... and to go with those Fourth of July Burgers: Carrot-Raisin Salad and Strawberry Lemonade
With burgers on the brain (and soon to be on the menu: my friends have decided to serve burgers at their fireworks party - score one for the home team), I'm now on to what to serve with them: Something with potatoes, of course, coleslaw, because it's so good with burgers, lots of mustards and relishes and ketchup, maybe a mango salsa, maybe some guacamole (I remember the first time I had guacamole with a burger - it was about 100 years ago in Palo Alto, California and I think the dish was called a California Burger) and this carrot salad, which has been a favorite of mine for a long time.
As American as the salad looks, it's really a standard of French home cooking and casual bistros. In fact, it's so much a part of the French kitchen that you can buy salad-ready grated carrots in just about any supermarket in the country. Of course, if you've got a food processor with a grating disk, you can get the job done in minutes, less time than it would take to get that supermarket.
...Continue reading ... and to go with those Fourth of July Burgers: Carrot-Raisin Salad and Strawberry Lemonade
Dessert for The Modern Spice Virtual Dinner Party: Monica Bhide's Saffron Coconut Macaroons
If you haven't heard about Monica Bhide's new cookbook, Modern Spice, you will - here, in a second, on Monica's site, tomorrow, and everywhere else pretty soon. Monica, whose work you might know from her earlier book, The Everything Indian Cookbook, from her frequent articles in the Washington Post or from just being a person interested in food, food, food, takes the spices, ancient cuisine and traditions she grew up with in India and, as she says in the introduction to her book, 'translates them for our generation'. And, since 'our generation' lives a good part of our lives online, Monica has created what I think might be a first: A Virtual Dinner Party. The party kicks off June 22 on Monica's site and we're all invited.
Actually, Monica's party is a potluck and I've been asked to 'bring' dessert, so here's a sneak peek: Monica's Saffron-Coconut Macaroons (and a confession).
...Continue reading Dessert for The Modern Spice Virtual Dinner Party: Monica Bhide's Saffron Coconut Macaroons
Roasted Rhubarb, So Good Over Ice Cream
Tomorrow, I'm heading back to the Lyme Farmers Market and I'm sure I'll have new things to share with you. However, before that happens, I want to catch you up on last week's haul. I already told you about the garlic scapes and the pesto I made from them -- and ate all week: once with pasta, once with scallops, once with shrimp and rice and a couple of times just straight off the spoon -- but I haven't had a chance to mention the rhubarb, which I roasted.
The problem I often have with rhubarb is that I overcook it -- it seems to go from celery-crisp to baby-food soft in a flash -- so I was delighted when I found this simple way to roast the rhubarb and end up with tender stalks that (mostly) still hold their shape.
...Continue reading Roasted Rhubarb, So Good Over Ice Cream
Raisin Scones in Kabul: A Message from Nell and Inspiration for Hesitant Bakers
As I'm sure you already know, I love getting comments from you and I'm thrilled when you write that you've made one of my recipes and that you like it. Yes, I know, I don't always respond as quickly or as fully as I should -- and as I truly want to -- but I read absolutely every word that you send me. Just ask my husband -- I usually read every word to him! And, as always, when I read your comments, I'm surprised to find how far-flung you all are. It's so terrific to know that something that I created in my kitchen is being made around the world. That fact never loses it's kick for me. So you can imagine how surprised I was when I discovered that these Spoonable Raisin Scones had made their way to Afghanistan.
I found out via email from Nell Hawley, who's living -- and baking -- in Kabul, Afghanistan. Her message was so wonderful that I wanted to share it with you and so I'm reprinting it below with Nell's permisison.
...Continue reading Raisin Scones in Kabul: A Message from Nell and Inspiration for Hesitant Bakers
Garlic Scape Pesto: Another Fleeting Pleasure
Like so many of us who are thrilled at the start of the growing season, I seem to be on a foods-that-come-and-go-in-a-flash kick. First it was asparagus, now it's garlic scapes.
Yesterday was the opening of the Lyme (Connecticut) Farmers Market and it was a perfect day for being at Ashlawn Farm -- it was sunny and warm, a top-down on a convertible day, and everyone who'd hibernated for the winter was out. With all the hugging and kissing, the exclaiming over how children had grown and the exchange of a year's worth of news, it reminded me of the first day of summer camp. And even though my mother will tell you that I was a complaining camper, I did like that first day.
Of course, since this is New England, a start-of-June market is not a full and colorful one. There were beautiful lettuces, chard and kale, a spot of color, courtesy of the first batch of strawberries, which sold out almost instantly (and about which I'll have more to say in another post), and these, the find of the market: garlic scapes from Hidden Brook Gardens in Ledyard, CT.
...Continue reading Garlic Scape Pesto: Another Fleeting Pleasure
Ice Cream Sundaes: The Perfect Apres-Burger Dessert
To kick off the official start of summer (forget the calendar), Parade magazine published great hamburger recipes from great chefs: There's a terrific burger from Emeril that includes a recipe for Orange Habanero Ketchup; a quirky take on a pork burger from Mario; a thin comforting burger from Katie Lee Joel, the queen of comfort; and a bunch of burger recipes and tips from Bobby Flay, who just wrote the book on burgers.
With all this grilling going on, who was thinking about dessert? Me! Because that's what I always think about. And the only dessert I could imagine that would hold its own against juicy, mile-high burgers, was a fabulous ice cream sundae. In fact, what I thought of was three fabulous sundaes: Banana Split, Strawberry Shortcake and Caramel Affogato!
...Continue reading Ice Cream Sundaes: The Perfect Apres-Burger Dessert
David Lebovitz's Sweet Life in Paris: The Book (A Recipe, Too)
Can you see the guy in the green shirt all the way at the back of the crowd? The one who's surrounded by people hanging on to his every word? That's my friend, David Lebovitz, and this is the best picture I could get of him, and I only got it by standing on my tip-toes and shooting with my zoom lens. Even though I got to WH Smith, the Paris bookstore where David was reading from his new book, The Sweet Life in Paris, 30 minutes ahead of the scheduled start, I couldn't get any closer. The place was jammed! And I couldn't have been happier for David, who made his entrance by sweeping down the grand staircase like a movie star. Fitting, I thought, since David is one of the shiniest stars in the blogosphere and a rightfully trusted cookbook author (keep reading for one of his recipes).
...Continue reading David Lebovitz's Sweet Life in Paris: The Book (A Recipe, Too)
Spoonable Raisin Scones + Rice Noodle Salad: Catching Up on a Couple of Recipes
After writing about the scallion pancakes I managed to make despite messing up the timing, there were requests for a sauce to go with the pancakes, as well as for the recipe for the Shrimp and Rice Noodle Salad we'd also had that night.
First for the sauce: the recipe didn't suggest a specific sauce, so Joshua, my cooking companion that night, made a dipping sauce of soy, a splash of sesame oil, sliced scallions and a tiny squeeze of sriracha, which is not at all typical, I'm sure, but we're both of the belief that almost everything tastes better with sriracha.
...Continue reading Spoonable Raisin Scones + Rice Noodle Salad: Catching Up on a Couple of Recipes
Scallion Pancakes and The Impatient Cook
When I was a kid, my mom would sometimes say, "Do as I say, not as I do." And even as a kid, the line, which came to feel like an adage, didn't seem right to me. In fact, I thought it branded my wonderful mother as a hypocrite and, in a mental note to self, I instructed myself to never say that. That I ended up saying it last night, and that I directed the line to myself, is proof that one should never say never.
Sometime around 7:30 last night, The Kid and I decided that it would be fun to make scallion pancakes, something neither of us had ever done. That it was late and that one of us (it turned out to be me) would have to go out to buy sesame oil, scallions and just about everything else that was needed for the noodle salad we thought should go with it, didn't daunt us.
...Continue reading Scallion Pancakes and The Impatient Cook
Biscuits on Parade: A Recipe + A Biscuit Tip-Sheet
There's something so very, very satisfying about making biscuits. You don't need fancy equipment (although there are few things that are fun to have), you don't need to set aside a big chunk of time and you don't even need to bake them as soon as you make them: once you cut the biscuits, you can freeze them and bake them whenever you want, no defrosting necessary.
I love this kind of convenience almost as much as I love feeling like a genius because I can have something fresh-from-the-oven on the spur of the moment.
