In A Tiny Kitchen

Chocolate Chip Pretzel Bars

2009-10-08T16:39:00.003-04:00

This bar cookie recipe came from the August 2009 issue of Food and Wine magazine. I actually ended up making two batches, one for friends and one to take with me to work on Monday. Despite needing almost twice the recommended baking time, they were easy and fast to put together. I used white chocolate chips instead of semisweet or bittersweet, and omitted the sprinkles (I didn't think they needed sprinkles), but followed the recipe otherwise.

The cookies are loaded with brown sugar and butter, and are studded with chips and salty pretzel bits... it's a great combination, with that salty-sweet pairing that's so popular. They went over great!

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Recipe: Chocolate Chip Pretzel Bars from Food and Wine, August 2009

Space needed: Minimal
I used two mixing bowls: one smaller bowl for the dry ingredients, and a larger one for the wet ingredients. No kneading, no rolling, no cookie cuttering... great for limited counter space!

Armenian "Barbary" Bread

2009-06-14T09:25:00.001-04:00

This lovely flatbread comes from Nick Malgieri's The Modern Baker. This book incorporates shortcuts into the recipes, for the "modern" baker who may not have time for a bread recipe that requires 3 rises and 12 hours. The book jacket states that the aim was for most of the recipes to have under an hour of prep time. If you're someone who loves baking but has trouble fitting it into your schedule, this is a cookbook you may want to take a look at. Breads, cakes, sweet and savory pies, quick breads... there's a very nice selection here.

This came together very easily. A 4-to-1 mix of all-purpose flour and whole wheat flour, plus a couple of teaspoons of salt make up the dry ingredients. Another bowl gets the yeast and warm water, along with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Slowly add the flour mixture into the yeast mixture, give a quick knead, and set aside to rise for 1-2 hours. Divide the dough in 2, shape into long ovals, let it rise for another hour, and then bake for 20 minutes.

The finished bread has a wonderful flavor from the whole wheat flour and the olive oil. The whole wheat flavor isn't overpowering, but adds a nice subtle heartiness to it. We had this with beef stew, and the bread stood up to it nicely.

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Recipe: Armenian "Barbary" Bread from The Modern Baker by Nick Malgieri

Space needed: Moderate
A couple of bowls and enough counter space to be able to work the dough for a few minutes. The shaped loaves rise on the baking sheets for an hour, so you also need room to stash the sheet during the rising time. I was able to fit both of my loaves on one baking sheet, so I needed less room for that.

Cost: Under $5
$3.15 as written for two loaves. The two loaves should serve 7-8 people, so one serving runs about $0.40 to $0.45. The yeast price I have here is for the 3-pack of envelopes; bulk yeast is less expensive, but only worthwhile if you do a lot of baking.

Recipe amounts: AP Flour - $1.00; Whole wheat flour - $0.25; Yeast - $1.25; Olive oil - $0.65

Turkey Meatball and Farfalle Soup

2009-06-04T11:28:00.002-04:00

Lunch on Tuesday:

I adapted this from the Chicken Meatball and Orzo Soup from the April 2009 issue of Food & Wine. It was in a feature called "5 (Almost) Instant Soups", and they weren't kidding. From start to finish, this took me 20 minutes. It's light and fresh, a perfect soup for early summer.

This didn't look like something that would reheat particularly well, so I decided to just make enough for lunch. I used one link of sweet turkey sausage and made 3/4" meatballs from it. I browned the meatballs in a bit of olive oil in my saucepan I was using, then added 1 can of low-sodium chicken broth (no removing the meatballs and then adding them back in). Once it came to a boil, I added 1/2 cup of mini-farfalle pasta. Any small pasta would work for this: shells, orzo, even spaghetti broken into smaller pieces. I set the timer for 2 minutes less than the pasta cooking time, and when it went off, added a handful of chopped spinach. It cooked for another couple of minutes to let the spinach wilt, and then, DONE!

A nice light lunch in no time!

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Recipe: Chicken Meatball and Orzo Soup from Food & Wine, April 2009

Space needed: Minimal
A plate for the meatballs. For my single-serving version, I just formed the meatballs and dropped them directly in the pan; no plate needed.

Cost: Under $5 ($4.10/serving)
$16.35 for the full recipe as written, but almost half of that is the chicken sausage. Maybe chicken sausage is cheaper elsewhere in the country, but the packs I looked at here were pricey. I subbed in less-expensive turkey sausage and, had I made the full 4 serving recipe, would have saved $3.50 overall. I also used store brand low-sodium chicken broth instead of brand name, which also saved me some money.

Recipe amounts: Chicken sausage - $7.50; Chicken broth - $4.50; Orzo - $0.75; Garlic - $0.10; Spinach: $3.50

Brown Butter Blueberry Tart

2009-05-30T15:31:00.001-04:00

I posted my results from a food terms quiz on Facebook a few days ago, and one of my friends responded with "Cook me a pie!"

Just to spite him, he's not getting a pie. He's getting a tart. TAKE THAT.

