8 posts tagged “amanda hesser”

salted caramel ice cream

Back when we lived on Grand Avenue my husband used to make frequent trips to Binny's Beverage Depot.  Not only a great nearby spot for wine, beer, cigars, and estoteric liquor, they also have a nice little deli of gourmet cheeses and other nibbles.  But their most delicious item can be found right by the cash register where it is impossible to resist.  Caramels.  Soft little cubes wrapped in wax paper.  Whenever Jon and I went there I would always buy two - one to eat right then and there and one to savor on the walk home.  They were perfection - sweet, toasty, creamy, chewy, and just a bit salty.  Before long we had a standing unspoken agreement that if Jon went to Binny's for any reason he would come home with 2 caramels for me.

When we moved up here to North Center, we found a new wonderful liquor store, Armanetti's.  Armanetti's puts Binny's to shame in the esoteric liquor department, and they have a mind-boggling selection of gourmet beers and wines.  However, they do not even begin to touch Binny's delicicous caramels.

This week when I finally broke out the ice cream maker I got 2 Christmases ago from Jon, I guess it was somewhat predictable that I would turn to my old standby Amanda Hesser for a recipe.  And I probably I have raved about the old Binny's caramels quite a bit.  Still, I never guessed that when updated my facebook status to "Robin is breakin out the ice cream machine" the first comment would be "Caramel ice cream from Mr. Latte?  I suggest a bit less sugar and more salt."  That Jorie really has my number.  Since she knows me so well I guessed she would know just how I wanted it to taste, so I followed her adaptations and the result was sheer perfection.  As Amanda says, "...this one is exceptional.  It's a touch salty, which makes it addictive, and not a bit flabby, thanks to the sternness of toasted sugar."

Salted Caramel Ice Cream
adapted from Amanda Hesser's recipe in Cooking for Mr. Latte
Ingredients
5 egg yolks, room temperature
1 1/8 cups sugar
1/4 cup light corn syrup
2 teaspoons coarse sea salt
4 cups half and half, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions
In a medium bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, 1/8 cup sugar, corn syrup and salt, until pale and fluffy.  Set aside.

Pour the remaining 1 cup of sugar into a deep, heavy 3-5 quart saucepan.  Place over medium heat until the sugar melts, the turns a caramel brown and all of the sugar granules have dissolved.  As soon as the sugar is a uniform color, pour in the half-and-half in a swift fluid motion.  It will spit and spatter; be careful.  [There's a chance the caramel will harden into candy when you do this - don't worry, just turn off the heat for a bit and keep stirring, it will eventually dissolve.]

Using a wooden spoon, stir the caramel mixture until all of the now lumpy caramel has dissolved, about 5 minutes.  Whisk about 1/2 cup of the caramel mixture into the eggs, then gradually whisk the egg mixture back into the caramel.  Place over medium heat, whisking or stirring constantly to keep the base of the pan clean, until the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of the spoon.  Do not let it boil, or you will have scrambled eggs.  Then remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla.

Let cool, then chill overnight in the refrigerator.

Then next day, pour the ice cream into an ice cream maker and follow manufacturer's instructions.

upscale cassoulet

You may not have been aware that you have been reading the blog of an award-winning chef, but now I must let the truth be known.  A couple weeks ago I entered Apartment Therapy/The Kitchen's braising contest, and last Friday I found out that my dish was selected as one of the winners!  I will soon be the recipient of a sunny yellow Calphalon cast-iron dutch oven, and a copy of Daniel Boulud's new book, Braise: A Journey Through International Cuisine.

The dutch oven-winning recipe was from my old standby, Cooking for Mr. Latte.  On that fateful night, we were having Heather and Johnny over for dinner and I had actually planned to make some lamb chops with asparagus and mashed potatoes, a kind of dry-run for the Passover meal I was preparing for.  (This was the same night as I tried out the honey nut cake.)  But at the last second I found out about the braising contest.  It was a perfect opportunity to try Amanda Hesser's "Component Stew," a recipe which had always intrigued me - but not enough to gather all the various and sundry ingredients it required.  But the prospect of free Calphalon was enough to motivate me to scrap my plans and run out to the store.

