Burwell General Store

Recipe Swap!

2012-04-18T09:06:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,
It's time for another recipe swap! This time around, we all remade tomato pudding!

I've been on an intense project, so I was not able to make my own version, but please check out everyone's creative takes on this month's recipe!

Egg in a Biscuit

2012-04-01T16:05:00.000-07:00

Welcome to another Recipe Swap!

As a kid, did you ever swing so high on the playground swings that you felt you might fly out of your seat or come jolting down from the thrill of it all? Wasn't that the point of swinging? All cylinders of my life kicked in last month, and I am making decisions about whether to sleep or return emails. That's native territory for me, but the kitchen is usually my refuge. It is my place where time slows down, where methods and thoughts become deliberate. Not so, this month. Our swap this month was an amusing recipe called Ham Snails. I loved the idea of rolling up what is essentially biscuit dough with a layer of filling. My play on it was to cut out a hole in the middle of a biscuit, and drop an egg in, and bake. The idea was lovely. It was a tasty, herby, hammy breakfast. But, it was not the breakfast I hoped for this morning.

Egg in a biscuit.

Let me explain.

After eating hotel food for the past three weeks and living out of a suitcase (work), sometimes even the blog *gasp* takes a back seat to life. This, my first breakfast back in my own kitchen, happens to be documented, but it isn't food-blog perfect; set, staged and photographed for the social media masses' delight. It was my breakfast, probably like a lot of other people's breakfasts this morning.

I started with biscuit dough.

Do not molest your dough.

Then, I made biscuits with a hole cut out in the middle and tucked a layer of prosciutto in the hole, and cracked in an egg. I baked, I photographed from my iPhone, I ate, I caught up on emails. It was a great morning, mostly because it was at home in my own kitchen.

Not shown: prosciutto. It's hiding under the eggs.

The recipe? Use any standard buttermilk biscuit dough recipe that makes about 12 3" biscuits and add a couple of extra tablespoons of buttermilk to it, making this a very wet dough. (You'll need to compensate for how long the egg needs to bake.) I have my favorite and wouldn't dare try to improve upon a traditional buttermilk biscuit. To it, add 2 Tbsp of chopped chives. Pat them out on a well-floured board, and cut into rounds using a 4" cookie cutter. Then, using a 2" round cutter, cut the middle out. You'll get about six large biscuits and the middles from this process. Transfer the doughnut-looking biscuits to an oiled sheet pan and reshape. Add a half a slice of prosciutto into the middle hole, sprinkle a pinch of chopped shallots in, crack an egg on top, and bake at 400F for 16 minutes or until the egg is set. Serve immediately.

So, this isn't a recipe post, per se, as much as it is a slice of life. Sometimes, it's busy, and the leisurely task of blogging doesn't fit very well between laundry, shower, gym, sleep, work, shower, repeat. But that's okay, there's always a new day, and a new opportunity to hit the "publish" button.

Please check out everyone's takes on the same vintage recipe below!

2012-03-14T08:54:00.000-07:00

Welcome to another Recipe Swap!

By now, you know the drill, I release a vintage recipe every month to a fantastic group of bloggers, and we each remake the recipe in our own ways, coming up with original results! Last month, we split the swap into two groups, so this is the Wednesday group's first outing! Welcome.

The Jell-o and cottage cheese recipe seemed inevitable in a vintage recipe exchange, and this week, we are putting our takes on Orange Snowflake Salad. I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with.

Whole Wheat Focaccia

2012-03-04T15:59:00.001-08:00

Welcome to another recipe swap!

Today is the first day of our Recipe Swap split! (Don't know what the Recipe Swap is? Click here.) Our group is growing at a record pace, and we felt it was time to split into two smaller groups so we can all keep track of each other. Starting today, half of us will continue swapping recipes on the first Sunday of every month, and the rest of us will post on the second Wednesday of each month. The next group posts on Wednesday, March 14, so be sure to visit us then!

I thought there was no better way to split the group than to take a recipe from facing pages of the same book, giving one recipe to each group to remake. This Sunday's challenge is a tough one; pizza. Difficult, because pizza is so identifiable, which to me, means "hard to reinvent."

Whole wheat sun-dried tomato, garlic and oregano focaccia

My taste buds are native to springy, chewy, airy white flour. In my kitchen, converting recipes to whole wheat, healthier versions means converting recipes to less fun. But, a goal of mine this year is to create healthified versions of standby recipes. The original pizza recipe became a needed version of my focaccia recipe; a whole wheat, double rise version of flatbread, perfect for slicing and making into sandwiches.

I'm fascinated with yeast. I wish we all could eat endless sugar and fart carbon dioxide for magical results. I love watching it activate and rise, and kneading dough takes me to a happy place. Baking reminds me of working with clay; deciding how long to knead, when to rest, how to shape. Potters and bakers both participate in avocations that take the edges off of a day by distracting the mind with the need to concentrate on touch, shape and form. But, there's a tactical side to all of that. The first thing one must do when taking the plunge into the wonders of yeast is to get a digital scale. It does not need to be fancy. It just needs to be accurate. Mine is a $5 IKEA model that I've had for about three years. I now take the opportunity to convert every recipe I revisit from volume measures to weights. As a result, accuracy, certainty and self-confidence goes up.

The recipe below makes four focaccia. I won't lie, it takes most of a day. But, a beautiful day off it can be, one of cultivating patience and working with your hands. I did yoga while waiting for the second rise of the breads, allowing me official entry into some sort of SoCal Venice Beach-living stereotype contest. I ate mine with just a little of my favorite marinara sauce, warmed, on the side. The rest I split and froze to use for future lunch sandwiches.

Thanks all, for reading. We are all so grateful for your support of the Recipe Swap. We have a blast reinventing recipes; I hope you have as much fun reading them, and are inspired to get into your own kitchens. Please say hello in the comments below, and be sure to visit everyone's remake of the same recipe in the links below.

Whole Wheat Focaccia
Burwell General Store

Serves: 8, makes four breads

Notes: this is a very high-water recipe. Do not dismay. It will come together.

Equipment:
Stand mixer with dough hook attachment
two half sheet pans
digital metric scale

Better living through IKEA

Ingredients:
390 grams organic All-purpose flour
224 grams organic Whole Wheat flour
476 g warm water (100F)
1 tsp dry yeast
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp brown sugar (I used demerara)

Toppings:
1/4 cup sun dried tomatoes, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp dried oregano
1 Tbsp salt
Extra virgin olive oil

Before the second rise

In the bowl of a stand mixer, place the dried yeast. Add warm water (not in excess of 100F) and sugar, stir and let activate while preparing other ingredients. Turn stand mixer onto low setting and gradually combine the flours and salt into the bowl. Turn off the mixer and scrape down the sides, then turn mixer up to medium-high speed and mix with a dough hook for approximately 20 minutes, or until the dough is mostly pulled away from the sides of the bowl. Scrape dough into a large, oiled bowl, coat with a thin layer of oil, and cover loosely with plastic wrap. Set in a warm place out of direct sunlight, and let double in volume, about two to three hours. While waiting, lightly oil two baking sheets with canola or another high-temp cooking oil. Punch down the dough and remove to a large, lightly floured board, and divide the dough into four equal parts. With floured hands, gently stretch the dough into long, flat sections, and place on the baking sheets. After all four are formed, let rise again on the cookie sheets for about 45 minutes. After the second rise, take your fingers and punch down into the dough, creating dimples (giving the breads texture). Salt liberally, add toppings of your choice, and drizzle tops with a little olive oil. Bake at 425F for ten to 13 minutes, or until tops of the outside edges brown.

