Wrapping Up and Up Next

This month flew by quite pleasantly, cooking-wise. There were some duds, but I'm happy with most of the recipes I've tried from Ellie Krieger's The Food You Crave. I wouldn't call it health food, but healthier food. She uses whole grains and lots of vegetables and puts the more caloric ingredients--cheese, nuts, etc--up front so that it's what your eye sees first. I've said before that this is one of my most-used cookbooks, and that statement stands. My old favorites (Macaroni with Four Cheeses, Roasted Pork Loin, Balsamic Chicken with Baby Spinach and Couscous) still hold up, and I've found some tasty new recipes to add into my rotation. I feel sufficiently detoxed from the holidays, and I think that the general greaselessness of Ellie's recipes helped.

I'm a little concerned that by not revisiting many of my perennial favorites, I may have provided a skewed impression of this cookbook's offerings. Over the years, I've tested many of the recipes that most enticed me, and haven't mentioned them here: Fish Tacos with Chipotle Cream? Amazing. Baked Shrimp with Tomatoes and Feta? So good, and easy. Lemon Chicken Soup with Orzo? Cozy perfection.

I strongly recommend this book. I feel good cooking from it because the food is healthy, but don't feel deprived, like I'm cooking diet food. Some of the meals err on the side of bland, but it's nothing that can't be fixed with a tweaking of the spices.

For me, it's a keeper.

I've also decided to call it quits on David Lebovitz's Ready for Dessert, primarily because I need to stop thinking about dessert so much. With this book on my mind, it's very difficult not to bake constantly, because everything looks delicious. The recipes are pretty flawless. I loved 11, I liked 14, and only 3 were just okay. I hated 1. Those are amazing results. I want to try plenty of more recipes in this book, but I'm too preoccupied with their deliciousness and need to shelve it. There's an entire ice cream section that I couldn't test out, because I don't own an ice cream machine. They look gooood, though.

If you like to bake, you need this book. If you know someone who likes to bake, you need to buy them this book. Without doubt, a keeper.

So, moving on.

This month, I'll focus on Nigella Lawson's How to Eat.

I love Nigella's easy attitude and her philosophy that cooking and good eating shouldn't be stressful. This particular book--her first--is a very annoying format. There's no organization, and huge chunks of text. I like a bit of personality in my cookbooks, but I don't want to scour chunks of text to find the recipe I want. Real recipes are titled in pink, but there are other recipes within pages of chatty essays that are identified by gray headings out in the margin. This book is hard on my eyes. It doesn't make me want to cook.

This book features a lot of stews and roasts. Cold weather food, in other words. I kept putting this book off because it's so hot here, but I've decided to explore it now, because I'm pretty sure this is as cold as it's going to get this winter. It's going to be 78 degrees tomorrow. Oy.

Also, I'm replacing Ready for Dessert in my long term projects with Jennifer Reese's Make the Bread, Buy the Butter: What You Should and Shouldn't Cook From Scratch.

Jennifer writes the wonderful blog The Tipsy Baker. I love her, and I mentally refer to her as "Tipsy." I'll try to refrain from calling her that here. In her book, she set out to determine what foods are worth making instead of buying, in terms of cost and difficulty. I've made it a long term project, because most of the recipes are for components, rather than whole meals. So, it's food like breads and cheeses and cured meats (I'm not sure I'm that brave. We'll see.), etc. There are some full recipes, but not many. Her book is funny, with essays about her adventures trying to raise chickens and goats and ducks. As opposed to Nigella's book, I don't mind the essays here, because everything is clearly sectioned out and labeled.

I'm excited to start. Yahoo!

Things that Make Me Go "Mmmmm."

Ellie has found seafood redemption. After last night's crabcake bomb, I was a little hesitant to waste more expensive local seafood on her recipes, but I took my chances on Shrimp Scampi with Artichokes (pg 237 of The Food You Crave), because I'd already bought the ingredients.

The most time-consuming part of this recipe is shelling the shrimp. All you do is soften shallots and garlic in oil for a few minutes, then add the shrimp, white wine, lemon juice, frozen or canned artichoke hearts. Right at the end, add salt, pepper, and parsley.

Come to me, my lovely shrimp.

Conclusion: Loved it. This was great. Not okay, not good, but great. Easy and flavorful. Just about perfect. And, Charlie ate two shrimp. Woop woop!

My friend missed Charlie (they adore each other), so she invited us over for a lunch of tasty Persian food on Saturday so she could spend time with him. I had spare apples from that pie I didn't make over the holidays, so I made a recipe from David Lebovitz's Ready for Dessert that caught my eye the very first time I flipped through the book: Buckwheat Cake with Cider-Poached Apples (pg. 44).

Pulverized almonds are mixed in with the buckwheat flour, so the nuttiness really complements the cozy flavor of the buckwheat flour. On its own, the cake was good. With the poached apples, this dessert was three-thousand times more delicious. 3,000 is the result of a scientific calculation. My only small qualm is that Lebovitz says to spoon the apples and syrup over the cake. The problem is that the "syrup" is more juicy than it is syrupy, so it made the cake soggy. I prefer the apples and a slight drizzle of juice on the side.

Conclusion: Loved it. Buckwheat + almonds + apples = hearty perfection. Plus, Charlie really seems to enjoy buckwheat. He ate a lot of this cake.

Wow, that's two recipes in one post that included the word "perfect." Good stuff.

A New Favorite

Wilted Spinach Salad with Feta, Olives, and Lemon Vinaigrette from Perfect Vegetables is so good that I've made it twice in the past week. Matt requested it the second time, and my friend who was over for dinner exclaimed "This salad is amazing!" Pretty high praise, all around. Quick question, though: should it be called a vinaigrette if it has no vinegar? Hmmmm.

From the title, I expected this to be like any other Greek salad. The key is that you sautee a shallot, garlic, oregano, salt, pepper, and sugar in oil until the shallot is softened, and then swirl in some lemon juice. Pour the oil on the spinach, add olives and feta, and presto! I expected the spinach to wilt more, but I'm glad it didn't. It wilts just enough to not feel like you're eating raw spinach, but not so much that it's soft or mushy in any way.

Deceptively simple.

Conclusion: Loved it. Twice.

With the spinach (the first time), I made Broiled Eggplant with Herbed Goat Cheese (pg 100). Matt, who doesn't like eggplant, thought this was great. I liked it, but I wish I'd just gotten normal goat cheese instead of a lemon one. Lemon seemed like it would work with the rest of the flavors (mint, basil, and garlic are mixed into the cheese), but something about it was too tangy for me. It's possible that I still wouldn't have loved it with normal goat cheese, anyway, but I choose to blame the lemon.

