Cooking in Cambridge

So again, I'm spending the summer in Cambridge, visiting Benson. Both of us very much enjoy cooking, and I've been eating better here then I usually do at home, since usually at least *one* of us feels like cooking, and it's a  lot more fun to cook for two then to cook for one. So, the result of this is that Benson and I have made breakfast (or brunch) at least once every weekend since I've arrived, which has been pretty awesome. I actually brought to England with me a small bottle of maple syrup which I bought in New Hampshire last week as a gift to Benson -- it's already over half gone!
We've done pancakes, omelets, Dutch Baby, the world's best scrambled eggs, Challah french toast (from scratch -- with my friend Zahava's amazing homemade Challah recipe), and this weekend we made Oeufs en Cocotte (eggs in a pot). I'd never heard of these before (and thus had never made them before), but while we were browsing in a kitchenware store (looking for a cheese grater, amongst other things) we stumbled across these little ceramic mini-casserole dishes which were just too cute for me to pass up (my one true weakness: kitchenware). So, while commenting to Benson, waiting in line, that I had no idea what we would make with them but I had to have them anyway, the lady in front of us suggested making Cocette - a french dish she knew, with eggs and ham all made in a tiny ramekin - perfect for the little crockery we were purchasing. So, with help from Google, we had this for brunch this morning.



Oeufs en Cocotte
4 eggs
150 grams (5.5 oz) créme fraiche
nutmeg (a pinch)
salt and pepper (to taste)
handful of fresh chopped dill
butter
Optional additions: chopped up ham, bacon bits, asparagus, smoked salmon, cheese, anything else that might go in a delicious eggy breakfast dish!




This dish was quite easy to make - first, preheat the oven to 180C/350F (switching units of measurements for temperature and cooking in England has been a tad aggravating, I admit, but I'm getting used to it). Mix the créme fraiche with dill, salt and pepper, and a dash of nutmeg in a small bowl. Then, butter 4 ramekins (we just did this in the 2 little dishes, but ramekins are usually smaller) completely, and put  a generous spoonful of the creamy mix in the bottom of each one. If you are adding ham, cheese, or other things, put those in next (we just used ham, which was a nice addition), and crack an egg on top of that (in our crockeries we put 2 eggs, since they were large enough). Finally, put a dallop of the créme fraiche mix on top of all of this, and put another sprinkle of salt and pepper and a dash of dill to garnish. Put your ramekins in a baking pan, and fill the pan with warm to hot water until it comes halfway up the side of the ramekins. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until the eggs have set nicely.

These are great. I particularly like the taste that the dill gives to the recipe - dill is something I really like but don't actually go out and get very often (it doesn't dry well in my opinion, fresh is the way to go, and I usually don't buy a lot fresh herbs because they only come in huge packs at the store and they go bad before I can use them all). I also associate the taste and smell of dill with my grandmother (on my dad's side) -- she was a fantastic cook, and I don't think I encountered dill very often anywhere other than her house when I was little, so it's a pretty strong sensory memory associated with her. Can't have it without thinking about her. Anyway, so yes, a delicious brunch, and pretty easy to do, if you have ramekins.

Dinner is also a thing Benson and I have been making, obviously. So we also recently made the *best* chicken wings I've ever made in my life. We combined two recipes for the task -- first, Korean chicken wings are amazing, so we found a recipe for the sauce used in San Tung Fried chicken wings (here). We lack a deep fryer, however, so instead we decided to bake our chicken wings. However, the best thing about Korean chicken wings is how deliciously crispy they are. Which means we managed to discover a recipe which crispifies chicken wings in the oven extremely well instead (here)! We modified the crispy bit a little.


Crispy, Oven-baked San Tung Chicken Wings
Wings:
4 lbs chicken wings
2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup flour

Sauce:
2-3 scallions
10-15 cilantro sprigs
2-3 tbs soy sauce
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup water
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 tbs rice vinegar (we substituted apple cider vinegar mixed with white wine)
1 tsp chili garlic sauce or red peppers (AKA - Sriracha sauce!)

Preheat the oven to 250F (yes, two hundred fifty, not a typo). Pat the chicken wings dry. Mix baking powder, flour, and salt and sprinkle/coat the chicken wings with the mix -- you don't want to heavily coat your wings, because then they taste like baking powder, but you want to cover them well. This is the agent which is going to make your chicken wings crispy! You can add the flour mix through a sifter or a mesh strainer to sprinkle it lightly over the wings if you would like, rather than rolling it in the flour mix to coat it.

You are going to bake the wings on a wire rack -- so you want to put the rack on a cookie sheet, with aluminum foil covering the sheet (for easier cleaning). Then evenly arrange the wings, skin side up, in a single layer on the rack and bake at 250F for 30 minutes (this dries out the skin). Then, increase the temperature of the wings to 425F for 40-50 minutes more, rotating the sheet halfway through. The wings should be lovely and crispy and brown at this point, so take them out and let sit for 5 minutes. Then, simply toss in the sauce until they're all coated and delicious.

Ah yes, the sauce. Also an important thing you should make. The sauce is quite easy though -- just mix all the ingredients in a sauce pan, put on low-medium heat, and simmer (stirring frequently) for 5-10 minutes until it has thickened. We found that starting the sauce right after you rotate the chicken wings is about the right amount of time, giving you 20 minutes or so.

These are AMAZING. We served them over rice -- we actually made a half recipe, which was plenty for two with the rice. But for a larger group, make more!

