foodlust

FINALLY - dinner in less than an hour!

2011-02-21T19:41:00.002-05:00

those of you who have cooked with me, or had dinner with me on a friday night, know that i am generally incapable of making dinner in less than an hour. in fact, usually i choose whatever preparation is most involved. well, not "most involved" in a fussy way - i just like to make sure that there is sufficient layers of flavor built up so that something simple can perform to its highest potential in your mouth. (take bolognese, for example: it's basically carrots, celery, onions, beef, pork, and tomatoes, but if you caramelize the vegetables properly before adding the tomatoes and then the meat, your sauce will taste that much better.)

so it is with great joy and satisfaction that i present to you a recipe that is delicious and doesn't take forever. this is based on the mustard-baked chicken thigh recipe from serious eats' eat for eight bucks column, and is essentially chicken thighs marinated, then seared, and finished in the oven. the time that the chicken takes in the oven also allows you to roast some sort of not-too-dense vegetable - i used asparagus in an attempt to use what i had on hand, and be a little healthy, but you can use whatever you like (ie, a thinnish layer of potato wedges). just make sure that the layer of vegetables will cook in about 15 minutes at high heat.

you can really adapt the marinade, the vegetables, and the sauce however you like, in terms of ingredients, but the preparation remains the same - much easier to put together than most things that i make! the only thing is that you must marinate the chicken ahead of time - the night before, really, but it takes about five minutes, so you can do it before you go to bed. the next day, your cooking time will be about 30-35 minutes, start to finish. really! i am being completely serious.

chicken in less than an hour

2T cider vinegar

3T maple syrup

1 1/2T olive oil

1 1/2T whole grain mustard

salt + pepper

4-5 chicken thighs, bone-in and skin on (1.5 lb)

1/2T vegetable oil

1/2T olive oil

1 bunch asparagus

1-2 large shallots or 1 small onion

1c chicken stock or 1/2c white wine

1 bay leaf or sprig of other fresh herb you have on hand

1. marinate the chicken the night before (or for at least an hour): in a cereal bowl-sized bowl, mix together the cider vinegar, maple syrup, 1 1/2T olive oil, and mustard. pat the chicken thighs dry and sprinkle with salt and pepper. dip each chicken thigh in the marinade and place in a gallon ziplock bag. pour excess marinade in the bag and seal it shut, making sure to squeeze the air out. refrigerate the chicken overnight, or at least an hour.

2. preheat the oven to 400F. heat the vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat until shimmering. open the bag of chicken and transfer the thighs to the pan, skin side down, shaking off excess marinade. reserve the extra marinade. if you have a splatter screen, put it over the skillet - the chicken thighs will sizzle. cook 6-10 minutes, until the skin is golden brown. flip over with a pair of tongs and let cook for 3-4 minutes, until browned.

3. meanwhile, prep whatever vegetable you have on hand, and toss it with the olive oil in a 9x9 glass baking dish. when the chicken is finished searing, turn the stove off and transfer the chicken to the baking dish, skin side up. bake the chicken for about 15 minutes, until it reaches 150-160F on a digital thermometer (smaller chicken thighs will take closer to 10 minutes).

4. while the chicken is finishing in the oven, pour off all the fat in the skillet except 1/2T; turn heat to medium. dice the shallots and saute with the bay leaf until translucent, 3-4 minutes. add the chicken stock and turn heat to medium-high to bring the liquid to a boil, scraping the pan to release browned bits. add the excess marinade and let the sauce reduce until it's syrupy.

5. when the chicken is done, remove it from the oven and let it rest while the sauce reduces. when the sauce is done, plate the chicken and vegetables and spoon the sauce over it.

[serves 4]

a couple of recipes for you

2011-02-14T20:27:00.002-05:00

ok, nothing fancy here - just wanted to share a few recipes with you. the first is a chocolate cake, like the one i use for everything (the stout cake), but for when you don't have beer on hand. it's much the same in consistency, and a little bit healthier! (note: a little bit. still...) it's a wonderful chocolate cake, keeps well, not too sweet. and, of course, moist despite not having any oil in it.

the second is one for snickerdoodle blondies. they turn out wonderfully chewy and are rife with cinnamon, like a dense, concentrated snickerdoodle - but i couldn't help thinking about all the butter in them as i ate one. so, i provide the recipe i used originally, but i bet you could use 1 1/2 sticks of butter and nobody would be the wiser (except your heart). the key here is to use good quality cinnamon - i tried vietnamese cinnamon for the first time and boy, was it good. more depth of flavor than the usual cinnamon, and intangibly sweeter without actually being sweeter. make these - i took a bowl of these babies to a friend's house as a pre-dinner snack (yes, of cookies) and the bowl was empty in no time.

lastly, i have a new chocolate chip cookie recipe for you. these turn out wonderfully - just thick enough, without thinned edges, with a mix of chocolate and wheat-y flavor. they stay nicely soft in the middles without the use of shortening (blegh. double blegh.). i have to say, though, that i am surprised. i have found a chocolate chip cookie that is actually better when baked up crisp - stick-it-in-your-coffee crisp, an amber golden brown. just before burnt. they are a beautiful marriage of chocolate and wheat and butter, and you will be a convert if you bake up just one pan of these in all of their crispy glory. i think the whole wheat flour really needs some time to develop and cook in the oven, so this time, forgo the soft chewy cookie for the one with superior flavor.

chocolate cake (for when no beer is on hand)

1c Dutch-process cocoa

2 1/3c flour

1 2/3c brown sugar

1 1/2t baking powder

1t espresso powder, optional

1 1/2t baking soda

1t salt

1 1/2c chocolate chips (8 oz....but honestly you can just use the whole bag), optional

3 eggs

1 1/2c whole milk

1T rum

1T cider vinegar (or white if that's what you have)

1 stick butter, melted

1. preheat oven to 350F. grease two 9" cake pans and line withparchment paper, or line a muffin tin with cupcake wrappers (you'll have two batches).

2. in a large bowl, whisk together the cocoa, flour, sugar, baking powder, espresso powder (if using), baking soda, salt, and chocolate chips.

3. in a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, and rum. stir egg mixture into the dry ingrdients, mixing until just combined (some dry streaks are fine).

4. stir in vinegar and melted butter until combined. spoon the batter into the prepared pans, filling the cups 3/4 full if making cupcakes. bake 23-25 minutes, until a tester comes out clean. if you made cakes, then wait 10 minutes, and invert onto plate, then flip back over onto a rack to cool.

[makes 24 cupcakes or two 9" cakes]

snickerdoodle blondies

2 2/3c flour

2t baking powder

1 1/2t vietnamese cinnamon

1/4t nutmeg

1c butter, softened

2c brown sugar

2 eggs

1T rum

2T sugar

2t vietnamese cinnamon

1. preheat oven to 350F. butter a 9x13 pan and line with foil, then butter the foil lightly.

2. in a medium bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

3. in a large bowl, cream the butter with an electric mixer, then add the brown sugar and beat until fluffy and completely combined. beat in the eggs one at a time, until completely combined, scraping the bowl after each addition. beat in the rum until completely combined, then mix in the dry ingredients on low until completely combined - your batter will be quite stiff.

4. scrape the batter into the pan and spread evenly with a spatula. in a small bowl, mix together the sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle over the batter. bake 25-35 minutes, until a tester comes out clean (the batter will rise, then fall). let cool to room temperature and cut into squares. small squares. the blondies will set up and become chewier as they cool.

[makes 24 2" square blondies]

whole wheat chocolate chip cookies

3c whole wheat flour

1 1/2t baking powder

1t baking soda

1 1/2t salt

2 sticks butter, softened

1c dark brown sugar, packed

1c sugar

2 eggs

1 1/2t rum

8 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped coarsely (i chopped up chocolate chips)

1. in a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

2. in a large bowl, cream the butter, then add both sugars and beat until fluffy and completely combined. beat in the eggs one at a time, until completely combined, scraping down the bowl in between each egg. beat in the rum. add the dry ingrdients and mix in on low, until completely combined.

3. scoop the dough out of the bowl with your hands and check to see that all of the flour has been incorporated. smooth and shape into a large roundish ball and wrap securely in plastic wrap. refrigerate dough for at least 12 hours (to allow the flour to absorb enough moisture) and up to 2 days.

4. preheat the oven to 350F. form tablespoons of the dough into round balls and place on baking sheets lined with foil or parchment paper. bake cookies 16-25 minutes, until the edges are golden and the tops are cracked. for best flavor, bake cookies until they are on the crisp side, completely amber-golden-brown.

[makes 36-40 cookies]

i like these so much i can't countenance giving them away

2011-02-04T16:03:00.007-05:00

it's the dead of the winter, and the gray skies have the happy consequence of making lemon taste like sunshine. there's nothing like eating something that you know is definitely out of season, you know? and i don't know about you, but i don't feel guilty at all.

what i do feel guilty about is that while i usually am happy to give away scads of baked goods, these hit the spot so well that i am thinking about keeping them all for myself. how big a pan of them did i make, you ask? oh, a paltry jelly roll pan's worth. and while i am actually using some of them in an experiment to see how they would fare frozen and thawed again (thus making it possible to eat them over a period of time...), there is no way that i really need to eat this many lemon bars. i just really, really want to.

the thing that is lovely about these lemon bars is that they have a thick enough shortbread crust that the bottom of it stays nicely crisp, while the middle gets imbued with moisture from the lemon custard. you get a nice gradient of soft to slightly soft to crisp, and it all tastes sharp, but not too sharp, because the mixture has a healthy dose of milk in it. the milk does double duty - it makes the custard creamier, and cuts the acidity of the lemons a bit, but not too much. also, these bars don't have too much crust or too much filling, and the result is a very lemon-y, custardy, crispy confection that tastes divine out of the fridge.

this is adapted from cook's illustrated - i accidentally put in twice as much milk, so then i compensated by adding a couple of eggs. i also subbed in flour for cornstarch - the recipe says it makes the crust more tender, but i'm not convinced by the idea of a tender shortbread. shortbread is crispy and tastes like caramelized butter, people! anyway, i have scaled it back down to a 9x13" pan, but this doubles well (though it takes about twice as long to bake - don't worry, the custard won't curdle or get hard). you could also make it as a tart, if you like, and serve it with...i dunno, meringue, whipped cream, things like that. btw, i don't dust lemon bars with powdered sugar because i hate inhaling sugar before eating something, but go ahead if you like.

lemon bars

crust

2c flour

2/3c sugar

1t salt

1 1/2 sticks butter

filling

5 eggs

1 1/3c sugar

3T flour

zest of 2 lemons

2/3c lemon juice from 3-4 lemons

2/3c whole milk

1/4t salt

1. to make the crust: lightly butter a 13x9" baking pan and line with parchment paper or foil (i used foil, it sticks better). lightly grease that layer, then apply one more layer crosswise over it. preheat the oven to 350F.

2. pulse flour, sugar, and salt in a food processor. add the butter in chunks and process to blend, 8 to 10 seconds, then pulse a few times until mixture is pale yellow and resembles coarse meal. you can also do this by hand - mix in the butter with your fingers or a pastry blender. sprinkle the mixture into the prepared pan and press into the pan, 1/2" up the sides with a thickness of about 1/4". chill for 30 minutes in the fridge, then bake until golden brown, 20-30 minutes (by "golden brown," i mean the butter should have started browning the crust a little, but don't toast it to death since it will go back in the oven to acquire more color and caramel flavor).

3. while the crust is baking, make the filling: in a medium bowl, whisk together the sugar and flour to blend. add the eggs and beat until mixed well. add the milk, lemon zest, lemon juice, and salt, and whisk until completely incorporated.

4. take the crust out when it's done, and leave the oven door open; reduce heat to 325F. immediately, while the crust is still hot, pour the filling into it. return the pan to the oven and bake until the filling is just completely set, 20-25 minutes (closer to 40 if you have doubled the recipe). let cool to room temp (at least 30 minutes, more if you've doubled the recipe), then cut into 2" squares with a knife, pizza cutter, or dough scraper.

[makes 20-25 bars]

note: i'm seeing how well these freeze and will edit this recipe when i have results!

edited 02-13: so, they freeze flawlessly. the single caveat is that these are really best for the first four days after you've baked them, as the crust retains some modicum of crispness. when they've sat for a week or been in the freezer, the crust absorbs moisture and the bars have a slightly "fudgier" mouthfeel, which i feel is not as desirable in lemon bars. but if you get cravings for lemon, freeze away! i know i will.

kill your heart with chocolate + toasted nuts

2011-01-12T19:18:00.004-05:00

those of you who know me well, know that i am not the biggest fan of nuts. i hate the way they get stuck in your teeth: not only little bits of the meat of the nut, but also flakes of skin that stick to your teeth. then you're struggling not to look weird while trying to get stuff off your teeth, because you're ocd and you can't stand when there's stuff on your teeth. suffice it to say that i do not have the best relationship with nuts.

suffice it to say that these cookies are one of the few items for which i will bear nut skins stuck to my teeth. these are deeply chocolaty from the unsweetened chocolate, with a slightly "wet" crunch from the toasted nuts (do not skip the toasting step!!!). they stay soft but are best the first two days after you make them - although magically, the nuts retain their crunch. make these: you won't regret it! then give most of them away so you don't eat them for breakfast and inadvertently kill your heart.

chocolate chubbies

(adapted from the sarabeth bakery cookbook)

8T butter

9 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped*

3 oz unsweetened chocolate, chopped

1/2c flour

1/2t baking powder

1/2t salt

3 eggs, room temp

1 1/4c sugar

2t dark rum

1 3/4c bittersweet chocolate chips (11 oz)

1 1/2c (5.5 oz) pecan halves

1 1/4c (4.5 oz) walnut halves

1. preheat oven to 350F. spread pecans and walnuts in a single layer on a baking sheet and toast 15 minutes. remove from oven, let cool 15 minutes, and break into pieces (size irregular, but don't break them into pieces that are too small). leave the oven preheated. while the nuts are toasting, you can chop the chocolate.

2. melt the butter and chopped chocolates together in a bowl over a double boiler (or on low heat in the microwave, in a heatproof or pyrex bowl; remove from microwave every two minutes to give it a stir), stirring to incorporate. remove bowl from heat and let stand, until cooled slightly.

3. in the meantime, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl. in a large bowl, whip the eggs on medium-high speed with an electric mixer until eggs are foamy and lightly thickened, ~30 seconds. add sugar and rum and whip on high speed until the mixture is very thick and pale yellow, about 4 minutes. reduce mixer speed to medium and beat in cooled chocolate, until completely incorporated.

4. add the flour mixture and mix on low speed until just incorporated (or fold in with a spatula). stir in the chocolate chips, pecans, and walnuts with a spatula, making sure that they are evenly distributed throughout the cookie batter. the dough will be soft, and stiffen up slightly as it sits.

5. using a 2-inch ice cream scoop (or a large spoon), scoop 2T balls of dough onto a baking sheet lined with a silpat or foil, 1 1/2" apart. bake 15-20 minutes, until cookies are set around the edges but still seem slightly underdone in the middle - be careful not to overbake. cool completely on the baking pans before removing (you may transfer the foil or silpat off the pan with the cookies on it, to do another batch.

*you may cheat with good-quality bittersweet chocolate chips if you are feeling lazy, or unfortunately didn't realize you didn't have any actual bittersweet chocolate in the house, like i did.

[makes 24-36 cookies; these keep for a week in an airtight container]

fall = apples + spices (and everything nice)

2010-11-08T20:44:00.003-05:00

ok, ok, i know it's been a long time. i've been taking care of things that needed to be taken care of, and i'm finally getting some good cooking and baking time in, these days. i'm in the process of looking for a really good apple cake - because really, what's better in the fall than a nice, spicy apple cake? well, besides chicken pot pie. anyway, i've tried three or four so far, and have discovered the following preferences:

- no oil-based cakes. because honestly, they never taste quite that good, and though moist, the crumb is never quite tight enough. i cannot condone an oil-based cake. butter is a flavor, people, and don't you forget it!

- i am looking for a spiced apple cake, in particular - it's fall! i quite enjoy the flavor of apple on its own, but that's another kind of cake (one which would pair apples with slivers of candied lemon...mmm...). it should be spicy, but not so much that it overpowers the apple.

- no exotic ingredients, and nothing that is too expensive (ie, apple butter)

- i like the idea of this as a cake that has a bit of chew to it - so nothing too moist. my connotations to overly moist cake is cold and slimy, so i just don't like to go there.

- i'm not a huge fan of nuts in cakes. i think i would actually enjoy walnuts in an apple cake, but generally i leave them out for the other no-nuts people.

- not too sweet: i am not a huge fan of cakes that are too sweet. i don't like undersweetened cakes either, though.

- i am so over these apple cake recipes that specify "medium apples" or "large apples". what, pray tell me, is a "medium apple"? a "large apple"? can't we go with a cup measure of grated apples instead? honestly. precision is a cornerstone of baking!

of the cakes that i've tried, one fails the exotic ingredients test, one fails the sweetness test, and one fails the oil-based cake texture test. we are just going to forget oil-based cakes altogether...we are going to forget that they exist. because we like flavor, yes? i am including the cake that fails the exotic ingredients test - it's just that it has a lot of apple butter in it, which is lovely, but a little expensive for a cake. the third...well, let's just say that the third is in development!

double-apple spiced bundt cake

(adapted from dorie greenspan)

2c flour

2t baking powder

1/2 baking soda

1t cinnamon

1/4t nutmeg

1/4t ground ginger

1/4t salt

1 1/4 sticks butter, room temp

1 1/2c brown sugar

2 eggs

1c apple butter

2 medium apples, peeled, cored, and grated

1c pecans or walnuts, toasted and chopped (optional)

1/2c raisins (or 1c raisins if you omit the nuts)

1. preheat oven to 350F. butter and flour a 10- or 12-cup bundt pan.

2. in a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and spices. in a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar for about five minutes (this develops the structure of the cake).

3. add the eggs, one at a time, incorporating each one completely before adding the next. add the apple butter on low speed. the mixture may appear to be curdled, but don't worry, that's fine.

4. using a spatula, fold in the grated apple until completely blended in. stir in the dry ingredients and mix until the flour is just completely incorporated. fold in the raisins and nuts (if using).

5. scrape the batter into the bundt pan and smooth the top. bake for about 50-55 minutes, until a tester comes out clean. cool the cake for five minutes, then invert onto a plate.

