Pre-prepared desserts

I have a touch of OCD.

It's nothing serious (in my opinion). I'm very particular as to how I do things in the kitchen. I refuse to start cooking until the kitchen is immaculate, with everything in its place. This means when I get home from work, I empty out the dish rack, the dishwasher, and take care of whatever leftover items might be hanging out in the sink. Depending on how much stuff needs to be dealt with, it can mean 20 mins go by before I'm prepared to start dinner. By then, depending on how tired I am, I may not feel like making dinner at all.

But for some reason, before I got my act together to actually make-ahead some meals, and not a la Rachel Ray "Week in a Day", the only thing I've had on hand that's been prepared in advance is dessert.

I decided to buy a set of vintage Hall custard cups off of Etsy and the first thing I wanted to make were pots de creme. I'm a big fan of La Tartine Gourmand's site and I adore all the dishware she uses, so I was inspired to search for some similar items. This is the best I could come up with. For their inaugural voyage, I decided to try La Tartine Gourmand's recipe for Dark chocolate and coconut pots au creme, a fancy way of saying puddings or custards. This is what they looked like when they came out of the oven.

If your initial reaction is "yech, those don't look too appetizing", then don't worry because that was my first thought when I took them out of the oven. I don't think the cocoa dissolved fully (hence the black specks), and the coconut milk also created some weird lumps. Definitely not the most appealing of things that I've made.

A much more successful attempt involved David Lebovitz's Goat cheese custard recipe with strawberries in red wine syrup. Some of you may remember when I tried to make this dessert last summer and failed misearably (see here). Well, I've successfully made it twice now and it's the easiest recipe in the world, when you buy goat cheese that has minimal packaging. It's like a tangy, sophisticated cheesecake, maybe because both times I've used heavy cream when I've made the recipe. The red wine syrup is delightful touch. The only downside to these custard cups is that they're so small (I think they hold a 1/2 cup of liquid at most?), so it's easy to gobble one of these down.

The final pre-made dessert that I've had on hand are meringues. I tried to be all Ina Garten (Barefoot Contessa) and pipe the meringues in neat little nests. Can you see how sad they look? In addition to an incredibly unsteady hand that made a mess of a nest that any bird would be ashamed of, I had structural integrity issues - the one in the upper right had a wall collapsing on itself. This was my first attempt and I wasn't entirely surprised by the results since I'm terribly uncoordinated, but when I tried piping meringues for a second time, they were just as ugly and possibly even uglier than these. And how is it that my meringues never come out snowy white? I know I use raw sugar, which probably adds to the caramel tint, but I can't figure out how to cook these suckers long enough so they're not chewy without them browning.

Ah well, minor concern. On to the eating. I've been following a new blog (well, new to me, maybe not truly new) called She Simmers: Thai Home Cooking, and blogger Leela's recipe Mango meringue tart with coconut cream caught my eye since it combines three of my favourite things in one dessert! Despite its promise, it left much to be desired, mostly due to the texture of the custard - 3 tbsp of cornstarch is far too much for anything unless you want a molded pudding. I prefer a creamier textured custard so this gelatinous mess was more than a bit of a turnoff. Since it's heading in to spring (hopefully?) here in New England and rhubarb has put in an appearance in the grocery stores, we've gone back to our old standby of strawberry-rhubarb compote and freshly whipped cream as the topping for meringue. Why mess with a good thing?

When the going gets tough, the tough stop cooking

I have been unusually busy as of late. Busy by pharma standards, that is - it's still nothing like my investment banking days, but I have spent a number of days in the past two weeks starting at 8am and ending at 7pm. It's definitely not like my investment banking days since I find myself with a lingering interest in cooking, even when I get home on the later side. The difference is that I find myself with less time to plan meals - I guess I didn't realize that how much I think about food when I have some down time during my work day.

Luckily this winter I've been trying make-ahead meals on the weekend and freezing batches for dinners during the week. Since it's still been freezing cold here in New England in mid-April, the hearty meals from the freezer have been welcome, in addition to being convenient. Though I must say, not everything has been successful and most of them weren't particularly photogenic, or else I was too hungry to bother with a photograph. In fact, the only photo I took of the recent make-ahead meals was this pile of napa cabbage:

The pile was transformed in Asian cabbage rolls via Serious Eats, from the cookbook "Not Your Mother's Casseroles". It's essentially a dumpling filling in a cabbage leaf, and while I love the ingredients in this recipe, somehow the flavour was a little off. It may be the ground pork that I bought wasn't that good (from Whole Foods, and not Savenor's the butcher shop with the best meats that I can find in a retail store), and it may have been a textural thing - I didn't put the pork in the food processor to make it smooth, which is what I would need to do to recreate the dumpling filling effect. It was also a ton of work - chopping scallions, mushrooms, ginger and cilantro by hand perhaps wasn't the most efficient thing to do if I'd thought of using the food processor. The recipe doesn't specify blanching the cabbage leaves beforehand, but I thought they were too stiff to roll without pre-treatment, so I ended up stinking up the kitchen as I blanched the towering pile of cabbage leaves.

