Tuesdays with Dorie: Apple Weekend Cake

I'd previously mentioned that, given my newfound efforts to balance my exercise/healthy eating/baking interests, I'm going to try to keep up with the Tuesdays with Dorie schedule as they bake from Baking, Chez Moi every two weeks. The recipes that I  missed, I absolve myself of. There are too many. I'll never catch up. I'm just going to try and participate going forward.

I was delighted to see that the recipe chosen for this week was Apple Weekend Cake. Since I had a bunch of people over for brunch a week ago, this seemed like a perfect addition to the table. It's an unassuming little loaf cake that didn't attract much attention, with all the other more dramatic offerings on the table (homemade bagels! A mountain of bacon! Two dozen gorgeous donuts!). I think that most of what was missing from the cake was eaten by my two kids before anyone else arrived.

I'll take a plain loaf cake over a frosted, tiered behemoth anytime.

 Simple as it looks, this little cake is lovely. I'm always impressed by the things Dorie does with apples. So many of her recipes taste so cleanly of apple, without being muddied up by other flavors. There's a bit of cinnamon in here, but it's a supporting note. This was moist, simple, and perfect with a cup of coffee. The other half is sitting in the freezer, waiting for someone to come have coffee with me.

TwD: Tiger Cakes

Yay, I'm posting on schedule for the first time in months. Woohoo!

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe from Baking, Chez Moi is for Tiger Cakes, mini-muffin-sized almond flour-based cakes that are supposedly reminiscent of a tiger's stripes because of the chocolate that is mixed into the batter. I don't know about that. I'm not seeing it. Regardless, these cakes are wonderful.

My son started kindergarten this year. It only took him one month to develop self-esteem issues. Wonderful. For the past week, every morning before school, and every night before bed, he sulks about how he's "not as great" as the other kids, he's not as funny, and he has no friends. (Note: I emailed his teacher to find out if he was being shy all day long, or if he was fine once he was in class, because I know he is more social when I'm not around. She said he has lots of friends and socializes so much that he doesn't always pay attention. Sounds right.)

I grew up feeling like I was not very good at anything besides reading and baking. Baking always made me feel good about myself because, nine times out of ten, even if a baked good doesn't turn out perfectly, it's still pretty good. You put the work in, you create something delicious. People inevitably compliment the product. Instant esteem boost. Recognizing that baking functioned for me in this way, I asked Charlie if he wanted to help me bake the Tiger Cakes on Friday morning, before we took a trip to the zoo.

I supervised, but Charlie basically made these himself (I already had egg whites in the freezer, so he didn't have to separate them.) We had a lovely time.

I told him that I was planning to bake every recipe in the book, and asked him if he wanted to help. He said, "Well, yes, but isn't that going to take a long time?" I said, "Yes, but that'll only make it more satisfying when we finish." He said, "But if we bake all those recipes, how will we have time to go to the zoo?" HA! Once I assured him that we were not making them all in one day, he was fully on board.

Neatness is overrated.

I made sure we thoroughly buttered the pans, because I'd read that the cakes were prone to stick. I guess we didn't butter it enough. We ripped the bottoms off of 90% of them trying to get them out of the pan. Lesson for life: So what? They still taste good.

Charlie got the first taste. I asked how they were. He said, "Deeeelicious. Maybe I am a great boy." That esteem boost may not last forever, but it was exactly what I'd hoped for. We're going to be baking a lot in the coming weeks.

We packed up a few to bring to the zoo, so we could eat tiger cakes in front of the tigers.

TwD: Apple Kuchen

Our move is complete, my house is mostly sorted, and I'm going to try to get back in the Tuesdays with Dorie groove. I've got quite a few makeups to do.

Hurricane Joaquin was a bust around these parts, not that I'm complaining. While planning to be rained in for the weekend, I couldn't think of a cozier idea than to give myself a baking project. Some people go pumpkin crazy in Autumn. I'm all about apples. So, Apple Kuchen, from Baking Chez Moi.

The dough that lines the springform pan made me insane. I guess it hardened too much in the fridge. It fell to pieces as I tried to form it. Ugh! Deep breaths. I patched it all up. There may have been a few curses.

BLAST!

Things did not go more smoothly once the tart was filled. Halfway through the normal baking time, the raisins had already turned into hard, burned balls. I had to bake the kuchen for an extra forty minutes, and it was still wet on the inside. The knife never came out clean. Finally I took it out of the oven. I added the butter and sugar to the top, and put it under the broiler. The apples were supposed to "char seductively." Mine burned, non-seductively.

I pulled the entire top layer of apples (and all the raisins) off of the kuchen, let it sit until after dinner, and then dug in.

Conclusion: Delicious. It was like apple pudding. Yum! I have no need for the crust. The custard, on its own, is all I need.

The Play-It-Again-Dorie Recipe

This week, we're talking about the recipe that we keep coming back to, over and over again. It isn't necessarily our favorite recipe, but the one we've made most often.

