lisa is cooking

Espresso Cardamom Crumb Cakes

2013-05-17T09:52:00.000-05:00

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned the big bake sale that was being planned to raise funds for recovery efforts in West, Texas. I’m thrilled to report that it was a huge success, and we’re all so thankful to everyone who came out for the sale and made donations online. The total raised was over $19,000! As planned, I baked more of the Chocolate Chip and Cherry Scones, and I wanted to bring a second option to the sale as well. I was in a crumb cake kind of mood, and really, I’m always in the...

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Skewered Tamarind Fish with Dried-Lime Butter and Chives

2013-05-12T15:21:00.000-05:00

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been cooking from the new Malouf book, New Middle Eastern Food, of which I received a review copy. This is a beauty of a cookbook. You might say it’s a coffee table cookbook, but that doesn’t mean the recipes are very difficult or overly complicated. This latest book brings together the authors’ favorite dishes from all their earlier books with some updates and a few new things as well. Right away, you’ll notice the stunning photos and food styling. A simple...

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Kouign-Amann

2013-05-08T09:04:00.001-05:00

When I look at recipes for cakes, I make mental notes like “this one would be great for a birthday,” or “this is the cake for a spring party,” or “I have to remember this one during the holidays.” But, with the new book from Gesine Bullock-Prado, I was making all those usual mental notes and also thinking “I want to bake this cake just to see if I can do it.” The new book is Bake It Like You Mean It, and I received a review copy. There are showpiece cakes with intricate layers and beautiful...

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Inspired by Brazil

2013-05-03T10:07:00.000-05:00

I had no idea how little I knew about Brazil. Obviously, I need to visit this country. Happily, I’ve learned a few new things during the Central Market Passaporte Brasil event which continues until May 7. For example, I was previously completely unfamiliar with Brazilian wine. Now, I know there’s a very active wine industry there making fantastic wines of all kinds. One of my favorites that I tasted was a sparkling wine from Casa Valduga which was crisp with acidity and perfect for pouring this...

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Chocolate Chip Cherry Scones

2013-04-30T10:05:00.000-05:00

The Austin Bakes group has a couple of big bake sale fundraisers under our belt, but because these bake sales were organized to help recovery efforts after terrible events, we all agreed we never wanted to host another one ever again. Sadly, following the tragic events of the explosion in West, Texas on April 17, we started planning the next event to bake for our fellow Texans. The bake sale is happening this Saturday, May 4 at eight different locations in Austin, and there is an online giving...

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Black Olive Gourgeres

2013-04-27T09:02:00.000-05:00

I always get excited about cookbooks that include great tip and techniques. When things are explained in ways that give you choices for customizing recipes and make you understand what affect those customizations will have, it’s eye-opening. Dan Lepard’s latest book, Short and Sweet: The Best of Home Baking, is full of tips just like that. It was published in the UK in 2011, but the US version was just recently released. When I received a review copy, I couldn’t put it down. The Tips and...

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Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas with Swiss Chard

2013-04-22T14:59:00.000-05:00

I realize it’s customary for food cravings to strike when you miss a particular dish, when you haven’t had the chance to taste a favorite thing for a long time, and when you can’t wait for the next opportunity to have whatever that is once again. However, even though I live smack in the middle of Austin where you can’t take too many steps in a row without tripping over another Tex-Mex restaurant, I constantly crave Tex-Mex food. I can order tacos for breakfast, burritos for lunch, and...

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Roman-style Artichokes

2013-04-18T12:28:00.000-05:00

I imagine when the day comes that I’m living on that quaint, scenic, stretch of land in rural Italy, this is the kind of thing I’ll have for lunch every day during artichoke season. And, there will be wine from nearby and olive oil from my neighbor of course. I do live a rich fantasy life. Until then, I can now get locally grown artichokes right here at home, and I’m very excited about that. The other day, I went on a bit about our local Austin food scene and incredibly fresh asparagus, and...

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Burnt Caramel Cake

2013-04-15T16:30:00.001-05:00

I was sure it was going to be a cake filled with lemon curd and topped with a toasted meringue frosting. Then, I changed my mind and considered a simple, vanilla angel food cake with strawberries on the side. And, there are two different pistachio cakes that I’ve wanted to try for ages. I have a hard time choosing when it comes to my birthday cake. In the end, my decision was made when I remembered the Burnt Caramel Cake in Basic to Brilliant, Y'all. I mean, caramel covering multiple layers of...

