Adventures in Home Cooking

Cauliflower Coconut Curry

2008-09-01T10:31:00.001-07:00

I don't know what to do with cauliflower except smother it in cheese sauce, which is delicious and comforting if not kind of unhealthy. Luckily, inspiration came through in the form of Indian food and Mollie Katzen's Moosewood Cookbook, a very hippie-ish cookbook full of veggies, grains, and good ideas. This recipe is super easy once you've got all the spices together - just whizz them up in a blender to make an aromatic sauce to simmer your cauliflower in. The resulting dish is not exactly Indian, but a very earthy-tasting, spicy approximation that goes best with basmati rice.

Cauliflower Coconut Curry

Sauce
1/2 cup shredded unsweetened coconut
3 medium garlic cloves, peeled
1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon cloves or allspice
2 tablespoons cumin seeds
2 tablespoons sesame seeds
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
1/2 cup water

2 tablespoons ghee or vegetable oil
1/2 cup onion or shallots
1 teaspoon salt
1 large cauliflower, cut into florets
1 tablespoon black mustard seeds
1 tomato, diced
3-4 tablespoons lemon juice

Combine the coconut, garlic cloves, ginger, peanut butter, turmeric, cloves, cumin, sesame, cayenne and water in a blender and puree to form a smooth sauce.

Heat the ghee (clarified butter) or vegetable oil in a large saucepan over medium heat and add the onion and salt. Saute till lightly browned. Add the cauliflower and saute for another 10 minutes. Add the sauce and cook till the cauliflower is tender. Add water as needed to loosen the sauce and prevent the cauliflower from sticking. Add the mustard seeds and tomato and cook till the tomato is softened. Finally, take the pot off the heat and finish off the dish with a squeeze of lemon to pick up the flavour at the end.

Gorgeously rich, spicy cauliflower!

Improv Cooking: Key Lime Realemon Yuzu Bars

2008-08-21T19:42:00.001-07:00

I became enamoured with a tiny bag of tiny Key limes the other day at the grocery store. I ran gleefully into the house, showing them off as if I had just sold a company I'd built with my bare hands and then gone out and bought myself one of those gigantic right hand rings. Only I'd rather have Key limes than a ring. They're just so...limey. That is to say, sharp and aromatic, but much more than a regular lime. I converted some of them into Key lime tortilla soup, and then began casting about for a way to hide the rest. Eventually, I settled on the brown sugar shortbread lemon bars from the Tartine cookbook, which looked beautiful in a thickly yellow sort of way. So I started squeezing Key limes. And squeezing. And squeezing. And then, exhausted and in pain from the citric acid, I realized that I had a mere three-quarters of a cup of Key lime juice whereas I needed one cup and two tablespoons. So I topped it off with a quarter of a cup of Realemon and two tablespoons of yuzu juice (see my previous post on the mysteriousness of yuzu). They are buttery crisp, citrusy and smooth. Please try them cold with a cup of hot lemon tea for a real hit on the tongue.
Tartine Lemon Bars on Brown Butter Shortbread

Crust
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup unsalted butter

Filling
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 1/4 cups sugar
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons lemon juice
lemon zest grated from 1 small lemon
6 large whole eggs
1 large egg yolk
pinch salt

confectioners' sugar for topping

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Butter a 9-by-13 inch baking pan. I generally use the wrapper the butter came in to butter my pan.

Crust: Place the confectioners' sugar and flour into a mixing bowl and stir together. Add the butter and beat on low speed just until a smooth dough forms. Press into the bottom of the baking pan and up the sides by 1/2 inch until the entire crust is 1/4 inch thick. Bake the crust until it is a deep golden brown, 25 to 35 minutes. And I mean a deep golden brown - you really want this crust to be crisp and have a deeply browned butter flavour. The authors of this recipe also sifted the flour and sugar as well as using pie weights while baking, but who has the time? Not me. I also would add a half teaspon of salt to the crust next time to add an extra dimension of flavour to the shortbread crust.

Filling: Place the sugar and flour in a bowl and stir together. Add the lemon juice and zest and stir till the sugar dissolves. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs and egg yolk with the salt. Add the eggs to the lemon juice mixture and whisk till blended. I had a ton of pits from the key limes, so I let them settle to the bottom of the cup, then used my fingers to strain out the pits from the juice. Also, I didn't use the extra egg yolk. I know the filling would be richer and more custardy, but I just don't know what I'd do with a single egg white hanging around my fridge.

Make sure the crust is hot, either by taking it out of the oven directly or warming it up, then pour the filling into the hot crust. Reduce the oven temperature to 300 degrees Fahrenheit

and bake 30 to 40 minutes until the filling is no longer wobbly in the center.

Cool. Dust with confectioners' sugar. Cut. I used a small tea strainer to dust with sugar, as I don't have a large strainer. Just open it up and snap up some sugar, then knock it against a knife to cover the soft yellowness with sugar drifts.

President's Choice Diet Litchi Soda

2008-07-21T22:34:00.001-07:00

Well, I am a sucker for Superstore. I remember when they first came into being and it was a gigantic uproar - small grocery stores would go out of business! Safeway would be run into the ground! Dogs and cats - living together! Mass hysteria! Sure, it's a gigantic store, but the things they have crammed on those shelves...it boggles the brain. My shopping trips would take two hours on average. On average. I found lutefisk crammed away between the freezer shelves somewhere between a whole frozen milkfish and sheep intestines. I found Dutch syrup waffle cookies on top of pfeffernusse. But President's Choice is a product line that stays right on top of consumer tastes. And they batted it out of the park with Diet Litchi Soda. At first, I was confused. How could they make litchis...diet? But once I cracked open a can and tasted it, I realized that they had captured a fresh, light, tropical taste of sparkling, not too sweet canned litchis (not fresh - that flavour is just too darn ephemeral). Just try it with some spicy grilled meat, chili paste and a small salad with some mango and cucumber hacked in. It's tropical summer in a can.