Amanda's Component Stew was inspired by a meal at Tom Colicchio's* restaurant, Craft, at which she was bombarded by her foodie friends with tastes of 18 different dishes.  Being a very opinionated eater (as well as cook), she didn't appreciate having her palate corrupted with so many random delicious foods that interrupted the gustatory path she had planned.   So she created this recipe as an antidote - many random delicious foods combined into one succulent and cohesive meal.

She points out that technically this is a braise, not a stew, but she didn't feel Component Braise had a good ring to it.  Personally I don't think Component Stew has a good ring either - this is food, after all, not an electronics manual.  What is the difference between a stew and a braise anyhow?  Both are methods that entail browning ingredients and then cooking them slowly with moist heat.  But for stewing you cover the ingredients completely with liquid, while braising uses a smaller amount of added liquid and allows the ingredients to cook mostly in their own juices and by steaming.  

The word braise always seems like a one of those combined words to me - like it's a combination of browning and... raising?  praising?  Really it should be a combination of browning and boiling but then the word would be broiling.  And that means something else entirely.  Plus you really don't want to boil your braise, ideally it should be kept at a bare simmer.  But brimmer just doesn't seem appetizing at all.  Turns out the word actually comes from the French word  braiser, which means to cook something over hot coals.  But... wouldn't that be grilling?  Aah, who knows.

The cooking time for this braise is not that long – about one hour total, followed by an hour rest and then a quick reheat.  The prep time adds another 30-40 minutes though – especially since I couldn't find cipollini and substituted pearl onions.  Amanda says this recipe is about simplifying your life (??) so if you can't find cipollini you can just skip them.  But this was for a contest!  I wasn't going to win any Calphalon with that kind of thinking!  I think it took me about 20 minutes just to peel all those stupid little onions.

the ingredients

She also suggests some other possible substitutions: bacon or pancetta for the sausage, which... well, where can you find pancetta but not italian sausage?? and this helpful tidbit: "If you can't get duck confit, use smoked duck breast."  Well thanks, Amanda.  I searched Whole Foods, and two other grocery stores, but there were no prepared duck products to be had.  Unless I wanted to buy a whole duck and smoke it or confit it myself, I was SOL on the duck front.  I decided to buy a pair of smoked turkey legs I found at the Cabrini Green Dominick's instead.  (This was the same shopping trip as my matzoh cake meal search - which I also ended up finding at that store.  You wouldn't think that the grocery store by one of Chicago's most notoriously crappy housing projects would have a better selection of Jewish foods than places in the Gold Coast, but there you go.)  I only used about half of one turkey leg, but the rest made a great pasta sauce the next day, slivered and sauteed with onions and some leftover mushrooms and cream. 

As soon as I got home I set about preparing my ingredients.  Normally I am not so organized with pre-slicing everything and putting each ingredient in its own little bowl before cooking, but when Calphalon is on the line I can get as Martha Stewart as the next gal.

browning my leeks and onions

Next it was time for the browning part of the braise.  I went about browning the sausage, chicken, mushrooms, leeks and onions in my trusty orange Le Creuset casserole.  Maybe I haven't totally mastered the use of enameled cast iron cookware, but I often do have trouble with things sticking or leaving browned bits behind.  Because each ingredient had to be browned separately, I was afraid all the browned bits left behind by previous ingredients would start burning and give a yucky flavor to the braise.  So I actually ended up deglazing the pan with a little bit of broth between each round of browning.  After loosening all the bits, I poured the resultant sauce back to my little container of broth, put a little bit more olive oil into the pan and continued browning.  Finally, everything was browned.  I laid all the ingredients in the pan, added the broth, covered it, and skipped off to clean the bathroom before our guests arrived.

The fanciest thing about this dish (besides the elusive duck confit that is) is the little sauce you serve it with.  After the braise has finished cooking, you add sherry and tarragon to the juices left in the pan and swirl it around for a few seconds before decanting it into a bowl to pass at the table.  The sauce was one of the best parts of this meal.  She says to serve the stew over a slice of ciabbatta or country bread, but I think we ended up devouring the whole loaf with all the extra slices that were passed around to soak up more of the scrumptious sauce after all the stew was gone.  We unanimously voted the name "Component Stew" off the island and renamed this delicious dish "Upscale Cassoulet."  I'm not sure what was so very upscale about it since I substituted turkey legs from Cabrini Green Dominick's for the fanciest element, but any dish that takes 15 ingredients and almost 3 hours to make and wins the cook a free pot and cookbook deserves a better name than "Component Stew," don't you think?