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Red and Golden Beet and Cheese Tart

2013-04-11T14:56:00.000-05:00

I’ve always liked beets, but there was a time when I got to the point of dreading one more beet at the end of the season. My thinking seems to have changed since these days I look forward to having some roasted beets in the refrigerator. I like cutting roasted beets into wedges and adding them to salads with crumbled goat cheese, and I really like adding roasted and pickled, sliced beets to sandwiches. But, with our latest CSA beets, I wanted to try something different. I remembered a recipe...

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Mini Strawberry Tarte Tatins

2013-04-09T11:53:00.000-05:00

No sooner had I typed the words “there will be much, much more Simple Puff Pastry in my future” than I was already making it again. Store-bought puff pastry really might be a thing of the past in my kitchen. I had spotted this recipe for Mini Strawberry Tarte Tatins in an issue of Donna Hay Magazine last year, and the recipe is available online. I left it filed away until strawberry season rolled around, and by then I had discovered a way of making a quick puff pastry that works really well. I...

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Asparagus Pesto with Herb Pasta

2013-04-06T10:39:00.000-05:00

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how much the local food scene in Austin has changed over the years. Many years ago, I visited the lone, quiet, little farmers’ market on Wednesdays in the parking lot of the old Whole Foods. That was way before Whole Foods moved into the current flagship location with the corporate headquarters upstairs. It was just a handful of us who showed up for the market which consisted of a few vendors who brought a couple of carrots and maybe a turnip or two. I’m...

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Hot Cross Buns

2013-04-03T15:35:00.000-05:00

This year, for a sweet breakfast bread for Easter, I turned to tradition, sort of. I had made hot cross buns once before, but that first time I didn’t choose well among recipes. That was a few years ago when I set out to make proper hot cross buns as they were originally intended to be made. The dough wasn’t particularly sweet or rich; there weren’t very many currants in the buns; and the flavor and texture were lacking in every way. What I learned was that the cross on each bun was...

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Spinach and Red Quinoa Salad with Pecans and Halloumi

2013-04-01T10:08:00.000-05:00

I realize this just looks like a spinach salad, but there’s a lot more going on in there. For one, it was intended as a quinoa and spinach salad, and I did use the entire suggested amount of quinoa, but I had a lovely bunch of spinach and wanted to use every bit of it rather than only a couple of handfuls. So, the extra spinach is hiding a lot of the red quinoa. But, that’s not all. There are also chewy pieces of dried apricots, toasted pecans and pumpkin seeds, and a tangy dressing with...

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Whole Wheat and Oat Bread with Golden Raisins

2013-03-27T18:52:00.001-05:00

I think that no matter how much bread I bake, I’ll always get a little nervous about it. You never know how much it will rise or how long it will take to rise or how it will look when you cut into the finished loaf. It makes bread baking exciting. Yes, waiting for hours for dough to rise is exciting! I said it. This is another loaf from Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes. It’s made with sourdough starter that’s mixed into a liquid levain the night before the dough is made. The...

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Chickpea Samosas with Spicy Mint Sauce

2013-03-23T10:12:00.000-05:00

I’ve wanted to try making samosas for years. Those crispy, little nuggets full of fluffy, mashed potato, maybe some peas, and spices are a favorite of mine. I always have at least one with whatever else I order at Indian restaurants, but I’d never worked up the courage to make them at home. Then, I saw this version with chickpeas, carrots, and some minced green chile in the filling and the accompanying recipe for the dough that seemed easy enough, and I was inspired to give it a shot. This is...

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Cinnamon Baked Doughnuts and Mexican-Style Chocolate Sauce

2013-03-19T09:40:00.000-05:00

Kurt may not agree with this assessment, but I don’t think I have very many baking pans. I don’t have every possible size for cakes or tarts, and I really only have a few pans that are for specific things like madeleines or snowman-shaped cupcakes. Of course, I want every baking pan I ever see, and I imagine I’ll use all of them enough to justify them taking up storage space, but only very occasionally do I actually add to the small collection. I’d considered getting pans for baked doughnuts...

