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.
I’ve been open about my problem with cookbooks and food magazines regarding how I can’t stop collecting and reading them. Well, I also have an issue with collecting links to recipes I see on all those fabulous food blogs out there. The list of recipes keeps growing. Fortunately, a perfect opportunity for trying some of them presented itself. Bread Baby mentioned an upcoming bake sale and asked if anyone in Austin would like to donate items. She, in fact, had organized a very cool benefit for Space12 and planned a bake sale as part of it. What could be better than getting to try a few different recipes from my list and then having a place to take the baked goods to prevent me from eating them all? I wasted no time in combing through that long list of links and decided on these: cinnamon cappuccino cookies from A Kiss and a Cupcake, molasses cookies from Cooking During Stolen Moments, and banana snickerdoodles from Noble Pig.
I didn’t realize it when I picked those cookies, but they all have something in common. For all three cookies, balls of dough are formed and then are rolled in sugar or a sugar mixture before being placed on a baking sheet. I had the technique down after these recipes. The cinnamon cappuccino cookies have powdered espresso in the dough, and then the dough balls were rolled in cinnamon and sugar to which I added a little more espresso powder. The molasses cookies were rolled in sugar, and the banana snickerdoodles were rolled in cinnamon and sugar. I made one change to the banana snickerdoodle recipe which was to use butter instead of shortening, but I always do that.
These were three very different cookies in the flavor department, and I liked them all for different reasons. I’ll be keeping all three recipes in the permanent file. Kurt’s favorite, hands down, was the cinnamon cappuccino. I thought for sure my favorite was going to be the molasses cookie because I’ve become so taken with molasses in recent years, and it was extremely good. In the end though, I was torn between it and the banana snickerdoodle. The banana snickerdoodle dough was ridiculously good, and I almost had to restrain myself from eating the entire bowl before the cookies could be baked. Since I clearly can’t pick a winner among the three, I suggest you bake them all and let me know which one you like best.
Ok, I have one last item from the Austin food blogger hatch chile potluck to share. The bread was an experiment so I also made risotto balls, and just for the fun of it, I wanted to take something sweet as well. Several weeks ago, I sampled some chocolate dipped peanut brittle at Big Top Candy Shop on south Congress in Austin, and as soon as I tasted it I knew I had to try to recreate it. I used pecans instead of peanuts to give the confection a little local flair. Despite the fact that this was a hatch chile potluck, I didn’t think the chiles would actually improve the flavor of this dish, but I wanted to stick with the theme in some way. When I found green chile salt, I imagined that might work as a finishing touch on the chocolate.
The basic brittle recipe I use is one from a 1996 issue of Living magazine. I’ve made it many times with peanuts, with a mix of nuts, and with pecans. It’s very easy to prepare, but a candy thermometer is needed, and you need to take some precautions while working with the molten liquid candy. You’ll want to prepare your baking sheets and have all the ingredients prepped and at hand before you begin to cook the brittle. Then, just stir, watch the thermometer, and add ingredients at the appropriate times. I let the brittle sit overnight and then broke it into pieces the next day. I dipped the pieces into melted milk chocolate and placed them on parchment-lined baking sheets. Before the chocolate set, I sprinkled a few grains of green chile salt on each piece.
I happen to be a big fan of nut brittles and toffees of all kinds, and I make these candies every year during the holidays. In the past, pecan toffee topped with milk chocolate was always my favorite. It’s slightly softer in texture than brittle, and I have a guarded recipe with a secret ingredient or two. I never would have thought it could slip from the number one spot of homemade candies in my mind, but this salted chocolate dipped pecan brittle was a surprisingly serious contender. Kurt isn’t even as into homemade candies as I am, and he was wowed by this one. When he first tasted it, he claimed the salt really worked well and quickly reached for a second, then third piece.
For our Austin food blogger hatch chile potluck, I made a sourdough bread with roasted hatch chiles and roasted garlic in it. Luckily, the bread turned out fine, but since it was an experiment and I wouldn’t know if it seemed ok or not until the last minute, I also had a back-up plan. The back-up plan unraveled something like this: remember that asparagus lasagna I made back in March with the cream and parmigiano sauce? Yes, what if I made that with roasted hatch chiles and fresh corn instead of asparagus and then used Mexican cheeses instead of Italian ones? It sounded like an interesting flavor combination, but do you also remember what that lasagna looked like and can you imagine how it would look after being transported to a potluck and sitting out for a while? Right, so I started thinking of ways to combine those ingredients in another format, and that’s when I found the risotto balls recipe in Martha Stewart's Hors d'Oeuvres Handbook. Fried arancini would travel much better than a lasagna with cream sauce.