[serves 10-12; keeps in the fridge, wrapped, for a week.]

when everything changes; plus friday lunch

2010-06-11T15:14:00.002-05:00

so i've been at home in carlisle for about two weeks now; my new lease doesn't start until mid-july, and this was just the easiest thing to do logistically. it's weird having everything packed away in boxes, though - and it proves that you really can live without all your stuff. i think i just like having all the stuff around - a little clutter is somewhat comforting.

anyway, the upshot of this is that i have really been far too busy to cook anything. (as it happens, i do have a restaurant review in the works, but i'm going to wait until i'm not typing entries on my ipod for that.). you know how it goes: you don't want to clutter your fridge with more stuff when you're about to move, and then you pack up your stuff, then work gets busy, and you're not unpacked...this is partly why i haven't moved in five years. this is also how i managed to amass an entire kitchen's worth of kitchen tools, dishes, and utensils - independent of my roommates' stuff. yeah. it's a little obscene.

i did finally feel settled today, especially after my trip to whole foods yesterday (bedford WF < prospect st WF < river st WF < tribeca WF), so today i returned to my friday ritual of cooking and made lunch for my mom and me. cod was on sale at WF, so I'd gotten some with the idea of building a nice lunch from that. i was originally going to sear the cod, but in truth, i was lazy and did it en papillote instead, with some fresh tarragon and lemon zest. i plated the fish on a bed of slightly caramelized leeks, and added roasted potatoes and a quick watercress and mozzarella salad as accompaniments. i think that in the hustle and bustle if the past several weeks, i had really forgotten just how much i like the process of cooking: choosing proteins and vegetables, complementing them with other sides, planning out the sequence of steps to get everything on the plate while it's still hot. if i get it right, it's pretty satisfying. this lunch went pretty smoothly - i started prepping at about 11:15 and we sat down to eat at 12:30. i'm not really going to write up a recipe - this is pretty much the most basic and self-explanatory meal you could make. oh, but i did use foil instead if parchment, and the fish bakes for 15 minutes at 400. other than that, i did do a very basic vinaigrette for the salad, lemon juice and olive oil, plus a bit of honey to balance the bitterness of the watercress. so go to it!

Location:Sidney St,Cambridge,United States

3eme soiree du porc

2010-04-26T12:01:00.002-05:00

this recipe is for the weekend, as it takes up a large chunk of your day, but it has a pretty high upside. this is my take on the traditional mexican stew, posole - essentially a pork and hominy stew. i had pork neck bones in the freezer, as well as some pork ribs, and it all went in. i specifically chose cuts of meat with bones, for better flavor, and it definitely paid off - this is a hearty meal, with delicious porky flavor and a bit of sweetness from the corn. in the matchup between pork neck bones and oxtails, the former are a clear winner. for a really cheap cut of meat (granted, most of it is bones), you can't get more tender meat, with a slight slick of unctuous texture from the neck bones.

i also threw in a bunch of cabbage that was leftover from the pulled pork - i chopped it, sauteed it in bacon fat and pulsed it in the food processor to get it fine enough to go into the posole. it adds body and is healthy, too, with lots of vitamin k and c, and a good amount of dietary fiber. i left the cabbage out of the recipe, but in case you want to add it, i put in about two cups of food processed cabbage at first, then ended up adding the rest in after we'd had maybe a quarter of the stew for dinner, for a total of 1.5 small heads of cabbage.

we had this with cornbread, braised kale (i was distracted, so the kale was pretty bland, but good with the posole), and "guacamole" (insofar as mashed avocados with lime juice can be considered guacamole).

posole

2-3T vegetable oil

3-4 lbs pork neck bones

2 lbs pork ribs (country style, bone-in)

2T olive oil or rendered pork fat

1/2 head of garlic, minced

4 large onions, diced

1 package fresh oregano, chopped

3-4 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce

2 dried pasilla peppers

1 carton of chicken broth

1 carton of beef broth

cabbage (optional)

32 oz canned hominy

zest of 3 limes

1. in a large, not non-stick pot, heat the oil on medium-high heat. sear the pork neck bones on each side, in batches, taking care not to crowd the pan. set aside on a plate to rest.

2. add the olive oil or pork fat to the pot, let it heat over medium, and then add the garlic, onions, and oregano. stir together and let cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions are translucent and the garlic is slightly golden, about 10-15 minutes. scrape the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon to make sure the browned bits don't burn.

3. while the onion mixture is cooking, chop the pasilla peppers and chipotle peppers, and stir in 1/3c of chicken broth. microwave on medium for 2 minutes, then put through a food processor or blender. add this mixture to the onions and let cook a few minutes.

4. add the neck bones back into the onion mixture, and add enough broth to cover the meat. let simmer on medium (turn down the heat if it boils vigorously) for at least an hour, stirring occasionally to make sure nothing burns.

5. remove the pork neck bones and put on a plate in one layer to cool, and put the pork ribs into the broth-onion pot to simmer on medium to medium-low. when the pork neck bones have cooled enough to touch (about 15 minutes), shred the meat off the bones. put the shredded neck meat into the pot and discard the bones.

6. let the mixture in the pot simmer for an hour (45 minutes if you're in a hurry) and remove the ribs. let cool 15 minutes, or until cool enough to touch, and shred the meat off the bones. return shredded meat to the pot and discard the bones.

7. drain the liquid from the hominy and stir it and the lime zest into the pot. let simmer for at least an hour, until reduced and stewy in consistency.

8. serve immediately with cornbread or rice.

[serves 10-12]

bacon-scallion cornbread

1c cornmeal

1 1/4c flour

1/4c sugar

2t baking powder

1t baking soda

4 slices bacon

1 pkg scallions or 3 large onions

2T chives (optional), chopped

1c buttermilk, or a mixture of yogurt, cream, or milk

3 eggs

6T butter, melted and cooled to room temp

salt and pepper to taste

1. preheat oven to 350F and butter a 9" square pyrex pan. in a medium bowl, stir together cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, and baking soda.

2. cook the bacon over medium heat until crispy, then remove and drain on paper towels. pour off all of the fat except for 1T; heat on medium and add the scallions or onions. cook the scallions until just wilted, about 10 minutes, or if using the onions, cook until caramelized, about an hour. remove from heat and let cool to room temp.

3. meanwhile, whisk together the eggs and buttermilk. add the butter and whisk together. chop the bacon into bits and stir bacon and scallions into the flour mixture. stir in the chives, if using.

4. add the wet ingredients to the dry, and stir just until the mixture is completely combined. scrape into the pan and bake 25-40 minutes, until golden brown on top and a tester comes out with a few crumbs adhering. let cool slightly, then serve.

[serves 6-8]

take this easy path to pork heaven

2010-04-26T10:28:00.001-05:00

i have fond memories of the pig 'n' pepper fair in westford, ma, from my childhood. my best friend's mother ran the pepper tent, where people entered pepper products to be judged, and we helped out and ran around the fair. one of the staples of running around was getting a pulled pork sandwich from redbones for lunch: a soft bun containing a small mountain of pork, liberally doused with bbq sauce. a few months ago, while at star market, i saw a good-looking pork shoulder and snapped it up. it languished in our freezer until i finally thawed it and popped it in the oven.

it's nice to know that slow-cooker recipes also work without the slow cooker. really, it's a logical conclusion, but i guess that it's hard to leave the oven on overnight. i would be on board with a pressure cooker - i find that pretty intriguing - but slow cooker, not so much. i try not to use more exotic appliances unless i really need to, since i don't have a kitchen aid, pressure cooker, slow cooker - any of the really big-ticket items. i do, however, have pretty much everything else, and i make good use of my roommates' kitchen appliances.

anyway, this pork is great, and the easiest thing i've made in a while. you just pop a pork shoulder in the oven and cook it at low heat until it's done. i did actually let the oven cook it overnight, and it was fine, safety-wise - after all, 235F is not a particularly high temperature. the meat near the bone and under the fat cap is the most flavorful and tender, while the meat closer to the baking pan's surface adds a bit of chew. shredded together...mmmm.

i love condiments, and i served this to my friends with a few different salads, including a bit of watercress to add a bit of balance to the richness of the pork. i had some potatoes on hand, so i made a mustardy potato salad; the coleslaw was also mustardy and tangy, since i swapped out some of the mayo for yogurt. serve this with whichever condiments you like, and you and your guests will be very happy.

note: the yield of this recipe depends on how hungry you are, and how much people like condiments. i had a pork shoulder that was about 8 lbs. the pork stretches further if you balance it with condiments (and just don't eat ridiculous amounts of meat in the bun). the size of the bun also limits how much pork people tend to put on the bun. anyway, i had 10 people over and a few people went back for seconds, just so you get an idea of how many this will feed.

pulled pork

1 7-10lb pork shoulder

salt and pepper

buns

1c bbq sauce

whole wheat hamburger buns

condiments: mustard, coleslaw, bbq sauce, watercress, carrot slaw, potato salad

1. preheat the oven to 235F. rinse the pork shoulder and pat dry with paper towels, and season with salt and pepper.

2. place the pork in a roasting pan (or on a foil-lined baking sheet) and roast for 8-12 hours, overnight. your pork is done when when it's starting to fall apart and the fat cap is browned.

3. remove the pork from the oven and cool until it's not too hot to touch. shred the pork with forks or your hands, discarding bits of fat and gristle. stir in about a cup of bbq sauce (see previous post), to keep the meat moist. cover with foil until ready to serve. (refrigerate if not serving that day; reheat in the oven.)

4. serve on toasted buns, with condiments.

[serves 8-12]

liquid smoke v. EU

2010-04-26T10:05:00.004-05:00

i made this bbq sauce to go with the pulled pork i was making last week, and along with the pork, it's quite a winner. it's mild in your mouth with a bit of a fiery kick at the end, and pairs well with pulled pork and other things you might want to barbecue (chicken wings, etc). it mellows as you let it stand, so try to make this a day before using it.

i've adapted the recipe a little bit, as the original recipe called for liquid smoke. according to wikipedia, liquid smoke is "a substance produced from smoke passed through water," and apparently, carcinogenic compounds such as tar and ash are removed in processing the liquid. however, i just can't get on board with semi-artificial ingredients like this - who knows what went into this stuff, anyway? also, the EU version of the FDA, which has higher standards, is currently investigating liquid smoke, so that's good enough for me - no liquid smoke. instead, i swapped in smoked salt that i got from the whole foods bulk section in tribeca. you'll get a bit of smoky flavor from the chipotle peppers, too; i found that this sauce was plenty smoky enough.

the original recipe also called for just combining the ingredients in a pot, but i sauteed the aromatics (onion, garlic, allspice) before adding everything else, for that added dimension of flavor. it's likely that i can't taste the difference, as my palate isn't sensitive enough, but i like any adaptations that have the potential to add more flavor.

perhaps i should have paid more attention to molasses, which is also a processed food, but i didn't. i did use the "robust" flavor of molasses from the supermarket, which is what we had lying around. don't use blackstrap, but if you have something that has slightly more bite than typical molasses, that's probably perfect for this sauce.

i am not particularly well-versed with southern, mexican, or south american cuisine, so i don't know if canned chipotles in adobo sauce count as heresy. sorry if they do, but they're important to this sauce. i even found them in the international foods aisle of star market - a welcome surprise, since i was shopping at 11:30pm the night before people were coming for dinner.

finally, with respect to ingredients, i used fire-roasted tomatoes. if it were the season, i would have used real tomatoes, but as they're still out of season, i substituted muir glen tomatoes. the tomatoes even have little black flecks in them, which actually creeps me out a little bit - somehow it looks like black confetti added in at the last moment, rather than being the product of fire-roasting. however, i do trust muir glen, so it is what it is.

bbq sauce

2 28-oz cans crushed tomatoes (2 28-oz cans fire-roasted muir glen)

9-12 ounces molasses ("robust")

1/2c orange juice

2T worcestershire sauce

4 chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, chopped (or more if you want a hotter sauce)

2 medium onions, diced

2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed

2t allspice

1T olive oil

1/2t smoked salt, plus more to taste

pepper

additional equipment

immersion blender (a regular blender is fine too)

1. in a large saucepan, heat the olive oil on medium heat. when the oil is hot, add the onions, garlic, and allspice, stirring to combine evenly. cook 10 minutes, until the onions are glossy and the garlic is slightly browned, then add the tomatoes, molasses, onion, sherry, worcestershire sauce, chipotles, and 1/2t smoked salt. bring to a simmer over medium-high heat.

2. reduce heat to low and cook, uncovered, for 30 minutes - stir occasionally to make sure nothing's sticking to the bottom of the pan. take the pot off the heat and use your immersion blender to blend the mixture into a homogenous sauce. simmer, stirring frequently, for at least 45 minutes longer (i simmered mine for about 4 hours, all told). see step 3 before adding additional salt and pepper.

3. if you are roasting a pork shoulder while making this sauce, add any rendered pork cracklings (the shiny, crispy, dark brown stuff stuck to the bottom of the roasting pan) to the pan. if you, like i had when i made this sauce, made pork belly recently, add the pork jelly (the brown liquid that renders from the belly, minus the fat) to the sauce as well. the cracklings and jelly are salty and will add body and a slightly meatiness to your sauce. if you are using cracklings, make sure you don't add additional salt beyond the smoked salt until after you add the cracklings.

4. when the sauce is reduced to the amount you want (in the neighborhood of 2 quarts), take it off the heat and let it cool. transfer to an airtight container and store for up to a month. this sauce also freezes well.

[makes 1.5 to 2 quarts of sauce]

"recipe adapted" (also: samoas)

2010-03-04T14:37:00.007-05:00

this post is really about homemade samoas, a recipe that i noticed popping up on the blogs a few weeks ago. but first (first?!), a digression about that label on so many blog recipes: "recipe adapted from." for the samoas, i used graham crackers as a base that i saw a photo of on somebody's blog. it turns out that that person had posted the recipe as being adapted from heidi's recipe over at 101cookbooks. i was curious, and went through the recipes side-by-side. well, readers, these recipes were exactly the same, word for word. that's simply not ok.

for me, recipes are intellectual property just like anything else - a song, a patent, etc. i think that the community, potluck aspects to recipes on blogs and in magazines do allow for a creative commons-type usage, hence the "recipe adapted from" label that allows for "fair use" along with absolution from legal entanglement. but here's the thing: if you adapted the recipe, it should no longer be the same recipe. yours is derivative, but it's its own variation. and i would say that nearly all of my recipes are truly adapted - there may be one or two that i posted in my early days, when i didn't know how to cook that well, which are less well-adapted. i'm not that stringent in my position on the ethics of adaptation, either - i fully support a wide range of degrees of adaptation. on the minimum side of the spectrum, a really good recipe that's in tune with my tastes won't require very many adjustments in the combination of ingredients, and sometimes a recipe doesn't work unless you use the exact measurements as the original. in this case, i will always write my own instructions, with the notes and thoughts that i know will help me remember the recipe the next time i make it. on the maximum side of the spectrum, there are recipes that i completely retool, both in ingredients and instructions. these are recipes that are overly wordy or incorrect in their instructions, or that don't completely accord with my own tastes of what constitutes sweet, savory, balanced. unless there's an attribution, though, i would never post a recipe without any changes.

and, of course, there are different kinds of uses of a recipe. adaptation applies to when you repost a recipe that is not originally yours - rather than, say, linking to it. adaptation doesn't apply to merely cooking a recipe; after all, what cook doesn't want somebody else to use her recipes, especially if she's posting them online? but if you are going to publicly share a recipe, and it's not your own original, it should bear the adaptation tag. if you didn't change anything, you should just link to the recipe.

back to the samoas: this recipe is a good example of me liking someone else's general idea, but completely changing the preparation. it's girl scout cookie season, and i love samoas (or rather, caramel delites, as i seem to prefer the latter over the former). this recipe is my homemade version of samoas, which i will just say upfront, are predicated more on my memory of what a samoa tastes like, rather than what a samoa actually tastes like, so be forewarned. these cookies, in my opinion, are better than the authentic version.

the original recipe i found was itself an adaptation from the bakingbites blog. and, as i read through both of them, i didn't really like either one. in the original, the caramel in the topping was simply melted caramels, which is just not a good option (tastewise and ingredientwise, because of all the corn syrup). the adaptation is more a true adaptation in that it makes samoa-like cookie bars, rather than actual cookies, since the cookie base isn't baked before assembling.

wanting a slightly less buttery taste to the cookie, i decided to use a graham cracker base, though i did worry a bit that it would make the cookies taste too healthy. i started making the caramel part of the adapted recipe before noticing that it had a rather odd ingredient - a cup of sour cream - added into it before baking. i kept making the caramel, and i did actually add a bit of sour cream, but nowhere near what was suggested. i then cooked the caramel until softball stage, mixed in the coconut, and molded it onto the cookies while warm so it didn't totally stiffen up. the cookies, as it turned out, were on the very crispy and very slightly hard side of cookieness, and so i was hoping the caramel would actually soften them up just a little bit. i was going to dip the bottoms of the cookies in chocolate, then drizzle them like the real cookies, but i got lazy and just dipped half of each cookie in. (i only dipped about two thirds of the cookies; the photos are from dipping the remaining third. this worked out well, as the cookies i dipped first fit into the cookie jar with no space to spare.)

and so you ask, how did these turn out? well, when i tasted each component on its own, they were good, but not great. when i tasted the finished cookie, they kept on tasting better and better. specifically, when i tasted the caramel, it tasted a bit too buttery, though it didn't have excess butter in it - but the darkness of the chocolate completely eliminated that problem. i think this is the sort of thing that shows you just how bad a storebought cookie can be, because the homemade version tastes so much more complex. these cookies stay good for over two weeks in an airtight container, losing none of the graham cracker's crispiness and snap. the caramel was chewy and pliable, and the whole combination of flavors was really complemented by the chocolate to a degree i haven't recently experienced. in fact, i liked the chocolate on the cookies so much that i would dip the whole cookie in chocolate. use a good chocolate and you will be rewarded many times over.

what i realized after i made these, and opened the box of samoas i had set by to taste-test, is that the cookies i made are almost completely different than the girl scout version. in fact, samoas are mostly cookie, with a thin coat of caramel and a bit of coconut sprinkled into it, with a drizzle of chocolate. the cookies i made are probably 40% cookie, 50% coconut-caramel, and 10% chocolate. while i still favor the crumbly-sandy-yet-tender crumb of the original, i think the balance of components in my version was far superior.

this recipe is still pending some revisions to the cookie base - i'd like to find a cookie with a slightly sandier texture - more tender than the graham crackers, but still just as crisp. you can substitute your own choice of cookie, just make sure they're not too buttery. the caramel needs a bit of salt, i think (which i have added into the recipe), but it's otherwise quite workable. i might fiddle with it, but it retains a nice pliability without stickiness, which is key for this recipe; if anything, let you caramel get a good deep amber so you maximize the effect of the caramelized sugar.

this recipe is easy, but involved due to the number of components - i recommend making the cookies one day, then adding the topping and chocolate coating the next day. when you are melting the chocolate for the coating, melt it slowly to make sure the chocolate doesn't seize, and that there is less of a chance of your chocolate blooming. (fyi, the chocolate did begin to bloom ever so slightly after two weeks; make sure you use good chocolate and this will be less of a problem.)

homemade samoas, aka caramel delites

graham cracker base (adapted from 101cookbooks)

2 1/2c flour

1c dark brown sugar

1t baking soda

3/4t kosher salt

1/2c butter

1/3c honey

5T milk

2t vanilla

caramel-coconut topping

1 1/2c sugar

1/2c butter

1/3c sour cream or yogurt, at room temp

1/2t salt

1t vanilla (optional)

2 1/2c unsweetened shredded coconut (any dimension, really; i prefer it to be shredded on the fine side, just make sure it's still somewhat pliable, not dried out)

8-12 oz bittersweet chocolate

1. to make the graham crackers, pulse the dry ingredients in the bowl of a food processor to combine (this recipe is a typical food processor recipe, in which you cut the butter into the dry ingredients, then add any other wet ingredients). scatter the butter in the dry ingredients and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse meal. in a small bowl, mix together the remaining ingredients (honey, milk, vanilla) and then add to the flour mixture. pulse a few times, until the dough comes together. turn the dough out onto a clean surface and shape into a large disk, no more than 1 1/2" thick. wrap in plastic and refrigerate until firm, 2 hours or overnight.