Ketchup Chips Part 2

2008-07-21T22:28:00.001-07:00

Just a quick note since I came back from a trip home, where I crammed a bag of ketchup chips in my mouth as I stepped off the plane: Hostess chips are gone, bought out by Lay's. I cannot recommend Lay's chips except as a vehicle for dill pickle dip, and they are make a sad sort of ketchup chip. The chips are reddish brown, versus the bright red #3 of Old Dutch chips, which I always feel lends a more ketchupy flavour mentally. As well, they skimp on the flavour powder. Sweet, sweet flavour powder. Most importantly, however, Old Dutch chips taste deeply and honestly of potatoes, whereas Lay's chips are soft, crumbly and greasy. Any potato flavour has long since left the building when you pop open a bag of Lay's ketchup chips.

Sticky Toffee Pudding

2008-05-08T21:46:00.000-07:00

Have you tried Haagen Dazs new ice cream flavours? Even though they were endorsed by Gourmet, the sticky toffee flavour is a good idea for the Pride and Prejudice set: caramel, cake, cream and dates. Be still my beating heart beneath my restrictive social norms. I definitely incline towards those squishy steamed English desserts. Sticky toffee seemed as good as any to try and so I yanked the recipe from the Gourmet cookbook, with a few revisions. It is wonderfully sticky and gooey and tastes best with a chunk of vanilla ice cream plus the molten caramel sauce layered over top. It is also a good way to convert a date-hater into a date-lover. Mr. Darcy not included.

Sticky Toffee Pudding
Cake:
2 cups (10 ounces) pitted dates
2 2/3 cups water
3/4 stick (6 tablespoons) unsalted butter, softened
1/3 cup packed dark brown sugar
3 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups self-rising flour (not cake flour) [I added 1/2 teaspoon baking powder to 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour instead of using self-rising flour]
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

Sauce:
1 cup heavy cream
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter
1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon Lyle's Golden Syrup (I used 1 tablespoon corn syrup instead)

Make the Cake:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. The original recipe called for six 8-ounce ramekins, which I don't have, so I used a buttered and floured 9x13 oval baking dish.

Combine dates and water in a 1- to 2-quart saucepan and bring to a boil. Cool to room temperature. Puree cooled date mixture with baking soda in a food processor until just combined (I used a food mill).

Beat butter and brown sugar until pale and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time and beat after each addition, then beat in vanilla. Mix in flour. Add pureed date mixture and stir until just mixed. Divide mixture among ramekins.

Place ramekins on a baking sheet and bake 20-30 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Make the Sauce:
Combine cream, butter, brown sugar and syrup in a 1- to 2-quart saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring. Boil until sauce is reduced to 1 1/3 cups and thick enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon, about 3 to 5 minutes.

Outlaw Breakfasts: Ensaymada with Creme Fraiche and Marmalade

2008-03-28T11:55:00.001-07:00

This is my tribute to John Thorne's awesome breakfast feature on his website Outlaw Cook, which features unconventional breakfasts like sausage skins and a five-month-old croissant. I like his breakfasts because they are hearty, often fried in butter, and utilize leftovers, which to me is the best and most creative part of cooking. I felt our vernal equinox dinner required a sweet, eggy sort of bread and conveniently happened upon ensaymadas at Costco. These are a rich, sweet eggy bun often topped with butter, sugar and cheese. This ones didn't have a sweet topping, which I was rather sad about because that's how my mom makes them but beggars couldn't be choosers. We shared one after our dinner, but it was hard going since we were completely full of ham and perogies by that point. So, I ate the rest for breakfast for the rest of the week, topped with leftover creme fraiche and marmalade I made that week. The marmalade came from giant bags of oranges my husband hauled back from a friend's backyard. My aversion to wasting food is acute, so I made marmalade. I have to say the beautiful burnt orange color of the marmalade really makes this breakfast, as well as the bitter orange caramel flavor on the cream and faintly sweet bread.

Masses of Perogies

2008-03-17T11:57:00.001-07:00

Perogies are a sensitive topic to me. This is because I come from Saskatchewan, the breadbasket of North America, home to the largest population of Ukrainians outside of the Ukraine, and smack dab in the middle of a perogy, cabbage roll and kielbasa vortex. My mother-in-law made four kinds of homemade perogies for Christmas: buttered cheese, onion-and-butter cheese, cheese with cream sauce, and cheese with mushroom dill cream sauce. I've only just lost the weight. You can get perogies at the rink, deep-fried perogies at the pool, and perogies for brunch. There is a perogy section in the freezer aisle at the grocery store. My mother gathers at her neighbor's place for perogy-making day: bacon, onion and cheese-flavoured. Vera, my mom's neighbor, has six deep freezers. San Francisco was a horribly rude wakeup call of perogy deprivation. In desperation, I mixed up my first batch in a kitchen equipped with two pans and cutlery stolen from my roommate. My husband and I ate them on the floor, washed down with a Molson. Still, the sour cream, butter and egg dough was horribly rich and tore easily and my filling was lumpy. There had to be a better way. My mom-in-law pointed me towards the oil-and-egg dough that most ladies use back home. I lifted this recipe from the Growing Alberta website and never looked back. It works like a dream, stretches forgivingly and cooks up soft. The sight of masses of plump-bellied perogies floating in hot water never ceases to make me smile greedily.

