A Few of my Favorite Things

Being a Baltimore girl, originally, my favorite food is crab - specifically, a nice big pile of Chesapeake-caught Blue Crabs steamed with Old Bay seasoning. This spread is, unfortunately, something that is not only seasonable but area specific. However, you can still get decent crab elsewhere in the country - but when I do so, I generally make sure I'm getting the whole crab, or obvious chunks of crab (legs, for example), rather than something that is 'stuffed with crab' - since I've found that unless you are particularly careful about your source, those sorts of dishes end up with more random filling than crab, or even utilize FAKE crab (which is an abomination of culinary arts.) 

And the one dish I avoid like the plague is "Maryland Style Crab Cakes" (when outside of the Chesapeake Bay area, that is, of course I've gotten decent crab cakes in both PA and VA and at home in Maryland). In Baltimore, the best crab cakes are from G&M's (not counting the homemade crab cakes of my Aunt Dot, but those aren't exactly available to everyone!). These crab cakes are the size of your fist, if you happen to have very large hands. They're bigger than my fists, anyway - they're literally half a pound each, and most of that is solid crab. You have huge chunks of backfin falling out of it, they're lovely! There are many other excellent crab cakes in Baltimore, of course, but these are my favorite. My point is, I have high standards for crab cakes. But with only the very rarest of exceptions, I've found crab cakes made elsewhere tend to consist of the barest flakes of crab, held together by massive amounts of something that ISN'T crab. I'm not saying that there aren't any good crab cakes away from home - just that I've gotten tired enough of being disappointed by crab cakes that I've stopped ordering them all together. And when I keep an eye out for other people's crab cakes orders, they generally confirm my impressions. 

You can often tell a crab cake is going to be bad by simply looking at it: if it looks like a firm, smoothish, patty - it's going to be mostly fill and crab flakes; a PROPER crab cake should be mostly crab, with some other stuff that holds it together - hopefully just barely enough other stuff to hold it together - and  the larger chunks of crab meat you can pick out, the better. And I've gone to restaurants, NICE restaurants, which have very good sea food in general and where I really enjoy the food, and seen crab cakes which make me wince just at the sight of them. So I've pretty much given up on LOOKING for decent crab cakes, unless chance favors upon me. I have found, by chance, exactly one place in New York City that has a decent crab cake sandwich - Red 58 has a solid crab cake BLT. I didn't order it the first time I was there, but a friend of mine did. And when I tried a bite I was most pleasantly surprised! I'm not saying its the best crab cake you'll ever have, but it, you know, actually tastes like a crab cake, which means it tastes good. So when we've gone back there for drinks and dinner, I've ordered it ever since. So now, I have one place in New York that I can go for such things. Again, I wouldn't be surprised if there are other places in NYC that have decent crab cakes, and if you know of one, please! Let me know!

When I consider non-crab favorite foods, there has always been one dish which springs to the top of my list. This is my favorite dish that is on my regular meal rotation, and has been for some time. Fettuccine Alfredo is both easy and straightforward to make, and absolutely delicious. Now, healthy? Not so much. My family's nickname for the dish is "heart attack on a plate," which is a fairly accurate descriptor: it's all butter and cream and cheese and deliciousness. It's been one of my favorite dishes for as long as I remember, before I ever even tried crabs, and is pretty much my ultimate comfort food.

Fettuccine Alfredo

1/4 c. (4 tbs) butter

1/2 c. heavy cream (or more, if you wish)

1/8 lb parmesan cheese (at a minimum – I tend to add extra)

Salt

Pepper (fresh ground)

1 lb fettuccini noodles

You can make this with pasta that isn't fettuccine as well, and to be honest, the above picture is technically linguini alfredo. But pasta substitutions are relatively minor - you might need a little more or less of everything to coat pasta variations with different amount of surface area, I guess. Additionally, something related to parmesan cheese, like asiago or romano cheese, are also valid substitutions. I like to buy solid blocks of cheese, then grate off the amount that I need - it tends both to be less expensive, and keep better. Cheese graters are handy things to have! 

Anyways, whatever your noodle choice, cook them as directed until they are tender - they should be more on the undercooked than the overcooked side, since you'll continue heating them as you add the additional ingredients, but cook them to your taste. Strain the noodles and put them in a pot on the stove top. Cut the butter into 1 tbs chunks or so, and mix into the noodles until they are well coated with butter and the butter is melted (this should be done over low heat). Add cream, continuing to mix over low heat - you want to keep mixing the noodles so that nothing scorches. Grind in generous amounts of pepper, to taste. My mother doesn't really like ground pepper, so when I'm making this at home, I always have to just put a little on and add the rest later to my own plate, but when I'm cooking in NYC, I can add all the pepper I like - which is quite a lot. I also tend to be a bit heavy handed with the salt. Next, still on low heat, add in the cheese slowly, and mix well - it should get nice and melty.  . Serve immediately. Add salt and any additional pepper to taste -this means grate fresh black pepper generously across your plate, and a nice extra dash of salt, as well!

If everything seems a bit dry, add a bit more heavy cream until it's properly moist. If it's too moist, just add more cheese. I like lots of cheese, so I end up with both a lot of cream AND a lot of cheese - this is not a bad thing. Honestly, I don't really bother to measure out the ingredients anymore since I'm so familiar with this recipe, I just add things in until it looks right. It's a pretty simple recipe, but a delicious one, and definitely one of my favorite things.

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.

Fun times with Kaila and Benson

This past week, Benson (my boyfriend, visiting from California for a wedding) and I went up to Waltham for a couple days to visit a friend from undergrad, Kaila. I lived with her for two years while I was at Brandeis University, in a house with 5 girls total, including us. And I miss her cooking, she's a great cook. All three of us, in fact, quite enjoy cooking and eating well, so we made a very nice feast on Tuesday night. Again, a good way to bond and chat with people, with a delicious result. First, the main course.