2. to bake the graham crackers, preheat the oven to 350F. roll the dough out to slightly more than 1/8" or a scant 1/4" thick (depending on your preference; i tended towards the thinner cookies, which will still rise a bit from the baking soda). cut out cookies with a cookie cutter of your choice (i used two square fluted cutters - 1.5" and 2.5" square). bake 15-25 minutes (depending on the thickness of the cookies), until slightly browned and slightly firm to the touch. the tops of the cookies should look dry. transfer to a rack to cool completely, then store in an airtight container until ready to assemble cookies.

3. to make the caramel, heat the sugar in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium-low heat until it melts and caramelizes. as it melts, it will turn a light amber; swirl the pan around a bit in order to get the sugar to melt evenly. you want your sugar to turn a dark amber that is not too brown (too brown = burned) - somewhere slightly lighter than the color of pecan skins. if the color of your sugar is like chestnut shells, it's burned and you should start over - just soak the pan in hot water and the burned sugar will dissolve.

4. when the caramel has turned the correct amber, remove it from the heat (you can turn the stove off) and add the butter. it will spit and bubble, but if you're using a saucepan with sufficiently high sides (ie, nothing skillet-like), you'll be fine. stir the mixture until the butter is incorporated. stir in the yogurt and salt, then let cool for 5 minutes, or until the caramel is hot but not scalding to the touch (so as to not burn the coconut) and before the caramel stiffens up. while the caramel is cooling, set out the cookie bases on some trays or cooling racks. mix the coconut into the caramel until well combined, then immediately start molding the caramel onto the cookies with a knife, while still pliable. if your caramel stiffens up, you could probably reheat it on the stove on low heat, but i didn't reheat mine. don't do this in a cold kitchen - the caramel will stiffen up too quickly. besides pliability, you need to apply the caramel while it's warm, because it will adhere better to the cookie.

5. as the cookies are cooing to room temp, chop the chocolate and melt slowly in a heatproof bowl over a pot of barely simmering water. the bottom of the bowl should not touch the water; you need only 1 to 1 1/2" water in the pot. if your chocolate is heated too fast, it could seize or bloom; i'm not one to temper chocolate unless it's a special occasion, but if you want to temper, go ahead. when the chocolate is melted, set up a silpat and a few large sheets of parchment paper. grab a cookie by its edges (the caramel can be a good way to hang onto it), dip the bottom in chocolate. shake off the excess chocolate and place on the silpat/parchment, about 1" apart. when you've finished all the cookies, dip a spatula in the chocolate and swing it gently over the cookies to deposit chocolate threads on the tops of the cookies. practice over a few of the cookies to get the hang of this - you need to get the right amount of chocolate on the spatula, but not too much. you can also put the chocolate in a squeeze bottle with a fine nozzle, for better control. let the chocolate harden, then transfer to an airtight container.

(approximate) active cooking time: 1-1.5 hrs for the graham crackers, 1-1.5 hrs for the coconut caramel, 1 hr for assembly and dipping

[makes 40-50 small cookies, or 30 large cookies]

dulce de leche (definitive version)

2010-02-15T20:47:00.003-05:00

it's been a couple weeks since dulce de leche v1.0, and the verdict is in. that version, as you will remember, was defined both by a beautiful color and a slightly acidic aftertaste. the basic recipe remains the same: a quart of milk, a cup of sugar, a vanilla bean; but i made two more batches varying in the type of milk product. the first of those batches employs regular whole milk, the second evaporated milk. in the photo above, there's a clear variation in the color of each batch (l-r: whole milk, evaporated milk, whole milk + baking soda).

there are differences in texture, visible in the photo, as well: the regular milk batch is a little grainier, even after food processing. in fact, after two weeks in the fridge, it has definitely crystallized a bit. the other two batches retained a creamier texture; perhaps it's the baking soda, but the baking soda batch edged the evaporated milk batch in texture, with a slightly softer mouthfeel. the baking soda batch did mellow a bit as it aged, so if you really want the darker color, you could probably do with adding in the baking soda. i would recommend not, in general.

i will say that making dulce de leche does not involve much skill, so go to it! it does require patience, but it will be worth it - this stuff does taste better to me than the typical way of making dulce de leche, with a richer taste and texture. if you're making this, don't forget that since there are so few ingredients, you should use good ones. your vanilla bean should be plump and at least moderately supple and bendy; if you're using regular milk, use an organic, hormone-free milk for best results.

dulce de leche

1 quart (4c) evaporated milk

1c sugar

1 vanilla bean

1. in a heavy-bottomed saucepan, combine evaporated milk and sugar. split the vanilla bean and scrape the beans out into the pan. stir to combine (the vanilla seeds will disperse more evenly as the mixture thickens and cooks) and turn heat to medium.

2. cook over medium heat until the mixture is thick and it doesn't run too much when you firmly drag a rubber spatula through the mixture. keep stirring it frequently, taking care that it doesn't boil, but rather simmers. the time for this varies, but it will probably take about four hours. it will look a little bit grainy as it gets close to being done, but don't worry about that. you will want to stir more in the last half-hour to make sure the mixture doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan and burn.

3. scrape the mixture into the bowl of a food processor and pulse until the mixture is smooth. if you don't have a food processor (or a blender, or immersion blender), your dulce de leche just won't be quite as smooth - it will still taste the same, all debates about the effect of visual perception of food on its taste notwithstanding. this is a rare occasion in which i do actually recommend using a food processor. scrape the mixture into an airtight container and let cool. when it's cool, store in the refrigerator up to about a month or two.

[makes 1 to 1 1/2 cups]

caramel...melts

2010-02-09T22:52:00.003-05:00

i don't usually take photographs at an angle - that "artistic angle" so favored by food bloggers - but for some reason, the dead-on photos just don't look as good. something about the straight shooting suppresses the cragginess of these cookies.

so, caramel melts. this is what i discovered upon leaving a tupperware of ganache-topped caramels in the fridge, with no outer coating of chocolate, for over a year. possibly for two years - i've forgotten exactly when i put them in for that long, long hibernation. i think i expected them to keep the way that, miraculously, my most prized caramel sauce has kept for two years as i slowly consume it. (the original delicious caramel sauce got a boost of sugar syrup from spiced, baked apples, infused and reduced with tea, that rendered it positively spectacular.) alas, it was not so. beyond acquiring the aroma of the refrigerator - airtight container be damned - the caramels absorbed liquid from the ganache and melted into waxy sludge.

luckily, while cleaning the fridge recently, i found a slab of caramel from some other caramel experiment (i have yet to find a definitive caramel recipe that does not include corn syrup, but the one i've posted before is pretty good nonetheless). i cut myself a bit to taste, and it appeared to be in good enough working condition to include in these cookies. these cookies involve a rather soft dough, due to the inclusion of yogurt to provide some of the moisture, and i think that as they baked, the caramel sort of melted into the batter, producing a cookie that's crisp on the outside, soft on the inside (from the original dough itself), and gooey in the center. that is to say, these cookies are delicious and you should make them asap. as usual, they will taste better if you use good-quality cocoa and caramel.

salted chocolate-caramel cookies

1 1/4c flour

1/4t baking soda

1/2t salt

5T butter

7-8T cocoa

2/3c sugar

1/3c dark brown sugar

1/3c plain yogurt or sour cream

1t vanilla

~3-4oz soft caramel, rolled into 1/2"-diameter balls (dice, then squish the corners in until it resembles a sphere)

1. preheat the oven to 350F (i accidentally baked these at 375, and it was fine). in a small bowl, mix together the flour, salt, and baking soda.

2. melt the butter in the microwave in a medium bowl. sift the cocoa over it and mix until combined. add both sugars and mix until combined. add yogurt or sour cream, as well as the vanilla, and mix until combined. slowly mix in the dry ingredients with a spatula or a wooden spoon.

3. take a couple scant teaspoons of dough and form it evenly around a ball of caramel (i stick my thumb into a ball of dough and put the caramel into the ensuing hole). if your caramel balls are bigger than a few teaspoons of dough will cover (you want at least 1/4" of dough on the exterior of your caramel, estimating of course), then use as much dough as you need to make it work. place on a baking sheet about two inches apart and bake until the tops are slightly crackled, but before the caramel starts leaking out of the cookies - about 10 minutes or so. let cool at least 5 minutes - cookies will be very soft and will need to set up a little. transfer to a wire rack and let cool completely.

4. store in an airtight container and eat 'em within a few days for best flavor!

[makes 30-40 cookies]

yeasted bread chronicles, chapter II

2010-01-17T00:30:00.020-05:00

this one's a keeper. there was a post about this bread/cake at thekitchn, which is originally from flo braker (via leite's culinaria). i love sweet yeasted breads and buns, and this is the best of the bunch. really, it's a cake, but i always think of yeasted things as breads, so there you go. essentially, this is a yeasted dough that gets rolled out after the second rise, then cut into rectangles spread with lemon zest and sugar, and stacked into a loaf pan. the dough gets one last rise and then goes into the oven. when you eat it, you can just pull the sheets off one by one.

this dough is less eggy and less bready than the overnight cinnamon buns, but somehow manages to be richer. ok, the butter brushed between the rectangles of dough helps a lot. and this dough is moister than the cinnamon buns, which makes it seem more like cake, less like bread. regardless, it's delicious, and after being attacked by four of us for dessert, it was more than half gone. it's not too sweet - the cream cheese icing has a bump of lemon juice in it to balance the sweetness of the bread - and if you eat it the day you bake it, the top will still be crispy.

if you have the time, make this right now. i did this over two days, refrigerating the dough after the first rise, and assembling it the next day out of the fridge. i was a bit overzealous in getting the dough to room temp after assembling it (putting it in a hot water bath that was probably a bit too hot), so that's why the bread is super-puffed on the ends. i think i might try the alton brown technique next time, and put the assembled dough in a cold oven with a pan of hot water underneath it. one other thing - i have never understood how other people manage to roll doughs out into rectangles, so if you can do it, please inform me of your technique. i always end up with oblong ovals, rather vaguely rectangular. that's not a real problem with this bread, so don't worry about it.

i love yeasted breads, but i always dislike how much effort you have to put in to get the final product. while the dough is rising, i'm not actually doing anything, but i'm impatient to get the dough into the oven so i can eat it. it would even be better if i was really busy during the rising time - for example, i have no problem making really complicated things that require hours, as long as i'm kept busy chopping, stirring, etc. waiting for dough to rise is like watching water boil - interminable. i do think this bread is worthwhile, though, so maybe the solution is to double the recipe and make two loaves, freezing one to bake later.

lemon-scented pull-apart coffee cake (adapted from flo braker via leite's culinaria)

for the dough

2 3/4c (12.25 oz) flour

1/4c (1.75 oz) sugar

2 1/4t (1 packet) yeast

1/2t salt

1/3c (2.5 fluid oz) whole milk

2 oz (4T) butter

1/4c (2 fluid oz) water

2 eggs, at room temp

for the filling

1/2c (3.5 oz) sugar

3T lemon zest (from 3 lemons)

1T orange zest

1.5 oz (3T) butter, melted

for the icing

3 oz cream cheese, softened

1/3c (1.25 oz) powdered sugar

1T whole milk

1T fresh lemon juice

1. stir together 2c (9oz) of the flour, the sugar, the yeast, and the salt in a large bowl. in a small saucepan, heat the milk and butter over low heat, until the butter melts. add the water and continue to heat the mixture until it's about 130F.

2. pour the milk mixture over the flour-yeast mixture, mixing with a rubber spatula until well combined. add the eggs one at a time, mixing with the spatula each time until completely incorporated. add 1/2c of the remaining flour, and mix with the spatula until the dough is smooth. add two more tablespoons of flour and mix until the dough is smooth.

3. flour your countertop and turn the dough out on the counter. knead until smooth and only slightly sticky (add a few more tablespoons of flour if it's stubbornly sticky), about 10-15 minutes. the dough will be quite soft. place the dough in a buttered or oiled bowl, and cover with plastic wrap. let the dough rise in a warm place (at least 70F) until it doubles in size, about an hour. if it's winter, you can warm up the dough's environment by putting the bowl in a warm water bath, though you should be sure not to make the water too hot. if you're doing this, make sure you use a plastic bowl - it will conduct heat a little more gently than a metal bowl. if you're refrigerating the dough overnight, punch the dough down and re-cover with plastic wrap, and pop the bowl in the fridge.

4. to make the lemon filling, mix together the sugar, lemon zest, and orange zest in a small bowl. let this stand while you handle the dough, as it will get wetter as the sugar draws moisture out of the zest).

5. butter a 9"x5"x3" loaf pan and line with parchment paper; butter the parchment paper. flour your countertop and roll the dough out into a 20"x12" rectangle. brush the dough with butter, using a pastry brush (be generous). using a bench scraper, pizza cutter, or knife, cut the dough into 5 vertical strips, each 4"x12". sprinkle one of the strips with a fifth (about 1.5-2T) of the sugar-zest mixture and press it into the butter. top with another strip of dough and sprinkle it with the sugar-zest mixture, pressing it into the butter; repeat with remaining dough strips until you have one stack of rectangles. (the last layer does get sugar-zest mixture on it, btw.)

6. slice the stack horizontally into 6 strips, each 4"x2". fill the loaf pan with the stacks (see photo above to see what it should look like), cut edges facing up. loosely cover the pan with plastic wrap and let the dough rise in a warm place (or, if the dough is cold from the refrigerator, set in a cold oven with a pan of boiling water on the rack underneath it), until the dough doubles in size, 30 to 50 minutes. (press the dough gently with your finger; if the indentation remains, the dough is ready to be baked.)

7. bake the cake until the top is a deep golden brown, 30-45 minutes. let cool as you make the icing.

8. to make the icing, mix the cream cheese and sugar until smooth with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula (or use an electric mixer). mix in the milk and lemon juice and stir until well combined.

9. remove the coffee cake from the pan, and put it on a serving plate. using a spatula, knife, or pastry brush, ice the top of the coffee cake. serve at room temp. store in an airtight container.

active cooking time: 2 hrs; total time ~4.5 hrs

[makes 1 loaf; serves 8-10]

dulce de leche (v1.0)

2010-01-16T22:35:00.003-05:00

my love for dulce de leche started about five years ago, when nina happened to make a banoffee pie one weekend. i had heard of it (from the musical "guys and dolls"), and possibly had had it a few times, but i had never paid it much attention. now i know better; like condensed milk, i'm pretty sure i could sit on the couch like a lump and consume entire jars of it. it's like caramel, but at once not; while caramel is more about the sugar, dulce de leche is all about the milk. somehow it's more comforting than caramel - and that's saying something, because i love caramel like nobody's business. i confess that i also like the time it takes to make dulce de leche - there's something comforting about its cooking process consisting of stirring it for hours on the stove.

you can buy dulce de leche, but many people just make it from scratch, or (more frequently) by boiling a can of condensed milk in a pot of water for four hours. supposedly, as long as you keep the can covered with water, it won't explode all over your kitchen (and you). i've gone the condensed milk route, but i wanted to try making it from scratch, especially as i had a quart of whole milk on hand from yesterday's lemon coffee cake. it takes about as long as the condensed milk takes, but with some stirring thrown in. the recipe i consulted instructed me to combine milk, sugar, and vanilla in a pot and wait for it to simmer, then stir in some baking soda. no idea what the baking soda does - maybe it thickens it? what i do know is that it gives the dulce de leche a faint acidic aftertaste - not so good. the dulce de leche experiments will continue. in my consequent google searches for "milk jam," none of the recipes contained a trace of baking soda, so i'm going to try making this without the baking soda at all. it was also very sweet, so maybe i'll try a version with evaporated milk. the basics of the recipes seem pretty standard, though - 1 quart milk, 1 cup sugar, 1 vanilla bean.

just to clue you in regarding the photos, the top is the ingredients in the pot, then after i had added the baking soda and it was simmering. the third photo is missing a couple of steps - first, i walked away from the pot and when i came back, the milk was boiling into a semi-solid froth, and i stirred that down and it became a lot more liquid. second, my milk jam separated into curd and whey (both caramel-colored) and so i food-processed it, per another recipe i consulted. so the third photo is when i had returned the food-processed dulce de leche, to reduce a bit further (you can see a little bit of the lumpy dulce de leche on the spatula). the fourth is to show you how thick it gets.

dulce de leche 1.0

1 quart whole milk

1c sugar

1 vanilla bean

1/2t baking soda, dissolved in 1T water

1. in a heavy-bottomed saucepan, stir together milk and sugar. split the vanilla bean; scrape the seeds out of the pod and add both to the pot. heat on medium-low until the mixture boils (if you leave the milk out and bring it to room temp, this step will take much less time).

2. remove the pan from the heat and stir in the baking soda mixture. stir until the froth subsides a little, then return to heat. simmer on medium, taking care not to let the mixture boil (turn down the heat if it boils), until the mixture has thickened a little and is a dark caramel-esque brown - give it a stir every now and then to make sure nothing's burning.