Perogy Dough
Makes about three dozen.
3/4 c. warm water
2 tbsp. oil
1 well beaten egg
2 1/2 c. flour
1/2 tsp. salt
Mix water, oil and egg. Sift flour and salt. Add liquid to flour and mix well. Knead on board until dough is smooth. Cover and let stand two hours in a warm place. Later, roll out dough, cut into rounds and place a small spoonful of filling in the centre. Fold over and pinch to seal.
To cook, place perogies in boiling water with 3 tbsp. oil. When they float to the top they are ready. Scoop out, toss with butter/oil to prevent sticking together. Serve with fried white onions and sour cream. To freeze, coat generously with flour and freeze individually on pans, then in freezer bags.

Potato and Cheddar Filling
2-1/2 lb medium red or Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cut in half
2 c. mild or medium Cheddar cheese, shredded
1 tbsp. salt

Boil potatoes till soft; drain well. I then placed the pan over the heat to dry off any excess moisture. Rice the potatoes to remove lumps and mix in cheese while hot to melt the cheese. Add salt to taste.

Guilty Pleasures: Semi-Ambrosial Salad

2008-03-05T21:29:00.000-08:00

I called this semi-ambrosial not because it is not ambrosial, but because I omitted one of the four total ingredients: coconut. I just don't like those chewy, dried out little bits of coconut hanging around in what should be an ecstatically creamy, fruity experience. This salad always presented itself to me in American cookbooks - it just seemed the sort of thing ladies in the South might serve alongside a ham dinner as a faint, fleeting gesture towards fruits and vegetables. I buy sour cream only to make this salad, and stock up on the rest of the ingredients at the drug store. This also seems like an American sort of gesture towards cooking for a buffet. Let this salad sit in the fridge overnight before you serve it - that way the marshmallows soak up the fruit juice and sour cream and get squidgy and creamy.
Semi-Ambrosial Salad

1 20 oz. can of pineapple bits, well drained
2 11 oz. can mandarin oranges, well drained
1 16 oz. bag mini marshmallows
1 cup sour cream

Mix together the fruit and half the bag of mini marshmallows. Fold in the sour cream. Refrigerate overnight. Serve. Beautiful.

Dinner for Friends

2008-02-08T12:30:00.000-08:00

I really love cooking for friends but, let's face it, you're always trying to impress them. Or at least give them the best kind of hospitality you can manage. Now that I'm in my thirties, all of us are trying to make our way and prove it by talking about our stock, our real estate or our salaries at every possibility. It's exhausting, to say the least, and so are some of the parties thrown - rife with intimidating ingredients and the guilt of an organic provenance draped all over them. Some of the best parties I've been to were totally unapologetic: rolls, a vegetable platter, a fruit platter, sliced cheeses, ham and a big knife. I just like delicious food that makes you feel as if the host and hostess haven't been sweating madly and arguing over whether the vegetable brunoise is in fact a brunoise. Every dinner party I've thrown so far has made me feel as if I have been that mad hostess, except for this one. My husband came up with it, and it's a nice mix of plain but special food. Be forewarned, though: it does take a bit of time, especially if you're not used to rolling out pie dough or noodles. In that case, I would bake some cored apples with cinnamon, nutmeg and lemon rind earlier in the day to have with the ice cream.

Lemon Chicken
Fresh noodles with butter and Parmesan

Pesto

Green salad

Apple pie

Lemon Chicken
This is a variation on Chicken Escoffier, which I gleaned from the Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook. The best part of the recipe is the use of clarified butter, which doesn't burn or smoke or cause problems when frying up the chicken. I did away with the whole problem of melting the butter and skimming off the clear butter by buying a jar of clarified butter from the Indian grocery down the street. If too much butter stresses you out, just use olive oil instead.

2 whole large chicken breasts
3 lemons
Salt and pepper
4 tablespoons clarified unsalted butter
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup dry bread crumbs
1/2 cup Parmesan
1/2 cup white wine

Cut the chicken breasts in half and salt and pepper on both sides. Zest the lemons and mix in with the chicken. Put the chicken in the fridge for 3-4 hours to marinate. Melt the butter and coat the chicken on both sides with butter, then pat the breasts in the breadcrumbs on both sides to create a crust. Let the chicken stand for 10 minutes. Heat two tablespoons butter plus two tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat. Put two breasts in the pan, reduce the heat to medium-low and saute for 5 minutes on each side, till the crust is a rich golden brown. Remove the chicken to a separate plate to keep warm and cook the remaining chicken the same way. When finished cooking all the chicken, squeeze the lemons into the empty pan, pour in the white wine and scrape up the brown bits from the bottom of the pan. Season this pan liquid with salt and pepper and pour over the chicken breasts. Sprinkle with some flat-leaf parsley if you've got it and surround with quartered lemons to squeeze over top.

Yucca Flux

2008-02-06T12:00:00.000-08:00

Yuccaflux is one of those urban myth sorts of recipes - everybody I know has heard of it and knows what it is, but nobody has actually tasted one. Even the name is totally odd - I know what yucca is, and I know what flux is and, believe me, yuccaflux has nothing to do with either an ornamental plant or surface flow rates. Yuccaflux is fruit soaked in alcohol, but I really think of yuccaflux as a variation on the plugged melon, where you cut a plug out of a watermelon or cantaloupe or honeydew, fill it with rum and let it sit in the fridge overnight. Slice and enjoy the boozy fruit. Once I even tried to inject oranges with vodka using 60ml syringes, which could be another variation on the recipe. Yuccaflux could also be a kind of sangria, with the booze to fruit proportions switched. Yuccaflux, however, is plugged melon, injected oranges and solid sangria on a gigantic scale, suitable for celebrations way, way, way out of town or seventies-style key parties.

