Pumpkin chip cookies

Jess and I are in West Yellowstone, MT, living in a motel room, but it has an adjacent kitchenette, which makes me infinitely happier. Most people probably use motel kitchenettes to warm up leftovers or at most make some mac 'n cheese, but, we got a little more creative than that. Curry the first night, then a squash soup, then some chicken and green beans, we're living pretty well. And of course, dessert - we made some pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. With walnuts.

I got the recipe from here, it looked the most like a version I'd made in the past, but I couldn't remember the recipe - just that it had oil in it. I thought it was King Arthur Flour, but they use butter. So, this worked. We didn't want to have to buy butter AND oil - the goal is to have no leftovers by the end of the week, although I did buy baking powder, just because I'm out of it at home so figure I can pack back the rest of it... Anyway, I reprinted the recipe below, with my changes (we didn't have any spices).

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
Made 21 medium-to-large cookies

1C canned pumpkin
1 egg
6 tbs oil
1C sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2C flour
1C chocolate chips
1C walnuts (optional)

Preheat the oven to 375F. Combine the oil, egg, pumpkin, and sugar in a big bowl. Add in the salt and baking powder. Then add the flour, mix until just combined. Fold in the chocolate chips and walnuts. Scoop onto a greased cookie sheet and bake 15-20 minutes. The cookies don't spread at all, so they can be pretty close together. My cookies were probably 1/4C of batter to each one.

Orange yogurt cake

I'm continuing my quest for the perfect lemon-cornmeal cake... except this time it was an orange cake, with yogurt. In the past, I tried a lemon cornmeal muffin, but that wasn't quite was I was looking for. This one was a little closer, but the cornmeal was a very fine grind, so its not that cornmeal-y. I didn't have any orange zest, so went with orange extract, and I used the idea of a marmalade glaze from Dorie Greenspan's yogurt cake. Actually the recipe is pretty similar, although I was really just sort of throwing things in the pan - it was super quick to pull this together, and then it tasted darn good when I took it out of the oven. It reminded me a little of a pound cake, but not quite so dense - that is something I definitely don't like about pound cakes, they're just too dense. But I could see orange marmalade going really well as an accompaniement for this cake. Actually I could see some sort of alcohol working really well in the glaze... a limoncello-spiked lemon cake, anyone? I'll have to acquire some limoncello, then thats next. Maybe without the cornmeal, although it does give a nice little bite.

Orange cornmeal yogurt cake
3/4C regular flour
3/4C fine-ground cornmeal
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp orange extract (or orange zest, if you have it)
3/4C sugar
3 eggs
1/2C plain whole milk yogurt
1/2C oil

Preheat the oven to 325F. Put all the wet ingredients into a bowl, and whisk them until they're really well combined. Dump the flours on top of the wet stuff, and the salt and baking powder on top of that. Stir the salt and baking powder gently into the flour, and then fold all the dry stuff into the wet. Pour into a greased 9x5" pan, and bake for 45 minutes. Its done when the edges are pulling away from the edge of the pan and a tester toothpick comes up clean.

Let it cool for 5 minutes, then take it out of the pan and put it on a cooling rack (over a plate, to catch the glaze drips). Microwave 1/2C marmalade with 1tbs water until its warm, then strain it. Mix the marmalade mixture with approximately an equal amount of confectioner's sugar, and pour that over the top of the cake, and let it harden - it'll harden to a tacky hardness, not super hard. Enjoy in slices!

Sorry 'bout the crummy pictures (crumby, hehe), we were too busy eating the cake. This is on day 3, and its still not stale after sitting out for three days. Sweet.

