Yes, I fully intended to publish these at the peak of cranberry and pumpkin seasons.  They were supposed to follow closely on the heels of my Deconstructed Thanksgiving Turkey post.  But that didn’t happen.  We broke ground on our home remodel on November 30.  Christmas ensued.  Bill got snarled in a major project at work and was leaving for work before I awoke and coming home just as I was turning out the lights.

Making matters more complicated, I started another blog.  I didn’t really mean to.  Honestly.  But it just kind of happened.  I was originally just using the blog format to communicate with a group of my friends about my 40^th birthday trip.  Soon I found myself compulsively writing about my thoughts about turning 40.  I didn’t really realize I had so much to say.

And while we’re on that subject, my 40^th birthday trip IS kind of over the top.  But that’s me.  Right?  I may be dead tomorrow, so I sure as hell am going to be certain that take full advantage of the life, health and joy God has offered today.

I invited 14 friends.  They’re a mish-mash of amazing women I’ve known throughout my life.  I almost didn’t do it because of the guest list anxiety.  There are many amazing women whom I adore but couldn’t include on the guest list.  That makes me feel kinda pukey.  This isn’t an inner-circle kind of thing.  It was really more complicated than that.

Back to food.

I’m completely enraptured with fresh pumpkin.  I can’t get over it.  There are already several recipes on readyprepgo.com that feature pumpkin:  Kaddo Bourani, Pumpkin Cranberry Muffins, Pumpkin Pancakes with Cranberry Maple Syrup. I simply can’t get enough of the combination.  Flavor, nutrition and gorgeous colors are a food trifecta.  I could probably dedicate a whole site just to my cranberry pumpkin passions.

Regular readers will remember that I ended the summer committed to reviving my breakfast life with new, interesting recipes.  Pumpkin Cranberry Baked French Toast and Pumpkin Cranberry Baked Oatmeal have become part of our weekly rotation.

While I bothered to cook and puree my own pumpkin, you can very simply use canned pumpkin for both.  The home-prepared pumpkin has quite a bit more flavor and color, and since its more labor-intensive, I tend to use a bit less of the homemade stuff in the recipes.  It isn’t a big deal either way.

I hope I’m back on track to keep posting regularly here.  However, life is still really nutty.  I’ve got some more versions of baked French toast to be published:  I love the make-ahead simplicity of this dish.

My new kitchen is part of the first construction phase. I've designed it with teaching and food blogging in mind. I can't wait to show it to you.

Thanks to my dear friend, Kate, who encouraged me the other night to keep publishing…

My food-loving, gentleman farmer architect, Richard, had the idea to put a cold-frame garden bed right outside my kitchen on a South-facing wall. I should be able to keep herbs outdoors all winter long.

The post Catching up over Pumpkin first appeared on Ready, Prep, Go!.

Nothing moves my morning along like the aroma of pumpkin pie mingling with my morning coffee. This breakfast takes no time to whip up the night before- I often do it while dinner is baking or sautéing. I’ve shortened the prep time even further by grinding the mix of spices in a batch so I just have to add a teaspoon of it. It’s basically “pumpkin pie spice.” The next morning, I stagger bleary-eyed downstairs and throw it in the cold oven and move on to the business of the morning. By the time the lunches are made, breakfast is ready.

My mornings have become more complicated as I now have three kids to get off to elementary school and one to take to preschool this year. Now consider that the construction crew conveniently arrives at the house just as I’m trying to get each kid matched with a backpack, lunch and shoes. Add to the mix a puppy who’s learned that the peaking chaos of the school morning is the perfect time for mischief. A bowl of Cheerios just isn’t gonna get me through that kind of morning.

Ingredients
Dry Ingredients
8 cups challah bread, cut into 1”cubes
2 cups whole cranberries, fresh or frozen

Wet Ingredients
½ cup maple syrup
6 eggs
1 ½ cups whole milk
2 tablespoons melted butter
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla
1 ½ teaspoons (packed) microplaned fresh ginger, (about 1” ginger)
3 cloves, ground or a generous dash of ground cloves
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
8 allspice berries, ground or 1/4 teaspoon
½ teaspoon salt
12 ounces fresh pumpkin puree or one 15 ounce can The fresh pumpkin has more flavor and color so you can use less if you care to.

Instructions

Prepare the dry ingredients
1. Lightly grease a 9” x 13” baking dish.
2. Add the bread and cranberries to the dish.

Prepare the wet ingredients
1. Add all of the wet ingredients in a blender and blend to combine.

This batch of wet ingredients came out a bit thick. I got lazy and didn't measure. If your batch looks thinner than this, it should.

Combine and let sit overnight
1. Pour the wet ingredients over the dry and toss lightly with a large spoon to combine. It should seem watery. The bread will absorb the liquid overnight.
2. Cover and let stand in refrigerator overnight.

Bake and serve
2. Preheat the oven to 350-degrees.
3. Remove and uncover the dish. Bake 45-60 minutes or until done. Because I usually just pop it into a cold oven, I allow closer to that 60 minutes to finish baking. You can tell its done when the cranberries are popped and the top of the bread takes on a bloated appearance. That doesn’t really happen until the last minutes of baking. If in doubt, stick a knife in the middle and look for sogginess.
4. Serve. Its lovely with a little extra drizzle of maple syrup.

The post Pumpkin Cranberry Baked French Toast first appeared on Ready, Prep, Go!.

You guessed it. This is an autumnal riff on Funky Monkey Baked Oatmeal. The cravings for pumpkin and cranberries begin with the first ruby maple leaf and don’t wane until the appearance of the first crocus.