Yuccaflux (Yukkaflux/Yuckaflux)

Fruit:
Watermelon, peeled and sliced
Oranges, quartered
Cherries, stemmed
Peaches, quartered and pitted
Cantaloupe, peeled and sliced
Bunches of green and red grapes
Strawberries, cored
Mango chunks
Pineapple chunks
Lemons, sliced

Sandwich bags filled with water and frozen

Fill up a container with fruit. It could be a quart jar, ice cream pail, cooler, or even a garbage pail. I prefer the cooler with a spigot at the bottom so you can drain off all the delicious booze and fruit juice when you are done. Pour over a lot of dark rum and white rum. I mean a lot - probably 4-5 forties of booze. Close the top and let sit for 12-24 hours in a cool place. Then throw in the sandwich bags of ice and have at it! Another, more communal variation on this recipe is for everyone just to pour in whatever alcohol they brought to the party. Anyhow, there's no way Thomas Keller can put a classy spin on this one.

Diners, Drive-ins and Posers

2008-01-17T12:09:00.000-08:00

You know, I really love the Food Network show Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. I love everything about it. The show reminds me of the wonderful articles Jane and Michael Stern used to write for Gourmet before their space was severely edited and their intricate tale-telling was reduced to blurb form. DD & D puts a spotlight on local food oddities like lobster chow mein and proprietors' eccentricities like tater tot pizza. Yep, I love the show...except for the host. Guy Fieri may be a great chef but as a host he just grates. His persona teems with the usual SoCal dribs and drabs. Bleached hair with roots? Check. Tattoos? Check. Sunglasses worn on the back of his neck? Oh, please. Check. I find the way he chats with the owners and chefs off-putting and insincere. It's a strange mix of surfer dude talk, catchphrases of the day and buddying up to chefs and owners. I actually find myself hitting mute whenever Guy speaks, then hitting unmute when the chef speaks. It's that bad. Please, Food Network, hire someone sincere for the job! It's too good of a concept to waste.

Fusionista Food: East Indian Tacos

2008-01-08T11:51:00.000-08:00

Mixing Mexican and Indian food sounds really strange and is most likely a huge disaster. I, on the other hand, didn't even know I was doing it until it had already been done. Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid wrote the cookbook Mangoes and Curry Leaves: Travels Throughout the Subcontinent. Their writing style includes photographs, travel stories and delicious, unusual recipes. Cookbooks can be hard to trust if the first recipe doesn't work. In their previous book, Seductions of Rice, I tried a recipe for Tofu with Tomatoes and Cilantro. I was skeptical but it tasted wonderful.

Once I received their cookbook for Christmas, I chose my first recipe, Mint-Cilantro Beef Patties, collected spices and scouted out the nearest Indian grocery, which turned out to be Namaste Plaza in Belmont. There, I bought mint, cilantro and cucumbers and stared hard at the flours before realizing atta (durum) flour could only be bought in 20 pound sacks. So instead I picked up an aluminum foil-wrapped package of roti made by a lady in Santa Clara. I went to other extremes instead: I ground my own chuck for the patties, making the mix a 90:10 ratio of meat to fat. So I shaped and grilled the patties, heated the chapatis and brushed them with ghee, made a vegetable plate of chopped tomatoes, cucumbers, mint, cilantro and limes, and stirred up a quick garlic and salt raita. Then my husband started piling everything into the chapati, and I started to laugh. Spicy, herbal and hot beef wrapped in chewy, wheaty chapati with vegetables, herbs, creamy sauce and a spritz of lime is nothing if not a cultural and culinary collision of the most delicious sort.

Cumin-Coriander Beef Patties (From Mangoes & Curry Leaves: Culinary Travels Through the Great Subcontinent by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid)

About 1 pound best-quality lean ground beef
1/2 cup finely chopped or grated onion or shallots
1 teaspoon minced ginger or ginger ground to a paste (optional)
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon cayenne
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 plain (full- or reduced-fat) yogurt
1 teaspoon rice vinegar
1/4 to 1/2 packed chopped coriander leaves or 1/4 cup minced mint leaves
Peanut oil or vegetable oil

Mix beef, onion (which I didn't use), ginger (which I also omitted), spices, yogurt, vinegar and herbs. For this recipe I used 1/4 cup chopped coriander and 1/4 cup chopped mint. Knead the mixture together well to obtain a smooth, well-blended texture. I shaped the mixture into 16 smaller oblong patties rather than 8 larger patties. I then grilled the patties on a well-oiled cast iron grill pan till both sides had deep black grill marks and were cooked through.

A Ukrainian-Saskatchewan Christmas

2008-01-04T12:04:00.000-08:00

My mother-in-law never tasted a vegetable that wasn't cooked in cream until she was married. She lived on a regular working farm, with chickens, cows, a big garden and grainfields. She also ate her eggs cooked in cream. This was no thin pasteurized cream in little cartons from Safeway. This was farm cream, yellow and thick, with an even thicker layer of solid cream sitting on top. She mused, "We ate what we had! No wonder all of my uncles died of heart disease in their mid-fifties." Marian cooks the best comfort food I've ever had. I don't like Gourmet Christmases. I don't like potatoes mashed with weird things and beef cooked with strange mushrooms at this time of year. No, what I want at Christmastime is exactly what I've eaten for every Christmas for the past 32 years. I want perogies, cheese-and-potato filled dumplings. Marian makes three or four kinds: plain, with onions and butter, cooked in cream sauce and with mushroom dill cream sauce. Plus, Marian makes turkey and ham and stuffing and cabbage rolls and lasagna (for something new) and mashed potatoes and cheese mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce and green beans and peas and a fruit platter and a vegetable platter and a cheese platter and Jell-o salad. It's a crazy-making whirl of food, one that prompts people to take two plates at a time in an effort to cram as much food as possible into one sitting. Last year, she made holubtsi, Ukrainian for little pigeons, which can also refer to cabbage rolls, but in this case meant tiny bits of bread dough rolled up in beet leaves, baked and then cooked in a cream sauce. It's a heart-stopper, but utterly delicious. Then come desserts: pumpkin cream, angel food and what ladies in Rouleau call a "dainty platter". You basically take a giant platter and fill it full of homemade baking. This included the all-purpose "squares", which is any kind of dessert you can cook and serve in bar form. Saves a busy farm wife a load of time when guests come over. Again, the dainty platter is a cornucopia of sweets and guilt, including brownies, shortbread, poppyseed rolls, cherry cheesecake tarts, cherry tarts and cinnamon rolls. These last items are called scuffles. Not sure why. The year Marian had shoulder surgery she held back and only made nine kinds of sweets. Unfortunately, everyone's turned into a diabetic and were forced to hold back on everything except the green beans. But not me. Not yet.