You can find my recipe for Buttermilk Biscuits on the Parade website along with my recipes for Pickled Cucumbers and Spicy Egg Salad (I love the lime and jalapeno in it) - all the fixings for a little picnic.
But if you've never made biscuits before, you might want to give these few pointers a quick once-over before pulling down the flour bin.
...Continue reading Biscuits on Parade: A Recipe + A Biscuit Tip-Sheet
A Confluence of Canned Food: Could It Be a Trend?
Saturday night friends came to dinner and they came bearing gifts of food, the nicest gifts possible. But here was the odd thing -- they brought their homemade treats packed in canning jars, although neither gift was truly "canned". And, just to make it all a little odder, on the menu for a first course I had gravlaxed and marinated salmon and potatoes in oil, both made in canning jars and both served from them. Was it a coincidence? Culinary telepathy? The tip of a trend?
You may have heard me say this before, but I once had an editor who told me that when you see something once, it's nothing; when you see something twice, it's interesting; and when you see the same thing three times, it's a trend. Could 'canned food' be the next big thing?
...Continue reading A Confluence of Canned Food: Could It Be a Trend?
On Parade: Simplest Loaf Cake + A Recipe for Chocolate Sauce to Drizzle Over It
CORRECTION; It was just pointed out to me that there's a typo in the recipe on the Parade website -- the correct amount of flour is 1 1/2 cups. Thank you, Mary.
Here's the latest in the series of recipes I've created for Parade Magazine's 1-2-3 Bake! column. It's a sour cream loaf cake with a lovely crumb, a golden crust, an aroma that lingers in the kitchen (how I love that!) and a taste that's just sweet enough to make it a great dessert and just tangy enough (that's the sour cream at work) to make it right for an afternoon snack.
This is truly a handmade cake. Look at the recipe and you'll see that you need nothing more than a bowl and a whisk to make the batter, a plain loaf pan to bake it in and a toothpick (or paring knife) to test that the cake is done. Sweets don't get much lower-tech than this.
...Continue reading On Parade: Simplest Loaf Cake + A Recipe for Chocolate Sauce to Drizzle Over It
Coddled Eggs and the Power of Suggestion
Today was a writing day and the writing to be done was recipes and their headnotes, cookbookery jargon for the narrative describing a dish before you get to the ingredients and directions. First up was coddled eggs and, even though I finished writing about them by mid-morning, the thought of them stayed in my head for the rest of the day, until finally I realized that I'd never be able to get my work done if I didn't rustle up an egg or two -- pronto. But really, coddled eggs can only be made one way -- pronto.
If you've never coddled an egg, I urge you to go into the kitchen, make one and check it off your life list.
...Continue reading Coddled Eggs and the Power of Suggestion
BeaterBlade+ A New Tool and a Recipe to Test-Drive It
Every once in a while something comes along for the kitchen that makes you think, "What took them so long?" And the thought that usually follows in the minds of those who are more mechanically inclined than I am, is "Why didn't I think of that?" My bet is that as soon as you see the new BeaterBlade+, you'll have one or both of these reactions.
The BeaterBlade+ is like a windshield wiper for your stand mixer. It's a leaf or paddle attachment with wipers on the sides and bottom so that as your blade whirls around, the wipers scrape the bowl in those hard-to-get-to places.
...Continue reading BeaterBlade+ A New Tool and a Recipe to Test-Drive It
Lamb Tagine with Apricots: The Aroma Will Woo You
This morning, when I looked out the window and saw snow, I thought of this tagine. If anything could whisk away the dismay of seeing snow falling on daffodils, I thought for sure a tagine of lamb with tomatoes, onions, plump dried apricots, toasted almonds and bold spices could. And I was right.
A tagine is one of those dishes, like couscous, where you can get a little caught up in the nomenclature. With couscous, the word refers to both the pasta that's called couscous and the classic dish that contains couscous. With tagine, the word refers to the finished dish as well as to the pot in which it's cooked.
...Continue reading Lamb Tagine with Apricots: The Aroma Will Woo You
Lemongrass-Ginger Sipper: A Constant Companion
There are some things we do so mindlessly (at least I do) that it isn't until someone stops and asks us about them we give them a little thought. And so it is with my all-day sipper, a "tea" of lemongrass, ginger and honey. When, after a visit, my friend Stephanie wrote to say she loved it and wanted to know what I put it in, I took another look the drink.
I think the first time I had a mix like this was about 20 years ago, when I was spending a lot of time in Jean-Georges Vongerichten's kitchen (he was at Lafayette then). One of the first things he'd do when he'd come in early in the morning was mix up a brew of ginger and lemon and/or lemongrass -- so many years later, the brain is a little fuzzy -- mix it with honey and pass it out to everyone. I loved the bright, fresh flavor and the heat -- ginger's not a passive ingredient -- and I found myself craving it.
Lemongrass-ginger tea is not a replacement for coffee -- nothing could be -- but after a few jolts of java in the a.m, it makes a lively companion.
...Continue reading Lemongrass-Ginger Sipper: A Constant Companion
On Parade: Three Recipes for Great Oven-Steamed Food
It's been a long time now that I've loved cooking in a cocoon -- a.k.a. cooking en papillote -- but I recently created three recipes for Parade magazine and fell in love with the technique all over again. Essentially a way to steam food in the oven, when you cook en papillote (or in a pouch), all the juices, aromas and nutrients stay with the food, which is just where they belong.
You can cook just about anything en papillote, but for Parade I chose these mixed vegetables -- baby bok choy, sugar snap peas, baby onions, garlic, mint and orange zest for added fragrance -- along with curried chicken and peas (see below) and salmon with fresh lemon slices.
The classic cooking pouch is made by cutting a circle or oval of parchment paper, putting the ingredients in the lower half of the circle and then folding over the top part and sealing the papillote by turning the parchment over on itself (almost as though you were pleating it).
Parchment makes a beautiful package, but it's a bit fussy to seal, so I've found another way of getting all the benefits without haivng to take a post-graduate course in arts and crafts.
...Continue reading On Parade: Three Recipes for Great Oven-Steamed Food
Vanilla: Not Just the Opposite of Chocolate
Even if chocolate is your favoritest flavor. Even if you never eat vanilla ice cream, vanilla frosting, vanilla yogurt, vanilla milkshakes, macarons or marshmallows. Even if, even if, I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that faced with a vanilla bean, a soft, pliable bean with extravagantly fragrant pulp and seeds, you'd find it impossible -- silly, too -- not to succumb to its charms.
I was thinking about this last week when I discovered myself playing with a vanilla bean when what I was supposed to be doing was cooking with it. The bean was beautiful. It was long and slender, but plump enough to squeeze, moist, but wrinkly and, as soon as I touched it, my fingers carried its scent. What I needed to do was slice the bean in half lengthwise and release the inner seeds -- and I would -- but what I found myself doing was bending the bean up and down, rubbing its surface with my fingers and breathing in its perfume, deeply. And, as I did this, I thought of Pierre Herme, whom I always think of when I've got a vanilla bean.
...Continue reading Vanilla: Not Just the Opposite of Chocolate
On Parade: Three Recipes for Good Food from the Pantry
Those of you who get HealthyStyle Magazine in your Sunday newspaper -- it's PARADE's sister magazine -- may have seen that The Last Bite has three recipes made from inexpensive ingredients, most of which we keep as staples in the pantry or fridge. The recipes are mine and I loved creating them for the magazine because they're the kind of food I make a lot at home: tasty, simple, colorful, quick to prepare and fun to eat.
The recipes are Tuna and White Bean "Waldorf" Salad (pictured above in a photo for Parade by Deborah Cry, styled by Brett Kurzweil), Lemony Sardine Spread -- as you may already know, I love sardines -- and Penne with Tomato and Tuna.
...Continue reading On Parade: Three Recipes for Good Food from the Pantry
Welcome to My New Home, Make Yourself Comfortable
We'll I'm not unpacked yet, but I'm in. Welcome to my new home! I'm just finding my way around the place -- so many new pages, so many new categories -- and just getting used to what to click and what to check. After more than two years of blogging -- how can time go so fast? -- being in my new home feels a little like moving from a studio to a chateau.
I hope you'll like it here and that you'll poke around in all the "rooms". At last, all my posts are organized and the recipes even have sub-categories. If only my real-life recipe files were as neat!