Remove from oven, let cool for ten minutes before tearing into the focaccia.

Two years ago today...

2012-02-14T17:01:00.000-08:00

I rifled through my old posts to see what I said on previous Valentine's Days. Not surprisingly, I said nothing, since I don't celebrate it in a typical way. But I did find something relevant in the files. Two years ago, my husband and I were in the Middle East, having going-away drinks with our manager on a project there. The guy gave us some great marriage advice over multiple beers in the lounge of a Western hotel. At the time, we had been married two months. Today, back in Los Angeles, it has been two years and two months, and I am just as eager to have dinner with the hubs tonight as I was then; giddy, excited, and hopeful he will be excited, too. I'm making Manifest Vegan's Bulgogi-style tofu, which has been marinating since last night. No, I'm not a vegan. I'm a killer recipe lover.

Read the old post here back when Burwell General Store was called Our Other Car Is A Camel. All those posts are now tagged on this blog as UAE, if you're interested in reading some Dubai adventures.

Whether you celebrate this day or not, it's always a good thing when you stop for a moment to think about and honor those who you cherish. Love to all of you!

Napa Sugar

2012-02-10T12:43:00.000-08:00

In the kitchen at Cooks County, or any commercial kitchen for that matter, ingredients must be labeled when they are stored. That's part health code, part convenience. Kitchens, the great cultural levelers, (perhaps best chronicled by George Orwell) usually contain language barriers, which can make the entire experience more interesting than any other place on earth, at the moment. Every now and then, I'll go into the walk-in and find "brocoley." Or "Water Crest." Or "gabbage." The best one, which I didn't see but chef told me about was something labeled, "Potato Leek Beets". The contents; rhubarb. It's what someone hoped the rhubarb would be. And that's okay. I believe in hope. And, I believe in laughing.

Last night, I found "Napa Sugar," the work of another hope peddler. He could not know that today, Napa Sugar is my new phrase embodying a spirit of hope and levity. Falling out of a pose in yoga is my Napa Sugar, my opportunity to laugh and strive for improvement of my craft. Picking up my drawing pencils is a statement of hope, in this case, exactly like Napa Sugar in that I hope the thing I wrote on looks like what I just tried to make it. I like to take Napa Sugars along Venice Beach, my new home, to soak in all of the fun.

Taking a Napa Sugar before I knew what they were called, last weekend.

What's your Napa Sugar? Go find some this weekend and tell me when you find it!

Wild Rice Oatmeal

2012-02-05T15:59:00.000-08:00

Welcome to another recipe swap! By now, most of you know the drill, I take a recipe from a vintage cookbook, release it to our fantastic group of bloggers, and we each remake the recipe in our own way, posting the results below. We are almost 30 strong now, and starting in March, we are splitting into two groups of 15. Twice the fun, twice the recipes, twice a month. Just like a Doublemint commercial! (Sorry, had to.) Half of us will continue posting on the first Sunday of each month, and the other half take over the second Wednesdays, so keep a watch out for us.

This month's recipe was Wild Rice Dressing. Be sure to check out all of our links below to see how we each reinvented it!

This year, one of my mantras is to simplify. Everything. From errand-running to my exercise routine, my question of the year is "What can I subtract from this moment, this project, this idea to add simplicity?" (Thanks, Coco Chanel and Buddhists everywhere for your inspiration.)

Morning, pot a'twitter.

Botanists help me out here, but wild rice isn't actually rice. It's an aquatic oat. Rice is a reed that grows in water-soaked fields, and oats are typically a dry-land plant. Wild rice is a version of an oat that grows not in dry fields but in wetlands, traditionally along riverbanks and the shallow parts of bodies of water. So, I decided to treat wild rice like its brethren, and make a bowl of oatmeal.

The combination of nutty, earthy wild rice and sweet, toasty maple syrup stopped my blog brain cold in the quiet of a late morning. No running the bowl and props to a window full of light with a bounce card to photograph. No DSLR to document. None of the other things we do as food bloggers. It was just a moment, halted by the discovery of wild rice, butter and maple syrup as a wonderful weekend-morning hot breakfast. I filled the bowl twice, sat, and enjoyed my new discovery. Sorry, oatmeal. Oh, wait, you are oatmeal.

Wild Rice Oatmeal
Burwell General Store

Serves: 2

Since there are few ingredients that make this dish what it is, I suggest using the best you can afford.

Ingredients:
2/3 cup organic wild rice
6-8 cups water
1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbsp really, really good butter: I recommend Plugra unsalted
2 Tbsp grade B maple syrup (it's cheaper, and I think tastes nuttier and fuller than grade A)
cream
raisins and pecans (optional)

Method:
Place wild rice into medium saucepan of boiling, salted water, and cook for 45-50 minutes until grains are completely split open and apart, checking after 30 minutes to make sure the grains are free-moving in the water. Add more water if necessary. When done, drain the wild rice, split into bowls, top with butter, maple syrup and drizzle with cream to taste. Enjoy your morning, perhaps with a side of fruit and cup of coffee.

Don't try this at home

2012-01-19T12:32:00.000-08:00

I had but a minute to lament the death-by-overpreparing beautiful two-year avocados. That was last shift's lesson. Last night at Cooks County, I received a hard lesson in under-preparing.

Embrace the silence.

Roxana, one of the chef-owners, shares the station with me. Her side of the counter is pastry, I'm on the cold line, making appetizers and salads. While prepping our stations in moments of relative calm, conversation goes like this:

Chat chat chat what kind of yoga do you do? chat chat chat You need to get some more sleep, girl, and drink water... I love the huckleberry sauce you serve with the pop tart dessert! chat chat chat How long do you proof the spretzel dough? chat chat We need to make more mustard dipping sauce, but let's put it on the list for tomorrow.

Then:

Wham.

Oh. Shit. This is what I get for making fun of vegans. I've got 16 salads up and that's not counting the chicken liver and radish apps. One table ordered four radish plates? "Don't worry about new tickets, Chris, just clean up what you have." Dan, the other chef-owner calls over; Christianna, "Fire what you have." I sense that is code for "Hurry *%@$!^ up." I'm out of the avocados I over-prepped the other night. I'm out of grapefruit. 25 plates due five minutes ago and I'm segmenting grapefruits and avocados on the fly. Roxana, the owner who employs me, is working four of my tickets. Not her own. Mine. Joy of joys, they are called The Weeds, and I am in them.

After the tickets clear, I look out into the dining room. People are having fun. They're standing, waiting for tables on a Wednesday night. I get my station back in order, and watch the wave that hit me land on the hot line, then desserts. The steelhead salmon steaks searing on the wood-fired grill catch my eye from across the kitchen, glowing a beautiful orange. The whole line smells of mussels steaming in white wine and roasted tomatoes. Those plates go out, rustic but composed. Roxana, done with her charity work for the evening on my station, is back to plating her gorgeous desserts.

Pop tart with huckleberry sauce

Roxana says, "I haven't had a run like that in six years." Okay good. Context is good.
"I did not handle that well."
"It's fun, right?"

Yes, it is. For a restaurant that has been open just over two months, it is a good problem to have that most nights feel like Friday nights in the kitchen. Our reward for the night's work: there's one half of an avocado left, and Roxana and I split it. We're back to chatting while we break our stations down. Chat chat avocados are great for your skin! Don't let me forget to make the mustard dipping sauce tomorrow. Chat chat chat I think I'm going to bring my paring knife in for service tomorrow. It's better for segmenting.