Back of the Box Cookery: Raspberry Cornmeal Muffins

2007-12-04T12:00:00.000-08:00

I find back of the box recipes to be reliably good and easy to put together. This recipe, from the back of the Albers' cornmeal box, is a dream to make: put the wet ingredients in one bowl and the dry ingredients in another, then mix them together and bake. They pop out of the muffin tins with ease and are a mix of crisp edges, light crumb and crunchy cornmeal. I also add a dollop of raspberry jam in the center of the muffin batter before baking to really tart up the muffin and turn it into breakfast food with a bit of heft.

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup cornmeal (yellow or white)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups milk
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/3 cup vegetable oil
3 tablespoons butter or margarine, melted
1/3 cup raspberry jam

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease or paper-line 18 to 20 muffin cups.
Combine flour, sugar, corn meal, baking powder and salt in medium bowls. Combine milk, eggs, vegetable oil and butter in small bowl; mix well. Add to flour mixture; stir just until blended. Pour into prepared muffin cups, filling 2/3 full. Drop in 1 teaspoon raspberry jam onto center of muffin batter.

Bake for 18 to 20 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pans on wire racks for 5 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool slightly. Serve warm.

Salted Chocolate Caramels

2007-12-03T19:35:00.001-08:00

Making candy always seems intimidating and difficult, which, I have to say, it definitely is. This never stopped me, since I remember begging my mom to let me make english toffee from The Joy of Cooking when I was fourteen or so. I remember us dancing frantically around a stockpot of amber molten sugar trying to discern the difference between hard ball, soft ball and threads fished out of cups of, admittedly, room temperature water. Then my mom poured in a glug of rum, we turned it out onto the counter, waited for a moment, then rolled it up into wax paper bits. They turned out pretty well, as I recall: rich, creamy and slightly grainy, which I find appealing. Sadly, though, there was no trace of rum. The desire to make candy reared its ugly head again last year when I happened upon the Gourmet Christmas issue and a feature for salted chocolate caramels. I hate things that are too sweet, but the salt on top promised a more balanced sort of candy. There were some stressful moments in making these caramels, specifically the point I had to decide whether the candy was soft-ball or hard-ball, but the cooking times given by Gourmet are extremely reliable and now I just cook the candy for fifteen minutes after adding the chocolate and cream. This candy is a little challenging to eat, as it is not the forgiving golden squishy kind, but a hard, stick-to-the-teeth sort that eventually melts into a rich, complex-tasting, chocolatey goo.

Ingredients
2 cups heavy cream
10 1/2 oz fine-quality bittersweet chocolate (no more than 60% cacao if marked), finely chopped
1 3/4 cups sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/4 cup water
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into tablespoon pieces
2 teaspoons flaky sea salt such as Maldon
Vegetable oil for greasing

Special equipment: parchment paper; a candy thermometer

Grease the the bottom and sides of an 8-inch straight-sided square metal baking pan and line with 2 long sheets of crisscrossed parchment paper. I definitely recommend this step, as I neglected it and was forced to dig out the cooled candy at the end with a knife, sweating and panting.

Bring cream to a boil over medium high heat, then reduce to low and drop in chocolate shards. Let it sit for a minute or two to let the chocolate melt into the cream, then stir till the chocolate is completely melted. Remove from heat.

Place sugar, corn syrup, water and salt in a 5- to 6-quart saucepan. This is very important, because when you add the cream mixture to the sugar mixture the volume of the candy mixture will increase dramatically. At this point, I use a step from The Joy of Cooking: clamp a lid down on top of the saucepan and bring the sugar mixture to a boil over moderate heat. Boil for 3 minutes, or until the condensation washes down the sides of the pan, dissolving any sugar crystals that can ruin the candy. Then take the lid off and cook the mixture until deep golden while swirling the pan occasionally (I don't use a spoon to stir at all at this point). Then add the chocolate cream mixture very carefully. Cook the mixture for another fifteen minutes, stirring with a spoon, till it reaches 255 F on a candy thermometer. I don't have a candy thermometer, so I use another Joy of Cooking trick: I drop bits of syrup into ice water till I get a hard ball that needs to be squished down with my fingers to achieve flatness. Add the butter, stirring until completely melted, then pour the candy immediately into the baking pan, without scraping the pan. I scraped the pan onto another sheet of waxed paper, then broke those bits up for snacking later. Sprinkle the candy with sea salt and cool completely in the pan, about 2 hours. This is very important because candy that is still warm has a tendency to stick to the pan and is then very hard to dig out.

Invert the caramel onto a clean, dry cutting board and peel off the parchment. Then turn the candy sea salt up and cut into 1-inch squares.