This is going to my gaming group this evening: my adaptation of the Brown Butter Raspberry Tart from Bon Appétit's June 2009 issue. I switched blueberries in for the raspberries, and left out the berries completely in one quarter, using white chocolate chips as the "filling" instead. In case there's anyone who dislikes berries. Which, yes, is probable.

Tarts like this, where the crust is pressed into the pan, are perfect for smaller kitchens. No rolling out the crust! And like all recipes that call for a tart pan, I made this in a springform cake pan. Same removable bottom principle, but the springform is able to multitask a bit better. The tradeoff: it means that my tarts don't have a lovely fluted edge. I haven't had anyone complain yet.

What a great, simple way to let a batch of berries shine!

Recipe: Brown Butter Raspberry Tart from Bon Appétit, June 2009

Space needed: Minimal
A couple of bowls (you could probably get away with one and just reuse the bowl you made the crust in to also make the filling), a saucepan, and a tart pan/other baking pan. I needed very little counter space for this.

Cost: Under $10
For the recipe as written, you'd be looking at about $9.00 for the whole thing. Most of that comes from the berries. Substituting a less expensive berry or finding a deal at a farmers' market would be an easy way to lower the price. Mine using blueberries came out to $5.

Recipe amounts: Butter - $1.25; Sugar - $0.25; Vanilla - $0.80; Flour - $0.30; Eggs - $0.30; Raspberries - $6.00

Dutch Baby with Lemon Sugar

2009-04-22T08:06:00.002-04:00

April's issue of Gourmet had a lovely article featuring 5 different dessert recipes made with lemon and eggs. I was faced with the dilemma: which to make first?

The winner ended up being the Dutch Baby with Lemon Sugar. This is basically one huge popover that ends up being shaped like a bowl. Popovers are my weakness, so I'm not sure it was a fair contest for the other recipes.

Anything you would put on pancakes or waffles would work as a Dutch baby topping: fruits, powdered sugar, syrup. The Gourmet recipe uses lemon sugar, made by combining lemon zest with the sugar. I added the zest to the batter instead, and finished it off with a dusting of powdered sugar.

I followed the advice of several reviews and cut the butter back by half. They weren't kidding. Two tablespoons is more than enough butter to generously coat the pan.

Piping hot in the oven. Puffy!

The center puff falls almost immediately once it's out of the oven.

The crater, still dotted with melted butter from baking.

Perfectly browned risen sides.

Time for dessert! Or breakfast! Or brunch!

I managed not to eat the entire thing in one night, refrigerated my leftovers wrapped in foil, and then reheated the foil-wrapped package in the oven at 350 degrees for 20 minutes for breakfast.

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Recipe: Dutch Baby with Lemon Sugar from Gourmet magazine, April 2009

Space needed: Minimal
One bowl and an oven-safe skillet. If you don't have an oven-safe skillet, this would work fine in an 8" or 9" baking dish or cake pan. Baking time might need to be adjusted for a different size pan.

Cost: Under $5
My total came out to $2.52 for the whole dish. This makes 4-6 servings (depending on serving size), so you'd be looking at anywhere between $0.42 and $0.63 per serving.

Recipe amounts: Sugar - $0.15; Lemon - $0.67; Eggs - $0.45; Milk - $0.30 ; Flour - $0.15; Vanilla - $0.20 ; Cinnamon - $0.05; Nutmeg - $0.05 ; Butter - $0.50

Lemon Pepper Pasta with Capers

2009-03-29T12:52:00.003-04:00

To make up for the gravy fries from the last post, let me point you in the direction of a lovely pasta in a light lemony cream sauce: Lemon Pepper Pasta with Capers from The Kitchn. And yes, I mean that. Each serving has a grand total of 1 tablespoon of cream in it, and you can easily nudge that already-pretty-low number down, or even use half-and-half instead.

We have Trader Joe's here, so I made sure to pick up a package of the Lemon Pepper Pappardelle the last time I was there. The girl who rang up my purchases told me she'd tried it with tomato sauce and that it just hadn't worked, but she didn't know what sauce to use instead.

This one is a nice simple option. Turns out you don't need a lot of cream for a convincing cream sauce; this one calls for 1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) total, and I used even less than that. I added between 2 and 3 tablespoons of cream to mine and it was plenty. I also cut back on the capers and added what looked like a "good amount".

There's a lot of room to play around here. Toss in some veggies, add some chicken (or shrimp or shellfish, if you're someone who can do that without breaking into hives... which I'm not), use regular pasta and add the juice from the lemon to the sauce, etc.

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Recipe: Lemon Pepper Pasta with Capers from The Kitchn at Apartment Therapy

Space needed: Minimal
Two pans (one for pasta, one for sauce), and enough counter space to chop up the garlic.

Cost: Under $5 per serving
Actually, under $2 per serving. $1.79 to be exact, $7.15 for the full 4-serving recipe, going by what I paid for the ingredients here in Maryland.

