The cookie monster strikes again

I was a Sesame Street fanatic growing up. Every afternoon I sat in front of the television to watch the show while I munched on my usual orange-colored snack (a carrot and an orange). Grover, Big Bird, Oscar, they were all great, but my favorite character was Cookie Monster. I didn't live in a garbage can like Oscar, and I didn't have an imaginary friend like Big Bird, and so it was Cookie Monster with whom I most related. Because yes, even though my mom, well meaning as she was, gave me an orange and a carrot to eat as a snack, I really wished that I were gobbling cookies like my blue fuzzy friend.


Well, now I have a kitchen of my own and I get to feed myself anything that I choose. And yet I barely ever think to bake cookies. But tonight was one of those rainy evenings on which I was feeling restless and tired but still itching to bake something comforting and sweet.



I had mentally bookmarked the recipe for "Very Chocolate Cookies" when I saw it on David Lebovitz's blog a few months ago. Tonight seemed like the perfect time to try it out.

If you're a chocolaholic like I am, then these are the cookies for you. This recipe does not mess around, either, because it calls for *three* forms of chocolate (powdered, chunk, and chip/nib). The cookies are buttery and rich. They contain no eggs and so they do not come out puffy and smooshy as many homemade cookies typically do. Rather, this recipe produces a cookie that is more crumbly and concentrated with chocolate flavor. Imagine droplets of delicious buttery and rich chocolate entering your mouth. Cookie Monster would be so proud (or maybe just jealous).

Very chocolate cookies, available at the David Lebovitz food blog; the recipe is originally by Clotilde of Chocolate and Zucchini

Apples atop pancakes makes for a delicious Sunday brunch

And yes, we are still working through the bushels of apples that we acquired in Asheville. This Sunday, we made regular pancakes, with regular milk rather than buttermilk to make a lighter pancake.


Then we peeled and chopped a few apples, threw them in a buttered saucepan, which we placed on medium heat, sprinkled in a bit of cinnamon for spice effect, and PRESTO: delicious topping for delicious pancakes.

YUM!


PS: That's whipped cream on top of the pancakes in the first picture. Double YUM.

Melt-in-your-mouth cakes

Variety is the spice of life, or so they say. Whether or not this aphorism holds true in the kitchen is a matter that remains up for debate. Nonetheless we played by that rule when we planned and prepared our pancake brunch this past Sunday.

Earlier, I wrote about about our favorite buttermilk pancake recipe, from the Joy of Cooking. That recipe is so pancake-flippin' good (couldn't resist the pun, sorry) that it's hard to even consider deviating from the standard. But last Sunday morning, my eyes wandered to our Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home cookbook that has been gathering dust at the bottom of our shelf, and I thought I'd see what they had to offer in terms of pancake ideas.

Considering the 2 bushels worth of apples that we had (and still have) sitting on our kitchen floor, and then the nearly past due container of cottage cheese that was becoming dangerously close to growing a green mold on its surface, I thought that the cottage cheese apple pancake recipe seemed appropriate.

As it turns out, venturing into the great unknown of the pancake world was a really good thing. These pancakes were delicious. And perhaps I already ruined the punchline with my "melt in your mouth cakes" title, but really, these pancakes do melt in your mouth. I think that this has to do with the fact that there is very little flour in the recipe, and the batter consists mainly of egg and cottage cheese. At the same time, they're not very heavy because, again, they are made mainly of egg and cottage cheese.

Don't get me wrong. I'll definitely return to my buttermilk pancake recipe. But I will also try this one again too. Guess maybe there is something to the adage: variety can add some spice.

Cottage cheese apple pancakes, adapted from Moosewood cooks at home

Note: This recipe only makes enough pancakes for 2 people. I might consider doubling this recipe next time around. I suggest you do the same if you're planning to feed 2 or more hungry people.

1-2 apples, grated
1/2 cup low fat cottage cheese
2 large eggs
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
(Note: You could probably experiment with the spices in this recipe, ginger might be good)
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup unbleached white flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

1 tablespoon butter

Peel, core, and grate the apples into a mixing bowl. Mix in the cottage cheese, eggs, spices, maple syrup, and salt. Sprinkle in the flour and sifted baking powder and stir well.

Butter a heavy griddle or nonstick skillet and place on medium heat. Scoop 1/4 cup of batter onto hot skillet to make each pancake. When bubbles form on the tops and the bottoms are browned, flip pancakes over and brown them on other side.

Serve immediately topped with your favorite jam or syrup and enjoy the melt in your mouth not in your hand sensation.

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

Happy Halloween, a day or 2 belated!

Yesterday, a friend had a day-after-halloween pumpkin party: bring your favorite pumpkin dish. The menu consisted of pumpkin soup, a black bean and pumpkin stew, pumpkin seeds atop a green salad, pumpkin brownies for dessert, a carved pumpkin for decoration, and...pumpkin lasagna!

Okay, now let's focus on the last food item that I mentioned. Close your eyes. Now, when I say the words "pumpkin lasagna", what comes to mind? Well, when the chef of said food item said pumpkin lasagna, what came to my mind was the following: "Okay, he layered chunks of pumpkin between lasagna noodles, then covered the noodles with cheese and sauce, and there ya go! Pumpkin lasagna!"