And, I'm finally getting around to writing a monthly newsletter. I hope you'll sign up for it. Look to your left -- the sign-up for the newsletter and my RSS feed are right there.
So, put up a pot of tea and grab a slice of cake. (The cake in the picture is my French Yogurt Cake with Marmalade Glaze, page 224 in Baking From My Home to Yours, and the photo, by Brian Leatart, is from the recipe's posting on Epicurious.) I wish I could serve them to you. It would be such fun to sip, munch and take a little spin around my new home together.
Ma maison est ta maison. The door's always open. Come on in.
Chocolate Chunkers: The Cookies That Didn't Get Me Fired
This week, the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers made the Chocolate Armagnac Cake, which is subtitled "The Cake That Got Me Fired" (it's on page 279 of Baking From My Home to Yours). It's one of my favorite cakes -- a low, sleek, one-layer cake that's made with lots of dark chocolate, ground pecans and Armagnac-flamed prunes -- and the fact that I can still love it after it got me fired from a job I was happy to have, is a testament to its goodness.
The short version of my getting the heave-ho is that, many years ago, I was an apprentice pastry chef in a very popular restaurant in Manhattan. It was my first job in a professional kitchen and, being the last person in and the least experienced, my job was to come in early and make the cake and batches of chocolate cookies. The cake was a chocolate torte made with ground almonds and studded with whiskey-soaked raisins. It was the restaurant's signature cake and it was my job to make sure it showed up perfectly made and on time when the lunch crowd was ready for dessert. And that's what I did -- until I didn't.
...Continue reading Chocolate Chunkers: The Cookies That Didn't Get Me Fired
Quiche: And Now for the Crust
After writing yesterday about my latest adventures in quichedom, some of you sent comments and emails asking me for a crust recipe -- how sensible of you. While quiches can be crustless, they're so much nicer when you can pair their soft, creamy custard with the slight crunch of a crust.
For the crust, I'm going to send you over to a recipe of mine that appeared in Bon Appetit magazine and that now lives on Epicurious. Click and you'll get a two-fer: a recipe for a crust and a recipe for a mushroom and shallot quiche. (It's the mushroom and shallot quiche that's in Pornchai Mittongtare's photo above.)
The recipe's self-explanatory, but here are a few extra pointers:
...Continue reading Quiche: And Now for the Crust
Quiche: Still a Favorite
When you bake as much as I do, which is just about daily, you get used to your husband only nibbling at a cookie or two, or cutting the thinnest possible slice of cake and not going back for seconds, and after a while (say 20 years or so) you don't take it personally. Happily, there are still things I make that he finds irresistible, among them the French Pear Tart (it's the recipe I chose for Tuesdays with Dorie), rugelach, almost like his mother made, and quiche, eggy, cheesy, creamy, rich quiche.
Before the book, Real Men Don't Eat Quiche, and before the "Food Police" (a group Julia Child always referred to as "grumpy") decided quiche somehow wasn't p.c., the French custard tart was beloved on our shores. Of course, it's never stopped being loved in France, from whence it sprung.
...Continue reading Quiche: Still a Favorite
World Peace Cookies: Metric Measures and Variations
A few days ago, when the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers made World Peace Cookies, I piped in with a couple of stories about the cookies and heard from so many of you, who had your own WPC stories and a couple of questions, the most frequent being, "What are the metric measurements for these cookies?"
Below, you'll find the measures. They come from Paris Sweets: Great Desserts From the City's Best Pastry Shops![""]("http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=doriegreenspa-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0767906810")
Now for something different ...
...Continue reading World Peace Cookies: Metric Measures and Variations
Tuesdays with Dorie: World Peace Cookies
Today, in the nooks and crannies of the blogosphere, wherever the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers are, it's World Peace Day. As I think I explained when it was my turn to choose the TWD recipe (I chose the French Pear Tart), Tuesdays with Dorie is a group of more than 400 baking bloggers who bake something from Baking: From My Home to Yours each week and then post about it on Tuesday. Started by Laurie Woodward, the group has been baking for more than a year, which is surprising on its own and makes it even more surprising that a member of the group didn't choose World Peace Cookies earlier. I say this because at last check there were, incredibly, 463,000 links on Google for the cookies! But in a world that needs as much peace as it can get, better late than never ...
The cookies, for those of you who don't know them, are chocolate sables, French shortbreads, but, because they've got more brown sugar than white in them, they've got more chew than most shortbreads. They've also got a generous amount of dark chocolate chunks and enough fleur de sel, moist, coarse-grained French "finishing" salt (i.e., salt to be used in teensy quantities as a spice or condiment), to make them noticeably salty and completely addictive, in the way so many good things with salt are.
...Continue reading Tuesdays with Dorie: World Peace Cookies
Eggplant Dip on Parade
Remember how excited I was when my beet, tomato and yogurt salad turned out to have just 70 calories? Well, I've got another 70-calorie wonder, this eggplant caviar that I created for Parade Magazine.
...Continue reading Eggplant Dip on Parade
Snow Again, Soup Again
I thought I was so smart getting up at 5 am and turning the car around in the driveway so that I wouldn't have to back out in the snow (I'm not crazy about reverse in any weather -- it's just another quirk I'll work on one day when I've got more time). What I failed to remember was that the snowplow would come along and sock me into the driveway no matter which way my car was pointing. Oh well, it's not so bad being snowbound, since the electricity -- and therefore the heat -- is still working and I've got a lots of stuff in the fridge and the cupboards so that I can play in the kitchen. And, I've got soup, always a good thing.
...Continue reading Snow Again, Soup Again
The Chili-Chicken Sandwich: Holding on to a Taste from Laos
Ever since The Kid, our son, Joshua, and I got back from our travels through Southeast Asia, this sandwich has been a regular in the house. Actually, it's been on Joshua's menu just about every day, sometimes for lunch, sometimes for dinner and sometimes at hours others might not consider sitting down to anything this substantial ... or anything at all. The sandwich, a layered affair, is inspired by the ones we had in Luang Prabang, Laos. There, the chicken sandwich was the last thing we'd eat every night, and in between bites, as we tried to keep up with the heat and the dribble of the chili sauce, we'd look at one another with grins and invariably say the same thing: "I can't believe this is so good!"
...Continue reading The Chili-Chicken Sandwich: Holding on to a Taste from Laos
Snowy Days and Hot Soup
These days, no matter where I am -- and in the past week, I've been in Paris, New York City and Westbrook, CT -- there's been snow, real snow, the kind that sticks and sends little kids outdoors to make snowballs and the rest of us to the kitchen to make soup.
...Continue reading Snowy Days and Hot Soup
Yogurt: Three Recipes
Yogurt, plain, nonfat yogurt, is my security blanket -- if I've got it in the fridge, then I know I won't go hungry.
For more years than I want to think about, my working lunch (i.e., the lunch I have when I'm working) has been a diced apple, sunflower seeds, raisins and yogurt. On special days, I might go a little crazy and top the whole thing off with a few spoonfuls of cereal. And when I want to bake and have only the basics at hand, I whip up a Yogurt Loaf Cake, a simple French cake that all my Parisian friends, even those who can barely find their kitchens, either make or remember having had made for them as they were growing up. (Baked in a round pan and topped with whipped cream, it was the birthday cake of choice for lots of my friends. Those of you with Baking From My Home to Yours can find instructions for the round cake and a rosemary-scented "Riviera" variation that uses thick Greek-style yogurt and olive oil on page 225.)
...Continue reading Yogurt: Three Recipes
Tuesdays with Dorie: French Pear Tart
Before I write about the French Pear Tart and post the recipe, I just want to -- make that have to -- say that I'm thrilled, delighted, honored and touched to have been asked to choose this week's recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie, especially since it marks the start of the New Year and the beginning of TWD's second year. THANK YOU.
While TWD, started by Laurie Woodward of Quirky Cupcake, has been going strong for a year, and while hundreds of TWDers have been baking a recipe from my book, Baking From My Home to Yours, every Tuesday during that year, I'm still awestruck by the excitement, creativity, talent and passion that the members share each week. It's truly inspiring. Congratulations! And Happy Anniversary!
And now to the French Pear Tart ...
...Continue reading Tuesdays with Dorie: French Pear Tart
Blog Envy: A Great Holiday Recipe Round-Up
You've got to -- as in really, really must -- see the slideshow of terrific holiday recipes that Bon Appetit just posted. Called Blog Envy, the editors have culled recipes and photographs from some of their favorite food blogs, pulled them all together in a neat little package and made it easy for all of us find great holiday recipes.
