Chocolate Chip Cookie Match-up

We were invited to a chili cook-off block party tonight. I've made chili in the past, but I haven't found a recipe yet that's knocked my socks off, so instead of chili, I baked cookies. Specifically, My Best Chocolate Chip Cookies (pg 68) from Dorie Greenspan's Baking. I, for one, would rather have cookies than fourteen pots of chili, and I can't imagine anyone will mind.

In the intro, Dorie says that these cookies are "kin to Toll House" chocolate chip cookies, but that she's tweaked a few things that, in her opinion, improve them. I hate to argue over something that's pretty delicious any way you can get it, but I prefer Toll House. I compared the two recipes, and there are only a few changes. Dorie uses less flour, less baking soda, more vanilla, and a different ratio of white and brown sugars. Her cookies spread more than Toll House ever has for me, and they were thinner and less substantial. And they're fragile. I chose to bake chocolate chip cookies because they're reliable crowd-pleasers, travel well, produce a large yield, and generally don't disintegrate between your fingers. I'm afraid to stack these ones on top of each other, for fear that they'll break.

Plus, Dorie has fussier baking instructions. She says to only bake one tray at a time, and you have to spin it midway through baking. I know that's all in the interest of even baking, but it's an added step that I wouldn't appreciate if I was making these while Charlie was up and running around. Fortunately, he's napping. 

I should be happy that I'm not compulsively eating one cookie off each tray as it comes out of the oven (for quality-control purposes, of course), but I'm not. 

Conclusion: I love Toll House. I like these. Toll House reigns supreme.

Risotto, or not risotto?

Neither Catalan-Style Turkey (pg 134 of The Family Meal) nor Saffron Risotto (pg 132)  met my expectations.

I planned to have spinach, but it went horribly wrong when I decided to keep it warm in the oven. Don't judge my veggie-less-ness.

Raisins and prunes are soaked in sherry all day. Technically, they're meant to be soaked in a Catalan wine called vino rancio, but it says sherry will work as a replacement. All this sweetness is the primary flavor of this dish, and it's primary problem, in my opinion. The sweetness was one-dimensional and cloying. I tend to like fruit in my savory dishes, but this one had no savory.

Conclusion: Just okay.

We have a canister of beautiful saffron that Matt brought back from Bahrain, so Saffron Risotto was an obvious choice. My understanding of risotto preparation is that you stir for the majority of the cooking time, and you slowly, slowly add bits of fluid until you have a wonderful, creamy bowl of rice. In this version, you add a ladle of broth once, and once that's absorbed, add the rest of the stock in one shot, stirring frequently. The creaminess comes from parmesan cheese, not from softly nurturing the rice. I believe in the magic of risotto. All due respect, Mr. Adria, but this recipe did not respect that magic.

Conclusion: Just okay. This sat heavy in my stomach.

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.

Cod, Schmod.

Cod may the most flavorless food in the world. I should know by now not to bother with it, as I'm never happy with how it turns out. I'm going to learn my lesson this time. Really.

Cod and Green Pepper Sandwich (pg 292 of The Family Meal) lured me in because it looked so quick and easy.

First, you fry "long, sweet green peppers" in oil until the skins brown. At the supermarket, my choice was between bell peppers and an assortment of hot peppers. I went with the bell. Turns out that, due to their roundness, bell peppers are exceedingly difficult to keep flat in hot, spitting oil. I'm a scaredy-cat when it comes to spitting oil, so Matt cut up the peppers and tended to them while I prepped the fish. The fish is salted, floured, and dipped in egg, then right in the oil.

The sandwich is simply the peppers, fish, and mayo. Boring.

Conclusion: Just okay. I won't be making this again.

Happy Potato Dance

My love for potatoes is long-standing and deep-rooted. I've never met a potato I didn't like. Powdered instant mashed potatoes don't count. Those are gross.

We invited a friend for dinner for her birthday on Saturday. Matt cooked lamb chops, and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to catch up on the Potato Gratin recipe (pg 360 from Around My French Table) that French Fridays with Dorie cooked last winter. I'm really glad that I recently purchased a mandoline, because there is no chance I'd have sliced potatoes consistently and thin. The mandoline earned its keep this weekend.

Everyone loved this gratin. Garlic-steeped in heavy cream and a gruyere topping gave it a rich, subtle flavor that perfectly accompanied the lamb. I forgot to take a picture until after dinner was over. This is all that was left of the entire pie plate of potatoes...

Matt asked if we could have this for dinner every night. We'd all die of a heart attack if I did that, but this will definitely become a go-to potato treat.

Conclusion: Loved it. Wow--I just realized that this is the 70th recipe I've cooked from AMFT. That's a lot.

