Impulse Baking

This morning we went to Barryville, PA's farmer's market. We didn't eat breakfast before we left the house, so the first stall I headed for was the stall with jam-tasting and tiny specks of baked goods to try out. Blueberry-jalapeno jam was on offer, as well as an orange marmalade which I tried on some zucchini bread. Pushing the idea of a blueberry-jalapeno jam experiment out of my mind for a moment, I knew I had to make zucchini bread. Today. 

So I tasked D with picking out a basket of zukes while I got some eggs, and no sooner were we in the house than I started making this zucchini bread. And after an hour when it was out of the oven, it was almost gone. If I had a jar big enough, I would pickle the tiny ones, but I guess that will have to wait until another day. Like the blueberry-jalapeno jam. 

I found a recipe that uses sourdough and of course had to try it. It's delicious.

Cardamom-Zucchini Sourdough Bread

1/2 cup good olive oil
3/4 cup white sugar
3/4 cup sourdough starter
1/2 cup whole milk
1 cup zucchini, grated
2 cups wheat flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp cardamom
1/2 cup raisins

Mix oil, sugar, starter and milk. Stir and let sit for a few moments. Stir in your grated zucchini (if you like your bread more veggie, use more than a cup. If you like your bread puffy, use an egg in addition to the other wet ingredients, but then decrease your sourdough or milk by about 1/8-1/4 of a cup). In a separate bowl, combine the dry ingredients (flour, powder, soda, spices) well and then add to the wet mixture to blend just enough. Fold in the raisins. (You can use nuts unless someone you love doesn't like them. Walnuts, pecans, almonds...whatever you like). 

Grease a bread pan and pour the mixture in, leaving just a tiny bit in the bowl for you to scoop up with your finger and eat. Bake at 325° for about an hour (test by sticking a toothpick in the densest part and see if it comes out gooey. If it does, it's not done). 

Let it cool for a few minutes and try to restrain your people from attacking it while it sets. If you want to save some for the morning (zucchini french toast, anyone?), you should have made two loaves. 

Pickling Berries

A few weeks ago, the wife of one of my softball teammates told me that she saw a recipe for pickled berries that she was interested in trying. She sent me the image of the recipe a few days later, and so when I saw these gorgeous red currants at the farmer's market this morning, I knew I had to try pickling them.
I found a Danish recipe, but it contained a preservative that I neither had nor wanted to use. And then I found an Alice Waters recipe adaptation which sounded more my style. I'm not sure yet what I'll do with them, but I have a few ideas. I could put them on a salad, serve them with some cheese and bread (Danish-style), but I'll most likely serve them alongside a venison and spaetzle.

Here's how I did it.

Pickled Red Currants
  
1 pint fresh red currants
1 cup champagne vinegar
1/8 cup sugar
10 each of juniper & allspice berries
1 stick of cinnamon
1 tsp pickling spices

Wash the jars out thoroughly with hot water, including the lids and place them near the stove. Wash your currants and place them carefully in the jars. Most of them will come off the stems, but leave some on the stems as they'll make a nice garnish in bunches. Chop your juniper and allspice berries on a cutting board. Add a bit of pickling spice to each jar. Bring the champagne vinegar, sugar, crushed berries, and cinnamon to a boil. (I added a dash of salt, too). Quickly pour the boiling liquid into the jars so that the berries are covered. Leave them to pickle for a few weeks before trying them in a dish.

Of Kitchens & Meth Labs

Have you ever made freshly prepared horseradish? All you need is some horseradish root, vinegar, water, a little salt.....and a gas mask. Seriously, fresh horseradish preparation is NO JOKE. I bought two gnarly looking roots at a farmer's market in the Hamptons back in May, and they stayed dormant in a brown bag in the fridge's veggie drawer for almost a month before I had the time to prepare it. I roughly followed this recipe, but it was literally: peel the horseradish, chop it into manageable pieces, run it around in a food processor until it is broken up into small chips, and then stuff it into a glass jar. I think I stuffed it too tight because I don't think that the white vinegar I covered it with really suffused the root overnight, but people seemed to love it, so it was probably okay to pack it tight. Then you pour white vinegar over it (enough to cover it, and a little more), cover the jar, and leave it for 24 hours. Then drain the excess vinegar into a bowl, add a little bit of salt, and reserve it. Return the suffused horseradish to the food processor and process away until the pieces are pretty fine.