So, all in all, having a lovely time in Cambridge. I've also gone into London 3 times now -- once as described in the last post, once for a live show of a comedy radio program I really like, and once to go to the Victoria and Albert museum as well as to track down the *best scotch egg* in London. We succeeded in this second task, finding ourselves in a really great Michelin star pub for lunch which served game and had *perfect* venison sausage covered scotch eggs. That was a good day!

Until next time!

The BEST Sandwich!

One of my favorite appliances in my kitchen is my bread machine. How often I use it varies wildly: I'll use it regularly for 2 weeks, then forget about it for a month and a half. For example: prior to last week, I hadn't used it since late February. However, last week I volunteered to bring in coffee-snack for the department (which we have every Monday and Thursday), and whenever I do this, I usually make some sort of snack (quiche on Monday, cheese cake squares on Thursday) and round it off with a loaf of fresh baked bread (peanut butter bread, pesto bread). This always works out well, because not only is home-made bread delicious, but most bread machines (including mine) have a delay bake setting, which allows you to program exactly WHEN your bread is going to finish. Which means I can bring in bread that is basically right out of the oven. Which is a treat for the gods. In addition to the two loaves I made last week, I made an additional loaf for myself this past Wednesday, and plan on making home-made pizza dough over the weekend! (Because home-made pizza is ALSO a delicious treat.)

I thought I'd include a couple of my favorite bread machine recipes here, for reference, since I'm particularly fond of the pesto bread and pizza dough recipes; and a good solid recipe for white (French) bread is very nice to have! These don't even require additional directions, since the nice thing about bread machines is you just dump all the ingredients in, press the proper setting and adjust the delay time if you want it, and press go. And then, X hours later, POOF! Delicious bread! (Or dough.) If you do not have a bread machine, I'd highly recommend getting one. They're generally not too hard to pick up cheaply, since they often show up in thrift shops: people get them, then don't use them and don't want them cluttering up their kitchens. Mine was from a yard sale, actually, and cost about $20. Worth it. While I don't make bread as regularly as I could, I feel I get good use out of mine. (Not as good as my aunt, though, who makes a loaf once or twice a week instead of buying bread!) I actually have a bread-machine cookbook, so I'm always trying new recipes for bread, but these are probably the recipes that I make the most. For the bread, I give both the proportions for a 1.5 lb loaf and a 2 lb loaf. Also note that I don't actually bother with bread flour, for the most part, though it is better to use it if you have it.

White French Bread (use regular or french setting)

Bacon-Toasted French Bread (see below)

1c.+2tbs  1+1/3      cups         Warm water
1              2             tbs           Vegetable Oil
1.5           2             tbs           Sugar
1              1.5          tsp           Salt
3+1/4       4            cups         Bread flour
1+1/4       1+1/4     tsp            Active dry yeast

Swiss Beer Bread (use regular setting)

1              1+1/4      cups         Beer 

                                               (room temperature)

1/2           2/3          cups         Shredded swiss 

                                              (or chedder!)

1.5           2             tbs           Vegetable Oil

1.5           2             tsp           Sugar

1.25         1.5          tsp           Salt

Swiss Beer Bread

3+1/3       3+3/4     cups         Bread flour

2+1/4       2+1/4     tsp            Active dry yeast

Pesto Bread (use regular setting)
1 cup       1cup+2tbs               Warm water
1/3           1/2          cups         Basil Pesto
1.5           2             tbs           Sugar
1              1.5          tsp           Salt
3+1/3       4            cups         Bread flour
2              2+1/4     tsp            Active dry yeast

(I just buy basil pesto, but you can make it yourself, of course!)

Garlic-Crust Pizza Dough (use dough setting) (found on all-recipes)

6 oz warm water

Nothing beats homemade pizza!

2 tbs olive oil       

3 cloves minced garlic

2 cups bread flour

1 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp yeast

In the case of the pizza dough, I do need to add a little more. Preheat the oven to 400F. After the dough is complete, remove it from the bread machine and lay it out flat on a cookie sheet (or other large flat bakeable surface) greased with olive oil, and let it rise for about 20 minutes more. After this, you can add tomato sauce, cheese, and whatever toppings and spices you so desire: in the case of the picture above, I added tomato sauce, basil, oregano, garlic salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, mozzerella, sliced garlic, and sausage! Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until the crust is nice and browned.

While I'm generally happy to just eat bread and butter (or jam), bread is also a traditional component of that obscure and exotic food, the sandwich. So since I had decent bread around, I decided to make what is pretty much THE best sandwich in the world. I have expressed in several of my posts that Thomas Keller is a fantastic chef (or implied it by extolling his restaurants and cookbooks). So when I say this recipe comes from him, it should not be surprising that I am in love with this sandwich. It's actually just a variation of a simple BLT, with a couple additional elements - namely, it combines the BLT with a fried egg and grilled cheese. I add a slight variation of my own in the way I toast my bread. Keller recommends using a rustic, countrystyle bread for this sandwich, which I highly recommend. But since I had some home-made white bread, I figured that was a reasonable substitute.  I've also found that a nice sour-dough goes very well in this sandwich. The point is, you actually do want some GOOD bread for this sandwich, it's worth it.  Here are the links to the original recipe and a video of Keller making this sandwich. You cannot watch that without your mouth drooling, I swear.



The Best Sandwich EVER!
2 thick slices of good quality bread (today's bread is home-made French)
2 slices of Monterey Jack cheese
4 thick slices of bacon
4 tomato slices
1 tbs mayonnaise (I use/prefer Miracle Whip)
2 slices good lettuce
1 large egg
1 tbs butter (I use bacon fat, instead)
chives (optional, but tasty)
salt, pepper

Gooey cheese melted over toast!