Boef Bourguinon

Anna and I went to go see Julie and Julia the other day, and we both left the theatre craving butter. They talked about Julia Child's boef bourguinon a lot, although she pronounced it as "boof", which was mildly annoying. But, it looked delicious, and I decided that I really wanted to make some - hop on the Julia Child boef Bourguinon bandwagon, so to speak. I found the recipe online, scanned from Julia Child's cookbook - it had an ungodly number of steps, but I decided to follow them. I figured I'd do all the prep work Monday night, and we'd eat it on Tuesday. This was a good approach, because the prep ended up taking ~1.5 hours, and then the stew cooked for 3 hours, and there was another hour or so of prep and cooking for the onions and mushrooms. I did pretty well actually following the recipe, although I won't be making this again unless there is some really good reason - as Ed remarked, this was a recipe that they'd make in a French restaurant's kitchen, where you have different stations for every bit of the recipe. Not so much a home kitchen recipe, but the result was the same - AMAZINGLY delicious. I mean, foodgasm delicious. Expect some recipes in the future as I try to recreate this with less time in the kitchen... and probably less fat in the recipe, too, but I followed Julia's instructions this time, and its a real rich stew.

The first step was to obtain some meat. She calls for stewing meat, so I went to Whole Foods (Whole Paycheck) and amazingly, they had some chuck blade steak on sale for $3.99/lb. Chuck works for a stew, heck, any cheap cut of meat works. This wasn't cut into pieces yet, but I have a sharp knife, I'm up to the task.

The recipe called for 2" pieces, I don't know 2" but I do know bite-sized, so I went with that. I should have made my pieces about twice as big (and thereby made them ~2"), because it would have been fewer batches to brown them. Anyway, Julia says its very important to dry your meat or it won't brown properly, so, here is the meat sitting on its paper towels drying out.

The first actual step was to take a 6oz chunk of bacon and cut it into lardons. Now, I have regular bacon in the fridge, so I went with that. Sorry, deviating from the recipe, but I figured the flavor it gave to the dish would be similar, although I'd miss simmering the bacon rind in the stew. It was amazing anyway, so thats alright. The first step, once you've cut your bacon into lardons, is to boil it for 10 minutes. Boiled bacon... um, alright. Once its boiled, you take it out, and cook it with some olive oil in your "casserole" (I used Ed's dutch oven, I suppose thats the same thing) so that it browns. Here it is boiling away...

Once the bacon has browned, you pull it out of there, and start browning the beef. This ended up taking me ten batches, because she says to not crowd the meat - and I agree with her, can't get a good sear if there is too much meat in the pan. You're supposed to heat the fat until its almost smoking, and then start browning the meat. I used tongs to put it in there, but the oil was spattering a bit, so I used a longer-handled wooden spoon to rotate the meat. You should also hit the oven at 450F so it can pre-heat while you do this. You can see the fat and extra beef bits burning to the bottom of the dutch oven. I still haven't cleaned that thing yet. Whoops.

As the beef browned, I added it to the plate with the bacon on it (this plate at one point had a paper towel on it, but once the towel had soaked up the grease from the bacon, I removed it, so that I could collect the juice that was coming out of the beef - mmmmm, blood!), you can see my setup...

Eventually, you'll finish browning all the meat. Yay! You'll also probably be covered in little burn marks from the hot oil splattering, this is ok, because chicks dig scars. (pain is only temporary, glory lasts forever, chicks dig scars. It applies in the kitchen, too). Put your chopped carrot and chopped onion in the pan, and saute them until they're brown too. Then, pull the pan off the heat and drain off any excess fat. I didn't have any excess fat, in fact, I'd had to add more oil to keep browning the beef - this probably has to do with the fact that I cut it into pieces that were too tiny. Whoops. Now for the flavoring. Add the beef back to the pan, and toss with 1/4tsp pepper and 1/2 tsp salt - table salt. Then add 2-3 tbs flour, and toss to coat. Supposedly, this gives a crust to the beef, but I think more importantly, it'll thicken the stew. I could see just stirring in the flour once there is liquid in there... but thats for another recipe.