If you're familiar with horseradish, then you'll know what consistency you want. If you're not, they should be little tiny pieces that resemble bulghur wheat or coarse breadcrumbs. Return the horseradish pieces to the jar, and then stir in the reserved vinegar until you get a wet consistency. Cover the jar and refrigerate.

Back to the gas mask part: Seriously. This stuff is potent. If your eyes water when you peel an onion, be prepared to weep. But it's more than that. It's actually hard to breathe in a closed space with so much horseradish. Even two or three rooms away, people will be affected. It was summertime when I made this, hot in our small Brooklyn apartment, and I feel like I seriously endangered our health by not taking precautions. Hence the title of the post: you should really think of your kitchen as a kind of meth lab during this endeavor. Gloves and a little paper gas/infectious disease mask are really a must for this process. I think you can get one of those paper masks at a well-stocked pharmacy. I plan to make a lot more of this next year, and I will definitely plan in advance.

It's really ready to use pretty soon after you return it to the jar. And look at all the things you can do with it! About a month after I prepared it, I used it to make horseradish pickles, bloody marys, and cocktail sauce with peeled shrimp. Next up: horseradish sauce for turkey sandwiches!

Global Babyfoods!

I totally think I hit on a niche market: baby food from around the world! I joined friends for an amazing dinner at Brooklyn Commune for a family-style vegetarian meal one night a few weeks ago. One of the dishes they served was a quinoa salad with grilled portobello mushrooms slathered in a creamy carrot sauce. Of course I asked the chef for the ingredients, and they were graciously provided by our server: carrots, tomato, cardamom, ginger, and coconut milk. I haven't mastered the proportions yet, so I won't post a recipe, but I served it this past weekend at a Fourth of July BBQ and guess who loved it more than me? THIS BABY RIGHT HERE! Actually one of the cutest and fun babies ever. She just couldn't get enough of it. I spiced up the recipe with a generous amount of pepper, garlic, and onion, but that was no problem for Allissa. Thanks, Erica and Allan for such a great addition to the world. And the inspiration for my new company: Global Babyfoods!

Where's the bun?

sourdough brioche hamburger buns

When you have buffalo patties, homemade bread & butter pickles, and homemade pickled onions, why would you settle for buns-in-a-bag? Especially when there's active sourdough starter sitting right there in your fridge? So don't settle! Start baking so you can have them fresh for dinner tonite.

Sourdough Brioche Seeded Buns

2/3 cup of warm milk
¾ cup sourdough starter, primed
½ cup sugar (maybe a little less)
2 large eggs (plus 1 more for egg wash)
3 cups of flour (1 more cup for shaping)
2 tsp salt (more course grain to sprinkle on top)
¼ cup melter butter (maybe a little more)
2 tsp yeast
black & white sesame seeds to top

If you have the time, the evening before (8 - 12 hours), take one cup of sourdough starter from your fridge and combine with one half cup warm water, one half cup white flour. Mix well and let sit overnight.

Place all of the ingredients in the mixing bowl and mix until well combined (some use a 
paddle or spiral mixer: you can do this with a wooden spoon). The dough should be supple and soft, with a high gluten development.

Transfer the dough to a slightly oiled container (I use olive oil spray), cover and leave for 1 hour. 

When the dough has risen, divide it gently into 6 pieces and loosely shape into bun-shapes. Preheat your oven to 460 Farenheit.  Brush your buns with an egg wash, sprinkle them with sesame seeds (and maybe a little course salt if you want), and let the buns rest for 15 minutes.

(The blog where I got this recipe has some interesting ideas about how to turn your oven into a steam room for the buns, but I don’t usually have time for all that.)

When the oven is hot and the buns are rested, pop them in the oven for 20 minutes, watching to make sure they get to the just the right shade of golden brown on top. Let the loaves cool completely on a wire rack. Enjoy with your favorite burger and toppings!

