Author Archive

We’re still floating and mildly homeless, so I took over someone else’s kitchen (my mother’s) to perform this month’s Daring Bakers challenge. I’m glad I did! I discovered that danish pastry is time-consuming but not that tough and super-rewarding. The final result is buttery, melting, and super-tender.

I’m grateful to  Kelly of Sass & Veracity and Ben of What’s Cooking? for a great challenge! I’m a little too lazy to copy out the recipe, so if you’d like to try it out (do! It’s fun and delicious!), you can find it here.

I decided to try out my mother-in-law’s bread machine today. I’ver never used a bread machine before, and the loaf (challah, if you’d like to know) isn’t even a third of the way done, and I have no idea how it’s going to turn out. But it’s already a success to me, because I’ve just discovered something very interesting to me as a Canadian baker (sorry to my American buddies, this probably isn’t at all useful to you, unless you feel like importing Canadian flour). In the past year or so I’ve been experimenting with flour types, buying bread flour instead of all-purpose because it’s what my bread books advise.

In preparation for baking a bread machine loaf, I pulled up the Black & Decker bread machine manual and discovered that they provide different recipes for Americans and Canadians. Why? As it turns out, I didn’t need to be using bread flour all this time! All-purpose flour is a blend of hard wheat, which has more protein (gluten), and soft wheat, which has less. Canadian wheat is harder in general, and the blend leans more toward hard flour, so Canadians can generally use all-purpose flour for any bread recipe, as the protein content is about equal to American bread flour.

I’m not exactly sure what bearing this has on my cake/cookie/pastry baking, but I’ve never had too much trouble all-purposing those either. Maybe we ought to start experimenting with cake flour? Does anyone outside of North America have any ideas about flours elsewhere? How about Americans? Do you use bread flour or all-purpose flour for your baking? Have you noticed any differences?

Here’s an interesting explanation of the Canadian/American flour thing.

ps. Hi everyone! We’re back! (and obviously can’t resist a bit of metablogging in nearly every post)

It seems that I’m spending most of my time lately apologizing– I’m late, I’m absent… Well. So I’m late posting this and I’ve been absent. And we’ll be absent some more for the next month, I think, as we are packing up our life and moving ourselves across the country. Carlo’s been getting shooting pains in his head, and I’ve suddenly developed a neck problem. Ha. So this is my final apology and from here on out, if we post we’ll be acting as if everything’s normal and there’s nothing to apologize about.

So here we are late with our Daring Bakers report. This Last month, Morven at Food Art and Random Thoughts chose Dorie Greenspan’s perfect party cake. Now, I’m not much of a cake baker. Too much precision, too much waiting and anxiety, too many fallen cakes. A lot of bakers had problems getting their cakes to rise, and I was no exception. My layer cake had only two layers instead of four, since I didn’t want to try slicing into my pitiful little layers. But! The cake was super-tasty. I made a strawberry-lemon curd filling to layer inside, and the buttercream was thick and delicious. For a basic cake recipe, this one is a good one. Check out some of the other bakers’ cakes by going to the Daring Bakers’ blogroll. There are some good ideas for how to get the cake to rise.

You can check out the cake recipe here.

STRAWBERRY LEMON CURD

1 1/2 cups sugar
2 cups fresh strawberries
zest and juice of 1 lemon
2 large eggs
3 egg yolks
1/2 cup butter, cubed

Put the sugar, strawberries, lemon zest and juice, eggs and egg yolks in the bowl of a food processor and spin them until the strawberries are smooth.

Put the puree in a small saucepan, add the butter and cook over low heat, stirring often, until butter has melted and mixture thickens, about 30 minutes. Don’t allow the curd to boil.

Take the curd off the heat and cool it before placing it in clean jars and refrigerating it. This recipe makes about 2 1/2 cups of curd. It’s great for a cake layer, for spreading on eggy bread, or just to eat out straight out of the jar (I’m not ashamed…).

Happy April!

Did you think we were gone? We’re still here, though it seems that we’re barely eating and barely keeping up with life as we anticipate some big changes that all of a sudden are sitting there like mountains, just feet away. Oops.

Anyway, I’m breaking the silence to tell you about Arfi and her interesting blog HomemadeS. After having so much fun browsing through someone’s back recipes with last month’s Taste and Create, hosted by For the Love of Food, I couldn’t wait to play again. This month I got to browse through an exotic (to me, anyway) collection of recipes. Arfi posts a lot of Indonesian recipes, and I can’t wait to go through her archive and do some more cooking. Bubur Injit, Sambar Telur Manis, and Empal Panggang are on my must-try list now, but I have to admit that I settled on slightly less adventurous choices. I couldn’t resist making two things: corn fritters and ginger tea.

The corn fritters were lovely. Arfi brought exciting flavour to a nice simple base of corn, flour, and egg with the addition of crispy fried shallots, feta, and celery leaves. Yum! I can’t wait to make them again. The only change I made to her recipe was the addition of some buttermilk, which I added because I found the mixture a bit too dry to work with. I liked the tangy flavour it added, and I thought it went well with the creamy feta. We ate the fritters alongside tomato soup.

After finding the corn fritter recipe, I did some more digging and found a recipe for ginger tea concentrate. Again, nice and simple with a great result. I mixed the concentrate with straight lemon juice and diluted it with water in a one-to-one ratio. I loved the combo of lemony sour, spicy ginger, and sweet palm sugar. I just wish it were summer, so I could appreciate it from a sun-dappled picnic table in a park somewhere. Thanks so much, Arfi!

It’s easy to be in love with an idea; it’s a lot harder to follow through on its execution.

I’ve been thinking about baking French bread for a long time now. The idea of pulling a crispy, golden baguette out of my oven appealed to my romantic bread-baker side, but it seemed so complicated. I was scared. I’m not very fond of failing, and I’d often rather not do something at all than to do it and get it wrong. I know, I know. That’s not very daring of me.

I’ve been putting off French bread for all sorts of reasons: I don’t have a spray bottle for misting the bread and making steam, I don’t have a fancy bread lame, I don’t have a canvas baking couche for proofing the bread. Oh, and I wasn’t really sure what proofing meant. And then there’s this:

We were lucky that our stove was included in our apartment, but not so lucky with the stove itself. It’s a million years old, with only one rack inside. The burners go out once a month, the broiler seldom works, and it runs at least 20 degrees cooler than it’s supposed to. It’s so poorly insulated that it just can’t hold its heat. This stove should be a recipe for failure.

So I was unreasonably thrilled when I found out that Julia Child’s French bread was my very first Daring Bakers challenge. If I failed, well, so be it. It wasn’t going to be my fault–I didn’t have the right supplies! As it turns out, Julia Child’s detailed instructions, combined with some anxiety and improvisation with equipment, gave us an amazing result. This was SO not a failure. What we had in the end was a bread with a moist, almost creamy crumb, with large holes; and a crisp, golden, crackling crust that sprang open beautifully where I slashed it before slipping it into the oven. The recipe made three baguettes slightly longer than 12 inches each.

I’m so happy (and pleasantly surprised!) with how this bread turned out, especially given the equipment I was working with. That’s the magic of Julia Child and 10-page-long instructions. The only thing I would do differently is to use better flour. With the intention of conquering my perfectionism, I decided to use the regular, not-special all purpose flour I had in the house. With three(!) rises, and so few ingredients (water, flour, yeast, salt), the flavour of the flour really develops, so it only makes sense to use the best you can get your hands on. I’ll do this next time. And yes, there will be a next time.

The Daring Bakers is a huge group, and there’s a lot of bread online today, so I won’t reprint the recipe. You can check it out here. What I’d like to offer you are some of the resources, materials, and techniques I used.

KNEADING: I’m always a pretty anxious cook, and I was especially so with this recipe. On the day of my baking, my nerves were eased when I discovered this video of Richard Bertinet demonstrating his kneading technique. This was perfect for the French bread dough. Ignore the ingredients he’s using and just focus on the super-cool kneading. My damp, sticky dough was transformed, but I didn’t need to use any extra flour, so the final product wasn’t even the slightest bit tough!

