review: marco

marco / 253 hanover street / boston ma / 617-742-1276 / tue-thu 5-10:30pm, fri-sat 5pm-11pm, sun 4pm-9:30pm / reservations accepted / entrees moderately expensive ($15-25)

i heard about marco from being on pigalle's mailing list. after it got a bunch of good reviews, i thought it would be nice to try it out. we went on a sunday night, when they serve dinner family-style (which really means that the menu is designed so that everyone at a given table shares everything - the portions are in individual and family portions - not that everyone in the restaurant eats together). it was raining, but the place still filled up as we ate.

the restaurant is right on hanover street in the middle of the most visible part of the north end, but you could almost miss it. the sign is just the coat of arms with an M on it, and the outer glass door is blank - it's the inner glass door that says "marco" on it in small white lowercase letters. you enter, and then the restaurant is on the second floor. all of this contributes to the feeling that you're eating in somebody's house (the building inside has the dimensions of a row house). the restaurant is tiny - it seats maybe around 20ish people - and you can see out onto the street from the tables along the windows. the interior is decorated with things like ceramic plates that say "marco" on them with the coat of arms, and there's a fireplace with no fire, but lots of large flickering candles.

this is my new favorite restaurant for bread. there is this fantastic focaccia with a slightly salty, crisp exterior, and a chewy interior. the olive oil is very green, and is absolutely fantastic. it tastes as if somebody made it yesterday. they also give you a little bowl of marinated vegetables (red peppers, onions, olives, etc) that are fantastic.

so for dinner, we started with grilled vegetable antipasti - eggplant, red cabbage, mushrooms, zucchini, and a dollop of very fresh, mild goat cheese. these were fantastic - just the right amount of good balsamic vinegar. for wine we had a cannonau from sardinia - costera's cannonau di sardegna argiolas (2003) - to satisfy charles' curiosity about sardinian wines. this one, for your information, was excellent, and went well with the food.

for main courses, we shared orecchiette with homemade sausage and broccoli rabe, rigatoni with gravy and meatballs, and veal piccata. all three were excellent as well, and very filling, yet not heavy - that's a difficult balance to achieve. i am always somewhat disappointed by italian restaurants, in that it always seems that you could make whatever you have yourself at home with less effort and cost, despite any increase in quality. i wonder if it's because there are so many bad italian restaurants out there, especially the chain restaurants, or if it's just that haute couture french country food, for example, is trendier, and thus has more of an aura than italian food. what i mean is that i feel that my disappointment is a failing upon my part, rather than any failing of the restaurant, if the food is indeed good. which it is at marco. and in fact, the combination of the food and the physical restaurant itself make for a fantastic neighborhood place that i wish was in central square (although it couldn't be nearly as romantic as it is allowed to be in the north end).

contraband silver

silver is toxic in larger amounts than is in these dragees unless you believe the californian lawyer who we can thank for dragees being discontinued as a food decoration in the united states. i bought these in portugal when i was there three years ago, where they are cheap and plentiful. in this photograph, the sugar in the dragees has melted from the moisture of the panna cotta, and what's left is a little silver shell that collapses when you poke it with your spoon.

a chocolate kind of new year

i guess i could never be a dishwasher, because a day after the dinner party, my hands are all itchy and irritated by constant dishwashing. i just put two kinds of gunk on my hands in hopes that they will be happy soon. it's strange, though, because throughout my clay travails, i never had an angry hand problem. it's probably the soap, then, which is even called "mild" but merely seems to be mild in the sense that it doesn't clean as efficiently as normal dishwashing liquid.

so the party- let's return to the subject of actual party. celina and i had wanted to have a chocolate-themed party since last fall, but studio got in the way of having any time for anything else, so it got pushed to iap. we wanted to have a party party, but instead we did a dinner party because, sadly, chocolate (and the wine that goes with it) is expensive. after intermittent perusal of the internet, here is the menu we came up with. it's a balance between budget, chocolate, not too much chocolate, and time constraints (we started on friday and cooked pretty much through til the beginning of the party, minus sleep).

the menu
to start : chocolate chestnut soup
this was ok - probably my palate was just unused to the combination of chocolate and chestnuts in a savory context. it was a chestnut soup made with onions, chestnuts, vegetable stock, white wine, and a bit of chocolate - just enough to change the flavor. we used valrhona 70% per the recipe, from art culinaire. unfortunately, commercial vegetable stock is too tomatoey to really be of any use in cooking. i have no doubt that this soup would have been better with homemade vegetable stock, but as it's the kind of thing you can't really make on short notice, we had to settle. i don't think i'd make this again, but it's one of those things you have to do once so you can taste it.

and then : beet, romaine, and mint salad with balsamic vinaigrette
this salad is fantastic! we bought about two pounds of beets and roasted them. they turned this fabulous dark magenta, darker on the outside and lighter on the inside - hands down the most beautiful beets i've ever seen. the beet juice bleeds into the salad a little, so it's not the most beautiful salad you'll ever see, but the combination of beets and lettuce is good, and adding mint makes it even better. the balsamic vinaigrette cuts the sweetness of the beets and adds a little acidity to balance the whole affair. i made the vinaigrette from olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper, nothing out of the ordinary. for a head of lettuce, 2 lbs of beets, and 1/8 cup of torn up mint leaves, you'll need about 1/3 cup of vinaigrette. this serves maybe 10-15 people.

glazed carrots and peas
i've now tried two recipes in my bouchon cookbook. i was tempted to make french onion soup from it earlier this month, but i didn't really have the motivation to cook onions for eight hours. however, i do love this cookbook dearly - everything in it has these great, basic flavors that really showcase the main ingredients. for example, with the glazed carrots and peas, the glaze complemented the vegetables and wasn't too heavy. the garnish, chives, is actually a real part of the dish, rather than being an aesthetic consideration. for herbs (basically you boil the vegetables in water, butter, herbs, and peppercorns until it becomes a light glaze) we used thyme and rosemary.