Leftover bananas

What do you do when you have two leftover soggy bananas? Make banana bread! This is a simple and tasty recipe. Do it next time you think about putting those slimy bananas in the freezer.

Banana Nut Bread

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 cup mashed bananas
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup oats
1/2 cup chopped walnuts, plus some more for the top

Preheat oven to 350 and lightly grease a 9 x 5 inch loaf pan. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and the sugar. Add the eggs, one at a time. Then stir in the banana and vanilla. Sift into the banana mixture the flour, baking soda, and salt. Mix thoroughly, then stir in the oats and nuts. Pour into the prepared pan and bake for about an hour. Check to see if it's done by inserting a toothpick into the center. If it comes out clean, it's done!

Edge of Summer Roast Pork

 

On the edge of summer, just before the temperature rises, you can make this tasty dish without breaking a sweat. I usually make pork in either a crock pot, or roasted for many hours in a hot oven. This time, I tried an abbreviated version of the oven-roasted pork. I made a pernil paste with garlic, salt & pepper, oregano, vinegar, and oil, coated a pork shoulder (bone-in) with the paste and refrigerated it overnight. The next morning, I placed the coated pork shoulder into a roasting pan with about 2 cups of vegetable broth. I covered the pork with plastic wrap and then aluminum foil and popped it in the oven for about 5 hours at 300 degrees. We served it with white rice, black beans, cilantro, sauteed spinach, and sliced avocado--a nice change from the pulled pork tacos we usually make. It was so moist it didn't even need any sauce. But later this week, I think a nice juicy pulled pork sandwich on a potato roll is in order.

Easy Oven-Roasted Pork

1 3/4 - 2 lb pork shoulder
16-20 garlic cloves
3 tbsp oregano
3 tbsp fresh ground pepper
3 tbsp salt
1 tbsp champagne vinegar
2 tbsp olive oil
2 cups vegetable broth

Chop garlic cloves in a mini-chopper with black pepper, salt, and oregano. Once its chopped into a nice paste, add the vinegar and oil. Coat the shoulder with the paste, and refrigerate overnight in an air-tight plastic bag. The next morning, rest the shoulder in a roasting pan atop 2 cups of vegetable broth. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and then tightly with aluminum foil. Pop in an oven at 300 degrees Farenheit. Leave it without looking for about 5 hours.

You can serve as roast pork by itself, chopped into empanadas, or shredded in tacos or on a sandwich.

Late Winter Venison Pie

This winter, we received gifts of venison from some really good people in our lives. I've tried to do something interesting with each cut of meat. To celebrate St. Patrick's Day weekend, I wanted to make a shepherd's pie for one of our hunter-friends who was coming over to help with an outdoor task. I thought it would be nice to surprise him when he and D came in from the cold with a steaming dish of his own venison cooked in a tasty pie. I found my inspiration for this adapted recipe from a blog called Food for Hunters. Instead of a plain old mashed potato crust, I decided to add some parsnips we had hanging out in the fridge from a few weekends ago. It makes the crust a little sweeter, but because I used beer instead of wine for the stew, the crust will be a nice compliment to a more bitter-savory stew.

Venison Shepherd's Pie

Stew
 pound venison cubes (stew meat)
1 medium onion
4 garlic cloves
(2 tbsp bacon fat)
olive oil
1 large carrot
1 medium turnip
2 stalks of celery
1 cup mushrooms (any kind)
3/4 cup or about 20 green beans
2 tbsp rosemary
1 bottle of beer (the darker the better)
1 3/4 cup veggie or beef stock
2 tbsp tomato paste
2 tbsp flour

Potato Topping
2 medium parsnips
2 large white or red potatoes
3 oz cheddar cheese, shredded
4 tbsp butter
1 egg, lightly beaten
salt and pepper to taste

Start by peeling the parsnips and potatoes, chopping them into cubes and immersing them in boiling water with a little bit of salt. Let cook until the cubes are tender.

In the meantime, chop your onions and garlic. Set aside. Then chop your venison into small bite-sized pieces.