3. transfer to a food processor or blender (there's not quite enough of it to use an immersion blender) and process until smooth. you can return it to the pot to reduce it a bit further over low heat, or transfer to an airtight storage container and let cool before covering.

prep: 5-10 minutes

active cooking time: 3-4 hours

[makes 1 cup; stays good in the fridge for 3 months or the freezer for 1 year]

the myth of "melt in your mouth"

2010-01-15T23:57:00.000-05:00

these cookies look pretty good, right? unfortunately, they're not. well, they're ok, but they were enough of a disappointment that you won't find the recipe here. i saw a post on photograzing for "peppermint meltaways" and was intrigued. i've always been intrigued by things that claim to "melt in your mouth," be it chocolate, meat, or cookie. for example, how does meat melt in your mouth, exactly? surely a bit of steak isn't going to melt in your mouth the same way that, say, butter will? and even if it did, would you really want meat to melt in your mouth? i know that meat wouldn't "melt" the same way butter would, yet i expect it to because of the connotations i attach to the word "melt" (probably, in no small part due to the ubiquity of those m+m commercials during childhood).

that isn't to say that there aren't things that melt in your mouth. the lemon-buttermilk pudding (essentially a pudding cake) at rendezvous recently reaffirmed that, indeed, something can look like cake, but literally melt away in your mouth. (sidebar: it's been about two years since i had this pudding, and i had remembered it as being good, but not as good as it was that evening. it was exactly what i wanted at the end of a meal - cool, refreshing, light but rich...)

it was with all of these things in mind that i made these cookies. i wanted them to be impossibly light, airy, and crispy; buttery and pepperminty. the mechanism in the recipe that renders them "meltaways" is the replacement of some of the flour with cornstarch, and the use of powdered sugar. unfortunately, the meltaway effect was not the epiphany i expected. maybe it's that i just don't like cookies that "melt" - chewing some crispy thing just to have it dissipate immediately is a bit odd, and very different than chewing something soft (ie, cake) and have that "melt." so these cookies were ok, but not amazing. i swapped out the sugar glaze for chocolate, which i thought complement the cookies pretty well; and they do look pretty if i say so myself. their mediocrity, though, is affirmed by the roommate test. after a week in the cookie jar, it's still half full. this, after a batch of chocolate chip cookies lasted about three or four days. i guess it wasn't meant to be.

chicken - not frog, shark, or snake - tastes like chicken

2010-01-11T23:02:00.002-05:00

when top chef first started airing, i was one of the skeptics. without willy wonka's magical tv, i reasoned, it's just not possible to be able to live vicariously through chefs in competition the way that one can with fashion in project runway. whereas in project runway, the way we consume fashion is to wear it and see it, in top chef, the way we consume food - eating and smelling it - is impossible.

i realized that, over the past few years, my position on this issue has softened - slightly. every day, i look at seriouseats' photograzing section to see what other people are making. and through looking at these photos, i've found that i have been developing my faculty of being able to tell how something will taste, based on how it looks. the powers of observation will not always hold true, but they do admirably well most of the time. in these photographs, i can see when the onions haven't been properly browned, when shortbread hasn't been cooked enough and remains hopelessly pale, when meat is overcooked and looks dry. i can see when a ganache-covered confection has been refrigerated and brought back to room temp too quickly (condensation, and a certain type of slick shininess that isn't the soft sheen that ganache should have). i can see when something is overly yellow and a custard is too solid from too many egg yolks. and these are things that transcend bad presentation, over-exposed or unfocused photographs, and their related ilk - these are things that you can see that actually make you not want to eat something.

that said, i do bookmark recipes that i find quite often, and the following recipe is an adaptation of something i made tonight. remembering the fridays on which i typically make dinner with mary, the first thing that comes to mind is that we end up eating at 9 or 10pm. usually we don't end up at the supermarket until 7:30, and then we get home at 8 or 8:30, and then we start cooking - you can see where this is going. determined to eat before 9pm, i bookmarked a recipe for a roast chicken that requires fairly minimal prep - just chop stuff, throw it together, and roast. (the recipe below is wordy because i, in my recipe-writing, am wordy.) this chicken is quicker than a typical roast chicken because it's roasted in pieces, and you can do all the prep ahead of time, then throw it in the oven the next day.

this recipe is delicious, and though it has a fair number of ingredients, it's still all about the chicken. this preparation yields a chicken that is tender but toothsome, and tastes very wonderfully of, well, chicken. this is the way you can tell your ingredients are good - if they taste more like themselves than they "usually" do: good potatoes taste "more like potatoes," good chicken tastes "more like chicken." but there is also a certain style of cooking that isn't afraid to season aggressively with herbs and garlic, and those who employ it know that the showcase ingredients can stand up to that aggression. this recipe hews to that philosophy - that chicken is not bland, but has its own flavor, which is enhanced by its accompaniments. it didn't hurt, either, that the chicken we got was some sort of organic or free-range chicken from the store (we were at the organic foods supermarket because it's closest to home).

there is a certain the pancetta is a little more subtle than bacon would be, especially when it's sliced thin, because it gets very crispy but doesn't burn because of the relatively short baking time. the original recipe uses a lardon-sized dice of pancetta, but when i got mine at the new wine store, they sliced it thin, assuming that i was going to use it in canapes. well, this was a blessing in disguise, because it's not particularly fair to overpower chicken with bacon, so using the thin ribbons produces more of a textural effect with some salt and a smack of ham. i didn't use lemon zest, but i think that the addition of a bit of it would help further balance the saltiness of the olives and pancetta. i think the bread is key, too, instead of a traditional starch - the way the bread sops up the herby chicken juices is reminiscent of that nytimes chicken recipe in which you roast a butterflied chicken on top of chunks of bread so that they get soaked with roast chicken juices. just trust me - it's good.

roast chicken with crispy pancetta

1 chicken, 4 to 5 lbs

1/4c olive oil

1-2T fresh thyme (leaves stripped from stems)

1 1/2T fresh rosemary, chopped fine (this definitely should be fresh; i never use dried rosemary as it tends to stay too hard, and can stick in your throat)

1 medium head garlic

1t freshly ground black pepper

1/2c kalamata olives, pitted (~4 oz, not including the brine)

3-4 ounces pancetta (sliced thin by your butcher)

1c white wine

optional: 1t lemon zest

fresh bread (preferably some sort of hearty multigrain)

1. first, do the prep: strip the thyme from the stems, chop the rosemary. separate the cloves of garlic and smash them, then remove the skin - you'll want to smash them fairly hard so they break up instead of staying whole, but don't break up completely. cut the chicken into 10 pieces, leaving the skin on: thighs, wing+drumette, drumstick, breast (quartered by halving lengthwise and crosswise), reserving the back/neck/guts for other uses. (i froze the back to use later for soup.) shred the pancetta into 1/2" strips with kitchen shears or a knife - the pancetta i got was about 4" in diameter, and so my strips were about 1/2"x4" with some smaller bits.

2. in a bowl, combine olive oil, rosemary, thyme, garlic, pepper, and lemon zest (if using) and stir well. place the chicken pieces in one layer in a 9"x13" baking pan and pour the herb-oil mixture over it, turning the chicken in it to coat. scatter the pancetta over the chicken pieces, making sure it gets coated in some of the herb-oil mixture. scatter the olives between the chicken pieces, rolling in the herb-oil mixture to coat. at this point, if you're doing this ahead of time, you can cover the pan and refrigerate the chicken until you want to cook it the next day. let it come to room temperature before you put it in the oven for best results - sometimes pyrex can shatter if it's old and it has to jump temperature too fast.

3. preheat the oven to 450F. put the chicken in, and roast 25 minutes. you'll hear the oil crackling but don't worry - that's normal. after the 25 minutes, open the oven and drizzle the wine over the chicken. continue roasting for 10-15 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through. remove from oven and cool slightly to allow the meat to rest. serve with hunks of bread to sop up the sauce; don't forget to make a side of veg to complete the meal.

prep time: 20-30 minutes

cook time: 30-40 minutes

[serves 6-8]

and now, something sweet

2010-01-11T11:31:00.000-05:00

long overdue, but finally here! i am going to make these a few more times and will post adjustments as necessary.

overnight cinnamon rolls (adapted from alton brown)

notes: i have written this recipe for those who don't have stand mixers - i don't have one myself. it is also written in weight (standard for bakers, and more accurate) but also cups in case you just have measuring cups. i will likely be experimenting with the egg content of this recipe in the future - it uses a lot of egg yolks - and will let you know the results. i've been pondering iles flottantes to use up the egg whites, which are frozen for the present.

dough

4 egg yolks, room temp

1 egg, room temp

2 oz sugar (1/4c)

3 oz butter, melted (6T)

6 oz buttermilk (~scant 1/2c), room temp

20 oz flour (~4c)

1 pkg instant dry yeast (2 1/4t)

1 1/4t kosher salt

vegetable oil

filling

8 oz dark brown sugar (scant 1c packed)

1T cinnamon

1t salt

3/4 oz butter (1 1/2T)

icing

2 1/2 oz cream cheese, softened

4 oz powdered sugar (1c)

1. first, heat the buttermilk in a small saucepan or in the microwave (on medium power, until it's hot) and scatter the yeast over it; let it stand (i like to proof the yeast to make sure it's good). in a large bowl, with a whisk or an electric mixer, mix together the egg yolks, eggs, sugar, and butter, and buttermilk-yeast mixture. add 2 cups of flour and the salt, mixing until well combined (if you're using a whisk, switch here to a rubber spatula). add all but the remaining 3/4c of flour, and mix into dough with a rubber spatula until completely incorporated. turn the dough out onto a clean, floured countertop and knead until the dough is soft and elastic, and doesn't stick to your hands. this will take about 15 minutes, varying based on how vigorously you knead the dough. add the remaining 3/4c of flour if your dough remains very sticky after about 10 minutes. lightly oil the bowl you mixed the dough in, put the kneaded dough in it, and turn the dough in the bowl to lightly coat with oil. cover with a damp cloth and let rise until it doubles in volume. if it's winter, or you live in a cold climate, you can help the dough rise by putting it in the oven (after preheating it to the lowest temp and turning it off), or by putting the dough bowl in a larger bowl full of hot water (keep replacing the water as it cools).

2. combine the sugar, cinnamon, and salt for the filling, mixing until well combined. melt the butter in a small bowl.

3. butter a 9"x13" baking pan. take the dough and punch it down, then roll it out on a floured countertop, to an approximate 18"x12" rectangle and a 1/2" thickness, with the long edge facing you. brush the rectangle with butter, leaving an inch margin along both long edges. sprinkle the dough with the cinnamon sugar filling mixture. roll the rectangle of dough tightly, starting with the long edge facing you. when you get to the other edge, pinch the edge to the side of the roll to seal it shut. using a serrated knife (really), slice the roll into 1 1/2" thick slices, or about 12 slices. arrange in the baking dish, cover tightly with plastic wrap, and refrigerate overnight. this prep session will take about an hour of active time, an hour of rising time - less as you get more practice.

4. remove the rolls from the fridge and place in a cold oven (don't turn it on). fill a large baking dish 2/3 full with boiling water and put it on a rack underneath the pan of rolls (to bring them to room temp before baking). let the rolls rise for about a half hour, until they start puffing (rising) again. remove both pans from the oven, and preheat the oven to 350F. return the rolls to the oven and bake in the middle until just golden brown (190F inside, if you have a thermometer), about 30 minutes. make sure you don't overbake these - they are infinitely better if they're softer and moister.

5. while the rolls are baking, make the icing - beat the cream cheese in a bowl with an electric mixer (or microwave very slightly until very soft). sift the powdered sugar over the cream cheese, then mix until combined. when the rolls have cooled slightly, you can ice them with a knife. the rolls are best with a few days of baking.

overnight prep: 2 hrs

day-of prep and baking: 1 hr 15 min

[makes 12 rolls]

day-after-xmas dinner in nyc

2010-01-10T01:05:00.000-05:00

locanda verde / 377 greenwich st / nyc / (212) 925-3797 / dinner mon-sun, 5:30-11p; breakfast mon-fri, 8-11a, sat-sun, 8-10a; lunch 11:30a-3p / reservations recommended / dinner ~$50-60 per person (no wine) / 2 1/2 stars out of 4

it's not often that hyped restaurants live up to the hype. especially restaurants that are minorly owned by celebrities. in this case, locanda verde, part-owned by robert deniro (whose previous restaurant in the same space, ago, folded), lives up to the food hype, but falls short in other ways that prevent it from being the whole package.

i read up on the restaurant shortly before we walked over, and let me just say that a lot of the yelpers who reviewed this place are a little...well, let's be clear here: robert deniro may have invested in the restaurant, but he does not run this restaurant. when writing your review, should you feel a need to address a specific person, try the chef, the sous chef, the pastry chef, the manager, etc - not the investor who just wants a return on said investment. also, please employ correct spelling, and do not address anyone as your friend or "buddy" unless they are, indeed, your friend or buddy.

on to the food, which was quite good. it's slightly better than craigie, if i say so myself. there are not many good italian restaurants that are modern, and in any case, italian restaurants structure meals differently than the typical american meal. in any nouveau american restaurant, you're likely to do the traditional appetizer, entree, dessert sequence. in an italian restaurant, dinner is a longer affair, encompassing primi (appetizers), secondi (pastas), entrees, and dessert. when i went to babbo with shirley and lilly, we did the whole four courses: two appetizers, three pastas, two entrees, three desserts. not even a "full" four-course dinner for each of us and we were totally stuffed. so in that sense, it was a good idea not to do the full four courses at locanda verde - we still ordered enough food to be quite pleasantly full.

for appetizers, we shared the sheeps milk ricotta with grilled bread; marinated beets with goat cheese and gorgonzola; steak tartare with crispy guanciale; and lamb meatball sliders. the ricotta is almost worth the hype - you've certainly never had ricotta like this, and i'm not even sure what they did to it. it's silky, creamy, almost like mascarpone, with just a tad too much richness, actually. maybe they strained it, then whizzed it in a food processor? i wanted to believe that it was just made in a way that produced silky, creamy ricotta, but i know better. points off, too, for not providing the correct amount of bread for the amount of ricotta served. the marinated beets were good as well, especially with gorgonzola - not a combination i'd had before. the lamb meatball sliders were good, but not particularly memorable. however, the steak tartare was absolutely fantastic - perfect texture, perfect temperature, perfect seasoning, with a bit of tang from some scallion or cilantro or something like that. i like steak tartare and have had it in a few places, and this was the best of the bunch. it was completely unadorned - no cornichons, mustards, fig jams, etc - and it needed no adornments.

for entrees, i had the fennel glazed duck with tuscan kale, yukons, and concord grape conserve. this was nearly as fabulous as the steak tartare. it was perfectly cooked, but more importantly, the combination of flavors was stellar. the fennel was understated, coming through with bites of duck, while the duck jus saturated the kale. i was surprised by the concord grape conserve, though - you hear about these mythical ingredients that tie a dish together, but you rarely encounter them. this was one of those mythical ingredients, beyond tasting like someone had put a lot of love into it. i think it was cooked in some sort of red wine reduction, and it was deliciously juicy, a textural contrast to the solidity of the rest of the dish. i do wish there had been a few more potatoes - these days, restaurant potatoes are so deliciously potato-y in flavor, yet dwindling in number on the plate. i don't really understand this fear of starches, and i think everyone should just get over it - as long as you balance starches, proteins, veg, and fat, it's ok. really, put the starch back on the plate already.

my parents had the fire-roasted garlic chicken for two and i grabbed a bite of it before i was irrevocably stuffed. it was delicious - and somehow, so much more vivid than any chicken i've had recently at a restaurant. it wasn't boring, it wasn't mild - it was every bit as daring as any other entree at the restaurant. perhaps it lacked nuance of the duck, but its vibrancy made up for that - just depends on what you're in the mood for. my sister had the veal shank (a special that evening) and man, was that thing huge. you don't think of veal having such large shanks - but apparently they do.

my parents and i shared the maple budino with candied pecans, cranberry sorbetto for dessert. this was a bit of a letdown, actually - i love pot de creme, i love maple, and it should have been a home run, especially with the cranberry sorbet to cut the intensity of the maple. but somehow it wasn't - it was too sweet, too much of a confection.

all in all, the food was great - a little uneven, and nothing was a home run, but with flashes of actual brilliance. unfortunately, the service and decor were enough of a distraction that the overall dining experience rates lower than at restaurants like craigie, babbo, and alinea - all restaurants which i would go to first over locanda verde. notes on the negatives are below:

service: i am so tired of pretentious service. to all restaurants i may patronize in the future: i am not a rube about food and i am going to not only behave, but tip well. i am not an overly demanding or picky customer. so stop kicking my chair as you walk by, acting as if i know nothing about food, being inattentive, and pretending that we're hicks. please remember who ordered what, too - i would understand if the restaurant were totally in the weeds, but that was not the case when i was there. in short: don't be a jerk, because that's just going to make me want to be a jerk back.

on the decor - well, it's all oddly mismatched, and not in a good way. it's part pub, with piney wood paneling and lots of ugly mirrors, but has the arched plaster ceilings and chandeliers of a more ritzy restaurant. the back of the restaurant is a more family-style area with long tables, whereas the front is more slick and modern with shiny black tables and a bar. the height of the space is nice and airy, but i would have preferred an interior without the occasional broken mirror. further about these mirrors, which line the back and side walls of the room - they are obviously a relic of the previous restaurant's interior, which presumably had booths that matched the mirrors. now that those booths are gone, the mirrors seem out of place.

faux canneles

2009-12-19T02:08:00.003-05:00

i've been working pretty hard, and i rewarded myself recently with a cannele mold (the smallest one i've ever seen! not that i have seen a lot of cannele molds, but it's smaller than i thought it would be) from amazon. i don't really have the time to devote to proper canneles, but wanted to test-drive the mold. solution: cake. this is the buttermilk cake from smitten kitchen, which makes a cake that isn't particularly good for special molds, but that is really quite delicious. it makes a fairly light vanilla cake with a bit of a tang and a nice soft crumb. the crumb, however, is loose enough that it doesn't really mold that well. i should have made that vanilla rum cake or something, or perhaps tiny poundcakes. beyond canneles, i'm definitely interested in seeing how the larger cakes (like poundcake, which i always do in a bundt) hold up texture-wise in smaller units. with respect to unmolding, this mold does quite well - it's thin enough that you can invert each mold to get the cake out if it's being recalcitrant. as you can see from the photo, the cakes brown quite nicely.

instead of raspberries, c had cranberries on hand so we cooked them to smushed-berry stage with some water and sugar, and scattered it in the cake. the tang of the cranberries goes quite well with the cake - it's a balanced sweet-and-tangy cake. we made this cake with m, a few weeks ago, and used strawberries, which produced an entirely different kind of cake - it was much more strawberries-and-cream in flavor profile.

regardless of the fruit that you use, i highly recommend. i have been using real vanilla in most things since i have tons of beans from the last time i bought em (the place i buy them from always sends free beans), to pretty good effect.

coming up: c and i bought a ham on sale at the supermarket, necessitating a ham date in january when i'm done with thesis. i also have plans to have a birthday party this year! with lots of cute things to eat, of course. j and i have a bolognese date to schedule - we're going to taste-test the four-hour bolognese that he found online with the fergus henderson 12-hour bolognese that i recently came across. (for reference, the one i make is a six-hour deal.)

