Sugar and Thyme...

Disaster #2: Burned Sugar!

Recently DK and I had an opportunity to visit a Caribou Coffee shop, where I indulged in an impulse purchase (you know, those little items they sell next to the cash register) of old-fashioned caramel. I’m not big on caramel, but I needed a little sugar jolt, so as soon as it was paid for I unwrapped the square, popped half in my mouth and gave the other half to DK.

My eyes went wide – this wasn’t ordinary caramel, it was cinnamon caramel, sticky and buttery with just the right amount of warm spice. It was so delicious, I was determined to recreate this treat in my own kitchen.

So I found a recipe for cinnamon ginger caramels on The Kitchn, a great blog that’s part of the Apartment Therapy series. I also found a post on a fellow food blogger’s site chronicling her attempt at making the very same recipe. Apparently during the first stage of cooking she didn’t let the sugar/water/corn syrup mixture get hot enough, making her caramel nearly runny at room temperature. Well, I wouldn’t be making that mistake. I would push my stove like a professional, bringing that caramel to the terra cotta color the recipe called for.

Twenty minutes later I’m standing in my tiny galley kitchen gagging on the huge puffs of smoke that were billowing from the pot on my stove. “It tastes like burning!” I yelled to DK over the whir of the stove hood. He was busy ripping open windows (during the first week of December) and fanning the black smoke clouds away from our smoke detector.

The timing here was remarkable. It took ten seconds for this caramel to go from perfectly toasted to terribly burned. To make matters worse, I’m not much of a baker or candy maker, so I didn’t know how to deal with the hot sugary mess. Could I pour it down the drain? If I waited for it to cool, would it permanently entomb my pot?

Eventually things settled down. The sugar cooled for a few minutes and then (while it was still syrupy and perilously hot) I did indeed pour it down my sink. Mistake? Time will tell. So far, the sink is still working. But my apartment suffered, smelling like burned sugar for at least 24 hours – after that my nose lost track of the stench, though a stranger surely would have noticed.

But I will not be defeated! Next week my office is doing a Holiday treats week, and I’m signed up to bring in something special for my co-workers on Monday. Can I manage to screw up this recipe twice? More to come!

Cooking like Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaartha

I made stock last weekend. Had I known that it would portend The Great Sickness (the current strain of office crud that I'm nursing) I would have spent last Sunday reading rather than boiling chicken bones. So, of course, now that I'm armed appropriately with homemade chicken stock, I succumb. 

And I'm going bonkers, not sick enough to sleep the day away but too sick to do much of anything for more than 20 minutes. So I've spent my waking hours reading through Maaaaaaaaaartha's new book, Martha Stewart's Cooking School (review to be posted later this week) and I realized that, at its core, my philosophy of cooking is much less Martha and much more Mario (Batali).

Batali, who I learned to love during the airing of his Molto Mario cooking shows, is Falstaff reincarnate. His approach to cooking, in his words, is best exemplified by "the cooking of grandmothers" He's not interested in those who chop, whisk, or beat ingredients into submission. And, like Batali, I'm less interested in dishes that impress and more interested in foods that nourish. Foods that are prepared with love and eaten with enthusiasm rather than awe.

And yet, the basics must be learned.

So in my sickness haze this afternoon, I threw together a last-minute soup and decided to brunoise my carrots rather than chop them in the usual half-moons. The fancy chop wasn't necessary, but I wondered just how much more work it could possibly be.

So first I squared off the carrot - I immediately felt wasteful because, unlike a professional kitchen, I had nowhere else to use or store the carrot trimmings. Strike one for the Martha approach. Next I chopped little carrot planks:

 

Which were then chopped into little carrot sticks:

   

And then, finally, grandly, the sticks were chopped into little carrot cubes. I will say that there was a certain satisfaction with seeing the perfect cubes roll off my knife. The pile of little carrot soldiers brought a buttoned-up feeling, a tidiness to the task at hand. I was no longer throwing together a random amalgam, I was crafting a meal.

Will I continue to brunoise my vegetables? Maybe, if called for. It can't hurt. But I'll never lose sight of the ultimate goal: the food of grandmas (and I don't think grandmas brunoise).

Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies

With apologies to Carren for taking so long to post this...

Winter days roll around and I can't think of anything better than cranberries. Fresh or dried, these ruby fruits make my mouth pucker and smile at the same time with their tart and sweet flavors. So cranberry oatmeal cookies, to me, are one of the best treats of the holiday season.

Ingredients:
10Tb butter
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
1Tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 and 1/2 Tsp baking soda
Pinch of Salt
1 and 2/3 cup whole wheat flour (King Arthur's is widely available in most grocery stores)
1 cup rolled oats
2 cups dried cranberries

First, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Beat together the butter and sugar, then add vanilla and eggs and blend until all of the ingredients are thoroughly combined and the mixture is smooth. In a separate bowl, sift together your dry ingredients (baking soda, salt, and flour). Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, 1/3 at at time, and mix until combined. Add the oats, mix, and once they have been distributed evenly add the cranberries. Give everything a few final stirs to spread the cranberries throughout the mixture.

