bread if you are using that. 

Raw pizza

You might be saying to yourself, "raw pizza..gross," as images of soggy dough covered by cold sauce and topped with shredded uncooked mozarrella cheese float through your head. But no, this recipe wasn't invented to perpetuate the chipmunk-inspired "raw food" fad. Ovens and elevated cooking temperatures are actually required. In fact, I am calling this a "raw" pizza only because the recipe doesn't ask you to bake the pizza with the various toppings and cheese on top. Instead, you bake your crust, load it up with soft cheese(s), veggies, and herbs and wha-la! You eat it as is. No further baking required. I am a fan of this idea because of the resultant food textures. You have (in theory, at least) a crisp dough and crust, topped with a subtle and soft cheese, and then with herbs and flavorful and crunchy greens and veggies. Yum.

It is perhaps unfortunate that today I had one of those strange moments of ill-conceived inspiration during which I said to myself something along the lines of the following: "Hmm I have a great idea. How about I substitute a different ingredient for everything that is actually listed in the original recipe and hope for the best?" Well I wouldn't exactly call my product the best, but it was good and more than anything else I'd say that my raw pizza pointed to the potential awesomeness that might result if one actually, say, followed the instructions that the recipe provides.

By this point I know that you are gripping your seat and wondering what on earth i did to change around this recipe. Well, please, allow me tell you. Firstly, I changed the flour. The recipe calls for 1.5 cups of all purpose flour. Instead, I mixed together 0.5 cup buckwheat flour, 0.5 cup pastry flour, and 0.5 cup whole wheat flour. Secondly, the recipe calls for 0.25 cup butter. In my attempts to cook a bit more on the healthy side (and despite my proclaimed love for butter that we discussed previously) I substituted 1/4 cup of olive oil for the butter. Third, the recipe calls for rolling sesame seeds into the dough before it is baked. I simply skipped this step completely. Finally, I completely changed the vegetable topping, sauteing spinach and onion with olive oil and lemon juice and spreading on top of ricotta and goat cheeses instead of layering thin slices of zucchini.

I do think that this recipe has a lot of flexibility to adjust, alter and substitute. While I was happy with the flavor of the dough I was disappointed that it was not more crisp. Perhaps next time I will have to return to my use of butter. All in all though I was pleased with this recipe and I definitely plan to revisit it in the future.

In any case the original can be found here, on the Chocolate and Zucchini site.

Home-made energy bars

I have to rank this as one of the best recipe discoveries that we have made-ever. Really. Truly. No joke. Let me begin to list the ways that this recipe is amazing: 1.) it's relatively easy to throw together, 2.) it's simple and 3.) flexible, 4.) the bars are healthy, and 5.) they actually taste good! This recipe is a delight, too, because the bars actually stay together, unlike the product from many of the other granola bar recipes that I have tried. These fruit and nut bars serve as a great alternative to the store-bought granola or power bar.

There are many ways that one could adjust this recipe: add some extra spices, use alternative sweeteners to maple syrup, add in some butter for added flavor (see on love and butter for more on this subject), add in cocoa powder and/or chocolate chips, use almond or peanut butter instead of the nuts...the possibilities are endless.

Really I speak from personal experience. When I baked these, I depended on what I had in my kitchen at the time. I didn't have almonds but I had almond butter,. I didn't have raisins but I did have cranberries. I didn't have apricots but I did have prunes and figs. And so on. I was very happy with the result despite all of these changes and I am just so pleased to have this recipe in my life.

Here the original recipe, by Elie Krieger, can be found here:

Energy Bars

On love and butter

Food thoughts by an insomniac

I'm having one of those toss in the bed unable to sleep nights. Sometimes on such nights, a little uninhibited knoshing does the trick and makes me sufficiently sleepy. I open the refrigerator and take little bits of cheese, spoonfuls of yogurt, and slowly shovel these into my mouth. I open boxes of cereal and often without even bothering to put the content into a bowl, munch away on the dry grains. After a few minutes my tummy feels full and I happily return to bed. Sometimes I leave behind crumbs and open cereal boxes, which serve as evidence of my late-night kitchen escapades. Other times I wipe the kitchen clean and it's as if nothing ever happened. Never mind that there's hardly any cereal left for the morning. It's all worth it and tastes much better at midnight anyways.

In any case, I've wasted too much time already. I'm off to the kitchen.

First apple pie of the season! and Joyce Maynard

I hadn't made a pie in ages but got a sudden urge on Friday evening after a long and tiring week. And so I ran to the grocery store and bought a pound of apples before my pie baking energy escaped.

