I have a little problem. I'm addicted to cookbooks, food writing, recipe collecting, and cooking. I have a lot of recipes waiting for me to try them, and ideas from articles, tv, and restaurants often lead to new dishes. I started losing track of what I've done. So now I'm taking photos and writing about what I've prepared—unless it's terrible in which case I forget it ever happened.
When I read a cookbook, there are always recipes that stick in my mind, that I continue to think about for weeks. When they're recipes for things that aren't in season at the time, I make mental notes about what future occasions would be good opportunities to serve each particular dish. So, last year when I read Ad Hoc at Home and saw a lovely looking cream of cauliflower soup with beet chips, the winter vegetables and red and white colors made me think of Christmas. This being a Thomas Keller recipe and my first time trying this recipe, I didn't want to be making this on the actual day of Christmas. Instead, I chose a day during the holiday season when I had plenty of time to work my way through each step, use each and every pot, pan, and utensil I own, and then wash all of those dishes after dinner. Yes, it is a little bit of a process to follow the recipe exactly, but it all came together nicely to make a velvety smooth soup with crispy, crunchy, and tasty toppings.
The first step is to chop the cauliflower. Most of the cauliflower, including the stems, were cooked and pureed, but some florets were set aside for a garnish. For the puree, onion, leeks, coarsely chopped cauliflower, and some curry powder were cooked in melted butter. Equal amounts of milk, cream, and water were added, and it was left to simmer until the cauliflower was tender. The mixture was pureed in batches. To make things easier on the day you plan to serve the soup, this puree could be made in advance and just re-warmed before serving. Next, a red beet was peeled and thinly sliced on a Japanese mandoline. I used a candy cane striped chioggia beet from our farmers' market. The paper thin beet slices were fried in oil in a small saucepan and left to drain on a paper towel-lined rack. Then, the reserved cauliflower florets were blanched in water with a little vinegar. Keller notes that the vinegar helps keep the cauliflower white. The drained, florets were then sauteed in melted butter. At the same time, I also made the requisite torn croutons which were slowly browned in a mix of garlic oil and melted butter with the goal of the croutons absorbing the flavor of the oil and butter while taking on a crisp outer texture. The soup was served in wide bowls topped with the florets, then some torn croutons, a stack of beet chips, and a swirl of extra virgin olive oil. The other garnishes held the beet chips up and out of the soup so they stayed crisp.
All of the parts and pieces did make a spectacular soup. The rich and smooth puree was even better with the chunky and crunchy textures of the garnishes. Certainly, the soup puree could have been made in advance, but the beet chips are best when just fried and still crisp and warm. The croutons can be re-warmed, but they do become drier and lose the bit of give they have after just being browned. This soup was a great example of how simple, humble vegetables can become a dish that's the star of a meal.
A year ago, I had every intention of baking panettone for the holidays, and then somehow Christmas was gone in a flash and my kitchen saw not a single loaf of festive, fruit-filled bread. So this year, I was determined to make it happen. I even earmarked some of the candied orange peel I made in November for this very purpose. I used the panettone recipe from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice which is a two-day process unless you need to bring your sourdough starter to room temperature and feed it before you get started in which case it becomes a three-day process. The first two days’ tasks are minimal, but the waiting time between days is necessary. This panettone recipe is made with a fairly rich dough with an egg and an additional egg yolk and half a cup of butter, and even though the dough is soft and a little sticky, it wasn’t difficult to knead or shape. The fun part was mixing the dried and candied fruits with rum, Gran Marnier, and vanilla so they could sit overnight to plump and absorb great flavors before being mixed into the dough. I made one big loaf in an eight inch springform pan and used the rest of the dough for muffin tin-sized mini panettones.
So, step one was making a wild yeast sponge with a barm or starter, milk, and flour. The sponge sat at room temperature to ferment for four hours before spending the night in the refrigerator. Also, on that day, the dried and candied fruits were soaked in rum, an orange or lemon extract and I chose to use Gran Marnier instead, and vanilla and left to sit overnight. I used dried sour cherries, dried cranberries, golden raisins, and chopped candied orange peel. The next day, the wild yeast sponge was brought up to room temperature before mixing the dough. I used a stand mixer and combined flour, sugar, salt, and instant yeast before adding the sponge, the whole egg, and an egg yolk. Water was added until the dough came together, it was allowed to rest for a bit, and then softened butter was worked into the dough before the soaked fruit mixture was added. It was kneaded with a dough hook for a few minutes, and then transferred to a floured board. The almonds were worked in while kneading by hand. Because this is a sticky dough and you don’t want to add too much flour while kneading, I used a bench scraper to lift and turn the dough while kneading with the other hand. It was left to ferment for two hours, shaped into one big loaf and some muffin sized pieces, and then all of that proofed for two more hours. For the big loaf in the springform pan, I placed a parchment collar around the sides and a parchment circle in the bottom of the pan. Last, the big loaf baked for about an hour, and the minis were pulled from the oven after about 25 minutes. The bread should reach 185 degrees F in the center.