roast chicken with chocolate-pear sauce
this is an altered version of a recipe we found online. it's for cornish game hens, but cornish game hens for a large dinner party is ridiculous in terms of effort and cost, when you're a student, so we decided on regular chickens. to boot, when we got to star, roasting chickens were on sale (for 79 cents a pound as opposed to $1.49 per pound for young chickens) so we went with the larger 6-7 lb chickens instead of the 4-5 lb chickens. anyway, the recipe also calls for you to basically steam the birds with pears and chicken stock, which i'm not so much a fan of when you can stuff them, rub them with salt and sugar, and stick 'em in the oven and forget about them for an hour and a half, so we roasted the chickens and made the sauce from the recipe. the sauce is essentially chicken stock, onions, garlic, white wine, pear poaching liquid, and pan juices from the roasted birds. of course, the bonus with roasted chickens, as i believe i opined in a previous post, is that you have the satisfaction of getting every last bit of mileage out of that bird, from roasting it, to leftovers, and making soup out of the bones. in fact, right now, there's a pot of chicken-asparagus-carrot soup sitting on the stove, and it has a lovely color and lots of chicken-y goodness in it. regarding the chicken for the party, i will say here that i really need to learn how to carve an entire chicken instead of the drumsticks and the breast, because nobody will eat it unless it's easily detachable (ie, detached) from the rest of the bird. it went well with the sauce - what chocolate seems to do for savory things is give it a feeling of body and richness that is unfamiliar but not unwelcome to the palate. the pears, given the state of fruit in boston, and the state of fruit in the winter, were negligible.

stuffed eggplant
this is the first recipe i've made from les classiques de camille, which rob brought me from his trip to france. it was quite good - basically your typical stuffed eggplant with a rice-tomato-raisin-mint mixture inside, all baked. we bought sushi rice for this as well as to go with the chicken, which is generally my preferred kind of rice for anything. people seemed to like this a lot.

*
dessert #1 : black pearl cake
this is not inspired by pirates of the caribbean, but is rather the cake version of the haut vosges chocolate bar with the same name. the chocolate bar has black sesame seeds, ginger, and wasabi in it. it's a great combination - carrien made this cake for lmf last year, with great success. not only is it an interesting combination, it's also a beautiful cake, with dark brown cake layers, lighter brown ganache, and whipped cream frosting. there is ginger in the cake - it has ginger in the actual cake and is soaked with a ginger-vanilla syrup. we made the ginger-vanilla syrup with lots of ginger and a vanilla bean, which made it really quite spicy (we also steeped it for much longer than the recipe called for). i'm not a fan of the ginger bits in the cake. i think i'd make it into a paste instead, or steep it in some liquid part of the cake, because your mouth reads the little bits as hard little "things" and you wonder, what the hell is this in the cake? is it a bit of egg, because the batter wasn't mixed correctly? i think you only realize what it is if you've eaten the cake. but the general cake is fantastic - the cake is pretty dense, and with the ganache filling (which has the sesame seeds and wasabi in it), the whipped cream frosting is the perfect foil.

dessert #2 : vanilla panna cotta with balsamic chocolate sauce
i love panna cotta for two reasons. 1 : it tastes good. 2 : it's incredibly easy to make. alright, this panna cotta is a bit more work-intensive, but it's still done in a snap. besides, i tripled the recipe. we picked a vanilla panna cotta to balance out the chocolate in the desserts; it comes from mario batali via epicurious. it's technically supposed to go with balsamic vinegar and strawberries, but we decided to make a chocolate-based sauce with balsamic vinegar in it. this panna cotta is also fantastic because it's half yogurt and half cream, so by itself it has a bit of tang to it that's very clean yet indulgent. mmm. the leftovers are in the fridge...it's all i can do not to eat all of them this very moment. not so much a fan of the sauce - i made it and i didn't get the proportions right. rather, i got them in the ballpark, then i messed them up by adding too much salt and it went downhill from there. oops. but the panna cotta itself was great. i replaced the vanilla extract in the recipe with a vanilla bean (you heat part of the cream and mix the rest with the yogurt, so the vanilla bean steeps in the heated cream).

*
compote
this is actually a polish drink, not the typical american/european concoction that is composed of dried fruits cooked together. we wanted a non-alcoholic drink that wouldn't be too heavy, and would balance with the chocolate, and this is what we came up with. basically, it's a fresh fruit juice/fruit tea. you boil fruit with water and then add sugar, and voila, you have a great, mild but fresh-tasting drink. we used about a gallon and a half to two gallons of water with three pears, three peaches, and three apples. this gets better when you have better fruit, so the best time to make this is in the summer rather than in the winter.

recipes will be posted soon when it's not past my bedtime.

*

so my general thoughts on this party are that it was fun, expensive, and we almost got the timing right. we intended to do a port wine granita between the main course and dessert, as a breather, but it wasn't done by the time we wanted to serve it, so it's still in the freezer. people were really wanting dessert by the time they finished dinner, anyway - we had announced the order of the courses in the meal so people would know what was in everything (so as not to have any unpleasant surprises, allergy and food-preference wise). i wonder if the desire to have dessert is more common in the buffet-style dinner party than the sit-down-at-a-table-style dinner party.

since we have real silverware and dinnerware we used it, but this created an immense amount of mess. it coordinated pretty well - this is the closest i've gotten to being on time (we ate at about 7:30, 7:45?) when doing a multiple-course dinner like this with somewhat complicated recipes. we got to do a bit of setup, which was good, but not the cleanup that one does in the kitchen beforehand, so the kitchen was a huge mess during the whole thing, sadly. hopefully i'll get better at this dinner party stuff as i continue to do them. in the meantime, somebody else should do one... as for the chocolate, it was an interesting experience to do a whole menu based on chocolate. i would do it again...just for a few people and not fifteen. still, there's nothing like cooking for lots of people.

orange-scented banana layer cake

carrie : and when we go to star, we could get -
me : pork loin!
carrie : yeah, that too...but i was thinking of ice cream.
(24 hours later)
carrie : last night i had a dream about rare meat...i think it was the pork loin.

* * *
i am having a minor allergic reaction to the tiny bit of chocolate-hazelnut shortbread dough that i ate. hmph. well, now the shortbread is in the oven and it shall be mine. hopefully the tea i'm drinking will make the itch in my throat go away. i sweetened it with lyle's golden syrup, which i used last sunday to make a caramel sauce. it's one of those british things you'll only understand when you use it. but it's perfect for caramel sauce - it just has this kind of caramel-sweet flavor to it. it's also the thickest liquid i've ever seen in my life. shake it, and it just doesn't move at all. wonder why it's so viscous. it's not as good a sweetener as honey, but it does the job, and when else am i going to use it?

the story about the pork : a couple days ago i came home to find carrie scarfing down some focaccia from star. while browsing, she came upon a pork loin sale - huge pork loins for $1.99/lb. we didn't go last night, but as of last night's desperate-must-have-ice-cream-and-tosci's-is-closed run, we are proud owners of a ten-pound pork loin. it was the runt of the lot, but had the best marbling and the least fat on top. we have plans for this pork loin...

* * *
(the shortbread comes out of the oven.)

carrie : we're missing one thing.
me : what?
carrie : milk.
me : we have cream...