My co-chefs, Benson and Kaila

Chicken Cordon Bleu, as found on that very useful site, allrecipes.
6 chicken breasts
6 slices of sliced cheese
6 slices of ham
3 tbs of flour
1 tsp paprika
a handful of breadcrumbs (not in the recipe, but we added it anyway)
3 tbs butter
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup white wine
1 or 2 bouillon cubes
1 tbs cornstarch
1 cup whipping cream

We altered this recipe a bit, namely in our cooking method and the addition of breadcrumbs, but I think it turned out really nicely (we also halved it). Mix the flour and paprika (and we added some breadcrumbs), which will make up the crust of your chicken. Pound out the chicken breasts flat. Lay the cheese and the ham up in a roll, securing with toothpicks. Then roll in the egg, and bread with the crumb mixture. Next, pan fry the chicken packets in butter until they're nicely browned, and bake at 350F for 20-30 minutes, until fully cooked.

Meanwhile, for the sauce, mix the cornstarch and cream in a small bowl, and add to the skillet with the wine and a bouillon cube. Stir constantly until the cube dissolves (as cream can be finicky), and taste to see if you want a stronger chicken flavor - if so, add another bouillon cube. You want to cook this on medium-low heat until it has thickened into a nice saucy consistency. Then, when both sauce and chicken are complete, serve: pour the sauce over the chicken (or allow each person to do that on their own). Watch out for the toothpicks! It might be a good idea to remove those before serving to guests, or at very least warn them!

As sides, we also made Mashed Potatoes and Pan Roasted Parsnips. The potatoes were from scratch, and pretty straightforward (peel, cube, and boil potatoes; mash with butter, milk, salt and pepper until the right consistency and seasoning is reached! Add a bit of garlic for fun.) Similarly, the parsnips were another simple and delicious vegetable. If you haven't tried parsnips, they're really simple and easy to make. They look like giant albino carrots, and have a wonderful nuttiness to them. Here, we just peeled them and sliced them thin, and cooked them with a bit of butter, salt and pepper. Couldn't be more simple, couldn't be more delicious. An interesting and tasty vegetable! We also made Gruyere Cheese Gougeres (aka, cheese puffs), a recipe from the French Laundry Cookbook, but I think I'll save those for another post. They're a bit complicated, and French Laundry deserves it's own place to shine, really, it's a great book.


Finally, for dessert, we made:

Apples Pielettes (Cup-pies!)
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
3 TBS salted butter
1/4 cup apple juice
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 tsp apple pie spice - aka some cinnamon, and a pinch each of cloves and allspice, with, in our case, a bit of nutmeg as well. Kaila cooking ALWAYS involves nutmeg!
1 tbs cornstarch
8 soft caramel candies
3 baking apples, pealed, cored, and chopped into 1/2 inch pieces

Crust:
2 11-oz boxes of pie crust mix
1/2 cup water
1 egg, beaten

Anyways, you want to put the sugar, butter, apple juice, cream, spices, cornstarch and caramel in a pot on medium heat, so that everything melts all together, stirring constantly. Then add in the apples, and bring to a boil. Simmer for 8-10 minutes - you want the apples to still hold the shape, but the sauce to be thick and syrupy. Then remove from heat and set aside. This is delicious, and if you have leftovers, you can do what we did and make french toast the following morning and have this as the topping!

A dough blender

Heat the oven to 425F, then make up the pie crust. We actually used Kaila's pie crust recipe instead of the box kind: 3 cups flour, 1 tsp salt, and 1 cup crisco, and a bit of water to keep it sticking together, all smashed together with a dough blender (NOT electronic, though it sounds that way!). Usually, I admit, when I make pies or quiche I use the pillsbury frozen ready made pie crust doughs - the crust isn't pre-baked, it's still dough form so you can shape it a bit, and you can bake it exactly as required by the recipe, and that's just fine. They're pretty tasty. But I have been thinking I want to try my hand at making actual crust, especially as it's fairly straightforwards. If you have your own recipe for crust, you want enough for a two crust pie. So just make that up, and divide in half. Take one half, then roll it out to 1/4 to 1/8 thickness.  Using a 4 inch cookie cutter (or the rim of a 13-oz coffee can), cut out 6 circles which you put in the bottom of a cupcake pan as the bottom of the cup-pies, then cut out 6 smaller 2 3/4  circles (with a glass rim, perhaps), which you'll use as the top. Then repeat this with the OTHER half of the dough, for an even dozen.

Fill each of the up pie crusts with the filling, and put the tiny circles on top, pinching all around the rim to seal them - make sure they're sealed tight! then slice a few slivers through the pie crust tops so they can vent (in decorative patterns, preferably!). Brush all over with egg so the crusts are a nice golden brown. Bake for 15 minutes until nice and brown, then remove from the oven. You can remove these from the muffin tin after perhaps about 10 minutes of letting them cool. And then, delicious pie-letts!

Pumpkin Pie-lettes

We liked these so much, the next day we did the whole thing again, only with pumpkin pie filling, instead. Note that if you take a random pie filling recipe, you'll end up with extra filling, so we had to take some dough and make one extra big pie-lette (not shown).

Anyway, Benson and I had a wonderful time visiting Kaila. We didn't JUST cook, naturally, we also walked around Waltham, which is really nice to do, since I DID live there for 4 years; we went to see Wreck-it-Ralph (a lot of fun, worth seeing); we watched some Arrested Development (Kaila hadn't seen it, though Benson and I had); and generally had a nice time. Benson left to go back to California, and I stayed an extra couple of days. And cooked some more, but thats another blog post!

Dinner is served!!!