[Check your potatoes at this point. If they are tender and done, add 4 tbsp butter and 3 oz of shredded cheese along with some salt and pepper and mash. Set aside to cool down.]

Heat the olive oil (or, alternatively, bacon fat) in a cast iron pot that is about the size of your pie pan. Saute the onion and garlic until they become soft and are beginning to brown. Add the venison pieces and season with a little bit of salt and pepper. Sautee until the meat begins to brown and then transfer to a bowl off to the side.

De-glaze the cast iron pan by pouring into it (while it's hot) the bottle of beer. Add 2 tsp or a cube or two of beef stock concentrate along with the tomato paste. Stir the onion-and-venison leavings from the pan into the liquid. After a few minutes, add finely chopped rosemary and let simmer for a little while. Pour the liquid into the bowl with the venison.

Add a bit more olive oil to the pan and add your chopped vegetables. Season with a little bit of salt and pepper. When the veggies are soft, add the venison mixture back into the pan and stir until combined. Add 2 tbsp of flour into the meat mixture and stir to thicken the sauce.

At this point, pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees F.

Turn your attention to the now-warm-to-cool parsnip-potato mix. Mix in your beaten egg.

Spoon the venison mixture into a pie pan. Add dollops of your potato mixture on top of the venison, starting from the outside and moving in until the entire "pie" is topped. Fluff a bit with the fork to make it look nicey-nice, sprinkle fresh ground black pepper on top, and drizzle with olive oil.

It's ready to go in the oven! Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the potato crust is golden brown and the innards are bubbling.

Serve to your loved ones and enjoy!

Strawberry Shortcake Cream on Top

We spent the weekend in the country with two other couples, and food was a central part of the gathering. We made elaborate dinners and full lunches, it seemed like we were cooking and eating constantly. My friend Holly pulled out some strawberries, shortcake, and balsamic vinegar. I couldn't understand what the balsamic had to do with anything. She cut up the strawberries a few hours before dinner, and marinated them in the balsamic vinegar and a little bit of sugar. After dinner, she spooned the strawberry mixture onto the cakes, and we topped it with some hand-whipped cream with some rum. It was amazing. You could taste the balsamic vinegar, and it perfectly complemented the tart sweetness of the berries. I will definitely make this again.

Purple Pesto

I'm co-hosting a small cocktail party this week, and wanted to bring some little dishes to wow our guests. I found a recipe for this little treat in an entertaining book at a friends home while we were on vacation. I re-created it with a few tweaks. Ideally, I'd serve it with some parmesan shortbread crackers, but those will have to wait for a less busy time for now. Our guests will have to soldier on with store-bought crackers.

Beet Pesto 

8 small-to-medium roasted beets

1 cup grated parmesan 

1/2 cup toasted pine nuts

2 cloves garlic

2 tbsp olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Throw them all in a mini-food processor and blend until the desired consistency. Serve on crackers or little toasts with some goat cheese and a baby watercress garnish.

Gorgeous dish.

Ceasefire Stuffing

On the way out of town the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I said to D: the only thing I wasn't able to get was a brioche or a challah bread for the stuffing. He asked if I wanted to take a detour to the Lower East Side to B & H Dairy for some fresh challah. He told me that his dad, a NYC taxi driver, used to stop there all the time and bring home a fresh loaf for the family. Sadly, I never met D's dad. From what I know of him--an irascible character with an outsized personality--I think I would have really liked him a lot. So off we went into the morass of traffic (which was great, because for some reason, I remembered as we were driving that I had left our brining turkey on the porch back in Brooklyn. A discovery better made in Lower Manhattan than in New Jersey). As we neared the shop on Second Avenue, D wondered if they'd even have any bread left the day before Thanksgiving. I figured if the Dairy didn't have it, then Moishe's across the street would. But we were in luck! I asked for the challah (which I never imagined would look like this) and the woman behind the counter handed me the loaf, "still warm from the oven," she said. It was $4.