Recipe amounts: Pasta - $2.00; Garlic - $0.10; Lemon - $0.50; Butter - $0.10; Olive oil - $0.15; Chicken broth - $0.40; Cream - $0.40; Capers - $3.50) = $7.15

Gravy Cheese Oven Fries with Roasted Garlic

2009-03-26T19:44:00.004-04:00

Today was a yucky, rainy, gray day here in MD.

I wanted warm, carb-filled, unhealthy comfort food. The PERFECT excuse to make the Gravy Cheese Oven Fries with Roasted Garlic that Serious Eats posted a few weeks ago.

Oh, mama.

I feel bad even posting this, but it was so ridiculously easy and SO GOOD. A nice time-saver and space-saver is to use frozen steak fries. That's what I did, so I omitted the olive oil used on the potatoes. I ignored the cooking instruction on the package and followed the recipe: 40 minutes at 400 degrees, turning once. The fries and garlic were done at the same time, ready for the super-simple gravy. Cook flour and butter together for a quick roux, add beef broth, stir like crazy for a minute to get rid of the lumps, then let it simmer for 20-30 minutes.

The roasted garlic is such a great addition to this. The sweet, slightly caramelized flavor sets off all those savory ingredients very nicely.

I am ready for a happy carb nap now. :)

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Recipe: Eat for Eight Bucks: Gravy Cheese Oven Fries with Roasted Garlic from Serious Eats

Space needed: Minimal
Space to cut up the fries and slice the top off of the garlic, a saucepan for the gravy, and a baking sheet for the fries and garlic. If you use frozen fries, you barely need any counter space at all.

Cost: Under $5 per serving
This depends heavily on the cost of the cheese. Serious Eats used a Gruyère that was $15.80 per pound, and even theirs came in at $8.02 for 2 servings. I used some Trader Joe's shredded Mexican four-cheese blend that I had on hand, which was something like $4 per pound.

Scottish Baps

2009-03-02T18:57:00.003-05:00

Slashfood posted a recipe a couple of weeks ago for Scottish Baps, a flour-dusted yeast roll. It probably won't surprise anyone to hear that I bookmarked the page.

I made these today for a snow day project. The recipe is easy to follow and very accessible. Nothing fussy; I would recommend these to someone as a "first yeast baking project" in a heartbeat. The only possible headscratcher is "caster sugar" in the ingredients. If you don't have caster sugar (a.k.a. superfine sugar), you can substitute regular table sugar.

This dough came together nicely... so nicely that I didn't even have to knead it on a flat surface. I kneaded this in the same bowl that I mixed it in. After about 5 minutes of kneading, I left it to rise for an hour. Then some shaping, and the rolls started to take form:

A sprinkling of flour gives them a nice dusty look when they're done.

The finished rolls are light and soft and airy... apparently, one traditional use is to make a sandwich with fried bacon, butter, and a brown sauce. Curse you, my sadly baconless refrigerator!

Space needed: Minimal
For mine, I used one mixing bowl, one cookie sheet, and a measuring cup. I heated the milk and proofed the yeast in the measuring cup, then melted the butter in it as well.

Cost: Under $5
Total cost for the recipe is about $2.50 for 12 rolls.

Recipe: Simply Wonderful Scottish Baps from Slashfood.com

Monte Cubano

2009-02-26T17:05:00.004-05:00

This is the cover recipe on the March issue of Gourmet: the Monte Cubano sandwich. Take a Cuban sandwich, and instead of pressing it, dip it in egg and fry it like a Monte Cristo.

Flippin' geniuses, those people.

In a (futile) attempt to make it a wee bit healthier, I used wheat bread and left out the mayo. The "dipping in egg and frying in butter" probably negated a lot of that.

The wheat bread probably wasn't firm enough for this, but I was able to de-soggify it with a 15-minute trip to a hot oven.

Space needed: Minimal.
One plate to build the sandwich, one bowl for the egg, and a frying pan on the stovetop.

Cost: Under $5.
The ingredients for one recipe-specific sandwich come out to about $3.50 (to be exact, $3.46 according to prices here in the DC/Baltimore area). I ended up only needing one slice of cheese for full sandwich coverage, so mine came in at $2.86. That was with Boar's Head meats and Alpine Lace swiss; store brand deli products would have easily knocked this down to less than $2.50.

Recipe: Monte Cubano from Gourmet magazine, March 2009

Buttermilk Quick Bread

2009-01-11T16:26:00.003-05:00

I decided today to break the baking lull that's been going on around here. And in honor of New Year's resolutions, and the fact that I had buttermilk that I wanted to use up (I'll leave it to you to figure out which one figured in more heavily), I give you the Buttermilk Quick Bread from Cooking Light's January 2009 issue.

Let me tell you, I love baking but I don't always have the best luck with quick breads. I was thrilled to open the oven to find this gorgeously browned loaf waiting.

After a long 10 minutes, I cut into it, hoping that the exterior wasn't just taunting me. I feared finding an undercooked mess, or a dried-out crumbly loaf, or a brick...