I assemble the dry ingredients with the cranberries, cover, and then place them overnight in the fridge. I measure the wet ingredients right into the blender, give it a whirl, and refrigerate in the blender jar overnight. When morning arrives, I preheat the oven, give the wet ingredients a fresh whirl in the blender jar and pour over the dry. In the oven it goes, and I’m back upstairs to wrangle the stubborn preschooler into the shower and listen to a pubescent whine about how I’ve surely been sabotaging her by hiding her orchestra music.

I also make my life easier by pre-mixing the cinnamon, allspice and cloves in ½ cup batches. Many recipes for “pumpkin pie spice” call for ground dried ginger and ground nutmeg to be mixed in. I think its worth the effort to have the liveliness of fresh ginger and spicy notes of fresh nutmeg. However, you could add it all in if you like.

And yes, smartass, you can buy pumpkin pie spice at the store… I DO know that.

Ingredients
Dry Ingredients
2 cups old fashioned oats
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt

Wet Ingredients
1 ½ cups milk
¼ cup maple syrup
½ c pumpkin
1 egg
1 t vanilla
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves or 4 cloves, ground
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon fresh ginger, minced or microplaned

Instructions

Mix the dry ingredients
1. Preheat the oven to 400-degrees Unless, of course, you’re prepping for the next morning.
2. Generously grease a 2-quart baking dish.
3. Mix the oatmeal, baking powder and salt. Distribute half of this mixture in the baking dish.
4. If using fresh cranberries, give them a quick whirl in the food processor. I use my Vita-mix blender, but a regular blender won’t be up to the task. You’re just trying to roughly chop them. We are definitely not trying to make cranberry paste. If you are using frozen cranberries, cover them with hot tap water for 30-seconds, drain, and then chop.
5. Layer the cranberries over the oatmeal, then cover with the remaining oatmeal.

Mix the wet ingredients
1. Combine all of the wet ingredients in the jar of a blender. Blend to combine.

Assemble and bake
1. Pour the wet ingredients over the dry ingredients in the dish. Gently bang the dish on the countertop to distribute the wet ingredients. If you’re using a glass dish and have stone counters, bang on a cutting board.
2. Bake for about 25 minutes, until the cranberries have lost their form and small cracks begin to appear in the surface of the oatmeal.
3. Drizzle with a little bit of natural maple syrup before serving, if desired.

Off Script…
If your kids are offended by the tartness of the cranberries, you could add one or two tablespoons of sugar to the cranberries when you chop them.

If fresh cranberries aren’t to be had, you could use whole dried cranberries, raisins, or chopped apples.

The post Pumpkin Cranberry Baked Oatmeal first appeared on Ready, Prep, Go!.

I was a twenty-something culinary ingénue living in San Francisco. My BFF- Kyle- in-laws and a few other guests were in town for Thanksgiving. I was absolutely tickled that I was going to make my turkey with a chef as talented as Kyle. I had my first fresh, expensive bird before me- a bird whose provenance was so esteemed that I couldn’t bear to treat it like just another bird. I wanted my guests to fall on the floor and start speaking in tongues when they tried their first bite.

I consulted my America’s Test Kitchen Cookbook, which extolled the virtues of spatchcocking the turkey. This involves cutting out the bird’s backbone and sort of butterflying the whole thing open. That seemed distinctive and sophisticated enough to make my statement of culinary prowess. I’d already brined the bird and had the herbed butter ready to go.

We sent everyone away for the afternoon, cranked up Erasure’s Greatest Hits, mixed a drink, and had a cooking fest. I filled Kyle in on my plan and handed him the knife. He’s the pro-chef, so he should do the tricky stuff, right? He raised an eyebrow. We hovered like Hannibal Lechter over that mass of bumpy rose-hued skin for about five minutes, each of us wondering if we could really desecrate the bird this way. It felt heretical. “You do it.” “No you should do it.” Back and forth we went. Kyle finally bailed out, decisively handing me the knife and a final lame excuse that I should do it because it was my bird.

I did it. We laughed hard while I did it because it was not a graceful process. And it was the best darned bird I’d ever had. I’ve never done a bird differently since.

Here’s the deal. The magic of spatchcocking is, foremost, that it puts the breast and leg meat on the same plane, allowing them to reach a done temperature almost simultaneously. A second cool effect is that, because you no longer have the cavity, the bird gets done faster. I’ve been doing chickens this way ever since. I’ve already written a long post about its virtues.

You’re skeptical. I know.
• “But that won’t look so pretty coming out of the oven!” Do ya wanna eat it or frame it? And its not ugly, just different.
• “But then I can’t stuff the bird!” You know better than to stuff the damned bird. I don’t think I need to remind you that it forces you to overcook the breast meat in order to get the stuffing to a safe temperature. The only reason to stuff is bird is nostalgia.
• “But that sounds kind of scary.” Well, it is the first time. But so is flying in a single prop plane, birthing children, and showing up at a PTA meeting.

I’ve done all kinds of fancy stuff to turkey since then. What I’ve learned over time is that the key to a great bird is self-restraint and integrity.
• Start with a great bird. Pasture-raised. Organic. No solutions, antibiotics or hormones. Heritage breed. Pick some combination of those qualities and buy the best you can reasonably afford. And if you can’t afford a great bird, ignore the next piece of advice.
• A turkey should taste like turkey. Turkey tastes delicious. No getting all fancy-schmancy with rubbing butter under the skin with all manner of herbs and spices and aromatics. No brine flavored with spices or broth or anything goofy like that.
• Don’t rub anything under the skin. Detaching the skin from the breast meat leads to drier meat and skin. Keeping them together helps the fatty layer under the skin to baste the meat, resulting in moist flavorful meat and crispy, melt-in-your-mouth skin.
• Don’t roast a turkey on a rack. It allows too much evaporation of juices, setting you up for sorry, burned drippings.
• Don’t baste it.  Contrary to conventional wisdom, this does not add flavor. Everything you baste it with just runs right off into the pan. I suspect that basters are in their very natures helicopter moms who love to hover and fuss. Everytime you open up the oven to baste the bird, the oven temperature drops dramatically, compromising the cooking of the bird and the even, crispiness of the skin.