I made the risotto as suggested in the book, but at the end I added about seven hatch chiles that had been roasted, peeled of the charred outer layer, seeded, and chopped. I also added fresh corn kernels cut from two small ears of corn, and a couple tablespoons of chopped cilantro. Then, instead of using grated parmigiano, I grated a dry jack cheese and stirred it into the risotto. The finished risotto was left to cool and was then refrigerated overnight. There are a few steps to completing this hors d’oeuvre, but each of them can be spaced out and tackled when you’re ready. Once the risotto had completely chilled in the refrigerator, it was ready for forming into balls. For each, one tablespoon of risotto was formed into a cup shape into which a small cube of queso oaxaca was placed. Then, the risotto was gathered around the cheese cube and rolled into a ball. Once all the balls were formed and placed on a parchment-lined baking sheet, they were refrigerated overnight. Next, the risotto balls were breaded with flour, then egg, then cornmeal. At that point, they could have been refrigerated again until ready for frying. They were briefly fried for two minutes or so in a saucepan with a few inches of hot oil.
The cornmeal made a nice crunchy surface which contrasted well with the oozing center. Sweet, fresh corn and smoky, roasted hatch chiles sidled up comfortably to the queso oaxaca. The flavor combination here was a good one, and I think the lasagna version will be just as good when I can serve it at home straight from the oven.
Every year at this time, we enjoy the arrival of hatch chiles from New Mexico. They appear in our grocery stores, and we look forward to using as many of them as we can before they’re gone for another year. Our nearby Central Market sets up big, rotating roasters, and the smell of chiles fills the parking lot. You can buy the chiles fresh or roasted and bagged, and they’re available in hot and mild. They’re also used in all kinds of products throughout the store such as hatch chile hamburger buns, hatch chile cheese, hatch chile sausages, etc. So, in honor of these chiles, and just because it had been too long, an Austin food blogger potluck was held on Sunday, and the dishes were to be hatch chile-themed. Now, the last time I attended a food blogger potluck, I decided I should only use tried and true recipes. This time I went another way, got a little experimental, and worried even more about what I made. My sourdough starter hadn’t been used for weeks, and I had never before shared any of my sourdough bread with anyone other than Kurt. So I chose to experiment with a hatch chile and garlic bread and let other people sample it for a change. I took inspiration from a roasted garlic bread by Dan Lepard and once again worked from the Breads from the La Brea Bakery book.
I followed the recipe for the Italian ring bread, but instead of folding chopped marjoram into the dough, I used chopped, roasted hot and mild hatch chiles and whole cloves of roasted garlic. This dough made use of both sourdough starter and fresh yeast, so I hoped it would have enough strength to rise with the vegetables I added. The recipe is written as a two-day bread, but there is a 12 hour waiting time on the second day. I timed it out to make it a three-day bread instead. Day one only required making a sponge from starter, bread flour, and water. On day two, the dough was made from the sponge, fresh yeast, bread flour, salt, olive oil, chiles, and roasted garlic. It started as what I thought was a slightly too dry dough, but after adding the vegetables, it seemed slightly too wet and sticky. I kneaded in a little more flour and crossed my fingers.
It went through the usual rituals of resting, kneading, fermenting, being divided, resting again, and then being formed into boules which were refrigerated overnight. On day three, the dough was brought up to room temperature and then turned out onto a board. A peel was floured so a boule could be loaded on it, and then a hole was cut in the center of the boule with a biscuit cutter. The hole was to be stretched to three times its original size, and the piece of dough removed was baked as a roll. Luckily, I baked one loaf at a time because the first one suffered from the hole not being made large enough. It closed in on itself like a giant bialy, but I got it right the second time. Of course, the oven was spritzed a couple of times during the first five minutes of baking, and that produced a crispy, crackly outer crust.
The interior was chewy and similar in texture to ciabatta although less open in structure. With the chiles and garlic, each piece of bread was almost a meal in itself, and I liked that about it. I think this bread with some cheese on the side would be great for a picnic. One loaf was taken to the potluck, and the other will be re-warmed and served with salad for dinner tonight. I survived presenting my homemade bread to a group of food bloggers, and they were even kind enough to say they liked it.