* * *

whoever combined chocolate and hazelnuts was a genius. a genius. such a genius. the recipe we used was from the past issue of gourmet (which still has ugly covers, by the way), and the only substitution we made was hazelnuts for almonds. the almonds are probably a little more subtle and don't whack you upside the head like the hazelnuts, and certainly wouldn't draw as many comparisons to the ferrero rocher candy, but in all reality i prefer hazelnuts. they do taste a bit like the candy, but so does every other chocolate-hazelnut combination. the shortbread is tender but crumbly (note that this is when the shortbread is about 15 minutes out of the oven), and has, in addition to the chocolate-hazelnut flavor, a nice, rounded buttery flavor, and a bit of a crunch from the granulated sugar. i really like recipes like this one, where each ingredient has a clear and simple role in the flavor of the finished product, whether it lends something to texture, smell, or aesthetics.

to go back a few days to the place where i left off in my previous post, let's talk about the banana cake i made for alice's potluck. it was saturday night, i was tired and had no intention of going anywhere, but i wanted to make a banana cake. so...after perusing epicurious, i found a cake that perfectly suited the ingredients i had on hand. more specifically, i combined two recipes - one for a banana layer cake that used oil (not butter, of which i had half a stick left in the house) and one for a chocolate buche de noel. i used the layer cake from the banana cake recipe, and the gelatin-stabilized, orange-zested whipped cream from the buche de noel. the whipped cream is fantastic because it has very little sweetener in it, and so it's really a fantastic foil for anything that's heavy or really intense. i didn't have any vegetable oil, so i used olive oil and crossed my fingers (it was fine). i also didn't have any vanilla, so i used orange oil instead, thus making the commitment to a banana-orange cake rather than a straight banana cake. the original idea had been a boston cream pie, essentially, with banana cake in place of the vanilla sponge cake - kind of like bananas foster as a cake. i thought the pure flavors of the cream and a caramel sauce would be great with the banana cake. as it happened, i added another flavor that maybe wasn't really the right thing to do, but it went over fine at the potluck.

i had bought the cream - four pints of it, mind you - when it was on sale at star market, 2 pints/$3. quite the deal, though perhaps not when you go through said pints of cream in a week and a half. good thing i didn't eat all of it myself, huh? anyway, the abundance of cream gave me the vision of thin layers of cake sandwiched with layers of pillowy whipped cream. it was saturday, though, and the potluck was on sunday, so i stabilized the whipped cream for two reasons - one, so that it would hold up overnight, and two, so that the cream would withhold the pressure of the heavy cake.

we also made a quiche. i made the crust from richard sax's home desserts, and i was afraid the dough would never come together. finally it did, and then i worried that it would be tough. well, it was fine. it was flaky enough - it could have had a bit more butter - but quiche is rich enough without having equally rich pastry. this quiche was also made from what we had on hand on sunday afternoon (by which time my parents had replenished my stocks of butter) - a mixture of parmesan, cheddar, gruyere, and herbed goat cheese; eggs, cream, and milk; and broccoli, onions, and caramelized onions leftover from making pizza. it turned out well, though, despite the slapdash nature of putting it together. i like quiche and bread pudding because you can really mess with the ratio of eggs and cream before it ruins it. quiche is certainly more susceptible to mediocrity than bread pudding, because the egg-cream custard is front and center, but it's still pretty flexible. i can't remember the last time i've ended up with a bad quiche with respect to the filling.

life in the cutcat kitchen has been fairly uneventful since the potluck. yesterday carrien and i made dinner, though. we made a spinach-cream sauce for pasta (bucatini rigate) from our incredibly sandy boston organics spinach, our remaining pint of cream, parmesan cheese, onions, and rosemary that we sneaked home with us from central kitchen - it had had a former life as a garnish. the sauce, loosely based on the spinach cream sauce from how to cook everything, was fantastic. i really like the combination of spinach, cream, and onions in the first place, and the rosemary was a surprise welcome addition. add the salt of the parmesan cheese, which also thickens the sauce, and you have a great, viable pasta sauce that's more than creamed spinach. we also boiled some green beans and broccoli and tossed 'em with olive oil. can't go wrong there.

and without further ado, here are some recipes.

orange-scented banana layer cake
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup mashed ripe bananas
1/2 cup olive oil or vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1/4 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon orange oil
2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

4T boiling water
2t gelatin
2 1/2c cream + 1/2c cream
1/8c to 1/4c sugar
2t orange zest

caramel sauce (optional)

1. mash the bananas coarsely, add sugar, and whip with an electric mixer until smooth. add the oil and beat until smooth. add eggs, buttermilk, and orange oil, and beat until smooth.

2. sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt. add to the wet ingredients and mix until combined. grease and flour two 9" cake pans and divide the batter between the pans. preheat the oven to 350F and bake the cakes for 25-30 minutes, until golden brown on top and a tester comes out dry. cool the cakes and then split into two layers each.

3. to make the whipped cream, sprinkle the gelatin over the boiling water. let stand 10 minutes. heat the 1/2c cream until warm and then slowly stir into gelatin mixture. let the gelatin mixture cool to room temperature. whip the 2 1/2c cream until it reaches soft peaks. add the orange zest and sugar and whip until combined. add the gelatin mixture and whip to stiff peaks. if the gelatin mixture is not at room temperature, the whipped cream will curdle; stirring the gelatin mixture will help it cool down.

4. assemble the cake : place one layer on the cake platter. smooth about 1/4c caramel sauce on the layer, if you're using it. spread a quarter of the whipped cream (1 1/2 to 2 cups) on the layer and repeat until you have used all of the layers. you'll have four layers of cake and four of cream, ending with a layer of cream on top. refrigerate at least two hours, and preferably overnight. before you serve the cake, drizzle it with caramel sauce.

[makes 10-12 servings]

caramel sauce (from the pie and pastry bible, via epicurious)
1c sugar (7 ounces = 200 grams)
1T Lyle's Golden Syrup (refiner's syrup) or corn syrup (0.75 ounce = 21 grams)
1/4c water (2 ounces = 60 grams)
1/2c heavy cream, heated (4 ounces = 116 grams)
2T unsalted butter, softened (1 ounce = 28 grams)
1t pure vanilla extract (i generally omit this)

1. in a heavy saucepan (with a 5-cup or larger capacity), stir together the sugar, syrup, and water until the sugar is completely moistened. heat, stirring constantly, until the sugar dissolves and the syrup is bubbling. stop stirring completely and allow it to boil undisturbed until it turns a deep amber. immediately remove it from the heat and slowly and carefully pour the hot cream into the caramel. it will bubble up furiously.

2. use a high-temperature heat-resistant rubber spatula, or a porcelain or wooden spoon to stir the mixture until smooth, scraping up the thicker part that settles on the bottom. if any lumps develop, return the pan to the heat and stir until they dissolve. stir in the butter. the mixture will be streaky but become uniform after cooling slightly and stirring.