Its likely that the lack of specific ingredient measurements is going to piss you off. But you can do this. Ready Prep Go! isn’t about recipes. Its about teaching you how to cook like a grown-up. Read the directions through before you get started and learn to trust yourself. It might not turn out perfect, but you’ll actually learn something about yourself and cooking and it will most likely be amazing and- worst case- be not bad.

Ingredients
For the meat
One whole turkey of any size

For the brine
Kosher salt
Water
Sugar

To baste
Some amount of a stick unsalted butter, melted
A 2-1 ratio of thyme to sage leaves, finely minced
Kosher salt

For the gravy
Reserved turkey backbone, giblets, and any other bones or non-fatty trimmings
1 onion (you decide how big based on your turkey size)
1-2 carrots, peeled and sliced into 1” rounds
1-2 stalks celery, sliced into 1/2” pieces
½ teaspoon peppercorns
5-10 stems fresh thyme
Flour
Turkey stock
Heavy cream and dry white wine, to finish

Instructions

Spa Day: birdie gets a salty soak
1. Two days before you will cook the bird, remove the neck and giblets and set them aside in the fridge.
2. Prepare your brine solution. Fill a large stockpot with water. Add enough kosher salt- stirring well between additions to dissolve completely- to create a taste that is reminiscent of sea water (2 gal water, 2 cups salt, one cup sugar for those needing precision). Add sugar, again stirring thoroughly, until the flavor of the sweetness just begins to come through the saltiness.
3. Wash a vessel for which you have a fitted lid that is large enough to accommodate your bird completely without excessive air space and with at least 2” space between the top of the bird and the top of the vessel. For a really big bird, I actually use an empty plastic sweater box that I’ve washed with soap and a dilute bleach solution and rinsed thoroughly. For a more petite bird, I’ll just use a large stockpot.
4. Place the bird in the brining vessel and fill it with brine until the bird is completely covered. If you need more brine, just mix salt and water in appropriate amounts (sea water taste test) and add to the mixture.
5. Place in a location that is less that 39-degrees for 18-24 hours. If you’re really lucky, you can use your back porch as a “walk out” fridge. When I lived in Chicago, I could place plastic wrap over the top of the vessel before lidding it to ensure a tight seal, bring it out by the back door and put a big piece of wood and a few bricks on it to deter any investigations by local wildlife. If you are not in such a convenient climate, you may need to pull a shelf or two out of your fridge to accommodate your birdie and its bath.

Dry the skin
1. Remove the bird from the water. Rinse with cold water. Pat dry with paper towels.
2. Place the bird in a roasting pan in your fridge and leave uncovered 8-12 hours. If you have a roasting rack, place it on the rack so that as much of the skin is exposed to air as possible. The purpose of this is to dry out the bird’s skin so that it will be able to brown and crisp up nicely. Expect some of the brining solution to seep out into the pan.

Spatchcock that bird
1. Place bird breast-side up on a cutting board with the cavity opening facing you. Now look down into that cavity and get a visual on that bird’s backbone. That’s what we’re going to hack at.
2. Flip your bird over. Grasping the tail protrusion for stability, use a very sharp, hefty chef’s knife to separate the backbone from the bones to which it is attached on either side. If you have very sharp kitchen shears or, better yet, poultry shears, those would be preferable to the knife. You’re running just along side the backbone. Move slowly and deliberately pushing the knife away from you and anyone else- except maybe your least favorite in-law.
3. The second side will be easier as you have more to hold on to and you can see better.
4. Reserve the backbone in the fridge with the giblets and neck.
5. Flip the bird breast-side up. Flatten out the bird by pressing hard to crack the top of the breastbone.  Its like the clavicle section of the bird that we’re breaking here, but I don’t know what turkey clavicles are actually called. With my Xena Warrior Princess strength and knowledge of poultry anatomy, I can usually just do this by grasping the bones, cracking them, and then leaning hard into the top of the bird. You, however, may opt to whack it in its midline a few times with a rolling pin or your brother-in-law’s bald head.

Make the turkey stock
1. Place the turkey parts and giblets, celery, carrots, onions, bay leaf, thyme and peppercorns into a medium-sized pot. Add water to cover by about 1”.
2. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a low simmer. Simmer for the duration of the turkey’s cooking time. Add boiling water as necessary if it reduces to the point that the meats are no longer covered.

Roast that bird
1. Preheat oven to 400-degrees.
2. Melt the butter. Mix it with the herbs. Brush all of the butter over the surface of the turkey’s skin. Be sure to get all around the legs and wings.
3. Choose a roasting pan that is just slightly greater in diameter than the bird. This will prevent moisture loss from the bird’s drippings.
4. Place turkey in the roasting pan, breast-side up. Manipulate the legs so that the bird’s “knees” are touching each other.

I didn't have just the right sized pan for this medium-sized bird, so I placed it in a larger pan. I crinkled up some aluminum foil and put it in the excess space. The foil is there to prevent evaporation from the drippings. Without the foil, I'd risk dehydrating and burning them.