Instead, I got this:

Lovely, moist bread. There's a nice sweetness to it from the sugar, and the buttermilk really shines here. The sweet/savory aspect reminded me a bit of cornbread.

Big points for easiness. Mix ingredients; bake. In the interests of saving myself a tiny bit of clean up, I melted the butter in the loaf pan in the oven while it was preheating. This gave me the melted butter and the greased pan in one step, and I didn't have to get out another bowl for butter melting purposes. Score!

Cooking Light's nutritional info says that this has 137 calories and 4.6g of fat in a slice. You'd never guess from eating it. Yum.

Recipe: Buttermilk Quick Bread from Cooking Light magazine, January 2009

Maple Leaf Cookies

2008-12-14T18:13:00.005-05:00

For once, I had my annual cookie swap contribution picked out in advance. And I'm talking a couple of months in advance.

Martha got me good, with a recipe for Maple Leaf Cookies as the "cookie of the month" in the November Martha Stewart Living. It's a basic sugar cookie, but with brown sugar and maple syrup added to give it a slightly deeper flavor. I am a complete sucker for maple, so I copied this cookie recipe as soon as I saw it.

I got 6 dozen out of this recipe, despite rolling the dough thinner than the recipe calls for AND using smaller cookie cutters than the recommended 3.5" maple leaf. Martha says you'll get "about 8 dozen".

The cookies as they come out the oven are not very sweet at all, and you could easily stop there and have some nice tea-or-coffee biscuits. The final step of brushing with maple syrup and sprinkling sugar on top adds a nice amount of sweetness to them. The maple flavor is there, but pretty subtle.

I didn't bother with the repeated dough freezes called for in the recipe. I almost always roll out cookie dough between sheets of plastic wrap or parchment paper, which lets me get away with a stickier dough. Any time it felt like the dough was getting too warm, it went into the refrigerator for 10 minutes.

I used regular granulated sugar for the final step, instead of sanding sugar. They still came out sparkly and sugary:

Now I just have to keep myself from sampling any more. I've gone through the leftovers already, so all that's left are the packages for my coworkers. :)

Recipe: Maple Leaf Cookies from Martha Stewart Living, November 2008

Chicken and Celery Pot Stickers

2008-11-06T17:12:00.005-05:00

My first time making my own pot stickers rather than just heating up a bag of Trader Joe's frozen ones. The Trader Joe's chicken gyoza are darn tasty, but I may never go back.

These were obscenely easy to make, and perfect for a small kitchen. I didn't even need to get out a cutting board. A food processor, a plate to hold the filled pot stickers before cooking them, and a frying pan with a lid. That's it. Filling these felt like a school art project; I had 2 dozen made in no time.

The recipe is not only easy, it's also fairly inexpensive to make. The filling is ground chicken, a couple of ribs of celery, a couple of garlic cloves, some salt, pepper, and soy sauce. A quarter pound of meat gave me 24 pot stickers with filling to spare.

The results were fabulous. A crispy, crunchy browned side, a chewier steamed side, a nice hit of garlicky chicken filling, and a basic soy-and-vinegar dipping sauce... what's not to love?

Want the recipe? Chicken and Celery Pot Stickers from Gourmet.com

Pepperoni pasta

2008-06-29T20:40:00.004-04:00

This was easy, fast, and incredibly good. :)

I came across this Cavatappi with Pepperoni recipe in foodandwine.com's "Quick Pasta" slideshow. Pasta, tomatoes, garlic, onion, bell pepper, and a very respectable amount of pepperoni to give it a bit of heat. I followed the recipe pretty closely. However, instead of dumping all the grease from the pepperoni, I kept a bit of it in the pan and used that to sauté the onion and pepper. I also used a couple of 8 oz cans of plain no-salt-added tomato sauce instead of the whole tomatoes in the recipe.

This was filling, but not heavy. Nice mild heat from the pepperoni, balanced by the sweet onions and peppers. It was done in under half an hour, not much cleanup... gotta love that.

Two thumbs up!

Lime and Basil Pasta Salad

2008-06-06T20:29:00.004-04:00

We've had a couple of hot, humid days here, and it just seemed like the perfect opportunity to make a summery pasta salad. It was inspired by Orzo with Grilled Shrimp, Summer Vegetables, and Pesto Vinaigrette by Sara Foster. Lovely recipe, except for two main ingredients that I can't eat: shrimp and pesto (which usually has nuts in it). This has the same underlying idea as the original: pasta, grilled summer vegetables, lime vinaigrette, fresh basil. Light, refreshing, and perfect for a warm night.

I have a countertop grill, so there was no chance that the green beans would fall through the grate. For a regular grill, you could wrap the green beans up in foil and grill them in a packet.

Lime and Basil Pasta Salad
serves 4 as a main dish, 6 as a side

8 ounces orzo or other small pasta
Juice of one lime
4 1/2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 clove garlic, minced
Salt and pepper to taste
1 red or yellow bell pepper, quartered
1/4 to 1/2 lb green beans, ends trimmed
1 pound cooked chicken, cut into 1" cubes
1/4 cup thinly sliced fresh basil leaves

Cook pasta in a large pot of boiling salted water until tender but still firm, stirring occasionally. Drain. Rinse with cold water; drain well. Transfer to large bowl and toss with 1 tablespoon oil.