* You may also know Tom Colicchio as the bald guy from Bravo's trainwreck/cooking show, Top Chef.

Upscale Cassoulet (formerly known as "Component Stew")

a serving of cassoulet

from Cooking for Mr. Latte by Amanda Hesser
Ingredients:
2 Tablespoons olive oil
2/3 pound sweet Italian sausage, cut into 1 1/2 inch pieces
2 cups thickly sliced mushrooms (cremini, or any variety of flavorful mushroom like chanterelle, bluefoot, hen-of-the-wood)
3 thin leeks, halved, rinsed well and cut into 1-inch lengths
1 cup peeled cipollini
4 chicken thighs
Coarse sea salt or Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 cup chicken broth
1 fresh bay leaf (optional)
1 confited duck leg, meat cut from the bone, trimmed of fat and slivered
1 15-ounce can cannellini, great northern, or any kind of plump, creamy bean, drained and rinsed (use cranberry beans when they're in season; shell 1 1/2 cups and blanch them until tender)
2 Tablespoons Manzanilla or fino sherry
1 Tablespon chopped tarragon
4 thin slices country bread (ciabatta, if possible), lightly toasted

Instructions:
Pour 1 tablespoon olive oil into a large enameled cast-iron braiser, or similar pan (a thick sauté pan with a lid will work just fine).  Place over medium-low heat.  Drop in the sausage and let it sizzle away, rolling only when the sides turn color.  Brown all over.  If you have a splatter screen, this is the time to pull it out, as fat will be popping everywhere.  Spoon the sausage onto a plate layered with paper towels.

Add the mushrooms to the pan and brown on both sides.  Spoon into a bowl.  The pan may be dry by now.  You can drizzle in another tablespoon of oil.  Scatter the leeks and cipollini around the pan and increase the heat to medium so they color a bit; there's no need to cook them through because they cook more later.  Saute for about 5 minutes, then spoon them into another bowl.  Take the pan off the heat.

Season the chicken on both sides with salt and pepper.  Put the pan back over medium-high heat and add the chicken skin-side down.  Brown well, then turn and brown the other side, about 8 minutes total.  Put the chicken on a plate, then drain the grease from the braising pan.

Slip the chicken back into the braising pan and pour in the broth.  The liquid should just cover the base of the pan.  Add the bay leaf.  Adjust the heat to low and cover the pan.  Monitor the heat so that the surface of the liquid is wobbly with bubbles like a glass of freshly poured champagne.  You don't want it to boil.

After 20 minutes, spread the sausage, mushrooms, leeks and cipollini, slivered duck meat and beans (don't forget to rinse off those thick can juices) over the chicken.  Use a wooden spoon to gently nudge the different parts down in between the chicken.  The cooking juices should be pushing up the sides but not soaking the components.  Cover again, and continue cooking until the chicken is cooked through and the cipollini are tender, about 15 to 20 minutes.

At this point you can shut off the heat, cool it down and serve it the next day.  If you wish to serve it the same day, I'd let it cool for an hour or so.  This little rest gives the flavors a chance to blend and the meats time to reabsorb the moisture, which has cooked out.  When you're ready to sit down to dinner, heat it up over medium heat until it's bubbling, then use a slotted spoon to transfer everything to a warm serving dish.  Bring the juices to a boil.  There should be about 1 cup (don't bother measuring); if not, add a little more broth.  Taste and adjust seasoning.  Stir in the sherry and let it cook for a minute, then swirl in the tarragon.  Pour this into a pretty little bowl and pass it at the table, following the stew.

Everyone's place should be set with a shallow bowl.  As the stew and gravy are passed, have each person set a piece of toast in his bowl.  Spoon over the stew and then some of the fragrant juices.

Serves 4

kadjemoula

It turns out I'm not the only one obsessed with cooking Amanda Hesser's recipes.  I made another recipe from Cooking for Mr. Latte this weekend, Kadjemoula, which is a north African stew that she adapted from James Beard.  As I was getting ready to write this post, I googled "kadjemoula" to learn more about this exotic dish, and I found the excellent and hilarious food blog, The Amateur Gourmet.  Adam Roberts, the author, has blogged about at least 13 different recipes from Mr. Latte, including the vanilla bean loaves I butchered last month, and the kadjemoula I made last Saturday night.