My mom visited this weekend, so I wanted to make something easy but special for dessert. Chocolate Pots de Creme (page 120 of Ready for Dessert) worked out perfectly. Mom said it "tasted like Easter," and after I took a bite, I knew exactly what she meant. Pure, dense, unadulterated chocolate. Personally, I prefer the texture and process of making a mousse more than these, so that's what I'll probably stick to in the future, but I'm glad I tried this. Matt and I split the leftover serving last night. It had thickened up considerably, so that I felt like I was eating a tub of icing.

Conclusion: Liked it. Very rich and filling, though.

Cookie Caper

Matt's office had a "Cookie Caper" today, which isn't as exciting as it sounds. It's just lunch, and everyone brings cookies. Between that and book club tonight (I've become the unofficial dessert girl), I decided to bake two kinds of cookies yesterday, and send half of both batches to each event.

I admit, I stuck with safe choices from Ready for Dessert, since these were leaving the house, so there were no surprise flavor combinations or anything. My selections were based on the fact that I really wanted to try the cookies, and really didn't want to eat the entire batch, because the calorie count on each must be astronomical.

First, I made Chocolate Chocolate-Chip Cookies (pg 187). Oh my lord. Lebovitz doesn't mess around when it comes to chocolate. Start with a pound of bittersweet chocolate, melt it with butter, mix it with eggs and a scant 1/2 cup of flour so that you're able to call this a cookie instead of a chocolate bar. Then, for good measure, add 2 cups of chocolate chips. The recipe also calls for pecans, but I omitted them to avoid potential nut allergy problems.

These are heavy cookies. They look like normal cookies, but are hefty in your hand. They're rich enough that I couldn't eat more than two of them. Even the next day, they seem melty.

What's cookin', good lookin'?

My only complaint was with the baking time. Lebovitz says to cook them for nine minutes, until slightly firm around the edges. I did, and the first round was very difficult to get off the cookie sheets. Too mushy in the middle. Charlie distracted me for the second round, so they got an extra two minutes of baking, and they were much easier to move. Minor complaint, and one I chalk up to my oven temp.

Melty goodness.

Conclusion: Liked it. Too rich and heavy to make and keep around the house, but a nice cookie to serve at a party or to bring to a pot luck.

Second, I made Peanut Butter Cookies (pg 194). I forgot how much I like a good peanut butter cookie. The dough was crumbly and hard to work with, but the cookies came out soft, with just the right amount of sweetness. I did skip the step of rolling them in sugar, because I know from experience that I prefer them not to be. These came out just right.

Have to admit, I'll be happy when the last of these are out of my house.

Conclusion: Liked it. I've eaten way too many of these since last night.

Sweets, Mostly

My stick-to-the-vegetable-book plan didn't work out all that well over the past week. My in-laws were in town for Thanksgiving, and Matt wound up cooking most days. I intended to make Perfect Vegetables' recipe for candied sweet potatoes for Thanksgiving, but as I was about to get started, I read the instructions closer and realized that they wanted me to stir it every five minutes for 50 minutes. Opening the oven door every five minutes seemed like it would be very bad for my turkey, so I switched gears and just mashed the sweet potatoes instead. So much for my plans.

My French Fridays with Dorie efforts were a flop this week, too. This was a free choice week, so I planned to cook the duck breast recipe from a few weeks ago, since supposedly my supermarket would now have them. I'd like to note that only one other person in the FFwD universe had a problem getting duck breasts. What the frig? They're only seasonal in Texas? ANYway, I was told that they'd definitely be at the store by this past Monday. I went this morning, and they once again had no idea what I was asking for.
Me: I was told you'd have them as of Monday.
Lady butcher: Then they must have just had them for thanksgiving.
Me: So you sold duck breast for a total of four days?
Lady butcher: Yes.
Me: Really?
LB: I don't know.

She then called a dude over.

LB: She wants duck breast.
Man Butcher: Turkey breast?
LB: Duck breast.
Man Butcher: Turkey breast?
Me: DUUUUCK BREAST. You were supposed to get it in on Monday.
MB: We have frozen ones.
Me: I know. I don't want a whole bird.
MB: You need a whole bird. Their breasts are only this big. (Holds hands into a small circle.)
Me: Duck breasts are bigger than chicken breasts. OH FORGET IT.

I give up. Someday, if I run across duck, I'll try this recipe.

Moving on...

The one thing I did make from Perfect Vegetables this week was Roasted Parsnips with Warm Spices (pg 178). The parsnips are mixed up with melted butter, allspice, nutmeg, ginger, and honey, and roasted. They were good, but I expected them to be a little sweeter and stickier. I guess the honey altered my expectation for how it would turn out. They were pretty dry, and burned more than I would like on the bottom. The instructions say to shake the pan halfway through. I stirred everything up instead, but they still burned.

Conclusion: I liked them, I'll just have to monitor them more closely and play around with the seasoning a bit more next time.

My mother-in-law loves biscotti, so I baked up David Lebovitz's Almond and Chocolate Chunk Biscotti (pg. 216 of Ready for Dessert). Slicing them after partially baking them was difficult, because there is so much chocolate included that it got melty and pieces crumbled off. Turned out perfectly in the end, though. They're great dunked in coffee. On their own, not so great.

Conclusion: Loved them.

Because two pies didn't seem like enough for Thanksgiving, I also made Lebovitz's Maple-Walnut Pear Cake (pg 35). Cinnamon upside-down cake with maple syrup, pears, and walnut baked into the top. YUM.

Conclusion: Liked it.

Lastly, and most tragically, I baked Dorie's Caramel Pumpkin Pie (pg 322 of Baking) instead of my normal pumpkin pie. Sounds good, right? It was awful. She says to make a very dark caramel, and warns that you'll think you've gone too far, but you haven't. I believe I made the caramel just as I was meant to, but between it and two tablespoons of rum, the mere one cup of pumpkin imparted no flavor. This tasted like a bitter rum pie. Now I need to bake a normal pumpkin pie to make up for it.

That's not burned. It was that dark even before I cooked it.

Conclusion: Disliked. All my guests said it was okay, but no one ate more than a sliver.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

Their Problem is Hyperbolic Labeling

I think part of what bugs me with the ATK/CI crew is their over-inflated sense of self. They don't just publish a book of International Recipes. It has to be "Best International Recipes." They don't just publish a book of vegetables. It has to be "Perfect Vegetables." I judge them more harshly because of this than I would if the book were simply called "Vegetables," or even "Great Vegetables." If you promise me perfection, you better produce perfection. Anyway.

This'll be quick as I can make it, though I do have a number of things to catch up on. Things have slowed down on the nanowrimo front, about which I'm not happy, but it felt like things were running away from me over here, so I just want to catch up real quick, while Charlie is babbling in his crib instead of napping.