RISING: Here’s a trick my mother has used for years. I use my oven for the first rise, and in the case of this bread, the second rise too. I set my oven to the lowest temperature it runs at. I leave it there for two minutes, and then turn it off, turning on the oven light at the same time. This makes a nice cozy environment for the bread to grow in. Another trick is to put the covered bowl of dough on top of the fridge. It’s usually nice and warm up there too.
Another essential is patience. This dough required hours to rise to its full height. It had finally gone through its final rise and fully cooked 12 HOURS after I first pulled the flour off the shelf. Monitor the dough closely, but don’t skimp on time.

MAKING STEAM AND HEAT: Julia Child’s recipe recommends unglazed quarry tiles and a spray bottle to reproduce the heat and steam of a professional bread baking oven. Well, I didn’t have those, but I do have a pizza stone. I heated the oven hotter than the recommended temperature with the pizza stone inside. This heated the stone up nice and hot, so it would hold the heat that our crappy oven couldn’t. When I slid the baguettes onto the stone, we made steam by tossing a bit of water directly onto the bottom of the oven. The recipe recommends ice cubes, but I didn’t want to sacrifice any heat at all (precious, precious, heat), so we used hot water. We did it three times, about a minute between each steam bath. Carlo whipped open the oven door, I tossed the water from a cookie sheet directly onto the floor of the oven, and Carlo whipped the door closed again. Total time per steam bath: maybe 5 seconds. After all that, I finally reduced the oven heat to the recommended temperature.

NOT BEING AFRAID: Don’t be afraid!

Thanks to the hostesses of this month’s Daring Baker challenge — Mary from The Sour Dough and Sara from I Like to Cook — I’ve conquered my fear of French bread. I can’t wait to see what comes next!

You can see other Daring Bakers’ French bread by going to the Daring Bakers Blogroll.

There’s been a theme to my last few posts. I’ll give you a second to go back and check, if you want. Booze, dessert, syrup, pasta. Yeah… we’ve been putting lemon in everything.

Well, if you’re looking for a change of pace, I’ve got none to offer. And I’m not apologizing, because I think this next recipe is another great use of lemon. Try it, you’ll like it.

First, an intro: this month I signed up for a great event called Taste & Create, at For the Love of Food. Participants get matched up with another blog, and you both go through each other’s archives and find a recipe to recreate. I love this idea and I can’t wait to do it again. You should do it too!

We were lucky to be paired with Andreea and Mark of Glorious Food and Wine. I loved paging through their posts (ahem.. and felt a little guilty about the blog’s wealth of recipes. Unfortunately for Andreea, she had a much smaller pool of recipes at SiS to choose from). I love the casual “toss some of this in, throw together some of that” feel of the blog, and the photos are great! There was so much to choose from, but I settled on some plain old potatoes. Well. Not so plain.

Rustic Anchovies Potatoes caught my eye. It’s got something I’ve never tried before (how have I gone this many years without anchovies?), and it’s got lemon. Two of my hangups in one recipe equals something I must try.

I wanted to make sure that I could taste the lemon, so I fiddled a bit. While Andreea and Mark’s guidelines call for a lemon roasted with the potatoes, I went one step further. After roasting the potatoes with a quartered lemon, I tossed the finished product in a little sauce made from a bit of lemon juice (maybe half a tablespoon) mixed with diced anchovies. It worked out great! The sour of the lemons and umami of the anchovies were a nice mix, and made ordinary roasted potatoes into something that tasted entirely new. Hooray!

Hey, Carlo here. And look! A new feature. Don’t go holding me to it just because I made a banner.

So Hanne keeps signing SiS up to blogging groups, which is great, but my non-participation makes me feel (and likely look) like the sort of curmudgeonly husband who sends his wife off to dinner parties alone because there’s a very important hockey game on and beer in the fridge. No, pointing out that the Oilers have no more important games left in them this season is not helpful.

Anyway. Here is our supper in stereo:

I pan fried “don’t call me deer if I’m dead” venison steaks smothered in half a log of Anthony Bourdain’s red wine compound butter (see Ruhlman). We always have a store of the butter in the freezer for last minute steaks. It’s like insta-marinade. I’ll post the recipe sometime.

The wine butter’s palate smack was nearly too much for the gamey/muddy taste of the deer steak (I guess that does sound weird). If it wasn’t for the roasted potato and anchovies turning the steak’s aftertaste on its head with its fishy citrus bite, I might not have enjoyed this meal as much as I did. Frankly, at first bite I didn’t like the potatoes much either, but they grew on me quick. I guess I wasn’t expecting such complex flavours out of meat and potatoes. We rounded out the plate with glazed carrots. Their sweetness helped level off the major umami busting off the other two thirds of the dish. Despite my initial skepticism, it turned out to be a great meal.

Oh yeah. The carrots were glazed with Meyer lemon honey. They were great, but I swear I now know there can be too much of a good thing. Okay Hanne? Next time life gives you more lemons than you know what to do with, use the freezer.

Anyway, thanks to the other blog for supplying us with the recipe. Oh and hey other blog, tell the other other blogs I’m not actually a big unsociable jerk, okay?

I have something to tell you. Up to now, this blog has been decidedly positive. We tell you how much we love a food item, give a little run-down on why we like it, maybe give a glowing description and a couple preparation suggestions. Then you get the recipe. This is good. And positive. Everything’s all right here at Supper in Stereo.

But here’s my confession– I’m not generally sunny. I’m a whiner, a complainer, a look-on-the-dark-side kind of person. I complain about my job, curse the cloudy weather, call my cat stupid.

Actually, I only did that last one once. And I felt really bad afterwards.

I’m working on it, I am. But sometimes Carlo’s and my self-imposed exercise of listing three good things that happened every day ends up sounding something like this: Today is over. I survived today. I can go to bed now. This, my friends, is not positive.

Sometimes when you’re busy feeling grey like this, food falls by the wayside. Oh, we still eat, of course. But cookies turn out tough and floury, soup tasteless, meat dry. And we dutifully shovel it in, to get enough energy to slog through another day. January and February are especially bad when you live in a wintry climate. We’re lucky to get one sunny day a week and the rest of the days are plodding and overcast. They’re not even grey, they’re just… nothing.

Have you had enough yet?

Then listen: every once in a while, even I have to poke my head up and say “wait, this is pretty good.” The other night, Carlo and I were contemplating a beautiful pan of chicken parts scattered with chunks of lemon and rosemary that we were about to roast (the recipe was yet another gift from my generous aunt and uncle, and I’ll pass it on to you soon). It was gorgeous, even uncooked, and we could tell just by looking that it was going to be delicious. Carlo said “man, we have it pretty good.” And I agreed.

I had another moment like this the other night, standing in the kitchen, sticking my tongue out while I took a paring knife to the skins of our last Meyer lemons. I was sticking my tongue out because I was concentrating on only getting skin and not pith, so that the mini batch of limoncello that I was preparing wouldn’t come out with any bitterness at all. To be honest, the task of carefully peeling thin-skinned lemons isn’t really all that fun. I was tense and my shoulders were aching. But at the other end of the counter, Carlo was preparing a batch of one of our favorite ice creams. He was talking himself through the steps, pretending to host a cooking show (sample instructions: “…then you take a thing… or a spoon… and you move the stuff in the bowl around with it.” Sample banter: “I’m okay! Do you like me? You’re okay!”). If I wasn’t concentrating so hard, I would have been giggling. Carlo finished preparing his ice cream, and I finished peeling my lemons (it took me 30 minutes for four lemons– that’s dedication). Then Carlo put his ice cream into the ice cream machine and I put my limoncello in the cupboard to steep.

It’s just a little jar, mind you. I only had four lemons left (and incidentally, the more-than-half-empty bottle of vodka on our bar had the exact right amount of alcohol left, which was a nice coincidence). When the limoncello’s finished, it will be enough for a few sips, not much else. But I still like knowing that it’s sitting in the cool darkness of our cupboard, getting more and more delicious, waiting for us. You can steep your limoncello anywhere from two weeks to four months. I’m leaving mine there for all of February. We’ll see how I feel come March.