Once the beef is coated with flour, put the dutch oven in the oven (which is at 450F) for 4 minutes. After 4 minutes is up, take it out, toss it around, and put it back for another 4 minutes. Supposedly this will brown the flour, but I didn't really see much browning happening. Once the second four-minute stint is up, take the dutch oven out, and turn down the oven to 325. Add the bacon and vegetables back to the beef, and add 3C of red wine (I used a merlot, as that was what I had on hand), and 2-3C of beef stock (I used water with 3 chicken boullion cubes... sometimes, you just don't have any homemade beef stock on hand) until the contents of the pot are just barely covered. In goes 1 tbs of tomato paste, 2 cloves of smashed garlic, and a crumbled bay leaf. I was out of bay leaves, so added some rosemary instead, because I like rosemary.

Put the top on the dutch oven, and bring it to a simmer on the stove. Then stick in the oven for 2-3 hours. The sauce tasted pretty wine-y before I put it in the oven, but when I checked it after 3 hours, it was definitely done and the sauce had lost any of that overly wine-y flavor - now it was just delicious. I couldn't stop licking the spoon. It had thickened up a lot, you're supposed to drain off the sauce, but that was really hard to do, I only got about 2C of sauce, and that was after adding more water to it to thin it out (they say to add beef boullion, but I didn't have any of that. I poured the sauce through a strainer into a saucepan, and put the beef in a bowl for later. I sort of scrubbed out the pot, to use for the veggies.

Then it was time for the vegetables. You're supposed to make Julia's braised onions, and I sort of did that. I sauteed onions (I had about 8 little ones left over from something, and added another one big one, chopped up) in olive oil for ~10min, until they were just starting to caramelize. Then I put them in the dutch oven, covered with water and chicken boullion, and left to simmer for ~40min. The mushrooms were next. I had a pound of white mushrooms, I quartered them and salted them, just to get out some water. Then I cooked them in ~1.5tbs butter and 1 tbs oil, as called for, but I totally crowded the pan. Whoops. Forgot about that one. Julia says if you crowd the pan the mushrooms will steam in their juices, and they were definitely doing that. Well, all wasn't lost, as I poured off some of the mushroom juice, and turned the pan up to high, tossing them around every once in a while - they browned.

So, at this point, you are supposed to skim off the fat from the sauce. I didn't see any obvious fat, I sort of half-heartedly spooned off some stuff that looked like it might just be fat, but it wasn't like when you make chicken stock and the fat comes to the top and congeals. You're supposed to boil the sauce for a bit to make it thicker, I did that, but then you're just supposed to serve the stew as is. Since I knew I'd be serving it to more people and I was worried there wouldn't be enough, I'd added two potatoes, a parsnip, and three carrots to the braising onions. This ended up diluting the stew so that it wasn't quite as delicious as it had been before dilution. Damn. It was still darn good, though. Two of the four people who were over (and one of the four was a vegetarian, so technically thats 2/3) wanted the recipe. It just had been better before I went and added a bunch of vegetables - velvety, rich, bursting with flavor. I just started drooling again just thinking about it.

So my plans for this stew are to take the basic idea and make it something that takes a lot shorter to prepare and doesn't have quite so much bacon or oil in it. Stay tuned for variations along those lines...

Buffalo Basil

This is another one of Anna's recipes, sort of kind of not really actually. But it was inspired by a recipe in her cookbook that we made last time we were over there. Her recipe used chicken, and I'm sure there was some other stuff in it, really the only connection is the inspiration.

I was in Whole Foods and noticed that their ground buffalo was about the same price as the ground beef, and I like buffalo, so I got some. And then I remembered that I had a lot of Thai basil at home, and this dish was born. Its fairly simple, but it was high on the yum-scale.



Buffalo Basil Glop
Made three servings

1/2lb ground buffalo (any sort of ground meat works here)
A 2" chunk of ginger
2 cloves garlic
2C basil leaves (Thai basil has a slightly spicier smell/taste)
Soy sauce, to taste
Molasses, to taste
2C green beans, broken in half
Oil of some sort, for cooking

In some oil, cook the garlic until it is golden brown. Add the ginger and the meat, and stir it around to break it up. Add a couple glugs of soy sauce (small glugs), and keep stirring around. Once its broken up, add the basil, chopped or ripped into pieces. Add about 1-2 teaspoons of molasses, stir it around - if the meat is cooked enough for your liking, give it a taste. Add more soy sauce and molasses as you feel necessary. Remove the meat from the heat.