The Master Recipe for Oven Fries (pg 229) produced dried out, thin-cut fries. It was a promising concept. Their technique is to steam, then oil, then bake. I like my fries crispy on the outside and mushy on the inside. A baked potato has more moisture in it than these bad boys. Bad.

Conclusion: As far as fries go, hated them. I mean, I still ate them, but this is a terrible oven fry recipe.

Those fries look better than they were.

However, with it, I served Sauteed Shredded Zucchini with Sweet Corn and Chives (pg 315). Sweet, a little buttery, with a nice, mild oniony flavor from the chives and shallot. Yum. Seems like a good way to get zucchini into a kid, because it's sort of just in the background to the corn. Assuming your kid will eat corn, that is, which mine will not. I'll keep trying this one on Charlie. Someday, he's bound to taste it.

Conclusion: Liked it.

However you imagine Orecchiette (Penne, for me) with Broccoli, Sausage, and Roasted Peppers (pg 44) to taste is, I'm sure, accurate. I made this because it was easy. It was fine, but nothing that I'd ever crave.

I was starving. No time for a glamor shot.

Conclusion: Just okay.

Last night, I made Roasted Winter Squash with Soy and Maple (pg 309). Personally, I loved this. In the last five minutes of roasting, the cut side of the squash is smeared with a combo of soy sauce, maple syrup, and grated ginger. The result seems to amplify the butternut squash's natural flavor and sweetness, without actually tasting like soy or maple or ginger. However, Charlie spit it out and Matt hated it (hehe, that one's for you, Stacy.) From the odd motion Matt was making with his mouth, I think his problem was one of texture, not taste. He can neither confirm nor deny if he's ever had butternut squash in anything but soup form. I doubt he'd like any roasted version.

Conclusion: I loved it, and that's what counts. This can be my Matt's-out-of-town vegetable.

Lastly, when I saw all the bundt cakes that bloggers baked for Mary the Food Librarian's National Bundt Day, I wanted to play too. It was after the fact, but I baked Polenta Cake with Olive Oil and Rosemary (pg 58) from David Lebovitz's Ready For Dessert. The recipe calls for six teaspoons of minced rosemary. I used a substantial amount less, because my poor, pathetic little plant just didn't have that much to offer. The rosemary flavor in mine was there, and you'd be able to identify it, but it was nice and subtle. I may have found the flavor overwhelming if I'd used the required amount. I very much enjoyed the match-up of almond extract with rosemary. I never would have thought to put those two flavors together, but it worked nicely.

Matt insists on calling it corn bread. I think the almond throws it, so you wouldn't want to eat it with a bowl of chili, but otherwise, yeah. It's a nicer-crumbed corn bread. Like Lebovitz's Pistachio Cardamom Cake, this seems like more of a breakfast or tea sweet to me. It's not the type of thing that I want when I'm craving dessert. Still tastes good, though.

Conclusion: Liked it.

FFwD: Pumpkin Stuffed with Everything Good

When I told Matt we were having Pumpkin Stuffed with Everything Good (pg 364 of Around My French Table) for dinner, the semi-annoyed look on his face revealed his suspicions that I was not-so-smoothly masking a recipe that fills pumpkin with liver and maggots.

"Everything good? Like what?" he asked slowly. For a split second, I was tempted to list all his most loathed foods. "Oh, don't worry, honey, I just threw beets, mushrooms, cottage cheese, crappy chocolate, and mango into a pumpkin and let her bake." Instead I told him the truth: bread and cheese and bacon, lots of garlic and scallions and cream. "Oh," he said. "That is all good."

Boy, was it ever! It's the comfiest of comfort foods.

 Dorie suggest several methods of serving this. I went with the option to scrape the pumpkin flesh into its lovely molten filling, mix it all up, and scoop it into bowls. It didn't look pretty by the time I was done with it, but it tasted amazing. I'm sad that it took me 31 years to find this recipe. I'm already thinking of variations I want to try next time. For one thing, I think I'd prefer sweet sausage instead of bacon, because bacon is best when it's crispy, and this was pretty flacid after its two-hour bath in cream and pumpkin juice. Toasted pecans would be awesome, as would dried cranberries and apples and corn bread and corn, and the list goes on and on.

Matt wants to serve this with Thanksgiving dinner. If I had two ovens, I'd agree. I don't see any workable way to cook this and a turkey and have them both be finished at the same time. I'll definitely be serving this during Thanksgiving week, though. In fact, I may be serving this once every week while pumpkins are in season.

Dorie says it's better to eat this fresh than to have leftovers. Perhaps that's true, but the leftovers are still pretty damn good.

Conclusion: LOVE IT.

For book club last night, I baked Lime-Marshmallow Pie (pg 77 of Ready for Dessert). It was good, but there were a number of things I would change about it. For one thing, three tablespoons of melted butter was not enough to moisten 1.5 cups of graham cracker crumbs. It looked dry to me, but I thought maybe when I pre-baked the crust, the butter would melt and fuse the crumbs together, so I didn't add more. In the finished product, there was a thick layer of loose graham cracker crumbs under the pie.

It looked so pretty before I cut it.

The ratio of crust to filling seemed off. The lime custard did not go very far. I would prefer more lime custard and less graham cracker.

The marshmallow topping tasted good (homemade marshmallows always do, though, don't they?), but it was extraordinarily difficult to slice. Between the un-crusty crust, the invisible custard, and the way the marshmallow stuck to the knife, these slices win no awards for presentation.

Yikes.

Conclusion: Don't get me wrong, this did taste good. There was only one slice left by the end of the night. However, I would be very surprised if the crust was supposed to come out as it did, and the custard was completely dwarfed by the graham and the marshmallow. When I eat a pie, I think that most of my bites should include filling. More often than not, I found myself rolling marshmallow in the crumbs, without any custard to be found. I'm going to label this one Just Okay.

365: No Repeats: Everything-Crusted Chicken Rolls Stuffed with Scallion Cream Cheese

Everything-Crusted Chicken Rolls Stuffed with Scallion Cream Cheese (pg 245) is a take-off on an everything bagel. The idea appealed to my obsession with all things bagel, and it seemed kind of whimsical, so I gave it a go. Chicken coated in poppy, sesame, onion flakes, and kosher salt? How could it be bad? (Actually, the recipe didn't call for the kosher salt. I added it anyway. Anyone who knows anything about an everything bagel knows that big flakes of salt are key. Consider yourself schooled, Rachael.)

The bagel accoutrements are mixed with breadcrumbs (I used panko). Smear scallion cream cheese on the chicken, roll it up, flour it, egg it, breadcrumb it, fry it.

I worried that this wouldn't cook through, since they were thick when rolled up. I filled the pan halfway with oil, and they cooked nicely on the inside by the time they were golden and crispy on the outside.