First things first, cooking up the bacon is the time consuming step: cook the bacon until it's nice and crispy (some people prefer less cooked bacon, but in my opinion, crispy is the way to go). Transfer to a plate with some paper towels to drain. Now it is time to construct your sandwich, starting from the base. The original recipe just says to take toast, put mayo on it, then add the cheese on that. Now, what I like to do is to toast the bread in the pan itself, using the bacon grease that you just got from making up the bacon. This infuses your bread with a delicious bacon flavor. So what I do is take both pieces of toast, fry them up with the bacon grease, remove one from the pan and spread with the mayo, then take the other and top with the cheese, turning off the heat, covering the pan, and letting it sit in there until it gets all melty. Then set your cheesy, bacon-y toast aside (this will be the top of your sandwich). Place the bacon, tomato, and the lettuce on the bottom (mayo'ed) piece of toast (be sure to sprinkle a little salt on the tomatoes). Back to the skillet, melt some butter (or more bacon fat) in the pan, and fry your egg over moderate heat - you really really want the egg to still be runny, here! Slide the egg over onto the sandwich (sprinkling it with a bit of salt, pepper, and chives if you desire; then top the sandwich with the melty cheesy slice of toast). Now, when you cut the whole thing in half, you have a gooey, delicious, runny egg yolk all over your sandwich. Which is just AMAZING. Look at that thing, it's just gorgeous!

Beautiful!

Breakfast in Baltimore

I've been visiting my parents a bit more frequently these days, since my mother has been having some health issues, and holidays have been around. So I've been doing a fair bit more of my cooking there as well. When visiting my folks in Baltimore, we very often have our main meal of the day sometime in the middle of it - in other words, a nice big Brunch/Lunch! Breakfast foods are a staple here, in part because I don't make them as often for myself when I'm in New York. For example, I never think to make pancakes just for myself - it just feels a bit sad and lonely eating pancakes alone. There are exceptions: the recipe below for Dutch Baby is probably the breakfast food I make most often for myself at my apartment (aside from eggs, of course, because eggs are awesome), because it's easy to make just one serving with relatively little effort, and I always have the ingredients around. But I'd never make Swedish Pancakes (Crêpes) just for myself. Anyways, while I generally don't treat breakfast as the 'most important meal of the day' that it supposedly is, I DO quite enjoy a nice breakfast, even if it's a dinner time. So here are a pair of my favorite breakfast recipes that I have made (with my dad, generally) on recent visits to Baltimore. Both these recipes are just eggs, milk, salt, butter, flour (and a bit of sugar for the crêpes) - it's amazing the difference proportions can make!

Dutch Baby: (serves 3)

3 tbs butter
3 eggs
3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup flour
pinch of salt









This is a 4 ingredient recipe (5, if you include salt), and all you need is an oven, a pan, and an Osterizer. Oh, you don't have an Osterizer? That would be the first mainstream blender ever sold in the United States, but unlike "Xerox-ing", "Osterizing" never really took hold as a household word - so any blender will suite your purposes here. My father estimates that our Osterizer is from somewhere between 1950-1955, so about 60 years old. And it still functions perfectly - let's see your fancy modern blender in 60 years, shall we? But yes, this super simple recipe is fast, easy, and delicious, looks beautiful, and is great for breakfast, brunch, or breakfast-for-dinner.


Preheat oven to 400F. Melt the butter in the pan, wobble the pan around so that the bottom is nicely coated with it. Add ingredients, in order, to the Osterizer, blending as you do so. Pour into pan, and bake for 10-15 minutes, until a loverly, puffy golden brown! And that's it! Eat right away (it starts to deflate a bit if you let it sit) with maple syrup (I always heat mine up prior to serving), or with powdered sugar and lemon, or with a bit of jam. Now note, this serves three quite nicely, and is also really really easy to divide by three. So if you want to scale up or down, it's really easy to do so! When I'm at my apartment, I occasionally make a 1/3 recipe for myself in a circular 8 inch pan, which is about right for one. If you want to make more or less, just change proportions and pan size.

Next, a more complicated but equally (or, dare I say, MORE) delicious breakfast food.

Swedish Pancakes (Crêpes)

3 eggs

1 tbs sugar

1-1/3 tsp salt

175 mL flour (~ a scant 3/4 cup)

500 mL milk (~ a generous 2 cups)

3 tbs butter – for cooking

These are just about ready to flip!

This recipe takes a bit more effort, but is extremely worth it and is wonderfully delicious. When I'm visiting home, we can use the cast iron skillet that my dad owns - we can put it atop of two burners to heat it up. However, you can also make these in a regular non-stick pan - it just harder to get the crepes out if you do it this way, and harder to maneuver around when flipping them.

Mix eggs, sugar, salt, and a little flour to the blender, and blend. Add the rest of milk and flour slowly to thin the mix and blend again, thoroughly. Let sit for a half hour before use (this is not, strictly speaking, required, but it is recommended. I've definitely forgone the half hour and it's turned out fine, though, and cut it down to ten minutes). Use a HOT skillet (the cast iron one mentioned before, or just a nice non-stick pan) thoroughly coated with butter. When we use the skillet, we generally keep a stick of butter in the freezer to keep it from melting, and between each batch we butter the skillet thoroughly with the stick to get a nice, even layer of butter. Pour out the crêpes large and thin - you can actually use some implement to make it more circular or you can tilt the pan, or blow on them in order to shape them a bit better. Watch the crepes carefully, and flip when it is just jelled, (and still has some moisture in the center) - there should be little bubble like features in the centre, see the picture. Let it sit for another minute or two, until the other side is cooked. You should be able to get under it easily with a spatula, and they should be a nice golden brown on both sides.