Spicy Ginger Cookies

2007-11-23T13:03:00.003-08:00

I was looking for a contrasting cookie to go with my "Christmas assortment" this year when I happened upon the recipe for Gingerbread Snowflakes in The Gourmet Cookbook (2004). These cookies are not very sweet, easy to make (you don't have to take out the mixer) and sturdy. This means that you can box them up and send them halfway around the world and they will hold up very nicely. Plus, I think they'll be impervious to kids grabbing and slathering them with icing straight from the tube. The recipe suggested icing them with royal icing, the egg white-based decorating icing, which I didn't do. Subsequently, the the first sheet of cookies didn't seem quite sweet enough, so I sprinkled the rest with granulated sugar. In the future, I might press on some coarse sugar crystals for a prettier cookie. These are a very straightforward kind of cookie.

Ingredients

2/3 cup molasses (not robust)
2/3 cup packed dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, cut into tablespoon bits
1 large egg
3 3/4 to 4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt

Move oven racks to upper and lower thirds of the oven and preheat to 325 F.
Mix together molasses, brown sugar and spices in a large saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat. My brown sugar was extremely hard but softened up eventually with the molasses and heat.

Stir in the baking soda. Now watch out - the mixture looks innocuous but will foam up to double its volume.

Add butter 3 pieces at a time and stir until melted fully each time.

Then add the eggs and stir. Add the salt and 3 3/4 cups of flour and mix completely to form what looks like gingerbread modelling clay.
Now at this point, the Gourmet recipe recommended kneading the dough until soft and easy to handle, while dusting with the remaining 1/4 cup of flour. I did knead the dough but did not require any extra flour. The dough handled very easily without the extra flour. Halve the dough, wrap one half in plastic wrap and keep at room temperature.
Roll out the remaining dough on a flour-dusted surface if required ( I didn't need extra flour) into a 14-inch round. Stamp out as many cookies as possible with cookie cutters. For my part, I found that I could fit a huge amount of stars in one round of rolling and cutting.
An offset spatula (pictured above) really comes in handy here for transferring cut cookies to the cookie sheet. As well, I find it useful to leave as much of the dough around the cut cookie as possible while transferring the cookie; this preserves the cut edge of the cookie and prevents it from getting too squashed while you are moving the uncooked cookie to the baking sheet.
Grease up your cookie sheet; my mother swears by bacon fat poured into a clean Campbell's soup tin, but I like to use the paper or foil the butter for the recipe was wrapped in. This is an efficient way to use up the tiny bits of butter still clinging to the wrapper. Transfer the uncooked cookies to 2 cookie sheets.
Put one pan of cookies on the top rack and the second pan to the bottom rack. Bake for 5-6 minutes, then switch positions and bake for 5-6 minutes more. Transfer cookies to racks to cool. Roll out remaining dough scraps and make more cookies. These cookies are crisp, dark, and full of warm spices that would snuggle up nicely beside a plate of buttery vanilla shortbread on a day when its freezing outside.

Pumpkin Bread Pudding with Caramel Sauce

2007-11-23T12:50:00.000-08:00

My friend Sarah, for some strange reason, loves getting up at 7 am, cooking an entire Thanksgiving dinner from scratch, and feeding us, useless friend sad sacks who do nothing other than buy a couple of pints of ice cream and beer for dinner. She is truly a gem of a friend, one who must be savoured and held up as a prime example of a great pal. Her menus are always homey with a slight twist so that you never feel cheated of a traditional meal but are still startled ever so slightly out of your Thanksgiving rut before you settle comfortably back, relishing every bit. My ghostly longing for pumpkin pie was completely exorcised by this dessert, which is mainly wads of soft, spicy and custardy bread doused in caramel. It is incredibly, richly good. I also really think you should buy a pint of very creamy vanilla ice cream to melt over the top and steal bits of cold cream into your mouth along with the pumpkin-soaked bread. This recipe, with slight adaptation, comes from the Epicurious website.

Bread pudding
2 cups half and half
1 15-ounce can pure pumpkin
1/4 cup dark brown sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
10 cups 1/2-inch cubes egg bread (about 10-ounces)
1/2 cup raisins

I actually baked a sweet egg bread in my bread maker for this recipe, since I knew I would have a hard time finding a nice challah-like bread at my grocery store. Overkill? Probably. But, honestly, it's really easy to bake up a loaf in a bread machine and it tastes so much better than those strange plastic loaves most of us have to deal with at the grocery store (as Nigella would say).

Caramel sauce
1 1/4 cups (packed) dark brown sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
1/2 cup whipping cream

For bread pudding: Preheat oven to 350°F. Whisk half and half, pumpkin, dark brown sugar, eggs, ginger, allspice, cloves, cinnamon and vanilla extract in large bowl to blend. Fold in bread cubes. Stir in golden raisins. Transfer mixture to 11x7-inch glass baking dish. Let stand 15 minutes.

Bake pumpkin bread pudding until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 40 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare caramel sauce: Whisk brown sugar and butter in heavy medium saucepan over medium heat until butter melts. Whisk in cream and stir until sugar dissolves and sauce is smooth, about 3 minutes. I actually cooked the sauce for much longer, maybe 10 minutes. It thickened a little more but seemed relatively unaffected.

Serve warm with caramel sauce.