It's hard to pick one, but based on number of times I've made it, I have to call out Creamy Cauliflower Soup Sans Cream. I love this soup. It's easy to make, tastes delicious--especially with cheese melted on top--and makes me feel virtuous, even when I eat three bowls in one sitting (ahem, always).

Plus, the kiddo likes it. He won't admit that he likes it, but I can get him to eat it. When he genuinely doesn't like something, no power on earth can get it in his mouth. When he merely wants to be contrary, there are ways to work around it.

I made the cauliflower soup two weeks ago to accompany my gougeres. Charlie was not allowed to have a cheesy pouf until he had ten bites of soup. He ate ten bites.

Then, I told him he could only have a second gougere after he ate some more soup. He said, "29 more bites?" Ummm...sure. Twenty-nine bites will be fine.

He did it, and earned himself all the gougeres he wanted. That's what passes as a crowd-pleaser recipe in this house.

We're heading out tomorrow for an 11-day trip to Ireland (SQUEAAAL!), so I will not manage to write next week's post--the final FFWD post!!--until the following week. I'll sit down with a box of tissues and a cup of tea and catch up with all the other Doristas' posts then.

Never Doubt Dorie

Even though I absolutely hated the outcome of the Salmon and Potatoes in a Jar recipe from Around My French Table, it seems like the perfect write-up for this week's French Fridays with Dorie post, in which we were tasked to "Choose the recipe that might not have been your favorite or even something you enjoyed making or even something you were skeptical about but which taught you a technique or gave you an idea or provided a lesson of some kind."

I did not enjoy making or eating this recipe, in which salmon is brined, then packed into a jar with olive oil, herbs, and vegetables. I was 100% skeptical of it, going in. I knew I would hate it, and so I instantly started backtracking and trying to find ways to not follow the recipe. Granted, I did follow the Roasted Cured Salmon bonne idee, so I didn't go totally rogue, but it turned out horridly. I know that cured fish is technically not raw, but when starting with such dull looking salmon to begin with, cured was too raw for me. I roasted it, and it turned into an overly fishy salt-bomb. This provided the lesson. Two lessons, actually.

Lesson 1: Always, always, always use the freshest ingredients possible. My salmon was gross looking, straight from the supermarket, and so there was no chance in the world I was going to prepare it as written. I should have looked harder for a better product.

Lesson 2: As I quote Matt as saying in my original post for this recipe, "Next time, just trust Dorie!!" It was years ago, but I can still hear his wail as he tried to scrape all that salty fish off his tongue. It was pretty funny.

Going rogue works for some people, but for me, I'm better off when I just trust Dorie.

FFwD: The AHA Moment!

To launch our celebration month after completing every recipe from Around My French Table, we were tasked with choosing our favorite recipe, and then making a top 5 list. (Okay, so I'm 20 recipes short of "every", but I'm at peace with that number.)

No question in my mind, my number one favorite recipe in this book is Gougeres. This was one of the first recipes I made, before I knew that French Fridays with Dorie even existed. I was not much of a cook at the time, and had a picky, cranky 1-year-old on my hands, but I decided to take a risk and try this cheesey choux dough--not that I'd ever heard of pate a choux--for no reason other than that the picture in the book looked delicious.

Glorious.

It felt like a miracle when Charlie ate one. Then two. Then as many as he could stuff into his face. Gougeres became the treat I made when we had long car rides ahead of us. They became my go-to party snack. Charlie learned to say "cheesy poof," our in-house name for gougeres, before he learned to say I love you. Cheesy poofs are dear to our hearts.

He was so leeeettle! I want to eat his face! And that cheesy poof.

I fully intended to bake a celebratory batch of gougeres today, but life got away from me, and now I don't have time. After a full morning of errands, my husband called and said that he'd broken his foot playing soccer at work (darn military and their mandatory PT!), was at the hospital, and that I needed to come and wait for him to be done, then bring him back to work. By the time I dropped him off, I had just enough time to pick Charlie up from school. I'm exhausted, and instead of gougeres and soup, my dinner will now consist of rotisserie chicken and whatever leftover grain/veg I can find in the fridge.

Matt's plan for tomorrow was to clean out our disaster of a garage. Now that his foot is broken, I guess I get bumped up in the queu. boooooo! Actually, he thinks he's doing it anyway. Um, no. I bump myself up in the queu, and he's going to have to learn to stop being productive for a little while. So, tomorrow may suck, but, by God, there WILL be gougeres!! And gougeres will make it all better.

It is nearly impossible for me to pick a top 5. Here's my best shot. I'm not counting gougeres. They're my #1, but this way, it's like I get a Top 6. Mwa ha haaa!

1. Provencal Olive Fougasse. If memory serves me, this was one of my first forays into bread. I was afraid of yeast before this recipe. After, I was like, "Oh. That was no big deal." Salty, lemony, bready goodness. What's not to love?