"See you tomorrow night?"

Of course. I wouldn't miss this much fun for anything.

A New Year, A New Voice

2012-01-17T12:03:00.000-08:00

View from my station.

Three months ago, a friend of mine opened a restaurant in West Hollywood, and I called to see if I could help out. She said yes, and, she’s letting me document the experience. For the thousands of ways food establishments close, there’s only one way to open. It involves 80-hour weeks, sleep-deprived decision-making, and if you can think it, you can worry about it, from napkin inventory to payroll taxes.

I work the cold line, nights. My worst fear is running out of food on a busy shift, especially while I’m still new on the line and both chef-owners are in the kitchen with me. Last week, I cut too many two-year avocados for my mise en place, and all night they sat there, decaying. No worries, we can just compost them and grab more. In two years. A well-designed plan you can’t execute might as well be no plan at all, in the kitchen, in business, in life. And sometimes, perhaps most times, logic won’t get you to that great plan. I heard it, the voice that said, “Those are too many avocados.” I didn’t listen, because I didn’t want to have to cut and season avocados on the fly with seven tickets up during service. I reasoned it would be a busy night, and it was, just not for the avocado salad. While I was prepping, my gut said, “Easy on the avocados, cowgirl!”

Sorry, kids.

Enter the new year. I feel like setting a resolution is creating a plan I can’t execute, but a conversation with my loving compadre opened my eyes to a new way of preparing for the year. “What are your posts contributing outside your community of foodies?” he asked. The question hit me simultaneously like a ton of bricks and an inspiration. This year, I have one thought in mind when I hit the post button, “What else am I contributing when I publish this?” If this remains a straightforward recipe blog, I’m denying the side of my brain interested in people’s stories, and our senses of place and culture. There will still be recipes, to be sure. But, I set an intention to write more stories and take more pictures of subjects that intersect with food (and are not just about it.) My gut is telling me that’s the sweet spot, so I’m going to start there this time, with some fun stories from a back kitchen in Los Angeles.

Lemon-Mustard Aioli Dressing

2012-01-08T15:30:00.000-08:00

Lemon-Mustard Aioli Dressing

Welcome to another Recipe Swap! We do this every month, our group of 25 bloggers. I release a vintage recipe, and we each remake it in our unique ways. (Please be sure to check out the other swappers' blogs in the links below.) This month, an Italian custardy dessert, Zabaglione, made the cut.

I didn't quite think about this when I released a dessert recipe to be remade for January 8, but after two weeks of eating holiday food, I couldn't bring myself to make, or eat, another dessert. And so went my rationale to turn this Zabaglione into a "healthier" dish. Zabaglione is essentially an egg sauce, so I kept that part of the technique and applied it to an aioli-style dressing to go on a salad. See? That wasn't too painful. The sauces are similar in that both use egg yolks to suspend other ingredients. That's about it for similarity, true, but the result is a creamy, smooth, tangy dressing that can't be bottled; a fresh aioli uses raw egg yolks, so this dressing should be eaten within a day or two after it is made.

Simple lettuce salad tossed with dressing, undoing sins of holiday eating.

So, I bring you a post-holiday idea to undo a little of the holiday diet damage, Lemon-Mustard Aioli Dressing!

Lemon-Mustard Aioli Dressing
Burwell General Store

Makes: About four ounces, or two family-style salad servings

Ingredients:

Two fresh egg yolks, whites discarded or saved for future use
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tsp shallot, minced
1 Tbsp flat-leaf parsley, minced
1 Tbsp dijon mustard
1 Tbsp whole grain mustard
juice of one lemon (about 1 1/2 Tbsp)
Salt and pepper to taste
lemon wedge and parsley for garnish on salad of your choice

Method:
In a medium-sized metal bowl place two yolks and begin whisking to break up. One spoonful at a time, drizzle in olive oil, whisking constantly to emulsify the yolks and oil. Continue until about a tablespoon of oil remains, (about five minutes) and while whisking, add lemon juice, shallots and parsley. Continue whisking in the remaining oil, adjust taste with salt and pepper. Add more lemon juice if you desire a tangier dressing. Place a layer of cling film directly onto the surface of the dressing and chill in the refrigerator until ready to serve on a salad of your choice. Use within two days of making.

Hey there, radishes.

Sadie & Emma Pottery Company

2011-12-15T15:43:00.000-08:00

Last week, I went to UniqueLA, a craftsperson's boutique that "pops up" every six months or so, allowing craft-minded buyers to vote with our dollars and meet the people making products we love.

My favorite find was from Sadie & Emma Pottery Company, based north of the Valley, in Sunland, California. Their pieces are a once-fire process to cone 6, which is brave for potters (usually ceramics are fired twice, a sure way to achieve strength) and beautiful for buyers. Minimal use of glazes and beautiful clays make for clean, simple kitchen and tableware. I lucked upon these little jugs, modeled after old whisky jugs, and realized I found a blog mascot, reminiscent of the old times, when hand-crafting included not only the contents, but the package.

We are overly concerned about what goes into our bodies, yet many of us, myself included, sometimes serve beautiful, handmade meals on cheap mass-produced plates. It's a good point. Why not bring that purchasing power to the rest of the table?

Peanut Butter Rice Treats - Cookies for Canines

2011-12-04T16:17:00.000-08:00

Welcome to another Recipe Swap! Over a year ago, I found an old hymnal with recipes in the back in a junk store, and every month, I release a new recipe to a fantastic group of food bloggers from that book. Last month was our one-year anniversary, so it seemed a good time to switch books to another retired volume; The Second Ford Treasury of Favorite Recipes From Famous Eating Places. This month, we set out to remake the Toll House cookie (originally developed at the Toll House, (photo) a historic inn (history) in Whitman, Massachusetts.) Please make sure to visit all of our pages at the bottom of this post to see how we have each invented our own cookie inspired by this original recipe. We are about 20 strong now, and are an amazing group of talented food types.

There are a lot of cookies being pushed from household to household during this time of year. Over the holidays, food sits around, perhaps more than usual. Out, on counters within snout distance. Unattended on coffee tables, at eye level. Yet, our devoted dogs are met with the same "no eat" rules we apply the rest of the year. It's not fair! So, in honor of our devoted four-legged friends, I made these pup cookies so they can have more food around than usual, too. (Recipe Swappers, forgive me. Can you resist those eyes, below?)

I made them with a very special pup in mind, who I just saw over Thanksgiving. I adopted George the German Shepherd in September of 2006 from the New York Animal Control Center in Harlem. He was a "Day Six" dog, meaning I (in concert with a working dog rescue organization) grabbed him on the last possible day to avoid the mandatory euthanization of pets at the shelter on the seventh day. Fast forward five years, and George is now happy, healthy, spoiled, loyal, stress-free and has a permanent home with my parents, who dote on him like a granddog. He now has a full-time, fulfilling job, keeping them on a very strict feeding, walk and treats schedule.

George the German Shepherd, AKA King George, Georgey, Big G

One year over the holidays, George ate an entire half sheet pan of marshmallows I made and left on the counter to set up. I came home to find him laying in the middle of the room, with an enormous belly, groaning as he breathed. The temptation was just too great, seeing people in the kitchen all day, with nothing dropped on the floor. These treats will be going in a box of holiday gifts to my parents, with instructions to feed liberally; one of the best gifts you can give a dog, in my book.

Happy holidays, everyone! I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the cookie posts.

Peanut Butter Rice Treats - For Pups!