Conclusion: Matt and I both liked this a lot. It's a tasty, fun take on breadcrumb chicken. Yum.

I think I'm trying to conjure Fall by baking. Weather-wise, it's not working, but it sure is making my mouth happy. I'd bought fresh pecans at the farmer's market a few weeks back, and have been daydreaming about Lebovitz's Brown Sugar-Pecan Shortbread cookies (pg 198 of Ready for Dessert) ever since.

Cookies in photo are smaller than they appear.

Matt thinks they taste like Christmas cookies (as if that's a reason to dismiss them), but that's only because both our mothers make pecan sandies/snowballs for the holidays. My mom calls hers "slugs" and gives them antennae. Ha! These shortbread cookies do not have antennae, but I have to say I like them better than either of our mother's cookies (don't tell!). The texture is more of a solid biscuit than a crumbly cookie. Toasting the pecans amp up their flavor, and the whole thing is buttery and rich. It's a good thing I froze half of the batter, because I could single-handedly eat the whole batch.

Lebovitz suggests dipping the cookies in bittersweet chocolate. You won't hear me say this about many desserts, but I don't think chocolate has any place on these cookies. They're perfect, just as they are.

Conclusion: Love. True love.

Unrest in the Realm of Ray

Things are not going well at all. If these end-results continue in this vein, it will be proof-positive that tastes change over the years. Remember when I commended RR for not being afraid of spice? Nix that. It's hard to muster the interest to blog about lousy recipes, much as I'm sure it's hard to muster the interest to read about them, so I won't linger long on any one disaster.

Oh, and this book's format is driving me INSANE. I jot down the page # of the recipes I plan to cook on my grocery list so I can go back and find them when I'm ready to cook, but the list inevitably finds its way into the trash after the first or second meal, and then I have to scan the index to find the recipe I planned to make. Super annoying. Moving on...

The least offensive dish of the lot, Ricotta Pasta with Zucchini, Garlic, and Mint (pg 171 of 365: No Repeats) tasted even blander than you would expect from the title. I picked this because I had half a container of ricotta that needed a meal to call home. I used the whole pack of mint, but the flavor was still very light. I barely tasted garlic, even though I used extra. Snooze-fest.

Conclusion: Just okay. I'd only make this again if I had all of the ingredients wasting away in my fridge.

Now, welcome to the danger zone.

Creamy Broccoli Soup with Cheddar and Chive Toast (pg 149) was inedible. I think the liquid-to-solid ratio was off, because blend as I might, this never coalesced into a lovely, soupy puree. It was a solid pile of mush with some puddles. This was frozen chopped broccoli. It shouldn't be hard to puree. Ignoring the texture, it didn't even taste good. To finish the soup, you're instructed to add lemon zest and juice to the creamed soup. This gave it an unpleasant sour flavor. Bad. Just bad. All I ate was the toast, which had chives, bacon, and cheddar melted on top.

Conclusion: Yuck. Hated it.

Dinner last night was no better. Involtini all'Enotec'Antica with Gnocchi (pg 166) sounded interesting. Meatball-stuffed radicchio leaves simmer in a thick tomato/wine/beef stock sauce until the meat is cooked through. Polish stuffed cabbage is delicious, so I thought this would be similar, and worth trying. Wrong.

The meatballs tasted like any other meatball you've ever had. Cooking them this way didn't impact the flavor.

Radicchio, in my opinion, needs to be used in small doses, and balanced with a sweeter flavor to counter its bitterness. It's too harsh to be eaten in big chunks at a time.

Matt asked what in the world I'd done to the sauce, because it tasted like Chef Boyardee. He was 100% right.

Conclusion: Hated it. I'm also giving up on gnocchi until I find myself in a restaurant that specializes in it. I've never liked it. Every time I've ordered it, or, in this case, boiled up the store-bought version, I get dense dough-bombs. On Top Chef and assorted other food-related programming, I've heard gnocchi described as light and pillowy. I'll give it the benefit of the doubt that it CAN be good, but I'm not wasting my time on it until I find a version with a reputation of excellence.

To pull myself out of my food doldrums last night, I threw together Very Spicy Baked Pears with Caramel (pg 107) from Ready for Dessert. It was exactly what I needed: easy to make, complex flavors, and all the ingredients were things I had on-hand. All you do is mix melted butter, brown sugar, rum, and a smashed medley of cloves, cinnamon, star anise, and black peppercorns, and bake. This smelled sooooo good when it was baking. Once the pears are cooked, remove them. Pour the spices and drippings into a skillet, add cream, and cook until you have caramel. I've never made caramel before, and I think I could have left it on to thicken up a little more, but I was afraid I'd ruin it. Next time, I'll wait longer.

 I have no problem with the standard Fall spice mix of cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg, but I was pleased that the omission of nutmeg and the addition of star anise, pepper, and rum changed the flavor enough to make it both familiar and surprising at the same time.

Conclusion: Liked it. It cries out for a scoop of vanilla ice cream, though.

365: No Repeats: Oregon-Style Pork Chops, etc.

I have absolutely no interest in Twitter, and the extent of my knowledge of it is that each tweet can only be 140 characters. I would be unable to tweet the full name of the recipe I cooked for tonight's dinner. It's 16 characters too long. (Do spaces count? If space count, this comes to 181 characters). It is--ahem-- Oregon-Style Pork Chops with Pinot Noir and Cranberries; Oregon Hash with Wild Mushrooms, Greens, Beets, Hazelnuts, and Blue Cheese; Charred Whole-Grain Bread with Butter and Chives (pg 14). Good lord. Is it really necessary to list every ingredient in the title??

There was way too much going on here. All the flavors zeroed each other out. This really didn't taste like much. Odd. 

Conclusion: Just okay. I wouldn't bother making this one again, especially since I used every pan we own. Though it is an antioxidant powerhouse, between the beets and the kale.

Dessert was Creamy Rice Pudding (pg 138 of Ready for Dessert). You know how people had to stop throwing rice at weddings because pigeons would overeat the dry rice and then die when it expanded in their stomachs? I feel like one of those pigeons. It huuuuuuurts. 

Rum raisins, why have you betrayed me?

Hot out of the pan, this pudding was perfect. Hours later, it had hardened into a concrete block. It's made with arborio rice and slow cooked in milk, sugar, and a vanilla pod and bean. They always say you need to eat risotto as soon as it's done. Lebovitz should have said the same for this. Granted, he does advise to add more milk and warm it up again if it gets too thick. I didn't realize how dense it would be until after I was finished.

Conclusion: The vanilla flavor was lovely, and I liked how each piece of rice retained its own chewy identity. Compiled with the density, though, it was way too heavy. Matt said, "This is the best rice pudding gum I ever had." Sounds just about right. I'm going to have to give this a Just Okay.