[makes about 1 cup]

store at room temperature, up to 3 days; refrigerated, at least 3 months. to reheat: if the caramel is in a microwave-safe container at room temperature, microwave it on high power for 1 minute, stirring twice. if cold, it will take a few seconds more. alternatively, place it in a bowl in a pan of simmering water and heat, stirring occasionally, until warm, about 7 minutes.

notes
* refiner's or corn syrup helps to prevent the caramel sauce from crystallizing when stirred. It also lowers the caramelization temperature.

* unrefined sugar, which contains a small amount of natural molasses — which caramelizes at a slightly lower temperature — provides a flavor that is deliciously reminiscent of butterscotch. the "impurities" in unrefined sugar can cause crysallization so if you use it, care must be taken not to stir the caramel too much.

* to further prevent crystallization, try not allow any sugar crystals to get on the sides of the pan, and be sure to moisten all the sugar with the water. stop stirring entirely as soon as it comes to a boil.

* use a pan that conducts heat well (such as unlined copper, aluminum, or anodized aluminum) so that cooking stops soon after it is removed from the heat. do not use a pan with a tin or nonstick lining, as its melting point is below that of caramel.

* soaking utensils in hot water will remove hardened caramel.

* after the caramel is prepared, do not stir it too much, as this may eventually cause crystallization.

pasta in a spinach-cream sauce
2T olive oil
1 large onion, sliced thinly into rings
10 oz fresh spinach, washed
1c cream
salt + pepper, plus a bit of sugar
1/2T fresh rosemary, chopped fine (optional)
1/2c microplaned parmesan cheese (please don't use pregrated or kraft parmesan cheese)
1/2 lb to 1 lb pasta (preferably a ridged long noodle pasta)

1. heat the olive oil in a medium skillet, over medium heat. when it's hot, add the onions and stir. saute until soft and translucent, about 5-7 minutes. add the spinach (it might overflow the pan but pack it down) and cover it. let the spinach cook until it's wilted. remove the cover and let cook uncovered.

2. add the rosemary. in a separate large pot, start heating water to cook the pasta. when the water is boiling, add the pasta and cook it (drain it when it's done). let mixture cook until the water has almost completely evaporated. as it cooks, break up the spinach into bits with a spatula (it should be soft enough for this to be easy).

3. add the cream and simmer until the mixture is fairly thick, about 10-15 minutes. add salt, pepper, and sugar to taste. stir in the cheese until it's cooked. toss the sauce with the pasta and serve.

[serves 4]

chocolate hazelnut shortbread
1/2c whole hazelnuts
1c flour
5T sugar
2T cocoa (preferably valrhona - this is not a recipe in which you could use cheap cocoa)
1/4t salt
1/2c butter

1. pulse nuts with flour, sugar, cocoa, and salt in a food processor or blender until very finely chopped. if you're using a blender you might have to stir up the ingredients a couple times so the mixture is fairly homogenous.

2. if you're using a food processor, add the butter in small pieces and pulse until a dough forms. if you're using a blender, dump the dry ingredients into a medium bowl and cut in the butter until a dough forms - don't overwork the dough.

3. press dough evenly into an ungreased 9" square baking pan. cut dough into 16 squares with a sharp knife, then cut squares diagonally to make a total of 32 triangles (optional - you can make whatever shapes you want, but follow this cutting process).

4. bake until cookies are dry to the touch, 15 to 17 minutes. while cookies are hot, recut in the pan. cool completely in the pan.

[makes 32 small cookies]

the last piece of pizza

has taken refuge in my stomach. i eyed it, all lonely on the glass saucer, and put it out of its misery. i don't think i can properly express how much i love cooking from the random mix of stuff in the fridge. we had defrosted the pizza dough the day before, but didn't actually have any pizza cheese or sauce. however, the trip to star, despite its proximity, seemed somewhat useless if we only needed one thing, so we decided to make do. for the sauce, we cooked down a tomato and added some jarred vodka sauce. our mix of cheese was cheddar, gruyere, and herbed goat cheese. and for toppings, we piled on leftover chicken from the roast chicken earlier in the week, caramelized onions, sliced tomatoes, broccoli, slivered sundried tomatoes, and some raw onions.

it turned out surprisingly well. i expected it to be fine, but somewhat odd given the motley assortment of ingredients we put on it, without any real thought towards whether or not it would actually go together. incidentally, i finished the soup from the roast chicken - the broth was a bit weak, so i got some carrots and onions and caramelized them, then added the broth. i have no idea if it made a difference, but i used honey to sweeten the soup a bit this time instead of regular sugar. i also sliced the carrots thinly, partly as an experiment to see if it was a more pleasing shape to eat than thicker slices of carrot, but more out of a desire to play with my knife. other than the carrots, though, the soup was largely the same as it was last time. it was much darker than the last soup from the color of the caramelized onions and carrots (which i then strained out) - i caramelized about three or four cups of vegetables. i also added less pastina, which worked out great this time.

beets, and an ode to roast chicken

right now i'm sitting at the kitchen counter, my impending chicken broth on obsessive surveillance for the purpose of skimming off any foam that dares break the surface of the broth. i have vague memories of michael ruhlman's book about food school and a raft, but i can't remember if i'm supposed to skim it off or not, so off it comes.

the countertop on which my laptop sits is completely clean. gloriously clean, in fact, because i am anal and it shows, in the wonderfully white, white countertop.

yesterday v came over for dinner and carrien and i made dinner. carrien and i had talked about making risotto the day before, but didn't make set plans until about 7 the next evening. in anticipation of beet risotto, which we had looked since we had beets from our boston organics delivery a few weeks ago, i wrapped the beets in foil and stuck them in the oven to roast. they were a bit squishy and wrinkly but i washed 'em, foiled 'em, and hoped for the best.

i also diced our jewel yams, roasting half of them at a 1/2" dice and leaving the rest in a 1/4" dice for the risotto. as it so happens, we ended up making a regular risotto with a bit of the diced yam, veal piccata, roasted yams, and a beet salad. risotto is, after all, best when it has nothing in it but onions. about the veal piccata - carrien had had some veal she'd been needing to use as it had been in the freezer for a while, and we happened to have lemons around because i'd caved and added more lemons to my preserved lemons. hopefully adding more lemons halfway through the cycle won't mess 'em up too much. the beet salad was simply the roasted beets, peeled and sliced, with a bit of leftover lettuce and a dill-cider vinegar vinaigrette. it was pretty good - i was afraid that the vinaigrette was too acidic, but it was fine once it was paired with the beets.