George's Special Treats

Serves: One pup about 36 times, or one pup one time if you leave the bag out.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cup cooked brown rice cooked in vegetable broth (great use of leftovers)
2-3 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup peanut butter (crunchy or creamy)
1 cup hot water

Method:
In a large bowl, combine all ingredients, adding more flour as necessary to knead into a stiff dough. Roll out about 1/4" thick, cut with a cookie cutter and place directly onto a baking sheet. Bake at 350F, and leaving in the oven, turn off the oven and leave overnight. If the treats are still a little pliable in the morning, leave them out on the stovetop for a couple of hours.

Notes: Yes, I tried them. They're edible. Vaguely peanut-buttery. With a touch of vegetable broth. If the pup likes them and doesn't poop them out too quickly, I have done my work.

Lessons in Columbian Street Food

2011-11-29T09:47:00.000-08:00

Columbian street food in Sedona, Arizona? I’ll push through an aura-readers’ off-roading jeep tour for that.

Thanksgiving weekend was a blast. The day after making (and eating) untraditional Cornish hens, Brussels sprouts, German potato salad, and mom’s famous cheesecake, I went on a seven-mile hike in Sedona, Arizona, as penance for the weekend’s diet sins. “Of course there’s a flute player on the rocks.” He was perched on top of one of the red rock spires, probably for maximum volume projection. The rest of the time I could hear him, I spent making fun of Sedona in my mind. As a tour helicopter flew over, someone joked that it was probably a part-time resident on a Starbucks run. At the end of Boynton Canyon trail, the graffiti defacing the rocks was of a sun with a yin-yang symbol inside. It would be unwise to publish the rest of the stereotype-rich cracks at this point. I finished growing up around here, so I give myself a local's license.

In search of post-hike beer and food, we stumbled upon the antidote to the elite resorts, rock climbing flute soloists and crystal shops that make up a significant part of the cultural landscape of Sedona. At the Oak Creek Brewery, the bartender gave me a menu for the hot dog window I ignored in order to get inside the brewpub.

Lesson #1: Never, ever ignore a person who seems happy to be stuffed into in a hole-in-the-wall food establishment with an order window. He knows something you do not.

Simon, of Simon’s Gourmet Hot Dogs opened this closet-sized hot dog business a year and a half ago, and the fingerprints of his Columbian heritage are all over the comfort food on the menu. While looking at the menu, aloud, I reasoned that “I can get a chili dog anywhere, so I’ll have the maicitos instead.”

“You can’t get my chili dog anywhere.”

Lesson #2: Know better than to say “I can get that anywhere” to the person making, serving, cashiering and bussing your food, especially when the menu says “chili dog” followed by “family recipe”.

“I'll get both.” My loving compadre ordered the Loka brat, a brown mustard, mayonnaise, sauerkraut, and jalepeno-covered bratwurst. I ordered the chili dog and the maicitos, a corn, bacon and cream baked stew with white cheese and crushed potato chips on top.

The dogs came dressed in a soft, tangy roll. The beef chili was savory but had a sweetness of a clove or cinnamon-type spice. In a word, I suppose, it was balanced. And delicious.

Maicitos

The maicitos came with tortilla chips on the side, probably to prevent people from grabbing the entire bowl and drinking it, and contained the power to break whole sentences into shards, in public.

“Corn delicious sweet.”

“Bacony crack.”

“Love potato chips...”

“Cheese melty”

“Try… make this someday.”

Simon seemed as though he has seen this reaction before. He gave us a card, thanked us for ordering food, and beamed a soul-lifting smile.

If you are within 50 miles of Sedona, please make a special stop to go find Simon. For $20, you’ll receive two full bellies of killer Columbian-infused street food, no attitude, a great story, and a brilliant twist on the classic beer-and-brats combination. Over our country’s most hallowed food holiday, it was one of the best meals of the weekend.

Simon’s Gourmet Hot Dogs

2050 Yavapai Drive, Sedona, AZ, inside the Oak Creek Brewery

928-496-0266
Plug the address into your gps; the brewery is located on a small street off highway 89A and is easy to miss.

Some Library Love Cocktail (A Thanksgiving Antidote)

2011-11-19T16:29:00.000-08:00

"Would it be cheating if you went to another place called The Library?" asked the loving compadre. Last night, we headed out The Library Alehouse in Santa Monica. We drank tasty beers.

My library is in the process of being shut down for the winter. Water turned off at the street, pipes inside emptied, things covered and put away. It sounds so romantic, shutting the summer place down for the season. But sometimes, I wish I could pick the building up and move it a hundred miles outside of Los Angeles. Other times, I appreciate that it is planted in the middle of nowhere and the solitude that affords. Mostly, I'm proud to be a part of the "stock" that comes from there, the kind that reaches across the table or the aisle or whatever necessary to stop things that are to no one in the room's benefit, like the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have menaced the land 30 miles east of Burwell.

For now, with much gratitude for all of these blessings in my life, I'll cook my way through Thanksgiving and the rest of winter here in California (poor, poor me) in anticipation of the next summer season filled with lake-going and puzzle-playing friends and family out in this lesser known region of Nebraska. I made a drink for you, library, and raise my glass to next year!


The hot water will be ready in 2012.

Some Library Love (A Thanksgiving Antidote)
Burwell General Store
Serves: 1

Somehow, these ingredients are almost always available on the bar at the library.

Ingredients:
2 oz Rye whisky, your choice, Pendleton is usually stocked in Burwell
1 oz Cointreau
6 oz boiling water
2 turns cracked black pepper
1 orange wedge
1 cinnamon stick
1/2 tsp cane sugar, optional

Method:
In a clear heat-safe mug, add water, cracked black pepper, cinnamon stick, whisky and Cointreau. Squeeze orange wedge into mug, drop it in and stir contents. Add sugar if you desire a sweeter drink, let steep together for three minutes, then serve. Put on a sweater and curl up on the couch with a good book.

Maple Molasses Spice Cake

2011-11-06T14:00:00.000-08:00

Maple Molasses Spice Cake, with homemade maple syrup.

Around this time last year, I found a recipe book at a swap meet that contained recipes with instructions like “bake in a medium oven until done.” I love these kinds of books, and they’re even more fun when you cook with friends. Since I’m still making friends in Los Angeles, I reached out to my blogger network to see who would be interested in “swapping” recipes from the book, starting with Lindsay of Rosemarried. We have since then grown to almost 30 accomplished bloggers who participate every month, creating their own recipes out of a vintage one I release every month. Today is our one year anniversary of the swap, so please check out all of our posts below and wish a Happy Birthday to us!

It wouldn’t be a “birthday” post without a look back across the last year. Lindsay and my first posts were to remake a Persimmon Pudding. I was working out of a kitchen I had been in for two days, meaning I didn’t yet understand the oven’s hot spots or know where anything was. Worse, (for me) it was raining that day and the light to photograph was not ideal. It made me wonder if the thought was a good idea at all.

The Sand Hills of Nebraska.

This year, I’m writing this post from the passenger seat on a road trip. I flew back to New York from Los Angeles to pick up my loving compadre after a project, and we decided to make a lazy ten-day trip out of it, visiting friends and family along the way. For this post, my laptop is in its rightful spot, the Sand Hills of Nebraska whizzing by outside. I recreated this recipe in my aunt-in-law’s kitchen in a suburb of Chicago, and my mother-in-law had to race me to the store at 7:30am for a lemon so I could photograph the cake. She brought me maple syrup for the occasion that a friend of hers made this season. (I've never worked with homemade maple syrup before!) In a way, it feels as ramshackle as the first Recipe Swap post. The difference is, I’m now comfortable with the process of the monthly posts, and the journeys they take me on. Not all the photos are spectacular. Not all the recipes are perfect. But, they are, and we are sharing our discoveries and progress with each other.