Another lackluster attempt was a southwestern meatloaf, a recipe from one of the last Fine Cooking issues in our subscription that combined ground pork with cumin, red pepper and chipotle (among other ingredients), which in theory sounded good but in practice tasted just awful. We also have a small brick of meatloaf in the freezer that I haven't been able to bring myself to thaw, so it will be heading into the garbage once we start needing more space.

At least there were a few successful attempts thrown in there or else I would have thrown in the towel and resorted to takeout all the time, which was occurring with increasing frequency anyway since I hadn't frozen enough meals in advance. One was Tuscan Peasant Soup, an oldie but goodie Fine Cooking recipe that I consider to be a vegetarian meal since pancetta doesn't really count as meat given the quantity used in this dish. I used my homemade roasted chicken stock (made with 75-cent chicken parts!), San Marzano canned tomatoes (the Cento brand, which I think is imported from Italy) and dried white kidney beans that I soaked overnight then boiled for an hour. I'm not sure which or if any of these three ingredients made the difference, but it was the best soup I'd made and since it filled our large Dutch oven, we had plenty of leftovers to freeze.

The other surprising hit was a chicken pot pie recipe from America's Test Kitchen. They aren't kidding when they warn that this is a full-on production. None of the steps are particularly challenging, it's just that there's a lot to follow. It's the kind of thing that I tackle on a Sunday - I start by making the topping, go watch TV while that bakes, come back to poach the chicken, go back to watching TV while it cools, do all of the prep work for the sauce and then finally cook it all together before assembling the final dish and sticking it in the freezer. It's worth the effort to come home on a weeknight, pop the casserole out of the freezer and into the oven, and be ready to eat dinner in 45 minutes after whipping together a salad while the pie reheats.

As much as I like being prepared ahead of time, somehow it feels like these pre-planned meals work best with winter fare. Not sure what I'm going to do when the weather warms up, if it ever does around here...

Another kitchen gadget

This is starting to become an expensive habit. First it was the pound of artisanal bacon that I impulsively bought on Saturday morning. No one should let me into Formaggio Kitchen without forcing me to eat breakfast first because I am powerless when surrounded by delicious smells, aka their first BBQ of the season. The cheesemonger was describing this new bacon they have from a farm in Vermont that's made from an heirloom breed, and I was a goner - I bought a pound of it on the spot. Do you know how much a pound of bacon is? It's A LOT. Far more than I expected. Most of it's in the freezer, waiting for the next craving, but we did try some for breakfast on the weekend and it's worth every penny.

But I digress. The bacon incident was a distraction from my original objective - to try a recipe for Pork and Lemongrass Meatballs in Lettuce Cups from the March issue of Bon Appetit. We obviously love Asian flavours, and these ingredients were right up our alley, so I popped over to Savenor's and picked up just over a pound of ground pork. I also picked up over a pound of chicken parts (necks, backs and butts) for only 75 cents, the price of which freaked out the husband but made plenty tasty stock after I roasted the chicken and vegetables.

Anyhow, I followed the instructions for the meatballs using our little 4-cup Cuisinart. Normally this little food processor can handle all of our chopping needs, but not when it comes to a pound of pork that needs additional grinding/blending. It also wasn't able to handle 15-oz of beans (equivalent of one can) when we tried making a white bean pesto dip. Since it was two times in a row that the little model couldn't handle our processing needs, I decided it was time to upgrade to this baby - the Cuisinart 12 cup model, which includes a 4 cup bowl for smaller jobs. I can't wait until it arrives - and if it's as beautiful as it looks in the picture, I think I'll have to find a name for it...

Website

As for the meatballs, they turned out spectacularly well. My only complaint is that the dipping sauce is very salty - I didn't like the ratio of fish sauce to lime juice, but that's easily remedied. I fried them this time since it only took 15 mins and who doesn't love fried food, but I may bake it next time for simplicity and to lower those fat calories. This definitely will be on our future dinner rotation. 

The lettuce cups were so cute!



The full meal - that's sauteed swiss chard in the back

What is this strange, foreign object...

This hasn't made an appearance in our kitchen in many, many years:

Yet it appeared one day, because of my not-so-successful purchase - those not-so-tasty gourmet marshmallows.