I’ll let you know how the limoncello turned out in a couple months. And Carlo’s ice cream? It was perfect, perfect. Life is good and we are lucky. I just don’t feeling like talking about it.

BROWN SUGAR SOUR CREAM ICE CREAM

We follow the recipe for brown sugar sour cream ice cream from Mercedes at Desert Candy faithfully. The last few times, we’ve used panela instead of brown sugar, just because I found panela in the store and felt that it needed to come home with me. I highly recommend this variation, as the panela has a great intense smoky, molassesy flavour. However, you MUST try the original recipe as well. It’s great! I love the addition of bourbon to the mix, but you could easily leave it out and still have a great ice cream. Plus there’s no custard to fiddle with (Farhan, I’m thinking of you…).

LIMONCELLO

If you want to make limoncello, here’s the recipe I used. I used vodka, as it’s what we had around, but if you can find a grain alcohol, that would probably be better. The linked recipe makes a huge amount, but I scaled it to the following proportions:

4 lemons, preferably unsprayed and unwaxed
350 mL vodka or grain alcohol
1 1/4 c. water
1 1/3 c. sugar

Wash and dry the lemons, then peel them. Place them in a mason jar with the alcohol. Make sure the lemon is fully covered. Put the mason jar in a cool, dark place, shaking it once a day. Leave this for at least two weeks, but I’ve read you can go up to four months.

When your lemon concoction has steeped to your satisfaction, it’s time to sweeten it. Bring the water to a boil and add the sugar. Stir until the sugar has dissolved, then remove from the heat and allow to cool. When the mixture is room temperature, put a strainer over the saucepan that’s holding the sugar syrup and strain your steeped lemon mixture into the sugar syrup. Combine the liquids well, then place the mixture back into a mason jar. Put the mason jar back into your cupboard and repeat the first process, shaking twice every day for about three weeks.

Finally, after all that time, it’s ready to taste! The Washington Post recommends storing your limoncello in the freezer, where it will turn a milky yellow.

WASTE NOT!

By the way, I juiced the lemons after I peeled them and boiled the juice with sugar in a 1:1 ratio to make lemon syrup. You could use this syrup to make lemonade, or you could pop in a vanilla bean and do a bit more fiddling to make something like this (which looks super-lovely).

We’ve been away from the blog for a little while now, but it’s not because we’re not cooking– it’s just that we haven’t been cooking anything really, really good. And instead of subjecting you to mediocrity (why share a so-so recipe?), we’ve been waiting until we had something great to share with you. And ta-da! Here’s an incredibly simple dessert that I’m planning to keep in my arsenal forever. Would you believe it has just three ingredients? Cream, sugar and lemon juice combine to make a mousse-y dessert that’s rich but light-tasting. We loved how the lemon lifted the thickness of the cream off our tongues so the dessert felt decadent but not heavy. I wish even more that it actually wasn’t heavy so that I could eat it every day, but that’s another matter.

I did a bit of research and found out that this dessert evolved from a strange-sounding Elizabethan (or maybe older?) drink of warmed milk curdled with sack (sherry) or ale. I’d like to try this out too, just because “sack” always makes me think of Shakespeare’s Falstaff. Anyone know of any literary references to posset?

I followed a recipe from the LA Times for this modern posset, and it called for Meyer lemon in particular. Any lemon will work, but you might need to add more sugar to balance the flavours. Next time, I’m using blood orange juice (thanks to our beautiful, beautiful new vintage chrome juicer) and cutting back on the sugar to make blood orange posset. I’m excited!

MEYER LEMON POSSET adapted from the LA Times

This recipe makes two 1/2 cup portions. Feel free to double it.

1 cup heavy cream
1/3 cup sugar
Juice of 1 Meyer lemon (about 1/4 cup)

Combine cream and sugar in a small saucepan. Heat them over medium-low heat until the sugar is dissolved and the surface of the cream just begins to ripple and steam. Remove the saucepan from the heat and set it aside to cool, stirring it occasionally to prevent a film from forming on the top of the cream. Allow it to cool until lukewarm, approximately 20 minutes.

When the cream and sugar are cooled, stir in the lemon juice to blend well. I took these instructions very seriously and whisked in the sugar, creating some air bubbles at the top of my posset. If you’re gentler, you’ll probably avoid this. Divide the posset between two small bowls and put it in the fridge to set at least four hours or overnight.

When we went through customs in Toronto, I dutifully filled out the customs form, checking off the little box that said we were bringing food items into Canada. When we passed the customs officer, he asked me what kind of food we had with us. I started off dutifully, listing “Lemons, dried chiles, some cheese, some vinegars….” (actually three vinegars–sherry, grapefruit, and sugar cane. Cool, huh?). Then the full magnitude of our food purchases hit me and I trailed off in embarrassment. I was sure he’d judge us, so I didn’t mention the chocolates, tapioca pearls, pistachios, dried cherries, dried apricots, Valhrona cocoa powder, dried sweetened hibiscus flowers (!), chile-spiced mangoes… you get the idea.

Anyway, the star of our food haul has got to be these:

Aren’t they lovely? And so free! My very generous and food-loving uncle and aunt have a Meyer lemon tree in their backyard. Every time I say that sentence it gives me little jealousy pangs. Do you know how much a Meyer lemon costs in Montreal? Ahem. Two dollars and fifty cents. For one lemon. If you can even find one in this city, which is rare as these guys don’t transport all that well. Count the lemons in that bag. Do the math. And the ones I can find around here aren’t even fresh. Or big. They’re puny, wizened little things. These lemons are bursting with juice and flavour and scent. Owen and Gabrielle, thank you so much!

To prove we’re putting these lemons to good use, I offer you the following recipe. It’s from Amanda Hesser’s “Cooking for Mr. Latte,” which I find to be hit-or-miss. I’ve made a few stinkers from the book, but this one’s a definite hit. The peppery arugula and rich crème fraîche are livened up by a hit of herbal meyer lemon tang, and the sauce coats the pasta perfectly.

I suspect the above image isn’t beautiful, but I can’t tell because it just reminds me of the flavour of this pasta, which definitely was beautiful. Here’s the recipe.

MEYER LEMON CREME FRAICHE LINGUINE adapted from “Cooking For Mr. Latte” by Amanda Hesser

Cooking notes: mise-en-place is very important here. Make sure everything is prepped in advance, as this pasta cools down quickly and thus must be eaten immediately upon preparation. It makes a great first course. I can also imagine it going very well with chicken.

Salt
1 pound of linguine
a chunk of Parmesan (to be grated)
2 Meyer lemons
3 large handfuls of arugula, cleaned and roughly chopped
1/2 cup crème fraîche*
freshly ground black pepper

Bring water to boil in a large pot. When the water is boiling rapidly, add salt (generously) and then the pasta.

While the pasta cooks, grate a handful of parmesan into a large bowl and zest the two lemons into the bowl. Add the arugula to this bowl as well. Juice one of the lemons and reserve the juice**.

When the pasta is cooked (make sure it’s still al dente), quickly drain it and add it to the serving bowl that’s holding the cheese and lemon zest. Don’t worry about getting the pasta completely dry. It should be slicked with water, as that will help thin out the cheese and the thick crème fraîche to a tossable consistency. Next, add the lemon juice and toss again. Last, add the crème fraîche and continue to toss well, until the sauce is well-distributed, the arugula is wilted, the the cheese is melty. Grind some pepper into all this and toss once more. Serve immediately.

*crème fraîche is expensive! If you want to make your own, at a slightly better price and with the satisfaction of do-it-yourself, here’s a recipe. I confess I’ve never tried it, but it does sound nice and simple.

**Please don’t throw away the other lemon’s juice. If nothing else, you can boil it with water in a one-to-one ratio to make a great simple syrup to add to gin for a nice cocktail– more on this in a later post.

This is just a quick recipe for my dad, who’s looking for ways to preserve meyer lemons for easy transport.

MEYER LEMON SIMPLE SYRUP (adapted from marthastewart.com)

1 cup sugar
1 cup water
grated zest of one lemon

Simmer the above together until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture is slightly thickened, approximately 10 minutes. Allow it to cool before putting it into a can or bottle for storage. Keep syrup refrigerated.