Beautiful challah loaf

 Such a shame to cut this beautiful bread up for stuffing cubes! So I set aside four slices for breakfast tomorrow morning before everyone comes for dinner. Chop the rest of it I did, though, in large chunks. I placed those on dry baking sheets and stuck them in the oven at 250 F for about 15-20 minutes until they were hard and dry.

toasted challah cubes

The title of this post is "Ceasefire Stuffing" because today, after 8 days of sustained violence in Gaza, Israel and the Palestinians agreed to a ceasefire, and I combined challah bread with pork for my Thanksgiving stuffing. Clearly, the two events are not at all comparable: the former being a critical global event that will save countless lives and the latter a simple tasty dish. But the blog post needed a title, and the dish needed a name. 

pork sausage, removed from its casing, with fresh thyme.

There are some foods that are just designed to go together, and apple, sage, sausage, and leek are like a close knit group of friends--they are so good together--in a soup, a stir fry, and best of all, a stuffing. Thankfully no vegetarians this year, but I guess you could substitute a vegetarian tofu sausage, or even leave the meat out altogether. The smell of this dish cooking, as Julia Child would say, will make you feel like home.

The key to this dish, I think, is the careful way you have to fold the wet ingredients into the dry. Don't be afraid to use the butter--your guests will appreciate it. I was worried that the stuffing would be too wet with all of the stock, butter, and egg, but once you bake it, this liquid will ensure that your stuffing is moist and holds together. This recipe made quite a bit of stuffing, but we're having 8 with healthy appetites for dinner, and I hope there's some left over for turkey sandwiches!

Ceasefire Stuffing
Challah Stuffing with Apple, Leek & Sausage

1 large loaf of challah bread
2 large leeks, chopped
3 celery stalks, chopped
8 oz mushrooms, chopped
4 apples, diced
4-5 sausages or ground pork*
1-2 tbsp chopped fresh thyme
3 tsp sage
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cracked black pepper
3 cups chicken or vegetable stock
4 tbsp melted butter
1 beaten egg

*spicy, sweet, seasoned or not, depending on your taste.

Cut the bread into 1" or 1/2" cubes, depending on how you like your stuffing. Spread out evenly on cookie sheets and toast at 250 F until dry.

Saute the chopped leeks and celery in a cast iron pan with some olive oil until soft. Add the mushrooms, apples, sage, salt & pepper and cook until the apples are tender.

Transfer the leek-apple mixture to a very large bowl. By this time, your bread should be done. Take it out and set it aside. In the same cast iron pan, saute the pork and thyme. When the meat is nicely browned, transfer to the bowl with the leek-apple mixture. Melt 4 tbsp butter in the pan you've just taken the meat out of; add the melted butter to the meat-veggie mixture. Stir in the stock. And then, when the mixture has reached room temperature, add in the beaten egg.

Carefully stir the toasted bread cubes into the meat-veggie mixture a little bit at a time to fully coat the bread with the mixture. Stir together until everything is incorporated. Pack the stuffing into a casserole dish, cover, and bake at 350 F for 30-40 minutes. Uncover the stuffing for the last 5 minutes and turn up the heat to 400 F to brown the top. You can also prepare the stuffing the night before and pop it into the oven the next day before dinner.

Enjoy!

Drunken Kabocha

On the way up to the country in the car, we heard an interview with  Hiroko Shimbo, author of a new book Hiroko's American Kitchen and she was talking about using kabocha squash for pie instead of pumpkin. Her description of the nutty flavor and buttery texture of the squash was intriguing, and I figured it was something I was definitely going to have to try. We stopped at a grocery store close to our destination, and what do you know--there was a big pile of kabocha squash. So I tried it out. I don't yet have her book, so I had to look for some other model recipes and found one from the New York Times that I had most of the ingredients for on hand.

It was a great alternative to pumpkin pie this season and I would definitely make it again. I'm looking forward to experimenting more with kabocha--ginger kabocha soup is on deck, and next week I'd like to try a red curry stir fry with the squash.

Drunken Kabocha Pie

2 cups of pureed kabocha squash
8 ounces softened cream cheese
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon cardamom
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons good quality whiskey
2 eggs at room temperature
1/4 cup cream
(your favorite pie crust for the bottom. We use the crust from Four & Twenty Blackbirds)

Combine all of the ingredients in a bowl, and then pre-bake your crust at 375 degrees for about 15 minutes. When the pie crust is done, add the squash mixture and bake for another 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Serve with fresh whipped cream. Enjoy!