Since I couldn't figure out any other way to use up them up, other than to make rocky road ice cream, which I was not prepared to do given that it's still winter and I would have needed to make gallons of the stuff, I gave in and made the classic - rice krispie squares. Of course, because of my adoration for David Lebovitz, I decided to try his White Chocolate Rice Krispies recipe. What confused me was the requirement for a 10 oz or 300g bag of marshmallows. I had marshmallows - but I had no idea how much I had. The weight was nowhere to be found on the bag or on the website. How weird is that? 

So I went out and bought this new toy:

That's not a stock photo, that's really the model that I bought. See the crumbs and smudges on the shiny red surface? Not a professional picture at all. And yes, it is an indulgent purchase considering I have never needed to weigh anything before now. Bakers swear by the precision of a scale, but as OCD as I am, I had never felt the need to take accuracy to this level. 

However, now that I have it in the kitchen, I find I use it fairly often for everyday recipes. For example, it came in handy when I needed 5 oz of goat cheese for goat cheese custards (more on that another time), again when we needed 15 oz of beans for a white bean puree (instead of using canned beans, we soaked a bunch and cooked them, but didn't know how much of it we should use), and again when I needed 1 oz of grated Parmesan for a chicken pot pie recipe. I'm sure we could have winged it had we not had a scale available, but now that it's one of our standard kitchen tools, I feel so much more secure with precision measuring. 

As for those rice krispie squares? I didn't like them. I guess inferior-tasting marshmallows lead to disappointing rice krispies - they weren't buttery enough for my liking, and I was a little over-enthusiastic in mashing the mix into the pan because they came out dense and somewhat hard to chew. Oh well, now I know to leave the rice krispie making to the professionals. Which reminds me, there was a rice krispie maker featured on Foodcrafters recently, I'm going to have to go order some... 

Is it summer yet?

We've had beautiful weather in New England for a change - a couple of days of sunshine and 60 degree temperatures does wonders to improve my mood. Since it felt like spring, I decided to make one of our favourite warm weather salads to bring to a friend's place for a wine-tasting get-together - the Barefoot Contessa's Shrimp and Orzo salad.

Doesn't that look like summer ingredients? It's a light salad that feels healthy as there is no butter, mayo, or sour cream involved, just an olive oil-lemon juice vinaigrette. I used Maine shrimp since they're currently in season, but boy is it a pain to remove the shell on a pound of those little critters. Otherwise it's an easy salad to whip together after work on a Friday. Unfortunately I never got the chance to share it - as I was putting the finishing touches on the salad, I could feel a high fever coming on. That was enough to send me to the couch for the rest of the evening and I didn't end up going out. Oh well, I can always make it again - and the husband is more than happy to eat it...

They could be called Total Knock Outs

These cookies are known as TKO's:

That stands for "Thomas Keller Oreo", as made in Bouchon Bakeries in NYC, Napa and Vegas. I think I've been to all three locations (NYC and Napa for sure, Vegas is a blur) but I've never tried their oreos since I'm crazy about their bouchons, which are these cork-shaped dark and rich chocolate brownies. I've been known to walk the 10+ blocks in NYC from my old company's office to Columbia Circle, buy the bouchons and hand carry them on the plane to share with the husband at home (ok, so maybe the fruit/produce from California wasn't that strange in retrospect). But somehow, I'd never noticed their oreos.

This in itself is odd, because I am a big homemade oreo fan. I don't like the commercial brand because I find them too sweet. I don't go out of my either way to find the bakery version since I'm not that obsessed with them. However, one day in the last week or so, I was reviewing my starred blog reader entries and noticed a lovely post from local blogger Tiny Urban Kitchen featuring the Bouchon Bakery recipe, helpfully converted from weight measurements to volume. The white chocolate filling as opposed to the more traditional buttercream got my attention, so I got it into my head to give these cookies a try.

It did require a trip to Williams Sonoma to pick up a pastry bag since I don't have one (nor the decorating tips) and a set of cookie cutters (since I don't have any anymore). I also popped in to Whole Foods to pick up white chocolate (Green and Black's organic bars) and dutch cocoa powder (Lake Champlain Chocolates). Oh and a pound of butter, since we were out.

It was amusing to read the original recipe from Bouchon Bakery posted on The Kitchn site (link below), as half of the comments raved how amazing these cookies are while the other half complained it was a disaster. I'm guessing the complainers didn't realize the difference between weight and volume, which obviously can have a huge impact. In comparing the Bouchon Bakery recipe to Tiny Urban Kitchen's version, it was interesting to note that her adaptation called for 1 1/2 tsp of salt vs the "pinch" in the bakery recipe. We all know I'm a salt fiend so I went for the 1 1/2 tsp. I also generally reduce the amount of sugar that recipes call for, but in this case I didn't and I'm glad I didn't mess with it.