2. Cheese-Topped Onion Soup. This takes substantially longer to properly caramelize the onions than Dorie says, but it is so rich and delicious at the end, that I don't care. Best. Soup. Ever.

3. Beef Cheek Daube with Carrots and Elbow Macaroni. This one was a shock to me, because up until I made this recipe, I hated stewed beef with a fiery passion. I LOVE this recipe, and I've made it many times, whenever the temperature drops. I'm looking forward to having a real winter in DC next year (Did I tell you, we now have orders to Washington DC??!! Matt and I lived there for 8 years after college. I'm super excited to go back. It feels like going home, because we have so many friends in the area. I am SO going to feed them this beef.)

4. Pumpkin Stuffed with Everything Good. The name speaks for itself. Maybe I'm just hankering for cool-weather dishes right now, but I miss this dish! I can't wait to be reunited with the proper kind of pumpkin for it. They have pumpkin in Italy, but it's very different. I tried to make this once here in Italy, and it didn't work.

5. I literally can not choose between Marie-Helene's Apple Cake or the Tourteau de Chevre as my favorite dessert. I can't. I'm not even going to try. So there!

It feels so wrong to leave off the osso bucco and veal marengo and the hurry-up-and-wait roast chicken and dressy pasta risotto and potato gratin and the slow-roasted tomatoes and endives,apples, and grapes, and almond flounder mouniere, and the chocolate mousse, and...and...and...there's too much. I feel like a very lucky girl to have so many favorite recipes in my arsenal. Thank you, Dorie!!

FFwD: Chicken in a Pot

So this is it. The last recipe that the French Fridays with Dorie group is scheduled to cook from Around My French Table. We'll have one more month of cooking, where we highlight our favorites/recipes that taught us something/etc, but, really, this...is...it.

Chicken in a Pot. This is the recipe on the cover.

The prime placement, that gorgeous photo, and the fact that we saved this recipe for last, may have all served to build my expectations a bit too high. I love roast chicken. Love it. In combo with roasted-in-the-same-pot sweet potatoes, carrots, and white potatoes, it's one of my top 5 favorite recipes (and Dorie's Hurry-up-and-Wait Roast Chicken has become my standby). This one uses all my favorite elements (I omitted the preserved lemon), and looks spectacular in the picture.

Except for one thing. It turns out, this is not a roast chicken. That picture totally fooled me. After browning the vegetables, you brown the chicken, then put it in a pot to braise in broth and wine. Dorie calls for white. I used red, because I accidentally drank the white the night before. Well, the drinking wasn't an accident. The forgetting that I'd reserved it for this recipe was.

This is a divergence, but it boggles my mind whenever a recipe calls for a ton of veg, and then, when it wants you to brown it, makes a side note of "if necessary, do this in 2 batches." How big of a pan do these people have that could ever possibly brown this amount of anything in one pan?? Of course it's going to take two batches. In fact, this took me three batches! Pet peeve. I don't know why. I think because the batches always add extra time that I hadn't accounted for on first read. And, in this case, I don't feel that the browning added additional flavor to the veg after they soaked in that braise for an hour.

I appear to have done a terrible job browning my chicken. I'll admit outright that I am an impatient browner. It always takes so much longer than I think it's going to.

That gorgeous golden bread ringing Dorie's pan was a let down. She says that this seals in all the flavor. I, mistakenly, assumed that it would also be good for eating. Nope. It's basically just a putty to seal the pan closed, that is dry and flavorless once baked. Is this step really necessary? No. Not if you have a well-fitted lid, it's not.

One other complaint regarding the bread-sealed lid is that I couldn't check the temperature on my chicken.

In the end, this was a perfectly fine chicken. It took more time and more steps than seems necessary, especially when a straight-up roast chicken, with all the same ingredients, is exponentially more delicious. I wish I had a more dramatic love for our last recipe, but I don't. It was fine. It feels a little anticlimactic. Ah, well. Fine's not so bad.

FFwD: Cheesecake Tart

This week, the French Fridays with Dorie group was scheduled to bake the final dessert from Around My French Table: Cheesecake Tart.

I've been reducing my carbs and sugar lately, so I was really happy when I read through this recipe. As long as I omitted the tart shell, the only ingredients that interfered with my food plan was 3 tb of sugar and 3 tb of corn starch. Good enough for me. 

After I put the tart in the oven, I worried that it might turn into a giant disaster, because I hadn't buttered my pan. Luckily, the slices came out with no trouble.

The cheesecake filling was made out of cottage cheese, sour cream, egg yolks, sugar, corn starch, lemon zest, and vanilla, blitzed in the food processor until smooth and creamy.

This was good, even without the crust. It had a nice tang to it. However, if I'm going to eat cheesecake, I want a thick, luscious, rich NY cheesecake. This was tasty, but it just doesn't compete. On the other hand, this is a great recipe to keep in my back pocket for days when I want dessert without disrupting my meal plan too much.