Well imagine my and everyone else's surprise when what emerged from the oven was not your usual casserole dish holding neat layers of noodles and sauce, but rather one half of a carved out pumpkin with noodles, meat and sauce on the inside.


After recovering from our initial shock at this new development and piece of culinary ingenuity, we all circled around the pumpkin lasagna to have a better look. We then tentatively shoveled the contents of the pumpkin onto our respective plates. And guess what. The contents basically tasted like lasagna. Now, place this idea on reserve in your head for next halloween. You, too, can delight your friends and impress your loved ones. Cook a lasagna in a pumpkin.

Almost like stone soup

In the fairy tale Stone Soup, a stranger (or maybe it was a group of strangers?) visits a village and tricks the residents into providing the ingredients for a soup. I guess there are some morals that one should take from this story, such as the values and merits of sharing, generosity, and cooperation, but what always fascinated me in this story was the idea that they had created a luscious soup out of the most simple of ingredients.



Recently I saw a recipe for saffron tomato soup on the food blog, Confessions of a Tart . The recipe immediately caught my eye because it seemed pretty simple in terms of implementation, plus I didn't have to leave my house to buy ingredients because I had everything that I needed on hand.


In my opinion, the product of this recipe is a stone soup. I say this not because I tricked anyone into donating ingredients to my dinner cause, but rather because the recipe is so simple, requires minimal ingredients and time, and yet the soup comes out tasting so damn good.

The recipe calls for chicken broth and drumsticks. I didn't use drumsticks and used vegetable instead of chicken broth, and the soup came out nicely. Whatever you do, though, don't skimp on the saffron. That's the special ingredient that makes this soup special and not your run of the mill tomato soup.




Tomato Saffron soup, available at Confessions of a Tart

The Dripolator - Asheville's finest

So, being a coffee connoisseur (snob?) can be a burden more than a blessing. I can no longer handle the inadequacy of a 'quick' cup of coffee from some lesser company/roastery/coffee shop. No, it has to be Counter Culture, Stumptown, Gimme!, and it has to be done right (though it's pretty hard to mess up good beans, unless you just make really weak coffee). For that reason, I was very excited to discover the Dripolator.

When you walk into a good coffee shop, you can judge the quality of the place almost immediately. The smell of a fresh pot brewing, the striped down, no frills coffee menu (if you see 'frappucino' you're in the wrong place), and the respect the establishment shows to the company who provides their beans. In this case, the Dripolator serves Counter Culture coffee (no surprise, given the existence of a training center in downtown Asheville), and their appreciation for their beans is pretty obvious throughout the storefront.

Being an appreciator of good coffee means you probably have a thing for well made espresso drinks. I like to judge the quality of a place by their Cappuccino (double, of course. I ain't no light weight). Unfortunately, I failed to capture an image of their cappuccino, but suffice to say it was smooth, rich, and did justice to the company from whom they depend on their beans. And, being a good coffee shop, the barista art was definitely present in the milky-foam that topped my cappuccino.

Now, since we were in Asheville for more than one day, we just had to go back for another round. But this time, I decided to try something different: a Chai (pictured above, set to a background of a soon-to-be completely massacred slice of pie). I asked the waitress if it was house made. Check. I asked her opinion of it. She said, without hesitation, "We are pretty damn proud of our Chai." Well, hell, what choice did I have?

Of course, being a coffee fiend, i had to get The Dirty Chai, which includes two shots of espresso. Note: there was no article in front of the name on the menu, but I feel that its inclusion here emphasizes the singularity of this particular Chai. I can easily say that this is the best enhanced/dirty/red-eye/'whatever you want to call it' Chai I have had the pleasure of consuming. A nice hint of spice and a strong hit of espresso, neither of which was overpowering.

I suggest you try it, or just about anything else they have to offer.

Challah french toast

There's no better Sunday morning than one on which you sleep late, stumble out of bed, make yourself some good strong coffee, and then follow those first sips of coffee by cooking brunch in the kitchen. That's precisely what we did this morning, and it was fantastic.





One of our favorite things to make for brunch--now-- is french toast. I must say "now" because, growing up, I wasn't a french toast fan.


But I think that I know what the problem was: the bread. The trick to making really good french toast is to find yourself some really good, fresh bread.



We've experimented with many types: multi-grain, sourdough loaf, plain ol' white bread...and today we used a nice loaf of challah. I think that this was my favorite, or at least it makes it to the top of my list. It's not so much the flavor of the bread as it is the texture.


You see, many loaf breads are just too wimpy. You dip them in that nice eggy mixture and they just dissolve. Challah on the other hand, well, there's a bread that is up to the challenge.



For our recipe, we generally adapt the Joy of Cooking recipe for french toast:

Whisk together in a shallow bowl:
-2/3 cup milk or half and half (Note: I actually like to use butter milk)
-4 eggs
-2 tablespoons sugar or maple syrup (go for the maple syrup if you can!)
-1 teaspoon vanilla or 1 tablespoon of rum
-1/4 teaspoon salt

One at a time, soak both sides in the egg mixture:

-8 slices white sandwich bread (um...try challah instead!)
-Butter as needed

Brown the bread on each side in a hot well buttered skillet. Serve hot sprinkled with confectioners sugar (or affectionately smothered in maple syrup and topped with a dollop og whipped cream)