The verdict: These are addictive cookies. They're chocolately, they're salty, they're not too sweet, and they're definitely, wonderfully buttery. They're better than the store-bought version, and I like them better than the ones sold by Hi-Rise Bakery or Flour. The husband has declared these to be his new favourite cookie, more so than the white chocolate cranberry ginger cookies that I make all the time. Luckily for him, they made 42 sandwich cookies and I'm not sure if I was skimpy with the filling, or I just couldn't operate the pastry bag (both are reasonable possibilities), but I only used half the filling mixutre and have the remainder sitting in the fridge, ready to be used with another batch of cookies. It's a bit labour-intensive (I'm not the fastest rolling out the dough and cutting cookies, nor am I that adept with the pastry bag) so I'm saving the next batch for a weekend project or another snowstorm. The husband did go out and buy another pound of butter so I'm ready to go the next time I have a few hours to kill.

TKO's, or Homemade Oreos
from Tiny Urban Kitchen and Bouchon Bakery via The Kitchn

Cookie:
1 1/2 cups plus 3 Tbsp all purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup plus 1 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp salt
15 Tbsp unsalted butter at room temperature

In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar together using a paddle on medium speed. Sift the dry ingredients together and add to the butter and sugar mixture until combined. Refrigerate the dough for 30 minutes. Roll the dough out to a thickness of 1/8 of an inch. Cut out cookies into desired shapes. Refrigerate the cut cookies for 20 minutes. Bake at 325°F for 12 minutes and let cool on a rack.


For the White Chocolate Ganache Filling:
7 ounces (14 tbsp) heavy cream
7 ounces white chocolate
1 ounces (2 tbsp) butter

Chop the white chocolate and place in a bowl. Bring the heavy cream to a boil and pour over the chopped white chocolate and stir until smooth. Add the butter and stir until incorporated. Allow the cream mixture to cool. Transfer the mixture to the bowl of electric mixer. Using the whisk attachment, whip until light and the mixture holds its shape. Refrigerate until needed.

Little things make us happy

This is our newest toy:

Yes, that's a kitchen faucet. Our new kitchen faucet.

It may seem pretty ordinary to you, but the Blanco Semi-Professional model (because we're only semi-professionals, you know) is the best kitchen item we've bought all year. It beats out the long silicone-tipped tongs (purchased after I realized deep frying french fries isn't a good idea when you have itsy-bitsy tongs and your hands are dangerously close to the hot oil) and the cute jars I use to make pickles.

It's amazing because we put up with a broken builder's basic Delta faucet for a year. Our old faucet was stuck on a weak spray - we couldn't switch it back to the full stream anymore, so filling a pot of water or a watering can was a slooooow process. This new puppy has so much pressure that I was power-washing lettuce to the point that it needed extra spins in the salad spinner.

It was a good thing we got our new faucet installed because it had no problem tackling this glorious mess:

This was my first attempt ever at making baked beans. I violated the cardinal rule and tried this dish for the very first time the day we had guests coming for dinner. We were serving apple-cider glazed ribs with the Barefoot Contessa's roasted butternut squash salad, and it occurred to me the day before that baked beans would go well with the meal. I'm not particularly fond of baked beans so I think the husband was a bit taken aback when I offered to cook this as a side.

I first trotted off to Formaggio in search of salt pork. Turns out it's probably the only pork product that they don't carry. The closest substitution was either pancetta or guanciale. I went for a pound of guanciale since it was the fattier option of the two (and a few dollars cheaper). I was also hoping to buy Rancho Gordo beans, a supplier of dried heirloom bean varieties that reportedly taste far better than the run of the mill varieties. I'm a big fan of heirloom tomatoes, so I wanted to give the heirloom beans a try, but unfortunately they didn't carry the type of white navy bean that the recipe called for. Instead, I settled for a dried New England bean mix from Whole Foods.

I was intending to make a full recipe, but the husband suggested perhaps halving the quantities would still be a hearty amount, given how much other food we had to serve, so it was only half a pound of beans that soaked in water overnight. The next morning, when I started to assemble the rest of the ingredients for the 5 hours of cooking time, I realized the recipe called for a 1-to-1 ratio of salt pork to beans. I dutifully chopped up a half pound of guanciale to match the half pound of beans, but when it came time to put all of it together in the pot, I just couldn't add that much fat to that amount of beans. I ended up adding half of what the recipe recommended, and I'm very glad I did because it ended up being rich as all hell. I like my food to be fatty (though we'll see how my cholesterol's doing at my next check-up, gulp) but even this was a bit too much for me. I added 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar which helped the heaviness, but I think I'll be looking for a more southern-style baked beans recipe the next time I get the urge - I think I'm a sweet and sour, ketchup type of baked bean eater after all.