In addition to being inspired to bake by the crispness of fall and my need to do something that doesn't involve staring at a computer screen, I had recently stumbled upon Joyce Maynard's website, where I discovered an entry on pie making. Apparently, Joyce Maynard is not only a writer and story teller, but also a pie maker. She teaches her late mother's pie making style and boasts, "I'm guessing the number of my pie students has probably reached the quadruple digits now, and I'm not about to stop. I have been known to travel with a rolling pin." I love Joyce Maynard's pie making spirit, the fact that her teaching of the craft serves a sort of homage to her mother, and that she uses the process of pie making as a metaphor for life. (For example, in her pie making video, Joyce Maynard says that she cuts that apples into uneven pieces since this is the way life is; uneven and unpredictable.)

Apparently, in her recently published book, Labor Day, one of the main characters teachers another to make a pie:

" We were his ticket across state lines. That was the story. I’d watched enough episodes of Magnum P.I.. to get it. Only then Frank turned around to face us, and he was holding a knife.These peaches, he said, looking even more serious than before. If we don’t put them to use soon, they’re goners. What did you have in mind? my mother said. There was a sound to her voice I could not remember ever hearing. She was laughing, not the way a person does if you tell them a joke, but more how it is when they’re just in a good mood and feeling happy. I’m going to make us a peach pie, like my grandmother did it, he said. First thing, he needed a couple of bowls. One to make the crust. One for the filling. Frank peeled the peaches. I cut them up. Filling is easy, Frank said. What I want to talk about is crust.You could tell, the way he reached for his bowl, that this man had made more than a few pies in his life."

The passage continues and provides detailed instructions for making a pie crust. The recipe calls for 3 cups of flour (for a double crust pie), 1 stick of butter, about an equivalent amount of shortening, salt and sugar.

After reading this I was inspired to try Joyce's recipe for pie crust making myself. While I have experimented with using butter, and shortening, separately in pie crusts, I hadn't ever before tried to use both in roughly equivalent amounts.

All in all I was pleased with the pie that I made. However, I had some trouble rolling out the dough. My theory is that this problem results from the fact that I took the oft-cited rule of pie crust making that one should never add too much water to an extreme. As a result, the raw pie crust dough was dry and therefore crumbly and difficult to roll. When baked the pie crust was tasty but remained a bit soggy. After this experiment using shortening + butter I decided that I prefer an all-butter crust, to a butter/shortening one, because of the far superior flavor that the butter provides. The apple filling that I made was quite delicious and consisted of ~ 1 pound of apples, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, sugar, lemon juice, rum, and corn starch.

After this pie making experience I was left with renewed energy for pie making, and with ideas for future pies. Stay tuned for more!

Olla Podrida

This perfect fall recipe was inspired by a dish that I had during my trip last December to the northern coast of Spain. As you can imagine, we tried many delicious foods while there (god, the food of Spain is just amazing!), but one dish, in particular, a bean and sausage stew that we had in the town of Burgos, was especially memorable. In fact, I've wanted to recreate that meal ever since our trip but it's only now, 9 or so months later, that I mustered up the energy and confidence to try.



After a quick internet search I decided that the dish that I remembered is something that's known as Olla Podrida. The so-called "authentic" recipe calls for blood sausage, which is really hard to come by here in the States. For my stew, I ended up using an Italian Sausage that we bought from a local farmer here in Carrboro--the use of this type of meat in the context of this stew is probably completely atypical and some might even skoff and roll their eyes at the thought of my having done such a thing. But my excuse is that this was meat that I trusted and that I could find relatively easily. So there.



Truth be told I ended up tweaking the recipe a lot--so much so that I don't know that
it's even appropriate that I titled this post "Olla Podrida." Nevertheless the outcome was really tasty. It made our apartment smell amazing and G. already bought the ingredients so that I can make the stew again!! And yes, it was so good that I wanted to record the recipe on this blog, before I forget what I did. And so here goes. This is a really flexible, loosey-goosey recipe (at least in my humble opinion), so enjoy and don't follow the instructions too closely!


Olla Podrida--North Carolina version

1 pound of Italian Sausage
1 pound of dried white beans, such as Great Northern Beans
1 onion, coarsely chopped
5 cloves of garlic, coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons paprika
pinch of saffron
1 can of tomato paste
salt to taste
2-3 bay leaves
4 tablespoons of olive oil
red wine for cooking

1. First, cook the beans, in water and with the bay leaves. I did this in our slow cooker, but use whatever method suits you. I recommend taking them off the stove/out of the slow cooker when the beans remain al dente. This way you can simmer them with the other ingredients and make sure that the beans don't fall apart.

2.When the beans are nearly finished cooking, saute in a dutch oven or large sauce pan the sausage in 2-4 tablespoons of olive oil on medium heat until it is browned and fragrant.

3. Add the onions to the sausage and saute for a 1-2 minutes.

4. Add the garlic and saute with the onion and sausage for a minute.

5. Add the beans, about a cup and a half of the water that they cooked in, the spices, tomato paste, and a nice chug of red wine to the sauce pan. Add salt to taste. Give this a nice mix.

6. Now allow the ingredients to simmer on medium low to medium heat for about an hour or so (or longer, if you have the time).

Serve with crusty bread and a glass of red wine.