Breakfast along the way, Detroit, Michigan.

Leaves at the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, Illinois.

Thank you all for reading and supporting the recipe swap. More importantly, thank you for giving us all reasons to keep writing, photographing and posting about food.

Late harvest, backyard, Detroit, Michigan.

This month, we’re remaking, what else, a cake, to celebrate! The original recipe was Maple Syrup Cake. My take on it is a Maple-molasses spice cake with lemon whipped cream. Light and easy.

Bar at the old library, Burwell, Nebraska, my favorite place in the world.

Please be sure to take the time to visit everyone’s posts below, and Happy Birthday to us!!

The original recipe for Maple Syrup Cake

Maple Molasses Spice Cake

Burwell General Store

Serves: 8

Equipment:

Stand Mixer

9"x 9" baking pan

Ingredients:

Dries, whisked together in bowl:

1 3/4 cups white flour

1/2 cup wheat flour

2 tsp baking soda

1 Tbsp baking powder

1 tsp fresh ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp fresh ground nutmeg

2 tsp espresso powder or finely ground coffee

1/4 tsp salt

In stand mixer:

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup sugar

2 eggs, room temperature

Wets, mixed together in bowl:

3/4 cup grade B maple syrup

1/4 cup molasses

Topping:

1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

grated lemon zest

Method:

Preheat oven to 375F.

In stand mixer fitted with whisk attachment, cream together butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time and slowly incorporate. Add 1/3 of the dries, then alternate with 1/3 of the wets, and slowly incorporate until everything is combined. Pour into greased baking pan and bake for 20-25 minutes or until the middle when pressed will spring back. Remove from oven and let cool. Whip cream into stiff peaks, adding a touch of maple syrup. Top with lemon zest, and serve to loved ones.

Kabocha Squash Soup: A Perfect Bowl Of Fall

2011-10-23T16:11:00.000-07:00

It started with a Kabocha squash and muttered self-criticisms like, "WHY did I pack that skillet?"

There's a lot of change going on this month. I am moving to a new apartment. Then, in true freelance form, a project started and suddenly stopped. When change comes about, I love to make a big pot of something simple, so at least I know I have consistent meals in between bubble wrap and boxes.

This soup became a gift to myself. One meal-making session created four dinners during a time when I'm so busy, I'm forgetting to eat or am skipping meals, and its simplicity makes it a new favorite recipe. The base has eight ingredients (read: what I had left lying around), and that's counting water, salt and pepper. It's an homage to the new ingredients the season brings, in food and life.

You're going to make a nice soup.

Kabocha Squash Soup
Burwell General Store
Serves: Eight

Ingredients:
Soup:
1 Kabocha Squash, halved, seeded and roasted (If you can't find a Kabocha squash, try one butternut and one acorn squash to replicate the Kabocha since butternuts are relatively sweet.)
3-4 large cloves shallot (a scant 1/2 cup, minced)
2 Tbsp. fresh sage, chopped
16 oz. organic or homemade vegetable or chicken stock (I used veggie)
Approx. 4 cups water
2 Tbsp. dark brown or Demerara sugar
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil to drizzle

Garnish:
toasted pecans
Fried sage leaves (hot olive oil, fry ten seconds a side until the leaves turn deep green, drain)
Parmesan cheese
Whole grain bread on the side (Not shown. I absentmindedly ate it while taking the pictures.)

Method:
Preheat oven to 375F. Halve, seed, oil and roast a Kabocha squash on a sheet pan for 45min-1hr until fork-tender. Let cool, then scoop out the flesh and discard the skins. In a stock pot, saute shallot until translucent. Add sage and stir for a minute. Add squash, stock and three cups of water and let come to a simmer. Season liberally with salt and pepper, add sugar and simmer for another half hour, making sure everything is still stirring around in the pot, adding more water if it isn't. Press soup through a fine mesh sieve or blend in batches in a blender until you reach a smooth consistency with a few bits of texture here and there. Return to pot and add any final water if you desire a thinner soup. To serve, top with toasted pecans, grated Parmesan and fried sage, warmed bread on the side.

Notes: My pot kept for four days in the fridge, but I imagine this freezes nicely, too. This can be completely vegan if you use vegetable stock and omit the Parmesan cheese.

Foraged acorn salad: a philosophy on life

2011-10-18T15:55:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I attended a Los Angeles County Master Food Preservers class to observe for an article I wrote here. While interviewing some of the class members, I met Pascal, owner and operator of Urban Outdoor Skills, an outdoor preparedness school (of sorts). There, he teaches classes on wild food gathering and preservation, alternative energy, and urban self-reliance. Among other things, Pascal brought pickled yucca shoots and purslane salsa to share that night as examples of his homemade foraged preserves. He also brought pickled acorns. To that point, I never tried one. In fact, previously I thought acorns and squirrels went together, not acorns and humans. I tried them, and fell in top-five-food-experiences love. Sour, humble, nutty, and herbaceous, my moment with pickled acorns must have made an impression because as he was packing up, Pascal gave me the rest of the acorns. I am currently rationing them on top of salads and crackers with goat cheese. I haven't yet decided what my last meal with them is going to be.

I asked Pascal if he orients himself and his business more to food foragers or survivalists. In a sentence, he changed a bit of my perspective on life. He explained that typical "survivalist" goers tend to be isolationists man-in-the-mountains apocalyptic types. "Survivalism is a community effort. It's actually a very social activity."

He's right. In the day-to-day, survivalism takes shape in mild, resourceful forms. I have extra garlic, you have extra tomatoes, he has a pressure canner, we all have tomato sauce. Those daily interactions intensify when times become tough, or extreme. As we watch our society limp along economically and philosophically, I see (and report on) demonstrated acts of our increased resourcefulness. We are becoming more responsible and vocal about our purchasing power and our activities. We are able to wipe our own slates clean right now and start anew, learning things we have always wanted to try, and new skills that add a more tangiable value to our lives. As I watch the Occupy movement coalesce, whatever its outcome, it is pushing "intentional communities" to the front of the media, and if you look at it through the right lens, how is that not the kind of community-based survivalism Pascal is talking about? How is it not an opportunity to do one new thing to improve the household today that we may not have tried in a while? Mend the shirt, stick a lettuce plant in a flower pot. Make a salad from the dandelion greens growing in the yard, and share it with a neighbor.

Our instincts are to pull together, not away, and sharing skills is a skill in itself.

Fall Frittata

2011-10-02T15:48:00.000-07:00

Welcome to another recipe swap! Some amazing bloggers do this every month; we take a vintage recipe for inspiration and create our own versions of it. We are a big group this month, so be sure to check out all of our posts below. (For the history of the Recipe Swap and list of participants, click here.) The recipe: "Hot Slaw." What it became in my kitchen is a perfect story of my state of being right now; inventing, uncertain, and a little anxious.

--
One requirement of living in New York is having a weekend retreat upstate somewhere. (It's true. It's in the "welcome to New York City, Sucker" resident manual.) As a result, when I lived there, I spent a lot of time in upstate Connecticut in a small idyllic lakeside cabin, grasping at decompression from the weight of city life in 48-hour intervals. It was there I became fascinated with how lakes act as telltales to the change of seasons.