...Continue reading Blog Envy: A Great Holiday Recipe Round-Up
Madeleines, Honeyed and Spiced for the Holidays
When you've got to replenish your ginger and cinnamon stocks twice in as many weeks, it can only mean one thing: the holidays are here! I used the spices for Thanksgiving, when I made both the Cranberry Bundt and the Christmas Galette (yes, it was jumping the season a bit, but not by all that much), then I made gingerbread cookies and a couple of gingerbread houses (more about them in a week or two) and yesterday, really on a whim, I pulled out the holiday spices and came up with these madeleines, which are spiced, honeyed, oranged and, I think, really swell. (The Kid declared them "awesome"; his mother beamed.)
...Continue reading Madeleines, Honeyed and Spiced for the Holidays
All Things Considered Considers Cream Puffs
I hope you'll tune in to NPR's All Things Considered tomorrow, Thanksgiving Day, to spend a little time with host, Michele Norris (in the background) and me as we make pate a choux in her wonderful Washington, DC kitchen and turn the dough into cream puffs and gougeres, my all-time favorite cheese puffs.
If you miss the segment -- you might just be having a turkey dinner when it airs -- you can download the audio here.
...Continue reading All Things Considered Considers Cream Puffs
New Twists on Thanksgiving's Favorite Flavors
Here's a holiday heads-up: I've got three recipes in today's Parade Magazine that I think are great for Thanksgiving. Each uses a traditional turkey-day ingredient in a slightly new way: Holiday Relish has cranberries, of course, as well as apple and ginger and balsamic vinegar; Sweet and Spicy Pecans, are crunchy and crackly and flavored with cinnamon, chili powder and a pinch of cayenne; and Maple Pumpkin Butter, a mix of pumpkin puree (I use canned puree), maple syrup and apple cider, is just as good on breakfast toast as it is on holiday biscuits.
The recipes are super-easy -- make that super-super easy -- and fun to make. Enjoy!
Photograph from Parade.
The Baker: Christmas Galette
![Mare_christmas_galette_h[1]](http://www.doriegreenspan.com/images/6a00d8341c77df53ef010535f9136c970c-500wi.jpg)
Even in my travel-dazed state I know that Thanksgiving hasn't come yet, but I wanted you to know about this open-faced tart, my Christmas Galette, because, while I created it for Christmas, I think you could get a headstart on the holiday and make it for Thanksgiving too.
This is a gorgeous dessert and one that's easy enough for first-time bakers to tackle successfully. The dough for the crust is fun to work with and, because the galette is by nature a rustic, ragged-around-the-edges affair, there's no need to worry about precision. As for the filling -- it's got everything we love about the season: apples, pears, dried fruit, ginger and orange marmalade.
You can find the recipe here on the Bon Appetit website.
And you can find the story behind the recipe here.
The Christmas Galette is the last in my three-part series, The Baker, for Bon Appetit. Hope you liked the stories and recipes.
Photograph by Laura Letinsky.
The Baker: Spiced Cranberry Bundt Cake
You can read my story about making resolutions -- I make them early and often because that way I've got more opportunities to break them -- and you can get the recipe for my Spiced Cranberry Bundt Cake on the website as well.
It's a great holiday cake -- it's got all the best flavors of the season (cranberries, fresh and dried, cinnamon, ginger, brown sugar and a surprise: Chinese Five-Spice Powder); it's easy to make; it's beautiful (thank you Bundt pan); and, like all my favorite recipes, you can play around with it and make it your own.
I start making this cake 'round about now and keep making it through Christmas -- I hope you will, too.
Photo by Laura Letinsky
Paris: Sweets To Look Forward To
I'm flying to Paris on Sunday and, as always, I'm as excited as if this were my first trip. And, as always, there are things -- sweet things, of course -- I want to do the minute I land.
On the list is a viewing -- and tasting -- of Fauchon's newest eclairs. I missed the all-eclair weekend in early September when the pastry chef, Christophe Adam, had 34 sweet and savory eclairs on display, but there are constantly new ones to try. In fact, I'm thinking I should make a life list, the kind birdwatchers have, and start checking off the eclairs I've had, so I can keep track of the pleasure. Actually, having mentioned it, I'm wondering if Fauchon shouldn't make a cute little leaflet for all of us who are enjoying this game. (Photo courtesy of Fauchon.)
...Continue reading Paris: Sweets To Look Forward To
Pumpkin, Packed with Bread and Cheese: A Recipe in Progress
As I mentioned, I bought my first pumpkin of the season last week and this is what Idid with it: I hollowed it out and stuffed it with bread cubes, cheese, garlic and cream, slid it into the oven to bake until everything under the cap bubbled away merrily and then served it for lunch.
...Continue reading Pumpkin, Packed with Bread and Cheese: A Recipe in Progress
Bittersweet Brownies and Raspberries the Birds Didn't Peck
I've been waging a mostly losing battle with Ma Nature this summer. While the racoons seem to have moved on to other people's trash bins, the beavers are very much at home, eating away the woods behind our house; the chipmunks stare me down when I plead with them to leave me just a tomato or two; the rabbits have demolished everything around the daisies (I guess they don't fancy the daisies themselves); and the geese ... don't get me started on the geese. Yet somehow, for reasons I can't fathom but am so grateful for, the birds have graciously decided to share my raspberry bush with me. It's the first year I've been able to gather a bowl of berries and I'm delighted.
...Continue reading Bittersweet Brownies and Raspberries the Birds Didn't Peck
The Baker: Bacon-Cheddar Quick Bread with Dried Pears
The October issue of Bon Appetit magazine just hit the stands -- as well as the web -- and, in addition to announcing the winners of this year's awards to the stars in the food world, and offering a recipe for Flamiche from the terrific Molly 'Orangette' Wizenberg , it features the premier of my three-part series The Baker.
...Continue reading The Baker: Bacon-Cheddar Quick Bread with Dried Pears
Frittata: The Other Omelet
We had friends coming for brunch yesterday and I had every intention of flipping some pancakes for them. And then I changed my mind and flipped a frittata instead. A frittata is a kind of omelet, except the add-ins get stirred in rather than slipped into the center and, instead of having to do some fancy-in-the-pan folding, you get to turn the frittata over onto a plate, and then slide it back into the skillet so the other side can cook, an act that takes a little courage, but no elaborate wrist action.
...Continue reading Frittata: The Other Omelet
Blueberry-Sour Cream Ice Cream: TWD Chills
Over the weekend, I got message from Carol Dronsfield, who told me she'd picked 13 -- count'em -- pounds of blueberries and was now looking for ways to use them.
At the point at which she wrote to me, she was already blueberry-muffinned out. I thought it was the time for her to mass produce a bunch of double-crusted blueberry pies. If you've got a big freezer and you're not short of pie pans, this is a great way to use a lot of berries deliciously. You construct the pies, freeze them unbaked, wrap them really well once they're firm, then tuck them away until it's cold outside and you're craving the sweetness of summer. When that moment comes, all you've got to do is pull out the pie and bake it -- without defrosting it -- until the crust is deeply golden and the berries bubble up through the peephole steam vents. (My favorite blueberry pie recipe is on page 361 of Baking From My Home to Yours.)
...Continue reading Blueberry-Sour Cream Ice Cream: TWD Chills
Cafe Salle Pleyel Burger: The Burger of The Times
You may remember that last fall I wrote about the terrific hamburger at the Cafe Salle Pleyel, a restaurant created by my friend Helene Samuel, about whom you've heard me talk before.
Well, today the Cafe Salle Pleyel burger got big-time coverage -- it's the star of Jane Sigal's extensive story In Paris, Burgers Turn Chic. It's a really good story and, after you read it, you should take a couple of minutes to view/listen to the accompanying audio/slideshow as well - the pictures are swell.
Now here are the two best parts of the story:
...Continue reading Cafe Salle Pleyel Burger: The Burger of The Times
Summer House Cooking: Putting the season's vegetables to good use
While the tomatoes in my garden are still too green for anything, even green tomato pie, the corn is already sweet, the zucchini already plentiful and the onions ready for their close-ups at my local farmers market in Lyme.
