Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Soft Honey Butter Cookies and Baklava Cookies


Is this picture blurry, or do I need to clean my glasses?
If you like crispy cookies, stop reading this right now. These are soft and chewy buttery-sweet cookies. If you want to bite into a cookie and get crumbs in your lap (or in your cleavage) this in not the recipe for you. 

Preheat your oven to 350 convection, or 375 degrees regular oven.

Ingredients:

1 stick salted butter, room temperature
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup white sugar
1/3 cup of the best quality honey you can get
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
1 egg
1 and 2/3 cup all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt

Almonds for topping, or to mix in (optional) 
Walnuts, sugar, cinnamon and honey for baklava topping (optional)

The method is pretty standard, if you've made Nestle Toll House cookies, you can make these. Mix the butter and sugars together first, then add the egg and honey and beat for another minute. (The vegetable oil is for you to rub the inside of the 1/3 cup measuring cup with before you measure out the honey, so the honey won't stick to the cup.) 
Add the dry ingredients next and beat well until combined. 

Drop your dough onto a cookie sheet (I use some parchment paper lining because I hate cleaning pans) by rounded tablespoons. I like to use my hands to ever-so-gently roll each ball of dough and then squash it into cookie shape, so the cookies come out nice and round- you don't have to do that. (But you should, don't be lazy!)

Before you put them in the oven, you can sprinkle the tops with sugar, or if you like nuts you can sprinkle the tops with sliced almonds or add some sliced almonds to the batter. 

If you're feeling really adventurous, you could mix 1/3 cup finely chopped walnuts with a teaspoon of sugar and 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon, and sprinkle that mixture on top of them to give you kind of a 'baklava' cookie, and when they come out of the oven, you would drizzle just a wee bit of extra honey on top.
Bake them for 8-10 minutes. I like to pull them out the second they are just barely cooked, when the dough is not shiny-raw looking on top, but not yet really brown on the edges. The more undercooked they are, the more you'll get the flavor of the honey; nine minutes is probably ideal, if you do ten minutes they'll be less on the soft side and more on the chewy side. Set a timer, or don't leave the kitchen! Burnt cookies are the worst.

Let them sit for one minute on the pan before you GENTLY remove the cookies with a thin spatula to cool on a rack (or paper towels of you don't have a rack). They will seem very soft while they are still hot, resist the urge to put them back in the oven, unless they are truly raw and wet in the middle.

Friday, September 19, 2014

'La Bella Polenta' and Venetian Style Appetizers

First of all, you HAVE to watch part of this video, it's adorable. Leave it to the Italians to make up an awesome song about making polenta. (By the way, I think the young woman on the far right is in the market for a husband- you'll see what I mean.)  Oh and, be warned: the song sticks in your head.




As a person who has only recently acquired the funds to travel to Europe without the assistance of my parents, I am not a seasoned traveler and therefore this isn't one of those braggy posts. I was lucky enough to stay in Venice in June, and while in general I wouldn't say it is the food capital of Italy or anything, they did have some interesting dishes. Unfortunately for us most of the famous dishes involved seafood. My husband doesn't like seafood at all (although he periodically tries it, just to make sure) and I'm allergic to shellfish. By the way, if you're ever there and you need to communicate that you have a seafood allergy you say, "Sono allergico ai crostace."

Of course pasta and gnocchi are served a lot, but they also serve a hefty dose of risotto and polenta (cornmeal mash) too. The best thing about Venetian food though is the cicchetti, tiny little happy-hour appetizers (pretty much Italian tapas.) There was salt-cod salad, truffled ham* (ridiculously good), fried cheese balls, grilled octopus...so many tasty things. 
 
*This is truffled ham. If anyone knows where to get it in California, tell me!