Scoop out small dough balls from your bowl, rolling them between your hands to make them slightly smaller than ping pong balls, and place them on an unlined, ungreased cookie sheet. Put the sheet in the center oven rack and bake for 7 to 9 minutes, or until the cookie tops begin to look brown and toasty. Cool on a baker's rack and enjoy!

Disaster #1: Sausage and Lentil Soup

 

Sounds wonderful, right? Warm, comforting, exactly the sort of thing you’d like to curl up with on a cold day in November. The recipe, taken from Katie Lee Joel’s The Comfort Table, seemed straightforward enough: green lentils, andouille sausage, aromatics, kale, broth.

But unfortunately Trader Joe’s doesn’t carry green lentils. In fact, my Trader Joe’s doesn’t carry ANY dried lentils – only bags of pre-cooked beluga lentils. Nice for a quick munch, not so great for soup since a long slow simmer is required to bring together all of the flavors.

So I stopped by my local Giant Eagle, the standby supermarket for most of us in Western PA, to pick up green lentils, and wound up coming home with dried split peas. Not exactly what was called for, but they passed my test: Legumes? Check. Greenish in color? Check. Slightly firmer than regular lentils (which is what distinguishes green lentils from their counterparts)? Check.  

Four hours later I was standing over a pot of what could have easily passed for green concrete. There was barely any cooking liquid left. The peas were still not cooked through. The sausage, which had been simmering in the soup for hours, had rendered its flavor to the little bit of broth that hadn’t evaporated, leaving the meat hot but nearly tasteless.

Sigh. So the lesson learned is: Substitutes are fine if the recipe is old hat, but don’t try a new dish without having the proper ingredients on hand.

Coming up in disaster #2 – burned sugar!

And We're Back!

[cricket, cricket]

[tumbleweed blows by]

Sooooooo, things have been awful quiet around here, hmmm?

My apologies. To be honest, I wasn't slacking off in the cooking department, just in the writing department. A lot of cooking was going on, actually, but the problem was that not all of said cooking was successful. So I was faced with the dilemma - do I write about the failures so that my readers (all three of you, and that includes you, Mom!) can avoid them, or do I write only about the successes so that you can emulate them?

Well everyone makes mistakes, so I've decided that I'll share mine with you. So brace yourselves - disastrous kitchen stories are coming up next!

Thoughts from Mark Bittman

If you've read any of the Michael Pollan books in recent years, the information Mark Bittman presents below is nothing new. However, despite my interest in and desire to "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." I will still catch myself inhaling a Junior Bacon Cheeseburger (no tomato, thank you) and fries on a few highly shameful occasions. My cheeks burn even now, just thinking of it. It's not the act of eating the food that I'm uncomfortable with, but it's the pleasure, the comfort, the familiarity that I find in that hot greasy mess of a meal that makes me so squeamish. How did a fast food fry-up become nostalgia fare? 

And what about those people for whom the $.99 Value Menu makes the difference between a full belly and an empty one? People who don't have a grocery store within walking distance, people who have to take public transportation for their weekly shopping trips - how can we expect them to choose fresh veg or fruit (both of which are highly delicate and highly perishable) over something frozen, portable, or ready-made?

I don't actually have answers to these questions, and I don't expect the food industry to answer back too quickly either, but it's important for those of us who continue to think about ways in which our bodies and the environment are impacted by the food we eat to recognize that the mere consideration of these things is a luxury. An important one, but a luxury none the less. 

Bucatini All'Amatriciana

The first time I tried this dish it was a disasterous failure. It's not that it's overly complicated - on the contrary, it's a straighforward, fast and easy dish, but somehow I managed to crash and burn quite nicely. Four years later, after seeing Giada De Laurentiis and her aunt Raffy make it this afternoon on the Food Network, I figured it was time to redeem myself.

So I went to the grocery store to arm myself with the necessities:

1# of bucatini or percatelli (both pastas have a pinhole running through the length of the noodle - if you can't find one, spaghetti will do)
8 oz. of cubed or diced pancetta
14 oz. of crushed tomatoes
1 medium spanish onion, cut in half then sliced thinly
2 cloves of garlic, peeled but whole
3/4 cup dry white wine
crushed red pepper flakes
salt
olive oil
1 cup pecorino romano cheese

First, put a large pot of water on the stove to boil. Then, in your largest saute pan (something that will hold the sauce plus your pound of pasta) coat the bottom with the oil and cook the pancetta cubes over medium heat until they're crispy, 7-10 minutes. Remove the pancetta (drain it on paper if you'd like) but allow the fat to remain in the bottom of your pan. Add the onions, garlic cloves, and a generous pinch of salt. Sweat the onions for 5 minutes or until they're no longer rigid and becoming translucent.

By this time your water should be boiling - add the pasta with a generous handful of salt and cook for 1 minute less than listed on the package (this is one of my tricks - for me, the pasta is always perfectly al dente if I follow this rule). 

As the pasta boils, add the white wine and pepper flakes to your sauce - kick up the heat to medium or medium/high to help with the wine evaporation. Simmer the onions in the vino for a few minutes or until the liquid's volume has reduced by about half. Add the crushed tomatoes and stir. Allow the sauce to bubble, then (carefully without burning yourself) taste for seasoning. Add salt and more pepper if needed. 