I also made up two recipes this week. First, Tomatoes Provencal. I have no idea why it took me so long to make this. It's easy--Cut tomatoes in half. Sprinkle with oil, garlic, and chopped herbs. Roast. The tomatoes turn melty and sweet, with minimal effort. Delicious!

Last night, I made Chestnut-Pear Soup for dinner before having the tart. I've been avoiding this one for quite a while. I adore most of Dorie's savory soups, but I've been unhappy with all of the book's soup recipes that involve fruit. I had half of a bag of chestnuts in the fridge, because I made a chestnut soup from River Cottage Veg two weeks ago, so figured I should make Dorie's recipe, if for no other reason than to use up my chestnuts. To prevent the soup from turning too sweet, I used two very small local pears. They have a good flavor, but are crunchy, like an apple. There was so little meat, I figured they couldn't overpower the soup. I was right. I added toasted almonds on top, because I thought it needed some crunch.

Not pretty.

This soup turned out to be lovely, though it was not nearly as delicious as the River Cottage Veg version. If I were going to pick one of the two recipes to make again, I'd absolutely go with RCV. Still, I'm glad I finally checked this off of my list.

FFwD: Cabbage and Foie Gras Bundles

I was prepared to make Dorie's Cabbage and Foie Gras Bundles on schedule, a few months ago. I've had the foie gras in my fridge since November (don't worry, it hadn't expired yet.) How did I know it was from November? Because I had my friend, Hilary, pick some up for me while she spent a week in Paris, en route to Napoli, to visit us.

Fortunately, Hilary was staying with a friend in Paris, who brought her to a foie gras shop and did all the talking. I'd told Hilary what Dorie says in the intro, to "buy a small terrine of foie gras made from whole pieces of foie gras, not a mousse or pate made from ground or chopped foie gras." That was not enough information for the woman at the store. Over facebook, Hilary asked me what I was using it for. I told her that I was going to wrap it in a cabbage leaf and steam it. The shopkeeper was befuddled, and said she'd never heard of anyone doing that before. I told Hilary that it sounded like a tragic waste of foie gras to me, but that was the recipe. She had her friend repeat this to the woman. Hilary said that the woman hooted with laughter, and kept repeating, "Oui! Oui! Trajeeeek!" Quite the scene.

After that, I couldn't quite figure out the correct opportunity to make this recipe. I have friends over for dinner often, but don't usually do an appetizer or small plate type of thing. I could never figure out where to fit this in.

However, with the foie gras' expiration date fast approaching, and the deadline for Around My French Table looming, I seized upon the fact that our friends, who are about to move to San Diego, came over for one last lazy Sunday BBQ over the weekend as reason enough to crack open the foie gras and bust out this recipe.

May I just state that I feel like I live in an alternate universe right now, in which I'm like, "Oh yeah, come over for a casual barbecue. While the boys are grilling, we'll eat foie gras and some tartufo pecorino that I happen to have in the fridge." Moving home is going to be a bit of a shock to my system.

I liked that the recipe could mostly be prepared ahead of time, and the little bundles just steamed right before you want to eat them.

Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy eating these. My primary problem was textural. It was too soft and mushy. Paired with the livery aftertaste, it was hard for me to swallow. I did eat my entire bundle over the course of several bites, and even finished the last bite a few minutes later, when my friend (who LOVED them) told me that I should try them again, because they'd cooled off a bit and firmed up to the perfect consistency. Not for me. I know I've eaten and enjoyed dishes in restaurants that included foie gras, but I didn't like this. Matt liked them at first, but after he ate two, he didn't like the aftertaste. Whataya gonna do?

FFwD: Next-Day Beef Salad

I couldn't quite wrap my brain around this week's French Fridays with Dorie recipe. Next-Day Beef Salad was created as a way to use up leftovers. Conveniently, I'd made a roast beef earlier in the week, so this used up the remainder.

Dice up the meat, then mix it together with a hodge-podge of refrigerator ingredients: tomatoes, capers, olives, red pepper, a tart apple, all mixed up with a mustard/mayo mixture, and served over lettuce (I used arugula). I also added cheese, because cheese improves any salad it touches. I like a thin smear of either mustard or mayo on a sandwich, so the thought of covering an entire salad in a combo of the two sounded kind of icky to me. Knowing this, I halved the dressing recipe.

Kind of tasted like deli pasta salad, which I hate. So why couldn't I stop eating it?

Even after eating it, I can't decide whether or not I liked it. I didn't think the dressing was great, but I did enjoy the crunchy/chewy/salty/sweet-tart elements, and that no two bites were exactly the same. I may play around with the dressing to tweak it to my liking, but this is a solid way to use up leftover meat. It certainly beats the hell out of simply reheating it.

I also have three makeups from this week.