If you want to use the juice too, I think that would work fine. Maybe just add equal amounts of sugar to any lemon juice you add.

When I looked out the window this morning, the street looked like this:

It snowed all night, it’s snowing now, and they’re saying it will continue to snow for the next few days. Later, I will put on my suit, rolling up the cuffs of the pants and secure them with binder clips (one hazard of Canadian winter–your pants can’t be tailored for your heels and your boots at the same time. And you do not want to have damp pants cuffs). Then I will venture out to wade through the snow to go teach a class. For now, though, I’m wrapped in layers of blankets and sweaters, keeping snug indoors.

They’re saying that this winter might be a cold one, full of snow and low temperatures. Something about La Nina. I say, bring her on! I’ve got chicken stock on my balcony (hey, what’s the frozen outdoors for if not to augment my freezer space?), tea in my cupboards, many, many pairs of wool socks in my dresser drawers. And on my table right now I’ve got a loaf of tender, toasty bread. It’s not beautiful (witness the lumpy, flattened top–I think my loaf tin was a little too big), but it’s cozy.

This is wild rice onion bread. It’s moist and full of onion flavour. The recipe comes from Peter Reinhart’s “Brother Juniper’s Bread Book,” which is once of my favourite bread books. It’s a great read, and it’s got some great recipes. Wild Rice and Onion bread uses a mix of brown and wild rice as a base to add fluffiness and moisture to the dough. If you can’t get your hands on wild rice, I think brown rice would work fine on its own. The recipe calls for one cup of raw, diced onion, but when I make it next time, I think I’ll use 1 1/2 cups of raw onion and cook it down to caramelize and concentrate the flavours. Other than those modifications, this bread is a keeper! It’s firm enough to use as a sandwich bread, but it’s also moist and light enough to be toasted and eaten on its own or made into rolls. The rolls make me think of onion bagels, just begging for some whipped cream cheese. It also makes fantastic warm and crunchy and light toast.

PETER REINHART’S WILD RICE ONION BREAD
adapted from Brother Juniper’s Bread Book– Makes two loaves, or 30 rolls

8 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup diced fresh onions
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 Tbsp instant yeast
1 1/2 Tbsp salt
1 cup cooked wild rice blend (I used a mix of wild rice and brown rice. I added 3 parts water to one part rice and cooked it for about 45 minutes, until the water was absorbed and the wild rice had split open– make sure the wild rice is tender enough. This should be added at room temperature, so it’s a good idea to make it a day ahead)
1/3 cup buttermilk
about 1 1/2 cups of water

In a steel bowl, mix all the dry ingredients together, including the yeast, the onions and the wild rice blend. Next, add the liquid ingredients. Don’t add all the water. Set some aside in case you need to add more to adjust the consistency of the dough while you’re kneading it. Mix everything together as best you can. I usually eschew the spoon and just use my hands to bring the mix together.

Turn out the shaggy mess of dough onto a floured counter. Knead the dough for about 10-15 minutes, until it comes together in a smooth, stretchy, silky mass. It should pass the windowpane test. Enjoy this part of the process. Remember (or pretend) that it’s snowing outside anyway, and you’re inside your warm kitchen with this beautiful mass of dough in your hands, making magic.

When you are finished kneading, put your dough into a clean bowl and cover the bowl with a damp kitchen towel or saran wrap. If your kitchen is a little cool or drafty, feel free to coddle your dough by protecting it in the oven. I turn my oven on to 200 F for about 30 seconds, then turn off the heat and turn on the light in the oven before putting my dough in. The dough loves the insulated warmth. Leave your dough to rise until it has approximately doubled in size, between 45 minutes and 1 1/2 hours, depending on the heat.

Punch down your dough and form it into rolls or loaves. Place the formed dough in greased baking tins, re-cover it and allow it to rise for another 45 minutes to 1 hour, until it doubles in size. You can brush the tops of the dough with an egg wash before you bake them.

Bake your bread at 350 F for approximately 45 minutes. If you are making rolls, they will be done in about 12-15 minutes.

When your bread is done, take it out and allow it to cool before slicing into a loaf or ripping into a roll and toasting it.

Well, victory-ish. Expect a real (read:longer and with content) post soon, but I’d just like to inform you that we made it through a post a day for a whole month. I’m pretty pleased with us right now, even though we didn’t make a recipe-a-day.

I’m working on a wrap-up of the month, and Carlo’s working on his post about poutine, so you’ll see some content soon. I just want to say now that I’m really glad we took the NaBloPoMo plunge. It’s been a great and eye-opening month for us.

Carlo’s wandering around the living room muttering “stupid nablopomo,” and “I hate writing.” And I’m pretty tired today too, so here’s a teaser instead of a full post. We bought our dinner again, but this time, no regrets. Well, none but the inevitable junk food hangover. Oh, but it’s so worth it. Do you know what we ate today? It’s all wrapped up inside this package:

Now Carlo’s reading a children’s book about latkes. He’s giggling. Which is not the same thing as writing. So that’s why you’re going to have to wait a bit to learn about poutine. One note: it’s pronounced poo-teen. It’s popular in Canada, but mostly in Quebec. And I don’t know why it’s not better known outside of Canada*. Once when we were visiting Oregon, my sister tried to order it at a fast-food restaurant. The cashier looked at her, blinked a couple times and said “I’m sorry. You want poo what?”

Carlo will tell you more about poutine later. I apologize for the live-blogging experience. I feel like a hockey announcer, narrating the most boring game ever. I promise not to make it a habit.

*There are some notable exceptions to the Canada-poutine rule. Kris of To Be Mrs. Marv recently asked me about my experience of poutine in Montreal. I’m doing some research to give her tips for home prep, as we (and people in general, in the land of poutine) generally get our poutine take-out. I’m still working on the poutine project, Kris!

One of the things about food blogging is that if you don’t eat well, you don’t have anything to say. So far, this has proven to be an advantage for us– I don’t want strangers to write me off as a food-loser, so I step up and perform. Usually. However, there’s a flip side. If you aren’t eating well, your blog ends up covered in pictures of robots (I’m sorry I keeping linking back to us. Is it weird to link to yourself?).

And frozen pizza? You’re not supposed to know we eat those kinds of things. And if we do tell you, we’re not supposed to tell you it’s not good. We should be eating gourmet frozen pizzas, maybe made by hand by an Italian nonna and shipped directly to us from Naples. Certainly we shouldn’t be eating robot pizzas. At least Carlo’s drawing turned out well. I like the robot. Check out his ice cream cone hat and his pizza-slice hands. He’s an Italian for sure.

Yesterday’s dinner may have been an eating low point for us, but the dessert didn’t let us down. I got the idea for a Guinness ice cream in the comments thread at another blog (sorry, I don’t remember which one–this is how you know you read too many blogs). Our favourite Montreal brewery occasionally has a special stout that Carlo is particularly fond of– a Chocolate Vanilla Stout. Thus, in thinking about Guinness ice cream, I came to Chocolate Stout. Now, the triumphal part is the thing I didn’t really consider before we tasted our first bite. Stout is a malty drink. So the end result here is a creamy, malty, sweet concoction that tastes like chocolate malt all dressed up for grownups. Don’t you love it when you hit on genius by accident?

I can’t wait to try this recipe again. Next time I make it, I might tweak the proportions to see if I can make it more ice cream-y. As is, it has almost the exact same consistency as the chocolate malts I remember from fast food restaurants (Wendy’s!). Mine turned out quite light, and not very custardy, as I used 1% milk and few egg yolks. I think you could use half and half, for example, or another egg yolk could be added to make a thicker custard base. The chocolate bar we used was Lindt “Noirissime,” with 99% cocoa. We used very little, just enough to add a chocolate flavour, and it added no sweetness. Next time, I might try a sweet chocolate and maybe dial back the sugar just a little. This is delicious as-is, but I can’t wait to see what else I can do with it! Let me know if you have any ideas.