Boston-style Baked Beans
From Serious Eats

Ingredients

• 1 pound dried white pea beans, soaked overnight in cold water
• 6 cipollini or small onions, peeled
• 3 whole cloves
• 1 pound salt pork
• 1/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 1 tablespoon dried mustard
• 1 teaspoon coarse sea salt

Directions

• Drain the beans, discarding the soaking liquid, and place them in a large saucepan. Cover the beans with water and bring to a boil. Remove the pan from the heat, skim off any scum that has risen to the surface, and drain the beans, reserving the cooking water. Set the cooking liquid aside and transfer the beans to a heavy casserole or Dutch oven
• Preheat the oven to 275ºF
• Skewer 3 of the onions with a clove each and add them, with the remaining onions, to the beans. Cut the salt pork into 2-inch pieces and add to the beans. Mix the brown sugar, molasses, mustard powder, and salt with about 1 cup of the cooking liquid and pour over the beans and pork, stirring to mix. Add enough of the reserved cooking liquid to cover the beans and set the remaining liquid aside
• Cover the beans and cook for 4 hours, checking from time to time to make sure that the beans are always covered with liquid, and adding more of the reserved cooking liquid as necessary. After 4 hours the beans should be just tender, but the cooking time will vary depending on the age of your dried beans; older ones will take longer to cook. Uncover the pan and continue to cook them for another hour to thicken the sauce and color the salt pork pieces. 

Cooking like an Iron Chef

No, our cooking skills aren't that good. We've never taken a professional cooking class and our knife skills are rudimentary at best. In fact, they're so rudimentary that I started to take a piece off my thumb while attempting to cut a baguette last night.

I'm referring to a (reasonably?) new show on the Cooking Channel featuring Iron Chef Michael Symon. I thought it might be hokey at first, but the premise is simple - pick a "secret ingredient" and cook 3 dishes with it. The episode featuring pork got my attention - he made a pork tenderloin dish in minutes using only one pan.

Not only did it take less than 10 mins to cook (with maybe 10 mins prep, at most), it's really, really good. The sweetness of the dates cut the richness of the bacon with the pork, and the lemon zest adds an unexpected brightness to what could be a very heavy dish. This is one we'll be adding to our weeknight repertoire.

Pork Tenderloin with Bacon, Chile Flakes, Toasted Almond and Parsley 

Recipe courtesy Michael Symon

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons blended oil, plus more as needed
• 1 (1 1/2-pounds) pork tenderloin, cut into 2 1/2 to 3-ounce medallions
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 2 thick slices bacon, cut into lardons
• 1/4 cup slivered almonds to pan, to toast
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup pitted, chopped dates
• 1/2 teaspoon red chile flakes
• 1 clove garlic, thinly sliced
• About 1/2 cup chicken stock
• Zest and juice of 2 lemons
• 1 small bunch fresh parsley, leaves picked and chiffonade
• Kosher salt 

Directions

Place a large saute pan over medium-high heat and add 2 tablespoons blended oil. Season the medallions with salt and pepper on both sides. Once the oil is heated, add the seasoned pork to 1 side of the pan and sear on both sides, about 2 minutes each side. To the other side of the pan, add the bacon and allow to start to render.

Once the bacon has started rendering and the pork is flipped, add the almonds and butter to toast. Next add the dates, red chile flakes, garlic, chicken stock, lemon zest, and juice. Allow to simmer briefly then remove from the heat and stir in the parsley. Taste and season with a pinch of salt, if needed

Place 2 of the medallions onto a plate and top with the dates, almonds, bacon and drizzle of the sauce.

This is not a doughnut

 

If it was, it would be a giant doughnut since that's a full-size dinner plate that it's sitting on.

It's my second attempt at an angel food cake. Since I've made four batches of ice cream with 6 egg yolks in each, I've had a lot of egg whites to contend with. First I tried a Martha Stewart recipe that called for 12 egg whites and not a lot of flour and ended up being "really chewy", according to the husband.  I just thought it was dry and tasteless. I had another 6 egg whites to use up from the aftermath of the salted butter caramel ice cream adventure, and I had fully intended to make coconut macaroons dipped in chocolate, when I watched Ming Tsai this afternoon make a Ginger-Thyme Angel Food Cake.

I was intrigued when he used 2 tablespoons of grated ginger in this cake. I'd been lamenting that my attempt at double ginger ice cream wasn't gingery enough for me, so I was excited to see him use 2 tbsp of grated ginger since that's a lot of ginger and should give it a good punch of flavour. I was feeling better after having battled the start of the cold that never progressed past the feeing crummy stage, and was up to the task of grating the large amount of ginger required. Recipe itself was a breeze to assemble and into the oven it went while hubby prepared dinner.