anyway, back to the chicken broth. it's been on the stove for an hour or so and i'd like to go to sleep soon, so i just turned the heat up. i may have committed suicide flavor-wise, but let's just remember the millions of women who have been making chicken soup for the past few millennia. how many of them do you think overheated their chicken broth at one point or another? yeah.

i roasted another chicken today (we have one left in the freezer). this time, i stuffed it with what was essentially a meatloaf mix. hey, i had some ground pork around that i needed to use. there were leftover 1/4" yam dice, too, so i roasted that and added it to the mix. other ingredients included diced onions (raw), a bit of soy sauce, salt and pepper, sugar, lemon zest, thyme, some ripped up toasted wheat bread, and wheat breadcrumbs. oh, and a beaten egg. it seemed like it would stay together. i put the meatloaf mix in the fridge and let it sit overnight, hoping that the lemon zest and thyme would infuse the mixture. as it happens, only about a third of it actually fit in the chicken's cavity. the rest of it i just made into a small meatloaf. it went fine with the chicken, but i have to say it's excellent as meatloaf, because the yams caramelize at the edges of the pan, and it gets all crunchy at the edges.

now, if only the chicken broth would be done. ignore the fact that i don't actually know what "done" means when referring to chicken broth. you know, there's nothing more satisfying than roasting a chicken. first you get to trim off all the hunks of fat, then you get to separate the skin from the breast so you can stuff it with herb butter, then you get to rub the whole thing with salt and sugar...you roast the thing, and it turns this wonderful, rich shade of golden brown, and the pan drippings turn into gravy. and then you're done? oho, maybe you thought so! then you get to pick the whole thing apart to get all the meat off, and so you can make soup with the bones. after the broth is finished, you fish out the bones, and you get to be all anal again and pick off any bits of meat from the boiled bones. while the broth was simmering, you got to skim off the foam. and then you get to strain the broth and let it sit so you it cools enough for you to skim off the fat. and voila - your chicken has yielded every single bit of meat on its bones, from the big pieces off the breast to the slivers of dark meat off the neck. ah...

winter meatloaf
1 lb ground pork
2T fresh thyme, chopped
1 to 1 1/2 cups yams or butternut squash, diced to 1/4" pieces
1 onion, diced
lemon zest from two lemons
5 slices of wheat bread
1T soy sauce
1t salt
1T sugar
1 egg, beaten

1. preheat the oven to 375F. toss the yams with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper, and roast until tender, about 15 minutes. set aside and let cool.

2. toast the bread. rip two slices into small pieces. put the rest of the bread (coarsely torn) into a blender or a food processor and process until you have fresh breadcrumbs. you should have about a cup of breadcrumbs.

3. put the meat in a large bowl and break it up a little. add the rest of the ingredients and mix until just combined. don't overmix - it will toughen the meat. cover the mixture and let stand overnight.

4. preheat the oven to 350. transfer meatloaf to a loaf pan and bake 45 minutes to an hour, until the top is slightly browned and the edges have caramelized.

[makes 1 loaf - serves 4-6]

ice cream in the city

right before star market closed at midnight, carrie and i were standing in front of the ice cream case, contemplating. we contemplated for about 5 seconds, and then made our selections : peanut butter cup ice cream and chocolate chip cookie dough (breyer's was on sale, 2/$5).

it was only when i got home and was fiddling with this blog that i realized that star never really has the flavors of ice cream that i want. the breyer's flavor that i really want is the vanilla ice cream with black cherries in it. does star carry it? nooo, siree. hmph. it couldn't have been a dream when i had it at home...

chocolate-covered digestive biscuits for $4/package and no good ice cream flavors - i must be the only one outraged at star, otherwise this would not be the situation. i wonder how star picks its flavors. okay, okay, its taste isn't totally bankrupt. i appreciate the red sox flavors (especially the peanut butter one). i appreciate the dublin mudslide ben and jerry's. what i don't appreciate is the lack of good fruit flavors! i can deal with the digestive biscuits (they're 99 cents at super 88) but the ice cream makes me sad.

as you can see, i'm just a bit of an ice cream junkie.

dill, dill, and more dill

did you know that trader joe's (at least the one on boylston) now carries a brand of herbs called "infinite herbs"? if only the "infinite" were true. at any rate, the herbs are perfectly good and a whole 60 cents cheaper than herbs at star or whole foods, so i might have to make weekly treks out to trader joe's. sadly, when i moved in june, i moved closer to star and harvest, but farther away from trader joe's and the river street whole foods ("the mother ship"). when i went to get my hair cut i stopped by and made the herb discovery, and pounced on some thyme and dill. thyme is my reigning favorite herb, with tarragon a distant second.

i bought the dill because i like the way it smells. i have had it infrequently in the past few years; notably in a warm green bean salad carrie made for a menu once, and when my mother makes little toasts for special events - she spreads the toasts with cream cheese that has been blended with onions, ham, and dill, and puts a slice of tomato on top of that. carrie and i, needing to use it, decided on a tunisian fish soup, the green bean salad, and some dill-cheddar biscuits. all right, carrie decided to make the soup, and i made some things to go along with it.

the fish soup is a typical tunisian soup : spices, tomatoes, broth, and cilantro/parsley simmer for a while, then you add the fish. it smells undeniably tunisian in a very appetizing way. while carrie was in lab, i made the biscuits as i also made sugar cookies for rob's christmas present, which was longtime overdue. i have discovered the joys of having the tv on when i cook - it provides a source of background noise that's rather pleasant. i could also turn on music, but it's nice to have something to look at once in a while.

the biscuits are from a recipe on epicurious and i didn't really change anything. i did use "mediterranean style" yogurt from trader joe's, because that's what i had on hand. the difference? the mediterranean style yogurt is sharper in yogurt flavor, and is much thicker - more like a thick sour cream, really. it's somewhat close to creme fraiche. anyway, i got enough of it into the biscuit dough before i polished off the rest of it with some honey. yogurt and honey is an excellent combination, especially for those of us who still need to acquire the taste of really strong yogurt.

i would really recommend this biscuit recipe, although i would say that they're more like a cross between biscuits and scones. they are wonderful right out of the oven - all crispy on the outside - but they absorb moisture overnight, even when packed into an airtight container, so you might want to toast them in the toaster oven before consuming the leftovers the next day. i might also increase the dill a bit next time i make these, but that's just because i like dill. i've been eating them broken up in soup...bread soaked with soup is such a lovely wintertime food.

i also really like the green bean salad. suffice it to say, i am no great hand at steaming vegetables because i have no patience. still working on that. the green beans were a bit crunchy, but the dressing is good, and i like adding tomatoes to this salad quite a lot, both for flavor and visual pleasure. it's supposed to be a warm salad, but i like it better cold - the leftovers, after having sat in the fridge for twenty-four hours, were simply fantastic.