Ready for Dessert: Apple-Frangipane Galette

Saturday, some friends came over for a German feast. That's my favorite kind of feast, because it means Matt's doing the cooking. Ha! I was tempted to make my Mom's apple strudel recipe, but I didn't feel like putzing about with filo dough, so I picked the Apple-Frangipane Galette recipe from Ready For Dessert instead. It seemed like it shared strudel's spirit.

This was a three part recipe, but it was still easy to make. The galette dough only has to chill for a half hour, so by the time I was done preparing the frangipane (which is almond paste processed with an egg, almond extract, rum, butter, and a few other things until it's as creamy as possible) and peeling and slicing the apples, I could move right into rolling out the dough.

Roll the dough into a big circle, spread the frangipane on top, dump the apples on in an even layer, leaving a border of crust to fold up over the apples, then sprinkle the whole shebang with sugar. I must have had a crack in my crust somewhere, because a giant pool of precious frangipane leaked out. I'd assumed apple juices had overflowed, so I was aggravated to discover it was my delicious almond paste.

I order you to get back in your crust, frangipane!!

I'd hoped that there would be a stronger interplay between the almond and apple flavors. It's possible that it lost some oomph by leaking a puddle of paste onto the baking sheet, but the almond flavor was very subtle. In one way, it's a compliment, because it really allowed the flavor of the apples to shine through, with nothing to season them except sugar. Part of me missed the cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves, but I kept telling myself that this was not an apple pie, and I shouldn't compare the two. Still, given the choice, I think I'd rather eat a pie.

Also, the crust was kind of doughy. It didn't crisp up or turn flaky. Bummer.

Conclusion: Liked it.

It's a testament to the quality of Lebovitz's recipes that my standards have gotten so high that I'm complaining about this at all. This galette was not my favorite recipe in the book, but it was still pretty good. In the interest of clearing out the fridge, I had to finish the last slice just now. I twisted my own arm.

We're trying to eat our way through a mountain of leftovers, so I won't cook a new RR recipe until at least tomorrow. I forgot that her measurements create enough food to feed a battalion. I'll need to halve them from now on.

A Few Good Ones

I've been too busy jumping in circles at the news that I'm moving to Naples to stop and blog. My calves will look awesome by the time I calm down. I've managed to stand still long enough to cook a few things, so I'll play a quick catch-up now.

Sam Choy's Southpoint Chowder (pg 16 of Hawai'i Cuisine) was everything you'd want a seafood chowder to be: creamy, stuffed with critters (mussels, tilapia, shrimp, scallops, and bacon), and with the right amount of starch--in this case, white potato, sweet potato, and corn--to get just a bit with every bite of fish. This chowder perfectly balanced the sweet flavors with the fishy.

Conclusion: Loved it. Simple to make (since I used store-bought fish stock, instead of making my own), delicious, and filling. Oh, and it's Charlie-approved. For unknown reasons, he now refuses to eat shrimp, which he used to inhale, but through this dish, we discovered that he likes bay scallops. Score!

Sweet and Sour Pineapple Pork (pg 48) blew every Chinese take-out version of this clear out of the water. The difference is that, although it's sweet, it's not just sweet. I never taste a sour element when I order this. Homemade, it was sweet, sour, fruity, a touch spicy, and ginger and garlic lurked in background. Also, the pork was rolled in corn starch instead of being drowned in batter, which made it crisp and meaty, rather than doughy.

I used many dishes and it took a lot of prep work, but it was well worth the effort. I marinated, then deep fried the pork. While the pork marinated, I made sweet and sour sauce with a whole hodge-podge of ingredients. I knew vinegar and pineapple juice would be used, but there were several ingredients that surprised me, including ketchup, orange marmalade, and hot sauce. Wacky. Something tells me this is not a traditional Chinese dish, despite it's popularity in the States. Ha! I added the sauce and the pork to sauteed vegetables, and had found my new favorite way to cure a Chinese food craving.

Conclusion: Loved it. I'll never order sweet and sour pork again.

My friend and I made plans for Saturday to watch Jane Eyre and whine about how much we hate Corpus Christi (despite my exciting next home, I still have to suffer another year here, and my friend will be here even longer. Blah.) Cheesecake Brownies (pg 195 of Ready For Dessert) seemed like a perfectly self-indulgent, woe-is-me kind of treat. They're exactly what they sound like: brownies topped with cheesecake.

A little bit of this brownie goes a looong way.

At room temperature or slightly cool, I would prefer to either have a brownie or cheesecake. The flavors and textures didn't really seem to gel. However, yesterday I froze the remaining brownies for some future dessert, per Lebovitz's suggestion. That future dessert came a few hours later, when I ate one straight from the freezer. The brownie and the cheesecake had frozen to the same chewy consistency. Fresh, the cheesecake was kind of light and airy, and didn't really stand up to the dense brownie. Frozen, they were equals.

Conclusion: Liked it.

Hawai'i Cuisine: Chicken Salad Chinese-Style with "Dabest" Sauce

I love those wacky Hawaiians and their "da"s. I also love Sam Choy and his salads. Now, I'm not a salad girl, but he makes salads just the way I like them, with everything he can think of thrown into one bowl. Chicken Salad Chinese-Style with "Dabest" Sauce (pg 22) was another winner.

The salad is a crunchy mix of lettuce, napa cabbage, cucumber, celery, green pepper, carrots, chicken, shrimp, and fried wonton strips. The sauce is made up of sugar (big surprise), rice vinegar, oil, ginger, soy sauce, sesame seeds, and green onions.

There is so much going on in this bowl that my mouth didn't get bored, which is always the danger I face when eating salads. My only complaint is that the shrimp would have been better if they were sauteed in garlic, instead of simply being boiled.

Conclusion: Liked it. Crunchy and sweet.

I was feeling a little celebratey, because, oh, we just found out we're MOVING TO ITALY next summer. YA-HA-HA-HOOOOOEEEY!! Thank you, US Navy!! Anyway, I wanted to make some dessert without running to the store. Peaches in Red Wine (pg 109) from Ready for Dessert sounded elegant and fun. Plus, it was simple. Dissolve sugar in red wine. Add peaches (or, in my case, nectarines). Chill for a few hours.

David Lebovitz owes me a bottle of red.

I really thought this would be good. It tasted like cough syrup. What a waste of decent wine and juicy nectarines. We couldn't eat it. It was that bad. Sugar in wine, left to sit, is a bad idea. Bad. Bad, bad, bad. That's okay, though, because moving to Italy is good, good, good. YEEEEE!!!

Conclusion: Hated it. It had to happen eventually.

A Round-up

I've made a few things in the past two days.