When the pasta is ready, transfer the noodles directly to the sauce. Add the pancetta to the top and toss the sauce, noodles, and pork together along with the pecorino cheese. Serve immediately - enjoy!

Easy Artichoke Dip

 

Another super quick and easy appetizer, this artichoke dip can be thrown together in the time it takes your oven to preheat. Even better, you don't need a ton of specialty ingredients or seasonings, just the following:

1 14oz. can of quartered artichoke hearts (packed in water, not oil)
1 cup mayo
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
cayenne or paprika, whichever you prefer

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Drain the artichokes and run a knife over them so that they're roughly chopped - no precision necessary. Place the chopped artichokes in a bowl along with 1 cup of mayo and the Parmesan cheese, reserving a pinch or two of the Parmesan for later. Stir the ingredients until everything is thoroughly blended, then scoop the mixture into a small baking dish or a large ramekin, whatever you have on hand. Sprinkle the reserved cheese on top along with a dusting of cayenne pepper or paprika, depending on how much of a kick you're after. I'll always choose the cayenne, but then I never can get enough of that wonderful pepper burn.

Pop the dish in the oven and bake it for 15 minutes or until the top begins to brown and the dish is bubbling at the sides. Resist the temptation to eat directly from the baking dish with your finger (because let's remember, the dip is hot) and serve the artichoke dip with crackers, tortilla chips, pretzels, endive or any other civilized implement. Enjoy!

Figs and Prosciutto

A costly appetizer, yes, but figs and prosciutto couldn't be easier or tastier.

I'd definitely make these sweet little bundles the next time I have friends over for cocktails and appetizers. My first attempt at making these was earlier this week when I needed a no-cook appetizer for a small potluck luncheon at my office, and they were simple, delicate, flavorful - overall, a big success! Here's what you'll need:

8 slices of prosciutto
1 small package of plain goat cheese
2 figs

Cut the slices of prosciutto in half widthwise so that you wind up with 16 long ribbons of ham. Then wash and dry your figs very carefully so that you don't damage the delicate fruit. Trim the woody stem from the top and, with your sharpest knife, slice each fig into quarters, then cut each quarter in half. You will wind up with 16 pieces of fruit to go with your 16 prosciutto slices.

Then assemble your bundles - stretch out the prosciutto, spread a small amount of goat cheese on one end, place the fig slice on top, and then roll the ham around the fig and cheese. The appetizers can be assembled up to 24 hours ahead of time - just chill them in the fridge and bring them to room temperature before serving. Enjoy!

Oven stone, my go-to gadget

To call it a pizza stone would be limiting. Yes, it makes an awesome pizza, but my oven stone does more than just pizza pies. It deftly handles cookies, bread loaves and rolls, and is an all-around awesome tool for the oven.

So how does it work?

Basically you can think of it as a hard, very hot sponge.  An oven stone absorbs moisture from anything placed on top of it and applies gentle, even heat to the bottom of your dough, allowing for consistent cooking in the most temperamental of ovens. And while this moisture-sucking device may be bad for fruits, meat, and veg, it is very, very good for any kind of dough.

The first thing to remember when using your oven stone is to always place a cold stone in a cold oven. Though I've not experienced it, I can imagine that a shattered stone caused by thermal shock of a hot oven on cool ceramic would not be a fun thing to clean up. So set your stone on the appropriate rack and then turn your oven on. Let the stone pre-heat according to it's instructions (25-45 minutes, though sometimes I'll admittedly only give it 10-15 minutes and I'm no worse for the wear). And while you're reading up about the pre-heating time in the booklet that comes with the stone, check to see whether there's a maximum suggested temperature. My stone tops out at 400 degrees F, which isn't a problem, I just wind up cooking my pizza a little longer (the recipe calls for 12 minutes at 425).

When you're ready to place your dough - let's just pretend we're making chocolate chip cookies - open up the oven and drop your cookie dough in place just like you would on a cookie sheet. No need to use parchment, non-stick spray, or anything else. The stone is naturally stick-free thanks to its moisture wicking properties.

You will need to watch your first batch of cookies carefully, since the cooking time will be slightly different. I've actually found that my cookies bake about 20% faster thanks to my oven stone. Remove the cookies from the stone carefully with your spatula and place them on a cooling rack as per usual.

Following previous logic, if a cold stone goes into a cold oven, so must a cold stone come out of a cold oven. So when you're done with your last batch of cookies, simply turn off the oven and walk away. That's it. Don't even think about that stone for another two hours. Come back to it later (it's always the next morning for me) and pick it up, dust it off with your hand or a dry cloth, and put it away.

Notice there is no washing here - remember, this ceramic is porous, so washing it with any sort of soap or detergent, will lock in that flavor for life (soap cookies, anyone?). Don't believe me? Read the instructions that come with the stone. If you must, a quick rinse of water will do the trick.

The best part about an oven stone is that it's relatively affordable - $20 or so will get you a perfectly good one, so you don't have to wait until payday to get your hands on one. Enjoy!