Oddly, aside from Adam's blog and a couple other random mentions, I couldn't find much information on this dish, which is supposedly a Morrocan or Libyan stew.  I surmised from one google result, which linked to a goat farm's website, that you can also make this with goat meat, but fortunately this recipe only called for beef and lamb.  I actually couldn't find the lamb stew meat called for at the store, so I used a different cut which was bone-in pieces from the neck.  To make up for all the bones in the meat, I bought a larger amount of lamb (about 3 pounds).  The butcher lady said the bones would add good flavor to the stew even though we couldn't eat them. 

The recipe, like the duck I made last weekend, was time consuming but easy.  Coat the meat in flour, brown it, and then add the vegetables and broth and simmer for 2 hours.  Since all those lamb bones greatly increased the volume of the stew, I had to add more broth to cover all the meat - about 7 cups rather than the 4 recommended in the recipe.  All that meat and broth was too much to fit into my trusty old Le Creuset pan, so I simmered some of it in a stock pot and some in the Le Creuset, and then combined them together when the liquid had reduced enough. 

Despite all these changes to the recipe, it turned out absolutely delicious.  Instead of serving it with couscous, as Amanda, James Beard, and Adam suggest, I decided to serve it with a scoop of polenta.  It know it seems kind of random to have polenta with African stew, but it reminded me of this delicious meal I had at a Cape Verdean restaurant on the last night of our honeymoon, this chicken stew with scrumptious cornmeal dumplings.  Apparently cornmeal mush is a staple dish in West African food, so I wasn't that far off the wall.

A Perfect Day for Bananafish

Not that I endorse everything in West African cuisine.  Do you want to know what Jon ordered at that Cape Verdean restaurant?  Sardines and bananas.  I'm not kidding.  Take a look:

It was absolutely terrible.  Apparently he thought it was going to be plaintains... but still, who wants to eat sardines with plantains??  Then again there might be those who say that prunes and cinnamon do not belong in a beef stew.  But they would be wrong.

Kadjemoula
Adapted by Amanda Hesser from The New James Beard (with some changes by me)
Ingredients:
2 pounds lamb shoulder, cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes (or 3 pounds of bone-in lamb stew meat)
2 pounds beef chuck, cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes
1/2 cup flour (more if needed)
2 Tablespoons butter
2 Tablespoons olive oil (more if needed)
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 medium onions, sliced
4 large (or 8 small) carrots, peeled and quartered
2 medium turnips, peeled and diced
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2/3 cup dried apricots
2/3 cup prunes, putted
3 to 4 cups beef broth (or more if needed to cover meat)

Instructions:
Trim fat from the lamb and beef cubes.  Put the flour in a plastic bag and add the meat four pieces at a time.  Shake the bag to coat the meat, then shake excess flour from the pieces as you lift them from the bag.  Heat the butter and oil in a braising pan over medium high heat.  Add the meat cubes, a few at a time, and brown them quickly on all sizes.  As they cook, remove them to a plate.

When all the meat is browned, add the sliced onions to the pan.  Stir to coat thoroughly in oil, and as onions release their moisture, scrape any browned bits from the bottom of the pan. 

When onions are soft and translucent, add all the meat back to the pan.  Sprinkle with salt, cinnamon, ginger and pepper.  Add the carrots, turnips, apricots and prunes.  Pour in enough broth to barely cover (if your pot is too small, place half the meat and vegetables in another large pot or pan and cover the contents of each pot with broth). 

Bring to a boil.  Lower heat and gently simmer for 2 hours or until tender.  The vegetables and fruits should have blended into a thin but flavorful sauce. 

Serve with  a fluffy grain to soak up extra sauce - couscous, rice pilar, cracked wheat, or even polenta.  If you have it, place a couple slices of quince paste or preserves at the edge of each plate.