5. Place bird in the oven. Roast until done (165-degrees for breast meat, 175 for legs). The 10-pound bird in the photos took about 3 hours. If the skin starts to get too brown, loosely place a sheet of aluminum foil over the bird.

One oft-overlooked indicator of doneness is the appearance of the drumsticks. Doneness is indicated when the skin recedes significantly up the legs. You still need to use a thermometer to check, but you needn't even bother checking until you see this happen.

Give that bird some time off while you make the gravy
1. Remove the bird from roasting pan onto a large carving board. Loosely tent with aluminum foil and allow it to rest for at least 30 minutes. DO NOT CARVE INTO THE BIRD FOR AT LEAST 30 MINUTES! GOT IT?
2. Get an assistant to hold a fine-mesh sieve over the roasting pan. Strain the hot stock into the roasting pan, discarding all of the solids.
3. Whisk the pan drippings into the stock. Whisk all over the bottom, loosening up and integrating all of the fond that might be clinging to the pan bottom. You’re using the residual heat from the pan and the hot stock to deglaze the pan. No need to put it over a burner.
4. Pour the liquid from the roasting pan into a steeply-sided, preferably transparent, bowl. Allow to settle for a few minutes.

The fat layer is the pale yellow layer at the top.

5. Using a shallow ladle, skim the fat layer off the stock and into the pot in which you made the stock. Alternatively, you can use a turkey baster to suck it off the top.
6. Place the fat in the pot over medium-high heat and cook for a few minutes. If the fat begins to spatter, turn the heat down. You’re just heating the fat and evaporating any water that is mixed in with the fat.
7. Add flour in 1 tablespoon additions, whisking with each addition. You’re trying to create a paste that is just thick enough so that when you whisk it, it sticks together and you can see the bottom of the pan for about 3 full seconds.

8. Cook the fat/flour mixture (called “roux,” which is pronounced “roo”) until it goes from smelling like homemade play-doh to smelling toasty and nutty, about 2-3 minutes.
9. Add the stock, whisk to combine and cook until thickened, just a few minutes.
10. Add some dry white wine. You just want the tickle of acidity on your tongue.
11. Add some freshly ground black pepper. There should be plenty of salt from the drippings but adjust as necessary.
12. Finish with a touch of heavy cream. This softens and rounds out the flavors. Add a bit and taste until you get a flavor you like.

The post Deconstructed Thanksgiving Turkey first appeared on Ready, Prep, Go!.

Two weeks ago at the crack of dawn I found my way to my pantry.  I pressed the button on my electric coffee grinder, anticipating the nerve-addling crunching and whirring that precedes the beautiful fragrance of freshly ground Kenyan coffee beans hitting my nose.  I heard little more than a struggling grunt- the coffee grinder version of a car-engine turning over and over without starting.  

I tried in vain to figure out what the problem was for the next twenty minutes- neglecting the breakfast and lunches that needed making. However, I knew instinctively what the problem was- I was the owner of a mediocre coffee grinder that had just hit its expiration date.

Don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t a totally cheap coffee grinder.  Rather, it was a $50 Capresso burr grinder.  Importantly, it was my second purchase of this same model.  Each one lasted 2-3 years of daily use before it crapped out on me.  Don’t tell me I should have cleaned it more often or shied away from oily beans or whatever.  I don’t want a grinder that I have to coddle.  I want one that works.  I learned this lesson in my epic pursuit of a great blender.  You gotta pony up the big bucks for appliances that work excellently and consistently.

So I set off to do some research.  I posed the question to my Facebook and Twitter friends and found out you all don’t know jack about grinders either.  So I’m gonna tell you what I’ve learned.

Your coffee grind is at least as important as your choice of beans and brewing technique.  This is often overlooked.  The ideal grind:

1. Is absolutely uniform:  No boulders and sand in the same pot.
2. Is accomplished with little heat:  Heat generated in the grinding process meaningfully alters the flavor of the coffee.  Think of it like defrosting meat in the microwave, you kind of ruin the meat because the process starts the cooking too soon.
3. Gives you the perfect size for your brewing method:  I read online discussions about how people adjust their espresso grind fineness according to humidity readings.  I’m not getting that crazy, but I pay about $14/lb for my Kenyan beans, and I want to enjoy their flavor as much as possible.

The post And the winner is- the Baratza Virtuoso Precioso first appeared on Ready, Prep, Go!.

My daughter returned from sleepaway camp this summer raving about the baked oatmeal she had at camp. Can’t say I’d ever had such a thing. Curious, I took advantage of a 16-hour road trip from Chicago to New York to peruse recipes. I was pretty psyched at the possibility of anything new and exciting entering the breakfast rotation.

I tried two recipes. The first was a vegan recipe containing cocoa, coconut and peanut butter from Marcus Samuelsson’s site. The flavors were fantastic. Being a vegan recipe it contained no eggs to leaven it. Consequently, the texture experience had all the appeal of gulping down wet paper mache.

I was then directed to a recipe written by Heidi Swanson of 101 Cookbooks by several bloggers who’d republished her recipe. I found the original on Epicurious, published with her permission. The flavor and texture were great. However, I couldn’t get over wanting the flavors of the other recipe with a more pleasing texture. So I just combined the two. Result? Awesome.

Frankly, this has the appeal of a candy bar or a Ben & Jerry’s flavor without the sugar rush: chocolate, coconut, peanut butter and bananas. Walnuts are a fantastic, protein boosting addition but my kids had conniptions about them. The texture is light, marbelized with cocoa and warm sweet chunks of banana keeping each bite interesting.

I make my life easier when I make this on a school morning by pre-mixing the wet and dry ingredients the night before. I then quickly assemble it and get the lunches ready while it bakes.