Rugelach

2007-11-12T11:01:00.000-08:00

I am not Jewish. I never met anyone Jewish till I was 20, and I never tasted rugelach until I was 29. Still, I feel that home cooking is as good as a newspaper for glimpsing into a culture, and rugelach beckoned to me. They are slightly tart, tender pastry twists encircling fillings as varied as raisin, apricot, walnut and chocolate. It's strange making food that you know other people are intimately familiar with. They know how much filling to put inside, how to shape them, and how long to bake them. I was in the dark, except for the lost memory of the rugelach I tasted, and some pictures I pulled up on my computer. Rugelach, however, seemed to be a very forgiving type of holiday food. No matter my lack of knowledge, they rolled out agreeably, encased the filling with aplomb, and baked up flaky, golden, and in abundance. This recipe is one for date-walnut rugelach pulled from the Epicurious website. I made two batches of dough. For the first batch, I omitted the walnuts because my husband is allergic to them and substituted additional dates instead. I also reduced the sugar because dates are quite sweet enough and added extra vanilla because I like the fragrance. For the second batch, I became more fanciful: I used a filling of raspberry jam, grated orange peel and almond extract, then dipped the tops in orange sugar. For my part, I liked the date ones the best: they were mildly tart and tender, but with a mysterious, evocative and ancient flavor.

Dough:
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt

Confectioners' sugar for rolling dough
For the dough, I softened the butter in the microwave - ten seconds per stick (make sure they're wrapped in paper). Don't put the butter right in the center; the microwave will melt a hole right down the middle. The Epicurious recipe instructed me to sift the flour before measuring, but who has time for that kind of thing? I added my flour unsifted. As well, the Epicurious recipe said to mix up the dough in a food processor, but I don't have one. I used my mixer instead to cream the butter and cream cheese together, then added the flour and salt. After you're done mixing up your dough, shape it into a log, wrap it in plastic wrap, and stick it in the fridge for at least 4 hours and up to 1 day.

Filling 1 (for 1 batch of dough):
12 ounces pitted dates (about 1 3/4 cups) 1/4 cup granulated sugar 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon vanilla

Finely chop dates, stir in sugar, cinnamon and vanilla till well combined.

Cinnamon sugar topping:
1/2 cup white sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon

Mix together sugar and cinnamon.

Filling 2 (for 1 batch of dough):
1 cup raspberry jam (mine had seeds)
2 tablespoons orange juice
1 teaspoon almond extract
Grated peel from half an orange

Mix together all ingredients.

Orange sugar topping:
1/2 cup sugar
Grated peel from half an orange

Mix together sugar and orange peel.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Remove dough from refrigerator and cut into 8 equal pieces. Dust your work surface and rolling pin with confectioners' sugar and roll out one piece into an 8-inch round. It takes a while for the dough to warm up sufficiently enough to roll out easily, so be patient. Cut the circle into 8 wedges. Now grab 1/4 cup of date filling or 2 tablespoons raspberry jam and distribute evenly around the circle, 1 inch from the outer edge.

Above: Unrolled date rugelach

Above: Unrolled raspberry rugelach

Roll up each wedge from the outer edge to the point to make a tiny croissant. I was supposed to turn under the outside edges to enclose the filling, but I forgot and some of the jam spilled out while baking. Oh well. Dip the tops of the rolls in the sugar topping and line up in satisfying rows on your cookie sheet. Now bake your rugelach by first putting your cookie sheet in the lower third of the oven for 7 to 10 minutes. Then transfer the cookie sheet to the top third of the oven for 7 to 10 minutes. Transfer to racks to cool completely. These also freeze very well, so stash some away for when unexpected guests stop by around teatime.

Above: Baked Date Rugelach

Above: Baked Raspberry Orange Rugelach

The Cheese Board Cookbook

2007-11-05T20:11:00.000-08:00

I love cookbooks - mostly as a nice thing to read before drifting off to sleep. When I was a kid, I used to keep The Joy of Cooking beside my pillow and dreamed of dressing squirrels and angels on horseback (oysters wrapped in bacon on toast rounds). I generally did not use my cookbooks for actual cooking, but relied instead on the cook-as-artist's method of inspiration drawn from cookbooks plus constant tasting. One day, however, my husband bought me The Cheeseboard cookbook "The Cheese Board Collective Works". For those who have never heard of The Cheeseboard Collective, it is a worker-owned and -operated bakery, pizzeria, and cheese shop in Berkeley, California in which all members have equal decision-making power. Sadly, I have never been to The Cheeseboard, which is strange because I live maybe forty minutes away. In lieu of eating at The Cheeseboard, I have found that The Cheeseboard Cookbook is a superior cookbook. Everything I have cooked from it tastes unbelievably delicious. The chocolate chip scones are gigantic, flaky, buttery, and studded with bitter bits of chocolate. My cousin keeps asking for the corn cherry scones, which are slightly sweet, crispy with cornmeal, and tender within from buttermilk. Their recipe for sourdough starter worked like a dream for me, despite starting my culture with white whole wheat flour instead of organic rye flour. The baguettes were beautifully sour and chewy, with large holes and a very thick deep brown crust. The piece de resistance was when I used some of the master sourdough dough to make their tomato pizza with lemon zest. The mozzarella formed a thick chewy layer under the meaty plum tomatoes, set off by a thinly browned crust of mozzarella and crumbles of feta over top. After it came out of the oven, I brushed the crust with garlic oil and shaved lemon zest over top. In addition, I shaved Asiago cheese and crumbled fresh thyme instead of cilantro over all. I did this because I dislike cilantro in my food unless it is Indian or Mexican. I then squeezed fresh lemon juice on the pizza and served it with lemon wedges on the side. My husband gave it the highest compliment: he proclaimed it the best pizza he had ever tasted. And it truly was: a sour, chewy, crisp crust with sweet tomatoes, melted salty cheese, briny lemon and earthy herbs. It was the utmost compliment coming from a fella who would normally take a slice of Hawaiian pizza any day.