Serves 6

vanilla bean cake

Baking has always intimidated the hell out of me.  Cooking is a fluid process, full of chances to taste and adjust along the way.  With baking, you miss one teaspoon of some crucial powder at the beginning of the process, and your whole recipe is a disaster.  And substitutions are way easier in cooking too.  Don't have any butter?  Saute in oil instead!  Out of green beans for your stir fry?  Throw in some broccoli or whatever you find in the produce crisper!  But just try using margarine in your cookie dough and you will be left with spongy, tasteless lumps where your chocolate chip cookies should be.  And cookies are supposedly one of the easiest things to bake!

I pretty much gave up on baking when I moved to Chicago.  When I first got here, I lived in a tiny studio apartment that had an ancient 3/4 size oven that you had to light with a match.  Having only cooked with electric ovens up to this point, I had never really considered the process of lighting a gas oven.  The first thing you do to bake something is turn the oven on, right?  So I turned on the gas, and searched for my matches.  I found a little paper booklet for the restaurant where I was waitressing at the time, tore off one little cardboard strip and tried to strike it.  The match wouldn't light.  I tried again and it tore in half.  OK, fine.  I pulled off another match.  This one I managed to light.  I opened the oven door and leaned down to the little hole my landlady had shown me for lighting the oven.  And then, all of a sudden... FOOOOOOOM!  For a split second, I was engulfed in a fireball.  Instantly, it receeded into the oven, and hummed away as if nothing was the matter, just doing it's oven job, nothing to see here, move along, people.  I gingerly closed the oven door.  As my hand moved away from the door handle, I glimpsed gray dust on my wrist.  Upon closer inspection, it was clear that my arm hair had been sizzled away.  Oh, god, my hair.  I reached up and felt my hairline.  What was formerly wispy baby hair was now short and spiky.  And what about my eyebrows and eyelashes!  Would I look like a bald-faced cancer patient?  I walked over 8 feet to my bathroom.  Thankfully only the inner quarter of one eyebrow had been burnt off, and there was still enough stubble there to give a decent impression of brownness until the hairs grew back.  It could have been worse.  Still, I refused to make any dish involving an oven for the next four years.

In a later apartment with a self-lighting oven, I finally ventured back beneath the stove as I discovered the joys of broiling.  And soon I was baking - potatoes, chicken, even lasagne!  But still cakes and baked desserts were beyond my comfort zone.  With cooking I could correct my missteps.  But baking?  I was nowhere near being a perfect enough cook to try that.

But recently I have had a cooking epiphany: you don't have to do things perfectly to bake good desserts either.  NYT restaurant critic Ruth Reichl says in her wonderful memoir, Tender at the Bone, "I discovered the secret of every experienced cook: desserts are a cheap trick.  People love them even when they're bad.  And so I began to bake, appreciating the alchemy that can turn flour, water, chocolate and butter into devil's food cake and make it disappear in a flash.  Boys, in particular, seemed to like it."

Case in point - my Valentine's day dessert.  I had planned to make vanilla bean loaves, a cake recipe from the Hi-Rise Bread Company in Massachussets, published in good old Cooking for Mr. Latte.  I ran into several hurdles along the way.  First of all, I got started a lot later than I intended to.  My plan was to make the cakes in the morning, but due to gratuitous romance on my husband's part and gratuitous dawdling on my part, I didn't get started until late afternoon when I was already supposed to be focusing on the dinner courses.  I went to the cabinet to get out my two loaf pans, but found I only had one, so I had to halve the recipe.  No big deal so far. 

Then I realized I was supposed to start with room temperature butter and eggs.  My eggs were in the refrigerator and most of my butter was in the freezer.  I stuck 1 1/2 sticks of frozen butter in the microwave for a minute, hoping to soften them a little.  My microwave is notoriously low-powered - after a minute, the butter was still rock hard.  I tried one more minute - and found a puddle of melted butter surrounded by some soft lumps.  Argh.  I used a tablespoon to measure the lumps, which turned out to be only one stick's worth of butter.  I saved the melted butter for my risotto and threw in half a stick of butter from the refrigerator.  Half ultra-soft butter and half cold hard butter - that should even out to room temperature, right? 

Then I realized I was supposed to cream the vanilla sugar and butter with a stand mixer's paddle attachment - I don't have a stand mixer.  I only have a hand mixer, and the beaters are distinctly un-paddle shaped.  Consequently, the butter/sugar mixture did not get fluffy as directed.  No matter how long I mixed it, it remained sort of crumbly and granular.  Even when I mixed in the eggs and vanilla bean, it didn't get smooth, it just formed this kind of liquidy, lumpy batter.  Not pretty. 