Ingredients
Dry Ingredients
1/3 cup light brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon cocoa powder I love Droste. Ghirardelli is nice too.
½ teaspoon salt
2 cups old-fashioned oats

Wet Ingredients
1 14-oz can coconut milk. Use the full fat stuff. It has much fuller flavor. The fat in the coconut milk and peanut butter is enough to moisten the dish so you don’t have to add any other fat.
1 egg
1 heaping tablespoon peanut butter

Add-ins
2 bananas, cut in half width-wise and then in thirds lengthwise
½ cup chopped walnuts

Instructions

Mix the dry ingredients
1. In a small mixing bowl, whisk together the brown sugar, baking powder, cocoa powder and salt.
2. Stir in the oats. The cocoa-sugar mixture will want to settle to the bottom. That’s okay.

Combine the wet ingredients
1. Whisk them all together. The peanut butter will dissolve into the coconut milk.

Assemble and bake
1. Preheat the oven to 375-degrees.
2. Grease a 2-quart baking dish with coconut oil or butter.
3. Spoon a light layer of the oat mixture over the bottom of the pan- just enough to fully cover the bottom. Use the spoon to make sure you get distribution of the cocoa-sugar mixture from the bottom with each spoonful of oats.
4. Layer on the bananas and walnuts, if using.

5. Spoon the remaining oat mixture over the bananas.
6. Give the wet ingredients a quick whisk. A bit of the peanut butter may have settled at the bottom. Pour the wet ingredients over the dry.

7. Jiggle the pan a bit to distribute the wet ingredients throughout the dish.
8. Bake about 35 minutes on the center oven rack. Doneness is indicated by little cracks that will start to form over the surface of the oatmeal.

The post Funky Monkey Baked Oatmeal first appeared on Ready, Prep, Go!.

Last summer, on a rare morning when I rose before the kids, I spied a bowl of leftover cherry clafoutis in the refrigerator. “Well now,” I thought to myself, “wouldn’t that taste nice with my morning coffee?”  Dusted with some cinnamon and powdered sugar, it did indeed start my day off right. Its custardy goodness was filling and satisfying. That morning, clafoutis morphed from dessert into a slightly decadent breakfast food.

Clafoutis is basically a custard with fruit baked into it. Making it involves throwing three eggs, a bit of sugar, vanilla and milk into a blender, pouring it over three cups of fruit and baking it for an hour. You can do that, right? Yeah, it takes an hour to bake, but you could whip it up the night before or put it together some morning when you rise before the kids. It is wonderful warm and cold, so it really doesn’t matter.

Clafoutis is classically made with sweet, dark cherries. I love sour cherries however. Unlike sweet cherries, they have that classic cherry flavor. I sit there in the kitchen like an idiot and pop those pits out with my favorite cherry pitter. Traditional cherry clafoutis actually leaves the pits in the cherries so that their amaretto flavor infuses the batter as it bakes. You could avoid both the time-suck or the dental risk by opting for pitted frozen cherries, however.

Clafoutis-making doesn’t end with cherry season. Blueberries, peaches, apricots, plums and nectarines are gorgeous and just require a bit of prep. There’s no need to remove the skins. If you’re dealing with small plums or apricots, simply remove their pits and quarter them. Try a combination like blueberry and white nectarine.

This recipe began with the recipe Julia Child published in “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” Rather arrogantly, I’ve played with the technique and tweaked a few ingredients to suit my tastes a bit. My mom- who is a custard lover- preferred a version with four eggs, but I felt that was too eggy. Try it if you think that might be more your speed.

My clafoutis technique uses a bain marie. It sounds fancy but boils down to baking something in a bath of hot water. The hot water enables delicate, eggy things to cook without forming dense or dry crusts at the bottom or edges. It creates a buffer zone.

Ingredients
For the custard mix
1 ¼ cups whole or 2% milk
3 eggs
1/3 cup sugar
¼ cup flour
½ teaspoon almond extract
½ teaspoon vanilla extract

For the fruit
3 cups prepared fruit

For the garnish
2 tablespoons powdered sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Instructions

Prepare the oven and dish
1. Preheat the oven to 350-degrees.
2. Lightly butter a cake pan that’s at least 2” deep or an 8×8 pyrex baking dish or a similar 2 quart volume pan.
3. Set a few cups of water to heat on the stove while you prepare the batter. It doesn’t have to boil. You are just trying to get it very hot- which will speed your cooking time.

Make the batter
1. Place all of the batter ingredients in a blender or bowl to combine.

Bake the clafoutis in a bain marie
1. Place the fruit in the prepared dish and pour the batter over it. The fruit will float to the surface.
2. Place the dish holding the clafoutis inside a roasting pan. Place on the center rack of the preheated oven. Pull the rack out so that you can pour water into the pan.
3. Pour the boiling water into the roasting pan so that the level of the water is about halfway up the side of the clafoutis dish. Gently slide the rack into the oven.
4. Bake about 1 hour, or until the center is fully set. You’ll just have to tap at the center to see if it quivers because you can’t risk jiggling the pan without splashing the very hot bain marie water.

Serve
1. Scoop the clafoutis into bowls and dust with the powdered sugar and cinnamon mixture

Off Script…
I love the way the almond and vanilla extracts taste up against the fruits that go into clafoutis, but if you’re not a fan of almond, just use 1 teaspoon of vanilla.

The post Clafoutis Rhymes with Babootie first appeared on Ready, Prep, Go!.

I often describe Kyle as my best friend, though that isn’t really an exclusive club. Everyone who knows us knows there’s something different about this “best” friendship. There’s no platonic term for someone bigger than a best friend. I’m sure some language somewhere has one, but English leaves me fumbling for something greater.