i'm a believer

2009-12-14T02:10:00.006-05:00

okay, okay. i believe you now, serrated knife. i believe in you, too. who knew that a serrated knife would cut so easily through dough? assuming that the serrations would just rip the dough instead of cutting through it, i used my trusty pastry...scraper? (the name of this object escapes me at the moment; all i can think of is its woodworking brethren, the bench scraper.) that is - i did that the first time i made these overnight cinnabuns. unfortunately, cutting the cinnabun roll into buns with my pastry scraper gave them these pinched edges. pinched edges that became all the more offensive - and permanent - when it turned out that the yeast that i used was not particularly active. i kicked myself - this recipe consumes 5 eggs, 4 cups of flour, buttermilk (which i don't usually have on hand), and a not insignificant amount of brown sugar - so it's not the most economical food item to make. nor are they particularly easy to put together the night before - you still have to wait for the first rising of the dough. the payoff, though, is huge, if you can get it right. the dough is fabulous - so good (buttery, rich...) that that first batch was still edible, if not the right texture.

and this is what i did: i went out and bought new yeast, proofed the yeast before adding it to the dough, let the dough rise in the oven after i turned it off the warm cycle (it's cold!), and cut the roll with a serrated knife. and now i've got those babies (see above photo) in the fridge. i'm going to bake them tomorrow, and you better believe that they will obey my need for cinnamon buns. yeah, cinnamon buns, i'm looking at you, i've coddled you enough; now it's time for you to give back.

i'll report back on them tomorrow, with a recipe.

bacon bread

2009-11-30T20:57:00.005-05:00

i'm unable these days to really take on any big cooking projects, due to exhaustion from school. anything that requires more than an hour is pretty much out of the question right now, unless i don't have to babysit it - making chicken stock comes to mind. in the past few months i've either split any slightly involved projects over multiple days, or more likely, i just haven't thought about them seriously at all.

i've been thinking about this bread, though, and talking it up enough since it came out in bon appetit a few months ago that i finally decided to make it. that is, a week ago i decided to make it, while shopping for dinner with mary. i made the bacon-onion-dried pear mix actually about 10 days ago (maybe i shouldn't be telling you this, but there you go). and i had bought the dried pears about 3 weeks before that. so this bread has been in the works for a while.

i finally went to look at the recipe on epicurious, only to find that the reviews were less than stellar - people complained that the bread was dry and bland. multiple people offered suggestions for substitutions, which i duly noted. i mean, if you're going to go to all the trouble of procuring bacon, cheddar and dried pears, all at the same time, it better be good, right? beyond the rarity of all of those stars aligning (the only place at which i have found dried pears is arax, where we happened to stop by after brunch at delux town diner one day), there's the expense of the ingredients.

i was determined to ensure that this bread was neither dry nor bland, so i made quite a few alterations to the original recipe, none of them based in the science that is probably well documented in on food and cooking. first, i replaced the olive oil with melted butter - this was suggested by a few of the reviews, and i agreed, as i have often found that olive oil-based cakes are oddly on the dry side. to bolster any lingering dryness issues, i increased the milk to a 1/2 cup and added a stonyfield container's worth of yogurt (it was fruit on the bottom, so i added everything except the fruit jam). i threw in a bit of extra cheese - i got an 8-oz brick of cabot seriously sharp, and threw in the ounce and a half i had left of an extra-sharp brick. to balance the savory ingredients, i added a little dark brown sugar. i used rosemary instead of sage, because that is what we had on hand when i was making dinner with mary - you must make sure that it is very fresh, so it's still soft. i increased the amount of pears and threw in some onions for good measure.

the result is a long list of ingredients, but i promise you that it's worth it. this bread comes out a crusty golden brown at the edges and on top from the cheese - a slightly flaky, browned cheese type of golden brown. the crumb is very moist and soft - you might not need all of the yogurt - but holds up well to the "fill." i imagine that it would taste good toasted, since the edges will get even crustier. and, quite honestly, this bread is more than the sum of its parts - i had tasted the dried pears they tasted a bit vinegary to me, but that just meant that they go well with the bacon. typically i use whole foods maple-cured bacon, but this time i got niman ranch bacon because it was slightly cheaper. i hate to encourage the crazy yuppie foodies who insist on everything organic from a farmer whose name they know, but the niman bacon is actually better than the whole foods stuff - its flavor just permeates whatever you put it in. i think it was even better in this bread than it was when we ate some after cooking it. do make sure that you use a good thick-cut bacon when you make this, as opposed to a typical thin-cut supermarket bacon.

p.s. i know you would all love to see photos - because, face it, we're all much more likely to make something if we can see what it can and should look like. when i get my life back, consider it a done deal that there will be more photos.

bacon-cheddar-pear bread
1 3/4c flour
1/2t salt
1/4t pepper
1/4c dark brown sugar
1T baking powder
1 c cheddar, grated, plus 1/2c cheddar, in 1/4" cubes (8 to 10 oz)
3 eggs
1/3c yogurt
1/2c whole milk
1/2c butter, melted and cooled to room temp
8 oz bacon
1c diced dried pears
1/2c onions, diced
1/2t fresh rosemary, chopped fine
1/4t dried thyme (optional)

1. heat a large skillet on medium; cut the bacon slices in half and cook until crispy, 15-30 minutes depending on the thickness of the bacon. remove from pan with tongs and drain on paper towels. pour off all of the fat except 1 tablespoon and add the onions, rosemary, and dried pears. while the onion mixture is cooking, cut into small pieces with kitchen shears or a knife, then add back into the onion mixture. cook until onions are cooked all the way through and transfer to a bowl to cool. (this step can be done in advance; cover the bowl and refrigerate until using, within a week.)

2. grease two 5"x9" loaf pans and line with parchment paper. preheat oven to 350F. in a large bowl, combine the flour, salt, pepper, dark brown sugar, and baking powder, stirring with a fork and breaking up any lumps of brown sugar. add grated and cubed cheeses and stir with a fork or your hands to mix completely, making sure that the cheese doesn't clump together.

3. in a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs until well. add whole milk and yogurt and whisk until combined. to add the butter, pour in a slow stream into the egg-milk mixture while whisking. add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and mix just until completely combined. the batter will be on the wet side. add the bacon-onion mixture and thyme (if using) and stir until thoroughly combined.

4. using a rubber spatula, scrape the batter into the prepared loaf pans and bake 45-55 minutes, until golden brown on top and a tester comes out with a few crumbs clinging to it (make sure to test in the batter, not in a piece of cheese or pear). serve immediately, or toast the next day.

[makes 2 loaves, about 15-20 slices]

artificial drink mix gone...right?

2009-11-26T00:22:00.003-05:00

so i found these cookies on photograzing: apple-cider cookies with caramel inside. the photo looks amazing - a ribbon of caramel stretching lusciously between two halves of a cookie - and i'm thinking to myself, a stuffed cookie like a caramel-filled truffle? no awkward compression and repositioning of cookie filling as happens with sandwich cookies? sold.

that is, until i looked more closely at the recipe and found that all of the important flavor components come from artificial, processed sources. the cider flavor comes from cider drink mix, and the caramels are just kraft caramels from the candy aisle. typically, i would attempt to replace these ingredients with non-artificial stuff, but, well, i wanted these cookies. what do you replace apple cider drink mix with, anyway? you can't replace it with reduced apple cider, because it throws off the balance of wet and dry ingredients, and i unfortunately don't have a deyhydrator with which to make apple cider powder.

i held off for about a week before their siren call necessitated a trip to the supermarket for artificially flavored sugar products. i made the cookies, and, well, they were pretty awesome. so now i guess i need to figure out how to make them without the processed sugar. in the meantime, here's the original recipe.

caramel-filled apple cider cookies
2 sticks butter
1c granulated sugar (i used what i had on hand, 1/3c white sugar and 2/3c brown sugar)
1t salt
1 7.4-oz box of alpine cider drink mix (original, not sugar free)
2 eggs
1t vanilla
1t baking soda
1/2t baking powder
3c flour
1 14-oz bag kraft caramels

1. in a large bowl, cream together the butter, sugar, salt, and drink mix (yep, the whole box).

2. add the eggs and vanilla, and beat until incorporated. add the baking soda and powder and beat until incorporated.

3. fold in the flour with a spatula. cover and chill the dough for about an hour.

4. unwrap 36 of the caramels. take about a tablespoon of dough and flatten it out enough to wrap one of the caramels in it. roll the ball of dough in your hands to make sure the caramel is sealed in, then place on a cookie sheet. bake 12 cookies to a sheet, for about 10-12 minutes - until the rims are just turning golden brown. let cool completely before removing from the cookie sheet. you can line the cookie sheet with foil and slide the foil off to keep making more cookies.

note: the caramel will still be soft and melty when right out of the oven. the caramel will stiffen up as the cookies cool - to rewarm, nuke the cookies for about five seconds in the microwave, or set over a hot mug of tea or coffee.

[makes 36 large cookies]

***

p.s. i have been tinkering with the pumpkin pie-tart recipe, specifically with the filling, so look out for a new version of the recipe soon.

when a pie is not a pie

2009-11-13T23:58:00.004-05:00

for the past several months, i've been taking friday evenings off - it's the end of the week, and i'm really feeling the sleep deprivation for that particular week. plus, i work the weekends, so essentially friday nights are my weekend. usually i find myself making dinner with mary, though at this point we're fairly notorious for not actually eating until 10pm or later. by the time mary gets out of work and to central, it's 7:30, and then we invariably go food shopping; we start cooking around 8:30 or 9...you get the point.

i've had a craving for pumpkin pie ever since fall really arrived - there's just something so festive and seasonal about it. we never really ate pie growing up - cheesecake was our MO - and so now i love all kinds of pies: pumpkin, pecan, chocolate, custard, cream. and of course the best kind of pie is leftover pie - leftover pie for breakfast the next day.

anyway, i didn't have the energy to make a regular pie crust by hand, so we did a cookie crust with my favorite gingersnaps. i often find that cookie crumb crusts are too insubstantial, and lack structure, falling apart at the mere proximity of a fork; instead, i made the pie in a tart pan, which had the unintended consequence of making this pie technically a tart. and in doing so, it unintentionally made it into a faux upscale sort of thing - a yuppie move if i ever saw one. it seems odd that a pie can become something totally different just by changing its shape a little bit - the difference was highlighted all the more by the strong associations i have between the nostalgia of pumpkin pie and its tradtional shape. it really begs the question of whether this pie is still a pie, even though it's in a slightly different shape. i would say that there are fundamental differences between pies and tarts - pies are often more robust and homey, whereas tarts are more delicate and finessed. pies are all about functionality as a flavor delivery system, whereas tarts are more about presentation and display. i guess a pie topped with meringue has quite a bit of drama to it, especially when it's slightly bruleed on its exterior with a butane torch, but there's nothing like a tart for an OCD person to obsess over the arrangement of pieces of fruit. my verdict is probably that even though this pie is shaped like a tart, its filling doesn't really change from one shape to the other, so really it's still a pie.

despite the yuppie factor, this pie/tart is pretty excellent. out of sheer laziness i made the recipe on the back of the can - usually i use a cream-and-egg-based recipe from saveur - and upped the spices and ginger in particular. this pie is a bit on the sweet side, so a glass of cold milk or unsweetened whipped cream would be great accompaniments.

gingered pumpkin tart

for the crust

3 boxes of anna's gingersnaps

1 to 1 1/4 sticks butter

1 egg white (optional)

for the filling

1 can pumpkin

scant 1c sugar

1 1/2t ground ginger

1/2t freshly ground nutmeg

1 1/2 to 2t cinnamon

2T crystallized ginger, minced fine

pinch kosher salt

2 eggs

1 12-oz can evaporated milk

1. preheat the oven to 350F. place the gingersnaps in the bowl of a food processor, coarsely breaking them up with your fingers as you take them out of the box. pulse until the cookies are completely ground up. (alternatively, put them in a large, heavy-duty ziploc bag and crush the cookies with a rolling pin or other heavy/solid implement - a wine bottle would be good, a drinking glass less so.) add the butter and pulse until the crumbs are saturated and slightly wet looking.

2. press the mixture into an 11-inch fluted tart pan with a removable bottom and bake for 20 minutes or so, until the crust has browned a little bit. you may want to use pie weights to keep the crust in place, as it may slip down the tart pan a little bit. if it does, though, you can also just press the crust back into place when you take it out of the oven (which i did, and recommend doing, anyway). let the crust cool while you make the filling. if you want the crust to stay crispier when you bake the filling into it, you can beat the egg white until foamy and brush the foam onto the crust right after you take the crust out (but after you reform it if necessary), while it's still hot. the egg white will dry as the crust cools and seal it against the filling.

3. in a medium bowl, whisk together the pumpkin and sugar. add the spices, salt, and crystallized ginger and whisk to combine. whisk in the eggs one at a time, then slowly whisk in the evaporated milk. pour the filling into the crust and bake until the center is just set, about 45 minutes. you may have too much filling - just put the extra into a ramekin and bake alongside the tart. let the tart cool fully - you can eat it while it's hot if you're desperate for pie (just wait 15 minutes), but i think it's better when it has cooled and set.

[serves about 10]

breakin' in the bundt

2009-11-01T12:49:00.004-05:00

a couple weeks ago, i fell in love. i don't normally go for non-classic bundt pans because they are usually too complicated. why would i want a sunflower-, rose-, or sandcastle-shaped bundt pan? that the cake isn't a standard layer cake is already enough for me, without unnecessary bells and whistles.

but i saw this bundt pan - the "heritage" by williams sonoma - and couldn't resist. as you can see in the photo, it's not the classic bundt, but it's not an overly complicated one either. well, i took one look at it, and added to my shopping cart online. yeah, i considered for about 10 seconds before i bought that baby.

i can't usually afford things at williams sonoma, unless i'm at their outlet, or i'm buying a spatula. this pan wasn't too much more than i would pay at a nice kitchen store, and i'm fully prepared to say that it was worth it. my classic bundt also has a classic nonstick coating, which has stood up well over the past four or so years that i've had it - not that i make bundt cakes frequently. the pan has probably seen use maybe 10-15 times. but this new bundt pan has a pretty amazing nonstick coating - it's a proprietary williams sonoma one, so that the pan is kind of golden-gray. when i made a cake in this bundt for the first time, i waited about 30 seconds to turn the cake out on a plate, and the "whoosh" that a cake makes when it comes out of the pan was immediate and perfect. i will have to try a few of my very unforgiving bundt recipes to check the coating comprehensively, but this cake bodes well.

unfortunately, you have to cut across the swirl pattern to serve it, but you do at least get some oohs and aahs when you bring it out, so make the most of it!

and on to the cake - this is a rum-vanilla pound cake. it's not technically a pound cake with respect to the technique - it is much easier and much more forgiving - but it has the texture of one. it's very bad for you - tons of eggs, sugar, and butter, fortified with lots of baking powder - but it's quite good. i think i would adjust the sugar, and have done so in the recipe i've included below - i decreased it by a third cup, in case you want to make it with the full balance of sugar. there is a small possibility that you may get less of a caramelized crust on your cake, but i think that possibility is pretty small. i also made quite a lot of rum syrup, which was on the rummier side than the sugary side. rum-soaked means rum-soaked, people. i used the 8-year aged rum by bacardi, which is pretty good for a big brand.

as for aesthetics - i grabbed this recipe from a blog i came across, and the cake on that blog was rather pale. i saw another version of this cake on another blog that was fully caramelized, so i was confident that it would be ok when i made it - i think this is from dorie greenspan's book. this cake has a dense, but soft crumb, a bit wet from the eggs, and an almost crispy-chewy crust from the high amount of sugar. the caramelized crust is really quite pretty, so it's perfect for showing off a bundt cake.

rum-soaked vanilla pound cake

2 2/3c flour

2 1/2t baking powder

1/2t salt

2c sugar

6 eggs

1 vanilla bean, or 2t vanilla extract (really, go for the beans on this one - the little flecks in the cake are quite pretty)

2/3c whole milk

3T rum

15T butter, melted and cooled

1. preheat oven to 350F. generously butter a 12-cup bundt pan, or a 10-cup bundt plus a few cupcakes.

2. sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. in another bowl, whisk together the eggs, then add the sugar and whisk until completely incorporated. split the vanilla bean and scrape out the beans, then add to the egg-sugar mixture. you may have to use a spoon or spatula to separate the beans a bit, but as you whisk, they will evenly distribute through the mixture. add the milk and rum, and whisk to combine.

3. add the wet ingredients to the dry, and slowly whisk to combine completely (no lumps). add the butter and fold in with a spatula.

4. pour batter into the pan and bake 45-60 minutes. mine was done after about 45 minutes, but i was also using a 10-cup bundt, not a 12-cup. while the cake is baking, make the rum syrup. combine the water and sugar in a small saucepan and heat over medium until the mixture boils. remove and stir in the rum, and let cool. i ended up using the syrup and then just brushing rum straight onto the cake because i didn't think it had enough rum in it. i think i probably used an extra quarter cup of rum.

5. when the cake is done, remove from oven and let sit for about a minute, then turn the pan over onto a large plate. if you want, poke the cake all over with a thin skewer (i never do this because i think the cake isn't as pretty) and then brush with the rum syrup. let cool completely, then cover.

[serves 10-12]

p.s. i am aware that there are problems with the recipe index...i will fix this, but am slammed at school right now so probably it won't get fixed until end of nov or mid dec. sorry!

odds and ends

2009-10-17T15:49:00.005-05:00

just a few odds and ends today. i have a ton of recipes to post that i've tried out in the past couple of months, but not the motivation yet to write about them. i'm in search of a good carrot cake recipe, so if you see one, let me know. i'm looking for a cake that uses either oil or butter, raisins, brown sugar (instead of white sugar), but not pineapple or any of that whickety whack. i just tried a recipe today and thus far i think i may have slightly overdone the nutmeg because it was microplaned fresh instead of storebought ground. more carrots, too, i think.

i have been looking everywhere for the november issue of saveur, which apparently newstands have ceased carrying. when did that happen? saveur is my favorite food magazine because it doesn't follow seasonal and general food trends as closely as gourmet/bon appetit, but instead profiles the food of different cultures. the november issue has an article about gingerbread in it - specifically, about the test kitchen trying out different recipes. i love gingerbread, and i want this issue. apparently cvs and star market do not want me to have the issue.

in a bit of good news, the price of butter has gone down to 2000ish prices. i remember when the price of butter went up in boston area supermarkets, to $4/lb - it was when the price of milk went up to $4/gal. it was also when i was food steward at lmf, so you see why i would pay attention to these things. well, in the past year or so, butter has always been cheapest at whole foods, but usually i would just wait until it went on sale at star market, then buy 6-8 lbs. yeah, that's right. i used to bake quite a lot. anyway, whole foods is still slightly cheaper - $2.39/lb as opposed to $2.79/lb - but now i can feel ok about buying butter at star while it's not on sale. incidentally, it is on sale this week, for $1.88/lb, but all the unsalted was gone by the time i got to the supermarket (at noon on saturday!).

i was walking home from 7-11 - a circuit that included the mit press bookstore since i felt too embarrassed to go to star market three times in a span of 15 hours - during which trip i spent an embarrassing amount for two bricks of cream cheese. i was reminded exactly why i never buy anything at 7-11, beyond the fact that it's simply out of my way. i like to walk home around 5 if i can, the back way (along main street) because there's a small "park" (a clearing with stone benches in it and a few miserable-looking trees) behind a restaurant. at 5, everyone has finished family meal and is sitting outside in that park smoking. while i'm not a huge fan of the restaurant being in my neighborhood (though the food is excellent), it's kind of nice to see someone using those benches, which had sat empty about 90% of the time before this restaurant moved in.

homemade chocolate liqueur

2009-10-03T12:23:00.003-05:00

just found a use for that really attractive, 10cane (ten cane, not iocane) rum bottle: another homemade liqueur. i have some cherry bounce in the fridge that's maturing, and vanilla extract maturing in my room (it's about a month and a half into its four month duration), and now i've got some chocolate liqueur to add to the pack. the recipe is kind of obvious - it's a simple infusion of aromatic spices into alcohol - but i think i might let it sit for a few months and give it away over xmas. the original recipe called for a high-proof rum (150-proof), but i went with a 40-proof mid-range rum (bacardi select). i figure that if it sits for longer than the 3-week period specified in the recipe, the infusion will be just as chocolatey and it won't be overwhelmingly alcoholic.

we'll see.

chocolate liqueur

1 bottle (750 mL) rum

1/2c cocoa nibs

2 vanilla beans, cut in half and split lengthwise

1. fill the bottom of a bottle with the cocoa nibs and vanilla beans. presumably, you could just add the nibs and beans to the bottle of rum. maybe it's easier to get everything in the same place if you're not trying to pour things into the liquid, but rather vice versa? i don't know; i used a different bottle because the one i had was prettier.