Watching it in the fall was like watching Mother Nature put a fussy baby down for a nap; the lake didn't go to sleep quietly. Winds kicked up the surface, bullied wildlife, and changed moods. The change of colors became a tantrum as nature threw the last of its dying leaves on the ground. We never knew which dive off the dock would be our season's last. The still waters ran spitefully deep, and sometimes without warning, overnight, they ran really fucking cold.

This and every fall, I feel a little anxious for what is to come, I suppose. The surprises are less shocking than on the east coast, but in Southern California, the clues to the change of season are revealed by what is on the tables at the farmer's market. The apples are early this year.

Regardless of our locations, (our recipe swap group has grown to a worldwide cadre of fantastic bloggers) fall is a time to slow down, look inward and prepare for winter. Some of us celebrate the new year with Rosh Hashanah, which brings with it a lot of work in preparation for a seasonal and spiritual renewal. The actions we ignored for a year come back to the surface and we are asked to not only process them, but take responsibility for them. For lakes, this time is known as the final chance to punk the person confidently cannonballing off the dock with a shock of cold water, or by wrapping some mud-slime thing around their swim trunks on the way back up. Actually, that's how reassessing my behaviors of the past year has felt this time around. For the rest of us, it is a time to cozy up, settle in, and eat well.

From the original vintage "Hot Slaw" recipe came a shallot, cabbage and apple frittata; a mild, easy dish to ease our ways into cool fall mornings, perfect for a light brunch with family and friends. Happy Fall, and Happy New Year!

Fall Frittata

Serves: 6

Ingredients:
8 large farm eggs
2 Tbsp heavy cream
1 tsp agave nectar (or 1/2 tsp honey)
1/4 cup shredded cabbage
3 large cloves shallot, sliced
1/2 cup grated tart apple (I used Pippins, but Galas or Granny Smiths would work great)
3 Tbsp crumbled goat cheese
2 Tbsp chopped dill
1/2 tart apple, sliced very thinly and held in water with a dash of lemon juice
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil for sauteing

Method:
Preheat oven to 375F.
In a 9" heat-safe saute pan on medium heat, pour 2 tsp olive oil. Add shallots, cabbage and apple and saute until the cabbage turns bright green. In a separate bowl, add eggs, cream, agave nectar, a good pinch of salt and a few cracks of pepper and whisk thoroughly. Add contents to saute pan and top with goat cheese and dill. Place into oven for ten minutes. Remove from oven, tap the center to confirm the frittata is set (it should spring back), and turn the oven to broil. Place apple slices and cheddar cheese on top of the frittata and broil for two minutes or until bubbly and golden. Let cool for a couple minutes before slicing and serving with greens on the side and fresh bread and butter.

Camper's Couscous

2011-09-04T18:19:00.000-07:00

Here we are again! Every month, I release an original recipe from a vintage cookbook, All Day Singin' And Dinner On The Ground, a junk store find, and we each update and remake it in our own creative ways. This time around, we embraced "Wild Rabbit With Vegetables". Our rotating crew is immensely talented and diverse, as you'll see in the links at the bottom of this page. Visit the swap page for bios of past and present swappers and please visit all of our blogs to let us all know what you think of our inventions!

This weekend, I hiked Mt. San Antonio, (Mt. Baldy to the skiers), about an hour east of the sprawl of Los Angeles. It is one of the four mountains in the area above 10,000 feet elevation, making it a great hill to practice how one handles the challenges of altitude sickness.

About halfway up one of the trails that lead to the summit, there's a wee ski hut, built in 1936 (for the second time, after a fire destroyed it.) Now maintained by members of the Sierra Club, if you plan in advance, you can reserve a bunk in the hut that sleeps about 12 for $20 a night. A fellow camper staying there told stories of his father who helped portage in 2x4s and steel sheets to build the roof. All morning and afternoon long on both days, hikers stopped in on their way to the summit, telling us their stories of stays at the hut, signing the register and grabbing water on the way out.

For a while now, I've swung back to the other side of the food blogging pendulum; previously focusing with precision on what is on the plate itself, how it tastes, how it is styled, how it represents itself to others. It has been a long time coming for me, but I'm slowly and steadily getting back in shape to prepare for a spectacular backpacking trip next year. Talking to all of the guys who overnighted in the ski hut on their way up to or down from Mt. Baldy brought this goal into perspective; everyone had thoughts, and everyone was encouraging my plan for a lengthy 50-mile back country trip that ends with the summit of Mt. Whitney next summer. With this increased training in my week comes an increased focus on food as a vehicle for accomplishing an energy-sustaining balance of fat, calories, carbohydrates, vitamins and amino acids. In some ways, this puts me at odds with the idea of food blogging as a luxurious flipbook of recipes for the developed palate, an idea which I think drives the whole of food blogging.

The more I'm out in the back country, the more food itself takes a back seat to the experiences and conversations had over eating it. The act of having my meals cooked on a wood-fired stove that someone hauled 3,000 feet up a mountain by hand, sitting at a rough-hewn table with wood that someone hauled the same distance for the act of doing exactly what we were doing was infinitely more important than the actual food on the table. We could have eaten a bag of chips at the table and we still would have had the experience of communing with strangers over a love of nature in an historic refuge in the forest.

My take on this swap's recipe is Camper's Couscous, and it was exactly what I hoped it would be; a solution to me buying pre-packaged cups of soup when I go out on these journeys. But it in no way was the focus of my interest this weekend. It seemed inappropriate to eat for one in a hut full of other hikers, even though we had pre-planned our contributions to family meals. When a fellow hiker asked me how the soup was, I merely said "It needs dried chives." It wasn't fun to eat a cup of soup by myself, then or ever. The breakfast made for ten, on the other hand, was a blast. We drank percolated coffee, black. Our hut host stoked the stove and we stood around laughing about torturing the morning's hikers with the smells of hot coffee, potatoes and bacon they couldn't have. Over this community breakfast, we had a time I am eager to bring back into my home, over my own table; communion with other loved ones using food as an expression of appreciation for one's presence.

Sunrise at the San Antonio Ski Hut.

I am excited to have my own recipe for instant soup, and I'll definitely make it again for the trail, with some modifications to keep things interesting. I am thankful to have enough money to make food to my specifications and for having great health to be able to take that food to beautiful wilderness to enjoy it. But what I remember of the weekend is the spirit of the original recipe, Wild Rabbit With Vegetables, which was probably originally made in over-sized, banged up cookware like ours this morning, intended to feed a small army from a humble kitchen.

Camper's Couscous
Serves: One hungry camper

Ingredients:
1/3 cup small grain couscous
1 T organic powdered chicken broth (use a smashed cube of bouillon if you can't find powdered)
2 T dried corn (I used the "Just Corn" variety found at Whole Foods)
1 T dried, crumbled shitake mushroom
1 T sundried tomatoes, (about two slices, chopped)
1 tsp dried chives (or fresh, if you can't find them)
1/2 tsp salt
A few fine-grind cracks black pepper
1/2 tsp garlic salt

Method:
Place all ingredients in a plastic baggie, and hike somewhere where you have access to hot water. When settled in to camp, place contents in a medium bowl, and pour about two cups boiling water over soup, cover and let steep for five minutes. Uncover, stir, eat and enjoy your surroundings.

View atop Mt. San Antonio, looking southeast.