We met in the cafeteria queue during my junior year at an uber-conservative missionary kids’ boarding school in Columbia, South Carolina. He was a new kid as an incoming senior. He had all the confidence of a wet cat. I ran the potential social consequences of saying “hi” to this kid through my high-school psyche-“God, what if I say “hi” and then he thinks I’m his friend and then other people think we’re friends and then I’m stuck dealing with that in the first weeks of being an upper-classman?” Maybe it was a desire to do the right thing. More likely it was an assessment that he was safe. I introduced myself and met a charming, sarcastic, funny, intelligent new friend. The weight of his character has shaped the person I am and am still becoming. I want to be like him when I grow up.

He was my “prom” date that year- though at a school that bans dancing, rock music and physical contact between boys and girls, it was really not much of a prom. It was a first choice for neither of us, but as is often the case, the wild card made the game more interesting.

This relationship has many layers, but among the most interesting is the food connection. I can’t remember the first time we connected over food. It’s just always been there. I think the first time he cooked for me was when he made babootie at my parents’ house. We’ve stood nervously over a turkey we were determined to spatchcock, each poking the other, saying, “You do it. No! You do it!” We learned- in a very uncomfortable way- that really hot Thai chilies don’t lose their heat in the digestion process (figure it out). We’ve slurped ramen and flirted with waiters and eaten things that have made us gag, pucker, pant and moan.

Kyle and I during a jaunt to Monterrey, CA. I was pregnant with my first baby, Sophie, and thrilled that pregnancy gave me an excuse to wear pants with elasticized waists as we dined together.

We’ve dined at many destination restaurants over the course of our friendship. The experiences all follow a familiar pattern. We’d hear about someplace thrilling and promising, set aside the cash for the extravagance and book the reservation. We’d then show up with the eager anticipation of 13-year old girls at a Justin Beiber concert. Five minutes after being seated, Kyle would start carping about waiters who poured water from the wrong side, salad that was tossed too long ago and serving pieces that should have been warmer.

I was nervous as hell the night in 2002 when Bill, Kyle and I drove up to Napa Valley to dine at the French Laundry. At the time, French Laundry was the pinnacle of American dining. I was ecstatic that we’d scored the French Laundry reservations- thanks to Kyle’s efforts, inevitably. Yet there I was pulling into the unassuming gravel driveway of this foodie mecca thinking, “Well, now I get to see how the French Laundry comes up short.” Secretly, as much as I adore Kyle, I was kind of reluctant that he was our dining companion that night.

It didn’t. It is still the celebrated culinary moment of our relationship precisely because it DID live up to the hype. We still talk wonderously about the dishes we enjoyed that night and the perfect tone and execution of the service. It was that moment that made me appreciate Kyle’s standards.

On Kauai with Soph passed out on his back. I kept struggling to carry her on our hikes, not realizing at the time that I was pregnant with Max.

Kyle isn’t looking for flaws, he’s looking for beauty and skill and surprise and greatness. When he coughs up the hard-earned cash for what is supposed to be an elite dining experience, he does so with the expectation of the extraordinary. No matter how great the lead dancer is in Swan Lake, if one of the other dancers is plonking on her toes, you’ll be hard-pressed to enjoy the brilliance of the other performers.

There have been many times when Kyle has criticized a dish that I’d tasted and thought was good. I’d then take another taste and realize that he was right. The dough was too sweet or the sauce was too viscous or the plating so fussy that it alienated the eater from the dish.   I learned the value of absorbing the entire experience of dining.

Before learning to cook, I just wasn’t paying enough attention to what I was eating: I wasn’t focused on what I was eating enough to really even enjoy it. In order to really be able to taste and appreciate food, you need to know how to cook it. It’s about understanding. Unless I knew how to cook, my enjoyment of food would always be limited by my ignorance of it. We can all enjoy a concert, but a musician- even an amateur one- will always enjoy it more. The musician can appreciate the talent and discipline that go into making great music. She will also hear the mistakes that will go un-noticed by the non-musician.

Kyle turned 40 this week. I’ve been thinking a lot about how grateful I am for his friendship and how it has influenced my life. When it comes to food, learning the difference between great, good and crappy food has added so much. Because of Kyle I understand why dishes are awe-inspiring or utterly forgettable. I pay attention to what I do and don’t like about everything I eat. When I cook I think about the experience I want to have when eating the dish: aiming for clean and pure, or hearty and filling, or possibly the unexpected. Ingredients are just tools in my endeavors to fulfill culinary longings.

So cheers to you, Uncle Kylie.  Thanks for the laughs and inspiration, the patience and forgiveness.  Thanks for making my life so damned delicious.

The post My Favorite Food Critic first appeared on Ready, Prep, Go!.

I can no more give a crappy gift than I can look you in the face and say, “No darling, you are rockin’ that bikini!” whist thinking the strings of your bikini look more like cooking twine on a pork shoulder and your once-sexy tramp stamp reminds me of a Silly Putty newsprint transfer. That’s lying. So is giving a crappy gift.

It’s better to show up empty-handed to a dinner party than bring something cheap and thoughtless. For that matter, I’d rather you graciously show up empty-handed to my dinner party than bring me that packet of cheesy novelty cocktail napkins and the rhinestone-studded wine glass you got for being a top multi-level marketing achiever. I really won’t notice your empty hands. I’ll be annoyed at having to dispose of a lame gift.