If this bread counts in any way as a fruitcake, then it’s my favorite fruitcake ever. In fact, I’m thinking this should become an annual tradition. I can try different dried and candied fruit and different liquors or liqueurs each time, and I may never make the same panettone twice. The soft, brioche-like bread was irresistible warm from the oven, and it keeps well wrapped in foil too. It was so enjoyable simply sliced and toasted over the next few days, I never got around to trying it as French toast or in bread pudding, but that’s just another reason to make it again next year.
I’m submitting this to Yeastspotting where you’ll find some seriously well-made bread.
Earlier this year, I was invited to an absinthe tasting at Peche in Austin where I learned a little about the spirit and the different brands and varieties that are available. We were served two absinthe drips which are nothing more than absinthe in a glass over which a sugar cube has been placed in a spoon so that water can be slowly poured over the sugar cube into the glass. The first was made with Pernod and the second with St. George absinthe. I learned that St. George has much more herbal flavor while Pernod tastes more of anise. I also learned that thujone, the substance which years ago was incorrectly thought to be dangerous in absinthe, naturally exists in higher concentration in rosemary than it does in wormwood which is one of the many ingredients in absinthe. I was intrigued by what I learned that evening, but I hadn't gotten around to adding absinthe to my home liquor cabinet until I received a review copy of the new book Absinthe Cocktails by Kate Simon. It's a slim book that offers a quick history of absinthe, how it was banned by 1915 in the US, France, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, and Brazil, and how it began to reappear about ten years ago returning to the US market in 2007. The book includes a chapter of the Classics which are absinthe cocktails like the absinthe drip, sazerac, waldorf, and doctor funk which is a tiki bar favorite with lime and lemon juices and grenadine. The second chapter of recipes is The New Guard, and this includes the best absinthe cocktails from current top bartenders. These updated drinks include the likes of the shiso malt sour, my oh my ty, and la lucha sigue which involves tequila, sweet vermouth, Nonino, and orange bitters. There's also a handy glossary for looking up less familiar ingredient names, and suggested substitutions are included with the definitions. With cocktails spanning simple classics to sweet or complex concoctions, this book offers something for every taste.
Right away, I was curious about the tequila sazerac and wanted to find out how the flavors of tequila and absinthe mixed. To make the cocktail which is in the photo above, a glass was filled with ice and set aside to chill. In a mixing glass, tequila, a simple syrup made with agave nectar, and Peychaud's bitters were stirred with ice. Until I shopped for this recipe, I had no idea that Peychaud's bitters were so difficult to locate. I heard from several people that the easiest thing to do is to bring some home when you visit New Orleans. Had I only known that the last time I was in New Orleans, I would have brought home several bottles. After a few calls, I finally located some at a downtown liquor store, and I was ready to stir and sip. Once the cocktail was well mixed in the ice, the ice in the glass was discarded, and just enough absinthe was poured into the chilled glass to coat it. The interesting thing about these cocktails is that very little absinthe is used, but the flavor is always prominent. The tequila mixture was strained into the coated glass, and lime peel was twisted over the top and added as a garnish. This was a strong, sipping kind of cocktail, and the tequila and absinthe married nicely. Peychaud's bitters accented the licorice flavor well.
Next, I turned back to the Classics chapter for the morning glory fizz, and that is shown in the photo below. This was a shaken cocktail with scotch, lemon juice, simple syrup, a scant quarter teaspoon of absinthe, and an egg white. After shaking with ice to chill and froth, soda water was added. Once in a chilled glass, a dash of Angostura bitters was dropped on top. This was a tart and tasty drink, and that small amount of absinthe added nice herbal and anise flavor with the dash of bitters preventing the drink from being too sweet. It was interesting to taste how absinthe mixed so well with different ingredients, and I'm looking forward to trying several more combinations, both classic and new, from the book.
About a year ago, I brought home a copy of Stir: Mixing It Up in the Italian Tradition and have enjoyed cooking several meals from it since then. That book is by James Beard Award-winner Chef Barbara Lynch of Boston. Her early experience included working with some of Boston’s other great chefs such as Todd English, traveling in Italy, and being named one of Food and Wine’s Best New Chefs in America. Since 1998, Barbara has operated her own Boston restaurant, No. 9 Park, and two additional restaurants, B&G Oysters and The Butcher Shop, opened in 2003. A few years later, five more businesses were opened including a catering company, a bar dedicated to craft cocktails, and Stir which is a demonstration kitchen and cookbook store. Last spring, her latest fine dining restaurant, Menton, opened in the Fort Point neighborhood. Barbara leads all of these businesses as CEO of Barbara Lynch Gruppo, and her many recognitions include being named Best Chef by Boston Magazine and No. 9 Park being named one of the Top 50 Restaurants in America by Travel and Leisure. I was curious about what books such a busy and talented chef would find interesting, so I asked her what are you reading?