For Friday's dinner, I made Hawaiian Pulehu Tri-Tip Steak (pg 46) and Black Goma Asparagus (pg 86). I think the steak is a big gimmick. It appeals to a tourist's notions of exotic cooking, but isn't actually a good way to make a steak.

First, you cake a tri-tip steak with a mixture of garlic, pepper, sugar, and sea salt. Like, A LOT of sea salt.

 Let it sit for half hour and go light up the BBQ. The thing that makes this steak unique is that you lay it directly on the coals and flip it every four minutes. Chef Choy says it will be "crusty on the outside and rare on the inside." What he means is it will be charred on the outside and raw on the inside, except for the ends, which will cook through and be dry as boards.

The biggest problem is that the recommended cut of beef is not the same width all the way through. This would work better with a london broil or something that is flat and even.

Because it was soooo rare, and I don't think tri-tip is a particularly tender cut to begin with (or at least this one wasn't), it was too chewy for me. I prefer to focus on the pleasures, rather than the mechanics, of eating, and that was very hard to do here.

The meat looks like it's cooked to a medium here, but trust me. It was still chilly in the middle.

On the plus side, I expected this to be a salt-bomb, and it wasn't. Maybe a lot of the salt burned off or was transferred to the coals?

Conclusion: Dislike. On a different cut of meat, cooked a more even, reliable way, the salt rub would have been good, but that wasn't the recipe. It takes a lot for me not to finish my steak, and I left most of it on my plate.

I wish I could say that the Black Goma Asparagus was better, but it's really just asparagus with soy sauce on it. Add a bit of ginger, a bit of sugar, and black sesame seeds (I used white), but all you taste is soy sauce. Plus, a certain toddler who shall remain nameless distracted me while I was cooking them, so they were mushy.

Conclusion: Just okay.

Now, on to brighter pastures!!

Last night, I made Moloka'i Shrimp Spinach Salad. It had many components, which started to annoy me as time passed and my kitchen sink filled to the brim with dishes, but it was worth it.

Marinate shrimp in a brown sugar/soy sauce/red pepper flake mixture with a bunch of spices thrown in.

Toss spinach with a sweet, warm balsamic vinaigrette, then top with the shrimp, sliced roasted red pepper, boiled eggs, and minced macadamia nuts. The vinaigrette was supposed to have 1/2 cup (!!!) of pine nuts in it, but I must have used up what I had last time I made pesto. I didn't miss them.

This salad was slightly too spicy for me. I think I have a sensitivity to red pepper flakes, as opposed to other pepper products. No matter how small of a pinch I use, they always seem too spicy to me, so the three teaspoons used here was more than I'm used to. The egg had the surprising effect of mediating the heat, though. This salad kept a beautiful balance between sweet (red pepper, sugar, balsamic), salty (soy sauce, macadamia nuts), and spicy (red pepper flakes, ginger, white pepper).

Conclusion: LOVED it. Matt said that he's never eaten a salad so fast in his life.

I asked Matt to pick out  a dessert from Ready For Dessert. He's not a big sweets guy, and my hope was that if he picked the treat, he'd eat more than a sliver of it. He chose Apricot Souffles (pg 131), which I never would have picked, because our universal disappointment with Dorie's cheese souffle turned me off to wasting my time on another.

I am so glad he picked this. It was amazing.

For a few minutes, you simmer dried apricot halves in white wine, with the contents and pod of a vanilla bean, then leave it to sit for about an hour (or, in my case, most of the afternoon). When you're ready to make the souffle, puree the mixture (sans vanilla pod), sugar, and an egg yolk. Then you assemble it like any other souffle, whipping up the egg whites, then gently folding them in. This recipe is for four smaller servings, instead of one giant souffle, so it only cooks for about nine minutes.

Hello, new friend.

I like knowing that souffles really aren't as difficult or as scary to make as their legend would suggest.
Lebovitz recommends serving this souffle with raspberry sauce. Perfection. The souffle tastes like pure apricot concentrate, and the tart raspberry sauce provides a masterful counterpoint. I was afraid, after my previous cheesy experience, that it would taste eggy, but it didn't.

Conclusion: Loved it! Light, melt-in-your-mouth, fruity goodness. Now I want to try Lebovitz's other sweet souffles.

Ready For Dessert: A Twofer

I'm getting a late start on my Hawaiian book. Lesson #1 about Hawaiian cooking: they marinate stuff for hours. Lesson #1 about my flaws in the kitchen: I don't remember that I need to marinate stuff until I start cooking. Tonight, we're having dinner with Matt's new CO, so tomorrow will be my Hawaiian debut.

In the meantime, I've been baking from Ready for Dessert. I was supposed to go to a book club meeting on Thursday, so I made his Fresh Ginger Cake (pg 42). I've been wary of this recipe, because his other two gingerbread recipes that I tried pre-blog were bad. This, however, turned out to be the gingerbread I've been searching for. I no longer need to scour cookbooks for the perfect recipe. I've found it.

What sets this gingerbread apart from any other recipe I've tried? 4 oz. of fresh ginger, to start. In case you can't visualize, that's a pretty sizeable stick of ginger. Between the fresh ginger, cinnamon, cloves and black pepper, this cake has a nice background heat to it, and the balance of ginger to molasses is perfect.

I wound up not going to the book club, because we had the first thunderstorm of Charlie's cognizant life, and he was a bit upset by the thunder. It may be for the best, anyway, because Matt thinks that no one in their right mind would want to eat gingerbread when it's 100 degrees out, and that it would be a weird thing for me to present to a group of almost-strangers. Perhaps. More for me. To stop myself from inhaling the whole thing, I froze half of it.

Conclusion: Loved it and it's Charlie-approved! This kid's tastes are so unpredictable.

I didn't intend to bake another dessert this weekend, but I couldn't resist. Growing up, once a year, my Mom would make a plum cake during the very short span of time when Italian Plums were available in our supermarket. Her recipe was simple--she just cut the plums in half, pitted them, and placed them on top of a sheet cake pan full of boxed yellow cake mix batter. The plums would sink to the bottom and get juicy and wonderful during baking.

I saw Italian Plums, and I had to buy them. A friend was coming for dinner on Saturday, so that was all the excuse I needed. I bought a box of cake mix, but figured I'd scan through Lebovitz's book and see if I could find a similar type of recipe that I had all the ingredients for. Plum-Blueberry Upside-Down Cake (pg 40) jumped out at me.

The cake was good. The evidence speaks for itself...

Three adults ate 3/4 of a cake. Oy vey.

Something seemed wrong to me, though. In my Mom's cake, the plums are still tart and taste like plums. Here, they tasted like prunes. I don't know if I bought the wrong type of plum--they were labeled as Italian plums, so I thought it was right--or laying the plums and blueberries on brown sugar and butter amplified their sweetness so much that they turned pruney. It was good, but it did not satisfy my craving for my Mom's plain old box mix creation.