Spice-Crusted Tuna was fine. I didn't love it. I didn't hate it. Part of my problem is that I got food poisoning from a piece of tuna a few months ago, and I've had an aversion to it since then. This aversion is also preventing me from making up any of the Dorie's recipes that involve raw fish. I'm not ready. ha! So, I don't think I ground up my spices enough. I don't really like getting mouthfuls of practically whole coriander. This was not the right time for me to try this recipe. I may cook it again in a year, and have a totally different response to it.

My side dish--Broccolini with Sweet Tahini Sauce (I think that's the name), from Plenty More, is DELICIOUS, though.

I expected to like Jerusalem Artichoke Soup, because I've enjoyed the majority of Dorie's soups, and nothing about this one struck me as a risk. I didn't expect to love it as much as I did. In the absence of fresh truffle to shave on top, as Dorie suggests in her bonne idee, I stirred some truffle cream stuff that I'd bought in Umbria into the soup. Oh, Nelly. In the interest of fairness, I tried the soup plain, and it was good, but this cream stuff (it was too solid to be a sauce. I'm not sure what to call it.) brought it to another level. The flavors were made for each other.

Not the prettiest plate of food.

Last, but definitely not least, I made the Veal Marengo from a few weeks ago. I'd planned to cook this on time. I'd bought the veal, and everything. But then life got in the way, the veal went in the freezer, and cooking went on the backburner. Happily, I finally had the chance to make it.

Ooh la la! This cow was born in France, and was killed when it was younger than 22 months. Very informative label.

The sauce from this dish is one of the best things I've ever eaten. I don't even need the meat. I want to put the sauce on everything I ever make, going forward. I always thought that I didn't like normal white mushrooms. Apparently, my mistake was that I wasn't cooking them in enough butter. I'm embarrassed to confess how many of them I ate directly out of the pan, but not nearly as many of them made it into the stew as I'd anticipated. I couldn't find small white onions, so I omitted them, and I had to use red wine instead of white, and still, this was just mind-blowingly delicious. It joined the ranks as one of my favorite recipes we've cooked from the book.

My only complaint would be that the meat was still kind of tough after the recommended cooking time. I don't think there was enough liquid in the pan to have cooked it much longer, though, so I'm not sure what the solution is. I'm afraid that adding extra liquid would mess with the glorious balance of this sauce. I don't really care, though. So, so good.

FFwD: Cote d'Azure Cure-All Soup

I'll admit that I wasn't remotely interested in cooking the Cote d'Azure Cure-All Soup from Around My French Table. On paper, 10 cloves of sliced garlic, steeped in chicken broth with herbs (sage, bay, and rosemary instead of thyme), then thickened with egg yolk and Parmesan, and drizzled with olive oil sounded, at best, boring, and at worst, nasty.

Charlie wouldn't taste it, but he was impressed by the polka dots.

I came down with a cold on Monday, and all of a sudden, this soup sounded like the only thing I wanted to eat. I don't know if you have to be sick to like it, but this was a surprise hit. It was cozy and comforting and, because of the thickening from the egg and cheese, soothed my throat. I loved it. It didn't cure my cold, but, for a few minutes, it made me less miserable. Good enough for me!

I can't believe that we only have 10 recipes left to cook from Around My French Table. It's blowing my mind. I don't think I'm going to manage to complete all of my make-ups--I have more desserts than my judgment thinks I should bake in three months, and there are some things (dilled gravlax, chicken liver gateaux, arman's caviar) that I flat-out refuse to make. Including those, I only have 22 to make up after this post, so I'm going to try my damnedest to get that number down. So, here are some make-ups:

I always thought of Orange and Olive Salad as being an Italian dish, so I was surprised to see it here. Because I've made what was basically the same recipe in my cooking class here in  Napoli, I stalled on making Dorie's version, because it's not one of my favorites. I put this together this week, and I don't know what went wrong, but by the time I was done, my oranges, which were extremely sweet on their own, tasted BITTER with the onions and olives. That didn't happen when I made it in cooking class. Maybe the type of olive I used changed the flavor. Regardless, neither Matt nor I enjoyed this.

In the same meal, I made Salty-Sweet Potato Far. This has a strange list of ingredients--grated potatoes, bacon, prunes, raisins, eggs, milk--but I like all of those things individually, so I was open to the idea of them coming together and creating something glorious.

Maybe I didn't use enough bacon (I cut up 3 strips), but this was underseasoned. For the first few bites, I couldn't figure out if I liked it, though I was leaning toward yes, for it's nursery-type blandness and bread-pudding texture. Halfway through my portion, I'd had enough. Matt thought he liked it, but a few hours later, he tried to eat a cold piece, and he said it was disgusting, which ruined it for him.

I didn't hate it, but I wouldn't make it again.

Vanilla Beans are Better Spent in Cake

I didn't deliberately coordinate this, but the Tuesdays with Dorie recipe and the French Fridays with Dorie recipes that I've made recently both involve vanilla beans.