STOUT CHOCOLATE MALT ICE CREAM
Makes approximately 1.5 quarts

1 bottle of stout (341 mL, 12 oz)–I used an Oatmeal stout from McAuslan, a local brew, but feel free to play around with your options here
1 tbsp. cocoa powder
1/2 vanilla bean
2 cups heavy cream
2 cups milk
3/4 cup sugar
5 egg yolks

Bring the stout to a boil in a small saucepan, and boil it until it thickens (maybe to 1/2 its original volume), 15 mins. or so. It might froth up. If it does, take it off the heat for a few seconds before replacing it on the burner. When the beer has reduced, allow it to cool for a few minutes and then whisk in the cocoa powder. Split the vanilla bean and scrape the seeds into the chocolate/beer. Drop the scraped pod in too, and set it all aside to steep.

Prepare an ice bath by placing ice cubes and water into a large steel bowl. Set the bowl aside.

Prepare the creme anglaise. Whisk the egg yolks in a bowl. Combine the cream, milk, and sugar over medium heat in a small saucepan. Bring the cream just to a boil, then whisk it in a slow stream into the egg yolks. When the yolks are combined with the cream, pour the mixture back into the saucepan and put it back over medium heat. Cook it, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens and coats the back of your wooden spoon.

Strain the creme anglaise into a medium steel bowl through a fine mesh strainer. Strain the beer mixture into the bowl as well, discarding the vanilla pod. Whisk the beer and cream mixtures together, then cool your ice cream base by placing the medium steel bowl into the larger prepared ice bath. Cool the mixture by stirring it for about five minutes over the ice bath. At this point, you can freeze the mixture immediately (at this point, it will be slightly less smooth. It also tastes great–I know, because we almost always are too impatient to wait), or chill the mixture further in the fridge until you are ready to freeze it.

Okay, so we didn’t make anything today. We ate frozen pizza. It wasn’t good. The toppings were unbalanced. It was supposed to be Quattro Stagione (four seasons), so four even quarters, with different toppings on each. But it was like Canada– one season dominated. All the vegetables were huddled together on 1/3 of the pizza, and the rest was covered in (rubbery) prosciutto. Carlo made this picture about it. You’d think a robot could at least be symmetrical.

Anyway, right now I have ice cream churning, so tomorrow you can expect something interesting. This month is going to do us in!

So. We’re running out of post-every-day steam. Today, here’s a link to what Carlo made for dinner: Provencal-Style Lentils at Family Style Food. This is a simple lentil and spinach dish made with my favorite Du Puy lentils. It’s got a bit of tang thanks to vinegar and dijon, and it’s a great buddy for a bowl of warm rice. We’ve prepared this a few times and we always enjoy it. It’s easy but filling and warm enough that you feel like you’re really eating, not just putting food in your mouth. Head on over to Family Style Food and check it out!

Here’s what we had for breakfast this morning. The recipe isn’t quick–the rice pudding takes about an hour and a half– but it’s worth the time you put into it. It’s especially good for a lazy Saturday. Get up and put on some slippers, then pop the rice and milk onto the stovetop. Have a coffee and thumb through a cookbook or a magazine while your rice pudding cooks down. You need to check on it occasionally, but not too often. It requires just enough attention that you don’t have to feel bad about sitting around doing almost-nothing. As for the stewed prunes, well, I know they’ve got a bad rep, but it’s undeserved. For a great defense of prunes, see Orangette, from whom I borrowed the prune recipe.

The prunes and clementines are a nice mix, with the sweet tang of the citrus and the smoothness of the prunes. And they go perfectly on top of slow-cooked rice pudding (we use jasmine rice, which adds a lovely perfume, but any rice is acceptable), infused with a stick of cinnamon and a few pods of cardamom. Next time you want an excuse to relax Saturday morning, try this out. If you don’t have time to relax, this pudding is forgiving. Just give it a stir now and again and when you need to take a break from work, a fabulous comforting treat will be ready and waiting.

CINNAMON-CARDAMOM RICE PUDDING
makes about 4 cups

3/8 cup rice
5 cups milk
1 small cinnamon stick
2-3 pods of green cardamom
1/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp. sugar

Combine the rice and milk in a medium saucepan. Crush the cardamom pods with the flat side of a knife, and extract the little dark brown seeds. Add these, along with the cinnamon, to the rice and milk. Bring the mixture to a slow simmer over low heat. Cook for 1-1 1/2 hours, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pot fairly often. You need to pay attention to this mixture or it will burn and coat the bottom of your pan. If it does start sticking and/or burning, try not to scrape the bottom of the pot too hard or you will dislodge the burnt bits and ruin your pudding.

When the pudding has thickened sufficiently, to a thick and creamy consistency, remove it from the heat and stir in the sugar. I prefer a less sweet pudding, but if you like yours sweeter (or if you’re serving it for dessert), you can go up to 1/2 cup sugar. It can be served warm or cool.

STEWED PRUNES recipe adapted from Orangette

2 large handfuls of pitted prunes
2 clementines, halved and sliced thinly
1 small cinnamon stick (I cut one regular-sized stick in half and used 1/2 for the rice and 1/2 for the prunes)

Place the prunes and clementines in a small pot and pour in enough water just to cover them. Bring them to a boil over medium heat and stew them for 30-45 minutes, until the water has reduced and the prunes and clementines are soft.

I put the rice pudding on the stovetop and then after my third or fourth time checking on it, put the prunes over the heat. Both the pudding and the prunes were finished at around the same time and we ate them warm.

I’m having a hard time thinking of a way to write this without doing that strange anthropomorphizing the cookbook thing where I say something like “I’ve been spending a lot of time with Alice Waters lately,” and pretend that I’m hanging out in your kitchen with my new best friend Alice, trading tips and feeding each other and generally just being best buds. So, um… yeah, I’ve been spending a lot of time with Alice Waters lately.

Really, though, I’ve been dragging “The Art of Simple Food” around with me like a security blanket. When I go to bed, it’s there on my nightstand next to me. When I get up in the morning, I take it with me to the office (which is only 15 steps from the bedroom) to thumb through in slow moments. Today, we went to renew our passports, and I packed it in my backpack to come along to the passport office, then felt a little disappointed when I found out that our advance paperwork meant that we didn’t have to sit in a two-hour line. That would’ve been two hours with my new best friend! I’ve pretty much had it within arm’s reach at all times since it first came through our door. Like I said in my last post, I’m reading it cover-to-cover. I love this book! I think I’ll name it Red. That’ll get around the whole friends-with-the-author thing.

The Art of Simple Food is, in fact, one of those books that makes you feel that the writer is someone who knows you very well. Waters’ voice is authoritative and inspiring, with a clear instructional style that makes it hard to believe any of the recipes could possibly go wrong. And the recipes! They’re straightforward but exciting, and Waters offers variations on each theme in the 19 “lessons” she offers in the first half of the book, so that you feel comforted and supported by a strong backbone, but free to wiggle in your own direction too. I’m convinced that this book will be a classic.

Breaking my cover-to-cover reading a little bit, I flipped to the index last night to see if I could find a good use for a particularly beautiful vanilla bean. I found a nice simple vanilla custard recipe that I thought would marry well with a recipe from another great (albeit completely different– again, no wonder we identify with these people as friends) food writer– Nigella Lawson. She calls these cookies “Granny Boyd’s Biscuits.” The recipe is super-simple. It’s essentially shortbread with cocoa added to it.

These cookies’ crumbly texture and smoky cocoa flavour was a great match for the incredibly smooth vanilla custard. We tried the custard warm and cool, but my favorite was the cooled custard. The vanilla flavour was easier to detect, and I appreciated the velvety texture of it.

Thanks, friends!

ALICE WATERS’ VANILLA POTS DE CREME adapted from “The Art of Simple Food”

4 egg yolks
3/4 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup half-and-half
1/4 cup sugar
1 two-inch piece of vanilla bean
4 custard cups or ramekins

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Whisk the egg yolks together in a medium bowl. Pour the heavy cream into another medium bowl.

Put the half-and-half and sugar into a small pot. Split the vanilla bean lengthwise and scrape out the seeds with the back of a knife. Add the seeds and pod to the half-and-half. Put this pan over medium heat and warm it until it begins to steam. Do not bring it to a boil.