I’m submitting this to Yeastspotting where you’ll find some seriously well-made bread.
A pesto recipe is like a scone recipe for me in that every time I see one, I have to try it. In defense of my sanity though, pesto is a very versatile sauce. It goes well with pasta, smeared on a sandwich, drizzled over vegetables, and could even be a dip. Not only are there many uses, there are also many ways it can be made. In the July/August issue of La Cucina Italiana, there was article about pestos with several recipes which I could not resist. A lemony pesto made with olives was used as a dressing for sea bass crudo on a bed of baby lettuces. I stole the pesto part of that dish and used it instead on a layered salad of raw zucchini and yellow squash slices with fresh mozzarella. Then, I also tried the pesto with two tomatoes which was used as a sauce for spaghetti. That recipe isn’t available online, so I’ll include it below.
To make the pesto di limone, two wide strips of lemon zest were pureed with the juice of a lemon and some olive oil. Then, I was supposed to have used Taggiasche or Gaeta olives, and had I found some green Taggiasche olives the pesto would have been nice and green. Since I used black Gaeta olives, mine was a darker color. The pitted Gaeta olives and two big cups of basil leaves were added to the blender and pureed with the first three ingredients. This resulted in an intentionally thin pesto with a fresh, lemony flavor. The pesto with two tomatoes was just as simple to prepare. First, sun-dried tomatoes, olive oil, and rinsed and drained salt-packed capers were pureed in the blender. Then, cherry tomatoes, and I found the prettiest dark red, almost purple cherry tomatoes, were added, and it was pureed together until smooth. That pesto was transferred to a large bowl, and grated parmigiano reggiano and chopped chives were added.
The tomato pesto required one half cup of olive oil, and I know I’ve used a lot more oil than that in similar quantities of pesto. Yet, the smooth texture gave it a richness that made it seem more decadent than it was. Of course, the flavor was nicely layered with fresh, juicy tomatoes and the depth of sun-dried tomatoes, and the chives lent just enough bite from the allium family. Both pestos are keepers, and I’m sure I’ll think of different ways to use them each time they’re made.
Pesto ai due Pomodori from La Cucina Italiana July/August 2009 1 c drained oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes ½ c extra-virgin olive oil 1 t salt-packed capers, rinsed, soaked in cold water for 10 minutes, then rinsed again and drained 2 c cherry tomatoes 3 T freshly grated parmigiano reggiano 1 T chopped fresh chives
-using a blender, puree sun-dried tomatoes, olive oil, and capers; add cherry tomatoes and puree until smooth -add one to two tablespoons water to help blend if needed -transfer mixture to a bowl and add grated parmiginao reggiano and chives and stir to combine
*Note: This quantity of pesto was used to sauce one pound of spaghetti.
About a year ago, I baked the brown sugar pound cake from Sweets: Soul Food Desserts and Memories, and I mentioned that there were several other things I wanted to try from that book. One of those other things was the meringue topped banana pudding, and just a short eleven months and twenty-something days later, I did finally try it. I’ve made banana pudding several times before and it’s a favorite of mine and Kurt’s, but this one was different because of the meringue on top. I usually serve it with a topping of whipped cream, and that’s how we see it served at restaurants too. I’d never tasted banana pudding with meringue on top. The pudding itself, as usual, is just a basic, vanilla pudding. Every time I make a pudding or pastry cream, I wonder why I don’t do so more often. I taste it warm from the saucepan just after the vanilla has been added, and every time, I marvel at how good that is. The lovely pudding is layered with sliced bananas and vanilla wafers, and I did not bake homemade vanilla wafers for this. I followed the recipe which suggested using a twelve ounce box. However, I did seek out an organic brand.
The pudding was prepared with four egg yolks, and the four whites from those eggs were used for the meringue. Pudding was poured over a layer of vanilla wafers and sliced bananas in a one and a half quart casserole dish, and then the layers were repeated two more times. This filled the dish to the very top edge, and I should have been smart enough to realize it was a bit too full. The fluffy meringue was spread on top with lots of swirls and curls, and it went into a 350 F oven for about twelve minutes. Luckily, I had placed the casserole dish on a baking sheet, because the pudding bubbled up and spilled over a bit here and there. Next time, I’ll eat a little more pudding right after it’s cooked so as to keep it just below the top edge of the dish. I let it cool on a rack for an hour and then refrigerated it overnight.