First up, the Brown Butter and Vanilla Bean Weekend Cake from Baking, Chez Moi. This cake was really easy to throw together. The only problem was that I burned the first batch of browned butter and started over. Not that big of a deal, and an easy problem to solve.

I baked the cake to serve to my book club gals, and served it with barely-sweet whipped cream. I thought it was a bit dry without the whipped cream, but with it? SO delicious.

Hell yeah!

Last week's FFwD recipe from Around My French Table was Vanilla-Butter Braised Lobster. Unable to get my hands on lobster, I poached my bag of frozen shrimp in the vanilla butter. It was fine. I felt greasy after I ate it, though. I think eating all the little shrimp amounted to more surface area than a lobster tail would, so maybe I'd feel less disgusting if this was prepared as written. That said, the vanilla flavor was very subtle. I'm not sure it's the best use of a bean. I'd rather eat cake.

(The shrimp looked like shrimp. I didn't bother taking a picture.)

FFwD: Croquants

I've never heard of Croquants (pg 410 of Around My French Table) before, but it turns out they're one of the simplest cookies that I've ever made. Chop nuts. Mix with sugar. Stir in egg whites. You don't even have to whip the whites into a meringue or anything. Straight from the egg and into the batter. Then stir in a little flour. Then bake. That's it.

I used salted cashews, because Dorie says they're her family's favorite. Who am I to argue with the experts? I also added vanilla, because why not?

Hello, my lovelies.

I'm in real danger of eating the entire output of this recipe. Dorie says that they're defined by their crunch texture. The edges of mine are crunchy, but the middles are chewy, and this is what is causing me to devise excuses to pass through the kitchen and grab another.

The bottoms of the cookies on my second tray burned slightly. These are so simple that the slight burn ruined the cookies. I'm pretty happy that I could, in good conscious, throw half out.

The remainder have to go to work with Matt tomorrow, because I'll take them down if I'm left alone with them for too long. They're so light, I don't even feel like I'm eating anything. Trouble.

Conclusion: Love them. Too much.

Not Quite FFwD

I am having such a hard time keeping up/catching up with French Fridays with Dorie. This week's recipe was supposed to be a spice crusted tuna dish. Sounds good. I just didn't get there.

I have, however, made up a few old ones, which I promptly forget to blog about. I'm so irritatingly redundant. I apologize. I can't promise it won't happen again.

By substituting frozen shrimp for mussels, I managed to make last week's Curried Mussels out of items I had in my poorly-stocked kitchen after being in Siena for our 4-day weekend (Thanks, Martin Luther King, Jr.!) This was easy and totally delicious. I loved it. And it was easy enough to please everyone by cooking a few shrimp in butter on the side for Charlie. Shrimp is one of the few animal proteins he'll reliably eat. I really should cook them more often. This recipe will definitely be a repeat.

Before the holidays, I spotted Jerusalem artichokes at the Italian supermarket. I thought, "Ooh, I need to make up the 2 Dorie recipes soon!", but dawdled too long, and when I tried to find them, they were gone. However, I spotted one lonely package of them at the market last week, so I grabbed them, even though I couldn't remember what else went into the recipe for Roasted Jerusalem Artichokes with Garlic. Turns out, it's mostly just garlic and olive oil. Score. I had rosemary on-hand, but did not have thyme. No big deal. Due to their name, I shouldn't have been surprised that these sunflower tubers taste exactly like artichokes, but I was. I hate preparing artichokes, but really enjoy eating them. I'm on a new mission to substitute Jerusalem artichokes for every Italian preparation of artichoke that I've learned since I've been here. Next month's Italian cooking class involves a dish of artichoke, potato, and cheese, baked together in the oven. Sounds to me like that recipe was built for a Jerusalem artichoke substitution!!

A while back, I made the Warm Scallop Salad with Corn, Nectarines, and Basil. I had to use frozen shrimp, frozen corn, and frozen peaches. It was pretty flavorless. I hold it against my ingredients, not the recipe. If you don't have fresh food for this recipe, don't bother. 

I'm certain that I uploaded my pics to my computer, but they're not showing up. No time to sort it out right now. Charlie's 5th birthday is on Sunday, and there is much to be done. (FIVE??? HOW IS HE FIVE????)

FFwD: Beef and Dried Apricot Dutch Oven

Okay, so today's French Fridays with Dorie recipe is supposed to be Lamb and Dried Apricot Tagine. I knew I wasn't going to find the cut of lamb Dorie specifies, but I thought I could get my hands on some ground lamb, and use all the same ingredients, but treat it like Indian keema recipes that I've made. However, I couldn't find lamb. I grabbed ground beef, because I've made the aforementioned keema recipe with beef before, and it turned out fine. Not as good as lamb, but not bad. I had no idea if beef would work with the predominant flavors of this recipe--coriander and apricot. I'd planned to get back to the store this week to try and find some pork or veal to stew instead, but it didn't happen, so I returned to my ground beef plan.