In a small bowl, whisk together lime juice, 3 1/2 tablespoons olive oil, red wine vinegar, garlic, salt and pepper. Set aside.

Heat grill to medium-high heat. Brush the grill with olive oil, then grill pepper until softened and lightly browned, about 5-7 minutes. Remove pepper to cool. Grill green beans until they develop grill marks, about 5 minutes (they should still have a nice crunch to them). Remove green beans to cool.

Once cooled, chop green beans into 1" pieces and chop bell pepper into bite-size pieces or smaller. Add cooked chicken, green beans, and bell pepper to bowl with pasta. Add lime vinaigrette and sliced basil; toss to combine. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Can be made 2 hours ahead. Cover and refrigerate. Serve cold or at room temperature.

Fusilli Carbonara

2008-05-09T20:49:00.003-04:00

Pasta + bacon + egg + leeks + 15 minutes = happy me.

And really, can you blame me for that? A bowl of hearty, filling comfort food (did I mention the bacon and eggs?) in about as much time as it takes to cook a pot of pasta. I even splurged a bit and got some Niman Ranch uncured applewood smoked bacon for this... out of this world. The leeks add a mild sweet onion flavor that complements the saltiness of the bacon very well.

Recipe: Orrechiette Carbonara (Bon Appétit, April 2008)

Grilled cheese with onion jam, Emmentaler, and escarole

2008-05-08T17:38:00.004-04:00

Got this recipe out of February's issue of Gourmet, and I have to say, it's a nice way to make grilled cheese into something a bit out of the ordinary.

I didn't see Taleggio cheese at Fresh Market, so I got a little brick of French Emmentaler instead. It doesn't have as strong of a flavor as the Taleggio would have had, so I tried to go light on the onion jam so the cheese wouldn't be completely overpowered. Of course, I'm addicted to the jam anyway, so there could have been no cheese at all and I probably still would have been happy (Stonewall Kitchen Roasted Garlic Onion Jam, for those who are curious). The sweetness of the jam, the nuttiness of the cheese, the bitterness from the escarole, the slight tang from the sourdough bread... everything balanced well.

Recipe: Grilled Cheese with Onion Jam, Taleggio, and Escarole (Gourmet magazine, February 2008)

"Irish" meatloaf with holiday potatoes

2008-03-11T16:44:00.000-04:00

I collect meatloaf recipes, ideally ones with an off-the-wall ingredient or something unexpected. When I came across this cheddar meatloaf recipe on The Fresh Market website, I was drawn to the use of quick-cooking oats as a binder, instead of the standard breadcrumbs. And as I was making it, it occurred to me that there were two very "Irish" ingredients in it: oats and cheddar. I didn't bother with mini-meatloaves, as you can see. Nor did I "finely chop" the onion, because I like larger chunks of onion. It ended up moist but not greasy, and held together pretty well even though I cut into it the second it came out of the oven. This is one of those "nobody would guess the secret ingredient" recipes; it certainly doesn't taste like oatmeal.

And since it's meatloaf, there's a law that it has to be served with mashed potatoes... another thing that people associate with Ireland. These here aren't normal mashed potatoes. They are the single most unhealthy potato preparation I've ever made; as you can imagine, they are also absolutely delicious. I guess in the interests of eating healthy, one could use low-fat cream cheese and leave out the butter. For special occasions, though, these potatoes (also from Fresh Market) should get the full shebang. I left the skins on mine, since these were just for me and I like potato skins.

In keeping with the theme, you could certainly bring color into it and have a green vegetable or salad on the side. For me, this was one of those meat-and-potatoes moments where I just wanted comfort food and didn't want to fuss with anything else for the sake of a "complete" meal. Broccoli would be nice, maybe roasted alongside the meatloaf and potatoes (bonus: both dishes cook for the same time at the same oven temperature).

Recipes:
Lil Cheddar Meatloaves (The Fresh Market)
Holiday Potatoes (The Fresh Market)

Onion soup

2008-01-06T17:47:00.000-05:00

I'd been looking for something lighter to kick off the new year with. And as I sat there this morning paging through a Donna Hay cookbook, I realized: I don't *want* lighter. It's winter. I'm supposed to be having rich, slow-cooked, filling stuff, not salads. I realized this when I came to a full page picture of French onion soup and nearly started drooling.

And really, all it is is onions and broth... it's rich, but it's not wholly unhealthy, so I don't feel quite as bad about having this as my first "real" post of 2008. I started with the Donna Hay recipe, and then incorporated ideas from a couple of other onion soup recipes (the bourbon and red pepper flakes are all me, however). This would easily serve 4 as a starter, and 2-3 as a main course.