oh, and for the record - i drank parmalat straight for the first time (i've been using it for baking) and the verdict is in...suffice it to say i will not be buying parmalat any time soon. it just doesn't taste like milk. it tastes like milk that has been incubated in cardboard for a very, very long time. ew. i like it when milk tastes like milk.

tunisian aromatic fish soup with potatoes
4c water
1 lb potatoes, peeled, halved lengthwise, cut crosswise into 1/2-inch-thick slices
2 medium tomatoes, peeled, quartered
3 garlic cloves, chopped
2T chopped fresh mint
1 1/2T fresh lemon juice
1t paprika
1/2t ground cumin
1/4t dried crushed red pepper
1/3c plus 1T finely chopped cilantro or parsley
1 lb 1-inch-thick firm white fish fillets (such as cod, haddock or sea bass)
3T olive oil

1. combine first 9 ingredients in large pot. add 1/3 cup cilantro and bring to boil. reduce heat, cover and simmer 20 minutes. uncover and simmer 10 minutes.

2. add fish and olive oil and simmer until fish is cooked, about 10 minutes. using back of spoon, break up fish into smaller pieces. season soup to taste with salt and pepper. ladle soup into bowls. sprinkle with 1 tablespoon chopped cilantro and serve.

[makes 4 servings]

cheddar-dill biscuits
2c all-purpose flour
2t baking powder
1t sugar
1/2t baking soda
1/2t salt
5T cold unsalted butter, cut into bits
2 oz coarsely grated extra-sharp cheddar (3/4 cup)
1 1/2T chopped fresh dill
3/4c whole-milk plain yogurt
1/3c whole milk

1. in a large mixing bowl, place flour, baking powder, sugar, baking soda, and salt and stir until well combined. add butter and pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal.

2. add cheddar and dill stir until combined.

3. whisk together yogurt and milk, then add to dry ingredients and stir with a spatula until just combined and dough comes together. don't over-mix, or your biscuits will be tough.

4. spoon 12 (1/4-cup) mounds of dough about 2 inches apart onto an ungreased large baking sheet and bake until puffed and pale golden, 12 to 15 minutes.

[i scaled this by 1 1/2 and it made 24 normal-sized biscuits]

green bean and tomato salad with dill
2 lbs green beans, trimmed and halved
3 tomatoes, chopped or sliced however you like them in salad (i sliced them, then halved the slices)
2T cider vinegar
1/3c olive oil
2t dill seeds (i omitted these because i didn't have any)
1/4c chopped fresh dill

1. in a steamer set over boiling water steam the beans, covered, for 6 to 8 minutes, or until they are just tender.

2. while the beans are steaming, in a blender blend together the vinegar, the oil, the dill seeds, the chopped dill, and salt and pepper to taste. alternatively, whisk together the dressing ingredients in a bowl; if you're using the dill seeds you may want to crush them a bit before you put them in the dressing.

3. transfer the beans and tomatoes to a serving bowl and toss them with the dressing.

[makes 8 servings]

and last but not least, here is the recipe for rob's cookies. they're basically linzer cookies minus the cough-and-choke-inducing powdered sugar. this recipe combines my favorite (and standard) butter cookie recipe with a raspberry jam filling.

rob's favorite cookies
for the cookies
2c all-purpose flour
1/2t salt
1/4t baking powder
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened
1c sugar
1 large egg
1/2t vanilla
1t almond extract (for regular sugar cookies, omit the almond extract)

for the filling
1 large jar seedless raspberry jam (i use smucker's)
1t lemon zest
1/2c amaretto or raspberry liqueur (optional)

1. make the cookies : in a large bowl, cream the butter, then mix in the sugar until well combined. add the egg and mix until well combined; then add the vanilla and almond extracts. add the flour, baking powder, and salt and mix until the dough comes together and is mixed well. while you want the dough to be a uniform texture and color, you don't want to overmix or your cookies will be tough. divide the dough in half and form it into two discs. wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least an hour.

2. preheat the oven to 350F. roll out one of the discs of dough between two sheets of plastic wrap, to about 1/8" thickness (slightly thicker is ok, but 3/16" is as thick as it should be). slide onto a cookie sheet and place in the freezer for 10-15 minutes, until the dough is stiff. put the dough on your work surface and peel off the top layer of plastic wrap. use cookie cutters to cut out your cookies (i'm partial to 3" and 2" square fluted cookie cutters). i find that the best way to do this is to cut all 3" cookies and transfer them to the cookie sheet, then cut out the middles of half of the cookies once they're on the cookie sheet. you'll get more nicely-shaped cookies that way. when you're cutting the middles of the cookies out, press the cutter down and leave it there. to get the middle out, lift the cutter so that one corner is still stuck in the cookie, and basically dig the middle out - this will lift the corner of the part you're cutting out so that you can lift it out entirely, without messing up the rest of the cookie. i like to have four cookies across on the cookie sheet, alternating top and bottom, so they cook evently.

3. when you're done filling a cookie sheet, stick it in the freezer for 5-10 minutes. bake in the middle of the preheated oven for about 10-12 minutes, until they're pale golden (and golden on the edges). you might want to watch them so they don't overbake. if they do overbake, it's purely an aesthetic consideration - the cookies will still be quite good. let cool for a few minutes, then transfer to a plate. reroll the scraps of dough and finish making cookies.

4. make the filling : in a saucepan, combine the raspberry jam, lemon zest, and liqueurs (if using). heat over medium heat and simmer until the mixture is reduced by half. stir every now and then so the sugar in the jam doesn't burn; you will want to watch this fairly carefully. this takes maybe 20 minutes or so, depending on whether you add liqueur - it will take less time if you don't use the liqueur.

5. assemble the cookies : while the filling is still warm, take a cookie top, flip it over and brush its underside with filling. place on a cookie bottom and spoon a teaspoon of filling in the cutout, spreading it to fill the cutout. since the filling will be hot, take care that you don't drip it on the cookie. place on a plate and let cool. don't stack the finished cookies while they're cooling, or they'll stick together. if you aren't going to serve these at once, you might want to sprinkle the exposed filling with granulated sugar once the cookies have cooled, since the filling will still stick to anything, including reynolds release wrap. do not use powdered sugar. store in an airtight container. the cookies, after they've cooled, will retain their crispy nature but will absorb a bit of moisture from the filling and end up as crispy-chewy.