Meanwhile, blanche the green beans, until they're tender but crisp. Add to the meat.

Serve over rice.

When we did this at Anna's house, the recipe called for a fried egg over the top. Ed and I agreed that while the egg was good, it wasn't really adding anything to this dish. Oh well. Worth it anyway.

Chop Chae

Anna got a fancy new Asian food cookbook, so the last two times I've invited myself over, she's made me yummy Asian food. This last recipe is Korean, and used glutenous rice noodles as a starch - I discovered that I'm not a huge fan of glass rice noodles. They're super chewy, and gloopy, and occasionally I found myself forgetting to chew and just swallowing, and they slid down nicely. Anyway, just not a fan of the texture, but the rest of the dish was really good, and I liked the sauce. And it does need to be said, that even though I might not ever buy glass noodles for myself, I certainly ate them with varying degrees of gusto.



I realize this isn't the most flattering picture I could have taken, but I was hungry, and just trust me that it tastes better than it looks.

Marinade
3 Tbs soy sauce
2 Tbs sugar
1.5 tsp corn syrup
1 tbs garlic
2 tbs green onion
1 tbs sesame oil
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp salt
1/3C sesame seeds (clearly, we left them out since there aren't any featured in the photo)
2 tbs vegetable oil

9oz beef rib eye or strip steak, julienned

Combine the marinade ingredients, toss with the meat, and marinate for one hour.

The rest of the dish:
1 tsp salt
1C zucchini
3/4C carrots
1C onions
1C shitake mushrooms
1C oyster mushrooms (we left out the mushrooms, because Anna doesn't like mushrooms)
1 red pepper
salt and pepper
1 Tbs soy sauce
1 tsp sugar
1 Tbs pine nuts (again, we left these out)
3 eggs
7oz dried glass noodles

Soak the noodles for 30-40 minutes. Blanche the Oyster mushrooms for 2 minutes, then blanche the shitakes for 1 minute. Make a little omelet with the eggs and julienne it. Julienne all the vegetables. Salt the zucchini and carrots, and let them sit for 10 minutes (this removes some water, it says). Cook the beef. Boil the noodles for 3 minutes, then drain and rinse with cold water. Cook the vegetables. Mix the soy sauce and sugar and toss with the noodles. Put everything in a big bowl and garnish with the egg. Eat.

I'll probably make something similar, at some point, without the noodles. Or with a different kind of noodles. And definitely with the mushrooms. The marinade was delicious, and you just pour that sauce right over everything.

Fried seafood

Some days, you get a call that you're going to be abducted and taken to New Deal, the fish shop in Cambridge. I can't say I complain when I get that phone call... Ed wanted to cook seafood, I had no idea what he was planning but I went along with it since when he cooks things, they taste good. Usually.

So, he bought some mussels, some scallops, and some big shrimps. We went home, while Ed schemed as to what he'd make with these delectable little fruits of the sea. We did a broth thing with the mussels - white wine, water, butter, carrot, leek, tiny onions - and pretty much everything else was fried.

The picture may be dark and blurry, but it tasted much better than it looks. I love me some mussels.

Ed deep-fried the shrimp, and made french fries too. Apparently the trick to making french fries is to fry them twice. I didn't know this. It also makes your kitchen a mess, but the fries were worth it. The deep-fried shrimp... meh, I prefer them steamed or grilled. But they were alright. He pan-fried the scallops in butter - now THOSE were excellent.



Little beady shrimp eyes... I did not suck the stuff out of the heads.

Potato-Leek soup

Mama used to call this "potage", which I think just means soup, but whatever. Potage is potato leek soup. I think at one point she gave me the recipe, its similar to my recipes, using the word "about" many times and nothing is definite. This is a variation on the usual potage, because it has some kale in it. I had used the green part of the leek for something else, and I was worried the soup wouldn't be green enough. So, I added kale. And bacon, because everything is better with bacon...