Instead of crostini toasts as a base for spreads and cold cuts, they sometimes used little grilled polenta squares. I was raised in Arizona, so to me they taste a little bit like an open faced tamale. Here's my recipe:

4 cups of low sodium or homemade vegetable broth
1 cup of dark yellow cornmeal 
1 teaspoon salt (if you use water instead of broth, use 2 tsp.) 
1/4 teaspoon white pepper (use cayenne or nothing if you don't have white)
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup marscapone cheese or thick cream
2 rounded tablespoons finely grated Romano or Parmesan cheese
a big glug of Tabasco or other hot sauce (I told you, I'm from Arizona) 

Bring the broth, salt and pepper to a boil, and add the cornmeal slowly, whisking the whole time. Stir on high for a few minutes, until the mixture thickens- like oatmeal thick. Turn the temperature down to as low as it will go and continue cooking on low for another 30 minutes, frequently giving it a really good stir with the whisk. 

Add in the butter, cheese and Tabasco at the end, mix thoroughly and vigorously, and then pour it out into a 9"x13" greased pan. Try to even out the polenta as best you can with your spatula, I ended up using a cube of cold butter as a flattener because it doesn't stick. 

Let the polenta cool on the counter for ten minutes, then put it in the refrigerator, covered, to cool completely. Cut the polenta into square or diamond shapes, and then you can either brush the shapes with oil or butter and put them on the grill, or just grill them in a non-stick pan until they are brown, but not black at all, on both sides. 


Here are some basic Americanized toppings you might want to try. Because there is cheese and butter in the polenta, I think putting cheese on top would be redundant, but you do what you like: 

-Fresh or canned salmon salad made with capers, dill and mayonnaise
-Fresh chopped tomatoes mixed with very finely diced anchovy, garlic and oil
-Prosciutto di Parma and chopped green Castelvetrano olives
-Bacon, pepper jelly and almond slices


(This one has Prosciutto, hot pepper jelly and roasted Marcona almonds)



-Roasted chiles, chicken and salsa
-Basil and sun dried tomato in oil or tomato jam and balsamic vinegar
-Thinly sliced steak cooked very briefly and covered in lemon juice, olive oil and parsley
-Leftover BBQ pulled pork and apricot jam or fresh apricot
-Cut the squares big enough to make a polenta Eggs Benedict with bacon, eggs and Hollandaise sauce

You get the idea.  
 
The Sacro e Profano in the San Polo neighborhood of Venice, worth a visit!

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

My Best Fresh Summer Spaghetti Sauce

I really need to admit to you that we ate most of this up when it was hot out of the kitchen, without taking a picture of course, so this is a picture of my plate of leftovers the next day, with no garnish. On a paper plate. 'Cause I'm classy like that.

The key to this very simple recipe is good quality tomatoes, and a blender or processor of some kind. The blending is going to take the place of cooking the sauce down, you know, to get a nice smooth texture. It will be the perfect sauce to really stick to the spaghetti. Basically you are not really cooking the sauce, as much as you are just heating the tomatoes through and preserving their fresh sweetness. 

If you don't have blender of any kind, you can of course chop everything really tiny, but in that case I would cook this a little longer and I would also use a different pasta: like little shells or orecchiette, something with nooks and crannies to catch all the chunks of sauce.

5 cups (approximate) of fresh cherry tomatoes, squished in the pan or halved
1/2 a small onion, chopped
4 cloves of garlic
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon salt (or more- to taste)
1 dash black pepper
a handful of  pine nuts (if you don't have pine nuts, you can try other nuts or seeds, I'll bet it's still good)
1 tablespoon fresh or dried basil
1 teaspoon dried oregano or marjoram
1 tablespoon butter
1 small slice of stale bread, crumbled up, or just toast fresh crumbs in a pan (optional, this is more for added texture if needed, but it's a good idea if the tomatoes are extra watery. If you refuse to use pine nuts, you will definitely need these.)
4 tablespoons finely grated Pecorino Romano cheese (this is not time for Permesan)

If, through no fault of your own, you do not have sweet cherry tomatoes, and you have instead chopped up some tasteless winter hothouse tomatoes, add a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar or lemon juice and 2 teaspoons of sugar to the mix.

In a pot, heat up two of the tablespoons of olive oil over medium high heat, then fry the chopped onion and garlic for about a minute, stirring. Add the tomatoes, spices, the rest of the olive oil, the pine nuts, and heat through for about five minutes. Blend well with an immersion blender or food processor, then put back on the heat, but turned down to low to keep warm while you make the pasta. Cook 16oz of spaghetti or capellini according to the package directions (in SALTED water), and when drained (but still wet) toss immediately with the sauce, breadcrumbs, cheese and butter. 