Now, you can just eat these like this, and they'll be wonderful. Dad and I generally have them with maple syrup, though my mother always is sure to comment when we do this that it's not the FRENCH thing to do. The 'French' thing to do is to have them with some sugar and a dash of lemon juice - this is how my mom eats them. But there are a lot of other ways you serve this base recipe that are also delicious! For example, once you've got the crepes flipped and mostly cooked, you can put a filling in the middle and fold the crepe in half, cooking it a little longer to warm the filling. If you want to make a more savory meal of it, you can use ham and cheese as a filling, letting it sit on the pan so the cheese melts. Or if you want to stick to the sweet side of things, honey and apples. Or just honey. Or berries and fresh whipped cream. Or chocolate chips (letting them melt a bit!) with bananas. Or PB&J. Or just the jam, or just the peanut butter. Or Nutella. Or go all out and make Crêpes Suzette with a grande marniere orange sauce and vanilla ice cream on the side! The point is, there are many amazing ways you can serve them, and it can be a lot fun to experiment. Bon Appétit!

At the Farmers Market: Winter Veggies

Right next to Columbia University, every Thursday and Sunday, there is a local farmers market where you can get fresh fruits, vegetables, meats, bread and grain, and all the rest of farmer markets greatest hits. During the winter, the selection is a bit more limited, but it's still really a good place to get produce, and I try to go fairly regularly. It's good for cooking inspiration and it encourages me to eat my vegetables - I love veggies, but it's easy to neglect them. While the exact selection changes from week to week, there are some pretty standard items you see frequently. Apples, potatoes, onions, garlic, various greens, etc; and this week, I picked up a nice acorn squash and some lovely parsnips. I've enjoyed both of these vegetables a lot, and both of them were originally introduced to me by my friend Kaila (who has been featured in this blog before). The roasted acorn squash recipe I got directly from her during college, and she was the one who first made pan roasted parsnips for me (pictures of which you can see in the blog post "Fun Times with Kaila and Benson"). This post is featuring a different parsnip recipe, which was inspired, indirectly, by my father.

My dad collects comic books, and is very fond of Disney comics - particularly Uncle Scrooge, Donald Duck, and the rest of Duckburg. One of the best (or really, the best) duck writers is Carl Barks, the man who first came up with Scrooge McDuck, in the late 40s. One of his stories is "the Golden Fleecing," where Uncle Scrooge goes in search of the famed golden fleece. Long story short, he runs into a tribe of "Larkies" (based on Harpies) who kidnap him and force him to judge a cooking contest (as the richest duck in the world should have the most refined taste). He throws the contest in order to escape, but the dish that he must cause to win is 'parsnip pudding' - and his least favorite food in the world is parsnips. So when I first mentioned to my father that I had discovered the deliciousness of parsnips, this story immediately sprang to mind, and he requested that if I was going to make parsnips for him, that I make Parsnip Pudding. Now, honestly, the recipe I made was just OK, but as I tasted while I went, I found that one of the initial stages of it, when you pureed the parsnip before mixing with other stuff and baking, was pretty good on its own. Parsnips have a very nice, distinct flavor, so you don't really NEED that much more. So, the next time I made parsnips, I decided to make something more like a mashed potato, a Parsnip Puree, rather than baking it with cheese and onions and all sorts of other things. So below, I present the results of this weeks trip to the farmers market!





Roasted Acorn Squash
Acorn Squash
Butter
Brown Sugar
Maple sugar or other flavorings (optional!)

A very simple, tasty dish with very little preparation. It does take a while to bake if you want it sufficiently soft, but if you are making it, it's worth the wait for it to be soft throughout. (Also, Kaila informs me that you can take your cleaned half squash, place it face down in a bowl of water, and zap for several minutes before you bake it, so that it doesn't take as long to bake - I haven't tried this yet.) First, slice the squash in half lengthwise, from stem to bottom, so you have two symmetric halves. Next, scoop out the seeds and stringy stuff, similarly as you would when carving a pumpkin (they are, after all, closely related). At this point, you can save the seeds to roast as a snack for later, or just toss them. They're pretty tasty, though, so I'd recommend using them! Take your two halves (or just one, and fridge the other one for another day - one half is one serving) and put in a small baking pan and fill the pan with a couple inches of water so that you don't burn the bottom of the pan. Next, cut a few thin slices of butter and put around the rim of the squash to keep it moist, and a couple bigger chunks (a bit under a tbs total) in the hollow of the squash. Next, sprinkle the whole thing generously with brown sugar, the edges and the middle. Now, I also have some lovely maple sugar, which I also lightly sprinkle over the entirety of the squash, for an additional flavor. You could also try it with cinnamon sugar if you'd like! Bake at 400F for ~1 hour, until the squash is soft and you can easily poke it through with a fork. At this point, you'll find that the squash is making a nice little bowl, with a sugary/buttery sauce in the middle. To eat, simply scoop out bits of the squash with a fork (or a spoon) and dip in the buttery sauce. Just be careful not to poke through the skin, or you will find your sauce drips through into the bowl - but the flesh itself should peel off the skin fairly easily.


Now, we still have those seeds from the squash, so there is no need to waste them. You can make an easy, light, crunchy snack out of them. I got this recipe from my friend Lauren, and there are many variations you can do. I like to use just salt and pepper (as I do tend to prefer salty snacks, as I've mentioned in SEVERAL previous posts), but if you prefer, you can make a sweeter variation with sugar and cinnamon, or a spicy version with cayenne pepper and garlic powder, or whatever your snack choice might be!