Potato-leek (and kale and bacon) soup
1 large potato
1 leek
3 pieces of bacon
~1C kale
2C chicken broth (or two boullion cubes)
Water to cover
1 scallion for ganish, or chives, those are pretty too.

Chop up the bacon into little pieces, and cook it in a pan to render out most of the fat. While that cooks (it'll take 15-20min, don't try to rush it...), chop up the leek and rinse it well. Those things grow in a pile o' shit, you don't want to eat that. Drain off about half the bacon grease, and add the leek with some salt. Put the chicken broth on to boil, peel and chop the potato and add it to the broth. Add water as needed to barely cover the potato. Rinse the kale and add it to the soup. Once the leek is soft and starting to taste a little sweet, add it to the boiling potato. Once the potato is cooked, attack the soup with an immersion blender or pour it into the blender. I like mine a little chunky still, not too pureed. Serve with some bacon and scallions on top. Tastes best with some toasted baguette or sourdough bread...

Applesauce

So, Ed shook the apple tree in VT, and got close to 50 pounds of apples falling on his head. He put them in boxes and took them home, to make applesauce. 50 pounds of apples makes a LOT of applesauce. At least he bought a food mill to help him.

They start out looking like this. Clearly, he shook TWO trees. Because those aren't all from the same tree.

Then he boiled them for a while - skins and everything. He cut them in quarters first. I don't know how much water he added - I think not that much. I also don't know how long he boiled them. But I don't think it was very long.

Then the apples went in the food mill, and out came the applesauce!





He is currently in the process of canning it. I'm not helping. I just eat it. The problem is I'm not crazy about applesauce... keep your eyes peeled for interesting recipes using applesauce in the near future. First one is apple leather. And of course granola bars with applesauce. And muffins with applesauce. And brownies with applesauce. And it goes on...

Chocolate raspberry truffles

I tried really hard to follow a recipe here. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough butter. But that was pretty much all I changed. The original recipe looks fantastic, and next time I have a full four sticks of butter in my house I'll be trying it, but these were pretty good as is, too. I ended up bringing about half the batch (and I'd made a half batch as it was) to work, because they're just too rich and delicious to leave sitting around at home.

I'll post my "recipe" below, although I would recommend the King Arthur one first, since the brownies would have benefited from more butter and I messed up the topping... but this version is good, too.

Chocolate Raspberry Truffles
Made ~36 squares

1.5 sticks of butter (2 would be preferable, but I only had 1.5)
1/2C raspberry jam to make up for the lack of butter (I'm not sure it works this way, actually... but I also didn't have any raspberry flavor, so I figured this was killing two birds with one stone, or something)
3oz bittersweet chocolate
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp instant espresso powder
2 eggs
3/4C flour

Topping:
1/3C chocolate chips
1/4C heavy cream
1/4C raspberry jam

Garnish:
1 pint raspberries

Melt the butter in a pot, add the jam, add the sugar, mix it around. Remove the pot from the heat, let it cool a bit, then add the chocolate and stir until its melted. Add the flavorings and the eggs, stir that around. Then add the flour.

I cooked these in a 9x5" pan and a small heart-shaped pan (~8" diameter). (this is what I had available to me after halving the recipe). Preheat the oven to 400F. Bake for 30min.

This is where I stopped reading the recipe and made up my own topping. Whoops. In a double boiler, melt the chocolate chips and add the cream. Once its all melted, stir in the raspberry jam, and spread this over the bars. Add a raspberry over where you think each square will be, and cool in the fridge (or the freezer, if you want to eat them sooner). Don't try to cut the bars while they're still warm. Frankly, I think the KAF way of doing the topping looks better, but my way made a gooey raspberry-chocolate sauce-y topping, which held the fresh raspberry quite nicely. I kept the bars in the fridge, so they never got too goopy, and they were deliciously rich. I recommend making them.