Don't be alarmed at all this oil and butter. Think about it, there's no meat in it, and it's five tablespoons total for a whole pound of pasta- you should be able to serve four or five people with that.

This goes with white wine of course, and I liked the Neyers Chardonnay I had with it.

Saturday, August 23, 2014

Tomato Fritters: Clearly, I Have a Fritter Problem



Yes, I've posted recipes like this before, but usually for just squash fritters, because my garden is always overrun with squash. This year I have one solitary squash plant and, uhm, fourteen tomato plants. (They came in six packs! What was I supposed to do, throw them out?)

Anyway, I always felt like they needed Greek yogurt or balsamic vinegar or lemon or something to give the squash fritters a little more flavor and tang. I now realize that better flavor can be accomplished with, you guessed it, tomatoes. The fritters get sweet and they stay really moist inside- fully cooked but not dried out. I eat them plain now, right out of the pan, as soon as my mouth can stand the temperature.

The herbs can vary a LOT and still be amazing. I like these combos: a teaspoon each of dill and garlic powder, plus a 1/4 cup chopped chives
OR 1/4 cup each of chopped parsley, green onion and fresh mint. 

In this recipe, I went with Herbs de Provence and no onions or garlic. Rosemary is pretty strong so there's not very much. (I wouldn't use white onions or raw garlic by the way, these don't get cooked long enough.)

Ingredients:

I cup of chopped tomatoes, without juice
1 cup of packed down grated summer squash, without juice
1/2 cup semolina flour, or all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon dried Herbs de Provence (or other spice combo from above)
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 cup crumbled goat's cheese
1 large egg

Panko bread crumbs, optional

Oil for frying, I used about 1/4 cup of oil, but frankly I don't really measure. If you don't like olive oil, avocado oil is really good (or both)

More salt and pepper to sprinkle on top afterwards

Grate or food process the summer squash, one large or two small is plenty. Put the pile in a strong paper towel and squeeze the heck out of it with your hands until all the juice comes out. If you have a little more or less than a cup it doesn't really matter.

Chop the tomatoes like you would for pico de gallo. Two tomatoes, or a bunch of cherry tomatoes should be about right. Pick up the pieces of tomato, leaving as much of the juice and seeds behind as you can, and place them on a paper towel, then lay another paper towel on top and gently press to get more juice out. Again, slightly more or less than a cup doesn't matter. 

Put your veggies in a mixing bowl and add the flour, baking powder and spices and toss well with a spoon. Next add the crumbled goat cheese (to be honest I think I had more like a 1/3 cup goat cheese, but this is kind of up to you.) Add the egg last and mix well. The batter will be like chunky drop biscuit batter.

Heat the oil on medium high until it's really hot. Make the fritters about a heaping tablespoon each. I like to scoop out the batter with the spoon, but then I shape it a little bit in my hands like a flattened meatball before I put it in the pan. Fry them for at least a minute in each side. Now sometimes I accidentally turn them too soon, because I panic about how brown they are getting, but they can be pretty dark brown and they will be really good, crispy on the outside and juicy and cheesy on the inside. 
When you pull them out of the pan place them on a paper towel in a single layer to drain, and salt and pepper them immediately.

Now, if you want them even more crisp- when you are spooning and gently molding the batter into the little patties, you can then coat each side with some panko bread crumbs. If I were doing this, I would do them all first before starting to fry them, because it takes too much time to coat each one before you plop them in the pan; you don't want the cooking times of each patty to be that far apart. 

If you are avoiding red meat, you could make a larger hamburger-patty shaped version and stick it on a toasted bun with a little mayo or HP sauce. You could also serve the larger ones at breakfast with a fried egg on top (and you can be all trendy that way, it seems everyone puts fried eggs on their food these days, right?) If you're doing gluten-free just use corn meal instead of flour. If you're doing non-dairy this in an opportunity to use one of those Toffuti cream or ricotta cheeses.