Conclusion: This recipe turned out to be different than I was hoping, but it was still good. Maryam said it had a good "plum to cake ratio", and everyone but Charlie went back for generous seconds. Liked it.

Ready For Dessert: Cranzac Cookies

Charlie has three teeth coming in simultaneously, which is super annoying for all of us. He's not eating, not sleeping, etc.

After about three weeks of this (two teeth down, one to go), I submitted to the old parenting pressure of making something--anything--that he would eat, despite the pain. I landed on Cranzac Cookies (pg 203) from Ready for Dessert. I figured that with a cup of rolled oats, dried cranberries, and swapping out regular flour for The Sneaky Chef's baking mix, if he'd eat it, he'd get some form of nutrition, even if it was in conjunction with lots of coconut and sugar.

Lyle's Golden Syrup is used as the main wetness of these cookies. Have you ever heard of this stuff? I hadn't. It's an English product, and I found it in the international section of the supermarket. It is buttery and delicious, sort of like a thin caramel or something. Now I need to figure out what else to do with it, because I'm in love. The bottle says you can get a recipe booklet off their website. Don't mind if I do.

The dough was pretty hard to handle. It's crumbly and didn't want to roll together into balls. It mostly stuck to my hands. That's okay, though. Since there's no eggs in this, I was at liberty to lick my fingers clean.

Lebovitz says these cookies are "a riff on Anzac biscuits that were created as sustenance for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (Anzac)." From this description, I worried that this would make a hard, dry, coconut biscuit. I was wrong on all counts, thankfully. I don't know how they compare to the original, but they're good. The coconut lends more moisture than flavor. The closest thing I could compare these to are a moist, non-cinnamoney oatmeal cookie.

Conclusion: Like, though I think I prefer the Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin Cookie recipe from the Quaker Oats box. With the coconut, these cookies pack more calories into my boy, though, which is okay. The doctors are always nagging me that he's not heavy enough, so a bit of coconut won't hurt him. (Mind you, they don't ask what or how much he eats. They'd prefer I shove french fries at him instead of strawberries and cheese, as long as he were gaining weight. I think it's a load of crap, but whatever. They're the ones with the charts and statistics.)

My scheming has worked, to some extent. Charlie ate a cookie. Woohoo! I ate three. Not-so-woohoo.

TBIR: Spain and Portugal

I had big plans to cook paella from the Spain and Portugal section of The Best International Recipe. However, after going on a wild goose chase to find Asian sesame paste (different from tahini) to make sesame noodles from the China section, I needed a quick and easy replacement dinner. Spanish Tortilla (pg 224) was the only thing I had all the ingredients for.

As you probably know, this dish is just potatoes and onions cooked in a pan, then you add 10 scrambled eggs and stick it in the oven to cook for about ten minutes. What's Spanish for "Voila"?

I don't have a whole lot to say about this one. It was good. Exactly what I expected, being a fan of tortillas as an afternoon snack when I was in Barcelona. Matt said it was good, "But tastes like breakfast." I added a little red pepper to it, because I once again realized at the last minute that I'd forgotten about vegetables. Vegetables don't seem to figure much in this book.

These recipes keep reminding me of a Tom Petty concert I went to once. It was good, but it bothered me that he sounded exactly the same live as on CD. The concert was solid and well executed, but not particularly interesting. I don't know if that's really a complaint about the book. It's certainly valuable to have recipes that give you exactly what you expect them to. It's not very exciting to cook from day after day, though.

Conclusion: Liked it.

Yesterday was a Hale and Farewell (welcome new colleagues and say goodbye to old) for one of Matt's co-workers, who is about to head out for a tour in Afghanistan. (On a side note, I love the Navy's phraseology for things. I laugh every time Matt says he has to "hit the head." We're not on a boat, dear. lol) Happy for any excuse to bake, I made Black and White Cookies (pg 192) from Ready For Dessert.

I have a huge soft spot for black and white cookies. They seem to be in every bakery in Brooklyn, but they're often dry cake and bland icing (ahem, stale). Even so, I love them. My first thought when I saw this recipe was, "What the hell does some San Franciscoan ex-pat in Paris know about New York black and white cookies??" My second thought was, "If this recipe works, I'll be the happiest girl in the world."

Well, my friends, the recipe works. Gloriously. These cookies are everything they should be, but exponentially better. I may never be able to eat a store-bought one again. The cookie is a cookie/cake hybrid, but Lebovitz's was moist and buttery. The chocolate icing was rich, but it didn't overpower the nicely balanced vanilla/lemon side. Mmmmmmmm.

My one gripe with this recipe is that, once again, even though I precisely measured out the amount of dough he advises--2 tablespoons per cookie--my yield was half of what he says it should be. That means that I only made 12 cookies. Fortunately, they were intended for a fairly small event, but if I expected to feed a larger group of people, I'd have been screwed. This is the second cookie recipe that this has happened with. Not cool, David. Not cool.

Conclusion: Love. They're even better than the original.

Chocolate Crack Cookies

With all this socializing I'm doing lately, Ready for Dessert may be less of a long-term project than I expected. Then I can move on to Dorie's Baking, which I finally broke down and bought. Mwa ha haaa! I guess word got out that if you invite me to something, I will bring sweets. That's fine--I'm not above buying friendship with sugar.

Matt's colleague invited us over to his pool for the evening. He's always exceedingly grateful and sends me thank you emails for any leftover desserts that I send to work with Matt, so I figured he deserved something that wasn't three days old for once. Chocolate Crack Cookies (pg 190) sounded good to me, because the title includes three of my favorite things. Just kidding about the crack part. Lebovitz named them for their appearance, not for any drug-related reason, though when he baked them back in his days at Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, he had to come up with other, less offensive, names for them. I think his alternate of "baked chocolate truffles" gives a pretty accurate description of the finished product.

I need another hit.

These are small, one-bite cookies that are a little too easy to eat. They sort of melt in your mouth right until that millimeter before your teeth meet, when there is a slight crunch, because of the toasted almonds that are pulverized in with the flour. If there's one thing David Lebovitz knows how to deliver, it seems to be chocolate.

Conclusion: Love. It's like a brownie and a cookie had a baby.

I swear, I really did bake up a few dud recipes from this book before I started this blog. Everything I've made lately has been other-worldly good, but I definitely had my doubts about whether or not I'd keep this book at the outset. I just don't want to give the false impression that everything is flawless. The Nonfat Gingersnaps (pg 200) were inedible, and much to my mortification, I'd baked them as a gift, and had no time to make a replacement. Horrid. The Nectarine-Raspberry Upside Down Gingerbread (pg 41) was okay, but the flavors didn't really jive. Happily, I have many more unique recipes to try, so we shall see how it goes. If only I had an ice cream machine. There's an entire chunk of this book that I can't even touch. Sigh.