Pumpkin-Madness

Everybody's making fun of all the pumpkin-flavored things that people load up on this time of year: pumpkin spice latte, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin scones, pumpkin donuts, pumpkin-Pringles, pumpkin pasta, pumpkin salsa, pumpkin-flavord martini, and even pumpkin pie margarita....but I really do enjoy pumpkin season.

It seemed pretty obvious to me that our Sunday pancake routine could use a dash of pumpkin, so I found this recipe on the blog "i am baker." I adapted it with my sourdough starter and the addition of more spices and pecans. You can do a lot of adjusting with this recipe. If you like thinner, creamier pancakes, use a lot more liquid (milk, sourdough, buttermilk, water); if you like them cakier, follow this recipe strictly.

Pumpkin Pecan Pancakes

1 cup flour
1/2 cup cornmeal
1/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
(any other spices you like: cardamom, ginger, allspice)
1 beaten egg
1 1/2 cup milk (or sourdough or buttermilk)
1/2 cup pureed pumpkin
(chopped pecans to sprinkle on top)

In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients. In a separate bow, mix together the wet ingredients. Add the dry to the wet, and blend until incorporated. If the batter is too thick, you can add warm water or more milk.

Drop pancakes by the heaping tablespoon, depending on how big you like your pancakes, onto a very hot griddle with oil and/or butter. Sprinkle pecans on the uncooked side. Cook until just a few air holes appear on the top of the pancakes or the sides become shiny, and then flip.

Serve with maple syrup, local bacon, and hot coffee.

Sandy Sourdough

Hurricane Sandy gave us a 4-day weekend and we're making the most of it.****[see postscript]

While I should be reading, I am cooking up a storm to match the one outside.

Here's a new spin on one of my favorites, Rich People's Bread. I adapted this staple by adding 1/2 cup of pumpkin, and a little bit of nutmeg & cinnamon. I substituted the cranberries/raisins that I usually use with chopped dates. Delicious right out of the oven with some butter.

Should I name the recipe Sandy Sourdough?

****I wrote this blog on October 29th--well before the destruction wrought by Hurricane Sandy became real--for my family and my city. While my family made it through with only property damage (some really severe), a lot of people lost their lives. The storm plunged the city into darkness and water, and the displacement has been profound. Some communities were nearly decimated. Red Hook's Fairway--the place where I get many of the ingredients I use in recipes recorded in this blog--suffered catastrophic damage. Let this be a lesson: do not underestimate or joke around with Mother Nature. 

Spicy Autumn Chutney

Chutney is my new favorite thing. I recently replicated a salad I had at an Albany restaurant, the secret ingredient was spicy apple chutney. I described the salad in a previous blog post, but didn't yet tell you how to make the chutney.

Now's the time to stock up on this stuff, right at the end of the apple season. I cut some apples for a tart, saving the best and most beautiful slices for the tart and discarding the uglier pieces for this chutney. The last time I made it, it was a little too hot. This time, I think I could have used just a speck more jalapeno. It'll be great though with greens and goat cheese.

Spicy Apple Ginger Chutney

4 cups of chopped apple
1 tbsp diced ginger
3 garlic cloves, diced
1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
1 jalapeno, finely diced
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup raisins
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp pickling spices

Saute the ginger, garlic, onion, and jalapeno in a deep sauce pan. Once they are carmelized, add the apple and stir to coat and warm. Add the vinegar, brown sugar, raisins, salt, nutmeg, cinnamon, and pickling spices and stir often over a medium flame. The mixture is finished cooking when most of the liquid is evaporated and the apples are soft and nicely mushed with the raisins.

Spoon in to clean canning jars and seal tightly. If your lids pop, you can keep this at room temperature for quite some time. If they don't, refrigerate and use within three weeks. You can eat the chutney right away, but I find that the flavors deepen after a few days.

I've heard that spicy apple chutney is great with a pulled pork sandwich, too, and that's the next destination for this batch.