I didn't have time to fret since I was having risotto issues and dealing with my shallot marmalade and duck at the same time.  So I just proceeded to the next step, sift the baking powder and salt together with the flour.  I plumbed the depths of my flour cannister, but was only able to come up with 3/4 cup of flour, and I needed 1 1/4 cups for even my halved recipe.  Not worried yet, I checked the freezer.  Whenever I buy a bag of flour, I fill my flour cannister and put the rest of the bag in the freezer, to prevent bugs from getting into it.  Well, when I opened the freezer, all that was there was WHOLE WHEAT FLOUR!  AAAAAAAAAArrgh!  Who ever heard of whole wheat flour in a cake??  OK.  Fine.  Whatever.  I used half a cup of the whole wheat flour to supplement the rest of my white flour and sifted it together with the salt and baking powder.  I combined the powders with my gross looking chunky batter and the mixture looked marginally better.  Somewhat heartened, I poured it in my one loaf pan and baked in the oven. 

Then about half an hour later I realized I forgot to add the vanilla extract.  D'OH!  The whole point of the cake was that it was saturated with vanilla flavor - with vanilla-infused sugar, a vanilla bean AND VANILLA EXTRACT in the batter, and vanilla bean syrup brushed on top.  I decided to just add the extract to the vanilla syrup that I was making to glaze the cake with.  At least that part of the recipe would be extra vanilla-y. I was so burnt out on this dumb catastrophe of a recipe that when the cake was done, I didn't even bother cooling it on a rack and brushing with the syrup.  Instead I just poured the entire pot of syrup over the cake into the loaf pan and let it sit there until I was ready to deal.

After a couple glasses of wine, what turned out to be a delicious meal, and some sweet nothings from my Valentine, I was ready to check on the condition of my botched dessert.

Turns out Ruth Reichl was right - even with all my myriad mistakes, the cake was still pretty darn scrumptious.  And boys in particular do like it.

Impossible to Ruin Vanilla Bean Loaves
adapted from the Hi-Rise Bread Company in Cambridge, Massachussets
Ingredients:
3 sticks unsalted butter
4 1/4 cups sugar
4 vanilla beans
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
8 large eggs
3 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Instructions:
THREE DAYS BEFORE BAKING, make vanilla sugar.  Split one vanilla bean, scraping the seeds into 2 1/2 cups of sugar.  Place the split bean pod in the sugar and stir well.

ONE HOUR BEFORE BAKING, bring butter and eggs out on countertop to warm to room temperature.

Heavily butter two 8x4x3 inch (or similarly sized) loaf pans and preheat your oven to 325F. 

Using an electric mixer, preferably a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and vanilla sugar until the mixture is pale and fully.  Scrape one vanilla bean and flick its seeds into the mixture.  Add the vanilla extract and the eggs and beat to mix.

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl.  Add to the batter and mix just until smooth, using a spatula to scrape the sides and the bottom, making sure everything is well blended.

Divide the batter between the two buttered pans.  Bake for 30 minutes, then turn the pans around and bake until a cake tester or skewer comes out almost clean, another 25 to 40 minutes.

While loaves are baking, prepare the vanilla syrup.  In a small pan, dissolve 1 3/4 cups sugar in 1 cup of water over medium heat.  Add the 2 remaining vanilla beans and stir so their seeds and fragrance disperse.  Take pan off heat.

Place a baking rack over a baking sheet.  When the loaves are done, cool for 10 minutes on baking racks, then turn them out of their pans and set back on the racks.  Brush loaves generously all over--bottoms, tops and sides--with vanilla syrup.  Repeat the brushing process a couple of more times as they cool.  These cakes store and freeze well.

Makes 8 generous servings of cake (about 16 hearty slices)

goat cheese and shallot cassis marmalade

By far the most successful dish I made for Valentine's day was the shallot-cassis marmalade served on French bread with goat cheese.  I added this to the menu almost as an afterthought.  The recipe is from my special occasion cooking bible, Cooking for Mr. Latte.  Amanda recommends serving this after the main course because it is so delicious that if you serve it first, no one will save room for dinner.  And I have to concur.