2. let sit for at least a month. before using/giving away, strain the cocoa nibs and vanilla out of the rum.

AT LAST....my love has come along

2009-08-28T21:10:00.004-05:00

The night I looked at you
I found a dream that I could speak to...
I found a thrill to rest my cheek to
A thrill that I have never known...

And here we are in heaven
For you are mine
At last

friends, this is a momentous occasion: the brownie hunt is over, thanks to katharine hepburn and her brownie recipe. i have fond memories of slightly-undercooked brownies, allowed to chill in the fridge before being consumed in a state of cold, slightly chewy fudginess. i certainly used to sneak more than my fair share...

in general, if it's homemade, it's better than the mix version. however, i held out in the case of brownies for years, as homemade brownie after homemade brownie didn't meet my standards: too cakey, too dry, not chocolatey enough... unfortunately, this belief was proved wrong when i tried two brownie mixes last fall, in a bid to revisit the glory days of cold, fudgy brownies. all of a sudden, i really could taste all of the chemicals and preservatives that go into these mixes, and they lacked both richness and depth of flavor. to add insult on top of injury, i failed to be attentive enough to the brownies and allowed them to overbake, bringing their texture closer to foam blocks than fudgy heaven.

since then, i've made brownies only once - thekitchn's one-bowl mascarpone brownies (incidentally, really you should never use more than one bowl when making brownies). they were adequately fudgy, but a touch too...well, they felt a little thick on the tongue, rather than settling into a buttery, chocolatey layer in your month. and this is where a homemade brownie, with an adequate recipe, will finally help you out - the butter allows a good brownie to nearly melt in your mouth. i have adapted katharine hepburn's original recipe slightly - i cut the sugar, used half cocoa and half flour, and doubled the recipe, based on user comments of the original brownies being too thin, too sweet, etc.

one of the dangers of homemade brownies is that you can cut into them too early, before they set. one must not give in to temptation, however; homemade brownies are invariably better when you allow them to cool. i did abide by this brownie maxim tonight, and was duly rewarded tenfold. these brownies are super-chocolatey because of the use of unsweetened chocolate, and the sugar required to balance that chocolate creates that delectable crunchy top on the brownies. the key, though, is that the body of the brownies remains wonderfully fudgy, with only the faintest hint of flour to help the brownies hold their shape. best to cut them into small squares in order to prevent yourself from eating the whole pan yourself.

homemade brownies

(adapted from katharine hepburn's brownies)

1c (2 sticks) butter

4 oz unsweetened chocolate, broken or chopped into smallish pieces

1 3/4c sugar

4 eggs

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4c flour

1/4c good quality cocoa (valrhona is good, hershey's not so much)

1. grease a 9" square pan (i used a 9" square pyrex) with butter. line with a wide strip of parchment paper, extending past the edge of the pan, to make it easier to take the brownies out, and butter the paper. preheat oven to 325F.

2. melt the butter and chocolate together in a medium saucepan with a heavy bottom. stir together with a rubber spatula as they melt.

2. whisk in the sugar until well incorporated. make sure the mixture isn't too hot (it can be hotter than lukewarm, but not too much more than that) and whisk in the eggs one at a time. whisk in the vanilla and salt.

3. stir in the flour with the spatula. sift the cocoa into the batter and stir that in as well. your batter should be thick, and slightly glossy.

4. pour into the prepared pan. bake for about 45 minutes, or until the top looks crusty and the batter doesn't jiggle when you shake the pan slightly. a toothpick inserted into the batter will come out with rather wet crumbs adhering to it, but it is indeed done. let cool for 1-2 hours, then slice - these will be easiest to slice if you refrigerate them overnight, then cut them the next day, but i understand if you need to satisfy a craving. cut these into small squares (1.25"-1.5") because they are quite rich.

[makes about 25 small brownies]

gettin' my mojo back

2009-08-28T20:58:00.003-05:00

for the entirety of this summer, i have been trying to convince myself and my health that i am on vacation, and that life is normal again. for about a year - since june 2008 - i haven't had a real break, one where i puttered around the house doing nothing but maintaining the rituals of daily life, and thinking about cooking. and by the rituals of daily life, i mean really mundane things: doing laundry, making my bed, putting away clothes, vaccuming the carpet, cleaning the kitchen counters. every now and then, given the privations of grad school and employment, i need at least a week of doing nothing - waking up whenever, doing whatever.

i expected to get a break this summer, but apparently it wasn't meant to be. there were trips to lowell for work, a site visit for thesis, training sessions for my teaching job, teaching at the bac, then more work at lowell and an attempt to work on thesis...you get the point. and although these commitments don't come close to those that i maintain during the school year, they were enough to deprive me of any chance to really get back up to speed and feel like i was motivated to do anything. and i do mean anything - it has taken two and a half months, but i am finally motivated to cook regularly again. i haven't done very much thesis work in the past two days, even though our first review is in a few weeks, but i have woken up late and cooked a lot, and i feel vastly better right now than i have since that happy time of rejuvenation in june 2008.

and so i have a few recipes here as a reward for reading through this angst-ridden post. i made dinner for roommates tonight: creamed leeks and tomatoes, chicken in milk, and hide bread. we had the brownies for dessert, and then i have a new cookie recipe for you.

the leeks and tomatoes are pretty standard technique, so i won't include those here - basically, olive oil, saute the leeks, add the tomatoes and a bit of whatever cream or half and half you have on hand. the chicken in milk is a jamie oliver recipe i found on thekitchn, and it is quite good and fairly easy - wonderfully aromatic, a bit different from a traditional roast chicken. it is a bit cool tonight, so i thought it would be a good night for roast chicken. this is the second time i've made this particular chicken, and it was better this time around - i think last time we couldn't get sage at the supermarket, but this time i put in the whole package, with more garlic. the chicken is steamed and roasted in milk, with lemon zest, sage, and garlic - i think i would add even more lemon zest, because this time around, the sage and milky-cream flavor dominated, with notes of lemon and cinnamon. i think we got the cinnamon right, but it could use 1-2 more lemons. fyi, the lemon zest causes the milk to curdle into a thickish sauce. it tastes better than it sounds... also, once we stripped all of the meat from the bones, i dumped them into a pot of broth that i have been periodically mixing and strengthening with broths and bones from additional chickens. as most of the chicken i have been cooking this summer is asian, it's flavored with ginger and garlic, and now lemongrass, sage, and cinnamon...i have to say, it smells pretty good now and should be pretty chicken-y.

anyway, the star of the night is the hide bread - in addition to a desire for roast chicken, i chose this particular recipe because it involves plentiful sauce that would soak into the bread. these scone-slash-rolls are named for a person, not because they are in any way close to jerky in texture. they are from a recipe from the big sur bakery, via 101cookbooks, and are essentially very seedy scones that actually taste good. typically, perhaps because i grew up on super-seedy bread, i hate seeded breads, but this one is quite good. and it's quite good for you, i imagine - it's very seedy and fiber-y: oat bran, flax seeds, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, amaranth. it is closer to scones than rolls in technique, as you mix together all the dry ingredients, then stir in the wet until just combined. i made a half-recipe, because some of the comments on 101cookbooks noted that theirs came out like hockey pucks, but we really enjoyed them. they are a bit hard on the outside, and you are supposed to split them and toast them, then slather them with butter. however, if you have good teeth, these would make a wonderful breakfast with a bit of butter and sugar, or jam. if you don't, well, they soften quite nicely in a sauce, providing a healthy but delicious option for carbs and starches at dinnertime.

and finally, i have a fabulous new cookie recipe for you. it is easiest made in a food processor, but you could probably make do without one. these cookies made me appreciate what a food processor can do for you, because it literally takes five minutes to put them together. i have been wanting to try these earl grey tea cookies for quite some time, since i saw them on thekitchn in september 2008. they're basically a shortbread cookie with tea in them; i used tea from tea bags as recommended, with fabulous results. these cookies are perfectly crisp, and imbued with great tea flavor. i made two batches - one with earl grey, and one with jasmine. as expected, both taste better the day after they were baked. the jasmine cookies taste more jasmine-y, while the earl grey cookies have mellowed out a bit.

which reminds me - i have one last cookie recipe for you as well - brown-butter shortbread cookies. it seems like i've been making quite a lot of shortbread-type cookies these days, and for good reason - they are always crispy, stay crispy for longer, and don't go stale nearly as fast as chocolate chip cookies. i've made these brown-butter cookies a couple times now - they were good the first time, but even better the second. i had made the dough, then as has happened frequently this summer, i didn't have the energy left to actually make the cookies. i let the dough languish in the fridge for a little over a week before finally baking them, and disbursing them to roommates and family. they went over pretty well, in part due, i think, to a a longer stay in the fridge for the flavors to develop, and also because i let the butter brown for longer than i usually do. i was convinced that i had accidentally burned it, in a fortuitous instance of forgetfulness, but forged ahead anyway.

and without further ado, here are the recipes:

chicken in milk

(adapted from jamie oliver)

1 roasting chicken, about 5 lbs or so

salt and pepper

3T butter

2T olive oil

1/2 cinnamon stick

1 pkg of fresh sage, leaves picked from the stems and torn coarsely

zest of 3-4 lemons

15 cloves of garlic, smashed and skinned (smash them with the flat of a chef's knife to skin them)

2 1/2c milk

1. preheat oven to 375F. melt the butter and olive oil in a dutch oven and when it's hot, sear the chicken all over, at least a few minutes each side until you get it nice and browned. use a pair of tongs (or a couple of pairs of tongs) to move the chicken to a plate, then pour off the fat in a ramekin. (the original recipe instructs you to discard the fat, but i think you could easily cook other things with it, so i saved mine.)

2. return the chicken to the dutch oven, breast side up, and scatter the sage, lemon zest, cinnamon stick, and cloves of garlic around it. add the milk, then put the lid on and slide it in the oven. cook for an hour with the lid on, then a half hour with it off (it was getting a bit late for dinner, so instead i did 45 minutes with the lid on, 25 minutes with it off, and it was properly cooked temperature-wise). every now and then, take the lid off and spoon the liquids over the chicken.

3. remove chicken from the oven, and serve immediately. we ate it right out of the dutch oven (ie, carving by each person as they served themselves), but if you are making this for a nice dinner party, or a party where you care more about etiquette, then you could use a nice serving bowl and carve the chicken into it, then spoon all the sauce around it. i wouldn't recommend serving the sauce in a gravy boat or anything, though.

[serves 4-6]

note: i'm not quite sure how many this recipe will serve. the original recipe serves 4, though i have used a larger chicken, and we have about 2 cups of shredded chicken in leftovers, so it could quite possibly serve 6 people if you really carve the chicken well, or if you are not as hungry as we were!

hide bread (super-seedy scones)

(adapted from big sur bakery)

5 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra flour for dusting

1/2 cup flax seeds

1/2 cup sesame seeds, toasted

2 cups oat bran

1/4 cup sunflower seeds (i used pumpkin seeds, as i don't like sunflower seeds)

1/2 cup amaranth, quinoa, millet, or poppy seeds (i used amaranth because i have never had it before, but you can use any combo of these...i think think amaranth and poppy seeds would be good - the amaranth was still quite crunchy after baking)

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons beer

2 1/2 cups buttermilk, half-and-half, milk, or water (i used half and half...i would not use water in these)

1. preheat oven to 375F. line a baking sheet with parchment, or use a silpat (really, i just used the silpat because i had it on hand, and the batter is very sticky so i wanted to make sure the scones would come off the pan).

2. mix together all of the dry ingredients in a large bowl.

3. make a well in the center of the dry ingredients, then add the wet. stir with a wooden spoon until a thick, sticky dough/batter forms. plop handfuls of the dough onto the baking sheet, leaving at least 2 inches in between; your handfuls will be about 3.5-4" in diameter, 1.5" thick. if you don't do too much shaping, then the cragginess of the dough will form a crunchier top when baked. don't make them too small - stick to the recommended yield - or you will get hockey pucks that are inedible. these are somewhat denser than the typical scone, but not too heavy.

4. bake for 45 minutes, or until they are golden on top. if your tops are very craggy and not smooth, then they may not look like they are completely golden on top, but make sure you do not overbake. you can eat these either on their own, or as recommended by the original recipe - split, toasted, and slathered with butter. store in an airtight container.

[makes 14 scones, though this recipe is easily halved to make 7]

tea-flavored shortbread cookies

1c flour

1/4c sugar

1/4c confectioners' sugar

5-6 teabags' worth Earl Grey (or other) tea leaves

1/4t salt (i was a bit more generous with the salt, which provides a nice counterpoint to the sweet in this cookie)

1t water

1 stick (1/2c) butter

1. preheat oven to 375F. if you are using a food processor, pulse together all of the dry ingredients until the tea leaves are pulverized.

2. add vanilla, water, and butter, and pulse together until a dough forms. the dough will be on the wet side of a shortbread dough. dump the dough out onto a piece of wax or parchment paper, and form it into a log about 2-2.5" in diameter. wrap the wax paper around it, and chill for 1 hour or overnight.

3. when you're ready to bake it, slice the log into 1/3" thick pieces (i got exactly 24 cookies). place on baking sheets, about 15 (3 cookies x 5 cookies) at the most, since the cookies do spread quite a bit. if you chill them longer, they will retain their edges better and not spread quite as much. bake 10-13 minutes, until the edges are just brown. (i baked some until the edges were just brown, and some a bit longer, and the recipe was spot on - bake until the edges are just brown - they will still be crisp.)

4. let cookies cool on the sheets for five minutes so they can firm up, then transfer to a plate to cool completely. store in an airtight container up to about 2 weeks.

[makes 24 cookies]

brown butter shortbread cookies

(adapted from Gourmet via smitten kitchen)

3/4c (1 1/2 sticks) butter

1/2c dark brown sugar, packed

1 1/3c flour

1/4t kosher salt

1. cut the butter into a few pieces and cook in a small, heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat. stir frequently, scraping the bottom of the pan, and cook the butter until it smells kind of nutty, and the particles that have settled on the bottom turn a medium brown. the particles are the milk solids (you would discard these to make ghee, or clarified butter) and basically they are caramelizing; this is browned butter. you don't want the particles to get too dark - that means that they're burned - but neither do you want them to be too light, because the cookies will be less flavorful. the particles should be about the color of hazelnut shells. anyway, once the butter is browned, remove it from the heat and scrape into a small bowl. let cool to room temp, then stick it in the fridge to chill it back into a solid. it should be just firm, and good to go in about an hour.

2. beat together butter and brown sugar with an electric mixer until pale and fluffy (do actually use the electric mixer for these cookies). mix in flour and salt at low speed until just combined.

3. transfer dough to a sheet of wax paper or parchment and form into a 12-inch log, 1.5-2" in diameter. chill, wrapped in wax paper, overnight (alright, if you must have these sooner, chill until firm, 1-2 hours, but these are much better if you let the dough's flavors meld) or a few days.

4. preheat oven to 350F. slice the dough into 1/4" thick slices, then place on a baking sheet (lined with foil if you want, or a silpat) about 1.5" apart - these cookies spread less than the tea cookies did, probably because they were chilled for longer. bake until the surface looks dry and edges are slightly darkened, 10-15 minutes. cool on the pan for 5 minutes so the cookies set up, then transfer to a plate. they will be a bit crumbly in a sandy way, but they will be delicious so it's ok. store in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks.

[makes 20-30 cookies]

cannibal cookies

2009-08-21T20:15:00.004-05:00

have you ever wondered what it would be like if you made a cookie with cookies in it? well, it's kind of like the show-within-a-show trick - but naturally, much better. these best-of-both-worlds concoctions don't always work out - instead of increasing your utility, the combo disappoints.

but these cookies definitely do not disappoint. they're certainly more like chocolate chip cookies than oreos, but they add a lovely bit of crunchiness to a traditional soft, chewy chocolate chip cookies. the crunchiness isn't quite that of the sugar-butter crispiness of a chocolate chip cookies, nor is is soft like a chocolate chip; it's somewhere in between. and let me say that i think the baking temperature is actually significant in the case of these cookies. 325 is almost like baking your cookies sous-vide - they're just a bit crunchy at the edges, but totally soft and chewy everywhere else. these cookies are softer than other chocolate chip cookies i've made, and despite the inclusion of melted butter, these cookies didn't spread like crazy when baked immediately after making the dough. in fact, the cookies stay nice and pleasurably thick; i've never liked the thin, crispy genre of chocolate chip cookie.

the bottom line is that these are probably the easiest chocolate chip cookies to make. you can deviate from my typical recommendation to chill the dough before baking, and you don't have to wait for the butter to soften since you're just going to melt it, anyway.

chocolate chip oreo cookies

2c flour

1/2t baking soda

1/2t salt

3/4c butter, melted

1c brown sugar, packed

1/2c sugar

1 egg

1 egg yolk

2c chocolate chips (1 standard pkg)

20 oreos, crushed

1. preheat the oven to 325F. line your cookie sheets with alumninum foil or parchment paper.

2. in a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, and salt (or, skip this and when you add the dry ingredients, mix in the baking soda and salt, then the flour).

3. in a medium bowl, beat together the melted butter and both sugars (i do recommend using an electric mixer for these cookies). make sure the mixture isn't too hot and then beat in the egg and egg yolk, until completely blended (it'll become a little less glossy). mix in the dry ingredients until just blended.