Pearl Couscous for an Autumn Date

I created this recipe for a fall dinner with friends of Tilapia and a kale-goat cheese-chutney salad recipe, which I blogged about here. 

All of the ingredients in this dish are underrated. Together, the flavors are fantastic. And it's totally easy to make as well. You can substitute just about any dried fruits, nuts, vegetables, and liquids in this recipe for what I've chosen.

Pearl Couscous with Dates, Walnuts, and Preserved Lemon

1 medium onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, diced
1 stalk celery, chopped

2 tbsp olive oil, or rice bran oil

1 ¼ cups vegetable broth
1 cup water
2 tablespoons finely chopped dates 
2 tablespoons chopped walnuts 
1 tablespoon diced preserved lemon
½ teaspoon salt 
¼ teaspoon ground cumin
¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
1 cup pearl couscous

Sautee the onion, garlic, and celery in oil in a deep and wide sauce pan. Add couscous and season with salt, pepper & cumin. Toast for a minute or so, and then add vegetable broth & water, which will sputter. Quickly add dates, walnuts, lemon and give it a quick stir. Bring to a boil, and then reduce the heat and cover. Resist the urge to stir, or you'll make the dish sticky. Once the liquid is evaporated, test the couscous and make sure it's cooked. Do not overcook or the couscous will be mushy and/or burned at the bottom of the plan. Fluff with a fork and serve. You can garnish with chopped cilantro or parsley.

Burning Hands Relish

My hands were burning like hell three years ago. I had just finished making 200 little jars of hot pepper relish as wedding favors. I spent that Saturday night at my BFF's house with both hands in big containers of yogurt while drinking red wine from a straw and watching Saturday Night Live.

Two blunders mark that experience: First of all, I never wrote down the recipe I used. And second, I didn't wear gloves while cutting hot peppers.

I'm recording the recipe as best I can this time, having improvised quite a bit from a recipe found in The Complete Book of Pickles & Relishes, originally published in 1965 by Leonard Louis Levinson. This book, which I acquired by marriage from my husband who is a trained chef, is my basic pickle-, relish-, and chutney-making bible.

During a visit to the Red Hook Added Value Community Farm, I lamented that I hadn't made relish for a long time. My husband encouraged me to take some time this weekend to make some, and so we picked up an assortment of late-summer produce: purple and green tomatillos, red, purple, and green bell peppers, and assorted, colorful hot peppers. Making relish is a snap--you just have to remember the damage these hot pepper can do to your nose, your eyes, and your hands. I guess I didn't learn my lesson from the last time.

Hot Pepper & Celery Pickle Relish

6 tomatillos
6 bell peppers
6-12 assorted hot peppers, depending on your taste and their size
1 large onion
2 stalks celery
2 cups cider vinegar
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons pickling or canning salt
8 small jars

Chop the tomatillos, onions, celery, and peppers roughly and then put in a food processor. Chop just enough so the relish is fine, but not a paste. Combine in a pot on the stove with vinegar, sugar, and salt. Bring to a boil. Strain the relish from the liquid, reserving the liquid. Spoon relish into clean jars and fill with reserved liquid to the consistency you like. Screw on lids tightly and set aside until they pop. Distribute jars to close friends and advise them that the relish is good on such things as scrambled eggs, fish, hot dogs, and kielbasa.

Late Summer Treasure

I travel to Albany, New York for my job. A lot. Most people groan when they hear that, and offer their sympathy. But I adapt to my surroundings, and I love going to Albany.

In my opinion, the Albany food co-op is the city's greatest hidden treasure. I've never seen anything like it. If you read this blog, you know I cook a lot. And I use ingredients that you don't find in your everyday supermarket. I can always find exactly what I need at the Albany food co-op, and more. The people are friendly, the prices are great, their bulk section is amazing (I never knew there were so many different kinds of flour!), and they even have raw milk.

Albany's restaurants are also pretty amazing. New World Bistro Bar, a 10-minute drive from the capitol building and a place where you can often see Albany powerbrokers brokering power over a drink and a meal, is my favorite.