Bland Soup and a Sugar Rush

Giada's Butternut Squash Soup with Fontina Cheese Crostini (pg 52) was a huge disappointment. Blech. This recipe differs from any other butternut squash soup recipe I've made in a couple of ways, and now that I've tasted the result, I can confidently say that none of these differences are for the better.

First key variation: instead of cutting the squash in half and roasting it, which I think imparts a deeper, more caramelized flavor to it, she instructs you to peel, cube, and boil it in chicken stock with a carrot, an onion, and some garlic. Ever peel a squash? They're slippery little buggers. I don't know what the hell happened to my hand during this stage of the process--whether it's an allergic reaction or the wax adhered to it--but after I washed my hands, the one that had been holding the squash was shiny and tight. I spent the day rubbing at it, and now it's mostly off, so I guess it was from the wax, but no amount of washing would clean it. I looked like a burn victim. Mark 1 against Giada.

Instead of the standard nutmeg/clove/ginger type spices that are usually used in butternut squash soup, Giada uses a whole heap of fresh sage. I've never used fresh sage before, so I had no expectation of how it would turn out. The herb smelled pungent, so I worried that it would overwhelm the dish. I needn't have been concerned. This soup tastes like nothing. In a blind taste test, I doubt I could identify it as butternut squash. That's messed up.

It's meant to be served with fontina and sage topped crostini. I just shredded the fontina on top of my soup, because I didn't have crusty bread. Again, ew. I've never had fontina. B-L-A-N-D.

Fail.

Conclusion: Dislike. Yuck, yuck, yuck. I froze some of it for Charlie, but the bulk, I'm sorry to say, set sail on a fateful voyage down the drain. What a waste.

To end the day on a better note, I decided to make Candied Cherries (pg 250) from Ready for Dessert. Lebovitz says that they keep for at least six months in the fridge, so I figured I could make them now, while cherries are in season, and have them through the Fall without actually having to eat much of it today. I've recently become fascinated with the idea of preserving food, so this was me dipping my toe in. I'm kind of confused as to how these keep for so long without boiling the filled jars, or any of the other botulism-prevention methods that people use for jelly. Anybody know the science of preserves? Would the boiling/vacuum seal action be for things that you intend to keep longer than six months? Am I going to die if I eat these in November?

I doubled the recipe, because two cups of cherries didn't look like much. I'm glad I did, because even though the original recipe says it will yield two cups of product, my four cups of cherries only yielded two cups of product. Not sure what happened there. It doesn't seem like the type of thing that could be so drastically off, unless cherries in France are the size of golf balls. 

Pit the cherries, then cook them with water, half a lemon, and sugar for 15-20 minutes. I wish he specified that it would take a lot longer if you were doubling the recipe. He gives advice on doubling elsewhere (ie to use a half a lemon instead of just a squirt), so there would have been a place for it. Fortunately, he provided a target temperature, so I relied on the candy thermometer to tell me when it was done. Before you pour it in your jar, you have the option of adding a touch of amaretto. Well, if I must.

Taking my aunt's advice about using turbinado sugar instead of granulated sugar in fruit recipes to tone down the sweetness, I used turbinado. Holy moly. I should have halved it. I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but this was so sweet that I could feel my eyebrows vibrate. I was afraid to cut the sugar, because I didn't know if it would "candy" properly with less. I'd try it next time, though.

A little bit of these cherries and syrup goes a long way. It was more pleasant drizzled on a little scoop of vanilla frozen yogurt, rather than eaten straight. Lebovitz suggests a number of ways to use these cherries, including to spoon some over lemon desserts. I wouldn't have thought of that, but think it would work perfectly. Warm vanilla pudding would be good, too.

Conclusion: Liked it. I would definitely fiddle with the sugar next time, but it makes me happy to know that I have a lovely jar of cherries waiting patiently for me in the back of my fridge.

Ready For Dessert: Pistachio-Cardamom Cake

I wanted to bake a dessert yesterday so that I didn't show up to my first book club meeting empty handed. In my experience, it's easier to make friends when you come bearing cake. I had no time to factor in a supermarket trip, so I needed a recipe that I already had all the ingredients for. Nothing from Giada at Home fit the bill, so I moved on to Ready for Dessert. My lack of chocolate or quantities of fresh fruit limited my choices. Then, I found it. Of all the bizarre recipes in the world, the only one that I had every ingredient for was Pistachio-Cardamom Cake (pg 57). I thank Dorie and Around My French Table for stocking my pantry with pistachios (from her wonderful Beggar's Linguine) and cardamom pods, which showed up in a whole bunch of her recipes.

This is not really a great cake to make during your toddler's naptime, as it utilizes every appliance in the kitchen. Live and learn.

First, melt butter in a cake pan, then evenly distribute sugar and sliced almonds in the pan. In a food processor, pulse pistachios with flour until the nuts are finely ground. With a mortar and pestle (or, in my case, a hammer and the concrete garage floor), crush cardamom seeds. Don't worry, I put the seeds in a baggy first. It was at this point that I began to worry about presenting such an off-the-wall cake to strangers. Would I be the weird girl with bad beet and onion breath who bakes weird cakes? I shrugged it off and added the cardamom to the pistachio mixture.

In a mixer, beat butter and sugar. Add eggs, then a flour/salt/baking powder mixture, then the pistachio mixture. This is a thick batter, so you drop globs of it into the pan and then spread them out with a spoon, trying not to disturb the almonds too much.

All the nut and pod shelling made this cake pretty labor-intensive. Do you know how many cardamom pods it takes to get two teaspoons of seeds? Approximately a million.  Okay, maybe not that many. Easily twenty, though.

This cake smelled amazingly warm and spicy as it baked, and I knew as soon as I turned it out onto a plate and saw those pretty brown almonds that I would love it, even if no one else did.

You and I are going to get along just fine, Cake.

I'm happy to report that the cake was a HUGE hit at book club. Two women went back for thirds, and one took a chunk home with her and requested the recipe. I snagged one slice to bring home for Matt, but I may have accidentally eaten it for breakfast this morning. Woops.

Now that I know better, in the future I would serve it more as a breakfast or tea cake. The crumb was a little dry for dessert, but was perfect with a cup of coffee this morning. The pistachios provide more texture than flavor. The recipe calls for unsalted pistachios. I used salted anyway, because it's what I had, and I actually liked it when every now and then there would be a hit of salt in the bite. This cake is perfectly balanced--not too sweet, with exactly the right amount of cardamom.

Conclusion: Loved it. This is a new favorite.