Onion soup

1 large red onion
2-3 small yellow onions
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp fresh thyme or 2 tsp dried ground thyme
1 bay leaf
2 tbsp all-purpose flour
1/4 cup bourbon
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
1/2 cup water
about 4 cups beef broth (2 cans is fine, use the low-sodium option)
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes (optional)

Cheese toast:
1 slice of bread for each serving
Butter at room temperature
Shredded cheese

Thinly slice the onions. Heat the butter and olive oil in a large saucepan, then add the onions, thyme, and bay leaf. Cook uncovered over medium heat, stirring every couple of minutes, until onions are golden, 15-20 minutes (for darker onions, simply continue cooking at this point until they're the desired shade of brown). Remove and discard the bay leaf.

Add the flour and cook over medium heat for 2-3 minutes, stirring constantly. Add the bourbon and cook for 1 minute to remove most of the alcohol. Add the mustard, water, broth, and red pepper flakes. Bring to a slow boil and allow to cook, uncovered, until the liquid has reduced by half, about 30-45 minutes.

When the soup is almost done, assemble the cheese toasts. Preheat broiler. Butter one side of each bread slice, top with desired amount of shredded cheese (I go light on the cheese because this is a filling soup). Place the toasts in the broiler and cook until the cheese has melted and browned, about 5-7 minutes.

Ladle soup into serving bowls and top each bowl with a cheese toast.

*If you're without bourbon, you can substitute brandy, wine, sherry, or just leave out the alcohol entirely.

Happy 2008!

2008-01-01T14:09:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year, everyone!

December ended up being crazy, and I didn't make much that I was inspired to post about here.

However, I wanted let everyone know that I haven't forgotten this little blog here, and post about something that I'm looking to start doing here in 2008. I came across this book on our donations table at the library:

No, that's not a dirty word; it's German. A German language cookbook! It's from 1985, it assumes that the reader is someone who already has good knowledge of cooking, and it's arranged alphabetically. You read that right. The first chapter is "A", and includes Artischoke (artichoke), Ananas (pineapple), Aubergine (eggplant), Apfel (apple)... It's the strangest cookbook layout I've ever seen.

Each chapter starts with an introduction that talks about the ingredients, and then gets into the recipes for that letter. Every recipe in the book that starts with A is in the first chapter, arranged not by course or ingredient, but simply by recipe title. So, the first page of recipes includes an apple tart, an anchovy-flavored sauce, a Christmas cookie, and an African-style fish with bananas.

The directions for the recipes assume that you know what you're doing. The aforementioned Christmas cookie recipe says to put the cookies on a sheet and bake them. There's no oven temperature given, no length of time that they should bake for, no details about how to tell when your beaten egg whites have reached proper stiffness... in short, it's the type of cookbook that you'd never see on the shelf at Borders.

I'm hoping to use this as inspiration and use the basic (and slightly vague) recipes as a jumping-off point. There's a lot of room here to improvise and find ways to make these recipes my own, and in turn, perhaps that'll give me something more to say here and give me more reason to post. This isn't to say that my love of Epicurious is going away, or that my baking projects won't still turn up. However, interspersed with that, I'd like to find a way to let my own cooking style come through a bit more (I blame Top Chef. "There's no 'you' in this dish."). Updates are coming soon, once I can dust myself off from the holidays and get back into a normal routine.

I hope everyone had a nice holiday season!

Homemade Thin Mints

2007-12-05T11:37:00.000-05:00

If you work with me, and you're doing the cookie swap, this is what you're getting from me: Heidi Swanson's All-Natural and Homemade Thin Mints.

I've been looking for an excuse to make these since she posted the recipe back in 2006. I don't bake sweet stuff for myself very often, and we have so many birthdays at work that I almost feel guilty bringing in sweets on other days. I forgot about the recipe when I was doing last year's swap, but I remembered this year!

The nice thing about online recipes is that they frequently have a place where people can leave comments. You can tell pretty quickly which comments can be ignored ("I changed most of the ingredients and it didn't turn out right, so this is a bad recipe" is always a favorite) and which ones should be taken to heart. On this recipe, there were several comments about the dough being crumbly and difficult to work with, as well as comments saying that dipping the cookies in the melted chocolate leaves a chocolate layer that's too thick.

Crumbly, persnickety dough. That means that using cookie cutters is going to be a HUGE pain, so I changed the baking method just a bit. The recipe says to roll out the dough to 1/8" thick, cut out shapes, and bake for 10 minutes. Instead, I rolled it out closer to 1/4" thick and used a knife to cut the dough into 1.5" squares. I put them in the oven for 10 minutes per baking sheet, and due to the high butter content, they spread out nicely into 2" slightly rounded squares. I made three batches of the dough so I'd have plenty, and had a nice assembly line going for the mixing. I made one batch, put it in the freezer to chill, used the same bowl for a second batch (no cleaning the bowl necessary, since it's all going to be the same dough anyway), put that batch in the freezer, made the third batch, put that in the freezer, and took out batch #1 to roll out.