...Continue reading Summer House Cooking: Putting the season's vegetables to good use
The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie: David Leite Goes on a Quest
David Leite, he of the wonderful Leite's Culinaria, set himself a quest fit for a knight: he wanted to find the perfect, the ultimate, the best, the most satisfying chocolate chip cookie -- and he found it!
In today's New York Times you can read about David's adventures and his conversations with New York City bakers about everything from the ingredients (I got in my 2-cents worth championing salt), the size of the cookie, the size of the chips and the length of time the dough should rest before being shaped (days, says one baker), to the optimal munching temperature (warm wins). It's a terrific read -- no surprise, since David is such a very, very good writer -- and it's a great study into the enduring classic.
There's a also a recipe, a compilation of all that David learned. I'm betting it's going to be the most-baked cookie of the week.
(PS -- these are chocolate chip cookies from Baking From My Home to Yours)
The Last Word (for now) on Sardines - Russ Parsons Has It
After writing about my experience filetting sardines and using them to make an escabeche, I got an email from my friend Russ Parsons, food and wine writer for the Los Angeles Times, and the author of How To Pick a Peach (a fascinating read).
Russ is a certified fan of sardines and, when writing about them for the Times, described his way of dealing with the bones:
The flesh of the sardine is so tender and soft that you could probably do all of the cleaning using a butter knife. But in the interest of time and a neater piece of fish, you'll probably want to use a paring knife.
...Continue reading The Last Word (for now) on Sardines - Russ Parsons Has It
Give A Man A Fish ...
On my way home from the Marche Saint Germain this morning, I kept thinking of the Chinese proverb:
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
I'd just bought a kilo (about 2 1/4 pounds) of sardines and I'd hoped that madame, the fishmonger, would filet them for me. And she would have -- if I'd only wait 30 minutes, please. Because it was a warm, sunny, perfect Paris day, and because I'd no more shopping to do to fill in the time, I said I'd filet them myself. Madame gave me a quizzical look -- read doubtful -- and, because she was too polite to say, "I bet you've never done this before and don't know what you're in for," she said, "You know, you've got a lot of sardines and it will take you a while to filet them."
"Well," I said, "I really do have to get back home, so I'll take them as is. But," I asked, "would you just show me how to do it?"
...Continue reading Give A Man A Fish ...
Paris Sweet: La Palette's Strawberry Tarte
I'm in Paris now and each time I pass the cafe La Palette or stop in to have a coffee, I think of the time, several years ago, when my husband, Michael, and I had lunch there under the trees and finished with the simplest tart imaginable. La Palette's strawberry tart was nothing more than a cookie crust, brushed with strawberry jam, topped generously with strawberries and served with a little pottery bowl of thick creme fraiche.
At La Palette, I think what they do is bake the tart and leave it unfilled. When an order for tart comes in, they cut a wedge of the crust, give it a gloss of jam and spoon over the cut berries. It's a brilliant way to keep the crust crisp in a cafe and it works just as brilliantly at home. Because you don't assemble the tart pieces until you're ready to serve them, you don't risk having the crisp crust go soggy.
This week, the bakers at Tuesdays with Dorie made the La Palette Tart from Baking From My Home to Yours, so you can see almost 200 versions of it on members' blogs. Here's what it looked like when I had it at La Palette the first time
La Palette is at 43 rue de Seine, in the 6 th arrondissement.
Roll-Out Cookies: A Shortcut
Yesterday, I decided to turn my Midnight Crackles (the recipe is from Baking From My Home to Yours), cookies that you form by rolling balls of dough between your palms then pressing the puffs down lightly on the baking sheet, into roll-out cookies. I wanted something flatter than the pillowy buttons the ball-and-press technique gave me and I knew, because the dough was firmish right after it was mixed, and downright hard after it chilled, that it would be a good candidate for roll-out treatment. I also knew that I could take a short-cut with the dough: instead of shaping the dough into a disk, chilling the disk and then rolling the dough, I went directly to roll-out without passing GO and without mishap.
...Continue reading Roll-Out Cookies: A Shortcut
The Most Extraordinary Lemon Tart Re-thunk
A few weeks ago, I posted the recipe for this lemon tart, a favorite of mine from Pierre Herme, on Serious Eats and, coincidentally, it was chosen as the recipe of the week by the wonderful bakers at Tuesdays with Dorie. I heard from some of you that you were having difficulties getting the lemon cream up to 180 degrees F -- 165 degrees F seemed to be the stopping point -- and that whether you called it quits at 165 or kept going to 180, it was taking a long time and a lot of elbow grease to thicken the cream.
...Continue reading The Most Extraordinary Lemon Tart Re-thunk
Baking with Dorie: Cheesecake
I'm a little late linking to this week's Baking with Dorie recipe on Serious Eats, but I don't think it's crucial, since a classic cheesecake really doesn't have a time limit.
And this is a classic - and classy - cheesecake: tall, smooth, rich, dense and creamy, creamy, creamy. You can make it with all kinds of crusts - this one's the traditional graham cracker crust - or, for Passover (which starts next Saturday night), you can make it crustless or use Kosher-for-Passover macaroons instead of crackers.
In fact, the cheesecake lends itself to all kinds of variations. I've got 11 of them in my book and I bet you can think of at least 11 more.
If you play around with the recipe, I'd love to know what you do.
(Photo by Alan Richardson)
Baking with Dorie: Extraordinary Lemon Cream Tart
I've been traveling and haven't had a chance to write, so I'll catch up on things soon, but I didn't want you to miss this week's Baking with Dorie Recipe at Serious Eats. It's for my favorite, favorite lemon cream, a recipe from Pierre Herme, and I hope you enjoy it.
More soon -- I'm off to catch another plane.
Baking with Dorie: Corniest Corn Muffins
Click over to this week's Baking with Dorie recipe on Serious Eats - it's for one of my favorite recipes in Baking From My Home to Yours: Corniest Corn Muffins. I love these muffins and serve them at breakfast and brunch and also with stewy dishes at dinner. But I never thought to serve them the way a commentor at Serious Eats suggested: toasted, covered with milk and honey and eaten like cereal! Enjoy!
As with all photos from Baking, this one was taken by Alan Richardson.
Baking with Dorie: Banana Cake Big and Small
Here's this week's Baking with Dorie recipe on Serious Eats: It's my friend Ellen Einstein's classic banana cake, cut in half and baked in muffin tins. Normally made as a sturdy Bundt cake, the recipe calls for four ripe bananas, but since I had only two and it was the day I was leaving for Paris, I just cut the recipe in half and went for a dozen minis. (When you click over, you'll find instructions for converting the minis back to full-size.)
I also went for some chocolate - I chopped up some dark chocolate (although milk chocolate would be just as good, if not better - milk chocolate and bananas are naturals together) and folded it into the batter at the last minute.
...Continue reading Baking with Dorie: Banana Cake Big and Small
Baking with Dorie: Gingerbread Baby Cakes
Soon it will be spring - but it's so not spring now! Minutes ago the weatherman said it was 14 degrees F and that we could expect another 3 inches of snow. A report like that just confirms that it's still gingerbread weather.
This week's Baking with Dorie recipe on Serious Eats is for spicy gingerbread baby cakes. The recipe comes from Johanne Killeen, who, with her husband, George Germon, is chef-owner of the legendary Rhode Island restaurant, Al Forno.
...Continue reading Baking with Dorie: Gingerbread Baby Cakes
Baking with Dorie: Creamy Lemon and Raspberry Tart
Please, don't let the fact that I don't have a picture for you stop you from making this week's Baking with Dorie recipe at Serious Eats. The recipe for a whole-lemon tart comes from The Cafe Boulud Cookbook, the book I wrote with the amazing chef, Daniel Boulud, and it's one that I know you'll try, love and make over and over again.
When I say whole-lemon, I mean it. The filling for the tart is made with every bit of the lemon, except the pith and pits, so you get an intense shot of lemon flavor - this is not a tart for those with timid tastebuds. In this version of the tart, raspberries are scattered across the bottom of a pre-baked crust before the (made-in-a-blender) lemon filling is poured in. The recipe is super-easy and super-super good. A sunshine-filled tart for winter. Hope you enjoy it.
Baking with Dorie: Gourmandise
This week's Baking with Dorie recipe at Serious Eats is both gorgeous and delicious - no surprise when you know that it comes from Pierre Herme (from the book, Desserts by Pierre Herme). It's called Gourmandise and it has three components, each delicous on its own and spectacular when combined with its dessertmates.