Pumpkin (or squash) seeds
Pumpkin (or squash) seeds
veggie oil
salt and pepper
      (or  cinnamon sugar, or whatever you want!)

Put a bit of oil on a cookie sheet, so that the seeds won't stick - or alternatively, line the tin with parchment paper. Take your seeds and wash them (making sure they're separated and don't have any stringy squash guts stick to them), and then pat them dry. In a small bowl, add a dash of oil - just enough to coat them so things will stick - then add your spices and mix well. In truth, when I made these the other day, I just put extra oil on the cookie sheet, mixed around the seeds a bit, then grated salt and pepper (as I have grinders for both) over the whole thing, then mixed them in the pan and grinded a bit more on top - you want the seeds to be in a single layer, spread out over the pan. Place the pan in the oven at 200F and bake for about an hour. After 30 minutes you should check on them, and mix them up a bit, then spread out into a single layer again. Check again at the 45 minute point, since you don't want them to become over done. By the time they're done, they should be nice and crunchy and a toasty brown; just pop one in your mouth to see if it's done!

Whipped Parsnip Puree (2-3 servings)
2 large Parsnips
1-2 tbs Butter
~3/4c Milk
Salt and pepper (to taste)

 Start some water on to boil. Meanwhile, peel and roughly chop your parsnips. The thinner you chop them, the less time it will take to cook them - but you don't have to make them TOO fine. Add a bit of salt to the water, and boil the parsnips for 20-30 minutes until soft. Strain, then put them in the blender, with your butter and enough milk that it will blend. As you blend, keep adding milk until it's a nice, light, fluffy texture that blends easily - this will be lighter than all but the fluffiest of mashed potatoes. Add some salt and pepper, perhaps a little cayanne, to taste. And voila! A nice, simple dish which you can startle guests with by not specifying what it is and letting them assume it's mashed potatoes. They really do look like mashed potatoes!

Caramelized Onion and Goat Cheese Quiche

I've been pretty busy catching up with work and such since I got back from South Africa, but everyone needs to eat, and if you are going to eat, you may as well eat well! This is a favorite dish of mine, which I only started making about 2 years ago - I wanted to make a quiche, but the only vegetable I had around the apartment were onions (I always have onions and garlic floating around - they are bare necessities in my kitchen), and I happened to have some goat cheese in the fridge. So, I looked up a recipe for onion/goat cheese quiches and found a LOT of them - so this is my blend of several recipes scattered across the internet.  As a bonus, this is a good vegetarian meal! 


Caramelized Onion and Goat Cheese Quiche
1 standard pie crust
2 red onions
1 tbs balsamic vinegar
4-8 oz goat cheese (depending how cheesy you want it, or how big the packet of goat cheese you bought happens to be... I'd tend towards more than less, but it's really up to you. I usually just put in the whole chunk of goat cheese I purchased.)
3 large eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup cream
nutmeg
salt and pepper
cayenne pepper (optional, to taste)

Onions: I put this step first because it takes the longest, but while the onions are cooking, you should deal with pre-baking your pie crust, as well. But to get a nice caramelization going on your onions, you need to cook them slowly, over the course of about an hour. First, french your onions. If you are not familiar with this term, that's OK, I wasn't either when I made this recipe for the first time. What you are going for is long, thin strands of onion. So, chop of the top and bottom of the onion, and peel it. Next, slice the onion in half, down the length of the it (from the top to the bottom), like an orange splits. Then, in the same direction, cut thin slices off of the onion, so you get nice long slices - see the picture to the left! Once your onions are all frenched up, put some olive oil in a pan on medium heat. Add the onions, sprinkle some salt over them, and cook for 10 minutes until they're starting to become soft and translucent. At this point, reduce the heat to LOW, and cook for about 30 minutes more (moving them around occasionally) until they're becoming brown and very soft. Add the balsamic vinegar and mix well, and cook 10 minutes more on low until they're caramelized and delicious! Then remove from heat and set aside.

Honestly, these onions are delicious by themselves, but take a while. So if you think you'll have use for them, you may as well cook some extras up while you are doing this. They're really good, sweet, even,  and consider that they're basically onions and vinegar. Mind, it IS balsamic vinegar, the most delicious vinegar ever! Silly though it may be, I still remember the first time I had it balsamic as a salad topping, at a German restaurant in DC - I was just amazed at how tasty the stuff was, and insisted my parents buy some right away for the next time we had salad at home. But then, I do tend to have a memory for food -  seriously, I can completely forget a face I've met only once, but take me to a restaurant I've been to once before, and I'll tell you exactly what I ate and how I liked it. Ah well.

Pie Crust: Preheat your oven to 400F. Make up your pie dough. Now here, I admit I cheat a bit. I don't actually make my own pie crust very often. I've made it via a mix, and I've made it when baking with friends who have their own recipes, but when I'm just cooking for myself, I generally cheat and buy frozen Pillsbury pie dough - it's pie dough, NOT pre-baked (as those tend to get dry), which you can cut up, or pre-bake yourself, or whatever you want to do with your pie crust. I pretty much always have a box in my freezer for spontaneous pie or quiche. Very useful! Anyways, once you have your pie crust dough, fit it into a standard pie pan. If you don't have a pie pan, I have, in the past, improvised and used a 8-inch circular cake pan, which will work just fine - however, I generally use my grandmothers pie pan, much easier to deal with. At this point, if you happen to have them, you can weight the crust down with pie weights. Alternatives include dried lentils, or beans, or whatever - the point is to prevent the bottom from puffing up and deforming while the crust bakes - I generally skip this step and it works out fine, but it certainly doesn't hurt to do. Pre-bake for 10-15 minutes (or whatever your pie recipe calls for) until its a nice, light brown. It will be going back in the oven later, with quiche in it, so don't over do it or the outer crust will get a little too toasty. (Mmm... toasty.). Let cool.