Mixing, rolling, and baking took about 2 hours from start to finish: not bad for 9 dozen cookies.
The full batch of cookies cooled overnight, and this morning, I did stage 2: chocolate coating. Instead of dunking each cookie in melted chocolate (which, according to many comments, left far too much chocolate on the cookies), I spread a thin layer of the chocolate on the cookies. It worked well, and had the added benefit of being messy fun. Doing this also allowed me to coat all of my cookies with one 12 oz. bag of semisweet chocolate chips instead of 3 lbs of chocolate--a smidge healthier is always a good thing, and the extra chocolate won't be missed. I got about 4 dozen cookies per batch of dough, and since I only made 9 dozen, I have the leftover dough in the freezer awaiting a chocolate craving attack. :)

The mint flavor in the chocolate is very subtle, and I would definitely add more of the peppermint extract on any future batches. This isn't just because I used less chocolate, because even the chocolate by itself doesn't have that strong mint flavor that the GS Thin Mints have.

Playing around with chocolate wasn't a bad way to spend the first snowy morning of the winter!

Cranberry Eggnog Tart

2007-11-23T18:44:00.000-05:00

As the baker in the family, I'm always responsible for bringing bread/rolls and dessert for Thanksgiving dinner. I didn't have much trouble figuring out the rolls -- the "butter dipped rolls" from the Bread Bible. This dough took forever to rise, so there's a possibility that I need to freshen up my yeast supply. The finished rolls were very dense and buttery... I was reminded a lot of crescent rolls, both in flavor and texture.

A dessert choice took a little while to hit me. Most "traditional" Thanksgiving desserts are things that at least one person in my family won't eat or (in my case) is allergic to. I've relied on cakes for the last few years, since they transport well. For whatever reason, I couldn't find a cake recipe that I really wanted to make this year.

I turned to Epicurious, like I usually do when I'm in any kind of food quandary. They had picture slideshows of Thanksgiving recipes, including one of "Thanksgiving Pies and Tarts". Most of the recipes fell into the "Only one person would actually eat that" category or the "That has nuts and would make me puffy and unpleasant" category. And then I saw the Cranberry Eggnog Tart. Cookie crust on the bottom, thin layer of cranberry jam, cheesecake layer flavored like eggnog, and another layer of jam on top. The crust and the cheesecake are done in the food processor, and the jam is a basic stovetop cranberry sauce put through a strainer. Easy prep, don't need to use every bowl in the kitchen to make it... perfect.

My lone problem was that the cranberry "jam" never became anything thicker than a syrup. Maybe my cranberries weren't ripe enough, maybe I didn't force enough of the solids through the strainer; regardless, it would have been impossible to use it for layers in the tart. However, it was a lovely consistency for a dessert sauce, so... problem solved.

This was my first time making a cheesecake, and I really liked the "no water bath" aspect of it; it's thin enough that you don't need to bother. It also seems like getting a store-bought jam (cranberry or otherwise) would work nicely in place of the from-scratch cranberry jam. Heck, maybe even a thin layer of lemon curd spread over the top.

This will probably be a strong contender for next year's Thanksgiving dessert as well.

Chicken and Fall Vegetable Pot Pie

2007-10-28T21:38:00.000-04:00

I know, I know, I just had a pot pie post fairly recently. I'm a pot pie fiend. Something about 3, possibly 4 food groups all smooshed together in one dish really appeals to me.

This particular one came up as the Epicurious featured recipe of the day a couple of weeks ago: Chicken and Fall Vegetable Pot Pie. Fresh Market had everything I needed except turnip greens, so I decided to substitute some baby spinach instead. Got three huge and absolutely gorgeous chicken breasts back at the butcher counter, and while I waited for my turn, I had some entertainment from the kids at the "make a creepy halloween cupcake" table. Cupcakes, frosting, and every kind of gummy creepy-crawly imaginable... The kids there were having a grand time.

Anyway, there's a reason that this has a 95% "would make it again" rate, with a 4-fork rating... it's really good. With the wine, leeks, and shallots in the sauce, and the departure from the normal "peas, carrots, onions" vegetable mix, this is a slightly more sophisticated version of a pot pie. It's very filling, full of lean protein, vegetables, and greens, with the only "unhealthy stuff" being the butter and shortening in the crust, and the heavy cream in the filling. I like to think the "good for you" cancels out the "not so good for you" in dishes like this.

This was a nice way to officially welcome fall to our corner of Maryland.

Sweet Spelt Sourdough Bread

2007-10-16T09:37:00.000-04:00

Oh no, she's breaking out the whole grains...

I promised healthier after my eggs and cheese and butter extravaganza in the previous post, so here's the Sweet Spelt Sourdough Bread from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking.

Spelt is a new grain for me. The natural store that I shop at carries it, and I got a 1 lb bag on a whim a couple of months ago. I haven't found tons of recipes using spelt, as it's only recently started gaining popularity. This sourdough recipe not only provided a way to use some of the spelt that I'd bought, but also gave me an excuse to poke my starter and see if it was still going strong after several months hibernating in the refrigerator (answer: Yes. Sweet Fancy Moses, yes. It'll probably outlive me.).