For others' recipes:

Grrr

2011-08-21T18:17:00.000-07:00

Last night, as I was wrapping a day on set, I took a tray of leftover craft services burritos home with me. I drove to downtown Santa Monica and walked around in the alleys looking for people to hand them out to. I walked by a scraggly guy holding a 40 in a paper bag who immediately asked me for $5 for the bus (yeah right) and replied, "I don't have cash but I'm handing out these for anyone who is hungry." He essentially said 'no thanks'. Another scraggly guy who appeared to be a friend of his came up and started mocking me for handing out "food to the homeless." I told him I was handing out food to anyone who was hungry, not to "the homeless". He grabbed the tray from me, the conversation disintegrated, and I walked away.

The encounter sucked the spirit of goodwill right out of me. So, today I went out into stupid nature, and walked through the stupid mountains, ate my stupid lunch and tried to hike off my pissy mood. It was a great sandwich; bacon, egg and cheese on ciabatta. I am a big fan of eating breakfast for other meals, especially when it also pulls double duty as a carbohydrate and protein replenishment device.

Then, I was angry at people for being loud and stupid on my lame hike. Noted. I let the drunk and stinky guys-and-burritos encounter ruin my day.

The people on the hike were actually really nice. The hike was beautiful. My mood is still a cesspool. I'm trying, dear God above, to exhibit compassion towards people on this earth, and I was met with an angry dude grabbing a tray of food from me and being mean-spirited about it. It's going to take me a little time to smile anyway and recognize that an act of compassion itself is not necessarily about how it is received, but that it was offered in the first place. I believe it is important to keep being compassionate to everyone, even mean people, but damn, sometimes it is really, really hard.

Carb Reload Pasta With Garlic Cream Sauce

2011-08-18T20:01:00.000-07:00

I am working out, again. This time, I joined an I'm-not-scared-of-the-showers gym and hired a trainer (yeah I said it) to put the fear of disappointment and pain in me. She was there the other day when I went for a piddly little 30 minutes of manual level 5 cardio. She followed me to my machine and set me up on a level 9 hill workout and then stood there and talked to me for ten minutes to make sure I was doing it. This was not a regular training session, this was just running into her.

How does this intersect with a post on a food blog? On a normal night in the days before working out, I might come up with some fun recipe at lunch, stop by the store on my way home, enter the kitchen with a glass of wine, and embark on a leisurely and privileged jaunt through food exploration ending with what might pass my bar for a blog-worthy post.

That was one big-ass bowl of pasta.

Tonight, I ran into my trainer again, resulting in another unexpected intense blast of cardio. On the way home, I thought, "If I can't make the biggest bowl of pasta right now I'm going to In-N-Out." In other words, I was starving. So, just like college days, I got home, dropped the backpack on the stairs and put a pot of water to boil. These were the ingredients I found. Yes, this was all I ate for dinner, and yes, this is the way blog posts are going to be for a while.

Carb Reload Pasta With Garlic Cream Sauce

Serves: One hungry athlete

I must say, I was quite pleased with this thin, cream-based sauce, just enough to cover the pasta.

Ingredients:
8 ounces (dry) rotini pasta, cooked (1/2 a 16oz package)
1/4 cup half and half
2 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
1 T butter
1/4 cup grated Romano cheese
black pepper to taste
2 T toasted pine nuts
1 T chopped parsley for color and crunch (I didn't have it and wished I did)

Method:
Cook pasta per box instructions, drain. While doing that, in a small saucepan, heat cream and two cloves of garlic. Keeping to a very low simmer and keeping the cream moving, steep the cloves for ten minutes. Add butter and let melt. Remove cloves. Add cheese and whisk on very low heat. Sauce will be thin but stir only until cheese is melted. Season with black pepper, pour over pasta, toss with pine nuts, garnish with parsley, and serve yourself. One could easily turn this into a meal for two by adding a chicken breast, salad and dividing by two. I tallied up the calories on this lady and she weighs in at 960 for the serving.

Et voila, my new favorite heavy-duty meal!

The Simplicity of a Cheese Sandwich

2011-08-14T21:02:00.000-07:00

Today for lunch, I ate a smashed cheese and honey-mustard sandwich. Unremarkable, except that it was at the top of Calabasas Peak, all 2160 feet of it, in the Santa Monica Mountains east of Malibu. While I was eating, a mayfly fell at my feet. A lizard ran down the side of the rock, stopped in front of the fly, looked at me, ate the fly, looked at me again, and took off as fast as he came, making it for a brief moment the most popular lunch spot I could see for miles.

It was hike #1 towards reaching the summit of Mt. Whitney next August. In terms of my physical health, the last two years have been a blurry combination of feeling sorry for myself after a bunch of health crap (I say that so I don't have to use the c-word), paralyzed by the anxiety of "what if it comes back?" Why did it take two years to get back into things I love doing, like communing with a lizard over lunch? And now, how do I fight off these feelings of being angry with myself for throwing a two year-long pity party?

I like cheese sandwiches. I like hiking. Sometimes, a day shouldn't be any more complicated than that, and our minds shouldn't search for meanings ahead or behind these moments.

End pity party.

Raw Cashew and Apricot Cookies

2011-08-07T16:24:00.000-07:00

Here we are again! Every month, I release an original recipe from a vintage cookbook, All Day Singin' And Dinner On The Ground, a junk store find, and we each update and remake it in our own creative ways. This time around, we embraced "Sorghum Molasses Cookies". Our rotating crew is immensely talented and diverse, as you'll see in the interpretations of this humble recipe by: Dennis, Toni, Shumaila, Alex, Lora, Lindsay, Mari, Crissy and Lauren, Pola, Jamie, Claire, Shari, Joy, Monique, Linda, Priya, Rachel, Alli, Katy, Emily, Krissy, Jacqueline and Jaclyn. Visit the swap page for everyone's bios and please visit all of our blogs to let us all know what you think of our inventions!

I spent a week trying to come up with something that was a twist on a good ol' farmhouse cookie in the middle of a particularly aggressive personal training workout plan, with gym trips five to six days a week. Then, a funny thing happened last week: I lost my taste for wheat flour. As in, it tastes like dirt. This has happened before in periods of relative health, but it has never been sustained long enough to cause a departure for me and my previous flour-and-butter-and-wine-and-coffee-filled diet. The result: we, (my body and I) have developed a new, special relationship, filled with a series of demands, permissions and denials. A typical conversation between my mind and body might be:

Body: So, uh, no more than a glass of wine a day now?
Mind: Yep.
Body: Okay that's cool. But don't you miss it?
Mind: Yep.
Body: Huh. Okay, the willpower domain is all you, Mind. Good luck with that.

Another example:

Body: Mind, if you try cutting off the caffeine supply again to me I will turn into Satan on wheels. I will wake you up in your sleep. I will make you feel like you have been stabbed in your nerve center. Do not test me on this again.
Mind: Holy #%$*, Body! Make the stabbing stop! Make it stop! I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry!

Every once in a while, the stomach chimes in like a nine year-old left unattended in a grocery store.

Stomach: I'd like an ice cream cone with cookie dough ice cream, and a Snickers bar and some beef jerky and some purple Gatorade for dinner please.
Mind and Body: (in a rare moment of agreement) Uh, no. We'll be having brown rice, steamed vegetables and organic baked tofu for dinner instead. If you're good, you can have a cookie for dessert.

Enter the raw cashew and apricot cookie.

Back in my New York days, I went on a raw food detox and spent three weeks eating 100% raw. I cannot say enough about how amazing it made me feel. I also can't say enough of why people should not shock their body with a vastly different diet than the one they were previously on. However, I had the energy of me, one decade earlier. My skin cleared up. By the time my weight normalized, about a week into it, my cravings for cotton candy-wrapped ice-cream shakes with mint chocolate fudge on top disappeared, replaced by honest cravings for fruits or sprouted beans or nuts. I found a raw cookie something like this one at a health food store and bought them like they were gold or batteries, and stuffed them in every bag, using them as shields against the coffee shop pastries that I was assaulted with on every street corner.