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Roasted Carrot Soup with Dukkah Spice and Yogurt

2013-03-14T13:58:00.000-05:00

Some people get earworms, songs stuck in their head, and can’t think of any other music because of that tune that won’t go away. I have this issue with recipes instead of music. Is that a recipeworm, foodworm, brainworm? I don’t think I like any of those names for the condition. I’ll keep working on that. This soup was one of those recipes that took up residence in my head and wasn’t going to leave. I saw it in the December issue of Bon Appetit and thought of it every time I saw carrots. It’s...

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Little Gianduia Turnovers

2013-03-12T09:43:00.000-05:00

I have two questions for you. Have you ever made a “quick” puff pastry? And, have you made homemade gianduia, also known as homemade nutella? I can now highly recommend you try both. At some point a few years ago, I wrote off the possibility of “quick” puff pastry. I had tried a couple of different recipes and ended up with pie crust each time. There were no puffy layers as seen in “real” puff pastry. I decided the “quick” versions were a myth. They didn’t work for me. All of that changed when...

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Fried Eggs with Chard and Saffron-Red Pepper Hollandaise

2013-03-07T15:45:00.000-06:00

I realized the other day that I categorize cooking in a few different ways in my head. There’s the day-to-day cooking that can be done on autopilot. And, there’s cooking from a recipe when I just need to check quantities but otherwise pretty much know what to do when. Then, there’s the exciting stuff that makes me think “now I’m really cooking.” Making sauces falls squarely in that last category. I received a review copy of Modern Sauces by Martha Holmberg, and I can’t seem to put it down. The...

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Guinness Brownies with Butterscotch Fudge

2013-03-04T10:13:00.000-06:00

I’ve mentioned my to-try stack of recipes, but there’s actually more than one stack. There’s the physical stack of pages cut from magazines, there’s also a list of links I keep in Evernote, and there’s a board of recipes to try on Pinterest. It’s a little crazy to have to look in three places for ideas I know I put somewhere as a reminder to myself, but I usually eventually find what I’m looking for. A couple of weeks ago, I was searching for new-to-me brownie ideas. We were getting ready to...

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Roasted Poblano and Caramelized Onion Dip

2013-02-28T10:42:00.000-06:00

I spend a lot of time shopping for food, and I love making little discoveries along the way. I have a pretty good mental catalog of what to buy where in Austin, but I still occasionally turn up hidden treasures at grocery stores. Recently, H-E-B sent me a gift basket full of things just like this. It was a basket of samples of some of their Primo Picks described as one-of-a kind goods from around the world. There was a bag of Sahale snack mix that Kurt grabbed immediately, and I wasted no time...

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Vegetarian Muffuletta

2013-02-25T09:54:00.000-06:00

As I put together the Marinated Cauliflower, Olive, and Caper Salad, it reminded me a lot of the kind of olive salad that’s usually on a muffuletta. The only problem for me with a standard muffuletta is that it’s usually filled with several varieties of salami and ham which all fall into the red meat category that I avoid. So, I thought, why not build a vegetarian muffuletta? I skipped the meat and sliced roasted portobellos to take its place and added a layer of piquillo peppers. I chopped the...

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Marinated Cauliflower, Olive, and Caper Salad

2013-02-21T10:23:00.000-06:00

At the tail end of cauliflower season, I’ve had enough of bubbly, gooey gratins. With spring just around the corner, I wanted to use what might be the last of our local cauliflower for something with more zip. I found a marinated cauliflower salad from Bon Appetit’s November 2003 issue, and that was just the inspiration I needed. Of course, I made a few changes by including carrots, switching up the olives, throwing in some capers, and adding some heat with crushed red pepper. But, I was...

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Walnut Spice Cake with Chocolate Fudge Frosting

2013-02-19T09:48:00.000-06:00

The birthday cake conversation has changed over the years. There was a time when I would ask Kurt what kind of cake he’d like for his birthday, and the answer was chocolate. No pondering, no pause, no prompts for suggestions. Just chocolate. In recent years, the answer hasn’t come quite so quickly. He still likes chocolate but wants to hear other ideas too. This year, I presented three options that I thought he’d like, and he chose this lovely, layered creation with white cake and spice cake...

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