The recipe calls for an all-spelt levain. Bakers have a whole bunch of terms that mean "starter".. levain is one of them. It's kind of an intermediate step between your permanent starter and the finished dough. Basically, take a little bit of your starter, feed it, and that's your levain. This recipe actually calls for you to begin with a spelt starter... my starter is good ol' AP flour and bread flour, and I absolutely wasn't going to convert the whole thing to spelt just for the 2 tablespoons that are used to make the levain. I used two tablespoons of my existing starter, fed it with the amounts of spelt and water specified, and set it on my warm oven to ferment. ("Room temperature" for bread tends to be warmer than my room temperature here. Any time I see that something needs to rise at room temperature, I turn on the oven as low as possible and set the rising container on top.)

Now, here's where my fun really started. The basic sourdough recipe that I've made in the past calls for the levain to expand for up to 16 hours... my yeast does this in 4 hours. Using the (faulty) assumption that I would also have a faster rise with this one, I started its 12-hour rise at 5:30 pm on Friday. I figured, even if it took half the time called for, I'd still be able to make the dough around 11:30, nap during rise times, and take fresh baked bread in to work with me Saturday morning.

Of course, this time it took the full 12 hours to rise. I stashed it in the fridge so it wouldn't continue to expand so quickly while I was at work and then out Saturday evening. I got the levain out on Sunday morning, let it come up to room temperature, and then made my dough. This dough was hard as a rock. It sucked up all the liquid and still left about half a cup of dry flour on the bottom of the bowl. I added enough water to make a very wet and loose dough with the flour that hadn't been absorbed, and folded that into the rest of the dough. Slowly, it started to loosen up to a point where I could actually knead it.

From there, all that was left was to let it rise, shape it, slash it, and stick it in the oven. The recipe calls for one 8" x 4" loaf pan... the one size I don't have. I split my dough into one 7" x 3" and two mini-loaf pans, baked the two mini-loaves for 30 minutes each and the larger one for 40 minutes. After all the various things that had gone wonky with this bread, I wasn't expecting much, so I was very pleasantly surprised to pull out 3 nice, risen, crusty loaves of bread.

The flavor of this is completely unlike any bread I've ever had, and one mini-loaf was entirely gone within two hours. The most surprising thing to me was that, while it smells like regular ol' whole wheat bread, there's none of the bitterness that you sometimes get with whole wheat flour. The finished bread is slightly sweet, slightly tangy (from the natural starter), with a dense crumb that's not overly chewy. Great toasting bread.

Turkey Cream Puff Pie

2007-10-11T19:44:00.000-04:00

This is one that's been in the (virtual) recipe box for a while, just waiting for the first cooler day of the fall. It does not involve dessert cream puffs in any way; I think it acquired that name because the crust is a choux pastry, like what you use to make cream puffs... but it should probably be "turkey cheese puff pie" or "turkey gougere pie".

Making choux pastry is one of those times when you feel like something magic is happening in front of you. Every time I make a batch, I can't believe what happens. You dump the flour into your butter/liquid mixture and think, "Oh, this will never smooth out, I'm going to have a lumpy mess." Lo and behold, it smoothes out and all the lumps disappear. You add your eggs one at a time, and it looks like there's no way the dough will absorb each additional egg... and then you look and the egg you just added is gone. And all of this comes before you even bake it, which causes your sticky, buttery paste to rise and puff and turn a gorgeous golden brown.

I've made choux pastry a bunch of times, mostly for gougeres. The idea of using it as a savory pie crust, however, came from Gourmet magazine (recipe available on Epicurious). I subbed in my usual veggie combo of carrots, corn, peas, and broccoli, and also added a couple of tablespoons of sherry to my filling.

The smell of this baking is out of this world, by the way--my whole apartment is filled with the aroma of butter and cheese. The finished pie is pretty darn delicious. There's absolutely no confusing the choux pastry with a typical pie crust. It's dense and eggy and moist, with pockets of Swiss cheese throughout.

Something healthy next time, I promise.

Fresh Market

2007-09-24T13:32:00.000-04:00

We just got a Fresh Market here in the Baltimore area last week. If you watch Top Chef, Fresh Market is where they go to shop for most of the challenges. It always looks like a lovely store when they show the cheftestants running around searching for rabbit and microgreens, so I went to check it out.

I love this place. Big produce section, an olive bar (!), a cheese case/prepared food area right in the center of the store, and the bakery, butcher, and seafood departments along the back wall. I could have just wandered around for quite a while, but I would have gotten strange looks from the employees. The prepared foods selection is extensive, featuring pastas, soups, sandwiches, rotisserie meats, even sushi. I absolutely had to get some of their chicken salad once I saw it. Nice big pieces of shredded rotisserie chicken, chopped celery, just enough mayo to hold it together without being gloppy... yum.

Fresh Market has been added to my list of "stores I have to drive more than 15 minutes to get to, but are worth it".