It was inadvertently an evening of experimenting with new recipes. A couple of weeks ago, I was shopping at the Lexington Farmer's Market and noticed a new vendor selling lamb. I wish I could remember the name of the farm but I'm too full to wander downstairs to check the package, but it's a small farm in the Boston vicinity who only sells lamb - or only had lamb to sell at the market. I decided to buy a very small rack of lamb and a boneless leg of lamb to try at home since we never eat lamb unless we're eating out. Today felt like a good day for lamb so out of the freezer the rack came.

We've never cooked a rack of lamb before, but luckily my book club friends were over last weekend and the topic of Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc cookbook came up. We hadn't used it in a while - it's a very heavy cookbook, and we're scared of getting it dirty since it really is a beautiful book, so it is relegated to the bookshelf and easily overlooked. Sure enough, he has a recipe for rack of lamb. He had the most interesting ingredients out of the few recipes I perused from other sources, in that his recipe uses mustard, honey, parsley and rosemary, bread crumbs and anchovies. We like anchovies, but we didn't have any in hand and we would have seriously needed only 2 little fishies for the size of the meat we were cooking, so we just left them out. His recipe also called for his own garlic confit, which essentially involves poaching garlic in oil for about 45 mins or so, then using that garlic in the paste. Other than this time-consuming step, roasting the rack of lamb was easy.

The husband carved it up before I could snap a picture, but it wasn't that impressive to look at since it was such a small piece (it was under a pound but that's enough for the two of us). The lamb was damn good - tender, not gamey at all, and the herb crust was delicious. Thomas Keller certainly can cook and the recipes we've tried out of his book including this one have rocked.

We ate the yummy lamb with another French wine, this one a Beaujolais again from our friends at Central Bottle for $14. This one will also be a repeat purchase - so easy to drink that I'm amazed that we only quaffed half the bottle.

As for the cake, it was gingery alright. The husband also commented that it was more cakey than the first angel food cake I made, probably since there was more flour in this recipe. But as was the case with the first one, I found it to be dry and unappealing - probably because there's absolutely no fat in the recipe, and I was using a whole wheat pastry flour that made the texture more grainy. We ate the last of the salted butter ice cream with the cake to give it that badly needed fat, and tomorrow night I'll be making the ginger cream that's part of the Ming Tsai recipe. I know I'm supposed to eat less fat, but no fat just doesn't cut it with me.

Dangerously low on cookies

I've been quiet lately because I've been on a mission to redecorate two rooms in our house. We have two small bedrooms (each 9.5 x 11 ft, which incidentally is smaller than Lindsay Lohan's jail cell) that are used as a guest suite and office/laundry storage room. We've just thrown our old furniture in both rooms and bemoaned the lack of space for the last four and half years.

Our recent purchase of the iPad has led me to purchase online magazine subscriptions - frighteningly simple to do, and delivered on the beautiful iPad interface. We can now get two Canadian design magazines that we love and missed - Canada's Style at Home and Canadian House and Home. I've never figured out what the American equivalent is, and I'm convinced Canadian design is better anyways or why else would HGTV in US be filled with Canadian shows? :-)

So perusing design magazines again and browsing a lot of design blogs led me to consider our two under-utilized rooms. It wasn't until I tried room planning software (there's a program on the Better Homes and Gardens website) that let me play around with furniture that I realized we had positioned all of the furniture in the wrong spots in the guest bedroom. It would take something as simple as flipping the bed around so that the headboard was against the window and not the opposite wall that would free up tons of space and allow us to get a queen bed in there. (We have a full or double bed in there now - apologies to all past guests for the cramped sleeping quarters!)

We found a bed we liked pretty quickly - we got the Nailhead Bed from West Elm, pictured below, but in the natural color and not the gray shown:

We're going to keep the dresser we have in there now so all we need is a narrow desk/vanity table or bookcase and the guest room has been redone.

During my obsessive quest to find appropriate yet inexpensive furniture, the husband alerted me to the fact that he was dangerously low on cookies. While he's an extremely healthy eater, he enjoys his desserts and generally prefers them to be home made. His favorite is a ginger-cranberry chocolate chip cookie recipe that I saw on Ming Tsai and now make regularly. It is super easy to make (thanks to the my trusty Kitchen Aid mixer) and I pop each batch into the freezer when they're baked since they freeze well and they're delicious when warmed in the oven. It's also my diet trick - I forget that they're in the freezer since I don't see them, so I don't eat them other than 1 or 2 when they're first baked. The husband, on the other hand, meticulously takes one to work each day to finish off his lunch, and likes to alert me when he's running low. So I stepped away from my obsessive searching to whip up a batch.