The menu is seasonal, and the food creative. It's warm and comfortable, and the service has always been friendly and attentive. They have a great wine list, except I'm always disappointed with their selection of local New York wines.

Farmer's Market Salad was on the menu that last time I visited, and I was blown away. I don't know if it was the menu description of the dish, or the server's recommendation, but I'm glad I chose it. I knew I had to make it at home. When I returned to Brooklyn, I had the opportunity to re-create the salad for friends who came over for dinner. I served it as the second course following pumpkin soup, and before tilapia over date-nut couscous. It was a hit.

New World Bistro Late Summer Farmer's Market Salad

Bunch of kale
Bunch of escarole
2 tbsp Apple chutney
1 tbsp Curried Cashews
2 tbsp Curried vinaigrette
3 oz goat cheese

Roughly chop the kale and escarole after washing thoroughly. Both greens retain a lot of sand. Toss the lettuce and chutney with the curried vinaigrette until the leaves are lightly coated. Tip: Add the vinaigrette gradually to taste instead of adding all 2 tbsp immediately. You may want to reserve some for the table. Toss in pieces of goat cheese and curried cashews. Arrange on a plate displaying all ingredients. Serve and enjoy!

Ginger Rehab

You know you're cooked when you get that little tickle in your throat. Too late for the echinacea, too late for the Vitamin C. You just gotta stock up on the tea & cough drops and hope your schedule allows for a day or more resting at home. Mine didn't this time around. I had a 3-day retreat that I'd planned for my department in Albany, New York and a big party at home that Saturday night--neither of which I could cancel. Unfortunate, because in my experience, if you try to work through sickness with medication (my preferred coping meds are a steady stream of DayQuil and NyQuil), you're just staving off symptoms and your cold lasts longer. And that is, indeed, what happened.

What made this cold a tiny bit more bearable was the fresh ginger I picked up at the Albany food co-op. I'd never seen it before, and the co-op workers told me they wouldn't have it for long. I bought enough to do three things: make some ginger-tofu stir fry, stick one of the little root ends in water to see if it would grow, and cut little slivers into throat-coat tea all week. Delicious.

Kicking Summer to the Curb with Apple Spice Cake

Mohonk Mountain House is an amazing place. Just outside of New Paltz, New York, hidden atop a gorgeous mountain and overlooking a lake on one side and a valley on the other, the estate used to be a Quaker retreat and now all kinds of people and groups retreat there for the beautiful and peaceful natural vistas. The restaurant, staffed mainly by graduates of the nearby Culinary Institute of America, complements the place well. The food is excellent. 

I sit on the Board of Directors of the New York State Perinatal Association, an organization that advocates for better maternal and infant health policies and outcomes, and I was fortunate that the Board organized a retreat a Mohonk in September. 

There are so many things that were inspiring about that place, not the least of which was a deep dish over sterno cups that contained a mess of apples in caramel sauce. I don't know what drew me to it, but it was my fortunate choice from the dessert table. I vowed to replicate it for this year's Kicking Summer to the Curb party. I was pleased with the results I got from this recipe, with a few alterations (no walnuts, and bumped up spices). I picked up apples from the Albany food co-op on the way back from a work trip, and made this cake the day before the party. I also tripled the recipe for 48 servings.

End of Summer Apple Spice Cake with Caramel Sauce

Apple Spice Cake 
1/4 cup butter or 1/4 cup margarine, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 cup flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cardamom
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp ginger1 tsp baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 apples, peeled and grated (I used a food processor)

Preheat oven to 350-degrees F. Spray a 8-inch square cake pan with non-stick olive oil or grease pan and set aside. In a large bowl cream butter with sugar. Beat in egg. Stir in flour, spices, baking soda and salt. Fold in apples. Pour into prepared pan. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until cake is done and toothpick comes clean when inserted in cake. Cut in squares when cool.

Caramel Sauce
1/4 cup butter or 1/4 cup margarine
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup whipping cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
salt

To make caramel sauce melt butter in saucepan over low heat and then add remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Continue stirring for 5 minutes or until sauce thickens. Remove caramel sauce from heat and serve over apple cake squares.