4. with a spatula, mix in the chocolate chips, then the oreo bits (you can break the bits up directly into the batter so you don't have to pre-crush).

5. drop the dough onto the cookie sheets by tablespoonfuls; roll them in your hands a few times if you want them to be more uniform in size. these cookies work best when given space, so don't crowd them on your baking sheet; use the traditional 12 cookies per standard cookie sheet.

6. bake for 14-16 minutes, until edges are just golden and the tops of the cookies look dry (they really are done at this point - i made these twice, and they stayed softer and chewier when i just whisked 'em out at the 15 minute mark). cool on the baking sheets for a few minutes before transferring to a plate. store in an airtight container for a week or so.

[makes 40 cookies]

upstairs again; tomatoes at craigie; a new find

2009-08-20T20:48:00.002-05:00

this year, upstairs on the square must have a new chef, because the food is a lot more exciting and adventurous than it usually is. it also appears to be suffering a bit business-wise, even though the food is better than it has ever been; so i'm doing my part towards the country's economic recovery by having had lunch twice at upstairs in the past two weeks. the first time wasn't particularly worth talking about - a clam chowder that tasted mostly of creme fraiche and a fish sandwich on too-thick bread - but the second time was really quite wonderful. i went with my mother and sister, and we had:

- chilled yellow tomato soup with a hint of scotch bonnet; crouton of wild salmon and avocado tartare

- antipasti of lourdes' mozzarella; peach and sweet summer pepper relish

- lemon tagliatelle; chiogga beets & greens, lobster knuckles, sauteed cod cheeks

- bbq pork piadina sandwich; giardiniera of farmer's market vegetables, crisp onion strings

- cheeseburger on a potato roll; gruyere, niman ranch bacon, cucumber pickles

- market fruit galette; candied almonds

- crema catalana; cinnamon & orange, pecan shortbread cookies

the tomato soup was absolutely delicious - i often find tomatoes to be too sweet, but these were sweet and plenty tart. the addition of the scotch bonnet is also quite wonderful - adding a crucial bit of warming heat to the cold soup. the avocado was delicious, but unnecessary.

i had the bbq pork sandwich as my main course - it was also quite good. it turns out that a piadina is a sort of italian flatbread, slightly thicker than a tortilla; this one was corn-based. the bbq pork was great - a lot of bbq flavor, a bit of char - and i think that it may have been cooking in the grill we saw right at the entrance to the restaurant, as the smoke from the grill matched the smoky flavor in the pork. the giardiniera, which is an actual name for an italian side dish that is a fancy name for pickled vegetables, was forgettable and a bit too vinegary for my tastes. the crisp onion strings were absolutely delicious - very lightly battered, razor-thin slices of onion - basically, ephemeral bits of onion essence.

i had a bite of my sister's lemon tagliatelle, which is fresh, house-made pasta. not as delicious as the lobster dish i had a few weeks ago, but still quite good. i also had a bite of my mother's burger, and i may have to amend my decision to name craigie's burger as the best burger around here. i've had the upstairs burger before, but long ago enough that craigie had replaced it in my esteem. however, now that i've had each burger within a week of each other, i can safely compare them. while it was worth the wait for the tomato in craigie's burger, the upstairs burger actually tasted beefier and more satisfying. the upstairs burger also earns some brownie points with its inclusion of homemade mayo for the burger or fries (mayo with my fries is one food-related affection that i've developed in my grown-up-adult phase of life). i also prefer upstairs' thick-cut fries over the shoestring fries at craigie, although this time, at least craigie had regular potato fries (i am not a fan of sweet potato fries). there is just no way to effectively eat shoestring fries; it robs you of both a high rate of potato consumption (a debatable loss), but more importantly, of the satisfaction of chewing a mouthful of potato. and that is definitely a crime.

unfortunately, although the first and second courses were delicious, dessert was disappointing. i generally caution against dessert at upstairs, unless you choose the butterscotch pudding, which is absolutely wonderful. both desserts were clunkers - the galette wasn't sweetened enough (and i'm pretty sensitive to overly sweet desserts), its crust was completely soggy, and it came topped with whipped cream that was whipped almost to the point of being butter. i really wanted to send it back, but i never know what the etiquette is for that type of thing. the crema catalana was better - it was basically a spiced creme brulee, and the shortbread cookies were good, but it was overall an average dessert.

as a side note, exciting news! i have now been to craigie enough times that i apparently am a trusted enough customer that they don't require me to secure my reservations with a credit card. i'm moderately flattered.

***

also last week, i did restaurant week lunch with my sister at asana, which is in the mandarin oriental hotel on boylston. the entrance is unmarked as far as i could see, both from the street entrance and from the hotel entrance; much as it may denote high levels of cool, i am not a huge fan of such displays. luckily, the food was wonderful, and the decor is quite nice design-wise - simple, with accents of texture and volume.

per the restaurant week menu, we had the following (the simplicity of the way the menu is worded masks some of the preparation techniques):

- heirloom tomato and lemongrass soup; watermelon, flowers

- ahi tuna sashimi; wasabi greens, yuzu vinaigrette, squid cracker

- bento box; asian bbq beef, sticky rice, wakame salad, steamed pork dumplings

- atlantic salmon; mizuna, citrus, mint, basil, sake vinaigrette

- grand marnier parfait; marinated raspberries

- jivara chocolate tart; roasted banana ice cream

i was slightly underwhelmed by the tomato soup that i had, although this is more due to my cultural conception of what a tomato soup should be. this tomato soup was more of a tomato consomme, in which the tomato juice is extracted from pulped tomatoes. it wasn't like v8 tomato juice - rather, the consomme is to v8 as fresh orange juice is to oj from a carton. it has a wonderfully fresh, delicate flavor, but i think my liking for florals in my food is pretty limited, so i was less a fan of this soup. (the two notable floral concoctions i've had were the lemonade from cafe baraka, which has rosewater in it, and the floral scent-infused sea bass chowder i had at alinea.)

the tuna sashimi that my sister had was really delicious - a good balance of ingredients in addition to very good tuna. as usual, no ability here to taste yuzu.

main courses were really good - the salmon i had was seared on one side, skin-on on the other side. the sear was very well done technically - the salmon was perfectly cooked, the sear perfectly crispy. the salmon was unadorned, really, save for the grapefruit - grapefruit with seafood is a favorite combination. i can't remember what salmon is usually paired with at restaurants, but it seemed to me that mashed potatoes and salad were slightly out of the ordinary. it was a well-orchestrated trio - the mashed potatoes were similar to the salmon in richness, while the mix of arugula and mint acted as a refreshing foil to that richness. it's not often that one gets mint in a salad, instead of as a garnish or in a pesto, and i was somewhat surprised to find that it pairs so well with arugula - the peppery flavor of the arugula and the coolness of the mint are well-balanced. i did also have a dumpling and a bit of beef from my sister's bento box, which were good and excellent, respectively. the beef was very complex in flavor, the spices balancing out the sweetness of the sauce. you could also tell that the way the beef had been cooked in the sauce was a distinctively asian preparation, not unlike char siu pork - it wasn't beef in sauce, but rather, the sauce had been reduced and the beef seared and cooked in it for some time.

it seems rare to me that restaurants do both sweet and savory well, but the desserts here were really impressive. i find that it's more difficult to find good places for dessert in the boston area than for dinner, so it's great to find a place that does everything well. the parfait that i had came in four small cylinders laid on a plate like logs, their tops scattered with a smattering of raspberries that had a sheen of some kind of "marinade" (like a syrupy reduction of sugar or wine), and a traditional caramelized-sugar tuile. the cylinders were the "grand marnier parfait" and tasted like a semifreddo, but firmer - as if it had been firmed with whatever the molecular gastronomy types use to solidify frozen things. the end result was that throughout eating the dessert, it didn't melt, still tasted cold, and had the slightest bit of chew to what appeared to be a soft ice cream. well, it was delicious - just a very simple preparation to end an excellent lunch. my sister's dessert was equally good - the jivara, i believe, corresponds to a specific blend of valrhona chocolate; both tart (of the dense, flourless-chocolate-cake ilk) and the banana ice cream were great.

in addition to lunch, we had a couple of tonics - i can't quite remember what they had in them, but they are wonderful, simple yet complex concoctions. it's the sort of non-alcoholic tonic that makes you feel like you're just as appreciated as someone who's drinking an alcoholic cocktail (plus, it was lunch on a weekday).

the service here is also pretty good - inobstrusive, but attentive. it's the type of place that's the dressy, hostess-pulls-out-your-chair-for-you type place - the high-end type of place that is welcome but atypical for the casualness of life in boston. i'm pretty sure that the last place where my chair was pulled out for me was per se in new york. the dining room has well-lit high ceilings, and the high-end finishes of the decor and silverware really make you feel like you're in a luxurious setting. then again, the sumptuousness of a weekday three-course, two-hour lunch certainly contributed to its air of luxury, too... (for those of you who are always conscious of food portions, the portions here are generally spot on - not too much, not too little, erring on the side of slightly generous (especially for lunch).)

i remain somewhat amazed by the discovery of a new place that's so good - simple, adventurous, delicious. i'm pretty hard to impress, food-wise, but i was impressed; it's rare that a new place is so good. i often feel belittled at nice restaurants because i appear to be young or inexperienced in the realm of good food, but the service here is fairly unpretentious. it was pretty empty at lunch on a friday afternoon - about a third of the dining room was occupied - so the scene when it's busy might be off-putting, as it seems like it's an upscale/hip enough place to attract the correspondingly pretentious crowd. however, on this day - a beautiful sunny day - it was quiet and relaxing.

the vanilla experiment

2009-08-13T14:52:00.003-05:00

really, this isn't much of an experiment, as evidenced by a very robust thread about homemade vanilla on eGullet. however, it's an experiment that's new to me, so i've invested in vanilla beans - good quality, cheap beans from a seller on ebay (the graphics are terrible, but the beans are really good, and many other people on eGullet have bought them, so i feel ok about it), jars, and alcohol, and now i have five jars of vanilla extract, maturing in a box in my room.

i bought the jars on amazon, sight unseen, and it turns out that 1 3/4c jars are really quite large...requiring a large amount of alcohol to fill them. ah, well. that just means that i'll have a lot of vanilla extract to gift away in four months, which is the duration of this experiment. basically, the vanilla flavor leaches out into the alcohol, and you get vanilla extract that's closer to the flavor of real vanilla pods than the stuff you can buy in the store. i have five blends going, with variations in alcohol, bean type, and additional spices (star anise): bourbon beans/rum; bourbon beans/cognac+rum; tahitian + bourbon beans/cognac+rum; tahitian beans/vodka+rum; bourbon beans + star anise/rum. will keep you posted as time goes on.

upstairs at upstairs

2009-07-28T20:11:00.004-05:00

for a few weeks, carrie and i have been trying to partake of either the bpl's courtyard tea, or the special lobster-and-corn-themed menu at upstairs on the square. as luck would have it, the menu got extended a few days past its stated last day, so we took it as a sign and made a reservation.

i will say, just in passing, that it was much easier than i had expected to get a reservation - we called the night before and were able to get a table for four. then, the following day, when we couldn't find another deuce, we were able to change the reservation from four to two.

in all honesty, for years i've been pretty ambivalent about upstairs on the square - usually the menu is seasonal classics done well with respect to technique. it's one of those places where you would take a look at the menu, and be satisfied, but not particularly excited - a feeling that's a bit strange when considering the whimsical decor. that said, i haven't stayed away just for that reason - you won't find a better butterscotch pudding anywhere, nor can you find a more perfect burger with the right balance of euro (mayo with your fries) and american (...beef, and perfectly crisp bacon).

following this past visit, i can't help but feel that things are on an upswing. we started with an amuse bouche that was a sort of gougere, its interior not unpleasantly on the wet side, with a red wine reduction and a couple shards of parmesan. technically perfect, and the ho-hum nature of the gougere, popularized as an amuse bouche by thomas keller, was definitely upgraded by the red wine reduction. bread was ok, on the salty side, but thankfully no sign of sourdough, and the butter was the consistency of a thick mayo - ie, eminently spreadable.

for starters, i had the wellfleet oysters with asian pear slivers and yuzu ice; carrie had the "native corn three ways" (corn chowder, crispy polenta with a greek salad, sweet corn flan with candied bacon). i've had a bit of a thing for raw oysters ever since i had them for the first time at pearl oyster bar; these oysters were, as far as my slightly insensitive palate goes, quite good. i think they would have been a bit better had they been a little colder, but they tasted fabulous, and the asian pear was a great counterpart. i've never really been able to taste yuzu, but presumably it added some sort of exotic, elusive flavor. carrie's corn trio was quite good as well - the corn chowder could have been called "bacon chowder" instead, so strongly and deliciously did it taste of bacon, despite its complete textural absence. the crispy polenta outdoes pigalle's deep-fried poached egg for perfect crisping, but the centerpiece of this trio is really the flan. the corn sweetens the flan enough, but not too much, and really, as carrie commented, it tastes like a perfect quiche custard, made with the richest ingredients possible, and without any additives - broccoli, etc. and somebody in the kitchen must really love bacon, because the candied bacon was clearly handled with love - perfectly crisp-chewy, with just the right note of sweetness. overall, starters were maybe a 7.5/10?

i would say that entrees trumped starters, no contest. i had grilled lobster (a tail and a claw) with bok choy tempura, spiced butter, and coconut rice. the first time i realized that i liked lobster, as it happens, was also at pearl oyster bar, the same time as the oysters. my memory is like a sieve these days, so i only have the vaguest of memories: that the lobster roll i had was delicious, refreshing, cold, tender, and sweet. you know, all of those things that really good lobster is stereotypically supposed to be. i remember that lobster roll much more fondly than the lobster tail i had at per se; my also-vague memories of the lobster at per se recall concerns over the discernible toughness of the lobster, despite it being poached in butter.

but this is just a long-winded setup to tell you that this lobster dish is possibly the best lobster i've ever had. the lobster was tender without being mushy, and that is saying something. the ample amounts of lobster concealed rice that was savory and strongly imbued, somehow, with coconut flavor and subtle spicing. even the bok choy was better than i had expected - the really leafy bits tasted a bit like kale chips, and the body of the leaves contrasted nicely with the tempura batter. speaking of the batter, it had quite a bit of chew to it, in comparison to most tempura batters, which are soaked with frying oil and almost ephemeral flavor-wise. the crunchy bits of tempura that broke off the bok choy were delicious with the rice and lobster, providing a welcome bit of textural contrast. i'm not sure if that was the intent, but i like to think that it was - that whoever designed this dish thought about what would happen, physically, to the food as it was cut up and consumed.

in other news, carrie had a lobster salad - peppercress (from eva sommaripa's garden!), avocado, citrusy dressing with chunks of lobster. i tried just a bit, and the peppercress was really fabulous, and well taken care of - still crispy and springy. the salad was really the complete opposite of the grilled lobster - the crunchy birkenstock-wearing californian, as opposed to the cold-weather, comfort-food-craving new englander. all in all, quite delicious.

i was disappointed not to see the butterscotch pudding on the dessert menu; we settled on sharing the special dessert - corn ice cream atop a blueberry cobbler. the corn ice cream was really good - again, not too sweet, and it didn't taste of corn, per se. it tasted like somebody made corn sugar out of the corn, in some way that tasted of corn that happened to be sweet
(as opposed to the straight-out sugar sweetness of refined corn syrup). what it reminded me of most was this dessert i had at alinea that had tonka beans in it, really. the ice cream topped a shallow ramekin of blueberry cobbler, which appeared to have equal amounts of topping (with only a smack of oats) and blueberry. somehow this wasn't a problem, because of the shape and size of the serving dish. the shallowness of the dish ensures that there isn't too much blueberry for a given amount of topping, which was in larger crumbly bits than in a normal cobbler.

so, a delicious, relaxing dinner upstairs at upstairs on the square. i hadn't had dinner in the soiree room before, but it proved to be a relaxed respite to the bustle of the larger dining room downstairs. seemed like the downstairs also has more harder surfaces than the upstairs, because the sound echoes there a lot more. just checked the restaurant week menu, and it looks promising.

the real ham king

2009-07-15T18:13:00.005-05:00

lindsay: would you like to try some of this?

buster: [tasting] so watery...yet there's a smack of ham to it.

lindsay: ...it's hot ham water!

in warren, john and i drove by a place called "ham king II." unfortunately for our curiosity, but more fortunately for our stomachs, we satisfied ourselves with a slow driveby of the fairly dilapidated storefront - plastic tarp for windows, dinginess abounded. we also passed "ham cafe," which we also graced with a driveby, but no economic patronage.

instead, star market got my economic patronage when i returned from warren, interested in making a ham (not just for my own curiosity, but also for keith, whom i imagine subconsciously pining for ham over any other form of pork save bacon). well, just you try getting a ham in july. they're not so much in demand in cambridge, at whole foods, harvest, or star market. i had intended to do a ham for july 4, but ended up doing barbecued ribs instead because i couldn't find a ham. a week later, i still couldn't find a true, thanksgiving-style ham, so i settled for a bone-in smoked pork butt from star market.

the ham that keith always mentions is one i made for lmf diner de noel back in maybe sophomore year: a traditional spiral-cut ham, baked with slices of pineapple applied liberally. i didn't quite want to do just a pineapple ham, despite some great comments in pineapple-based ham recipes on epicurious: "my son even asked for more pineapple because it was fruit that tasted like ham!" and it's been a while since i've made a ham, so i felt a little like i should match my ham recipe to my oh so sophisticated adult life that i lead nowadays. i still went with epicurious - a honey-thyme glazed baked ham, which called for steaming it for a while, then glazing it for a while. i felt like the ham should still have some pineapple in it somewhere, so i steamed the ham in a couple of small cans of pineapple juice, then later used the pineapple-infused pan juices with the leftover glaze to make a gravy/jus of sorts.

the final product was pretty good. i wish it had been a bit more tender - somehow the exterior wasn't that tender, despite the steaming it got, probably due to the lack of fat layer over the top of the ham. the glaze was good - not too sweet, and not too thyme-y. i think i would add more cider vinegar, though, to balance out the honey flavor a bit more. the smoked flavor of the ham was also a good balance for the sweetness of the glaze, i think. i would have to try it again with a more traditional ham to know the effect of the smoked pork butt for sure. we had enough ham for six people, plus leftovers for a couple days.

i often overdo dinner when i have people over, but this time i seem to have calculated more effectively, adding simple accompaniments to balance out the ham. for drinks, aviators on request (or rather, to inflict on test subjects) and peach iced tea (harney + sons from last season, lightly sweetened and lemon-ed). for sides, mashed potatoes (california white - i like using the waxy potatoes for mashing) and creamed peas that i started in a bit of bacon fat and finished with shredded basil. all in all, an excellent success - the sides + ham were a more harmonious trio than i usually manage, and not overwrought at all. for the peas, i mixed frozen petite peas with some real english peas, partly for novelty and the hope that fresh peas make a difference flavor-wise, and partly because i really enjoy shelling peas. i would normally do dessert, but haven't had the endurance to do it in addition to dinner for a while, so mary brought an excellent blueberry-plum buckle.

honey-thyme glazed ham

16 oz pineapple juice

1 smoked pork butt, approximately 6-10 lbs, preferably bone-in; or get a spiral-cut ham

4 1/2 T butter

3T chopped thyme

1/2c cider vinegar

3/4c mild honey

2t worcestershire sauce

1. preheat the oven to 325F, positioning the rack in the bottom third. peel off rind or skin from ham, leaving a quarter inch of fat on the ham, at most (there was not cap of fat on the pork butt i bought; if this is the case for you, just pull off excessive fat). score a diamond crosshatch pattern into the fat without cutting into the meat. put ham on a rack in a large roasting pan, pour the pineapple juice into the pan. put a piece of parchment paper on top of the ham, then cover the ham + pan with foil so it's one closed entity. bake for about 2 to 2 1/2 hours.