Barbara:
Eggsby Michel Roux I adore eggs, and there is so much technique involved in perfectly cooking this everyday ingredient. In the hands of the French, eggs may be transformed into incredible dishes…from airy souffles to luscious aiolis. This book from the brilliant Chef Roux is really a must-have for any cookbook collection—it combines lessons on technique with both basic and “fancy” recipes and is a great reference for egg cookery.
Blood, Bones and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton One of the perks of owning my own cookbook store (Stir) is getting advanced releases on some of the much anticipated books throughout the year! One of these isBlood, Bones and Butter. I love Gabrielle Hamilton, and her restaurant Prune is one of my favorites in NYC. I started reading her book and couldn’t put it down—in fact, I’ve reread it twice. Gabrielle’s writing is honest and gutsy, and it is a terrific read! This book comes out in March, and I can’t wait for others to read it.
Thank you for participating, Barbara. Check back to see who answers the question next time and what other books are recommended.
Can I show you one more cookie? I hope you said yes because this was my favorite cookie I baked for Christmas this year. That sounds like I'm being mean to the other cookies, but I'm really not. Of course I liked them all, but this one with the stacked doughs was a different kind of cookie. The technique got me thinking as well. If two doughs can be stacked as they are here, why not three? And, next time, I can try different flavors depending on the season or the occasion. I followed the original recipe for these from the December 1998 issue of Living magazine. I found the page in my files when I was checking to see if there was something I'd tucked away from years past that I should try. I love it when I find a gem like this hiding in my files. So, the two types of dough in this cookie are orange-sable dough to which dried cranberries were added and a chocolate-espresso dough to which toasted walnuts were added.
I started with the orange-sable dough, and it was made with almond meal, confectioners' sugar, butter, orange zest, an egg, lemon juice, and flour. You can grind blanched almonds in a food processor or use almond meal as I did. Once the dough came together, dried cranberries were stirred into it, and it was pressed into an eight-inch square pan lined with plastic wrap and set aside. Next, the chocolate-espresso dough was made with flour, Dutch-process cocoa powder, finely ground espresso, butter, confectioners' sugar, and vanilla extract. I used a mix of ordinary Dutch-process cocoa powder and some very dark and rich black onyx cocoa powder which gave the dough a deep, black color. Toasted and chopped walnuts were added to the chocolate dough, and it was pressed on top of the orange-sable dough. The pan was chilled at least two hours or overnight in my case. The next day, I removed the stacked doughs, cut two-inch wide rows which were then cut into skinny, one quarter inch cookies to be baked.
I liked the color contrast in each cookie, and the extra dark cocoa powder helped with that. I also liked the specks of dried cranberry adding touches of red on the orange-sable side. Mostly though, I really liked the flavors. The citrus and tart cranberry on one side and the deep chocolaty, coffee flavor with walnuts on the other was a great mix. I'm already thinking of other combinations for this technique. Maybe a third layer full of finely chopped pistachios would work, or maybe a version with layers of flavors that are a take on a banana split would be good. The possibilities are endless, and that's why this was my favorite. I hope you're all enjoying the holidays, and I wish you a very Merry Christmas.
Once I stared baking from the Gourmet Cookie Book, I couldn't stop with just one cookie. As I flip back through the book again now, I don't see any cookies in it that I don't want to try. This next one I baked is the second to last cookie in the book, and it's from a 2008 issue of the magazine. The glittery, sparkly little butter cookies sandwiched with a lemon buttercream just had to be tried. They're made with a straightforward dough with no surprises, and the hardest part of making these was rolling the dough into little balls to be coated with sanding sugar. The very next day after baking these, I found a similar recipe from which I learned that if you chill the dough for a bit, rolling it into balls is much easier. I'm set for next time. Each cookie is tiny, made with just barely a teaspoon of dough, but when they're sandwiched together they're just the right size.
To start, flour, cornstarch, and salt were whisked together and set aside. Butter and confectioners' sugar were mixed until fluffy, and lemon zest and vanilla were added. The flour mixture was mixed in until the dough formed. At that point, I should have chilled the dough for at least 30 minutes. Had I done so, rolling teaspoons of it into balls and then coating them in sanding sugar would have been a breeze. Since I didn't chill the dough, I had sticky cookie dough all over my hands and repeatedly had to stop and wash my hands and start again. I rolled half the cookies in plain white sanding sugar and the other half in sugar in confetti colors. The sugared balls of dough were placed on baking sheets and baked for about 12 minutes. When they were cool, the filling was made with confectioners' sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, corn syrup, and softened butter. The buttercream was placed in a plastic bag, the corner was snipped, and filling was piped onto the flat sides of half the cookies before they were paired up and sandwiched.