Delicious as dinner was on Saturday, I feel like I'm still digesting it. I need veg, so I decided to make the Caesar Salad (pg 72) from The Family Meal. I'd reserved a bit of anchovy from the pissaladiere with the dressing in mind. I probably could have used more of it. Matt commented that the dressing was good, and "tasted like caesar salad," but that he thought it needed more anchovy. I was afraid to be too heavy-handed, after my pissaladiere's results.

One problem I'm having with this book is that I haven't found a good way to blend the things that need blending. I'm cooking the recipes according to the "for 2" guidelines, and the outcome is spot-on with a reasonable portion size, but they use such a small quantity of ingredients that the blades on my immersion blender (which is what the book instructs you to use) don't reach what needs to be blended. My food processor is way too big. Because of this, I had a really hard time making this dressing. There's no way to "very gradually pour in the sunflower oil while blending" when the blender won't reach the oil. I don't think this came out as well as it could have. It never reached the mayonnaise consistency that I was supposed to be looking for, but it was still good.

Yep. That's a bowl of lettuce.

Conclusion: Liked it. It's a salad. Nothing special.

I needed to use up some leeks that I had, so I made Vichyssoise (pg 92) to go with our salad. Very tasty, but I think something went wrong. The book's photos show that the soup should be loose. By the time it sat in the fridge for a few hours, it had solidified into mashed potatoes. Delicious mashed potatoes, but I don't think that's what I was going for. Matt asked why anyone would want cold soup, and after tasting it both hot and cold, I had to agree, so I heated it up and thinned it out with some water. It still was thick, though. Matt said that if I thickened it with another potato instead of thinning it with water, they would have been the best mashed potatoes ever. Good enough for me, soup or not.

Adria serves it with a soft-boiled egg, but I opted out of that. If we were just having soup, I would have tried the egg. It seemed like too much for dinner, when combined with the salad. 

Conclusion: Liked it. Easy and tasty. It looks nothing like the pics in the book, though.

FFwD: Pissaladiere

I in no way hold the unfortunate outcome of my Pissaladiere (pg 45 of Around My French Table) against the recipe, or against pissaladieres around the world. In case you're wondering what the hell a pissaladiere is, it's a thin-crusted dough smeared with caramelized onions, anchovies, and olives. In Nice, I'd give one a try without thinking twice. In my kitchen, everything that could go wrong, did.

I first suspected something was up when I opened the tin of anchovies. It looked like cat food. In the photo in the book, there are long, solid lengths of anchovy laced across the onions. I looked back at my tin, and found it impossible to separate a single fish from its friends. It was one mushy mass. I figured that would save me the step of chopping the anchovies, and dumped them in with my onions. As promised, they dissolved into the onion. It smelled awfully fishy, though, and when I tried an onion, it left a very unpleasant aftertaste in my mouth.

Yum. Please ignore the weird stains on my windowsill. I just noticed that.

My aunt, via facebook, saved the day, as much as the day could be saved. A fan of pissaladiere, she said:
A) She hoped I didn't use the little sardine type tins of anchovy, but the better kind that come in jars. Woops. I bought the tin that cost 20 cents more than the one next to it, figuring they were better. Ha!
B) If the onions tasted too fishy, rinse them off, dry them well, and sautee them again with lemon juice and brown sugar. I did, and the onions were muuuuuch better. Phew! Disaster averted. Right? Wrong.

My dough didn't rise. I don't know why. I baked a bread using this yeast last weekend, and it was fine, so I don't think bad yeast was the problem. I put the dough in the garage, which is warmer than the house. Maybe it wasn't warm enough. It cooled down to the mid-70s here this week. I thought that would be warm enough. Beats me. All I know is my dough was pretty much the same exact size two hours later.

Then, Charlie started having a clingy fit about ten minutes before the buzzer was set to ring. Matt said he'd do what needed doing. I told him that when the buzzer rang, throw the olives on top, then bake it for five more minutes. At the end of those five minutes, the onions had burned and the dough had turned into a too-dark cracker. Matt told me after the fact that it looked done to him before he put the olives on, but I told him to bake it another five minutes, so he did. Urge to kill RISING.

Anyway, we ate a few bites. Matt heated up leftover pad thai. I finished my glass of wine and called it a night.

I would try this one again if I could find the right kind of anchovy. I don't hold anything against the concept. This Dorie disaster was my own doing. Onward!

FFwD delay

I planned to make this week's French Fridays with Dorie selection--pissaladiere--for dinner tonight. However, Charlie appears to be having some allergy issues (it finally cooled down to the 70s here, so I'm blaming Nature for releasing something wacky with the weather change). All last night and today he's been a miserable, sleepless, snotty mess, who wants only to sit on my lap and watch Finding Nemo over and over and over again. Help. Me. Anyway, there was no way I'd manage to correctly time the proofing of my dough or caramelize onions for 45 minutes without burning them, so I'll make this tomorrow or Saturday, when my time is more manageable.

At least he doesn't have a fever. It's 7 pm and I could fall asleep. Wish us luck that we all get more rest tonight.