[makes about 2 1/2 dozen 3" square cookies]

dinner digest

so the quiche, by the way, was quite good. it needed a couple more eggs - it was on the creamy side - but i far prefer deep-dish quiches to the regular tart or pie kind. it lasted exactly three and a half days before it was completely gone... the crust was fine with the filling, but on its own, it became an over-salty, over-floury mess. ew. the pie crusts i turned out for the pumpkin pie back in december was light years better, which just goes to show that i need to make more pies so that i remember the proportions of butter, flour, and water correctly.

monday night carrie and i cooked - i roasted the pork loin that i had gotten from my mother. it's the first time i've cooked pork loin, and it turned out pretty well. the sauce turned out to be a little bitter; i'm not sure why. perhaps from the rum in the marinade? (the sauce was essentially the marinade, with the alcohol cooked out and the pan juices added to it.) i had forgotten what you're supposed to add to it to make it less bitter - it was either sugar, lemon juice, or butter, so i just added a little bit of each. to go with the pork loin, we made basil-parsley pesto with our new blender, courtesy of my mother, a sale at bed-bath-and-beyond, and those 20% coupons they mail out constantly. we also had a salad (lettuce and corn with a goat cheese-pine nut-balsamic vinaigrette) and sauteed broccoli and cauliflower, which i attempted to do in the style of my mother, but which i obviously need to practice. good think i like broccoli and cauliflower.

last night we cooked as well, though with much less fanfare - just fried rice with mushrooms, a bit of zucchini, peas, eggs, and onions. it was quite good, though, and looking at what we've got left, a box from boston organics, when we cook like normal people, will last us pretty much a week. ah, the life of students...

wedding-cake-tasting

when i was younger, my mother used to buy my grandmother's birthday cake at konditor meister. their cakes were these enormous, wonderful confections - a dark, dark chocolate cake filled with whipped cream and cherries, with a bit of rum. on top, they were decorated with huge chocolate-covered strawberries. in keeping with the times, we weren't allowed to eat the frosting (buttercream). i'll have you know that i gleefully eat frosting now, although my mother's ploy worked to a degree - my tolerance for frosting is still pretty low and i can't stand supermarket frosting, where you can still taste the grit of the sugar. there are certain occasions when the grit of sugar is an acceptable texture, for example, whipped cream. frosting is not one of those occasions.

i have no idea how my mother found konditor meister, but we went there for a cake tasting yesterday for nora and charles' wedding. the cake-tasting room is behind the retail bakery (there are separate entrances - the cake-tasting room has the nice one). it looks like someone's parlor - it's a dead ringer for a wedding-related place, with its faux-victorian wood-and-velveteen chairs, polished wood tables, and silver cake platters up the wazoo. the only giveaway that you're not in a wedding wonderland is that you look out the window and see...the rest of braintree.

however, the cake makes up for it. they were pretty busy when we got there, but soon enough brought over a bunch of cakes to try. nora and charles had pretty much decided on a chocolate cake rather than the traditional "gold" (see, there's the whole branding thing going on again...gold cake = yellow cake, but if you were the typical american and had a choice between "gold" and "yellow," what would you pick?), but we tried a bunch of yellow cakes anyway. there were a couple of fruity cakes that were good - mango and lemon - but they aren't particularly wedding-y, in my opinion. the ideal wedding cake is decadent but not heavy, elaborate but not tacky. anyway, nora and charles chose a chocolate cake with raspberry mousse (a good choice because the chocolate mousses were all gritty, which was a disappointment), with a buttercream frosting. the icing design is quite pretty, and on the modern side - it looks like um...a cross between fans and seashells (in a line-drawing, japanese wood-print kind of way) piped all over the cake. the cake will also have buttercream roses on it, just on the top.

anyway, if you've ever gone either to a wedding cake tasting or the chocolate bar at the meridien hotel, the experience you get of having eaten too many rich things in not enough time is the same at each place. you look at these slices of cake and think, "oh, i could definitely finish that." but then you factor in that it's 11am, and that there are now eight slices of cake on the table - the fact that the table is small makes it look like there is even more cake than there is - and you realize your eyes, once again, are much bigger than your stomach. despite the ease with which one becomes sated while eating cake, i told nora that if people don't eat their slices of wedding cake, i will eat all of the leftovers, because it would really be a shame if this cake went unloved like that.

what you see in the photo above is the box of patisserie that they sent us home with. we joked about them being gone by the time we got back to their house, but in reality, we each knew that we were kidding ourselves if we thought that was actually going to happen. the two front rows are chocolate-covered strawberries, and the last row contains a cream puff, two little mousse cups (one chocolate, one raspberry, with really remarkably good chocolate cups), and a mini eclair. maybe i'm just jaded, or have seen too many chocolate mice/penguins, but these tuxedoed strawberries are much cuter than burdick's chocolate mice and penguins.

a glut of cooking

it occurred to me that there are phrases that make recipes sound better to me (or to other people). for example, i always am attracted to recipes that include the word "icebox" in their titles: i get an image of a white refrigerator a la petit larousse in an immaculate, sunny 50s-era kitchen. perhaps i'm also attracted to the thought of opening the fridge to find it empty, save for a cake or a pie... another phrase that i don't particularly care about, but imagine other people do, is the "double-chocolate" or "triple-chocolate" appellation, which can mean anything from a combination of chocolate and cocoa to the inclusion of milk, dark, and white chocolates. also, "margarita," "drunken," "tequila," "heirloom," and any recipe where the title is in a different language. in all reality, your "pomme frites" are going to taste the same whether they're called pomme frites, frites, fries, chips, or deep-fried potatoes, but for many people the fact that they're eating "pomme frites" somehow makes them better. do they understand what the literal translation is? no. but they don't care - the only thing that matters is that it's in another language.

anyway, tonight we're eating leftovers from dinner yesterday: roast chicken, butternut squash-sage risotto, roasted potatoes and carrots, and green beans. keith and carrien got back yesterday, so i had intended to be in the middle of making dinner when they got back. the chicken was stuffed with an onion and half an orange, with sage-orange zest butter stuffed underneath the skin. same trussing as usual - foil around the legs and wings pinned with toothpicks. i also roasted some carrots and potatoes around the chicken. the risotto was pretty typical: render the fat from some bacon, saute the onions, add the rice and liquid. the squash pretty much melts into the rice and colors it a beautiful orange color. i used delicata squash that came with our boston organics shipment, and a bunch of roasted butternut squash my mother gave me. carrie also made some green beans (boiled, then finished in some extra bacon fat).