Remove the half-and-half mixture from the heat and whisk it into the egg yolks in a slow stream. Strain the yolk/cream mixture into the bowl of heavy cream, and discard or set aside the vanilla pod (Waters notes that at this point the custard can be refrigerated for up to 2 days. I would also like to note that you can rinse and dry the vanilla pod and use it to grind up with your coffee or put in a jar with some sugar to make vanilla sugar).

Pour the mixture into 4 custard cups or ramekins. Put the cups into a deep pan and pour hot water into the pan until it comes about halfway up the sides of the cups. Cover the pan with aluminum foil and seal it well. Bake the custards for 25 to 30 minutes. You’ll know they’re done when the edges are firm but the middle is still a little wiggly.

Remove the custards from their pan and cool them. You can eat them warm or put them in the fridge to eat cold later.

COCOA SHORTBREAD COOKIES adapted from “How to be a Domestic Goddess”

2 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
3 Tbsp. cocoa powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup softened unsalted butter
1/2 cup sugar

Preheat the oven to 325 F.

Stir together the flour, baking powder, cocoa and salt in a medium bowl. Set the bowl aside.

In a larger bowl, cream the butter and sugar together. When they are pale and fluffy, stir in the dry ingredients. This part takes a bit of patience. It will appear that the mixture needs more liquid, but just keep mixing, it will come together into a dough. I used my hands a bit, because I got impatient.

Roll the cookies into balls (about the size of a walnut) and place them on a greased or parchment-lined baking sheet. Press them down with the back of a fork.

Bake the cookies at 325 F for five minutes, then turn the heat down to 300 F for the last 10-15 minutes. The cookies are done when they are firm but not hard on top. Make sure not to bake them too long or they’ll turn into mini hockey pucks as they cool and harden. When the cookies come out of the oven, transfer them to a wire rack to cool. They’re probably best consumed cool, but I bet they’d be great still warm and crumbly with a cooled custard.

COOKING NOTES:

-I used bread loaf tins to hold the water bath for the custard. One was metal and one was glass. The glass cooked the custards much more evenly and they came out smoother.
-I halved the cookie recipe with no problem. Also, the original recipe calls for self-rising flour. As I don’t have it, I just added baking powder and salt and made one cup of flour slightly scant. If you do have self-rising flour, you can use that instead and omit the salt and baking powder.

It’s another slow day at SiS, but we’ve made a commitment, and I’m sticking to my guns. We’re going to make it through NaBloPoMo, even if it bores our readers to death. I’m here knocking out this post while Carlo makes dumplings for our soup.

The above is a photo of our newest food books. The great thing about having a blog is that it makes it easy to justify buying more books. Of course, I’ve always managed to justify buying food-related anything. I have this conversation a lot with one of our favorite food friends. She always says she’s worn the same sweaters for years because she just can’t bring herself to buy new ones, but there’s always room in the budget for another cooking tool. I know the feeling. And I wish I had her mandoline.

I’m really enjoying browsing through Michael Ruhlman’s (very authoritatively written– I’ll never bring my stock to a boil again!) The Elements of Cooking, but it’s more a glossary of kitchen terms, with a few essays on essentials like salt, stock, and kitchen equipment at the beginning of the book. Anthony Bourdain’s introduction is entertaining as well. My favorite line: “… if you do somehow manage to properly roast a chicken and serve it with a little sauce, it’s nice to be able to discuss how, exactly, you did it. Your chicken did not turn brown in the pan by magic.” Now, I’m writing about the introduction and not the book itself, but I think that really sums it up for me. Cooking is a craft, with techniques and methods that can be learned and honed. And once you have those basics under your belt, they allow you to be creative.

This is also why I finally caved and bought Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking. Honestly, I’ve just thumbed through it so far, and the diagrams are freaking me out a bit. I just opened the book at random to find an example, and I found an explanation of “linear amylose and bushy amylopectin.” Um, yes. Sounds a little bit dirty, and a little bit over my head. I’m going to take this one slow, but I do think it will be useful. I’m always curious about why food turns out the way it does (especially in baking, which contrary Bourdain’s quote up above, I still think of as pretty much magic).

Finally, I couldn’t resist Alice Waters’ new book, The Art of Simple Food. Out of the three, this is the one that I want to curl up with in an armchair and read through cover-to-cover. Of course, that’s also because hers is the only one that is not an encyclopedic reference. Now, that’s not to say that it’s not authoritative. The book is structured as a series of lessons, on topics like sauces, bread, simmering, and rice. The idea is that you can practice and master the recipes in the first half of the book (the lesson half), and then be prepared to improvise, or to use your newfound skills with the recipes in the second half of the book. I love Alice Waters’ philosophy, even when I’m not following it (I usually buy my eggs from the drugstore. They’re cheapest there out of anywhere. I try not to think about the hens these eggs come from.), and her book is great, full of simple, honest recipes with an emphasis on buying local, fresh, and delicious food. I’m thinking maybe I’ll take her advice and start buying farmer’s market eggs.

So that’s my haul. I’m pretty pleased with all three of these books, which of course totally justifies buying them.

Welcome back to Booze Stereo, delayed gratification edition. Last week, I talked about impulsive food prep (does a cocktail count as food? Not so much, I guess). As soon as I read about apple vermouth cocktail on Serious Eats (original recipe from Paul Clarke), I knew I had to have it. You know when a taste springs into your mind fully formed? Yeah, that’s what I had. Of course, after my impulsive assembly of ingredients, I had to wait and allow my sliced apples to steep in a litre of vermouth for five days. We finally got to taste our concoction on Saturday, when we cracked open the bottle as a brunch accompaniment.

My expectations were totally warranted. This cocktail is fruity without being froufy, as the herbal notes of the vermouth tone down the apple flavours and add a bit of sophistication. It was a great brunch drink as it was nice and light. I wish I had one of these, because I think it would be amazing fizzy. But maybe that would be over the top.

The assembly was very easy too. I made the executive decision to leave the skins on the apples, because I wanted the vermouth to pick up a nice pink colour, which it did. There was a bit of sediment in the final product after I strained it through just a fine-mesh strainer. However, I also strained it through several layers of cheesecloth and after that it came out nice and clear (see the above picture), with a beautiful coral pink tint. Another change to the recipe that I’d recommend is to reduce the number of apples. On Serious Eats, the number of apples was 8. I only used five. I had one mason jar full to the brim with apples and vermouth, and another jar that was only half-full. Next time, I’d fill two jars 3/4 full, as I found that the apples browned less in the jar that wasn’t full to the brim. I’m not sure why, but it worked better that way, maybe just because the apple-to-vermouth proportion was lower.

This was an altogether satisfying experience. I can’t wait to make another batch!

Canadian Thanksgiving was a few weeks ago, so we’ve already gone through the eating. We were lucky not to have to prepare our dinner ourselves. Instead, we ate dinner with our favourite food friends and their family. They cooked for 18 people (sorry guys, if I got the number wrong. If it was more, the idea remains the same– impressive), and all that we had to do was the pie. So on Thanksgiving Sunday I was in my kitchen rolling out pie crust for six pies– and pleading with and cajoling and cursing at the pastry. In the end, it turned out okay, but as I was making the pumpkin pie filling, my mother’s classic recipe, Carlo mentioned that it would taste good frozen. That’s how our ice cream was born.

Growing up in Canada, I always celebrated Thanksgiving twice. My parents, Americans, collected an assortment of American friends who came over every year to celebrate the US holiday. Now that I’m across the country and planning my own feasts, I think I’m going to hold on to this idea. It’s like having a test run. Or two Christmases.

If you’re looking for an alternative Thanksgiving idea, I offer you these pastry bites. The ice cream on its own is divine. I modified my mother’s pumpkin pie filling recipe (if you’re interested in the original filling, let me know. The proportions and ingredients are nearly identical to this one, but the technique for preparation is a little simpler) to create a rich custard base in which the typical, warm pumpkin spices steeped. After the spices were steeped in, I added some pumpkin puree and bits of candied ginger. The result is a smooth, cool base warmed up by cinnamon, ginger, and cloves, with a bit of extra texture from the pumpkin. The candied ginger is optional, but I like the chewy zing that it offers.