Onions and Goat cheese on the bottom

Filling and Baking: Preheat the oven to 325F. Blend milk, cream, egg, spices, and up to half the cheese until liquified and homogenous. Take your onions, and spread about half of them on the bottom of your pie crust, and crumble some more of the goat cheese on top of that. (In this particular pie, I was using 4 oz of goat cheese total - 2 oz in the blender, 1 oz on the bottom, and 1 oz sprinkled on top. I generally use a little more, but that's what I had around today.) Then pour your filling into the tart. Top with the rest of the onions and goat cheese (it will sink into the pie as you bake it, but you want it layered a bit). Bake for ~45 minutes until starts browning on the top - it's a good idea to check on it every so often, as you don't want it getting overdone, either.

Filled, not baked, and topped with
the remaining onions and goat cheese

This is friggen' delicious. My department has 'morning coffee' twice a week, with people rotating to bring in snacks to go with coffee, which I like to volunteer for every once in a while. Of the various things I bring in, this is definitely one of the most popular. I also like to bring in homemade bread with my bread machine, since usually one quiche by itself wouldn't be enough for everyone (and it tends to disappear FAST). On this occasion, however, I made it all for myself (and for my roommate, who made up a nice salad to go with it), for dinner and a nice lunch tomorrow.

Of Cookies and Cupcakes

On Monday evening I held a board-game night, for people both from college and from my department. It was a great evening, with lots of fun boardgames played (Pandemic! Ticket to Ride! Cards Against Humanity! Taboo! Settlers of Catan! Dominion! Etc!), lots of fun people, and lots of fun food and drinks. My friend Kaila was here for the weekend, (as previously seen in the "Funtimes with Kaila and Benson" post), so she was extremely helpful in aiding my food prep for the evening. She made a delicious spinach dip, for example, as well as helping with numerous other dishes including finding a GREAT recipe for basil pesto bread in my bread machine cookbook. But the most awesome dish that the two of us made was a previously untested (by us) recipe that Kaila found online that looked really cool: Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes - the original recipe can be found here.

This is exactly what it sounds like: cupcakes, stuffed with cookie dough. They're pretty straightforward, too - just drop frozen chunks of cookie dough on top of your cupcake batter and bake. But of course, you need to make the dough and the batter! So as a bonus, this post also includes a recipe for delicious Vanilla Pudding Cookies (with chocolate chips!) - a different recipe for chocolate chip cookies that was the standard at our place in college. Unlike my other chocolate chip cookie recipe (see "Christmas Cookie Spectacular" blog post), this recipe is designed to put out large, fluffy, SOFT cookies which stay soft for a long time after you've baked them, as in, probably a week though they've never really lasted that long! And although you only need a half a recipe for the cupcakes, well, we made a full batch so that we could have cookies in addition to cupcakes! So two delicious desserts for one! Apparently you can also just use the standard pre-made cookie dough that comes in tubes to make this recipe even easier, just roll THAT in balls and freeze it instead of making homemade cookie dough. You can also substitute other cookie doughs or other cake mixes to mix and match.

Vanilla Pudding Cookies (makes 4 dozen)

2.5 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1 3.4 oz package vanilla pudding mix
1 c. softened butter
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups chocolate chips
(1 cup walnuts)

Preheat the oven to 350F (assuming you are making cookies). First mix all your dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, the sugars, the pudding mix) in a large bowl, thoroughly. Next, mix in your softened butter. Repeating something I said in my "Christmas Cookie Spectacular" blog post, be sure to actually soften your butter, rather than microwaving it until it's melty. Melted butter and softened butter are very different animals, and the quality of your cookie somewhat depends on your butter consistency! While we did soften our butter as we were supposed to, if you are in a rush, there is an easy trick to make it soft really quickly, without cheating with the microwave - if you have a cheese grater, you can grate your hardened butter through it, which increases the surface area of the butter and lets it soften up right away. Plus, since it's already grated, it mixes easier than straight up hard butter does, even when each individual piece might be harder than truly softened butter. So a handy trick if you are ever in a pinch, like you've suddenly developed a massive cookie craving in the middle of the night and you MUST BAKE NOW. Yes, this has happened to me.

Once you've added and mixed the butter, proceed to add the eggs and vanilla as well, and mix thoroughly. Now, at this stage, your dough may look a little dry and/or flaky. If this is the case, you need to mix it more thoroughly, until it's completely homogenous. The easiest way to do this is just get in there with your hands and mix it thoroughly! So everything should look nice and smooth, as a cookie dough should. Once you've done that, add the chocolate chips as well. And if you like nuts in your cookies, I suppose you can also add those, though I wouldn't recommend them for the cupcakes, and personally I don't like nuts in my chocolate chip cookies! So, if you are making cookies OR cupcakes, you'll want to put the dough into 1 tbs balls and place them on a cookie tin (or, in the case of the cupcakes, into something that will fit into your freezer but keep the balls separated). If making COOKIES: bake for 10-12 minutes in your preheated oven, until they're nice and brown on the bottom.  Remove from the oven, let cool, and consume. These will stay soft for at LEAST a week, probably longer!