From the bottom up, you've got: tapioca cooked in coconut milk; fresh pineapple tossed with lime and marmalade; and oven-dried pineapple slices.
Everything can be made ahead - I love that; and each of the parts is easy to make - I love that, too.
Happy Valentine's Day to All
These mini-hearts were cut from my Fifteen-Minute Magic/Chocolate-Amaretti Torte (page 275 in Baking From My Home to Yours). I doubled the recipe, baked it in a 9-x-13 inch pan and used a biscuit cutter to cut the cake into hearts. I dipped half of the hearts in chocolate, left the others as is and, because I had to carry these crosstown - and because I thought it was cute - I filled in all the spaces between the little cakes with candy "conversation" hearts.
Baking with Dorie: Chocolate-Dipped Linzer Hearts
Getting into the full swing of Valentine's Day, this week's Baking with Dorie recipe at Serious Eats is for Chocolate-Dipped Linzer Hearts.
The dough for the nut-and-spice cookie, which isn't very sweet, is great to work with. It rolls out easily, cuts cleanly and can be re-rolled without toughening if you follow my instructions for "pre-rolling" the dough right after it's made and then re-rolling the gathered scraps between plastic wrap or wax paper. (The pre-rolling is a neat trick that you'll be able to use with other recipes.)
The cookies are also exceptionally play-aroundable. In Baking From My Home to Yours, you'll see them as scallop-edged round sandwiches: half the cookies are cut with peek-a-boo holes and two cookies are sandwiched together with Valentine-red rasberry jam. Of course, you could sandwich these heart-shaped cookies. And, you could dip the sandwiches in chocolate. After all, they're for Valentine's Day, a good day for making special things extra special.
Puddings of The Times
The food page in this past Sunday's New York Times Magazine was entitled Lovin' Spoonfools and it was a piece by Sara Dickerman about the pleasures of puddings, soft and creamy, traditional and not so traditional.
For Sara - and for many of us, I'm sure - the sweetness of pudding begins even before the first spoonful because there's something serene, sensuous and satisfying in the act ofjust making pudding. Sara, who is a terrific writer (you can find some of her work on Slate, including Down with Gloves, for which she won a James Beard Foundation Journalism Award), describes the peaceful process of stirring a pudding on the top of the stove and coming to that almost magical moment when the pudding starts to thicken.
...Continue reading Puddings of The Times
Baking with Dorie: Chocolate-Amaretti Heartbreakers
I've posted a pre-pre-Valentine's-Day recipe this week on Baking with Dorie at Serious Eats. It's for heart-shaped waffles made with lots of chocolate and crushed amaretti, those wonderful little almond-meringue cookies that come in the beautiful red tins and boxes (pictured). I make these waffles in a five-of-hearts waffler, but you can use any kind of waffle iron and then, if you'd like, cut the waffles into hearts for your sweetie.
...Continue reading Baking with Dorie: Chocolate-Amaretti Heartbreakers
Baking with Dorie: Boca Negra
This week's Baking with Dorie recipe at Serious Eats is for a chocolate cake that really lives up to its name, Boca Negra, or black mouth - it's chocolaty, chocolaty, chocolaty.
The recipe, created by the talented Lora Brody, comes from Baking with Julia, the book I wrote for the PBS series of the same name. I love this recipe for its simplicity: it can be made in seconds in a food processor; it can be dressed up with ice cream, whipped cream or Lora's bourbony white-chocolate cream (the recipe's included); and it can be frozen and kept for that rainy day. Actually, because the cake is so fudgy and has so much bourbon in it (as you'll see when you read the comments at Serious Eats, coffee can be subbed for the hootch), it doesn't really get so hard that you can't nibble a little slice straight from the freezer. Can you tell I'm speaking from experience?
(Photo by Gentl & Hyers)
Baking with Dorie: Daniel Boulud's Coffee-Cardamom Pots de Creme
Leave it to Daniel Boulud, one of the country's most exciting chefs, to come up with a fresh take on classic pots de creme - baked custard to many of us.
Here, in a recipe from the Cafe Boulud Cookbook, Daniel caramelizes coffee beans and cardamom pods to intensify their flavor, then he uses them to infuse the custard's milk. The inspiration was Middle Eastern coffee; the result is an exotic reading of what is essentially a comfort-food favorite.
...Continue reading Baking with Dorie: Daniel Boulud's Coffee-Cardamom Pots de Creme
Baking with Dorie: EVO and Yogurt Cake
I'm always so excited when I can pass along a recipe like this one: It's easy to make; quick to put together; requires no special equipment; uses ingredients we're likely to have on hand; bakes up perfectly every time; and tastes sooooooo good.
I mean, what more could you possibly ask of one little cake?
...Continue reading Baking with Dorie: EVO and Yogurt Cake
Baking with Dorie: Galette des Rois
It's that time of year again: Time for Epiphany and Kings' Cakes, galettes des rois! Last year's best galette des rois was the one above, an Ispahan galette filled with rose-almond cream and raspberries, and it was brought to us by my patissier prefere, its creator, Pierre Herme (above).
...Continue reading Baking with Dorie: Galette des Rois
Baking with Dorie: Pierre Herme's Fruit and Spice Loaf
This week's Baking with Dorie recipe on Serious Eats is one that's perfect for the holidays: a type of pain d'epices, or honey cake, from Parisian pastry wizard Pierre Herme. While it's not at all like my chocolate-gingerbread (last week's recipe), there's something about the loaf that makes me think it's my American gingerbread's long-lost French cousin.
Pain d'epices is a holiday must in France and Pierre's, not surprisingly, is terrific. If you make it -- and I hope you will -- try to make it the day before you want to serve it: The flavors really come into their own after a day's rest under wraps.
TYPO ALERT: While it may be changed by now, there was a typo in the original recipe. The correct amount for the water, the first ingredient is: 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons water. I'm very sorry.
Baking with Dorie: Chocolate-Gingerbread Cake for Christmas
Since it 's minutes before Christmas, my Baking with Dorie recipe on Serious Eats is for a holiday classic: gingerbread. My version is made as a tall square cake that can be cut in cubes and it's got melted chocolate as well as chopped chocolate and fresh ginger inside it, and there's a delicious chocolate glaze on top of it. Not really classic, but really, really good.
It's also easy to make and - ta-da: freezable. If you wanted to, you could make the cake now, ice it and freeze it until you're ready for it. You'd have one less thing to do when the going gets going on Monday and Tuesday.
This recipe comes from Baking From My Home to Yours. And the beautiful photograph (don't you want to be wherever that cake is?) was taken by Alan Richardson.
All Things Considered Considers Christmas Pudding
If you're over the age of 5, you've probably sung about figgy pudding - or will be singing about it next week. But have you ever tasted it? Or, better yet, made it?
If you've always wondered about the dessert - sometimes called Plum Pudding or Christmas Pudding - you're not alone. A little while ago, Michele Norris, host of NPR's All Things Considered, called me because she, too, was having a figgy pudding wonder moment. Which explains how I ended up in her terrific kitchen in Washington, DC making the above.
...Continue reading All Things Considered Considers Christmas Pudding
Great Cookies for a Cookie Swap - or for Santa
If I've got my calendar straight, this week should be crazy busy with shopping, holiday parties and cookie exchanges. Cookie exchanges, for those of you who've never been to one, are a wonderful American invention in which every guest is asked to bring large quantities of his or her favorite cookie, so that the delicious cookies can be exchanged for everyone else's delicious cookies. If all goes right, at the end of a good cookie swap you go home with a fabulous variety of oodles of great cookies.
I recently created four cookie-swappable recipes for AARP The Magazine - including Almond and Currant Tea Cakes, Coffee-Hazelnut Biscotti, Sweet and Savory Roll-ups (think savory rugelach) and the pictured Cherry and Spice Brownie Bites - and, just for good measure, I added the recipe for my all-time favorite World Peace Cookies. I also included some tips for hosting an exchange.
If you jump on this idea now, you might be saved when Santa comes down the chimney looking for his milk and cookies.
This photo was taken by Jim Franco.
Baking with Dorie: Fluff-Filled Chocolate Madeleines
Bonjour from Paris! Michael and I just flew in this morning.
This week's Baking with Dorie recipe on Serious Eats is for Fluff-Filled Chocolate Madeleines, fun, delicious little cakes, which, as you'll read, I won't be serving to my Parisian neighbors.