However, this ice cream popped into a cream puff (profiterole) take the whole thing over the top. The buttery, eggy puff is a nod to pie pastry without the necessary fiddling and rolling. Julia Child says in Mastering the art of French Cooking that once you have the profiterole technique down, it’ll take you no more than 30 minutes to get the puffs assembled and into the oven. This is an excellent recipe to have in your arsenal, because you can use it in a million different ways. When I was a little girl, my mother used to make these and fill them with whipped cream. My brother and friends have also filled them with Bailey’s whipped cream. As Julia Child notes, you can also make a savoury version (for example, my friend makes them with cheese). Finally, ANY kind of ice cream goes inside profiteroles beautifully, and their nubbly, puffy tops are perfect receptacles for caramel or chocolate syrup. Next time I make these, I’m considering a ginger caramel syrup to go on top of the puffs. Ooh… I’m hungry again.

PUMPKIN PIE ICE CREAM
makes about 1 litre (1Qt.)

2 cups heavy cream
3/4 cup sugar (I used brown sugar, but white sugar would work fine too. Depends on the flavours you’re interested in)
5 large egg yolks
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ginger
1/4 tsp. cloves
pinch of nutmeg (optional–I never add it)
1 1/2 cups pumpkin puree (homemade or canned; just make sure not to buy premade pumpkin pie filling)
1/2 cup candied ginger, diced small (optional)

To prepare the custard:

-Whisk together the egg yolks, salt, cinnamon, ginger and cloves in a small bowl until they’re well-blended. Set them aside.
- Warm the cream and sugar in a medium saucepan over medium heat, stirring frequently. Bring it almost to a boil (the surface will begin to ripple), but do not allow it to boil, or else it will cook your egg yolks. When the surface ripples, remove the cream from the heat.
-Temper the egg yolks by pouring 1/2 cup of the hot cream mixture into the yolks, whisking them constantly. Pour the tempered yolk-cream mixture back into the sauce pan, again whisking constantly.
-Put the saucepan back over medium heat and stir it (yeah… still constantly) with a wooden spoon until the mixture has thickened into a custard. DO NOT ALLOW IT TO BOIL. You’ll know it’s done when the custard coats the back of the spoon without running. (Here’s an image)

To prepare and freeze the ice cream:

-Strain the custard through a fine-mesh strainer into a medium stainless-steel bowl. Stir in the pumpkin puree and mix well.
-To cool the mixture, fill a large bowl with ice cubes and a bit of cold water. Place the bowl with the ice cream base into the larger bowl and stir the custard for about five minutes to chill it. At this point, you can be quick and not-so-gourmet and freeze the base immediately (which we often do with our ice creams). The base, as long as it has been chilled over the ice until it’s really cold, freezes well and has a good texture. Your second alternative, to chill the ice cream base in the fridge for 4-24 hours is a better choice, as it yields a slightly creamier texture. The choice is yours, but honestly, if you haven’t got much time, don’t worry. Freezing immediately works just fine.
-Last step: freeze the ice cream in your ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions. When the mixture is done, turn it quickly into a steel bowl that has about half the candied ginger in it. Working quickly, sprinkle the rest of the ginger on top and stir it all in before transferring the ice cream to a storage container.
-It’s best to freeze your ice cream for at least a few hours to firm it up before eating it.

FOR PROFITEROLES
recipe adapted from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, for 10-12 puffs about 3 inches in diameter.

1 cup water
6 tbsp. butter
1 tsp. sugar
pinch of salt
1 cup all-purpose flour
4 large eggs, plus one extra for glazing the tops of the puffs

-Preheat your oven to 425
-In a small saucepan, boil the water, salt, sugar and butter until the butter is melted.
-Remove the saucepan from the heat and immediately pour in all the flour. Stir vigorously until the flour is incorporated and the mixture pulls away from the sides of the pan.
-Put the saucepan back over medium heat and continue stirring the flour mixture until it begins to form a film on the bottom of the pan.
-Remove the saucepan from the heat and make a well in the centre of the flour mixture. Break an egg into this well and beat it in until it’s well-incorporated. Do the same with the next egg, continuing until you’ve used up all the eggs. Beat the pastry for a little bit after all the eggs have been incorporated, to ensure everything is holding together well.
-Drop the pastry onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. The puffs should each be about 2 inches across and 1 inch high. Space them about 2 inches apart.
-Beat an egg in a small bowl with a fork. Brush a light coating of beaten egg over the tops of the puffs to help them get super-golden.
-Bake the puffs for 20 minutes, turning them halfway to ensure they brown evenly.
-After 20 minutes, turn down the oven to 375, and continue to bake the puffs for another 10-15 minutes, until they’re golden and crusty.
-Take the puffs out of the oven and make a little inch-long horizontal slit in the side of each puff. Then put them back in the turned-off oven, with the door a little ajar. This will help them to dry out inside, so they’re not soggy.

MINI FROZEN PUMPKIN PIES (or as Carlo calls them, PUMPKIN PIESCREAMS)

Cut the puffs in half after they’ve cooled. Empty out the moist insides with your fingers, then fill the puffs with a scoop or two of pumpkin ice cream. If you’ve got whipped cream, please use it. Add a little dollop on top of the ice cream before replacing the cap of the profiterole. If you’re feeling really decadent, consider a glug of caramel syrup on top of it all.

This post is a gift for my brothers and sister, who just moved into a new house. Today is their housewarming party, and I’m all the way across the country. Since I can’t attend, guys, I’m offering you this housewarming gift. Without Mom in your kitchen, I figure you might be eating more chips and soda, starburst candies, and um… raw potatoes (do you still eat raw potatoes?) than before, at least for a little while.

Here’s a recipe that will give you a break from the junk food. Carlo and I make this all the time and we still can’t believe so few ingredients can taste so good. The secret is in the long simmer, where the tomatoes slowly absorb the butter and the flavour of the onions, cooking down into a thick and rich sauce that’s just perfect on pasta with a generous sprinkling of parmesan on top. It’s amazing that just three things can make a sauce that tastes so good and feels so warm and filling. But there you are.

This simplicity is a good thing to remember, I think. You’re all taking care of yourselves now, and that’s a lot. I still sometimes have these panics where I think “my goodness, for the rest of my life I’m going to have to do this myself.” And there’s no way to take a break from life, it’s just going to keep coming at you. That’s why it’s nice to know that it doesn’t always have to be hard to take care of yourself. Pop this in a pot, boil some pasta, and in 45 minutes, sit down together and eat. You can do it! Happy housewarming! I guess maybe I’m going to have to stop calling you “the kids.”

I’m sorry about the not-so-beautiful photo. Trust me, even though it’s not beautiful, it’s delicious.

We got this recipe from Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. We’ve adapted it so that its proportions match a large can of tomatoes (796 mL), but that’s about it. You can reduce the amount of butter in the sauce, which I always do. However, it always tastes best when Carlo makes it (he’s not careful with the butter).

TOMATO SAUCE WITH ONION AND BUTTER

1 can plum tomatoes (28 oz/796 mL, either diced or whole)
1/3 cup butter (you can be a little more generous or a little more sparing with this)
2 medium onions, peeled and cut in half
salt
1 to 1 1/2 lbs. pasta (or whatever amount you happen to throw in the pot)
Parmesan cheese for serving

Put the tomatoes, the butter, the onions, and a generous pinch of salt in a saucepan. Bring the sauce to a gentle simmer over medium heat. Stir it occasionally, and mash the tomatoes up with your spoon. Cook the sauce for about 45 minutes (it should be at a light simmer this whole time) or until you start to see the butter and tomatoes separating from each other. When it’s done, taste it and add more salt if you need to. Take the pan off the heat and remove the onions. Serve it over pasta, with parmesan cheese on top.

Just to let you know, if you google “booze stereo,” we are the first link that comes up. And I probably just made it worse by posting this. Um… that is, if anyone ever again in the history of the internet uses that exact search term. I’m going to assume that whoever found us that way didn’t find what they were looking for.