The recipe is fairly simple too, once you accomplish the task of deciphering her cheese recommendation: "1 round of Chaource, brick of Lingot de Quercy, or button of Chevrot."  I had no idea what she was talking about.  And I took three years of French.  I didn't even realize that cheese portions were referred to as rounds, bricks, and buttons, and I didn't have the slightest clue as to how many ounces each of these things entailed.  I faithfully copied the exact wording onto my grocery list and showed it to the cheese guy at Whole Foods.  I strongly suspect that he didn't really understand it either - after all this was a supermarket, not a cheesemonger's.  But he gamely recommended a cute little cylindrical cheese, about 6 ounces, with a very long name (more than four words) which I have since forgotten.  It had a soft, crusty looking rind and a creamy center.

The only other daunting part of the recipe, aside from the cheese selection, is the task of creating 3 cups of thinly sliced shallots.  It took about nine large shallots worth of slicing on the 1/16 setting of my mandoline slicer before I had the requisite amount.  From there, the recipe couldn't be easier - melt some butter in a pan, add the shallots and some salt, turn the heat down to low, and you can basically forget about them for about half an hour, stirring occasionally.  At the end you deglaze the pan with vinegar, and mix the drippings together with the shallots and some thyme, creme de cassis, and currants.  If you're organized, the dish can be completely made ahead of time, and then you just bring the cheese and shallot marmalade out on the counter to warm to room temperature about an hour before serving.  Or if you're me, you can rant and rave wildly as you make three other dishes and a cake at the same time and still, the marmalade will just sit there patiently until you're ready to serve it.

my valentine

lemon bar

So you know how in The Joy of Cooking, there are all these recipes with the word "cockaigne" at the end?  Brownies Cockaigne, Coffee Cake Poppyseed Filling Cockaigne, Creamed Eggs and Asparagus Cockaigne.  [NOTE: If you have no idea what I'm talking about you probably don't own The Joy of Cooking.  This is a crime against culinary nature.  I command you to stop reading this blog immediately and go out and buy a copy.  This essential cookbook, written by Irma Rombauer and illustrated by her daughter, Marion Rombauer Becker, was originally published in 1931 as Irma, a St. Louis housewife, was struggling to stay afloat financially after her husband's death.  It is required reading for owning a kitchen, people.  Or even for us poor slobs who just rent a kitchen.  What other cookbook gives recipes for everything from cornmeal mush to sole meuniere?  Every section begins with a basic lesson on the essentials of cooking that particular category of food, and some of my best culinary secrets have been gleaned from reading these chapter heading lessons.  They even have a chapter on setting the table for every occasion from casual picnic to formal banquet, and on page 454 there are directions for preparing and cooking A BEAR.  I'm not kidding.] 

Anyway, I was always like, what the heck is with this Cockaigne they keep naming all the recipes after?  Why are they obsessed with Cockaigne?  Maybe they're snorting Cockaigne.  [Seriously, stop reading and go buy The Joy of Cooking, right now.  You need it.  Really.]  Once, in a fit of curiousity, I looked up Cockaigne in the American Heritage Dictionary.  It is defined as " An imaginary land of easy and luxurious living."  Umm.... OK, so they're saying this fruitcake recipe evokes a nation of laziness and gluttony, hmmm.  On the Wikipedia page for Cockaigne, they quote a 13th century French poem called The Land of Cockaigne where "the houses were made of barley sugar and cakes, the streets were paved with pastry, and the shops supplied goods for nothing."  All right, now I understand a little better, they're saying the fruitcake could be used to pave the streets in a socialist Candyland?

Finally I found the true answer by just looking up Cockaigne in the index to the cookbook, which directed me to the foreword.  Apparently Cockaigne is the name of Marion's husband's family's country home in Ohio (apparently Ohio is the Hamptons of St. Louis??), and she used this name to denote her favorite recipes of the volume.  Well, that was kind of anticlimactic.