Ginger-Cranberry Chocolate Chip Cookies
From Simply Ming (Ming Tsai)

1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar
9 tablespoons butter
1 extra-large egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons minced ginger
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 pound chocolate chips
1/2 cup dried cranberries

1.Pre-heat oven to 325 degrees.

2.In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with paddle, cream together sugars and butter.
3.Add egg, vanilla and ginger and mix until combined.
4.In a large bowl, combine flour, salt and baking soda.
5.In a second large bowl, combine cranberries and chocolate chips.
6.Starting with flour, alternate flour and cranberry mixtures until dough is thoroughly combined.
7.Using a tablespoon, portion cookie dough 2 inches apart onto ungreased bake sheet (you can line with parchment, if you like).
8.Bake for 8-12 minutes, or until cookies are golden brown and underside is the same. They will feel moist on top, but will harden as they cool.
9.Let cookies cool on bake sheet for 5 minutes, then remove to a rack to finish cooling.

I generally use half oat flour and half regular flour to try and make it a bit healthier, and white chocolate chips seem to be a better match with the dried cranberries. I can usually get 24 cookies per batch.

Pavlovas are no longer the bane of my existence

I adore meringue. I don't remember how my love affair with egg whites and sugar began, but meringue is probably my number one dessert. I like lemon meringue pies, ile flottante (soft meringue clouds floating on a sea of custard, also known as oeufs a la neige), maracons (egg whites, ground almonds and sugar sandwich cookies), and macaroons (with coconut), but I think my favorite version is the pavlova.

Pavlova is a meringue-based dessert named after the Russian ballet dancer Ánna Pávlova. Essentially it's a cake with a light crust and a soft sweet marshmallow center. It's a great way to use up extra egg whites and it's theoretically a low-fat dessert since there's no butter involved, though serving it with whipped cream tends to negate that health benefit.

I hadn't make meringue or any other dessert in years until we decided to buy a KitchenAid mixer last year. We bought the smallest, cheapest model we could find (the white one) since we thought it would be a good appliance to have, but we didn't think we would use it that much - until we tried it. That mixer could make dessert on its own - which is a problem in that I now routinely make dessert.

I first made pavlovas when the rhubarb/strawberry season started last year. My husband loves rhubarb and strawberry - it reminds him of his grandmother, so every spring he asks me to make rhubarb+strawberry desserts. It's one of the few things he asks me to make, since he's very proficient in the kitchen, but for some reason rhubarb and strawberries are my domain.

I started with a strawberry-rhubarb compote with vanilla and cardamon. Super easy to make and lasts for days in the fridge, though go easy on the cardamon since it's a strong spice. It's very good over ice cream or angel food cake, but I knew it would go particularly well on a pavlova.

Meringue to me isn't hard to make. For some reason I've never had a problem whipping egg whites into shape with the trusty mixer. It's the baking part that drove me batty over the past year. I've made them crunchy on the outside (as opposed to delicately crispy) but so gooey on the inside that we needed a knife to cut into them and chewing them was almost impossible (think consistence of saltwater taffy). They've been undercooked so they're marshmallowy, which is still tasty but not the consistency I've been going for. Usually they're also too brown, when they're not supposed to take on any color. But I think I've finally got the technique down, thanks to the comments at Simply Recipes - Pavlovas - seems like I need to reduce the heat by 25 degrees and bake at least 1.5 hours. I think it was closer to 2 hours with the hot weather we've been having on the East Coast. Now let's see if this is what it takes to overcome the inconsistent results that have been plaguing me.



Strawberry-Rhubarb Compote with Vanilla & Cardamom
From Fine Cooking magazine

4 cups 1/2-inch-thick sliced rhubarb (about 1-1/4 lb.)

1/2 cup granulated sugar; more to taste
6 Tbs. fresh orange juice; more to taste
3 Tbs. honey
1/4 tsp. plus 1/8 tsp. ground cardamom
1/4 tsp. kosher salt
1 small vanilla bean
3 cups hulled and thickly sliced strawberries (about 2 pints)

Combine the rhubarb, sugar, orange juice, honey, all the cardamom, and salt in a heavy-bottomed stainless steel 3-qt. saucepan. With a paring knife, slit open the vanilla bean lengthwise, scrape out the seeds with the back of the knife, and add the seeds and the scraped pod to the saucepan.

Bring to a simmer over medium-low heat, stirring often. Simmer until the rhubarb releases its juice and becomes tender but still retains its shape, 5 to 6 minutes. Add the strawberries and simmer until they start to soften and the rhubarb breaks down slightly, 1 to 3 minutes.