Do you like this photo? I’m not sure I do, but it’s all I’ve got. Count those cookies. There are four in this picture. There were more this morning. Now there are none. So we’re going to have to live with this photo because, well, I’m sure a picture of four cookies is better than a picture of none. I meant to check these photos out and then go take some more if need be, but the “just one nibble” turned into a mini cookie feast. Now my belly hurts, but that’s a small price to pay. These cookies are just that good.

They have a perfect mix of chewy centre and crispy outside, with the in-your-face bite of blackstrap molasses (go ahead and substitute fancy molasses if you want to) backed up by cinnamon and ginger. I can never eat just one. That’s why I make them in small batches. If you’re like me, you might want to halve this recipe. Or if you’re really worried, just don’t make them at all. They’ll hook you, I swear.

MOLASSES COOKIES

3/4 cup butter (softened) or margarine
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup molasses
2 cups sifted flour
1 tsp. ginger
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt

Preheat oven to 350.

Cream together the butter and the sugar. Add the egg and molasses and stir well.

In a separate bowl, sift together the dry ingredients before adding them to the wet ingredients. Again, stir well. The dough will be relatively soft and sticky.

Form small balls of dough and roll them in sugar before placing them (far apart, as these cookies spread) on an ungreased or parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake for 12-15 minutes.

I work from home, which is usually pretty great, but is not always the enviable position you might imagine. Often it means that there’s no escape from work, and I’ll find myself lounging on the couch watching TV in the evenings, worrying about the pile of work sitting accusingly on the table next to me. However, one great advantage (slash disadvantage) is that when an idea strikes me I can go ahead and do it. And, because I’m a great procrastinator and I welcome any distraction, I usually do it immediately. Case in point: this apple vermouth cocktail. I read the recipe on serious eats an hour ago and I knew I had to try it. A jog to the grocery store (and two liquor stores) later, it’s sitting in the fridge. I’m not much of a patience kind of person, I guess. I do, however, have to wait at least five days to try this out. We’ll let you know how is tastes next week.

p.s. As I don’t have a mandoline, I used the slicer of my food processor to do the work. You could also slice the apples by hand. Also, the recipe doesn’t specify whether or not to peel the apples, so I didn’t.

We’re going all pumpkin around here lately. I guess all that puree stored in the freezer is weighing on my mind. Here’s one of the ways I’ve been using it up. These pumpkin-pecan madeleines are flavoured with brown sugar and browned butter, which adds a richness that perfectly complements the pumpkin. It took me three tries to get this recipe down. The first time they didn’t rise high enough, the second time I added vanilla (I discovered that it just got in the way) and I forgot to butter the tins. Finally, on the third round, everything aligned. These little cakes are hardly madeleines anymore, what with the pumpkin and the brown sugar and the crunchy, candied nuts, but they’re so pretty, and I love how their edges get nice and crispy when they’re baked in a madeleine tin. I also highly recommend the browned butter method for combination with pumpkin. It’s a deep flavour that goes perfectly with brown sugar.

COOKING NOTES:

-If you don’t have a madeleine tin, I think these would work as mini-muffins instead.
-Grease your tin really, really well. If you don’t, your madeleines won’t brown nicely AND they won’t come out of your tin. -Candying (and in fact, even toasting) the pecans is optional, but I like it because the madeleine batter is not very sweet.
-If you use canned solid-pack pumpkin instead of homemade puree, I recommend mixing it with your melted butter before adding it to the batter. This should soften it enough to make it easy to incorporate.
-I added some baking powder to the recipe because my madeleines didn’t rise as much as I would have liked (as I had to cut back on butter in order to add pumpkin). If you have a way to cut the baking powder, let me know.

PUMPKIN-PECAN MADELEINES

1/4 cup butter, plus more for toasting pecans and greasing madeleine tin
2 large eggs
pinch of salt
1/4 cup loosely packed brown sugar, plus 2 tsp. for candying pecans
1/3 cup + 1Tbsp. flour
1 tsp. baking powder
4 Tbsp. pumpkin puree
1/4 cup chopped pecans

First, do your preparation: preheat your oven to 350. Chop the pecans and sift the flour and baking powder together in a small bowl.

Next, melt your butter in a small pan over medium heat. It will froth up, then reduce again as it begins to brown and turn a rich nutty colour. When it is brown, pour it through a fine-mesh strainer (this gets rid of any solids that might have formed) into a small bowl. Set the browned butter aside to cool as you prepare your pecans and batter.

In the same frying pan you used to brown the butter, toast the pecans with a teaspoon or so more butter. When they are getting golden, toss approximately 2 tsp. of brown sugar in and stir the pecans to coat them well. Remove them from the pan and set them aside to cool.

To prepare the batter, first beat the two eggs together with a pinch of salt. You can use a standing mixer if you’ve got one (lucky you!), a handheld electric mixer (this is what I did), or if you’re tough, do it by hand. Beat the eggs until they’re pale yellow, thick, and syrupy. They will also have gained some volume. Next, beat in your brown sugar, adding it in large pinches to the eggs while you continue beating. When all the sugar has been incorporated, continue beating until your mixture has gained even more volume and holds the marks of the beater for a few seconds (like softly-whipped cream).

After you’ve beaten the eggs, sprinkle the flour overtop and gently fold it in with a spatula. Don’t be rough and overstir, but don’t be afraid to be firm with it either. Next, fold in the butter and pumpkin, ensuring they are well-incorporated.  Finally, fold in the pecans.

Put the batter into your (well-greased!!) madeleine tin, a big tablespoon for each little mold. Most of the madeleines recipes I consulted said that the batter would spread in the heat of the oven, but I didn’t find this to be true. Instead, I used the back of a spoon to spread the batter evenly in the molds. I filled the molds approximately 3/4 full, maybe a little bit more. I had exactly enough batter for 12 madeleines.

Bake your madeleines for 12-15 minutes, turning the pan once halfway through cooking to ensure they brown evenly. They will be golden and springy when they’re ready.

Once you remove them from the oven, cool your madeleines in the tin before popping them out and eating them. Try them with tea or coffee.

I’ve got a lot of pumpkin in my freezer right now, thanks to Halloween. I also promised I was going to make a post about how to roast pumpkin. Now that I’ve done it once I won’t ever buy canned pumpkin again. It was too easy! I’ve read all over the place that sugar pumpkin is the only acceptable pumpkin for baking with, but I disagree. My mother has always roasted her plain old Halloween variety and they’ve always been delicious. They come out light and flavourful. The other complaint I’ve read is that regular pumpkins come out stringy, but I’ve never encountered this problem either. As long as you’ve taken care to scrape the pumpkin out well, you’ll be fine.

TO ROAST A PUMPKIN
Tools Needed: Rimmed baking sheet, colander or large strainer, cheesecloth (this one’s optional. I’ve done without).

Preheat your oven to 350.

While your oven is heating, disembowel your pumpkin. First, I cut the cap off, as if I’m going to make a Jack’o'lantern out of it. I find this makes it easier to cut the pumpkin in half. Then I cut the pumpkin in half lengthwise and use a spoon to scrape out the strings and the seeds in the middle. Do a thorough job of this, and remember to set aside your seeds for roasting!

Once your pumpkin is disemboweled, lay the two halves face-down on a rimmed cookie sheet. Place the sheet in the oven and pour a cup or two of water in the base to prevent sticking and burning. Roast your pumpkin for about an hour (less for a small one), or until a fork goes into it like it’s butter.

Remove your pumpkin from the oven. The skin should peel right off. Puree your pumpkin in batches in a food processor and then set your pumpkin mush in a cheesecloth-lined colander over a large bowl. Allow it to drain of excess water overnight. In the morning, you’ll have pumpkin puree! Use it for baking (pumpkin muffins, pumpkin bread, pumpkin pancakes, pumpkin pie, the possibilities are endless) or for soup. One thing, though. I’m noticing that all of my pumpkin baking recipes use the same basic spice combos (cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves….). Does anyone have any different ideas for pumpkin spicing? I’d love to try something new, but I’m not sure what. Keep an eye out, though, for our pumpkin ice cream with candied ginger, coming up soon!