If filling a national treasure with marshmallow fluff sounds a little too goofy to you, skip the fluff - the chocolate madeleines are great all by their ownsomes. But I urge you to go for the ganache dip. What doesn't taste better wtih ganache?
Roll-Out Cookies for the Holidays
If you didn't see my recipes for roll-out cookies in the December issue of Bon Appetit, you can now find them on Epicurious.
There are recipes for chocolate, spice and vanilla roll-out cookies, along with a recipe for an easy to scroll, squiggle and curlicue royal icing that dries hard.
I love these cookies - especially the spice cookies, which are gingersnappy and get a little extra zip from dried mustard - for lots of reasons: they are super easy to roll out; they keep their shape when they're baked, so you can cut them in fanciful forms and use them for decorations (if you want to use them as ornaments, make a hole in the cookies before you bake them); and, they're really, really delicious.
I hope you enjoy them!
Three Wonderful Things: Chestnuts, Pierre Herme and a Tart
I've got a special place in my heart for chestnuts. I associate them with my mother, who'd roast them late at night; I think about them when I think of Paris - hot chestnuts wrapped in newspaper and bought from a street vendor are ace handwarmers when you're browsing the outdoor flea markets in winter; and I have chestnuts to thank for my friendship with Pierre Herme, the famous Paris pastry chef.
...Continue reading Three Wonderful Things: Chestnuts, Pierre Herme and a Tart
Baking with Dorie: Attention Swedish Visiting Cake Lovers
I think those of you who love the Swedish Visiting Cake in Baking From My Home to Yours, are going to be as excited as I was to make its cousin, the Swedish Apple Cake, from a recipe that my Connecticut neighbor, Ann Brettingen, recently got from her mother in Sweden. It's as easy as the Swedish Visiting Cake - as delicious, too - but it's got a little something extra: a baked-in apple topping.
You can find Ann's recipe in this week's Baking with Dorie post on Serious Eats.
You can find my friend Ingela Helgesson's recipe for the Swedish Visiting Cake here.
Baking with Dorie: Pumpkin-Pie Pancakes
If you're still craving a little something pumpkiny after your Thanksgiving feast, the current Baking with Dorie recipe on Serious Eats could be just what you're looking for: pancakes with all the spices that make pumpkin pie so delicious. I think the pancakes are terrific for breakfast with maple syrup and just as great for dessert with ice cream. I hope you'll make them over the weekend.
For Thanksgiving: Daniel Boulud's Chestnut Soup
I know just how hard it can be to change even one dish on any family's traditional Thanksgiving menu - it took me years to get rid of our dread stringbean-swiss cheese-cornflake-topped casserole even though no one really wanted to eat it anymore. Traditions can be like that. So, knowing that, I wouldn't dare suggest that you give up whatever soup you normally make for the holiday and turn to this one, but if you're undecided in the soup department, here's a winner.
...Continue reading For Thanksgiving: Daniel Boulud's Chestnut Soup
Granola Grab Bag
When Kerrin and Olivier Rousset (they of the wonderful wedding) came to spend this past weekend with us in Connecticut, they arrived bearing gifts: Granola, homemade and in three flavors!
It was a great gift, but it also turned out to be a funny one, since when Kerrin was roasting granola on Friday, I was doing exactly the same thing! I hadn't made granola in years, but it seemed like just the right thing to have on hand when there'd be people in the house for a couple of days. Obviously, that's what Kerrin was thinking too.
...Continue reading Granola Grab Bag
All Things Considered Considers Packable Sweets
This afternoon, Michele Norris, host of National Public Radio's All Things Considered, and I will be talking about packable sweets, goodies sturdy enough to travel. We've got lots of tips for what to bake and how to pack what you've baked so that everything arrives crumbless whether it's going across the river to grandma's house or across the sea to far-flung family and friends.
To get more tips and two packable recipes (including one for the Lenox Biscotti in the picture) emailed to you, click through to the ATC site.
Photo by Alan Richardson
Baking with Dorie: Sour Cream Pumpkin Pie (or Tart)
This week's Baking with Dorie recipe on Serious Eats is my go-to Thanksgiving pie - shown here in tart version. You can make it as either a pie or tart depending on your whim, the look you're after or how much filling you want. And the filling is so good that you might want lots of it: the pumpkin is spiced like eggnog - that means there's cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg and, of course rum - and made velvety smooth with sour cream. Can you tell it's my favorite? Hope it will become yours, too.
Baking with Dorie: All-in-One Holiday Bundt Cake
It's not too early to think about Thanksgiving, especially since this bundt cake, this week's Baking with Dorie recipe on Serious Eats, can be made ahead and, sans icing, frozen.
The recipe is from Baking From My Home to Yours, as is this wonderful photograph by Alan Richardson.
Baking with Dorie: Baked Apples
This week's Baking with Dorie recipe on Serious Eats is for down-home old-fashioned baked apples. As desserts go, baked apples are very low on the fancy/fussy scale, but they're way up there on the comfort-o-meter, so I hope you'll make them this weekend. If it's chilly where you, they're guaranteed to taste even better.
Baking with Dorie: Homey, Creamy Chocolate Cake
This week's Baking with Dorie recipe on Serious Eats is for a very homey, dense, dark, creamy chocolate cake. The recipe was given to me by Robert Linxe, the founder of La Maison du Chocolat, which just celebrated its 30 th anniversary with a huge party at the new Cafe Pleyel (about which, more soon).
Baking with Dorie: Cookies for Julia
My current recipe on Serious Eats is for terrific Mocha Chocolate Chip Cookies. They're the sweets that pastry chef Rick Katz made for us to snack on when we were shooting Baking with Julia at Julia Child's house in Cambridge. The cookies are made with a pound of chocolate and they're worth every ounce of the precious stuff. I think you'll love these.
All Things Considered Considers Tarte Tatin
A year ago, when Baking From My Home to Yours was published, Michele Norris, host of National Public Radio's All Things Considered, invited me to the NPR studios in Washington, DC to talk about baking. It turned out that Michele, who is a very talented cook, wanted to become a better baker for the best reason possible: She wanted to be able to give her children the same kinds of sweet, wonderful memories that she has of her mother in the kitchen. And with that we began our journey, which has taken us through holiday treats and Valentine brownies to rugelach and cobblers and now, this Tarte Tatin.
...Continue reading All Things Considered Considers Tarte Tatin
Baking with Dorie: Slippery-Slidey Cinnamon-Espresso Cup Custard
Just up on Serious Eats, the latest Baking with Dorie recipe: Slippery-Slidey Cinnamon-Espresso Cup Custard -- smooth, comforting, tasty, easy and right for the season. Hope you'll enjoy it.
Baking with Dorie: Ricotta-Berry Muffins
To get the weekend off to a good start, why not make Ricotta-Berry Muffins? The recipe's in this week's Baking with Dorie at Serious Eats.
All of the recipes I've done for the Baking with Dorie column can be found here.
Happy baking! Happy weekend!
Baking with Dorie: Tomato-Cheese Tartlets
Piperade and Chicken Basquaise in The Washington Post
Here are all the ingredients for that Basque specialty, piperade, ready to simmer slowly, soften, gather flavor and become the base for comforting braised chicken. My recipes for both the Piperade and Chicken Basquaise are in today's Washington Post. Take a look.
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Baking with Dorie: Coconut Domes
Serious Eats has just posted my latest Baking with Dorie recipe: Coconut Domes. Another easy treat, but this time it comes from the French pastry chef Pierre Herme, master of everything sweet. I hope you'll try it.
Cheddar-Chive Bread on Serious Eats
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Dimply Plum Cake on Serious Eats
This week's Baking with Dorie recipe on Serious Eats is my Dimply Plum Cake from Baking From My Home to Yours. It's a brown sugar and spice cake topped with plums that's very simple to make and so easy to serve - it's a terrific brunch treat and nice with tea later in the day. It's the kind of cake than can make a sweet weekend even sweeter. I hope you enjoy it! Bon week-end!
Sundae at Serious Eats
This week's Baking with Dorie recipe on Serious Eats is for Peach Melba. Take a look at the variation that's in the section called Playing Around - it's for corn ice cream! I think it's great and I hope you do too - let me know.