Still, it didn't stop me from trying these utopian lemon bars.  After all, supreme foodie Amanda Hesser served these at her engagement party.  The Meyer lemon-obsessed Hesser publishes this recipe in Cooking for Mr. Latte, where she offers an adaptation for using her favorite gourmet lemons: simply use 1/2 cup less sugar for the lemon curd topping.  It takes about 5 regular or 8 Meyer lemons to generate the whopping 1 cup and 2 tablespoons juice needed for the recipe.  Why not just buy extra just in case and use the leftovers to make some lemon-pistachio pesto!

Instructions:
Position a rack in the center of the oven. Preheat the oven to 325F. Have ready a 13x9 baking pan.

Sift together into a large bowl 1 1/2 cups of flour and 1/4 cup of sugar. Toss in the cubes of butter. Using a pastry blender, two knives, or your fingertips, cut in the butter until the mixture is the size of small peas. (I used my fingers.  Amanda Hesser recommends a "small pinching motion.") 

Using your fingers, press the mixture into the bottom of the pan and 3/4 inch up the sides to avoid leaking during baking. (Don't worry if it seems like you don't have enough crust at first - just keep on pressing it until it thins out enough to cover the entire bottom of the pan.)  Bake until golden brown, 20-30 minutes. Set aside to cool slightly.

Reduce the oven temperature to 300F. Whisk together eggs and 3 cups of sugar until well combined. Stir in lemon zest and lemon juice. Sift 1/2 cup of flour over the top and stir in until well blended and smooth.

Pour batter over the baked crust. Bake until set, about 35 minutes. Remove the pan to a rack to cool completely before cutting into bars.

Makes about 18 3x2 inch bars.

meyer lemon pasta

I finally got my hands on some Meyer lemons.  I've been hearing about these things for years.  Brought to the United States from China at the turn of the century, these sweet little lemons were used mostly as ornamental plants until they were popularized by California chefs in the 70s and 80s pursuing a cuisine of locally grown organic foods.  Nowadays cookbook chefs are constantly dropping them into recipes all casually, as if we all live in California and can just go pick some off the bush in our back yard.

Even though Meyer lemons are certainly not locally grown here in Illinois you can still find them once in a while, usually during the lemon season which is from December to April.  Thought to be a cross between regular lemons and tangerines, they are rounder and more orangey yellow than conventional lemons.  Their flavor is sweeter than regular lemons and their skin is soft and has a wonderful orange-lemony fragrance.

So when I finally found some during my weekly grocery shop, I grabbed half a dozen.  Now I could finally make all those lemon-snobby cookbook recipes I'd been bypassing!  I decided to start with a main course, meyer lemon pasta.  I actually had two different recipes for a meyer lemon pasta (one from the Living spa cuisine article and one from Cooking for Mr. Latte).  I decided to keep the common elements - spaghetti, meyer lemons, arugula - and just add in which ever of the other ingredients suited me.  The result was a light, delicious pasta, which was pretty easy to make (once I got the lemons) and as a bonus, it's pretty healthy to boot!

Spaghetti with Meyer Lemon-Pistachio Pesto
Ingredients:
1 pound whole grain spaghetti (I use Barilla - the yellow box)
2 meyer lemons (the recipe will still be good with regular lemons, just use one lemon instead of two)
1 cup grated parmesan cheese
3/4 cup roasted pistachio nuts (buy the kind that are already shelled)
1 large shallot, minced
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup creme fraiche or sour cream
3 handfuls arugula, roughly chopped
salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:
Put on a pot of salted water to boil.

Zest the lemons into a large bowl and add the grated parmesan.

Cut the lemons into six wedges each and remove seeds.  Discard peels.

Pulse pistachio nuts in food processor until well chopped.  Add peeled, seeded lemon wedges and pulse to combine.

When water boils, put in pasta and cook until al dente (about 10 minutes or as package directions indicate). 

While the pasta is cooking, heat one tablespoon of olive oil in a small pan and saute shallots over medium heat until fully softened.  Add cooked shallots to pistachio-lemon mixture.

When pasta is done, drain, reserving 1 cup of cooking water.  Toss cooked pasta in bowl with lemon zest and parmesan.   Add pesto, mix thoroughly until all strands are coated.  If the dressed pasta is too sticky, add some of the cooking water until it has a nice slippery texture.  Fold in creme fraiche.  Finally, add the chopped arugula, and mix until it is wilted and evenly distributed throughout the pasta.  Salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with a fresh grating of parmesan on top.

Serves 4