If making CUPCAKES: place the balls (24 of them, one for each muffin, though I added an extra one for luck) into the freezer for at least 2 hours, until they're frozen solid. The reviews of this cupcake recipe are very vehement that the cookie dough MUST be frozen solid for these cookies to turn out right. So freeze them well. Heck, overnight, if you so desire, I guess. When they're frozen, you are ready to make your Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes



Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes
1 box of cake mix
Any additional ingredients required to make said cake mix (this usually consists of some number of eggs, some oil or butter and water)
24 frozen solid 1 tbs balls of chocolate chip cookie dough - REALLY frozen.

Preheat the oven to 350F. Mix your cake mix according to the instructions on the box. In our case, this involved a red velvet cake mix, 3 eggs, 1 1/4 cup of water, and substituting a half a cup of softened butter for the half a cup of oil (because that way your cupcakes are more buttery! Can't go wrong with that!). Next, either line your cupcake tins with cupcake holders or grease the cupcake pan. We didn't have the paper cupcake things, so we just greased it, but next time I'd definitely use the liners: especially since if these are underdone they're otherwise quite difficult to remove from the pan. Fill your cupcake pan so that each cupcake thing is 2/3 full. I would emphasize that you are adding both cookie AND cupcake batter to your tins, so don't overfill: the cupcakes rise significantly. We overfilled ours, and they overflowed a little. Still tasty, but not as pretty! Next, place a frozen dough ball on top of each of the cupcakes, centered. It will sink as the cupcake bakes, so you don't need to press down or anything.

 In the comments from AllRecipes, it emphasizes to REALLY make sure the dough is frozen and DO NOT over cook the cupcakes, or they'll cook, and you'll have chocolate chip cookie stuffed cupcakes instead of chocolate chip cookie DOUGH cupcakes. Not a tragedy if you overshoot a little, but just be aware. Bake for 16-18 minutes - test the cupcakes by sticking a toothpick into it near the side of the cupcake - since you are testing the doneness of the cupcake part, not the cookie dough part. Once you think its done, remove the cupcakes from the oven, and let cool for 15 minutes (so it settles) before removing from the tins. Then you can pop them out, and they're ready for frosting!

Chocolate [Almond] Frosting
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup butter, softened
2 1-oz squares of unsweetened chocolate (melted)
1 tsp vanilla
Optional: small splash of almond extract
2.5 cups powered sugar

Bring the butter and the milk to a boil in a small saucepan, then blend in the chocolate, vanilla and, if you so desire, the almond extract. We actually didn't intend to add almond extract, but the bottle of vanilla and the bottle of almond extract look very similar, and some went in before we realized our mistake. But it was a very tasty mistake indeed, so if I made this again, I would replicate it! Next, slowly add your powdered sugar, blending as you go until it's smooth. You should probably taste as you go, and add more or less as you desire your sweetness level. While the original frosting recipe we were following (from my wonderful all chocolate-based recipe cookbook!) called for 2.5 cups of sifted powdered sugar, we cut it down a bit to 1 3/4 - mostly because that was all the powdered sugar we had. However, we found that it was actually just about the right amount of sweetness, so it wasn't a huge problem. The icing WAS a little runny, however, and tended to get a bit melty when in a warm room, so I'd probably go with the full amount of sugar if you have it. Once that's all done, you can frost your cooled cupcakes! And you have a delicious treat for you.

Our final products were very tasty, but NOT the prettiest cupcakes I've ever made. Our first batch turned out slightly overdone - so it was an absolutely scrumptious cupcake with a soft and fluffy chocolate chip cookie baked inside - which was delicious, but wasn't chocolate chip cookie dough we were going for. For our second batch (I only have 12 cupcakes worth of cupcake pans, so we had to do it in 2 batches), we overcompensated and undercooked - so we got the cookie dough part, but the cupcakes were almost falling apart because they weren't quite cooked enough. I'd error on this side, personally, if you have cupcake liners, since the main problem here was difficulty of removal from the pan. Note that the cooking time difference between the two batches was 2 minutes (18 minutes for the first, 16 for the second). So there is a fine, fine line here. And it probably varies based on the exact cookie dough and cake mix you use - so experiment a little! But all in all, very tasty, I would definitely make these again.

Baked cupcakes before the icing stage

Christmas Cookie Spectacular

Dad and I, decorating the tree
and stringing the lights

Christmas season is well upon us, and I, of course, headed home to Baltimore for the holidays. I spent several days, and had many productive hours decorating the tree, making cookies and Christmas Eve dinner, and generally spending quality time with family. Then on Christmas day, my parents and I headed up to New Jersey, to spend day with my grandfather. Since Poppop doesn't really do much cooking, (or like much cooking to be done in his kitchen) we all went out for dinner at a local diner - which are quite plentiful in New Jersey. Then today, it was back to NYC. Over the break, Benson will be visiting, and we'll be going on a cruise with him and two friends from college, which I'm looking very much forwards to!

Holiday traditions are always nice, and of course, the most classic one is that of the Christmas Cookie! While we do tend to vary exactly which cookies get made every year, we made two of our favorite standbys this season. The first is the  fantastically delicious and quite simple to make Hello Dolly Bars. I've also seen these listed elsewhere as Magic Cookie Bars, but the name "Hello Dolly" just has a bit more pizzazz. The second is the more traditional Chocolate Chip Cookie:  literally the standard recipe that you get off the bag of chocolate chips, though I do put in some notes about technique. But these are pretty classic, you HAVE to have chocolate chip cookies for Christmas, if nothing else!