Les Brownies on Serious Eats
Ooops. I forgot to tell you: the new Baking with Dorie recipe is up on Serious Eats and it's French Chocolate Brownies (from Baking From My Home to Yours). The full recipe is there, including the instructions for flaming the raisins in dark rum - my favorite part.
Rainy Day Salad
My husband, Michael, couldn't resist this Siamese-twin tomato at the Lyme Farmers Market this week (it would have been a perfect match for the boomerang eggplant I bought the week before, but that had already become caponata)
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Blueberry-Peach Cobbler on Serious Eats
This week's Baking with Dorie recipe on Serious Eats is Blueberry-Peach Cobbler. It's simple, delicious and messy - just as it should be. Enjoy!
Cooking in a Cocoon: Salmon and Tomatoes en Papillote
When I first learned to fold a parchment paper circle into a half-moon turnover in which I could cook just about anything en papillote, I cooked just about everything en papillote and thought that if I kept it up, I'd not only be among the healthiest-eating citizens in the land, I'd also earn the right to call myself an origami master.
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Opening Day at the Farmers Market: Dinner and a Couple of Recipes
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Chocolate Chip Cookies: Kid's Play, Happiness and a Recipe
In my book, Baking From My Home to Yours, I tell the story (page 139) of going to a luncheon and being surprised to find that the dessert that was passed around was mine! In fact, the whole experience was surprising from beginning to end, since the hostess didn't know that the recipe was mine and the chef had no idea I'd be at the lunch. For me, it was an incredible treat - and an honor: I was thrilled that the chef liked the cookies enough to put them on the menu.
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The Market at Rue des Carmes and a Recipe
So I am in Paris! I wasn't supposed to be, but something came up and I had to be - I know, worse things have been known to happen - and this morning I took a stroll through the Saturday morning market at the rue des Carmes, that's in the fifth arrondissement, metro stop Maubert-Mutualite. (I love that addresses here are always given along with the nearest metro stop - so practique.)
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Better Butter: A Tasting and A Recipe
The amazingly talented Molly Stevens (she of All About Braising) organized a butter tasting at the IACP conference last week and, once again, my favorite butters in the tasting turned out to be the butters I always favor in a tasting, proving both the butters and I must be pretty consistent.
Most of us don't normally "taste" butter, we use it in baking, cooking or as a bread-topper, but I started tasting butter and studying butter about 7 years ago, after the legendary breadbaker, Lionel Poilane, didn't want to give me his recipe for his great butter cookies, Punitions, for my book, Paris Sweets, because he didn't think they'd fare well with American butter.
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French Chocolate Brownies
Julia Moskin's got a terrific story about Brownies in the Dining section of today's New York Times and I'm delighted that she's included my recipe for French Chocolate Brownies. I'm crazy about these brownies and love the story of how they came about.
The first time I made the recipe I was in Paris, preparing dinner for friends and thinking I was making a fondant for dessert. Fondant, a creamy chocolate cake, is one of only a handful of sweets the French make for themselves at home. I made my fondant in a square pan (not usual, but not so far-out) and added rum-flamed raisins (again, not usual, but not heretical either). I cut the cake into squares and got the following reaction when I brought it to the table: "Ooh, brownies - splendide!"
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Rugelach: Three Stories and a Recipe
This is a tri-part post on a cookie that merits a triple dose of attention: rugelach, cookies (really pastries) made of cream-cheese dough, spread with jam and nuts (and often raisins), cut into wedges and rolled up to resemble mini croissants.
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Slow-Roasted Tomatoes: A Pasta Picker-Upper
Just when it looked like we were heading into the lamb part of March (is the expression March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb universal? or at least known in the northern hemisphere, where March is a winter/spring month?), along comes real snow and with it pokey traffic. By the time we got up to Connecticut the other night, it was past serving time at all our favorite places and we were left to scavenge dinner, using whatever was in the pantry and the bag of leftovers I'd scooped up in New York and tossed into the car. It was a little like Iron Chef ... but not.
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Eccentric Eggs from Daniel Patterson
Daniel Patterson of Coi Restaurant in San Francisco was the only American chef to be invited to this year's Omnivore Food Festival in Le Havre, France. He walked onto the big stage, faced the audience and the camera crew from Cuisine TV (France's Food Network), smiled shyly, greeted everyone in soft school-boy French and then proceeded to keep the mostly French audience of food pros, press and Michelin-starred chefs hushed and wide-eyed.
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Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
We just got up to Connecticut and it's gorgeous, but sooooooooooooo cold. Anyone who lives in chilly climes can just look at the fabulous color of the sky and know it's impossible to get that hue without temperatures that fall way below comfortable.
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Fireside Soup
There are lots of differences between men and women – you noticed, I know – but here’s one that came to mind last night as I settled into our house in Connecticut for a week of work sans Michael: When the temperature hovers around zero, men build fires and woman make soup. At last, that’s what this woman does.
On the drive up from New York, the weather guy kept saying that it was going to be dangerously cold and, in fact, it was awfully nippy when I made the dash from driveway to door and fumbled for my keys. I got the heat going (that’s easy – a flip of a switch; no tree-chopping required), queued up the music, turned on the computer (it may be the country, but life without the internet is no life at all), made the big wine decision (it was definitely a red night) and started rummaging through the fridge.
There wasn’t a lot of fresh stuff in the house, I’d dragged pretty much everything back to New York with me last Sunday, but I always think that if I’ve got onions and a few carrots in the house, all is not lost, and, in fact, there was one onion, three big carrots and a few bonus tidbits: half a head of garlic, a teensy knob of ginger and one parsnip.
I put all the vegetables in my trusty soup pot (a French blue Le Creuset number) and started softening them in olive oil over low heat, when inspiration struck – I stirred in turmeric and some wonderful garam masala, which had been mixed at Falls Brook Organic Farm, up the road a piece in Lyme. Stir, stir, soften, soften, season, season, and then a big can of chicken broth and a handful of barley for stick-to-your-ribsness.
It’s hard to tell you how happy I was. Just knowing there was soup on the stove gave me the feeling of all being right in the world (or at least, in my little house for that little moment). That it turned out to be an earthy, satisfying soup with a little bit of sweetness – the carrots, parsnips and garam masala did that – only added to the pleasure.
Oh, there was another nice thing: the fire. Once I knew the ingredients in the pot were on their way to soupdom, I could consider building a fire. Naturally, by the time I built it I didn’t need it for warmth, but it was pretty swell for atmosphere. What doesn’t taste better eaten fireside?
Here’s the picture of the fire. It’s not great, but I sent it off to Michael, who’s in London, just to prove to him that I did learn something when I was a Brownie.
And here’s the recipe – kind of – for the soup. I say kind of because I didn’t measure anything while I was making it and you probably won’t either, it’s not that kind of recipe.
FIRESIDE SOUP
Makes 4 servings
1 to 2 tablespoons olive oil
2 to 3 onions, peeled, trimmed and diced
3 big carrots, peeled, trimmed and diced
1 parsnip, peeled, trimmed (cut out the core if it’s woody) and diced
3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
One 1-inch piece of ginger, peeled and chopped
Turmeric, to taste (start with about 1/2 teaspoon)
Garam masala, to taste (start with about 3/4 teaspoon)
Hot pepper flakes, to taste and optional
1 large can (48 ounces) chicken or vegetable broth (or water)
1/2 cup pearl barley, rinsed
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper
Warm the olive oil in a large heavy pot with a lid. Add the onions, carrots, parsnip, garlic and ginger and stir to coat with oil. Season with salt and pepper, cover and cook for about 5 minutes over low heat. Stir in the turmeric, garam masala and hot pepper, if you’re using it, cover and continue to cook very gently, stirring often, until the vegetables are soft but not colored, about 15 minutes more. Add the broth or water, bring to the boil over higher heat, then stir in the barley. Reduce the heat so that the broth simmers, cover and cook until the barley is tender and “blossomed” (it will puff considerably). Taste and add more salt, pepper and spices, as needed.
When in Doubt, Chicken-in-the-Pot
Every cook needs a clutch of totally trusty recipes, a bunch of go-to recipes you can turn to when you haven't got the time, inspiration or ingredients to tackle something new or when you've just got to be sure that the dish will be perfect. It also doesn't hurt if the recipe is so easy you can put it together quickly, maybe even with your eyes closed, and if it's flexible enough that if you haven't got a couple of the ingredients you can swap them for others or skip them entirely.
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