Somehow, being offered a cookie always solves a problem. Eating one is a treat, no matter how healthy, and it represents a little break in the day. This one is a little springy, and its flavor is tart and nutty-sweet, and that combination hits the spot for me every time.

Raw Cashew and Apricot Cookie

Makes 8-10 cookies

Time: about four hours
Active time: about 20 minutes

Equipment:
4" biscuit cutter or ring mold
Small food processor or blender
Baking sheet

Ingredients:
1/2 cup chopped raw, unsulphured apricots
3/4 cup raw cashews
1 - 1 1/2 cups filtered water
1/8 tsp. nutmeg
1/8 tsp cinnamon
1 Tbsp Agave syrup

Method:
In a small bowl, pour warm water (110 degrees) over apricots and cashews just to cover. Let stand for one hour. Lightly drain mixture, reserving liquid, and place into blender or food processor. Add spices and agave syrup to food processor. Adding one tablespoon of liquid at a time (I used 2 Tbsp) pulse and scrape sides of processor until both apricots and cashews are combined into a coarse, tacky blend. Taste and adjust for sweetness if desired.

Preheat oven to 250F. Line a sheet pan with foil and using a ring mold, spoon about 3 tablespoons of the mixture into the ring mold on the foil and press flat with a spatula. Gently twist ring mold off of "cookie", place the mold onto foil about an inch away and repeat. Place cookie sheet into oven and turn the heat OFF. Let sit for one hour. Remove cookies, turn heat back on to 250F, carefully flip the cookies, place a cashew nut in center of each cookie, and place back in the oven, turning heat off and let remain for another hour or until all sides are dry. Remove from oven, let come down to room temperature (if not already) and store between pieces of wax paper in an airtight container. Keeps for one week.

Move Over, Mojitos, The Mint Swizzle Is Here

2011-07-15T09:07:00.000-07:00

There are many things one might do in the name of being a food blogger that one might otherwise not do. Buy three pints of ice cream to decide which one pairs best with the cookies one is craving. Roast an entire chateaubriand just to say you've done it, and then invite half the neighborhood over to help eat it. Fuss over the placement of pieces of lettuce on a plate for 30 minutes until they have reached optimal beauty for photography.

Oooh, the fourth wall, my notebook, a bounce for light.

While I may or may not have done all of the above, I did walk into Sotto the other night, a southern Italian restaurant on Pico and Beverly in the old Test Kitchen space, and said, "I have an odd request." I'm not sure what kinds of other odd requests they hear at the bar, but everyone in my eyesight bristled until I pulled out a bag of mint and set it on the counter. Making me a drink with Maggie's Mint, a hybrid variety reminiscent of spearmint, was suddenly a relief. Why Sotto? It is one of the few restaurants that lauds their mixologists as much as their chefs, and that fact will guarantee you a solid mixed drink from the bar. (And amazing wood-fired pizzas to pair with them.)

What you're supposed to do with a swizzle spoon.

My mixologist, Kate, came up with a swizzle; an agitation technique that lands safely in between shaken and stirred. (The swizzle spoon is that long, twisted, wrought-handled thing I thought was a long stirring spoon at the bar, demonstrating where my culinary knowledge starts to fray.) Lime juice brightens the drink, rum softens it, bitters give it some heft and the presentation is sophisticated yet fun. The most important people in my life; my contractor, my accountant, my mixologist.

Maggie's Mint

Queen's Park Swizzle
Recipe courtesy Kate Grutman, Sotto Restaurant

Serves: 1

Ingredients:

A handful of mint, about ten leaves, plus sprig for garnish

1 oz fresh lime juice

3/4 ounce evaporated cane sugar syrup (simple syrup)

2 ounces Rhum J.M. agricole white rum

three heavy shakes each Angostura and Peychaud's bitters

Method:
Gently muddle mint in bottom of glass with swizzle spoon. Pour in rum, lime juice and simple syrup, add ice until glass is 3/4 full. Agitate with swizzle spoon. Top with bitters and garnish with mint. Serve.

Notes:
You can use any white rum, but agricole is a pot-distilled, unaged variety, explaining its lack of tannins and color. The pot-distilled process brings a woodier, fuller flavor to it than other rums.

Queen's Park Swizzle

Sotto

9575 West Pico Blvd., (between Beverwil and Beverly) Los Angeles, CA, 90035

310-277-0210

Kitchen at Sotto

Dessert From My Blanket Fort: Cookies and Cream

2011-07-10T16:39:00.000-07:00

Welcome to another recipe swap!

Every month, I release an original recipe from a vintage cookbook, All Day Singin' And Dinner On The Ground, a junk store find, and we each update and remake it in our own creative ways. This time around, we embraced "Jelly Cake", an old-fashioned layer cake. Our crew is immensely talented and diverse, as you'll see in the interpretations of this humble recipe by: Dennis, Toni, Sabrina, Lora, Lindsay, Mari, Crissy and Lauren, Pola, Jamie, Claire, Shari, Joy, Monique, Linda, Priya, Rachel, Alli, Katy, Lana, Emily, Krissy and Jaclyn. Visit the swap page for everyone's bios and please visit all of our blogs to let us all know what you think of our inventions!

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It happens every summer and throughout the year when I'm feeling overwhelmed with work and life; the pull from the center of my chest towards my place in Burwell. The old library is my adult blanket fort, but with booze, room for ten, my cookbook collection and a new kitchen. The last time I was in residence (a summer ago), I went to the Chokecherry Jamboree in neighboring Sargent, Nebraska, a weekend-long celebration of its namesake, complete with vendors and a Little Miss Chokecherry pageant. Chokecherry bushes are abundant in the Sandhills of Nebraska, producing small, sour, juicy red berries. When I purchased this jelly at the festival, I also purchased two chokecherry bushes and planted them in my yard in Burwell. As soon as next summer I may be harvesting some of my own chokecherries and pairing them with peaches or apricots in pie. For now, 1,500 miles away from my sanctuary on the plains, I have jelly that one Linda Osborn lovingly put up for us to enjoy later. The resulting recipe is like most plains recipes and like the original Jelly Cake recipe; simple and understated, yet can be dressed up for company and served with coffee.

Chokecherry Jelly

Mixed Berries, Cookies and Chokecherry Whipped Cream
Serves: 4

Equipment:
Large short-walled rammekin, about 5" diameter
whisk
stainless steel bowl

Ingredients:
One package ladyfinger cookies
One pint fresh mixed berries
One pint heavy whipping cream
2 Tablespoons jelly or jam, your choice, stirred to break up

Optional:
maple syrup

Rinse and pat dry the berries. In a chilled stainless steel bowl, pour one pint of heavy whipping cream. Add jelly, and whisk until the cream forms stiff peaks but is still glossy. Take ladyfinger cookies and line the walls of the rammekin with them, using a dollop of cream on the bottom of the rammekin to hold them in place. Once into position, carefully use a spatula or pipe cream in using a plastic bag with the end snipped off until cream reaches just more than 3/4 of the way up the ladyfingers. Smooth, top with berries, and chill the dessert for about an hour to set, reserving leftover berries and cookies to add to individual bowls of berries, cookies and cream. If you like, drizzle with a little maple syrup and serve with fresh-brewed coffee.