I have to say, I didn’t miss the whipped cream. I like it that way too, but the meringue was different and light and just as nice. With meringue, you have the browned, near-crust on top and then the airy, pillowy texture underneath. In the book, there’s a warning that while you can refrigerate leftovers it doesn’t hold up well. I can tell you that’s true. After scooping out two servings for dessert, I placed the dish back in the refrigerator. The next day, it was a little runny and not so attractive. The side opposite of the runny stuff was still delicious, but serving this sooner rather than later is ideal. One thought for next time is to create individual servings which could remain refrigerated for a couple of days with no scooped-out areas for runniness.
Trying a lot of new and different recipes can have its ups and downs. There are ones that are easy and lovely and cause no stress and turn out delicious. Others are a little more complicated and leave you wondering about the results until the very end. And, once in a while, there’s a recipe that ends up being a complete waste of time and ingredients. It doesn’t happen often, but I just experienced one of the latter recently, and it’s depressing. I had to move on, find something really good to try, and forget about it. The sikil pak from Super Natural Cooking by Heidi Swanson was a great recipe for dip and for forgetting about bad food. This is a Mayan dish that’s perfect for dipping tortilla chips. Ground pepitas form the base of the dip and an habanero gives it spice. I have no idea how I’d never encountered this before, but now that I know how to make it, I’ll be doing so frequently.
An habanero and some unpeeled garlic cloves were charred in a pan and then allowed to cool. Tomatoes received the same treatment. The pepitas were ground in a food processor and removed to a bowl. Then, the seeded and chopped habanero, the peeled garlic, and the cored tomatoes were roughly chopped in the food processor. The ground pumpkin seeds were returned to the food processor, and the goal was to puree this mixture to a mayonnaise-like consistency. Some vegetable stock was called for in the recipe, but there was enough juice in the tomatoes I used to achieve the desired texture without adding any other liquid. Finely chopped white onion, cilantro leaves, and a couple pinches of cinnamon were stirred into the dip to finish it.
It was noticeably fiery but not in a painful way. The pepitas smoothed out the heat, and the tomatoes freshened it up. Charring the vegetables added deeper flavor and earthiness, and the onion and cilantro added texture and spunk. The dip gets even better as it sits in the refrigerator overnight, and I’m certain about that because I nearly devoured the entire remaining quantity for lunch today. This was such a happy discovery; I think everyone should try making it. Or, just stop by my house because from now on I’ll be making some every few days.
I’ve been open about my problem with cookbooks and food magazines regarding how I can’t stop collecting and reading them. Well, I also have an issue with collecting links to recipes I see on all those fabulous food blogs out there. The list of recipes keeps growing. Fortunately, a perfect opportunity for trying some of them presented itself. Bread Baby mentioned an upcoming bake sale and asked if anyone in Austin would like to donate items. She, in fact, had organized a very cool benefit for Space12 and planned a bake sale as part of it. What could be better than getting to try a few different recipes from my list and then having a place to take the baked goods to prevent me from eating them all? I wasted no time in combing through that long list of links and decided on these: cinnamon cappuccino cookies from A Kiss and a Cupcake, molasses cookies from Cooking During Stolen Moments, and banana snickerdoodles from Noble Pig.
I didn’t realize it when I picked those cookies, but they all have something in common. For all three cookies, balls of dough are formed and then are rolled in sugar or a sugar mixture before being placed on a baking sheet. I had the technique down after these recipes. The cinnamon cappuccino cookies have powdered espresso in the dough, and then the dough balls were rolled in cinnamon and sugar to which I added a little more espresso powder. The molasses cookies were rolled in sugar, and the banana snickerdoodles were rolled in cinnamon and sugar. I made one change to the banana snickerdoodle recipe which was to use butter instead of shortening, but I always do that.
These were three very different cookies in the flavor department, and I liked them all for different reasons. I’ll be keeping all three recipes in the permanent file. Kurt’s favorite, hands down, was the cinnamon cappuccino. I thought for sure my favorite was going to be the molasses cookie because I’ve become so taken with molasses in recent years, and it was extremely good. In the end though, I was torn between it and the banana snickerdoodle. The banana snickerdoodle dough was ridiculously good, and I almost had to restrain myself from eating the entire bowl before the cookies could be baked. Since I clearly can’t pick a winner among the three, I suggest you bake them all and let me know which one you like best.