It worked out fine. I'm 100% certain that it would be better as a lamb stew, per the recipe, but I really wanted to do something, to stick to the schedule. Once I fall behind, I stay behind.

I have no strong feelings about this recipe. Its biggest draw is that CHARLIE ATE IT. Well, he ate the meat and the rice. Good enough for me. I was shocked. After dinner, he found a stray coriander seed on my counter. He has a thing about seeds. He'll spit out an entire piece of fruit if he gets a seed in his mouth, and refuse to take another bite. I don't get it. He asked why I had a  seed on the counter. I told him it was in the meat--the meat that he liked. He said, "Oh, so you took this disgusting thing and made it yummy." Sure. I guess. Kid brains are weird. Ha!

My one gripe was that I could have broken up the coriander seeds more. I would prefer a rough grind, rather than "broken", in the future. I don't like chewing on the seeds. Maybe Charlie's on to something after all.

FFwD: Tartine de Viande des Grisons

Tartine de Viande des Grisons is a long and mysterious name for a simple tartine that the French Fridays with Dorie crew made this week. Bread? Check! Butter? Check! Bresaola? Check! Walnuts (or in my case, toasted almond slices)? Check! Olive oil? Check! That's it.

The deep red color of bresaola has often caught my attention at the supermarket here in Napoli, but I was never really tempted to buy it. I find the color off-putting. It's just SO red. I'm happy to have found this recipe, though, because it turns out to be delicious!

This is one of those recipes that tastes better than its individual parts seem to warrant. The butter, oil, and toasted nuts really pull the toast and meat together into one delicious bite of food.

Matt got home late from work the other day, so I put a tartine together for him while his soup re-heated. Instead of eating any soup, he turned the rest of the (sizeable) loaf of sourdough bread into tartines and devoured them all. Needless to say, we loved this. I thought it would be good, but I didn't anticipate how good!

FFwD: Butternut Squash and Chestnut Soup

This week's French Fridays with Dorie recipe is Beatrix's Red Kuri Soup. I had to google red kuri squash, because I had no idea what it was. After seeing pictures of it, I knew I was going to have to come up with an alternate plan, because I'd never seen that squash here in Napoli. They have other squashes, but nothing that looks like red kuri.

Fortunately, Dorie provides a bonne idee in the sidebar that butternut squash and chestnuts can mimic the flavor of red kuri. Weird. Weird, and convenient. I already had a butternut squash in the house, and I currently own more roasted, peeled chestnuts than I will ever know what to do with. I still have to catch up on the Pear and Chestnut Soup, so I ordered the vacuum-sealed chestnuts on amazon. I could only get a 4-pack, and I didn't realize that 20 oz bags are huge.

This would be a good spot for me to request all of your favorite chestnut recipes. Really. What am I going to do with all of these???

Unfortunately, my digital scale ran out of batteries. I eyeballed what I thought 7 ounces might be. I think I added way too many chestnuts.

No, grazie.

I wanted to like this soup, so that I could use up the rest of my chestnut supply on it, but I really don't. There's no strong flavor, apart from the sort of muddy taste of the chestnuts. If you blindfolded me, I'd never guess there was butternut squash in there.

Not much else to say. It's better with the chopped apples that she suggests as a topping, but that's only because the apples provide a bit of texture and much-needed flavor.

I'm not a fan.

I'm posting this early, because we're heading to Vienna on Thursday. Yahooo! 

Baking, Chez Moi: Cranberry Crackle Tart

Keeping Thanksgiving timeliness in mind, the Tuesdays with Dorie crew selected Cranberry Crackle Tart (pg 135, Baking, Chez Moi) for this week's recipe.

I was excited when I read through the recipe, because it sounded like a version of a pavlova. I have a friend from New Zealand who makes me "a pav" every few years when I manage to swing a visit , because I love it so. Tart cranberries mixed into what looks like a pav-ish meringue topping? Yes, please!

The Sweet Tart Dough was easy to handle. I love Dorie's suggestion to roll out pie dough while it's still soft, and then refrigerate or freeze it. I used this method on her galette dough recipe for my Thanksgiving pies (we celebrated last weekend), and it worked beautifully. Unfortunately, I didn't love the actual flavor of the crust as much as my standard pie dough, which comes from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. His dough is a BEAST to work with, and absolutely was too crumbly to cooperate with Dorie's rolling-while-soft technique. We preferred the flavor and texture of the crust of the one pie that got the Bittman treatment, which made me sad, because I'd make pies a lot more often if a recipe that's as easy to use as Dorie's galette recipe produced my perfect crust. I've wandered off on a tangent. Where was I? Oh yeah...