I think these dazzling, little treats look a lot more complicated than they really are which is one reason I liked them. Another reason is that the tart lemon flavor in the smooth filling is a nice contrast with the sugary, crunchy cookie coating. They're festive and eye catching, and this is a cookie I know I'll be making for many more occasions to come.
When the holiday baking season was fast approaching, I grabbed a copy of the new Gourmet Cookie Book. A couple of years ago, there was a cookie article in the magazine that offered the best cookie, as chosen by the editors, from each decade going back to the 1940s, and this book is an extension of that idea. It includes the best cookie from each and every year the magazine was published from 1941 to 2009. What I find particularly interesting about this book is that the recipes were reprinted as they were originally written, and there are notes throughout regarding how recipe writing styles have changed over the years. In some of the earliest recipes, the instructions were a little vague with suggestions to place cookies in a "moderate" oven and "add butter" with no reference to what temperature either should be. If you've baked similar cookies before, certainly you can figure out the process, but it's interesting that these days recipes leave no detail to the imagination. Just in case, the book's editors have provided updated notes on those early recipes to clear up any possible confusion. I started with one of those older recipes, from 1947 to be exact. It's an old-fashioned butter cookie, and I was intrigued by this recipe's use of hard-boiled egg yolks in addition to raw yolks in the dough. I'd seen that done before on a cooking show several years ago, and I wanted to find out how that affected the texture of the cookie.
So, three eggs were hard cooked, the whites weren't used here, but the yolks were pushed through a sieve and set aside. Butter and sugar were creamed, and the instructions suggest doing that by stirring. I only took the old-fashioned concept so far. I used my stand mixer. To the fluffily creamed butter and sugar, the sieved egg yolks were added alternately with sifted flour and three raw egg yolks. Last, some lemon zest was mixed into the dough. The dough was chilled before being rolled and cut into festive shapes. It was an easy dough to roll and cut, and it held its shape well. Before going into that moderate oven, which the editors noted should be 350 degrees F, the cookies were brushed with egg white and sprinkled with chopped nuts and sugar. I used roasted, salted, chopped macadamia nuts for mine.
These were crunchy, crumbly, buttery cookies. They had a nice snap, and I heard that snap repeatedly as these were possibly the easiest-breaking cookies I've baked. Once I realized I needed to handle them more carefully, I started to like that snap with each bite. The sandy, crumbly cookie and the crunchy nutty topping made these a great treat for the holidays or any time of year.
and saw a lovely looking cream of cauliflower soup with beet chips, the winter vegetables and red and white colors made me think of Christmas. This being a Thomas Keller recipe and my first time trying this recipe, I didn't want to be making this on the actual day of Christmas. Instead, I chose a day during the holiday season when I had plenty of time to work my way through each step, use each and every pot, pan, and utensil I own, and then wash all of those dishes after dinner. Yes, it is a little bit of a process to follow the recipe exactly, but it all came together nicely to make a velvety smooth soup with crispy, crunchy, and tasty toppings.
which is a two-day process unless you need to bring your sourdough starter to room temperature and feed it before you get started in which case it becomes a three-day process. The first two days’ tasks are minimal, but the waiting time between days is necessary. This panettone recipe is made with a fairly rich dough with an egg and an additional egg yolk and half a cup of butter, and even though the dough is soft and a little sticky, it wasn’t difficult to knead or shape. The fun part was mixing the dried and candied fruits with rum, Gran Marnier, and vanilla so they could sit overnight to plump and absorb great flavors before being mixed into the dough. I made one big loaf in an eight inch springform pan and used the rest of the dough for muffin tin-sized mini panettones. 
by Kate Simon. It's a slim book that offers a quick history of absinthe, how it was banned by 1915 in the US, France, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, and Brazil, and how it began to reappear about ten years ago returning to the US market in 2007. The book includes a chapter of the Classics which are absinthe cocktails like the absinthe drip, sazerac, waldorf, and doctor funk which is a tiki bar favorite with lime and lemon juices and grenadine. The second chapter of recipes is The New Guard, and this includes the best absinthe cocktails from current top bartenders. These updated drinks include the likes of the shiso malt sour, my oh my ty, and la lucha sigue which involves tequila, sweet vermouth, Nonino, and orange bitters. There's also a handy glossary for looking up less familiar ingredient names, and suggested substitutions are included with the definitions. With cocktails spanning simple classics to sweet or complex concoctions, this book offers something for every taste.
and have enjoyed 
by Michel Roux
by Gabrielle Hamilton
I couldn't stop with 