Hello Dollys (aka Magic Cookie Bars)

1/2 cup butter
1.5 cups graham cracker crumbs  (8-ish graham crackers, crushed)
1 (14 oz) can of Eagle Brand Sweetened Condensed Milk
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 (3.5 oz) can flacked coconut (or 1 1/3 cups of coconut)
1 cup chopped walnuts.

mmmm... toasty!

Preheat the oven to 350F. Melt the butter completely in a 13x9 baking dish. Make sure to tilt the pan so the butter is even over the bottom surface, then sprinkle the graham cracker crumbs over the butter evenly. Next, pour the milk over the surface (evenly).  Note that this is easier said than done: sweetened condensed milk is THICK, and I usually have to  spread out the last bits with a spatula, and tilt the pan back and forth a bit before it is even... and there are usually a few holes leftover. As long as they're small, this is fine. Follow with the rest of the layers (chocolate chips, then coconut, and finally the walnuts) - making sure each layer is nice and even, and that you don't neglect the edges of the pan. Press all of this down firmly so it's nicely packed. Bake for 25-30 minutes until the coconut is nice and toasty brown, and the chocolate chips are starting to get nice and gooey. Remove from the oven and let cool, then cut into bars. You can store these at room temperature. (Makes 24-36 bars, depending on how big you cut them). These are delicious, rich, and chocolatey, and absolutely one of my favorite cookies every year.



Next, onto the classic. Chocolate chip cookies are an absolute MUST for the Christmas season!





Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookies
2.25 cups white flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup (2 sticks) softened butter
3/4 cups white sugar
3/4 cups brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 cups chocolate chips
1 cup nuts (optional)

Softened butter, sugar, and vanilla!
For a nice creamy texture.

It is a good idea to put out your butter a couple hours in advance, so that it softens naturally and you don't have to microwave it to soften it and risk melting it altogether. You want SOFT butter, not melted butter, to get the batter texture right and for the best cookies (yes, how you put in the butter actually matters for the finished product!). So do this well in advance! This is a good plan for any cookies or cakes which require softened butter. Honestly, butter doesn't really need to be refrigerated as much as you might assume - while you don't want it in a super hot place, if you keep it out in a relatively cool area, you really won't have any problems. However, I still tend to stick it in the fridge, where it will last longer. But if I'm eating a lovely loaf of homemade bread, or something, I will occasionally leave out a half a stick of butter so that its soft and easily spreadable!

Sifty sift

Another note, for your dry ingredients: when making Christmas cookies, we (my father and I) ALWAYS sift the flour before adding it, and similarly, we ALWAYS sift the sugar. This avoids lumps in the batter! Admittedly, when making cookies on my own, I don't always do this. But Christmas cookies are worth the extra work!

Preheat oven to 375F. First, combine (sifted!) flour, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl and mix well. In a larger bowl, thoroughly mix the softened butter with the (sifted!) white sugar, (sifted!) brown sugar, and (not sifted, silly!) vanilla extract. To this, add eggs one at a time, beating well after each. Then gradually add the flour mixture to this. Do this SLOWLY, a bit at a time, so that it doesn't lump up, or get uneven, or whatnot. This part is probably the most strenuous - we always do it by hand, and it gets quite thick after a while. In fact, this can get to be a problem. Years back, my dad and I made an extremely large batch of cookies, a triple recipe or so. Dad did the bulk of the stirring at that time, though we switched off a little, and his arm got QUITE sore. In fact, the next day, his elbow still ached.   And the day after that, it STILL ached. In fact, Dad had what we dubbed "chocolate-chip-cookie-elbow" for several months following that Christmas. Since then, I've done the bulk of the stirring when we make cookies - and we haven't made quite so large a batch, either.

Chop chop chop!

Once you've mixed the dough, you can now add the chocolate chips! Mix well until they're evenly distributed.  You can then add nuts at this point, if you so desire. While my mother is a big fan of chocolate chip cookies with nuts, my father and I aren't such fans. Therefore, we always weigh out the cookie dough precisely and make 1/3 with nuts, and 2/3 without. This saves much family argument.

My dad, putting the last few cookies
onto the tray

Now, all that's left is to bake them before you eat all of the delicious cookie dough. That's always my temptation, the dough is as good as the cookies, I swear. In college, the campus convenience store sold pre-made cookie dough which you could buy with your meal plan. As such, there was often a thing of cookie dough in my dorm fridge, of which my roommate Zahava and I always ate a lot, and our other roommate, Dahlia, protested about it's presence as too much temptation (but she still ate a LITTLE bit anyway!). I have, in fact, at least on one occasion, made a half batch of this cookie dough and failed to get any actual cookies out of it. I'm generally not concerned about raw eggs and such, since the odds of getting ill from that are quite low.

But anyway,  make rounded tablespoons of dough and place them on an ungreased cookie sheet, with a bit of space between them, then bake for about 10 minutes, until they're nice and brown on the bottom. Then transfer the cookies either to cooling racks, or lay them out on the table on top of a brown paper bag (which you can cut up for this purpose as a makeshift cooling rack!). And there you have it! Delicious chocolate chip cookies. You can store them in cookie tins or whatever you have on hand. I will note that when I store a few chocolate chip cookies in a container with a few Hello Dollies,  the Hello Dollys actually keep the chocolate chip cookies softer than they would be otherwise, which is nice!

All in all, I had a wonderful Christmas. Key gifts include an iPad Mini, some very fine mittens, and, on the foodie front, a nice set of springform pans! So expect a cheesecake post at some point in the future.

Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!