The most intimidating challenge is choosing gifts for people whose personal tastes you simply don’t know very well. My answer to such problems- as with all things- is food. Everyone must eat. Not sweets. Is there anything worse than those ubiquitous tins of crappy cookies or chocolate samplers during the Holidays? I’m talking about real food and real eating and everything that surrounds them.

The Queen Bee of the gift-giving challenge is the teacher gift. A good friend of mine was an elementary school teacher and used to get the most horrific pile of crap at the holidays. We’d have so much fun perusing the load of “World’s Best Teacher” picture frames, scented candles and assorted hot-glued crafts. Feeling guilty for being so snarky, inevitably one of us would look at the pile and weakly offer, “It’s the thought that counts…”  Uh-huh.

The modern solution to this problem is the gift card. The room mom collects cash at the beginning of the year and gives the teacher a card for one of his favorite places. This requires no thought on my part- which is convenient but defeats the purpose of the gift. A gift, in my estimation, should show some consideration by the giver. It should express the appreciation you feel for the receiver or the receiver’s gesture toward you. If my gift is effortless, what purpose is it actually serving? It doesn’t actually compensate the teacher in any way for all he or she has done. It also doesn’t demonstrate my gratitude.

The image above is of the teacher’s gifts I assembled for my kids’ teachers this year. I gave them some of my favorite Tunisian couscous and a Meyer lemon flavored olive oil that I adore just as much. I enclosed the following message:

This meyer lemon infused olive oil and artisanal couscous are some of my favorite things. The oil is fantastic in salad dressing, for dipping bread, or for finishing vegetables. It’s been a pantry staple for me for over ten years.

The couscous is a recent discovery. “How can couscous be that different?” you might ask. It just is. And honestly, I’m not really sure why.

I often use these two ingredients together for a quick, nutritious weeknight meal. Grill some vegetables- peppers, onions, asparagus, carrot slices, eggplant. Chop them up, toss them with the cooked couscous and some cooked lentils and finish it all off with a drizzle of the oil and a little squirt of fresh lemon. That’s it. Serve it hot or cold.

The value of the two gifts plus the pretty bag was about $35. I chose these because I think they’re distinctly delicious. They’re also a little luxurious, pretty, versatile and conform to the demands of a wide variety of diets. They don’t require fantastic cooking skills.

In the past, I’ve actually given high quality frozen steaks and fish to my kids’ teachers. I’ve also given glass bottles of my favorite Mexican Vanilla with a jar of Saigon Cinnamon. Again, I wanted to impart a little indulgence and versatility. In those situations, I’ve known the teachers a bit better than I knew these, so I had more of a sense of who’d want two NY strip steaks and who’d prefer the halibut steaks. I also knew that none of those teachers had long commutes home that would risk defrosting the meat. We gave steaks to my kids’ coaches and music teachers. We give steaks and fish to my husband’s colleagues.

Some of the most thoughtful gifts I’ve ever received were simple gifts of food: a bag of assorted citrus from a friend visiting from California, a few kinds of paprika from a friend who visited Hungary, some lemon and orange extract and a bag of Saigon cinnamon from friends who’d recently taken a “culinary tour of Chicago” and stopped at The Spice House, vanilla from my mom when she visited Mexico, a few eggs from a friend’s chickens. These gifts aren’t pricey. They’re just thoughtful, useful items that I wouldn’t necessarily have picked up myself.

I keep a stash of glass-bottled vanilla and copies of one of my favorite, most practical cookbooks, “The New Best Recipe,” on hand for last minute dinner-party gifts.

I’ve compiled a list of suggestions that might get your ideas flowing the next time you’re searching for a thoughtful gift:
• Gilt Taste: Though it has caught a bit of flak for having some outlandishly priced items ($33 for a pint of finger limes. Really?), the site is tantalizing. Stick with the pantry section of the site, which has some really special offerings such as an Umbrian grain sampler, a spice blend set, olive oils, and a vanilla and chamomile maple syrup that made me downright lusty.
• Zingerman’s: Famous for their Bacon of the Month club, Zingerman’s is a collection of the finest, esoteric foods. Make someone smile with a jar of Luxardo Marasca Cherries (real Maraschino cherries), a jar of violet mustard, or a bottle of Agrumato Lemon Oil. The site is funky and playful with product knowledge and descriptions that take the fear out of buying something crazy like- say- violet mustard.
• The Spice House: I love this place. Their spices are simply beautiful. There’s so much to love in their product selection. For simple gifts that would please almost anyone, they have a wonderful selection of boxed spice sets ranging in price from $20-50.
• Gourmet’s Choice: This is where I get my steaks. For the holidays last year, Jim assembled and shipped beautiful gifts of 2” thick bone-in porterhouse steaks accompanied by some Campeche shrimp for my husband’s colleagues.

Even if the recipient isn’t a foodie, she has to eat. Her world is as likely filled with clutter as yours is, so she doesn’t need you to run to the Hallmark store for a snowglobe. Give her something that will be a momentary pleasure in the moment and for years to come. I was introduced to Molino Real vanilla by a gift from my Mom upon her return from a Mexican vacation. My love affair with The Spice House and whole Saigon cinnamon bark came from a hostess gift. I remember the givers everytime I consider these treasured ingredients.

The post Perfect Gifts for People You Barely Know first appeared on Ready, Prep, Go!.

Nothing this delicious has ever before emerged from my kitchen. You should understand that before you read on.

This also happens to be the most kid-unfriendly dinner I have ever made. It is a tragic reality.  The chasm is as impossible as the obviously ill-fated passions of Julia Roberts and Lyle Lovett.