Caramel Rice Krispie Marshmallow Beasts

2007-11-01T09:04:00.000-07:00

In high school, my best friend's mom was the best cook and a crack baker. She made the best school lunches - tomato AND mushroom soup, the creamiest Kraft Dinner - that's Kraft macaroni and cheese, and boiled hot dogs. All this while watching The Flintstones on their cushy beige velvet couch. I'm not sure why her soups tasted so good, since our moms all cooked the same Campbell's soup for lunches. It had something to do with the old balloon whisk and whole milk she mixed hers up with. One day she popped open her Tupperware container and gave me a gigantic marshmallow bristling with Rice Krispies. I bit into its belly gingerly. The taste was like sweet, smooth and crisp, with a deeply golden milk flavor surrounding a sweet puff of nothing. They were the product of unwrapping a pound of Kraft caramels and melting a can of condensed milk into them, then coating marshmallows with the caramel and rolling them around in a plate of Rice Krispies. I never forgot that milky caramel flavor, so I dipped and rolled a batch. They are a bit fussy to make, but they freeze well and are delicious beasts indeed.

1 16 oz. package of large marshmallows (stash them in the freezer overnight for easier dipping)
1 16 oz. package of caramels (Kraft, which come in 16 oz. bags, or Brach's, which come in 11 oz. bags. I think Brach's caramels have a richer, milkier taste)
1 14 oz. can of condensed milk
1/4 c. butter
Rice Krispies to coat (about half of an 18 oz. box)

Stick some Rice Krispies into a container with high sides. I used a loaf pan, which preventing cereal escaping all over the floor. Stash the caramels, condensed milk, and butter in a smallish saucepan that is deep enough for dipping and melt over low heat.

It's difficult to stir at first but make the effort as the mixture burns easily. When the caramel is completely liquid, switch the heat to the minimum and give it a stir once in a while in between dips. Plunge in a marshmallow and worry it around with a fork to coat it, then fish it out and let the caramel drip between the tines. My first attempt was to impale the marshmallow on a skewer, which was really difficult to remove after dipping.

Drop the caramel-coated marshmallow onto your Rice Krispies and use a second clean fork to move it around and coat it fully with cereal. Then place your marshmallow beast onto a cookie sheet lined with wax paper, and continue till the marshmallows are gone. To freeze, place them onto a cookie sheet lined with wax paper, and stick in the freezer till hard. Then pop into freezer bags for stealthy sweetness later.

Ketchup Chips

2007-10-30T12:25:00.000-07:00

Canada does not really have cuisine. Canada mostly has fresh ingredients, the regional cooking of immigrants and back-of-the-box cookery. Canada does have, however, excellent snack foods that seem to have their roots stuck very deeply into the English traditions of crisps and chocolate. Ketchup chips have their detractors by people who detest a sweet-sour chip. I, however, love them and would eat them as often as I could get my hands on them. I hung around rinks most of my life and, to me, there is nothing like snapping open a crisp bag of Old Dutch ketchup chips after a few hours on the ice. I'd stop along the way to wish upon my wish chips, take a mouthful of cold Sprite, tip the bag up to catch the last few crumbs, and finish up by licking my thumb and middle finger. These would stay pink for the rest of the day. When I was stuck with a bag of plain or ruffled chips, I would try to approximate the experience by putting ketchup on my chips. It's just one of those acquired tastes, like eating yeast on toast. Also, stay away from Hostess chips. Old Dutch has a much higher ratio of ketchup powder to chip, ensuring a solid ketchup experience. It's a small culinary oddity, but a worthy one. Now if only Old Dutch would do a sharp English mustard chip...

Yuzu Honey

2007-10-22T09:42:00.003-07:00

I was over at my friend's house, rummaging in her fridge for something nice to go along with our chamomile tea, when I happened upon a large, squeeze-type bottle with Japanese printed on it. "It's yuzu honey," she said. I obligingly squeezed a tiny drop onto my finger to taste and was instantly transported to a more fragrant, citrusy realm. Since my friend's sister has finished graduate school and left Japan, I was in agony, knowing that I would be hard pressed to locate a source of yuzu honey. I eventually trekked over to my local Japanese grocery and located a tiny bottle of yuzu juice. It was eight dollars, but it was worth it. It has a very tangerine-like flavor, but more perfumy and perhaps a little more salty. I tried mixing it with Eggman Farms honey labeled "Mountain Flora". The bees visit tiny mountain wildflowers to create a very mild honey, which at first tasted quite strong but after mixing with yuzu juice melded into a sweet-tart yuzu flavour. Try mixing one teaspoon yuzu juice with two tablespoons honey.

Northern Gold Granola

2007-10-22T09:42:00.001-07:00

Granola is for hippies. This is what I used to think. Granola conjures up memories of my roommate stirring giant cookie trays full of oatmeal, honey, almonds, dried cranberries and my cinnamon. Everything was organic except the cinnamon. Then one day I began to think about whole grains. This was after I tried to stop eating white flour and sugar and subsequently my ravening appetite in the mornings went away. The wolf at the door was gone, sent away by granola. Most brands of granola paint themselves as healthy, but do not be fooled. The raisins are coated in coconut oil and there is twice as much honey as there needs to be. Northern Gold is a very satisfying kind of granola. You really do taste the grains, the honey, the almonds and the sesame. The list of ingredients is very short, which is a good sign for me. The cereal is roasted in such a way as to give it a caramelized flavor, which it then lends to the milk. I eat this granola every morning and sometimes for supper too with some fruit. My only problem is that my local grocery store ran out of the blueberry and raspberry flavor, which features freeze-dried bits of berry. These retain a very good berry flavor. I took this disappearance to be an ominous portent. Then the honey almond flavor went on sale and, gradually, it was gone. I am not sure what to do now, short of ordering an entire case from Northern Gold. Perhaps I will make my own. Or perhaps I will begin life as a granola lobbyist.