Pre-baked sweet tart dough crust, then a layer of strawberry jam, topped with the cranberry-jeweled meringue. I was afraid that my meringue wasn't going to cover the surface area, but it turned out to be the exact right amount. Bake it for an hour until it's peaks turn beautifully golden, and voila! Fairly easy for an impressive looking dessert.

I brought this tart to a friend's house, and we inhaled it. Everyone was impressed that the meringue was sweet enough to keep the cranberries from being unpleasantly tart, but not so sweet that it tasted like candy. The overall effect was of a really light dessert that you could easily eat multiple slices of without wanting to explode.

I loved it. This one has definitely earned a spot in our Fall/Winter holiday repertoire.

Baking Chez Moi: Palets de Dames, Lilles Style, Take 2

I am super duper excited that Dorie's new book, Baking Chez Moi, has finally been published, and I'm thrilled to bake through it from the start with the Tuesdays with Dorie group. One of these days, I'll even get to hold the book in my hands and look at it. It is currently sitting in the military mail system.

What was a little less exciting to me was that the very first recipe chosen was for Palets de Dames, Lilles Style, which I baked two weeks ago when the French Fridays with Dorie gang celebrated Dorie's birthday. I understand and appreciate that TWD chose a recipe that was available online so that people who don't have a book yet (ahem, me) could bake along, but it did make my first foray into the book a bit less exciting.

It's week 1 of the new group! First recipe from the book! There's no way I was going to sit this one out, just because I posted about these so recently.

Last time, I stuck to the recipe. This time, I decided to play with flavor a bit. I replaced the vanilla in the batter with almond extract, and replaced the icing's lemon juice with orange zest and juice. Charlie had just as much fun decorating on Round 2 as he did the first time.

The cookie and the icing were separately delicious, but the flavors competed when eaten together. Don't get me wrong, they're not bad. Next time--and these are so easy to make that there will be a next time--I'll either do a vanilla cookie with the orange icing, or an almond cookie with a vanilla icing. I'm pretty sure I'll work my way through all my extracts on these cookies. Hmmm...peppermint icing for the holidays? Yes, please.

Reasons to Celebrate with Dorie

October marks several Dorie-related occasions--it's Dorie's birthday, it's French Fridays with Dorie's 4th anniversary, and Dorie's new baking book (Baking Chez Moi) comes out. Woohoo! To celebrate, the Doristas were given three recipes from the new book and told to pick one.

I went with Palets des Dames, Lilles Style, which is a fancy name for a simple and delicious cookie that I've never heard of. Charlie helped me bake the cookies, and it turns out to be a perfect recipe for kid participation because there are only a few basic steps, no expensive ingredients, and includes an icing that begs to be dyed colors and/or coated in sprinkles. These cookies bake up with a little bit of a dome, and have a texture that's closer to cake than cookies, so they're nice and sturdy. Not one fell apart after being handled by my overzealous 4-year-old.

 I thought I measured the batter properly, but I only got 24 cookies, instead of 40. I also needed to make two batches of icing to coat all the cookies. Minor complaint. With a touch of vanilla in the batter and a touch of lemon juice in the icing, these are the perfect match for a cup of tea.

Charlie and I had a lot of fun baking these together. Halfway through decorating them, he threw his arms around my neck and exclaimed that he was "so happy!" He kills me with how sweet he is sometimes. He may have been a difficult infant, but he's becoing a pretty incredible kid. Thanks for the memory, Dorie. I'm sure it's the first of many I'll associate with Baking Chez Moi.

Check out the links of the other participants, and the other recipes we had to choose from. I could sure go for some Brown Butter Peach Tourte right about now.

Mini Cannelés

• Liz from That Skinny Chick Can Bake
• Adriana from Great Food 360º
• Gaye from Laws of the Kitchen
• Sanya from Kitchen Therapy
• Mardi from eat.live.travel.write
• Kathy from Bakeaway with Me
• Christy from Confessions of a Culinary Diva
• Tricia and Nana from Tricia and Nana Cooking with Dorie
• Katie from Prof Who Cooks

Chocolate Cream Puffs with Mascarpone Filling

• Mardi from eat.live.travel.write
• Cher from The Not So Exciting Adventures of a Dabbler
• Kathy from Bakeaway with Me

Paletes de Dames, Lille Style

• Tammy from Chez Nous
• Mary from Lights on Bright No Brakes
• Betsy from A Plateful of Happiness
• Rosa from One Expat's Life
• Teresa from One Wet Foot
• Diane from Cafe Mom Cooks
• Susan from Create Amazing Meals
• Emily from Emily's Cooking Foray
• Eileen from Cookbook Immersion Project

Brown Butter-Peach Tourte

• Christy from Confessions of a Culinary Diva
• Cher from The Not So Exciting Adventures of a Dabbler
• Teresa from One Wet Foot
• Margaret from Tea and Scones
• Alice from A Mama, Baby & Shar-Pei in the Kitchen