Pour the mixture into a bowl. Make an ice bath by filling a larger bowl with ice and water. Chill the compote over the ice bath at room temperature, stirring occasionally, until completely cool, 10 to 15 minutes. Discard the vanilla pod. Taste the compote and add more sugar and orange juice, if needed.

Yields about 4-1/2 cups

I'm blaming the tequila

So what if it was 5 days ago when I had a tasty but particularly lethal margarita - well, it was perhaps the two glasses of wine before the margarita that did me in. Here's a pic of my tequila-related injury, where my leg lost a battle with a coffee table - still looks nasty, 5 days later, but it definitely didn't hurt at the time!



Anyhow, I'm convinced it's the tequila that's thrown me off balance this week. It could also be the oppressive heat we've been having in New England, combined with my allergies flaring up and going to a friend's birthday dinner that ran pretty late on Wednesday night, but I'm going with the tequila as the primary culprit. I ended up being very tired on Thursday but I had some egg yolks sitting in our fridge that I needed to use. So despite my bleary-eyed exhaustion, I was determined at 8:30pm to make David Lebovitz' Goat Cheese Custards.

His recipe can be found here, along with some beautiful photos, but it's super simple and consists of just 5 ingredients (ack, I hope I don't sound like that awful chick on the Food Network): fresh goat cheese, sugar, milk, egg yolks and vanilla. Throw all in a blender then bake in a water bath. Should have been a fast and easy dessert.

We'd bought some fresh goat cheese that came from a farm in Massachusetts (available from Whole Foods, we are not that dedicated in chasing down our food - yet) and was very tightly vacuum sealed, making it much harder to cut open in my tired state. I hacked my way through the heavy outer wrapping and threw the freed goat cheese log into the blender without much thought. The rest of the ingredients went in and I whirred away. I tasted it to see what it was like (quite good, like a tangy cheesecake) and noticed that the mixture seemed to still be a little lumpy, so I gave it a few more seconds of blending and assumed it would be fine.

Pouring the mixture into the first ramekin resulted in a puddle of lumps. I leaned in for closer inspection and pulled up shredded bits of plastic as the source of the lumps. After I uttered "what the?" and upon seeing the offending plastic bits, my husband helpfully said "There's an inner wrapping of plastic around the cheese - did you remove it?".

No - no, I definitely did not remove it. I didn't even see it. I'd never been the one to handle this cheese before (my husband is always the one to add goat cheese to salads) so it was unfamiliar packaging to me. The struggle with the outer wrapping had worn me out and the lighting was dim where I had the blender so the goat cheese package got the better of me. I tried to salvage it by straining out the plastic shards, but only a thin liquid came through which didn't look like it would bake properly. I was too tired and there were too many bits of plastic to pick them out (I'd been thorough in my blending), so I declared defeat, threw the mixture in the trash and went to bed. So much for trying to be resourceful and use up some leftover egg yolks - at least I know it will be tasty the next time I attempt this recipe and I will definitely be looking for any and all plastic wraps in the future.

America's Test Kitchen Helping Me to Eat More Fish

I think it's a sign of me getting old but I like PBS' food shows - I think they have the best food programming out there, though I don't subscribe to the new Cooking Channel so it's not a complete comparison. I enjoy watching America's Test Kitchen for its entertainment value, but we haven't really made anything from the show until we watched the recent episode "Salmon - Indoors and Out".

I'm really trying to reduce my red meat intake and increase my fish consumption. Sushi is a favorite, tho it's expensive to eat out and it's not something I'm prepared to make at home. The grilled salmon prepared on the show was very easy to do - it required heating the hell out of the grill and oiling it like mad, but it didn't stick. It was the vinaigrette that made the dish particularly tasty. We had every type of vinegar in the house except the one I needed (white wine vinegar), so I substituted rice wine vinegar and it seemed just fine. The acidity worked nicely to cut through the richness of the fish, and with a big fresh salad, it was a great meal on a sweltering hot day.

With the success of our first foray into ATK's offerings, I think this salmon dish will make it into our regular weeknight repertoire. The next recipe to try from this episode is an oven baked salmon with a tangerine relish, but I think I'll save that for a cooler day.

Almond Vinaigrette
From America's Test Kitchen

Makes about 1/2 cup

Ingredients
1/3 cup almonds , toasted
2 teaspoons honey
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
4 teaspoons white wine vinegar
1 medium shallot , minced (about 2 tablespoons)
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon cold water
1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon leaves
Table salt and ground black pepper

Instructions
Place almonds in zipper-lock bag and, using rolling pin, pound until no pieces larger than 1/2 inch remain. Combine pounded almonds, honey, mustard, vinegar, and shallot in medium bowl. Whisking constantly, drizzle in olive oil until emulsion forms. Add water and tarragon and whisk to combine, then season with salt and pepper. Serve.