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Summer Country Captain- Inspiration from the American South...via British India


Country Captain is a curried stew that's popular in Georgia and the Carolinas, and according to Wikipedia it was a favorite dish of General George Patton. (That makes it fancy and historical, so you should enliven your dinner conversation with gripping tales of the second world war.) It's savory and sweet and slightly exotic, and I call it "Summer" Country Captain because instead of using canned tomatoes, I use fresh. If it's winter-time and the tomatoes are total crap, well then please use chopped canned tomatoes; but I have a garden bursting with more tomatoes than I can use right now, so here's my version of this recipe.  Y'all are going to want to try this.

2-3 pounds of chicken thighs, or enough to cover the bottom of whatever pot or deep pan you're going to use.
1/2 cup flour
2 Tablespoons butter
1 Tablespoon oil (I use olive oil, I'm Greek)
1 large sweet onion, chopped
2 orange or yellow bell peppers, chopped
3 rounded cups of roughly chopped fresh sweet tomatoes (or use canned)
1/2 cup golden raisins (don't worry if you think you don't like raisins, they plump up and melt into the stew)
1 Tablespoon dark brown sugar
1 shot dark spiced rum (or brandy of you don't have rum)
1/3 cup water or stock
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon celery seed
1 teaspoon garlic powder 
1 Tablespoon curry powder
1 big pinch red pepper flakes (or more if you want it super spicy)

1/4 cup sliced almonds (important)
Cooked rice (not so important)

First sprinkle the chicken with a little salt and pepper, then coat the pieces in flour.  Heat the butter and oil in the pan on high heat and then brown the chicken on both sides, this will take like 3-5 minutes per side. 


Remove  the chicken and set aside while you saute the chopped onion, pepper and the spices in the hot oil, stirring frequently. After about 5-6 minutes of sauteing, add the chopped tomatoes, rum, sugar and water. Bring to a boil, then turn down to a low brisk simmer and add the chicken pieces, kind of immersing them in the veggies and liquid.

Add the golden raisins or fruit at this point. Most recipes say to add them at the end, but I like the way they flavor the sauce when you add them earlier. Simmer uncovered for 45 minutes on that same temperature (on my stove top it was a 3), then you can turn it all the way down to low/warm after it's done until it's ready to serve. 

Serve one or two chicken thighs per person and plenty of sauce, over a bed of *rice, with slivered almonds sprinkled on top. Now rice is traditional of course, but I don't see why buttered noodles, mashed potatoes or grits wouldn't be just as good.

It's best served with chilled, slightly sweet, German white wines or a cold Pilsner beer.

*To make rice, just boil twice as much water as you have rice (It's 2 water to 1 rice), along with a little butter and salt, then add the rice, turn the heat down to a low simmer and cover, cook for 20 minutes. Fluff with a fork before serving. 

People sometimes mess up their rice by either adding the rice into the cold water (mushy rice) or by letting the water boil too long before they add the rice (crunchy rice) so, keep your eye on the water! You want to add the rice when the water first starts bubbling away, then set the timer for the 20 minutes.


Monday, April 14, 2014

Not Quite Normal Potato Salad

Ingredients: 

2-3 medium sized boiled Yukon gold potatoes (skin on) cut into one inch cubes
2 cups of sweet grape tomatoes, cut in half
1/2 cup thinly sliced sweet onion (use a lot less if it's not a sweet onion) 
1 handful (about a cup) of arugula (a.k.a. rocket) leaves, chopped 
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon mayonnaise
1 teaspoon mustard 
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt 
1 oz. feta cheese or other sharp cheese (optional). If you don't use feta, add a little extra salt.

If the potatoes are still warm, go ahead and toss in the olive oil and garlic salt on them first, and then let them cool completely before adding the other ingredients. Now because you are using tomatoes, this isn't really a potato salad that you mix up ahead of time, but you can do all the chopping ahead and then mix it all together at the last minute. The arugula adds a peppery-ness to it, so you don't need to add pepper. If you do I would go with white pepper, not black. If you aren't doing dairy, a good substitute to add richness is a crumbled hard boiled egg yolk (no white, that's not a great texture here.) 

I just ate this for lunch and it didn't need bread or anything. But it would go great with fried chicken too!