I happen to be a big fan of nut brittles and toffees of all kinds, and I make these candies every year during the holidays. In the past, pecan toffee topped with milk chocolate was always my favorite. It’s slightly softer in texture than brittle, and I have a guarded recipe with a secret ingredient or two. I never would have thought it could slip from the number one spot of homemade candies in my mind, but this salted chocolate dipped pecan brittle was a surprisingly serious contender. Kurt isn’t even as into homemade candies as I am, and he was wowed by this one. When he first tasted it, he claimed the salt really worked well and quickly reached for a second, then third piece.
. Fried arancini would travel much better than a lasagna with cream sauce.
The cornmeal made a nice crunchy surface which contrasted well with the oozing center. Sweet, fresh corn and smoky, roasted hatch chiles sidled up comfortably to the queso oaxaca. The flavor combination here was a good one, and I think the lasagna version will be just as good when I can serve it at home straight from the oven.
I followed the recipe for the Italian ring bread, but instead of folding chopped marjoram into the dough, I used chopped, roasted hot and mild hatch chiles and whole cloves of roasted garlic. This dough made use of both sourdough starter and fresh yeast, so I hoped it would have enough strength to rise with the vegetables I added. The recipe is written as a two-day bread, but there is a 12 hour waiting time on the second day. I timed it out to make it a three-day bread instead. Day one only required making a sponge from starter, bread flour, and water. On day two, the dough was made from the sponge, fresh yeast, bread flour, salt, olive oil, chiles, and roasted garlic. It started as what I thought was a slightly too dry dough, but after adding the vegetables, it seemed slightly too wet and sticky. I kneaded in a little more flour and crossed my fingers.
It went through the usual rituals of resting, kneading, fermenting, being divided, resting again, and then being formed into boules which were refrigerated overnight. On day three, the dough was brought up to room temperature and then turned out onto a board. A peel was floured so a boule could be loaded on it, and then a hole was cut in the center of the boule with a biscuit cutter. The hole was to be stretched to three times its original size, and the piece of dough removed was baked as a roll. Luckily, I baked one loaf at a time because the first one suffered from the hole not being made large enough. It closed in on itself like a giant bialy, but I got it right the second time. Of course, the oven was spritzed a couple of times during the first five minutes of baking, and that produced a crispy, crackly outer crust.
To make the pesto di limone, two wide strips of lemon zest were pureed with the juice of a lemon and some olive oil. Then, I was supposed to have used Taggiasche or Gaeta olives, and had I found some green Taggiasche olives the pesto would have been nice and green. Since I used black Gaeta olives, mine was a darker color. The pitted Gaeta olives and two big cups of basil leaves were added to the blender and pureed with the first three ingredients. This resulted in an intentionally thin pesto with a fresh, lemony flavor. The pesto with two tomatoes was just as simple to prepare. First, sun-dried tomatoes, olive oil, and rinsed and drained salt-packed capers were pureed in the blender. Then, cherry tomatoes, and I found the prettiest dark red, almost purple cherry tomatoes, were added, and it was pureed together until smooth. That pesto was transferred to a large bowl, and grated parmigiano reggiano and chopped chives were added.
The tomato pesto required one half cup of olive oil, and I know I’ve used a lot more oil than that in similar quantities of pesto. Yet, the smooth texture gave it a richness that made it seem more decadent than it was. Of course, the flavor was nicely layered with fresh, juicy tomatoes and the depth of sun-dried tomatoes, and the chives lent just enough bite from the allium family. Both pestos are keepers, and I’m sure I’ll think of different ways to use them each time they’re made.
I have to say, I didn’t miss the whipped cream. I like it that way too, but the meringue was different and light and just as nice. With meringue, you have the browned, near-crust on top and then the airy, pillowy texture underneath. In the book, there’s a warning that while you can refrigerate leftovers it doesn’t hold up well. I can tell you that’s true. After scooping out two servings for dessert, I placed the dish back in the refrigerator. The next day, it was a little runny and not so attractive. The side opposite of the runny stuff was still delicious, but serving this sooner rather than later is ideal. One thought for next time is to create individual servings which could remain refrigerated for a couple of days with no scooped-out areas for runniness.
It was noticeably fiery but not in a painful way. The pepitas smoothed out the heat, and the tomatoes freshened it up. Charring the vegetables added deeper flavor and earthiness, and the onion and cilantro added texture and spunk. The dip gets even better as it sits in the refrigerator overnight, and I’m certain about that because I nearly devoured the entire remaining quantity for lunch today. This was such a happy discovery; I think everyone should try making it. Or, just stop by my house because from now on I’ll be making some every few days.