I am usually irritated by requests for “kid-friendly” fare. What the hell is that, anyway? Junk-food made less unhealthy? Healthy food made enticing by giving it toy-like styling? Food that’s bland and unchallenging? Everyone means something different by that and, frankly, I object to the idea that any good food isn’t “kid friendly.” But when it comes to octopus salad, I get it. The most adventurous American kid is going to be pretty horrified. I have seen little Japanese children rejoice over “tako” on a stick the way American children would celebrate fried pizza on a stick at the state fair. That’s not happening with our kids.

My octopus salad started in my email inbox.  I receive a daily-food writing digest from the Culinary Institute of America called the “Pro Chef Smart Brief.”  I occasionally peruse its headlines to see if it contains anything captivating. This particular issue had an article about tenderizing octopus. Three different chefs talked about all kinds of seemingly goofy ways to accomplish this goal- marinate it with old wine corks or tumble it in a clothes dryer. Anyway, it got my mouth watering. I’ve enjoyed octopus at fine restaurants many times but never considered what went into preparing it.

On Monday morning last week, I’d raced to Whole Foods to pick up the ingredients for a private lesson I was teaching at noon. They usually have nice fish, so I sauntered up to the display to shop for myself. None of the day’s catch excited me. I spied some small octopi in the corner of the case. Hmmm. The octopus article came back to me. I’d never thought about making octopus at home. I briefly hesitated.  Could I do it? Why not?

Thus began three days of anxiety and trauma for my children. I forewarned them we would be having octopus for dinner that week. I wanted to talk about it- why they perceive something as “gross” that they’ve never actually tasted. The two littlest were as concerned as they were curious. My 9-year-old was mortified. She was downright angry and rebellious about it. If she’d of been a little nicer, I might have felt a little guilty.

I researched recipes online- looking as much for courage as inspiration. When I stumbled on an article written by Mark Bittman on the subject, I had the confidence I needed to move forward.

I never anticipated that my little octopi would be featured on readyprepgo.com. I wasn’t sure the dish would turn out at all, much less be “post-worthy.” This is why the prep shots were actually shot on my iPhone, just for giggles.  But it was, seriously, one of the best things I’ve ever made.  I took away an appreciation for the silly boundaries I set between foods I’ll order in a restaurant and foods I can enjoy at home. I had some important conversations with my kids about prejudice and culture and gratitude.

I also suspect I’ve raised the bar on the kids’ gross-out factor.  Next time I serve a whole fish to a table of recoiling children, I can always remind them that we could have octopus next week instead…

Ingredients
For the braise
1 pound of baby octopus, cleaned, heads on In my research, I learned that the process of freezing and thawing facilitates the tenderization of the octopus. I also figured out that the heads contribute to the flavor of the braising liquid, though they are a bit tough and taste more strongly than the tentacles. This is why I left them on for the braise and then discarded them.
6 cups water
1 large carrot, peeled and chopped (about ½ cup)
1 large stalk celery, chopped (about ½ cup)
1 small yellow onion, chopped (about 2/3 cup)
3 sprigs thyme
1 small sprig rosemary
1 bayleaf
8 peppercorns
1 teaspoon kosher salt

For the Marinade
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
juice of ½ large lemon
1 heaping teaspoon fresh oregano, minced
1 large clove garlic
salt & pepper

For the Salad
3 cups cooked couscous I adore M’hamsa Tunisian Couscous.  Available at Whole Foods and online for about $9.
1/3 cup chickpeas, fresh- if available Realistically, you’re probably using cooked dried chickpeas. I just happened to score some fresh ones on my Whole Foods trip. Canned chickpeas will be salty and mushy. I’d avoid them.
½ cup peas Frozen are fine
1/4 cup kalamata olives, pitted
1/4 cup sundried tomatoes, julienned (sliced into thin strips)
2 oz. dry Portugese chorizo, chopped You can use any sort of dry sausage (doesn’t require refrigeration) that’s got some heat to it.
1 ½ tablespoons fresh basil, finely chopped
Juice of 1/4 lemon
1 tablespoon highest quality extra-virgin olive oil
3 cups spinach, watercress or salad greens
Shaved Parmagiano-Reggiano, to taste

Instructions

Braise the Octopi
1. Add the vegetables to the water in a small stockpot.
2. Bring the water to a boil, reduce heat to a low simmer and add your octopi.
3. Simmer for 45 minutes to an hour. Test for doneness first on the smallest of your octopi, picking one up with tongs and piercing the center with a skewer or meat thermometer. Mark’s said that you want to feel the meat yield like a cooked potato, offering little resistance.  He was right.
4. Remove the smallest octopi first, testing larger octopi before removing them.
5. You may refrigerate them overnight or proceed to marinate.

Marinate the Octopi
1. Remove the heads of the octopi.
2. Combine the marinade ingredients.
3. Put the octopi and marinade together in a zip-top bag. Push the air from the bag before sealing.
4. Marinate for 2 hours, turning the bag frequently to ensure contact with the marinade.

Grill the Octopi
1. Preheat a grill to high heat.
2. Remove the octopi from the marinade.
3. Quickly grill each side of the octopi over very high heat. You are not cooking them. Rather, you just want to add grill marks and grilled flavor to them. You’re probably looking at no more than 30-seconds each side on a raging hot grill.

Assemble the Salad
1. Cut each octopus into quarters- smaller if necessary- to create bite-sized pieces.
2. Toss the octopus with the chickpeas, peas, chorizo, and basil. Drizzle the lemon and oil over the salad and toss to combine. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
3. Scatter the greens around the edges of a pasta or salad bowl, mound the couscous in the center, and top the couscous with the salad. Garnish with parmesan shavings.

The post Mediterranean Grilled Octopus Salad first appeared on Ready, Prep, Go!.