2. while the ham is baking, make the glaze. melt the butter and thyme in a small saucepan and let foam for about 10-15 minutes. boil the cider vinegar in another saucepan until it's reduced to a couple tablespoons. remove from heat and whisk in the honey, worcestershire sauce, and thyme butter. you might have to whisk it for a bit to get the whole thing to emulsify together. let glaze stand while the ham finishes baking.

3. when the ham is done steaming, remove from oven (keep the oven on though) and discard foil and parchment paper. brush the glaze on the ham and return to oven, reducing temperature to 300F. bake for another hour, re-glazing every 10 minutes or so. after the hour is up, remove ham from oven and move the ham to a serving platter; let stand at least 15 minutes before carving. pour all pineapple liquids and glaze drippings to a saucepan and reduce until it reaches a syrupy consistency. skim the jus and serve in a bowl with the ham.

[serves 6]

creamed peas

4 slices of thick-cut bacon, cut in half

4-5 cups petite peas, frozen or fresh

a handful of fresh basil leaves

1/3c to 1/2c light cream

1. put the bacon in a skillet and turn to medium heat. cook the bacon until crispy and fat is rendered, about 15-20 minutes. leave the fat in the skillet. pat the bacon dry with paper towels or napkins and eat it. go ahead, eat the bacon. you deserve it.

2. add the peas. cook until the peas are almost all cooked through, about 10 minutes or so. add the basil and cook a few more minutes. add the cream and cook until the cream reduces a bit, about 10-15 minutes, but watch it to make sure your peas don't get mushy. the idea is to add enough cream to coat the peas, but not so much that they're swimming in it. then the basil, cream and peas all meld together with some smoky, bacony overtones; the cream will also make the peas stick to each other a bit, making them easier to eat.

3. you can keep the peas on low to keep them warm for up to a half hour.

[serves 6]

butterscotch pudding

2009-06-29T11:23:00.002-05:00

it's no secret that i love pudding. i mean, really, how can you not like pudding in all of its various forms: regular pudding, panna cotta, pot de creme, creme brulee (which is clearly more pudding than custard)...i've posted a couple of pudding recipes here - chocolate and brown sugar - but nothing yet for vanilla or butterscotch. well, no vanilla pudding recipe yet, but here is a simple butterscotch pudding recipe. this is not nearly the revelation that marks the butterscotch pudding at upstairs on the square (far and away the best pudding ever), but it's still pretty good, especially for the simple ingredient list. this recipe still takes as long to make as traditional pudding, but since it uses cornstarch as a thickener, not egg yolks, there is no need to separate eggs for your mise en prep, nor is there any bother about tempering lukewarm and hot liquids that are sensitive to curdling. typically i don't add the butter that most pudding recipes call for, but in this case, to return some of the richness of egg yolks in the pudding, i did add the butter.

i suspect that a truer butterscotch pudding might involve building a more complex flavor through actually making caramel of some kind, but we'll leave that to a later experiment. oh, also: butterscotch puddings do tend to be sweet, and i found the original recipe i used to be just slightly too sweet, hence the addition of "scant" to the sugar measurement.

butterscotch pudding

scant 1/2c brown sugar

2T plus 2t cornstarch

1 1/2c whole milk

1/2c heavy cream

1T butter

1. in a medium saucepan (heavy-bottomed if at all possible), combine the sugar and cornstarch and whisk together until the majority of the lumps are gone.

2. whisk in the whole milk and cream. heat the mixture over medium heat until it boils, then allow to boil for one minute (sometimes this takes a long time, especially if your cream and milk were cold when you added them in; also, sometimes, cornstarch-based puddings will thicken before they boil - if this is the case, you can either consider it done, or wait until it boils to make it thicker).

3. remove the pan from heat and add butter. stir until butter is melted and incorporated. pour into a serving dish, ramekins, etc. if you don't want a skin to form on the top of the pudding (i actually like the skin), then immediately cover the surface of the pudding with plastic wrap - literally let the plastic wrap adhere to the pudding.

[serves 4]

in which the weather complies

2009-05-27T23:23:00.009-05:00

as you know, i love really involved recipes. as it happens, i've had a yen for spaghetti and meatballs for some time - comforting, savory but slightly sweet, altogether delicious. it is also, however, a cold-weather food, but luckily for me the weather complied by turning chilly in the past day or so.

let's just be clear: when i say bolognese, i mean real bolognese: garlic, carrots, celery, and onions, in addition to the meat. i mean a 6-hour simmer - there is nothing "quick" about bolognese - in which the tomatoes disintegrate because they've been on the stove for six hours, and in which the meat is tender and toothsome because it's been simmering in the sauce for hours. bolognese tastes as good as it does because it takes time, not because you dump a lot of four-star ingredients into it.

so this is a delicious, honest bolognese - with an emphasis on tomatoes rather than meat, and with a strong cast of supporting vegetables. the finished product will be a thick, savory sauce that pairs well with a ridged, shell pasta. then again, we also know i have a soft spot for ridged, shell pasta, so i'm probably just biased. i find, though, that i prefer spaghetti and meatballs with non-spaghetti pasta, because i inevitably derive more pleasure from eating pasta with a spoon. plus shells are better at capturing bits of sauce than spaghetti.

for those concerned about budget, well, bolognese isn't the cheapest thing in the world, but it's not too expensive either. most of the cost goes to the meat and the tomatoes - but you will notice that i have specified plum tomatoes because they are always significantly cheaper than regular tomatoes, with more flesh and less pulp. there is also a combination of regular and canned tomatoes for budgetary reasons. ideally, you would use all real tomatoes, but a small proportion of canned tomatoes doesn't hurt. all in all, in an urban supermarket, i think this costs around $20-25, so if it feeds 6-8 people, the average cost per person is fairly low. and it's delicious!

a note about the prep work - prep the tomatoes to roast and get them in the oven first, then do the rest of your prep work. it'll give the tomatoes the time they need to caramelize well.

a note about the ingredients - do use the bacon fat if at all possible. it will give your sauce depth, and the smokiness of the fat will meld well with the acidity of the tomatoes. also use good quality bacon - bacon is one of the few things i splurge for at whole foods; you get the bacon, and then you can cook with the fat for a few months, so it's really quite economical in the end. i find that whole foods bacon just gives better fat - it has less additives and fewer artificial flavorings, or at least it tastes like it does.

bolognese sauce
olive oil
3 lbs plum tomatoes
3-4T rendered bacon fat (if you don't have this, use butter)
1 head garlic, minced
3 medium to large onions, diced finely
5 stalks celery, diced finely
5-6 carrots, peeled and diced finely
2-3T fresh thyme, stripped from the stems
2 28-oz cans whole tomatoes, coarsely chopped
1 1/2 lbs ground beef, pork, or a mix of both
3/4c cream, light cream, or whole milk
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

1 lb pasta (preferably some kind of ridged pasta)
salt, olive oil

1. preheat the oven to 375F. halve and core the plum tomatoes and toss lightly with olive oil. place on a baking sheet, cut side up. roast the tomatoes in the middle of the oven for about 2-3 hours. do this first, and then prep the rest of your ingredients.

2. in a large saucepot, heat 2T of the fat over medium. add the garlic and cook for a few minutes, until the garlic is golden. add the remaining fat, onions and thyme and cook for about 10 minutes, then add the celery and carrots and continue to cook.

3. heat a skillet on medium-high and add the ground beef/pork. brown the meat, breaking it up as it cooks, then add the cream/milk. bring the cream to a simmer, stirring frequently so the cream doesn't burn. cook for about 10-15 minutes until the cream reduces slightly. remove from heat; add to the vegetable mixture and stir to combine.

4. open the canned tomatoes and drain the liquid into the pot. coarsely chop the tomatoes and add to the pot as well.

5. at this point, the roasted tomatoes should be done - they should have caramelized to brown and flattened out. you can dump them into the pot whole, or chop them coarsely before adding them. stir the sauce and continue to simmer over medium heat. add salt and pepper to taste. your sauce will have a lot of liquid in it, so simmer for 3-4 hours to let it reduce and to develop its flavor. this will also give the tomatoes time to disintegrate into the sauce.

6. when the sauce is done, heat 3 quarts of water in a large pot for the pasta. bring the water to a boil, then add about a tablespoon of salt. when the water returns to a boil, add the pasta and cook until it's al dente. drain the pasta and toss with a little bit of olive oil to keep it from sticking to itself.

7. serve sauce over pasta.

[serves 6-8]

gingerbread

2009-02-12T20:46:00.003-05:00

this gingerbread is nothing like a gingerbread cookie: it's moist, dense, slightly sticky, and intensely gingery - everything you wish when you eat gingerbread, and more. this is the sort of thing that would be fabulous on a cold night, topped with whipped cream. it's much better the next day, and keeps well in the freezer

gingerbread

(adapted from claudia fleming)

1c guinness (or other deep, dark stout)

1c dark molasses (not blackstrap)

1/2t baking soda

2c flour

1 1/2t baking powder

2T ground ginger

1t cinnamon

1/4t ground cloves

1/4t freshly grated nutmeg

3 eggs

1c dark brown sugar, packed

1c sugar

3/4 cup vegetable oil

1. preheat oven to 350F. generously (really, quite generously, otherwise your cake will stick to the pan) butter a bundt pan, then dust it with flour; knock out the excess.

2. bring stout and molasses to a boil in a large saucepan and remove from heat. whisk in baking soda, then cool to room temperature.

3. sift together flour, baking powder, and spices in a large bowl. whisk together eggs and both sugars. whisk oil into egg-sugar mixture, then the molasses-beer mixture. add the wet ingredients to the dry, and whisk until just combined.

4. pour the batter into the prepared pan. rap pan on the counter to eliminate air bubbles. bake until a toothpick comes out with just a few moist crumbs adhering, about 50 minutes. cool cake in the pan for 5 minutes, then turn out onto a rack immediately and cool completely.

[serves 10-12]

a paucity of vegetables

2009-02-06T12:55:00.004-05:00

it's completely unremarakable that upon returning from taipei and also from palermo, i had dinner with my family. what is rather odd is the dinner itself - chinese takeout after taipei, and as it happens, italian after palermo. sadly for palermo, i rather think that the italian i had last weekend in somerville beats out anything i had in sicily. the sole notable exception would be that breakfast buffet in trapani, specifically the prosciutto and the cornmeal poundcake; even the best dinner in palermo didn't really hold a candle to what you can get stateside. i was out at pescatore, and we had a salad (arugula and sundry other greens, grapes, caramelized pine nuts, fennel), seared sea bass (sauteed asparagus, saffron risotto), and chicken marsala (mushrooms, butternut squash agnolotti). there are not many fresh vegetables in either taipei and palermo, so i am fairly certain that i've been craving fresh vegetables and that this is why i so enjoyed pescatore's vegetables. i will say that objectively, i was surprised by just how fine the vegetables were, especially for winter in boston, land of cranberry bogs. the sea bass was especially delicious, with good contrast in textures (the asparagus was perfectly tender-crisp), and the saffron risotto was notably not too heavy. pescatore has certainly upped its game since i was last there, maybe a year ago - before it used to focus more on quantities of seafood, but now the non-seafood entrees have been upgraded.

if you do go to palermo, check out santandrea for dinner. i did find the pasta to be a little thick for my tastes, but that could easily be chalked up to a cultural difference. i don't know, readers; i'm pretty sure that every time i've made pasta or that my roommates have made it, it was better - the pasta was more supple, less coarse in texture, and more pleasurable to eat.

durian really does smell rotten

2009-01-10T20:41:00.005-05:00

sometimes i wonder how we discovered that durians are a desirable food source: they're spiky and hard on the outside, smell rotten on the inside, and the little white pods are stringy on the outside and custardy on the inside. i suppose that back whenever civilization discovered durians, the smell may not have been so off-putting because they may not have known what a rotten smell is in the first place. and conceptually, durian is pretty awesome because it smells like one thing, but tastes like another, but since your olfactory and taste senses are interdependent, then the sweet taste is constantly fighting off the aroma of rottenness. mmm. appetizing. in reality, seeing the squishy, wrinkly kernels inside the shell of the durian just makes me want to throw them at people - rather than tomatoes, right? they seem like they would have really great splatter action.

you can get a couple of kernels (read: more than enough) of durian for NT$100 (about USD$3). it's true that the inside inside - the custardy part rather than the stringy outer layer of the kernel - is much sweeter than the outside. the whiff of rottenness that you get is subtle at first - just here and there - but as you carry it around for longer, the aroma seems to develop and mature. (however, the increasingly strong smell may have been because the kernels got stuffed into somebody's pocket and smooshed about). it's kind of like duck blood: i'm happy i tried it, and now i'm done with it unless i happen to be starving at some point in my life and there are only durians and duck blood to eat. so there you go.

a bit of blood

2009-01-08T10:54:00.004-05:00

i saw the brown gelatinous blocks coming out of the hot pot and into my bowl, and thought it might be either liver or blood. it was blood. duck's blood, to be precise, rather than the pig's blood that i'm used to seeing around super 88. despite knowing of its existence, i've never eaten blood.

it tastes okay - kind of like a sort of tofu. it tastes a little like what i imagine cheese curds taste like before they're processed: a bit squeaky on your teeth, firm but not too firm, clean tasting. except it's blood.

craigie on main

2008-11-24T17:33:00.004-05:00

restaurant openings in my neighborhood always cause me some pain along with the joy. i very much like craigie street bistrot, and am quite happy that now it's around the corner on main street. at the same time, i really am not that happy that craigie street is what moved in on main street, because its prices are so high that it's not affordable for the vast majority of the neighborhood. while i don't object that much to the influx of well-heeled yuppie/upper-middle-class strangers coming into the neighborhood - who are we kidding, i mind a whole lot - it's more that i think that restaurants that purport to be so neighborhoody should pay more attention to who lives in the neighborhood. it just doesn't seem ethically right that a restaurant should locate itself in a place where most of the diners are not natives (unless we're in new york). not even brunch is affordable! contrast craigie on main with tosci's - tosci's is a true neighborhood place where you can sit, linger, and brunch for not too much. i just feel that craigie is being a little insensitive.

ethical tension aside, craigie on main is pretty good in the food and service department. first, let's do a couple of notes about decor. overall, quite nice - easy to hear, nice colors, no clashing, etc. but the two-tops are spaced too close to each other. i mean, really - i'm not a huge person, and i had trouble getting in and out of my seat because it was back to back with the seat behind me. you know how you feel like the restaurant doesn't think you're going to be that profitable for them, and they give you the most rotten tables? that pretty much sums up how i felt about that table. and the table size is fine - all the plates fit - but the spacing is pretty much horrible. also, i kind of like having the kitchen out in the open (concerns with food odors saturating your clothing aside), but it leaves the entryway space feeling really cramped. i don't know who their designer was, but they did not do that great a job - good idea, middling execution. i wonder if the draft from the door affects temperatures in the kitchen, or if it's far enough away?

anyway, the food. we came because they had a restaurant stimulus menu - a $35 3-course prix fixe. it was relatively unexciting, though, and the first course was crispy smelts that i wasn't sure i would like, so mary and i ordered a la carte. usually craigie street has a $30 3-course prix fixe, so i'm curious to know if at craigie on main, it has been edited out. because i would certainly go more often if there was a more affordable option.

appetizers: i started with grilled octopus with chorizo cream, cipollini onions, and hearts of palm. i'm not a fan of hearts of palm - they just taste bland to me - but the rest was an excellent combination. i haven't had octopus that many times - i can probably count the number of times on one hand - and the last one i had was at babbo, and it was fantastic. this one was excellent as well; the chorizo cream was a particularly good pairing. i find the difference between the textures of squid and octopus to be really intriguing - you wouldn't expect such similar creatures to taste so different. mary had the cream of cauliflower soup with rabbit sausage and a bit of brussels sprouts. the soup was pretty delicate in flavor, but was fantastic in combination with the rabbit sausage; in turn the rabbit sausage was definitely the best preparation of rabbit that i've had - i don't typically like rabbit because i find it bland.

by the way, bread service: generally blah. the bread was fine, but i don't see why craigie street always insists on serving butter that's too cold to spread.

for main courses, i had the slow-cooked sea trout with frizzled ginger, rock shrimp, and mussels, all in a bit of serrano ham broth with almonds (hot ham water, anyone?). i assume that "slow-cooked" means "sous vide" and i'm coming to understand that i don't really like the texture of things that are cooked sous-vide. i think i prefer food, or at least meat, with texture and chew to it, rather than it being food for babies and people with dentures. however, the flavors of this dish were really excellent - better than the octopus, i would say. everything was very complementary, and the rock shrimp were almost as good as the ones i had at babbo (the last place i had rock shrimp). the trout didn't taste overly trout-y (as mackerel sometimes taste overly mackerel-y), and every time i have mussels, i increasingly realize that i really like them.

the surprise of the night was dessert - gingerbread pain perdu, and it was a knockout! I don't typically think of dessert being a strong suit for craigie street, but this was the best thing we had all night. it was two triangles of cake that had a lot of egg in it - enough for a very moist, almost custardy way, but custardy in a cooked in a hot water bath for a while, rather than a typical creme caramel custardy-ness. it's difficult to describe, and i'd be curious to know what the preparation was. whatever it was, the slight crunchiness of the very top layer was absolutely delectable, and it was fantastic with the ginger ice cream. it was kind of like a ginger-spiced version of sticky toffee pudding, minus the copious amounts of caramel sauce.

service was excellent - it seems like the restaurant is really trying to please diners so they come back, in these difficult economic times. well...i mean, my views on this are pretty clear. i wonder if it's just not economically feasible to lower prices, or if there's a certain level of produce quality that can't be trimmed in any way to make the restaurant more affordable. regardless, it's nice to have some seriously good food in the neighborhood - it's definitely better than everything else (with the exception, perhaps, of salts, a restaurant i haven't been to). let's just hope that someday the locals will be able to partake.