the risotto was quite good, and we made a lot of it - 2 1/2 cups rice, dry, which the three of us consumed a small amount of on thursday, then ate and fed to our friends on friday, and finished on saturday with our friends. note to self : a little rice goes a long way. the chicken was also quite good - the salt-sugar-pepper-paprika mixture on the skin always gives the skin this wonderful, salty-sweet crackling skin. mmm. after dinner i picked off all of the extra meat, and made soup with the carcass. it was also pretty basic : carrots and onions, divided, and the first half sauteed with thyme. i added the chicken bones and sauteed them briefly, and then added water. i boiled the chicken for a while - maybe an hour or two - and then added the other half of the vegetables, sauteed separately. i also picked out the bones and added some diced potatoes. finally, we added some pastina (too much, it turned out - i am not good at estimating these things!). probably, the most important addition was the thyme and the salt, pepper, and sugar - it's always important to put in enough of all of the seasonings, because if you oversalt soup you can always water it down a little, whereas if you add too little it will simply be flavorless. i am also a big fan of balancing the salt with sugar. anyway, this was probably the only chicken soup i've ever liked beyond my mother's chicken soup with pastina and tomatoes.

friday i had lunch with rob and rocco at bluefin, in the porter exchange. having just read an nytimes article about katsu don and tekka don, i ordered katsu don and shared an eel-sweet egg omelette roll with rob and rocco. mmm...katsu don is like the countless teriyaku rice bowls that i consumed during the summer from tokyo lunch box, except with better-seasoned rice and a wonderful combination of slightly sweet scrambled egg and fried pork. i surprised myself by eating the entire thing. however, then i didn't eat anything until rather late in the day.

eric had some friends over to watch various new episodes of shows on the sci-fi channel, and while they did so i made chocolate zucchini cupcakes for the brunch i was going to have on saturday. they turned out pretty well; since i didn't have any chocolate chips, i filled them with nutella and blueberry preserves. the recipe i used (from www.101cookbooks.com) reported that you have to watch them or they'll get overbaked. i thought this was slightly strange, as zucchini breads generally never require cautions like these, as the zucchini imparts ample moistness to the bread. however, i heeded it anyway, and probably for no reason - they were extremely moist on saturday.

for the brunch on saturday, we made baked eggs, french toast, crumpets, bacon, and carrie made a galette des rois for the epiphany. the french toast was standard, and could have been made with better bread (which then would have made it better), but it was the more economical choice. a little rum in the egg mixture went over pretty well, and i turned the leftover bread and egg mixture into a bread pudding. the recipe for the baked eggs is below, and is a modification of this recipe from epicurious, based on the ingredients i had on hand. it went over quite well, and slices very well. make sure that it's baked in the middle. i had assumed it would be quiche-like but it seems to need a bit more time than you would think than if it had been a quiche, which is to say that it should be completely set before you take it out. the galette des rois was excellent, probably because i really love almond paste, and the interior is, for all intents and purposes, almond paste (we used the almond paste that jessica made us).


i had made some caramelized onions for the brunch, and used the leftovers in a spinach-onion quiche that's currently in the oven (the quiche consumed most of the spinach from boston organics, and the rest i ate with some basil and a balsamic vinaigrette). it's a pretty typical quiche, with a mixture of cheddar, asiago, and gruyere for the cheese. it's also a deep-ish dish quiche, and we'll see how that works out instead of the typical pie-pan or tart-pan quiche. i'm a little worried that there wasn't enough butter in the crust, or it got overworked, or that i may have added too much water - it looked a little pale and doughy to me.

edit : hmm...i am really kind of ashamed to admit that i made this crust. it looks fine, but it's just...tasteless. obviously overworked, and i added too much water. hmph. the filling should still be fine, though (it needs to finish setting).

baked eggs with sundried tomatoes and thyme
1/8 cup sundried tomatoes, chopped fine
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
9 large eggs
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 1/2 cups coarsely grated extra-sharp Cheddar (6 oz)
1 cup whole-milk ricotta (8 oz)
1 cup grated asiago (2 oz)
1T fresh thyme, chopped fine

1. sift together flour, salt, and baking powder into a small bowl.

2. beat eggs in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until doubled in volume, about 3 minutes. add butter, flour mixture, and cheeses and mix well at low speed, then stir in tomatoes and thyme. 3. pour into a buttered 9.5-inch glass pie plate and bake in middle of oven until top is golden brown and a tester comes out clean, 30 to 35 minutes. let stand 5 minutes before serving.

[gourmet reports that this makes 6 servings; but those seem rather large unless this is the only thing you're having for breakfast. i would say that it's probably closer to 8-10 servings.]

chocolate zucchini cupcakes
the original recipe for these cupcakes can be found here.

1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1/4 cup melted butter
3/4 cup vegetable oil (note : i used olive oil because it was what we had, and it was fine)
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup buttermilk (i used the add-lemon-juice-to-milk trick and it curdled a bit, but turned out fine anyway)
2 cups grated zucchini
2 cups unbleached flour
1 cup cocoa, sifted
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda

1. pre-heat oven to 350F. lightly grease the muffin tins, or use muffin cups. if you aren't using muffin cups, greasing the muffin tins is essential to them coming out without breaking.

2. in a medium bowl mix together the sugar, butter and oil. beat in eggs one at a time until well incorporated. stir in vanilla, buttermilk, and zucchini.

3. in a separate bowl mix together all of the dry ingredients (if you wanted to be lazy like me, you could just add all of the dry ingredients directly to the wet ingredients). add the liquid ingredients and mix until well combined. spoon batter into large muffin pans. if you want to fill your cupcakes, fill the muffin tins a third of the way, spoon about a half-teaspon to a teaspoon of preserves or nutella on to the batter, and cover with more batter until the tins are almost full.

4. bake in the center of the oven for about 35 minutes (12 minutes for mini cupcakes). when they've completely puffed, they're done - you can check them with a toothpick if you like. wait for the tins to cool completely before you take the cupcakes out, or you will get increased breakage. once they've cooled completely cover loosely - they'll stay moist from the zucchini.

[makes 9 large cupcakes, 20 standard cupcakes, or 70 mini cupcakes.]

salted lemons...

with your sugared dates! ok, i've seen one too many disney movies.

i have begun incubating my preserved lemons, and have every hope that they turn into real preserved lemons at some point in the next 30 days. my other curing project for the month of january is bacon, to be made at some point later this month when i find a good butcher.

boston organics 1/04

i had completely forgotten that wednesdays are our boston organics days. sadly, it'll be another two weeks before we can get them back the green boxes we always forget to put out for them, but in the meantime, our fridge is basically full from the food my mother gave me and our delivery. in this week's box we got yams, a delicata squash, an avocado, potatoes, a cucumber, beets, carrots, lettuce, spinach, basil, and some cremini mushrooms that accidentally got left out of the above photo. also, the dishrack i got for the apartment arrived today, and i don't know why i didn't bother to look at how big the dishrack is, because it's huge! i mean, i suppose that's good, but the dishrack ideally goes to the left of the sink, and the new one doesn't fit there. oops. i put it on the right anyway; we'll see how it works.